‘You Must Not Order the Silly Old Book’
HART, Francis Russell.
Admirals of the Caribbean … with Illustrations. Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1922.
8vo, pp. x, [2], 203, [1], with a frontispiece portrait and sixteen plates; a very good copy in the original quarter vellum, patterned paper sides; corners bumped; large engraved bookplate of Marian Bateman (dated 1923), with an autograph letter, signed, by the author presenting the work tipped in (Oct. 1922, on ‘The Club of Odd Volumes’ headed paper), and some other ephemera within a wallet on the front endpaper.
No. 170 of 200 copies of the special edition, printed by the Riverside Press in Cambridge, Mass., on Umbria hand-made paper. This copy was presented to Marion Alice Bateman-Hanbury, Baroness Bateman, by the author: ‘You have done many kind things for the author of this book. Will you do one more and accept this copy. You do not need to read it … The inspiration and encouragement given by your letters is in no small way responsible for my temerity.’ The ephemera comprise a review cutting, a typescript subscription request for the book and an autograph note from Hart, stating ‘You must not order the silly old book as I shall send you one’.
The New Yorker Marion Alice Knapp (née Graham, widow of Henry Cabot Knapp), had in July 1904 married William Spencer Bateman-Hanbury, the third Baron Bateman (1856–1931). Later a friend of Somerset Maugham, she was one of the flotilla of American heiresses to marry into impecunious English aristocracy in the early twentieth century.