Tag Archives: theatre

New catalogue: Literary Manuscripts and Correspondence of James Elroy Flecker

Guest post by Lilia Kanu
Easter intern at Bodleian Libraries Archives & Modern Manuscripts


Photograph of James Elroy Flecker [c.1911-1914], Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. 21234/1

A collection of books and manuscripts related to the poet James Elroy Flecker (1884-1915) has now been catalogued and is available to view at the Weston Library. This small collection spans the period from 1902 to 1951, with papers dating from his late school years up to decades beyond his death. Although it is a small collection, the contents of these five boxes are nonetheless fruitful and intriguing.

Flecker was born in London and first attended Dean Close School in Cheltenham, where his father was headmaster. In 1902, he won a classical scholarship to study at Trinity College, Oxford, where he spent his time writing poetry characterised by his growing interest in Parnassianism and being a sociable conversationalist with his peers. After several stints as a schoolmaster in schools in London and Yorkshire, in 1908 he attended Caius College, Cambridge where he studied oriental languages to prepare for consular service. From 1910, he was stationed in Constantinople [Istanbul], and then Beirut, as vice-consul, but he oscillated between his posts abroad and living in England due to bouts of illness.

He married Helle Skiadaressi (1882-1961) in 1911. Due to his long-term struggle with tuberculosis, he retired and moved to Switzerland in 1913, where he lived out his final years. Here, he continued to write and published his most notable work, The Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913). He died aged 31 in January 1915, and many of his poems were posthumously published, as were his two acclaimed plays Hassan (1922) and Don Juan (1925).

This collection was brought together from several different sources by Howard Moseley before arriving at the Bodleian. The boxes include a plethora of items, including manuscript drafts of Flecker’s published and unpublished poetry and plays written throughout his life, as well as his personal correspondence with other notable contemporaries such as John Mavrogordato and Edward Marsh. There are also books which Flecker owned and annotated, including one with an 18 line comic poem inscribed into the title page of The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (1904). There are also posthumously produced sources, such as a proof copy of T.E. Lawrence’s An Essay on Flecker (1937), alongside ephemera and clippings from publications such as The Times containing obituaries, featuring his poems, or reviewing various productions of Flecker’s plays. Amongst the materials produced after his death are letters from his wife, Helle, to the same recipients of the letters written by Flecker himself which are also present in the archive.

A striking element of this collection is the broad temporal and geographic scope from which these items were produced: there are letters written from Switzerland, manuscript poems written in Beirut, and postcards sent from his alma mater – and family home – in Cheltenham. These materials had obviously been in different hands and travelled across continents, with many of the manuscripts or bounded books being accompanied by postcards or letters between Flecker and others. The same names continuously pop up in his correspondence, evincing some valued, long-lasting friendships. There is much evident interaction with these materials, as seen by the extensive marginalia, fingerprint marks, and other signs of use. Each item can be placed at distinct points of Flecker’s lamentably short life, the latter fact which is heightened by the sentimental features of the posthumous sources written about his life and his impact – a quality which, as a fervent Parnassian, Flecker might have been averse to! You get a sense of the impact Flecker had in his loved ones’ lives; the letters from his wife to Flecker’s friends are characterised by black edged writing paper as a symbol of mourning, and Heller Nichols’ copy of Hassan features a cut-out from The Times stating that ‘it was James Elroy Flecker’s dream to live long enough to see his first play Hassan produced’. In some of his items, Flecker’s personality shines through – especially amusing was reading of his preference to write in ink, noting below a typescript copy of one of his poems, ‘excuse the typing on a mad writing machine’!

Printed copy of Hassan in German, translated by Albert Langen, München, 1914 (inscribed ‘W. Heller Nicholls’), Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. 21234/4

Typescript draft of ‘The True Paradise’ [c.1914], by J.E. Flecker, Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS.21234/1

This is overall a lovely small collection of materials relating to Flecker, and will be of interest for early 20th century English poetry and further insight into Flecker’s life.

