Laudator Temporis Acti

From Michael Hendry:

I'm surprised your post on A.S.F. Gow doesn't mention:

1. his editions of Theocritus (2 volumes), Machon, and (with D. L. Page) Hellenistic Epigrams and The Garland of Philip (2 volumes each), all far more important than the papers you list, and

2. that he is one of the prime suspects for the 'Fifth Man' and ringleader of the Cambridge spy ring (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2220794/Orwells-Eton-tutor-named-Fifth-Man-art-critic-reveals-Andrew-Gow-Cambridge-Five-spymaster.html).

From Eric Thomson:

Two more snippets on Gow:

'Andrew Gow, a classical scholar in the Housman tradition, was a friend to numbers of undergraduates, particularly if they were interested in painting. His colleague, Gaillard Lapsley, the American-born medieval historian, asked Gow to look at a painting by Allan Ramsay he had bought and waited on tenterhooks for the connoisseur's judgement. 'Not a very good Allan Ramsay, is it?' Pause. 'But then Allan Ramsay wasn't a very good painter, was he?' Noel Annan, The Dons: Mentors, Eccentrics and Geniuses (London, HarperCollins, 1999) p. 85.

On being presented as a very old man with Housman's three-volume Classical Papers by the editors (who'd done it all behind his back):

'So, a time having been arranged, we visited him in his rooms in Trinity. After pausing to admire his collection of impressionist paintings on the walls of his outer room, we found him in his sitting room, muffled up, in a bathchair. Burbidge [from the CUP] handed him the three volumes. He turned the pages slowly, and at length looked up and said 'Within the limits of my disapproval I congratulate you.' J. Diggle, 'Housman's Cap and Pen' (in A.E. Housman: Classical Scholar).

A timely reminder there that for the infirm curmudgeon the bathchair must always be the conveyance of choice. Let the rest of humanity go to hell in a handcart.

From Neil O'Sullivan:

Amongst my books I have a translation of Burckhardt's classic Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy which has Gow's bookplate (a very chaste one too - really just a label) and the following inscription:

To A.S.F. Gow
from C.H.K.M.
In memory of his Art Lectures, & the 4 members of C.H.K.M.'s House in his C1 Division.
Eton: Dec. 1917

Those more versed in these things may be able to explain the initials.

A scan is attached.

(Click image to enlarge.)

From Ian Jackson:

C.H.K.M. is Sir Clarence Henry Kennett Marten (1872-1948), Provost of Eton, but at the time of the inscription a mere history tutor at Eton. There's even a Wikipedia entry for him. Gow's books were bought by Brill, who then still had an antiquarian department (closed about ten years ago) and who sold them (through an intermediary) to Waseda University Library in Japan. Obviously this is a stray.

According to Paul Naiditch: 'The Library of A.E. Housman' in his Additional Problems in the Life and Writings of A.E. Housman (Los Angeles, 2005), pp.113-25 (at 113-4), originally published as the first of 'Three Notes on A.E. Housman's Library' in Housman Society Journal volume 11 (1985) pp.33-53:

Laurence [Housman] ... allowed A.S.F. Gow to choose for himself such classical volumes [from the library of A.E. Housman] as he desired, and Gow selected at least 137 titles (359 volumes or fascicles). To the great majority of these books, Gow added a commemorative bookplate. When early in 1978 Gow himself died, most of his classical library, including nearly all of this group, came into the possession of E.J. Brill Ltd., Leiden. Gow's group was kept almost entirely intact. In 1979, Brill's announced their acquisition of the books and produced an informal listing of the library (11p.) [Brill's Cat. 504, March 1979]...[S]ome materials were withdrawn or excluded from the listing...Waseda University, Tokyo, obtained the great bulk of the Gow collection by way of a Japanese bookselling firm, Kinokuniya. At Waseda, staff prepared a catalogue of the books that were purchased ... The format of this catalogue however, though it allowed ordinary bibliographical information, did not permit citation of provenance. Consequently, Housman's name is not attached to any of the volumes from his library (Gow Bunko mokuroku, Tokyo, s.a. 164 p.)

For Gow's commemorative bookplate see: http://www.wul.waseda.ac.jp/Libraries/fumi/28/28-16.html: