QUENTIN REYNOLDS

 Reynolds and the University of Western Ontario

     I ran across Reynolds when I was reading about Ernie Pyle, about whom I just posted. Like Pyle he was, for a portion of his career, a war correspondent and they both reported from London during the Blitz. Pyle went on to win a Pulitzer and was awarded honorary degrees from Indiana University and the University of New Mexico before he was killed in the war. Reynolds continued on as a writer and he also was awarded an honorary degree - from the University of Western Ontario. 

     An account of the conferral is provided below and within it there is an indication that the choice of Reynolds was controversial. The writer of the account (President Fox of Western) thinks that the citizens of Western Ontario were misguided in their opinion of Reynolds and suggests that some members of the UWO Senate were equally ill-informed. 

     I have no idea what would have been controversial about the choice of Reynolds to be honored by Western. At the end of the excerpt below it appears that the residents of St. Thomas, at least, were enthusiastic when Reynolds arrived there and President Fox was obviously impressed. University records and publications probably provide some answers, but they are not readily accessible, nor are the local newspapers from that time. I did find one article in the Globe and Mail, but there is no hint of any controversy. You are welcome to dig deeper.

     Twice there are mentions below of a trial involving Quentin Reynolds and Westbrook Pegler, but it was the latter who was more controversial. More information is provided.

     About a decade after the degree was granted, Mr. Reynolds was involved in a Canadian Hoax, but even that does not reflect negatively upon him. The details are provided after the Western story.

     Here it is:
     At the autumn convocation, November 26, 1943, the University conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws upon the famous United States war correspondent, Quentin Reynolds. The action had been preceded by considerable adverse criticism from citizens of Western Ontario -- an attitude that was not in accord with the high acclaim given to Quentin Reynolds in Britain, from such men as Winston Churchill and from high ranking naval officers as well as from the British public in general. Reynolds’ fearless reporting of the famous Dieppe raid and other war activities of the Allies was counted as tightening the bonds of understanding amongst the Allies and especially between Britain and the United States. Reynolds’ whole record confirms the soundness of that judgement. It was doubly confirmed by the evidence that was brought out in the famous suit for libel and slander instituted in 1949 against Westbrook Pegler and the Hearst Syndicate.
Now it will be interesting for the alumni and students of Western to know how the nomination of Quentin Reynolds for the Doctoral honour came about. Usually such nominations originate in the University Senate. In this case, however, it was the chairman of the Board of Governors, Mr. Arthur Little, who made the suggestion that Reynolds’ name be laid before the Senate. When I had succeeded in getting the Committee on Honorary Degrees to endorse Mr. Little’s suggestion, I found the same ignorance prevailing in the Senate as among the general public of Western Ontario. Thus I had considerable difficulty  in persuading the Senate to permit the Secretary of the Senate, the Registrar of the University, to offer Quentin the degree.
After several days, we received a letter of acceptance from Reynolds who asked that he be met at the Michigan Central Station in St. Thomas at a certain hour. There the Chairman of the Board and myself met him. Pending the day of his arrival (November 26, 1943) we had been deluged by requests by the people of St. Thomas to be given the opportunity to have their copies of Reynolds’ books autographed by him. So large did this company become that the gathering for the autographs was arranged for, together with a luncheon, to take place at the Air Force Station several miles south of St. Thomas (now the Ontario hospital). The proceedings were made as concise as possible. Reynolds spoke briefly about his experience at Dieppe and then the autographing fest began.
In the evening the Convocation ceremony was held in the auditorium of the H.B. Beal Technical School. It was honoured by the presence of the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, my old friend Mr. Albert Matthews, whose aide-de-camp for the occasion was his own son, General Bruce Matthews.
May I close by adding that during the several hours I had in London and St. Thomas in 1943 with Quentin Reynolds, I found him the same friendly, generous spirit that was brought out in the trial of his famous suit in 1954.
(from: Sherwood Fox of Western. Chapter XIX, “The War Years and After,” pp. 211-213).

Quentin Reynolds vs Westbrook Pegler

     Reynolds sued Pegler for libel and won, BIG. The $175,000 awarded was the largest libel judgement up to that time. See: "Quentin Reynolds Wins Libel Action: Court Awards $175,001 in Suit Against Pegler and Two Hearst Concerns," New York Times, June 29, 1954. The Supreme Court refused to review the case: "High Court Declines Pegler Trial Review," New York Times, Oct. 11, 1955. Louis Nizer defended Reynolds and wrote about the case in My Life in Court. The story of the trial later became a Broadway play and was adapted for the movies.

