This newsletter is being circulated on 8 July 2012, 120 years to the day after Edward Godfree Aldington was born in
Portsea, near Portsmouth, on the south coast of England. July 2012 also sees
the fiftieth anniversary of Aldington’s death in Sury-en-Vaux, in the Cher
region of France. It is also 100 years since Richard Aldington, as he was by
then known, started to come to public attention as one of a new group of
writers of free verse, dubbed by Ezra Pound and known to posterity as the
Imagists. Perhaps, in the light of these anniversaries, as society members we
should make an effort to spread the word about RA – tell someone who might
appreciate his work about it. He remains underappreciated and it would be good
to feel that we are all doing something to help these writings endure.
A reminder, on this note, that Biographer
Vivien Whelpton is organising a celebration luncheon on Saturday 28th
July in Padworth, where RA spent most of the 1920s. Many members and
correspondents of the society will be there, and it promises to be a memorable
occasion. Please e-mail Vivien at v.whelpton@btopenworld.com
if you would like to come along.
Andrew
Frayn
**********
Correspondent Simon Hewett was put in touch
with Wendy Mauermann by the late NCLS Founder, Norman Gates. Wendy Mauermann
is the daughter of Mary Anne Hughes Mauermann, the daughter of Richard
Aldington’s friend Glenn Hughes and Babette Hughes, and RA's literary
“goddaughter.”
Wendy Mauermann has shared a letter written
to her mother in 1972 by Babette Hughes, which refers to Aldington’s break-up
with Arabella Yorke: “when Aldington let us use his cottage at Aldermaston,
that peaceful little village, with not even electricity, which is now a nuclear
center, he and Arabella went with Lawrence and Frieda to stay on some island
off the coast of Italy. Something happened there-—a lot of quarrels-—I remember
Richard talking about them. Anyway, when he came back, Lawrence was sick, and
Aldington was through with his life as a country squire with Arabella typing
his articles and reviews, making all his shirts-—by the light of an oil lamp,
and cooking for him. At that point he left her and went to Paris where he lost
30 pounds or more and bought a trench coat and wrote Death of a Hero.”
Wendy Mauermann also shared a copy of a
receipt for a meal at the Grand Hotel Savoia in Rapallo on Tuesday, January 29,
1929. The participants in the dinner are noted as “Yeats/ Pound (Mr. &
Mrs.), Aldington, Mrs. Patmore, Bab and G. Hughes.”
Wendy Mauermann additionally provided
copies of photographs taken on Glenn & Babette Hughes’ visit to England in
1928, including photographs of Aldington, Hughes, Brigit Patmore and Arabella
Yorke. Included amongst these photographs are (i) Arabella Yorke and Babette
Hughes, and (ii) Aldington, Hughes and Patmore, and (iii) Brigit and Babette on
a beach.
Finally, Wendy Mauermann permitted Hewett
to acquire the silver bracelet given by Aldington to Mary Anne Hughes
Mauermann. This was actually his military identity bracelet engraved “2nd Lt.
R, Aldington, C. of E., Royal Sussex Regt.” On the back is engraved
“ARABELLA.”
The above have been added to the Aldington
archive now maintained by Correspondent Hewett.
**********
Member Alan Byford writes: browsing through
a book called John Nash's Book Designs, (researched and written by Clare
Colvin and published by the Minories (in Colchester) I came across the
following:
‘Images (1910-1915) by Richard
Aldington, published by The Poetry Bookshop, 1915. Line drawing printed in
three colours. Published slightly later but in the same as F. S. Flint’s Cadences,
Images was in the same series of Poetry Bookshop publications. Nash’s
illustration is technically more proficient and the composition is less
stilted. It is inspired by some lines from stanza IV of ‘Images’ in which
Aldington describes the beech tree that stands alone on the edge of the
forest.’
‘Cadences by F. S. Flint, published
by The Poetry Bookshop, 1915. Line drawing in three colours. This was John
Nash’s first cover design and first book illustration. He has illustrated some
lines from ‘The Swan’, which describe the swan’s journey down river towards the
dark arch of the bridge. The poem is full of symbolic overtones and the swan’s
journey to the black depths can be seen to parallel man's journey through life.
Cadences was one of a series of soft-covered, economically produced,
poetry books published by The Poetry Bookshop.’
