Stewards at the Coronation of King George VI & Queen Elizabeth 1937

Found - a mimeographed 4 page typed set of instructions for stewards at the royal ceremony. It reveals the amount of detail and planning that goes into these occasions. It was found slipped into a book on George VI and must have belonged to a former steward. The mention at the end of fatigue and strain for this voluntary job is interesting. Stewards had to be at the stands at 5 a.m. wearing (in most cases) morning dress or uniform. Some were required even earlier. Still, refreshments came from Mecca Cafes Ltd (to be paid for by guests and stewards) and there were cigarettes, chocolates and sandwiches circulated by workers bearing trays. A phone service had also been specially installed...

The Coronation of Their Majesties King George VI.

and Queen Elizabeth.

Wednesday, 12th May, 1937

Instructions to Stewards.

1. Stand Stewards.

Each stand will be under the control of a Stand Steward, whose name will be indicated on the Steward’s pass. Stewards will report to the Stand Steward on arrival, will accept orders from him without reservation and will remain on duty until permission to leave is given by him.

2. Time of Attendance.

Stewards will be required to be at their stand, the number of which is indicated on the back of the pass, not later than 5 a.m. and should make themselves conversant with the general traffic facilities in order to ensure their attendance by this time. A certain number of Stewards on each stand may be required by the Stand Steward to be present at an earlier hour.

It is anticipated that in spite of the later hour of arrival which has been prescribed by the Police for seatholders, a large number will present themselves at the stands at a very early hour, and in order that congestion by seatholders and members of the public at the entrances to stands may be avoided it is considered necessary to arrange for Stewards to be present at that time indicated.

3. Opening of Stands.

Each stand will be in the charge of an Office of Works’ nightwatchman

Cafe Bizarre - Beatnik club

Found- a rare piece of Beatnik ephemera, a card from New York's Cafe Bizarre with the phone numbers and name of Rick Allmen who started the club in 1957. The Cafe Bizarre was one of the better known clubs to capitalise on the beatnik phenomenon, and the venue for many counterculture poets and musicians of the period. Musitron Records even recorded an album of Beat festivities at Cafe Bizarre in the late '50s. (In the post-beatnik-era Andy Warhol discovered The Velvet Underground there.) Another band who played there was the Lovin' Spoonful who described the place as a 'little dump' (1965 -post its Beatnik Glory).They played 3 gigs a night and were paid with tuna fish sandwiches, ice cream and occasionally peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. More can be found at Rock and Roll Roadmaps.

A rare souvenir of London’s Great Wheel

The Great Wheel, which was built for the Empire of India exhibition at Earl’s Court in 1895, and was the ‘London Eye’ of its time, is pretty well documented. Postcards showing various aspects of it can be had quite easily, as can medallions, which were struck periodically throughout its career, right up to 1907, when it was demolished. But what we have here is something quite rare—on a number of levels. Firstly, it is a large photographic image of the wheel—four times the size of a postcard—which was mounted on board and sold –presumably to be framed and hung—by the famous  commercial printers of posters, stamps and banknotes, Waterlow and Sons Ltd. And there on the lower right hand corner is the signature of the Wheel’s ‘constructor ‘ Walter B Basset ‘, which may be original, but could equally be a facsimile. Lastly, we can date the photograph because it depicts the Wheel looming above the temporary constructions in painted wood and ironwork—some especially imported from India-- that comprised the Exhibition, which was the brainchild of Imre Kiralfy, a producer of burlesques and spectacles.

Interestingly, in the background can be glimpsed  the warehouses that stored the forage for the horses that transported goods of London largest department store, Whiteleys,

Francine Saigon parodist of Francoise Sagan

Found  - a Keystone file photo from March 9th 1963 of 16 year old  novelist Felicity Moxton. Her book Bonsoir Maitresse: a novel (Pavilion Publications, London 1963) was a parody of Francoise Sagan's bestselling 1954 novel Bonjour Tristesse. It is quite rare but looks like this (the design very much like Francoise Sagan's French paperbacks):-

The back of the press photo reads:

Only 16 years old… is the young English writer Felicity Moxton and in a short time her first book will be to get in all book-shops. Felicity is the daughter of a writer in London. Her first book has the title 'Bonsoir Maitresse' and her pseudonym is 'Francine Saigon'.

A rare British Museum Library ticket

There are plenty of biographical anecdotes concerning the experiences of writers using the facilities of the old British Museum Library —from Washington Irving through Karl Marx up to David Lodge and beyond. When the famous round Reading Room was built many incorporated into their fiction memories of studying there. However, we have little idea today of the process by which books were ordered in the very early years of the Library.

