RALPH STRAUS

 

A MAN APART: RALPH STRAUS,
AN ODD AND NEGLECTED NOVELIST
BY
BARRY VAN-ASTEN

The novelist, biographer and bibliographer, Ralph Straus, has become sadly overlooked in the decades following his death in 1950 and remembered mostly for his works on Dickens and membership to the exclusive Sette of Odd Volumes club. There is no doubt as to his literary achievements, one need only 

look at his fine books on Baskerville or Sala to confirm this, but he was also the author of many charming and delightful novels, which with his love of Dickens, had a Dickensian sense of adventure about them. Straus wrote about real people, people he knew and met during his lifetime, from the social world he orbited and kept enthralled with his fascinating tales and bookish talk. The characters he evokes all have either elements of himself or of someone he knows; the men in his books are usually antiquarians, literary men with high ideals and some weakness such as Humphrey Dorsett, a man who was not a sportsman and not even fond of women, in the Unseemly Adventure, Charles Orme in Married Alive, Mr. Artemus Pye in The Little God’s Drum or Lord John Orley who fails to distinguish himself and follows in the footsteps of his ancestors, a long line of ‘devilishly stupid’ Orleys’ in The Orley Tradition. It is the men who tend to rebel, either against a dominant female, as Humphrey does with his mother in the Unseemly Adventure or against duty, such as Oswald Unit in Our Wiser Sons. The women are mostly strong figures as we can see with Agatha Dorsett, Humphrey’s mother in the Unseemly Adventure, Phillipa in the Prison Without a Wall or Gertrude Belt in Volcano: A Frolic. There is also the desire to change oneself which arises from Straus’s interest in psychology, such as in the character of Oliver Prince who gets mistaken for a Lord and uses the mistake to his advantage, which brings us to the subject of pseudonyms and titles; Straus, of whom one might say had an extraordinary snobbish attitude used various pseudonyms for his writing – Ralph Strode, during his undergraduate years, Robert Erstone Forbes, around the time of the First World War, and Gertrude Belt and Eustace Pountney in the nineteen-twenties. In the novels we encounter both poverty and wealth – the Pribbs in the Unseemly Adventure who have ‘six bathrooms’ are seen in contrast with Jane Oak, who poor and abandoned, attempts to drown herself and her baby until she is rescued by Magnus Appleby; or the American millionaires, the Welkenberg’s in the Transactions of Oliver Prince, who literally have more money than sense; yes, they are likeable and it is hard to despise such fortunate figures to which Straus differentiates between Oliver, a cunning young man who does not want to work as a clerk in a ‘wretched little seaside bank’ for a ‘paltry two pounds a week’. We see the contrast in a humorous light, probably because Straus experienced an excess of wealth and although he didn’t taste the depths of real poverty, there was a great financial loss and a sense that he must work hard by his pen to replace that loss, which he succeeded to do. Straus’s fascination for psychology took him into complex characterisation such as John Pengard and Hartley Sylvester, two individual split personalities inhabiting the same body in Pengard Awake or James Duxbury in Married Alive who is a bigamist; the desire to be different or altered somehow is a constant theme of development, Gertrude Belt, like Humphrey Dorsett, is changed by romance and the adventure that goes with it, which completes their personality and makes them all round better people. But not all of Straus’s male characters find love and happiness. In the Little God’s Drum, Tony Lord Wrynge, disappointed and disgusted by the misfortunes of love comes to the conclusion that ‘motoring is better than marriage’, and in The Scandalous Mr. Waldo, Gordon Waldo declares that ‘the gods had fashioned me for books and the car and an occasional picnic…’. When it comes to the strong male character there is no finer manifestation than Appleby Magnus in the Unseemly Adventure, who like Straus had a fondness for pseudonyms and generally being someone else; Magnus, a larger than life ‘Crowleyan’ figure first appears as dirty and repulsive but his charm, charisma and obvious ‘man of the world’ breeding shines through and he holds the reader spellbound throughout the novel, a wonderful creation yet we never learn his true identity and neither does Humphrey Dorsett. Another strong male character from the same novel is the Reverend Dr. Peltworth, who gives an objectionable sermon which ignites in Humphrey his rebellious nature; Peltworth, who ‘took perverse pleasure in flouting authority’, says ‘I prefer men to books’ something Straus would never say as he loved both equally, I believe, but we learn that Peltworth has some strange yet fascinating interests which puts him decidedly in the ‘odd’ category, such as ‘Dutch bulbs, Ouspensky, the ductless glands, a fourth dimension, truffle hunting and ruined temples of Cambodia’. Straus was an amalgamation of all the characters he created, yet he remains just as mysterious and illusive as Magnus Appleby so it is worthy to shine a little light into the darker recesses of the one-time popular novelist, bibliographer and member of almost every club in London – Ralph Straus.

 

Ralph Sidney Albert Straus was born on 5^th September 1882 in Chorlton, Manchester, Lancashire, the son of the stockbroker, Sidney Ralph Straus (1854-1930) (1) and Jessie Hendel Dux (1864-1935) who were married in Prestwich, Lancashire on 27^th April 1881. They lived at 58, Bassett Road, North Kensington, London (certainly from 1901-1914). Ralph Straus had a younger sister named Violet Babbette Straus, born in Chorlton on 4^th September 1886 (2). Young Ralph seems to have been as mischievous as any other boy and ‘as a small boy’ he says in an article, ‘I nearly blinded my nurse with a hard pea shot from a tin tube (and at the time was sorry I hadn’t blinded her, I mean). At school, too, I fought a youth very nearly as old and as big as I was, and although the referee’s decision was grossly unfair, I fancy I showed what is usually called the true bull dog spirit.’ [The Tatler. Wednesday 10^th October 1923. p. 34]

Ralph was a lover of finely printed books from a young age, in fact, in October 1894, having recently turned 12 years old, he attended a meeting of the London Bibliographical Society (founded two years earlier in 1892), at 20 Hanover Square, to proudly show his collection of books printed by John Baskerville (1707-1775).

Ralph was educated at a Preparatory School in Dover Street, Manchester before going on to Harrow School (Small Houses) where he was a Fives Player in 1901. The 1901 census shows 18 year old Ralph, a student, boarding at the home of Harrow schoolmaster, Charles Sankey, at West Hill, Harrow on the Hill, Middlesex; Charles is aged 58 (born Leicestershire in 1843) and his wife, Mary and their two daughters, Marjorie aged 13 and the unusually named, Avice [written or deciphered in the report as ‘Airee’] aged 11. Several other students are boarding at the home of the Sankey family also [RG13, schedule 190, piece 94, page 31]. In his volume, A Whip for the Woman (1931) Straus rather pompously records that he ‘wrote my first novel at twelve. It was a gory affair, in the course of which a schoolmaster suffered much pain and ultimately perished. The “original” of this martyr was one of my own masters who had accused me, quite legitimately, of behaving in an un-gentlemanly way. There was also a great deal about food in this book, for which reason, I imagine, it would probably have a success to-day. It was followed, I remember, by a pseudo-scientific romance, written during my third year at Harrow.’ He mentions as an aside that the Headmaster, Dr. James Welldon (1854-1937) ‘had already published a novel’ and that the Reverend Edward Gilliat (1841-1915) ‘had literary leanings and taught the boys to swear in modern Greek’. (pp. 8-9)

Ralph left Harrow School in 1901 on a National Science Scholarship to Pembroke College, Cambridge [Foundation in Biology], B.A. 1904. His tutor at Pembroke was Arthur Hutchinson (1866-1937) who taught Natural Sciences at Pembroke from 1892 and later became Professor of mineralogy in 1926 (he was also a member of the Royal Society, 1922 and a Master of Pembroke College, from 1928-1937). It was as an undergraduate at Pembroke that Ralph privately published his first novel, ‘Heart’s Mystery’ in 1903 under the pseudonym, Ralph Strode (3). Straus refers to this novel in his volume A Whip for the Women (1931) saying that ‘an undergraduate – his name does not matter, but he was supposed to be wealthy – had written a book.’ He goes on to say that ‘this rich undergraduate, however, desired to give his message to the world, and he sought my advice. I told him that although I recognised the artistic merits of his book, I could see no possibility of a commercial success. He said that he head no wish to achieve a commercial success, and after satisfying myself that his financial position was even more enviable than was generally supposed, I believed him. I did more. I offered to publish his book – at his own expense. And this I did, to the no small astonishment of my college.’ (p. 129) In the same book, A Whip for the Woman, Straus reveals a little more about his Cambridge life, saying that he ‘cheerfully denied myself the pleasure of attending the lectures arranged for my delectation, and gave myself up to serious bibliographical study.’ On the same page, (p. 128) Straus adds a note to this saying that it was ‘under the pleasant aegis of the late Charles Sayle [1864-1924], A. T. [Augustus Theodore] Bartholomew [1882-1933], Stephen Gaselee [1882-1943] and Ronald Storrs [1881-1955], now Governor of Cyprus and ambassadorially rotund, but in those days a singularly hungry undergraduate.’ Straus continues, saying ‘the five of us, by the way, were particularly keen at that time on books which had been printed at the Baskerville Press, and a Baskerville Club was formed [1903]. It flourished for several years, and my own John Baskerville: A Memoir owed much to the kindly help of its members.’ (pp. 128-129)

Following the private printing of ‘Heart’s Mystery’ in 1903 the pseudonymous ‘Ralph Strode’ was resurrected once again in December of that year when the Smart Set magazine published the story Straus wrote in collaboration with his undergraduate friend, Louis Umfreville Marlow, ‘The Last of the Decadents’. It is an interesting little tale concerning a group of scholarly men which includes a psychologist named Tyrell, an Actor-Manager, a Scotchman, a Very Young Man and an Oxford man, discussing decadence, which we are told that ‘in the early nineties, a man was admitted into society if he wore an excessively green tie’. The talk brings up the name of an aesthete and decadent named Aubrey Menster who was the author of novels so ‘excessively immoral that his private life must have been extremely dull.’ The psychologist concludes that ‘Decadence’ is the same as ‘alchemy’ and ‘one of the dead arts.’ Here the Oxford man steps forward to say he can provide evidence that decadence is alive and well and not dead at all for he knows such a person who ‘lives in a green atmosphere. I have seen him drink absinthe.’ The Oxford man is willing to introduce the group to the decadent individual and so a group of ten men travel to his home address, 18B, Craven Mansions to see for themselves the ‘Decadent’ who is at home in ‘the Blue Room’ making ‘little pastry cakes’. After a short while, bored by being stared at and questioned, the decadent leaves not on the basis of ‘seeing a man about a dog’ but a ‘godmother about an umbrella’, leaving the ten men astonished, having come some distance to see him. The Decadent, whom we later learn is named ‘Wilfred’, travels by cab to Lancaster Gate to see his godmother, who happens to be a useful excuse for getting rid of unwelcome visitors and for when an umbrella is needed – ‘men will continue to believe in godmothers long after they ceased to believe in God.’ In the cab on the journey he confirms to himself that ‘nearly all Oxfordians were either dull, which was middle-class, or brilliant, which was boring’ and he ‘trembled on the verge of an epigram, but trembled unsuccessfully’. At his godmother’s he was perturbed to find she had guests in the form of Mrs. West Ridgeway and her daughter and he finds himself compelled towards the schoolgirl-like beauty of Miss West Ridgeway, was he actually falling in love? Following mention of the fabled ‘umbrella’ promised to be posted to him, we move to the final part, several days later, to find the Oxford man and the psychologist deep in talk. Apparently, the Oxford man, a nephew of Mrs. West Ridgeway, had met the godmother and mystery surrounded the last of the Decadents whose death appeared to be ‘suicide during temporary insanity.’

Straus is mentioned in the interesting volume ‘Adventures with Authors’ (Cambridge University Press. 1966) by Sidney castle Roberts (1887-1966) who says that Arthur Hutchinson, a ‘Christ’s man’ who came to Pembroke in 1892 told a story about Ralph ‘who had been up at Pembroke just before my time. As an undergraduate, Straus, whom I knew fairly well in later years, frequently aimed at shocking the bourgeois, and Hutchinson, as his tutor, had from time to time to reprimand him. After the discussion of one of his escapades, Hutchinson concluded: “It’s no good, Straus. We’re not going to send you down; we’re not going to make a Shelley of you.”’ (p. 88)

Ethel Mannin (1900-1984) the novelist, who became a lifelong friend of Straus’s writes a charming portrait of Ralph in her volume, ‘Confessions and Impressions’ (London. Hutchinson & Co. Ltd. 1936); in a chapter on Ralph Straus – Portrait of a Literary Critic (chapter XVI, pp. 209-214) she says that Straus ‘was, in point of fact, a medical student for a good many years; it was a toss-up whether he qualified as a doctor or a psycho-analyst, or both, but when a young man begins writing novels and biographies in his early twenties it is quite obvious that he cannot end up as anything else than a man of letters.’ (p. 212)

Straus’s first published novel under his own name, The Man Apart, appeared in 1906 and it concerns the activities of a Cambridge undergraduate named Cedric Readham who while at University was a member of the exclusive society known as The Open Hearts who regularly met to discuss various matters of unconventional aspects. Having left university, Cedric pursues a literary career, writing under the pseudonym Mark Denman, publishing novels which have a natural disregard for convention as the author. A writer’s daughter named Ruth Sheridan falls in love with Cedric despite her father’s concerns over Cedric’s beliefs and opinions and reputation as a member of the Open Hearts. Ruth and Cedric eventually marry but prior to this Cedric had met and made an attachment to a young theatrical star named Olive Ranger whom he met and found in the company of Lord Sothernmere while crossing to Ostend. Olive has a child from the relationship and she falls upon difficult and ‘evil’ times and threatens to blackmail Cedric. He, not knowing what to do, kills Olive and while he is considering confessing all to Ruth and begging for her forgiveness, he succumbs to his own fateful end. The book is dedicated to Straus’s friend, Noel Frederick Barwell, M.C. (1897-1953) of Trinity College, Cambridge, Captain  (later Lieutenant-Colonel), Oxford & Bucks Light Infantry, M.C. 1916; he published a novel, ‘Someone Pays’ (1908) and a delightful book – ‘Cambridge’ by Blackie & Son (1910). He died in India in 1953.

