I recently visited the home of a gastronome and saw in their pile of toilet reading, an issue of "Saveur" from January 2009. Specifically I saw "Lucius Beebe" on the spine. The article was well written and about three pages long, and told me more about the character than I had ever known before. According to Mr. Google, much about Beebe was written in the last year and you may wish to ruminate the stories at the links, below. Apparently the magazine article I read is not available online.

http://www.dandyism.net/?p=939

http://blog.seattlepi.com/bookpatrol/archives/190633.asp

http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/node/1416710

http://www.vcrail.com/history-vc/the_lucius_beebe_years.htm

I haven't seen it for many years, but if you get a chance, read a book called "The Provocative Pen of Lucius Beebe". It's a hoot. I'd like to read it again.
He was an excellent railroad writer, photographer and all around character. Wm. Barham once told me that when Beebe came to St. Louis (late 30s-early 40s) Barham being a cop always managed to get into roundhouses, yards and on RR property and sort of "escorted" Beebe. Told me that Beebe never wore a pair of socks, underwear or gloves twice. I didn't ask how he knew.

Before Beebe moved west from New York he made an early cover of Life Magazine:
Image found at http://www.coverbrowser.com

I have never read it, but this compilation of columns Beebe wrote for one of the San Francisco newspapers was published by Nowell-North books (long gone) of Berkeley, California.

About 35 years ago when I was managing Orange Empire's bookstore a tour bus arrived with senior citizens on a tour to somewhere. One of the ladies spotted our single copy of the book on the shelf behind the cash register. I offered to get it down and unwrap it. “No,” she said. But she went on to explain that she had lived in Virginia City at the same time that Beebe and Clegg lived there – “Everyone knew what they were…They were a queer pair."

Gee! How could have anyone guessed? :-)

Now here is a word from the opposition. Unfortunately Beebe inspired a number of rail writers. Imitation Beebe prose often appeared in railfan group newsletters. Most were unreadable. These writers did not have Beebe's talent with words. They did not recognize their own truly bad writing. I had to suffer through the newsletter of one group until the editor got over his Beebe infatuation.

Even today I have problems with reading Beebe. I think his flowery language gets in the way of understanding the railroad information he is trying to convey.

The word "nauseum" in the subject of this post is singularly appropriate.

fkrock

I've been spending entirely too much time browsing the scanned Life magazines over at www.books.google.com. Here is a link to the Jan 16, 1939 issue with Beebe on the cover:

http://books.google.com/books?id=10wEAA ... q=&f=false

Also his lack of accuracy makes the books only good for the photos.

Richard

Amazing how many critics there are of a deceased mans writings, lets see your books on Pullman please. We use them for reference and the pictures are an amazing collection in one volume, excellent reading too.

Mike Pannell
Cheyenne

Mr. Beebe and his “Traveling Companion” (as the dust jacket “blurbs” described him) Mr. Clegg had a certain panache that is lacking from modern railroad writings. Of course, at the time, railroads were more in the public consciousness, and I tend to believe “railfans” were more common. While not always accurate, Beebe was fun to read. My mother-in-law purchased me a copy of Highliners for Christmas this past year, and I have enjoyed reading the book. Beebe and his contributors such as Mr. Barham were pioneers in “action” photography, in days when ISO 100 film was “fast,” Kodak Tri-X Pan was yet to be marketed, and the Graflex cloth curtain shutter was state-of-the-art.

While I wear fedoras to work every day, I only wish I could pull off the patterned waistcoat, top hat and cigar like he did in the Life cover.

David M. Wilkins

There is one story that I've heard -- don't know if it is true:

Beebe was working with the owners of Howell-North on the layout of one of the books. Someone noticed that a caption did not match the sign on the station building in the photo. Well, Beebe picked up the photo, walked over to a nearby paper cutter and sliced off that offending portion of the photo.

There used to be a contributor to a now-defunct railfan publication who seemed to have imbibed freely from the Lucius Beebe punchbowl. I think, like the above-mentioned writer, he finally sobered up. From time to time, one reads of "Imitation Hemingway" and "Imitation Bulwer-Lytton" writing competitions. Fortunately, I've never seen a reference to an "Imitation Lucius Beebe" contest in the railfan literature. The word "inimitable" gets tossed around quite a bit, but it fits Mr. Beebe like a properly tailored suit.

Some years ago I inherited Wm. Barham's negative collection. I was after the Frisco negs of which there were many, but some were missing and coincidentally they were of shots that were in Beebe's books. Bill told me he had loaned the negs to Beebe to print. This was the way Bill did business and he freely loaned out negs back in the day. Trains Magazine also had loan of some of them for a 1943 article about Southeastern Jct. They weren't in the collection either.
Beebe had been dead for several years and I obtained Clegg's address and wrote him and described the negatives.
I had always heard that they filed their negs in wooden champagne cases and still don't know if that was true. However the reply I got from Clegg was very flamboyant and I had to laugh at it. Needless to say, I'm still missing those negs and regret it to this day. They were beautiful shots. Wonder where they went?

Funny thing, I didn’t piece that together until just a few years ago, had never really given it any thought until someone pointed out his lifestyle. Sure, I recall reading that Clegg was his “partner” but at a much younger age, I just thought of it in a business sense. Then I felt like a fool for never realizing it before once I became older and wiser. Still, not that it changes any opinion I ever had about his books. The guy was a darned good writer, no question. Care to expand on that? What was the content of that reply?

I'll have to see if I still have the letter.
His answer was very dramatic about how he spent just hours looking for them, etc. Not as bad as Cojo, but not too far off either.

Some people with that clothing habit donate the once used and cleaned haberdashery to charity and friends. One set up a foundation that provides gently used suits for unemployed actors to wear to interviews, and the secret of his habit got out. I forget if the name was "Beebe".
In my innocent days, I thought that in the companionship, Clegg was the photographer and Beebe, the author. Aren't both skills needed for those books?