Category: Fine Press

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 22^nd 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.

TE. Lawrence had from an early age a great love of books and he read, wrote and collected them throughout his life. In August of 1910 he had written to his mother;

Why cannot one make one’s books live except in the night, after hours of straining? And you know they have to be your own books too, and you have to read them more than once. I think they take on something of your personality, and your environment also – you know a second hand book sometimes is so much more flesh and blood than a new one – and it is almost terrible to think that your ideas, yourself in your books, may be giving life to generations of readers after you are forgotten.

Surely a “holy grail” for all T.E. Lawrence collectors and scholars is a book of TE’s that was in the cottage at Clouds Hill in 1935 at the time of his death.

These were catalogued for inclusion in “T.E. Lawrence by his Friends” in 1937, this is a comprehensive listing covering nearly all of the volumes. According to a letter from A.W. Lawrence, the catalogue was apparently undertaken by “2 professional librarians” and is complete except for a “second copy of Baring’s Per ardua left out by accident” and “A copy of  the SP 1926 edition moved for safety and not returned”.  Although, according to a unique copy of “Friends” annotated in pencil by A.W. there were seven other omissions, clearly noted in this particular volume, now in a private collection.

Following TE’s death the library was catalogued and photographed.  In the wonderfully clear original photographs that result, it is just possible, sometimes, to read an actual title sitting on the shelves. Without the presence of the books Clouds Hill was to appear rather barren and plain. A situation remedied to some extent by a display by Wing Commander Reggie Sims, a display itself now gone.

It was mainly due to the prevailing conditions at the cottage and concerns for security that the books were dispersed. Those that were sold through J.G. Wilson, proprietor of London booksellers J. & E. Bumpus Ltd, had a, now familiar, bookplate attached, although AW retained some few volumes and these do not contain the bookplate and were later sold by AW mainly when he left his Yorkshire home in the 1980s, on occasions these appear in commerce.

The bookplates themselves can cause confusion and as we detailed in another of our notes there are fake bookplates around so caveat emptor.

So, here is a genuine volume from the library at Clouds Hill. It is a biography; Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, by E.M. Forster, published by Edward Arnold & Co in 1934. It bears the correct bookplate and has added interest in a number of respects.

Firstly it is by a great literary friend of TE’s, Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970), the renowned scholar and novelist. In addition we have a record of TE’s thoughts and feelings upon reading this very book, related in a letter to Forster dated 24. v. 34 from his lodgings at 13 Birmingham Street, Southampton:

Dear E.M.F., It is Thursday night, and I have just finished your life of G.L.D., upon which I have been  quietly happy for many evenings. In the daytime I run boats up and down the Solent (and shall do, for another month) and in the evening I try always to read a little.

Your book has been quite precious. The restraint, the beautiful tidiness of it, the subtlety, and its commonsense… your glorification of quiet and care for the average man…all these points lift it far above ordinary biography. It must have been hard to do, but seldom can an artist have so surely and confidently achieved his aim. The very care to avoid the unattainable is wisdom. Full marks to you. I wish I had known G.L.D.

I found pleasure in your wit widespread over the pages. The sentence ‘she forgave him’ is almost your best: not so quotable as the smoking-room chairs, but of greater style. I looked back at it three or four times as I read further, just for the pleasure of its finality.

Your quotations, where you quote so often, are quite beautifully inlaid into the texture. It is a very self-sacrificing book too. Very very good.

I am late telling you so: but I was away in Wolverhampton when I got the book, and my leisure for reading is now so small. March next, and I leave the R.A.F. for a boundless prospect of leisure at Clouds Hill. Let us try to meet then, Yours T.E.S.

We perhaps, hear a rather weary TE, busily involved in testing the five R.A.F. armoured target boats at Southampton The letter, (printed in David Garnett’s “Letters of T.E. Lawrence”, 1938 and in Jeremy and Nicole Wilson’s, “T.E. Lawrence Correspondence with E.M. Forster and F. L. Lucas”, 2010), takes us from his room at Southampton to Wolverhampton, where he had visited Henry Meadows Ltd the builders of the boat engines, each target boat having three. Then finally returning to Clouds Hill where his other books were now gathered together, patiently awaiting his return after lodging in a number of locations over the years. Regrettably, a return that was not to be ‘boundless’ but for all too short a time.  Perhaps not too surprising in a busy life he very slightly mis-quotes Forster, “she forgave him” actually reads, “she forgives him” p.161.

