‘Our London, My London, Your London’

Abstract

This was in 1909. It was a year when the character of Pound’s London and his own artistic persona began to take shape. It was the year too, most probably, when, in one of modernism’s legendary set-pieces, he first met Wyndham Lewis (Lewis guessed it was in 1910) at the Vienna Café close by the British Museum. Both men made a significant early appearance in Ford’s English Review though whether either registered this or knew anything of each other’s work is doubtful. The Vienna Café, Lewis remembered, had a distinctive triangular first-floor room with a glass ceiling ‘which reflected all your actions’ (1982: 280). The motives and emotions at their meeting were far from transparent, however. The café had been adopted by readers and officials at the British Museum including Laurence Binyon who effected the first introduction (‘his bulldog, me… Lewis... Mr T. Sturge Moore’s bull-dog’ as Pound painted the scene in the Cantos (1975b: 507)). Lewis didn’t remember himself as anybody’s bull-dog. He was an ‘idle student’, biding his time, who ‘looked like a moujik’ but ‘bought his clothes in Savile Row or Brook Street’ (1982: 272, 273). Somehow he had slipped easily into this company of mandarin scholars on his return from Europe. For Pound it was an introduction to English class attitudes, cultural snobbery and complacent racism. He was dismissed in advance as ‘Jewish’ and American, and Lewis, when they met, was surly and indifferent.

‘Game!’ Ezra leaped forward, planting a low return that Hueffer scrambled vainly to return. ‘Hard luck!’ someone half laughed. Hueffer ignored the call and immediately sent back a soft underhand serve. It fell in the tram-lines, bounced twice but was scooped back by Pound who sprang as if to help the ball over the net, his polychrome shirt flapping in the breeze. Hueffer pushed his belly forward and lunged, missed and missed again. ‘My set!’ Pound pronounced. Ford took up a position on the base line, threw the ball high into the sun and hit it hard on the first bounce. Pound anticipated from a sitting position as Hueffer’s serve arced out of play. ‘That’s love all’, Hueffer called.

The tennis court stood on the opposite side of’ south Lodge’ on Campden Hill Road, Kensington and was part of a large garden rented by Violet Hunt for parties. Once Pound knew there was a court he had seized on the idea of playing tennis and the overweight Hueffer (later Ford) had agreed. They played, the way Pound danced and Hueffer talked, without rules or constraint, spinning the game into the irregular form that suited them both, ill-matched though they were. ‘It was beyond anyone to umpire or score’, said Brigit Patmore (1968: 55). Sometimes there were doubles with Pound and Hugh Walpole, Amber Reeves and Kitty Rome, which could only have added to the irritation of some and the fun of others. ‘Ezra! Ezra!’, Violet Hunt’s parrot squawked as the players returned to the house.

(Hunt, 1926: 114; Goldring, 1943: 47; Carpenter, 1988: 132)