Raynes Park

Today saw our return to the platform library at Raynes Park Station, after what seems like a long absence over the various summer breaks. I was thinking we might pick up some of the glossy magazines they often carry from the drinks business (references 1 and 2), but instead of that, it looked as if someone had been clearing out an attic.

So clockwise from top right.

Reference 3. A slim book, first published in 1941 and in its nineteenth edition by 1943, written by Alice Duer Miller, a lady of the United States with a fine pedigree, who studied mathematics and also wrote. A book which, it seems, after a slow start, made a big impression in the US when it was published, a time when plenty of people in the US were not keen on getting involved in another war in Europe. A book which appears, on the basis of a very quick look, to be an extended poem, framed by a (first) war time romance, about what a wonderful place Great Britain was. Illustrated with lots of sketches by Hilda Austin and Leonard Cotterill, illustrators of that time with some web presence now.

Plenty of them available from Abebooks.

Reference 5. Another slim book, from ten years later. A short history of Whitbread and beer. Nicely illustrated with a range of engravings, paintings and photographs, some in colour. At one time, Whitbread was getting a lot of stick from beeries for gobbling up lots of provincial brewers, while I used to rather like their Trophy bitters, alleged to be rebadged versions of said provincial beers. I shall read this little book with interest.

In the meantime, I note that Chiswell Street, off the bottom of Whitecross Street, noticed in these pages mainly for the fine bacon sandwiches to be had there, was an important part of the Whitbread world. A place which I felt sure I had noticed in the margins of my visits to St. Luke's, but inspection of the archive reduces this to references 11 and 12. Not to be confused with the Truman brewery in nearby Brick Lane, now also some combination of business venue and visitor attraction.

A book which was once the property of the Seafarers' Education Service of Balham which appears to have provided books for small libraries on merchant vessels. One can read all about them at reference 6.

Reference 7. A regular book, with boards and 369 pages. Lots about General Gordon, but nothing about the provenance of the book itself. Given as a prize to John Jakeman in 1907 for regularity at Chipping Norton British School. According to Bing: 'The British School was built on New Street in 1854 and subsequently renamed Chipping Norton Council School and Chipping Norton Infants' School', with lots of records being held by the Oxfordshire History Centre.

In gmaps, New Street, off one end of the High Street, looks to contain a wide range of property, some quite old, but nothing which was clearly a school. I did turn up a couple of Wellingtonia in the front garden of what is now a care home. Snapped above, but it did not seem right to score them.

So far I have learned from the book that General Gordon, aka Chinese Gordon, was part of the rather messy European interference in the even more messy affairs of mid 19th century China. He appeared to believe in his God-sent mission so to do. Interference which seemed to be directed at the protection of our trade there and which was based on the rivers, canals and lakes to the immediate west of Shanghai. Interference which carried on for long enough for BH's naval grandfather to serve on some kind of gunboat in the same area in the first part of the 20th century, that is to say after the First World War. I don't suppose either of these gentlemen pushed as far up the Yangtze as Wuhan, of Covid ill-fame.

Reference 8. A slim booklet. An improving booklet, mainly about design in the home, showcasing the work in that department of the Nordic countries. A field which I imagine was then taken by any number of much more glossy offerings to be had from the likes of W. H. Smith, now by a rather smaller number of television programmes.

There were some others, too slim to notice here. A good haul, even if the beverages failed us.

PS: a little later: as far as I can make out from references 4 and 9 (a lengthy memoir, written by her husband a few years after his wife's death), 'The White Cliffs' is a work of fiction. I have yet to find that the author was ever in the UK. As a young married woman she was in Costa Rica and after that mostly a working writer in New York. See also reference 10, the top of which is snapped above.

References

Reference 1: https://www.thespiritsbusiness.com/.

Reference 2: https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/.

Reference 3: The White Cliffs - Alice Duer Miller - 1941.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Duer_Miller.

Reference 5: Whitbread's Brewery, incorporating 'The Brewer's Art' - Whitbread & Co - 1951. Produced by Adprint, whoever they might have been.

Reference 6: https://www.marine-society.org/history.

Reference 7: Life of General Gordon - anonymous, possibly various - before 1907. Published by Nimmo, Hay and Mitchell of Edinburgh. Listed by Project Gutenburg as No.54 in their Empire Library.

Reference 8: Design for study: Design and our homes: A book on design in the home and in the shop, raising ideas for discussion and suggestions for activities in groups and classes in the Co-operative movement - Margaret Llewellyn 1951. Produced by the Cooperative Union Ltd and the Council of Industrial Design.

Reference 9: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b106273&view=1up&seq=7.

Reference 10: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/162513/not-senseless-not-angels.

Reference 11: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/04/back-to-st-lukes.html.

Reference 12: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/trios.html.