'Meeting held at 7, Marlborough Avenue. 15th Jan, 1944
A. G. Joselin in the chair.
[...]
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed
[...]
5. Howard Smith opened the evening on Shelley with a biographical sketch. [...]
6. We adjourned for refreshment[.]
7. F. E. Pollard read “Ode to the West Wind”
8. Margaret Dilks gave brief appreciation of Shelley’s poetry. This started a general
discussion in which nearly all took part — whether he influenced or was influenced by
his contempor[ar]ies , & what effect he had, if any, on future poets. On these
questions opinion varied, but all agreed with F. E. Pollard that Shelley’s verse is
supremely ‘poetical’.
9. To illustrate Shelley’s passion for liberty and reform Bruce Dilks read from “The
Masque of Anarchy” which was inspired by the Peterloo Massacre in 1819.
10. Rosamund Wallis read some stanzas from “Adonais”. F. E. Pollard read a short
poem entitled “A Lament”[.] Thus, our thoughts being with the departed, the meeting
ended on a lighter note. One member quoted a touching little verse from the
Berkshire Chronicle In Memoriam notices, which another capped by some lines written
by a school-boy on the relative merits of perpetual roasting and eternal hymn-singing.
Lines which gained the boy a severe reprimand from his head-master, and a ‘Fiver’
from his father.
[signed as a true record by] S A Reynolds 14/2/44'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members and perhaps guests of the XII Book Club Print: Newspaper
