Thread by @NPosegay

1/??? A historical 🧵of uncommonly little significance:

There is a rather famous (“niche famous”) letter in @theUL that Solomon Schechter sent to Agnes Lewis in 1896, informing her that a manuscript she purchased was the lost #Hebrew text of Ben Sira. exhibitions.lib.cam.ac.uk/discardedhisto…

2/??? The discovery led Schechter to acquire most of the Cairo #Genizah for Cambridge. This is not important. What is important is that his letter was written on Cambridge University Library stationery, and it has a #watermark: "Partridge & Cooper Vellum Wove Club House Paper"

3/??? According to this blurry 1869 newspaper, P&C were very proud of this paper:
"Manufactured expressly to meet a universally experienced want, i.e. a paper which shall in itself combine a perfectly smooth surface with total freedom from grease." Sounds delightful.

4/??? Did @theUL respond to this ad? Did they really purchase 27 years worth of stationery all at once? This feels like too much. Someone should have stopped them. That no one did reflects the moral failings of modernity, or something.

5/??? Partridge & Cooper were based in Holborn at the time. Their address, 192 Fleet Street, is indeed at the corner of Chancery Lane. They eventually expanded to 1 & 2 Chancery Lane and 191 Fleet Street, and they may have opened a second shop at some point.

6/??? Google says their original location is now a permanently closed Itsu, but according to this directory of London addresses, they were still open in 1940. The shop is listed just after Cliffords Inn Passage, less than 70 yards away. londonwiki.co.uk/streets1940F/F…

7/7 And here is, I swear I’m not making this up, a picture of me and my dad in Cliffords Inn Passage in 2019. I did not know this going in. This has been a story about how I lost my afternoon and also about how human history is nested fractally and we will never reach the bottom.

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