1000th Post

I feel as though I ought to make a little speech - but I'm not going to. I can think of nothing particularly sage to say on the nature of blogging to mark this milestone. Certainly this blog, and indeed the nature of blogging itself has changed considerably since I started. This blog has had prolific patches and slow stretches but the man in the machine tells me this is 1000.

Perhaps I shall think on't and have more to say when the blog's 5th birthday comes around later this year. For now... simply onwards...

John Addington Symonds's Oxford Notes

This slightly tatty-looking copy of Mark Pattison's Memoirs (Macmillan, London, 1885) hides a wonderful secret inside the front cover. On the front pastedown, there is the bookplates of the father of all queer letters, John Addington-Symonds.

Pattison was the Rector of Lincoln College in Oxford and these are quintessentially Oxford memoirs. They describe in great detail Pattison's religious life and, in particular his relationships with Pusey and Newman at the intense height of the tractarian movement. The Memoir is rather sad in tone and extremely introspective but what is particularlly nice in this copy is that Symonds has made his own marginal notes - sometimes at length. Sometimes they are comments about Hegel and german philosophy, more often they are little remarks about people or practices which Pattison mentions that Symonds was also familiar with. I haven't read them all yet but tantalisingly, Symonds's comment alongside a mention of his old headmaster, Vaughan, has been rubbed out. I'm just hoping that in the right light I might be able to get a few words of it but haven't managed yet. Vaughan lost his job because a young Symonds discovered his relationship with another pupil and brought the matter to his father's attention. It would be interesting therefore to read what the adult Symonds wrote as a note alongside Vaughan's name.

Percy F Westerman

In the 'ripping yarns for boys' market, Percy F. Westerman is not a name which is now as well known as it should be: he is no Henty, Fenn or Haggard. In fact, I confess, before I was asked to look through another dead man's books recently his was not a name which would have been on any list I was compiling from memory. However, one of the great things about this business is that you never know what author is going to knock next on your door. This small collection of his books came from a recent purchase so I thought I had better find out a little about him. And was subsequently astonished...

Firstly I was astonished by his output. When I did some work on the Victorian novelist Richard Marsh recently, I thought that his about 80 novels put him in the category 'prolific' but even he fades to insignificance next to Westerman's 174 novels! All of them were boys stories, many about the sea and about scouting and consequently a lot about Sea Scouting! In the 1930s, he was possibly the most famous boys' author working.

Secondly I was astonished because he was a Portsmouth man. Not for all of his life but for the first 35 years he lived and worked here. Portsmouth has for the last few years been trying to play up its literary associations with figures like Dickens, Conan Doyle, Walter Besant, Neville Shute and so on... remarkable then that I never heard a single mention of Percy F Westerman who wrote probably more books than all of the above together.

Great books to look at too. The whole decorated boards thing was still just going in the first quarter of the 20th century and some of these, although often worn on the spine have some great, dramatic illustrations on the boards.

Ryan McGinley Photo

Not a vintage photo but one which has captivated me recently. From my interest in Equus, often and ardently displayed on this blog, you might have guessed that I have real passion for what you might call 'the boy and beast' genre. You might not have known though that I'm also a big fan of Ryan McGinley's photos. Oh, to be able to afford an honest to goodness actual print... anyway...

This was something I came across on the internet, I'm sorry I don't remember now where. I think it's a near perfect picture. The choice of the boy and cat is inspired. They compliment each other. The fact that the cat is straining fowards against it's leash and even appears to be swiping at the viewer gives real drama to the image. At the same time, the cat is an extension of the boy's physicality, not too big and powerful but lean and agile looking. Dangerous but not overpowering or forceful. Together they represent that tension in late adolescence between explosion and restraint, the boy looks like he is only just holding onto this force that's about to spring away from him. I even like the fact that boy is a bit grubby round the edges, like the two of them have been running feral for hours.

Strange how, from time to time, an image captures the imagination and holds it.

