William Abdullah Quilliam, Islam and the British Empire

I was examining the first synagogue in Liverpool, an existing building which was adapted for synagogue use in 1753. Then I accidentally came across the first mosque in Liverpool and saw a story that had to be told.

William Quilliam, on the cover of Ron Geaves' book, Islam in Victorian Britain

William Quilliam (1856 – 1932) was the son of a successful watch-maker, and became a solicitor after training at the Liverpool Institute. But he was a politically radical solicitor. And even though many Victorian men felt free enough to be eccentric, Quilliam was more eccentric than most. For example, he reportedly appeared in court wearing Turkish ceremonial dress.

Quilliam also had a very serious side and saw Liverpool's social ills 'poverty, prostitution, alcoholism' as a sign that Christian culture had failed.

I don’t suppose life was easy for a concerned professional so in 1882 Quilliam travelled to the south of France to recover from stress. Then he decided to cross the Mediterranean to North Africa, to visit Morocco and Algeria. Perhaps he had nurtured a quiet interest in Islam beforehand, but it was in North Africa that his fascination with Islam manifested itself publicly. He converted to the religion and started using the name Abdullah.

In the years after his return to Liverpool, William Abdullah Quilliam gathered around him 150 Muslims, almost entirely made up of British converts, including his own family members. He first began holding lectures on his new religion and then, in 1889, Quilliam founded the Liverpool Mosque and Institute at 8 Brougham Terrace in West Derby Street. The architect, Joseph McGovern, made adjustments to the building eg a prayer room was built as an extension at the back of the building. Fortunately most of the Saracenic style renovations Quilliam made to the terrace were paid for by the son of the Emir of Afghanistan. Finally Quilliam also bought #9-12 Brougham Terrace, turning them into a boarding school and lecture rooms.

This social activist set out to help ease Liverpool's social ills, founding the Medina Home, which cared for illegitimate children and found them foster parents. He set up a weekly Debating and Literary Society, and a Muslim college which offered courses for both Muslims and non-Muslims. His Temperance speeches introduced audiences to a religion that banned alcohol.

mosque, 8 Brougham Terrace in West Derby St Liverpool, opened 1889

Quilliam burned with the fervour of a man who had found his true calling. He produced two very important and successful journals, The Crescent and The Islamic Review, on a printing press in the mosque's cellar. In 1897 a map of the British Empire included Nigeria, Egypt, India and Malaya, all large territories with very significant Muslim populations! Muslim lands provided the manpower and material resources that contributed to the prosperity of Victorian Britain and there were so many Muslims in the British Empire that whatever he wrote inside Britain was eagerly read across the Empire.

Quilliam became a regular contributor to the letters pages of Liverpool’s daily newspapers, attempting to right what he saw as the incorrect popular view of Islam. And he wrote an important book. The Faith of Islam was published in 1899 by a small local printer and was translated into many foreign languages, all around the British Empire. Quilliam proudly said that it had been read by Queen Victoria who ordered several copies. Clearly he was still establishment enough for the Queen to keep up with his writings.

All this action came at a price. Liverpool thugs were not very pleased with Quilliam’s mosque, his publishing or his Islamic social welfare work. Soon after he converted to Islam, he was evicted from his house by his landlord, who disliked Quilliam’s views on Christianity. The mosque was vandalised many times by nasty local lads and his book on Islam stirred up more hatred from the local community. Sometimes huge crowds of protesters gathered outside the building, attacked those leaving the prayer hall and threatened to burn Quilliam alive.

But there were two even more substantial problems. Mostly, I believe, Quilliam’s critique of Christian theology distressed sincere Christians who would have otherwise ignored the eccentric solicitor. And his views on British foreign policy were loud and antagonistic. He attacked the Prime Minister, William Gladstone, who was giving a speech in Liverpool urging action against the Ottoman Empire for its treatment of Armenians. Quilliam accused Gladstone of wilfully ignoring Christian atrocities against Muslims.

Fortunately this brave Briton received support from his Islamic leaders abroad. He was made the Sheikh of Britain, leader of British Muslims, by the last Ottoman emperor and was honoured by the Sultan of Morocco, the Shah of Persia and the Sultan of Afghanistan. But in the end, religious harassment of the tiny Muslim community of Liverpool forced the faithful to move to other parts of Britain. In 1908, the Liverpool mosque closed down and the centre of British-born Islam moved, largely to Woking in Surrey.

It is not clear what happened to Quilliam in 1908, just before he was absurdly struck off as a solicitor. One view is that he left Britain, mysteriously heading to Turkey and not returning until shortly before his death in 1932. The other more probable view is that he morphed into an academic called Professor Henri Marcel Leon who moved to Britain in December 1914, participating in functions at the Woking Mosque and writing in The Islamic Review .

Woking, first purpose built mosque in Britain

Most historians believe he died in 1932 and was buried in Brookwood Cemetery, near Woking, although a specific grave has never been identified. He was never a model for imported Islam; rather Quilliam was important as the founder of a unique, home-grown British form of Islam.

Today the remains of the oldest mosque in Britain are still on the ground floor of that C19th grade II-listed Liverpool building established in 1889 by William Abdullah Quilliam. But the elegant old Georgian terrace is a bit tragic today and desperately needs restoration work. There is a modern Abdullah Quilliam Society that wants to buy the building and renovate it as a Muslim heritage centre. The terrace is currently under consideration for listing by English Heritage.

The most useful book on the subject is Ron Geaves' Islam in Victorian Britain: The Life and Times of Abdullah Quilliam, published by Kube Publishing Ltd in 2010.

