Pregnant with a new book—-Marguerite Evans writes to fellow novelist Berta Ruck

Found tucked away in the same envelope with the letter ( see earlier Jot) written to Oliver Onions from Rupert Croft-Cooke is a short letter dated May 24^th1962 from the very prolific novelist and magazine contributor Marguerite Evans ( 1886 – 1964) to fellow novelist Berta Ruck (1878 – 1978), wife of Oliver Onions. Evans wrote under three pen names—Oliver Sandys—which she used on some of her headed notepaper—Marguerite Barclay (using her given name) and Countess Barcynska. Evans published an incredible 130 novels between 1911 and 1946, and her oeuvre also includes non-fiction. She has been described as a purveyor of ’middlebrow fiction ‘, which as one critic has pointed out, is not a helpful term in her case. Several of her novels were filmed, most notably ‘The Pleasure Garden’( 1925), which was Alfred Hitchcock’s first completed film as director.

Ruck and Evans did not live too far from one another –Ruck in Aberdovey and Evans at The Ancient House, Little Stretton, Shropshire. In the letter Evans promises to visit the older woman:

‘Would give anything for a long, long chat with you…Am on last lap of book & feeling very pregnant. Thank heaven for that because before, the sensation was like a bad ‘ mis ‘ ! How strange this opus creation in its likeness to those functions. Have you not felt the same?

I do hope EAT. is better. Tell him I am truly and regularlyconcentrating on him & it would be lovely to hear he is better & stronger. This isn’t a letter . It is to send love.

Always

Marguerite. ‘

Two years later Evans was dead. Her husband Caradoc, who she had married in 1933, had died aged just 67, back in 1945. A controversial writer, whose collection of short stories, My People(1915) earned him the unenviable title ‘ the best-hated man in Wales’, is now recognised as ‘ the founding father of Anglo-Welsh writing’. On his death Marguerite paid him the greatest tribute by publishing his biography. Her own autobiography, Full and Frank, may shed some light on her friendship with Ruck and may also identify EAT. Ruck died in 1978 aged 100.

I found Chris Hopkins’ online paper ‘ Self-portrait of the Middlebrow as artist’ useful in the compilation of this Jot. [R.M.Healey]

Diary of a Nobody (Part 3)

On 4^thJuly 1957 our gardening civil servant and his wife Madge left London for their fortnight in Austria and Italy. Rather unusually ( but perhaps not so unusual for 1957 ) the couple cycledto town, deposited their rucksacks at the Air Terminal ( was this near Victoria coach station back then?) and then left their bikes at his place of work. They then caught a bus to London Airport, from where they flew by Swissair Metropolitan to Zurich, arriving at dawn. From here they took a train on a very hot day to Innsbruck and by early afternoon were settled in their hotel, the Weisses Kreug.

Being British our gardener devotes time to recording the weather ( from ‘Hot—jolly hot’ to ‘rains all morning’ and ‘rains slightly in afternoon’) , praising good meals and complaining about not so good meals, briefly mentioning sights visited and photos taken. Most of the holiday was spent among the mountains of northern Italy—in places like Cortina, Vigo di Fasso, and Bolzano, where they exalt in finding a restaurant that offers ‘ 2 courses incl. meat for 360L’. One of the main reasons for choosing this part of Austria and Italy is the prospect of locating Alpine flowers to photograph. They do find ‘ a fine meadow of alpine flowers ‘ and later our gardener leads Madge up Mount Marmolata in search of Entrichium, but fails to locate any. However ‘we do find other nice plants to photo…’ They also bump into the Olympic stands that were used in the previous February for the ‘Cresta Run’ and skating. Continue reading →

Jailed for being gay—the experience of Rupert Croft-Cooke

Before 1967, when as a result of the Wolfenden Report, homosexual acts Croft-Cooke letter pic 001 between consenting adults were made legal, many men from all backgrounds, including actors, writers and at least one famous mathematician, were prosecuted and sometimes jailed. The persecution of Dr Alan Turing, the genius who helped the UK win the Second World War, is a shameful blot on the English penal system, but another victim of the law whose conviction has aspects in common with that of Turing is the less well-known writer Rupert Croft-Cooke (1903 – 75).

In 1953 Joseph Alexander, the companion and secretary of Croft-Cooke, a prolific novelist, crime writer, short-story and screenplay writer, picked up two sailors in the famous Fitzroy Tavern , and took them back to Croft-Cooke’s house in Ticehurst, Sussex. After they were plied with drink Alexander and Croft-Cooke had sex with them. On their way back to London the sailors got drunk and assaulted some men, including a policeman. After their arrest the sailors agreed to tell the police about their sexual encounter in return for immunity from prosecution. Croft-Cooke and his assistant were duly arrested, tried for gross indecency, convicted and jailed. Croft-Cooke was sentenced for six months and spent time in Wormwood Scrubs and Brixton.

Almost exactly a year earlier Alan Turing had been arrested for the same offence when his lover, Arnold Murray, confessed after a burglary at Turing’s home that he was in a relationship with the mathematician. Turing pleaded guilty and was given the choice of a prison sentence or a period of probation during which he would undergo treatment with female hormones. Continue reading →

A jacket for E.H.W. Meyerstein

Found among a collection of publisher’s file copies from the Gollancz archive a novel by E.H.W. Meyerstein. It was his last work, as he died in the year of its publication (1952). It was a bibliomystery set in Hampstead entitled Tom Tallion. The blurb and printed notes on the sleeves of thejacket are lengthy and enthusiastic and its anonymous author had probably read the whole book and may have even been a fan of Meyerstein’s work.

Connoisseurs have long regarded Mr Meyerstein as one of the wittiest and most urbane novelists of the day… This book has the same delightful blend of the prosaic and the fantastic [as his last novel Robin Wastraw]. Mr Meyerstein writes of the most startling events as if they were commonplaces, and through his eyes the ordinary business of living takes on a fabulous quality.

It would be a pity to describe the plot, though we could hardly spoil the reader’s pleasure by doing so. Tom, like Robin, is a reflective boy brought up in a scholarly and eccentric environment, haunted by echoes of murder and arson, pursued by a middle-aged woman, remaining detached from all such extravagances of behaviour and quietly following his own interests and calling. There are exquisite episodes. There’s the day, for instance, when Tom, bored with ‘nature study’ at school, eats the pomegranate which he is supposed to be drawing, then sketches it from memory with a sudden assurance – he thereby discovers a unique theory of art, and painting becomes his vocation. There is the business of old Mr Wilkins sudden death. There was Captain Clements, who erupts into Tom’s life with his sinister interest in the occult. There is Mrs Heene, the missionary author of God or Dog? who abruptly loses her faith and raise a flag with the inscription: “THERE IS NO GOD (MRS) HIRAM HEENE.’

Continue reading →

‘A unique feature of modern publicity ‘ : Gordon Selfridge & his Callisthenes articles

Imagine Mike Ashley or Philip Green sitting down every day to compose a feature article in a leading national newspaper for the amusement and edification of regular or prospective customers of their department stores. It’s impossible to contemplate. Yet in the early years of his flagship store in London’s Oxford Street this is exactly what Gordon Selfridge ( 1858 – 1947) did to publicise the enterprise he had founded in 1908.

Each day for 27 years Selfridge, under the pseudonym ‘ Callisthenes ‘, published a short essay reflecting ‘ the policies, principles and opinions of this House of Business upon various points of public interest.’ The articles appear to have begun around 1910, only months after his store had opened for business. From 1924 they appeared in the ‘ entertainment’ page of the Times and two hundred of these Times articles from 1930 were collected in book form under the Selfridge imprint in 1933; further articles continued to be published for another four years.

In collecting together these articles, which in their original form provoked responses from all over the world, Selfridge was at pains to emphasise that they were never written to be collected as serious literary essays. Rather they represented ‘a unique feature of modern publicity ‘framed as ‘modern, topical journalism’. Continue reading →

Applying for the Garrick Club 1954

Found among the papers of Ifan Kyrle Fletcher writer, expert on the history of theatre and bookseller, a bunch of correspondence from 1954 relating to his application for membership of the London club, the Garrick. One member writes that he has just posted his proposal and reminds him to get the ‘seconder’s letter from Carter as soon as convenient.’ Another writes that he is delighted to write to the Commissioner of the Garrick and also to arrange for his name to be placed in IFK’s page in the candidate’s book. Another letter says that Carter (John) is in America and ‘his name will be entered as your seconder by proxy as long as he writes the necessary letter.’ One correspondent – St.Vincent Troubridge writes: ‘I rather fear the tendency by publisher members to knife a bookseller. Now this voodoo seems to have been lifted by the recent election of Peter Murray Hill, so I have no doubt you will now balloon in. In my view you have been wise to wait a little and let someone else break what ice there may have been about.’ Are ‘balloon’ and ‘knife’ still current clubland jargon? Another member notes:

I hope you’re not expecting to find a very large number of theatrical members, because, if so, you may be disappointed…about a third of the total are publishers, another third are connected with the law, while the remaining third covers all the arts, other professions and riff-raff like myself. Incidentally lawyers and barristers are, I find, much more interesting people than actors. In the main the latter have only one topic of conversation, namely themselves. Today you have nine names to your credit which is a good start. Would you like to lunch with me one day to meet more members for greater support?

Things change slowly in London’s clubland, so many of these procedures may still be in place. Not sure if IFK ever became a member. He certainly would have known more about the actor David Garrick (after whom the club was named) than almost any member. In 1938 he issued a catalogue devoted to ‘Garrickana’ commemorating the 160th anniversary of Garrick’s death…

The Dawn: An experimental poem by Ramon Gomez de la Serna

Found in a box of papers – this two page typewritten carbon copy of a Gomez surrealist poem page 1 001 poem entitled ‘The Dawn’ by the famous Spanish experimental writer Ramón Gómez de la Serna translated into English by Diego Marin ( author of Poesia Espanola, 1962) and Tomas Bartroli (fl. 1969). It would be interesting to discover its provenance.

In his time Gomez (1888 – 1963) was arguably the most celebrated experimental writer in Spain. Born in Madrid to a middle-class family, he refused to follow his wealthy father into law and politics, resolving instead to adopt the bohemian lifestyle of an experimental writer, and subsequently he began contributing to many of the avant-garde magazines of the period.

Like Sartre in Paris, years later, he established a literary salon in Madrid’s Café Pombo and during the First World War brought out six collections of experimental poems—El Rastro, El Doctor Inverosimil, Greguerias, Senos, Pombo and El Circo. Thereafter he continued to publish experimental writing, including works on Dali and El Greco. His work strongly influenced the surrealist film-maker Luis Bunuel. He is now best known for his lapidary ‘ greguerias’.

One source has described his main characteristics as a writer thus:

‘ his search for a new fragmentary genre of short prose poems, his exaltation of trivial everyday objects, his emphasis on eroticism, his exuberant self-projection and exclusive dedication to art, his playful humour, his contemplative secular mysticism, and above all his cut of the image…’ Continue reading →

The Book Trade Strike of 1925

Everyone knows about the General Strike of 1926. It paralysed the nation for nine days and the serious damage it inflicted on the relations between employers and employees was never quite repaired. However, just a few months before the General Strike another strike took place that largely seems to have been written out of labour movement history. The Internet has little or anything to say about it and it doesn’t seem to have troubled historians. It was the Book Trade Strike of December 1925.

We at Jot HQ were unaware of the strike until a four page flier was discovered among a pile of papers. Entitled ‘The Strike in the Book Trade ‘and issued by the Book Trade Employers’ Federation on December 10^th1925, it outlines the reasons for the strike, who were involved in it, the effects of it on the public, and possible remedies. The main arguments put forward by the employers’ Federation against the strike focussed on the privileged position of those unskilled workers in the book trade who were at the centre of the dispute—the ‘ packers, porters and lookers-out ‘—compared with other unskilled employees doing similar work in other branches of industry in London.
The figures supplied by the Federation to support their case are themselves revealing. Packers in the book trade were indeed paid better and worked fewer hours than the majority of their peers elsewhere in the metropolis, as this table of payment demonstrates:

