Sassoon the Man
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n appearance he is tall, big-boned, loosely built. Heis clean-shaven, pale or with a flush; has a heavy jaw,wide mouth with the upper lip slightly protruding andthe curve of it very pronounced like that of a shrivelledleaf (as I have noticed is common in many poets).His nose is aquiline, the nostrils being wide and heavilyarched. This characteristic and the fullness, depth andheat of his dark eyes give him the air of a sullenfalcon. He speaks slowly, enunciating the words as ifthey pained him, in a voice that has something of thetroubled thickness apparent in the voices of those whoemerge from a deep grief. As he speaks, his largehands, roughened by trench toil and by riding, wanderaimlessly until some emotion grips him when theknuckles harden and he clutches at his knees or at theedge of the table. And all the while he will be breathinghard like a man who has swum a distance. Whenhe reads his poems he chants and one would thinkthat he communed with himself save that, at thepauses, he shoots a powerful glance at the listener.Between the poems he is still but moves his lips...He likes best to speak of hunting (he will shout of it!),of open air mornings when the gorse alone flamesbrighter than the sky, of country quiet, of his mother, [Footnote: His father was a well-to-do country gentleman ofAnglo-Jewish stock, his mother an English woman, a MissThornycroft, sister of the sculptor of that name.] of poetry--usually Shelley, Masefield and ThomasHardy--and last and chiefly--but always with a rapid,tumbling enunciation and a much-irked desperate airfilled with pain--of soldiers. For the incubus of waris on him so that his days are shot with anguish andhis nights with horror. He is twenty-eight years old; was educated atMarlborough and Christchurch, Oxford; was a master offox-hounds and is a captain in the Royal WelshFusiliers. Thrice he has fought in France and once inPalestine. Behind his name are set the letters M.C.since he has won the Military Cross for an act ofvalour which went near to securing him a higherhonour.
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