Prose And Poetry 1847-1922

1847 1922 Alice Meynell PROSE AND POETRY Centenary Volume edited by P. P., V. M., O. S. P. M. With a biographical critical introduction by V. SACKVILLE-WEST LONDON ONATHAN CAPE 30 BEDFORD SQUARE i 947 ALICE MEYNELL AET. jO An etching 1879 by Tristram Ellis after a water-colour portrait 1877 by Adrian Stokes THE CONTENTS Introduction p. 7 Prefatory Poems p. 27 f . Literature and Language p. 37 Women p. 181 Commentaries p. 216 In Italy p. 233 Landscape p. 262 The Children p. 290 Introductions and Reviews p. 320 Selected Poems p. 357 Bibliographical Note p. 393 Portraits FRONTISPIECE AND FACING PAGE 37 AND PAGE 357 INTRODUCTION How enviable appears the task of the biographer whose sub ject has passed safely beyond the reach of living memory when one mans interpretation, based on the available docu ments, is as good as anothers. It is then only a matter of selection and of a judicious piecing together to compose the portrait there can be no true check on the likeness, there can be nothing but a divergence or else a concurrence of opinion. The most that can be demanded is that the portrait shall be convincing in itself that it shall re-create, with sufficient plausibility, the entity that was once a living man or woman. All must depend upon the inferences drawn according to the particular outlook of the chronicler, and these in turn must largely be based upon the written impressions of others, like wise gone beyond the reach of dispute. Unable to come for ward and disagree, these others, whose evidence alone would be worth having, are securely relegated to the region whence can come no refutation. But how different is the case when a multitude of the personally well-informed exists toululate in protest. Like an army of friends and relations invited to view a posthumous painting, they fill the artists studio with their cries of objection the nose is not bad, they say, and you have certainly caught the glint in the hair but where is that elusive smile we knew so well, that little fleeting look of irony, or that charming glance of amusement which c ime so seldom and was so precious when it did come and where is the characteristic gesture of the hand and where that touching droop of slight tiredness where, in fact, is the person we knew Not here. Accurate in every definable particular, something has eluded the brush this is not wholly he, or she, whom we loved. I never saw Alice Meynell. Hearing of her from time to time from her friends who were also my friends, I put together a composite image which might bear but little resemblance to 7 INTRODUCTION the truth. I imagined a rather tall, very willowy woman, swathed in grey voile with a bunch of Parma violets at her breast a woman gliding rather than walking through life even as she glided rather than walked through the parquet-floored drawing-rooms of her acquaintances. An attractive aloofness, tinged with preciosity, in my conception rendered her some what unapproachable if not actually inhuman a woman who reserved her expansiveness even as she reserved her affections, for her family and a chosen few. It was so impossible to asso ciate anything cheap or cheapening with Alice Meynell, that I had no desire to know her unless it might be in the hope of knowing her well an honour not likely to fall to the lot of one so young and obscure as I. Thus I never sought to make her acquaintance, although I could easily, throughthose friends, have done so and now I cannot be sure if I am sorry or glad. A legend to me, even then when I was so young, she retains the quality of a legend still. Ethereal, rather than very real, she seemed to live with a nimbus of adoration round her and if a woman can achieve that, I thought, her personality must indeed hold something authentic and remarkable. She might never have written a word, and yet she would be listened to. People would instinctively get up when she entered the room. Such were my early and half-informed impressions...