Columbia Bar-Lock,
Christmas a very long time ago
Hermes 2000 portable
Christmas 1950
Courtesy Georg Sommeregger
Remington-Rand Quiet-Riter
Christmas 1957
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Christmas Typewriters #17
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Typewriter Update
White Oz Christmas?
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According to the pushers at Pusher, this is what looking out the front window of this place on Christmas Day would reveal - if it was in the Northern Hemisphere, and if we were to experience a White Christmas. No such chance, I'm afraid! Still, as Georg Sommeregger commented this week from snowy Switzerland: "Good to know you are down there."
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Sir Alf Reed Exhibition
Leading New Zealand sports historian Ron Palenski has alerted me to a Blickensderfer 8 typewriter which forms part of an exhibition being staged at the Dunedin Public Library in Otago. It celebrates the extraordinary life of Sir Alfred Hamish Reed (1875-1975), one-time owner of the New Zealand Typewriter Company and Blickensderfer's sole Australasian agent at the turn of the last century. In 1897 Reed was sent to Dunedin to start up the NZTC branch there and took over the entire company in 1902. He sold it in 1911.
Curators of the present exhibition have identified the Blick 8 as Reed's own, though it is not the one he is seen using in the black-and-white image above (taken in the early 1960s). The curators incorrectly dated Reed's Blick 8 to 1897, which is 10 years before the Blick 8 appeared. Nonetheless it is an interesting machine, as it has a QWERTY keyboard but none of the tabulation attachments usually seen with a Blick 8 (which were initially offered as a free option). It is certainly an early version, as it has a back-spacer lever rather than a back-spacer key (and the bell is in the same position as it is on the Blick 7). But it does have the two-piece typehead casting, so it is definitely an 8. Quite aside from it having been used by Reed himself, it strikes me as being a rare example of the 8.
Alf Reed as a 20-year-old in 1895, when he joined the NZTC in Auckland.
Herman Price Collection
More details on Reed's life as a travelling typewriter technician and as owner of the NZTC can be seen here. A lengthy article on Reed also appeared in the December 2010 edition of ETCetera (No 92). However, it is now some years since back copies of ETCetera were made available online in PDF form, and it is to be hoped that the ETCetera website may soon be updated to make more back copies available. Ted Munk's interesting post on the current ETCetera board election highlights the need to address this issue. So please, please, please, if you are reading this, can you pass on the password to "the appropriate authorities". If you do, in the coming days, it will be ...
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Christmas Came Early
Christmas came early for me with the arrival in Canberra last Friday afternoon of Melbourne typewriter collector Diane Jones and her partner Stephen Harrison. To my considerable surprise, and delight, Diane and Steve brought with them the gift of a Varityper. To my considerable relief, they left here on Saturday evening in a 4WD packed to the gills with high quality typewriters. In the interim, the three of us had enjoyed a night on the town and a tour of the many treasures Canberra has to offer.
I first encountered Diane earlier in the year when I sold her a couple of Underwood portables on eBay. I could tell immediately that she and I were on the same wavelength, because of Diane's very obvious understanding of typewriters and her thorough appreciation of their finer points. What also shone through was her sensitivity and sensibility. She was a pleasure to deal with, and at a very rocky time for me she was, from a considerable distance, a steadying influence.
In person, Diane turned out to be everything I had come to expect from our lengthy exchanges of emails and telephone conversations. It was great to meet such an agreeable, thoroughly pleasant typewriter collector, one who was a professional typist (back in the day) and who has retained a deep but modest love of typewriters. Above all else, Diane had proved to be entirely trustworthy, and has helped restore my faith in humanity.
What's the goss?
I'm not much one for Hollywood gossip, but from what I can gather, Angelina was first reported to have offered $250,000 for one of Hemingway's many typewriters, intending to give it to Brad as a wedding gift. But she then thought better of it. Or so the story goes ...
