SMITH, Logan Pearsall — Handwritten, signed letter to Cuthbert Williamson, dated 6 November 1936.

On headed paper '11, St. Leonard's Terrace,/ Chelsea'. Folded sheet, one is blank. 35 lines in scribbled handwriting, running down to the bottom right. Envelope with a stamp of King Edward VIII (who would abdicate a month later, less than a year after his accession). Williamson's address is 'York House/ Portugal St.' Williamson had written to Smith in response to his book Reperusals and Recollections - about the botanist James Britten and the gardener Gertrud Jekyll. Smith elaborates on Britten: he was 'delightful company, but certainly a trying guest'; he 'put the evil eye on all our flowers when he came to stay with us in Sussex'. Also about the writing ladies couple 'Michael Field', friends of his parents, who had confiscated one of the young Logan's favourite paintings. Smith still resents himself thirty years later for having demanded it back sternly. Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) was born in America and, in his younger years, a friend of Walt Whitman. He studied in Oxford and remained in England for the rest of his life. He was related to Bertrand Russell, Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, and Bernard Berenson. He was a real language refiner, and his books are still entertaining and worth reading.