Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

"After some silence, one might take the opportunity... to revive a little correspondence with popular topics; but I think you are no violent politician, and I am full as little so; I will therefore tell you of what I of course care more, and I am willing to presume you do too; that is, myself."  (Volume III, pp.161-162)

I'll take a cue from Walpole and proffer some news from Planet Sarah.  My painting show opens in a week and I am still allaying wayward anxiety with the soporific of these beloved books.  At the halfway point in Volume III of The Letters of Horace Walpole (my 1906 reprint of the Peter Cunningham edition of the 1850s), I am thinking that I will definitely be reading this set for the foreseeable future.  As if there was ever any doubt!  Nothing else has distracted me since I began and I just cleared away the few lingering hopefuls from the future-reading pile on the bedside table.  I'm going to keep on with the Letters for very simple reasons - they are highly entertaining on many levels (personal, historical, general, specific, literary, social, all of everything!), the prose is lovely, and the cast of characters is fascinating.  They are full of humor and pathos and all states of being in between.  And I care.  What more could I want in my leisure reading?  Not that everything I do isn't leisure reading, but you know what I mean.  So, as summer approaches and my blog posts become necessarily fewer, since I'll be outside painting as much as possible, it's safe to assume that my Walpole-reading will carry on.  Five and a half volumes remain as yet unread.  I find this fact quietly exciting.  Please know that I will continue to write here when time permits.

Before I sign off this evening, though, I will mention how comforting I find the Letters.  I've often written about books as comfort food, and they are all the more so during difficult life transitions.  This is on my mind because tomorrow we attend the memorial service for my cousin.  She died of cancer this winter, at age 34.  I did not know her well, but she was the next cousin, after me and my sisters, in this particular branch of our family tree, and her death remains a shocking inescapable fact.  An epitaph that Walpole wrote contains these lines (p.108):

     "The Grave, great teacher, to a level brings
      Heroes and beggars, galley-slaves and kings."  

That says it all, doesn't it.  Why am I reading about all of these people I never knew, so long ago, their lives and deaths, I ask myself sometimes, when I pause, in the Letters.  I answer myself, I care.  But I can't leave on that note, it's far too sad.  I offer this instead, a little sparkle on the surface of Walpole's great sea of words (p.187):

 "...I have writ enough.... by what I have writ, the world thinks I am not a fool, which was just what I wished them to think..."

As I transition slowly from Volume II into Volume III, I can't help but think that reading Horace Walpole's Letters is a pastime that could keep me happily occupied for the entire summer.  I don't recall ever attempting to read such a huge series at this time of year - for the last decade my long reading projects have all taken place during the winter months, when being indoors coincides with a need for increased concentration and perseverance.  At that time a sustained reading project feels, in short, worthy.  But I have jumped the fence somehow and find myself in the middle of this one, after an extra long winter spent in the company of ancient authors.  And I must say it's a lovely place to be, like a wide field out in the open.  The experience is certainly helping to alleviate some anxiety about personal events looming on my immediate horizon, including an upcoming solo exhibit of my paintings.  Reading is, after all, my anti-anxiety medicine of choice!  So calming!  Keeps me busy (as does writing) so I don't worry as much!  And besides, it's been fascinating in its own right to see Walpole's transition from town mouse to country mouse, as he settles in at Strawberry Hill, and works on his house, gardens, and prospects.  Of course he goes back and forth between them constantly and his correspondence reflects that too.  I love watching his life unfold, and I love his turns of phrase. More quotes from Volume II (before I set sail with Volume III): 

"You deserve no charity, for you never write but to ask it.  When you are tired of yourself and the country, you think over all London, and consider who will be proper to send you an account of it.  Take notice, I won't be your gazetteer; nor is my time come for being a dowager, a maker of news, a day-labourer in scandal.... The town is empty, nothing in it but flabby mackerel, and wooden gooseberry tarts, and a hazy east wind."  (p.283)

"The town is empty, dusty, and disagreeable; the country is cold and comfortless; consequently I daily run from one to t'other, as if both were so charming that I did not know which to prefer." (p.383)

"...the times produce nothing: there is neither party nor controversy, nor gallantry, nor fashion, nor literature - the whole proceeds like farmers regulating themselves, their business, their views, their diversions, by the almanac.... I, who love to ride in the whirlwind, cannot record the yawns of such an age!  (p.384)

"Do you get my letters? or do I write only for the entertainment of the clerks of the post office?" (p.436)

His friends must have shouted with laughter as they read.  I smile and take notes, which is more my style.  One more letter I'd like to quote from at length describes his attempted capture of a robber, in the middle of the night.  Again thanks to Yale, I will instead point interested parties to the entire letter.  Just so good.  He has great comic timing.  Can you imagine being the recipient of such a letter!  Well, I suppose we all are now, thanks to the publishing arts. 

As I read along, I love to take note of how Walpole sees himself.  He is a gazetteer, an almanac, historian, socialite, watcher; he describes himself to his friends often, usually in a comic mode.  At one point he says:

"The present journal of the world and me stands thus: ..."  (p.363)

One letter begins with the place and date written at the top, during an unusually cold May:

"May 4, as they call it, but the weather and the almanac of my feelings affirm it is December." (p.436)

The almanac of my feelings.  How wonderful.  That phrase reminds me of nothing so much as Frank O'Hara's long poem In Memory of My Feelings (one of my favorite titles of anything, anywhere), which begins:

"My quietness has a man in it, he is transparent
 and he carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets.
 He has several likenesses, like stars and years, like numerals."

And this in turn reminds me of Horace Walpole.  Who we will be talking about again soon, I feel quite sure.  Meanwhile this country mouse will continue to enjoy reading about his forays into town and back again.

What led me into this Horace Walpole madness, anyway... I found myself wondering this afternoon (nearly finished with Volume II of his Letters).  Oh yeah, it was that charming David Cecil book I read many weeks ago, Two Quiet Lives.  The second Life in the book describes Horace Walpole's friend, the poet Thomas Gray.  My examination of Gray led to my reexamination of Walpole, which may continue indefinitely.  But back to Gray for a moment.  I would have sworn I had nothing else by or about Thomas Gray in this house, unless it was his most (his only?) famous poem, the oft-quoted and -misquoted Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard, perhaps contained in some fat English poetry anthology.  But I would have been wrong.  For today I was rifling through some books I haven't looked at in ages, namely a section in my shelves devoted to printers, printing, and fine press books of interest.  Many of these are thin, and once tucked into the shelves, near-invisible.  I pulled out one such, a diminutive hardback, about forty pages long:     


Isn't that a nice paper cover?  The black cloth spine has the gently faded title spelled out in gilt, but inside, the title page is much more readable.  In fact, it's a lovely piece of typography altogether, almost a hymn to legibility:


An Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard by Thomas Gray, printed at the Southworth Press in Portland, Maine, in 1930.  Number 91 of 990 copies printed.  The introduction by famed bookman John T. Winterich takes up half the book, and speaks much of Johnson and Boswell and briefly of Walpole, who loved this poem and first ushered it into print for his friend.  Fred Anthoensen's fine presswork continues inside, with little block illustrations (woodcuts? they don't feel like engravings...) in varied colors throughout:



I see from my bookseller's code inside the back cover that I bought this book in 2006 for six dollars.  And then promptly tucked it into my scant accumulation of admired books by Maine printers and promptly forgot about it.  Well, tonight I'm going to do what this little book is asking me to do - set aside Walpole's Letters for a few moments - the book is so slender that's all the time it will take - and read it.  Of course the other thing this book is asking me:  What else on those bookshelves have you completely forgotten about...?

So much to talk about - painting, spring book sales, bookselling, family, food, gardening, home life, world events, and of course the cat, the cat! - lots happening on all fronts - and yet all I want to do is write out perfect sentences from Horace Walpole's letters, both into my diary and then, here.  Nearly halfway through Volume II of The Letters of Horace Walpole, edited by Peter Cunningham.  Walpole is in his early 30s and has bought the house and grounds that will become his little gothic masterpiece, Strawberry Hill.  But more about that another day.  Back to the aforementioned perfect sentences:

"I can't afford to hate people so much at such a distance: my aversions find employment within their own atmosphere."  (p.67)

"I am going to tell you a long story, but you will please to remember that I don't intend to tell it well; therefore, if you discover any beauties in the relation where I never intended them, don't conclude, as you did in your last, that I know they are there."  (p.127)

"You will be diverted with a story I am going to tell you; it is very long, and so is my letter already; but you perceive I am in the country and have nothing to hurry me."  (p.141)

