ODD MAN’S WEEK Why even the reference books don’t quite cut it
AWEEK or two ago I wrote of the demise of the big fat red reference book and made mention of the other indispensable reference work saying that I would return to it.
So, herewith, the Cuttings Book. It is even more vital.
All reporters should, from an early age, keep a cuttings book of their own work. But not out of vanity. Should this notional reporter decide to move his talents elsewhere his future employing-editor will (or certainly did) require to see of what his applicant is capable. However a rather more thoughtful reporter may keep a book of cuttings which he feels could be relevant to his work, a reference book to which he can turn giving immediate access to the past.
I recall, even when I was a schoolboy, I was pasting up cuttings which interested me. And I still have them. But when I joined this newspaper more than 60 years ago I began to take things seriously and instil some discipline. For instance I began to index my cuttings books and have several on the go, their contents alphabetically arranged and well thumbed. People often say ‘How do you remember it all’ or suggest I know a lot. Well I have neither of these attributes. But I do have my cuttings. They are invaluable not just to me but to, sometimes, solicitors making enquiries or, more frequently, those with an interest in genealogy. And sometimes they can help.
But not always. For instance because I have been local for many years people think I know about our county … fen, heath, marsh and wold… vast – from the Isle of Axholme to Stamford, the place is
unknown to me really. I’ll tell you a story ...
One day at an auction viewing in Brigg, there was a very neatly kept cuttings book devoted specifically to the Spilsby area. I knew little of the district and determined to buy the book. The auctioneer who I knew, thought it might make £20. So, I suggested if I left £50 on it I’d get it? The auctioneer was amazed.
Why, he asked, was I so determined? I replied that it was all about something I did not know … and wanted to know. I left £100 on it. I didn’t get it!
And why? Because that cuttings book with its notes contained information utterly unobtainable anywhere else. And someone other than me appreciated that. Cuttings books can have a great value and far beyond the death of their compilers. I would be enormously inconvenienced if I could no longer have recourse to mine.
Cuttings books incidentally bear a misnomer. They get called ‘scrapbooks.’
Scrapbooks have an enormous and entirely different history.
In the 18th Century young ladies of leisure compiled albums of prints, engravings specifically produced for the pasting-in thereof. And they supplemented them with poems and watercolours, They can have a value all their own. They were just albums until the mid-19th Century.
Then, a German firm of lithographic printers, Faber and Faber (in the main) began producing sheets of assorted pictures – views, battles, kings, queens, flowers, generals, animals and sentimental pictures of children and their pets and so on endlessly.
These were known as Scraps. You cut them from the sheets and compiled your album page with them, Scraps were also used on large screens (draught preventers). And they come up for sale occasionally. But Scraps probably gave way to other hobbies like cigarette cards, the first produced in America in the 1870s. And people collected the crests of the nobility and of regiments, royalty and nations … and monograms for which albums were supplied by a specialist firm in London, W S KLincoln’s who also sold stamps and a vast range of albums. But your cuttings book is not a scrap book. Cuttings books arrived with national literacy and so added another dimension to mark the passing of the years and the importance of marking their passing. So there we have it. They are not scrap books or common place books. They are not a bore to compile or a burden to read.
And tho’ I mourn the passing of the big, fat red book it is up to me whether or not I chose to keep a cuttings book. And I do. You would get much pleasure from it … even the indexing!