Donald Weeks; Baron Corvo biographer
Hyfler/Rosner
(Independent)
Donald Weeks
Biographer and collector of Baron Corvo
19 February 2004
Donald Weeks, artist, designer, writer and collector:
born Detroit 18 April 1921; died London 7 September 2003.
In 1966 a short, neat, affable American arrived in London
for the second time on a sabbatical from the successful
Detroit magazine for which he was art director. Donald Weeks
was brought to England by his passion for the writer
Frederick William Rolfe, otherwise known as Baron Corvo,
"saint or madman"; and never returned.
After the publication of his 1971 biography Corvo the
polymathic Weeks, a driven literary sleuth, became the
acknowledged authority on Rolfe. If a toothpick was
suspected of a Corvo connection Weeks would not rest until
he had discovered its provenance.
Just before he started with Chevrolet's house magazine,
Friends, in 1953 his Corvo obsession erupted. A.J.A.
Symons's so-called "experiment in biography" The Quest for
Corvo, first published in 1934 and newly reissued by the
Folio Society, had ignited it. By 1964, after Weeks had been
Friends's art director for eight years - piling up awards
for his innovative layouts (using a new artist, Edward
Gorey), sought after for talks on design - he at last owned
all of Corvo's first editions. Parts of his private Corvo
collection, the largest in the world, including letters,
manuscripts, drawings, paintings, photographs, ephemera and
memorabilia, were exhibited in London, Iowa and Detroit.
Through his Corvo mania he helped found the Book Club of
Detroit and was its president and editor of its newsletter.
Donald Weeks was born in Detroit in 1921. A very private
person, who never mentioned religion, he came from a
Lutheran churchgoing family. Johann Himmler, his maternal
grandfather, was the first Lutheran lay preacher in
Michigan. His mother, Helen, was a charter member of the
Iroquois Avenue Christ Lutheran Church in Indian Village,
Detroit. His father, an infantryman in the First World War,
may have died before he was born.
"I did not decide on art as a vocation," he said. "It just
seemed to be the only thing for me to follow." In his
primary and intermediate school Donald won awards for
posters; then his talents were moulded in the Art Department
of Cass Technical High School, where he specialised in
industrial design. While his love of movies, vocal music and
theatre flourished, he was voted by the teachers as having
the worst handwriting in the school.
His letters in adulthood, in swooping exotic vigorous
script, were almost unreadable (not helped by his being
blinded in one eye after meningitis over 20 years ago), but
letters were his natural way to communicate with everyone -
quirky, abounding with titbits of knowledge, literary
revelations, sketches of characters around London and with
newspaper cuttings appended. At least one page would so
vividly describe his dodgy health that one dreaded seeing
him, but he always looked the same. His smooth unlined face
reflected his unforced energy for intellectual and sensual
life. After four decades he knew the London streets,
bookshops and cafés better than some black cabbies.
On graduating from high school Weeks won a scholarship to
the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, to
study fine art and design. One of his many exhibited
paintings was, according to the academy's painting
instructor, "as good as anything by George Grosz" (an idol
of Weeks's). He acquired a taste for ballet, and food.
Prompted by the violin maker Elmer Williams, his interest in
literary books may have been for content only but "I have
been aware of beauty in many things including the beauty of
books" must also account for his insatiable hoarding of
them.
Jobs included making floor plans and designs for bars. A
better offer came from the Government Ordnance Department's
headquarters in Fort Wayne, Detroit, where he worked as an
architectural designer for equipment and made plans for
Ordnance and Quartermaster warehouses right across the
United States. He also did page layouts and mechanical
illustrations for a book for the Ordnance Department. During
the war he was shipped to Hawaii, where he was attached to
Regimental Intelligence to work on maps. At the same time he
produced mechanical drawings and posters for the medics. In
New Guinea, still with Intelligence, he also drew a cartoon
strip for a locally mimeographed newspaper, and drawings for
a book on jungle warfare.
Then, mysteriously, while landing in the Philippines, he
received a head injury. After an operation to remove a bone
splinter from the base of his skull he did not remember a
thing. The army gave him no information about what happened.
Eventually released from a hospital in Memphis, Tennessee,
he came home to Detroit and began freelance art and
lettering, attending evening classes on lithography.
