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Show CHRYSALIS pAQE 205 certainly (and might still) have tormented him. Harry tells me he is eighty years old this July. I am amazed. I tell him I would never have guessed it. We sit quietly for a moment. Then we talk of his past, of his children lost to violence or sickness, of Winnifred, his lovely wife for forty-three years. We talk of art and music and poetry. "I have been thinking of Rupert Brook this morning," he says. "The young poet who died on his way to the Dardanelles. And of Wilfred Owen. They died in the war, the First World War. I was in that one, you know. That tells you how old I am! And the young man who wrote *In Flander's Fields.' Who was that? 'In Flander's Fields the poppies blow. . . .'" Thinking of the "tenderness of silent minds, and each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds,' I tell him I can't remember who wrote "in Flander's Fields." It doesn't matter. Harry Lawrence was himself a professional writer, a correspondent for several national trade magazines, a playwright and a poet. Now a blind friend comes often to visit and she brings a Braille typewriter for his use. "It's hunt and peck," he says, laughing. "But it was hunt and peck when I could see!" No matter where I look, I can find no hint of deprivation in his manner. I tell him this. |