Books

One Morning

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As you may have gathered by now, I spend most of my time these days (though in my Oxfam ‘youth’ things were different) looking at what we call the Old and Interesting books donated to the shop.

And, as you may have gathered over the years, many of the books I look at might be old but not necessarily very interesting, but there are enough to make my Oxfam life fascinating (sometimes.)

And I’d really like to tell you about some of the more interesting. But some other time.

I could tell you of the work of many another volunteer – from those who sort, wash, iron and put online the clothes we have had donated ( yes, in despite of being a bookshop), those who then pack them up and send them off, the classical music expert already sorting out special stuff to keep back for Christmas ( yes that word is already being mentioned), the sorting out of Oxfam cards into their allotted slots in the spinner, and so much/many more.

But I don’t know what they do as well as I know what I do, so here is my Monday just as an example of what happens behind the scenes :

I arrived at 8am, wrote and distributed the weekly volunteer update – what we took last week in the shop, counting up the online sales of books, jewellery, music and the odd stuff – a pair of gold, fur-lined gloves ( in July?), the treen boot-jack with integrated boot tools which has been on sale for six months and has finally sold etc etc.

I left to do my pilates class – yes I am a Sussex housewife – and got back at about 10.15 by which time everyone had worked up their questions about what felt like a million things, queries about what to do, : 

What was happening with the table and the window, plans for the front-facer books (in case you have forgotten, these are books displayed so you can see their front covers and therefore and really, are more attractive and sell better), where to put the latest donations, and was this book especially interesting, could we have tea and coffee, and by the way did you buy some milk? etc etc.

And could I find a few very small jewellery donations which weren’t yet listed online to fill the miniature pirate cask in the window?

By the way, the window looked great thanks to someone who does a great job at making it so – with the help of the manager’s mother who has knitted rats for the pirates display….

But I needed to put not for sale stickers on the inflatable seagulls (yes seagulls and pirates of course) belonging to another volunteer and clear up some of the window display ‘leftovers’.

I found some jewellery.

Could I find some theme of books for the corner display and clear off the previous display –  in case you want to know – books about Japan and a few Japanese artefacts.

So, no I couldn’t think of anything on a theme so just brought down (from the semi-organised chaos upstairs) some lovely-looking, interesting books. 

(They sold really well and that means there were gaps, and our smart, great manager said she stood and looked at the gaps in the display the next day and tried to work out what the theme was……  today, we re-filled it with great books we had been wondering where to show them off.)

In the meantime, back in Monday, I had asked someone I knew to come in an PAT test ( proving the items are electrically safe) some model railway stuff which we have had buried behind the boxes of vinyl ( yes they have been there for, well, some months.)

(He needed coffee, space, a conversation, thanks and time to be acknowledged.)

So, I have no idea what these things are but apparently they are worth some £20 each. I also have no idea how to describe them but I will wait until next Monday when a volunteer who knows a bit about this stuff, tells me how to write them up for an Oxfam online listing.

Then two other volunteers came in and they had questions, something just to mention, tea requirements, change for the till because there were two ten pound notes – no good if someone buys a £2.49 book with (yet) another.

So, that was a trip to the bank.

And in between all that, there were donations.

Now, we have an amazing volunteer who cuts through donations like a knife through butter – everything sorted into those that need to go to ‘another’ place ( yes that is a euphemism) and those which will sell, are first editions, signed, unusual.

But there is a rule that says five minutes after he leaves, there is another arrival of donations – and they needed to be dealt with.

Suffice it to say, I was a bit tired at the end of my (extended) shift on Monday.

But in all that I found a book which has been a dandy of a research project and might be worth a good deal. 

More of that another time.

Niche Ships

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Another bit on niche books – attractive to my only Vice Admiral (and Sir) reader, I would guess.

So, if you are not into ships/boats/history/niche books, now is the time to walk away.

And after this, I maybe off to a blog on pickles – I bet you can hardly wait.

Right, now we are off to the Falklands.(Or Malvinas if you prefer.)

(Before we get onto the content, for those of us who remember bashing away on a typewriter, this little pamphlet was a trip down memory lane – obviously typeset from a typewritten ‘manuscript’ with added sketches – done by the author.

I do like a real, original typewriter typeface.

And presumably he did not print so many that he couldn’t bear the thought of changing the odd mistake by hand – see subsequent photos.)

I am guessing the author was the same John Smith who wrote a memoir called : 74 Days: An Islander’s Diary of the Falklands Occupation. ( No, that has not been donated.)

