Horror in the Night by Richard Macgregor (aka MacGregor Urquhart )

A local dealer has this graphic artist's illustration for a lurid book cover. He thinks he may have bought it from someone selling a quantity of book cover illustrations on card (gouache, watercolour etc.,) by the railings on Bayswater Road about 30 years ago. Art (now mostly kitsch and worse) is still sold there every Sunday. Often these illustrations  have lettering so you can see the title, but not in this case, and no artist had signed either.

By sheer chance he found the actual book that had used the illustration - in a box of SF, fantasy and horror paperbacks.  The book was Horror in the Night, a short story collection by Richard Macgregor published by Digit in London in 1963. Not a lot is known about Macgregor, these were 5 short horror stories and he seems to have written 5 other books between 1963 and 1964 for Digit. Titles like The Deadly Sun, Creeping Plague, The Day a Village Died --- a category that came to be known as Doom Watch fiction, possibly post apocalyptic in content. A further book Taste of the Temptress came out in Sydney in the mid 1960s published by Eclipse, so he could have been Australian -this was also published by Digit so possibly not (also it seems he was from Essex - see the excellent Bear Alley.) As for the artist it could be one R.A. Osborne (1923 - 1973) art director of Digit at the time and responsible for many of their covers including Macgregor's Day a Village Died, the story of a village plagued by killer ants.

This piece first appeared at our old site Bookride and since then new information has come to light via dealer Cold Tonnage and the IMDB database. It seems that his real name was MacGregor Urquhart. IMDB's short biography says he 'was a writer and actor, known for The Powder Monkey (1951), John of the Fair (1951) and The Malory Secret (1951). He died on March 17, 1967.' His first work of fiction appeared in the early 1960s  so it seems that his writing career followed his spell in movies. Further investigation shows he was also a playwright with at least one published play Investigation. A Pay in Three Acts (Evans, London 1958.)

Paul Nash bookplate for art collector Samuel Courtauld

Found - a loose bookplate by Paul Nash  for the industrialist and art collector Samuel Courtauld. Produced around 1930, it measures a sizeable 13 by 9.5 cms, probably intended mainly for art books and livres d'artistes. The writer and broadcaster Lance Sieveking writes in his autobiography The Eye of the Beholder (Hulton Press, London, 1957) -'Sam Courtauld and Paul met at a dinner party I gave at Number 15 The Street, and Courtauld persuaded Paul to design a book plate for him. The result was one of the most charming he ever made.' The engraving is said to be the only one initialled by Paul Nash on the block. The bookplate is quite scarce as, presumably, it is mostly found in books held at the Courtauld Institute; few have entered the used book trade.

The woodcut is British Surrealist in style with an echo of Cubism and Vorticism - both movements had earlier attracted Nash. Samuel Courtauld's family fortune came from the textile industry (rayon), hence the bobbin and threads. The French flag refers to the origins of the name Courtauld, a French Huguenot family whose early descendant was the celebrated goldsmith Augustine Courtauld. The Courtauld textile industry was based in Braintree and Halstead in Essex. The view through the frame shows what appears to be a Martello Tower - these are closely associated with the  East Anglian Coast.

Jacynth Parsons, W.B. Yeats and ‘The Songs of Innocence’

WB Yeats' preface to an illustrated edition of William Blake's Songs of Innocence (Medici Society 1927.) The illustrator was a young English girl called Jacynth Parsons*. It is an interesting piece about the illustrator but also about the Ireland of the time. The joke of doing the thing you are refusing to do (i.e. write a preface) is reminiscent of another Irish writer -George Bernard Shaw. GBS would reply to requests for his signature with notes such as 'Sir, I never give autographs! George Bernard Shaw.' There is very little about Jacynth Parsons online and no Wikipedia page.

Prefatory Letter
To the Medici Society.

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The Physiognomy of the Oligarch

Found in a small book from 1831 this analysis of 'The Oligarch.' The word has now come to signify 'Russian billionaire' but there are (and were) other resonances. The Characters of Theophrastus Illustrated by Physiognomical Sketches to Which Are Subjoined Hints on the Individual Varieties of Human Nature (A J Valpy, London, 1831.) The ancient Greek classic of psychology and character study, updated  to incorporate the findings of modern science, (including the new science of phrenology, although it is not named as such.) The plates are in the vein of Hogarth, Hieronymus Bosch, and the grotesque drawings in the Notebooks of da Vinci.