Laura Siegel Larson and Michael Larson, daughter and grandson of Jerry Siegel, with Siegel's typewriter. Below, Siegel with his Royal.
Meanwhile, the Royal portable which had belonged to Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel turned up at the Paley Centre for Media in Beverly Hills as part of the Soboroff collection exhibition.
M e a n w h i l e , the Olympia standard upon which Joseph Stefano wrote the screenplay for Psycho was expected to fetch $25,000 at auction. I can't find an outcome, so maybe it was passed in?
Handy hint
Did you know?
See here.
High apple pie in the sky hopes
A Southlake, Texas, typewriter seller has had listed on eBay for some time a rest key for a Corona 3 portable typewriter. I'd be fascinated to know what the one offer was that the seller has received (and rejected) for it, but so far there have been no takers at the "buy it now" price of $2500. The seller says, "The ridiculously high price is probably accurate - based on the key's rarity - yet you might get lucky and catch me when I'm broke. That being said, I'm in no hurry to sell this thing; the price won't go down much."
Lynda Beckler highlighted the listing in her "Online" column in the latest issue of Typex, under the heading "For the collector who has everything ..." Lynda pointed out the key will not fit on a Corona 3 Special, "just the older model with shift keys only on the left". I note the typewriter used to illustrate the key's use has a number sign, which is on one of my Corona 3 Specials, but in another (left side) place on the keyboard. Still, it strikes me as an early use of this "hash" sign.
David Lawrence in Auckland drew my attention to the rest key listing, saying "I wish I could laugh, but I cannot."
David went on to tell me: "Last week a man phoned me and asked if I wanted to buy more than 100 typewriters, all with their keys chopped off. I declined. I could not bear to even think of all those lovely machines, eyeless in Gaza, and what I would like to do to the man responsible. He calls himself a jeweller." I would call him a vandal.
Christmas Day, 1916,
Oakland, California
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ULI typewriter ads
Mr December
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Christmas Typewriters #18
Corona portables, Christmas 1934
Patria potable, Christmas 1936
Courtesy Geog Sommereger
Corona portable, Christmas 1927
Remington portables, Christmas 1938
Corona portables, Christmas 1941
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Typing from the Beyond with Unseen Hands: How Quacks and Spooks Relieved Yost of his Union Typewriter Trust Millions
'What Fools These Mortals Be'
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Too random with the Radam or not, one thing Yost did do was give full rein to his extremely vivid imagination. But much more prosaic than his invention claims was Yost's 1895 statement that he had been the driving force behind the formation of the Union Typewriter Trust (aka Union Writing Machine Company) - in tow with lawyer and banker Charles Newell Fowler (1852-1932), later a US Congressman. Yost's involvement with the trust was worth $1.335 million, including $1.226 million in common stock.
Union Typewriter Trust founder Charles Newell Fowler
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Simon P.Kase and Abraham Lincoln on the "dancing piano". Look it up.
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Harry Kellar off his head
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Lizzie Bangs
Yost responded:
Less than three months later, Yost was dead:
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Christmas Typewriters #19
Royal portable, Christmas 1929
Remington portable,
one lovely Christmas
Courtesy Peter Weil
Royal Futura and Signet,
Christmas 1961
Royal Safari, Christmas 1963
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Twain's Typewriters
Twain with Cable
The next year, 1926, Albert Bigelow Paine, claimed to have used the very same typewriter to write Twain's biography:
Albert Bigelow Paine
As well as being Twain's authorised biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine was also his literary executor and the first editor of his papers. Paine (July 10, 1861-April 9, 1937) published the biography in 1912, two years after Twain's death, and Twain's letters in 1917. Paine was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, relocating to Bentonsport, Iowa, when he was one. He later moved to St Louis, where he trained as a photographer, eventually setting up as a dealer in photographic supplies in Fort Scott, Kansas. Paine sold out in 1895 to become a full-time writer, moving to New York. He wrote in several genres, including fiction, humour and verse, and among his works are several children's books, including The Hollow Tree and The Arkansas Bear (both 1898); a novel, The Great White Way (1901); and a biography of Thomas Nast (1904). Paine's Hollow Tree series consists of short stories about animals, reminiscent of Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus tales. He spent most of his life in Europe, including France, where he wrote two books about Joan of Arc. This work was so well received in France that he was awarded the title of Chevalier in the Légion d'Honneur by the French Government. Paine was a member of the Pulitzer Prize Committee.
Paine and Twain together
Paine first met Twain at a club dinner in New York City in 1901. They began a correspondence, which led to Paine approaching Twain about being his biographer. Twain enthusiastically agreed to the proposal. By January 1906, Paine was living in the Clemens home, and was Twain's companion for the remainder of his life. Paine conducted extensive research about the life of Twain, sifting through unpublished manuscripts and visiting places where Twain spent periods of his life.
Mark Twain in New Zealand in 1895
Of all the earliest writers to employ a typewriter (machine and human), Twain's use is perhaps the best documented. We do know he was one of the first 400 people to buy a typewriter, a Sholes & Glidden, sometime between July 1 and late November or very early December 1874. He wrote two letters on it, both on December 9 that year, one to his brother Orion Clemens and the other to William Dean Howells:
Orion Clemens
And yet there is still much conjecture. Paine may well be responsible for some of this, by relying too heavily on Twain's unreliable memory.
Looks like Twain needed a typewriter!
For example, there is the question of the first typescript offered to a publisher - that is, the first book typeset from typewritten rather than handwritten pages. Twain thought it was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and by later publishing what Twain incorrectly recalled, Paine compounded the claim. Twain had actually first set the record askew with a story called "The First Writing-Machines" in the $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories in 1906:
In the 1912 biography, Paine wrote:
Rather than adding his doubts as a footnote, Paine might have been better advised to stress the unlikelihood of Twain's claim. If it had been Tom Sawyer, it could only have written on a Sholes & Glidden, any Sholes & Glidden. But it turned out to be Life on the Mississippi, which came out seven years later, in 1883. Even then the Hammond had still not made its debut (1884 New Orleans Centennial Exposition). So what type of typewriter was actually to type the Life on the Mississippi typescript, and who exactly used it to type the typescript, remains anyone's guess.
The observant reader may have picked up another inconsistency here. While the confusion about Tom Sawyer and Life on the Mississippi has by now been well and truly sorted out, it remains very much a part of Twain typewriter lore that he was with David Ross Locke (aka Petroleum V. Nasby) when he first saw the Sholes & Glidden in Boston in late 1874. This notion seems to be confirmed by the fact that Locke soon after joined John Hale Bates and George Washington Newton Yost in the first advertising agency for the Sholes & Glidden.![]()
However, in his biographies and later writings and statements about Twain and his typewriters, Paine is adamant it was not Locke with Twain in Boston that fateful day, but the Reverend Joseph Hopkins Twichell. As with Tom Sawyer, Twain's unreliable memories - in this case about being with Nasby - have gained widespread, undisputed currency. The record should now be set straight.
Twichell (November 30, 1838-December 20, 1918) was a writer and pastor and was Twain's closest friend for more than 40 years (he appears in A Tramp Abroad as "Harris"). They met at a church social after the Civil War, when Hopkins was pastor of Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford, Connecticut, his only pastorate for almost 50 years. Reverend Twichell performed Twain's wedding and christened his children, and counselled him on literary as well as personal matters for the rest of Twain's life. A profound scholar and devout Christian, he was described as "a man with an exuberant sense of humour, and a profound understanding of the frailties of mankind."
A younger Twichell
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Christmas Typewriters #20
Hermes 2000 portable,
Christmas 1948
Courtesy Georg Sommeregger
Olivetti Lettera 22 portable,
Christmas 1953
Olivetti Lettera 22 portable,
Christmas 1957
Smith-Corona 5TE electric portable,
Christmas 1957
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James Bartlett Hammond's 'Mystery Widow'
Jeannette Maxwell Hammond, the "mystery widow" of James Bartlett Hammond.
