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EZRA POUND 105
is so held—the confusion is, of course, inevitable under the circumstances."
5
On March 23, 1918, he wrote to Marianne Moore, "If there
is one thing that stands out clearly above Ezra's other perfections,
it is his unswerving intelligence in the detection of literary
quality." 6
H. L. Mencken blew hot and cold about Pound, as he did
about most things. His remark on Pound was, "Ezra Pound?—the
American in headlong flight from America—a professor turned
fantee, Abelard in grand opera." 7
Carl Sandburg made his position on Pound clear in the February,
1916 issue of Poetry, saying, in part, "If I were driven to
name one individual who, in the English language, by means of
his own example of creative art in poetry, has done most of
living men to incite new impulses in poetry, the chances are I
would name Ezra Pound."
Iris Barry has given us a very memorable picture of Pound
in London, as she knew him there in 1916. She writes, "Pound
talks like no one else. His is almost a wholly original accent,
the base of American mingled with a dozen assorted 'English society'
and Cockney accents inserted in mockery, French, Spanish
and Greek exclamations, strange cries and catcalls, the whole
very oddly inflected, with dramatic pauses and diminuendoes."
Of his wife, she says, "With him came Mrs. Pound, carrying
herself delicately with the air, always, of a young Victorian lady
out skating, and a profile as clear and lovely as that of a porcelain
Kuan-yin." 8
Four decades later, Dorothy Pound still carries
herself as nobly as she did when Iris Barry knew her in London.
Miss Barry describes others of the London circle, during what
she terms the "Ezra Pound period"—Violet Hunt, who complained
that one of her chores was to pick snails off the Gaudier
bust of Ezra which was sinking in her garden; Miss Harriet
Weaver, the publisher of The Egoist, who was as stiff and severe as
a bishop's daughter (Iris Barry says that she could hardly think
of her as the one who first printed Joyce's Ulysses); Mrs. Strindberg,
the cabaret proprietor, with her little troop of pet monkeys;
and the very civilized Edmund Dulac, who had a Chinese sig-