A Strong Song Tows Us

by Richard Burton

  Bunting goes on to praise Copenhagen’s architecture, girls and Tivoli. The girls were beautiful, the whores less so: ‘They are fat, not good-looking, even less attractive than the English variety … I’m off to see Litvinov on Monday. May go to Stockholm next.’28

  Maxim Litvinov was a Russian diplomat who had been based in London as a representative of the Bolshevik People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs from early in 1918. In 1919 he went to Copenhagen as head of the Soviet delegation negotiating the exchange of prisoners of war. It is unclear what Bunting was looking for from a meeting with Litvinov, but at the very least he would have wanted endorsement for a smooth transition to Russia.

  Bunting gave the fullest account of his Scandinavian adventure to Lionel Robbins in October 1920:

  I never reached Russia: the police were too efficient for me. First of all in Copenhagen Litvinov wouldn’t see me, or more accurately, his secretary wouldn’t let me see him. So I went to Stockholm, to see Frederick Ström [by then the head of the Stockholm Comintern group that negotiated with Western Europe]. He was pleased and helpful, but when he finally made up his mind to let me thro by Reval [Tallinn], he got instructions from Copenhagen not too [sic]. He advised me to try and get to Archangelsk or Alexandrovsk via the Arctic, and I set off by the Lapland train, after infinite passport difficulties with the Norwegian Authorities. It’s a wonderful country, and all that, and the Finmark coast is even better: but that’s beside the point. I reached Hammerfest, two short days from Russia, and then two detectives came on board, arrested me, and locked me up, with a gaoler who was afraid of me and six or seven selected criminals, mostly drunken Laps. I was deported to Newcastle, no reason assigned. Every port we came to the police had a fresh idea. One lot arrested me, another set me loose, another wanted me put in irons; anon there came more detectives, disguised as Consulate officials, and at N/C were more detectives, dressed up as customs officers. Before I started I was warned by someone that there was an International dossier out against me, but I wouldn’t believe it!

  This letter reveals that Bunting had made a ‘bargain’ with his father. Thomas funded the Russian escapade but his son forfeited his right to further education, forcing this pioneer of the gap year to start looking for a job, not very successfully, on Tyneside as his father refused to allow him to go to London to look for work:

  An uncompromisingly truthful advertisement in the Athanaeum and the Statesman, brought me two copies of a tract on the Resurrection of the Dead, and a leaflet printed in two colours on The Evils of Drink. There are no jobs to be had in the northern Trades Union world. At present I have two prospects, both very unlikely, one a bi-weekly column on Trades Union Affairs in the local liberal paper, the other a job that Cadbury has been advertising, on their [added by hand: ‘Oh! Grammar! How a Typewriter undoes thee!’] private paper to keep their workpeople from striking.29

  His recent reading material, by his own account ‘some queer stuff’, is not what we might expect from an emerging poet:

  My Arctic jailer produced two German books for me, a romance about the coming war, written in 1906, and differing from [Erskine Childers’] Riddle of the Sands only in being rather more capable, rather more knowledgeable, rather more frank, and rather duller; and the commanders account of the first voyage of the Deutschland, which, in spite of its technicalities and its very colloquial style, was extremely fascinating. It took my breath like a novel by Defoe, and I read it all at a sitting. Hairrrbrreadth escapes! Daring! Triumph of the legitimate hero, and no women in it! [added by hand: ‘Lieber Gott! What a beast of a typewriter!’]

  At least his German was coming on, although his Russian was ‘progressing slowly’. More surprisingly he reveals, after a more conventional appreciation of Swift’s poetry, a remarkable admiration for the work of Anatole France:

  at last I have read La Revolte des Anges … What a book! I do not think it is equal to Penguin Island, but it is more coherent, and the incidents are delicious. Who else would have materialised the Angel when the hero was in bed with another man’s wife, just … Gibbon says these things are best left in the decent obscurity of a learned language, so I leave you to find the French. Who else would make another Angel earn its living as a ‘Russian lady’? And who but Anatole France would finish the novel with the triumph of Satan, and his assumption of the exact state just vacated by Ialdabaoth?

