RECENT

A RARE WYNDHAM LEWIS PAMPHLET

James Egles

I N January 1994 the British Library purchased a 'stony desert' for a 'sanctimonious ice-box'.^at auction a copy ofWyndham Lewis's political From November 1940 to June 1943 Lewispamphlet Anglosaxony: A League that Works stayed at the Tudor Hotel in Toronto, the(shelfmark: Cup.4io.f.4i9.). Published 30 June model for the Hotel Blundell in his 1954 novel1941 in Toronto by the Ryerson Press in an Self Condemned, where Toronto is Momaco, aedition of 1500 and priced at 75 cents, 310 place ' so ugly, and so devoid of all character ascopies were sold by February 1944. According of any trace of charm, that it was disagreeableto the publishers no record exists of the to walk about in'.* Until the end of the war heremaining 1190 copies and Lewis's biographer was chiefly in Windsor, Ontario, where heJeffrey Meyers states that it 'may have been taught at Assumption College, and occasionallypulped - for it is now unobtainable'.^ No copy travelled across the border giving lectures inis known to exist in British libraries. St Louis and Chicago.

Wyndham Lewis (1888-1957) is generally Although he pictured himself as 'an in-regarded as one of the most important figures voluntary squatter in the Dominion ofin the history of Modernism as novelist, social Canada',^ and felt that his thirty years ofand cultural critic, painter and leader of the creative achievement were ignored byVorticist movement. Of remote Canadian Canadians, his international reputation andancestry, he was born on his father's yacht Canadian citizenship made him comparativelywhile it was in Canadian waters off Amherst, welcome. He lectured for the Canadian Broad-Nova Scotia. He retained his Canadian citi- casting Corporation and wrote articles forzenship throughout his life, a factor which Saturday Night. Wtvf2LS comm\ss\ontA lo^^mtenabled him to leave England in 1939 and numerous portraits as documented in thespend tbe war years in North America, where recent Art Gallery of Windsor exhibitionhe believed he could earn more money than in catalogue ' The Talented Intruder': WyndhamEngland. A few days before leaving England he Lewis tn Canada, which concludes that he madetold Julian Symons that he 'had seen Europe about three times as much money during hisdestroy itself in one war and had suffered Canadian years as the average Canadianthrough it, and that he had no intention of worker.^sitting through another'.^ Among the portraits he drew early in 1941

Lewis arrived in Toronto in September 1939 while in Toronto was an unsolicited sketch inwhere he stayed until October. He then went to crayon of Dr Lorne Pierce, the Editor-in-ChiefNew York, where he hoped to sit out the of Ryerson Press (est. 1829). Pierce, who washostilities, but when his American visa expired told by Lewis that he looked like De Valera andhe was forced to return to Canada, exchanging Mephistopheles, was pleased with the result

which Lewis said later that he 'had used...many times with prospective clients, and that ithad brought him success'.' The meeting led toa contract for a small propaganda pamphlet onthe Commonwealth, namely Anglosaxony.

Lewis was very concerned about the title ofthe pamphlet, writing to Pierce on 31 May1941 that ' the title of a book is important: ...I want this book to go into the shops andnewsstands with a name that will help you tosell it\^ He rejected titles such as Democracyand The Bulldog Breed preferring Pierce'ssuggestion Anglosaxon Commonwealth: ALeague that mill mork. On 12 June 1941 hewrote to Pierce that the Ryerson preference ALeague that Works alone was 'rather like forcingAugustus to wear a top-hat - or dressingPresident Roosevelt up in one of Goering'suniforms'.^ A compromise was reached withLewis having the last word: 'as I wrote thebook, you must allow me one letter of my ownin the title: namely a Y'.^^

Lewis was as concerned about publicity ashe was about the book's title, suggestingreviewers such as his friend Alice RooseveltLongworth, who would be made very angry byit 'because she loathes Democracy and all itsworks!', and Edmund Wilson 'who is so fondof Marx he cant [sic^ see the point of anythingelse, but who would review it'.^^ But all hisconcern could not help the book from fallingcompletely flat. For Lewis the chief reason forthis was that the book was published, not inLondon or New York, but in Toronto. Hebelieved Canadians asked each other about 'avisitor like myself, from another planet..."What the heck is he doing here'\ For just asthere is something degrading about a bookhaving itself brought out here, so there ispresumably something degrading about being

