Picturing the Great WarThe First World War Blog from Mary Evans Picture Library

Fortunino's Fortunes - WW1 artist Matania's 21st century revival

In recent weeks, there has been something of a buzz about an artist who, in his day, could be said to have captured the Great War more comprehensively, more eloquently and more accurately than any other.  His name is Fortunino Matania and I've got to know him well over the years.  More so of late as I've been compiling a book of his First World War illustrations, due to be published by The History Press on 3 November 2014 in association with the library. 

'Goodbye, Old Man: Matania's Vision of the First World War' brings together around 120 of Matania's illustrations from The Sphere magazine, which is part of the archive owned by  Illustrated London News Ltd but housed and managed here at the library.  Some extra pictures are included courtesy of David Cohen Fine Art and I am able to also add in a particularly fine reproduction of the colour oil painting of 'Neuve Chapelle, 1915' which Matania exhibited at the Royal Academy, courtesy of the Royal Worcestershire Regimental Museum who own the original.  The majority of images however, are gleaned from the pages of The Sphere of which ILN has a complete run.  Matania was their star 'special artist', having worked for the magazine since 1904 following a sparkling career trajectory that saw him train in his father's Naples studio, illustrate his first advertisement at the tender age of 9, his first book at the age of 14 and become an artist for prestigious Italian journal, L'Illustrazione Italiana soon after.  In 1902, he covered the coronation of King Edward VII for The Graphic (another magazine we have here).

                                                

  Art ran in Matania's blood - his father Eduardo was a respected magazine artist, and his cousin Ugo would also contribute regularly to The Sphere - but Matania was blessed with a number of almost superhuman gifts.  He had a photographic memory (genuinely - no sketchbooks were allowed in the Abbey at the 1902 Coronation but Matania memorised everything).  He was able to work at great speed, producing pictures that were unnervingly photographic in their realism.  Furthermore, he combined skill and artistry with a strong streak of journalistic tenacity.  Matania believed wholeheartedly in portraying the truth, and producing pictures that were accurate and authentic.  He went to some incredible lengths to achieve this.  During the war, he visited the Front on several occasions, often putting himself in danger to gather material for his pictures.  When not able to do this, he would interview eyewitnesses and take along toy soldiers when he spoke to recovering men in hospital to ensure battle positions were recorded faithfully.  Back at his studio, he had an enormous collection of uniforms, weapons and other props to ensure every last detail of his finished picture was correct. 

                                                    

This breathtaking detail I was privileged to enjoy first-hand while I was manager of the Illustrated London News Picture Library (before it moved here, to its new home at Mary Evans).  The ILN were in possession of a number of originals, miraculously so since there had been sales of his work for The Sphere in 1971 and again, in the 1980s.  Nevertheless, among the originals remained some real crackers.  The R.A.M.C. bringing in the wounded from the battlefield is one,  British soldiers firing flares from Very guns from a trench over No Man's Land is another, while an image of a soldier returning home to his family for Christmas, his bulky form bathed in light from his opening front door is enough to melt the most cynical heart.  No wonder The Sphere printed it on their cover on 1 January 1916.  These pictures, painted with gouache on board 'en grisaille' (the majority of his pictures were reproduced in black and white so it made sense to paint only in this colourway - all magazine artists of the period did so), were stored, wrapped in acid-free tissue paper in the plans chest in the basement archive where our small team worked.  Now and again, I would get them out and pour over them, marvelling at the detail, the three-dimensionality of the figures and at the atmosphere or emotion Matania was able to conjure with his brush.  

                                                                                            

                                                                     
A number of scans of these originals will appear in 'Goodbye, Old Man' and I hope the book will not only represent the breadth and scale of his work during the period, but also give some sense of how famous and how revered he was in his time.  Although retained in England as an 'official War artist' in fact, post-war, Matania was shunned by the art establishment.  The Imperial War Museum declined one picture he had hoped to donate to them.  He was, in the words of journalists and museum officials, 'a mere illustrator'.  A mere illustrator perhaps but one of unique genius, and one whose pictures, which, either through The Sphere's circulation or through their syndication to other illustrated journals around the world, reached and influenced millions more people than artists such as Nash and Nevinson.  Certainly, to our 21st century eyes, he was embarrassingly biased in his portrayal of the war and no amount of authentic detail could disguise the fiercely pro-Allied message - the Allies were the goodies; the Germans most definitely the baddies (even a picture of a British soldier remaining with a dying German, is accompanied by a report that the German died admitting the British were the superior force).  Some felt so uncomfortably anti-German, I omitted them from the book.  But as a magazine artist, he had a role to play and it was expected he would present the protagonists as such. They are  pictures that must be judged within the context of the time. 

                                                                        

Regarded as unfashionable for decades, it seems however, with the centenary of the Great War that Matania's time has come round again.  Last year, Illustrators magazine devoted an in-depth article to him and the same publishers have long been planning a large art book covering his prolific career and exceptional body of work.  Our book, which I've written, researched and compiled, focuses predominantly on his WW1 era illustrations and his relationship with The Sphere.  It is due for publication at the beginning of November.

Before that, in October, the remaining ILN Matania paintings will go under the hammer at Christie's and the resulting press interest in the paintings has already been seen in features on Matania in the Mail Online and this Monday's issue of The Times.  There are some very fine paintings to be had (though not an original of 'Goodbye, Old Man' as the Times article intimates); it would be nice to see some of them end up in public collections for everyone to enjoy.  In the meantime, for anyone interested in viewing them, they are on display in the Lower Gallery at Christie's in South Kensington until 30 July.  It seems very likely that Signor Matania is about to have a renaissance, as a new audience discovers the brilliance of his work for the first time. 

Of course, there are some of us who always knew it.

                ___________________________________

View a selection of Matanias here.

http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=28215

  Hundreds more online at www.maryevans.com

'Goodbye, Old Man: Matania's Vision of the First World War' is published in November.  Pre-order a copy via the link here  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Goodbye-Old-Man-Matanias-Vision/dp/075095597X

See many images by Matania featured in The Illustrated First World War bookazine out now at good high street retailers or available to order via this link http://www.illustratedfirstworldwar.com/magazine/

 

 

Luci Gosling

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Music & Morale - Lena Ashwell and the healing power of concerts at the front

An illustrated article recently discovered in the archive throws a spotlight on how the healing and morale-boosting power of music was harnessed by the British on the Western Front. Written in 1916 for the Strand Magazine by celebrated actress Miss Lena Ashwell (1872-1957), the article is entitled ‘A Year’s Music at the Front’, and reports upon the mission to bring uplifting concert music to soldiers during World War One.  The article brings alive the positive impact the ‘concerts for the Front’ programme had on the mental and physical health of the troops, as well as Lena Ashwell’s energetic  and inspirational personal involvement in this scheme.

                                              

                                                Lena Ashwell pictured in The Sketch in March 1915

Ashwell writes that the idea of concerts for the front was first mooted in February 1915, when the Ladies’ Auxiliary Committee of the Y.M.C.A suggested that users of the Y.M.C.A huts(already visited by this blog) might welcome the diversion of a concert from rigours of life on the front lines.  In fact, a concert troupe of actors and actresses, led by Seymour Hicks had already departed for the front in January that year, but Ashwell’s concerts were nevertheless to have a significant impact on those who enjoyed them.   She writes, “It is very difficult for people at home to realise the monotony of life when life consists of hard work, rigid military discipline, and nothing else, and when one’s world is suddenly a town of bare huts in a sea of mud...” With mouth organs and gramophone already in demand in the trenches and at military hospitals, the uplifting and healing power of music was well known, but for “a real concert party with a programme of really good music” to be put on for the benefit of the troops, was something new.

                                    
        A concert behind the lines at the Front with soldiers in drag, pictured by Fortunino in The Sphere in November 1915.   Lena Ashwell sought to provide more professional, cultured entertainment for the men.

An ensemble departed for the front in early April 1915, including pianist and composer Ivor Novello(who also composed the popular WW1 song “Keep the Home Fires Burning”), with the first concert at the YMCA hut at Le Havre proving a great success. Spurred on by such an enthusiastic response from the troops, the concerts were rolled out to other locations, and Ashwell writes that in twelve months, one thousand five hundred concerts were given, not just in Flanders and Northern France, but as far afield as to Egypt and Malta, as well as to the bases and hospitals of the Mediterranean.

