WCP3248

[1]¹

Kingham, Chipping Norton

Sept. 12 1906

Dear Sir

I think it might possibly be a source of satisfaction to you to know with what very great pleasure I have just been reading the first volume of your autobiography. I believe that I possess nearly all your works, & two or three of them I read over & over again with renewed pleasure, but in this last I find to my surprise and delight that many of your old haunts were also my haunts in my young days, & the association of them henceforward with such an honoured name as yours naturally gives me additional satisfaction in reading your book, of which the second volume has not yet reached me from the Times library. I spent fifteen years of my boyhood & early youth, when I was at home from school or Oxford, at the Gnoll, Neath, which had passed into the hands of my step-uncle Mr C. Evan-Thomas; he divided it into two halves of which we had one. My brother & I roamed all over the country, & <I> particularly recall an expedition identical with one of yours, to the waterfalls at the head of the Neath valley, then walking over to the Beacons ^{which we ascended next morning} after sleeping at the Storey Arms. I was then much interested in geology, but <I> did not discover what you have pointed out about the peculiar formation of the summits of the Beacons, and I wish to thank you for those remarks. Again, all that you say about Brecon & its neighbourhood comes home to me, for my brother married there & lived there for some years, & it is l[sic?] not long since I spent some days with his family at Senni Bridge. I also have read with the greatest interest all that you have inserted about the Welsh character and habits. Nor is it only these associations [2]² which have made your book so fascinating that I can hardly lay it down. I think that what has made me always enjoy your books (and I say it as a man who has written books himself) is the way in which you speak as from yourself, with a vivid memory of details, and thus let the reader know yourself & your ways of thinking. I found this in your books of travel <and> find it here again in the Life. To be able to do this is a precious gift, & I hope you will allow me to congratulate you on it. Some people may take little interest in such details; to me they are far more interesting, & in certain ways more instructive, than wearisome biographies constructed out of letters & diaries.

Please do not trouble to answer this letter, it is merely written to give expression to my own pleasure. I would write it with a pen if I could, but I am obliged to do almost all my writing with a machine.

Yours faithfully | W. Warde Fowler