CHARLES EDWARD SAYLE

WHERE THE WOODBINES GROW

CHARLES EDWARD SAYLE

BY

BARRY VAN-ASTEN

                                                                                      

Be it mine to peruse

Old prints and editions;

Books our fathers might use

Be it mine to peruse.

Let others hunt news

And go mad about missions:-

Be it mine to peruse

Old prints and editions.

(‘Triolet of the Bibliophile’. Charles Sayle*)

DIM VOICES IN THE VOID

Charles Sayle, a minor uranian poet, scholar and librarian is known to perhaps a small handful of bibliomaniacs and collectors of obscure works by authors of a certain fin-de-siecle reputation who appreciate rare volumes of poetry and academic subjects; a man who left a wealth of unpublished diaries and worked diligently amongst his dusty tomes at the Cambridge University Library where he gave so much of himself. Like so many scholar poets such as A E Housman, A C Benson and H G Dakyns (1838-1911), he was a complex man with inner demons; the author and Master of Magdalene College, A. C. Benson writing Sayle’s obituary in ‘The Library (December 1924) says that ‘superficially he was regarded as a happy man, but underneath all this there ran an undercurrent of sadness and even dreariness… like one who had fallen more than once among the thorns of life.’

Charles Edward Sayle was born in Cambridge on 6^th December 1864, the youngest of ten children born to Robert Sayle (1816-1883), a retailer in drapery and haberdashery who founded a department store at 12 St Andrew’s Street, Cambridge in 1840 (1), and Priscilla Caroline Sayle nee Ginger (1824-1904) who was born in Buckinghamshire (2). The prosperous Sayle family had increased in number since Robert and Pricilla’s wedding in 1849 and the children sprouted forth thus:

Charlotte Mary Sayle born in1850 (Christened on 15^th November 1850 in Cambridge), she married a council clerk named Boardman Bromhead Dalton Sayle (1850-1916) in 1879 in Chesterton, Cambridgeshire. She died on 26^th November 1942; Martha Elizabeth Sayle, born 13^th September 1851 (Christened 31^st October 1851 in Cambridge); she died on 13^th November 1854 at three years old (she was buried on 16^th November 1854); Arthur Willis Sayle, born in Cambridge in 1853 (Christened on 1^st May 1853 in Cambridge), educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, October 1872 (B. A. 1876). He died in Shanghai, China on 28^th January 1878, aged twenty-five; Robert Henry Sayle born on 23^rd June 1854 (Christened on 9^th March 1855 in Cambridge), he died on 11^th December 1889 aged 35 in Kensington, London; Caroline Martha Sayle born in 13^th December 1855 (Christened 4^th May 1856 in Cambridge), she married Joseph John Brown in 1876 in Chesterton, Cambridgeshire; she died on 17^th July 1936; Frances Ann Sayle, born 19^th March 1857 (Christened on 29^th May 1857 in Cambridge), dying age 77 on 3^rd May 1934 (she never married); George Moore Sayle born1858 (Christened on 3^rd July 1859 in Norfolk), he married Emily Brierly Friend in Plymouth, Devon in 1888 and died on 17^th October 1935 in Bournemouth, Dorset; Martin Wellesley Sayle born 28^th July1860 (Christened on 14^th March 1861 in Cambridge) he died in Boston, Massachusetts on 19^th March 1914; Ellen Jane Sayle, born in 1862 (Christened on 13^th May 1862 in Cambridge), Ellen trained as a nurse and died in 1952 in Christchurch, Hampshire (3) and Charles born 1864.

Charles is six years old in 1871 and living with his Uncle John Sayle and Aunt Louisa in Southey, Norfolk. Uncle John is a 53 year old farmer; young Sayle’s older sister Charlotte May, aged 20 is also there; his mother and father and other siblings: Frances Ann, Martin Wellesley and Ellen Jane are at Trumpington in Cambridge. When he was about seven years old, Charles, the Sayle’s fifth son, went to live with his Aunt Elizabeth and his Uncle, the Rev. William Ballard Dalby (who married Elizabeth Susan Sayle 1825-1891 on 12^th June 1851 at Southey in Norfolk); they are living at Sharrington, near Holt in Norfolk where he is schooled by his Uncle in the rectory/schoolhouse; after Uncle Dalby’s death in 1874 (he was buried at Sharrington on 26^th September 1874), Charles attends Philberd’s School in Maidenhead, Berkshire and in September 1877, 12 year old Charles enters Rugby School where he remains until the summer of 1883.

