Escape with me!

I am now half way through my second reading of reference 3, a travel book by Osbert Sitwell, prompted by reference 1. A relic of the days when celebrities were able to fund their travels by writing books about them; unlike nowadays when celebrities are paid to tell us about their travels on trains on television. As if it could be said to be travelling when one is traipsing about with a camera team and support lorry.

A book with history in its own right, once the property of one William Valentine, lately chairman of University College, Dundee (the place noticed at reference 2), donated to the library there by his widow in 1972 and found it way to me August just past, via Better World Books Ltd for little more than the price of postage and packing. A nicely produced book from MacMillan, with the rather pretty endpapers being the reproduction of a fragment of the Empress Dowagers favourite wallpaper. This famous Empress having started out as Imperial Concubine Yi in 1852.

An interesting read, not least for its descriptions of Angkor Wat and the Forbidden City.

This particular page caught my fancy, with its description of our opium relations with the Chinese. First we fight two wars with them to make them take opium in return for all the tea that we took off them. All the tea in China. Then the missionaries get in on the act and want the British authorities to make the Chinese authorities to make the stuff illegal. Then all the British tourists to Chinese towns wanted to taken by their guides to the most picturesque opium den in town, a very important part of their grand tour. But if you click to enlarge you can read all about it for yourself.

PS: while reference 4, which came to me via the University of Bristol library and a charity shop, is about to receive honourable burial in the brick compost bin at the bottom of the garden, unread. No doubt M. Butor is a fine writer, famous even in French literary critical circles, but life is too short. The pile of unread books is too high. A book which came interestingly bound with thick cardboard covers (possibly by les éditions de minuit, possibly by the library on arrival there) and which came complete with a variety of interesting library stickers, including one which instructed the reader that the book was confined to the library.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/facades.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/puzzle.html.

Reference 3: Escape with me: an oriental sketch book - Osbert Sitwell - 1939.

Reference 4: Répertoire IV - Michel Butor - 1974.