Blasting and Bomardiering Read online

  I did not carry through the piece of work as well as I should. I was hurried (I always thought I was about to get well, then slipped back). Since, I have had to rewrite every line of it. Even in that early form Tarr brought me much attention as a writer —though I should be sorry to have gone down to posterity as 'the author of Tarr■' in its unrevised first version. A gratifyingly large and flattering Press marked its appearance. It was hailed as the first book of a new epoch, 'a date in literature'.

  'The prose style is original.... A book of great importance, because it will become a date in literature... because here we have a forerunner of the prose and probably of the manner that is to come, a prose bare and precise, a manner hardly ever general, never diffuse, usually concentrated and penetrating. The new writer takes definite and lasting leave of the romantic movement.... We are at last spared the illogical impertinence of a set plot in a world

  where nothing happens according to set plot but by the natural development of character.'

  I have no record of who wrote this: it appeared in the New Witness.

  eTarr is a thunderbolt,' said the Weekly Dispatch. 'Tear is just Trilby—but it is Trilby written, elaborated, done, and worth reading,' said the Outlook. 'A painful commentary on modern morals,' said a provincial paper. 'But it has a powerful fascination,' it added. Whether the 'fascination' lay in the morals or in the manner of presentment the writer does not say.

  A notice in the Nation, from the pen of Rebecca West, was a more serious matter, and it was the intelligent support of one or two such influential critics as Miss West which assured this first book the respectful attention of the world at large. It must always be remembered that notices in those days were not the mere clowning that they have become at the present time. So what such a writer as Miss West wrote carried weight.

  This, as you can see, is literary history, as well as my personal history, so I need not tell you that there is no vanity in reproducing these opinions of persons at present justly eminent in our literary world.

  Miss West's generous tribute to this first book was characteristic of a critic who has never sold her pen, as others have, and who therefore to-day still occupies the position that she always has, as one of the two or three people who remain above the commercial melee into which writing has been led.

  'A beautiful and serious work of art that reminds one of Dostoievsky only because it too is inquisitive about the soul, and because it contains one figure of vast moral significance which is worthy to stand beside Stavrogin. The great achievement of the book, which gives it both its momentary and its permanent value, is Kreisler, the German artist.'

  You can see that with such champions as this, the 'author of Tarf had nothing to fear from critical misunderstanding, and his 'bombshell' was not treated merely as an explosive novelty: and the fact that it had in England such a publisher as Miss Harriet Weaver assured it the best treatment a book can receive, on that side. Mr. T. S. Eliot, in reviewing it, remarked that 'In the work of Mr. Lewis we recognize the thought of the modern and the energy of the cave-man.' So, since even then Mr. Eliot was influential, I was launched as a 'caveman', as well as an editor and an author.

  Before Tarr I had been a painter—though I never had time to paint. I had been so busy massaging the British Public, as it were—in preparation for the effort of understanding that would be required if it once I did, in fact, begin.

  Now I was 'an author'. I had a first novel to my credit. What fun! you will think, if you are a Boots Subscriber. But, you know, I was a quite different sort of 'author' to the sort you're thinking about. It's never any fun being the real thing!

  I was perhaps more of a portent as 'an author' than as 'a painter'. The English will never regard painting as anything but a joke, or a chocolate-box. Whereas whatever else you may say about the English, they are a great literary nation, and in an uneasy way they feel it is up to them to take some notice of a book. They are after all supposed to understand books, even if they don't.

  I need not describe my first book, otherwise than to say that the attitude of mind that presided at its composition seemed highly original at the time. It would not seem so now, the attitude has been too often imitated. The statement—the narrative technique—was denuded of those rhetorical ornaments to which the English critic had become accustomed in a work of fiction. It was not a world of gentlemen and ladies that was unfolded in its pages, nor yet of love's young dream, nor of the 'kindly' emotions. But it was not (if you cared to cross the Channel) the first book in European literature to display a certain indifference to bourgeois conventions, and an unblushing disbelief in the innate goodness of human nature.