After University, Straus became involved with the Samurai Press which was founded in 1906 at Ranworth Hall, near Norwich by the poet, actor and theatre director (and one of Straus’s oldest friends) Maurice Browne (1881-1955) and the poet Harold Monro (1879-1932) amongst others. During its three years in operation the Samurai Press published 30 books, the first of which was Straus’s ‘The Dust Which is God: An Undimensional Adventure’ (1907). The novel is a strange voyage into the fourth dimension as its hero, the scientifically minded, unsocial Juan Martafax, is transfixed with the notion of resurrecting the dead. Martafax, meets a stranger named Diophantus who like Virgil in the Divine Comedy, guides Martafax to other planetary realms. They travel to the First World which is a barren land where life first evolved and later they journey to the Third World with its marble cities and on reaching earthly reality once more, Martafax writes a popular book on his transcendental ‘undimensional’ adventure. The volume is perhaps inspired by H. G. Wells whom Straus knew and admired and who was also connected to the Samurai Press and there are moments when one could be excused for thinking one was reading Arthur Machen or Algernon Blackwood. In June that year, the Bookseller noted that ‘the “Undimensional Adventure” of Juan Martafax, a London zoologist, specially appeals to those interested in mystic and spiritual problems. Whether such problems are best dealt with through the medium of fiction is, of course, open to argument, but these pages are at any rate original, and, it seems to us, a distinct advance on the author’s previous story, “The Man Apart”.’[Bookseller. Friday 7^th June 1907. p. 31]

At this time (1907) Ralph’s mother was Lady President of the Mile End District League of Mercy which was founded in 1899; the President is a cousin of Ralph’s father named Bertram Stuart Straus (1867-1933); the Straus family are living at 58, Bassett Road and Ralph’s sister, Violet, is the League of Mercy’s Secretary for the Mile End branch. Mr. Bertram Straus, J.P. who was also the Liberal M.P. for Mile End from 1910-1916 is the Manchester born son of Henry Sigismund Straus (1810-1893), merchant and vice consul for the Netherlands, of Sedgeley Park, Manchester and young Bertram was educated at Harrow School and never married. Later, when Ralph’s father became ill in the 1920’s, we find him living with Bertram at 8E Hyde Park Mansions, London, where Bertram died on 26^th August 1933. Bertram was also Chairman of Virol Ltd. a malt-based extract vitamin preparation which reminds us of ‘Marrox Ltd.’ in ‘Our Wiser Sons’ (1926); Ralph Straus dedicates his volume ‘Carriages and Coaches’ (1912) to ‘B.S.S.’ – Bertram Stuart Straus.

John Baskerville: A Memoir, by Straus and Robert K. Dent was published in 1907. In the preface, Dent says that an unfinished biography of Baskerville was begun by Samuel Timmins, F.S.A. and that upon his death in 1902 his biographical material was entrusted to Dent – ‘Mr. Ralph Straus submitted to me the first draft of a work which he had in preparation on the subject’ and so much of the research had been carried out by Straus. Robert Kirkup Dent (1851-1925) who was born in Staffordshire became an assistant to Mr. J. D. Mullins, the Chief Librarian at Birmingham Public Library when he was 15 years old; he remained there for six years, mostly cataloguing books. In 1875 he was instrumental in forming the Local Library Association, of which he was Honorary Secretary for 18 years. He was appointed Chief Librarian of Aston Free Library in 1877 and was a well-known writer on archaeological and antiquarian matters. Dent published several interesting volumes, such as ‘Historic Staffordshire’ (1896) with Joseph Hill and ‘Old and New Birmingham: A History of the Town and its People’ (1880).

 

Also in 1907, Ralph paid a visit to Melbourne, Australia to see his Uncle, the lawyer, Herbert Nathaniel Straus (1863-1950) who owned the Hotel Fasoli. (4) Several Australian newspapers of the time reported on his visit, The Herald (Wednesday 29^th May 1907. p. 3) said that Straus, a ‘Cambridge man’ had ‘arrived by the Adelaide Express today [29^th May] to study Australia’s social and political conditions; Straus said that ‘zoology is a hobby of mine’. In another paper, The West Australian (Friday 24^th May 1907. p. 7) he was interviewed at Freemantle following his passage from Plymouth to Melbourne by the RMS Orient; the article said that ‘his health has not been altogether satisfactory of late, and, further, he is anxious to study politics’. Straus, who was working on his novel, The Little God’s Drum, was an admirer of H. G. Wells and is associated with him in a sort of club, or more of a project which became the Samurai Press with other leading authors, ‘Bernard Shaw, Carpenter [presumably Edward Carpenter 1844-1929], Monro, Pocock [R. I. Pockock, 1863-1947, zoologist] and Ficke [A. D. Ficke, 1883-1945]’.

Towards the end of March in 1908, Straus spent a week in Eastbourne writing his ‘Episode’ for the Eastbourne Old Town Hockey Club in preparation for the Pevensey Pageant which was to be held in the ruins of Pevensey Castle in July that year. The Pageant consisted of several episodes which told the history of Sussex from the first episode detailing the Coming of the Romans, c. 54 B.C. to episode IX which told of its smuggling days, c. A.D. 1746. Ralph was tasked with writing Episode VIII, Pevensey Prepares to Resist the Landing of the Spanish Armada, A.D. 1588. There was one public dress rehearsal and six performances, the Eastbourne Old Town Ladies’ Hockey Club performing Ralph’s episode and the whole Pageant, which incidentally although popular, was a financial disaster, was performed from Monday 20^th-Saturday 25^th July and the musical arrangements and conducting was in the hands of James R. Dear, MUS. BAC., Oxon, FRCO.

Ralph, who considered himself something of a gourmet, was a great enthusiast of Literary dining clubs and was a member of several distinguished London societies, such as the Savile Club; the Badminton Club, 100, Piccadilly, London, founded in 1875; the Johnson Society, of which he was a founding member; the Omar Khayam Club, which was founded in 1890 whose members included W. W. Jacobs (1863-1943), Harold Nicholson (1886-1968) and the orientalist and linguist, Edward Denison Ross (1871-1940); the First Edition Club formed in 1922 by its Secretary and Director, A. J. A. Symons (for a history of the club see: A J A Symons: His Life and Speculations. Julian Symons. Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd. 1950), the Saintsbury Club, which began in the early 1930’s and was named after George Saintsbury (1845-1933) which met twice a year, on Saintsbury’s birthday and Shakespeare’s, to enjoy dinners and rare wine and fine talk; members had a love of wine and letters – J. C. Squire was a member and so was A. J. A. Symons (1900-1941) the bibliographer who wrote the biographical masterpiece, ‘The Quest for Corvo’ (1934) about the intriguing and eccentric author, Frederick Rolfe (1860-1913). But perhaps the most well-known bibliographic dining club Straus is associated with is the Sette of Odd Volumes which was established in London in 1878 by the antiquarian bookseller, Bernard Quaritch (1819-1899). It was in October 1908 that Straus became a candidate for membership of the Sette of Odd Volumes and he was initiated the following year and became known as Brother Scribbler. The Sette held monthly evenings consisting of lavish dinners and bookish talk in which articles and essays would be read, many of the papers published. Brother Scribbler, the Sette’s archivist became President, ‘His Oddship’, from 1913-1919. An article in The Bystander of Wednesday 1^st May 1935 (p. 46, continued p. 220) by Charles Graves – ‘Clubs Without Quarters: No. 2. The Odd Volumes’ gives some details about the club which will celebrate its ‘five-hundredth dinner’ during the summer; the article says that the club is ‘one of the oldest and most conservative clubs without premises in London’ and it goes on to say that members ‘meet eight times a year, on the fourth Tuesday of the month, at the Savoy. There are twenty-one members known as Odd Volumes, this being the number of volumes of the Variorum Shakespeare of 1821. There are also a similar number of Supplemental Odd Volumes. Altogether, the whole Club is very odd. There are Odd Councillors, and each Odd Volume has an odd title. Thus Khaki Roberts is Gladiator, Maurice Healey, K. C., is Prattler, A. J. A. Symons is Speculator, Roland Oliver, K. C., is Fiddler, Low, the cartoonist, is Exaggerator and Sidney Glanville is Ushabti, which has something to do with Egyptian mythology, I fancy. Oh, yes, and Ralph Straus is Scribbler as well as being Keeper of the Archives while Nathan Mutch took the name of Pessimist. On election, each Odd Volume pays three odd pounds and three odd shillings as his subscription, as well as another three odd pounds and three odd shillings for entrance fee, and ten and a half odd shillings for his official badge. The distinctly odd rules include Rule 16, which is, briefly, that there shall be no Rule No. 16. No Odd Volume is allowed to talk unasked on any subject he understands, nor may he refer, in any circumstances, to any other O. V. except by his title and denomination in the Sette. Rule 20 insists that no O. V. speech shall last longer than three minutes. If, however, the inspired O. V. has any more to say, he may proceed until his voice is drowned in general applause. Each O. V., in the ordinary way, brings two guests, who sit on either side of him at these dinners, and introduces them as cynically as possible.’

In 1908, Chatto & Windus published Straus’s novel, ‘The Little God’s Drum’ which the Clarion of Friday 29^th May 1908 (p. 2) described as a ‘comedy of life and manners’ in which Mr. Straus ‘occasionally, introduces a note of convincing earnestness. Cupid is, of course, the vulgar name of his little god, and Mr. Artemus is, a wealthy gentleman who dabbles in literature and whom Mr. Straus has made extremely real, is a self-appointed Super-Cupid, who uncles all the marriageable young men and women of his acquaintance.’ Cupid, it seems, favours a new weapon of torture rather than the bow and arrow for he now carries – a drum, with which he bangs noisily. Artemus Pye, a benevolent old bachelor of the Albany, a man who does not like idealists and is an inveterate matchmaker attends the Curzon Street Club and attempts to manipulate the young people there into wedlock. He takes particular interest in Tony Lord Wrynge, an almost insane idealist and a genius, Artemus, using strange oaths compels Lord Wrynge towards Grace Mannering with whom he falls in love but who deserts him on the eve of their wedding for another man, Beverley Fiennes; Lord Wrynge, in his despair, assumes a pseudonym, Mr. Brown, a philanthropist and devotes himself to social reform and humanitarian work at an East End Mission where he meets Joan Heathcote and together they form a Guild of Workers. Tony, in love with Joan, is jilted once again before their marriage when she runs off with his best friend, Ivan Meryon, a fashionable novelist who had gone to the East End with Peggy Jerningham, (Ivan had also jilted the widow, Mrs. Vanderest, whom he was engaged to before falling in love with Joan) and they discover Tony and his new identity. Grace, Tony’s first fiancé returns after her husband, Beverley Fiennes shoots himself and she and Tony become close once more but fate again intervenes and she runs off with an old love named Willie Graham whom she knew as a ten year old girl. Lord Wrynge in his disgust gives up on the idea of marriage, preferring his car. Along the way we also meet the cherubic Stanley Ferrars but none of the couples destined for each other by Pye seems to work and there are constant changing of partners and he makes an awful lot of mistakes for such a ‘little God’.

Perhaps inspired by the Samurai Press, after its disbanding in 1909, Straus set up his own Private Press at the sign of the Ostrich. In the book, A Whip for the Woman, Straus tells us that he ‘purchased a fine old Stanhope Press and the necessary material, and set out on a new voyage of discovery.’ (p. 130) The books printed by Ralph Straus at the Sign of the Ostrich Press were: ‘Flower O’ The Rose: A Romantic Play’ by William J. Lock (50 copies printed in 1909), ‘Petronius: A Revised Latin Text of the Satyricon with the Earliest English Translation’ (265 numbered copies printed in 1910) and ‘5000 A.D.: A Review and an Excursion’ (265 copies printed in 1911).

Straus’s volume, ‘The Scandalous Mr. Waldo’ was published in 1909 and The Sketch said of it that ‘there is nothing scandalous about The Scandalous Mr. Waldo, unless it is his inability (a student of Mr. Shaw, too) to realise that that it is the woman who marries the man, and even then the big word grossly overloads the situation. He seems to have been a young man who did not want to get married, who had some rather nebulous dealings with several young women, and was married in the end by a girl of much muscle and presence of mind. We are half afraid that Mr. Waldo is not a very interesting person; but as neither he nor Mr. Ralph Straus, his author, seems to have suspicion of it, it is quite possible that we are mistaken.’ [The Sketch. Wednesday 6^th October 1909. p. 32] The novel which is written in three notebooks in a diary style, concerns the romantic inclinations of Gordon Waldo, the Cambridge educated only son of the barrister Sir Henry Waldo, a man who declined a baronetcy but accepted a knighthood. Gordon, an antiquarian bibliomaniac, author of ‘Eminent Libraries of Medieval Europe’ and the ‘Life of John Baskerville’ is a 32 year old bachelor who resists his father’s attempts to see him married to Lady Mary Meddenham, only child of the Duke of Rochester; in this, Sir Henry is aided by Mary’s mother, the Duchess, a ‘dragon’ who ‘rampages Mayfair’. Sir Henry finds Gordon’s literary work incomprehensible, (he is working on compiling a Bibliography of the Baskerville Press) and wants only for him to marry and the distinguished line of Waldo to continue. The son dutifully assists his father in his parliamentary campaign as candidate for East Chapel, a slum area of London. It is here that Gordon’s adventures begin. Gordon, who sees marriage as a ‘ceremony that should be postponed for as long as is possible before being permanently avoided’ does fall in love with a young woman named Nesta Carruthers, daughter of Sir Austin Carruthers who married his cook who dutifully drank herself to death; the faux pas in etiquette caused a twenty year splintering in the friendship of Gordon’s father and Sir Austin. Nesta, who has left her Cumberland home and her father for London under the assumed name of Mrs. Summers (and wearing a wedding ring) is in love with a young Apollo named Raymond who received a thrashing from Sir Austin when they were discovered together and he was sent to Naples. Nesta has now befriended a Jewish man named Carl Mabrum, a vendor of jewels who also wants to marry her. Mabrum and Nesta are helping with the elections and Lady Mary is also canvassing with Gordon. Nesta settles for Carl as she cannot have Raymond but leaves him just twenty-minutes before the wedding and Carl in his fury attempts to blackmail her father… (Previously, two years ago, Nesta was engaged to Gordon’s friend, John Hylton who collects women like butterflies and continually getting engaged). Lady Mary becomes engaged to Basil Anstruther, an ‘excellent judge of horse flesh’ and a would-be millionaire when his father dies but the relationship does not work out; Gordon, who ‘so far, indeed, as love is concerned… might well have been born a fossil’, realises Mary is in love with him and they get engaged and Raymond returns and he and Nesta get engaged and marry. Mary, realising Gordon’s feelings for Nesta calls off the engagement and eventually Gordon marries Mabel Carruthers, (who was engaged to Gordon’s friend, John Hylton) whom it turns out is Raymond’s sister. It is a somewhat confusing but enjoyable plot, similar to the romantic complications in the Little God’s Drum.

