Books: Puckish Proust

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Marsh felt especially flat in the presence of the unrelated Lawrences, D. H. and T. E., with both of whom he corresponded. His closest literary friendship was with Poet Rupert Brooke, with whom he exchanged many long, often rather silly letters.

The War made Marsh a bitter-ender. With Churchill he went on a heroic reconnaissance of the front where he was "rather surprised at not feeling the least frightened." He talked tanks with experts, swapped barrack-room tales too rancid to print "even in French." With the War over, many of his friends killed, Marsh took to collecting pictures, editing his serial anthology, Georgian Poetry. It sold 73,000 copies. Seven years Marsh spent making the only complete English translation of La Fontaine's Fables.

Like the witty, glittery, fragile society it reports, after 300 pages A Number of People begins to peter out in trivia and spotty reminiscences. When Marsh retired in 1937, George VI made him Sir Edward Marsh. So tickled was the new knight, he forgot to go to his own knighting, had to be phoned for. At a luncheon soon after Lady Leslie asked him what difference he found being a knight made. "I said I hoped it had given me more presence." "More presents?" exclaimed astonished Lady Ribblesdale, "What a very sordid point of view!"