He hears dim voices in the void

That call to his fine sense within:

He sees high visions unalloyed

With any mystery of sin.

(‘Tenui Penna’. 1888. from Musa Consolatrix. 1893)

While he is at Rugby, Sayle was the editor of the school paper – The Leaflet; Sayle’s friend at Rugby, John Haden Badley (1865-1967) who entered the school in April 1880 aged 15 (he left in 1884), (4) sent a copy of The Leaflet to the poet Lionel Johnson (1867-1902) with whom he was in correspondence. Johnson wrote to ‘the editor’ of the paper in February 1884 and in a letter to Badley dated 18^th February 1884, asks ‘I suppose you know C. at Rugby’… ‘I have received a most kind letter from him.’ (5) Johnson writes to Badley on 15^th June that ‘C.’s face I now possess, and his letters: of all the good your friendship has been to me, his friendship and brotherhood are the best.’ (‘Some Winchester Letters’. p. 111) and again to Badley in November – ‘C. must be a very pleasant spirit in this world: has written me quite delightful letters which I have answered at intervals.’ (p. 160); the romantic friendship grows as Johnson tells Badley (23^rd December 1884): ‘C.’s face is simply haunting: from one glance at its copy, I remember each portion of it, each expression of eyes and mouth – I must see him some day.’ (p. 165). During December 1884 Sayle was at Tenby and Johnson writes to him on Christmas Eve, saying ‘I want your “likeness” and must have it – pardon my importunacy.’ (p. 167) Sayle requests a ‘likeness’ of the poet too and Johnson replies to Sayle in Tenby on 29^th December that he is still awaiting the likeness and ends his letter: ‘Oh to be at Tenby / Now that you are there! but I can’t. Vale.’ (p. 170) Johnson got his likeness in January and Sayle got Johnson’s in March. Johnson’s correspondence to Sayle and Badley can be found in ‘Some Winchester Letters of Lionel Johnson’ (1919) published anonymously by John Francis Stanley Russell (1865-1931) who was at Balliol College, Oxford and with whom Johnson was having a close relationship; the letters from Johnson to Russell are also contained in the volume which discusses literary and religious matters as well as everyday sundries, mostly of a romantic tone, between the four special friends: Johnson, Russell, Badley and Sayle. (6)

When he is eighteen years old, his father, Robert ‘died in 1883, just as Charles was about to enter New College Oxford, having already sent three of the four older boys to Cambridge’ (7). He matriculates at New College, Oxford on 9^th November 1883.

‘Sometimes our lips shall meet’

(‘Four Seasons’. Bertha: A Story of Love. 1885)

Sayle published anonymously his first volume of poetry, ‘Bertha: a Story of Love’ in 1885 which apparently, as he told his friend, John Addington Symonds, is an account of a relationship with a fellow undergraduate for which he was sent down for the academic year 1885-86.

Lo! I the man fulfilled of sin and shame,

Blacked and deeper than a man should know,

Who would be perfect when he chanced to go

Among a people, timid, tied, and tame.

Lo! such am I: yet still forbear to blame

One who hath sunk within the mire so;

For I was e’en as they till soft and slow

The rushing wind swept by of Love’s strong flame.

For, other gods now banished, yet remain

Nature and Art and Love – these sacred three,

Holy be they, and blest the names thereof;

Though Nature’s self be cruel, full of pain,

And Art but handmaid of a mystery,

Yet Love is always perfect: - God is Love.

(Dedicatory Poem. Bertha. 1885)

The volume is in three parts: Love, Love Parted, and Love Dead and it tells the story of the relationship with ‘Bertha’ the recipient of the poet’s adoration through the joys and exhilaration of the first moments of endless love and we can picture the two clandestine undergraduates, young and simmering with romantic ideals, eager to impress each other and to possess the other in an intense devotion, so few can ever attain:

Meet me love, where the woodbines grow

And where the wild-rose smells most sweet,

And the breezes, as they softliest blow,

Meet;

Passing along through the field of wheat,

By the hedge where in spring the violets grow,

And the blue-bells blossom around one’s feet;

Where latest lingers the drifted snow,

And the fir-tree grows o’er our trysting-seat,

Come – and your love, as long ago,

Meet.

