1896 EB 1946: A Salutation. November The First, 1946, At The Garrick Club

(London: Garrick Club, 1946). First edition. One of only 15 copies printed on hand-made paper for a dinner on the occasion of Edmund Blunden's 50th birthday. Keynes B20. The souvenir program for the Jubilee dinner for Edmund Blunden, with three poems written especially for the occasion by Sassoon, Cecil Day-Lewis and William Plomer. The celebration was arranged by Rupert Hart-David, and the attendees were T. S. Eliot, Stanley Morrison, Walter De La Mare, Cecil Day-Lewis, Phillip Tomlinson, and William Plomer; Sassoon regrettably was unable to attend but composed (truncated) "A Salutation" for his friend. The program is signed by all of the attendees, with the single exception of Sassoon, to whom this copy of the program was given by Hart-Davis. The program is accompanied by three ALSs from Rupert Hart-Davis to Sassoon, all on Hart-Davis's Bromsden Farm, Henley on Thames, Oxon, Rotherfield Greys, letterhead. In the first letter, 2 pages, dated 8 October 1946, Hart-Davis, the esteemed publisher and friend of many of the wartime poets, and the editor of Sassoon's Diaries, notifies Sassoon, one of Blunden's closest friends, that he is organizing a Jubilee Dinner for Blunden at the Garrick Club on November 1. He describes the menu plans - pheasant - and drink; he asks Sassoon if he can provide burgundy from his cellar.  Most significantly, Hart beseeches Sassoon to provide a "few couplets" in honor of his friend Blunden, and expresses being "disheartened" at not being able to publish "Selected Poems" of Sassoon as it is still with Macmillan. In the next letter, 4 pages, dated 13 October, Hart-Davis responds to the news that Sassoon cannot attend the dinner ("I am broken hearted"), thanks him for providing "excellent vintages" for the meal, promises to send him an account of the evening and comments on Sassoon's pending project of a biography of Meredith. In the final letter of 4 pages, dated 2 November 1946, composed the day after the dinner, Hart-Davis provides Sassoon a detailed report of the dinner, including a diagram of the seating plan around the circular table, and an apparently near complete rendering by memory of Hart-Davis's toast to Blunden.  Hart-Davis's retelling of the program is remarkably reportorial. After the recollection of his own toast he tells Sassoon: "Then I called on Cecil Day Lewis to read his poem, then William Plomer.  When they were finished, Edmund's eyes were shining, and I think he was happy. (He had not known that poems were to be written or read, since I had properly left them a surprise)"  Hart Davis encloses a copy of the "printed souvenir" - of which he had printed only 15 copies - that he had asked Blunden and all guests to sign for Sassoon.  Sassoon's couplet is entitled "A Salutation"; Cecil Day-Lewis's poem is called "Lines for Edmund Blunden on His Fiftieth Birthday", and Plomer's poem is called "For Edmund Blunden". Sassoon's "Salutation" appears in Keynes's bibliography of Sassoon as SS B20.  Philip Ziegler in his biography of Hart-Davis, Rupert Hart-Davis: Man of Letters, writes about the dinner on p. 150. So far as we have been able to determine, only 3 copies of the dinner program are located in special collections: University of Iowa, Southern Methodist University and the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. As the signatures on this copy were solicited by Hart-Davis specifically for the absent Sassoon, it is not clear whether other signed copies of the program exist.  Provenance: The present copy was offered for sale as item 160 in the House of El Dieff, Inc. catalogue of 233 Items from the Library of Siegfried Sassoon (New York: 1975), p. 13. The price was $1,000.00. We presume that the collector from whom we acquired this copy purchased it from the House of El Dieff directly. Rare and probably unique, in fine condition. 4-page leaflet, 6 ½ x 9 inches folded, folding out to 13 x 9 inches. Rare and probably unique, in fine condition. (Inventory #: 23456)