“He has a kind of mischievous cruelty in his dissection of humanity,” a distinguished novelist once remarked, speaking of Lucas’s conversation. “But he is extremely good company,” came in the next breath. This observer added: “I always think that the best picture of Lucas’s character is to be found in Bennett’s Books and Persons.” Here it is:
“Mr. Lucas is a highly mysterious man. On the surface he might be mistaken for a mere cricket enthusiast. Dig down, and you will come, with not too much difficulty, to the simple man of letters. Dig further, and, with somewhat more difficulty, you will come to an agreeably ironic critic of human foibles. Try to dig still further, and you will probably encounter rock. Only here and there in his two novels does Mr. Lucas allow us to glimpse a certain powerful and sardonic harshness in him, indicative of a mind that has seen the world and irrevocably judged it in most of its manifestations. I could believe that Mr. Lucas is an ardent politician, who, however, would not deign to mention his passionately held views save with a pencil on a ballot-paper—if then!... Immanent in the book is the calm assurance of a man perfectly aware that it will be a passing hard task to get change out of him!”[75]
And here is more testimony, to the same general effect:
“E. V. Lucas always reminds me of Kipling’s ‘cat that walked by itself.’ He knows everybody, but I have often wondered whether anybody really knows him. He is an amazingly busy man—the assistant editor of Punch, the literary director of Methuen’s, the writer of almost countless charming and distinguished essays, to say nothing of novels and travel books. As a writer he has the appealing urbanity of Charles Lamb, of whom he has written far and away the best biography in the language. But I do not think that there is much of Lamb’s urbanity in E. V. Lucas the man, the gentle-voiced, modern, rather weary man of the world. The humor of the Lucas essays is sunny and kindly. The humor of Lucas himself is cynically tolerant.
“I have said that Lucas knows everybody. The only circles into which he never goes are literary circles. Where professional writers are gathered together, there you will never find E. V. Lucas. He prefers actors and prize-fighters. There is a story that Lucas once gave a dinner party at the Athenæum Club to which he invited Georges Carpentier and Harry Tate. I do not altogether disbelieve that story, but a bishop ought to have been included in the dinner party to make it complete.
“Lucas loves cricket, and is a good man to dine with. His talk is stimulating and his taste in wine perfection.”[76]
Possibly E. V. Lucas’s closest personal friends among writers in America—certainly his closest temperamental affinities—are Don Marquis and Christopher Morley. Occupationally, as the sociologist would say, he is allied with such fellow editors as E. T. Raymond and A. A. Milne and with such publishers’ literary advisers as—not to go back to George Meredith, who read for Chapman and Hall—Frank Swinnerton, who reads for Chatto & Windus, and J. D. Beresford, reader for Collins.
BOOKS BY E. V. LUCAS
For a full list of books written, compiled, edited by and contributed to by Mr. Lucas, write to Methuen & Co., Ltd., 36 Essex Street, London, W.C. 2. About 130 titles are comprised.