Noel Symington and The Night Climbers of Cambridge

Two years before Oleander Press republished The Night Climbers of Cambridge. The company's website describes it as follows:

The Night Climbers of Cambridge was first in print in October 1937 with a second version rapidly next in November of the same year. Reprinted in 1952, the book has since been engaged and has built up a cult next with copies of either version becoming increasingly rare.

Authored under the pseudonym Whipplesnaith it recounts the brave (or foolhardy) nocturnal exploits of a group of students mountaineering the ancient institution of higher education and town buildings of Cambridge.

These daring stegophilic feats, including such heights as the Fitzwilliam Museum and the venerable King's College Chapel, were recorded with prehistoric photographic paraphernalia carried up over battlements, up chimneys and down drain-pipes. The climbers all this while trying, with mixed results, to avoid discovery by the 'Minions of Authority': institution of higher education proctors, Bulldogs and, of course, the local 'Roberts'...

The result is a fascinating, humorous and, at times, adrenalin-inducing escapade providing a rare glimpse into a side of Cambridge that has always been enshrouded by darkness.

It all sounds great fun. Such funny young gentlemen!The book has a blog and even a Twitter account devoted to it. More than that, you can find the full book of the 1953 version on the web for free, and it is indeed hard to resist episode titles like "South Face of Caius" and "Diagram of the Escape from Marks and Spencers".The book is credited to "Whipplesnaith". Some sources suggest that it was the work of additional than single hand, but all agree that the prime transporter behind it was single Noel Howard Symington.Symington is a familiar name to us here in Market Harborough.For much of the 19th and 20th centuries the family owned the two most important factories in the town. One made corsets and the previous soups and previous small package foods - there is a website that will tell you all about the Symington family's business ventures.But the Symington family did have a black sheep. Noel Symington stood for Harborough in the 1950 as an independent Mosleyite candidate, winning 273 votes. In 1958 he was to produce the book "Return to Responsibility: A New Concept of the Case for Fascism in the Post-War World". The book was in print by Earlibra of Market Harborough, a firm otherwise unidentified to the literary world.So are the author of The Night Climbers of Cambridge and Harborough's Mosleyite applicant the same person?I was going to argue that they were, because two Noel Howard Symingtons would be too much of a coincidence. Then I establish InsectNation, which long-established my suspicion:

In the rather “heady” institution of higher education atmosphere, I was not unduly surprised, in January ‘37, apparently on Wilfred Noyce’s recommendation, to be approached by a recent graduate of King’s college, Noel Symington who, while an undergraduate, had done some roof climbing, and had evolved the idea of producing a book based mainly on flashlight photos of climbers in action on University buildings, and was looking for climbers to help place his idea into practice.

I had never climbed buildings in daylight, let alone in the dark, but I was intrigued by the invitation, which I accepted, and soon began to help plan operations and to enlist further volunteers.

Noel’s father owned the well-established firm of “Symington’s Soups” of Market Harborough, so enough money were obtainable to cover the quite substantial costs involved, due, particularly to the flashlight equipment required.

Besides Night Climbers and Return to Responsibility, Noel Symington did publish a third book. It was called A Drop of Water and was in print by Wellandside (Photographics) Ltd of Market Harborough in 1970.It begins as a work of philosophy, its short paragraphs perhaps influenced by Wittgenstein's Tractatus (though perhaps its content is less inspired):Wherever we can, we try to indicate the wider setting with a capital letter. Do not raise your hat in awe to each new capital. The bath is flat; the ocean is Not Flat. A circle is round; a sphere is Round. This loses its awe if we say that a sphere is spherical, and it is also additional exact. But we must say Round until we have a express for spherical.Soon it turns into a strange sort of poetry book with many stanzas with only two otherwise three words:

Strike twotennis ballswith equal

forward velocity,giving oneundercut, and

the othertop spin.The ball

with topspin willstrike the

ground first.This effectcan only

come fromtheir ratesof rotation.

I bought my copy of A Drop of Water years before at a secondhand furniture shop that also had a shelf of books from house clearances. I had always thought it purely of local interest, but now I could advertise it as "By the author of The Night Climbers of Cambridge".
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