2110-5-12-31

May 27th 1932

Selham House, Petworth

Station: Selham, S.R. Telegraph & Telephone: Lodsworth 4.

Dear Mr Buchan

I have just parted - alas - from your delightful Scott, which has only strengthened my desire to meet and worship him in the hereafter, if there is one. But will Queen Mary of red-hot memory still be denounced the "bloody papist bitch"? The expression has a peculiar charm for me;

it is exactly how my dear old father-in-law Sir Francis Doyle - a Tory of Scott's vehemence would have phrased it, biting his lip as the word issued from them.

You don't want to read this drivel, but what moves me to write is the horrid thought that my grandchildren will be unable to understand a word of the Scots tongue; to them Sir Walter can be little more than a more easily read Dumas.

Is there any remedy? a glossary would not meet the case, for what young reader would trouble to use it? An edition with an explanatory note on every page would do it, but though conceivable, such an edition is unpublishable.

By the way have you discovered what the allusion was in his use of the word "Gabions"? You may have

explained it on some page that I was too sleepy to understand.

Please do not reply unless you can give the clue to Gabions.

Yours sincerely

Charles Lacaita