Contents Editorial Editorial statement 163 Editorial 164 Dunstan Ward Obituaries Alan Sillitoe (1928–2010) 168 A Personal Memory Lucia Graves Colin Wells (1933–2010) 172 In Memory and in Celebration of Colin Wells Frank Kersnowski Colin Allen (1929–2010) 176 Remembering Colin Allen Joseph Bailey Features An Unrecorded WWI Publication by Robert Graves 179 Eric Webb Graves and the Grocery 205 Philip Stewart 162 GRAVESIANA: THE JOURNAL OF THE ROBERT GRAVES SOCIETY Critical Studies Robert Graves and the Scholars 211 Norman Austin The Claudius Novels and Imperial Family Melodrama 235 Peter G. Christensen ‘You may not believe it, for hardly could I’: Robert Graves and the Bible 251 Anne Mounic A ‘Spirit Above Wars’: Robert Graves’s Self-Portrait as Soldier and Poet, 1915–29 290 Dominic Hibberd Sources, Collaborators, and Critique in Antigua, Penny, Puce 309 John Woodrow Presley Laura (Riding) Jackson and Robert Graves: The Question of Collaboration 331 Mark Jacobs One Story and One Story Only: Robert Graves’s American Reputation 348 John Woodrow Presley Review Robert Graves: A Life by Bruce King 370 Matthew Betts Editorial statement Gravesiana is a peer-reviewed journal which publishes scholarly articles concerning Robert Graves and members of his circle. It also contains reviews of the latest studies about Graves and those connected with him or the subjects of his works. There are biographical articles which aim to highlight Graves‟s personal relationship with various literary and other contemporaries, as well as providing personal glimpses of the man behind the poetry, fiction, mythography, scholarship and criticism. The journal is also the publication of the Robert Graves Society and contains information concerning the society‟s activities, including conferences, lectures and other events of interest to those engaged in Graves studies. Gravesiana is now available as an electronic journal (at www.robertgraves.org/iana) and welcomes submissions from all who read its pages: the intention is that it should be a lively and intellectually challenging journal that in some degree reflects the protean spirit of the man to whom it is dedicated. Editorial Dunstan Ward This is the first electronic issue of Gravesiana. Following discussion over several years, the decision to go online was finally taken at the meeting of Robert Graves Society during the 2008 Robert Graves Conference at Oxford. One major advantage is accessibility. In his article on Graves‟s American reputation John Woodrow Presley, Vice-President (Americas) of the Robert Graves Society, „applaud[s] the society‟s growing reliance on the internet. All that can be done […] to help Graves scholarship more rapidly appear in print (especially on the internet) should be undertaken.‟ Online publication should also help solve the problems which have beset the journal, causing delays in the appearance of several issues, including this one: we owe apologies to our readers and gratitude for maintaining their commitment to this vital forum for Graves studies. Past history and hostages to fortune notwithstanding, our aim is to bring out the journal on time every year. This Gravesiana is a „first‟ in other ways. It features a hitherto unrecorded „letter from the front‟ which Robert Graves sent in 1915 to his old school magazine, The Carthusian. Eric Webb convincingly identifies Graves as the anonymous author of „Is my Team Ploughing…?‟. He suggests that it is really a letter to „Dick‟, the younger schoolmate whom Graves loved, and, moreover, „an apologia pro vita sua on the eve of battle‟. Another discovery is the exact site of the shop that Robert Graves and Nancy Nicholson ran on Boars Hill, five miles from Oxford, in 1919–21. Philip Stewart‟s account of his researches is illustrated by the shop sign „almost certainly‟ painted by Nancy Nicholson, the report in the Daily Mirror, and a view of the spot where the shop stood. Dominic Hibberd‟s article in the „Critical Studies‟ section is ground-breaking in a different sense. It reveals the extent to which Editorial 165 Goodbye to All That re-invented in 1929 the Robert Graves of the wartime letters and poems, and how different his earlier attitudes were both to the war and to poetry about it. The much-quoted episode in Goodbye when Graves tells Sassoon that he will change his style after he has been in the trenches is just one of the numerous points where Dominic Hibberd sets the record straight. The articles by Eric Webb and Dominic Hibberd are among several in this issue that might be considered to answer the plea of a speaker at the 2008 Oxford meeting for Graves criticism that eschews „hagiography‟. Norman Austin dissects with forensic precision Graves‟s modus operandi in The Greek Myths. However, far from merely doing a hatchet job (like an infuriated academic a few years ago in the