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Short List #21
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Cloudy Cove illustrated by Carolin Jackson
Cloudy Cove is a 32pp booklet sewn into thin card covers one of a large number of such that were published by The Oxford University Press in the 1950s under the series title "Adventures in Reading" and used widely in schools across the UK. I picked up some of them today and I'm completely charmed by the books and by their illustrations. These are by Carolin Jackson. The limited colour palette just adds to the charm I think. What really interested me though were the images (you'll see them as you scroll down) that illustrate scenes in the story that happen at night: a real act of collaboration and interpretation between illustrator and printer. To create those 'night time' scenes in such a basic printing medium they both needed a real understanding and appreciation of the other's skills.
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The Royal Hotel in Russell Square of Yesteryear
This has to be the coolest thing to fall from between the pages of a book in quite a while here at Callum James Heights. I assume it is a piece of letter paper from The Royal Hotel. The eagle eyed will note that as well as photos of its own rooms, The Royal includes a photo of the "Turkish Baths - adjacent". Today, if you step out of the tube station at Russell Square and walk towards the square itself, the is still a decorative mosaic panel in the pavement saying "Turkish Baths" and an arrow to point the way.
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Mystery Dust Jacket
Apologies to those of you who follow me on Twitter who will already know this image. After another rewarding trip to The Pallant House Gallery in Chichester the other day I was struck by the number of well known, Twentieth Century artists, many of them who might be termed "neo-romantics" that illustrated jackets or covers for books. This then led to wayward thoughts of how wonderful a collection of such books might look. Obviously, I stamped down hard on such thoughts...
...so the next day I am perusing a bookshop in Salisbury and I see this. I had to have it for its style. However, the artist is not credited. It is quite possible that the two squiggles above the AU of VAUGHAN are initials, and they might be D.M. or P.M. So I am leaving it here in case of anyone out there being able to help.
The book is published by Johnathan Cape in 1952 and one of their most prolific illustrators was Pat Marriott, who got her first commission for Cape in exactly 1952. It is possible this is her work, however, the style is just a little bit wide of what she did elsewhere for the company and I have found no jackets known to be by her that have her initials on them so it remains a mystery.
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Gaston Goor Illustrates Les Amitiés Particulières Part I
Les Amitiés Particulières by Roger Peyrefitte is widely considered one of the classic pieces of romantic schoolboy fiction. It is the story of an older and a younger boy in a French boarding school who become romantically attached and about the tragedy that ensues when the affair is discovered and mishandled by the priests who run the school. The 'affair' actually is no more than some passionate letters and a couple of stolen kisses. It was translated into English and made into a film and in 1953 Flammarion published a de luxe edition in two volumes with lithographic illustrations by Peyrefitte's favourite illustrator Gaston Goor. Some of this suite of illustrations have been floating around the Internet for a while but to my knowledge no one has yet posted the whole set. These are the illustrations for the first volume: the second follows.
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Gaston Goor Illustrates Les Amitiés Particulières Part II
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Ian David Baker A New Collaboration
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Today's Vintage Swimwear Additions
Three more vintage swimwear photos arrived in the post today and, with my usual generosity of spirit, I am sharing them here of course. For some people, photos like the bottom one which have been cut about are just a no-no, but I love things like that: it's like the patina on an old piece of furniture, it proves these things have had a life.
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Count Stenbock's Contemporary Reviews
Of Stenbock's four books, the last two had similar titles, The Shadow of Death: Poems, Songs and Sonnets (The Leadenhall Press: 1893) and Studies of Death: Romantic Tales (David Nutt: 1894). A little digging recently lead me to two contemporary reviews which I thought I would share here. The first is perhaps one of the snidest and more excoriating reviews I have ever seen, but for that reason it becomes almost as amusing a parody as it suggests of the book it reviews! It is from The Pall Mall Gazette of 1894
'The Shadow of Death by Count Eric Stanislaus Stenbock, is so very subtle a little book that we venture to think the author made a mistake in not adding a preface to give some hint of its real character. For want of some such explanation, there is every risk of the ordinary reader taking it seriously and throwing it forthwith behind the fire as a parcel of silly doggerel. Whereas really, of course, as becomes obvious after a little reflection it must be a parody - an elaborate and screaming parody of that latterday literary abortion, the youthful decadent. The slipshod versification, the maudlin sentiment, the affected preciousness, the sham mysticism and sham aestheticism, the ridiculous medley of Neo-Paganism and Neo-Catholicism, Verlaine and the Vulgate - all the nauseating characteristics of the type, in short, are here reproduced in lively burlesque, and the result is in its way quite one of the most amusing books we have ever seen. In his parodies of Sappho and Goethe it must be admitted Count Stenbock is not quite so happy; and is it not carrying mystification too far to describe them, as he does, as "paraphrases" and "translations"?'