  Tarr was not 'constructed', as the commercial pundit calls it. It did not conform to the traditional wave-length of the English Novel. There was not a lot of soft padding everywhere,

  bombardier the battery officer

  in other words, to enable the eggs to get safely to market, to Boots and to Mudies. Indeed they were not eggs. They were more like bullets. As Mr. H. G. Wells once remarked to me: I did not write novels as he'd been brought up to think of them. But Tarr was only the first: and there have been many since then—of my own, for that matter. To-day Tarr would be accepted as a pretty straightforward narrative. Then it looked queer.

  As the 'author of Tarr at all events, and as 'the Editor of Blast' I was henceforth to be known, until 1926. Then I began writing a lot more books. I had to make a list of them the other day, and found I have by now written twenty-three. This was up to May 1937.

  But in 1926 this autobiography ends, as you will remember. So for the purposes of this autobiography I am 'the Author of Tarr'. The curtain goes down upon Tarr.

  Later in the War I was, when on leave from the Front, in Lady Cunard's box at Govent Garden. Next to me sat the General commanding the American troops in England. This was the month in which Tarr had made its appearance: and my hostess introduced me as 'the author of Tarr—a novel, General! Mr. Lewis has been compared, General, to Dostoievsky! The Times says he has taken Dostoievsky for his model. Dostoievsky, General!'

  'Dostoievsky—Dostoievsky!' exclaimed the gallant officer. 'And a very good model too!'

  As a fact, I had not taken Dostoievsky for a model, though The Times may have said I had. But this is just to show the sort of form my early lionization as an 'author' was to take. Lady Gunard has much more than her share of mother-wit: and having to make contact quickly, in the midst of the surging pandemonium of a Wagner opera, between an American General officer and a British subaltern, she just shouted the name of a sort of field-marshal of letters (Marshal Dostoievsky as it were) and announced me as the latter's chief of staff— about to step into his shoes: though in the tented field, of course, a mere bottlewasher—not even a brasshat; a battery officer, one amongst thousands popping off stupid guns.

  In the years immediately succeeding the War I was 'the

  D author of Tarr' more than anything else, with 'the editor of Blast' as a secondary title to fame. The War had washed out the bright puce of the cover of the organ of the 'Great London Vortex'. Too much blood had been shed for red, even of the most shocking aniline intensity, to startle anybody. And upon my literary labours of the first six months of the War I stood or fell, for seven long years. Mostly I stood, pretty securely. Which is surely a tribute to Tarr. It is remarkable how well that hasty piece of workmanship supported me until I decided to start building a better pedestal. For a pedestal is as essential for an artist as it is for a statue.

  I was, I believe, suspected of painting still (though such an expert in those matters as Mr. Herbert Read assures the Public that since the War I have never been guilty of that offence). But my painting was merely an oddity about 'the author of Tarr' which it was rather amusing to recall. Like the landscapes of Mr. Winston Churchill.

  CHAPTER VI

  The Sitwells, a 'Book-Dictator', and Mr. Richard Sickert

  Have you ever heard of the Sitwells? If you have, I do hope you won't r
esent this question. Or rather I hope you will overlook my telling you who they are.

  Sir George Sitwell is a baronet in the north of England, and he has three children. Two of them are men, and one a woman. The latter is one of my most hoary, tried and reliable enemies. We are two good old enemies, Edith and I, inseparables in fact. I do not think I should be exaggerating if I described myself as Miss Edith Sitwell's favourite enemy.

  Once I shared that distinction with Mr. Noel Coward, but Noel Coward has somehow dropped out. Why? Oh, I don't know—I suppose you can't go on getting excited about Cavalcade forever even if you are Miss Sitwell. Then Mr. Coward has recently become a member of the Athenaeum. It's time to drop an enemy when he does that.

