WHYTE'S in association with CHRISTIE'S - The Ernie O'Malley Collection MONDAY 25 November 2019

64 0 30 January 1940 My Dear O’Malley I thank you both from my heart for your sympathy and your thoughts for us in our sadness. My sister 1 was always so gallant carrying along with her source of the spirit of a young girl to the very end that I find it hard to think that she has left us here. Two of us 2 gone inside twelve months. I am glad to know my sister did not have too much pain in her illness. She was only away from the [Cuala] Press for about a month, and indeed came up to it for two days just a week before Christmas. I am Yours very sincerely, Jack B. Yeats 1 Elizabeth Yeats died in Dublin on 16 January 1940. 2 William Butler Yeats died in France on 28 January 1939. 31 January 1940 My Dear O’Malley, Many thanks for your cheque for which I send the formal receipt. It flatters my ideas to know of someone reading art from my books. I have always forgotten how I came to write anything in a little while so when I open my own books again and read, I hear the words. I delight in your description of your wild birds all about you. Your part of the country used to be described as “a Paradise for Sportsmen.” I would like to think of it as a Tír na nÓg for all the wild ones if it could be in feather, fur and scales. I am sorry about your hand but I hope it is mending all right. I don’t remember ever hearing of a water horse getting a foal on a mare of the land. It is wild places that bring about the wild happenings, like logs that enlarge. My wife, who enjoyed also your account of your birds, sends her kindest remembrances together as I do who am Yours very sincerely, Jack B. Yeats