London's East End - my grandmother's life

My paternal grandmother’s descriptions of living in the East End of London were fascinating, but I never knew how accurate her memories were. And there was no way I was going to discover details about my grandmother by reading about royal, noble or wealthy families, from army or church records or even from newspaper clippings.

So for me, the most interesting part of reading historical census documents was discovering how ordinary people lived, people who were born, worked and died without any fuss being made. A 1901 census re­turn succintly described the living conditions in­ King Edward St Whitechapel. Then in the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney, the house gave a safe haven to five families, all the adults being immigrants from what is now Russia, Belarus, Ukraine or Poland.

This should not surprise us. The 1901 Census noted that Jewish families were desperate to leave Russia's Pale of Settlement and that 90% of Britain’s 150,000 Russian and Polish Jewish newcomers settled in London’s East End.

Jewish Soup Kitchen, Brick Lane, Spitalfields

opened 1902.

Today the sandstone facade and sign are original, but the building itself has been converted into luxury flats

The building was divided into flats, but there were still only eight rooms in total. Sarah and Max S shared their two rooms with their two children and a lodger. Jacob and Heide B had one room. Elijah and Florrie S shared their room with their child. Isidor and Rebecca P and their six children squeezed into two rooms. Isaac and Rosa H, six children and Isaac’s adult brother fitted into the final two rooms in the house. 27 human beings!

Census unformation was given about every resident’s name, gender, age, country of birth and occupation. And for that I am grateful. But wouldn’t it have been useful to known if all five families shared one kitchen, bath and wash-house? Did any of the adults in the house speak English? Did the adults have any other language in common with each other eg Yiddish, German, Polish or Russian? How long did each family live in King Edward Street, before they moved on to a bigger flat? Did the 27 human beings roster the one toilet across the alley, to avoid overcrowding?

Conditions at home may have been appalling, but community facilities were booming. I know there were four synagogues and at least one school within easy walking distance from the Whitechapel house. A soup kitchen was founded in Brick Lane and a Temporary Shelter was opened in Leman St, mainly for new comers. Social clubs included Russian tea rooms and libraries. Sick visiting organisations supported struggling families and a Jewish burial society tended to the bereaved. From the late-1890s, Pavilion Theatre (later demolished) in Whitechapel Road showed Yiddish language plays to enthusiastic audiences.

Of all the facilities and activities available, my grandmother remembered The Pavilion Theatre, music hall and pantomimes most fondly.

Jews' Temporary Shelter

in Leman Street, Whitechapel

opened 1886.

The marriages must have survived because my grandmother later found herself surrounded by four more healthy siblings, supported by their father’s salary as a boot finisher. One sibling went eventually to live in Chicago and established himself independently of his family. (Was he in trouble with the law, or did he made someone pregnant accidentally?) The rest of the family emigrated to Australia just as the outbreak of WW1 was stopping all civilian shipping.

Actually it wasn’t very different for my grandmother when she arrived in Australia, at least regarding external toilets. Pan closet toilets in Melbourne’s crowded inner suburbs generally backed onto a lane and were emptied weekly by a nightman. And like the UK, the toilet was generally built as far from the house as possible, to avoid spreading infections. But there WAS a big differ­ence. Inside the family’s own back yard in Melbourne, the one toilet was used exclusively by the one family.

London slum

Photo credit: History Zone

The Whitechapel Boys was a group of young men that went on to become some of my favourite English writers and artists of the era. I will mention only three: Mark Gertler (1891–1939) was born and raised in Spitalfields, Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918) moved to Stepney as a school boy and David Bomberg (1890–1957) grew up in Whitechapel. From their intensely impoverished but acculturated world, The Boys used the Whitechapel Library as a meeting place, their discussions contributed to the founding of British Modernism. Strongly iconoclastic, the painters and sculptors in the group began to experiment with dynamic form and abstraction while the writers and poets searched for innovative prose to express their philosophical and political views. My grandmother (also born 1890) didn't remember them but she would have been proud of how her exact contemporaries overcame the constraints of living in the impoverished East End to become a vibrant avant garde.

Pavilion Theatre in Whitechapel Road, 1905

See excellent maps of old Spitalfields, and old Whitechapel. The former includes Mark Gertler's house, the Princelet St Synagogue and the Jewish Soup Kitchen. The latter includes the Yiddish Newspaper House, the mikveh/ritual bath, the youth club and Isaac Rosenberg's home.

Pieter Brueghel's village lawyer, 1615.

I love 17th and C18th art that made commentary on social issues in the communities where the artists lived. William Hogarth (1697-1764), for example, documented the seamy side of life in England, firing off his artistic bullets against corrupt politic­ians, negligent mothers, sleazy men who seduced gullible young women and alcoholics. In his satir­es, he swore that the political and social references were real but that the faces did not refer to anyone in particular.

Even the well heeled gentlemen in their private club (see the painting A Midnight Modern Conversation below) were falling apart under the influence of alcohol. Hogarth was not displaying the “imperturbable grace and goodness of an England built on land and trade”, but more subversively the vomit-inducing excess of a nation addicted to booze.

Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1565-1638), born in Brussels and educated in Antwerp, was not known as a satirist and political commentator. So what do we make of his painting The Village Lawyer, painted in 1615? According to the European Fine Art Fair notes, the village lawyer was depicted as smugly reading petitions in his chaotic office. In the meantime, the peasants were queuing up to pay their fees with farm produce in lieu of cold, hard cash.

