RONALD FIRBANK
Firbankweb
Firbankweb
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
<strong>RONALD</strong> <strong>FIRBANK</strong><br />
One Hundred Items from the Collection of Robert Scoble<br />
CALLUM JAMES BOOKS<br />
May 2016
<strong>RONALD</strong> <strong>FIRBANK</strong><br />
and six other writers<br />
deprecated by<br />
unimaginative<br />
people<br />
One Hundred Items from the Collection of Robert Scoble
<strong>RONALD</strong> <strong>FIRBANK</strong><br />
and six other writers<br />
deprecated by<br />
unimaginative people<br />
One Hundred Items<br />
from the Collection of<br />
Robert Scoble<br />
Offered for sale<br />
by Callum James Books<br />
in<br />
May 2016
This catalogue was published online in May 2016.<br />
At the same time, as a tangible record of Dr Scoble’s<br />
collection, and as a contribution to bibliography,<br />
a limited edition of 40 copies of this catalogue has<br />
been printed and signed by the collector and publisher<br />
This is number:<br />
To<br />
Firbank’s champions<br />
Carl Van Vechten<br />
Edmund Wilson<br />
Anthony Powell<br />
Robert Murray Davis<br />
Brigid Brophy<br />
Steven Moore<br />
Miriam Benkovitz<br />
John Byrne<br />
Barry Humphries<br />
Alan Hollinghurst<br />
Richard Canning<br />
Callum James Books<br />
31A Chichester Road<br />
Portsmouth<br />
UK - PO2 0AA<br />
+44 (0)2392 696150<br />
callum@callumjamesbooks.com<br />
Front Free Endpaper Blog:<br />
callumjames.blogspot.com<br />
Website: www.callumjamesbooks.com<br />
Twitter: @CallumJBooks<br />
Cover illustration: Michel Sevier illustration for<br />
Firbank’s Princess Zoubiroff<br />
Text and images<br />
© Callum James Books/Robert Scoble 2016<br />
PURCHASES<br />
To purchase an item from this catalogue please<br />
email us and we will confirm availability and<br />
shipping costs. Please be sure to let us know<br />
where in the world you are.<br />
Payments can be made via Paypal and we will<br />
send invoices through Paypal for your records<br />
and convenience. You do not have to have a<br />
Paypal account to use the website to securely<br />
pay for items with a credit or debit card.<br />
We are happy to provide payee details for<br />
an old-fashioned cheque - as long as it is in<br />
Sterling and drawn on a UK bank - or bank<br />
details for an electronic transfer.<br />
Photographs in this catalogue are not to the<br />
same scale.
This catalogue lists one hundred items<br />
from the collection put together by<br />
Dr Robert Scoble over the past four decades<br />
Among its scarce items:<br />
A copy in rose covers of Ronald Firbank’s first<br />
publication Odette, with a rare Laurencin bookplate<br />
A copy of Santal<br />
inscribed and dated by Firbank<br />
First editions of all<br />
Lord Berners’s novels<br />
A dustjacketed copy of Richard Rumbold’s<br />
exceptionally scarce novel Little Victims<br />
A dustjacketed copy of Gerald Hamilton’s elusive<br />
autobiography As Young As Sophocles, inscribed by Hamilton<br />
Fine sets of Simon Raven’s two novel sequences<br />
Arms for Oblivion and The First Born of Egypt<br />
An attractive copy of the first French edition of<br />
Roger Peyrefitte’s novel Les Amitiés Particulières<br />
with a contemporary inscription by Peyrefitte
PART 1<br />
<strong>RONALD</strong> <strong>FIRBANK</strong><br />
(1886-1926)
1. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Arthur Annesley Ronald<br />
Odette d’Antrevernes and A Study in Temperament<br />
1905<br />
Elkin Mathews. FIRST EDITION. One of 500 copies, this copy in rose stiff paper covers<br />
lettered in blue on the upper cover. Some copies were printed in sea-green stiff paper<br />
covers, but no priority has been established between the two colours. Many of the book’s<br />
gatherings are uncut. Near fine, with a very slightly embrowned backstrip. Benkovitz A1.<br />
Tipped onto the inside upper cover is the bookplate, in pristine condition, of Edward<br />
Wassermann, the American bibliophile, art collector and author of the eccentric travel<br />
book, Velvet Voyaging (1940). Original copies of this bookplate are scarce and much<br />
sought after by collectors, as it is the only known bookplate designed by the French<br />
artist Marie Laurencin (1883-1956), an important figure in the Parisian avant garde.<br />
Wassermann was in her Paris studio and saw her working on an engraving of a girl<br />
wearing a pearl necklace. He asked whether she could make him a personalised bookplate<br />
out of it and she agreed.<br />
10<br />
£300
2. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Vainglory<br />
1915<br />
Grant Richards. FIRST EDITION. One of 500 copies. Bright, near fine copy ‒ a few<br />
spots of foxing on the outer edge ‒ in a largely intact but soiled dustjacket, chipped at the<br />
extremities and with a restored tear on the upper cover. Colour frontispiece by Felicien<br />
Rops. This copy with the publisher’s catalogue advising that ‘Mr Firbank is a new writer;<br />
he is very “modern”.’ Benkovitz A2a.<br />
‘There was a pause ‒ just long enough for an angel to pass, flying slowly’.<br />
£280<br />
11
3. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Vainglory<br />
1925<br />
Brentano’s. FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. Frontispiece by Felicien Rops. Fine copy<br />
in a very good dustjacket designed by Joseph Fannell. The dustjacket is chipped at the<br />
extremities and its backstrip is worn and rubbed with one significant closed tear. Benkovitz<br />
A2b.<br />
‘She could admire a distant view of a cold stone church by Vanbrugh. Flushed at sunset, it<br />
suggested quite forcibly a middle-aged bachelor with possessions at Coutts’.<br />
12<br />
£100
4. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Inclinations<br />
1916<br />
Grant Richards. FIRST EDITION. One of 500 copies. Firbank’s name is ‘A. A. R.<br />
Firbank’ on the backstrip and ‘Ronald Firbank’ elsewhere. The artist Albert Rutherston,<br />
who has contributed two drawings, had recently changed his name, and appears as ‘Albert<br />
Rutherston (Rothenstein)’ on the title page. Very good, with small pieces missing from<br />
the top corner of four leaves, a faint red mark at the foot of the lower board, and rubbing<br />
at both ends of the spine and other extremities. There is a small, unobtrusive bookseller’s<br />
label at the foot of the back pastedown endpaper. This copy lacks the protective tissue<br />
guard on the frontispiece. The dustjacket has some light chipping and fraying along the<br />
head and the foot, and two large chips at the head of the lower panel. Nevertheless an<br />
attractive copy of a book and dustjacket of which there have been very few survivors.<br />
Benkovitz A3.<br />
‘As course succeeded course came the recurring pressure of a forward footman’s knee’.<br />
£220<br />
13
5. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Odette: A Fairy Tale for Weary People<br />
1916<br />
Grant Richards. FIRST ILLUSTRATED EDITION. One of 2,000 copies. Frontispiece<br />
and three full-page illustrations by Albert Buhrer (1891-1991), who later changed his name<br />
to Adrian Bury. This is a fair copy only, the backstrip embrowned and badly chipped and<br />
the upper panel having separated altogether. The front free endpaper is INSCRIBED by<br />
Albert Rutherston, the illustrator of Inclinations: ‘For Julien this “Refresher”. The author’s<br />
last work was illustrated by me. We quarrelled ‒ his morals were bad ‒ hence the sub title<br />
of this his next effort. I pass it to you as one “sub” to another. God Bless you & may our<br />
search for Romance & adventure in Ryde meet, at length, with success. A.R. 26 May 17.’<br />
Benkovitz A4.<br />
‘Far away in the East, the day began to Dawn. A flush of yellow like ripe fruit spread<br />
slowly across the sky. The birds in the trees piped drowsily to one another, and the bent<br />
cyclamens by the riverside lifted their fragrant hearts in rapture to the rising sun’.<br />
14<br />
£60
6. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Caprice<br />
1917<br />
Grant Richards. FIRST EDITION. One of 500 copies. Frontispiece by Augustus John.<br />
Dedicated to Stephen Hammerton, the celebrated seventeenth century boy actor. The<br />
bookplate of Ernest E Taylor, author of The Valiant Sixty (1947), a well-regarded history of<br />
the origins of the Quaker movement, is tipped onto the front pastedown endpaper.<br />
On the verso of the half-title a new Firbank novel, entitled Glenmouth: A Romantic Novel,<br />
is announced as ‘in preparation’; this later appeared under the title Valmouth. This copy<br />
is internally clean, but the cloth on the binding is lifting in a few places, and there is no<br />
dustjacket. Caprice is notoriously the most difficult Firbank to find in its first edition.<br />
Benkovitz A5.<br />
‘How he got up those narrow stairs is a mystery to me’.<br />
£120<br />
15
7. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Valmouth: A Romantic Novel<br />
1919<br />
Grant Richards. FIRST EDITION. One of 500 copies. Frontispiece by Augustus John.<br />
The neat book label of John Johnson (1882-1956), the eminent papyrologist and Printer<br />
to Oxford University, is pasted onto the front pastedown endpaper. Very good, with some<br />
foxing to the half-title and title pages, and to the outer and lower edges. The dustjacket<br />
is remarkably intact, with a small closed tear to the upper cover and a 7mm piece missing<br />
from the top of the lower cover. Benkovitz A6a.<br />
‘May a woman know, dear,’ Mrs Hurstpierpoint softly said, ‘when she may receive her<br />
drubbing?’<br />
16<br />
£350
8. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Valmouth<br />
1956<br />
Duckworth. ILLUSTRATED EDITION. One of 2,500 copies. Illustrations, eight in full<br />
colour, by the French writer and artist Philippe Jullian. Near fine, with slightly dulled spine<br />
and extremities, in a near fine dustjacket with a faded backstrip and a closed tear at the<br />
front fold. Benkovitz A6b.<br />
‘Do you care to undergo a course ob me?’ she asked. ‘For de full course ‒ I make you easy<br />
terms; and I always try,’ she airily cozened, ‘to end off wid a charming sensation.’<br />
£10<br />
17
9. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Valmouth: The Musical<br />
1958<br />
A collection of items relating to Sandy Wilson’s musical comedy Valmouth, loosely adapted<br />
from Firbank’s novel:<br />
(a) The printed programme for the original production at the Lyric Opera House<br />
Hammersmith, where the musical opened on 2 October 1958, after two trial weeks at the<br />
New Shakespeare Theatre in Liverpool. Bertice Reading was cast as Mrs Yajnavalkya,<br />
Fenella Fielding as Lady Parvula, and Doris Hare as Grannie Tooke.<br />
(b) The CD of the Pye Records recording, on 28 January 1959, of the original<br />
production, which had transferred the day before to the Saville Theatre in Shaftesbury<br />
Avenue. Bertice Reading had been replaced by Cleo Laine, and there is some difference of<br />
opinion as to which of the two stars was the definitive Mrs Yajnavalkya.<br />
(c) The printed programme for the Saville Theatre production, with one of the<br />
original seat tickets, priced at five shillings.<br />
(d) The printed programme for the Chichester Festival Theatre production in 1982,<br />
in which Bertice Reading, Fenella Fielding and Doris Hare reprised their roles, and ‒ an<br />
inspired piece of casting ‒ Robert Helpmann played Cardinal Pirelli.<br />
(e) The LP record of the 1982 Chichester Theatre Festival production. The record<br />
cover is in good overall condition and there are no discernible scratches or other flaws on<br />
the vinyl.<br />
18<br />
£80
10. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
The Princess Zoubaroff<br />
1920<br />
Grant Richards. FIRST EDITION. One of 530 copies. Two colour illustrations by Michel<br />
Sevier. The bookplate of Rives Skinker Matthews (1907-1981), the American journalist on<br />
The New York Herald-Tribune and The Billboard, and publisher of the Maryland Somerset<br />
News, is pasted onto the front pastedown endpaper. A near fine copy, with some light<br />
spotting to the upper board, in a near fine dustjacket with one small chip off the top of the<br />
back panel. Benkovitz A7.<br />
‘His Hellenism once captivated me. But the Attic to him means nothing now but Servants’<br />
bedrooms’.<br />
£220<br />
19
11. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Santal<br />
1921<br />
Grant Richards. FIRST EDITION. One of 300 copies. INSCRIBED by the author on<br />
the front free endpaper: ‘From Ronald Firbank / July 1923’. Firbank inscriptions are<br />
exceptionally scarce. Dedicated to his Cambridge friend Coleridge Kennard’s mother<br />
Helen Carew, who introduced Firbank to Lord Berners. Very good copy, with a chipped<br />
backstrip ‒ as in almost all copies of this book ‒ with loss of the final four letters of<br />
‘Firbank’. The lower cover shows an area of fading and a few tiny dots of the same black<br />
ink that has been used for Firbank’s inscription. Protected in a custom black chemise in a<br />
black slipcase ‒ the spine of which has been rubbed in places ‒ and lettered on the spine in<br />
gold. Benkovitz A8a.<br />
‘As an exponent of the Handkerchief Dance there was not to be found, perhaps, her equal.<br />
Her wrigglings, her writhings, her facial play - these were things not to be forgot’.<br />
20<br />
£950
12. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Santal<br />
1955<br />
Bonacio & Saul with Grove Press. FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. One of a probable<br />
edition of 500 copies. Fine in a fine dustjacket, with a bookseller’s book label and another<br />
bookseller’s red stamp ‒ both of these very small ‒ at the foot of the last leaf of the book.<br />
Benkovitz A8b.<br />
‘He found her in the kitchen with Mabrouka holding the very knife, while on the Moorish<br />
chest in a stream of gushing blood, lay the lamb. “I think cutlets!” Amoucha was saying’.<br />
£60<br />
21
13. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
The Flower Beneath the Foot<br />
1923<br />
Grant Richards. FIRST EDITION. One of 1,000 copies. Drawings of Firbank by<br />
Augustus John and Wyndham Lewis, and a striking dustjacket portrait in blue of the<br />
fictional Laura de Nazianzi by C R W Nevinson. Dedicated to ‘Madame Mathieu and<br />
Mademoiselle Dora Garnier-Pagès’ ‒ presumably a mother and daughter ‒ who have to this<br />
day escaped identification. At the very end of the publisher’s advertisements at the back of<br />
the book ‘a study of West Indian life and manners’ is said to be ‘in preparation’; this later<br />
appeared under the title Sorrow in Sunlight. Fine in a near fine dustjacket with a very small<br />
chip from the top of the backstrip. Benkovitz A9a.<br />
‘He has such strength! One could niche an idol in his dear, dinted chin’.<br />
22<br />
£350
14. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
The Flower Beneath the Foot<br />
1924<br />
Brentano’s. FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. After the title page, there is a facsimile threepage<br />
reproduction of Firbank’s autograph signed preface within a single-rule black frame.<br />
The dustjacket has the portrait of Laura de Nazianzi by C R W Nevinson, this time in<br />
orange. Near fine with some rubbing to the gold lettering on the spine and the small book<br />
label of The Sunwise Turn Inc ‒ a prominent bookshop on 44th St in New York ‒ at the top<br />
of the front pastedown endpaper. The dustjacket has a few tiny closed tears and one small<br />
chip from the top of the backstrip. Benkovitz A9b.<br />
‘With the deftness of a virtuoso, the Countess seized, and crushed with her muff, a palewinged<br />
passing gnat’.<br />
£120<br />
23
15. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Prancing Nigger<br />
1924<br />
Brentano’s. FIRST EDITION. One of a probable 300 copies of the First Printing.<br />
Introduction by Carl Van Vechten. Fine in a very good dustjacket, reproducing the mauvecoloured<br />
frontispiece illustration by Robert E Locher. The dustjacket has some chipping<br />
and short closed tears from the top of the faded backstrip and in particular from the foot of<br />
its upper panel. Benkovitz A10a.<br />
‘On de whole, it was quite an enjoyable pahty ‒ doh dat music ob Wagner, it gib me de<br />
retches’.<br />
24<br />
£150
16. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Sorrow in Sunlight<br />
1924<br />
Brentano’s. FIRST ENGLISH EDITION. Number 215 of an edition of 1,000. Endpapers<br />
designed by C R W Nevinson Near fine copy without the dustjacket. Some wear to each<br />
end of the spine, the lettering on which is faded. There is a small area of glue residue,<br />
approximately three centimetres by one and a half centimetres, from the removal of a book<br />
label from the verso of the front free endpaper. Benkovitz A10b.<br />
‘The appearance of the Cunan Constabulary, handsome youngsters, looking the apotheosis<br />
themselves of earthly lawlessness, in their feathered sun-hats and bouncing kilts, created a<br />
diversion’.<br />
£60<br />
25
17. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli<br />
1926<br />
Grant Richards. FIRST EDITION. One of 1,000 copies. Frontispiece drawing of Firbank<br />
by Augustus John, and a colour portrait of Firbank by Charles Shannon on the dustjacket.<br />
Near fine with exceptionally bright lettering on the upper cover and spine. A very small<br />
number of spots of foxing on the outside edge. Very good dustjacket with several tiny<br />
chips and closed tears. Benkovitz A11.<br />
‘On the Feast of the Circumcision she invariably caused to be laid before the high-altar of<br />
the cathedral a peculiarly shaped loaf to the confusion of all who saw it’.<br />
26<br />
£300
18. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
The Works of Ronald Firbank<br />
1928<br />
Duckworth and Brentano’s. FIRST COLLECTED EDITION. Number 197 of a limited<br />
edition of 235 sets, 200 of which were for sale. The title pages of all five volumes<br />
are dated 1929, although the edition was published in 1928. The first volume has an<br />
introduction by Arthur Waley and a ‘biographical memoir’ by Osbert Sitwell. This set is<br />
in remarkably good condition although, as with all surviving sets, its grey dustjackets have<br />
long since disappeared. This has resulted in a few scuff marks on the covers and uniformly<br />
embrowned spines. Benkovitz A12a.<br />
£350<br />
27
19. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
The Works of Ronald Firbank<br />
1929-1930 and 1940<br />
Duckworth. RAINBOW EDITION. This edition, so-named because of its colourful<br />
dustjackets, was first published in eight volumes in 1929 and 1930, and reissued with<br />
slightly different designs in 1940. It is legendarily difficult to assemble complete sets<br />
of the 1929-1930 edition, indeed to assemble any set of the Rainbow Edition at all. The<br />
set offered for sale here is made up of four volumes of the 1929-1930 edition (Caprice,<br />
Inclinations, Vainglory and The Princess Zoubaroff) and four volumes of the 1940<br />
reissue (Prancing Nigger, Valmouth, The Flower Beneath the Foot and Concerning the<br />
Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli). All volumes are in near fine condition, with the tiniest<br />
of spots of foxing along their top edges. Some of the backstrips on the dustjackets have<br />
slightly faded. There is some offsetting of the dustjacket flaps on the endpapers. The upper<br />
board of one volume ‒ The Flower Beneath the Foot ‒ has some discoloration, and the<br />
dustjacket of another ‒ Caprice ‒ is price-clipped. Benkovitz A12c.<br />
28<br />
£220
20. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Five Novels<br />
1949<br />
Duckworth. OMNIBUS EDITION, ENGLISH ISSUE. One of 2,350 copies of the English<br />
issue. A long introduction by Osbert Sitwell. The dustjacket splendidly designed by Keith<br />
Vaughan. Fine in a near fine dustjacket with some minor chipping to the extremities.<br />
Benkovitz A12d.<br />
£60<br />
29
21. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Three Novels<br />
1950<br />
Duckworth. OMNIBUS EDITION, ENGLISH ISSUE. One of 2,500 copies of the English<br />
issue. Introduction by Ernest Jones. Bright, near fine copy, with a few tiny spots of foxing<br />
on the front endpapers and the outside edge. Small bookseller’s book label at the foot of<br />
the front pastedown endpaper. The dustjacket, strikingly designed by Keith Vaughan, has<br />
been price-clipped and has some beginnings of rubbing at its extremities. Benkovitz A12d.<br />
30<br />
£30
22. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
The Artificial Princess<br />
1934<br />
Duckworth. FIRST ORDINARY EDITION. One of 2,000 copies. Introduction by<br />
Coleridge Kennard. Bright, near fine copy, with spots of foxing along the top edge.<br />
Dustjacket is flawless. Benkovitz A13a.<br />
‘He also keeps pets. Lovely plump pigeons that take his letters; and run little errands of<br />
mercy for him through the sky. Only last night I noticed two of his birds fly over the Palace<br />
with a pair of stockings’.<br />
£80<br />
31
23. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
The Artificial Princess<br />
1934<br />
Centaur Press. FIRST LIMITED EDITION. Number 6 of an edition of only 60 copies.<br />
Introduction by Coleridge Kennard, the text identical to that in Item 22. Three full-page<br />
illustrations by Hugh Easton. Bound and dustjacketed to constitute the sixth volume of<br />
The Works of Ronald Firbank (see Item 18). Near fine, with a few spots of foxing on the<br />
endpapers, in a near fine dustjacket with one short closed tear, marked and spotted in places<br />
and with an embrowned backstrip. Scarce in the dustjacket. Benkovitz A13b.<br />
‘He wore the dainty trappings of a page in a Benozzo Gozzoli, and was paid a large wage<br />
to look wilful, and to stand about corridors and pout’.<br />
32<br />
£280
24. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Extravaganzas<br />
1935<br />
Coward-McCann. FIRST EDITION. One of 1,200 copies. Introduction by Coleridge<br />
Kennard, the text identical to that in Items 22 and 23. The book reprints two of Firbank’s<br />
novels: The Artificial Princess, mistakenly named ‘The Enchanted Princess’ on the<br />
dustjacket, and Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli. Fine copy in a near fine<br />
dustjacket. Benkovitz A15.<br />
‘The impressionable, highly amative nature of the little Obdulia gave her governesses some<br />
grounds for alarm. At the Post Office one day she had watched a young man lick a stamp.<br />
His rosy tongue had vanquished her’.<br />
£80<br />
33
25. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
The Complete Ronald Firbank<br />
1961<br />
Duckworth. FIRST EDITION. One of 5,100 copies. Preface by Anthony Powell. Pristine<br />
copy in a fine dustjacket. Benkovitz A17.<br />
34<br />
£200
26. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
The New Rythum and Other Pieces<br />
1962<br />
Duckworth. FIRST EDITION. One of 5,000 copies. Introduction by Alan Harris.<br />
Fourteen interesting photographs. Fine in a fine price-clipped dustjacket. Benkovitz A19a.<br />
Included in this volume are: two short stories, ‘A Study in Temperament’ and ‘Lady<br />
Appledore’s Mésalliance’; a fragment of a novel, The New Rythum, set in New York; a<br />
miscellany of amusing ‘short passages from unpublished writings’; and a useful appendix<br />
listing the valuable Firbank materials sold by Sotheby’s in 1961.<br />
£20<br />
35
27. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Far Away<br />
1966<br />
Typographic Laboratory, University of Iowa. FIRST EDITION. One of 80 copies issued,<br />
of an intended edition of 100. A brief fragment, with an informative ‘bibliographical note’<br />
by Miriam J Benkovitz. The edition was issued with yellow laid paper wrappers, but this<br />
copy is perhaps unique in that its wrappers are pale blue. Fine. Benkovitz A22.<br />
36<br />
£80
28. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
An Early Flemish Painter<br />
1969<br />
The Enitharmon Press. FIRST EDITION. One of 300 copies. ‘Issued at Christmas 1969<br />
as a greeting for the friends of the Enitharmon Press and Miriam J Benkovitz’. 185<br />
copies were printed with the Enitharmon Press name, and 115 with the name of Miriam<br />
J Benkovitz. This is one of the Enitharmon Press copies. A photograph of the portrait<br />
of Emperor Charles V attributed to Jan Gossaert is tipped in. Unfortunately, as with<br />
all copies, an inappropriate glue was used to attach the photograph, and over time this<br />
has produced light lines of foxing on the verso and on the page opposite. A tiny 2mm<br />
production fault on the top edge has attracted a spot of foxing. In all other respects this<br />
copy is excellent. Benkovitz A24.<br />
£30<br />
37
29. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Two Early Stories<br />
1971<br />
Albondocani Press. FIRST EDITION. Number 165 of 226 copies. Six illustrations by<br />
Edward Gorey – one of his scarcest books. Foreword by Miriam J Benkovitz. Fine.<br />
Benkovitz A26.<br />
The stories, ‘The Wavering Disciple: A Fantasia’ and ‘A Study in Opal’, were first<br />
published in The Granta in 1906 and 1907 respectively.<br />
38<br />
£180
30. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
La Princesse Aux Soleils & Harmonie<br />
1974<br />
The Enitharmon Press. FIRST EDITION. Number 158 of 200 copies. Four illustrations<br />
by Philippe Jullian. Introduction by Miriam J Benkovitz. This was the copy of Benkovitz’s<br />
good friend the rare book dealer George Sims, with his elegant orange book label on the<br />
front pastedown endpaper. It is INSCRIBED to Sims and his wife above Benkovitz’s<br />
introduction: ‘Beryl and George, / with love / Miriam’. Fine in a fine glassine dustjacket.<br />
Benkovitz A27.<br />
Two very short pieces, written by Firbank in French when he was only eighteen, and<br />
appearing in 1904 and 1905 in the Parisian journal Les Essais ‒ his first two publications.<br />
They are here reprinted in the original French, with translations by Edgell Rickword.<br />
£80<br />
39
31. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
When Widows Love & A Tragedy in Green: Two Stories<br />
1980<br />
The Enitharmon Press. FIRST EDITION. One of 300 unnumbered copies. Edited with<br />
an introduction by Edward Martin Potoker. Two short stories written in Firbank’s youth but<br />
here appearing in print for the first time, apart from very brief extracts in The New Rythum<br />
(see Item 26). The dustjacket was designed by the English artist Frances Richards (1903-<br />
1985), who has INSCRIBED this copy on the half title to the famously assiduous autograph<br />
collector Harry Spilstead (1925-2008): ‘For / Harry Spilstead / from / Frances Richards’.<br />
Fine copy in a fine dustjacket. Benkovitz A29.<br />
40<br />
£60
32. FLETCHER, Ifan Kyrle<br />
Ronald Firbank: A Memoir<br />
1930<br />
Duckworth. FIRST EDITION. One of a probable 1,500 copies. The scarcity of this book<br />
is due to the destruction of part of the stock in an enemy air raid in 1940. Fine ‒ the lower<br />
board is bumped at the top fore-corner ‒ in the scarce dustjacket, which is price-clipped<br />
with several tiny chips and a faded backstrip. Benkovitz B2.<br />
Fletcher’s evocative flagship essay ‒ written when he was only twenty-five ‒ takes up the<br />
bulk of the book, and concludes that ‘but for the irony of such artists as Firbank, sobriety<br />
and prudery and temperance would descend upon us like a black and stifling pall’. And so<br />
say all of us. There are shorter essays by Vyvyan Holland, Augustus John, Osbert Sitwell<br />
(whose contribution was first published two years previously ‒ see Item 18) and Lord<br />
Berners. Altogether one of the most important books on Firbank.<br />
£320<br />
41
33. BROOKE, Jocelyn<br />
Ronald Firbank<br />
1951<br />
Arthur Barker Limited. FIRST EDITION. Fine in a near fine dustjacket with one close<br />
tear and a little chipping to the backstrip’s extremities. Benkovitz B3.<br />
The first attempt at a book-length study of Firbank’s work, published as one of the volumes<br />
in Arthur Barker Limited’s English Novelists Series. The book is breezily readable but<br />
just manages to stay on the right side of superficiality. Now and then there is a note of<br />
disapproval: ‘The typically ninetyish combination of sanctity and smut was always a<br />
temptation to Firbank’.<br />
42<br />
£20
34. BENKOVITZ, Miriam J<br />
A Bibliography of Ronald Firbank<br />
1963<br />
Rupert Hart-Davis. FIRST EDITION. One of 1,063 copies. Near fine copy ‒ three spots<br />
of foxing on the outer edge and some rubbing to the spine’s extremities ‒ in a fine priceclipped<br />
dustjacket. Benkovitz B6.<br />
together with<br />
Supplement to A Bibliography of Ronald Firbank<br />
1980<br />
The Enitharmon Press. FIRST EDITION. One of 400 unnumbered copies. Fine in a fine<br />
dustjacket.<br />
together with<br />
A Bibliography of Ronald Firbank<br />
1982<br />
Clarendon Press. SECOND EDITION. Fine copy in a fine price-clipped dustjacket.<br />
£60<br />
43
35. KIECHLER, John Anthony<br />
The Butterfly’s Freckled Wings: A Study of Style in<br />
the Novels of Ronald Firbank<br />
1969<br />
Francke Verlag Bern. FIRST EDITION. This is the published version of Kiechler’s thesis,<br />
presented to the University of Zurich in 1967. He disaggregates and discusses several<br />
elements of Firbank’s fiction: local colour, reported speech, dialogue and imagery. Fine,<br />
but with a 2cm water stain on the spine. Not in Benkovitz.<br />
44<br />
£40
36. MERRITT, James Douglas<br />
Ronald Firbank<br />
1969<br />
Twayne Publishers Inc. FIRST EDITION. One of 2,000 copies. Number 93 in Twayne’s<br />
English Authors Series. Fine in a near fine dustjacket, with one small closed tear and a<br />
slightly rubbed backstrip. Benkovitz B8.<br />
£15<br />
45
37. BENKOVITZ, Miriam J<br />
Ronald Firbank: A Biography<br />
1969<br />
Alfred A Knopf. FIRST EDITION. One of 4,000 copies. Fine in a near fine dustjacket,<br />
with two closed tears, one of which, on the backstrip, has an expertly applied internal<br />
repair. Benkovitz B7a.<br />
46<br />
£20
38. BENKOVITZ, Miriam J<br />
Ronald Firbank: A Biography<br />
1970<br />
Weidenfeld and Nicolson. FIRST ENGLISH EDITION. Near fine, with some spots<br />
of foxing on top and outer edges, and a small area of glue residue, approximately three<br />
centimetres by one and a half centimetres, from the removal of a book label from the front<br />
free endpaper. The dustjacket is near fine, with some rubbing at the extremities. Benkovitz<br />
B7b.<br />
£20<br />
47
39. CUNARD, Nancy<br />
Thoughts About Ronald Firbank<br />
1971<br />
Albondocani Press. FIRST EDITION. One of 26 lettered copies in a total edition of<br />
226 copies. This copy is lettered ‘T’. Foreword by Miriam J Benkovitz. Fine. Not in<br />
Benkovitz.<br />
together with<br />
A prospectus issued by the Albondocani Press announcing the simultaneous publication of<br />
this essay and Two Early Stories (see Item 29). Fine.<br />
48<br />
£60
40. BROPHY, Brigid<br />
Prancing Novelist: A Defence of Fiction in the Form<br />
of a Critical Biography in Praise of Ronald Firbank<br />
1973<br />
Macmillan. FIRST EDITION. Near fine ‒ some very light discoloration to the outer edge<br />
and rubbing to extremities ‒ in a fine dustjacket. Benkovitz B10.<br />
£60<br />
49
41. HORDER, Mervyn<br />
Ronald Firbank: Memoirs and Critiques<br />
1977<br />
Duckworth. FIRST EDITION. One of 4,750 copies. Edited with an introduction by<br />
Mervyn Horder. Reprints all the essays in Item 32, and various other short pieces on<br />
Firbank written by literary celebrities. Fine copy in a near fine dustjacket, the backstrip of<br />
which has uniformly faded. Benkovitz B11.<br />
50<br />
£30
42. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Firbankiana: Being a Collection of Reminiscences of<br />
Ronald Firbank<br />
1989<br />
Hanuman Books. FIRST EDITION. Number 30 in the Hanuman Books Series. Fine.<br />
Hanuman Books, publishing from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, was the brainchild of<br />
Raymond Foye and Francesco Clemente. Its small format books were edited in New York<br />
but printed in Madras, and sought to promote writers ignored by mainstream publishers.<br />
Its history is comprehensively described on the website of the University of Michigan<br />
Library, which houses its archive. Firbankiana consists of fifty short anecdotes ‒ extracted<br />
from previously published essays by Firbank’s friends ‒ with a particular focus on his<br />
eccentricities.<br />
£10<br />
51
43. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Complete Short Stories<br />
1990<br />
Dalkey Archive Press. FIRST EDITION. Edited by the meticulous Firbank scholar Steven<br />
Moore, who has appended useful textual notes on each story. Fine in a fine dustjacket.<br />
52<br />
£30
44. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
The Early Firbank<br />
1991<br />
Quartet Books. FIRST ENGLISH EDITION. Edited by Steven Moore. Fine in a fine<br />
dustjacket.<br />
This is the English edition of Item 43, with the addition of the two short plays The Mauve<br />
Tower and A Disciple from the Country. There is a short but insightful introduction by<br />
Alan Hollinghurst, who had written his Oxford M.Litt. thesis on Firbank among others, and<br />
went on to give him a walk-on part in his debut novel The Swimming-Pool Library. Alan<br />
Hollinghurst remains a considerable authority on Firbank, as indeed does Steven Moore.<br />
£30<br />
53
45. UNIVERSITY THESIS William Lane Clark<br />
Subversive Aesthetics: Literary Camp in the Novels of<br />
Ronald Firbank<br />
1991<br />
An original copy of Clark’s PhD thesis, George Washington University. Fine.<br />
together with<br />
A typed letter dated 20 January 1995 and signed by Clark, telling his correspondent that his<br />
views on Firbank had been developing since he had written the thesis: ‘The arguments have<br />
evolved considerably...some positions have been reversed, some abandoned’.<br />
54<br />
£50
46. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Complete Plays<br />
1994<br />
Dalkey Archive Press. FIRST EDITION. Edited with an introduction by Steven Moore,<br />
who also appends ‘A Note on the Texts’. Fine in a fine dustjacket.<br />
£30<br />
55
47. MOORE, Steven<br />
Ronald Firbank: An Annotated Bibliography of<br />
Secondary Materials, 1905-1995<br />
1996<br />
Dalkey Archive Press. FIRST EDITION. Edited with a preface by Steven Moore. A very<br />
few of the early copies ‒ of which this is one ‒ were sold without the final line of Moore’s<br />
preface; it was pasted into all subsequent copies. Fine.<br />
A tour de force of bibliographical compilation, with a comprehensive and accurate<br />
index and a particularly enlightening section entitled ‘Creative Works’, which lists all of<br />
Firbank’s appearances in subsequent fiction and non-fiction and traces his influence on a<br />
range of writers.<br />
56<br />
£20
48. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Letters to His Mother 1920-1924<br />
2001<br />
Privately printed at the Stamperia Valdonega, Verona. FIRST EDITION. One of 300<br />
ordinary copies (there were also 150 special copies). Edited with an introduction and an<br />
epilogue by Anthony Hobson. Fine in a fine dustjacket.<br />
£100<br />
57
49. <strong>FIRBANK</strong>, Ronald<br />
Vainglory with Inclinations and Caprice<br />
2012<br />
Penguin Classics. FIRST EDITION THUS. Edited with a lengthy introduction by Richard<br />
Canning. Cover illustration by Andy Warhol. Fine. SIGNED by the editor on the title<br />
page.<br />
Professor Canning, who has also written a biography of Firbank, has accompanied these<br />
three texts with a useful and interesting critical apparatus, and on this showing some<br />
imaginative academic press should commission him to edit a much-needed full scholarly<br />
edition of Firbank’s works.<br />
58<br />
£20
PART 2<br />
LORD BERNERS<br />
(1883 - 1950)
50. ANONYMOUS<br />
Miniature Essays: Lord Berners<br />
1922<br />
J & W Chester Ltd. FIRST EDITION. One of 3,000 copies. This was published as the<br />
third in the Miniature Essays Series. Berners was still in his thirties and was known only<br />
as a composer, as he had not yet begun to write. The text is in English, with a full French<br />
translation. Tipped-in frontispiece photograph of Berners, reproductions of two pages from<br />
his published music, and a checklist of his compositions. Given the supposed number of<br />
published copies, this booklet is unaccountably scarce. Near fine, as the card covers are a<br />
little tired.<br />
£40<br />
60
51. BERNERS, Lord<br />
The Camel<br />
1936<br />
Constable. FIRST EDITION. Three illustrations by the author. Fine in a fine dustjacket.<br />
Berners’s first novel relates the disruption caused in an English village when a camel<br />
inexplicably turns up at the vicarage. The characters of the vicar and his wife were loosely<br />
based on John and Penelope Betjeman.<br />
£150<br />
61
52. BERNERS, Lord<br />
The Camel<br />
1936<br />
Constable. PROOF COPY in boards and with a printed label on the upper cover. The three<br />
Berners illustrations are lacking. Peter Streuli’s copy, with his small library stamp on the<br />
front pastedown endpaper and his signature on the front free endpaper. Very good copy, the<br />
boards rubbed and soiled but internally excellent.<br />
Peter Streuli (1915-2007) was an influential figure in British theatre, working variously as<br />
a stage manager, director, actor and teacher. One wonders whether there were thoughts of<br />
adapting Berners’s novel for the stage.<br />
62<br />
£40
53. BERNERS, Lord<br />
Far from the Madding War<br />
1941<br />
Constable. FIRST EDITION. Three illustrations by the author. INSCRIBED by the<br />
author on the front free endpaper: ‘H. Stanley King / from / Berners / August 1941’. Fine<br />
with a slightly faded spine, in a very good price-clipped dustjacket with several chips and<br />
closed tears and a faint red mark on the upper panel.<br />
Berners’s second novel recounts adventures in the lives of dons and their families in<br />
wartime Oxford, most memorably Emmeline Pocock ‒ illustrated on the dustjacket ‒ whose<br />
‘war work’ is the unpicking of a rare medieval German embroidery. Berners depicts<br />
himself as ‘Lord FitzCricket’. Stanley King was an accountant who gave Berners financial<br />
advice from time to time.<br />
£150<br />
63
54. BERNERS, Lord<br />
Count Omega<br />
1941<br />
Constable. FIRST EDITION. Frontispiece by the author. Very good, with some<br />
unobtrusive foxing to the first few leaves, in a good dustjacket which is soiled and has lost<br />
some chips from both ends of its backstrip and from the top of the upper panel.<br />
Berners’s third novel is the story of a young composer ‒ loosely based on William Walton ‒<br />
who has obtained the financial backing of a mysterious millionaire to ensure a spectacular<br />
premiere for his first symphony. When Walton expressed his relief that he wasn’t actually<br />
named in the novel, Berners teased him by sending him a note: ‘If you insist on trying to<br />
thrust yourself into my novels in this fashion, I shall be obliged to apply for an injunction<br />
to restrain you from doing so’. He followed up with a mischievous letter to Walton’s<br />
solicitors: ‘I am shortly bringing out a book called Ridiculous Composers I Have Known.<br />
If your client, Mr William Walton, should consider it necessary to see a copy before<br />
publication, will you kindly tell him to apply to Messrs Constable?’<br />
64<br />
£50
55. BERNERS, Lord<br />
Percy Wallingford and Mr. Pidger<br />
1941<br />
Basil Blackwell. FIRST EDITION. Two novellas, the first of which has a printed<br />
dedication to Clarissa Churchill, Anthony Eden’s wife. INSCRIBED by the author on<br />
the half-title: ‘Juliet / with love / from / Gerald / October 1941’. Covers, edges and<br />
preliminaries mildly spotted, lower cover with a patch of discoloration.<br />
together with<br />
A short holograph letter from the author to Juliet Duff: ‘My dear Juliet, Here are the two<br />
stories. I hope they will amuse you. It was nice seeing you yesterday. Love from Gerald.<br />
Oct.16.41’.<br />
Lady Juliet Duff (1881-1965) was the daughter of the 4th Earl of Lonsdale and the wife of<br />
Sir Robin Duff, who was killed at Mons in the Great War. Berners knew her through her<br />
son, his friend Michael Duff (1907-1980), who was fond of cross-dressing as Queen Mary<br />
until he embarrassingly came face-to-face with the real Queen when they both made calls<br />
on the same person. Michael Duff wrote an amusing privately printed novella, The Power<br />
of a Parasol (1948), in which Berners appears as ‘Sir Purvis Bernard’.<br />
£250<br />
65
56. BERNERS, Lord<br />
The Romance of a Nose<br />
1941<br />
Constable. FIRST EDITION. Frontispiece by the author. Fine in a fine dustjacket with<br />
one or two tiny closed tears.<br />
Berners’s fourth full-length novel centres upon Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, and her<br />
dissatisfaction with her long nose, to shorten which she undergoes plastic surgery, with<br />
momentous consequences.<br />
66<br />
£100
57. BERNERS, Lord<br />
A Distant Prospect<br />
1945<br />
Constable. FIRST EDITION. Frontispiece by the author, and three photographs.<br />
INSCRIBED by the author on the front pastedown endpaper: ‘With every good / wish from<br />
/ the author / Berners /July 1945’. Fine – with the lightest trace of foxing to the edges – in<br />
a fine dustjacket.<br />
A memoir of Berners’s schooldays at Eton, which he left ‘as Antony left Cleopatra, with<br />
more love than benediction’.<br />
£120<br />
67
58. BERNERS, Lord<br />
First Childhood and Far from the Madding War<br />
1983<br />
Oxford University Press. FIRST EDITION THUS. Preface by Harold Acton. This<br />
paperback was the first serious attempt to introduce Berners to a broader readership. First<br />
Childhood has a tongue-in-cheek printed dedication to Berners’s notoriously unliterary<br />
partner: ‘To Robert Heber-Percy, whose knowledge of orthography and literary style has<br />
proved invaluable’. Fine.<br />
68<br />
£20
59. BERNERS, Lord<br />
First Childhood<br />
1998<br />
Turtle Point Press and Helen Marx Books. FIRST SEPARATE PAPERBACK EDITION.<br />
Described on the colophon as the ‘1st pbk ed’. Cover illustration from William Hogarth.<br />
Fine<br />
together with<br />
Turtle Point Press and Helen Marx Books. Uncorrected Galleys. Near fine, with a tiny loss<br />
to the foot of the upper cover.<br />
together with<br />
Two sheets of marketing material in fine condition, one of them characterising Berners<br />
rather oddly as a master of ‘Firbankian understatement’.<br />
Constant Lambert wrote: ‘With the always honourable exception of The Home Life of<br />
Herbert Spencer, I can honestly say that First Childhood is the funniest book I have ever<br />
read’.<br />
£40<br />
69
60. BERNERS, Lord<br />
A Distant Prospect<br />
1998<br />
Turtle Point Press and Helen Marx Books. FIRST SEPARATE PAPERBACK EDITION.<br />
Described on the colophon as the ‘1st pbk ed’. Cover illustration from William Hogarth.<br />
Fine.<br />
together with<br />
Turtle Point Press and Helen Marx Books. Uncorrected Galleys. Fine.<br />
70<br />
£40
61. BERNERS, Lord<br />
First Childhood and A Distant Prospect<br />
1999<br />
Weidenfeld & Nicolson. NEW HARDBACK EDITIONS. Fine in spectacularly colourful<br />
fine dustjackets.<br />
£30<br />
71
62. BERNERS, Lord<br />
Collected Tales and Fantasies<br />
1999<br />
Turtle Point Press and Helen Marx Books. FIRST COLLECTED EDITION. This edition<br />
was published in paperback only. Fine.<br />
together with<br />
Turtle Point Press and Helen Marx Books. Uncorrected Galleys. Fine.<br />
This volume brings together Berners’s six major fictional works. Regrettably, Berners’s<br />
shorter writings, particularly his Beerbohm-like satirical pieces, are harder to track down.<br />
