Vol. 31, No. 3              Autumn 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

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                        The important news of this quarter is the availability of the new "Index to the NCLSN : Volumes 1-30."  You may purchase a stapled 21 page "Index" by itself at $3.50 postpaid in the U.S. or $5.00 postpaid in the U.K., or bound with Vols. 1-30 of the Newsletter at $30.00 postpaid in the U.S. or $35.00 postpaid in the U.K.  Postage and container costs are calculated based on the least costly postage rates.

                        We are primarily indebted for this very useful scholarly tool to MaryAnn Crawford, who with her late husband, Fred, compiled the first and second editions of "Index."  I was very grateful to be able to help bring into print this record of thirty years of the Newsletter .

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                        Our website editor Paul Hernandez has put the new "Index" on-line in MS Word format and HTML at http://Imagists.org/aldington/nclsn/index.html where you can peruse it at your leisure, print out a copy, or put it on a disk or a CD.  You will also find the last five issues of the NCLSN on this page of "Aldington Resources". This should be very helpful to scholars interested in RA, his contemporaries, or the period generally--thank you, Paul.

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                        Correspondent Michael Copp noted the following in the latest catalogue of Clearwater Books (clearwater.books.@dial.pipex.com): A.E. Hausman & W.B. Yeats. Two Lectures. 1st ed.,  £35; Gerard de Nerval, Aurelia, trans. By RA, deluxe 1st ed. (One of 50 copies), signed, £95; Roads to Glory, deluxe 1st ed. (one of 360 copies), signed,  £120.

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                        NCLS member Marcy Tanter wonders whether RA ever had any relationship with Kathrine Mansfield.  E-mail her at tanter@tarleton.edu if you have any information that might be helpful.

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                        RA biographer Jean Moorcroft Wilson visited the U.S. in early June to deliver a paper on Virginia Woolf and Seigfried Sassoon at the Virginia Woolf Conference held at Smith College.  She also spent time exploring RA material at the Berg Collection in New York and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in New Haven.  "I could, of course, merely skim the surface," she wrote, "but plan to return as soon as possible to start work in earnest."  If you wish to contact Dr. Wilson her mail address is 1 Mornington Place. London NW1 7RP, England.  She hopes to have an e-mail address in the near future.

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                        The Scotsman, 7 June 2003, publishes one of many favorable reviews of Jean Moorcroft Wilson's recently completed second and concluding volume of her biography of Siegfried Sassoon, The Journey from the Trenches 1918-1967.  In his review "Dreams from Extremes" Robert Nye "applauds a biography that brilliantly captures the full range of contradictions in Siegfried Sassoon's life."  Nye adds: "All this activity [in Sassoon's life] provides Dr Wilson with an entertaining story, or series of stories, which she tells with aplomb.  But it is in telling the story of Sassoon's less obvious life, his inner life as reflected in verse and prose, that she really excels."

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                        The paper that NCLS member William Pratt gave at the Sorbonne in 2001 is now in print in a book edited by Helen Aji and published by the Sorbonne: Ezra Pound: Dans la Vortex de la Traduction.  Although the title is in French, the collection is in English, which is the common language of all Pound conferences.

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                        Although the membership of the NCLS has grown tenfold in the last thirty years, we have also lost many early members whose passing may not have been noted simply because we were not immediately aware of it.  We would like to mention here two early members whose deaths occurred some time ago 

                        Beatrice Moore was the wife of longtime member Harry T. Moore, the D.H. Lawrence and RA scholar who was primarily responsible for the fine Aldington Collection at Southern Illinois University.  She was also my very helpful editor for A Checklist of the Letters of Richard Aldington that was published by the SIU Press.

                         In an article devoted to business men whose hobby was book collecting, the November 1974 issue of Fortune says that Frank Harrington  "culminated a ten-year gathering of the works of the poet Richard Aldington, a British contemporary of T.S. Eliot, by presenting the collection to the Paley rare book library at Temple University."  Harrington came to RA through his interest in James Hanley for whose book, The German Prisoner, RA wrote an introduction.  [For the many references to long-time NCLSN member Frank Harrington, see the new "Index to the NCLSN: Vols. 1-30."]

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                        Since we have had no word from the following NCLSN members whose names were listed in our Summer issue, we must regretfully drop them from our membership list: Reuth Ambre, Jane Angue, Tony Annetts, Michael Briggs, Grenville Cook, Kathleen Crown, Rita Ferrari, Alex Frere, Liam Hanley, June Kittredge, Miles Ormsby, Jenny Plastow, Glynn Roberts, and Maud Rosenthal.