(‘The Trysting-Tree’. Bertha. 1885)

We do not know the real nature of the relationship and whether it was physical, but Sayle seems to have been a romantic idealist and overly sentimental – A. C. Benson paints a delightful description of Sayle in his diaries, saying that ‘Sayle rather horrified me. He is a great sentimentalist, falls in love with undergraduates, pets them, worships them, flatters them. Some of them he tames and civilises – some he spoils.’ (8) And so to the inevitable parting of lovers, as he says in his sonnet, ‘The Offering’ (II) where he is ‘fulfilled of sin and justified of shame’:

What made you kiss me then,

Brother and friend as thou art?

Ah! I kissed you back again,

And forgot what it was to part

(Through the silence we all but heard

The pulses in either heart).

(‘Parting’. Bertha. 1885)

Sayle had met the poet Ernest Dowson (1867-1900) while at Oxford. Later in 1888, Sayle introduced Dowson to his friend, Victor Plarr (1863-1929), in his rooms at Grays Inn and the two became firm friends. Plarr relates the incident in his biography of Dowson: ‘It was early in the year 1888 that my old friend, Mr Charles Sayle, that great introducer, first said to me: “There’s a man whom you aught to know, a young poet just down from college, a man exactly like J.” – naming a well-known writer; “only, if possible, more so!”’ He goes on to say that they ‘met in Mr Sayle’s rooms, those quaint picturesque rooms which were to be found in Grays Inn years ago, and have doubtless not been obliterated in that ancient place.’ (9) Apart from Sayle’s friendship and correspondence with Dowson, who on a visit to Cambridge with Plarr, ‘insisted on keeping an all-night vigil in Mr Sayle’s garden’, (10) and John Addington Symonds (1840-1893), he also enjoys a close friendship with the poet Lionel Johnson and a correspondence with the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams; and we are told, he even encountered the Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley, ‘reciting his own poetry in a Snowdonian public-house’! (11)

In 1887 Sayle is awarded his B. A. and three years later in 1890 an M. A. from Oxford. After leaving Oxford in 1887 he is appointed Librarian to Toynbee Hall, a post he gives up in order to continue his private study. In October 1888 he is selected to re-catalogue the books in the 17^th century Library of St John’s College, Cambridge which contained well over 40,000 volumes (12) and took four years.

 Sayle’s second volume of poetry was ‘Erotidia’ in 1889:

EVENING AT KING’S CHAPEL

“For a scanty band of white-robed Scholars only”

Keep silence! From the chanting draw apart

And take thy seat where ends the monarch aisle,

And where are caught the glories of this pile

Most beauteously, with help of every art.

Forth from the gathering gloom past ages start

Till we feel placed within them for a while, -

Till memories forbid us to beguile

Our soul with sweetness or with sight our heart.

Here is no hint nor any need of change:

It is a dream of that which once hath been, -

Dream lasting still. No strife nor galling doubt.

Nothing doth enter here of new or strange:

Calmly we feel the silent peace within,

Forgetful how the tempest roars without.

(Erotidia. 1889)

Charles enters St John’s College, Cambridge on 4^th October 1890 and in 1891 Sayle receives his M. A. from Cambridge University. In December 1892 Sayle re-arranged and re-catalogued the Library of the Cambridge Union Society which contained 15,000 volumes. During this time Sayle is living with his widowed mother and his sister Ellen at 2 Harvey Road, Cambridge (his mother is still there in 1900 until sometime after from 1901 she is residing at 2 Brookside; in 1901 Charles is living at 9 Brookside.

In 1893, aged twenty-nine, he joins the staff of the Cambridge University Library as an Assistant Under Librarian and rose to become Assistant Librarian in 1910, a position he kept until his death in 1924.

THEO

Open this book where these letters stand

And write again in bold, round hand: -

‘He loved boys and thieves and sailors,

Servant of Thine, St Nicholas!’

(‘Muscovy’. Erotidia. 1889)

Sayle became friends with a fellow librarian at Cambridge named Augustus Theodore Bartholomes (1882-1933) or ‘Theo’ to his friends. Sayle ‘took immediately to Bartholomew, who joined Sayle’s group of “swans”, a group which later included George Mallory and Rupert Brooke, both of whom dabbled in same-sex relationships as undergraduates.’ (13) Bartholomew began his career at Cambridge University Library aged 17 as a Second-Class Assistant on 29^th January 1900. ATB, who later edited the work of Samuel Butler with Butler’s friend, Henry Festing Jones, entered Peterhouse College, Cambridge in 1901 till 1904 (B. A. 1904, M. A. 1908). Sayle seems to have become a little infatuated with the younger librarian who had delighted in the company of such luminaries as the novelist Forest Reid, poet and Venetian scholar, Horatio Forbes Brown whom he met in Venice; artist and writer, Ralph Chubb, poet and writer on homosexual themes, Edward Carpenter and the poet, Siegfried Sassoon, to name a few: ‘what is the attraction of ATB to me, as of so many before him?... it is this: I must have a playmate always.’ (Charles Sayle. Diary entry: 12^th February 1901. Cambridge University Library) Theo, like Sayle who was eighteen years his senior, was fastidious and precise with impeccable taste and they both shared a love of books and cataloguing volumes. While at the University, Theo became a member of Charles Sayle’s ‘Baskerville Club’, which was founded on 4^th October 1903 and the club was set up to encourage bibliographical studies. The first formal meeting took place on 28^th October 1903 and in a publication by the Cambridge University Press of 1904 titled ‘The Baskerville Club: No. 1. Handlist’ there is a list of its members: A. T. B. (Peterhouse College), A. F. Cole (King’s College), S. Gaselee (King’s College), F. J. H. Jenkinson (Trinity College), J. M. Keynes (King’s College), G. I. H. Lloyd (Trinity College), C. D. Robertson (Trinity College)  and C. Sayle. The club was dissolved in 1931. At the time of the Baskerville Club any romantic feelings Sayle had had for ATB had waned, perhaps on Bartholomew’s own desire not to be the ‘plaything’ of an older man and Sayle’s increasing suspicions and feelings of growing older in a world of youth –

‘ATB today gave me his first look of scorn… A few more and it will all be over.’ (Charles Sayle. Diary entry: 29^th April 1903. Cambridge University Library).

In 1913 Bartholomew became Under Librarian at Cambridge University Library, a post he remained at until his death in 1933.

BOURN BROOK: SUMMER

Still stream, from every toil and care remote,

Where the faint breeze has long since dropped and died,

And the thick shades that on thy surface float

Make it most sweet to linger at thy side;

Where, unafraid, the lapwing sounds his note

And, undisturbed, the wild fowl past us glide;

‘Tis half a sin to push on with our boat

And break the stillness of thy silent tide!

How oft, a boy, upon thy banks I played

And started at thy stillness – fancy-full.

But now these fancies into nothing fade –

I only know that thou art beautiful.

(from The Cambridge Independent Press. 1885)

SAYLE AND HIS CAMBRIDGE ‘SWANS’

After the death of his mother on 9^th May 1904, Sayle moved from 9 Brookside to 8 Trumpington Street, Cambridge, where he would host his ‘infamous’ evenings of conversation, music and literature; Sayle would entertain many young (and oftentimes handsome) undergraduates such as Augustus Theodore Bartholomew and the poet, Rupert Brooke of King’s College (matriculating in 1906). Sayle became infatuated with Brooke who one day went to see Sayle at his home in Trumpington Street; finding Sayle out Brooke made himself at home. When Sayle returned, ‘standing in my hall in the dark, and thinking of other things, I looked towards my dining-room, and there, seated in my chair, in a strong light, he sat, with his head turned towards me, radiant. It was another unforgettable moment. A dramatic touch. A Rembrandt picture. Life.’ (14) Another of the great ‘gods’ was the climber, George Mallory of Magdalene College (matriculating in 1905). Sayle was a keen climber and a founder member of the Climber’s Club of England and Wales, founded in 1898 (he provided a ‘Map for Snowdon Summit’ to the Climber’s Club Journal, vol III. No I. March 1901. a quarterly edited by E Raymond Turner) and no doubt had much to say to George and possibly went climbing together in North Wales. Sayle met Mallory on 7^th February 1907 when A C Benson took the young undergraduate to a dinner at Christ’s Church in which Sayle was one of the guests. Sayle was immediately taken by the charming Mallory and within days they were having tea at Sayle’s Trumpington home.  Two weeks later on 21^st February, George attended a dinner at the ‘University Arms Hotel which had been organised by Charles Sayle in honour of the writer and critic Charles Lamb.’ (15) At the dinner was Rupert Brooke and Maynard Keynes and another friend of Sayles, a young climber named Geoffrey Winthrop Young (1876-1958); Mallory and Winthrop became instant friends through their shared interest of mountain peaks. (16) Mallory, whom Sayle presented with an inscribed first edition of his ‘Erotidia’ on 14^th March 1908, and Brooke, would become known as his ‘swans’ for they were beautiful creatures. Another of the ‘swans’ was Geoffrey Keynes of Pembroke College (matriculating in 1906), brother of the more famous John Maynard Keynes, (Geoffrey Keynes published his account of ATB: ‘Augustus Theodore Bartholomew: 1882-1933’ in 1933). The great diarist, A C Benson draws a delightful sketch of Sayle’s home following his visit in August 1912, saying that ‘it’s an odd house, a kind of pussy-cat place. There are many books, the rooms are small but pleasant – and there are many photographs of children, boys, youths – all the object of Sayle’s innocent adoration. There is something a little silly about it, but still it’s a definite life on a definite method. Sayle is not concerned with what is thought of him and goes his own way in a cosy, old-maidish, sentimental way, full of adorations, without passion.’ (17)