We have had got two of these pamphlets and one is signed and other has an interesting dedication but more on that later.

So, there are notes and sketches on 14 wrecks in the Falklands harbour – from Capricorn to Fennia.

And indeed the 3-mile long harbour does seem to have an abundance of wrecks.

There is a bit of history – and I have to say, well-written interesting stuff which is not inevitably the case with self-published/locally-published books…..

Back to the ships:

Here they are:

Apparently, it is indeed in the museum and …….

The Charles Cooper was built in Black Rock, Connecticut in 1856 and is the only surviving American ship of its kind in the world. It is the best surviving wooden square-rigged American merchant ship.  Built for New York’s South Street packet trade, the vessel voyaged around the world during the golden age of sail, and when it could sail no longer, became a floating warehouse for nearly a hundred years on an island off South America. The ship sailed for a decade from 1856 to 1866. It carried cotton to England, salt to India, gunpowder ingredients to the North during the Civil War, and brought European immigrants seeking economic opportunity and freedom in America. The Charles Cooper began with regular fixed schedules between New York and Antwerp. Then, with the outbreak of the Civil War, it no longer had set published departure times and instead voyaged based on spot demands from America to Europe and Asia.

So, finally to the inscription:

So, it turns out that this pamphlet was given to Martin Kine by Cosmo and Phillida Haskand. Haskard was the Governor General of the Falklands (1964-1970) and who ‘played a key role in defeating plans by Harold Wilson‘s Labour government to cede the sovereignty of the islands to Argentina. ‘

Martin was the HMS Endurance navigator, and dashing he looks too.

Jun. 06, 1968 – Press visit to H.M.S. Endurance: There was a Press visit to HMS Endurance, the Royal Navy’s new ice patrol ship, at Portsmouth Dockyard today. H.M.S. Endurance is expected to sail for the Antarctic later in the year. She will normally be deployed in the Antarctic, returning each year to the United Kingdom for maintenance and leave. In addition to providing a British naval presence in the area, she will assist the British Antarctic Survey in carrying out its scientific research programmes, and help support the permanent British stations there. HMS Endurance was recently converted for her new role at Harland and Wolff’s yard. Previously known as the Anita Dan. Her conversion has included the installation of special scientific and hydrographic equipment for her work in the Antarctic. One of the features of the ship is that it can be controlled from the crow’s next so as to give her officers view of channels through the ice.Photo shows the Navigating Officer, Lt. Martin Hines (nearest camera) and the Commanding officer, Captain Peter Buchanan seen making their way up to the crow’s nest from where the ship can be controlled. (Credit Image: © Keystone Press Agency/Keystone USA via ZUMAPRESS.com)   

Of course, of course, this was not the original HMS Endurance but a later version – originally a German ship bought by the British navy and used as an ice-breaker among other things.

But she had her place in history – she was the ship on which ‘the final surrender of the war, in the South Sandwich Islands, took place.’

Apparently she was known by her sailors as HMS Encumbrance towards the end of her life ‘due to unreliability problems.’

I have no idea why the Haskards had ‘such a memorable passage ‘ on her but it has been a memorable little find in Oxfam.

Very Niche Books

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I think I may have said before the if you wait long enough there a book on every subject under the sun will come into our Oxfam bookshop – and today we had a bit of a niche-book bonanza.

So, in case you are not clear, this is a book on the embroidery of traditional Romanian costumes, with patterns and with a Romanian text – not something we get every day in our Petersfield bookshop. (Apparently worth £50 and should you be interested, it is for sale on Oxfam online.)

This, is a record of the High Sheriffs of Gwynedd from, as it promises, from 1284 to 1993.

Not what I expected from the title – Kalendars? No I don’t know why a Kalendar is a list of High Sheriffs.

But as far as I can work out, it means a list – and in Danish it is a calendar.

Ok I should do more research but I won’t – any research welcome on a (virtual) postcard.

According to a letter inside the book the author said it was out of print pretty quickly.

But he kept ‘ a few copies’ and he gave this one to a Major Corbett, a High Sheriff in the 1990s and donator was indeed another High Sheriff 1989-1990.

No idea how, or why, it ended up with us.

There is quite a lot ( not that I have read it all) of political history as well as the list of the HS.

And finally ……

I rest my case.

Salvaged

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We get a lot of history books into the Oxfam shop, but not many written by hand.

And though perhaps not actually strictly a history book, it is a book which is a part of history.

This nicely (but now rubbed and faded on the outside,) marbled book holds a record of wartime salvage off the Sussex coast.

