Recycling

The two books mentioned at reference 1 are now back in the recycling system, having been lightly read by myself and slightly less lightly read by BH.

Both books were rather chatty memoirs involving a lot of name dropping, variations on Osbert Sitwell's theme, also discovered at Raynes Park and figuring in the string of posts at reference 2. There must be someone in the Raynes Park catchment area who likes this sort of thing, or maybe was in and his heirs are getting rid of it all.

The first, the one from the Boot's (Boots'?) Library was by one Henry J. Greenwall and consisted of exactly 200 pages of anecdotes about Maxim's in Paris (not counting the xix pages of preface numbered in lower case latin). A right den of iniquity, much favoured by the rich and famous of the English speaking world. Also much favoured by the demi-mondaines and worse who made a good living grazing on same. Quite entertaining, a sort of thinking persons' version of TitBits or the News of the World.

I offer by way of example Margeurite Steinheil (illustrated), most famous for a President of France, Felix Faure, once dying in her arms, but also famous for skirting the guillotine in the course of what had been thought to be a complicated crime of passion. After having been the toast of Maxim's for many years, she ended up keeping a boarding house in Hove.

The second, a little more literary in tone, was by one James Lees-Milne, who, after Eton and Oxford and during the closing years of the second world war, having been (it seems) invalided out of the army, was something in the embryo of the National Trust we know and love now. His work seemed to consist in cruising around properties in the country being offered to the Trust and making assessments of their worthiness, both from the point of view of likely footfall (to use the modern jargon) and from that of the money which came with them. Lots of gossip about the people in and around such places. I suppose that after the depredations of death duties, at the time not that long invented, and after those of the military being billeted in them for the duration, there were plenty on the market. Of interest to anyone who spends quality time with the Trust, be that as a volunteer or as a common or garden punter.

Lees-Milne's father was something in trade in Worcestershire, so not to be confused with Sitwell who was a proper aristocrat, the 17th something of something, or something. Probably an ancestor of a companion of the Conqueror, one of the happy few (sic). And rich in old money, having had the good fortune to hold land which had been turned into coal mines during the industrial revolution. And before that some of it had been spoiled for normal agricultural use by the Romans and their lead mines. It seems that such spoiling is more more or less for ever - a rather different sort of evidence of which is to be found in the many small spoil heaps, all over the Lake District. Not all daffodils at all.

PS: with thanks to murderpedia for the illustration. Google offers plenty more.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/endellions.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=sitwell.