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

Buffets for the Buffeted - tea, trains & comfort for soldiers & sailors a century ago

                                                

By December 1915, as many as 8000 men a day were passing through Victoria railway station, either returning home for a brief few days on the 'leave train' or catching the 'boat train' to begin their journey to the Front.  That year, there had been letters to the press pointing out that something should be done to offer these men some sustenance at the beginning and end of their journey.  One letter to The Times even pointed out the disgrace of men, 'cold and hungry', having no refreshments to welcome them on arrival in the capital.  The situation was soon remedied by Mrs (Florence) Kenward Matthews, who had previously manned a trolley of tea and sandwiches to feed refugees from Belgium arriving in London in September 1914. 

                                                    

As Commandant of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Free Buffet, she, along with her Quartermaster, Miss Muriel Perry, set up a catering phenomenon that was to not only feed and provide some comfort to millions of men throughout the war, but was to epitomise the charitable spirit of those remaining on the home front.  Operating under the auspices of the War Office and as part of the Red Cross, the buffet provided a hot cup of tea, mountains of sandwiches and generous slices of cake, all of it free.  The buffet was staffed by an army of women volunteers, who paid their own expenses and worked in six-hour shifts pouring hundreds of cups of tea every hour, buttering bread, slicing fruit cake or, as The Tatler's gossip columnist Eve described it, 'the worst part' - washing-up.  Open round the clock, it was a subject on which the magazines we hold in the archive took much interest, especially in December 1915 when several illustrations and articles appeared celebrating this sterling effort and describing the appreciation of the many soldierly beneficiaries. 

Margaret Chute, writing a piece in The Graphic entitled, 'Tommy's Free Tea Table' illustrated with a picture by Frank Dadd, gave a vivid account, beginning:

'Along the platform, where the leave-train will soon come sliding, stands a row of trestle-tables - four altogether.  On each table rest huge dishes, piled high with sandwiches and appetising-looking cake.  Dozens of china and enamel cups; several serviceable jugs; vast copper urns, full of steaming tea; a few jars filled with bright-coloured flowers adding a splash of colour to a colourless scene.  Behind the trestle-tables stand ladies, clad in sensible dark blue clothes, with the Red Cross badge on their hats, waiting to feed the hungry men who will soon come pouring over the platform in their hundreds.'

Many hours of preparation went into this to ensure refreshments were ready and waiting as soon as trains arrived.  Chute describes one girl who had been making sandwiches for five hours solid.  Her hand had become swollen from holding and wielding a knife forcing her to be removed from her task and put on to the lighter duties of serving at the counter.  Eve, writing about buffet work in her column in The Tatler commented that, 'even the playing-shop part is no fearfully fluffy occupation.  Try lifting your arms to pour out tea or something about thirty times a minute for a few hours and you'll see what I mean.'

Buffets at other London rail terminuses soon opened, including Liverpool Street and London Bridge.  At the latter, run by Lady Limerick, Queen Alexandra herself took a turn at pouring tea when she paid a visit in December 1915, handing out coffee and cakes to unsuspecting customers for over an hour.  When she was eventually recognised, she improved on the occasion by collecting for the buffet's money box and on leaving, announced her intention of returning soon.  The event was captured by the artist W. Hatherell in The Graphic for its 25 December 1915 issue. 

                                                                                

The fact that buffets were entirely free (though they accepted voluntary contributions in collection boxes), delighted and surprised many of the men who proffered coins, expecting to pay.  Margaret Chute, in another article for The Graphic in April 1916 - 'From Battle Front to Buffet' - described one soldier's reaction to the news that he would not have to pay.

'Up to the counter a young shy soldiers pushes his way.  "A cup of tea, please, and a sandwich," he says, nervously, while his eyes - hungry eyes - regard the cake longingly.  Somebody gives him his tea and a big sandwich - and a smile too.  Then he grows very red, fumbles in many pockets, under much kit, and mutters, "How much, please?"  Another smile comes over the counter.  "It's all free - quite free!"  The amazement on his head is almost pitiful.  "Free?" he echoes.  "Why I - I thought - I - please, miss, may I have a piece of cake, too?"  "Of course you may - as much as you like!  "And nothing to pay, really, miss?"  "Nothing to pay!"  Munching his cake he talks to older soldiers who have made many visits to that Buffet.  "Yes, it's a fair marvel!" admits one man.  Just have as much as ever you can stuff - that's their motto here - and not a farthing to pay!  I suppose it's just subscriptions as have kept it going.  Costs over a hundred and fifty quid a week I heard one lady say.  And all they have is this 'ere box on the counter - and it's not a big 'un, at that!"  Shaky, his hand creeps up to the box, and he contributes his mite, from real gratitude.'

                                                    

Such largesse was difficult to sustain, and there were frequent appeals in the press for contributions in order to keep the buffet going.  One suspects that the rash of articles and illustrations around this time a century ago, was part of a fundraising drive to raise awareness and generate donations to keep this essential service going.  The Field magazine published an appeal that month stating, 

'...it costs over £800 a month at present for food: eighty ladies give their services entirely free; and every troop train is met on the platform with trollies loaded with warm drinks and good food.'

