(3 of 4)
Somehow the whole point to the G. B. Shaw anecdote as related by Biographer Archibald Henderson [Shaw was outraged when he received a letter addressed to G. B. "Shawm," even more outraged when his wife pointed out that a shawm was "an old-fashioned wind instrument"—Dec. 3] has been lost. Shaw's pseudonym as a London music critic was "Corno di Bassetto"—the Italian for basset horn, a tenor clarinet. The cleverly misdirected letter implied: "If you must call yourself a wind instrument, why not 'Mr. Shawm'?" Nettled by the dig, Shaw pretended not to recognize it, and succeeded in throwing both Mrs. Shaw and Biographer Henderson off the track. A shawming ruse, one might add.
J. MURRAY BARBOUR
East Lansing, Mich.
Sir:
Re your item on G. B. Shaw and Shawm: the figure of a shawm player can be seen on the Hansel Fountain in the courtyard of the Heilig-Geist-Spital (Holy Ghost Hospital) in Nürnberg. Although the figure is a copy, the original (about 1400 A.D.) is on display at the Germanic National Museum of Nürnberg.
DORA RENZ
Frankfurt, Germany
¶ For Nürnberg's original shawmist, see cut.—ED.
English As She Was Spoke
Sir:
Your Dec. 17 reviewer finds a "fatal weakness" in Rebecca West's Fountain Overflows in "an unnatural and very unmusical style of dialogue" modeled on Victorian storybooks. Victorian storybooks were, after all, modeled on the style of speech familiar to their writers at a time when there was not the difference one finds today between written and spoken English.
E. W. SMITH
New York City
The Abbé
Sir:
I am sorry you saw fit to publish that terrible and unbelievable story [of the Catholic priest in France who murdered his mistress and their baby—Dec. 17]. This man sinned by yielding to temptation. His sins caught up with him and drove him mad, for no one but a madman would do what he did. Things that madmen do should never be told in a magazine like TIME.
CHARLES DOESCHER
Waterbury, Conn.
Sir:
It is a disgrace to publish such a story.
CAROL MURPHY
Purchase, N.Y.
Sir:
TIME'S discreet omission of the lurid details in this case is commendable. Perhaps the official statement of the Chancery in Nancy would interest your readers:
"Public opinion will have been painfully shocked by news of the tragic drama enacted in a parish of our diocese. Such an act is incomprehensible by its very monstrosity . . . We share completely in the sorrow of this dreadfully afflicted family and confronted with a crime committed by one of our own, we experience a heart-rending humiliation in the depths of our being. However . . . there remains the comfort of a confident prayer for the victim and our own expiation for the guilty party."
(THE REV.) FRANCIS CONKLIN, S.J.
Seminaire des Missions
Saint Martin d'Ablois
Marne, France
Stormy Weather
Sir: