THE modern history of Sweden has been one characterised by a state of continuous peaceful existence. No participation in any war since 1814, neutral in both world wars, no political assassinations in the country for nigh on two centuries following the murder of King Gustav III in an aristocratic coup attempt in 1792. This remarkable irenic run, free of political violence, was shattered on the night of 28th February 1986 with the seemingly unfathomable murder of Sweden’s incumbent Democratic Socialist prime minister, Olof Palme＊.
Sveavägen murder scene 🔻 (Photo: Anders Holmström/Svenskt Pressfoto)
“Clouseauesque” policing The Swedish PM’s shooting in Sveavägen, one of Stockholm’s busiest streets, by a single assassin, was followed by an amateurish investigation that was a complete shambles from the start. An initial mix-up over phone calls meant the police were slow to respond to the crime, losing precious minutes while the murderer made good his escape. On arrival, they failed to cordon off the murder scene properly, allowing onlookers to contaminate potential forensic evidence; key witnesses were allowed to leave the scene without being questioned. Established crime protocol—a street-by-street search of the area (ie, a dragnet)—was not implemented [“Olof Palme: Sweden believes it knows who killed PM in 1986’, BBC News, 100-Jun-2020, www.bbc.com/]. Another injudicious move on the police’s part was the ignoring of witnesses who had key information.
🔺Head of investigation, H Holmér (Image: www.news.sky.com)
The police investigation was headed by Chief Commissioner Hans Holmér who assumed more or less from day one that the crime was politically motivated, eventually becoming fixated on the Kurdish militant group the PKK as the likely perpetrators, to the neglect of other, more tangible leads. After a haul of locally-based Kurdish immigrants were arrested and then released for lack of solid evidence, the prosecutors and media turned against Holmér’s handling of the case, forcing him to resign [‘“Murder Most Foul” – the Death of Olof Palme’, (Jan Lundius), Inter Press Service,30-Jun-2020,www.ipsnews.net; BBC News]⦿.
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The cast of suspects and the conspiracy theories◘ In the 39 years since the Palme shooting the police have conducted 10,000+ interviews and more than 134 people have confessed to the murder. Aside from the PKK, another international suspect was the white South African regime. Palme was a charismatic figure in world politics but also a controversial and polarising one, as a foreign policy-minded social democrat he elicited criticism from both left and right, including from both superpowers. In addition, his high-profile anti-apartheid stance was a thorn in the side of the Pretoria government. One theory suggests a conspiracy between South Africa’s security and intelligence forces and right-wing extremist mercenaries within Sweden to execute Palme. The view gained some traction but Swedish investigators have never satisfactorily connected the dots between these elements. Not unexpectedly, CIA involvement in Palme’s murder was also suspected by some.
🔺 Stockholm: Intersection of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan
Palme’s economic reforms, especially those geared towards promoting worker control, did not endear him to the capitalist class in Sweden. More specifically there was Palme’s strong stance against the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors who was illegally selling weapons to several proscribed nations. When Iran was blocked from receiving a shipment one scenario advanced is that an Iranian hitman liquidated the Swedish PM [‘Sweden’s Bofors Arms Scandal’, Directorate of Intelligence, 04-Mar-1988, www.cia.gov/].
Political pressure for “a result” Refocusing domestically on individuals, the spotlight turned to Christer Pettersson who had a criminal record including manslaughter. Pettersson was dubiously convicted of Palme’s murder in 1989, in part because Palme’s widow, prompted by police officers, picked him out in a police lineup. The seriously compromised verdict was easily overturned on appeal (lack of a murder weapon or motive) [‘Who killed Sweden’s prime minister? 1986 assassination of Olof Palme is finally solved – maybe’, (Andrew Nestingen),The Conversation, 11-Jun-2020, www.theconversation.com]. The investigation team’s eagerness to ‘fit’ Pettersson for the crime despite the absence of hard evidence, reflects the pressure exerted by the ruling Social Democratic Party on the police to secure a quick resolution of the crime “acceptable to the public” [‘Who killed the prime minister? The unsolved murder that still haunts Sweden’, (Imogen West-Knights), The Guardian, 16-May-2019, www.theguardian.com].
Another, more ‘political’ suspect to attract the police’s interest early on was Victor Gunnarsson. Gunnarsson was an activist with connexions to various right-wing groups, especially the European Workers Party which held grudges against Palme. Gunnarsson was briefly detained by Holmér but the case against him however dissolved when witnesses failed to locate him at the murder scene at the time of the crime. Gunnarsson later emigrated to the US where he himself ironically became a homicide victim [‘Victor Gunnarsson’, People Pill, www.peoplepill.com].
“Skandiamannen”✪ Another name on the person of interest list of police was Stig Engström. Engström willingly offered himself up to police as a ‘witness’ at the time of the assassination and though questioned, the police eventually discounted him as a serious suspect. But some 20 years after the murder, a new theory, originating in a book by Lars Larsson and developed by journalist Thomas Pettersson, gained traction. The case put by Pettersson that Engström was the killer rested on a conjunction of factors—the “right timing, the right clothing, (he had) unique information, he had close access to guns of the right type, he was right wing and Palme unfriendly” [‘After 34 Years, Sweden Says It Knows the Killer of Olof Palme’, (Thomas Erdbrink & Christina Anderson), New York Times, 10-Jun-2020, www.nytimes.com]. Petersson handed over his findings to the police in 2016, leading to a reopening of the investigation.
Palme, then Swedish communications minister, appeared in the controversial 1960s “erotic-drama” ‘I am Curious – Yellow’ (below with the film’s star, Lena Nyman)🔻
”Resolved” but left up in the air? In 2019 the state prosecutor announced that he had come to the conclusion that Engström was probably Palme’s killer, but, given that Engström himself died in 2000, he promptly closed the case. Not everyone in Sweden is satisfied by the conclusion to the Palme case, many questions remain unanswered about the inconclusiveness of the evidence…eg, no DNA match, where is the missing murder weapon and what was the motive? (BBC). To paraphrase one antagonistic perspective on the case resolution: “it settles none of the unanswered questions”, instead it “underlines the determination of powerful political forces to continue the cover-up surrounding Palme’s murder” [‘Decades-long cover-up continues of assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme’, (Jordan Shilton), World Socialist Web Site, 13-Jun-2000, www.wsws.org/].
Endnote: Palmology and parallels with the JFK conspiracy saga The collective trauma felt by Swedes with Olof Palme’s 1986 assassination—many expressing a sense of lost national innocence, no longer immune from political violence◘—recalls the devastating effect the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 had on the American psyche (Lundius). Both leaders’ violent deaths triggered a runaway train of conspiracy theories, some plausible and some highly implausible◕. In the years since 1986 Sweden’s national obsession with the unsolved murder, labelled Palmessjukdom (“Palme sickness”) has inspired a raft of plays, films, television and musical works on the topic. It has even been cited as a contributing “factor in the worldwide explosion of Scandinavian (noirish) crime fiction”. ‘Palmology’ has spawned a veritable Swedish industry of privatspanarna – a legion of private investigators (such as Thomas Pettersson) conducting independent inquiries into the baffling crime…some have been serious researchers, others espousing “crackpot theories” (West-Knights).
🔻 PM Palme (source: www.cnbc.com)
——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪—𝄪 ＊ not however the country’s last political murder, in 2003 Swedish foreign minister, Anna Lindh, was assassinated by another “lone wolf” assassin ⦿ marginalising SÄPO (Säkerhetspolisen – the state secret police) from the investigation didn’t make the task any easier ✪ Engström was dubbed “Skandia Man” by Lars Larsson because he worked in the Skandia Insurance Co tower building which fronts on to Sveavägen-Tunnelgatan ◘ and perhaps in some measure jolting Swedes out of a lingering outlier complacency ◕ among the considerable number of suspects ‘fingered’ for the hit on the Swedish PM was the Swedish police, the Yugoslav secret service, even Palme’s own wife, Lisbet!
Obscure origins: Like so many things pertaining to the dark realms of antiquity it can’t be said definitively when the crossbow came into existence…at some point between the 7th to 5th centuries BC, the consensus of opinion says. What is pretty much settled is that it first appeared as a combat weapon in China. The Chinese employed it to good effect during the Warring States period (c.475 – 221 BC). Crossbowmen of this period comprised between 30 to 50 per cent of standing Chinese armies. The weapon was still popular during the Han Dynasty (late 3rd century BC to AD 220) but it’s popularity diminished after the Hans lost power, possibly due to the introduction of more resilient heavy cavalry under the succeeding Six Dynasties.
Crossbow from China’s Qin Dynasty, early 3rd century BC. Ancient Chinese crossbows were made from wood, sinew, bronze and bamboo.
The crossbow in Europe, decline and reemergence: From ancient China the crossbow spread to Europe’s early civilisations. Its use was recorded in a battle at Syracuse (Sicily) as early as 397BC. The ancient Greeks were responsible for several early iterations of the crossbow namely the gastraphetes, a hand-held crossbow invented before 400BC, and the ballista, a small assault weapon capable of firing both stones and bolts, which the Romans copied and modified as a composite catapult-crossbow called a scorpio. The scorpio was lethally effective, offering marksman-like precision of its projectiles. The cheiroballistra or maniballista was another Roman variant on the crossbow with specific application as a siege engine. After the fall of Rome the crossbow fell out of use in the West until the 10th to 11th centuries AD when it was revived. The French used crossbows in siege warfare and they were in use during the epochal Battle of Hastings in England in 1066. France’s iconic heroine Joan of Arc was wounded by an English crossbowman in an attempted siege and the famous Plantagenet warrior-king of England, Richard the Lionheart, was killed by a bolt from a crossbow. The crossbow attached considerable prestige especially in England, so much so that only knights were permitted to own and use the weapon in war.
Crossbowman in an AD 1225–1250 English manuscript. BL Royal 12 F XIII The Rochester Bestiary (source: British Library and Manuscript Miniatures)
Crossbow or siege engine? As iron-based crossbows were improved and made more powerful and elaborate, the concept of the crossbow starts to merge with that of the torsion-powered siege engine (the former requiring only one man to work it while the latter needed several men). Certainly medieval sources seem to have conflated the two…different authors writing on the Crusader wars for instance have described the ballista alternately as a crossbow or a siege engine [Stuart Ellis-Gorman, The Medieval Crossbow: A Weapon Fit to Kill a King (2022)].
The Ballista: crossbow–cum–catapult
Evolution of medieval crossbows: In the Middle Ages the arbalest was popular in Europe. This was a decided technical advance in crossbows, improved by having a special mechanism for drawing back and releasing the string. Arbalests were larger and heavier weapons with metal-tipped bolts replacing the earlier wood-bolted crossbows, thus achieving devastating impact against the armour of the enemy. By the 13th century further technological improvements in the use of crossbows came with the advent of winches and various spanning mechanisms such as winch pulleys, cord pulleys, gaffles, cranequins, and screws [‘Medieval Crossbow’, Medieval Britain, http://medievalbritain.com]. The crossbow increasingly evolved into a defensive weapon, a composite crossbow–catapult of sorts, used to defend castles during sieges and favoured for its longer range capacity.
Leonardo Da Vinci, design for a crossbow, ca1500 (made of wood and iron)
Crossbow versus longbow? Which weapon was more effective in medieval warfare situations? There is not a straightforward answer to this question because the two lethal projectiles had different strengths and advantages over each other. The (English) longbow had a flexibility and portability edge over the more clunky crossbow which need time (and sometimes assistance) to load. The crossbow however was more accurate including at distances in honing in on the intended target (with a range of up to 300m). The longbow having simpler parts was cheaper to manufacture and where it had clear advantage over the crossbow was in its frequency of shots. In the time it took the crossbowman to launch two or at most three bolts at the enemy, the longbowman could propel 10 to 12 arrows. The crossbow though perceptibly slower to load and much heavier to carry, required appreciably less strength to operate…it’s locking mechanism allowed the crossbowman to handle stronger draw weight so able to hold the bolt for longer with significantly less physical strain, which translated into better precision (‘Medieval Crossbow’). Another plus for the crossbow was ease of use, it required minimal training cf. the traditional bow which took years of training to master. The downside for the longbow in battle was that it couldn’t penetrate medieval armour as the heavier bolts could do. This didn’t seem to be a problem in the two most famous battles of the 100 Years War—Crecy and Agincourt—where the English bowmen triumphed completely over the numerically superior French and mercenary crossbowmen (and cavalry) [‘A quick history of the English longbow’, Notes from the U.K., 17-Jan-2025, www.notesfromtheuk.com].
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Genoese crossbowmen
The crossbow reaches its obsolescence point: By the 16th century the crossbow had seen its best days and was being supplanted by gunpowder weaponry – muskets, cannons, guns. Firearms had greater range, faster reload times and an overall firepower that crossbows could not begin to match. The final fling for the crossbow as a weapon of choice in war occurred in 1644 at the Battle of Tippermuir in Scotland (English Civil War).
ITV television adventure series of William Tell (late 1950s)
Endnote: Crossbow sellers’ greatest marketeer: Hovering at the intersection of history, myth and popular culture is the heroic legendary figure most popularly associated with deadeye expertise in the crossbow caper and a talent for shooting apples off his own son’s head, William Tell. Elevated by Swiss folklore as a symbol of the struggle for liberation from the tyrannical Austrians, baby boomers—opera buffs aside—will associate the mythical hero William Tell with the 1958–59 British television series The Adventures of William Tell in which Tell (played by Conrad Phillips) is portrayed as a sort of Robin Hood clone but with a different kind of bow and the Swiss Alps rather than Sherwood Forest for backdrop𖤓.
William Tell splitting the apple
𖤓 a nexus not coincidental, ‘William Tell’ was created to exploit the success of another highly popular ITV show of the Fifties The Adventures of Robin Hood. ‘Tell’ followed the earlier series’ familiar formula: a brave citizen turned outsider valiantly leading the resistance on behalf of the oppressed masses against a unredeemable evil tyrant
Aside from a handful of dissenting voices, no one in America disputes the ignominious role assigned Benedict Arnold in the annals of American history. Arnold, a general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, switched sides and took British money to divulge American military intelligence, even offering to trade West Point to the invading British. Benedict Arnold is a name synonymous with treason in the hearts of Americans…needless to say there are no “Benedict Arnold High Schools” in the US! Aaron Burr’s career on the other hand is more complicated. Though also considered a traitor by many, Burr is not as black-and-white a candidate for the US historic hall of infamy. Burr started out, like Arnold, somewhat of a hero during the revolution, then quit the fighting to practice as a lawyer and then enter politics. Burr was successful enough to (twice) run for president of the United States, on the second occasion managing to tie with Thomas Jefferson in the electoral college vote. As vice-president under an increasingly distrustful Jefferson, he found himself on the outer, excluded from involvement in White House politics.
Benedict Arnold, archetype of the American traitor
Plagued by a sequence of political reversals𝕒 and heavily in debt, Burr turned his back on mainstream US politics and changed course to pursue other ambitions of an extra-political and illicit nature. The former vice-president left Washington DC and headed west, this is where the narrative of his controversial activities takes on a nebulous complexion.
Aaron Burr in profile
Burr’s grand scheme X?:No one knows definitively what Burr’s intentions were after 1804, but allegations of nefarious machinations orchestrated by him were legend. Some of his accusers claimed that Burr’s plan was to annex Texas for himself or to incite the southern states and territories (Mississippi, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana) to secede from the United States, creating a new independent country with the former VP at the helm. Another allegation spoke of a grander plan to conquer Mexico by triggering a secessionist movement and establishing an empire for himself. Some opponents speculated that Burr wanted to attack New Orleans or seize the Florida peninsula from Spain𝕓. Burr’s own version of his post-politics plans was that he was heading south-west to farm 40,000 acres in the Spanish colony of Texas which had been supposedly leased to him by the Spanish Crown.
Spanish-controlled Southwest (incl. Texas) early 19th century (source: pbs.org)
What is known is that Burr sensed the opportunity for wealth and glory in the west, embarking on an “expedition” of sorts with the recruitment of a fighting force𝕔, rather than farming, on his mind. He also sought money for a great “enterprise” from prominent people (Southern planters, sympathetic politicians). Burr engaged a co-conspirator, bringing General James Wilkinson𝕕, a US Army senior officer, on board to give weight to his planned illegal operations. At the same time Burr established international connexions with British officials, Spanish ministers and even Mexican revolutionaries. The British ambassador’s account of their conversation revealed Burr’s offer to the British to wrest control of the Southwest and Louisiana from the US and hand it Britain. The price? A hefty sum of money and an armed force supplied by Britain. The ambassador’s masters in London however showed no interest in Burr’s scheme, nor did the Spanish government in Madrid. Burr also met with a group of criollos whose objective was to capture Mexico from the Spanish, but again nothing tangible came of this.
Burr on the recruiting drive out west, Ohio River (image: Alamy (via smithsonian.com))
A question of definitions:Before Burr could launch any part of his grand and ambitious masterplan he was undone by his co-conspirator. General Wilkinson having lost faith in Burr’s wild scheme sent President Jefferson a confidential, coded letter incriminating Burr. Burr was hunted down and eventually captured by US authorities in Louisiana. A Virginian federal court trial was arraigned in 1807 with the charge against Burr treason. Jefferson was hell-bent on prosecuting Burr and unconcerned about breaking the law to do it, however presiding Supreme Court Justice John Marshall had his own ideas of how things should proceed. Marshall applied the strictest definition of treason in accordance with the Constitution’s treason clause—interpreting it as the accused needing to be guilty of “the act of actually levying war” for treason to be proven —and accordingly found Burr not guilty (‘Aaron Burr’s trial and the Constitution’s treason clause’, Scott Bomboy, National Constitution Center, 01-Sep-2023, http://consitutioncenter.org).
Thomas Jefferson (source: theatlantic.com)
Coda: Having escaped the treason charge Burr was soon to discover he had been convicted in the court of public opinion…across America effigies of him were burned and additional charges were brought by individual states. Faced with such threats and his dreams of”glory and fortune” in tatters, persona non grata Burr, fled this time to Europe where he tried unsuccessfully to convince the English and French to back his new plots to invade North America. By 1812 he had returned to New York and recommenced practicing law in relative obscurity under a different name – “Aaron Edwards” (‘The Burr Conspiracy, PBS, www.pbs.org).
Polar opposites: which Burr do you choose? (image: paw.princeton.edu)
Endnote: Rehabilitating Burr?: Writers and historians since Burr’s time have tended to depict Burr as an unprincipled villain and a betrayer of the Republic. Swimming resolutely against this tsunami-like tide is Nancy Isenberg’s revisionist take on the least admired founding father, she states that “Burr was no less a patriot…and a principled thinker than those who debased him”. She also challenges the popular view that he ever planned a grand conspiracy or intended to instal himself as emperor of Mexico. Isenberg adds that rather than being a womaniser as his enemies claim, Burr was something of a proto-feminist (although this begs a glaring question: how does this assessment square with the flagrant mismanagement of his wealthy second wife’s fortune?). That he has been so comprehensively vilified by historians, Isenberg contends, owes to the usefulness of (a morally flawed) Burr as a foil, making the other founding fathers𝕖 (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, etc.) look virtuous by comparison (N Isenberg, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr, (2007)).
𝕒 his loss in the 1804 New York gubernatorial election and the notoriety and odium heaped on him after his tragic duel with Alexander Hamilton sealed his political demise
𝕓 at one point Burr told Spanish officials that his plan was not just western secession but that he wanted to capture Washington DC itself
𝕔 in which he was only modestly successful
𝕕 himself a double agent for Spain
𝕖 a theme previously pursued in Gore Vidal’s 1973 historical novel Burr…Vidal skewers the founding fathers’ traditionalist, mythical iconography, portraying Washington and his ilk as all too humanly fallible
Scrivener: a copyist of documents; a clerk, scribe or notary [from OldFr. escrivein from L. scriba (“scribe”)]
Sebastomania: religious insanity or mania [ [Gk. sebastos, (“reverence”) + -mania]
Sermocination: the practice of making speeches; the habit of preaching constantly [from L. sermo (“speech”; “conversation”) + -ion]
Sermocination (photo: David Henry)
Sicarian: a murderer, especially an assassin; mercenary fighter [from Sicarii a group of Jewish zealots/insurrectionists opposing the Roman occupation of Judea; cloak-and-dagger assassination unit [from sicae (“small daggers (sickles) concealed in the sicariis’ cloaks”]
Sicarian (image: EBay)
Sillograph: writer of satires [from the book Gk.Sílloi by Timon of Phlius, (flourished ca.280 BC)+ -graphe]
Sillograph (Timon)
Smatchet: a small, nasty person or child; a contemptible, unmannerly person [Scot. Eng. probably from MidEng. smatch + -et]
Somatoparaphrenia: (Psych. ) a type of monothematic delusion where one denies ownership of a limb or an entire side of one’s body [from Gk. sôma, (“body”) + -para (“beside”) + –phrenia]
Staurophobia: pathological aversion to the cross or crucifix (eg, cinematic portrayals of Dracula) [Gk. staurós, (“cross”) + -phobia]
Stentorphonic: speaking very loudly [from Stentōr, a Greek herald in the Trojan War (Homer’s Iliad)]
Stentorphonic (image: tumblr.com)
Stramineous: strawlike; valueless; consisting of straw [L. stramineus (“of straw”) from sternere (“to strew”; “spread out”; “lay flat”)]
Subderisorious: mocking gently and with affection; ridiculing with moderation [L. sub (“below”; “under”) + L. –dērīdeō (“I deride”) + -ous]
Subintelligitur: a meaning or understanding (as of a statement) implied but not expressed [from L. sub- (“secretly”; “under”) + intelligere (“to understand”) + -al]
Succussion: the action or process of shaking the body or the condition of being shaken especially with violence [L. sucussio, from -cussus, (“to shake up”)]
Supernumerary: (person) in addition to usual or necessary number [L. super- (“above”) + number]
Susurrant: gently whispering and rustling [from L. susurrare (“to whisper”)]
Syncretistic: seeking to identify common features of different belief systems, philosophies or civilisations and assimilate them or merge them into a single system [from syncretise (“to attempt to unite and harmonise”), from Gk. synkrētismos (“joining together of Greeks”)]
Synethnic: of (or together with) same race or country [Gk. syn (“same”; “with”; “together”) + –ethno (“people”; “race”; “tribe”; “nation”)]
As part of the Denazification process (German: Entnazifizierung) after the Second World War and to facilitate the Nuremberg war crimes trial proceedings, the German people were classified into five discrete groups:
• Major offenders (Germ: Hauptschuldige)
• Offenders: activists, militants, or profiteers (Germ: Belastete)
• Lesser offenders (Germ: Minderbelastete)
• Followers (Germ: Mitläufer)
• Exonerated persons (Germ: Entlastete)
Of the five categories, Mitläufer is the most contentious…it absolves the person concerned from having committed any formal Nazi criminal activity but acknowledges that he or she participated in some form of loosely defined, indirect support of Nazi crimes, which might be as minimalist as passively sympathising with Nazi aims and goals [‘Mitläufer’, Wikipedia, en.m.wikipedia.org]. The extent of the offence actually perpetrated however didn’t always equate with the category description – as will clear from the examples below.
Nazi defendants at the International Military Tribunal (Nov. 1945) (source: National Archives and Records Administration)
The German term Mitläufer (fem: Mitläuferin)—literally meaning “with-walker” or “one walking with”—can be defined as “follower” or possibly a “passive follower”. Mitläufereffekt is derived from it, also called the Bandwagon-Effekt (effect), which refers to the effect a perceived success exerts on the willingness of individuals to join the expected success. A characteristic of the Mitläufer is he is not convinced by the ideology of the group followed but merely offers no resistance, such as for lack of courage or for opportunism (ie, giving in to peer pressure) (‘Mitläufer’).
Some observers make a further (slight) distinction from the Mitläufer typology, to allow for the Nazi Mitläufer, a fellow-traveller” (Mitreisende) who sympathised with the Nazis but only indirectly participated in Nazi atrocities such as genocide.
Martin Heidegger: one of the 20th century’s greatest philosophers for his pioneering work on existentialism and phenomenology, all of which has been overshadowed by his controversial association with the German Nazi Party. Heidegger joined the Nazi Party in 1933 – prior to this the philosopher was fundamentally apolitical. As rector of Freiburg University he delivered a number of speeches extolling the Nazi cause and publicly expressed antisemitic opinions. At the end of the world war the knives came out for Heidegger, he was forbidden to teach and lost his West German chair of philosophy (the ban was overturned just three years later). Heidegger, perhaps because of the lofty esteem he was held in as a leading intellectual, was never submitted to any harsher retribution (such as a term of incarceration). Critics have noted Heidegger’s complete failure after 1945 to “honestly reckon with the realities of Nazi Germany’s crimes, including the Holocaust, and his own role in lending support to the regime” [Jürgen Habermas in ‘Heidegger’s Downfall’, Jeffrey Herf, Quillette, 22-Feb-2023, quillette.com]. A very full account of Heidegger’s involvement with National Socialism makes it abundantly clear that he was neither a reluctant fellow-traveller nor (…) a nonpolitical scholar, a ‘child’ who got caught by the juggernaut of hideous political events [‘Heil Heidegger’, J.P. Stern, London Review of Books, Vol. 11 No.8, 20-April-1989 (Review of Martin Heidegger: Unterwegs zu seiner Biographie, by Hugo Ott), lrb.co.uk].
Heidegger, intellectual backing for the Nationalist Socialists (image: simplycharly.com)
Leni Riefenstahl: a Berlin-born actress-turned-filmmaker, one of the few German women to direct a motion picture during the Weimar period. A favourite of Hitler, Riefenstahl was an important instrument of the Nazi propaganda machine, producing highly successful propaganda documentary films like Triumph of the Will and Olympia for the Third Reich. After the war Riefenstahl was arrested and found to be a Nazi fellow-traveller, sympathetic to the Nazi movement but not a party member[ᗩ] She however avoided being charged with any crime. Riefenstahl claimed she was an “apolitical naïf” and denied any knowledge of Nazi racial policies or the Holocaust, describing a concentration camp she had visited where the Roma and Sinti were detained as “a relief and welfare camp”[ᗷ] [‘Burying Leni Riefenstahl: one woman’s lifelong crusade against Hitler’s favourite film-maker’, Kate Connolly, The Guardian, 09-Dec-2021, amp.the guardian.com].
Leni: “My favourite dictator”
Wilhelm Stuckart: to the casual observer Wilhelm Stuckart’s steady progress up the Nazi hierarchy corresponds with that of the classic career Nazi. The Nazi lawyer and senior Interior Ministry official’s fingerprints were on some of the most nefarious Nazi concoctions against humanity (eg, co-author of the Nuremberg Laws, involved in the planning of the Final Solution). For someone involved fundamentally in the framing of genocidal policies Stuckart was absurdly classified as category IV (follower), copping a sentence of just three years from the tribunal. The leniency shown to Stuckart and other accomplices, Gruner attributes to the sophisticated defence strategies employed by former Nazis and their lawyers. Only a short time after Stuckart regained his freedom he was back drafting provincial German laws, one of which ended Denazification in Lower Saxony [Gruner, Wolf. The Journal of Modern History, vol. 86, no. 3, 2014, pp. 727–29. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/676745. Accessed 10 July 2024].
Wilhelm Stuckart on his SS uniform. (source: Yad Vershem)
Footnote: As illustrated above, classifying someone as Mitlaüer was a good way of allowing them to avoid the more serious categories and their consequences. Some high-profile unofficial servants of the Nazi regime managed to avoid being categorised as a Mitlaüer altogther. One was famous Austrian conductor Karl Böhm. Böhm was never a member of the NSDAP and never brought before the Denazification tribunal. However, as the historian Oliver Rathkolb has remarked, he was the artist who “had presumably been the most active (non-party) member to provide propaganda for the (Nazis)” and was lavishly rewarded with plumb conducting positions, culminating in his appointment as director of the Vienna State Opera [‘Karl Böhm – Salzburg Festival’,salzburgerfestspiele.at].
[ᗩ] Nazi party membership of itself didn’t necessarily result in a more serious classification than Mitläufer…in the case of the celebrated Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan joined the NSDAP twice (membership nos. 1607525 and 3430914), he was exonerated of illegal activity during the Nazi period at his Denazification tribunal hearing and classified as a Mitläufer
[ᗷ] trenchant critics in the West take an unflinching and unforgiving view of her role, labelling her an “unindicted co-conspirator” (Simon Wiesenthal Center), “a Nazi by association” (Sandra Smith) and “the glib voice of ‘how could we have known?’ defence” (Bach, Steven. “The Puzzle of Leni Riefenstahl.” The Wilson Quarterly (1976—), vol. 26, no. 4, 2002, pp. 43–46. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40260668. Accessed 11 July 2024)
The turmoil and political upheaval in the wake of the sacking of Constantinople by crusaders in 1204 fragmented the unity of the vast Byzantine Empire into a patch-quilt of separate parts. Epirus«𝕒», a region which encompassed parts of modern Greece, Albania, Bulgaria and northern Macedonia, formed itself into one of these independent states, known by modern historiographic convention as the Despotate of Epirus✴︎. Its founder and first despot was Michael I Komnenos Doukas (a member of the deposed Byzantine imperial house of Angelos) with the state’s capital initially (and mainly) situated at Árta in N.W. Greece. Michael’s reign saw some expansion by conquest into neighbouring Thessaly at the expense of the Lombard lords and for a brief time, control over the Lordship of Salona. Michael’s realm also became a refuge and centre of resistance for Greeks opposed to the intrusions of the Latin Crusaders [‘Michael I Komnenos Doukas’, Wikipedia, en.m.wikipedia.org].
Epirus (source: world history.org)
✴︎ for accounts of the history of other Byzantine successor states see also the earlier articles on this site: Byzantine-Lite: The Empire of Trebizond under the Komnenos Dynasty and The 13th Century Empire of Nicaea: An Empire in Exile and the Restoration of Imperial Byzantine
Epirus imperial dreams – the Empire of Thessalonica:The Epirote State rulers soon found themselves embroiled in conflict with several of the other regional players, namely the other successor states, the Bulgarians (their former allies) and the Latins (Franks, Italians, etc). Michael I was assassinated in 1218 and replaced by his half-brother, Theodore Doukas, who extended the “empire” eastward, capturing Thessalonica from the Latins in 1224. Theodore duly established the “Empire of Thessalonica” and had himself crowned as emperor.
Battle of Klokotnitsa and aftermath: Theodore’s dream of ensconcing himself in Constantinople at the head of a greater Epirus-centred empire came crashing down at the Battle of Klokotnitsa in 1230. Theodore’s forces were attacked by both Bulgaria (under Tsar John Asen II) and the Nicene Empire (under John II Vatatzes) and comprehensively beaten. Theodore was captured, Bulgarian troops poured into Epirus and the despotate–cum–empire was reduced to vassal status vis-a-vís the Bulgarians. With Theodore imprisoned for seven years, the Epirote imperial leadership passed to his brother Manuel Komnenos Doukas, under whose reign the downslide continued, much of the earlier conquests in Macedonia and Thrace were lost. Meanwhile, in Epirus, Michael II, illegitimate son of the founder of Epirus Michael I, assumed control of a diminished Epirus and was recognised as despot (1230–ca.1267/1271). During Michael II’s rule the Epirote state was progressively reduced in size and power…in 1264 Michael was forced to recognise the suzerainty of Michael VIII Palaeologus whose rival successor state had ousted the Latins from Constantinople and restored the Byzantine Empire under the Nicene emperors.
Theodore Doukas
Deposed Theodore returns as king-maker:In 1237 Theodore returned to Thessaloniki and deposed Manuel and installed his son John as emperor of Thessalonica. However, under pressure from the Nicaean Empire John was forced to abdicate in 1242 in favour of John III Vatatzes, the Nicaean emperor. In 1246 Thessalonica was lost to Nicaea for keeps. Over in Epirus Michael II was succeeded by his son Nikephoros I whose sovereign power was challenged by Charles I of Anjou and Sicily with whom he eventually entered into an alliance (Nikephoros acknowledged himself as Charles’ vassal). Later, Nikephoros allied himself with Charles’ son and successor Charles II, which led to conflict with the Byzantines.
Map of Epirus, ca. 1250 (source: anistor.gr)
Epirus’ fragile autonomy: Thomas I followed the same perilous path as his father Nikephoros after succeeding him in ca. 1297. Thomas clung precariously to power as Epirus lunged from alliance to conflict with both the Angevins and the Byzantines. Ultimately, Thomas was assassinated by his Italian-Greek nephew Nicholas Orsini, Count of Cephalonia (Ionian islands) in 1318. Nicholas, in control of southern Epirus, conspired with the Republic of Venice to retake the north including the city of Ioannina but was unsuccessful. In 1323 he was in turn usurped by his brother John II Orsini. The pattern of instability persisted…Epirus lost its independence to the Byzantine Empire in 1338 before briefly winning it back (with the assistance of Catherine I, Latin empress), only to lose it yet again to Byzantium, all within the space of two years. In 1348 it was the turn of the Serbs under (King) Stefan Dušan who incorporated Epirus and Thessaly into the Serbian Empire. After the Serbs came the Albanians…in 1367 the Despotate of Árta, an Albanian clan led by Pjetër Losha, attacked and besieged the Despotate of Epirus’ capital Ioannina.
Neapolitan ambitions for the Hellenes:Árta as a mainly autonomous despotate and then lordship persisted until 1416 when the incumbent despot’s rule was terminated by another Italian incursion. Neapolitan count, Carlo I Tocco (hereditary count palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos) took Arta as part of a systematic territorial expansion in Greece«𝕓». Carlo reached the limit of his expansion in the 1420s when the Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaiologos’ army cut short Carlo’s attempts to expand his influence into the Despotate of the Morea (the Peloponnese).
Carlo I, Cephalonia and Epirus coat-of-arms
Epirus, the final chapter:Under Carlo I’s successor, Carlo II, the Tocco dynasty lost Ioannina in 1430 to the encroaching Ottoman conquest of Byzantine lands, as well as almost all of their possessions in Eripus by ca.1448«𝕔». At this time the fate of Epirus and the other post-1204 successor states of the Byzantine Empire had been well and truly sealed by an ongoing preoccupation with civil wars, conflict between themselves and religious disputes to the neglect of the greater threat posed by their common enemy from Asia Minor«𝕕».
Michael I Komnenos Doukas
Epirus, manoeuvring between east and west: Epirus, perched centrally between the east (Byzantium and Anatolia) and the west (western Europe), was in a special position, trying to carve its own niche in the region while competing for advantage and influence against the vested interests of more powerful players (namely Anjou, Venice, Sicily, Bulgaria, Serbia, Nicaea, Ottomans). The Epirote state’s despots through this era pursued two strategies for survival: it sought to protect its power base from its Latin enemies, while at the same time maintaining its independence from the rest of the Byzantine states. In a Byzantine world in which loyalty was a fluid commodity, Eripus found itself compelled by the power imbalances it faced to constantly swap its allegiances between the Latins and the Byzantines [Evangelos Zarkadas, ‘The Despotate of Epirus: A Brief Overview’, Mapping Eastern Europe, Eds: M.A. Rossi and A.I. Sullivan (accessed October 14, 2023), http://mappingeasterneurope.princeton.edu].
Ioannina (photo: theplanetd.com)
Postscript: Paucity of sources on Epirus Historians have long lamented the scarcity of surviving sources on Epirus, especially from the depostate itself. Probing this medieval Byzantine-Greek chapter has been hampered by an absence of historical narratives and biographies of the despots. The chronicles that do survive are those of Byzantine historians from Constantinople such as George Pachymeres (13–14th centuries) [Donald M Nichol, in Zarkadas].
«𝕒» or in the form some prefer, “Epiros”
«𝕓» adding it to Corinth and Megara captured by him earlier
«𝕔» Carlo II’s son Leonardo III ruled as the last Despotate of Eripus up to Epirus’ ultimate coup d’grâce by the Ottoman Empire
«𝕕» the last remnant of Epirus, Vonitsa, fell to the advancing Ottomans in 1479
Film star Errol Flynn was a larger than life character of mythic proportions, on-screen he was an authentic Hollywood legend. But his attention-getting off-screen personal life embellished his aura of notoriety and fame even more than the many Hollywood adventure film roles he played. On the silver screen Flynn embodied the heroic, swashbuckling celluloid figurepar excellence as Robin Hood, Captain Blood, Don Juan, General George Armstrong Custer, Gentleman Jim Corbett and Major Geoffrey Vickers, just some of his many celebrated roles. In his private life—most of it though was pretty public—the rebellious Tasmanian had a legendary playboy reputation for debauched behaviour and manoeuvrable morality…excessive drinking, brawling, drug-taking, wild partying, famously prodigious sexual exploits and a proclivity for underage girls culminating in rape trials. But even before his Hollywood period Flynn’s episodic life in New Guinea and New Britain was an incident-packed cavalcade of adventures that wouldn’t have been out of place in an Indiana Jones movie. Young Errol clearly had a compulsion to try different things, bouncing from one knockabout job to another – shipping clerk to tobacco planter to colonial agent to would-be gold prospector to tour guide, etc. During all this Errol escaped crocodiles and native headhunters, womanised indiscriminately, shot and killed a local for which he was tried for murder and subsequently acquitted. Damningly as well, Flynn was also an absconding serial debtor, an inveterate liar and an alleged slave-trader.
Father & son together
So, given Flynn’s Brobdingnagian reputation, any offspring of his, especially a male, would have a lot to live up to. Flynn’s three marriages produced only one male heir, Sean, born in 1941 to Flynn and his first wife Lili Damita. Almost inevitably as fate would decree it Sean Flynn, 6’ 3”, with a similar athletic build and inheriting Errol’s good looks, did attempt to follow in his far from model pater’s footsteps. Sean got an initial taste of acting in his teens appearing in Flynn Senior’s TV show The Errol Flynn Theatre𝕒. Sean inherited a small sum when his father died suddenly in 1959 and with it enrolled at Duke University but did not complete his degree. The beckoning call from Hollywood or “imitation” Hollywood was not far away.
Son of Errol
The Son of Captain Blood In 1961 the highly predictable happened! Sean was cast as the swashbuckling lead in a sequel of sorts to his dad’s spectacular breakthrough role in Captain Blood which had catapulted Errol into instant, universal stardom in 1935. Son of Captain Blood, an Italian–Spanish–British co-production (with some of the action scenes shot in Spain). The script was penned by Casey Robinson, writer of the original 1935 film. Prior to production the neophyte Sean received instruction in how to fence, fight and fall safely and convincingly on screen from Tarzan actor and stuntman Jock Mahoney𝕓 (Gene Freese, Jock Mahoney: The Life and Films of a Hollywood Stuntman (2013). Unfortunately Sean’s foray into cinematic pirate territory didn’t reproduce the family sparks – as the LA Times pithily summarised the movie, “the old magic isn’t there.”
Sean with Pili…or is it Mili? (Source: briansdriveintheater.com)
Ephemeral B-movie star Though Sean failed to set the screen alight in The Son of Captain Blood he did make a few more minor adventure films in Europe the mid-1960s, such as Duel at the Río Grande (as Zorro), followed by a couple of forgettable Spaghetti Westerns, the second playing opposite a popular Spanish teenage comic duo, Pili y Mili, AKA the Bayona Sisters (Sharp-Shooting Twin Sisters).
The last photo of Sean Flynn (left) & colleague on the day they disappeared (Photo: Perry Deane Smith/MCT/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Frontline Flynn, the Gonzo war photographer When Flynn Junior became bored with acting, perhaps channeling Hemingway more than his father, he took himself off to Africa to work as a guide for safaris and big game hunting. Sean’s final movie was a 1967 French–Italian action picture Five Ashore in Singapore. By this time Sean had taken up a new career as a freelance photojournalist, basing himself in Vietnam with the Indochina war in full swing. This work was much riskier than anything Errol ever tackled in his tumultuous life…Sean went on patrols with the Green Berets, getting shot at by the Viet Cong (being wounded on one occasion), all in the name of getting the best pictures of the raging war𝕔. In 1970 Flynn went to Cambodia to cover the spread of the Vietnam War into that neighbouring country. Sean and another American photojournalist disappeared on 6th April 1970, never seen again, after they ventured into Communist-held territory in Cambodia. In 1984 Flynn was declared dead in absentia, his exact fate remains a mystery but most think that the two Americans were executed by either North Vietnamese guerrillas or the Khmer Rouge.
Sean Flynn on patrol (Photo: Tim Page)
Sean’s willingness to repeatedly put himself in the path of extreme danger in the Vietnam conflict led some observers to conclude that the combat photographer harboured a “death wish”. Certainly, Sean seemed to have inherited Errol’s reckless gene, always looking to push the envelope without regard for self. Both father and son seemed to be guided during their lives by a Byronic impulse, their lives inextricably linked to the romantic and the tragic (Jeffrey Meyers, Inherited Risk: Errol and Sean Flynn in Hollywood and Vietnam (2002).
𒈝𒈝𒈝𒈝𒈝𒈝𒈝𒈝
𝕒 hosting this British anthology series was one of the jobs the former matinee idol had to resort to after his Hollywood film career took a nose dive
𝕓 who had earlier stunt-doubled for the older Flynn
𝕔 Flynn was one of a group of Vietnam War “Gonzo” photographers including Tim Page and John Steinbeck IV who were committed to going anywhere, putting themselves into extreme risk situations to get the best combat photos
ROTUND, sardonic Anglo-American auteur Alfred Hitchcock’s oeuvre comprised over 50 feature films but he was no stranger to unfinished or unrealised film projects. Starting with what was meant to be his directorial debut in “Number 13” (AKA “Mrs. Peabody”) in 1922, for the next 57 years Hitch was at the helm for upward of twenty aborted films. Hardly any of the score of unmade movie projects ever got beyond the pre-production stage[1̲̅].
Alfred’s hitch in making ‘Hamlet’⟡There were various reasons why the films never got made…difficulties in location (Walt Disney, the man, not the corporation, wouldn’t let Hitchcock film ”The Blind Man” at Disneyland supposedly because of his disapproval of Psycho); Hitch’s dissatisfaction with scripts[2]; Hitchcock’s ”Titanic” project was waylaid by a string of obstacles including objections from the British shipping industry; some projects were vetoed by producers and studio heads; Hitchcock couldn’t get the female lead he wanted for ”No Bail for the Judge” (Audrey Hepburn)[3]. Hitch’s great success with The 39 Steps prompted him to try to direct film adaptions of other John Buchan novels featuring spy Richard Hannay, eg, ”Greenmantle”, however he couldn’t afford the rights to the book. He even wanted to direct Shakespeare, his enthusiasm to do a modernised version of Hamlet (with Hitchcock favourite Cary Grant cast as the “Melancholy Dane”) was ultimately blunted by the threat of a lawsuit from a writer who had already penned a modern-day version of Shakespeare’s great tragedy (‘Every Unmade Alfred Hitchcock Movie Explained’, Jordan Williams, Screen Rant, 12-Jun-2021, www.screenrant.com).
The final project pursued by Hitchcock was ”The Short Night”—based on a novel of the same name by Ronald Kirkbride and on the exploits of real-life double agent George Blake—which was to be Hitchcock’s red-hot crack at making a “realistic Bond movie”. In an interview with John Russell Taylor for Sight and Sound Hitchcock outlined the story’s great allure for him: ”It’s a situation that fascinates me: the man falls in love with the wife of a man he’s waiting to kill. It’s like a French farce turned inside-out. If he sees a boat coming across the bay with the husband on it, he can’t hop out of the back window, he has to wait and do what he has to do. And of course he can’t take the wife, who loves him, into his confidence. And so the whole romance is overshadowed by this secret, which gives it a special flavour and atmosphere. That’s what I want to convey”.
Poster for the movie that never materialised⟡Originally conceived in the late 1960s (after two uninspiring earlier Hitchcock Cold War espionage features Torn Curtain and Topaz were coolly received), the director scouted locations in Finland. Hitch wanted the “real deal”, Sean Connery, to play the Bondesque double agent protagonist, the director must have been keen on the film…while the project was still parked in pre-production, without anything about the movie being nailed down, Hitch had a poster designed for the movie (‘Alfred Hitchcock’s unrealized projects’, Wikipedia). Alas, scripts were again a problem, Hitch churned through a bunch of writers and a number of different treatments in the search for the ‘right’ script, but an even bigger problem was Hitch himself! Now 80, Hitchcock‘s health was failing badly, he was unfocused and listless on the set[4], he simply was no longer up to it. Towards the end of 1979 Hitchcock quietly retired from the business and ”The Short Night” project was shelved for good.
———————————————
[1̲̅] Hitchcock managed to shoot only a few scenes of “Mrs. Peabody”,before a lack of budget brought the production to a close
[2] the prickly and demanding Hitchcock had fractious relationships with his scriptwriters, he even fell out with his favourites like Ernest Lehman (over Family Plot, contributing to Hitchcock ditching “The Wreck of the Mary Deare” and starting work on the espionage classic North by Northwest
[3] Hitchcock’s uber-creepy obsessiveness with many of his leading ladies (Grace Kelly, Tippi Hedren, Ingrid Bergman among others) has been well documented, eg, Spellbound by Beauty, Donald Spoto (2008)
[4] ”moving in and out of senility” in the view of the last screenwriter parachuted into the project, David Freeman
Considering how universally popular and well-known Elvis Presley was𝕒, during the entertainer’s heyday there was much conjecture about why “the King” of the music entertainment industry failed to capitalise on his phenomenal record sales by not touring internationally – like virtually every other successful pop and rock music act did. In fact Elvis only left American shores a couple of times during his entire lifetime, once for a tour of duty in West Germany as part of his compulsory military service, and the other briefly to northern neighbour Canada for two shows each in Toronto and Ottawa in 1957, followed later that year by a single performance in Vancouver (Elvis was not accompanied on his Canadian trips by his manager Tom Parker). At the time Presley’s reluctance to journey overseas was attributed by a number of observers to the singer’s fear of flying – notwithstanding the fact that Elvis regularly took domestic flights within the US to shows.
Elvis For Beginners♬ ♬ ♬
Light was shed on the puzzle of Elvis’s non-event international performing career for me many years ago when I was thumbing through a copy of Elvis For Beginners𝕓 one day at a bookshop. The reason for this striking anomaly in the Elvis career path was apparently all about Elvis’ ubiquitous manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker. The ex-carny Parker was notorious for several things, among them his vice-like grip on Elvis’s career; his way over-the-top fee for managing Elvis’ career (25%, later increased to an outrageous 50%); his insistence on Elvis getting a 50/50 cut in songwriting royalties even though Elvis contributed zero to the actual writing of the songs he recorded, and who hasn’t heard about the story of his “exemplary ethics”(sic) long, long before he got his avaricious mitts on the goldmine that was Elvis – the colonel started his business career by painting sparrows yellow and selling them as canaries! But there was a much darker, clandestine side to Parker’s past that explained the curiosity of Elvis’ stay-at-home career. “The Colonel” was not actually “Tom Parker”, an assumed identity he adopted. Parker’s real name was Andreas Cornelius van Kuijk (alternately rendered in some articles as “Kuijk-Dries” or “Kuyk”) and he was born not in West Virginia as he always claimed but in Breda in the Netherlands. Van Kuijk entered the US illegally (probably via Canada) in the late 1920s and took on the assumed name (and identity of a Southerner) after a short stint in the US Army. Altogether quite a revelation! Seismic even for the history of popular music.
“Elvis the Pelvis” and the “Colonel” (Photo: Getty)♬ ♬ ♬
For reasons only known to himself Parker never tried to acquired an American passport, so he remained an alien all his life in America. Without a passport Parker was housebound within the US, and as keeping a tight rein on Elvis was essential to the Colonel Parker business plan, there was no way he’d let his golden egg go off overseas without him. So apart from the brief trip early on to Canada Elvis the entertainment industry’s number one pin-up boy never got to tour the globe and show international audiences his swivelling hips and velvet voice. As a consequence Parker “turned down dozens of offers, totaling millions of dollars, to have his famous client tour the world”𝕔 (Dash).
Breda, Netherlands♬ ♬ ♬
It was van Kuijk’s own relatives back in the Netherlands who first twigged to Elvis’ manager’s grand deception. Van Kuijk’s sister stumbled by chance upon a photo of Andreas in a Belgian magazine. A subsequent visit by Kuijk’s brother to him in America threatened to blow the Colonel‘s cover but Parker managed to hush it all up, for the time being at least. The truth only emerged very gradually after Elvis’ death. The revelation that Parker was actually Dutch doesn’t get a mention in Peter Guralnick’s acclaimed biography of Elvis Last Train to Memphis which was published as late as 1994.
“Colonel” Tom, 1960♬ ♬ ♬
Footnote: The Colonel’s darkest secret? Rumours about Parker’s mysterious past in Holland have floated around for decades. One theory about the reason for van Kuijk’s sudden departure for America—developed from journalist Alanna Nash’s research—is that the Dutchman brutally murdered a grocer’s wife in Breda in 1929 when he was about 20, and thus was on the run from the law. Van Kuijk was first connected to the crime via a tip-off given to Dutch reporter Dirk Vellenga in the 1970s while he was investigating the Colonel’s past (Giles). Evidence of van Kuijk’s culpability is at best circumstantial (he left the Netherlands for the US the same day as the murder) and nothing has ever been proved.
ྂ࿐ྂ࿐ྂ࿐ྂ࿐ྂྂ࿐ྂ࿐ྂ
𝕒 when Presley died in 1977 a Western news crew visited a village in a very remote part of Siberia to discover that uneducated peasants there—without the aid of modern communication devices like the internet and social media (or even TV)—somehow still knew who Elvis was!
𝕓 a book in the Readers and Writers series of documentary comic books (graphic books)
𝕔 such as an invitation from Buckingham Palace for Elvis to perform at the Royal Variety Show in London
♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
Bibliography
Jill Pearlman, Elvis for Beginners (1986)
’Colonel Tom Parker (1909-1997)’, New Netherland Institute, www.newnetherlandinstitute.org
‘Colonel Parker Managed Elvis’ Career, but Was He a Killer on the Lam?’, Mike Dash, Smithsonian Magazine, 24-Feb-2012, www.smithsonianmag.com
Rosemary Giles, ‘Who Was the Colonel Before He Met Elvis?’, Vintage News, 27-Jun-2022, www.thevintagenews.com
When the Beatles at the top of their fame reflected back on their climb to the summit of pop/rock music, they didn’t understate the early contribution to their success of exceedingly long periods of time spent playing in seedy, red-light night spots in Hamburg, West Germany. John Lennon summed up the immeasurable value of the Hamburg gigs phase to the early Beatles’ development, quipping to a journalist that though he was “born in Liverpool, (he) grew up in Hamburg”. George Harrison echoed John’s sentiments, saying that the band “didn’t have a clue” before the German experience, “Hamburg was really like our apprenticeship, learning how to play in front of people”. Paul McCartney concurred that playing to inebriated and often hostile German sailors “galvanised the band into a musical form”. The boys’ repertoire expanded by necessity, forced to learn countless new songs so as to fill in the marathon eight-hours sets in the Reeperbahn precinct clubs (“George Harrison Said The Beatles ‘Didn’t Have a Clue’ Before They Went to Hamburg, Germany”, Hannah Wigandt, Showbiz CheatSheet, 08-Dec-2021, www.cheatsheet.com).
ʰᵃᵐᵇᵘʳᵍ ¹⁹⁶¹ ⁽ᵖʰᵒᵗᵒ﹕ ᵍᵉᵗᵗʸ ⁱᵐᵃᵍᵉˢ⁾
Just before departing for their first stint in Hamburg in 1960, the Beatles (still calling themselves the Silver Beatles) needing a regular drummer to fulfil their contractural obligations took on ex-Blackjacks drummer Pete Best (hired by the band’s manager of sorts Allan Williams). Williams’ business associate Harold Adolphus Phillips (who promoted the band during its Silver Beetles days and occasionally performed himself as “Lord Woodbine”) drove the now five-piece group to Germany.
The band first played at the Indra Club in August 1960 (while sleeping rough in “pigsty” accommodation behind the screen of the nearby Bambi Kino). Later in the year they moved from the Indra down the street to the larger Kaiserkeller, performing late-night to sailors and sex workers, and the more appreciative art students. Both nightclubs were owned by Bruno Koschmider who was paying each of the five Beatles the princely sum of £2.50 a night to perform (although they did score an accommodation upgrade to actual hotels)🏴.
ᴷˡᵃᵘˢ, ᴬˢᵗʳᶦᵈ & ˢᵗᵘ, ¹⁹⁶¹ ⁽ᴾʰᵒᵗᵒ: ᴳᵉᵗᵗʸ ᴵᵐᵃᵍᵉˢ⁾
While they were doing their night sets at the Kaiserkeller, John, Paul and George met Ringo (Starr), also working the club with the (then) more highly regarded Hurricanes band. The Kaiserkeller was also where the boys met Astrid Kirchherr, a Hamburg local who was to have a profound influence on the band’s look …from Astrid they got their signature “mop-top” style haircut. In Hamburg the Beatles wore black leather jackets and cowboy boots, but Astrid’s influence has an effect here too with the rounded collarless jacket she made for Stu Sutcliffe🏴 which became a prototype of the famous 1963 collarless suits worn by the Beatles🇮🇹. Astrid’s Hamburg art college student friends Klaus Voorman and Jürgen Vollmer also formed lasting associations with the Beatles from the Kaiserkeller days (especially artist and session musician Voorman who designed art covers for Beatles’ albums and played bass on post-breakup Beatles’ individual records).
ᵀᵒᵖ ᵀᵉⁿ ᶜˡᵘᵇ . ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ: ᴷ & ᴷ ᴴᵃᵐᵇᵘʳᵍ
The following year, while still contracted to Koschmider, the boys were enticed by Peter Eckhorn (Koschmider’s Reeperbahn rival) into defecting to the Top Ten Club on the offer of better money and conditions. Koschmider found out and it’s likely that it was he who turned the underage Harrison in to the police, leading to George’s deportation. When Paul and Pete went back to the Kaiserkeller to get their equipment a fire lit by them caused minor damage to the club. The seriously “pissed-off” Koschmider had McCartney and Best arrested for arson and they too were deported back to England…Lennon eventually followed them back to Liverpool, bringing the Beatles’ engagement at the Top Ten Club in 1961 to an abrupt close.
The Beatles’ residency at the Top Ten did result in a breakthrough of sorts in their career thus far, albeit a low-key one at the time…the boys managed to cut their very first record – backing singer Tony Sheridan (who was also on the Hamburg club circuit at the same time) on a German 45 for the Polydor label. The recording “My Bonnie” at Ernst-Merck-Halle listed the Beatles on the label as the “Beat Brothers”🇦🇺 (‘Tony Sheridan’, The Beatles Bible, Upd. 15-May-2017, www.beatlesbible.com).
ˢᵗᵃʳ⁻ᶜˡᵘᵇ
The following year they were back however, this time performing at the Star-Club, operated by Manfred Weissleder and Horst Fascher🇩🇪. By now the band members’ nightly fee had been upped to £67 each. They did three stints at the Star in 1962—the last two with Ringo in the drummer’s seat for the first time—undertaken reluctantly as the band had already released their first UK single on Parlophone and were champing at the bit to get on with consolidating their burgeoning recording career in the UK. The last live performance by the soon-to-be “Fab Four” in Germany was on New Years Eve 1962.
The tyro Liverpudlian band’s musical education in the north coast German city got a terrific leg-up from getting up close and personal with legendary US rock ‘n roll performers—such as Little Richard, Gene Vincent and Jerry Lee Lewis—also working the same St Pauli clubs at the time…Little Richard later recounted helping to hone Paul’s vocal style backstage while the Beatles were opening for the pioneering American rock performer at the Star.
The Chronology of the Beatles’ gig venues in Hamburg, 1960–62Indra Club, Große Freiheit 64, St Pauli. 48 nights, August—October 1960 (37-hr week)Kaiserkeller, Große Freiheit 36, St Pauli. 56 nights, October—November 1960 Top Ten Club, Reeperbahn 136, St Pauli. 92 nights,April—July 1961 (51-hr week)Star-Club, Große Freiheit 39, St Pauli. April—May, November, December, 1962
Live at the Reeperbahn (image: Spotify)
↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝
The intense schedule imposed by the Hamburg club management, forcing the Beatles to play live for hours on end (with the aid of copious amounts of booze and a regular diet of ‘uppers’)🏁 formed the band into a tight musical outfit. This and the band’s increasingly fetzig (“wild”) and unpredictable stage antics and the decibel-shattering volume and raw energy of their playing earned them a loyal following in Hamburg (‘Breaking the Illusion: Hamburg and The Beatles’ Gritty Roots’, Riley Fitzgerald, Happy, 13-Oct-2021, www.happy mag.tv). And when they came back to Merseyside at the very beginning of 1963, the Beatles (–Pete/+Ringo) didn’t come back as nobodies, Hamburg gave them an international reputation to trade on in the future.
Postscript: Return to their roots
The Beatles returned to Hamburg one more time, this time as the hottest musical act on the planet. In 1966 at ‘Beatlemania’s” high-water mark, the group played two nights in Hamburg, not at any of the old haunts they had played as young scruffs but at the more respectable Ernst-Merck-Halle. This was part of the German leg (tagged the “Bravo-Beatles-Blitztournee“) of the band’s ‘66 world tour, which also included concerts in Munich and Essen.
🏴 their booking agent Allan Williams was getting three times what the musicians were!
🏴 Sutcliffe left the group and became engaged to Kirchherr in 1961 before his premature death the following year
🇮🇹 based partly on Pierre Cardin’s design
🇦🇺 it was a customer request in the Liverpool NEMS music store for ‘My Bonnie’ that first alerted Brian Epstein to the existence of the Beatles
🇩🇪 Fascher, a West German amateur boxing champion, doubled as the Beatles’ bodyguard
🏁 “800 hours in the rehearsal room” McCartney called it
‘Coniston’ Ashfield, Bea’s first home (Source: hafs.org.au)
You’dbe hard pressed to come up with a personality that epitomised 20th Century Sydney eccentricity more than the legendary Bea Miles who died in 1973. When the subject arises even today, so many Sydneysiders of a certain vintage have a Bea Miles anecdote to tell. Either it’s a chance (and sometimes disconcerting) encounter they had as a school kid—usually on inner Sydney public transport—with the larger (and louder) than life character herself, or one recounted to them by their mother or father. Such was her profile in this city that newspapers in the Forties and Fifties claimed that Bea (or ‘Bee’ as she later insisted it be spelt) was “more widely known than the prime minister” of the day. Bea’s popularity was rooted in that honoured tradition of Australian larrikinism, the unusual thing about this was that she was female※.
Early days, the athletic Bea Miles
Born into a wealthy merchant family, young Beatrice Miles was already exhibiting the rebellious nature that made her buck against the straitjacketed proprieties of conservative Sydney (and specifically North Shore) society, when the illness befell her that would profoundly change her forever. Contracting Encephalitis Lethargica at 21, Bea over time changed physically from a tall, trim and athletic young woman to a seriously overweight, matronly-looking woman.
(Photo: Daily Tele)
Going rogue
More immediately and crucially, Bea underwent a complete personality change, becoming totally disruptive, hyper-kinetic, manic and basically uncontrollable§. When her father couldn’t cope any more with her behaviour he had her committed to an asylum, she was shuffled around between psyche facilities in Gladesville, Kenmore (Goulburn) and Callan Park. After her last escape attempt a Sydney tabloid,Smith’s Weekly,ran a story which exposed Bea’s dire plight in the psychiatric gulag of Callan Park (with sensationalised headline “Mad House Mystery of Beautiful Sydney Girl”) which helped secure her release.
No fixed address
Unable to return to the family home in St Ives, Bea had a sojourn in Sydney’s Kings Cross where she mixed happily with the locale’s Bohemian artists and writers. After this she lived rough in Sydney, finding shelter where she could – a Rushcutters Bay stormwater drain, a cave above a Sydney beach, a park bench opposite Central Station, the steps of a church rectory, etc. Ratbags author Keith Dunstan called her “very nearly the first drop-out, the first hippie”.
Bea with men of the press, circa 1946
CV: Enemy of authority, laws and law-enforcers, habitually disruptive public presence
Bea revelled in being controversial and confrontational, especially towards political and social authorities…abusing police, doctors and magistrates came instinctually to her, and she certainly had plenty of practice at it! By her own (not necessarily reliable) count she was “falsely convicted 195 times, fairly 100 times”…Bea defiantly refused to pay for public transport or to enter cinemas. Other offences earning her the ire of the law included swearing in public and vagrancy.
Bea’s recital services board
Bea Miles, literary oratorBea loved pulling stunts and making a spectacle of herself, some she did for the heck of it—like riding a man’s push bike through the streets while wearing a formal evening dress—other stunts were to earn money after her grandmother’s inheritance allowance dried up – on the street she would hold a sign up to passing punters advertising her declamatory services, for a set “schedule of fees” she would verbatim quote passages from Shakespeare.
Main Reading Room, NSW State Library (Flickr)
Rogue scholar
Under the rough edges of Bea’s (very) public persona, was a formidable intellect. She had excelled at school (Abbotsleigh Girls) and gained admission to medicine at Sydney University. In her post-illness nomadic years, the “wayward waif” as one article called her, never held a formal job and generally gave her occupation as ‘student’. Bea was a habitué of public libraries, especially the State Library in Macquarie Street¶…a life-long voracious reader and produced her own collection of writings, such as “Dictionary by a Bitch”φ.
Bea in the driving seat? (Photo: Daily Telegraph)
Scourge of taxi drivers
The stunts Bea is best remembered and most notorious for involved her with taxis and their drivers. Her propensity for refusing to pay for taxi trips and commandeering taxis to demand that they take her to vastly distant locations has gone into folklore. Legendary instances of this were the 19-day taxi trip she took to Perth (fortunately for the female cabbie involved Bea paid her £600 for the assignment), as well as trips to Broken Hill via Melbourne and Adelaide). As is the way with legendary public figures, some of her outrageous taxi exploits were more urban myths than actual events, like the tale that used to circulate of Bea taking a taxi to Broken Hill and then on approaching the outskirts of the town she was supposed to have done a runner leaving the poor hapless driver fleeced of his massive fare. Bea’s most dramatic encounter with a cab, one that did happen, saw her respond to the driver’s refusal to take her by wrenching the door completely off the taxi’s hinges (she was a big woman!). This legendary “Bea-act” landed her in Long Bay Gaol for a spell (and a rest).
“Bee in charcoal”, Roderick Shaw (Source: portrait.gov.au)
Terror of trams
Tram drivers didn’t escape the attentions of Bea either…the popular press labelled her the “Terror of Trams” and on at least one occasion her antics flirted with real danger as one tram driver who refused to move until Bea paid the fare discovered. Bea, never one to back down, hijacked the tram, seizing its controls and piloted it to Bondi, even stopping to pick up passengers on route.
The Bea Miles “signature look”: The original “bag lady” apparel
Bea’s unorthodox ways made her a Sydney institution and an unmissable sight. Her irregular and unkempt mode of dress made her readily recognisable wherever she went…Bea’s regular ‘outfit’ described by the Sydney Morning Herald as a “down-at-heel uniform” of tennis shoes, white (or was it green) tennis sun visor and ever more scruffy overcoat. Always pinned to the overcoat’s lapel was a £5 note (Bea’s idea of countering any notion the police might get about arresting her for vagrancy).
Years of homeless living, sleeping rough, took its toll on Bea and in 1964 she was taken in by the Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged in Randwick. Those last nine years of her life allowed Bea a clean, dry bed and gave the inveterate bookworm that she was joyous access to another library (borrowing an average of 14 books a week from the Randwick branch library).
(Sydney Morning Herald)
Footnote: Deviating from the mainstream, inheriting some of her father’s idiosyncrasies
Despite the love-hate conflict with her father and his eventual disowning of her, Bea gained quite a number of her radical and non-conformist predispositions and beliefs from him. In his own right, wealthy businessman William J Miles was also an individualist and an eccentric. Miles was a rationalist and a secularist (Bea herself was a staunchly committed atheist❡)… from him she also got her love of Shakespeare and her anti-British imperialist/strident Australian patriotism). In the late 1930s pater Miles’ odd brand of political extremism found its voice in The Publicist. Funded and edited by Miles, the journal advocated fascism (curiously in tandem with Aboriginal rights), wholeheartedly embracing German Nazism and anti-Semitism𝄢. Bea endorsed his pro-Aboriginal and anti-British stand but never enunciated far-right or racist sentiments during her life, although at the end she did express some views that inferred the supremacy of the “white race”.
✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠✠
※ one of precious few non-male Aussie public larrikins, Dawn Fraser also comes to mind
§ though she still retained her sharpness of intellect afterwards
¶ until she was barred from the library in the late 1950s for being a nuisance (What, Bea?!? Never!)
φ example of an entry, “Duty: an excuse for showing unwarranted interference in somebody else’s business”
❡ there’s some dispute over whether her deathbed conversion to Catholicism was genuine or merely Bea’s way of thanking the church for taking her in off the streets in her twilight years
𝄢 it was a forerunner of the Australia First Movement. William’s dalliance with fascism prompted Cunneen’s assessment that, “with dangerous obsessions and money to spend, Miles represented an unstable element in Australian society”
ℼℼ~ℼℼ~ℼℼ
Articles and websites consulted:
Chris Cunneen, ‘Miles, William John (1871–1942)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/miles-william-john-7576/text13225, published first in hardcopy 1986, accessed online 27 October 2021.
Judith Allen, ‘Miles, Beatrice (Bea) (1902–1973)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/miles-beatrice-bea-7573/text13219, published first in hardcopy 1986, accessed online 27 October 2021.
Pip Wilson, ‘Bee Miles One of Sydney’s favourite individualists’, Wilson’s Almanac, 18-Feb-2012, web.archive.org
Robert Kaplan, ‘Miles From Her Father’, Quadrant, 07-Aug-2016, http://quadrant.org.au
According to Guinness World Records the pop song that has been covered more times than any other record is the 1965 Beatles’ 1965 Paul McCartney-penned Yesterday (a staggering 1,600-plus recorded versions). Conversely The Lion Sleeps Tonight trails far behind the record-holder with a mere 160 or more covers (still a very large number of covers), but few popular songs in the modern era of music can match it’s convoluted, controversial and even tragic history.
The Evening Birds, 1939 (Solomon Linda on the far left)
Ripped off from the debut single
The story starts in the Gallo Recording Studio in Johannesburg in 1939. Migrant labourer Solomon (Ntsele) Linda and his troupe of a capella singers (the Evening Birds) cut a record in the Zulu asisicathamiya style. The tune with its spartan lyrics is called Mbube or perhaps more correctly Imbube (‘lion’ in the Zulu language). The tune they sing is not a particularly remarkable piece of music except for Solomon’s melody. As Cape Town music journalist Rian Malan, who is to play a key role in the Mbube story as it develops, puts it, “there was something terribly compelling about the underlying chant, a dense meshing of low male voices above which (soprano) Solomon yodeled and howled (“a blood-curdling falsetto”) for two exhilarating minutes” improvising as he went along…“a haunting skein of fifteen notes” (’In the Jungle: Inside the Long, Hidden Genealogy of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”’, Rian Malan, Rolling Stone, 14-May-2000, www.rollingstone.com). Recorded, the song sells over 100,000, copies in South Africa by 1948. Linda’s cut, 10 shillings for the recording plus a menial job in the record company (in the process signing over all rights to the song to company proprietor Eric Gallo).
Pete Seeger (Source: Mother Jones) Image: the78prof (YouTube)
From a humble back room recording in Sub-Saharan Africa’s only recording company to the American Top 40
This pattern of exploitation, injustice and racism (both overt and by omission) escalates when the story moves to America. Struggling folksinger Pete Seeger hears Solly and the Original Evening Birds’ 78 record, digs the sound and records it with his group the Weavers. But Seeger misinterprets what Solomon Linda is singing, changing the Zulu refrain ‘Uyimbube’ (“You’re the Lion”) to ‘Wimoweh’ on their recording (‘Mbube’ becomes the song ‘Wimoweh’). It’s a hit in the US in 1952 and Seeger’s career receives a big boost. No credit and no royalties for composer Solomon – although later Seeger motivated by pangs of guilt sends Linda a cheque for $1,000 via TRO/Folkways, however it gets siphoned off on-route and never reaches the impoverished Linda in the slums of Soweto in Jo’burg.
“Paul Campbell” is the only writing credit on ‘Wimoweh’ (a common nom-de-plume ploy used to claim royalties on public domain songs)☥
In 1961 a new chapter in the story opens, “doo-wop” band the Tokens, like all pop music enthusiasts in the US, are familiar with the super-catchy “Wimoweh” refrain and want to record it. Their RCA producers get songwriter George David Weiss to revamp the song. Weiss adds new lyrics (“In the jungle, the mighty jungle”, etc) and shifts the focus of the song on to Linda’s chanting melody. ‘Mbube’ having previously morphed into ‘Wimoweh’ is repackaged by Weiss as ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, all three versions still bearing the essential imprint of Solomon Linda (Malan). The Tokens’ single—with singer Jay Siegel’s distinctive high falsetto—reaches # 1 in the US and internationally, eventually selling more than three million copies§. Again, no credit and no moolah for Linda who dies destitute in 1962 with just $25 in his bank account, leaving a widow and a half-dozen young children behind.
The Tokens (Source: singers.com)
Spreading the largesse to TRO
While credited songwriters Weiss and RCA’s Creatore and Peretti cash in big time on ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’s’ soaring sales, other formidable industry figures in the US were getting in on the act from another angle – again to the exclusion of the song’s original creator. Eric Gallo in South Africa injudiciously trades his rights to Linda’s song in America to big international music publishers TRO, (The Richmond Organisation) cutting himself off from benefitting from the ongoing “gravy train” and enriching TRO founder Howie Richmond and his partner Al Brackman.
Industry eyes only on the prize
Rather than making an act of goodwill or perhaps an atonement of sorts for the wrongs done to Solomon Linda by shuffling a financially meaningful sum in the direction of Linda’s daughters, the major stakeholders, fixating on the riches they see before them, at the beginning of the Nineties dig their heels in, even resorting to wrangling among themselves. TRO and Richmond on one side and Weiss and co-writer Creatore on the other end up fighting each other in arbitration presided over by copyright law judges…”rich white Americans squabbling over ownership of the most famous melody ever to emerge from Africa” (Malan).
‘The Lion King’ jackpot
Disney’s turn to exploit the melody’s popularity
The “golden egg” of ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ explodes to new astronomical heights in 1994 when the Disney Corporation releases The Lion King, a blockbuster of a a movie—using ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ song—which by 2019 has raked in $1.65 Bn at the box office, plus spin-offs such as videos and merchandise. Not stopping there, Disney follows it up with a 1998 sequel Lion King II and a Broadway musical theatrical release (highest grossing Broadway production of all time – >$1 Bn). Added to all this is about another thirteen films that includes ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ song, plus its use in television commercials, endless airplay on radio and so on.
The two remaining Ntsele sisters looking at the 1939 photo of their father’s band (Source: Netflix)
The long quest for justice and some light at the end
An amelioration of the unconscionable plight facing Linda’s family only emerges after Rian Malan takes up their cause in the Nineties, writing a penetrating exposé (published in 2000) which gets their predicament publicity and legal support, and also embarrasses the “fat cat” beneficiaries who make some insultingly meagre financial concessions to the family. A series of court cases ensue but untangling the complicated web of ownership of the three versions of ‘Mbube’ is not straightforward – for one thing both Linda and his two surviving daughters have already signed over their rights to ‘Mbube’ in transactions which were legal, also there are issues with expiry of copyright in both RSA and America. In 2004 the Ntsele sisters with the aid of copyright lawyers initiate a lawsuit against Disney. The 2006 ruling acknowledges that ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight‘ was of South African origin and rooted in Zulu culture (‘Copyright in the Courts: The Return of the Lion’, Owen Dean, Wipo Magazine, April 2006. www.wipo.int). In an (undisclosed) out-of-court settlement Disney (keen to avoid a PR disaster) and Abilene Music❆ agree to make an equitable and substantial payout to Linda’s surviving daughters. (’The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, Lydia Hutchinson, Performing Songwriter, 01-May-2017, www.performingsongwriter.com; ‘In the Jungle, the Unjust Jungle, a Small Victory’, Sharon LeFraniere, New York Times, 22-Mar-2006, www.nytimes.com).
Rian Malan (Source: Writers Write)
Malan estimates (2002) that given the seeming limitless sales potential of ‘Mbube’/‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight‘ in all its versions and forms, the royalties owing to the song’s composer would lie in the region of US$15 million, a figure that Solomon’s descendants won’t ever see in their bank accounts…however through the unflagging, dogged persistence and refusal of Malan not just to grasp the nettle but to never let go of it⇼, and the stirling pro bono services of lawyers stirred to action by the injustice, the future is now secure for them, and credit for the classic song is now rightfully attributed to their father. One of those South African copyright lawyers Owen Dean expresses optimism that royalties will be secured for “the use of Mbube in all its derivatives, including ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight‘, for the benefit of the family” (Malan), noting also that there is “some pride in having successfully championed the cause of the small creator among entertainment industry giants” (Dean).
Source: Definitely Owen on YouTube
Postscript:Remastered: The Lion’s Share, a 2019 documentary shows writer and documentarian Malan’s quest to trace the roots of the mega-successful ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight‘ song, one of the most instantly recognisable pop melodies in American music, and his untiring efforts to help get fair compensation for the surviving daughters of the Black South African composer air-brushed from his part in music recording history.
🎶➿🎶➿🎶
—————————————-———————
§ artists to cover ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ include the Springfields, Roger Whittaker, The Tremeloes, Robert John, Glen Campbell, Brian Eno, R.E.M., They Might Be Giants and Tight Fit
☥ another go-to pseudonym—one used by Al Brackman to grab a cut of the songwriting royalty payments pie—was “Albert Stanton” (www.secondhandsongs.com)
❆ who licensed the song to Disney for the movie
⇼ The Guardian aptly summarises this irrepressible trait of the controversial RSA journalist: “Malan is at his best when he finds a story that allows him to employ the full power of (his) instinctive reluctance to take yes for an answer” (Tim Adams, 2nd March 2013).
Everyone’s heard the story of Marco Polo, his epic journey from Venice via the Silk Road to Cathay (China) and the court of Kublai Khan, and further explorations in Southeast Asia as the Great Khan’s foreign emissary, but much less well known outside the Maghreb and the Middle East are the more impressive peregrinations—in terms of immenseness of scope and distance—of the medieval Moroccan Islamic traveller Ibn Battūta.
Marco Polo’s ‘Travels’
Battūta was born in Tangier, Morocco, into a Berber family of legal scholars about 50 years after Marco Polo’s birth. In 1325 the youthful Battūta set off alone initially with the purpose of undertaking the hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca, but circumstance and curiosity took the Moroccan scholar on a seemingly never-ending series of extended side trips. Over the next 29 years Battūta’s travels took him on a wide arc to the East, visiting virtually all of the Islamic lands including far-off Sumatra (in modern Indonesia). Battūta’s sense of adventure and desire to learn about distant lands led him to extend his journey far beyond Dar al-Islam (the lands of Islam) to visit Dar al-Kufr (the non-Muslim world). As an Islamic scholar Battūta’s travel to ‘infidel’ lands was legitimised by the Islamic principle of Talab al-‘ilm (“search for knowledge”) (Berman, Nina. “Questions of Context: Ibn Battuta and E. W. Bovill on Africa.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 34, no. 2, Indiana University Press, 2003, pp. 199–205, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4618304).
Battūta’s travels (Image: ORIAS – University of California, Berkeley)
Battūta’s world
Ibn Battūta’s adventure-packed travels—sometimes on foot, sometimes by sea, often for safety in the company of camel caravans—took him to the lands occupied today by 40 modern countries. Divided into two journeys, the first encompassed North Africa, Central Asia and Russia, the Middle East and Anatolia, India and South Asia, the Maldives, East Africa (down as far as modern Tanzania), Southeast Asia and China. A later, shorter journey took him into the Mali Empire and West Africa (crossing the Sahara to Niger, Timbuktu, etc) and later to Moorish-inhabited Spain.
The top three travellers in Pre-modern history – measured by distance
• Ibn Battūta (Islamic scholar and explorer) approx. 117,000 kilometres
• Zheng He (Chinese admiral and explorer) approx. 50,000 kilometres
• Marco Polo (Venetian merchant and explorer) approx. 24,000 kilometres
(‘Ibn Battuta’, Wikipedia entry; John Parker World Book Encyclopedia, 2004)
Image: www.history.com
Unreliable memoirs
Although Battūta clocked up a phenomenal amount of mileage for a traveller in the Medieval age, many modern scholars believe that Battūta did not visit all of the destinations listed on his Rihla✡ itinerary, the narrative of his journeys. Amikam Elad for instance contends that Battūta plagerised large parts of the travel narrative including the description of Battūta’s travels in Palestine from another Muslim traveller Muhammad al-‘Abduri (Elad, Amikam. “The Description of the Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa in Palestine: Is It Original?” The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 2, [Cambridge University Press, Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland], 1987, pp. 256–72, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25212152). Doubts also exist about his visits to the city of Sana’a in Yemen, Bolghar via the Volga River and Khorasan et al. Some academics contend that in China Baṭṭūṭa only ever got as far as Quanzhou and Canton. Another false claim was that he witnessed the funeral of the Mongol Great Khan (the reality was no emperor died during Battūta‘s sojourn in China). The Moroccan storyteller borrowed liberally from hearsay evidence in the accounts of earlier Muslim explorers, and from his illustrious Venetian predecessor – the Rihla reveals many similarities in themes and commentataries to Marco Polo’s Travels.
Marco Polo, adapting to Tartar dress
Polo/Battūta overlap
Both Marco Polo and Ibn Battūta were in a sense oral historians, neither travellers penned a single word of the books they are famous for, instead dictating their travel stories to a scribe. Battūta’s tendency to rely on hearsay to describe some places he didn’t visit (eg, the Great Wall of China) mirrored the larger-than-life Venetian storyteller’s inclinations – Polo described the small island of Ceylon thus, “for its actual size, is better circumstanced than any island in the world”, despite never having set foot on Ceylonese soil (Marco’s contemporaries were well aware that “il Milione” was given to exaggeration).
Battūta/Juzayy’s ‘Rihla’
Battūta’s ghostwriter
As Ibn Battūta never kept a journal during his nearly three decades of travel, the Marinid sultan of Fez commanded him to collaborate with court poet Ibn Juzayy who wrote the manuscript of what became A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling☯ based on Baṭṭūṭa‘s recollections. The title was later shortened for convenience to the Rihla☮. The travel book has transparent shortcomings, the format is undercut by extreme chronological inconsistencies. The travelogue relies on Battūta’s memory—Morgan points out that the memory of a traveller understandably may lapse especially if the travels stretch over such a large passage of time (Morgan, D. O. “Ibn Baṭṭūṭa and the Mongols.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 11, no. 1, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 1–11, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25188080).
Wives, concubines and divorce
A curious side feature of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s global footprint is the disclosure in the travelogue of various personal relationships he entered in to. Baṭṭūṭa on arriving at a new town regularly married women and took countless concubines, leaving the (divorced) wives and some of his issue as well behind when he moved on. For an observant Muslim Baṭṭūṭa includes a surprising level of sexual detail pertaining to the local women he encounters on his journeys (Singer, Rachel, ‘Love, Sex, and Marriage in Ibn Battuta’s Travels” (2019). MAD-RUSH Undergraduate Research Conference. 1. http://commons.lib.jmu.edu/madrush/2029/love/1).
Though the Rihla was in essence intended as the devotional work of a pious Islamic scholar, its real value lies in its secular insights into the world of the Middle Ages…providing descriptions of diverse and far-flung countries’ geography, personalities, politics, cultural practices, sexual mores and the natural world (‘The Longest Hajj: The Journeys of Ibn Battuta’, Douglas Bullis, Aramco World, July-August 2000, www.archive.aramco.com).
(Photo: History Extra)
In the 1350s after Ibn Battūta had finally had his fill of wanderlust and hung up his sandals for good, he settled into an altogether sedentary vocation, appointed as a Qadi (Islamic judge) in his hometown of Tangier.
(Source: Blackstone Audio Inc)
Endnote: Polo and Battūta didn’t invent fabrication and embellishment in travel writing. Herodotus of Halicarnassus (5th century BCE)—considered both the “father of history” and the world’s ur-travel writer from—was prone to mixing in ”legends and fanciful accounts” to his Histories (Euben, Roxanne L. “LIARS, TRAVELERS, THEORISTS: HERODOTUS AND IBN BATTUTA.” Journeys to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers in Search of Knowledge, Princeton University Press, 2006, pp. 46–89, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7t5dw.7).
————————————————————————————————————————
✡ literally the ‘Travels’
☯ the travelogue’s proper title
☮ the word Rihla strictly speaking refers to a genre of Arab literature rather than the name of the travel book (Bullis)
The first time I wandered through Waverley Cemetery in the chic, beachside eastern suburbs of Sydney I was somewhat bemused to find in the midst of the congested maze of gravesites of famous Australians—poets, politicians and judges, sports men and women, aviation pioneers among others—a large, impressive marble, bronze and mosaic memorial to the martyrs of the 1798 Irish Rebellion.
Honouring the sacrifices of 1798
The connexion only became clear to me later when I did some research on the ‘mystery’. The nexus linking the heroic but lost cause of nascent Éireannach 18th century insurrection against the indignities of English rule to a Sydney cemetery turned out to be one Michael Dwyer, whose remains along with those of his wife are buried within the grand monument. The memorial was constructed for the 100-year anniversary (1898) of the uprising, the plot and monument paid for by the local Irish community in New South Wales.
Michael Dwyer, hero of Wicklow resistance
Dwyer in the ‘Pantheon’ of Irish independence heroes
Native Wicklow man ‘Captain’ Dwyer fought in the ‘98 Rebellion, later leading an effective guerrilla campaign against the British army in the Wicklow Mountains. Dwyer held out till 1803, earning himself the sobriquet “the Wicklow Chief” before his eventual capture and transportion to the NSW colony (not America as he had been promised). In any event Dwyer got off pretty lightly compared to many of the rebels – given his freedom and a land grant of 100 acres on Cabramatta Creek. Dwyer’s life in Australia was a roller coaster of a ride and colourful to put it mildly…twice imprisoned and tried for plotting an Irish insurrection against the British authorities in NSW, a highly dubious charge that that he was acquitted of (though he still had to do time in Norfolk Island and Van Diemens Land penal colonies). When the NSW Corps overthrew Governor Bligh in the Rum Rebellion, Dwyer was reinstated as a free man, fortune favoured him again a couple of years later when he was made chief constable of police at Liverpool, NSW, and then it deserted him once more when Dwyer ended up in debtors’ prison (Ruan O’Donnell, ‘Dwyer, Michael (1772–1825)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/dwyer-michael-12896/text23301, published first in hardcopy 2005, accessed online 9 September 2021; O’Sullivan, Michael, 1798 Memorial, Waverley Cemetery, Dictionary of Sydney, 2012, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/1798_memorial_waverley_cemetery, viewed 10 Sep 2021).
First steps on a long road to liberty
The inspiration for a surge in Irish nationalism and a sovereign republic free of English domination came from the French and to a lesser extent American revolutions. Ireland had a parliament of its own in Dublin but democratic participation was strictly limited by religious and property entitlements, squeezing out Catholics and Presbyterians and leaving the “Protestant Ascendency” in control of the country. The Society of United Irishmen (SUI), a secular organisation not restricted to Catholics¹,was formed to push for real autonomy for the Irish. Some reforms were forthcoming such as the franchise for non-Protestants but this was not near enough for the more radical elements of SUI.
Wolfe Tone
The SUI leader (Theobald) Wolfe Tone forged links with French republicans aimed at overthrowing English rule, leading to a 1796 invasion of Ireland by a nearly 14,000-strong French army. Unfortunately nature intervened and the invasion fleet ran into storms off the Irish west coast, loss of vessels and lives forced the abandonment of the invasion. The response of the government in Ireland—symbolically known as Dublin Castle—was to crack down heavily on the SUI radicals. The SUI was driven underground in a wave of repression culminating in the imprisonment of many of the organisation’s leaders. Though the Irish republicanism of SUI was a popular sentiment in the country, it didn’t have universal support even on the Catholic side, the Catholic Church strongly opposed what it saw as the ‘atheistic’ United Irishmen (‘The 1798 Rebellion – A Brief Overview’, John Dorney, The Irish Story, 28-Oct-2017, www.theirishstory.com).
Battle of Vinegar Hill
An uncoordinated insurrection
The Irish rising in 1798 was ill-timed and badly organised – most of the SUI leadership was still incarcerated. The insurgents’ planning was strategically inept, the rebellion was intended to be nationwide, but was largely confined to isolated pockets – Wexford, Leinster, Mayo, Antrim and Down. Dublin which should have been central to the revolt played virtually no part in it (Dorney). Historian Thomas Bartlett disputes the commonly held view of the rebellion being a localised affair…he argues that far from being confined to the east coast, the uprising produced “tremors throughout the country” with disturbance occurring in a very large number of counties (Bartlett, Thomas. “Why the History of the 1798 Rebellion Has Yet to Be Written.” Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an Dá Chultúr15 (2000): 181-90. Accessed September 8, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30071449). The rebels had some brief, early successes (especially the Battle of Oulart), but superior English troops and weaponry overwhelmed the poorly equiped Irish force inside a month. A subsequent incursion from a small French expeditionary force offered a momentary flicker of hope for the rebel cause but this was quickly snuffed out as the English-led forces took complete charge of the country. Retribution against the rebel leaders was swift and uncompromisingly brutal, most were summarily executed (or in Wolfe Tone’s case took his own life while awaiting execution). Atrocities were committed on both sides. A large number of the insurgents (like Michael Dwyer later on) were transported to the penal colony in New Holland. The failed ‘98 rising left a mixed legacy, intensifying the level of sectarian bitterness in Ireland but also inspiring countless Irish republicans and revolutionaries to continue the struggle for a free Ireland (‘The 1798 Irish Rebellion’, Thomas Bartlett, BBC, 17-Feb-2011, www.bbc.co.uk).
1800 Act of Union
In the wake of the crushing of the rebellion by the Marquis Cornwallis², fundamental political changes were enacted. The Irish Parliament was dissolved and direct British rule imposed by virtue of the 1800 Act of Union with Ireland, a situation that would stay in force until the Irish Free State came into being in 1922.
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¹ in fact many of the leaders like Wolfe Tone, Harvey and Keogh were Protestant
² the same (Lord) Cornwallis in the forefront of the ignominy associated with the 1781 English surrender at Yorktown which ended the land conflict in the American War of Independence
In 1953, two years after George Whitman resurrected Sylvia Beach’s famed Shakespeare and Company in Paris, the bookshop that was to become its trans-Atlantic soul mate, City Lights, opened its doors in the North Beach area of San Francisco🄰.
(Photo: Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley)
Two landmark ‘indie’ bookshops
The story of Shakespeare and Company’s evolution into an legendary bookshop has been sketched in a previous blog piece: ‘Hanging Out at Shakespeare and Company’, 21-July-2021. On the other side of the Atlantic another distinctive stand-alone bookshop was staking it’s undeniable claim for iconic status in the world of independent booksellers.
A literary community
Lawrence Ferlinghetti envisaged City Lights as “a literary meeting place”—just like Whitman and Shakespeare and Company—a haven for aspiring writers to hangout and find creativity. A poet himself, Ferlinghetti attracted an emerging group of fiction writers and poets that coalesced into the “Best Generation”, including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Gregory Corso. The Beat writers and poets found themselves a comfortable niche hanging out together in the basement reading room of City Lights.
(Image: Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley)
Not only that, Ferlinghetti was proactive in his support for the Beats’ budding careers by starting a publishing arm at City Lights, bringing to the public collections of poetry, offbeat and radical books ignored by the mainstream press. Ferlinghetti’s disavowal of the commercial mainstream saw him promote alternative newspapers and magazines as well (‘Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and founder of City Lights bookshop, dies aged 101’, Sian Cain, The Guardian, 23-Feb-2021, www.theguardian.com).
(Image: citylights.com)
Maverick bookseller
City Lights was always an innovator in the bookselling biz. It arose with the onset of the paperback revolution, a wave that the San Fran bookshop happily rode. Hard covers were expensive so City Lights became the first all-paperback bookshop in the US (co-founder Paul Martin’s idea). The bookstore bucked the bookselling status quo – before City Lights came along readers could only buy paperbacks from drugstores, bus stations and newsstands (‘The Beat Generation in San Francisco’, Bill Morgan, www.citylights.com). Ferlinghetti’s store was a democratising force in US bookselling, City Lights’ paperbacks were cheap, all budgets could afford their quality pocket books. City Lights’ innovativeness extended to opening hours. Unlike the bulk of mainstream American bookshops who usually closed early in the Fifties, City Lights stayed open seven days a week and late into the night.
🔺 the ’emperor of City Lights
Bookshop outreach
The bookshop extended outreach activities to the local community. The store maintained a community bulletin board, disseminating info for the North Beach literary set, thus helping to foster the local counterculture community. Ferlinghetti also furnished the City Lights store with letter racks for itinerants who frequented the triangular storefront to collect their mail.
The ‘Howl’ episode
In 1956 Ferlinghetti published and distributed a poem by an unknown Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Police in an undercover sting operation confiscated Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’🄱 collection and arrested Ferlinghetti who was charged with selling “obscene material and corrupting America’s youth”. The subsequent trial became a cause celeb in the industry. The judge found that the publication had “redeeming social significance” and therefore was not obscene🄲. The trial publicity was great for Ginsberg’s poetry and for City Lights. ‘Howl’ became an underground best-seller and a symbol of both the counterculture and the Beat Generation🄳 (Morgan).
🔺 Ferlinghetti outside City Lights, 1950s
Politicalpoetics
The character of City Lights reflected Ferlinghetti’s own political and social activism. The “philosophical anarchist” was a bulwark for left causes, eg, using the bookshop venue to host many sit-ins and protests against the Vietnam War (“books, not bombs”). Ferlinghetti believed that poetry was a social force capable of raising the consciousness of the people.
Ferlinghetti & Ginsberg (Source: SFist)
Precarious business model?
Profitability was not City Lights’ raison d’être. Staying out of “the red” was a constant challenge. To stay afloat sometimes the publishing side needed to bail out the retail sales which was losing money and at other times it was vice versa (Cain). What didn’t help matters financial were the activities of shoplifting gangs in the Seventies which targeted the bookshop. And if it wasn’t them it was insiders like poet Gregory Corso helping himself liberally to the till (Morgan).
Whitman & Ferlinghetti (seated) in 2002 (Photo: Mary Duncan/Paris Writers Press)
Footnote: the extent to which Shakespeare and Co and City Lights can be called sister bookshops comes down largely to the personal visions of their founders Whitman and Ferlinghetti🄴 who were both lifelong book tragics🄵, “(sharing a) love of literature and poetry (and a) devotion and commitment to the power of words” (‘The Beats go on…’, Alix Sharkey, The Guardian, 02-Mar-2002, www.theguardian.com). For Whitman and Ferlinghetti however, the bookshop was more than a receptacle for selling books, it filled the roles of haven and incubator in nurturing new writers as well as a hub for the local literary community. Sister bookstores they may be but they are clearly not identical twins when it comes to the interiors and decors of the two bookshops…City Lights’ book displays are neatly-ordered and arranged whereas Shakespeare and Co is clutter central to the max!
City Lights (Photo: Literary Hub)
𓂉𓂊𓂉
Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti, poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights. The New York born, Paris educated, bookseller and publisher, died on 22nd February 2021, aged 101.
⊞⊟⊠⊡⊞⊟⊠⊡
🄰 City Lights’ address, 261-271 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco 94133, places it technically within Chinatown but the store identifies with the adjoining precinct of North Beach
🄱 ‘Howl’, ‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…’ was a thunderbolt against the conservative poetry establishment of Fifties America, the prototype for a new poetry which immersed itself in “wide-eyed truth-telling”
🄲 the basis of the acquittal was a precedent called on in later attempts to overturn bans on works like Tropic of Capricorn and Naked Lunch
🄳 although often associated with them, City Light’s publishing arm never confined itself to the beat writers, it also publishes the work of non-Beat luminaries like Charles Bukowski, Sam Shepard and Malcolm Lowry
🄴 strictly speaking Ferlinghetti wasn’t the founder of City Lights, that was sociology academic Paul D Martin but Ferlinghetti got into the business on the ground floor in 1953 and took sole charge of the bookshop within two years after Martin left
🄵 Whitman literally slept in a room in the store overflowing with books
In his semi-autobiographical, Australian novel Kangaroo, DH Lawrence’s protagonist Richard Somers remarks that he’ll “probably repent bitterly going to America”. This echoes Lawrence’s own equivocation about America. In correspondence, Lawrence thought America “the land of his future” but this was tempered by a pessimism that the United States would be ‘barbaric’ and he would hate it⌖ (Letters IV:141, 151, ‘Manuscripts and Special Collections’, D. H. Lawrence Research – The University of Nottingham, www.nottingham.ac.uk).
The call of Pueblo lifestyle
In the end what clinched it for Lawrence was an invite from New York art patron Mabel Dodge Sterne to visit Taos, New Mexico. The promise of Taos captured DHL’s imagination…remote (7,000 feet-high, 23 miles from the nearest railway), 600 free Indians unspoilt by western capitalism and modernity, “sun-worshippers and rain makers” (D. H. Lawrence and the American Indians’, Jeffery Meyers, Michigan Quarterly Review, Vol 56, Issue 2, Spring 2017, www.quod.lib.umich.edu).
DHL was enchanted with the idea of the primitive lifestyle of native Americans, their spiritual faith and traditional connexion with the earth.
Taos Pueblo (Source: http://ahistoryofthepresentananthology.blogspot.com/)
Lawrence envisaged that this could be the utopian community, the free and open, instinctive society, ‘Rananim’, that he had been trekking around the world trying to find. Mabel also lured Bert to Taos with the prospect of dazzlingly spectacular scenery.
Mabel Dodge (Luhan) & her Amerindian husband (Photo: Santa Fe New Mexican)
In search of healthy air
DHL had another motive for choosing New Mexico, being potentially beneficial to his precarious health. His tubercular condition was not diminishing at allq. The climate in Taos—high and dry with famously good and clean air— was one that might bring about a cure for his infected lungs (‘Looking for Lawrence’, Henry Shukman, New Mexico Magazine, (nd),www.newmexico.org).
Desert Rananim?
As his letters show, Lawrence was in love with the desert landscape of New Mexico to an intoxicating degree – overwhelmed by the strangeness and beauty of the place, even a bit awestruck and fearful. When the writer visited the wilderness of Western Australia earlier, he experienced similar vibes from the bush environment (‘Looking for Lawrence’).
DHL waxed lyrical on the experience later, ” I think New Mexico was the greatest experience from the outside world that I have ever had. It certainly changed me forever …. the moment I saw the brilliant, proud morning shine high up over the deserts of Santa Fe, something stood still in my soul, and I started to attend”: he wrote how the person who lives there “above the great proud world of desert will know, almost unbearably how beautiful it is, how clear and unquestioned is the might of the day” (‘Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers is D. H. Lawrence’, (2017)).
At Taos Lawrence found himself the unwilling object of a love triangle with host Mabel vying with wife Frieda for his attention, which stiffled his creativity somewhat. He did however manage to finish the final chapter of Kangaroo during his initial sojourn in Taos.
The Lawrence Ranch
Ranch life in the high country
Lawrence returned to England in 1923 keen on recruiting members of the British artistic fraternity for his New Mexico ‘Rananim’. He returned the next year but with only the one recruit, artist Dorothy Brett☼, whose presence added a further tension to the feminine rivalries at Taos. This led to Mabel giving the Lawrences their own ranch way up in the mountains (8,600 feet above sea-level) and about 20 miles from Taos—the only property the couple would ever own—the Kiowa Ranch (now the D.H. Lawrence Ranch)✪. When not beavering away on new manuscript projects, Bert kept busy at the ranch chopping wood and constructing log cabins, as well as taking hikes in the mountains.
(Photo: www.taos.org)
Ambivalence towards Amerindian culture
Once Bert got to see Amerindian religious ritual and customs up close, much of his pre-visit enthusiasm dissipated (“not impressive as a spectacle”, he noted). He still admired the “Red Indian” but felt the native American culture had been debased by American ‘progress’ and modernity, reduced in Taos to that of a tourism attraction (essay ‘New Mexico’, (1928); ‘D.H. Lawrence and the American Indiana’s, Jeffery Meyers, Michigan Quarterly Review, Vol 56 Issue 2, Spring 2017, www.quod.lib.umich.edu).
⇪ ‘St Mawr’ set partly in New Mexico mountains juxtaposes the vitality of nature with modern degenerate civilisation
Lorenzo’s literary output in the Southwest
DH Lawrence visited Taos, NM, three times during the period 1922-25 but only for a total of 11 months altogether. ‘Lorenzo’, as his patron and admirer Mabel Dodge fondly called him, never fulfilled the fervent hopes of Mabel by writing the great novel of the Southwest or even of New Mexico…but he did manage to produce a solid body of work while residing in NM including the novellas St Mawr and The Woman Who Rode Away, the travel book Mornings in Mexico, as well as writing part of the novel The Plumed Serpent at the ranch (after research conducted in Mexico).
Lawrence’s TB condition worsened in Europe and the novelist died in 1930 in the south of France, still proclaiming to friends a heartfelt desire to return to his beloved Taos. Frieda, who returned to live in Taos, afterwards had her late husband’s remains exhumed and shipped back to be interred on Taos soil.
Kandy, 1925 (Photo:www.lankapura.com)
End-note: Lawrence in the tropics
Lawrence’s global search for an alternative to modern, industrialised ‘civilisation’ landed him in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) on route to America. Lawrence’s anticipation of a good time in Ceylon was dealt a harsh blow by reality. The Lawrences stayed on the edge of the forest in Kandy, their attempts to sleep plagued by unbearable heat—”the terrific sun … like a bell-jar of heat, like a prison over you”, and the local fauna —“horrid noises of the birds and creatures … hammer and clang and rattle and cackle and explode all the livelong day” (Letters IV: 214, 227 Notts U). The one bright spot was the Raj Pera-Hera festival which DHL enjoyed, inspiring him to write a poem, ‘Elephant’, the sole literary fruit of his five weeks in Ceylon.
Huxley & Lawrence in Taos
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⌖ San Francisco, the Lawrences’ entry point to the US, Bert, pernickety as ever, found less than prepossessing – “noisy and expensive”
☼although writer Aldous Huxley did visit Lawrence in NM
✪ in return the Lawrences gave Dodge the MS for Sons and Lovers, which proved to be far more valuable than the ranch
Next year marks the centenary of the visit of acclaimed writer DH Lawrence to the Antipodes … the author of Sons and Lovers and Women in Love spent some 99 days on the southern continent travelling from its west to its east coast and writing the bulk of his great Australia novel, Kangaroo. The 1922 visit by the English novelist and poet has attracted new interest both within Australian literary circles and the general public over the past couple of decades. The tortuous saga of the vicissitudes of Lawrence and his wife Frieda’s house in Thirroul, NSW, after the Lawrences departed Australia, has been canvassed elsewhere on this blog site – “Lawrence of Thirroul: Creating Kangaroo at ‘Wyewurk’”, November 10, 2014.
DHL at Taos (Source: New Mexico Magazine)
Lawrence”s Weltanschauung (World view and moral vision)
Lawrence’s unquenchable wanderlust emerged from a disavowal of the dehumanising and degenerating effects of modernity and industrialisation. To his moral eye, people’s natural feelings including sexuality had been “dulled by the mechanical routine of ‘civilisation'”, making their responses coldly cerebral, not warmly instinctive and spontaneous. Lawrence’s answer to the dilemma was for society to embrace the anima (vital energy or spirit force) to be found in primitive cultures (eg, among the ancient Etruscans)…only by doing this would modern civilisation achieve the necessary revitalisation (‘D.H. Lawrence World Literature Analysis’, upd.05-May-2015, www.enotes.com). Later after the Australasian leg, DHL believed he had discovered in Taos, New Mexico, the utopian place he had been searching for (“a new part of the soul woke up suddenly and the old world gave way to a new”)⌖.
⏏ ‘Women in Love’, set against the modern industrial Britain so loathed by Lawrence
Travels with DHL
DH Lawrence’s arrival in Australia was a stage in the writer’s global quest to find a new world in tune with his sensibilities. Dissatisfaction with his homeland had prompted voluntary exile from the industrialised rat race of Britain and launched Lawrence on a country to country “savage pilgrimage” across the world.
Coming to the southern continent, DHL’s hope was that Australia, free from the old society’s ills, would deliver the ‘nirvana’ he was seeking (a utopian construct he called ‘Rananim’) (D.H.Lawrence’s Australian Experiment’, Susan Lever, Inside Story, 21-Oct-2015, www.insidestory.org.au).
Deep dissolution down under
As the text of Kangaroo reveals, these hopes were swiftly extinguished during the sojourn in Australia. Taking an instant dislike to urban Sydney Lawrence swiftly escaped to the south coast town of Thirroul. Though the beauty and awe of the Australian bush and landscape (its “spirit of place”) left a deep impression on him, Lawrence found disfavour in what he took to be the Australian character. What galled Lawrence was the “profound Australian indifference” … “hollow, modern people, living in a society so democratic that it denied all superiority and depth of intellect and feeling”… “exemplifying the degenerative nature of industrial society” that DHL abhorred (David Game, DH Lawrence’s Australia: Anxiety at the Edge of Empire, 2015).
DH Lawrence, technophobe
Australians’ material modern-ness irked Lawrence, their slavish craving to be up-to-date with the most modern conveniences, be it electric lights, tramways or whatever (‘The beard of the prophet’, Tom Fitzgerald, Inside Story, 30-Oct-2018, www.insidestory.org.au). Australians, Lawrence/Somers opined, were too materialistic, too outward-looking, to the exclusion of their inner lives…”like so many mechanical animals” (“‘Harmless Eden”: Revisiting D.H. Lawrence’s Kangaroo“, Julian Hanna, 3:am Magazine, 28-Oct-2014, www.3ammagazine.com).
In Kangaroo, Richard Lovat Somers’ dalliance with the right wing paramilitary Diggers movement serves as a warning of the coming peril of fascism. But Somers is equally distrustful of democracy in modern, industrial society⧆ and is also alienated from socialist sentiments he encounters – embodied in the character Willie Struthers※. Typically contrarian (and at times contradictory) in his views, DHL was notorious for being what one journalist called “something of a world champion in hypercritical, hard-to-please invective (Fitzgerald)֎.
(Source: telegraph.co.uk)
Lawrence in New Zealand, hit and run
The Lawrences left Sydney in August 1922 , sailing “four days to New Zealand over a cold, dark and inhospitable sea”. A minor run-in with an immigration official upon arrival in Wellington prompted in Bert an instant negative reaction to New Zealand. Spending just one day in “cold and stormy Wellington” and seeing very little of the place♤, the couple left abruptly for San Francisco via Rarotonga and Tahiti (also not to DHL’s taste, Papeete: “dead, dull, modern”). Lawrence’s parting shot at NZ/Aeotoroa (based on a single day’s stay in the capital city) was that he had no desire “to stay in a cold, snobbish middle-class colony of pretentious nobodies” (‘Katherine Mansfield: DH Lawrence’s “Lost Girl”. A Literary Discovery’, Sandra Jobson Darroch, Rananim, 2009, www.dhlawrencesocietyaustralia.com.au).
♠ ♠ ♠
A note on place names in ‘Kangaroo’
Lawrence freely identifiesthe various places the Somers come across on their travels—Manly, St Columb (Collaroy), Narrabeen, the Quay, North Sydney, Murdoch Street (Cremorne), Mosman Bay, Como, Bulli, etc—but he alters the names of where the couple live…Thirroul becomes ‘Mullumbimby’ and their beach-cliff bungalow on the Illawarra coast, Wyewurk , is renamed ‘Coo-ee‘ in the novel.
The Lawrences’ mini-Odyssey in Sydney through the lens of ‘Kangaroo’
In DHL’s Roman à clef Australian novel, Richard and Harriet Somers re-trace Bert and Frieda’s perambulations from the city to the Northern Beaches on their first full day in Sydney, before the escape to Thirroul .
Royal Botanic Garden
”A bunch of workmen were lying on the grass beside Macquarie Street … they had that air of owning the city that belongs to a good Australian”❧
Circular Quay ferry across the harbour
“The harbour … was an extraordinary place … like a lake among the land, so pale blue and heavenly, with its hidden and half-hidden lobes intruding among the low, dark brown cliffs”
⏏ The Corso
The Corso, Manly
“You land on the wharf and walk up the street , like a bit of Margate with seaside shops and restaurants … at the end … is the wide Pacific rolling in on the yellow sand”
⏏ Lagoon at Narrabeen (Source: DH Lawrence Society Aust.)
Narrabeen Lagoon, beach
”They seemed to run to leg … three boys, one a lad of fifteen or so, came out of the warm lagoon in their bathing suits, to roll in the sand and play … extraordinary like real young animals, mindless as opossums”
Footnote: what ultimately comes through in the pages of Kangaroo is an ambivalence about Australia. In the final chapter added when living in New Mexico, Lawrence talks about loving Australia but at the same time needing to rail against it. There’s a constant struggle in Somers’ mind, a tension between his love of the place (the bush)⌧ which is “in his marrow”, and the suffocating apathy of the people surrounding him.
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⌖ Taos’ native pueblos, the “earth-centred culture”, Lawrence’s new ‘elemental’ civilisation, the wellspring of regenerative potential for contemporary civilisation (‘Looking for Lawrence’, Henry Shukman, New Mexico Magazine, (nd), www. newmexico.org)
※ possibly modelled on Australian communist agitator and unionist Jock Garden (Robert Darroch, Rananim, Dec 1999)
⧆ “a self-convinced opponent of the levelling-off effects of democracy“ (John Worthen, D.H.Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider 2005)
֎ DHL’s hyper-critical reflex was seemingly boundless – California on first impression was summarily dismissed as “a queer place…turning its back on the world (looking) into the Pacific void …absolutely selfish, very empty” (DH Lawrence, 1923 letter)
♤ the experience was mutual, Lawrence’s fleeting stopover in the “Land of the Long White Cloud” went unnoticed by the New Zealand press or public
❧ the overt egalitarian ‘mateship’ of workers in Australia was a trait that certainly got stuck in Lawrence’s craw
⌧ love, that is, mingled with a sense of dread of the bush both in Western Australia and the “bush-covered dark tor” of the Illawarra escarpment
I finally received Carol’s death certificate from the unfeeling bots at the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Glancing through it I noticed that under the sections “Mother’s Name” and “Mother’s Maiden Family Name”, the entries were “Unknown” and “WALKER”. This triggered something in my mind that I hadn’t realised before. Whenever Carol had raised the hate-inducing subject of her mother, she had never mentioned her by first name or by any name for that matter. For Carol, the resentment of her maternal treatment was as fresh and vivid as it was when she was five…the mother-abuser of Carol’s childhood, the denier of their mother-daughter bond, was a non-person, merely and perpetually an accursed thing, not to be dignified with human attribution.
Shipley Art Gallery: ‘The Lost Child’ by A. Dixon
The entry for “Father’s Name” conveyed even less information. Entered on the page were the cold and clinical words that had haunted Carol all her life — (first) “Unknown” and (surname) “UNKNOWN”. Her father’s identity was an enigma—the missing nexus that perhaps would have made her feel more whole—which Carol had always puzzled over unendingly and unknowingly. Now, here it was, official confirmation from Births, Deaths and Marriages so it would seem, that the cloak of anonymity enveloping her natural father would accompany her to the grave. Given that Carol in her life caused such a ripple with so many people who entered within her orbit, touched so many with her selfless kindness devoid of the semblance of a quid pro quo, I wondered to myself, was Carol the known daughter of two unknown (and unknowable) persons? So it does seem.
Oatley is a prime piece of residential real estate in the southern suburbs of Sydney. The suburb faces on to the Georges River (Tucoerah River in the local indigenous language). Large leafy blocks of land and water views abound in this “north shore” status locality of the south. One of the star attractions in the western fringe of Oatley is the 45-hectare Oatley Park, a dense concentration of natural bushland with Edwardian era baths and sandstone ‘castle’ built during the Great Depression and now encircled by lofty smooth-barked Angophoras Costatas.
If you cross the railway line to the east side of Oatley you can see a tower dedication to the early Sydney settler the suburb is named after – James Oatley. Oatley was yet another transported felon made good in New South Wales’ formative years. The Oatley tower in the high street contains a clock face which alerts us to J Oatley Esq’s association with timepieces. Oatley from Staffordshire in the West Midlands got napped for stealing two featherbeds and linen to the value of £16, sentenced to death for his crime but transported instead to Australia in 1814. Oatley put his watch and clock making skills to good use, winning a conditional pardon and a Georges River land grant from Governor Macquarie in 1821. On his Georges River land—stretching from Gungal Bay in the west to Boundary and Hurstville Roads—where he established a farm on his property called “Needwood Forest” after the woodland in his native Warwickshire. Oatley’s Needwood Forest grant included the area of today’s eponymous suburb.
Appointed colonial clockmaker, Oatley plied his trade from a shop in George Street opposite the Sydney Town Hall, with a bit of a flair for constructing grandfather clocks. His best known work was the clock in the turret at the Hyde Park Prisoners’ Barracks built by fellow emancipist Francis Greenway (Oatley’s clock has featured on the Australian $10 note).
Oatley’s work also won favour with later governors who granted him 515 acres in the Hurstville area between 1831 and 1835. The clockmaker died on his residential property ‘Snugburough’ in 1839. The precise location of Snugburough in Sydney is not certain…some sources give it as Canterbury, others Beverley Hills or Pubchbowl. After Snugburough was sold by Oatley’s family, future owners had to accede to a curious condition of sale – they were required to retain Oatley’s sepulchre and his body on the property. Clockmaking stayed in the family after Oatley’s demise, his third son took over the George Street shop.
⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖
Books and sites consulted:
Frances Pollon, The Book of Australian Suburbs (1988)
Brian and Barbara Kennedy, Sydney and Suburbs: A History and Description (1982)
Oatley, James (1770–1839)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/oatley-james-2514/text3399, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 30 March 2021
Like the great majority of the world’s population I’ve never been to North Korea…but unlike most people I have been to the very edge of Kim Jong-un’s secretive “Hermit Kingdom”. In 2019 I ate at restaurants run by North Korean exiles in the vibrant, lively Chinese border city of Dandong (directly opposite the seemingly dead NK city of Sinŭiju). I have also bought North Korean souvenirs from ex-pat NK market stall-holders on the Yalu River, the DPRK’s western boundary. As close to the “Kim Kingdom” as you can get, I have penetrated deep within North Korea’s territorial waters by boat on the Yalu River➊.
Source. CFR
Kim Jong-un took the helm of the North Korean regime in 2011, succeeding his father Kim Jong-Il. Given his youth, 28, and lack of experience, external observers have had doubts whether the novice could establish a lengthy hold over the country. But ten years later Kim Jong-un is still firmly in control. This can be explained by a number of factors.
The first two Supreme Leader Kims (Photo: Reuters)
Stalinist purges – Korean “Game of Thrones”
The Kim dynasty had been entrenched for over 60 years by the time it was Kim Jong-un’s turn, allowing him to inherit a stable regime commanding absolute authority as “Supreme Leader” (Suryong). Kim Jong-un also inherited the “Stalinist dictatorial public persona of his grandfather (cult of personality) and the political nous of his father” (Patrikeeff). On top of this the young Kim has adopted a ruthless approach to dealing with potential threats to his leadership through periodic purges … senior military figures removed from high office, politicians including his own uncle executed and a half-brother assassinated in Malaysia. In this Kim Jung-un (KJU) was following the pattern of his predecessors in “coup-proofing” his rule (playing off one institutional rival against another, coupled with the purging of latent threats) (Habib). Kim’s purge targets include the North Korean economic elites (the Donju who like the army had benefitted from the Supreme Leader’s patronage system). Purges keep the elites in a state of instability, unable to predict Kim’s moves (Michael Madden).
Flag of WPK
Hegemonic role of the Party
Another strategy employed by KJU to consolidate his hold on power was to reinvigorate the effectively obsolete Worker’s Party of Korea (WPK) as the core political organ of the state. This saw the emergence of a new pecking order under KJU – the rhetoric of Party / State / Army signalled the relegation of the military in politics to a role of secondary importance➋.
(Photo: Korean Central News Agency via AP Images)
The Kim Jong-un ‘vision’
Modernisation and beefing up the DPRK’s lethal strike force are high on the totem pole of KJU’s objectives. Kim has ploughed ahead with nuclear tests and missile launches in a transparent show of strength and intimidation aimed at the state’s enemies. The “Dear Leader”, as he likes to be called, is intent on more than military modernisation. Kim wants to be seen as a modern leader of a modern country, pursuing economic development as an instrument to “hook into the South Korean economic engine”…which goes a good way to explaining KJU’s diplomatic change of tack (the recent pivot to diplomatic relations with Seoul) (Ken Gause).
Leader Kim & Sister Kim
Succession plan?
The only apparent dark shadow on the landscape for Kim Jong-un➌ is the state of his own health. Overweight, a heavy smoker with a preference for rich imported foods and alcohol, rumours intensified after his three week disappearance in April 2021. Succession talk has surfaced with a possible candidate being Kim’s younger sister Kim Yo-jong.
“Crazy and irrational” Kim Jung-un
It’s tempting to write off KJU, with his erratic behaviour and bombastic pronouncements—as some sections of the mass media do—as crazy and irrational. Benjamin Habib demurs from the caricature image of Kim, contending that it deflects from the existence of a rational strategy by the regime. The argument goes that the nuclear flexing by KJU and the blustering official statements are all part of a calculated rhetoric.
(Source: The National Interest)
In this view Pyongyang’s raison d’etre in an ultimate zero-sum-game is it’s existential survival and the over-the-top weaponising is more about projecting a deterrence to South Korea, Japan and the US, rather than an aggressive intent to carry through with the threats. In the logic of North Korea’s circumstance, the use of military force is the “only credible security guarantee in what it perceives to be a strategically➍ hostile environment”. The country’s H-bomb/A-bomb and ballistic missile capability, Habib suggests, should not automatically be seen as signifying an intention to deploy on the part of the North Koreans (Habib).
Kim has stepped up the elaborate military parades recently (one in October 2020 and again in January 2021), this can be seen as a show of resilience for public consumption in the face of the triple threat to the country – Covid-19, a wave of economic sanctions and a spate of natural disasters (WPR).
Inhuman excesses
Human rights are of course at a premium in such a doctrinaire totalitarian state, but Kim’s excesses and violations again can be viewed as part of “the rational and predictable politics” which are standard in authoritarian dictatorships such as the DPRK (Habib). Social control under KJU has a distinctly Orwellian tinge with the Songbun system which herds citizens into three distinct “socio-political” classes – ‘loyal’, ‘wavering’ and ‘hostile’ (HRW).
Juche Torch, Pyongyang
🇰🇵 Endnote: ‘Juche’ – Official state ideology
The “Hermit Kingdom” endorses a philosophy of Juche, devised by Kim Il-sung. Roughly translated as “self-reliance”, by which the regime means that the Korean masses acting as the masters of their own destiny make it possible for the nation to become self-reliant and strong and thus attain true socialism (‘Juche Idea: Answers to Hundred Questions’).
𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯
➊ peering over the border into Kim Jong-un World, even from the excellent high vantage point of Hushan Great Wall, didn’t disclose much evidence of human habitation. I saw kilometres and kilometres of not unattractive empty fields and meadows, lots of green countryside but no people to speak of. The DPRK’s population of 25 million must be somewhere over there but clearly not on this borderland of the country
➋ since the 1990s Songun “military first” (over other elements of society) had been a key ideological tenet of the regime
➌ leaving aside the possibility of Kim miscalculating his hand or overreaching himself internationally with his policy of aggressive regional brinkmanship
➍ we might add “and ideological”
❥❥❥
Bibliography
‘The dangerous enigma that is Kim Jong-un’, (Felix Patrikeeff), InDaily, 08-Jan-2016, www.indaily.com.au
‘5 assumptions we make about North Korea — and why they’re wrong’, (Benjamin Habib), Nest, (2017?), www.latrobe.edu.au
‘North Korea’s Power Structure’, (Eleanor Albert), Council on Foreign Relations, 17-Jun-2020, www.cfr.org
‘North Korea Events of 2018’, Human Rights Watch, www.hrw.org
‘North Korea’s Latest show of Strength Masks Its Weaknesses’, WPR, 28-Jan-2021, www.worldpoliticsreview.com
Pyrmont Bridge Road in the inner suburb of Camperdown—no small distance from the now pedestrian only Pyrmont Bridge itself—is where you’ll find the brew house of James Squire, reputedly Sydney’s first brewer. It’s current name, Malt Shovel Brewery, is a yesteryear nod to the “Malting Shovel Tavern”, a pub run by the brewery’s namesake and founder James Squire at Kissing Point (present-day Putney on Sydney’s Parramatta River) commencing ca. 1798.
Squire (or possibly ‘Squires’) commenced cultivating hops on the riverside location around 1806. Squire is considered to be the first person to brew beer successfully in Australia, although some claim the title on behalf of one John Boston who made corn beer in Sydney in 1796 with the aid of an encyclopaedia. Boston’s Indian corn-based beer “was so successful that he erected at some expense a building proper for the business” (Iltis).
Squire also was particularly successful at it, so much so that he eventually acquired a vast estate that stretched from Parramatta River to a point north of Victoria Road. Squire’s real estate empire wasn’t exactly down to superior business acumen on the brewer’s part…Squire kickstarted his land holdings monopoly by revelling in decidedly unethical behaviour.
But more of that later, first let’s look at the earlier chapter of Squire’s life, the sequence of events that brought him to Britain’s colony at Port Jackson. From his early years in England Squire found himself on the wrong side of the law, arrested for highway robbery which launched him on a path of recidivism. He was subsequently nabbed for pilfering from somebody else’s hen house and managed to escape the noose through transportation to Botany Bay with the 1788 First Fleet. Being transported didn’t cure Squire of his predilection for thievery however. Stealing hops (an illustrious start to brewing immortality!) got him 300 lashes of the ‘Cat’ (150 immediately and another 150 on “lay-buy” when his back was deemed up to it again).
After winning his freedom Squire was granted a small plot of land which with “a little skillful swindling” from other less diligent emancipist-land grantees he managed to grow into an estate in excess of 1,000-acres (the “unethical behaviour” alluded to above).
Squire’s business was the recipient of government incentivisation a few years later when Governor King began encouraging the brewing of beer as a counter to the pernicious trafficking of rum and corruption perpetrated by the colony’s military. King’s largesse bestowed on the “enterprising rogue” included a cow and the title of Australia’s first brewer.
The brewery and Malting Shovel Tavern at Kissing Point was strategically located, roughly equidistant from the colony’s two arms of settlement (Sydney Cove and Parramatta) …very handy for thirsty passing sailors and boat passengers on the river. By 1820 James Squire was producing a weekly output of 49 hogsheads of beer most of the year long (Walsh).
Squire’s wealth did not rest on the brewery concern. Due to the vagaries of the local grain market and the import trade at the time, it rested on a number of diversified interests which included farming and grazing as well as beer making (Walsh).
Interestingly, the James Squire brewing company of today has, rather than playing it down, whole-heartedly embraced the “scoundrel’s’ legendary ill-repute as a marketing ploy. Convict-related names biographically referencing the exploits and misdemeanours of the man himself resound in the label titles of James Squire beers – “One Fifty Lashes”, “The Swindler”, “Broken Shackles”, “Hop Thief”, “Four Wives” (a reference to JS being married four times) and the like.
࿏࿏࿏
Bibliography
G. P. Walsh, ‘Squire, James (1754–1822)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/squire-james-2688/text3759, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 16 March 2021.
Judith Iltis, ‘Boston, John (?–1804)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/boston-john-1804/text2051, published first in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 16 March 2021.
Pedro II’s reign as emperor of Brazil started in the least propitious of circumstances. The first and immediate threat to the longevity of his rule was that he was only five-years-old when he acceded, necessitating a regency in Brazil until he came of age to rule in his own right. The other obstacle was that Brazil was still a fledgling empire wracked by political instability. Civil wars and factionalism plagued the empire, a vast region posing extremely formidable challenges to rule … between 1831 and 1848 there were more than 20 minor revolts including a Muslim slave insurrection and seven major ones (some of these were by secessionist movements). Pedro II had more success in foreign policy, the empire expanded at the expense of neighbours Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay as the result of a series of continental wars. Some early historians saw Dom Pedro’s long reign in Brazil (1831-1889) as prosperous, enlightened and benevolent (he freed his own slaves in 1840) [Martin, Percy Alvin. “Causes of the Collapse of the Brazilian Empire.” The Hispanic American Historical Review 4, no. 1 (1921): 4-48. Accessed December 3, 2020. doi:10.2307/2506083.], certainly the emperor was viewed widely as a unifying force in Brazil for a good two-thirds of his reign.
1870s, on a course for turbulent waters in the empireFrom the 1870s onward however the consensus in favour of the rule of Pedro the ‘Unifier’ had started to show signs of fraying. The institutions that formed the three main pillars of the empire’s constitutional monarchical system—the landowning planter class, the Catholic clergy and the armed forces—were all becoming gradually disaffected from the regime, as were the new professional classes.
The landowning elitePedro II’s reign came to an end in 1889 with his overthrow. The pretext for the removal of the Brazilian monarchy, according to the conventional thesis, was grievances of the planter oligarchy at the abolition of slavery (The Golden Law, 1888), which Dom Pedro had given his imprimatur to (CH Haring). This view holds that the landowners❋ deserted the monarchy for the republic because they were not compensated properly for their loss of slaves (Martin). This conclusion has been challenged by Graham et al on several grounds: the plantation owners dominated the imperial government of Pedro making them complicit in the decision to abolish slavery (ie, why would they be acting against their own interests?); many slave-owning planters favoured abolition because it brought an end to the mass flight of slave from properties; the succeeding republic government itself did not indemnify planters for their loss of slaves. More concerning than the abolition of slavery to the planters, in Graham’s view, was the introduction of land reform, something they were intent on avoiding at all costs. The planter oligarchs were willing to concede the end of the slave system so long as it forestalled land reform, the linchpin to real change in the society. Siding with the republicans, Graham concedes, was a calculated risk on their part, as there were many radical and reformist abolitionists¤ under the pro-republic umbrella with a very different agenda (national industrialisation) to them, but one they were willing to take⚉ [Hahner ; Graham, Richard. “Landowners and the Overthrow of the Empire.” Luso-Brazilian Review 7, no 2 (1970): 44-56. Accessed December 3, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3512758.]
🔺 Slaves on a fazenda (coffee farm), 1885
The clergyThe conservative Catholic hierarchy were traditional backers of the emperor and the empire in Brazil. But a conflict of state in the 1870s between secularism and ultramontanism (emphasis on the strong central authority of the pope) undermined the relationship. This religious controversy involving the irmandades (brotherhood) drove a rift between the Brazilian clergy and the monarchy [Hahner, June E. “The Brazilian Armed Forces and the Overthrow of the Monarchy: Another Perspective.” The Americas 26, no. 2 (1969): 171-82. Accessed December 3, 2020. doi:10.2307/980297].
The national armyThe army had long-standing resentments about its treatment in Brazilian society…its low wages and the lack of a voice in the imperial cabinet were simmering grievances. Understandable then that together with the republicans, they were in the forefront of the coup against the monarchy, the pronunciamento (military revolt) that occurred in 1889. A key and popular figure influencing the younger officer element away from support for the monarchy was Manuel Deodoro da Fonseca (Marechal de campo in the army). Marshal Deodoro assumed the nominal leadership of the successful coup. Swept up in the turmoil of republican agitation, Deodoro, despite being a monarchist, found to his surprise that he had been elected the republic’s first president. The coup has been described as a “barrack room conspiracy” involving a fraction of the military whose “grievances (were) exploited by a small group of determined men bent on the establishment of the Republic” (Martin).
🔺 Allegory depicting Emperor Pedro’s farewell from Brazil (Image: Medium Cool)
Revolution from aboveHistorians have noted that the 1889 ‘revolution’ that toppled Pedro II was no popular revolution…it was “top-down”, elite-driven with the notable absence of participation from the povo (“the people”) in the process (Martin). In fact the emperor at the time still retained a high level of popularity among the masses who expressed no great enthusiasm to change the status quo of Brazil’s polity.
The Braganza monarchy, hardly a robust long-term betWith the health of the ageing Dom Pedro increasingly a matter of concern, the viability of Brazil’s monarchy came under scrutiny. For the military the emperor was not a good role model, Pedro’s own pacifist inclinations did not gel well with the army’s martial spirit. The issue of succession was also a vexed one…Princess Isabel who deputised several times when Dom Pedro was called away to Europe was thought of as a weak heir to the crown. She did not enjoy a positive public perception and Pedro’s transparent failure to exhibit confidence in her did little to bolster her standing, contributing to a further erosion of support for the monarchy [Eakin, M. (2002). Expanding the Boundaries of Imperial Brazil. Latin American Research Review,37(3), 260-268. Retrieved December 3, 2020, fromhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/1512527]. The Brazilian monarchical state has been characterised as a kind of monarchy-lite which contributed to its lack of longevity – viz it failed to forge an hereditary aristocracy with political privileges, its titles mere honorifics not bestowing social privilege in Brazilian society. So that, by 1889, the empire had been reduced to a “hollow shell” ready to collapse (Martin).
A loose-knit empire?One perspective of the 19th century empire focuses on the sparseness and size of Brazil’s territorial expanse. Depreciating its status as an ‘empire’, this view depicts it as being in reality comprising something more like a “loose authority over a series of population clusters (stretching) from the mouth of the Amazon to the Río Grande do Sul” (Eakin). The lack of imperial unification, according to another view of the course of its history, surfaced as an ongoing struggle between the periphery (local politics) and the centre (national government), resulting in the weakening of the fabric of the polity [Judy Bieber, cited in Eakin].
Landless and disenfranchisedOther issues in addition white-anted the legitimacy of Dom Pedro’s regime, notably the shrinking of the franchise. By 1881 the number of Brazilians eligible to vote had dropped alarmingly – less than 15% of what it had been just seven years earlier in 1874. And this trend was not corrected by the succeeding republic regime, portending a problematic future for Brazilian harmony because with the new republic came a rapid boost in immigration [‘The Old or First Republic, 1889-1930’, (Country Studies), www.countrystudies.us].
The cards in Brazil were always stacked in favour of the landed elite, an imbalance set in virtual perpetuity after the 1850 Land Law which restricted the number of Brazilians who could be landowners (condemning the vast majority to a sharecropper existence). The law concentrated land in fewer hands, ie, that of the planters, while creating a ready, surplus pool of labour for the plantations [Emília Viotti da Costa, The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Histories (2000)].
Structural seeds of the empire’s eclipseOne theory locates Brazil’s imperial demise squarely in a failure to implement reform. The younger Pedro’s empire, projecting a rhetoric of liberalism which masked an anti-democratic nature, remained to the end unwilling to reform itself. The planter elite, with oligopolistic economic control and sway over the political sphere, maintained a rigid traditional structure of production—comprising latifúndios (large landholdings), slavery and the export of tropical productions (sugar, tobacco, coffee)—while stifling reform initiatives and opposing industrialisation [McCann, Frank D. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 18, no. 3, 1988, pp. 576–578. JSTOR,http://www.jstor.org/stable/203948. Accessed 3 Dec. 2020]. Another criticism of the monarchical government concerns its economic performance. Detractors point to the regime’s failure to take the opportunities afforded by the world boom in trade after 1880, a consequence of which was that powerful provincial interests opted for a federal system [‘The Brazilian Federal State in the Old Republic (1889-1930): Did Regime Change Make a Difference?’, (Joseph L. Love), Lemann Institute of Brazilian Studies, University of Illinois, www.avalon.utadeo.edu.co/]
Primeira República, “King Coffee” and industrial developmentInitially the political ascendency in the First Republic lay with the urban-based military. However within a few years the government complexion was changed. The ‘Paulistas’, a São Paulo civilian cliche of landowners, elbowed the ineffectual Deodora aside. Exploiting differences between the army and the navy, the landowning elite then edged the remaining uniformed ministers out of the cabinet [Hahner], consolidating the “hegemonic leadership” of monolithic Paulista coffee planters in the republic✪.The First (or Old) Republic (1889-1930) was marked by uneven, stop-start spurts of industrialisation together with high level production of coffee for export. The Old Republic ended with another coup by a military junta in 1930 which in turn led to the Vargas dictatorship [Font; Graham].
Río de Janeiro, 1889🔺
Endnote: The anomalous Brazilian empire of the 19th centuryDuring its 60-plus years of existence Brazil’s empire stood out among the post-colonial states of 19th century Central and South America as the single viable monarchy in a sea of republicanism. Briefly on two occasions it was joined by México, also a constitutional monarchy but one that didn’t truly take root. On the second occasion the fated Emperor Maximilian—who was Pedro II’s first cousin—tried to forge an imperial network of sorts with Brazil.
PostScriptAfter the South’s defeat in the American Civil War, Pedro II, wanting to cultivate cotton in the empire, invited Southerners to settle in Brazil which still practiced slavery (others went to México or to other Latin American states, even to Egypt). Estimates of between 10 and 20 thousand took up Dom Pedro’s offer, settling mainly in São Paulo. Most of these Confederados found the hardships too challenging and returned home after Reconstruction, some however stayed on in Brazil with their descendants still living in places like the city in São Paulo named Americana [‘The Confederacy Made Its Last Stand in Brazil’, (Jesse Greenspan), History, upd. 22-Jun-2020, www.history.com].
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
❋ a dominant force in Brazilian economics and society which had benefitted from the 1850 Brazilian land law which restricted the number of landowners
¤ such as Joaquim Nabuco
⚉ the planter elite decided in the end that a governo federal system would better protect their land monopolisation than the empire could (Graham)
✪ coffee from Minas Gerais, Río de Janeiro and especially São Paulo plantations were the mainstay of the Brazilian economy (Font)
The second in our brace of reclusive authors of American fiction is Thomas Pynchon (see preceding blog on his the similarly publicity-shy JD Salinger). Long Island-born Pynchon came to the full-time vocation of fiction-writing via short stints in the navy and for Boeing as a technical aide. By the time Pynchon writes his first novel, V. in 1963, he is domiciled in México City, and the persona of Pynchon as an “Invisible Man of Letters” has already started to take root.
PYNCHON
If there were slim pickings for inquisitive fans of JD Salinger wanting more biographical information about their ‘fave’ reclusive writer, then comparatively there’s an absolute famine when it comes to the lack of ‘goss’ on Thomas Ruggles Pynchon! Pynchon has managed to weave an airtight web of mystery around his personal life – no interviews, no attendance of literary prize awards, no memoirs, no hobnobbing with fellow celebrities at ‘A’ list gatherings, no teaching post in academia. In Pynchon’s (loosely) historically-based novel Mason & Dixon one of the characters is castigated for “the least tolerable of Offences … the Crime they styl’d ‘Anonymity’” – the very state of existence that Pynchon craves. The reclusive and ubër-private New Yorker differs from the equally reclusive Salinger in not having had to suffer the ignominy of family ‘betrayal’ as Salinger was subjected to. Pynchon’s family (agent/wife, son, brother and sister) and friends have all closed ranks, drawing down the cone of silence on the subject of the famous recluse＊.
‘Mason & Dixon’
Pynchon very much belongs to the “why make it simple, when you can make it complicated” school of literary communication. His books, popularly subsumed under the labels ‘postmodern’ and metafiction are typically characterised by over-elaborate and often open-ended plots, dense and hard to follow, labyrinthine sentences (Mason & Dixon meanders a full 122 words before it reaches its first full stop on page 2!) Pynchon offers up a mixed grill of cultural references to sex, drug culture, science and tech stuff, historical info and comic-book fantasy (with a raft of quirky and zany characters), etc. Beginning with The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), the first of Pynchon’s “Californian trilogy” novels, the author turns a critical eye on the counterculture…although Pynchon evinces a consonance with its core values and communitarian ideals he voices a concern that the American counterculture may be an accessory of the dominant culture rather than a genuine reaction to it [‘American Modernity and Counterculture’, (The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon), www.litcharts .org]. In ‘Lot 49’ protagonist Oedipa Maas accidentally stumbles into Trystero, a shadowy world of convoluted conspiracies, unearthing a centuries-old conflict between rival mail distribution companies.
Political Pynchon?
A central motif that comes through in Pynchon’s novels is a distrust bordering on paranoia of government agencies and private corporations. In Gravity’s Rainbow he expresses deep suspicions about the motives of the military/industrial complex. But Pynchon seems also to distrust the established political left in its empirical authoritarian form. Instead, his natural orientation and sympathies seem to be towards the anarchists and the preterites (ie, those controlled by the elite). One scholar notes that anarchists or allusions to them are present in all of the Pynchon books … anarchism, Pynchon seems to suggest, might be the best non-authoritarian and non-hierarchical social configuration for the future [‘Riding the Interface: An Anarchist Reading of Gravity’s Rainbow’, (Graham Benton), www.pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org]. Politics also run through Pynchon’s next, Vineland (1990), a novel which some dismissively dispatched as “Pynchon-Lite”. Vineland is an absurdist fable— punctuated with numerous references to drugs, 1960s music and TV pop culture, especially Star Wars—through which Pynchon provides a commentary on several key issues of the Eighties (the culture war debates, reading, television and mass communications). Set against the backdrop of the Republican Party’s re-election in 1984, Pynchon also takes a hefty swipe at American politics in the age of Reaganomics with a warning to America about “encroaching fascism” [Meinel, Tobias. “A Deculturated Pynchon? Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland” and Reading in the Age of Television.” Amerikastudien / American Studies 58, no. 3 (2013): 451-64. Accessed November 26, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43485900].
❝ Then again, it’s the whole Reagan program, isn’t it—dismantle the New Deal, reverse the effects of World War II, restore fascism at home and around the world, flee into the past, can’t you feel it, all the dangerous childish stupidity—I don’t like the way it came out … someday, with the right man in the White House, there will be a Department of Jesus.❞
~ Thomas Pynchon, Vineland
Guesting on ‘The Simpsons’
While resolutely keeping his guard up Pynchon maintains control of his world by choosing when and what of himself he gives up to the world at large. Famously Pynchon has appeared (in animated form) on two episodes of The Simpsons (a clear sign that the couch-surfing literary hermit is up on mainstream pop culture※), having dictated the terms of his guest spot. Obviously the idea of the Simpsons gig tickled his humerus wildly, as he is shown(sic) wearing a paper bag on his head and gets to say that he loves Marge Simpson’s book “almost as much as he loves cameras”.
Navy boy Tom
The “no selfies” author Tom Pynchon has been incredibly successful over many decades—especially living in a metropolis of over eight million people—in scrupulously avoiding the lenses of the ubiquitous paparazzi. Until fairly recently there was virtually no new photos of the reclusive writer floating round⍟. Media outlets when running a story on Pynchon almost invariably fall back on the one or two photos taken during his navy days (when Pynchon was aged around 19 or 20!). Pynchon’s legendary antipathy to having his photo taken has been explained away as self-consciousness about his protruding buck teeth (something that a sequence of sessions in the dentist’s chair early on could surely have fixed). Whether this explanation holds water or not is of course, like everything else, a topic Pynchon is deafeningly silent on. On the issue of Pynchon hermetically sealing himself off from the world, a more plausible speculation is that it may be a reflection of Pynchon’s disapproval of the modern trend of writers embracing, even rejoicing, in the role of being celebrities, eg, Norman Mailer and Truman Capote et al [‘Thomas Pynchon Returns to New York, Where He’s Always Been’, (J.K. Trotter), The Atlantic, 17-Jun-2013, www.theatlantic.com].
A method in the madness? The lengths Pynchon will go to avoid being photographed have a paranoia-like tinge to them, and some are legendary. Once in México during the Early Sixties V. period, when surprised by a random photographer, Pynchon apparently jumped straight out of his apartment window to escape being snapped [‘Hiding in Plain Sight: On the unobservable Thomas Pynchon’, (Alex Gilvarry), Topic, Issue No. 04, October 2027, www.topic.com]. The failure to pin down the identity of a famous but reclusive novelist contributes to the creation of myths … the enigma of an “invisible literary man” exudes more intrigue. Pynchon would understand that having a mystique about him, another layer of interest for his ‘gonzo’ fan base to engage with, would have a bonus marketable spin-off for the author’s sales [‘Meet Your Neighbor, Thomas Pynchon’, (Nancy Jo Sales), New York, 27-Jun-2008,www.nymag.com].
Pynchon Inc personnel: the ministry of silly names Pynchon novels are typically peopled by a vast array of (usually odd) characters. In Gravity’s Rainbow, Pychon rolls out no fewer than 400 named characters in 760 pages (most with fleeting walk-on, walk-off parts). Pynchon also revels in preposterous nomenclature, inventing lots of outrageous puns like Joaquin Stick, Benny Profane and the Marquis de Sod (a Californian lawn-care specialist!), and an inexhaustible supply of downright silly names – including McClintic Sphere, Tyrone Slothrop, Rachel Owlglass, Weed Atman, Yashmeen Halfcourt, Mike Fallopian, Scarsdale Vipe, Doc Sportello, Rev. Wicks Cherrycoke and Pig Bodine. Counterculture names abound – Zoyd, Frenesi, Prairie, etc. Needless to say from the jokey nature of this Pynchon nomen-sampler that fleshing out a character’s multi-layered depths is not really the New Yorker’s bag [‘Gravity’s Rainbow’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
An orgy of exegesis: Conspiracy la-la landAs someone with a lofty literary profile in the US and beyond (regularly scores a mention in the mix of annual Nobel Prize contenders), the utter paucity of biographical information on Pynchon has given rise to some pretty wild speculation about who he really is? Outré theories abound on the internet about the novelist’s identity, one of the most persistent is that Thomas Pynchon is really JD Salinger! Presumably the germ of this notion was the commonalities between the two, both perceived as hermits with a pathological allergy to attention, and each shared a fierce insistence on their personal privacy. But what gave added weight to the imaginative coupling in people’s minds was Salinger’s early removal from the public gaze and the supposed drying up of his literary output as evidenced by the complete cessation of his published work post-1965. This baseless ‘theory’ holds that Salinger invented “Thomas Pynchon” as an “elaborate authorial personality” to hide behind (Trotter). Even more ludicrous was the allegation that Pynchon was in fact the Unabomber! Another speculation has him as an airline pilot in real life (motivated by Howard Hughes adulation perhaps?). Other theories, rather predictably, conclude that Pynchon has to be a drug smuggler or a CIA agent (“its all there in the stories!”) [‘Authors reveal their Thomas Pynchon conspiracy theories’, Bookish, 03-Oct-2013, www.usatoday.com]. And so it goes, with more and even crazier notions. There’s something very apt that so many loopy conspiracy theories circulate about the identity of an author whose fiction is littered with accounts of loopy conspiracy theories✫.
Footnote: Lost in Pynchon Given my own often bewildered reaction to much of the fiction of Pynchon, and the palpable frustration that I see exhibited by others seeking despairingly to decode Tom Pynchon’s idiosyncratically personal brand of hieroglyphics◪, I often wonder why so many of us punters keep making the self-flagellating effort…I’m reminded of the cynic’s definition of a classic book, “something that everyone wants to have read but nobody wants to read” (Mark Twain, who else?). Echoing this is one critic’s pithy summation of Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon’s most praised book, as the “least-read-must-read” book in American history (Sales). For the marginalised multitude denied enlightenment there is some comfort in mockery. The title of the 2009 “Po-Mo” take on TRP’s ‘gumshoe’ novel, Inherent Vice⍉, offers a pyrrhic get-square (‘Incoherent Vice’) [‘Incoherent Vice’, (Sam Anderson), New York, 31-Jul-2009, www.nymag.com].
PostScript: Absurdist and Fabulist?Pynchon is a black belt when it comes to telling the “shaggy-dog” story. Early critics described his novels V. and Gravity’s Rainbow as “high-caliber shaggy dog stories, full of digressions and possibly pointless details converging to a climax that revolves little” [‘Thomas Pynchon: A Primer’, (Jack Joslin), 25-Apr-2012, www.litreactor.com]. This description also applies to the later Mason & Dixon, a long rambling tale full of rollicking in taverns and absurdly inconsequential humour. Pynchon concocts a mixture of fact and fiction, the actual historical personages of Mason and Dixon blended into the “obvious lies, rumours and outright fantasies of their travels” while surveying the boundaries of colonial North America [Thomas Pynchon: Novels & Concept.” Study.com, 25 June 2013,study.com/academy/lesson/thomas-pynchon-novels-lesson-quiz.html]. This shaggy dog, picturesque style of Pynchon brings to mind Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, but more contemporaneously it reminds me of Peter Carey (especially Illywhacker) and John Barth (The Sot-Weed Factor, Giles Goat-Boy) who both write in a Fabulist/Magic Realism vein.
＊the scarcity of biographical material on Pynchon doesn’t stop the “Pynchon-curious” from trawling through the texts to turn up whatever “auto-fiction” they can find…the protagonist of V., Benny Profane, “a schlemihi and human yo-yo” is ex-navy, just like his creator
※ Pynchon, and for that matter, JD Salinger in his time, would undoubtedly have no trouble writing a treatise on daytime television had either wished to do so
⍟ even the photos supposed taken of the septuagenarian/octogenarian Pynchon out shopping can’t be confirmed as being genuinely of him
✫ Pynchon once famously said “every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength”
◪one reviewer likened Pynchon’s cryptic first novel V. to a Hieronymus Bosch triptych
⍉thus far the only Thomas Pynchon novel to make it to the silver screen
In the contemporary world of fiction-writing and publishing, maximising one’s media exposure in such a highly competitive market is considered essential for commercial success in the industry. A regime of TV talk shows, book tour circuits, getting your face out there, meeting and greeting the fans, is what authors do, its their bread and butter.
Two American novelists whose careers have followed an altogether different trajectory are JD Salinger and Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Junior. As modern writers of fiction, what Salinger and Pynchon have in common are a seemingly reclusive nature, or at the very least a pronounced aversion to publicity, or if you prefer to look at the obverse side, a fanatical even pathological commitment to guarding one’s own privacy from prying eyes.
SALINGER
❛What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.❜※
~ JD Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
꧁꧂꧁꧂꧁꧂
The ‘Catcher’: the unbearable heaviness of fame
JD (Jerome David, but went by the name of Jerry) Salinger had a remarkably slim output for a literary career that spanned over half a century. Between 1965 and his death in 2010 Salinger published nothing at all, although he continued to write in this time, prolifically it seems⚀. 1951 was the seminal year for Salinger with the dazzling success of his debut novel, Catcher in the Rye…the story of teenager Holden Caulfield struck a profound chord with American adolescence, articulating a sense of angst and alienation from adult (mainstream) society. The ensuing torrent of fame, the intense media and fan preoccupation with the book and in its author, drove Salinger to ground, relocating for good to a rural retreat in Cornish, New Hampshire.
Salinger, in the words of the New York Times, “elevating privacy to an art form”, bunkered down, refused interviews, and clammed up about his personal life and past – leaving the press and other interested parties to try to piece together the autobiographical parts of the novelist’s existence. Some observers have speculated that Salinger experienced some sort of identity crisis or nervous breakdown after ‘Catcher’, that triggered his publicity-shyness. As a result of Catcher in the Rye’s impact Salinger thereafter set a determined course to studiously avoid future publication, including no follow-up novel to capitalise on the success✧. Eventually a handful of shorter works were published, the most significance of which was his 1961 novella/short story collection Franny and Zooey (adventures of the Glass family). On the dust jacket of that book Salinger wrote, “a writer’s feelings of anonymity-obscurity are the second most valuable property on loan to him during his working years”… elsewhere he has spoken of “the joys of not publishing” [‘Salinger, Pynchon & Co.: When writers are recluses’, (Scott Timberg), LA Times, 02-Sep-2007, www.latimes.com].
Salinger troppo bizarro
While Salinger kept schtum over the years, striving vigilantly to fend off unwanted attention, others within the author’s family and associates provided personal insights to whet the biography-starved appetites of the public. Both Salinger’s former live-in lover Joyce Maynard (who at 18 shacked up with the 50-something literary recluse in the New Hampshire hideaway) and the author’s own daughter Margaret wrote their own “tell-all”, unfavourable memoirs of Salinger (eg, “a scowling martinet who drank his own urine and clung to outmoded racial stereotypes drawn from old Hollywood movies”)¤ [Robert Schnakenberg, Secret Lives of Great Authors, (2008)]. Margaret’s hatchet-job on Dad provoked a sibling feud as Salinger’s son Matt (an occasional actor) rushed to his defence dissing Margaret’s memoir, Dream Catcher, as mere “gothic tales of our supposed childhood” [‘The odd life of Catcher in the Rye author JD Salinger’, (Martin Chilton), Independent, 01-Jan-2019, www.independent.co.uk].
A young Salinger (photo: AP)
Catcher in the Rye has consistently charted as a best-seller✪, but its critical reception has been controversial and reviews mixed. Some critics of the novel, taking a highbrow view (Joan Didion, George Steiner) have deemed it too pessimistic in its message, too obscene, sincere admittedly, but nonetheless mawkish. Other readers, more low-key in their response, have wondered what all the fuss was about [‘J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, Aging Gracelessly’, (Jonathan Yardley), The Washington Post, 19-Oct-2004, www.washingtonpost.com]. The ever-acerbic Gore Vidal questioned whether “Salinger’s enigmatic exile lent his work a seriousness it didn’t deserve” (Chilton). Salinger biographers Shields and Salerno saw ‘Catcher’ less as a coming-of-age story than allegorically as a “disguised war novel”◘ [‘Book Introduction to Salinger’, American Masters, 24-Dec-2013, www.pbs.org/].
A manifesto for the criminally unhingedA notorious side-effect of the public’s (or sections of it’s) infatuation with Catcher in the Rye is that it has been the motivational vade mecum of choice for some assassins (or would-be assassins) of celebrities. The novel had an inspirational role in the (separate) shootings of John Lennon and Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s. Mark David Chapman (who murdered Lennon) and John Hinckley Jr (who shot Reagan) both over-identified with Holden Caulfield to the point of being delusional and both were found to be in possession of a copy of ‘Catcher’at the times of their crime.
PostScript: How reclusive are these literary hermits?
Salinger and Pynchon et al have been described as “recursively reclusive”, and this seems to be the majority opinion among fervent Salinger and Pynchon-watchers [‘The People Behind the Pen – T. Pynchon, J.D. Salinger and J.R.R. Tolkien’, Cision, 25-Sep-2015, www.prweb.com/]. But this view has been challenged – in Thomas Pynchon’s case, by himself! In 1997 Pynchon told CNN (by phone) that he believed that ‘recluse’ was “a code word generated by journalists … meaning, ‘doesn’t like to talk to reporters’” – the “media-shy recluse as an invention of the media” [“The endangered literary ‘recluse’”, (Brian Joseph Davis), The Globe and Mail, 07-Aug-2009, www.theglobeandmail.com]. But if Pynchon—dubbed by the US media as the “Invisible Man”—is a recluse and a hermit, he’s one who is hiding in plain sight, having lived for about 30 years in the same apartment (the precise address can be openly accessed by a simple online search) in the dense metropolis of New York City!
In regard to Salinger, Shields and Salerno contend that he was never actually a recluse – their evidence? While in Cornish, NH, he travelled, he had friends, family, relationships, he consumed the popular culture of his day, he expressed political opinions (not necessarily positive ones…Reagan was “the outgoing dummy” and George HW Bush was “the incoming dummy”)(Chilton). Another biographer, Paul Alexander, asserts that Salinger played up the role of loner, that he was originally quite a keen socialiser when he lived in NYC…and in “another life” in his youthful pre-literary career, ‘Jerry’ had been “entertainment director” for a cruise liner, making the fun happen for 1,500 passengers on MS Kungsholm! As has been noted, Salinger and Pynchon (and Harper Lee and others) are “not recluses in the true sense of the word … they simply have different ways of being public figures” (Davis).
※ Salinger’s words proved incredibly prescient in light of his own literary career
⚀ in 2019 Salinger’s son indicated that the family will release much of his father’s large body of unpublished work
✧from the 1950s on Salinger also refused all offers to sell the film rights to ‘Catcher’, backing it up with a ready willingness to sue in any instance of unauthorised use of his creations
¤ other allegations of ‘oddball’ behaviour directed at Salinger include his practice of glossolalia, his use of an orgasmatron, his dabbling in Scientology (and Vedantaism) and embrace of extreme homeopathy (Schnakenberg)
✪to date the novel has sold somewhere in the vicinity of 70 million copies worldwide
◘ Salinger was a WWII veteran (active in D-Day, Dachau), had PTSD; postwar he was “perpetually in search of a spiritual cure for his damaged psyche” (Shields & Salerno)
Forty years on from the Emperor Agustín episode (see preceding post), México experienced a brief imperial phase for the second time. The Second Méxican empire differed from the first in being the creation of an externally-imposed political intervention. Born out of the ambitions, dreams and adventurist tendencies of the French emperor Napoleon III, the foreign intervention resulted in a hand-picked member of the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg dynasty being elevated to a “prefabricated throne” in México [Hanna, Kathryn Abbey. “The Roles of the South in the French Intervention in Mexico.” The Journal of Southern History 20, no. 1 (1954): 3-21. Accessed November 17, 2020. doi:10.2307/2954576.].
The trigger that set off the chain of events which resulted in an otherwise undistinguished Austrian archduke sitting atop an empire in faraway México was an economic crisis plaguing the Second Méxican republic in 1861. The Juarez government owed huge sums of money to foreign creditors—in particularly to France but also to other European states—which it was either unable or unwilling to repay, eventually the regime reneged on its debts. France’s Napoleon III entered into a conspiracy with México’s rich landowning class, to subvert the Juarez regime. With back-up from Britain and Spain (also creditors of the regime), the French landed a force at the port of Veracruz and demanded that Méxican government meet its financial obligations to Europe. After an initial military setback in the Battle of Puebla※, the French army eventually captured México City. The French military intervention further inflamed a civil war already in train between the conservative and liberal forces of México [‘The Emperor Maximilian arrives in Mexico City’, (Richard Cavendish), History Today, 06-Jun-2014, www.historytoday.com].
Napoleon’s empire of opportunism Napoleon’s foray into México was not just about the recovery of international debts, some historians contend that it had a longer strategic intent, a grandiose plan to fuel the emperor’s imperialistic designs, known as la Grande Pensée (lit: “the big thought”). Having established a protectorate over the country Napoleon’s immediate objective was to create a buffer against US expansionism, which he thought could be realised by turning México into a pliant imperial ally…amounting to the creation of “a new order” in the region , one to Napoleon’s liking. This view purports that the French emperor sought to forge a “Latin, Catholic bloc” to counter any likely further US encroachment on the central and southern parts of the continent (see more on this in Footnote)◇ [Michele Cunningham, ‘México and the Foreign Policy of Napoleon III’, (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Adelaide, December 1996]. The timing had been right, all of America’s energies were directed towards the civil war renting the union asunder, preventing Washington from taking a robust response to the European incursion in its sphere of influence⌽.
Emperor Maximilian I
Maximilian’s reluctance to play an obliging puppet role To head the imperial construct, Ferdinand Maximilian, younger brother of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor (Franz Josef) was chosen. Maximilian was initially loathe to take on the job, he only did so after encouragement from his ambitious wife (Carlota) and after some deception on the part of the French (a phoney plebiscite was rigged to convey the impression that the Méxican people were willing to accept an Imperio Mexicano with Maximilian as emperor). Maximilian eventually warmed to the imperial role but he proved less amenable to the conservative program espoused by his backers than they had anticipated. Seeing himself as the protector of the peasantry, Maximilian endorsed wide-reaching reforms (including abolition of serfdom and child labour) and refused to restore the powerful Catholic Church to the privileged position it held prior to Juarez’s attack on its assets (Cavendish)⌑. The loss of Catholic hierarchy support didn’t help Maximilian’s prospects of surviving when things got tight politically for him in México later on.
Castillo de Chapultepec, Maximilian & Carlota’s official imperial residence, CDMX (Photo: www.mexicanroutes.com) ⍒
Confederate exile plan Maximilian’s empire, even with its heavy reliance on French support, struggled to bend all of the internal opposition to its rule⦿. Maximilian and his French backers duly forged alliances with the American South, Confederate generals Magruder and Preston were appointed envoys to México City. The door to México was opened to Confederates…settler schemes, the brainchild of southern oceanography pioneer Matthew F Maury, were launched (New Virginia Colony/Carlota Colony) to encourage postwar migration (asylum) south of the border. Maury’s colonisation scheme was intended to bring 200,000 southerners to Méxican plantations with former slaves as ‘apprentices’, however the plan never really took off. México’s long-standing ban on slavery was a further disincentive for prospective Confederate settlers (Hanna).
French end-game As things transpired Napoleon (and Maximilian) gambled on the wrong side in the American Civil War. The Union’s emergence from the civil war triumphant was lethal for French ambitions in México, Washington was now free to turn its attention to the foreign interloper. Invoking the Monroe Doctrine of Manifest Destiny, the US “hard-balled” France into removing its troops from México. Other urgencies closer to home were also a factor in Napoleon‘s exit from México – primarily the menace of a rising Prussia. The French departure also sealed the fate of the foreign emperor they had placed on the throne. In 1867 with dwindling support for the Méxican empire, Maximilian was comprehensively defeated by the republican forces, captured and like his monarchical Méxican predecessor Agustín I, executed by firing squad.
Footnote: A rationale for French imperial reach into México and l’Amérique latine At the time of Napoleon’s Méxican adventurism there was a widespread undercurrent of ”Pan-Latinism” in the air. The Napoleonic foreign policy that propelled France into the midst of an internal conflict in México has its rationale in the thinking of political economist of the day, Michel Chevalier. His influential ideas about Pan-Latinism struck a particular chord in France. Chevalier developed the idea that France (as leader of the Latin language countries) had a special hegemonic role to fulfil among les races Latines (the “Latin races”(sic)) vis-a-vís the Anglo-Saxon world. In the New World this manifested itself in the idea of France taking the lead in Hispanic America as a bulwark against the US expansionist juggernaut. Specifically, this meant France intervening in México to stabilise the unstable Méxican government—providing “a strong barrier on the Rio Grande to impede the march of Anglo-Saxonism”—and thus resisting Yankee territorial expansion which would undermine the solidarity of Catholic l’Amérique latine❂. And, as alluded to above, for Napoleon of course, the structure of empire was deemed the best framework to glue the various parts of the territorial entity together. A bonus incentive for France to establish a foothold in the Americas would be a chance to share in the continent’s vast riches◇[‘Pan-latinism, French intervention in México (1861-1867) and The Genesis of the idea of Latin America’, (John Leddy Phelan), (reproduced in Historical Digital), www.historicas.unam.mx].
◙◙◙ Maximilian I, first and last Habsburg Emperor of México, 1864–1867
ㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎ
※ commemorated by Méxicans annually on “Cinco de Mayo” (5th of May)
⌑ one of the stratagems ultilised by Maximilian to try to make himself more appealing to Méxicans was to formally adopt the two grandsons of the first Méxican emperor, Agustín de Iturbide
⌽ practical assistance by the Americans to the republican side during the civil war was largely restricted to ‘losing’ caches of weapons over the border
⦿ Emperor Maximilian was probably aware of the downside of over-association with France – French diplomats sent to México City had an unfortunate tendency to make zero effort to disguise their distain for Méxicans, engendering an understandable reciprocal feeling of antipathy on the Méxicans’ part [Barker, Nancy N. “Monarchy in Mexico: Harebrained Scheme or Well-considered Prospect?” The Journal of Modern History 48, no. 1 (1976): 51-68. Accessed November 16, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1877749].
❂ both the French and the Méxicans viewed the prospect of further territorial grabs by the Americans as pretty much inevitable
◇ France had already signalled its interest in the lucrative Sonora silver mines in northern México
During the first half-century of México’s independence, having freed itself from the Spanish Empire in 1821, the country was subjected to two brief periods of monarchical rule. The two emperadores de México, whose reigns were separated by 40 years, were elevated to the Méxican throne through very different circumstances, though ultimately they both met the same fate.
The first emperor, Agustín de Iturbide, was a Méxican caudillo (military chieftain) who after initially supporting Spain in the Méxican war for independence, switched sides, allying with the radical insurgents and took command of the independence movement. Iturbide formulated the Iguala Plan which called for an independent México to be ruled by a prince from the (Spanish) Bourbon house (or failing that, a Méxican one), with equal rights for creoles (mixed race citizens) and peninsulares (of Spanish ancestry born in either Spain or México). The Plan, also advocating the retention of all powers for the army and the exclusivity of the Roman Catholic Church, won a consensus of approval within Méxican society. The viceroy of New Spain, with a new liberal government in charge in Spain, acquiesced to the Plan (Treaty of Córdoba), and Iturbide, basking in the glory of his role of El Libertador de la Nueva España took the helm of the new state.
(Image: www.onthisday.com)
Road to empire
Iturbide initially became the president of the governing Council of Regents. By May 1822, having several times previously declined appeals by the populace at large❋ to become emperor of México, Iturbide finally concurred and was crowned as Agustín the First in July. The empire of New Spain which fell to Iturbide certainly warranted the imperial tag, comprising an area of “Greater México” which included, in addition to modern-day México, the areas of Alto California right up to the Oregon territory, Arizona, New México, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, plus all of lower Meso-America down to Panama.
Mismanaging the finances
Within a few months things in Agustín’s empire had started to go badly “pear-shaped” and the image of Iturbide who had led the country to an almost bloodless war of independence was receding in peoples’ minds. Despite the country’s shaky financial situation the Agustín administration overspent catastrophically – a cost blowout of more than 25,000 pesos a month, nearly five times that of the New Spain Viceroyalty. Equally scandalously, the extravagance and imperial pomp of Agustín’s court drew widespread criticism and fostered republican sentiment at a time when ordinary Méxicans were bearing the brunt of salary cuts and newly imposed taxes [Anna, Timothy E. “The Rule of Agustin De Iturbide: A Reappraisal.” Journal of Latin American Studies 17, no. 1 (1985): 79-110. Accessed November 13, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/157498]. In addition, Agustín increasingly couldn’t afford to pay the army (his power base) which to was prove critical to the chances of his own political longevity.
México, 1825 (image: Library of Congress (US)
Emperor v Congress
From the onset of the empire Agustín was at loggerheads with an increasingly hostile Congress, eventually resulting in a more authoritarian response by the ruler…press freedoms were curtailed, an alleged conspiracy within the parliament gave Iturbide a pretext to jail republican member, suspend Congress and replace it with a 45 man-junta. Key sections of the army deserted the emperor in 1823 including his most trusted generals. Other leading army generals, Santa Anna and Victoria, declared the Casa Mata Plan, calling for Agustín’s ouster and the installation of a republican form of government✫. Finding his position untenable Agustín abdicated in March 1823 and sought exile in Europe. Unaware that Congress had sentenced him to death in absentia, Iturbide returned to México in 1824 and was arrested and promptly executed. Iturbine’s constitutional monarchy was replaced with a federalist structure along US lines—de Los Estados Unidos Méxicanos, the ‘USM’—a constitution giving more power to the legislative branch than to the executive.
PostScript: Agustín the ‘Unpraised’
Historians on the whole have tended to give Iturbide rather short shrift, especially when compared to the other, lavishly acknowledged, great liberadores of Spanish American history such as Bolivár and San Martin. Many seem have taken a leaf from the book of Iturbide’s contemporaries who unrestrainedly vilified him, eg. the opposition El Sol Méxican newspaper who labelled the emperor “a traitor, a hypocrite and an impious man” (30th April 1823)✪, “betraying his patria (homeland) for personal wealth and tyrannical power” [Review, Timothy E. Anna, The Mexican Empire of Iturbide, (1990), Michael P. Costeloe, (Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009, www.cambridgeunivesitypress.org/].
(attributed: JA Huerta)
Historian TE Anna proffered a fresh reappraisal of the embattled first emperor of México three decades ago in an attempt to give some balance. On the charge that Iturbide usurped power for himself, while conceding there were lingering questions of legality about his accession to the throne—Congress lacked the required quorum to ratify the move—Anna nonetheless contends that there was no substantial nationwide opposition to the imperial elevation at the time. Anna also evidences Iturbide’s reluctance to assume the title of emperor, noting that it was only at the urging of others that he eventually took the job. Moreover he affirms that the consensus in favour of Iturbide reflected the existence of a “cult of Iturbide”, a genuine and spontaneous groundswell of popular support that was “not manufactured by the Hero himself”. On the question of why did Iturbide, having already consolidated power in his hands, go the emperor route, Anna argues that there was very few voices raised against the establishment of a monarchy in 1822 (mainly Fray de Mier and El Sol)…and that Méxicans, after centuries of rule by the Spanish viceroys, were accustomed to an imperial form of government▣. Anna also addresses why Agustín made the decision to abdicate, concluding that he “gave up because the political price of remaining on the throne was more than he would pay”. To continue as emperor, Anna argues, Iturbide recoiled from the grim prospect of having his power emasculated… conceding sovereignty to Congress meant imperilling the planks of his cherished Iguala Plan (Anna).
__________________________________________
❋ excluding republicans
✫ Santa Anna’s other co-conspirators against Agustín were generals Guerrero and Echàverri
✪ Other pejorative adjectives heaped on Agustín include ‘fraud’, ‘usurper’, ‘dictator’…his decriers have even described him as “México’s most significant non-person” [Anna Macias, TIMOTHY E. ANNA. The Mexican Empire of Iturbide. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1990. Pp. xii, 286. The American Historical Review, Volume 96, Issue 2, April 1991, Pages 642–643, http://doi.org/10.1086/age/96.2.642-a]
▣ conversely the republican form of rule was still not very well understood at the time, even by its advocates
✦ Anna’s basic thesis seems to be that at heart Iturbide wanted the Méxican regime to be a constitutional monarchy but was thwarted by enemies in and outside of Congress (Macias)
Romanians, especially those from the region of Transylvania, must view Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula with at best mixed feelings. On the one hand, the immense popularity of Stoker’s imaginative work of fiction helped put Transylvania on the international tourist map…on the other hand, its dark and ghoulish tale of chilling evil with its genesis in the mountains and forests of trans-silvae (“the land beyond the forest”), projects a negative and deceptively gloomy picture of the country. The association of one of the greatest heroes in Romanian history and a defender of Christianity, the Medieval ruler Vlad Ţepeş III, with the fictional Dracula, would be displeasing to many patriotic Romanians.
Dracula’s transformation into a classic of the Gothic horror genre captured the imagination of film-makers, inspiring numerous silver-screen interpretations of Dracula – from the silent German feature Nosferatu to countless Western film versions which made actors such as Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee famous – and typecast. The Dracula character’s pervasion of especially American popular culture has seen the trope extend to parody cartoon versions on TV (Duckula), to female teen “vampire-slayers” (Buffy) and even to “blaxploitation” movies asserting the emergence of a self-conscious black culture in the US (eg, Blacula).
Vlad’s signature punishment
In some screen interpretations of the novel, like the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the identities of Dracula and Vlad Ţepeş are presented as if they are one and the same person! (see also PostScript). Entirely fanciful of course but Stoker’s character did draw inspiration from the real-life Vlad Ţepeş III (or Vlad Împalatul). Vlad was the voivode✱ of Wallachia in the mid-15th century, infamous for impaling victims such as his own troublesome boyars or foreigners captured in conflicts (Ottomans, Bulgarians, Saxons, Hungarians▣). Such an horrific torture technique earned him the nickname “the Impaler”.
⇩1499 woodcut, Vlad the Impaler
Vlad Ţepeş, voivode and resident of Wallachia, not Transylvania
Stoker did get the name ‘Dracula’ from the Medieval Romanian prince, or at least from his family. Vlad’s father—Wallachian voivode before him—was Vlad II, also known as Vlad Drâcul…Drâcul (or Drâc) was a word for ‘dragon’ in the 15th century※, today in Modern Romanian it means “the devil” – something noted by Stoker in his research for the book as an apt descriptor for his fictional arch-nemesis. There is however a great deal of the character of Count Dracula that Stoker didn’t derive from the circumstance of Vlad Ţepeş. The Impaler had nothing to do with vampires or any supernatural beings and his associations with Transylvania were largely peripheral and tenuous. Vlad was supposedly born within Transylvania in Sighişoara although there are some doubts about this (an alternative view has his birthplace in Wallachia). Bran Castle, a Transylvanian tourist attraction identified with Stoker’s Dracula, has no connection with Vlad at all [Florin Curta, referenced in ‘The Real Dracula: Vlad the Impaler’, (Marc Lallanilla), Live Science, (2017), www.livescience.com].
⇩Bran Castle (Photo: Daniel Mihailescu/AFP/Getty Images)
Constructing the Ur-vampire
Transylvania, being to outsiders, “a mysterious land of vampires and other supernatural things”, handed down a long tradition of folklore and legends, it’s not surprising that Stoker drew on this source for inspire and inform his vampire story. Superstitions and beliefs of Romanian peasants in Stoker’s time fuelled a plentiful supply of tales about vampiri (vampires), vârcolaci (werewolves) and other supernatural monstri. Stoker’s library research would also have acquainted him with the strigol, a Romanian figure of legend—“a reckless spirit that returns to suck the lifeblood from his relatives”—the type of vampirish “undead souls” that would find a place in Stoker’s horror novel [‘The Use of History in Dracula Tourism in Romania’, (Tuomas Hovi), www.folklore.ee].
⇧Whitby, England (Imagecredit: www.visitwhitby.com)
Non-Romanian influences on Dracula
In the Dracula novel the undead Count travels to Britain in search of more victims, journeying to Whitby in Yorkshire. This echoes Stoker’s own earlier visit to Whitby in which the author was reportedly quite taken with the town, its colony of bats circling round the churches, its whole creepy atmosphere, all of which he would have found good material for a Gothic novel [‘How Dracula Came to Whitby’, English Heritage, www.english-heritage.org.uk]. Stoker apparently found more inspiration in Port Erroll (these days, Cruden Bay) in Aberdeenshire – Slains Castle with its “fang-like rocks” is thought to have also inspired the Transylvanian Dracula castle home in the book [‘Slains Castle’, www.visitabdn.com].
Vampires: not the exclusive preserve of Transylvania⦿Bram Stoker was Irish and never visited Romania in his lifetime, prompting some to speculate that the Dracula story may equally have been influenced by the author’s own experiences growing up in Ireland. Stoker would have been exposed to homegrown myths of the supernatural (such as those involving the sidhe, the fairy people of Irish folklore), as well as to the nightmarish ordeal of living through a cholera epidemic [‘How Bram Stoker creates Dracula with the aid of Irish Folklore’, (Leonie O’Hara), Irish Central, 04-Oct-2020, www.irishcentral.com].
PostScript: Vampire tourism
Vampire tourism in Transylvania has not been waylaid by coronavirus, tourist operators in Romania are still offering up a raft of tour packages—with titles like “7-Day Dracula Highlights Tour” and “Fun With Fangs: Vampire Tours in Romania”—to lure the “vampire-curious”. The tours, tend to wallow in all the predictable cliches and stereotypes, milking the prevailing craze for all things vampire, staying in Dracula-themed hotels, etc. Vampire tourism is an intriguing admixture of history, tradition and fiction…taking a leaf from Hollywood some of the tours indulge in considerable conflating of the historic Vlad Ţepeş with the fictional Count Dracula (Hovi).
▣ Prince Vlad’s political fortunes generally hovered in the vacuum between the two regional powerhouses Hungary and the Ottomans, who he fought both with and against at different times
※Drâculeşti is the patronymic – Vlad Ţepeş was also known as Drâculea, “son of the dragon”
☒ descendants of Saxon (German) merchants and craftsmen who migrated to Romania, commencing in the 12th century
⦿ though the tradition is a strong one in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, eg, Greece vrykolakas, Albania shtriga
The James Bond film series, is the world’s most successful and enduring movie franchise, since 1962, 24 completed feature films and with another currently cooling it’s post-production heels in Covid lockdown…a franchise that seemingly has not yet run out of steam. The 007 phenomenon has inspired countless imitations in cinema and television. This has ranged from blatant rip-off imitators trying to capitalise on its impetus in the Sixties (“Matt Helm”, “Our Man Flint”, “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”, etc.) to playing it for laughs parodies (“Get Smart”, “Austin Powers”, “Johnny English”).
(Photo: Britannica)
But where did the original creator of the James Bond novels, Ian Fleming, get his inspiration for the iconic character from? We know that Fleming’s own lived experience and background—as a British naval intelligence officer in WWII—made him an insider in the world of espionage, double deceptions and counter-agents. Obviously when the Caribbean-domiciled Fleming came to put pen to paper and create the fictional James Bond in the early Fifties, he drew on many of the real-life acquaintances he had met in the ‘workplace’❋.
In his lifetime Fleming never said definitively who the principal model for 007 was, but the consensus seems to gravitate towards a Serbian double agent Dušan (‘Duško) Popov, someone Fleming came across in the course of his own intelligence career. A famous scene in Casino Royale (Fleming’s first James Bond novel) further advances the association of the world’s most celebrated fictional spy with Popov. Bond’s besting of a powerful Russian criminal at the baccarat table in Casino Estoril (Portugal) in the book/film mirrors an exchange Fleming observed first-hand when the real-life spy spectacularly called the bluff of a boastful Lithuanian gambler in a baccarat game at the same location.
Popov stumbled into the espionage game after being arrested by the Gestapo. To get out of that pickle Popov agreed to spy for the Abwehr (German intelligence agency). While in England he was recruited by MI6 and turned double agent✫. During the war Popov managed to feed a steady stream of misinformation to the Nazis about the Allies’ movements, strength, etc. Most productive for the Allies was his role in Operation Fortitude – Popov helped to convince German military planners that the D-Day invasion of France would occur in Pas de Calais, not Normandy, the actual landing point. As a consequence of Popov’s disinformation, when Operation Overlord was launched in 1944 there were seven German divisions stuck in Calais and unavailable to the Reichswehr in Normandy [‘My name is Popov, Duran Popov’, (Marta Levai), www.0011info.com].
(Image: Getty)
The Serbian counter-spy also tried in August 1941 to alert the US military as to high-level Nazi and Japanese interest in Pearl Harbor, however the critical information which could have averted the military disaster on 7th December was blocked from reaching its target by CIA director Hoover. Hoover distrusted Popov as a double agent, an attitude not allayed by Popov’s reputation as a womaniser and playboy.
(Source: www.newspapers.com)
After the war Popov’s services were rewarded by the Brits with an OBE, but it wasn’t until 1974 that Popov himself lifted the cover on his war-time espionage activities when he published his autobiography. When asked about comparisons between himself and 007, Popov was dismissive of the hedonistic, jet-setting spy as portrayed on the big screen, remarking that “a spy who drank like Bond would be drunk the first night and dead the second” [‘From the archive: the real James Bond, 1973’, (Observer archive), (Chris Hall), The Guardian, 22-Mar-2020, www.theguardian.com].
_____________________________________________ ❋ and on those Fleming only knew of, such as the legendary master spy Sidney Reilly [‘Novel Man’, (William Cook), New Statesman, 28-Jun-2004]
✫ at one point Popov was also spying for the Yugoslav intelligence service, making him a triple agent
In the aftermath of the Great War, among the numerous issues facing the post-world war peacemakers was what to do about the status of Fiume, which had been part of the(dissolved) Austro-Hungarian Empire. Both the newly established Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (KSCS), and Italy, laid claims to the city whose population included significant numbers of Italians as well as Croats and Slovenes. While the Paris Peace Conference deliberated over Fiume’s fate❈, an Italian poet-adventurer named Gabriele d’Annunzio took advantage of the city’s state of flux to invade with a small private force in the name of Italian irredentism.
The “Poet-Warrior”
D’Annunzio was an international celebrity in his time, an unconventional, physically small but larger-than-life, multi-faceted character, an Italian man of letters who also saw himself as un uomo d’azione (‘a man of action’)⌖. Having seized the disputed Adriatic port of Fiume, d’Annunzio offered his prize to the Italian government who not wanting to endorse d’Annunzio’s dubious coup, rejected the offer [‘An Irishman’s Diary on Gabriele d’Annunzio — the “John the Baptist of Fascism” and would-be IRA quartermaster’, (Mark Phelan), The Irish Times, 07-Mar-2018, www.irishtimes.com]. Spurned, d’Annunzio reacted by declaring Fiume’s independence as the “Italian Regency of Carnaro”, AKA Impresa di Fiume (‘Endeavour (or Enterprise) of Fiume’).
🔺Photo: d’Annunzio and some of his supporters in Fiume
Progressive reforms and a repudiation of the Versailles Treaty
The constitution(la carta del Carnaro) of d’Annunzio’s unrecognised enclave contained an idiosyncratic “grab-bag” of ideas, including elements from both the Left and Right. The charter included many progressive articles – calling for the full equality of women in society, tolerance for both religion and atheism, a social security system, medical insurance and age pensions✪[Michael A Leeden, The First Duce: D’Annunzio at Fiume, (1977)]. D’Annunzio’s regime was the first to recognise the Soviet Union and pitched the idea of a kind of “anti-league of nations” for (select) oppressed peoples of the world—which in d’Annunzio’s thinking was those countries which fared badly in the post-WWI territory carve-up and were holding a grudge—including offering assistance in the form of arms to the IRA in its struggle to free itself from British colonialism.
Culture, ‘counterculture’, plus proto-fascismLa carta del Carnaro made music a key principle of the state, the arts flourished with daily public poetry readings and concerts. Impresa di Fiume established a corporatist state along anarcho-syndalicalist lines. The Adriatic city exuded a veritable bohemian buzz, becoming, as Hughes-Halley notes, a “political laboratory” for all manner of political persuasion including anarchists, syndicalists, socialists and ultimately, fascists. It wasn’t all politics either…all manner of perceived ‘subversives’ and outliers, including the socially marginalised, the unorthodox and the disenfranchised, flocked to d’Annunzio’s enclave – fugitives, drug dealers (and takers), prostitutes, discontented idealists, ‘pirates’, dandies, homosexuals, artistic “drop-outs”, runaways, and so on⊞ [Lucy Hughes-Halley, The Pike: Gabriele D’Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War, (2013)].
Although the Fiuman duce wasn’t a fully-fledged fascist himself, his political ideas and his aesthetics in inspired an imitator in Benito Mussolini and informed the blueprint for the future Italian corporatist-fascist state – d’Annunzio’s legacy which prompted many to see him as a kind of “godfather of Italian Fascism” includes the staging of mass rallies, demagogic speechifying, black-shirted vigilantism and Roman salutes (Phelan). Moreover, d’Annunzio’s adventurism in the Regency of Carnaro contributed to a weakening of Italian democracy and paved the way for the Fascist takeover and consolidation of the corporatist state (Hughes-Hallett).
D’Annunzio’s exile and defenestration Under a deal between Italy and KSCS (Treaty of Rapallo, 1920), the enclave’s name was changed to the Free State of Fiume. D’Annunzio refused to acknowledge the agreement and having failed to reach a modus vivendi with the Italian government, impetuously and unwisely declared war on Italy – with predictable, disastrous results. Fiume was bombarded and d’Annunzio was forced to flee—relocating in exile to Lake Garda in the eastern Lombard region—leaving his Reggenza and his schemes for a new world order in tatters. A later agreement (Treaty of Rome, 1924) sealed Fiume’s full annexation by Italy. Injuries sustained by the still popular d’Annunzio in 1922 when he mysteriously fell from a window (possibly an assassination attempt) worked to Mussolini’s favour, whether he was implicated or not. D’Annunzio withdrew from politics and Mussolini secured his continued inactivity through the payment of inducements. D’Annunzio however characteristically did not remain entirely mute, proffering advice to Mussolini whenever he felt the inclination◰, such as his warning, unheeded, in the 1930s to Il Duce not to enter into an axis pact with Hitler.
Topnymic end-note: Flume, Fiume, Rijeka Fiume today is the city of Rijeka (‘River’ in Croatian) within the Republic of Croatia (post-Yugoslavia space)… roughly, a bit over twice the size of Fiume in d’Annunzio’s day, it comprises the most important deep-water port on the Croatian coast.
⋄⏦∝⧜∘⋄⏦∝⧜∘⋄⏦∝⧜∘⋄⏦∝⧜∘⋄⏦∝⧜∘⋄⏦
❈ the Allies’ (and US president, Wilson’s) preference had been to make Fiume into a buffer state, a prime candidate for the headquarters of the soon-to-be created League of Nations
⌖d’Annunzio was many more things as well – decadent artist and musician, aesthete, war-monger and war-hero, necromancer, pioneering aeronautist, serial debt-defaulter, libertine and cad, above all perhaps, an indefatigable self-publicist (Hughes-Halley)
✪ progressive platform aside, Comandante d’Annunzio retained an elitist perception of his own role in national affairs, inspired by Nietzsche, that of the Übermenschor superuomo (the “superior man” who rises above society’s mediocrity)
⊞ it would be interesting to know if the Fiume Enterprise had any influence on the creation of contemporary Užupis, the bohemian “independent republic” of artists ensconced within the city of Vilnius, Lithuania 🇱🇹 – see blog Vilnius I, Senamiestis & Užupis: From Old Town to Artistocrazy? (06-November 2015)
◰ Mussolini and d’Annunzio exchange some 578 letters and telegrams until the latter’s death in 1938 [Peterson, Thomas E. “Schismogenesis and national character: the D’Annunzio-Mussolini correspondence.” Italica, vol. 81, no. 1, 2004, p. 44+. Gale Academic OneFile, Accessed 21 Sept. 2020].
In a way the Wonder Woman story starts in Medford, Massachusetts, at Tufts University, in the 1920s. William M Marston, a young progressive and unorthodox psychology professor, teaches his own DISC theory＊ to his students. One particular female student takes a shine to Marston’s DISC ideas and to the professor himself. Next thing we know Marston immerses himself in a ménage a trios with the student (Olive Bryant) and his (initially quite reluctant) wife Elizabeth. The polyamorous relationship◵ allows Bill to explore a latent interest in BSDM and arrive at the conclusion that women are the “love leaders” of society, predicting that women would “take over the rule of the country, politically and economically, within the next hundered years” [Tim Hanley, Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine, (2014)].
(Source: www.money.org/)
⍋ 1st sighting of the pioneering super-heroine: Marston uses the pseudonym “Charles Moulton” for the Wonder Woman comic books
Marston over the years tries his hand at many things in addition to psychology —inventing a systolic blood pressure test (which contributes to the development of the polygraph); writing screenplays for early silent films; authoring self-help books—without ever really attaining a measure of lasting success in any. Marston’s venture into creating comic books in 1940 turns that trend around. Always looking for a new business opportunity, especially after finding himself on the outer in academe, Marston finds a new way to champion his faith in female superiority by creating Wonder Woman, the first super-heroine in comics.
⍒ Wonder Woman on the lie detector
Marston’s ‘superwoman’
Having successfully pitched the idea to DC Comics boss Max Gaines, Marston’s Wonder Woman debuts in 1941 in All Star Comics #8, with cartoonist HG Peter supplying the pencilling which have a touch of art nouveau about it. Marston embodies WW with all the attributes and values that added up to his idea of perfect femininity (based seemingly on an amalgam of the brace of women in his life, Elizabeth and Olive). The make-up of WW’s character reflects Marston’s fascination with Greek mythology. She is depicted as an Amazonian princess◘ , as “strong as Hercules”, “wise as Athena” and “beautiful as Aphrodite”. Garbed in a sexy but patriotic suit of star-spangled red, white and blue, her accoutrements are distinctively martially potent – including the “Lasso of Truth”, a device to compel people to tell the truth (an idea germinating from Marston’s lie detector prototype). WW wears indestructible bracelets which deflect bullets, a golden tiara which doubles as a projectile and an ‘invisible’ jet to whisk herself away from danger [Wonder Woman Psychology: Lassoing the Truth, edited by Travis Langley & Mara Wood (2018)].
Wonder Woman, a comic book gender transgressorIn the comics of the 1930s prevailing cultural norms are reinforced,superheroes are male by gender and violent in method – the stereotypical depiction of women was commonly restricted to evil seductresses, the girlfriends of heroes (eg, Lois Lane) or their ‘helpmates’. Wonder Woman represents a radical departure from the norm, her shtick is fighting fascism in America wherever she finds it – using her brains rather than the heavy-handed brawn exhibited by Batman, Superman and co. [‘A Psychologist and A Superhero’, (Margarita Tartakovsky), Psychology Central, updated 15-Mar-2019, www.psychcentral.com].
Wonder Woman, “deer-hunting” ⍋
Comic bondage and a moral backlash
Marston is able to indulge one of his most cherished psychosexual beliefs through Wonder Woman, that “women enjoyed being bound”. In the comics it appears as a standard contrivance, we find WW being tied up by villains as some point or other in the story line. Sometimes WW herself ties up women, and to accentuate the kinkinessof her character, dresses them in deer costumes for a mock cervid hunt through the forest⁌ [‘Wonder Woman (comic book)’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. The BSDM preoccupation reflects a personal fetish of Marston’s but also can be linked back to the powerful influence the suffrage, feminist and birth control movements has on him (pioneering birth control activist Margaret Sanger was Olive Byrne’s aunt) ⌖. Wonder Wonder is an instant hit for the comic book-reading public (eventually reaching a weekly readership of five million), drawing the opprobrium of America’s moral guardians who object to the torture motif running through the stories, also considering WW’s outfit to be far too skimpy [‘The Surprising Origin Story of Wonder Woman’, (Jill Lepore), Smithsonian Magazine, October 2014, www.smithsonianmag.com].
⍒ Justice Society of America
At DC Comics Wonder Woman is invited to join the Justice Society of America (DC’s superhero team in the “Golden Age of Comic Books” as the period was known). WW’s elevation is hardly a step forward for gender advancement however as her designated role in the JSA is that of secretary for the male superheroes, while the ‘boys’ get on with the heroics of protecting the world from the designs of global criminal masterminds [‘The Truth About Wonder Woman’, Robert Kirkman’s Secret History Of Comics, (US documentary)].
Marston doesn’t get to appreciate the success of Wonder Woman for long, he contracts a form of cancer and dies in 1947, still in his early fifties (for the last two to three years he has an assistant, Joye Hummel, who helps ghost-write the WW stories when he is too ill). With the reins of the Wonder Woman comics passing from its originator to new hands, the iconic super-heroine’s persona and fortunes would undergo a number of transformations over the decades to follow.
Initial sketch of WW by HG Peter (1941) ⍒(Source: Smithsonian Libraries)
︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵
＊Marston believes that the behavioural expression of emotions could be divided into four primary types – Dominance, Inducement, Submission and Compliance [‘William Marston’, www.discprofile.com/]
◵ Elizabeth and Olive each have two children to Bill and everyone live under the same roof
◘ like Superman, Batman, etc, WW has a civilian alias – Diana Prince
⁌ such scenes may also have inspired by Byrne givingMarston a window into the activities of her sorority at Tufts University – “baby parties” where dominatrix women bind and discipline submissive sorority members [‘Curious Traditions of Times Past: Baby Parties’, (Yim Walsh), Tufts, 18-Sep-2014, www.dca.tufts.edu]
⌖ from this exposure Marston learns that the breaking of chains is “a powerful feminist symbol of emancipation” [‘A look back at Wonder Woman’s feminist (and not-so-feminist) History, (Michael Cavna), Independent, 30-May-2017, www.independent.co.uk].
THE modern history of Sweden has been one of continuous, peaceful state existence. Non-participation in any war since 1814, no political assassinations in the country for nearly two centuries (following the murder of King Gustav III in an aristocratic coup attempt in 1792). This remarkable run, free of political violence, was shattered on the night of 28th February 1986 with the seemingly unfathomable murder of Sweden’s incumbent democratic socialist prime minister, Olof Palme＊.
Sveavägen murder scene🔻 (Photo: Anders Holmström/Svenskt Pressfoto)
‘Clouseauesque’ policing The Swedish PM’s shooting in Sveavägen, one of Stockholm’s busiest streets, by a single assassin, was followed by an amateurish investigation that was a complete shambles from the start. An initial mix-up over phone calls meant the police were slow to respond to the crime, losing precious minutes while the murderer made good his escape. On arrival, they failed to cordon off the murder scene properly, allowing onlookers to contaminate potential forensic evidence; key witnesses were allowed to leave the scene without being questioned. Established crime protocol—a street-by-street search of the area (a dragnet)—was not implemented [“Olof Palme: Sweden believes it knows who killed PM in 1986’, BBC News, 100-Jun-2020, www.bbc.com/].
🔺Head of investigation, H Holmér (Image: www.news.sky.com)
The police investigation was headed by Hans Holmér who assumed more or less from day one that the crime was politically motivated, eventually becoming fixated on the Kurdish militant group the PKK as the likely perpetrators, to the neglect of other leads (injudiciously, witnesses with key information were ignored). After a haul of locally-based Kurdish immigrants were arrested and then released for lack of solid evidence, the prosecutors and media turned against Holmér’s handling of the case, forcing him to resign [‘“Murder Most Foul” – the Death of Olof Palme’, (Jan Lundius), Inter Press Service, 30-Jun-2020, www.ipsnews.net; BBC News]⦿.
The suspects and the conspiracy theories◘ In the 34 years since the Palme shooting the police have conducted 10,000+ interviews and 134 people have confessed to the murder. Aside from the PKK, another international suspect was the white South African regime. Palme was a charismatic figure in world politics but also a controversial and polarising one, as a foreign policy-minded social democrat he elicited criticism from both left and right, including from both the superpowers. In addition, his high-profile anti-apartheid stance was a thorn in the side of the Pretoria government. One theory suggests a conspiracy between South Africa’s security and intelligence forces and right-wing extremist mercenaries within Sweden to execute Palme. The view gained some traction but Swedish investigators have never satisfactorily connected the dots between these elements.
🔺 Stockholm: Intersection of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan
Palme’s economic reforms, especially those geared towards promoting worker control, did not endear him to the capitalist class in Sweden. More specifically there was Palme’s strong stance against the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors who was illegally selling weapons to several proscribed nations. When Iran was blocked from receiving a shipment one scenario advanced is that an Iranian hitman liquidated the Swedish PM [‘Sweden’s Bofors Arms Scandal’, Directorate of Intelligence, 04-Mar-1988, www.cia.gov/].
Political pressure for “a result” Refocusing domestically on individuals, the spotlight turned to Christer Pettersson who had a criminal record including manslaughter. Pettersson was dubiously convicted of Palme’s murder in 1989, in part because Palme’s widow, prompted by police officers, picked him out in a police lineup. The seriously compromised verdict was easily overturned on appeal (lack of a murder weapon or motive) [‘Who killed Sweden’s prime minister? 1986 assassination of Olof Palme is finally solved – maybe’, (Andrew Nestingen), The Conversation, 11-Jun-2020, www.theconversation.com]. The investigation team’s eagerness to ‘fit’ Pettersson for the crime despite being bereft of hard evidence, reflects the pressure exerted by the ruling Social Democratic Party on the police to secure a quick resolution of the crime “acceptable to the public” [‘Who killed the prime minister? The unsolved murder that still haunts Sweden’, (Imogen West-Knights), The Guardian, 16-May-2019, www.theguardian.com].
Another, more ‘political’ suspect to attract the police’s interest early on was Victor Gunnarsson. Gunnarsson was an activist with connexions to various right-wing groups, especially the European Workers Party which held grudges against Palme. Gunnarsson was briefly detained by Holmér but the case against him however dissolved when witnesses failed to locate him at the murder scene at the time of the crime. Gunnarsson later emigrated to the US where he himself ironically became a homicide victim [‘Victor Gunnarsson’, People Pill, www.peoplepill.com].
‘Skandiamannen’✪ Another name on the person of interest list of police was Stig Engström. Engström willingly offered himself up to police as a ‘witness’ at the time of the assassination and though questioned, the police eventually discounted him as a serious suspect. But some 20 years after the murder, a new theory, originating in a book by Lars Larsson and developed by journalist Thomas Pettersson, gained traction. The case put by Pettersson that Engström was the killer rested on a conjunction of factors—the “right timing, the right clothing, (he had) unique information, he had close access to guns of the right type, he was right wing and Palme unfriendly” [‘After 34 Years, Sweden Says It Knows the Killer of Olof Palme’, (Thomas Erdbrink & Christina Anderson), New York Times, 10-Jun-2020, www.nytimes.com]. Petersson handed over his findings to the police in 2016, leading to a reopening of the investigation.
Palme, then Swedish communications minister, (with actress Lena Nyman), appeared in the controversial 1960s “erotic-drama” ‘I am Curious – Yellow’ 🔻
‘Resolved’ but left up in the air? Earlier this year the state prosecutor announced that he had come to the conclusion that Engström was probably Palme’s killer, but, given that Engström himself died in 2000, he promptly closed the case. Not everyone in Sweden is satisfied by the conclusion to the Palme case, many questions remain unanswered about the inconclusiveness of the evidence…eg, no DNA match, where is the missing murder weapon and what was the motive? (BBC). To paraphrase one antagonistic perspective on the case resolution: “it settles none of the unanswered questions”, instead it “underlines the determination of powerful political forces to continue the cover-up surrounding Palme’s murder” [‘Decades-long cover-up continues of assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme’, (Jordan Shilton), World Socialist Web Site, 13-Jun-2000, www.wsws.org/].
(Source: www.latimes.com)
Endnote: Palmology and parallels with the JFK conspiracy saga The collective trauma felt by Swedes with Olof Palme’s 1986 assassination—many expressing a sense of lost national innocence, no longer immune from political violence◘—recalls the devastating effect the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 had on the American psyche (Lundius). Both leaders’ violent deaths triggered a runaway train of conspiracy theories, some plausible and some highly implausible◕. In the years since 1986 Sweden’s national obsession with the unsolved murder, labelled Palmessjukdom (“Palme sickness”) has inspired a raft of plays, films, television and musical works on the topic. It has even been cited as a contributing “factor in the worldwide explosion of Scandinavian (noirish) crime fiction”. ‘Palmology’ has spawned a veritable Swedish industry of privatspanarna – a legion of private investigators (such as Thomas Pettersson) conducting independent inquiries into the baffling crime…some have been serious researchers, others espousing “crackpot theories” (West-Knights).
(Source: www.cnbc.com/)
𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪 ＊ not however the country’s last political murder, in 2003 Swedish foreign minister, Anna Lindh, was assassinated by another “lone wolf” assassin ⦿ marginalising SÄPO (Säkerhetspolisen – the state secret police) from the investigation didn’t make the task any easier ✪ Engström was dubbed “Skandia Man” by Lars Larsson because he worked in the Skandia Insurance Co tower building which fronts on to Sveavägen-Tunnelgatan ◘ and perhaps in some measure jolting Swedes out of a lingering outlier complacency ◕ among the multitude ‘fingered’ for the hit on the Swedish PM, was the Swedish police, the Yugoslav secret service, even Palme’s own wife, Lisbet
The literary character Charlie Chan, created by Earl Derr Biggers, is best remembered in numerous cinema representations from the 1930s and 1940s. While the obsequious but sagacious Chinese-American detective became one of the enduringly nostalgic fictional figures of US popular culture, his creator in fact based him on a real life-and-blood Hawaiian-Chinese policeman – Chang Apana (his name is Hawaiianised but he was born “Chang Ah Pang” of Chinese migrant parents).
⍐ Downtown Honolulu, circa 1935
(Source: www.reditt.com)
Over the first three decades of the 20th century, the diminutive and slightly-built Chang Apana, a paniola(Hawaiian cowboy) before entering the Honolulu police service, patrolled the dingy and dangerous Chinatown district of Honolulu armed only with a 1.5m-long bullwhip. Chang’s detective escapades were legendary, involving – audacious, single-handed arrests of members of gambling dins, mastery over disguises in working undercover and shrewd and meticulous powers of sleuthing on murder cases (a cornucopia of material for Biggers to drawn on). Biggers’s own account of Charlie Chan’s genesis, is that he happened upon the existence of the “real Charlie Chan” after reading about Chang’s exploits in a Honolulu newspaper one day in the New York Public LibraryA.
⍐ ‘The House Without a Key’ (1925): the first Charlie Chan novel, although Chan appeared in it only as a minor character
A wellspring of a literary character
The portly Chinese detective with a penchant for “Confucius says”/fortune cookie-style aphorismsB appeared in six crime novels—initially serialised in the influential American magazine Saturday Evening Post—in the 1920s and ‘30’s. Biggers’ premature death in 1933 cut short the Chan literary sequence but not the film adaptations which continued to proliferate with a series of extremely popular Fox mystery filmsC. Charlie Chan‘s first screen appearances were in obscure silent movies with Japanese and Korean actors playing the leads before Walter Oland, a US actor with Swedish-Russian parents, took over and played Chan in 16 pictures. Upon Oland’s death American Sidney Toler assumed the mantle for 22 more CC movies,and lastly, Roland Winters, the son of German and Austrian parents, for a further six films.
⍗ ED Biggers
Life inextricably entwined with artThere were some interesting connexions arising from ED Biggers’ magnum opus…firstly, Chang and Chan’s creator actually met – in 1928. By then, such was the fame of CC, people in Honolulu had started to call the real detective ‘Chan’. The local newspaper recorded their meeting at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel as “AUTHOR MEETS ‘LIVE’ CHINESE DETECTIVE”. Three years later there was the even more improbable meeting of Chan and Chang when 20th Century Fox shot The Black Camel on location in Honolulu. The meeting between sleuth Chang and actor Walter Oland and obligatory photo op occurred during filming…Chang was invited to watch the action and ended up coming every day apparently totally engrossed in the unfolding film [‘Chan, the Man’, (Jill Lepore), The New Yorker, 02-Aug-2010, www.newyorker.com].
⍗Chang and Oland (Chan) meet at Waikiki
The dragon’s embrace of Chan
Charlie Chan’s international cinematic popularity extended, perhaps surprisingly to observers looking at it with the greater cultural sensitivity of the present time, to the Chinese themselves. Walter Oland, at the height of his CC fame, visited Shanghai in 1936 on a promotional tour – to widespread acclaim. Local Chinese newspapers even presented the event in terms that suggested that Biggers’ literary creation was in fact a real person: “Great Chinese Detective Arrives in Shanghai”D. And of course the Chan movies spawned home-grown imitators within China [‘Charlie Chan in China’, The Chinese Mirror: A Journal of Chinese Film History,08-Jul-2011, [http://web.archive.org]. Chinese-born American academic Yunte Huang’s hunch as to why people in China took so whole-heartedly to the clearly faux-Chinese film character is to do with a tradition you see in Chinese operas of performing “the other”. He explains, there’s an acceptance of this “kind of imitation (be it opera or cinema) as part of the artistic culture of China” [‘Investigating The Real Detective Charlie Chan’, NPR, 07-Sept-2010, www.npr.org].
(Source: www.movieposters.ha.com)
🀂🀂🀂Charlie Chan, detective at largeAs the series progressed and the search for plots to accommodate the oriental ace detective widened, Charlie Chan took on a ”globe-trotting” role à la the “Road to“ series. Hence the public were served up increasingly formulaic offerings in a variety of exotic locales – Charlie Chan in Shanghai, Charlie Chan in Egypt, Charlie Chan in Panama, Charlie Chan in Paris, Charlie Chan in Rio, Charlie Chan in Reno, Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo, etc, etc.
Backlash against the honourable Mr Chan in an era of PC sensitivityWhat passed—unchallenged in a ‘whitebread’ society—for innocuous humour in the 1930s and ‘40’s was viewed very differently in the more pluralistic and multicultural milieu of the 1980s and ‘90s and beyond. Many Asian-Americans looking back have found the Charlie Chan depiction objectionable, a Chinese racial stereotype of subservience and pidgin English, a relic of ‘yellowface’ (a kind of “Yellow Uncle Tom”, much akin to the contemporary view of ‘blackface’ minstrel entertainment in the US) [Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and his Rendezvous with American History, Yunte Huang (2010); Lepore].
⍗Chan (Sidney Toler) with #1 son and #2 son
Yunte Huang has sought to redress or balance this jaundiced perception of Charlie Chan, arguing that the fictional Asian-Honolulan super-sleuth is “as American as Jack Kerouac” – “precisely because of (Chan’s) theatrical implausibilities and mixed-up origins”. To Yunte Chan “epitomises (both) the racist heritage and the creative genius of (America’s) culture”, and he notes that while Chan himself is Chinese, “his methods and his milieu are American”, eg, the books and films’ settings are Hawaiian/American mainstream, not set in Chinatown [‘Watching the Detective’, (Pico Iyer), Time, 23-Aug-2010; Yunte].
Assuaging the perception of ‘Orientals’ in AmericaThe dominant literary precedent to Charlie Chan in American (and Western) popular culture of Asians was the figure of Fu Manchu. The creation of English writer Sax Rohrer (Arthur Henry Ward), the Fu Manchu novels (1913-48), exploited the “Yellow Peril” conspiracy image prevalent in the West of an Asian stereotype of evil – Fu was depicted in literature and on-screen as a mad scientist–cum–archvillain hellbent on a mission to rule the world. Yunte points out that Charlie Chan fulfilled a purpose of refuting or challenging the negative Fu Manchu image in the minds of many Americans. In contrast to the iniquitous Fu Manchu wreaking havoc everywhere, Chan is a “man of logic” (as are his fellow detectives extraordinaire Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes), Chan’s personal qualities are that of moral rectitude, observation and logic (Yunte). Biggers himself derided the Fu Manchu portrayal as “sinister and wicked” and “old stuff”, compared to his creation, “an amiable Chinese on the side of the law (which) has never been used (before)” (1931) [‘Creating Charlie Chan’, Popular Culture, 1975].
Other observers concur that the amiable Chinese detective was a departure from the old, more overtly racist stereotypes in US fiction at the time – supplanting the “heathen Chinee” with a more positive image of a Chinese person [‘The Importance of Being Charlie Chan’, (Sandra M Hawley), in Jonathan Goldstein, Jerry Israel & Hilary Conroy (Eds), America Views China: American Images of China Then and Now, (1991)]. Fletcher Chan notes that the books and movies “were a big factor in softening the attitude of white Americans towards Asians”, Charlie Chan as a sort of “goodwill ambassador” [‘Charlie Chan: A Hero of Sorts’, Fletcher Chan, Californian Literary Review, 26-Mar-2007, www.calitreview.com].
Where the Yellow Peril stereotype of Fu Manchu personifies the evil, scheming and immoral Asian in popular culture, the character of Charlie Chan presents—albeit with the retention of some truly cringeworthy ethnic stereotyping—an equal, at least intellectually, to the whites in the world he traverses [Yunte; ‘Charlie Chan’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
⍐Mr Wong: Charlie Chan rip-off with Boris Karloff
Endnote: Hollywood imitators, Moto and WongThe success of Charlie Chan on the big screen led other filmmakers to try their hand at using European actors to portray Asian-American crime fighters, however these were pale imitations of the original and lacking the Chan series’ success and its longevity. Fox’s “Mr Moto” series had Hungarian-American Peter Lorre as a Japanese secret service agent with a Viennese accent. Monogram Pictures, a low-budget specialist, also tried to emulate the success of Chan with its copy/interpretation of a Chinese-American detective Mr Wong, with British horror specialist Boris Karloff in the title role. The last in the series of Mr Wong flicks, Phantom of Chinatown, was a first…in place of Karloff, Chinese-born Keye Luke (previously Charlie Chan’s “Number One Son”) featured in the role of Wong, avoiding the then standard ‘Yellowface’ casting for Asian-American roles.
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A Biggers’ story of reading about a slick piece of detective work by Sergeant Chang Apana and another Hawaiian-Chinese detective Lee Fook has been extensively investigated by Yunte Huang who could not confirm the said article appearing in the Honolulu media of the day. An alternative explanation is that Biggers discovered the local police celebrity on a holiday he took to Hawaii in 1919 or 1920
Beg., “Tongue often hang man quicker than rope”; “Mind like parachute – only function when open”; “Front seldom tell truth. To know occupants of house, always look in backyard”; “Truth is like football – must receive many kicks before reaching goal”; ad nauseam. This idiom or element of Chan’s persona is known today as a ‘flanderisation’ – where a single (often minor) trait or action of a character is increasingly exaggerated or accentuated until it becomes the character’s defining characteristic [www.allthetropes.fandom.com]C as well as a regular stream of radio shows, comics and television series
D mind you, contestants on a 1980s US quiz show asked to name some historical or contemporary Chinese persons came up with “Charlie Chan” as their fifth response (‘The Chinese Mirror’)
Englishborn Fred Harvey learned the basics of good food service from a lowly station in a New York restaurant and later ran a successful cafe prior to the Civil War before entering the employ of the US railroads. Working first for the Hannibal and St Joseph Railroad and later others, Harvey was required to travel a great deal as a railroad agent. This gave him first-hand experience of how dismal railroad food and service was.
🔺 Frederick Henry Harvey (Photo: Wall Street Journal)
This was no secret to regular passengers, before Harvey came along, the railroads were serviced by local rough eateries or unscrupulous restaurant owners who would reheat the leftover dishes and serve them again as supposedly new to the next, unsuspecting train-load of hungry passengers. Some travellers wary of the dubious quality offered up, would bring their own ‘shoebox’ lunches of fried chicken and hard-boiled eggs but this didn’t prove a satisfactory alternative – after sitting in the train for a couple of days the food from home would quickly go off [‘Fred Harvey and the Harvey Girls: A Dollar, a Dream and a Dinner’, (John Koster) Historynet,www.historynet.com].
Business-savvy Harvey sensed there was a gap in the market and in 1876 he clinched a deal with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad (AT&SF)ⓐ to open eating houses along the railroad. The start was modest, one small lunchroom in the Topeka (Kansas) depot of the railroad. But from these modest beginnings Harvey created a thriving railway hospitality concern and more. The prototype Harvey lunchroom has been described as “the progenitor of what (Americans) think of today as a diner” [Stephen Fried, quoted in ‘Tracing the Recipes of America’s First Restaurant Empire’, (Sara Bonisteel),Epicurious,18-Jun-2013,www.epicurious.com].
🔺 Santa Fe railroad & Harvey hotels & dining stations
The beginnings of fast food
The key to Harvey’s success was quality of food and speed of delivery. Once the network of Harvey dining-rooms were established along the Santa Fe route, the operations were streamlined to work like clockwork…and they needed to. As the trains pulled into the stations Fred Harvey staff had 20, at most 30 minutes to feed 60 to 100 passengers. This required coordination between the train conductor and Harvey staff (to give the staff advanced warning of their impending arrival). To meet the short turnaround time, the waiting staff (“Harvey Girls”) utilised a unique signalling system, the waitress taking the order would send a signal to a second waitress, a cup turned upright on the saucer meant coffee, a cup facing down, tea. The second waitress could then immediately do that part of the order without having to wait for her colleague to return with the order [‘Watch the Cup, Please’, (Jann Bommerbach),True West,04-Nov-2015,www.truewestmagazine.com].
🔻 Harvey’s El Tovar Hotel, Grand Canyon
No “mean cuisine”
Harvey Houses (as they eventually came to be known) were no “Greasy Joe’s”. From the start Harvey headhunted a star head chef from back east for his first restaurant. The chef prepared top-quality cuisine for AT&SF line passengers…the food was so good that travelling salesmen and other regular travellers chose the AT&SF on that basis over rival western railroads (Koster). They were getting quality food, fresh and affordable to the middle class traveller, served on spotless Blue China with white linen tablecloths [‘Classic Harvey House recipes’, 23-Feb-2019, CBS News, www.cbsnews.com/].
Value as well as quality for money
In 1888 Fred Harvey debuted the first Fred Harvey dining-car on the Chicago to Kansas City train service. The menu for the service illustrates what a bargain it was – for the middle class—for 75¢ passengers got a mains (choice of oysters, lobster, salmon roast beef or other meats) plus dessert—often prepared by world-class chefs (Koster).
🔺 Castãneda Hotel, Las Vegas, (the ‘other’ Las Vegas – in New Mexico): the first trackside Harvey House (Image: www.castanedahotel.com]
The Harvey dining empire
How extensive was the Harvey House network? At the onset Fred Harvey promises a depot restaurant every 100 miles between Kansas and California. At the Harvey high-point there was 25 Harvey hotels, 40 sit-down dining-rooms and 55 lunchrooms on the route (Koster), and the Harvey House concept was extended to other west-bound railroads. Harvey was a natural marketer coming up with advertising campaigns like “3,000 Miles of Hospitality” to promote tourism in the region [‘Fred Harvey—Branding the Southwest (Quality Fast Food)’,www.lib.nau.edu].
The Harvey girls’ uniform: looking a bit too similar to a WWI nurse’s outfit or something you might see in a nunnery!🔻(Photo: Grand Canyon Railway and Hotel)
The Harvey Girls: Helping to civilise the “Wild West”
Because the male waiters employed by Harvey had a tendency toward drinking on the job and causing trouble in the houses, the entrepreneur in 1883 had the inspired idea of replacing them with single women (aged 18-30) shipped out from the East. The Harvey Girls (as they became known) were attired in demure, conservative feminine uniforms and required to not marry before they had completed six months of service. The women waitresses on the job set standards for cleanliness and decorum which had “a civilizing effect on the often rough customers in the territories” [‘Fred Harvey,the Harvey Houses, and the Harvey Girls’,https://abqlibrary.org/railroads/HarveyHouses]. Many Harvey Girls stayed in the West after their employment, often marrying their bachelor customers, earning the railroad restaurants the sobriquet of “Cupid on Rails”ⓑ.
Farm-to-table: “Meals by Fred Harvey”
Fred Harvey Co (FHC) entered into contracts with local purveyors to ensure fresh ingredients for his meals.Fred Harvey Co also went into the farming business itself,running it’s own dairy and cattle farms (‘Fred Harvey—Branding the Southwest (Quality Fast Food).
(Photo: www.railroadmemories.com)
Business diversification: Whisky, chocolates, gifts, etc.
With success and fame came morediversification.FHC eventually manufactured it’s own whisky,sold it’sown brand of chocolates, candy, ice cream, salad dressings, as well as take-home gifts and souvenirs to passengers.Harvey’s knack for marketing put the brand everywhere. FHC gave away cookbooks of Fred Harvey recipes (‘Branding the Southwest’).The Harvey Co, as part of the tourism package it was promoting, also entered the postcard publishing field…through the Detroit Publishing Co it produced the very popular Fred HarveyArizona ‘Phototint’ series of cards [‘Fred Harvey (entrepreneur), The Full Wiki, www.the full wiki.org/].
🔺 Menu image from the Santa Fe dining-car (Source: www.lib.nau.edu)
Menu art of the Southwest
The railroad menus of FHC are an interesting sidelight of the company,delightfully quaint in their great diversity. Many celebrated in colourful imagery the beauty of the American Southwestor the pre-United States connexions to the region of colonial Spanish missionaries and Native American tribes(see below ‘Marketing an image of the Southwest’). The menu artwork was often of a high calibre,eg, William Deane Fausett’s humorous images. Menus like the company’sLa Posadamenu were instructional–including an US warplane ID chart for US servicemen using the AT&SF rail during WWII.Therewere menus for special occasions like Mother‘sDayand special menus for kids which doubled as clown masks (‘Branding the Southwest’).
Marketing an image of the Southwest
Fred Harvey invented a new hospitality service for railway passengers, but he also invented (and marketed) a particular image of the country’s Southwest for Americans. Harvey, together with the AT&SF Railroad, changed the perception of Americans, filling the vast unknown void of savage desert with a new, “compelling regional identity for the Great Southwest of northern New Mexico and Arizona”. The Harvey corporation “appropriated and marketed the cultures of Native Americans”ⓒ presenting them as “colourful, tamed native peoples”. Harvey to a lesser extent also did a inventive reconstruction of the cultural impact of Spanish colonial and early Anglo-Celtic settlers. Weigle suggests that FMC’s commercial innovations such as the Indian Detours program (affording railroad passengers the opportunity to visit local native communities, represented a kind of ‘Disneyfication’ of the region [Weigle, Marta. “From Desert to Disney World: The Santa Fe Railway and the Fred Harvey Company Display the Indian Southwest.” Journal of Anthropological Research, vol. 45, no. 1, 1989, pp. 115-137. JSTOR,www.jstor.org/stable/3630174. Accessed 12 Feb. 2020].
Endnote: Founder Fred died in 1901 but the business remained in the family until his grandson died in 1965. In 1968 FHC and Harvey Houses were purchased by Amfac, Inc. (an Hawaiian hospitality industry conglomerate).
🔻HarveyHouse,Seligman,Ariz.
PostScript: FH Menu dishes
Not surprisingly the FHC menus included a noticeably Latino-Mexican flavour—including Bright Angel Mexican Salisbury Steak, Guacamole Monterey, Empanadas with Vanilla Sauce, Fried Chicken Castãneda and Albondigas Soup (‘Classic Harvey House recipes’).
ⓐ the Santa Fe line ended at Needles in eastern California, where it connected with another railroad which completed the journey west to the Pacific
ⓑit is estimated that of the approximately 100,000-plus Harvey Girls in the company’s history, perhaps as much as⅕ of them stayed and settled down to married life in the West, ‘The Harvey Girls, a Slice of American History’, (updated 26-Apr-2012),www.hubpages.com
ⓒ Hopi, Navajo, Pueblo, Apache and other Southwestern tribes
Ambrose Bierce, American short story writer, man of letters, journalist and civil war (Union side) veteran, is best known for his unorthodox lexicon, The Devil’s Dictionary, a humorous, satirical and very personal take on a selection of words in the English language. The dictionary was compiled by Bierce over three decades, being initially published in instalments in various newspapers and magazines. Eventually the collection was published in book form, first as The Cynic’s Word Book in 1906 and then as The Devil’s Dictionary in 1911, two years before Bierce’s never satisfactorily-explained disappearance in Chihuahua, Mexico, where the journalist was visiting to gain first-hand experience of the Mexican Revolution.
Highly influential literary critic of the first half of the 20th century, HL Mencken, heaped lavish almost doting praise on The Devil’s Dictionary… “the true masterpiece of the one genuine wit that These States have ever seen“…”some of the most gorgeous witticisms in the English language“…”some of the most devastating epigrams ever written“.⇑First (1911) edition of the Dictionary
დ~დ~დდ~დ~დდ~დ~დ
Cynicism and satire provide the backbones of Bierce’s provocative dictionary. So, an interesting place to start looking is how he handles these terms – the words ‘satire’, ‘cynic’ and ‘dictionary’ themselves. Despite being fully versed in the craft himself, Bierce views the practitioner of cynicism less than favourably.
Cynic: A blackguard❅ who sees things as they are, and not as they ought to be (which presumably is the definition of an optimism۞).
Satire: An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author’s enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness✫.
Dictionary: A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic.
Bierce goes on to add with tongue firmly planted in his cheek that his dictionary, however, is “a most useful work”.
But a cynic Bierce certainly is. At one point he sweepingly declares, in the blanket fashion that is his trademark, that “all are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher” (in which case, what would Bierce have made of Freud and the “dark art” of psychotherapy!?!). This perception of the author reminds me to some extent of the distinction often made between a person with an erratic behavioural pattern who is poor (and is labelled insane), and a person with an erratic behavioural pattern who is wealthy (labelled merely eccentric).
Romance and true love falls by the wayside with Bierce’s cynic always hovering around ground level:
Love: A temporary insanity cured by marriage.
Politics is even more fertile ground for Biercian cynicism…even the highest office in the land is not spared. With characteristic directness, there is:
President: The greased pig in the field game of American politics.
Senate: A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanors.
Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one’s country.
And of course, to Bierce, ‘capital’ (ie, the capital) is defined as “the seat of misgovernment”.
The contemporary power politics of the day is very entrenched in Bierce’s cynic’s consciousness:
Cannon: an instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.
In a similar vein Bierce gives recognition to the tradition of his nation’s imperialistic ambitions in possibly the most quoted and most acute of Bierce’s definitions:
War: God’s way of teaching Americans geography⬲.
Bierce’s entries can go off on a tangent☒, often making extensive use of quotations from “eminent poets” to underscore his definitions (Father G Jape, SJ, is a much relied upon prop for Bierce). Sometimes this involves recourse to wordy anecdotes and phrases. In contrast to lengthy descriptors, some Devil’s Dictionary‘s entries are succinctly on the mark, some are absolute poetic corkers:
Absent: Peculiarly exposed to the tooth of detraction.
Erudition: Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.
Envy: Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.
Fib: A lie that has not cut its teeth.
Martyr: One who moves along the line of least reluctance to a desired death.
Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
And even more succinctly summarised is:
Hope: Desire and expectation rolled into one.
Some of Bierce’s ‘opinions’ veiled as definitions are little more than whimsical nonsenses or clever wordplays:
Incumbent: A person of the liveliest interest to the outcumbents.
Harbor: A place where ships taking shelter from stores are exposed to the fury of the customs.
The Devil’s Dictionary dishes up irony in spades, repeatedly turning the mirror back on the reader:
Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
Bierce’s lexicon is strewn with idiosyncratic elements, one is a recurring motif of robbers and theft, regularly he describes a situation where someone’s hands are in someone else’s pockets:
Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other’s pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third.
Bierce is often lauded for his humanist perspective of the world…the major organised religions do not escape his critical eye:
Religions are “conclusions for which the facts of nature supply no major premises”
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
He can be irreverent – “Christians and camels both receive their burdens kneeling”.
The Dictionary dishes up a smorgasbord of satirical, ironic and often bitter definitions of the world as seen by Ambrose Bierce (one of the acerbic writer’s nicknames was “Bitter Bierce”). But Bierce is of course a creature of his time with all the glaring faults and prejudices of the 19th century white man’s mindset. So, through the satire and cynicism we witness the less savoury traits and predisposition of the lexicographer. Casual assumptions of racism and misogyny run through the pages of The Devil’s Dictionary.
Witch: A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a league beyond the devil.
Widows are depicted as “pathetic creatures”, whereas wives are dismissed as merely “bitter halves” (big surprise: Bierce was separated from his own wife). On occasions he crosses the line that even he should not have ventured, such as advocating or at the very least implying a violent impulse towards the female sex:
Bang: The arrangement of a woman’s hair which suggests the thought of shooting her.
The dreaded ‘N’ word is wheeled out in the cause superior of cynicism:
African: A nigger who votes our way.
And there is more than a hint of a general misanthropic disposition emerging from the pages of the Dictionary:
Birth: The first and direst of all disasters.
Marriage is the union of “two slaves”.
AB’s miscellany of hobby horses
Politicians and philosophers are on Bierce’s “hit list”, as are lawyers who get a predictable assessment:
Lawyer: One skilled in the circumvention of the law.
Liar: A lawyer with a roving commission.
Historians, in The Devil’s Dictionary are reduced to “broad-gauge gossips”, and ‘history’ is summarily pigeonholed as “mostly false (and) about unimportant events”.
Although he doesn’t specifically give medical students a definition entry, his regular references to them through the book might prompt one to conclude that their single defining feature is that of “grave-robbers”∞.
Places like New York City and specifically Wall Street are “dens of iniquity”, the sort of Biblical association Bierce employs to those things or entities representing (in his eyes) absolute evil.
Bierce’s idiosyncratic designation of ‘happiness’, as “an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another” dovetails neatly to the definition of the German term Schadenfreude (substituting the word ‘perverse’ for ‘agreeable’ perhaps).
Bierce’s dictionary is also prone to outbursts of elitism – such as:
Laziness: Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.
Idiot: A member of a large and powerful tribe✪ whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling (an ‘idiotocracy’ perhaps).
EndNote: Bierce’s cold trail
The mysterious disappearance of Bierce has fascinated interested parties for the hundred plus years since the author vanished in Mexico. Speculation has been wildly unrestrained and rampant as to the writer’s supposed end (eg, he hooked up with Mexican bandit leader Pancho Villa and he was killed by Federal troops, or by rebels, or by his own hand or by Villa himself). Novelists, playwrights and filmmakers have all had a go at unravelling the mystery, but the reality is that no one really knows what happened to Bierce [‘The Death of Bierce’, The Ambrose Bierce Appreciation Society, www.biercephile.com].
👿
⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝
❅ Bierce defines ‘blackguard’ as an “inverted gentleman”, like a box of cherries that displays the fine ones on top but with the box “opened on the wrong side”
۞except that Bierce’s ‘optimist’ is “a pessimist (who) applied to God for relief”
✫ obsolete or not, it doesn’t stop AB from indulging in the device
⬲ it is not universally accepted that this most famous of Bierce-isms originated with Bierce himself, see for instance “The Ambrose Bierce Site”, www.donswain.com
☒ for example see the entry for ‘story’
∞ maybe overstated but Bierce was not fabricating a connection – “body snatching” for medical education was a very real and very lucrative activity at the time
✪ Bierce tended to view different societal groups as tribal entities
I first happened upon the name of ‘Capability’ Brown several years ago when I was researching the Kirkbride buildings complex in Sydney✼. I guess it was the jokey sounding name that first caught my interest. I found his name historically associated with the popularising of “Ha-Ha” Walls (another hard-to-take-serious concept when you first encounter it without context) which is an architectural feature of Kirkbride. Brown acquired his nickname from his habit of telling clients that their land had capability for improvement [‘Highclere Castle: The real-life Downton Abbey’, (Steve McKenna), SMH, 17-Apr-2016, www.traveller.com.au].
Highclere ⇓
Capability (Christian name Lancelot) Brown’s career as a landscape gardener and designer in the 18th century was a wildly successful one. Lofty accolades cast in his direction describe him as “England’s greatest gardener” and “the Shakespeare of Gardening”. He rose from humble origins to become master gardener to George III at Hampton Court Palace, receiving over 250 commissions in his lifetime and designing in excess of 170 parks (the majority of which survive) [‘Capability Brown’, Wikipedia, http:/:en.m.wikipedia.org]. His vast oeuvre stretches over 30 counties in England and Wales, greater London and even one garden project in Germany. As artistic creators of grand physical structures go, the fecund Brown was the landscaping and gardening equivalent of Frank Lloyd Wright of his day – minus the ego!
Portrait of the “rockstar” landscape gardener
And like that prolific and seminal 20th century American architect he was very well remunerated for his efforts. From the 1760s Brown was earning £6,000 per annum (equivalent to £806,000 in 2018 money!) and £500 for a single commission [ibid.].
Classical v Romantic
As Brown was starting to learn the trade in the late 1730s, there was a fundamental change going on with landscape gardens England. The formally patterned garden with its strict geometrical order and adherence to the classical style (the embodiment of the Palladian ideal) was giving way to a new, more informal type of garden landscape✥…romantic, irregular, not conforming to order, the appearance of a natural landform [Bassin, Joan. “The English Landscape Garden in the Eighteenth Century: The Cultural Importance of an English Institution.” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, vol. 11, no. 1, 1979, pp. 15–32. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4048315].
William Kent ⇓
The new style
In the forefront of this movement towards the natural and informal was WilliamKent (Brown’s mentor), Charles Bridgeman and others, as well as prominent literary figures of the day like Alexander Pope. What Kent et al started, Capability Brown would go on to elevate to a higher plane.
Typical features of the Brown garden
(see also “Ha-Ha Wall” in end-note) Brown honed his landscaping style while working under Kent at Stowe (Bucks). Trademark features: smooth, undulating grass running straight to the house; the grand sweeping drive (eg, Ashridge Estate, Berrington Hall, Wimpole Estate); the woodland belt (eg, Basildon Park, Dinefwr, Ickworth); clumps and scatterings of trees (eg, Petworth Park, Stowe, Croome); the picturesque stone bridge (eg, Prior Park, Wallington, Stowe): and serpentine lakes formed by invisibly damming small rivers (eg, Hatfield Forest, Stowe, Wimpole Estate); decorative garden buildings (monuments, temples, rotundas and follies◙) (eg, Clandon Park, Petworth Park, Stowe, Wallington); cedars of Lebanon🌲 (eg, Croome, Charlecote Park) [National Trust (#1) , www.nationaltrust.org.uk; ‘Brown’, Wiki, op.cit.]
Era of the picturesque
The picturesque was a 18th century movement in art and architecture which was a reaction to Neo–classicism with its fixation on order, proportion and exactitude. In Georgian England the picturesque influenced landscape designers like Brown (and his successor HumphryRepton) who sought to replicate the romanticised country scenes of Italian paintings in their garden projects. The features in Brown’s ‘natural’✪ garden landscapes – long vistas to lakes, bridges, lawns, ruins, groves of trees and Ha-Ha walls – were a case of real life imitating (sublime) art [‘Lancelot “Capability” Brown and Humphrey Repton and the Picturesque’, (Janice Mills Fine Artist), (Jan-Dec 2016), http://janicemillsfineartist.wordpress.com]◇.
Social purpose
The new informal gardens in 18th century England, as typified in Brown’s landscapes, were created to underscore the growing affluence of the landowningclass…showingEngland through their properties as they wished it to be seen, “a wealthy, educatedandfertile centre of the Industrial Revolution and Enlightenment”. Thus Brown’s beautiful, idyllic estate gardens were intended to resemble a romantic painted scene through the “use of local natural elements and English architecture” [ibid.].
Dinefwr Castle (Carmarthenshire) – in this Welsh estate LCB was engaged as a visiting consultant, makingrecommendations to the landowners
(Photo: National Trust) ⇓
Multitasker extraordinaire
Capability Brown was able to complete a vast sum of landscape projects in this career. On average, at any one time he had six projects going simultaneously, this testifies to Brown being able to work fast…an accomplished horseback rider, he could ride from site to site, survey it and knock up a rough design, all within a couple of hours. Of course even with his exceptional capacity he could only spread himself so far, when he couldn’t personally oversee projects, he would delegate to his hand-picked team of foremen, assistant surveyors and landscapers to be “hands-on” on-site and ensure that his designs were implemented properly [‘Our great ‘Capability’ Brown landscapes’, National Trust, (#2), www.nationaltrust.org.uk; ‘Brown’, Wiki, op.cit.].
Brown’s success as a landscape architect owed a lot to different factors…one of his virtues was his ability to choose assistants for his projects – he had a knack of picking the right people to work with, such as William Donn, John Hobcroft and Nathaniel Richmond. Brown also kept himself informed of the latest technologies. His awareness of hydraulic devices led him to utilise steam pumps employed in mining for the water features of his landscapes [Shields, Steffie. “’Mr Brown Engineer’: Lancelot Brown’s Early Work at Grimsthorpe Castle and Stowe.” Garden History, vol. 34, no. 2, 2006, pp. 174–191. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25472339].
Dissenting voices – ‘Culpability’ Brown
Despite the popularity Brown attracted for his landscape work, the Northumberland garden designer had his detractors… both from contemporaries and from critics after his time. Typical among these was Uvedale Price who criticised Brown for sweeping away all of the older trees and formal garden features in wholesale fashion (destroying the aesthetic of the classical of earlier landscapes). Similarly, architect William Chambers thought the “new manner of gardens” (code for Brown’s work) as little improvement on “common fields and vulgar nature” [‘Brown’, Wiki, op.cit.]. Certainly for these critics, the subject of their censure may have better been labelled ‘Culpability’ Brown!
Some of the invective aimed on Brown’s direction however would have derived from a more base source. Class snobbery would have been a motive for some given Brown’s modest origins – the language often used was a giveaway, detractors like architect Reginald Blomfield disparaged him as “a peasant slave from the melon ground” and having once been (allegedly) a “kitchen gardener” [Shields, loc.cit.]. Some of the opprobrium also was no doubt born out of sheer jealousy at Brown’s immense fame and financial success.
In 2016a collection of Royal Mail stamps were issued to mark the tercentenary of LCB’s birth ⇓
A “single shaping hand”
For the many true believers though, no praise for the man known as ‘Capability’ seems high enough…one observer noted of his Highclere Castle (Hants) gardens: the location has been a designed landscape for over 1,200 years, yet Brown’s stamp is so much on the place. The remarkable result of one person imposing “his vision with sufficient force for it to have endured indefinitely” [Phipp, loc.cit.].
So successful was Capability Brown in popularising the informal garden, and so imitated was he, that he played a revolutionary role in changing the face and character of English gardens forever. In creating naturalistic landscapes he ‘copied’ nature so skilfully that “his work is often mistaken for natural landscapes” [‘How to spot a Capability Brown landscape’,[National Trust, (#1), loc.cit.].
The English Ha-Ha⇓
End-note: The Ha-Ha: “Invisible boundaries”
The Ha-Ha Wall (AKA the sunken wall) was a defining features of a typical Capability Brown landscape garden. The Ha-Ha (French in origin)was devised to keep grazing animals out of the more formal areas of a garden, doing away with the need for a fence while creating the illusion of openness. Brown et al used it to provide unbroken vista views – from the house and garden to the parkland or countryside beyond (eg, Petworth Park, Charlecote Park, Stowe) [‘Garden Features: What are Ha-Has?’, The English Garden, 29-Oct-2014, www.theenglishgarden.co.uk].
PostScript: The test of timeRemarkable also are the number of country gardens sculpted by Brown that have remained intact (or at least partly so). Around 150 survive – including Alnwick Castle (Northumberland), Blenheim Palace (Oxfds), Basildon Park (Berks), Croome Park (Worcs), Stowe House and Stoke Park (Bucks), Berrington Hall (Hertfds), MiltonAbbey and Abbas (Dorset), Clandon Park (Surrey), Charlecote Park (Warws), Chatsworth House (Derbys), Petworth Park (Sussex), Warwick Castle (Warws), Wimpole Estate (Cambs), Wallington (East Yorks), Hatfield Forrest (Essex), Harewood House (West Yorks), Ashridge Estate (Hertfds), Appuldurcombe House (Isle of Wight), Ickworth (Suffolk), Belvoir Castle (Leics), Dinefwr Castle (Wales), Kew Gardens (Lond) and of course Highclere, these days more famous for the location of the TV series “Downton Abbey”.⇑Brown’s penchant for lakes & bridges (Photo: National Trust)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
✼ ‘Callan Park: The Kirkbride Experiment, a Microcosm of “Good Intentions” ‘, December 2015 blog
✥ this trend had a paradoxical component to it…as the born-to-rule gentry were opting for country homes which were smaller, the gardens were becoming larger [Bassin, loc.cit.] – which of course suited landscape gardeners like Brown given to broad canvasses
◙ follies are decorative, usually non-functional, buildings that enhance the planned landscape, Brown used mock Roman villas, Medieval ruins, etc
🌲 evergreen conifers
✪Brown’s gardens were of course not natural in any organically occurring sense, but carefully and meticulously contrived to both look natural and to convey “a sense of informality” [‘Capability Brown’, Britain Express, www.britainexpress.com
◇ Brown’s vistas contained no clear delineation between house, parkland and natural environment giving the landscapesa seamless appearance [Mills, op.cit.]
Barely four kilometres south of Apia Town, just off the Cross Island Road, is Samoa’s finest residential building, Villa Vailima (1891), the home away from the (Northern) cold built by Scottish novelist and poet Robert Louis Stevenson (see FN below).
⌂ RLS ‘Treasure Island’ Samoan stamp
Anyone with a passing acquaintance of mainstream Western literature will have some familiarity with Stevenson’s work. Author of a host of illustrious juvenile adventure classics like Treasure Island, Kidnapped, The Master of Ballantrae✲, and one Gothic novella, Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde, offering deep psychological insights into the human mind.
Stevenson’s voluntary exile from Britain in search of a climate less injurious to his fragile health led him to the Pacific. After sailing around the islands on an extended ‘odyssey’ (Hawaii, Gilbert and Ellice Islands, New Caledonia, Marshall Islands, etc), Stevenson (accompanied by his American wife) settled on Samoa as a hoped-for antidote to his chronic bronchial condition✥.
RLS in local politics
When Stevenson set anchor in Samoa the islands were in the midst of a civil war over succession to the Samoan throne. Behind the stand-off between rival chieftains was a three-way struggle for control between the colonial powers, Germany, the US and Britain, each of which had despatched warships to the Samoan islands to protect it’s commercial interests. While building the Vailima home RLS embroiled himself in the political conflict, taking the islanders’ side against the colonialists…so much so that he became a sort of political advisor to the indigenous factions [‘History of Samoa’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
By the conclusion of a second civil war in 1899, the colonial powers under a Tripartite Convention divided up the islands between them – Germany retained the western islands of Upolu and Savai’i, and the US got American Samoa (Britain did a trade for the Northern Solomons) [ibid.]
The Stevenson family at the Vailima homestead ⥥
.
Tusitala’s kudos
Stevenson’s whole-hearted embrace of the Samoan people was reciprocated…though a palagi (white-skinned person) they afforded him a special status in Samoan society. The Samoans attributed the quality of mana (“heaven-sent” supernatural powers) to the writer. And the craft of his story-telling which he had mastered so expertly in his novels led Samoans to bestow on him the title of Tusitala, the “teller of tales” [‘Samoans Honor Adopted Son, The Teller of Tales’, (Lawrence Van Gelder], New York Times, 08-Dec-1994, www.nytimes.com]. Samoans however were nonplussed as to how RLS earned his living (being at a loss to comprehend how the activity of story-telling could amount to paid work!).
Centennary British banknote with images of RLS & Vailima ⥥
After RLS’s death of a stroke in December 1894 after decades of ill-health, his widow sold up and returned to California. Since then, Villa Vailima initially housed the German colonial administrators followed by the New Zealand ones. After decolonisation it became the residence of the Western Samoan head of state. Finally, restored to its impecable state, it was transformed into its present incarnation as the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum on the anniversary of the novelist’s death.
Recreating RLS’ treasured island haven
A visit to Villa Vailima today will discover a slendid, elegant mansion of a building. A tour will reveal the scope of the interior which includes five bedrooms, a large living room, a smoking room, a library/ study and a ballroom big enough to accommodate 100 dancers. In his time there Stevenson made several additions and extensions…I was informed by our guide that the east wing of the building was added later as separate living quarters for RLS’s mother-in-law who had come to live with them◙.
The walls of some of the Villa’s rooms were adorned with incongruous items, like the bow-and-arrow set in this bedroom⥥
RSL’s study and the smoking room are probably the highlights of the tour for several reasons…on display in the former is a bookcase full of original translations of RL Stevenson works. Even more impressive, it contains the novelist ’s original, solid wood writing desk (on which he wrote his last four novels). The pièce de résistance for me though was in the downstairs smoking room – a double fireplace had been installed (and never used!) It seems that the Scot wanted the “feel-good” reassurance of having a quintessential feature of his former Northern hemisphere life – irrespective of how incongruously impractical it seemed (and how puzzling to Stevenson’s Samoan attendants!), located in the steamy tropical climes of the South Pacific. RL’s wife Fanny had her own familiar reminder of home at the Vailima house, she had the walls of her bedroom lined with polished Californian redwood [Lonely Planet Samoan Islands, (M Bennett et al) (2003)].
⥥ The smoking room
I was also intrigued by the contents of the spacious living room…what caught my eye immediately was this massive mega-safe in the middle of the room (too big I thought even for the XXL-proportioned Samoans to move!). The very large portrait of RLS (by Sargent?) next to it looked broodingly dark and foreboding. The guide recounted to us how Stevenson was brought into this room by his servants after he was fatally stricken out on the front lawns of the property.
Ascending Mt Vaea
It is very fitting once you’ve toured the RLS residence and learnt some of his Samoan story to take in the final chapter by making the 472m trek up Mt Vaea to glimpse the “teller of tales’” final resting place. It’s a short but a very steep climb and can get very hazardous after heavy rain (I have first-hand experience of how slippery it can get having slid right off the quagmire of a track on the return descent!). When you reach the beautiful high plateau where Stevenson’s tomb is located you will appreciate just how irenic and tranquil the setting is. The great views of the island from the top are also well worth the effort of getting there.
Footnote on ‘Vailima’: There are two interpretations of the name’s etymology – in Samoan ‘vai’ means ‘water’ so Vailima is commonly rendered as “Five Waters”, however the suffix ‘lima’ can mean ‘hand’ or ‘arm’ (as well as the number ‘five), so an alternate (literal) explanation for Vailima is “water in the hand” [Theroux, J. (1981). ‘Some Misconceptions about RLS’. The Journal of Pacific History, 16(3), 164-166. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25168472]
PostScript: RLS in Sydney
From his Samoa base Stevenson made several trips to Sydney, staying mainly at the city’s Union Club (Bent Street) and at the Oxford Club (Darlinghurst). On one visit he stopped over in Auckland where he met the former governor and premier of NZ, Sir George Grey. Stevenson occupied his time in Sydney by mainly working on various manuscripts of novels and stories (including The Wrecker, Ebb-Tide and In The South Seas)✪ [‘RLS Website’, (2018), www.robert-louis-stevenson.org].
⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝⇜⇝
✲ not to neglect the personal favourite “Boys Own” RLS book of my 11-year-old self, The Black Arrow ➳
✥ the choice of Samoa as home was desirable on pragmatic terms because it had a regular mail service (allowing RLS the professional author to connect with agents, editors and publishers). He was also attracted to the place because it was not too ‘civilised’ [Prof Richard Dury, ‘RLS Website’]
◙ the anecdote goes that Stevenson sent her off to Sydney for a few months and upon her return had the new wing built so he could put some (much sought-after) distance between them!
✪ these last two books plus The Wrong Box (1889) were co-written with his American stepson (S) Lloyd Osbourne
Pan American World Airways, or as it was universally known in its peak, Pan Am, is a name that is no longer displayed on the flight indicator boards of international airports across the globe. However up to the Eighties it was one of the premier names in the international airline industry. At the top of it’s game the airline was completing up to 214 flights from the US to Europe a week (1964) [‘Juan Terry Trippe, Founder of Pan Am World Airways and InterContinental Hotels’, Stanley Turkel (PDF, 2006), www.ishc.com].
From the ground up
Like quite a few young, middle class American men during the Great War, Tripp gravitated towards a future in the air, at first aspiring to be a navy pilot. After the war he transitioned from running a failed taxi service into a small regional air transport company. Trippe’s drive to succeed led him within a few years to merge his group with two other similar-sized ones to form Pan American Airways Inc.
The New Jersey-born businessman came up with a steady stream of novel ideas for innovation in the airline industry – which however required money. Prospects were bright though as new airline ventures were a good selling point. As William Stadiem explains, flying in the “Roaring 20s” was “the high-tech startup of its time!” Financiers, including members of the Rockefeller and Vanderbilt families, were all too willing to bankroll Trippe’s burgeoning airline industry ambitions [William Stadiem, Jet Set: The People, the Planes, the Glamour, and the Romance, in Aviation’s Glory Years (2014)].
By 1927 Trippe had started to assemble the rudiments of a fleet of aircrafts, initially with a brace of tri-motored Fokkers supplemented by some ageing surplus floating boats which he converted into the Pan American Flying Clippers (Trippe was a pioneer of these multi-engine seaplanes). Thus modestly began Pan Am’s first air mail service to the Caribbean (maiden flight in a 65-horsepower Seagull – Key West Florida to Havana) which paved the way for further Pan Am incursions into the region. Expansion followed innovation – from the West Indies he moved into Central and South America, and the foundations were laid for a global transport business✲.
Eschewing managerial orthodoxy
As textbook BUS101 management orthodoxy goes, Tripp was far from the desired model. His inclination was not to delegate and he was given to making unilateral decisions without consulting – much to the chagrin of his boards of directors [‘Juan Trippe and Pan Am’, (Richard Branson), Time, 07-Dec-1998, www.content.time.com]. What he was really exceptional at though, was anticipating the market in air travel, working out usually before anyone else what the next big thing was going to be…and going for it totally!
Business transparency was not part of the Trippe management style…his early inroads in the industry owed a lot to his “stealthy lobbying for U.S. mail licences”, which gave Pan Am a precious legup! [Harold Evans, Gail Buckland & David Lefer, They Made America, (2004)]. Trippe took a ruthless approach to competition and was not adverse to doing secret deals to outmanoeuvre his airline rivals [‘Juan Trippe Revolutionized Trips By Air With Pan Am’, (Scott S Smith), Investor’s Business Daily, 09-Oct-2014, www.investors.com].
Pan Am at times resorted to outright bribery to stay ahead of the pack, eg, offering several 100 thousand dollars to a Mexican president to block rival American Airlines’ bid for landing rights in the US’ southern neighbour [‘Juan Trippe’s Pan Am’, (Ann Crittenden), New York Times, (Archives),03-July 1977, www.nytimes.com].
Thoroughly innovative Juan
By continually expanding the scope of Pan Am’s operations, creating many new routes, Trippe opened up both the Atlantic and the Pacific to air travel❂. Trippe’s list of innovations in the industry are legion – including the pioneering of round-the-world commercial flights; the introduction of cockpit electronics allowing Pan Am pilots to fly in any weather; he also came up with “fly now, pay later” plans; his personnel came up with an advanced (computerised) reservations system first [Stadiem, op.cit.; ‘Dead Airlines And What Killed Them’, (Jean Folger), 25-Jun-2010, Investopedia, www.investopedia.com].
Before Laker Air there was …
Perhaps Trippe’s greatest legacy however was the pivotal role he played in making affordable air tourism a reality to everybody. When Trippe and Pan Am entered the still embryonic industry, seats were expensive and airline passengers tended to be exclusively from the well-off sectors of society. The airline ‘biz’ was run by a cartel called IATA (the International Air Transport Association) who contrived to maintain airline prices at a high level [Scott, op.cit.].
The first discount king of airlines
The Pan Am boss’ idea was to introduce a new class of passenger, “tourist class”, slashing the round-trip fare from New York to London by half (to US$275). The cartel reacted by trying to impede the US maverick’s move. British airports were closed to all Pan Am flights with tourist seats (Pan Am was forced to switch its European flights to remote Shannon Airport in Ireland). Pan Am managed eventually to get round the cartel’s net, it’s tourist class proved so popular that IATA caved in and accepted the reality of it [Branson, loc.cit. ; Smith, op.cit.]. Trippe’s actions thus brought air travel within the reach of ordinary people.
Airline entrepreneur and “friends with benefits”
Part of Trippe’s success owed a lot to influential people in high places…he benefited from a personal rapport with presidents like FDR and Truman. In fact, far from it being exclusively a triumph of free enterprise, federal government cooperation and support were integral to Pan Am’s overall success in the business [Crittenden, loc.cit.].
⍔JT Trippe & CA Lindbergh (Source: The Trippe Family)
Juan Trippe had the nous to surround himself with the right people from the start…in 1927 he ‘headhunted’ the (then) most marketable figure in world aviation, famed pilot Charles Lindbergh, to work for Pan Am (Lindbergh’s Continental survey flights helped establish the company’s early trade routes✥).
Another key figure within the company was its chief engineer Andre Priester who wrote the specifications for Pan Am’s flying boats. Priester set and maintained the airline’s meticulous safety standards [‘Pan Am Series – Part XLVIII: Skygods’, (Jpbtransportation: the Blog and Website of James Patrick Baldwin), 15-Feb-2015, www.jpbtransconsulting.com]. Staff training and airline safety were things Trippe refused to take shortcuts with – insisting on a high level of training for his pilots, flight crews, mechanics and support staff [Folger, loc.cit.].
With a little help from his (fellow capitalist) friends
Trippe in retirement freely acknowledged the help he received from United Fruit Company…the powerful US banana multinational assisted Pan Am early on to establish a presence in Latin America, thanks to United Fruit’s unique(sic) insider knowledge of the region’s states and its capacity to open doors to various governments [ibid.]. Trippe and Pan Am also prospered from cultivating a good friendship and working relationship with long-time Boeing head Bill Allen.
Enter the jet age
By the 1950s the heyday of “prop-liners” (propellor-driven aircraft) had come to an end. Jet liners were the future, trouncing ‘props’ for both aircraft speed and carrying capacity…and as ever Trippe got in at the ground floor! Trippe immediately bought up big on Boeing 707s and the first 707 Pan Am commercial flight took place in 1958 (NY-Paris)✮. He then got to work on making it more economical by figuring out how to reduce the jet’s seat-mile cost [Branson, op.cit.].
While going full-tilt into 707s Trippe was already looking beyond…to the 747, the jumbo-jet. As Evans et al observes, Trippe had “an almost clairvoyant grasp of the future (and a) determination to find aircraft to fit that vision” [Evans, Buckland & Lefer, op.cit.]. Unfortunately for Trippe, the antennae didn’t work as desired every single time and a few missteps had serious ramifications for the long-term future of Pan Am (see below).
⍔1st InterContinental: Belém (Brazil)
Pan Am ‘accommodates’ – airport to hotel…
Inevitably, the holistic approach Trippe brought to the airline industry✢ led him to capitalise on the airline ‘s success by directly entering the hospitality field… connecting the dots between passenger transportation and accommodation. With government encouragement from US president FD Roosevelt, Trippe began InterContinental Hotels & Resorts in 1946as a subsidiary of Pan Am…the first international hotel was situated in Belém, Brazil. Between 1946 and 1996 there were 222 I-C Hotels doing business worldwide (>90% of them outside the US) [Turkel, loc.cit.]※.
Changing fortunes
Pan Am – once a ‘Titan’ of the airways – is no more, what then led to its demise? Some observers trace the seeds of its eventual fall to the late 1940s – years before the company had reached the peak of its powers. Earlier in the Thirties, during Pan Am’s formative first decade, Trippe lobbied the US government, advocating his “chosen instrument” theory (by which Washington would designate a single air carrier for all foreign flights). Pan Am in fact secured this special status, initially with the awarding of a 10-year mail contract by the US Postmaster-General. Eventually though other carriers were green-lighted to enter the overseas field and started to claw back Pan Am’s advantage [Smith, loc.cit.]. Postwar, competitors such as Howard Hughes’ Trans-World Airlines (TWA), Braniff and North West Orient were allowed to enter Pan Am’s routes in South America and Asia, and contest it’s semi-official monopoly✧ over those regions [‘Pan-American World Airways: the rise and fall of a 20th century cultural icon’, (06-Jan-2017), www.seanmunger.com]. The “catch-up” had commenced.
However when Pan Am sought to establish a competitive foothold domestically in the late Forties, the US government flatly rejected its request to start a connecting domestic route network [‘Lots of Reasons Why Pan Am Failed’, (Robert J Byrne), Washington Post, 25-Jan-1992, www.washingtonpost.com]. This setback proved a critical handbreak on Pan Am’s expansion into the profitable US internal passenger market.
⍔Pan Am logo, the “blue meatballs”
In 1968 Juan Trippe stepped down as company president, however he remained active and influential in Pan Am’s executive decision-making, maintaining an office in the company’s headquarters. Pan Am still looked in solid business shape, it has 40,000 employees and was flying seven million passengers a year to some 86 countries. Trippe’s unflagging desire and capacity for change and innovation was to be a “two edged sword”, sparking Pan Am’s upward trajectory but also contributing to its ultimate decline. Not content with the revolutionary 707, Trippe cajoled the jet manufacturers to design a new “jumbo jet” capable of carrying in excess of 180 passengers⊡. The 747 answered this ‘need’, with the first commercial flight of a Pan Am 747 taking place in 1970. Trippe employed a similar stratagem with the Kennedy Administration which was reluctant (because of the exorbitant cost involved) to embrace the next level up, the SST-2707 supersonic jet. By signalling that he intended to purchase five Anglo-French Concorde planes, Trippe pressured President Kennedy into launching the American Supersonic Transport project. But this was one instance where Trippe’s ‘hunch’ was badly off target. The Boeing 2707 proved so problematic (and costly) that the project was dropped altogether in 1971.
⍔Two Pan Ams, 707 & 747 (source: Boeing)
The ill-timed expansion into 747s: Capacity overloadTrippe, always striving to be ahead of the curve, placed his order for the new 747s before they were designed, let alone off the assembly line! On this occasion the economy brought him and the company unstuck. The timing of the introduction of 747s, 1970, was not great – coinciding with a recession! Trippe didn’t foresee the 1973 oil crisis, which blew out the costs for maintaining the fleet of jumbos – fuel prices skyrocketed after the Middle East energy backlash [Folger, loc.cit.].
The state of Pan Am’s finances in the early Seventies was not propitious for taking on something of the magnitude of the 747. Commencing from 1969-70 Pan Am experienced seven straight years of losses. By 1977 the company’s long-term debt amounted to a disquieting $727 million! The financial burden on Pan Am was too much – and the problem was compounded by one of Trippe’s successors as company head (Najeeb E Halaby) who bumped the order of 747s from Trippe’s original 25 up to 33 aircrafts [Crittenden, loc.cit.].
Other developments in the world added to the company’s woes. The spate of terrorist incidents involving Pan Am, culminating in the 1988 Lockerbie tragedy, damaged the company’s reputation and precipitated a decline in travel numbers [Folger, loc.cit.].
Deregulation
Another setback for Pan Am came in the late 1970s with industry deregulation. The legislation of course brought more competition for Pan Am into the game, but this time coming from the big international airline players. Deregulation also meant that Pan Am could now at last enter the American domestic market, and it acquired National Airlines which unfortunately failed at a time Pan Am was in need of a financial “pick-me-up” [Smith, loc.cit.].
When the end came for Pan Am, it came fairly abruptly – in 1991. Pan Am offices everywhere simply closed their doors, virtually overnight. Rising costs of operation, falling market share, a trough in passenger numbers (a further blow in this respect was brought on by the 1990 Gulf War which led to a fall-off in international travellers) [Folger, loc.cit.]. There was a failure to make preparations for a smooth transition for Pan Am after the head’s departure. Trippe, having been so dominant and instrumental in the company’s success over four decades, was negligent in not planning for a long-term successor to himself [Byrne, loc.cit.]. This hurt Pan Am during the rocky days ahead when it was in desperate need of clear-headed, astute leadership.
Footnote: in the 1920s and 30s Juan Trippe was one of a handful of great US airline pioneers – the elite list also included CR Smith (American Airlines), WA Paterson (United Airlines), Eddie Rickenbacker (Eastern Airlines) and Collett E Woolman (Delta Airlines).
PostScript: Pan Am’s broader role
Under Trippe, Pan Am’s planes could be called upon when required to provide service outside it’s core commercial role. This happened in war, both hot and cold (eg, active role of Pan Am Clippers in WWII; humanitarian trips during the 1948-49 Berlin evacuation; collecting “refugees from communism” in Cuba during the early years of the Castro regime). Trippe also came to the rescue of his fellow “captain of industry” Henry Ford in 1931, by flying the Brazilian military into the remote Amazon to put down a worker revolt in the Fordlândia rubber plantation.
✲ in addition to a purely business opportunity, Trippe’s focus on this region was to help forestall the establishment of a German (and possibly also a French) airline service to the Panama Canal (in which the US held a strategic interest), [Sean Munger, op.cit.]
❂ by the 1970s the Pan Am publicity arm was able to boast that it was “the World’s Most Experienced Airline”
✥ often taking him to inassessible places in South and Meso-America where Trippe’s workers would follow, having the arduous job of hacking out landing strips from the dense jungle [Smith, loc.cit.]
✮ in very quick time BOAC, QANTAS, Air France and Lufthansa, among others, rushed to embrace 707s. In 1959 the Douglas company debuted its DC-8, virtually a copy of the 707 [Stadiem, loc.cit.]
✢ in the early years Trippe had even helped build airports in the jungles of Latin America to fit in with the new air routes planned for Pan Am
※ the hotel chain was sold to an English conglomerate, Grand Metropolitan, after Trippe’s death in 1981
✧ Pan Am’s role at that time has been described as the US’ “unofficial flag carrier”, [George C Larson, ‘Moments & Milestones: Birth of the Clippers’, Air & Space Smithsonian, Nov 2010, www.airspacemag.com]
⊡ skillfully Trippe played the big manufacturers (Boeing, Douglas and Lockheed) off against each other, manipulating them into commiting to an even larger jet before they were ready to build it! [Smith, loc.cit.]
By the 1930s it was apparent to all concerned that Fordlândia, Henry Ford‘s rubber plantation in the Amazon, had been a costly, massive underachiever. Ford however, to the unending frustration of his family, doggedly refused to pull the plug and walk away from the Amazon fiasco counting his losses. In 1934, instead of ditching the failing Fordlândia operation altogether, he retained it and at the same time poured a fresh pile of money and resources into a second Amazonian rubber plantation site.
Learning from failure
The new rubber plantation, at Belterra, was better positioned geographically in relation to the main regional city of Santarém (just 40 km south of it). The plantation site selected this time was a more judicious choice, unlike the uneven ground of Fordlândia, the site comprised a flat topography, much better terrain for moving equipment around and for planting✱. The more favourable physical conditions at Belterra meant that Ford’s agrarian labourers were over a period of several years able to cultivate some 19 square miles of land for the planting of rubber trees (not a gigantic quantity by any reckoning, but a significant advance on the pitiful returns from Fordlândia) [‘Belterra, Pará’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
Improvements in local agronomy
The horticulturalists at Belterra were conscious of the need not to replicate the monoculture prevailing at Fordlândia – which had made the rubber plants vulnerable to infection. By planting hardwoods this time and employing new breeding methods which used local varieties, the planters were able to avoid the scourge of Fordlândia – the Amazon leaf disease. The downside of this method however was that it was very labour-intensive and expensive [ibid.].
Infrastructure, variety and man-management
One of the clear lessons of Fordlândia was that living conditions for migrant workers in the camp were not conducive to creating a happy workforce. Again, as at Fordlândia, the migrant employees (based on the precedent of Ford’s American plant workers) were paid much higher than the going rate elsewhere in Brazil…but the company had learnt from the Fordlândia plantation that this was not enough of itself to get the desired worker performance. This time Ford’s managers delivered an enhanced town infrastructure…the drawing board for Belterra included three well-staffed hospitals (a critical area of shortage at Fordlândia) and three major (and two minor) schools◊. The sanitation system was much improved on the earlier settlement (arguably it was better than anywhere else in rural Brazil at that time). The street layouts were better planned and more uniform (straighter streets, more systematic street grid and more effort put into ‘greening’ the environment). The Belterra management gave workers more options for their leisure time – construction of football fields⍟ and playground equipment, movie and dance nights (exclusively folk dancing, another obsession of Henry Ford!). The upshot was to give the plantation town something akin to a suburban feel [‘Dearborn in the Jungle: Why Belterra Flourished Where Fordlandia Failed’, Past Forward: Activating the Henry Ford Archive of Innovation, (blog), www.thehenryford.com].
Whereas Fordlândia had catered exclusively for single men in its Brazilian work force, the Ford managers (eventually) adopted a more realistic, far-sighted policy, recruiting an increasing number of migrant families to the plantation…showing that Ford (or his management team) were serious about addressing the staff problem that had plagued Fordlândia, a high rate of turnover of the work force [ibid.].
Some relaxation of Ford’s tight reins
Other efforts were made to appease the plantation’s migrant work force to make them more compliant with company target objectives. The imposition of American food on Brazilian work force, which had been the bane of (a large slice of) the dissension in Fordlândia, was lifted. The Brazilian tappers and labourers were allowed to retain their traditional, local eating habits. In addition, in a further relaxation of conditions, musical instruments (an integral part of the Brazilian lifestyle) were allowed in the camp [ibid.].
Ford’s American ‘civilising’ mission for the “undeveloped world”
Despite a relaxing of some of the rules governing the running of Ford’s new industrial town in the Amazon, there were certain things Henry would not compromise on. Ford was always big on “moral education”…part of his rationale for getting into the Brazilian jungle was to fulfill a mission to realise a peculiarly idiosyncratic idea of his concerning “racial progress’. As Elizabeth Esch describes it, driving Ford was a patronising impulse to “proletarianise and civilise” the uneducated rubber tappers of Amazonia, to make them into “something better”※. In the carmaker’s eyes, melding the workforce into an more efficient unit went hand-in-hand with educating them.
Belterra school girls and boys in Ford’s uniforms, ca.1940 | THF56937 | by the Henry Ford (Flickr) 🔽
Midwest “old school” values
School was compulsory at Belterra – for all! Adult workers had to attend night school classes. Schoolchildren were strictly schooled and imbued with discipline along American lines of education…all workers’ children were issued with uniforms (which made the boys look like boy scouts or cadets). Every school day started with the ceremonial raising of the US flag. Some observers have noted how Ford’s installing of rigid educational and moral discipline at Belterra mirrored his own value system…to whit, tantamount to a kind of sociological experiment to “Americanise Belterra youth” along the lines of a “Mid-western small town model” [‘Dearborn in the Jungle’, loc.cit.].
Global war, disruption and end-game
Ford established a tyre manufacturing plant in Dearborn in 1937 which by 1940 had the capacity to build 5,000 tyres, unfortunately for Ford NOT ANY of the raw rubber was sourced by that time from the company’s Brazilian plants [Ford Richardson Bryan, Beyond the Model T: The Other Ventures of Henry Ford, (1997)].
🔽 Henry Ford tinkering (Photo source: The Ford UK Co)
The Amazonian rubber venture by 1941 nevertheless did seem to be making some headway, there was in excess of three-and-a-half million rubber tree planted (mostly at Belterra), which by the following year had yielded 750 tons of latex [ibid.]. The Ford Company was optimistic enough to announce that it expected to produce 30 to 40 million pounds of high quality rubber from the Amazon by 1950 [Esch, op.cit.]. One thing in its favour, as a consequence of the world war extending to the Pacific, was that British, Dutch and French Far Eastern rubber plantations were now in the hands of enemy Japan and no longer commercial entities.
Ultimately though the war rebounded on the Ford Company as on commerce generally with an increasing drain on the US economy for the war effort. The motor company’s finances were not in great shape during the war years…incredibly the increasingly ‘flaky’ Ford Senior had axed the global company’s Accounting Department! [G Grandin, Fordlândia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City, (2010)]) . The domestic situation in Brazil was not helping Ford’s rubber plants…although powerful Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas had given approving nods in the public eye to the company’s presence in Brazil, labour law reforms in the country were not advantageous to Ford. The Brazilian government also restricted the export of lumber during the war. To exacerbate matters even more, the rubber plantations were hit with a return bout of the dreaded leaf blight infestation [Bryan, op.cit.].
Synthetic rubber – the future!
Ford’s son Edsel✜ and grandson Henry II had for several years been badgering the bewilderingly stubborn and by now ailing and declining industrialist to bring the wasteful Amazon fiasco to an end. What possibly clinched it in the end was a technological breakthrough, by 1945 synthetic rubber production was a superior and more economical method of getting latex than natural rubber. Moreover, with WWII now over, Britain and the other European powers had regained control of their lucrative Far Eastern rubber estates, and would once again provide the Ford rubber plants with very stiff competition [ibid.]. In December 1945 Ford finally sold the Fordlândia and Belterra plantations back to the Brazilian government, losing over US$20 million in the deal [‘Belterra, Pará’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. The dragged-out, ill-fated Amazon venture of Ford, which perpetually “had teetered between failure and farce” was over [Esch, op.cit.].
PostScript: Fordlândia and Belterra redux
Belterra today is in much better nick than Fordlândia, this is largely because the Brazilian government has kept the Belterra plant operational, although it has never been particularly profitable. Fordlândia on the other hand bears many of the characteristic scars of a ghost town. When Companhia Ford Industrial Do Brasil ceased operations in 1945, the Americans cut and ran, leaving things pretty much as they were…pieces of equipment and machinery abandoned, left lying idle, to rot or to be stolen or to be vandalised (contemporary Fordlândia has been described as a “looters’ paradise”◘), furniture, door knobs and other fittings, whatever that was movable, was taken. Most of the original buildings though have survived✥, as well as the plantation sawmill, the generator and such industrial relics, left rusting in the jungle for the past 73 years.
The most striking physical industrial remnant at Fordlândia today is the Torre de água – the 50m-high Water Tower…it still stands, like a symbol of the lost town, and like most of the fixtures at Fordlândia, built in Ford’s Michigan and shipped to the Amazon. Greg Grandin describes its still erect form as a reminder of what it once personified, “a utilitarian beacon of modernity for Ford’s ‘civilising’ project” [Grandin, op.cit.].
✱ botantist expert James R Weir, brought in to ‘troubleshoot’ the company ‘s dismal performance in trying to grow rubber at Fordlândia, came up with the idea of a second plantation in the Amazon (and then promptly left the project altogether!)
◊ named after Henry Ford’s three grandsons, Edsel, Benson and Henry
⍟ Ford had banned the playing of football (soccer) at Fordlândia
※ there was lots of talk at Dearborn about “taming savages” and more disturbingly, of pseudo-racial categories – creating a “Latin-Saxonian unity” that supersedes the ‘Indian’ and mestizo groupings, E Esch, ‘Whitened and Enlightened’: The Ford Motor Company and Racial Engineering in the Brazilian Amazon’, in OJ Dinius & A Vergara [Eds.], Company Towns in the Americas: Landscape, Power and Working Class Communities, (2011)
✜ Ford heir Edsel predeceased his father, dying in 1943
◘ Simon Romero, ‘Deep in Brazil’s Amazon, Exhibiting the Ruins of Ford’s Fantasyland’, New York Times, 20-Feb-2017, www.nytimes.com]
✥ but not the crumbled mess of the town hospital
Pioneering American industrialist Henry Ford built his first commercial automobile in 1901, and went on in the years following to revolutionise the motor vehicle industry with his eponymous Model T Ford and his innovative assembly line production techniques✲. With the advent of Fordism (a system involving modern technological machinery and standardised production in high volumes) Ford was paying his auto industry employees an (at the time) unprecedented $5 a day! However it came with very consequential strings (a dehumanisation of the workplace and the loss of workers’ individual autonomy).
By the 1920s Ford was pursuing a plan to harness the waters of the Tennessee River to power a proposed 75-mile long mega-city, which the car-maker proclaimed would be a “new Eden” in northwest Alabama.A concerted campaign by political opponents within the US however blocked Ford’s efforts to get the scheme off the ground ‘[‘Valley of Visions’, (Adam Bruns), Site Selection Magazine, May 2010, www.siteselection.com]. Vexated but undaunted, Ford turned to the remote Amazon jungle for his next big project.
The rubber market and “latex gold”Rubber was in high demand by car manufacturers like Ford and his American rivals General Motors and Chrysler. Rubber is the source of latex, which is vulcanised to create car tyres and for a range of other vehicle parts (eg, valves, gaskets, hoses, electrical wiring). The problem for Ford and other manufacturers was that the European colonial powers, France, the Netherlands and (especially) Britain, had an established monopoly on the production of rubber through their profitable South-East Asian colonies (Malaysia, the East Indies, Vietnam, Ceylon). Ford was particularly concerned that the British, spearheaded by its secretary for colonial affairs Winston Churchill, was intent on creating a rubber cartel to further monopolise the valuable product for the Europeans. The industrialist therefore was looking round for a cheaper way of sourcing rubber…he briefly considered planting rubber trees in the Florida Everglades but that didn’t turn out to be promising. His focus eventually fixed on Brazil and its vast Amazon Basin (see also the Footnotes).
Eyes on BrazilFrom 6,000 km away in Ford’s Dearborn car ‘empire’ headquarters, the Amazon looked a logical location for a rubber plantation. It was after all the original (and therefore seemingly the natural) environment for producing latex, being the home of the plant Hevea brasiliensis, used to make the most elastic and purest form of latex!
Ford’s idealistic and ideological visionClearly Henry Ford saw the long-term business advantages of securing a consistent supply of latex at the most favourable prices, but in his public pronouncements he let it be known that he viewed the Brazilian project as something grander than an attempt to corner a resource market – “a civilising mission” no less! Ford regularly couched his intervention in Amazonia in terms of it being an act of “benevolence to help that wonderful and fertile land” [‘Lost cities #10: Fordlandia – the failure of Henry Ford’s utopian city in the Amazon’, (Drew Reed), The Guardian, 19-Aug-2016, www.theguardian.com]. While some of the car manufacturer’s overblown utterances may have been an indulgence in PR, the Amazonian venture (and the fact that he persisted with it long, long past its use-by-date) suggests that the idea of Fordlândia represented something in his core that was deeply idealistic. Greg Grandin in his epic study of the Fordlândia experiment, has noted that despite the runaway success of his Detroit-based business empire, Ford had become increasingly disatisfied with modern American society and culture as he saw it, there was a whole catalogue of things that he abhorred…including war, unions, alcohol, cigarettes, cow’s milk(!), modern dance, Wall Street financiers, Jews, the creeping intervention of government into business and into American life as a whole [Fordlândia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City, (2010)].
A blinkered idealismFord saw in the challenge of carving a viable city out of the Brazilian wilderness, a potential antidote to all he disliked about his homeland – a way to recreate “a vision of Americana that was slipping out of his grasp at home” [ibid.]. Another driver in Ford’s Amazonian quest was the unflinching faith in his capacity to replicate the Dearborn business success elsewhere, including the Amazon jungle. This idealism led Ford, even when things went “pear-shaped” in Fordlândia “to deliberately reject the expert advice” and blindly cling to his peculiarly personal notion of trying “to turn the Amazon into the Midwest of his imagination” [ibid.]. Moreover, Grandin notes, that the greater the reverses of Henry’s rubber enterprises in the Amazon, the more the carmaker would describe his ‘mission’ in Brazil in idealistic terms – Fordlândia would, he stressed repeatedly, bring economic stability and increases in the standard of life to the impoverished people of the Brazilian interior; the new city would support 10,000 people, etc [ibid.].
Initially, the government and it seems, the Brazilian people in the main, welcomed Ford’s Amazonian industrial city. Brazilian officials, especially consul José de Lima, went to great pains to woo the American carmaker once his interest in the Amazon became known. Some Brazilian officials even heaped overly-lavish, religiously evocative praise on Ford , calling him the “Jesus Christ of Industry”, the “Moses of the Twentieth Century” and “the salvation of Brazil’s long-moribund rubber industry” [ibid.].
By the terms of the business deal, Ford would pay the Brazilian government about US$125,000 for 5,625 square miles of land and the company was to be exempt from taxes✣. Under the concessions Ford’s city was to be granted an autonomous bank, police force and schools, to many observers it was a violation of Brazilian sovereignty…”it was as if Ford had the right to run Forlândia as a separate state”. The sceptical Santarém (local) press mockingly referred to the Dearborn (Michigan) car manufacturer as “São Ford” (“St Ford”) [ibid.].
The blueprint for FordlândiaFord poured a massive amount of resources into his (new) utopian ‘dream’ city. The plant was equipped with “state-of-the-art” processing facilities. No expense was spared on constructing the American village (known locally as Vila Americana) which was reserved for American management. It was equipped with a swimming pool, a golf course, tennis courts, a library, schools and a hospital. Not surprisingly, the de luxe conditions of the Americans’ village was in grotesque contrast with that of the Brazilian workers whose rudimentary houses lacked even running water [ibid.].
Setbacks and drawbacksThe jungle site picked out for Ford’s prefabricated industry town was Aveiro on the River Tapajós, in the state of Pará. From the get-go in 1928 things did not go well! First off, clearing the dense jungle for the site was really hard (and dangerous) work✪…even with Ford’s promise to pay high wages to the locals, labour was in short supply. The project’slogistics provided another headache, the location’s communications and transportation had serious shortcomings, The location was hilly and there were no roads to Aveiro so movement was by boat up and down the river, and seasonal climatic conditions tended to impede access (also latter on hindering the cargo vessels trying to reach Fordlândia to load up the latex).
“Agri-ignorance”The task of planting rubber trees was thoroughly error-ridden. Ford’s managers used antiquated planting techniques, the team lacked basic knowledge of tropical agriculture. A fundamental flaw that proved critical was the company’s practice (ignoring the advice of Brazilian botanists) of planting the rubber trees too close to each other, this resulted in making the plantings susceptible to disease (enabling the destructive South American leaf blight to move easily from tree to tree) [ibid.].
Illness caused by the harsh tropical location wreaked havoc with the work force (especially the migrant workers but also affecting the American staff). Workers went down with various ailments (malaria, VD, yellow fever, beriberi, parasites, snake bites, etc) placing a strain on the already overwhelmed company health services [ibid.].
Subverting worker moraleFord imposed strict conditions of behaviour on the work force – in keeping with his personal puritanical code. A prohibition ban was imposed (to match the prevailing injunction on alcohol in the US at the time). In light of the severely harsh conditions they were working under, Ford’s “absolutely no tolerance” liquor policy was totally unrealistic⊡. Workers were forced to endure a regime of rigid conformity – regimentation of plantation life, adhering to strict standards of discipline and hygiene. And to make things even more onerous, Ford introduced the same, notorious heavy-handed yolk of enforcement he employed in the River Rouge automobile plant in Detroit. Ford’s “Big Brother” like Service Department men were employed to carry out highly intrusive spot searches on workers’ quarters to ensure compliance with the edicts.
Americanisation overkillFord insisted that the migrant workers at Fordlândia adhere to Americanised conditions of work and services which ignored the local realities and cultural norms. This meant everyone got American-style housing with metal roofs which were conductors of the already intense tropical heat (in preference to the more sensible natural thatch roofs they were used to in Brazil). Another “First World” error by Ford was to build workers’ houses close to the ground…the locals in the Amazon knew to build high up on stilts so that they didn’t get overrun with animals and insects! Ford was insistent on interfering with the Brazilians’ diets, workers were fed unfamiliar food like hamburgers, whole-wheat bread and unpolished rice, and they were encouraged to plant flowers and vegetables on their plots. The American managers, with scant regard for the workers, forced them to work in the middle of the day in full tropical sun. Inevitably, the migrant workers staged a revolt against the management practices, known as Quebra-Panelas (the “Breaking Pans”). They rioted in late 1930, protesting against Ford’s imposed conditions, and the Brazilian army had to intervene to restore order (with management making some concessions with regard to the food) [ibid.].
Erratic managerial directionPart of the problem with Fordlândia was with the management. They’re was a rapid turnover of managers in the first two years of the settlement. Ford’s often wrong-headed policies were not easy to implement, but some managers were not up to the task and others just couldn’t hack it in the extremely challenging and arduous Amazon and quit. Unsurprisingly, with mismanagement morale plummeted, the American staff increasingly engaged in wild parties and drunken revelry. It wasn’t until Scot Archibald Johnston was put in charge at the end of 1930 that progress started to be made at Fordlândia. Johnston was able to improve the infrastructure, enhance the lifestyles of employees’ – new entertainments and recreations – film and dance nights, gardening, football games (overturning Ford’s earlier ban) and more education options. Grandin feels that under Johnston’s management, the city “came closest to Ford’s original ideal”. But still the yields of latex didn’t come remotely close to the company’s anticipated returns.
With the lack of commercial success, the original Brazilian government enthusiasm for Ford’s project waned badly. Even from the start there had been critics of the done deal that was vague on many details and required Ford to use only 40 % of his land grant for the production of latex♉. Eventually, there was a loss of credibility for Fordlândia – with the situation showing little improvement, the Brazilian middle classes ultimately could not square Ford’s “self-promoted reputation for rectitude and efficiency” with the reality of the plantation’s dismal track record [ibid.]
FN 1: British ‘Bio-piracy’The European monopoly on rubber had its origins in the unscrupulous actions of British botanist Henry Wickham who clandestinely pilfered Hevea seeds out of the Amazon in the late 19th century. These were propagated successfulyl in Asia✧, putting the three colonial powers in a frontline advantageous economic position in the trade. The sale of latex, especially to the US auto industry which needed rubber for the expansion of the burgeoning industry, helped Great Britain and France pay off its (WWI) war debts [Grandin, op.cit.].
FN 2: The “latex lords”Before the rise of the Asian rubber plantations, Brazil was the dominant world supplier…in the second half of the 19th century, processed rubber accounted for 40% of Brazil’s total exports. The Amazon’s big towns, Manaus and Belem, profited spectacularly from the rubber boom as witnessed by the magnificent BeauxArts palaces and grand neoclassical municipal buildings that sprang up. By the early 1920s however, the country’s rubber industry had bottomed out and Brazil was bankrupt [ibid.].••••——••——•••——••——•••——••
✲ so successful that the Ford Motor Company had captured over half the US auto sales market by 1921✧ rubber cultivation thrived in South-east Asia due to a combination of factors – the parasites (insects and fungi) that feed off the rubber in Brazil were not present; the cross-breeding of trees led to increased yields of sap. The plantations were close to ports (cf. Brazil), reducing the transportation costs. Lastly, the cost of labour (principally derived from China) was significantly lower [Grandin, op.cit.]
✣ as it transpired, the deal was not as great as the Detroit carmaker thought …”swindled by a Brazilian con artist” Ford paid around three-times the value of the land [G Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, The United States and the Rise of the New Imperialism, (2005)]
✪ a hardship compounded by the company providing the clearers with very poor housing conditions⊡ and impossible to fully enforce…plantation workers got round the prohibitions (Ford’s ‘puritanism’ extended to bans on women in the town, on smoking and on the playing of football as well) by establishing illicit bars, nightclubs and brothels on the so-called “Island of innocence”, [‘Fordlândia’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]♉ leading some Brazilians to speculate that Ford’s real motives for intervening were to seek oil, gold and political leverage [Grandin, op.cit.].
In the middle of the Napoleonic Wars, with conflict raging in different parts of the Continent, attention switched momentarily to the North Atlantic. In 1807 the United Kingdom attacked Copenhagen, capturing or neutralising virtually the entire Danish navy. The Danish response was to join the European conflict on Napoleon’s side against Britain and its allies.
Iceland at this time was a sovereign territory under the realm of the Danish-Norwegian real union. During the hostilities, in 1809, a British trading expedition to Iceland was mounted by London soap merchant Samuel Phelps. Accompanying Phelps on this mission was a Danish adventurer with a dodgy past, Jørgen Jørgenson whose escapades in Iceland and elsewhere were to make him one the most colourful characters of the era.
Jørgenson’s coup
Despite Iceland’s citizens suffering from a shortage of provisions, the governor of the colony rebuffed Phelps’ request to trade with the locals. At this point, Phelps and especially Jørgenson, took things into their own hands. The Dane had the governor (Count FC Trampe) apprehended and his administration deposed in a “bloodless coup”. Jørgenson immediately declared Iceland a republic, free and independent of Danish-Norwegian rule.
Jørgenson’s “reform agenda” for Iceland✱
Unhesitatingly Jørgenson assumed the top spot in the new regime, adopting the title of “His Excellency, the Protector of Iceland, Commander in Chief by Sea and Land” [James Dally, ‘Jorgenson, Jorgen (1780–1841)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/jorgenson-jorgen-2282/text2935, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 1 January 2019].
The ‘protector’ set about designing a flag (above) for the ‘republic’ and built a fort which he named Fort Phelps after the merchant who financed the expedition. Jörgenson announced a series of reforms, pledging to lower taxes on the citizenry, establish price controls on grain, and to restore the Althing (Iceland’s historic parliament dating back to AD 930) [Historical Dictionary of Iceland, (Sverrir Jakobsson & Gudamundar Hálfdanarson) [1st Ed.]]. Jørgenson’s proclamations that he was acting on behalf of Icelanders to liberate them from colonial servitude have a question mark over them…in his autobiography Jørgenson hints at the fact that he had been motivated more by personal gain and glory than by any altruistic aims [‘The Convict King’ by Jørgen Jørgenson (edited by James Francis Hogan)].
The “nine week republic”
The English were not in favour of Jørgenson’s bold unilateral coup, the influential Sir Joseph Banks for instance decried the takeover by Jørgenson as illegal – although its interesting to note that Banks had already urged Westminster to annex Iceland (as well as Greenland and the Faroe Islands) and turn the North Atlantic into a “British lake” [Jørgen Jørgenson’s Liberation of Icelandic – A Bicentenary’, Tasmanian Times, (Kim Peart), 31-May-2009, www.tasmaniantimes.com]. Just nine weeks after the deposition of Danish rule on the island, the HMS Talbot under Captain Alexander Jones was despatched to the capital Reikevig (Reykjavík) to take the Danish “mini-Napoleon” into custody and restore Danmark-Norge rule.
Jørgenson was taken back to London (apparently voluntarily) where was imprisoned for breaching his parole which had forbidden him from leaving England without permission. After the defeat of Denmark-Norway’s ally France in 1814, Norway was ceded to Sweden and Iceland ceded to Denmark (Treaty of Kiel). It was the not until 1944 that Iceland finally obtained full independence from the Danes and became, this time permanently, a republic.
⟰ Stone engraving commemorating Jørgenson on the Ross Bridge, Tasmania
PostScript: Jørgen Jørgenson, opportunist adventurer
Jørgenson’s eventful life, both before and after his brief Icelandic escapade, was a entertaining cavalcade of alternating peaks and troughs. His autobiography makes the case for Jørgenson as “man of many parts”: “Being the Life and Adventures of Jörgen Jörgensen, Monarch of Iceland, Naval Captain, Revolutionist, British Diplomatic Agent, Author, Dramatist, Preacher, Political Prisoner, Gambler, Hospital Dispenser, Continental Traveller, Explorer, Editor, Expatriated Exile, and Colonial Constable.“ [Hogan, op.cit.]. Among other things, Jørgenson had two lengthy spells in Van Diemens Land (Tasmania), involved in the early exploration of that island✥; had a number of mandatory stays at “His Majesty’s Pleasure” (the Fleet Prison, Newmarket); was for a time a spy FOR the British; and in between adventures he wasted an inordinate amount of time engaged in nonstop gambling and drinking.
☤☤ ☤ ☤ ☤☤
Note: Icelanders today refer to Jørgenson as Jörundur hundadaga-Konyngur (“Jørgen the Dog-Days King”) (Icelanders tend to characterise summer as the “dog-days”).
▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓
✱ Jørgenson had called for the creation of a liberal constitution based both on that of the United States and on the French First Republic
✥ ‘Vandemonians’ have heaped on Jørgenson some of his more romanticised sobriquets, such as the “Founder of the City of Hobart Town” and the “Viking of Van Diemens Land”
Three hundred years ago this coming April, London merchant-cum-journalist Daniel Defoe published his debut novel anonymously✱ – it was to become one of the most iconic and most imitated literary works ever…it began with a title page descriptor that read in full:
The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates.
Once “cast on Shore by Shipwreck”, Crusoe, isolated and alone, is forced to make the best of a perilous predicament in an alien and challenging environment. His solitary, epic struggle in the face of hardships and the existence of threats from wild animals and the unknown elevates the story to mythic proportions. The myth is complete when Crusoe ultimately succeeds in conquering all impediments and fashions the island into his own “miniature Great Britain”.
A multiplicity and diversity of readingsRobinson Crusoe is a multifaceted work of fiction, viewable from a number of different perspectives. On a straightforward level its an adventure novel and a travel book (rather than a guide) tantalising the 18th century Englishman and woman with a sense of faraway “new worlds” which were still undergoing a process of discovery and exploration.
The personality of the protagonist Crusoe himself is an Everyman figure, representing a cross-spectrum of contemporary English societal types – above all he is the archetypical survivor prompting untold numbers of readers to identify with the despair of his plight and “embraced his myth of struggle, survival and triumph against all odds” [Crusoe: Daniel Defoe, Robert Knox and the Creation of a Myth, Frank, K (2011)].
⍐ One of the numerous screen adaptations of the ‘Robinson Crusoe’ tale
Crusoe as “economic-imperialist” and coloniser
There is the hero of romantic, bourgeois individualism, the Englishman who turns his dire circumstance to his ultimate financial advantage. When others appear on the island (Friday, the boy slave Xury, the ‘savages’, the Spanish sailors and English mutineers), Crusoe reacts with a sensibility typical of the “natural superiority” of a coloniser and uses the others as ‘commodities’✥. James Joyce described Robinson Crusoe as the “true symbol of the British conquest”, embodying “the whole Anglo-Saxon spirit” [quoted in ‘An introduction to Robinson Crusoe’, (Stephen Sharkey), 21-Jun-2018, www.bl.uk].
A spiritual voyage
On another level Robinson Crusoe can be read as a kind of spiritual autobiography (popular in Defoe’s time). Crusoe’s journey from one exotic land to another can be seen as the “spiritual voyage” of Bunyanesque Puritan Christianity. Crusoe’s long, long sojourn on the island is a test of his faith. Being alone with infinite time on his hands he devotes himself to intense self-scrutiny, questioning the Providence that landed him in his predicament (ie, his relationship with God). Some critics have noted that Crusoe’s thought processes on the island entailed a progression from rebellion, acknowledgement of mortal sin, atonement and religious conversion [‘Robinson Crusoe Theme of Religion’, (shmoop), www.shmoop.com].
DIY Robinson Crusoe and the Conduct book
Defoe provides a very detailed description of how his hero goes about making the most of his enforced stay on the island. As Katherine Frank observes, DeFoe’s novel is the “ultimate how to book: a step-by-step guide on how to live in a particular tricky situation”, ie, a method for surviving alone on a desert island◘ [Frank, op.cit.]. On the ship and again on the island Robinson spends copious amounts of time cataloguing items and making lists of everything that comes into his head.
The novel’s preoccupation with DIY touches on something else close to Defoe’s heart, the “Conduct book”✪ (a kind of user’s guide for life in the 18th century). The self-help component in Robinson Crusoe gives a sample of the writer’s broader interest in instructional works…Defoe spilled a lot of ink in writing a series of published texts telling people how they should live their lives – with titles like The Family Instructor, The Compleat English Tradesman and The Compleat English Gentleman.
A Defoe conduct book on the Robinson Crusoe theme
Always look on the bright side of life
Defoe’s faith in the individual’s capacity for self-improvement comes through in his novels as much as in the didactic Conduct books. In Robinson Crusoe Defoe’s central character refuses to give up and submit to his fate no matter how glum his prospects look. With each new challenge he faces on the island, Crusoe time and again evokes the “power of positive thinking”…in his solitude he learns “to look more upon the bright Side of my Condition and less upon the dark Side” (Defoe imbues the protagonists of his later novels like Moll Flanders with this same positive disposition) [ibid.]. Defoe really had to be a glass half-full kind of guy to keep bouncing back from all the reversals life was lobbing on him (viz. a succession of self-inflicted, calamitous business ventures he managed to embroil himself in, doing gaol time for failure to pay his debts, etc).
PostScript: Cashing in on the “golden egg”The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was an instant commercial success with four editions printed in 1719. Defoe, always with his mind fixated on how to enrich himself, was quick to follow-up Robinson Crusoe with a sequel. The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, published in the same year, proved to be almost as much a hit with the public. The Farther Adventures (usually today called the Further Adventures) was intended to be Robinson Crusoe’s swan-song, but Defoe couldn’t resist going to the well one time too many with a third book in 1720 entitled Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: With his Vision of the Angelick.Serious Reflections ‘bombed’ badly and the less said about it the better⊡.
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✱ it was commonplace for 18th century texts to be published either anonymously or using a pseudonym…Defoe was especially inclined to obscure textual ownership to try to cover himself when raising polemical questions [‘Anonymity in the Eighteenth Century’, (Gillian Paku), (Literature, Literary Studies – 1701 to 1800: Aug 2015 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935338.013.37 www.oxfordhandbooks.com]
✥ Crusoe’s mercenary nature (equating with that of the money-obsessed Defoe) is best illustrated with Xury who Crusoe is happy to sell back into slavery when he is no longer required and by so doing fetch a tidy sum for himself
◘ novelist EM Forster once remarked that Robinson Crusoe reminded him of a “Boy Scout manual”
✪ Conduct books, today’s self-help guides, in Defoe’s day took the form of sermons, devotional writings, familiar letters, chapbooks and instruction manuals offering advice on social mores and manners, spiritual guidance and practical information on state and household duties, [Batchelor, Jennie. “Conduct Book”. The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 July 2004
https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=216, accessed 29 December 2018.]
⊡ the Farther Adventures had the same trademark derivative framework as the original novel – Defoe borrowed heavily once again from Robert Knox’s autobiography and seems to have modelled the last part of Crusoe’s journey on a 17th century Moscow Embassy secretary’s travel journal (Moscow – Peking), The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; Frank, op.cit.]
The path taken by John Lewis in scaling the heights of retail commerce was typical of many embryonic and aspiring owner-drapers in mid-Victorian Britain. Somerset born and raised, Lewis started his first modest shop in Nº132 (later re-numbered) Oxford Street, London, in 1864 (taking the sum of 16s & 4d on opening day). His first twenty years in business for himself were far from glamorous, a period dominated by hard and dreary ‘yakka’ and slow piecemeal accumulation and consolidation.
The tortoise approach – slow and steady
Lewis took a conservative, uncomplicated (“keep it simple”) approach to retailing and only slowly moved his lines from silks, woollens and cotton fabrics to dress fabrics and clothing and later to furnishing fabrics and household supplies like China and ironmongery (but never food!). His philosophy was sell cheap and no ads (for nearly a century the John Lewis company continued a practice of minimal advertising!)✱. Unsurprisingly for a man described as “a Victorian curmudgeon” [‘John Lewis (1836-1928)’, Geoffrey Tweedale, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 06-Jan-2011, www.oxfordnb.com], his management style was rigidly autocratic, he often had abysmally poor relations with his staff and was prone to effecting arbitrary and sometimes wholesale dismissals. In 1920 Lewis’ “pig-headedness” and anti-union stance triggered deleterious industrial conflict…in 1920 the unaddressed grievances of Lewis’ shop-girls led to a strike by 400 staff. Lewis simply sacked the strikers and replaced them, but his arbitrary action brought him discredit and caused commercial ruptures adversely affected the company’s competitiveness vis-à-vis its retailing rivals in the long-term. ‘How John Lewis was the original store wars: As the retail empire celebrates 150 years, we tell its fascinating story’, (Brian Viner), The Daily Mail (UK),, 04-Jul-2014, www.dailymail.co.uk]
ef=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/image-1.jpg”> Flagship store 1939 (Source: John Lewis Memory)[/cap
Lewis adopted an habitually “penny-pinching” stance when it came to running the store’s finances. In this he was the diametrically opposite of his Selfridges contemporary, the ostentatious, big spending, big advertising Harry Gordon Selfridge. In the eyes of Lewis, Selfridge must have seemed absolutely criminally profligate! Nonetheless Lewis did earn “brownie points” with London consumers for his straight dealing and commitment to the purveyance of quality goods, and profits grew accordingly. Sales for the ‘John Lewis’ stores rose from an underwhelming £25,000 in 1870 to a commendable £921,000 in 1921.
http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/image-2.jpg”> Peter Jones[/caption
Another instance of Lewis’s circumspect approach was his reluctance to expand the business. It was not until 1906 that he made a move in this direction, purchasing the ailing Peter Jones store in Chelsea after the death of the store’s original Welsh owner✧. During his long lifetime John Lewis made no further expansionary attempts. The company during this period was clearly hamstrung by a lack of dynamic vision under its founder – losing vital retail ground to the likes of Whiteleys and Owen Owen [Tweedale, loc.cit.].
Father v son
Lewis’s innate caution also showed itself in his hesitancy in passing even a portion of control of the firm over to his sons, especially his eldest son John Spedan Lewis. When Lewis’s sons came of age, he gave them a limited role only…Spedan (as he was universally called) was put in charge of the newly acquired Peter Jones store (presumably to keep him from interfering with the central operation of the business). Spedan increasingly clashed with Lewis Senior over their fundamentally different approaches to business, with Spedan in charge of Peter Jones and JL Senior holding sway in Oxford Street HQs, relations between father and son deteriorated alarmingly (characterised in some quarters as equating to intra-family “store wars”) [Viner, loc.cit].
After the founder’s death in 1928 Spedan was free to fully implement his more progressive management ideas – in the area of staff relations these were often light years away from his father’s outmoded views and intransigent bellicosity…once at the helm Lewis Junior started by cutting working hours and introduced tea-breaks for the staff…Spedan envisaged further, more radical, plans for modernising ‘John Lewis’ and propelling it forward in the Thirties.
Under Spedan’s watch – JLP up and away!
Spedan wasted no time in taking ‘John Lewis’ in a very different direction to his late father’s ultra-cautious, steady-as-it-goes approach. In 1929 he reformed the enterprise into a public limited company, John Lewis Partners (JLP). Staff were rebranded ‘partners’ and made shareholders in the firm. Spedan diversified and pursued an expansionary route that Lewis Senior had so long doggedly eschewed. Smaller, less profitable chains were acquired – from 1933 on Spedan widened the John Lewis Partnership dramatically, adding purchased stores for the first time outside of London – Nottingham, Weston Super-Mare, Portsmouth and Tyrrel, Southampton, etc. [‘The 1930’s; a period of growth’, (Johnathan Blanchford), (‘John Lewis Memory Store’), www.johnlewismemorystore.org.uk]. One of JL Junior’s ideas was to create a chain of John Lewis hotels, and to supply these hotels he bought a chain of grocery shops, known as Waitrose, in the Thirties. Waitrose proved a spectacularly profitable acquisition for John Lewis’⊛. As of 2016 there were some 353 Waitrose supermarkets across the UK, collectively worth more than £1B (one of only five such successful food and drink brands in Britain) [‘Waitrose’, Wikipedia]http://en.m.wikipedia.org.
In the Forties John S Lewis bought up some of the failing Selfridge business concerns after the former high-flying company plummeted and Harry Selfridge was forced out to pasture and into retirement. Other (overseas) business moves into South African draperies however turned out to be unsuccessful ventures [‘John Lewis’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
▼ Spedan Lewis
Although Spedan was less autocratic, and certainly less confrontational✣, than his father, he was no democrat when it came to running the John Lewis business empire. Some observers (including insiders), recognising an inherited family trait, saw Lewis Junior as a “my way or the highway” type of business leader. Recollections of some ex-staff and associates point at a Spedan inclination to public losses of temper and the arbitrary and unfair treatment of staff on occasions, with a suggestion of a peculiar bias against staff (including managers) with ginger hair [‘Memories of Spedan – not all sweetness and light’, (Margaret Cole), (‘John Lewis Memory Store’), www.johnlewismemorystore.org.uk].
Today JLP remains an employee-owned British company (consistent with the “worker-cooperative” entity (the ‘Partnership’) as initiated by Spedan Lewis in 1929). According to the Sunday Times it is the third largest private UK company by sales – £3.78B revenue in 2017 [“The Sunday Times HSBC Top Track 100 league” (2016)]. As a retail operator JLP maintain its traditional market position as a chain of high-end✫ department stores⊡, competing with its historic, equally upscale rivals in the merchandising field, Harrods and Selfridges.
FN: the corporate colours of retailing
John Lewis’s store colours have traditionally been green and white – supposedly because Spedan Lewis wrote his memos exclusively in green ink (the auditor’s colour!) on white paper [Tweedale, loc.cit.]. Interestingly, green seems to be the preferred colour of successful London-based retailers…Selfridges’ salient business colour is also green, and both Harrod’s and Marks and Spencer’s traditional hues are green and gold.
2013: John Lewis presence in Westfield’s Shepherds Bush mall ∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸
✱ the John Lewis motto (dating from 1925) characteristically is “never knowingly undersold”
✧ the sale was the stuff of legend in London retailing – Lewis reportedly walked the distance from Oxford Street to the Sloane Square, Chelsea, Jones premises, with bank notes in his pocket to the value of £20,000 to complete the purchase in person. Today, Peter Jones is the ‘posher’ sibling of the John Lewis store
⊛ Waitrose is an upmarket grocer in line with the general emphasis of John Lewis merchandising
✣ JL Senior’s quarrelsome, confrontational nature was often fraught with consequences – a protracted turn-of-the-century legal dispute with Lord Howard, Baron de Walden, saw Lewis being sentenced to three weeks in gaol in 1903 for contempt of court [‘How John Lewis ended up in prison. A new century same old Mr Lewis’, (J Blanchford), (‘John Lewis Memory Store’), www.johnlewismemorystore.org.uk]
✫ a monumental departure from the early days of JL Senior’s “sell cheap” strategy
⊡ currently around 30 JL stores in England, Scotland and Wales and concessions in the Republic of Ireland and Australia
“People will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them sit up and take notice.”~ HG Selfridge
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Before I ever visited the UK I wasn’t at all familiar with Selfridges. I knew about Knightsbridge and Harrods and its preciously preserved pedigree all right…we’ve done that! My first time in London I was on a bus travelling (make that crawling) down Oxford Street heading towards the West End when I was enlightened as to the existence of the second-best known upmarket London department store. As the bus idled stationary I spotted a sign in front of a building that said ‘Selfridges’, my first thought, I remember, was “strange name!”…but when I think about it now I vaguely recall that I had previously heard the name Selfridges, but without inquiring further at the time I sort of formed the literal impression that it was a store as the name sounded that “sold fridges”, ie, a purveyor of domestic white goods! So when I did eventually get my beak inside the store’s doors at 400 Oxford Street I was surprised to see lines and lines of (pricey) fashion wear, shoes, accessories, skin care products, bags and more – but not one refrigerator in sight! (in its time it has apparently sold most everything!)
Even without visiting Selfridges’ flagship Oxford Street store, you may well be aware of it or of its US-born founder Harry Gordon Selfridge thanks to the recent ITV television series Mr Selfridge (first aired in 2013). The series was a period drama about the flamboyant, visionary retailer and the interactions that take place around him in his eponymous London department store✱.
A Marshall Field blueprint for LondonWisconsin-born Harry Gordon Selfridge initially earned his business ‘spurs’ working for Chicago department store Marshall Field & Company (right), this segued into him purchasing his own department store in Chicago. In hardly any time at all the mercurial Selfridge abruptly re-sold the business, making a quick profit and retired to play golf. In 1906 while holidaying in London, Selfridge sensed a new retail opening for his entrepreneurial talents in the British capital. For £400,000 he purchased land and surrounds for a novel custom-built, mega-department store in the then unfashionable, western end of Oxford Street [‘Harry Gordon Selfridge’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
“The American Invasion of London”The London press was not initially warm to the notion of the American’s incursion into the world of London commerce. The City’s daily and drapery trade press described it as an “American Invasion of London” [Lawrence]. Selfridge’s loud in tone and bombastic approach to selling the project didn’t help in endearing him to the newspapers (described in some publications as being “aggressively big in scale”). Selfridge’s efforts to make the store a reality were driven by an unwavering vision: creating a “monumental retail emporium” was in his eyes the key to elevating “the business of a merchant to the Dignity of Science” (as he grandiosely put it). Selfridge believed to achieve that, he had to construct a gigantic “technologically advanced department store”, hence the massive amount of money, time and effort he put into the project [LAWRENCE, J. (1990). ‘Steel Frame Architecture versus the London Building Regulations: Selfridges, the Ritz, and American Technology’. Construction History, 6, 23-46. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41613676].A ground-breaking, landmark modern steel-framed buildingConstruction of the Selfridge store was something of an architectural coup in itself. It won praise in its day from British building journals for its innovative construction methods…built with steel frames and reinforced concrete allowing for much narrower than usual walls, the frames permitted a far greater window area, so very large plate-glass windows could be installed (12 of which were the largest sheets of plate-glass then in the world!) – making for much more interior natural light and brightness (designed by famed US architect Daniel Burnham and associates). Originally comprising a 250′ x 175′ site, Selfridge’s had nine Otis passenger and two service lifts and six staircases. 100 separate departments were spread out over eight floors. While the physical construction of the Oxford Street store took only 12 months, Selfridge had first to overcome London City Council’s raft of objections (unprecedented size of the commercial structure, fire danger, etc). Selfridge and his engineers’ lobbying of the LCC Committee eventually resulted in the passing of two local building acts – LCC (General Powers) Acts of 1908 and 1909 – necessary for the Oxford Street project to be completed [Lawrence, ibid.]☯.
Rigid building regulations weren’t Selfridge’s only impediment to making his dream store a reality. Half-way through the project funding became a pressing issue when his partner and main backer Sam Waring, frustrated by Harry’s “grandiose and reckless approach” to the venture (Selfridge had grievously underestimated the complications of the project), withdrew his financial backing. The economic downturn in London (and in the US) at the time made alternative sources of funding a very grim prospect, and disaster was only narrowly avoided when a new backer, millionaire tea tycoon John Musker stepped in to rescue Selfridge [Gayle Soucek, Mr Selfridge in Chicago: Marshall Field’s, the Windy City and the Making of a Merchant Prince, (2015)]. After the big opening Selfridge remembered to make sure the store’s product lines included everything to do with tea-making (teapots, cups and saucers, sugar bowls, etc) [‘Selfridges: 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about the department store’, (History Extra), www.historyextra.com].
Selfridge, customer-centred strategies ahead of the curveHarry’s approach to retailing was characteristically innovative on many fronts. Selfridge placed tremendous faith in advertising, the 1909 campaign leading up to the store’s opening cost a reported $500,000 in 1909 money [‘Selfridge Dies: Ripon Lad Who Jolted Empire’, The Milwaukee Sentinel, 9-May-1947 (online fiche)] (Britain’s biggest ever ad bill to that point) and he used it imaginatively together with ingenious publicity campaigns. Selfridge was the first retailer to make popular the idea of “shopping for pleasure”, rather than it being solely a functional task undertaken for necessity (as people conceived of it prior to Harry’s advent). In-store activities and arrangements often were original and novel (eg, displaying the monoplane used by aviator Louis Blériot in the first cross-English Channel flight at Selfridge’s (1909)✜). Another interest-generating feature in the store was Logie Baird’s televisionprototype shown on display in 1925.
Those specially designed wide windows were put to optimal use, Selfridge was the first to utilise window dressing where he could show off the latest fashions and utensils in open display [‘Selfridges 7 things’, loc.cit.]. The staff at Selfridge’s Oxford Street store (initially comprising 1,400 employees) were instructed to assist customers in their purchases, not to pester or use any “hard-sell” tactics on them⊟. Harry’s philosophy was “first get them in, then to keep them there. Thereafter they would buy” (Woodhead). One of Selfridge’s more forward-thinking moves was to locate the goods where they were visible and accessible to customers all around the store’s interior (a practice he devised while at Marshall Field’s in Chicago), rather than hiding them away from sight under counters (as had been the practice in most retail stores hitherto). He also introduced the concept of the “bargain basement” to retailing, a section where shoppers could find regularly discounted commodities [‘Innovation Lessons From The World’s First Customer Experience Pioneer — Infograph’, (Blake Morgan), Forbes Magazine, 26-Jun-2017, www.forbes.com ; Lindy Woodhead, Shopping, Seduction & Mr Selfridge, (2012)].
A visceral, holistic experienceSelfridge’s vision was to make the department store more than just a shop where you went to buy goods, he continued to introduce new features to Selfridges…elegant (moderately priced) restaurants, a library, reading and writing rooms and special reception rooms for French, American and ‘Colonial’ clientele. There were cookery demonstrations in the kitchenware section. All this marked a radical departure from the practices of other department stores which employed floorwalkers to ‘shoo’ people out of the store who were just hanging around and not actively engaged in buying an item! Even the store’s roof was put to productive if curious usage (a shooting range for an all-girl gun club as well as an ice rink✧) [Lawrence, loc.cit.].
The female shopper as an identified demographicSelfridge saw the role of the department store in macrocosmic terms – “the store should be a social centre, not merely a place for shopping”. Unlike the conservative establishment of the day and much of the mainstream, Selfridge endorsed the Suffragette Movement…the new store was (in part) “dedicated to woman’s service”. In a 1913 advertisement Selfridge described the store thus: Selfridge and Co: The Modern Woman’s Club-Store” [‘Suffrage Stories/Campaigning for the Vote: Selfridge’s and Suffragettes’, Woman and her Sphere, (Elizabeth Crawford), 16-May-2013,www.womanandhersphere.com; ‘Selfridge Lovers: The Secret behind our house’, www.selfridge.com]. Astute businessman that he was, Harry popularised shopping as a leisure activity specifically for women…to make it a more welcoming and conducive place for them to spend time (and money!), he displayed freshly scented floral arrangements and had open vistas in the store, he employed musicians to perform and added beauty and hair salons (Paris-inspired) and art galleries. And he introduced public restrooms for women to the store (the first time ever done!)❅[Forbes, loc.cit.].
The H.G.S. leadership style As retail magnate go, Selfridge went against the grain for his day by not being an authoritarian business leader. He was temperamentally inclined towards fairness with regard to remuneration, increasing the wages of his staff, elevating them above “wage slavery”, treating them as employees as opposed to ‘servants’ (cf. Harrods) [ibid.]…not to overstate it, Selfridges shop floor staff were still exposed to long, long hours of drudgery but they were paid a livable wage for their arduous labours. A sample of the quotes attributed to Selfridge reflect his anti-dictatorship approach to business and interpersonal relations: “The boss drives his men, the leader coaches them” ;“The boss depends on authority, the leader on good will” ; “The boss says ‘I’, the leader says ‘We'” ; “The boss inspires fear, the leader inspires enthusiasm” ; “The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown, the leader fixes the breakdown” ; etc.✥ [‘Harry Gordon Selfridge’, Wikipedia, op.cit.]
Tower follySelfridge’s thrived, prospered and grew after the Great War (the store size doubled). Things didn’t always go the Wisconsin-born retail magnate’s way however…a couple of commercial reversals suffered by Harry during the decade concerned his plans for erecting a massive tower from the building which was rejected by the LCC Committee because of excessive height, and possibly also because it would have vied with the iconic St Paul’s Cathedral for attention (a fortunate outcome perhaps as the model drawings for the tower suggest the result would have been an incongruous coupling of architectural forms and a hideous eyesore!) [Lawrence, op.cit.]. The other setback was Selfridge’s proposal for a tunnel between the store and the nearest tube station, Bond Street, the plan ultimately got kiboshed!
Harry on the downslideBy the late Twenties Selfridge & Co was at the top of its game, the name was synonym with quality merchandise and Selfridge took its place as a stellar institution on the London commercial scene. Some time after the onset of the Great Depression things started to turn badly pear-shaped for Selfridge, as for businessmen as a whole. Harry Selfridge contributed to his own decline however by persisting in his flamboyantly extravagant spending. He squandered money on his womanising ways for which he earned a certain notoriety, for instance, $4M was wasted on his dalliances and affairs such as with the Dolly Sisters (Hungarian jazz dancers) – a part of his story that the TV series was quick to focus on) [Forbes, loc.cit.. By 1940 the company owed £250,000 in taxes and Selfridge was deep in debt to the bank, forcing him to sell out and retire from the business (retaining a modest annual consultancy stipend) [‘Harry Gordon Selfridge’, Wikipedia, op.cit.; Milwaukee Sentinel, op.cit]
Selfridges’ Birmingham Bullring store ▼Selfridges post H.G.S.Selfridge & Co’s reversal of fortunes signalled a move from its circling competitors…rival department chain John Lewis & Partners acquired some of Selfridges’ provincial stores in the Forties, which was a preliminary move to John Lewis’ eventual takeover of the flagship Oxford Street store (1951). In turn John Lewis was itself acquired by the Sears Group in 1965. Its current owners, the Anglo-Canadian Galen Weston company bought Selfridges in 2003 for a reported £598M. Today the store name ‘Selfridges’ survives on the Oxford Street building, and in the three other regional branches in the counties (Trafford Centre and Exchange Square, both in Manchester, and the Bullring in Birmingham).
FN: Harry Selfridge from when he first arrived was perceived widely as a Trans-Atlantic “blow-in”, splashing his (and his wife’s) money around, vociferously determined to show the established home-grown retailers what a ‘superior’ type of modern department store looked like. Selfridge displayed a talent for polarising opinion…to his dazzled admirers he was “the Earl of Oxford Street”, the flashy Midwest American merchant was “as much a part of the sights as Big Ben” (as one columnist waxed lyrically), but to his detractors (including many of his competitors and much of the London press) he was merely a “vulgar American tradesman” or worse [Milwaukee Sentinel, loc.cit ; Woodhead, op.cit.].
PostScript: ‘Selfridges gets Sixties hipIn 1966, Selfridges, by now under Sears Holdings boss Charles Clore, recognised the youth market with a separate outlet for young women, Miss Selfridge (forming a link back to Harry Selfridge’s traditional focus on female customers). The new store in Duke Street signalled Selfridges’ wholesale embrace of the Sixties’ fashion revolution. Miss Selfridge used mannequins based on the straight line form of 1960s iconic model Twiggy and sold the latest in Mary Quant and Pierre Cardin fashions. In the early 2000s Miss Selfridge was acquired by the Arcadia Group [‘Selfridges 7 things’, op.cit.].
“The Queen of Time” AKA Ship of Commerce Statue ▼⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎
✱ described as “Downton Abbey with tills” [” ‘Mr Selfridge’: It’s ‘Downton Abbey’ with tills…”, The Telegraph, (Daphne Lockyer), 15-Dec-2012, www.telegraph.co.uk]☯ the impressive Selfridge facade, personifying power and permanence, was later complimented by the addition of a decorative Art-Deco motif – the ‘Queen of Time riding her Ship of Commerce’ (clock-statue by Gilbert Bayes)✜ around 12,000 visited the store to view the displayed history making French monoplane…no doubt plenty of these visitors also made spontaneous purchases while they were in Selfridge’s premises [Forbes, op.cit.]⊟ Selfridge possibly was quite consciously also trying to make his front-line staff as unlike Harrods’ staff – who had a reputation for ‘snootiness’ and stiff formality – as he could! [Milwaukee Sentinel, loc.cit]✧ recently the roof was again used in idiosyncratic fashion, by being turned into a “boat lake” and a “putt-putt” mini-golf course for customers❅ in return, when protesting suffragettes smashed shops windows in Oxford Street, Selfridge’s was one of the few left unscathed✥ other (very famous) attributed ‘Selfridgeisms’ are “the customer is always right” and “only xx shopping days till Christmas”
Wanamaker’s department stores were an innovative 19th century prototype of American retail enterprise best remembered today for the drive and vigour of its founder in establishing the company regionally on the Atlantic Seaboard. John Wanamaker’s humble origins in the retail trade began with the small menswear store known as “Oak Hall” (Philadelphia) he started up in partnership with his brother-in-law in the early days of the American Civil War.
From the get-go Wanamaker exhibited a flair for innovation, demonstrating an aptitude for thinking outside the box in retailing. Wanamaker introduced concepts in his business that were quite radical in retailing of the day. One of the earliest, which seems self-evident to us today, was to establish the principle of price-setting. Before Wanamaker started putting price tags on his goods, the practice in shops was that the price of an item would be determined by haggling between the customer of the salesperson. Wanamaker, as a devout Christian imbued with the Protestant work ethic, espoused the principle of price equality…as he liked to say (repeatedly), “if everyone was equal before God, then everyone should be equal before price”✱[1]. Wanamaker also allowed customers the option of returning the goods (within a specified time period) and receiving a refund, a practice that was unusual in retailing at that time.
Truth (and volume) in advertising
From the time he was a teenager Wanamaker developed an appreciation of the value of publicity. One of his early publicity stunts for the store was to release 20 foot balloons and reward those who retrieved them with a free suit from Wanamaker’s. From as early as the 1860s the Philadelphia merchant relied on advertising to propel his business forward. Wanamaker took out large size ads in newspapers, which proved expensive, but nonetheless generated a large volume of sales. During the War between the States the store was kept afloat by being able to supply Union Army officers’ uniforms to the Northern side. By 1909 the retailer was placing ads daily in the press. Wanamaker assiduously built consumer trust…when he placed retail ads offering low prices for wares, he kept his word to the public[2].
Wanamaker usually didn’t miss a business opportunity when it came along. In 1876 he purchased Pennsylvania Railroad property and turned it into what would become Wanamaker’s flagship store, named the Grand Depot. Located on the corner of 13th and Market Streets, Philadelphia, Wanamaker promoted it as a “New Kind of Store”, adding women’s clothing and dry goods to the existence outlet for menswear, arguably making it one of if not the world’s first department store. The original building (architect: Daniel Burnham) boosted an exotic Moorish-style facade, the building that he erected much later on the same site had a classic Florentine facade.
Other Wanamaker retail innovations
The Pennsylvanian merchant was ahead of the curve in many ways, pioneering marketing strategies as well as being an early proponent of advertising. Other firsts for the Wanamaker stores included:
◗ the first department store to include a restaurant inside its complex
◗ the first department store with electrical illumination
◗ the first department store to have telephone communications
◗ the first department store to use pneumatic tube transit (to internally move cash and documents around the store)
◗ the first department store to have an elevator
◗ the first department store to have a wireless station
◗ the first department store to engage buyers to travel to Europe to acquire the latest fashions[3]
Wanamaker also pioneered a series of individual benefits for his staff members – free medical care, profit-sharing, pensions (all ahead of his competitors). Wanamaker implemented measures for staff training that were in advance of their time…establishing an in-house college, the Wanamaker Commercial Institute, providing his workers with skills and tuition in bookkeeping, finance, English and maths◘. He also initiated summer camps for young men and women on the payroll – in keeping with Wanamaker’s characteristic intertwining of religion and business, this was to equip them with moral instruction and development[4].
Wanamaker’s continued to grow into a small chain of stores…by the early 20th century Wanamaker had 16 department stores operating, mainly regionally, but the network included a showcase store in New York City (1896), between East 9th and 10th streets (in the ‘NoHo’ neighbourhood of Manhattan). Later Wanamaker built a second building opposite and connected them via an overhead walkway he called the “Bridge of Progress”.
Grand Depot mega-store
Wanamaker’s most ambitious store project was a massive transformation of the Philly retail store in 1910. The store was radically re-shaped in the form of a wheel with a 90 foot circular counter and 129 smaller sales counters installed in concentric circles. Wanamaker claimed that he had created “the largest space devoted to retail selling on a single floor”[5]. And, to give his new City Center flagship store a touch of imperial grandeur, the store contained a “Grand Court”, to which he added a Grand Court organ and a large bronze eagle⊙ (both of which had featured in the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair).
Wanamaker died in 1922 and his successor (his second son) in 1928, but the business continue to thrive and expand until the 1960s and 1970s. Increasingly though Wanamaker as a regional player wasn’t able to match it with national retail chains. Even in Philadelphia it was losing its market share to Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s. In 1978 Wanamaker’s was sold to California’s Carter Hawley Hale Stores, which tried to revive its fortunes but failed. Still trading as Wanamaker’s, it was then on-sold to Alfred Taubman’s Woodward and Lothrop. Under Woodward and Lothrop it again declined, then downsized to five stores, and eventually went into bankruptcy. In 1995 they were further sold to retail giant Macy’s, bringing to a close 133 years of Wanamaker’s retail history[7]. Despite the sense of inevitability, for many Philadelphians, the end of Wanamaker’s was a heartfelt moment, the loss of “a unique public institution and a powerful symbol of Philadelphia’s commercial viability”[8].
PostScript: Wanamaker’s diversified interests
Wanamaker at one point founded a bank (First Penny Savings Bank) to encourage Americans to embrace thrift. He also established a trades school in Elwyn, Pa. Between his business activities Wanamaker found time for a (four-year) stint as a civil servant…President Benjamin Harrison appointed him Postmaster-General in 1889. Wanamaker initiated some reforms (eg, brought in parcel post, erected a pneumatic tube system to US post offices), but his term was not without controversy (mass sacking of 30,000 postal workers, accusations of having ‘purchased’ the post of PMG).
🏢🏢🏢🏢🏢🏢🏢🏢🏢🏢
✱ Wanamaker conceivably got the idea of fixed prices from the English Quakers, “fixed prices made everyone equal in the eyes of God”, Mary Pilon, The Monopolists, (2015). As befits someone with a bent for religious proselytising, Wanamaker had quite a penchant for pet mottos and maxims in business
◘ not as altruistic as it first sounds, there was a strong element of self-interest on Wanamaker’s part, the business ‘titan’ had an abhorrence of the labour movement and his generosity was insurance against the prospect of his workforce ever becoming unionised (Hingson)
⊙ Wanamaker’s Eagle became such an institution that Philadelphians would conveniently use it as a meet-up point when coming to the city (‘Wanamaker Organ’)
Source: Smithsonian (Postal Museum)
⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖
[1] ‘John Wanamaker, Innovator’, (Who Made America?), www.pbs.org[2] ‘Wanamaker, John, (1838-1922), Ad Age, 15-Sep-2003, www.adage.com[3] ‘Wanamaker’s’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; ‘Facts and Figures about the Wanamaker Organ’, www.wanamakerorgan.com[4] ‘Thirteen Things You Might Not Know About John Wanamaker’, (Sandy Hingson), Philadelphia Magazine, 11-Jul-2016, www.phillymag.com[5] ‘John Wanamaker A retailing innovator’, The Philly Inquirer, 22-June-1995, (Andrew Maykuth Online), www.maykuth.com; ‘Who Made America?’, loc.cit.[6] ‘John Wanamaker’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org[7] ‘Wanamaker’s’, Wikipedia, op.cit.[8] Sarah Malino, review of Herbert Ershkowitz’s John Wanamaker: Philadelphia Merchant, (Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol.125, No 1/2, Jan-Apr 2001)
Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat were two English film-makers who maintained a steadily consistent presence in the British cinema between the 1930s and the 1970s. Launder and Gilliat’s creative contribution to films, whether as writers, directors or producers (or as all three), contributed to over 100 British films in that era, including nearly 40 together as co-writers and producers.
The two co-wrote The Lady Vanishes, a 1938 mystery which was a breakthrough feature for Alfred Hitchcock❈. Interestingly both Launder and Gilliat (hereafter L & G) had their (separate) starts in the film business composing inter-titles (title cards) for silent movies in the late 1920s, the same industry beginnings undertaken by Hitchcock several years earlier. L & G combined their talents behind-the-camera together for the first time from the mid 1930s. The L & G partnership had a flexibility and a particular pattern to it … invariably they would jointly produce films and/or also co-write screenplays (although on other occasions either man would co-write films with various other collaborating screenwriters). But almost with very few exceptions one or the other would direct a specific film singly – this was done apparently to avoid confusing the actors[1].
A versatile¤ and fecund partnership
As well as being prolific contributors to the creation of British films for such a long period, L & G’s film output spanned a range of genres … from thrillers and ‘whodunits’ like Green for Danger (1956) and Secret State (1950) to WWII social-realism films such as Waterloo Road (1944) and Millions Like Us (1943) to romance/adventures like The Blue Lamp (1949) to historical dramas such as Captain Boycott (1947) to farces like The Green Man (1956) and light comedies such as The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950), a precursor to a popular series of movies set in a girls’ boarding school immobilised by riotous juvenile anarchy – starting with The Belles of St Trinian’s (1954) which spawned a string of increasingly predictable sequels.
“Journeymen auteurs?”
The Times of London described the Gilliat/Launder team as “one of the most sparkling writing, directing and producing partnerships in postwar British cinema”[2]. Notwithstanding such praise, L & G’s body of work has tended to be undervalued by the bulk of film critics … at times eliciting back-handed appraisals from critics such as “toilers in the British comic tradition”; (their films at best exhibiting) “unfailing good humour and the occasional brainy prankishness”[3]. Certainly, technical innovation and self-conscious artiness was not Gilliat and Launder’s style, but they never managed to garner anything remotely like the prestige or critical approval that was lavished on other contemporary British film-makers, eg, Powell and Pressburger, Carol Reed or the Boulting brothers. Bruce Babington has attributed this in part to L & G’s ‘reticence’ as film-makers, the way that they declined to project themselves forward and intervene in controversies and debates of the day, unlike say, their contemporaries the Boultings[4].
Enlistment in the production of propaganda vehicles
So closely did the personal film-making styles and interests of the two collaborators align, many people found it hard to distinguish between a Launder-directed picture and one directed by Gilliat … most L & G films tended to resemble the fruits of their combined efforts. Or as Adair and Roddick put it, “it would take a lynx-eyed buff to be able to distinguish one from the other”[5].
The war-time pictures, Millions Like Us and Two Thousand Women can be identified as reflecting in particular Frank Launder’s preoccupation with the portrayal of strong, defiantly independent women[6]. These films were commissioned by the UK Ministry of Information to counter the prevailing low recruitment and morale of women in war-time factory work. Millions Like Us, as Judy Suh has noted, conveyed the “double valence of women as productive workers and domestic symbols of national unity”. L & G’s social-realist films, though propagandist in purpose, posed questions of gender and class whilst depicting the routine of ordinary people at work. The necessities of war-time brought out the conflicting roles and identities of women in such an out-of-the ordinary circumstance, as well as the existence of crossings of class boundaries[7].
St Trini’s girls with their jolly hockey sticks (Ronald Searle cartoon, 1954)
After the war, witty and farcical comedies (albeit slight), were their forte (with the occasional thriller thrown in). Like other high-profile international film-makers L & G had their favourite performers that they liked to work with. L & G got the best performances out of British actors like Alastair Sim, Margaret Rutherford, Joyce Grenfell, Rex Harrison and George Cole. Of these luminaries it was Alastair Sim whose star shined most brightly under the direction of L & G. Sim appeared in at least ten L & G movies and his deliciously roguish star turns as a middle class word-spinning con-man were pure gold. George Cole, who also had a regular gig in the St Trinian’s cycle as the ultra dodgy spiv Flash Harry◘, described working with Gilliat and Launder (and Sim) … to Cole (later himself to find TV fame as consummate, malapropistic con-man ‘Arfur’ Daley in Minder) their films meant:
“Good scripts but terrible money. If Alastair was in the film it was even worse because he got most of it. But they were wonderful people to work with”[8].
‘Pure Hell of St Trinians’ (1960)
In the 1940s Launder and Gilliat formed their own production company, aptly named Individual Pictures, at this time they were contractually engaged by Gainsborough Pictures … in 1958 the partners took charge of the production side of the struggling independent studio British Lion. By the 1960s both the quality and quantity of Gilliat/Launder productions had receded. In 1980 Launder went once more to the St Trinian’s well❃ with yet another sequel, Wildcats of St Trinian’s … unwisely so as the novelty of L & G’s feature films based on Ronald Searle’s charming cartoons of feral schoolgirls had long since lost their appeal.
PostScript: The Charters and Caldicott characters trope – antiquated, old school Englishness
L & G wrote into The Lady Vanishes two minor characters that were to become iconic, background characters in British cinema. Played by actors Basil Radford and Naughton Wayne, the two incidental supporting figures are singleminded cricket enthusiasts—or “cricket tragics” as one recent Australian PM was dubbed—trying to hurry back to England to see the last days of the Manchester test match. The popularity of the characters saw them reappear in other L & G movies (including Night Train to Munich, Millions Like Us and in the 1979 remake of The Lady Vanishes), and in several other non-L & G films, eg, the Boxs’ A Girl in a Million and (appropriately enough) It’s Not Cricket. Charters and Caldicott were also reprised for several radio series, and for a 1985 television series. Charters and Caldicott’s fame also extended to their inclusion in a series of Carreras Cigarette cards in the 1950s.
⏏︎ Charters & Caldicott
The starkly gormless personalities of Charters and Caldicott, a couple of blithering “Colonel Blimpish” snobs, was a comical throwback to a past England with ‘proper’ gentlemanly good manners and standards of dress[9]. Matthew Sweet saw the two blunderers (in their 1938 incarnations against a backdrop of appeasement) as symbols of “a peculiarly British obstinacy in the face of Nazi aggression” in Europe[10]. Their apathetic dispositions and complete lack of perspicacity about the momentous events happening around them also puts one in mind of Tom Stoppard’s two artless and aimless courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern roaming through Elsinore, ‘Everyman’ figures in the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, but even more prosaic!
The L & G team
❈ The Lady Vanishes helped open Hollywood doors for Hitchcock … after ‘Hitch’ completed Jamaica Inn in 1939 (written by Gilliat et al) he set sail for America (for good), inviting Gilliat to join him however the Cheshireman declined the offer, preferring to stay in the smaller and infinitely less lucrative pond that was the British film industry (Babington, 2002)
¤ “Versatility” Gilliat once said, “was always our curse”, but as Gilbert Adair remarked in a 1994 obituary for the film-maker, “it was also their own form of individualism”
◘ Cole as well appeared in nine of L & G’s films
❃ this was twice too often to the well as the preceding Great St Trinian’s Train Robbery (1966) was also a lame effort at rehashing the by now decidedly stale formula
⊹ ⊹ ⊹
[1] although such was the working symbiosis between the two that the non-directing partner would in all likelihood make suggestions for improvements to the designated director where necessary, B Babington, Launder and Gilliat (2002)
[2] quoted in The Age (Melbourne), 08-Jun-1994
[3] G Adair & N Roddick, A Night at the Pictures: Ten Decades of British Film, (1985)
[4] Babington describes Launder and Gilliat as “modest auteurs”, Babington, op.cit.
[5] Adair & Roddick, loc.cit.
[6] ‘Launder and Gilliat’, BFI Screenonline, www.screenonline.org.uk
[7] J Suh, ‘Women, Work, Leisure in British Wartime Documentary Realism’, Literature/Film Quarterly, 40(1), 2012
[8] ‘Obituary: Frank Launder’, The Independent, 24-Feb-1997, www.independent.co.uk
[9] ‘Charters and Caldicott’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; ‘Charters and Caldicott’, www.chartersandcaldicott.co.uk
[10] M Sweet, ‘Mustard and cress’, The Guardian, 29-Dec-2007, www.theguardian.com
John Clarke: Trail-blazing Parodist, Lodestar, Daggstar
John Morrison Clarke died, most unexpectedly, in the Victorian wilderness a day-and-a-half ago. An ordinary looking man with an ordinary (unremarkable and yet distinctive) voice, but an ‘Everyman’ with a towering gift for communicating parody and travesty with coruscating clarity!
John Clarke, born and raised in Palmerston North, New Zealand, but domicile in Melbourne, Australia, for the last 40 years, was a uniquely talented satirist, TV comedian, comic writer and actor. The word ‘genius’ gets carelessly bandied around way too much these days, but in appraising the oeuvre of Mr John Clarke it finds a true home.
Daggstar completely out of the box
Whilst in New Zealand Clarke developed and refined the character of Fred Dagg, a stereotypical, blunt-speaking farmer from the North Island, with long straggly hair and perpetually clad in a black singlet and gumboots. Fred Dagg got Clark’s idiosyncratic brand of humour into the spotlight of New Zealand television. By 1977 Clark had outgrown both NZ and (so it seemed) Fred Dagg and moved to the bigger canvas of Australia❈. Clarke wasn’t however quite done with Fred Dagg – in Australia Fred resurfaced as a real estate ‘expert’ with his guide for would-be home buyers providing the “good oil” on avoiding the pitfalls inherent in the spiel of property agents – as the following “bullshit-busting” sampler of his trenchant wit testifies:
• a “cottage” is a caravan with the wheels taken off
• “genuine reason for selling” means the house is for sale
• “rarely can we offer” means the house is for sale
• “superbly presented delightful charmer” doesn’t mean anything really, but it’s probably still for sale!
• “privacy, taste, charm, space, freedom, quiet, away from it all location in much sought-after cul-de-sac situation” means that it’s not only built down a hole, it’s built at the very far end of the hole
• “a panoramic, breathtaking, or magnificent view” is an indication that the house has windows, and if the view is “unique”, there’s probably only one window
Fred Dagg AKA John Clarke was no admirer of the realty and property game and the proclivity of estate agents to be “fast and loose with the truth”, and he gave us the following memorable job description of what they really do:
“The function of the agent basically is to add to the price of the article without actually producing anything” (gold!)
(and how to recognise an actual estate agent when you see one)
“If you’ve got gold teeth and laugh-lines around your pockets, you’re through to the semis without dropping a set”.
There was so much to the creative output of Clarke comma J, and so much variety too … screenplays, film acting, radio, stage work, television, songs, books. Clarke’s art didn’t fit into any one particular mould, he was, to use Martin Luther’s expression, an “irregular planet which cannot be fixed among the stars”, always inventing, moving on and reinventing, exploring something new that had piqued his interest.
My personal favourite John Clarke masterwork is the Complete Book of Australian Verse⌖. This nugget of gold is a series of early Nineties recordings in which Clarke audaciously and imaginatively reinvents the “Canon of Great British Poets”, relocating it to regional and outback Australia. Clarke ‘discovered’ the existence of an Aussie poet “laureate-hood” comprising “dinky-di” Australian poetry ‘greats’ with Antipodean-sounding names like ‘Shagger’ Tennyson, ‘Stumpy’ Byron V.C, ‘Gavin’ Milton and “Fifteen Bobsworth” Longfellow⊛.
Clarke’s sublime riff on these fictional masters of Australian poetry is incisively, deeply humorous, and both wise and pretentious-sounding at the same time! Absurdly funny stuff, especially when uttered in John’s wonderful flat, disinterested, monotone voice (“he was sentenced to three years jail for insulting a lobster in a Sydney restaurant”) … Clarke’s clinical dissection of (then) Leader of the Opposition John Howard is a devastatingly savage takedown the future PM…to paraphrase playwright Simon Gray, it “made me laugh so much that I was prepared to overlook its essential cruelty”. Clarke’s poem entreats Howard—who had failed twice to win the top job in Canberra—to change his vocation:
‘To a Howard’ by Rabbi Burns
Wee, sleekit, cowerin, tim’rous beastie,
I know tha’s probably doing thy bestie,
…………………….
Thou’ll try wi’ th’ gunnery up at the range,
Thou’ll no have much truible, thou’ve dun it afore,
Thou’s an expert for a’ that; look, ‘Wanted: Small Bore’.
With ‘A Child’s Christmas in Warrnambool’ Clarke produces a poetic tour de force by turning Dylan Thomas’ classic winter-scene ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales’ on it’s head, transforming it into a children’s nostalgic celebration of Australian summers past:
“The smell of insect repellant and eucalyptus and the distant constant bang of the flywire door”/”the fridge of imperishable memory”/”the wide brown bee-humming trout-fit sheep-rich two-horse country”/”some middle-order nephew skipping down the vowel-flattening pitch and putting the ball into the tent-flaps on the first bounce of puberty”.
The Complete Verse‘s eclectic compilation includes a coruscating if excruciatingly painful piece by “Sylvia Blath” which is both riotously funny and disturbingly harrowing at the same time. Clarke weaves into the poem Sylvia’s harangue of her dead father who “danced upon my cradle, as I Annexed the Sedatenland” and ends with an unexpected and wicked twist (a crossed-phone line channelling of Germaine Greer!!!): “Daddy Daddy I’m through, Hello? Germaine … I can hardly hear you, this is a very bad line.”
Since the 1990s Clarke had been an on-screen constant feature with his famous series of mock political interviews (“two-handers” with Bryan Dawe as the straight-man ‘innocently’ asking questions which were fodder for Clarke’s witty retorts) … the one-liners just rolling off Clarke’s golden and acerbic tongue, skewing high-profile politicians left, right and centre:
(pricking at the bluster of an overbearing state premier)
“I’m not interested in doing the most intelligent thing … I’m JEFF KENNETT!
Prime Minister Hawke’s robust “Alpha male”, over-enthusiastic response to the question of how fit he was after a recent op:
(I’m so fit that)
“I’m a danger to shipping!”
Clarke was a wordsmith that other satirists and comic writers in Australasia must have looked at with a mixture of admiration and envy … he simply had such a razor-sharp, punchy, economical and hilarious way with words.
And there was much more to John Clarke’s stellar CV – such as his ‘invention’ of the cliché-ridden ‘sport’ of farnarkeling for The Gillies Report, and not to forget the manifold brilliant riffs on finance, business, the economy, the public service and the environment (“the front fell off (and) we towed the ship outside the environment”). Clarke was a trail-blazer in television comedy … his “on the money” take on the crazy, shambolic world of Olympics bureaucracy The Games was a template for other later projects which explored the thorny terrain of corporations and officialdom (such as Utopia) and it informed the BBC’s contribution to the 2012 London Olympics campaign.
John Clarke’s sudden, most untimely death leaves a Sydney Opera House-sized hole in Australian and New Zealand satire – and I shall never forget that voice – as with Billy Bragg’s, so distinctive, and as with Joe (Dragnet) Friday’s, so deadpan matter-of-fact … or his trademark mischievous grin and the sparkle in the eyes.
⚜⚜⚜
Vale John Clarke … thank you for entertaining and delighting us for so long and enriching the lives of so many people all the way from Palmerston North to Perth and far beyond. John’s song lyrics were wrong in one respect … there are countless people in the two Trans-Tasman countries that he lived and worked in who do know “how lucky” they were to have him, albeit for too short a time✥.
Footnote: I didn’t realise until now that Clarkey was responsible for introducing that quintessentially Australian term “budgie smuggler” into the vernacular lexicon of the nation, to the regret of one former PM (not Howard) and the joy of everyone else!
╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╼
❈ his unusual accent didn’t really fit the clipped English speech pattern of “Nu Zillunders” anyway
⌖ the success of which was followed up by the Even More Complete Book of Australian Verse
⊛ other ‘Oz’ poet-luminaries include b.b.hummings, TS (Tabby Serious) Eliot, Ewen Coleridge, Ted Lear and many more
✥ one of the incomparable Fred Dagg’s best-known songs was entitled “We don’t know how lucky we are”
The association of America with Napoléon Bonaparte for most people probably revolves round the US government’s bonanza real estate deal with Napoléon in 1803…the US cheaply acquired huge swathes of territory (the Louisiana Purchase) which the French emperor wanted to offload to build up France’s finances for war. Napoléon Bonaparte (Italian: Nabulione Buonaparte) never came to the United States or to anywhere in the New World –- although in the event of his grand scheme to conquer Europe going pear-shaped (as it ultimately and irrevocably did in 1815), his “Plan B” was just that, to make good an escape to the American Republic [1]. However it was Napoléon’s older brother Joseph (born Giuseppe) Bonaparte, formerly installed as king of Spain and the Indies, and before that, king of Naples and Sicily, who did come to the American continent and moreover lived in the US for some 17 or more years after the Emperor’s fall from power.
Sibling & HM King Joseph
Joseph succeeded in his getaway where Napoléon failed, slipping out of French waters and travelling incognito to New York, albeit narrowly avoiding detection by the British. In America Joseph styled himself the Comte de Survilliers … after living in New York and Philadelphia for a period Bonaparte purchased a palatial residence in Bordentown, New Jersey called “Point Breeze” – one of the finest country houses in the Delaware Valley. Joseph was able to afford (and subsequently vastly improve) one of the republic’s grand mansions because he had brought the Spanish Bourbons’ crown jewels with him which he had acquired when abdicating the Spanish throne. With his dubiously acquired riches Bonaparte made other land acquisitions in upstate New York on the Black River (a locale still known as Lake Bonaparte)[2].
‘Point Breeze’, Bordentown, NJ
Joseph AKA the Count of Survilliers largely led a quiet, uneventful and comfortable life in the US, taking no interest in a political role … when Mexican rebels and expat French supporters gave their backing to him to be made emperor of Mexico (1820), he demurred at the offer. In 1832 Bonaparte returned to Europe (although he did return briefly to the US and his much loved mansion ‘Point Breeze’❈ in 1839), living for a while in London and in Italy where he died in 1844. The ineffective, former ‘puppet’ king of Spain was never permitted to return to his native France again because of the French government’s concern that it might provoke a groundswell for a Bonapartist restoration[3].
Joseph was not the only Bonapartist to flee to America following his brother’s downfall in 1815. The return of the Bourbons with the ascension of Louis XVIII prompted a “witch-hunt” of Bonapartists in France. Many followers of Napoléon escaped to America to avoid arrest and recriminations … once there some of Napoléon’s loyal soldiers set up Bonapartist colonies in Alabama (Vine and Olive Colony) and Texas (Champ d’Asile) – which were uniformly unsuccessful and short-lived[4].
Joseph’s (Spanish) Royal Monogram 👑
PostScript: Napoleon’s “life in America”
A) Rescue plans – before exile and on St Helena
In the aftermath of the disaster of Waterloo rumours abounded about various plots and attempts to rescue Napoléon. One plot involved a mega-wealthy French-born banker Stephen (Étienne) Girard living in the US who supposedly hatched an elaborate plan to transport the deposed emperor to Virginia (a claim made in the Baltimore American, 1902). According to some sources Girard also played a role in the Louisiana Purchase machinations[5].
Napoléon’s island prisonBy far the most bizarre plot involved a Brit of Irish parentage Tom Johnson, who as well as being a recidivist smuggler had a bit of a reputation as an escape expert. Johnson’s claim was that in 1820 he was offered £40,000 to rescue Napoléon from St Helena, using two primitive types of submarines he had designed as the “getaway” vessels. Johnson’s colourful account reads as highly fanciful and the plot was in any case never implemented … the one plausible element of the story being that Johnson’s underwater crafts (for which designs did exist) were inspired by Robert Fulton’s 1806 submarine -–the American engineer and inventor had earlier worked for both Napoléon and the British government on armed maritime vessel projects (what is less certain is whether Johnson had actually met Fulton as he claimed)[6].
B) Exploring the “What If …” scenario for Napoléon
Devotees of alternative history have speculated lyrically about what might have happened had Napoléon made good his escape to the Americas. One of the early imaginative conjectures (1931) came from British historian HAL Fisher who hypothesised that the exiled emperor might have established a base in New York and then gone on to Spanish America to liberate the masses, before finally drowning at sea whilst attempting to conquer India[7].
Outlawed in Europe after Waterloo, it would have been logical for Napoléon to gravitate towards America … the US had only recently engaged in hostilities with Britain (War of 1812), so the locals would probably have been disposed or at least neutral towards him, he would have been able to live as a free man. The US was a new country born of revolution (and one inspiring a revolution in his native France which promoted his own rise). An American base would position the ambiguous ex-monarch well to marshal his resources and launch an invasion of Central and South America which was ripe for revolution against the Spanish conquerors. One of Napoléon’s aides-de-camp in fact made the suggestion to him that he should make himself “emperor of Mexico”[8] (anticipating what transpired with a later Habsburg royal).
A recent alternative history (Shannon Selin, Napoléon in America) postulates three possible theoretical courses of action for Napoléon – settling on the eastern (Atlantic) seaboard, living peacefully, probably near his favoured brother Joseph (possibly biding his time, building up the necessary support for another go at overthrowing the French Bourbons and reclaim the throne either for himself or for his son); establishing a colony within the US peacefully (in fact Bonapartists later attempted to forge colonies in Alabama and Texas – both then controlled by Spain); and as with Fisher’s supposition, invading Spain’s American colonies and thereby securing a new throne[9].
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❈ as boys Frank and Charles Woolworth (the future giant retail empire founders) lived close to ‘Joe’ Bonaparte’s abandoned Bordentown mansion, spending lots of their leisure time playing at ‘Point Breeze’
۵~۵~۵
[1] originally Napoléon and Joseph had laid plans for the two of them to seek refuge together in America in the likelihood of a worst-case scenario. A location in New Jersey was picked out as the optimum place for settling but Napoléon missed a real chance to escape to the US by stealth, having prevaricated too long waiting for anticipated passports which did not come, and then making the fateful decision to give himself up to the British authorities, CE Macartney & G Dorrance, The Bonapartes in America, (1939), www.penelope.uchicago.edu (see also PostScript above)
[2] R Veit, ‘Point Breeze (Bonaparte Estate)’, (2015), www.philadelphiaencyclopedia.org; ‘Joseph Bonaparte at Point Breeze. New Jersey’s Ex-King and the Crown Jewels’, Flatrock, www.flatrock.org.nz
[3] ibid.
[4] ‘Bonapartist Refugees in America, 1815-1850’, www.napolun.com
[5] L Weeks, ‘What if Napoleon Had Come to America’, NPR, 10-Feb-2015, www.npr.org. Girard also underwrote the American war effort in the War of 1812
[6] M Dash, ‘The Secret Plot to Rescue Napoleon by Submarine’, Smithsonian Magazine, 08-Mar-2013, www.smithsonian.com
[7] H.A.L. Fisher, ‘If Napoleon had Escaped to America’, (Scribner’s Magazine, Jan. 1931), www.unz.org
[8] M Price, ‘How Napoleon Nearly Became a U.S. Citizen’, History News Network, 28-Dec-2014, www.historynewsnetwork.org
As has been described in Part 1, Zog’s attainment of the kingship paved the way for him to step up his autocratic rule over the Albanian citizens. Zog was now politically more secure against his internal rivals, but the broader reality of the plenipotentiary’s (and Albania’s) position was still that of a very small fish in a large and increasingly volatile European lake.
King Zog in his finest regalia
Dicing with the Devil
Given the backwardness and poverty of an Albania that was still essentially feudal, Zog realised that the country needed large injections of external finance to achieve modernisation. Zog’s government had approached the newly formed League of Nations but to no avail (although Yugoslavia provided an early loan). Needing more money to develop Zog eventually turned to fascist Italy and the two countries entered into talks. As a result of the 1926 Pact of Friendship and Security Albania secured loans of around 20 million lira from Mussolini – but in exchange for the loss of its independence in foreign policy. A second Tiranë Pact in 1927 netted Zog a further £140,000 at the cost of a further diminution of Albania’s sovereignty, Italy negotiated more influence over Albania’s militia (including control of its training). Consequently the Italians ended up with a “virtual protectorate over Albania”[1].
Follow up bilateral treaties tied Albania to Italy economically by monopolising its trade. Albania granted Italy new petroleum concessions¤ and the right to build military fortifications on Albanian soil. These pacts kept Albania in a subordinate position vis-à-vis Mussolini’s Italy. Its economic development was hamstrung, industrialisation was stagnant, having achieved little headway, by 1939 production was still predominantly agricultural and the state was forced to rely on imports from Italy, a situation that Rome was perfectly content to see persist[2].
Shqipëria “Land of the Eagles”
Roadblocks to Reform
Education in Albania during Zog’s rule was state-controlled but made slow progress due to a combination of factors, eg, lack of national educational infrastructure, shortage of teachers, resistance from religious institutions and communities, (Greek) Orthodox, (Italian) Catholic, Ottoman/Muslim. By 1939 the literacy rate was only 15% (only marginally up from 10% in the early 1920s)[3].
Some scholars have placed stress on Zog’s distinctiveness as a European Muslim monarch (eg, JH Tomes, King Zog of Albania: Europe’s Self-Made Muslim Monarch, (2004)) but in reality the footprint of Islam didn’t feature in his policies. Once entrenched in power Zog legislated to ensure the primacy of secular law. Islamic law was supplanted by Western civil (Swiss/French), criminal and commercial codes[12]. Zog’s government in 1923 put an end to polygamy and the wearing of the hijab[4]. However for purposes of political unity he still endeavoured to appeal to the diversity of communities within Albania, eg, his oath of allegiance at his coronation was sworn on both the Bible and the Koran, a further manifestation of Zog’s dualism.
With the rise of European fascism in the 1930s Mussolini had become more emboldened in his foreign policy, engaging in widespread colonial adventurism, eg, Ethiopia, Balearic Islands. Zog, perturbed that Albania was becoming more and more a client state of Italy, tried to counterbalance Rome’s excessive influence by forging trade treaties with Greece and Yugoslavia. But Albania (and Zog) were in a very difficult situation from either direction, both Italy and Serbia were attracted to its territory and the lure of unfettered access to the Adriatic.
Endgame for Albania’s independence
By the late 1930s Zog was baulking at Mussolini’s demands for even greater Italian incursions into Albania. The linchpin for Mussolini’s decision to invade its Adriatic neighbour was Nazi Germany’s sudden, unexpected takeover of Czechoslovakia … Mussolini, peeved at Hitler’s unilateral move without informing his Italian allies, immediately launched his action as a tit-for-tat gesture[5].
‘Daily Express’ April 8, 1939
The military conflict was short-lived, the meagre, poorly equipped forces of Albania’s army (trained by Italians, itself a factor compromising its will to resist) put up a feeble fight (although small pockets of the resistance did fight valiantly if briefly). In the middle of the ‘defence’ Zog and his retinue fled the country, slinking off with him a significant chunk of the nation’s gold reserves. The Albanian people he left behind were absorbed into the Italian empire, the country was made nominally autonomous with Albania’s largest landowner, Shefqet Verlaci (onetime Zog’s prospective father-in-law), appointed as prime minister. This was for appearances though as control of Albania was entirely in Italian hands (until the fall of Italy in 1943), and Mussolini set about implementing an Italian colonisation program in ‘Greater Albania'[6].
House-moving with the Zogu family
In exile Zog (and his family including heir to the throne Prince Leka) led a peripatetic life which took them to Greece, Egypt, the south of France, England (living in London, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire), returning to Egypt as guests of King Farouk until the deposition of Farouk himself. Zog spent the final part of his life living quietly in Paris.
Zog’s Long Island Palace
An intriguing side story of Zog’s exile was the grand castle and estate he purchased in New York in 1951. Zog intended to inhabit the 60 room mansion (the Knollwood Estate in Muttontown, NY) and turn it into his palace-in-exile, complete with Albanian retainers and servants. The Zogus never carried through with the planned relocation to the US and the property was sold in 1955, the mansion eventually fell into disrepair and decay, and was later demolished[7]. The scattered remnants of the Zogu estate (in what is known as the Muttonwood Preserve) such as they are, are a curiosity piece today for hikers and other visitors.
Moderniser? Harbinger of Nationalism?
A perception of Zog as being a comical figure in history, not to be taken too seriously and the sense of him being of at best minor importance, obscures whatever Zog may have achieved as head of state for Albania and Albanians. The exaggerated pomp and ceremony of his monarchical style didn’t help to elevate him in the opinion of those outside of the country. Even when he announced his kingship to the world in 1928, the international response was more or less universally underwhelming. Hardly anyone, certainly none of the major powers, rushed to recognise the event. There were those who publicly rebuked him, such as the Turkish president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who refused to recognise Zog’s kingdom and ridiculed the Tiranë royal court as being like a scenario from an operetta[8].
Tiranë, 1930s
Notwithstanding all of this, Zog was a leader who made a genuine attempt at modernising. Modernisation for a backward, hidebound country like Albania entailed Westernisation. Zog introduced a Western state apparatus and constitution and secular legal system. Under Zog Albania made some progress in education and other areas of society (albeit starting from a very low base!), but his accomplishments were only partial or often heavily qualified. This can be attributed to a number of factors. Albania suffered badly from a chronic lack of financial reserves and limited resources, hence the ill-advised reliance (as it turned out) on fascist Italy to provide the shortfall. Some of the projects (eg, public works in the new capital) involved extravagant waste. And like everywhere else at that time, Albania ran smack bang into the Great Depression and the catastrophic economic dislocation that ensued would have had a retarding impact on Zog’s programs and reforms. Corruption and misappropriation, predictably for a despotic regime, also played its part in hindering Albania’s progress.
A by-product of Zog’s consolidation of power was the formative development of nationalism in Albania, a consciousness already kick-started by his prime ministerial predecessors. At the uncertain beginnings of Albanian independence which was born out of the upshot of the Balkan Wars, conditions were far from propitious for engendering nationalist sentiments – the many obstacles included:
⌲ the Albanian language had not been widely disseminated because the Ottomans had forbidden its teaching in school
⌲ because of aggressive designs by Greece and Serbia on its territory, many Albanians viewed Turkey positively as it provided protection to small and vulnerable Albania. Moreover the Ottoman Empire provided a defined path for career advancement for Albanians – either in the army or in the civil service
⌲ the bonds of clanism and localism were very entrenched in Albania
⌲ the churches were not a unifying force because there was no one, dominant religion in the country (spiritual instruction was spread between the four coexisting faiths – Orthodox, Catholic and two separate strands of Islam)[9]
Zog managed to get round most of these handicaps and foster a measure of nationalist feeling among Albanians through several state strategies … using the education system to inculcate a nationalist consciousness and desire for national independence; creating autocephalous churches to block the sources of external authority and bring the clerical leadership under national control; shaping the tiny national army into a “melting pot” of recruits drawn from all parts of Albania; by achieving some improvements in communication and transport infrastructure (eg, extending the road network) the police and tax collectors gained greater access to the far-away northern tribes in their mountain retreats. There is an irony in the extent to which Zog made inroads into the sectionalism of Albania and achieved an element of unification and nationalist consciousness … he laid part of the groundwork for communist strongman Enver Hoxha later on to set up a very different brand of nationalism[10].
Postscript: Enter the pretenders
After Zog I died in 1961 his only son and heir Leka had himself consecrated ‘King Leka I of Albania’, notwithstanding the fact that the Hoxha communist regime of Albania abolished the monarchy in 1946. Leka married an Australian teacher and, being an admirer of Franco, lived in Spain where he worked as a commodities broker. Some of those ‘commodities’ it transpired were weapons and armaments (prompting the post-Franco authorities in Madrid to move the Zogus on)❦. They moved to Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe) but clashed with Robert Mugabe, necessitating another move, this time settling in South Africa.
Leka, throughout his life, sincerely campaigned for his restoration as King of the Albanians (and for Kosovo’s integration into Albania). An attempt to return to the country of his birth in 1995 was stopped at Tiranë airport when authorities barred his entry because his passport (issued by the Albanian Government-in-Exile, ie, by himself) listed his occupation as “King of Albania”.
Leka I – celebrated return amid controversy 1997
He was more successful two years later when the Albanian (Berisha) Government found itself under pressure from the public for its part in failed financial schemes and was forced to allow both Leka’s return and a referendum on the question of the monarchy’s restoration in Albania. Only 30-35% however voted for the monarchy. Leka responded by alleging that the ballot was rigged by the government, and a shoot-out erupted at the electoral centre between Leka’s personal militia and the police before Leka’s entourage fled in a private jet. ‘Colourful’ would be an apt description for Zog’s son who enjoyed shooting and hunting and was given to swanning round in military fatigues.
The pretender to the throne was subsequently sentenced in absentia to three years imprisonment – which was later overturned with Leka being pardoned. Surprisingly in 2002, after support was mustered within the Albanian parliament by right-wing monarchists, the government permitted the return of Leka to his homeland[11].
Leka and his wife, ‘Queen’ Susan, had one son (Zog’s grandson), also named Leka, who had born in Johannesburg. After Leka I died in 2011 in Albania the crown prince was declared to be the successor to the Albanian throne. Prince (or King) Leka II, as he is known to some Albanian émigré monarchists, has initiated no active role in promoting the Zogu restoration in Albania. In fact he has been co-opted into the machinery of government in Tiranë, representing the Fourth Republic in various diplomatic posts.
:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:¤ Albania had earlier granted Anglo-Persian Oil (partly British owned) extensive prospecting rights.
❦ Leka’s fascination with guns maintained the family tradition as Zog was famous for resorting to the use of weapons when needs be.
[1] ‘Tirana Pact’, (Papers Past – Press – 1 April 1927), www.paperspast.natlib.gov.nz
[2] The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, (3rd Edition, 1979) “Italian-Albanian Treaties and Agreements” Retrieved 20 July 2016 from http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Italian-Albanian+Treaties+and+Agreements ; BJ Fischer, ‘King Zog’s Albanian Interwar Dictator’, in Fischer (Ed.), Balkan Strongman: Dictators and Authoritarian Rulers of South Eastern Europe, (2007)
[3] E Sefa, ‘The Efforts of King Zog I for Nationalization of Albanian Education’, Journal of Educational and Social Research, 2(2) May 2012, www.mcser.org ; Fischer, ibid
[4] ‘Albanian Kingdom 1928-39’, (Wikipedia), http://en.m.wikipedia.org
[5] ‘Zog I of Albania’, (Wikipedia), http://en.m.wikipedia.org
[6] ‘Italian colonists in Albania’, (Wikipedia), http://en.m.wikipedia.org
[7] ‘King Zog’s Ruins’, (2008), Bygone LI, www.lioddities.com/Bygone/zoo.htm
[8] JH Tomes, King Zog: Self-Made Monarch of Albania, (2007)
[9] BJ Fischer, ‘A Brief Historical Overview of the Development of Albanian Nationalism’, paper delivered www.wilsoncenter.org
[10] ibid.
[11] ‘Leka I Zogu’, The Telegraph (London), 30-Nov 2011, www.telegraph.co.uk
Zog the First is one of my favourite rulers among the unimportant bit players in the authoritarian power politics of interwar Europe. Zog hailed from the periphery of Europe, Albania, a ‘backwaters’ country at that stage of its development, predominantly absorbed with agrarian pursuits and animal husbandry and the persistence of tribal fiefdoms. The (London) Times was given to describing the unlikely, self-appointed monarch from Europe’s most obscure country as “the bizarre King Zog”[1].
I suppose what first drew my attention to the Albanian strongman-cum-potentate was simply the seeming absurdity (to Western ears) of his odd-sounding name. “King Zog” sounds like a character you would find either in a television spoof about prehistoric man (sort of like … “Ugg, me Zog, live cave”) or featuring as an interplanetary humanoid in a Star Wars episode. You might also think a slightly ludicrous royal named Zog wouldn’t be out-of-place in fictional Ruritania or the Duchy of Grand Fenwick (depicted in The Prisoner of Zenda and The Mouse that Roared respectively).
Working his way to the top of the political heap
But unlike the imaginary rulers from those satirical places and fictional works, Zog was a very real historical person. Born Ahmet Zogolli into a Beylik Muslim family in Northern Albania in 1895 (then part of the Ottoman Empire). Zog utilised his post as hereditary governor of Mati province as a springboard into Balkan politics. From 1919 Zog was involved in political machinations and intrigues in the new state of Albania, playing the role of ‘kingmaker’, being largely responsible for the overthrow of successive governments, biding his time until he was in a position to takeover as prime minister of the Principality of Albania at the young age of 27.
A tenuous grip on power
Tenure of the Albanian prime ministership was a revolving door for politicians from the Declaration of Independence (1912) through to the 1920s. Even Zog, the most successful interwar leader of the reformist Popular Party, found himself brought down at one point by the vicissitudes of national politics. In 1924 a chain of events upturned Zog’s power base. The trigger was an attempt outside the parliament on the life of the still vicenarian prime minister. Zog was wounded in the fracas but managed to escape, retreating to his Mati tribal stronghold to recover. Zog had earned the enmity of a diverse group which had coalesced in opposition to his program (northern chieftains, elements of the military and gendarmerie, irredentists and the main parliamentary rivals, the Democratic Party). In keeping with the native custom of “blood vengeance” an opposition MP held responsible for the attack on Zog was assassinated (Zog had authorised it as a revenge killing). Fan Noli’s Democratic Party reacted by orchestrating a coup forcing Zog to flee the country to Belgrade with the Harvard educated Bishop Noli replacing him as Albanian PM. Six months later, with funding and troops provided by Serbia, Zog launched a counter-coup to retake the government in Tiranë (Tirana). The lessons of 1924 convinced Zog that he needed to shore up his hold on power more securely … the solution was to come the following year with Zog taking the opportunity to change Albania into a Republic and enact dictatorial powers.
Early 20th century highland Albanian tribesman
The consummate opportunist
Throughout his public life Zog’s instinct for opportunism was always to the fore. Zog played a significant role as a tribal leader in helping to rid Albania of foreign forces (especially Italian and Serbian) in the immediate post-WWI chaos, though the credit given him was perhaps a little inflated. Whichever way it happened[2], once the border incursions were repulsed Zog turned his attention to the overriding task of national unity. Internally chaos still reigned in Albania with a host of warring tribes (Ghegs, Tosks, Mirditës, etc) hostile to central authority and each other. At the core Zog had a non-ideological bent, fundamentally he was about power for power’s sake … his best chance, probably his only chance, of staying in control, was to bring the powerful tribes together under his hegemony. He understood that political unity was the precondition for economic stability[3].
The Über-chieftain: Countering the centrifugal forces
Zog’s strategy in regard to the quarrelsome regional clans was a mixture of cunning and force. Many chiefs were bribed with “peace money”, this often took the form of offering them the rank of colonel in the Albanian army and putting them on the payroll. Those chiefs that came to swear allegiance to Zog did so personally to him … to his supporters he was viewed as a kind of über-chieftain. Remarkably given the feudal and “Wild West” nature of the country at the time, Zog through his persistent efforts, got many (but not all) of these tribal leaders sufficiently onside that they eventually acquiesced to his bold insistence that they hand in their rifles[4].
Zog streamlined the national army and carved out a personal elite, a new militia composed of trusted Mati tribesmen. This provided him with the clout to subdue (or at least keep quiescent) the tribal warlords who failed to be won over by his military appointments and other financial inducements. In trying to integrate the regional players into the unified state Zog was pragmatic when there was bigger, especially external issues to consider, he refrained for example from supporting the irredentist impulses of the Kosovars so as not to draw the hostility of Albania’s larger neighbour Yugoslavia (the Kosovo minority was already a sensitive issue to the Serbs)[5].
Guinness Book of Assassination Records
Zog’s Mati guards were also responsible for the leader’s personal safety. Over the course of Zog’s rule many hundreds of political opponents were arrested and exiled – mainly to Italy (other enemies were not so lucky being liquidated outright!). But the guards still had their work cut out for them, between 1924 and 1939 Zog was thought to be the target of around 55 attempts to assassinate him! The most conspicuous attempt occurred in 1931 when two gunmen (agents acting for Zog’s Albanian political opponents) shot at the king as he was leaving the Vienna Opera House. Zog was not harmed and, according to eye witnesses, became the stuff of legends by pulling out his own revolver and returning fire[6].
Zog permitted some limited political reform once at the helm, but was careful to make sure it never threatened his own position. He introduced Western-oriented reforms into the polity but increasingly his rule became more despotic (a mix of West and East) – especially after 1925 when he replaced the principality with a republic and himself as president.
There was also limited land reform[7] but Zog’s regime intended no social revolution. Zog always made sure that he didn’t take things too far, he avoided encroaching on the traditional way of life of the people and discouraged popular participation in society. By permitting the populace minimal representation he maintained his hold on power, and continued to “collect the fruits of monopolizing political power”[8].
Pretensions of emulating Napoleon
From 1927 Zog embarked on the road to becoming royalty. He engineered a ‘spontaneous’ response from sectors of the community, entreating him to accept the title “Saviour of the Nation”. The following year, after receiving a nod of approval from Italy, the “Nation’s Saviour” changed his family name to Zogu❦ and (in the tradition of his hero Napoleon) had himself crowned “King Zog I”. After his coronation he broadened and deepened the already extensive powers he had as president, extending them to the point of autocratic control of the country. Parliament was dissolved, and to retain a sham veneer of democracy, replaced by a new constituent assembly. All decision-making was by executive prerogative.
Zog with three of his sisters in uniform (white the operative colour!)
Zog set about immediately and enthusiastically acquiring the trappings of royalty, he had already exhibited a fondness for dazzling white uniforms and elaborate epaulettes. The king’s face now appeared on stamps, on buildings and his name and initials were carved on to the side of mountains. To further enhance his reign’s legitimacy he fabricated, or at the very least embellished, a connection to the 15th century national military hero Skanderbeg, taking the name ‘Skanderbeg III’ as part of his official title[9]. Zog, again taking a leaf from the Napoloeonic playbook, extended the garland of royalty to his siblings who were made princes and princesses.
With the consolidation of the Zogu monarchy (purportedly constitutional but in reality absolute), Albania took on the increasingly appearance of a police state. With his regime buttressed by a facade of royal imprimatur, the vainglorious Zog had attained the high point of his rule. Over the next decade or so the Albanians’ hold over their own country would be whittled away by pressures exerted from outside – as will be described in the second part of my piece on Zog Zogu, the “Bird Pasha“.
Zog’s countenance on Albania’s banknotes
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❦ ‘zogu’ in Albanian means ‘bird’.
[1] R Cavendish, ‘King Zog I of Albania’, History Today, 58(9), Sep 2008, www.historytoday.com
[2] The success of getting the invading Serbs to pull back from Northern Albania may have resulted from a secret deal between Zog and the Serbian leaders whereby Zog agreed to not support the irredentist demands of the 700,000 Kosovars wanting to escape Serbian rule, JH Tomes, King Zog: Self-Made Monarch of Albania, (2007)
[3] BJ Fischer, ‘King Zog’s Albanian Interwar Dictator’, in Fischer (Ed.), Balkan Strongman: Dictators and Authoritarian Rulers of South Eastern Europe, (2007)
[4] That Zog established a measure of central authority in an anarchic, faction-riven, still embryonic country was a formidable achievement … especially when one considers the depth of the traditional rivalry between the Ghegs in the north (Zog’s own clan) and the Tosks in the south (the latter forming the brunt of the communist elite from 1944)
[5] Besides, the Kosovars located within the borders of Albania were in conflict with Zog’s government, so it was not in his interest to reunite the two groups under the Albanian flag, Fischer, op.cit
[6] Die Stunde, (Vienna, 22-Feb-1931, 22-Feb-1931), cited in R Elsie, ‘Texts and Documents of Albanian History’, (1931 The Balkans in the Operngasse), www.albanianhistory.net
[7] Fischer, op.cit
[8] R Wintrobe, ‘The Tinpot and the Totalitarian: An Economic Theory of Dictatorship’, American Political Science Review, 84(3), Sep 1990
[9] Fischer, op.cit
Throughout the course of Salvador Dalí’s life and career it was increasingly hard to distinguish the artist from the showman-cum-self publicist and exhibitionist. Dalí was many things – artist, sculptor, photographer, clothing & object designer, film-maker, writer and poet … and in his later years a facilitator of fake copies of his own work!
Early on in his artistic apprenticeship Dalí began by taking the conventional path, studying the old masters (especially Raphael, Velázquez and Vermeer) which honed his ultra realistic technique. Dabbling initially in Fauvism (inspired by Matisse), he gravitated towards the iconoclastic Surrealists. The Surrealist movement’s insistence on the primacy of the unconscious as a precondition to creativity neatly fused with his own views which had been shaped by his readings of Freud. Typically though Dalí forged his own self-referential brand of Surrealism which he termed the paranoiac-critical method.
Dalí with fellow Surrealist Man Ray in 1934 ⤴
Dali visited America (New York) for the first time in 1934 where he was enthusiastically embraced as “the embodiment of Surrealism”[1]. After the Nazis invaded France in 1940 Dalí fled back to New York, where he sat out the war.
A mania for shock and outrage
The dandyish Dalí found America the ideal milieu in indulge in his predilection for shocking and scandalising the public. Numbered among the periodical, zany antics and pranks pulled by Dalí and his “collaborator-in-crime”, his much vilified Russian émigré wife Gala, were:
▹ attending a masquerade party with Gala dressed as the Lindbergh baby and he as the kidnapper (a grievous miscalculation by the Dalís as the heinous celebrity crime was still fresh in American minds, requiring the artist to afterwards beg forgiveness for the appalling taste of his stunt)
▹ attending a “Dalí Ball” in his honour wearing a glass case displaying a bra
▹ organising an event in a Manhattan bookshop in 1962 where he signed copies of his book in a hospital bed whilst he was wired up to a brain wave machine[2].
SD & Babou
Dalí delighted in over-the-top, exhibitionist displays of eccentricity. As he got older his shtick included prancing round with exotic wild animals on a leash (exotic animals have long been the accessory du jour for celebrities). He was well known for taking his pet South American ocelot with him on luxury cruises and to swanky restaurants. Photos also show him walking a giant anteater around the streets of New York on a lead as if it was the family dog.
Dalí’s ‘oddball’ gimmicks were all part of the artist’s “carefully cultivated image of a madman”[3]. The prevalence of photos of Dalí with chickens or other objects on his head, etc. points to the contrived nature of his eccentricity. Dalí’s appearances before the camera, unkempt hair, imperious piercing eyes and trademark extravagantly curled moustache, added to the image of an unhinged persona.
‘Temptation of St Anthony’ (see below)
Dalí’s enfant terrible behaviour (a condition that persisted his whole life!), whilst good for keeping him in the public eye and boosting sales, nonetheless alienated many in the art world. The Surrealists eventually disowned the Catalan artist for his egomaniacal antics and his blatant and shameless exhibitionism and commercialism. In 1939, Andre Breton, the founder of the Surrealist movement, gave Dalí the nickname Avida Dollars (an anagram of “Salvador Dalí”) which can be translated as “eager for dollars”[4].
Some observers have noted that the Surrealists’ reasons for rejecting Dalí had also to do with his increasingly apolitical position in the wake of the rising tide of fascism in the 1930s (going so far as to suggest that Dalí was soft on Nazism). Breton and other left-wing members of the movement, by contrast to Dalí, had used their Surrealist writing and art to attack the direction taken by Hitler and Mussolini. Later when Dalí happily returned to live in post-war Spain under the uncompromising dictatorship of Franco, he was further howled down by the Leftist artists sympathetic to communism[5].
⤴ Dali working on the set of Hitchcock’s ‘Spellbound’ (1945)
Spending long periods in America (and specifically Hollywood) from the late 1930s allowed Dalí to continue his interest and involvement in film. Even before first coming to America he was very much into cinema. In 2007 the Figueres-based Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, in conjunction with the Tate Modern, held an exhibition called ‘Dali and Film’ in London which details his long association with film[6]. In the late 1920s-early 1930s he had made two polemically radical films with Luis Bunuel, a later master director of the screen (Un Chien andalou and L’Age d’or).
After coming in contact with Hollywood, Dalí, through his friendship with Harpo Marx, worked on writing of a screenplay for a Marx brothers movie to be called ‘Giraffes on Horseback Salad’ (planned scenes included gas mask-wearing giraffes and Chico in a deep-sea diving suit playing the piano bore the unmistakable Dalí touch). Plans for the movie were unfortunately scuttled after Groucho put the kibosh on it[7].
Dalí’s set from ‘Spellbound’
During the years he lived in America, Dalí worked with Hollywood luminaries of the calibre of Hitchcock and Disney. The Spanish artist, surprisingly for many in the US, became very good friends with Walt Disney. Walt and Sal collaborated on a short cartoon (Destino) but the project was not completed by them (possibly because Dalí’s ideas were “too explicit” for Disney). With Hitch, on Spellbound (a psychological crime thriller), Dalí created the artistic set for the dream sequence scene. He also later worked with director Vincente Minnelli on Father of the Bride creating some characteristic Dalí motifs[8].
At the Tate Modern (London) exhibition back in 2007 one of the Dalí paintings that caught my attention—being somewhat incongruous for a Dalí!—was a quite conventional portrait of Hollywood movie mogul Jack L Warner*. I wasn’t aware at the time but apparently the powerful Warner Brothers studio head was also a friend of Dalí. A strange association I thought but his estranged, one-time friend Luis Bunuel in his autobiography opined that Dalí was always attracted to the company of multi-millionaires (so much so he became one! … Dalí left an estate worth around US$32m). Cecil B De Mille was another Hollywood establishment heavyweight that Dalí cultivated a friendship with.
A further surprise for me at the Tate ‘Dalí and Film’ exhibition was to see how small many of the Catalan’s artworks were. For example, Dalí’s 1931 work (above), the Persistence of Memory (AKA ‘Melting Clocks’), one of his most famous and most referenced paintings, stands at a mere 10″ x 13″, virtually a miniature!
Dalí was praised for his avant-garde work in the thirties and universally admired for his artistic technical virtuosity. But by the fifties and sixties most of that distinctive originality had dried up. Influential art critic Robert Hughes summarised Dali’s later oeuvre as “kitschy repetition of old motifs or vulgarly pompous piety on a Cinemascope scale”[9]. By this time Dalí’s unchecked commercialism had overshadowed all vestiges of his artistic integrity (he had stooped to doing TV ads for Lanvin Chocolates, designing logos for Chupa Chups, etc).
‘L’elephant-giraffe’ (1965) ⤴
Controversy continued to dog Dalí into his seventies and eighties. As he got older and frailer he became embroiled in forgery scandals. He resorted to signing thousands of blank canvases (possibly he was coerced into this by the manipulative Gala and other ‘hangers-ons’ close to him in their haste to cash in on the famed Dalí name). To this day fakes and frauds of Dalí’s paintings and lithographs (some with real signatures) proliferate around the world with countless numbers of unsuspecting buyers finding themselves lumbered with inauthentic Dalís.
Burning giraffe + women with drawers AKA “Femme-coccyx” (tail bone woman)
PostScript: The Dalí style
Dalí’s art is characteristically laden with ideography, much of it religious (eg, several on Gala as Madonna, one coupling her with Dalí as a monk, The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus); often his landscapes are populated by bizarre animal symbols (eg, burning giraffes; elephants and horses with extremely long but thin (stilt-like) legs (The Temptation of St Anthony). Some works border on the pornographic (eg, a dismembered nude girl being sodomised by rhinoceros horns!?!) and there is a onanistic element to some of his paintings (eg, The Great Masturbator). Violent human dismemberment is another recurrent theme (eg, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans). He also enjoyed experimenting with optical effects in his works, like superimposing faces onto landscapes (eg, Paranoiac Visage.)
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* Dalí also did a painting of Warner’s wife, although Mrs Jack Warner is a bit more edgy work than the portrait of her husband
[1] Dalí & Film, An exhibition of the artist at the Tate Modern (London), 1 June – 9 September 2007 (text by Matthew Gale)
[2] S Meisler, ‘The Surrealist World of Salvador Dalí’, Smithsonian Magazine, Apr 2005
[3] Sara Cochran, quoted in G Goodale, ‘In Hollywood, Dalí’s films are reappraised”, Christian Science Monitor, 2 Nov 2007, www.csmonitor.com. Dalí seems to have possessed that Hamlet-like quality of “dissembling madness” – “I am but mad north-north-west, when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw”
[4] M Vallen, ‘Salvador Dalí – Avida Dollars’, Feb 2005, www.art-for-a-change.com
[5] ibid.
[6] ‘Dali & Film’, op.cit.
[7] R Kennedy, ‘Mr Surrealist goes to Tinseltown’, New York Times, 29 June 2008, www.mobile.nytimes.com
[8] ibid.
[9] R Hughes, ‘Homage to Catalonia’, The Guardian, 13 Mar 2004
Adil Rashid, currently displaying his bowling wares in the Big Bash League, recently took a five-wicket haul on test debut for England in the UAE. Nothing too sensational there you might say … except that he was the first English leg break bowler to bag a ‘Michelle’ (thank you Kerry O’Keefe!), five wickets in an innings, in a cricket test for 56 years! Its not that the English haven’t had any decent ‘leggies’ in that time – Robin Hobbs, Ian Salisbury, Chris Schofield, Scott Borthwick, have all been ‘capped’ for England – but when they have given them a go in the international arena they have done so ever so briefly, such is the closed mindset of the English establishment when it comes to leg-spinners!
England and Australia have diametrically opposed thought processes when it comes to assessing the value of leg-spinners. Everyone in Australia (and India) remembers Shane Warne’s test debut, 150-1 v India, grist for Ravi Shastri’s mill in 1992. And it didn’t get better in a hurry for Warne, after his first four tests he had taken precisely four wickets! But the Australian selectors, seeing the promise, persisted with Warne – and the rest was (leg spinning) history. The English authorities by contrast are neither brave or bold when it comes to encouraging and nurturing their young leggies, and it remains to be seen if England will persist with Rashid for longer than they have with other promising wrist spinners in the near past.
England invented the leg break and the ‘Bosie’ (the googly) and it is certainly not true that the country and its conditions are incompatible with good leg-spin bowling. Pakistan leggie Mustaq Ahmed in his legendary stint with Sussex took 478 wickets in five seasons of English country cricket (he remains the most recent bowler to take 100 wickets in an English FC season). Sussex won its first ever County Championship in 2003 and went on to win three in five years on the back of ‘Mushy’s’ persistent, penetrative leg breaks and wrong-uns! Indian leg-spinner Anil Kumble was similarly successful in his one (1995) season with Northamptonshire, topping the championship bowling list with 105 dismissals.
Tich in action° ° ° °As to home-grown leggies, going deep into the history, England produced, among others, the most phenomenal, overachieving leg-spinner ever to grace an English ground! Alfred Percy Freeman, as his nickname (‘Tich’) implies, was tiny, 5’2″ (158 centimetres in the new language). Freeman achieved phenomenal success with Kent in the English County Championship in the inter-war years (see below). The attitude of the English selectors to Tich’s “class of his own” performances, emphasises what was to become the characteristic “head in the sand” reaction, a reluctance to embrace leg break bowling and give it a decent tryout.
In the historical record books of First class (FC) and English county cricket the nonpareil AP Freeman’s career include the following highlights:
:~ 3,776 wickets at 18.42 in FC career in 592 matches (6.38 wkts per match, strike rate: 40.9, economy rate 2.69) – second highest all-time wicket-taker to the great Wilfred Rhodes who took 4,204 wickets in 1,110 matches (ie, in 518 more matches)
:~ 304 wickets @ 18.05 in the 1928 English FC season – the highest of all-time & the only bowler to snare 300 in a single season (he also holds number 2 spot with 298 wkts @ 15.26 in 1933)
:~ in all FC matches: Five wickets in an innings, 386 times, & ten wickets in a match, 140 times! The next closest “five for” in an innings tally achieved in FC cricket is 287 instances (Rhodes), 99 in arrears of Tich. The next closest bowler for number of “ten fors” in matches made 91 (Charlie Parker)
:~ The only bowler to take 10 wkts in an innings thrice, the only bowler to take 17 wickets or more twice in a match
:~ Almost half of his 3,776 wkts were unassisted – the batsmen were either bowled, caught & bowled, LBW or hit-wicket
With such startling figures, leg-spinner or not, the selectors couldn’t ignore Tich forever. He was selected in an MCC ‘A’ tour to New Zealand in which he excelled on NZ pitches, followed by a full test tour to Australia in 1924-25 in which he made his debut at age 36. A combination of good, hard Australian wickets and the fact that Australian batsmen were brought up on a diet of leg spin meant that Freeman made very heavy weather of the series. Thereafter the national selectors choose the leg-spinner very irregularly. He did very well against South Africa and the West Indies, but was not considered for the tests against the Australians on either the 1926 or 1930 tours of the UK, despite getting a six for and a five for in the county games for Kent against the tourists. The selectors demonstrated a remarkable lack of perception in not showing a sustained faith in Freeman’s obvious talent and not backing him in tests, especially in English conditions. As things turned out, his record in tests suggest the magnitude of their error in judgement:
In just 12 tests, 66 wkts. ave: 25.86, strike rate: 56.5 BB: 71-7. Five wkts in inns: 5 times, Ten wkts in match: 3 times.
In the very limited opportunities afforded Freeman to represent his country, 66 wickets in tests at an average of 5.5 per match is more than respectable as returns go. In any form and at any level of the game, he was an out-and-out wicket-taking machine!
What accounts for the diminutive, right-arm Kent leggie’s exceptionality? Firstly, he was unswervingly consistent as a bowler … and he improved with age. In the eight seasons after he turned 40 in 1928, he took 2,090 wickets at 17.86, making him the leading wicket-taker in county cricket eight years in a row! Glenn McGrath has been described as ‘metronomic’ as a bowler, but it was Tich Freeman first who whirled them down with unerring accuracy like an automaton for 20 plus years. He commanded fantastic control of line and length. Although Tich was small, he was strong of hand and he had seemingly endless reserves of stamina, going on and on and on at the bowling crease. Freeman loved nothing more than to bowl and bowl and bowl. And he just hated being taken off. Regularly he would open the bowling in county games and bowl right through the innings!
Tich Freeman’s standard bowling strategy was one of relentlessly attacking the stumps. The line of his leg break (his “go-to” ball) was directed towards making the right-handed batsman play at the ball, rather than being able to just let it spin by harmlessly. He had an unorthodox leg-spinner’s grip and tended to not overuse the googly, but had an extremely hard-to-pick top-spinner.
Some cricket pundits, in contrasting Freeman to later generations of bowlers, have tried to explain away or diminish his extraordinary success by predictably referring to the poor state of uncovered wickets in his day. Or to the fact that he sent down such a sheer weight of numbers of balls in his career. It is undeniable that bad wickets were an advantage for bowlers in that era, but in response I would ask what was it, given the even playing field prevailing, that made Freeman so much more successful than his contemporary counterparts? This comparison accentuates the point: in that English season when he took 304 wickets, the entire Derbyshire team in the Championship by comparison took just 324 wickets! The next closest individual county bowler to his 304 victims in 1928 managed only 190 wickets.
And while it was true that Freeman bowled a hell of a lot of balls in FC cricket, 154 thousand plus, the point remains that at the same time he maintained an outstanding career strike rate, less than 41, which is right up there with the very best of bowlers. Tich Freeman was a seriously great English wrist spinner whose fame was largely restricted to his home county of Kent. But for the timidness and blinkered vision of the national selectors in truncating his test career, Freeman’s bowling feats could be as well celebrated and lionised internationally as they are today among the Kent faithful and in pockets of the county cricket fraternity.
In the 1953 film, Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (Mr Hulot’s Holiday), Jacques Tati introduced the character of Monsieur Hulot to the world of cinema-goers. Over the next 18 years in a sequence of four widely spread out movies, Tati reprised Hulot who became the emblematic face and profile, if not the (audible) voice, of the idiosyncratic Parisian’s cinema. In the features made by Tati between 1953 and 1971 Hulot was the central figure and yet at the same time he was peripheral to the ‘action’ of the story, “the man nobody quite sees” as Roger Ebert described him [R Ebert, ‘Mr. Hulot’s Holiday’, www.rogerebert.com]. No one notices that is, until something goes “pear-shaped” as a consequence of Hulot’s habitual clumsiness (mime-clown Tati’s characteristic slapstick shtick).
▪ • ▪ ‘Mr Hulot’s Holiday’
▪ • ▪
Physically M Hulot cuts a tall, distinctive figure, a sort of “prancing, myopic giraffe” (a reference to his characteristic springy, long-striding gait) as one collaborator notes [Peter Lennon, ‘My holiday with Monsieur Hulot’, The Guardian (23-Jul-2003, www.theguardian.com/]. Another critic calls him “a gangling, spider-limbed gent”. Stanley Kaufmann describes Hulot as “a creature of silhouettes” [S Kaufmann, ‘The Second Mr.Hulot’, New Republic 139(23),1958]. The elongated Hulot silhouette was put to good use in the various film posters for the Hulot movies. Hulot’s standard beige/grey garb, the fedora hat and long-stem pipe, tired-looking long trenchcoat, long pants (not quite long enough to reach his ankles) and umbrella, were all well suited to the dark outline of Tati’s characteristic form. The personality of Hulot is avuncular, benign, friendly, forever curious, but he is also uber-gauche and prone to misadventures.
• • •
Perpetually observing humankind
The storyline of Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot is, as always with Tati, a simple one. M Hulot visits a resort in the north-west coast to get a taste for himself of the new, post-war passion for spending summer at the seaside. He wanders round with no particular object in mind, just checking out the cavalcade of human ‘wildlife’ that is drawn to the beach resort. There is no plot to speak of, just a series of amusing, whimsical escapades, eg, a ping-pong game in which we see only the figure of Hulot running flat-chat from one side to the other frantically trying to return the ball. The location for Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday was the French seaside town of Saint-Marc-sur-Mer which today has a bronze statue of the man who put it on the tourist map (depicting Hulot in typical stance, tilting forward, observing the human interactions on the beach).
▪ • ▪ ‘Mon Oncle’: Hulot’s ‘penthouse’ loft
▪ • ▪
▪ • ▪ ‘Min Onkel’ (Danish poster)▪ • ▪
Mon OncleMon Oncle (My Uncle) (1958) was the second in the M Hulot series, this time Tati’s disapproving and eagle-eyed attention was directed towards the modern suburban home and mania for consumerism of the Parisian middle classes, willing participants in a Conga line of sheer mindless acquisitiveness. The story has Hulot, living in the city and unemployed, visiting his sister and her family (the Arpels) in the new suburbs on the outskirts of Paris. Hulot spends his days looking after his young nephew Gèrard. Villa Arpel, their ultra-mod house and garden is a geometric monstrosity, designed with an obsessiveness bordering on the pathological! All aspects of the villa are fully automated, everything is push button remote controlled—gates, doors, “weird fish” water fountain, everything precisely mechanised.
Hulot’s sister wants him to adopt their chic lifestyle so she gets him a job at her husband’s company (called Plastak). The venture proves comically disastrous with Hulot falling foul of a ubiquitous and seemingly endless red hose and entangles himself in a caper to try to dispose of it. The plastics factory, like the Arpels’ antiseptic home, is a soulless and sterile environment.
While he’s there, Hulot’s sister tries to match him up with her neighbour, a matrimonial project which is equally doomed to failure. The female neighbour is far too bourgeois in her tastes for Hulot, who is in any case a confirmed bachelor.
In Mon Oncle we are left in no doubt that Tati’s vision of the world sees modern technology as anathema to humanity! The Arpels live in an bland and ugly modernist style home with a pristine, sterile yard. The home’s arsenal of whiz-bang gadgets are not only coldly impersonal but Hulot discovers that their functional effectiveness is not up to scratch. The gate is practically entry-proof, the garage doors malfunction, the small parking space is totally inadequate for the Arpel’s very big, shiny American car, and so on.
▪ • ▪ A replica of ‘Villa Arpel’ in Paris ⟱ ▪ • ▪
Hulot brings his own brand of disorder to the house but this only serves to accentuate the original folly of the project. The Arpel house “designed to trumpet the ingenuity of engineering” succeeds merely at highlighting its lack of functionality and utter impracticality (witness the ridiculously serpentine front path) [Matt Zoller Seitz, ‘Mon Oncle’, 06-Jan-2004, Criterion,www.criterion.com].
Tati is a dab hand at noting all of the “modern inconveniences”(sic) of contemporary Western society. Mon Oncle is a sharp commentary on the way “modern life traps humanity within its contrivances” [James Quandt, ‘Scatterbrained Angel: The Films of Jacques Tati’, From the Current – Criterion Collection, www.criterion.com] Mon Oncle, Tati’s obra maestra , won the Oscar for best foreign language film in 1959.
• • • Hulot and ‘Barbara’ (American tourist in Paris)
• • •
Playtime
An idiosyncratic feature of Jacques Tati’s cinema is its unwavering critical focus on the unrelenting mania for all things modern. With Playtime, the focus turns again to the ultra-mod world—modernity in architecture, shop interiors, in everything—that has come to dominate modern cities like Paris. As always, the plot-line is coincidental, dialogue is incidental. The insouciant M Hulot wanders round the city visiting the airport and various buildings, in doing so he continually crosses paths with a group of gormless, wide-eyed American tourists. Hulot peers inside busy offices to expose dispiriting scenes of workers in their own depersonalised little boxes shut off from human interaction. Playtime is a flawed gem, like all of Tati’s films it has a slow, leisurely build-up but it suffers from being too long—originally around 155 minutes but cut to 124 minutes for commercial release in 1967—still too long and crying out for tighter editing. The film, by a long way the auteur’s most expensive, disappointed many upon its release, especially when viewed against the preceding Mon Oncle.
Although the persona of Hulot is the human thread that runs through Playtime, Tati deliberately does not allow the popular character to dominate proceedings (as tended to be the case in Mr Hulot’s Holiday and Mon Oncle) [Kent Jones,’Playtime’, From the Current – Criterion Collection, www.criterion.com] putting the focus back on ‘everybody’, ie, the observed cross-section of humanity. Tati eschews the use of close-up shots and the technique of the camera panning in for exactly the same reason. A sub-plot of Playtime follows American tourist ‘Barbara’ whose own meanderings always eventually lead her back to Hulot.
Trademark cute
There are many little gems in Playtime – the signature Tati sight gags like the blissfully unaware Hulot boarding a crowded bus grabbing on to what he thought was a handrail, immersing himself distractedly in his newspaper only to find himself again out on the footpath at the next stop because the mistaken handrail was actually the tall floor lamp of a fellow commuter who had alighted the bus with Hulot still holding on. Or the spiral neon arrow on the nightclub sign which guides the drunk straight back into the “Royal Garden” from which he has just departed … both of these sight gags are pure gold! Playtime represents the zenith, the highest expression, of Hulot’s distaste for the contemporary world of “mod cons” and gadgetry.
‘Playtime’: Hulot and those dehumanising work boxes! ⟱
So much of Tati’s film art is about messing with the impersonality of modernisation which he disapproves of, sabotaging it to bring the dehumanising folly of it into the spotlight, this is his narrative. As Ebert precisely describes it, Tati “discovers serendipity in a world of disappointment”, ‘Mon Oncle’, www.rogerebert.com]. In Play Time, “an obstreperous cityscape whose supposed modern conveniences conspire to trip, bewilder, and ensnare the hapless populace gets violently reshaped as a vast play area” [David Cairns, ‘Jacques Tati: Things Fall Together’, www.criterion.com]. The film, Tati’s first go at a big (wide-screen) movie, turned into something of an epic saga, being eight years in the making!§Play Time was the most expensive French film to that point ever made, in no small measure due to Tati’s insistence on constructing a horrendously expensive mini-city, a set of glass and steel, nicknamed Tativille. To finance the film Tati had to sell his own home and eventually the rights to all his films – a clear indication of Tati’s single-minded commitment to an artistic vision!
Tati’s fifth feature, Traffic (or Trafic in French) was the last to include M Hulot. Traffic’s plot and narrative is as threadbare as Playtime: Hulot is a car designer who invents a new automobile, a gadget-packed camper car, the film tracks Hulot’s attempts to transport it to Amsterdam for a motor show. The trip, as any trip would be involving M Hulot, is incident-laden. Hulot and his companions experience various vicissitudes including breakdowns, customs inspection hold-ups and a multiple car pile-up, in the end arriving at the destination too late for the auto show.
• • •
Finding the funny in life’s absurd
In the laughs department Traffic is a bit light on compared to the earlier Hulot pictures. But that said, Tati films do not create “belly” laughs, no real LOL moments, the humour generated by him is more of a gentler, subtler style of comedy, giving rise to a wry reflection on an amusing situation. There is one scene in Trafic though where the director draws comical comparisons with the Apollo 11 moon mission (happening concurrently with the making of Trafic) with two of the characters mimicking the low-gravity motion of astronauts.
‘Trafic’ (1971)
• • •
The Tatiesque film: a throwback to a lost cinema
The films of M Tati are not everybody’s cup of tea. They tend towards a polarising effect. Many decry the lack of pace and that it appears that ‘nothing’ is really happening. In Trafic, as in all of Tati’s features, he was criticised for the weakness of the dialogue. Tati would have been indifferent to this objection because it was inconsequential to what his (idiosyncratic) cinema was about – to him the visual had primacy, whether it be man versus road, man versus building, etc. [James Monaco, ‘Review of Trafic by Jacques Tati’, Cinéaste, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Summer 2009). As a child Jacques grew up on a diet of silent cinema, Keaton was his idol, but he devoured the work of Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Harold Lloyd, all the great silent comics. His strain of comedy harked back to that era. As Kaufmann noted, Tati in the postwar period was “the only performer attempting to recapture the immensely more imaginative and abstract comedy of silent days” [Kaufmann, op.cit].
▪ • ▪ Situational humour ▪ • ▪
Entering the cinema from a background as a mime in music-hall also grounded Tati in the art of the visual and the physical. Tati’s films are not strictly silent pictures in that there is (minimal) low-level dialogue. Sounds do play a role but as background, complimentary but subordinate to the visual, the situation humour that was the essence of silent comedies. Stylistically, dialogue in a Tati movie is a device for sound effect [Jonathan Romney, ‘Jacques Tati’s Playtime: Life-affirming comedy’, The Guardian (25-Oct-2014), www.theguardian.com/film]. It never distracts from the central preoccupation of his cinema, observation of the interaction of human nature with the environment.
Life in boxes: Absurdity of modernity (‘Playtime’j
At the time of Tati’s death (1982) he was working on a project for a new Monsieur Hulot film entitled ‘Confusion’ – with its theme to be the obsession of western society with television and visual images. As James Monaco observes, it would be fascinating to have seen what Tati would have made of today’s virtual world, the internet, social networking media and digital devices [Monaco, op.cit.].
▪ • ▪ François (centre) in L’École des Facteurs (‘School for Postmen’), a 1947 short which prefigured Tati’s feature film debut ▪ • ▪
‘Jour de féte’ (1949)
Footnote: Proto-Hulot
Before there was Hulot, there was François. François was the eccentric comic creation in Tati’s first feature, Jour de Fête (The Big Day) (1949). The storyline has François, an over-zealous and maladroit postman (a kind of public servant precursor to M Hulot), who watches a US postal training film and tries to replicate its efficiency in his provincial post office operation. The results however go disastrously haywire. Introducing the theme Tati would return to again and again, the director satirises contemporary society’s slavish devotion to technological progress, especially it’s over-eagerness to adopt every new innovation from America [‘Jacques Tati Facts’, www.biography.yourdictionary.com].
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§ a consequence in part of Tati’s directorial style on set which might best be described as monumentally indecisive
Before there was motion pictures, radio or television in Australia, variety theatre and vaudeville flourished as the form of public entertainment. In the first half of the 20th century two performers in the absolute vanguard of Australian vaudeville comedy were George Wallace and Roy Rene. Both these standout comedy stars of the Australasian theatre, at their career high-point, were extremely well paid. Each had his own distinctive style and persona, as well as particular strengths and weaknesses in the differing modes of comic performance attempted.
George Wallace (above) had an early taste of the stage appearing in children’s pantomime at age three, but it wasn’t until after WWI that his career really took off when he teamed up with fellow vaudevillian Jack Paterson to form a knockabout comedy act called “Dinks and Onkus”. The duo performed their “couple of drunks” routine to packed audiences at the Newtown Bridge Theatre for five years before Wallace outgrew the partnership and joined up with bigger enterprises, first that of Fuller’s Circuit and then the Tivoli Theatre Circuit.
George was smallish in stature and quite chubby in build but despite this, on stage he was exceptionally acrobatic and agile on his feet. As part of his very physical act he became acutely adept at landing on his left ear during a deliberate fall. Wallace wrote witty songs and review sketches to perform in theatre, sometimes he told absurd stories about characters such as Stanley the Bull, the Drongo from the Congo and Sophie the Sort [Stuart Sayers, ‘Wallace, George Stevenson (1895–1960)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/wallace-george-stevenson-8961/text15765, published first in hardcopy 1990, accessed online 4 April 2015]. The Wallace persona on stage and screen was that of a childlike man, portraying goggle-eyed, innocent characters well down on the social ladder, often farm boys, hicks and yokels ill at ease with women [Paul Byrnes, ‘George Wallace’, www.aso.gov.au]. The country bumpkin-cum-innocent in the big city association was further emphasised by George’s garb, comprising ill-fitting clothes and rumpled hat.
Wallace’s “working class zero” popularity attracted the attention of local film-makers and in the thirties he appeared in a number of films such as Gone to the Dogs, A Ticket for Tatts, mostly for Ken G Hall, Australia’s foremost (Cinesound) director in the interwar period. In his movies (some of which he co-wrote) Wallace reprised his theatre role as a bumbling, disaster-prone innocent. In his performances on the big screen Wallace demonstrated that he was able to make the transition from stage to cinema. After WWII however, finances dried up and the Australian film industry went into steep decline. Wallace returned to theatre including a return to pantomime and to the new medium of radio performance. In 1949 he began a weekly radio show with the Macquarie Network in Sydney. The one setback to Wallace’s career was his unsuccessful attempt in the early fifties to make it in the English theatre as a comedian, but this could be attributed partially to the English audiences’ unfamiliarity with his Australian accent [ibid.].
Roy Rene (born of part-Dutch ancestry, Harry Van Der Sluice) was a rival of sorts for Wallace in the interwar musical comedy theatre. Rene’s stage persona of ‘Mo’ and his successful partnership with Nat Phillips as “Stiffy and Mo” was the inspiration for Wallace to form “Dinks and Onkus”. Like Wallace, Rene started in ‘panto’ at 14 as “Boy Roy” in a Sydney production of Sinbad the Sailor. Rene’s popularity grew in musical comedy reviews all around Australia and NZ in the 1920s and 1930s. His theatrical career however was marked by tempestuous relationships with colleagues and proprietors. He broke up and then reunited with Phillips, and moved (sometimes sacked) from one theatre company to another (Princess Theatre, the National Amphitheatre, Fuller’s, Tivoli, Theatre Royal, etc) from one side of the continent to the other and on to New Zealand throughout his career.
Rene had a very distinctive on-stage appearance, striking black-and-white face paint which gave a nod to the influence of minstrelsy, baggy pants and a battered black top hat. In performance he exuded an extroverted and even exhibitionist style – he was the quintessential lair (the self-promoting “show-off”). Often he would robustly insult the audience with a spray of obscenities, both verbal and gestural. In today’s milieu of political correctness Rene’s act would in all likelihood be characterised as sexist and even racist (in its presentation of a Jewish caricature) and it did alienate some viewers in the day. This did not stop Fuller’s from billing him (pre-war) as “Australia’s foremost delineator of Hebrew eccentricities” [Frank Van Straten, ‘Roy Rene 1892-1954’, Live Performance Australia – Hall of Fame (2007), www.liveperformance.com.au ].
At the height of his career the wider public loved Mo’s humour and feted him as a great clown. The typically unrestrained expressions used by Rene in skits became the vogue, so much so that they entered the Australian lexicon. The numerous ‘Mo-isms’ that still colour the linguistic landscape of Australia include such perennial gems as “strike me lucky!”, ” you beaut!”, “strewth”, “cop that, young Harry”, “you little trimmer!”, “don’t come the raw prawn with me” and “fair suck of the sav” [‘Roy Rene’, www.skwirk.com].
Rene as a live performer was a forerunner of what a later generation would euphemistically call “working blue”. His work, especially in the Stiffy and Mo skits was punctuated with risqué humour and vulgar double entendre. One of their most celebrated routines had Mo, chalk in hand, saying to the “straight guy” Stiffy: “why is that whenever I write F you see K” (the audience apparently never got it at the time). How far Roy could be characterised as a “blue comic” is a moot point. A show biz contemporary of his, Bill Moloney in his autobiography, Memoirs of an Abominable Showman, cautions that this was more in the public’s perception than anything actually evident in Mo’s sketches. Moreover, in the light of the unfettered ‘blueness’ of later comics like Lenny Bruce and Rodney Rude, Mo’s ribald smuttiness comes across as very pale by comparison.
Roy as Mo struck a chord with the public partially perhaps because he was seen as being so far from being a hero, more of an everyman, and also because they saw him in the context of the Depression as a battler, an underdog barking back at his so-called ‘betters’ [ibid.]. At the peak of his fame a measure of his popularity were the stacks of unaddressed mail he received from his fans. Letters would somehow find their way to Roy Rene’s home or office with only the iconic, black and white image of Mo’s face scribbled where the address should appear on the envelope!
Inevitably the popularity of Mo led to attempts to establish Roy Rene as a film star. Strike Me Lucky! (1934) directed by Ken G Hall was not successful either critically or at the box office. The medium did not suit Rene who needed the spontaneity of performing before a live audience to feed off and sparkle at his best. The repetition of takes during scenes in movies was also to his distaste [Lesley Speed, ‘Strike Me Lucky: Social Difference and Consumer Culture in Roy Rene’s Only Film’ (Screening Australia), www.tlweb.latrobe.edu.au].
After WWII, with variety theatre in recession, Rene made a successful transition to radio. He was able to do this having learned from the lessons of his failed venture into films, because he made sure that his radio shows were presented before a live audience to ensure that his performances had that necessary edge. At Sydney radio station 2GB he found a niche as the bombastic “Professor Mo McCackie” of “McCackie Manor” finding a whole new audience for his unique sense of humour.
Because they possessed very different comedic styles, it is hard to detect any influences Rene and Wallace may have had on each other. Rene, hitting the boards a good decade before the younger man, led to him becoming the bigger star in the late 1910s to mid 1920s. The differences in style and content were quite pronounced: Rene’s speech drew on the broad Australian vernacular, he had an urban type of comedy influenced by the traditions of American Jewish (Yiddish) comedy. Roy/Mo was both raunchy and in-your-face in a way the simpler, more laid-back George/Onkus never was. Wallace was more influenced by the traditions and stories of the Australian bush (his adolescent years were largely spent working in the Queensland bush as a cane-cutter, horseman, dairy farming and the like). One critic has identified the influence of Charlie Chaplin on Wallace’s comedy in aspects like the use of athletic slapstick and the choice of costumes [Byrnes, op.cit.].
Wallace and Rene were gigantic figures in the first half of 20th century Australian variety entertainment, both were quintessentially Australian, both had exemplary timing in their comic delivery. The two plied the same trade but stylistically and temperamentally they were very different vaudeville comics. The two comedians did ultimately have one curious connexion: both men died in the same small Sydney suburb of Kensington, six years apart.
‘Mo Mac’ with another great master of comedy, Stan Laurel
Postscript: I have not included Jim Gerald within the purview of this survey. ‘Diabolo’ Gerald, the rubbery-faced clown, a contemporary of Rene and Wallace, was a theatrical performer who rightly deserves a place in the trio of 20th century Australian vaudeville comic greats. Gerald however differs from the other two Australia-focused comedians. He was more international in outlook, sourcing a large amount of his material during trips abroad, and working overseas extensively, eg, touring South Africa, Asia, North America; as part of the AIF Entertainment Unit in the Middle East and the Mediterranean during WWII; plus starring in a series of cinematic shorts in Hollywood during the silent era.
Hogsback, 18 kilometres from Alice in South Africa’s Eastern Province, is just about the coldest place I’ve been to in sub-Saharan Africa, barring the mountainous Malealea region of Lesotho. In fact it is one of the few places in South Africa where it actually snows!
Auckland village, above M&C Falls (ECP)⋄The topography of Hogsback is characterised by dense forests, an extended mountain range (the Amathole Mountains), lush, verdant hiking trails (a veritable hiker’s nirvana) and teeming rivers, magnificent waterfalls such as the Madonna and Child Falls and the 39 Steps Falls, the Arboretum (a garden comprising a wide selection of international trees including a grove of Californian Redwoods over 100-years-old).
⋄In the period since JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books became famous, many acquainted with this part of Eastern Cape have drawn attention to the physical similarity of Tolkien’s fictional Middle Earth with the town of Hogsback. Director Peter Jackson could as well have chosen Hogsback for the setting of “The Rings” series of movie epics had he not been a native of a country (New Zealand) with a landscape equally evocative of Middle Earth.
Even before “The Lord of the Rings” movie series some Hogsback locals did their best to capitalise on a handful of tenuous links with the celebrated Lord of the Rings author. The story goes, the ‘Rings’ books were inspired by the magical, enchanting physical form of Hogsback. The proponents of this theory point to the fact that Tolkien was born in South Africa (in Bloemfontein, Free State). The thesis loses traction when probed more closely. The famous author and avid philologist left South Africa at the tender age of three, never to return and having not ever visited Hogsback.
⋄Myth-making about the Master Mythologist:
Despite this inconvenient fact, it hasn’t stopped the local tourist industry from milking the supposed nexus at every turn! ‘Lords of the Rings’ themes pervade the town and its surrounds, driven obviously by an effort to exploit the enhanced fame of Lord of the Rings. Tolkienesque references are scattered throughout Hogsback in the names of lodgings, shops and outdoor activities – Rivendell, Gandalf’s Rest, Merrell Hobbit Trail Runs, The Shire, Lothlórien, The Rings Hardware and Bottle Shop, Hog and Hobbit, Away with the Fairies Backpackers, River Running, Camelot Cottages, etc, etc. The association can probably be traced back in 1947 with the establishment of Hobbiton-on-Hogsback, an outdoor recreation and education centre for disadvantaged kids just off the R345 as you come into the Hogsback township. The “fantasy and fairies” theme is underscored in the numerous pieces of town sculptures depicting these motifs.
The Tolkien Middle Earth connection is often emphasised in print, such as in the following: “The romance of Hogsback, is recognised by reading The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (1892-1973) which seems to capture the special atmosphere of the unspoilt Hogsback forests and of a time when peace will rule the world” [Trevor Webster, The Story of Hogsback, www.hogsback.com].
Talking to the staffer in the Hogsback Visitors Information Centre, she was unequivocally dismissive of the Tolkien LOTR nexus. So the lingering myth clearly wasn’t emanating from the likes of her! She also warned me against buying the primitive wooden toy horses and zebras in the street from members of the local Xhosa community. The street sellers, looking cold and dismal in the freezing conditions, were only asking R2 an animal, but the Visitors Centre lady explained that they are not properly gazed and sealed, making them a prohibited item to export out of RSA. Apparently a local artisan/sculptor had offered to glaze the artworks for the community at minimal cost so that they could charge more for the figurines, but his offer had not been taken up.
So, how plausible is the link between “Middle Earth” of Lord of the Rings and the sleepy, little village of Hogsback? Clearly, as stated above, JRR Holkien had no direct association with Hogsback, having left South Africa at age three. Information on Tolkien’s life however, suggest the existence of an indirect link. One of Tolkien’s sons, whilst in the Royal Air Force during WWII, was stationed at Hogsback and did correspond regular with the author with his reflections on the locale. These correspondences from Tolkien Junior included sketches and descriptions of the Hogsback ambience [Ibid.].
The Hog’s back!⋄Accordingly it is quite feasible that, at the very least, these glowing accounts of the mystical, magic-like countryside provided background material for the physical world of The Lord of the Rings trilogy published in 1954/55. The parallels existing present a strong case to say that the description of the Mirkwood forest in the Rings cycle may conceivably have been inspired from Tolkien having read the war-time accounts of the place provided by his son.
IF you didn’t know it was there, you would drive right past it. In a quiet back street in the Illawarra beachside village of Thirroul … No. 3 Craig Street, no signs or plaques. For two or so months in 1922, this inconspicuous bungalow with the jokey, alt-spelt name ‘Wyewurk’❂ was home to one of the 20th century’s greatest English-language writers, DH Lawrence. That Bert Lawrence resided briefly in a far-flung part of the world like Thirroul NSW was not exceptional in itself. In the course of his “stop-go” global peregrinations Lawrence during his truncated life resided in over 300 addresses across the world! What gives it import and binds the great writer to this country was that he used this sojourn in the Illawarra to write all but the final chapter of his 421-page novel about Australia, Kangaroo.
⍙ “Valley of the Cabbage Tree Palms”
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After the 1914-18 War DH Lawrence (DHL), opted for a life of voluntary exile, eventually journeying to Australia with his German wife Frieda, the latest destination in a globe-trotting quest by the writer for a peculiar degree of spiritual fulfilment. They stayed two weeks in Perth⊞, before sailing on to Sydney. Lawrence’s initial plan was to live in Sydney for an extended time, however a day trip up to Narrabeen Lakes apparently convinced him that Sydney was decidedly not to his taste. The people with their displays of unbridled, rampant democracy, he found jarring to his sensibilities. He discovered little to enthuse about in the town…in the novel he describes pre-Harbour Bridge Sydney as “loused over with small promiscuous bungalows around which lay an aura of rusty tinned cans” (its fortunate that DHL didn’t pursue a career as a real estate agent on Sydney’s foreshore suburbs). He also rather extremely went so far as to wish that something akin to a tsunami would engulf the city. The Lawrences escaped from Sydney finding refuge in a small, coal-mining settlement 70km south. That Lawrence found a haven from the suburbia of Sydney in a (then) coalmine-littered Thirroul is a choice irony, given his hatred of coalmining, the vocation of his father back in Lawrence’s native Nottinghamshire.
⍙ The “Pale sea of green glass” at the front of Wyewurk
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Descriptions abound in Kangaroo of the bungalow in which they lived, and of Thirroul more widely. Lawrence evocatively depicts the beach directly below ‘Wyewurk’—which he gives the name “Coo-ee” in the novel—as “the pale sea of green glass that fell in such cold foam. Ice-fiery, fish-burning … full of brilliantly clear water and delicately-coloured shells … strangely sea-scooped sharp sea-bitter rock floor, all wet and sea-savage”. In the thinly-autobiographical novel Lawrence calls Thirroul ‘Mullumbimby’ – presumably he came upon the name ‘Mullumbimby’ on a state map as it’s the name of an actual town in the “hippie hinterland” of north coast NSW. The bungalow Wyewurk/Coo-ee is delineated thus: “The house inside was dark, with its deep verandahs like dark eyelids half closed … overlooking the huge rhythmic Pacific.”