The second, rather more measured review is from the Glasgow Herald in 1895:
'Studies of Death. Romantic Tales by Eric Count Stenbock (London: David Nutt, 1894). - On the quaint cover of this little volume we have presented to us, inter alia, an avenue of funereal cypresses, a couple of black cranes, a couple of owls (back and front view), a serpent and (we rather think, but we are not quite sure) a gravestone. Yes Studies of Death is not quite so depressing as it looks. It is true that in most of the little stories it contains people die; but, then, heroes and heroines die in novels, whatever may be printed on the title-page, and even without black crows, cypresses, and serpents on the cover. Count Stenbock's style, if it is really that of a foreigner, is remarkably good; an injudicious appreciation of the most objectionable feature of Kipling's writing - viz., oaths, is probably responsible for the language which soils the otherwise pretty tale of "The Egg of the Albatross.""Narcissus" perhaps shows the truest fancy. Amid much that is merely "precious" in this fantastic volume, we think we discern a writer of ability; at all events, the book is "curious"'
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Louveteau Magazine in the 1950s
French and continental European Scouting in the 20th Century had a very different feel to it compared either with the British or American versions of the movement. One expression of that difference was it's strong reliance on a few well known and prolific illustrators and photographers to create its 'image': Robert Manson, Pierre Joubert, Jacques Simonot, Karel Egermeier, Michel Gourlier and a number of others. But even when not relying on these main 'image-makers' the movement in France had an eye for presenting itself in a particular way; a strange mix between the comic, the wild, and the heroic ideal. These covers are from 1950s issues of a magazine called Louveteau. an official publication of Scout de France for their younger "wolfcub" branch and none of them are by the big names of Scoutisme photography or illustration.
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Scout de France Magazine in the 1950s
in the second post today on 1950s French scouting magazines, these covers are all from Scout magazine which was an official publication of Scout de France. The covers in most instances are by Pierre Joubert, perhaps the best known and most prolific creator of scouting imagery in France in the 20th century, and the photographic one is by Robert Manson, again a well known and prolific creator of scoutisme imagery.
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Shane Leslie and Self-Censoring "The Cantab"
In 1922 the Irish catholic novelist Shane Leslie published a semi-autobiographical novel The Oppidan, a tale of life at Eton, where Leslie had been schooled and which he hated. The novel was reasonably well received and publication passed without much comment. In 1926 he published a second semi-autobiographical novel, again full of real people partially disguised, this time dealing with life at Cambridge University: The Cantab. It wasn't a matter of libel though which caused problems for him, it was a matter of morality. Shortly after the book was released the Catholic Bishop of Northampton, Dr Clary Elwes, wrote to the Cambridge Review condemning the book. Leslie withdrew it. All the unsold copies were taken back. Shortly after this Leslie learned that legal proceedings against the book were also being put in motion. This clipping from The Express makes it clear just how abject he was in his sense of humiliation and despair.
So what were the changes that Leslie made between the first and second version? The changes are not extensive. A few involved the changing of a couple of sentences. There are three or four places where he rewrites a couple of pages but nothing more than that. In each case they tone down the language and make the immorality of his characters slightly less 'in your face'. Take this extract from page 17 describing the circumstances of one of his character's birth.
"Veronica's life ensampled Cherryumpton existences. Her birth was incestuous, owing to the close intimacy in which Mrs Judbud's family had been brought up. So promiscuous had their cottage life been, that it was difficult to know whether Veronica was the issue of brother and sister or of uncle and niece. Both brother and uncle denied responsibility for the seventeen-year-old mother, but as it was in the family it didn't seem to matter."
Which Leslie changes in the second version to:
"Veronica's life ensampled Cherryumpton existences. Her birth was illegitimate , owing to the close intimacy in which Mrs Judbud's family had been brought up. With neighbours sharing the same set of cottages. Nobody ever claimed Veronica's paternity, and she went through life as Mrs Judbud's niece. It did not seem to matter at the family honour was left to aunt and niece to explain."
