2110-5-11-3

March 11/32

The Deanery Windsor Castle

Telephone, Windsor 561

Dear Mr Buchan

I have no excuse for writing. I have only met you once & I despise people who write to authors about their books. But I can't help it. Sir Walter means more to me than I can say. He has been the chief guide & influence of my life.

I was brought up in the country house life which still had the flavour of his time. Many of my old relations had known him, some intimately. I heard familiar stories of life at Abbotsford. From the beginning my mother read me Scott with that assured acceptance which makes books thrilling to children. At 22 I was introduced to Lockhart's life by a friend

I have read him every year since then as one reads a book one knows by heart.

I know Scott as I knew my mother When I went over Abbotsford a few years ago I knew the history of almost every bit of furniture.

Almost everything written about him of late years has represented the critical mind which Lowell describes as

Profoundly aesthetic as that of a flea

which supping on Wordsworth - should print for our sakes.

Recollections of nights with the bard of the Lakes

Or lodged by an Arab guide venture to render a

General view of the ruins of Dendera.

For the first time you have written something that seems to me worthy. No I'll make an exception there is

The Deanery Windsor Castle

Telephone: Windsor 561

one other book I think which makes a real contribution.

"The Friends of Sir Walter Scott" by Florence McCunn.

Of course the extracts from the letter book help a lot, but I think the notes beastly. To be smart in healing with Scott is like being smart in describing the Parthenon.

To me there are three examples of the true insight into human nature The Bible, Shakespeare & Scott. They none of them think of human nature analytically or didactically. They know mankind, not intellectually but by the only power for knowledge

we have, the power of love. Ask the most gifted analyst to explain his mother to you & his failure will be grotesque. He may know her if he loves her, but his knowledge will have nothing to do with his intellect.

You can no more know or describe a man intellectually than you can know the scent of a rose intellectually.

In life it is evident. It is those who's nature is love who know & are known by their fellow men.

Then they recognize the capacity for glory underlying human nature. They recognise it, while unloving men can see nothing. When I was young, if I said I thought someone a bore, my

The Deanery Windsor Castle Telephone: Windsor 561

mother used to say 'that only shows that you are too stupid to see what is interesting about them.'

Scott is to me the perfect example of the man who had the vision of love. He has helped me to understand Christ to realize what "God is Love" means. The hope & inspiration of it. The self respect it gives, with the hatred of sin that holds us back from our fine selves.

Forgive this long rigmarole. It is really self justification for writing at all. But it means "thank you". You have expressed what I feel as well as it can be expressed.

I wonder if you would some