CLXX
Horace Mun-Brown to Verena Raby
(Two months later)
Dear Aunt,—I am deeply gratified to hear that your recovery is complete and that you have all your old and beneficial activity again.
After so long and costly an illness I am sure that, wealthy as you are, you would not, in these very expensive times, wish to lose any opportunity of adding to your fortune; and such an opportunity now occurs. You have heard of the paper shortage? Owing to the war only a small proportion of the paper needed for journals and magazines and books is now being made. The problem then is, how to supply the deficiency? And it is here that my scheme comes in.
If new paper cannot be manufactured from wood pulp—owing to the scarcity of labour in the forests—it must be made in other ways. Now the best of these is from old paper. Now this can be done satisfactorily only if the printed words on it can be removed; in other words (to be for a moment scientific) it must be “de-inked.” De-inking is a mysterious business, but Sybil, who took a course of chemistry at Newnham, has hit on a process which cannot fail. She has tried it in the kitchen of her flat with an old copy of the Nineteenth Century and After and found it perfect. Our plan then is to buy up thousands and thousands of the largest papers, such as the Daily Telegraph and the Queen and the Field—the paper for each copy of which now probably costs more than the price it is sold for (this discrepancy being made possible by the wealth of advertisements)—de-ink them and sell the new paper at a considerable profit. All that is needed is the capital for the erection of the de-inking plant. Speed is of course imperative. If you are interested—and this cannot fail—please telegraph.
Ever since the day when I first met Sybil in the Egyptian Room at the British Museum my life has been a whirl of joy and intellectual stimulus. We are both convinced that we lived and loved before, in a previous existence, and Sybil even goes so far as to believe that as ancient Egyptians we were instrumental in overcoming a papyrus shortage in the days of the Ptolemies. Personally I think this a little fanciful, but it might be true. Who can say? And women have wonderful intuition.
We both long to be united. Lack of pence is our only obstacle.
Please telegraph, dear Aunt Verena, to
Yours sincerely,
Horace Mun-Brown