Whither Time's Arrow?
In the late 60s I started work in that part of London known as Bloomsbury, just a few minutes walk from the British Museum and in an area much favoured by the retail outlets of many of the well-known publishing houses. In those days the streets to the south of the British Museum were filled with bookshops of all kinds and I found them to be exciting places to visit. The work with which I was involved at the time was sessional so that there was plenty of time off in the middle of the day. As a result, fair weather or foul, I was able to browse to my heart's content on most days of the week. The tale I am about to relate followed from one such expedition and was to prove the eeriest experience of my life.
It was early October and I was heading along Great Russell Street back to my place of work when, on the opposite side of the road, I spotted a bookshop that I had never noticed before. It appeared to be an interesting shop, double-fronted with bow windows and a couple of steps leading up to an imposing entrance door. With a little time in hand I crossed over the road for a closer inspection. The windows were filled with books dealing with railways, canals and their associated architecture so it was clearly a shop for specialists. Although I was not in that league I had a neighbour and friend who was very much involved with that sort of thing so I stepped inside to have a closer look. It was very quiet. The interior of the shop was arranged on two levels separated by what I can only describe as an altar rail. In the central part of the rail, opposite the door, were two or three steps leading to the upper level. The lower level had very little in it apart from the window displays that blocked out most of the light from outside so that the interior of the shop was quite dim. I mounted the steps to the upper level, a long, narrow, rectangular space surrounded by bookshelves. A quick look round revealed that the subject matter of all the books was the same as that on view in the window display. There were no other customers in the shop but, at the far end of the space, there was a woman bending over a table and writing in what appeared to be a ledger. Oddly enough she did not look up or speak and I left the shop making a mental note to pass on the information. That same evening my friend's wife called in and I told her about the shop and thought no more about it.
Some days later my friend's wife called in again to ask a favour. Her husband, an architect, had produced his Christmas wish list that included one or two books that may have been available at the Great Russell Street shop. My brief was, if possible, to acquire the books in time for Christmas. "Easy enough", I thought, but it was to prove otherwise.
At the next opportunity I went straight to where I had seen the shop the previous week and it was not there. Furthermore, although the buildings were as I remembered them, there was no evidence that any of them had ever been a shop. My first reaction was to assume that I had been mistaken about the shop's location but I knew it couldn't be far away. Between Tottenham Court Road and Southampton Row there are three streets that run parallel to Great Russell Street and six streets that run between Great Russell Street and New Oxford Street or Bloomsbury Way. They are all fairly short in length so I figured it would not take me long to locate my shop. But it did. Over the next week I systematically covered all the adjacent streets, looked at all the bookshops, and made enquiries, all with a negative result. So I was obliged to report failure and look foolish into the bargain. It was as though the shop, together with any evidence of its existence, had vanished into thin air. But it was what happened next that underlined the bizarre nature of that experience.
Another friend called Dennis was an engineer who ran a small electrical installation service. On a working visit to a local farm one day he noted that the farmer's children were making mud pies in the garden. They were constructing their muddy edifice on what appeared to be a painted panel. A quick look at the panel told Dennis that it might be worth investigating further so, when the business was finished with the farmer, he enquired whether he could offer the children half-a-crown for their playing board. With the farmer's agreement Dennis made his approach to the children. The kids were overjoyed with the deal and Dennis took the panel home and carefully cleaned it off. Luckily its contact with the mud had caused very little damage. It was indeed an oil painting of two attractive young ladies set in a landscape. On the back was a label inscribed in copperplate with the names of the young ladies, daughters of a captain in a famous military regiment. The painting was signed Ramsay Reinagle and it was dated 1815.
The name was vaguely familiar and a little research on the artist was rewarded with a fascinating story. In the eighteenth century there was a little known Scottish painter by the name of Allan Ramsay. He was a contemporary of Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough and, in 1767, much to their annoyance was appointed as principal painter to George III. Ramsay travelled across Europe quite widely and received more than 50 commissions to paint various European Kings and Queens. Returning to England Ramsay became unwell and took on a penniless young man called Phillipp Reinagle as a pupil and assistant. Although there were eventually other assistants, Reinagle, of Dutch origin, became Ramsay's favourite and was looked after very well. In 1775, when Reinagle was 26, his wife gave birth to a son who was named Ramsay in honour of Reinagle's mentor and benefactor. Ramsay Richard Reinagle then grew up to become a painter in his own right and some of his works fetch quite substantial prices when they come on to the market. So, if the panel was to be truly attributed to Ramsay Reinagle it had to be authenticated, and who better to carry out the authentication than Sothebys of New Bond Street.
So, a few months after the shop incident, in mounting anticipation and with the painting suitably protected in a small suitcase I trotted off on Dennis' behalf to Sothebys. Hindsight, an exact science, told me later that I should have telephoned to make an arrangement to see an expert. It might have saved us a lot of disappointment. I arrived in Sothebys' large entrance vestibule to find the place buzzing with excitement. Someone had brought in a magnificent Dutch winter landscape that had been mounted on an easel and was surrounded by Sothebys' art aficionados, and others, all twittering superlatives and swooning with joy. Nobody was prepared to give me and my little panel any attention so, after a while, I gave up and left. On the way back to Bloomsbury I came up with what I thought to be the bright idea of asking the curators at the British Museum if they could help with the authentication.
