Richard Aldington

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NEW CANTERBURY LITERARY SOCIETY NEWS

Vol. 31, No. 2              Summer 2003

Editor: Norman T. Gates
520 Woodland Avenue
Haddonfield, NJ 08033-2626, U.S.A.
e-mail: ntgates@worldnet.att.net

Associate Editor: David Wilkinson
The Old Post Office Garage, Chapel Street, St. Ives
Cornwall TR 26 2RL, U.K.
e-mail: books@book-gallery.co.uk

RA and H.D Website: http://Imagists.org/ Correspondent and RA website editor, Paul Hernandez.

Correspondents: Catherine Aldington, Michael J. Copp, C.J. Fox, F.-J. Temple, Caroline Zilboorg.

Correspondent and Bibliographer, Shelley Cox. Biographers, Charles Doyle, Jean Moorcroft Wilson.

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                  Announcing the publication of Writers in Provence, the proceedings from the first two International

Richard Aldington Conferences in les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, France.  Eight essays on Richard Aldington,

including works by Norman T. Gates, Ian S. MacNiven, Carol Peirce, and H.R. Stoneback.  An essay on

Lawrence Durrell by Corinne Alexander-Garner.  Personal reminiscences by Catherine Aldington, Valerie             

Hemingway, and Frédéric-Jacques Temple (in French).  For a copy, please contact Daniel Kempton, Department  

of English, SUNY New Platz, NY 12561 with checks payable to Daniel Kempton (Aldington Society) for $18.

                                                                        * * * * * * * * * *

                  Member William Pratt reports that the Imagist panel in Baltmore (see NCLSN, 31.1.1) went very well. 

“We had a standing room only crowd at the Associate Writings Programs conference at the Baltimore Harbor-

place Hotel, and everyone was eager to hear about Imagism, which seems to be enjoying a revival among

Creative Writing teachers.

                                                                       * * * * * * * * * *

                  The next Ezra Pound International Conference will be held in Pound’s birthplace of Hailey, Idaho,

and the neighboring Sun Valley Inn.  The dates are July 2-6.  Events will include a rodeo on the Fourth of July

and a keynote address by Denis Donoghue, as well as a reminiscence of Pound at Pisa by one of the American                         

officers who was there, Homer Somers of Vermont.

                                                    * * * * * * * * * *

Member Brian Payne asks whether RA may have written a short story using a pseudonym.  The short

story “Underfire” by “Aquila” in Fifty Amazing Stories of the Great War (Odhams Press Ltd., 1936) includes

many references that also appear in RA’s “Meditations on a German Grave” and “Eumenides.”  “Underfire” does

not seem to be written in RA’s style, but there are a number of connections to his writing.  To comment, e-mail

Brian Payne at BPayne@geotecsurveys.com

                                                                        * * * * * * * * * *

                        Douglas Lawrence, who was born in Padworth in 1920 and has lived there ever since, has published a book of photographs of the village entitled Padworth: A Pictorial Peep Into The Past (52-pages, 4to. Stapled card covers.  Self-published from: The Old Post Office, Padworth Common, Reading, Berks. RG7 4QG.  250 copies. £7.50 + shipping costs).  David Wilkinson advises that the book has minimal text but it does include practically all of the illustrations to his paper from the Reading Symposium as well as a portrait of RA.

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                        Correspondent Michael Copp writes: "I know the following two references have been touched upon in previous Newsletters, but I thought it worth quoting them in full, and making a brief comment on them.  The first seems to me to be a very fair and convincing assessment of one aspect of RA's personality, whereas I find the second baffling and even preposterous, given RA's well-established heterosexual inclinations.  Is there any other confirmation of this assertion?  Surely, the worlds of James Strachey and RA never overlapped?

1. 'But there you have us [Frances Gregg and H.D.], two girls in love with each other, in love with the same man, and making our plans for the waylaying and the snaring of nice, safe husbands in due course.  We got them, too, Richard Aldington for Hilda, and Louis Wilkinson for me.  Nice husbands they were, but safe, they were not.  Such comets were never designed for safe domestic hearthsides.  They addled our wits and fuddled our hearts, and managed to remain impeccable British gentlemen to the last.'  (Frances Gregg, The Mystic Leeway, ed, Ben Jones.  Carleton University Press, 1955, p. 155.)

