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Notes
John Carter and Graham Pollard, An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain 19th Century Pamphlets (1934), pp. 307-314; hereafter cited as Enquiry.
In his affidavit of 1875 (see below) Tennyson swore that in the year 1830 he had employed Effingham Wilson to print the Tale with a view to its publication. He confused the matter with the printing of his first volume of verse, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (London: Effingham Wilson, 1830).
Six copies are now known; that Hallam mentioned the same number must be regarded as a coincidence. The last census of examples (Ashley Library, VII, 1925, pp. 106-7) may be briefly indicated, with the necessary additions: (1) W. H. Thompson—Ashley Library; (2) According to the autograph letter by Browning which accompanies it, given by Tennyson to Forster—Browning—Thomas Powell; later Pickering—Locker Lampson—Spoor; sold at the Parke-Bernet Galleries in the W. P. Chrysler, Jr, sale (#344) on 26 February 1952; present location unknown; (3) Tennyson—Gladstone—W. H. Arnold—Huntington Library; (4) Crocker Collection, University of Virginia; (5) Tennyson—D. M. Heath—Heath family—Wise—Maggs—Kern—Owen D. Young—Berg Collection; (6) Name of original recipient erased from titlepage; sold as the property of "an English owner" at the Parke-Bernet Galleries on 10 May 1955 (#440)—Harvard. There exist some proofs of a second printing of the Tale [1868]; since all the three known examples remained in private hands until after Shepherd's death, they can have no significance for this paper.
For the reader's convenience I have henceforth punctuated the legal documents I quote, and have introduced capital letters at the beginnings of some sentences that lack them. For my knowledge of the legal documents, and the identification of a number of individuals, I am happy to thank Miss V. J. Ledger.
Interpreted, these statements suggest that Pickering asked Shepherd to transcribe the Tale in order that he might describe and quote it in a second edition of Tennysoniana (a Pickering property), whether or not Pickering was successful in retaining the volume in the ensuing re-sale. Shepherd's account throws into extremely debatable territory the ultimate responsibility for his transcription. The second edition of Tennysoniana, published by Pickering in 1879, contains a cautious description of the Tale (pp. 47-51).
Josiah Temple of Crown Hill, Norwood, Surrey (1835-1915) was the second son of Frederick Temple, of the Chamberlain's Department in the Guildhall; "he was a man of leisure, and his tastes were literary" (Norwood News, 12 February 1915). He left an estate of about seven thousand pounds to be divided between a niece and four nephews—one of whom, William Temple Franks, was at the time Controller of H. M.'s Patent Office (P.P.R. 773/1915). In 1875 Shepherd gave a copy of his second reprint of the Tale to W. Evan Franks, Esq., of 8 Thurlow Place, Tulse Hill (i.e., Lower Norwood), and six copies to Josiah Temple, again "for self and friends." In 1879 he dedicated the second edition of Tennysoniana "To J. T., E. H. T., and C. S. F. (Norwood) in token and record of gratitude and affection to themselves and to those who have gone before."
R. H. Shepherd, Bibliography of Tennyson (1896), p. 9; hereafter cited as Shepherd. There is a peculiar difficulty connected with the book. In his preface the editor wrote, "Four or five years ago . . . declining health necessitated his [Shepherd's] retirement from active life, and in a retreat at Camberwell his last days were spent in compiling for Notes and Queries a bibliography of Coleridge, and in preparing for the press a bibliography of Tennyson." He had retired to the residence of his brother, James Francis Hollings Shepherd, at "Fern Bank," 35, Broomhouse Road, Fulham, but he died on 15 July 1895, of cancer of the testis and liver, in the Camberwell House Lunatic Asylum. His brother, who had set up in 1892 as a bookdealer under the name of Frank Hollings, published and no doubt edited the posthumous bibliography of Tennyson. The book is slightly confused in method: the important remark here in question has not hitherto been noticed because it appears in an entry concerning The Gem (1831); in the entry concerning his own 1875 reprint of the Tale the minor poems are not listed in quite the correct order; and the collations are not adequate, by modern standards. But Shepherd's explicit statements seem trustworthy. The basis of the work was probably a notebook which Shepherd had kept over many years, prior to his final troubles.
Shepherd, p. 50; a statement that the 3 gatherings containing the Tale in the 1870 reprint could be substituted for those in the 1875 reprint "as the pagination is the same".
