PARTISAN REVIEW
"Well if you have a job in the Civil Service-which there's no
reason why you shouldn't have,
if
you get a First like me-and if
you are able to sell ten-thousand copies of your poems, like I did of
my last volume, you will be able to write poetry," and he continued
to talk of the books he had sold in the fatally transparent tones of
those writers who seek to bury their critics under their public.
J.
B.
Priestley, having elicited the same reply to the same question, ad–
vised: "Well, it's not at all a bad idea to start with a little poetry
if
you want to write something solid and serious, later on. I did myself.
Now I .... " and he went on to tell me that as a consequence of
his early poetic discipline at this moment trains were being chartered
in the North of England and loaded with copies of
The Good Com–
panions.
Only Walter de la Mare, perhaps b_ecause he had already so
much the air of being an inhabitant of the shades, seemed quite
confident in 'his modesty and modest in his confidence. In his charm–
ing way, de la Mare can make admissions far more damaging than
those of the other writers I have mentioned. "It's strange isn't it,"
he said, "that I have a kind of sixth sense by which if my name is
printed in a newspaper, I know at once and turn immediately to it."
De la Mare has the profound innocence which accepts and wonders
at every phenomenon, and is never shocked. Many years after this,
I met at his house a young American, a poet and story teller, who
told a long story about how he had met a sailor in London who had
gone home with him and then stolen
all
his
money and clothes.
De la Mare listened to this story, asked questions, smiled, a though
it were a narrative in the realm of dreams told by Shepherd Nod.
Later I saw something of the American who perhaps liked de la Mare
and myself because we both understood him, though perhaps for
different reasons: de la Mare from enchantment, I from disenchant–
ment. And when, after being thrown in and out of prison, he took
his
own life, de la Mare and I entered into some correspondence about
his literary remains. But it was not until I read a passage of real
insight in the Introduction to de la Mare's anthology
Love,
that I
realized how profoundly this most dreamy and unworldly of poets
had accepted and understood the underlying actuality of the whole
episode. Recently I heard a story of de la Mare which charmed me
greatly. An old friend of his had been to visit him and was a little
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