Beryl Graves, second wife of the celebrated English poet and novelist Robert Graves and a stolid supporter of his creative quirks, has died. She was 88.

Robert Graves

She died Monday on the Spanish island of Mallorca, from complications brought on by a broken hip, her family said Tuesday.

Graves met Robert Graves in 1937, but it was only 13 years and three children later that she married the man who wrote more than 130 novels and books of poetry _ among them the best-seller ``I, Claudius'' _ and became known for his colorful lifestyle.

For decades, Graves bore her husband's many affairs with women who he believed were temporarily inhabited by his Muse. To Robert, ``the White Goddess,'' as he called his Muse, was a cosmic force essential to his creative flow throughout his life and into senility.

Born Beryl Pritchard on February, 22, 1915. Admitted to Oxford University, she studied politics, philosophy and economics.

When she was 22, she met Robert Graves, a tall, handsome man almost twice her age nearing the end of a tormented relationship with American poet Laura Riding.

When that relationship ended in 1939, she abandoned her one-year marriage to Robert's collaborator, Alan Hodge.

Within five years, she bore Robert three children. They married in 1950, and a fourth child was born in 1957.

In 1946, the couple moved from England to Deia, a remote mountain village on Mallorca, where they remained together until Robert's death in 1985.

As Robert churned out poetry, translations and novels and pursued a string of extramarital affairs, Graves ran the household, providing a bedrock of stability upon which her husband's creativity could flourish, according to William Graves.

Graves, who is survived by her four children, will be buried in Deia.

A Child's Nightmare

Through long nursery nights he stood
By my bed unwearying,
Loomed gigantic, formless, queer,
Purring in my haunted ear
That same hideous nightmare thing,
Talking, as he lapped my blood,
In a voice cruel and flat,
Saying for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."

That one word was all he said,
That one word through all my sleep,
In monotonous mock despair.
Nonsense may be light as air,
But there's Nonsense that can keep
Horror bristling round the head,
When a voice cruel and flat
Says for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."

He had faded, he was gone
Years ago with Nursery Land,
When he leapt on me again
From the clank of a night train,
Overpowered me foot and head,
Lapped my blood, while on and on
The old voice cruel and flat
Says for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."

Morphia drowsed, again I lay
In a crater by High Wood:
He was there with straddling legs,
Staring eyes as big as eggs,
Purring as he lapped my blood,
His black bulk darkening the day,
With a voice cruel and flat,
"Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..." he said, "Cat! ... Cat!..."

When I'm shot through heart and head,
And there's no choice but to die,
The last word I'll hear, no doubt,
Won't be "Charge!" or "Bomb them out!"
Nor the stretcher-bearer's cry,
"Let that body be, he's dead!"
But a voice cruel and flat
Saying for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!"

-- Robert Graves

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