If you wish to read arguably the very best novel of World War I, then look no further than Frederic Manning (1882-1935) and the two versions of his magnum opus.
Born in Australia, writer Frederic Manning moved to England as a young man, firstly in 1898. He moved in literary and artistic circles and wrote his first two books with classical allusions, “The Vigil of Brunhild” (1906) and “Scenes and Portraits” (1909). He enlisted during 1915 into the Shropshire Light Infantry, serving in France during 1916 as ‘Private 19022’ and it was here that he found material for the background to his classic novel which has given him enduring fame. Originally published anonymously by Peter Davies in 1929 under the imprint of Piazza Press, as two handsome volumes, “Middle Parts of Fortune”, this is a numbered edition of only 520 copies. It was then published in a trade edition by Peter Davies in a bowdlerized, single volume version, “Her Privates We” in 1930. The titles of both being derived from the quotation from Shakespeare. The work was praised by such notable figures as Ernest Hemingway and T. E. Lawrence who said of it: “No praise could be too sheer for this book…So loving, exact, delightful, inwardly and outwardly true, so generous, politically and morally and militarily…how admirable are its restraint, and humour, and vividness, the lovely weather, the lights and darknesses – there are too many sides to the book for it ever to be forgotten… anyone would be proud to have written it. It justifies every heat of praise. Its virtues will be recognised more and more as time goes on.”
The two volume “Middle Parts of Fortune” is indeed a handsome set, a delight to hold in the hand, modestly bound in cloth with marbled endpapers and a two-colour title page. A copy of this edition was in TE’s Clouds Hill Library and is listed in the catalogue printed in “T.E. Lawrence by his Friends” (1937). Featured here is a presentation copy to Lorna Priscilla, Lady Trench-Gascoigne (nee Leatham) with a delightful inscription from Manning adding his regimental number and the words mentem mortalia tangent from Virgil’s Aeneid.
This title and the slightly later “Her Privates We” were published anonymously just giving this regimental number, Private 19022, as a clue to authorship.
Lorna Priscilla Leatham had served as a VAD on the Western Front in WWI and it was there that possibly they may have first met, although there were other links, including one via Manning’s mentor Arthur Galton. Whatever the link here it is a fascinating association copy.
T.E. Lawrence was to contact the publisher Peter Davies by telephone having identified the author from his reading of “Scenes and Portraits” and the style of the writing in both works, as well as being provided with a clue by J.G. Wilson of Bumpus. Davies made a now elusive, promotional brochure of the content of the telephone conversation and the book subsequently enjoyed great critical and commercial success. Peter Davies issued “Her Privates We” in a striking, if macabre binding, oatmeal cloth with a skeleton looking over the shoulder of a private soldier. Both this and a later edition of “Scenes and Portraits” were issued by Peter Davies in what are now exceedingly scarce, fragile glassine wrappers with printed paper turn-ins.
So here we have a series of books linking a number of interesting personalities, It was in February of 1935 that TE retired from the RAF and left Bridlington on a bicycle intending to visit Manning with whom he had become friends, who was living at Bourne in Lincolnshire. However, Manning had died of a respiratory disease on the 22nd February. Writing to Peter Davies, TE states; “On Tuesday I took my discharge from the R.A.F. and started southward by road, meaning to call at Bourne and see Manning: but today I turned eastward, instead, hearing that he was dead,” TE himself was to die in a motorcycle accident in May of the same year. The publisher, Peter Llewelyn Davies (1897-1960), had been identified by J.M. Barrie as the source for the famous character, Peter Pan in his 1904 play, providing him with an unlooked for immortality which he grew to dislike. He survived until 1960 when he was to throw himself under a tube train at Sloane Square Station.
So, the characters in our tale have all now departed the stage, however they leave behind these bright mementos of their presence, illuminating a time and providing both tactile and telling signs of their continued presence in our world.
