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NEW CANTERBURY LITERARY SOCIETY NEWS

(The Richard Aldington Newsletter)
Vol. 33, No. 4                  Winter 2005-06

NEW CANTERBURY LITERARY SOCIETY NEWS

(The Richard Aldington Newsletter)

Editor: Norman T. Gates
520 Woodland Avenue
Haddonfield, NJ 08033-2626, USA
E-mail: ntgates@worldnet.att.net
Associate Editor: David Wilkinson
The Old Post Office Garage
Chapel Street, St. Ives
Cornwall TR26 2LR U.K.
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, Stephen Steele, F.-J. Temple, Caroline Zilboorg
Correspondent and Bibliographer: Shelley Cox. 
Biographers: Charles Doyle, Jean Moorcroft Wilson

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                        In France this summer on a working vacation, Biographer Jean Moorcroft Wilson has been attempting to set up a meeting with F.-J. Temple, RA’s good friend and colleague.  Temple co-edited An Intimate Portrait with Alister Kershaw, and, next to the deceased Kershaw, who was RA’s secretary for many years, Temple would probably be one of the most important of RA’s friends still alive.

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                        NCLS member Max Saunders invites membership in the Ford Madox Ford Society.  For information, contact him at max.saunders@kel.ac.uk

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                        On 15 November, in the small seaside resort-cum-port of Wells-next-the-Sea on the north Norfolk coast, Michael Copp introduced and read a number of RA’s war poems to an audience of “The Friends of Poetry-next-the-Sea.”  NCLS member Copp chose to read the following poems: “Proem,” “Leave-Taking,” “Field Manoeuvres: Outpost Duty,” “A Village,” “Machine-Guns,” “Apathy,” “Happiness,” “Eumenides,” “Fatigues,” and an extract from Life Quest.  He shared the evening with co-member, Alan Byford, who spoke about, and read poems by, Edmund Blunden

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                        Shelley Cox found an offering on eBay of RA’s Crystal World that included a letter dated October 28, 1937, from William Heinemann, RA’s publisher, to the critic Humbert Wolfe.  Heinemann, in asking Wolfe “to do a piece about it” adds: “The reason that I venture to opportune you thus is that he is certain to get a slamming from Eliot and all his tribe, who, for obvious reasons, dislike him and his work.”

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                        Bibliographer Cox, who keeps a close eye on eBay for RA related items, found a book by Walter Lowenfels, Finale of Seem, inscribed by him and with a second inscription reading “ And from Richard Aldington, who got the book published, without its … affix.”  The inscription, which is to A.S. Frere-Reeves is dated Paris 1929.   NCLS member Gemma Bristow bid on this book, but she was outbid at the last minute.

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                        Southern University Carbondale, which holds a very extensive RA collection, is advertising on-line to fill the position of Director of the Special Collections Research Center at Morris Library.  In the initial number of Cornerstone, the newsletter of Morris Library, the retirement of NCLS member David Koch, the present Director, is the lead story.  “He has been an integral part of shepherding Special Collections from its humble beginnings to an advanced research center.”

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                         For Banned Book Week at SIU’s Rare Book Library, Shelley Cox read selections from Thomas Paine that got him permanently exiled from England.  In the past, she has read from RA’s work that essentially brought the same results for him.

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                        The portrait purported to be of RA that was mentioned in the last NCLSN (Vol. 33, No. 3, p. 4) was sold for £400.  The seller did not withdraw the picture for further inquiry as they said they might.

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                        New NCLS member Archie Henderson writes: “A great place to catalogue your books on line, including your Aldington collection is the beta page for LibraryThing (http://www.librarything.com).  Two hundred books can be catalogued free; an unlimited number can be catalogued for $10.00.  Adding a book is as simple as clicking on the description from amazon.com or any of a number of library catalogues accessible through the site.  You can also search across other people’s libraries if they are not kept private.”

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                        Correspondent Michael Copp reports: “The exhibition, ‘Lawrence of Arabia: the Life, the Legend,’ opens at the Imperial War Museum on 14 October.  To accompany this Malcolm Brown has written a book with the same title.  In two early reviews there is mention, inevitably, of RA.  In the Times of 8 October Michael Binyon writes: ‘Richard Aldington’s notorious debunking was as brutal as it was provocative.  Lawrence was a charlatan, a vain man pretending to shun publicity only to court it, a minor figure in the war and a sexual deviant.’  In the Independent on Sunday of 9 October Mark Bostridge writes: ‘It’s difficult now to appreciate the extent of the shock delivered in 1955 by the publication of Richard Aldington’s “biographical inquiry” into Lawrence in which he argued that he was a consummate deceiver who had fabricated his own legend; nor the ferocity of the backlash visited upon the author by members of the Lawrence circle.  What has become clearer with time is that Aldington’s debunking was part of an inevitable process of revisionism that finally removed Lawrence’s reputation from the hagiography that threatened to overwhelm it in the years following his death.”