THE OLIGARCH: OR, THE ADVOCATE OF DESPOTISM 

An arrogant desire to dominate over his fellows, appears in the opinions, the conduct, and the manners of this partisan of despotism. When the people are about to elect colleagues to the Archons for the direction of some public solemnity, he stands up to maintain that the magistracy should on no occasion be shared. And when others are voting for ten, his voice is heard exclaiming 'One is enough.' Of all Homer's verses, he seems to have learned only this:

"…think not here allow'd/ That worst of tyrants, an usurping crowd.

He is often heard using expressions of this sort: 'It is advisable that we should withdraw to consult upon this business. Let us separate ourselves from the mob, and from these popular meetings. This access of the populace to the magistracy should be barred.' If he meets with any personal affront, he exclaims 'That they and I should live within the same walls is insufferable.' 

At noon he stalks abroad, sprucely dressed and trimmed, and he drives the world before him with haughty defiances, as if he could not think the city habitable until the mass of the people should be expelled from it. He loudly complains of  the outrages sustained by the higher classes from  the crowd of litigants in the courts of justice;and he tells of his having been put to confusion in the assembly of the people, by the contact of a squalid, shabby fellow, who placed himself beside him. He inveighs against the popular leaders; whom he professes to hate heartily: 'It was Theseus', he adds, 'who was the author of all these evils in the State.' Such is the discourse which he holds with foreigners, and with the few citizens whose temper is like his own.

Gabrièle Buffet Picabia on Dada

Found in an exhibition catalogue from the Hanover Gallery, London 1968 of Francis Picabia watercolours this unpublished essay on Dada by Picabia's widow Gabrièle Buffet Picabia (1884 - 1988). It is mostly quotations from important Dadaist manifestoes but the first part is by her (followed by Andre Breton.)

The intellectual world of Europe has been upset for several years by a strange sect which calls itself "Dada", and its followers Dadaists.

It is difficult to define Dada because Dada pretends to escape from everything that is common or ordinary or sensible. Dada does not recognise any traditions, any influences, or indeed and limits. Dada is a spontaneous product of life; a sort of cerebral mushroom which can appear and grow in every soil.

Dada cannot be defined; it reveals itself; and during the five years in which Dada manifestations have taken place all over the world, the public which comes en masse, in turn furious, amused, deceived, and nevertheless subjugated, has not succeeded in solving this problem:

Are the Dadas serious?
Are the Dadas curers?
Are the Dadas artist?
Are the Dadas dangerous?
Are the Dadas harmless idiots?

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Minor Symbolists 2 (Nicholas Kalmakoff)

More from  this article Unisex, 1910-Style found in a forgotten antiques bulletin The Four in Hand Letter from May 1970.

It was in 1962 that the work of a rather more bizarre artist, Nicholas Kalmakoff, was newly discovered in the Paris Flea Market. Kalmakoff was born in Russia in 1873 and the earliest influence on his life was a German governess who taught him to believe in the Devil -- a recurring theme in his paintings. He studied painting in Italy and returned to St. Petersburg in about 1903. He became immersed in all sorts of strange mystical and sexual cults and probably even attended the satanic meetings that Rasputin was holding at the time.

In 1908 he was commissioned to do the costumes and decor for Wilde's Salome and his interpretation was so shockingly extravagant (the interior of the theatre was designed to closely resemble the most unmentionable part of a woman!) that the production was taken off on the first night.

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Minor Symbolists

Found - this article Unisex, 1910-Style in a forgotten antiques bulletin The Four in Hand Letter from May 1970. It billed itself as The Fortnightly Guide to Collecting for Profit (Art Antiques Junk Valuables). Very much for the intelligent dealer and stall holder of the time with its eye on prices and trends. It tips the fringe PRB painter Simeon Solomon as an artist to watch, a painting of his recently made a 6 figure sum but he could then be bought for less than a £1000 for an oil. The artists mentioned here are still quite obscure with no art books or Catalogues Raisonnées available ...[in 2 parts with the first mostly on Eric Robertson and the second on Nicholas Kalmakoff]

Unisex, 1910-Style

Eric Harald Macbeth
Robertson (1887-1941)
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