LETTER-WRITERS

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31862, 14 December 1968, Page 4

LETTER-WRITERS

The White Garnett Letters. Edited By David Garnett. Cape. 318 pp.

T. H. White and David Garnett first began writing to each other in 1936 through a mutual admiration of each others’ books; and out of this correspondence there developed a friendship which was to last until White’s death in 1964. White chiefly admired Garnett for his scholarship, which seemed to extend to everything he himself was interested in—even ants and manticoras. “I would lay long odds,” he wrote in his diary, “that he has some acquaintance with any subject i ever likely to be mentioned: often a very good acquaintance.” Garnett, for his part, appreciated ' White’s own curious brand of scholarship, which included a knowledge of medieval bestiaries and the finer points of Celtic mythology. Sportsmanship was another link. They both

shared a passion for salmon fishing and fowling; and White, moreover, was expert in the field of falconry. Reading these letters, one is left in no doubt that Garnett was the dominant personality in the relationI ship. It was on Garnett’s advice, for instance, that White spent the war years in Ireland, where he came to identify himself closely with the Irish: it was through his advice too, that he went to the Channel Islands to live after his book “Mistress Masham’s Repose” was chosen as the United States Book of the Month, and he found himself suddenly in the position of having to avoid taxation. White was a strange personality. Basically gentle and loving, he was tormented by a streak of sadism that compelled him to be cruel to those he loved: he was gregarious and ebullient, and yet also a lonely person, finding solace in alcohol and a wide range of hobbies. Some of these tensions are hinted at in the letters, but for the most part they skim along happily on the surface, ranging through such topics and “crazes” as fishing, Irish history, the belligerence of bees, the life-cycle of the ant or the growing of peaches. Two events in particular strike a deeper note. One was the death of his pet dog Brownie. His letter to Garnett not only reveals the depth of his kinship with animals but also the extent of his inner loneliness. “You must try to understand that I am and will remain entirely without wife or brother or sister or child and that Brownie supplied more than tbe place of these to me. We loved each other more and more every year. It was because we were both childless that we loved each other so much. If I got one (another bitch) we would probably never rise to the same love. An unbearable 12-year future comes in again. So I will stop going round and round.” The other event was the publication of Garnett’s novel "Aspects of Love.” which profoundly shocked White. Their correspondence on this subject reveals how far apart the two men were in their views about chastity and marital fidelity. It is perhaps going too far to suggest, as Garnett does, that T. H. White was one of the finest letter-writers of his time; nevertheless these letters with their affection and gentle whimsy, and their eccentric enthusiasms, have considerable charm and vitality; and they make a valuable companion-piece to Sylvia Townsend Warner’s much-praised biography.

Life’s a Dream. By Pedro Calderon de la Barca. Translated from the Spanish by Kathleen Baine and R. M. Nadal. Hamish Hamilton. 116 pp. “La Vida es Sueno” was the climax of Calderon’s early tragic period, and is probably his best-known play. There is a strong philosophical tone at its base, which, however, resists analysis. The protagonist, Segismundo, Prince of Poland, has been imprisoned by his father as the result of the inevitable prophecy; he is drugged, and loses faith in his senses; life becomes a dream for him. Our sympathies lie with his levelheaded father who commits a classic hamartia without any moral fault, and becomes his own victim. But the fact that Segismundo’s forces produce the happy resolution (the play is in no strict sense a tragedy), and that his character affords a close parallel with the young Calderon, suggest that the playwright’s mouthpiece is, in fact, the apparent villain. Kathleen Raine is herself a distinguished poet, but has wisely not attempted to imitate any of the technical elements of Calderon’s verse. Her translation is intended to ibe actable on the modern stage, and is scheduled for nroduction at the Mermaid Theatre next year.