Pieter Brueghel the Younger

The Village Lawyer, 1615
75 cm x 125 cm

Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent

But I am not sure that the lawyer was smug or that the peasants were serviced perfunctorily. The scribe in the background was depicted as working very hard on the tasks set by the lawyer, and the peasants seemed respectful and patient. What was needed more than anything in this lawyer's office was an efficient filing system for the masses of papers on the floor, the desk, up on the shelves and tucked into the eaves.

One last thought. Pieter Brueghel II's genre paintings of peasants may well have lacked his father's (Pieter Brueghel I) subtlety and humanism, but perhaps the son emphasised the picturesque on purpose. The moral message of The Village Lawyer could be that it does indeed display the oafish simplicity of the Flemish peasantry, but not out of the artist's sense of elitism. Perhaps the artist both loved his peasant friends and recognised their limitations.

**

Who were these village lawyers? In Europe the first univerties in Italy, France and England gave students the choice of arts, canon and civil law, medicine and theology. And we know that Law only became a formal profession with clear educational require­ments by the 13th and 14th centuries, and probably later.

Canon lawyers served the church and were not often seen by ordinary citizens.

But civil law was the stuff of everyday life – the writing and execution of wills; conveyancing i.e the drafting of documents for property transactions; labour and other contracts; and defending people charged with petty and more serious crimes. Civil-law notaries drafted and recorded legal instruments for private parties, provided legal advice and gave attendance in person, usually on a fee-for-service basis. Every citizen would have needed, at some time during their life, access to a local lawyer. So men working in civil law would almost always be amongst the elite of the town’s population, educated, well paid and living in decent housing.

One imagines that a village lawyer did not need a PhD to sort out many of the disputes in the manor courts that had to do with farming and prop­erty, and small crimes like assault, petty theft, public drunkenness. Perhaps Brueghel’s lawyer found it was boring and repetitive work. Perhaps this lawyer did not like the smell of the Great Unwashed.

William Hogarth
A Midnight Modern Conversation, 1733
132 x 146 cm
National Trust, Petworth House

New Amsterdam - New York

Henry Hudson was an experienced and busy English seaman. Firstly he had been commissioned by the English merchants in the Muscovy Comp­any in 1607; he was to find a north west passage to China via a route above the Arctic Circle. This would be, if he found it, a quick route from England to the "islands of spicery."

Then Henry Hudson had been hired by the Dutch East India Company to once again find an easy route to Asia. His ship sailed across the uncharted waters he hoped would bring them to Asia, but they came unstuck north of Norway. The crew was not happy and threatened mut­iny, so Hudson wisely decided to go along the tried and tested passage in­stead, a la John Smith and Samuel de Champlain of the New World settle­ments of Jamestown and Quebec.

Imagine the crew's excitement in 1609 when they sailed into the mouth of a large river just off the coast of Cape Cod (Massachusetts). And imagine how delighted they were to find a majestic harbour surround­ed by wide, easily navigable rivers and land rich with natural re­sour­ces. In 1614 the New Netherland Co. was established and they soon created a second fur trading post in Fort Nassau, today called Albany. 

Hudson returned to The Nether­lands with the maps and reports; this was followed by a flood of Dutch citizens who flocked to this new land with its wonderful river, now called the Hudson River.

Peter Stuyvesant become the Director-General of the New Netherland colony in 1647.

Who settled the area first - the Dutch or the British? The May­flower was the famous ship that transported British pilgrims from Plymouth England to Plymouth Mass. no earlier than 1620. So we can be clear that the Dutch had already established their own colony in North America 11 years before the Pilgrims even kissed their loved ones goodbye back at home.

Merch­ants from Amsterdam began sending agents to the area to act in their financial interests. These agents collected food, tobacco, fur and timber, sending shiploads back to Amsterdam, which was then Europe’s leading trade city. In order to secure for themselves the rich trade that the new land seemed to promise, the Dutch decided to colonise the area and name it Nieuw Nederlandt. New Netherland was the first Dutch colony in the New World, extending from Delaware to Albany New York and included parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New Jersey. Some colonists came for the prospect of owning their own land or to capitalise on the fur trade. Others came as servants or hunters, or to escape religious persecution.

New Netherland was populated mostly by Native Americans, traders and employees of the Dutch East India Company. Eventually, farmers and tradesmen arrived, often with their wives and children. Slaves were brought in from Africa. Soldiers were shipped over to protect the colony. Officials were appointed to govern and maintain order. There were shipbuilders, teachers, millers, butchers, brewers, black­smiths, carpenters and bakers, some Dutch but others from other parts of Western Europe.

The written history of New York City properly began with the Dutch settlement of Walloon families in 1624, when State General Peter Minuit formally bought the island of Manhattan from the Native Americans! That town, at the southern tip of Manhattan, was called Nieuw Amsterdam, and was the main city of the Dutch colony of Nieuw Nederland. To defend New Amsterdam, Minuit built Fort Amsterdam on the water’s edge.

The date 1625 appeared on New York City's corporate seal; the year of Dutch incorporation as a city. And we can track the Dutch origins in many names in New York City today e.g Brooklyn came from Breukelen, Harlem was Haarlem, the Bronx was once Pieter Bronck, Flushing was Vlissingen and Staten Island came from Staaten Eylandt.

In 1646, Peter Stuyvesant was selected by the Dutch East India Co. to become the Director-General of the New Netherland colony. Stuyvesant organised the colonists in projects, draining marshes and dig­ging canals. In September 1647, he appointed an advisory council of nine men as representatives of the colonists on New Amsterdam.

