My last remarks were sent you from a boat.
I’m back on shore now in a warm bed-sitter,
And several friends have joined me since I wrote;
So though the weather out of doors is bitter,
I feel a great deal cheerier and fitter.
A party from a public school, a poet,
Have set a rapid pace, and make me go it.




We’re starting soon on a big expedition
Into the desert, which I’m sure is corking:
Many would like to be in my position.
I only hope there won’t be too much walking.
Now let me see, where was I? We were talking
Of Social Questions when I had to stop;
I think it’s time now for a little shop.


In setting up my brass plate as a critic,
I make no claim to certain diagnosis,
I’m more intuitive than analytic,
I offer thought in homoeopathic doses
(But someone may get better in the process).
I don’t pretend to reasoning like Pritchard’s
Or the logomachy of I. A. Richards.

A poet, swimmer, peer, and man of action,
-It beats Roy Campbell’s record by a mile-
You offer every possible attraction.
By looking into your poetic style,
And love—life on the chance that both were vile,
Several have earned a decent livelihood,
Whose lives were uncreative but were good.

A statement which I must say I’m ashamed at;
A poet must be judged by his intention,
And serious thought you never said you aimed at.
I think a serious critic ought to mention
That one verse style was really your invention,
A style whose meaning does not need a spanner,
You are the master of the airy manner.

There’s every mode of singing robe in stock,
From Shakespeare’s gorgeous fur coat, Spenser’s muff
Or Dryden’s lounge suit to my cotton frock,
And Wordsworth’s Harris tweed with leathern cuff.
Firbank, I think, wore just a just-enough;
I fancy Whitman in a reach-me-down,
But you, like Sherlock, in a dressing-gown.

‘I hate a pupil-teacher,’ Milton said,
Who also hated bureaucratic fools;
Milton may thank his stars that he is dead,
Although he’s learnt by heart in public schools,
Along with Wordsworth and the list of rules;
For many a don while looking down his nose
Calls Pope and Dryden classics of our prose.

The mountain-snob is a Wordsworthian fruit;
He tears his clothes and doesn’t shave his chin,
He wears a very pretty little boot,
He chooses the least comfortable inn;
A mountain railway is a deadly sin;
His strength, of course, is as the strength of ten men,
He calls all those who live in cities wen-men,

Besides, I’m very fond of mountains, too;
I like to travel through them in a car
I like a house that’s got a sweeping view;
I like to walk, but not to walk too far.
I also like green plains where cattle are,
And trees and rivers, and shall always quarrel
With those who think that rivers are immoral

It is a commonplace that’s hardly worth
A poet’s while to make profound or terse,
That now the sun does not go round the earth,
That man’s no centre of the universe;
And working in an office makes it worse.
The humblest is acquiring with facility
A Universal-Complex sensibility.

The Higher Mind’s outgrowing the Barbarian,
It’s hardly thought hygienic now to kiss;
The world is surely turning vegetarian;
And as it grows too sensitive for this,
It won’t be long before we find there is
A Society of Everybody’s Aunts
For the Prevention of Cruelty to Plants.

Art, if it doesn't start there, at least ends,
Whether aesthetics like the thought or not,
In an attempt to entertain our friends;
And our first problem is to realize what
Peculiar friends the modern artist's got;
It's possible a little dose of history
May help us in unravelling this mystery.

We find two arts in the Augustan age:
One quick and graceful, and by no means holy,
Relying on his lordship's patronage;
The other pious, sober, moving slowly,
Appealing mainly to the poor and lowly.
So Isaac Watts and Pope, each forced his entry
To lower middle class and landed gentry.

The important point to notice, though, is this:
Each poet knew for who he had to write,
Because their life was still the same as his.
As long as art remains a parasite
On any class of persons it's alright;
The only thing it must be is attendant,
The only thing it mustn't, independent.

To be a highbrow is the natural state:
To have a special interest of one’s own,
Rock gardens, marrows, pigeons, silver plate,
Collecting butterflies or bits of stone;
And then to have a circle where one’s known
Of hobbyists and rivals to discuss
With expert knowledge what appeals to us.

Until the great Industrial Revolution
The artist had to earn his livelihood:
However much he hated the intrusion
Of patron’s taste or public’s fickle mood,
He had to please or go without his food;
He had to keep his technique to himself
Or find no joint upon his larder shelf.

Those most affected were the very best:
Those with originality of vision,
Those whose technique was better than the rest,
Jumped at the dance of a secure position
With freedom from the bad old hack tradition,
Leave to he solo judges of the artist’s brandy,
Be Shelley, or Childe Harold, or the Dandy.

How nice at first to watch the passers-by
Out of the upper window, and to say
'How glad I am that though I have to die
Like all those cattle, I'm less base than they!'
How we all roared when Baudelaire went fey.
'See this cigar,' he said, 'it's Baudelaire's.
What happens to perception? Ah, who cares?'

I've made it seem the artist's silly fault,
In which case why these sentimental sobs?
In fact, of course, the whole tureen was salt.
The soup was full of little bits of snobs.
The common clay and the uncommon snobs
Were fat too busy making piles or starving
To look at pictures, poetry, or carving.