Lena (6th from left) & concert party outside the Indian YMCA        An interested audience

Ashwell herself travelled to the front, and became deeply involved in fundraising and logistics behind the concert parties, writing passionately about the positive effects the concerts had on the men. Through articles such as the one in the Strand, as well as fundraising concerts organised back home, she was able to publicise and report back on the work of the concert parties.

Ashwell recognised the uplifting and therapeutic power of music, seeing men “invigorated, refreshed and stronger merely for the change in outlook” that the concerts provided. She believed that, “The men welcome the music as if they were hungry and thirsty for the beauty and comfort of it…”At a time when the psychological hardships of life on the front lines were medically unacknowledged, the realisation of the power of something as simple as music to lift the spirits and help to knit together broken men was perhaps a surprising development.

Ashwell defended the entertainments against those who saw them as a frivolous diversion from the serious business of war, and stressed the good that such programmes could do.  “For, quite apart from the pleasure the music brings into the hospitals, it does more than give the patients a happy afternoon. It seems to break the spell that the horrors and the deafening noise of modern military warfare lays on the nerves of so many men. The good it does is permanent. There have been cases when the music has bought back memory to a man who had completely lost it, and speech to another struck dumb; and though such cases are, naturally, exceptional, the music not only seems to make the men forget their pain and weariness for the time being, it soothes and calms their tense-strained nerves, and gives them happy memories, instead of horrible ones.” The comfort of familiar English music, brought especially for soldiers’ entertainment, provided a tonic for the homesick, war-weary  and wounded that doctors could not prescribe. Theodore Flint, accompanist and musical director of the scheme, noted in a letter from the front to Lena Ashwell that “One army doctor found the ‘concert did wounded men more good than a month’s nursing.’”

                                                              

Lena Ashwell’s article in the Strand Magazine concludes with a quotation from the medical paper Hospital, published in August 1915, which states that “Money for this purpose is just as usefully spent on splints and bandages, for diversion and amusement are valuable aids to recovery from bodily ills, whether they be fevers or bullet wounds. It would probably be true to say that these concert parties have actually saved lives.”

                         
Society ladies, including Lady Diana Manners (centre) perform a charity matinée to raise money for the Concerts for the Front fund.  From The Tatler, 4 July 1917

The notion of harnessing the therapeutic power of music via concert parties was in many ways ahead of its time, and it was through the vision of individuals such as Lena Ashwell that the scheme was made not only possible, but incredibly successful. Ashwell’s many other achievements are too abundant to detail here, but even just highlighting her passionate commitment to this cause, through this single article in the Strand, provides some illustration of her character, and a moving testimony to the power of music, and the difference that one woman can make.

http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=28149

Lucinda Moore

Tony Wilding's last Wimbledon - A Sporting Great Who Fell in the Great War

As this year's Wimbledon championship reaches its climax this weekend, it seems timely to throw the spotlight on the tournament a century ago when one of the game's most charismatic players walked onto Centre Court for the final time. 

Anthony Frederick Wilding was born in Opawa, near Christchurch, New Zealand on 31 October 1883.  His father Frederick, originally from the Herefordshire area, was a keen all-round sportsman, playing cricket for Shrewsbury School, and becoming well known as a rugby player, boxer, athlete, oarsman and, eventually, five-times tennis doubles champion of New Zealand.  With such athletic genes, it seemed inevitable that Tony would show sporting promise.  His mother described her toddler son in her diary as, "such a darling boy, and I am so immensely proud of him.  They call him little Hercules here.  He is so splendid in physique, so sturdy and yet so sweet and affectionate."  Brought up with two brothers and two sisters, Wilding had a happy, outdoorsy childhood, taking up a variety of sports with the encouragement of his father.  He was elected captain of his football team and made his first century at cricket two days after his fourteenth birthday.  At other times, he went for long walks, rode his pony and became proficient at both shooting and fishing.  As was expected of young men in those days, he was a good, sporting all-rounder.