The City of New Amsterdam in 1660

By the mid 17th century, New Amsterdam was doing very well commer­cial­ly. Alas for the Netherlands, their biggest competitor for ship-building and overseas trade were the English who persuaded King Charles II to "give" the successful Dutch colony to his brother, the Duke of York, in 1664.

In the same year, English ships entered the harbour and troops mar­ch­ed to capture the East River to the city, with minimal resistance from the Dutch governor, Peter Stuy­v­esant. The English really wanted Manhattan Island with its fine natural harbour and two impressive rivers. But we still have to ask why Nieuw Amsterdam was ceded by the Dutch to the English so passively?

The best explanation I can find is that after the second Anglo-Dutch Sea War 1665-7, the English agreed to transfer sovereignty of Sur­in­am to the Dutch in The Treaty of Breda in 1667, in exchange for New Amsterdam. Perhaps the coffee and sugar cane plantations of Suriname looked better to the Dutch than the fur trade of northern USA. Or perhaps Peter Stuy­v­esant had made little effort to endear himself to the good burghers of New Amsterdam since he arrived in 1646, so when they were asked to defend the city against a fleet of British warships, the citizens simply refused to risk their lives.

The Dutch had done very well for 50+ years (1609-67), but their idyll was over. The newly English city grew northward, and became the largest city in the colony!

2014 is exactly the 350th anniversary of the year in which the English took over the Dutch colony and called it New York. But the Dutch legacy remains - in holiday traditions, food, place names, architecture and even politics. For detailed information, see New Netherlands Institute, Exploring America's Dutch Heritage.

Royal and noble affairs for an Australian country girl - Sheila Chisholm

In preparing for the book Sheila: The Australian Beauty Who Bewitched British Society by Robert Wainwright (2013), I had to ask myself if I wanted to read about cashed up young women from the colonies who moved to Britain to meet eligible but impoverished young noblemen. Examination of some of my own earlier posts suggested that the answer was "yes" eg Husband hunting in British India, and When American money married British aristocracy.

Sheila Chisholm (1895-1969) grew up in rural NSW, youngest of three children of Harry and Margaret Chisholm. Dad was a grazier and successful bloodstock agent, so they could afford to educate their daughter at home - book learning of course but also horse riding and sheep droving. The suffragettes were seen as heroines in the Chisholm household.

Already overseas when WWI broke out, Sheila went with her mother to Egypt in 1915, planning to nurse soldiers and to see her brother John who was serving with the Australian Imperial Force. Still a teenager, Sheila was seen as tallish (168 cm), a good face and a nice figure for dancing. This was a promising start for a future high society beauty.

While serving as community volunteer at the Australian base in Cairo, Sheila met the handsome, well spoken Francis, Lord Loughborough who was being treated for wounds received at Gallipoli in May 1915. Sheila married him at the British Consulate in Cairo in December 1915.

They went to England in the new year and, despite Francis’ boozing, had two lovely sons, Anthony and Peter. The marriage suffered financial hardship from Lough­bor­ough's gambling, inherited from his inveterate gambler of a father, the 5th Earl of Rosslyn. Fortunately throughout her marital problems, Sheila sustained a warm connection with her friend and confidante Freda Dudley Ward.

Freda was the mistress of the Prince of Wales and soon Sheila and the Prince’s brother Albert Duke of York (Bertie) rounded out the foursome – the 4 Dos. The affair between Sheila and Bertie, who later took the throne when Edward abdicated, is an important part of the book. Bertie was shy, single and lonely; Sheila was married and miserable. Their close liaison ended in April 1920 when Bertie’s father, King George V, demanded that Bertie leave the married colonial and that Bertie marry someone suitable.. immediately!!

But one thing is puzzling. Wainwright found incriminating letters sent to Sheila by the Prince Bertie AND Prince Edward. Were both men in love with her?

The Four Dos. From left, Prince Edward and Freda Dudley Ward, Prince Albert and Sheila Chisholm. Photo credit: Sydney Morning Herald.

The Loughboroughs lived in Sydney in the early 1920s but she must have spent plenty of time in Europe. Sheila certainly enjoyed a lengthy affair with the glamorous Prince Serge Obolensky, and a less torrid affair with Rudolph Valentino, both of whom would have been very interesting, well-connected characters for our Sheila. Valentino died in 1926 at a tragically young age, but I would love to have known more about the prince - lots more!

Needless to say, the Loughboroughs were divorced in Edinburgh in 1926. Back in London permanently, Sheila frequented the Embassy Club and was a member of the Prince of Wales' set, also known as The Dar­l­ings.

In 1928 she married 26-year-old Baronet Sir John Milbanke (1902-47). Milbanke’s aristocratic cronies were impressed with the lovely Aust­ralian – her fashions and manners as well as her face. She may have been a bit older than Milbanke, but she fitted right into their social scene. But even then, tragedy struck. One of her sons, Peter, was tragically killed on active service with the Royal Air Force in 1939.

After the war, Sheila spent a little time with King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, later the Queen Mother. But she spent a great deal of time with Edward and Wallis Simpson. I would like to know more about this strange relationship as well.

After John Milbanke died in 1947, Sheila successfully ran Milbanke Travel Ltd from Fortnum & Mason Ltd in Piccadilly. This time it took her a while to regroup and remarry, but remarry she did. In October 1954 she married Dimitri Alexandrovitch Romanoff, a Russian prince and a nephew of the last tsar. They lived in London, a relatively quiet and happy married life. In 1967 they flew to Aust­ralia to catch up with the family, her first visit home for decades.

Lord John Buffles Milbanke and Lady Sheila at Ascot
Photo credit: Sydney Morning Herald.

Sheila had been born to an ordinary family, with no noble connections and not a huge amount of money. What a long way she travelled in 74 years!! Her first hus­band, Lord Loughborough, was King Edward VII's godson. Her second husband, Baronet Sir John Milbanke, inherited the Halnaby Hall estates in Yorkshire. Her third hus­band, Prince Dimitri, was a nephew of the last Tsar.

Sheila died in 1969 in London and was buried in Edinburgh. Her elder son succeeded as 6th Earl of Rosslyn.

Did The Express overstate the impact of Our Sheila on the British royal family? “It was a royal affair that shook Buckingham Palace to its very foundations. So much so that the liaison between a married society beauty and a future monarch was ended on the orders of a king”. I would say that royal princes had had affairs since time immemorial, certainly before they were married and sometimes even after. Buck­ingham Palace’s foundations still look solid to me.

In any case, as The Mail noted, it was a different group of people who were making the glamorous headlines between the wars - Edward VIII, the Mitford sisters, Lady Diana Cooper, Evelyn Waugh, Cecil Beaton, Noel Coward and Emerald Cunard. Not Sheila Chisholm.

**

At the same time that the Robert Wainwright book was published, An Exuberant Catalogue of Dreams was written by Clive Aslet and published by Aurum Press (Nov 2013).  Starting in the late Victorian era and finishing at the end of WW2,  Britain’s country houses saw a new type of heiress come across the Atlantic to marry the impoverished landed gentry and nobility. And some staggeringly wealthy American industrialists men like William Waldorf Astor and newspaper magnate Randolph Hearst also arrived!

Exuberant Catalogue of Dreams examines the impact of the American dollar princesses on the architecture, gardens and art collections of cash-strapped British noble men. St Donat’s Castle in Glamorgan, Hever Castle in Kent and Cliveden in Buckinghamshire started to look very flash indeed. Even Blenheim, which was looking very shabby, was brought back to modern life.

Although there was no link whatsoever between Aslet's dollar princesses from America and Our Sheila, I was interested to read what one newspaper columnist noted at Sheila's first wedding in 1915: "It is refreshing to hear that an Australian girl, after a pretty little war romance, has married into the peerage. With some of Britain's lordlings it has been a not too infrequent habit either to marry a charmer off the music halls or else wed an American heiress. Now it appears they are marrying on the keep-it-in-the-Empire principle—at least Lord Loughborough has set a new and patriotic fashion in that direction."

Victor Lustig - the world's most hopeful swindler?

I could not quite believe the story of a London City councillor, Ivan Luckin, who was stuck with a bridge over the Thames that did not work well. But the story was true - he really did market London Bridge to the Americans as a symbol of historic London, a feat of engineering that could trace its lineage back to its medieval ancestor. Did they believe that the quite modern bridge was actually medieval? Or were the Americans simply swayed by the European symbolism?

And now for a similar story...except for one big difference. The London Bridge really WAS delivered to the American investors. The Eiffel Tower, as we shall see, was not delivered to anyone.

Victor Lustig was born Robert Miller in 1890 in Sudetenland, now the Czech Republic. As a youngster he studied many languages. He also studied people: their habits, mannerisms and especially their weaknesses, and decided to go into a career that utilised those skills. He was a glib and charming conman, who established himself by working scams on the ocean liners steaming between Paris and New York City. The passengers on these liners were relaxed, rich and very sure of themselves.

By the age of 20 Lustig was already a conman. Straight after WW1 ended, when he was 30 years old, he was a confirmed conman on the run from police in several European countries. So he restarted his career in the USA and gave himself a noble European title, Baron.

In 1925, France had recovered from World War I and Paris was boom­ing, an excellent environment for men on the make. Lustig's master ruse came to him one spring day when he was drinking coffee at an outside Paris café with a fellow con man, a Franco American called Robert Arthur Tourbillon aka Dapper Dan Collins. 

Victor Lustig and the Eiffel Tower that he sold. Twice.
Paris 1925

A news­paper article discussed the problems the city was having maintaining the Eiffel Tower – that it was in urgent need of repairs or it had to be razed to the ground. That made sense since the Eiffel Tower had been built for the 1889 Paris Exposition, and was never intended to be permanent. It did not fit with the city's other great monuments like the Arc de Triomphe, and in any case the contract with Eiffel required the structure be taken down in 1909. So by 1925, the tower was looking pretty tragic. Lustig’s mind moved into action and he quickly saw the possibilities that the Eiffel Tower offered - he would sell Paris' most famous landmark to a scrap metal dealer. He gave himself the title Deputy Director-General of the Ministry of Mail and Telegraphs. Dapper Dan would be his secretary.

They typed-up letters with Lustig's title printed on them and mailed them out to the six leading scrap metals dealers in Paris. They were asked to come meet Lustig and his secretary at their room in the fashionable Hotel Crillon. All six attended the meeting where the potential buyers were told that it had become too costly to repair the Eiffel Tower; the 7,000 ton steel structure would be sold to the highest bidder to be torn down. They were also told to keep the meeting secret; if the public found out too soon there would be an outcry.

Lustig took the men to the tower for an inspec­tion tour. It gave Lus­tig the opportunity to gauge which of them was the most enthus­iastic and gullible. Lustig asked for bids to be submitted the next day, and reminded them that the matter was a state secret.

They selected Andre Poisson who was nicely insecure and thought that obtaining the Eiffel Tower contract would put him in the centre of Paris’ business community. A week later Monsieur Poisson showed up once again at Lustig's place. However Poisson's wife was suspicious of this government official, of the secrecy and the rush. To deal with her suspicion, Lustig arranged another meeting, and then confessed. As a government minister, Lustig said, he did not make enough money to pursue the lifestyle he enjoyed, and needed to discretely supplement his income. Poisson understood that he was dealing with a corrupt government official who simply wanted a bribe. That put Poisson's mind at rest immediately, since he was familiar with the type.

Poisson was handed a fake contract that stated that he owned the Eiffel Tower, while Lustig was handed a real cheque for the Eiffel Tower AND a large bribe. The Baron and Dapper Dan quickly cashed their earnings ($70,000) and left immediately on a train for Vienna. Resting in Vienna they scanned the newspapers to see if Poisson went to the police, but Poisson was clearly too embarrassed to tell anyone what happened. Surprisingly, nothing happened at all.

A month later, Lustig returned to Paris, selected six more scrap dealers, and tried to sell the Tower once more. This time, the chosen victim reported his loss of $100,000 to the police before Lustig could close the deal! But the Baron and Collins once again managed to evade arrest, this time fleeing to America and not to Vienna.

Hotel Crillon, Paris

a very elegant location for an important business meeting

I would have thought Baron Lustig had enough cash left to live the good life in the USA. But perhaps a true con man cannot help himself. In 1930 Lustig went into partnership with an unknown chemist from Nebraska. Tom Shaw had the job of engraving plates for the manuf­act­ure of counterfeit banknotes. Together they organised a counter­feit ring for the purpose of circulating the hundreds of thousands of forged notes throughout the country. In secret.

In May 1935 Lustig was dobbed in and an arrest warrant was issued by federal agents on charges of counterfeiting. Secret agents swooped on Lustig who was carrying a briefcase. Opening it up they found only expensive clothing, but in his wallet they found a key to a locker in the Times Square subway station. The locker contained $51,000 in counterfeit bills AND the plates from which they had been printed.

The day before his trial, Lustig managed to escape from the Federal House of Detention in New York City but was recaptured a month later in Pittsburgh. Lustig pleaded guilty at his trial and was sentenced to 20 years in Alcatraz Island in San Francisco, the American gaol for the worst offenders. In March 1947 he contracted pneumonia whilst still in gaol and soon died.

**

Dear reader, if you are going into the conman business, here are the rules that Lustig set down ..to increase your chances of success:

1.Be a patient listener.
2.Never look bored.
3.Wait for the other person to reveal any political opinions, then agree with them.
4.Let the other person reveal religious views, then have the same ones.
5.Hint at sex talk, but don’t follow it up.
6.Never discuss illness, unless some special concern is shown.
7.Never pry into a person’s personal circumstances.
8.Never boast. Just let your importance be quietly obvious.
9.Never be untidy.
10.Never get drunk.

I would add:
11. Speak French, German, English and other languages fluently
12. Do not have a spouse or children, so that you can move quickly.           

Gabriel Garcia Marquez and his literary influence

I spent my 1966 Gap Year abroad, largely with young, socialist, passionate South American students. Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-2014) was soon to be their hero...so naturally I too wanted to read his books. My first venture into Marquez's world was One Hundred Years of Solitude, published in 1967.

Later, as the letters stopped coming from my Spanish-speaking friends, I read only two more of Garcia Marquez’s novels: Chronicle of a Death Foretold 1981 and Love in the Time of Cholera 1985. Of these, Chronicle was the bravest for the following reason. After García Márquez and his family moved to Mexico City in the late 1970s, the author decided not to publish again until the hideous Chilean Dictator Augusto Pinochet went into exile or died. Nonetheless he risked writing and publishing Chronicle of a Death Foretold while Pinochet was still in power. Apparently Garcia Marquez could no longer remain silent in the face of injustice and repression, telling the story of a good friend from his own childhood who died as a young man.

Two local factors stamped Garcia Marquez as deeply embedded in the South American experience, according to the author himself. Firstly he could trace his interest in magical realism directly to his beloved grandmother, the woman who raised him. Furthermore he believed that the magical strangeness emerging from South American fiction was a true reflection of South American history.

Secondly political chaos was everywhere. For a young, sensitive Colombian student, nothing said South American Tragedy like the assassination of the best President his country ever had in 1948. Garcia Marquez’s university was shut, his liberal newspaper was closed down and young socialists had to flee from their own country. In 1958 he left Europe and travelled to Venezuela when that country’s despised dictator General Perez Jimenez was defeated in a coup; Perez Jimenez was immediately sent to join General Franco, Spain’s despised dictator. In 1959 Fidel Castro had successfully entered Havana and young activists throughout the continent cheered.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold, 1981

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Decades later, the questions I want to ask now are: how exclusively South American were Garcia Marquez’s novels and did they have any influence on young Australian novelists? The Australian writer Richard Flanagan said it was hard to conceive of modern Australian literature without Garcia Marquez's revolutionary novels. Flanagan said what Garcia Marquez and other Latin American writers were grappling with in their writing was how to reconcile the great European and North American traditions of the novel with worlds that had a fundamentally different experience; they had to make an art that didn't seek to ape that of Europe and North America. For Australian novelists, Garcia Marquez was a liberation. Flanagan noted that because Garcia Marquez was grounded in the idea of journalism – he worked as one for several years in Colombia and in Europe – he always said he invented nothing.

