SOUTH TO CADIZ
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
Six,—I have no particular wish to pick a quarrel with your reviewer, Mr. Evelyn Waugh. But still less do I like seeing one of the few notable and conscientious living writers of English treated as though he were no more than a clumsy literary potman who cannot serve the drinks without slopping them. And Mr. Waugh's statement that Mr. II. M. Tomlinson's South' to Cadiz is so gauche as to be " barely readable " surely
requires the specific, rather than the implied, qualification that it is unreadable by Mr. Evelyn Waugh—clearly a very different thinz,7. The instances of gaucherie and " slovenli- ness " which Mr. Waugh adduces leave me more bewildered than before. I myself read the sentence about the driver who poured-" his bus " round the sharp bendi -of eity streets -as though the thing were an articulated reptile " with a lively admiration for the man whose mind naturally conceives such vivid and arresting images. As for the rest of the evidence for the prosecution, I confess that I did find myself stumped by one phrase—the one about Toledo Cathedral. As I could make neither head nor tail of this, I compared it with the original to discover, as I rather expected, that Mr. Waugh (or his typist, or the printer) had got it wrong, and by printing " lift " as " left " had really made rubbish of the sentence.—I am, Sir, Yours, &c.,
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