Welsh Journals

Pat-a-Cake, Pat-a-Cake, Baker Man. Little Reviews, 1914-1943, DENYS VAL BAKER, Allen & Unwin, 2s. This petty and impertinent little pamphlet, having received the Papal blessing of the P.E.N., is now likely to be distributed all over the place as gospel and as accurate history. It is unlikely that one pointed finger could puncture the barrage- balloon of Mr. Baker's conceit, but it may be that this review will come to the notice of his publishers, drawing their attention to the fact that it is unwise to let the whelps out hunting with the hounds till they .have made some show of an ability which will, at least, prevent them mucking the trail. It is, perhaps, fortunate that I have neither the time nor the space to rewrite Mr. Baker's essay in ineptitude, providing the dates which he has not bothered to provide (sometimes it appears to be doubtful whether he has seen more than one copy, if that, of some of the periodicals he mentions), trying to give some account of the relative importance of the various titles, and, in fact, verifying a few facts. It may, however, be instructive to skim quickly through Mr. Baker's pages, noting his aimiable aimlessness. Pp. 5-8 The Little Review Mr. B. seems to have had little opportunity of examining copies of this periodical. (I base this fact on his own statement that it was often printed on cheap paper with a sickly brown cover," whereas the cover of each number was a different bright colour.) Margaret Anderson, whatever her defects, and they were not few, was not a lady of adequate financial resources reference to her autobiography, My Thirty Years' War, Knopf, 1930, will show that she could wring advertisements from the hardest-headed business men and support from a veritable stone, and that it was these gifts, not a vast private fortune, which kept the paper in production. Pp. 8-9: Wyndham Lewis Mr. B. must have examined a bound set of Blast, in a great hurry, for my copies are bound in paper, the first number in virulent magenta,.the same thickness as that of the text; the number of illustrations in my copies is also not quite negligible-23 in No. 1, and 17 in the thinner second number (Mr. B. conveys the impression that both issues appeared before the last War-No. 2 is dated July, 1915, on the cover and contains an obituary notice of Gaudier-Brzeska). Where, then, is the Tyro? No. i appeared as a folio paper in 1921, and No. 2, quarto, in 1922-Mr. B. just doesn't seem to have heard of them (though if he had read a periodical about which he is inaccurate later, Twentieth Century Verse, he would have found a check-list of the works of Wyndham Lewis which might have put him on the track; attention to the job which he was doing might also have told him that there were THREE not two numbers of the Enemy 1, dated January, 1927 2, September, 1927; and 3, First Quarter, 1929; in addition Mr. B. should have noted that the Enemy was published at the time by Mr. Lewis himself-The Arthur Press-and that Mr. Zwemmer merely took over the job of disposing of the unsold stock after Mr. Lewis had moved on to something else-there is no excuse for this error as copies of No. 2 were on sale as late as June, 1943). Pp. 11-12 The Egoist I think Mr. B. has seen one odd copy of this very important periodical, which was started as a fortnightly, entitled the New Freewoman, on July 15th, 1913, became the Egoist on January 1st, 1914, continued as a fortnightly until January, 1915, and then as a monthly until December, 1919. From December 15th, 1913, until May, 1917, the Assistant Editor was Richard Aldington. From then until the suspension of the periodical, the position was filled by no less important a figure than Mr. T. S. Eliot. During its long life little items published serially, and apparently not considered worthy of Mr. Baker's consideration included The