MAGAZINE Summer 2016 ISSUE 32
£3.50
reading between the lines Andrew Martin inspects the shelves for his pick of the Library’s railway titles
Sheridan and ‘the school for scandal’
The first performance of Sheridan’s play is recounted by Linda Kelly on the bicentenary of the playwright’s death
London’s forgotten black radical
David Horspool looks back on the life of the Chartist William Cuffay and his mistreatment by the British Establishment
The London Library Magazine / issue 32
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Contents
David Horspool relates the story of William Cuffay, the son of a West Indian slave and a radical member of the Chartists, the first great working-class movement in British history. Cuffay’s participation in a violent uprising in 1848 resulted in a harsh punishment by the British justice system that reflects the prejudice of the nation at the time.
5 FROM THE LIBRARIAN 6 Contributors 8 BEHIND THE BOOK
Red Saunders, William Cuffay and the London Chartists, 1842 (detail), 2014. © Red Saunders.
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Tanya Harrod’s essays, written over 30 years and collected in The Real Thing, benefited greatly from the discoveries she made on the Library’s open shelves during the same period
11 MY DISCOVERY A book in the British Security section of the back stacks offered Marcy Kahan the framework she needed for her play on Noël Coward
Richard Brinsley Sheridan died 200 years ago this month. Linda Kelly looks back to one of the great moments of his career, the triumphant opening night of his play The School for Scandal at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on 8 May 1777.
12 London’s forgotten black radical David Horspool remembers William Cuffay, the black political activist whose strong convictions resulted in violence and exile
Joshua Reynolds, R.B. Sheridan (detail), 1788–9. © House of Commons, London.
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16 SHERIDAN and ‘the school for scandal’ Linda Kelly celebrates the first performance of Sheridan’s most famous play
19 POEtry The winner of this year’s Cosmo Davenport-Hines Prize
Andrew Martin has been exploring the Railways &c. shelfmark and finding much to enjoy, from the visual pleasures of a book on the Orient Express to the lengthy lists of stations and journeys compiled in Bradshaw’s railway timetable of April 1910
20 hidden corners Andrew Martin, a writer whose work often features railways, describes his pick of the Library’s titles on the subject
25 MEMBERS’ NEWS
LNER ‘Peppercorn’ Class A2 Pacific no.60532 Blue Peter waiting to leave Aberdeen on the 13.30 express The Grampian to Glasgow, 1966. Photograph © Bill Wright.
p
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 3
A Midsummer Night’s Dream The Taming of the Shrew Macbeth The Two Gentlemen of Verona Imogen Cymbeline renamed and reclaimed The Merchant of Venice
946 The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk The Inn at Lydda Kneehigh’s
Kneehigh’s
Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts We hold specialist book sales throughout the year, ranging from single items to complete libraries.
Upcoming sales: 27th July & 28th September 1 Colville Road, London W3 8BL 020 8992 4442
chiswickauctions.co.uk 4 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
free valuations Monday to Friday 10am – 6pm nicholas@chiswickauctions.co.uk
f rom the L I B R A R I A N ‘The desire to know more, the desire to feel more, and, accompanying these but not strangling them, the desire to help others: here, briefly, is the human aim, and the Library exists to further it.’
On the cover
Steam train in the Norfolk countryside (detail), 2014. Photograph © Mel Kirby.
These words were written by E.M. Forster in 1941 when the Library was celebrating its 100th anniversary beneath the Blitz, and they remain true today as we celebrate our 175th anniversary. I witnessed this vividly in May throughout our literary celebration, Words In The Square, and I see it in every issue of the magazine as member-writers give freely of their knowledge and skill. And from the many members who tell me so, I know how warmly the magazine is welcomed in very many households. In our summer issue, David Horspool introduces us to the remarkable William Cuffay and his role in the Chartist movement, fighting for some of the most basic democratic rights and principles we are all now inclined to take for granted. His activism cost him his freedom; transported to Tasmania, he died in poverty but remained well respected, described as ‘an inveterate reader’ to the end. Linda Kelly marks the bicentenary of the death of Richard Brinsley Sheridan by taking us back to 1777 with her account of the original Drury Lane production of The School for Scandal, a work destined to become a favourite of audiences and actors alike. Turning to the twentyfirst century, we are delighted, as ever, to publish the winning poem from this year’s Cosmo Davenport-Hines Prize. Discoveries in the stacks are such an intrinsic part of membership of The London Library that it is always a joy to hear of them. Tanya Harrod reveals some of the volumes that inspired her latest collection of essays on art, design and craft, while Marcy Kahan takes us on a spy hunt and Andrew Martin unveils the hidden world of railways (which turns out to be surprisingly irresistible). Members’ News looks back to the glorious sunshine of Words In The Square and forwards to the year ahead to which I must add an important date: our 175th Annual General Meeting will take place on Wednesday, 9 November 2016 at 6pm. Finally, if anyone would like to read the whole of Forster’s eloquent tribute to the Library in 1941, we have reprinted it in On Reading, Writing and Living with Books, one of the titles in our ‘Found on the Shelves’ series with Pushkin Press. It is well worth reading and available now in bookshops and directly from the Library.
Inez T.P.A. Lynn Librarian
Published on behalf of The London Library by Royal Academy Enterprises Ltd. Colour reproduction by adtec. Printed by Tradewinds London. Published 1 July 2016 © 2016. The London Library. ISSN 2398-4201 The opinions in this particular publication do not necessarily reflect the views of The London Library. All reasonable attempts have been made to clear copyright before publication.
Editorial Publishers Jane Grylls and Kim Jenner Editor Mary Scott Design and production Catherine Cartwright Picture research Charlotte Burgess
Editorial committee David Breuer Emma Marlow Helen O’Neill Peter Parker Philip Spedding Erica Wagner
Advertising Jane Grylls 020 7300 5661 Kim Jenner 020 7300 5658 Charlotte Burgess 020 7300 5675 Development Office, The London Library 020 7766 4704
Magazine feedback and editorial enquiries should be addressed to magazine@londonlibrary.co.uk THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 5
CONTRIBUTORS
The BP exhibition
Sunken cities Egypt’s lost worlds Supported by BP
Jamie Foo Jamie Foo is from Singapore and currently studying English Literature at King’s College London. She is a lover of puns and spokenword poetry, and hopes one day to find the courage to put on a performance in front of a crowd. Her poems explore relationships and how modern communication has changed them, as well as her own love-hate relationship with the difficult but satisfying process of writing.
Tanya Harrod joined the library in 1979 Tanya Harrod is the author of the The Crafts in Britain in the Twentieth Century (1999). With Glenn Adamson and Edward S. Cooke she is the editor of the Journal of Modern Craft. The Last Sane Man: Michael Cardew, Modern Pots, Colonialism and the Counterculture (2012) won the 2013 James Tait Black Prize for biography. Her latest book, The Real Thing: Essays on Making in the Modern World (2015), is published by Hyphen Press.
Book now
David Horspool
Photo: Christoph Gerigk. © Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation.
britishmuseum.org #SunkenCities
joined the library in 2005
David Horspool is History editor of the Times Literary Supplement. He is the author of The English Rebel (2009), Alfred the Great (2014) and, most recently, Richard III: A Ruler and his Reputation (2015).
Marcy Kahan
joined the library in 1984
Marcy Kahan was born in Montreal, educated in Oxford and Paris and now lives in London. Her work includes the BBC2 screenplay, Antonia & Jane, and over 30 original plays for BBC radio. Her Radio 4 dramatisations include Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and P.G. Wodehouse’s Psmith in the City. She is currently working on the fifth series of her award-winning Radio 4 romantic comedy, Lunch.
Linda Kelly joined the library in 1967 Linda Kelly’s books include Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1997), Ireland’s Minstrel: A Life of Tom Moore (2006) and, most recently, Holland House (2013). She has written for the Times Literary Supplement, the Washington Post and numerous other publications, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Wordsworth Trust. Her forthcoming book, Talley in London: Prince Talleyrand’s Last Mission, will be published by I.B. Tauris early next year.