Wage Age Hours

Packers in Drug and Chemical Trade 58/- 21 48

Packers in Co-operative Societies 60/- 24 48

Packers for London Employers’ 62/- 24 48

Association

Packers in Furniture Trade 62/1 21 47

Packers for Wholesale Textile Association 63/- 25 44

Packers in Cloth Trade 64/8 21 48

Packers for Export 64/8 21 48

Packers in Book Trade 65/- 21 44

Continue reading →

Brocard Sewell on the Trial of Stephen Ward

The West End success of the play Stephen Ward recalls the scandalous mistrial in 1963 of the trendy osteopath that prompted Ward’s suicide. Luckily, to remind us of the gross injustice meted out by the Judge, Alfred Denning, we have a review in the Aylesford Review by the maverick Carmelite monk Brocard Sewell, of Ludovic’s Kennedy’s revelatory Trial of Stephen Ward (1964).

Denning was a clever man with a first class degree in mathematics, but it is generally acknowledged that many of his judgements and pronouncements in court and outside, lacked a degree of humanity and empathy, qualities that seem to have diminished still further with age. He may, of course, have suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome at a time when this condition was little understood. He was 65 at the time of the Ward trial and he continued as a senior judge until asked to stand down because of his great age. Nor did the prosecution and police ( quelle surprise) come out of the matter with any plausibility. In fact, according to Father Sewell, ‘few of the people concerned in the trial emerge with credit ‘.

To Sewell, Denning proved himself to be anything but the impartial weigher of evidence and sifter of facts that his profession demanded of him. Instead of allowing the prosecution to ask the necessary questions of the police witnesses he intervened by asking the same witnesses exactly the same questions himself, thus telling the jury obliquely that ‘in the judge’s view Herbert and Burrows were men whose word was to be trusted’. Continue reading →

Vote! Vote! Vote!

Found – a one page leaflet from the Fabian Society urging people to vote no matter what political party or candidate they supported :

‘…be sure you use your vote somehow. The right to vote was won for you, not by the great statesman whose names are connected with reform bills… but by the persistent agitation of generations of poor political workers who gave up all their spare time and faced loss of employment, imprisonment and sometimes worse, in order to get you a share of the government of the country. Now is your chance to use what cost so much to win. A political battle is about to begin. Choose your side according to your conscience; strike the one blow that the law allows you. There is no excuse for not voting. Even when there is no candidate worth voting for, there is always a candidate worth voting against. Even if you think that both candidates are fools, make the best of it by voting for the opponent of the bigger fool of the two. Whatever you do, don’t stay at home and waste your vote.

…If you want to be protected from unjust legislation use your vote. You owe it to your fellow citizens and to yourself not to lose your opportunity. It is the selfish, indifferent, the shortsighted, the lazy man who cannot see why he should trouble himself to vote. No sensible man throws away a weapon which has won so much for those who’ve learned how to use it. For all you know, the election maybe decided by your vote alone. How will you feel if you neglect to vote, and find, the day after the poll, the candidate who best represents your interest is beaten by one vote?’

Although the message is ‘just get out there and vote’ it is likely that Fabian backed radical candidates would profit from a higher turnout as the middle classes, traditionally conservative, were more likely to vote anyway. In an era of gentleman MP’s, some very silly indeed, the advice to vote for the least foolish candidate would have been useful too. Note the way it assumes the voter is a man. Nothing sexist here – the leaflet dates from 1893 and it was not until 1918 that women (over 30) got the vote. Full voting rights came in 1928.

Ada Elizabeth Smith (1875- 1898) forgotten poet

Found in a book published by J.R. Tutin, the Hull based reprinter of 17th century literature, a short letter from 1908 to John Haines, a Gloucestershire solicitor and minor poet associated with Ivor Gurney, F.W. Harvey, Edward Thomas and other members of the Dymock Poets group. After discussing various Elizabethan writers Tutin wrote out a fine poem by Ada Elizabeth Smith (1875- 1898) called ‘The Earth Lover’. He had found it in a recent anthology New Songs put together by F Y Bowles – ‘the poem is a real gem in my opinion : yet I’ve not seen it noticed by in any of the reviews of the book.’ A search online reveals little about Ada Elizabeth Smith, a classic poete maudit, except this anonymous (‘J.L.G.’) quite high-flown notice in the London based literary magazine The Academy of December 1898 a week after her untimely death.

Early Dead. Ada Smith 1875 – 1898 In Memoriam. 17 – 12 – 98

Ada Smith was born in Haltwhistle, a hard featured village from which a bare land runs up to the bleak escarpments that carry the ruined line of the Roman wall. She began early to write verse, and published at 13, having acquired very easily a versification of noticeable grace, smoothness, and cadence. She spent some years abroad, chiefly at Vienna and went about with adventurous and observant audacity. Her idea was that she must not only study life as it met her, but seek it out in the hope of writing novels in the coming time. At this period some of the work found its way into the hands of the present writer. It had too many words and not enough pauses and there was much feigning of the Heinesque. Without being quite able to see what she might arrive at, one felt she must go on.

She returned from Vienna last year with the feeling that she was at last equipped for London, and the great adventure could not be delayed. She attempted London at the age of 22 with a nerve wilful and steady. She did not fail. Verses began to be accepted, and her work matured rapidly. She did typewriting, and it must have been hateful.. Her constitution suddenly began to give way in the summer. A long holiday upon the Northumbrian coast made her better, but not well. She ought not to have gone back to typewriting in the city, but she would and did. A couple of months ago she had to return to the North for the last time quite broken down. Her illness ultimately developed in the gravest way then advanced with frightful rapidity. She died at Newcastle upon Tyne upon the Wednesday night of last week.

Continue reading →

Walking with G.M. Trevelyan (1910s)

Found– Walking by G.M. (George Macaulay) Trevelyan* (Mitchell, Hartford, Dry_stone_wall_20 Connecticut 1928) – a special American edition. The great historian ‘s paean to the joys of walking (” I have two doctors, my left leg and my right..’) was published first as an essay in 1913 in Clio, a muse, and other essays literary and pedestrian and the American introduction by J. Brooks Atkinson notes that the walking world has changed much since then: “..the motor car has completely separated the walkers from the riders. It lays a new responsibility upon the walkers to conduct themselves nobly in God’s light.. they cannot be road walkers now, like Stevenson, since roads have become arteries -hardened arteries- of traffic. They are pushed willy-nilly into the hills, meadows and woods beyond the clatter and the evil fumes of the highway..” (he then launches an attack on the new walking clubs- ‘their walking is a bastard form of motoring.’) Trevelyan’s essay recalls a world now largely lost, although our great modern walkers (Iain Sinclair, Robert Macfarlane, Will Self) still find great places to ramble. GMT writes:

The secret beauties of Nature are un-veiled only to the cross-country walker. Pan would not have appeared to Pheidippides on a road. On the road we never meet the “moving accidents by flood and field ” : the sudden glory of a woodland glade ; the open back-door of the old farmhouse sequestered deep in rural solitude ; the cow routed up from meditation behind the stone wall as we scale it suddenly ; the deep, slow, south-country stream that we must jump, or wander along to find the bridge ; the northern torrent of molten peat-hag that we must ford up to the waist, to scramble, glowing warm-cold, up the farther foxglove bank ; the autumnal dew on the bracken and the blue straight smoke of the cottage in the still glen at dawn ; the rush down the mountain side, hair flying, stones and grouse rising at our feet ; and at the bottom the plunge in the pool below the waterfall, in a place so fair that kings should come from far to bathe therein yet is it left, year in year out, unvisited save by us and “troops of stars.”
Continue reading →

A Los Angeles philosopher

Found – a small and very rare book Happy in Hell (Freedom Hill Pressery, Burbank, 1924) by ‘Freedom Hill Henry’ (Dr. Henry Leroy.) He founded a commune in the Shadow Hills district above Burbank which flourished between 1913 and 1930. It was known as Freedom Hill. This small book was limited to 957 copies and printed and bound by the author. He wrote another book called Miserable in Heaven and also a study of Jacob Beilhart of the Spirit Fruit Society, an influence on him. A bit of a joker he has a note at the front: “Dear Comrade: If you like this booklet, lend it to your poor friends and tell your rich friends to buy a copy. If you don’t like it, keep quiet, and consult a specialist on mental diseases. I am an insane specialist and I can readily tell whether any one is just right in his mind. If you agree with my notions, then you are all right. If you don’t agree with me, then I know you are crazier than I am.”

Leroy’s philosophy, if that is not too lofty a word for his ideas, is hinted at in the titles of his books Miserable in Heaven and Happy Hell. He was influenced by Edward Carpenter, Walt Whitman, the Theosophists, Vivekenanda, Martin Luther and even Luther Burbank. It was essentially a loving philosophy aimed at helping people to think for themselves and realize that they could change the way they had always looked at things and to be ‘happy in hell’ (or purgatory.) He writes:

We are in slavery as long as we can’t get what we want, all that we want, and nothing but what we do want. Do you think we shall ever become skillful enough to get all that we want and nothing but what we do want? Or, in other words, do you think we shall ever become free? If we can’t become skillful enough to get what we want, maybe WE CAN BECOME SIMPLE ENOUGH TO WANT WHAT WE GET, and that would amount to the same thing. In order to do and to get what we please we may have to change our pleases. If we could change our pleases to what we do do, and to what we do get, then our doing and our getting would correspond with our pleases. Then we could say we do as we please and get what we please. It is wonderful how logic can make impossible things easy. The way to do as we please is to be pleased with what we do. The way to get what we want is to want what we get. The way to be free is to be content with our lot. Now I have given you a secret of happiness— a secret worth a million dollars to you if you will take it and use it.

Continue reading →

Maurice Percival illustrator

Found– Moonlight at the Globe;: An essay in Shakespeare production based on performance of A `Midsummer Night’s Dream at Harrow School (Joseph, London 1946). It was written by Ronald Watkins O.B.E. a drama teacher who at the time of the book was working at Harrow. This copy bears a signed presentation from the book’s illustrator Maurice Percival (to ‘Ted and Jessie’) with a letter in an excellent italic hand and an attractive self portrait drawing – both on Harrow School Art School notepaper. Percival illustrated 2 other books with text by Watkins- both on Shakespeare.

Percival falls beneath the Wiki radar but there is scattered information on the web and an interesting press cutting about him loosely inserted in the book. This is from The Daily Telegraph Peterborough column in 1958 and was occasioned by an exhibition of 240 of Percival’s drawings of Roman scenes at Richmond Central Library. The article notes that he had been teaching art at Harrow (1945-1954), formerly at Malvern and as a locum for Wilfrid Blunt at Eton. Peterborough also writes that MP admits to being ‘quite non-plussed when confronted with nature’ and ‘wildly inaccurate..few artists care to make either claim.’ The exhibition also had a photograph of King Faisal II as a schoolboy at Harrow ‘doing some italic writing.’ Presumably the ill fated king* was taught by MP, something of a calligrapher as well as a fine draughtsman.

*He had just been executed at the age of 23.

The friends of John Michell

Found in a book called Michellany: a John Michell Reader (2010) a list of subscribers. John Michell, whose most famous book was The View Over Atlantis (1969) was an esotericist and a major figure in the development of the counterculture /Earth mysteries movement.
A senior figure from the Hippie era and scion of a wealthy family (Eton, Cambridge, Glastonbury) he had died in 2009 aged 76 and the book was a memorial anthology. Our copy had the small attractive bookplate, showing a bookish owl, of ‘Oz’ publisher, later media tycoon, Felix Dennis (1947 -2014) The lengthy subscriber’s list is worth recording- it brings together the great and the good of bohemian/ eccentric British, mostly upper class, society…

Ahmed Ainsworth, The Lady Ashcombe, Patti Baker, A. D. Bakewell, Michael Balfour, Richard Barnes, David Batterham, Opi Bell, Gerard Belleardt, David Benedictus, Phyllis Benjamin, Mary Berg ,Elizabeth Best, James Birch, Charlotte Black, Sir Peter Blake, Ralph Blum, Jill Bond, Laura and Harry Boothby, Joe Boyd, N. Van Den Branden, Mr and Mrs Michael Briggs, Theadora Brinkman, Paul Broadhurst, Alex Brown, Sir Anthony and Lady Shelagh Montague Brown, Peter Browne, Sally Burgess, Dr Aubrey Burl, Simon Buxton, David Cadman, Joseph Caezza, Tarquin and Sophie Campbell, Chung Yee Chong, Mrs O.D.H. Claus, Lord and Lady Patrick Conyngham, Prof Pierre and Helene Coustillas, Keith Critchlow, Paul Cullivan, Major General and Mrs Andrew Cumming Bronwen Cunningham, Karen D’Arc, Michael R. Davies, Robert Dudley, Belinda Eade, Mrs V. A. Ehlers, Jacquetta Eliot, Prof Richard England, Ness Eyre, David Fideler,
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The Skimmers- a book club of the 1920s

