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67 Selborne Road, Southgate, N.14.—Chadwick has declined to join the panel.

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67 Selborne Road, Southgate, N.14

I am sorry to say that Chadwick refuses: I have had a letter from him, and he says he has so much other work he can undertake no other liabilities. Sorry

R. W. Chambers

[Direction:] R. B. McKerrow Esq. | 3 Adam St | Adelphi | W.C.2.

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Postmarked at Palmers Green at 11.30 a.m. on 8 January 1924.

Oriel College, Oxford.—Supports his idea of issuing a scholarly English journal. Refers to his own unsuccessful attempt in that direction, and makes some suggestions.

(With an envelope.)

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Oriel College, Oxford
1 Dec. 1923

Dear Dr. McKerrow

Dover Wilson writes to me of your project of issuing a scholarly English Journal. I sympathize fully with you. Some years ago I mooted here the question of an ‘Oxford Journal of English Studies’, to be conducted by the English School, the staff of the Dictionary, & the Clarendon Press. I also tried to get the English Association to move, but I failed.

I shall be glad to give any help I can, but—frankly—I dread just now taking on more work.

Wilson asks about a scholar for Middle English: R. W. Chambers, if you can get him—a scholar & a literary critic in one, as his Beowulf book & his writings on Piers Plowman show.

I have one suggestion. Undertakings of this kind always seem to me to get water-logged by the review part. Need every damned thing anybody prints—if you don’t mind my violent way of putting it—get reviewed? Could you without invidiousness select the works {1} you would review, or from time to time print short surveys of study in a particular author or a particular subject. R. W. Chambers some time wrote an excellent report of the stage which the Piers Plowman controversy had reached. {2}

Your paper would, I suppose, be quarterly; or even three times a year, leaving the summer holiday free. I should suggest for its working motto not only Ne quid nimis, but Ne quid saepius. {3}

Yours sincerely
Percy Simpson {4}

Twelve years ago Henry Bradley said of Kenneth Sisam (now at the Clarendon Press) that he was far the first of the young men working at Old & Middle English. Enlist him. I can help if you don’t know him.

Nichol Smith for the eighteenth century if you can get him: he is difficult to get hold of. And, for an occasional article, R. W. Chapman.

On Elizabethan English F. P. Wilson.

From time to time I come across some very able young men. I should like to introduce them to you occasionally.

This is a disjointed letter, but I am in bed with a cold.

PS

[Direction on envelope:] Dr. R. B. McKerrow. | Enderley | Great Missenden | Bucks.

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The envelope was postmarked at Headington, Oxford, at 2.30 p.m. on 3 December 1923.

{1} Reading uncertain.

{2} ‘The Authorship of “Piers Plowman”’, MLR, v (1910). 1–32.

{3} i.e. not only ‘nothing in excess’, but ‘nothing too often’.

{4} Followed by ‘PTO’. A page ends here.

67 Selborne Road, Southgate, N.—Is glad that the proposed periodical has the support of those involved with other journals, and will be glad to join the meeting on Friday.

(Dated 1 Dec. The year is clear from the context.)

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67 Selborne Road, Southgate, N.
Dec. 1.

Dear Dr. McKerrow

Your letters (which I return) give very good news. The necessity for an ‘English Studies’ periodical is obvious; but I felt, as you know, a little uneasy with regard to those who have been keeping the flag flying with difficulties for so long a time. It is great to feel that there is no difficulty in the way.

3 p.m. on Friday {1} would suit me excellently, & I shall be very glad to form one of the conspirators

Yours sincerely
R W Chambers.

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{1} 7th.

10 Southwood Lane, Highgate Village, London, N.6.—Suggests that certain names in Hamlet have a Danish origin.

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10 Southwood Lane, Highgate Village, London, N.6
16 June 1932.

Dear Chambers,

Why not the Danish: Valdemar, (Saxo: Waldemarus)?

I don’t know whether Belleforest included other tales from Saxo in his Histoires tragiques, but if he did he could hardly have avoided the name Valdemar, by far the most frequent in Saxo.

I believe that there is every reason to think that S. purposely added to the local colour, not only by the obvious Rosenkrantz and Gyldenstjerne but by two other names, which have not been recognized as Danish. Several years ago Dr. Perret drew my attention to the name Yaughan in the grave-digger scene, which looks suspiciously like an English phonetic transcription of Danish: Johan.—Also Yorick must be Danish. Perret suggested Erik, and I think he is right when we bear in mind that the Jutland form of the name is Jerrik, pronounced exactly like Yorick. I consider that far more likely than Jørg(en), which I believe Dowden mentions on the authority of Magnússon {1}.

Doesn’t it look as if, of the 6 Danish names in ‘Hamlet’, Shakespeare had got the 2: Rosenkrantz and Gyldenstjerne right from often seeing them written or printed, (of all the Danish ambassadors to the English court in those days every second is sure to have been a Rosenkrantz and every third a Gyldenstjerne); that Voltimand or Valtemand is a scribe’s or printer’s error for Valdemar(us), while in the case of Johan and Erik S. had his knowledge by hearsay from Burbage and the rest who returned from Helsingør in 1585?—Where the H in Hamlet comes from I have never been told. Who was the cockney that could not leave the good Danish name alone? The Frenchman couldn’t possibly have been the culprit.