A fortnight after James Bartlett Hammond, the multi-millionaire head of the Hammond Typewriter Company, died on his yacht off St Augustine, south of Jacksonville on the Florida coast, on January 27, 1913, his "mystery widow" turned up in New York City. Since there was a right royal scrap going on over who would inherit Hammond's considerable fortune, the widow's sudden appearance caused quite a surprise - and a stir. She was described as a mystery woman back then and until today she remained a mystery.No longer. Her name was Jeannette Maxwell and she was born in Bay City, Michigan, on September 12, 1862. She was, in other words, more than 23 years younger than Hammond and was a music teacher in Michigan when they married in Boston on September 15, 1897, three days after Jeannette's 35th birthday. On her reappearance in New York in 1913, newspapers said the marriage had taken place before 1893.
A copy of the marriage certificate
Contrary to the reports at the time, she was not originally from Boston and she was not living in Germany when Hammond died. She came from Michigan (where her father, Andrew Crosbie Maxwell, 1830-1902, was a wealthy lawyer) and she had been living in Paisley, Scotland, with her future (second) husband, John Thomas Pattison (born Bowling 1860), also a wealthy lawyer. She married Pattison sometime after 1916.She and Hammond were never divorced, but had separated in about 1902, five years after their marriage. Jeannette had been living in Scotland from 1905-09, but in 1910, three years before Hammond died, she was manager of a magazine in Boston. She and Hammond were still living together in Manhattan in 1900, which makes a mockery of the Hammond family claim that they had separated in 1898.
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Washington Post, February 9, 1913
J.B.Hammond in 1894, three years before his nuptials.
Jeannette and her Scottish second husband continued to make regular visits back to the United States until at least 1934. But whether she got any of the Hammond money is not known. Not being divorced from the typewriter inventor, she was almost certainly entitled to some.↧
Oh, Mein Papa
My father, Wallace Newman Messenger
As a child, this time of year was always the most exciting. Our folks worked wonders to keep it so. They couldn't conjure snow, admittedly, but we still got that all-important visit.Traces of the thrill of Christmas linger on. The wonderful memories have doubtless been enkindled, now that - as of 2014 - I'm not just a father, but a grandfather and an father-in-law to boot. The prospects of living it all again seem somehow to have suddenly been heightened.
A jolly little typewriter collector under the Christmas tree,
18 Collins Street, Blaketown, aged three, 1951
The snow came later, in kea country, aged eight, 1956
Finding a train set under the Christmas tree in 1953 is one vivid recollection, the more so because it was the day my own dad got the call about the Tangiwai Disaster. Perhaps it seems a little incomprehensible now, trying to recall just how convinced we were that train sets did come down the chimney. Not to mention the bike. The football books would have been comparatively easy, at least for a slimish Santa.That I can still sit transfixed, shedding bucketloads of tears watching silly Santa movies, is testimony, I suppose, to the enduring magic of Christmas. Either that or the Peter Pan in me, or a little bit of both.
In my dotage, there is a certain familiarity to the events leading up to Christmas Day - though, the ridiculous movies aside, it's not a familiarity that breeds one iota of contempt.
Yet my changed circumstances have made this Yuletide feel that little bit different. Today I've been thinking about my father, and not just what he did to make our Christmases special, but what he did to make our childhoods so happy and so settled.
What sparked this was something I found quite astonishing, and I'm no longer easily astonished. A cousin in New Zealand posted on Facebook a small news item from the Grey River Argus from this day, December 21, 100 years ago, in 1914.
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My dad as a baby, 1907
In the territorial army, 1928
My dad stuck to his job for 48 years, and retired in March 1970. This is the story my mentor Jack Turner wrote about him on his retirement, a story which appeared on page one of the Greymouth Evening Star:
It's almost nine years now since I wrote a column about my dad for The Canberra Times. Today my cousin's Facebook post reinforced for me how awful my dad's childhood circumstances had been, especially those which had forced him to leave school at 14. Now I realise, too, how tragic it was that I didn't appreciate him more while he was alive. There's a lesson in that for us all. At this time of year, as a grandfather myself, it dawns on me that my dad was, of course, my own real-life, all-year-round Santa, or at least everything the real Santa represents, even in this cynical age. He gave me so much, but when he left me the gifts he did, it was almost always sight unseen. And always without a word of thanks from me.
The photo at the top of this post was used on a table set aside for the "dearly departed" at the reception for my son Danny's wedding to Emily last month. I thought it was a nice touch.
Seeing the kotuka ghost? On a cheerier note, my grandson Isaac and my son Simon:
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Christmas Typewriters #21
Hermes Baby, Christmas 1941
Hermes Baby, Christmas 1945
These two courtesy of Georg Sommeregger
Royal portable, Christmas 1949
Smith-Corona portable, 1950
Remington Quiet-Riter, Christmas 1957
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Christmas Typewriters #22
Corona 3 portable, Christmas 1925
Courtesy Wim Van Rompuy
Royal portable, Christmas 1941
Smith-Corona portable,
Christmas 1945
Smith-Corona portable,
Christmas 1946
Royal portable, Christmas 1948
Royal portable, Christmas 1954
Remington portable, Christmas 1966
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Christmas Typewriters #23
Smith-Corona portable,
Christmas 1956
Smith-Corona portable,
Christmas 1957
Olivetti Lettera 22, Christmas 1957
Royal Futura, Christmas 1958
Smith-Corona portables,
Christmas 1962
Smith-Corona portables,
Christmas 1965
Smith-Corona portables,
Christmas 1963
Brother portables, Christmas 1970
Smith-Corona electric portable,
Christmas 1977
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Christmas Typewriter Update
Miss Christmas Typewriter
Piotr, the Prince of Lightness
What a wonderful Christmas gift from Piotr Trumpiel in London - a calendar comprising 12 pages of images of Piotr's impressive collection of Groma Kolibris! The calendar celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Kolibri in 2015. In it, the month of April is devoted to the burgundy Kolibri I sent Piotr a short while ago. Piotr has even included best wishes for my 67th birthday on that page! Plus there was a really beautiful typewriter-themed card with the parcel. You are a prince and an artist, Piotr. Not to mention a gentleman and a scholar. I'm lost for words in gratitude. You've gone even one more step up in my estimation ...
Typewriting Writer a Christmas 2014
'runaway success'
J. Jefferson Farjeon - suddenly flavour of the month in England
Five months ago I posted on prolific author Benjamin Leopold Farjeon (1838-1903), describing him as the "first writer-journalist to master the typewriter". Farjeon arrived on the Victorian goldfields aged 16 and seven years later, in 1861, he headed for New Zealand to continue his newspaper career, notably on that country's first daily, The Otago Daily Times. Farjeon returned to England in December 1867, setting himself up in the Adelphi Theatre and from 1876 hammering away mercilessly at a Sholes & Glidden.
In June 1877, Farjeon married Margaret Jane "Maggie" Jefferson, daughter of American actor Joseph Jefferson, and the couple had four children, all of whom enjoyed considerable success in the arts.
One them was another prolific writer and journalist Joseph Jefferson Farjeon (1883-1955).
