Autograph Letter Signed ('D. S. Cairns') from the theologian David Smith Cairns to 'Mr. Vansittart' [the diplomat Robert Gilbert Vansittart, later Baron Vansittart of Denham], praising his poem 'The Singing Caravan' in the most fullsome terms.

7pp., 12mo. Good, on lightly-aged paper. On two bifoliums. He begins: 'Dear Mr. Vansittart | I have just finished a second reading of "The Singing Caravan". I got a copy for myself after a hunt, for it is o[ut]. [of] p[rint]. as you know'. He will 'return to it again & again. It is rather a shame to trouble you with a letter when you are just "shooting Niagara", but [...] you can read it when you choose.' He is 'impelled anew to thank you for the book, and to say how fine I think it, & how real a gift it is to your generation.' Cairns continues in the same vein, praising the 'abundance of fine lines & passages'. 'It is, if I have read it rightly, as I think I have, a kind of "Pilgrim's Progress" of a very original twentieth century kind.' He continues with his interpretation'. He finds the values of the book 'deeply Christian'. He ends: 'Forgive this intrusion but I feel I am deeply your debtor for this poem It has <?> ignited my own imagination, & has won a place among the friendly books to which I shall turn again'. 'The Singing Caravan' is described in Vansittart's entry in the Oxford DNB as his 'most celebrated piece [...] a kind of Canterbury Tales set in Persia [...] much admired by his distant kinsman T. E. Lawrence'.