A second effort to romanticize Devon did no better .sx Fletcher , with memories of Elizabethan England , spoke of local talent .sx Sidney whinnied scornfully .sx 'Here it is .sx Us .sx We three .sx We're the only local talent within fifty miles .sx ' And Fletcher , who had wanted masochistically to claim Philistinism for America , clicked his tongue .sx It took us a long time to discover anything about his private life .sx Not till he announced one day gloomily , ~'I endoor domesticity,' did we even know that he was married .sx =4 .sx My acquaintance with Basil Blackwell , my first publisher , developed quickly into a friendship which , though we have not often met since I left Oxford , has lasted and is based on real regard .sx Presently , with an appetite sharpened by the American anthology , I suggested to him that it would be a good idea for me to make an anthology picked from the many poets he had published .sx He fell for this idea , and the result was Eighty Poems , beautifully produced at the Shakespeare Head Press .sx The book drew attention to the work which he had done , and a most interesting bunch of poets were represented .sx Turning the pages now , I find that quite a number of poems still stand up with individuality and power , poems which I should pick again today .sx There was Wilfred Childe's Recognition and The Gothic Rose , which I put in another collection many years later , and still admire ; a happy conceit of Gerald Crowe , Ad Sanctum Geraldum Pro Nautis Ejus :sx a short lyric , Still-Heart , and two longer poems by that little-known poet Frank Pearce Sturm , a friend of Yeats's .sx Their inclusion provoked an interesting correspondence , and Sturm sent me a little ivory Chinese figure which I have today .sx Roy Campbell contributed a delightful monkey poem , Bongwi's Theology .sx The three Sitwells , Dorothy Sayers , Edgell Rickword , Katharine Tynan , and Fredegond Shove were represented ; Susan Miles offered one of her village poems ; Morley Roberts appeared in an unfamiliar light ; my Oxford poet friends all figured , and there was a short lyric by Vincent Morris .sx In all , fifty-seven poets were represented .sx But the book's main importance for me was two friendships which it brought .sx Among the poets published by Blackwell was Clifford Bax .sx I was deeply impressed by his Traveller's Tale , and wrote to tell him so .sx The result was an invitation to a meal , and at what was then De Maria's restaurant at the foot of Church Street , Kensington , began yet another friendship of the kind that absence or catastrophe has no power to disturb .sx Clifford's charm and breadth of worldly and other-worldly wisdom delighted and enthralled me .sx Still very much the country bumpkin , for all my Oxford overlay , I admired the grace and assurance which wealth , travel , and experience had given him .sx His voice and smile emphasized the gentleness of his nature , and his Buddhist faith confirmed it ; yet there were delightful contradictions .sx On the cricket field , for instance , Clifford flung the mantle of contemplation aside and emerged as a man of unpredictable and decisive action .sx The only thing that was safe to predict about an innings of his was that the figure six would appear on the score sheet ; how often depended only upon how long he remained at the wicket .sx Sometimes he was bearded , sometimes clean shaven , but this was his only variation .sx I never saw him ruffled , much less out of temper , and while he had a healthy appetite for gossip and was under no illusions about the characters of the people he met , I cannot imagine him unkind in word or deed .sx Clifford was deeply interested in philosophy and religion , and had an open mind with regard to supernatural phenomena .sx He and his brother Arnold , to whom he presently introduced me , had been very strongly drawn into the Irish Revival in the first years of the century .sx Arnold wrote under the name of Dermot O'Byrne , and both brothers were friends of A. E. ; this friendship must have helped to acclimatize Clifford's mind to aspects of experience towards which he was by nature prone , but over which the social side of his life might otherwise have drawn a glittering curtain .sx It was characteristic of Clifford's generosity of spirit that he never made me feel uncultivated .sx I felt so naturally , and blurted out my feeling more than once , but he discounted it , showing me with a very pleasant realism that , if I were as bad as I felt , this , that , and the other person would not be able to endure my company .sx In sum , he was one of the people who helped me with my growing pains , and I shall always be grateful .sx Another was Humbert Wolfe .sx I had met him for the first time when he came to speak to a College society , where he was received with especial honour as a Wadham man .sx He also was represented in the Blackwell anthology , and this brought about a less impersonal meeting .sx Commenting on its ineptitude as a setting for him , I gave him dinner at the Philistines' Club , where his long drooping lock , loose bow , and weary voice roused some astonishment .sx We were a party of four , and with the utmost courtesy he set himself to please us .sx He presently teased me because , when asked my opinion of certain people , I praised their kindness .sx 'You seem to set particular store by this quality , Strong .sx Who has kicked you ?sx How did you acquire this abject attitude ?sx ' I protested that it was not abject , and he conceded that instead it might be the romantic faith of a provincial .sx He himself was inclined to suspect kindness as a self-interested wish to please .sx He was , as I was later to discover , extraordinarily kind , but hated either to acknowledge or have it acknowledged .sx At any rate , he kept to the end his accusation of romantic faith against me .sx Many years later , he