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                        There is one RA quotation in The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Quotations (1999): “I have got to write a damned book I don’t want to write, but when it’s done I’ll never again let myself be tempted by large advances to undertake anything my daimon doesn’t suggest.”  [From a letter to H.D., 29 May 1951.]  Caroline Zilboorg in her Richard Aldington and H.D.: The Later Years in Letters in a note to this sentence writes: “Aldington is probably referring to his Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Inquiry, published in London by Collins in 1955.  He began this project in the spring of 1950 at Kershaw’s suggestion.”

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                        T.E. Notes, Vol. XV, No. 1, Summer 2005, includes at least two references to RA.  On p.10 of “The Alternative Life of T.E. Lawrence” by Maarten Schild there is a reference to a letter of RA’s that was published in Literary Lifelines: The Richard Aldington-Lawrence Durrell Correspondence (New York, 1981) that was edited by NCLS member, Ian S. MacNiven and former NCLS member Harry T. Moore   A note by Jack H. Storer that tells how he became interested in T.E. Lawrence (p. 29) also mentions RA.

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                        NCLSN correspondent Michael Copp came across two items that indicate that the Imagists are still being read.  The first occurs in a review of a Folk Festival in Wales: “Joanna Newsom […] started what she said was a new song.  As it unwound over a full fifteen minutes or so, image following image as precisely as in a poem by H.D., we were all drawn into her spell.”

                        NCLS member Alan Byford called Copp’s attention to the second item.  An article in a recent issue of the National Trust magazine begins by quoting five lines from F.S. Flint’s poem, “Lament.” From Otherworld:

                                                            “The young men of the world

                                                            No longer posses the road;

                                                            The road possesses them.

                                                            They no longer inherit the earth:

                                                            The earth inherits them.”

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                        Last summer Associate Editor David Wilkinson wrote: “Funny how the circle closes, isn’t it?  The name of Ranger Gull was firmly implanted on my mind on that first reading of Life for Life’s Sake.  Hence my current research into Gull’s life and work.  That has led me to investigate Gull’s friendship with the eccentric Reverend Harold Davidson who has gone down in church history as the ‘Prostitute’s Padre.’  Davidson had connections with the notorious Maundy Gregory who was known to be selling honours for Lloyd George and whose biography, by Tom Cullen, has just arrived.  The Prologue is no more, nor less, than the following quote:

‘Should there not be some memorial to this national character, who if not exactly a king-maker was by way of being a knight-maker and even a peer-maker?  A full-length statue of Gregory might be put up in the archive of the College of Heralds, with the modest inscription: “Si monumentum requires, circumspice.”  Or perhaps a bust similar to that of Moliere at the Academie Francaise, might be set up in the house of Lords with the inscription in English: “Nothing was lacking in his glory, he was lacking in ours.’”

RICHARD ALDINGTON  [From RA’s essay on Gregory in Frauds (Heinemann, 1957.)

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                        Heesok Chang (Vassar) and NCLSN Correspondent Stephen Steele have completed their study “Modernism at the Margins: Richard Aldington’s Letters to Douglas Goldring (1932-1946).”  It is scheduled to appear in the next issue (January 2006) of Modern Language Studies, 35.2. 

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                        Correspondent Steele has also collected other unpublished letters written by RA.  Reproduced below is one letter from RA to Robert Creeley and part of another from this interesting collection of RA’s writings.  For Creeley’s remarks on his contact with RA, see NCLSN 31.1 (Spring 2003).  Robert Creeley passed away recently.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Villa les Rosiers*

                                                                                                                                     Ancien chemin de Castelnau

                                                                                                                                     Montpellier

                                                                                                                                     Hérault

                                                                                                                                                 21 Sept 1951

Dear Mr Creel[e]y,

                               Lately I have received a ukase from Unkil Ez giving me your address and telling me to get in touch with you.

                               I can’t find Fontrousse anywhere in the neighborhood of Aix on the Carte Michelin.  How does one get there from Aix, and what is the number of the road or roads?  How do I find you in the village?

                               At the moment my (very small) car is being repaired and I am involved in the troubles of getting a daughter to school.  But I would very much like to nip over and see you if you would care.  Next week I hope to have staying with me a young Australian poet who will surely interest you more than an elderly bozo like me.

                                                                                                            Yours sincerely,

                                                                                                                        Richard Aldington

*Courtesy of Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries

 

Aldington wrote Creeley again on October 16: “Entertaining letters from Ez, who retains the faculty of getting highly worked up over matters in which he has but a faint practical and personal interest—e.g. banking.  Now if he had the fortune of Barbara Hutton or Doris Cromwell there might be some point to it… .”

