" MR. LANSBURY "
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Mr. S. K. Ratcliffe concludes his review of Mr. Lang- bury's book, Looking Backwards and Forwards, with an attack on my wife and myself. He considers that we should " have told him (Mr. Lansbury) the meaning of ' cockney saturnalia' and expunged a sentence such as this : ' My mother died when my first child was born.' That would seem to imply a new peril in childbirth."
The phrase " cockney saturnalia " is used quite legitimately in the book ; the second phrase is an entirely unexceptionable statement of fact. Mrs. Lansbury, senior, died at the time when Mr. Lansbury's first child was born. It requires a mind of quite exceptional vulgarity to see anything ridiculous in that information.
May I add a more general statement ? I was allowed to prepare Mr. Lansbury's text for the printer because he is a busy man, and not, as Mr. Ratcliffe so civilly seem to assume, because he cannot write English. In so doing, I meticulously refrained from removing the racy and colloquial phrases which he uses. They are the same as those he uses in speech, and are typical of the man. I would no more alter them than I would change the phrases of Cobbett. And if I did think of changing them it would not be to the desiccated journalese that Mr. Ratcliffe thinks to be correct English.—Yours faithfully, 45 Hendon Lane, London, N.3. RAYMOND W. POSTGATE, [If every passing criticism is " an attack " every reviewer is ipso facto an aggressor. As for Mr. Ratcliffe's comment on the curious phrase " My mother died when my first child was born " (the same day ? the same week ? the same month ?) it requires—to adapt Mr. Postgate's own phraseology--a mind of quite exceptional fastidiousness to see anything vulgar in a perfectly unexceptionable sentence.—ED. The Spectator.]
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