Jennifer's Diary
Sir: I was on the editorial staff of The Spectator from 1958 to 1962: is there no one there these days to verify references? I refer to Jennifer Paterson's Diary (5 November).
It is too late in the century for comment on the manners of a guest who repays her hosts with a gossip-column paragraph in lieu of a thank-you letter: I am concerned with facts.
I gladly accept 'that tiny Napoleon of a man' as a description of her neighbour at the Punch Table, 'Tiny' is true enough (though Private Eye would have qualified it with 'but perfectly formed', which is also true) and I suppose 'Napoleon' is flattering if one admires mass murderers. (I prefer my old school gym sergeant's 'our pocket 'ercules'.) It is true, too, that I warned our guest that the food would be foul and frozen, which did not prevent the cuddle- some creature from tucking heartily into a generous helping of foul frozen fowl, in- stead of waiting for the excellent cheese, as. I always do.
But to facts. I was asked had I known Sam White when I was on The Spectator, and I said that I had known him much longer — since Christmas 1944. According to Jennifer's Diary, I 'drove into Paris in a tank and was pipped at the post trying to interview General Patton by our beloved Sam White who had already cornered the pistol-packing soldier in his own tank.' I did not drive a tank — I would not have known how — I hitched a lift. It was not Patton — it was McAuliffe. It was not Paris, it was Bastogne. It was not Sam's `own tank' — correspondents did not have tanks of their own — and it was in a shell-battered village house, anyway. Jennifer's Diary ends with a wish to serve on a jury: 'I should be a perfectly
LETTERS
good woman and true.' Good at compre- hending spoken evidence? Cyril Ray
Albany, London WI
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