His parodies of Gertrude Stein’s idiosyncratic faux-naïf style are particularly funny: ‘What<br />
with one thing and another. What with another and one thing. What with what with what<br />
what wit and what not’. ‘He is saying this and this and this and this. He is saying this and<br />
that. He keeps on saying this and that. He is keeping on going on saying this and that. He<br />
means to be keeping on going on saying this and this and this. And that’.<br />
72<br />
£20
63. BERNERS, Lord<br />
The Girls of Radcliff Hall<br />
2000<br />
Montcalm and The Cygnet Press. SECOND EDITION. Frontispiece by Emilio Coia.<br />
One of 500 UK copies, of a total of 750 copies. Edited with an introduction, a key to the<br />
characters and a postscript by the bookdealer and scholar John Byrne. INSCRIBED by the<br />
editor on the title page: ‘For Robert Scoble with warmest regards / John Byrne’. Fine in a<br />
fine dustjacket.<br />
together with<br />
A fine copy of the four-page prospectus for this book.<br />
This roman à clef was first published in 1934, Berners using the pseudonym ‘Adela Quebec’<br />
to caricature his friends as scheming and squabbling schoolgirls. The book was printed<br />
privately and copies were distributed sparingly. Some of the men who had been lampooned<br />
later took steps to find copies and destroy them. It is thought that fewer than ten copies of<br />
the first edition have survived.<br />
£120<br />
73
64. BERNERS, Lord<br />
The Chȃteau de Résenlieu<br />
2000<br />
Turtle Point Press and Helen Marx Books. FIRST EDITION. Fine.<br />
together with<br />
Turtle Point Press and Helen Marx Books. A fine copy of the Uncorrected Galleys, entitled<br />
Chȃteau de Résenlieu. The definite article The was added to the title before publication.<br />
An essay describing Berners’s teenage sojourn in Normandy, where he was endeavouring<br />
to improve his French before applying to join the diplomatic service.<br />
74<br />
£20
65. BERNERS, Lord<br />
Dresden<br />
2008<br />
Turtle Point Press and Helen Marx Books. FIRST EDITION. Edited with a foreword by<br />
Peter Dickinson. Fine.<br />
An essay describing Berners’s teenage sojourn in Dresden, where he was learning German<br />
before applying to join the diplomatic service.<br />
£10<br />
75
PART 3<br />
MONTAGUE SUMMERS<br />
(1880-1948)
66. SUMMERS, Montague<br />
The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism<br />
1950<br />
Rider and Company. FIRST EDITION. One of 1,500 copies. Fine in a near fine<br />
dustjacket, with just a little rubbing and one closed tear to the backstrip’s extremities.<br />
Summers has collated an enormous amount of detailed information on the stigmata and<br />
other mystical phenomena, such as levitation, bilocation, ecstacies and visions. Summers<br />
writes well and the book is an easy ‒ albeit somewhat eyebrow-raising ‒ read.<br />
78<br />
£80
67. ‘JEROME, Joseph’<br />
Montague Summers: A Memoir<br />
1965<br />
Cecil & Amelia Woolf. FIRST EDITION. Number 664 of 750 copies. Foreword by Sybil<br />
Thorndike. There was also a special edition of 15 copies. Near fine ‒ the frontispiece<br />
photograph of Summers has effected some unobtrusive discoloration of the title page ‒ in a<br />
flimsy glassine dustjacket (not shown), largely intact but torn in places.<br />
‘Joseph Jerome’ was a pseudonym used by Brocard Sewell.<br />
£75<br />
79
68. SUMMERS, Montague<br />
The Galanty Show: An Autobiography<br />
1980<br />
Cecil Woolf. FIRST EDITION. Introduction by Brocard Sewell. There was also a special<br />
edition of 30 copies. Fine in a near fine price-clipped dustjacket, the backstrip slightly<br />
faded.<br />
80<br />
£40
69. d’ARCH SMITH, Timothy<br />
Montague Summers: A Bibliography<br />
1983<br />
The Aquarian Press. SECOND EDITION. The first edition had been published in 1964.<br />
Compiled and introduced by Timothy d’Arch Smith. Foreword by Brocard Sewell. Fine in<br />
a fine dustjacket.<br />
£10<br />
81
70. FRANK, Frederick S<br />
Montague Summers: A Bibliographical Portrait<br />
1988<br />
The Scarecrow Press. FIRST EDITION. Number 7 in the Great Bibliographers Series.<br />
The bibliographical section is not as meticulous as might be expected of a reliable<br />
bibliography. However, this book is an essential resource, as it reprints fifteen essays by<br />
Summers himself and essays on him by the Summers experts Brocard Sewell, Robert<br />
Hume and Devendra Varma. Fine, without a dustjacket, as issued.<br />
82<br />
£20
71. SEWELL, Brocard<br />
Tell Me Strange Things<br />
1991<br />
The Aylesford Press. FIRST EDITION. Number 16 of 35 hardback copies SIGNED<br />
by Brocard Sewell. The other 150 copies in the total edition of 185 were paperbound.<br />
Introduction by Sandy Robertson and Edwin Pouncey. Fine in a fine dustjacket.<br />
A slim volume commemorating the erection and unveiling of a memorial stone on<br />
Summers’s grave at Richmond Cemetery.<br />
£40<br />
83
72. SUMMERS, Montague<br />
Antinous and Other Poems<br />
1995<br />
Cecil Woolf. SECOND EDITION. The first edition had been published in 1907 and copies<br />
are exceptionally scarce. Edited with an informative introduction by Timothy d’Arch<br />
Smith and Edwin Pouncey. Fine in a fine dustjacket, which is a replica of that used on the<br />
1907 edition.<br />
A classic of decadent literature, with its mixture of the sacred and the satanic and its hints<br />
of decay and sexual transgression.<br />
84<br />
£40
PART 4<br />
RICHARD RUMBOLD<br />
(1913-1961)
73. RUMBOLD, Richard<br />
Little Victims: A Novel<br />
1933<br />
The Fortune Press. FIRST EDITION. This is Richard Rumbold’s only novel, written<br />
when he was only nineteen. Near fine copy of a vanishingly scarce book. The boards are<br />
a little rubbed, with a few spots of foxing on the top edge and a small bookdealer’s book<br />
label at the foot of the front pastedown endpaper. The characteristic Fortune Press yellow<br />
dustjacket is bright and completely intact except that it is price-clipped and its backstrip has<br />
faded a little.<br />
Vividly autobiographical, Little Victims recounts its student protagonist’s anguish over his<br />
homosexuality, complicated by his Catholic upbringing and his fears that he might inherit<br />
his mother’s mental illness. The book had a succès de scandale but the critics were hostile,<br />
partly because of its subject matter and partly because of its melodramatic plot. The<br />
Fortune Press’s proprietor R A Caton encouraged its sales by suggesting that Rumbold had<br />
been excommunicated by the Catholic Church for writing it. In fact the Catholic chaplain<br />
at Oxford, the famous Ronnie Knox, who was under pressure from his bishop, had merely<br />
been insisting that Rumbold take counsel with him before he next presented himself at the<br />
Communion rail. Attempts at censorship of any kind are almost always very foolish.<br />
86<br />
£380
74. ‘LUMFORD, Richard’<br />
My Father’s Son<br />
1949<br />
Jonathan Cape. FIRST EDITION, First impression, published in January 1949. Dark<br />
green binding. Very good with, oddly enough, two pages only ‒ the front and back free<br />
endpapers ‒ somewhat foxed. Informative pencilled annotations throughout by a previous<br />
owner. No dustjacket.<br />
together with<br />
A copy of the FIRST EDITION, Second impression, published later the same year. Redbrown<br />
binding. Very good, with a long line in blue ballpoint on the front pastedown<br />
endpaper and a thumbnail-sized area of fading on the spine. Dustjacket ‒ examples of<br />
which are rarely seen ‒ in a sorry state, soiled and with large chips along the extremities<br />
and three marks in blue ballpoint.<br />
Copies of Rumbold’s autobiography, published under the pseudonym ‘Richard Lumford’,<br />
are very scarce in any condition. Both impressions are included here because the first<br />
has contemporary annotations by an anonymous former owner who claims to have<br />
been a witness to one of the most important episodes in Rumbold’s life, and because the<br />
second has retained at least some of its exceptionally rare dustjacket. Rumbold recounts,<br />
seemingly straightforwardly but perhaps not quite reliably, the tragic circumstances he had<br />
fictionalised years before in Little Victims.<br />
£80<br />
87
75. PLOMER, William<br />
A Message in Code: The Diary of Richard Rumbold<br />
1932-60<br />
1964<br />
Weidenfeld and Nicolson. FIRST EDITION. Edited, with an introduction and explanatory<br />
notes throughout, by Rumbold’s second cousin William Plomer. INSCRIBED by Plomer<br />
on the front free endpaper to the then Warden of All Souls, John Sparrow: ‘for John ‒ /<br />
a diary not at / all like Kilvert’s ‒ / from W.P. / April 1964’. Fine in near fine dustjacket<br />
rubbed and chipped at the extremities.<br />
together with<br />
A holograph note of thanks on All Souls letterhead to John Sparrow from Robin Zaehner<br />
(1913-1974), Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions at Oxford and onetime British spy.<br />
Rumbold’s diaries are honest and revealing. They document his social life, such as it was,<br />
and his struggle to remain mentally calm and well, with the help of faithful friends such as<br />
Hilda Young and mentors such as his onetime lover Harold Nicolson. His spiritual journey<br />
took him from his early Catholicism, through years of travel and Buddhist studies in Asia,<br />
and ‒ almost ‒ back to Catholicism again. He was fascinated by men ‒ such as Dom<br />
Bede Griffiths and Robin Zaehner ‒ who seemed successfully to have reconciled Eastern<br />
mysticism with their lifelong Catholicism.<br />
88<br />
£50
PART 5<br />
GERALD HAMILTON<br />
(1890-1970)
76. HAMILTON, Gerald<br />
As Young As Sophocles<br />
1937<br />
Martin Secker & Warburg. FIRST EDITION. A legendary rarity, particularly in its<br />
dustjacket. INSCRIBED on the front free endpaper: ‘To my friend / Alan Clodd / from the<br />
author / Gerald Hamilton’. Very good, with light foxing on a few pages, in a very good<br />
dustjacket, completely intact but rubbed with some areas of discolouration on the backstrip.<br />
together with<br />
A typed letter on Debrett letterhead dated 1964 and signed by the editor, Patrick Montague-<br />
Smith, explaining that no evidence had been found to substantiate Hamilton’s claim that he<br />
was related to several aristocratic families.<br />
The title of Hamilton’s book is from William Johnson Cory’s poem Academus: ‘I’ll borrow<br />
life, and not grow old; / And nightingales and trees / Shall keep me, though the veins be<br />
cold, / As young as Sophocles’. This is the first of Hamilton’s unintentionally amusing<br />
volumes of autobiography. An incorrigible fibber and name-dropper, Hamilton habitually<br />
places himself at the centre of history: ‘I assisted at many interesting ceremonies at the<br />
Vatican, where I was repeatedly received by the Holy Father...The Siamese Minister to<br />
Rome invited me to accept the vacant post of Siamese Consul-General in Rome...There<br />
