'Edith, though a great reader, did not consume all and any poetry as a child; she was kept in regularly on Saturday afternoons at one time because of her refusal to learn by heart Mrs Hemans's "Casabianca" ("The boy stood on the burning deck..."). The reason for her recalcitrance was that "as everybody had left the Burning Deck, and he was doing no conceivable good by remaining there, why in heck didn't he get off it!"'