Post-Card, Sandringham House, West Front, image post-marked 1904 on verso, private collection

I am sure you must have mornings when, like me, you wake up wondering what you did with that recipe for leather dressing, the one your friend gave you, (along with her recipe for white grapes pickled in vodka - refreshing!), the friend who used to be in the book trade but then, like so many, disappeared into the wilds of upstate New York.  Well, wonder no more.  When my (partial) set of bound Country Life magazines (1903-1906) arrived, acquired in an e-bay auction at what I might add was an almost absurdly reasonable price,  I was immediately struck by the condition of the leather bindings, especially when my hand came away from the spine of the first folio volume a distressing shade of orange.

I acted quickly, as you might imagine, for there is nothing worse than leather that's gotten so dry it leaves a rusty saffron stain on a freshly laundered white shirt.  I promptly sought professional advice from an expert, my dear friend Justin, who recognized my plight and talked me out of what I have to admit was a hastily composed plan to track down my old friend -- a plan which would have involved untold privation and days of travel by plane, bus and hired boat, under conditions of a dire and primitive variety  -- when book people get out of the business, they get out. 

So rather than some harrowing Heart of Darkness journey to the remote shores of Lake George, I went Here and recommend you do the same for all your leather and binding and conservation needs.  And as soon as my Hewit Leather Dressing arrives, I will set to work and then, my darlings, be prepared to be regaled with all the news from Country Life, 1904.

Meanwhile, speaking of periodicals, bound or otherwise, I wonder if you were not as distressed as I was to learn that Mavety Media Group is ceasing publication of its adult titles.  Consider the irony that as I snatch up magazines from the turn of the last century (for a song), a whole list of titles which played so important a role in my youth, helping me to develop my aesthetic taste and sensibility, are no longer to be.  "Everything's on-line," I am told, and while that may be true, I can't help feeling nostalgic for the old days, those happy times when I would relax by arranging and rearranging my choice periodical collection on the counterpane around me, gazing fondly at familiar faces and scenes and day-dream... but I digress.

General Sir Dighton McNaghton Probyn was a recipient of the Victoria Cross for extreme gallantry at the age of 24 in the 2nd Punjab Cavalry during the Indian Mutiny, and was deeply devoted in his later years to the Princess of Wales, subsequently Queen Alexandra, building and designing gardens for her at Sandringham, including a rockery of artistically arranged stones and known as the Queen's Nest, in 1904. 

I feel quite confident I will find a lengthy article in a 1904 issue of Country Life on the Queen's Nest, perhaps illustrated with images of Sir Dighton and H.M. which is something I have as yet failed to find on-line, despite being assured by everyone that everything important, everything you care about, can be found on-line.  And even if that were true, what, I ask, is to prevent the people who control the servers with all that on-line content from eliminating or expunging -- what's to keep them from dropping all the Country Life?  

I couldn't -- I can't -- take that risk.