The Anglo world's misreading of magical realism led to "a very maudlin and sentimental idea of the invention of the fabulous. It led to an enormous amount of bad writing and bad books." But at home Garcia Marquez had reunited the great radical art of the novel with a popular audience. He understood magical realism as a true realism. He understood that conventional realism was insufficient to describe the dreams and nightmares and the ways people actually experienced life and the utterly extraordinary world of every day of Latin America. Magical realism had been a response to social realism, which socialists like Garcia Marquez felt had crippled them both artistically and politically.

Flanagan said "Unless you could acknowledge the fullness of human experience you couldn't actually achieve a true liberating and revolutionary politics. So the politics demanded a different art and the different art demanded a different politics. We were no different in Australia. We were obsessed with writing books that were death masks of fashions and ideas and experiences elsewhere. What you got from Garcia Marquez and the Latin Americans was that you had to go into your experience on its own terms."

Another Australian novelist, Peter Carey, agreed: "Garcia Marquez changed the way I wrote. He opened a door that I had just been hammering on. He wrote about his place in a way that was new and fresh and completely different. I was struggling to do the same thing about my own country and he was completely inspirational." Carey said he had originally misunderstood a lot of what Garcia Marquez did, thinking that he was inventing things that were actually firmly grounded in his life. But like many other people misunderstanding him and reading and being thrilled by – he changed how Australians wrote.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez in c2002

Gabriel Garcia Marquez maintained his commitment to social justice throughout his literary career, even when he became the first Colombian ever to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. He spoke openly at the Stockholm ceremony, televised to the world, denouncing the horrific acts that had taken place throughout much of his continent during the decades of his adulthood. I loved my South American friends dearly, but I would not have wanted to live in their shoes.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez died in Mexico City this year. RIP my friend.

Napoleon's island idyll on Elba 1814-15

Elba is an island of 12,000 inhabitants in the Mediterranean, only 20 km off the Tuscan coast. Bec­ause of its steep geography, the largest town of Portoferraio requires some vigorous walking. The town is surrounded on three sides by the sea, facing a natural harbour that was, and is very attractive.

beautiful Portoferraio harbour

This island has changed hands many times. It stayed with the Grand Duchy of Tuscany until the C18th when, due to its strategic position in the Mediterranean Sea, the tiny island was argued over by France, England and Austria. Then in 1802 it was transferred to France. But it was only after the exploit­ation of new iron mills in Rio Marina that the town started to grow and the community infrastructure started to be built. Decades after the end of the Napoleonic Era, Elba became part of the newly united Kingdom of Italy in 1860, enabling Portoferraio/Iron Port to thrive.

I wonder what the locals made of the 45-year-old prisoner Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte when he and his personal guard of 600 men were trans­ported from Paris to Elba in 1814. I presume the locals asked the same excellent questions that Stephen Cooper asked. Why was the Emperor treated so lightly? After all, he had subjugated most parts of Continental Europe, threatened Britain with invasion, caused the death of three million citizens and burned Moscow. No effort was made either by the French or by the international community, to bring him to justice. Furthermore, Elba was only 64 ks from his native Corsica, 240 ks from mainland France and very very close to Italy, where his family continued to hold power.

Although the 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau allowed him to retain the title Emperor and to rule over Elba, Napol­eon was supposed to be prisoner. He was warmly welcomed off his ship and onto the island, with flags, heartfelt speeches and a tour of inspection of his new island home. And he was not cut off from the outside world: he was allowed to read newspapers and letters, and to receive visitors who arrived on boats. His worst punishment was that his second wife and his beloved only son were sent to live in Austria.

Two houses on Elba were adapted or built for the Emperor’s court, Villa dei Mulini in Portoferraio and the Villa San Martino just 5 ks out of town. Neither place was a palace, but they were very comf­ort­able homes with enough dignity for Napoleon to welcome his overseas visitors with pride. Not bad for a prisoner being held in disgrace.

 

Napoleon's Villa dei Mulini in Portoferraio.

His town house had all his personal quarters on the ground floor of the home, while the top floor was totally dedicated to the enter­tainment of his courtiers and guests. The impressive library, inc­reased by the good booksellers of Livorno, was installed in the town house, as promised. Napoleon continued to live a very learned and cultivated life. He had a four-post bed with red silk curtains, Empire-style console tables, bronze mirrors and candlesticks.

Napoleon shared the architectural design of his humble two-storey summer resort with architect Paolo Bargigli, and also was involved in the villa’s decorat­ions and furnish­ings. Any money needed to create this summer residence came from Napoleon’s sister Princess Pauline, wife of Camillo Borghese, 6th Prince of Sulmona, an Italian nobleman. She must have really loved visiting her brother - this princess organising gala events for Napoleon to which the most suitable members of Elba society were invited.

Another import was Vincenzo Revelli who came from the Turin court to be the “court painter” of Elba. In one room, Napoleon could linger over his victories in Egypt 13 years ear­lier, amid paintings of ancient Egyptian archit­ecture and Pharoic writings. Frescoes, hailing Napoleon's victories alongside his heroic French armies, were lavishly painted on the villa walls.

   

Napoleon's summer residence at Villa San Martino,

just outside Portoferraio

Napoleon’s staff were given decent accommodation was well, so that although the Brit­ish did not want him to escape, they treated him with the dignity due to an emperor. It would be interesting to know who paid for Napoleon's 1000-man army on Elba – their salaries, housing, food, clothes and weapons. And he looked after their cultural needs as well. Napoleon had an old church converted into Teatro dei Vigilanti, complete with three tiers of seats from where they could watch the stage below.

