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V
POUND'S LAST effort with group participation in the arts, before
he retreated to a position of individualism, was his association with
the Vorticists in London. Although some of the principles advanced
by this group had first been heard in the rooms of T. E. Hulme, its
key figures were Pound, Wyndham Lewis, and Gaudier-Brzeska.
Hulme was not a joiner, and he preferred to watch them from a
distance. A giant of a man, he once startled Wyndham Lewis by
holding him upside down over the railings of Soho Square in order
to emphasize a point. There were many quarrels and fierce rivalries
in the London Bohemia, and Hulme had Gaudier-Brzeska make a
brass knuckle-duster for him which he carried everywhere.
One of the characters prominently seen, and gawked at, during
this period was a Cheapside tout named Hixen, who sometimes
performed missions for the artists. He ran about the town like
a Western road runner. Hixen suffered from a pronounced stutter,
the result of his having been caught stealing from a church poorbox
when he was about six years old. The priest had painted such
a frightening picture of the torments of hell that the poor lad had
gone into shock, and stuttered ever afterwards.
Pound was boosting the work of his various "discoveries" in
every issue of The Egoist. These enthusiasms included Lewis,
Gaudier-Brzeska, Jacob Epstein, and James Joyce. His closest friend
during the Vorticist period was Wyndham Lewis, who later was to
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