ANTHONY HOBSON’S PERSONAL COLLECTION
“Oh, poor Anthony! Poor Anthony! Think of all those empty shelves!”. In 1996 Anthony Hobson resolutely confronted an economic crisis by dismissing some seventeen authors from his collection of Twentieth Century literature in a 323-lot auction. These were of necessity big names, including Auden, Eliot, Graves, Greene, Orwell, Waugh, Woolf and Yeats, all held in significant depth. But there were no empty shelves. Like the prisoners in Fidelio many books came forward out of the darkness of double-banking, while others clambered up from the cupboards below. These were the things that Anthony could not let go. He was still working on Lorca and Radiguet; he had to keep the Firbank letters in readiness for his Roxburghe Club publication; above all, closest to his heart were the works of friends.
Collecting was in Anthony’s blood, as were auctioneering and scholarship. He had already built energetically and astutely in other fields before embarking in the late 1950s on his selected ‘moderns’ (few Americans, no Joyce or Lawrence). He hardly needed his greatest mentor Cyril Connolly to advise: “Do not hesitate to ask authors you meet to sign their books for you”. Anthony did not hesitate. If a few same-dated clusters betray the Approach Bagful, and Forster’s late signatures were acquired through an intermediary, many sequences of inscriptions demonstrate friendships growing in warmth, trust and intimacy. There were lunches and dinners and visits exchanged with Kingsley Amis and Elizabeth Jane Howard, Tony and Violet Powell (it must have been a special day when in the sixth volume of A Dance the author wrote “to” rather than “for”), Sachie and Georgia Sitwell, the Koestlers. There were holidays with Cyril and Deirdre Connolly, Tanya Hobson’s step-sister; travels with Eric and Wanda Newby; skiing in Zermatt with Robin Fedden. The Naipauls’ visits always produced an expectant atmosphere. A few slightly lesser lights were collected out of ancient loyalty: Capt. Hobson met the flamboyant Capt. Buckle when they were liberating Italy in 1944, and Archibald Colquhoun in 1945. To Nancy Cunard he was first professional adviser, then valued friend, finally executor.
In addition to the social elegances and fun, Anthony had in his wooer’s armoury the fact that he read his friends’ books attentively (and not altogether uncritically). And admiration might lead to acquisition. He did not covet archives, but a notebook or a working draft would be an adornment, and would bring him closer to its author. Thus proliferated the polished black morocco spines.
Anthony died last year a little short of his 93rd birthday, having outlived all but one of the writers he collected. His cultural curiosity was unflagging, and he was not ashamed to admit that he listened to Harry Potter tapes while driving across Europe to the scholarly libraries that were almost his second homes. He did not want J.K. Rowling’s First Editions, preferring still to build upon and to refine what he already had.
His sheer longevity kept this remarkable material out of the marketplace and out of the limelight. Except for a private exhibition at home for his beloved Association Internationale de Bibliophilie, Anthony rarely shared his treasures. He was determined, however, that they should have their day in the sale-room, that the world should see the extraordinary edifice he had built – and then dismantle it in a last-chance cascade of unrepeatable opportunities.
ACTON, Harold. 21 autograph letters (26 pages, 4°, 45 pages, 8°), 3 autograph postcards signed to Thomas Balston [director of Duckworth & Co], Oxford, Florence, Paris, 1922-1926, the last letter from Peiping, 1935, with an autograph manuscript poem, Blake, 27 lines on one foolscap page. Discussing the publication of his first two books of poems (for the cover of Aquarium “you could have chosen nothing more exquisitely appropriate”); enthusiastic responses to Albert Rutherston’s work; news of The Oxford Broom; rapturous about Edith Sitwell’s The Sleeping Beauty; Robert Byron’s ‘gating’; glimpses of Anthony Powell and charades at Garsington; meeting “the unique Jean Cocteau, and Prima, whom I consider greater than Picasso”; “T.S. Eliot? I would travel continents to meet him”. When Balston rejects his third book, Acton is sorely disappointed but gracious in defeat. His final letter thanks Balston for his book on John Martin and reflects on changes in the London publishing scene. Half black morocco box.
Details
ACTON, Harold. 21 autograph letters (26 pages, 4°, 45 pages, 8°), 3 autograph postcards signed to Thomas Balston [director of Duckworth & Co], Oxford, Florence, Paris, 1922-1926, the last letter from Peiping, 1935, with an autograph manuscript poem, Blake, 27 lines on one foolscap page. Discussing the publication of his first two books of poems (for the cover of Aquarium “you could have chosen nothing more exquisitely appropriate”); enthusiastic responses to Albert Rutherston’s work; news of The Oxford Broom; rapturous about Edith Sitwell’s The Sleeping Beauty; Robert Byron’s ‘gating’; glimpses of Anthony Powell and charades at Garsington; meeting “the unique Jean Cocteau, and Prima, whom I consider greater than Picasso”; “T.S. Eliot? I would travel continents to meet him”. When Balston rejects his third book, Acton is sorely disappointed but gracious in defeat. His final letter thanks Balston for his book on John Martin and reflects on changes in the London publishing scene. Half black morocco box.