Heavy scent
Sir: In Mr Osbert Lancaster's witty but limited profile of the late Brian Howard (16 February) —I jib at calling it a review of my biography, Brian Howard--Portrait of a Failure (Blond)— he takes exception to another reviewer's reference to Brian's potentiality as (not, please note, his ambition to be) the English Cocteau. This is not so ludicrous as it may seem when the following achievements are listed: Brian's avant-garde poetry was already being published when he was fifteen (even before he became Edith Sitwell's prot4e); he produced the remarkable Eton Candle at barely seventeen; chose the music, story and designed the clothes for a Chariot Show ballet with Anton Dolin and Jessie Matthews at twenty-one; ex- hibited his spoof abstract 'Bruno Hat' paintings to good effect at twenty-four (Lytton Strachey even buying one); his book First Poems was pub- lished by Nancy Cunard and he experimented with film-making at twenty-five. He contributed over seventy highly intelligent articles of literary or art criticism to the New Statesman and Nation from the age of twenty-six (1930 onwards), several anti-Nazi features to the News Chronicle in the mid-1930s, five wartime propaganda scripts to BBC radio, as well as several fine poems to Harper's Magazine and Horizon. (Extracts from many of the above are quoted in my biography.) His total output, including unpublished work, was consider- able, but being a perfectionist (ill-combined with a complete lack of ambition, let alone staying power) he submitted little of it for publication.
I have an umbrageous suspicion that Mr Lan- caster felt unequal to the task of reading this —to him—`macabre festschrift,' as after drawing gratuitous attention to what he calls Brian's 'prose masterpiece' (a savage review of one of Mr Lan- caster's books) he admits to preferring another critical appreciation, from which he proceeds to misquote in every way 'from memory,' not bother- ing to use my extensive index, which would have given him the exact words on pages 292-295. Out of editor's pique I would like to point out that his 'review' referred to 'the compilers,' although I am clearly the sole perpetrator, and exag- gerated its admittedly excessive length to 'almost 700 pages' when in fact the book runs to 569 pages, the introduction and three appendices add- ding another sixty-two. This high number was achieved by the designer allowing margins 'large enough to ride a tricycle round' (cf. Cyril Con- nolly) in emulation of Brian's best-selling Eton Candle of 1922, which typographical nicety appears to be waste land in 1968.
Finally, in fairness to the ghost of Brian, I would swear that he would not be seen dead in heaven or hell 'exchanging bitchy quips with Lady Mendl or Chips Channon' Whatever put that devilish idea into Mr Lancaster's capacious head? Marie-laqueline Lancaster 1 Crescent Mansions 113 Fulham Road, London SW3
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