The First Edition Club

6 LITTLE RUSSELL STREET LONDON W.C.I - HOLBORN 8626

19th December, 1935.

My dear Mary Butts,

I am sorry to have let so long go by without acknowledging and thanking you for your charming letter and astonishing review of "Hubert's Arthur". I was completely delighted by what you wrote. yet I cannot put Rolfe's romance as high as you do; and indeed I cannot agree that it is as good as Hadrian; I prefer Corvo in his mood of wish-fulfilment (which appears even here, in making Hubert a rejected priest) but I admire the point of view which you have expressed and I believe that George Moore would have agreed with you. "Hubert's Arthur" has always seemed to me to resemble those long, unrelieved, flat narratives of Moore's which (at the end of his life) he accepted as his masterpieces, but despite my slow response to such works, I recognise their merit, and I am especially delighted that you should have said, so much more convincingly than I could, what a good book

2.

"Hubert's Arthur" is.

I do not think that Pirie-Gordon had much to do
with the excellencies of Hubert. Neither his own work, nor
that other written in collaboration with Corvo justifies the
inference. On the contrary I think it was Corvo's careful
polishing and remaking that made Hubert a gem.

The profoundest salutations to you both. My
musical box is now in Essex, much slowed down, and the
wonder of all listeners - though I have since found that
Wyndham has a better one.

Yours sincerely,