Before your mind wanders to a romantic story of villagers pillaging loot under the cover of darkness as the waves of the channel swish along a hidden slice of coastline, stop it.

This is a series of terse listings of what, where and who from 1943 to 1947.

Written, I am thinking, by men who were charged with creating a log to keep officialdom happy or at least undemanding, or just to have a record of what appeared on ‘their’ shores.

The title page is blank so they ignored the boxes asking who they were  – and if you read it carefully, you will see that perhaps officialdom was looking for a few more details. 

They knew what was found, where and who carried out the salvage but as to what it was worth, who was paid what as a result or who the owners were – it is all a mystery to us and perhaps them.

There is different handwriting as we move through the book and the years – some more legible and some a fraction less terse, but nowhere are we getting the backstory.

What ship shed its load of rubber? There were various amounts of rubber found at various dates, in places from ‘ bottom of sea lane, Angmering-on-Sea’ to five yards below the High Water Mark outside the Pheonix Club, Alma Hotel, Middleton-on-Sea, and one bale of unmarked rubber on the foreshore of the Craigwell Estate.

I have no idea who was filling in these entries and what official capacity they held, but we do get an idea if who was doing the salvaging.

Quite a number were Canadian soldiers – not entirely surprisingly as there were a lot in Sussex and presumably were allowed onto the fortified beach when ordinary locals weren’t.

But there were salvaging civilians including E W Morris, Lorry Driver, 50 Highfield Road, Bognor Regis.

And, Richard Davie, Police Constable, Police Cottage, East Preston, Sussex.

J O’Connell of Admiralty Road, Felpham salvaged ‘Paraffin Wax approx 150 lbs no marks.’

The names don’t repeat – with the exception of Constable Davie which might point to locals handing stuff over to him whether completely to not – so presumably these were not professional salvagers unless there was a significant number of them vying for stuff all along the Sussex coast.

I am assuming that most of what was found was flotsam (being the stuff that was not deliberately thrown overboard) as opposed to jetsam which was, you won’t be surprised to hear, was jettisoned.

And there are other more interesting finds than rubber or paraffin so, if you have the time and energy to read on.

It seems as if the entries all refer to things which ended up on the shore and indeed quite a lot is listed as being pulled above the high water mark.

But more portable stuff was ‘taken to a place of safety’ and interestingly, that place is rarely identified.

I could run away with the idea that places of safety might include shed, kitchen cupboards, or under counters but there is the official record – however thin and terse – of what arrived on land so presumably the salvagers were an honest lot.

For instance:

There are a number of dinghies, and a canoe complete with oars.

With a couple of exceptions, none of the boats had names. Perhaps that was common in the war, but where did they come from? What happened to the people in them? Why were people out in dinghies, or indeed canoes in the channel during a war?

Finally, perhaps the saddest entries are those of ships’ life rafts

Hopefully, we will find someone who wants to research/appreciate/understand this brief record of an aspect of Sussex coastal wartime history – if we do, I will let you know.

More than books

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There are all sorts of strange things donated to Oxfam bookshops and recently we seem to have had our fair share. 

I have covered this theme before but do you know what, it still keeps happening. All these were donated in the last week.

Here is a microscope, from we think, the mid to late 1800s.

Here is a box lined with what I think (but don’t know) is Japanese script/newspaper – but from what era? 

A pair of shell casings from WW1 – not trench art, just casings, presumably brought home and you have to wonder what was the story behind bringing them back.

The box was donated by a fellow volunteer who won it at an auction at the Australian High Commissioner’s event in Singapore many years ago – as you do.

He (the volunteer, not the commissioner) told me it was the box that had held the surrender papers from the Japanese navy at the end of WWII – but he was joking. 

He had no idea what/when/why it was.

I would like to know what the script says – it is the classified adds from the Tokyo Times in September 1970 or a confirmation this was owned by the under secretary to the under secretary of the Emperor sending out a secret message to Matthew Perry – the first foreigner ‘allowed” into Japan for 200 years?

So, what to do with them?

‘You can do a Japanese table display,’ said my manager.

But we would need Japanese books…

And yes, the next donation she sorted was a bag full of Japanese books – there are some book gods out there….

As for the microscope. It has no name on it so not an absolute treasure, but a volunteer who knows about cameras (close enough) was called in to check it out. 

It was probably a school microscope dating from the mid to late 1800s. Brass, solid, in a box, used and re-used by schoolboys (no doubt, no girls) and who knows whether it inspired a child into science where he (undoubtedly) did some good science work which is benefiting us today….