The hastily written and skimpily revised novel Kangaroo itself is not valued highly in the overall oeuvre of DHL by critics or academe, eg, “Kangaroo is little more than an egregious failure” [Macdonald Daly, 1997 Penguin edition of Kangaroo; “a generic gallimaufry with a primarily pastoral focus”, Joseph Lenehan Davis, ‘Place, pastoral and the politics of the personal: a semi genre-based exploration of D.H. Lawrence’s Kangaroo‘, PhD dissertation, University of Wollongong, 1992]. What the novel has attracted recent commentary for revolves around the thesis advanced by Robert Darroch and others – its depiction of a secret right-wing army in Australia which was allegedly planning a coup d’état. Lawrence in Kangaroo seems to have anticipated the advent in the late twenties and early thirties of semi-fascist groups in Australia such the Old Guard and the New Guard.
David Herbert (Bert) and Frieda outside ‘Wyewurk’, 1922⍙
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In the isolated village of Thirroul—between the sea and the escarpment—DHL found an anonymity and ‘stillness’ that he had craved but had hitherto eluded him. The freedom, artistically, he found in Thirroul, enabled him to write over 3,000 words a day of his ‘great’ modern Australian novel [John Worthen, DH Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider] . Frieda and Bert left Thirroul and Australia in August 1922 for the US via Wellington, NZ. Settling near Taos in New Mexico, Lawrence completed the final chapter of Kangaroo and hastily edited the book. The serene native pueblos and western ranches of Taos were the next staging post in Lawrence’s lifelong “savage pilgrimage“, his descriptor of the relentless search for a more fulfilling lifestyle than that delivered by industrialised Western civilisation. Lawrence believed that “every continent has its own great spirit of place”. In the course of DHL’s terrestrial wanderings, both Taos and to a much lesser extent Thirroul embodied in their different ways aspects of the powerful life-spirit he was seeking.
Lawrence grappling with the menacing Kangaroo on the veranda of “Wyewurk”. ⍙ The Struggle’ by Garry Shead (Wollongong Art Gallery)
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In the years after the Lawrences departed Australia Thirroul slowly extricated itself from its coalmining preoccupation. Largely, it has remained a sleepy holiday coastal town while building a thriving arts community for local artists and musicians. Wyewurk, bereft of the DHL aura, slumbered back into a cloak of invisibility. It continued to be owned by the Southwell family whilst a succession of renters occupied it. In the 1970s people (some local, some from further afield) started to take a renewed interest in the literary significance of the writer’s 1922 residence. Unfortunately for the growing public interest but hardly surprisingly, the occupants of Wyewurk at the time (a dentist and his wife) repeatedly denied visitors access to the house and grounds.
⍙ ‘Wyewurk’, the Craig Street bungalow
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This situation got worse from the perspective of the DH Lawrence “fan base” after a local real estate agent bought Wyewurk from the Southwells in 1984. The new owner categorically refused any access to the property at all. Lawrence scholars (who would later coalesce into the “Friends of Wyewurk” and also form the nucleus of the DH Lawrence Society of Australia) grouped together to lobby politicians resulting in an interim conservation order being placed on Wyewurk. Despite this the owner submitted plans with Wollongong Council to add a two-story extension to the bungalow (which if implemented would effectively “cape cod” it).
Thus began a protracted period of litigation, the outcome of which saw the Heritage Council of NSW reject the owners’ ‘Pavilion’ plan. The Wyewurk group rallied support for the preservation of Lawrence’s house in its original form from public figures like Patrick White, Manning Clark and Judith Wright, from various national and international DHL scholars, and the local community. Later, support was also forthcoming for its retention on architectural grounds after the architects’ council declared Wyewurk to be the oldest surviving example of the Californian bungalow style in NSW (possibly in Australia) [S Jobson, ‘How we battled to save Wyewurk’, Rananim, Nov 1995, 3(3)]
The Wyewurk saga dragged on for several years more with the community divided on the issue. With all the publicity about Lawrence’s house, the Sydney Morning Herald weighed in with a predictable LCD tag, referring to Wyewurk as “Lady Chatterley’s beach house” [SMH, 29 July 2003]. Submissions to the Commission of Inquiry followed including proposals to turn Wyewurk into a centre for arts activities, but none of this bore fruit. At one point the owner himself is believed to have approached Wollongong Council with a view to the Council purchasing the house. The Council, adopting a breathtakingly tunnel-visioned approach, rebuffed the proposal outright…it’s woeful lack of acuity signifying a real missed tourism opportunity! Despite the building’s literary and cultural significance, the Commissioner ultimately ruled that the owner be permitted to erect a one-story addition to Wyewurk. To everyone’s surprise, in the end the owner decided not to proceed with the approved changes to the bungalow![Jobson, ibid.]
⍙DH Lawrence Reserve
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Wyewurk today is still there in Craig Street, pretty much as it was (the exterior at least) in Bert Lawrence’s time, though more strongly fortified now – given its challenges a minor miracle of survival! The preservationists won, but since sightseers and Lawrence devotees are barred from viewing its lawns, verandahs and the jarrah wood table on which Kangaroo was crafted, it remains something of a Pyrrhic victory. Since the mid Eighties the estate agent/owner has done all he could to block the public’s view of the bungalow through fences, the planting of trees and dense shrubs, a garage and a marauding dog on the property ready to bark at inquisitive and unwelcome visitors. There are no plaques in front of the cottage proclaiming its connection to the great English novelist and poet. The only indication signalling that “Lawrence was here” is 35 metres away in a tiny reserve overlooking Lawrence’s “green glass” Pacific. In late 1998 the Council named the reserve in honour of DHL and installed a commemorative plaque.
Bert & Freida in the backyard at ‘Wyewurk’ with visitors ⍙ (photo: Mr AD Forrester)
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Footnote: the current inaccessibility of the bungalow to DH Lawrence enthusiasts and the ordinarily curious over the last few decades was not ever thus! After the Lawrences’ departure for America, the owners at the time, grasping the significance of their recent famous tenants, kept the house as a sort of shrine for the 20th century literary icon. They maintained the furniture that Frieda and Bert used during their stay, including the table on which Kangaroo was penned! They even kept a visitors’ book for the many literary “pilgrims” who undertook the trek to Craig Street [‘Wyewurk’, (built circa 1911) NSW Office of Environment & Heritage, www.environment.nsw.gov.au].
⍙ Wyewurk with cute, friendly “dangerous dog” sign
Postscript: Lawrence’s visit and the publication of Kangaroo have exerted a profound influence on a number of Australian artists and other creative practitioners in the arts field. These include composer Peter Sculthorpe, Nobel laureate Patrick White, artists Sidney Nolan, Brett Whiteley and Garry Shead. Sydney artists Whiteley and Shead set up their easels in the backyard of the cottage next-door to “Wyewurk” (with the similarly-themed quaint name of ‘Wyewurrie’) in about 1973 and painted several Lawrence-themed pieces❈ including a diptych of the bungalow where Lawrence penned Kangaroo [Sandra Jobson Darroch, ‘Claws in the Arse’, www.dhlawrencesocietyaustralia.com.au].
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❂ the ‘Wyewurk’ theme is extended to the house the Lawrences/Somers stayed briefly in at Murdoch St Cremorne – which in the novel DHL calls ‘Torestin’ (“to rest in”)
⊞ DHL penned a short story here while being simultaneously inspired and frightened by the WA bush
❈ the Shead paintings of DHL’s sojourn are memorably jocular ones, especially riotous is the one (see reproduction above in the text) which depicts Lawrence frantically trying to ward off a frenzied attack from a large red non-metaphorical kangaroo on the back verandah of ‘Wyewurk’, while an unperturbed Frieda serenely admires the view
Walter Burley Griffin’s untimely death in India in 1937 provoked only passing comment, even in Australia where he and Marion had lived a high-profile existence, practicing their particular craft for over 20 years. Mahony returned to Chicago from Australia around the end of 1938, and set about the valiant but ultimately fruitless task of trying to consolidate Walter’s reputation. The vehicle for the restoration of WBG’s name (principal among which was defending Griffin against the poisonous invective of one Frank Lloyd Wright) was Marion’s epic memoir (The Magic of America), a massive work of over 1,400 pages and 650 illustrations [www.artic.edu]. Marion was dissuaded by a family friend from her intention to try to have The Magic of America published. Regrettably, the ‘friend’ advised her than there was insufficient interest in Burley Griffin within American architectural circles at that time (the 1940s).
Burley Griffin’s main period of productivity in America amounted to a narrow corridor of time, from about 1905 when he went into practice on his own to 1914 when he and Marion left to take charge of the Capital City project in Australia, entrusting their US work to new partner Barry Byrne. Griffin spent the entire second half of his life living and creating structures and communities outside of America, denying himself the opportunity of recognition and esteem that he would otherwise have likely received from his countrymen and women had he stayed.
Consequently a note of ambivalence about the extent of the Chicagoan’s architectural significance persists in America. As recently as 2002 and 2003 two of the early Illinois houses designed by Griffin were demolished without any real public clamour (it is difficult to imagine this happening to one of Wright’s houses in this day without a resounding hue and cry) [‘Silence deafening as home by noted architect razed: Elmhurst teardown fails to stir outcry’ (N Ryan) Chicago Tribune, 19 May 2002)].
Notwithstanding this, Walter’s lavish abilities as a planner, designer and landscaper are more widely recognised today. He is acknowledged as an outstanding innovator in domestic architecture, and is credited with having invented the carport, developed the L-shaped floor plan and the use of reinforced concrete. WBG was a pioneer of open plan living and dining areas. His work in the Prairie School was characterised by his attention to vertical space, contributing critically to the development of split-level space interiors (not in widespread use until after WWII) [M Maldre & P Kruty, Walter Burley Griffin in America]. As I enlarged on in an earlier blog, Griffin also invented the Knitlock construction method in Australia in 1917 which had the practical advantage of enabling houses to be built quickly and cheaply [M. Walker, A. Kabos & J. Weirick, Building for Nature: Walter Burley Griffin and Castlecrag].
Marion L Mahony, as a pioneering woman in the field of architecture, encountered all of the prejudices and assumptions that was commonplace about female professionals in the day. The first staffsperson to be released from her cousin Dwight Perkins’ architectural office when there was a downturn in business. Despite Frank Lloyd Wright’s (perhaps) begrudging praise of the sublime quality of her architectural rendering, Marion was never treated as anything close to an equal by the great architect. After Mahony returned to her homeland at the end of 1938, her efforts to turn her talents to community planning and to re-enter architecture in the US met largely with discouraging indifference.
Marion’s silkscreen watercolour of Walter’s plan for Griffith, NSW
Since the 1990s there has a renewed focus on the work of pioneering women architects, especially in the US [eg, “The 10 Most Overlooked Women in Architecture History”, www.archdaily.com], and Marion has been a beneficiary of this, receiving overdue acknowledgement of her contribution to modernist art and architecture. American architecture expert David Van Zanten made the case that Mahony’s extraordinary delineating talent ranked her as “the third great progressive designer of turn-of-the-century Chicago after Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright” given that the Chicago School placed an extraordinary emphasis on drawings [D Van Zanten in D Wood (Ed), Marion Mahony Griffin: drawing the form of nature].
After her marriage to Griffin, Mahony was perfectly content to live in the shadow of her more illustrious partner, to be “a slave to my husband in his creative work” [quoted in J Wells, “The collaboration of Marion Mahony Griffin and Walter Burley Griffin”, www.griffinsociety.org/]. Notwithstanding Marion’s freely-chosen subordinate role, she and Walter worked smoothly and cohesively as a team. The respective strengths each brought to architecture and planning were different, but on specific projects these abilities were pooled together to produce a harmonious and advantageous fusion. WBG’s imagination allowed him to conceptualise complex ideas and solutions for building problems and plan intricate landscaped communities, but his talents as a draughtsman, a delineator of great schemes, were at best modest. MMG with her superb draughting technique filled this void perfectly. Former Castlecrag resident, Wendy Spathopoulus, recounted the pair’s peculiar style of co-working, “silent communication … a kind of fusion … expressing the same ideas, the same philosophical ideas, but coming at them from a different angle” [interviewed in ‘City of Dreams: Designing Canberra’ (2000 documentary).
Wright’s residential magnum opus: Fallingwater, Penn.
The Griffins were part of the Prairie School style of architecture, the best-known practitioner of which was the prolific and highly-revered F L Wright. An interesting point of comparison between Wright and Griffin is that the greatest architectural achievements of Wright’s career, the Fallingwater house in Bear Run, Pennsylvania (chosen by the American Institute of Architects in a national survey in 1991 as “the best all-time work of American architecture”) and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, occurred long after FLW had turned 60, the age at which Griffin died. It remains a speculative consideration but a reasonable question to ponder, what more might WBG have accomplished had he lived on into old age as FLW did? (Wright worked productively in architecture till the age of 91!)[‘The Griffins – Canberra’ (PBS broadcast), www.pbs.org; www.griffinsociety.org].
A balanced evaluation of the achievements of the Griffins in Australia as architects and planners reveals a mixed legacy. The plan for a capital city in Canberra was stunningly original in its vision of an unseen land, and the pictorial and diagrammatical representation of the city by Marion was an artistic accomplishment in itself of the highest order. As we know the implementation of Griffin’s plan for Canberra remained unrealised. This can be attributed to a combination of factors, bad luck and timing, political opportunism by both sides of parliament using WBG as a pawn, outright sabotage by vested interests (sectors of the public service, envious Australian architects), and idealism and naivety on Walter’s part. As a result, the shape of Griffin’s original plan was heavily distorted by successive politicians and bureaucrats, key components of the plan were excised altogether in the name of expediency. Perhaps worse of all, not one of the designed buildings for Canberra on WBG’s drawing board were ever constructed!
Castlecrag: Griffin Country
If we turn to Castlecrag, the Burley Griffin imprint on the ‘would be’ suburban bush utopia again met with mixed results. The Griffins did manage to engender a sense of community and cultural affinity in Castlecrag from adherents who like Walter and Marion came to cherish the virtues of living in a natural environment. This was realised by WBG’s careful planning of houses within a thriving organic landscape. Having established the aesthetic miliéu conducive to artistic activity, Mahoney provided a great deal of the community leadership (and the infrastructure) that led to the flourishing of creative energies. To top this off, Marion and Walter, far from being remote leaders of the community perched high above everyone else in an ivory tower, were committed participants in the everyday life of the early community. They joined and were actively involved in the Castlecrag Progress Association from its inception in 1925.
Griffin’s inventive use of windows and fireplaces in Castlecrag won praise from admirers and provided inspiration for later Australian architectural practitioners. Not everyone however had a favourable view of the WBG concept of the model house. Many home-buyers were not attracted to the utilitarian plainness and the restrictive compactness of the standard Griffin house with its flat, odd cubic shape. In addition, the quite puritanical covenants concerning individual property use, whilst implemented to protect the natural environment and for egalitarian purposes, served to turn many would-be Castlecrag residents off.
There were other issues with the form and character of the Griffin house which suggest that the American architect did not fully appreciate the local, Australian conditions. The absence of practical features like verandahs, eaves on roofs and hoods on doorways, did not address the exigencies of a harsh environment and climate. Similarly, some critics pointed out that Griffin did not apply himself sufficiently to the specific problems arising in Castlecrag such as drainage on horizontal roofs and the challenges of building on a rocky terrain [Walker, Kabos & Weirick, op.cit.].
Marion’s drawing of Walter’s design for an Indian-inspired “Sydney Opera House”
The final chapter of the Griffins’ life together, in Lucknow, India, saw the reuniting of the old creative team – with Walter as innovator and Marion as delineator. Their work in collaboration, produced a prolific harvest anew, a churning out of plans and designs for a host of new buildings which married the ancient architectural forms of India with the Griffins’ take on modernism. In less than 18 months the couple designed some 95 projects for India ranging from university buildings to exhibition pavilions to palaces to bungalows, even finding time to create a design for an ‘Opera House for Sydney’ featuring an Indian-influenced central domed roof [A Kabos, ‘Walter Burley Griffin’, www.griffinsociety.org].
Through the efforts of interested groups like the Walter Burley Griffin Society (NSW), the Walter Burley Griffin Society of America (St Louis, Mo.) and local historical and architectural groups in the Castlecrag/Willoughby (Sydney) area, the legacy of the Griffins’ have been preserved. These organisations, through their publications and websites, have promoted the couple’s accomplishments to newer generations.
The Griffin footprint in Castlecrag & Australia
The Griffins’ story, spanning three continents, has all the elements – drama, tragedy, political intrigues, obsessions, spurned love❈, the clash of great personalities – that would make it eminently filmable. At centre, two temperamentally different but like-spirited idealists, highly gifted if flawed artists striving against convention to articulate their distinctive beliefs and feelings of nature and democracy through the practice of their architectural and artistic pursuits. In Australia they were ground-breakers in a number of areas, as trailblazing environmentalists, as passionate landscapers, as creators of affordable, ready-to-assemble homes for the average person. Had the Griffins returned to the US as originally intended, after the expiration of WBG’s contract with the Australian Government in 1917, they would undoubtedly have left a much weightier artistic and cultural footprint on the built environment in America.
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❈ there is a suggestion that Walter may have married Marion on the rebound. Griffin originally proposed to Frank Lloyd Wright’s sister, Maginel, but was rejected … this rebuff can hardly have lessened the growing animosity between the two rival architects (WBG and FLW)
The type of dwelling Burley Griffin envisaged as the model house for the new bush suburb of Castlecrag was based on a new technological innovation in building called Knitlock Construction, or as Griffin more grandly termed it, Segmental Architecture. The American had pioneered and co-patented (with D C Jenkins) the Knitlock system in 1917 whilst working on the Canberra Capital Project. The Knitlock technique was to become the archetype for all of WBG’s subsequent domestic architecture.
Griffin’s Segmental Architecture was a quantum step forward from previous building technologies used in Australia (eg, Mack Slab) [M Lewis, ‘Knitlock’, www.mileslewis.net]. Intended by Walter for use on workmen’s cottages in Canberra (before the disintegration of his Capital City dream), the technique heralded a variety of radical advances in construction. With a simplicity and economy of design, the Segmental Architecture method constructed walls from ‘segments’ of precast reinforced concrete which were easier and quicker to construct than other methods (Griffin was one of the early developers of prefabrication). The Knitlock bricks, machine-manufactured on the southern side of the ‘Crag estate in a shed set up on the corner of The Redoubt and The Rampart, were light yet compact and sturdy. The bricks were reinforced with a dual ‘vertebrae’ structure which forms a concrete skeleton. The sections were easy to transport, easy to assemble as walls and cheap to make [W B Griffin, Australian Home Builder, No 1 (August 1922)].
Added to this, another major advantage of Knitlock was the convenience. The bricks did not require cutting, bedding or plastering, working instead on an interlocking join to connect them together (the prefab concept). A further advance was that Knitlock technology allowed for greater diversity in shapes for features of the house [‘Landmarks: Urban Life’ (National Museum of Australia) www.nma.gov.au/.].The beauty of Burley Griffin’s domestic construction using this system was that it could produce buildings that were simply designed and quickly constructed – non-standard workers’ cottages which were affordably priced. Affordability was an important requirement for the Griffins, the capacity of workers to afford their own home squared with their own espoused egalitarian and democratic principles.
The prototype for all of the Knitlock houses built in the Castlecrag and Haven Estates by WBG was ‘Pholiota’, the Griffin’s own small, ultra-modest home set among red gums and bush in Heidelberg, Victoria, before they moved to Castlecrag. This most basic, pared to the bone, single-roomed, utilitarian house, provided an example that any layman self-builder could follow. As proof of this, ‘Pholiota’ was erected in double-quick time apparently by Walter and Marion themselves with the assistance of a local chicken farmer! [P Y Navaretti, ‘Melbourne’, www.griffinsociety.com; Jenny Brown, “Humble ‘humpy’ masters miniature”, (19 May 2012), www.news.domain.com.au/].
‘Fishwick house’
Burley Griffin’s finest architectural achievement in Castlecrag is probably Fishwick House (№ 15 The Citadel). Because of his client’s requirements (large budget, expansive house), Walter deviated from his usual prescription of a small-scale “no frills”, minimalist, unembellished cottage. Fishwick House is a more grand house, emphasising horizontal eaves and porticos. At the sides and rear of the house judicious placement of large picture windows and glass doors permits cascades of filtered sunlight to enter the living room from varying angles [www.griffinsociety.org/]. This aspect of Fishwick House echoes the interior courtyard of Stanley Salter House in Toorak, Melbourne, which some architectural specialists rate as WBG’s best residential building [eg, James Birrell, cited in ‘Stanley Salter House’, De de ce, www.dedece.com]. Griffin’s use of open-plan interiors demonstrates the architect’s belief that the house shouldn’t be a haven for withdrawal from the outside world, but rather “a place for reflection and engagement with the surrounding environment” [ibid.]. WGB defied the conventions of the day for home design, putting “living rooms at the rear and opening to the landscape and views, and had utility rooms such as kitchens and bathrooms fronting the street” [M Petrykowski, ‘Architecture’,www.griffinsociety.org/].
‘Duncan house‘
The attitudes of pioneering residents of the Castlecrag Estate to the Griffin signature home were mixed. Some like Frank and Anice Duncan were delighted with the nature-centredness and functionality of Walter’s dwellings. The Duncans lived in no less than four of the houses over the years. The fourth one, the Duncan House at 8 The Barbette, specially commission by them, was the last Griffin-built home in Castlecrag.
However other residents were less sanguine about the houses – some with very good reason. The flat roofs on the early Knitlock constructed homes had a tendency to leak. Ellen Mower, first occupant of № 12 The Rampart (Mower House), was plagued by leaking roofs and eventually Griffin had to buy back the house from the owner [www.griffinsociety.org]. Mower House, incidentally, was the last home Marion lived in after her return from India after Walter’s death in 1937. Similarly, Mrs A E Creswick, who commissioned the small house built at 4 The Barbette (Creswick House), was similarly dissatisfied with the standard of her home and the Griffins had to re-purchase this dwelling as well [Castlecrag Progress Association, www.castlecrag.com.au/].
WBG fountain memorial
Dr Edward Rivett, who converted the King O’Malley House in Sortie Porte into Castlecrag’s first hospital, also commissioned the Griffin-designed 148 Edinburgh Road, however he altered the original plans to add a pitched tile roof and interior walls which were brick rendered. Griffin through GSDA, his company, sued Rivett for breach of Covenant and a lengthy legal battled ensued which was eventually won by Dr Rivett. Other potential buyers also had problems with the Covenants imposed by WBG and many turned away from Castlecrag, opting instead for the railway-serviced suburbs on the Upper North Shore which didn’t have restrictions on the size or type of house or on how or whether you landscape your property [‘Castlecrag’,www.sydneyforeveryone.com.au/].Because of the restrictions and other contentious issues surrounding the construction of GSDA dwellings in the estate, banks became less willing to approve loans on Griffin houses. The onset of the Depression strangled the economy which affected development everywhere in Sydney, but subdivisions that were less popular like Castlecrag suffered its effects hardest [ibid.]. Castlecrag had to await the postwar building boom to achieve significant inroads in development.
Another factor holding back Castlecrag’s development at this time was getting to and from the Middle Harbour promontory! In the 1920s the Middle Harbour promontory was severely hamstrung relative to transportation options. Before the Sydney Harbour Bridge was constructed it was a very long haul by road to Castlecrag (cars in the 1920s were in any case still fairly scarce), and the eastern part of the Northern suburbs lacked a main arterial road (Eastern Valley Way was a post-war development). In addition, trams on the north side of the harbour did not go as far as Castlecrag in the interwar period [G Wotherspoon, ‘Ferries’ (2008), www.dictionaryofsydney.org/]. A story told by the son of Edward Haughton, Burley Griffin’s Melbourne estate agent and valuer, is instructive. The father and 10-year-old son came to Sydney to assist WBG in promoting the Castlecrag Estate. Haughton’s son later recalled how difficult it was and how long it took to reach Castlecrag (from the city: walk/ferry/elevator/tram/walk) [recollected for M Walker, et al, ‘forming the Greater Sydney Development Association’, www.teachingheritage.nsw.edu.au/].
Burley Griffin’s attitude towards building materials was every bit as rigidly purist as his attitude was to how the finished product should look. He championed the use of concrete and stone (particularly local Castlecrag sandstone which blended in with the natural setting). Conversely, he railed against the popularity of the standard building materials of the day, brick and tile, which he rejected.
Marion was equally purist in her aesthetic preferences. Bernard Hesling, a Castlecrag resident in the Thirties recalled Mahoney “scrambling the hills like a billy goat” and pointing southwards to the predominance of red roofs and lack of trees in Northbridge, exclaiming loudly in her thick Midwest American accent “It’s hoorabul, hoorabul! Walter and I wanna keep the Crag voigin bush!” [‘Willoughby Walking Tours’ (Willoughby City Council), www.walks.willoughby.nsw.gov.au/].
The proportion of Burley Griffin designs converted into houses by GSDA over a 14 year period was quite low. Only 15 built in the Castlecrag and Haven Estates (none built north of Edinburgh Road, the area known as the Wireless or Sunnyside Estate) with about four or five other houses designed by one of WBG’s acolytes but approved by him. In what is somewhat of a trademark feature of Griffin’s oeuvre, many houses proceeded no further than the drawing board. WBG designed in the vicinity of 35 or so others for the ‘Crag that were not carried through to completion [‘The Idealists: creating Castlecrag’, ABC RN, Hindsight, 8 July 2012]. There was a host of reasons for this as outlined above, but sometimes sheer bad luck played its part in Griffin’s fortunes. Global developments had a tendency to intervene to stymie his noble intentions. Just as his vision for a physical landscape in Canberra worthy of the capital city of “a nation of ‘bold democrats” ran smack into the war effort of WWI which redirected valuable Australian resources away from WBG’s project, the development of Griffin’s estate in Castlecrag had its momentum undercut by the crippling effects of the Great Depression [‘Creating a new nation’s capital: The Griffins’ vision for Canberra’, (National Archives) www.naa.gov.au/].
When Walter’s private and GSDA commissions started to dry up, he increasingly took on industrial building design work. By the mid-1930s, frustrated by the lack of work in Castlecrag, Burley Griffin took up an invitation to design buildings for the University of Lucknow. The move to India, only intended to be a temporary one, served to re-energise Griffin’s architectural ambitions, allowing him to explore the fusion of ancient Eastern architecture with Western modernism. WBG engrossed himself in many new Indian projects but unfortunately, in a familiar story, the local colonial bureaucracy obstructed the realisation of most of the projects [G Sherington, ‘India’, W B Griffin Society, www.griffinsociety.org/].
‘Camelot’
EM Nicholls: Keeper of the Griffin flame
After the Griffins left Australia, his protege-cum-associate Eric Milton Nicholls took over the running of GSDA in Sydney and became the “keeper of the flame” for Griffin’s architectural vision. Nicholls soon started to design houses in Castlecrag in his own right. The pick of Nicholls’ work are probably Camelot (formerly called Pangloss) at № 3 The Bastion, and the all-white Moriaty House at № 215 Edinburgh Road. Camelot, with castle features including a Martello tower, is distinctively Nicholls’, but its circular stone design shows the clear influence of WGB’s earlier design for the Symington Parapet project [‘Castlecrag’, (Willoughby Dist. Hist. Soc.), www.willoughbydhs.org.au/].
Nicholls was a prominent architect in the Willoughby area, designing many domestic and public buildings in Sydney and Melbourne. An Anthroposophist like the Griffins, he was involved in the establishment of Steiner Glenaeon Schools in Middle Cove and Pymble [‘Eric Nicholls’, (Willoughby City Council), www.willoughby.nsw.gov.au]. Burley Griffin’s influence lives on in Castlecrag and elsewhere … The Griffin (8 Rockley Street), designed by Alex Popov in 1990, won the Robin Boyd Award (Australia’s leading residential architecture prize) – the building was described by the judges as “a reverent tribute to Griffin” [WDHS, op.cit (‘Castlecrag’).].
8 The Barbette
Footnote: The WBG sales pitchThe sales brochure of the Greater Sydney company (the Griffin’s firm) reads: “Castlecrag architecture has struck a distinct bold note in Australia. In place of the high peaked tile roofs … the handsome landscape style, with the stone walls and flat roofs, has been introduced in harmony with the great amphi-theatre of stone and forest”.
Walter Burley Griffin had been captivated by the magnificent harbour of Port Jackson upon first sailing into Sydney. Now, free of the seven-year Canberra fiasco, he was able to turn his mind to the search for a new project. After investigating sites at Longueville and Beauty Point Griffin’s creative energies were given direction when he discovered a large and quite choice stretch of virgin ground situated on two peninsulas on the upper part of Sydney’s Middle Harbour. WBG managed to secure an option to buy 263 hectares of largely cleared land, which included nearly 6.5km of untouched water frontage (still forested), for a very reasonable amount of money (there is some disagreement about whether the amount was $25,000 or £25,000). The scoop netted the Griffins the entire south-west part of what was to become Castlecrag, a large chunk of modern day Castle Cove, and around half of Middle Cove [“The Legacy of the Griffins” (Castlecrag Community), www.castlecrag.org.au/history/history.htm].
The original Castle Rock, Edinburgh EH1 Scotland
Griffin’s focus fixed itself on the southernmost of these promontories (Castlecrag), which he decided to subdivide and develop into different estates (while Middle and Castle Cove were put on hold for the time being to be developed later). WGB formed his own public company, the Greater Sydney Development Association (GSDA), to build homes in the Castlecrag Estate (and later the Haven Estate) which he would design. Shareholders in GSDA were offered a free block of land if they bought a home off the plan. Walter planned the first estate using a similar geometric pattern to the Canberra design, with a series of parallel semi-circular roads rippling out from a central point (a high rock), which he thought resembled the castle rock of Edinburgh Castle in Scotland (hence the name ‘Edinburgh’ chosen for the main road dissecting the peninsula). This resemblance also accounted for Griffin’s choice of name for the rocky promontory, Castlecrag. The fortress theme extended to the connecting roads which fanned out from Edinburgh Rd, with each of the streets given names that were derived from the concept of a castle – The Rampart, The Parapet, The Bastion, The Citadel, The Redoubt, The Outpost, etc, etc.
Griffin’s town planning ethos reflected his Prairie School training, but in Castlecrag he was to take urban development to a degree that was quite radical and purist in its strictures. Walter’s approach to the model community experiment in Middle Harbour was to be characteristically holistic. The natural features of Castlecrag defined how the suburb took shape. WBG planned the streets to follow a curvilinear line to fit in with the rocky sandstone contours of the promontory, parallel-running roads would be linked by pathways.
Griffin mapped out the road and allotment pattern of the estate by foot, walking all over the rocky terrain and leaving markers for the surveyor to follow [Teaching Heritage, “Forming the Greater Sydney Development Association”, www.teachingheritage.nsw.edu.au]. He then placed the planned homes very carefully and very strategically so that they didn’t impinge on the natural setting. It was all about the harmonisation of the built and the organic environment. Griffin stated that “a building should be the logical outgrowth of the environment in which it is located” [Walter Burley Griffin Society, S Read, “Landscape Architecture”; M O’Donohue, “Castlecrag”, Sydney, www.griffinsociety.org]. The young Griffin was guided by the famous maxim of his fellow Chicagoan and architectural mentor, Louis Sullivan – “form follows function”. Intended to blend in with the natural world rather than clash with it like much of modern architecture, Griffin’s houses were designed to recede into the landscape.
Griffin Prairie style cottage, The Parapet, Castlecrag
One story recounted by one of the early Castlecrag residents emphasises the extent to which Walter went to pursue his own peculiar brand of the “back to nature” philosophy in architecture. When one of the cottages was being built, several branches of particular trees were encroaching upon the site. Instead of simply cutting the ‘offending’ trees, WBG tied them back until the cottage was completed and then released the branches so that they sprang back and engulfed most of the house [“Willoughby Walking Tours” (Burley Griffin’s Castlecrag), www.walks.willoughby.nsw.gov.au/].
Griffin summarised his vision for Castlecrag in what is an oft-repeated quotation of his: “I want Castlecrag to be built so that each individual can feel the whole landscape is his. No fences, no boundaries, no red roofs to spoil the Australian landscape: these are some of the features that will distinguish Castlecrag.” [Griffin, 1922, AHB, S Read, op.cit., www.griffinsociety.org]. The Castlecrag Estate (and subsequent subdivisions) were to be characterised by tree retention, roofs were to be flat, not pitched in shape. WBG insisted on the use of building materials with textures and colours which mixed in well with the sandstone and native bushland, using local stone where possible. WGB also planned for ‘traffic islands’ at the intersections of streets, small triangular oases of planted natives and bush which allowed pedestrians respite from the vehicle-dominated roadway.
‘Grant house’
All over the estate, strategically positioned between each clutch of houses, Griffin planned bushland reserves for the residents, created to preserve the major landforms and rocky outcrops of the terrain. These ‘internal’ reserves were easily accessible from the houses by specially allocated pathways and were meant to encourage the owner-residents to take an interest in the maintenance of the retreats [ibid.]. In the Griffins’ idealistic philosophy, by creating these ‘common spaces’ which accentuate the natural beauty of the bush, for all of the neighbourhood to use, Castlecrag would realise the high democratic ideal of a model urbanised community that Canberra had failed to be. WGB forbid development along the foreshore of the promontory so that it would be kept as public open space for everyone to enjoy, therefore, access to all of the natural beauty of Castlecrag would be democratised. He implemented a system of covenants which was intended to control land use in the estate so that out-of-character development didn’t occur, and flora and fauna could be protected [M Walker, A Kabos, & J Weirick, Building for Nature: Walter Burley Griffin and Castlecrag, (WBGS)].
Haven Amphitheatre
The Griffins moved permanently to Castlecrag in Autumn 1925 with the intention of fully and actively embracing the local community. Whilst WBG set about creating his utopian vision for Castlecrag, MMG as usual provided the behind-the-scenes support. She assisted in GSDA’s work by preparing drawings, promoting sales, hosting VIPs, etc. Marion’s main role at Castlecrag however was to be a leader of the community, organising various cultural activities and meet-ups, from ballet classes to classical drama. She organised productions for the Haven Scenic Theatre in an amphitheatre in a rock-gully in Castlehaven Reserve, doing set and costume designs for plays [Peter Harrison, “Griffin, Walter Burley (1876–1937)”, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol 9, 1983, http://adb.anu.edu.au; Bronwyn Hanna, “Marion Mahony Griffin”, Dictionary of Sydney, www.dictionaryofsydney.org, 2008].
Marion’s key role in the cultural and artistic life of Castlecrag allowed her to revisit her past interest in acting, she had been enthusiastically engaged in drama back in her undergraduate days at MIT. The type of people that were attracted to the Griffins’ new garden suburb, were an intriguing mix. Often, they were drawn from non-conformist circles, including literary types, artists, musicians, environmentalists, spiritualists, bohemians, people of ethnic background, people with radical political convictions and other outsiders [“The Idealists: creating Castlecrag”, Hindsight, broadcast 8 July 2012, ABC Rational National]. Certainly in her leading role in Castlecrag, Marion affected the appearance of a bohemian lifestyle with lavish, ostentatious costume parties, but as her friend Louise Lightfoot said, “Marion could be said to be a ‘square bohemian’ …. completely unconventional yet strict” [L Esther, The Suburb of Castlecrag: A community history].
MMG
Griffin and GDSA initiated a number of measures to try and promote Castlecrag and boost house sales on the estate. A brief silent promotional film made in 1927 and entitled “Beautiful Middle Harbour” was shown in local cinemas. In it, the Castlecrag model suburb is presented as comprising “cool forests”, “Sylvan Glades”, “verdant bush” and “picturesque stone villas”. The last part of the film suggests the theatrical touch of Mahony with maidens frolicking in the Middle Harbour bush and being carried off by exotic masculine types dressed like Rudolph Valentino in ‘The Sheik’ (a Hollywood movie phenomena of the day) [‘Beautiful Middle Harbour’ (Keepin’ Silent series of Australian doco films) www.aso.gov.au]. Griffin wrote articles for architectural and trade journals as well as detailed brochures, all extolling the merits of Castlecrag. Large advertisements for home sales for the estate were also placed in Sydney newspapers [Teaching Heritage, op.cit.].
Although road construction on the rocky promontory was difficult and therefore slow (not to mention costly) [‘Castlecrag’, Willoughby District Historical Society, www.willoughbydhs.org.au/], the GSDA methodically went about the construction of stone cottages in accordance with Griffin’s plans. Two demonstration homes were quickly erected in Edinburgh Road, one became Marion and Walter’s temporary home and the other was used as the Castlecrag office for GSDA. Others followed including King O’Malley House, later converted into a hospital and a small strip of shops (extended into what is today the Griffin Centre). Many in the community who agreed with the Griffins’ emphasis on the fusion of human life with the natural world began to refer to Walter as the “Wizard of Castlecrag”, but Griffin’s idealism was to be lost on some who had the experience of living in his ‘model’ homes.
Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin travelled to Australia in 1914 armed with Walter’s blueprint for transforming the Canberra plains into a model “democratic” Capital. The Griffins as part of an early 20th century US movement known as the Prairie School (or as Mahony preferred, the “Chicago School”), introduced Australia to the new ideas of modern American architecture. The Prairie School practitioners, the most famous of which was Frank Lloyd Wright, employed low, horizontal lines (flat roofs) and lack of decoration in their buildings. The idea behind this primarily residential architectural style was that the built environment should blend in with nature. Specifically given the School’s origins in Chicago, its inspiration was the flat landscape of the American Midwest.
When the Canberra project turned sour for Burley Griffin, after hostile local forces and circumstances conspired to block the realisation of his Capital “vision”, the Griffins channelled their energies into their private practice. WGB’s focus on the business in Melbourne was productive with a regular supply of commissions coming in from clients wanting to have their house built by the celebrity American architect living within their community. Griffin designed houses in the Melbourne suburbs of Carlton, Canterbury, Surrey Hills, Toorak, Heidelberg, Kew, Black Rock, Ivanhoe, Armadale, Eaglemont and Frankston (the Frankston and Heidelberg dwellings were designed as residences for the American couple). MMG by herself was credited with the design of one Melbourne house in East Malvern [P Navaretti, “Melbourne”,http://www.griffinsociety.org/].
Palais Theatre,
St Kilda, Vic.
Burley Griffin, with assistance from Mahony, also designed a number of commercial buildings in Melbourne at the time, including Newman College (Melbourne University), the Palais de Danse and Palais Picture Theatre (both in St Kilda), the Kuomintang Club for the Chinese Nationalist Party, Café Melbourne, the Capitol Theatre (Mahony’s crystalline ceiling design comprising 4,000 coloured globes for the theatre was an absolute tour de force). The Capitol was described by prominent architect and academic, Robin Boyd, as “the best cinema that was ever built or is ever likely to be built” [The Australian, 24 December 1965]. Whilst in Melbourne, WBG’s exceptional flair for town planning was reignited and demonstrated in the imaginative plans he created for the Ranelagh Estate of holiday homes on Mornington Peninsula and the Glenard and Mount Eagle subdivisions in Eaglemont.
Rock Crest/Glen
After coming to Australia the Griffins maintained their architectural office in Chicago working through a partner, Barry Byrne, to design some distinctive houses (Rock Crest/Rock Glen) in Mason City, Iowa. WGB would send back his plans for US projects for Byrne to follow through on but unbeknownst to Griffin, Byrne was altering Griffin’s plans to suit his own aesthetic and proceeding with his own designs on the business’ projects. WGB eventually twigged to what Byrne was doing and severed their partnership [James Weirick, “Walter Burley Griffin: In his Own Right”, US PBS program broadcast 1999 (www.pbs.org)]. As if the Griffins didn’t have enough headaches with the vicissitudes of the Australian projects already. Around 1920/1921 Walter let go of his personal vision of the new capital, cutting himself free from the Canberra project morass and turned his focus elsewhere.
Concurrently with the Melbourne practice, the Griffins through Mahony ran a Sydney architectural office from Bligh Street in the City. During the Canberra period the Griffins lived mainly on Sydney’s North Shore (at Cremorne, Neutral Bay and then Greenwich). Walter had been attracted to Sydney’s spectacular harbour from his initial arrival in Sydney in 1913. Whilst in Sydney WGB found time to to take on individual commissions, designing private homes at Pymble (two), Wahroonga, Killara, Avalon and Telopea (all of which exist to this day), plus two other residences in the South Sydney municipality now demolished. In addition, a few of WBG’s designs for commercial buildings were realised, such the facade for the Paris Theatre (cinema) in the Sydney CBD.
Plan of Leeton, NSW (1913)
Whilst on the Australia east coast Walter maintained his strong interest in urban planning. Among the many, many town plans WBG created in Australia, were designs for new towns in Leeton and Griffith (part of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Project), Culburra Beach (Jervis Bay), North Arm Cove (Port Stephens), Milleara (Keilor East), Newcastle and St Kilda, as well as two university campuses in Sydney [J Birrell, Walter Burley Griffin, cited in Di Jay, “Urban Planning”, www.griffinsociety.org]. Disappointingly, the overwhelming majority of Griffin’s urban plans in this country were never implemented, or sometimes only ever partially so.
The downturn in the economy occasioned by the Depression adversely affected the Griffins’ building sales in the Castlecrag Estate. Needing a new source of finance to continue his residential work, WGB took an opportunity to venture into industrial commissions. At this time municipal councils in Australia were under pressure to find new solutions for the growing problem of waste disposal, instead of simply dumping refuse at sea as had been the prevailing practice. WBG joined up with the Reverberatory Incinerator & Engineering Co, headed by a former client of his. In the 1930s he designed 13 such incinerators in collaboration with Eric Nicholls in several states and the ACT. Griffin and Nicholls promoted their incinerators as being “hygienic, efficient and aesthetically pleasing” [“Burley Griffin Incinerator”, sydneyarchitecture, http://sydneyarchitecture.com/GLE/GLE27.htm].
The initial reverberatory furnaces built (Ku-ring-gai/West Pymble and Essendon) were relatively small structures and church-like or large residence-like in appearance and scale. Later Griffin/Nicholls incinerators took on a more monumental and imposing countenance, utilising Art Deco styles and Pre-Columbian motifs (eg, Willoughby, Glebe, Pyrmont). Simon Reeves argues that the catalyst for the change was the growing interest of Walter, and especially Marion, in the spiritual beliefs of Anthroposophy, describing the Pyrmont incinerator as representing “the geometric massing of archaic power, embellished with symbols” [S Reeves, “Incineration and Incantations” in J Turnbull & P Y Navaretti (Eds), The Griffins in Australia and India]. From the early 1930s Anthroposophical belief did appear to inform WBG’s architecture and planning, the American Anthroposophical Society affirms that “buildings should be ecologically sound and reflect the character of the region or culture …(and should enhance) … physical, psychological and spiritual well-being”. To this end Griffin’s work certainly possessed a crucial ecological purpose [J K Notz Jr, “A Beginning, an End and Another Beginning” (Marion Mahony Griffin, Architect), Chicago Literary Club address, 23 April 2001].
Burley Griffin’s industrial construction represented some of his most striking work in Australia. Marion considered Pyrmont with its distinctive Mayan influences and towering chimney to be Walter’s best Australian building [“Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin”, www.griffinsociety.org; PY Navaretti, “Incinerators”, ibid.]. Sadly, it was allowed to fall into disrepair by a neglectful Sydney City Council and demolished in 1992 to make way for a block of units. [“WB Griffin Incinerator”, www.teachingheritage.nsw.edu.au]
With his Canberra dream unfulfilled, Burley Griffin continued to search for a suitable site that could be moulded into a community compatible with the Griffins’ nature-centric philosophy, where the built world could be integrated into the natural world. This led Griffin to find a favourable location in Middle Harbour on the north side of Port Jackson, on an isolated, rocky promontory. Walter would call it “Castlecrag”, here, he would try to create an “organic solution”, a way of living in harmony with nature.
On-site residential bushland retreat, The Crag
Once the idea took root and the foundations started to take shape, the Castlecrag community was to become the Griffins’ abiding passion, right up until they left Australia for Imperial India in the mid 1930s. Planning and guiding this small, community from scratch allowed Griffin to give full vent to his talent for landscape architecture and his and Marion’s) deep love of nature. Integrating the habitat with the natural world was intimately personal for Walter and Marion in Castlecrag, as the couple were to live, fully engaged, within the local community for the longest term of their marriage. I will outline the Castlecrag chapter of the Griffins’ story in Australia in a separate blog.
The seeds of Marion Mahony Griffin and Walter Burley Griffin’s prolific partnership as designers and planners contain an ironic provenance. The individual who inadvertently brought them together was Frank Lloyd Wright (FLW), destined to become the Griffins’ lifelong bête noire. The future couple met as a result of Walter Burley Griffin (WBG) joining Wright’s architectural firm at Oak Park, Illinois, in 1901, where Marion Mahony (MMG) was already employed. WBG was a recent graduate of Illinois University and MMG was—in a de facto sense if not actually given the title by Wright—head draughtsman. Both were qualified architects, Marion had been the second US female graduate in architecture (from MIT in Boston), and if not the first, one of the very first licensed female architects in the world)[“Marion Mahony Griffin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s First Employee,” Jackie Craven, (Thought Co), (2014, updated 13-Dec-2016), www.thoughtco.com]
MMG, soon after graduating from MIT University
It can be said that MMG’s role in the architectural and town planning projects that she was involved in, indeed her whole career up until WBG died, revolved around her personal relationships with male architects in which her place was always the subservient one (willingly so as far as she was concerned) – perhaps hardly surprising given the period. As Lynn Becker put it, Marion Mahony was “one of a series of pioneering women architects and designers who have disappeared into the deep shadow of their male associates” [L Becker, “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Right-Hand Woman”, www.lynnbecker.com]. In her case, the men venerated by Mahony were in sequence her cousin Dwight Perkins, Wright and Griffin. Her first job in the field after graduating was working for Perkins, which was short-lived as Dwight, still trying to build up his business, didn’t have enough work for Marion and had to let her go in 1895. From that year many of the progressive young architects practicing in that period (including Wright, Griffin, Mahony, Spencer, Perkins, the Pond brothers, Myron Hunt, etc) coalesced in Steinway Hall (a building itself which MMG had contributed to its design). The loft in Steinway Hall became a kind of incubator for new ideas for these young forward-looking architects seeking to extend the boundaries of the profession. Becker described it aptly … “it could be said that this (Steinway Hall) was an aviary where the Prairie School of Architecture was hatched” [Becker, ibid.].
FLW
Marion’s relationship with Frank Lloyd Wright was a complicated one which, due to circumstance, underwent change over time. She was with Wright many years, apparently she enjoyed working for him and being in his company, and perhaps there was an element of hero-worship involved in the early period. For his part, Wright clearly found her indispensable as a highly valued draughtswoman and as an administrator [Becker, ibid.], in FLW’s words, she was his “most capable assistant” (high praise indeed from one not usually given to positive affirmations of others!). That Mahony was even closer to FLW’s wife, Catherine, strengthened the bond with the Wrights. Many of the male staff in FLW’s office publicly pronounced on the sublime quality of Mahony’s drawing board work and its preeminence to that of anyone else in the studio, even Wright wasn’t prepared to dispute this consensus of views. One of the studio’s architects, Barry Byrne (later for a time Walter’s partner in the US before an acrimonious split) in his reminiscences wrote that the informal design competitions held between the employees in FLW’s studio were mostly won by Mahony, and that Wright filed away her drawings for future use and rebuked anyone who described them as “Miss Mahony’s designs” [F A Bernstein, “Rediscovering a Heroine of Chicago Architecture”, New York Times, 1 January 2008].
The Mahony/Wright relationship proved very advantageous to FLW in the advancement of his professional business – to put it mildly. In his immensely influential two volume folio of lithographs, the Wasmuth Portfolio published in Germany during the period of his European elopement (with a client’s wife!), Wright liberally used Marion’s drawings, over half of which comprised the Wasmuth folio, without acknowledgement. Consequently, FLW’s fame in the architecture world, at the expense of Mahony’s anonymity, spread exponentially after the Wasmuth publication. Architectural historian Vincent Scully described Wasmuth as “one of the three most influential treatises of the twentieth century” [Janice Pregliasco, “Life and Work of Marion Mahony Griffin”, Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol 21, No 2 (1995)].
K C DeRhodes House (Sth Bend, Ill.) designed by Marion, credited to Wright
MMG’s contribution to Wright’s architecture is spectacularly seen in the planning of two of the Wisconsinite’s most celebrated early Midwest buildings, K C DeRhodes House and Unity Temple. In the design for both works, Mahony’s drawing technique, heavily inspired by Japanese woodblock prints, led her to create a new style of architectural rendering, one that emphasised depth, light and landscape in her drawings, and characterised by richly detailed foliage giving a frame and focus for the house itself, a technique that according to Paul Kruty became the gold standard for later Prairie School designs [Kruty cited in Becker, op.cit. (“FLW … Woman”).]. Marion’s exceptional renderings were an important part of the promotion of Wright’s early work through various publications and exhibitions [Pregliasco, op.cit.].
Light fitting, Capitol Theatre Melbourne (MMG)
The excellence of Marion’s design work extended to home and furnishing designs. She had a real flair for interior design, creating designs for panels, coloured and leaded glass windows, mosaics, murals, light fittings, furnishings, drawings and illustrations, that not only added value to the projects and commissions of FLW (and WBG), but contributed in their distinctiveness to the development of Prairie School interior features [Craven, op.cit. ; [Anna Rubbo, “Marion Mahony Griffin: A larger than life presence in early 20th century architecture”, in A. Watson (Ed), Beyond Architecture].
David Amberg House (1910). MMG.
The lofty regard Marion held for Wright eroded to some extent as she became more comfortable with Walter, resulting in a transference to WBG of her habitual adulation of a strong male figure. But what really offended and disenchanted Marion in respect of FLW was his scandalous behaviour in 1909 in abruptly eloping to Europe with the wife of a client, in so doing deserting his wife and children (MMG was best friends with Wright’s wife). FLW offered Marion charge of his office, which she declined, however in her characteristically conscientious manner she picked up the pieces of Wright’s unfinished commissions which he had abandoned (along with his family!) in such a startlingly unprofessionally way, and worked with another architect to finalise FLW’s outstanding projects. One of these completed homes, Amberg House in Michigan, designed by Mahony, was so widely admired that later both Wright and the collaborating architect von Holst claimed it as their own [Pregliasco, op.cit.].
After Mahony and Griffin severed all links with Wright and started to be noticed in architectural circles for the work they were doing on their own, the scurrilous Wright hardened his views on the Chicago couple. Whenever anyone would mention Marion and Walter and their latest projects, FLW would decry their achievements and write them off as hack designers (“Griffin was merely a draughtsman”) [“Walter Burley Griffin”, (Sydneyarchitecture), http://sydneyarchitecture.com/ARCH/ARCH-Griffin%20.htm]. In her memoirs MMG railed against the poisonous words of Wright but never once mentioning him by name, referring to him simply as the “cancer sore”.
◄ { MMG’s interior, Capitol Theatre, Melbourne
Marion’s critical role in Walter’s success in winning the Canberra Capital City project has been well canvassed (see my previous blog, “WB & MLM Griffin and the Canberra Federal Capital Project: A Democratic City Lost?”). Once the Griffins settled in Australia, despite voluntarily taking a supporting, secondary role in her husband’s career (see PostScript), Marion’s artistic output did not altogether abate…her work as a designer of buildings, it is true, was subordinated, but she sought out and found other artistic endeavours for her flourishing and creative impulses. A lot of MMG’s finest artistic achievements occurred in Australia, whether it was collaborating with WBG on his Capitol Theatre in Swanston Street, Melbourne, enhancing it by her magnificent crystalline lighting ceiling (above), or the superb tree paintings and drawings she independently did of the Tasmanian forest (below).
Tasmanian Forest portrait
In their building and design work Walter and Marion brought very different but complementary strengths and qualities to their professional partnership – Griffin the architect, the landscaper, the town planner, Mahony the artist/illustrator, the delineator of perspective and design, the bush garden planner. Alasdair McGregor said of the Griffin partnership: “Walter had wonderful three-dimensional imaginings … yet as a draftsman he was stillborn … by contrast Marion was probably the most gifted draftsperson–renderer of her times” [quoted in “Unearthed Griffin treasure returned to the Archives”, NAA, Issue 3, July 2011, www.yourmomento.naa.gov.au]. Where he was deficient or lacking in some part of the process, Mahony was there to fill the void and raise the finished product up a notch or two, giving it that special, added lustre. No more was this more apparent than in the Griffins’ winning submission for the Federal Capital Project in Canberra.
MMG was a complex personality, despite her exceptional talents, she did not push herself forward at all (the antithesis of the egotistical Wright). Whether this was due to an innate insecurity she felt as a woman in a staunchly male profession or something else, her inclination was to avoid the limelight, to stay busy, beavering away behind the scene. Interestingly, MMG maintained a keen side-interest in acting, whilst at MIT and later again in Castlecrag. The theatre was perhaps a vehicle for her to express herself individually whilst under the cover of it being only play-acting. As Alice Friedman described Marion, she was an architect but a particular sort of architect, “a collaborator in a field of individualists, a builder of communities and connections in an increasingly fragmented and competitive professional world” [A T Friedman, “Girl Talk: Marion Mahony Griffin and Frank Lloyd Wright and the Oak Park Studio”, (Design Observer Group), www.places.designobserver.com].
MMG rendering of a FLW house
Walter Burley Griffin’s star was on the rise when he and Marion married, he was becoming famous and starting to get more prestigious commissions in the US. Mahony was very content from that point on to devote herself wholly to the betterment of his career, to derive some measure of vicarious satisfaction from contributing to his achievements in architecture and planning. MMG, in her unpublished 1940s memoir, “The Magic of America”, described herself as having been “a very useful slave” to Griffin (the 1400-plus page manuscript in itself was Marion’s attempt to elevate and preserve the reputation and status of WBG as a first-rank American architect and town planner). So often, when WBG had to shift projects, MMG was there to fill the void, when Griffin went to Canberra the first time, Mahony was left to mind the shop in Chicago. When Griffin journeyed to India in search of more lucrative commissions, she was there, again, to keep the Castlecrag business going.
MMG rendering of Library & Museum plan, Lucknow (India).
Marion’s anthroposophical contacts helped Walter gain new sources of work in India. in 1936 MMG joined her husband in Lucknow with her creative energies renewed, prompting Griffin to remark that Marion was “back at the drawing board” for the first time in 14 years [L Becker, “Marion Mahony Griffin – in Australia and beyond”, www.lynn.becker.com]. MMG collaborated with Griffin on the design of over 100 Prairie School-influenced buildings which were a departure from the prevailing British Raj style in India. The standout example of Mahony’s rendering of Griffin’s designs in the Sub-continent was the library and museum for the Raja of Mahmudabad [ibid.].
After Walter’s sudden death in 1937, Marion finalised Griffin’s outstanding Indian commissions before returning to Australia. Eventually after leaving the Australian business in the hands of WBG’s partner, Eric Nicholls, she left Sydney to return to her native Chicago. In the 1940s Mahony turned her hand to community planning, securing commissions from a prominent US peace activist, Lola Maverick Lloyd, to plan townships in New Hampshire and Texas. Lloyd, Unfortunately, died at this time and the plans were never carried through. A further town plan Mahony did for South Chicago also did not eventuate. Notwithstanding that the projects in Texas and New Hampshire did not materialise, they reinforce MMG’s role as a pioneering woman in architectural planning, representing as they do, “the first communities in the world designed entirely by a woman”[Pregliasco, op.cit.].
Whatever disappointments there were for the Griffins and for WBG especially (the setbacks of the Federal Capital project in particular), the relevant statistics, as calculated by Anna Rubbo, point to an output that was very productive and overall quite impressive. In 26 years together, in the US, Australia and India, Walter and Marion, together as “Team Griffin”, collaborated in around 280 architectural, town planning and landscape projects, of which nearly 180 were completed [A Rubbo, in Watson, op.cit.]. Whilst history has in recent times addressed an oversight in relation to Griffin and finally afforded him something akin to his rightful place amongst the 20th century practitioners of architecture, Marion’s contribution to modern architecture has tended to be overlooked or as least obscured under the focus on her husband. During the last decade several architectural writers have drawn attention to the neglect of Mahony, eg, D Van Zanten (Ed), Marion Mahony Reconsidered; D Wood (Ed), Marion Mahoney Griffin: Drawing the Form of Nature; “Marion Mahoney Griffin”, Mass. Institute of Technology, http://web.mit.edu/museum/chicago/griffin.html].
The MMG monogram
PostScript: Marion’s self-determined role as a “support player”
The number of houses MMG designed in her own right was small, in Australia for instance only one (in suburban Melbourne), and a handful in America (some wrongly attributed to Wright – see Amberg House above) [P Kruty, “Marion Lucy Mahoney Griffin”, (Walter Burley Griffin Society of America), www.wbgriffinsociety.org]. Lack of opportunities afforded to a woman in the profession in that era, goes a good way to explaining this, but so does her willingness to ever be the collaborating “assistant”. It was in her work as a artist and draughtsman that Marion really came into her own. Influential architectural critic Reyner Banham described her as “the greatest architectural delineator of her generation” – male or female [Architectural Review (1973)].
Mention the name Walter Burley Griffin and people in Australia will think, especially since last year’s lavish Capital Centenary celebrations, of Canberra. In the Australian psyche the American architect is largely associated with the planning of the capital in Canberra 100 years ago. However, there was a lot more to the Australian story of Walter Burley Griffin (WBG) and his wife Marion Lucy Mahony, than the seven frustrating years they spent in Canberra, but I will concentrate in this blog on the Canberra chapter of his life in Australia (and that of his wife).
Early Griffin project {Carter House Evanston, Illinois}
In 1911 Griffin was a young Midwestern architect living in Chicago, working within the modernist style of the Prairie School and making inroads in the profession. The Illinoisan was establishing himself in his own practice and building up a portfolio of important commissions in America. Walter’s wife and architectural partner, Marion Mahony Griffin (MMG), found out about Australia’s Federal Capital Design Competition and badgered him into completing the plans for entry (they only just made the extended deadline for entry submission by the tightest of margins!).
WBG’s design for the capital-to-be was selected in 1912 as the winning entry. No small part in Griffin’s success was due to the exemplary quality of the plan and perspective presentations superbly rendered by Marion. They comprised 14 immense ink on satin drawings, the standard size was five feet wide by two-and-a-half feet (some even were a staggering eight feet by up to 30 feet long!). Some of the amazing drawings and paintings were done in triptych fashion, opening out into three-hinged panels in the style of Japanese woodcut prints [National Archives of Australia(Your Momento To), “Unearthed Griffin treasure returned to the Archives”, Issue (July 2011)]. Fred Bernstein has described the effect of MMG’s beautiful drawings thus, “the rugged Australian landscape seemed to embrace Griffin’s buildings”… and this was despite the fact that MMG had never set eyes on the country [F A Bernstein, “Rediscovering a Heroine of Chicago Architecture”, New York Times, 20 January 2008].
A second factor that worked to the Griffins’ advantage was that whilst other competitors in the national capital design competition (there were 137 entries in all!) failed to take into account the topography of the site in their presentations, the Griffins’ submission managed to harmonise with the site’s landform and natural features [National Archives of Australia, “A vision for a democratic capital”, www.naa.gov.au.
▼ BELOW {MMG: Ink on satin painting – the city from across the valley}
With a little help from our compatriots? Ultimately, the support of the Australian Minister for Home Affairs, King O’Malley, was decisive. The colourful O’Malley, himself an erstwhile American like the Griffins, as the minister with overall responsibility for bringing the new national capital to fruition, made the final decision in favour of WBG’s submission against concerted opposition from within the Australian community [Alasdair McGregor, “Rebels & Gilt-spurred Roosters: Politics, Bureaucracy & the Democratic Ideal in the Griffins’ Capital”, a paper delivered in A Cultivated City, (Seminar, 2 May 2013)]. Unfortunately for Griffin, O’Malley’s support for WGB’s plans for the capital was not sustained beyond the original decision. It transpired that O’Malley was in reality prepared to use a hotchpotch of the three leading designs for the purpose of implementation (the Griffins, the second place-getter from Helsinki and the third from Paris) [“An Ideal City? The 1912 competition to design Canberra”, www.idealcity.org.au]. My hunch is that the manoeuvrable and expedient O’Malley probably considered Griffin’s city plan of no greater merit than the Finnish and French bids, but it was the sublime quality of Marion’s artwork presentation that tipped the scales in the American architect’s favour.
Over a year passed after the contest victory before WBG received an invitation to come to Australia. During this interval the Department Board in Melbourne set up by O’Malley had persuaded the minister into allowing them to rework the Griffin plan. Only after an outcry from the architectural community at this amateur effort at town planning, did the Government reverse this and reinstate the Griffins’ winning plan [‘City of Dreams – Designing Canberra’ (2000 documentary)]. Upon his arrival in 1913 Griffin initially received a warm reception from the Australian press, Advance Australia introduced him to the public as “Walter Burley Griffin – Architect and Democrat”. Walter’s optimism at the outset was understandably pronounced, saying “I have planned a city not like any other city in the world. I have planned it not in a way that I expected any government authorities in the world would accept.” Unfortunately in the fullness of time this faith in the Australian power-brokers was to prove sadly misplaced.
Griffin then returned to the US to put in place provisions for the maintenance of his Chicago practice during the Griffins’ absence from America. During this time WBG spent a long while waiting round for an invitation from the Australian Government to return and start work on Canberra, which he was obviously keen to do. It was only after a change of government in Melbourne (then the interim national capital) in 1914, that the new Home Affairs Minister, William Kelly, finally invited the Griffins to return and paid for their passage [G. Korporaal, “Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin were drawn together on Canberra”, The Australian, 9 March 2013]. Marion and Walter established bases for their work in both Sydney and Melbourne.
Blueprint for a “Democratic Capital”
In accepting the Federal commission Walter had the highest hopes for his vision of what Canberra could become, the realisation of the idea of a democratic city. This political element of the Canberra project was important to Griffin in itself. Politically, the Griffins were idealistic liberal progressives, followers of radical political economist, Henry George, whose egalitarian single tax on land struck a resonant cord with his fellow Americans, especially his tenet that the value of land should be owned equally by all citizens. WBG attempted to put this tenet into practice when appointed Federal Capital Director of Design and Construction, exerting his influence on the Government – when residential plots were first opened up in the ACT, land was not sold. Instead it was offered up for rent on 99-year leases [K Williams, “William Burley Griffin”, www.prosper.org.au]. Having a chance at shaping the Canberra experiment was an overriding priority for WBG, so much so that when offered the chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of Illinois shortly after winning the Australian prize, he declined it [“Walter Burley Griffin in his Own Right”, US PBS broadcast documentary, www.pbs.org. WBG’s blueprint envisaged the new Federal Capital as an “irregular” amphitheatre with a centrally located parliamentary triangle, surrounding artificial lake with a concentric pattern of residential streets moving away from the centre.
The Lake
Griffin’s grand plan for the new capital city was however cynically undermined from the start. Even before WGB had set foot in Australia, a specially-appointed departmental board pressured O’Malley into making changes to WBG’s Canberra design [“Canberra – Australia’s Capital City”, www.australia.gov.au]. Instead of making Mt Kurrajong a public space and placing Parliament House lakeside in the valley below, as Griffin wanted to do (part of WBG’s scheme for the democratisation of the capital), the bureaucrats positioned Parliament on the mountain (Capital Hill). In a spooky parallel with what was to happen to Jørn Utzon and his design for the Sydney Opera House half-a-century later, the Griffins met with continual bureaucratic interference and obfuscation, and eventually became disillusioned.
Canberra: the winning blueprint
For sure Griffin rubbed certain people in the government and the public service the wrong way, but there was clearly a coordinated attempt to sabotage the implementation of his “vision”. Some working on the Canberra project decried his plan as being vastly extravagant and incapable of ever being brought to fruition [Peter Harrison, “Walter Burley Griffin” in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 9 (1983)]. He was further criticised for “poor administration of the project”. The situation was further complicated by funding for Canberra starting to dry up due to the priorities of the war, and by injudicious comments by WBG himself in the middle of World War I opposing Australia’s participation in it. The progress of WBG’s work was also subject to the vicissitudes of alternating national governments during the war years, as he waxed in and out of favour with every new minister appointed. In the end WBG had had enough, the forces of dissent had won, and he resigned his post as Director of the Federal Capital program in 1920, removing himself from all further involvement in the Canberra project. Walter’s architect brother-in-law, Roy Lippincott (who accompanied the Griffins to Australia), described the experience as “seven years of struggle and slander” [McGregor, op.cit.]. Virtually none of WBG’s designed buildings for the Capital were ever completed (the only structure by erected by Griffin was a monument to a general killed in the Gallipoli Campaign), and both his extensive lakes scheme (only implemented after heavy modification nearly half-a-century later) and his railway proposals were not taken up.
GSDA Sydney Office, 35 Bligh Street
The Griffins: Architectural Life after Canberra – Sydney, Melbourne, private practice and the GSDA
In the late 1910s, as implementation of the plan for Canberra and construction of works stalled, Walter could see the writing on the wall, but interestingly the wilful WBG didn’t pack up and return to Chicago where there was plenty of work for him and the likelihood of a chair in architecture at the university. Instead, the Griffins turned more to developing their Australian private architectural commissions. Marion took charge of the couple’s New South Wales office in Bligh Street, Sydney, whilst Walter ran the newly created Melbourne office, seeking out new residential projects in the southern city to shore up the couple’s finances.
I’ve always thought it absurd that the average punter in the street raises up movie stars (whether it be Hollywood or any other derivative film community) to the status of demi-gods (as they do with pop and rock stars and elité sportspersons). Yes I know that it was ever thus, film stars in the silent era were arguably even more venerated by society given that at that time they did not have to compete with popular singers and sporting stars for the public’s kudos.