  Gentle things like Chapmans Homer, Complete Angler, Lambs Letters, Gibbon and Boswell, fulfill my list. The last two have been a standby for years.

  Bunting’s ‘bargain’ with his father didn’t last long. On 6 December 1920 Bunting wrote to Miss MacTaggart at LSE from his parents’ house in Portland Terrace, Jesmond, excusing his absence and telling her that he was, ‘anxious to resume my course. Could I return to the School in January and take Intermediate in June? Or could I return in April and take Intermediate in June, using the interval to relearn Latin, Greek, German, etc.?’

  The school’s Secretary, E. V. Evans, replied to reassure him that it would probably be acceptable for him to return in the summer term and sit his examination in July, and to ask his reason for his travels in Europe so that he could account for the absence to the university. Bunting replied on 4 January 1921, with more details of his trip, saying that he’d decided to resume his studies that term.30

  The Lent term began on 10 January 1921 and Bunting was relatively diligent, attending 64 of the 99 lectures at which he was expected. If we exclude Economic Theory, which he attended just once out of the ten lectures, his record is surprisingly good at over 70 per cent. He was certainly active politically. The London School of Economics student magazine, Clare Market Review, reported that Bunting had organised a London University social credit study circle. Of one Socialist Society meeting Lionel [Robbins] wrote cryptically in his diary, ‘A meeting. Bunting and “Absolute Dictatorship”.’31

  By the autumn of 1921, however, he was troubling the authorities again. A letter to Dr Edwin Deller, the recently appointed Academic Registrar of London University, from Sir William Beveridge, then Director of the London School of Economics, dated 10 November 1921, formally requests a further interruption in Bunting’s studies stating that, ‘Mr. Bunting finds that residence in London has a deleterious effect upon his health, and his doctor has advised him to spend the next six or nine months abroad.’ Having passed the exams the previous July he was entitiled to study for a year at an approved foreign university. Bunting, characteristically, had requested the as then unapproved University of Freiburg. There was some doubt about whether Bunting could study there and still sit his finals in 1923, but the application was granted on 15 December. The idea that the University of London, then barely eighty years old, and LSE at twenty-five or so, between them might not approve a course of study at one of the oldest universities in Europe may seem odd, especially when one considers Freiburg’s outstanding reputation in the social sciences. No doubt the fact that Freiburg is in Baden- Württemberg had an effect on a still war-conscious establishment.

  In June 1922 Bunting requested leave of absence again: ‘My doctor has advised me not to use my eyes for reading and writing for about a week, and to spend all my time in the open air. I wish, therefore, to be excused from attending at the school during the present week, I enclose the doctors certificate.’ The doctor’s certificate, from M. M. Richards of 30 Guildford Street, London WC, is dated 12 June 1922: ‘Mr Bunting is suffering from eye strain and should do no work for a few days.’

  Evans’ response is sympathetic, but puzzled: ‘Thank you for your letter and medical certificate. I have given instructions for your absence from lectures to be excused. An application was, by the way, made at your request to the University last Autumn for leave of absence to be given to you to attend the University of Freiburg. This application was granted, but as you do not appear to have availed yourself of the Senate’s permission I am wondering what the position is.’

  So having been granted it, Bunting turned down the opportunity to s
tudy at Freiburg. He had attended just 137 out of 268 lectures in 1921–22 and he managed only one more term, Michaelmas 1922, at the London School of Economics before disappearing again.32

  Bunting’s student career reached a glorious climax in April 1923. On 17 April Evans politely enquired, ‘I am informed that you did not attend any lectures at the School last term, and I am wondering what are your plans with regard to your Final Examination.’

  By now Bunting’s father was involved once again.33 Thomas wrote from Jesmond, in that slightly hesitant, anxious voice (‘almost essential’) we may remember from Leighton Park days, on 26 April, that his son had,

  written asking my consent to his spending the next six months in France & Germany instead of in London. Would you be kind enough to advise me on the subject?

