LONDON LETTER
525
What will be his impressions? As he looks round the crowded cock–
tail party, hugging a thimble of something warm and sweet with a recoil
like nail polish remover, he will certainly observe four facts about English
writers. They are not young, they are not rich, they are even positively
shabby; on the other hand they seem kind and they look distinguished
and their publishers look hardly more prosperous and hardly less dis–
tinguished than they do. No one, certainly, can be in this for the money.
Of the people he most wants to meet there will be a fair sprinkling, for
private individuals can no longer afford to give cocktail parties and most
writers will not miss this chance of a pleasurable spring reunion. The
Sitwclls are generally in the country but Mr. Eliot will probably be
there accompanied by Mr. John Hayward (Dr. Johnson disguised as
Boswell) and they already convey an atmosphere particularly English to
the gathering (not angels but Anglicans, as Gregory said) . Towering
over the rest are Mr. Stephen Spender and Mr. John Lehmann, two
eagle heads in whose expressions amiability struggles with discrimination
(Bisbee's European visit will largely depend on their summing up) .
About nine inches below them come the rank and file, Mr. Roger Sen–
house, Mr. Raymond Mortimer, Mr. V. S. Pritchett, Miss Rose Macau–
lay, Miss Elizabeth Bowen, Quennell, Pryce-Jones, Connolly, we all are
there. But where is Bisbee's opposite number? Why is Mr. Dylan Thomas
still the youngest person present? Where are the under thirties?
If
Bis–
bee is observant he will have remarked on the two outstanding pecu–
liarities of English literary life. The absence of young writers at the bot–
tom, the fusion of author with publisher at the top. In such a gathering
nearly everyone will have two or three jobs. Authors are either publishers
or editors; if they do not edit or publish they will be on the British
Councilor the B.B.C. Culture is made and difIuscd by the same people.
The cow serves in the milk bar. This explains the amazing coherence of
English literary life, which often surprises visitors.
It
is easy to get ninety
per cent of English writers happily into the same room because nearly
all work in the same business. Editor-author, publisher-author, B.B.C.–
author, in turn the hunters and the hunted, they are in constant com–
munication. Then again, they are nearly all of an age, which is now
from about forty to fifty. But the remunerative pressure of culture–
diffusion tends gradually to extinguish the creative spark and Bisbee
would do well to make a point of never asking these charming, friendly
and distinguished people what they arc writing now, or what they plan
to write in the future. Make clear that you have read our books, at least
one of them, that you regard us as authors firs t and publishers, editors,
broadcasters, or vill age explainers afterwards, and then try to understand