And, our volunteer found out one like it – for sale on E-bay. Ours has ‘ original patina’ as they say on Antiques Roadshow, but that one was all polished up.

He was sneery about the polishing and thought the original condition would please someone who wanted the original/ripe for rescue microscope –  and very sure that ours will make more than the £94 the other one went for on E-bay.

By serendipitous coincidence, we had already been gathering books to do a window on science and technology and now we have a star artefact/prop.

The microscope will be in an Oxfam window near me in the next few weeks and there will be a lot of fingers crossed hoping that a microscope restorer looking for a new project will be walking around Petersfield…….

Well, we will see and I will tell you.

In the serendipity of an Oxfam bookshop, we had already been collecting books for a window of science and technology through the ages – so the microscope will be out star (non-book) performer.

As for the shell casings.

Well they are not crafted into trench art and so our best hope is that the metal might be worth something – or/and, fingers crossed people, there is someone out there ( book-shopping in Petersfield) who wants some undecorated WW1 memorabilia.

And some William Morris Sanderson fabrics and a pair of curtains.I thought they’d gone out, in and back out of fashion, but turns out they are still worth a bit.

Arts and Crafts, I thought. 

Well, of course, I hear you saying.

But what I plan/hope/can to do with them is for another time.

Russians in America

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As I have mentioned before, ad nauseam you might think, coincidence is a major part of the enjoyment of working in an Oxfam bookshop.

These are rather esoteric coincidences, but that’s what you get sometimes so buckle up.

Someone rang to ask if we wanted some volumes published by the Haklyut Society and I said yes. 

I had seen a few before and know them to be nothing-if-not-niche history books. And worth putting online.

They came in in pristine condition and the donor admitted he had not read all of them from cover to cover.

Now, given that among the donation were three volumes of The Artic Whaling Journals of William Scoresby the Younger – I am not entirely surprised.

( Though I was surprised to note this must have been where Phillip Pullman got his name for the artic explorer Scoresby in his Northern Lights Trilogy. 

Are you keeping up?)

Now, if you were thinking, ‘Well, they’ll be sat on the shelves for a while.’ You are wrong, they had sold before I got back to the shop to take a photo for this blog and to prove I was telling the truth about them.

Anyway, there were also two volumes of Russian California.

So,

‘Sailors from the Russian Empire explored along the northern coast of California. In 1812, the Russian-American Company established a trading post and small fortification at Fort Ross on the North Coast.Fort Ross was primarily used to supply Russia’s Alaskan colonies with food supplies. The settlement did not meet much success, failing to attract settlers or establish long term trade viability, and was abandoned by 1841.’

I am not sure how you would get two volumes out of that but as the Haklyut Society publishes ‘scholarly editions of primary records of voyages and travels’ maybe there were more bored settling Russian sailors writing diaries than one might expect.

And they seem to be convinced that the Russians came earlier and left later than Wikipedia thought.

So, I can hear you asking, who was this Haklyut who inspired this society of arcane travel history books publishing society?

Well, first of all his name is pronounced Hak’loowt which I found good to know as I had been struggling with various alternatives.

No, not Dutch as you might think.

Born and bred in Herefordshire – that was a surprise (and indeed the area I grew up in, by coincidence.)

Their family taking their name from the ‘Forest of Cluid in Radnorland’ apparently.

Richard’s father was a dealer in furs and was a member of the Worshipful Company of (aptly-named) Skinners.

Richard had a good education, got ordained, was around in Elizabeth and James I’s court and the was a significant promoter of the colonisation of America and was the chief promoter of a petition for ‘letters patent’ to colonise Virginina.

So, now you are feeling a lot more educated on Haklyut than you were an hour ago. No, it is fine, don’t thank me.

Anyway, on the same day that the Haklyut books came in, our champion donations-sorter came upstairs with a map.

And there it is showing Alaska ‘owned’ by the Russians.

The map was printed in 1865, just two years before the Americans bought it for $7.2m dollars. See below.

Now I disappeared down a rabbit hole of the history of Russians in Alaska and below is a short summary of what I found out – but feel free to think that you might not need to have even a very short version of this corner of history.

By the time the sale treaty was signed, Russians had been in Alaska for 125 years.

In 1741, Vitus Bering (he of the straits fame) was spurred on/ordered by Peter The Great to find out what happened after the end of Siberia. 

One voyage failed but on the second one they found the edge of Alaska. Bering died of scurvy but his ship mates returned loaded up with skins of sea otters, foxes and seals – and whetted the fur-appetite of Russian dealers.

So, the Russians headed back to Alaska asap.

