A Brennan Album. A large album in half-morocco

Component identifier:

Item 96

Content Summary:

(a) Original etching by Sir Lionel Lindsay, "Of old, on her terrace at evening", inscribed, "To my friend Harry Chaplin, Lionel Lindsay".

(b) Reproduction in colour of Brennan's old home at Newport.

(c) Original etching by Sir Lionel Lindsay, of Brennan in profile, together with the annotation by the artist to H.F.C.: "...I looked up the Dixson list and find he hasn't got it..."

Pencil working sketch of the above for conversion to a bookplate for H.F.C., together with the first proof, showing the "s" in Ex Libris reversed, also second state with the error corrected.

(d) Etched and woodcut portraits of Brennan by Sir Lionel Lindsay.

(e) Autograph letter from Miss Esme Hadley to J. Le Gay Brereton, 4pp, 19 October 1932, entirely devoted to her friendship with Brennan, with commentary upon his death.

(f) Autograph letters to Rolf Brennan from a friend.

(g) Photo-copy of Brennan's Will, together with statement of assets and liabilities. The net amount for probate being £68.5. 6.

(h) Photo-copy of the Will of Anna Helena Gibson [Brennan] dated 13th March 1929.

(i) Typescript copies of letters from Brennan to F.S. Delmer, at Koenigsberg University, 4pp, fcp. December 1900. Much about Mallarme. "...I grant you a grain of affectation here and there, natural in a man moulding his language to a new gesture, but that affectation is the basis of his style is to me inconceivable. 'Inartistic obscurity' - well, I can only say that I understand him from one end to another and that no commentator has ever helped me; I have simply applied the corporeal understanding - as to any other writer." Another comment: "I have been reading Blake's prophecies and am now proceeding, along the track of the Gnostics, towards the East, to find a mysticism without personal God "or personal immortality, wherein to forget the vain hubbub of the West with its parochial religions, and no less parochial atheisms - Nietzsche is a parish brawler after all..." He refers to The Burden of Tyre and that it is not ready, the work of revision "demands more time and eye-sight than I have just now, but you'll get a copy as soon as it is finished". References to the home being built at Mosman, and other domestic matters. [Long and interesting letters. The copies very kindly given to me by Miss M.S. Delmer.]

(j) Original pen and ink portrait of Brennan by Sir Lionel Lindsay.

(k) Other items of interest, including photograph taken by R.G. Howarth of a friend wearing Brennan's top hat.

Names:

Christopher Brennan

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