_22 October, '14:_
Dear Mr. Pound:
Many thanks for your letter of the other day. I am afraid I
must say frankly that I do not think I can open the columns
of the _Q.R._--at any rate, at present--to any one
associated publicly with such a publication as _Blast._ It
stamps a man too disadvantageously.
Yours truly,
G.W. Prothero.
Of course, having accepted your paper on the _Noh_, I could not refrain
from publishing it. But other things would be in a different category.
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.