Alaska wasn’t empty of people. There were an estimated 100,000 native people living there.

There were some trading arrangements set up but relations were not great once the Russians started taking leaders’ children as hostages and using their more powerful weaponry, for example.

On the Aleutian Islands, again for example, a pre-Russian population of about 17,000 plummeted to 1,500 as a result of disease, capture or fighting.

And they brought over Russian Orthodox missionaries to do what missionaries tend to do. And, the most visible trace of the Russian colonial period in contemporary Alaska is the nearly 90 Russian Orthodox parishes with a membership of over 20,000 men, women, and children, almost exclusively indigenous people. 

In search of somewhere just a little bit more clement and less demanding that you were a very rugged man, the Russians headed south and set up a trading relationship with the Spanish and Fort Ross in 1812 – just 90 miles north of San Francisco Bay. 

Fort Ross in its early days

Russian Orthodox Church Fort Ross

But they were half a globe away from St Petersburg, it was tough, cold and 

‘By the middle of the 19th century, profits from Russia’s North American colonies were in steep decline. Competition with the British Hudson’s Bay Company had brought the sea otter to near extinction, while the population of bears, wolves, and foxes on land was also nearing depletion. Faced with the reality of periodic Native American revolts, the political ramifications of the Crimean War, and unable to fully colonise the Americas to their satisfaction, the Russians concluded that their North American colonies were too expensive to retain. Eager to release themselves of the burden, the Russians sold Fort Ross in 1842, and in 1867, after less than a month of negotiations, the United States accepted Emperor Alexander II‘s offer to sell Alaska. The purchase of Alaska for $7.2 million ended Imperial Russia’s colonial presence in the Americas.’ Wikipedia

So the wildlife and local people were killed off. And, of course, that is not just the prerogative of Russians. See also America, the British Empire and many, many others.

And one man’s ‘revolt’ is another person’s definition of fighting to reclaim their own land, customs, rights. 

The Story of Mankind

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Hendrik van Loon got sent to my house when I was languishing with Covid, bored, and couldn’t go into the Oxfam shop.

He arrived in a box with a collection of other books that I could ‘play around with.’ ( And more of the other books another day.)

And he is enchanting. Well, the book is, yet there are aspects to Hendrick’s life which have more question marks than enchantment – but more of that later.

Now, before you begin, I must warn you there is a long schlepp ahead of you. There are lots of images as well as words.

And I dedicate this blog to Mary and Bob – no they are not dead, off enjoying Irish music in the pubs of West Ireland – but they reminded me to tell some more Oxfam stories. Thank you to you both.

Just so you know:

(January 14, 1882 – March 11, 1944) Hendrick van Loon was a Dutch born historian, journalist, and children’s book author.

So, apparently this is a book he wrote for his children and ‘The Story of Mankind tells in brief chapters the history of Western civilisation, beginning with primitive man, covering the development of writing, art, and architecture, the rise of major religions, and the formation of the modern nation-state.’

The chapter on Moses comes between the chapter on the Sumerians and the Phoenicians who

He not only wrote but also illustrated this book, and isn’t this great?

This is not a short book, so Hansje and Willem must have had to have a good few nights when their dad read it to them.

But if ever there was a book written to be read out loud, this is one of them. Tell me  when you read these starter pages, you can’t hear a Dad’s voice? 

Don’t worry I am not going to go through the whole book with you, even the most loyal of readers are not going to accept a commentary on nearly 500 pages from ‘The Setting of Stage’ to ‘The New World.’ 

So, I am just going to give you some of the drawings with the occasional snippet of the words. 

Now that has to be a pre-historic marine-caterpillar dressed up as a palm tree – which is a bit of a stretch as the first movement of sea to land vegetation.

And it has guest appearances later in the story of civilisation:

Interestingly, there is little mention of dinosaurs – a paragraph or two. But I assume that it was Jurassic Park (1993 – yes that long ago) that lit the fire under (primarily) boys’ fascination with anything called something ending in ….saurus.

And there are maps which I am sure the Best Beloved, will study as he is writing his history book, meanwhile Jess has better things to do:

So, here are some of the illustrations which are nothing if not a snapshot of the subject:

and the BB would agree – blue sky and ancient monuments, what else would you need, well maybe a beach
Pretty sure this is the equivalent of a postcard….

Is it my imagination or are those trees walking quietly towards the Kremlin?

Yep that is a mountain pass

Now I am not sure of Hendrik’s views on all of the religions of the world though neither of these look altogether happy about their allotted lot:

Just mentioning the palm tree, and not entirely sure that is an authentic costume, just saying….
Moses not looking convinced

Just a quick note on Hendrik.

