In Memoriam Meredith Kempthorne
Written in February 2022.
I first met Meredith thirty years ago. I remember her being full of life. Her stove pipe jeans ran down to a pair of calf-high, black, doc martin boots. With her flaming red hair, she was the proverbial live wire on the dance floor. The Doors, Bella-Napoli, and other haunts were where we might encounter one another.
Meredith’s vocation for the last couple of decades has been the book trade. She was the knowledgeable shop manager of the Bookdealers of Bryanston branch when we reconnected. Like all in the business, we aren’t really competition, but rather just parts of a greater ecosystem. And so, I remember with fondness my coffee dates, in what was always a very busy shop.
Dinner at Meredith’s home was always entertaining. I can’t help remembering certain objects that linked us. There was the massive Victorian cast iron book press that she bought from me. She was also a student of the master binder, Peter Carstens.
On her wall hung an antique engraving of a Mandrake. This mysterious plant has an anthropomorphic shape and is credited with hallucinatory properties. Back in the day, all self-respecting Mystics would tout an image of this plant in their library. This curiosity is, as they say, “so Meredith”.
She really was such a character. On the one hand, quiet, gentle, and unassuming in public. One might even say that she was extremely shy. These are traits that usually run contrary to the common or garden variety book dealer. We’re a boisterous lot, enjoy our opinions, and capitalise on opportunities to air our views. Meredith was a counterpoint, calm, and calculated of thought. She was a voice of reason.
This is one of the factors why we were all thrilled to have her named as chairperson of the South African Book Dealers Association. It was a daunting task, which she took on with enormous burden, for it was at a time when the government instituted onerous legislation that almost brought the trade to its knees. Meredith and others were in the trenches in Parliament, holding up the torch of common sense to those that have no interest in the hugely beneficial social significance of a healthy second-hand book trade.
I can picture her now, in her figurative doc martin boots, stomping at the banality of punitive laws that affect many people’s livelihoods. She really was a social justice warrior. There are also those that have no voice. Meredith was there to take up their cause. I refer specifically to the Husky dog rescue.
Today I reflect on the loss of a truly beautiful person who only ever impacted our lives positively. I miss you, Meredith.