The Canadian Hoax

The Man Who Wouldn't Talk: The Heroic True Story of 'The Gentle Spy'

     That is the title of a book by Quentin Reynolds. The "Man Who Wouldn't Talk" was George DuPre, an Albertan who served with British Intelligence in France where he  remained silent even after being tortured by the Gestapo. He did talk a lot after the war. He talked to service clubs, business groups and toured the country with the Canadian Forestry Association where "he spoke mostly on his sensational career as a saboteur and of arranging escapes for Allied airmen." Readers Digest and Random House became interested and Reynolds wrote the book.

     The "heroic true story" turned out not to be true. No one had checked. The story had been universally accepted. About two weeks after the book was published someone who had served with DuPre showed up at the Calgary Herald and the hoax was exposed.

     Poor DuPre had just wanted to impress his wife and the small lies he told became bigger ones told to larger audiences. Apparently money was not the motive and DuPre was apologetic: "I am truly sorry that I misled Quentin Reynolds and the editor's of Reader's Digest. These men were kindness itself to me and believed in me."

     Reynold's remarked "that this may turn out to be my first novel." Bennet Cerf, the president of Random House came up with an ingenuous solution. The book was simply re-classified as "Fiction".

Sources:

   The quotations in the section about the hoax are from: "Calgarian's Spy Role Is Exposed as Big Hoax," Globe and Mail, Nov. 16, 1953 or from the very thorough account: "Story Too Good To Be True," Joseph F. Dinnen, Boston Globe, Nov. 22, 1953. 

    Here is a short review of The Man Who Wouldn't Talk written before the hoax was exposed:

KIRKUS REVIEW

"An undemonstrative narrative of a Canadian born, British agent during the war is grave rather than dashing- and tells of George Dupre, a gentle, quiet, and deeply religious man who spent more than four years along side of the French underground and endured the brutalized inquisition of the Gestapo without betraying his identity. An intensive period of training in England groomed him for the alias of Pierre Touchette, an idiot, and he returned to Touchette's native town- Torigni- as a garage helper. His imbecility of speech and gesture gave him a certain immunity from the Germans as during the years ammunition was stolen as well as cars, installations dynamited, and British pilots rescued. But aged Madame Bouvot, who worked along with him, was to use her own life as a means of taking that of several German officers; and Armand, a boy of 14, was shot by a firing squad before his eyes. During the ordeal of questioning, his nose was broken and ""reset"" twice by the same fist; boiling water was poured down his throat; and hypodermics applied the final torture from which he emerged damaged in body but unbroken in spirit. He then went to Hamburg as forced labor in a plant where they sank ""the subs before they got wet""; returned to Torigni, and finally to England where he experienced a delayed reaction to the experiences endured and witnessed..... A plain clothes, not cloak and sword, version of the foreign agent- whose survival depends on a sober, steady, precise obedience to his superiors and his orders and takes its stamina from an inner faith. The Quentin Reynolds name will help to carry this to a wide audience." Pub Date: Oct. 23rd, 1953

Post Script:
One of those odd coincidences - this article just appeared in the New York Times: "It's a Fact: Mistakes are Embarrassing the Publishing Industry," Alexandra Alter, Sept. 22, 2019.

Bibliography of Books by Quentin Reynolds

Britain Can Take It, Dutton, 1941.

The Wounded Don't Cry, Dutton, 1941.

A London Diary, Random House, 1941.

Convoy , Random House, 1942 (published in England as Don't Think It Hasn't been Fun)

American Arms, Todd, 1942.

Only the Stars are Neutral, Random House, 1942.

Dress Rehearsal: The Story of Dieppe, Random House, 1943.

The Curtain Rises, Random House, 1944.

Officially Dead: The Story of Commander C.D. Smith, Random House, 1945.

70,000 to 1: The Story of Lieutenant Gordon Manuel, Random House, 1946.

Leave It to the People, Random House, 1949.

The Wright Brothers, Pioneers of American Aviation, Random House, 1950.

