Ye Olde Rectory, Didcot
My dear Blair,
It was very kind of you to give up so much time and to take so much trouble for that grave comedy on Thursday.1 I felt ashamed at having imposed the task on you; but whom else could I have trusted? And you did it so well. Many thanks: I am most grateful, and I will try to show my gratitude by cooking up something on Grotius.2 I fear that it will be something of a rechauffé: I have, after all, already dished him up, or part of him, in Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans.3
My life, all last week, was centred on my poor orphan hedgehogs. At first I thought, since they were mobile and since the gardener assured me that one of them had gobbled up a proferred worm, that they could fend for themselves. A zoological Fellow of Oriel assured me that they could. But gradually I came to doubt this. None of them would sip the milk which I set out for them, and they turned their noses away from the most succulent of worms. Soon their gait became uncertain and the pallor of death tinged their cheeks. In despair I constantly telephoned Animal Rescue and the RSPCA, only to hear dry metallic voices referring to each other. By this morning three of the four had died and been buried, and I was merely waiting for the fourth to die. But then—oh happy moment!—I managed to persuade it, perhaps through mere physical weakness, to open its mouth; whereupon I force-fed it with milk through a surgical syringe; after which it revived. And then—a second happy chance!—the RSPCA actually responded on the telephone with what seemed to me a live voice. ‘Are you a human being or a machine?’ I asked; and the lady admitted her humanity. So a conversation ensued. She told me of an infirmary for ailing hedgehogs near Princes Risborough. So I carried off the last survivor and it is now installed there in a private ward and will, I am confidently assured, quickly recover: all it needs is a hot-water bottle and warm milk. Perhaps Horlicks will be best. My pleasure is tinged with melancholy by the thought that, if only I had heard that human voice earlier, all four might have been saved.
I love hedgehogs and cannot quite forgive Sir T. Mayerne for recommending dried intestines of hedgehog au vin blanc as a sovereign quickener of reluctant urine (urinam potenter ciet). What was wrong, I ask, with the powdered bees (also au vin blanc) which worked so well on archbishop Ussher?
As I always take any comment by you very seriously, I have been considering the grave question of the alleged abbreviation of my sentences.1 Perhaps you are right: but let me point out that as there is no general rule or tendency that may not, on special occasions, be deliberately flouted; so, if you should look at Hermit of Peking pp. 184–5 (Penguin edition), you will find one sentence of such serpentine length and sinuosity as has no parallel since the time of the late Lord Clarendon.2 This, I admit, was deliberate.
As your life is convulsed and distracted by college chores, so mine is by incessant attendance at the hospital—generally I go by train, Xandra needing the car, and it being impossible to park it there; which is very tiring. But I have sent in my latest volume of essays, which have been a millstone round my neck.1 I am not pleased with it, only glad to be rid of the burden which I had weakly accepted. Now I hope to be undistracted (except by Grotius) until I have to think of the lecture which I am to give in Spain in April. But I hope to be often distracted by your company before then.
yours ever
Hugh