Auden helped people

From What W.H. Auden Can Do For You by Alexander McCall Smith.

The young poet’s story tells us about Auden’s quiet, but very touching, kindness. Auden helped people. Sometimes this took extraordinary forms: he was kind, for example, to a Canadian burglar who wrote to him from prison. He wrote back, encouraging the burglar in his interest in poetry. (Canada no doubt has its share of burglars, but for some reason there seems something surprising in the concept of a Canadian burglar—something vaguely oxymoronic).