Happy birthday, Mr. Eliot!

Dr Nicoletta Asciuto, Associate Lecturer in English Literature, writes about T.S Eliot who was born 129 years ago this month.

T.S Eliot in 1934.  Public Domain image by Lady Ottoline Morrell

‘Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future, / And time future contained in time past.’ (I, ll. 1-3). Of Four Quartets, I have always found ‘Burnt Norton’, where these lines are taken from, the most soothing one. Written before the outbreak of World War II (1935-36), ‘Burnt Norton’, the first of the four quartets, carries the rewarding promise that our past lives, present experiences, and future hopes all merge into one fluid experience of personal time, where nothing is lost and everything redeemed, pointing to ‘one end, which is always present’ (l. 10). No other Eliot poem, I feel, expresses such fluidity in a more serene, peaceful way. Memories from his American childhood and his most recent British life mingle with preoccupations about the future, breaking through during the poet’s walk in the rose garden of Burnt Norton. He visited Cotswolds in 1934, to meet with his old friend Emily Hale, who came over from America.

This is what has made me a passionate reader and scholar of Eliot’s poetry throughout the years: how his poetry, always so very preoccupied with time, manages to be timeless yet profoundly set in history and tradition. ‘There will be time, there will be time’ (l. 26), says the poet in ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, but only until ‘the taking of toast and tea’ (l. 34): after that quintessential moment of British and New England turn-of-the-century sociability, imprisoning the poet, there will be no more time to change our minds and, for him, to ever be free again.

Time and history were much on Eliot’s mind. But they are also literally accumulated and deposited in his verse, and not just as reflections of poet’s intellectual preoccupations. Writing cannot happen in a historical vacuum, and Eliot’s poetry especially engages, both directly and indirectly, with the rich poetic tradition that preceded it, whilst at the same time branding itself as new, modernist, and a breakaway from the old. Reading Eliot’s poetry does not mean simply reading the words and thoughts of an Anglophone poet living in the first half of the twentieth century; rather, it entails entering a literary time and a complex game of allusions and references, in which poets of different ages and cultures can somehow “cohabit” in one single, atemporal space. This timelessness of Eliot’s poetry has contributed to its allure, recognized by hundreds of students, scholars, and poetry readers over the last century.

This year, we not only celebrate the 129th anniversary of Eliot’s birth in St. Louis, Missouri, but also the 100th anniversary of the publication of Eliot’s first poetry collection, Prufrock and Other Observations, with the Bloomsbury-based Egoist Press, which also published works by Ezra Pound and James Joyce. Happy birthday, Mr. Eliot, and thank you for gifting us with such extraordinary, timeless poems.

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The Eliot Collection

(University of York library Rare Books Collection)

The University of York library was gifted a small number of books by and about T.S. Eliot by the library of King’s College, Cambridge in the early seventies.  This was the result of a bequest to King’s College by Eliot’s friend, John Hayward, and consisted of those books in the Hayward Collection of which King’s College already owned copies.  The collection has since been expanded, both through the acquisition of new books by gift and purchase, and through transferring to it books previously on the open shelves. It now covers such authors as W.B. Yeats, Robert Graves, D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Seamus Heaney, Christopher Hill, and Paul Muldoon.  

To arrange to view items in our rare books collection please contact the Borthwick Institute

Albert Moore and the University’s art collection

To coincide with a major exhibition of York-born artist Albert Joseph Moore’s work running at York Art Gallery Ilka Heale, Metadata Specialist, links the artist to the University’s art collection.

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York Art Gallery currently has a major exhibition of the York-born artist Albert Joseph Moore’s work. This is the first exhibition of his work since the one held in 1894 to commemorate his death a year earlier.

The Department of History of Art at the University collaborated with the art gallery to set up the exhibition. Earlier in the summer the Department hosted the conference Rethinking Albert Moore and speakers included Professor Liz Prettejohn from the Department who has authored many books on Victorian painting and Aestheticism.

Born in York in 1841, Albert Moore was one of the leading artists of the Aesthetic movement in the late 19th century alongside J.M. Whistler, Edward Burne-Jones, G.F. Watts and Frederic, Lord Leighton. Believing in “art for art’s sake”, these artists emphasised that art existed for its beauty alone rather than the importance of subject matter or another purpose.