You know the terror that for poets lurks
Beyond the ferry when to Minos brought.
Poets must utter their Collected ‘Works,
Including Juvenilia. So I thought
That you might warn him. Yes, I think you ought,
In case, when my turn comes, he shall cry ‘Atta boys,
Off with his bags, he’s crazy as a hatter, boys!’

I like your muse because she’s gay and witty,
Because she’s neither prostitute nor frump,
The daughter of a European City,
And country houses long before the slump;
I like her voice that does not make me jump:
And you I find sympatisch, a good townee,
Neither a preacher, ninny, bore, nor Brownie.

You’ve had your packet from time critics, though:
They grant you warmth of heart, but at your head
Their moral and aesthetic brickbats throw.
A ‘vulgar genius’ so George Eliot said,
Which doesn’t matter as George Eliot’s dead,
But T. S. Eliot, I am sad to find,
Damns you with: ‘an uninteresting mind’.

By all means let us touch our humble caps to
La poésie pure, the epic narrative;
But comedy shall get its round of claps, too.
According to his powers, each may give;
Only on varied diet can we live.
The pious fable and the dirty story
Share in the total literary glory.

I’m also glad to find I’ve your authority
For finding Wordsworth a most bleak old bore,
Though I’m afraid we’re in a sad minority
For every year his followers get more,
Their number must lave doubled since the war.
They come in train-loads to the Lakes, and swarms
Of pupil-teachers study him in Storm’s.

And new plants flower from that old potato.
They thrive best in a poor industrial soil,
Are hardier crossed with Rousseaus or a Plato
Their cultivation is an easy toil.
William, to change the metaphor, struck oil;
His well seems inexhaustible, a gusher
That saves old England from the fate of Russia.

I’m not a spoil—sport, I would never wish
To interfere with anybody’s pleasures;
By all means climb, or hunt, or even fish,
All human hearts lave ugly little treasures;
But think it time to take repressive measures
When someone says, adopting the “I know’ line,
The Good Life is confined above the snow-line.

Not that my private quarrel gives quietus to
The interesting question that it raises;
Impartial thought will give a proper status to
This interest in waterfalls and daisies,
Excessive love for the non-human faces,
That lives in hearts from Golders Green to Teddington;
It’s all bound up with Einstein, Jeans, and Eddington.

For now we’ve learnt we mustn’t be so bumptious
We find the stars are one big family,
And send out invitations for a scrumptious
Simple, old-fashioned, jolly romp with tea
To any natural objects we can see.
We can’t, of course, invite a Jew or Red
But birds and nebulae will do instead.

I dread this like the dentist, rather more so:
To me Art’s subject is the human clay,
And landscape but a background to a torso;
All Cézanne’s apples I would give away
For one small Goya or a Daumier.
I’ll never grant a more than minor beauty
To pudge or pilewort, petty-chap or pooty.

At the Beginning I shall not begin,
Not with the scratches in the ancient caves;
Heard only knows the latest bulletin
About the finds in the Egyptian graves;
I’ll skip the war-dance of the Indian braves;
Since, for the purposes I have in view,
The English eighteenth century will do.

Two arts as different as Jews and Turks,
Each serving aspects of the Reformation,
Luther's division into faith and works:
The God of the unique imagination,
And a friend of those who have to know their station;
And the Great Architect, the Engineer
Who keeps the mighty in their higher sphere.

But artists, though, are human; and for man
To be a scivvy is not nice at all:
So everyone will do the best he can
To get a patch of ground which he can call
His own. He doesn't really care how small,
So long as he can style himself the master;
Unluckily for art, it's a disaster.

But to the artist this is quite forbidden:
On this point he must differ from the crowd,
And, like a secret agent, must keep hidden
His passion for his shop. However proud,
And rightly, of his trade, he’s not allowed
To etch his face with his professional creases,
Or die from occupational diseases.

But Savoury and Newcomen and Watt
And all those names that I was told to get up
In history preparation and forgot,
A new class of creative artist set up,
On whom the pressure of demand was let up:
He sang and painted and drew dividends,
But lost responsibilities and friends.

So started what I'll call the Poet's Party:
(Most of the guests were painters, never mind) -
The first few hours the atmosphere was hearty
With fireworks, fun, and games of every kind;
All were enjoying it, no one was blind;
Brilliant the speeches improvised, the dances,
And brilliant, too, the technical advances.

Today, alas, that happy crowded floor
Looks very different: many are in tears:
Some have retired to bed and locked the door;
And some swing madly from the chandeliers;
Some have passed out entirely in the rears;
Some have been sick in corners; the sobering few
Are trying hard to think of something new.

I've simplified the facts to be emphatic,
Playing Macaulay's favourite little trick
Of lighting that's contrasted and dramatic;
because it's true Art feels a trifle sick,
You mustn't think the old girl's lost her kick.
And those, besides, who feel most like a sewer
Belong to Painting not to Literature.

The clock is striking and it’s time for lunch;
We start at four. The weather’s none too bright.
Some of the party look as pleased as Punch.
We shall be travelling, as they call it, light:
We shall he sleeping in a tent tonight.
You know what Baden-Powell’s taught us, don’t you,
Ora pro nobis, please, this evening, won’t you?