Treasured photographs from World War 1

Originally Australian soldiers could take their own photos during World War One, or they could use the services of British professionals. But for the last 1.5 years of the war, from July 1917, things changed.

Frank Hurley and Hubert Wilkins became the only two Australian professionals formally commissioned as war photographers in WW1. Along with five French professional photographers, Hurley and Hubert were pioneers in the creation of coloured war images. Coloured images were becoming possible in civilian life and these men wanted to reflect the battlefields and towns of the Western Front more accurately.

Hubert Wilkins. 
George Clemenceau visited the 4th Australian Division Headquarters at Bussy France, 
July 1918

Today the Australian War Memorial in Canberra has the total collection of commissioned Australian war photography from 1917-8. The Canberra archive assembled a selection of this major collection of photos in a booklet called Captured in Colour, edited by Nola Anderson and Ian Hodges.

The editors noted that while the colour plates could not be readily incorporated into printed formats, they could be used to present slide shows in public venues in Australia, while the war was still in progress. Hurley and Wilkins themselves wanted to create dramatic, staged shots or even trick photography, to enlist public support at home. They thought they could excite the public imagination for a war that was now dependent on conscription, despite conscription being opposed by half the adult population in Australia. Edwardian Promenade has confirmed the importance of magic lantern shows in bringing the news to cinemas everywhere.

Frank Hurley, 
Lighthorseman picking memorial flowers, 
Palestine, 1918

But who had thought of dramatic presentations in Australian scout halls and mechanics’ institutes as the goal for taking war photographs? Certainly not the important Australian war correspondent, Charles Bean. He planned to use the Hurley’s and Wilkin’s photographs as historical evidence, “a sacred record” of people and events. This record would allow the soldiers’ children and grandchildren to see what had happened in the 1914-8 era.. with plain, simple truth.

This divergence of goals created a problem. And in any case, what were they to photograph? Images of young Australian corpses would have been totally unacceptable politically and would have been devastating to the grieving parents and widows at home. Likewise, images of German teenage corpses would have left Australians with an image of their boys as callous beasts. So most of the photographs were of Australian soldiers and their allies at rest from the last battle, rehearsing for the next battle, mixing with local citizens in towns along the Western Front or architecture devastated by the two warring armies. 

Note that Hurley did take some images of active battle, including photos of corpses - in Behind the News blog. And in 2008 two of Hurley photographs, that depicted the horrors of trench warfare, were acquired by the NGV in August from a Sydney collector. But these photos were never intended to be used for public lectures.

Hurley was in Palestine in late 1917, taking photographs of Australian cameliers, camel ambulances, Light horsemen, Jerusalem architecture and local citizens in cities/villages. The capture of Jerusalem in Dec 1917 ended 400 years of Ottoman rule, and was cheered enthusiastically by all the Jewish citizens. Hurley did not record how the Arab citizens responded to the British success.

Frank Hurley, 
Australian Cameliers in Egypt, 
Feb 1918.

Hurley’s colour images greatly impressed an eager public in London in May 1918 when an exhibition of official war photographs was held at the Graftan Galleries.  So I can understand why Hurley resigned his commission in July 1918, very unhappy that the Grafton Galleries Exhibition was not to be sent directly to Australia.

Hubert Wilkins continued to document the AIF experience, even after the final shots of the war had been fired. In January 1919, Wilkins joined Charles Bean and his men on the Gallipoli Mission, retrospectively examining the ANZAC area and its famous 1915 campaign. As I noted in a previous post, artist George Lambert was the important partner with Wilkins as a documenter of the ANZAC campaign.

Frank Hurley, 
Squadrons of the 4th Australian Light Horse Brigade in formation, 
Palestine, Feb 1918

ABlogAboutHistory refers readers to some very moving WW1 photos. The majority of these images are held by Gallica, the digital wing of the Bibliothèque National de France. Although the provenance of the photos is uncertain, it is thought they may be autochromes taken by the French photographer, Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud. History and traditions of England blog has amazing photos of show troops from America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and India in the UK, before leaving for the fighting front – mostly in France.

Monash University noted photographs were an inseparable part of our memory of war. They have come to play a vital role in our efforts to remember and to commemorate events of which we have no direct experience. Only people in their 60s now can remember what their grandfathers told them about The Great War. And while photos can’t bring home the terrible experience of war, they can provide us with images that at least indicate something of its horror. Monash's latest exhibition,  Icon & archive, drew on the collection of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. The exhibition in April-July 2010 included many iconic photographs that have become lodged in Australia's national memory. And some that we could see for the first time.

Monash University's exhibition literature had this sensitive studio portrait of an unnamed World War One soldier, complete with greatcoat, slouch hat and Australian army insignia. But who was he and what happened to him? 

And now a completely different collection of WW1 photographs. The Bendigo RSL Military Museum and Eaglehawk Heritage Society in central Victoria mounted an amazing exhibition of WW1 photos called A Camera on the Somme in 2009. From the Bendigo Art Gallery, the exhibition went on tour around Australian galleries during 2010 and is still travelling in 2011.

Where did the Bendigo photos come from? Two young brothers from central Victoria, Jack and Bert Grinton, found themselves serving in the trenches of France and Belgium. 90 years later, an extraordinary find came to light. Inside a biscuit tin stored for decades in a shed on the Grinton farm – and headed for the rubbish tip – was a large collection of negatives and photographs; images taken by Jack and Bert Grinton between 1916 and 1919 with the cameras they carried with them during the war.

Grinton, 
Australian soldiers and French children, 1918, 
Bendigo RSL Military Museum

This collection is a unique addition to the historical record, for two reasons. Firstly it captured people and places often overlooked by official war photographs. Secondly it highlighted the development and artistry of amateur photography.

The booklet called Captured in Colour, edited by Nola Anderson and Ian Hodges, has since been expanded to include WW2. It has come out as a book called Australian War Memorial: Treasures from a Century of Collecting, edited by Nola Anderson and published by Murdoch Books in 2012. Anderson headed a team of the institution's experts to choose examples from a HUGE collection of items, reaching right back into colonial times.

Louis Pasteur, rabbits and sex in Australia

I reread my article on The Divine Sarah Bernhardt in Australia, 1891: sex, theatre and sun, and decided it talked too much about sex romps with young scientists and not enough about the scientific problem at hand. The hard research work for this topic was done by Stephen Dando-Collins whose book is called Pasteur’s Gambit: Louis Pasteur, the Australasian Rabbit Plague and a Ten Million Dollar Prize, published by Vintage Books in 2008.

Prof Louis Pasteur with rabbits, by Holding, 1887

The problem was simple. In 1859 British-born pastoralists had wanted to make Australia more like their homeland, so they released rabbits and partridges into the bush. Anyone who knows the reproductive habits of rabbits will realise that within 20 years, the entire Australian continent was overrun by a rabbit plague. The economies of the eastern colonies were totally threatened. The NSW premier, Sir Henry Parkes, was desperate. So in 1887 he launched an international competition with a huge financial award ($10 million, in today’s money) for any successful scientist.

Professor Louis Pasteur was certain he had the remedy against rabbit plagues and wanted to travel to Australia himself, but he was ill when he read of the competition in a Paris newspaper. So he sent his brilliant nephew Dr Adrien Loir (1862-1941), a handsome young scientist, to represent the family business – the Pasteur Institute.

Dr Adrien Loir, Prof Pasteur's nephew

Dr Loir believed he could knock the rabbit problem off in a very short time, so he only had enough money for six week’s travel and accommodation in Australia. Alas for him, the competition stipulated that the scientists had to test out their cures for a complete year. Fortunately, while Loir was cooling his heels in Melbourne, a job fell into his lap. The major beer makers in Melbourne asked Dr Loir to teach the Pasteur method to the brewers, and paid him very well for his efforts.

Stephen Dando-Collins' book

Eventually Dr Loir was invited to Sydney, to propose Uncle Louis’ solution to Australia’s rabbit problem. The wire manufacturers tried to sabotage the Pasteur entry into the competition, since they hoped to make a fortune building rabbit proof fences around the nation. Plus there were a couple of doctors on the judging panel who actively supported Pasteur’s old critic and rival, Professor Robert Koch. Only the premier, Sir Henry Parkes, wanted to help Team Pasteur, spending a small fortune to erect a laboratory for them on Rodd Island, in Sydney Harbour.

The Rodd Island laboratory had another, almost incidental success. Dr Loir offered an impressive anthrax vaccine trial to the NSW Colonial government. When this was successful at greatly reducing anthrax, Dr Loir produced the vaccine in commercial amounts in the Rodd Island facility.

The Rabbit Commission didn’t give a prize to anyone in the end, but Dr Loir really wanted to stay in Australia and continue his work here. You will have to read the Dando-Collins book to see why the Rodd Island facilities, so hugely successful, eventually failed. In brief, we can say that the eventual Madame Loir hated living on the island and went back to France. Dr Adrien Loir bitterly resented his wife’s sabotage of his important work, and although he dutifully followed her back to France, in time he ran off with the maid and lived an exotic life in Africa and South America.

Rodd Island, Sydney Harbour

Beautiful Rodd Island was used from 1888-90 as a laboratory by scientists working for the Pasteur Institute on the rabbit infestation problem. From 1890-94 its facilities were used to manufacture sheep and cattle vaccines for anthrax and pleuro-pneumonia. After 1894, the laboratories were demolished and the research station residence was converted into a dance hall, which still exists. Over the past 120 years it has been a quarantine station, a USA Army training depot and a pleasure-ground for the ordinary working families of Balmain and Rozelle. The island is now part of the Sydney Harbour National Park and visitors can enjoy an interesting exhibition of photos and memorabilia within the grounds. Dr Loir's house was restored and opened to the public in 1996.

Dr Adrien Loir's two volumes of scrap-books, left by his daughter Dr Marie-Louise Hemphill, are in the Basser Library in the Australian Academy of Science, Canberra. They concerned his two visits to Australia: one in 1888-9 and the second in 1890-3. There are two other volumes of the same kind (not in the Basser Library) which apparently covered Dr Loir's later visits to South Africa and South America and his period as Director of the Pasteur Institute in Tunisia. In all these travels he was acting as the representative of Louis Pasteur, in relation to the development of protective inoculation against anthrax, rabies and other diseases.

59 Brick Lane Spitalfields: Christian, Jewish, Muslim

By the mid-late C17th, the long street in the East End of London called Brick Lane was being built up from the south. The Huguenots were fleeing religious persecution by the Catholic Church and Catholic government in France. After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, tens of thousands of Huguenots sought sanctuary in Britain and brought with them their weaving and silver-making skills.

Traders & weavers lived near, not necessarily in Spitalfields. Their late 17th and C18th domestic buildings were well appointed terraced houses, perfect for housing the French weaver families once they became successful; fine city mansions were built around the newly created Spital Square.

substantial  houses, built since 1700

59 Brick Lane, corner Fournier St, was a plain but quite elegant, rectangular dark brick building with tall arched windows. Even in a heavily built up street like Brick Lane, natural light could flood into the spaces inside. The building was described as having 2 storeys with a plain band between floors, 6 windows with red brick gauged arches and stone keys, recessed windows, a central Palladian window with semi-circular headed windows at sides (1st floor) and 4 segmental headed windows on the ground floor.

