Odyssey of a Barbarian

Found in a Penguin Odyssey translated by the classical scholar Dr E. V. Rieu a typed signed letter from the novelist, playwright and the biographer of Aleister Crowley John Symonds to Dr Rieu. EVR’s reply is witty and good-natured…

Methuen and Co., Ltd.

36 Essex Street, London W.C.2

22nd September 1961

Dear Sir,

Some years ago I bought your version of THE ODYSSEY and THE ILIAD, and put them on a shelf beside my bed, intending one night to begin reading them, and thus fill a literary gap. And there they remained until the month when I took down THE ODYSSEY removed the paper wrapper, felt the fine blue cloth binding, gazed at the clear print and began reading.

Splendid and immortal yarn! But what a barbarian Odysseus is! He is like a comic-strip superman of the Daily Mirror. And then I came to Book XXII which you describe in your introduction as “the magnificent climax”. What is magnificent about it? The cruelty of Odysseus appalled me. Merciless butcher, without charity! He won’t even spare the tearful women. The horrors described on page 324 made me feel sick and I flung the book into the fireplace.

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Professor Louisa Stanley—pioneer of healthy US diets

Found in the fascinating El Mundo archive is this intriguing photo of Dr Louisa Stanley( 1883 – 1954), pioneer of practical home economics, shown standing in front of the Good Housekeeping home which was one of the twelve Homes of Tomorrow exhibited at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago.

At the time Stanley, as Bureau head of Home Economics, was the highest paid woman in the United States Department of Agriculture, where her brief was to improve the diets of ordinary Americans. Unlike the TV chefs of today, she came to the important issues of well-balanced diets and a healthy lifestyle, from the standpoint of a chemist. The nearest we have had to such a celebrity nutritionist was the seventies TV guru Dr Magnus Pyke—he of the waving arms and rapid fire delivery—but at the moment Jamie ‘The Naked Chef’ Oliver is doing something similarly serious to change our attitude towards dangerously fattening carbohydrates, notably sugar..

Back in 1930s America, sugar was not denounced as public enemy number one, and Stanley saw it as part of a well balanced diet. There is even a photo of her judging a pie competition. But she did champion the benefits of healthy home cooking based on sound nutrition. One of the issues she promoted was the canning of home-grown vegetables.The health benefits of soya beans was something else she supported. Much of her promotional work was mediated through radio broadcasts.

In the photo the lettering on the large cards displayed inside the four rooms of the Good Housekeeping Home is too small to read easily, but we can just make out a statement to the effect that a ‘well balanced diet’ is the key to safeguarding health. In another room the same family appear to be engaged in some communal activity (possibly listening to the radio), while behind them on the wall is that hardy perennial of the statistician, the pie chart, which though invented in 1801, wasn’t really used until 1858.

Louise Stanley went on to become a sort of national treasure in the United States. In 1940 she became the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate and in 1961 a building at her alma mater, the University of Missouri, was named after her. [R.M.Healey]

Miguel de Unamuno on Fuerteventura

unamuno Found in Essays and soliloquies by Miguel de Unamuno (London: Harrap 1924) this preface written on the windswept Spanish island of Furteventura. The island is now mainly a holiday destination, although there is an impressive statue of Unamuno by the main road and also a life size statue of him on a side street. Unamuno was exiled to Fuerteventura in 1924 by the Spanish Government for his political ideas. His friend J.E. Crawford Flitch visited him there and prepared (and translated) this selection.

Author’s preface

I am writing these lines, today the 6th of June, 1924, in this island of Fuerteventura, an island that is propitious to calm thinking and to a laying bare of the soul, even as this parched land is bare, bare even to the bone. Here I have been confined now for nearly three months, no reason for my confined having been given other than the arbitrary mandate of the military power that is de-civilising and debasing my native country.

Hither came my friend Mr. J. E. Crawford Flitch to bear me company. He was entrusted by Mr. Alfred A. Knopf with the task of making an anthology or florilegium of my shorter articles and extracts from my more extensive writings which should present a conspectus of my whole literary work. It is he, my friend and translator, who is responsible for the selection of the pieces which form this anthology…

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Vera Wainwright, poem on Powys

An excerpt from a signed typed letter addressed to the feminist bookseller and Powys specialist, Joan Stevens from Phil Coram (among other things the bibliographer of Hugo Manning.)

