John Gielgud:
An Actor's Biography in Pictures. Compiled and described by Hallam Fordham with personal narrative by John Gielgud; [With loosely inserted programme].
Stock Code 104414
London, John Lehmann, 1952
Original price
£300.00
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Original price
£300.00
Original price
£0.00
£300.00
£300.00
-
£300.00
Current price
£300.00
Inscribed. Hallam Fordham (d.1955), a radio presenter, a theatre producer and biographer.
Jonathan Mayne is likely the 'Jon' with which N. Smith signs off his letter dated 11th December 1952 to Fordham, implying that Mayne and Fordham were close friends or perhaps romantically linked.
List of Documents:
Five press cuttings containing obituaries of Hallam Fordham dated in pen annotations to 1955.
A bundle of letters including:
Letter dated 17th January 1958 from Jonathan Mayne to L. Asher of Books for Pleasure Ltd. on the possibility of Asher in taking over 500 loose sheets of Fordham's 1952 John Gielgud An Actors Biography in Pictures, and binding and reissuing this book.
Letter dated 6th January 1958 from A.M. Heath of A.M. Heath & Company Ltd. to Jonathan Mayne advising Mayne to contact Books for Pleasure Ltd re the republication of Fordham's 1952 work.
Letter dated 5th February 1958 from L.L. Asher of Books for Pleasure Ltd. to Jonathan Mayne re a copy of Fordham's 1952 work.
Letter dated 7th February 1958 from John Foster White, Director of MacDonald & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. to Jonathan Mayne acknowledging receipt of a letter and enclosure of 5th February. Gives Jonathan Mayne's address as 10 Ashburn Place, London, SW7.
A Christmas card to Jonathan (likely Jonathan Mayne) from John Gielgud, with a photograph of the latter clutching a video camera near the coast.
A Christmas card to Jonathan (likely Jonathan Mayne) from John Gielgud, 16 Cowley Street, London, SW1, dated 1962, without portrait photograph of the latter.
A Christmas card to Jonathan (likely Jonathan Mayne) from John Gielgud, dated in pencil annotation to exterior 1957/8.
Letter dated 11th December 1952 from N Smith to Hallam Fordham on the subject of John Gielgud and King Lear:
Exeter College
Oxford
Dear Hallam,
My great congratulations on your wonderful book about Gielgud, which John sent me with a charming inscription, and for which I also have to thank you for your part in it. I think it delightfully arranged and presented, and that above all it shows an amazing diversity of genius carried over an even more … of achievement. Your introduction is charmingly and wittily written and you will not be cross with me if I disagree with you on two points. The first (a minor one) is your claim for his performance as Angelo. It was indeed a 'research into the springs of personality' but it was the personality of an Erasmus, not of an Angelo. One ought to have felt — but I never did feel it — that Isabella was in almost physical danger during the temptation scene. I do not mean this by any vulgar action of touching her, but by somehow contriving the effect of an enormously strong personality driven by a great lust shadowing and attempting to dominate her. It ought to have felt like sex; but to me it had no dangerous smoulder just about explode. And the second thing I disagree with is your judgement that his distinguishing gift is character-acting. I think this a tantamount to saying that Rembrandt is distinguished as a portrait painter. It is obviously true that the portrayal of personalities is a power immensely given to them both; that I don't think such a claim can put anyone in the Top Class — is the power to embody a passion or a sense of passion. And this I put quite simply above all else an artist can do. I therefore think John's Leontes the greatest thing I have seen him individually do. The passion of majesty and guilt and anguish together was such as I could never have imagined without him. In these words he extended the bounds of my consciousness of this high passion, much as (say) Dante extends the bounds of what we can imagine to be bliss in the Paradiso.
To make these comments is not to take anything away from my admiration for your book. I do congratulate you on it!
And now I have a request. I am puzzled in a question concerning Lear, which (I believe) only you (or possibly John himself, but I trust your exact researches more than his imaginative memories!) can answer. The problem is this: At the very end of the play Albany has a 10 line speech, ending surprisingly thus:
The cup of their deservings — O, see, see!
Lear And my poor fool is hanged: no no, no life etc.
