Vol. 35, No. 3 Autumn 2007
Editor: Norman T. Gates
520 Woodland Avenue
Haddonfield, NJ 08033-2626, USA
E-mail: ntgates@worldnet.att.netAssociate 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, website editor, and list manager:
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* * * * * * * * * *
NCLS member Patricia Willis, curator of American Literature at the Beinecke Library, Yale University, writes that they have recently acquired 24 pieces of correspondence, 1962-1966, from John Cournos to Ingeborg ten Haeff, the German-born painter, now living in New York, and a typescript, carbon, corrected and signed, n.d., of Cournos’s “A tide in the affairs of men…”. There is another copy of “A tide in the affairs of men…” in the Olga Rudge papers there.
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About 80% of our Newsletter is now sent out by e-mail. If you now receive a mailed copy, but could accept e-mail, please give us your address. Your editors would greatly appreciate this. We also ask that if you change your e-mail address you let us know; otherwise, our entire mailing is disrupted. And don’t forget that if you missed your copy of the Newsletter or want to see a back issue, you can go to our website listed above.
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NCLS member Virginia Nicholson’s new book, Singled Out – How Two Million Women Survived without Men after World War 1, is being published by Viking in the UK at the end of August. Members will be particularly interested in the section that discussed the relationship between Irene Rathbone and RA. We hope to offer reviews of this book later this year, and will be glad to have readers’ comments.
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Member Michael Copp’s new book, The Fourth Imagist (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press), brings together for the first time poems from the three volumes of poetry that F.S. Flint published between 1909 and 1920. The Introduction offers biographical information on Flint, and explains how he became acquainted with Ezra Pound, RA, and H.D., and so became one of the four core Imagist poets. The Introduction also makes helpful use of early assessments of Flint’s poetry by contemporaries such as May Sinclair, RA, and John Gould Fletcher. Copp’s most recent books are An Imagist at War: The Complete War Poems if Richard Aldington (2002), and Richard Aldington: The Selected War Poems (2005).
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Dorothy Richardson: A Calendar of Letters was issued as an E-Book by the ELT Press on 17 June 2007, the fiftieth anniversary of Dorothy Richardson’s death. The Calendar identifies and briefly summarizes over 2100 letters sent by the author to her friends, family, editors and readers. It can be viewed and downloaded free at:
http://www.uncg.edu/eng/elt/RichCalendar/Calendarindex.htm
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Lisa Gilbey of Rosica Colin Limited advises that they have concluded an agreement with the Folio Society for a reissue of RA’s translation of The Decameron that will be available at approximately £135 in a deluxe leather bound edition.
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Great news: Paul Hernandez has set up an RA listserv! If you want to send messages to anyone on the list, address your e-mail to aldington@lists.berkeley.edu If you would like to join the list, send an e-mail to majordomo@lists.berkeley.edu In the body of the e-mail should be (and only be): “subscribe aldington”
Subscribers will then receive an e-mail telling them they need to reply with a particular code supplied in that message. Alternatively, anyone can send an e-mail to Paul at paul@imagists.org and he will add her/him to the listserv. I believe that this is an important step in RA scholarship that will enable us to work closely with one another in receiving and giving information about RA
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Correspondent Mike Copp, in the Cambridge University Library, came across the 1919 collection of poems by Andre Spire, Le Secret. It is inscribed as follows: A Richard Aldington, bien cordialement, A. Spire, le 19 Mai 1919. The book was presented to the Library by Frederick John Norton who was Under-Librarian at Pembroke College, Cambridge. The accession date, stamped inside, is 25 January 1954, but there is no record of where or when RA disposed of it. Copp also found a volume of poems by Andre Spire dedicated to F.S. Flint. And inscribed “A F.S. Flint bien amical hommage!! Andre Spire”.
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Please, please remember to notify us if your mail or e-mail address changes or if you no longer wish to receive the Newsletter. Each quarter when we mail or e-mail our lists there are a few names that can’t be found. We try to discover whether they have moved or changed their addresses, but, if we are not successful, the names are removed from our membership list.