  My son’s final examination is in October this year, & it is almost essential that he should get his degree then. I am anxious he should do nothing to militate against this. If, under these circumstances, you think the residence in France & Germany is the wisest (or even a wise) course I shall agree to it. But I am anxious first to have your views, & shall be indebted to you if you will let me have them.

  Too late. Bunting struck first. He wrote to Evans’ secretary, Mrs Mair, on 23 April 1923 from the Grand Hôtel de l’Univers in Rue Grégoire de Tours, Paris 6e:

  I have abandoned my intention of getting the B.Sc. Econ: I am now attempting to earn my living in Paris. If any part of my fees is returnable, please send it to me here.

  My reasons for abandoning the course are:

  I) It interfered with my pursuit of literature.

  (II) It did not seem to lead to any secure employment.

  (III) It ceased to interest me for its own sake.

  (IV) It appeared (to me) to have turned several intelligent men into dullards, & I did not desire a similar fate.

  I am now seeking employment as a bargee.

  Mrs Mair replied with a straight face on 26 April: ‘Thank you for your letter of April 23rd. I am afraid that one of the regulations of the School is that fees are non-returnable and I cannot therefore return any part of the sessional fee paid by you in October.’

  Bunting’s course leader, Dr T. E. Gregory, replied to Thomas with characteristic early twentieth-century British restraint, informing him of Bunting’s decision, summarising the whole tale and noting: ‘as your son has not been here since Christmas I am not really in a position to say to what extent he is fit to go in for the examination, and in any case he seems himself un-anxious to sit’.

  In October 1923 Lionel Robbins had dinner with a postgraduate student, Rajaram Narayan Vaidya, and Elizabeth Allen, the vice-president of the Students’ Union. Vaidya told Robbins that Bunting had left London for Paris suddenly on 20 April, but Robbins already knew. Bunting had written to Robbins on 22 April to tell him where he was and that he had left unpaid debts to Jacques Kahane and Vaidya. He asked Robbins to take over the debt and pay the £2 to each of their friends as they were both ‘very hard up’. Bunting expected to be able to repay Robbins by the middle of May. In fact the debt wasn’t repaid until Bunting returned to London three years later.34

  The final item in Bunting’s student dossier is a reply from Evans to ‘The Rt. Hon. Sidney Webb, M. P.’ of 26 April 1926. Webb appears to have asked him for a reference for Bunting:

  I have your card regarding Mr. Basil Bunting. I have not seen or heard anything of this young man for three years, and he never sat for his degree examination. He came to the School in October 1919, but interrupted his course during that session in order to go to Russia to study conditions there. (He did not reach Russia, however, being intercepted and deported by the Norwegian Police Authorities for some passport troubles.) He settled down more or less steadily to work in January 1921, and passed his Intermediate. He then started to work for the Final Examination, but attended irregularly, appearing to lose interest in economic studies, and finally I received a letter from him in April 1923, which I have copied out as I think it will amuse you.

  It is a case in which I should find it very difficult myself to give a testimonial. Mr. Bunting had ability, I believe, but he did not attack his work at the School with real interest, and did not keep closely in touch with any member of the staff. His honours lecturer, Dr. Gregory, saw very little indeed of him.

  Attached to this letter, in a handwritten note dated 26 April 1926 to Evans’ secretary, is Bunting’s London School of Economics epitaph: ‘Mrs Mair. I don’t know if you remember Basil Bunting – bearded & rather an oddity.’