How was this building used over the centuries?

today 59 Brick Lane is an elegant mosque

The first community to use 59 Brick Lane were the recently arrived Frenchmen. The Huguenot community built La Neuve Eglise as a Protestant Church in 1743, along with a small school. As these Calvinists worked hard and prospered, some of them could afford to build large and handsome Georgian houses around Brick Lane, with glass-ceilinged workshops in the attics, where they set up their weaving looms. They didn’t forget their religious values either. In 1700, there were nine French churches in Spitalfields, although by the end of two generations of English born Huguenots, the French-speaking community was clearly being assimilated through inter-marriage.

Interior of 59 Brick Lane, when used as a Methodist chapel  (above)

Interior of 59 Brick Lane, when used as a Jewish synagogue (below)

The next group to use 59 Brick Lane were a different people. The London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews used The Jews’ Chapel, as they called the building in 1809, to encourage the physical restoration of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and to encourage the Hebrew Christian Messianic movement. The Society only lasted for one decade in Brick Lane.

John Wesley himself had lived not far away on City Road and preached his first covenant sermon at a chapel, just off Brick Lane. The simplicity and plainness of The Methodist Chapel, as the Wesleyans called it in 1819, would no doubt have suited them well.

When the local silk-weaving trades went into decline, the abandoned properties in this suburb were sublet and in the C19th the East End became a cheap place to live. Waves of impoverished and rather desperate immigrants arrived over the decades, slowly prospered and then moved out of Spitalfields as soon as they could. So as Icons Of England has shown, the building changed a number of times as each community established its own place of worship here.

With the huge influx of Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe flooding into the East End in the 1880s and 1890s, our Methodist Chapel was converted into The Spitalfields Great Synagogue in 1897. Brick Lane was the heart of London’s Jewish community and this was the principal synagogue of the area. Plus there were schoolrooms under the roof for children of the masses of impoverished, hard working refugees. From the 1960s, the Jewish community in the East End dwindled, many moving into more salubrious north London. The building eventually closed.

Since 1976 this building, Brick Lane Jamme Masjid, has been one of the largest mosques in London; 4,000 worshippers can fit into the prayer hall. The mosque has particularly served the religious needs of the large Bengali community which arrived after World War Two. The non-structural fittings like pews were removed, the opening in the centre of the gallery was reduced in size, made octagonal and moved eastwards, while retaining the columns on the ground floor supporting the gallery. A partition wall was inserted around the western end of the ground floor, and a qibla was constructed on the ground floor under the SE corner or the gallery. The northern and central vaults were also converted to prayer halls. Rooms adjacent to the prayer halls were adapted for washing.

Again there is an school for religious instruction here, on the 1st floor, but this time it is an Islamic school. The Huguenot chapel and former Great Synagogue in Fournier St and the adjacent former school buildings, now used as ancillary spaces for the mosque, are Grade II listed buildings.

Princelet St Synagogue, behind this Huguenot house

Another of the handsome Georgian houses in Spitalfields that were built by the Huguenots eventually became the Princelet St Synagogue. The front of the building is a former Huguenot house built in 1722, but at the rear was a synagogue, built in 1862. Like the other 38 synagogues in the City and the East End, Princelet St Synagogue lost its Jewish population in the two decades after WW2 ended.  

Sandys Row Synagogue, 

men on the ground floor, women section in the balcony

The Sandys Row Synagogue site was bought by Huguenots in 1763 and dedicated as a church in 1766. It is fascinating for two reasons. Firstly the synagogue was established in 1870 by a society of Dutch Jews, not Russians, Ukranians and Lithuanians. Secondly the synagogue, formerly a French Chapel, is the only extant, functioning synagogue in the East End today. A photographic exhibition of Spitalfields, taken in 1912, will remain open in the synagogue throughout 2012.

Two projects based on Spitalfields have recently come to my attention. Firstly a BBC programme called Saving Britain's Past was shown in Dec 2009. It did not ask whether the old Huguenot chapel cum synagogue should now be a mosque - that is beyond dispute. Rather it asked how today’s Bengali families could make the area their own, while not destroying the heritage value of old Spitalfields.

Georgian home in 27 Fournier St, 

restored by the Spitalfields Trust

Secondly The Spitalfields Trust bought crumbling Regency (1809-15) houses in Whitechapel, selling them on to Londoners who then let the Trust rebuild them observing strict conservation rules. Homes & Property has followed the story of the horseshoe of homes in a run-down part of East London. In this year’s Georgian Awards, presented by the Duke of Gloucester, the restoration work was highly commended. Plus The Spitalfields Trust project won first prize in Country Life’s national restoration competition.

One renovation stands out in particular. Fournier Street was the last street to be laid out on the Wood-Michell Estate and was originally known as Church St. 27 Fournier Street was built by Peter Bourdon of Spitalfields, who was granted a 98 year lease in 1725, the date that appears on the rainwater head on the front of the building. Weaver Mr Bourdon was believed to have been a prominent member of Spitalfields society, presumably Mr Bourdon was Huguenot. He would be delighted with how 27 Fournier St looks today.

Tired of London, Tired of Life recommends visiting London's Museum of Immigration at 19 Princelet Street. The museum's home page says that 19 Princelet Street is a magical unrestored Huguenot master silk weaver's home, whose shabby frontage conceals a rare surviving synagogue built over its garden. The staff are working to save the building and to create a permanent exhibition documenting the history of the Huguenots, Irish, Jews, Bengalis, Somalis and others who shaped this Spitalfields.