came into my hands the text of a secret treaty signed at the Hague between Japan and<br />
Germany’ and so on.<br />
90<br />
£320
77. HAMILTON, Gerald<br />
Mr Norris and I: An Autobiographical Sketch<br />
1956<br />
Allan Wingate. FIRST EDITION. Prologue by Christopher Isherwood and epilogue by<br />
Maurice Richardson. Very good, with a slightly faded spine and spots of foxing on the<br />
edges, in a very good dustjacket with a few chips from the extremities.<br />
Christopher Isherwood’s novel Mr Norris Changes Trains was published in 1935, and<br />
Gerald Hamilton thereafter basked in his notoriety as the prototype for the disreputable<br />
character Mr Norris. In the mid-1950s he wrote this second volume of memoirs, repeating<br />
many of the stories in the first. The preposterous name-dropping resumed: ‘Like all<br />
friendships with Bosie Douglas, mine had its ups and downs...My friendship for Casement<br />
and other friendships equally compromising were the foundation of the questions I was<br />
asked...The Khedive asked me if it would be possible for me to arrange in Paris for<br />
permission for him to reside in France’.<br />
£30<br />
91
78. HAMILTON, Gerald<br />
Jacaranda<br />
1961<br />
Sidgwick and Jackson. FIRST EDITION. Very good ‒ several spots of foxing on the<br />
edges, fading to the title on the spine, and a bookseller’s small neat stamp at the foot of the<br />
front pastedown endpaper ‒ in a very good price-clipped dustjacket with some small chips<br />
from the extremities.<br />
It was one of the dottier ideas of the South African apartheid apologists to commission<br />
Hamilton to visit their country in 1958-9 and write a book about what he found. ‘It was<br />
thought,’ he writes disingenuously, ‘that an open mind would be able to write a book<br />
better than someone with political prejudices’. Hamilton was introduced to a wide range<br />
of people, white and black, and took a particular and ostensibly commendable interest<br />
in a Boys Town just outside Johannesburg ‒ ‘one of the wickedest cities of the world’ he<br />
comments, approvingly ‒ where he ‘was able to mix freely with the boys’. He is dismissive<br />
of the anti-apartheid activists back in the UK: ‘It was to be expected that the idea of this<br />
foolish boycott [of South African goods into Britain] should have been born in Oxford, ever<br />
the home of lost causes, and I do not think much is likely to be heard of it in the future’.<br />
92<br />
£20
79. HAMILTON, Gerald<br />
The Way It Was With Me<br />
1969<br />
Leslie Frewin. FIRST EDITION. Foreword by James Pope-Hennessy, who warns that<br />
‘like its author, the book bristles with contradiction and prejudice’. Review copy, with the<br />
original Leslie Frewin slip asking that no reviews appear before 29 November 1969. Near<br />
fine ‒ the first two or three pages, either side of the frontispiece photograph of Hamilton,<br />
show some unobtrusive foxing, and there is some rubbing to the extremities ‒ in a near fine<br />
dustjacket with tiny chips.<br />
For a third time a publisher has been persuaded to allow Hamilton to reprise his unlikely<br />
adventures. Names are dropped like confetti: the Romanovs, André Gide, Guy Burgess, the<br />
Chief Imperial Eunuch of China, E M Forster, Maundy Gregory, Brian Howard, Eamon de<br />
Valera, Benedict XV, Oswald Mosley, Tallulah Bankhead, et tout le tralala. He even has a<br />
disagreement about politics with a masseur in a Turkish Bath, which ends quite amicably,<br />
Hamilton concluding with satisfaction that ‘tout savonner c’est tout pardonner’.<br />
£20<br />
93
80. SYMONDS, John<br />
Conversations with Gerald<br />
1974<br />
Duckworth. FIRST EDITION. Drawings throughout by James Boswell. John Symonds<br />
interviews Hamilton informally and introduces the book with a preface. Fine ‒ there is just<br />
a touch of rubbing at the extremities of the spine ‒ in a fine price-clipped dustjacket. This<br />
book is scarce in such remarkable condition.<br />
Yet another litany of highly improbable encounters with eminent people: Robbie Ross,<br />
Rasputin, Aleister Crowley, A J A Symons, Oscar Browning, Gabriele d’Annunzio,<br />
Trebitsch Lincoln, Norman Douglas, several popes, and a woman who has had ‘an affair’<br />
with a Javanese orang-outang: ‘the husband came back unexpectedly soon one day and<br />
caught them in flagrante’. There are even several anecdotes featuring Frederick Rolfe,<br />
‘Baron Corvo’, whom Hamilton claims, it goes without saying, to have known quite well.<br />
Hamilton tells Symonds that he liked inviting Papal Chamberlains to his luncheons ‘to<br />
make it Ronald Firbanky. They look picturesque in their robes’.<br />
94<br />
£40
PART 6<br />
SIMON RAVEN<br />
(1927-2001)
81. RAVEN, Simon<br />
Brother Cain<br />
1959<br />
Anthony Blond. FIRST EDITION. Raven’s second published novel. Fine in a near fine<br />
dustjacket, designed by Oliver Carson, with a little chipping at the extremities.<br />
96<br />
£25
82. RAVEN, Simon<br />
Arms for Oblivion<br />
1964-1976<br />
Anthony Blond, later Blond & Briggs. FIRST EDITIONS. A magnificent set of Raven’s<br />
Arms for Oblivion sequence, ten novels in all. Fine ‒ there are tiny spots of foxing on the<br />
outer edge of four volumes ‒ in fine unfaded dustjackets, the first six strikingly illustrated<br />
by Oliver Elmes. The dustjacket of the final volume, as in all copies, has been priceclipped<br />
by the publisher, who has attached a revised price sticker.<br />
These ten novels constitute Raven’s most substantial literary achievement. A fine natural<br />
writer of the second rank, he might be said to have indulged too readily his taste for<br />
irresponsibility, vitriol and lubricity. The result is a lack of nuance in his descriptions<br />
of the naughtiness of his characters, so that a false note is often struck. The novels<br />
nevertheless remain a guilty pleasure.<br />
£880<br />
97
98
83. RAVEN, Simon<br />
The First Born of Egypt<br />
1984-1992<br />
Blond & Briggs / Anthony Blond / Muller, Blond & White / Frederick Muller / Hutchinson.<br />
FIRST EDITIONS. A bright set of Raven’s The First Born of Egypt sequence, seven<br />
novels in all. Fine ‒ there are tiny spots of foxing on the edges of four volumes ‒ in fine<br />
unfaded dustjackets, the first three illustrated by Lawrence Toynbee.<br />
£280<br />
99
100
84. RAVEN, Simon<br />
The Islands of Sorrow<br />
1994<br />
The Winged Lion. FIRST EDITION. One of 750 copies. Dustjacket illustrated by<br />
Lawrence Toynbee. Fine in a fine dustjacket.<br />
A macabre novella set in Venice.<br />
£20<br />
101
85. RAVEN, Simon<br />
Remember Your Grammar and Other Haunted Stories<br />
1997<br />
The Winged Lion. FIRST EDITION. Dustjacket illustrated by Annie Shrager.<br />
Unaccountably scarce for a relatively recent book; perhaps the edition was small. Fine in a<br />
fine dustjacket.<br />
Eleven short stories on supernatural themes, all previously published in periodicals but<br />
never before collected.<br />
102<br />
£80
PART 7<br />
ROGER PEYREFITTE<br />
(1907-2000)
86. PEYREFITTE, Roger<br />
Les Amitiés Particulières<br />
1943<br />
Jean Vigneau. FIRST EDITION. One of 1,999 copies, this copy numbered ‘H.C. [hors<br />
commerce] No. CIX’. Sumptuously rebound by Rene Aussouri with all components of<br />
the original paper covers bound in, including the spine which states ‘Édition originale’.<br />
INSCRIBED by the author on the half-title to the Vichy collaborator Jacques Chardonne<br />
(1884-1968): ‘À Monsieur Jacques Chardonne, / avec l’hommage déférent / de Roger<br />
Peyrefitte / 17 mars 1944’. First editions of this book with Peyrefitte’s contemporary<br />
inscriptions are exceptionally rare.<br />
This novel is Peyrefitte’s chef d’oeuvre and remains one of the most admired French novels<br />
of the twentieth century. It tells the story of two boys at a Catholic boarding school in<br />
1920s France, fourteen-year-old Georges de Sarre and twelve-year-old Alexandre Motier,<br />
who form a romantic attachment ‒ the ‘particular friendship’ of the book’s title ‒ expressed<br />
no further than by a few kisses and love poems. The priests who teach at the school,<br />
some of them harbouring their own ambivalent feelings towards their pupils, mishandle<br />
the situation and the younger boy commits suicide. Peyrefitte later revealed that he had<br />
himself been the elder protagonist in precisely such a sequence of events at his own school.<br />
Les Amitiés Particulières won the Prix Renaudot and its affecting film adaptation, by Jean<br />
Delannoy, was nominated in 1964 for the Golden Lion in Venice.<br />
104<br />
£980
87. PEYREFITTE, Roger<br />
Les Amitiés Particulières<br />
1953<br />
Flammarion. ILLUSTRATED EDITION. Number 48 of 740 copies, with 24 original<br />
lithographs by Gaston Goor, expertly printed by Marcel Manequin. Two volumes,<br />
each containing a number of loose gatherings ready to be finely bound according to the<br />
purchaser’s taste. The two volumes are fine, but they are enclosed in a cream-coloured<br />
cardboard slipcase which, while fully intact, is soiled and damaged along its extremities.<br />
The boards of each volume and the slipcase were, of course, intended to be discarded.<br />
Gaston Goor (1902-1977) was a French artist who specialised in the depiction of young<br />
men and adolescent boys. He was a longtime collaborator with Peyrefitte, illustrating not<br />
only several of his books but also some of the walls and doors of his Paris apartment.<br />
£250<br />
105
88. PEYREFITTE, Roger<br />
Special Friendships<br />
1958<br />
Secker & Warburg. FIRST ENGLISH EDITION. Translation by Edward Hyams of<br />
Peyrefitte’s Les Amitiés Particulières (1943). Dustjacket design by Michael Ayrton. Fine<br />
in a fine dustjacket. Rarely seen in this pristine condition.<br />
106<br />
£280
89. PEYREFITTE, Roger<br />
Diplomatic Diversions<br />
1953<br />
Thames and Hudson. FIRST ENGLISH EDITION. Translation by James FitzMaurice of<br />
Peyrefitte’s Les Ambassades (1951). Very good ‒ the free endpapers and the edges have<br />
spots of foxing ‒ in a near fine fully intact dustjacket, the backstrip of which is slightly<br />
embrowned.<br />
together with<br />
A Thames and Hudson flyer advertising this and other books. Peyrefitte is described as<br />
‘France’s most talked-about young author’.<br />
Georges de Sarre, the principal character in Special Friendships, has been recruited by the<br />
Quai d’Orsay and finds he has much to learn when he is sent to Athens on his first posting.<br />
Peyrefitte himself was posted to the French Embassy in Athens in the mid-1930s.<br />
£30<br />
107
90. PEYREFITTE, Roger<br />
Diplomatic Conclusions<br />
1954<br />
Thames and Hudson. FIRST ENGLISH EDITION. Translation by Edward Hyams<br />
of Peyrefitte’s La Fin des Ambassades (1953). Very good ‒ the boards show signs of<br />
discoloration, and the dustjacket flaps have caused brown offsetting to the free endpapers ‒<br />
in a near fine fully intact dustjacket, the backstrip of which is slightly embrowned.<br />
This third instalment of Georges de Sarre’s adventures is set in Paris, where he has<br />
