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Book News

“Gloucestershire” friends, keeping warm in their jackets!

Again, we are touching on associations and the connections that make for such bibliographical delights.  Here between poets during the early years of the twentieth century, who had a love of the countryside and in some cases Gloucestershire countryside in particular.

All the books featured here are elusive, but particularly so in their precious and fragile dust-jackets. The authors, all near contemporaries, knew or knew of each other. Ivor Gurney (1890-1937), John “Jack” Haines and J. W Harvey (1888-1957) were great friends and the latter two local solicitors. They all admired the prose and poetry of Edward Thomas (1878-1917), as did John Freeman (1880-1929), another poet who was a friend of Haines.

Let us start with Ivor Gurney, born and raised in Gloucester, he was poet and composer, particularly of melodic songs. He fought in the First World War, survived the conflict, but spent a tragic life confined to mental hospitals. Featured here is his second volume of poems War’s Embers, published in 1919 by Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd. His first book of poems had been Severn and Somme published in 1917.

His two great Gloucestershire friends were J.W. Harvey and John Haines. We have here a copy of Harvey’s Gloucestershire Friends, poems from a German Prison Camp, published by Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd in 1917, containing poems sent from the camp. Also featured is Haines’ Poems published by Selwyn & Blount Ltd in 1921. Both copies coming down to us in the fragile and now elusive jackets.

Edward Thomas, perhaps the best known of these poets and an author of prose, was to write In Pursuit of Spring, published by Thomas Nelson in 1914, a splendid evocation of the season and his observations on a journey from London travelling through the counties to the West, accompanied by a friend and a bicycle. It is redolent with poetic overtones that were to lead American poet Robert Frost to see the true poet in Thomas and for Frost to encourage the writing of the splendid countryside poems that are his legacy. Here is a copy of the first edition, with that elusive jacket and the illustrations by Ernest Haslehurst. He also carried a camera and a far later edition of 2016 published by Little Toller Books contains a selection of his photographs taken on the journey, now preserved at Cardiff University.

Ivor Gurney, whilst admiring Thomas and his poems, setting a number of them to music, was never to meet him, Thomas being killed in 1917 on the Western Front. However, Thomas’ wife Helen was memorably to visit Gurney in hospital and was to delight him with Thomas’ maps of Gloucestershire which he pored over following the countryside walks of Edward Thomas over a landscape that he would never walk or even see again.

In 1919 Haines was to write an informative and revealing memoir of Edward Thomas contained within In Memoriam, Edward Thomas, his essay entitled Edward Thomas as I Knew Him, in which he relates first meeting Thomas in 1914 at Lascelles Abercrombie’s cottage, then occupied by the American poet, Robert Frost.

John Freeman first published poetry in 1914 and won the Hawthornden Prize in 1920 with Poems 1909-1920. Following it up in 1921 with Music Lyrical and Narrative Poems. His poem Last Hours was set to music by Ivor Gurney. It was in the 1920s that Freeman, a friend of Haines was to write a postscript on the reverse of an envelope containing a letter from Freeman to Haines, seeking a meeting with Ivor Gurney when he was then in the mental hospital. There is no evidence, that I have found, that the meeting ever took place.

So here is a host of connections all much in evidence in these volumes, mingling poetic thoughts and words. These volumes, with their interlinked connections, with or without jackets, and in whatever edition, will be sure to warm any chilly evening whilst the reader dips into them.

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Book News

CONNECTIONS

One of the aspects that makes certain books so desirable is their connections. Here is a small selection of volumes linking David Garnett with a few of his friends, a brief window on his life and those around him. These connections are various, but all fascinating, with larger stories lying behind the sometimes brief inscriptions, bringing us just a little closer to the characters mentioned.

We have referred to David Garnett (1892-1981) previously on these pages, he was the son of the publisher’s reader and literary critic Edward Garnett (1868-1937) his mother being translator Constance Garnett (1862-1946). David was a notable author, sometime bookseller and director of the Nonesuch Press. Perhaps his best remembered book is “Lady into Fox” of 1923, this being his second published work following the pseudonymous “Dope Darling” of 1919. Although he later wrote “Aspects of Love” in 1956 that was made into a musical by Andrew Lloyd-Webber and had a more recent revival due to this. He also edited a seminal edition of the “The Letters of T.E. Lawrence”, published in 1938 just three years after T.E.’s death. This remains an invaluable resource for all students of TE. Garnett was an endlessly fascinating and well connected character in his own right.