As an afterthought, readers might like to examine Philip Davies' book, Panoramas of Lost London: work, wealth, poverty and change 1870-1945. It would be interesting to know which Georgian and earlier terraces, houses and shops in London were photographed, before they were razed to the ground and rebuilt in a more modern style. I would also like to see the bustling street scenes, full of shops, awnings, advertisements, horses and carriages and street lamps. The book was republished by Transatlantic Press in 2011.

Jewish London Walking Tours, led by Stephen Burstin, start at Aldgate tube station and cover the schools, soup kitchens, synagogues, Petticoat Lane markets, Brick Lane restaurants, Yiddish theatres and houses of people who went on to become famous.

Ballets Russes: Russian, French and Spanish collaboration

The Calais-Mediterranée Express was created by a private French railroad company, the Chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée, to take wealthy families to the French Riviera where they might avoid winter in the northern hemisphere. This luxury night express train ran between Calais and the French Riviera from December 1922 until the very eve of World War Two. Everyone referred to the Calais-Mediterranée Express as Le Train Bleu, because of its very elegant dark blue sleeping cars.

In 1924, Le Train Bleu inspired a ballet of the same name, created by Serge Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, with a story by Jean Cocteau, costumes by Coco Chanel and a scenic curtain painted by Pablo Picasso. I had seen many of their fabulous costumes at the Melbourne Exhibition but knew nothing about the ballet Le Train Blue. Now I am interested in the Ballets Russes because of the collaboration between artists of different media and from vastly different nations.

The French composer Darius Milhaud was commissioned to write the music for Le Train Bleu by impressario Serge Diaghilev.  As contemporaries expected, the setting for the ballet was an English Channel beach resort when the aristocratic women and the playboys came out to parade in their elegant and oh so modern bathing suits. Games and socialising were portrayed against the ocean sounds in the background. The ambiance Milhaud sought was that of a light and friendly French operetta. Yet when opened in Paris, Milhaud was attacked for lack of seriousness and occasional vulgarity.

Picasso's Women Running on the Beach 1922, backdrop for Le Train Bleu, 1924

After 1917, the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso was involved in creating the designs for nine ballets including L'Apres-midi d'un Faune. He was in a close working partnership with artists like Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, Leonide Massine and Vaslav Nijinsky.

Picasso’s backdrop for Le Train Bleu, a giant 10.4 x 11.7 m in size, was called Women Running On The Beach, bounding over the sand against a deep blue sea and sky. Not quite original, the design was actually an enlargement of "Women Running on the Beach", a watercolour he had done in 1922. I don’t like this image because the women were muscular giants. But I suppose the drop curtain was typical of Picasso‘s early 1920s work in its monumentality and neo-classicism.

Russian Bronislava Nijinska (Vaslav’s sister) choreographed five modern ballets for the Diaghilev's Russian Ballet during the period 1921-6. For Le Train Bleu, Nijinska created a special ambiance through the language of dance. She introduced angular and geometrical movements and organised dancers on stage as interactive groups that reminded the viewers of golf, tennis and beach games. Nijinska herself performed in the role of a tennis player. Nijinska worked with plot writer Jean Cocteau and composer Darius Milhaud.

French designer Coco Chanel created the costumes for Le Train Bleu, a ballet that brought together tennis players, golf champions and sun bathers searching for adventure. Diaghilev’s directions for the costumes were: “Instead of trying to remain this side of the ridiculous in life, to come to terms with it, I would push beyond. To be truer than true.” So rather than designing special theatrical costumes for Le Train Bleu, Chanel dressed the dancers in actual sports clothes from her collection. She didn’t attempt to veil reality; rather, she brought it to life.

Some of Chanel's costumes for Le Train Bleu, 1924

Coco Chanel’s creations for the Ballets Russes’ Le Train Bleu are now at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The exhibit is called Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, on from Sept 2010 until Jan 2011. Jbrackett saw the exhibition objects and said “the overwhelming, glorious artistry of Diaghilev was brought alive again through the sumptuous, riotous colours of the costumes (with the stage lighting bouncing off the silks and satins), all seen against their appropriate scenery, and heightened through the music and dance performances”.

Let me add one more element of international collaboration, many thanks to ballet magazine. English dancer Anton Dolin was born in 1904. His mother took the young lad to the Coliseum to see the great Astafieva, who impressed him so strongly that he insisted on taking lessons from her: a key decision, as it was in Astafieva's studio that he was first seen by Diaghilev. He appeared briefly in the famous Sleeping Princess season in 1921, and joined Diaghilev's company formally when he was 19. Although he only danced with the company for two seasons in all, he took many leading roles. And here is the important point for this particular post. The great Nijinska created for him the lead in Le Train Bleu, which was so closely tailored to his extraordinary athletic dancing that no one else ever did it.

Some tiny amount of footage has survived from Ballets Russes in this period (1923-8). Since Diaghilev refused to allow any of his company’s performances to be filmed, it is a miracle that The History Blog found any film at all. It was taken, apparently, in Montreux in Switzerland during their annual June festival, Fêtes des Narcisses.

Canada's most spectacular gardens? Vancouver Island

In 1886, with the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway terminus on Burrard Inlet, Victoria's position as the commercial centre of British Columbia was clearly lost to the Vancouver. So the city had to begin cultivating an image of elegant civility within its natural setting and its very mild weather. I suppose the two events that most influenced Victoria’s reputation was a] the opening of the gorgeous Empress Hotel by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1908 and b] the opening of the popular Butchart Gardens 1904-8, 20 minutes drive north of the city.

Victoria on Vancouver Island, parallel with the Canadian-USA border

The concept of spectacular gardens originated with an effort to improve an unattractive, exhausted limestone quarry site on Robert Butchart’s family estate, pioneers in the manufacture of Portland Cement in Canada. But it was Mrs Jennie Butchart (1866–1950), and not her husband, who devised a plan to have tons of topsoil carted into the pit. In one post-WW1 photo, you can see the old cement works still in place, long after the planting had commenced.

