Some New Letters of Edward FitzGerald. Edited by F. R. Barton, C.M.G. With a foreword by Viscount Grey of Fallodon. K.G. With two portraits

FIRST EDITION, FROM THE LIBRARIES OF NORMAN SCARFE & RONALD BLYTHE, WITH TWO RELATED ALS. 8vo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt. Leading and bottom edges untrimmed. Extremities bumped and worn, some mottling and darkening. Edges toned and foxed, some foxing to text block, heaviest at front and rear, offsetting to endpapers, two POIs to ffep, incl., in black biro and Blythe's hand: "Given to Ronald Blythe, by Paul Fincham," pencil scoring throughout, a few annotations, plus three full pages of notes to rear endpapers about Bernard Barton, and further quotation in blue biro to verso of publisher's advert: it's unclear whose hand, but likely either Scarfe's or Blythe's. Two affectionate and engaging ALS laid in, the earliest (four pages, 16 June, no year) from Father Alec Robertson to Scarfe, and the second (two pages, 19 Sept. 2014) from Fincham to Blythe. Else, clean. Good+ A queer "Fitz" appreciation copy, with apt Suffolk roots, of Some New Letters of Edward FitzGerald (1923), from the libraries of a celebrated historian of the county, Norman Scarfe, and fellow Suffolk author, Fitz enthusiast, and gay man, Ronald Blythe, having been gifted to the latter by Scarfe's partner, Paul Fincham, following the historian's death in 2014 (with another EFG item following, according to Fincham's two-page 2014 letter, to "My dear Ronnie"), and inscribed in Blythe's hand: "Given to Ronald Blythe, by Paul Fincham." Edward Fitzgerald, who had a number of close relationships with men, was a literary touchstone for the author of Akenfield, who frequently visited the celebrated scholar and translator's grave in a nearby village, sometimes taking visitors: "An age ago now, the novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner came to visit me. I had praised her wonderful novel The Corner That Held Them. [.] I talked to Sylvia about it as we sat by my fire. It was spitting hulver (holly) sparks. Later, we drove to see the grave of Edward FitzGerald in the darkening afternoon. I often visited it in St Michael and All Angels, Boulge, just a mile or two from my house. [.] And, as a boy, I learned the whole of his translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám by heart. [.] A Cornish boy had given me his enchanting poem. His grave tilts a little in the Suffolk soil." (Blythe, 2015) Fitzgerald as a lover of men is taken for granted in the longer, undated, frank and moving letter from Father Alec Robertson (1892-1982), the Anglican priest, music critic and broadcaster, to the younger Scarfe (1923-2014): "Surely Fitz died a virgin, content to adore the beloved. [William] Kenworthy Browne may have been a little embarrassed by this, but he loved his old Fitz. It is impossible to picture Fitz getting an erection or masturbating!" Robertson also recalls his early amorous and sex life, as well as his salvation: "[in Cairo during WWI] I met with him & after a pipe of hashish he made a bed of cushions and there we made love under the great yellow moon [.] I won't bore you with a Don Giovanni catalogue of my 'affairs,' some fleeting, some not. But back in England I had become an addict & this nearly led me to suicide then, by the grace of God, I was, almost by accident, led into the church it was my salvation". Fitzgerald, in contrast, had been introduced to the original of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám shortly after the loss of his Christian faith. Though Fincham and Scarfe went on to be civilly partnered in later life, for all four men, three of whom were born in the first third of the C20th (and Robertson in 1892), much of their early lives, as gay men, would have been lived under the shadow of possible social censure, blackmail and criminalisation. Ronald Blythe (2015) 'Word from Wormingford,' Church Times (10.VII.2015).…