Tag: The Golden Cockerel Press

Tapster’s Tapestry

Early this morning we attended Lymington Hospital for the removal of my catheter which was executed swiftly and painlessly. It took me so long to produce an adequate flow to confirm all was in order that I was sent off to the café downstairs for a mug of tea to add the necessary liquid fuel. I surprised myself by adding a Full English breakfast eaten with such relish matched only by yesterday’s Chinese takeaway – gusto I have not experienced since the first cystoscopy.

This afternoon I dozed over

the third of my A.E. Coppard’s Golden Cockerel Cockerel books.

This work tilts at windmills as applicable today as they were in Coppard’s time of the first quarter of the twentieth century; bureaucracy, international relations, warfare, politics, and people management are all lampooned in this blend of satirical satire and realism, following in the steps of Jonathan Swift – the difference being that our author managed the feat in just 58 pages.

Three adventurous adolescents unite on a trip to discover whether the earth is flat or round. In all their perambulations they establish no certainty about this or anything else, eventually returning home. Perhaps with all life it is the journey that counts. They encounter a strange variety of peoples and their countries, briefly engaging in relationships with them. The writer’s insightful knowledge of people is apparent from the desire of all the freed captive humans to return to their cages.

In his title Coppard indulges his poet’s taste for alliteration, as along with rhyme, simile, and metaphor he does throughout the story. “It was the sort of poetry that dazed the mind; it crackled like elastic and smelt of the roll of a drum”; “Time, however, had drooled heavily by”.

His dry humour is also constantly evident, as in this piece of well executed dialogue: “‘Not a soul of them is caring about this grand question of the contour of the earth!’ / ‘They don’t seem to take an all-round view, that’s flat'”.

Further evidence of the fluent prose is given with these scans of Gwenda Morgan’s faithful engravings in the 1930s style. They can be enlarged in the gallery.

This evening I dined on left-overs from last night’s Chinese takeaway, while Jackie chose a bowl of mixed vegetables.

Count Stefan

I had begun reading

before going into hospital on 21st, and needed a little revision before continuing with it today. The frontispiece is by Robert Gibbings.

Here are the boards and spine; and the jacket which has protected them from two years short of a century. Perhaps the fact that four of the last few pages were partially uncut suggests the book has not been opened very often.

This tale, set in an Austrian guest house, during which one of the guests is writing a novel “all about an adventuress whom Miss James had invented, but whom she disliked with a fierce unpleasantness” and for whom she found a perfect model in one of the other residents. Coppard traces the interrelationships of the group brought together in this establishment as they jostle for position in the house; especially as they await the arrival of the constantly delayed eponymous Count. His absence fosters speculation, and consequent rivalry over his anticipated attractions, which, in the event, bear no relation to reality.

He is man with a problem at last arriving into the house with a doctor charged with curing him. Carinthia James, despite her better judgement, finds herself persuaded into becoming a key supporter and part of a similar group of recruits. There is a question of madness, eventually settling on one of the original residents. Couples pair off into their own exclusive relationships.

I have chosen to scan one particular page of Coppard’s descriptive scene-setting prose with clever little details.

Others are attached to illustrations by Robert Gibbings.

This evening we dined on small portions of chop suey and chow mein from Hordle Chinese Take Away.

The Tenacious Rose

The Golden Cockerel Press was an English fine press operating between 1920 and 1961. Its history and further information can be found in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Cockerel_Press.

Tapster’s Tapestry is a little gem of satirical phantasy published in 1938 which I finished reading last night. These two illustrations are of the title page and the jacket, repeating one of the full page illustrations and made of stiff cartridge paper, still intact after 82 years.

Gwenda Morgan’s illustrations are good examples of her period.

As we left the house for a forest drive this afternoon we admired the tenacity of this strongly scented climbing rose clinging to life suspended by a stem broken by the recent storm Alex.

Today was unseasonably warm with sunshine and showers subject to fast moving clouds photographed at various autumnal locations including

Bennets Lane;

Anna Lane;

and Forest Road

with its now replenished reflective pools.

Ponies enhanced the landscape on the road to Burley

where curly tailed piglets buried their snuffling, snorting, snouts in their frantic competitive foraging for acorns.

I am delighted to report that there was plenty of Jackie’s chicken and leek pie for another sitting served with crisp roast potatoes; crunchy carrots and cauliflower; tender cabbage, and meaty gravy. The Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden and I drank Montpeyroux Recital 2018.

Xylonite

Pelican Books is the non-fiction imprint of Penguin Books. From 1938 to 1940, a few books within the series Penguin Specials (and thus given numbers starting with “S”) were given blue covers and labelled as Pelican Specials. These paperbacks were claimed by the publishers to be ‘books of topical importance published within as short a time as possible from the receipt of the manuscript. Some are reprints of famous books brought up-to-date, but usually they are entirely new books published for the first time. S16, which I finished reading this morning, is

Here is the frontispiece;

sample pages with drawings and texts;

and, in particular, the plates of the underwater pencil sketches. These were made on xylonite, a waterproof early plastic which would, when suitably prepared, take pencil.

The intense expression in this portrait of Robert Gibbings reveals the penetrating eye that provides his vision for detail; his evident power belies the delicacy of his hand. The strength required to manage his drawing in a fairly primitive helmet weighed down by lead piping to enable him to remain underwater is evident in the striking image.

Gibbings “was born in Cork in 1889 and educated in the snipe bogs and trout streams of Munster.” He attended the National University of Ireland, and in London the Slade School and the Central School of Arts and Crafts. During the first World War he served in Gallipoli and Salonica; in 1924 he took over the Golden Cockerel Press and ran it for nine years, producing books which will long remain some of the finest examples of English printing. It was largely through his efforts that the Society of Wood-engravers came into being. (From the jacket blurb).

This delightful little volume bears the author’s descriptive, poetic, prose; useful information about fish and coral reefs as they were 80 years ago. His eye for colour and form is evident throughout, and he brings an elegance of movement both to the drawings and to the wood engravings.

Originally published at 6d or 2.5p in today’s money, the book is so well made that it remains intact.

This evening Jackie will produce a roast chicken dinner. Before then Giles will collect me and drive me to the bird hide at Milford on Sea where I hope to photograph waterfowl. I will report on that tomorrow.