Almost two years later, in September 1917, The Graphic reported that, 'The Soldiers' and Sailors' Free Buffet at Victoria Station which has done such splendid work ever since the war began, is threatened with extinction, the funds being now exhausted.  At a weekly cost of £250 about 6000 men are fed here daily, and up to the present, 5,000,000 have been given refreshment  free of charge.  It would be a national disgrace is the Buffet were no longer able to welcome the returning and speed the parting heroes, and our readers are urged to send their contributions to Mrs Kenward Matthews.' 

A week later that year, Eve in The Tatler repeated the appeal.  Staffed largely by middle and upper class women, the buffets were a war charity close to the heart of high society magazines such as Tatler.  Money also came from theatrical fundraisers; George Robey adopted the buffet as one of his charities putting on matinee variety performances at the Coliseum, generously donated by the theatre impresario Oswald Stoll for the afternoon.  Robey even wrote a poem, which accompanied Margaret Chute's April 1916 article.  The 56-line poem, entitled, 'A Tommy's Appreciation of Victoria Station Free Buffet' set the scene in London when weary Tommies arrived after a long journey.  Robey's verse was steeped in Cockney music hall vernacular:

''Ave you ever struck London at two in the morn?

Lor' love a duck - ain't it cold!

When you're dying for something to drink as is warm,

But it ain't to be bought - not for gold'

Then later on in the poem, an ode to the women who ran the buffet, as well as those who donated to keep it going...

'They're ladies, they are: us, an' REEL ladies, too -

Servin' cawfee and cake to the swaddies.

An' they're there all the night, with a kind word or two -

Lor' - they must have eight 'earts in their bodies.

I've never seen 'eaven - an' don't s'ppose I will -

I'm just doin' MY bit - for the Nation,

An' I ain't seen an angel, but I'd like to bet

That they're just like them gels in the station.

I says to one lady there - "Pardon me, mum,

But who's payin' for all this 'ot drink?"

She says, "Tommy, my lad - it's the Public who pays -

I SHOULD say, those of 'em who THINK!"

Well, whatever they've give - if it's pennies or quids,

As sure as the Lord's up above 'em,

Their names'll be writ in the Good Book some day,

An' all we can say is - "Gawd luv 'em!"

                                                                                

 

 

                 

For Florence Kenward, her own considerable efforts spent organising, overseeing and publicising the buffet scheme did not go unrewarded.  In October 1917, she was one of a number of women who were decorated by the King at Buckingham Palace for their contribution to the war effort, becoming an Officer of the British Empire.  No doubt the news would have cheered many of the men who enjoyed the simple but satisfying comforts, in particular one soldiers, described by Margaret Chute.  Having drifted from the leave train without anything to drink or eat for about thirty hours, he declared,

'Talk about medals.  If anybody ever deserved one it's the folk what runs this place - saved many a man, they have.  And never anything but smiles.  Bloomin' marvels, that's what they are!'

© Luci Gosling/Mary Evans Picture Library

Click to see a selection of pictures on railway buffets during the Great War http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=33695

  

  

Motley & Morale - The Role of Fancy Dress in the First World War

                                                             

                                                                            A Concert behind the Lines by Fortunino Matania, The Sphere, 29 November 1915

Last month, I was asked to give an illustrated talk on fancy dress during the 1910s at a wonderful event entitled The Century. Run by Salon London & Odette Toilette it was an immersive, decade-by-decade tour of the 20th century where the audience enjoyed a mix of talks, fragrance and cocktails evoking each period's social and cultural phenomena from the rise of the department store to the heyday of film noir.

Drawing on the Mary Evans archive for the slot on fancy dress, it became apparent that costume balls were something of a craze in the years leading up to the Great War, covered in forensic detail by the illustrated weekly magazines we hold here. There are some wonderful examples.  The Shakespeare Ball at the Albert Hall in 1911 was reckoned, by The Bystander, to rival the Coronation Ball itself in splendour, and indeed, the costumes sported by the various members of society who attended appear not only appropriately splendid, but also historically authentic.  A year later, a ball at the Savoy in aid of the Middlesex Hospital featured among the costumes pictured in The Sketch, a prehistoric woman, media darling Lady Diana Manners as a Restoration Lely beauty, and Somerset Maugham as a player in Othello.  There seemed no end to the detail and expense lavished on outfits; the Artists' Costume Ball in 1910 saw a group dressed as Aubrey Beardsley characters and others in avant-garde Futurist costumes.  The most exquisitely themed during this period was undoubtedly the Picture Ball, held at the Albert Hall in December 1913 in aid of the Invalids of London Kitchens.  Guests were organised into groups reflecting different artistic movements and styles through the centuries.  The ubiquitous Lady Diana Manners appeared this time as a figure in an Etruscan frieze, while Hazel, Lady Lavery (wife of the painter Sir John Lavery), personified Botticelli's Prima Vera, and was pictured in a full page in The Sketch for her troubles.

