Richard Le Gallienne (1866-1947)
Richard Le Gallienne was an English man of letters. He was a literary critic and contributed to the Yellow Book with Beardsley, Max Beerbohm and Ernest Dowson. He associated with the fin-de-siècle esthetes of the 1890s before becoming a resident of the United States.
Among his many works, one can mention Volumes in Folio, poems (1889), a novel, Quest of the Golden Girl (1896), Attitudes and Avowals (1910) which are a collection of essays and papers, his reminiscences The Romantic '90s(1925) and From a Paris Garret (1936).
Although not present in Autobiography he is mentioned in John Cowper's letters to Llewelyn. They both knew him fairly well in the twenties. Le Gallienne was present at Llewelyn and Alyse Gregory's marriage in 1924 in Kingston, N.Y.
I enclose a really charming flattering letter from R. de G. Do go and see him. He might be a lovely old man! I remember Ralph Shirley reading his poetry to me 30 years ago! I have written that I will write these 1500 words for him at once and so I will! (John Cowper Powys, Letters to His Brother Llewelyn, 15 November 1922)It seems appropriate and right to let Le Gallienne express himself about the noble state of poet:
Of all the poets I know, I think Richard Le Gallienne looks most like a poet. When Ebony and Ivory came out, I sent him a copy; and I shall never forget the thrill of pleasure he gave me when he came to tea at Patchin Place, carrying the book in his hand for me to inscribe. For Richard Le Gallienne always represented to my mind the last of the great figures of the Nineties; and in truth, because of a certain look of fatality he wore over his shoulders, like Caesar's cloak, one was constantly being reminded that one was talking with a man who had sat at meat with Swinburne, with Downson, with Lionel Johnson, and with Oscar Wilde. In later days, I used to walk with him in the Catskill Mountains, and have seen him many times come toward me with his jacket on his arm, light of step as any fisher-boy; but even then I never lost the impression, though we might be happy for long hours together, that in some curious way he was set apart, that he was hearing, from the hollow chasms of the great stone-quarries he loved, a voice I could not hear, seeing through the slim trunks of the silver birches which rose out of the bracken a form that I could not see. (Llewelyn Powys, The Verdict of Bridlegoose)
The surprise with which the poet receives his earthly cheque for his immaterial merchandise — can it be a real cheque, a cheque liable to be honoured this side of the moon? — is of a piece with his whole relation to society, to the world in which he so strangely finds himself — a stranger. The poet is the real man in the moon, that came down too soon, and is always asking his way — to the moon. He is, so to speak, a phantom in fleshly garb, an inspired spectre, embodied for a while for mystic purposes of divine speech; and even to the gross sense of the world there is a suspicion of the supernatural about him, and about his life, ever an air of romantic miracle. In fact, he is the romantic soul of man consciously embodied and articulate. He is and does "what some men dream of all their lives." What mankind at large sees but in a glass darkly he sees face to face. The opaque commonplaces of human experience are for him constantly diaphanous with the creative light that first made and is forever making all things. To him man, beneath all his fractional disguises and parochial activities, is all the time a mysterious spirit, a being of mysterious destiny, a ghostly creature of infinite portent, his life a witchcraft thing of magic joy and magic sorrow.
Richard Le Gallienne, "The Profession of Poet" in Attitudes and Avowals, John Lane, 1910)
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