So when an actual ordering slip from this period turns up —and one signed by a well known author—it is a rare event. Surely such ephemera are scarcer even than Shillibeer omnibus tickets and must rank among other celebrity souvenirs, such as non-presented cheques signed by Hollywood film stars and the like.

This particular ordering slip was made out by the poet Thomas Campbell (1777 – 1844), whose Pleasures of Hope  was a minor success in 1799, and who remained a well known, though hardly revered, figure of the Romantic period. The book he ordered was The History of Edward the Second by Sir Francis Hubert, which first appeared in 1629. We know the book was asked for on August 23rd , but with no year date present we must examine the style of the vestigial remnant of the printed part of the form and guess that the order was made sometime between 1803, when Campbell settled in London, and 1819, when he brought out his Specimens of the British Poets.

Anonymous book donor revealed

Found in a collection of ephemera this intriguing typed letter from the long vanished New York bookshop Tessaro's. The shop was in Maiden Lane which appears to have been a kind of bookseller's row. The address later housed a rare bookshop called Sabin's. Tessaro's was formerly called Rohde and Haskins who had dabbled in publishing at the dawn of the 20th century.

The letter deals with a request for the identity of the anonymous donor of a book from the recipient - a nurse (presumably) at The General Hospital at Fox Hills.  The shop decided ('we'll take a chance') to reveal the donor's identity. Significantly he was a soldier, as Fox Hills was a very large Army hospital dealing at that time with WW1 casualties. There the story ends. It would be nice to add 'and reader she married him.' The bookshop as go-between must be uncommon and in our cautious times it might not reveal the donor, or possibly send on the request to the donor for permission…

Dear Madam 
Acknowledging receipt of your note of 28th July we would say we do not know that the sender of the book desired it to be known who sent it, but we'll take a chance and say to you, in confidence, that it was mailed to you on the order of Lieut. G.C. Anderson.
Yours very truly,
TESSARO'S

Fox Hill Nursing Staff (1921) from
Advance Archive Photos (many thanks)

Library Lists

 A piece of pre-Amazonian technology for ordering books from libraries, a rare, ephemeral survival probably from the 1930s...  An attractive little booklet with a carbon at the rear for keeping duplicates of 'library lists'. Inside are the following instructions--

 These lists are made up from Literary Supplements, Publishers Lists of new books, reviews and books recommended by friends.

 The list is torn out at perforation and sent to Library.

 The carbon copy is retained as a check on the books received.

 The carbon copy also becomes a useful record of books read, books to be recommended to friends, and a reminder of the works of Authors you have read. 

Norman Lindsay Does Not Care - an Outburst

A pamphlet found in a Fanfrolico Press book The Antichrist of Nietzsche illustrated by Australian artist Norman Lindsay. Printed about 1927 it is by his great champion P.R. Stephensen who was a friend of Lindsay's son Jack. Stephensen (1901-1965) was known as 'Inky' and was a curious figure, starter of many presses including Mandrake and something of a left wing firebrand who moved to the far right in his middle years. Here he is in his late twenties ranting in full épater le bourgeois mode:

Norman Lindsay Does Not Care
An Outburst
by
P. R. Stephensen

Fanfrolico Pamphlets No. I
Price One Farthing

Why should Norman Lindsay care if suburbia shudders with a horror which is really terror of his stark and ruthless presentation of the image of beauty? Nothing else could be expected, for at this level criticism remains atavistically moral, tribal; and any artist making a vital expression is likely to be regarded as a spawn of Satan, Antichrist, lewd and wicked, abhorrent to all Right-Thinking People. Norman Lindsay does not care how loudly the Good People howl for his suppression. But the Official Art Mob (or Mobs) also dislike him, with the intensity of a fascination which repels as it attracts. And as these quite sophisticated persons officially disown Suburbia, it is difficult for them to damn the man in Suburbia’s phrasing. Yet they must do something about it,

Salvage (1942)

A piece of  ephemera from Dad's Army days in Kent during WW2 (1942). A sheet of mimeographed paper typed both sides from the Tenterden 'Salvage Officer,' one G.D. Forder. Possibly such leaflets were from a national template, although no record of this leaflet is forthcoming. Bones were much wanted (even if gnawed by a dog) - these could be used in making glycerine (for high explosives) also candles and soap.
 Salvage has now become recycling and generally they don't refuse bones but no longer solicit them.

Tenterden Rural District Council

Hillside
5 East Hill
Tenterden Kent.
6th May, 1942.

