Autograph Letter Signed ('Robert/') from the Irish wood engraver and artist Robert Gibbings to the anthropologist J. H. Driberg, covering a wide range of topics in energetic style.

3pp., 4to. Fair, on lightly-aged paper, with slight smudging to outer margins of both leaves. Addressed to 'My dear Jack'. He is pleased to have heard from Driberg, but disappointed that there is 'no immediate chance' of seeing him, as he has not 'strayed from home for moons. I've been completing my "motu marana" for Fabers [the book 'Coconut Island' published later the same year] & apart from time it has taken a deal of energy.' He is sorry to hear that Driberg has 'had a worser [sic] time' than he expected, but hopes that 'the promised increase of ability for the serious matters of life has materialized'. Regarding a job at Central College of Art, London, he assumes he is 'out, but whether through incompetence or immorality I know not. I gather that any artist who ever hung a palette on his thumb has applied and possibly they are still wading through the debris.' He discusses '[p]ossibilities at Reading', and thanks Driberg for lending him his 1933 book 'Engato' ["Engato The Lion Cub", pub. 1933], which his wife Elizabeth also enjoyed. He ends by urging Driberg to 'try & blow along one day in the summer, just at the moment we live in a bower of apple blossom but the last three nights I haven't had a wink of sleep with the nightingales. Didn't know they could make such a din, imitating everything from train whistles to motor bikes.' Gibbings did the decorations for Driberg's "Initiation. Translations from poems of the Didinga & Lango tribes" (Golden Cockerel Press, 1932).