752. A New Year's Letter about Books

At the beginning of 1928, Charles Ricketts wrote a note to Sydney Cockerell to thank him for bringing home a quotation. He then began to list the books he was reading or had read from a series published by Kegan Paul:

Do you keep in touch with the To-day and To-morrow series Kegan Paul. I find them most cheering & entertaining, some of them. Daedalus, Icarus, Tantalus Cassandra are remarkable. Platos American Republic & Narcissus most amusing. Even cranks like old Vernon Lee and Sylvia Pankhurst come out well. I have been greatly entertained by Haldane’s End of the World in his last book Possible Worlds.
[Letter to Sydney Cockerell, 3 January 1928: BL Add MS 52746, f 152]

J.B.S. Haldane, Daedalus or Science and the Future. 
A Paper Read to the Heretics, Cambridge on February 4th, 1923.
London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1923

The To-Day and To-Morrow Series was a popular series of books that speculated on various topics about what the future would look like. Scientific research and social developments were extrapolated, suggesting, for example, that the world and humanity would be transformed by radio or space travel.

Ricketts referred to several volumes:

J.B.S. Haldane, Daedalus or Science and the Future. A Paper Read to the Heretics, Cambridge on February 4th, 1923. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1923;

Bertrand Russell, Icarus or The Future of Science. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1924;

F.C.S. Schiller, Tantalus or the Future of Man. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1924;

F.C.S. Schiller, Cassandra or The Future of the British Empire. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd.; New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1926;

Douglas Woodruff, Plato’s American Republic. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1927;

Gerald Heard, Narcissus. An Anatomy of Clothes. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd.; New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1924;

Vernon Lee, Proteus or The Future of Intelligence. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.; New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1925;

E. Sylvia Pankhurst, Delphos. The Future of International Language. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd.; New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., [1927];

J.B.S. Haldane, Possible Worlds, and Other Essays. London: Chatto and Windus, 1927.

Ricketts was not the only enthusiastic reader; James Joyce also read the volumes. He borrowed them from Sylvia Beach's bookshop/lending library, Shakespeare & Co, and used them to find words for Finnegans Wake (see the article by Robbert-Jan Henkes and Mikio Fuse on Genetic Joyce Studies).

751. A Post-War Christmas

Towards the end of the year, it seems, Charles Ricketts often looked back on the months behind him with disappointment and disapproval. When he wrote down his thoughts, which he did not always do (like many diary writers, of course), they tended to be negative rather than positive. When you are dissatisfied or depressed, you really have something to write about. 

On the first Christmas Day after the end of the First World War, he wrote a letter to his long-standing Dutch friend, Richard Roland Holst, in which he recalled wartime habits and discussed remaining restrictions.

Your letter dated 13th arrived many days later; it has been on my table unanswered for countless good and bad reasons. Yes, the end came suddenly as a Japanese told me it would early in the war, yet the surprise was not what I should have imagined, nor even the sense of relief, the latter sensation has grown daily till, to-day Xmas, I am aware that something has been lifted from my life, yet, even now, old war habits continue – I pull down blinds, save bread; feel astonished at the return of old luxuries, – these by the way are few since the shortage of certain things is still a fact; paper for instance is rare, frames impossible, and probably for a long while artificial reasons will stop a return to normal things, let alone the danger of the Russian threat.

The signal of the Armistice found us without flags and, for several hours, our balcony was decorated with a banner I had painted for Jeanne d’Arc, in a stupid propaganda play, which happened to be in the cellars.

There was a prospect of change, thanks to Edmund Davis, who had offered them a second home outside London as a token of appreciation for their art advice. In the end, they would not be decorating a cottage, but a centuries-old tower, The Keep at Chilham Castle.

Chilham Castle Keep in 2021
[Photo © Phillip Halling, from: Geography.org.uk
Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license 2.0]

A friend has promised us a small cottage in a lovely English village, Chilham near Canterbury. The spring may see us there, but it may take longer and, I fear the next year will see changes and troubles. Evil will not pass so readily. I hope next Xmas all this will seem like a pre-existence.

This war has proved the power of unknown forces of endurance and renewal, and these, for the moment, have prevailed. The sense of security is not as yet a habit, even now I sometimes think I hear the sound of guns, of possible distant raids, as I did a few months ago.

