Biography

• Family
• Education
• Travels abroad
• Holiday reading
• Walking holidays
• Visits to the theatre
• Final years

Family

Esmond de Beer was born in Dunedin on 15 September 1895 into the great mercantile family of Hallensteins. In 1910 the de Beer family moved to London when his father, Isidore, was appointed to run the Hallensteins London office.

His two elder sisters, Mary and Dora, moved permanently to London after the death of their mother, Emily, in Dunedin in 1930 and Isidore in London in 1934. They set up house with de Beer first at 11 Sussex Place and then from 1964 at 31 Brompton Square. They lived together harmoniously and mutually supportively until both sisters died within a month of each other in the early nineteen-eighties. His elder brother, Bendix, was killed in action in Belgium in 1917. Charles Brasch, New Zealand poet and long-time editor of Landfall, was a cousin and close friend.

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Education

De Beer developed an early passion for books and reading and was exposed to rare and beautiful books from an early age. At Mill Hill School, North London, he won prizes for French, German, General knowledge and Essay. Throughout his life, his relationship with his immediate and extended family remained remarkably close. In 1914 de Beer went up to New College, Oxford, and spent two years studying history under his mentor and exemplar, Sir Charles Firth, Regius Professor of Modern History. In 1916 he joined the army and received a temporary commission in the Indian Army. After being awarded a B.A. War Degree from Oxford, he continued his studies at University College, London, and the Institute of Historical Research. He was awarded a M.A. in 1923 and then moved to Oxford to become Sir Charles's voluntary assistant. In 1929 he began work on the first complete edition of the diary of John Evelyn.

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Travels abroad

The de Beers travelled extensively, most often to Italy which de Beer loved with a passion. He was an expert in the history, buildings and art of Rome. There were also frequent trips elsewhere on the Continent, some of them to family in Germany. In 1921 he joined his family on a 20th-century version of the Grand Tour, visiting Japan, America and England. De Beer travelled again to America in October 1965. In a letter to Olivia Thompson, a distant cousin and goddaughter to Mary de Beer, he wrote:

I go to New York in a week's time. My idea was soft-shelled crabs art-galleries museums a few friends and call at one or two libraries… . To judge by preliminary rumours, I am expected to do a lot of work in libraries and to lead an all round the clock social life. And do you think I shall ever dare to cross a street? [de Beer]

His last trip to New Zealand was in 1972 to attend Hallensteins' centenary celebrations.

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Holiday reading

Wherever de Beer travelled he made sure that he had plenty of reading matter available. In October 1963 he flew to New Zealand and returned to London by ship in March 1964.

Literature for the outward journey would ‘be easy: one hard book one soft one; probably some Montaigne and a tec'. He enjoyed crime fiction and English novels from the earliest times to the present day. For the return by sea he posted to New Zealand a lot of Gibbon - his article ‘A reading of Gibbon' appeared in Landfall in 1965 - and other books unspecified, ‘and there should be some pulp on board'. [Strachan]

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Walking holidays

In 13 days I walked nearly 50 miles, worked for about a hundred hours, and lost a pound or two in weight - what more could one wish for from a holiday? [de Beer]

For many summers de Beer returned with friends and family to Raasay, the long, narrow island between Skye and the mainland. It had an excellent hotel as well as first class walks. It was a time to read and walk, and, in his case, to work on ‘dear Eve', as the family liked to call it. The short preface to the Index volume of the Diary ... is dated ‘Raasay; London 1953-4'. Raasay featured in Johnson and Boswell's Scottish tour of 1773. De Beer himself may have discovered it as a holiday destination when retracing Johnson and Boswell's steps with his friend, Lawrence Powell, who edited a revised edition of Boswell for Clarendon Press. De Beer later read a paper ‘Raasay today' to the Johnson Club of London and had it printed and distributed to friends at Christmas 1961.

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Visits to the theatre

He had started reading Shakespeare even before he went to secondary school and continued to read him steadily … He knew Moliere well, and Ibsen, and Congreve, and I think Shaw; Ibsen he admired especially; a photograph of the white-bearded old man in high stiff collar and steel-rimmed glasses hung in his flat. …
As he came to know my friends … he proposed that we should read plays together, meeting in his flat; which we did more or less regularly for two or three terms, reading Shakespeare, Webster, Marlowe, Ben Jonson …

Brasch

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Final years

After the death of his sisters, de Beer decided that the great house at Brompton Square must be given up and its treasures were dispersed, most of them to Dunedin. In 1982 he moved to a flat in St. John's Wood but he found the activities of daily life increasingly difficult to manage. In 1984 he moved to Stoke House, a residential home for the elderly in Buckinghamshire. He was by then virtually blind and deaf and suffering from Parkinson's disease. He died on 3 October 1990.

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