Ben dedicated his The Last Supper from “DeCasseres Books” to Mr. Ross.
Paul Avrich’s Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America gives this brief biographical sketch of Mr. Ross:
Arthur Leonard Ross, a New York attorney, met Emma Goldman in Paris in 1924 and became her legal representative in the United States, from which she had been deported in December 1919. He helped raise money for the purchase of her cottage in St. Tropez, sent books to her for her preparation of lectures in Toronto, negotiated with Alfred Knopf for the publication of her autobiography, and helped arrange her visit to the United States in 1934. “Arthur Leonard Ross, kindest and most lavish of men,” she wrote in St. Tropez in 1931, “gave me his untiring efforts as legal representative and adviser…. He was the rare type that one gets to consider in a short time as a good friend?” Ross died in New York in the spring of 1975.
Dear Arthur,
There are only four copies of this book–probably the most restricted edition of any work.
There is an error in the copyright line. It should be 1936, there is a page missing giving an account of other books and the ??? ??? is missing.
I am retaining 3 copies for myself and present this again to you with salutations.
Yours, Ben
To Arthur Leonard Ross
from
Benjamin De Casseres
New York, 1936
Welcome to a new category of post called “Signatures and Inscriptions.” If you click on the category, you will find all post we have made so far. If you would like to contribute an interesting signature, inscription, or letter (starting soon), please contact me. There is a form on the front page: https://www.benjamindecasseres.com/
Many thanks to Robert Carmonius for this contribution and some of the further research.
This inscription found in a copy of The Superman in America, and is dated the same year of publication, 1929.
Of interest is his “Anno Volstead 9”, I hadn’t seen him do that before (or I don’t recall it either way). Year nine of prohibition.
To Al Satterthwaite
in memory of those
nights so long ago when we
used to wander under the
morning stars talking Schopen-
hauer and Saltus, rending
life and the Universe to tatters–
since which time I–they–
have never been quite well,
for did not God say to me
over the other day, “Say, Ben, you
give me a pain in my
DeCasseres!” Venerably,
Benjamin DeCasseres
1929
Anno Volstead
9.
It seems both Benjamin DeCasseres and an Albert Satterthwaite contributed to Pendant la mêlée: acrate, individualiste, éclectique (title translates as During the melee), a French individualist anarchist publication from 1915-1916. The journal was one in a series associated with Emile Armand.
November 15, 1915 , in full World War, exit the fortnightly Paris “during the melee ,” the newspaper proclaimed acrate, individualistic and eclectic. The manager is Charles Michel. From January 1916, the newspaper published in Orléans, change its name to ” beyond the fray .” The executive of a department of the newspaper then E.Armand but after the arrest of the latter in October 1917 (for desertion complicity) is Pierre Chardon who will succeed him until February 1918. The following month, the newspaper will change as for ” The Melee “. – translated by Goole from http://www.ephemanar.net/novembre15.html
This postcard with text from “Alba Satterthwaite” was found at:
http://cartoliste.ficedl.info/article2385.html?lang=fr
Ignorance in the brain, hatred in the heart, cowardice in the will, these are the crimes I impute to the idea of God and his fatal corollary: religion. — SÉBASTIEN FAURE.
The most terrible fact to the charge of Christianity is neither its intolerance, nor its tortures, nor its excommunications, nor its internal wars, nor its fatuity or falsehood, but this: it teaches man To resign himself to life, not to enjoy it, thereby depriving him of the most precious possession he has acquired by right of birth. He teaches him to be satisfied with social injustice. He taught her to tighten the other cheek and not to resist the evil. He treacherously induces him to barter the present, now, for a mythical beyond. And this is why men who are intellectually intellectually reject with sincere repugnance his theology, his dogma and his profession of faith. — ALBA SATTERTHWAITE