Also around this time Ralph had become enamoured by the work of a young artist named Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956) – Spare designed a bookplate for Ralph in 1908 which depicts a Library interior with an ostrich standing in the foreground – Ralph did not see Spare’s London ‘Black and White Drawings’ at the Bruton Gallery exhibition of October 1907 which caused much talk in the art world (he had also exhibited at the Royal Academy that year) but Straus admired the young artist enough to write an article in 1909 entitled ‘Austin Osman Spare: A Note on his Work’. It ‘featured in a special Bookplate number of The Booklover’s Magazine. This article was based upon a meeting that Straus had with the young Spare at this formative time and reveals some interesting preoccupations: “We talked, I remember, of tortures and fairies, of tapestries and blood and were-wolfs, of magic and book-plates and religion…”’ (The Bookplate Designs of Austin Osman Spare. Robert Ansell. Bookplate Society. 1988. p. 4) The article goes on to say that after the interview at Ralph’s house, the older man found the young artist ‘one of those rare creatures possessed, like Socrates, of a daemon’ and that subsequently after the meeting, Straus ‘followed him round London for a sight of such works as he had sold.’ Spare was fascinated by mysticism and the occult and during this year, 1909, Spare became involved with the notorious Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) who in turn was equally bewitched and entranced by the force of Spare’s art. Spare joined Crowley’s magical order, the Argentium Astrum in July 1909 but in 1912 he found that his own occult interests would take him in other directions. Straus was also known to Aleister Crowley and two letters survive from Straus to the Great Beast – Aleister Crowley (5). Crowley mentions Ralph Straus in a letter to Crowley’s biographer, John Symonds (1914-2006) as a possible reviewer of Crowley’s poetry volume, ‘Olla: Sixty Years of Song’ which was published in 1947. The letter says that ‘”if you are writing personal letters to reviewers, you might remind Desmond MacCarthy that he went up to Trinity the same year as I did, and “Peterborugh” that he knows who I am. Ralph Straus is an old friend. No words from you yet about the advert idea – limit of cost is what I want to know.”’ Symonds goes on to say that ‘as I expected reviewers cold-shouldered the book [Olla] – because it was poetry and not very good poetry at that, and because it was by Aleister Crowley. I saw only two reviews, one in the local paper – Crowley was almost a celebrated character in Hastings – and the other in The Occult Review. Fortunately the latter was long and praiseworthy.’ (6)

Straus was also a friend to another acquaintance of Crowley’s, the author, Louis Umfreville Wilkinson (1881-1966) who was at St. John’s College, Cambridge from 1902-1905 and wrote under the pseudonym, Louis Marlow. Ethel Mannin mentions Louis in her volume, Confessions and Impressions (1936) and Louis says himself in his volume ‘Seven Friends’ [Richards Press. 1953] of his introduction in 1904 to William Somerset Maugham that ‘it was, I think, my fellow-undergraduate Ralph Straus who introduced me to him. Then a little over thirty, he was not yet at all well known as a dramatist’. (p. 142) Louis Marlow attended the cremation of Aleister Crowley at Brighton in December 1947 and read Crowley’s magnificently powerful poem ‘Hymn to Pan’ at the ceremony which created such outrageous headlines in the press referring to Satanic practices and other nonsense. In fact, Louis gives a delightful chapter to Crowley in his ‘Seven Friends’. Another associate of Ralph Straus connected with Crowley was Straus’s cricketing companion, the author, Clifford Bax (1886-1962) who played many a memorable game of chess with the Great Beast.

1910 saw the appearance of Straus’s biography on Robert Dodsley – Poet, Publisher and Playwright, for which he thanked the kind assistance of Austin Dobson and Edmund Gosse, dedicating it to the former. The Westminster Gazette of Saturday 10^th September 1910 (‘An Exceptional Monograph’, p. 5) had nothing but praise for the volume, saying that ‘the justification which Mr. Straus could not urge [the absence of an apology in his preface which he thought should be included as ‘eighteenth-century authors multiply exceedingly’ and Dodsley is little known] is the one that stands him in good stead – namely, his manner of writing the work. For he has hit that happy medium between imaginative writing and scientific history which is so rare in this sort. He has given us a striking portrait of a remarkable man, told his story with a skill that kept us absorbed in the narrative, and yet has introduced no matter which is not perfectly legitimate, for which he has no sufficient authority.’ The piece goes on to say that Dodsley, who lived between 1703-1764, was the ‘son of a poor schoolmaster’ and was ‘apprenticed in his youth to a stocking-weaver, from whom he appears to have run away; he came to London and went into service as a footman, from which position he raised himself by his own efforts and became the protégé of Defoe, Pope, and Dr. Johnson, the publisher of Gray, Sterne, and Edmund Burke, and a writer who achieved something in the advance of letters.’ Dodsley’s dramatic work, ‘The Toy-Shop’ (1735) enabled him to free himself from the chains of domestic service as a footman and begin publishing and writing and in many ways, as Straus stressed, he was a pioneer, ‘without any very astounding genius he was able by the exercise of some unknown instinct to discern the precise turn of public opinion and popular taste, and so well managed the appearance of his works that they came in almost every case at the crest of the wave.’

The novel, The Prison Without a Wall was published in 1912 and it relates to us the tale of a young, weak and dreamy boy named Sylvanus de Bohun, the last representative of an old and distinguished family in England who enters adulthood and becomes a dusty Cambridge scholar. The opening chapters in which Sylvanus and his seemingly stronger sister, Philippa as children, are wonderfully drawn with magical elements, finding them in the little wood, their enchanted forest at Welles, where Sylvanus is telling stories to his beloved Philippa. To make Sylvanus stronger, who is not fit for Eton, he is sent on a world tour with his tutor which does indeed works and he enters the cloistered world of Cambridge University becoming a classical scholar. Philippa marries a rascal named Dian Bradley and she shortly dies; Sylvanus marries an unworthy woman who loved his brother-in-law, Bradley, which does not last. Following the devastating death of his sister which brought about his own hatred of Welles with its childhood memories, his own fate is sealed. Sylvanus, who became the head of the family estate at Welles after his Uncle’s death, retreats into a hermit’s life once more as a ‘Cranmer Fellow’ and Master at St. Mary’s College, Cambridge, the prison without a wall, where, with his queer ways, he is considered a little strange and a little mad. No less a reviewer than Robert Ross said of it in The Bystander [Wednesday 7^th February 1912. p. 42] that Straus, who is ‘fond of human curiosities, not from the Dickens or comic point of view but for the tragic value’ has created an excellent representation of college life where ‘examples are hardly curiosities at Oxford and Cambridge, but only for the outside world. I doubt, however, if the type has ever been done in a more masterly manner, with so much sympathy and knowledge.’ He goes on to say that Sylvanus attempted to ‘live up to his position as the heir of wealth and the scion of a noble house. He sinks beneath an honour to which he was not born’ and ‘creeps back to his old Cambridge College… which he should never have left, and which we have difficulty in leaving.’

Another clever novel published by Ralph appeared in March 1914 – The Orley Tradition, which paints for us a picture of a minor aristocratic family tucked away in a corner of the English countryside, for ‘there had always been Orleys in this corner of Kent, and the importance of that one fact was supreme. Kent would love these Orleys and respect them, even if they did nothing at all. The county was proud of their record. Old scandals there might have been… but an Orley could do things which were forbidden to ordinary mortals. The trouble seemed to be that they refused now to do anything at all.’ And so we are introduced to the young heir to the Orley estate, John Orley, who we may presume, like his forefathers, fails to distinguish himself in any way. The village shopkeeper and oracle, Mrs. Damson, predicts (and hopes) that the child will not be ‘as big a fool as his father’, the present Lord Orley, who has carried on the distinction of being ‘devilish stupid’ as only the Orleys can. The Governess says of the Orleys that they are ‘just healthy animals, not very different from one another – stupid, obstinate, lovable savages, who would as soon think of throwing themselves over the cliffs as of reading a book for pleasure.’ When John is 19 years old he has an accident and is lame for some time which prevents him from playing sports, which he enjoys. As a young man John falls for the beautiful Mrs. Adderson, a novelist who lures him into London’s literary Bohemian society where John’s pretence of culture and intellect seem out of place for one blessed with more muscle than brains. Of course he is dazzled by the cultured lifestyle and beauty of Mrs. Adderson who attempts to make him marry her, but the Orley stupidity comes to the fore and he escapes her clutches. He has aspirations of standing for Parliament but is defeated in the polls; he fails at politics as he fails at everything and so he returns to the way of life he knows best – the Orley tradition. He marries Marjorie Grant, only daughter of Major Grant, J.P., D.S.O., whom he has loved since his childhood, and in his twenty-fifth year, he and Marjorie produce the next heir to the Orley estate, and the great sage, Mrs. Damson, says she would be terribly disappointed if the child did not follow the Orley tradition and that she would, on her soul, ‘turn in my grave’. The characters and scenes are well drawn and the minor character, Theophilus Outing, has flashes of brilliance which perhaps could have been embroidered more.

Three of Straus’s short stories seem to have endured and remained popular, two written prior to the First World War – ‘The Room on the Fourth Floor’ and ‘Horse of Death’, while ‘The Most Maddening Story in the World’ was written following the war. All three stories have the protagonist, the politician and raconteur, John Chester, who enjoys telling a good yarn. In ‘The Room on the Fourth Floor’, we find Mr. Chester, M.P. recounting a tale to his friend how a few weeks ago while dining at the House of Commons, an ex Prime Minister, the ‘most remarkable man in England’ sat near his table. When the ex P.M. left Chester began telling his tale how that ‘most remarkable man’ solved the riddle of the ‘Farringham case’. The case itself took place thirty years before when Mrs. Farringham, a widow, and her daughter were on something of a world tour. While in Paris during the Great Exhibition (1900), the hotel being quite full, the ladies could not have adjoining rooms so the daughter was given a room of the fifth floor while the mother took a room on the fourth. Being tired, the daughter goes for a sleep and on her return to the fourth floor, finds no sign of her mother and all the hotel staff, including the cab man who delivered them there from the station, denying she ever entered with her mother, she came alone. In fact, nothing is ever heard of the mother again. The seemingly obvious answer to the riddle is that Mrs. Farringham died in the hotel and she was swiftly escorted away, the death covered up and those involved were bribed to keep quiet as a death would not be good for business, especially during the ‘Exhibition year’. In the second story, ‘Horse of Death’, Mr. Chester is in the smoking room at the House of Commons and while talking generally on ‘coincidence’ begins to tell his tale. It happened a few years ago in a small fishing village called Claniston in Kent where Mr. Chester had gone for a complete rest. Coincidentally, the fair is at the village, and that evening he attends with his landlady Mrs. Larkins and her children. Intrigued outside one of the tents, there is a man dressed as Mephistopheles, enticing customers in to see Professor Torino, the clairvoyant. Chester goes in and so does Mrs. Larkins son, who wants to know the winner of the Bridbury Stakes next Thursday. Torino, who has put his wife in a trance in order to answer questions, says he is forbidden to predict such knowledge, but later, when Chester has been night walking over the cliffs, takes a wrong turn and finds himself at a barn. In the barn is the young Larkins lad with a revolver pointed at Torino’s head; his wife goes into her trance and predicts the winner of the race, with mention of a death when a person in the crowd is kicked by a rider-less horse escaped from the paddock. On the day of the race, Chester is in attendance and sees it all play out as Torino’s wife predicted, the winner and the bystander near the paddock who died; when Chester goes to see the body he recognises it as that of Mrs. Larkins’ son who threatened to shoot Torino in the barn. The story, ‘The Most Maddening Story in the World’ has John Chester, meeting his friend, the narrator, at his club in March 1920, who has returned from India after four years service. Chester relates the strange tale of Lord Brassington who was killed at the Somme, an ‘experience’ which happened to him back in 1910 or 1911, when overworked, he took himself off to Europe alone. At Brussels, he met the Comte d’ Anoury, who gave him a blank visiting card upon which he wrote some words in a strange language; the card it seemed, would give Brassington entry into the best hotels. But every time he shows the card, something terrible befell Brassington. In Paris, the hotelier was so angry that he had three detectives take the disgraceful Lord by train to the German frontier, expelled from France. In Prague, having refused to show the card, four soldiers searched him, found it and put him in a prison cell for nearly three weeks, becoming ill in the process. He was then taken to the Italian frontier and gave a false name at the Inn where he met a friendly Greek man. Thinking it safe to show the card and that the Greek man might translate it for him, he takes it from his wallet and after the Greek man reads it, he stabs Brassington in the side and leaves. In Naples, he runs into his old friend, Sir Archibald Summers and his wife, and one night, after dinner and liqueurs, Archie swearing not to react badly, looks at the card and turns on his friend, saying he will have to resign from his clubs and not show himself again in decent society. He is told to leave the hotel. In Messina he has a nervous breakdown and has to return home to England. He goes to his doctor, Dr. Aylmer, a neurologist at Guy’s who examines the card and finds no writing on it at all, it is simply a blank visiting card.

During the First World War, Ralph Straus, who had began a study of medicine, worked as a secretary in a VAD Hospital in Kent which took care of wounded soldiers and sailors. In an article, ‘Great Guns’ written by Ralph Straus under the pseudonym, Robert Erstone Forbes [The Bystander. Wednesday 13^th August 1919. p. 48] he tells us that in ‘early 1915’ an ‘elderly M.O.’ [Medical Officer] had a ‘poor opinion of his heart’ and suggested that the Red Cross might find work for him as he was not fit enough for regular service. And so ‘within a week’ he was ‘somewhere in the Home Counties’, in Kent, as a ‘hospital orderly’, where he remained for nearly four years. In November 1915 a new VAD detachment was formed in Tunbridge Wells to run the Kingswood Park VAD Hospital at Park House. The Commandant of the hospital, which had 250 beds and an operating theatre, was the author and friend of Ralph’s, Miss Ada Barnett (1864-1953). Ada never married and sometimes wrote under the pseudonym, ‘G. Cordella’ and several of her novels were published, such as: ‘A King’s Daughter’ (3 volumes, 1892), ‘The Perfect Way of Honour’ (3 volumes, 1894), ‘For the Life of Others’ (1897), ‘The Adventures of Tod With and Without Betty’ (1900), ‘The Man on the Other Side’ (1921) and ‘The Joyous Adventurer’ (1923). Straus reviewed the latter novel in his Literary Log column for the Tatler (Wednesday 7^th November 1923. p. 82) saying that ‘as a rule I do not like novels about the occult’ but he made an exception for Barnett’s ‘The Joyous Adventure’, summing up he says that ‘Miss Barnett is a keen lover of nature, and she does not make the mistake of investing her gossamer theme with an out-of-place solemnity. It is all very joyous and entertaining, by far the best work she has done.’ Ada assisted Ralph on two of his books which he wrote under the pseudonym, Robert Erstone Forbes: ‘Mrs. Holmes Commandant’ (1918) and ‘The Transactions of Oliver Prince’ (1924). The former, tells the tale of how the bullying Mrs. Holmes created a hospital for the care of wounded soldiers in the village of Fairbridge which required much preparations and many months of active work. With the help of her assistant, the narrator of the tale, Robert Erstone Forbes, an elderly bachelor author, after-dinner speaker and President of the Fourth Folios and subsequently Secretary to the Hospital, the inhabitant of the Grange manor house, Mrs. Delamaine, is persuaded to give up her home to be used by the Red Cross as a hospital. The book is written in four separate stories or chapters, which all have Mrs. Holmes, the Commandant as the garrulous central figure; in one chapter, ‘The Romantic Career of Lance-Corporal Rainey’ we find a young soldier, wounded at Flanders who appears to be of a  literary bent, for he has brought unto the world his great historical tragedy – ‘Caligula’. Straus has obviously drawn upon his own experiences with Ada Barnett at Kingswood Park.

