We would like
to welcome Walter Baumann and Vincent Trott to the list.
Walter Baumann
is Professor Emeritus at the University of Ulster, and is known particularly
for his work on Ezra Pound’s Cantos.
Vincent Trott writes: I am currently a
collaborative PhD student working with the Open University and the British
Library. My research focuses on the relationship between literature and the
mythology of the First World War. My interest in Richard Aldington naturally
concerns Death of a Hero, as a key text in the evolving memory of the
war, but also Aldington’s autobiography, Life for Life’s Sake, in which
the Second World War colours his perceptions of the earlier conflict. I’m
therefore grateful for being invited to join this newsletter. Outside of my
PhD research I enjoy football, cricket and playing the guitar.
Robert Richardson has also been welcomed
back into the NCLS fold. Robert was the editor, with William Pratt, of the Homage
to Imagism (AMS Press, 1992).
**********
Editor Andrew Frayn and Correspondent
Michael Copp both spoke at the XXIV Ezra Pound International Conference hosted
by the Institute for English Studies at Senate House, London, and organised by
John Gery (University of New Orleans; John also co-organised last year’s RA
/Imagism conference) and Richard Parker (University of Sussex). The conference
ran from 5 – 9 July. Frayn spoke on Hugh Selwyn Mauberley in the
context of post-First World War disenchantment, while Copp spoke about Pound’s
role in the Imagist circle. The conference was attended by Pound’s daughter
Mary de Rachewiltz, who spoke at the opening session, and the closing plenary
session featured Helen Carr, whose compendious The Verse Revolutionaries
is a must for scholars of Imagism, modernist scholar Catherine E. Paul, and
David Moody, author of the recent and ongoing Pound biography. Well over a
hundred papers were presented at the conference, ranging all across Pound’s
oeuvre and linking him with subjects from Geography, to Noh Drama, and the
Occult.
It was a pleasure to renew old acquaintances
within the society, to entice other attendees into (or back into) the fold, and
to talk about Imagism (and, yes, RA) with a range of passionate and
enthusiastic scholars of a range of ages and from a wide range of universities
across the world.
**********
Lucy McDiarmid, author of numerous books on
modernism and Irish writing and editor with Maria DiBattista of High and Low
Moderns (Oxford UP, 1996), was in touch to ask the expertise of
Correspondent Michael Copp for a book she is working on about the famous
"peacock dinner", which RA attended. The book develops, revises and
expands the ideas in McDiarmid’s article “A Box for Wilfrid Blunt,” PMLA,
special issue On Poetry, 120:1 (January, 2005), 163 - 180.
**********
Editor Frayn notes that there are a few
references to RA and his works in Jeff Wallace’s excellent new introduction Beginning
Modernism (Manchester UP, 2011).
**********
M. Frederic-Jacques Temple writes to
Associate Editor David Wilkinson to confirm receipt of the last Newsletter [NCLSN,
Vol. 39, No. 2, Summer 2011]. He corrects Wilkinson on one point. The civic
plaque was unveiled not on 'his wall' but on the wall of "Villa des
Rosiers". That said, following the donation of his archive to the
Médiathèque Centrale, a celebratory Symposium is being organised by the
Université Paul-Valery of Montpellier and the Médiathèque Centrale Émile Zola
to mark M. Temple's ninetieth birthday. The Symposium is to include an
exhibition of F-J's archive, films, a concert, etc., from 20th to 22nd October.
Twenty-five years ago M. Temple came to the Reading Symposium where he spoke of
RA 'for the honour of France.' We feel sure the entire membership of the NCLN
joins us in congratulating this venerable gentleman on achieving his milestone.
Portrait of M. Temple, details of Symposium
**********
Associate Editor David Wilkinson received
the following appeal and gives his response:
Please pardon this intrusion. The Somerset village of East Coker, where T. S. Eliot is interred, is shortly going to be
swamped by 3,750 new houses and an industrial estate. The plan is being pushed
through by a Liberal Democrat councillor on the South Somerset Council who
admits his ignorance of its cultural significance, adding "I don't like
poetry" and "You may well personally hold that a dead poet's tomb is
a national monument, and that the setting extends for miles around, but as I
understand it Elliot only had a passing link with the village, being the family
home rather than his chosen place of regular abode. He was so overwhelmed with
East Coker that he mentioned it in a poem once." If the council does not
very soon feel a groundswell of opposition from those who appreciate the beauty
and literary importance of the village, this scheme will be unstoppable. Please
will you help us to prevent that, by sending an email to the members of the council
whose addresses appear below -- and by sending this appeal on to any of your
friends who might also like to help? The East Coker Preservation Trust will be
happy to provide any more information you need. It will be much appreciated if
you feel able to write. Thank you. Sandra Snelling, East Coker Preservation
Trust.