He wrote lots (and I mean lots) of books – check Wikipedia. 

Wikipedia also told me that Hendrik married an Eliza and had his two sons, then after leaving her ‘had two later marriages’ to another Eliza, and a Frances. Then he left Frances and went back to the second Eliza.  Keeping up?

That is quite a lot of marriage stuff to fit in between writing dozens of books on everything from The Rise of the Dutch Kingdom, followed ( inevitably) by The Fall of The Dutch Kingdom.

Multiplex man, or the Story of Survival through Invention, Life and Times ofPeter Stuyvesant (no, not the cigarette brand), and Man the Miracle Maker – all in 1928.

In case you were wondering, he was married to Frances in 1928 so either blissfully happy and creative, or hiding away in his writing room and keeping very distracted and busy.

And he had a look of what for him was the modern world:

I can’t claim I will be finding all Hendrik’s books and settling down to a decade of reading, but one I would have been interested in finding donated to the shop one day:

A World Divided is a World Lost, 1935. Could have been written in any of the last few years….

And he knew what he was talking about:

‘After having revisited Germany many times in the 1920s, he was banned from the country when the Nazis came to power. In the summer of 1938, during an extended visit to Scandinavia, van Loon met with refugees who had recently fled Nazi Germany and who gave him first-hand accounts of the terror that they had experienced.

His book Our Battle, Being One Man’s Answer to “My Battle” by Adolf Hitler (1938) earned him the respect of Franklin D Roosevelt, in whose 1940 presidential campaign he worked, calling on Americans to fight totalitarianism.’

But then I found this review and my enthusiasm has been a bit dented:

‘I was delighted to find this little booklet. Mr. Van Loon is one of my favourites. I was so excited. I wondered how he was going to deal with the title subject in such a short space – four chapters.

Well, he didn’t really. In typical Hendrik fashion he set the subject up in a simple but clever way. It took three chapters. I thought I might be going to get a proposal for tidying up the partisan-ness that we see in American government, for enjoying it and for making it work without the resorting to personal rancor, the utter refusal to listen or the telling of blatant lies. Didn’t happen! Chapter four waltzed off on to a different subject completely. I felt that the work presented in this pamphlet might have been intended as the beginning of another Van Loon book. Now that could have been fun.

Still, it is vintage Van Loon language and syntax. I love it for that. And for his illustrations!’

And this is a philosophical ending – thank you Hendrik, Bob and Mary.

A Day of Reuniting

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If you want a good Oxfam story, this is one of my better ones. 

But dear reader, there is what we called as journalists, a long dropped intro.

Which means you have to wade through some stuff before you get to the nub of the story.

Here are a few things I have said before and all of them happened today:

1)If you wait long enough there will be every printed thing/book/pamphlet turn up in your Oxfam shop – there is something printed on every topic you could ever imagine.

2)There is a good home for some special books – places they belong.

3) It is a such a buzz to pick out something dusty and strange and make 2) happen and get some money for Oxfam, and make people happy.

Well, of course not every printed item turned up today, but at the bottom of a book of not very interesting books, something really unusual turned up. 

How it turned up in an Oxfam shop in Petersfield, I will never know and sometimes as a book sorter, I really wish I could hear the story of the donation. But we very rarely do – and I mean very rarely. 

After all, someone comes in with a few boxes of books and if we are lucky we can ask them to Gift Aid them ( if they do we get 25% extra from the government on every book we sell), and they are on their way. 

Often they are bringing in books from aged/dead/going-into-a-care-home parents and really haven’t looked at what there is.

Anyway, enough delay, let me tell you what I found:

This is the particulars for a major estate sale in 1926.

Now, I couldn’t find another one for sale – which needless to say dear reader, means it is rare and a rather interesting read.

A bit of research, thanks Wikipedia, meant that I found out the estate was bought by Colonel Edward Clayton from the Wills family – indeed should that be ringing a vague bell, they were the founders of Imperial Tobacco Company and ‘in 1966 was the family with the largest number of millionaires in the British Isles, with 14 members having left fortunes in excess of one million pounds since 1910.’

In 1994 Edward’s son sold it on to Ralph and Suzanne Nicolson who now run the house as what looks like a very nice indeed holiday let. 

Clearly, a phone call needed to be made.

It turns out the family had tried to buy the a copy of the particulars but weren’t successful so they are said ‘Yes please’ to buying our donation.

Now, that is what I call a good day’s reuniting.

