JEKYLL, Gertrude (1843-1932). Artist and garden designer.
Good Autograph Letter Signed to [Logan] Pearsall Smith (1865-1946, literary scholar), 1 page 4to with sketches in the margin, Munstead Wood, 8 July 1926. Taking him to task over his explanation of the expression 'by hook or by crook' in Words & Idioms (1925), and mentioning a reference in Shakesepare to 'bag & baggage'.
Gertrude Jekyll had long been friendly with Pearsall Smith, the American-born writer, and engaged in philological duels with him. After she had revived the old word 'armigerous' (bearing heraldic arms) he had described her as an armigerous 'old Amazon', and he was to describe her in his Reperusals and Recollections (1936) as 'some ancient, incredibly aristocratic rhinoceros gazing gravely out from amid a tangle of river reeds'.

'I read in your "Words & Idioms" 1925 that the origin of 'by hook or by crook' is obscure. Is what follows an acceptable explanation?
 I read in a book about the New Forest, in some account of the old laws defining the rights & privileges of the foresters, that they might have any dead wood found on the ground or any dead wood that the[y] could get out of the trees by hook or by crook. I take it that these implements would be as I have sketched - the hook to pull down anything quite loose and the crook to jerk up any dead wood that had got hooked up, so that it had to lifted to be dislodged. ...'

£825 [No: 21748]