Mrs Butchart personally supervised the beautification programme, starting with the exquisite Sunken Garden in 1904. The best photos show the Sunken Garden as seen from the lip of the old quarry and the Ross Fountain occupies what was the deepest part of the quarry. Note that the fountain wasn’t installed until 1964, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the gardens. The water rises 70’, providing a magnificent display by day, and is brilliantly illuminated at night.

Sunken Garden

Her project expanded to cover 50 acres of gardens and provided spectacular views to visitors. Apparently Mrs Butchart had a commitment both to horticulture and to hospitality. By 1908, she had added a Japanese Garden, an Italian Garden next to the family’s original home and a fine Rose Garden. Her comments at the time led people to assume she learned of these foreign gardening design principles when overseas, and loved them enough to want to replicate their beauty back at home. Certainly the Japanese Garden was designed by a well known landscape artist who travelled from Japan, at the request of Mrs Butchart.

According to Butchart Garden's own home page, Mr. Butchart took much pride in his wife's remarkable work. He collected ornamental birds from all over the world, kept ducks in the Star Pond and peacocks on the front lawn. He enjoyed training pigeons at the site of the present Begonia Bower, and had many elaborate bird houses stationed throughout Jennie's beautiful gardens.

Ross Fountain, installed in 1964

In the early days of the gardens’ history, weekly symphony concerts were hosted by the owners of the estate. Originally the concerts were planned for the pleasure of the extended family and their guests, but eventually it was opened to paying guests. Even now the Butchart Gardens offers a variety of daily concerts and events in summer. Open air concerts take place on the Concert Lawn stage; visitors are invited to sit on a bench or bring a blanket for the lawns. From there they can watch the on-stage performances and exciting musical nights!

And since 1977, on Saturday nights after the concert, visitors wait for the spectacular Fireworks show. The Gardens staff say visitors are unlikely to see another amazing fireworks show like this anywhere else in North America!!

Japanese Gardens

Every summer evening, visitors stroll around the gardens as thousands of coloured lights dramatically light up the gardens. Underground wiring installations and fabulous colours made me think of Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen.

Personally speaking, I have only visited in summer, as part of a family reunion. But apparently in the autumn, the Japanese garden becomes the main attraction as its red, russet and golden maples join with dozens of varieties of chrysanthemums to create an amazing range of autumn colours. Each weekend in October and November, visitors are invited to tour some of Butchart’s 26 greenhouses, which are filled to the brim with Poinsettias and other holiday delights.

Italian Gardens

Another winter-time event is the Historical Display. From mid Jan to mid March, the family residence is open for visitors to view memorabilia displaying the development of the Butchart Garden. Furnishings, correspondence and photos allow the visitor to step back into the graciousness of the period. Afternoon Teas are appropriately warming.

For a broader view of Vancouver Island, its wild spaces and easy access to nature, read Heather On Her Travels.

Rudyard Kipling and Australia, 1891

In 1891 Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) left Britain on what he called a small excursion to the other end of the world because he didn't know how to handle his lady friend Caroline Balestier. Like many men in a romantic tangle, he got himself out of town! But Kipling went further - he travelled to Australia and New Zealand, via the SS Mexican to South Africa and then the SS Doric to Australia!

When his father told the story of Rudyard's sudden travels,  papa's version didn't mention any woman. John Lockwood Kipling only recalled that young Rudyard had exhausted himself by his prodigious literary output in 1890 and 1891, so the young man set off on a sea voyage round the world to recover his nerves.

Kipling spent only a few weeks in Australia - 2 days in Sydney, one day in Hobart and the rest of the time in Melbourne. Although only in his mid 20s, he was already famous by the time of his visit, so he was introduced to various dignitaries, was interviewed by several journalists, and was quoted extensively in the press. 

How did it fit all the travelling in? We know that during his fortnight in Melbourne, Kipling travelled along what is now the Great Ocean Road and wrote a short poem mentioning both Lorne and the Erskine Falls. And he must have also visited Apollo Bay which he called Paradise. [Kipling was effusive in his praise of places he liked. During his New Zealand stay, he decided Milford Sound was the Eighth Wonder of the World].

Kennedy & Pinney, Kipling down under : Rudyard Kipling's visit to Australia: 1891.

Note that the portrait on the front cover was painted by John Collier (1850–1934) in that same year that Kipling did his "small excursion" overseas.

It was not an entirely happy visit, according to Brief Encounters: Literary Travellers in Australia. Kipling got locals offside when he criticised Australians for having too much government for the size of population, for being too Labour in its politics, for tending to go on strike too easily and for not being cautious enough about the Yellow Peril on the doorstep.

His views appeared in print in Melbourne's most important daily newspaper, The Age, 13th Nov 1891. Needless to say, many Australians were displeased with the remarks of an outsider, a blow-in. But the press did constantly invade his privacy, and they published gossip about his private romantic life, so Kipling was also displeased. 

Kipling paid a very short visit to Hobart. In later years Hobart would feature in his writing only in the poem he called Song of the Cities, in which sixteen cities in the empire were given a quatrain each. Kipling may not have loved the southern city, but he had taken a good deal of effort to learn its history.

