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THE NEW AGE UNDER ORAGE CHAPTERS IN ENGLISH CULTURAL HISTORY by WALLACE MARTIN MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS BARNES & NOBLE, INC., NEW YORK Frontispiece A. R. ORAGE © 1967 Wallace Martin All rights reserved MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS 316-324 Oxford Road, Manchester 13, England U.S.A. BARNES & NOBLE, INC. 105 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10003 Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd, Frome and London This digital edition has been produced by the Modernist Journals Project with the permission of Wallace T. Martin, granted on 28 July 1999. Users may download and reproduce any of these pages, provided that proper credit is given the author and the Project. FOR MY PARENTS CONTENTS PART ONE. ORIGINS Page I. Introduction: The New Age and its Contemporaries 1 II. The Purchase of The New Age 17 III. Orage’s Editorial Methods 32 PART TWO. ‘THE NEW AGE’, 1908-1910: LITERARY REALISM AND THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IV. The ‘New Drama’ 61 V. The Realistic Novel 81 VI. The Rejection of Realism 108 PART THREE. 1911-1914: NEW DIRECTIONS VII. Contributors and Contents 120 VIII. The Cultural Awakening 128 IX. The Origins of Imagism 145 X. Other Movements 182 PART FOUR. 1915-1918: THE SEARCH FOR VALUES XI. Guild Socialism 193 XII. A Conservative Philosophy 212 XIII. Orage’s Literary Criticism 235 PART FIVE. 1919-1922: SOCIAL CREDIT AND MYSTICISM XIV. The Economic Crisis 266 XV. Orage’s Religious Quest 284 Appendix: Contributors to The New Age 295 Index 297 vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A. R. Orage Frontispiece 1 * Tom Titt: Mr G. Bernard Shaw 25 2 * Tom Titt: Mr G. K. Chesterton 36 3 * Tom Titt: Mr Max Beerbohm 46 4 * Tom Titt: Shaw, Chesterton, Pinero, and Wells 63 5 † Tom Titt: George Bernard Shaw 77 6 * Walter Sickert: ‘And I drive the ‘bus that Mary rides on.’ 99 7 * Tom Titt: H. G. Wells 111 8 * Walter Sickert: A Pail of Slops 124 9 † David Bomberg: Chinnereth 132 10 † Tom Titt: Ezra Pound 152 11 * Walter Sickert: Dieppe 173 12 * Jacob Epstein: The Rock Drill 186 13 † Will Dyson: Progress 191 14 * Tom Titt: Hilaire Belloc 203 15 † W. Roberts: Study 224 16 † Gaudier-Brzeska: A Dancer 254 17 A Facsimile Front Cover 294 Tom Titt is the pseudonym for Jan de Junosza Rosciszewski. Author and publishers are indebted to the Trustees of the British Museum and The Librarian, Central Library, Man- chester for providing photographic prints for these illus- trations from The New Age. * Central Library, Manchester † British Museum viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENT is made to the following holders of copyrights for permission to quote from the works of the authors indicated: A. P. Watt & Son: quotations from Arnold Bennett and (with Cassell & Co.) The Journals of Arnold Bennett. The Artemis Press, Ltd: quotations from A. R. Orage. The Executors of H. G. Wells: quotations from H. G. Wells and (with Victor Gollancz, Ltd) Experiment in Auto- biography, by H. G. Wells. The Society of Authors and the Public Trustee: quotations from G. B. Shaw; the Society of Authors as the literary repre- sentative of the Estate of the late Katherine Mansfield: quota- tions from Katherine Mansfield’s letters. Mrs Dorothy Pound and the Committee for Ezra Pound: quotations from Ezra Pound. George Allen & Unwin, Ltd: the ‘Translator’s Preface’ to Sorel’s Reflections on Violence, by T. E. Hulme; Orage and the ‘New Age’ Circle, by Paul Selver. The Hogarth Press and Mrs Willa Muir: An Autobiography, by Edwin Muir. The Executors of Walter Sickert: quotations from Walter Sickert . Mrs Valerie Eliot: quotations from T. S. Eliot. Janice Biala: quotations from Ford Madox Ford. Mr Christopher Middleton, literary executor of F. S. Flint, and Mrs Ianthe Price: quotations from F. S. Flint. The Lilly Library, Indiana University: letter from Orage to Upton Sinclair in the Sinclair Collection. Mrs Jacob Epstein: The Rock Drill, by Jacob Epstein. ix PREFACE THE object of this study is to record the history of The New Age in the context of English cultural history between 1907 and 1922. While we still think of the literary and artistic achievements of those years as ‘modern’, the cultural context of which they were a product is now nearly two generations distant, and the acceleration of social and cultural change in the twentieth century has separated us from it more decisively than chronology alone would indicate. Studies of many specialized topics will be necessary for a full and accurate understanding of the intellectual backgrounds of that period. This study of The New Age is intended to be one such work, tracing certain aspects of art and thought from the Edwardian age into that period during which modern culture was born. The volumes of The New Age that appeared under Orage’s editorship, which contain over 15,000 pages, could not be discussed coherently without