This Week in Dover Street: Geoffrey of Monmouth, Katherine Ainslie & Whitney Darrow Jr

Mar 9, 2015 | Uncategorized

Here at Peter Harrington Dover Street we like to showcase the very best in rare books, encompassing everything from the keenest heights of political economy to the most nostalgic depths of children’s literature. There really are some astounding things here and, since it would be a little selfish to keep them all to ourselves, we have decided to share a special selection of three exceptionally interesting items every week with the wider world. I hope you enjoy reading about these books from time to time – you can click through from the picture to the full entry on our website, where you can also browse our entire gallery and rare book stock. Additionally, if you find yourself in the area, please drop by 43 Dover Street and I’d be happy to show you around.

 

Katherine AinslieVotes for Catherine Susan and Me, (1910) – BOOK SOLD

 

Votes for Catherine Susan and MeVotes for Catherine Susan and Me    Votes for Catherine Susan and Me

Votes for Catherine Susan and Me Votes for Catherine Susan and Me     Votes for Catherine Susan and Me

 

Our children’s books section isn’t all fairies and rainbows – it does have its nasty elements. Katherine Ainslie’s adorable series of illustrated books about the adventures of two Dutch “peg dolls”, Catherine Susan and Me, took a turn to the dark side when the author turned her mind to the suffragette movement then raging, and decided that any potentially uppity young girls among her readership would profit from a cautionary tale. So much for solidarity. These expressively-drawn pictures suffice to give the general impression of the story. Ainslie’s telling has the whole issue of women’s suffrage being raised merely as a symptom of bourgeois ennui (incipit: “Catherine Susan and Me hadn’t anything much to do, so…”), and closes, after putting the girls through a correctional stint in prison, with ultimate deference to the authority of men in top hats and tails: “But we cheered up when the Home Secretary and the Governor came to see us. And when they said “Will you go home quietly”? we said “Yes” – and we did.” The End, and let’s here no more about it. Ainslie’s book serves to remind us of a troubling truth: that some of the most trenchant opponents of history’s liberating movements have been those who stand to benefit.

 

Whitney Darrow Jr – The New Yorker Cartoons complete collection (1943-66) – SOLD

The New Yorker Cartoons complete collection

Nothing beats a good New Yorker cartoon, and for over half of the 20th century, Whitney Darrow Jr (1909-99 – whose father, incidentally, was a friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald) was the New Yorker cartoon, contributing over 1,500 cartoons, and publishing 18 books including four New Yorker collections. On a quiet day at Dover Street (if ever such a day should arise) one of my favourite browsing choices here would be this superb complete set of his New Yorker cartoon collections, each copy wonderfully inscribed by Darrow with an original illustration to his Random House editor, Pat Read.

His particular genius appears to have been a taste for bringing the absurd disquietingly close to home – that and poking fun at Modern Art and Married Life in equal measure. Let this blog post serve as an excuse to reproduce some of his best examples:

Miss! Oh, Miss! For God's sake, stop!“Miss! Oh, Miss! For God’s sake, stop!”

It certainly makes one realise how insignificant you are.“It certainly makes one realise how insignificant you are.”

Bird in Flight.“Bird in Flight.”

Marge, is it yellow or gray you look like hell in?“Marge, is it yellow or gray you look like hell in?”

 

GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH – 18th-century antiquary William Cole’s own heavily annotated copy of the first English edition of Monmouth’s British History (1718) – ITEM SOLD

The British History, Translated into English From the Latin

I’m something of a freak for anything to do with King Arthur. Sad, perhaps, but true – there comes a time in life when one must suck it up and accept such things. So, when this copy of the first English edition of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Brittaniae (completed 1139) came across my desk, I was delighted. It is one of the earliest and most important historical sources we have that tells of King Arthur and of Merlin (also, incidentally, of King Lear, who eventually reached Shakespeare via Holinshead, 1587). So much the more exciting, then, when I descried the ownership inscription of William Cole, the learned 18th century scholar to whom Horace Walpole would refer as his “oracle in any antique difficulties”. A man who knew his facts about the past – and here he has annotated Monmouth’s History throughout, clarifying obscurities and correcting faults. What an epistemological spectacle, to witness the objective mind of the Enlightenment encountering the misty mysteries of the mediaeval past. The Romantics and pre-Raphaelites preferred to enjoy, not to say wallow in, this mystery; not so Cole, who provides, in a lovely loopy hand, the following utile gloss on the life and death of Arthur:

“King Arthur being mortally wounded, was carried to Glastenbury, where he died, aged 90 years, 76 of which he had spent in the Continual exercise of armes. Tho he had reigned but 34 years yet before he mounted the throne, he had long commanded the British armies under Ambrosius. He is supposed to have instituted the Order of the Knights of the Round Table. He was born at Tindagel in Cornwell, in 452, or 453, and died in 542. He was buried at the monastery of Glastenbury in Somersetshire, where there was found an Inscription upon a leaden cross with Arthurs Epitaph upon it, in Henry 2nd’s Reign.”

Arthurs Epitaph upon it, in Henry 2nd’s Reign

 

Also enjoyable, is Cole’s full quotation of the sceptical Catholic poet Alexander Pope’s opinion of this English translation (copied from a letter to Edward Blount dated Sept 8 1717):

“I have very lately read Jefferey of Monmouth… in the Translation of a Clergyman in my Neighbourhood. The poor man is highly concerned to vindicate Jeffery’s veracity as an Historian, & told me, he was perfectly astonished we of the Roman Comunion could doubt of the Legends of his Giants, while we believed those of our Saints! I am forced to make a fair Composition with him; and, by crediting some of the wonders of Corinaeus and Gogmagog, have brought him so far already, that he speaks respect|fully of St.Christopher‘s carrying Christ, and the Resuscitation of St. Nicholas Tolentine‘s Chickens. Thus we proceed apace in Converting each other from all manner of Infidelity. Ajax and Hector are no more compared to Corinaeus and Arthur, than the Guelphs and Ghibelilines were to the Molochs of ever dreadful memory. This amazing Writer has made me lay aside Homer for a week, and when I take him up again, I shall be very well prepared to translated with believe, and reverence the Speech of Achilles’s Horse.”

Pope’s witty sign-off, “believe there is nothing more true (even more true than anything in Jeffery is false) than that I have a constant Affection for you, and am, &c”, gives a fair indication of the prevailing sense in the 18th century that Monmouth’s “History” was of a value perhaps more literary than historical.

The British History, Translated into English From the Latin

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