Napoleon ruled Elba as governor for only 300 days. He was constantly trying to im­p­rove the lives of the 12,000 islander inhabitants, perhaps while plotting to get enough boats together to escape from the island. In his 9+ months there, he created a small navy and army (to defend the island from whom?), developed the iron mines, ruled on modern agricul­tural methods, built roads and redesiged his two residences. He spent tax payer money on public works like draining the island's marshes and on an impressive improvement of the legal and education systems. He also oversaw improvements to the island's iron-ore mines, the revenue of which funded many of his pet projects.

Totally separated from his second wife and son who had been sent back to Austria, struggling for the allowance guaranteed to him by the Treaty of Fontainebleau, and perhaps fearing a worse and more remote exile than Elba, Napoleon escaped back to France in late February 1815. His Mediterranean idyll ended; his misery on St Helena had not yet started.

Looking up the harbour cliff face,

note Villa dei Mulini on the right

After Napoleon left the island, the summer home Villa San Mart­ino was abandoned until the Russian Prince Anatole Demidoff married one of Napoleon’s nieces and took over the building. There the prince established what is today known as the Galleria Demidoff, designed to house arte­facts, artworks and gardens in celebration of Uncle Napoleon. So the main house Palazzo dei Mulini, and the smaller Villa Demidoff San Martino, together make up the National Museum of the Napoleonic Residences on Elba.

One last thought. Do the local inhabitants of Elba really still say a Mass each year for Napoleon’s soul at Misericordia Church in Portoferraio? If true, it suggests that the old French Emperor was loved by at least the important part of Elban society. This should not surprise us at all. At least half the modern scholarship on Napoleon saw him as a man as a soldier of the revolution, a saviour, a peoples' hero and a leader of the Liberal Empire, in France but also presumably on Elba.

For beautiful photos of Elba, see Exiled like Napoleon to Elba Island in the blog Sarah Laurence. For a good read, find Neil Campbell's book Napoleon on Elba: Diary of an Eye Witness to Exile, Ravenhall Books, 2004. And "Napoleon on Elba 1814" by Stephen Cooper in History Today, 15th April 2014.

The Jewish agricultural settlements of Argentina since 1880

After Argentina gained independence from Spain in 1816, European emigration to this large South American nation increased. Argentina's 1853 constitution guaranteed religious freedom, and the country had vast, empty land reserves. So the country's president, Domingo Sarmiento (in power 1868–1874), warmly encouraged an Open Door policy of mass immigration.

By the 1880s, the Jews of Eastern Europe began arriving in large numbers, keen to find safe haven in South America. The timing of the wave of immigrated prompted a very fine German philanthropist Baron Maurice Hirsch to establish a Jewish Colonisation Association in 1890, set up specifically to help the new arrivals to become autonomous agricultural settlers. Fortunately Hirsch’s plan coincided with Argentina's vigorous campaign to attract immigrants.

The Russians, Ukrainians, Poles and Romanians arrivals did not speak Spanish, they had no money and South America seemed like a very mysterious, remote continent to them. So the majority settled in the big cities where they could find work and community support. However some moved to the autonomous agricultural settlements that were becoming established in three areas of Argentina: 1] Buenos Aires Province in the centre of the country and 2] Entre Rias Province and 3] Sante Fe Province, both immediately to the north of Buenos Aires Province.

Baron Hirsch City Library in Moisesville

Sante Fe Province

Basavilbaso Synagogue, 
in Entre Rios Province, 
photo credit: Argentina Heritage Tours



Monigotes Synagogue
in Sante Fe Province
photo credit: Jerusalem Report 24th March 2014.

Historic and Communal Museum of Jewish Colonisation
in the town hall of Moiseville

When one group of Eastern European Jews landed in Santa Fe Province in 1890, they were taken from the ship and settled in the colony of Moiseville/Moses Town. Coming from the cities and towns of the Ukraine, the original settlers must have had a difficult time, making a living off the land. They were more used to being shopkeepers, traders and craftsmen than they were wheat farmers or people who milked cows. And they may have starved, had it not been for the local gauchos who taught the settlers how to survive. The Jewish Colonisation Association bought 600,000 hectares of land, making Moiseville a proud settlement with all the facilities that a settled Jewish community would need: four synagogues, Jewish schools, and Argentina’s first Jewish cemetery.

Moiseville in Santa Fe Province was not a newly established settlement, but in 1891, one Jewish colony WAS established from the ground up by the Jewish Colonisation Association. In fact the members of Colonía Mauricio in Buenos Aires Province became contractually linked to the JCA. But this settlement was bound to succeed – the land was more fertile than at Moiseville and the railway links with the city were excellent. By the outbreak of WW2 the colony was a shadow of its former self, but today the Cemetery and Moctezuma synagogue remind tourists of what a well planned town this once was.

Mauricio Jewish agricultural settlement
photo credit: Jewish Encyclopaedia

Some immigrants knew they were going to rural settlements. By far the largest group of Jewish colonies in Argentina was Clara in Entre Rios Province, which was established by the Jewish Colonisation Association in 1894. Settlers in Clara were pre-organised in Russia and brought in ten groups, of about forty families each. These were taken directly from the ships in which they arrived to the farms on which they were to settle, where houses, cattle, seeds, implements, and the food necessary for them between seed-time and harvest had already been provided. The first three groups to arrive were settled in three villages of fifty houses each.