Courtroom: The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz, Farrar, Straus, 1950, 

Custer's Last Stand, Random House, 1951.

The Man Who Wouldn't Talk, Random House, 1953.

I, Willie Sutton, Farrar, Straus, 1953.

The Battle of Britain (illustrated by Clayton Knight), Random House, 1953.

The Amazing Mr. Doolittle: A Biography of Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle, Appleton-Century, 1953.

The F.B.I., Random House, 1954, reprinted, 1963.

The Life of Saint Patrick, Random House, 1955.

Headquarters, Harper, 1955, reprinted, Greenwood Press, 1972 

The Fiction Factory; or, From Pulp Row to Quality Street: The Story of 100 Years of Publishing at Street & Smith, Random House, 1955.
Operation Success, Duell, Sloan, 1957.

They Fought for the Sky: The Dramatic Story of the First War in the Air, Rinehart, 1957.

Known but to God, J. Day, 1960.
Minister of Death: The Adolf Eichmann Story , Viking, 1960.

By Quentin Reynolds (autobiography), McGraw-Hill, 1963.

Winston Churchill, Random House, 1963 (published in England as All about Winston Churchill, W.H. Allen, 1964 ).

With Fire and Sword: Great War Adventures, Dial Press, 1963.

Macapagal, D. McKay, 1965.

Ernie Pyle

War Correspondent

     Although there are newspapermen with richer sounding names (Westbrook Pegler, Heywood Broun, Quentin Reynolds) the skinny Hoosier, Ernie Pyle, was the most celebrated and popular correspondent during the 30s and 40s in the U.S.  Even before he started covering the war, his columns were widely syndicated.

     It is because of the the 75th D-Day anniversary back in early June that he is being considered here. Since that time I have read much of what he wrote. There is no need for me to attempt to write an essay about him; the Wikipedia article is first-rate. I simply want to encourage you to learn more about Pyle and read some of his columns. I will provide some below which you can either read or listen to. 

    The piece that led me to Pyle is this one: "The Man Who Told America the Truth About D-Day, By David Chrisinger," New York Times, June 5, 2019. He writes: "It wasn’t until Pyle’s first dispatch was published that many Americans started to get a sense of the vast scale and devastating costs of the D-Day invasion, chronicled for them by a reporter who had already won their trust and affection." He also notes that Pyle underwent "a sort of journalistic conversion", after which his columns became "more stark and honest." 

    He had already volunteered to cover the bombing in England and it is clear from his letters and his columns that he had seen enough. Still, he later chose to cover the war in the Pacific. He was killed on the island of Ie Shima by a Japanese machine-gunner in April, 1945.

     To learn more about Pyle, start with the website at Indiana University. From there you can read or listen to some of his WARTIME COLUMNS.  For a famous one that appeared on the front pages of many papers see: "The Death of Captain Waskow", Jan. 10, 1944. Indiana University is also the repository for Pyle's letters and columns - Archives Online at Indiana University. See also the website of the Indiana Historical Society. 

    Pyle was adopted by Albuquerque where he had a home which he was rarely in. See: "America's Most Loved Reporter: Ernie Pyle".

Roving Reporter

     If you would rather not read about war, have a look at the columns he wrote about various towns, villages, and people scattered throughout the U.S. and Canada. For over five years in the 1930s he and his wife travelled back and forth and up and down the continent writing six columns a week. They are typically about unimportant things, people and events and they are always enjoyable and usually funny. If you remember and liked Charles Kuralt, you will not regret picking up a copy of Home Country. A new edition was published as: Ernie's America: The Best of Ernie Pyle's 1930s Travel Dispatches. 

     They visited some places in Canada and you can find the related columns by using the index in Home Country. There is an amusing one about Dr. Mahlon Locke from Williamsburg, Ontario (here is a link to the Williamsburg plaque about Locke). Although I was not able to see a copy of Ernie's America..., apparently Canadian material was not included. ( I learned that from a good review of the book by Ken Cuthbertson, "Nomad in a Dead End,"  in the Kingston Whig-Standard, Dec. 30, 1989.)

Some additional sources: 

   For biographical material see the biography by his editor, Lee Miller,  The Story of Ernie Pyle. For reasons I don't recall I have a copy of An Ernie Pyle Album by Miller which contains all of the photos he couldn't put in his biography. 

   

    Pyle's war reporting is collected in: Brave Men; Here Is Your War and Last Chapter.  They are also conveniently collected in this book which contains a good biographical sketch: Ernie's War: The Best of Ernie Pyle's World War II Dispatches, David Nichols. 

   If you are interested in The Blitz, Ernie Pyle In England is very good. And if you are really interested read also the book by his fellow American, Quentin Reynolds - London Diary. 

And for a movie see:

"The Story of G.I. Joe (United Artists) is

an attempt to picture the infantryman's

war as the late Ernie Pyle saw it. Pyle

himself (played in the film by Burgess

Meredith) and nine fellow correspondents

supervised and vouched for the movie's

hard-bitten authenticity. The result is far

& away the least glamorous war picture

ever made. It is a movie without a single

false note. It is not "entertainment" in the

usual sense, but General Eisenhower called

it "the greatest war picture I've ever seen." 

TIME Magazine. 6/18/1945, Vol. 45 Issue 25, p64. 

Professor Macksey's Library

    In July of this year there were many obituaries for Professor Richard A. Macksey who taught for over six decades at Johns Hopkins University. Apparently he was a legendary and inspirational teacher. Clearly he was a great collector of books. His library of approximately 70,000 of them is pictured above.






Sources:
"Richard Macksey, Johns Hopkins Professor With Capacious Mind and Library, Dies at 87, " Matt Schudel, Washington Post, July 26, 2019.
"Dr. Macksey (pronounced “Maxie”) was a wide-ranging scholar and polymath whose expertise extended from ancient and modern literature — in at least six languages — to medical history, biophysics, critical theory and film. He had joint appointments in Johns Hopkins’s School of Arts and Sciences and the medical school, where he helped design a curriculum that included writing and the humanities."
"He also was a founder of what is now the Maryland Film Festival in Baltimore and volunteered to work in the night shift at a free book exchange. He seemed to subsist on three hours of sleep and pipe tobacco."
"Dr. Richard A. Macksey, A Legendary Johns Hopkins University Professor, Polymath and Noted Bibliophile, Dies," Frederick N. Rasmussen, Baltimore Sun, July 25, 2019.
"At home, the center of Dr. Macksey’s life was his library, which came about after he and his wife decided to convert the garage of their 1921 Guilford home into a library measuring 16 feet by 28 feet, and whose walls contained shelves that rose 15 feet to the ceiling. In spite of the massive size of the room, which had a Palladian window and a heat pump to protect the books from humid Baltimore summer, his library of an estimated 70,000 books spilled onto tables and rose in piles from the floor, making it the largest private library in the state."
"Richard Macksey, 'A One-of-a-Kind Intellectual Giant' Dies," Rachel Wallace, HUB, July 23, 2019.
"When Hopkins Alums Think of the Humanities, They Think of Richard Macksey," HUB, July 23, 2019.  This is a profile of Professor Macksey that appeared originally in the Johns Hopkins Gazette on June 21, 1999.  The picture of Macksey is from this article.
"Farewell Richard Macksey, Legendary Polymath and 'The Jewel in the Hopkins Crown,(1931-2019)" Cynthia Haven. From "The Book Haven", her blog at Stanford.

[Once again, no links are provided because of the likely instability of many of them and because some sources may be behind a firewall. If you google, them you can verify the sources.]

Post Script:
This bad news for Hopkins is offset to a great degree by this good news:
"Bloomberg Gives $1.8 BILLION to Johns Hopkins for Student Aid," Anemona Hartocollis, New York Times, Nov. 18, 2019

Wayne State University Press

Regionalism and University Presses

     It can be difficult to find interesting books. The various "Best Sellers Lists" are generally not too useful and you may balk at the suggestions made by the heavily pierced bookstore clerk, or not find anything enticing among "Heather's Picks" (for American readers, our Heather is the boss of Indigo Books, the equivalent of  your Barnes and Noble).
    If you are interested in the general area in which we live I will make the surprising suggestion that you look at some of the books published by the Wayne State University Press.  I said "surprising" because many civilians think that scholarly books written by academics are likely to be unreadable. That may be the case for most subjects about which they write, but sometimes an attempt is made to publish books that will have some appeal for the tax-paying citizens.
    I made a similar suggestion a while back when I posted about the Penn State University Press. They publish a local series called Keystone Books and the geographical range of some of them extends across the lake and the subjects covered are often of interest to Canadians.
    Wayne State University Press produces books about many subjects. The focus here is on the Great Lakes Book Series. If you travel to Detroit or enjoy books about cars, sports and the history of our area have a look at their publications.
     A list of some of the titles from the WSU Press available in London is provided below. As well, they publish some works in Canadian Studies and a few titles are mentioned at the bottom of this list.

