A melancholy yet darkly inspirational Tale

[Mike Weaver]

In the late 90s I was part of the cataloguing team at the Working Class 
Movement Library. One book I catalogued was 'Agin the Governments' by 
Sir Francis Fletcher Vane (published in 1929).
Dedicated to his dog Tox.
M&D read not long before, my curiosity was piqued -  Vane, dog, Tox - 
had I stumbled on a odd corner of Pynchonian research?
It turned out that Sir Francis was a direct descendant of Sir Henry Vane 
the Younger, whose 'melancholy yet darkly inspirational Tale' is 
referred to on page 225.

My enthusiasm for Pynchon's books had recently persuaded the WCML 
librarian to read GR, so I shared my possible discovery with him.
"You know those boxes in the basement", he said, "marked  'Shields 
Papers', they include an unfinished biography of Sir Francis."

I had a look and, like Edward Shields and others before me, I became 
interested in this oddball aristo. I had a new project!
I sorted the papers, created a web page 
<http://www.wcml.org.uk/our-collections/activists/francis-fletcher-vane/> on 
the man, his deeds and his writings and over the next few years had 
various correspondences with others who for one reason or another were 
interested in him, and along the way I gathered more material to add to 
Shields' notes.

Edward Shields had become interested in Vane when researching for a 
songbook commemorating the 50th anniversary of the  Easter Uprising in 
Dublin.
Now, as a result of that, then the sheer chance that I, a Pynchon 
reader, was the cataloguer of that particular book, it has come about 
that, as a part of the 100th anniversary of the uprising, a photo of 
Vane from the Shields collection has been used for one of 
thecommemorative stamps 
<http://www.irishstamps.ie/shop/c-209-1916-2016-eighth-definitive-series.aspx> 
just issued by the Irish Post Office.



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