Andrew Martin joined the library in 1999 Paul Rumsey Library Head (Octagon) Charcoal 74 x 54 cms
DRAWN TO THE LINE
Contemporary and Modern British Drawings 13 July – 5 August 2016 PIERS FEETHAM GALLERY
475 Fulham Road, London SW6 1HL 020 7381 3031 www.piersfeethamgallery.com Tues-Fri 10-6; Sat 10-1
6 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
Andrew Martin is a prolific journalist and author; he has also written and presented a number of TV documentaries. His novels include the crime series featuring the Edwardian railwayman, Jim Stringer. His most recent non-fiction book is Belles & Whistles: Five Journeys Through Time on Britain’s Trains (2014). His latest novel (nothing to do with trains, but about the superrich of Mayfair) is The Yellow Diamond (2015).
C U LT U R A L TO U RS F O R D I S C E R N I N G T R AV E L L E R S
Kirker Holidays provides a range of carefully crafted escorted holidays, with fascinating itineraries designed for those with an interest in history, art, archaeology, architecture, gardens and music. Groups typically consist of 12-22 like-minded travellers, in the company of an expert Tour Lecturer.
THE ROMANTICS IN ROME Lord Byron, The Shelleys and Keats
A FIVE NIGHT HOLIDAY | 19 OCTOBER 2016 The decaying beauty of the Eternal City provided an irresistible source of inspiration to some of the 19th century’s greatest writers and poets, including Byron, Keats and the Shelleys. In the company of Keats scholar Angus Graham-Campbell we will explore Rome from the perspective of these great Romantics, including not only ancient monuments such as the Colosseum and the Forum, but also the places where they lived, wrote and died. Price £1,498 per person for five nights including return flights, accommodation with breakfast, three dinners, all sightseeing, entrance fees and gratuities and the services of the Kirker Tour Lecturer and a Tour Escort.
SICILY – AN ENIGMATIC ISLAND A NINE NIGHT HOLIDAY | 2 OCTOBER 2016 Our tour is based for the first four nights in Syracuse which was once the most important city in Magna Graecia. We will visit a private palace in Catania and spend some time in Taormina. In Agrigento we shall see the spectacular Valley of the Temples before moving on to Palermo, a city of great contrasts. We will also visit the great Norman Royal Palace and the Chapel of the Kings and the Martorana with its impressive Norman tower.Visits will be made to Monreale Cathedral and Segesta with its romantic collection of Doric temples and Selinunte. Price from £2,370 per person for nine nights including flights, accommodation with breakfast, nine dinners, all sightseeing, entrance fees and gratuities and the services of the Kirker Tour Lecturer.
PALACES & GALLERIES OF ST. PETERSBURG A FIVE NIGHT HOLIDAY | 6 OCTOBER 2016 Our six night tour to the city created by Peter the Great at the far end of the Baltic provides one of the most culturally stimulating holidays imaginable.Visits include the Winter Palace, now home to the Hermitage, and the summer palaces including Pavlovsk, the Catherine Palace and Peterhof. We also visit the Russian Museum with its unmatched collection of icons. This tour is based at the 4* superior Angleterre Hotel. Price from £1,897 for five nights including flights, accommodation with breakfast, five dinners, two lunches, a Russian visa service, all sightseeing, entrance fees and gratuities and the services of the Kirker Tour Lecturer.
Speak to an expert or request a brochure:
020 7593 2284 quote code XLO www.kirkerholidays.com
Behind the
Book
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The London Library has always been a crucial resource for Tanya Harrod, with books on its open shelves that are as surprising, unlikely and oddly interlinked as her borderland interests
Tanya Harrod’s The Real Thing: Essays on Making in the Modern World (Hyphen Press, 2015).
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My book The Real Thing: Essays on Making in the Modern World (Hyphen Press, 2015) is a collection of short pieces written over 30 years. Most discuss making and craft, in the broadest sense. I’ve always tried to avoid hierarchies and boundaries, so art is looked at in the light of craft, and craft in the light of art; and design is seen as an activity that runs through all visual disciplines. Many of these essays are about the impact of modernity and the politics of work.
The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner by Daniel Defoe, illustrations by George Cruikshank (London 1890). Fiction. Young designers are drawn to Robinson Crusoe because they learn about the perils of starting from scratch. Failure is painful – as when Crusoe decides to escape. He cuts down a tree and takes three months to hollow out the trunk. But the boat he makes turns out to be too heavy to drag down to the sea. Poor Crusoe concludes that the boat is ‘a Memorandum to teach me to be wiser next Time’ . As in no other novel, objects – a lump of beeswax, a home-made shovel, and a kettle for which Crusoe longs – take centre stage. There are several illustrated editions in the Library but Cruikshank’s are among the nicest. The Nature and Art of Workmanship by David Pye (Cambridge 1968). A. Art. This short book offers a very focused look at different types of workmanship. Sentimental ideas about the delights of handwork are given short shrift. Instead Pye draws a distinction between the workmanship of risk – in which the result depends upon the judgment and dexterity of the maker – and the workmanship of certainty which characterises fully automated mass production. Both have their uses and, to make his impartiality clear, Pye writes admiringly of a pull-tab
8 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
drinks can, a humble enough object which would be very difficult to make by hand. The Wheelwright’s Shop by George Sturt (Cambridge 1923). S. Industries. A beautifully written classic that inspired the critic F.R. Leavis and the designer John Chris Jones. It attempts to describe the indescribable – the tacit or practical knowledge of the wagon builders and wheelwrights in the workshop that Sturt inherited from his father. This kind of knowledge, only acquired through practice, set out in no book and involving a deep understanding of materials, still fascinates designers and writers on design. Scrutiny: A Quarterly Review (Cambridge 1932–63). Periodicals. Unlimited access to historic periodicals is a delight, and reading Scrutiny, particularly the numbers edited by Leavis and Denys Thompson, is a fascinating experience. Neither Leavis nor Thompson appears to have much experience of rural life but rural crafts, customs, song and speech are identified as crucial to the national culture. What they term the ‘organic community’ is set against suburbanism which, Adrian Bell argues in an article of 1934, is ‘paralysing true feeling at the source’ . Scrutiny’s pages convey the weird spiritual and intellectual stasis of the 1930s, in which the desperate problems of the period were to be solved by invoking the land and the past and by
offering up books like The Wheelwright’s Shop as a model. Hand to Mouth and Other Essays by Idris Parry (Manchester 1981). L. German Lit., Hist. of. Idris Parry was a great scholar of German literature who made his learning accessible through frequent broadcasts on the BBC Third Programme during the 1960s and 1970s. He possessed an unusual sensitivity to the material world and its impact on writers like Rainer Maria Rilke. Hand to Mouth includes ‘Kleist’s Puppets’ , one of his loveliest essays, on Heinrich von Kleist’s 1810 piece ‘On the Marionette Theatre’ . Puppets come up quite often in my writing – they are the ultimate borderland art form – and I first learned about Kleist through reading Parry. The Treasure Chest: ‘Unexpected Reunion’ and Other Stories by Johann Peter Hebel, illustrated with contemporary woodcuts, trans. John Hibberd (London 1994). Fiction, 4to. This book indirectly inspired The Real Thing because its anecdotes, curiosities and stories, first published in 1811 in collected form, portray people and objects, different trades, high life and low life, with all the clarity of folk or fairy tales. It is the real thing, a book that cannot fail to make you happy. Physically, this edition is a very beautiful object in its own right, to be treasured for its appearance as much as for its contents.
See London from an unusual viewpoint. Spend a day exploring the capital in the company of an expert. Martin Randall Travel London Days focus on some aspect of art, architecture or history and are designed to illuminate and inspire. Exclusive and special arrangements feature: from access to TfL’s historic headquarters at 55 Broadway to champagne at the Savoy; a private organ recital in a West End church to lunch at Middle Temple Hall.
London’s Underground Railway A history & appreciation of the Tube 12 September 2016 & 19 October 2016 Led by Andrew Martin
Tours include: Shakespeare’s London • The London Backstreet Walk – from Hyde Park to The Tower • Modern Sculpture in London • Arts & Crafts – Red House to Voysey House • Byzantine Glories – Golden Mosaics in London M ARTIN RANDALL T R AV E L
For more tours, visit martinrandall.com/london-days
‘We were promised delights and surprises and we were not disappointed.’