                                                                        * * * * * * * * * *

2. 'He [Rupert Brooke] and [James] Strachey were at the Mermaid Club in Rye, Sussex, in late March when he wrote to [Ka] Cox about someone named Dick (probably Richard Aldington), who, he said, "had been a flame of James' for years".'" (Keith Hale [ed.], Friends & Apostles: The Correspondence of Rupert Brooke and James Strachey 1905-1914.  Yale University Press, 1998, p. 206.)

                                                                        * * * * * * * * * *

                        Associate Editor David Wilkinson asks that, if you have not already done so, you send him information for the “Directory of  Members of the New Canterbury Literary Society” that he is preparing.  See NCLSN, 30.3.3 for suggestions.  Printed copies of the completed directory will be sent to our membership and deposited in appropriate libraries.  The up-to-date directory will then be made available on the Richard Aldington Website edited by Paul Hernandez (http://Imagists.org).

                                                                        * * * * * * * * * *

Checklist addenda:

           Connolly, Cyril (essayist and novelist; founder of Horizon, literary editor of the Observer; reviews in the New Statesman and the Sunday Times); 1 letter

                        1 – 6 November 1929 – tls, c/o Barclays Bank, Paris; University of Tulsa, Tulsa.

          Harald, Michael  [Add to Checklist entry, p. 86.]; 5 letters

                        5 – 20 November 1958 to 27 February 1961 – tls, Sury, University of Tulsa, Tulsa.

                                                                        * * * * * * * * * *

                        We are indebted to NCLSN member Stephen Steele for locating the above letters in the Cyril Connolly collection at the University of Tulsa.  The following items are from the same collection:

           1. Typed copy of “SEPADS: A Modern Poem” beginning with the line “WJZ…,” no variants.

           2. Letter from F.-J. Temple to RA (26.2.59).

           3. Letter from NCLSN member David Thatcher to Connolly (15/9/70) re: publication of RA’s letters.

           4. Scrapbook with 28 photos of “Richard Aldington &  His Friends” (RA, Patmores, Arlen, Cunard, etc.)

           5. Eight loose photos from the same scrapbook. RA, Frere, Orioli, O. Sitwell, Patmores, and the famous shot of “The Poets” visit to Newbuildings, Sunday, January 18, 1914.  (“property of Cyril Connolly” on the back of this photo).

                                                                        * * * * * * * * * *

                        NCLSN member Michael Copp, editor of An Imagist at War: The Complete War Poems of Richard Aldington (Associated University Presses, 2002), has been awarded a Mellon Research Fellowship, which he plans to use to examine RA’s letters to F.S. Flint that are held by the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas.  Copp is considering editing these letters, 239 are in the Checklist, into book form.

                                                                        * * * * * * * * * *

                        Cyril Connolly in Previous Convictions (New York: Harper & Row, 1963) mentions RA in his essays “The Breakthrough in Modern Verse (pp. 235-251) and “Ezra Pound as Critic” (pp. 255-257).

                                                                        * * * * * * * * * *

                        Member Stephen Steele, in a visit to the University of Victoria, found several additional references to RA in a letter and postcard from Irene Rathbone to Douglas Goldring.  Steele also found an interesting letter from someone signed simply “A.M.” (identified as A. Moore) to RA about Four English Portraits, 1801-1851.  This letter is held in the Sir Shane Leslie Papers at Georgetown University.

                                                                        * * * * * * * * * *

                        Associate Editor David Wilkinson reports: “The Mermaid at Rye that once belonged to RA’s mother, Jesse May Aldington, remains one of the most celebrated hotels in the UK.  This fact was underlined by an article in the Daily Telegraph on 5th April 2003.  Under the headline, ‘This Lady Proves that Age and Beauty do go together,” Paddy Burt reported on a visit to The Mermaid for the Travel section: “Unlike most females, the Mermaid Inn in Rye boasts about her age: ‘Our doors had been open 150 years when Elizabeth I visited Rye in 1573,’ she says.”

