THE LAST YEARS
cancer. On 22nd November 1938, he wrote a pencilled note from the hospital to Mrs E. Williams Bailey, an admirer and collector of his work:
‘I wish I could give a good account of either my wife or myself. My wife has bone up amid great disturbances astonishingly well, but I fear it cannot be said that she is better. And I – well the less said the better. Henceforth life will only be possible for me with the aid of a surgical nurse – whether at home or at the hospital as at present. I wish I could stop losing weight – but I eat with difficulty & haemorrhage is frequent & severe. So I am very weak.’
And on 28th November he wrote to the same correspondent:
‘…I am told I must not expect to be able to gauge the future possibilities for my life in less than about a year. It turns on unknown conditions that cannot be got at – due to the capricious behaviour of a gland, that may get tired of its misbehaviour, or the reverse – in which case my difficulties will be very great. However, we must wait & see. My best hope is to feed as well as I can (at present a very poor effort) & never tire myself.’
He returned home to Stilegate with no illusions; his London studio was abandoned; and as time showed that he was not to recover he became very low and depressed. He spent much of the time in bed, but there were days when he still felt strong enough to work and deal with his affairs. In April 1939, Mary Truby King wrote to Heinemann from Adelaide, asking permission to use a drawing from Swinburne’s The Springtide of Life – ‘quite the most charming “natural feeding” picture I have seen’ – as a frontispiece for her book Mothercraft, and added: ‘I feel sure that Mr Arthur Rackham, or his trustees (I think he is dead, but am not sure) would not mind the
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