Beerbohm’s Mum

To the Editors:

In his omnibus review [NYR, January 25] of books by and about Beerbohm, Pritchett thought that the mother was Baltic German. As a matter of fact Eliza Draper was of Yorkshire and Lancashire stock; and since her father was the son of a solicitor and an ardent bibliophile she presumably was brought up in a cultivated household and was well educated. It is almost inconceivable that she had any “difficulty with English idiom.”

As a deceased wife’s (Constantia) sister her marriage to Julius Beerbohm was celebrated outside the United Kingdom.

(See Beerbohm Tree, His Life and Laughter by Hesketh Pearson.)

Goodwin G. Weinberg

New York, New York

Mr. V.S. Pritchett apologizes.