“Occ.  Verse.”  He is somewhat too much occupied with this attitudinization before women or the memory of women.  It has about as much to do with the reality of sexual companionship as the Lord Mayor’s procession has to do with the municipal life of Greater London.  Still, J. Marjoram is a genuine poet.  In “Fantasy of the Sick Bed,” the principal poem in the book, there are some really beautiful passages.  I would say to him, and I would say to all young poets, because I feel it deeply:  Do not be afraid of your raw material, especially in the relations between men and women.  J. Marjoram well and epigrammatically writes: 

Yet who despiseth Love As little and incomplete Learns by losing Love How it was sweet!

True.  But, when applied to love with a capital L, and to dropped pins despairing, a little sane realistic disdain will not be amiss, particularly in this isle.  I want to see the rise of a new school of love poetry in England.  And I believe I shall see it.

TROLLOPE’S METHODS

[23 Sep. ’09]

I am reminded of Anthony Trollope and a recent article on him, in the Times, which was somewhat below the high level of the Times literary criticism.  Said the Times:  “Anthony Trollope died in the December of 1882, and in the following year a fatal, perhaps an irreparable, blow to his reputation was struck by the publication of his autobiography.”  The conceit of a blow which in addition to being fatal is perhaps also irreparable is diverting.  But that is not my point.  What the Times objects to in the Autobiography is the revelation of the clock-work methods by which Trollope wrote his novels.  It appears that this horrid secret ought to have been for ever concealed.  “Fatal admission!” exclaims the Times.  Fatal fiddlesticks!  Trollope said much more than the Times quotes.  He confessed that he wrote with a watch in front of him, and obliged himself to produce 250 words every quarter of an hour.  And what then?  How can the confession affect his reputation?  His reputation rests on the value of his novels, and not in the least on the manner in which he chose to write them.  And his reputation is secure.  Moreover, there is no reason why great literature should not be produced to time, with a watch on the desk.  Persons who chatter about the necessity of awaiting inspirational hypersthenia don’t know what the business of being an artist is.  They have only read about it sentimentally.  The whole argument is preposterous, and withal extraordinarily Victorian.  And even assuming that the truth would deal a fatal blow, etc., is that a reason for hiding it?  Another strange sentence is this:  “The wonder is, not that Trollope’s novels are ‘readable,’ but that, being readable, they are yet so closely packed with that true realism without which any picture of life is lifeless.” (My italics.) I ask myself what quality, in the opinion of the Times writer, chiefly makes for readableness.