As you can see, it is fatal getting out the garden loungers as the minute you leave them, Someone Else takes over! That's Alfie on the left and Ghengis on the right.
In the flurry that was August and early September, I put on one side a little keepsake/autograph/friendship book which I bought at the car boot sale at Burnham-on-Sea when we were on holiday. I bought it to enjoy and then rehome at a Fair. On the title page, which sadly was stuck together and has just had to be prised apart, is a dedication: "To Dear Eileen, Sept. 28th 1910, I.O.W. " I imagine it was a birthday gift. It is written in a beautiful hand - in a style very reminicent of American handwriting today, which I find intriguing. It continues with a Christmas dedication from Percy V Sims, dated 28th December 1910:
"Love for those who love you
for those who know you true
for the heaven that smiles above you
for the good that you can do."
Next page:
"As some rare perfume on a vase of clay
Pervades it with a fragrance not its own,
So, when Thou dwelled in a mortal soul,
All Heaven's own sweetness seems around it thrown."
Philip H Brown
It continues:
"Never tell evil of a man if you do not know it for certainty. Then ask yourself why should I tell it.
Always seek the good that is in people, and leave the bad to Him who made mankind and knows how to rub off the corners." Goethe's mother.
Emmie Lamboll 25.5.11.
Politeness is like an air cushion. There may be nothing solid in it, but it eases the jolt wonderfully. E.L.
"Never a cloud o'er hung the day
And flung its shadow down
But on its heaven-side gleamed some ray
Forming a sunshine crown."
F Lamboll
May 25 1911
How we have moved on - I can't imagine such homilies being written in a "friendship book" today - I can't really imagine anyone giving a child friendship or autograph book come to that. I will share some more of this before I take it out to sell.
I wonder if I still have an autograph book somewhere. They were all the rage at school in the late 60's. All I can remember is
ReplyDelete2Ys U R
2Ys U B
I C U R
2Ys 4 Me !
What a lovely find BB. Nice to think that it has survived all these years - I am sure the people concerned originally would be amazed if they could realise that the words have gone all round the world in the blink of an eye.
ReplyDeleteSue - love it! I had an old autograph book and I remember my dad drawing a chimney and putting underneath it: "My sign - Smokey" (we had a grey cat of that name).
ReplyDeleteI've been looking up the people who signed it Pat. Lamboll is an unusual name and I found it centred on Surrey - there were folk signing the book from Guildford and Haslemere, so no surprise there. An artist too - Marjorie L Knapp Fisher was married to Architect and Artist Arthur Bedford Knapp fisher, born Kensington, and there were others signing with addresses in Kensington.
I still have the autograph book I had as a teenager and which holds signatures of a lot of my class mates. But you have a lovely find there. pp
ReplyDeleteI've seen the autograph book which my mother had in her high school days [late 1930s] it was full of such sentiments, apparently very familiar in the day. The equivalent in my teens was to carry around a copy of the school 'yearbook' asking friends to sign beneath their school portrait.
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