L E A D I N G E X P E R T S I N C U LT U R A L T O U R S
BURLINGTON HOUSE SUMMER LATES Join us for three special evenings (18.00-21.00) and explore Burlington House Courtyard like never before! •
Friday, 24 June
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Visitors will be able to choose from a range of activities – exhibitions, demonstrations, lectures and tours – held around the courtyard.
Burlington House Piccadilly, London W1J 0BA
Free activities at the Society of Antiquaries (reservations not required); activities at other locations may require booking.
DETAILS: WWW.SAL.ORG.UK/EVENTS
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020 8742 3355 martinrandall.com/london-days
KATHARINE CHURCH 1910-1999
A Life In Colour The Later Years
Katharine Church, the Dorset & Bloomsbury connected painter. This 288 page book with over 200 colour illustrations of oils & works on paper, Chronology, and photographs, which gives an insight into this powerful painter with major artistic connections. Text by John Duncalfe. Foreword by Vivienne Light MA FRSA ISBN 978-0-9567177-3-3 This Publication is available from: Amazon.co.uk, the Publishers: tillingtonpress@hotmail.co.uk Bookstores and Gallery Art shops.
Hard back: £35 (£5 p&p) UK Order by email or send remittance to: Tillington Press, PO Box 736, Harrogate HG1 4EE or by Paypal at www.tillingtonpress.com
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 9
lity a N Qu KI C g BU hin c OF Y ea IT T S R for VE I r UN ea E Y e TH th f yo t i rs e v i Un M
A GH
Master’s in the History of the English Country House, 1485-1945 October 2016 to September 2017
A one-year, interdisciplinary programme, directed by Adrian The ten seminars are led by an internationally distinguished group of Tinniswood, OBE, enabling students to examine the interrelation experts. Speakers will include: between architecture, art, and social history in the evolution of the country house from the Tudors to the end of the Second World War. Simon Thurley Jeremy Musson John Goodall Lisa White Gavin Stamp Steven Parissien Based in central London, but designed also for those who may live further afield, the course enables students to undertake Those wishing to attend the seminars, but not to undertake independent research on a topic of their choice under expert dissertation, may join the course as Associate Students at a reduced fee. supervision. Assessment is by a dissertation. A central feature of the programme is its series of evening seminars For further details contact: Ms Claire Prendergast on 01280 820204 and post-seminar dinners in a London club, in Pall Mall, at which E: claire.prendergast@buckingham.ac.uk www.buckingham.ac.uk/ma-country-house participants can engage in general discussion with the speakers.
THE UNIVERSITY OF
BUCKINGHAM
LONDON PROGRAMMES
My DISCOVERY
Marcy Kahan on her chance find in the stacks of a book about a British espionage division which gave her the vital details she needed for her radio play about Noël Coward
BRITISH SECURITY COORDINATION The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas 1940–45, introduction by Nigel West (1998) In January 2000, a few weeks after Noël Coward’s 100th birthday, BBC Radio 4 broadcast my play, Design For Murder, which depicts the playwright, actor and composer as an amateur detective in 1938, investigating a backstage murder. It had been commissioned by the radio producer Ned Chaillet, who knew of my lifelong admiration of the man whom many call the Master but whom I, with more objectivity, think of as God. Radio 4 then requested a Noël Coward detective series, but I argued that his life was too fascinating to be restricted to a London-based mystery series. Indeed, one of the interesting things I knew about him was that he’d worked undercover for British Intelligence. I proposed a series of four plays, set at different times and locations, starting with a 1940 New Yorkbased espionage adventure, which was accepted. I began drafting this play, Blithe Spy, aiming to invent an effervescent scenario rooted in fact. Coward’s wartime memoir, Future Indefinite (1954), reveals how he was recruited as an agent while he was in New York by the Canadian businessman, William Stephenson, who was setting up a unit of British propaganda at Rockefeller Center during the years of American neutrality. Stephenson was enlisting amateur helpers, notable for their looks, charm and cleverness. The more research I did, however, the more uncertain the facts became. At the height of my research crisis, I attended a friend’s birthday dinner, and found myself seated next to the eminent biographer Michael Holroyd. He asked me what I was working on. ‘A Noël Coward espionage adventure. Only problem, I’ve no idea what he
actually got up to. ’ ‘Ah,’ Michael replied. ‘That suggests he was an effective spy. ’ ‘I’m sure he was,’ I said. ‘But I’ve discovered that the biographies of his spymaster are riddled with mendacious claims about his unit’s activities. Hard to know what’s true, inflated or even deliberately distorted. ’ Then Michael gave me some wise advice. ‘When you’re dealing with an unreliable source, you must ring-fence the indisputable facts and ignore the rest. ’ The following Monday morning found me descending into the stacks of The London Library, clutching my espionage book list. I scanned the shelves for a book about Stephenson’s spy-training centre in Ontario, and that’s when it happened. The title on the spine leapt out at me: British Security Coordination. This was the name of Stephenson’s espionage division. It had a subtitle: The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas 1940–45. There was no author. The book began with a proviso: ‘This publication has not been officially endorsed by Her Majesty’s Government. ’ The introduction by military historian Nigel West explained that these documents had been commissioned by Stephenson in 1945 as a complete and authentic record of BSC’s operations. What I had in my hands was a 500page volume of ‘the ring-fenced facts’ which Michael Holroyd had advised me that I needed. The book is written in the style of a government report, providing precise details of how this amateur New York unit became expert at propaganda, surveillance of enemy spies and infiltration of double agents. There was no mention of Coward or indeed any agent
Noël Coward, 1940. Photographer/artist: Bettmann. Getty Images.
by name. The book inspired me to design a Hitchcockian plot featuring dastardly Axis agents, a McGuffin document outlining a proposed attack on US West Coast ports, and a highly suspicious pair of Scandinavian diplomats. A few months ago, I was chatting to Rick Stroud in the Members’ Room about the book he’s writing on female agents of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). I told him about my discovery of the BSC documents. He responded with polite incredulity. I left Rick and descended to the stacks. Perhaps I had dreamt the whole incident? I have often been helped in my playwriting by falling asleep, then springing awake with an idea or image that unlocks the play. I scanned the H. European War II shelves. No sign of it. Then suddenly (all London Library stackexplorers are familiar with this huntergatherer’s moment of excitement) there it was: British Security Coordination. Only this time, there were two copies. THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 11
london’s forgotten
black radical David Horspool tells the remarkable story of the Chartist leader and activist William Cuffay, who was let down by the British judiciary system and unfairly treated by the ‘free’ press
At the production of A Christmas Carol in the West End this winter, the Ghost of Christmas Present showed Scrooge a photograph of a great gathering, enlarged to fill the entire backdrop, which she described as a meeting of the ‘homeless’ . It’s an arresting image, strikingly bringing to life an episode almost from the time in which the play is set, though in fact taken six years later, in 1848, not 1842. The 12 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
black-and-white daguerreotype, taken by the fashionable portrait photographer William Edward Kilburn, shows not a demonstration of the homeless, but a mass meeting of Chartists on Kennington Common, South London, on 10 April 1848. Thousands of covered heads are turned away from the camera, focused on the platform where an indistinct handful of figures are standing. This is said to
be the first photograph of a crowd. In its anonymity, and the power it derives simply from the weight of numbers shown, it stands as appropriately mute testimony to a political campaign that has never quite imprinted itself on the popular consciousness. Chartism might fairly be described as at once the most well-supported and the least successful popular movement
Opposite Daguerreotype by William Edward Kilburn of the Chartist meeting on Kennington Common, South London, 10 April 1848. Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2016. Right William Cuffay ‘Drawn in his Cell in Newgate’, lithograph after William Paul Dowling, 1848. © National Portrait Gallery.
