Alec Waugh

Alexander Raban Waugh (Alec Waugh) (1898 – 1981), was a British novelist, the elder brother of the better-known Evelyn Waugh and son of Arthur Waugh, author, literary critic, and publisher. .Read more on Wikipedia

Lowry refers to Waugh in a letter to Carol Brown dated May 1926 when he tells her about what Rev. Harry Bisseker, the Leys's Headmaster had been saying about him to W. H. Balgarnie treasurer and president of the Leys Fortnightly committee; "that...I had been reading Alec Waugh, but I had been reading Noel Coward, Michael Arlen, Eugene O'Neill, and Samuel Butler." (Collected Letters Vol 1 Pg. 25)

Lowry does not state which of Waugh's books he was reading - by 1925 Waugh had published The Loom of Youth (1917), Resentment Poems (1918), The Prisoners of Mainz (1919), Pleasure (1921), Public School Life: Boys, Parents, Masters (1922), The Lonely Unicorn (1922), Myself When Young : confessions (1923), Card Castle (1924), and Kept : a story of post-war London (1925).

The Loom of Youth was so controversial at the time (it openly mentioned homosexual relationships between boys). The book was based on Waugh's experiences and memories of Sherborne School, a public school in Dorset. The book was clearly inspired by The Harrovians by Arnold Lunn, published in 1913 and discussed at some length in The Loom of Youth.

Michael Arlen Mayfair

Michael Arlen's Mayfair is a 1925 collection of 11short stories with a prologue, which Arlen described in the frontispiece as "Being an entertainment purporting to reveal to Gentlefolk the Real state of Affairs existing in the very Heart of London during the fifteenth and sixteenth years in the reign of His Majesty King George the Fifth: together with Suitable reflections on the last follies, misadventures,and galanteries of These Charming People."

Lowry was allowed to chose a copy of Arlen's Mayfair as a prize by the Leys Fortnightly in 1925 as detailed in letter to Carol Brown dated May 1926; "However the Fortnightly always rake up a prize for me at the end of the year: last year they gave me O'Neill's 'Anna Christie,' Michael Arlen's 'Mayfair,' and 'The Wrecker' by R.L.S." (Collected letters Vol 1 Pg. 26)  . Lowry also refers to Mayfair in his short story 'The Blue Bonnet' for the Leys Fortnightly; "With apologies to the Author of "Mayfair", "The Green Hat", etc (Pg. 5) - the short story is a pastiche of Arlen's work.

Beginning to read Mr. Arlen's new book of short stories, "May Fair," I had the good fortune to begin with a story in the middle of the book, "The Revolting Doom of a Gentleman Who Would not Dance with his Wife," and instantly began to utter glad cries of joy. When a tale is told with such frolicsome humor and satire, what does it matter whether the characters are inhabitants of May Fair or of Limehouse? What difference does it make if the owl, who takes a leading part, has flown straight out of Max Beerbohm's "Zuleika Dobson"? What does it matter if there is more than a suggestion of the precious poseurs of the Yellow Book period? The story is a cream puff, and as such it is perfect. If you wish corn beef and cabbage, you have no business to be reading Michael Arlen. The same commendation I would like to accord to the story called "The Battle of Berkeley Square," which could not be surpassed by any writer of to-day whose name comes to mind. Aside from these, I will admit, in the cause of honesty, that there are two or three stories in the book which I have not read. I hope that they are as good as the two I have named, but I doubt it. There are two or three others, however — notably "The Prince of the Jews," "The Gentleman from America," and "The Ghoul of Golders Green" — which seem to me to be failures, and not very splendid failures at that. In them the author essays to write little tragedies, mysteries, ghost stories, horror stories, or other serious yarns. Sometimes, as in "The Ghoul of Golders Green," they are tragedies up to the end, when they turn into farce. Writers have achieved this with success, but Mr. Arlen does not do it. But he may be forgiven if a number of his arrows stick in the outer rim of the target, or even hit the grass alongside. For two of them, at least, have gone straight into the bull's-eye. Read more her: Edmund Lester Pearson The Outlook June 10 1925 or another contemporary review The Saturday Review of Literature June 6th 1925

Michael Arlen

Michael Arlen born in Rousse, Bulgaria, 1895-1956, original name Dikran Kouyoumdjian, was an Armenian essayist, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and scriptwriter, who had his greatest successes in the 1920s while living and writing in England. Although Arlen is most famous for his satirical romances set in English smart society, he also wrote gothic horror and psychological thrillers. Read more on Wikipedia

Lowry was allowed to chose a copy of Arlen's Mayfair as a prize by the Leys Fortnightly in 1925. (Bowker Pursued By Furies Pg. 38).