At the other end of the book when one of the characters feels himself in danger of loosing his virtue Leslie originally wrote:
"He began by making an ejaculation to St Joseph, who was said in the Prayer Manuals to be efficient against whoredom. It had no effect on the Jewish landlord"
and changed it to:
""He began by making an ejaculation to St Joseph. Then he prayed sweetly unto One, who was conceived without sin, and he felt better. His prayers had no effect on the absurd creatures who were troubling his peace."
These changes and a number of others like them are what Leslie describes in the preface to the revised edition as "the incriminated passages and more have been innocuously overwritten." What's more this was done, "in deference to the Roman obedience before the author was aware of proceedings on the part of the state." In the first version of the book, the sequel that he wrote about is advertised as Babylon"in preparation". In the preface to the revised version he addresses this: "these passages were intended as preludes to a searching study of the Social Evil in the promised Sequel. This Sequel contained scenes which the author could hardly bear to write and which the public has shown that it cannot bear to read. To save some trouble, and without inflicting any loss on literature, the author has destroyed the Sequel."
As it happens, there was a sequel eventually, in 1929, the fairly innocuous The Anglo-Catholic, thus completing the Edward Stornington trilogy. Self-censorship? Self-promotion? Probably a bit of both, we will probably never know whether there was a driving cynicism or just an attitude of 'making the best of a bad situation'.
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Ronald Firbank & Others Catalogue
I am excited to be able to tell you that in mid-May I shall be issuing a catalogue titled, Ronald Firbank: One Hundred Items from the Collection of Robert Scoble, this is obviously a follow-up to the Baron Corvo catalogue in similar vein I issued in 2013 and just as in 2013 the catalogue will be issued online.
Members of my mailing list will receive the digital copy 48 hours before it is posted publicly online.
The catalogue's full title shows there is more to it than Ronald Firbank: and six other writers deprecated by unimaginative people. Those other six who between them make up half of the one hundred items are: Lord Berners, Montague Summers, Richard Rumbold, Gerald Hamilton, Simon Raven and Roger Peyrefitte. There are some very choice items representing all of these authors.
So why am I writing now about something happening in May? Just as with the Baron Corvo catalogue, there is to be a printed, numbered, limited edition of the catalogue, fully illustrated in colour, and signed by both book-collector and book-dealer. The printed catalogue is a quarto paperback that matches the Corvo catalogue in its presentation and style. The catalogue is £20 plus postage (UK: £2, EU: £4, ROW £5) and you can pre-order it now (with apologies to those who have kniptions at the word 'pre-order'). If you would like one then simply email me and be added to my mailing list and I will send a paypal invoice for the appropriate amount (don't forget to tell me where in the world you are). The physical copies will then be sent out at the same time as the digital catalogue which you will, of course, also receive.
Also, I have a few copies of the 2013 Corvo catalogue left and whilst stocks last, you may order one of those at the reduced price of £15 if also pre-ordering the Firbank catalogue.
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Some Photos That Got Away
Although I am obviously an extremely wealthy man (!), sometimes the things that I want in life do slip through my fingers. This is a small selection of items which won't be joining my collection of vintage photographs but which I had hopes for. A couple of these I simply failed to bid high enough on Ebay, a couple are from other sites (yes, I buy things away from Ebay too!), where I just dallied too long with them on my watching list and someone else snapped them up. Ah well, I may not have the physical thing but I why not share my failures here too as well as the successes.
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Christian William [Bill] Miller (some more...)
Christian William [Bill] Miller has featured here before. He was a 'bright young thing' transposed from 1920s England to 1940s and 50s America. These photographs are among those that are in the Glenway Wescott papers at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscripts Library at Yale and they have done a fine job digitising those papers and photographs. How own papers and photographs are at the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives and they have done the internet a service by providing some accurate and basic information about Miller:
"Christian William Miller was born William Henry Miller on August 7, 1921, in Newark, New Jersey. Miller attended the Franklin School of Professional Arts in New York City from 1938-1941, majoring in advertising design. From 1939-1941 he began his career in design with stints at Datzenbach & Warren, Brunschwig & Fils, and Lord & Taylor. During the years 1942-1946, Miller was enlisted in the United States Maritime Service Coast Guard Reserve. He was assigned to a research project in 1942 by the Air-Sea Agency, helping to design a device to make sea water drinkable. Miller also designed an inflatable chair that is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In May 1951, Miller officially changed his name to Christian William Miller. As an avid photographer and model, Miller moved through the New York gay social scene of the 1940s and 1950s, interacting with noted gay artists."