in British history. In the short term, that is. The movement took its name from the People’s Charter drawn up in 1838 by the radical activists William Lovett, a cabinetmaker from Cornwall, and Francis Place, a Charing Cross tailor. The six points they settled on were not particularly new. They included a vote for men over the age of 21, the secret ballot, payment for MPs and annual parliamentary elections. All had been mooted in the late eighteenth century, and nearly all (and in the case of votes for women, more) would eventually pass into the constitution of the United Kingdom. But by that time, more than half a century had passed, and the lives of those who had espoused the Charter had often been wrecked: driven into poverty, their principles ignored or ridiculed, and, in a few desperate cases, subject to the full force of the law. By 1848, the great surge of popularity that had brought Chartists out in ‘monster meetings’ across the country at the movement’s inception, with gatherings in Lancashire and Yorkshire of over 250,000 people, had passed. Perhaps 25,000 individuals came together at Kennington Common to march together towards Westminster to deliver yet another petition to Parliament in favour of the People’s Charter. In the event, the Chartist leader Feargus O’Connor was persuaded that official resistance to the march would be too great, and the Chartists were advised to disperse, their petition taken in cabs to the House of Commons. The photograph of Kennington Common was bought by Prince Albert, perhaps wanting to remember that this peaceful-looking convocation was the nearest his wife’s realm had come to succumbing to insurrection during a year of consternating European
upheaval. The Royal family had in fact been spirited away to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight on the day itself, in anticipation of an act of revolution that never came. The mainstream press took pleasure in the outcome and that, as an editorial in The Times put it, ‘the signal of unconstitutional menace, of violence, of insurrection, of revolution, was yesterday given in our streets, and happily despised by a peaceful, loyal metropolis’ . The paper’s airy concession that ‘the six points of the Charter are honest and allowable doctrines’ might have been calculated to enrage those who had devoted themselves to promoting it. If they were so honest and allowable, why were they dismissed by the only body, Parliament, that was
in a position to grant them, and why were their representatives so thoroughly ignored or mocked by those in a position to help them? It was this impasse that had begun to split Chartism between those who still hoped for a constitutional solution, relying on ‘moral force’ , and those who felt driven to ‘physical force’ . A late arrival in the camp of the latter group was a man who had been a Chartist since the beginning, and who was present at the great disappointment of April 1848. Perhaps he is there somewhere in the sea of top hats: William Cuffay. All the Chartist leaders deserve to be better known, if we truly prize democracy and the courage to speak up for it when the Establishment would THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 13
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The peculiar detail that Cuffay and his wife had been melting down lead type for bullets is a grim reversal of the pen’s supposed superiority to the sword
prefer us not to. But Cuffay’s story, in so far as we can know it, is remarkable even by the standards of those who came to prominence in the first great workingclass movement in Britain’s history. Cuffay was the son of a West Indian slave, a naval cook from St Kitts, known as Chatham Cuffay presumably after the port in which he settled with his wife, and where William Cuffay was born in 1788 (if he was not actually born on a ship bound for England from the Caribbean). Although residence in Britain made Cuffay free, his life experiences showed him the limits of that freedom for a poor black man in Victorian England. He had a further obstacle to overcome: his shin bones and spine were ‘deformed’ from birth, with the result that he stood only 4 feet 11 inches tall. Cuffay was brought up with his brother and sister by his mother in Chatham, and was eventually apprenticed as a tailor and moved to London. He seems to have been radicalised by his experiences in the tailors’ strike for shorter hours in 1834. In what would turn out to be a good indication of his character, once Cuffay overcame his initial reluctance to take action, he stuck to his guns unflinchingly. According to the Chartist George Reynolds in 1850, Cuffay ‘disapproved of the Trades’ Union movement in 1834, and was nearly the last of his society in joining the lodge; but ultimately he gave way, and struck with the general body, remaining out until the last, thereby losing a shop where he had worked for many years’ . This early defeat was the prelude 14 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
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to more than a decade of disappointed struggle. Five years after the strike, Cuffay joined the Chartists, helping to form the Metropolitan Tailors’ Charter Association, and eventually being elected as one of the delegates for Westminster to the Chartist National Convention in 1848. During his time as a Chartist, Cuffay remained a passionate supporter not only of the cause’s main programme, but of developments such as the Chartist National Land Company, which was set up to enact a Chartist ‘land plan’ , buying up land and distributing it to those in most need. Despite losing his job, he seems to have remained in good spirits for most of the decade. In the 1840s he was on more than one occasion recorded by the Chartist newspaper the Northern Star as ‘favouring the company with some excellent songs’ . And he was as happy organising a charitable shindig – ‘A Grand Festival consisting of Tea, Concert and Ball’ – as he was in the more sober business of pressing for political rights. Perhaps this streak of showmanship was part of the impetus for attacks made on Cuffay by less well-disposed parts of the press. In his profile of Cuffay in 1848, for example, George Reynolds alleged that ‘As early as 1842 [Cuffay] had been especially singled out by The Times as a leader of the opposition in London to the Anti-Corn Law League, – which facetiously denominated the Chartists as the “Black man and his Party” ’ . The allegation that The Times referred thus to Cuffay has been repeated ever since, though I have found it impossible to trace in the paper itself. Perhaps Reynolds
meant that this was how the Anti-Corn Law League described Cuffay, and not the paper, though, in any case, Cuffay’s name does not seem to appear in The Times at all before 1848. There, he is treated with more amused disdain than contempt, and his own words are quoted; for example, ‘Mr C (London) said that because he was an ugly little old man he was despised by some of his friends of the middle classes’ . There certainly was an uglier side to the treatment of Cuffay in the press. Thackeray’s rather lame exercise in Cockney ventriloquism printed in Punch in December 1848, for instance, gives Cuffay as a ‘pore old blackymore rogue’ , who ‘vas a Journeyman,/ A taylor black and free,/ And my wife went out and chaired about,/ And my name’s the bold Cuffee’ . The reference to Mrs Cuffay’s ‘chairing’ was a repeated joke playing on the fact that she had been forced, since her husband lost his work, to go out ‘charring’ . Some ‘satires’ , in which Cuffay was depicted as a monkey or a negro minstrel, were even cruder. The attacks on Cuffay were just as likely to be focused on his class and physical frailty as his ethnicity, however. Whether we think that makes them any easier to swallow is perhaps more a reflection of our own pecking order of prejudice than the oppression Cuffay himself experienced. It seems very clear that the subjection of the poor, politically and economically, was his principal concern. What turned this figure of affection in his own circles and of ridicule in the opposition’s into something more serious was the consequence of what happened at Kennington in April 1848. Or did not happen. Cuffay was one of those deputed to bring the petition to Kennington Common, and was supposed to accompany it on its onward journey to Parliament. The Chartists were aware that there were plans to prevent them marching, but many, including Cuffay, thought it important to confront the police; not necessarily to fight them, as some in the press alleged, but to show that they were being prevented from carrying out an activity that had been a lawful part of English political life for almost as long as Magna Carta, the document from which their own Charter took its name and example: petitioning Parliament. When O’Connor announced that the
london’s forgotten black radical
William Cuffay and the London Chartists, 1842, photographic representation by Red Saunders, 2014, depicting a meeting of the London Chartists in Whitechapel, including Cuffay, who was President of the group. © Red Saunders/ Hidden Project.
Chartists were not going to march, Cuffay was one of the first to react. According to an apparently verbatim report widely syndicated in the days after the meeting, he declared that ‘it would be time enough to be afraid of the military when they were met with them face to face’ , and that ‘the whole Convention were a set of cowardly humbugs, and he would have nothing more to do with them’ . It was in the days after the acrimonious break-up of this last great Chartist meeting that Cuffay found himself putting his wilder threats into practice. A plot began to take shape, the leadership of which was later accredited to Cuffay, though the real movers were other, younger Chartists. Still, Cuffay certainly went along with the plans for some form of violent uprising, perhaps along the lines of the one in Newport, Wales, in 1839 which had almost resulted in the execution of the ringleaders. From the beginning, the conspiracy was penetrated by police spies. When the matter came to trial, it was clear that many of the accused felt that the spies had acted as agents provocateurs. Despite
his protestations, there was little doubt that Cuffay and others had been planning violence – the peculiar detail that he and his wife had been melting down lead type for bullets is a grim reversal of the pen’s supposed superiority to the sword. At his trial, Cuffay made a point that he was not being tried by his peers. The jury, like the electors, were from a different class who, by virtue of their property, got to decide the fate of the nation and its citizens. He knew that he would be found guilty, and would have expected the sentence of transportation (to Tasmania) for life. His closing thoughts in his speech from the dock were still focused on the great cause which had brought him there: ‘Every good act was set aside in Parliament – everything that was likely to do any good to the working classes was either thrown out or set aside, but a measure to restrain their liberties could be passed in a few hours. I have nothing more to say. ’ Cuffay was transported later that year, and was eventually joined in Van Diemen’s Land by his wife. He was given a free pardon in 1857, but never returned to England, and
apparently continued to involve himself in political activism, though he died as he had lived, a poor man. Cuffay is perennially recalled by radical historians and in the furthest reaches of Black History Month, though most schools seem reluctant to tell the story of a man whose experience of British hospitality was so mixed. Cuffay himself, according to Reynolds, appreciated the fact that becoming a British subject had emancipated his family from slavery, but this only made him more conscious that the freedom on offer was not enough: ‘he has often shed genuine tears of gratitude for this boon, and declared that the sacrifice of his life and his liberty if needed, was due to the complete emancipation of that nation which had inscribed his name upon the list of free men. ’ The nation certainly let him down during his lifetime, using all the powers at its disposal, from the ‘free’ press to the police. It would be good to think that today the same nation, which has embraced rights the Chartists barely even imagined, could take William Cuffay, black radical, to its heart.
