II

THE VISIT TO the country was to stay with well-to-do friends, James Whittall and his wife, in their house at Vale End in Kent. Whittall, of Philadelphian Quaker origin, had no pretensions to bohemian or avant-garde credentials; he says in his memoirs that he had feared, when he first met the Aldingtons, that his ‘having enough money to live on comfortably would always prevent anything but a casual relationship’ with the Aldingtons, but this proved not to be the case.³⁰ The Aldingtons were grateful for Whittall’s invitations to his agreeable sequestered country house – he had a home in London as well – which Aldington described that summer as ‘looking over wide stretches of fertile Kentish land and surrounded by a brilliantly coloured sea of large poppies, scented lupins, carnations, roses, foxgloves and many other flowers’.³¹ Whittall for his part was encouraged by their keen interest in his work as a translator; H.D. helped when his publisher asked him to put into vers libre the translations he was making of Judith Gautier’s Le Livre de jade, translations in turn of Chinese poetry, first published in 1867 and greatly admired in France; some of the resulting vers libre appeared in the Egoist.³²

Whittall comments, as so many of those who met them did, on how very different the Aldingtons were, though he describes them both as ‘irresistible’. H.D., he says, ‘was tall, slender, strangely beautiful, sensitive, possessed of a gift for making one feel important and for the moment absorbingly interesting to her’. She lived much of the time in another world ‘near the shores of the Aegean’, yet she would return to the present world with delight: ‘Her sudden entries into our talk and her effortless domination of it filled us with elation because she brought with her such disarming enthusiasm and delivered herself with such amazing speed and clarity on any subject that might be uppermost.’ Richard, on the other hand, appeared thoroughly of the here and now, and, although he affected a black cloak and long hair, was far from being a languid aesthete: ‘His energy of brain and body was like a fresh, strong wind which invigorated without whipping skirts about or blowing off hats … his speech was alive with the true accents of the young innovator, passionately opposed to all comfortable mediocrity. He hated publishers, successful authors, critics, Americans and Quakers, but he had friends among them all, consistency being a trait seldom possessed by a dangerously charming person.’³³ Whittall’s account indicates that in spite of the war and the loss of the baby, the Aldingtons could still be lively and entertaining companions, who continued to get much out of life together.

Amy had written Richard a warm note of sympathy on hearing of the stillbirth, urging them to ask if they needed help with any extra expense, and offering to pay their fares if they would like to visit her to give H.D. a change of scene. She sent them a bunch of newspaper clippings, some about the anthology, others more generally about the new poetry, for the imagists were already producing followers, some of whom alarmed her considerably. Kreymborg, whose magazine the Glebe had only survived a few issues, had invited her to contribute to his next one, this time to be called Others, dedicated to those who have ‘died to make verse free’. Aldington would describe it as ‘a small periodical which publishes nothing but vers libre, of which its choice is catholic though perhaps not apostolic’.³⁴ Amy was at first delighted and eagerly sent off a contribution, and she was no doubt pleased that when Others first appeared in July, an article in the New York Tribune pointed to the prominence in the new poetry movement of women, and commented that ‘Two, at least, of the best known leaders are women, Miss Amy Lowell and Miss Monroe.’³⁵ But now she wondered, she told Aldington, if she had made a mistake to ally herself to these newcomers, because it seemed that ‘all the questionable and pornographic poets’ were trying to sail under the imagist flag. That Amy herself was a questionable poet in many people’s eyes, and that she used her vers libre to express quite unacceptable lesbian desire was something that did not seem to occur to her. The immediate association that the papers were making or implying between ‘free verse’ and ‘free love’ bothered her, even though, or perhaps because, it had so much truth; Lowell was, she told Aldington, particularly worried about an article from the New York Call, presumably the one by Emanuel Julius, ‘This Summer’s Style in Poetry, or the Elimination of Corsets in Versifying’, which had appeared on 16 May.³⁶ Again, the analogy between the fashion for freedom in underwear and in poetic metre undeniably carried a social truth about the period; notwithstanding Lowell’s expressed disapproval, it must have made an impact on her, because she would draw on that image for her most popular poem, ‘Patterns’, which she published later in the year. Poor Amy, she was too large to abandon corsets in real life: another reason the article may have struck such a chord of alarm, though perhaps what really perturbed her about Julius’ article was that he had rather wittily coined the phrase, the ‘vers libertines’.