The pastedown of Best Short Stories of 1925 has this large book club notice for “The Skimmers.” This is almost certainly an American women’s reading club very possibly one found at the Louisiana University site for ‘wives of the Louisiana State University faculty, and operated in the Baton Rouge, La. area as a social group and unofficial book club.’ It was formed in January 1927 and its archives are at Louisiana. They note “…although the Skimmers’ membership occasionally grew to 20, the club has traditionally limited itself to a maximum of sixteen persons. In addition to regularly reading and trading books, the club’s activities included entertaining the members’ husbands as well as themselves with special dinners, bridge, afternoon teas, outings, and luncheons. The club also participated in World War II service projects. Now comprised of residents throughout Baton Rouge, as well as faculty wives, the club continues its traditions of literary activities, luncheons, dinners, and outings.”

If the above Skimmers are indeed the Louisiana academic’s wives, the part about 20 members is slightly worrying, as there are 35 names here. Also there is no mention of auctions on the site. It is just possible to work out the curious rules of the club and the way the books were passed on but it is likely by the time they were auctioned they had been rather well read… The illustration is familiar and may come from a turn of the century American illustrator and poster artist whose name escapes your humble jotter. As far as can be ascertained The Skimmers are still going as a book club.

Attack on Auden, Spender etc., 1934

Found– a poem in the autumn 1934 issue of the literary and political periodical Cambridge Left. It was titled ‘Theodolite’ and was by one Minton Courtauld (probably a scion of the wealthy family and about 22 at the time. Minton was a family name.) The poem is aimed at W H Auden, Stephen Spender, Cecil Day-Lewis and Rex Warner– all anti-fascist and sympathizers with the Soviet Union and Communism, although some of them became disillusioned. This is not quite MacSpaunday (Macneice, Spender, Auden, Day-Lewis) as Macneice was intellectually opposed to Communism. The periodical has a manifesto against war and fascism and Courtauld’s beef with Spaudwarnerday (if I may) is likely to have been their taunting warlike stance. The ‘L’ referred to is a mystery…

THEODOLITE

Wystan, Rex, Stephen, Cecil, all of you::
It is now time to discontinue abuse.
The spent bullets from your machine guns are quickly
Building a rampart to protect the enemy.

You are awaiting orders to make an advance movement.
Heavy guns should have found the approximate range.
Those attacking the cathedral will wear gas masks.
So far there have been no casualties.

A concerted attack pushed home at every point.
No mercy now: they will have none if they beat you.
Remember how they tortured L. till they killed him:
That’s what they’ll do to you, if they get you alone.

You must stop sniping now from the gasometer,
It gives away the position and does us no good.
Are you prepared to fight for days without sleeping?
For years without going home to visit your girl?

Are you quite sure that you understand the position?
Visibility poor. Have you a windscreen-wiper?
Are you sure that you know the road now the signposts are gone?
Wystan, Rex, Stephen, Cecil, all of you?

Diary of a Nobody (part two)

As we read through the diary for 1957 (see previous Jot) we gradually learn a little more about the anonymous chrysanthemum fancier and DIY fanatic who wrote it. We now know, for instance, that he probably lived in Welling, that he was a civil servant in the Treasury, regarded himself as no great shakes as a gardener and indeed scolded himself after his gardening failures .We know a little more about his work colleagues, friends, and relations, although he doesn’t do us a favour by providing surnames to go along with their Christian names. We have already established that he was a man of culture, especially with regard to middle of the road classical music, but our superficial assumption that his interest in the visual arts was negligible may have been mistaken. For instance, he found a book on the famous art collector Duveen ‘ very interesting ‘. He may have been a linguist too. While many of his fellow civil servants may have taken the ferry to Dieppe or Boulogne for their summer break in France our gardener and his wife jetted off to Zurich for three weeks.