In The Transactions of Oliver Prince (1924), nineteen year old Oliver, the grandson of General Sir Oswald Prince, V.C., having left the Royal Navy Reserve, is now ‘forced to earn a paltry two pounds a week in a wretched little seaside bank!’ Oliver, whose father was killed in a railway accident, lives with his mother and their lodger, Mr. John Waynflete, a kind old gentleman and a dreamy scholar writing a book on heraldry which will never get finished; he seems to have taken the fatherly role and dishes out fatherly advice to Oliver.  Not wanting to work in the bank at Bournsea which by the way, his mother’s friend, Louis Carstairs had got for him and wanting to seek his fortune using his ‘devilish cunning’, and trusting on his amazing luck, Oliver goes to London and his adventures begin. In fact, they begin as soon as he is on the train for he is mistaken for Lord Oxney of whom he is the very image. Using the likeness to his advantage, he finds himself in all sorts of propositions and ‘transactions’, and amassing a small fortune. The novel is an interesting plot and other characters are also enjoyable, such as Lady Blanche Oxney, Roddy, Lord Oxney’s mother who also mistakes Oliver for her son, and Mr. Clarence Elton (nephew of Lord Hailsham) who intends to marry Lady Oxney; they are both living on borrowed money due to her husband Lord Oxney’s will and her son, Roddy has turned against her; Doris Esmond, Mr. Elton’s young cousin who lives in Chelsea with whom Oliver falls in love while she thinks he is Lord Oxney, until he confesses and Oliver eventually goes to Lord Oxney and tells of the mistake and they both become friends. We also meet Major Gilbert Farnham, a car hire proprietor whom Oliver met on the train and later uses his services and Captain John Ridley (late of the Southshires) who is out of work and has a gold Turkish drinking-cup in his possession, said to be three-hundred years old and worth quite a bit; the Duke of Kirkaldy, who also mistakes Oliver for Oxney at the Savoy, and Cornelius Welkenberg and his wife from Chicago staying at the hotel, in fact, a lot of the action and misunderstandings takes place at London’s grand Hotels, the Ritz and the Savoy and it is a fine tale in Straus’s distinctive hands.

Straus was very fond of playing court tennis and snobbishly looked down upon those who preferred lawn tennis, he was also a keen cricketer and following the First World War he became a member of J. C. Squire’s Literary cricket team, ‘The Invalids’. Squire (1884-1958) captained the team which consisted of authors and scholars and wounded soldiers from the war and many enjoyable weekend matches were played.

In 1917 Ralph met the author Alec Waugh (1898-1981), elder brother of the more famous Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) and they soon became firm friends. Alec’s father, Arthur Waugh (1866-1943) was Managing Director and Chairman of the well-known publishing establishment, Chapman & Hall from 1902-1930; Chapman & Hall had published Charles Dickens in their time, something which would have given Straus, a dedicated Dickensian, great pleasure and he himself, became one of the Board of Directors.

Alec Waugh dedicates a whole chapter to Straus in his volume ‘My Brother Evelyn and other Portraits’ (New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1955) and describes him as ‘small, stocky, bald, with a thick short black moustache’ (1967 ed. p. 98) and that he walked with a limp and used a stick; he also says that he first met Straus in March 1917 when a mutual friend, the poet Ian Hume Townsend Mackenzie (1898-1918) who was a fellow cadet with Waugh at Sandhurst introduced them. Waugh mentions that at the time Straus was in uniform and working in administration at a hospital with the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD). At the time Straus was living with his parents at Craven Road, near Paddington and ‘had a large study booklined to the ceiling, with a high rounded window’ (p. 97). Straus became interested in psychoanalysis, particularly dreams and their meaning – ‘where psychoanalysis was concerned he had little sense of humour. Describing an occasion on which he had found himself in medical disagreement with a stranger, “Little did he guess,” he said, “that he was arguing with the greatest living authority on masturbation.”’ (p. 97) According to Waugh, Straus ‘left the hospital at Tunbridge Wells to resume his Literary career’ and that in 1920 or the following year, Ralph’s father suffered a stroke which was when the family realised that they were in financial ruin and their home at Craven Road had to be sold along with Ralph’s precious volumes, many of which were signed first editions. To make ends meet, Ralph turned to journalism and wrote for the Daily Chronicle under the name Gertrude Belt, a character from his 1922 novel ‘Volcano: A Frolic’.

The novel, ‘Pengard Awake’ published in 1920 shows Straus’s interest in psychoanalysis and the main character, John Pengard, seems to be suffering from dissociated or ‘dual’ personality on similar lines to Poe’s hauntingly paranoiac, ‘William Wilson’. The novel features a psychologist, the eminent Dr. Lucius Arne, who keeps bears and is somewhat large and rude and the novel begins with Arne and Sir Robert Graeme, a bachelor antiquary who narrates the tale, discussing Pengard’s case. John Pengard, a rather dreamy and amiable English man is the owner of a book shop in Chicago; he is continually haunted by a man named Hartley Sylvester, a cynical and sinister character with a fine creative mind who looks like Pengard and lives in Boston. Hartley has written a book, ‘Indomitable Man’ and along the way we meet some interesting characters such as the captivating Lady Rosamund Raynor who falls in love with Pengard and Sylvester; Rosamund’s father, Lord Pomfret, known as ‘the Doge’; Graeme’s sister Babette (note Straus’s sister’s middle name was also Babbette) and Anne Mannington Worrall, a rude and opinionated ‘bestseller’. Straus writes well on the subject incorporating scientific and the supernatural as the dual personality, probably due to repression, suggests various points of view from the doppelganger, hypnotic-suggestion, demonic possession and actual transformation but the crux of the novel is that Pengard and Sylvester are one man but there are two different personalities inhabiting that man, both attempting to destroy the other. The book is dedicated to Ann Lady Warmington (1852-1925) who was born Ann Winch; she married the barrister Sir Cornelius Marshall Warmington, Bart (1842-1908) in Kent in 1871.

Also in 1920 Ralph met the shell-shocked naval officer, Lieutenant-Commander Rupert Thomas Gould (1890-1948), a polymath and horologist with similar bibliographic tastes to Straus who struggled with depression for most of his troubled life. Gould accompanied Straus to his first Sette of Odd Volumes’ dinner at the Imperial Restaurant, Regent Street, London, on Tuesday 25^th May 1920 and five months later on 26^th October, Gould was initiated as Brother Hydrographer. Gould is a very intriguing man indeed; in the 1920’s he restored the John Harrison timekeepers (he published in 1923 ‘The Marine Chronometer: Its History and Development’. London. J. D. Potter) and he became fascinated with the unexplained or ‘paranormal’ world, publishing many books on the subject, such as ‘Oddities: A Book of Unexplained Facts’ (London. Philip Allan & Co. Ltd. 1928), ‘The Case for the Sea Serpent’ (London. Philip Allan & Co. Lt. 1930) and the first serious volume on the Lock Ness Monster (London. Geoffrey Bles. 1934), [see ‘Time Restored: The Harrison Timekeepers and R. T. Gould, the man who knew (almost) everything. Jonathan Betts. Oxford University Press. 2006] As well as Rupert Gould, who by the way drew the illustration for the dust jacket of Straus’s ‘Pengard Awake’ in 1920, Straus introduced the two Sitwell brothers, Osbert and Sacheverell to the Sette of Odd Volumes and other notable members were: Vyvyan Holland (1886-1967) ‘Brother Idler’, the son of Oscar Wilde who was himself a guest of the club in 1889; John Lane (1854-1925), the publisher was ‘Brother Bibliographer’ and Straus’s friend Alec Waugh, joined the Sette in 1920 (the same year as Rupert Gould) as ‘Brother Corinthian’ and later became Secretary of the club.

Straus’s comedy based upon a tragedy, ‘Volcano: A Frolic’ was published in 1922 to much acclaim. It is the story of a 42 year old righteous and respectable charity worker named Miss Gertrude Belt, the daughter of a Bishop who lives at the Grange in Croome, an English inland watering place, not too dissimilar to Tunbridge Wells (which Ralph was familiar with). ‘You will find her rather chilly at first, this spinster lady’, said The Bystander of Wednesday 1^st march 1922 (in an article called ‘Sin Amongst the Angels: A New Book by Ralph Straus’. p. 82) who sets ‘the social tune in Croome and expected other people to play it.’ Miss Belt, who founded the Croome Vigilance Society and belonged to various Charity Organisations and Relief Committees had set up the Vigilance Society to prudishly interfere with couples making love on the common at night; this sort of behaviour was rife and even her own housemaid, Ellen Ruffe had fallen to its allure. For Gertrude’s first night’s duty she prowled and patrolled the green space in search of nocturnal wickedness and duly shocked she was on her way back home when she came upon a sleeping youth. The young handsome man was a sailor named Jim Ruffe, the brother of her domestic, Ellen, and as she talked with Jim she felt her heart melt towards him. She throws caution to the wind and goes to London with Jim as Aunt and nephew, she showing him her world of fine luxurious hotels and restaurants and he introducing her to the world of boxing and all sorts of queer and interesting people. Gertrude falls in love with Jim and finds an overwhelming ecstasy in his company while back home in Croome, its inhabitants, Lady Kolp, Miss Agatha Fancourt, Canon Mailing-Styles and his wife, gossip and jump to all sorts of conclusions and the worst suspicions are running wild. It is a wonderfully told story of righteousness, pagan aberrations and propriety in which we also find the middle-aged Mr. Eustace Pountney, a philosophy student of Freud who has left London and is staying at Croome for health reasons who unlike the people of Croome, is able to appreciate the new abandonment found in Miss Belt

Straus was a lifelong dedicated Dickensian and was a member of The Dickens Fellowship which was formed in 1902 and met at Dickens’s house, 48, Doughty Street, London; the Fellowship published a journal called The Dickensian from 1905 and Straus had many articles published by or about him in the Dickensian magazine, such as ‘With Dickens at Gad’s Hill’ 1929, volume 25, issue 211, p. 183; ‘The Forthcoming Nonesuch Dickens’ 1937, volume 33, issue 243, pp. 211-213; ‘Dickens: A Portrait in Pencil’ reviewed in the 1929 edition, volume 25, issue 209, p. 60 and ‘The World on Dickens’, 1947, volume 43, issue 283, p. 150. There are many articles relating to Straus and the Johnson Society such as this from the Birmingham Daily Gazette of Thursday 18^th May 1922 (p. 3) which gives a brief outline of the 6^th Annual Pilgrimage of the Johnson Society which occurred on Wednesday 17^th May, as members and friends from Lichfield and Walsall gathered for their annual meeting and visited Okeover, Chatsworth and Matlock – the Duke of Devonshire kindly allowed the visitors access to Chatsworth House to ‘inspect the numerous treasures’ and ‘in an address, Mr. Ralph Straus, the novelist, described Johnson as a positive man, not at the mercy of every current, not that bugbear of to-day, an opportunist. He set his stamp upon things, and, if necessary, he made his own rules. The lesser man followed the rules of others, but the bigger man made his own. Johnson knew what he wanted, and did it or said it. He did not learn life from books, but from life, which was the only way to learn it.’ [see also the Lichfield Mercury. Friday 19^th May 1922. p. 5]

The Unseemly Adventure, published in 1924, and dedicated to Straus’s friend, the actor and producer, Oswald Skilbeck (7) has some of Straus’s most lovable characters, such as Mr. Humphrey Dorsett, Esquire, J.P. of Queen’s Dorsett, a molly-coddled snob who left alone at the great Elizabethan mansion he calls home, (his mother, Agatha, who dominates him, having gone to Norway), suddenly finds a dirty, drunken tramp asleep in his summerhouse, a man called Mr. Appleby Magnus, surely one of the greatest characters Straus has ever devised. Appleby Magnus, a model of Falstaff, an intellectual educated man whom ‘Dear Humphrey’ sets out to reform, is a charismatic chap and a character, I thought, not unlike a certain Mr. Aleister Crowley who had the same unreserved manner with people, and so begins a most marvellous Pickwickian adventure. Prior to this strange meeting in the summerhouse, Queens Dorsett, including Humphrey, was shocked to hear the ‘Sermon’ by the locum preacher, Rev. Dr. John Peltworth, D.D. who ‘wasn’t in the least like a parson. He hardly mentioned the Church. He didn’t seem to mind your going to Chapel or having babies or even poaching a rabbit or two’. Peltworth refers to his younger self as a ‘negative slug’, an unremarkable, gutless ‘watcher’, not a leader, an unadventureless ‘model young man’. This strikes a chord with many in the village, including Humphrey, who has come under the Reverend’s contempt as having the ‘jellyfish attitude’. Upon Appleby’s and Humphrey’s travels, they pick up a beautiful young woman named Jane Oak, who was attempting to drown herself and her baby, Timothy John, whom Magnus calls ‘Adolphus’. The four of them travel by horse, named ‘Alberry’s Pride’, and cart, Magnus purchasing it with Humphrey’s money with enough for an ‘indifferent brandy’ a ‘pestilent liquor’, having drunk like a ‘monstrous Napoleon’. Gradually, Humphrey becomes less of a prig, finding himself being reformed by Magnus rather than the other way around. Magnus, who wears many pseudonyms such as – Sir Anthony Fulton, the author of ‘Seventeenth Century Emblems’ who wanted to examine Humphrey’s library, or Detective Inspector Merilees of Scotland Yard who, while with Humphrey at the rose-covered cottage of Mrs. Galt, hunt an imaginary murderer; or the Lawrentian Professor of Zoology at Oxford, Professor Emery Hicks, in charge of an expedition into the life and love of certain ‘rare night moths’; or even the showman, a ‘resting actor’ named Clarence Montgomery Vine or Lord Viscount Warburton, whoever Magnus really is, a Dickensian Alfred Jingle or Rabelaisian hero, remains unknown which is in his favour for he is an enduring character who leaps from the page. On his return to Queen’s Dorsett, we find a more refined man of the world Humphrey, liked by all.

Throughout much of the nineteen-twenties and thirties Straus wrote articles for various journals and publications and as an example I have chosen to quote a piece titled ‘When Old Books are Valuable’ from the London Daily Chronicle (Saturday 10^th January 1925. p. 6) which is typical of Straus’s fluent, whimsical and intimate nature: ‘It is curious, and sometimes a little pathetic, to find how widespread is the belief that “a really old book” must be of great value. Time after time I have been asked to look at a shelfful of “very old books”, which their owner has reluctantly decided to sell. “They must be worth hundreds of pounds”, I am often told, “because they belonged to my great-grandfather and have been in my family ever since. In fact, we’ve been told they’re worth a small fortune. Sort of heirlooms, you see. They were printed hundreds of years ago. And look at the prices that American doctor has been paying!” “It does not follow”, I point out, “because Dr. Rosenbach paid a thousand pounds for an old book, that all old books are valuable.” “No, but I don’t expect many are as old as mine.” “Were yours printed before 1522?” I ask. A small point. The answer is not sure. He is a little annoyed at the directness of the question. “I think so”, he says, “but, anyhow, they are rare. There’s one, I know, which is dated 1625.” “And what are they about? Have you read them?” He stares and frowns. No, he hasn’t actually read them, but – “They’re very rare”, he repeats, “and I’d take £100 for the lot, though I’m certain they’re worth very much more.” And so I go to his house, and am shown the precious shelf, and find precisely what I expected to find: A Carolean exposition of the Scriptures, an imperfect edition of Milton, half a dozen volumes of Sermons, a collection of legal cases, and a prayer book minus its title-page. The merest rubbish. I try to explain, but am not believed. The owner is even a little suspicious of my honesty. “But look at the dates”, he exclaims. “You must be wrong!”’

