Rickaro Books

“I read novels with the utmost pertinacity. I look upon them-I look upon good novels-as a very valuable part of literature, conveying more exact and finely-distinguished knowledge of the human heart and mind than almost any other, with greater depth and fewer constraints.”

Patrick O’Brian places these words into the mouth of one of his great “heroes” Stephen Maturin, surgeon, naturalist, philosopher, and sometime spy. The statement can be related to and is most certainly true of O’Brian’s own great series of naval tales. It might be considered that these really began with the two earlier, stand-alone naval novels, set in the time of George Anson’s 1740-1744 circumnavigation voyage of the globe. These are The Golden Ocean of 1956 and The Unknown Shore of 1959. Perhaps rather surprisingly these were initially designated for “younger readers”, however they can most certainly be read and enjoyed by readers of any age. They tell of adventure and friendship and are the foretaste of things to come with the Roman à clef  of the Aubrey/Maturin novels set during the period of the Napoleonic War.

These comprise twenty volumes with a fragmentary twenty-first and are so admirably written that they can be read and re-read without growing stale and can be explored for the infinitely displayed detail and humour. They tell of the escapades and adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey and his particular friend Stephen Maturin. They perfectly capture the style and feel of the Georgian period and the comparison with the writings of Jane Austen is not hyperbole. This period feel is made possible through the result of an exquisite and extensive reading of contemporary literature by O’Brian, providing an authentic sense of place within the early nineteenth century, augmented by the use of correct period reference works. In the reading of them one can discover an infinity of minute detail as well as the joy of two “particular” friends.

These naval tales (as they were called by O’Brian) were initially edited for the publisher Collins by Richard Ollard, himself a writer of history and a biographer. The Aubrey/ Maturin series commenced publication in 1969, with Master and Commander, although the germ of the idea was apparently set much earlier by O’Brian. Originally commissioned by the American publisher Lippincott and first published in the USA in 1969 it was officially released in the United Kingdom in 1970.  However, as indicated by Arthur Cunningham in his bibliography and confirmed by the letter of Richard Ollard accompanying a finished volume, copies of the UK edition were available in December of 1969. The British Library acquisition is dated 12^th December 1969 and this is confirmed by the date of the Ollard letter of five days later 17^th December 1969, that was sent to the Daily Express with the book.

The final published volume in the series Blue at the Mizzen appeared in 1999, shortly before O’Brian’s death in 2000. A small fragment of  a twenty-first book was later to appear in print posthumously.

The Aubrey/Maturin novels were principally written at the O’Brians’ home in Collioure situated on the coast in the very south of France and first read and typed by his beloved second wife, Mary. Indeed, a number of the volumes bear various printed dedications to Mary, as in the first, Master and Commander, “Mariae lembi nostril duci et magistrae do dedico”.

The Aubrey/Maturin tales have been acclaimed by many and certainly outstrip the majority of his predecessor writers of naval stories, they indeed stand comparison with the works of Melville and Conrad and will surely live on as great literature forever.

As so beautifully written by Emily Dickinson;

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away

This is most certainly true of the novels of Patrick O’Brian and I rather envy those who have yet to board a voyage of reading them for the very first time.

References;

O’Brian, Patrick, Master and Commander, William Collins, 1969

Cunningham A.E. (ed.),  Patrick O’Brian Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography, British Library, 1994.

Tolstoy, Nikolai, Patrick O’Brian, A Very Private Life, Harper Collins, 2019.

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Again, we are touching on associations and the connections that make for such bibliographical delights.  Here between poets during the early years of the twentieth century, who had a love of the countryside and in some cases Gloucestershire countryside in particular.

All the books featured here are elusive, but particularly so in their precious and fragile dust-jackets. The authors, all near contemporaries, knew or knew of each other. Ivor Gurney (1890-1937), John “Jack” Haines and J. W Harvey (1888-1957) were great friends and the latter two local solicitors. They all admired the prose and poetry of Edward Thomas (1878-1917), as did John Freeman (1880-1929), another poet who was a friend of Haines.

Let us start with Ivor Gurney, born and raised in Gloucester, he was poet and composer, particularly of melodic songs. He fought in the First World War, survived the conflict, but spent a tragic life confined to mental hospitals. Featured here is his second volume of poems War’s Embers, published in 1919 by Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd. His first book of poems had been Severn and Somme published in 1917.

His two great Gloucestershire friends were J.W. Harvey and John Haines. We have here a copy of Harvey’s Gloucestershire Friends, poems from a German Prison Camp, published by Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd in 1917, containing poems sent from the camp. Also featured is Haines’ Poems published by Selwyn & Blount Ltd in 1921. Both copies coming down to us in the fragile and now elusive jackets.

Edward Thomas, perhaps the best known of these poets and an author of prose, was to write In Pursuit of Spring, published by Thomas Nelson in 1914, a splendid evocation of the season and his observations on a journey from London travelling through the counties to the West, accompanied by a friend and a bicycle. It is redolent with poetic overtones that were to lead American poet Robert Frost to see the true poet in Thomas and for Frost to encourage the writing of the splendid countryside poems that are his legacy. Here is a copy of the first edition, with that elusive jacket and the illustrations by Ernest Haslehurst. He also carried a camera and a far later edition of 2016 published by Little Toller Books contains a selection of his photographs taken on the journey, now preserved at Cardiff University.