The earliest of our featured books is David Garnett’s third, “Man in the Zoo” of 1924, this particular copy is presented to David Garnett’s great friend Stephen “Tommy” Tomlin (1901-1937), a now well-regarded artist and with David a founder member of the Cranium Dining Club and connected with the so-called Bloomsbury Group. 

The next volume is David’s fourth book “The Sailor’s Return” of 1926 and here is a very personal dedication to a family friend Cecily Hey, nee Tatlock. Cecily was present at the marriage of David to Rachel “Ray” Marshall and indeed cared for Ray in her final illness at Hilton Hall. Ray illustrated with wood-engravings a number of David’s volumes. To further the connections Ray had a brief fling with Garrow Tomlin, Stephen Tomlin’s brother. The inscription by Cecily refers us to a further character, a friend of David, Aldous Huxley, being given the nickname “Antic Hey” after the 1923 Huxley comic novel “Antic Hay”.

Our third volume is “The Grasshoppers Come” of 1931, David’s ninth book in print, here presented and so inscribed to T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) who needs no further introduction, with his own connections to so many literary figures. TE was to write of “The Grasshoppers Come”: “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 volume is listed, with the inscription, in the catalogue of the Clouds Hill library, printed in “T.E. Lawrence by His Friends” published in 1937, however it does not contain the Clouds Hill bookplate, placed in the books when they were sold, so may one of the volumes retained by A.W. Lawrence.

Our final, but by no means least featured volume is the second of David’s autobiographical works “The Flowers of the Forest” of 1955. It is presented, “with love” to David’s lifelong friend, the artist Duncan Grant (1885-1978). “Bunny” was David’s pet name, apparently dating back to a time when, as a young child he had a rabbit skin cap. This is a volume in which Grant features a good deal. Grant was the sometime lover of David, had a daughter Angelica (1918-2012) with Vanessa Bell. Angelica was later to marry David Garnett as his second wife. On Angelica’s birth, David was to write to Lytton Strachey on the subject of the new baby: “Its beauty is the most remarkable thing about it. I think of marrying it: when she is twenty I shall be 46 – will it be scandalous.” Well marry her he did in 1942, when she was 24, following Ray’s death in 1940. Of her real father, Angelica was to write: “(Grant) was a homosexual with bisexual leanings”. It was not until 1937, when eighteen, that Angelica believed her biological father was Clive Bell, Vanessa’s husband, rather than Grant, although the reality was apparently an open secret within the Bloomsbury Group. Connections hardly become more complex than these!

So here is a small number of volumes intimately linking a number of interesting connected people. They are a tactile, tangible, intimate object projecting us into the past, a memory in paper.

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Book News

A Brough Superior cavalcade.

Many of us may delight in the Brough Superior motorcycles, but not everyone can afford the exotic prices that they can reach in today’s market.  However, there is nothing to prevent us from reading about them and having a vicarious pleasure in their might and majesty.

It was George Brough, motorcyclist, manufacturer and publicist, who created the eponymous Brough Superior.

His father, W.E. Brough had become a motorcycle manufacturer at Vernon Road, Basford in Nottingham in 1902, first producing a single cylinder machine and later developing a flat-twin engined bike, these machines were called simply “Brough”. So it was that our GB had motorcycles and motorcycling in his blood from a very early age.

GB established the small Haydn Road factory being opened by 1920, production moved there and the rest, as they say, is history, until WWII put paid to motorcycle (and car) production.

It is reported that his father was rather perturbed when the name “Brough Superior”, was conjured up over a pint in a local public house, the name actually suggested, it is said, by one, Bob Blay.  W.E. Brough was understandably none too pleased, “I suppose this makes mine the Brough Inferior” he is quoted to have remarked. In fact the ongoing relationship would appear to have been good, W.E. continued production of the horizontal twin until around 1925 and upon his death in 1934 GB took over the original Vernon Road works.