Edgardo Zablotsky discussed the entire programme of Jewish agricultural settlements that were created: two in the provinces of Buenos Aires, seven in the province of Entre Ríos and Moiseville in Santa Fe Province. In total there were nearly 10,000 Jews settled on the land, mainly in Entre Ríos. This programme was a large experiment in social welfare, promoting the organised immigration of thousands of people from the old Russian Empire to Argentina and setting up agricultural colonies. To my mind, it was very much like the experience of urban Lithuanian Jews who were strongly encouraged to move south to Ukrainian agricultural settlements. Except in the Ukraine, there were no Yiddish-speaking gauchos.

I can clearly understand why Argentina wanted young, keen families to travel from Europe and settle the agricultural land. I can absolutely understand why Jews fleeing the Russian Empire and Central Europe loved Argentina’s open-door immigration policy. And Baron Maurice Hirsch’s magnificent plan to save the Jews of Eastern Europe from death and destruction speaks for itself. The only thing I am not sure of is why, since most new arrivals headed straight to the big Argentinian cities and to welcoming Jewish communities, some newcomers chose to be pioneers in small agricultural settlements. They were the true heroes of Argentina's Open Door policy of mass immigration.

Map of Argentina.

Note the three provinces surrounded in red.

 Entre Ríos had the majority of the Jewish agricultural settlements

The Jewish Colonisation Association's agricultural colonies have almost none of the great grandchildren of the original settlers. The third generation made its way to major cities, in a preference for academe over agriculture, visiting their parents on weekends and summer holidays. The fourth generation have only seen grandpa's photos.

Camille Pissarro's painting of Montmartre: a record at auction

The Impressionist artists were irreversibly split over the Dreyfus Affair from 1894 on, the crisis that split all of France. Monet, Pissarro, Signac and Vallotton, as well as art critics Mirbeau and Feneon supported Captain Dreyfus0. Those on the opposite side included Degas, Cezanne, Renoir and Armand Guillaumin. When asked to sign the pro-Dreyfus Manifesto of the Intellectuals, Monet, Signac and Pissarro signed; Renoir refused.

Manet was dead and Degas, Cezanne and Renoir never spoke to their old friends again. As a result, Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) was a rather distressed and lonely old man by the time he painted Le Boulevard Montmartre, matinée de printemps in 1897. So he stayed inside his upper floor flat and painted the busy spring scene through the window. Thus the elevated perspective.

He died a few years later.

This version of Boulevard Montmartre moved through the hands of two of my favourite art dealers: Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris who acquired it from the artist in June 1898; and Paul Cassirer in Berlin who acquired it from Durand-Ruel in October 1902. Of all the occasions on which this painting was exhibited to the public, the most important were at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris in 1898 (Recent Works by Pissarro); and at Wildenstein in New York in 1970 (100 Years of Impressionism’: A Tribute to Durand-Ruel).

Camille Pissarro, 1897
Boulevard Montmartre, spring morning
65 by 81cm.

By 1923 the painting was in the impressive collection of the German industrialist Max Silberberg from Breslau. He assembled an art collection that included fine French Impressionist works by Manet, Monet, Renoir and Sisley, as well as masterpieces of Realism and Post-Impressionism by Cézanne and van Gogh. At the time he was ranked as an internationally famous collector alongside Andrew Mellon, Jakob Goldschmidt and Mortimer Schiff. So naturally his treasures were requested for exhibitions around the world. As late as 1933, Max Silberberg's paintings were generously loaned for shows in Vienna and New York.

Silberberg, who was forced by the Nazis to dispose of the work in a Berlin sale in 1935, was exterminated in Auschwitz, with wife. In 1999, Max’s daughter in law Gerta Silberberg became the first British relative of a Holocaust victim to recover a work of art under the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-looted art. In 2000 the small painting was placed on loan with the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

artdaily noted that Pissarro’s series paintings of Paris were among the supreme achievements of Impressionism, taking their place alongside Monet’s series of Rouen Cathedral. Pissarro worked method­ically for over two months on his Boulevard Montmartre series and held this particular painting in especially high esteem, writing to his dealer Durand-Ruel, ‘I have just received an invitation from the Carnegie Institute for this year’s exhibition: I’ve decided to send them the painting Boulevard Montmartre, matinée de printemps… So please do not sell it’.

Pissarro’s paintings of Paris executed in the last years of the 1890s were hugely significant achievements that brilliantly evoke the excitement and spectacle of the city at the fin-de-siècle. For an artist who throughout his earlier career was primarily celebrated as a painter of rural life rather than the urban environment, the Boulevard Montmartre series was among a small group that confirmed his position as the preeminent painter of the city. Pissarro was able to exploit the artistic possibilities presented by the new urban landscape of Paris that Baron Haussmann’s renovations to the city had created.

The art market agreed. In February 2014 the Pissarro painting was auctioned at Sotheby's in London, and sold for £19,682,500, double its pre-sale estimate and five times the previous record for this particular Impressionist.

Although this post is just about the Pissarro painting of Montmartre, I did wonder what happened to the other 143 works of art from the Silberberg collection that were sold by the Nazis in four separate auctions between 1933 and 1938. The Foundation for Prussian Cultural Heritage, the organisation responsible for German museums, approved the return of a Vincent van Gogh and a Hans von Marees when its president asked for special authorisation to restore property to the children of people who died in the Holocaust. In 1999 the Foundation was successful, avoiding protracted and painful court proceedings, at least for two of the 143 art objects. Van Gogh’s Olive groces with Les Alpilles in the background was restituted to Gerta Silberberg from the National Gallery of Berlin in 1999.

The Bridge of Trinquetaille, 1888 

by Vincent van Gogh.
Was owned by Max Silberberg. Where is it now?