  It is just possible that my friend Mr. Geoffrey Grigson may feel that he is the favourite. Since the newspaper correspondence in which he referred to her as 'the old Jane', and she asked what a grig was and looking it up in the dictionary found that it was 'a small eel', he may feel that his claims should not lightly be brushed aside. All the same, I believe I shall always be the apple of her eye—now Noel's dropped out.1

  Osbert Sitwell I have always liked, rather in spite of myself— for those foxhunting men I can never really respect. The very name SitweU is suggestive of the horsemaster, the hereditary 'foxhuntingman'. But Osbert is a 'hearty' who has taken the wrong turning—he has looked at pictures, he has listened to music much too much—he has loved the Ballet not wisely but too well. I doubt if he could catch a fox to-day for all the equestrian aplomb of his patronymic.

  But Edith Sitwell is another matter. Edith—she is a poetess by the way—is a bad loser. When worsted in argument, she throws Queensberry Rules to the winds. She once called me Percy.

  Although I don't like Edith quite so much as I like Osbert (she said I 'wanted to be loved' on one occasion, so I need make no bones about saying that I do not love her) for all that Edith does liven up the English literary scene considerably. And I hope Geoffrey Grigson will stop knocking her about in public. He should remember that although as brave as a lion, she is only a woman.

  (By the way, all this is merely doing my stuff. No autobiography of me—1914-1926—would be complete without the Sitwell family. They are one of my comic turns. I assure you that if the above seems to you a bit rough in places, it is nothing to what Miss Edith puts in, once we get into a clinch in the newspapers. You should watch out for that. This book ought to bring her out, and then all the toupets will be on the green. But I'd a damn sight rather have Edith than those cowards1 who skulk beneath a nom de plume, and peashoot you from ambush.)

  But back to Osbert now. Osbert was once a minor Maecenas. He had le bel air, so much prized by the Baroness Bernstein—a Hanoverian hauteur and a beautiful lisp—which helped him out as a raconteur, and he was one of Chelsea's best. He threw quite a good dinner-party, in his salad days, and he was about the last person in London to mix 'mind' with his Mayfair. He would have been a 'baronet with a butterfly', under happier circumstances.

  Not long after the War I was at his house for dinner (in Carlyle Square, Chelsea, it was) and Arnold Bennett and Walter Sickert were present.

  Walter Sickert is of course Richard Sickert, the great Ex-Royal Academician. It would be in vain for me to tell you all the other things he is—the R.A. is the least of them. And

  1 No, not Noel. q«

  Arnold Bennett was an Edwardian novelist, who wrote about the Five Towns.

  I am telling you here about Tarr. This preparation (and all that knock-about stuff with the author of Wheels was part of it) has been to show you how Tarr sometimes got 'the author of Tarr' into difficulties.

  At this dinner-party Sickert began talking about Tarr. I could see Bennett didn't like it. I think Sickert saw that too, for he went on talking about it more and more, at every moment in more ecstatic terms. I did not engage in the conversation. I saw that Bennett was extremely annoyed; and when at last Sickert said: 'Here we've been talking about it for a quarter of an hour. The author has said nothing. But I don't think it matters what we say about it. Tarr is such a book that it doesn't matter what we say about it, one way or the other!' Bennett threw himself back in his chair at this, and stammered out crossly, 'Oh, I shouldn't say that. I shouldn't say that!'

  Naturally it was aggravating of Sickert to make Bennett talk about a 'young author's' book for half an hour. For I saw only too well that as an old hand he had resented this ordeal. So much irresponsible generosity had been more than he could stomach. Tarr had been made to stink in his nostrils. Bennett had an age-complex as big as a house. I knew that Sickert had made me an enemy though he had not meant to, for he is the kindest man in the world.

  Afterwards it looked as if my forebodings had been confirmed. I say looked, because I cannot believe that that episode accounted for what followed, though I dare say it did not help matters.

  For a number of years Arnold Bennett was a kind of book-dictator. Every week in the pages of the Standard, he 'dictated' what the Public should read. And more or less the Public obeyed. He was the Hitler of the book-racket. The book-trade said that he could make a book overnight. If he praised it on Thursday evening, by the week-end it was selling like hot cakes. And he became inordinately proud of this accomplishment. He loved power in the way that a 'captain of industry' loves power.

  He was reported to have sold fantastic quantities of a book entitled, I think, The Bridge of San Luis Rey. But there were hundreds of them. He 'made' one a week. C} it ait fou as Sickert would put it. It was hair-raising.

  The 'author of Tarr' under this Dictatorship spent his time in a spiritual concentration camp—of barbed silence. No one ever heaved a heartier sigh of relief at the death of a Tyrant, than that the 'author of Tarr' heaved when Bennett passed from this scene to a better and even more resplendent one. For living beneath that boycott was no joke, for a person who depended for his living upon what he could get out of his books.

  Of course I realize that this particular Dictator probably disliked The Lion and the Fox, The Childermass, Time and Western Man, and so on, from the bottom of his heart. Also— as this is after all a democracy (in spite of our local Dictators), and seeing that I had an undeservedly splendid Press everywhere else—'the author of Tarr' survived the rigours of this solitary boycotteer. All the same, whenever I see the Standard (which thank God only has a mouse-like shadow of a 'dictator' to-day) I shudder. Whatever the reason, it meant a tidy bit out of my pocket. This John Keats would have had much more porridge if this particular Hitler had not taken a dislike to the cut of his hair. If Letters were Life, I am persuaded, I should have been beheaded. My head would have 'rolled in the sand'. But I should never have understood exactly why.

  As Sickert and I left the Sitwells that night (in 1922 or 3) I reproached him for having been so vehement with Bennett. But Sickert exclaimed against my retrospective objection. 'Nonsense! Why shouldn't he hear it! Of course he should be told— that and a lot more! Quel come die—that such people as Arnold Bennett should be in a position of that sort—it is only in an age like ours that they could be! That one should have to talk to such people about books at all! Why should one be asked to meet such people? It is absurd that a Bennett should be referred to, for anything except the time of a train or the cast of a bicycle lamp! Pfui!'

  1 Noel Coward is not an enemy of mine, I should perhaps say. In that capacity he belongs to Miss Sitwell, and I am not butting in. I had to make it clear why I should be the favourite, and not him, that was all.

  CHAPTER VII

  The 'Bull-Gun'

  I will return to Percy Street, at a later stage. I always return to Percy Street. Suffice it to say that at last 'the author of Tarr'— though he was not that yet, but still 'the futurist artist'—'the editor of Bias? regained his health—about the same time that he wrote finis to the sad story of Bertha Lunken—and attested.

  My first week as a soldier was at Dover. It was on the parade ground of the castle there that I learnt how to fall-in and to dismi
ss: and in public houses on the quays that I got so drunk with mandoline-playing sailors that I was compelled on one of my first nights as a gunner to crawl up the hill to the castle upon all fours. In the upright position, I discovered, on this steep incline, I either fell to my knees and struck my forehead on the ground like a moslem, or reeled over backwards and struck my occiput like a British heavyweight.

  The army hut where I slept was in a little wood. When I reached it, on this occasion, I grasped one of the trees, and rose slowly to my feet. Fixing my eye upon another tree a few yards away, I marched upon it and embraced it. Embracing it I revolved, until I leant against it with my back. Then I retraced my steps, and supported myself against the first tree for a while. So I marched and countermarched a number of times.

  Satisfied with my form, I turned my face towards the hut. The corporal in charge occupied the left hand bed beside the door. As I reached it I turned the handle slowly and pushed it inwards. I entered, manoeuvred round it, and walked back with it until it was closed again. Then, averting my eyes from the direction of the corporal's bed, I marched over to my own, sat down a little precipitately, coughed, removed my boots and tunic. Then I turned my eyes, with a casualness there was no mistaking, in the direction of the door. I allowed them to skim the bed that stood beside it. There was no one there! There was no corporal. But a little later he came, or it would be more accurate to say spun in. He subsided upon his bed, without, however, removing his boots. I laughed drunkenly and went to sleep.

  After Dover, with its alarm-sirens announcing Taubes, its hoarse Irish drill-sergeants, its alcoholic A.B.'s, I went to the Gamp at which you have already seen me. I had enlisted as a gunner, and that was a trade which required to be learnt. But it was not that which prolonged my training. It was the getting of a commission.