resumed working at the Quai d’Orsay, having been recalled from his Athens posting.<br />
Several critics disapproved of the book’s relentless lubricity, deploring in particular one<br />
incident involving four opportunist German soldiers at the Cathedral of Tours.<br />
108<br />
£30
91. PEYREFITTE, Roger<br />
South from Naples<br />
1954<br />
Thames and Hudson. FIRST ENGLISH EDITION. Translation by J[ohn] H F McEwen of<br />
Peyrefitte’s Du Vésuve à l’Etna (1952). Drawings throughout the text by Gunter Böhmer.<br />
Fine in a near fine dustjacket, slightly rubbed with some fading to the backstrip.<br />
A travelogue which requires constant reading between the lines. Peyrefitte finds much to<br />
admire and enjoy, particularly in Taormina, where ‘are to be found portions of everything<br />
perfect that this divine region has to offer’.<br />
£30<br />
109
92. PEYREFITTE, Roger<br />
The Keys of St Peter<br />
1957<br />
Secker & Warburg. FIRST ENGLISH EDITION. Translation by Edward Hyams of<br />
Peyrefitte’s Les Clés de Saint Pierre (1955). Near fine ‒ some faint spots on the endpapers<br />
and top edge ‒ in a near fine dustjacket, fully intact but with a faded backstrip.<br />
This is the first of Peyrefitte’s novels to attack the shortcomings of the Catholic Church<br />
and the hypocrisy of its senior prelates, a subject on which he was disconcertingly well<br />
informed. His cynicism and willingness to name names caused great scandal and much<br />
amusement. In August 1955, the German magazine Der Spiegel added fuel to the fire by<br />
naming Peyrefitte’s principal Vatican informants.<br />
110<br />
£40
93. PEYREFITTE, Roger<br />
Knights of Malta<br />
1960<br />
Secker & Warburg. FIRST ENGLISH EDITION. Translation by Edward Hyams of<br />
Peyrefitte’s Les Chevaliers de Malte (1957). In this English edition, the book is entitled<br />
Knights of Malta on the title page and spine, but The Knights of Malta on the dustjacket,<br />
presumably an inadvertence of its designer Sheila Perry. Fine in a fine dustjacket.<br />
Peyrefitte’s second ecclesiastical exposé caused an even greater sensation than its<br />
predecessor. This time, instead of having to base his work on rumours, he was given copies<br />
of documentation which revealed every stage of a deadly feud between the ruthless and<br />
worldly Cardinal Canali and the highest ranking Knights of Malta. As always, Peyrefitte<br />
decorated his story with rich imaginative touches, but it was so accurate in its essentials<br />
that many senior churchmen were grievously embarrassed.<br />
£100<br />
111
94. PEYREFITTE, Roger<br />
The Exile of Capri<br />
1961<br />
Secker & Warburg. FIRST ENGLISH EDITION. Translation by Edward Hyams of<br />
Peyrefitte’s L’Exilé de Capri (1959). Foreword by Jean Cocteau. Fine in a fine but hideous<br />
dustjacket the designer of which, Antony Maitland, was presumably attempting to depict<br />
the fumes from Baron Fersen’s opium pipe.<br />
Dr Scoble has in his collection two calling cards ‒ not offered for sale here ‒ the first that<br />
of ‘Le Baron Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen’ with his Paris address, and the second that of<br />
‘Le Comte de Fersen’ for use on Capri. There is some uncertainty, however, as to whether<br />
Fersen was any kind of aristocrat at all. Peyrefitte (a lifelong snob) concedes the barony<br />
and gleefully recounts Fersen’s remarkable story, from his organisation of poses plastiques<br />
starring Parisian schoolboys to his debauched drug-induced death in his Capri villa.<br />
112<br />
£100
95. PEYREFITTE, Roger<br />
The Prince’s Person<br />
1964<br />
Secker & Warburg. FIRST ENGLISH EDITION. Translation by Peter Fryer of Peyrefitte’s<br />
La Nature du Prince (1963). Fine in a fine dustjacket designed by Michael Foreman. The<br />
dustjacket’s backstrip has embrowned very slightly.<br />
A true story well suited to Peyrefitte’s libidinous predilections. Vincenzo Gonzaga, Prince<br />
of Mantua, having extricated himself from a childless first marriage, is required by his<br />
prospective new Medici in-laws to prove his virility before he can marry their daughter.<br />
Astonishingly, it is agreed to organise a test run, before an audience, with an orphan who<br />
is a certified virgin. The Prince, who is still only twenty-one, passes the test and goes on to<br />
father several children with his new Medici wife.<br />
£25<br />
113
96. PEYREFITTE, Roger<br />
The Jews: A Fictional Venture into the Follies of<br />
Antisemitism<br />
1967<br />
Secker & Warburg. FIRST ENGLISH EDITION. Translation by Bruce Lowery of<br />
Peyrefitte’s Les Juifs (1965). Secker & Warburg’s ‘File Copy’ sticker on the front free<br />
endpaper. Very good ‒ a number of spots of foxing to the edges ‒ in a fine unfaded<br />
dustjacket designed by Bernard Highton.<br />
This novel marks the return of Peyrefitte’s alter ego Georges de Sarre, who attempts to<br />
shame and embarrass the antisemites of his acquaintance by demonstrating that they are<br />
all likely to have Jewish blood to a greater or lesser extent.<br />
114<br />
£20
97. PEYREFITTE, Roger<br />
Manouche<br />
1973<br />
Hart-Davis, MacGibbon. FIRST ENGLISH EDITION. Translation by Derek Coltman of<br />
Peyrefitte’s Manouche (1972). Near fine ‒ spots of foxing to the edges ‒ in a fine although<br />
price-clipped dustjacket.<br />
A biographical essay on France’s most notorious gangster’s moll, this book marked the<br />
beginning of Peyrefitte’s literary descent into soft porn and the celebration of debauchery.<br />
£20<br />
115
98. PEYREFITTE, Roger<br />
Propos Secrets and Propos Secrets 2<br />
1977 and 1980<br />
Albin Michel. FIRST TRADE EDITIONS. Very good, but with some spots of foxing<br />
inside the covers and along the edges, and some rubbing at the extremities.<br />
These two volumes of memoirs make for compelling reading, as one expects from so<br />
naturally gifted a writer as Peyrefitte, but they are not for the faint-hearted. Peyrefitte<br />
disingenuously claims that he is recounting salacious episodes and ‘outing’ prominent<br />
gentlemen in a good cause: ‘Je ne suis pas un homme de scandale...Je ne suis pas un<br />
amateur de potins sordides. Je défends une cause’. The two books were felt to be too<br />
explicit to be translated into English in the 1970s, and it is even less likely that English<br />
readers would be allowed to read them in our own politically correct and po-faced age.<br />
116<br />
£30
99. PEYREFITTE, Roger<br />
Quelques Images pour La Jeunesse d’Alexandre<br />
1982<br />
La Vue. FIRST EDITION. Number 297 of 3,000 copies. Over one hundred full-page<br />
explicitly erotic illustrations by Gilbert Garnon. Near fine, with no major defects but<br />
showing the usual minor signs of age.<br />
The theme of the illustrations is Alexander’s emotional life and sexual exploits when he<br />
was being raised in his father Philip of Macedon’s household. It is to be surmised that it<br />
was Peyrefitte’s stipulation that the illustrations be so explicit. Peyrefitte had a lifelong<br />
fascination with Alexander, and claimed to have ‘re-founded’ in 1990 the bogus Order of<br />
Alexander with, it goes without saying, himself as its Grand Master.<br />
£70<br />
117
100. de MONTHERLANT, Henry & Roger Peyrefitte<br />
Correspondance<br />
1983<br />
Éditions Robert Laffont. FIRST EDITION. Near fine, with some unobtrusive<br />
discoloration of the endpapers. Voluminously footnoted by Peyrefitte and Pierre Sipriot.<br />
The correspondence between de Montherlant and Peyrefitte from 1938 to 1941, when the<br />
former was in his mid-forties and the latter a little younger. De Montherlant was much<br />
more discreet about his homosexuality than Peyrefitte, and his discretion was rewarded<br />
when he went on to be elected in 1960 one of the Immortals of the Académie Française.<br />
He died in 1972 and it is doubtful he would have approved Peyrefitte’s publication of these<br />
letters, which chronicle in such detail the single-minded sexual exploits of the two friends.<br />
It goes without saying that no English-language publisher was courageous enough to issue<br />
an English translation.<br />
118<br />
£40
120<br />
Ronald Firbank’s tombstone in Rome’s Campo Verano cemetery has<br />
been designed to reflect his religious beliefs. It features a cross, a<br />
request that visitors pray for his soul, and a Chi-Rho symbol, which<br />
combines the first two letters of the Greek word for Christ
<strong>FIRBANK</strong>’S FAITH<br />
Ronald Firbank was received into the Catholic Church on 6 December 1907, when he was a<br />
21-year-old undergraduate at Cambridge. Five years before, to improve his French, he had lived<br />
for some ten months in Tours, and this early exposure to Catholic culture seems to have made an<br />
impression on him. When he returned to England, he indulged his already lively enthusiasm for<br />
the works of Wilde, Huysmans and other fin de siècle writers, but his reading began to be leavened<br />
with works of religion, most notably the devotional handbook The Imitation of Christ, by the<br />
fifteenth-century German monk Thomas à Kempis. These first signs of religious awakening are<br />
reflected in his early stories. ‘The Wavering Disciple,’ for example, opens with a Duchess reading<br />
The Imitation ‘to soothe,’ she claims, ‘a sort of yearning.’<br />
The strength and sincerity of Firbank’s commitment to his new faith has been called into<br />
question by some commentators, who suggest that he was much too naturally irreverent to have<br />
taken it seriously, and that his was a superficial aesthetic conversion, rather than a deep-seated<br />
spiritual one. In other words, they claim that he was attracted merely by the liturgical display and<br />
devotional excesses of high Catholicism. Certainly throughout his life he preferred a traditional<br />
Catholic ambiance. Shane Leslie recalled that at Cambridge Firbank ‘declined to hear Mass in the<br />
low-ceilinged Chapel for Catholic undergraduates as his soul could only expand under a soaring<br />
vault!’ The London churches in his novels were invariably those which offered their congregations<br />
an imposing mise-en-scène, such as the Brompton Oratory (in Inclinations and Caprice) or Farm<br />
Street (in Inclinations again).<br />
It is drawing a rather long bow, however, to argue that Firbank’s preference for rich<br />
ceremonial and devotional practice somehow compromised the sincerity of his conversion. Ifan<br />
Kyrle Fletcher wrote that ‘the explanation afforded by the aesthetic satisfaction of the Church ritual<br />
is not upheld by the testimony of a friend who met him in Paris in 1910 and found that the service<br />
made no appeal to him, but that he was still profoundly moved by the mystic element of religion.’<br />
This is an important clue to Firbank’s religious sensibility. He was drawn to Catholicism, and<br />
stayed privately loyal to it, to the extent that it satisfied his pronounced taste for mysticism. When<br />
