'Looking at a Fuchsia Drenched with Rain'

English literature, more than most, overflows with modest, idiosyncratic talents. This may be related to England’s tolerance for eccentricity. The phrase I’m trying to avoid is “minor writer,” not a useful category. Rather, who pleases us and who does not? Who writes well and who does not? Is Max Beerbohm “minor”? Not when he consistently makes me envious. Is James Agate? Not when he writes in The Later Ego (Crown, 1951): “Then Tschaikowsky [sic] No. 5. Drenched with self-pity. But I like listening to it just as I like looking at a fuchsia drenched with rain.” Nor, on many occasions, are Thomas Culpepper, William Cobbett, Pierce Egan, Sydney Smith, Walter Bagehot and Cyril Connolly. Nor is George Stuart Gordon, whose Companionable Books (1927) I recently wrote about. The friend who sent me the link to Gordon’s book wrote to me on Monday about Gordon’s “companions”:

“These books all have something in common. They are all happy books, written by happy people about happy things. Gordon must have been a very nice guy. Would have been nice to have taken a course from him.”

My friend, who is Jewish, adds about Saturday’s post:

“Don’t be too hard on Lamb for his Jewish problem. Joseph Epstein taught me how to overlook this and while not disregarding or excusing it, he understands the milieu and can forgive (a very Christian trait) an extraordinary writer.

“I can think of only one book written by a Christian from the nineteenth century back that is philo-Semitic, unless, maybe St. Augustine. Montaigne and Cervantes have Jewish ancestry and so they are excluded. Pascal is an interesting guy.”

Indeed, and so is George Eliot, who is unquestionably philo-Semitic, especially in her final novel, Daniel Deronda.