The book he had brought out, in which*much of the argument has a vahdity beyondthe special pleading of the moment',^^ is im-portant today chiefly as an insight into Lewis's

political ideas at the time of World War ILBefore the war Lewis had shown sympathy forfascism in his 1926 work The Art of BeingRuled ('I am not a communist; if anythingI favour some form of fascism rather thancommunism')^'' and been grouped by T. S.Eliot with a number of writers who 'inclinein the direction of some kind of fascism'.^^ Hehad also written two books about Hitler, whichmany believed meant that he supported him.In a footnote in his autobiography he was towrite as follows about them in response to acomment by George Orwell in the PartisanReview (Summer, 1946):

As to my books 'in favour of Hitler', I have writtentwo books about Hitler, one when he first appearedon the scene... (in 1930) before he came to powerand revealed what a lunatic he was, and the other[The Hitler Cult and How it Will End) at the time ofMunich. The first book was 'in favour': though itwas not the Nazi's view of the matter; the secondwas very much the reverse of 'in favour'.^^

The Hitler Cult is in many ways a rewriting ofthe earlier Hitler^ with numerous points refutedwhich had been made on behalf of Hitler in thefirst book. The satirical America^ I Presume^impressions of America published in New Yorkin August 1940, reinforces this change ofopinion by referring to Hitler as a ' barbarouslittle mountebank'.^^ In the same book Lewisexpressed a view which is one of the mainthemes of Anglosaxony, namely that whateverhappened during the present war - whether ornot America would enter i t - ' i t is of vastimportance that the English-speaking peoplesof the world should act in harmony'.^^

Anglosaxony is written in three parts. Thefirst, entitled Democracy and Fascism^ is adefence of the democratic ideal againstcriticisms from both Right and Left. Lewisstresses that he sees democracy as a 'limited, anAnglo-Saxon family affair'^^ but he does notmean to give democracy a nationalist character.Instead he envisages it as one only

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several ways of life and not as a political system a symbol of animal restlessness against the Nazi'desirous of imposing itself upon all and symbol of animal fixity'.̂ "* Lewis understandssundry'."^^ He also believes that a democratic the war as a desire by the Axis Powers forshake-up of the social structure is possible in expansion at the expense of the maritimeBritain which would enable the best brains to nations who are considered to have selfishlyfunction freely and no longer be stifled by the locked up the resources of the world. Tomediocrity of the 'vulgar and purposeless achieve this'the very notion of sea-supremacyluxuriance of the middle-class businessman's must be assailed, and its concrete existencemillennium'.^^ For Lewis the chief advantage abolished'.^^ German propaganda stigmatizesof democratic government is that change Anglo-Saxon sea-power as having the sameand improvement is possible whereas fascism 'universalist'- cosmopolitan or international-regards such ideals as freedom, justice and tendency as the Catholic Church and the Jews.equality as unrealizable and even undesirable. For Hitler to challenge all three of theseThe changes in the social structure that are international forces Lewis regards as'strangelyenvisaged ''could be done within the good old inept', as the folly of a fanatic, as 'a record offramework ofdemocracy, without stretching its sublime naivete' and as 'the suicide of theprinciples too far. For democracy can be German People\^^ But the attack on the threeanything that is free. Let us lay that down for 'universalist' bodies may in the end proveour golden rule of democracy. Anything that fortunate since only the universal, internationalhas "free" as its watchword can be classed as forces, with Anglo-Saxon democratic sea-democracy'."" mindedness a formative influence, will be likely