his Cambridge friend Vyvyan Holland took him to see Robert Hugh Benson, it did not take Father<br />
Benson at all long to convince him that Catholicism was his true mystical home.<br />
121
122<br />
The 35-year-old Benson was himself a Catholic convert, the son of a former Archbishop<br />
of Canterbury, and came from a family well versed in the occult. His father had founded a Ghost<br />
Society. His uncle Henry Sidgwick had founded the Society for Psychical Research, of which his<br />
aunt later became President. His mother claimed to have had a considerable number of psychic<br />
experiences. When he was himself an undergraduate, Benson began to experiment with hypnotism<br />
‒ then more commonly referred to as ‘mesmerism’ ‒ but desisted when his mother threatened to tell<br />
his father. At the time Firbank knew him, Benson had begun to write ghost stories with Catholic<br />
themes. Shane Leslie paints a disturbing picture of him at this time: ‘Benson exactly appreciated<br />
the mixture of fear and fun which goes to the making of true religion…I can see him sitting in<br />
the firelight of my room at King’s, unravelling a weird story about demoniacal substitution, his<br />
eyeballs staring into the flame, and his nervous fingers twitching to baptise the next undergraduate<br />
he could thrill or mystify into the fold of Rome.’<br />
Benson enchanted Firbank with his flower-filled rooms, strange stories and knowledge<br />
of the occult. Brigid Brophy has correctly observed that ‘the influence of Benson on Firbank<br />
deserves more explanation than Firbank scholars have allowed.’ When he received Firbank into<br />
the Church, it was into a particularly fraught and mystical version of Catholicism, and in return<br />
Firbank presented Benson with a finely-printed copy of The Imitation of Christ, inscribed ‘For<br />
Father Benson in gratitude & affection from Arthur Firbank.’<br />
Over the next few years, Firbank strayed into mystical areas not approved by conventional<br />
Catholicism, including crystal-gazing and other kinds of fortune-telling. His native Irish superstition<br />
found an outlet in his fascination with Egyptian talismans and magic. For a short time he became<br />
involved with Aleister Crowley, and he even began to explore the world of diabolism. These<br />
interests are reflected in his very earliest novels, and we recall, for example, that Miss Massingham<br />
in Vainglory is the author of a book entitled Sacerdotalism and Satanism. After only a very few<br />
years, however, Firbank largely lost interest in these phenomena. Several Firbank commentators<br />
have argued that his interest in mysticism was incompatible with Catholicism, and demonstrated<br />
his movement away from the Church, but there is no evidence that Firbank himself saw it that way.<br />
In this respect he remained a faithful disciple of Robert Hugh Benson.<br />
While Firbank was always discreet about his religious beliefs, religion was certainly front and<br />
centre in his books, and he clearly found Catholic attitudes and practices inexhaustibly amusing.<br />
‘Oh, the charm, the flavour of the religious world!’ he editorialised in The Flower Beneath the<br />
Foot. ‘Where match it for interest or variety!’<br />
It is somehow dissatisfying to class Firbank’s novels merely as satires or parodies. Some<br />
critics have discerned their roots in Restoration comedy, but their structure is much closer to the<br />
sotie, which had flourished in sixteenth-century France and which Firbank’s contemporary André<br />
Gide had also revived in his 1914 novel Les Caves du Vatican. In a typical sotie, the location is<br />
vague or symbolic, the language allusive and stylised, and the tone somewhat directionless and<br />
whimsical. The sotie has no linear story leading to a clear dénouement, but a series of verbal<br />
exchanges which constitute a telling commentary on some social or political target. Firbank’s<br />
refinement was to impose upon the sotie a thick overlay of camp.
Susan Sontag, in her influential 1964 essay on camp, recognised its central paradox: that it has<br />
a love and fascination for the people and institutions it is ostensibly ridiculing. ‘Just as drag queens<br />
adore the tragic divas that they travesty,’ wrote Ellis Hanson, ‘so ecclesiastical camp springs to the<br />
defence of the one true Church.’ And just as drag queens are all the funnier when they stumble or<br />
reveal theatrically the underlying incongruity of their sexual identity, Firbank preferred the Church<br />
in disrepair. Like Lady Anne Pantry in Vainglory, he ‘couldn’t bear the Cathedral without a few<br />
sticks and props.’<br />
Tellingly, Firbank neither mocks the theological tenets of Catholicism, nor its most sacred<br />
ritual, the Eucharist. Rather, he confines himself to the sumptuous externals. Cathedrals feature<br />
in all his novels ‒ even in Prancing Nigger, in which the principal characters are Baptists ‒ as do<br />
their stained glass windows (what a loss it is that no one takes up Miss Wookie’s idea in Vainglory<br />
of a Ballets Russes window). Nunneries loom over every town: the Convent of the Holy Dove,<br />
the Convent of the Flaming-Hood, and Princess Zoubaroff’s Convent of Monte Serravizza (‘It’s<br />
nothing but backbiting from morning to night’), all of them hotbeds of lesbianism and recreational<br />
flagellation. Odd miracles are recounted ‒ one woman ‘engendering a missel-thrush through the<br />
channel of her nose’ ‒ and tourists inspect ‘a feather from the Archangel Gabriel’s wing’ and other<br />
such relics. Firbank’s later novels are clearly influenced by Norman Douglas’s South Wind, which<br />
had sent up saints and relics in this way.<br />
It is important to note that, after Firbank has dropped his early interest in diabolism,<br />
his characters are invariably portrayed as naughty rather than evil. The most likeable ‒ Laura<br />
de Nazianzi in The Flower Beneath the Foot, Cherif in Santal, and Charlie Mouth in Prancing<br />
Nigger, for example ‒ are uncynically seeking solace in religion. Cardinal Pirelli’s judgement is<br />
faulty and his fondness for drag inappropriate, but he is neither evil nor a great sinner, and he is<br />
ultimately redeemed. Adolescent boys think nothing of casually prostituting themselves: Peter<br />
Passer, Chicklet, Charlie Mouth and Angelo (who, Firbank makes a point of mentioning, comes<br />
from Taormina). Sex and transvestism are seen as all-pervasive and hardly worth commenting<br />
upon. When Firbank indulges in smut ‒ not uncommon in his late work ‒ it is so allusive and<br />
fleeting that the majority of his editors and readers are unlikely to have noticed it. In Valmouth,<br />
the ‘curly-pated enfant de coeur’ Charlie mentions in passing that ‘Father often wipes his pen in<br />
my hair’ ‒ presumably when Father is writing at his desk ‒ and when Cardinal Pirelli learns that<br />
his cathedral dancing-boys are unwell, he decides to take them some melons ‘and, perhaps, a<br />
cucumber.’ These throwaway remarks are eyebrow-raising, but they are hardly diabolic.<br />
The enterprising young bookdealer Ifan Kyrle Fletcher published his compelling and<br />
sympathetic ‘memoir’ only four years after Firbank’s death in 1926: ‘Firbank was always reticent<br />
about his beliefs and his religious activities. At the time that he left Cambridge he spoke to a few<br />
friends about his connection with the Church. In later years it was a subject which he avoided,<br />
and...he confided in no one.’ Lord Berners, who knew Firbank only in the final years of the latter’s<br />
life, wrote that he ‘had never for a moment imagined that Firbank was a Roman Catholic. His<br />
attitude towards the Church of Rome both in his conversation and his writings was distinctly<br />
heretical...more than once he had said to me, “The Church of Rome wouldn’t have me and so I<br />
laugh at her”.’<br />
123
Leaving aside Berners’s notorious unreliability and the improbabilities and hyperbole<br />
(‘heretical’) in these few sentences, it is entirely to be expected that Firbank will have hidden<br />
his religious beliefs from his worldly and potentially derisive acquaintances. For much of the<br />
twentieth century, the homosexual community had necessarily to be secretive, and those among<br />
them who were practising Catholics had to keep a secret within a secret. Cases similar to Firbank’s<br />
are legion. Vaslav Nijinsky was at the very centre of Diaghilev’s bed-hopping entourage, but he<br />
wrote later in his diary that he always wore a crucifix around his neck: ‘I wore it to show that I<br />
was a Catholic.’ Jack Kerouac, who excised the homosexual episodes from his book On the Road,<br />
described it as ‘really a story about two Catholic buddies roaming the country in search of God,’<br />
and always insisted ‘I’m not a beatnik, I’m a Catholic.’ Andy Warhol created ground-breaking<br />
transgressive films, while regularly attending Catholic services. All these men will have seen the<br />
pointlessness of discussing their Catholicism with their irreligious friends and colleagues.<br />
While Firbank thought of himself as a Catholic throughout his adult life, he often went for<br />
long periods without attending church services. ‘One isn’t always inclined for church!’ exclaims<br />
Mrs Pet in Vainglory. Inevitably this led to regular crises of faith ‒ quite different, of course, from<br />
a loss of faith altogether. Many years later, his friend Evan Morgan wrote that on occasion the two<br />
of them had visited the crypt under St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, where Firbank had ‘spent long<br />
hours on his knees.’ After a visit to Carthage in 1920 Firbank wrote to his mother of the martyrs<br />
‘in the first century of our beautiful Christian era,’ and a few months later he was in Naples: ‘This<br />
morning I went to the Cathedral for Mass and it was wonderful ‒ so many candles all alight at the<br />
same time I’d never seen before! and the music was wonderful. I went too to St. Chiara but the<br />
Mass was over.’ Soon, however, his doubts began again, and he lamented that ‘my chief regret<br />
at present is that I have no Religion.’ Nevertheless, when he settled in Bordighera the following<br />
year to write Prancing Nigger, he took care to arrange for the local village priest to bless his villa.<br />
In his lively letters to his mother and sister, Firbank had no inhibitions about mentioning<br />
his religion and the doubts that regularly assailed him. When he died in Rome, having just turned<br />
forty, his friend Lord Berners arranged with the Consul to have him buried in that city’s Protestant<br />
cemetery. His sister Heather, when she learnt of this mistake, arranged in the face of long delays<br />
and bureaucratic complication to have him transferred to Rome’s Catholic cemetery in Campo<br />
Verano. It is reasonable to assume that Heather ‒ herself a non-Catholic ‒ would not have gone<br />
to all this considerable trouble without a firm conviction that it was what her brother would have<br />
wanted.<br />
Robert Scoble<br />
May 2016<br />
124