THE HAUNTED HOUSE [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR]
SIR,—Mr. E. S. P. Haynes' bedside reading is evidently as amazing as his letter or indeed of his sense of charm in building. Houses have been, and will continue to be, saved by their association with great names, but is Herbert Spencer a name sufficiently memorable to save even so dull a house? " There is a fellow named Herbert Spencer (wrote Jowett to R. D. Morris in 1875) who knows a little of physical science and gives back to scientific men their own notions in a more general form. Of course they worship him as a god, and instead of being an empty sciolist, he is regarded by them as the philosopher of the future. I hope that we shall some day put a spoke in his wheel at Oxford, but at present he is rather swaggering and triumphant."
" Oxford is a glorious place," wrote Morris. " At night I have walked round its colleges under the full moon and thought it would be heaven to live and die there."
It is good news, indeed, that Kelmscott is to be preserved (unfortunately not exactly as he left it)—no house was ever more haunted by a personality who said finally : " What busi- ness have we with art at all, unless all can share it? I am not afraid that art will rise from the dead whatever else lies there."—Yours faithfully, East Meon, Hants.
P. MORLEY HORDER.
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