Ezra Pound
Below, Ezra Pound writes to his mother, thanking her for his birthday gift (a bit of much needed spending money, it would seem), and fills her in on his literary activities in London. Later in November, he would go to Stone Cottage to stay with W.B. Yeats, ostensibly working as elder poet’s secretary—a practice Pound would repeat every winter through 1916.
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TO ISABEL W. POUND
Early November, 1913, London
Dear Mother:
I plan to spend my birthday largesse in the purchase of four luxurious undershirts. Or rather I had planned so to do; if, however, the bloody guardsman who borrowed my luxurious hat from the Cabaret cloak room (not by accident) does not return the same, I shall probably divert certain shekels from the yeager.
Upward’s Divine Mystery is just out, Garden City Press, Letchworth. His The New Word has been out some time; the library may have the anonymous edtn.
My stay in Stone Cottage will not be in the least profitable. I detest the country. Yeats will amuse me part of the time and bore me to death with psychical research the rest. I regard the visit as a duty to posterity.
Current Opinion is an awful sheet. Merely the cheapest rehash of the cheapest journalistic opinion, ma ché! No periodical is ever much good. Am sending the Quarterly which is at least respectable. I hope you don’t think I read the periodicals I appear in.
I am fully aware of The New Age‘s limitations. Still the editor is a good fellow—his literary taste— — — — is unfortunate. Most of the paper’s bad manners, etc. …
I seem to spend most of my time attending to other people’s affairs, weaning young poetettes from obscurity into the glowing pages of divers rotten publications, etc. Besieging the Home Office to let that ass Kemp stay in the country for his own good if not for its. Conducting a literary kindergarten for the aspiring, etc., etc.
Richard and Hilda were decently married last week, or the week before, as you have doubtless been notified. Brigit Patmore is very ill but they have decided to let her live, which is a mercy as there are none too many charming people on the planet.
Met Lady Low in Bond St. Friday, ‘returned from the jaws of death,’ just back.
The Old Spanish Masters show is the best loan exhibit I have yet seen. The post-Impressionist show is also interesting.
Epstein is a great sculptor. I wish he would wash, but I believe Michel Angelo never did, so I suppose it is part of the tradition. Also it is nearly impossible to appear clean in London; perhaps he does remove some of the grime.
Anyhow it is settled that you come over in the Spring. If dad can’t come then, we’ll try to arrange that for the year after. I shall come back here from Sussex (mail address will be here all the time, as I shall be up each Monday). You will come over in April; at least you will plan to be here for May and June. Once here you can hang out at Duchess St. quite as cheaply as you could at home.
I shall go to a Welsh lake later in the season instead of going to Garda in the Spring. Having been in the country thru’ the winter I shall probably not need spring cleaning.
If I am to get anything done this day, I must be off and at it.
Love to you and dad.
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FURTHER READING
For more on the Pound/Yeats relationship, click here.
For an interesting essay on the development of Pound’s political sympathies in this period, click here.
For the full text of Upward’s The New Word (which, notably or not, contains the first recorded use of the word “Scientology”), click here. (Pound would publish Upward’s verse in the first Imagist anthology, Des Imagistes, in 1914.)