Vol. 31, No. 4 Winter 2003-04 Editor: Norman T. Gates Associate Editor: David Wilkinson
520 Woodland Avenue, The Old Post Office Garage, Chapel Street, St. Ives
Haddonfield, NJ 08033-2626, U.S.A. Cornwall TR26 2RL U.K.
e-mail: ntgates@worldnet.att.net e-mail: books@book-gallery.co.uk
RA and H.D. Website: http://Imagists.org/ Correspondent and website editor: Paul Hernandez
Correspondents: Catherine Aldington, Michael Copp, C.J. Fox, F.-J. Temple, Caroline Zilboorg
Correspondent and Bibliographer: Shelley Cox. Biographers: Charles Doyle, Jean Moorcroft Wilson
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Does anyone know whether the "May Aldington" listed on the Internet as the author of "Beloved, I am lonely" under Howard Craxton, composer, was RA's mother? (Search "May Aldington" "Harold Craxton" on the Internet.)
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The Modernist Studies Association Conference, "The Death and Resurrection of the Modernist Author," which met in Birmingham, England, during September, featured two of our NCLS members. Caroline Zilboorg spoke in the session entitled "The Death and Resurrection of the Modernist Author." The title of her paper was "Death, Resurrection, and Textual Representation of Otherness in Richard Aldington's War Writings, and focused on the letters RA wrote to H.D. in 1918 and on "The Fool In the Forest."" Professor Zilboorg also organized and chaired the session "Modernist Cultures of War" where member Gemma Bristow presented a paper "'A Book of Verse-- and Thou.' Private Publications in Wartime by Richard Aldington and H.D." which included slides of Bubb chapbooks. Anglea Kay, who spoke on Dora Marsden and The Egoist's publication of war poetry, also discussed RA. Marysa Demoor's paper, which centered on The Egoist ended with a quotation from RA.
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In NCLSN, 31.3.4 the publication of two of RA's poems in Art and Letters is noted. Michael Copp comments further on this journal: "The issues of this short-lived magazine, 1917-1920, founded by Herbert Read and Frank Rutter, and later edited by Frank Rutter and Osbert Sitwell, made a truly significant contribution to English modernism. For example, in the issue which includes two of RA's poems ('Postlude' and 'Concert') we find in the poetry section work by the three Sitwells, Ford Maddox Hueffer, Aldous Huxley, and Sigfried Sassoon. There are prose contributions by Herbert Read, Charles Ginner, and Frank Rutter. But the greater part of this issue of 52 pages is given over to Wyndham Lewis's The War Baby (28 pages). The art section includes reproductions of works by Edward Wadsworth, Picasso, Gaudier-Brzeska, Wyndham Lewis, and Jacob Kramer."
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There are a few brief references to RA in Poet and Painter: Letters Between Gordon Bottomley and Paul Nash 1910-1946. This was first published by the Oxford University Press in 1955, and then by the Redcliff Press Ltd., Bristol, with Causey's "Introduction," in 1990.
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Bibliographer Shelley Cox points out that there are numerous references to RA in Jacob Korg's Winter Love: Ezra Pound and H.D. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003). On p. 19 Korg discusses the early love of H.D. and RA; H.D.'s and RA's connection with Imagism is mentioned on pp. 32-33; on p. 98 Korg quotes from H.D.'s letters to Pound to support his comment that "She was emotionally attached to both Bryher and to Macpherson, but wrote that she still loved Aldington." There is no footnote to the statement on p. 58 that states: "While Bryher assumed the dual role of H.D.'s protector and acolyte, Aldington, who continued to work with her on her writing, now withdrew from her, refusing to take responsibility for her or her child, and the relations between the two became painfully rancorous."
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NCLS member William Pratt writes: "Our 20th Ezra Pound International Conference in Hailey, Idaho, marked the dedication of the Pound Birthplace, which had been handsomely restored by the local Pound Association. Speakers of note included Hugh Kenner, Denis Donoghue, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Robert Creeley. It was a gala occasion with sessions at the Sun Valley Inn and excursions to Hemingway as well as Pound memorials. The next Pound conference will be held in 2005 in Rapallo, Italy."
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Be sure to obtain and read NCLS member David Richards' "Collecting Poet, Novelist, Biographer Richard Aldington" in Firsts The Book Collectors Magazine, September, 2003, Volume 13, Number 7, pp. 34-47. While primarily written for book collectors, member Richards' essay offers a fine summary of RA's life and work, and includes twelve stunning reproductions of RA's first editions. The article also offers a "Checklist" of over fifty first editions with publishing details and estimated present costs of each. The magazine may be obtained from Firsts Magazine Incorporated, 4493 N. Camino Gacela. Tuscon, Arazona 85718-6807 for $5.95.
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Member Brian Payne found the following verses in Wyndham Lewis's "One Way Song" in the section "if so the man you are" where no. 30 reads:
"…The greater Yeats,
Turning his back on Ossian relates
The blasts of more contemporary fates.
