Caledonia, a Fragment
N.p. [1934]. From the Bart Auerbach Collection. 4to. 12 pages. Frontispiece after Edward Burra. Original quarter red cloth and tartan boards, printed label on front cover. Light wear along outer joints and at a few places on edges; essentially a fine copy. Item #409208
First edition, believed to have been privately printed in an edition of about 100 copies, and a dedication copy. The printed dedication, which occupies the first page, reads: "To a Welch Gentleman / Sometimes Mayor of Montgomery / in the County of Montgomery / in the Principality of Wales / One of His Majesty's / Commissioners for the Peace / and Also to His Worship's Younger Brother, / a Gentleman Residing in London, / Member of the Royal College of Surgeons / and Licentiate of the / Royal College of Physicians / This Fragment / Is Humbly Dedicated by the Author." Powell has crossed out the beginning word "To" and has written above the printed dedication in capital letters: "To / John Lloyd, Esq." Powell has also inserted a dropped "the" in the printed dedication, has signed his name at the end, and has added below: "Feb. 10th 1935/25 Geo. V." (all of Powell's writing is in ink). In addition, there are five ink corrections in the text of the poem by Powell. With John Lloyd's armorial bookplate.
The dedicatee John "The Widow" Lloyd and Powell had been friends since their days at Oxford in the mid-Twenties. Lloyd's younger brother and co-dedicatee was Wyndham Lloyd, a doctor and an accomplished photographer who took some of the pictures that illustrate Powell's memoirs.
In the second volume of these memoirs, 'Messengers of Day' (NY, 1978), p. 175, Powell recounts the background of 'Caledonia': "At about this period several books written in a somewhat self-applauding tone by Scotchmen on the subject of Scotland (or condescendingly humorous about the rest of Great Britain) had been published. A counter-satire in the 18 century manner seemed required. I used to compose verses in this vein during hours of insomnia. They would be repeated, sometimes improved, at the Castano luncheon table [a Soho restaurant where Powell would meet his friends, introduced to it, incidentally, by John Lloyd]; [the composer Constant] Lambert writing the [12-line] section on Scotland's music. Caledonia, as this [154-line] pastiche came to be called, knocked about as a rough typescript for a time... When I married (at the end of 1934), Desmond Ryan, a friend who possessed control over a small printing press, said he would pull off some hundred copies as a wedding present [and] he arranged for the production…Like Ryan himself, the printer was somewhat given to the bottle, and Caledonia, a treasure-house of long forgotten topical references, is also notable for its misprints" (a few of which Powell has corrected). Lilley A4. (BA).
Price: $8,000.00