Volume 1 — CORRESPONDENCE

A PROTEST

(To the Editor of The London Mercury)

Sir,—Your dramatic critic writes of my play Sacred and Profane Love, "A writer of Mr. Arnold Bennett's eminence and great sagacity would be the last person to expect us to take this play seriously as a contribution to dramatic literature." Only a certain ingenuousness prevents this remark from being outrageous. Of course I expect the play to be taken seriously. Your writer is perfectly entitled to condemn my play; but he is not entitled on the strength of his opinion to attribute to me an attitude which is not mine, and which, if it were mine, would render me odious in the sight of artists. Why in the name of my alleged great sagacity should I publish a play which I did not expect to be taken seriously? Did your critic perhaps imagine that he was being charitable? One does not expect from the critics of The London Mercury the ineptitudes which characterise the dramatic criticism of the stunt daily Press. I mention the matter because I think that an important point of principle is involved, and because this is not the first time that one of your critics has exceeded his province. In your first number there were references to the work of Mr. Frank Swinnerton which amounted to a quite gratuitous imputation against the artistic integrity of the author.—Yours, etc.,

Arnold Bennett.

12B George Street, Hanover Square, W.1, December 19th, 1919.

[We gladly publish Mr. Bennett's disclaimer, but we think he exaggerates the gravity of the supposition he repels. We need scarcely say that our critic had no intention of imputing to Mr. Bennett anything which we supposed would render Mr. Bennett odious. Taking the view that he did of Mr. Bennett's play, our critic thought he was paying a compliment to Mr. Bennett's intelligence. If it is odious to write, occasionally, things which we do not regard as serious contributions to literature, we can only say that a great many artists have made themselves odious. As for Mr. Swinnerton, our reviewer, detecting a falling off, suggested that it might be due to the novelist having got into the habit of turning novels out regularly instead of waiting for the impulse. If a serious reviewer is to be precluded, when he thinks himself justified, from making suggestions like that, he might just as well be muzzled.—Editor.]

"THE DUCHESS OF MALFI"

(To the Editor of The London Mercury)

Sir,—Mr. Turner says he can hardly believe that the section of the audience which behaved so abominably at the "Phœnix" performance consisted largely of the theatrical profession. I think he is right. I happen to know that an effort was made by two actors in the audience to get a request for order made from the stage during the first interval.

Nor were these people entirely of the "uneducated" sort—in the conventional sense. One of the worst offenders was a terrible woman sitting next to me, who occasionally interrupted her nervous giggle to remark, "A wonderfully characteristic touch!" or something of the kind. I believe she must have been a don.

May I suggest that at the next performance by the "Phœnix," if similar trouble occurs, the matter should be brought to the notice of the management during the first interval, and that a request should be made from the stage by the latter? Personal requests to individual offenders were made by more than one member of the audience at the performance in question, but without result. It is worth while making a concerted effort to prevent the authentic joy of the theatre, when at last it is offered to us, from being marred by the behaviour of vulgar sentimentalists and neurotics.—Yours, etc.,

Victor Gollancz.

Authors' Club, 2 Whitehall Court, S.W.1, January 9th.

TAM HTAB

(To the Editor of The London Mercury)

Sir,—In vain Mr. L. Pearsall Smith held out a juicy carrot. Lest Mr. J. J. Biggs also be disappointed in his hope of a solemn ass, I beg to offer myself in that capacity, and with well-feigned eagerness point out that this page, if held to a mirror, will show that TAM HTAB is no more the reverse of BATH MAT than MOOR EEFFOC of COFFEE ROOM.

As you say, these public inscriptions are responsible for much distress.—Yours, etc.,

A. P.

January 6th.