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                        Here is the letter, in Checklist form, that was mentioned in our last issue as having been located by Professor Steele:

            Bifur (Review that ran eight numbers between May 1929 and June 1931; published Marxist, anarchisti

                       and dissident or excommunicated surrealists); 1 letter

                        1 - 14 October 1929 - tls, Corneille, Tulsa University.

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                        Michael Copp writes: "In her Richard Aldington and H.D.: Their Lives in Letters, Caroline Zilboorg includes letter No. 143 on p. 313 in which H.D. is telling RA about the books she read as a girl.  She writes: 'There was a thing called Four Girls, I could never find that book; …'.  I believe this must refer to Four Girls at Chautauqua (1876) by the American children's writer, Isabelle Alden (1841-1930) , pen-name 'Pansy.'  She wrote over 200 titles, many of which are still in print.  They tended to contain a very strong 'improving' Christian message." 

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                        Associate Editor David Wilkinson writes of a very interesting find: "You might recall that some years back, I went on a quest for RA in North Devon and failed to find much. I now learn that The University of Exeter holds Papers of Jan (aka John) Mills Whitham (1883-1956).  A potted biography of Aldington's friend (LfLS, p. 159 [UK edition] and p. 170 [US edition]) appears with a description of their holdings in a new publication, Modern Literary Papers in the University of Exeter Library: A Guide by Jessica Gardner and Ian Mortimer {University of Exeter, 2003).  Mills Whitham moved to North Devon on the advice of Yeats.  '. . .His second novel, Starveacre, was published in 1915.  Unfortunately, at the time it was published, Whitham was in prison.  Rather than enlist in the ranks, he had become a conscientious objector.  He was led from Barnstable tribunal on foot to Dartmoor Prison, and jeered and struck as he marched through Tavistock, chained to other prisoners.  In prison he went on a hunger strike in order to improve conditions.  In this at least he was successful; the Home Office allowed him to be released to work as a farm labourer near Combe Martin….  In 1916, while staying in Combe Martin, he started courting Sylvia Milman . . . who was staying with her uncle, the vicar of Martinhoe ... '  This major source sheds light on the period when RA, Fallas, Cournos, H.D., et al stayed in Martinhoe immediately before RA and Fallas were conscripted."

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                        Wilkinson has bought, at auction via a telephone bid, sight unseen, six typed, signed letters from RA to "Bertie" between 1935 and 1942.  Bertram Cecil Eskell (1886-1952) was a leading New York surgeon and a favorite in theatrical circles.

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                        Michael Copp noted in the latest catalogue of Turner Donovan Military Books (Brighton, Sussex, www.turnerdonovan.com): Death of a Hero, 1st English edition, a "very nice copy … complete with the attractive dw designed by Paul Nash."  £85.00.

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                        NCLS member John Worthen, whose new biography of D.H. Lawrence will be published by Penguin Books, was interested in David Wilkinson's note in the last Newsletter about Lawrence's purchase of furniture in St. Ives.

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                        NCLS member Jennifer Emous-Aldington writes regarding Michael Copp's note on Rupert Brooke and James Strachey in NCLSN, 31.2.2: "Richard was absolutely heterosexual!  The mind boggles at alternative suggestions."

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                        Our Russian NCLS member Ludmilla Volodarskaya continues her work as a translator of English publications into Russian.  She recently published a translation of Anaïs Nin's Cities of the Interior (1959), and with V. Minushin has translated and is awaiting publication of Lawrence Durrell's The Revolt of Aphrodite.

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                        NCLSN member Jeanne Houghton is offering for sale her extensive collection of books by and about RA and H.D.  For a listing, e-mail her at Jeanne.Houghton@wanadoo.fr.

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                        Re-reading my Richard Aldington: An Autobiography in Letters, Michael Copp was able to identify the quotation, "never glad confident morning again," in Letter 19 (p. 34), as coming from Robert Browning's "The Lost Leader."  To me, this will always be one of the most moving letters that RA ever wrote to H.D.

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                        For a wonderful description of a servant's life in the real Padworth House of RA's The Colonel's Daughter, see http://www.berksfhs.org.uk/journal/Sep2000/Sep2000UpstairsAndDownstairsinThe1920s.htm

Shelley Cox discovered this by Googling Padworth and Douglas Lawrence (see NCLSN, 31.2.1).

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                        Associate Editor David Wilkinson writes: "I received a prospectus this morning for the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, one of the most prestigious (and, at £7.500 - or £6,500 for advance orders - surely one of the most expensive) publications in the world.  As a result of involving her in my own research, the new edition will carry (among many others she has contributed) Caroline Zilboorg's entry on C. Ranger Gull, who was described by RA as 'a tubby little bon vivant' and who was well known in the 'salon' hosted by Jesse May Aldington.  The flyer features an illustrated display of the full 60 volume set while, in the background is a computer screen showing the on-line entry for 'Lawrence, Thomas Edward (known as Lawrence of Arabia) (1886-1935), intelligence officer and author'.  We see clearly that TEL was the second of five sons born to Thomas Robert Tighe Chapman and his mistress, Sarah Junner, the highlighting of which fact brought down the wrath of the establishment on the shoulders of Richard Aldington nearly fifty years ago."