 

                                                                  

    Lady Diana Manners as an Etruscan figure at the Picture Ball, 1911                                               Lady Lavery at the same ball as Botticelli's Prima Vera

Such expense and extravagance looked tame in comparison to some of the costume balls held in Paris in these pre-war days.  Paul Poiret's famous One Thousand and Second Nights Ball in 1911 saw guests, dripping in jewels, adopt the French designer's daring Oriental fashions of harem pants, aigrettes and lantern skirts (those who declined to do so were turned away), while the host sat on a gold throne and his wife Denise reclined on plush silk cushions in a gilded cage observing the gaiety.  In May 1912, the Comte & Comtesse de Chabrillon held a ball similar in its opulence.  Jewels were provided by Cartier and colour photographs representing the full rainbow of the myriad costumes appeared in the French weekly title, L'Illustration.

                                                          

                                                                   Persian Costume Ball hosted by the Comte & Comtesse de Chabrillan in 1912

The advent of war, and the associated economical exigencies, meant the costume ball was put into proverbial mothballs for the duration of hostilities.  But that was not to say dressing up was abandoned entirely.  Lady Diana Manners swapped her evening gowns and historic costumes for a nursing uniform as she went to work at Guy's Hospital.  However she, and other members of high society found ways to indulge their love of dressing up through a theatrical concept known as the charity matinee, often shortened to 'charity mat' in high class slang.  In the same spirit as the pre-war balls, high-born young ladies and society scions would appear at these fundraising shows for afternoon performances (leaving theatres free for the professionals to take over in the evening).  Very little acting took place; it was all about dressing up and creating a spectacle at which the audience would clap politely and go home satisfied they had contributed to the war effort for matinees were always, without exception, in aid of one war charity or another, be that the Concerts for the Front Fund, the Three Arts Employment Fund or the Serbian Relief Committee.  These wordless tableaux proliferated.  In the last week of June 1915 alone Eve, The Tatler's gossip columnist, reported three jostling for space - 'Princess Patricia's Comforts Fund, one for her Canadian Light Infantry; Mrs Keppel's entertainment at the Ritz for the Officers' Hostel in Belgrave Square; and the In-Aid-Of at Wyndham's Theatre on Monday week for Lady Lytton's hospital in Charles Street.'  The Angels tableaux, staged at the Palace Theatre in November 1917, featured Violet Bonham-Carter (the ex-Prime Minister's elder daughter) and Hazel, Lady Lavery, among others in series of recreations of Old Master paintings, inspired, perhaps by the Picture Ball theme just a few years earlier.

Dressing up for entertainment purposes went beyond West End theatres and Mayfair mansions as concert troupes were an essential element in boosting morale among the men at the Front or in hospitals at home.  Drag was almost compulsory and we have numerous examples of burly soldiers taking to wigs and petticoats with great enthusiasm.  The Sphere's special artist, Fortunino Matania captured a scene of a concert taking place in a French barn behind the lines with soldiers bellowing out songs dressed in female attire, while our collection of photographs of Quex House VAD Hospital, part of the Powell-Cotton Museum collection show several occasions where patients are dressed up to resemble a lantern-jawed great aunt!  The Tatler featured one photograph in 1917 of two leads in a trench pantomime put on by the Coldstream Guards where a Private Splatt makes a particularly convincing principal girl!  Being a smart regiment, these panto costumes look very professional - perhaps ordered from a London department store - but in general, costumes rarely mirror pre-war quality.  Nevertheless, the resourcefulness is impressive, not least in the case of men interned at a POW in Germany who appeared in The Tatler in 1917 in fancy dress for an entertainment they were staging. The principle performers were British and Russian officers and among the costumes seen (remarkable considering the disadvantageous circumstances under which the organisers worked) was a pierrot, Napoleon, several clowns and a large number of ladies!

                                                            

                                                             Patients at Quex House VAD Hospital in drag for an unidentified entertainment.

                                                            

                                                            A fantastic array of fancy dress costumes at the POW Camp in Furstenberg, Mecklenburg, Germany

                                                             
                                                              Royal Artillery Review, Rouen, France - 1917

Costume also served as a symbol of patriotism throughout the war.  The Women's Right to Serve March, held on a pouring wet and windy day in July 1915, saw 30,000 women walk through London's streets demonstrating for the right to be given useful work and to contribute towards the war effort.  Many of them, at least those who appeared in the papers, were dressed up to represent the Allied nations.  Miss Farnar-Bringhurst, as martyred Belgium, even walked barefoot, giving her costume a particular dramatic poignancy.  

Children too, unknowingly or not, showed their patriotism by donning miniature military uniforms, quickly made available by leading retailers, such as Gamages of Holborn.  In December 1915, Gamages was offering child-size Army and RFC uniforms along with other types of popular war toys.  The music hall star, Vesta Tilley had already carved out a career for herself in the late 19th century as a male impersonator and the war earned her nickname of 'Britain's best recruiting sergeant' as she toured theatres and halls around the country dressed in soldier's uniform encouraging (or shaming, depending on how you look at it) male members in the audience to join up.  As the war progressed, fancy dress not only drummed up support and patriotic fervour but projected messages about how to cope with the war, as exemplified by a photograph of an extraordinary outfit in the Grenville Collins postcard collection, where one lady has dressed up to represent the concept of 'Food Control' - introduced in that year in a bid to counteract food shortages. 