Lo and behold, at Christmas 2014, the typewriter-wielding J. Jefferson Farjeon has suddenly become flavour of the month in literary circles in England. Normandy-based journalist Christopher Long alerted me to this article in the London newspaper The Independent:
Thirties murder mystery novel
is surprise runaway Christmas hit
Booksellers say readers are turning away
from dark modern thrillers and
back to the golden age of crime writing
from dark modern thrillers and
back to the golden age of crime writing
By Paul Gallagher
A Christmas detective tale not seen in shops for more than 70 years has become a festive sleeper hit and resurrected interest in a long-forgotten crime writer. Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story by J. Jefferson Farjeon is selling in "astonishing numbers", according to the Waterstones book chain. It has outsold rival paperbacks Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn, and Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch on the high street, while Amazon temporarily ran out of stock last week due to surging demand.
First published in 1937, Mystery in White has been republished as part of the British Library Crime Classics series that is rekindling interest in authors from the pre-Second World War "golden age" of crime writing. More than 155,000 copies in the series have been sold this year, with Mystery in White accounting for 60,000 of those sales.
Another one hooked
Christopher Long's Royal, once owned by his grandfather
Mention of Christopher Long reminds me that I did warn him earlier in the year about the dangers of getting hooked on typewriter collecting, no matter how innocently - and with every good intention of keeping the collection small - it all starts out. In his email pointing me to the Farjeon story, Christopher fessed up that his collection has grown from a 1965 Olympia Splendid 66 and his grandfather’s 1931 Royal portable to include a 1917 Corona 3, a 1936 Royal portable, a 1937 Imperial Good Companion in mint condition, a 1953 Royal HH Elite, a 1961 Imperial 66, another Olympia Splendid 99, a 1958 Olympia SM3 De Luxe and a 1968 Olympia Splendid 66.He's now after a Hermes 3000.
Here we go again
Try hacking into this, Pyongyang
Brace yourselves. Every time there is one of those internet security scare stories, there is going to be an associated story about typewriters coming back into demand. Since we can confidently expect that internet security scare stories will escalate in the coming weeks, months and years, that means there are going to be "typewriters are on the way back" stories by the hundred, possibly by the thousand. The latest one, of course, is linked to North Korea hacking Sony Corp. Global News quickly reported, "It’s back to 1992 for employees of Sony Pictures in the wake of the cyber-attack that resulted in private emails being released.
"Whether Sony will start makingtypewriters is yet to be seen – but this latest hacking scandal has clearly got people talking – or should we say typing - the old fashioned way."
'What the hell is a typewriter?'
A Hadley fire truck blocks Rocky Hill Road after a report of a suspicious package.
There was a bit of excitement in Hadley (population 5250 souls) in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, when someone found - wait for it - a typewriter!"Rocky Hill Road was closed to traffic for an hour as police investigated a suspicious suitcase found on a doorstep. The state police bomb squad took an X-ray of the suitcase and quickly determined it was a typewriter, said Hadley police officer Mitch Kuc. Hadley police and firefighters responded to the scene. Kuc said a resident called police after finding the suitcase on a front door step and had no idea how it got there. A neighbour reported seeing an unknown person leaving it on the step but did not know what it was. Kuc said he does not know what happened to the typewriter after that. Asked if it was a new or older model of typewriter, Kuc replied he did not know, adding "Aren't all typewriters old?" As one of the comments on the Hadley Police Facebook page noted, "No wonder it was suspicious! What the hell is a typewriter?"
Birthday Typewriter
We know of another very special person who received a typewriter for his birthday, but in his case it was a cake. No names, no pack drill:
Vale, Joltin' Joe
I covered Cocker's explusion from Australia in October 1972. The way he was treated back then was one of the reasons I was glad to be leaving the country myself the following month. Cocker and six members of his tour entourage were arrested in Adelaide by police for possession of marijuana. The next day in Melbourne, assault charges were laid after a brawl at the Commodore Chateau Hotel, and Cocker was given 48 hours to leave the country by the Australian Federal Police. This caused huge public outcry in Australia and sparked hefty debate about the use and legalisation of marijuana. It also gained Cocker the nickname of "the Mad Dog".