(1) Anderson Auction Co., Lapham sale (#1371), 1 Dec 1908 [see (7)]; (2) ditto, H. W. Poor sale (#1074), 5 Apr 1909; (3) Sotheby's, misc (#112), 15 June 1910 [BPC says 1875, sale catalogue says 1870, "with a Monograph"]; (4) Anderson Auction Co, G.W. Perry sale (#529), 4 Dec 1911; (5) Amer. Art Assoc., Sydney Herbert Sale (#909), 16 Feb 1916; (6) Anderson Galleries, H. B. Forman sale, Pt II (#862), 25 March 1920; (7) Amer. Art Assoc., W. T. Wallace sale (#1298), Lapham copy, 22 Nov 1920; (8) Anderson Galleries, misc (#242), 18 Jan 1922 [ABPC says 1868, sale catalogue says 1870, "with a Monograph"]; (9) ditto, Mrs. J. W. Merriman sale (#536), 14 Dec 1922; (10) Hodgson's, misc (#60), 4 Dec 1928; (11) ditto, misc (#173), 23 May 1929; (12) ditto, misc (#373), 21 June 1929; (13) ditto, misc (#214), 9 Apr 1930; (14) Amer. Art Assoc., misc (#188), 27 Oct 1930; (15) Hodgson's, misc (#139), 2 March 1943; (16) Parke-Bernet Galleries, J.A. Spoor sale, Pt II (#1000), 4 May 1939; (17) Sotheby's, misc (#305), 3 March 1943; (18) Parke-Bernet, F.J.Hogan sale (#722), 24 Apr 1945; (19) ditto, misc (#569), "Hogan bookplate," 13 March 1956.
Sotheby's, 9 May 1917, "from the library of the late Thomas Morgan Joseph-Watkins, late Chester Herald" (#842); BAR notes "w[ith] a[ll] f[aults]"; sold for 2s.
(A) (1) Bangs, A.J. Morgan sale (#346), 1 Apr 1902—sewed; a slip bearing 3 autograph lines of the Tale, attested by Locker-Lampson, inserted; (2) resold, Anderson Galleries, Elbert A. Young sale (#545), 3 Feb 1925; (3) resold, Chicago Book & Art Auctions, Hanna Homestead Library (#487), 25 Feb 1936. (B) (4) Sotheby's, misc (#91), 11 Dec 1913—vellum; pen-and-ink portrait of Tennyson and ALS inserted; (5) resold, Sotheby's, misc (#305), 18 July 1916. (C) (6) Amer. Art Assoc., Brayton Ives sale (#983), 7 Apr 1915—full green levant morocco, gilt top; (7) resold, ditto, Rev. Dr Terry sale, Pt II (#422), 14 Feb 1935. (D) (8) Sotheby's, W. T. Watts-Dunton sale (#1089), 13 March 1917—sewn [BPC says 1875, "no titlepage printed"; BAR says Wise's 5th ed., sale catalogue says 1870]. (E) (9) Sotheby's, B.B.MacGeorge sale (#1308, with other volumes), 1 July 1924—morocco.
Shepherd later declared that he had also advertised his reprint during April and May 1875 in the Times and Notes and Queries; these notices have eluded me.
The volume (shelfmark 11902.a.36) contains a copy of Tennysoniana (1866) bearing the museum's accession stamp in blue (for an accession under the copyright act) dated 24 August 1867. On the back of the titlepage is pasted a strip bearing inscriptions in two different hands: (a) This had better be inserted in Mr. Shepherd's "Tennysoniana" (b) Presented to the Trustees of the British Museum by Richard Herne Shepherd, 5 Hereford Square, Brompton. May 19th, 1875. At the back of the volume is bound in a copy of the monograph bearing the museum's accession stamp in yellow (for a gift) dated 22 May 1875. Obviously, Shepherd's inscription was intended to refer to the monograph, not the book; and the inscription in another hand was intended to refer to the monograph, not the strip.
This volume was among a group of books purchased from Maurice Buxton Forman by Elkin Mathews, Ltd., who advertised it in their catalogue No. 102, of 1948, as item #623. They affirmed that it contained "the poems as recorded by Wise for issues [i.e., editions] 5 and 6"; the statement is incorrect. The volume was purchased by Harvard. In 1874 Swinburne had written an introduction for the second volume of Shepherd's edition of Chapman, and plied him with a good deal of knowledgeable advice and help concerning the texts to be included. Not long before 21 August 1874 Shepherd visited his collaborator at Niton, in the Isle of Wight, and on his return to London he sent back as a gift the 12 volumes making up his (anonymous) editions of Dekker, Glapthorne, and Heywood. After that warm if disproportionate gesture, it is sad to discover that on 9 January 1875 Swinburne wrote of Shepherd to a friend as "a literary hack or a drudge of all work." —Cecil Y. Lang, ed., The Swinburne Letters, II (1959), 192-193; 307-344; 367-368. No doubt Shepherd despatched his gift of The Lover's Tale to Swinburne in August 1875 as a kind of anniversary remembrance.