Lowry refers to Michael Arlen in a letter to Carol Brown dated 27/4/1926; "..... young lovers of the present generation are helped greatly in awkward situations by the use of words which have been used by their fictional heroes in similarly awkward positions, or position, helpful matter which would have been denied to those who lived before the days of shall we say, Charles Dickens, James Elroy Flecker, and Michael Arlen". (Collected Letters Vol 1 Pg. 14). Lowry was probably recalling either The London Venture (1920), Piracy (1922), The Green Hat (1924) or Mayfair (1925). Lowry again refers to Arlen in another letter to Carol Brown dated May 1926 when he tells her about what Rev. Harry Bisseker, the Leys's Headmaster had been saying about him to W. H. Balgarnie treasurer and president of the Leys Fortnightly committee; "that...I had been reading Alec Waugh, but I had been reading Noel Coward, Michael Arlen, Eugene O'Neill, and Samuel Butler." (Collected Letters Vol 1 Pg. 25).

Lowry also refers to Arlen in his short story 'The Blue Bonnet' for the Leys Fortnightly; "With apologies to the Author of "Mayfair", "The Green Hat", etc (Pg. 5) - the short story is a pastiche of Arlen's work.

Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev

Portrait of Andreyev by Ilya Repin

Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev 1871 – 1919 was a Russian playwright, novelist and short-story writer. He is one of the most talented and prolific representatives of the Silver Age period in Russian history. Andreyev's style combines elements of realist, naturalist and symbolist schools in literature. Read more on Wikipedia

Lowry refers to Andreyev in a letter to Carol Brown dated 27/4/1926; "The great trouble about this first school tea is that one has'nt salved any of one's friends as yet, one sits where one may find a place, there is such a clatter of bent tin knives and forks on rancid ham that one can't hear oneself eat if one would eat, which one in one case- one-would'nt: the whole thing, believe me, reminding me of the sordidity of the first chapters of a Russian novel by Leonid Andryev." (Collected Letters Vol 1 Pg. 13). Andryev only wrote one novel The Seven Who Were Hanged  - so we must assume that Lowry is referring to this novel. The reference is an insight into Lowry's feelings for The Leys.

Later, everything in the world—day and night, footsteps, voices, the soup of sour cabbage, produced in him a continuous terror, plunging him into a state of savage uncomprehending astonishment. His weak mind was unable to combine these two things which so monstrously contradicted each other—the bright day, the odor and taste of cabbage—and the fact that two days later he must die. He did not think of anything. He did not even count the hours, but simply stood in mute stupefaction before this contradiction which tore his brain in two. And he became evenly pale, neither white nor redder in parts, and appeared to be calm. Only he ate nothing and ceased sleeping altogether. He sat all night long on a stool, his legs crossed under him, in fright. Or he walked about in his cell, quietly, stealthily, and sleepily looking about him on all sides. His mouth was half-open all the time, as though from incessant astonishment, and before taking the most ordinary thing into his hands, he would examine it stupidly for a long time, and would take it distrustfully. The Seven Who Were Hanged Chapter 3

Illustration for The Seven Who Were Hanged by John Buckland Wright

Samuel Butler The Way Of All Flesh

The Way of All Flesh (1903) is a semi-autobiographical novel by Samuel Butler which attacks Victorian-era hypocrisy. Written between 1873 and 1884, it traces four generations of the Pontifex family. Butler dared not publish it during his lifetime, but when it was published it was accepted as part of the general reaction against Victorianism. Read more on Wikipedia

Lowry refers to the novel in a letter to Carol Brown dated April 1926; "Then I tried to read 'The Way of All Flesh'........ Then I went on trying to read the 'The Way of All Flesh' (Collected Letters Vol 1 Pg. 7).  Lowry again refers to Samuel Butler in another letter to Carol Brown dated May 1926 when he tells her about what Rev. Harry Bisseker, the Leys's Headmaster had been saying about him to W. H. Balgarnie treasurer and president of the Leys Fortnightly committee; "that...I had been reading Alec Waugh, but I had been reading Noel Coward, Michael Arlen, Eugene O'Neill, and Samuel Butler." (Collected Letters Vol 1 Pg. 25).