some principles of selection. In general, I have concentrated upon those aspects of the magazine that are of enduring interest in relation to cultural history, with particular emphasis on literature. Many writers contributed to the magazine at one time or another without entering in any decisive way into its overall development; most of these have not been discussed, but their names are listed in the appendix. Political contributors, some of them brilliant stylists whose names were forgotten along with the causes they advo- cated, must await resurrection at the hand of the political scientist. The New Age’s hospitality to writers with special interests (such as Marmaduke Pickthall, Arthur Kitson, xi PREFACE and William Poel) will not be treated herein. And finally, it has been necessary to exclude discussion of little-known regular contributors to the magazine whose works con- stitute an interesting part of its history, but a part which enters only tangentially into the theme of the present study. In many cases, I have relied upon quotation rather than paraphrase for documentation. Some readers may feel that this is simply an abnegation of the scholar’s responsi- bility to summarize wherever possible; however, quite apart from the pitfalls of paraphrase for even the most scrupulous writer, the spirit and phraseology of these quotations seem to me as important for an understanding of the period as is their paraphrasable content. Many of those associated with The New Age provided hitherto unrecorded information for this study. Orage’s kindness to contributors was reflected in their kindness to the present writer, both in recording their memories of the magazine and in making it possible for their letters from Orage to be transcribed. Correspondence with the following contributors was of considerable help: Richard Aldington, Van Wyck Brooks, Professor R. S. Crane, St John Ervine, Storm Jameson, A. M. Ludovici, Alice Marks (secretary of The New Age), Ruth Pitter, Paul Selver, Upton Sinclair, and W. R. Titterton. I am especi- ally indebted to Sir Herbert Read for allowing me to quote passages from Orage’s letters to him. Philip Mairet, whose memoir of Orage was very helpful for this study, displayed inexhaustible patience in answering questions and in supplying the addresses of people whom it would otherwise have been impossible to locate. Other contributors and those who knew Orage well were interviewed when this proved practicable. F. S. Flint, Professor Janko Lavrin, Alfred Newsome, Mrs xii PREFACE Jessie Orage, and Ezra Pound were among those whose help was particularly valuable, as were Mrs Cecil Chester- ton, Lady Haden-Guest, Rowland Kenney, Jeffrey Mark, C. H. Norman, S. C. Nott, Marie Rambert (Mrs Ashley Dukes), Maurice Reckitt, and Henry Simpson. I am grateful to the Scholarly Activities Committee and the Deans of the University of Toledo for facilitating the completion of this study through a reduction in teaching duties and a leave of absence. It originated as a dissertation, directed by Professor Isaacs of Queen Mary College, University of London; my indebtedness to him for count- less suggestions regarding sources of information, methods of treatment, and most important for the creative spirit with which he approached such problems, cannot be adequately acknowledged. Professor Norman Callan of Queen Mary College was also helpful with regard to many matters of detail. Professors Sam Hynes, Laurence Lafore, and N. Christophe de Nagy made valuable sug- gestions regarding revision, as did Noel Stock (to whom I am especially indebted in this respect). I owe a less immediate but no less significant debt to J. C. Lair, F. W. Bornhauser, Yvor Winters, and George Steiner, as teachers. And for stylistic suggestions, typing, and for- bearance, I am indebted to my wife. xiii go to next chapter PART ONE ORIGINS CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: THE NEW AGE AND ITS CONTEMPORARIES ‘IN 1907,’ said Shaw, ‘I and another person unknown to me put down five hundred pounds apiece to found a weekly magazine to be called The New Age, and edited by my friend Holbrook Jackson and a mystery man named Orage. The paper was in desperate financial straits from the moment this initial capital was spent; and Holbrook Jackson, built for more solid enterprises, soon transferred his activities to a wider field.’1 After Jackson left the magazine in 1908, Orage carried on alone, paying only those contributors who, like Pound, had no other regular income (‘He did more to feed me than anyone else in England’) 2 and meeting the annual deficit of over one thousand pounds through the contributions of wealthy friends. Between then and 1922, when Orage relinquished the editorship, The New Age was an unparalleled arena of cultural and political debate. The history of The New Age is germane to an under- standing of the development of English culture in the early twentieth century.
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