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Editor: David Wilkinson 2B Bedford Road, St. Ives Cornwall TR26 1SP 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, Stephen Steele, Archie Henderson, Caroline Zilboorg
Correspondent and Bibliographer: Shelley Cox.
Biographer: Charles Doyle
http://www.philly.com/philly/obituaries/20100423_Norman_T__Gates__executive__scholar.html
PROFESSOR NORMAN TIMMINS GATES PhD [1914-2010]
Professor Norman Timmins Gates, the founder and editor of the New Canterbury Literary Society Newsletter, died in his sleep at the age of ninety-five on 17th April 2010. He was born in October 1914 and grew up on a working farm south of Reading, Pennsylvania. His father was a businessman, a candy-maker. After graduating from Wyomissing High School in 1931, Norman enjoyed a year at Dickinson College before sacrificing his degree to work in one of his father's candy stores. In April 1933, Norman married Gertrude Morre. Their marriage lasted sixty-six years until Gertrude's death in March 1999. Norman had three fifteen-year long careers. First he worked for a paper products company in Philadelphia. At thirty-six in 1950 he began the N. T. Gates Company that specialized in packaging materials. After a further fifteen years he returned to the academic world where he earned his doctorate in English from the University of Pennsylvania. Then began a third career of teaching English at Rider College in Trenton, New Jersey before retiring as Professor Emeritus. Norman was awarded the Lindback Prize for distinguished teaching.
It was while considering a suitable subject for his PhD that Professor Gates’ Rider College advisor urged him to take a look at the work of Richard Aldington; his resultant books are the foundation on which current studies of Aldington have come to depend. They are: The Poetry of Richard Aldington: A Critical Evaluation and Anthology of Uncollected Poems [Pennsylvania State University Press. 1974]; A Checklist of the Letters of Richard Aldington [Southern Illinois University Press. 1977] and Richard Aldington: A Biography in Letters [Pennsylvania State University Press. 1992].
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Professor Norman Timmins Gates was the husband of the late Gertrude Morre, the loving father of Marilyn (Mrs. Robert Gates Hart) of Canton, Connecticut,
Norman E. Gates of Valley Springs, California, and Patricia A. Winder of San Francisco, California. He is also survived by five grandchildren, four great grandchildren and his dear friend and companion Peggy Will. Time was set aside in Haddonfield, New Jersey on Saturday, June 12th for family and friends as a celebration of Norman’s life. Seventy friends and family gathered to bid farewell. The family have put up some of Norman’s poems on the dedicated memorial website ‘Gertrude's Garden’ that Norman maintained for ten years at http://mysite.verizon.net/vze128lt9/
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Nothing was said but Norman ensured that our membership details were up to date in the last month of his life. Astonishingly, only a week before he died he changed his email address.
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NCLS Member Judith L. Johnston was hired in the wake of NTG’s retirement from Rider College where she continued to teach World War I literature. Richard Aldington was the subject of a continued correspondence between these two scholars.
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Recent Members may be unaware of the significance of the ten asterisks between news items in the Newsletter. Norman had long picked up on the so-called ‘C. L. S.’ Aldington’s ‘Canterbury Literary Society,’ an informal, mock society the ten (or so) members of which during the Thirties received dedicated copies of RA’s books; of Movietones in particular. There came a time when Norman found he was writing separate letters to the ten people who knew - or had shown an interest - in R. A. It was but a logical step to put together a duplicated sheet and distribute that as the New Canterbury Literary Society Newsletter. Volume 1, Number 1 was circulated on 1st August 1973 to Ann Bagnall, Miriam Benkovitz, Ruth Galloway, Frank Harrington, Alsiter Kershaw, Selwyn Kittredge, Harry T. Moore, Sydney Rosenthal and David Thatcher. Member number 10 of course was Norman T. Gates himself who, until he too moved on, was the sole survivor of that founding membership.
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It was in the summer of 1978, following publication of A Checklist of the Letters of Richard Aldington that Norman and Gertrude knocked on the door of Malthouse Cottage where RA had lived during the 1920s. So it was that the then incumbent, your current editor, was introduced to this scholarly world in which are enveloped. In the gracious company of Simon Hewett, your editor and his son Felix completed the circle when we visited Norman at home on the occasion of his 94th birthday in 2008. Norman then took us to meet his beloved Peggy over lunch at the Tavistock Country Club where ‘Professor Gates’ was treated with easy-going but well-deserved deference as Club President.
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Norman’s Obituary appeared in the Philadelphia newspapers. The emblematic portrait from ‘The Philly’ appears at the head of this Newsletter. Click the following:
http://www.philly.com/philly/obituaries/20100423_Norman_T__Gates__executive__scholar.html For a short time only, NCLS members who discovered this Obituary were able to leave personal notes on the page of condolences at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/philly/obituary.aspx?n=norman-t-gates&pid=142024361
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In recent years most members have received their Newsletter by email but Norman has continued to post hard copies to our American membership with his ‘associate editor’ doing the same for our European members. With our roles now reversed, Norman’s granddaughter Meredith Hart has offered to distribute hard copies to our state-side readership. Like her grandparents before her, Meredith also made the pilgrimage to Aldington’s Berkshire cottage in the late 1980s.
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‘Despite seldom being in touch, I continue to follow the goings-on of the NCLS and was greatly saddened to hear of the passing of Norman. He was one of those rare figures whose unstinting scholarship and meticulousness help keep literature - and the arts in general - alive, while ensuring that its adherents are both well informed in their research and grounded in their opinions. I take my hat off to him, he'll be sorely missed.’ [Michael Phipps].
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With this issue we welcome RA’s eldest nephew, Tim Aldington, to our ranks; somehow his name had slipped the radar.
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In the light of Norman’s death this seems an appropriate moment for your current editor to back off and set in motion changes to the Newsletter. One suggestion is that rather than issue a quarterly newsletter, contributions could be sent directly to the web site. In the interim, guest editors will be invited to present future issues. The next issue will therefore be penned by Dr. Andrew Frayn, Teaching Fellow in 20th Century American and British Literature, Erasmus and Visiting Students Co-ordinator, English and American Studies, School of Arts, Histories, and Cultures, Samuel Alexander Building, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester. M13 9PL. Frayn has been a member of the NCLS since late 2003. Please send email contributions either to the email address on our masthead or directly to: andrew.frayn@manchester.ac.uk We anticipate that the next issue will include news of The VI Richard Aldington Society / International Imagist Conference that was held at the home of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary de Rachewiltz in Brunnenburg Castle in the Tyrol region of Northern Italy between 20th and 22nd June.
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Norman’s death the following day prevented him from using this paragraph in the Newsletter. It was the last item sent by his associate editor:
Lisa Gilbey from RA’s literary agent, Rosica Colin Ltd., informs us that they have concluded an agreement with the publishers, Messrs. AST-Release, for the Russian language publishing rights to five Aldington titles. It is anticipated that 5,000 Russian language copies of the novels The Colonel’s Daughter [1931], All Men are Enemies [1933], Very Heaven [1937], Seven Against Reeves [1938] together with Portrait of a Rebel: The Life and Work of Robert Louis Stevenson [1957] will be issued in the near future thus continuing the long-standing accolade of Aldington as a favoured author among Russian readers.
In recent times Rosica Colin Ltd slipped off Norman’s database. This has now been rectified. Their Joanna Marston will receive this and future Newsletters.
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Michael Copp’s Obituary for Norman appeared in The Guardian on 10th June 2010. Click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jun/10/norman-gates-obituary
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Your current editor sent the following note to Norman just in time to miss his last Newsletter. Norman was familiar with the circumstances.
"My old house-mate Annie phoned last night. You may just recall that she was brought up in one of the cottages in Mill Lane, Padworth, that RA talks of in The Colonel's Daughter - just round the corner from Malthouse Cottage. I believe I mentioned that her uncle used to be RA's odd-job boy but that was about all he could recall so I never pursued the contact. Two days ago Annie went to see her Auntie Winnie who is also in her Nineties. Winnie served afternoon tea on a little wicker tray and began to muse over her childhood. 'That tray used to belong to Richard Aldington,' she told Annie, 'but I don't imagine you have any idea who he is.' I can almost see Annie gulping over her tea. As a young girl, Auntie Winnie used to wash the dishes for 'Mr. and Mrs. Aldington' and her mum cooked for them. Winnie remembers RA 'going on long walks.'”
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Members may be interested to see that The Queen’s Preferment by Albert E. Aldington is once more available. Via ‘abebooks.com’ a bookseller in Exeter, Devon, is offering a ‘brand new’ British Library paperback edition at $39.64. This title is believed to be the only novel written RA’s father.