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                        On 8 November the official launch of “The War Poets” series, published by Cecil Woolf, London, took place in the Boardroom of the Imperial War Museum (as can be seen by the titles below, this series aims to concern itself with more than exclusively First World War poets).  The walls of this elegant room were appropriately covered with war paintings by William Orpen.  This was very much an NCLS occasion, since apart from Jean Moorcroft Wilson, as General Editor of this series, other NCLS members were responsible for three of the titles: Michael Copp, Richard Aldington: The Selected War Poems; Alan Byford, Edmund Blunden and the Great War: Recollections of a Friendship, and Anne Powell, Alun Lewis: A Poet of Consequence.  The other titles are: Richard Perceval Graves, Changing Perceptions: The Poets of the Great War, and John Press, Sidney Keyes.  Each author was given five minutes to speak about his or her book.  Michael Copp chose to read extracts from two letters from RA to F.S. Flint, written when RA was in France in the summer of 1918, as well as three poems: “Soliloquy I,” “Soliloquy II,” and “Concert.”  Among the forty guests, prominent were Margi Blunden, Edmund’s daughter, Alun Lewis, the nephew of Alun Lewis, Robert Perceval Graves, the nephew of Robert Graves, and Dominic Hibberd.

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                        Autumn 2005, Catalogue Number 40, of Palladour Books (NCLS members Anne and Jeremy Powell) is devoted to “Literature and Poetry of the First World War.”  The collection includes three of RA’s books: Images of Desire, Two Stories, and Roads to Glory, as well as fifteen anthologies in many of which his poetry appears.  Included with the catalogue is a flyer, “Five New War Poets Monographs from Cecil Woolf” that gives details on the three books by NCLS members described above, including Richard Aldington: The Selected War Poems, offered at £7.50.  “Michael Copp’s judicious selection will undoubtedly serve to restore and justify Aldington’s reputation as one of the most important literary voices of the First World War.”

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                        Associate Editor David Wilkinson writes “I have this morning received a catalogue – a real life catalogue – of Twentieth Century Literature from Paul Rassam, [Flat 5, 18 East Heath Rd., London, NW3 1AJ.  Tel:020 7794 9316].  There are a number of items that connect to the original CLS, selectively as follows:

RICHARD ALDINGTON

Item 5. Remy de Gourmont: a Modern Man of Letters. 1st edn. Inscribed by RA to Natalie Barney [1928]. £250.

Item 8. Remy de Gourmont: selections from all his works…1928.  Inscribed by RA to Pino.  £175.

Item 53. Choruses from Impegenia in Aulis by H.D.  Inscribed by H.D. to Mrs. J.G. Fletcher.  £550.

Item 54. Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1915, and a year book of American Poetry by H.D. inscribed by H.D.   

               To F.S. Flint.  £500.

Item 76. Cadences by F.S. Flint. 1915.  Inscribed by Flint to his literary executor, Christopher Middleton. £175.

Item 143. Some Letters of Pino Orioli to Mrs. Gordon Crotch. First. 1974. Ltd to 120 copies. [not signed!]. £35.

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                        Your editor enjoyed a recent visit by longtime NCLS member Paul Schlueter who prepared “A Chronological Check List of the Books by Richard Aldington” that was included in Richard Aldington: An Intimate Portrait, edited by Alsiter Kershaw and Frédéric-Jacques Temple (1965).  The “Checklist” has served me well since 1967 when I bought this book.  Schlueter’s most recent publication is Francis A. March: Selected Writings of the First Professor of English, edited with June Schlueter (2005).

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                                                                     CALL FOR PAPERS

IV International Richard Aldington Society Conference, Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, France, July 6-8, 2006

The International Richard Aldington Society holds its bi-annual conference in the historic town on the coast of the Mediterranean in the Comargue, 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 that address connections between Aldington and other twentieth-century writers, such as H.D., Durrell, Pound, Hemingway.

Please submit a title and brief extract (with your e-mail address) before February 1, 2006 to the conference directors, H.R. Stoneback and Daniel Kempton, Department of English, SUNY New Platz, New York 12561.  (If mail is inconvenient, submit electronically to kemptond@newplatz.edu.)  Information about registration, travel, and accommodations will be forthcoming in February.

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Our newest NCLS member is Lorna Sargent who is writing her dissertation on novelists of the

Great War, including Richard Aldington.  She is a mature student with a love for history, in particular the period of the First World War and the lives of those who fought, died, or survived.  Her interest is not so much in the content of the novels, but in the context of using them as a focus to study masculinity, pride, patriotism, nationalism, and rejection of post-war ideals.  At the moment, she is comparing Death of a Hero with the novels of Remarque and Barbusse.  You may reach Sargent at sargentshouse@btopenworld.com