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.netAssociate 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
including
works by Norman T. Gates, Ian S. MacNiven, Carol Peirce, and H.R. Stoneback. An essay on
Hemingway, and
of English, SUNY New Platz,
NY 12561 with checks payable to Daniel Kempton (Aldington Society) for $18.
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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
place Hotel, and everyone
was eager to hear about Imagism, which seems to be enjoying a revival among
Creative
Writing teachers.
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The next Ezra Pound International Conference will
be held in Pound’s birthplace of
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
officers
who was there, Homer Somers of
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Member
Brian Payne asks whether RA may have written a short story using a
pseudonym. The short
story “Underfire” by “
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
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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,
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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 –
Harald, Michael [Add to Checklist entry, p. 86.]; 5 letters
5 –
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We
are indebted to NCLSN member Stephen Steele for locating the above letters in
the Cyril Connolly collection at the
1.
Typed copy of “SEPADS: A Modern Poem” beginning with the line “WJZ…,” no
variants.
2.
Letter from F.-J.
3.
Letter from NCLSN member David Thatcher to Connolly (
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,
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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.
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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).
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Member
Stephen Steele, in a visit to the
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Associate
Editor David Wilkinson reports: “The Mermaid at
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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
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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.
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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.]
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Shelley Cox noticed in
the most recent catalog of Ulysses Books in
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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
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
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Our Associate Editor,
David Wilkinson, who is responsible for getting the Newsletter to
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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
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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
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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