Sir: Lady Kelly said in her letter about Harold Nicolson
in your issue of 13 September: 'Thinking of him at Sissinghurst, in a memor- able garden he helped his wife Vita Sackville-
West to design, should one not say about him with. Milton : "There we shall build a monu- ment, and plant round it with shade of laurel ever green . . . and branching palm . ." '
No, one should certainly not. The quotation game is one of the most fascinating there is, but it is breaking all rules to lift out a few words or a phrase from some defenceless poet and misapply it. This sort of thing is to poetry what 'Land of Hope and Glory' is to music.
The words Lady Kelly quotes are spoken by Manoa, father of Samson, after Samson had shaken the two massy pillars and had brought the theatre roof down , on the Philistines and on himself. What analogous bearing this has on Harold Nicolson I fail to see.
Valerie Lumley 34 Harringcourt Road, Pinhoe, Exeter
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