327 From a letter to Robert H. Boyer

[Answering a question about his acquaintance with W. H. Auden.]

25 August 1971

I did not know Auden personally as a young man and in fact I have only met and spoken to him very few times in my life.

So far as his interest in Old English Poetry was due to me, this was derived from my public lectures and was mainly due to his own natural talents and the possession of an 'open ear' among the majority of the deaf.

I am, however, very deeply in Auden's debt in recent years. His support of me and interest in my work has been one of my chief encouragements. He gave me very good reviews, notices and letters from the beginning when it was by no means a popular thing to do. He was, in fact, sneered at for it.

I regard him as one of my great friends although we have so seldom met except through letters and gifts of his works. I tried to repay him and express part of my feelings by writing a commendatory poem in Old English, which appeared in a volume of Shenandoah celebrating his sixtieth birthday.