Bonus Post: The Little Wings

Vivienne's teenage poems

Graham Greene’s early chapbook of poetry, Babbling April, cannot be read digitally online. If you want a legit copy of the book, it will cost you a pretty penny. The only one I’ve seen on Ebay was owned by Anthony Powell. The author took a fairly caustic view of Greene, who he knew at Oxford, but hung onto a signed copy of his first pamphlet. The asking price was £3000, too rich for my blood. Luckily, because I was teaching at a university during most of Greeneland’s research period, I was able to order a copy digitally from the British Library.

There is a slightly cheaper option if you are keen to read the better poems in the pamphlet in the way the author intended. For, towards the end of his life, Greene published a limited, signed edition of the poems which he wished to preserve in print, A Quick Look Behind. The cheapest copy on Abe is from Vagabond Books, a fine US specialist who I have bought from myself (although be warned, the postage is a killer). Vagabond’s £145, however, is rather cheaper than the three copies of Babbling April on Abe, which go for three, six and seven grand respectively (the cheapest one, curiously, is the signed one). There is also an Indian bootleg copy (weird, I know), which can be yours for £18.27 post free. A bargain, of sorts.

Here’s one of the poems that Graham chose not to reprint from Babbling April.

The only copies of Vivienne’s The Little Wings for sale are also Indian bootlegs, at a slightly higher price. However, if you’re interested in reading the poems and essay of Greene’s wife-to-be, they are all available, along with Chesterton’s introduction, on that excellent site, The Internet Archive. Here’s the link:

https://archive.org/details/littlewingspoems00dayruoft/page/n9/mode/2up

See if you get further than I did. Chesterton’s unctuous introduction is very much of its time. The poems suggest that, had Vivienne continued with poetry, she might have given Patience Strong a run for her money. Do bear in mind that they were written when she was fifteen, or even younger. Here’s the second half of ‘Stratford’, dedicated to her mother.

The spots of sunlight quivering

On water golden-tan and bright,

While overhead the thrushes sings

In ecstacy of mellow light.

… All down the beamed and gabled street is sunlight,

Stilled is the clatter of the human feet. I hear

The feet of Lear–or Rosalind.

If I could only find a tune

To fit that golden afternoon.

(For MUMMYDAR in remembrance of October 30, 1915)

Has anyone written at length about Greene’s poetry, I wonder? It’s too big a project to take on in a bonus post. Many novelists I’ve known have written poetry on the side, as it were. Alan Sillitoe published much of his, and thought it was his best work (it wasn’t). Stanley Middleton published very little after his student days but left enough for a strong posthumous collection, somewhat larger than A Quick Look Behind, albeit the latter is a selection and omits what are, I suspect, some racy poems written to Catherine Walston.

Discussion, as always, welcome.