Yours sincerely,
J. H. Helweg.

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Typed, except the signature and a few corrections.

{1} See Edward Dowden’s edition of Hamlet (1899), p. 195, note.

University College, London. - 'Poison Wordsworth speech... I have read your sketch [of Housman] again'.

90 Regent’s Park Road, N.W.1.—Suggests means of increasing the circulation of the Review.

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90 Regents Park Rd., N.W.1.
June 3 1925 {1}

Many thanks. I will do anything I can to help. There must be no question of failing to make good! {2} Could you not get at the English Association? I was disappointed to see that they referred to the R.E.S. in such a cold and colourless way in their last Bulletin. I should have thought it was their first business to give you all the support in their power. Boas might help you here. Would it not be worth the expense to send your circular to all the 6500 members? a goodly proportion of them ought to be among your subscribers. You have, no doubt, circularised all professors of English in the universities of the world; but it might be a good thing to send them—or the most promising of them—a dozen circulars and ask them to bring the journal to the notice of their staff and students. Chambers ought, for instance, to lay a number of the prospectuses on the table of the Engl. library at Univ. Coll. Perhaps he has done so; if not, I will suggest it to him.

Always yours sincerely
J.G.R.

[Direction:] Dr R. B. McKerrow | Messrs. Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd | 3 Adam St | W.C.2.

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Postmarked at London, N.W.1, at 3.15 p.m. on 3 June 1925. There is also a postmark advertising the British Exhibition, May-October 1925.

{1} The first two figures of the year are printed. The printed address, ‘University College, London’, has been struck through.

{2} The reference is evidently to the financial difficulties mentioned in McKerrow’s circular letter of 1 April (MCKW A3/34).

(1 Briar Hill, Purley.)—Suggests using local correspondents to keep the editor of the proposed journal in touch with work in the universities.

(Postmarked at Purley Oaks.)

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19.XI.23

What about having, in addition to the panel of contributors, a list of local correspondents, one for each university or university college, who would be responsible for keeping the editor in touch with the work of his college & would act as a missionary for the Journal? This does not require an answer. I am seeing R. W. Chambers next Friday. {1}

JDW

[Direction:] R. B. McKerrow Esq Litt D | Enderley | Little Kingshill | Gt Missenden | Bucks

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Postmarked at Purley Oaks Sorting Office at 2 p.m. on 19 November 1923.

{1} 23rd.

67 Selborne Road, Southgate, N.14.—The suggested article by Greg is too contentious to use as a specimen of the format of the new journal. Is not up to date with work on Chaucer, but will try to find someone else to write on that subject.

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67 Selborne Road, Southgate, N.14

Dear McKerrow

Very many thanks for writing so fully.

I was rather afraid that if we were going to circulate any specimen of the format of the Review, Gregs article would look rather like rubbing it into Atkins. {1} I was very glad indeed to read Gregs article in the M.L.R. but as a specimen of a new Journal it is almost as contentious as certain things I have written myself. (“Woe is me my mother that thou hast born me, a man of strife & contention.”) {2}

I’d awfully like to write something for the Periodical: but I am not up in recent Chaucer work, I fear. I’ll try & think of someone who could do that satisfactorily. Thank you for asking me.

Yours
R W Chambers

[No direction.]

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{1} Greg had criticised J. W. H. Atkins’ edition of The Owl and the Nightingale (1922) in his article ‘On Editing Early English Texts. Some Bibliographical and Palaeographical Considerations’, Modern Language Review, xviii (1923). 281–5.

{2} Jeremiah xv. 10, slightly misquoted.

The permission Onslow was granted to borrow books from the library was for one year from 1 Jan 1915. If he still wishes to use the library, Chambers will put the matter before the Library Committee at the next meeting. Meanwhile, he is sending the requested pamphlet under separate cover, and asks Onslow to sign and return the enclosed ticket.

Notes that Onslow was given permission to borrow books from the University College Libraries last year; understands from the Librarian that he is 'making a good deal of use from the Library' so asks if he would like to have permission extended for another year. Tells him to make 'formal application' if so.

University of London.—Wyld has intimated that he would like to be added to the advisory panel.

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University of London, University College,
Gower Street, London, W.C.1
Feb 1 1924

Dear McKerrow

H. C. Wyld writes in a letter to a friend of mine

“I dont know what it is he asks me to join, but I am sure that if he approves of it it will not commit me to a recognition of the Soviet Government, nor to membership of the Sanhedrin, nor any other movement likely to strike a blow at Church or State”

So with perfect confidence you may add him to the list. That completes my bag of Wyld & Gordon: Chadwick cries off as too busy.

Yours sincerely
R W Chambers

Thinks William Aldis Wright was wise to use the Trinity MS rather than the Law MS as the basis of his edition.

University College, London.—Sends Helweg’s answer to Greg’s question (see 1/38).

University College, Gower Street, London. - '... three frivolous poems... I have had some copies bound'.