Long-Lost Wibberley Found After Long Search

By Leonard Wibberley

First Published December 19, 1949

10/16/2022

I was sitting on the rim of the Los Angeles Times copy desk, trying to think of a six-letter word for hieroglyphic in a hurry. That is the trouble about the work of a copy reader. We are constantly solving what amounts to crossword puzzles with only 20 seconds to be spent on each clue.

Then an operator from the city room switchboard called out to me that someone wanted me on the telephone, and I wondered idly which of my creditors now required reassurance.

I said, “Wibberley here” into the phone, and a dispatcher said “One minute please. New York is calling.”

New York? The only people I know in New York are newspapermen, and none of them has the money to call Los Angeles.

Then, a woman’s voice came out of the distance. Only it came not only out of the distance but out of the distance of time.

It said, “Hello, Leonard. This is Anna. How are you?”

Anna. My sister Anna. When I was a small boy in a temper, Anna used to hold my hands until the temper had died down. And then she would let my hands go, and I would bite her heartily because the temper hadn’t died down at all.

Anna. My sister Anna. When our father died suddenly, she took control of the household, for Anna was always the second mother of the family. All the little things that had stopped with grief, Anna set in motion again… laundry… paying the milk bill… ordering groceries… seeing that my brother and I washed properly and changed our linen… senseless things at a time like that, but necessary things, and it was Anna who saw that they were attended to.

I said I was fine, and Anna said, “Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you all over. We had nearly given up.”

That would be Anna. When I went away, centuries ago, for that is the distance between boyhood and manhood, I did not tell Anna I was going, for there was a tightness in me and a need to walk out into the world and into solitude for a while.

I didn’t write home because things did not go well for a long time and a boy has too much pride to write when things are not too good. Also young men are cruel. They need to be for they need to take on the world in combat to wrest a living for themselves.

And I did not write either because I did not know where I was going to next. All I knew was that I wasn’t staying long where I was, and there was still that animal demand to be alone.

Months changed into years and the years added up to a decade, and where I had been would take a long time to tell.

So I said I had been around here and there. In California for the last three years almost. And Anna said she had been in New York for two years and had been looking for me ever since.

Once when I was driving spikes in the unfriendly ties of the Southern Pacific railroad out on the Nevada desert, with the wind cold enough to make a dead man’s bones cry out, and pitying my mate on the extra gang—a wino whose face was blue with cold, malnutrition, and muscatel—at that time, Anna, the second mother in our family, was in Las Vegas, looking for me.

Then, in happier times, when I was editing the Independent Journal in Marin County, Anna flew into San Francisco. We were perhaps 17 miles apart then, but no one on the San Francisco newspapers knew me. It was only 17 miles, but the time wasn’t ripe for us to meet and she went back to New York, still looking.

She tried everyone I had known in the old days in New York when I was a hotshot newspaperman, but I left town for California not quite knowing where I was going and didn’t want to tell anyone either, for the thing to do when you are going is to get up and go.

Then, by happenstance, I wrote a newspaperman in New York telling him I was in Los Angeles on the Times. And Anna called him, and the circuit was complete.

Anna said, “I’m coming out on a plane. Stay where you are.” And she gave me the name of the hotel she would stay at in Beverly Hills.

How do you re-meet your sister after all that time? You walk into a room and she is waiting there and you say, “Hello, Anna. You’re looking well” and shake hands. That is what you do. That is what it says in the code.

But that is not way it is. You walk into the room. And you see a handsome woman with steady eyes standing there. And suddenly you can’t say anything at all because there is a great thickness in your throat. And then you know for the first time how lonely you’ve been and for how long and there is no need to say anything.

Leonard's Sister Anna Wibberley

EXCERPT from A Mouse That Roared: The Life and Writings of Leonard Wibberley by Dennis Michael Duffy.

“Sinead (Leonard’s mother) took her husband’s death extremely hard and the burden fell upon Leonard’s sister Anna to keep the house functioning. Many years later Anna Wibberley wrote a semi-autobiographical novel about the family of an English agricultural specialist living in Cork, Ireland, in 1921 who encouraging the local farmers to form co-operatives for the purchase of farm machinery. At the end of the novel the family returns to London and the father dies suddenly just before Christmas. Anna’s description of the impact of his death on the family may well have been drawn from her memories of her own father’s death. She has the narrator of her story say, “When my father died, it was like a wheel when the rim falls off and the spokes are thrown every which way from the hub. We were a family with nothing to hold us together.” Anna was only the second oldest daughter, but the responsibility fell on her to take charge of the family while her mother was incapacitated by grief because soon after their father’s death, she found herself the oldest child still at home.”

***** NEW ON KINDLE *****

DESCRIPTION:

The crowning of a British monarch is one of the oldest, most colorful and most romantic rituals in the world. Its roots reach back through history into legend. Almost everything about the ceremony stems from distant tradition—from the officers who attend to the robes they wear and the tales of heroism and terror that surround the Crown Jewels.

A born storyteller with a love of history who grew up in England, Leonard Wibberley has brought together the varied and often inaccessible facts of the Coronation—a ceremony steeped in antiquity and unsurpassed in splendor—and has transformed them with skill and charm into a fascinating book rich in lore and humor.

REVIEWS:

“With eyes turned this year to the big event in England, here is an absorbing portrait of its many aspects—legendary, historical, ceremonial—by a man who has Britain in his blood. With a light, yet befittingly serious informality, Mr. Wibberley tells of the symbolic meaning of the coronation and the Stone of Scone, the histories of the royal jewels and regalia, the functions of the various officers in attendance—stewards, heralds, marshalls—and finally the actual ceremony itself. The Stone’s legend, as it was recently stolen by three Scots from Westminster Abbey, is a high spot. .”—Kirkus Reviews

“★★★★★ Fascinating Information. I never knew this book existed, until I began looking at other books by Leonard Wibberley. This is a real treasure trove of information on the rules of royalty.”—Amazon Review Find The Coronation Book on Amazon here.