G. D. Forder,
Salvage
Officer.

Dear Sir or Madam,

Salvage.

Salvage is vitally important.
Shipping is limited an many supplies formally drawn from the Far East and other countries have been cut off. So we must utilise to the utmost every bit of material which can possibly be got at home.

Local Authorities everywhere have been urged to arrange for its collection. Their resources of man power and equipment are fully taxed, and other overtaxed, and need to be supplemented by voluntary help.

Materials.

The things most urgently needed are waste-paper and cardboard, metal of all kins, bones, rags and rubber.

A Ship's Library - Kinfauns Castle

Kinfauns Castle
(Ship's Nostalgia site)

Found - a list of the entire inventory of a ship's library - Donald Currie & Co's Royal Mail Steamer "Kinfauns Castle"(South African Service). An interesting list, possibly intended to be comprehensive. There is a curious amount of William Black, then at his height, a sort of Victorian Dan Brown (so popular that in America his works were bootlegged.) Likewise there are 3 works of Norman Macleod, editor of the immensely successful Good Words and now so forgotten than he is not even known for being forgotten - although Sutherland covers him well in The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction. He is  part of a slight Scottish bias to these books (the list was printed by David Bryce & Son, Glasgow.) There is little for children, not many thrillers and not a lot of humour, although Twain and Brett Harte both make the list. Conspicuous by their absence are Trollope, Gibbon, Poe, Milton, Fielding, Wilkie Collins, Swinburne and R.L. Stevenson. Children had to make do with Froggy's Little Brother and possibly German Popular Stories. There is very little religion and no Holy Bible, possibly shipping magnate Donald Currie thought there was enough of that on land or that most people would have a bible if they needed one. The Kinfauns Castle started sailing in 1879 and this is probably from early in its life (it seems to have still been afloat in the late 1920s.) The list was pasted into book 10 Carlyle's Heroes and Hero Worship, attractively bound in full green leather lettered gilt at the spine with the words 'Castle Packets' at the foot -possible all the  library was bound thus..



South African Service

Catalogue of Library 
Donald Currie & co.'s Royal Mail Steamer
"Kinfauns Castle".






A. Becket's Comic History of England, 132.
Adventures of Verdant Green, 165.
Aylwards' The Transvaal of Today, 131.
Baker's Eight Years in Ceylon, 96.
- Nile Tributaries, Abyssinia, 97.
Ballantyne's Lighthouse, 87.
- Erling the Bold, 88.
- Lifeboat, 89.
- Six Months at the Cape, 90.
Black's Green Pastures and Piccadilly, 91. 
- Madcap Violet, 92.
- Adventures of Phaeton, 93.

A request from the Archbishop…

Found by relentless jotter RR, this rare manuscript scrap from his collection.

The Archbishop of Canterbury believes that Mr Brodie left a prescription yesterday at Mr Godfrey’s shop directing a medicine to be prepared for ye Archbishop’s use. If so, Mr Godfrey will please to send it by ye Servant who delivereth this note.

Lambeth Palace Nov: 27th 1827

RR writes:- The Archbishop in question was Charles Manner-Sutton—by all accounts a rather conservative prelate who led the Church for 23 years at a time of great social and political upheaval. As someone who claimed direct descent from King Edward III, and therefore from William the Conqueror, it has been said that he is arguably the most aristocratic of England’s Archbishops of Canterbury, and therefore quite likely the sort of posh cleric who might use a word like ‘delivereth ‘in a letter to a tradesman. However, an analysis of the handwriting suggests  that he would have dictated his request to a flunkey.

At the time, the Archbishop’s health was not good and he died eight months later, in July 1828 aged 73.

Note: written requests for medicine from Archbishops of Canterbury to ordinary shopkeepers  are extremely rare.

Japanese Rupees in Burma 1944

Fell out of a book - this curious souvenir of what is now known as The Burma Campaign - which raged from 1941 to 1945 with the Japanese in the ascendant much of this time. The tide was turned (with heavy losses on both sides) in early 1945 and Mountbatten staged an elaborate victory parade, at which he took the salute in Rangoon on 15 June of that year. This took place despite the fact that thousands of Japanese were still fighting hard behind British lines - as they tried desperately to escape across the Sittang river into Thailand, losing heavily as they went. This 100 Rupee note printed by the Japanese was issued under their 'puppet government' lead by Dr Ba Maw in early 1944.

