THE LIFE OF LITERATURE
of meter and rhyme.
If,
however, I abandoned meter and rhyme,
and wrote free verse, the result was even more fatal, because my
poeticisrns then became just a continuous flow, with no reason ever
for them to stop. In general, I think that one of the advantages of
"form" in literature is that it provides the reader with some kind of
assurance, other than the mere number of lines and pages, that there
are brakes which eventually will bring the thing to a stop at a
terminus.
Sometimes, when I had finished a bundle of poems, I would
stuff them into an envelope and address it to Mr.
J.
C. Squire. When
they had got to this stage I had lost all confidence in them myself,
but I reflected that after
all
they might be wonderful, and in this
case Mr. Squire would know. However, he never replied.
Occasionally I experienced moods of great indignation, espe–
cially against my Aunt May. These moods were by no means un–
justified, and they had a sound basis, I believe. When both my parents
had died, my uncle would, I think, having no children of his own,
have been very glad to have us as companions. My aunt who was
really, I think, incapable of liking anyone, was specially capable of
disliking us, and most of all me. After a brief honeymoon period of
our relationship, during which she extracted most of my secrets, she
decided that I was doomed to marry an actress, and that the primrose
path which would lead to this final immorality was art. She never
lost an opportunity of lecturing me on the depravity and wickedness
and irresponsibility of artists. Next to artists, she hated Mr. Lloyd
George. She was a crude expert at insulting people, and this gift
exercised amongst the delicate fissures of the Liberal Party- which
my uncle was for ever trying to heal- made her a kind of perambu–
lating human chisel on the occasions of Liberal reunions. She in–
sisted on attending these celebrations, would then push herself for–
ward saying in a loud voice "I want to meet Mr. George," a reference
to the fact that the Lloyd George family had tried to add distinction
to their name by adding the Lloyd to the George. Having met Lloyd
George she would either then shout at the top of her voice: "We
meet again, Mr. George," or she would tum her enormous back on
him.
She hated any tender human emotion with an intensity only
1201
