[Lord Alfred Douglas.] Unsigned Typed Copy of letter [to the editor of an English national newspaper], regarding a 'very ill-natured review' of his autobiography by the Irish poet Sylvia Lynd, and recalling his time at Winchester School.

1p., 4to. In fair condition, on lightly-aged paper. Apparently unpublished. He complains of Lynd's 'very ill-natured review of my "Autobiograp[hy] [...] She makes the ridiculous statement that "a child" at a public school is "at most on speaking terms with five percent of his contemporaries". What utter nonsense. When I was at Winchester in my last two years I was "on speaking terms" with every boy in the school, and I was on intimate terms with at least 100 out of the 400 of which the school consisted. | What on earth can Mrs Lynd know about public schools? How can any woman know as much about any boy's public school as one of its members? | Then she says, very uncharitable [sic], that my life has been "unsuccessful", and that it is a "lost cause". Again, I ask her, how does she know? The only judge of whether a man's life has been successful or not is God. A man might be intensely disliked by Mrs Lynd andn yet be secure in the love of God; in which case the fact that he is disliked (and gratuitously insulted) by Mrs Lynd and her like might be one of his greatest assets.'