 Great Lakes Book Series (click on this link for a full list of the titles in this series.)
Editor: Thomas Klug, Wayne State University
"The Great Lakes Books Series specializes in books of regional interest and importance to Michigan and the entire Great Lakes region. Inaugurated in 1986 to honor Michigan's 1987 sesquicentennial, the series currently includes titles on Michigan and regional history, the Upper Peninsula, military history, the Great Lakes and maritime history, Detroit history and culture, automotive history, art and architecture, literature, sports, ecology and the environment, and books for young readers."

  

     Listed below are about 40 titles from the Great Lakes Series that are available in the Western Libraries. There are around 1000 titles listed in the Western catalogue from the WSU Press. The London Public Libraries also have some. In both cases, the books can be located by doing a key word search by publisher.

The Ambassador Bridge : a monument to progress 
Arsenal of democracy : the American automobile industry in World War II 
Throughout World War II, Detroit's automobile manufacturers accounted for one-fifth of the dollar value of the nation's total war production, and this amazing output from "the arsenal of democracy" directly contributed to the allied victory.
Beyond the Model T : the other ventures of Henry Ford 

The French Canadians of Michigan : their contribution to the development of the Saginaw Valley and the Keweenaw Peninsula, 1840-1914 
Charting the inland seas : a history of the U.S. Lake Survey 
Deep woods frontier : a history of logging in northern Michigan 
Narrating the history of Michigan's forest industry, Karamanski provides a dynamic study of an important part of the Upper Peninsula's economy.


Designing Detroit : Wirt Rowland and the rise of modern American  architecture 
Shines a light on Detroit architect Wirt Rowland who, until now, has largely slipped into obscurity.
Detroit : city of race and class violence 
Beginning with the legacy of the Ku Klux Klan and the industrial tyranny of the early twentieth century, Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence charts Detroit's bitter history through the birth of industrial unionism, war time, the 1967 riots, and their effect on the city today.
Detroit images : photographs of the renaissance city 

The Detroit Tigers : a pictorial celebration of the greatest players and moments in Tigers history Discovering stained glass in Detroit 
"Expanding the frontiers of civil rights" : Michigan, 1948-1968 
A fluid frontier : slavery, resistance, and the Underground Railroad in the Detroit River borderland 
New research on the long, shared struggle for freedom by people of African descent in the Detroit River borderland from a uniquely bi-national perspective.
Frontier metropolis : picturing early Detroit, 1701-1838 
Great Lakes journey : a new look at America's freshwater coast 
Henry's lieutenants 
In the shadow of Detroit : Gordon M. McGregor, Ford of Canada, and Motoropolis 
Part biography and part corporate history, In the Shadow of Detroit investigates the life and career of Gordon M. McGregor, who founded and led Ford of Canada during the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Iron fleet : the Great Lakes in World War II 
John E. Fetzer and the quest for the new age, 
John Jacob Astor : business and finance in the early republic 
Biography of John Jacob Astor's life and his career as a merchant, fur trader, and land speculator as vehicles for examining several important themes and issues in American economic and urban development between 1790 and 1860.
Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair handbook 
Let the drum beat : a history of the Detroit Light Guard / 
Life on the Great Lakes : a wheelsman's story
The Making of Michigan, 1820-1860 : a pioneer anthology
Mapping Detroit : land, community, and shaping a city
Illustrates and analyzes Detroit’s dramatic physical transformation in a balanced mix of text and maps.
Maxwell Motor and the making of Chrysler Corporation
A detailed history of Maxwell Motor Company, a medium-sized Detroit automaker that became the foundation of the Chrysler Corporation.

