Autograph letter signed from Maslyn Williams to Mark Hertzberg, 17 October 1997

MLMSS 7829

fonds

17 October 1997

825951

0.01 metres of textual material (1 folder)

Maslyn Williams (1911-1999), writer and documentary filmmaker, was a friend of Mark Hertzberg and his late wife, the writer Nancy Keesing. He lived at Bowral in the Southern Highlands of N.S.W.

Maslyn Williams, aged 86, writes from his home, Copley Cottage, Bowral, and begins by belatedly thanking Hertzberg for replying to his enquiry about a song concerning Lake Kinnereth (Sea of Galilee). Williams laments his slowness in completing an essay he had started two months before. He keeps up the daily discipline of writing and revision to stay mentally alert. Hertzberg’s recent visits to China and Japan occasion Williams' reference to his own time in Japan in the 1960s, one of the subjects of his nascent essay. He acknowledges the invaluable support from his carer, Beverley [Beverley Hall]. She had spent a week in Japan several months earlier, in part to survey nursing homes for the aged and incapacitated. He mentions that friend and retired publisher Ken Wilder is currently away on one of his annual sojourns to Italy, and he alludes to Wilder’s book, I, Aretino : Scourge of Princes, 1492-1556, published that year by Leo Berkelouw. In contrast, Williams declares he rarely travels long distances unaccompanied, although he had made a trip to Sydney for a concert of New Music at the Spring Festival [8th Sydney Spring International Festival of New Music] which he had found disappointing.

Edmund Campion, Maslyn Williams' literary executor, provided the surname of Williams' carer, Beverley Hall, August 2008