BC. Laurence Binyon

33. Letters. Quoted in Hatcher (43), 1995.

According to Hatcher the letters to Nicole Binyon and the 10 September and 4 October letters to Margaret and Helen Binyon are in the Binyon Archive at the British Library (see 34b); the letter to William Rothenstein is in the India Office Library at London; the 20 October letter to Margaret and Helen Binyon was in 1995 in the possession of Harriet Proudfoot, Binyon’s granddaughter.

a. To William Rothenstein, 10 September 1912 (p. 70). Writing to recommend the work of a young Japanese artist, Urushibara Yoshijirô (see also 18), Binyon contends that Japanese artists have attained ‘a level totally beyond anything possible in our Western processes’.

b. To Margaret and Helen Binyon, 10 September, 4 October, 20 October 1929 (pp. 246, 248). Letters from Tokyo to Binyon’s daughters note details of the trip and Binyon’s impressions of the city and of those he met there.

c. To Nicolete Binyon, 18 October, 20 November 1929 (pp. 247, 253). In the October letter to his youngest daughter Binyon describes his impressions upon seeing a performance of the nô. The ‘plays were too wonderful for words. Just the theatre itself, the spotless fine unpainted wood of the stage (uncurtained) with its fine proportions & the big pine-tree painted on the back, was ravishing to look at. And then the utter remoteness from realism, the slow movements, the gorgeous dresses!’ In the November letter Binyon writes that he has ‘lost [his] heart’ to Miyajima (see 24c for the poem that resulted from this), and includes details of his visit to Kôyasan that found their way into his poem about the monastery (24a).