Member Gemma Bristow noted that the historian Amanda Vickery, a
prominent figure on television documentaries in the UK, posted on Twitter that in
the process of recording a programme for BBC Radio 4 on Smuggling she had paid
a visit to the Mermaid Inn at Rye (CTRL+click all links). The hostelry was, of course, run by Jessie May Aldington for many
years from just before the First World War.
[The programme
is still available to listen
online.—AF]
**********
Correspondent Simon Hewett noticed the following reference to RA in
the recently-published T. E. Lawrence, More Correspondence With Writers
(Castle Hill Press, 2014), part of Castle Hill’s ongoing T. E. Lawrence
Letters series. Referring to Aldington’s introduction to The
German Prisoner by James Hanley in a letter to Kenneth Marshall, a London
bookseller, dated 9 March 1931, Lawrence writes ‘But why in God’s name an
introduction by Richard Aldington? Honestly, that’s low. Hanley writes a damn
sight better than R.A. and doesn’t pule in print. Why not an intro. by Sir A.
Quiller-Couch. Why not let it rip without any chaperone?’
[Aldington’s introduction
speaks to the cachet he had as both an author of war fiction and a literary
critic at the time, following the successes of Death of a Hero and Roads
to Glory in the preceding eighteen months. However, the role of the
introduction in this instance is less certain, as The German Prisoner
was first published privately by Hanley. Perhaps the prestige Aldington’s name
would offer by association was still felt needed, just as Robert Graves and
Siegfried Sassoon offered more direct assistance in the publication of Frank
Richards’s Old Soldiers Never Die, a rare account of the conflict by a
working-class private, two years later.—AF]
**********
Several members of the society spoke at the English Association
conference on British Poetry of the First World War at Wadham College,
Oxford from 5–7 September 2014. Member Adrian Barlow is chair of the
organisation.
Editor Andrew Frayn and Correspondent Michael Copp both gave papers
in a panel on Aldington discussing, respectively, traces of the war in
Aldington’s city poems and form and fact in Aldington’s war poetry. The panel
was well attended, and a lively discussion followed in which both society
members worked hard to persuade some sceptical but open-minded attendees of the
value of Aldington’s poetry. The panel was chaired by Elizabeth Vandiver, a
Professor of Classics at Whitman College in Washington State, USA, who is
currently working on Aldington and H. D. Professor Vandiver gave a paper on her
current Aldington research in a panel that also included RA biographer Vivien Whelpton’s
talk on the British poetry of the Gallipoli campaign. (Professor Vandiver has
since become a member of the NCLS.) Whelpton also spoke in a roundtable on war
poets and biography. There was a pleasingly wide variety of papers throughout
the three days of the conference, taking in both canonical war poets and
lesser-known names.
The plenary events at the conference were
thought-provoking, focusing by and large on the intractable problem of
communicating the ‘truth’ of war. This topic was most evident in the concluding
roundtable featuring Professors Stuart Lee, Tim Kendall, Edna Longley and Jay
Winter, billed as (to my mind) a rather false opposition: ‘The historians vs.
the poets’. As I opined in the session, both make claim to truth, but of a very
different kind and using very different methodologies. Also notable was the
Saturday evening recital of settings of 18 war poems set to music throughout
the course of the twentieth century; poems by authors from Dante Gabriel
Rossetti to Wilfred Owen, with music by composers from Ivor Gurney to Ralph
Vaughan Williams, sung expertly by the baritone Roderick Williams.
The
conference was well attended, convivial and pleasant, with well-known scholars
of the period happy to talk at length with more junior scholars and interested
amateurs. A concern for me was the demographic of the conference, with a relatively
small number of early-career scholars in attendance. It’s worth thinking about
how we can help these vital works endure and ensure, as far as we can, that
these centenary celebrations are a comma, rather than a full stop in the
history of First World War poetry.
**********
Correspondent
Michael Copp also draws attention to the fact that there is a short section
devoted to RA in Professor Vandiver’s Stand in the Trench,
Achilles: Classical Receptions in British Poetry of the Great War
(Oxford University Press, 2010). Copp describes the book as ‘remarkable and
wide-ranging’, while Tim Kendall praises it as ‘enthrallingly written’ on his War
Poetry blog.
**********
Correspondent Michael Copp writes: For admirers of H.D. the latest Enitharmon Press Rare Books catalogue includes "Images of H.D." / from The Mystery by H.D., by Eric
W. White, first published in 1976. The first half of the volume is a
reminiscence by White, and the second half comprises extracts from The Mystery,
since published in full in a scholarly edition by the University Press of
Florida (ed. Jane Augustine, 2009). There are 50 numbered and signed copies of
this 62 page book at £50.00, and 350 more reasonably priced unsigned copies at
£20.00.