And Richard Aldington, equipped to sing
The beauties of an impossible Greek spring."
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Jean Moorcroft Wilson, who is working on a new RA biography, lectured on Sassoon (and her second volume of his biography), at the National Portrait Gallery on 6 September. While on vacation in France, Wilson visited Catha Aldington. "My first impression when we finally met was that I was catching a glimpse of RA--very fleeting but quite definitely, especially in the later photographs. She was very warm and welcoming and I liked her immediately. (I suspect her resemblance to RA is not just physical.)"
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Noting the reference to Jan Mills Whitham in NCLSN, 31.3.2-3, Caroline Zilboorg forwarded the entry in Archives Hub (archiveshub@mimas.ac.uk) that describes the Whitham Papers at University of Exeter.
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Stephen Steele has found four letters from RA to Valery Larbaud written between 1923-27 in the Fonds Valery Larbaud at the Mediatheque municipale Valery Larbaud in Vichy. The letters discuss RA's reading habits, his preference for French novels, and his enthusiasm for Valentine Dobree's Your Cuckoo Sings by Kind and S. Sitwell's Southern Baroque Art. RA approaches Larbaud in an effort to have Larbaud or someone else translate these books. The letters also sketch RA's literary landscape in France, with Jean Paulhan, Edmond Jaloux, and Jacques Riviere, editor of nrf until his death in 1925. (See below for these letters in Checklist form.)
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NCLS member Steele (ssteele@sfu.ca) would appreciate information on Trevor Blakemore's literary estate. He has tried unsuccessfully to locate his papers or the literary papers of Ann Blakemore.
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Checklist addenda:
Larbaud, Valery (French novelist, critic, and translator); 4 letters
1 - 11 October 1923 - als, London [Criterion letterhead], Mediatheque Municipale Valery Larbaud.
1 - 10 June 1924 - tls, Padworth, Mediatheque Municipale Valery Larbaud.
2 - 16 June and 1 July 1928 - tls, Paris, Mediatheque Municipale Valery Larbaud.
* * * * * * * * * Larbaud refers to RA in letters written to Adrienne Monnier. In a letter from Rome on 28 March 1922 he praises RA's "The Influence of Mr. James Joyce," and in a letter from Italy dated 22 June 1924 he notes RA's suggestion that he write something on Sitwell's Southern Baroque Art (see above).
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NCLS member Michael Copp tells us that in Paul Selver's Orage and the New Age Circle: Reminiscences and Reflections (George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1959), the author describes how, on a visit to Pound in London in 1911, some Imagists arrived soon after: "We were getting along swimmingly when Richard Aldington breezed in. I had already met him in the office of the New Age, but somehow he slipped my memory before. The fault cannot have been his. For he was a brawnyish, blond, good-looking young man who, on his walks abroad, went hatless (which in those days was a symptom of oddity), and affected a cloak of stagy cut. He had about him something which Ezra, I fancy, would have called panache, and a plain speaker, such as Randall, I fear, blasted swank. Aldington's contributions to the New Age consisted of versions from lesser-known Greeks, and sometimes he made mistakes which he corrected in next week's correspondence column." There follow brief vignettes of H.D. and F.S. Flint, and a dismissive comment on their conversation which Selver found was above his head (pp. 36-38).
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NCLS member Max Saunders reported that the Ford Madox Ford Society met 4 October in London. Joseph Wiesonfarth, who recently completed a book on Ford, was the lecturer. See the Society's website at www.rialto.com/fordmadoxford society for the latest issue of the Society's Newsletter. RA [and later H.D.] acted as a secretary to Ford, before he changed his name from Hueffer.)
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Associate Editor David Wilkinson says that he has found a relative of the Cornelia Brookfield mentioned in Barbara Guest's book on H.D. Anyone interested in further information should contact David.
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Catherine Aldington reports the death on the 14th of October of Ghislaine de Boysson, Lawrence Durrell's third wife. Catha and RA were close friends of the Durrells--see Doyle's Biography and Gates's Letters.
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NCLS member Stephen Steele has turned up an exchange of letters between RA and W.K Rose who was editing the letters of Wyndham Lewis. Rose asks whether RA has any letters from Lewis beside the five that he lists. RA replies that all of his letters from Lewis "have vanished," and adds: "I am glad that you are working on Lewis - a man of varied genius, much under-estimated in his own time by the fools and knaves who control opinion. He was a great artist as well as a great writer."
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Checklist addendum:
Rose, W.K. (Professor of English at Vassar and editor of Wyndham Lewis Letters); 1 letter
1 - 14 August 1959 - tls, Sury, Vassar College Libraries.
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Correspondent Cy Fox reports that when "rooting around my cave" he found a 1995 review, "The Maecenas of Anlaby" by Robert Drewe, in TLS for August 4 of former NCLS member Geoffrey Dutton's Out in the Open and Ninette Dutton's Firing. Although RA is not mentioned in the review, Dutton was a great admirer of him so that this review may be of background interest.
