MOTHER AND SON

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21087, 12 February 1934, Page 3

MOTHER AND SON

A COLLECTION OF LETTERS Letters to Mother. Edited by G. C. Wheeler. Allen and Umvin. 323 pp. (7/6 net.) In every civilised country the affection between mother and son is considered so sacred" that it is safe from any kind of commentary. This collection of letters written by 72 eminent sons to their mothers intrudes in two instances upon that sanctity. The letters written by Carlyle and Captain Scott are so sincerely affectionate, the expression of their love is so childlike, that the mere reading seems a curious prying. These are the only letters which a very sensitive anthologist would have hesitated to include. All add something to our knowledge of great men and their social circumstances. They have, of course, "human interest" and many of them are jolly. At the age of 10 Thomas Love Peacock wrote to his mother in verse, enclosing an epitaph:

Poor Wr.de. my schoolfellow, lies low in the gravel. ' One month ere fifteen put an end to his travel.

lie claimed a guinea as a reward for a letter written in Latin.

Dear mama, I hop you arc wall and I am very wall and I hop papa is wall and I begin to slanp and 1 hop al wall and my cosans liks thers pla things vary wall and I hop Doly phillips is wall and pray give my Duty to papa. —This from Horace Walpole, aged 8! The letters written from Oxford by John Wesley as undergraduate and fellow explain the origin of Methodism. He evolved the doctrine of strict living with his mother. He has to chide her for her unworldliness, which verged upon inhumanity: | You have more than once said you j loved me too well and would strive to love me less. Wilberforce and Johnson rose to austerity in their adjurations; each was preoccupied by his mother's spiritual state, and ventured upon moral exhortations that expelled the human warmth and comfort that are a mother's right. James Wolfe had to regret, his irritable temper, the effects of which disturbed and saddened his mother. William Beckford. planting his million trees and constructing his walk of 20 miles through the woods, justified his extravagance by asking his mother to share his satisfaction in the constant employment he gave to hundreds of people. Thomas Moore communicated to his mother the specifications of a contrivance for keeping her feet warm, while Shelley asked to be sent from home his Galvanic Machine and Solar Microscope. Byron complained that improvement at an English i niversity was for a Man of Rank impossible and the very idea ridiculous. Thcu-e are some fresh glimpses of other men—Walt Whitman nursing Civil War wounded in Washington. Sir Arthur Sullivan rehearsing 'The Pirates of Penzance in New York, and Ruskin unable to keep his eves from the ladies, even when being invested with his Cambridge LL.D:

The little bit of backing was "said by one of the young ladies here to have been very gracefully done.

Mr Wheeler, one is glad to observe has been unable to exclude some' well-known letters Here is SamueLJßutler's famous letter; to, Jus

mother, describing definitely the breach with his father, and here, also, are one of Stevenson's letters and Viscount Bryce's account of his meeting with Tennyson. The book is clearly printed and pleasantly and firmly bound. Its worst feature is its title. The editor has written short but adequate biographical notes to show the place the letters take in the lives of the writers.