26 OCTOBER 1951, Page 19

Sweet Williams

SIR,—In his article on Ripley's New Believe It or Not, in your issue of October 12th, Mr. Harold Nicolson mentions the statement made in the book that the sweet william got its name from Butcher Cumberland. I came across this assertion once before some years ago, and was dis- mayed at the incongruity in a flower of that name being thus linked with a man of that reputation. However, a little later I happened to read the essay Of Gardens in Bacon's Essays: "I like also little heaps, in the nature of mole-hits, to be set, some with Wild Thyme ; some with Pincks ; . . . some with Sweet-William Red." I found this very corn-

forting.—Yours faithfully, B. G. CROWLEY. Shedfield Vicarage, Southampton.