Mark Twain, Collector Of Compliments

by Stephen J. Gertz

Little Montana Girl's Compliment
"She was gazing thoughtfully at a photograph of Mark Twain
on a neighbor's mantelpiece. Presently she said, reverently,
'We've got a Jesus like that at home only ours has more trimmings.'"

On January 11, 1908, The Lotos Club in New York City, one of the oldest literary associations in the United States, held a dinner in honor of one of its members, Samuel L. Clemens, aka Mark Twain.

Founded in New York City in 1870 by a group of young writers, journalists and critics, the Lotos Club initiated Twain to membership in 1873, who, waggish card that he was, immediately declared it “The Ace of Clubs.” At the dinner - attended by many luminaries - the guest of honor gave a speech announcing that he had become a collector of compliments. PBA Galleries is offering one of those compliments, in Twain's hand, in its Historic Autographs & Manuscripts with Archival Material sale May 8, 2014. It is estimated to sell for $2,500-$4,000.

As reported in the New York Times, January 12, 1908, Twain told the gathering:

"I wish to begin at the beginning, lest I forget it altogether. I wish to thank you for your welcome now and for that of seven years ago, which I forgot to thank you for at the time, also for that of fourteen years ago which I also forgot to thank you for. I know how it is; when you have been in a parlor and are going away, common decency ought to make you say the decent thing, what a good time you have had. Everybody does it except myself.

"I hope that you will continue that excellent custom of giving me dinners every seven years. I had had it on my mind to join the hosts of another world - I do not know which world - but I have enjoyed your custom so much that I am willing to postpone it for another seven years.

"The guest is in an embarrassing position, because compliments have been paid to him. I don't care whether you deserve it or not, but it is hard to talk up to it.

"The other night at the Engineers' Club dinner they were paying Mr. Carnegie here discomforting compliments. They were all compliments and they were not deserved, and I tried to help him out with criticisms and references to things nobody understood.

"They say that one cannot live on bread alone, but I could live on compliments. I can digest them. They do not trouble me. I have missed much in life that I did not make a collection of compliments, and keep them where I could take them out and look at them once in a while. I am beginning now. Other people collect autographs, dogs, and cats, and I collect compliments. I have brought them along.

"I have written them down to preserve them, and think that they're mighty good and exceedingly just."

[Twain began to read a few. The first, by essayist, critic, and editor Hamilton W. Mabie, declared that La Salle might have been the first man to make a voyage of the Mississippi, but that Mark Twain was the first man to chart light and humor for the human race].

"If that had been published at the time that I issued that book [Life on the Mississippi] it would have been money in my pocket. I tell you it is a talent by itself to pay complements gracefully and have them ring true. It's an art by itself.

"Now, here's one by my biographer. Well, he ought to know me if anybody does. He's been at my elbow for two years and a half. This is Albert Bigelow Paine:

"'Mark Twain is not merely the great writer, the great philosopher, but he is the supreme expression of the human being with its strengths and weaknesses.'

"What a talent for compression!"

[Novelist, editor, and critic William Dean Howells, Twain said, spoke of him as first of Hartford and ultimately of the solar system, not to say of the universe].

"You know how modest Howells is. If it can be proved that my fame reaches to Neptune and Saturn, that will satisfy even me. You know how modest and retiring Howells is, but deep down he is as vain as I am."

"Edison wrote: 'The average American loves his family. If he has any love left over for some other person he generally selects Mark Twain.'

"Now here's the compliment of a little Montana girl, which came to me indirectly. She was in a room in which there was a large photograph of me. After gazing at it steadily for a time, she said:

"'We've got a John the Baptist like that.' 

"She also said: 'Only ours has more trimmings.'

"I suppose she meant the halo.

[Since the offered "compliment" is numbered “4” and the Times reported the little girl’s compliment after three prior, this sheet was most likely Twain’s reading copy; he extemporaneously changed some of the words but it was basically the same story].

