'Meeting held at 39, Eastern Avenue: 24. 11. 39.
A Bruce Dilks in the chair.
1. Minutes of last [two meetings] read & approved.
[...]
7. F. E. Pollard gave a brief introduction to American literature, introducing a large
number of names including Benjamin Franklin, John Woolman, Tom Paine,
Washington Irving, Fennimore Cooper, the poet Bryant, the historians Bancroft,
Prescott and Motley, Louisa M. Alcott, Emerson, Longfellow & Whittier, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Thoreau, Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Hermann Dick, J. R. Lowell, Walt Whitman, Henry Hames, Winston
Churchill, O. Henry, & Mark Twain. He attempted very briefly to assess the place
of these & some others.
8. C. E. Stansfield read from the Autocrat at the Breakfast Table an extract in
praise of Meerschaums, Violins & Poems. We felt from the caressing tones of his
voice that like the Autocrat he gave pride of place to the Meerschaums.
9. A. B. Dilks, after a brief reference to the career and mystical experience of
Walt Whitman read from his Poems on the Sea.
10. R. D. L. Moore read a dramatic passage from the ‘Bridge of San Luis Rey[’],
describing the last hours of Brother Juniper.
11 We were, finally, introduced to Babbitt – those of us who had not previously
met him — by R. H. Robson. We were suitably amused at the manner in which
St.Clair Lewis makes his hero rise and shave.
[signed] R. D. L. Moore
19.XII.39'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Print: Book
