Flaxman 7714.
Sloane Square Station.

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19 Glebe Place
Chelsea S.W.3

Both in New York and at Cornell, which I did not like much and where I felt rather homesick, I made a point of going to all the English lecturers I could learn about. Some of them gave excellent addresses - I remember especially Norman Angell, S.K. Ratcliffe and Dame Rachel Crowdy - but others deserved everything that Americans say about them. One speaker in particular comes to my mind - a young Oxford don - as he was then - with a very pronounced Oxford voice but so few facts that he either had not prepared the lecture or was too pulverised with nervousness to remember what he knew. What he said would have been tolerable as the starting point of a discussion in an Oxford seminar, but it certainly was not worth the £100 that he received from the American university. Others took much larger fees and did little better.

Undoubtedly there are jealous people in every country who will circulate stories about anyone, but I can honestly say that there were a large number of English lecturers of whom I heard nothing but the most generous and sincere praise in anything from twelve to twenty cities. Never once did I hear a malicious story or unkind comment about yourself. Others who were always spoken of with warmth included Clemence Dane, Norman Angell, Dame Rachel Crowdy, S.K. Ratcliffe and E.M. Delafield; with the last, some people felt hurt by the Provincial Lady but had nothing but appreciation for her. One or two of the worst castigations I could myself endorse after having heard the same people in England. Nor were they always reserved for English lecturers - I heard quite severe criticisms of Louis Untermeyer in one place, and ex-Grand Duchess Marie of Russia - now an American citizen - in another.

I never found an audience who wanted the lecturer to use notes if they could be avoided - in fact I had a clause in my contract which forbade me to use a manuscript and indicated that I must make as little use of notes as possible. I did find sometimes that I was not understood, but my lecture agent told me that this was due to my pronunciation and that with English lecturers in certain parts of the country it was unavoidable.

I do fully admit that after the close ten-year contact which Gordon and I have had with America, and the many friends we have made there, I am probably more passionately pro-American than most of the English lecturers who go over. But I honestly don't feel that my article was unfair to this country, and practically everything I said in it was substantiated by either Gordon's experience or my own over a long period. Incidentally, nothing

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19 Glebe Place
Chelsea S.W.3

in my article referred to Harold Nicholson or V. Sackville West - who are, I know, rather sensitive to criticism just now owing to some trouble they had with their lecture agent (who was also mine). I have not heard them speak myself except over here in short talks, but the most charming reports of them were given to me at Wellesley and in Kansas City.

I do hope the party on the 18th will amuse you. I expect you have met the Bretts of Macmillan's before; they are quite young and most delightful and were perfect angels to me the whole time I was over there last autumn.