English satirical novelist Tom Sharpe once said that he hoped to die at his typewriter. These were words, apparently, he aped from his friend and hero P.G. Wodehouse. Whether either Shape or Wodehouse achieved their ultimate goals at their typewriters we do not know. But when Sharpe died, on a quiet cul-de-sac in the Catalan seaside village of Llafranc, on June 6, 2013, aged 85, we do know he owned 17 typewriters. And at least one of them had been used to write 30,000 words of an unfinished autobiography. This, and the 17 typewriters, were left in the care of Sharpe’s former doctor and secretary, Montserrat Verdaguer Clavera, who said “for me it is a great honour to be chosen to receive all his manuscripts, photographs, typewriters and cameras”.
Dr Verdaguer: There's a photo of another typewriter right above her.
Sharpe in Llafranc on October 8, 1997.
Photographs taken at the time of the June 5, 2014, burial included one showing a framed picture of Sharpe at one of his typewriters, a blue electric Smith-Corona S 301. It’s not one of the machines Sharpe was seen with in the many other images of him at typewriters. Obituaries for him claimed Sharpe collected “antique typewriters”, but none of those machines he was photographed with could be said to be antique – although they ranged more manuals to electric portables and semi-portables.
Although Sharpe was best known for his English-based books, notably the Wilt series, Porterhouse Blue and Blott on the Landscape, it seems his legacy has largely remained in Catalonia, according to the terms of his last will. Dr Verdaguer was also charged with the creation of a foundation. Dr Verdaguer said she “would like the foundation to be in Palafrugell”, the Costa Brava town near where Sharpe had lived since 1995. None of his literary heritage was to be sold, presumably including his typewriters.
Sharpe in Cambridge on October
7, 1985.
A great typewriter mystery.
ReplyDeleteHe looks like a man with a sense of humor.
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