10 AUGUST 1945, Page 5

I mentioned last week Lady Oxford's habit of invariably writing

her letters in pencil. G. W. E. Russell, the author of Collections and Recollections, and several other similar volumes of essays, apparently had the same habit, and confessed that, the flesh being weak, he used to write his letters in bed. (Personally, I find the habit as repugnant as breakfast in bed ; but both, I recognise, are matters of taste.) The last letter which my informant on this subject received from him asked for a reply, and it was sent in the form of some verses of which the last couplet ran:

"Some must read between the lines If others write between the sheets."