Wilding indulging in his other great love - motorcycles                    Cambridge sportsman serving in the war. Wilding is top right

He first began to play tennis at fourteen, partnering his father in doubles matches reaching the final of the national championship in New Zealand on one occasion.  Coached by his father initially, his killer shot was a powerful forehand topped drive but it would take time, and a gruelling physical regime, for his game to become more well-rounded.  He won his first championship in Canterbury at the age of seventeen, a five-setter against his father's old partner, R. D. Harman, a match which he won after a determined fitness drive which included running up a steep track behind his family home, accompanying three long-distance runners who were in training for an athletics meeting.  Wilding's high level of fitness, and repeated commitment to practice, would be one of the key factors in his later success.  

At the age of nineteen, he travelled to England where he was to study law at Cambridge.  He quickly established himself as a preeminent tennis player.  He was captain of both the Trinity College and University clubs,  partnered with Kenneth Powell* who commented of his friend, that he was, "the most remarkable example of how quickly a man may improve by putting his mind into the game.  He used to be continuously thinking out some new point, and before each match began insisting on pracitising with me in a quiet court for half an hour or so..."

With fans & admirers, Wimbledon, 1905 (below)

Such was his enthusiasm for the game he ensured it could be played beyond the summer months by negotiating with the municipal authorities and improvising a court in the Corn Exchange, he charged entrance fees to matches and encouraged well-established players such as the Doherty brothers to come and play at the University.  Although generally clean-living, he was not above high-spirited student japes.  Once he challenged a fellow student to a match in which he used only a cricket bat and was implicated in an incident during rag week investigated by the police, though no blame was ever pinned upon him.

He first visited Wimbledon in 1903 and was amused to watch a match involved H. S. Mahoney, renowned for playing in 'borrowed, ill-assorted socks.'  The next year, Wilding, who had continued to play in a number of tournaments in England, was a competitor himself at Wimbledon and found himself facing the odd socks in the second round.  Though his family were keen to see him follow a career in the law, tennis was soon to take precedence.  In 1907 alone, he toured the Riviera in March, Paris in April, London in early May (where he won all three covered court championships), Wiesbaden later that month, Austria, Wimbledon in June, back to Austria in July, England again, Homburg in August, Baden-Baden in September and Eastbourne before travelling back to Austria for the winter.  He also had a great love for motorcycling and often varied his European travels between train and bicycle, motorcycling from John O'Groats to Lands End in 1908.  

                                            

                                                Tennis strokes demonstrated by Wilding in The Sketch magazine, 1 July 1914

In 1910, he won his first Wimbledon Championship beating the forty-two-year-old Arthur Gore 6-4, 7-5, 4-6, 6-2 and went on to win three more titles in consecutive years, his greatest match perhaps in 1913 against the American Maurice McCoughlin which he won 8-6, 6-3, 10-8 (there were no tie breaks in those days).  This was the period of Wilding mania.  The athletic and charismatic Wilding set many hearts a-flutter among the crowd and one contemporary newspaper reported on a number of women fainting in the Wimbledon crowd, such was the New Zealander's effect!

With Lady Henry & Elizabeth Asquith at Monte Carlo, March 1914                        Caricatured by H. F. Crowther Smith in The Tatler

Visiting some of the world's most glamorous places, and soon one of the world's top flight sportsmen, Tony became a popular member of the smart set, though it was recalled by many of his friends that he himself was anything but 'smart', having little interest in clothes.  He often stuffed his travelling cases as if he were filling a laundry bag and borrowed clothes from friends and hosts.  Tall, blonde and with matinee idol looks, many commented on Tony's easy charm.  Magazines we hold here in the archive show him at the Riviera blending in seamlessly with such society figures as the daughters of Grand Duke Michael or the Prime Minister's daughter, Elizabeth Asquith.  In January 1914, he was pictured on the front cover of The Sketch magazine with a young, French protegée whom he was coaching - Suzanne Lenglen.  He became good friends with Arthur Balfour, offering him coaching tips and partnering him in doubles matches, while he was romantically linked to the glamorous American actress Maxine Elliott, fifteen years his senior.  If Wilding was a tennis player today, he would be a global superstar - and no doubt fabulously wealthy.