had to introduce Richard Church and me as successive speakers at a dinner .sx Of Richard , he said , ~'Here now is Richard Church , who has kept all his illusions' ; and , when my turn came , ~'Here is Leonard Strong , who has no illusions , but many delusions .sx ' Richard Church I met through the American anthology .sx He was at this time a civil servant , much junior to Humbert , who used to mock him affectionately when they ran into each other in Whitehall .sx Under a shy and slightly myopic exterior Richard hid a needle-like observation and a lightning wit .sx At his sharpest , he rivalled Humbert , and that is saying a lot .sx His temperament has always been warm and generous , and , particularly in these early days , it would lead him into enthusiasms which sometimes brought him to the verge of absurdity , where he was saved by his sharp wit .sx All his friends pulled his leg about these enthusiasms , and Richard , sensitive to the affection which prompted them , would beam and blush ; but the glint in the eyes behind the glasses would be steely sharp , as he mischievously looked for a chance to hit back .sx Never strong physically , he was in these days working far too hard , with the office all day , and his own writing , and a great deal of reviewing .sx He and I got on well together from the start , but I do not think either suspected how much we were to be together in the future , and how often we would turn one to the other for comfort and advice .sx =5 .sx My hunger for music , ignorant though I was , led me into several friendships I must otherwise have missed .sx The sturdy John Ellis had taken himself off , and gone to work on the railways at a job which he kept until he died , of a congenital heart complaint , while still in his early forties .sx He helped me more than I can say , and in many ways .sx Above everything I owe him the return to comparative sanity and balance after the disturbances caused by those soire@2es with Schiller and Co. All my life I have been lucky in meeting the right person at the time of need ; and in no instance was this truer than with John Ellis .sx Apart from this enormous service , he laid the foundations of my musical education , both by his example and by his comments on the gramophone records I would " vely play him :sx unerringly selecting what was good , however unpromising its setting- the anonymous violin in a trio on an eighteenpenny record , the little-known baritone singing a song by a composer I had never heard of- and screaming in falsetto derision at performances by artists far better known , or merely vulgar .sx Ellis's work was too sporadic to win the title of composer , though he set a number of poems to music , and sometimes invited me to write new words in place of the verses he had used .sx This I found I could do with little trouble , having sung enough to have a sense of word values and the possible duration of the various vowels .sx The next musician whom I got to know well was a much younger man whom I have already mentioned , Sidney Lewis .sx He had a long , equine head and a jerky manner which was the product of an urgent inner life and of energies too great for his thin asthenic frame .sx Sidney lived in a blaze of activity , mental and psychic .sx His dream life had sometimes a tragic intensity .sx I would not say that he had second sight as Romer Wilson had , but rather that some of his perceptions were dissociated in such a way as to give him uncomfortable , angular glimpses of eternity ; glimpses which sometimes comforted but more often threw him into an agitation of all his powers .sx Like many gifted people who have grown up in places where there is hardly anyone for them to rub their wits against , Sidney was a strange mixture of fantasy and practical horse sense .sx His shrewdness was alarming .sx He could drive a perception like a steel nail into the most imposing fac@6ade or the most complex situation .sx He had a great power of enjoyment , and would go into convulsions of laughter so violent that they could embarrass those who were with him in public places .sx He had beyond a doubt a touch of genius , but of the kind which is not destined to blossom in this world .sx =6 .sx Sidney had a number of older friends who had immediately discerned his quality and treated him as if he were of their own age .sx One of these was a Hindu who had come to Oxford to study Western philosophy .sx He was of short , stocky , powerful build , with fiercely curling black hair and eyes which immediately apprehended the essential things around him .sx His name was Basanta Kumar Mallik .sx The force of his mind and personality had made him many friends at Oxford , and it is possible that I should have met him through Robert Graves , or a Balliol man of great ability named Harries , if I had not been introduced to him by Sidney .sx Sidney however was the link , and this was important , since it was through Sidney's elder sister Winifred that I later resumed the friendship interrupted by Mallik's return to India and a gap of thirty years .sx Mallik's philosophy was at this stage impenetrable to me , but I could appreciate some of its practical conclusions .sx He was a very lively companion , and among other things a superb maker of curries , a gift which much endeared him to me .sx I liked his curries all the better because they were not too hot :sx he explained that the very hot kind were more for the taste of retired colonels and Indian civil servants than for the Indian connoisseur .sx Few things pleased him more than to be turned loose by a hostess with instructions to make curry for her and her guests , but the joys of the meal would often be followed by a rueful inventory of the larder , for Mallik would put in everything he could lay hands on , including items which ninety-nine English people out of a hundred would have thought immune .sx