Samuel Pepys Edwin Chappell Sir (2 results)

31 items from the papers of leading Pepys scholar and maritime historian Edwin Chappell (1883-1938). The collection in good general condition, with light signs of age and wear. Around half the items are by Chappell himself, including offprints (many of them bearing his Blackheath address, 41 Westcombe Park Road), pamphlets, articles, proofs, and a bibliography. Other items are papers and pamphlets by: Sir Arthur Bryant; J. R. Tanner; Sir Stephen Gaselee (bearing an autograph inscription by him); T. Wellard; Arthur Ponsonby; Allen Beville Ramsay; Edward B. Powley; H. L. O. Flecker. Also a Christmas card produced by the Admiralty (containing a printed disclaimer by Chappell) and an auction catalogue (no other copy of either item traced. There are a handful of loose enclosures, and a few autograph notes by Chappell. Ten of the items (one by Chappell) are addresses delivered at the Annual Pepys Commemoration Service at St Olave's Church. The majority of items in the collection are scarce, with few if any copies traced on COPAC. The last three items, dating from after Chappell's death, were presumably added to the collection by his executor. The following list is in rough chronological order. ONE: The Spanish Books in the Library of Samuel Pepys by Stephen Gaselee, M.A., F.S.A., C.B.E. Printed at the Oxford University Press For the Bibliographical Society, 1921. 49pp. TWO: Samuel Pepys: An Address delivered at S. Olave's, Hart Street, at the Annual Pepys Commemoration Service, on May 23rd, 1928, By The Rev. T. Wellard, B.A., B.D., Rector of the Parish and Chaplain to the Pepys Club. No copy on COPAC. THREE: Samuel Pepys: An Address delivered at S. Olave's, Hart Street at the Annual Pepys Commemoration Service on June 4th, 1929 by Mr. Arthur Ponsonby, M.P. No copy on COPAC. FOUR: Samuel Pepys as a Friend: An Address delivered at S. Olave's, Hart Street, at the Annual Pepys Commemoration Service on May 20th, 1930 By J. R. Tanner, Litt.D. (Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge). No copy on COPAC. FIVE: [auction catalogue] Catalogue of Oil Paintings, Drawings, Engravings, etc. To be sold by Auction On Monday, 4th May, 1931, at 12 noon. Hurcombs Grafton Galleries, W.1. [London] Some lots priced in pencil. Lot 55 (£24) is a portrait of Pepys by Sir Godfrey Kneller, and 56 (£12) is one of Mrs Pepys by Sir Peter Lely. No copy on OCLC WorldCat or on COPAC, and no other copy traced. Loosely inserted is a cutting of an advertisement by Hurcombs, from the Connoisseur, announcing the sale 'early in May' of the two portraits, both 'unimpeachable, coming from Samuel's descendants', and giving photographic reproductions of both portraits. SIX: Catalogue of Pepysiana belonging to Mr. Edwin Chappell exhibited at the Annual General Meeting of the Society for Nautical Research held at the Royal Naval College Greenwich 8th. July 1931. Accompanying text signed in type by Chappell, from his Blackheath address. Three copies only on COPAC. SEVEN: Samuel Pepys, The Childlike Diarist: An Address delivered at S. Olave's, Hart Street, at the Annual Pepys Commemoration Service on June 2nd, 1932. By the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. [i.e. Allen Beville Ramsay] EIGHT: Elizabeth Pepys by Edwin Chappell. Offprint. Reprinted from the Somerset Year Book, 1933. 'With the compliments of Mr. E. Chappell'. A date is corrected in autograph. One copy on COPAC. NINE: Samuel Pepys: An Address delivered at S. Olave's Hart Street at the Tercentenary Celebration of the Birth of Samuel Pepys (February 23rd, 1633) Held at the Church on February 23rd, 1933 By the Rev. Prebendary Wellard, B.A., B.D. Rector of the Church and Chaplain to the Pepys Club. With handbill advertisement for the service loosely inserted. No copy of either item on COPAC. TEN: Samuel Pepys by Edwin Chappell. Offprint. Reprinted from The Mariner's Mirror, April 1933. 'With the Compliments of Mr. Edwin Chappell'. Loosely inserted leaf carrying family tree of 'WILLIAM PEPIS | Will proved 1519'. ELEVEN: [Magazine] Notes and Queries. 13 May 1933. Containing on pp.326-227, the article by Chappell of which the next item is an offprint. TWELVE: Notes on Some Relations of Samuel Pepys: Reprinted from "Notes & Queries" of May 13, 1933, by kind permission of the Proprietors. 'With the Compliments of . . | Mr. Edwin Chappell'. THIRTEEN: Pepys's Wedding-Day: Reprinted from "Notes & Queries" of July 1, 1933, by kind permission of the Proprietors. 'With the Compliments of . . | Mr. Edwin Chappell'. FOURTEEN: Bibliographia Pepysiana 1633 Samuel Pepys 1933 Mens cujusque, is est quisque. Signed in type at end 'Edwin Chappell | September 1933', Blackheath. 18+1pp, in grey printed wraps. FIFTEEN: [proof of last] A Short-Title Pepys Bibliography Compiled for the most part from copies in my own possession. At end: 'Edwin Chappell | August 1933' and his Blackheath address. 16pp, stapled in margin. No wraps. SIXTEEN: Samuel Pepys as a Naval Administrator: A Lecture delivered to the Hull Historical Association on the 29th September 1933. Signed in type at end 'Edwin Chappell'. Cambridge: Printed at the University Press, 1933. 23pp. SEVENTEEN: The Secrecy of the Diary: A Paper read before the Samuel Pepys Club November 24th, 1933. 'With the compliments of Mr. Edwin Chappell', Blackheath. Pencil notes by Chappell on blank reverse of title. EIGHTEEN: [Christmas card, from the Admiralty, Whitehall] Nicely-printed card, with colour photograph of portrait of Pepys, 'Reproduced by permission of Mrs. Henry Noel, daughter of Mr. Frederick Pepys Cockerell, from the original small portrait in her possession'. Admiralty, Whitehall; Christmas 1933. With printed text in copperplate, headed 'Tercentenary of Samuel Pepys, 1633-1933', mainly discussing the portrait. Loosely inserted is a printed bifolium, carrying a long text by 'Edwin Chappell', Blackheath, December 1933, beginning: 'Although an employee of the Admiralty, I am not at the Admiralty. It is therefore an act of courtesy, which I very m.

Nine letters (eight ALsS and one TLS) totalling 16pp, 12mo, in close and neat autograph; and 2pp, 4to, typed. One from 1932 and the other eight from 1933. All signed 'Arthur Bryant'. In good condition, on lightly-aged paper, with slight rust-staining from paperclips to a couple of the letters. An interesting correspondence, in which Bryant gives an assessment of Pepys, and describes his approach to writing his biography. In one long letter (5 May 1933) Bryant describes his wider approach to the writing of history. Bryant is a problematic historian, and the tensions inherent in his work and character are exemplified in the present batch of correspondence. His work was explicitly praised by eight British Prime Ministers including Winston Churchill between Stanley Baldwin and Margaret Thatcher, but his standing among his peers has not been high. The recent attempt by Julia Stapleton to counter Churchill's biographer Andrew Roberts's damning characterisation of him as 'a supreme toady, fraudulent scholar and humbug', as well as 'a Nazi sympathiser and fascist fellow-traveller, who only narrowly escaped internment as a potential traitor in 1940', is not convincing. The present batch of nine letters dates from the period between Bryant's study of Charles II (1932) and the appearance of the first of the three volumes of his Pepys biography, 'The Man in the Making', published by Cambridge University Press in 1933. Shortly before the present correspondence, having been greatly impressed by Bryant's book on Charles II, the historian G. M. Trevelyan had passed over to him the extensive notes and papers of the Pepys scholar J. R. Tanner (1860-1931), to assist him in writing his Pepys biography. It has been the contention of several authorities that Bryant was inadequate in his acknowledgment of the heavy extent to which he relied on Tanner, and it is certainly true that after three volumes he left his work uncompleted at the same point of Pepys's life at which Tanner's papers end. Chappell was one of the leading authorities on Pepys, and published several works on him, including editions of his shorthand letters (1933) and Tangier papers (1935), and 'Bibliographia Pepysiana' (1933). The present correspondence exhibits many of Bryant's obvious failings, but Chappell's claim, at its close, that Bryant had failed to engage in 'fair dealing', and was guilty of 'the most outrageous piece of poaching that has ever come my way', would seem an overreaction to the behaviour of which he accuses him, and seems to display the asperity of a wider resentment, perhaps connected with misgivings about the nature of Bryant's scholarly approach. The first letter, 6 January 1932, is written as Bryant is working on his first Pepys volume, and does not give the impression of previous acquaintance, being addressed to 'Dr. Chappell' (unlike the other eight letters, which are written to 'Chappell'). He thanks him for sending his bibliography, 'and the delightful paper which introduces it', and states that he has 'added it to the bibliography which Dr Tanner had prepared and which I have taken over with his Pepys papers'. Tanner's papers, he has discovered, are 'far fuller than I at first thought and include a large number of what seem to be accurate though I have not yet checked any of them transcripts of Pepys' letters in the Bodleian. They are very elaborately arranged'. He feels they may be of help to Chappell in his work, and invites him to visit him to consult them. He thanks him for corrections to his book on Charles II (1931), explaining that his 'task' in writing the book 'was one of extreme compression'. He describes 'a small MS book of a few pages of an early 17 century shorthand', among 'the Shakerley MSS in my possession'. In the next letter, written a year later on 5 January 1933, Bryant corrects 'a slight slip' in the proofs of Chappell's edition of Pepys's shorthand letters, which had recently appeared, stating: 'May I say what a great service I feel you have done by these transcriptions: they do add a very great deal both to the Further Correspondence and the Diary, and help enormously to show what a master Pepys was at official correspondence. I think you were very right when you say that his strength lay in fighting defence: the way he marshals and crowds his facts in unassailable array is truly impressive. As an administrator in a small way myself, I can appreciate his skill in this most difficult art all the better. The only fault is that, for all his suavity and tact, he leaves his opponents without the smallest ground of right and human nature is apt to react unkindly to those who are altogether right!' He hopes 'to be allowed some day to look at your Pepys collection and to talk to you, or rather listen to you, about Pepys'. On 2 May 1933 he asks Chappell to read 'the typescript of my Pepys', adding, 'What a strange study Pepys is: I dont know whether I've got anyway near him or not. I think the real secret was vitality a really wonderful vitality that explains alike his great virtues and his equally great lapses'. He asks if Chappell has 'read the missing passages', which he thinks 'help to explain a lot'. He will let him have them if he has not got them, 'for I cannot believe that Turner will be able to print them all'. He would 'also like the N[ational]. M[aritime]. M[useum]. to have my envelopes; if they would think them worthy of acceptance'. He begins a long letter of 5 May 1933 by thanking Chappell for agreeing to a request which will 'be the greatest help to me and will probably save me from many foolish slips and blunders'. He agrees with him that 'Pepys is so vast a subject that one can never feel certain that one has covered all the ground'. He flatters Chappell by stating that it is 'perhaps even pleasanter to know that there is someone in the world who feels as passionate an interest in one's subject as one does oneself. When nine years ago I first started to transcribe the 14.