The novel, ‘Married Alive’ was published in 1925. The title was suggested by his good friend, Alan Patrick Herbert (1890-1971), the author and M.P. and later Sir A. P. Herbert, to whom the book is dedicated and of whom Straus says must ‘accept the consequences’ for it. The story does not stray too far away from Straus’s established themes as in a shy and awkward bachelor type with certain failings, mostly academically minded who rebels at an authority figure, usually a parent and finds his own way in the world to become a better human being; characters such as Sylvanus in ‘The Prison Without a Wall’ (1912), John Orley in ‘The Orley Tradition’ (1914) and Humphrey Dorsett in ‘The Unseemly Adventure’ (1924) are all psychologically fighting something within or without them which is in opposition to their true nature. In Married Alive, we find the young Cambridge don, Professor Charles Aloysius Orme, a Fellow of St. Mary’s College, Cambridge who lectures on Psychology [University Reader in Social Psychology] and a firm ‘woman hater’. After suffering a nervous breakdown, Professor Orme is ordered to have a rest cure by his Doctor so he goes with his Aunt, Lady Rocket to Polwyn on the Cornish coast, staying at the Trevethran Arms. During their stay they meet the mysterious Mr. James Duxbury, an engineer, and his wife and Lady Rocket becomes acquainted with them. At Bath, where Lady Rocket next takes her nephew, they meet the same Mr. Duxbury but there is a different Mrs. Duxbury and so the mystery deepens. Mr. Duxbury is called away on business, leaving his ‘wife’ in the hands of Professor Orme and Lady Rocket. Further on in the novel they meet Mr. Duxbury once again with another ‘wife’ and it is becoming clear that Mr. Duxbury is a serial bigamist. The third Mrs. Duxbury, an aristocratic beauty named Viola Helmesley Duxbury, also gets left behind when her husband is called away on more business and Aloysius finds himself falling in love with her before a fourth wife enters the arena! These ‘matrimonial complications of an adventurous scamp’ are delightful and the wives, one an actress, another, the daughter of a preacher and another an aristocratic Lady, all have their qualities, but it turns out James Duxbury is actually married to his first wife whom he married in Australia.

Straus’s next novel, ‘Our Wiser Sons’ published the following year in 1926, sees the familiar revolt of a son’s duty and loyalty to his father, in this case, Oswald Unit, a middle-aged bachelor who rebels against entering his father’s firm, Marrox Ltd. a patent food factory which produces the perfect baby food sold in every chemist, to become a great novelist. The great empire of Marrox was founded by Oswald’s grandfather, Sir Oswald Unit, K.B.E., now retired and the factory is now in the hands of young Oswald’s father, John Heming Unit, Chairman and Director of Marrox. Refusing to follow in his father’s footsteps and join the business, Oswald, fresh out of university, (and from a world tour courtesy of his father to acquire the skills and experience to run the factory), has other ideas and dreams and wants to write the great novel. Persuaded by his friend, Allan Doune that he has a real talent for writing, he breaks off his engagement with his fiancée, the daughter of Sir George Mantler, and in doing so he is cut off by his father; he settles in a studio in Chelsea with an odd set of bohemian types around him and begins his novel; he drinks and dances and has a roaring time amongst the likes of Paul Hecksher, a portrait painter who lives on borrowed money enjoying hectic parties and Agatha Begg, an elderly eccentric painter who writes novels. There is also a provocative young woman named Lisbeth Amory whom Oswald falls in love with and proposes to, she of course refuses him. The gaunt and willowy Agatha has been assisting Oswald with his novel, so much in fact that it has become almost entirely her novel and in Oswald’s disappointment upon reaching the conclusion that he cannot write, he throws the manuscript down the drain. Oswald’s father, John, visits him and the Chelsea poseurs at the studio and is treated disrespectfully by the bohemian artists to which he doesn’t seem to mind too much and in a strange twist of fate, young Oswald returns to Marrox Ltd. to take the helm and finds he actually likes being its proprietor and his father retires and settles down with Agatha Begg. The Sketch [Wednesday 17^th November 1926. p. 102] said of it that ‘there are young wild asses in every generation and not all are saved from a diet of thistles as happily as the younger Oswald. Our Wiser Sons has a studied extravagance, inwardness of its superficially flippant characterisation. Straus hits the mark every time with the Unit dynasty’.

 

Ralph Straus was considered to be a fine speaker and was no stranger to giving speeches and lectures on various literary subjects which included:

‘The New Psychology of Dreams’, a lecture give by Straus at the Town Hall, Tunbridge Wells at 3 p.m. on Wednesday 26^th April 1922.

‘Dickens’ Love of Acting’, an address given to the Oxford Luncheon Club at the Town Hall, Oxford on Friday 25^th January 1929.

‘The Novel Market’, a lecture for the Bristol Rotarians at Bristol on Monday 25^th February 1929.

‘That Too Many Novels are being published’, a debate before members of the Causerie Club, on Saturday 5^th October 1929. he also gave the same address that ‘Too Many Novels’, etc., to the Exeter Rotarians on Monday 10^th February 1930.

‘Dickens – The Man’, an address for the Cirencester Branch of the Dickens Fellowship on Monday 6^th January 1930; the same lecture was given for the North-West Staffordshire Branch of the English Association, at Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire on Thursday 30^th October 1930.

‘British Printers Who Have Made History’, a lecture delivered at the Stationer’s Hall, Ludgate Hill, on Wednesday 8^th October 1930.

Straus gave a toast to ‘Literature’ at a dinner at Grosvenor House, Park Lane, London. Straus’s friend, Alec Waugh was also in attendance and there was a talk by Sir Max Pemberton on the ‘Early Days in Fleet Street’. Tuesday 24^th November 1931.

‘Cheap Literature’, a lecture given at the Mary Ward Settlement, Tavistock Place, London, on Tuesday 11^th October 1932.

‘The Novel in Wartime’ a lecture given in the Library of The Times Book Club, 16, Strand, Torquay at 2.45 p.m. on Wednesday 23^rd July 1941.

‘Life and the Penny Dreadful’, a series of lectures delivered throughout 1945 such as at the Public Library in Taunton for the newly-formed Taunton Branch of the National Book League on Friday 31^st August 1945 [Straus first talked on the Penny Dreadful in 1927].

‘Fiction and Biography: The Modern Trend’, a series of lectures delivered at several locations such as: Cornwall Hall, Sevenoaks, at 8 p.m. on Tuesday 29^th January 1946; Young People’s Institute, Hull for the Women’s Luncheon Club on Wednesday 10^th April 1946, Creighton School Hall, Strand Road, Carlisle, at 7.15 p.m. on Wednesday 6^th November 1946, and throughout 1947 such as the Castle Hotel, Hastings, in October 1947.

‘Literary Taste’, a lecture given in the Lecture Hall, Central Public Library, the Square, Portsmouth  at 7.45 p.m. on Thursday 16^th January 1947.

A Lecture on ‘Literature’ for the Women’s Luncheon Club at the Queen Hotel, Harrogate on Tuesday 1^st April 1947; the following year he gave a talk on ‘Pepy’s Diary’ for a series on ‘Great Books of English Literature’ arranged by the National Book League at 7, Albermarle Street, London, on Thursday 9^th December 1948.

It is interesting to give one of the newspaper reviews for a lecture Straus gave at the Young People’s Institute in Hull to members of the Women’s Luncheon Club on ‘Fiction and Biography: The Modern Tendency in Literature’ printed in the Hull Daily Mail of Thursday 11^th April 1946 (p. 4) which stated that Straus was ‘at present busily engaged upon writing his 27^th book’ and that he ‘found time yesterday to visit Hull for the first time’. It goes on to say that he ‘gave would-be writers the benefit of his wide personal experience when he discussed the modern tendency in fiction and biography. As a critic (also an enthusiastic collector of old manuscripts) he wades through hundreds of books a year – whether from cover to cover, he did not disclose! Making a general survey of literary offerings of the 19^th century, Mr. Straus felt that the majority put their subject on a high pedestal; the personality of the writer was not allowed to show through, and there was a lack of design. That generation, on the whole, enjoyed the extremely moral but very dull books, often in two heavy volumes. Then came the birth of a new technique, when it was no longer necessary for biography to be wholly objective. A more intimate portrait resulted… embroidered truth. The ethical code of the Victorian era continued to demand the idea of the missing heir, with the aristocratic Sir Jasper (plus black moustache) as the villain. Pioneers striving towards a new goal were not new. He merely wrote what the previous generation believed should remain unrecorded. So far as biography was concerned, it was a question of how far can you go with decency into a man’s life. Mr. Straus believed that it was a matter of the writer’s discretion: But in 1946 authors could write whatever they wished in a novel. If it was very bad it was advisable to publish at a high price. Mr. Straus commented that he was tired of loose writing to-day. Good English was still the fundamental requisite. A warm vote of thanks was proposed by Mrs. C. M. Wright, and in the absence of the President, Mrs. W. Field Till, Mrs. E. J. Fisher, J.P., was in the Chair.’ Straus was noted for having opinions on novelists and publishers alike, being able to see it from both sides of the fence, and we get a glimpse of that opinion in an edition of the Dickensian [Spring, 1928. volume 24, issue 206. p. 94] which says that ‘speaking as a novelist, Mr. Straus said publishers are not very nice people. They endeavour to make money out of us! No wonder that Dickens quarrelled with them! But speaking as a publisher – a director of Dickens’s own publishers, Chapman and Hall – Mr. Straus added, as a confidential aside, authors, particularly novelists, are hopeless. They have no idea of business. They are far too enthusiastic on their own books and do not take any interest in other people’s books.’

There is also an account in The British Medical Journal (I, 13^th May 1933. p. 841) in which Straus attended the London Association of the Medical Women’s Foundation at Claridges on Friday 5^th May 1933 and proposed a toast to The London Association, ‘mentioning that he had begun his career as a medical student, but had been turned into other paths on discovering that he would be unable to advertise himself until he had received a baronetcy!’

Some of Straus’s talks were also broadcast on the wireless (radio) such as one on a series of ‘Chats with Famous Authors’ in which Straus debated with Mrs. Baillie Reynolds on ‘Men’s Heroines in Modern Fiction’, broadcast on Wednesday 3^rd March 1926; another on ‘Literary Criticism’, broadcast Monday 27^th August 1928 at 7 p.m. and one titled ‘A Sidelight on Charles Dickens’ at 9.15 p.m. on Monday 10^th September 1928.

That same year, 1928, Straus inspected the manuscript of Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Decline and Fall’ – Waugh took it to Chapman & Hall in which his father was the Head after Duckworths rejected it for publication; Arthur Waugh being away, it was handled by Ralph who was determined to find out why Duckworth’s were reluctant to take it. Ralph suggested a few changes to which Evelyn agreed and a few criticisms to which Waugh took slight and so the book was published by Chapman & Hall.

In 1927 Straus published his book on Edmund Curll which seems to have received generally good reviews. The Daily News of Friday 16^th December 1927 (p. 4) said that Straus writes ‘entertainingly from a fund of knowledge, and his book will be welcomed by those interested in the literary quarrels and the bibliography of the eighteenth-century.’ One such quarreller was Pope, a man of genius who attacked Curll – Pope was ‘anxious to publish his correspondence and yet afraid of being accused of vanity, contrived to get his letters into the hands of Curll, whom he could denounce as a scoundrel for printing them.’ Straus seems more than satisfied that ‘in this duel of trickery’ it was Edmund Curll and not Alexander Pope who ‘came out the victor’. The article then says that ‘we like Pope better than we like Curll. Pope’s perversities were only a fraction of a great nature: Curll’s perversities were the larger part of a mean one.’ Perhaps it is correct to believe that Curll will be remembered for his un-gentlemanly behaviour and his sexually illicit works, a ‘pest of his time, as a disfiguring growth on the eighteenth century’ and it is down to actual genius’s such as Pope and other more memorable men of letters that we remember Curll at all, for in the world of scandals and libels, there is an unending curiosity and fascination for such monsters of literature; it is only human nature to want to peek into the dark recesses of the past and the mysterious personalities that inhabited it. Such, I believe, was the genuine interest of Straus for Curll, Dickens and Baskerville and there was perhaps a lot more which he could have said but politely and gentlemanly refrained.

Straus’s interesting article in The Book-Collector’s Quarterly (March-May 1931. pp. 88-92) – ‘Chronicle and Catalogue’ gives us Straus’s opinions on two very different bibliographical works published in 1930: ‘The Englishman and His Books in the Early Nineteenth Century’ (Harrap) by Amy Cruse (1870-1951) and ‘Les Livres de L’Enfance’, 2 volumes by Gumuchian & Cie. Apart from the learned talk on books Straus gives us a peek into his early collecting mania when he says that the ‘sport of book-hunting is not what it was. Gone for ever, I am bidden to believe, are the days when even a man of the most moderate means might reasonably hope to form a collection of books which in its own way would be unique. Prices have soared to unholy heights, and specialists multiplied unnaturally fast. And then, of course, that strange country which passes for the United States of America has discovered what good furniture rare books will make if properly arranged on their shelves.’ (p. 88) Later, with tongue in cheek he adds, ‘True, there are collectors now who are not wholly illiterate – some even read (for enjoyment) the books which they collect – and a man has no need to be particularly dead before his literary works are permitted to enter the ranks of the Old Collectibles, but – what a falling-off there has been! That, at any rate, is what I am told. Well, the times have certainly changed. I no longer expect to find on David’s Cambridge stall a Baskerville Congreve for fifteen shillings. I cannot hope to pick up on the pavement at the Caledonian Market a copy of the first edition of Cranford in its original covers for four pence. But is it true to say that the chase has degenerated? Is the field too large, the going too rough, the quarry too elusive?’ (p. 89)

In 1932 Straus took part in the ‘Mock Trials’ which were performed in aid of the King Edward’s Hospital Fund from May to mid June of that year; the ‘Tuesday’ performances were conducted at the London School of Economics, Houghton Street, and the first performance titled ‘Not Reading Books’ on Tuesday 3^rd May beginning at 5.30 p.m. saw Ralph Straus playing one of the defendants. In another performance on Tuesday 7^th June titled ‘A Charge of Undue Domesticity’ the author, John Drinkwater (1882-1937) played the prosecutor and four actresses also took to the stage: Gladys Cooper, Lilian Braithwaite, Viola Tree and Elizabeth Pollock. Drinkwater also performed in another mock trial – ‘Destroying Liberty of Thought’ and other performers included: the barrister and writer, Philip Guedella (1889-1944) who interestingly is also, like Straus, a member of the Omar Khayam Club, and authors, poets and journalists, Gerald Gould (1885-1936), J. B. Priestley (1894-1984), Rebecca West (1892-1983), Sylvia Lynd (1888-1952) and Humbert Wolfe (1885-1940).

In 1935 Straus’s crime novel, ‘Five Men Go To Prison’ was published. It concerns the theft of a safe from Kyle Factory, on the southern side of the Thames, by five criminals which was supposed to contain two-hundred pounds but the safe remained impregnable to their attempts to open it. The story is told step by step from the point of view of the police officers, mainly Detective George Selby, investigating the case from the initial reporting of the crime to the eventual sentencing of the five men who were given hard labour. According to The Bookseller [Wednesday 14^th August 1935. p. 7] the book is based on a real case which Straus was involved with. Straus was ‘dining with a Scotland Yard Detective who was called away in the middle of the meal, to a case which concerned the theft of a safe from an East End factory. Straus accompanied the detective and saw inside the workings of the Criminal Investigation Department and five men were sent to prison.’

Straus dedicates his book ‘Sala: The Portrait of an Eminent Victorian’ (1942) to Edward Howell, saying ‘with grateful acknowledgement of his assistance, given over a number of years, and a complete understanding of his reasons for regarding the name of Sala with the utmost detestation’. This is possibly relating to the firm of Edward Howell, booksellers of Church Street, Liverpool. Its founder, Edward Hale, author and bookseller was born in 1852 and died in 1912 but he did have a son named Edward Howell, born 1897, Lieutenant, later Captain Edward Howell won the Military Cross in 1916 and died in London in 1969.

 

There is some evidence to suggest that Straus may have been helping to write an autobiography for his friend and fellow member of the Sette of Odd Volumes [‘Inquisitor’], Admiral Sir William Reginald ‘Blinker’ Hall (1870-1943). In the volume, ‘A Clear Case of Genius: Room 40’s Code-Breaking Pioneer’ (History Press. 2017) we are told that ‘Hall wrote his autobiography in collaboration with Ralph Straus, the erudite author, particularly noted for his remarkable book The Unspeakable Curll. Hall was in very good hands here and, once the ban was imposed, Straus suggested to Hall that the book should be rewritten in the form of a novel. Hall rejected the idea but, had it gone ahead, we would know a great deal more. According to Hall’s grandson, Timothy Stubbs, when Straus died “a great number of the Admiral’s papers were destroyed.” There is also evidence that Hall himself destroyed much of Room 40’s papers at the time of its closure in 1919.

Sometime around 1947 Straus began researching the historical documents at New Scotland Yard for a book on the history of the Metropolitan Police. Unfortunately, due to illness and eventually death he was unable to finish the book and had accomplished some eleven chapters up to around the year 1850; he had called on his friend, Douglas Gordon Browne (1884-1963) to assist him and following Ralph’s death he took on the task of completing the work. The book, ‘The Rise of Scotland Yard: A History of the Metropolitan Police’ was finally published in 1956 by Harrap & Co. and although Browne is the author he acknowledges Ralph’s initial part in the Preface, saying ‘several years ago my friend Ralph Straus began a history of the Metropolitan Police. He had the generous help of the authorities at New Scotland Yard in being given access to the records without which such a work as he contemplated could not have been undertaken. This privilege was later extended to me…’ Browne then tells us that ‘as Ralph’s health began to fail he found the double task of research and composition too much for him, and he asked me to help him with what had become the labour of writing. Before we had really got down to things together he went into hospital for the last time.’ The book that appeared on the shelves was not Straus’s vision of the book, Browne had changed most of what Straus had initially written and rewritten most, if not all of the text.

Ralph Straus died following a month-long illness at St. Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, London, on Monday 5^th June 1950 aged 67. ‘Who Was Who, 1941-1950’ listed his recreational interests as – ‘fives, racquets, yachting, book-hunting and real tennis’ and gave his last address as: 64a Eccleston Square, London. SW 1. The Lichfield Mercury [Friday 9^th June 1950, p. 3] said that it was a ‘great loss to the Johnson Society’ going on to say he was a ‘familiar figure and eloquent speaker at most of the Johnsonian gatherings at Lichfield and was President-elect of the Society for this year. A wreath will be sent from the Society for the funeral to-day [Friday 5^th June], when the Society will be represented by Colonel E. Howell.’ The Birmingham Daily Gazette [Wednesday 7^th June 1950, p. 1] mentioned that Straus had ‘three years ago’ [1947] been ‘given special facilities at Scotland Yard, and access to historical papers, to help him in writing 150,000 word history of the Metropolitan Police.’ (8) And the Manchester Evening Chronicle [Wednesday 7^th June, 1950. p. 2] gives a very brief biography of the ‘Mancunian’ Straus, mentioning Harrow and Cambridge and that he was connected to the ‘University School of Architecture’ in Manchester’s Oxford Road before stating that he had ‘more than 20 books published’ and ‘produced many more privately on his own press’.

A short yet somewhat appreciative obituary appeared in the Dickensian (volume 46-48, 1949-1950, pp. 172-173) which said that Ralph had ‘for some years suffered from very indifferent health borne with the patience which to those who knew him, reflected the innate gentleness of disposition that ensured him a wide circle of friends, among whom were many Dickensians. He was a Vice-President of the Dickens Fellowship. In addition to a long list of very readable novels, Straus’s busy life included literary criticism that was acute, tolerant, and sympathetic towards young aspirants, bibliography of permanent value, and biography. High in the list of his works is Dickens: A Portrait in Pencil (1928) which showed remarkable powers of graphic narrative written in a scholarly and sensitive style, and is an excellent example of Straus’s avoidance of exaggeration and harsh outlines, especially in dealing with Dickens’s domestic life. He also compiled Dickens: The Man and the Book (1936), a short anthology of his own selection with a connective commentary.’

And so as we can see, Ralph Straus was quite a remarkable man of letters whose novels still have the power to hold the reader’s interest, an interest which both odd and unusual, is certainly worth re-igniting! The following bibliography is not exclusive and my only excuse is that we must allow the man some element of mystery to remain!

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

 

Heart’s Mystery: Being a Story in Three Periods. Ralph Strode [pseudo. of Ralph Straus, published while an undergraduate of Pembroke College, Cambridge]. London. Privately printed. 8vo. pp. 315. 1903.

 

The Man Apart. Ralph Straus. London. Chatto & Windus. Cr. 8vo. pp. viii, 390. Cloth. 1906. Dedicated ‘To my good friend [Capt.] Noel [Frederick] Barwell’ (1879-1953), author.

 

John Baskerville: A Memoir. Ralph Straus & Robert Kirkup Dent. Printed at Cambridge University Press, Chatto & Windus. 13 plate illustrations and a bibliography. Large Quarto Buckram, red cloth. pp. xi, 144. 300 copies printed. 1907. [‘the late Mr. Samuel Timmins, of Birmingham was long enjoyed on a memoir of John Baskerville, the famous printer. He did not live to complete it, but Messrs. Ralph Straus and R. K. Dent have compiled a volume from the materials he left behind.’ The Sketch. Wednesday 12^th September 1906. p. 20]

 

The Dust which is God: An Undimensional Adventure. Ralph Straus. Norwich. The Samurai Press. 8vo. pp. 62. 1907.

 

The Little God’s Drum. Ralph Straus. London. Chatto & Windus. Cr. 8vo. pp. xii, 382. Cloth. 1908.

 

The Scandalous Mr. Waldo. Ralph Straus. London. W. Heinemann. Cr. 8vo. pp. 323. [14^th September] 1909. Dedicated to Norman Farr.

 

Robert Dodsley: Poet, Publisher & Playwright. Ralph Straus. London. John Lane, The Bodley Head. 14 illustrations and 74 page bibliography. Demi 8vo. pp. xiv, 407. Red cloth, gilt lettering on spine. 1910. [Reprint: New York. Burt Franklin Research and Source Works series 305, Selected Essays in Literature and Criticism 18. pp. 407. 1968] Dedicated to Austin Dobson.

 

5000 A.D.: A Review and an Excursion. Set up and Imprinted by ye Scribbler’s own Hand at his Private Press. London. Read to the Sette of Odd Volumes on 24^th January 1911 at Oddenino’s [The Imperial] Restaurant. Grey/Blue wrappers, black lettering on spine and sides. 107 copies printed. pp. 56. 1911. [‘Scribbler’ is Bro. Ralph Straus, B. A.]

 

Carriages and Coaches: Their History and their Evolution. Fully illustrated with reproductions from old prints, contemporary drawings & photographs. London. Martin Secker. 8vo. pp. 277. Blue cloth, gilt lettering. 1912. First U.S. edition: Philadelphia. J. B. Lippincott comp. pp. 230. 1912. Dedicated to ‘B.S.S.’ [Bertram Stuart Straus, 1867-1933]

 

The Prison without a Wall. Ralph Straus. London. W. Heinemann. 8vo. pp. xii, 307. 1912. First U. S. edition: New York. Henry Holt & comp. pp. xii, 307. [30^th January] 1912.

 

The Orley Tradition. Ralph Straus. London. Methuen. Cr. 8vo. pp. viii, 368. [26^th March] 1914.

 

Mrs. Holmes Commandant. Robert Erstone Forbes [pseudo. of Ralph Straus] with Miss Ada Barnett. London. Edward Arnold. Cr. 8vo. pp. 286. Red cloth. Only 535 copies printed. 1918. The printed dedication reads: ‘Dedicated with feelings of the profoundest respect to the Detachment.’ During the First World War Straus worked in a hospital in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) and the novel is about setting up a VAD hospital in a small English town.

 

Pengard Awake: A Psychological Mystery. Ralph Straus. London. Methuen. 8vo. pp. 308. Brown cloth, green lettering. [23^rd September] 1920. First U. S. edition: New York. D. Appleton & comp. pp. 298. Brown cloth, green lettering. Dust Jacket: Yellow pictorial front, black lettering. [24^th September] 1920. Dedicated to Ann, Lady Warmington.

 

Volcano: A Frolic. Ralph Straus. London. Methuen. Cr, 8vo. 1922. First U. S. edition: New York. Henry Holt & comp. pp. 304. [8^th September] 1925.

 

The Unseemly Adventure. Ralph Straus. London. Chapman & Hall. 8vo. pp. 282. [January] 1924. First U. S. edition: New York. Henry Holt & comp. 8vo. pp. 304. Red boards. 1924. Dedicated to Oswald Skilbeck (1901-1993) actor, producer and writer. The novel was also made into a 3 act play by Sydney Blow and Gordon Whitehead in 1926 and it played at London’s Garrick Theatre in April that year.

 

The Transactions of Oliver Prince. Robert Erstone Forbes [pseudo. of Ralph Straus] with Miss Ada Barnett. London. Chapman & Hall Ltd. 8vo. pp. 248. 1924. First U. S. edition: New York. Henry Holt & comp. pp. 296. Green boards. 1924.

 

Married Alive. Ralph Straus. London. Chapman & Hall Ltd. Cr. 8vo. pp. 278. Blue boards, gilt lettering. [April] 1925. [reprint 1936. Red cloth] First U. S. edition: New York. Henry Holt & comp. 12 mo. pp. 296. Rust cloth, black spine. 1925. Dust Jacket: Green/white, floral pattern with green lettering. The volume is dedicated to Straus’s friend, A. P. Herbert (1890-1971). The novel was very loosely made into a black & white silent comedy film, the only novel by Straus to do so, in 1927 and was Directed by Emmett J.  Flynn for the Fox Film Corp.

 

An Odd Bibliography: Being a list of all the Publications of Ye Sette of Odd Volumes from 1878-1924 compiled from various odd sources by Bro. Ralph Straus, sometime President of Ye Sette, Secretary on Four Occasions, and Scribbler since His Election. [Series: Privately Printed Opuscula issued Ye Members of Ye Sette of Odd Volumes, Number 76]. London. Chiswick Press. 8vo. pp. xi, 244. 1925.

 

Ye Second Volume of Ye Roll of Ye Sette of Odd Volumes, Compiled by Bro. George Charles Williamson, Lit. D., Horologer and Ralph Straus, Scribbler. London. pp. 244. 199 copies printed. 1925.

 

Our Wiser Sons. Ralph Straus. London. Chapman & Hall.  8vo. pp. 307. 1926. First U. S. edition: New York. Henry Holt & comp. 8vo. pp. 300. Blue cloth boards, dark blue lettering on spine. 1926. Dust Jacket: 1920’s style illustration with lettering, red, black and gold on cream. [note: a review – ‘Educating an Unruly Son: Mr. Ralph Straus’s Novel of a Pompous Family’ by Dilys Powell appeared in T.P.’s Weekly, volume VII, number 161, p. 140. 27^th November 1926]

 

Tricks of the Town: Being reprints of three eighteenth Century Tracts. Ralph Straus. London. Chapman & Hall. [series: Eighteenth Century Diversions, volume 1: i, Tricks of the Town Laid Open (1747), ii, A Trip through the Town (1735), iii, A Trip from St. James’s to the Royal Exchange (1744). With an introduction by Ralph Straus. 8 illustrations (frontispiece plate). 8vo. pp. xxiv, 256. Dark red cloth, gilt lettering spine. Only 1000 copies printed. 1927.

 

The Unspeakable Curll: Being some account of Edmund Curll, bookseller, to which is added a full list of his books. Ralph Straus. London. Chapman & Hall. 8vo. pp. xiii, 322. Blue cloth. Only 535 copies printed. 1927. First U. S. edition: New York. Robert M. McBride & comp. pp. 256. [1^st January] 1928.

 

Charles Dickens: A Biography from New Sources. Ralph Straus. Cosmopolitan Book Corp. New York. Grosset & Dunlap. 8vo. pp. 340. Red cloth. Dedicated to Arthur Waugh. 1928.

 

Dickens: A Portrait in Pencil. Ralph Straus. London. Victor Gollancz Ltd. 15 black & white photographs and manuscript reproductions, frontispiece portrait illustration. 8vo. pp. 319. Red/orange cloth, gilt lettering spine. 1928.

 

A Whip for the Woman: Being (perhaps a little unexpectedly) an impartial account of the present state of the novel market, and intended to be a guide for all literary aspirants. Ralph Straus. London. Chapman & Hall. Black & white illustrations. Cr. 8vo. pp. 243. Blue boards, gilt lettering spine. [October] 1931. Pictorial dust jacket with blue and white lettering. First U. S. edition: New York. Farrar & Rinehart inc. pp. 271. 1932. Dust Jacket: Pictorial, red, white, blue, black by Calman. Dedicated to [Lady] Flavia Giffard (1910-1998) ‘with my love’. Lady Giffard, an author, was the daughter of the 2^nd Earl and Countess of Halsbury.

 

Five Men go to Prison: A Plain Case. Ralph Straus. London. Chapman & Hall. 8vo. pp. viii, 404. Brown paper covered boards. [7^th October] 1935. [re-issue, 1937. London. Chapman & Hall. 8vo. pp. 374. Red cloth, black lettering]

 

An Odd Note on Ye founding and early history of Ye Sette of Odd Volumes, laboriously compiled from various odd sources by Bro. Ralph Straus and delivered as an address at Ye 500^th meeting. Tuesday, November the 26^th. 1935. London. pp. 15. [1^st January] 1935.

 

Dickens: The Man and the Book. [An anthology with a running commentary. Series: Argosy Books Number 4]. Ralph Straus. London. Thomas Nelson & Sons. Sm 8vo. pp. ix, 240. Illustrated frontis portrait of Dickens. Blue cloth, gilt lettering spine. 1936. Dust jacket: Orange and black pattern with pictorial sailing ship.

 

* I have found reference to a publication titled ‘Skimp’s Crowd’ by Ralph Straus published by Chapman & Hall, found in (i) Time and Tide [T & T], volume 18, part 2, p. 1349. 1937. (ii) New Statesman and Nation, volume 14-15, p. 560. 1937. (iii) Time and Tide [T & T], volume 19, issues 26-49. p. 1404. 1938. (iv) Bookseller & Stationer and Office Equipment Journal, p. 35 and p. 50. 1938.