  Six hundred black-hearted villains

  Although he didn’t refer to it explicitly in Descant on Rawthey’s Madrigal, in 1922 Bunting became Secretary to Major Harry Barnes MP. Barnes, a Coalition Liberal, had been elected at the age of forty-eight to the newly created constituency of Newcastle upon Tyne East in the so-called ‘Coupon Election’ of 14 December 1918.35 Barnes had won with an impressive 23.4 per cent majority over the Labour Party candidate and he remained the constituency’s MP until the 1922 election when he was ousted by Labour’s Joseph Bell in an election that saw the Liberal parties heavily punished by the electorate for their internal divisions.36

  There must have been a strong local reason for the former Commanding Officer of the 2nd Volunteer Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers, Major Harry Barnes, to take on as his assistant so locally notorious a conscientious objector as Basil Bunting. Either Bunting had made an outstanding impression on the military authorities at Fenham Barracks during his incarceration there, or there was a friends-and-family connection to Barnes. I think the former is unlikely.

  During nearly four years as MP for Newcastle East Barnes made just four interventions in the House of Commons. Hansard gives a strong impression of the character and values of Bunting’s first employer. His first contribution was during the debate on the King’s Speech on 13 February 1919. William Brace, the Labour MP for another constituency that had been created for the 1918 election, Abertillery, had moved an amendment to add the following words to the end of the King’s Speech: ‘But regrets the absence of any mention of definite proposals for dealing with the present causes of industrial unrest and for securing, as regards wages and working hours, conditions of labour that will establish a higher standard of life and social well-being for the people.’37 A serious industrial crisis had developed with strikes on the Clyde as well as in London and Belfast and Barnes’ lengthy speech opposing the amendment shows him to be above all a Liberal loyalist.38 He clearly understood working-class grievances but argued strongly for a solution to them that benefited British society as a whole by devolving the responsibility for finding it to the place where the grievance was being aired.39 Barnes’ later contributions show him to be a pragmatic Centrist. He argued against nationalising the railways in the same speech and five days later he supported a bill that temporarily gave the government emergency powers that would protect his ‘rights as a private Member [as well as] the rights of the electors’.40 His interventions on housing in March 1919 and the old age pension in June, as well as his publications on tax and housing show him to be particularly concerned with social issues as the country eased out of a devastating war. Devolution, the role of the state, the politics of a Conservative–Liberal coalition government, the publication of Graham Wallas’ The Great Society in 1914 – it seems that Barnes and his colleagues were tackling issues that the British electorate has been led to believe are peculiarly modern.

  Bunting clearly could have made no contribution to Barnes’ Commons speeches and we know nothing of his work with the MP, but we can assume that the bulk of his activity supported the MP’s social welfare preoccupations. Barnes was an architect by training and a property and tax expert. From 1910 to 1918 he had worked in the Valuation Department of the Inland Revenue and it is likely that the financially literate Bunting would have appealed to him. In his final year in parliament Barnes published his Valuation & Revaluation for Poor Rate and Income Tax (Post War) and Housing: Th
e Facts & The Future. These almost criminally tedious volumes would have stretched Bunting’s patience. If Bunting worked on these books, and he almost certainly did, it isn’t surprising that he didn’t see fit to mention it in Descant on Rawthey’s Madrigal.41 Bunting recalled the period without much warmth in 1969: ‘I was young then and I imagined that members of Parliament were serious people. That must have been one of the worst parliaments of all time. Six hundred black-hearted villains. Not that I think that things have improved much.’42 We have seen just how ‘serious’ Harry Barnes was. Bunting makes a political rather than autobiographical point here.

  IN PARIS THERE IS NO ONE DULL, 1923–1924

  Since Bunting was attending the London School of Economics, albeit sporadically, in the autumn of 1922 we must assume that he worked for Barnes while still technically a student. We don’t know exactly when Bunting left Barnes’ employment but Barnes lost his job at the election of 15 November 1922 and we can reasonably speculate that it was very shortly after that. In any event, as we have seen, Bunting left London for Paris on 20 April 1923 with no money and began ‘the usual sort of adventures that young men have until Pound found me a job as one of [Ford Madox] Ford’s young men for the time being’.43 It seems that he quickly found some (badly) paid life-modelling work as he wrote to Lionel Robbins on 1 May: