A presentation copy of the author’s first book of verse to one of his first literary friends: “To Jhn. L. Veitch with Arthur Symons’ kind regards.“
“I fear that I am yet known in that capacity [i.e., as a poet], to very few–I think I might limit it to four. But what a quartet they are! - Osborne the eminent Journalist, Veitch, the eminent Novelist, Furnivall, the eminent Scholar, Browning the eminent Poet.“ Veitch published eight novels under the pseudonym “Leith Derwent“, but in all honesty “eminence” is probably over-egging it a bit.
Annotated extensively in pencil by the recipient, giving an interesting insight into the contemporary reception of Symons’ first work. It seems that Veitch was a schoolteacher by trade, and his notes do sometimes have the smack of a teacher marking homework: “fair, manner better than matter”; “wretched”; “some fine lines and thoughts in this”; the intriguing “An ambitious failure - Something originally included has been excised”; “Very nearly a great success” (alarmingly for “The Knife-Thrower”!); “A very pretentious failure”; and “A masterpiece”. An unexpected dimension is added by a manuscript poem, transcribed in ink in what seems a different hand, in the margins of Symons’ poem “A Lover’s Progress”. It is eight quatrains long and in an as yet unidentified nordic language.
Hayward, 300. Several instances of staining from the insertion of flowers as bookmarks (one remains), and binding just a bit bumped.