Following the cooling of Sayle’s feelings for ATB, Sayle switched his attentions to a new ‘swan’ – Cosmo Alexander Gordon (1886-1965); they had met in November 1904 and Bartholomew had found his own ‘swan’ in Walter John Herbert Sprott (1897-1971), known as ‘Sebastian’ to his friends.

BYRON’S POOL

Here, where the lifelong splashing of the weir

Makes clamorous silence and all else is peace,

Save when the village youth, on its release

From long day’s labour, takes its pastime here,

With naked limb diving from off the pier

That stems the shallow pool; save when the trees

Murmur afresh touched by the summer breeze,

Or the lone church-clock sounds across the mere:

Here, basking on the summer afternoon,

One well might dream of now long distant days,

And mix old fancies with the pool and stream.

Here, watching through the copse-wood, where the moon

Rises and pierces through the night-drawn haze,

Life seems no more a waking but a dream.

(Erotidia. 1889)

On New Year’s Eve 1907, Sayle, ATB and Geoffrey Keynes got together at Sayle’s home, 8 Trumpington Street, Cambridge to celebrate the New Year, something which would become an annual event; Keynes tells the story in his ‘Henry James in Cambridge’ (1967): ‘towards midnight Sayle suggested that each of us should choose someone to whom he would like to send a New Year’s greeting in admiration of his achievements, to be signed by all three.’ (18) Sayle chose George Meredith, Keynes, being interested in science and medicine chose Elie Metchnikoff and Bartholomew chose the novelist Henry James. And so the greetings were posted and ‘the party broke up about 1 a.m. to await results.’ James was the only one to reply on 2^nd January 1908. The following year at their New Year’s eve party Sayle chose A E Shipley (elected Master of Christ’s in 1910), Keynes – Rupert Brooke and Theo: Henry James again! Another card was sent to James and he responded to the ‘Cambridge three’ again on 4^th January 1909 and agreed to visit Cambridge and his new friends. Sayle drew up the plan of entertainments and events for James who arrived in Cambridge on Friday 11^th June 1909 and was met at the station by Sayle, Theo and Keynes and taken by cab to Sayle’s home, 8 Trumpington Street where they had dinner and went to the Guildhall to hear a concert. James stayed at Trumpington Street for the duration of his visit. The next day, Saturday 12^th June, Sayle took James to King’s Chapel, Cambridge and to the University Library, (James is very impressed by St John’s Gallery). But things didn’t go so swimmingly! James was a little peeved at Sayle who attempted to finish his sentences for him with his own choice words and on Monday 14^th June they decided to punt along the river; Sayle accidentally dropped the pole on the great novelist’s head, luckily no damage was done but what a strange scene it would have been; they spent just over an hour on the river before going for lunch at Bartholomew’s rooms at Kellet Lodge, Tennis Court Road. James was scheduled to leave the following day, Tuesday 15^th June, but cut his visit short, leaving on the 4.35 p.m. train. The next day, James writes to Sayle from The Reform Club in London’s Pall Mall, thanking them all for their hospitality, saying ‘my three days with you will become for me a very precious little treasure of memory’ and he gives special thanks to the ‘gentle Geoffrey’, ‘admirable Theodore’ and a ‘definite stretch towards the insidious Rupert [Brooke]’; he even adds a P. S. to say that he left his pyjamas folded under his pillows and for the housekeeper to send them on to him! (19)

Sayle assisted with the research on the Milton Tercentenary and is credited in ‘The Portraits, Prints and Writings of John Milton’. Cambridge. J Clay by John Peile, Christ’s College, Cambridge in 1908. And as one ‘swan’ leaves another ‘swan’ enters in the form of a young Scottish undergraduate named Archibald William Robertson Don (1890-1916); Sayle was so enamoured of the handsome scholar that after Don’s death Sayle edited a biographical memoir of the handsome, heroic Scot, ‘Archibald Don: A Memoir’ (1918) putting much love and attention into the volume. (20)