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The International Lawrence Durrell Conference, which meets in Rhodes, Greece, June 27 through July 2, 2004, has issued a "Call for Papers" on "Durrell on Rhodes: the Spirit of Myth." Write Paul Lorenz, Conference Director, 3201 S. Beech Street, #40, Pine Bluff, AR71603 USA or e-mail paullorenz@beglobal.net
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Lionel Follet has published "Aragon-Pound, brèves recontres" in La Nouvelle revue française, 567, octobre 2003: 328-351. The essay includes mention of RA's letters to Brigit Patmore and their value as a chronicle of the rocky relationship between Aragon and Nancy Cunard. December 13, 1928, is given as the day RA chose La Chapelle-Réanville for publication of "Hark the Herald," and notes that Argon brought his proofs six days later.
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CALL FOR PAPERS
III International Aldington Society Conference, Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, France. July 6-8, 2004
The International Aldington Society holds its bi-annual conference in the historic town on the coast of the Mediterranean in the Camargue, where Catherine Aldington has lived for many years. The conference directors welcome papers on any aspect of Richard Aldington's life and work. They are also interested in papers on writers whose life or work has a significant connection with Aldington's (such as H.D., Durrell, Pound, Hemingway). And in keeping with Richard Aldington's love of Provence, we are also happy to receive papers on Provençal writers, medieval or modern.
Please submit a title and brief abstract, by mail, to the conference directors, H.R. Stoneback and Daniel Kempton, Department of English, SUNY New Paltz, New York 12561, or, electronically to kemptond@newpaltz.edu before February 1, 2004. Inquiries about travel and accommodations should also be addressed to the directors.
Registration fee is $45 ($35 for Graduate students). Fee includes opening banquet and annual membership in the International Aldington Society; registrants are eligible for a discount on Writers in Provence, the proceedings of the first two Aldington conferences.
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In "What World War I's Greatest Poet Would Say About Hiding Our War Dead" (New York Times, November 9. 2003) Adam Cohen compares Wilfred Owen's honest treatment of the horrors of his war with that of a U.S. administration that is "leading troops into battle, while trying its best to obscure what happens to them." RA certainly dealt honestly with the awful truth about WWI in his war poetry, but he also lived to treat much else about his homeland with equal honestly, which, unfortunately for RA's reputation, displeased the British establishment.
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Our newest NCLS member is Andrew Frayn, Department of English and American Studies, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, tel. 0161-448 9639, e-mail andrew.j.frayn@stud.man.ac.uk Member Frayn has completed an MA looking at the contexts of RA's fiction discussing the First World War, and he is currently pursuing a Ph.D. on the changes in novels discussing the War through the 1920s.
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RA bibliographer Shelley Cox has located a new printing of RA's poem "The Poplar" (see NCLSN, 27.4.3) held by Brigham Young University. "45 copies of this poem by Richard Aldington were printed at Tryst Press, August 22-24, 2002. This is copy 11."
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NCLS member Jacques Temple has sent some books by and about RA to the Historial de la Grand Guerre, Chateau de Peronne, B.P.63, 80201 Peronne Vedex, France. The curator, M. Thomas Compère-Morel answered with thanks saying that he was happy to discover the writings of RA. Temple suggests that some of our members might write to M. M. Compère-Morel to assure him that the 1914-1918 soldier RA does, indeed, belong with Hemingway, Junger, Remarque, Barbusse, Cendrars, Owen, and many other WWI writers.
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Strange Meetings, a new selection of poems by Harold Monro, with introduction and notes by NCLS member Dominic Hibberd, is available at £7.99 + £1 post & packing [UK only] from Laurel Books, 282 The Common, Holt, Wilshire, BA14 6QJ, U.K. [ISBN 1 873390 05 X. 128pp. Paperback.]
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Member Andrew Frayn is able to clarify the note in NCLSN, 31.2.4 about the John Rylands Library' holdings of RA material: There are eleven letters from RA (1939-39) to Dean, nine copies of letters from Dean to RA (1938-39), a memorandum of agreement between RA and Dean for the performance of the dramatic version of Seven Against Reeves (1939), and a script for My Wife Won't Let Me which was the title of the stage adaptation.
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Encyclopedia of Modernism, ed. Paul Poplawski, now has a publication date of 30 December 2003, and is priced at $99.50 or £64.50. NCLS member and Correspondent Caroline Zilboorg wrote the entry for RA.
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In a recent email to the H.D. Society, Zilboorg came to the defense of RA's burning of his and H.D's letters in his possession in 1920. She also addressed the accusation that RA left H.D. out of his D.H. Lawrence biography, feeling that he was doing what H.D. herself would have wanted. As both an H.D. and a RA scholar, Zilboorg has often been able to address some of these misunderstandings.
The Richard Aldington web site, revised December 3, 2003. Address comments to Paul Hernandez, paul@imagists.org