An auction is being held in London to sell a bizarre group of five 1902 postcards describing the Ibrox stadium disaster. The author of the postcards, a German emigrant living in Glasgow, was at the Scotland-England match on April 5, 1902 when Ibrox's West Tribune Stand collapsed, injuring hundreds of people and killing 25. Writing to his family on a series of postcards on which scenes of people playing ping-pong are used to illustrate Shakespeare quotations, the man describes the overcrowding ("The people at the back pushed forwards, so that the people at the front were crushed against some railings and many fainted") and the collapse ("there was terrible confusion and the crowd surged forward onto the pitch") before vowing, understandably, never to attend a football match again.
BBC News has a gallery of the postcards with descriptions and partial translations.
Marchepane has the complete set of these postcards, doesn't he?
The combination of the illustrations, the printed text and what the guy chose to write on them is beyond the bounds of human comprehension.
They could keep Brown's entire English department occupied for years.
It's the Shakespeare quotes that put the whole thing over the top for me.
I could deal with a set of 106-year-old postcards showing early Edwardian couples playing ping-pong. I could deal with a German emigrant in Glasgow using these postcards to write home. I could deal with him writing home on these postcards about the Ibrox stadium collapse.
But somehow, the fact that the Shakespeare quotes attached to the report of this real tragedy are used only to give point to the little ping-pong comic strip just makes my mind come unscrewed.
Oh, and for what it's worth, I think Dr. Marchpane was at the Ibrox stadium collapse.