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This third panel of a triptych is itself threefold. Its first part revisits the 28 pages by Caroline Chabot published in Moreana 93/69-82 and 94/83-96: it was understood from the start that I would annotate her text. The second part revisits Chambers' own Thomas More of 1935, because its latest translation - into Mandarin Chinese - has brought into greater relief a number of passages which, 56 years after its publication, call for an explicit identifying of sources and even for some emendation. ' A third assortment of letters responding to the biography and testifying to its impact will round up our evocation of Chambers and the London of the 1930s.
I. REVISITING MOREANA (No. 93)
* P. 69, first paragraph. Miss Hitchcock signed her preface to The Life of Sir Thomas Moore, knighte by W. Roper from "University College, London, 6 February, 1935", exactly the same date (More's birthday) and place and wording as in Chambers' Thomas More. Her book is dedicated "to R.W. Chambers and A.W. Reed". She proofread her friend's biography and compiled the index. Chambers made full use of the material she had gathered for her third EETS life, the "Ro:Ba:" mentioned in the last line of this page: its publication was delayed until 1950. She died on 5 September 1942, four months and a half after Chambers. 2 Mgr. Smith writes on the anniversary of More's execution, a date Chambers himself would choose for the brief postscript to his preface announcing "some small corrections and additions", 6 July 1936.
* P. 70, second paragraph. Sister Ruth Duckworth, who was a student under Chambers during the war, when University College was evacuated to Aberystwyth, writes:
His let ter s were dated "so many days after - or before - the feast of St. Thomas More. " Though he was not a Catholic, his most treasured possession was the medal he had received from the Pope after the publication of his biography of Thomas More. He showed it to me with pride. I felt that where Thomas More was concerned his was more than the enthusiasm of the scholar; there was a kinship of the soul - they were friends.
A second passage from her letter (of 4 September 1984) brings a...