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38 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
Percy Muir, who eventually incorporated the Mathews firm
into Chatto and Windus, says that Lane had "in overflowing measure
that buccaneer spirit, a modicum of which is indispensable to
any publisher." Muir describes Mathews as "timid and almost
entirely unadventurous." 15
But Pound, as he entered Mathews' office at the end of Vigo
Lane, which has been called the most narrow, inconvenient and
curious street in London, knew of him only through the Yellow
Book connection, and as publisher of such writers as Oscar Wilde,
Arthur Symons, Aubrey Beardsley, and Lionel Johnson. Across
the street was the firm with which Pound would later be associated,
Lane's Bodley Head Company, which was at that time ensconced in
the old Saturday Review offices.
Pound has described the encounter with Mathews as follows:
Mathews suggested that, as an unknown poet, Pound should pay
at least part of the printing costs.
POUND: "I have a shilling in my clothes, if that's of any use
to
you."
MATHEWS: "Well, I want to print them. Anyhow." 16
In April, 1909, Mathews brought out Personae. It was a critical
success. The Evening Standard critic said, ". . . a queer little
book which will irritate many readers."
Edward Thomas wrote a three-and-one-half page praise of
Pound in The English Review, saying, in part, ". . . He cannot be
usefully compared with any living writers . . . full of personality,
and with such power to express it that from the first to the last
lines of most of his poems he holds us steadily in his own pure,
grave, passionate world."
The Oxford Magazine critic said, "This is a most exciting book
of verse."
"No new book of poems for years had contained such a freshness
of inspiration, such a strongly individual note, or been more
alive with indubitable promise," wrote the critic of The Bookman.
Encouraged by the success of Personae, Mathews brought out
Pound's Exultations a few months later. His poems were now
appearing in the Evening Standard, St. James Gazette, The English
Review, and other important English newspapers and periodicals.