The London Planetarium

And while I'm on the subject of 1950s graphics - a little bit, of late. This came out of a box of bits and pieces the other day. Just the most wonderful piece of period graphic design on the front of a large brochure about the London Planetarium

Ex Libris Charles Philip Castle Kains Jackson

A while ago I was doing some work in part of the remains of the collection of the late Donald Weeks and saw there, and photographed, a copy of the bookplate of Charles Philip Castle Kains Jackson. Jackson was a solicitor come art critic and art magazine editor who was firmly in the circle of Gleeson White and, of course, Frederick Rolfe, particularly during the latter's time in Christchurch. Jackson was gay and in a relationship with his younger cousin, Cecil Castle. I find the pair of them fascinating. It is easy enough to pinpoint gay men in history but much much more difficult to find relationships but, through Jackson's writing, Rolfe's letters and sundry other sources, there is enough evidence to attempt a description of their relationship - which I hope to do in print at some point in the future.

So I was delighted when I got a chance to own my own copy of CPCKJ's bookplate (above) It is signed with a monogram in the top right corner by Alan Wright (an A and a W enclosed in an artist's palette). Wright too is an interesting figure. He was born in 1864 and lived to the age of 95 and worked as an illustrator of books and articles for nearly forty years. He was almost a contemporary of Beardsley, Walter Crane, Arthur Rackham, Heath Robinson and that lot, his work was regularly alongside theirs in the periodicals of the day and yet today he is almost unknown.

There are two possible reasons for this I think. First, his long-life. It could be he's a little like Richard le Gallienne, an 1890s figure without the sense of common cause to die before the turn of the century: it may be that he simply isn't counted in the crowd because he outlived them all. Secondly, however, it has been suggested that it might have been his association with Rolfe which was part of his undoing. Wright was the illustrator of 'How I Was Buried Alive' by Rolfe in The Wide World Magazine. However, The Aberdeen Free Press launched an excoriating attack on Rolfe following that story and it has been suggested that it was after this point that Wright's star began to wane, that he was, in some way, tarred with the same brush.

Wright became a very early Corvine, somewhat obsessed by his memories of his occasional encounters with Rolfe during the 1890s, often referring to them in later life. One of the nice things about this bookplate is that it shows perhaps the one artistic thing that Wright took from Rolfe: the method of drawing feet which details the big toe but simply outlines the rest.

Captain "Space" Kingley

What's not to like about these fantastic illustrations from the 1950s? Captain Kingley, or Space to his friends, only appeared in three Christmas annuals from 1954-6 and I'm told - by a blogger who has actually read them - that the stories themselves were pretty thin and silly, well below the talent of the artist who worked on them. I was particularly taken by the Flame Men of Mercury.

In truth this copy is ridiculously tatty and didn't really survive the scanning process. Nor was it intended to. I only picked it up in a fit of pique the other day as R and I came to the end of an hour or so in a bitterly cold antiques centre. He had found loads of stuff to feed his lust for 20th century ceramics and I had nothing, so when I saw the warming, 50s colours of the cover glowing behind an old teapot I had to have it. If only to share here.

Raven 10: The Crab and the Moon

It is half-past one in the morning and I am listening to the achingly beautiful Domine Jesu Christe from Durufle's Requiem while I assemble packages of books. It's slow going because I have some kind of bug which is making me nauseous and feverish.

I sent out the announcement of Raven 10: The Crab and Moon last weekend. As usual the special state sold out within hours and a healthy number of orders for the ordinary state were received but, what tends to happen every time I announce a new book is that the email jogs people's memory and suddenly I have lots of complicated orders to fulfill as customers decide to order the new book along with a few others that they had been meaning to get around to. I am not complaining about this - simply sharing my evening with y'all.

Raven Ten: The Crab and the Moon

by Robert Scoble

In late 1899 and well into 1900, Frederick Rolfe worked for most of every day in the great circular Reading Room at the British Museum, researching his book on the Borgia family. One of his fellow researchers was the Museum's recently-retired Keeper of Printed Books, Richard Garnett, also working on the Borgia. The two men had several conversations about their common interest in Renaissance Italy.

