CHILDHOOD FRIENDS
The two books opposite were inscribed in middle-age for childhood friends with whom Sassoon had stayed in contact into adulthood. Marjorie Forster (nee Stirling), grew up in nearby Goudhurst in an impressive Queen Anne house called Finchhurst, which features in an unfinished Sassoon short story called ‘A Beginning’, as well as in The Old Century . They remained in touch for the rest of their lives, and she wrote her last letter to Sassoon just four weeks before his death. Henry F. Thompson met Sassoon at Marlborough, and is noted in Egremont’s biography as being one of Sassoon’s better friends from his schooldays. Later, Thompson became a tea planter in Ceylon, but he and Sassoon met and corre- sponded through the 1920s. In 1926, while Sassoon was struggling with a section of his Memoirs Of A Fox-Hunting Man , a dinner with Thompson and discussion of the old days helped alleviate writer’s block, and yielded a further 500 words on his return home.
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