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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 15
sheridan and ‘the school for scandal’ This month marks the bicentenary of the death of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Linda Kelly looks back at the original Drury Lane production of his most famous play.
The first night of Sheridan’s play The School for Scandal, on 8 May 1777, is one of the great dates in theatrical history. Eagerly anticipated, the performance at the
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Theatre Royal, Drury Lane was attended by all the luminaries of the fashionable world, the Duchess of Devonshire among them. Garrick, who had superintended the
rehearsals and written the prologue, was seen applauding in the highest spirits at Sheridan’s triumph. The curtain went up at six o’clock; some time later the playwright Frederick Reynolds, who was passing the theatre, heard such a roar from within that, thinking the building was collapsing, he took to his heels and ran. It was the shout of applause that greeted the falling of the screen in the fourth act. So great was Sheridan’s elation at his success, he told Byron years later, that he was ‘knocked down and put in the watch-house for making a row in the streets and for being found intoxicated by the watchman’ . Sheridan had sprung to fame when he was only 23 with his first play, The Rivals, in 1775. Its brilliant success made his name as a playwright; it was followed that same year by his equally successful operetta, The Duenna, with music arranged by his father-in-law Thomas Linley. Sheridan’s elopement with the beautiful young singer Elizabeth Linley had created a sensation four years earlier. The seeds of The School for Scandal were already sown. In 1776, Garrick, the owner of a halfshare of Drury Lane, retired; Sheridan, with Thomas Linley and another investor, joined together to buy Garrick’s share. It was an investment built on the quicksands of loans and mortgages, but Sheridan, who took over from Garrick as manager, had no doubts of making his fortune. His high hopes seemed fully justified when less than a year later he produced his masterpiece, The School for Scandal. Sheridan had been maturing his ideas for the play over several years. Thomas Moore, in his life of Sheridan published
Opposite Thomas Gainsborough, Elizabeth and Mary Linley, c.1772, retouched 1785. By permission of the Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery. Above James Roberts, The Falling of the Screen, depicting the original Drury Lane production, 8 May 1777. Courtesy the Garrick Club, photograph by Hugh Gilbert.
in 1825, quotes from successive drafts to show how the two separate plots, one centring on Lady Sneerwell and her circle, the other on the Teazles, are interwoven, and how the characters and situations evolve. The relationship between Sir Peter and Lady Teazle, for instance, develops into something far more interesting than the bickering between an old man and his young wife: both obviously take pleasure in their verbal sparring and the attraction
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between them is implicit. Similarly the mischief-making of Lady Sneerwell and her friends is tuned to such a pitch of wit and fantasy that Lady Teazle’s enjoyment of their company becomes at least believable. Sheridan took infinite pains with the play, cutting and polishing till every facet shone. At the very last minute he was still correcting and rewriting so that the play had already been announced before the
“Amidst the mortifying circumstances attendant on growing old,” wrote Charles Lamb in 1822, “it is something to have seen The School for Scandal in its glory”
whole of it was in his actors’ hands. The last five scenes of the manuscript showed signs of being written in haste, and a note in Sheridan’s handwriting at the bottom of the final page – ‘Finished at last. Thank God. R.B. Sheridan’ – has a heartfelt postscript from the prompter: ‘Amen!’ ‘Amidst the mortifying circumstances attendant on growing old,’ wrote Charles Lamb in 1822, ‘it is something to have seen The School for Scandal in its glory’ . No play, he thought, had been so well cast when it first appeared. Sheridan knew his company well and the parts displayed them to their best advantage. Mrs Abington, the finest comic actress of the day, was Lady Teazle. Behind the scenes her quarrels and bad temper were a byword. On stage she was charm personified; no one, it was said, could handle a fan or point a witty phrase more gracefully. It was easy to believe that Sir THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 17
Left Joshua Reynolds, Mrs Abington (c.1737–1815) as The Comic Muse, 1764–8. Waddesdon, The Rothschild Collection (The National Trust), bequest of James de Rothschild, 1957; acc. no. 2304. Photograph © The National Trust, Waddesdon Manor. Opposite Joshua Reynolds, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1788–9. © House of Commons, London.
Peter found her irresistible – even when they most disagreed. ‘I think she never appears to such an advantage as when she’s doing everything in her Power to plague me. ’ Tom King, one of the most reliable actors of the company, was Sir Peter. His acting, wrote William Hazlitt, ‘left a taste on the palate, sweet and sharp like a quince … puckered up into a thousand wrinkles, with shrewd hints and sharp replies’ . The Surface brothers, Charles and Joseph, were perfectly matched. The gay 18 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
and jovial Charles, first seen ‘at a Tavern with Wine etc., ’ was played by William or ‘Gentleman’ Smith, an old Etonian noted for his easy aristocratic manner. John Palmer, otherwise known as ‘Plausible Jack’ , was Joseph, the lightest and most elegant of scheming hypocrites. For Charles Surface the deciding moment of the play is the picture-auction scene, when his refusal to sell his uncle’s portrait despite his friend’s disparaging description – ‘as Stern a looking Rogue as ever I saw – an unforgiving eye and a
damned disinheriting countenance’ – transforms him in his uncle’s eyes. For the disguised Sir Oliver he is now ‘a Dear extravagant Rogue’ , while Joseph, the man of sentiment, is soon to be found out. Joseph’s comeuppance is the climax of the famous screen scene. As the screen falls, to reveal Lady Teazle to Charles Surface and her astonished husband (‘Lady Teazle! By all that’s wonderful’ – ‘Lady Teazle! By all that’s horrible!’), the full extent of his duplicity is exposed. It is hard not to feel a sneaking sympathy for him in his embarrassments, though the ‘scandalous college’ remains poisonous to the end. But Lady Sneerwell’s parting shot to Lady Teazle – ‘May your Husband live this fifty years!’ – loses its sting in the touching reconciliation between Sir Peter and his wife. Garrick, like the man of theatre that he was, kept a close eye on the actors, even after the first night. ‘My compliments to Mr Sheridan, ’ he wrote a few days later. ‘A gentleman who is as mad as myself about ye School, remark’d that ye characters upon the stage at ye falling of the screen stand too long before they speak – I thought so too on ye first night – he said it was the same on ye 2nd – though they should be astonish’d and a little petrify’d,
yet it may be carried to too great a length – All praise at Lord Lucan’s last night. ’ From the days of Garrick onward actors have delighted in The School for Scandal. Productions vary over the generations but, as with an operatic aria, the language to a large extent imposes its own rhythm and Sheridan, an actor’s son, must have written with the sound of it in mind. In an essay on his production in 1947, in which he played Sir Peter Teazle, Laurence Olivier wrote of the producer’s duty to regard his author as an ‘all important lantern’ whose beams must be followed in interpreting him. The play worked best when approached with a devoted understanding of its eighteenthcentury setting and by actors grounded in a feeling for the period. For Olivier, its appeal was evergreen. Writing in his dressing room, fresh from playing the second quarrel scene with Lady Teazle, he described ‘the inexpressible feeling of fulfilment that possesses at least one humble actor as he feels the play’s life and spirit pulsating through his body and soul’ , and paraphrased Charles Lamb: ‘I am prepared to swear that whatever mortifying circumstances attend the life of the Theatre throughout the world, this play will never grow old. ’
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Poetry Cosmo DavenportHines, who was the youngest life member of The London Library, died on 9 June 2008, aged 21. The Cosmo Davenport-Hines Prize was set up at King’s College London in his memory. This year’s winner is Jamie Foo.