"Now here is a gold miner's compliment. It is forty-two years old. It was my introduction to an audience to which I lectured in a log schoolhouse. There were no ladies there. I wasn't famous then. They didn't know me. Only the miners were there with their breeches tucked into their boot tops and with clay all over them. They wanted someone to introduce me, and then selected a miner, who protested that he didn't want to do on the ground that he had never appeared in public. This is what he said:

"'I don't know anything about this man. Anyhow, I only know two things about him. One is he has never been in jail and the other is I don't know why...'"

The dinner was Twain-themed. As tasty as his speech was, the meal was tastier, a feast for those whose tongue for Twain went all the way. On the menu that evening:

Innocent Oysters Abroad.
Roughing It Soup.
Huckleberry Finn Fish.
Joan of Arc Filet of Beef.
Jumping Frog Terrapin.
Punch Brothers Punch.
Gilded Duck.
Hadleyburg Salad.
Life on the Mississippi Ice Cream.
Prince and the Pauper Cake.
Pudd'nhead Cheese.
White Elephant coffee.
Chateau Yquem Royals.
Pommery Brut.
Henkow Cognac.

Dishes served only in spirit included:

Double-Barrelled Detective Mystery Vegetable.

Connecticut Yankee Stew.

Mysterious Stranger Souvlaki.

Our compliments to the chef - and honoree.
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Image courtesy of PBA Galleries, with our thanks.
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James Thurber Illustrates Poetry

by Stephen J. Gertz

The four original illustrations by celebrated American humorist, cartoonist, author, and journalist, James Thurber (1894-1961) to accompany Charles Kingsley's poem The Sands o' Dee, as published in The New Yorker magazine March 25, 1939, have come to auction. Offered by Swann Galleries in its 20th Century Illustration sale January 23, 2014, they are estimated to fall under the hammer at $4,000-$6,000.

Executed in ink on paper, the artwork and poem appeared as part of The New Yorker's popular Thurber feature, Famous Poems Illustrated. Each drawing appeared above one of the four six-line stanzas:

 O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
          And call the cattle home,
          And call the cattle home,
      Across the sands of Dee."
    The western wind was wild and dank with foam
      And all alone went she.

 The western tide crept up along the sand,
          And o'er and o'er the sand,
          And round and round the sand,
      As far as eye could see.
    The rolling mist came down and hid the land;
      And never home came she.

Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair,--
          A tress of golden hair,
          A drownèd maiden's hair,
      Above the nets at sea?
    Was never salmon yet that shone so fair
      Among the stakes on Dee.

They rowed her in across the rolling foam,

          The cruel crawling foam,
          The cruel hungry foam,
      To her grave beside the sea.
    But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home
      Across the sands of Dee.

Each original illustration is 279 x 216 mm (11x8 1/2 or smaller). Thurber's signature appears at lower left on the final drawing. Three of the illustrations possess faint preliminary drawings on their versos.

Thurber illustrated nine poems for The New Yorker, the others being  Excelsior (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow); Lochinvar (Sir Walter Scott); Locksley Hall (Lord Alfred Tennyson); Oh When I Was ... (A. E. Housman); Curfew Must Not Ring To-Night (Rose Hartwick Thorpe); Barbara Frietchie (John Greenleaf Whittier); The Glove and the Lions (Leigh Hunt); and Ben Bolt (Thomas Dunn English). They were collected in Thurber's 1940 anthology, Fables For Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated.

Established in 1997, the annual Thurber Prize honors outstanding examples of American humor.

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With an affectionate tip o' the hat to Thurber keeper of the flame, fanatic and collector, Jay Hoster, who knows more about the man and his books than anyone alive.

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Images courtesy of Swann Galleries, with our thanks.

Sands o' Dee reprinted via WikiSource under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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Scarce Emily Dickinson Letter Comes To Auction

by Stephen J. Gertz

A rare three-page autograph letter by Emily Dickinson, written in pencil and signed  “Emily," is being offered by Profiles In History in its Property of a Distinguished American Private Collector sale December 18, 2012. 

It is estimated to sell for $20,000 - $30,000.

