" THE CRYSTAL CABINET "
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
have read Mr. Hone's review of my sister Mary Butts' book, The Crystal Cabinet, with great interest, but his notice raises one or two minor points; which I cannot help feeling call for correction.
My sister's memory ,seems to have failed her a little in her
description of the burning of some of my father's books. Her reactions as a witness of this scene cannot be quite what she has described, since she did not participate in it, being in France at the time it took place. In point of fact the books were burned by my mother and myself alone.
As to the books themselves, my sister never at any time
set eyes on one of them, for their very existence was unknown until after my father's death, when she had already left England ; and when she returned some weeks later they had already bee burned ; they were far from being what she claims for them ; I had at one time, and still perhaps possess, a list of them. With the single exception of The Arabian Nights, an editio.i with peculiarly candid illustrations, which few parents today, however advanced, would have risked putting into the hand.; of a young girl or a small boy, the entire collection was formed of contemporary works from a publisher in the Palais-Royal ; they were books which undoubtedly had a faint, sub-clinical interest, but were utterly lacking in any literary or aesthetic value whatever. The memoirs described by my sister as being those of Ninon and Mme. de Pompadour were actually nothing more than the flaccid •memories of Cora Pearl, and were consumed, as my sister implies, with an appropriately leaden dullness. Brantome and Rabelais were never destroyed, and are still in my possession, given me many years ago by my mother.
My sister's book contains innumerable dislortions or bhir t iris-statements of fact, which it would be out of place to singl out here. Relations are everyone's literary capital, but it has hitherto been considered an act of grace and delicacy not to make the contents of one's pass-book too undisguisedly public, more especially when the entries are so inaccurate.
I can only offer as some sort of psychological clue to my sister's curious interpretation of the relations existing betwee:i
my parents—an interpretano:- consisting of a series of more or less delicately veiled innuendoes—the fact that my father Was so wholly absorbed in his second marriage, which, o.i the whole, was a very happy and a very fortunate one, thzt he had no time whatever for either of his children, whom he could rarely ever be persuaded to set eyes upon. He was a most delightful man, but, except when on his very small yacht, all but invisible to my sister or myself. Once there, he was unable to avoid us.—I ant, Sir, &c., ANTHONY Burrs.
13 Newton Road, Westbourne Grove, W.2.
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