The documents drawn upon are as follows: P.R.O., C.32/338 T.111 (a Register of Documents); C.31/3024/1878 (Affidavit of the Plaintiff); C.31/3024/1877B (Affilidavit of H.J.Smith); C.16/1042/111 (Bill of Complaint); C.33/1244/128 (Interim Injunction); C.16/1042/111 (Interrogatories); C.16/1042/111 (Answer of the Defendant); J.15/1286/150 (Perpetual Injunction); and J.57/3363 (Note of the Taxing Master). The two copies of the 1875 reprint of the Tale which Smith procured in his search for evidence were produced in court. I have been informed by an official that "Exhibits are normally returned to the interested party on completion of the action in which they are brought into court. No unclaimed exhibits of the appropriate date [for Tennyson v. Shepherd] are preserved here." The two copies were therefore claimed by the poet's solicitors, and destroyed with those surrendered by the plaintiff.
The entry in Robson's catalogue was quoted in the Bill of Complaint: "420. Tennyson (Alfred). The Lover's Tale, a Fragment (in blank verse), pp. 47; edges uncut, reprint, very neatly bound in half red morocco, 15s. 6d. The above Poem was printed in 1833 and withdrawn before publication; only one copy of the original has ever occurred for sale. The present reprint has now become as scarce as the original; it is believed to have been superintended by the author of 'Tennysoniana.'" In his Answer, Shepherd said that he had himself written the description.
In the Answer Shepherd (that is to say, his solicitor) seized upon Tennyson's misstatement mentioned in note 3, and alleged that as the Tale had first been printed by Effingham Wilson and privately distributed in 1830, (a) it was the production of a minor, who could not hold copyright, and (b) a reprint earlier than Shepherd's had been made and distributed—namely, Moxon's, which bears the date 1833.
Shelfmark C.28.c.10; the disposition of the museum's stamps dictates the account of the two purchases in April 1875 and January 1876, and makes certain the exact extent of each item involved. The museum's records show that both purchases were made from Shepherd himself. One may suppose that, if Shepherd had not already presented a copy of his monograph to the museum, he would have sold an example of it in January 1876, together with the gathering of minor poems and a copy of the third, rather than the second, version of the preliminary fold, so that the volume made up by the museum from his wares would have been an example of what will be called, below, the fourth, rather than the third, issue of his reprint.
The Rev. Henry Curwen (1812-1894), Rector of Workington, Cumberland (a family living) from 1837 until his death. Or, more probably, his son of the same name (see DNB).
William Thomas Waite (1834-1883), a schoolmaster who took up the study of law in 1870. He was called to the Bar at Gray's Inn in 1876 and "soon rose to notice in criminal practice at the Old Bailey"; in 1879 he won for Shepherd the libel suit which the latter had instituted against the editor of the Athenaeum.—Law Times, 75 (1883-1884), p. 285.
As the statement stands, the total should be 31 (not 30) given, plus 15 sold; that is, 46 (not 45) in all. No doubt Shepherd remembered and inserted the name of one recipient of a gift copy, and forgot to change the total of gifts unrecollected.
Mr John Carter has written (ABC for Book Collectors, 3rd ed., 1961, p. 120), "the onus of proof that an observed variation derives from a deliberate action taken after publication lies, or should lie, like an iron weight on the conscience of anyone who begins to write the word issue." I define the date of publication, somewhat arbitrarily, as 21 April 1875, when Shepherd sold an example to the British Museum. The gathering of minor poems may reasonably be supposed to have been produced in the latter half of July.
Some ambiguity of terminology seems unavoidable in the unusual circumstances; namely, that this group of three gatherings was both (a) sold separately, when it should be called a pamphlet, and (b) sold as a component of a volume, when it should not. The monograph presents a similar case.
Mr W. H. Bond informs me that the four component parts of the Harvard copy can be distinguished by their papers. That of the preliminary fold is yellowest and has the closest-woven graining; that bearing the monograph is smoothest and whitest; that bearing the Tale itself is heaviest, roughest, and stiffest. These distinctions are observable in the Berg copy.
