Poets’ Excursion

My book arrived – hurray!

Now I can get to work figuring out just whose noses Joseph Gurnard was tweaking in this delightful little burlesque from 1943, which pokes fun at the poets of the day and the shifting fashions of poetry. 

First, let’s be clear: this is no Roy Campbell-style slash-and-maim, burn-their-crops, ransack-their-houses takedown. It’s a good-natured piece of gentle mockery, originally published by one of its own targets – John Lehmann – in Penguin New Writing, issue no. 18 (1943). Lehmann later republished it in English Stories from New Writing, which is the edition I now have in hand.¹ 

Gurnard was one of the fishy names of George Stonier. 

It’s a lovely little volume – slightly foxed and mottled, but stuffed with good stories from the period including work by George Orwell, V.S.Pritchett, Rosamund Lehmann, Graham Greene, Elizabeth Bowen, and Alec Guinness plus some from several writers new to me. 

But Poets’ Excursion is what I want to read first

Here’s how it begins:

A merry band of brothers gathers at Paddington Station for a train ride to… where?

Friends and family wave them goodbye, they have their sandwiches, and they’re off. As Auden didn’t write in September 1, 1939   they don’t quite know how they all got there, or where they are going, but there they all are.

Who’s Who

Let’s decipher who’s who. Some names are thinly disguised and easy to guess.

Stephen Spendlove is Stephen Spender, and the name is perfect. In his poem The Uncreating Chaos, he famously wrote:

Whatever happens, I shall never be alone,
I shall always have a fare, an affair, or a revolution.

The original version from his1933 Poems read:

Whatever happens, I shall never be alone.
I shall always have a boy, a railway fare, or a revolution.²

He was a twice married man of many affairs, relationships, romantic adventures, and sexual encounters.

Don Layman is John Lehmann.

Dick Chapel is Richard Church – He was a poet, journalist, and reviewer also known for claiming to have levitated³  His WWI poem Mud remains well anthologized.

Walter Turntap is Walter James Redfern Turner, whose poetry (from what little I’ve read) gushes like a faucet and was much admired by Yeats. He was from Melbourne, wrote several biographies of composers, and was known for his strong opinions. On the fiftieth anniversary of Richard Wagner’s death, he wrote: “I can confidently and in soberness declare that Wagner is a colossal fraud.”

Herbert E. Pilgrim is Herbert Edward Palmer who seems to have rather disappeared although his early books were published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at their Hogarth Press. Robert Graves admired him for his prophetic verse which was compared with William Blake. His grandiosity appears at the start of the journey and is appropriately and promptly skewered by his companions with “Go catch an earwig.”

Louis (Borzoi) MacNoose is Louis MacNeice. Presumably “Borzoi” refers to his long, lean appearance and rather canine mannerisms. G.S. Fraser described him as:

Tall, bony, muscular, gaunt, with a face like a handsome horse’s with too many teeth in its mouth, MacNeice had played vigorous amateur rugby into his thirties, and into his fifties would take long, long country walks in heavy hobnailed boots.⁴

Old Kate Cuspidor and Kitty Rainy? I’m not certain about the former, but the latter has to be Kathleen Raine – though Gurnard claimed this was an all-male outing. or was he just using the term “man” generically? More puzzles. 

Screechpen, Fuddlepuss, and Gurk (Yeats?) appear to be amalgams or stand-ins – where are Ralph Hodgson, Dylan Thomas, John Betjeman, C.Day Lewis, et al?. Not to mention Auden and Eliot. No worries – the train makes a stop at East Coker and Auden is both traveler and destination. And all the others? They are, I fear, woven into the text. I’ve spotted a few (“I was coming to that” – Robert Graves) but will probably miss many if not most of them.) 

So with the dramatis personae more or less out of the way out of the way let’s get this train moving. 

Here is the first page of this action packed adventure. It’s dense with quoted snatches and references. If you would like copies of the other nine pages drop a request in the comments. I would love some fellow travelers to help unpack all the poetic puzzle pieces or just enjoy the romp. 

To be continued.