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                        NCLS member David Richards has confirmation from the editor of Firsts: The Book Collector's Magazine that his article on Richard Aldington will appear in the September issue.  Included will be a checklist of Aldington titles with values of the books published during his lifetime.  Bibliographical details will follow.

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                        Shelley Cox recently received a copy of Stephanie de Montalk's Unquiet World: The Life of Count Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk (Wellington, N.Z.: Victoria University Press, 2001).  Ms. De Montalk is Count Potocki's cousin and first met him in 1968.  The biography is primarily based on her frequent meetings with him for the next nearly 30 years and on his archive of papers, materials from his Melissa Press, and correspondence, which is on deposit at the University of Victoria, Wellington, N.Z.

            "He [Potocki] was regularly in touch with Richard Aldington, a friend since 1928 and a supporter at the time of his trial, who was keen to see him set up with his own press.  Like Potocki, Aldington wrote in searing terms about the hypocrisy of modern society and literary pretentiousness.  (Aldington's 1933 novel, The Colonel's Daughter, had been so direct that two libraries had refused to stock it, and his biography, Lawrence of Arabia, had reviewed the controversial adventurer in a similarly uncompromising manner.)  Furthermore, as a translator of Greek and Latin poetry, Aldington shared Potocki's admiration of ancient civilisations (p. 250)"

            SIU has a considerable collection of RA's letters to Potocki (see my Checklist) a few of which are reproduced in An Autobiography in Letters.  Bibliographer Cox is going to check further on the holdings at the University of Victoria; we will report further on this interesting Aldington-Potocki connection.

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                        Correspondent Michael Copp found the following books by RA in the latest list from I.D. Edrich of Wanstead, London (www.idedrich.co.uk).  They are all first editions, and a number are signed by RA.               Some Imagist Poets, (1915), Exile and Other Poems, (1923), The Mystery of the Nativity, (1924), D.H. Lawrence, (1930), A Dream in the Luxembourg, (1930, Two Stories, (1930), Soft Answers, (1932), Balls, (1931), Balls, (1962), All Men Are Enemies, (1933), The Crystal World, (1937), Portrait of a Genius, but…, (1950), An Appreciation, (1950), Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, (1954), Aurelia, (1932), Switzerland, (n.d.).

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                        The Typographeum Bookshop, 246 Bennington Road, Francestown, NH 03043, announces the publication of what may be Alister Kershaw's last book, One for the Road, with an afterword by Terry Risk.  "This book has been hand-set and printed letterpress by R.T. Risk in an edition of 175 copies.  It has been bound by Jelka Kershaw in a gold cloth with contrasting end-papers and a green leather label titled in gilt on the back-strip.  A frontispiece wine label has been tipped in.  There are 124 pages.  The paper is from Strathmore.  The typeface is 12-point Bembo.  ISBN 0-930126-61-0 June 2003 $75."

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                        Michael Copp finds that J.J. Wilhelm, author of Ezra Pound in London 1908-1925 (Penn State University Press, 1990), "has a particularly jaundiced view of RA."  Examples: "…the peculiar Mr. Aldington…"(114), "The next speaker, Aldington, bumbled, in his usual awkward manner, into a quarrel with Gaudier." (162).  "Richard, or 'Cuthbert' as the two women called him (the name for a coward or turncoat), resolutely refused to contribute any support for the child and soon the Aldingtons were separated…" (223).

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                        NCLS member Virginia Smyers calls our attention to a new book by Val Schaffner, H.D.'s grandson, entitled The Astronomer's House which you will find described on Amazon.com

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                        Michael Copp visited the Ben Uri Gallery in London to see an exhibition titled "William Roberts & Jacob Kramer: The Tortoise and the Hare".  Among the display of printed ephemera which included illustrative work of these artists was an issue of Art and Letters (Vol. 2, No. 1, 1918-19) open to pages 4 and 5.  On p. 5 was "Study of a Russian" by Kramer; and on p.4 were two poems by RA: "Postlude" (which appears as the last poem in Images of Desire with the title "Epilogue") and "Concert."

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                        Encyclopedia of Literary Modernism, ed. Paul Poplawski, scheduled to be published by Greenwood press 30 October 2003, includes an entry of RA contributed by Caroline Zilboorg.

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