CRITIC BETWEEN THE LINES
SIR,—I must again thank Miss Laura Deane for a chivalrous and very witty letter. I appre- ciate Mr. Kingsley Amis's candour. I am enthusiastic about his first novel, Lucky Jim, and shall praise it as I praised the first novel by Denton Welch. (The works are not in the same category—bear no relation to each other.) It is evident that Mr. Peter Paget has read neither my poetry nor my critical works. 1 have not 'refuted the objections' of the persons he mentions, because there is nothing to refute. We must leave it to the future to decide whose opinions on the subject of poetry are of the most value—Mr. Hartley's, Mr. John Wain s, and Mr. George Moor's— or mine.
I realise that it is always the attacker, never the attacked, who is the victim. There was a delightful instance of this recently in Holly- wood, during an epidemic of rabies. An enormous stray dog (poor creature) suffering from that terrible disease, broke into a yard and bit a little boy, aged four and a half years, the child, naturally, had to be given the Pasteur treatment. Whereupon a sweet, interfering, bat-witted old lady, the President of some Animal Protection Society, wrote to the child's mother, asking, " What had your child done to that poor little pet to make it bite him ? Will you promise me to take that poor little pet back into your home and teach your child to love it, and not to resent being bitten 'I" I am NOT accusing your poor little pets of having rabies, or of being large stray dogs. The story is a parable.
And now, Sir, as 1 have work to do, 1 will leave your poor little pets to their high place on Mount Olympus, and, with my final con- gratulations on the magnificent success of Mr. Hartley's snoring technique, 1 will return (crawling on hands and knees) to my obscure place in what a very famous writer described as " the sub-shrub of literary London."—
Yours faithfully, .
Hollywood
EDI 1.1-1 SITWELL
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