Ivor Gurney, whilst admiring Thomas and his poems, setting a number of them to music, was never to meet him, Thomas being killed in 1917 on the Western Front. However, Thomas’ wife Helen was memorably to visit Gurney in hospital and was to delight him with Thomas’ maps of Gloucestershire which he pored over following the countryside walks of Edward Thomas over a landscape that he would never walk or even see again.

In 1919 Haines was to write an informative and revealing memoir of Edward Thomas contained within In Memoriam, Edward Thomas, his essay entitled Edward Thomas as I Knew Him, in which he relates first meeting Thomas in 1914 at Lascelles Abercrombie’s cottage, then occupied by the American poet, Robert Frost.

John Freeman first published poetry in 1914 and won the Hawthornden Prize in 1920 with Poems 1909-1920. Following it up in 1921 with Music Lyrical and Narrative Poems. His poem Last Hours was set to music by Ivor Gurney. It was in the 1920s that Freeman, a friend of Haines was to write a postscript on the reverse of an envelope containing a letter from Freeman to Haines, seeking a meeting with Ivor Gurney when he was then in the mental hospital. There is no evidence, that I have found, that the meeting ever took place.

So here is a host of connections all much in evidence in these volumes, mingling poetic thoughts and words. These volumes, with their interlinked connections, with or without jackets, and in whatever edition, will be sure to warm any chilly evening whilst the reader dips into them.

One of the aspects that makes certain books so desirable is their connections. Here is a small selection of volumes linking David Garnett with a few of his friends, a brief window on his life and those around him. These connections are various, but all fascinating, with larger stories lying behind the sometimes brief inscriptions, bringing us just a little closer to the characters mentioned.

We have referred to David Garnett (1892-1981) previously on these pages, he was the son of the publisher’s reader and literary critic Edward Garnett (1868-1937) his mother being translator Constance Garnett (1862-1946). David was a notable author, sometime bookseller and director of the Nonesuch Press. Perhaps his best remembered book is “Lady into Fox” of 1923, this being his second published work following the pseudonymous “Dope Darling” of 1919. Although he later wrote “Aspects of Love” in 1956 that was made into a musical by Andrew Lloyd-Webber and had a more recent revival due to this. He also edited a seminal edition of the “The Letters of T.E. Lawrence”, published in 1938 just three years after T.E.’s death. This remains an invaluable resource for all students of TE. Garnett was an endlessly fascinating and well connected character in his own right.

The earliest of our featured books is David Garnett’s third, “Man in the Zoo” of 1924, this particular copy is presented to David Garnett’s great friend Stephen “Tommy” Tomlin (1901-1937), a now well-regarded artist and with David a founder member of the Cranium Dining Club and connected with the so-called Bloomsbury Group. 

The next volume is David’s fourth book “The Sailor’s Return” of 1926 and here is a very personal dedication to a family friend Cecily Hey, nee Tatlock. Cecily was present at the marriage of David to Rachel “Ray” Marshall and indeed cared for Ray in her final illness at Hilton Hall. Ray illustrated with wood-engravings a number of David’s volumes. To further the connections Ray had a brief fling with Garrow Tomlin, Stephen Tomlin’s brother. The inscription by Cecily refers us to a further character, a friend of David, Aldous Huxley, being given the nickname “Antic Hey” after the 1923 Huxley comic novel “Antic Hay”.

Our third volume is “The Grasshoppers Come” of 1931, David’s ninth book in print, here presented and so inscribed to T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) who needs no further introduction, with his own connections to so many literary figures. TE was to write of “The Grasshoppers Come”: “The book pleased me quite beyond what I had thought possible. It is the first account of real flying by a real writer who can really fly: and it gave me a very great sense of long distance, and of that incommunicable cradle-dandling which is a cockpit in flight.” This volume is listed, with the inscription, in the catalogue of the Clouds Hill library, printed in “T.E. Lawrence by His Friends” published in 1937, however it does not contain the Clouds Hill bookplate, placed in the books when they were sold, so may one of the volumes retained by A.W. Lawrence.

Our final, but by no means least featured volume is the second of David’s autobiographical works “The Flowers of the Forest” of 1955. It is presented, “with love” to David’s lifelong friend, the artist Duncan Grant (1885-1978). “Bunny” was David’s pet name, apparently dating back to a time when, as a young child he had a rabbit skin cap. This is a volume in which Grant features a good deal. Grant was the sometime lover of David, had a daughter Angelica (1918-2012) with Vanessa Bell. Angelica was later to marry David Garnett as his second wife. On Angelica’s birth, David was to write to Lytton Strachey on the subject of the new baby: “Its beauty is the most remarkable thing about it. I think of marrying it: when she is twenty I shall be 46 – will it be scandalous.” Well marry her he did in 1942, when she was 24, following Ray’s death in 1940. Of her real father, Angelica was to write: “(Grant) was a homosexual with bisexual leanings”. It was not until 1937, when eighteen, that Angelica believed her biological father was Clive Bell, Vanessa’s husband, rather than Grant, although the reality was apparently an open secret within the Bloomsbury Group. Connections hardly become more complex than these!

So here is a small number of volumes intimately linking a number of interesting connected people. They are a tactile, tangible, intimate object projecting us into the past, a memory in paper.