Editor Andrew Frayn notes the odd claim by
Lynne Hapgood that ‘Writers who had been associated with the modernists, such
as Robert Graves and Richard Aldington, did not carry literary experimentation
into their writing about the war.’ This assertion is hard to reconcile with Death
of a Hero, which combines the listless hedonism of mid-twenties novels such
as Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises with a reworking of the then-popular
family saga novel. Indeed, one of the things for which the novel was
criticised on publication was its formal dissonance. Graves and Aldington are
also odd writers to pair in this way. Aldington was much more directly
involved in the London modernist network, and their versions of the war in Goodbye
to All That and Death of a Hero are dramatically different. The
former is a much more conventional memoir, albeit partly fictionalised. The
comment is made in Hapgood’s essay ‘Transforming the Victorian’, in Hapgood and
Nancy L. Paxton (eds), Outside Modernism: In Pursuit of the English Novel,
1900--30 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), p. 32.
**********
Correspondent Caroline Zilboorg’s recent
edition of H. D.’s Bid Me to Live (Gainesville: University Press of
Florida, 2011) has been nominated by the publisher for the MLA (Modern Language
Association) Prize for a Distinguished Scholarly Edition. This recognition is
richly deserved for the definitive edition of one of H. D.’s most compelling
fictional works.
**********
The Eliot-Aldington Letters
(Part III)
Volume 3 of The
Letters of T.S. Eliot covers the years 1926-1927, and includes 27 letters
from TSE to RA. In addition, many of the footnotes that accompany the letters
give quite substantial extracts from RA’s letters to TSE. Their correspondence
focuses largely on RA’s contributions to the Criterion. During this
period there are only three recipients who receive slightly more letters from
TSE, namely Bonamy Dobrée (33), John Middleton Murry (28), and Herbert Read
(29).
12
Feb. 1926, TSE to RA: ‘. . . I have heard that Brigit Patmore is translating
some French books for Routledge’s and is getting £65 for it. Is this credible
and is it true? I did not know that she was a French scholar and should hardly
have thought that she was up to the standard although I have no knowledge to
the contrary.’
9
Apr, TSE to RA: ‘Is anything wrong? . . . Your letter . . . rather suggests
that you do not feel able to review for the Criterion at any time. I
hope this is not what you meant . . . Remember that I always want anything that
you care to give us at any time.’ RA replied on 12 Apr, explaining he felt he
had committed himself to too much reviewing: ‘I will confess that . . . I am in
some danger of neglecting my essential stand-by the T.L.S. . . . It is very
good of you to suggest other contributions to the Criterion, but I have nothing
in hand, have no leisure to begin anything and, in any case, distrust my power
to live up to the Criterion standard.’
23
July. William King had just reviewed RA’s Voltaire in the New
Criterion. TSE apologised: ‘King’s review is fairly good, but I confess I
was a little disappointed in it and regretted that I had not done better by
you, but I am very glad to hear that the book has been doing so well.’
In
an exchange of letters in Feb. 1927 they aired their differences concerning
their understandings, definitions, applications and interpretations of
philosophy. RA: ‘It is generally agreed that philosophy must be based on
science. . . . Well, if that is so, is not medieval philosophy absolutely invalidated?
. . . The 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th
centuries were highly successful in the imaginative arts and architecture . . .
but their science was null and worse than null. Consequently their philosophy
must be null, because it is founded on the sands of theology and fabulous
science.’ TSE: ‘The middle ages were a period of scientific superstition, this
is an age of philosophic superstition. . . . To come down to brass tacks, I
don’t believe that the study of Science is going to help one write better
poetry.’ RA replied on 26 Feb.: ‘Are you not making philosophy entirely a
matter of metaphysics? . . . Is not metaphysics a set of hypotheses about the
unknown? . . . The emancipation of philosophy from science seems to me most
dangerous as an idea. . . . You shock me – “don’t believe the study of Science
is going to help one write poetry”!!!! Tom!! Sir, will you compare the mere
embellishment of fictions with the pure light of truth, with the intense joy of
contemplating ultimate realities which do not exist?’
