A fellow Farwerck enthousiast found a note in a copy of Het Teken van Dood en Herleving:
Is this a note of Farwerck to a buyer of his book or is it a note of the buyer of the book him-/herself?
Based on the examples of his handwriting on this website the fellow enthousiast thinks that this is Farwerck’s handwriting. Farwerck only made a less ‘autograph-like’ F for his name. I was not immediately convinced, but I think he’s right.
I have some examples of Farwerck’s handwriting. Unfortunately, I found no F in regular writing, like the capital of a word in a sentence. I do have one example of him just writing his name, not signing with an autograph.
That is still a pretty fancy F.
I did find an example of handwriting that is quite similar to the example in the book, unfortunately in bad quality:
Too bad it’s not too clear, but this looks quite like the first image, doesn’t it? It’s actually below a hand written letter, but the complete signing looks like this:
Is “J.L. Tates” the author of the letter? Could this same person be the one who made the note in Farwerck’s book?
Let’s compare the handwriting of the “Tates” letter to one that I’m certain is in Farwerck’s handwriting:
It looks like the example on top was written with a little more care than the example at the bottom. The Fs are quite similar, especially in the way they go over into the next letter. It’s becoming more likely that the blueish text was written by Farwerck after all.
If that is true, it also becomes more likely that the note in the book was written by Farwerck. That text says: “12-3-1954” “from F.E. Farwerck”. But why is there another autography in the middle?
Also, it appears that the date and autograph are written with another pen than the name of Farwerck.
Unfortunately I can make nothing of the autograph. It certainly doesn’t say “J.L. Tates”.
Speaking of whom, Tates published a short text in the June 1927 issue of Bulletin, the internal publication of the Dutch federation of Le Droit Humain. Apparently he was also a member of the lodge Christiaan Rosencreuz, because he signed together with Farwerck.
I have been looking if I can find more information about J.L. Tates. So far I found a few newspaper texts that mention a J.L. Tates as a photographer, chairman of an advocacy of Jewish disabled people and stock and business mentionings. This is all around 1940 and it is hard to say if this is really all the same “J.L. Tates”.
I had some hope to find more information in the Bulletin, but so far I only found that of the Amsterdam lodge “Getrouwheid” (‘Fidelity’) in 1927 “Sister” “C. Tates-Prent” was secretary and J.L. Tates Worshipful. This lodge has only existed from 1924 until 1928.
It is certain that Tates and Farwerck were members of the same lodge. Both were also active in other lodges. It is likely that Farwerck made the note in a book of himself, but I do not know to whom the note is addressed. Did the owner mark his own copy with the date, autograph and swoosh and did he ask Farwerck to add his name later?