Literary Views & Reviews QUARRELLING WRITERS

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30230, 7 September 1963, Page 3

Literary Views & Reviews QUARRELLING WRITERS

Hi* Fine Art of Litenryi Mayhem. Famous Writers' * nd . Their Fends. By Myriek Land. Hamish Hamilton. 198 pp.

‘ v- most entertaining i books tell® us about many of( t-ie antipathies among notable I writers. Some are well known, others not so well Known; some are quarrels i mat produced invective in the grand manner, others I mere spitefulness. Land begins with that! dedicated participant in : Literary feuds, the cantanker-! ous and great Dr. Samuel Jonnson. The chief feud selected is that with Lord I Chesterfield whose dallying over toe patronage of John- 1 son s dictionary of the English' language wounded the great man. When toe work was ready for publication. Chesterfield showed a change of face and wrote two enthusiastic articles about it which led Johnson to exclaim; "I have sailed a long and painful voyage round the w ond. and does he now send out two cock-boats to tow me to harbour?” As might be expected, the living word on the feud is with Dr. Johnson, wno cast into everlas.ing shadow’ Chesterfield's famous getters to His Son'' with me devastating comment that they teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master." ?“'ext comes the immortality conferred upon the unworthy Colley Cibber bv Alexander Pope, who was dismayed when George II (who was German-born and spoke little English! appointed Cibber to be Poet Laureate. Cibber's quality may be Judged by this excerpt from his first ode: Ve grateful Britons bless the year, That kindly yields i.icrease, With plenty that might feed a war, Enjoy the guard of peace; Your plenty to the skies you owe. Peace is your monarch’s care; Thus bounteous Love and George below Divided empire share . . . Henry Fielding parodied Cibber in one of his plays, but it was felt that Pope summed up the position exactly when he wrote: In merry old England, it once was Rule The King had' his Poet, and also his fool. But now we're so frugal. I'd have you to know it. Thar Cibber can serve both for Fool and for Poet. j

Later, Pope kept Cibber under concentrated fire in "The New Dunciad.” a literary extravagance that keeps alive memory of a Literary buffoon. The feud between Doestoerski and Turgenev (over a debt) is recalled, also the quarrel between Thackeray and Dickens, toe two literary giants of Victorian England, over a remark attributed to Thackeray about one of Dickens's matrimonial infidelities. Next comes the embroilment of Henry James with H. G. Wells, caused, as Wells observed, because the two were “by nature and training profoundly unsympathetic!” Henry Arthur Jones is not remembered as a major playwright. He wrote many successful plays, and of them Oscar Wilde said that there were only three rules a young playwright should be required to follow: "the first rule,” Wilde observed: "is not to write like Henry Arthur Jones . . He added that "... the second and third rules are the same.” Yet Jones was bold enough to challenge George Bernard Shaw, describing him as “a freakish homunculus germinated outside lawful procrea-

ition.” Jones's fervid patrioI tism had caused him to condemn Shaw’s attitude to the ' 1914-18 war, and he was a | party to a request to Shaw to cease attending the Dramatists’ Club, to which both I belonged. Shaw's unruffled reply to one of Jones’s attacks ended with the remembered sentence. "Oh. Henry Arthur. Henry Arthur, author of 'Saints and Sinners’ The Crusaders,’ and The i Philistines.' do you believe that toe editor of the 'Daily j Express’ IS England?” I Two pairs of unorthodox Hovers engaged in a relation[ship which, toe people being what they were, could hardly [fail to end in quarrels. Katherine Mansfield, who had spent most of her life rejecting discipline, resented toe readiness of D. H. Lawrence to take charge of toe 'lives of Middleton Murry and herself. The worshipful Murry was less disturbed. There were several violent i quarrels, partings and recon- : Filiations before Katherine i died, after which the feud became bitterer with Law- ! rence s increasing impatience ! with Murry, whom he had icome to see as a false dis- ; ciple. ■ A notable literary embroill ment of the 1930's was that i between Somerset Maugham j and Hugh Walpole who be- . Sieved that Maugham had i caricatured him in "Cakes l and Ale.” A basic insecurity | in Walpole’s make-up led I him to treat very seriously 1 what he regarded as a stab I in the back by a friend. (Later, it was Maugham’s ! turn to be incensed when a

_ook called “Gin and Bitters” turned out to be a thinlyveiled attack on him. Published under the pseudonym “A. Riposte,” “Gin and Bitters” was widely thought to be Walpole’s work. Actually, it was written by an American novelist, Elinor Mordaunt, who was said to have followed in Maugham’s footsteps in Tahiti and other South Sea islands, "and collected everything unpleasant about him that she could.” Ernest Hemingway's abrupt reversals of attitude toward .hose w’ho had helped him caused several literary feuds. One was with Gertrude Stein, whose repetitive style Hemingway guyed in a passage in “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” As is not unusual, a woman had the last w’ord. Not believing in Hemingway's persistently vaun-.ed masculinity, Miss Stein delighted in playing before visitors a game with her dog. Pretending to be a matador, she would wave a delicate lady's handkerchief in front of her pet, saying all the while in great humour: “Play Hemingway. Be fierce.” “The Fine Art of Literary Mayhem” includes full accounts of these and other feuds among famous writers. In most cases, of course. Mr Myrick Land is re-telling: but he has. chosen stories that are eminently worth his research and trouble and, as the subjects require, has set them down brightly and with spirit. The resulting book is informative and highly entertaining. Many will choose it for a beside book.