Vera Wainwright… have you heard of her Joan? She met the Powys family in 1927 and was “greatly enriched by this meeting”… a curious tie-up here… she was published in COMMENT, the very magazine which Hugo had such difficulty in getting hold of. She was also a good friend of Victor Neuburg and Austin Osman Spare… both of whom were involved with Aleister Crowley. In fact I have a copy of POEMS & MASK by Vera Wainwright which is illustrated by Austin O. Spare (and not published till 1968… 13 years after Spare’s death). These illustrations, as far as I know, are not published in any of Spare’s other books. The thing which may be of interest to you however is the first poem in the collection… at the risk of copyright here goes…

For John Cowper Powys

The sad sea shell that murmurs all the day

Its memories faint; the lost, abandoned stone;

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Jane Grigson at 27—-a lost etching

Grigson Jane etching 1955 001 Arguably one of the two greatest twentieth century English writers on food (the other being Elizabeth David), Jane Grigson ( 1928 – 1990) was the subject of this intriguing etching by the artist Jack Daniel, who knew her in the early fifties when she was living in west London as a young picture researcher working for the publisher George Rainbird.

The etching, which is signed by Daniel and dated retrospectively ‘1955’ was given to me by the artist when I met him about 20 years ago at his home. I was researching the life of Jane’s husband, the poet and critic Geoffrey Grigson, and had somehow discovered Daniel’s address. I found him very friendly and forthcoming about Jane and Geoffrey, whom she had met while he was editing the encyclopaedia People, Places, Things and Ideas for George Rainbird. He was particularly informative about their early relationship (they met when Geoffrey was already married) and just before I left, he sought out one of his portfolios and fished out this etching. It must have meant much to him, considering he had kept it for over forty years.

I seem to recall that Daniel shared part of the house with Jane, who is depicted working at a table in her flat, next to a window through which can be seen the rooftops and chimney pots of neighbouring houses. She seems to be writing something—probably nothing to do with gastronomy, for she had yet to specialise in this field. Indeed, it was a chance meeting with an archaeologist living in one of the cave houses at Troo, on the Loir near Vendome, that propelled her into this new career. She took over his research and the book which resulted from it was published in 1966 as the famous Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery. With this her future was assured. [R.M.Healey]

A Club for Millionaires

Illustration by Dudley Hardy

Found in The Idler Magazine (Chatto & Windus, 1892. Volume 1, February to July. pp 109-110) this piece by regular contributor Barry Pain. The Idler was edited by Robert Barr and Jerome K Jerome. It ran from 1892-1911.

Over the years, the roster of writers who contributed to various issues was impressive: O. Henry, Mark Twain, Conan Doyle, Eden Phillpotts, Marie Corelli, Barry Pain, Israel Zangwill, Grant Allen, W. W. Jacobs, and Robert Louis Stevenson. At a single sitting, the pages took the reader from travel adventures to cultural appreciations of events in the home island nation. “The Idler‘s Club” was a standard feature of most issues. Various writers sketched out opinions in ironic and exaggerated language. This piece was found there. It was Barry Pain’s second idea in this issue – his first was that amateur dramatics would be much improved if performed in total darkness and thus they would also be able to avoid paying a licence fee…His idea for a club follows:

Barry Payn (sic) sympathises with the millionaires.

Idlera My second proposal is to establish a club for millionaires. We see suffering all around us, and it is useless to close our eyes to it. There are millionaires in our midst; and, whether we like it or not, they are out brothers and sisters. Putting it on grounds which will appeal to everyone – I mean the lowest possible grounds – we cannot afford to miss an opportunity of making a little out of them. If we explore the region of the docks, we find separate homes there for sailors of every nationality; there is even a home for lost dogs. But nowhere do we find a home for millionaires. I propose to establish a proprietary club for them, a little room with a sanded floor, where they will find that absence of luxury which they must miss so much. They will be able to get a chop or steak they; wine will not be served, but a boy will fetch them beer if they feel that they don’t want it; a large cup of cocoa will be one penny, and a small one will be half-a-crown.