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Green Island illustrated by Carolin Jackson
To my delight I discovered a small pile of these "Adventures in Reading" booklets in my local charity shop. You might remember I found and blogged one a week or so ago called Cloudy Cove. Of course, it's the illustrations that makes these so appealing now, so completely of their period. Carolin Jackson remains a little opaque to me at the moment. She is not in my dictionary of 20th century book illustrators, nor can I find anything on the Internet except to say that is seems she illustrated quite a lot for the OUP and also worked for Puffin. I've scanned some illustrations from another of these and they are up next...
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Carolin Jackson illustrates Crooked Cargo
The second of these "Adventures in Reading" booklets for today. The colours in this one are much bolder whilst still retaining the same limited palette and the same style of work as the others.
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Vintage Covers for Dorian Gray
Completely by accident I came across a great cover on a Spanish edition of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray online. One thing led to another and soon I am digging through auction and sale sites across Europe to find any others. There are hundreds of editions of the book, of course, in French, Italian, Spanish and many other languages but I tried to confine my little collection here to those I found which had a 'vintage' vibe to them. Not a comprehensive overview, just a bit of fun. Obviously most of them are typical 'pulp' stuff but I rather liked the very simple black, white and red offering below using both a dagger and an artist's palette.
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A Late Review: A Game of Dark by William Mayne
A Game of Dark
by William Mayne
(Hamish Hamilton, London: 1971)
I have been reading quite a lot of what used to be called children's books, more usually labelled 'young adult fiction' these days. Some of it has been modern and some 'vintage'. William Mayne has been a significant discovery in the vintage category. It has been claimed that he was one of the greatest writers of children's books in the twentieth century and, equally fairly probably, he has a reputation as one of those children's writers as much, if not more read by adults than children. Certainly, I had never read any of his books as a child despite being of the right vintage myself. Nonetheless, I have read a number now and, given that I have chosen this book among them, you might be right in assuming this is going to be more of a recommendation than a review!
The title is not misleading, this is a dark tale. In the first scene Donald Jackson, our boy-protagonist, is 'coming to' in his classroom from a fugue-like state. He has little memory of where he has been or what he has seen but as the book progresses these switches back and forth between his here-and-now reality and "another place" become more and more vivid until it is difficult for Donald to tell which 'reality' he prefers. We see him go to a fantasy world more and more often as problems in his home life get worse. His father is physically and emotionally crippled, his mother is hard pressed to find enough compassion for her husband to have any to spare for Donald. As the book unfolds we learn more about a family tragedy that connects all these things and we see a father who is using his religion as an excuse to punish himself for undeserved gilt.
The device of having a child character live half in the real world and half in fantasy is by no means unique to this book but I have never seen it done so brilliantly. The fantasy world in which Donald finds himself is indeed one which has many of the tropes of the fantasy genre: knights, beasts, dark-ages style towns and culture. But Mayne's is full of stench and cowardice, ignobility and fear. There is also no direct analogue, there is no talking down to the child reader saying: his fantasy is this because it corresponds to that in the real world. Instead the two worlds are separate and unrelated in many ways and they really only share one thing, a choice that has to be made. The easy thing to do is to make the two worlds relate, to show how the character is running from an unhappy situation in the here-and-now into a place where he has control or where he can find respite from his worries. Mayne is so much cleverer than that.
Where Mayne truly excels though, and this is a paean I could sing of all his novels I have read so far, is in his observation. I have rarely read a book, let alone a supposed children's book, where the characters have felt so real and so full of their own life and history. Not just Donald, who is brilliantly portrayed with all the qualities of adolescence from the adorable to the disgusting, but also the adults in the book, his parents and the somewhat overly chipper Vicar in the here-and-now, and the pragmatic knight in the other place, every character is beautifully observed, sparingly recreated and in the end sympathetically shown to us with a great love, no matter how awful they might at first appear.
Mayne wrote over a hundred books, of the four or five I have now read this was the darkest and the best and I can wholeheartedly recommend it. But I am looking forward to diving into some of the remaining 95+
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Vintage photo haul...
Last week's trip to Brighton was the usual round of books, junk shops, and high living. These are a few of the photos that I liberated and brought back home with me...
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