It is well known and recorded that T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) loved motorcycles and motorcycling, “the greatest pleasure of my recent life has been speed on the road”, expressing the joie de vivre that he felt in speed and fine machinery.

TE owned seven Brough Superiors, naming them George I to VII after the eponymous maker George Brough or a generic name of “Boanerges”, this being the biblical name of the Apostles James and John, the “Sons of Thunder”. This possibly a reference to the deep-throated exhaust note of the V-twin engine of these machines, although interestingly it is a name used by the Arabs for some of their fleet thoroughbred horses. An eighth was on order at the time of his death in 1935.

There is a wealth of ephemera and books relating to these machines and we have included a selection here for you to enjoy.

So sit back and take your pick.

Where it all began, William Edward Brough, by David Clark.
Lambert & Butler cigarette card
Cycle World magazine 1987

The legacy though endures in this fine literary output. For George Brough, his gift to us, is perhaps, more tangible, if transient, the enthusiasts maintain his surviving fabulous iron steeds, reviving them, so the Brough “bellow” can still stir the heart and their appearance delight the eye. The few photographs which have been passed down to us, capture, in a single brief moment, frozen in time as it were, like insects in amber, those occasions when TE enjoyed his motorcycling, “the greatest pleasure of my recent life”.

Though we all have our favourite marques and models, for me a Scott Flying Squirrel.

Flying!!!
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Antiquarian Book News Fine Press T. E. Lawrence

Seven Pillars of Wisdom, A Triumph

“Subscribers’ ” or “Cranwell “ edition of 1926

One of 32 “Incomplete” copies signed and dated by T.E. Lawrence (Shaw).

Laid in “Some Notes on on the Writing of Seven Pillars of Wisdom” 1927 O’Brien A039 (c.200 copies distributed to Subscribers)

This is a copy of one of the 32 “Incomplete” copies given by TE to “people mentioned in the book, or people who had been officially or personally useful to the Arab Revolt” (O’Brien A040). This makes these 32 copies of particular significance. These copies are textually complete only lacking a number of the plates bound at the rear of all the volumes. There were 170 “complete” copies for subscribers and 32 bound as here in half leather by De Coverley that were signed as incomplete.

Altogether an attractive and fine copy, housed in a custom-made half morocco solander box that echoes the binding of the volume, made by award-winning binder Stephen Conway.

Printing History

The text and publication have a complex history and have been well documented. It can be summarised here:

Seven Pillars was commenced in January of 1919, and the completed parts of the manuscript being reputedly “lost” on Reading Station in November of that year. He then re-wrote the text under some strain to his mental state, reliving the harrowing experiences of his desert campaign, “I nearly went off my head in London this spring, heaving at that beastly book of mine”. In 1922 TE had eight copies set in 6pt linotype by newspaper compositors and printed at the Oxford Times, in double column and some 287 sheets, hence the term Oxford edition. These copies of this lengthy work, some one third longer than the later published text of 1926 and 1935, were printed on a newspaper proofing press. He then distributed copies to key friends for comment.

There then followed the editing of the text and the plan to produce the sumptuous limited edition issued to subscribers. The publishing and printing of the 1926 edition in a private edition was a long drawn out and complex process. Robin Buxton formerly of the Imperial Camel Corps and now a manager of the Liverpool & Martins Bank, assisted with the financing of the project. At a meeting with Lawrence, David G. Hogarth of the Ashmolean, Lionel Curtis of All Souls, Oxford and Alan Dawnay (another wartime colleague) were present, a scheme was agreed upon whereby 120 copies could be printed, with all of the planned illustrations, for sale at 30 guineas per copy. The Eric Kennington pastels were being printed by Whittingham & Griggs at the then enormous price of around ten shillings per print.

There is interesting correspondence between Lawrence and Buxton that throws light upon the financing of the volume. It was Eric Kennington who put Lawrence in contact with an American, Manning Pike, who was a newly qualified printer, to undertake the printing, he was later joined by an experienced pressman, Herbert Hodgson. To assist in financing the scheme Lawrence offered the publication of an abridgement, Revolt in the Desert to the publisher Jonathan Cape. This was a straightforward abridgement completed in a brief period whilst Lawrence was at Cranwell, published in 1927. It was to run to five editions before being withdrawn.