Albert was the youngest child in a family of artists. The exhibition also features paintings by Moore’s father and brothers of a variety of seascapes, landscapes and views of York.

Albert’s father was William Moore (1790-1851), a portrait and landscape artist who worked in oil, watercolours and pastel. Born in Birmingham, Moore moved to York in 1829 where he made a living painting portraits for local patrons. He died in 1851 after becoming ill from lead and vermilion poisoning, contracted from pastel pigment.

Five of his fourteen children (pupiled by William) became professional artists.
As well as Albert, there was Henry Moore RA (1831-1895), John Collingham Moore (1829-1880), the watercolourist Edwin Moore (1813-1893), and William Moore Jnr (1817-1909) a landscape painter.

The University of York art collection has a number of works of art which can be found throughout the campus and buildings. Within the collection are two portraits of wealthy York gentlemen painted in oils. The painter is listed as William Moore, although there is limited information about the origin or provenance of the paintings.

John Greame Esq. of Sewerby and Heslington in the
East Riding, 1833. Photograph by Paul Shields. 

This painting is of York gentleman John Graeme whose first wife was Sarah Yarburgh a descendant from the Yarburgh family of Heslington Hall.  Sarah died prematurely leaving Graeme with two young children.  John later remarried moving his family to Sewerby Hall where he lived with his second wife until their deaths within a few days of each other in February 1841. For more information on Sewerby Hall, see this guidebook in our King’s Manor Library.

The second portrait is of  John Graeme’s eldest son from his first marriage, Yarburgh, also painted in 1833.

Yarburgh Esq. of Sewerby and Heslington, 1833. Photograph by Paul Shields. 

The estate then passed to his eldest son from his first marriage, Yarburgh Graeme (b. 1782?), who also inherited Heslington Hall from his mother’s family.  A clause in his grandfather’s will stipulated that if the estate passed down through the female line any future heirs had to assume the name and coat of arms of Yarburgh. Due to this provision Graeme changed his name to Yarburgh Yarburgh. 

It is not know if Yarburgh lived in Heslington Hall but he did replace most of the Elizabethan hall with the largely Victorian building that the University took over in 1962.  

Heslington Hall during rebuilding, 1855. Reproduced by Paul Shields. 

This photograph shows the hall during the rebuilding in 1855 and is taken from a collection of photographs, offprints and typescripts by Harry Fairhurst for the book Heslington Hall: introductory notes on the building and its owners. The University Library also has a number of books on the history of Heslington Hall which can be found on YorSearch, the Library catalogue.

The exhibition Albert Moore: Of beauty and aesthetics continues until Sunday 1 October 2017 at York Art Gallery, so there is still plenty of time to visit. 

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To find books about Albert Moore and the Aesthetic movement, search YorSearch, the Library catalogue or browse the shelves in our History of Art collection at LJ 9.2081 and LJ 9.2:

• After the pre-Raphaelites: art and aestheticism in Victorian England by Elizabeth Prettejohn.
• Art for art’s sake: aestheticism in Victorian painting by Elizabeth Prettejohn. 
• Victorian painting by Christopher Wood.
• Victorian high renaissance: George Frederick Watts, 1817-1904 ; Frederic Leighton, 1830-96 ; Albert Moore, 1841-93 ; Alfred Gilbert, 1854-1934.
• Albert Moore by Robyn Asleson

The University of York art collection comprises of a wide range of works, from ancient and modern ceramics and sculpture to photography and printmaking. To view items in the collection search the online catalogue which is also available in print and can be found in the Library.

Writing in the library

This is a guest post from Dave Beer, Reader in Sociology, reblogged from his own Medium page with permission. All the images are by Dave too.

I’m working on a book at the moment. It’s largely drafted and I’m trying to work it into shape. I always find it a bit of a slog when I’m having to read my own words back, again and again. I keep the writing and editing stages very seperate, which means that I’m often working with an extremely rough draft that need lots of work over several months. It’s a slow process. This is when I tend to turn to the library. When it comes to the trickier bits of writing and editing — whether it’s books, chapters or articles I’m working on — I’ve found that relocating to the library can help a little. The slog is the same, but being surrounded by books seems to give the work a little bit of an encouraging nudge.

