text: Prior to his marriage, Davies often stayed in London with his friend Osbert Sitwell and Sitwell's brother Sacheverell. They enjoyed walks along the River Thames and attended musical recitals given by Violet Gordon-Woodhouse. Having moved to Watledge, these friendships continued. Some three months before his death, Davies was visited at Glendower by Gordon-Woodhouse and the Sitwells, Davies being too ill to travel. Sitwell noted that Davies looked "very ill", but that "his head, so typical of him in its rustic and nautical boldness, with the black hair now greying a little, but as stiff as ever, surrounding his high bony forehead, seemed to have acquired an even more sculptural quality." Helen privately told Sitwell that Davies' heart showed "alarming symptoms of weakness" caused, according to doctors, by the continuous dragging weight of his wooden leg. Helen kept the true extent of the medical diagnosis from her husband.
  Davies himself confided in Sitwell:
  I've never been ill before, really, except when I had that accident and lost my leg.... And, d'you know, I grow so irritable when I've got that pain, I can't bear the sound of people's voices.... Sometimes I feel I should like to turn over on my side and die.