                 

Top left: Vesta Tilley  Top right: A small boy in a miniature British officer's Army uniform helps to raise funds on a Flag Day in London

Bottom left:  Queen Alexandra pictured with Miss Jeannie Jackson, the daughter of a Burnley miner who collected £1,100 in coppers on the streets of Burnley in aid of war funds dressed in a miniature uniform.

Bottom right: The Marchioness of Headfort, formerly known to playgoers as Miss Rose (Rosie) Boote of the Gaiety Theatre, London, at her home, Headfort House in Co. Meath with her daughter Lady Millicent Taylour wearing a miniature military uniform.

               

 

Although fancy dress was an engaging way to project a serious message, it was also a way to escape into fantasy during the dark days of war.  When the stage production of 'Chu Chin Chow' opened at Her Majesty's Theatre in Haymarket in August 1916, it was the daring of the exotic, skimpy costumes that was the main draw and ensured the show ran beyond 1918, with several revivals in the 1920s.  Reminiscent of Paul Poiret's designs for his 1002 Nights Ball, Eve described the dresses as, 'just too utterly lovely for words.  Poiret and the far, far East mixed, you know, with a dash of Bakst and the Russians...'  To keep the show fresh, new costumes were introduced at intervals with photographs published in magazines of the fantastical, scanty creations. 'Very suitable for the sultry climate of Baghdad', wrote the Tatler in September 1917, with a palpable leer, when it featured six photographs of the latest designs.  In January 1919, two months after the war had ended, the cast of Chu Chin Chow were pictured boarding a bus, bound for the Night of the Stage Ball at the Albert Hall - no change of outfit required. 

With an avalanche of relief, fancy dress for its own sake made a welcome return less than three weeks after the signing of the Armistice with the Victory Ball at the Albert Hall.  All society attended (the benefitting charity this time being the Nation's Fund for Nurses) and magazines were awash with spreads showing well-known figures in their costumes.  Centre stage was, as usual, Lady Diana Manners, who led the Victory procession through the hall dressed as - what else but - Britannia.  In March the following year, the annual Chelsea Arts Club Ball, always the most creative and flamboyant, took 'dazzle' as its theme, the disruptive naval camouflage using monochrome zig zags and pattern pioneered by the British during the war.  

The result was a particularly cohesive visual feast, reported by the Daily Paper as 'a great flickograph night, with our vision mocked and tantalised by dazzles of lights and of costumes.'  The wife of photographer Bertram Park, Yvonne Gregory - a photographer herself - posed in her black and white striped all-in-one, almost camouflaged against a matching background.  She appeared alongside several other attendees on the front cover of The Sketch, a publication which prided itself on reporting all the theatrical and society news and so adored a fancy dress ball more than anything.

 

                                                                                       
                                                                                        Dazzle Ball guests pictured on the front cover of The Sketch, 1919

                                                      
                                                         The Victory Ball at the Albert Hall, November 1918. Lady Diana Manners as Britannia top row, 2nd from right


                                                            

As influenced as it was by the war, the style of the outfits at the Dazzle Ball seemed to reflect a new era for fancy dress.  The prescriptive and often ponderous historical favourites of the Edwardian days gave way to frivolous, light-hearted themes with ideas becoming more modern or abstract in keeping with the new post-war era.  Tracing the changes in fancy dress from the dawn of the 1910s and through the upheaval of war, it's fascinating to see how the art of dressing up is an unlikely marker, reflecting the trials, tribulations and preoccupations of a society at war, whether as an expression of patriotism, as a propaganda tool, a means to fundraise, boost morale or as simply a way of having some fun.  Dressing up in khaki it seemed, was not the only costume in which to help win the war.   

For a wider selection follow this link:  

http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=33609

Blog includes extracts from 'Great War Britain' by Lucinda Gosling (History Press, 2014) - http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/index.php/great-war-britain-24639.html

© Luci Gosling 

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Black Poppies - remembering the contribution of British and Colonial black soldiers during the Great War

                     
                       (11053259)

Every November, the Royal British Legion's Poppy Appeal raises funds to support families of the Armed Forces, and the associated wearing of the traditional red poppy has been a powerful symbol of remembrance and recognition since the appeal first began at the end of the First World War.  This year, however, a new flower appeared on some lapels, either in place of or alongside the traditional red poppy.  The Black Poppy Rose campaign, launched this year by Londoner Selena Carty, aims to recognise the Great War contribution of black soldiers and their families, a contribution which for decades remained largely unrecorded.  All funds raised go towards the West Indian Association of Service Personnel.

Prompted by this, we thought we'd look in the archive to see to what extent the contemporary magazines of the time acknowledged the role of black soldiers.  No fewer than eight of the numerous magazines from that period are now digitised, which makes searching far easier, but the findings were sketchy to say the least.  Three small photographs in The Graphic, 23 October 1915, part of a large page of pictures documenting the efforts of Britain's colonies in the war, show ships sailing with troops from the Bahamas and Barbados, and soldiers from the British West Indian Regiment already in England and in uniform.  The men were probably based at Seaford, Sussex, where the first battalion of the BWIR was raised in the autumn of 1915. 