Written in Amherst during Autumn 1884 to Mrs. Samuel E. Mack, the reclusive American poetess expresses her pleasure in Mrs. Mack's recent visit and quotes from Last Lines, a poem by Emily Brontë.

Dickinson writes in full:

It was very dear to see Mrs. Mack. A friend is a solemnity and after the great intrusion of Death, each one that remains has a special pricelessness besides the mortal worth --- I hope you may live while we live, and then with loving selfishness consent that you should go ---

Said the Marvellous Emily Bronte

Though Earth and Man were gone And suns and Universe ceased to be And thou wert left alone,
Every Existence would Exist in thee--

Tenderly, Emily

Letters by Dickinson are extremely rare. This missive - oddly addressing her correspondent  in the first sentence in the third person  -  was published in the Letters of Emily Dickinson  edited by T.H. Johnson, no. 940, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), noting that Dickinson quoted the same poem of Emily Bronte in a letter to another friend, Maria Whitney.

The letter was last seen at Christie’s New York, 15 December 1995, lot 16, when, along with related material, it sold for $16,000.

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Images courtesy of Profiles In History, woth our thanks.
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Rare Edition of Lawrence Of Arabia $112,000 - $144,000 At Auction

by Stephen J. Gertz

A scarce "incomplete" Presentation copy of the Subscriber's ("Cranwell") edition of T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, one of only thirty-two of a total edition of 211 copies and inscribed at the time of publication to writer E.M. Forster, is being offered by Sotheby's in their English Literature, History, Children's Books & Illustrations sale on December 12, 2012.

It is estimated to sell for  $112,000 - 144,000 (£70,000 - £90,000). That's $16,000 - $20,571 per pillar.

The book, in which Lawrence wrote of the Arab revolt, 1916-1918, against the Ottoman Empire during World War I and his role in organizing and leading it, set in stone the  legendary adventures of Lawrence of Arabia that emerged from the war's news coverage and stoked the mythos that had grown around one of the most fascinating, complex, and enigmatic characters of his or any other time.

"In 1913 Lawrence wrote a book entitled Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It was designed to cover seven Middle Eastern cities,,,The manuscript was burned in 1914....Lawrence began writing his version of the desert war in 1919...A major portion, if not all, of this first edition was lost at Reading Station in late 1919. A second version was written in London 1919-1920 in a period of three months. Lawrence burned this in 1922...The third manuscript was written in London, Jeddah and Amman, 1921, and in London 1922. This third manuscript, some 330,000 words long, was donated to the Bodleian Library" (O'Brien).

Lawrence had a eight copies printed of that third version in 1922, the first English ("Oxford") edition. He reworked the text 1923-1926, during which time he loaned copies of the 1922 version to various people for critical comment,  E.M. Forster amongst them.

"E.M. Forster was one of the most influential readers of Seven Pillars of Wisdom during the time that Lawrence was cutting down the 1922 ‘Oxford’ text to the abridged version that he issued to subscribers in 1926. Forster offered far more than general praise and admiration. He provided expert criticism of specific writing faults. The two became friends and remained in contact until Lawrence’s death in 1935" (Jeremy Wilson for Castle Hill Press, E.M. Forster and T.E. Lawrence, upon the publication of the Lawrence-Forster letters).

Despite the enormous amount of time, effort, craft and artistry that Lawrence invested in writing this classic his inscription to Forster modestly reads: "Not good enough, but as good, apparently, as I can do."

This, the elaborate "Cranwell" or privately printed Subscriber's (second English) edition - a text of 280,000 words - was published in 1926. Of the total of 211 copies, 170 were complete and 32 were incomplete with three plates lacking, a version "presented to the men who had served with him in Arabia and who were not able to pay the high price asked for the complete issue" (German Reed). the complete issue priced at £31 10s, a princely sum in 1926. The final nine copies were "spoils," i.e. plates only. Each copy was bound differently with various binders employed: for Bumpus (by Riviere); Best; Sangorski and Sutcliffe (as here); Harrison; Charles McLeish; Roger de Coverly & Sons; and Henry T. Wood.