Problem What makes Albany in temper himself and suddenly exclaim "O, see,
see!"??
I think it is fairly obvious that it must be some sudden action of Lear's, but WHAT action? For Lear's remark 'And my poor fool is hang'd' gives no hint that he has soon done anything at all, let alone a sudden and striking action such as would have made Albany exclaim.
What, therefore, did Granville Barker make John do, in the 1940 production, during Albany's ten lines? If you can answer this I shall be most grateful to you.
I have a faint idea myself of what might happen. I think Lear might wander up stage vaguely (he has just been very vague about Kent) and find the rope that had hanged Cordelia where (perhaps) it had fallen off her when he carries her in dead. And he might be abstractedly toying with the noose, so as to make Albany suddenly afraid that Lear was perhaps thinking of hanging himself, and therefore exclaim. To his exclamation Lear would pay no attention, but just looking at the rope meditatively say
And my poor fool is hanged:
There is a colon in Folio after 'hang's', a colon in Folio usually means a prolonged pause. I think he might then drop the rope and come down, looking at Cordelia, towards her on 'No no, no life' and kneel beside Coredlia on 'Thou'lt come no more'.
Heaven all this is perhaps a rather orced piece of imagining and Wizard Varker may have had a far better vision of those 10 ljnes. You have (I think) a record of every movement. So, open up! Don't leave me to die in damnable ignorance — like the lamentable Abbot of Kief who believed that the Penitent Thief had cullions of brass and an amethyst arse and who died in this dreadful belief!
With love to you and Jon
N Smith
First edition, signed by Gielgud to title-page, dated 'Feb 1953', inscribed by the Author below; 'for my dear Jonathan with love and gratitude from Hallam 3.11.53; 4to; numerous illustrations from photographs; publisher's blue cloth gilt, illustrated endpapers of 'leading ladies', pictorial dust-jacket, rubbed at extremities, abrasion and two small closed tears to spine; together with loosely inserted ephemera, comprising 3 portrait photographs of Gielgud inscribed to Jonathan Mayne; an ALS from Neveill Coghill to Fordham, a few pieces of correspondence between Jonathan Mayne and various publishers and four short obituraries of Hallam Fordham from barious papers and journals; [2] xxiii [2]pp. Preserved in a near-contemporary double slip-case with gilt initials J.H.M.
Jonathan Mayne is likely the 'Jon' with which N. Smith signs off his letter dated 11th December 1952 to Fordham, implying that Mayne and Fordham were close friends or perhaps romantically linked.
List of Documents:
Five press cuttings containing obituaries of Hallam Fordham dated in pen annotations to 1955.
A bundle of letters including:
Letter dated 17th January 1958 from Jonathan Mayne to L. Asher of Books for Pleasure Ltd. on the possibility of Asher in taking over 500 loose sheets of Fordham's 1952 John Gielgud An Actors Biography in Pictures, and binding and reissuing this book.
Letter dated 6th January 1958 from A.M. Heath of A.M. Heath & Company Ltd. to Jonathan Mayne advising Mayne to contact Books for Pleasure Ltd re the republication of Fordham's 1952 work.
Letter dated 5th February 1958 from L.L. Asher of Books for Pleasure Ltd. to Jonathan Mayne re a copy of Fordham's 1952 work.
Letter dated 7th February 1958 from John Foster White, Director of MacDonald & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. to Jonathan Mayne acknowledging receipt of a letter and enclosure of 5th February. Gives Jonathan Mayne's address as 10 Ashburn Place, London, SW7.
A Christmas card to Jonathan (likely Jonathan Mayne) from John Gielgud, with a photograph of the latter clutching a video camera near the coast.
A Christmas card to Jonathan (likely Jonathan Mayne) from John Gielgud, 16 Cowley Street, London, SW1, dated 1962, without portrait photograph of the latter.
A Christmas card to Jonathan (likely Jonathan Mayne) from John Gielgud, dated in pencil annotation to exterior 1957/8.
