Dickers & Son London W. Binding

CHISHOLM, A. Stuart M.

Recreations of a Physician [with ALS to Samuel Courtauld and two original Horace translations]

New York & London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1914. 22x15cm: vii, 328pp. First Edition. Rebound by Dickers & Son London W. with their stamp at verso top of front free endpaper. Three quarter blue leather over blue cloth with gilt rules. Gilt titling to spine with five raised bands. Top edge of text block gilt. Marbled endpapers with some discoloration along edges. Boards lightly edgeworn with some rubbing. Wear to corners with some exposure. Spine joints and head of spine with some wear. Some staining along text block edges. Covers open a bit easily, but are secure. Binding is sound and pages unmarked. Very Good.

Signed handwritten letter tipped in at contents page by the author to English industrialist and art collector Samuel Courtauld, with one handwritten and one printed translation of Horace (Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus) tipped in at pages 159 and 162, respectively.

The letter to Courtauld is written on the author’s letterhead and reads:
Dear Sir:-- I have perused with delight your collection of the Odes, and regret not having seen it earlier. However, you have given me some hours of pure pleasure for which I am grateful. I have found some of my favorites and many excellent versions that were new to me. // I have not yet read them entirely, but for my own pleasure, and yet I wonder where you got the text for the 15th verse of the Quis Desiderio // "num vanae redeat sanguis imagini" // which I have never seen. Macleane (sp?) and all my texts have the verse // non vanae redeat --” etc. // with a period instead of a ? at the end of the 18th verse. The latter version was evidently also the one used by the translator, Lord Lytton // I am enclosing with the hope that they will please you, the Solvitur Aeris, unrhymed, and the Donec Gratus, which I have recently done into Archilochian and Asclepiadean. Thanking you for the courtesy of your letters and the book, I am with respect, yours very truly A.S.M. Chisholm.” As above, Chisholm’s translations, one handwritten and one clipped from an apparent magazine publication, are tipped in later in the book.

Samuel Courtauld was an English industrialist, whose company, among other things, developed and marketed rayon as a silk substitute. He was a noted art collector, especially of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. He founded the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and set up an acquisitions fund for the National Gallery and Tate Modern in London to build their collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings.

Price: $125.00

Item #10104