Private letter
Sir: Enjoyable as it was to read yet another offering (Letters, 9 June) from the illustrious epistolier, though not always so belle a lettriste, writing this time not on the paper of one of his London clubs but from his French-Swiss residence (not to mention the letter in the same issue from the youngish, sometimes witty, soi-disant parodiste and sometime literary editor of the Spectator), I found it surprising, though perhaps it was merely a case of mechant overgrown enfant trying to appear terrible, that Mr Forbes should quote from an apparently private letter to you, sir, only a few weeks after he had scolded (Letters, 19 May) your distinguished predecessor (and my editor for nine golden and gemiitlich years) for allegedly committing the same breach of etiquette; por consiguiente inviting the suggestion that (while you were good enough to agree to publish his letter) his prima facie failure to consider the beam in his own normally clear-sighted eye would make him — had he and I not been more or less bien &yes at the same school of learning, though many years apart, founded by William of Wykeham with the injunction about men being made by manners — at least as maleducato as those t ) whcrn 1-1, so enjoys attaching the same epithet.
Simon Courtauld
Editor, The Field, Carmelite House, London EC4
Previous page