After the Second World War Weeks became associated with a
young people's group at church and worked with it for
several years on many projects, including annual plays in
which he used all his artistic skills. He even acted, doing
monologues, at times serving as toastmaster. It may have
been at this time he became a Sunday School teacher.
Abandoning freelancing, Weeks worked for several
publications before joining Friends in 1953.
Once in England, for many years he researched for Gale
Publishing. He wrote pamphlets on the popular German
illustrator Heinrich Kley (on whom he was an expert: The
Drawings of Kley, 1968) and T.E. Lawrence (T.E. Lawrence: an
hitherto unknown biographical/bibliographical note, 1983:
dedicated to his friend the writer and broadcaster, and
former bookseller, Iain Sinclair). Bram Stoker was one of
the various writers he collected. He published about a dozen
monographs on aspects of Corvo's life, most of which were
printed by the Tragara Press in Edinburgh. All are avidly
collected today.
Weeks continued to collect books and ephemera all of his
life and to do freelance illustrations. Sir Shane Leslie,
foremost preserver of Rolfe's name and works, was well
acquainted with him and Cecil Woolf, co-editor of Corvo's
centenary Letters (1959) and centenary essays Corvo,
1860-1960 (1961), became a good friend after they met in
1960 and visited Venice together. He was friendly with Harry
Pirie-Gordon and Sir Harry Luke, both of whom had known
Corvo. He also corresponded with Sir Harry's son Peter Luke,
who adapted Corvo's Hadrian the Seventh into a successful
stage play.
In London Donald Weeks found the freedom to be a loner who
could without hurting anyone compartmentalise his friends,
create his parallel worlds, become the oldest Nirvana fan.
In a résumé of his creative life up to 1965, he wrote, "To
end, let me say that I am no one, nor do I have anything.
There are so many people that need so much."
He died on 7 September, of natural causes, in North
Middlesex Hospital. Because, however, he left no will nor
details of next of kin, he was officially classed as a
missing person. He was "no one".
Such are British data protection laws, it took me from 7
October, when I did not receive a birthday card from him,
until two days before Christmas to discover he was dead. His
GP gave me three telephone numbers. One was the police
missing persons unit. The next was the woman who had made
the search for his will; who said Weeks had been cremated
and the landlord would probably dump his belongings. The
third was the hospital morgue. "Yes, Donald Weeks is here.
Do you want to see him?" They said they would let me know
the date of his contract funeral. (They didn't.)
Concerned about his rare-book collection, I informed the
American Embassy - Weeks was an American citizen. They
immediately liaised with HM Treasury and things began to
move. A London bookseller who stored some of Weeks's books
found his cousin, who had not seen him for 50 years, during
a visit to the US. The US Embassy now have Donald Weeks's
rare books and the Treasury are appointing a solicitor.
By law his friends could not pay for a proper funeral. The
contract funeral went ahead this week.
Bo Maggs
Bob Champ
lucked out wonderfully in his biography. It could be that the
biography will outlive its subject.
For more information on both, you might try:
http://www.bellonatimes.com/search.cgi?Baron+Corvo
Bob Champ
"Hyfler/Rosner" <rel...@rcn.com> wrote in message news:<403425f8$0$3069$61fe...@news.rcn.com>...
Bill Schenley
Again ... Odd, that you would type the above ... after
writing:
"The fact is that there are a number
of left-wing bullies, often most
profane, on this newsgroup."
FROM:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=9d079b90.0402111029.210cc288%40posting.google.com
... and without ever understanding how "profane" *you* are.
Bob Champ
calling Corvo a fairy that you find objectionable. I assure you that
it was done with a kind of affection. I don't think Corvo would have
disapproved entirely. True, he considered all his troubles in life to
have emanated from being homosexual in a society that didn't exactly
smile on homosexual activity, but I don't think he was without a sense
of humor.
Besides there have been some wonderful fairies in both literature and
life: Puck was a fairy, so were Ariel and Oberon and Titania; so were
Oscar Wilde and Andre Gide. It's an extraordinary line.
Bob Champ
"Bill Schenley" <stra...@ma.rr.com> wrote in message news:<VQP_b.7296$OE4....@fe1.columbus.rr.com>...