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Correspondence from Gerald Yorke to Philip Kaplan
5 Montagu Square London W.1.
30 May 1956
Dear Kaplan.
Delighted to hear of your dinner [21 May 1956 - Kaplan to Yorke] with Karl [Karl Germer], young Aleister [Aleister Ataturk], and Sam [Samuel Jacobs]. Please tell him [Samuel Jacobs] that amongst the typescripts that I bought at Sotheby's was his original letter to Viereck [George Sylvester Viereck] saying "Please inform your reader that I Shmuel bar Aiwaz bie Yackou de Sherabad have counted the number of the Beast and it is the number of a man." This came as answer to a question asked by A.C. on Feb 24 1918—having been written on that day at Beth Nahrin in Mesopotamia. Please check for me that this is in fact written by your Sam.
Am delighted to learn that the Star and the Garter was included in the 'Book of Our Time' Exhibit held in 1951. I have a copy on vellum. You added here (see enclosed), but alas there was no enclosure in the letter.
The price of A.C.'s work is bounding. Minor typescripts with A.C.'s corrections fetched £10 each at Sotheby's. Vellum copies of his work now fetch £30 each. You will probably never get another chance of buying Rosicrucian Scandal, White Stains, Summa Spes, Chicago May, or World's Tragedy. Please find out for me whether the latter has pp xxvii and xxviii in the introduction. A.C. wrote that in all but a few copies given to friends he had torn out these two pages—or rather one page printed on both sides, because they contained libellous matter against the Royal Family and he could have been prosecuted. The only two copies of the book that I have seen both include these two pages. I want to establish that copies exist without these pages for my amended bibliography. If the Sword of Song on vellum is bound in full blue crushed levant morocco, front cover in guilt [sic] squares it will be from the Quinn [John Quinn] sale. 3 copies were done on vellum. I have got a few unbound pages of The Book of Lies on vellum, so at least two must have been done. You will probably not get another chance of buying these copies on vellum. I do not think—after this Sotheby sale that 700 dollars is too much, 500 dollars would be a good buy.
I know nothing about [Oscar] Wilde's 'Teleny'. You say you are enclosing a number of sheets from The Choronzon Club, but they were not enclosed. I expect however they are in with my catalogue. I have a number of Choronzon Club papers. Russell [C. F. Russell] was a disciple at Cephalu [sic], but he and A.C. quarrelled and parted.
I am typing out for you my typescript listing the pictures etc exhibited by A.C. in New York and enclose it.
I do hope that you and Karl and Sam succeed in publishing something of A.C.'s.
At Sothebies [sic] on May 8th I bought the miscellaneous typescripts for £52. A very good buy as two of them were long portions of The Amalantrah Working and fit on to the portion I already had. It also produced a third more of Book of Oaths, The, and the missing visions of ADO. Then there was the unfinished novel called The Fish—some 100 pp of typescript, which I have been looking out for for years, and a number of other quite nice items. The bulk of the 33 typescripts had corrections in A.C.'s hand, and twenty of them were new to me. So I was pleased to get them for £52. Of the MS items, the only one of which I did not have the typescript was The Robbing of Miss Horniman, and I dropped out of the bidding at £15.
Have been in Italy and Sicily for 3 weeks, getting back late last night, and must stop, as I have a mass of correspondence to clear.
Yours
Gerald Yorke
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