**********
NCLS member Michel Pharand, Director of the Disraeli Project at Queen's University (Kingston, Canada), informs us that the
University of Toronto Press will be publishing Benjamin Disraeli Letters IX
(1865-1867) in early 2013. Benjamin Disraeli Letters X (1868), covering
Disraeli's first ministry, is due for publication by UTP in 2015.
**********
Correspondent Michael Copp writes: Neil
Pearson's book, Obelisk: A History of Jack Kahane and the Obelisk Press
(Liverpool University Press, 2007), features the Obelisk edition of Death of
a Hero, which was published in two volumes in Paris in 1930. Kahane’s list
of published books contains much dross, some of it pornographic, and much of it
totally unread (deservedly so) today. As Pearson notes, ‘Death of a Hero was
one of the first books he published that is of unassailable literary merit.’
Pearson also points out that its claim to be the full text is simply wrong.
Previously, both the 1929 editions by Chatto & Windus in England and Covici
Friede in the United States were heavily cut. It wasn't until the Consul
edition of 1965 that we had the full, unexpurgated text. This then came out in
paperback with the Sphere edition of 1968. On looking up the Kahane two-volume
edition on ABE Books the cheapest I
could find was £475.00. There are some at even higher prices.
Neil Pearson appeared in the TV series Drop the Dead Donkey
[also notably in TV’s Between the Lines and the film
Fever Pitch – ed.]. This is his first book, and it comprises a long
biographical sketch of Jack Kahane's life and work, full bibliographical
details of every book in the Obelisk list, photographs of a number of book
jackets, and potted biographies of all the published authors.
**********
Member James Thomas reports: preparation is
going well on the Occitan anthology Grains of Gold (due to be published
in 2013 by Francis Boutle Publishers), in which I will probably include an
extract of Aldington's writings on Mistral and Provence. Also, Aldington is
mentioned in an article I've written on ‘Dante and the Provençal Renaissance,
1800-1860’ due for publication in Italy next year.
**********
Editor Andrew Frayn notes that two of the
essays in the very good (if rather expensive) new Edinburgh Companion to
Twentieth-Century British and American War Literature, ed. by Adam Piette
and Mark Rawlinson (Edinburgh UP, 2012) make brief reference to RA: Ian
Patterson’s ‘Pacifists and Conscientious Objectors’, and ‘Allyson Booth’s ‘The
Trenches’.
**********
Associate editor David Wilkinson writes
that his biography of C. Ranger Gull, aka Guy Thorne, was published on 1 April
2012. Wilkinson was alerted to Gull’s existence on reading in Life for
Life’s Sake of the appearance in Aldington’s childhood of this ‘tubby
little bon vivant who never refused a double whisky.’ But there is much more to
this intriguing tale, so much more. Cyril Arthur Edward Ranger Gull [1875-1923]
has proved to be an emblematic ’Nineties decadent whose early works were
published anonymously and banned from the circulating libraries. Compton
Mackenzie tells us that those early novels created a scandal that compared with
the ‘four letter school’ of the 1960s. In 1906 Gull’s novels were removed from
the shelves at Oxford University. He was not above pulling the odd scam. The
publisher Grant Richards decided he was ‘an odd, attractive and rather
unprincipled little chap.’ He was an alcoholic and a gambler who placed himself
perilously close to Oscar Wilde and the sub rosa world of Edwardian
pornography. By the time he died he had sold over half a million copies of his
1903 novel When it Was Dark and yet his wife was left penniless. All
told Gull/Thorne wrote well over a hundred novels and countless short stories.
Gull crops up as Mr Barnaby Slush in RA’s Death of a Hero and Gull
repays the compliment time and again. Wilkinson’s book includes numerous
references to Aldington as well as to his mother Jessie May, his father Albert
Edward and to his sister Margery.
‘Guy Thorne’: C. Ranger Gull: Edwardian
Tabloid Novelist and His Unseemly Brotherhood By
David Wilkinson with 43 black and white illustrations (High Wycombe: Rivendale
Press). Hardbound with dust jacket: 15.9 x 23.5 cm. 355 pp. ISBN 978 1 904201
20 5. £40. Obtainable from The
Rivendale Press (CTRL + click).