Lowell would wax hot and cold about Others, whose contributors would include William Carlos Williams (at one stage editor), Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, H.D., Pound, Lowell, Frances Gregg and Mina Loy. Lowell, like Monroe and indeed Pound, was always uneasy about the Greenwich Village scene, but it may have been its politics rather than its sexual mores that she really found most uncongenial. A contemporary described the Village as ‘a spiritual geography. It is bounded on the North by the Feminist Movement, on the East by the Old World Bohemia … on the South by the Artistic temperament and on the West by the I.W.W. [Industrial Workers of the World].’³⁷ It was undoubtedly the latter that she found the most alarming; in spite of her admiration for the anarchist-inclined de Gourmont, Amy was a thoroughgoing capitalist.

Aldington wrote to thank Amy for sending the cuttings, which he assured her had cheered H.D. up. May Sinclair had written a sturdy defence of the imagists in the June Egoist, first taking issue with Monro’s attack on H.D. and then giving one of the most illuminating contemporary accounts of their poetics. H.D.’s poetry, she writes, ‘proves the power of the clean, naked, sensuous image to carry the emotion without rhyme – not, I think, without rhythm; the best Imagist poems have a very subtle and beautiful rhythm – and always without decoration’. She goes on to search for a definition of the ‘Image’, which, she insists, ‘is not a substitute; it does not stand for anything but itself. Presentation not Representation is the watchword of the school. The Image, I take it, is form. But it is not pure form. It is form and substance.’ For all poets, she says, poetry is a sacramental act, like the mass, but whilst the Victorians were Protestants, offering symbols of a reality to be found elsewhere, the imagists were Catholics, creating a reality themselves. May Sinclair was herself becoming deeply involved with psychoanalysis at this period, and, when she wrote here that ‘what the Imagists are “out for” is direct naked contact with reality’, she is perhaps, like Pound in 1913, making an analogy with the contact with the repressed truth of the unconscious that analysis claimed to give.³⁸ Yet Sinclair’s comparison with the mass was an apt one for the imagists; like the sacrament, for them the poem was a means to salvation, to a fuller and better life. Walter Benjamin would argue in the 1930s that in the age of mechanical reproduction the visual work of art has lost its ‘aura’, but for the imagists their poetry should, at any rate at its best, maintain a sacramental power. This article was the first of many that Sinclair wrote on behalf of the new poetry: defences of Flint, Aldington, Pound, Eliot, as well as more support for H.D. would all be provided over the next few years. They had a good friend in May Sinclair.

The Aldingtons do not seem to have been in touch with Pound since he refused to send a poem for the May Egoist. Pound was not one of those who visited H.D. in the nursing home, though he heard the news. He wrote to his mother two days after the stillbirth: ‘Hilda’s infant died, so dont send it a christening spoon, or embarrass Mrs Doolittle with enquiries. Hilda is, I believe recovering quite nicely.’³⁹ It sounds callous, but was not necessarily so. When Aunt Frank, of whom he was very fond, had died in 1913, all he could say to his mother was, ‘Yes, I suppose A.F. was at about the end of her tether.’⁴⁰ Pound could not handle his or others’ personal grief in any direct way. Although he had been greatly angered by Flint’s history in the May Egoist, he said nothing for now, possibly because even he realised it was not a good moment for a row. In addition, in spite of his irritation with Amy, he may have felt unwilling to fall out with his erstwhile good friends; he still thought highly of H.D.’s work, and he remained fond of her. He was busy with his other ploys too, continuing to supply Monroe with poets, and to remonstrate with her when she didn’t take his advice; he sent a more than usually vitriolic letter that May condemning the contents of the latest Poetry, though he was mollified when she finally printed ‘Prufrock’ in June. He was also in frequent contact with H.L. Mencken, who had now taken over from Wright as editor of the Smart Set. Pound had had hopes of acquiring his own weekly, but his efforts to raise funds were fruitless, though his endeavours to secure Joyce some money from the Royal Literary Fund would be, thanks to Yeats’ intervention with Edmund Gosse, more successful, in spite of the fact, as he told Joyce with some delight, that Gosse complained that ‘neither you nor W.B.Y. have given any definite statement of loyalty to the allies’.⁴¹ He was also preparing three more Noh plays from the Fenollosa papers for publication, sending them off in early July to the Chicago magazine Drama; and in June the first and only London Vorticist exhibition in Pound’s lifetime took place.⁴²