Books & Covers

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So, if you are still with me, lets’ go to Warren Hastings.

He who went through an impeachment trial brought on by Edmund Burke and whose biography appeared in our shop.

Malleson’s Life of Warren Hastings bound by the Relfe Brothers with a presentation binding but no presentation certificate.

If you want a translation of that paragraph let me tell you a bit more.

Usually with a binding like this, you would usually get a printed presentation certificate pasted inside with teacher handwriting saying something like ‘to George Robertson for excellent marks in history.’

Now, the Refle Brothers are really well known quality book-binders but can you find their story/history on Google? – well actually no.

No Wikipedia page – and yes I do give Jimmy Wales some money for all the use I make of his site.

So, if you look you can find books for sale with Relfe bidding and they are pricey, but you can’t find out anything about them – or at least, I haven’t yet.

The page edges are marbled and I have flicked them to see if you do that a picture appears. If that was the case we would have a while lot more money to look forward to. 

So next time you see a book in a charity shop with marbled edges, just give them a flick and happily pay the money they are asking.

Now, you often get good bindings on really boring books and I am not sure that the boy ( usually) who got it was terribly excited about reading it.

Indeed the copy we have looks pretty much unread….

But see the hand-tooled gilt and the spine bands and the original marbled insides. Nice, very nice.

Now back to Warren Hastings.

So Edmund Burke took two days to read the charges in Hastings’ impeachment. Mainly they were related to embezzlement, extortion and coercion.

The House of Commons sat for 148 days over seven years to hear this case.

In 1795 the House of Lords acquitted him and the East India Company, for whom Hastings worked, gave him a pension of £4,000 per year backdated to when he arrived back in England.

Hastings said the legal fees had pretty much bankrupted him but then he had lived in ‘considerable style’ in his London house throughout the trial……

And in 1788 he bought an estate in Gloucestershire for £54,000 had the house remodelled classical and Indian decoration, and gardens landscaped, and re-built its Norman church……not that living on lentils and no heating then. ( See also Rushi Sunak, again.)

Meanwhile, the East India Company was not just about trading.

Originally chartered as the “Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies”,the company rose to account for half of the world’s trade during the mid-1700s and early 1800s, particularly in basic commodities including cotton, silk, indigo dye, sugar, salt, spices, saltpetre, tea, and opium. 

The company also ruled the beginnings of the British Empire in India. (Wikipedia)

(Should you need to know more see my Best Beloved’s one-day-to-be-published history of Europe book.)

The EIC was either the beginnings of the glorious British Empire on which the sun never set, or the rapacious company implying all sorts of greedy, coercive, pseudo-rulers who imposed, stole, acted with impunity and had little interest in recognising they were not in charge – and indeed they became in charge.

I leave you to decide.

According to a site called History Reclaimed, ‘The impeachment of Warren Hastings was an act of imperial soul-searching unparalleled in history. Although Hastings was eventually acquitted, his trial was a warning to all future imperial proconsuls that they too could be called to account by the British Parliament. 

He was the first British Governor-General who launched India’s cultural renaissance way back in the 1780s.  Of all Britain’s imperial proconsuls, Warren Hastings was undoubtedly the most curious and learned about Indian culture and famously declared: “I love India a little more than my own country”.  

He became fluent in Bengali and had a good working knowledge of Urdu and Persian, the languages of the Mughal elite.  One of his most enlightened acts as Governor-General was to promote the founding of the Calcutta Asiatic Society in 1784.’

And, according to Wikipedia, ‘He and Robert Clive are credited with laying the foundation of the British Empire in India.

Getting a bit of an idea where Malleson is coming from.

Malleson was certainly on his side – a hagiography I would suggest but then with a Relfe binding, someone is going to buy this book because they have judged it by its cover.

More Maps

/ aspinalllucy / Leave a comment

So finally an update on the maps – yes plural – but be warned there is a wince coming on. And a long read so, as ever, brace yourself.

Just a quick re-cap. 

In our unearthing of stuff the now-resigned manager had left stuffed under, in and around the behind-the-scenes parts of our shop, we found a lovely old map of Windsor and the 25 miles around.

We were very excited about this map and why not, it is a lovely old thing.

Anyway, as part of the shop’s lucky hinterland, I have been in touch with a man who has considerable expertise himself but as well as that, has his own hinterland of experts who can tell us what we have.

(We are lucky to have him and the occasional chat about what he has been collecting, things found in junk and charity shops, and what I have brought to him – are much appreciated.)

Brace yourselves, it is not always good news.