-Lilia Kanu, Balliol College


This collection complements the Literary Papers of James Elroy Flecker already held at the Bodleian Libraries.

Congratulations, have a fish

Congratulation letters are a common feature of archives, celebrating milestones like getting a new job, having a baby, or winning awards and honours. There are many bundles of these letters and telegrams in the archive of George Villiers, the 6th Earl of Clarendon (1877-1955) which pat him on the back at moments including the birth of a son (July 1916), and being appointed Governor General of South Africa (1930). They range from paid-by-the-word concise telegrams to long and effusive letters, but they’re pretty predictable – there aren’t too many ways to say congrats on your new job after all.

Tag for a congratulatory fish, from the archive of the Earls of Clarendon (2nd creation), April 1938

Tag for a congratulatory fish, April 1938 [click to enlarge]

Until I came across this, in a pile of about 100 letters celebrating Lord Clarendon’s appointment as Lord Chamberlain of the Household.

The congratulatory fish was sent to the Earl by the Fisher family from Ednam House Hotel in Kelso, Scotland. Hopefully it arrived in London in lots of ice.

The Lord Chamberlain post was the culmination of the 6th Earl’s long career in government and public service. It also reflected the Hyde and Villiers’ families longstanding connections with the royal household which went back to the 1st Earl of the 1st creation, Edward Hyde, who not only served as Lord Chancellor to Charles II in the 1660s, but was the grandfather of two queens: Mary and Anne. More recently, the 6th Earl’s own father, the 5th Earl, Edward Hyde Villiers, had served as Lord Chamberlain from 1900-1905.

The job is an onerous one. As the most senior officer in the royal household, responsibilities include organising all ceremonial activity, including coronations and the State Opening of Parliament. Before 1968, the Lord Chamberlain also acted as the official theatre censor and bane of playwrights, with the power to ban plays when it was “fitting for the preservation of good manners, decorum or of the public peace“.

The 6th Earl was Lord Chamberlain for 14 years until officially relinquishing the role on 21 October 1952 at the age of 75, on medical advice. He was the second longest-serving Lord Chamberlain of the 20th century and during his term was responsible for the ceremonial for royal events including the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip in 1947 and the 1952 funeral of King George VI.

These papers, of the Earls of Clarendon of the second creation, are currently being catalogued and will be available to readers in 2022.

Common Threads: From Past to the Present

The race and diversity narratives project with the Bodleian Libraries and the Museum of Oxford allowed me to explore a crucial aspect of the city of Oxford and its inhabitants. For my research I looked at the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) archives, dating back to the 1960s, directly in correlation with the contemporary Rhodes Must Fall (RMF) 2.0 protests from summer and the global Black Lives Matter movement.

MSS. AAM 607. Reproduced with the permission of the Anti-Apartheid Movement Archives Committee.

MSS. AAM 607. Reproduced with the permission of the Anti-Apartheid Movement Archives Committee.

It was fascinating to trace the common elements between these two historical protests that the city of Oxford has witnessed. The simple but powerful Black Power Fist signifies just how connected the movements are. A poster from the 1980s for ‘End Repression in South Africa’ depicts a man raising his fist and can be directly compared with a picture from 2020 RMF movement and a protestor using the same powerful symbol.

Beyond significant symbols, the city as a space, the involvement of the students and city dwellers together, all become a part of the continued common history.

‘Rhodes Must Fall’ in Oxford, June 2020.

‘Rhodes Must Fall’ in Oxford, June 2020.

The AAM archives hold several letters and correspondences between the local chapter and the national one, between AAM and Oxford citizens who want to be more involved and supportive of the movement, minutes and proceedings of Oxford City Meetings and AAM meetings. The call for protests above is similar to the calls we send out today, the method of dissemination might have evolved, the sentiment remains the same – to unify and stand together.

One particular incident that stood out to me was the boycott of the Apollo Theatre during the Christmas of 1987 because the theatre starred Marti Caine, an actress who said: ‘The best thing we can do for the blacks is send them back into the jungle to recover their culture.’ The protest and the boycott led to Caine issuing a public apology and signing the AAM petition. Caine and Rhodes, Apollo Theatre and Oriel College, these are not the same issues, but similar in how spaces and people come to represent ideologies, often extremely problematic ones, but simultaneously how a unified stand against such ideas brings them down.

