Poetry's worst line?

Press, 14 November 1981, Page 17

Poetry's worst line?

The Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters: Correspondence of George Lyttelton and Rupert Hart-Davis, Volume 3, 1958. Edited by Rupert Hart-Davis. John Murray, 1981. 185 pp. $43.95 (Reviewed by Stephen Erber) I approached this book with the view that anyone who could imagine that others would be interested in his letters to, and the letters to him from his old schoolmaster, must be comprehensively conceited. I was wrong. The letters are full of liveliness and spirit. They are charming and witty. Many of the sentiments expressed are old-fashioned (and none the worse for it) and some are absurd. All can be read with easy appreciation. In 1958 Rupert Hart-Davis was 50 and a publisher. George Lyttelton was, 74 and retired. Hart-Davis had been a pupil of Lyttelton at Eton in 1926. Their correspondence started when, in 1955, Lyttelton complained that no-one wrote to him. Lyttelton had opinions on nearly everything and did not forbear to correct his former pupil’s style: “Small point — I hope you always alter ‘Whatever do you mean?' to “What ever do you mean?" Quodcunque is not an interrogative." Sometimes the pupil teaches, and so Lyttelton found that the proper pronunciation of Hakluyt is “Hacklewit.” Both correspondents were vastly literate. The letters are larded with literary allusions — not out of conceit or a desire to show off, but because love of literature was the main thing they had in

common. So. when discussing the lack of merit in current criticism of MatthewArnold's poetry we have a highlyentertaining paragraph on whether the worst line from the “great” English poets is "Who prop, thou ask'st, in these bad days, my mind?" (Shakespeare) or, “Irks care the cropful bird" (Browning). Lyttelton plumps for the latter. Contemporary poets are also judged, but not harshly though Lyttelton resents Edith Sitwell's pedestailing by many, “espeically when they speak of her facial beauty, as' to which I content myself with Petrarch's observation about his housekeeper: ‘lf Helen had looked like her. Troy would still be standing'.” There is a lovely letter (Lyttelton again) upon the foolishness of grown-ups in thinking that the sorrows of youth are “light and transient." Per contra they can be “devilish heavy." Then, after this discussion a spendid reminiscence about an old friend’s advice to a hesitating bridge player — "Play the card next to your thumb" — which advice Lyttelton thought was better advice for life than for bridge. It is a pleasure to read contemporary letters in which politics plays no part: where what is important is not the state of the nation nor of the exchequer but of the mind and learning. It is also a salutary reminder that few today have the leisure so to indulge themselves. It is for these reasons (among many) that this correspondence should be read. It provides great gossip, great information and great fun.