Time difference Dear Ma, You asked me how are you, have you eaten, how was school today, did you learn anything new? I’m sorry for replying so late, I didn’t have the time I learnt about World English in my Language in Time class today I wasn’t sure if I should be happy that I had mastery over what my classmates did not Since I speak Singlish every day but nobody seemed to understand me It turns out that it was time in language that I needed to master Since I was speaking too fast For words to stay long enough to belong Yet even when I slowed down The words ‘I’m fine’ could not come fast enough in reply Before ‘How are you’ turned away from me Still, this was not as difficult as mastering time difference The eight hours between us before you woke up to my texts in Singapore’s daylight Saving time was losing an hour’s sleep so that I could at least reply, ‘I’m fine, really’ Because it didn’t seem like the right time to tell you All that you asked and didn’t ask Jamie Foo
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100 Euros to use one Orient Express image Choose which image to use?
HIDDEN CORNERS
reading
between the lines Andrew Martin tracks down the best railway titles in the Library’s collection I was once browsing in S. Railways &c. when another reader came up to me and said, ‘I’ve seen you up here before. Lovely and quiet, isn’t it?’ His remark implied that anyone browsing those shelves must be doing so for extra-curricular reasons – in order to unwind and get away from it all – but I’ve made a good part of my living from writing fiction and non-fiction about railways. That, I admit, may appear perverse. The modern, de-glamorised network might 20 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
have been designed to divert mainstream writers away from the subject of railways. It’s as if signal boxes, dining cars, buffet cars, porters, named locomotives (as opposed to anonymous ‘power cars’ , at the head of worm-like ‘multiple units’), manned country stations, marshalling yards and compartments were all too interesting to be allowed to continue. Yes, rail use is rising, but only because of the increasing numbers of people commuting in garish, overcrowded multiple units into our big
cities. The train operators claim the credit for these rising numbers, and it is difficult to argue with them, given the complicated accounting of the modern, fractured railway. One author who takes the privatised railway of 2016 as easily in his stride as that of 1900 is Christian Wolmar. In the introduction to his book Fire and Steam: A New History of the Railways in Britain (2007), he writes, ‘I set out to put the history of the railways encompassing both their construction and their social impact in
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“Our Iron Roads” (1852) has the story of a woman in New Zealand who stood on the tracks and flagged down a train in order to find out whether any passenger could give her change for a £1 note
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one easy-to-read volume’ , and I’d say he succeeded. Wolmar – author of half a dozen titles in S. Railways &c. – once confided to me that when it came to surveying source material, he ignored ‘all the really boring stuff’ . The trouble with bad railway writing is simply stated: there are too many numbers. But I confess to finding a morbid fascination in such as the following, from The History of the Midland Railway by C.E. Stretton (1901): ‘On March 17th 1874, an officials’ special express to test the running of the cars at very high speed was worked between Derby and St Pancras with engine “No. 906” and two cars. The time allowed for the journey was only two and a half hours and included two stops of three minutes each, and a speed of 75mph was attained on parts of the journey; and four days later, on March 21st a special express of four cars conveyed about eighty visitors … .’ In spite of their glamorous potential, locomotives are problematic here, in that they generate a lot of numbers (wheel formations, steam pressures, top speeds, tractive effort) in addition to the serial number by which they are designated, and I was impressed by Simon Bradley’s nerve in almost completely ignoring them in his huge, recently published The Railways: Nation, Network and
Opposite Bulleid ‘West Country’ Pacific no.34018 Axminster, at London’s Waterloo Station, 5 May 1966. From Nicholas Whittaker’s Platform Souls (2015 edition). Photograph © Bill Wright. Above Passengers travelling to Istanbul on the Simplon Orient Express, 1930s. From Anthony Burton’s The Orient Express (2001). © Archives CIWL/ Wagons-Lits Diffusion Paris.
People (2015, two copies in S. Railways &c.). But when locomotives do appear they are memorably described in what is a beautifully written book: ‘To British eyes, the trains of North America seem especially gigantic. Thanks to interwar publicity stunts that sent the latest express locomotives from Stephenson’s homeland to tour the New World, it was possible to compare them side-by-side: photographed next to American locos, the visitors look like dapper little earls in the company of hulking lumberjacks. ’ One of the first railway books in the Bradley mould – a colourful social history as opposed to a technical manual – was published in 1852: Our Iron Roads: Their History, Construction, and Social Influences, by F.S. Williams. It is highly detailed and vivid on operational matters. Here is Williams on the operation of an emergency breakdown train: ‘A telegram flashes into the passenger station that there has been an accident. Two copies are immediately sent, one to the locomotive superintendent … the other to the traffic inspector of the district. A list of the names and addresses of the skilled men, twelve in all, who form the brake-down staff hangs up, framed and glazed, on the wall of the office; these are at once summoned. ’
Even though Williams’s main concentration is on Britain, he often goes abroad for comic material. So we have the story of a woman in New Zealand who stood on the tracks and flagged down a train in order to find out whether any passenger could give her change for a £1 note. Williams also relates how an ‘old and wellknown citizen of Chicago, of eccentric and jocular disposition’ , sought to confound the demarcation between passenger traffic and goods, by sending himself to Philadelphia in a wooden box. When the train stopped at Van Wert, Ohio, he was discovered by a railway guard who was passing through the baggage wagon, whereupon the stowaway was nearly shot for being a train robber, and taken to prison. It is reported in a similarly entertaining work, The Railway Station: A Social History, by Jeffrey Richards and John M. Mackenzie (1986), that sometime during the 1930s, the actor George Arliss booked himself into the Left Luggage Office at Charing Cross as a parcel, in order to escape marauding autograph hunters. Our Iron Roads chronicles a protean, rapidly expanding network that reached its peak density in 1910. This is why, in 1968, the railway publishing firm of David & Charles published Bradshaw’s April 1910 Railway Guide, a reprint of the Bradshaw THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 21
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Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits dining car no.1651 on the Orient Express in 1912, with the Chef de brigade in full CIWL uniform. © Archives CIWL/ Wagons-Lits Diffusion Paris.