Ms Snelling listed the councillors
involved. I have therefore taken it upon myself to respond as follows:
Dear Sir,
I have been alerted by Sandra Snelling of
the East Coker Preservation Trust to the threat of development in East Coker
and would like to add the voice of the New Canterbury Literary Society to those
local voices expressing their concern. I am the Associate Editor of the NCLS
Newsletter, a quarterly devoted to the life and works of the English writer
Richard Aldington [1892-1962]. The NCLS has a membership of just over one
hundred on whose behalf I presume to speak. Aldington was an associate of T S
Eliot and a fellow poet. He took issue with Eliot over a number of points but I
feel sure his spirit would underline the general concerns over any development
that may alter the character of your village. The NCLS membership is world wide
and can hardly be expected to be totally familiar with East Coker but I do know
that many of our membership have made the pilgrimage. All we can do from our
distanced position is to urge caution in considering the decision before you.
Yours sincerely,
David Wilkinson
East Coker Preservation
Trust | East Coker Society
**********
Readers will note that recently we have had
a number of longer contributions from members such as the below by Vivien
Whelpton and Michael Copp. The Editor would be glad to receive similar
contributions such as details of RA-related archive trips and book reviews on
modernism, Imagism, or related topics. As ever, comments, observations,
requests and trouvailles are welcomed.
**********
Vivien Whelpton
recently visited Special Collections at the University of Exeter to examine the
correspondence in the John Mills Whitham archive (EUL MS 38). She writes:
It was
disappointing to discover that Whitham kept copies only of his side of his
voluminous correspondence, presumably with an eye on his legacy. It is a
further disappointment that the period covered is only 1928-1939. I had hoped
to discover letters from the period (1920-1928) when R.A. and Dorothy Yorke
were regular visitors at the Whithams’ home in Combe Martin, Devon. The reason
for the absence of anything earlier may be that Whitham only started to type
his letters, and thus have carbon copies, in 1928. Why there are not letters
after 1939 (Whitham died in 1956) remains a mystery.
There are seven
letters to R.A., written between March 1928 and October 1929, the period when
R.A. was detaching himself both from England and from his relationship with
Dorothy Yorke.
In his letter
of 19 March 1928 Whitham expresses the ‘astonishment’ and ‘alarm’ of himself
and his wife, Sylvia, that R.A. is ‘on the eve of an elopement to Paris’ and
interrogates him: ‘Now what precisely do you mean to do?’ He continues: ‘If
you do leave this country, we shall feel lonely and chilled,’ and begs: ‘Can
the blessed pair of you steal hither for a few days before you pack up and
off?’ Whitham’s only consolation is that in Paris R.A. will be able to apply
himself better to his planned works on Montaigne and Rousseau.
By the end of
April that year, Whitham has received only a postcard informing him of R.A.’s
Paris address (Rue de Quatre Septembre) and writes: ‘I lack words to tell you
how sad I am from time to time because we have grown rather slack as
correspondents in our industry as book makers,’ but asserts: ‘I verily believe
that you and I are unshakeable in our affection one for the other.’
By 29 July he
is delighted to have heard from R.A. but frustrated that there is no mention of
either Rousseau or Montaigne! After that, unsurprisingly (given what we know of
his emotional and creative life in those months), R.A. seems to have gone to
ground: Whitham’s next letter is dated 19 May 1929. He is relieved to have
had news of R.A. (‘I have almost mourned for you as if you were dead.’) He has
clearly heard already from Yorke and is grieved but not reproachful: ‘I can
understand a man’s breaking with the old life in a valorous effort to make a
new, and there may be much nobility in that.’ He is also intrigued to hear
about ‘Death of a Hero’ and asserts: ‘There ought to be a war novel in you.’
He concludes: ‘We are overjoyed, profoundly glad, that you have not sent us to
limbo.’
On 2 June 1929
he is alarmed to hear of R.A.’s motor accident (in a taxi cab in Paris with
Valentine Dobrée) but most excited to hear of his project of ‘translating the
Attic dramatists’, describing it as ‘the most courageous and audacious of your
new activities’. He and Sylvia express their desire to hear more of R.A.’s
friend Brigit and ‘look to the day’ when they will meet her. Apart from the
motor accident (on which R.A. seems to have dined out, to judge by the number
of his correspondents who were regaled with the story), R.A. seems to have told
Whitham about his recent reunions with both Pound and H.D., as Whitham asks him
to give his regards to them both.