I have forgotten my reason for that last regulation, but I remember that it was logical. One of the cheaper evening papers will be taken, and members of the club can have it in turn; or, if they prefer it, they can do without it. I have no wish to limit their liberty more than is absolutely necessary for their own discomfort. Everything that can done to make the place nasty will be done. I intend, for the protection of the general public, to make the club exclusive. Only millionaires will be eligible. There will be an entrance fee of a thousand guineas and an annual subscription of one hundred. The subscription, together with a statement of the place of their birth, if any, must be forwarded in advance to the proprietor. I shall be the proprietor myself. I have other proposals to make, but these are enough for the present. I may have occasion to refer to the subject again, but I make no threats.

The 25 Favourite Sinatra Songs

Found among Peter Haining’s papers a typed sheet, possibly from a 1980 newspaper article, listing the results of a poll of Frank Sinatra’s most loved songs. It is possible he was planning a book on Sinatra…

The 25 Favourite Sinatra Songs

In 1980, Frank’s public relations firm, Solters and Roskin, conducted a poll to establish the singer’s most popular recordings. A total of 7600 fans from more than 11 counters were polled, and replies came from Britain, Canada, Australia, America, Japan, Brazil, France, Sweden, West Germany, Holland as well as various other place. In all 587 individual Sinatra titles were selected by fans, but the eventual winner proved to be a 25 years old recording, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” with words and music by Cole Porter, released by Capitol in 1956! (Note; It has been suggested that the number 3 song on the list given as “Chicago” should, in fact, be “My Kind of Town”.)

The list, with dates of recording, is as follows:

1. I’ve Got You Under My Skin (January 26, 1956)

2. The Lady is a Tramp (November 26, 1956)

3. Chicago (August 13, 1957)

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Sir Frederick Treves on the smell of Nice

Found in The Riviera of the Corniche Road (Cassell, London 1921) by Sir Frederick Treves (1853 – 1923) this description of the old town part of Nice. Treves, of course, is well known as a prominent British surgeon and for his friendship with Joseph Merrick, “the Elephant Man”. He was also a distinguished writer on travel, as well as surgery. In 1906 he had written on Dorset, the county of his birth, in the Highways and Byways series. He is particularly good on the smell of the old town. Odours are often neglected by travel writers. Does the area still smell the same?

The old town of Nice is small and well circumscribed. It occupies a damp and dingy corner at the foot of the Castle Hill. It seems as if it had been pushed into this corner by the over-assertive new town. Its lanes are so compressed and its houses, by comparison, so tall that it gives the idea of having been squeezed and one may imagine that with a little more force the houses on the two sides of a street would touch. It is traversed from end to end by an alley called the Rue Droite.
This was the Oxford Street of the ancient city. A series of narrower lanes cross the Rue Droite ; those on one side mount uphill towards the castle rock, those on the other incline towards the river.

The lanes are dark, dirty and dissolute-looking. The town is such a one as Gustave Dore loved to depict or such as would be fitting to the tales of Rabelais. One hardly expects to find it peopled by modern mechanics, tram conductors, newspaper boys and honest housewives; nor do electric lights seem to be in keeping with the place. Its furtive ways would be better suited to men in cloaks and slouched hats…

The only thing that has not changed is the smell. It may be fainter than it was, but it must be centuries old. It is a complex smell ” a mingling of cheese and stale wine, of salt fish and bad health, a mouldy and melancholy smell that is hard to bear even though it be so very old. The ancient practice of throwing all refuse into the street has drawbacks, but it at least lacks the insincere delicacy of the modern dustbin…

From any one of the windows may protrude a mattress ” like a white or red tongue “..

George Bernard Shaw saws wood

Found – a sepia photo of George Bernard Shaw sawing wood. The photo measures 8 inches by 6 and on the back is written “GBS 88th birthday”. It was probably a press photo taken in the grounds of his garden at Ayot St Lawrence. It was 1944 and nine of his plays were staged in London during that year – he was undergoing a revival in his popularity but was concentrating mainly on journalism…He died six years later at the age of ninety-four of complications precipitated by injuries incurred by falling while pruning a tree. The hat looks Russian, possibly leather, and is rather splendid.

The pioneers who gave us the first true Copyright Act

Writers of all kinds should be grateful for the work done of their behalf by two men, the lawyer, MP, and writer, Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795 – 1854) and the Tory MP and historian Lord Mahon (1805 – 75), who were the driving forces behind the Literary Copyright Act of 1842. But this was not the first Act that granted authors rights over their work. The first to do so became law in 1709. Up to this time copyright was restricted to booksellers who, as publishers, would buy up all rights from authors for a fixed sum. The 1709 Act first made it legal to anyone to own a copyright—even authors, although it gave them a meagre fourteen years. A further Act of 1790 extended this period to 28 years. Although this was an improvement, it still meant that a young writer like Dickens, whose Pickwick Papers was dedicated to Talfourd in 1837, could not expect to profit from his early works beyond his mid fifties. It is probable that his friendship with the novelist prompted Talfourd to pursue legislation that would benefit writers like him and to this end he presented an initial version of the 1842 bill to Parliament in 1837.

This bill failed, but Talfourd remained determined. Further bills were presented and at last, in 1842, the Literary Copyright Act became law. This extended copyright to the life of the author plus seven years, and where copyright already existed in a work under earlier legislation, it was to be extended to that provided by the new Act. The Act was further amended in 1911 and several times since.

So here is a rather rare item –a letter from Lord Mahon to T. N. Talfourd written six years before the famous Act was passed. Although the issue of copyright is not mentioned in the letter, the contents do suggest that the two men, who shared literary interests, were on friendly terms. Talfourd had sought election to the Athenaeum, a prestigious London club which numbered many writers, artists and scientists among its members. He was unsuccessful on this occasion, not because, as Mahon explains, the committee doubted Talfourd’s ‘eminent qualification ‘, but because there were insufficient committee members present to vote.

Although Talfourd’s literary career was unremarkable, he became a guiding presence on the Bench and died at the comparatively early age of 59 while delivering judgement in court. [R.M.Healey]

The Evil Girls behind the Teddy Gangs

Apparently, there are now academic papers on the ‘Teddy Girls’ of the late 1950s. One paper submitted by a woman from a liberal arts college in the middle of the Canadian grain belt defines Teddy Boys and Girls as ‘passionate spectators of urban life who incorporated aspects of the Baudelarian dandy with a more vigorous embodied relationship to the city.’ Or not…

Anyway, forget Baudelaire; here is a real story of one of these Teddy Girls, plucked from the ever-giving Peter Haining archive. It’s a contemporary account that appeared in the sensationalist weekly ‘ Fling ‘ c 1959 by a self-confessed ‘moll’ who calls herself ‘ Mary Grange ‘ and who entitles her salutary story ‘ I was a Gang Queen ‘.

Mary Grange isn’t my real name. I’m twenty, but I’ve got to conceal my identity to escape from my past—-an ugly, shameful past which landed me in a magistrates court and might have sent my friends to Borstal.

To-day you might meet me while making your holiday arrangements. I work as a receptionist in a travel agency. It you’re a man, you’ll admire my long dark hair, blue eyes and model-girl figure. You’ll classify me as pretty, eager, hardworking and full of fun.

Power

BUT ONLY A FEW MONTHS AGO I WAS A GANGSTER QUEEN

I was boss of ten Teddy Boys. I saw myself as one of those women you read about in books, whose beauty casts a spell over the men around her. I loved exerting my power. I loved excitement and adventure.

I used to “dare” the boys to steal gifts for me, just for the thrill of it.

First it was bottles of gin, then dresses, then the week’s taking from a shop till.

At the time they seemed like daring games. Now I see them as the stupid, criminal antics they were.

Warning

Why, you’ll ask, am I reviving a past that’s best buried and forgotten? Because I want to warn others against the pitfalls which put my name on police records.

I can’t plead the excuse of a slum home, a pavement playground. I live in what you might call a “select neighbourhood” in the suburbs of a large town in the north of England.

“Fadeless Sundour”

Found on the dust jacket of a Collins 1939 edition of Alice in Wonderland  this notice:

This book is bound in fadeless Sundour cloth, which can be lightly rubbed with a sponge when soiled, with perfect safety.

The cloth has hardly faded in its 77 year life and does not need sponging. The Sundour company is still going (in Warrington, Lancs) but now deals almost exclusively with curtains. Its involvement with book cloth seems to have ceased in the 1940s. There is very little online about this and Sundour’s fadeless cloth is mostly mentioned in the more meticulous used bookseller’s lists…

How to become a female home decorator c 1930

Devoted Jot101 followers will perhaps recall a previous jot of about a year ago which featured some unusual photographs of three ‘ women home decorators’ going about their work inside a what appeared to be a Georgian town house. The snaps, which appear to date from the late twenties or very early thirties, were attached to a short handwritten article composed by a women of feminist sympathies outlining the rewards and pitfalls of self-employment for a woman intent upon a career as a decorator. It is not known whether the article was ever published—possibly not, as the manuscript was recovered from an archive of various material. Anyway, here is the article in full.