                             

With 14 yr old Suzanne Lenglen on The Sketch cover, Jan 1914      Partnering Arthur Balfour in a Wimbledon friendly, 1912  

His ability with motors and his gentlemanly conduct was recalled by the actor Gerald du Maurier in a biography by the Telegraph's tennis correspondent, A. Wallis Myers:

"Anthony Wilding was once of the most attractive men it has been my good fortune to meet.  He was so healthy, clean-minded; it braced one to talk with him...My wife and I were motoring down to Bushey one night after the theatre in a taxi, which broke down in a lonely part.  A private motor pulled up; among its occupants was Anthony Wilding."

Wilding without hesitation repaired the damage to the taxi and then spent a further hour with the driver to ensure the car was roadworthy for the return journey. 

When war broke out in August 1914, Wilding was in the United States where he helped Australasia to win the Davis Cup along with team mate Norman Brookes, who had beaten him that summer in the men's finals at Wimbledon, bringing his championship run to an end.  It was typical of Wilding that he rushed back to England to join up, and was attached to the Royal Marines but soon afterwards joined the Headquarters Intelligence Corps where his knowlege of Continental roads proved valuable.  At times he was able to visit Maxine who had equipped a barge which she navigated around canals in Belgium distributing clothes and food to families trapped by the German invasion.  Later, he was attached to a new squadron of armoured cars under the command of the Duke of Westminster where he invented a trailer with a 3-pounder gun to run behind a light armoured car.  Motors and mechanics had always fascinated him and it was a role that suited him perfectly.  The trailer was his own idea and its two wheels were designed to run over rough ground relatively easily.  

                                                        

It was this trailer that Tony accompanied up to the front line on 8 May 1915.  His section moved to an advanced depot at Croix-Barbée where he had an excellent dinner of pea soup, roast lamb, fruit and white wine in a ruined cottage.  Later that night, in the trenches, Wilding met an old tennis friend, Lieutenant R. S. Barnes and the pair reminisced about lawn tennis:

"Well, old man, you were in rotten form when you met Brookes," said Barnes, referring to Wilding's relatively ignominous defeat at Wimbledon the previous year.  Apparently Tony merely shrugged and replied, "One can't always be at one's best."  

Another tennis acquaintance, Lieutenant L. E. Milburn of the 4th Suffolks met Wilding early the following morning and was struck by his appearance.  

"He had not troubled to put on the regulation breeches and puttees, but strolled up in 'slacks' and low shoes, looking for all the world as if he were about to pop down in his car to Wimbledon."

What happened next is recounted in a report sent to his parent by Reginald Gregory, R.N.:

'From the information since received, his three-pounder lorry had been in action on the 9th inst., in the vicinity of Lestrem, up to 4.30p.m., about which time the shell-fire became so intolerable that the gun's crew was sent to the trenches for shelter, Captain Wilding and three Army officers retiring to a dug-out close by.  This was, however, shortly afterwards struck by a large shell, which killed the officers there, Captain Wilding dying in such a manner that his death must have been instantaneous.'

Anthony Wilding was thirty-one.  Found among his remains as his comrades began to dig him and his fellow officers out from the mangled dug-out, was a gold cigarette-case, a souvenir of tennis triumphs on the Riviera in 1914, presented to him by his friend and doubles partner, Craig Biddle.  He was buried the next morning in an orchard backing on to the trenches.  

In a letter to Tony's mother, Lieutenant-Commander Chilcott, of the Royal Naval Air Service wrote of him:

"I had learnt to love him as few men love each other.  My admiration for him was unbounded, and I fear it will never be my good fortune during the remainder of my travel through this world to meet another friend with a nature such as his.  I always felt that he was an example to his fellow-men in everything.  God rest his great soul."

Luci Gosling

*Kenneth Powell (1885-1915), Olympic hurdler and tennis player, private in the Honourable Artillery Company. Killed in action, 18 February 1915

Quotes extracted from, 'Captain Anthony Wilding,' by A. Wallis Myers (Hodder & Stoughton, 1916), part of the archive at Mary Evans Picture Library

More images of Tony Wilding here - http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=27986

 

Cecil Aldin's War - the Sporting Artist and the Army Remount Service

A particular area of specialisation at Mary Evans is animals - perhaps curious since we are a  historical picture library.  But Mary herself was a great animal lover, with a lifelong fondness for dogs and she recognised that animals are part of the past too.  Certainly, the popularity of some of our doggy-related posts on this blog has proved that animal history is perennially of interest.