(i.e. the railway timetable) of April 1910. The Guardian predicted this would prove a waste of time, ‘like painting Union Jacks on chamber pots’ , but the resulting volume was a bestseller. I often dip into it, but am not like the man in the Victorian joke who stayed up all night reading Bradshaw ‘because he wanted to see how it ended’ . The sheer proliferation of trains and stations listed is fascinating, but it is hard to trace any particular journey, because of the way that main-line services are entangled with those on branch lines. Any traveller who did find the right service might be stymied by a treacherous footnote: ‘Not on Tuesdays’ , ‘Market days only’ . Punch used to print spoof Bradshaw pages, with footnotes such as ‘Ignore this – it is only here to confuse you’ . The firm of David & Charles was founded by David St John Thomas, who is namechecked by Simon Bradley in The Railways: Nation, Network and People (2015). Of his trainspotting boyhood in the 1970s, Bradley writes: ‘Every public library then had a shelf-load of books by post-war authors such as C. Hamilton Ellis, L.T.C. Rolt and David St John Thomas, lively and engaging writers who leavened technical description with human interest and historical understanding. ’ As their careers progressed, these authors – all represented in S. Railways &c. – found themselves in 22 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
When it comes to a train on which the waiters dressed like Regency bucks, a photographic record is what you need, otherwise you might not believe it
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the nostalgia business, simply by virtue of being interested in trains when they were being eclipsed by other transport modes. In his preface to The Trains We Loved (1947), C. Hamilton Ellis writes: ‘while to an onlooker the aeroplane seems perpetually angry, a cross, buzzing, busy thing, the train is decent, even benevolent. She rushes smiling through the summer meadows, laughs in austere mountain places, defies the lugubrious tunnel with a shriek of delight. ’ Another prolific railway author was
George Behrend, a sybaritic Francophile who specialised in trains de luxe. In particular, he is the best English-language source on the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, whose elegant blue trains, comprising sleeping and dining cars, traversed Europe for most of the twentieth century. Here he is in Grand European Expresses: The Story of the ‘Wagons-Lits’ (1962), heading from Paris to Stockholm on the Nord Express in the 1960s, making the best of that period of supposed decline in Wagons-Lits standards, when buffet cars were replacing dining cars: ‘Two menus are available in the buffet car, the small one omitting either cheese or sweet. Both begin with Julienne d’Arblay soup served in those familiar big blue cups. The entrée is Timbale Milanaise … After this the chef de brigade comes round with slices of mouth-watering veal on a silver platter. The Cote de Veau fines herbes is accompanied by Pommes Cocottes (cooked in butter) and creamed spinach. For this is not one of the most expensive menus; it is ordinary, adequately bourgeois, which means it is elegantly served, carefully prepared and subtly tasteful. ’ You’d think that would be the end of the matter. But there is then a paragraph about the cheese board (Camembert, Port Salut and Gervais cream cheese), followed by another on the coffee and liqueurs, in which Behrend laments the lack of appreciation of Wagons-Lits ‘gastrology’ among his fellow countrymen, who find the price of their dinners ‘so much more interesting than how they taste’ and fail to show any imagination when it comes to those liqueurs: ‘For our Englishman it is invariably Cointreau, and he has extremely odd ideas about how the flavour is improved by a smut from the engine. ’ (The English, apparently, liked to open the windows in the dining or buffet cars.) The Railway Workers 1840–1970, by Frank McKenna (1980), is an altogether grittier work. But what emerges is that, for all the tyrannies imposed upon them (and they were classed as ‘servants’ until 1947), railway employees enjoyed the job, especially those on the footplate: ‘A young fireman, sleep nagging at his eyeballs, could still thrill to the descent from The Peak into Derby station. ’ The book includes a glossary of railwaymen’s slang, invaluable to any writer of historical railway fiction. The London, Midland & Scottish (the LMS for
hidden corners short) was either ‘Let me sleep’ , ‘Lord, my shepherd’ , or ‘Elleva Mess’ . A fog might be ‘thick as a bag’ , while an engine steaming badly was, with charming simplicity, ‘running out of puff’ . The best book I have read on rail enthusiasm is Platform Souls: The Trainspotter as 20th-Century Hero by Nicholas Whittaker, which first appeared in 1995. (Full disclosure: I wrote the introduction to the revised edition published last year, a copy of which I donated to the Library.) As a young man, Whittaker was a living disavowal of many preconceptions about trainspotters. He was rather glamorous, he liked young women (he attempted to convert one to trainspotting) and he was clearly just as interested in words as numbers. He did have the trainspotter’s terrible diet though. Here he is, a teenager at Crewe junction in the 1970s: ‘Sometimes we took sandwiches and flasks with us, but we would also visit the buffet for extras: packets of crisps or a slice of Dundee cake in cellophane. There were machines for chocolate bars and Paynes Poppets [note the ferocious specificity here – Whittaker also once wrote a book about sweets], and a variety of drinks. It’s a truism that machine drinks are dubious, but I rather liked the chicken soup. It looked like steaming urine with specks of green tinsel floating on top. ’ Rail enthusiasts, whether spotters in the strict sense or not, will occasionally want to stray from S. Railways &c. – perhaps to S. Railways &c., 4to., for example. Here they will find The Railway Journey: Trains and Travel in the 19th Century by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, translated from the German by Anselm Hollo, which was published in 1980 and is possibly the finest study of the experiential aspects of train travel, with chapter headings like ‘Railroad Space and Railroad Time’ , ‘The Compartment’ , ‘The History of Shock’ . Nobody has thought harder about train travel than Schivelbusch. For example: ‘The region that can be reached by train from Paris realizes itself for the Parisians by means of the train. It then appears as a product or appendage of the railroad, as in a phrase of Mallarmé’s: “Normandy, which, like Brittany, is part of the Western Railway.” ’ Sometimes Schivelbusch thinks too hard, and his prose becomes clogged, but the amusing illustrations and cartoons provide light
Mornington Crescent Underground Station, designed by Leslie Green. Photograph © Ewan Munro.
relief, and justify the large format. For pure visual pleasure, S. Railways &c., 4to. also offers a book about the most famous Wagons-Lits service: The Orient Express: The History of the OrientExpress Service from 1883 to 1950 by Anthony Burton (2001). This is the best photographic record that I’ve seen of the OE, and when it comes to a train on which the waiters dressed like Regency bucks, a photographic record is what you need, otherwise you might not believe it. There is also The Underground Stations of Leslie Green by David Leboff (2002). Green designed the Tube stations built by the American mogul (and fraudster) Charles Tyson Yerkes. They are to be found on the West End branch of the Northern Line, and the central parts of the Piccadilly and Bakerloo lines. Most have a surface building clad in tiles the colour – apparently – of oxblood (think Mornington Crescent) and the vari-coloured tiling on the platform walls is different in every case, so that illiterate travellers would be able to recognise their ‘home’ stations. Green died in 1908 aged 33, of overwork, and Leboff’s book is very moving, simply presenting colour pictures of every station with a clear commentary. Of course not all the railway writing in the Library is in either of the S. Railways &c. Matthew Engel’s amusing book, Eleven
Minutes Late: A Train Journey to the Soul of Britain (2009), which chronicles the ‘two centuries of fiasco that comprise our railway history’ , is for some – no doubt very good – reason in T. England (Gen.). The enjoyable railway-journey accounts of Paul Theroux (‘I sought trains, I found passengers’) are also in Topography. Perhaps the very best railway writing is in fiction, especially under ‘D’ because nobody has written better about railways than Charles Dickens. His short story, Mugby Junction – which first appeared in 1866 in the Christmas number of All the Year Round (Periodicals), and is also included in Dickens’s Christmas Stories in various editions from 1876 (Fiction) – speaks of ‘Mysterious goods trains, covered with palls and gliding on like vast weird funerals’ . Of the lines themselves, Dickens writes that some of them ‘appeared to start with the fixed intention of going five hundred miles, and all of a sudden gave it up at an insignificant barrier, or turned off into a workshop. And then others, like intoxicated men, went a little way very straight, and surprisingly slued round and came back again. ’ In my wanderings about the Library, I am like those lines, regularly slewing around and going back to S. Railways &c., in the grip of an attraction that endures despite the best efforts of the modern-day train operators.
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AUTHORS’ FOUNDATION GRANTS AND K BLUNDELL TRUST AWARDS The Authors’ Foundation gives grants to authors whose project is for a British publisher The K Blundell Trust gives grants to British authors under the age of 40 whose project is for a British publisher. The project must aim to increase social awareness, and can be fiction or non-fiction NEXT CLOSING DATES: 30 SEPTEMBER 2016 30 APRIL 2017 Full guidelines available from www.societyofauthors.org /grants-and-prizes
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MEMBERS’ News WORDS IN THE SQUARE, 5 – 8 May 2016 Celebrating 175 Years Of Inspiration at The London Library After nine months of planning, our literary celebration took place in a giant marquee (650m2) in St James’s Square Gardens in glorious sunshine. It was a magical few days, made possible by the generosity of six corporate sponsors, two individual sponsors and two foundations as well as all those members and non-members who bought tickets and day passes. Directed by James Runcie and David Kynaston, the programme involved 17 events, from the Party in the Square on the opening evening to the most varied talks, panels and debates on the subsequent days, involving 58 speakers and filling 3,470 seats with over 1,400 attendees from across the
UK and Europe and far beyond (Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, USA …). With book signings following each event, Hatchards’ staff were kept busy in their pop-up bookshop in the exit marquee. Back at the Library, staff hosted 21 ticketed tours, introducing many to the delights of the Library and specially mounted anniversary displays. It was an unforgettable event for all who took part, including the Library’s staff and former staff who between them put in 454 volunteer hours to cover 17 different event roles over four days … while still keeping the Library open for business as usual.
