I saw most of John Masefield, a nervous, generous person, very sensitive to criticism, who seemed to have suffered greatly in the war, when an orderly in a Red Cross unit; he was now working at _Reynard the Fox_. He wrote in a hut in his garden surrounded by tall gorse-bushes and only appeared at meal-times. In the evening he used to read his day’s work over to Mrs. Masefield and they would correct it together. Masefield was at the height of his reputation at the time, and there was a constant flow of American visitors to his door. Mrs. Masefield protected Jan. She was from the North of Ireland, a careful manager, and put a necessary brake on Jan’s generosity and sociability. We admired the way that she stood up for her rights where less resolute people would have shrunk back. The tale of Mrs. Masefield and the rabbit. Some neighbours of ours had a particularly stupid Airedale; they were taking it for a walk past the Masefields’ house when a wild rabbit ran across the road from the Masefields’ gorse plantation. The Airedale dashed at it and missed as usual. The rabbit, not giving it sufficient credit for stupidity and slowness, doubled back; but found the dog had not yet recovered from its mistake and ran right into its jaws. The dog’s owners were delighted at the brilliance performance of their pet, recovered the rabbit, which was a small and inexperienced one, and took it home for the pot. Mrs. Masefield had seen the business through the plantation fence. It was not, strictly, a public road and the rabbit was, therefore, legally hers. That evening there came a knock at the door. ‘Come in, oh, do come in, Mrs. Masefield.’ It was Mrs. Masefield coming for the skin of her rabbit. Rabbit-skins were worth a lot in 1920. Mrs. Masefield’s one extravagance was bridge; she used to play at a halfpenny a hundred, to steady her play, she told us. She kept goats which used to be tethered near our cottage and which bleated. She was a good landlord to us, and advised Nancy to keep up with me intellectually if she wished to hold my affections. Another poet on Boar’s Hill was Robert Nichols, still another neurasthenic ex-soldier, with his flame-opal ring, his wide-brimmed hat, his flapping arms and ‘mournful grandeur’ in repose (the phrase is from a review by Sir Edmund Gosse). Nichols served only three weeks in France, in the gunners, and was in no show; but he was highly strung and the three weeks affected him more than twelve months affected some people. He was invalided out of the army and went to lecture in America for the Ministry of Information on British war-poets. He read Siegfried’s and my poetry, and apparently gave some account of us. A legend was started of Siegfried, Robert and myself as the new Three Musketeers. Not only was Robert not in the Royal Welch Fusiliers with Siegfried and myself, but the three of us have never been together in the same room in our lives. [Illustration: 1929 THE SECOND BATTALION, THE ROYAL WELCH FUSILIERS]