Sir,—Far from objecting to that Eton story of the umbrellas, which Dean Inge in his notice of my book has been telling “against” me (how “against”?) in your columns, I think it is a very nice one, and I would be rather proud to be the hero of it; but I fear I have no claim to the distinction.
The anecdote was current when I was a boy at Eton in the ’sixties, and it was then told, as an old schoolfellow has reminding me, of Mr. Hardisty. Doubtless it is immemorial; and as it deserves to be immortal, I am glad if my name has served its turn, however erroneously, in keeping it alive.
Henry S. Salt
19, Highdown-road, Brighton, June 5
The Evening Standard, June 6, 1921, p. 10