It was when I entered Great Russell Street and stopped outside the retail outlet of publisher Andre Deutsch that a sense of unreality began to build up. The episode of the disappearing shop was still very much on my mind and I was not prepared to let the matter go until I had investigated every avenue. So I went into the Deutsch's outlet and was greeted by an elderly man who looked as though he had stepped right out of a Dickens' novel. He wore an embroidered smoking cap, complete with tassel, a dusty-looking black suit, with frock-coat, waistcoat, and a pair of those gloves with the finger-ends removed. He listened attentively while I told my story, nodded a couple of times and shuffled to the door of the shop from where he peered eastwards down Great Russell Street.
"Ah yes", he said, pointing down the street. "That would be..", and here he mentioned the name of the firm. "They moved you know".
"I gathered that", I said, "but wasn't it a bit sudden?"
"Oh no", he replied, "We all knew about it. They had notices up and everything."
"I didn't see any notices when I passed by the other week", I said.
"Well you wouldn't" he said, "it's a long time ago now, seven or eight years if I remember rightly."
With the old boy's final remark I shivered slightly and the day suddenly began to assume a dream-like quality. I weighed up the evidence. The detail about the shop I had entered, my unfamiliarity with the area (I had only just got to know it within the last few months), the assurance of Andre Deutsch's representative. He may have been old but he clearly had all his marbles. Whatever was going on? Was I losing my grip? All these thoughts passed through my mind as I walked on. Little did I know it but the day's strange events were far from ended.
I had been into the British Museum only briefly during my time in London so I can't say that I was too familiar with its layout. It seemed to me, however, that I was more likely to find an art curator in that part of the museum that sounded as though it might display paintings. Accordingly I headed for the back entrance, turning up Gower Street then right into Montagu Street and right again into the King Edward VII Galleries. It may only have been an impression at the time but it seemed to me that the entrance to the galleries was even more imposing than the main entrance of the museum. Walking through the towering columns at the entrance I felt suitably overawed and it must have showed because I was approached by a museum official, wearing lots of gold braid, who asked if he could help. In retrospect I suppose it was the suitcase that did it because I noticed that the Major Domo, if that's what he was, kept glancing down at it. Bomb scares in central London had not developed into the familiar pattern that they were to assume during the mid-seventies. Nevertheless the word was out and I suppose that the scruffy suitcase looked a bit suspicious. I explained that I had brought a painting for examination by the curator of the art department and would be grateful if he, the Major Domo, could ask if it was possible for him to see me.
I cringe now in remembrance of my naivety in those days. I raised the suitcase and gave it a little shake. The official took a step back.
"I'm sorry sir", he said, "there is no art department here."
I was astonished. "I am in the British Museum aren't I?", I asked.
"Yes Sir."
"Are you sure that there is no art department?"
It was like a red rag to a bull. The official seemed to swell up and I noticed the veins in his neck pulsing.
"Well sir, I've only worked here for twenty years and I have yet to find the art department."
It seemed pretty final so I turned about and slunk away feeling that, on a score of one to ten for success, my lunchtime foray had earned zero points. I was genuinely puzzled by events and was beginning to think that London was a very strange place indeed.
I was still thinking along these lines at five o'clock as I marched up Judd Street towards King's Cross and my train home. I bought the Evening Standard from the newsagent at the entrance to King's Cross and boarded the train, sinking thankfully into a seat. Yes, in those days it was possible to get a seat on the train without specifically booking it. As the train pulled out and I began my hour's journey I opened my paper and the headline seemed to jump from the page. A London businessman had died and bequeathed his entire collection of lithographs to the art department at the British Museum. For the second time that day I felt a chill and shivered involuntarily.
Luckily there were no further strange events but the story of my experience in London got around and I was often asked to retell the one about the "Ghost Shop". A year or so later Anglia Television advertised the fact that they were proposing to run a series to be called "Time Slip" and asked the public if there were any interesting experiences they might like to contribute. The story of the shop seemed to fit the bill so I wrote it all out and sent it to the show's producer. There was no acknowledgement and, in due course, the first program in the series was screened. Amazingly the lead story on that first program concerned a lady from Norwich who had had a very similar experience to mine. She had entered a shopping arcade in Norwich to shelter from a heavy shower and had been attracted into an embroidery shop. She looked around carefully and, at a later date, came back to make some purchases only to find the shop was non-existent. Like me she made enquiries and discovered to her astonishment that the shop had gone out of business some thirty years before. There was no explanation other that the experience might be a form of déjà vu. In my own case, however, déjà vu was an unlikely explanation since I had, to my certain knowledge, never visited that part of London before starting work there some months before.
As far as I am aware the provenance of the painting by Ramsay Reinagle was never followed up. Dennis took it back and it adorned the wall of his living room until he retired and moved, with his wife Betty, to an interesting octagonal house in the village of Brampton near Huntingdon. Eventually he died and we moved to another part of the country and lost touch with Betty after a few years. With no response to our letters and Christmas cards we had assumed that she too had passed away. However, a few discreet enquiries with her GP's surgery revealed that she had been taken into a care home. An approach to the Social Services for the area proved to be distinctly less than helpful and they steadfastly refused any information as to where Betty was living. They undertook, however, to get the matron of the care home to open a line of communication but nothing came of it. Dennis and Betty had no children, nor family, so where the painting is now is anyone's guess. Is it hanging in her room at the care home or has it been sold with her other chattels? I sometimes wonder if a new owner has taken the trouble to determine its history and authenticity. As for the "ghost shop" I look on it now as an interesting and somewhat unnerving past experience best not dwelt on too deeply.
>>>>>>>oOo<<<<<<<