BR TO GILBERT MURRAY, 25 JULY 1952
BRACERS 52430. TLS. Murray papers, Bodleian
Edited by W. Bruneau. Proofread by A.G. Bone

41 Queen’s Road
Richmond
Surrey.
25 July, 1952.

Dear Gilbert,

Thank you for your post card. I am very glad that you liked the first two “portraits”.1 You may have seen that I got into trouble with E.M. Forster for criticizing Lytton,2 but I am quite impenitent. I hope you do not think I was blasphemous in pointing out an analogy between Webb and Aphrodite.3

Yours ever,
B.R.

• 1

  first two “portraits”I.e. BR’s radio broadcasts on A.N. Whitehead and J.M. Keynes and Lytton Strachey, which had aired on the BBC’s Home Service on 3 and 10 July 1952, respectively. Before writing to Murray this “Portraits from Memory” series had continued with BR’s recollections of D.H. Lawrence (17 July) and Sidney and Beatrice Webb (24 July).

• 2

  trouble with E.M. Forster for criticizing Lytton See “Portraits from Memory” (letter to the editor), The Listener, 48 (24 July 1952): 142, in which the novelist objected to BR’s “ungenerous account” of Strachey and proceeded to defend the latter’s character and literary achievement.

• 3

  analogy between Webb and Aphrodite “There was something like the Judgment of Paris with the sexes reversed, and it was Sidney who emerged as the counterpart of Aphrodite” (B&R C52.19), BR had been commenting on how, before her marriage to Sidney, Beatrice had also been drawn towards the two other “most distinguished” Fabians — with G.B. Shaw and Graham Wallas, by implication, assuming the roles of Hera and Athena in the contest with Aphrodite for the prize of the golden apple.