Michigan remembered: photographs from the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information, 1936-1943
A newscast for the masses : the history of Detroit television News
"Old Slow Town" : Detroit during the Civil War 
Details Detroit's tumultuous social, political, and military history during the Civil War.
A place for summer : a narrative history of Tiger Stadium
Riding the roller coaster : a history of the Chrysler Corporation
Roads to prosperity : economic development lessons from midsize  Canadian cities
Explores popular economic development strategies in midsize Canadian urban areas.
Roy D. Chapin : the man behind the Hudson Motor Car Company /

Rumrunning and the roaring twenties : prohibition on theMichigan-Ontario Waterway 
Songquest the journals of Great Lakes folklorist Ivan H. Walton
The field notes of a pioneering folklorist who collected the songs, stories, and cultural history of Great Lakes sailors in the 1930s.
Steamboats & sailors of the Great Lakes 
Steamboats and Sailors of the Great Lakes traces the evolution of the Great Lakes shipping industry over the last three centuries.
Storied independent automakers : Nash, Hudson, and American Motors
Survival and regeneration : Detroit's American Indian community
These men have seen hard service : the First Michigan  Sharpshooters in the Civil War /
Turkey Stearnes and the Detroit Stars : the Negro leagues in Detroit, 1919-1933


Uppermost Canada : the Western District and the Detroit frontier, 1800-1850 
Examines the historical, cultural, and social history of the Canadian portion of the Detroit River community in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Windjammers : songs of the Great Lakes sailors
Wonderful power : the story of ancient copper working in the Lake Superior Basin 

    The Wayne State University Press also publishes books relating to Canadian Studies. Here are two examples:


Power Play:Professional Hockey and the Politics of Urban Development
Big money and municipal politics collide in the story of Edmonton’s Rogers Place hockey arena.


Reflections on Malcolm Forsyth
A captivating and approachable portrait of the life and work of a Canadian musical legend.

Campus Corner

     
     Here are a couple of university-related items I will attempt to post quickly before the sun shines.

1. Retirement Communities on College Campuses

     You are correct, I have mentioned this subject before, but will do so again because there is a good article about one of the latest examples which will soon be found on the campus of Purchase College (SUNY). Why colleges would be interested in old codgers and why retirees would be interested in roosting on a campus are questions answered in the article and in my earlier posts. Among them:

"Purchase is one of a growing number of colleges sponsoring retirement communities on campus or thinking about it. It is a marketer’s dream, monetizing spare land, while milking the baby boom generation’s affluence by appealing to their obsession with staying forever young."

"The schools say their motive is more educational and social — encouraging intergenerational mixing — than financial. But the communities promise a new revenue stream for institutions that are coping with reduced state operating support and declining college enrollment in many parts of the country. They are bringing a new generation (or old generation) to campus to fill classes, eat in dining halls, attend student performances and become mentors."

     Among the other schools mentioned are Arizona State and Lasell University near Boston.  If you look at my old post you will see examples ranging from Cornell and Dartmouth to the University of Florida and the University of Michigan. Additional articles and Canadian sources are also provided. In short, if this subject is of interest see:

Sources:

"At Colleges, What's Old Is New: Retirees Living on Campus," Anemona Hartocollis, New York Times, Sept. 10, 2019.

This blog: "Retiring Back to University: Bucolic College Towns".

To learn more about the Purchase College example see "Broadview - Senior Living at Purchase College.

2. Not A Touching Moment at Western

     You may recall that I posted about HEADLINES and how they can be misconstrued if not clearly written. The one that follows is fairly clear, but some readers could understand it to mean that London police were summoned because finally something less than crass happened on campus: "London Police Investigate Touching Incident."London Free Press, Sept. 8, 2019.

3. University Rankings

     The latest Times Higher Education rankings were released and there were many headlines such as this one in the Canadian papers: "Top Canadian Universities Rise in Global Rankings," The Globe and Mail, Sept. 11, 2019. There were many additional headlines issuing from those campuses that did well. Unfortunately Western did not. 

     Credit should be given to Western, however, since it was noted in a campus publication that the university had dropped out of the Top 200. Usually in such cases, universities only note the good news.

See: "THE [Times Higher Education] Reveals World University Rankings," Jason Winders. Western News, Sept. 13, 2019.

Post Script:

     There has been a lot of news from Hong Kong lately, but I have not seen any mention of the Ivey Business School Asia, which is located there. The times appear to be a bit rough for universities offering graduate business programs and surely the disruption there cannot be good for the School. I have seen no mention of it on the Ivey or Western websites. Years ago the local paper would have picked up on such a story, but, like most communities, we no longer have one. 

