Tag Archives: vorticism

I have renewed my interest in Wyndham Lewis since reading the first edition of Blast magazine. An interest later cemented after I had the opportunity to read the second and final publication. Dense and single minded as it was, it is a fascinating (and conceited) read as it endeavours to unearth the style and rhythmic pattern of modernist writing as well as a precept for Vorticism itself. Reading around the web, Lewis appears to be quite a contrary person, at odds with, and actively seeking animosity amongst many of his contemporaries – no doubt this within the discretion of anyone high minded enough (and I mean that nicely) to write a manifesto. Manifesto’s of the avant-garde are one thing though, economic reality is another.

I love this show me the money quote from the Guardian’s review of Paul O’Keefe’s biography:

The one thing even less likely to meet with gratitude than a loan was an outright gift. At the end of 1923, a group of well-wishers established a joint fund to provide Lewis with a stipend of £16 a month for as long as he might remain in need of it. The result was the usual mayhem, as dark suspicions flourished, and lifelong friends fell out. On one occasion, a delay in the dispatch of the monthly cheque elicited an unforgiving response: “WHERE’S THE FUCKING STIPEND? LEWIS.” O’Keeffe dismisses this story as apocryphal, but he does not seem in much doubt as to the brutality with which Lewis often treated those who sought to help him. Earlier that year, Lewis had spent some time in France with one of the people who was to contribute generously to the fund, the painter Richard Wyndham. Sitting outside a café in Toulon, he told Wyndham that he was a ‘Narcissus’ and probably a ‘bugger’. People, Wyndham remembered him saying, are only friends insofar as they are of use to you. Lewis, it seems, did not so much bite the hand that fed him as mistake it for the main meal.