Publisher's brown cloth binding with gilt titles to spine and Alfred Beit's monogram in gilt on front panel.
221 pages. 4 plates (one as frontispiece). Foreword by General Jan Smuts.
Inscribed on the front endpaper, "To Professor and Mrs. Lowe. From the author 19. Jan. 32."
Author's handwritten letter, pinned to the front endpaper, reads as follows:
"Dear Mrs. Lowe
By this mail I am sending to you and your husband a (...) copy of my biographical sketch of Alfred Beit.
I wonder if after reading it if you would feel inclined to write a review not on the book for the literary (value?), I will do that, but on some of the more abstract (psychic?) aspects of Beit's nature.
It would be interesting to discover whether the determinant factor in his life lay in his (conscience?) and automatically in his exceptional brain structure.
Then again he had some of the characteristics of an introvert but easily defeated his extrovert rivals in the world of business and finance. He was at once singularly helpless and singularly powerful.
The (...) reviewer is quite incapable of handling (these factors) and (...) (...) psychic phenomena and (...) (...). But I think if you cared to do so you would find in Beit's nature very interesting material for psychological investigation.
I hope you are well and flourishing - please give my best remembrances to your husband - the Hamilton household is well and flourishing - but the two dogs have become quarrelsome and this is a cause of much anxiety! - G. Seymour Fort."
Fort's biography contains an interesting printing error as Beit is described as "Sir" in all the captions to the plates. The publishers inserted an errata slip on the title page to inform the reader about it. In this copy, however, the knighthood bestowed upon Beit by the publisher has been thoroughly crossed out in ink on all the plates - which I presume could only have been done by the author himself.
In Denis Godfrey's book on Africana book collecting entitled The Enchanted Door (1963) he writes the following on page 32:
'Books about Beit are not numerous. The basic work on the life of this shy wizard of South African finance is Alfred Beit: A Study, by Seymour Fort, published, with a foreword by General Jan Smuts, in 1932. The publishers, through a misconception, described Alfred Beit as Sir Alfred Beit in the captions to pictures throughout the book. The subsequent edition corrected this error but, as in stamp-collecting, it makes the first edition containing this mistake of special interest and value to collectors.'
I have added another copy of this title to the lot which belonged to W. Scot Russell, a prominent chartered accountant and businessman in Bulawayo (Southern Rhodesia) during the first half of the 20th century. He was highly active in the city's civic and social circles, serving as secretary and treasurer for the Rhodesian Philatelic Society during the 1920s and helping preserve important historical records from the region. The accounting firm he established, Scot-Russell, operated in Bulawayo for decades.
The error on the plates in Russell's copy remains unadulterated.
- Binding Condition: Very Good
- Overall Condition: Very Good