Birds & Eggs

The Feather Thief

     

     I do not often offer reviews of books I am reading, but I will do so in the case of The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession and the Natural History Heist of the Century, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  I read it so quickly I am sure to forget what it was about even faster than usual, unless I attempt a brief summary for you. You also will enjoy it even though it is about the following things: fly-tying; the feathers of birds and a flautist (what the Brits call a player of the flute) who may or may not have Asperger’s. Hardly compelling ingredients, you’re thinking.

      At an early age Edwin Rist became obsessed with tying flies like the one pictured above which requires “the crest feathers of the Golden Pheasant from the mountain forests of China, black and fiery orange breast feathers from the Red-Ruffed Fruitcrow of South America, ribbon-like filaments of Ostrich herl feathers from South Africa, and tiny turquoise plumes from the Blue Chatterer of the lowlands of Central America". As an aside, such flies are rarely used for fishing, but they are highly valued piscatorial objets d'art that attract collectors.

      Such feathers are as rare as the birds from which they are plucked and it is illegal to trade in them. Fortunately Rist the flautist found himself at the Royal Academy of Music in London which is not too far from the Natural History Museum in Tring. It is full of feathers and Rist broke into it and “ stuffed into his suitcase 39 resplendent quetzals, 47 Indian crows, 98 blue chatterers, 37 king birds-of-paradise, 17 flame bowerbirds and so on.”

     Kirk Wallace Johnson the author becomes obsessed with Trist and the fly-tyers and with finding out what happens to the criminal and what became of the proceeds of the crime. It is a very interesting story and along the way one learns about Alfred Russel Wallace (the collector of the feathers held at Tring), Lionel Walter Rothschild (the original owner of Tring), exotic birds and the use of feathers in Victorian fashions. 

 For those of you who rely on opening sentences to choose a book, here they are:

“Alfred Russel Wallace stood on the quarterdeck of a burning ship, seven hundred  miles off the coast of Bermuda, the planks heating beneath his feet, yellow smoke curling up through the cracks. Sweat and sea spray clung to him as the balsam and rubber boiled and hissed below deck. He sensed the flames would soon burst through. The crew of the Helen raced frantically around him, heaving belongings and supplies into the two small lifeboats that were being lowered down the ship’s flank.”

Post Script:

     One of the funniest books I have ever read has the word 'Feathers' in the title. Consisting of several short pieces, my favourite is The Whore of Mensa. It is about intellectual call girls, the kind a man wants if he is more interested in the mind than the body and where in the whore house one finds "pale, nervous girls with black-rimmed glasses and blunt-cut hair [lolling] around on sofas, riffling Penguin Classics provocatively." Among the services rendered in such an establishment: "For a hundred, a girl would lend you her Bartók records, have dinner, and then let you watch while she had an anxiety attack. For one-fifty, you could listen to FM radio with twins. For three bills, you got the works: A thin Jewish brunette would pretend to pick you up at the Museum of Modern Art, let you read her master’s, get you involved in a screaming quarrel at Elaine’s over Freud’s conception of women, and then fake a suicide of your choosing—the perfect evening, for some guys. Nice racket. Great town, New York."

    You can read these short stories in the book below. Most of them appeared in The New Yorker and you can find "The Whore of Mensa" in the Dec. 16, 1974 issue (it is readable via the Internet, but I won't put the link in out of fear it will soon rot).


What About the EGGS?

     I mentioned that word in the title and will offer a few articles about some oologists who are even more obsessive than the feather collectors. Stealing and collecting birds’ eggs is big business. Start with the fascinating story in The New Yorker:

“Operation Easter: The Hunt for Illegal Egg Collectors", Julian Rubinstein, July 15, 2013.

See also:

"Inside the Bizarre, Secretive World of Obsessive Egg Thieves: Audubon talks with filmmaker Tim Wheeler, whose documentary exposes the underworld of Britain’s illegal egg collectors. Audubon, By Emma Bryce, January 06, 2016.

"Journalist Joshua Hammer recounts the story of egg thief Jeffrey Lendrum and his latest jail sentence," CBC Radio · Posted: Jan 23, 2019

See the entry in Wikipedia for The Jourdain Society, and the one for Colin Watson.