TLS), Professor Austin demonstrates both the weaknesses and the strengths of the work. And he even concludes that „Graves himself would be astonished to discover how deeply the Goddess theory has infiltrated into the Academy‟. Nonetheless, in American universities John Woodrow Presley finds that there is an alarming lack of interest in Robert Graves‟s work. Among a multiplicity of factors that Professor Presley examines is the low rating accorded to Graves‟s work by those academic equivalents of Standard & Poor‟s, the Norton Anthology and its predecessor, the Untermeyer anthology in its successive editions. There has been, too, the aggressive campaign conducted by Laura Riding and her followers during her lifetime and since. The Graves-Riding collaboration, the subject of two articles in the last Gravesiana,1 is in this issue viewed from the „other side‟ by Mark Jacobs. Any hagiographical risk inherent in her theme is surely avoided in Anne Mounic‟s luminous study of the connections between Robert Graves‟s work and the Bible. And as well as the poet, the mythographer and the biblical scholar, Graves the historical novelist is represented by the late Peter Christensen‟s exposition of „family melodrama‟ in the Claudius novels, and by John Woodrow Presley‟s incisive analysis of Antigua, Penny, Puce in terms of „Sources, Collaborators, and Critique‟. 166 GRAVESIANA: THE JOURNAL OF THE ROBERT GRAVES SOCIETY In this Gravesiana we commemorate three outstanding supporters of the Robert Graves Society, whose deaths in 2010 bring to members of the society a real sense of personal loss. Alan Sillitoe was a wonderful friend to the society and to the cause of Graves studies. His inimitable talks and readings from his novels, poetry and letters at Robert Graves Society events in Oxford, Mallorca and Paris will always be treasured; they are evoked by Lucia Graves in her „personal memory‟ of Alan Sillitoe. The society has been enriched by the whole-hearted involvement of one of the key writers of our times. The highly productive scholarly life of Professor Colin Wells, distinguished classicist, archaeologist and historian, who presented elegantly erudite papers at Robert Graves conferences in Paris in 2004 and Oxford in 2008, is celebrated by his friend and former colleague Frank Kersnowski. Joseph Bailey, a fellow member of the council of the Robert Graves Society, pays tribute to the late Colin Allen. Elected to the council in 2004, Colin Allen gave a memorable talk on Claudius at the 2002 Rome conference; his counsel and genial company at the society‟s events were very much appreciated. The Robert Graves Society offers its sincere sympathy to Alan Sillitoe‟s wife, Ruth Fainlight, to Mrs Kate Wells, to Mrs Patricia Allen, and to their families. As editor of this issue, I wish to thank Lucia Graves and Patrick Villa for their invaluable help. This Gravesiana is a „last‟ in that it marks the end of my ten-year presidency of the Robert Graves Society. My grateful thanks go to all my friends in the society for their support, and my best wishes to my successor, Dr Fran Brearton. This issue of Gravesiana is dedicated to the memory of Alan Sillitoe. Dunstan Ward was formerly Professor of English at the Editorial 167 University of London Institute in Paris. With Beryl Graves he edited the Carcanet and Penguin Classics editions of Robert Graves‟s Complete Poems. A Personal Memory: Alan Sillitoe (1928–2010) Lucia Graves Alan Sillitoe with William Graves and Ruth Fainlight, Oxford 2008 The poet sings his poems on a bridge A bridge open to horizontal rain And the steely nudge of lightning, Or icy moths that bring slow death Croon him to sleep by snow-wings touching his eyes. [from „The Poet‟, 1968] Alan Sillitoe, poet and novelist, who died on 25 April 2010, aged 82, was a life-long friend of my family. He also had many good friends among the members of the Robert Graves Society, of Obituaries 169 which he was a prominent and much-loved contributor. Nobody who was there that November night in 1995, in the packed hall at La Residencia (Deyá), will forget listening to Alan reading Robert‟s poems together with his wife, the poet Ruth Fainlight. That night, Alan interspersed his reading with reminiscences of Robert, describing their first encounter in 1953 – Alan riding up from Sóller on a hired bike – and their subsequent connections over the years on both literary and personal levels. To end the evening, he pulled out his Morse key and tapped a message of greetings from us all, for Robert to receive in the world beyond. Alan reading at the wreath-laying, Deyá, 2006 Alan delighted us with many other readings over the years, at various Robert Graves conferences, at the Madrid exhibition in 2002 and, most recently, at the Oxford Conference of 2008, where he read a selection of Robert‟s letters to him.