The library is a bit of a bubble. I use it more in the gaps between terms. In the ebb and flow of the academic year — described beautifully in Les Back’s book Academic Diary: Or Why Higher Education Still Matters — the library space is most welcoming at the time when my own diary is at it’s thinnest. I’m in the library now, writing this short piece as a way of getting warmed up for a few hours of editing. The library space just seems to invite thinking and writing. Wifi connects me into the usual networks, but the space seems somehow to provide a refuge from the distractions and endless flows of information that call for our attention. It frowns on anything too fivilous; Twitter mentions and the like. The attention economy still calls to us through our devices, but somehow the quiet contemplation of the library space suggsts to us that we should be ignoring it and directing our attention elswhere.

In terms of our connectivity, the spaces of the library are no different to anywhere else. They just feel different. Part of the this is the kind of affective properties that are designed into the spaces — they are put together to make you feel a certain way. But the bigger presence is that of the books. Even if we are not taking them off the shelves, the books set the tone for the space. Their physical presence, looming down from the shelves, reminds you of the history of knowledge. This is partly liberating because, as when looking at pictures of outer space, I’m reminded of the meagreness of what I am contributing. The enormity of knowledge is there on display in the library. This frees me up becuase of the perspective it gives to the writing.

I think though the tone of the library is also a product of how evocative the books are. A little while ago I wrote a short piece about the properties of old books. That short piece used both Sherry Turkle’s notion of ‘evocative objects’ and Walte Benjamin’s account of the importance of the materiality of books to reflect on why working with old books is so interesting. Their yellowed pages suggest something of their past and istantly evoke a history of use — a material biography. When we sit amonst them rows of them we are placed within a mass of those historcial traces. The presence of shelves full of old books has a collective effect. The impact of evocative objects is multiplied when they are displayed in concert. The library space is where these evocative obejcts intersect and their dusty dogeared and sun-lightened spines tell stories of accumulating knowledge. The aura of these obejcts is powerful in itself — we need not always be working from these books to feel a sense of the weight of knowledge and the history of thinking that they evoke.

Writing spaces matter. The environment we write in inevitably shapes the work (as an example, I previously I wrote this short piece on the book I wrote whilst sitting in a fold up chair and leaning on a towel box). The liberating enormity and evocative presence of the library’s books make it a place to think and work that, I think, adds some energy and a bit of fizz to what I’m doing. It’s a space I tend to turn to when I need a bit of a push to keep writing or to keep editing. Sometimes I fetch those books come down from the shelves to inform what I’m doing, but often they sit there suggesting to me to think more, to be a bit freer and to get on with it.

The Ralph Vaughan Williams Collection

To mark the 59th anniversary of his death on Saturday 26 August, Olivia Else, Academic Liaison Librarian for Music, explores the set of scores that originally belonged to Ralph Vaughan Williams that are now housed in the Library's Rare Books collection.

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Vaughan Williams by Rothenstein in 1919.
Image from https://commons.wikimedia.org/
wiki/File:Vaughan-Williams-
by-Rothenstein.jpg in the public domain.

As the Academic Liaison Librarian for Music at the University of York I am proud to oversee the excellent collection of scores and academic texts that are housed in the John Paynter Music Library, as well as the large selection of music related DVDs and CDs, microfiche and electronic resources held elsewhere in the building, or online.

One of the lesser known parts of the Library’s Rare Books collection includes a set of 81 scores bound together in 21 volumes that were originally owned by the eminent British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958).

The scores were gifted to the Library by the Department of Music’s Professor Nicola LeFanu, an internationally recognised composer in her own right, and she in turn received them from another acclaimed composer, her mother Elizabeth Maconchy, who studied under Vaughan Williams (henceforth RVW) at the Royal College of Music in the 1920s.

The somewhat eclectic set of scores contains works by RVW’s forbears, contemporaries and pupils, as well as a handful of his own works. Most interesting to scholars are perhaps the annotations on some of the works. Although most show no signs of having been used in performance, some of the chamber works contain fingering and rehearsal marks, and a number of the scores have handwritten dedications to RVW by their composers, including Gustav Holst (a close friend of RVWs), Herbert Howells (a younger composer profoundly influenced by RVW’s music) and Arnold Bax (another younger composer who developed a close working relationship with RVW).