**********
Correspondent David Wilkinson observes the following item
listed in R. A. Gekoski’s Catalogue 33 (2009). http://www.gekoski.com/index.php/bookseller/catalogues
122. POUND, EZRA. Typed Letter Signed to T.E. Lawrence, two pp., 5 Holland
Place Chambers, Kensington W., August, 1920. The letter begins with a
characteristic Poundian salvo: “Being neither a Christian, nor an Oxonian, nor
even an Englishman, the idea that people ‘ought not to exist on one earth’
merely because they differ one from the other is strange to me. Doubtless you
have very bad taste; not that I mind the romantic, or even the academic and
idyllic, if they can be free of mental paralysis...” A terrific letter in which
Pound goes on to allude to many of the major writers of the day, and in
particular to Conrad. Writing as an editor of The Little Review he
notes: “I have just sent over one hundred delicious pages of Manning, which I
know will in due course be printed,” and adds that “Conrad has said he will
probably send on something some day or other, but has too many unfulfilled
promises hanging over him to make anymore ... Is Yeats any worse than the last volume
of Conrad’s?” There are further provocative and interesting references to
Yeats, D.H. Lawrence, and Richard Aldington. In very good condition in
collector’s cloth case. £4000
**********
In the recently-published international
anthology of conflict from 1914 to the present, The Hundred Years War: Modern War Poems, ed. Neal
Astley (Bloodaxe Books, 2014), Correspondent Michael Copp has contributed
eleven translations of French poets of the First World War: Guillaume
Apollinaire (2), Jean Cocteau (1), Francois Porche (1), Marcel Martinet (2) and
Henry-Jacques (5).
**********
Member Joanna Marston, of the Aldington
Estate’s literary agent Rosica Colin, writes to inform us that the Sunday
Mirror’s First World War commemorative poetry website was launched on 27
July 2014, and contains Aldington’s
‘Bombardment’, read by the former England football (soccer) captain Terry
Butcher.
**********
Vladimir Pankov’s The War had its
world premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival in August 2014. The
‘sound drama’ is billed as being based on RA’s Death of a Hero, Nikolai
Gurnilyov’s Notes of a Cavalry Officer and Homer’s The Iliad. Editor
Andrew Frayn wrote a piece on RA for the programme. The essay comprised a brief
account of his life, literary reputation and the impact of the war upon him,
and a discussion of Death of a Hero and the ways in which it is
particularly suited to inspire a ‘sound drama’ as a self-declared ‘jazz novel’
ostensibly structured and paced by the tempo instructions that head the
sections. Aldington was, as readers will know, acclaimed in Russia, from which
he benefitted late in life, and it is good to see that his influence endures.
**********
Carolyn Broomhead, Research
Community Manager at the New York Public Library, writes with news of three less-often-seen
photographs of Aldington in the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of
English and American Literature portrait file, which also contains photographs
of a vast number of other prominent authors. The photographs can be accessed by
searching the NYPL Digital Collections,
an ongoing project. There are three images in sequence in the alphabeticised
collection image book. In the first of these, #6 in the particular volume, RA
is seated at the base of a column wearing a singlet; in #7 he is posing with
his foot on the running board of a car; in #8 he is seated in a more formal
pose (not least in terms of dress). Separately, there is also the photograph of
RA—in fetching geometric-patterned pullover, cigarette in hand—that adorned the
front of Charles Doyle’s biography.
[I’d be very grateful if anyone could
provide further information about where these pictures were taken.—AF]
**********
Following on from the comment in the previous newsletter
about an article on the subject in the Times Literary Supplement, Lucy
McDiarmid’s Poets and the
Peacock Dinner: The Literary History of a Meal has now been published
by Oxford University Press.
The book details the famous pilgrimage to pay homage to
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt on 18 January 1914. The publisher’s blurb promises ‘a new
kind of literary history derived from intimacies rather than “isms.” [...] Through
close readings of unpublished letters, diaries, memoirs, and poems, in an
argument at all times theoretically informed, McDiarmid reveals the way
marriage and adultery, as well as friendship, offer ways of transmitting the
professional culture of poetry. Like the women who are absent from the
photograph, the poets at its edges (F.S. Flint, Richard Aldington, Sturge
Moore, and Victor Plarr) are also brought into the discussion, adding interest
by their very marginality. This is literary history told with considerable
style and brio, often comically aware of the extraordinary alliances and
rivalries of the 'seven male poets' but attuned to significant issues in
coterie formation, literary homosociality, and the development of modernist
poetics from late-Victorian and Georgian beginnings. Poets and the Peacock Dinner is written with critical
sophistication and a wit and lightness that never compromise on the rich texture
of event and personality.’ McDiarmid’s work has been widely praised in review. Thanks
to Correspondent Michael Copp for drawing attention to this publication.
