Andrew Marvell: The Rehearsal Transpros'd, ed. D. I. B. Smith (1971 / 2013)
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John Selkirk: Don Smith
Andrew Marvell: The Rehearsal Transpros'd (1971)
[Acquired: Maud Cahill's Jason Books, Auckland CBD - Friday, April 30, 2021]:
Marvell, Andrew. The Rehearsal Transpros'd and The Rehearsal Transpros'd: The Second Part. Ed. D. I. B. Smith. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.
Prof D. I. B. (Don) Smith (1934- ) supervised my MA thesis - on The Early Novels of John Masefield, of all things - at Auckland University from 1984-85. I have to say that I admired him hugely. He seemed so urbane and carefree, with a genuine love of books and literature generally, but also a complete lack of stuffiness about it.
He was younger then than I am now, I see with a shock, as he seemed eternal and effortlessly wise to me then. At the time he was much interested in early twentieth century fiction, which led a couple of years later to his 1986 'New Zealand Fiction' Series edition of Robin Hyde's Passport to Hell (1936), recently (2015) republished by Auckland University Press for the centenary of World War I.
As for his magisterial Oxford edition of seventeenth-century poet Andrew Marvell's witty political pamphlets The Rehearsal Transpros'd (1672) and The Rehearsal Transpros'd: The Second Part (1673), he once remarked to me: "That's how I got this job" (i.e. as Professor of English at Auckland University).
The copy I bought yesterday was inscribed "Mac With the Editor's Best Wishes." It comes from the collection of Prof. MacDonald P. Jackson, a great Shakespearian scholar and editor, and another one of the wonderful teachers I had in my time at Auckland University - though admittedly he may be better known now for being the father of poet Anna Jackson than in his own right - just as Don is known through his daughter, jazz singer Caitlin Smith.
- Collected Poems: Printed from the Unique Copy in the British Museum with Some Other Poems by Him. Ed. Hugh MacDonald. 1952. The Muses’ Library. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1969.
- Poems. Ed. H. M. Margoliouth. Introduction by C. V. Wedgwood. London: The Folio Society, 1964.
- Complete Poetry. Ed. George de F. Lord. New York: Random House, 1968.
- Complete Poems. Ed. Elizabeth Story Donno. Penguin English Poets. Ed. Christopher Ricks. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972.
- The Poems. Ed. Nigel Smith. 2003. Longman Annotated English Poets. Revised Edition. Pearson Longman. Edinburgh Gate, Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2007.
Of course, what Andrew Marvell is mainly known for now himself is his poetry, not his prose works. I see that I have five different editions of his poems, all of them subtly different (old-spelling, new-spelling, annotated, unannotated, and so on). What's more, you'll notice that each of the above has a slightly different title, which makes it easier to tell them apart.
Is it important? Well, with a poet as magnificent and complex as Marvell, it pays to get all the help you can get. Also, since he never published an authorised edition of them in his lifetime, questions of textual authority do arise for at least some of them.
The standard modern edition of his prose works is undoubtedly that put out by Yale University Press in 2003. This includes a number of his other, later political pamphlets as well as the two edited by Don.
If you wish to go even more deeply into the matter, it's hard to get past H. M. Margoliouth's pioneering edition of Marvell's poems and letters, re-issued in a third edition in 1971, the year of Don's Oxford edition of The Rehearsal Transpros'd.
As well as his more strictly scholarly pursuits, Don Smith's love for fantasy and SF inspired him to start up a Popular Fiction paper at Auckland University. I gave a guest lecture on Samuel R. Delany's Trouble on Triton during its first iteration in the early 1990s, I recall.
But his true claim to fame - and probably the only reason he has a wikipedia page to himself - was as an athlete, a middle-distance runner. He ran in the 800 metres at the 1960 Rome Olympics, but was eliminated before the finals. The event was famously won by his fellow New Zealander Peter Snell.
John Selkirk: New Zealand Olympians and Distance Runners (2018):
l-to-r: Bill Baillie, Sir Murray Halberg, Don Smith & Jeff Julian
So it's nice to find a new home for this book of his. All in all, I think I'm a fitting recipient, and will certainly try to appreciate it at its true worth.
Interestingly, both Don and Mac get a mention in this rather eccentric Kendrick Smithyman poem from the late 1980s, which purports to be a transcript of the experiences of a colony of rabbits domiciled on Constitution Hill, Auckland. It reads rather nostalgically now:
from Constitution Hill and Thereabouts
Running to Marathon Heat goes out of day's exchanges. The Stock Market is closed. Darkness, come down, like any old loose sentence, clause by clause, rabbits emerge on Constitution Hill congregated, coordinate. A young woman who runs audaciously long distances arrives to coach them. They are as on a darkling plane, ignorant armies not clashing but jostling in fellowship. Then off, given or giving a flip after (or sternly) wards, with them: Bruce, who is a big black fellow with great golden reflective eyes, leading shouldering a placard WIDE RUN FOLLOWS. At their tail end a couple of albinos, Mac and Don, flash their pink signal spots for any overtaking vehicles as they round the curve, scuts twittering, down into Okahu Bay after Paritai Drive, and back home. How their feet thump, but they'll make it. Dreamers, of course they are dreamers. Of the Round the Bays Run (who will be the first rabbit home?) you can take that for granted, as they see themselves pounding into St Heliers just astern of the RNZA team burling along with their 155mm howitzer. To forget is to forgive, they are willing to forget in interest of community. Dreams come bigger - that run on the island off Montreal after the thaw, the New York gathering, the Boston turnout, for starters? Bedding the kits down. tucking them in, their mothers say "Very well, only one story, what will it be?" and in this season naturally they want to hear again how the Greek rabbits stood up against the Persian cats and how . . . well, we all know how, and what. This is belonging. They know they belong. They turn over. They sigh, they nod off. Meanwhile back at the Basin shady figures lump a motor, heave an inflatable. "Quest-ce que c'est?" they ask, listening to that softshoe rhythm. "Rien, huh?" or only a melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating? Naked shingles of the world, your moon is almost at the full.
- category - English Poetry (pre-1900): Seventeenth Century
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