A Telegram from Rebecca West Hidden in a Used Book Reveals a Lost Story
My first and last telegram was from Rebecca West
At a Georgetown library book sale, a reader bought a battered copy of Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon and found a telegram tucked inside, sent by West under her real name, Cicily Andrews, to journalist Ann Cottrell Free. It led back to the Bulbul, a Sarajevo singer West had immortalized in her 1941 travelogue, whom Free later found alive in a Sinai refugee camp. West helped her quietly, then never wrote back.
Rebecca West would use anybody. She was a smart, ruthless woman.
- pradn
Telegrams have a quaint connotation these days I suppose.
In old Indian movies, a Telegram would only arrive to signify really bad news - someone died, or something like that. Why else would you pay for that expense? Well, it could also be a job interview or posting. So the connotation there, in that time, was probably not so good.
- greasegum
I didn't realize RW was cold like that.
- buran77
> Not long ago I received my first and last telegram
> I found this telegram tucked into a passage on the Jewish community in Sarajevo [...] The recipient of the telegram was Ann Cottrell Free
I dare say he didn't receive, he found, and it's not his but someone else's telegram.