a second effort to romanticize Devon did no better . Fletcher , with memories of Elizabethan England , spoke of local talent . Sidney whinnied scornfully . here it is . us . we three . we &apos;re the only local talent within fifty miles . and Fletcher , who had wanted masochistically to claim philistinism for America , clicked his tongue . it took us a long time to discover anything about his private life . not till he announced one day gloomily , I endoor domesticity , did we even know that he was married . 4 . my acquaintance with Basil Blackwell , my first publisher , developed quickly into a friendship which , though we have not often met since I left Oxford , has lasted and is based on real regard . presently , with an appetite sharpened by the American anthology , I suggested to him that it would be a good idea for me to make an anthology picked from the many poets he had published . he fell for this idea , and the result was eighty poems , beautifully produced at the Shakespeare head press . the book drew attention to the work which he had done , and a most interesting bunch of poets were represented . turning the pages now , I find that quite a number of poems still stand up with individuality and power , poems which I should pick again today . there was Wilfred Childe &apos;s recognition and the Gothic rose , which I put in another collection many years later , and still admire ; a happy conceit of Gerald Crowe , ad Sanctum Geraldum Pro Nautis Ejus : a short lyric , still-heart , and two longer poems by that little-known poet Frank Pearce Sturm , a friend of Yeats &apos;s . their inclusion provoked an interesting correspondence , and Sturm sent me a little ivory Chinese figure which I have today . Roy Campbell contributed a delightful monkey poem , Bongwi &apos;s theology . the three Sitwells , Dorothy Sayers , Edgell Rickword , Katharine Tynan , and Fredegond Shove were represented ; Susan Miles offered one of her village poems ; Morley Roberts appeared in an unfamiliar light ; my Oxford poet friends all figured , and there was a short lyric by Vincent Morris . in all , fifty-seven poets were represented . but the book &apos;s main importance for me was two friendships which it brought . among the poets published by Blackwell was Clifford Bax . I was deeply impressed by his traveller &apos;s tale , and wrote to tell him so . the result was an invitation to a meal , and at what was then De Maria &apos;s restaurant at the foot of Church Street , Kensington , began yet another friendship of the kind that absence or catastrophe has no power to disturb . Clifford &apos;s charm and breadth of worldly and other-worldly wisdom delighted and enthralled me . still very much the country bumpkin , for all my Oxford overlay , I admired the grace and assurance which wealth , travel , and experience had given him . his voice and smile emphasized the gentleness of his nature , and his Buddhist faith confirmed it ; yet there were delightful contradictions . on the cricket field , for instance , Clifford flung the mantle of contemplation aside and emerged as a man of unpredictable and decisive action . the only thing that was safe to predict about an innings of his was that the figure six would appear on the score sheet ; how often depended only upon how long he remained at the wicket . sometimes he was bearded , sometimes clean shaven , but this was his only variation . I never saw him ruffled , much less out of temper , and while he had a healthy appetite for gossip and was under no illusions about the characters of the people he met , I can not imagine him unkind in word or deed . Clifford was deeply interested in philosophy and religion , and had an open mind with regard to supernatural phenomena . he and his brother Arnold , to whom he presently introduced me , had been very strongly drawn into the Irish revival in the first years of the century . Arnold wrote under the name of Dermot O&apos;Byrne , and both brothers were friends of A E ; this friendship must have helped to acclimatize Clifford &apos;s mind to aspects of experience towards which he was by nature prone , but over which the social side of his life might otherwise have drawn a glittering curtain . it was characteristic of Clifford &apos;s generosity of spirit that he never made me feel uncultivated . I felt so naturally , and blurted out my feeling more than once , but he discounted it , showing me with a very pleasant realism that , if I were as bad as I felt , this , that , and the other person would not be able to endure my company . in sum , he was one of the people who helped me with my growing pains , and I shall always be grateful . another was Humbert Wolfe . I had met him for the first time when he came to speak to a College society , where he was received with especial honour as a Wadham man . he also was represented in the Blackwell anthology , and this brought about a less impersonal meeting . commenting on its ineptitude as a setting for him , I gave him dinner at the philistines &apos; club , where his long drooping lock , loose bow , and weary voice roused some astonishment . we were a party of four , and with the utmost courtesy he set himself to please us . he presently teased me because , when asked my opinion of certain people , I praised their kindness . you seem to set particular store by this quality , Strong . who has kicked you ? how did you acquire this abject attitude ? I protested that it was not abject , and he conceded that instead it might be the romantic faith of a provincial . he himself was inclined to suspect kindness as a self-interested wish to please . he was , as I was later to discover , extraordinarily kind , but hated either to acknowledge or have it acknowledged . at any rate , he kept to the end his accusation of romantic faith against me . many years later , he