**********
Editor Andrew
Frayn would like to follow up on Correspondent Michael Copp’s description of Aldington’s
‘War Yawp’ in his piece for the last newsletter (42:1) as ‘unsatisfactory’. It’s
interesting to think about the grounds on which we make such aesthetic
judgments, particularly as popular texts come to be recuperated as objects of
interest. (You might listen to, for example, Jane Potter’s podcast on
popular fiction and the First World War and look for some of her very good
previous work.) Aldington’s ‘War Yawp’ is certainly a document of its time. It
appeared in the November 1914 issue of Poetry and, given lead times, was
presumably composed very shortly after war’s outbreak. The poem seems to me an immediate
response to the war that doesn't fit with the way we think about it now, both
in terms of the general response to the conflict and Aldington’s developing
position. It’s worth remembering, though, that he did try to enlist at the
Honourable Artillery Company and was not, perhaps, as immune to war fervour as
his later recollections lead one to believe. For me, it doesn’t detract from
the other poetry RA produced, and perhaps heightens the sense of his
self-control in 1914-16. Of course, he would later come to believe that
overstatement in talking about the war was impossible, writing to H. D. On 6
June 1929 that it had been ‘so brutal that its brutality cannot be
exaggerated.’ (Their Lives in Letters, ed. Zilboorg, p. 219)
**********
The Eliot-Aldington Letters
(Part IV)
Volume 4 of The Letters of T.S. Eliot covers
the years 1928-1929, and includes just seven letters from TSE to RA – a
considerable reduction compared to the two previous years.
3 January 1928. TSE writes to RA, telling him he has
heard from Frederic Manning that Alec Randall was seriously ill with typhoid.
29 February 1928. TSE thanks RA for letting him know
that Alec Randall was out of danger. TSE notes that RA is going to Paris, and
offers to effect an introduction to the Princess de Bassiano. He informs RA
that he has no immediate translation work for him at the moment, and wonders if
RA could cope with Italian should the opportunity arise.
6 March 1928. TSE informs RA that he regrets not being
able to come to Paris to visit him there. He tells him: “There does not seem to
be much market in this country for French Translations except the market with
which you are already in touch.”
8 March 1928. TSE mentions various people RA might
enjoy meeting in Paris: Princess Bassiano, Natalie Barney and André Rouveyre.
TSE thanks RA for the piece he has written on Rémy de Gourmont, “the best thing
that has ever been written about Rémy and certainly the only thing in English.”
TSE indicates that he intends to “devote a long review to Rémy and yourself;
and if possible I will write it myself. You know Gourmont much better than I do
and I expect that you will surprise me with innumerable good things that I do
not know. After all, I owe a tremendous debt to him.”
16 March 1928. TSE repeats his regrets about the
reception of Gourmont in England: “I don’t expect that Gourmont, any more than
any other serious French writer will be read with any enthusiasm in England. I
have been so well disillusioned myself.” TSE promises that “if the Criterion
continues, you may be sure that we will devote a good deal of space to
Gourmont when your anthology appears.” TSE suggests two more people whom RA
might care to contact in Paris: Charles Maurras and Charles du Bos.
23 April 1928. Ezra Pound had written to Bruce
Richmond to complain about RA’s review of his Poems in the TLS.
On 22 April RA begged TSE “to put me right with Bruce if you get the chance.”
TSE assures RA “that Bruce is completely unconcerned about the matter, supports
you entirely, considers E’s letter impossible but amusing; and that neither he
nor I can understand why you should be in the least disturbed. I mentioned that
I had read your review and considered it remarkably favourable towards E. You
have NOTHING to worry about.” Earlier RA had informed TSE that Routledge had
asked him to translate Julien Benda’s La Trahison des Clercs. TSE
encourages RA to go ahead with the translation.
10 July 1928. TSE tells RA (now back in England) that
he has just received a copy of RA’s Rémy de Gourmont: A Modern Man of
Letters. Later, in The Monthly Criterion of 7 July 1929, TSE was to
rate it “the best critical introduction to the work of Gourmont that has been
written. Mr Aldington places Gourmont very judicially. [. . .] No one is so well
qualified as Mr Aldington to expound the ideas and explain the place of this
critic and moralist who occupied an important position in the literary world of
Paris during the latter part of the last century.” TSE is also
pleased to receive RA’s letter of 8 July in which RA had written: “It was good
to see you in London, and I felt more deeply than I can say the friendship and
sympathy in your look and handclasp”.
Thus, at this stage, their friendship and respect for
each other, on both the professional and personal levels, remain firm and
unaltered.
Michael Copp
**********
Editor Andrew Frayn writes: On an inevitable round of modernist
link-clicking, I ended up finally on RA’s Wikipedia page. I’d
like to suggest that members of the society work to edit the page to make it a
more complete and fitting entry. Indeed, perhaps we should also look to work on
associated pages such as those for his novels and volumes of poetry – but the
biographical information seems the best place to start.
The capsule
biography at the top of the entry would benefit from extending to give a more
rounded picture of his career and life; the section on Imagism focuses more on
his associations than on his own work; the section on the First World War is
very brief; his novelistic career is given very short treatment. The
conclusion, in particular, works to reinforce the impression of RA as abrasive
and cantankerous. I will start to work on this in the coming weeks and months;
it would be to the great benefit of RA’s reputation if the society could put
its collective knowledge and writing style together to improve the most visible
public repository of information about our protagonist.
**********
As ever, the
editors remain very grateful for any relevant material about RA and his circle
to populate the newsletter. Mentions in the press, related conferences,
publications about or talks about other Imagists or war writers—like RA, our
interests are many and varied. The information in the recent newsletters has
mostly come from our UK members and correspondents, and we would be very
grateful for any news from North American colleagues and comrades in order to
give a clearer idea of the extent of global activity on RA. The Newsletter
requires your support to continue!