THE LAMBKIN MSS. AND MR. BELLOC

(To the Editor of The London Mercury)

Sir,—Your valued bibliographer classifies the Remains of the Rev. J. A. Lambkin among the verse attributable to their editor. I feel very strongly the impiety of this error. For, although the influence of that eminent divine is traceable in the Dedicatory Ode prefixed by Mr. Belloc to the Remains of his great mentor, it is nevertheless in the realm of prose that we must look for Lambkin's main contributions to knowledge and literature. True it is that the late Fellow of Burford's justly famed Newdigate Poem is included in the definitive edition—indeed, Mr. Belloc must have felt the impossibility of rejecting its claims to such inclusion—yet, if I may quote a delightful "Lambkinism" which deserves a wider fame, "One swallow does not make a summer"; and, as one who owes a goodly part of the culture discernible (as I trust) in this letter to the author of the Article on the North-West Corner of the Mosaic Pavement at Bignor, I feel I should be untrue to the memory of my late dear tutor if I allowed such glories to be catalogued as if they formed part of the verses of a mere poet. No, sir, Lambkin is "this England's" Seneca, and all who treasure a great cultural inheritance should rally to do justice to its Remains. The late Dr. Pusey, whose character held so much in common with that of his younger disciple, never tired of narrating that wonderful instance of Lambkin's profound yet finely epigrammatic Latinity which is connected with the death of the late Pastor of Bremen, I think. I was present on that occasion, and can testify that, far from any library, Mr. Lambkin, after a short silence lasting perhaps for two minutes, whispered the words Requiescat in Pace—surely the most terse and crisp of potential epitaphs and one almost certain to secure the immediate popularity which it obtained, falling as it did upon the receptive soil afforded by the Oxford Movement from which event in our history the expression dates. As the fact is not generally known, perhaps, sir, you will allow me to state here that the present Sir Ezra Crumpton-Padge of Whortlebury Towers, near Brixton, is now the sole surviving link between the author of Physiology of the Elephant and our own times, the claims to this honour made by M. Lamkinski, President-elect of the Kacheefucan Soviet, having been expressly refuted by that gentleman's father-in-law, M. Georgeovitch Bernardenko Shavkin, the well-known big-game hunter and editor of Agapé.

Curiously enough Mr. Belloc's fine monograph on the "Padge" System of Rhetoric makes no allusion to this interesting example of what we may surely describe, in the truest sense of Lambkin's happiest aphorism, as a "survival of the fittest." Your bibliographer will doubtless wish to note these errata. Meanwhile I trust the importance of the subject may condone in some measure for the length of this letter.—Yours, etc.,

R. N. Green-Armytage [Curator L.L.].

Lambkin Library, Whortleboro', near Weston-S.-Mare, January 10th.

ONED

(To the Editor of The London Mercury)

Sir,—Your reviewer, in his notice of Mr. Dormer Creston's Clown of Paradise, claims to record a neologism which he commends to the notice of the editors of the Oxford Dictionary. Unfortunately they have anticipated him. If he will turn to the Oxford Dictionary, vol. vii, page 123, the top of the second column, he will find eleven examples, the last from a book published as recently as 1839, of this astounding grammatical invention.—Yours, etc.,

Gerard Hopkins.

Oxford University Press, Amen Corner, E.C.4, December 17th, 1919.

CANDIDE

(To the Editor of The London Mercury)

Sir,—It is interesting to learn from Mr. Lewis H. Grundy's letter in your issue of December that an English translation of Candide, with the name of M. de Voltaire as the author of the original, was published in London as early as 1759.

According to the preface of the edition of the Académie des Bibliophiles of 1869 Candide first appeared at the beginning of March, 1759, the Journal Encyclopédique of the 15th of that month containing an article on the book, which is headed by the following:

"We do not believe that this tale has a German original. It is attributed to M. de V."

This note produced a reply from Voltaire signed "Démad."

Though the reply is dated April 15th, 1759, it did not appear in the Journal Encyclopédique till July 15th, 1762, with the following note:

"This letter has been mislaid for a long time, and when it reached us we made fruitless efforts to discover the existence of M. Démad, Captain in the Brunswick Regiment."

A facsimile of the title-page of the first edition of 1759 is also given in the edition of 1869, and is the same as that quoted in the Bibliographical Notes of your issue of November.

L'Ingénu was also published anonymously in 1767. The title-page runs as follows:

"L Ingénu, Histoire véritable, tirée des manuscrits du Père Quesnel, à Utrecht, 1767."—Yours, etc.,

Ernest F. Gye.

61 Tregunter Road, S.W.10, December 19th, 1919.