(A) (1) Sotheby's, Dr Seward Bliss sale (#295), 26 March 1900—"mor. extra, g.t., by Riviere"; (2) resold Bangs, misc (#543), 14 Nov 1900. (B) (3) Bangs, A. J. Morgan sale (#403), 1 Apr 1902—"Half brown morocco, uncut." (C) (4) Merwin-Clayton Sales Co., H. S. Fuller sale (#667), 26 Feb 1907—"Boards, uncut." (D) (5) Sotheby's, T. G. Arthur sale (#677), 15 July 1914—"green morocco extra, gilt back, inside borders gilt, g.t., uncut"; (6) resold Amer. Art Assoc., Read sale (#367), 9 Jan 1936—bound "by Maclehose." (E) (7) Sotheby's, misc (#362), 13 Nov. 1919—"original boards." (F) (8) Anderson Galleries, H. B. Forman sale, Pt I (#864), 15 March 1920—"original boards, uncut"; now in Huntington Library. (G) (9) Sotheby's, B. B. MacGeorge sale (#1305), 1 July 1924 —condition unstated, "At the end of the vol. appears a Collection of Minor Poems, 16 pp., issued in 1870 without title. . . ." (H) (10) Amer. Art Assoc., misc (#1430), 1 Apr 1925—"original boards," "Third Pirated Edition [impossible, with monograph]"; (11) resold, Ritter-Hopson Galleries, misc (#321), 24 May 1932—[same description].
(A) (1) Bangs, A. J. Morgan sale (#404), 1 Apr 1902—ABPC says 1870, sale catalogue says 1875; half calf; "The Poems at end with a half-title [?] and separate pagination." (B) (2) Merwin-Clayton Sales Co., Bangs sale (#906), 27 Nov 1905—"gilt polished calf extra, gilt-tooled inside borders, gilt top, uncut." (C) (3) Sotheby's, Andrew Lang sale (#405), 6 Dec 1912— "calf gilt, t.e.g." (D) (4) Hodgson's, misc (#74), 13 Dec 1928—"half blue crushed morocco, t.e.g." (E) (5) Parke-Bernet Galleries, misc (#607), 13 Oct 1947—"full blue levant morocco, gilt top, uncut, by The Club Bindery"; (6) resold, Am. Book Auction Co., misc (#271), 3 Dec 1948— same description.
I owe the quotation from Richmond's letter, and other information concerning the holdings of the Morgan Library, to the courtesy of Mr Herbert Cahoon, Curator of Autograph MSS.
(1) Bangs', miscellaneous (#542), 9 May 1898, "sewn and entirely uncut as issued." (2) Henkel (Philadelphia), Peirce sale (#586), 27 March 1903, "sewn, uncut, as issued." (3) Merwyn-Clayton Sales Co., Bangs sale (#904), 27 November 1905, "sewed, unopened." (4) American Art Association, Borden sale (#777), 17 February 1913, "lev. mor., uncut"; (5) resold at the same galleries, W.T.Wallace sale (#1302) on 22 March 1920, "Borden copy," purchased by the Huntington Library.
(1) See note 40, (A). This could have been an example of the second issue of the Tale, 1875, in which the final gathering had been replaced by a copy of the 32-page pamphlet of minor poems, the only such collection possessing a half-title. (2) See note 18, (D). The editor of BAR, after a personal inspection, referred huffily to the note in BPC and described the item as an example of Wise's "Fifth Pirated Edition: 1875." If this decision was just, the item consisted of an example of some reprint of the Tale, lacking any preliminary fold, with a copy of the 32-page pamphlet of minor poems. But see below.
"Ah, God, the petty fools of rhyme" [called Afterthought, and Literary Squabbles]; On a Spiteful Letter; The Third of February, 1852; Ode for the Opening of the International Exhibition; On Translations of Homer [i.e., Experiment in Quantity ("These lame hexameters the strong-wing'd music of Homer")].
For example: Overprintings—p. 5, line 2, old Rhodes (both o's and the first d overprinted); p. 15, line 7, yours (diagonal blur to upper right within u); p. 18, line 1, part (last three letters overprinted); p. 23, line 16, manly (all letters overprinted). Broken letters—p. 6, line 14, spiced (crack across column of i); p. 9, line 8, inland (crack across left leg of second n); p. 15, line 13, faded (crack across shoulder of first d); p. 19, line 17, heart (two cracks in shoulder of h).
Mr Douglas G. Parsonage of Lathrop C. Harper, Inc., has kindly confirmed the sale to Mr Chapin. He was unable to tell me the source of the copy. "I can say quite certainly, however, that we never handled another copy, as Mr. Harper dealt exclusively in American History and Incunabula, handling literature but rarely on an occasional courtesy basis for a special customer."
The monograph itself is undated. Wise seems to have sought to create further confusion by appending to it in his forgery the date "August, 1870." This was the correct month for the production of Shepherd's 1870 reprint, as we know from Shepherd's Answer; it does not seem possible to say how Wise can have known it.
As has been related above, the list of of poems in the 32-page pamphlet seems to have been copied from the second part of Shepherd's 1870 reprint or (more probably) arranged to fit Shepherd's casual description of that reprint. It is difficult to see why this group of poems was used in the manufacture of a pamphlet supposedly of 1875. Perhaps the list was made out about 1890 for use in the forged "First Pirated Edition"; its use then decided against; and the list found and used about 1898 when its exact nature had been forgotten.
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