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EZRA POUND 73
noon, when a little Frenchman approached him in the town square.
The Frenchman was choking in a high starched collar, as he passed
by the comfortable Ezra, who was sauntering along in his customary
sport shirt, open wide at the neck. The Frenchman's eyes
protruded, first in hate, and then in envy. He reached up and with
a single violent gesture ripped open his tie and shirt. It may be
said that Ezra found the world writhing in stiff collars and left it
in sport shirts.
"I discovered him to be as baffling a bundle of contradictions
as any man I have ever known," says Fletcher, continuing his
description of Pound. "Internationally Bohemian in aspect, he yet
preserved marked farwestern ways of speech and a frank, open
democracy of manners. Hating the academicians of England, he
yet laid claim to be a great scholar in early Provençal, Italian and
Latin. Keen follower of the dernier cri in arts and letters, his own
poetry was often deliberately archaic to a degree that repelled me.
In short, he was a walking paradox." 2
Fletcher was unable to understand how a man could dislike
academicians and yet devote himself to the study of the classics.
Apparently he was unfamiliar with the type of scholar who had
grown up in the universities of England like a particularly difficult
type of clinging ivy, and is epitomized by T. S. Eliot's pronouncement
on Professor Gilbert Murray's translations of the Greek:
"He has erected a barrier between the student and the plays greater
than that represented by the original Greek." 3
At first, Pound and Fletcher got along, to such an extent that
Fletcher contributed some money to The New Freewoman. Having
pumped this masculine source, Pound proposed to Miss Weaver
that the journal's title be altered to a noun of more neutral gender.
He suggested The Egoist, and she agreed to it.
On January 1, 1914, the first issue of The Egoist appeared.
Dora Marsden remained as editor, assisted by Richard Aldington
as sub-editor. When he went to war, Aldington was replaced by
Rebecca West, and still later by T. S. Eliot.
In Make It New, Pound says,
"In the spring of 1912, H.D., Richard Aldington and myself
decided that we were agreed upon the three principles following: