Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair! – Catherine Butler

Shelley’s traveller had his vast and trunkless legs of stone. Today, authors have second-hand bookshops.

It’s always bittersweet to find one’s own books being sold second hand. Nothing puts the ‘Ex” into “Ex Libris” like finding a story into which one poured a good portion of one’s soul on sale for pennies, but when it’s a presentation copy it coats the bitter pill in wormwood icing. I don’t want to say it’s exactly like seeing one’s own child being put up for adoption, but there’s a smack of that.

So anyway, I came across Death of a Ghost (2006) in the local Oxfam, and on opening it got the shock of dull surprise I always feel when I encounter my own handwriting in an unexpected place. There was my friendly dedication to a local school, written – I now remembered – during a visit there some ten years ago. My first instinct was to be a little offended that they had given the book away, but then I looked at the plate where all the library stamps should be, and got snow blindness:

My Badge of Shame

It seemed that no one had taken it out in all its ten years. At least I could comfort myself that it hadn’t been read and found wanting, but not to have been read at all? Is that really better?

I bought it, of course, and hurried it home, certain that every passer-by was looking at me and muttering “unsuccessful author” under their breath.

Ahem. That was all I had to say, really, but, looking at my watch, it seems I still have a few minutes left, so while I’m here, why don’t we lighten the mood by looking at a couple of other inscriptions in my possession?

Here’s one it took me over a year to obtain. This particular book belonged to my great-great-great-great grandfather, Weeden Butler. It is inside a copy of the clergyman William Dodd's Thoughts in Prison, which Weeden (who was Dodd’s amanuensis) helped copy and publish after Dodd was hanged for forging the Earl of Chesterfield’s signature in 1777 – the last person to be hanged for forgery in England. (If you want to know the rather colourful story of Dodd’s fall from grace, I’ve written about it here.) You can see Weeden’s own stamp, and then in pencil some notes made by his great-grandson Gerard in 1894, including these intriguing lines:

On page 8 is the reference to “Butler - midst a million faithful found”, which in the wave of popular revulsion after Dodd’s execution in 1777 made so much difference to Weeden Butler's fortunes.

At some point after Gerard wrote that mysterious note the book left the family, and I was very pleased to get it back into Butler hands, via an American bookseller.

I have no personal connection with my other example, which I bought second-hand for 75p about 35 years ago. It’s a copy of Dante’s Purgatorio, and the inscription is to one R. F. Gore Browne, dated September 1915. Gore Browne was a prisoner-of-war at the time, being held in an officer’s prison camp at Stralsund on the Baltic Coast. I was struck then, and still am, by what an appropriate gift the Purgatorio must have seemed in such circumstances.

Prompted by writing this blog, I’ve tried to find out a little more about the camp, and discovered an account by an American visitor, written earlier in the year (Gore Browne, a second-lieutenant in the artillery, was already a prisoner by that time). It sounds distinctly more comfortable than the conditions many of his comrades were experiencing on the Front:

The British officers live by themselves, occupying two good sized rooms, nine in one and 18 in the other, there being also one French officer in the larger room, which is partitioned off by wardrobes into three sections. All seemed well and in good spirits, and all were in communication with their friends at home. All agreed in saying that there was no discrimination against them, and none had any material complaint to make. Letters and parcels are received more promptly than they had been at Mainz. The commandant promised to consider their wishes in regard to the use of a special field for cricket. Tennis courts are already in use, and there is a large park in which the officers are permitted to walk.

Here's a picture of the place, taken the same year:

Possible Cricket Field?

In my last ABBA blog I talked about Carrie's War, a book set in the Second World War in which there are no bombs or battles. I like that book for showing a quiet corner of the world in a time of global trauma, and in similar vein it pleases me to think of Lt. Gore Browne spending most of the First World War in relative equanimity (after whatever early action resulted in his capture), playing tennis, or cricket if the commandant proved amenable, reading Dante on rainy days, and watching the war go by from his small island on the Baltic Sea.

What became of Gore Browne afterwards? His book, at least, returned to Blighty, where I eventually bought it. As for the man...

But alas, I have reached the end of my allotted blogging time, and must take my pedalo back to the man with the bag of change. Already I see the next blogger waiting impatiently. Still, perhaps it’s a research project for January?

Do you have any interesting inscriptions in books you own?