"I am come hither for a few days, to repose myself after a torrent of diversions, and am writing to you in my charming bow-window with a tranquillity and satisfaction which, I fear, I am grown old enough to prefer to the hurry of amusements, in which the whole world has lived for this last week.  (p.150)

"I now jump to another topic; I find all this letter will be detached scraps; I can't at all contrive to hide the seams: but I don't care."  (p.199)

"I have so little to say, that I don't care if I do tell you the same thing twice."  (p.215)

His use of language continues to delight me.  More words, from both Volumes I and II - some are repeats from an earlier post, I know, but see the quote directly above - a good writer could spin entire historical novels out of these little lists, it seems to me:

villainies
diversions
aversions
calamities
flippancies

treasonable
tumultuary
insolvent
indolent
abominable
voluminous
scrambling

toad-eater
lozenge-coach
filigree
distemper
prudence
consternation

Should we start working these into daily conversation?  Perhaps yes?  I could go on, and in the future I'm sure I will.  However before I call it a day, I will just mention one recent happening of note.  While driving to the grocery store this weekend we passed a book sale in a local church.  I said, Noooo, don't stop... but Ryan did stop, because he had seen the sign on the door.  Which read, in part: 3$ PER BAG.  Mercy.  We bought and bought.  Eight bags, 130 books.  (You do the math.)  Most are for resale, but I do have a small(ish) stack set aside for perusal.  When that will be, on some post-Walpole day, I can only guess, but there they are, some of my up-nexts.  Ryan caught me coming out of the church, with two of the bags:  sheepish grin, really shouldn't be buying books, but...

 
I simply can't help myself - I never can, when it comes to books, especially buying books.  Insolvent consternation!  Voluminous calamities!  Indolent diversions!  Abominable prudence!         

I wonder how many posts I will end up writing about Horace Walpole.  Shall we find out together?  I just finished Volume I of his Letters.  400 pages of letters plus 150 pages of front-matter.  At the end of this volume he is only 29 years old.  It is January of 1746 and his letters are full of news of the Jacobite Rebellion.  His father has recently died, and so has his beloved dog Patapan.  On to Volume II shortly, and then perhaps on to the remaining six volumes after that.  But first, a few notes about readability.  I must say, for the hundredth time at least (forgive me), how much I love reading published diaries and collected letters, for their open-endedness and candor, their coverage of events both personal and historical as they arise, and their cumulative effect.  Reading them feels voyeuristic and yet not too much, because these letters were preserved and valued during the lifetimes of the correspondents, and often returned to the senders after the death of the recipients, or vice versa.  So, they were quite public, in a way, even at the time they were written.  I don't know where I'm going with this, other than to mention that these letters feel so full.  The opposite of edited.  Like life.  There is no paring down, in fact there is often padding, from not knowing what to say but wanting to write to a friend anyway, in spite of having no real news.  My patience for fiction in general has been thin lately, so I'm not surprised to find myself a maximalist when it comes to reading choice.  Life is so full and rich, even when nothing much is happening!  I love writers whose prose reflects that, and in nonfiction I have come to love writers who write a lot, over long lifetimes.  Among so many other things, they keep me from having to decide what to read next, because I can always just keep reading whatever it is I am reading right now.  Which is Horace Walpole.

On my mind after finishing this first volume:  when writing letters, does one say what one really wants to say?  Walpole is so good at tailoring his letters to please the recipients, that I often wonder.  But I do know, apropos of above - writing even when one has no news to share - that Walpole is a master at that (p.260):

"If I went by my last week's reason for not writing to you, I should miss this post too, for I have no more to tell you than I had then; but at that rate, there would be great vacuums in our correspondence."

Again (p.267):

"My letters are now at their ne plus ultra of nothingness; so you may hope they will grow better again."

And again (p.325):

"Does Decency insist upon one's writing within certain periods, when one has nothing to say? because, if she does, she is the most formal, ceremonious personage I know.  I shall not enter into a dispute with her.... I had rather write than have a dispute about it.... it is merely to avoid scolding that I set about this letter: I don't mean your scolding, for you are all goodness to me; but my own scolding of myself.... One can scold other people again, or smile and jog one's foot, and affect not to mind it; but those airs won't do with oneself; one always comes by the worst in a dispute with one's own conviction."

These are the times I love him best, when he veers off into self-reflection.  I wish he did it more often, but his main correspondent from this time period was living in Italy and so most of Walpole's writing to him encompasses politics and social tidbits he considered newsworthy or entertaining from afar.  Walpole will describe himself and his feelings from time to time, but only for short passages, and then a disclaimer usually follows (p.320):

"...I think I have pretty well exhausted the chapter of myself."