A selection of annotated scores from the Ralph
Vaughan Williams collection. Photograph by Paul Shields. 

RVW appears to have solved a problem that many musicians continue to grapple with today. He bound his score collection into larger volumes to make it easier to find what he needed when searching through large quantities of anonymous looking slimline sheet music. Some of these volumes have rather beautiful covers with RVW’s initials embossed on them in gold, and all contain handwritten contents notes on the front flyleaf, apparently written by RVW himself.

Front cover and contents page of a collection of scores, Morris dance tunes. Photograph by Paul Shields. 

The two most exciting volumes in the set contain a handwritten reduced score of RVW’s ballad opera Hugh the Drover. The opera was first composed during the period 1910-1914 but it did not receive a formal performance until 1924. A scrawled note on the cover of the first volume states “Curwen
Editions 3661” and this indeed reflects the details of the publisher and plate number of the 1924 edition of the score, but our version appears to be a pre-publication copy, possibly a final proof.

Front cover of Hugh the drover: a romantic
ballad opera in two acts. Photograph by Paul Shields.

Although largely identical to the published version, as you look through the score there are numerous areas of correction or re-working. On a casual glance it is impossible to be certain whether these reflect errors or deliberate revisions of the music - maybe there is a PhD thesis waiting for someone in these pages! What we do know is that Vaughan Williams continued to work on the score of Hugh the Drover throughout his lifetime, with the final version being published in 1956, over forty years after the work was first ‘finished’.

Annotations in Hugh the drover: a romantic
ballad opera in two acts.Photograph by Paul Shields.  

Whatever the role played by these volumes in the evolution of Hugh the Drover, for myself as a librarian and music graduate it is thrilling to be able to handle scores with such an illustrious provenance, and gain a little insight into the workings of one of our nation’s greatest musicians. As with any item in the Library’s Rare Books Collections, members of the University can arrange to consult the RVW collection in the Borthwick Institute’s Search Rooms. A full list of the scores in the collection can be seen on YorSearch,  I do encourage you to come and make full use of them. As for me, I’m off to bind my own score collection in leather volumes with OJE embossed in golden letters on the corners…

Creating the Story

In the second of his two blog posts regarding the IPUP internship, Alex Jubb tells us more about Clement Attlee's Indian Books.

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There is certainly an air of mystery surrounding Clement Attlee's relationship with the University of York. The presence of books donated by Attlee reflects two major questions; why did he have these books in the first place? And secondly, how have they ended up in the University's collection? The internship, brought about by the seventieth anniversary of the independence of India and Pakistan, has contributed to bringing both Attlee's involvement in the early history of the University to the surface, in addition to the wider knowledge of the accessions book; a source rarely known about outside of the Rare Books Department within the University.

Attlee's interest in Indian and Pakistani affairs was recognised by a great number of Indian authors. He had been a member of a number of influential commissions, including the Indian Statutory Commission between 1928 and 1934, and later became the expert on India within the Labour Party. During the Second World War Attlee was placed in charge of Indian Affairs, setting up the Cripps Mission in 1942 in an attempt to bring all the various factions within India together. As a result of this wealth of experience, Attlee played a crucial role in ultimately bringing about the independence of both states. It soon became obvious through many of the inscriptions in works personally donated by Attlee to the University that the ex-Prime Minister was a greatly admired, clearly knowledgeable individual who was seen as a man who could provide patronage to works on the subject of India and Pakistan. Authors such as Bhagavan Das,  MM Aslan Khan, and S Rawachaudra Rau, in addition to organisations such as the Anglo-Indian Association based in London, made hand-written notes to Attlee himself within many of the works. Das, in his 1934 work Ancient versus Modern “Scientific Socialism”, wrote to Attlee to ask for a review of the aforementioned work. This can be seen in the image below;

The inscription in Ancient Versus Modern "Scientific Socialism'"by Bhagavan Das.

