Re: VMs: Re: Who got ...?

[jean-yves artero <jyartero@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mart,

 

I am interested in your approach; however there are some facts in Ethel s and Wilfryd bios which are not -seemingly - quite consistant with the possibility of an Italian forgery.

 

Here are the main relevant comments about this by Rafal:

 

"On her return to London in 1895 she (Ethel)  met another Russian exile who called himself Sidney Reilly (1874-1925), originally Georgi (then Sigmund) Rosenblum, born in Russian Poland as an illegitimate son of a Polish wife of a Tsarist colonel and a Jewish doctor (Rosenblum) from Vienna. He emigrated to South America and then was brought to London by one major Fothergill. Later he was recruited by MI6 and became one of the most famous British agents, spying on Germany and Russia, where he was sent to assassinate Lenin in 1918. On his last mission he was caught and executed in Russia in 1925. A year earlier he was involved in forging the Zinoviev letter and getting it published in the Daily Mail, which brought the defeat of the Labour Party in the 1924 General Election.

Mrs. Voynich and her lover went to Italy, telling her husband she was working in the archives there. They visited Elba, Rome and Florence, where they spent the whole summer. Reilly told her about his early life and became the model for her most important novel The Gadfly which was published in the summer of 1897 in the USA (June) and England (September), and later became the top best-seller and compulsory reading in Soviet Russia."

My impression is thus that the Italian romance occured before Summer 1897. 

"In 1898 Wilfred Voynich was in Italy, where he met Erla Rodakiewicz [in her 1945 letter to Strong she says he was one of her closest friends]. In the same year he published the first of his London catalogues - and by 1902 there were nine of them".

 

Here is the first Italian tour by the book dealer:1898. Now the VMS is supposed to have been bought in 1912 in Italy and shown to the public in the States for the first time in 1915.

My question now is: why in that case the 1898/1912 gap? I know it s not that easy to answer it, and that history is a strange science. For instance the first London catalogue possibly was published in 1898 but a second edition of it appeared in May 1902. The index of books contained in lists I-VI is dated March 1902.

Rafal could well be right: at least six lists ( which is a big amount of books ) were published in 1902 or earlier.

Jean

Mart Vabar <mesinik@xxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 6 Jul 2004, [iso-8859-1] jean-yves artero wrote:
> Hi again Mart, your thoughts I share to a broad extent ...
> Mart Vabar wrote:
>> one point of interest could be to ask them, if they got possible
>> "suggestions" from secret services.
>> both Voynich and Kravchinsky was probably "interesting" for ss-es.
>> this is an old story anyway and it could be possible, the participants will
>> tell us about possible advices for trade or even about the origin of VMS.
>> not much hope, but maybe worth to try.

> OK Do you think the Italian tour by Ethel and Stepniak could be relevant?
> The preparation of the VMS "bargain" should be traced between say 189X and
> 191X, right?

surely this was the time, he began to create the "legend" about this tome for
typical ! buyers in anglo-american market.
the possible suggestions for buyers (from secret services) could be done much
later, too.

> In a way, one century ago; I cannot imagine at the moment that
> even in the case of a hoax, or of a "ss-es" file, some people are still to be
> protected.

I agree. But you see - like the Parkinsons law tells us - one thing is, what
the ss-es (like any other organizations) are doing, another thing is, what is
written down in papers.
we can hope an honest answer to such questions only, if the "real activities"
(in our case the possible suggestions for actual buyers) are not criminal.

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