Life and death in a Georgian workhouse ( A real life Mr. Bumble)

Here is a letter picked up years ago in London among a box of ephemera. It is undated, though the watermark is 1821. It is addressed to ‘Mr or Mrs Peacock’:

Mrs Kennion is quite surprised that Mr Peacock should have sent this poor boy to work. He was certainly very ill & ought to be in bed & have medical advice immediately. Mrs K will call at the workhouse about 1 o’clock & hopes that Mr Peacock will have sent for the Parish doctor before that time,that she may hear what he thinks of the child. Mrs K has sent him to Dr Sympson & Mr Richardson, but they are both from home.
Friday. 

A bit of Googling revealed that the action took place in Harrogate, then just beginning on its journey to becoming the most select watering place in the north of England.  In June 1822 Henry  Peacock, formerly the master of Aldborough and Boroughbridge workhouse,  arrived, with his wife Elizabeth, as the master of Harrogate’s workhouse in Starbeck. Evidently aiming to make an impression with the employers by saving money, the couple soon managed to reduce the average cost of keeping a pauper by establishing what was basically a vegetarian diet.

Snapshot of W.E. Gladstone

Found - a snapshot of W.E. Gladstone (1809 - 1898) the original 'Grand Old Man' (G.O.M.) at his country seat Hawarden Castle.  He was Prime Minister 4 times, resigning finally at the age of 84. At the time of this shot (1877) he was out of office. Written on the back of the photo (found in a book by  W.N.P. Barbellion) is 'Gladstone Centenary, December 29th 1909' (crossed out). Unique photo of late Rt. Hon. W.E. Gladstone taken at Hawarden in 1877.' Under this is a stamp 'E.J. Lavell 115 Bedford Hill, Balham S.W.' This is presumably the shop that processed the photo. An online image search reveals another fuller shot (on flickr) from the same session  revealing that the implement to his right is an axe and showing his straw boater on the ground beside him. There is  a note stating that he was relaxing after chopping wood.

The Worst Government for 100 years?

This rant on Harold Wilson's Labour Government came from the Wells (Somerset) Conservative Association. It was a one page flyer printed in blue ink and had first appeared in The Daily Telegraph. Anthony Lejeune, a highly competent journalist and author is not gifted with a Wikipedia page but there are traces of his career from a search on the site. He wrote a history of London clubs and has written about Arthur Machen and Fr. Brocard Sewell. He has written about Ernest Bramah in The Tablet which may mean he is a Catholic and almost certainly a book collector…the piece (very slightly  truncated) is very much of its time (circa 1966). Politicians are no longer condemned for wearing the wrong clothes at parties.

The Worst Government for 100 years? by Anthony Lejeune.
Do you remember George Brown on television, flanked by leaders of industry and the trade unions, flourishing his fatuous Declaration of Intent? Do you remember the commentators solemnly telling us that this marked a watershed in the history of British industrial relations? And do you remember any of those commentators apologising to us since for having been taken in by so naive a piece of nonsense? I don't.

Do you remember the National Plan?
I got into trouble with the BBC for treating it, the week it was published, with the disrespect which it soon proved to deserve. I'm still waiting for an apology or even an admission that I was right.

From Private Eye

Have we heard an apology from those who scoffed at predictions that a Socialist Government would mean big tax increases and that "voluntary" wage restraint would soon be followed by compulsory wage restraint? Have we, indeed, heard many apologies from the middle-class voters who argued blandly that a spell of Labour Government would "do no harm"?

We have not. All these people seem as reluctant to admit they were wrong as Mr Wilson himself.

But there is surely cause for apology. The plethora of troubles and distances into which we have been plunged since that black Election Day in the autumn of 1964 ought not to have taken any intelligent person by surprise. They were fully predictable and were, in fact, fully predicted.

The Laying of the Atlantic Cable (1866) in verse

This scrap of doggerel, found among a collection of holograph letters, has no name attached. It is bad enough to be by William McGonagall, the second worst poet who ever lived (the first being Amanda Ros), but is dated at around 1866, which must surely be too early for him.

Hark ? that noise, what meaning that Gun
The Great Eastern has arrived, the Goal is won
All the world must now precedence yield
To the Proprietors Glass, Canning and Field
For the (longest) Rope is made & successfully ran
That ever was made by the Hands of Man
To Capt. Anderson & all his officers too
For their strict perseverance all Credit is due
Likewise, all on board did as far as they were able
Every assistance render to lay our Glorious Atlantic Cable.