The exhibition opened in the Doré Galleries on 10 June 1915; Dismorr, Etchells, Gaudier, Roberts, Saunders, Wadsworth and Wyndham Lewis formed the main group of Vorticists, though there was a subsection of non-Vorticists who had been invited to contribute, including, surprisingly, the Bloomsbury painter, Duncan Grant. The catalogue proclaimed that ‘by Vorticism we mean a) ACTIVITY as opposed to the tasteful PASSIVITY of Picasso; b) SIGNIFICANCE as opposed to the dull or anecdotal character to which the Naturalist is condemned; c) ESSENTIAL MOVEMENT and ACTIVITY (such as the energy of a mind) as opposed to the imitative cinematography, the fuss and hysterics of the Futurists’.⁴³ Such a negative way of defining a programme, by its opposition to other movements, was perhaps an indication of an uncertainty within the movement about its future direction. It was much surer of what it disliked than what it wanted, and though more information about Vorticism was promised in the second issue of Blast, the promise, as W. C. Wees points out, was not kept. To nobody’s surprise, the reviews were largely antagonistic, and the works attacked as a celebration of mechanical barbarity. In an article in the New Age that January Pound had tried to counteract the widespread perception of Vorticism as violent and anarchic, writing there that the ‘political world is confronted with a great war, a species of insanity. The art world is confronted with a species of quiet and sober sanity called Vorticism’.⁴⁴ He convinced very few, possibly not even himself.

In early June, Pound wrote to his father saying, ‘Gaudier is getting very tired of the trenches its time someone came in and hurried matters.’⁴⁵ He would soon learn that Gaudier had escaped trench warfare for ever. Though the news did not come through until later in the month, he had been killed, while leading a charge, by a German bullet, said to be direct to the head, at Neuville Saint-Vaast, five days before the exhibition opened. His death changed Pound’s whole attitude to the war, and left its mark on his later politics. Charles Olson, after talking to Pound in 1946, suggested that Gaudier’s death was ‘the source of his hate for contemporary England and America’ and ‘in 1915, his attack on democracy got mixed up with Gaudier’s death, and all his turn since has been revenge for the boy’s death’.⁴⁶ Not everyone would agree. Even at the time there were those who questioned Pound’s sincerity. Aldington, who was very upset himself, told Amy that

Hueffer and Ezra are writing the most awful bosh about [Gaudier] … I am really angry about this, for all Gaudier’s real friends, Nina Hammet, Cournos, Brodzky, Hulme etc, have been pushed by, while these Vorticist cuistres who have never cared a cent for him, go about writing in the papers, making capital out of his death. Ezra wrote a ridiculous article in the Westminster Gazette and Cournos wrote to the paper and frankly told him he was a liar and was ‘making capital out of Gaudier’s death’.⁴⁷

Pound, to do him justice, told Harriet he felt like a ghoul for getting paid for writing on Gaudier, especially as it was the only paid work he could find at that moment. He was wounded to the quick by Cournos’ comment, telling Alice Corbin Henderson, ‘I have found it necessary to eliminate Cournos … from my list of acquaintance (re/Brzeska’s death, not on a point of style or literary activity).’⁴⁸Yet though Aldington was surely right that there were others closer to Gaudier, that does not mean Pound’s outrage at this loss was insincere. Humphrey Carpenter, suspicious like Aldington of Pound’s reaction, suggests he was not much disturbed by the news, basing this on the fact that his reporting of Gaudier’s death to his father is fairly matter-of-fact: ‘Brzeska has been killed, which is pretty disgusting, though I suppose it is a marvel it hasn’t happened before’.⁴⁹ But that was a typical Pound response, and one would not expect more revelation of feeling from most sons to their fathers in 1915. It is surely significant that in almost every one of his letters to his parents during those first ten months of the war Pound had passed on news of Gaudier. In May, when a cheque for their first wedding anniversary arrived, he promptly used it to pay off some of his debt to the sculptor, this at a time when, as he told Joyce, he was making his own furniture because they could not afford to buy any. One of the first people to whom he wrote about Gaudier’s death was his old professor, Felix Schelling, the pioneer of the philological method, in the University of Philadelphia, whom he had last seen by chance in the British Museum in October 1913. Schelling had generously, in view of their past differences, written to congratulate him on Cathay; in his reply, Pound referred to Gaudier, doubtless completely unknown to Schelling. ‘Gaudier-Brzeska has been killed … and we have lost the best of young sculptors and the most promising. The arts will incur no worse loss from the war than this is. One is rather obsessed with it. P.S. Have you seen Hueffer’s When Blood is Their Argument?’⁵⁰ Pound felt strongly – as he had already told his mother – that Ford’s linkage of philology and militarism was something that Schelling and the Penn faculty needed to register. Pound wrote to others about Gaudier’s death, including Joyce, but if he was genuinely appalled by this death, which he called the ‘worst calamity of the war’, it was perhaps not only because of the loss of the man but, as he put it to an American friend Milton Bronner, because of the ‘loss to art’.⁵¹ And this particular loss to art was inevitably a blow to his movement, to his own artistic mission; one can understand why Gaudier’s close friends, in mourning for a charming and immensely talented young man, full of vitality and zest for life, suspected there was an element of something self-interested in Pound’s response. Yet his grief was no less bitter for the fact this death threatened his own hopes for the new world that Vorticism was meant to bring.

