Eric Sams Selected letters to Maurice Brown

12. 

21 March 1974

My dear Maurice,

     just a quickle, if I may. First of all though I do hope Meg (povera donna) is better. I was greatly comforted (in a funny sort of way) to hear that migraine and nervous exhaustion perch, like back care beside the horseman, in other households than ours. Good too to know that there tablets (good old Desiril) which do the trick. “Serenid” sound as if they were specially named for Enid; another apt Aeneidan name would be “Pasiphae”.

     I've been down with flu this last fortnight, propped on pillows and uttering heart-rending greens.  At least my own feelings have been lacerated; but when I hear my children saying to each other “I can't stand it” I suspect that they may not mean quite what I would wish them to mean. The other evening, among conversation overheard in the sick-room from the landing, I swear I distinctly heard the word “euthanasia”.

     What I wanted to ask you was, if it isn't a nuisance, whether you know any warranty for Hans Hotter's rendering of the final cadence of An die Entfernte (marvelous song!) thus

doing what can only be described as giving us a nasty turn? I'm moved to doubt the authenticity of this addition (not in GA or Peters) because elsewhere on the same disc (madly called The Art of Hans Hotter) he sings with great feeling the Peters misprint at “sang ein süsses Lied von ihr”

yours ever