In
going on 47 years in newspapers, I have spoken to some interesting people: Muhammad
Ali, Lech Walesa, Gerry Adams, Gough Whitlam, Brian Wilson, Eric Clapton, Bob
Hope, Geoffrey Rush, Michael Thwaites, the odd mass murderer, who shall remain
nameless. And that’s to mention but a few who spring immediately to mind.
But I don’t think I’ve ever been as absorbed in a
conversation as I was this evening, when I received a call from a lady called Eva.
And it was all because of typewriters. Well, one
typewriter in particular: Eva’s 70-year-old Empire Baby portable.
Over the best part of an hour, during which time I
hardly got a word in edge ways, Eva told me much about her incredible life – and
of her long attachment to her typewriter.
Born to a Jewish doctor father in Nazi Germany in
1931, as a youngster Eva travelled with her family first to Palestine, then
London, then as assisted migrants to Wanganui and Auckland in New Zealand,
where she grew up, and grew to admire the country and its Maori people.
She married a scientist, who was always eager to buy
for their home the latest “space age” equipment which came on the market. But
throughout, Eva was determined to hold on to her beloved Empire Baby manual
portable typewriter, scorning all advances in writing machines.
During a year in the US, her late husband bought her
an electric typewriter. Eva tried it out, promptly stored it away in a corner,
and went back to the faithful, lightweight Empire Baby. She was its mistress,
it her loyal, reliable servant
Eva can’t be bothered with modern
technology. Using computers is “nonsense” she says – sending letters by email
is “so clinical … there’s nothing personal about it.”
Eva now lives in a small unit in a retirement
village in Canberra. Apart from her Empire Baby beginning to show its age, she
is as happy as a lark. She has a longed-for window seat, and her comfortable
wicker table and chairs. “The family home was where we lived and the children
grew up and moved out and all that sort of thing happened. But that was there
and that was then … this is ‘me’”.
Before moving out of the family home and into the
unit, after her husband’s death, Eva gave away all her “treasures”, her books,
her pictures, her vinyl records, even her TVs. But she kept the Empire Baby.
There isn’t much room to swing a cat, if she had one, but she has her typewriter.
And yet I may be able to convince her to part with it, to try a “new” Olivetti
Lettera 32 as a replacement.
“I’m not married to the Empire Baby,” she
said. “I’d consider replacing it.” It’s the process of manually typing letters
on a tiny, utterly obsolete yet highly dependable clickety-clack machine that
most appeals to Eva, not the Empire Baby per se. She has clearly had a long,
loving relationship with the Baby, and formed a powerful attachment to it. But
typing is the thing … it’s personal.
“A typewriter is, after all, a part of you,”
she said. “It’s your writing companion. It’s your friend.”
Eva has many friends around the world to
whom she writes on a regular basis – and always with the Empire Baby. They
comment about her persistence in still using a typewriter, but she knows they’d
miss it if she stopped sending typewritten letters to them.
Once, the Baby’s “h” lost its leg. After
putting up with it for a long while, Eva got the typeslug replaced by an Indian
typewriter mechanic in Melbourne. “Where he got it from I do not know,” she
told me.
But no sooner had Eva started writing
letters with the new typeslug than her friends overseas were lightheartedly
complaining. “We miss the legless ’h’,” they joked. “We’d got used to it … it
was like your signature.” In fact, when the Baby was temporarily out of action,
and Eva hand wrote a letter, a friend remarked, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen
your handwriting before!”
When Eva took the worn-out Baby to the
Indian repairman in Melbourne, he looked at it for quite some minutes, then
burst out laughing. “What’s so funny?” Eva asked.
“My aunt in India has one of these. It’s in much
better condition than your typewriter. My aunt keeps her Empire Baby in a
vitrene. She treasures it. She’s never used it, but every now and again she
takes it out of the vitrene and sits and admires it for a very long time. She says
it’s the most beautiful thing she has ever seen.”
Eva found my mobile telephone number and
called me in desperation. Her opening remark made me sit up and take notice.
“I’m having trouble with my typewriter and I can’t finish this letter,” she
said. “And it may well be the last letter I ever write.”
Eva reads my column and knows about my typewriter
collection and the exhibition which opens on Saturday. “Where do you get all
your typewriters serviced,” she asked. “All the people I knew who could service
my Empire Baby have moved on to a higher place, where I suppose I might be soon
headed. I don’t know what to do.”
“I service them myself,” I said.
“What, do you mean on top of all that
writing and collecting and exhibiting? How do you find the time?”
Eva feels an affinity with typewriters. She once visited a Jewish museum in Frankfurt am Main, where she saw a Hermes Baby which had allowed a Jewish enclave to continue communicating with the outside world, at a time when their own world was closing in around them. Eva found looking at that typewriter a moving experience.
The upshot of our long talk is that Eva is going to bring her Empire Baby along to the opening of my exhibition of Saturday, and I am going to take it home and service it for her.
The upshot of our long talk is that Eva is going to bring her Empire Baby along to the opening of my exhibition of Saturday, and I am going to take it home and service it for her.
Perhaps I should also consider taking Eva
home to her unit. “I get so excited when I go to see exhibitions,” she told me
– I’m not sure how seriously. “I get lost going home. It takes me an hour and a
half sometimes. I head off in completely the wrong direction, and get in the
wrong lane.”
Eva may well drive in the wrong direction,
and in the wrong lane, but when it comes to writing letters, she knows exactly
where’s she’s headed: for her Empire Baby. She’s entirely on the right track.
Great story -- a moving illustration of how these little machines can play important parts in our lives. How nice of you to offer to fix her typewriter.
ReplyDeleteVery touching story. I would like to hear how it all works out with you repairing her typewriter. It's great to see that she refused to move onto an electric. Atta-girl!
ReplyDeleteMy dad just gave me one of these typewriters. I searched online to try and find out some more about it as I had never seen one before. I found your article about Eva its such a sweet story, I never thought of a typewriter as a friend. Thank you so much for sharing
ReplyDelete