A wonderful gift ....

 

About a year ago, brother John Gallas, and I authored a translation of the poetry of the French show-off Petrus Borel, published by the celebrated poetry house, Carcanet...

It is the only time in our forty years as writers that we have collaborated on a whole book, and we are immensely proud of it. 

If I knew how to, I would enter it for some of the grand translation prizes available in Britain. John and I have won lots in the past. I even got an accolade from America when I was a beginner. But that was thirty-much-plus years ago. And I'm rather 'old-hat' now. Anyway, prizes ar'n't what we did the project for: it was two devoted brothers, on opposite sides of the world, searching for a novel and interesting subject to work on together.

And we most surely found it.

Yesterday, a slim cardboard envelope arrived at Gerolstein. John's handwriting. He is a dear. He got all the Viking/Highland blood in our family. I got the Jewish. He does things like Christmas: I don't. But there's always a little something in my letterbox round this time of the year. 

Well. He's scored a hit this year! An original copy of the ancient lithograph of Petrus which we used for our volume's cover.

It had to have a special frame! And, yes, I had one. Tortoiseshell and gilt. It had originally held a dedicated photo of Nellie Melba, who apparently gave music lessons, at some stage, to Ian's mother. I gave the photo to Melba-collector, Brian Castles Onion, but I kept the frame, and for many years it held a photo of Ian as a young man. Then I got a better, other-sized photo of Ian in 'my' years (now on the living room wall).

The frame made a return to the sideboard when our darling kitten, Minnie, died ...  but now Minnie and her friend ChiQi have a lovely little silver (Burlington Arcade) twin frame ....  

and Petrus has taken the tortoiseshell ...

And, of course, his place on the bookcase among all our other books ...

Oh, lordy!  It ISN'T tortoisehell at all. It only took me 50 years to find out!  It is some kind of beautifully-grained ?tropical wood ...