Letters to the editor
CRITIC BETWEEN THE LINES SiR,—May I thank Miss Laura Deane for ber delightful and witty letter.
With regard to your other correspondents: Anonymous letter-writers are not regarded tith favour by the community in general. Must leave these persons to shine among the lightest jewels in your crown, as I cannot be expected to waste my-time in arguing with anonymous semi-literates who can neither understand what they read (nobody has sug- gested that the phrase . . . ' Where the sap like peridots and beryls—Rises in the budding fig-branches' is a quotation) nor express themselves in educated English (' the bit in which all names are given, bits copied.' ere.). This letter is obviously written by the same wearisome person who wrote the letter signed ` Little Mr. Tomkins.' Both letters have the same theme song and are written in the same distinguished style.
In your previous issue, Mr. John Wain, Whom modesty .would become, complained that I did not write to a paper pointing out the omission of a note from my book. -
The book was published only a few days before the death of my friend Dylan Thomas, at the time of the imminent death of another very dear friend, and as I was about to embark for America. It was only when I Saw Mr, Hartley's review that I looked at the notes, and saw the omission.
Mr, G. E. Howard is a delight. It is evident that he finds cerebration difficult. How, when I have just proclaimed that certain lines of a poem are a transcript from Donne, can I be making ' a defence against the plagiarism With which' I ' was not charged' ? But Mr. Howard is a superb stylist: "Her childish cable might well have been allowed the oblivion of being left to stew in the bitter juice of injured self-complacency -in which it was spawned."
The above should figure in every anthology of English prose.
Mr. Hartley and I have at least one thing in common. I gather that he admires the work of Mr. Kingsley Amis, I have not, as Yet, read Mr. Amis's poetry, but I haye read his most remarkable, most distinguished first novel Lucky Jim with enthusiastic admiration. --Yours faithfully,
EDITH SITWELL
[Dr. Sitwell says that the letter signed 'Peridot and Beryl ' was obviously written by the person who wrote the letter signed 'Little '''1„ r- Tomkins.' This was not so.—Editor, Spectator.]
Previous page
