Willa Alone 1959–1963

Abstract 1959–1963. The chapter reviews the critical assessments and obituaries that follow Edwin’s death, north and south of the border. Willa’s friends rally round, and her correspondence with Violet Schiff, Kathleen Raine, and the Marwicks in Orkney will be a great comfort to her in years to come. Crippled with arthritis and easily tired, Willa is determined to cope on her own. Honouring Edwin’s Bollingen grant, she commits to writing the ballad book herself. She is awarded a prize of 3000 marks from the German Academy of Language and Literature in recognition of her translation work, and receives the Guinness Poetry Award on Edwin’s behalf in London. Edwin’s Collected Poems is published in 1960, and Willa helps with the addendum of ‘Poems not Previously Collected’. She meets Peter Butter, who is writing a book about Edwin. She writes an essay on old age from a woman’s perspective, but ‘This Lopsided World’ is never published. She does, however, contract to translate Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s play, Der Schwierige—The Difficult Man. Gavin is finally to be married. He will wed Dorothy Hargreaves at Swaffham Prior so that his mother can attend. Willa is delighted, but there will be growing tensions between her and Dorothy when the couple decide to come to live with her in December 1961. Within two years Willa has decided to leave Swaffham Prior to stay with Kathleen Raine, in a basement flat in Chelsea.