However, Volume I of the Letters does contain some extraordinary exceptions.  First, Walpole writes to his beloved cousin offering him a share of his worldly goods, if that is what it will take for the cousin to marry and be happy.  A beautiful letter.  Here it is, courtesy of Yale.  I love the last paragraph especially.  Second, two letters ably answer that question I mention above - He writes so well, but what was he really thinking?  In this particular case, we know exactly.  After the death of their father, one of Walpole's elder brothers sends him a terrible letter, about a parliamentary matter.  Cursory, insulting, truly awful.  Walpole writes a long reply, addressing his brother's statements one by one.  And doesn't send it.  In a masterful display of tact, he takes the high road and sends instead a single paragraph in reply.  Condensed, lovingly bitter.  Again, thanks to Yale, I point anyone interested to these very letters.  The terrible letter from his brother (see page two! the last sentence is a killer!).  The reply Walpole didn't send.  The reply he did send.  And not just the printed text, but also the handwritten letters themselves.  These, more than anything, make me want to read on.

I wish my aversion to reading a lot of text online wasn't so strong - I'd be reading all of the Horace Walpole letters on the Yale website (thousands more! to and from!) instead of just the selection in the printed volumes I have on hand.  But, as I found out last year with Samuel Clemens, when I read my way through his printed correspondence and gallantly tried to continue using the UC Mark Twain Project's online e-reader... I couldn't do it.  My heart belongs to real books.  No surprise there, I know.  

I've read nothing but Horace Walpole in weeks, it seems.  Other authors are on my mind, however.  One of the new books I would dearly like to buy and read, but am waiting on purchasing for now until I am back in funds (as one might say in the eighteenth century) is the recently-published memoir by Sarah Manguso entitled Ongoingness: The End of a Diary (Graywolf 2015).  Sarah, obsessive long-time diarist, stops keeping her diary.  Imagine such a thing.  I am fascinated and disturbed by the very thought and want to find out why and how she stopped, and what came next.  So that's on my list.  As is another book - my sister's best friend has just had a book of poetry published, and I can't wait to buy it and savor it.  He is wonderful and the poems are luminous - Kevin McClellan, Tributary (Barrow Street 2015).

Meanwhile, however, I am settling down each evening to read a hundred pages or so from my set of The Letters of Horace Walpole.  Nearly through with Volume I, which covers much of his 20s, in the 1730s and 40s, when his father was Prime Minister and he himself was an active member of Parliament.  He lived for a time at his father's new country house, Houghton (I mean...!), but he preferred living in "town."  His letters from this time period contain lots of political news, which I have a hard time following (lords and ladies and royalty and their intrigues and machinations and general comings and goings), but, as Peter Cunningham, the editor of this edition, reminds us in his preface (p.xvi):

"His letters (his best works) are absolute jests and story books, and the exact standard of easy engaging writing.... He has the art to interest us in very little matters, and to enliven subjects seemingly the most barren."

The recipients of his letters certainly valued him as a correspondent, for these very reasons.  Richard West, a school-fellow and friend, writes back to Walpole, about his letters (p.21):

"...I know I had rather gather the crumbs that fall from under your table, than be a prime guest with most other people."

His friends valued him in person, too, but he thought himself more worthy on the page (p.111):

"...if I have any wit in my letters, which I do not at all take for granted, it is ten to one that I have none out of my letters.  A thousand people can write, that cannot talk..."

And have I mentioned he is often funny?  This (p.175):

"...I cannot say I am well; I am afraid I have a little fever upon my spirits, or at least have nerves, which, you know, everybody has in England."

He uses more great words that bring the eighteenth century to life:

voluminous
epistolary
abominable
surfeit
post-chaise
consternation

I enjoy keeping a list of them in my diary, as I read along.  I'm almost afraid to read Sarah Manguso's book, truth be told, because I do love my diaries!  So much happens, everywhere, but I find I have nothing else to say today - in Walpole's phrase there is no news "...from the kingdom of the Dull..." (p.226), except that I must go dig over the vegetable garden and this is the perfect time to do it.  The fog has just burned off and it's sunny and chilly out.  Too cold for bugs and the grass isn't yet unmanageable. Walpole has the last word again (p.194):

"Adieu!  I am at the end of my tell."