Mary's love of animals spilled over into her collecting to the point that her house once boasted a room known, quite simply,as 'Mary's Dog Room' - filled floor to ceiling with dog-related books and ephemera.  She also had a world-class collection of editions of Anna Sewell's classic, 'Black Beauty', which we now hold at the library.

Which leads us to one section of our animal material; a fantastic collection of books by the illustrator and sporting artist, Cecil Aldin.  

Aldin (1870-1935) was one of the best-loved and most prolific book illustrators working during the so-called 'Golden Age of Illustration', which spanned the late 19th and early 20th century.  Like most commercial artists of the time, he could turn his hand to most subjects, designing posters, advertisements,    nursery friezes, toys and a range of china for Royal Doulton on top of his work illustrating a prolific number of books and magazines.  Overall, it was Aldin's own interests that began to dominate his artistic output.  A keen huntsman (we should point out this was one area on which Mary and Aldin would have disagreed), he became well-known for his equine or hunting scenes and his dog pictures too.  Unsurprisingly, he illustrated an edition of 'Black Beauty' which we have a copy of here in the library.  We have scores of the delightful children's books he wrote and illustrated based on the antics of mischievous puppies, as well as more autobiographical works which feature finely drawn portraits of some of the canine characters making up Aldin's extensive menagerie at home, among them a bull terrier named Cracker, Micky the wolfhound and a Sealyham terrier, Woggles.

 
Frontispiece by Aldin from 'A Sporting Garland', 1900                    A Sealyham Terrier, probably Woggles, from 'A Dozen Dogs or So'

Aldin was also a regular contributor to many of the weekly illustrated magazines we now hold here in our archive having his first illustration published in The Graphic in 1891 and thereafter contributing regularly to such prestigious titles as The Illustrated London News, the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News and The Sketch, who he drew an illustration for each week during the early 1930s portraying the naughty but endearing Woggles.

It is significant that there is very little evidence of the usually prolific Aldin's work in these magazines during the Great War period but Aldin had more pressing responsibilities during these years which left him with little time to devote to art. 

In February 1914, aged almost 44, Aldin was elected joint-Master of the South Berks Hunt together with his friend Eric Palmer.  Palmer soon left to join a cavalry regiment leaving Aldin in sole charge.  Hunting was an integral part of country life offering employment and livelihood to a large number of people and so when war broke out in August that year, the War Office asked all Masters to carry on though packs were significantly depleted and the best horses were often commandeered for Army purposes.  In many cases, hunting women took the lead and became temporary Masters in the absence of men.  In his autobiography, 'Time I Was Dead,' Aldin describes how he managed to hold the pack together, 'but very much reduced until the Armistice,' going on the remark, 'those four years of war-time were sad years for every family in England; my own was no exception.  Many of us have never recovered from the losses of that dreadful period, though somehow or other at the time we all had to keep a straight upper lip and carry on.' 

Though he does not go into further details about his own personal tragedy, in fact Aldin lost his only son, Dudley, who had been in France for six months as a second-lieutenant with the Royal Engineers.  He was killed at Vimy Ridge on the night of 15 May 1916 aged just 19.  Aldin's single, faltering words in his biography was the closest he ever got to admitting his grief over this devastating loss in public.  Aldin's contribution to the war effort perhaps helped him to cope.

  He became a Remount Purchasing Officer, responsible for buying horses for war purposes, a role which he was ideally suited to, having contacts in the hunting world.  During the first few days of war, Aldin admitted to having, 'very little sleep and some very long days' in order to reach the quota of horses demanded of him by the War Office.  He recalled too that it was, 'necessary to use a good deal of diplomacy and firmness in enforcing purchase,' though the fact that hunters from his own stables were the first to go made it easier to ask the same of friends and acquaintances in the hunting fraternity.  