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An announcement from the International Richard Aldington Society discusses 1) publication of the Proceedings of the Fourth Society Conference, 2) plans for the next biennial conference, 3) attendance at the Ezra Pound Conference by IRAS members including NCLS members Ian MacNiven and H.R. Stonebeck, and attendance at the Imagism Conference by some of this same group and also NCLS Correspondent Michel Copp. For the complete announcement e-mail H.R. Stonebach at Stoney_Sparrow@webtv.net
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Correspondent Caroline Zilboorg discovered that the BBC is putting its catalogue of radio and TV programs on line. Further investigation at http://catalogue.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/infax/contributor/492468 gave information on RA’s appearances. Does anyone know whether French radio has a similar archive?
As noted in the NCLSN previously, Wikipedia has quite a long article on RA at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Aldington where members can add to the discussion tab. There is also an H.D. entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilda_Doolittle. that has been identified as one of the best articles produced in Wikipedia. You are also invited to update or improve on this article.
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Mother-River-Flows-Two-Ways Press has just published Countries of the Heart: For Stoney and Sparrow. The collection of poems and stories, edited by Matthew Nickel, is dedicated to H.R. and Sparrow Stonebach and features contributions from Aldington Society members, Catherine Aldington, Eric Forbeaux, Bob Waugh, Dan Kempton, Gregg Neikirk, Steve Florcxyk, Matthew Nickel, Brad McDuffie, James Stamant, Goretti Vianney-Benca, Alex Andriesse, William Boyle, Jenica Lyons, and Damian Carpenter. The cost of the book, including shipping, is $13 (or 2 for $20). If ordering from Europe, the price is 13 Euros (or 2 for 20 Euros). For more information e-mail William Boyle: williamBoyle4444@yahoo.com
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Correspondent Mike Copp tells us that in Stefan Collini’s Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britian (Oxford U.P., 2006) there is an interesting reference to RA. On pages 287-289 Collini discusses in some detail the problem facing RA when translating the title of Julien Benda’s 1927 novel, La Trahison des Clercs. The problem lies in what to do with the last word. The 1928 Routledge translation has The Great Betrayal. The 1928 Crosby Gaige and the 1930 Chatto & Windus both have The Treason of the Intellectuals.
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Our Newsletter is compiled during a three months period from news items sent to us by our “Correspondents” and our general membership. If each of the members to whom we mail or e-mail the NCLSN quarterly were to send us one news item yearly, the work and worry of your editors would be lightened immeasurably. Tell us about yourself, your work, or anything that you may have discovered about RA in your reading or from others. Your editors would like very much to hear from you; some of you have not been in touch since your initial request that we send you the Newsletter—do write or e-mail us. The mail and e-mail addresses of your editors are given on our masthead. Thank you.
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En route from South Carolina to his new position in Canada, Michel Pharand and his family stopped to visit NCLS member Stanley Weintraub, good friend and sponsor of many past and present RA scholars.
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NCLS members interested in H.D. will be pleased to know of the publication by the University of Florida Press of The Sword Went Out to Sea, by Delia Alton, edited with a scholarly introduction by Cynthia Hogue and Julie Vandivere. A description of the project’s research has been posted on the Beinecke website at:
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Before Nancy Cunard became angry with RA over his depiction of Norman Douglas in Pinorman (1954), her Hours Press had published RA’s Hark the Herald (1928), The Eaten Heart (1929), and Last Straws (1930). After a trip to France, Correspondent Stephen Steele writes: “Visiting Normandy this summer, I stopped at La Chapelle-Réanville where Nancy Cunard established The Hours Press in 1928 [after it had moved from Paris] on her property named Le Puits Carré. The building that contained the press still stands. A neighbor informed me that the main house sat unoccupied for many years and recently sustained extensive damage from a fire. A legal dispute involving the current owners has left the future of the entire site in question. From what I could gather in La Chapelle-Réanville and in nearby Vernon, including the municipal archives, there is little left of Nancy Cunard in local memory.”
