photograph courtesy of Yahya Abdelsamad

The Telegraph yesterday, 1/3, reported the sad news of the death of Basil William Robinson, author and Orientalist, on December 29th at the age of 93.

Born in London June 20, 1912, Robinson was educated at Winchester, and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. While at Oxford, he prepared a a B.Litt. thesis on the collection of Persian miniatures in the Bodleian Library, which many years later was to form the basis of a comprehensive catalogue.

Upon completing his degree at Oxford, he accepted the post of headmaster of a school at Bognor Regis. He had been an enthusiast and collector of Japanese art, arms, and armor, since boyhood, and in the capacity of a collector became acquainted with A.J. Koop, Assistant Keeper of the Metalwork Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum. An inquiry resulted in a friendship, and with Koop’s encouragement, he sought a post at the Museum. He was runner-up for an Assistant Keeper’s position, but the favorite soon resigned; and, in 1939, Robinson succeeded to the appointment.

He joined the Royal Sussex Regiment in 1942, enlisting in the ranks, but was sent to officer training school, and then commissioned (on the basis of his knowledge of Urdu) in the 2nd Punjab Regiment. He subsequently served as an Intelligence Officer in the Headquarters of 14 Army, which defeated the Japanese in the course of the campaign in Burma whose major actions were the battles of Imphal and Kohima.

After the end of the war, Robinson was sent to Singapore to be employed, on the basis of his knowledge of Japanese swords, in evaluating large quantities of swords surrendered by the defeated enemy. He was able to obtain the services of Colonel Yamada Sakae, of the 3rd Air Force, who had been a member of the sword evaluating committee of the Japanese War Office, to assist in his task.

He returned to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1946. In the years following the war, Robinson proved a prolific author, publishing monographs on Persian miniatures and paintings, on Japanese swords and armor, and on the woodblock prints of Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi. His The Arts of the Japanese Sword (1961) was one of a small number of post-WWII publications in European languages which played a crucial role in opening up the study of Nihonto to Western students and collectors.

He became Deputy Keeper of Metal work in 1954, and succeeded the illustrious Charles Oman as Keeper in 1966. In 1967, Robinson was elected honorary president of the To-ken Society of Great Britain. He was president of the Royal Asiatic Society from 1970 to 1973. He was Keeper Emeritus at the Victoria and Albert from 1972 until his retirement in 1976. He is remembered with gratitude for his many contributions to the advancement of learning, and with affection by many friends, students, and long-time correspondents.

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Yahya Abdelsamad, Basil William Robinson, Japanese Sword Society of the United States Newsletter, 37:1, February, 2005.

Internationally renowned angling author Ernest George Schwiebert Jr. passed away Saturday morning, Dick Talleur reported on the Michigan Sportsman web-site. He was 74 years of age. Newspaper obituaries have not yet appeared.

Schwiebert graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture from Ohio State University in 1956, cum laude. He also earned a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts in 1960, and a Ph. D. in Architecture in 1966, from Princeton University . He wrote his doctoral dissertation on The Primitive Roots of Architecture. He resided in Princeton, New Jersey, and practiced for many years successfully as an architect in New York City and in Princeton.

While still an undergraduate, Schwiebert wrote his first book, Matching the Hatch (1955), which astonished the American angling community by realizing American angling’s most avidly desired, yet most unattainable, theoretical goal: reconciling traditional artificial fly patterns and their use in actual practice with Science. The book’s title became a by-word for the preferred methodology of serious dry fly fishermen everywhere.

Efforts at codifying a list of the most effective traditional fly patterns, and identifying scientifically the specific natural insects they imitated, thus reconciling angling with entomology, had been underway since the turn of the century, when Theodore Gordon’s articles in the English Fishing Gazette, reprinted domestically in Forest & Stream, began popularizing the ethos of Frederick Halford’s dry fly purism in North America. Previous authors, most notably including Louis Rhead, author of American Trout Stream Insects (1916), and Preston Jennings, whose A Book of Trout Flies appeared in a luxury edition published by the illustrious Derrydale Press (1935), had tried and failed. The goal of establishing the scientific identity of the most traditionally important mayfly hatches, determining what fly patterns constituted their most effective imitations, and which versions of these patterns were most correct, had represented the perennially sought for, never achieved, goal, the Unified Field Theory, of American angling for half a century. The sporting establishment was shocked to find that the for so long seemingly-impossible had been accomplished deftly and with unanswerable precision by an angler so young.

In a single step, the youthful Schwiebert vaulted to the supreme heights of angling authority; and, over the years, other publications appropriate to his sporting stature followed. Architectural training had taught him draftsmanship, and he subsequently became a skilled illustrator and water-colorist. This latter talent was placed on display in Salmon of the World (1970), an opulent portfolio of portraits of all the species of the King of Gamefish, produced in a small edition, and much coveted by collectors. With Nymphs (1973), Schwiebert proceeded so far into entomology that he passed beyond nearly all of his readers’ ability to follow. The boxed two-volume Trout (1978) at some 1800 pages length was intentionally monumental, and simply overwhelming, covering angling history, species biology, techniques, and featuring a rhapsodic and passionately detailed survey of high end tackle. Schwiebert wrote regularly for angling, and other sporting, serials, and published three collections of stories and memoirs: Remembrances of Rivers Past (1973), Death of a Riverkeeper (1980), and A River for Christmas (1988).

In the course of a long and illustrious career, he fished, and wrote about, the finest rivers all over the world. He was a regular habituée of the choicest waters and the most exclusive clubs, and was renowned for his enthusiasm for the best of everything. As the years went on, Schwiebert’s elitist perspective and idiosyncratic writing style came in for a certain amount of criticism. He was reported to be a colorful personality, and intensely competitive, by those who travelled in the same circles. Criticisms of Schwiebert’s latest book and anecdotes of conflicts in the field and at events became staples of gossip in the sporting community. One envious scribbler went so far as to caricature the great man in an anonymously published, pretentious and ridiculously overpriced, lampoon.

Real achievement of the scale of Ernest Schwiebert’s will always find detractors and provoke envy. It probably also true that, that like many of angling’s other greats, Schwiebert possessed a full consciousness of his own worth, and could at times be difficult. The roll of major angling writers is thickly populated with egotists and curmudgeons. His passing, however, is bound to silence criticism. Even those who did not like Ernest G. Schwiebert will be forced to acknowledge that we have lost probably the single most important angling theorist of the last century, the most important figure in North America this side of Theodore Gordon.

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12/13 Press reports are beginning to appear:

Field & Stream

NY Times

Web sources are reported the death of angling writer Ernest G. Schwiebert. More to follow.

The Sunday Times remembers Franz Jolowicz, owner 1976-1984 of Discophile, New York City’s most illustrious classical record store, who passed away November 8th.

It may seem peculiar to some who did not live there then that the Times published a major obituary of the one-time owner of a small basement shop on St. Mark’s Place, officially 26 West 8th Street, which closed its doors more than twenty years ago. But in its day Franz’ subteraenean sanctum was one of New York City musical culture’s best-known and most important landmarks.

Franz, assisted by his partner Dominic (looked like Lorre, sounded like Capote), operated as passionate recording importer, pirate, retailer, and connoisseur. His piercing dark eyes glaring forth indignantly from beneath formidable Mittel-Europan brows, Franz would sit chain-smoking behind his counter, purveying carefully-selected benchmark recordings of astonishingly diverse international origin, while –assisted by a loyal clientele– carrying on a scathing critique of the ignorance and bad taste of the classical recording industry, and of the critics writing in England’s Gramaphone Magazine, at whose absurd fondness for the likes of Klemperer, Solti, and Sutherland, he particularly loved to jeer.

Strange docecahedronal speakers, which Franz himself admitted weren’t any good, but which did look hi-tech and could be suspended from the ceiling leaving more room for LPs, usually played softly in the background, but Franz would crank the volume up and rattle the windows of his little shop to demonstrate particular favorites. I can remember Franz playing a 1944 Berlin Gieseking performance of the Emperor Concerto, gleefully pointing out the sound of anti-aircraft fire in the background, and then joking at an audible cough from the audience: “That was Goebbels!”

He knew his records. Franz sold us a marvellous set of Callas arias, many recorded at rehearsals, on the BJR label. Could BJR have been his own? He introduced us also to the extraordinary early performances of the Franco-Belgian Flonzaley Quartet, and it was Franz who prevailed on us to buy the Vienna Concerthaus Quartet’s unrivalled Schuberts, and the superb contemporary Tatrai Quartet Haydns. I could go on for pages. He will be missed.

I did not know that Franz was once a soldier, and served in La Legion Etrangere. I’ll have to find an appropriate version of Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden, and play it for Franz later. No Gerhard Husch unfortunately, I fear, no Schlussnuss. I might have Leo Slezak. Bleib du im ew’gen Leben, Franz.

Joan Kennedy Taylor, prominent libertarian writer, intellectual leader in the Conservative Movement in the United States, friend of Ayn Rand, and champion of Freedom passed away on Sunday, October 30th. Flags fly at half-mast in Galt’s Gulch.

Molliter ossa cubent. [May the earth lie lightly on her bones.]

Some of her articles.

Walter Olson at the Overlawyered blog

Charles Murray in Reason

Jeff Riggenbach at Laissez-Faire Books site

Tribute blog.