Sanity through lunacy
Sir: George Gale's story (*Viewpoint'. 6 December) of the Poet Laureate's remark at the Great Exhibition ('What I want is a bottle of Bass') remains me of an experience that was recounted to my father by a lady as having happened to herself. She was next to Tennyson at a luncheon party, and hanging on his lips for some poetic or otherwise memorable sentiment: but in fact the only words he addressed to her, about half way through. were: 'Mutton should be cut thick'. Perhaps I may also take the opportunity of recalling a not dissimilar experience of my own, over thirty years ago when, as a school- boy, I found myself at the same table in Paris as Paul Valery—a function in which I was included thanks to the late Theodora Bosanquet (one-time secretary to Henry James) who had just written a book about Valery. At the end of the meal the great man, perceiving in his vicinity a shy young Englishman, and presumably unable to think of anything more appropriate to say, ad- dressed to him the memorable words: Tadore le mint-sauce!
Michael F. Culls 4 Queen Anne's Grove. Chiswick, London w4
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