Home Decoration as a Career.

‘House Decorations is a most enthralling & interesting business, but let no-one imagine it is not a very serious undertaking.

Its aims are artistic, its ideas are artistic, but in the carrying out of these ideas stern business ability is required and no-one need undertake it who does not realise this.

Plain Business means incessant work, physical and mental control, knowledge of men & things, and insight into the character of others.

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Miseries of Twenty First Century Life – Travelling

Miseries of Twenty First Century Life (inspired by James Beresford’s 1806 masterpiece).

Miseries of Travelling.

Arriving at Middlesborough station and finding your way somehow to your B & B in some godawful back street, you are show to your room but after unpacking your suitcase, find that a mini-monsoon has prevented you from leaving your room in search of a pub, and with the town centre over a mile away. The TV doesn’t seem to be working, you can’t get a signal on your mobile , so for entertainment you first inspect the walls for perhaps an old steel engraving of a local beauty spot or two and find instead a reproduction of a rural scene by Helen Allingham and a daub of a cat by a girl aged 8; you then turn in desperation to a couple of shelves opposite the bed and find a Goss china souvenir of Harrogate, a lamp made out of a Chianti bottle, a pottery frog and a leaping dolphin hand crafted from grey resin. You look among some likely looking books and find nothing but three scruffy paperbacks of James Herbert, a mint copy of The Maid of Buttermere by Melvyn Bragg, a slimmer’s cookbook with an introduction by Gloria Hunniford, four Joanna Trollopes, two chicklit novels by women called Charlotte Gibbons and Vicki Manderson, an Argos catalogue of 2003, a battered poetry anthology by C Day Lewis, an odd volume of the works of Walter Scott, undated but c 1880, the autobiography of Alan Shearer, a paperback of popular astrology by Dale Winton, a local bus timetable dated 1985, a 1970s guide to Athens and an old copy of This England with several pages missing… [R.M.Healey]

Private Eye & ‘The New Satire’ 1963

Found in the short-lived early 1960s London cultural magazine Axle Quarterly (Spring 1963) in their column of complaints , rants and broadsides (‘Axle grindings’) this mild attack on the British satirical magazine Private Eye (still going strong with a circulation of 225,000). Axle is almost forgotten, it is occasionally seen being traded for modest sums on eBay, abebooks etc., It survived for 4 issues – contributors included Gavin Millar, Paul R. Joyce, David Benedictus, Michael Wolfers, Paul Overy, Roger Beardwood, Mark Beeson, Ray Gosling, Simon Raven, Tony Tanner, Richard Boston, Melvyn Bragg and Yvor Winters. This piece was anonymous.

Millions can’t be wrong aided by The Observer’s unerring flair for pursuing fads of its own creation, Private Eye’s achievement of a 65,000 circulation in just over a year is an interesting phenomenon. This is a figure comparable to that which, say, The Spectator has had to build up gradually over many decades. That Was The Week That Was has been even more successful. It is estimated that it is watched by approximately 11 and a half million people, or nearly a quarter of the population.

First of all why has Private Eye been so successful? It’s easy to read, of course, or rather, easy to skip through. Few read the extended written pieces like Mr. Logue’s boring True Stories. And what most people do read requires about as much effort as a Daily Express cartoon. It’s funnier, and cleverer, and more sophisticated, but all it demands is that one has skimmed the headlines and watched TV occasionally. It doesn’t require any mental effort to take it in (although it may stimulate it).

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‘Good to look at, but bad to live in’— rural slums in 1934

Today, most rural slums have either fallen into ruin or been gentrified by second home owners. In the thirties, however, some of the terrible privations characteristic of the urban slums described by George Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier , were equally true of many rural slums. In an article entitled ‘Clean Up Our Country Slums’ in the April 6^th 1934 issue of the news weekly Everyman, Orwell’s contemporary, the journalist Hamilton Fyfe (1869 – 1951), who was also a man of the Left, went behind the façade of a pretty country cottage inhabited by some agricultural tenants and was shocked to find damp walls, cracked plaster, peeling wallpaper and a shared sink.

