People I Annoy-

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 430, 11 August 1928, Page 26

People I Annoy-

Provocative Edith Sitwell States a Case For Herself

SOMETIMES, when I reflect on what small things bring ruin upon the mighty, I am so frightened that my heart quails and I tremble like an aspen leaf (writes Edith Sitwell, the futurist poet, in the “Daily Mail”). For instance, I have just brought black ruin and financial destruction, to say nothing of battle, upon the “Daily Mail.” A lady living in Ilford has threatened to withdraw her subscription from the “Daily Mail” if I continue to write articles for it. This awful ultimatum, coming, as it does, to a newspaper with only 1,919,576 subscribers, is a pretty serious matter, for now there will be only 1,919,575. Bother! Bang goes sixpence! It seems that the lady wants edification, or instruction, or some such commodity, from the daily newspapers. It seems, also, that I have not given her instruction. Believe me, madam, when I say that if I do start teaching you, you may not like it. And the first lesson you will get will be in elementary manners, and we will begin that lesson now. Meanwhile, let me assure everybody that though I may not have taught this lady anything yet, she will be wiser by the time she has finished reading this article —still, she has taught me something. For instance,

she has taught me the value of birth control of the masses. This lady, who is a striking though I am afraid not a very prominent example of the awful results of mass pi’oduction, has, by her letter, shown me the ghastliness of this problem of the surplus population. What is to be done with all these millions of people who have no brains to use and who couldn’t use them if they had them, and who wouldn’t use them if they could? The only amusement of these people seems to consist in trying to badger artists. The lady at Ilford and her peers should keep their pins for the purpose of abstracting winkles from their shells and should not try to poke poets with them. We are a savage lot, and she might get hurt. Let me warn the class of persons whose inferiority complex leads them to believe that it is a proof of British courage to be impertinent to distinguished artists in all the arts, that though it

may be very brave it is not always very safe. As a matter of fact, I have got so used to the mentality of persons of this sort that I understand the workings of their minds- —if we can mention the word in connection with the dear creatures —thoroughly and with the most awful clearness.

In the first place, their sense of their own mental inferiority leads them to imagine that anybody possessed of wits must be unkind, and that anybody possessed of intelligence must have no heart, and that anybody possessed of gifts must be vicious. This, no doubt, is a very, comforting belief, but, like many comforting beliefs, it is founded, alas, on a fallacy. And I do not know that it is really more unkind to poke a little gentle fun at purely imaginary bores than it is to be rude, stupid, and malicious to, or about, a concrete poet—or that it is less unkind to try to deprive a gifted artist of his or her livelihood than it would be to try to deprive a grocer of his. Malice is no more a charming characteristic in the stupid person than it would be in the gifted person, though in the opinion of the lady of Ilford it would seem to be based on a more conscious virtue. (I have always longed to know why it is supposed to be more virtuous to be stupid than it is to be intelligent. I wish I could be enlightened on this point.) In the opinion of a certain section of the British iiublic —bores, dogs, revue producers, stupidity, voluntaries on the organ, horses, the Albert Hall, lady novelists, that awful song “The Rosary,” patent medicine, heavy meals, and newspaper articles exhibiting the bleeding soul, are regarded as sacred, as part of the British Constitution, and I want to know why. But I hope nobody will try to explain this phenomenon to me, as I do not want to be bored more than is absolutely necessary.

I have, in the course of a long and fiery career, announced that many of these sacred things might be regarded as coming under the heading of the first —and that is why I am so disliked. It grieves me when I think of the terrible effect I have on the surplus population, but I hope that this may perhaps drive them in the long run out of England to the Colonies. (It may: you never know. And then the Government will love me.) For either the surplus population has got to give way or I have got to give way; and it certainly will not be me.

In the past persons of this kind pitted themselves, for the most part,, against artists with delicate health, like Keats, or artists who died young, like Shelley. Though when they butted against Wordsworth (to whom they were rude till he was well over fifty) they got as good as they gave. I am not at all delicate, and I have no present intention of being drowned. I cannot help feeling that the lady from Ilford would be much happier if she confined herself to watering her aspidistra and admiring “The Soul’s Awakening,” and did not try to damp me or awaken mine.