Presentation copy inscribed by the author to E.M. Forster,
“E.M.F.  from T.E.S. ['T.E. Shaw' Lawrence's post-War pseudonym]:
Not good enough, but as good, apparently, as I can do. | I.XII.26"
on preliminary blank together with later inscription from E.M. Forster
to Bob Buckingham, “R.J. Buckingham  from  E.M. Forster 20-1-68”.

No incomplete copies (aside from the nine plates-only "spoil" copies the rarest of the "Cranwell" edition) have come to auction within the last thirty-six years. One of the 170 complete copies sold earlier this year at Bonham's for $65,000 (incl. premium). Only a small handful of copies of the first ("Oxford") English edition of 1922 are in private hands. Should one miraculously find its way to market it will surely fetch upwards of $500,000.

In 1927, Lawrence published Revolt in the Desert, an abridgment of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, in a limited and trade edition that brought his story to a wider audience.

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[LAWRENCE, T.E.] Seven Pillars of Wisdom. A Triumph. [Privately Printed, 1926]. Quarto (251 by 188mm.). The subscribers' or "Cranwell" edition, one of 32 “incomplete” copies (from an edition of 211 copies) (annotated “Incomplete copy | I.XII.26 TES” on page XIX), presentation copy inscribed by the author to E.M. Forster (“E.M.F. | from | T.E.S. | Not good enough, but as good, apparently, as I can do. | I.XII.26.”) on preliminary blank together with later inscription from E.M. Forster to Bob Buckingham (“R.J. Buckingham | from | E.M. Forster | 20-1-68”) on preliminary blank, printed in red and black, frontispiece portrait of King Feysal after Augustus John and 62 (of 65) plates (mostly in colour) and other text illustrations after Roberts, Kennington, Nash, Nicholson and others, 4 folding coloured maps, decorative initials by Edward Wadsworth.

Original full tan morocco signed by Sangorski and Sutcliffe, tooled in gilt on covers, spine gilt in compartments, endpapers by Kennington, collector’s tan morocco backed folding box with thirty typed leaves and one handwritten leaf by Forster, occasional light spotting, one of the most complete of the “incomplete copies” but lacking plates ‘Waterfalls’ and ‘Mountains’ (within the plates following the text) and ‘Prophet’s Tomb’ (not listed, but noted by O’Brien).

O'Brien A040.

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Images courtesy of Sotheby's, with our thanks.
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You Can Smoke William Faulkner's Pipe For Only $3,000-$5,000

by Stephen J. Gertz

One of Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Faulkner's tobacco pipes is being offered at auction house PBA Galleries Fine Literature - Cooking & Gastronomy sale, today, August 30, 2012.

It is estimated to sell for between $3000 - $5000.

Residue is still present in the bowl. Faulkner was a well-known pipe smoker photographed many times with one in his hand or mouth but matching this pipe to those appearing in his photos has yet, and will likely never, succeed; there is not enough detail in the photos to make an accurate comparison. We can only  imagine what he was doing or writing while burning shag in this smokeshaft.

This pipe was one of several that were rescued from Faulkner's home after his death by his stepson Malcolm Franklin. The pipe wound up in the possession of William Boozer, the noted Faulkner collector and editor of The Faulkner Newsletter.  Professor James B. Meriwether, editor of several volumes of Faulkner's letters and interviews, was, apparently, the liaison between Franklin and Boozer.

A note in Meriwether's hand and signed twice by Franklin attesting to the pipe's provenance, along with two typed notes, signed, from William Boozer (one on the same sheet as the signed statement), accompany the pipe.

Will you be inspired to write if you snag this pipe? Will some aspiring scribe in Vermont win the bidding, smoke the pipe, and subsequently pen a Northern Gothic novel about a county with a  name impossible to pronounce populated by New Englanders who speak with a  drawl?

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Tobacco pipe, approximately 14.5x5 cm (5¾x2"), manufactured by Digby of London. Accompanied by a pouch and box from a Dunhill pipe. Stamped on bottom with maker's name, city and number 135.
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Pipe images courtesy of PBA Galleries, with our thanks.
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