I need scarcely say that The Quarterly Review is one of the most profitable periodicals in England, and one of one's best "connections," or sources of income. It has, of course, a tradition.
"It is not that Mr. Keats (if that be his real name, for we almost doubt that any man in his senses would put his real name to such a rhapsody)"—
write their Gifford of Keats' "Endymion." My only comment is that the Quarterly has done it again. Their Mr. A. Waugh is a lineal descendant of Gifford, by way of mentality. A century has not taught them manners. In the eighteen forties they were still defending the review of Keats. And more recently Waugh has lifted up his senile slobber against Mr. Eliot. It is indeed time that the functions of both English and American literature were taken over by younger and better men.
As for their laying the birch on my pocket. I compute that my support of Lewis and Brzeska has cost me at the lowest estimate about £20 per year, from one source alone since that regrettable occurrence, since I dared to discern a great sculptor and a great painter in the midst of England's artistic desolation. ("European and Asiatic papers please copy.")
Young men, desirous of finding before all things smooth berths and elderly consolations, are cautioned to behave more circumspectly.
The generation that preceded us does not care much whether we understand French individualism, or the difference between the good and bad in French literature. Nor is it conceivable that any of them would write to a foreigner: "indications of ideas, rather than work accomplished, but I will send you my best."
De Gourmont's next communication to me was an inquiry about Gaudier-Brzeska's sculpture.
[1] "A German study," Hobson; "A German study," Tarr.
[2] Quoted in L.R., February, 1918.
[3] Each of the senses has its own particular eunuchs.