The final cost of the Subscribers’ edition totalled a staggering £13,000 equating to a cost of around £76 for each complete copy, or just over £100 for each subscribed copy. In fact 211 copies were printed, 170 complete and 32 incomplete and 9 sets of proof sheets “more or less defective”.

Lawrence decided upon binding the volumes in an individual manner and sent sheets to a number of top quality binders, these included, Mcleish, De Coverley, Best & Co, Sangorski & Sutcliffe, Notary Binders as well as a number of others.

Kennington endpapers

As the volume was completed in late 1926 and copies initialled and dated XII/26, with the final touches in place and just a few copies despatched, Lawrence arranged to be posted to India at the turn of the year leaving Manning Pike to send out the remainder of the large tomes.

Signed “TES”.

So, here is one of the great books of the twentieth century, that really needs to be seen and handled to be fully appreciated.

Although even TE like Homer occasionally nods. In a letter to John Buchan dated 1 XII 26 sending a copy for the Prime Minster, Stanley Baldwin, he states the volume will “have no future” whilst acknowledging that it is a “rarity”!

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Book News Fine Press First Editions T. E. Lawrence

“Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours? -Faith, her privates we.” – Hamlet, Shakespeare

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.

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Book News Rickaro Books T. E. Lawrence

Return to sender!

There is little that brings us closer to a person and their character than a personal letter, displaying a characteristic hand and turn of phrase. This can be true of anyone we may know or be interested in and the pieces of paper may become treasured items.

T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935) wrote a great many letters to a wide variety of people, both ordinary and famous. We have previously considered the published collections of his correspondence, from the early David Garnett volume through to the forensic editions from the Castle Hill Press. A study of these letters can provide invaluable insight into the thoughts, character and activities of TE and are vital for anyone studying the life and times of this enigmatic historical figure.

It is a truth of anyone that their correspondence provides a window, as it were, to their innermost character. This is certainly true of TE and despite the many published volumes, very many letters remain unpublished and these provide further insight to the man behind the ‘legend’. As a bonus the seeking out of these letters can provide a frisson of pleasure in the search for new and original material.

The physical letters themselves are remarkable artefacts, redolent of their time, sometimes with the very envelopes in which they were posted and the ink occasionally remaining almost fresh on the page. Like first editions, autograph letters are a means of getting close to a person, almost, if of course not quite, being able to reach out and touch them.

“(incomplete copies have no future in the second-hand market)”

This tantalizing, brief extract is contained in a fascinating letter to the author and politician John Buchan of ’The 39 Steps’ fame and is dated 1.XII.26, that magical date written in TE’s hand in each and every one of the “complete” and “incomplete” copies of the 1926 “Seven Pillars”. This note was in fact written just upon completion of the 1926 edition and prior to his embarkation to India. Amongst other comments the letter refers to the gift for the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, of one of the extremely rare “incomplete” 1926 “Seven Pillars” of which there were only 39 copies. As a financial forecaster of the future TE has not proved very reliable, as an “incomplete” copy has recently sold for just in excess of £35,000. It must be recalled that the only “incomplete” thing about these copies is the omission of a few of the plates. He also goes on to relate: “This is one of those which I am giving to the fellows who did the Arab Revolt with me.” Interestingly this is written on the reverse of a piece of 14 Barton Street notepaper, perhaps indicating where the letter was written.

“What a mercy Revolt is withdrawn”

This is a whale of a letter, two full A4 sides, dated 24.4.28 and written on thin paper from Drigh Road, Karachi, to his solicitor Edward Eliot. It is unpublished and largely unknown,  covering several fascinating threads including the proposed and eventually abortive Korda film. It also discusses a rather surprising proposal for the construction of swimming baths using ‘Revolt’ money that had been donated to the RAF Benevolent Fund, this pool was to be “for married families and officers” and TE even details a rota for its use.  At the end of the letter he states “(Indeed Revolt wasn’t a book at all. It was a sort of solvent of an overdraft: a financial instrument)”. The story of the survival and rediscovery of this now rather fragile document is a tale in itself. It was found in the drawer of a large, unloved mahogany sideboard at an open-air antique market. The drawer tipped out and three pieces of paper fluttered to the muddy ground, one an unrelated letter, an old French will and this splendid letter. They could have been trampled in the mud!