(Letter dated 25 December 1918. Typed transcription, BL Add MS 61718, ff 200–2).

In these times, we hear those sounds, not yet in Western European regions, but close enough to be alarming. Where some wars come to an end and others persist, there is no prospect of a world in which atrocities and border violations are not committed – although a young perspective on the world may offer the necessary, more encouraging outlook. Tyrants are never truly young, neither in their hearts nor in reality. Tyrants never represent the future.

750. After Wilde

Merlin Holland's new book about his grandfather's legacy, After Oscar. The Legacy of a Scandal (Europa Editions) does contain one reference to Charles Ricketts (and none to Charles Shannon). His name features on page 211 and is not related to his designs for Wilde's works. It is mentioned in passing, introducing a letter from Robert Ross to Ricketts.

Merlin Holland, After Oscar (2025)

The letter was an answer to Ricketts's letter of 6 June about the libel case brought by Jack Grein and Maud Allan against Pemberton Billing which they lost. Ross wrote that his letter had 'touched & soothed' him:

I foresaw the result of the Billing case, & warned Grein not to bring the action. When the trial began everyone thought I was mad because I said Billing would be acquitted [….] Officials in the Treasury told me kindly but firmly that the subject was on my brain. Now they are absurdly astonished at the obvious. Billing & Douglas are the centre of a powerful & richly backed caucus of all the disgruntled people in England.

(Ross to Ricketts, 13 June 1918: BL Add MS 58091, f 152).

Ricketts's letter will be published next year in The Collected Letters of Charles Ricketts, edited by John Aplin and myself, and published in three volumes by Brill (see the Brill website).

749. A Fan by Charles Shannon

The Canadian auction house Waddington's in Toronto will soon be selling an item by Charles Shannon that is described in the catalogue as a red chalk drawing on buff paper: 'Classical study', 18,5 x 40 cm, with initials 'C.H.S.' in the lower right hand corner. [See Waddington's website.]

Charles Shannon, 'The Toilet' (lithograph, 1906)

The initials appear in the lower right hand corner of the fan-shaped image.

Initials in Charles Shannon, 'The Toilet' (lithograph, 1906)

However, this is not an original chalk drawing, but a lithograph, signed in the stone. Its title is 'The Toilet' and the edition is very small: only nine proofs were made in sanguine or black. For his 1978 catalogue of lithographs Paul Delaney traced three copies: in the British Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Boston Public Library. It was one of three fan-shaped lithographs that Shannon designed in 1906.

In 1920, George Derry (alias of R.A. Walker) gave a description of the image:

On the left of the fan a woman crouches combing her hair with her left hand, while the line of her right is also raised and follows the outside curve of the fan. A small child is kneeling on the floor and on the extreme right is a pitcher of water. 

The auction date is 11 December 2025, the estimate is $400-600 CAD.

[The lithograph sold at 200 CAD.]

748. Salome's Bookshelf Published

On 31 October I received my copies of Salome's Bookshelf. Artists and Writers of the 1890s, edited by Simon Alexander Reynolds, a Shakespeare scholar. The book contains nine essays on Fernand Khnopff, Arthur Symons, Max Beerbohm, John Davidson, Charles Conder, Charles Ricketts, Walt Ruding, Oscar Wilde and Ernest Dowson, and is published by Greenwich Exchange (copies may be ordered at the publisher's website). 

Salome's Bookshelf, cover (2025)

The articles establish connections between literature, music and visual art. My article on Ricketts ('Charles Ricketts  and Harmony Between Image and Text') discusses the way in which Ricketts combined (sometimes his own) texts and images at the beginning and end of his career, for example in the magazine The Dial, in Oscar Wilde's The Sphinx and in his later works, such as Beyond the Threshold.

Of the other essays, which introduce new perspectives, I was particularly struck by the article on Charles Conder by Samuel Shaw, who previously wrote about William Rothenstein and Edwardian culture in general.

The photographs for my essay were taken by Jos Uljee (The Hague). Below is a photograph of In the Key of Blue and Other Prose Essays, a different version of which is included in the book.

John Addington Symonds, In the Key of Blue and Other Prose Essays,
cover design by Charles Ricketts (1893) [Photo: Jos Uljee]