The first transatlantic telegraph cable manufactured by Glass and associates was laid in 1858 from Western Ireland to Heart’s Content, Newfoundland, with Cyrus Field as entrepreneur.  Unfortunately, the poor quality of the cable meant that it functioned well for only a few weeks

Lament for a Country Vet

Yoxford Church

Found - amongst a collection of Suffolk ephemera - this one page poem about a late lamented vet who died in the year of the Titanic and, according to records, was born in 1847. Little is known about him, but the poet W. S. Montgomery, the 'Blind Organ Grinder of Westleton' appears to have been an itinerant local poet and some of his poems and a short note* about him can be found in Barrett Jenkins book from the 1990s - A Selection of Ghost Stories, Smuggling Stories & Poems Connected with Southwold.

In loving memory of Edgar Willmott Wright, M.R.C.V.S.
For many years Veterinary Surgeon at Yoxford,
Died Friday, July 26th, 1912.

Interred at Yoxford Cemetery, Monday, July 29th.

We have lost our old Veterinary Doctor,
He has passed o'er the boundary of life,
Free from his pain and his suffering,
Gone from all sorrow and strife.
His form and his voice we'll remember,
For he spoke with no uncertain sound,
And many there'll be who will miss him,
All over the country side round.

Many years he has practiced amongst us,
Not a cleverer veterinary here,
So prompt to attend to each summons,
Let the call come from far or from near.
And for miles round they'd send for our Doctor,
No matter whatever the cost,
For his skill was well known with the horses,
He so seldom an animal lost.

A real match for the Axis

Found, if I recall, among bric-a-brac, in a job lot at an auction in the east of England, is this ‘striking’ packet of matches, only three of which have been used. As there are a number of US air bases in this part of the world, it may have once belonged to an airman who eventually settled here. Presumably, the date of manufacture by The Match Corporation of America in Chicago would be sometime between 1941 and 1945 and it is certainly possible that the US Air Force brought over to England large numbers of such packets for the use of their staff.

Advertising propaganda urging patriots to buy War Bonds dates back to the First World War, but I haven’t yet discovered any satirical British advertising on everyday objects, such as matches or cigarette packets, that dates from a hundred years ago . If any Jot 101 readers know of some, we would welcome further information. [RMH]

An Alice B Toklas memento (age 8)

Found - a rare piece of ephemera from the very earliest years of the life of the writer (and cook) Alice B.Toklas. A gilt edged and gold printed card, found in San Francisco from where her American family came. This is an invitation to her grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary at Kempen (Prussia) in Poland. Her grandfather was Simon Wolff Toklass born in  1814 in Kepno, Poznan, Wielkopolskie, Poland and her grandmother born a year later in the same town was Amalie Gnadenfeld. Their son, Ferdinand Toklass, born 1845 in Kepno was by 1880 living at 1880 922 O'Farrell St, San Francisco, California, USA and seems to have dropped one of the s's from his name. He had married one Emma Levinsky in the early 1870s and they had a son (Clarence) in 1872 and a daughter Alice Babette Toklas on 30 April 1877 in San Francisco. The father working for a relation, Max Toklas, as a bookkeeper at Brown & Co, clothing manufacturers of 24 Sansome St, San Francisco. The trip to Poland is mentioned in Linda Simon's well named The Biography of Alice B. Toklas (University of Nebraska 1991.)

Early in 1885, Emma and Ferdinand departed for New York with their eight-year-old daughter, en route to Poland for the Golden wedding anniversary of Ferdinand's parents…they landed in Hamburg…[and] went on to Kempen where the Toklas family was gathered for the celebration. Alice found her grandmother tall, elegant, and poised, and her grandfather quiet and gentle, despite family stories of his escapades in Paris uprisings in 1848.

Linda Simon writes of Alice's grandfather that '…after his escapades on the barricades he was forced home to Poland' where he painted and 'contented himself with excessive patriotic doggerel'- so writing was in the blood.

Margaret Mackenzies Tea Rooms in Florence

Found in a Tauchnitz edition of Barry Pain's Stories in Grey (Leipzig 1912) this bookmark advertising an English tea room in Florence at 5 Piazza Strozzi. It served 'Light Luncheons, Home Made Bread' with 'Best Teas on sale as used in Tea Room.' It also provided  English and American newspapers, a telephone and 'Writing Tables for use of customers' and may have flourished around 1920. The internet shows no trace of Miss Mackenzie's possibly short lived enterprise. Contemporary Baedeker's may mention it...The only clue is that the address was slightly later that of a publisher T de Marinis & Co who in 1925 published a book of  reproductions of illuminated manuscripts with English text. It was published jointly  with Bernard Quaritch of London.