4 - Álvaro de Campos, English Decadent

Summary

Unlike the death of Alberto Caeiro, which Pessoa tells us happened decades earlier, or that of Ricardo Reis, which was determined by Saramago and others to have occurred later, the disappearance of Álvaro de Campos, it has been assumed, took place on Saturday, 30 November 1935, the same day that Pessoa himself died. Readers of Portuguese newspapers read the news, but no British newspaper reported the Portuguese poet's death. But there was one death notice in the London Times that has caught my attention. On the very day that Pessoa (and presumably Campos) died, John Drew Cormack, who was born on 15 May 1870, also died – in Glasgow. I quote from the obituary in the Times:

Dr. J. D. Cormack, D.Sc., Regius Professor of Civil Engineering and Mechanics in Glasgow University since 1913, died at Park Terrace, Glasgow, on Saturday, at the age of 65. […] After being educated at Dumbarton Academy and at Glasgow University, he was appointed in 1892 lecturer in Electrical Technology at the Yorkshire College, Leeds. […] His first appointment as a professor was in 1901, when he became professor of Mechanical Engineering at University College, London. He remained in England in that post until 1913, when he returned to Glasgow to take up the appointment which he held at his death.