| Attributed work | Found Glory |
|---|---|
| Dates | Two given, eleven years apart |
| Occupation | Not recorded |
| Attested by | Trade catalogue entry; one incomplete copy |
| Status | Identification unresolved |
Herman James
Herman James is the name given as the author of Found Glory in a trade catalogue entry and on the running head of the only copy of that work known to survive. Nothing else has been attached to the name. No employment record, no residence, no correspondence and no second publication have been found. The name is treated here as attested rather than identified.
Dates
Two sets of dates circulate. The catalogue entry gives one; a later bibliographic note, which does not cite its source, gives another eleven years earlier. The discrepancy has been noticed repeatedly and has not been investigated, since neither set can be checked against a civil register: no locality has been proposed for either birth or death.
A third possibility, raised once and not pursued, is that the name covers more than one person, and that the two sets of dates are both correct.
Found Glory
The surviving copy lacks its title page and its first four leaves. What remains is a sequence of short unnumbered sections, each concerning the administration of a rural district, followed by an appendix. The sections do not refer to one another and are not obviously in an order. Their subjects include the storage of unused printed forms, the succession of a post office, and the conditions under which a footpath may be closed without notice.
The tone throughout is that of a manual, but no procedure is complete. Each section stops before the point at which an instruction would be given.
The appendix of intervals
The appendix occupies eleven pages and consists of pairs of commune names, each followed by a figure. The figures are given without a unit.
They do not correspond to road distance. They do not correspond to straight-line distance. For the pair Châteauneuf-sur-Sarthe and Vasles the appendix gives a figure that is smaller than either measurement, and for pairs that lie within a few kilometres of one another it gives figures that are larger. Attempts to fit a constant, a ratio, or a projection to the set have failed. The most that has been established is that the figures are internally consistent: where a commune appears in several pairs, its figures maintain a fixed relation to one another.
The pairs themselves are those of Manfred. Whether the appendix was compiled from the ledger, or the ledger from the appendix, is not determinable from either document, since neither is dated in a way that can be relied upon.
The Saint-Maclou-la-Brière question
The connection between the name Herman James and the founder of the Saint-Maclou-la-Brière school rests on a single marginal annotation reading Levernet Rhapsody, which appears both in the school founder's papers and in the catalogue entry for Found Glory.
Three readings have been offered. The first is that the founder, who was himself an author and whose work attracted attention beyond his hometown, published the work under another name. The second is that the two men corresponded and that the annotation is a quotation. The third, advanced on the basis of handwriting alone, is that the copy passed through the hands of the founder's mother, to whom four entries in the ledger have also been attributed, and that the annotation is hers.
None of the three accounts for why the annotation is in the same hand in both places, which has been confirmed and which the first reading does not require and the second does not permit.
Status
The copy is held in a private collection and has been seen by four people whose accounts of it agree except in the matter of the appendix, which two of them describe as twelve pages. No reproduction has been made. A request to photograph the appendix was declined on the ground that the figures had already been transcribed, which is correct, and that the transcription was available, which has not been located.
See also
- Kilometre reading — Appendix of intervals, Found Glory, Herman James
- Composite sheet — Appendix of intervals, Manfred
- External ordering — Appendix of intervals, Manfred
- Levernet Rhapsody — Levernet Rhapsody
- Manfred — Manfred
- Route document — Appendix of intervals
- Misdirected enquiries