The local TV news told us there was a storm coming. It also relayed the far more interesting information that the bar at Boston Public Library was now serving literary-themed cocktails. Accordingly, the following afternoon found me knocking back a "Tequila Mockingbird". This was the barman's error, as I had actually ordered a "Catcher in the Rye", but I am a novice in alcoholic terms and couldn't tell the difference between the flavour of tequila and that of rye whisky.
Siegfried Sassoon's visit to Boston, in April 1920 - 99 years before my first visit to the city - found him in an unhappy mood. His lecture tour of the United States was not going according to plan. The Pond Bureau, the organisation that had booked him, had gone bankrupt and he was left to find his own engagements. Being the diffident man he was, he had little idea how to go about getting these, and relied mainly on his circle of friends to point him in the right direction.
His time in Boston began with a recital at Wellesley College, the famous women's educational institution located in Greater Boston. This was followed by a meeting at the Harvard University Poetry Club, elsewhere in the city. His host in Boston was Harold Laski, a British political economist who was lecturing at Harvard. At Laski's house in the suburb of Cambridge, according to a history of Harvard, could be heard some of the best conversation in the city, perhaps partly because he and his wife often entertained their students, a habit that was highly unusual at the time.
I don't know whether Harvard students in our day spend much time with their lecturers outside classes, but it was of great interest to me to be attending a conference in the prestigious surroundings of the Harvard Law School, and having pointed out to me a framed photograph of the professor who inspired the 1970 novel The Paper Chase, later a successful film and television series. The title could have summed up Sassoon's opinion of academia, since he had tried and failed, at both Oxford and Cambridge, to achieve any qualification at all.
If academic study seemed like hard work, reading his poetry in front of audiences turned out to be an equally great challenge. Before his appearance at Harvard, Sassoon was forced to spend a day in bed, so worn out did he feel after putting himself in the limelight in New York and Chicago. Chairing his meeting next day at the Harvard Union was the redoubtable Amy Lowell, a cigar-smoking poet, then in her forties, who had never had a college education because her parents felt it was inappropriate for a woman. Sassoon wrote that she was "by no means in agreement with my opinions" but was nevertheless a "generous admirer" of his writing.
Sassoon has little else to say in his memoirs about his experiences in Boston. For my part, I was impressed by Harvard but found the atmosphere very different from Oxford or Cambridge, with the university buildings laid out in a spacious area. The conference organiser had told me to look for a "Romanesque" building, which puzzled me somewhat until I saw it - the pseudo-Norman arches and heavily-decorated facade made an impression that was not at all ecclesiastical but might well cause any student to feel privileged at being allowed entry.
The conference, of course, had nothing whatever to do with Sassoon. I have the impression that, by the time he visited Boston, he was weary of North America and looking forward very much to returning to a more familiar environment. I was fortunate enough to find my time in the city both interesting and invigorating. The people I met there might not have been of the same stature as Harold Laski and Amy Lowell, but they were friendly and appreciative, and I hope to be able to return next year for a repeat experience.
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