The idea of common elements or ‘threads’ between the two protests, for me, reflects how the fight for racial equality is an ongoing conversation and struggle but it has multiple sides to it. While the positives show that the people of Oxford have time and again stood up against the injustice, the counter-question becomes why have these injustices continued well into the 21st century? A critical exploration of archives at the Bodleian relating to the city of Oxford allowed me to ask these questions while contributing to and continuing the conversation. It is perhaps in these historically extending common threads across the decades that the meaning of ‘a movement and not a moment’ truly shines through as minority identities continue their struggles against historical and contemporary injustices.

MS. 18592/3, item 6.

MS. 18592/3, item 6.

Devika
Summer Intern 2020, Bodleian Libraries and Museum of Oxford
MPhil Modern South Asian Studies (2019-2021), St Antony’s College, University of Oxford

 

The Natasha Spender archive is now available

Programme for a piano recital by Natasha Litvin (later Spender) in 1944, from MS. 6647/54The archive of Natasha Spender, concert pianist, academic, and wife of the poet Stephen Spender, is now available.

Natasha Spender, Lady Spender, née Litvin (or Evans), was born on 18 April 1919, the illegitimate daughter of Ray Litvin and Edwin Evans, who was a well-respected (but married) Times music critic.

Ray Litvin (d. 1977) was from a family of Lithuanian Jewish refugees and grew up in Glasgow. She became an actress and was by 1915 a regular with Lilian Baylis’s Old Vic theatre company but in 1926 her career was crushed when she caught typhoid fever and became profoundly deaf.

Young Natasha, who had been fostered out during her early years, went on to spend her holidays with the wealthy and very musical family of George Booth (son of the social reformer Charles Booth) and his wife Margaret at their home Funtington House in West Sussex. A gifted pianist, Natasha trained at the Royal College of Music and following graduation, studied with the musician and composer Clifford Curzon and the pianist Franz Osborn before starting her professional career. During the war, she gave concerts for ENSA and in 1943 she, along with the actress Dame Peggy Ashcroft and the poet Cecil Day-Lewis, founded the Apollo Society which presented poetry with a musical accompaniment. She appeared often on television and radio including as the soloist in the very first concert televised by the BBC. She also gave recitals in the UK and abroad, including a concert for former prisoners in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In the 1960s Natasha made a move into academia after earning a degree in psychology and from 1970 to 1984 she taught music psychology and visual perception at the Royal College of Art. She later contributed to the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

Natasha met the poet Stephen Spender in 1940 at a lunch party hosted by Horizon, a literary journal that Stephen was co-editing at the time. They married in 1941. For decades, the Spenders were central figures in the London (and international) literary scene, with Stephen Spender’s career as a writer, professor, lecturer, editor and delegate taking them all over the world, with long periods in America.

In the 1950s, Natasha became friends with the terminally alcoholic, noir author Raymond Chandler, who fell in love with her. The exact nature of their relationship became an ongoing source of speculation among his biographers. This, along with controversies over unauthorized biographies and interpretations of Stephen Spender’s life led to Natasha fighting hard for the rights of biographical subjects and particularly for her husband’s reputation. Following Stephen Spender’s death in 1995, Natasha founded the Stephen Spender Memorial Trust, which continues to promote poetry in translation, and she collaborated first with John Sutherland on an official biography of her husband (published in 2004) and then with Lara Feigel on an updated edition of Spender’s journals (published in 2012). Natasha also published articles about friends and associates, including Dame Edith Sitwell and Raymond Chandler, and her archive includes an unfinished memoir covering the early years of her life and marriage. She died on 21 October 2010 at the age of 91.

The papers will be of interest to readers researching the history of early twentieth century theatre and performance, the academic field of visual perception, and the literary circle of Stephen Spender.