Nine Autograph Letters Signed from the poet Herbert Palmer to Rev. Harry Escott of Rhynie, Aberdeenshire, editing a book of Escott's poetry, discussing Christian verse, and attacking T. S. Eliot, the Faber poets and modernism.

Totalling 36pp., 4to. In fair condition, bound by Escott with brown paper into paper wraps, with the front wrap signed by Escott and bearing the typed label 'LETTERS from HERBERT PALMER on "Minstrels of Christ" and my second book of verse "Soar for Victory", amended in February 1948 to "Back to the Fountain."' An interesting correspondence, casting light on the workings of the mid-twentieth century publishing industry, from the point of view of a successful traditional poet strongly opposed to modernism. Four of the earlier letters concern Escott's anthology 'Minstrels of Christ' (published by the Epworth Press in 1941), with Palmer discussing the copyright of his poems (mostly divided between Dent and Benn) and offering 'two poems over which I have entire control'. He gives his opinion that a 'carefully compiled anthology sells anything from 2000 to 20,000 copies and as I know of no Post-Victorian anthology of Religious Verse you might sell considerably more than 20,000.' He adds: 'Poets like myself who have no other means of livelihood save literature are naturally chary about giving poems, much as they desire to do, and their publishers are generally rather tiresome.' He has gives a long list of poets he has marked down 'as "religious" in a greater or lesser degree' while compiling a 'history of Post Victorian Poetry for Dent'. On 21 March 1942 he accuses Escott of having 'so curiously let me down' over the use of his poems in the anthology, which Palmer was handed by Mary Winter Were while 'reading from my little book "The Gallows-Cross" to the Poetry Society': 'I did not want them re-printed in anybook exactly as they stood [...] I had written some new poems which were rather more suitable'. He claims to have been 'slighted and snubbed and boycotted' because of his writing of 'religious and Christian verse [...] and not only because I have opposed Eliot in satire and parody - whom I do not believe in as a Christian poet, and whom I regard as a dessicatory and disintegrating influence, especially in the Technique of Poetry [...] I have no income beyond the £100 Civil List Pension I get for "distinction as a poet" (whatever that may mean) and my reviewing and meagre literary journalism brings me in very little as, owing to my increased age, I do things very slowly nowadays. As a leading poet said to me a few months ago "It is strange that so lean and bitter a trade as poetry should attract hypocrites, but it does" - and that has been my chief cross as poet and critic for over 20 years. My wife, of course, has been the chief sufferer, and at present seems to be doing most of the work - school teaching, for which her age is now unfitting her.' A letter to which Escott replied on 7 April 1942 discusses religious matters in general, beginning: 'What are you? Are you a Methodist Minister, or Church of England Parson? My father was a Wesleyan Methodist Minister, and my brother who lives at Leeds is a Wesleyan Methodist Minister.' On being asked to look over Escott's book of verse Palmer responds as follows: 'I have during the last 3 months been battered to death by poet's [sic] MSS, books etc, and I have not had time to do more than glance through your book. And I now have to review books for a livelihood. If you like to pay me a fee of two guineas I will go through your book in detail and report on it (three guineas, however, it it takes me too long) It is impossible conisdering my circumstances to do otherwise.' Three of the letters discuss Escott's book in detail over seventeen pages. He writes a preface for the volume and advises Escott on which magazines to send poems to ('Now I must charge you a Guinea fee, but I think you ought to get it back - out of one of the periodicals I have mentioned.'). In the seventh letter in the folder Palmer tells Escott that he is 'a newcomer always with a first book of verse, even when you have been publishing for years in periodicals'. In editing Escott's work, Palmer summarises his own approach: 'I think that inspiration detached form art is the poet's greatest enemy. (I know this, personally, to my cost) You ought to get all the poems right with a little application. Poetry is largely a physical thing - it is only 50 per cent content. A little inspiration and a lot of art goes further than a lot of inspiration and a little art. Keats I know would tell you this, and certainly Tennyson and the aesthetic singers of the Yellow nineties would agree with me. Very few poems are got right in the week in which they were written, and scarcely any of the famous ones.' Elsewhere Palmer renews his attack on modernism: 'A great deal of modern poetry is no more poetry than a jelly-fish is a fish or the first green corn is a harvest. And this is not merely because the verse has been insufficiently revised, but equally often because in the first moments of creation the poet (if you can always call him that) has experienced no sense of exaltation or spiritual or aesthetic excitement'. In the last letter, dated 9 November 1943, he writes that he is 'carrying the War into the Enemy's Country. Not only am I publishing a selection of my verse in Faber's Seasame Series, but I am trying to get them to publish my new volume of Verse, part of which is a downright straight forward attack on Faber's own poets. But Geoffrey Faber (the head of the firm) is a very fine traditional poet and does not appear to really approve of much that he has published, and I believe wants a re-statement of the other side of the matter. Most of these publishers have been forced into publishing modernist Verse. It had to be either that or threadbare conventional verse, or nothing at all. All the same I feel like David in the land of the Philistines, and Edward Thompson goes even further and writes to me "You are David in the land of the Philistines", - a strange reincarnation.' He does concede that he has 'discovered a very fine religious poet among the young men. Who could you imagine it is? Well it is actually David Gascoyne the one-time upholder of Surrealism. Things are now changing, in spite of Geoffrey Faber's gloomy prophecy.'