On 2
May, RA wrote to TSE: ‘At the request of an American university I have written
a 7000 word pamphlet on D.H. Lawrence [D.H. Lawrence: An Indiscretion].
It is loose, “romantic”, and rather harum-scarum, but I think not unamusing, if
only for its truculence. Would you care to look at it for the Criterion?’
13
May, TSE to RA: ‘I am returning your essay on Lawrence. I have read it very
carefully; but, candidly, Richard, I do not think that it falls in with the
general position of the Criterion. . . . I am not criticising your essay
in detail: it is both interesting and brilliant. But I think that Lawrence is
one of the men on whom the Criterion ought to express itself with most
care; and I think that if I printed this it would seem to the public to be the
judgment of a party as well as of an individual.’
14
May, RA to TSE: ‘I write at once to say that I perfectly understand your
position about the Lawrence article, and I was more than half prepared for you
to reject it . . .’
[19]
May, RA to TSE: ‘. . . the Criterion is . . . too intellectual and
philosophical, not sufficiently imaginative and artistic. I see a purely
critical journal on the lines of the old Quarterly; but my ideal is the paper
which opens itself to all the efforts of les jeunes – painters, poets,
sculptors, musicians, architects, all that is really imaginative and creative.’
20
May, TSE to RA: ‘The Criterion is, I insist, widely open to all the
efforts of les jeunes: only, it seems necessary to attach a rather fine
strainer to the opening. If you know of any of les jeunes who don’t get
into the Criterion and who are any good at all, all I need say is, lead
me to it.’
In
Aug. 1927 TSE inadvertently caused RA’s prickliness to explode. RA to TSE, 14
Aug.: ‘The Russian notes in your last number caused me great surprise. “J.C.”
must stand for John Cournos. After what that man has done I am shocked that
you, a man whom I respect so much, a man with so nice a sense of honour, should
employ a creature of that sort. I can only feel that . . . you do not know the
base things he has attempted to perform with his novels. . . . I must ask you
not to publish anything further in the Criterion while Cournos is writing for
it.’ TSE to RA, 16 Aug.: ‘Your letter has come as a great surprise and has
given me a great shock. I hope that it is needless to say that I was ignorant
of the circumstances, although I now remember that someone once mentioned to me
that Cournos had written a novel in which you and a part of your life had
figured [Miranda Masters, 1926]. . . . I simply find myself distressed
and in a dilemma.’ It was now too late to remove a review written by RA from
the next number of the Criterion. RA to TSE, 18 Aug.: ‘I regret that I
left the . . . article so late that my name must again appear in proximity to
that crapule. Please see that the other articles are destroyed.’ On 22
Aug. RA wrote to Ezra Pound, to say he had withdrawn from the Criterion
because TSE was employing ‘that guttersnipe Cournos’. He assured EP that he and
TSE ‘are still on perfectly good terms otherwise.’
And
indeed, TSE and RA did continue to write amicably to each other on literary,
professional and personal matters, for the remainder of 1927.
Michael
Copp
**********
Editor Andrew Frayn observes that a new
collection of scholarly essays on early Aldington critic Thomas MacGreevy has
been published. The volume is divided into four sections: MacGreevy as Poet,
MacGreevy as Critic, Cities of MacGreevy, and MacGreevy and Friends. Aldington
is not mentioned in any of the essay titles. Susan Schreibman (ed.), The
Life and Work of Thomas MacGreevy: A Critical Reappraisal (London:
Bloomsbury Academic, 2013).