 

Lloyd’s: The Gentlemen at the Coffee-House. Ralph Straus. London. Hutchinson & co. Ltd. 8vo. pp. 327. 1937. First U. S. edition: New York. Carrick & Evans. 16 black & white illustrations. pp. 327. Red boards, gilt lettering spine. Dust jacket: pictorial with red, white and gold lettering. 1938.

 

Lloyd’s: A Historical Sketch. Ralph Straus. London. Hutchinson & co. Ltd. 8vo. pp. 280. 16 black & white illustrations, frontispiece. Brown cloth boards. 1938.

 

A Portrait of Dickens. [A new edition of “Dickens: A Portrait in Pencil”] Ralph Straus. London. J. M. Dent & Sons. [Aldine Library Series Number 4]. 8vo. pp. 319. Blue cloth, gilt lettering. 1938.

 

Sala: The Portrait of an Eminent Victorian. Ralph Straus. London. Constable & comp. Ltd. 8vo. pp. xi, 309. 16 black & white plates of illustrations and others in the text. Colour frontispiece. Blue cloth. 1942. Pictorial dust jacket depicting ‘Rossetti in his worldlier days (circ. 1866-1868), leaving the Arundel Club with George Augustus Sala, by Sir Max Beerbohm. Dedicated to Edward Howell.

 

 

SHORT STORY CONTRIBUTIONS:

 

The Last of the Decadents. (a satire) written by Ralph Strode (Ralph Straus) and his undergraduate friend, Louis Umfreville Wilkinson, who wrote under the pseudonym, Louis Marlow. The Smart Set magazine, volume XI, number 4, December 1903. pp. 75-81.

 

The Room on the Fourth Floor. The earliest reference I have found on this short story – ‘The Room on the Fourth Floor: A Mystery and its Explanation’, is in The Bystander, Wednesday 6^th December 1911, p. 485. The story was published in: (i) The American Magazine. December, 1912. (ii) The Argosy (magazine), volume viii, number 53, p. 117. October 1930. (iii) The Evening Standard Book of Strange Stories. London. Hutchinson & Co. Ltd. [80 authors and 88 stories] Red cloth boards. 8vo. pp. 1,024. 1934. (iv) Fifty Masterpieces of Mystery. London. Odhams Press. 8vo. pp. 768. 1937. (v) Suspense Stories Collected by Alfred Hitchcock. Dell. pp. 192. 1945. (vi) Alfred Hitchcock’s Fireside Book of Suspense. [28 stories] New York. Simon & Schuster. pp. 367. 1947. (vii)14 Suspense Stories to Play Russian Roulette. Alfred Hitchcock. Dell [paperback, essentially a reprint of Suspense Stories Collected by Alfred Hitchcock]. pp. 208. 1964.

 

Horse of Death. The earliest reference I have found to this story is in The Bystander, Wednesday 27^th November 1912. p. 6. The story was published in: (i) Australian newspaper, the ‘Herald’, Saturday 31^st August 1935. p. 36. (ii) Australian newspaper ‘The Queenslander’, Thursday 8^th October 1936. p. 8. (iii) The Evening Standard Second Book of Strange Stories. London. Hutchinson & Co. Ltd. pp. 1,021. 1937. (iv) Suspense Stories Collected by Alfred Hitchcock. Dell. pp. 192. 1945. (v) At the Track: A Treasury of Horse Racing Stories. Ed. Richard Peyton. Bonanza Books, Crown Publishers. pp. 366. 1987.

 

The Most Maddening Story in the World. Short story, found in: (i) The Sovereign Magazine. August 1920. (ii) The Second Century of Creepy Stories. Ed. Sir Hugh Walpole [26 authors and 27 stories]. London. Hutchinson & Co. Ltd. Red cloth boards and black lettering. pp. 1,023. 1937. (iii) The Moonlight Traveller: Great Tales of Fantasy and Imagination. Ed. Philip Van Doren Stern [21 short stories]. New York. Doubleday. Blue cloth. pp. 485. 1943. (iv) The Bedside Tales: A Gay Collection. Peter Arno [Introduction]. New York. William Penn Publishing Corp. Red cloth with red embossed lettering. pp. 569. 1945.

 

PUBLISHED CONTRIBUTIONS, INTRODUCTIONS AND WORKS PRINTED AT HIS OWN PRESS:

 

International Congress of Architects: Seventh Session Held in London, 16-21 July 1906. London. 8vo. pp. xii, 555. 1908. [p. 533: Catalogue of the Exhibition of British Architecture (including Water-Colours, Measured Drawings, Plans, Photographs), furniture and Silverwork held at Grafton Galleries, 16-21 July]. Ralph Straus wrote the Preface to the Catalogue of the Exhibition which was appended to the volume. He is mentioned within: ‘Ralph Straus, 58 Bassett Road, North Kensington, BA late scholar of Pembroke College, Cambridge, who acted as Secretary of the Exhibition Sub-Committee.’ [see also The Architectural Review Congress Number: In Connection with The International Congress of Architects. July 1906]

 

Austin Osman Spare: A Note on His Work. Article by Ralph Straus, printed in The Booklovers Magazine. Philadelphia. Library Publishing Company.1909. [Straus’s ‘The Sport of Book-Hunting’ also appeared in The Booklovers Magazine, number 6. pp. 180-186. 1907]

 

Flower O’ The Rose: A Romantic Play. William J. Lock. London. Printed on handmade paper, half canvas boards. Demy 8vo. pp. 24. Printed by Ralph Straus at the Sign of the Ostrich, 58 Bassett Road, North Kensington. Only 50 copies printed. 1909. [it is also interesting to note that William John Locke (1863-1930) the novelist and dramatist, was on the Exhibition of Architects Sub-Committee with Straus in 1906]

 

Petronius: A Revised Latin Text of the Satyricon with the Earliest English Translation (1694) Now first reprinted with an Introduction Together with one-hundred illustrations by Norman Lindsay (1879-1969). Introduction by Sir Stephen Gaselee, translated by William Burnaby [edited by Ralph Straus and Stephen Gaselee]. London. Privately Printed by Ralph Straus at the Sign of the Ostrich, 58, Bassett Road, North Kensington. Quarto. pp. i-xv, 303. 265 numbered copies. 1910.

 

Morcom’s Demonstration – A Story. (short story), T.P.’s Weekly. Volume 19. 1912.

 

How I Began. (article), T.P.’s Weekly. p. 515. 25^th April 1913.

 

Harrow And Harrovians. (article),T.P.’s Weekly. p. 295. 6^th March 1914.

 

Ugly, Odd And Other Clubs. Pan magazine. Volume III. p. 8. 1920.

 

The London Spy Compleat with an Introduction by Ralph Straus [with a portrait]. Edward Ward (1669-1731). London. Casanova Society. 8vo. pp. 444. 1924.

 

At The Edge Of The Occult – Puzzle of the Water-Diviner’s Art. (article) T.P.’s & Cassell’s Weekly. Issues 79-104. p. 603. 29^th August 1925.

 

Foreign Legion Novelist – The stirring Adventures of the Author of “Beau Geste”. T.P.’s Weekly. Volume VI, number 149. p. 586. 4^th September 1926.

 

Tant Mieux Pour Elle – ‘All The Better For Her!’ and Other Stories. Translated by H. B. V. [Vyvyan Holland] with an Introduction by Ralph Straus. Claude Henri Fusee De Voisenon. Series: XVIII century French Romances. London. Chapman & Hall. 8vo. pp. xiv, 165. 1927.

 

How To Establish A Profitable Library. (article), T.P.’s Weekly, issues 245-270. p. 270. 1928.

 

Chronicle and Catalogue. The Book Collector’s Quarterly. Volume 2, Number II, March-May 1931. pp. 88-92.

 

A Man with a Nose [Sala]. The Book-Collector’s Quarterly. Volume 3, Number IX, January-March 1933. pp. xi, 1-17.

 

A Pickwick Portrait Gallery. London. Chapman & Hall Ltd. [March] 1936. Ralph Straus contributes a chapter on Nathaniel Winkle, pp. 27-39. Black & white illustrations throughout. 8vo. pp. 243. Orange cloth, black lettering. Pictorial dust jacket, black images with red lettering. First U.S. edition: New York. Charles Scribner’s & Sons. 1936.

 

The Dickens Ancestry. Some New Discoveries: Being notes on the unpublished work of the late A. T. [Alfred Trego] Butler and the late Arthur Campling with an Introduction by Ralph Straus. Reprinted from the Dickensian. Leslie Cyril Staples. London. Published by the author. 8vo. pp. 24. 1951.

 

The Rise of Scotland Yard: A History of the Metropolitan Police. Douglas G. Browne [originally begun by Ralph Straus and completed by Browne]. London. Harrap & Co. Ltd. Black & white photographs/illustrations. 8vo. pp. 392. 1956. First U.S. edition: New York. Putnams. 8vo. Red boards with gilt lettering on spine. 1956.

 

 

ARTICLES WRITTEN BY RALPH STRAUS UNDER THE PSEUDONYM GERTRUDE BELT FOR THE LONDON DAILY CHRONICLE:

 

Dressmakers, British and French. Thursday 11^th May 1922. p. 6.

My Daughter and I. Friday 26^th May 1922. p. 6.

The Meaner Sex. Saturday 5^th August 1922. p. 6.

Love Letters in Court. Monday 2^nd October 1922. p. 6.

Spinster! Well, why not? Thursday 12^th October 1922. p. 6.

 

I have also found articles written by another of Straus’s characters from ‘Volcano’, Eustace Pountney, mostly in the London Daily Chronicle, which I believe to be a pseudonym of Ralph Straus:

 

Marriages Between Opposites. Thursday 13^th July 1922. p. 6. [also in the Liverpool Echo. Thursday 13^th July 1922. p. 6]

Local Regattas. Monday 21^st August 1922. p. 6.

After Dinner Speaking. Wednesday 20^th September 1922. p. 6.

Shy Young Men. Monday 27^th November 1922. p. 6.

Stepmothers No Longer Cruel. Tuesday 13^th March 1923. p. 6.

Is Dancing Too Popular? Tuesday 24^th April 1923. p. 6.

Publicanesses. Tuesday 22^nd May 1923. p. 6.

Traffic In The Future. Tuesday 26^th February 1924. p. 6.

Art Of Repartee Not Dead. [Newcastle Daily Chronicle] Wednesday 30^th April 1924. p. 5.

Changing Fashions In Art. Tuesday 1^st May 1924. p. 8.

 

ARTICLES WRITTEN BY RALPH STRAUS UNDER THE PSEUDONYM ROBERT ERSTONE FORBES FOR THE LONDON DAILY CHRONICLE [UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED]:

 

Great Guns. The Bystander. Wednesday 13^th August 1919. p. 48.

That Superior Feeling. Thursday 1^st June 1922. p. 5.

Are You A Tea-Hound? Tuesday 4^th July 1922. p. 6.

Company Manners. Friday 28^th July 1922. p. 6.

When London Clubs Are Cleaned. Friday 1^st September 1922. p. 6.

The Story Our Faces Tell. Thursday 5^th October 1922. p. 6.

Tea-Snobs. The Bystander. Wednesday 25^th October 1922. p. 34.

The Great Decision. Friday 27^th October 1922. p. 6.

My Little Lapse. The Bystander. Wednesday 6^th September 1922. p. 22.

A Loving Couple. The Bystander. Wednesday 13^th September 1922. p. 24.

Travelling Light. Tuesday 15^th May 1923. p. 6.

The Bag, An Adventure On The Railway. Tuesday 10^th February 1925. p. 6.

The Exceptional Man. Tuesday 17^th March 1925. p. 8.

Men Of More Than One Art. Friday 31^st July 1925. p. 6.

 

ARTICLES WRITTEN FOR THE BYSTANDER [Straus wrote many book reviews for The Bystander in its column ‘The Literary Log’ beginning circa 1911 and ‘The Bystander Among The Books’ in 1914, ‘The Literary Log Rolled by Ralph Straus’ and following the First World War in 1919, ‘The New Literary Log Rolled by Ralph Straus’; the following examples are not a complete list of Straus’s articles]:

 

The Middle-Aged Heroine. Wednesday 14^th February 1912. p. 42.

Oscar Wilde: A Genuine Criticism At Last. Wednesday 21^st February 1912. p. 42.

Plays In Print. Wednesday 13^th March 1912. p. 40.

When Poetry Was Fashionable. Wednesday 3^rd June 1912. p. 40.

A Book About Ireland. Wednesday 3^rd July 1912. p. 38.

Two Good Novels. Wednesday 17^th July 1912. p. 36.

Chaucer Secundus. Wednesday 31^st July 1912. p. 38.

The Human Boy. Wednesday 14^th August 1912. p. 40.

J. M. Synge. Wednesday 21^st August 1912. p. 34.

The Publisher As Author. Wednesday 18^th September 1912. p. 32.

Lord Rossmore’s Reminiscences. Wednesday 25^th September 1912. p. 36.

Mrs. Belloc’ Lownde’s New Book. Wednesday 9^th October 1912. p. 38.

Vagabondus Redivivus. Wednesday 30^th October 1912. p. 38.

The Beloved Tramp. Wednesday 6^th November 1912. p. 40.

A Sailor’s Yarns. Wednesday 13^th November 1912. p. 48.

 

The Passionate Friends. Wednesday 24^th September 1913. p. 48.

 

The Mollusc. Wednesday 28^th January 1914. p. 46.

An Old Fashioned Book. Wednesday 4^th February 1914. p. 40.

Chelsea. Wednesday 11^th February 1914. p. 40.

Mr. Zangwill’s Play [The Melting Pot]. Wednesday 18^th February 1914. p. 40.

The Great Change. Wednesday 25^th February 1914. p. 38.

The Navvy Poet. Wednesday 11^th March 1914. p. 42.

The Strong Heart. Wednesday 18^th March 1914. p. 40.

Joseph Conrad. Wednesday 1^st July 1914. p. 38.

Books For Holiday Reading. Wednesday 8^th July 1914. p. 69.

The Kipling School. Wednesday 15^th July 1914. p. 40.

Saki. Wednesday 22^nd July 1914. p. 36.

Two American Novels. Wednesday 29^th July 1914. p. 36.

That New East. Wednesday 5^th August 1914. p. 40.

Belgium. Wednesday 12^th August 1914. p. 32.

 

Light Literature Of The War. Wednesday 3^rd March 1915. p. 34.

The New France And Some New Novels. Wednesday 10^th March 1915. p. 26.

 

Notes On Novels. Wednesday 12^th March 1919. p. 44.

The Entente In Books. Wednesday 7^th May 1919. p. 48.

A New Literary Log. Wednesday 4^th June 1919. p. 50.

 

A Change Of Luck. Wednesday 1^st February 1922. p. 40.

 

When Genius Agrees. Wednesday 22^nd July 1925. p. 26.

 

Publicity And Propaganda. Wednesday 14^th November 1928. p. 56.

Froth And First Novels. Wednesday 21^st November 1928. p. 68.

Manners And Morals. Wednesday 28^th November 1928. p. 56.

Rare Wine And Lime Juice. Wednesday 5^th December 1928. p. 52.

Spies And Speculations. Wednesday 12^th December 1928. p. 50.

Tennessee Off The Stage. Wednesday 19^th December 1928. p. 47.

The Vigilant Mr. Douglas. Wednesday 26^th December 1928. p. 40.

