Wyndham Lewis - Blasting and Bombardiering

by Wyndham Lewis

Originally published by Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1937.

Reviaed and issued as a second edition by Calder & Boyars Ltd in 1967.

Wyndham Lewis Estate 1937, 1967 and 1982

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

SUBSIDISED BY THE

Arts Council

OF GREAT BRITAIN

ISBN 0 7145 0130 1

Printed by Tien Wah Press (Pte) Limited, Singapore

Introduction

part ilion and bombardier

I. Bombardiering 21

II. Mr. W. L. as Leader of 'The Great London

Vortex' 32

III. Some Specimen Pages of Blast No. 1 (June 20,

1914) 37

IV. 'Britannia's hard on the Lions' 46 V. The Prime Minister and Myself, 1914 50

VI. In Berwickshire, August, 1914 56

part ii-declaration of war

I. I Hand over my Self-Portrait to my Colleague of

Blast 63

II. Morpeth Olympiad 66

III. Journey during Mobilization 69

IV. The War-Crowds, 1914 78 V. The 'Author of Tarr' 84

VI. The Sitwells, a 'Book-Dictator', and Mr. Richard

Sickert 91

VII. The 'Bull-Gun' 95

VIII. 'Hulme of Original Sin' 99

IX. The 'Savage Messiah' is Killed 105

part iiia gunner's tale

I. The Romance of War 113

II. Howitzers 117

III. How the Gunner 'Fights' 123

IV. A Day of Attack 130 V. Trench-fever and 'Hell-Fire Corner' 137

VI. Our Home in a Pillbox 141

VII. Passchendaele 148 VIII. The 'O. Pip' on the Ridge 154

IX. Hunted with Howitzers 160 X. Among the Brass Hats, and Sir William Orpen 168

XI. The King of the Trenches 171

XII. Political Education under Fire 184

XIII. Kamper makes Whoopee 189

XIV. The Booze Artist 196 XV. King John 200

part ivadam and eve

I. Captain Guy BakerIn Memoriam 207

II. I go Underground 212

III. The High Wall at Adam and Eve 217

IV. The Wedding of Roy Campbell 221 V. Sitters 225

VI. 'Death to Mussolini' 230 VII. A Duel of Draughtsmanship in Post-war Venice 233

VIII. 'Lawrence of Arabia' 237

part vthe tale of an old pair of shoes

I. War and Post War 249

II. The Period of Ulysses, Blast, The Wasteland 252

III. Towards an Art-less Society 257

IV. First Meeting with James Joyce 265 V. First Meeting with Ezra Pound 271

VI. First Meeting with T. S. Eliot 282

VII. An 'Age Group' meets Itself 290

VIII. Our Lady of the Sleeping-Cars 295

IX. Cantleman's Spring-Mate 304

X. The War Baby 312

Conclusion

The New Guy who's got into the Landscape 339

For this second, revised edition of Blasting and Bombardiering Anne Wyndham Lewis has made several changes from the text of the first edition [London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1937] : she has deleted or modified some passages, and added new material in several places throughout the text. The chapters entitled "The King of the Trenches," "Cantleman's Spring-Mate," and "The War Baby" did not appear in the first edition.

A few introductory remarks should be made on the occasion of the republishing of BLASTING AND BOMBARDIERING which contains the author's memories of people and events leading up to the War, its duration and aftermath.

The War-Crowds, the tide of Chapter IV, is part of an unfinished war book which depicts the remarkable crowds which packed London on Mobilisation and their extraordinary one-mindedness, the violent upsurge of emotion which the declaration of war unleashed. The few remaining chapters of this book have now been added at the end of the volume. The style of this book is light and sardonic but contains the essence of this tragic war embodied in the Serviceman's reticence in relating horrors seen and endured at the Front.

Peace with its terrible epidemic, the Roaring Twenties with its disillusion, despair and growing unemployment. Veterans begging in the gutters and unemployed miners filling the streets with their beautiful songs. All this is captured here and is shown to lead to the horror of the General Strike.

One quotation from a work of that period seems to be particularly appropriate here.

'Peace is a fearful thing for that countless majority who are so placed that there is no difference between Peace and War except that during the latter day they are treated with more consideration. In war, if they are wounded they are well treated, in peace, if struck down it is apt to be nothing like so pleasant.'

Anne Wyndham Lewis

from photographs

Mr. Wyndham Lewis 88

The Mother and Father of the Author 89

The Bombardier and the Battery Officer 89

The Author of Tarr 120

portrait heads by wyndham lewis

Augustus John 121

Flight-Commander Orlebar 121

The Rev. M. C. D'Arcy, S.J. 121

Roy Campbell 121

Ezra Pound 184

Rebecca West 184

Self Portrait 184

James Joyce 184

Douglas Jerrold 185

T. S. Eliot 185

Nancy Cunard 185

Noel Coward 185

paintings by wyndham lewis

Girl Reading 216

Contemplator 216

The Three Sisters 217

Dawn in Erewhon 217

This book is about myself. It's the first autobiography to take only a section of a life and leave the rest. Ten years about is the time covered. This is better than starting with the bib and bottle. How many novels are intolerable that begin with the hero in his cradle? And a good biography is of course a sort of novel.

So you first encounter the hero of this book a few months before the outbreak of war, blissfully unconscious of its sinister proximity, on the right side of thirty but with much European travel behind him, in the course of which he has collected a strange assortment of clothes, of haircuts, of exotic mannerisms. You are supplied with a contemporary photograph to give you an idea of all this. When you have been made thoroughly to understand what the war made of him you bid him adieu. What has happened to him after that is unbelievably romantic. But that is another story.

This book is about what happened to me in the Great War, and then afterwards in the equally great Peace. I always think myself that 'great' as the Great War undoubtedly was, the Peace has been even greater. But this is only a point of view.

The War is such a tremendous landmark that locally it imposes itself upon our computations of time like the birth of Christ. We say 'pre-war' and post-war', rather as we say b.c. or a.d . This book is about the war, with a bit of pre-war and post-war sticking to it, fore and aft.

I find a good way of dating after the War is to take the General Strike, 1926, as the next milestone. I call 'post-war' between the War and the General Strike. Then began a period of a new complexion. It was no longer 'post-war'. We needn't call it anything. It's just the period we're living in today. Some people would call it one thing, some another. Best perhaps to call it nothing, until we see what it turns out to be.

One only writes 'biographies' about things that are past and over. The present period is by no means over. One couldn't sit down and write a biography about that. But the War and the 'post-war' are over long ago. They can be written about with detachment, as things past and done with.

As well as being about myself, this book is about a number of people in all walks of life. I have met an immense number of people. I have done a lot of things and moved about a great deal, so of course I have rubbed against a quantity of people. I tell you about a good few of them here, any one of them that fits into my pattern.

A book of course can be said to have a 'pattern', like a carpet or wallpaper. People who write about books are very fond of the word 'pattern'. But it's not a bad word to use about a thing like a book, which, unrolled, would be a long narrow thing, like a rug or stair-carpet.