Charles Edward Sayle died aged 59 on 4^th July 1924. It had been his fate, just as it would be Bartholomew’s fate also (21), to watch the young and vibrant undergraduates around the colleges as if they were immortal, always seeming youthful like the chrysanthemums, ‘pure white’ which ‘come once more… each year when the rest have passed / ye come again at last, at last.’ (‘Chrysanthemums’. 1889 from Musa Consalatrix. 1893) And so Sayle grew older and lonelier, depressed at not having found the one true love which everyone seeks, the one true love that never came – ‘I waited for one True Love. / I thought that I saw it pass: / But it fled unshriven like a vision damned / In an old magician’s glass.’ (The Ordination of a Greek Priest. Easter 1892, from Musa Consolatrix. 1893).

‘Nothing so sweet in all the world there is

Than this – to stand apart in Love’s retreat

And gaze at Love. There is as that, ywis,

Nothing so sweet.’

(‘Nothing so Sweet’. Bertha. 1885)

The obituary in The Times was kind to him, saying that his ‘life was devoted to the library and to bibliography’ and that he was a ‘fine example of the type of man who likes to catalogue things in the right order.’ It goes on to say that he was a ‘finished and accurate scholar, and no pains were too great for him to take in pursuit of his work’ and that he was also an ‘ardent supporter of the Cambridge University Musical Society and Musical Club. He wrote on music and fostered the taste in others at small musical parties in his charming little house in Trumpington-Street. He had a natural gift for winning the affections of young men, especially the more intellectual and artistic among them, and his Sunday evenings were a feature in the life of many a Cambridge student. Sayle was very fond of flowers – especially white flowers – and he sedulously cultivated his garden, hidden away behind his house in Trumpington-Street.’ And it ends affectionately: ‘Never very robust, he had a certain delicacy of mind and constitution. But his heart was in Cambridge and few members of the University had as great a knowledge of its intimate history, apart from the official, as he had.’ (22) Two other notable obituaries appeared in ‘The Library’ periodical of December 1924, one from Sayle’s friend and fellow bibliographer, Alfred William Pollard (1859-1944) and the other from poet, essayist and Master of Magdalene College, Arthur Christopher Benson who said of Sayle that he was ‘one of the most uniformly courteous men’ he knew.

And as the hearts of passionate lovers yearn

For dearest lips that hold Life’s biding grace,

So when I look, O brother, on thy face

I have no need of other love to learn.

(‘Continual Comfort’. 1888. from Musa Consolatrix. 1893)

A ‘MELANCHOLY FIASCO’

The funeral service, which took place at St. Benet’s, the oldest building in Cambridge, was described by A. C. Benson, saying ‘the coffin brought into the Church with a purple pall. A fussy old vicar for ever peering out from a pillar and signalling with his cap… Sayle was very particular about funerals and liked pomp. But this was a melancholy fiasco. He should have had a big company of bright boys (whom he loved best) to take him to his last resting-place, weeping for him and yet prepared to forget. Instead he had a band of undistinguished mourners and a crowd of rather dilapidated dons… It was horrible to think of S. cold and frozen in his box and his harmless, courteous, kindly innocent life over. He was always good to me; but there seemed nothing behind his little varnish of self-importance – no thought, no style, no enthusiasm, no loyalty even. As long as he had a pretty boy to pet, it mattered little. “He’s almost a religion to us”, as he said of Archie Don. He had no faith and yet no negation of faith – a very gentle, empty soul.’ (23) The poet A. E. Housman was also in attendance. Sayle is buried at Mill Road Cemetery in the Parish of St Andrew’s the Great, beneath the family granite chest tomb, along with his parents, Robert and Priscilla, his older brother Arthur Willis Sayle, his sister Francis Ann Sayle who never married and his sister Martha Elizabeth Sayle who died aged three years old. Charles Edward Sayle will be long remembered and appreciated for his tremendous work at the University Library, Cambridge, for his slightly peculiar and sweet nature and for his poems, which shall come as a pleasant discovery – ‘Ah! come ye back with pure delight! / And let me dream of you at night.’ (‘Chrysanthemums’).

AMOR REDUX

Dead love, new born, nor born to die again

Or, dying, nevermore to cherish pain; -

Nay, dying not, though time past come again.

Fast asleep, new waked, nor waked again in sleep,

Or, sleeping, nevermore sad dreams to keep;

Yea, sleeping now, sacring eternal sleep.