                              


A group of soldiers from the British West Indies Regiment, ready for action on the Western Front in France during the Somme offensive of 1916.

 Although the West Indies regiment of regular soliders had been in existence since 1795 and based in the Caribbean, the BWIR, formed as a separate unit of black soldiers within the British Army, channelled the enthusiastic response among volunteers in the West Indies to join up and serve the mother country.  By 1918, 15,204 black men would have volunteered to serve in the regiment. 

                                

Soldiers from Jamaica pictured in Navy & Army Illustrated, August 1914, part of the original West Indies Regiment.   Royal Engineers on the left and Infantry on the right (picture number 10981126).

George Blackman, who joined the BWIR was interviewed about his experiences by The Guardian in 2002 and recalled,   "We wanted to go. The island government told us the king said all Englishmen must go to join the war. The country called all of us."  Many Caribbean recruits believed that joining up and fighting would affirm both their loyalty and equality.  But one newspaper report from the Stratford Express, 19 May 1915 (found via http://africanandcaribbeanmemorial.com/index.php/centenary-of-the-british-west-indian-regiment/) gives some idea of the prejudice encountered by men from the West Indies who travelled to Europe in order to join up.  It makes uncomfortable reading.

“THE DOCKS – Black Men for the Front At West Ham Police Court To-day”

“Nine Black men, natives of Barbadoes, West Indies, were charged with being stowaways on the S.S. Danube. Mr J.W. Richards, who prosecuted for the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, said that the S.S. Danube made a voyage from Trinidad to England, and the day after leaving Trinidad the ship called at Barbadoes. It was presumed that the men came aboard there for the day. Afterwards they were found on the vessel. Mr Gillespie in court said “In a dark corner, I suppose”? and the people in court laughed. Mr Richards continued that the men were put to work, and they did not cause any trouble. He was told that the men were desirous of enlisting in the Army. Mr Gillespie in court said: “What, do they want to enlist in the Black Guards”?  and there was laughter in court. Detective Sergeant Holby said he had made enquiries at the local recruiting office and they told him they could not enlist because of their colour, but if application was made to the War Office no doubt they could enlist in some regiment of Black men. The accused were remanded for a week

 

Many of those who paid for their own passage to England, hoping to join up and see action were bitterly disappointed.  Though such prejudices were eroded as the war grinded on and shrinking manpower necessitated some loosening of rules, many black recruits were instead given dirty, dangerous tasks in a support, rather than combative role - jobs such as loading ammunition, laying telephone wires and digging trenches, generally in appalling conditions.  Near to the firing line, and suffering the same irritations such as lice and trench foot, black soldiers experienced all of the discomforts but frequently missed out on the glory.  Magazines of the day may have been willing to celebrate the contribution of the Empire's sons but in publications awash with tales of derring-do, heroic battle scenes and VC actions, black soldiers barely get a look in.  Testimonials and first-hand accounts prove that black soldiers fought - and fought well - but the British magazines we hold here, gloss over details of  segregation while acknowledgement of individual heroism is hard to find. 

It is surprising that Walter Tull, a professional footballer for Northampton Town F.C. who rose to the rank of Second-Lieutenant in the 17th (1st Footballers) Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment should be given no mention at all.  He was killed in France in March 1918 during the Spring Offensive and yet there is no inkling of him, even in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News which each week ran a 'Sportsman's Roll of Honour'.

These were magazines that catered to an upper class audience.  Rolls of Honour published each week in magazines such as The Tatler, The Sphere and the aforementioned ISDN tended to focus primarily on figures well-known in 'society'.  Tull, despite his sporting prowess and admirable military career, was brought up in an orphanage would have been of only fleeting interest to readers of these magazines which gave more prominence to rugby, tennis, cricket, athletics and rowing than football.  Nevertheless, it is still unsettling that no trace of him appears in what were popular and widely-read magazines (it is worth noting that another black sportsman, Eldridge Eastman, a Canadian sprint champion, was given brief press coverage when he travelled to Britain in 1915 to join the Northumberland Fusiliers). 

                                         
Eldridge Eastman, Canadian sprint champion undergoes training with the Northumberland Fusiliers in March 1915 (10222238)

Tull's story, which is due to be made into a major feature film for release in 2016, is remarkable but he was not unique, a fact that the Black Poppy Rose campaign seeks to highlight.  As well as the men from the West Indies who joined up to serve, many Africans were also part of the Allied effort, many in the King's African Rifles where companies formed from indigenous African ranks were pivotal in fighting against the Germans in East Africa.  One page from The Sphere in August 1918 carried photographs of the drilling of recruits in Uganda for the King's African Rifles, with accompanying text commenting that they made splendid soldiers - keen, courageous and resourceful as well as being excellent shots and good at football.  The report demonstrates that, like all black regiments, they were led by white officers. 