Letter dated 11th December 1952 from N Smith to Hallam Fordham on the subject of John Gielgud and King Lear:
Exeter College
Oxford
Dear Hallam,
My great congratulations on your wonderful book about Gielgud, which John sent me with a charming inscription, and for which I also have to thank you for your part in it. I think it delightfully arranged and presented, and that above all it shows an amazing diversity of genius carried over an even more … of achievement. Your introduction is charmingly and wittily written and you will not be cross with me if I disagree with you on two points. The first (a minor one) is your claim for his performance as Angelo. It was indeed a 'research into the springs of personality' but it was the personality of an Erasmus, not of an Angelo. One ought to have felt — but I never did feel it — that Isabella was in almost physical danger during the temptation scene. I do not mean this by any vulgar action of touching her, but by somehow contriving the effect of an enormously strong personality driven by a great lust shadowing and attempting to dominate her. It ought to have felt like sex; but to me it had no dangerous smoulder just about explode. And the second thing I disagree with is your judgement that his distinguishing gift is character-acting. I think this a tantamount to saying that Rembrandt is distinguished as a portrait painter. It is obviously true that the portrayal of personalities is a power immensely given to them both; that I don't think such a claim can put anyone in the Top Class — is the power to embody a passion or a sense of passion. And this I put quite simply above all else an artist can do. I therefore think John's Leontes the greatest thing I have seen him individually do. The passion of majesty and guilt and anguish together was such as I could never have imagined without him. In these words he extended the bounds of my consciousness of this high passion, much as (say) Dante extends the bounds of what we can imagine to be bliss in the Paradiso.
To make these comments is not to take anything away from my admiration for your book. I do congratulate you on it!
And now I have a request. I am puzzled in a question concerning Lear, which (I believe) only you (or possibly John himself, but I trust your exact researches more than his imaginative memories!) can answer. The problem is this: At the very end of the play Albany has a 10 line speech, ending surprisingly thus:
The cup of their deservings — O, see, see!
Lear And my poor fool is hanged: no no, no life etc.
Problem What makes Albany in temper himself and suddenly exclaim "O, see,
see!"??
I think it is fairly obvious that it must be some sudden action of Lear's, but WHAT action? For Lear's remark 'And my poor fool is hang'd' gives no hint that he has soon done anything at all, let alone a sudden and striking action such as would have made Albany exclaim.
What, therefore, did Granville Barker make John do, in the 1940 production, during Albany's ten lines? If you can answer this I shall be most grateful to you.
I have a faint idea myself of what might happen. I think Lear might wander up stage vaguely (he has just been very vague about Kent) and find the rope that had hanged Cordelia where (perhaps) it had fallen off her when he carries her in dead. And he might be abstractedly toying with the noose, so as to make Albany suddenly afraid that Lear was perhaps thinking of hanging himself, and therefore exclaim. To his exclamation Lear would pay no attention, but just looking at the rope meditatively say
And my poor fool is hanged:
There is a colon in Folio after 'hang's', a colon in Folio usually means a prolonged pause. I think he might then drop the rope and come down, looking at Cordelia, towards her on 'No no, no life' and kneel beside Coredlia on 'Thou'lt come no more'.
Heaven all this is perhaps a rather orced piece of imagining and Wizard Varker may have had a far better vision of those 10 ljnes. You have (I think) a record of every movement. So, open up! Don't leave me to die in damnable ignorance — like the lamentable Abbot of Kief who believed that the Penitent Thief had cullions of brass and an amethyst arse and who died in this dreadful belief!
With love to you and Jon
N Smith
First edition, signed by Gielgud to title-page, dated 'Feb 1953', inscribed by the Author below; 'for my dear Jonathan with love and gratitude from Hallam 3.11.53; 4to; numerous illustrations from photographs; publisher's blue cloth gilt, illustrated endpapers of 'leading ladies', pictorial dust-jacket, rubbed at extremities, abrasion and two small closed tears to spine; together with loosely inserted ephemera, comprising 3 portrait photographs of Gielgud inscribed to Jonathan Mayne; an ALS from Neveill Coghill to Fordham, a few pieces of correspondence between Jonathan Mayne and various publishers and four short obituraries of Hallam Fordham from barious papers and journals; [2] xxiii [2]pp. Preserved in a near-contemporary double slip-case with gilt initials J.H.M.
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