 

The Post-Sherlockians. Wednesday 2^nd January 1929. p. 40.

Drolls And Diversions. Wednesday 9^th January 1929. p. 42.

In The Nineteen-Nineties. Wednesday 16^th January 1929. p. 44.

Arnold Bennett’s Modern Girl. Wednesday 23^rd January 1929. p. 44.

Women’s Heroes And Men’s. Wednesday 30^th January 1929. p. 48.

Lilly Christine And Others. Wednesday 6^th February 1929. p. 60.

Three Wars And Women. Wednesday 13^th February 1929. p. 44.

Cars & Crimes And Christopher Marley. Wednesday 20^th February 1929. p. 52.

Liner Love. Wednesday 27^th February 1929. p. 56.

Gigolos, Zola And War Story. Wednesday 6^th March 1929. p. 44.

History And Hysterics. Wednesday 13^th March 1929. p. 56.

Six Greenes And Four Shiels. Wednesday 20^th March 1929. p. 64.

Snobbery In The States. Wednesday 27^th March 1929. p. 48.

Who Are The Real People. Wednesday 3^rd April 1929. p. 44.

Isadora And Some Others. Wednesday 10^th April 1929. p. 60.

Women In Wonderland. Wednesday 17^th April 1929. p. 60.

Clashes And Classes. Wednesday 24^th April 1929. p. 46.

Young Women, Surplus & Otherwise. Wednesday 8^th May 1929. p. 50.

Portraits Of Three Women. Wednesday 15^th May 1929. p. 66.

Who Are The Dull People? Wednesday 22^nd May 1929. p. 52.

The High Brow’s Charter. Wednesday 29^th May 1929. p. 44.

King David And Others. Wednesday 5^th June 1929. p. 50.

Bohunks, Berries And Broads. Wednesday 19^th June 1929. p. 46.

Kings And Queens And A Coward. Wednesday 26^th June 1929. p. 50.

Respectability And The Other Thing. Wednesday 3^rd July 1929. p. 48.

Mr. Belloc And Other Excitements. Wednesday 10^th July 1929. p. 46.

A Word Upon Blurbs. Wednesday 17^th July 1929. p. 52.

Mr. Horn And The Duchess. Wednesday 24^th July 1929. p. 52.

Love And Lunatics. Wednesday 31^st July 1929. p. 44.

Very Good Companions. Wednesday 7^th August 1929. p. 46.

Is Dorset So Dreadful? Wednesday 14^th August 1929. p. 42.

A Village Runs Amok. Wednesday 21^st August 1929. p. 44.

Mr. Locke And Other Excitements. Wednesday 28^th August 1929. p. 44.

When Wives Take Command. Wednesday 11^th September 1929. p. 46.

These Difficult Wives. Wednesday 18^th September 1929. p. 42.

Too Much Discretion. Wednesday 25^th September 1929. p. 50.

A Fascinating Mystery. Wednesday 2^nd October 1929. p. 64.

Swaffer Writes A Book. Wednesday 9^th October 1929. p. 52.

Can A Play Make A Novel? Wednesday 16^th October 1929. p. 48.

One Man And Five Women. Wednesday 23^rd October 1929. p. 44.

Some Women’s Novels. Wednesday 30^th October 1929. p. 44.

When Pedestals Are Pruned. Wednesday 6^th November 1929. p. 74.

Who Tells The Truth? Wednesday 20^th November 1929. p. 60.

That Hard Young Female. Wednesday 4^th December 1929. p. 62.

The Last (?) Of The War Books. Wednesday 11^th December 1929. p. 64.

What Of The Detective Story? Wednesday 18^th December 1929. p. 50.

Secretaries And Showmen. Wednesday 25^th December 1929. p. 46.

 

Those Twelve Years. Wednesday 8^th January 1930. p. 40.

Purities And Paroxysms. Wednesday 22^nd January 1930. p. 40.

Where Woman Is A Side-Show. Wednesday 29^th January 1930. p. 42.

A Mallet On L.G.’s Head. Wednesday 5^th February 1930. p. 52.

When History Is Rewritten. Wednesday 12^th February 1930. p. 48.

Cannibals And Other Caprices. Wednesday 26^th February 1930. p. 46.

Excitements And Explanations. Wednesday 12^th March 1930. p. 56.

Miss Sitwell And Mr. Pope. Wednesday 19^th March 1930. p. 70.

Mr. Walpole’s Rogue. Wednesday 26^th March 1930. p. 46.

This Will Not Do. Wednesday 2^nd April 1930. p. 44.

The Peerage And Mr. McKenna. Wednesday 9^th April 1930. p. 44.

What Of Stephen Hudson. Wednesday 23^rd April 1930. p. 52.

Lord Birkenhead As Old Moore. Wednesday 30^th April 1930. p. 42.

Prose And Amateurs. Wednesday 7^th May 1930. p. 70.

Really Nice Behaviour. Wednesday 28^th May 1930. p. 44.

When Women Love Boxers. Wednesday 4^th June 1930. p. 48.

The Glamorous Girl. Wednesday 11^th June 1930. p. 82.

Are These Shocking Books? Wednesday 18^th June 1930. p. 44.

Is The Historical Novel Dead? Wednesday 2^nd July 1930. p. 52.

More Extraordinary Women. Wednesday 9^th July 1930. p. 44.

Yet Another Genius. Wednesday 23^rd July 1930. p. 40.

Mr. Hueffer And Three Old Stagers. Wednesday 30^th July 1930. p. 42.

H.G.W. And E.V.L. Wednesday 6^th August 1930. p. 38.

Bensonians And Other Enthusiasts. Wednesday 13^th August 1930. p. 41.

Companions Good And Very Bad. Wednesday 20^th August 1930. p. 51.

Crimes, Clues And Mr. Chesterton. Wednesday 27^th August 1930. p. 46.

Scandals And Shipwrecks. Wednesday 10^th September 1930. p. 42.

The Importance Of Being Virtuous. Wednesday 17^th September 1930. p. 48.

Ordinary Women. Wednesday 24^th September 1930. p. 42.

Labels And Libels And A Terrible Tale. Wednesday 1^st October 1930. p. 52.

Mr. Maugham In Hot Water. Wednesday 8^th October 1930. p. 48.

The Grand Bennett Hotel. Wednesday 15^th October 1930. p. 50.

Lord Birkenhead As Historian. Wednesday 22^nd October 1930. p. 40.

When Women Were Women. Wednesday 26^th November 1930. p. 46.

Women In Love. Wednesday 3^rd December 1930. p. 40.

A Look Round. Wednesday 24^th December 1930. p. 40.

 

A Negro And Some Very Poor Whites. Wednesday 7^th January 1931. p. 44.

Gypsies And Other Misfits. Wednesday 14^th January 1931. p. 44.

Small Beer And Small Bigots. Wednesday 19^th February 1931. p. 44.

 

ARTICLES APPEARING IN THE LIVERPOOL ECHO:

 

A New Sort Of Relative. Tuesday 4^th April 1922. p. 4.

A Five Minute’s Drama. Thursday 27^th April 1922. p. 6.

Urgently Needed A Misunderstanding. Thursday 22^nd June 1922. p. 6

 

ARTICLES WRITTEN FOR THE LONDON DAILY CHRONICLE:

 

The New Relation. Tuesday 4^th April 1922. p. 6.

A Five Minute’s Drama. Thursday 27^th April 1922. p. 6.

My Aunt’s Day. Thursday 18^th May 1922. p. 6.

The Accident. Friday 16^th June 1922. p. 6.

A Misunderstanding. Thursday 22^nd June 1922. p. 6.

Poor Walter. Wednesday 26^th July 1922. p. 6.

Miss Hinton. Monday 31^st July 1922. p. 6.

The Degree Behind The Counter. Tuesday 17^th October 1922. p. 6.

The Poet Who Is A Best Seller. Friday 15^th December 1922. p. 6.

 

Hansoms Again? Tuesday 6^th March 1923. p. 6.

The New Poor’s – Week Ends. Monday 23^rd July 1923. p. 6.

Are You Worthy Of Trust? Tuesday 11^th September 1923. p. 6.

Hunting On Foot. Saturday 22^nd December 1923. p. 6.

 

A Cure-All Fruit. Monday 17^th March 1924. p. 8.

Schoolboy Snuff Takers. Friday 28^th March 1924. p. 8.

The New Dog. Tuesday 1^st April 1924. p. 8.

That Uniform [Messenger Boys]. Tuesday 22^nd April 1924. p. 6.

A Waiter Problem. Friday 17^th June 1924. p. 6.

Myself As Hero – The Story Of A Battle Of Words. Monday 15^th August 1924. p. 6.

 

When Old Books Are Valuable. Saturday 10^th January 1925. p. 6.

A Dreadful Affair. Saturday 17^th January 1925. p. 6.

Wonders Of 1925. Tuesday 27^th January 1925. p. 6.

The Language Of Sneezing. Thursday 5^th February 1925. p. 6.

Stage Butlers. Wednesday 11^th February 1925. p. 6.

My Black Eye. Thursday 2^nd April 1925. p. 8.

The Successors To Sherlock. Thursday 6^th August 1925. p. 6.

The Chair. Thursday 3^rd September 1925. p. 6.

Steamship Friends. Monday 5^th October 1925. p. 8.

 

Women’s Clubs Today. Tuesday 5^th July 1927. p. 8.

 

‘LITERARY LOG ROLLED BY RALPH STRAUS’ IN THE TATLER:

 

Wednesday 2^nd May 1923. p. 108. [two female novelists: Rachel Ferguson, author of ‘False Goddesses’, and Patricia Wainley, ‘The Illusion of Possession’]

Wednesday 1^st August 1923. p. 58. [‘Decoration and Care of the Home’ by Mrs. M. Vance]

Wednesday 29^th August 1923. p. 56. [Psychological books – ‘A Reversion to Type’ by E. M. Delafield. Also p. 40. ‘People I Should Like to Be’, number 1 – The Prime Minister]

Wednesday 3^rd October 1923. p. 76.

Wednesday 10^th October 1923. p. 72. [Romance and Adventure: Guy Rawlence’s novel ‘Mockery’. Also p. 34. ‘People I Should Like to Be’ – Heavy-weight Champion of the World]

Thursday 11^th October 1923. p. 67. [Harold Nicholson’s volume on Tennyson]

Wednesday 17^th October 1923. p. 60. [The novel and self-publishing]

Thursday 18^th October 1923. p. 63. [Death of Sir Mark Sykes and the biography by his cousin, Shane Leslie]

Wednesday 24^th October 1923. p. 70. [Male friendships – ‘The Day’s Journey’ by W. B. Maxwell]

Thursday 25^th October 1923. p. 55. [H. G. Wells volume ‘Men Like Gods’]

Wednesday 7^th November 1923. p. 82. [Ada Barnett’s novel ‘The Joyous Adventurer’]

Wednesday 14^th November 1923. p. 72. [Lord Curzon’s Speech]

Wednesday 28^th November 1923. p. 74. [Tutankhamen and Howard Carter’s book]

 

 

NOTES:

 

1. The Straus family are of German, Jewish descent; Ralph’s father, Sidney Ralph Straus was the son of the merchant, Ralph Sigismund Straus (1816-1880) and Josephine Weiller (1835-1905), [daughter of Abraham Jacob and Babette Weiller] who were married in Frankfurt in September 1853. Ralph Sigismund Straus came to Manchester from Frankfurt in the early 1830’s and Ralph’s father, Sidney was the first child born in 1854 and then came: Jacob James Richard Straus (1856-1925), Amy Josephine Straus (1858-1933), Herbert Nathaniel Straus (1863-1950), Leopold Arthur Weiller Straus (1864-1946) and Percy Weiller Straus (1870-1960) [Percy, a chartered accountant married Blanche Rachel Dux (1865-1949) on 12^th February 1896 and they had one child: Percy Jack Webb Straus (1898-1954)]
2. Violet Babbette Straus married John H L Lancaster (1881-1945) in Paddington in 1916 and they had two daughters both born in London: Margaret born in 1918 and Elizabeth born in 1921.
3. A presentation copy of ‘Heart’s Mystery’ was given to Ralph’s friend Arnold Robertson Churchill (1883-1975), [see The Jewish Contribution to Civilization. Charles Archibald Stonehill, issue 144, p. 179. 1940] A. R. Churchill was the son of a book publisher who went up from Harrow to Caius College, Cambridge and became a barrister in 1907. His Harrow entry in the register reads: Arnold Robertson Churchill, (Small Houses, the Head Master’s, and H. B.) son of A Churchill Esq. Fairhaven, Putney Heath. Sayer Scholar, 1902, left 1902, Caius College, Camb. B.A. and LL.B. 1905. Winner of the Inter University 3-Mile Race, 1904. Barrister 1907.’ The presentation copy from Straus to Churchill is inscribed and dated May 1903.
4. Herbert Nathaniel Straus (1863-1950) was born in Chorlton, Lancashire and moved to Australia and married Rachel Isabella Swain (1867-1945) in Victoria in 1917. Rachel had been married twice previously to Henry James Evans (Victoria 1886) and George Weller Seymour (Victoria 1892) and had children from both marriages. Herbert and Rachel lived in East Malvern, Victoria. Herbert suffered two tragedies, first the death of his son, Squadron Leader (24 squadron, Royal Australian Air Force), Nathaniel Herbert Straus, born 4^th November 1912 who died at sea at Vansittart Bay, Western Australia, aged 32 on 23^rd March 1945 (he is buried at the Adelaide River, Canberra War Cemetery) and within a few months, the loss of his wife, Rachel, on 16^th July 1945.
5. Straus mentions Aleister Crowley in his review for The Bystander, ‘Labels and Libels and a Terrible Tale’ (Wednesday 1^st October 1930. p. 52) in which he writes about ‘the Grand Tour’ and Evelyn Waugh ‘the second most impertinent man in London’ and in writing on the Sphinx, says it ‘somewhat naturally failed to impress this new crusader [Waugh]. As a piece of sculpture he found it hopelessly inadequate to its fame, and just about as inscrutable and enigmatic as Mr. Aleister Crowley, who may or may not be pleased with the comparison.’
6. The Magic of Aleister Crowley. John Symonds. London. Frederick Muller Ltd. 1958. p. 52. The review of ‘Olla: Sixty Years of Song’ in the local paper Symonds’ is referring to is the Hastings and St Leonard’s Observer. Saturday 4^th January 1947. p. 4 and the mention of Desmond MacCarthy (1877-1952) is another acquaintance of Straus’s – MacCarthy handled the non-fiction reviews for the Sunday Times while Straus took care of the fiction.
7. Oswald Skilbeck (1901-1993), London born actor, producer and stage manager. Skilbeck performed in many Shakespearean plays with the Old Vic in London during 1923-24, such as Troilus and Cressida, the Merchant of Venice, Henry VIII, Henry V, Hamlet, As You Like It, and in 1927-28, Skilbeck was notable as Renfield in Dracula at London’s Prince of Wales Theatre, Garrick Theatre and the Regent Theatre.
8. There is a short 22 minute film titled ‘Routine Job: A Story of Scotland Yard’ filmed in Chiswick, London and Directed by Gilbert Gunn for Merlin Films Co. in 1946 which credits Ralph Straus as the writer.