ℓ. 1

like those dreadful ones, at Iffley I think
it is, thus [sketch of an arch with a keystone] dreadful things with
keystones, you know, of Queen
Anne's time - not like those
I say, and not Norman, but with what
was I suppose a third-pointed moulding
or lovel label round the head. I tried
to remember the moulding in my mind's eye,
but that is a snare, you never can.

4. Two windows, one the east, had swallows'
nests like this. Symmetical birds you see. [sketch of a pointed arch harboring a swallow's nest]

5. I washed my hands in
a pebbly brook which ran
across the road. (You see
I have a quill now, for it is tomorrow
morning.)

I have been twice to S. Alban's, Grey's
Inn Road, but I cannot describe it now.
I send you something to console your
loneliness, it is [turn over. x

Gerard M. Hopkins
March/64

Dear Baillie,

For the first time for years I try to
write a letter with a non- J steel pen, or
rather I have tried three already. You know
how at home one can never get one one
wants,

Be it never so homely

There's no place like home for losing
what you have and not getting what you
want. I always find home so uncivilized;
they seem never to be acquainted with the
ordinary luxuries or necessaries. If it were
Pleasures or Palaces it would be the same;
for instance I am sure I should not find
sealing wax, though I might roam everywhere
for it. And you can only see The Times and
Saturday and nothing else, and the Church