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Correspondent Michael Copp found the following “far from appreciative, and rather superficial (just half a page) and grudging assessment of RA’s war poetry in John Greening’s Poets of the First World War (London, Greenwich Exchange, 2004): “The most prominent of the card-carrying Imagists to write of the war was Richard Aldington (1892-1962), although D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) and F.S. Flint (1885-1960) each left poems (Flint’s ‘Soldiers’ and ‘Hats,’ for instance, or Lawrence’s ‘Bombardment‘). Following the Imagist formula, going ‘in fear of abstraction’ and using ‘either no ornament or good ornament,’ Aldington wrote sharply and brightly, though not particularly memorably. ‘Field Manoeuvres: Outpost Duty’ begins:.
The long autumn grass under my body
Soaks my clothes with its dew;
Where my knees press into the ground
I can feel the damp earth …
Such unmusical verse comes perilously close to chopped-up prose, even in well-known poems such as ‘In the Trenches’ and while Adrian Barlow makes a good case for him in Six Poets of the Great War, read in bulk, his poetry seems just too skeletal and vapid.”
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“T.E. Lawrence: A Symposium” will be held at the Huntington Library and Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA 01108 October 5 and 6, 2007. For a program and other details contact Suellen Miller ( who will attend the “Symnposium”) at 17 Shadow Road , Melrose, Massachusetts 02176-5109.
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Associate Editor David Wilkinson has taken the Book Gallery back to its starting point in St. Ives (see masthead for new address). Due to lack of space, his extensive RA collection has been put into storage. He is considering its sale for which he has prepared a draft catalogue. Not surprisingly he would prefer to see it housed permanently in the UK as he plans to resume his work into the years RA spent in Padworth, continue his Gaudier-Brzeska research and complete his Ranger Gull project, much of which requires access to his collection.
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Correspondent Shelley Cox writes of the death of former Dean of Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Ralph McCoy. While many of us may not have known or heard of Dean McCoy, he was very important to Aldington scholars, since he was largely responsible for SIU’s having one of the largest and finest collections of Aldington books, manuscripts, letters, and collateral material. Dean McCoy, during his tenure, purchased my own Aldington library, and SIU has received or will receive my Aldington correspondence. All Aldington scholars owe him an immense debt of gratitude.
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On p. 2 of Vol. 26, No. 4 of the NCLSN there is a reference to James Whitall’s English Years. Michael Copp felt that the following quotation from p.58 of Whitall’s book might also be interesting:
“Richard’s good looks and high spirits made his intolerance of the existing order more than endurable. It was in fact quite contagious, and I might easily have wrapped myself in a long black cloak and joined the rebel ranks. As it was, I contented myself with the friendship of these two bright stars [RA and H.D.] of the Imagist Movement, gobbled up their favorable criticism of my translations and listened with suspended breath to some vague plans for a translation project in which I might conceivable participate.”
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INSCRIPTION
There was a poet dreamed and droned and rhymed
Fifty years long of buried queens and kings.
Picking old tales from books and garrulous peasants
Whose slant-eyed cunning knows the picturesque
Buys beer and tips. . .
Why, if he was a poet,
Did he praise the violent predatory men
And all those ignorant women? Why
Slip from the bitter iron strife with truth
To play his parlour tricks with petty words
Laureate of the unearned income world?
Is this our leader?
I’ll not praise fools
Nor flirt by proxy with imagined queens.
I can take harsher wounds than a feigned sorrow.
Give the wit to scorn what merits scorn,
To hate what’s hateful, let me break myself
Against the steel and concrete of our days,
Bleeding to bring a newer life to birth.
A typescript of this poem, with “Richard Aldington” typed at the bottom, is in the Morris Library of Southern Illinois University. No record of publication has been found.
(See p. 191, “Manuscripts and Notebooks,” The Poetry of Richard Aldington: A Critical Evaluation and an Anthology of Uncollected Poems, Norman T. Gates [The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1974.])
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