One discovery in our magazine archive gives a direct comparison of African and Indian soldiers (the latter were given far more prominence in the press).  An article entitled 'The Nursing of our Dark Soldiers,' from The Graphic, June 1918, was written by an anonymous nurse who had spent a year at the base hospital for Indian and African troops in Dar-es-salaam (capital of modern-day Tanzania).  In it, she describes the Indian sepoy as, 'essentially a soldier and a gentleman, but centuries of caste rule and prejudice have narrowed his views of humanity to a vanishing perspective, so it took him some time to widen it sufficiently to admit that the "Kala wallah" (black fellow) was just as much a soldier as his lordly self.'  The stereotypes apparent in the article feel unacceptably prejudiced from a 21st century perspective, but the writer's admiration of her patients is clearly apparent.  Her Indian patients bore their wounds, with 'courage and patience that left their native dignity untouched' while the Swahili had an irrepressible sense of humour, and an insatiable 'thirst for knowledge' exemplified by a tendency to fiddle or remove splints and drainage tubes, simply to satisfy a curiosity about how they worked.  They were 'dear boys,' she writes, 'and if they were rogues sometimes, snatching extra "helps" and cigarettes, if tin spoons occasionally found resting-places under pillows, the culprit was always such a sport, and so genuinely tickled at being found out, that one could only feel that they were good-natured boys, full of life and energy that even wounds and privations could not knock out of them. Marvellously plucky as they were over physical injury, they were most incapable of a long fight against dysentery or pneumonia.'

Elsewhere in the archives, there are some excellent examples of black participation in the war.  Via our American contributors we have sets of photographs documenting African American soldiers including the famed 369th Infantry Regiment, otherwise known as the Harlem Hellfighters, so named by the Germans due to their reputation for never losing a man, a trench or foot of ground to the enemy.  Such was their renown, the welcome home parade around the streets of New York in 1919 saw hundreds of thousands of Americans, black and white, line the streets to cheer their heroes.  We have photographs too of the regiment's band, led by the first prominent African-American bandleader, James Reese Europe.

                         
Some men of the 369th Infantry aka the Harlem Hellfighters, who won the Croix de Guerre for gallantry in action (10978094)

 

                            

James Reese Europe, African-American band leader pictured with the regimental band of the 369th Infantry (10978482)

  The Tirailleurs Senegalais, West African Colonial Army troops who fought for the French were composed of soldiers recruited and conscripted from throughout French West Africa and not just from Senegal.  Often fighting alongside African American troops, 170,000 Senegalese troops fought during the war, 30,000 of whom lost their lives. 

    
Senegalese sharpshooter (10795233)                                            (10988346)

The French humorous magazine, La Baionnette, acknowledged the immense contribution of African troops, albeit by employing comic stereotypes of the time, in a special issue devoted to 'Nos Africains' - a copy of which we have in the library.  The cover is illustrated by the great French cartoonist, Francisque Poulbot. Other colonial soldiers are documented in a superb portfolio of portraits we hold entitled, 'Die Feinde Deutschlands' (The Enemies of Germany).  Examples showing Sudanese and Liberian soldiers are pictured here.

                                                    

  Two soldiers from Sudan serving with the French Army by Theodor Baumgartner in 'Die Feinde Deutschlands' (10114438)

                

                                                   

                                                  Liberian soldiers by Theodor Baumgartner in 'Die Feinde Deutschlands' (10114303)

                                                                  

                                  Photograph of Paul, a private in the Hampshire Regiment, pictured in 1915 (10981114)

But perhaps the most extraordinary picture is a portrait of a soldier in the Hampshire regiment, a  photograph taken in Gosport and signed simply 'Paul'.  We know nothing more about him.  He is an ordinary private, one of hundreds of thousands of men who joined up and were prepared to pay the ultimate sacrifice for his country.  We do not know what happened to him - whether he survived the war or was killed.  But it is a picture that reminds us that this was a global war in which every creed and colour were involved.  A century or so after Paul's photograph was taken, it is right and proper that every soldier is remembered; the Black Poppy Rose campaign aims to honour and commemorate the thousands of black men from Britain and beyond who played their part.  

Luci Gosling

 http://blackpoppyrose.org/

http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=33326

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Down but not Out' - Harold Earnshaw, the artist who learnt to draw with his left hand

Newspaper tear sheet reporting briefly on the 'undaunted' Harold Earnshaw, 1917

Next month, on 13 August, the 13% of the population who use their left hands will be celebrated with National Left Handers Day.  Once considered a physical deficiency, left handed children were forced to learn to write with their right hand at school as recently as the 1960s and 70s.  Thankfully, lefties today are encouraged to embrace their left-handedness and a wide range of adapted tools and writing implements make the process of being left-handed in a right-handed world that bit easier.  Our blog today looks at the extraordinary story of one man, an artist and soldier, who began the war right-handed, but ended it using his left.  

Harold Cecil Earnshaw, known as “Pat” to friends and family, was born in Woodford, Essex, in 1886, the sixth of nine children. His grandfather was Rector of Sheffield University and his father, Frederick, had left Yorkshire to join a firm of scientific instrument makers in the south. Pat met Mabel Lucie Attwell while studying at St Martin’s School of Art in Central London and the pair married in June 1908.  They would have three children together - Peggy, Peter and Brian.