In addition, he seems to have been rather taken by the idea promulgated by an anonymous correspondent in the Times for 28^thMarch that a diary that mainly recorded gardening exploits was essentially a ‘ lie-book ‘.‘ My own lie-book is a very superior production.’, the writer declared:

‘True, it started modestly enough with the simple entry for January 5^th, 1950, “Planted out Anemone pulsatilla from P. Contained hedging. “ But as I have warmed to the job the entries have increased in length and scope until most of them, I feel, are quite equal to any of the essays in “Our Village”. Everything connected to our life in the country goes in: the weather, the comings and goings of the birds and the butterflies, wild flowers and garden flowers, fruit picking and bottling…’ Continue reading →

Letter to Geoffrey Grigson from E.J.Scovell

The combative poet and critic Geoffrey Grigson was not known to be a great fan of female poets. He rarely reviewed their work and when he did he was invariably scathing. This refusal to be a hypocrite when confronted by poetry for which he had no enthusiasm got him into hot water with the more politically correct band of literary critics, one of whom was the Mexican poet Michael Schmidt, editor of Poetry Nation.Luckily, Schmidt’s views are not shared by most genuine lovers of poetry.

But Grigson did admire two female poets of the twentieth century—Fleur Adcock (b 1934) and E. J. Scovell (1907 – 99). Both wrote the sort of poetry that Grigson admired—visual, precise and closely observed. Scovell‘s work was particularly to Grigson’s taste and the admiration was mutual. So here is a letter dated 23 April 1945 which we at Jot HQ found interleaved in a copy of Scovell’s third collection, The River Steamer(1956), along with a carbon of ‘A Baby’s Head’. In the letter Scovell responds to Grigson’s invitation to submit a poem for publication in his new literary miscellany The Mint(1946 by sending nine poems, including presumably ‘A Baby’s Head ‘. She also apologised for the fact that ‘so few of them escape being about children’. Book, poem and letter were bought from Grigson ( see previous Jot) by the bookseller and publisher Joan Stevens, at whose death it was retrieved from her archive by us at Jot HQ. At the time Miss Scovell, who was married to Charles Elton, the animal behaviourist, was working at the Bureau of Animal Population in Oxford (this fact alone would have prompted Grigson’s interest). It seems that Grigson was impressed by the submissions , for he duly published two of the nine poems in The Mint(1946).

Reading ‘ A Baby’s Head’, which was eventually published in The River Steamer, one can easily imagine Grigson being delighted by its opening line:

‘The lamp shines on his innocent wild head again ‘.

And it gets even better:

‘Now even the captive light in a close-sheltered room,

Claiming you as its kind, pours round you head in bloom,

So melting where it flows, that the strong armour-browed

Skull seems as pervious as a cloud…’ Continue reading →

Diary of a Nobody (part one)

We at Jot 101 are fascinated by MS diaries. It’s a wonderful day when we find one kept by someone famous, but sometimes it’s the journals of anonymous marrow growers and dahlia fanciers living in the leafy suburbs that can be windows into past lives. Such a diarist was the man who acquired a thick T.J.& J. Smith Dataday diary, possibly as a gift from his ‘ lady wife’ at Christmas in 1956, and began filling in the entries, starting with the 1^stJanuary 1957.

As far as we can see, the name of the diarist doesn’t appear anywhere in the volume—why should it? Back in those days it wasn’t deemed necessary for the owner to fill in personal details. And anyway, if the volume was lost and someone known to the diarist found it, compromising or embarrassing entries in it might take some explaining! We do, however, know something about the man himself which would probably identify him to anyone in his community who might discover the diary. That he was married to Madge (sometimes shortened to ‘M’) , worked in the City or in Whitehall (possibly at the Treasury) , lived in south-east London, where he was both a diligent DIY-er, and an very enthusiastic member of the Bexleyheath Chrysanthemum Society, is easily determined. Almost every other entry concerns either his garden activities or his home improvements. His daily grind in the City is rarely, if ever, mentioned, and most entries on central London relate to shopping trips or entertainment. Here was a man who, like so many others, endured a sometimes ‘unpleasant‘ job for the sake of his weekends at home. Continue reading →