A Stick on Fire

Letters

Vol. 7 No. 4 · 7 March 1985

From Margaret Lesser

SIR: Gillian Beer’s very kind review of my portrait-in-letters Clarkey (LRB, 7 February) raises a question which has puzzled me ever since I started to work on the subject. Dr Beer wonders if I have selected the most ‘arresting entries’ from Mary Clarke’s letters and journal. I have, of course – and to that extent no doubt falsified a correspondence which, like most others, contains its repetitions, banalities, private references etc. But I do not think I have been more selective, or more subjectively selective, than all but the most voluminous biographers; selection seems somehow to be more suspicious in a letter-portraitist than a biographer. But a subject like Mary Clarke, who is interesting above all for what she said and was (rather than what she did), seems to demand to be presented through her letters, with as little commentary (and surmise) as possible. I wonder how these consideration can be reconciled.

Margaret Lesser
Altrincham, Cheshire

Gillian Beer writes: My point was not that there should be no selection, but that the principles of selection should be made clear. It is not possible in Clarkey to distinguish between gaps in the source-material and the editor’s choice, or to know the grounds of that choice.

Vol. 7 No. 6 · 4 April 1985

From David Ward

SIR: In her review of Margaret Lesser’s Clarkey (LRB, 7 February) Gillian Beer speaks of ‘Mrs Hugo Reid’s work in founding Bedford College’. Mrs John Reid, or, as she preferred, Mrs Elizabeth Jesser Reid, was the founder of Bedford College.

David Ward
Bedford college, university London