JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 636 Blog Bookstore
In 
the panoply of play upon the
title of this post are many variations. For example, book and movie titles which could fill the space in the
category of “City of Lost _____” are Children, Dragon Lace, Souls, Soles, Angels,
Heaven, Books, Dream and Men. Filling in
“The Lost City of _______” are Atlantis, Chernobyl, El
Dorado, Nan Madol,
Abad, Bethsaida, Geraptiku, Trellech, Dvaraka and Uganit. For “Lost Cities of ____” that were never
really ever found, and which existed in the imagination and on the printed page
would include Metropolis, Wonderland, Utopia, Narnia, Fredonia, Eden,
Yuknapatawpha (County), Oz, Lilliput, Middle Earth (etc.), Slobbovia, Dune and
Hell.
Then of course there are the
cities that were and weren't any longer (though some did come back but without
its original inhabitants: the annihilated Jewish ghettos of Europe, Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Nanging are just a few that come to mind. New Orleans seems to be in a different category, partially destroyed
by benign neglect and arrogant stupidity at the very highest reaches of the federal
government (and resting in the one man, now thankfully lost). 
It would be fun to write a history
of forgetfulness with its companion volume on The Lost., but that has been
accomplished a number of times, already (see below*).
My post is not an attack upon London or its imaginary lost souls--it really is about lost
things. The images come from a fabulous article from the Illustrated London News of 5 March 1938 called "Forgetfulness by Tons and Thousands; How London, the Absent Minded Keeps Lost Property Offices Busy". Evidently, in the old days when London Transport were superb, there was a very well orchestrated and
detail-orientated staff that collected the lost things of the day found in the Tube, tram depots, buses and lorries; they were gathered and brought to the London Passenger Transport Board at Baker Street, where all of the items were meticulously cataloged and stored, kept for a half year (?!), all registered with the Lost Property Office. Add so aside from the pinch-faced Aubrey Beardsley-fingered man handling the sailboat, and the Floyd the Barber lookalike celebrating the fowl, and the low-belted quizicum inspecting the nether garments, and the slick-haired man inexplicably opening all o the thousands of closed umbrellas, are the following statistical bits on Lost Things Identified for the Year 1937: 49,9999 pairs of gloves; 19,978 single gloves; 33, 361 pieces of clothing; 25,489 attache cases; 24,600 books; 24, 158 pieces of "undefined property in parcels"; 5,805 spectacles; 5,278 keys; 4,005 pipes; and 2307 different pieces of foodstuffs. All this was just part of a grand total of 348,477 lost things for one year.
I think it would be fabulous if there was some lost room there at the old Lost Property Office, a place waiting to be rediscovered after the room itself had been lost for the last 71 years. If I had to chose I'd certainly would shout for Mr. Beardsley-fingers--he is,after all, pictured in the beautifully named "Oddments Department", admiring the "beautiful complexity of forgetfulness" stored there. Perhaps that room would be filled antique story lines, lost-items-found that were of such an unusual origin that the professionals used to dealing with such things found these to be unclassifiable, tossing them all into a I'll-Deal-With-it-Later locale. The material seems like a lock looking for a treasure.
*Philip Grove's The Imaginary
Voyage in Prose Fiction (1941); Pierre Versins' Encyclopèdie de
l'Utopie, des Voyages extraordinaires et de la Science-Fiction (1972); Alberto Manguel
and Gianni Guadalupi. The Dictionary of Imaginary Places
(1980, 1987, 1999)
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