“I want it for the illustrations’ sake.”

This is taken from a letter written from Cattewater (soon to be Mount Batten) on 21.V.29  written to Mr Bain  of the well-known booksellers James Bain. 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.”

In the letter TE requests several interesting books, possibly for his own use or possibly for loan to other airmen at Cattewater. The actual quotation above though relates to a title called “War Birds” in which there are attractive illustrations, although he admired the book thinking it “worthwhile”, writing to Frederic Manning in 1930 he states, “War Birds is not literature but a raw sharp life”.

“Flying, and the progress of flying, is a very great interest of mine….”

This tantalising statement is contained in a rather mysterious letter, dated 5.1.33  to an unknown recipient: “Dear Madam” who had offered a form of “refuge”. He ends by saying that “the last ten years in the Air Force have been wholly delightful.” TE does not need anything further.

“Pat is my next-door neighbour and he and I have gone into partnership (Knowles & Shaw, very LTD) to build our respective shacks”

So, for a final peek at this selection of correspondence we choose two closely dated letters addressed to Albert Yarwood, at his shipbuilding company in Northwich, Cheshire. They even remain in their postal envelopes addressed and sealed by TE. In the letters, Lawrence refers to progress on H.M.S. Auxiliary Aquarius, “I’ve had letters from Singapore about the Aquarius, which seems to have been adopted as a Station Pet! If she does half what they ask of her, she will be a wonder ship. The only criticism so far is that she is a bit hot, in the engine room. So I suppose the poor old chief is still sweating! He’ll qualify for a jockey in two or three years time.”; he also discusses a new design of flooring for his cottage, Clouds Hill, in Dorset, where Yarwood supplied materials.

This tiny fragment of correspondence from TE, I trust, indicates the intimate nature of such things and these brief extracts have two dominant tropes, his interest and love of books and the RAF. Possibly, along with his motorcycling the most satisfying threads of his multi-skeined life. His correspondence is indeed well worthy of exploration. So, remember when searching out letters, “anything can be anywhere”.

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Book News Fine Press T. E. Lawrence

T.E. Lawrence and the bookseller.

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.

No 1 Haymarket.

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.

“Near the Door” Bain 14 King William Street.

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.

1926 Seven Pillars, de Coverley binding.

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.

Interior of Bain’s bookshop 14 King William Street.
Categories
Antiquarian Book News

American independence and the “Holster Atlas”.

Here we feature the elusive so called “Holster Atlas”, The American Military Pocket Atlas; being an  Approved Collection of Correct Maps, Both General and Particular, of the British Colonies; Especially Those which Now Are, or Probably May Be the Theatre of War: Taken Principally from the Actual Surveys. This is the first edition, published in London, in the fateful year of 1776 by Sayers and Bennet, containing all the six maps as called for, all in first state. vi-viiipp. dedication letter and Advertisement + list of maps; with six folding engraved maps with original outline colour. Bound in original marbled boards with calf spine with green leather title label, the heraldic bookplate of Heinrich Johann, Freiherr von Gudenus dated 1891 on front pastedown.

Known as the ‘Holster Atlas’ this work was designed for British cavalry officers for use in the field during the American War of Independence. It was “calculated in its Bulk and Price to suit the Pockets of Officers of all Ranks” (from the Advertisement leaf).

The six maps here represent a distillation of what the British high command saw as the most pertinent topographical information for soldiers and, being issued at the war’s outset provides keen insight into how the British envisioned the war unfolding.

These comprise;

“North America, as divided amongst the European Powers”, and “A Compleat Map of The West Indies, containing Coasts of Florida, Louisiana, New Spain, and Terra Firma: with all the Islands” by Samuel Dunn;

“A General Map of the Northern British Colonies in America. Which comprehends the Province of Quebec, the Government of Newfoundland, Nova-Scotia, New England and New York” by Samuel Holland and Thomas Pownall (1776);

“A General Map of the Middle British Colonies, in America. Containing Virginia, Maryland, the Delaware counties, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. With the addition of New York, and of the Greatest Part of New England, as also of the Bordering Parts of the Province of Quebec, improved from several surveys made after the late War, and Corrected from Governor Pownall’s Late Map 1776” after Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson, and Lewis Evans;

“A General Map of the Southern British Colonies, in America, comprehending North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, with the Neighbouring Indian Countries…” after William de Brahm, Henry Mouzon, John Collett, and Bernard Romans;

“A Survey of Lake Champlain, including Lake George, Crown Point and St. John” by William Brassier.