The second brief section entitled How to bring salvation from ' these murderousFascism Began traces fascist roots in Marinetti's explosions we call wars, which will shatter allFuturist Movement with its cult of action and human society unless we can devise somepower. If Marinetti was the 'father of fascism' means of ending them'.^'he too had his origins in Sorel, Machiavelli and The World State envisaged by Lewis afterabove all Nietzsche, to whom Mussolini the war will have to be ' an/w^roi'^;/democracy,frequently expressed his indebtedness. And if purged of any taint of racialism or class-'the true family-tree for fascism in the realm of snobbery'.^^ Anglo-Saxon democracy, since itideas is Nietzsche', it originates through is essentially libertarian rather than authori-Nietzsche, back to Charles Darwin. Darwin tarian, might even be able to recommend towas 'just the generalizing research-student, other nations an * antiseptic, sweet-smelling,Nietzsche was the philosopher of Darwinism', blue-eyed version of communism'."^ But how-but 'if you wanted to put your hand on the ever much it may be adapted, the democracyinstigator of fascism ... Charles Darwin is your offered to the world must retain its essentialman '}^ character. 'All the Anglo-Saxon should do just

In the final section of Anglosaxony, called now - and this is a practical book for just nowSea-Power and Universalism., Lewis credits the - is to put all he has got into this old wordsea with having given birth to Anglo-Saxon '"democrat" and let other peoples take it ordemocracy. While the myopically nationalist leave it. No one will ever offer them anythingfascist is mystically obsessed with the land and half as good'.̂ *^has as watchword 'blood and soil', the in- For those who regard Lewis as 'crypto-ternationalist Anglo-Saxon is the represen- fascist' the views expressed in Anglosaxonytative of the ocean.'Against Hitler, the Peasant, may come as a surprise. As D. G. Bridsonlet us put forward a Seaman to stand for us - writes in his study of Lewis's political ideas,

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'Lewis had been badly misjudged by manypeople (myself among them) who had simplynot taken the trouble to read what he hadwritten, or tried to understand the reasonswhich lay behind it when they did'. ' ' Thegeneral reader, indeed, may often be confusedby the contradictions in Lewis's politicalstatements. ('Contradict yourself, in order to

live. You must remain broken up'^^ would beLewis's response.) The fact that Anglosaxony, acorrective to the balance of his political writing,has been very hard to obtain has not helpedLewis's reputation. Its availability now in theBritish Library may go some way to redress thebalance.

1 Jeffrey Meyers, The Enemy: a Biography ofWyndham Lewis (Boston, 1980), p. 263.

2 Quoted in Julian Symons, 'The ThirtiesNovels', Agenda, vii-viii (1969-70), p. 47.

3 Quoted in Meyers, op. cit., p. 260.4 Wyndham Lewis, Self Condemned (London,

1954), P- 179-5 Ibid., p. 176.6 Douglas Fetherling, 'Canadian by Default',

Books in Canada (Feb. 1994), p. 53.7 Lome Pierce, 'A Recollection of Wyndham

Lewis' in George Woodcock (ed.), WyndhamLewis in Canada (Vancouver, 1971), p. 79.

8 W. K. Rose (ed.). The Letters of WyndhamLewis (London, 1963), p. 289.

9 Ibid., p. 289.10 Ibid.11 Ibid., p. 291: Lewis to Pierce, 17 July 1941.12 Ibid., p. 294: Lewis to Pierce, 16 July 1941.13 Wyndham Lewis, 'The Cosmic Uniform of

Peace', in The Sewanee Review (Autumn 1945),P- 507-

14 Wyndham Lewis, The Art of Being Ruled(London, 1926), p. 381.

15 T. S. EHot, 'Commentary', The Criterion^ viii,no. 32 (April 1929), p. 378.

16 Wyndham Lewis, Rude Assignment (London,1950), p. 78.

17 Wyndham Lewis, America, I Presume (NewYork, 1940), pp. 59, 293.

18 Ibid., pp. 211-12.19 Wyndham Lewis, Anglosaxony (Toronto, 1941),

P- 29.20 Ibid.21 Ibid., p. 31.22 Ibid.23 Ibid., p. 48.24 Ibid., p. 50.25 Ibid., p. 60.26 Ibid., pp. 62, 64.27 Ibid., p. 65.28 D. G. Bridson, The Eilihuster, a Study of the

Political Ideas of Wyndham Lewis (London,1972), p. 237.

29 Anglosaxony, p. 75.30 Ibid.31 The Filibuster, p. xii.32 Wyndham Lewis, The Ideal Giant (London,

, P- 36.

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