Holbrook Jackson

My favourite image
of Holbrook Jackson

In the section ‘Of Pedigree Copies’ in his The Anatomy of Bibliomania, (George) Holbrook Jackson writes of the attraction of books “which are discriminated by the marks of precedent possessors, signatures, dedications, notes, memoranda, etc., or by recorded pedigrees showing a descent of distinguished ownership” (p.500). And he continues “How much more to be cherished are those books which bear the personal inscriptions of their authors, ex dono auctorem, volumes which the author gave in the pride of his heart to the poet who was his ‘Master’, to the critic whom he feared, to the friend with whom he was on terms of mutual admiration; to experience the strange unforgettable thrill at the sight of the self-same page that was once looked upon, even by the master whose writing it bears.” It is perhaps not surprising that Jackson left marks and more on some of his books, including pasting photographs into the front pages.

I’ve often thought the usual posed photos of Holbrook Jackson that you see on the internet do not portray the gentleness, the warmth or the quick intelligent and playful eye of the man. The commonly available pictures are staged to make the author look altogether too serious to my mind. How could the author of the delightful Bookman’s Holiday be the man in these photos? Holbrook Jackson was, we must remember, the editor of The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear, and he writes in his essay ‘Masters of Nonsense’ (which appears in Southward Ho! & Other Essays) “I do not think it is good for any one to be always sensible. … We live in a practical and business-like age, and have little time to cut capers. Material success is our aim, and nonsense has nothing whatever to do with that aim.” I think there was something decidedly mischievous in Holbrook Jackson’s character, which is not at all conveyed in the readily available images of him.

The photograph used
in the Wikipedia article
on Holbrook Jackson

Holbrook Jackson’s book Romance and Reality starts with the simple sentence “I like to do nothing” and further down the page continues “Of course I work — but I make no virtue of that — I work because I must. I do not make this admission to invite your sympathy. Even were I rich I might do something, just to give a relish to my real aim in life … As it is, I work to provide a margin to my days, a margin in which I may “taste the vaguely sweet content of perfect sloth in limb and brain. I know there are people who like work, and I am bound to respect their taste; but I do not in the least understand them.” Maybe after all there is something a bit dandy-like and posing in this prose; Holbrook Jackson produced more than forty books, and The Anatomy of Bibliomania alone runs to 668 pages, so he was certainly no stranger to literary work, all of which was done on top of his “day job” of journalism, of editing and later owning a weekly, and running a small press.  

In the copies of his books which he gave to his lifelong friend the librarian Ernest Callard (‘Callie’) are lovely inscriptions in his somewhat jagged handwriting, together with various photographs. There are two good photos of his house — ‘The End House’, Winterstoke Gardens, Mill Hill — pasted into the front of Southward Ho! & Other Essays, together with a more youthful and pleasant looking photo of the author.

‘The End House’, Winterstoke Gardens, Mill Hill

Another view of ‘The End House’, Mill Hill

Holbrook Jackson 

An even more youthful photo pasted by Holbrook Jackson into the front of Ernest’s copy of his Romance and Reality, shows, according to HJ’s inscription, dated 25.vi.45, Holbrook Jackson and Ernest pausing on a walk somewhere in Surrey some time in the early nineteen hundreds.

The young Holbrook Jackson and Ernest in Surrey

On the facing page is another pasted photo, and by far the most moving inscription is in Ernest’s hand, and sits below the following photo:

Holbrook Jackson on the day of his death, with Ernest ‘Callie’ Callard.

“Fifty years later. Taken at Bournemouth on the day of his death, 17th June 1948. The close of a joyous friendship.”