                                                                        * * * * * * * * * *

                        NCLS member Perry Reed noticed a reference to RA in Becoming George: The life of Mrs. W.B. Yeats by Ann Saddlemyer (Oxford University Press: 2002).  On p. 372 there is a quotation from a letter of June 8, 1931, from Nellie Tucker (Yeats’s mother-in-law) to Thomas McGreevy: “I dislike Aldington’s work; it bristles with personal grievances.  Of course you like it because it misjudges England—but then—you are our natural enemy, who may become a friend one day, while R. Aldington is an ill-conditioned relation. . ..”

* * * * * * * * *

                        Going through old records, David Wilkinson finds that D.H.L. probably bought furniture from a shop that was located where the Book Gallery is now.  In recent years, writers Ben Okri, Michael Holroyd, and Margaret Drabble have all visited the Book Gallery.    

* * * * * * * * * *

                        For an interesting commentary on the Aldington household when RA was a boy, see Ursula Bloom’s Holiday Mood [Hutchinson: N.D. (1934)] chapter one, “Early Holidays,” pp. 18-22, which begins : “The first holiday that I remember distinctly was when I was thirteen and we went to stay with the Aldingtons at St. Margaret’s Bay.”  [If you are unable to find this book and are interested, ask David Wilkinson (who discovered this) or myself to e-mail you a copy of this chapter.]

                                                                        * * * * * * * * * *

                        Shelley Cox noticed in the most recent catalog of Ulysses Books in London a first edition of RA's Pinorman.  "Constantine Fitzgibbon's copy with a review slip from the Times Literary Supplement bearing his name.  On the rear endpaper are Fitzgibbon's pencilled notes towards a review of the book.  His comments are not terribly complimentary."

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                        NCLSN, 29.1.2. notes the appearance of three of RA's writings in American Aphrodite, but the issue number given is incorrect: it should be Vol. 1, No. 4 (1951).

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                        NCLS member John Morris found two of RA's poems, "To a Greek Marble" and "Bromios," in The Golden Book of Modern English Poetry 1870-1930, ed. Thomas Caldwell (Dent, 1936), with an introduction by Lord Dunsany.

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                        Your editor has received a copy of Writers in Provence (see page 1 above).  Following an "Introduction" by the editors, Daniel Kempton and H.R. Stoneback, the book is divided into four sections.  The first section collects papers on "Richard Aldington," the second on "Other Writers and Van Gogh," the third a sampling of "Poetry" read at the conferences, and the fourth, "H.R. Stoneback," critiques on three of his poems set in the Camargue.  The "Richard Aldington" section includes nine essays: Catherine Aldington remembers "Meetings with H.D. and Bryher in Switzerland"; Lawrence Beemer discusses "Images of Flowers in Images of War"; Stella Deen considers the plight of Georgie Smithers in The Colonel's Daughter; Eric Forbeaux has some interesting comments on Aldington's biographies; I wrote of RA's poetry and the Great War; Daniel Kempton connects Aldington's Provence with his book on Mistral; Ian S. MacNiven offers some thoughts on RA's use of satire; Carol Peirce sees Aldington as able to transmute past and present in his poetry; and H.R. Stoneback conducts and imaginary dialogue with RA.

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                        With our Spring issue of the NCLSN (Vol. 31, No. 1) sent to members by regular mail, we enclosed a stamped self-addressed post card asking that you return it to us indicating that you wished to continue to receive our Newsletter either by e-mail, if you were connected to the Internet, or by regular mail as heretofore.  Later a personal letter asking for a response was sent to members who did not return the postcard included with our Spring issue.  Unfortunately, there are still a number of members who have not told us that they wish us to continue to mail or to e-mail the Newsletter to them; their names are listed below, and unless we hear from them before our Autumn number is sent out we will regretfully remove their names from the NCLS membership list and discontinue mailing them the NCLSN