Whitham’s last
letter (17 October 1929) shows that the relationship is wearing thin. His
promised copy of ‘Death of a Hero’ has not materialised and so he has not read
it. (This might seem like resentment, but the Whithams lived in very
straightened circumstances, such that he would not have been able to justify
the purchase of a book he had been promised free of charge.) R.A. has clearly
expressed his fury at the review of ‘Death of a Hero’ by St John Ervine, the
Irish critic who wrote for ‘The Observer’, and Whitham sympathises, telling
R.A. that Ervine’s criticism ‘as a rule over-reaches itself and drowns
whatsoever sense is in him by torrents of rudeness.’
Unfortunately,
the reader of Whitham’s correspondence can detect a little duplicity here, as
Whitham wrote to Ervine only two days earlier, telling him that he was
‘marvellous on Aldington’s book’ and reflecting, ‘ He has never quite freed
himself from the rage and tatters of ‘The Egoist’, and the Pound, Joyce, Eliot,
Lewis school have much to answer for in the way of nonsense, impudence …’
However, he does concede that the school have ‘one or perhaps two redemptive
virtues,’ and asks, ‘Surely Aldington’s book was touched with greatness
somewhere, was it not?’
From here, all
correspondence with R.A. ceases, but Whitham’s warm and affectionate letters to
Carl Fallas in the succeeding years are revealing about his increasing
hostility to R.A. (which we can guess was fuelled by his sense that he and
Sylvia had been ‘dropped’). In the light of this, it is interesting to see that
in ‘Life for Life’s Sake’ R.A. sums Whitham up as, ‘a man of inflexible
character and idées fixes, yet warm-hearted, unselfish, and an eloquent
talker’. The letters from Whitham to Fallas also extend our knowledge of the
Martinhoe days, apparently beginning for Whitham and the Fallases in late 1914
(if we are to rely on the evidence of Fallas’s memoir, ‘The Gate is Open’),
although R.A. and H.D. were not to join them until March 1916.
(Extracts from the Whitham letters are by
courtesy of University of Exeter Heritage Collections and Culture Services)
**********
The felicitous discovery by David Wilkinson
of the email address of Stella Garden, daughter of Barbara Clarke, the
Fallases’ younger daughter (born in 1918), has led to Vivien’s receiving some
delightful and informative emails from Stella and her sister Victoria Helby and
also from Hervey Wilcox and Lynden Easterbrook, whose mother was Leonora
Wilcox, the Fallases’ older daughter (born in 1912). Vivien will report on
what she has learned from this correspondence and from the Whitham letters to
Fallas in the next issue of the newsletter.
**********
Book Review
The cover for Andrew
Thacker's The Imagist Poets (Northcote House, 2011) signals quite
clearly one of the intentions of this little (134 pages) book. It reproduces a
photograph of the large and stately figure of Amy Lowell. Thus one of Thacker's
aims is to shift the focus and emphasis away from Pound and on to Lowell. The book also gives greater emphasis to F.S. Flint and John Gould Fletcher in this
Imagist narrative than is usual. In this way Thacker is doing on a smaller
scale what Helen Carr did in her vastly more detailed and comprehensive survey,
The Verse Revolutionaries (reviewed in NCLS Newsletter, Autumn, 2009).
Thacker argues that the dispute between Pound and Lowell 'can be understood as
a clash of personalities and politics as much as a disagreement over poetic
principles.' Lowell played an important role in energetically propagating Imagism
in America, not only with the three anthologies but also in numerous articles,
reviews, extensive lecture tours with 'flamboyant readings', and even a reading
on the radio. The book is structured as follows: Introduction: The Formation of
Imagism; 1. Movements and Modernism; 2. Publishing, Publicity, and Magazines;
3. Prefaces and Manifestoes; 4. Modern Themes; 5. Urban Images; 6. Gender and
Sexuality: 'Amygism' and 'H.D. Imagiste'.
Thacker looks
briefly at four poems by RA: 'Sunsets', 'In the Tube', 'Eros and Psyche', and
'Whitechapel'. A selection of poems by all the Imagists is considered: H.D.,
John Gould Fletcher, F.S. Flint, T.E. Hulme, Amy Lowell (concentrating on her
polyphonic prose, 'Spring Day'), and Ezra Pound.
This little book is exemplary as a
succinct, revisionist narrative of the cultural formation and achievement of
Imagism.