‘All their water they have to fetch in pails from a farm a couple of hundred yards away. They have no drainage, no light, no indoor sanitation ( as the house agents delicately put it); they enjoy none of the amenities that so may of us consider absolute necessities of life. And these cottage are not exceptional, They are typical of the homes in which our country folk mostly live…I could take you to a house where in two small rooms father, mother, grown-up son and four children ( thirteen to nine) sleep. I could show you rows of houses on the outskirts of little towns, where except for the fresher air, conditions are every bit as bad as in the black spots of London, Liverpool or Glasgow’

According to Fyfe, two Acts of Parliament:

‘make it possible for owners of cottages to borrow money on easy terms so that they may “ reconstruct and improve” their property, put in water supply, baths, light and more wholesome sanitary arrangements. Owners have been very slow, however, in asking for loans. The truth is that the farmer was badly stung over the purchase of his farm from the local viscount and is really not able to spend money on repairs. And he owes his bank so much that he shrinks from the idea of borrowing and more. The right solution, the only solution I can see, is that the community should take over the cottages and make them fir to live in. But most councils are as unwilling as most individuals to take advantage of the Acts of Parliament.

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Catch-phrases – interjections and rejoinders

41n7A6ZEwCL This is a list sent in by a nameless jotter. It is by no means exhaustive. It had no notes but each well worn phrase has been used as banter- a rejoinder or an amusing interruption in a conversation or during an anecdote or monologue. Almost all use irony, sarcasm or mild mockery and are cliches – but they could possibly still incite mirth if the timing was right. Thumping cliches have asterisks. I’ll get my coat.

I am now off on a bike to the Bodleian to consult Partridge’s 1977 Dictionary of Catch Phrases in manuscript (as you do). It will be interesting to see how many of these he recorded. Most are site specific but fairly obviously so – for example if someone is going on about a politician – how he should be incarcerated, hung drawn and quartered etc., you might say “tell us how you really feel..”

Amen to that!

And this affects me how?

And you know this it how?

Are you nuts?

As it were (after an unintended pun)

As the Bishop said to the actress (archaic)

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A Parisian Aladdin’s Cave of Children’s Books

Found in a small magazine/ booklet published in Edinburgh 1953.
– COLLECTORS ITEMS A BIBLIO-TYPOGRAPHICAL MISCELLANY (No. 2, Vol. 1) this piece on Gumuchian – a collector and dealer in children’s books (now a hot collecting area.) His book Les Livres de L’Enfance (Paris, 1930) is still in print (Holland Press modern reprint, right.) Originals are seldom under 1000 euros.

A Parisian Aladdin’s Cave of Children Books

Short and bearded, and somewhat like Tolous-Lautrec in appearance, Victor Gumuchian was one of the great booksellers of the past fifty years. Gumuchian will probably be known for posterity by his immense two volume catalogue of children’s books, “Les Livres de l’Enfance de XVe au XIXe Siecle,” which he published in 1930. But apart from hi knowledge of juvenile literature, he was a great authority on old buildings and books relating to flying and locomotion. He was a man He was a man of erudition, wide knowledge and versatility. A great traveller and linguist, as well as a writer and dramatist, he was also gourmet and a cook of rare quality. He knew where the best food could be eaten in Paris, or, in fact, anywhere in France.

How well I remember my first visit to his bookshop in the Rue Richelieu in Paris. A small window, with perhaps a dozen or two rare books on show; inside, a somewhat dull room, lined with glass covered book shelves full of uncommon and interesting books of all centres. At the end of the room was a small door through which he took me, up a dark winding staircase, such as is only possible in Paris, to a door in the first floor. This he unlocked, and switched on the electric light… I was in an Aladdin’s Cave! There were three rooms, leading one into the other, with thousands of children’s books, all in perfect condition, arranged to show the beautiful points of as many as possible, whether an illustration, a binding, or a page of superb typography. These books were the fruit of his three years’ collecting, and the basis of his great catalogue. I was dumbfounded at what I saw. I had never seen, nor shall I ever see again, such a galaxy of treasures: all so beautifully arranged and delighted displayed. From that moment I became, not an enthusiast, but a fanatic – and have remained so to this day.

M. Gumuchian died in America in 1949, after a series of great misfortunes and after a long illness that caused him much suffering.

A rare friend whom I can never forget.