Lyttoning strikes twice

I wish to correct two points in IAQ Richards sprawling anecdote, and subsequently pass comment on your SRC report.

IAQ Richards is a young man making a name by dropping bigger ones (e.g. Russell, Rossetti, Tennyson, etc.). He is not the social galavant suggested in that letter, yet it is time we are aquainted, and, yes, we lunched together recently. But it was not a tete a tete (as you, sir, suggest). It was yet another of Richard's exasperating attempts to procure my patronage - a waste of time as I subscribe to none of the tripe Richards passes off as ideas.

But, anyway, my objections and corrections: my age is my business, and it is not one of those which Richards indicates anyway. A stigmatism in the cornea is the probable cause of their variance from paragraph to paragraph, incidentally. Second-up: Russell's smile does not split his forehead. It does make inroads into his ears but never rises above the temple.

That is more or less it, but, as an afterthought, I must say that Richards facts on the Tennyson/ Rosetti feud are wayward. Richards knows neither of these gentlemen (regrettably, I do) and pinched the material for the various assertions from Queenie Y. Leavis' forthcoming autobiography. Mrs Leavis writes with the best of intentions (generally) and the worst of memories (always) and the consequences are evident in Richards' misinformation. The feud actually arose from their differing opinions on the propriety of army manoeuvres during the General Strike (1926). And, the concept of the English Genius cannot be ascribed to Tennyson at all. He only heard about it from Noel Ian Coward, the operatic impressario, and its genuine origins are shrouded in the mists of Max Beerbohm's grave.

As to your SRC report: in it, your writer refers to the inevitable Lloyd Jobson', This is a misnomer, as, if my finks report properly, Mr Jobson is only perennial. If you must regard this professional student as some sort of 'master of time', you might do well to recall your own paper's one-time designation for Jobson, i.e. Prick of the Week in Perpetuity'. It's got a good ring to it, and, at certain times, the feel of.......

Disassociation being the order of the day, I must deny any links with or susceptibilities towards "scrutiny', the Gissing Revival, that parvenu Eliot woman and the legacy of the enlightenment.