Navigating to Greenwich

[steepholm]

How would it have joyed brave Talbot, the terror of the French, to think that after he had lain two hundred years in his tomb, he should triumph again on the stage, and have his bones new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at least (at several times) who in the tragedian that represents his person imagine they behold him fresh bleeding.

Thus Thomas Nashe in Pierce Penniless. I feel rather the same way about my grandfather's memoir of the Destruction of the St Cuthbert. As I mentioned a little while ago, the National Maritime Museum has expressed interest in this document; and now the Archivist has recommended acceptance to the acquisitions committee. It's not a done deal yet, but it's looking very promising. I think it would have joyed my grandfather to have his memo book take its place in Greenwich.

My grandmother was apparently fairly dismissive of his literary efforts - and indeed in later years she used the back of the same memo book in order to tot up the accounts of Wrexham Golf Club - which are also, by this happenstance, quite possibly destined to become part of Our National Story. But then, my grandfather never had any literary pretensions. My mother tells me that when he was courting my grandmother in the early 1920s he used to put a row of full stops and commas at the top of his letters with the suggestion that she place them as she saw fit. I'm not sure whether that was a joke or a sincere invitation, by either way it's rather charming.

Comments

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I was going to post about Beamish Museum expressing an interest in our washing machine: but I am outclassed.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Well, I'd like to hear about it!