The Walter Pater/Douglas Ainslie copy, inscribed by the latter on the front free endpaper: “Ex libris Douglas Ainslie (bought 2/- at Clara Pater’s sale or rather Osterley’s sale of her property 8 New [?] Square Sp. 1922).”
A fine association: Silverpoints was heavily influenced by Walter Pater (vide Jerusha McCormack’s John Gray: Poet, Dandy, and Priest) and Pater himself lived just long enough to have known it: according to Brocard Sewell (In the Dorian Mode, p. 50) “Pater and Swinburne praised Silverpoints privately.” The statement of provenance by Ainslie, friend of Wilde and Beardsley, is slightly confusing, and appears to conflate Walter Pater’s two sisters Clara (died 1910) and Hester (who died indeed in 1922). According to Billie Andrew Inman’s extensive researches, Pater died intestate and his books and manuscripts were inherited by his sisters. They gave some away at the time but the majority remained with them, and on Hester’s death in 1922 a tranche was inherited by her friend May Ottley, who in turn bequeathed them to her daughter Constance Ottley, from whom John Sparrow bought a good group in 1972. There is no mention of a sale in 1922.
Unlike most copies of the regular issue, this copy is printed on Spalding handmade paper, crisper and stiffer than the Van Gelder, has two blank leaves between the front free endpaper and the title-page, and the verso of the title-page lacks the printed notice of limitation, positing this as a member of an unidentified class of copies for presentation. Though the gilt is bright and the binding is only very slightly worn at the extremities, there is an obtrusive crease toward the top of both boards, and the boards are somewhat soiled.