Fling roses, roses down before Love’s feet, -

‘After long years I shall be with you, sweet,’ –

As when we kissed, O Love, God’s shiny feet.

(Erotidia. 1889. [written 1888])

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Bertha: A Story of Love. London. Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.1885.

Wicliff: An Historical Drama. Oxford. J. Thornton.1887.

Iohannis Wyclif Tractatus de Officio Regis, now first edited from the mss. 4514 and 3933 by Alfred W. Pollard and Charles Sayle. Trubner & Co. 1887.

Erotidia. Rugby. George Over. 1889.

Letters Written by Lord Chesterfield to His Son. (edited by Sayle) Walter Scott Publishing Co Ltd.1889.

Letters, Sentences and Maxims, by Lord Chesterfield with a prefatory note by Charles Sayle and a critical essay by C. A. Sainte-Beuve. New York. A. L. Burt Company. (undated).

Sadi: Gulistan, or Flower-Garden: translated with an essay by James Ross and a note upon the translator by Charles Sayle. London. W. Scott. 1890.

Musa Consolatrix. London. David Nutt.1893.

In Praise of Music. (anthology, edited by Sayle) London. Elliot Stock. 1897.

The Art of Dining. Abraham Hayward QC. with annotations and additions by Charles Sayle. London. John Murray. 1899.

Catalogue of Early English Printed Books in the University Library, Cambridge, 1475-1640. Cambridge University Press. (4 vols) 1900-07.

Meditations and Vows, Divine and Moral. Bishop Joseph Hall. (edited by Sayle) London. Grant Richards.1901.

The Works of Sir Thomas Browne. (edited by Sayle) London. Grant Richards.1904.

Private Music. W. Heffer & Sons.1911.

Cambridge Fragments. Cambridge University Press.1913.

The Vatican Library: A Lecture. (given on 18^th February 1914). 1914. (see The Library, vol 6, issue 1. p. 327-343, p. 371-385. Published 1^st January 1894)

Cambridge University Library: The Beginnings. Cambridge University Press. 1914 (originally printed in the Cambridge Revied. 2 December 1914).

Annals of Cambridge University Library, 1278-1900. Cambridge University Library.1916.

Catalogue of the Bradshaw Collection of Irish Books. (3 vols) Cambridge University Press.1916.

Catalogue of the Early Printed Books Bequeathed to the Museum by Frank McClean MA FRS. [Fitzwilliam Museum Library]. Cambridge University Press. 1916.

The Ages of Man (edited by Sayle). London. J. Murray. 1916.

Archibald Don: A Memoir (edited by Sayle). London. J. Murray. 1918.

King’s Hall Books. Cambridge. W. Heffer & Sons Ltd. 1922.

NOTES:

* ‘Triolet of the Bibliophile’ by Charles Sayle. Book-Song: an Anthology of Books and Book Men, from Modern Authors. London. Elliot Stock. Gleeson White. 1893. p. 107. (the volume also contains Sayle’s ‘Demanding an Inscription in an “Omar Khayyam” to J. H. B. [p.106] and an inscription on the fly-leaf of ‘The Marriage of “Cupid and Psyche”’ [p. 105-106] Gleeson White also includes two of Sayle’s poems from ‘Bertha’: ‘Nothing so Sweet’ and ‘The Trysting-Tree’, in his ‘Ballades and Rondeaus, Chants Royal, Sestinas, Villanelles, selected with chapter on the various forms’. London. Walter Scott Ltd.1888. [p. 200] Sayle’s three poems: ‘Evening at King’s Chapel’, ‘Byron’s Pool’ and ‘Bourne Brook: Summer’ also appear in ‘A Book of Cambridge Verse’ by E E Kellett. Cambridge University Press. 1911.

