Robert Graves | Fairies and Fusiliers, London, 1917, first edition, inscribed by the author

Robert Graves

Fairies and Fusiliers. London: Heinemann, 1917

FIRST EDITION, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR on the front free endpaper, additional dedication inscription to the same recipient on p. 63, 8vo, original cloth, (supplied) dust-jacket, very light spotting,tape residue to verso of half-title, binding slightly soiled with tape residue to lower board

Inscribed by the author to the comrade who saved his life in the trenches: "Lieutenant O.M. Roberts, 2nd R.W. Fus from Robert Graves. | If it hadn't been for you butty [?] this book would be unwritten. See page 63". 

Above the title of the lyric on page 63 ("Escape"), Graves has hand-written: "Dedicated to O.M. Roberts 2nd R W Fus, in grateful memory of July 20, 1916". The poem itself dramatises Graves' time at death's door as a mock heroic narrative, whereby the poet fends off the hell hound Cerberus in order to make his successful escape from the underworld. But it also registers the poet's frustration at being unable to recall an accurate account of what actually happened. Passing through Lethe, he feels "the vapours of forgetfulness | Float in [his] nostrils". This Lethe is doubly troubling: a place of amnesia, as in the classical tradition, but also a place where, through the act of writing, the raw sensory horror of a gas attack in the trenches seeps back into the poet's consciousness, thus failing to offer the mental respite of truly forgetting. 

Roberts' role in saving Graves' life is omitted from the poem, and as well as from the 1929 autobiography of Graves' wartime experiences, Good-bye to All That (see lot 341). The present copy of Fairies and Fusiliers was likely inscribed at a similar time to Owen Roberts' personal copy of Good-bye to All That (now held at the National Library of Wales). Graves recalled the circumstances in a 1966 interview with Roger Ebert:

"Well, last month, while I was in the hospital to be cut open, in came a bloke to visit by the name of Owen Roberts. [...] So here he came into the hospital ward, 50 years later, a chipper old bloke, 74 years old, retired as a civil servant. Roberts was banged up pretty bad in the war, too, but he'd nevertheless managed to father two children and I've a pretty satisfactory life. It all adds up to something, I suppose. I was glad to set the record straight. I signed his copy of Good-bye to All That, I giving him full credit for saving my life. [...] It was the least I could do, you know."

In the interview with Ebert, Graves admits that he had forgotten Roberts' role in events by the time he got round to writing his autobiography, and that their meeting decades later jogged his memory. This adds a further dimension of poignance to the poet's manuscript dedication to "Escape". Thus, Graves not only acknowledges Roberts' importance in saving his life back in 1916, but also intimates that their subsequent meeting in the mid-1960s allowed him to fill in the blanks from a troublingly incomplete recollection of wartime events, thus finally offering him an escape route from past trauma.

LITERATURE

Roger Ebert, "Good-bye to All That", interview originally published 4 December 1966: www.rogerebert.com/features/good-bye-to-all-that