 A talented artist in his own right, Pat would never quite achieve the fame of his spouse, whose nostalgic drawings of chubby children were hugely popular. Yet he had a warm, cheery style of painting and his humorous pictures were regular features of The Bystander, The Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic News and The Tatler.  He also had regular commissions from the publisher Blackie, illustrating books and annuals for boys.  Husband and wife often worked together in the studio and collaborated on pictures – Pat often painting the less “Attwellish” parts, such as animals or scenery.

                     

Two illustrations from 'Winter's Pie' (left) and The Tatler (right), Christmas 1912.  Boy scouts were one of Pat's favourite subjects.

                         
Patriotism & humour:  WWI postcards by Harold Earnshaw.  Likely to have been drawn before Pat's injury.  The boy scout theme continues.

Pat was very much part of the artistic community; he was a member of the London Sketch Club, and when war broke out, he joined the Artists' Rifles, a regiment populated largely by artists, writers and others from the world of the arts.  He was a Lance-Corporal in the Royal Sussex Regiment serving in the Somme area when, on 13 February 1917, he suffered what many people might have regarded as ruinous, life-changing injuries.

He recounted events to the writer, A. B. Cooper in an interview for The Captain magazine entitled, 'Harold Earnshaw and his "Right Hand"' published towards the end of the war. 

"There was nothing unique about it.  It happens most days out there - that or worse.  I had been doing patrol duty along a length of light railway for a fortnight, every now and then becoming motive power to trolleys for the front line.  Myself and another were doing this very thing when I was 'pipped.'  We were shoving up behind, our four hands on the back of the truck and our bodies bent forward like a Rugger scrum of two against the opposing wagon.  The right arm I lost was close to the other chap's left, yet he was not touched.  I was also wounded, although I was quite unaware of the fact, in leg and back, and he did not get a scratch.  Yet the shell that knocked me out burst right over us."

The loss of Pat's right arm, taken clean off at the elbow, while his colleague remained unscathed is a chilling example of the arbitrary effects of shell explosions.  But he was not one to dwell on his bad luck, and was also anxious to emphasise the relatively unheroic way in which he sustained the injury:

"Shells burst here and yonder, yet we went on pushing and pulling, and carrying and fetching, and doing anything required of us like men mending a suburban road of villas with nothing more menacing to fear than a passing car.  It's use, not pluck; indifference, not valour."

He noted how his initial emotion was one of relief.

"I remember sitting up and thinking I was lucky to be alive and I had, even then, visions of a nice, clean bed in hospital and a visit to Blighty.  I don't think I felt very sorry for myself, but I remember thinking 'pity it wasn't my left'.  That was how it happened.  A very ordinary, unheroic way of getting your knockout.  I often feel I did nothing in the army except get wounded, and yet I suppose the main thing is that I was there for anything that turned up."

Pat did not, for one moment, consider his career as an artist over.  As soon as he was able to sit up in bed and hold a pencil, he wrote to his wife and in subsequent letters included one or two little cartoon sketches, each time improving his technique.  His fellow patients watched his progress with fascination, 'keenly interested to see how I shaped with my left, for one and all were in some boat of difficulty, and they were interested in the way I steered mine.'

    

His rapid rehabilitation is chronicled in part by the artwork published in magazines such as The Graphic and, particularly, The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News.  Editors seem to have been supportive and it cannot be denied that the incredible artistic recovery of Harold C. Earnshaw was a remarkable achievement.  In its 28 July 1917 issue, The Graphic published a full page of drawings by Pat entitled, 'Down but not Out: Leaves from a soldier's hospital sketch-book,' featuring a number of semi-autobiographical vignettes showing wounded Tommies in hospital in Stockport where he had spent six months recuperating.  Another illustration, 'The Senior Service' appeared on the front cover of The Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic News in October that year.  The editorial accompanying the picture stressed how the artist had only been released from hospital on 17 July that year, and that autumn, a number of highly competent illustrations, all in Earnshaw's jovial comic style, appeared.   It is not only the quality of the illustrations that is so striking, but also their humorous tone, another hint of Pat's irrepressible optimism.

          

   Two front covers of the Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic News.  'Senior Service' (left) was published 13 October 1917 and 'A Small Objective' (right) on 2 November, 1918

 

                 

The left image, entitled, 'Worth It' admirably demonstrates Pat's ability to see the best in everything and is a wry comment on his own predicament.  It was printed inside the ISDN on 13 October 1917.  'One Never Knows, Does One?' appeared in Holly Leaves, the Christmas number of the ISDN in 1918.  The two images clearly show that within a year, Pat had returned to his previous level of draughtsmanship.

Meanwhile, at home, Pat was finding ways to adapt to daily life.  In another magazine article, he explained how, "My friends considered me 'down and out' for three years at least' but in fact, Pat had adapted to life without his right hand extraordinarily well.  To A. B. Cooper he cheerily demonstrated a number of tools and tricks to help him cope, some of them invented at Roehampton, where men who had lost limbs were rehabilitated.

