On their return to Paris O’Connelly decided that a visit to the venerable organisation in London was essential to document himself on the work of Queen Victoria’s 19th century Royal Engineers conserved in vast archive of Palestine Exploration Fund’s London library. The Fund was still active after almost one hundred and forty years of research into the archaeology and history, manners and customs and culture, topography, geology and natural sciences of the Levant as they described their work. The Levant being in fact modern Israel and Palestine.
The Fund continued to publish the Palestine Exploration Quarterly, a journal respected by archaeologists and researchers. It also continued to modestly finance research projects in the Holy Land.
After the payment of the annual subscription of £30 O’Connelly became a member of the Fund and had access to its reference library situated at Hinde Mews, Marylebone Lane, London. The collection included rare eighteenth to early twentieth century travelogues, as well as a unique collection of over 9,000 vintage photographs, archaeological objects, natural history collections, archives and manuscripts.
The library was just a short walk from his hotel, the Churchill on Portman Square, along Wigmore Street to Marylebone Road, it was situated in an elegant late Georgian or early Victorian brick building, part of which had been apparently rented out as a result of Fund’s financial situation, they were in hard times.
He set out after a late breakfast and in less than ten minutes found himself before the elegant entrance doorway that dated back to the early nineteenth century. The library was small. He could not help thinking it was a pity that such a historic institution was in difficulties. After a short visit and questions to the librarian, the library bookshop quickly provided him with what he needed; a work entitled ‘Below the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’, a source book on the Cisterns, Subterranean Chambers and Conduits of the Haram al-Sharif for £40. It was described as ‘a comprehensive study of descriptions and available information on the Temple Mount, including plans by Wilson, Warren, Schick and others, much of this published here for the first time. 310 pages, 130 drawings, sketches and photographs’. He also bought a history of the Fund and a CD of the various works they had carried out in Jerusalem during their long existence.
The weather was fine and he set out across Hyde Park in the direction of Knightsbridge. The object was Harrods where he would take lunch, his favourite spot when he was alone, a sandwich and a glass of good wine at the bar in the food hall. Nothing was comparable to a Harrods’ roast beef sandwich, the prices were extravagant, but that was part of the pleasure. On occasions he went from bar to bar, first the sandwich, then an ice cream, a pastry or a fruit salad, followed by a double espresso coffee, each at a different bar, there were eighteen in all in the food hall.
However, there was another reason to visit Harrods was his safe box, where he kept a reserve, a precaution, a kind of retirement fund, or a hideaway where he could keep small treasures from prying eyes and the tax man. In 150 years of existence, Harrods had never been burgled.
Settled at the bar and after his sandwich he flipped through his new acquisitions. Palestine in the 19th century had been many things to the British middle-class and upper-class Victorians. It was the ‘Land of the Bible’, visited, experienced, and described to illustrate the veracity of the revealed scriptural texts, biblical archaeology and geography, in parallel with the other great popular revelation of the time; Egyptology.
Between the Holy Land and Egypt lay the Suez Canal, a passage of strategic importance for the British Empire and the subject of rivalry between the European powers competing for influence over the territories still nominally ruled by the Ottomans. For London, regardless of its real political and legal status, Palestine was British, which can be seen from the words of William Thompson, the Archbishop of York, in his inaugural address to the meeting of the Palestine Exploration Fund on 22 June 1865: ‘The country of Palestine belongs to you and to me. It is essentially ours’.
He then went to the book department where he found a coffee table book of water colours by the Scottish artist David Roberts drawn during his visit to the Levant in 1838-39. He spoke of an outbreak of the pest in Jerusalem in January 1839, its narrow streets filled with people of all nations in their picturesque costumes amongst mules and donkeys transporting veiled women between harems.
After a quick visit to his safe box, his next visit was to Christies in Kings Street. There was an auction preview of late 19th century and early 20th maps and books, including works and descriptions of archaeological investigations made in the Holy Land and more notably Jerusalem.
Laura would join later that evening for the weekend in London and if the preview was of interest the auction would be on their Saturday afternoon programme.