**********
Below, belatedly, is the piece trailed in
vol. 39, no. 3, and advertised as deferred in vol. 39, no. 4: biographer Vivien
Whelpton shares with us some of her research on the Fallases. On which note, I
must apologise for accidentally re-gendering Lynden Easterbrook in the previous
newsletter – she is their granddaughter. AF
Some notes on Carl and Florence Fallas
Vivien
Whelpton’s visit last summer to the University of Exeter to examine the John
Mills Whitham correspondence led to a most welcome exchange of emails between
Vivien and members of the Fallas family, namely: Hervey Wilcox and Lynden
Easterbrook, son and daughter of Carl’s and Florence’s older daughter, Leonora;
and Stella Garden and Victoria Helby, daughters of Barbara Clark, the younger
Fallas daughter. Sadly, Leonora passed away in 1959 at the early age of
forty-six, when her children were only nine and five years old. Barbara died
in 2006. The Fallas grandchildren have many fond memories of Carl and Flo.
For Hervey and Lynden, having lost their mother in 1959, the deaths of their
grandparents, Carl in 1962 (the same year as Aldington) and Florence in 1965,
were an especially bitter blow. The notes below are compiled from Vivien’s own
findings and from information which Stella, Victoria, Hervey and Lynden have
kindly passed on to her.
Stella tells us
that Barbara regretted very much in her later years that on her mother’s death
she had destroyed her huge pile of letters from Aldington. We know that H.D.
felt that Florence was not ‘good enough’ to be a lover for Aldington, but, of
course, we must read this response through the hurt she felt at his betrayal.
Florence was young at the time of the affair (although six months older than
Aldington), and probably quite shy. Born in Wilmslow in 1891, she was the
youngest of four children and lost her mother when only three years old, being
brought up by a stepmother who, Hervey tells us, was not kind to her. Her
father, James Smithies, was a metal-worker and designer in the arts and crafts
tradition whose work was exhibited at the Manchester and Leeds art galleries
and still fetches high prices on the international market.
Hervey recalls
Florence as ‘a lovely lady, full of life … confident, cultured and
well-informed,’ and Lynden writes: ‘My memory of my grandmother is of an
extraordinarily gentle, warm and graceful woman. She had friends who were from
all walks of life and seemed able to bring out the best in people. She loved
children and she was a keen gardener. She never became a little old lady, but
stayed tall, straight and elegant to the last.’ In her last years she
corresponded with Bryher, who, at Aldington’s instigation, gave her some
financial support, and Victoria has copies of Bryher’s books signed ‘To Flo’ by
their author.
Carl was born
in Wakefield in1885, the middle child of Walter Fallas, a Yorkshire
cabinet-maker, later turned commercial traveller, and he was brought up in
Salford. At fifteen he was apprenticed on the Daily Dispatch and then
the Manchester Evening Chronicle. Six years later he was off on
his travels: to Ceylon, where he was a leader writer on the island’s Observer;
to Japan, where he worked as the Tokyo city editor on the Japan Advertiser
and then editorial assistant on the Japan Mail; and to California, from
where he worked his passage home on a windjammer, round Cape Horn and across
the Atlantic, a five and a half months’ voyage; he reached Liverpool five years
after he had left. On his return he married Florence and came to London
shortly after the birth of Leonora in 1912; there he struck up a friendship,
first with Henry Slonimsky and then, through him, with John Cournos. However,
Carl’s reduced circumstances on the outbreak of the war in 1914 drove the
family to take lodgings (two rooms in a cowman’s cottage) in Martinhoe in North
Devon. In his memoir, The Gate is Open, Carl describes their life there
vividly, including the poignant story of the stillbirth of a male child to
Florence in late 1914.
In Devon, as we
know, the Fallases were joined in early 1916 by the Aldingtons, sent there by
their mutual friend Cournos; Carl and Richard signed up together in June of
that year – a week before they would have had no choice on the matter – and
became pioneers in the 11th Leicestershires on the 6th
Division front north-west of Loos. Carl was sent home for officer-training
before Aldington and was commissioned by the end of October 1917. We know that
he returned to the front, not only because Aldington wrote in a letter to H.D.
on 6 May 1918 of reading in the paper that Carl was wounded (‘Lucky little pig’
was Aldington’s comment), but because Carl’s experience in the German Spring
Offensive of 1918 is the subject matter of his final book, St Mary’s Village
(1954). Some of that experience is also recalled in his memoir, The
Gate is Open (1938). However, mysteriously, his medal roll card only shows
him as a private in the 11th Leicesters and then as a 2nd
Lieutenant in the 51st Leicesters, a reserve training battalion
which never left England, so maybe he returned to the front with his old
battalion or was temporarily attached to another unit. We know that he was
gassed, spending five months in hospital before returning to the continent with
the army of occupation after the armistice.