It is a highly evocative volume, taking us back to the year 1776 and the American War of Independence and the army that crossed the Atlantic to take part in this conflict.

The volume was published by Sayer & Bennet of London in 1776.  Robert Sayer had begun printing atlases in the 1750s and by the 1760s had developed a leading position in cartographic publications. With his business partner John Bennet, who had previously been his apprentice, they became significant publishers of maps and prints. They were ideally placed to publish this important series of maps for the British Army’s use in the American continent.

Robert Sayer, publisher.

We are fortunate in being able to see a splendid “conversational” family painting of c.1781, by Johan Zoffany, now at the Paul Mellon Centre, showing Robert Sayer, his second wife, Alice and son James, outside their mansion, which is in the backgound, on Richmond Hill, London. The contrast of characters is interesting and perhaps pointed, Robert, the successful and wealthy publisher is nonetheless shown in a plain, rather older fashioned attire, his wife looking wealthy in dress and white muslin, holding her pet dog, whilst James looks quite the “modern” dandy in his stylish outfit.

David Wilson, Johan Zoffany R.A. and the Sayer Family of Richmond,  Privately Published 2014-15

So here we see an evocative memento of the controversial and costly war of 1775-83 when the thirteen colonies rebelled against Great Britain over their objection to Parliament’s direct taxation and its lack of colonial representation. How many officers carried these maps and consulted them is unknown, but no doubt they nestled in many a holster and overcoat pocket, so here we have a direct and personal link to the actions of those turbulent years.

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Book News Fine Press First Editions T. E. Lawrence

A Volume from Clouds Hill

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.

Frontispiece to book.
Catalogue entry for E.M. Forster’s books in ‘Friends’

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.

TE on an armoured boat in Bridlington Bay.

He wrote at least two other letters on the 24th 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.

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Book News Fine Press First Editions Rickaro Books T. E. Lawrence

T.E. Lawrence, Clouds Hill bookplates and Jacob Schwartz

One always needs to look out for fakes and forgeries, although on occasion these have a fascination all of their own and can sometimes match or even surpass the interest of an original.

Here we would like to discuss two such instances in the field of  collecting T.E. Lawrence. The first relates to the books from what is known as the “Clouds Hill” library, these being the books that were in TE’s cottage at the time of his death in 1935. It is well known that these are catalogued in “T.E. Lawrence by His Friends” and this section of the volume may indeed lend itself to being used as a kind of “faker’s bible”. The books were mainly widely dispersed by A.W. Lawrence and the majority bear a small bookplate to identify them. However, there are books around with a “fake” or  ”second state” bookplate, possibly prepared by a bookseller. I have had through my hands the same title, one with a good bookplate and the other with a “second state” or “fake”. I have never come across a provenanced “Clouds Hill” volume, bearing a “fake” bookplate. The fortunate thing is that the bookplates are easy to tell apart, if you have seen them before, so do not be taken in.

Genuine bookplate.
“Fake” or “second state” bookplate.

The other thing to add is that A.W. Lawrence retained a few of the books, only disposing of them many years later and these do not have the bookplate but can usually be identified by other means of provenance.

A more entertaining and possibly contentious item is the so called “Schwartz Packet”. So called after an American, but London based bookdealer and bibliophile, who was mainly active in the 1930s from his Ulysses bookshop. This is Jacob Schwartz, who was apparently a charismatic character, perhaps mostly remembered, if at all now, as an authority on James Joyce material and the compiler of “1100 Obscure Points” a bibliophile’s handbook.

He was probably the owner, and certainly close to the item of TE interest here mentioned: it comprises three manuscript pages, of T.E. Lawrence’s study of James Elroy Flecker, written in black ink, on thin typing paper, the actual paper purporting to be re-used transcripts of letters from Hussein Ibn Ali and General Wilson. These sheets have been splendidly bound in quarter leather by renowned binders Sangorski and Sutcliffe, in a style that fits with the Golden Cockerel Press TE volumes. Presumably, this binding was commissioned by Schwartz to enhance and preserve the pages and improve their saleability.

