Jeremy Lawrence - Founders House 1953.

Jeremy Lawrence (photograph above), publisher and author of several books, recently published a limited edition (100 copies) of 'Private View', a commonplace book by Jean St Leger Lawrence.  (Gryphon Press, Cape Town, 2019).  The dust cover explains the book, as follows: 'Over the course of seventy years Jean Lawrence (1909 - 1999) filled an exercise book with quotations from the books she read - and she read widely.  'Private View' is a collection of these extracts; and like other 'commonplace books' of this kind it reveals, en passant, something of the compiler's character.' 

From the chapter on 'Childhood' the following quote is from Violet Trefusis's Don't Look Round: 'One is never cured of one's childhood: too happy, as in my case, it exhales an aroma with which the present cannot compete ... It is wise not to look around'. 

From the chapter on 'Women' the following quote is from Francis Parkinson Keyes's Christian Marlowe's Daughter: 'The woman who permits her emotions, of whatever sort, to disfigure her, wages a losing battle with life'.  From the chapter on 'Love', the following quote is from A Weigall's The Not Impossible She: 'Familiarity breeds contempt, but you have to be pretty familiar to breed anything'. 

From the chapter on 'Marriage' the following quote is from Augustine Birrel's Life of Sir Frank Lockwood: 'It might be hazardous to assert that barristers make good husbands, but that they generally have good wives is, I think, the case'. From the chapter on 'Friendship' the following quote is from Eric Linklater's The Wind on the Moon: 'But then they remembered ... there was no use having a friend if you were going to complain about everything that he or she did.  You had to understand her point of view, or his'. 

'On Death' features the following by Ezra Pound (from: To Madame Châtelet):

Life gives us
Two deaths - and to stop loving and being
lovable,
That is the real death,
The other is little beside it.       

The above photograph is of Sir Malcolm Searle, an OD who had a distinguished career.  Malcolm Searle was knighted shortly after being appointed Judge President of the Cape Provincial Division of the Supreme Court.  He was a Fellow of St Catherine's College, Cambridge; a member of Diocesan College Council; and Joint-Founder of the O.D. Union in 1896, and President.  Sir Malcolm was tragically killed in the Salt River Railway accident on 9 June 1926. He attended Bishops from 1865 - 1875.  Jean St Leger Lawrence was his daughter, and his grandson is Jeremy Lawrence.