London Letter
Edward Shanks
London, Dec. 1, 1914.
Ihave to humiliate myself at the beginning of this letter. Nietzsche did not provoke the war; he did not imagine there was ever any specifically “Teutonic” culture, worthy of being spread at any cost; and he seems to have disliked Prussia as much or more than I do. I say this not to inform the readers ofThe Little Review, who know it all already from the number in which my error appeared, but to unburden my soul. I sinned like a daily journalist and spoke from hearsay—for I confess I have never been able to read Nietzsche with sufficient attention to gain more than a vague notion of his ideas. Two persons set me right—Mr. Harold Monro, the editor ofPoetry and Drama, with some heat and indignation, and, more gently, Mr. A. R. Orage, the editor ofThe New Age, who was in old days one of the first to bring Nietzsche to England. It would seem that his efforts were of little use, for my blunder was merely an incident in a carnival of misapprehension which is now engaging our pseudo-intellectual critics. I have sinned in numerous, if evil, company.
I must withdraw another statement—namely, that the war has produced no adequate and agreeable verse. Mr. Maurice Hewlett’sSing-songs of the War(published by the Poetry Bookshop) is an admirable little volume. Wisely pitching his note neither too high nor too vulgarly, he has struck closer to the mark than he has ever in any attempt. He has achieved an excellent patriotic song, beginning
O, England is an island,The fairest ever seen:They say men come to EnglandTo learn that grass is green.
O, England is an island,The fairest ever seen:They say men come to EnglandTo learn that grass is green.
O, England is an island,The fairest ever seen:They say men come to EnglandTo learn that grass is green.
O, England is an island,The fairest ever seen:They say men come to EnglandTo learn that grass is green.
O, England is an island,
The fairest ever seen:
They say men come to England
To learn that grass is green.
That needs only supporting music to be a fine song of the pleasant boisterousness and exaggeration that it should be. Of the others,The Drowned SailorandSoldier, Soldier, have caught a wonderful and touching note of the folk-song. Mr. Hewlett’s work here is not ambitious, he has profited enormously by not keeping in his mind the necessity of producing a fine piece of literature. He has tried honestly to produce “something that will do” and much good poetry has been written in that way.
Mr. Harold Monro’s new book,Children of Love, which he has published himself at the Poetry Bookshop, contains also four gloomy war poems as far removed from Mr. Hewlett’s as from the verse of the newspapers.They are vivid and real impressions of fighting and, as appeals for recruiting, enormously inapt. But poetry does not exist for that. The title poem is a lovely piece, Mr. Monro’s very best, the composition which settled, or should have settled, all our doubts concerning his genius. The others display that sombre misery which is the characteristic note of his writing, which is extremely uncomfortable and, after a little while, extremely impressive.
I may seem to have devoted too much space to the publications of the Poetry Bookshop. But I think that, with luck, as time goes on, it may bulk yet more largely in English letters. Mr. Monro, if he is careful, may have the position that theMercure de Franceheld in Paris until quite recently: that is, he may publish about ninety per cent of all the good poetry that is published.
The war—again—disturbing our lives as a great tidal wave disturbs sea and shore, has brought to the surface, as waves will, many things of beauty. Among these, one that is not regarded, is Thomas Hardy’sDynasts, which has been abridged and produced by Mr. Granville Barker. It is printed in three volumes and nineteen acts, with innumerable choruses and semi-choruses. Mr. Barker has reduced the play to three acts and the chorus to two persons who sit enthroned, one on each side of the stage. Mr. Henry Ainley sits at a reading-desk lower down in front and declaims the descriptive stage-directions. The setting is a conventional design in grey to which slight additions are made from time to time, but which remains for the most part unchanged. Thus you see the men and women of Wessex in fear of invasion by “Boney,” the victory and death of Nelson, the death and burial of Sir John Moore, Wellington at Salamanca, Napoleon signing his abdication at Fontainebleau, Wellington and Napoleon at Waterloo. The Napoleon was bad: he laughed sardonically in the fashion of melodrama, but the play transcended him. The tragedy was profoundly moving, the comedy not less so. It is an extraordinary work, written in Mr. Hardy’s graceless style, and probably the greatest of his compositions. One thing only was wanting—an audience. That which is essentially impressive must have something to impress—the listeners have a place in a good play—and the grandeur of the occasion was sensibly diminished. When we went, we asked the box-office attendant if we might go in at half-price, on account of our uniforms, and he answered indifferently that “we might if we liked.” When we got in, we understood. There were about two rows in the stalls and two more in the pit. The boxes were empty as far as I could see. I cannot understand the English public. What more do they want now than to see Nelson on theVictoryand Wellington at Waterloo? Is it a cause of offence to them that the play is by a great man?