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-life-and-work-of-thomas-macgreevy-9781441140920/
**********
Correspondent Caroline Zilboorg notes that
a Facebook page has been created for a French poilu, Leon Vivién as part of an
educational project about the First World War run by La Musée de la Grande Guerre
du Pays de Meaux (about an hour to the east of Paris). The page emphasises
narratives about the pity of war, with a nod towards Henri Barbusse’s seminal Under
Fire (Le Feu).
https://www.facebook.com/leon1914?fref=ts
**********
Review
Richard
Aldington, Death of a Hero, ed. James Meredith (London: Penguin, 2013)
ISBN 978-0-14-310687-6
It is a matter for great celebration that
there is a new edition of Death of a Hero available – and in time for
the centenary of the First World War. We can hope and expect that this will
mean that this novel will now receive the attention it deserves. Aldington
himself might have smiled wryly had he known that in the twenty-first century
Penguin would still be publishing the expurgated British text of 1929, but
perhaps this choice is due to the imprint under which the novel appears and its
commitment to reproduce ‘classic texts’.
Expurgated or not, the book is
still shocking, funny and poignant. As many commentators have remarked down the
years, the third part contains one of the finest – and most restrained –
accounts of combat experience ever written in English. The Prologue and first
two parts have given critics more problems, but their satire of pre-war bourgeois
and literary society and their values is still entertaining and illuminating.
However, the ‘average reader’ of today might need some guidance to fully
appreciate the first half of the novel – at least perhaps some information on
the identities of Shobbe, Bobbe, Tubbe and Upjohn – and the editor of this
edition has not provided this. (The absence of notes to the edition is,
presumably, the policy of the imprint.) He has chosen, instead, to devote much
of his Introduction to information about the First World War and Winterbourne’s
involvement in it.
We may have
reservations about this part of the Introduction. Firstly, the War itself
still has such significance in our culture that readers probably need an
account of the events of 1914 less than they need one of pre-war literary
London. More importantly, some of the information is inaccurate or misleading.
We are told that ‘the writer of the novel roughly dates Winterbourne’s
engagement in the war from April 1917.’ Not only is this statement wrong, but it
fails to recognise the painstaking detail with which Aldington organised the
chronology of Winterbourne’s war service, which, except for his death before
the end of the war and one other detail , follows the author’s own. The
narrator tells us that ‘They passed Christmas [1916] at the base,’ (at Calais)
– as did Aldington. ‘Two days after Christmas the orders came.’ At this point
the draft join their regiments. There, ‘January [1917] slowly disappeared.’;
‘March dragged on.’ At this point ‘a new division was pushed into the line on
our right.’ (This was actually 24th Division; the Upshires are
presumably, like Aldington’s 11th Leicesters, in 6th
Division.) Then, ‘One March night’ there is ‘a smart local attack’, all part of
the attempt to deceive the Germans as to the exact position of the coming Arras
offensive. Winterbourne finally leaves his Pioneer battalion to go home for
officer training in July, the only detail of timing which departs from
Aldington’s own experience: he went home in late May.
The references to
the Battle of Arras in the Introduction constitute a misreading of the text.
Neither Winterbourne nor his creator was involved in the Arras offensive. The
sector which Aldington’s 11th Leicesters – and Winterbourne’s
Upshires – occupied, and which is described in vivid detail in the novel, is
north of the Arras sector, and constituted part of the Loos Salient,
specifically an area of mining villages west of the towns of Lens and Loos,
both in German hands. (‘Hill 91’ was actually Hill 70, only finally captured,
by Canadian troops, later in 1917 after Aldington – and Winterbourne – had
returned to England.) Hence the detailed descriptions of the slag heaps and
devastated mining villages. The narrator tells us that the Upshires’ billets
are behind the town of M–; this is Mazingarbe. ‘A long treeless road leads up
to M– and Hill 91.’ This area is ‘right in the crook of the salient’. Writing,
as he was, for a readership many of whom had served in the war, it was
important to him to get every detail right.
This
misunderstanding leads to a misreading of one of the most moving ‘set pieces’
of the novel, Aldington’s description of the tattered remains of a battalion
coming out of the line in the period prior to the Battle of Arras. Aldington
is perfectly clear that this battalion has been involved in one of the ‘smart
local attacks’ that have been organised as part of the preparations for
the big offensive. However, we are told in the Introduction that it is ‘a
sample of how Aldington tells the story of the battle [of Arras]’ and that the
passage is about ‘Winterbourne and his fellow soldiers’. It is not.