1. Robert Sayle, a JP of Cambridge and China, was born on 22^nd February 1816 at Southey, Norfolk and died on 5^th October 1883 at Trumpington, Cambridge.
2. Priscilla Caroline Ginger was the daughter of Thomas and Martha Ginger. She married Robert Sayle in Hertfordshire on 25^th August 1849 when she was twenty-five years old. She died on 9^th May 1904, aged 80 at 2 Brookside, Cambridge.
3. In the 1901 census Ellen Jane Sayle is 39, un-married and her occupation is given as ‘Hospital trained nurse’; she is boarding with the Harvey family in Chesterton, Cambridgeshire. In the 1911 census, Ellen is 49 and still un-married; she is a ‘Hospital Nurse’ and she is visiting Epsom College Public School and Master’s House.
4. John Haden Badley (1865-1967) of Rugby School and Trinity College, Cambridge. Badley later went on to found Bedales School and claimed he had ‘tea with Oscar Wilde’ (see his autobiography ‘Memories and Reflections’. 1955). Sayle dedicated his volume of verse, ‘Musa Consolatrix’ to Badley in 1893.
5. Some Winchester Letters of Lionel Johnson (edited by Sir Francis Russell). London. Geeorge Allen & Unwin Ltd. 1919. p. 58-59.
6. John Francis Stanley Russell (1865-1931), the 2^nd Earl Russell and elder brother of Bertrand Russell. Educated at Winchester College 1879 and Balliol College, Oxford 1883, towards the end of his 2^nd year in May 1885 he was sent down for a month by Jowett because of some indiscretion; there is still some mystery over his intimacy with Lionel Johnson. Russell, known as the ‘wicked Earl’ was tried for bigamy in 1901.
7. Charles Edward Sayle. J. C. T. Oates. Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society. Vol, 8, no. 2. 1982. p. 236. The three older boys were: Arthur Willis Sayle, educated at Bury St Edmund’s School, matriculating at Trinity College, Cambridge on 12^th October 1872 (B A 1876); Robert Henry Sayle, educated at Uppingham School, matriculating at Trinity Hall, Cambridge on 22^nd February 1872 to study Law. LL B 1876, LL M 1881, admission at Inner Temple 12^th January 1874, admission as a Solicitor in April 1880, practicing at 35 Queen Victoria Street, London, and Martin Wellesley Sayle, educated at West Brighton College, Sussex, matriculating at Pembroke College, Cambridge on 10^th October 1977.
8. On the Edge of Paradise: A C Benson, the Diarist. David Newsome. London. John Murray. 1980. p. 247.
9. Ernest Dowson, 1888-1899: Reminiscences, Unpublished Letters and Marginalia. Victor Plarr. New York. Laurence J. Gomme.1914. p. 11.
10. ibid. p. 102.
11. The Books of the Beast: Essays on Aleister Crowley, Montague Summers, Francis Barrett and Others. Timothy D’Arch Smith. Aquarian Press.1987. p. 30.
12. The Library. Vol. 4, v, issue 3. Dec 1924. p. 267 (published 1^st December 1924).
13. The Book Collector, vol. 65 no 3. ‘Simple and Exquisite Tastes – A T Bartholomew: A Life Through Books’. Liam Sims. Autumn 2016. p. 395.
14. The Strange Destiny of Rupert Brooke. John Lehmann. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. New York. 1980. p. 28-29.
15. The Wildest Dream: The Biography of George Mallory. Peter & Leni Gillman. The Mountaineers Books. 2000. p. 56.
16. Geoffrey Winthrop Young (1876-1958), educated at Marlborough and Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied classics. Geoffrey, one of the infamous ‘roof-climbers’ of Trinity, who like Mallory and Brooke dabbled in same-sex relationships was elected President of the Climber’s Club in 1913. see ‘Geoffrey Winthrop Young: Poet, Educator, Mountaineer. Alan Hankinson. Hodder & Stoughton. 1995.
17. On the Edge of Paradise: A C Benson, the Diarist. David Newsome. London. John Murray. 1980. p. 292.
18. Henry James in Cambridge. Geoffrey Keynes. W. Heffer & Sons Ltd.1967. p. 7
19. The Letters of Henry James, (vol II) selected and edited by Percy Lubbock. London. Macmillan & Co. 1920. p. 131-133.
20. Archibald William Robertson Don (1890-1916), born at Broughty Ferry, Scotland and educated at Horris Hill Preparatory School; Winchester College 1904-09 and Trinity College, Cambridge 1909-1914 where he studied geology. He then decided on a medical career and became a medical student at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. He was appointed a Fellow of the Geological Society in London on 4^th December 1912. When the war broke out he joined the British Red Cross and went to France until he obtained his commission in December 1914. 2^nd Lieutenant Don of the 10^th Battalion Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) died of malaria in hospital in Salonika on 11^th September 1916.
21. Bartholomew records in his diary on 26^th May 1921, that he has ‘always had a horror… of hanging on – oneself no longer young – to the coat-tails of youth. A horror in fact of becoming a sort of pastiche of Ch[arles] Sayle.’ Cambridge University Library.
22. The Times. Saturday 5^th July 1924. issue 43696, p. 16.
23. On the Edge of Paradise: A C Benson, the Diarist. David Newsome. London. John Murray. 1980. p. 372.