Kipling had already left Australia when he received the news that his closest male friend, the publishing agent Wolcott Balestier, had suddenly died in London. He rushed home as soon as he could and married Wolcott's sister Carrie the very week he returned to Britain, even though he had loved Wolcott far more than he loved the sister.  Perhaps he felt guilty for not being there, when Wolcott needed him most. Perhaps Rudyard wanted to memorialise Wolcott's name (and genes) through their future children.

literary marker, Sydney

This trip to Australia was brief and largely, so Kipling might have expected to carry very little away with him in lasting feelings about the most far flung part of the British Empire. In fact, as his later writing established, he was deeply impressed by his stay. For decades to come, his work would be sprinkled with Australian references. In the Just So Stor­ies, which contain The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo, Kipling gave a vivid impression of his travels from Melbourne to Sydney, and then from Melbourne to Adelaide, by train.

It was in South Africa’s Boer War (1899-1902), a full decade after his trip to Melbourne, that Kipling came to really like Australians, and his experiences with that group of soldiers left him impressed. He said he had never met "a cleaner, simpler, saner, more adequate gang of men". As a result, he wrote a beautiful poem Lichtenberg about a homesick Aussie soldier riding through a small South African, while thinking of his wattle-filled Hunter Valley home. A Sahib's War was another piece of writing that demonstrated Kipling’s respect for the Australian fighting man.

During the years of the Boer War, the various Australian states federated into one modern nation. Kipling discussed the news with his good friend Cecil Rhodes and decided that it was a great imperial coming of age.

 Historians love a paper trail. I recommend the following books and documentary:

1. Fullerton, Susannah Brief Encounters: Literary Travellers in Australia, Picador, 2009
2. Kennedy, Rosalind and Pinney, T Kipling Down Under, Xlibris, 2000.
3. Kipling, Rudyard Letters of Travel 1892-1913, London, Macmillan,1920
4. Treasures of the Trust: Batemans, Dec 2006.

Pena National Palace near Lisbon: fantasy land

Vacation and Travel Photos wrote very nicely about the tourist attractions of Restauradores Plaza in Lisbon. Now I want to look at a town not far from Lisbon, Sintra.

Since medieval times, there was smallish monastery in Sintra which was dedicated to Saint Jerome and run by his order. The Great Lisbon Earth quake of 1755 was terrible for the monastery, reducing most of it to ruins. But Saint Jerome must have been looking after the chapel because the chapel and its marble art objects escaped destruction.

exterior of Pena palace, recently repainted. The clocktower is red.

One of King Pedro I of Brasil/Pedro IV of Portugal’s most significant acts in 1834 was to suppress all religious orders and to confiscate their property. Several years later, in 1838, King consort Ferdinand II decided to build a summer palace for the Portuguese royal family.  So it was no problem for the royals to take over the old monastery remains in Sintra, all of the surrounding lands, the nearby Castle of the Moors and a few other estates in the area. The monastery had stood on the top of a rocky hill above the town of Sintra, with 360º views of the valley and the gardens that surround the complex. And the new palace would have the same splendid views.

Pena National Palace in Sintra was built (during the years 1842-1854) by a German architect Baron Wilhelm Ludwig von Schwege in a mixture of architectural styles. Whether the mixture was the architect’s taste or not, it is interesting to me that the royal family asked for medieval elements be included. It is even more to their royal credit that elements of the old convent were preserved wherever possible eg the cloister, dining room, sacristy and chapel. Richly decorated walls are all over the interior, covered either with tiles or painted walls.

The clock tower, which looks medieval, actually wasn't built until 1843. But it was all part of the medieval, the romantic, the eccentric, the poetic and the flamboyant. So, I assume, were the turrets, towers, ramparts, secret passages and fortified gates.

National Palace, decorated ceilings

But I was more surprised that the royals would want Islamic elements in the palace’s internal architecture and decoration. Contemplating Sintra was very helpful suggesting that the formal expulsion of the Arabs from Iberia did not mean that the majority of the Islamic community fled abroad. So it is easy, as the tourist brochures say, to envisage Sintra as an over-leafy and excessively decorated fantasy from the Arabian Nights.

The palace remained one of the main royal family residencies for decades. In 1889 it was purchased by the Portuguese State, and after the Republican Revolution of 1910, the palace was classified as a national monument and transformed into a museum. The rooms were left exactly as they were when the last royal closed the front door.

National Palace chapel, panelled and decorated walls

By the end of the 20th century, the palace was repainted and the original colours restored. However it must be said that many citizens didn’t like the bright colours and didn’t think they were appropriate for a royal palace. The palace has recently been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and is still used for state occasions by the President of the Portuguese Republic and other government officials. At all other times, tourists can enjoy the day visit out of Lisbon, only 40 minutes away by train.

The park that completely surrounds Pena Palace was created by Ferdinand II at the same time as the palace. Of course Ferdinand was not alone in this massive task - he worked with a baron with expertise in landscaping and botany, and with German architect Baron von Schwege. Today the forest is still filled with walking paths, fantasy buildings, fountains and lakes. But the plants are a surprise. Visitors will immediately recognise Australian, Japanese, Chinese and North American trees.

Pena Park looking up towards the palace.

Sintra (pop 33,000) has of course become a major tourist attraction because of Pena Palace. But since overseas visitors may only visit Sintra once in their lives, they will want to maximise their pleasure whilst in the town. The Castelo dos Mouros, with its great view of the Sintra-Cascais Natural Park, and the summer residence of the kings of Portugal Palácio Nacional de Sintra, are worth visiting as you can see from the photos above

And for art-oriented visitors, The Sintra Museum of Modern Art is special. The Berardo Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, an important international collection of 20th century European and American art, has been open since 1987. José Manuel Rodrigues Berardo is a wealthy Portuguese financier with mining interests in South Africa, Canada, Portugal and Australia. But his passion is modern art. Launching the collection was one of Berardo's priorities in life and it was with great satisfaction that he saw it classified as one of the best private collections in Europe by the Independent (11th Aug 1998). The article was called ”Beyond the Guggenheim”.

