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<DIV>I have begun to read VWB91 . . .</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Re Karen Levenback’s discussion of “The Royal Academy” in VWM: in my
selected essay collection, “Street Haunting and Other Essays”</DIV>
<DIV><A
title=https://www.amazon.co.uk/Street-Haunting-Essays-Vintage-Classics/dp/009958977X
href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Street-Haunting-Essays-Vintage-Classics/dp/009958977X">https://www.amazon.co.uk/Street-Haunting-Essays-Vintage-Classics/dp/009958977X</A></DIV>
<DIV>I paired that essay with “Thunder at Wembley” under the heading “The
British Empire”. In the limited notes at the end of the book, I did,
however, add a new one about the blinded soldier over-raising his leg:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>A letter from Harry G. Sparks in the Athenaeum,</DIV>
<DIV>12 September 1919, stated that he had ‘seen hundreds of</DIV>
<DIV>[gassed] men do exactly the same thing’ in France and that</DIV>
<DIV>the ‘over-emphasis’ was ‘on the part of the man – not on</DIV>
<DIV>that of the artist’.</DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Times New Roman"></FONT> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none">I think
Sargent is a wonderful artist – next week I shall be going to the exhibition in
Dulwich</P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><A
title=http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/2017/june/sargent-the-watercolours/
href="http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/2017/june/sargent-the-watercolours/">http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/2017/june/sargent-the-watercolours/</A></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none">but I think
the murals in the Boston Library are frightful (I’ve only seen repros).</P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none"> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none">“Gassed”
seems to me to be borderline – it’s almost an awful mural, but it’s not.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none">________________________</P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none"> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none">VWB p.
20</P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none">Vernon ‘Lee
“certainly ranked the press among the most culpable sustainers of the
slaughter”’</P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none"> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none">Cf. Jacob
“<SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: ; LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: en-gb; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: en-gb; mso-bidi-language: ar-sa'>had
seen Salamis, and Marathon in the distance.”</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: ; LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: en-gb; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: en-gb; mso-bidi-language: ar-sa'>with
</SPAN><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: ; mso-ansi-language: en-gb; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: en-gb; mso-bidi-language: ar-sa'>an
editorial in <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">The Times</I> in October
1914: ‘The undergraduate who last summer was playing his pleasant games and
making his pleasant little academic jokes, to whom the world was a charming if
rather bewildering place, is now suddenly a man with a plain and glorious duty
before him, a man like those Greeks who fought at Marathon and Salamis, like
<SPAN><FONT style="FONT-VARIANT: small-caps">Aeschylus</FONT></SPAN> himself,
the poet of the great age that was prepared for a victory in which he took
part.’</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none">________________________</P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none"> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none">I suppose I
was naive, but I had thought (hoped?) that from 2014 on, we would commemorate
the pointlessness of WW1, and the emphasis would be on its folly and
waste. Indeed, there was 3-part documentary-type recreation of the days
leading up to the declaration of war, with the script using the actual words
that politicians, the Kaiser, etc., actually said or wrote. It was clear
that Sir Edward Grey had no *grip* at all on events. I have subsequently
discovered his employing that very word in his autobiography: “In Austria, as in
Russia, there was no head with direction and grip of affairs” (GREY, [Edward],
Viscount, of Fallodon, K.G., "Twenty-Five Years, 1892-1916" (2 vols), London:
Hodder and Stoughton, 1925, ii. 32).</P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none"> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none">Instead,
the modern obsession with personalities, individuals and their reactions to
events has obfuscated. Instead of condemnations and analyses of
politicians and the military, we get stories about grandfathers and great-uncles
who *never came back*, or, if they did, *never talked about what had happened to
them*. Or their bodies were never found. Or descendants or other
relatives who never knew them visit their graves or even just their names on the
Menin Gate. And sometimes they weep quietly.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none"> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none">Even more
naively, I was shocked to hear:</P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none">“Hundreds
of thousands of Canadians crossed the cold, grey Atlantic to take a stand
against tyranny and oppression,” said Prince Charles, speaking to a huge crowd
gathered in sunny fields beneath a giant monument to the Canadians who died in
World War I.</P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><A
title=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/09/prince-charles-visits-world-war-one-battlefields-sons-justin/
href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/09/prince-charles-visits-world-war-one-battlefields-sons-justin/">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/09/prince-charles-visits-world-war-one-battlefields-sons-justin/</A></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none"> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none">On 11
November 2020 I hope I’ll remember this:</P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none"> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none">Referring
to the unveiling of the Cenotaph in Whitehall by George V on 11 November 1920,
VW wrote: ‘going down the Strand the night of the Cenotaph; such a lurid scene,
like one in Hell. A soundless street; no traffic; but people marching. Clear,
cold, & windless. A bright light in the Strand; women crying Remember the
Glorious Dead, & holding out chrysanthemums. Always the sound of feet on the
pavement. Faces bright & lurid [. . .] A ghastly procession of people in
their sleep’ (<I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">D</I>2 79–80).</P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none"> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-pagination: none">Stuart</P></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>