In my second year as a BA student at SOAS, we had a chap in our class sent over from the Dutch Foreign Service. As he was only attending lessons as a diplomat, he didn’t have to take his studies as seriously, so he’d go and find other things to do, such as reading up all the Judge Dee stories by Robert Hans van Gulik (also a Dutch diplomat, among other things).
When he was finished with that, he discovered that the library had a copy of van Gulik’s Erotic Colour Prints of the Ming Period [privately published, Tokyo, 1951] but they were under lock and key, and one had to approach the curator in person. “No problem, it’s just a matter of speaking to the man about it,” thought Clem, and duly went along.
The curator, however, turned on him and gave him a good ticking off, “You should be spending your time on your studies and not on such material!” and sent him away.
Clem grumbled to me later, “I bet he wanted them for himself!”
The curator’s surname? Lust. (I kid you not.)
When he was finished with that, he discovered that the library had a copy of van Gulik’s Erotic Colour Prints of the Ming Period [privately published, Tokyo, 1951] but they were under lock and key, and one had to approach the curator in person. “No problem, it’s just a matter of speaking to the man about it,” thought Clem, and duly went along.
The curator, however, turned on him and gave him a good ticking off, “You should be spending your time on your studies and not on such material!” and sent him away.
Clem grumbled to me later, “I bet he wanted them for himself!”
The curator’s surname? Lust. (I kid you not.)
(London, 1978/9)
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