Typewriter questions
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Christmas Typewriters #24
Royal Standard 1, Christmas 1909
Corona 3 portable,
Christmas 1918
Corona 4, Christmas 1926
Corona 4 portables,
Christmas 1930
Corona flattop, animal keyboard,
Christmas 1935
Remington portables, Christmas 1959
Royal Futura, Christmas 1959
Smith-Corona portables,
Christmas 1960
Underwood Lettera 22, Christmas 1961
Hermes Baby, Christmas 1962
Courtesy Georg Sommeregger
Olivetti-Underwood
Lettera 32, Christmas 1964
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Olivetti-Underwood
Lettera 32, Christmas 1964
Smith-Corona electric portable,
Christmas 1968
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A Christmas Tale, or Three
A White Christmas Not on the Cards
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Christmas Typewriters #25
Hammond Multiplex,
Christmas long ago
Simplex, Christmas
a very long time ago
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Summertime Blues
'Spend Christmas skiing with mixed party in remote Scottish highlands':
Aqualung, 'my friend'
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Bert, Bob and Boxing Day Bravado
Nerissa Ann Love
It was just four weeks before the next big day in her short and happy life. Australian-born Wellington typist Nerissa Ann Love was looking forward to her 20th birthday, on January 22, 1954 - even though she knew she'd be celebrating it without having her fiancé, Bob Blair, by her side. Nerissa planned a quite Friday evening family event at her home on Compton Crescent in Taita in the Lower Hutt. Bob would be almost 7000 miles away, in East London in South Africa, playing cricket with the New Zealand touring team. But a little more than a month after she had turned 20, Bob would be back in New Zealand, and the pair could start planning for their wedding.
Nerissa Love, left, with her mother Mabel and elder sister Valda
In the meantime, unbeknownst to Bob, Nerissa would have one last break as a single young lady. She would spend Christmas in the bustling big city and bright lights of Auckland, 650 miles north of her sleepy home town. The lure for Nerissa was that she might be able to catch a glimpse of the first reigning monarch to visit New Zealand. The SS Gothic, the royal yacht carrying the Queen of England and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, had berthed in Auckland on December 23. On Christmas Day the Queen would be attending a divine service at St Mary's Cathedral.
Lambton Quay in downtown Wellington, where Nerissa worked as a typist
Nerissa threw a cracked black vinyl cover over the Imperial 58 typewriter in her dusty old downtown office building on Lambton Quay in Wellington City and took advantage of the half-day holiday to catch a tram to Bunny Street and the NIMT railway station. It was the early afternoon of Christmas Eve, December 24th, 1953.Nerissa was feeling lucky. There had been an airline strike and a rush for tickets for the Overnight Express headed for Auckland. But a close friend of Nerissa's had got in early and booked two of the 176 second-class train seats. Then her partner had at a late hour found himself unable to get away, and so the friend had offered the spare ticket to Nerissa. The demand for seats was so great, the steam locomotive hauling 11 carriages, five of them second-class, was packed with 285 passengers, and New Zealand Railways had had to add a second Christmas Eve service for the north, leaving an hour after the first.
A bustling Wellington Central Station
Bob Blair did receive that letter. During the stopover at Taihape, while Locomotive KA 949 was coupled to the express and the crew changed, Nerissa had rushed off her carriage and found a mailbox on the Taihape railway station platform to post it.
But by the time Bob opened the letter, and many others Nerissa had sent him, Nerissa was dead.
At 10.21pm on December 24, 1953, just minutes after she had mailed her Christmas Eve letter, Nerissa died in the Tangiwai train disaster. She was one of 151 victims in New Zealand's worst train crash. Of the 176 travelling second-class, only 28 survived.