            Michael Briggs              June Kittridge               Allyson Kreutter           Robert Spoo

            Kathleen Crown                       Rita Ferrari                   John Worthen             Humanities Research Center

            Rhian Davies                            Eric Forbeau                Reuth Ambre               Ludmilla Volodarskaya

            Jane K. Angue                          Tony Annets                 Dr. Alan Bird                Grenville Cook

            Alex Frere                                Liam Hanley                 Jelka Kershaw              Nesta Macdonald

            Miles Ormsby                           Jenny Plastow               Glynn Roberts              Maud Rosenthal

                                                                        * * * * * * * * *

                        Our Associate Editor, David Wilkinson, who is responsible for getting the Newsletter to France, reports hearing from two of our "French Connection" members, Marie-Brunette Spire and John Mayes.  Spire is the daughter of the poet friend of RA, and Mayes was largely responsible for the reinstatment of the plaque marking RA's residence in Montpellier.  Our large and active group of NCLS members in France would have pleased RA who spent his last years there and Alister Kershaw who provided his home in Maison Sallé.

                                                                        * * * * * * * * * *

                        Wilkinson also noted a listing in the current catalogue from Bertram Rota of an advance proof copy of  Seven Against Reeves that RA inscribed "To Pat" (Item 20 in catalogue 301 @ £200).  David wonders what may have happened to the last copy of Movietones remaining in private hands that Mrs. Frere also had.

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                        A telephone call from Jean Moorcroft Wilson (see NCLSN, 31.1.4), when she was in the U.S. to present a paper, conveyed the good news that, having obtained the required permissions from RA's executor and literary agent, she is now ready to proceed with the new biography.  We will report her progress in our future issues; meanwhile, we are sure that all NCLS members will be of any help that they can.

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                        NCLS member Stephen Steele writes: "I am enclosing the copy of a letter from RA that comes from the Bifur Archive at the University of Tulsa.  Pierre Lévy was Director of the review that ran 8 numbers between May '29 - June '31.  G. Ribemont-Dessaignes, close to Dada and subsequent avant-garde movements, was the review's editor.  Aldington's letter is likely addressed to Lévy or Ribemont-Dessaignes.  Bifur published Marxists, anarchists and dissident or excommunicated surrealists.  Interesting to find RA of interest to Bifur."

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                        Professor Steele's "Richard Aldington et Gustave Cohen, l'un pour l'autre: inédites d'Aldington à Cohen" (see NCLSN, 31.1.3) was published in French Studies Bulletin 86 (Spring 2003), pp. 11-16.  This fine article reminds us again how very early in his career RA's life-long relationship with French literature began.

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                        Please meet our newest NCLS member Helen Bowman who writes: "I first came across RA's poetry when I bought the Naxos CD "Poets of the Great War" in which a number of his WW1 poems feature.  In particular, the reading of "Epilogue to Death of a Hero" by Michael Sheen prompted me to start delving."  Ms. Bowman was finally led to David Wilkinson via NCLS member Dominic Hibberd's biography of Wilfred Owen.  Our Associate Editor sent her a copy of the NCLSN and an invitation to join the NCLS.

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                        As announced in our Spring issue (NCLSN, 31.1.2), MaryAnn Crawford and I have now compiled a third edition of the 'Index to the NCLSN' covering volumes 1-30; moreover, Website editor Paul Hernandez will make it available shortly on the RA website (http://imagists.org) where you will be able to download a copy from an MS Word file.   Eventually, he will make an HTML version that will be useable on the Web.  If you do not have access to the Internet, write for cost and availability of the "Index" on a disk or in printed form.  Taking part in this updating has further increased my appreciation of the fine work that Fred and MaryAnn did with the first (Vols. 1-20) and the second (Vols. 1-25) editions of the "Index" without which this latest edition would not have been possible.   Without this index thirty years of  RA news would be lost.

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                        The John Rylands Library in Manchester, England, has a small amount of RA material in the Basil Dean Archive and among the Papers of Richard Church.


The Richard Aldington web site, revised June 23, 2003. Address comments to Paul Hernandez, paul@imagists.org