Here's a site about Alfred Wallis I found while checking up for that last post - and here's a bit from it to show what I mean about the letters - they are folk poetry, and don't let the spelling get in the way - "'Their is Nothing on The water Than Beats a full Riged ship' " :

In the just legible letters sent to Ben Nicholson and Jim Ede inside parcels of pictures, Wallis spoke simply yet revealingly about himself.

To Ede, he wrote in April 1935: 'what i do mosley is what use to Bee out of my own memery what we may never see again as Thing are altered al To gether if i live Till the 8 of august next I shall be 78 years old. I was Born in Devenport Born on The day of the fall of severserpool Rushan war.'

In November the following year, he wrote to Ede: 'i am self taught so you cannot me like Those That have Been Taught Both in school and paint i have had to learn my self i never go out to paint nor i never show them.'

Some of the lines in his letters to Ben are pure poetry: 'Their is Nothing on The water Than Beats a full Riged ship' (November 1928); 'I was always for Boats' (January 1929); referring to his predilection for sea (rather than land-bound) pictures: '..not to sell inlan Towns/ is the Best for sellin ships/ I am verry fond of ships/ of all kinds Rocks and Beaches' (June 1933); and in an undated fragment referring to his strongly religious temperament (based more on bible-reading than chapel-going): 'I am a Bible Keeper it is Red 3 hundreds sixty times a year by me.'