User:Pauldarby
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1. Paul Darby has been studying Elizabeth Bibesco for 23 years. Most of her correspondence was lost in the war. Thus there is a lot of detective work to be done in recreating her life. If you read her books, not as literature, but as masquerading autobiography there is a certain amount of psychological truth to be found. Couple this with the comments found in the memoirs of her contemporaries and you come somewhere close to her character, or so I like to think. It is a happy co-incidence that one of Elizabeth's (distant) relatives (Emma Tennant) has done just this kind of recreation of her grandmother Pamela Tennant, the sister-in-law of Margot Asquith (mother of Elizabeth Bibesco)in a very readable book, Strangers (Random House, 1998). Should anyone be interested in more information on Elizabeth Bibesco, or, better still, should anyone have letters or personal anecdotes, please contact me.
2. When Paul Darby met his future wife, Joan, as a young man, he had never heard of "Darby and Joan". It is a peculiarly English term (and he is Canadian). However, after this meeting, he kept coming upon idiomatic references in his reading. It was with a sense of Kismet that he began to study the derivation of the term. On their first visit to England, this modern day Darby and Joan made sure to have their picture taken outside a Darby and Joan Club. It is slightly embarassing to notice that in arranging the Doulton figurines for their photo shoot he seems to have reversed them from what MUST have been the original intention.
3. Paul Darby graduated from the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto in 1969. One of his most memorable performances was of "Twelve Miniatures" by Harry Somers for Alto voice, flute, harpsichord and cello. It was an entirely atonal experience but so got into his blood that he used it as a teaching tool for the next 30 years of high school teaching (not EVERY year - but you know what I mean)
4. An interest in Canadian printmakers in the 1960's led eventually to a fascination for what is called the Etching Revival, a period stretching roughly from 1860 to 1930. Gerald Brockhurst was one of the younger generation of etchers, the last to have the full attention of a wide public. That public dried up with the Depression and never returned. Collecting modern prints is now the preoccupation of a fringe group, whereas in the 1920's it became a popular mania. Once a part of that modern fringe group Paul Darby has now become a throwback Etching Revival maniac.