It’s interesting to reflect on how you first came to read an author. Can you remember your first PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, etc?
My formal education in Eng. Lit. was restricted to O and A Levels and an English course at university. Of course I remember some of what I read but more often than not with distaste. I didn’t “get” A High Wind in Jamaica or Henry James for example. I started reading PG Wodehouse at prep. school, where there was a good selection in the library. I don’t remember my introduction to more than a few other authors.
I do remember going to stay with a friend’s parents in Wiltshire. My room was stocked with a wide selection of books, although there was little time for reading. There was also bottled water and, I don’t think I’m imagining this, biscuits. It was all rather lavish especially for the 1970s.
I dipped into a book of letters between George Lyttelton and Rupert Hart-Davis and enjoyed the few that I read. As the first volume came out in 1978 they must have only just been published. My hostess was pleased as she liked them too. I read more on further visits but it was not until about ten years ago that I bought them, although I still haven’t got the full six volumes.
The letters are weekly exchanges written between 1955 and 1962. George Lyttleton had taught Classics at Eton all his working life and, in 1945, retired with his wife to live in Grundisburgh, near Woodbridge in Suffolk. Among his many distinguished pupils was Rupert Hart-Davis, a publisher, editor and writer. They met again at a party in London and RH-D said that he would like to write to his old mentor to keep him in touch with events in literary London. GL of course replied to every letter.
Rupert’s letters may be easily imagined but it would be a big mistake to revel in his gossip and stories of trouble with authors and so on and overlook GL’s replies from rural Suffolk; both are filled with literary allusions and wit. Sometimes a little parish pump news creeps in, as it did in this letter from RH-D, dated Sunday evening, 30th September 1956.
We duly delivered our boy to Bud Hill on Tuesday, and sure enough your nephew Charles was there, though I had only a minute in which to commiserate with him about the Bradman tragedy at Worcester. Altogether there were five new boys, mostly with two parents each, and we all sat down to a sumptuous tea for which nobody had much heart. Then we left with a lump in our throat, though the boy was smiling and cheerful.
The boy is Adam Hart-Davis, now a polymath: scientist, photographer, author, historian and broadcaster. One of the other four boys is my brother, Bru. He was the first Bellew to be sent to Eton, because my father and Bud Hill had been friends in the RAF in the war. I followed Bru into Bud’s House and Bru’s son, Patrick, attended Bud’s memorial service in College Chapel.
Now that I have time on my hands I’m going to buy the two missing volumes and re-read the lot in dribs and drabs between other books. It will take some time.