In the January of 1902 a man whose name was R Whyte (I do not have any more details about his name and please, no more lemonade jokes) purchased a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s From Sea to Sea from a bookseller on the island of Zanzibar. How do I know about this obscure purchase you may ask?
Later on the 8th of July 1905 The Zanzibar Book Club lent this book to the mysterious R.W.Lynn. One of the few rules of this book club was the caveat that if a book was badly damaged or lost then the borrower would have to replace the book (Zanzibar in 1905 was a harsh place to borrow books). However, this book was never returned and the mysterious R.W.Lynn disappeared (with his book) into the swirling mists of history. How do I know about this secondary loan you may ask? Because I purchased this book at the Arcade some weeks ago and apart from looking a little worse for wear, Kipling’s book was very much as had been in 1905. Both the signature of the original owner (1902) and the later addition of the light blue label of the Zanzibar Book Club (1905) were still bright and had only been disturbed by the addition (in pencil) of the new price requested for the book in 2017 (£1.00). It was the first entry into Kipling’s book for one hundred and twelve years (I doubt if there will be many more). The next time that I am in Zanzibar I will return this book to the book club and apologise for its late return. I trust they will not fine me.
Before finding this book I only knew three things about Zanzibar. Firstly, that the archipelago is situated in the Indian Ocean and is between twenty-five and fifty kilometres distant from the mainland of Africa. Also, that Freddy Mercury was born in Zanzibar in 1946 and more obscurely, a Miss Annie Allen who was a noted Nineteenth Century missionary spent many productive years there in God’s name. That was all I knew apart from a few vague geographical references, but now I know a little more thanks to my random find. You never know what you are going find in the Arcade or where these finds will take you.
Happy Hunting
Stuart-Miller-Osborne