                                                   
                                                    Women at an Army Remount Depot, June 1916

Not all horses gathered were in their prime and soon, it became clear that many of them needed care, conditioning, housing and often, breaking in, before they could be deemed suitable for military use.  The existing number of Army Remount Depots was not nearly enough to accommodate the growing number of horses and soon Captain Aldin, as he became, was travelling up to sixty miles a day around Berkshire in his role as Remount Officer, overseeing the care, exercise and feeding of up to 500 horses at various stables including Hawthorn Hill racecourse, Hardwicke House in Oxfordshire, Temple House in Marlow and Holyport Riding School.  Aldin was also responsible for the employment of stable hands to manage and care for the horses, and found himself underwhelmed by the quality and inexperience of men sent to him from the local infantry depot.  He once found a 'weedy-looking recruit shaking with fear' in a gangway between a line of two dozen gun horses jostling and squealing in anticipation of their morning feed, who admitted, 'I've never seen a horse close to before sir.  I'm a tailor's cutter by trade!"

                                            
                                             Cecil Aldin's daughter Gwen with one of her charges

Aldin's wife Rita and his daughter Gwen, were already helping out at the Purley Remount stables and Aldin soon began to promote the employment of women at his depots, a suggestion which was met with cynicism by the War Office at first but was soon justified. 

                                                   
                                                    A group of Aldin's Army Remount "strappers"

In his biography he describes the rapid conversion of the stables under his charge to female managment:

'At first they had only quiet R2s (small riding horses) under their charge, but as time went on and their horses were often better "done" and more quickly made fit for issue, more and more of my depots were placed entirely under woman control.  After the first few months of this organisation, I had more applications from hunting women for work than I could find places for.  A system of probationers on a week's trial became necessary which, if successful, entitled them to become stablewomen and riders.  I had very few failures - no instances of slacking over work at either stables or exercise - my difficulty and the difficulty of my head women being chiefly to watch that their "strappers"* did not overwork and make themselves ill.'

* "strappers" - the opposite of "slackers" - a term used to describe men who shirked their war duties.

                                                      
                                                        

Aldin was impressed by his female army of workers who, despite being, 'slight little things,' would walk a mile or two to the nearest railway station to pick up forty or fity gun-horses of LD2s (light draft gunners) and bring them back to the depot tied four or five abreast, each led by a small girl.  Many girls in fact were so small they had to stand on a bucket or box to groom their charges.  Others, presumably those who relished a challenge, specifically asked to be allocated to the most difficult cases - mules that kicked and bit for example or frisky horses that would buck for 'half an hour on end whenever a saddle was put on him.'

                                                        
                                                        Sketch for a painting of the Army Remount Depot bought by the Imperial War Museum

Inevitably, these women-run stables attracted the attention of the press.  In December 1915 issue, both The Tatler and The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News ran photos of Berkshire stables under Aldin's command.  The Tatler, under the title, 'Our Women in War Time - Cutting the Cackle and Coming to the 'Osses,' gave the piece a high society spin and applauded,

'the ladies of Berkshire who, under the "generalship" of Mr. Cecil Aldin, M.F.H., South Berks, are conditioning army remounts at one of the depots in Berkshire.  Miss Iris Ford and her sister, who are very well known in London and in Bucks, will be observed in the picture.  All the work from "stables" to exercise is done by well-known hunting ladies under the supervision of a "head lad," who is also a lady...The work is done on very businesslike lines and is very hard, the hours being 7 a.m. to 6.30p.m.'

At one point, there were over one hundred women under Aldin's charged engaged in doing stable work.  Although many other remount establishments later employed women, Cecil Aldin was the first to do so.  He may be best-known for his art and enchanting animal pictures, but this brief period away from his day job when the war required his services and his enlightened championing of women's abilities boosted the war effort, deserves our recognition.

Luci Gosling

                                                                                                    ____________________

Extracts taken from: 'Time I Was Dead' by Cecil Aldin and The Tatler, Oct-Dec 1915, part of the archive here at Mary Evans Picture Library.

Further reading on Cecil Aldin - 'Cecil Aldin - Story of a Sporting Artist' by Roy Heron (Webb & Bower, 1981)

 A selection of pictures by Cecil Aldin and of the Army Remount Depot here (many more online)

http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=2794