Ricketts never seems to have received regular education in the English language - he did, after all, spend part of his youth in France - and as a result, his spelling of English words was often fanciful.
He often misspelled words (including names) and was aware of this. In many letters he acknowledged that he didn't know how a certain word should be written. Below are just a few examples.
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| Arum flower |
In a letter from 1894, Ricketts wrote to Michael Field (Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper) that he and Charles Shannon disagreed about the spelling of the name of a flower:
We had covered our table with apples and arums (the artists are quarrelling as to how this word is spelt). It is a white flower like a twist of paper with a yellow stick inside.(British Library Add MS 58087, f 11)
In an 1898 letter to the same, he toyed with his incorrect spellings:
I hope I have spelt Theodor[e] Watts Dunton’s name all wrong.
(BL Add MS 58087, ff 108-10)
He also used his faulty spelling to express opinions, for example about a dog. A year later, in another letter, he wrote:
I hope I’ve spelt Basset wrong.
(BL Add MS 58087, ff 126-8)
(BL Add MS 58087, ff 126-8)
Three years later, Bradley read a letter about archaeology:
I hope my spelling is not worse than ever, I feel every other word is wrong but dare not corect correct.
(BL Add MS 58087, ff 196-8)
(BL Add MS 58087, ff 196-8)
In a letter to Laurence Binyon (1905) he ascribed a painting to an Italian painter:
to be ascribed to Jacob P papa Bellini – I dont know how to spell Jacob.
(BL Loan MS 103 10/1)
The announcement of a wrong spelling, followed by the correct spelling occurs repeatedly, for example in a letter to Robert Ross from February 1916.
I wrote pounds because, for the moment, I did not know how to spell guineas.
(BL Add MS 81717)
In many cases, he did not correct himself because he did not see the errors - he consistently added an acute accent to the spelling of Degas: 'Dégas'. In other cases he really did not know how a (for example medical) term should be spelled. In 1918 he wrote to W.B. Yeats:
For the last five days or so I have been put to bed and visited by a Doctor having had – I still have – a bad touch of Laryngitis which wanted to develop into Neumonia something which I cant spell, [p]neumonia.
(Stony Brook, W.B. Yeats Collection, SC 294, Box 51)
In a letter to Cecil French from 1927 he offers a general excuse:
Pardon spelling & punctuation. I have been talking & thinking in French and dont know if some of this makes sense.
(Houghton Library MS Eng 1738)
Although he continued to make one spelling mistake after another in later years, it seems that he no longer cared and rarely apologised for them.