Caravaggio's The Taking of Christ - at home in Dublin

I read a Caravaggio article by James F Clarity in The New York Times. Only later did I see a much longer and more detailed analysis of the apparently lost painting in the brilliant BBC series The Private Life of a Masterpiece, 2009. It was a better story than Dan Brown could have told... and all true!

Recently Sergio Benedetti, the gallery's senior conservator, stood behind a hushed crowd in the National Gallery of Ireland. The crowd was expressing its pleasure about the painting he hoped would give the museum new status in the art world: a wide canvas of dark gloom and sparkling light showing Judas as he kissed Christ. At the same time, a soldier gripped Jesus' neck, ready to drag Him away for crucifixion.

Guernica magazine described the scene accurately and colourfully. "The implied violence of the scene foreshadows the future. No routine arrest, this is a brutal takedown, ordered by the highest authorities, of a cult leader whose teachings threatened the social fabric of one of Rome's occupied territories. Because we know the story, and because the tension in the work is so tangible, we know what's to come: interrogations, brutal public torture, and of course, execution. It contains, within a common religious scene, the brutality of an age."

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio's painting, The Taking of Christ c1602, has been hanging in the gallery since Nov 1993. Finally the 3 years of detective work, technical examination and restoration by Mr Benedetti had paid off. It is one of only 65 or 70 works by the painter that experts have certified as authentic. Caravaggio, a notorious carouser and duelist, died in 1610 in rather tragic circumstances, eight years after this particular painting was completed. He was only 39.

The Taking of Christ 
by Caravaggio, c1602 
134 cm × 169 cmThe National Gallery of Ireland

Since its installation in the Irish gallery, the painting has been attracting spectators at a record pace. "Museum directors all over the world would give their eye teeth to have a painting like this," said Raymond Keaveney, the gallery's director. Mr Benedetti agreed, noting that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has two Caravaggios (Music and Lute Player), but the National Gallery in Washington and the Getty have none. This will put us on the map, he said of the gallery, a splendid Georgian building in the centre of Dublin. The Caravaggio is now the centrepiece of a collection that includes two Rembrandts.

The Caravaggio, whose authenticity was verified by 10 European experts who travelled to Dublin to examine it, first came into Mr Benedetti's view when he was asked to restore it by its owners. The owners were a community of Jesuit priests who had it hanging in the dining room and parlour of their Dublin residence for 60 years. They thought it was, as the title on its frame says, the work of a Dutch painter, Gerrit van Honthorst. Gerard van Honthorst was not a bad guess; he was in any case one of Caravaggio’s Dutch followers. But the real treasure, the original Caravaggio, was thought lost for all times.

The painting, now on permanent loan to the gallery, had reached the Dublin Jesuits by a twisting route, which Mr Benedetti retraced over three long years to verify its provenance. It was painted a year before another Caravaggio masterpiece, Supper at Emmaus, now in the National Gallery in London, for the Roman palace of the Mattei noble family whose ancestors had originally commissioned it.

The painting stayed in the Mattei Palace until 1802. Then it was mislabelled (by mistake or intentionally) as the work of Honthorst and sold to a Scottish landowner, William Hamilton Nisbit. In the 1920s, a Dublin physician, Dr Marie Lea-Wilson, bought it for less than $1,000. In the mid-1930s, Dr. Wilson gave it to the Jesuits, who noticed a few years ago that it was becoming dirty and got in touch with Mr Benedetti.

Sergio Benedetti said "After one month of working on it, everything was so perfect. I began to look for things wrong. But I could find nothing. The pentimenti were all there." These corrective touches by the artist included the over-painting of Judas's ear to make it smaller and the narrowing of a soldier's belt. In addition, on Christ's face, close to the hairline, there is a squiggle indicating a curl probably executed with the butt end of the artist's paint brush," a technique Caravaggio used in other work. "A copyist wouldn't bother with pentimenti. He would follow the original. Honthorst was a good painter, but not one-twentieth of the painter Caravaggio was." He declined to estimate the work's value except to say it would be in the millions of dollars.

The Dublin painting was recently on loan to an Italian gallery, as part of Caravaggio's 400th anniversary.

The National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

In a totally unrelated set of circumstances, Caravaggio's painting The Taking of Christ or The Kiss of Judas c1602, had been stolen in July 2008 from the Ukrainian Museum of Western and Eastern Art in Odessa. The badly damaged work, which looks very similar to our Irish painting, was recently recovered in Berlin after four members of an international gang of art thieves wanted to sell it.

It would be interesting to know if Caravaggio painted both of them, and which of the two paintings came first. The Association for Research into Crimes Against Art reported that the Dublin picture was lighter yet more brooding, and the figures were sharper. The Odessa figures, particularly that of Christ, were different and less refined than Caravaggio’s normal work.

"The Irish work is undisputedly regarded as the work that is documented as commissioned in 1602 by the Mattei family in Rome", said Fionnuala Croke, the Irish gallery's Keeper and Head of Collections. "Obviously Caravaggio's influence was enormous in his own lifetime and in succeeding generations and there were many copies of this work because it would have been seen by many, many guests and visitors to the Mattei family home, which was in the centre of Rome. There is a record in the Mattei family records that there was a copy commissioned of our painting by another member of the Mattei family in 1626 that was painted by another artist who was otherwise completely unknown called Giovanni di Attilio. Sergio Benedetti believes that it is this copy, painted 20 years after our original, which is the Odessa painting." She added that the Odessa painting had the exact dimensions of the original, which pointed to the fact that it was copied directly from the Caravaggio original.