Persuasions #15, 1993 Pages 5-6 In Memory of Jack Grey
(1935-1993) DAVID GILSON Oxford, UK An article in the issue of Country Life dated 19 February 1970,
describing Cottesbrooke Hall, Northants, failed to mention that mansion’s
supposed claim to be the original of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park; the same
periodical’s issue for 18 June 1970 published a letter from J. David Grey, New
York, commenting on this omission and offering originals for other houses
featuring in the novels. I felt
impelled to write to Jack in consequence, and a correspondence ensued; from
finding so much in common between us (including a birth year!), a friendship
developed which ended only with Jack’s untimely death on 11 March 1993. This friendship could have foundered
very soon after its launching. Jack had
already, for longer than I knew, been a collector of books and other material
by and relating to Jane Austen, and was forming his archive of relevant
information. When checking indexes of
1969 publications, he came across my announcement in the Times Literary
Supplement of 17 April 1969 to the effect that I was planning to publish a
revision of Sir Geoffrey Keynes’s 1929 Nonesuch Press bibliography of the
novelist. It may not be generally known
that Jack had already hoped himself to prepare a new bibliography of Jane
Austen; but with the generosity which was so prominent a feature of his
character he decided that it was pointless for two such works to be produced in
competition, and very nobly abandoned his own plan, in order to encourage and
support mine. When my bibliography of
Jane Austen was at last published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford, in 1982, I
was very glad to pay tribute in my acknowledgements to the help that Jack had
given to me. In our correspondence of over twenty years we
constantly exchanged news of new publications (I’m sure I gained more than I
gave); but Jack’s help did not stop there.
We met whenever he came to England, with hospitality more often on his
side than on mine (since Jack was generous in this as in all else and loved to
be the host). He put me up at his East
Side apartment when I visited New York in 1975 as part of a six weeks’ tour of
the riches of East Coast libraries and private collections (to collect information
for my bibliography), and took pride in introducing me to New York. More recently Jack entertained me royally in
1987 and 1988 at Manhattan Plaza when I was in New York in part to see the Jane
Austen autograph letters at the Pierpont Morgan Library (in connection with the
new edition of the letters which I then envisaged but have since had to
abandon). Among the excursions I then
enjoyed with Jack was a drive up to New Haven, to see again at Yale the Jane
Austen collection of Charles Beecher Hogan (which I had first seen at
Woodbridge, Connecticut, in 1975). My personal collection of Jane Austen material
owes much to Jack’s generosity, especially as regards American publications new
and old, critical studies, continuations and dramatisations of the novels, as
well as more ephemeral items, which might otherwise not have come my way. It is a matter for regret that Jack’s own
collection, in some directions more extensive than my own, has not remained
intact; his archive of material published in periodicals (whether in original
form or in photocopy) must have been the largest ever made, and I know that he
had once hoped that his collection might be preserved as a source of reference
for future scholars. Jack’s innumerable friends will always remember
his kindness, generosity, hospitality; he had a gift for friendship. But he has also more tangible
memorials. On the one hand there are
his own publications, most notably The Jane Austen Companion (New York:
Macmillan, 1986), that invaluable source of information on almost anything to
do with Jane Austen, to which I was proud to contribute and of which I treasure
my copy with Jack’s own far more numerous contributions all autographed, and Jane
Austen’s beginnings: the Juvenilia and ‘Lady Susan’ (Ann Arbor: UMI
Research Press, 1989), an important collection of essays which had its origin
in the 1987 New York JASNA meeting and whose extensive bibliography owes more
to Jack than it does to me. Before
either of these substantial volumes, Jack’s perceptive introduction to the 1982
Washington Square Press paperback edition of Pride and Prejudice was a
delight to read and has permanent value. Jack’s other more solid memorial must be,
simply, JASNA. Realising the need to
provide a focus in North America for lovers of Jane Austen who might never get
to England, with his two eminent co-founders Joan Austen-Leigh and the late
Henry G. Burke, Jack’s enthusiasm got JASNA going in 1979; he was the Society’s
first President and remained deeply involved with all its activities,
especially the annual meetings, all of which he attended (and even more
especially those held in New York, which he organised: the first, in 1979, and
the ninth, in 1987). I am sure that it
gave Jack great pleasure to see JASNA expand and develop, with its regional
groups and meetings as well as the great annual get-together, and the journal Persuasions
similarly increasing in size and importance from 32 pages in 1979 to 147 in
1992. Something of Jack must remain in England, which
he loved and visited often, where he made so many friends (on his own travels
and on the tours of the Jane Austen country which he led so effectively), and
especially at Steventon where the church of St. Nicholas owes so much to the
generosity of JASNA members; but more of my friend Jack Grey must remain in
JASNA and in that Society’s continuing expansion and prosperity. |