had to introduce Richard Church and me as successive speakers at a dinner . of Richard , he said , here now is Richard Church , who has kept all his illusions ; and , when my turn came , here is Leonard Strong , who has no illusions , but many delusions . Richard Church I met through the American anthology . he was at this time a civil servant , much junior to Humbert , who used to mock him affectionately when they ran into each other in Whitehall . under a shy and slightly myopic exterior Richard hid a needle-like observation and a lightning wit . at his sharpest , he rivalled Humbert , and that is saying a lot . his temperament has always been warm and generous , and , particularly in these early days , it would lead him into enthusiasms which sometimes brought him to the verge of absurdity , where he was saved by his sharp wit . all his friends pulled his leg about these enthusiasms , and Richard , sensitive to the affection which prompted them , would beam and blush ; but the glint in the eyes behind the glasses would be steely sharp , as he mischievously looked for a chance to hit back . never strong physically , he was in these days working far too hard , with the office all day , and his own writing , and a great deal of reviewing . he and I got on well together from the start , but I do not think either suspected how much we were to be together in the future , and how often we would turn one to the other for comfort and advice . 5 . my hunger for music , ignorant though I was , led me into several friendships I must otherwise have missed . the sturdy John Ellis had taken himself off , and gone to work on the railways at a job which he kept until he died , of a congenital heart complaint , while still in his early forties . he helped me more than I can say , and in many ways . above everything I owe him the return to comparative sanity and balance after the disturbances caused by those soir&amp;eacute;es with Schiller and Co . all my life I have been lucky in meeting the right person at the time of need ; and in no instance was this truer than with John Ellis . apart from this enormous service , he laid the foundations of my musical education , both by his example and by his comments on the gramophone records I would nai&quot;vely play him : unerringly selecting what was good , however unpromising its setting - the anonymous violin in a trio on an eighteenpenny record , the little-known baritone singing a song by a composer I had never heard of - and screaming in falsetto derision at performances by artists far better known , or merely vulgar . Ellis &apos;s work was too sporadic to win the title of composer , though he set a number of poems to music , and sometimes invited me to write new words in place of the verses he had used . this I found I could do with little trouble , having sung enough to have a sense of word values and the possible duration of the various vowels . the next musician whom I got to know well was a much younger man whom I have already mentioned , Sidney Lewis . he had a long , equine head and a jerky manner which was the product of an urgent inner life and of energies too great for his thin asthenic frame . Sidney lived in a blaze of activity , mental and psychic . his dream life had sometimes a tragic intensity . I would not say that he had second sight as Romer Wilson had , but rather that some of his perceptions were dissociated in such a way as to give him uncomfortable , angular glimpses of eternity ; glimpses which sometimes comforted but more often threw him into an agitation of all his powers . like many gifted people who have grown up in places where there is hardly anyone for them to rub their wits against , Sidney was a strange mixture of fantasy and practical horse sense . his shrewdness was alarming . he could drive a perception like a steel nail into the most imposing fa&amp;ccedil;ade or the most complex situation . he had a great power of enjoyment , and would go into convulsions of laughter so violent that they could embarrass those who were with him in public places . he had beyond a doubt a touch of genius , but of the kind which is not destined to blossom in this world . 6 . Sidney had a number of older friends who had immediately discerned his quality and treated him as if he were of their own age . one of these was a Hindu who had come to Oxford to study western philosophy . he was of short , stocky , powerful build , with fiercely curling black hair and eyes which immediately apprehended the essential things around him . his name was Basanta Kumar Mallik . the force of his mind and personality had made him many friends at Oxford , and it is possible that I should have met him through Robert Graves , or a Balliol man of great ability named Harries , if I had not been introduced to him by Sidney . Sidney however was the link , and this was important , since it was through Sidney &apos;s elder sister Winifred that I later resumed the friendship interrupted by Mallik &apos;s return to India and a gap of thirty years . Mallik &apos;s philosophy was at this stage impenetrable to me , but I could appreciate some of its practical conclusions . he was a very lively companion , and among other things a superb maker of curries , a gift which much endeared him to me . I liked his curries all the better because they were not too hot : he explained that the very hot kind were more for the taste of retired colonels and Indian civil servants than for the Indian connoisseur . few things pleased him more than to be turned loose by a hostess with instructions to make curry for her and her guests , but the joys of the meal would often be followed by a rueful inventory of the larder , for Mallik would put in everything he could lay hands on , including items which ninety-nine English people out of a hundred would have thought immune . 