Schoolboy Fun

David Garnett is thanking Sylvia Townsend Warner (letter of 1st November, 1971) for the gift of a copy of her latest book of short stories, The Innocent and the Guilty (Chatto & Windus, 1971) and commenting on them:

'Bruno' is very moving but perhaps a shade too much of a moral tale. As for 'Oxenhope', I keep going back there myself — although I never lit the marsh gas. T.S. Eliot or Frank Morley told me he had been at school with a boy who could set light to his farts — I was with them both and can't remember which one told the story.

Sylvia and David: the Townsend Warner/Garnett Letters, selected and edited by Richard Garnett (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994), pp. 161-162.

Hat tip: A friend.