Scull down to the Club, and then to tea & some singing & a little Dancing
An English miscellany presented to Dr. Furnivall in honour of his seventy-fifth birthday
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901. First edition, 8vo, pp. viii, [2], 500; gravure frontispiece portrait and 10 plates (1 folding and 6 double-p.); original red cloth, spine quite faded, else good and sound. Together with: a 2-page autograph letter signed from Furnivall (previous folds, some foxing) written on the back of a corrected proof sheet (probably by Furnivall and probably from the Early English Text Society), to "Miss Ward," and dated "3.2.1900 (Brit. Mus)": "Last Sunday I asked some of you girls whether 25 of your Singing Club and others wd. come to our Girls' Sculling Club on Saty, 13 Oct. from 2.30 to 3 & then to scull up to Kew, scull in the Gardens, scull down to the Club, and then to tea & some singing & a little Dancing … The Club is on the bank of the river, next to Jack Biffin's boathouse." Togther with: a 4-page offprint (also with previous folds and a bit foxed) from the Westminster Gazette entitled "The Furnivall Sculling Club … Unwritten Chapters from 'Nowhere'," by Mrs. Frances Campbell who describes a day spent with Furnivall and his crew, and concludes, "There was dancing after the music and reading, and then came the saying of good-night, and I, among others, turned homewards. The river came under Hammersmith Bridge like a torrent of black glass. The only substantial thing in the dusk was the Doctor walking beside me, and the tall young Stroke. It is a very beautiful chapter, that is lived in Nowhere, by the great Doctor Furnivall, with his working girls and men." Together with: Dr. Furnivall Memorial, 4to, 3pp. on integral leaves, previous folds, regarding the raising of money "to commemorate the late Dr. Furnivall's great services to literature and to social progress." On the Committee for the Memorial were Thomas Hardy, G. Bernard Shaw, and Anthony Hope Hopkins, who was Treasurer. Furnivall was the founder and "moving spirit" behind The Early English Text Society. The Ballad Society, the Chaucer, the Wyclif, the Shakespeare, the Shelley and the Browning Societies were "but some of his tireless activities." He also established a rowing society and "put thousands on the river who were never there before, and among these as the crowning touch of his energy and good intent, an eight sculled by shop girls." Together with: William Benzie's biography of Furnivall: Dr. F. J. Furnivall, A Victorian Scholar Adventurer, Norman, OK, 1983. Item #26159
Price: $1,600.00