Supposedly written in the 1920s by TE, if a forgery this was skilfully undertaken and deserves further research. The paper they are written on was apparently used to provide corroborating evidence, although possibly a little unconvincing in their content. Using the same method, the compiler also inserts a loose letter purporting to be from Lord Stamfordham with a  two-line note supposedly in TE’s hand at the foot.

“Schwartz” copy

A comparison with the facsimile contained in one of the thirty copies of the special Golden Cockerel Press edition of Men in Print of 1940 indicates some minor discrepancies that may give the “Scwartz” item away or possibly indicate a different version, it does not appear as a straightforward tracing?

Golden Cockerel Press facsimile from special of “Men in Print”.

Whatever, TE’s brother A.W. Lawrence decidedly took against the manuscript and the enclosure, noting on the letter: The above two lines of writing are not in my brother’s hand & no such note appears on the original holograph letter in my possession from which this copy was typed after the death of T.E. Lawrence. A.W. Lawrence May 11, 1938.

He was apparently also equally unimpressed with the three pages of manuscript and Ed Maggs tells me that he has seen a letter written to Mrs Flecker dated January 1938 where AW states, I found a manuscript about your husband among my brother’s papers and had it typed by a man who took the opportunity to trace the original and sell his tracing to a dealer as being a genuine document. In addition, AW inscribes the first blank of the bound manuscript to a similar effect.

He obviously had for whatever the reason felt so strongly about this matter that he insisted the manuscript and letter be sealed and stored with his solicitor, indeed the whole beautifully bound volume and related material still remains housed in a stout legal envelope sealed with red wax and elaborately signed by both Jacob Schwartz and AW over the seals.

Schwartz Packet with seals and signatures.

Now all this begs a number of points; why did AW go to such apparently elaborate lengths to have the pages sealed and signed with wax and stored at his solicitors rather than have them destroyed. Surely with his opinion of them this would have been a safer course of action rather than leave them for posterity.

This TE account of James Elroy Flecker has an interesting history in itself. In a letter of 27.IV.27 to E.M. Forster TE writes; Lets be exact. My note on Flecker was written one wet Sunday in Clouds Hill . Since light was vouchsafed to me I have written no more. My writing isn’t good. It was first published by the Corvinus Press in 1937 in a tiny edition of just 32 copies, there was also a small American printing that year to protect copyright that was not for sale or circulation. These editions followed the manuscript but contained a number of mis-readings and mistaken editorial changes, in what David Garnett terms, a corrupt text. Viscount Carlow annotates a copy; This book was printed to cover the copyright of certain documents that were stolen. No copies are in general circulation. So here is a slightly different account of the manuscript to that given by AW elsewhere. It seems that the events around this manuscript led to the desire to publish in a limited way to protect copyright.

In 1940 A. W. Lawrence published an edited and reduced text in the Golden Cockerel Press edition of “Men in Print”, itself an edition of only 500 copies, 30 being specials with the facsimile and with a note that sets out the basis for AW’s version. He also provides Hellé Flecker’s opinion of the text. Her statement that Flecker showed no Jewish traits is, perhaps, understandable at that date, since the population of Greece, her native country, was under threat from Nazi Germany. A Jewish connection might have put members of her family in danger. So as can be seen the text was at this time rather contentious and there are reasons that AW may not have wanted copies of the original text too readily available. It is only in recent times being made more generally available in reprint format, first by M. Valentine in 1988 and later (1992) in a facsimile version of the Corvinus Press edition.

So, the moral of these tales is surely Caveat Emptor, but do not always take things quite at face value, there are always stories to uncover and things may not always be just as they seem.

Thanks for assistance in putting this together to Ed Maggs and for further information on Jacob Schwartz see William S. Brockman, “Jacob Schwartz – The Fly in the Honey” contained in Joyce Studies Annual  1998. See also “The Corvinus Press, A History and Bibliography” by Paul W. Nash and A.J. Flavell. 1994. However, the interpretation , such as it is, is all mine!

I will welcome thoughts and comments.