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EZRA POUND 47
"Many poets have done that," writes Ford of this experience
(although he does not cite any other instances of would-be poets
arriving in Europe by cattle boat). "But I doubt that any other ever
made a living by showing American tourists about Spain without
previous knowledge of the country or language. It was, too, just
after the Spanish-American war, when the cattle-boat dropped
him in that country." 28
"The living" to which Ford refers was occasioned by Pound's
meeting an American family in Spain who were the proverbial
Innocents Abroad. He agreed to show them around, without mentioning
that this was also his first view of the sights, and received in
return a modest honorarium. There is an advantage to having a
guide who is also seeing the wonders for the first time, as enthusiasm
may be communicated. The guidebooks carried him triumphantly
through his first European venture.
Critics have always complained of Pound, whether he leads us
into the Middle Ages, Greece, or China, that he does not know
the country well enough to function as a guide. But guiding parties
across wildernesses that one had not yet traversed was an old
Western custom.
"It was with that aura of romance about him," says Ford, "that
he appeared to me in my drawing-room. I guessed that he must be
rather hard up, bought his poem at once, and paid him more than
it was usual to pay for a ballad. It was not a large sum, but Ezra
managed to live on it for a long time—six months, I think—in
unknown London. Perhaps my pastry helped." 29
Ford was continually amused by Pound's impact upon the society
of lady novelists and plump gentlemen of letters who maintained a
virtually impassable barrier against new talent. In Thus to Revisit,
a book that he wrote to boost the young Imagist poets of London,
Ford remarks, "I wish I had Mr. Pound's knack of cutting the heart
out of a subject." 30
"Mr. Pound's harsh aphorisms," he continues, "are like sharp
splinters of granite struck off by a careless but violent chisel. But
whatever Mr. Pound is or is not, of this the Reader may be certain:
wherever two or three men of Letters—of Printed Matter—are found
united in irritations, some splinters from one or other of Mr. Pound's
chippings will be found at the bottom of their poor, dear abscesses." 31