What do you think that:
- Mr. W. Newman, of 4 Dalhuusil Square, Calcutta, India,
- the Bengal United Service Club Library, and
- Mr. Herbert C. Fyfe, author of Submarine Warfare,
have in common with yours truly and the Opportunity Shop, Morrinsville, New Zealand?
I'll tell you:
A
book was bought by Mr. W. Newman, of Calcutta, which was then purchased
from him by the Bengal United Service Club Library in August 1902. I
found it in the Opportunity Shop in Morrinsville in 1999.
Apart
from its loose stitching and some pages tending to crack and break if
not carefully handled, it has survived remarkably well, even to the
Bengal United Service Club Library label on the back cover, which
states:
'Members may keep the book for thirty days and are reminded that unless books taken out by them are entered as "returned" in the book kept for that purpose, they remain responsible for them'.
The last issue
label of September, 1916, pasted inside, records just one issue, 22
March 1917. It was returned on 8 September 1944, and with no evidence
that the book was 'Withdrawn' from the library, prompts the question:
Where had it been during its twenty-seven years’ absence?
Published
in London in 1902, with its 50 illustrations and readable text,
'Submarine Warfare', by Herbert C Fyfe, is an absorbing read. What
intrigues me most about my Opportunity Shop find is the identity of the
member who, in 1917 took out P 99, as the book is designated. Why wasn't
it returned by the due date? Some call to active service perhaps, or
dare I suggest, the strangling rope of a thug, devotee of the Indian god
Kali, still active in some areas?
And after all
that, how did it come to be in the Morrinsville Opportunity Shop, 55
years after it was returned to the place of issue?
I say! Damned perplexing! What?!
(Any ideas?)
Dennis Crompton © 1999
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)
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