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On hearing the news of Norman’s death, member Jenny Plastow wrote: ‘How sad. What remarkable people belong to this society. And what an astonishing job Norman has done … in keeping the communications going.’
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Member Caroline Zilboorg sent details of an exhibition of the paintings of Paul Nash. The exhibition ‘Paul Nash: The Elements’ ran from 10th February till 9th May at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. Members will recall Nash’s evocative dust wrappers for RA’s Life For Life’s Sake and Roads to Glory. www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk
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The web site ‘You Tube’ is showing what is described as a ‘Movie trailer for “At All Costs”. Original story by Richard Aldington (July 8 – July 27 1962), he was best known for his WWI Poetry.’ The trailer that seems to bear no relationship to RA’s story stars Bruce Willis as Captain Hanley. Does anyone know anything about this film? Click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O5c7o00bQc
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The following is also from Zilboorg:
"In 1987, I had the privilege of participating in an NEH Summer Seminar on Modernist Poetry under the direction of Professor A. Walton Litz. In order to become a member of this select group, I had submitted an application that included a project I wanted to work on and which I had chosen in part because I knew so little about it: H.D. and her relation to Modernism. I read rather madly both in preparing my proposal and between the time of my acceptance in May and my arrival with my husband and four young children (the oldest was then seven) in Princeton in June, one question became increasing pressing: who really was Richard Aldington and why did those writing on H.D. seem to have such mixed feeling about him? ‘While working at the Firestone Library that summer, I came across Brigit Patmore’s memoir My Friends When Young. There Aldington features large-- and the handsome photographs of him both young and mature-- well, I did begin to wonder: what had H.D. seen in him that her feminist champions seemed, at least to me, to be missing? What part had he played in Modernism and in her life? ‘So then I changed my angle on things and began to focus on Aldington-- and the first thing I looked at after Aldington’s Collected Poems was The Poetry of Richard Aldington: A Critical Evaluation and an Anthology of Uncollected Poems (Norman’s doctoral dissertation, published in 1974) and Norman’s A Checklist of the Letters of Richard Aldington (1977). Both are works of primary scholarship, the bedrock of any historical study and vital to any critical or theoretical work that might come later. They were, for me, goldmines-- and they led me that summer to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale, to the Widener Library at Harvard, and to Norman himself, who luckily for me lived not far from Princeton in southern New Jersey."After reading Norman’s books, I immediately wrote him care of Ryder College, where he was then an emeritus professor, and received an answer amazingly quickly. I had so much I wanted to ask him! Walt Litz was another prince in my life that summer and an advocate of the important networking that has nourished my scholarship. All seminar participants had privileges at the Princeton University Faculty Club and we were supposed to use those privileges to invite people we wanted to meet to lunch. Norman was the person I most wanted to meet that summer, so I invited him and he graciously accepted, driving up from Haddonfield on a dazzlingly sunny day in July and bringing with him a copy of a full run of The New Canterbury Literary Society Newsletter-- a treasure trove! ‘I cannot recall what we ate that day, but it was a very long lunch and we were certainly the last people to leave the faculty dining room. We continued our discussion on a campus bench under the shade of enormously tall trees: Norman spoke of his relationship with Catha Aldington; with ‘the other Norman’ (Yale University professor Norman Holmes Pearson, champion of H.D.’s work); with Alister Kershaw, Aldington’s friend and literary executor; and with David Wilkinson, then living in the house in Padworth where Aldington had lived with Arabella Yorke in the 1920s. He agreed with Walt that I should take a few days off and go both to Yale (where Aldington’s letters to H.D. from the Western Front had just become available to readers) and to Harvard (to consult the papers of Amy Lowell and John Cournos)-- no easy feat for me to contemplate while juggling the demands of both family and seminar-- but with his encouragement I went and the rest of my career at least is history.
"Norman and I began that summer a correspondence which continued until shortly before his death, the reams of letters being replaced by emails over the decades. I saw him in France in 1992 at the Aldington conference in Montpellier, and twice I visited him at home, once before his wife Gertrude died and once afterwards when he was on his own. On both occasions he was the most gracious host and we talked and talked and talked.
"Over the years Norman was invariably encouraging of my writing and welcoming of my thoughts, even when I wondered about both. I have beside me on my desk this morning in Brittany copies of his books. The Poetry of Richard Aldington and the Checklist are inscribed identically with characteristic generosity: ‘3 February 1988-- For Caroline, who carries on our work-- Norman’. What a responsibility, what a gift."