In Rawachaudra Rau's case he forwarded on to Attlee his late father's 1912 work, K Srinivasu-Rau's The Crisis in India, stating that; 'For favour of noble acceptance by Major C. R. Attlee MP this work is presented in fulsome loyalty and devotion' (see the image below). This could be evidence for the respect for Attlee from authors of Indian affairs. Moreover, whilst the Anglo-Indian Association donated a work to Attlee from their offices in London, Attlee received many works from the Indian sub-continent itself. For example, Aslan Khan's analytical work 'Safeguards in the New Indian Bill' arrived on Attlee's desk all the way from Lahore.

The inscription in The Crisis in India by K Srinivasa Rau

The second question is clearly; how have these works ended up in the University's collections? The University had sent out a call to institutions and individuals across the country and as a result there were a series of generous donations of books between 1961 and 1963. During these years, the University had been announced but was not officially open until 1963. The founding of the University of York and other universities of the same period,  was a definite factor in receiving these donations. Socialist and Labour politicians such as Attlee appreciated and valued new universities as they provided education for a greatly increased number of potential students; 'education for all' being a key feature in the vocabulary of the majority of left-leaning politicians.

However, it is unclear what were the other driving forces behind the donation of these works. John Bew, the author of the most recent biography of Attlee, assumes that one possibility is that Violet Attlee, Clement’s wife, donated these books as the family was moving to a smaller home with less space for a vast library. The dates in which these works were logged in the accessions book all fell in August of 1962; Violet Attlee passed away in 1964, and Clement Attlee died in 1967. He was increasingly frail as the 1960s wore on, but in 1962 he did give two speeches in the House of Lords; he was very much still capable of enacting his political beliefs both in and out of Westminster, but was certainly in less good health than he had ever previously been. The latest possible date for these documents to have been donated would clearly be in 1962 with the logged date evidenced in the accessions book. The Attlee of the early 1960s would possibly have still been capable of donating these works, as well as also deciding which works to donate and which ones to keep within his collection. Documents that would support this theory have yet to be uncovered, and it is the accessions book that is the main piece of evidence for Attlee's contributions.

After correspondence with the British Library, the Bodleian Library in Oxford and Attlee's biographers, the mystery has only grown exponentially. In the correspondence with the Bodleian, the Superintendent for the Library’s Special Collections stated that; 'in keeping, perhaps, with his [Attlee's] seemingly quiet and methodical nature, he did not routinely keep personal correspondence … the collection we [the Bodleian] have is very much a collection of governmental and official documents'. The Bodleian holds the mainstay of manuscripts relating to Attlee, so the mystery would continue.

Clement Attlee's bookplate, found in
many of the works.

What is also interesting is that the collection of mid-twentieth century Indian works have been greatly
supplemented by major gifts from the Riddy family in 2008. Felicity Riddy was an academic at the University of York between 1988 and 2007, becoming the Vice-Chancellor in 2000. She is a specialist in late-medieval English and Scottish Literature, whereas her husband John had 'made his mark as a book collector, and built up a much-admired private library on the history of British India… once the largest of its kind in private hands'. He was known to give lectures and wrote articles illuminating various aspects of Indian history. The Riddys can also be found in the very same accessions book within the Borthwick Library, having gifted even more works than Attlee did himself. This project highlighting twentieth century Indian works within the University has accompanied the continued employment and recruitment of specialists in all departments within the University; specialists in fields such as Indian and Pakistani affairs, global and transnational history, in addition to scholars of worldwide independence movements following examples of de-colonisation in the twentieth century.

There is undoubtedly a great amount of scope for more research to be done in the particular field. The accessions book holds many hidden secrets; Attlee personally donated hundreds of works, to the University of York and this placement has only served to highlight those works relating to the independence movements of both India and Pakistan. A full programme of research into the accessions book will certainly be useful to create a greater level of understanding of the history of the Morrell Library.

There are plenty of sources still to find, and plenty of manuscripts still to uncover within the University’s archives to unearth the mysteries that have arisen as a result of this internship.

The information gathered during this internship will be used to enhance catalogue records making it easier for researchers to identify Attlee donations. For more information please contact the Rare Books Librarian sarah.griffin@york.ac.uk.

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All photos by Alex Jubb.