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108, Eaton Square S. W. 1.
Sloane 8604.
24 May 1932
Dear Buchan,
My wife & I (during an exile abroad for futile treatment of her arthritis) have been reading your book on Sir Walter Scott, having just before read Old Mortality again. Last year on going in to a nursing home I took with me 5 Scotts & Gwynn's book, & they kept me happy while recovering from an operation. I mention this to corroborate my claim to be at least - an exacting judge of your book. I - and my wife no less - read it with great admiration & with extreme pleasure. I will not go into details as to what I so much liked in it, because that would take too long. But it is a valued possession to me.
This does not justify my asking something of you, & much less does my own inability - (for it was that) - to do the book which on Lord Durham which you once asked of me & I undertook to try. Still what I am going to ask is a thing which, unless the date prevents it, you can certainly do exceedingly well.
Will you consent to be the annual speaker at the celebration of Dr Johnson's birthday which is held
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every year at his birth place, Lichfield? The actual birthday is Sept. 18th, but as that is a Sunday this year the obvious date for the function is Saturday, Sept. 17th.
Your duties will consist mainly of:
a. Being formally elected President for the year of the Lichfield Johnson Society at a meeting in the Guildhall at 3 p.m. & (after some very short business of the Society) delivering a Presidential Address, of say 40 to about 60 minutes to the not very large but very appreciataive audience which such a neighbourhood affords.
b. Partaking in the evening of a public supper, attended by an audience which is not very high-brow but very agreeable, & proposing the toast of the Immortal Memory of S.J. in a shorter speech.
c. Spending as long a weekend as you can spare us, together we hope with Mrs Buchan & your daughter, at our house, (reference as to house, host & hostess: Your daughter; - see also Boswell as to "the lower
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house on Stowe Hill", where Johnson & he dined, not with us but with Mrs Gastrell).
Last year we had a very good address from A.H. Hawkins; several years before Alfred Noyes gave us a very good one, as have several other people, - the best, rather to my surprise was Cecil Harmsworth.
Now one argument which you might use to justify refusal does not work. People say "What can I talk about? Everything that can be said has been said about S.J. ". The exact point in which Johnson was really great is that this is not true; that on the contrary every man of any originality who cares about him is provoked by him into saying things quite original, which only that one man could say.
If that one man is in this case you, you may take any line you like & say anything that comes into your head, with certainty that your visit & your pre-prandial & post-prandial remarks will be very gratefully appreciated.
I