The media is of course deeply complicit in this with its obsessive focus on Hollywood box-office stars, especially the popular gossip mags’ hanging on every utterance and info snippet of headline-grabbing Hollywood A–listers like George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt – a custom which is jejune and banal in the extreme. If these overblown ‘celebs’ make even a shallow pronouncement on environmental or human rights issues or announce their latest Third World orphan acquisition projects, this receives an inordinate amount of drooling media attention.
This uncritical über-reverence is ridiculously inane given that the majority of movie stars are not necessarily exemplars of propriety and moral rectitude, and sometimes behave like pampered prima donnas, absorbed in their overweening self-importance. Proportionate to the rest of society, movie stars often behave badly, they have equally manoeuvrable morals, they take drugs, they drink too much and beat their wives, extravagantly waste money, are unfaithful, get divorced (disproportionately to society at large in this case!), they are after all onlyactors! And yet media outlets continue to elevate them to the loftiest reaches of societal respect, as if some special higher wisdom is implicit in their trade.
Consequently she was ‘outed’ by the McCarthyists in ‘Red Channels’ (a right wing publication blacklisting suspected ‘subversives’ in the arts and media) and her burgeoning film career suffered accordingly❀. Hunt was a gifted actor, and an accomplished singer. She was also the composer of about 50 songs including one she wrote in the early 1960s, ahead of its time, on the subject of same sex equality in love and marriage – later a hit in the US in the 1980s.
In 1944 she was voted one of the Hollywood ‘Stars of Tomorrow’. However, like others in the industry who refused to recant their earnestly-held political convictions, roles for Hunt dried up. First she was relegated to B movies, then not even that and her film career was effectively over by the time she was 40. From the ’50s, Hunt, like many other Hollywooders including Ronald Reagan (180 degrees apart from her politically) found TV work her only reliable source of income and expression.
Peacenik, social activist
Marsha Hunt, friend to all Democratic presidents from FDR on, was and still is an activist with a capital ’A’. Outside of acting Marsha has pursued a concern for a host of vital humanitarian issues on the global stage—pollution, poverty, peace and population growth—as well as actively working against the blight of social homelessness and supporting the right of same sex equality. Hunt has never lacked for courage or for determination in anything she has done. She was active in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The 2014 film documentary, Marsha Hunt’s Sweet Adversity, illustrates the 60-plus years (and ongoing) of active international work (world hunger campaigns, a staunch supporter of the United Nations, UNICEF and other UN humanitarian projects, etc) by a woman known to admirers as a “Planet Patriot“.
Today despite her great chronological seniority she is as committed to and active in the causes of ordinary people as she ever was! Marsha is still in her own principled way making a difference for the planet. Marsha Hunt, talented actor, indefatigable activist, world citizen, a refined woman of principles, a great humanitarian and advocate for universal civil rights – a truly great American.
﹌﹌﹋﹌﹋﹋﹌﹌﹋﹋﹌﹌﹋﹋﹌﹌﹌﹋﹋
⌺ Hunt is the only surviving member of the Committee for the First Amendment
❀ whilst other, more illustrious Hollywood liberals abjectly backed down in the onslaught of HUAC bullying, Hunt was one of the very few ‘Tinseltown’ stars to put her film career on the line by refusing to apologise for her support of the blacklisted ‘Ten’ and for her role in progressive activist causes
Errol Flynn (Source: New York Post)
Father & son together 
Son of Errol 
Sean with Pili…or is it Mili? (Source: briansdriveintheater.com)
The last photo of Sean Flynn (left) & colleague on the day they disappeared (Photo: Perry Deane Smith/MCT/Tribune News Service via Getty Images) 
Sean Flynn on patrol (Photo: Tim Page)
Source: art.com
Alfred’s hitch in making ‘Hamlet’
The final project pursued by Hitchcock was ”The Short Night”—based on a novel of the same name by Ronald Kirkbride and on the exploits of real-life double agent George Blake—which was to be Hitchcock’s red-hot crack at making a “realistic Bond movie”. In an interview with John Russell Taylor for Sight and Sound Hitchcock outlined the story’s great allure for him: ”It’s a situation that fascinates me: the man falls in love with the wife of a man he’s waiting to kill. It’s like a French farce turned inside-out. If he sees a boat coming across the bay with the husband on it, he can’t hop out of the back window, he has to wait and do what he has to do. And of course he can’t take the wife, who loves him, into his confidence. And so the whole romance is overshadowed by this secret, which gives it a special flavour and atmosphere. That’s what I want to convey”.
Poster for the movie that never materialised
EP in Ottawa 1957 (Source: Elvis Presley Photos)
Elvis For Beginners
“Elvis the Pelvis” and the “Colonel” (Photo: Getty)
Breda, Netherlands
“Colonel” Tom, 1960
ʰᵃᵐᵇᵘʳᵍ ¹⁹⁶¹ ⁽ᵖʰᵒᵗᵒ﹕ ᵍᵉᵗᵗʸ ⁱᵐᵃᵍᵉˢ⁾
ˢᵉᶜᵒⁿᵈ ᶠᶦᵈᵈˡᵉ ᵗᵒ ᴿᵒʳʸ ˢᵗᵒʳᵐ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵗʰᵉ ᴴᵘʳʳᶦᶜᵃⁿᵉˢ ⁽ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ: ᵇᵉᵃᵗˡᵉˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ.ᶜᵒᵐ⁾
ᴷˡᵃᵘˢ, ᴬˢᵗʳᶦᵈ & ˢᵗᵘ, ¹⁹⁶¹ ⁽ᴾʰᵒᵗᵒ: ᴳᵉᵗᵗʸ ᴵᵐᵃᵍᵉˢ⁾
ᵀᵒᵖ ᵀᵉⁿ ᶜˡᵘᵇ . ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ: ᴷ & ᴷ ᴴᵃᵐᵇᵘʳᵍ
ˢᵗᵃʳ⁻ᶜˡᵘᵇ
ᴷᵃᶦˢᵉʳᵏᵉˡˡᵉʳ. ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ: ᴮᵉᵃᵗˡᵉˢ ᴮᶦᵇˡᵉ!
ᴴᵃᵐᵇᵘʳᵍ ᴮᵉᵃᵗˡᵉˢ ʷᶦᵗʰ ᴳᵉⁿᵉ ⱽᶦⁿᶜᵉⁿᵗ ⁽ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ: ᴾᶦⁿᵗᵉʳᵉˢᵗ⁾
🏴 their booking agent Allan Williams was getting three times what the musicians were!
‘Coniston’ Ashfield, Bea’s first home (Source: hafs.org.au)
Bea with men of the press, circa 1946
Bea’s recital services board
Main Reading Room, NSW State Library (Flickr)
Bea in the driving seat? (Photo: Daily Telegraph)
“Bee in charcoal”, Roderick Shaw (Source: portrait.gov.au)
(Sydney Morning Herald)
Pete Seeger (Source: Mother Jones)
Image: the78prof (YouTube)
“Paul Campbell” is the only writing credit on ‘Wimoweh’ (a common nom-de-plume ploy used to claim royalties on public domain songs)☥
In 1961 a new chapter in the story opens, “doo-wop” band the Tokens, like all pop music enthusiasts in the US, are familiar with the super-catchy “Wimoweh” refrain and want to record it. Their RCA producers get songwriter George David Weiss to revamp the song. Weiss adds new lyrics (“In the jungle, the mighty jungle”, etc) and shifts the focus of the song on to Linda’s chanting melody. ‘Mbube’ having previously morphed into ‘Wimoweh’ is repackaged by Weiss as ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, all three versions still bearing the essential imprint of Solomon Linda (Malan). The Tokens’ single—with singer Jay Siegel’s distinctive high falsetto—reaches # 1 in the US and internationally, eventually selling more than three million copies§. Again, no credit and no moolah for Linda who dies destitute in 1962 with just $25 in his bank account, leaving a widow and a half-dozen young children behind.
The Tokens (Source: singers.com)
The two remaining Ntsele sisters looking at the 1939 photo of their father’s band (Source: Netflix)
Rian Malan (Source: Writers Write)
Source: Definitely Owen on YouTube
Marco Polo’s ‘Travels’
Battūta’s travels (Image: ORIAS – University of California, Berkeley)
Image: www.history.com
Marco Polo, adapting to Tartar dress
Battūta/Juzayy’s ‘Rihla’
(Photo: History Extra)
The first time I wandered through Waverley Cemetery in the chic, beachside eastern suburbs of Sydney I was somewhat bemused to find in the midst of the congested maze of gravesites of famous Australians—poets, politicians and judges, sports men and women, aviation pioneers among others—a large, impressive marble, bronze and mosaic memorial to the martyrs of the 1798 Irish Rebellion.
Wolfe Tone
1800 Act of Union 
(Photo: Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley)
(Image: Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley)
The ‘Howl’ episode
In 1956 Ferlinghetti published and distributed a poem by an unknown Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Police in an undercover sting operation confiscated Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’🄱 collection and arrested Ferlinghetti who was charged with selling “obscene material and corrupting America’s youth”. The subsequent trial became a cause celeb in the industry. The judge found that the publication had “redeeming social significance” and therefore was not obscene🄲. The trial publicity was great for Ginsberg’s poetry and for City Lights. ‘Howl’ became an underground best-seller and a symbol of both the counterculture and the Beat Generation🄳 (Morgan).
Ferlinghetti & Ginsberg (Source: SFist)Whitman & Ferlinghetti (seated) in 2002 (Photo: Mary Duncan/Paris Writers Press)
Taos Pueblo (Source: http://ahistoryofthepresentananthology.blogspot.com/)
Mabel Dodge (Luhan) & her Amerindian husband (Photo: Santa Fe New Mexican)
DHL waxed lyrical on the experience later, ” I think New Mexico was the greatest experience from the outside world that I have ever had. It certainly changed me forever …. the moment I saw the brilliant, proud morning shine high up over the deserts of Santa Fe, something stood still in my soul, and I started to attend”: he wrote how the person who lives there “above the great proud world of desert will know, almost unbearably how beautiful it is, how clear and unquestioned is the might of the day” (‘Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers is D. H. Lawrence’, (2017)).
The Lawrence Ranch
(Photo: www.taos.org)
‘St Mawr’ set partly in New Mexico mountains juxtaposes the vitality of nature with modern degenerate civilisation
Lawrence’s TB condition worsened in Europe and the novelist died in 1930 in the south of France, still proclaiming to friends a heartfelt desire to return to his beloved Taos. Frieda, who returned to live in Taos, afterwards had her late husband’s remains exhumed and shipped back to be interred on Taos soil.
Kandy, 1925 (Photo:www.lankapura.com)
Next year marks the centenary of the visit of acclaimed writer DH Lawrence to the Antipodes … the author of Sons and Lovers and Women in Love spent some 99 days on the southern continent travelling from its west to its east coast and writing the bulk of his great Australia novel, Kangaroo. The 1922 visit by the English novelist and poet has attracted new interest both within Australian literary circles and the general public over the past couple of decades. The tortuous saga of the vicissitudes of Lawrence and his wife Frieda’s house in Thirroul, NSW, after the Lawrences departed Australia, has been canvassed elsewhere on this blog site – “Lawrence of Thirroul: Creating Kangaroo at ‘Wyewurk’”, November 10, 2014.
⏏ ‘Women in Love’, set against the modern industrial Britain so loathed by Lawrence
(Source: telegraph.co.uk)
Circular Quay ferry across the harbour
“The harbour … was an extraordinary place … like a lake among the land, so pale blue and heavenly, with its hidden and half-hidden lobes intruding among the low, dark brown cliffs”
⏏ The Corso
⏏ Lagoon at Narrabeen (Source: DH Lawrence Society Aust.)
Like the great majority of the world’s population I’ve never been to North Korea…but unlike most people I have been to the very edge of Kim Jong-un’s secretive “Hermit Kingdom”. In 2019 I ate at restaurants run by North Korean exiles in the vibrant, lively Chinese border city of Dandong (directly opposite the seemingly dead NK city of Sinŭiju). I have also bought North Korean souvenirs from ex-pat NK market stall-holders on the Yalu River, the DPRK’s western boundary. As close to the “Kim Kingdom” as you can get, I have penetrated deep within North Korea’s territorial waters by boat on the Yalu River➊.
Source. CFR
(Source: The National Interest)
Inhuman excesses
Human rights are of course at a premium in such a doctrinaire totalitarian state, but Kim’s excesses and violations again can be viewed as part of “the rational and predictable politics” which are standard in authoritarian dictatorships such as the DPRK (Habib). Social control under KJU has a distinctly Orwellian tinge with the Songbun system which herds citizens into three distinct “socio-political” classes – ‘loyal’, ‘wavering’ and ‘hostile’ (HRW).
𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯𖣯
Squire (or possibly ‘Squires’) commenced cultivating hops on the riverside location around 1806. Squire is considered to be the first person to brew beer successfully in Australia, although some claim the title on behalf of one John Boston who made corn beer in Sydney in 1796 with the aid of an encyclopaedia. Boston’s Indian corn-based beer “was so successful that he erected at some expense a building proper for the business” (Iltis).
Squire also was particularly successful at it, so much so that he eventually acquired a vast estate that stretched from Parramatta River to a point north of Victoria Road. Squire’s real estate empire wasn’t exactly down to superior business acumen on the brewer’s part…Squire kickstarted his land holdings monopoly by revelling in decidedly unethical behaviour.
࿏࿏࿏
🔺 Allegory depicting Emperor Pedro’s farewell from Brazil (Image: Medium Cool)
(Image: Lonely Planet)
Dracula’s transformation into a classic of the Gothic horror genre captured the imagination of film-makers, inspiring numerous silver-screen interpretations of Dracula – from the silent German feature Nosferatu to countless Western film versions which made actors such as Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee famous – and typecast. The Dracula character’s pervasion of especially American popular culture has seen the trope extend to parody cartoon versions on TV (Duckula), to female teen “vampire-slayers” (Buffy) and even to “blaxploitation” movies asserting the emergence of a self-conscious black culture in the US (eg, Blacula). 
Constructing the Ur-vampire
Transylvania, being to outsiders, “a mysterious land of vampires and other supernatural things”, handed down a long tradition of folklore and legends, it’s not surprising that Stoker drew on this source for inspire and inform his vampire story. Superstitions and beliefs of Romanian peasants in Stoker’s time fuelled a plentiful supply of tales about vampiri (vampires), vârcolaci (werewolves) and other supernatural monstri. Stoker’s library research would also have acquainted him with the strigol, a Romanian figure of legend—“a reckless spirit that returns to suck the lifeblood from his relatives”—the type of vampirish “undead souls” that would find a place in Stoker’s horror novel [‘The Use of History in Dracula Tourism in Romania’, (Tuomas Hovi), www.folklore.ee].
⇧ Whitby, England (Image credit: www.visitwhitby.com)
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(Photo: Britannica)
In his lifetime Fleming never said definitively who the principal model for 007 was, but the consensus seems to gravitate towards a Serbian double agent Dušan (‘Duško) Popov, someone Fleming came across in the course of his own intelligence career. A famous scene in Casino Royale (Fleming’s first James Bond novel) further advances the association of the world’s most celebrated fictional spy with Popov. Bond’s besting of a powerful Russian criminal at the baccarat table in Casino Estoril (Portugal) in the book/film mirrors an exchange Fleming observed first-hand when the real-life spy spectacularly called the bluff of a boastful Lithuanian gambler in a baccarat game at the same location.
Popov stumbled into the espionage game after being arrested by the Gestapo. To get out of that pickle Popov agreed to spy for the Abwehr (German intelligence agency). While in England he was recruited by MI6 and turned double agent✫. During the war Popov managed to feed a steady stream of misinformation to the Nazis about the Allies’ movements, strength, etc. Most productive for the Allies was his role in Operation Fortitude – Popov helped to convince German military planners that the D-Day invasion of France would occur in Pas de Calais, not Normandy, the actual landing point. As a consequence of Popov’s disinformation, when Operation Overlord was launched in 1944 there were seven German divisions stuck in Calais and unavailable to the Reichswehr in Normandy [‘My name is Popov, Duran Popov’, (Marta Levai), www.0011info.com].
(Image: Getty)
(Source: www.newspapers.com)
In the aftermath of the Great War, among the numerous issues facing the post-world war peacemakers was what to do about the status of Fiume, which had been part of the (dissolved) Austro-Hungarian Empire. Both the newly established Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (KSCS), and Italy, laid claims to the city whose population included significant numbers of Italians as well as Croats and Slovenes. While the Paris Peace Conference deliberated over Fiume’s fate❈, an Italian poet-adventurer named Gabriele d’Annunzio took advantage of the city’s state of flux to invade with a small private force in the name of Italian irredentism. 
Culture, ‘counterculture’, plus proto-fascism
La carta del Carnaro made music a key principle of the state, the arts flourished with daily public poetry readings and concerts. Impresa di Fiume established a corporatist state along anarcho-syndalicalist lines. The Adriatic city exuded a veritable bohemian buzz, becoming, as Hughes-Halley notes, a “political laboratory” for all manner of political persuasion including anarchists, syndicalists, socialists and ultimately, fascists. It wasn’t all politics either…all manner of perceived ‘subversives’ and outliers, including the socially marginalised, the unorthodox and the disenfranchised, flocked to d’Annunzio’s enclave – fugitives, drug dealers (and takers), prostitutes, discontented idealists, ‘pirates’, dandies, homosexuals, artistic “drop-outs”, runaways, and so on⊞ [Lucy Hughes-Halley, The Pike: Gabriele D’Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War, (2013)].
D’Annunzio’s exile and defenestration
Under a deal between Italy and KSCS (Treaty of Rapallo, 1920), the enclave’s name was changed to the Free State of Fiume. D’Annunzio refused to acknowledge the agreement and having failed to reach a modus vivendi with the Italian government, impetuously and unwisely declared war on Italy – with predictable, disastrous results. Fiume was bombarded and d’Annunzio was forced to flee—relocating in exile to Lake Garda in the eastern Lombard region—leaving his Reggenza and his schemes for a new world order in tatters. A later agreement (Treaty of Rome, 1924) sealed Fiume’s full annexation by Italy. Injuries sustained by the still popular d’Annunzio in 1922 when he mysteriously fell from a window (possibly an assassination attempt) worked to Mussolini’s favour, whether he was implicated or not. D’Annunzio withdrew from politics and Mussolini secured his continued inactivity through the payment of inducements. D’Annunzio however characteristically did not remain entirely mute, proffering advice to Mussolini whenever he felt the inclination◰, such as his warning, unheeded, in the 1930s to Il Duce not to enter into an axis pact with Hitler.
(Source: www.money.org/)
(Source: www.movieposters.ha.com)
Business-savvy Harvey sensed there was a gap in the market and in 1876 he clinched a deal with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad (AT&SF)ⓐ to open eating houses along the railroad. The start was modest, one small lunchroom in the Topeka (Kansas) depot of the railroad. But from these modest beginnings Harvey created a thriving railway hospitality concern and more. The prototype Harvey lunchroom has been described as “the progenitor of what (Americans) think of today as a diner” [Stephen Fried, quoted in ‘Tracing the Recipes of America’s First Restaurant Empire’, (Sara Bonisteel), Epicurious, 18-Jun-2013, www.epicurious.com].
(Photo: www.railroadmemories.com)
Highly influential literary critic of the first half of the 20th century, HL Mencken, heaped lavish almost doting praise on The Devil’s Dictionary… “the true masterpiece of the one genuine wit that These States have ever seen“…”some of the most gorgeous witticisms in the English language“…”some of the most devastating epigrams ever written“.
⇑ First (1911) edition of the Dictionary
Cynicism and satire provide the backbones of Bierce’s provocative dictionary. So, an interesting place to start looking is how he handles these terms – the words ‘satire’, ‘cynic’ and ‘dictionary’ themselves. Despite being fully versed in the craft himself, Bierce views the practitioner of cynicism less than favourably.
Romance and true love falls by the wayside with Bierce’s cynic always hovering around ground level:
The Dictionary dishes up a smorgasbord of satirical, ironic and often bitter definitions of the world as seen by Ambrose Bierce (one of the acerbic writer’s nicknames was “Bitter Bierce”). But Bierce is of course a creature of his time with all the glaring faults and prejudices of the 19th century white man’s mindset. So, through the satire and cynicism we witness the less savoury traits and predisposition of the lexicographer. Casual assumptions of racism and misogyny run through the pages of The Devil’s Dictionary. 
Capability (Christian name Lancelot) Brown’s career as a landscape gardener and designer in the 18th century was a wildly successful one. Lofty accolades cast in his direction describe him as “England’s greatest gardener” and “the Shakespeare of Gardening”. He rose from humble origins to become master gardener to George III at Hampton Court Palace, receiving over 250 commissions in his lifetime and designing in excess of 170 parks (the majority of which survive) [‘Capability Brown’, Wikipedia, http:/:en.m.wikipedia.org]. His vast oeuvre stretches over 30 counties in England and Wales, greater London and even one garden project in Germany. As artistic creators of grand physical structures go, the fecund Brown was the landscaping and gardening equivalent of Frank Lloyd Wright of his day – minus the ego!
Portrait of the “rockstar” landscape gardener
The Ha-Ha Wall (AKA the sunken wall) was a defining features of a typical Capability Brown landscape garden. The Ha-Ha (French in origin) was devised to keep grazing animals out of the more formal areas of a garden, doing away with the need for a fence while creating the illusion of openness. Brown et al used it to provide unbroken vista views – from the house and garden to the parkland or countryside beyond (eg, Petworth Park, Charlecote Park, Stowe) [‘Garden Features: What are Ha-Has?’, The English Garden, 29-Oct-2014, www.theenglishgarden.co.uk].
PostScript: The test of time Remarkable also are the number of country gardens sculpted by Brown that have remained intact (or at least partly so). Around 150 survive – including Alnwick Castle (Northumberland), Blenheim Palace (Oxfds), Basildon Park (Berks), Croome Park (Worcs), Stowe House and Stoke Park (Bucks), Berrington Hall (Hertfds), Milton Abbey and Abbas (Dorset), Clandon Park (Surrey), Charlecote Park (Warws), Chatsworth House (Derbys), Petworth Park (Sussex), Warwick Castle (Warws), Wimpole Estate (Cambs), Wallington (East Yorks), Hatfield Forrest (Essex), Harewood House (West Yorks), Ashridge Estate (Hertfds), Appuldurcombe House (Isle of Wight), Ickworth (Suffolk), Belvoir Castle (Leics), Dinefwr Castle (Wales), Kew Gardens (Lond) and of course Highclere, these days more famous for the location of the TV series “Downton Abbey”.
⌂ 1890s map of the Samoan Islands 🇼🇸 
After RLS’s death of a stroke in December 1894 after decades of ill-health, his widow sold up and returned to California. Since then, Villa Vailima initially housed the German colonial administrators followed by the New Zealand ones. After decolonisation it became the residence of the Western Samoan head of state. Finally, restored to its impecable state, it was transformed into its present incarnation as the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum on the anniversary of the novelist’s death.
RSL’s study and the smoking room are probably the highlights of the tour for several reasons…on display in the former is a bookcase full of original translations of RL Stevenson works. Even more impressive, it contains the novelist ’s original, solid wood writing desk (on which he wrote his last four novels). The pièce de résistance for me though was in the downstairs smoking room – a double fireplace had been installed (and never used!) It seems that the Scot wanted the “feel-good” reassurance of having a quintessential feature of his former Northern hemisphere life – irrespective of how incongruously impractical it seemed (and how puzzling to Stevenson’s Samoan attendants!), located in the steamy tropical climes of the South Pacific. RL’s wife Fanny had her own familiar reminder of home at the Vailima house, she had the walls of her bedroom lined with polished Californian redwood [Lonely Planet Samoan Islands, (M Bennett et al) (2003)].
By the 1930s it was apparent to all concerned that Fordlândia, Henry Ford‘s rubber plantation in the Amazon, had been a costly, massive underachiever. Ford however, to the unending frustration of his family, doggedly refused to pull the plug and walk away from the Amazon fiasco counting his losses. In 1934, instead of ditching the failing Fordlândia operation altogether, he retained it and at the same time poured a fresh pile of money and resources into a second Amazonian rubber plantation site.
Improvements in local agronomy
The horticulturalists at Belterra were conscious of the need not to replicate the monoculture prevailing at Fordlândia – which had made the rubber plants vulnerable to infection. By planting hardwoods this time and employing new breeding methods which used local varieties, the planters were able to avoid the scourge of Fordlândia – the Amazon leaf disease. The downside of this method however was that it was very labour-intensive and expensive [ibid.].
The Amazonian rubber venture by 1941 nevertheless did seem to be making some headway, there was in excess of three-and-a-half million rubber tree planted (mostly at Belterra), which by the following year had yielded 750 tons of latex [ibid.]. The Ford Company was optimistic enough to announce that it expected to produce 30 to 40 million pounds of high quality rubber from the Amazon by 1950 [Esch, op.cit.]. One thing in its favour, as a consequence of the world war extending to the Pacific, was that British, Dutch and French Far Eastern rubber plantations were now in the hands of enemy Japan and no longer commercial entities.
✱ botantist expert James R Weir, brought in to ‘troubleshoot’ the company ‘s dismal performance in trying to grow rubber at Fordlândia, came up with the idea of a second plantation in the Amazon (and then promptly left the project altogether!)
◊ named after Henry Ford’s three grandsons, Edsel, Benson and Henry
⍟ Ford had banned the playing of football (soccer) at Fordlândia
※ there was lots of talk at Dearborn about “taming savages” and more disturbingly, of pseudo-racial categories – creating a “Latin-Saxonian unity” that supersedes the ‘Indian’ and mestizo groupings, E Esch, ‘Whitened and Enlightened’: The Ford Motor Company and Racial Engineering in the Brazilian Amazon’, in OJ Dinius & A Vergara [Eds.], Company Towns in the Americas: Landscape, Power and Working Class Communities, (2011)
✜ Ford heir Edsel predeceased his father, dying in 1943
◘ Simon Romero, ‘Deep in Brazil’s Amazon, Exhibiting the Ruins of Ford’s Fantasyland’, New York Times, 20-Feb-2017, www.nytimes.com]
✥ but not the crumbled mess of the town hospital
Eyes on Brazil
From 6,000 km away in Ford’s Dearborn car ‘empire’ headquarters, the Amazon looked a logical location for a rubber plantation. It was after all the original (and therefore seemingly the natural) environment for producing latex, being the home of the plant Hevea brasiliensis, used to make the most elastic and purest form of latex!
Americanisation overkill
Ford insisted that the migrant workers at Fordlândia adhere to Americanised conditions of work and services which ignored the local realities and cultural norms. This meant everyone got American-style housing with metal roofs which were conductors of the already intense tropical heat (in preference to the more sensible natural thatch roofs they were used to in Brazil). Another “First World” error by Ford was to build workers’ houses close to the ground…the locals in the Amazon knew to build high up on stilts so that they didn’t get overrun with animals and insects! Ford was insistent on interfering with the Brazilians’ diets, workers were fed unfamiliar food like hamburgers, whole-wheat bread and unpolished rice, and they were encouraged to plant flowers and vegetables on their plots. The American managers, with scant regard for the workers, forced them to work in the middle of the day in full tropical sun. Inevitably, the migrant workers staged a revolt against the management practices, known as Quebra-Panelas (the “Breaking Pans”). They rioted in late 1930, protesting against Ford’s imposed conditions, and the Brazilian army had to intervene to restore order (with management making some concessions with regard to the food) [ibid.].
With the lack of commercial success, the original Brazilian government enthusiasm for Ford’s project waned badly. Even from the start there had been critics of the done deal that was vague on many details and required Ford to use only 40 % of his land grant for the production of latex♉. Eventually, there was a loss of credibility for Fordlândia – with the situation showing little improvement, the Brazilian middle classes ultimately could not square Ford’s “self-promoted reputation for rectitude and efficiency” with the reality of the plantation’s dismal track record [ibid.]••••——••——•••——••——•••——••
Iceland at this time was a sovereign territory under the realm of the Danish-Norwegian real union. During the hostilities, in 1809, a British trading expedition to Iceland was mounted by London soap merchant Samuel Phelps. Accompanying Phelps on this mission was a Danish adventurer with a dodgy past, Jørgen Jørgenson whose escapades in Iceland and elsewhere were to make him one the most colourful characters of the era.
Jørgenson’s coup
Despite Iceland’s citizens suffering from a shortage of provisions, the governor of the colony rebuffed Phelps’ request to trade with the locals. At this point, Phelps and especially Jørgenson, took things into their own hands. The Dane had the governor (Count FC Trampe) apprehended and his administration deposed in a “bloodless coup”. Jørgenson immediately declared Iceland a republic, free and independent of Danish-Norwegian rule.
Three hundred years ago this coming April, London merchant-cum-journalist Daniel Defoe published his debut novel anonymously✱ – it was to become one of the most iconic and most imitated literary works ever…it began with a title page descriptor that read in full:
Once “cast on Shore by Shipwreck”, Crusoe, isolated and alone, is forced to make the best of a perilous predicament in an alien and challenging environment. His solitary, epic struggle in the face of hardships and the existence of threats from wild animals and the unknown elevates the story to mythic proportions. The myth is complete when Crusoe ultimately succeeds in conquering all impediments and fashions the island into his own “miniature Great Britain”.
⍐ One of the numerous screen adaptations of the ‘Robinson Crusoe’ tale
The tortoise approach – slow and steady
Lewis took a conservative, uncomplicated (“keep it simple”) approach to retailing and only slowly moved his lines from silks, woollens and cotton fabrics to dress fabrics and clothing and later to furnishing fabrics and household supplies like China and ironmongery (but never food!). His philosophy was sell cheap and no ads (for nearly a century the John Lewis company continued a practice of minimal advertising!)✱. Unsurprisingly for a man described as “a Victorian curmudgeon” [‘John Lewis (1836-1928)’, Geoffrey Tweedale, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 06-Jan-2011, www.oxfordnb.com], his management style was rigidly autocratic, he often had abysmally poor relations with his staff and was prone to effecting arbitrary and sometimes wholesale dismissals. In 1920 Lewis’ “pig-headedness” and anti-union stance triggered deleterious industrial conflict…in 1920 the unaddressed grievances of Lewis’ shop-girls led to a strike by 400 staff. Lewis simply sacked the strikers and replaced them, but his arbitrary action brought him discredit and caused commercial ruptures adversely affected the company’s competitiveness vis-à-vis its retailing rivals in the long-term. ‘How John Lewis was the original store wars: As the retail empire celebrates 150 years, we tell its fascinating story’, (Brian Viner), The Daily Mail (UK),, 04-Jul-2014, www.dailymail.co.uk]
Under Spedan’s watch – JLP up and away!
Spedan wasted no time in taking ‘John Lewis’ in a very different direction to his late father’s ultra-cautious, steady-as-it-goes approach. In 1929 he reformed the enterprise into a public limited company, John Lewis Partners (JLP). Staff were rebranded ‘partners’ and made shareholders in the firm. Spedan diversified and pursued an expansionary route that Lewis Senior had so long doggedly eschewed. Smaller, less profitable chains were acquired – from 1933 on Spedan widened the John Lewis Partnership dramatically, adding purchased stores for the first time outside of London – Nottingham, Weston Super-Mare, Portsmouth and Tyrrel, Southampton, etc. [‘The 1930’s; a period of growth’, (Johnathan Blanchford), (‘John Lewis Memory Store’), www.johnlewismemorystore.org.uk]. One of JL Junior’s ideas was to create a chain of John Lewis hotels, and to supply these hotels he bought a chain of grocery shops, known as Waitrose, in the Thirties. Waitrose proved a spectacularly profitable acquisition for John Lewis’⊛. As of 2016 there were some 353 Waitrose supermarkets across the UK, collectively worth more than £1B (one of only five such successful food and drink brands in Britain) [‘Waitrose’, Wikipedia]http://en.m.wikipedia.org.
Although Spedan was less autocratic, and certainly less confrontational✣, than his father, he was no democrat when it came to running the John Lewis business empire. Some observers (including insiders), recognising an inherited family trait, saw Lewis Junior as a “my way or the highway” type of business leader. Recollections of some ex-staff and associates point at a Spedan inclination to public losses of temper and the arbitrary and unfair treatment of staff on occasions, with a suggestion of a peculiar bias against staff (including managers) with ginger hair [‘Memories of Spedan – not all sweetness and light’, (Margaret Cole), (‘John Lewis Memory Store’), www.johnlewismemorystore.org.uk].
2013: John Lewis presence in Westfield’s Shepherds Bush mall ∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸
✱ the John Lewis motto (dating from 1925) characteristically is “never knowingly undersold”
✧ the sale was the stuff of legend in London retailing – Lewis reportedly walked the distance from Oxford Street to the Sloane Square, Chelsea, Jones premises, with bank notes in his pocket to the value of £20,000 to complete the purchase in person. Today, Peter Jones is the ‘posher’ sibling of the John Lewis store
⊛ Waitrose is an upmarket grocer in line with the general emphasis of John Lewis merchandising
✣ JL Senior’s quarrelsome, confrontational nature was often fraught with consequences – a protracted turn-of-the-century legal dispute with Lord Howard, Baron de Walden, saw Lewis being sentenced to three weeks in gaol in 1903 for contempt of court [‘How John Lewis ended up in prison. A new century same old Mr Lewis’, (J Blanchford), (‘John Lewis Memory Store’), www.johnlewismemorystore.org.uk]
✫ a monumental departure from the early days of JL Senior’s “sell cheap” strategy
⊡ currently around 30 JL stores in England, Scotland and Wales and concessions in the Republic of Ireland and Australia
Before I ever visited the UK I wasn’t at all familiar with Selfridges. I knew about Knightsbridge and Harrods and its preciously preserved pedigree all right…we’ve done that! My first time in London I was on a bus travelling (make that crawling) down Oxford Street heading towards the West End when I was enlightened as to the existence of the second-best known upmarket London department store. As the bus idled stationary I spotted a sign in front of a building that said ‘Selfridges’, my first thought, I remember, was “strange name!”…but when I think about it now I vaguely recall that I had previously heard the name Selfridges, but without inquiring further at the time I sort of formed the literal impression that it was a store as the name sounded that “sold fridges”, ie, a purveyor of domestic white goods! So when I did eventually get my beak inside the store’s doors at 400 Oxford Street I was surprised to see lines and lines of (pricey) fashion wear, shoes, accessories, skin care products, bags and more – but not one refrigerator in sight! (in its time it has apparently sold most everything!)
Even without visiting Selfridges’ flagship Oxford Street store, you may well be aware of it or of its US-born founder Harry Gordon Selfridge thanks to the recent ITV television series Mr Selfridge (first aired in 2013). The series was a period drama about the flamboyant, visionary retailer and the interactions that take place around him in his eponymous London department store✱.
A Marshall Field blueprint for London
Wisconsin-born Harry Gordon Selfridge initially earned his business ‘spurs’ working for Chicago department store Marshall Field & Company (right), this segued into him purchasing his own department store in Chicago. In hardly any time at all the mercurial Selfridge abruptly re-sold the business, making a quick profit and retired to play golf. In 1906 while holidaying in London, Selfridge sensed a new retail opening for his entrepreneurial talents in the British capital. For £400,000 he purchased land and surrounds for a novel custom-built, mega-department store in the then unfashionable, western end of Oxford Street [‘Harry Gordon Selfridge’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
A ground-breaking, landmark modern steel-framed building
Construction of the Selfridge store was something of an architectural coup in itself. It won praise in its day from British building journals for its innovative construction methods…built with steel frames and reinforced concrete allowing for much narrower than usual walls, the frames permitted a far greater window area, so very large plate-glass windows could be installed (12 of which were the largest sheets of plate-glass then in the world!) – making for much more interior natural light and brightness (designed by famed US architect Daniel Burnham and associates). Originally comprising a 250′ x 175′ site, Selfridge’s had nine Otis passenger and two service lifts and six staircases. 100 separate departments were spread out over eight floors. While the physical construction of the Oxford Street store took only 12 months, Selfridge had first to overcome London City Council’s raft of objections (unprecedented size of the commercial structure, fire danger, etc). Selfridge and his engineers’ lobbying of the LCC Committee eventually resulted in the passing of two local building acts – LCC (General Powers) Acts of 1908 and 1909 – necessary for the Oxford Street project to be completed [Lawrence, ibid.]☯.
Selfridge, customer-centred strategies ahead of the curve
Harry’s approach to retailing was characteristically innovative on many fronts. Selfridge placed tremendous faith in advertising, the 1909 campaign leading up to the store’s opening cost a reported $500,000 in 1909 money [‘Selfridge Dies: Ripon Lad Who Jolted Empire’, The Milwaukee Sentinel, 9-May-1947 (online fiche)] (Britain’s biggest ever ad bill to that point) and he used it imaginatively together with ingenious publicity campaigns. Selfridge was the first retailer to make popular the idea of “shopping for pleasure”, rather than it being solely a functional task undertaken for necessity (as people conceived of it prior to Harry’s advent). In-store activities and arrangements often were original and novel (eg, displaying the monoplane used by aviator Louis Blériot in the first cross-English Channel flight at Selfridge’s (1909)✜). Another interest-generating feature in the store was Logie Baird’s television prototype shown on display in 1925.
A visceral, holistic experience
Selfridge’s vision was to make the department store more than just a shop where you went to buy goods, he continued to introduce new features to Selfridges…elegant (moderately priced) restaurants, a library, reading and writing rooms and special reception rooms for French, American and ‘Colonial’ clientele. There were cookery demonstrations in the kitchenware section. All this marked a radical departure from the practices of other department stores which employed floorwalkers to ‘shoo’ people out of the store who were just hanging around and not actively engaged in buying an item! Even the store’s roof was put to productive if curious usage (a shooting range for an all-girl gun club as well as an ice rink✧) [Lawrence, loc.cit.].
The female shopper as an identified demographic
Selfridge saw the role of the department store in macrocosmic terms – “the store should be a social centre, not merely a place for shopping”. Unlike the conservative establishment of the day and much of the mainstream, Selfridge endorsed the Suffragette Movement…the new store was (in part) “dedicated to woman’s service”. In a 1913 advertisement Selfridge described the store thus: Selfridge and Co: The Modern Woman’s Club-Store” [‘Suffrage Stories/Campaigning for the Vote: Selfridge’s and Suffragettes’, Woman and her Sphere, (Elizabeth Crawford), 16-May-2013, www.womanandhersphere.com; ‘Selfridge Lovers: The Secret behind our house’, www.selfridge.com]. Astute businessman that he was, Harry popularised shopping as a leisure activity specifically for women…to make it a more welcoming and conducive place for them to spend time (and money!), he displayed freshly scented floral arrangements and had open vistas in the store, he employed musicians to perform and added beauty and hair salons (Paris-inspired) and art galleries. And he introduced public restrooms for women to the store (the first time ever done!)❅
[Forbes, loc.cit.].
The H.G.S. leadership style
As retail magnate go, Selfridge went against the grain for his day by not being an authoritarian business leader. He was temperamentally inclined towards fairness with regard to remuneration, increasing the wages of his staff, elevating them above “wage slavery”, treating them as employees as opposed to ‘servants’ (cf. Harrods) [ibid.]…not to overstate it, Selfridges shop floor staff were still exposed to long, long hours of drudgery but they were paid a livable wage for their arduous labours. A sample of the quotes attributed to Selfridge reflect his anti-dictatorship approach to business and interpersonal relations: “The boss drives his men, the leader coaches them” ; “The boss depends on authority, the leader on good will” ; “The boss says ‘I’, the leader says ‘We'” ; “The boss inspires fear, the leader inspires enthusiasm” ; “The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown, the leader fixes the breakdown” ; etc.✥ [‘Harry Gordon Selfridge’, Wikipedia, op.cit.]
Selfridges post H.G.S.
Selfridge & Co’s reversal of fortunes signalled a move from its circling competitors…rival department chain John Lewis & Partners acquired some of Selfridges’ provincial stores in the Forties, which was a preliminary move to John Lewis’ eventual takeover of the flagship Oxford Street store (1951). In turn John Lewis was itself acquired by the Sears Group in 1965. Its current owners, the Anglo-Canadian Galen Weston company bought Selfridges in 2003 for a reported £598M. Today the store name ‘Selfridges’ survives on the Oxford Street building, and in the three other regional branches in the counties (Trafford Centre and Exchange Square, both in Manchester, and the Bullring in Birmingham).PostScript: ‘Selfridges gets Sixties hip In 1966, Selfridges, by now under Sears Holdings boss Charles Clore, recognised the youth market with a separate outlet for young women, Miss Selfridge (forming a link back to Harry Selfridge’s traditional focus on female customers). The new store in Duke Street signalled Selfridges’ wholesale embrace of the Sixties’ fashion revolution. Miss Selfridge used mannequins based on the straight line form of 1960s iconic model Twiggy and sold the latest in Mary Quant and Pierre Cardin fashions. In the early 2000s Miss Selfridge was acquired by the Arcadia Group [‘Selfridges 7 things’, op.cit.].
From the get-go Wanamaker exhibited a flair for innovation, demonstrating an aptitude for thinking outside the box in retailing. Wanamaker introduced concepts in his business that were quite radical in retailing of the day. One of the earliest, which seems self-evident to us today, was to establish the principle of price-setting. Before Wanamaker started putting price tags on his goods, the practice in shops was that the price of an item would be determined by haggling between the customer of the salesperson. Wanamaker, as a devout Christian imbued with the Protestant work ethic, espoused the principle of price equality…as he liked to say (repeatedly), “if everyone was equal before God, then everyone should be equal before price”✱[1]. Wanamaker also allowed customers the option of returning the goods (within a specified time period) and receiving a refund, a practice that was unusual in retailing at that time.
Wanamaker usually didn’t miss a business opportunity when it came along. In 1876 he purchased Pennsylvania Railroad property and turned it into what would become Wanamaker’s flagship store, named the Grand Depot. Located on the corner of 13th and Market Streets, Philadelphia, Wanamaker promoted it as a “New Kind of Store”, adding women’s clothing and dry goods to the existence outlet for menswear, arguably making it one of if not the world’s first department store. The original building (architect: Daniel Burnham) boosted an exotic Moorish-style facade, the building that he erected much later on the same site had a classic Florentine facade.
Wanamaker’s continued to grow into a small chain of stores…by the early 20th century Wanamaker had 16 department stores operating, mainly regionally, but the network included a showcase store in New York City (1896), between East 9th and 10th streets (in the ‘NoHo’ neighbourhood of Manhattan). Later Wanamaker built a second building opposite and connected them via an overhead walkway he called the “Bridge of Progress”.
Grand Depot mega-store
Wanamaker’s most ambitious store project was a massive transformation of the Philly retail store in 1910. The store was radically re-shaped in the form of a wheel with a 90 foot circular counter and 129 smaller sales counters installed in concentric circles. Wanamaker claimed that he had created “the largest space devoted to retail selling on a single floor”[5]. And, to give his new City Center flagship store a touch of imperial grandeur, the store contained a “Grand Court”, to which he added a Grand Court organ and a large bronze eagle⊙ (both of which had featured in the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair).
Wanamaker died in 1922 and his successor (his second son) in 1928, but the business continue to thrive and expand until the 1960s and 1970s. Increasingly though Wanamaker as a regional player wasn’t able to match it with national retail chains. Even in Philadelphia it was losing its market share to Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s. In 1978 Wanamaker’s was sold to California’s Carter Hawley Hale Stores, which tried to revive its fortunes but failed. Still trading as Wanamaker’s, it was then on-sold to Alfred Taubman’s Woodward and Lothrop. Under Woodward and Lothrop it again declined, then downsized to five stores, and eventually went into bankruptcy. In 1995 they were further sold to retail giant Macy’s, bringing to a close 133 years of Wanamaker’s retail history[7]. Despite the sense of inevitability, for many Philadelphians, the end of Wanamaker’s was a heartfelt moment, the loss of “a unique public institution and a powerful symbol of Philadelphia’s commercial viability”[8].
The two co-wrote The Lady Vanishes, a 1938 mystery which was a breakthrough feature for Alfred Hitchcock❈. Interestingly both Launder and Gilliat (hereafter L & G) had their (separate) starts in the film business composing inter-titles (title cards) for silent movies in the late 1920s, the same industry beginnings undertaken by Hitchcock several years earlier. L & G combined their talents behind-the-camera together for the first time from the mid 1930s. The L & G partnership had a flexibility and a particular pattern to it … invariably they would jointly produce films and/or also co-write screenplays (although on other occasions either man would co-write films with various other collaborating screenwriters). But almost with very few exceptions one or the other would direct a specific film singly – this was done apparently to avoid confusing the actors[1].
A versatile¤ and fecund partnership
As well as being prolific contributors to the creation of British films for such a long period, L & G’s film output spanned a range of genres … from thrillers and ‘whodunits’ like Green for Danger (1956) and Secret State (1950) to WWII social-realism films such as Waterloo Road (1944) and Millions Like Us (1943) to romance/adventures like The Blue Lamp (1949) to historical dramas such as Captain Boycott (1947) to farces like The Green Man (1956) and light comedies such as The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950), a precursor to a popular series of movies set in a girls’ boarding school immobilised by riotous juvenile anarchy – starting with The Belles of St Trinian’s (1954) which spawned a string of increasingly predictable sequels.
The war-time pictures, Millions Like Us and Two Thousand Women can be identified as reflecting in particular Frank Launder’s preoccupation with the portrayal of strong, defiantly independent women[6]. These films were commissioned by the UK Ministry of Information to counter the prevailing low recruitment and morale of women in war-time factory work. Millions Like Us, as Judy Suh has noted, conveyed the “double valence of women as productive workers and domestic symbols of national unity”. L & G’s social-realist films, though propagandist in purpose, posed questions of gender and class whilst depicting the routine of ordinary people at work. The necessities of war-time brought out the conflicting roles and identities of women in such an out-of-the ordinary circumstance, as well as the existence of crossings of class boundaries[7].
Daggstar completely out of the box
There was so much to the creative output of Clarke comma J, and so much variety too … screenplays, film acting, radio, stage work, television, songs, books. Clarke’s art didn’t fit into any one particular mould, he was, to use Martin Luther’s expression, an “irregular planet which cannot be fixed among the stars”, always inventing, moving on and reinventing, exploring something new that had piqued his interest.
John Clarke’s sudden, most untimely death leaves a Sydney Opera House-sized hole in Australian and New Zealand satire – and I shall never forget that voice – as with Billy Bragg’s, so distinctive, and as with Joe (Dragnet) Friday’s, so deadpan matter-of-fact … or his trademark mischievous grin and the sparkle in the eyes.
Outlawed in Europe after Waterloo, it would have been logical for Napoléon to gravitate towards America … the US had only recently engaged in hostilities with Britain (War of 1812), so the locals would probably have been disposed or at least neutral towards him, he would have been able to live as a free man. The US was a new country born of revolution (and one inspiring a revolution in his native France which promoted his own rise). An American base would position the ambiguous ex-monarch well to marshal his resources and launch an invasion of Central and South America which was ripe for revolution against the Spanish conquerors. One of Napoléon’s aides-de-camp in fact made the suggestion to him that he should make himself “emperor of Mexico”[8] (anticipating what transpired with a later Habsburg royal).
‘
Tiranë, 1930sLeka I – celebrated return amid controversy 1997
Throughout the course of Salvador Dalí’s life and career it was increasingly hard to distinguish the artist from the showman-cum-self publicist and exhibitionist. Dalí was many things – artist, sculptor, photographer, clothing & object designer, film-maker, writer and poet … and in his later years a facilitator of fake copies of his own work!
Dalí with fellow Surrealist Man Ray in 1934 ⤴
SD & Babou
‘Temptation of St Anthony’ (see below)
Dalí’s set from ‘Spellbound’
A further surprise for me at the Tate ‘Dalí and Film’ exhibition was to see how small many of the Catalan’s artworks were. For example, Dalí’s 1931 work (above), the Persistence of Memory (AKA ‘Melting Clocks’), one of his most famous and most referenced paintings, stands at a mere 10″ x 13″, virtually a miniature!
‘L’elephant-giraffe’ (1965) ⤴
Burning giraffe + women with drawers AKA “Femme-coccyx” (tail bone woman)
England and Australia have diametrically opposed thought processes when it comes to assessing the value of leg-spinners. Everyone in Australia (and India) remembers Shane Warne’s test debut, 150-1 v India, grist for Ravi Shastri’s mill in 1992. And it didn’t get better in a hurry for Warne, after his first four tests he had taken precisely four wickets! But the Australian selectors, seeing the promise, persisted with Warne – and the rest was (leg spinning) history. The English authorities by contrast are neither brave or bold when it comes to encouraging and nurturing their young leggies, and it remains to be seen if England will persist with Rashid for longer than they have with other promising wrist spinners in the near past.
Tich in action
With such startling figures, leg-spinner or not, the selectors couldn’t ignore Tich forever. He was selected in an MCC ‘A’ tour to New Zealand in which he excelled on NZ pitches, followed by a full test tour to Australia in 1924-25 in which he made his debut at age 36. A combination of good, hard Australian wickets and the fact that Australian batsmen were brought up on a diet of leg spin meant that Freeman made very heavy weather of the series. Thereafter the national selectors choose the leg-spinner very irregularly. He did very well against South Africa and the West Indies, but was not considered for the tests against the Australians on either the 1926 or 1930 tours of the UK, despite getting a six for and a five for in the county games for Kent against the tourists. The selectors demonstrated a remarkable lack of perception in not showing a sustained faith in Freeman’s obvious talent and not backing him in tests, especially in English conditions. As things turned out, his record in tests suggest the magnitude of their error in judgement:
Some cricket pundits, in contrasting Freeman to later generations of bowlers, have tried to explain away or diminish his extraordinary success by predictably referring to the poor state of uncovered wickets in his day. Or to the fact that he sent down such a sheer weight of numbers of balls in his career. It is undeniable that bad wickets were an advantage for bowlers in that era, but in response I would ask what was it, given the even playing field prevailing, that made Freeman so much more successful than his contemporary counterparts? This comparison accentuates the point: in that English season when he took 304 wickets, the entire Derbyshire team in the Championship by comparison took just 324 wickets! The next closest individual county bowler to his 304 victims in 1928 managed only 190 wickets.
▪ • ▪ ‘Mr Hulot’s Holiday’
While he’s there, Hulot’s sister tries to match him up with her neighbour, a matrimonial project which is equally doomed to failure. The female neighbour is far too bourgeois in her tastes for Hulot, who is in any case a confirmed bachelor.
▪ • ▪
Tati is a dab hand at noting all of the “modern inconveniences”(sic) of contemporary Western society. Mon Oncle is a sharp commentary on the way “modern life traps humanity within its contrivances” [James Quandt, ‘Scatterbrained Angel: The Films of Jacques Tati’, From the Current – Criterion Collection, www.criterion.com] Mon Oncle, Tati’s obra maestra , won the Oscar for best foreign language film in 1959.
Although the persona of Hulot is the human thread that runs through Playtime, Tati deliberately does not allow the popular character to dominate proceedings (as tended to be the case in Mr Hulot’s Holiday and Mon Oncle) [Kent Jones,’Playtime’, From the Current – Criterion Collection, www.criterion.com] putting the focus back on ‘everybody’, ie, the observed cross-section of humanity. Tati eschews the use of close-up shots and the technique of the camera panning in for exactly the same reason. A sub-plot of Playtime follows American tourist ‘Barbara’ whose own meanderings always eventually lead her back to Hulot.
Trademark cute
There are many little gems in Playtime – the signature Tati sight gags like the blissfully unaware Hulot boarding a crowded bus grabbing on to what he thought was a handrail, immersing himself distractedly in his newspaper only to find himself again out on the footpath at the next stop because the mistaken handrail was actually the tall floor lamp of a fellow commuter who had alighted the bus with Hulot still holding on. Or the spiral neon arrow on the nightclub sign which guides the drunk straight back into the “Royal Garden” from which he has just departed … both of these sight gags are pure gold! Playtime represents the zenith, the highest expression, of Hulot’s distaste for the contemporary world of “mod cons” and gadgetry.
‘Trafic’ (1971)
Situational humour ▪ • ▪
Life in boxes: Absurdity of modernity (‘Playtime’j
▪ • ▪ François (centre) in L’École des Facteurs (‘School for Postmen’), a 1947 short which prefigured Tati’s feature film debut ▪ • ▪‘Jour de féte’ (1949)
George Wallace (above) had an early taste of the stage appearing in children’s pantomime at age three, but it wasn’t until after WWI that his career really took off when he teamed up with fellow vaudevillian Jack Paterson to form a knockabout comedy act called “Dinks and Onkus”. The duo performed their “couple of drunks” routine to packed audiences at the Newtown Bridge Theatre for five years before Wallace outgrew the partnership and joined up with bigger enterprises, first that of Fuller’s Circuit and then the Tivoli Theatre Circuit.
George was smallish in stature and quite chubby in build but despite this, on stage he was exceptionally acrobatic and agile on his feet. As part of his very physical act he became acutely adept at landing on his left ear during a deliberate fall. Wallace wrote witty songs and review sketches to perform in theatre, sometimes he told absurd stories about characters such as Stanley the Bull, the Drongo from the Congo and Sophie the Sort [Stuart Sayers, ‘Wallace, George Stevenson (1895–1960)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/wallace-george-stevenson-8961/text15765, published first in hardcopy 1990, accessed online 4 April 2015]. The Wallace persona on stage and screen was that of a childlike man, portraying goggle-eyed, innocent characters well down on the social ladder, often farm boys, hicks and yokels ill at ease with women [Paul Byrnes, ‘George Wallace’, www.aso.gov.au]. The country bumpkin-cum-innocent in the big city association was further emphasised by George’s garb, comprising ill-fitting clothes and rumpled hat.
Wallace’s “working class zero” popularity attracted the attention of local film-makers and in the thirties he appeared in a number of films such as Gone to the Dogs, A Ticket for Tatts, mostly for Ken G Hall, Australia’s foremost (Cinesound) director in the interwar period. In his movies (some of which he co-wrote) Wallace reprised his theatre role as a bumbling, disaster-prone innocent. In his performances on the big screen Wallace demonstrated that he was able to make the transition from stage to cinema. After WWII however, finances dried up and the Australian film industry went into steep decline. Wallace returned to theatre including a return to pantomime and to the new medium of radio performance. In 1949 he began a weekly radio show with the Macquarie Network in Sydney. The one setback to Wallace’s career was his unsuccessful attempt in the early fifties to make it in the English theatre as a comedian, but this could be attributed partially to the English audiences’ unfamiliarity with his Australian accent [ibid.].
Rene had a very distinctive on-stage appearance, striking black-and-white face paint which gave a nod to the influence of minstrelsy, baggy pants and a battered black top hat. In performance he exuded an extroverted and even exhibitionist style – he was the quintessential lair (the self-promoting “show-off”). Often he would robustly insult the audience with a spray of obscenities, both verbal and gestural. In today’s milieu of political correctness Rene’s act would in all likelihood be characterised as sexist and even racist (in its presentation of a Jewish caricature) and it did alienate some viewers in the day. This did not stop Fuller’s from billing him (pre-war) as “Australia’s foremost delineator of Hebrew eccentricities” [Frank Van Straten, ‘Roy Rene 1892-1954’, Live Performance Australia – Hall of Fame (2007), www.liveperformance.com.au ].
After WWII, with variety theatre in recession, Rene made a successful transition to radio. He was able to do this having learned from the lessons of his failed venture into films, because he made sure that his radio shows were presented before a live audience to ensure that his performances had that necessary edge. At Sydney radio station 2GB he found a niche as the bombastic “Professor Mo McCackie” of “McCackie Manor” finding a whole new audience for his unique sense of humour.
Auckland village, above M&C Falls (ECP)
Even before “The Lord of the Rings” movie series some Hogsback locals did their best to capitalise on a handful of tenuous links with the celebrated Lord of the Rings author. The story goes, the ‘Rings’ books were inspired by the magical, enchanting physical form of Hogsback. The proponents of this theory point to the fact that Tolkien was born in South Africa (in Bloemfontein, Free State). The thesis loses traction when probed more closely. The famous author and avid philologist left South Africa at the tender age of three, never to return and having not ever visited Hogsback.
The Tolkien Middle Earth connection is often emphasised in print, such as in the following: “The romance of Hogsback, is recognised by reading The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (1892-1973) which seems to capture the special atmosphere of the unspoilt Hogsback forests and of a time when peace will rule the world” [Trevor Webster, The Story of Hogsback, www.hogsback.com].
Talking to the staffer in the Hogsback Visitors Information Centre, she was unequivocally dismissive of the Tolkien LOTR nexus. So the lingering myth clearly wasn’t emanating from the likes of her! She also warned me against buying the primitive wooden toy horses and zebras in the street from members of the local Xhosa community. The street sellers, looking cold and dismal in the freezing conditions, were only asking R2 an animal, but the Visitors Centre lady explained that they are not properly gazed and sealed, making them a prohibited item to export out of RSA. Apparently a local artisan/sculptor had offered to glaze the artworks for the community at minimal cost so that they could charge more for the figurines, but his offer had not been taken up.
So, how plausible is the link between “Middle Earth” of Lord of the Rings and the sleepy, little village of Hogsback? Clearly, as stated above, JRR Holkien had no direct association with Hogsback, having left South Africa at age three. Information on Tolkien’s life however, suggest the existence of an indirect link. One of Tolkien’s sons, whilst in the Royal Air Force during WWII, was stationed at Hogsback and did correspond regular with the author with his reflections on the locale. These correspondences from Tolkien Junior included sketches and descriptions of the Hogsback ambience [Ibid.].
The Hog’s back!
David Herbert (Bert) and Frieda outside ‘Wyewurk’, 1922 ⍙
Lawrence grappling with the menacing Kangaroo on the veranda of “Wyewurk”. ⍙ The Struggle’ by Garry Shead (Wollongong Art Gallery)
Lucknow in India’s “Uttar Pradesh”
Marion’s silkscreen watercolour of Walter’s plan for Griffith, NSW
Wright’s residential magnum opus: Fallingwater, Penn.
Castlecrag: Griffin Country
Griffin’s inventive use of windows and fireplaces in Castlecrag won praise from admirers and provided inspiration for later Australian architectural practitioners. Not everyone however had a favourable view of the WBG concept of the model house. Many home-buyers were not attracted to the utilitarian plainness and the restrictive compactness of the standard Griffin house with its flat, odd cubic shape. In addition, the quite puritanical covenants concerning individual property use, whilst implemented to protect the natural environment and for egalitarian purposes, served to turn many would-be Castlecrag residents off.
Marion’s drawing of Walter’s design for an Indian-inspired “Sydney Opera House”
The Griffin footprint in Castlecrag & Australia
Griffin’s Segmental Architecture was a quantum step forward from previous building technologies used in Australia (eg, Mack Slab) [M Lewis, ‘Knitlock’, www.mileslewis.net]. Intended by Walter for use on workmen’s cottages in Canberra (before the disintegration of his Capital City dream), the technique heralded a variety of radical advances in construction. With a simplicity and economy of design, the Segmental Architecture method constructed walls from ‘segments’ of precast reinforced concrete which were easier and quicker to construct than other methods (Griffin was one of the early developers of prefabrication). The Knitlock bricks, machine-manufactured on the southern side of the ‘Crag estate in a shed set up on the corner of The Redoubt and The Rampart, were light yet compact and sturdy. The bricks were reinforced with a dual ‘vertebrae’ structure which forms a concrete skeleton. The sections were easy to transport, easy to assemble as walls and cheap to make [W B Griffin, Australian Home Builder, No 1 (August 1922)].
‘Fishwick house’
‘Duncan house‘
Dr Edward Rivett, who converted the King O’Malley House in Sortie Porte into Castlecrag’s first hospital, also commissioned the Griffin-designed 148 Edinburgh Road, however he altered the original plans to add a pitched tile roof and interior walls which were brick rendered. Griffin through GSDA, his company, sued Rivett for breach of Covenant and a lengthy legal battled ensued which was eventually won by Dr Rivett. Other potential buyers also had problems with the Covenants imposed by WBG and many turned away from Castlecrag, opting instead for the railway-serviced suburbs on the Upper North Shore which didn’t have restrictions on the size or type of house or on how or whether you landscape your property [‘Castlecrag’,www.sydneyforeveryone.com.au/].Because of the restrictions and other contentious issues surrounding the construction of GSDA dwellings in the estate, banks became less willing to approve loans on Griffin houses. The onset of the Depression strangled the economy which affected development everywhere in Sydney, but subdivisions that were less popular like Castlecrag suffered its effects hardest [ibid.]. Castlecrag had to await the postwar building boom to achieve significant inroads in development.
Burley Griffin’s attitude towards building materials was every bit as rigidly purist as his attitude was to how the finished product should look. He championed the use of concrete and stone (particularly local Castlecrag sandstone which blended in with the natural setting). Conversely, he railed against the popularity of the standard building materials of the day, brick and tile, which he rejected.
The proportion of Burley Griffin designs converted into houses by GSDA over a 14 year period was quite low. Only 15 built in the Castlecrag and Haven Estates (none built north of Edinburgh Road, the area known as the Wireless or Sunnyside Estate) with about four or five other houses designed by one of WBG’s acolytes but approved by him. In what is somewhat of a trademark feature of Griffin’s oeuvre, many houses proceeded no further than the drawing board. WBG designed in the vicinity of 35 or so others for the ‘Crag that were not carried through to completion [‘The Idealists: creating Castlecrag’, ABC RN, Hindsight, 8 July 2012]. There was a host of reasons for this as outlined above, but sometimes sheer bad luck played its part in Griffin’s fortunes. Global developments had a tendency to intervene to stymie his noble intentions. Just as his vision for a physical landscape in Canberra worthy of the capital city of “a nation of ‘bold democrats” ran smack into the war effort of WWI which redirected valuable Australian resources away from WBG’s project, the development of Griffin’s estate in Castlecrag had its momentum undercut by the crippling effects of the Great Depression [‘Creating a new nation’s capital: The Griffins’ vision for Canberra’, (National Archives) www.naa.gov.au/].
‘Camelot’
The sales brochure of the Greater Sydney company (the Griffin’s firm) reads: “Castlecrag architecture has struck a distinct bold note in Australia. In place of the high peaked tile roofs … the handsome landscape style, with the stone walls and flat roofs, has been introduced in harmony with the great amphi-theatre of stone and forest”.
Walter Burley Griffin had been captivated by the magnificent harbour of Port Jackson upon first sailing into Sydney. Now, free of the seven-year Canberra fiasco, he was able to turn his mind to the search for a new project. After investigating sites at Longueville and Beauty Point Griffin’s creative energies were given direction when he discovered a large and quite choice stretch of virgin ground situated on two peninsulas on the upper part of Sydney’s Middle Harbour. WBG managed to secure an option to buy 263 hectares of largely cleared land, which included nearly 6.5km of untouched water frontage (still forested), for a very reasonable amount of money (there is some disagreement about whether the amount was $25,000 or £25,000). The scoop netted the Griffins the entire south-west part of what was to become Castlecrag, a large chunk of modern day Castle Cove, and around half of Middle Cove [“The Legacy of the Griffins” (Castlecrag Community), www.castlecrag.org.au/history/history.htm].
The original Castle Rock, Edinburgh EH1 Scotland
Griffin mapped out the road and allotment pattern of the estate by foot, walking all over the rocky terrain and leaving markers for the surveyor to follow [Teaching Heritage, “Forming the Greater Sydney Development Association”, www.teachingheritage.nsw.edu.au]. He then placed the planned homes very carefully and very strategically so that they didn’t impinge on the natural setting. It was all about the harmonisation of the built and the organic environment. Griffin stated that “a building should be the logical outgrowth of the environment in which it is located” [Walter Burley Griffin Society, S Read, “Landscape Architecture”; M O’Donohue, “Castlecrag”, Sydney, www.griffinsociety.org]. The young Griffin was guided by the famous maxim of his fellow Chicagoan and architectural mentor, Louis Sullivan – “form follows function”. Intended to blend in with the natural world rather than clash with it like much of modern architecture, Griffin’s houses were designed to recede into the landscape.
Griffin Prairie style cottage, The Parapet, Castlecrag
‘Grant house’
Haven Amphitheatre
MMG
Palais Theatre,
St Kilda, Vic.
Rock Crest/Glen
Plan of Leeton, NSW (1913)
Pyrmont Incinerator (demol. 1992)
Willoughby Incinerator (1934)
On-site residential bushland retreat, The Crag
MMG, soon after graduating from MIT University
FLW
K C DeRhodes House (Sth Bend, Ill.) designed by Marion, credited to Wright
Light fitting, Capitol Theatre Melbourne (MMG)
David Amberg House (1910). MMG.
Tasmanian Forest portrait
MMG rendering of a FLW house
MMG rendering of Library & Museum plan, Lucknow (India).
The MMG monogram
Early Griffin project {Carter House Evanston, Illinois}
Blueprint for a “Democratic Capital”
The Lake
Canberra: the winning blueprintGSDA Sydney Office, 35 Bligh Street
The media is of course deeply complicit in this with its obsessive focus on Hollywood box-office stars, especially the popular gossip mags’ hanging on every utterance and info snippet of headline-grabbing Hollywood A–listers like George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt – a custom which is jejune and banal in the extreme. If these overblown ‘celebs’ make even a shallow pronouncement on environmental or human rights issues or announce their latest Third World orphan acquisition projects, this receives an inordinate amount of drooling media attention.
Consequently she was ‘outed’ by the McCarthyists in ‘Red Channels’ (a right wing publication blacklisting suspected ‘subversives’ in the arts and media) and her burgeoning film career suffered accordingly❀. Hunt was a gifted actor, and an accomplished singer. She was also the composer of about 50 songs including one she wrote in the early 1960s, ahead of its time, on the subject of same sex equality in love and marriage – later a hit in the US in the 1980s.
In 1944 she was voted one of the Hollywood ‘Stars of Tomorrow’. However, like others in the industry who refused to recant their earnestly-held political convictions, roles for Hunt dried up. First she was relegated to B movies, then not even that and her film career was effectively over by the time she was 40. From the ’50s, Hunt, like many other Hollywooders including Ronald Reagan (180 degrees apart from her politically) found TV work her only reliable source of income and expression.
MVH at 95