After the war
he continued his career in journalism, first on the Manchester Evening News
for six years, and then on the London Evening Standard. He and Flo
settled in Pinner and named the house they had built in 1930, ‘Martinhoe’.
Carl retired at the age of fifty, moving to Lavender Cottage in Amersham, in
order to have time for the novels he had always hoped to write. Two were
written before the Second World War, two afterwards. During the war, he
returned to what he knew, heading companies of the Royal Pioneer Corps.
The novels are
set in set in the countries of his pre-war travels, Japan (The Wooden Pillow,
1935) and Sri Lanka (Eve with her Basket, 1951); in the Devon of his
1915-16 experiences (Down the Proud Stream, 1937); and in the war itself
(St Mary’s Village, 1954). His memoir, The Gate is Open, was
published in 1938. St Mary’s Village
is dedicated to four of his five grandchildren (Stella was not born until
1958). The book won him the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for that year.
It is interesting to view Carl and Florence
otherwise than through the lens of H. D.’s early acquaintance with them in
Martinhoe, fascinating though that perspective is. Carl’s books also make
rewarding reading, St Mary’s Village being a significant contribution to
the British combatant literature of the First World War, and its view from the
mid-fifties an unusual one. Vivien is grateful to his grandchildren for having
brought so much of all this to her notice.
Vivien
Whelpton
**********
As ever, any press mentions, publications,
citations and curiosities about RA are appreciated, as is news of members’
activities. Please e-mail news to andrew.frayn@manchester.ac.uk.
CALL FOR PAPER PROPOSALS
25th Ezra Pound International Conference
Dublin, Ireland
July 9 – 13, 2013
Ezra Pound and Modernism
The 25th Ezra Pound International
Conference will be held in Dublin, a place Pound knew well, though he only
visited there briefly in February 1965. The conference’s main host will be
Trinity College, Ireland’s oldest university institution, founded in 1592 and
located in the city centre. The second host and other conference site will be
Mater Dei, the college close to what was Leopold Bloom’s residence at 7 Eccles
Street. In addition to four days of papers and panels on Pound and Modernism,
as well as other topics related to Pound, special events planned include
walking tours to the haunts of James Joyce and W.B. Yeats, Pound’s close
collaborators and friends, as well as excursions to locations associated with
other writers for whom Pound was an important influence, including Thomas
MacGreevy, Austin Clarke, Samuel Beckett and Thomas Kinsella.
.
The committee
invites proposals for papers on any aspect of Pound and Modernism:
(To
break the pentameter, that was the first heave) (81/538)
O woman shapely as a swan,
Your
gunmen tread on my dreams
Whoi
didn’t he (Padraic Colum)
keep on writing poetry at that voltage (80/516)
Paper proposals may address the examination
of Pound’s own “modernization” from late Romanticism, his collaboration and
debates with his Modernist contemporaries in their efforts to “make it new,” a
reconsideration of Pound’s poetry and prose from the perspective of theories of
Modernism and postmodernism, and the adoption of Modernist aspects of Pound’s
thinking by his contemporaries and/or later followers, especially in America. Proposals may interpret the conference
theme in specific or broad terms, relating to Pound’s work and life: poetry,
prose, translations, textual analysis, biography, comparative studies, literary
or political influence, and/or historical matters. The committee especially encourages
proposals on the Irish dimension of Pound’s work, in particular the rather
neglected topic of Pound’s influence on Irish poets. Another somewhat neglected area, the
close reading of Cantos passages, specifically in the light of Modernism, will
also be welcome. Proposals
from postgraduate and younger scholars are encouraged, and as always, the committee will consider
proposals on other aspects of Pound.
If you are interested in giving a paper,
send a short proposal (approximately 250 words) to the Secretary. Emailed
proposals (as Word Attachment or email text), as well as those sent by surface
mail, are acceptable. Please include your paper title, name(s) and
affiliation(s), mailing address, and email address with the proposal.
Presentations should be limited to 20 minutes delivery time. To be
sure to receive registration information and details about lodging and
excursions, even if not sending a proposal, please contact the Secretary:
Professor John Gery
25th Ezra Pound
International Conference
Department of English
University of New Orleans
New Orleans, LA 70148-2315 USA
jgery@uno.edu
DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: October 15, 2012