Frank William Boreham 1871-1959

Frank William Boreham 1871-1959
A photo F W Boreham took of himself in 1911

Monday, November 06, 2006

Boreham on Coincidence (4)

This is the fourth in a series by F W Boreham from his essay The Long Arm of Coincidence, soon to be included in the forthcoming book, The Best Essays of F W Boreham.

In 1936 my wife and I were occupying a room on the fourth floor of the Cumberland Hotel, facing the Marble Arch in Hyde Park, London. The Australian mail one morning brought a letter from our daughter.

`Do you know', she asked, `that Carl Fairfax is in London? I wonder if you will run across him!'

I smiled inwardly at the vast improbability, during the few days that remained to us, of our meeting this solitary Australian amidst the maze of London's millions. With the letter still in my hand I stepped out of the bedroom on to the lift. And the only person on the lift was Carl Fairfax!

(To be continued) .

Source: F W Boreham, ‘The Long Arm of Coincidence’, I Forgot to Say (London: The Epworth Press, 1939), 87-96.

Image: The Cumberland Hotel, London base for Frank and Stella's fourth coincidence.