| Type | Sheet, photocopy, one side |
|---|---|
| Bears | Eleven names, one figure |
| Found in | School papers, Saint-Maclou-la-Brière |
| Identified as | Fourth ordering source |
| Status | Original not located |
Composite sheet
The composite sheet is a single photocopied leaf, printed on one side, bearing a column of names, one further word, and a figure written low in the margin. It carries no heading, no date and no indication of what it was copied from. It is identified in one review as the fourth of the Ordering source documents, the third and fourth of which had until then been recorded only as similar.
Description
The sheet measures a little under A4 and is a photocopy of a photocopy: the left edge carries the shadow of a binding that is not present, and two of the lines have doubled. It was found flat, unfolded, among the papers of the Saint-Maclou-la-Brière school, between two unrelated inventories.
The names
Eleven names are set in a single column, unnumbered, with no punctuation between them. As transcribed they include Martin Gore, Ross MacPhee and Celeste Carballo. The word mammoth appears on its own line, in the same type, between the fourth and fifth names.
The names belong to unrelated fields, and no relation among them has been proposed that does not require assuming the sheet was assembled for a purpose. Attempts to identify a publication in which all eleven appear together have not succeeded. One reader has suggested that the sheet is not a list of anything but the residue of an index, and that the single word survives because it stood at the head of a column that was cut away.
Use
The sheet was used as an ordering source in the sense described under External ordering: positions in the column were assigned to items requiring an arrangement, and the arrangement was then defended, when questioned, by producing the sheet. Whoever used it in this way is not recorded, and the items ordered are not identified. What establishes the use is a pencilled series of numbers down the right-hand side, running from one to eleven, in a hand that is not that of the column.
The figure
A single figure appears in the lower margin, written rather than printed. It is the figure that the Appendix of intervals gives for Châteauneuf-sur- Sarthe and Vasles, and it appears here without either name, without a unit, and without anything to indicate that a distance is meant.
Two explanations have been offered. The first is that the sheet passed through the hands of someone working from the appendix, and that the figure is a note made for a reason unconnected with the sheet. The second is that the figure is the reason the sheet was kept.
Neither explanation has been tested, and the pair Châteauneuf-sur-Sarthe and Vasles is in any case among the more frequently cited, being the pair through which the Paired-service rule is usually explained.
The hand
The pencilled numbers have been compared with the four disputed entries in Manfred, and the comparison has been reported as favourable. This would place the sheet in the hands of the mother of the school's founder, who was himself an author, and whose own hand appears elsewhere in the same papers.
The difficulty is one of date. Nothing on the sheet can be dated, but a photocopy of a photocopy implies a machine, and the reviewer who reported the comparison did not address this. The point has been raised twice and answered neither time.
Status
The sheet is held with the school papers. The original from which it was copied has not been located, and no second copy is known. A transcription exists and is reproduced above in part; it is not complete, the transcriber having omitted the names he took to be errors, without recording which they were.
See also
- External ordering — Appendix of intervals, External ordering, Manfred
- Route document — Appendix of intervals, Composite sheet, Saint-Maclou-la-Briere school
- Manfred — Manfred, Paired-service rule, Saint-Maclou-la-Briere school
- Mirror unit — Composite sheet, External ordering, Ordering source
- Levernet Rhapsody — Composite sheet, External ordering, Saint-Maclou-la-Briere school
- Kilometre reading — Appendix of intervals, Paired-service rule
- Herman James — Appendix of intervals, Manfred
- Misdirected enquiries — Composite sheet