Rolfe will have been intrigued to discover that, while in his public life Garnett had reached the very pinnacle of Victorian respectability, in his private moments he pursued an activity which was in technical breach of the law. He was an astrologer.

For the first forty years of his life, Rolfe had little interest in astrology, but it is noticeable that the two novels on which he worked most strenuously after meeting Garnett, Hadrian the Seventh and Nicholas Crabbe, are studded with astrological references. Born under the sign of Cancer, the Crab, and 'ruled' by the Moon, Rolfe began to refer in his correspondence to his crab-like characteristics, and to find in astrology a fertile source of powerful symbolism.

This latest addition to the Raven Series traces the trajectory of Rolfe's interest in astrology, and elucidates the many astrological references in his published work. It analyses Rolfe's own natal chart, showing how he would have been tempted to see in it a foreshadowing of his life's vicissitudes.

The Raven Series has been planned as a set of fifteen scholarly essays which will add substantially to our knowledge of the life and work of Frederick Rolfe. Each essay is being published in a strictly limited edition, and there is little doubt that complete sets will be sought after by collectors in the years to come.

Of a full edition of 70, the first 12 copies of The Crab and the Moon constitute the special state, case bound in black paper-covered boards with gilt titles, and signed by the author. Numbers 13-70 form the ordinary state of the edition, and are sewn into black card covers with a paper label and acetate wrappers.

Pterodactyls and the London Illustrated News

When I was ten or eleven, like most boys of that age, even before Jurassic Park, I had a bit of a thing for dinosaurs. Going through an old draw I found the following which I have kept from that time. I don't know where I came across the original reference but I remember having the help of the children's librarian in my local public library to fill in the request form to get hold of this article from the LIN. So dumbfounded where the librarians who received the request, possibly at the British Library itself, that when the photocopy of the article came back it had attached a limerick they had composed. I wish I had the limerick still. Clearly, it began "There once was a pterodactyl from..." but I really don't remember the rest. The story itself I find just as fascinating today as I did at the age of ten.

"VERY LIKE A WHALE - A discovery of great scientific importance has just been made at Culmont (Haute Marne). Some men employed in cutting a tunnel which is to unite St. Dizier and Nancy railways, had just thrown down an enormous block of stone by means of gunpowder, and were in the act of breaking it to pieces, when from a cavity in it they suddenly saw emerge a living being of monstrous form. This creature, which belongs to the class of animals hitherto considered extinct, had a very long neck, and a mouth filled with sharp teeth. It stands on four long legs, which are united together by two membranes, doubtless intended to support the animal in the air, and are armed with four claws terminated by long and crooked talons. Its general form resembles that of a bat, differing only in its size, which is that of a large goose. Its membranous wings, when spread out, measure from tip to tip, 3 metres 22 centimetres (nearly 10 feet 7 inches). Its colour is a livid black: its skin is naked, thick and oily; its intestines only contained a colourless liquid like clear water. On reaching the light this monster gave some signs of life, by shaking its wings, but soon after expired, uttering a hoarse cry. The strange creature, to which may be given the name of living fossil, brought to Gray, where a naturalist, well versed in the study of paleontology, immediately recognised it as belonging to the genus Pterodactylus anas, many fossil remains of which have been found among the strata which geologists have designated by the name lias. The rock in which this monster was discovered belongs precisely to that formation, the deposit of which is so old that geologists date it more than a million years back. The cavity in which the animal was lodged forms an exact hollow mould of its body, which indicates that it was completely enveloped with the sedimentary deposit."

---- The London Illustrated News, Feb 9th 1856

Was this the oldest living creature ever to have existed? Perhaps not but a great starting point for a story of bizarre and macabre happenings: almost Lovecraftian...

For more see this well written article on the veracity of the story - particularly the last three or four paragraphs...

Vintage photo: mother and son

This is, I think, a delightful photo which manages to be both informal and overdressed at the same time. Edwardian obviously, presumably mother and son and possibly by an amateur photographer in the family who could only get enough light for the indoor portrait by posing the pair looking out of a window.