So, if you came across a map from the 1700s, printed and then hand-coloured with the local boundaries and the size of a smallish kitchen table, you might think you were on to a good thing.

But, apparently it was worth no more than £200. Our hinterland expert found someone in his hinterland and that man knew what he was talking about.

I thought a conversation with a local auctioneer might have be coming on, but decided to list it on Oxfam online first, just to see…

Meanwhile, more unearthing found us this.

Also from the 1700s but, according to our new and excellent expert, re-backed onto so later canvas.

Now a map of the Loire is unlikely to sell in the shop. We have relatively few customers who own a second home in the area.

I will list it on Oxfam online and see what happens.

Are you ready for the wince?

OK, so the lovely, hand coloured, printed as part of George III’s demand for accurate mileage between turnpikes, showing all sorts of interesting things including ” remarkable hills” Windsor map:

I did list it on Oxfam Online for £200.

And Oxfam decided to have (another) sale. Everything listed for more than three months got reduced. 50% and then 70% and so our beautiful map went to someone for just £75.

I was gutted.

Now I should have moved it out of the listings so that the sale would pass it by and that was something I failed to do – I would also have had a lot of books too to move – books don’t sell like clothes.

(Somehow, I thought that an old map, one as lovely as our’s would be exempt from the sale algorithm but that was me being distracted and not getting to check the comms about when the sale was sorted.

There were the 14 questions other volunteers had when I started the day, and the 20 things on my list of what to do that day, and the fact we needed milk for tea and coffee that I was making for us, so I went to get it, how to get an order for stationery when I don’t have a password to get into the system because I am a volunteer and not staff, the chat someone wants about the next few window displays, emptying the indoor bins and calling Biffa again about why they haven’t emptied the outside bins, someone texting me to say they can’t make their shift, who is going to cover Saturday afternoon……….. Excuses I know, but sometimes the urgent take over from the the important.)

Many books need to sit there quietly waiting for the collector of tractor books, or old maps, or special bindings, or the small publisher from the 19th century or or or…..

Of course, maybe we would never had sold it for £200 and yes, of course £75 all adds to Oxfam’s ability to help people for whom £75 is a vast amount.

I do know that, but I still think we might have got more.

Finally, on maps we have a map of Hampshire – yes Petersfield is in Hampshire – from 1821.

So, our expert got his experts to give us a valuation, and it is not much.

Think £30.

But, I am on a roll to recover from the Windsor map and I think there might be someone walking past the shop who might be willing to pay £75 for such a lovely thing.

We will try it and see.

But before I go, a bit about this map.

So, in 1821, Bournemouth didn’t exist according to this map, but according to Wikipedia:

‘Before it was founded in 1810 by Lewis Tregonwell, the area was a deserted heathland occasionally visited by fishermen and smugglers. Initially marketed as a health resort, the town received a boost when it appeared in Augustus Granville‘s 1841 book, The Spas of England.[1] Bournemouth’s growth accelerated with the arrival of the railway, and it became a town in 1870.’

They are both interesting men – worth a bit of a look.

And West Sussex where I live looks a bit like ‘There be dragons country.’

I have to say, that the dragons round here these days probably drive 4×4 and have swingy blonde ponytails but can breathe quite a lot of fire if you don’t give them room on country lanes and immediately move your Citroen Picasso into the ditch. Just saying.

Hundreds by the way are administrative divisions –

The origin of the division of counties into hundreds is described by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as “exceedingly obscure”. It may once have referred to an area of 100 hides. (In the early Anglo-Saxon period a hide was the amount of land farmed by and required to support a peasant family, but by the eleventh century in many areas it supported four families.[1]) Alternatively the hundred may have been an area originally settled by one “hundred” men at arms, or the area liable to provide one “hundred” men under arms.[2] (Note that in earlier times the number term “hundred” can itself be unclear, meaning the “short” hundred (100) or in some contexts the long hundred of 120.) Wikipedia.

And why on earth would Odiham (pronounced Odiam, in case you are planning a visit) be the point from which all distances were measured?

Odiham is the home of the Royal Air Force Chinook heavy lift helicopter fleet and I can attest to that because they fly over us – apparently learning how to go up and over the Downs as practice for some hills elsewhere.

Maybe also taking senior military types to golf, who knows…

But I gather that Odiham was equidistance from Winchester and Windsor.

Now, Winchester has a long history of power and clergy.

I have never been to that village but what a great address that would be. ‘Yes, itchings plural and no, I don’t know what the problem was.’

And well, Windsor, need I say more.

I’ll let you know if we get the £75.