The marquee in St James’s Square Gardens for the Words In The Square event, 5 – 8 May 2016. THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 25
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Exquisite garden setting … and everything else of similarly dreamy standard
Clockwise from top Line-up featuring, left to right, Simon Callow, Simon Russell Beale, Natascha McElhone, Harriet Walter and James Runcie, discussing bringing characters to life; tour of the Library; audience voting at an event; visitors relaxing between events. 26 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
MEMBERS’ NEWS
‘
The event lifted my spirits (it seemed no coincidence that the sun emerged at this time), made me think and provided a wonderful opportunity to share bookishness with family and friends
’
Clockwise from top left Line-up of speakers discussing London in the Blitz, including, left to right, Juliet Gardiner, Lara Feigel, Max Hastings and David Kynaston; Antony Beevor at his talk on the changing nature of modern warfare; Hermione Lee and Tom Stoppard in conversation; writers discussing their favourite reads, left to right, Sara Wheeler (just seen), Deborah Levy, Nikesh Shukla and Ned Beauman. THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 27
‘
What did I most enjoy about Words in the Square? Everything: the venue, the lovely marquee 175th Anniversary (and loos), the staff, the speakers … Appeal and the very nice attendees We recently launched a special 175th Anniversary Appeal for
’
From top Visitor browsing at Hatchards’ pop-up bookshop; Simon Schama joins the queue for an event; Joanna Trollope and Victoria Hislop on the panel exploring why people write.
Photographs © James Tye and The London Library. For more images (and some time-lapse footage) see londonlibrary.co.uk/175 28 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
Library members and others who wish to make a celebratory donation during this momentous year. The Appeal allows those who share the Library’s guiding principles and aspirations to mark this historic anniversary in a way that will benefit both current and future users. We recognise that for many members their membership fee already serves as their support of the Library, and we very much appreciate everyone who contributes in this way. If you do feel you can make a donation it will be put towards fundamental activities of the Library, marking 175 years of our history and looking towards the future. These activities include maintaining and developing the book collections and ensuring that they remain both usable and accessible, both of which we feel would have been close to Thomas Carlyle’s heart. All those who give £175 or more will be listed in a special ‘Roll of Honour’, although every donation is gratefully received no matter the amount. If you would like to make a donation, please visit londonlibrary.co.uk/175 or contact the Library’s Development Office on 020 7766 4795.
What beneficiaries say*
The Royal Literary Fund
Short Online Courses
he ‘One of trs of a quiet pill lity.’ our civi
‘A miracl e.’ ‘An increasingly noble, and increasingly necessary, endeavour.’ ‘A ray of lig shining thr ht oug dark cloud.’ h a
s.’ r e t i r w o ft t ‘A life-ra *quotes from RLF beneficiaries during 2013-14
The Royal Literary Fund has been supporting published writers during hard times for over 200 years. If you need help e-mail eileen.gunn@rlf.org.uk or go to www.rlf.org.uk All enquiries are treated with sympathy and in the strictest confidence. Registered Charity No 219952
MA/MRes in the
HISTORY OF THE BOOK Institute of English Studies University of London
The MA/MRes in the History of the Book is an unparalleled multidisciplinary opportunity to study the book’s influence on cultural and intellectual change, while making use of the resources of central INSTITUTE London. Students take OF ENGLISH two required courses STUDIES (The Medieval Book, The Printed Book in Britain) and select from several option courses, including an internship at a London bookselling firm. Tutors are leading experts in their fields, and classes take place in Senate House Library, the British Library, Lambeth Palace Library, and the Victoria & Albert Museum. www.ies.sas.ac.uk @IES_London T: +44 (0)20 7862 8679 E: iesMA@sas.ac.uk THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 29
Pushkin Press • The London Library
‘FOUND ON THE SHELVES’ Essays on dieting in 1860… Instructions for gentlewomen on trout-fishing and archery… Remedies for the ill-health caused by the ‘modern’ craze of the velocipede… And more… All discovered in The London Library, £4.99 each, out now 1. Cycling: The Craze of the Hour 2. The Lure of the North 3. On Corpulence: Feeding the Body and Feeding the Mind 4. Life in a Bustle: Advice to Youth 5. The Gentlewoman’s Book of Sports 6. On Reading, Writing and Living With Books Six more to follow in November: 7. Through a Glass Lightly: Confession of a Reluctant Water Drinker 8. The Right to Fly 9. The Noble English Art of Self-Defence 10. Hints on Etiquette: A Shield Against the Vulgar 11. A Woman’s Walks 12. A Full Account of the Dreadful Explosion of Wallsend Colliery by which 101 Human Beings Perished!
www.pushkinpress.com
MEMBERS’ NEWS
Member Events Member events are free, but places are limited so must be reserved in advance at londonlibrary.co.uk/ memberevents
ROSES AND RAIN: THE LIFE AND WORK OF JAMES ELROY FLECKER Heather Walker Tuesday, 5 July 2016 6pm – 7.30pm Members’ Room Writer and journalist Heather Walker discusses her 2006 book Roses and Rain, the first biography of poet, novelist and playwright James Elroy Flecker in more than 30 years. She will recount Flecker’s life and work, from his career in the Levant Consular Service and marriage to Greek poetess Hellé, to his attempts to overcome ill-health, homesickness and lack of money and establish himself as a writer. Walker’s research provides an insight into not only Flecker’s short life but also the lives of his contemporaries including Rupert Brooke, Ronald Firbank and Lawrence of Arabia.
NEW MEMBERS’ DRINKS RECEPTION Thursday, 22 September 2016 6.30pm – 8.30pm Reading Room A special drinks reception to welcome all members who have recently joined or rejoined the Library. This is an opportunity to meet other members socially, view special displays and receive expert advice from staff on how to make the most of your membership. Invitations will be sent to new members nearer the time.
THOMAS CARLYLE’S HOUSE TOUR Thursday, 13 October 2016 5.30pm – 7pm Thomas Carlyle’s House, 26 Cheyne Row, London SW3 5HL Free for members In May 1841, 175 years ago, Thomas Carlyle realised his ambition to open a lending library for London. To celebrate The London Library’s connection with one of Victorian Britain’s most influential writers, we invite you to join other members for a drinks reception and exclusive tour of his former home at 24 Cheyne Row in Chelsea, now a National Trust property. Thomas and Jane Carlyle came to London in 1834 and rented the house in ‘unfashionable’ Chelsea for £35 a year. It became a meeting place for many of the leading writers of the day, including Charles Dickens, John Ruskin, Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Makepeace Thackeray and many others.
Ph.D. Members’ Group First Wednesday of every month 6pm – 8pm Members’ Room A meeting is held in the Members’ Room at the Library on the first Wednesday of every month for any members currently studying for a Ph.D. These informal gatherings provide an opportunity to share information on a variety of subjects including research and funding opportunities, as well as informal networking. Contact Library member Cleo Roberts on cleoetic@gmail.com for more details.
A Members’ Miscellany Serendipity lies at the heart of The London Library’s magic. There is always something new to discover on the shelves and something unexpected to find. As part of our 175th celebrations, we’re looking to capture some of the richness of the day-to-day encounters that make the Library so special and have been asking members to send in their tales of the unexpected. We‘re hearing about unusual finds inside the covers, quirky conversations and even more quirky books: a beautiful Duff Cooper book plate, a copy of Where Angels Fear to Tread donated by E.M. Forster, the slang dictionary in which Virginia Woolf’s father looked up the F-word, and the Student’s English–Arabic Dictionary where the same word can apparently mean ‘Cat, Dog, Misfortune, Perfumer and Swarm of locusts’. We will begin publishing some of these anecdotes, memories and chance finds as part of a Members’ Miscellany on the 175 pages of our website this summer (londonlibrary. co.uk/175) and would be delighted if you could continue sending us your stories at stories@thelondonlibrary.co.uk
children’s novel competition 2016 1ST PRIZE: £5,000 For unpublished women novelists only
CLOSING DATE: 19 September 2016 novel@mslexia.co.uk 0191 204 8860
www.mslexia.co.uk/novel
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 31
FINE BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS Wednesday 9 November 2016 Knightsbridge, London
ENQUIRIES +44 (0) 20 7393 3810 books@bonhams.com Closing date for entries Monday 26 September 2016
Entries now invited
BOUGAINVILLE (HYACINTHE Y. P. P.) Journal de la Navigation Autour du Globe Paris, Arthus Bertrand, 1837 Sold for £5,625
bonhams.com/books
Prices shown include buyer’s premium. Details can be found at bonhams.com