Bert Sutcliffe bats on, swathed in bandages
On a lively pitch at Ellis Park, New Zealand's champion batsman, Bert Sutcliffe, was knocked unconscious and taken to hospital after being hit on the side of the head by a bouncer from South Africa's fiery fast bowler Neil Adcock. In hospital, he had collapsed twice more. With the New Zealanders reduced to 81 runs for six wickets, Sutcliffe returned to the crease, his forehead swathed in bandages and his face "looking like parchment". When the ninth wicket fell at 154, the players began to leave the field, thinking that, with Blair absent, New Zealand's first innings was prematurely over.Suddenly the crowd stood in silence as Blair emerged from the tunnel and was greeted by Sutcliffe, who placed a comforting arm around his shoulder. ''C'mon son," said Sutcliffe, "This is no place for you. Let's swing the bat … and get out of here.'' Blair had been sitting in the team's hotel listening to a radio broadcast of the match, and had decided to hail a taxi and go to his teammates' aid at Ellis Park.
New Zealand cricket writer Dick Brittenden said, "Looking down on the scene from the glass windows of the pavilion, the New Zealanders wept openly and without shame; the South Africans were in little better state, and Sutcliffe was just as obviously distressed. Before he faced his first ball, Blair passed his glove across his eyes in the heart-wringing gesture of any small boy anywhere in trouble, but defiant."
Blair and Sutcliffe smashed 25 runs (including four sixes – three by Sutcliffe and one by Blair) off a single over from South Africa’s Hugh Tayfield, and combined for a last-wicket stand of 33. By the time Blair was dismissed, the team’s total had climbed to 187, with Sutcliffe 80 not out. Brittenden added, "They went, arms about each other, into the darkness of the tunnel, but behind them they left a light and an inspiration ..."
"It hurt at the time, it hurt a lot. Time moves on. But I can tell you I haven't enjoyed a Christmas since. I have a thought every Christmas ... It always comes up, it will never go away. It is something you have to live with.
57 Compton Crescent, Taita
"What happened in that Test, it's something anyone would do. Our guys were getting shot down and I had to help. That was all there was to it. They were bleeding on the outside and I was bleeding on the inside and we helped each other. But it wasn't what you wanted to go through when you're 21-years-old and thousands of miles from home."Blair continued playing Test cricket for another 11 years, and later coached in Australia, England, Northern Ireland and Zimbabwe. But every time he returned to New Zealand, he visited the grave at plot 292, Taita cemetery.
Born Carlton, Melbourne, Australia,
January 22, 1934
Died Tangiwai, New Zealand,
Christmas Eve, 1953, aged 19
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A Royal Christmas
Where the keytops glisten and Typospherians listen
To hear carriage bells in the glow
- with apologies to Irving Berlin
It may not be quite as breathtaking as that snowflake in the Polish rain, Piotr's palid Pola, that Trumpiel triumph, his polished white Valentine. And it's most certainly a very far cry from those heady days of yore, when I would "give one away and get two back". But it did come in the midst of some serious downsizing, and it was a gift. And as Christmas gifts go, it's one extremely special 1930 Royal Model P portable typewriter (serial number P186586).
To celebrate, I opened the Royal's case and spent some time happily typing with this gorgeous machine.
Croc skin, above, or snakeskin? You be the judge.
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RIP Rod Taylor (1930-2015)
A 1960 publicity shot for the TV series Hong Kong
Australian-born actor Rod Taylor has died, four days short of his 85th birthday, following a heart attack in Los Angeles. Taylor appeared in more than 50 films, including leading roles in The Time Machineand Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.
A development of the original time machine, the Sholes & Glidden
Rodney Sturt Taylor was born on January 11, 1930, at 40 Mary Street, Lidcombe, a suburb of Sydney, the only child of William Sturt Taylor (born Two Wells, South Australia, 1903), a steel construction contractor and commercial artist, and Mona Thompson Taylor, a writer of more than a 100 short stories and children's books.
Rod Taylor's middle name came from his great-great-grand uncle, Captain Charles Sturt, a British explorer of the Australian Outback in the 19th century. Taylor attended Parramatta High School and later studied at the East Sydney Technical and Fine Arts College.
With Doris Day in Do Not Disturb in 1965
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