Pound’s later hatred of capitalists and espousal of Social Credit was fuelled by his belief that bankers and financiers were responsible for the war; they starved artists in peacetime, and killed them in war. After Gaudier’s death, from being unconcerned about American support for the conflict, he became ever more angry that they were failing to assist the Allies. He wrote an article later that year about ‘The Net American Loss’, the loss, that is, that America had incurred in failing to enter the war; in it he abuses the United States for being preoccupied with usury and neglecting to protect civilisation against the ‘Prussian empire and its philology’.⁵² Pound’s obsessions were developing apace; he sent the article to John Quinn, asking him to get it published, but perhaps it’s not surprising that no one could be persuaded. But he was now convinced that the serious artist’s role was to demonstrate what was wrong with the world, and he was certain his political analyses were as correct as his aesthetic judgements.

Hulme had remained in hospital till June, scandalising the nurses by his insistence on reading German philosophy (probably Husserl, his latest discovery), an activity they considered exceptionally unpatriotic. He would not return to the front until May 1917; he had originally enlisted as a private, doubtless because of his dislike of the English upper classes, but being given orders when he thought he knew better did not appeal to him. After his convalescence he set about trying to obtain a commission, and training as an officer took time. He too was saddened by Gaudier’s death, but he never appears to have had second thoughts about returning to the front himself; his letters home from the trenches were published after his death, and although they by no means suggest he was insensitive to the carnage about him, Aldington’s assessment of him as a tough man appears justified. Indeed, he even seems to have achieved a certain calm that had not been there earlier. Both Karen Csengeri, who edited his Collected Works, and his biographer, Robert Ferguson, compare his descriptions of the front with the world he describes in ‘Cinders’. Ferguson suggests that perhaps the reason that he accepted trench warfare so stoically was ‘he had already seen it before, “all the mud, endless”’, in his bleak vision of a meaningless world in those early notes.⁵³ The prairies had spoken to him of the limitations of human understanding, Worringer’s ‘spiritual dread of space’ of the alienation and disorientation of modernity, but the front, which made literal those existential fears of an absurd universe, was in a strange way something of a solace. It was not that he denied that it was ‘a fearful place’; ‘really like a kind of nightmare, in which you are in the middle of an enormous saucer of mud with explosions & shots going off all around the edge, a sort of fringe of palm trees made of fireworks all around it’; as on the prairies, he discovers, ‘there is nothing certain or fixed.’⁵⁴ Yet, unlike most of his contemporaries, Hulme does not seem to have been surprised and shocked by the advent of war. It chimed with the view of the world he had always had; humanity for him was limited and flawed, progress a myth, and the imposition of order and compulsion always necessary. The war was simply a melancholy necessity. That it was incompetently organised he constantly pointed out, but that in no way affected his conviction that it was right to fight the Germans. Even the right-wing Hulme was beginning to praise democracy, at least when defined in his own terms, over German despotism.

Hulme was the person who organised breaking the news of Gaudier’s death to Sophie, though deputising the task to the Polish wife of a friend, and he later tried to help Sophie gather together Gaudier’s work for sale. She was not an easy person to assist, as she grew increasingly suspicious and paranoid. In French law she cannot have had any right to Gaudier’s estate, and Hulme appears to have been a go-between with the family, who strongly disapproved of her. Pound was also hovering, buying up works for John Quinn and placing some in museums. Sophie kept a diary, written to Gaudier, in which she vigorously complained about both of them. Pound, she reported to Gaudier, was more assiduous in his help than Hulme, but only because it served his own interests. Whether Hulme and Pound actually quarrelled over Gaudier’s remains isn’t clear, but a rift definitely emerged. Hulme, according to Kate Lechmere, now ‘took a great dislike to Pound’, though ‘he always loved Gaudier’.⁵⁵ Over the years, Hulme had grown more irritated by Pound: when asked what he thought of him, Epstein alleges that he said he knew exactly when he would kick him downstairs.⁵⁶ He never appears to have done so. Pound, for his part, reported rather regretfully to John Quinn that dealing with Gaudier’s estate had ended six years’ friendship between himself and Hulme. He blamed Sophie, but it may have been that Hulme, like Aldington, had been thoroughly exasperated by Pound’s proprietorial attitude to Gaudier.