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[Letterhead] Cornbury Park, Charlbury, Oxfordshire
Telephone 1, Charlbury
28 April 1922.
My dear Buchan,
A thousand thanks for the volume of the History of the Great War. I wish that I had been able to thank you personally; but I was on the shelf, & am only just down stairs again.
I have begun to read your account of the battle of Jutland: and it is very thrilling. The only account that I have previously read of it was in a book called "The Navy in Battle", by Arthur Pollen, which was evidently written with the object of depreciating Jellicoe; but the only effect that it had on me was to make me think that Jellicoe was perfectly right not to run unlimited risks.
As we were, we were the pivot of the allies at sea; and, if we lost that position, a winning position, we were done.
Many thanks again for your book.
Tomorrow to the funeral of a very old friend, who
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steered the New College eight in which I rowed in 1881, Harry Richards, a friend in all the good senses of the word: always light in hand, & always making the best of things: brimfull of humour & ready & kindly wit.
I suppose that "Fear no more the heat o' the sun" has been set to music. What a beautiful funeral anthem it would make:
With renewed thanks,
Yours very truly,
Vernon Watney
P.S. If you should ever have ten minutes to spare in Oxford, & cared to look up my boy, Oliver, at the House, you would be doing him a very good turn.
P.P.S. In J. Middleton Murry's "The Problem of Style" I have just come across something that is new to me & has delighted me : Wells's description of Henry James's later manner, which reminded him of "a hippotamus" trying to pick up a pea".
