2 MAY 1941, Page 5

Why, I wonder, did the wife of the Bishop of

Lincoln want to write that harsh and uncharitable letter about the death of Virginia Woolf in the Sunday Times? It was stated at the Inquest on Mrs. Woolf that she had left a note saying, among Other things, " I cannot go on any longer." The coroner made a sYmcathetic comment, which Mrs. Hicks quotes with dis- aPPr-val, ending with the statement—which Mrs. Hicks does not quote—" she had a sad history of nervousness." Mrs. Hicks sums up her strictures by asking " Where shall we all be if we listen to, and sympathise with, this sort of I cannot carry on'?" I don't know. Possibly in the region of a Corin- thians mil—which may not be much thought of in the Old Palace, Lincoln, from which the Sunday Times letter is dated.