The relationship between T.E. Lawrence (Shaw) with John G. Wilson (1876-1963) of Bumpus & Bumpus Ltd, then of 350 Oxford Street, whom Sir Basil Blackwell, in his DNB entry on Wilson, describes him as ‘the most famous English [sic] bookseller of his time’, is of course well known and documented. The slight irony in Blackwell’s account is that Wilson was born in Glasgow! Wilson assisted in raising subscriptions for the elusive 1926 “Subscribers” edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, indeed the order for a copy for King George V was placed via Bumpus (although TE subsequently refused to accept any payment for it) and following TE’s death in 1935, Wilson had a hand in the disposal of his library from Clouds Hill. But it should be stated that neither Bumpus nor Wilson were in any way an “official” subscription agent for the Seven Pillars volume.
As well as his many other attributes and enthusiasms TE was an avid bibliophile and much less discussed is his relationship with booksellers other than Bumpus. This note focuses on one such, that with the London bookseller James Bain. The business was first established in 1816 at the rather prestigious address of Kings Mews Gate, moving in the 1820s to larger premises at No 1 Haymarket, and in 1901 they moved again to 14 Charles Street.
By 1919 when we know TE visited the business it had moved yet again, this time to a shop at 14 King William Street. Throughout its various incarnations it remained within a close geographical proximity.
In 1940 Macmillan published Bain, A bookseller looks back. In the book J.S. Bain recalls “On August 13th 1919, a slightly-built man of very youthful appearance came in and asked to look at a copy of the folio edition of the Ashendene Press Dante, which happened to be in the window. Hearing that its price was fifty pounds he promptly bought it and gave his name T.E. Lawrence. This was the first transaction with “Lawrence of Arabia” and marked the beginning of an association which developed along the most friendly lines and lasted throughout his life”.
Bain relates that he was only “allowed” to buy a single copy of the 1926 Seven Pillars and noted their rapid increase in monetary value when only a few weeks after its distribution he had to pay £150 for a subsequent copy, the original subscription price being thirty guineas. An interesting aside, is that William de Coverley, who worked for Bain for many years eventually becoming a director, was a son of Roger de Coverley one of the bookbinders selected by TE to bind a number of copies of the 1926 Seven Pillars.
The author Horace Walpole wrote a Foreword for Bain, A bookseller looks back and has a splendid reminiscence regarding TE;
It was in the left-hand corner near the door that I once had a never-to-be-forgotten conversation with T.E. Lawrence, robed like a shadow in airman’s uniform.
This was one of a host of famous names that Walpole recalled meeting in Bain’s bookshop, surely reflecting the role of all good bookshops, the bringing together of diverse people.
There also survives a hand-written letter from TE, signed TE Shaw, to “Mr Bain” ordering some five books. The letter written from RAF Cattewater and dated 21.V.29 requests copies of David Garnett’s Lady into Fox, C.E. Montague’s Fiery Particles and Theodore Powys’s Mr Weston’s Good Wine, these obviously being reading copies as they are in the relatively inexpensive Pheonix Library editions. He also requests Memoirs of a Slave Trader by Theodore Canot, just published in 1929 and asks that Bain seeks out a first edition of War Birds for the illustrations.
Of these books, the first four are not listed as amongst the Clouds Hill books (see my earlier note) and may have been purchased as copies to lend out to other airmen, however Bain appears to have been successful in obtaining a War Birds published by Hamilton as this is included in the Clouds Hill library listed in Friends.
There is a first edition of David Garnett’s Lady into Fox in the Clouds Hill listing, David Garnett was the son of Edward Garnett, Jonathan Cape’s reader who was a friend and advised TE on his writings. David too became a friend and letters of his to TE survive commenting on Seven Pillars and The Mint. Lady into Fox was a bestseller in the 1920s winning the Hawthornden Prize and going on to many editions, still being in print to the present time.
It will be recalled that TE was posted to Cattewater or Mount Batten as it became, upon his return from India in 1929. It was to be a period that he recalled as a “Golden Reign” and was to set him upon perhaps the most satisfying part of his life, the assistance in developing the high-speed boats for use by the R.A.F.
So here we have an intriguing glimpse into the bibliographical side of the life of TE reflecting as it does an attractive and interesting side of his character that resonates down the ages.
