mike snook 2
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What about Dougal or Douglas Herbert?
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Sawubona
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Mike, good suggestion, but my opinion is that the first letter is an upper case "C" rather than a "D". I suppose I should scan De Wet's signature as the time and place are pretty contemporary and I therefore shouldn't be surprised if the style is similar. His capital "C" is exactly the same except for the vertical upstroke embellishment (that is an upstroke, don't you think, Alan?). Whatever combination I try, I seem to keep returning to "Caverly", a not uncommon surname. Could it also have been a given name or is our signator a dyslexic and trying to spell 'Cavalry"? Why isn't the "stand-alone" middle letter (an "a"?) capitalized? Am I now seeing "War" in the middle? Herein lies madness!
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Sawubona
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This little tome came up again in a recent thread and I looked closely at it once again-- particularly at that great enhancement of the handwriting on the cover done by Alan. Tonight I'm imagining "Durban" as the last word of the first handwritten line on the cover. Did the pen skip or simply run out of ink on the "belly" of the capital "D"? Is the stroke reversed from that of the "D" in Durban below? There's a pretty obviously a "b", then possibly an "a" and then an undecipherable final letter there at the end. Could that last letter be an "n" rendered with a lot of flash? And I can see "at" for the middle word (without a cross on the "t", something the writer left out on "Natal" as well). Knowing that "Caverly" was a surname common in that area-- it was a Sgt. Caverly who figured in the denouement of Mome Gorge-- I'm leaning towards "Caverly at Durban Durban-Natal 28/4/'79". Anyone else able to blur their eyes enough to see that? Possibly with eyesight lubricated somewhat with Squareface Vision Enhancer?
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"W. Bellairs, Col."-Man of Mystery |
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