He wrote at least two other letters on the 24^th May, one to Clare Sydney Smith of “The Golden Reign” period, now posted to Singapore and one to an RAF officer G.W.M. Dunn planning work for the following week.

Reading “T.E. Lawrence Boats for the R.A.F” published by Castle Hill Press in 2012 reveals the busy and in many ways satisfying time that TE was experiencing as he assisted in preparing the armoured target boats. A period of work that was very important to him and provided much satisfaction, often underestimated by some of his biographers.

So here is a fascinating association copy, providing a book that nestled at Clouds Hill, with the additional bonus of offering a glimpse into a brief period of TE’s life and thoughts.

The bookseller, publisher and writer, David Garnett (1892-1981), was the son of the eminent literary reader Edward Garnett and his wife Constance, herself an renowned translator of Russian novels. David had been joint owner of the bookshop at 19 Taviton Street, London, Birrell & Garnett since 1919, the other significant related event was his becoming a director of the Nonesuch Press when it was founded in the basement of the bookshop in 1923.

He was indeed himself a prolific writer, perhaps best known for his metamorphic fantasy, award winning novel, Lady into Fox (1922), the tale of a man whose wife is suddenly transformed into a fox. It was published to great acclaim, winning the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. This was not however his first novel, the elusive Dope Darling  published in 1919 might be described as an “early” work (if anyone out there has a copy, I would love to see it or even purchase it)

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In the more serious vein of writing, his third and follow up novel, A Man in the Zoo (1924), concerned a man who is accepted by the London Zoo to be exhibited as an example of Homo sapiens. His later novels were perhaps not so successful, although each an excellent read. In particular I would point out The Grasshoppers Come (1930) a novel of flight. Of which T E Lawrence, to whom the author had presented a copy, wrote of it to Garnett;

The book pleased me quite beyond what I had thought possible. It is the first account of real flying by a real writer who can really fly: and it gave me a very great sense of long distance,  and of that incommunicable cradle-dandling which is a cockpit in flight.

This novel was influenced by David’s learning to fly an aeroplane and later writing his reflections on this experience, Rabbit in the Air (1931), itself a splendid and evocative read of a time gone by. The title reflecting his nickname Bunny, used by his friends, said to have carried over from childhood when he had a rabbit-skin cap.

In the three volumes of memoirs, The Golden Echo (1953), The Flowers of the Forest (1955) and The Familiar Faces (1962) he recalls his time close to the Bloomsbury Group, was a lover of Duncan Grant, married Rachel (Ray) Marshall and after her death Angelica the daughter of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell.

One of David’s most enduring works (see one of our earlier blogs) was The Letters of T.E. Lawrence (1938) that remains a highly significant contribution of our understanding of TE and is a fine example of David’s editing skills.

He was therefore eminently qualified to write a note on bookselling and the book-trade when requested to do so by the American publisher Alfred A. Knopf. It is possible that Garnett never intended this to be published as a separate booklet, but Knopf, thought it,  so graceful and sincere a tribute to the entire book-trade and more especially to the bookseller, that he published anyway. The original edition published in 1929 in an edition of just 2000 copies, in attractive variant bindings, to be given “hors commerce” and to Garnett’s friends. A whimsical piece of reflection of the pain and pleasure of being involved in the book-trade a snippet provides a flavour of the whole; The bookseller is the kindest-hearted man alive and extraordinarily long-suffering. He works hard for small returns, he usually spends half his time in giving free advice to everyone in his town, he does all the hard work of the book trade. A handsome edition was much later published at The Fleece Press in 1985 with an Introduction by David’s son Richard, himself being a publisher and including a wood-engraving of a bookshop interior by Howard Phipps.

To gain an insight into the thinking and reading of the extended Garnett family one can do little better than study the endlessly fascinating catalogue of David’s library as it was following his death in 1981 and shortly before its lamentable dispersal. It has been described as a tour of most of the high spots of British literature between 1900 and 1950 and it most certainly was. The printed catalogue compiled by the late Michael Hosking of The Golden Hind Bookshop is a veritable treasure trove and a source of inestimable study and envy.

These books all tell of an intriguing and complex life, of an age now gone by and of an immeasurably fascinating range of personalities.