Winterbourne’s Pioneer battalion, or rather, a company of them, has been sent
up the line to dig communication trenches to the old German lines now in
British hands, and witnesses this pathetic scene. (Winterbourne’s battalion is
the ‘Upshires’; the group of men coming back from the attack are the
‘Frontshires’). In a letter to Herbert Read in 1925 Aldington himself gave a
detailed account of the incident on which the story is based. Why this
misreading matters is that it fails to comprehend what makes this account so
moving: Winterbourne (who becomes the narrator for much of Part Three) is a
compassionate observer, not a member of this group.
The novel portrays
how, gradually and ominously, the situation ‘heats up’ as the British try to
distract the Germans from the preparations for the big offensive, and the
Germans retaliate. Hence the gas bombardments (with the effects of which
Aldington would struggle in the post-war years). The Battle of Arras finally
opens on page 290 of the novel, with another compelling description – of the
artillery barrage that precedes it. The only occasion when Winterbourne’s
battalion participate as infantrymen is in an attack, only partially
successful, on Hill 70, some time in late April. By page 298, because of the
advance further south (the Arras offensive), their salient has been eliminated.
When Winterbourne
returns to France in 1918 after officer training, we are told in the
Introduction that ‘he returns to the same unit’. British Army practice of the
period and Aldington’s own war service would lead one to suspect that this was
unlikely; but in any case, Aldington is quite specific: Winterbourne is sent
to the 2/9 Battalion of the Fodshires (Aldington’s 9th Royal
Sussex), who ‘belong to one of the divisions who have been smashed to pieces on
the Somme’ in the March Spring Offensive.
The chief cause of
my own disappointment with this Introduction to Death of a Hero is its
failure to bring to the reader’s notice the qualities that make this novel so
distinctive – those which have been variously perceived as its strengths and as
its weaknesses. I appreciate that the Penguin Classics series is directed at a
readership that, while probably possessing a lively and intelligent interest in
the First World War and in early twentieth century literature, may be
unfamiliar with the historical (and literary) background. I appreciate that it
was necessary to remind readers of the main historical facts, (although I am
not sure that these included the Schlieffen Plan – or the Battle of Arras,
which is peripheral to the novel). However, it is extraordinary that the
Introduction concentrates almost entirely on Part III.
Furthermore, there
is no attempt to bring to the notice of the reader the distinctive qualities of
the novel’s structure and style or to place it in the modernist tradition –
other than an unconvincing comparison between Prufrock and Winterbourne. As
for placing it in the canon of First World War literature, the references to
Hemingway and Remarque are disappointingly weak. (‘Both narratives convey their
war perspectives quite vigorously’) and neither novel (particularly Farewell
to Arms) seems to be an appropriate choice for any attempt to establish the
uniqueness of Death of a Hero. The Introduction does end with the
assertion that Aldington’s novel ‘drills down [more] deeply into the granite
core of the trench soldier’s experience’, but so, equally, does Manning’s Her
Privates We. Such an assessment, while acknowledging a great strength of
the novel, neglects it as a work of satire.
To have the text
of Death of a Hero available to a wide readership once more, and at such
an important time, is a great achievement. It is just a pity that the reader is
being given an inaccurate account of the context and an inadequate appreciation
of the significance of this extraordinary novel.
Vivien Whelpton
**********
Editor Andrew Frayn writes: I’m in the
process of updating the NCLSN mailing list details, and there are a number of
previous members whose e-mail address now bounces. If you know any of these
people, and would like to put them back in touch (or knows whether they would
like to continue to be in touch), please give them appropriate contact details
from the top of the newsletter.
Marilyn Gates-Hart, Nigel Jones, Neil
McRae, Karl Orend, Jeremy & Anne Powell, David Richards, Paul Sherr, Stephen
Toft, Dmitry Urnov, Stanley Weintraub, Patricia Willis, Howard Woolmer.