"It's a case of live and learn.  The need brings the idea.  Friends see something that will suit me, like a combined knife and fork, for instance, and tell me about it.  Here's a cute little thing made by a chum of mine.  Take a simple operation like sharpening a lead pencil.  If my wife did not happen to be about, I was stopped dead.  Try to sharpen a pencil with one hand and see how you shape.  Pretty difficult eh?  Well, here's a bit of wood with transverse grooves.  You clamp it on the edge of the table, put your open knife in a groove, keep it there with this stirruped strap, and sharpen your pencil on it fine!'

Pat Earnshaw's lack of self-pity, and seemingly inexhaustible supply of optimism, make his story all the more incredible.  This is no harrowing tale of endurance and hardship.  This is a man who, faced with a problem suffered by thousands of men during the Great War, simply chose to carry on as before and overcome his disability with the minimum of fuss.  We publish here examples of his work from both before and after his injury.  After just a year or so, there is nothing to distinguish between illustrations drawn by his right, or his left hand.  "It may seem strange," he remarked in one interview, "but the idea of giving up drawing never entered my head."

        

Later examples of Harold Earnshaw's work.  The exquisite 'Worth Going to Bed For' was painted for Holly Leaves, Christmas 1919.  'Bas de Soie' on the right was published in The Tatler, 1 June 1927.

The effects of Pat's 'knockout' were perhaps more serious than this affable and self-effacing man might have admitted.  He died, on 17 March 1937 and was buried alongside the couple's youngest son, Brian (who had died from pneumonia, aged 20) at All Saints Parish Church, West Dean in the Cuckmere Valley.  His family were careful to underline the sacrifice he had made two decades earlier and his gravestone reads, 'In Memory of Harold Cecil Earnshaw who died from war wounds on March 17th 1937, aged 51 years.'

View more images by Harold Earnshaw here: http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=31951

Thanks to Webster Wickham and the family of Mabel Lucie Attwell for providing further source material relating to Harold Earnshaw.

 

 

 

 

 

'Remember Scarborough' - War comes to Britain in December 1914

Early on the morning of the 16th December 1914, a squadron of German battlecruisers and light cruisers commanded by Rear Admiral Franz von Hipper, emerged out of the mist off the east coast of England to unleash a bombardment upon the towns of Hartlepool, Scarborough and Whitby.  The attack was unprecedented, bringing war, fatally, to Britain's shores for the first time since the Civil War.  The elegant seaside spa town of Scarborough was undefended; Hartlepool, which had a clutch of  civilian docks and factories, was defended by three six-inch naval guns on the seafront, manned by 11 officers and 155 local men of the Durham Royal Garrison Artillery.  The guns fired upon the attackers, killing eight German sailors and wounding 12, but they were no match for the estimated 1150 or so shells that came hurtling and rattling through the buildings and streets of the towns. 

The damage inflicted by the raid, which was to last until about 9:30am, was extensive.  In Scarborough 18 civilians were reported to have been killed.  Hartlepool suffered worse with 101 killed and hundreds more injured.  With another four people killed during the 11 minute shelling of the fishing town of Whitby, the news that civilians had been attacked and killed on British soil sent shockwaves around the country.   The fact that, inevitably, women and children, some in their beds, many on their way to school, had been victims of the attack caused widespread condemnation of the German fleet's actions.  This, clearly, was proof that the Allies were fighting a barbaric and unscrupulous enemy.

With public opinion sufficiently inflamed, the outrage was soon being used as a subject to stir recruitment.  Lucy Kemp-Walsh's famous 'Remember Scarborough' poster, showing a furious Britannia urging the young men of Britain to look out to sea and avenge the killings is perhaps the most memorable from this period.  Another, in irate red letterpress declared, 'The Germans who brag of their "CULTURE" have shown what it is made of by murdering defenceless women and children at Scarborough.  But this only strengthens Great Britain's resolve to crush the German barbarians.'

           

  But it's interesting to note the varied depictions of the event among the resources we have here at Mary Evans.  We have a photograph from the collection of the silhouette artist H. L. Oakley showing Oakley's famous 'Think!' recruitment poster in York railway station, alongside another more wordy poster preaching about the need to avenge the attacks on York's nearby neighbours.  The 26 December issue of The Sphere magazine, a publication that strove to faithfully depict events as they happened, featured an illustration by their special artist, Fortunino Matania drawn from a sketch made by another of the publication's artists, G. H. Davis who was at Hartlepool and witnessed the scenes himself.  It shows the Baptist Chapel, with a large part of its upper front smashed away.  It accurately mirrors photographs of the damage to the chapel subsequently circulated, but also depicts the following incident, described in the accompanying caption:

'A shell coming from the sea hit the Baptist Chapel, smashing in a large portion of the upper part of the building; it then went clean through the building, hurtling into the roadway, from which it rebounded and crashed through the first-floor bedroom of the house, seen on the extreme right, killing a woman.  As the shell hit the chapel, causing a haze of dust, men and women came rushing down from all the houses around.  One woman was struck down and fell forwards on the road; a Territorial who rushed to her assistance had his rifle blown out of his hand.'

 

The Tatler magazine featured, on their 23rd December cover, a photograph of a devastated house in Wykeham Street, Scarborough where a Mrs Barnett and two children were killed with the words, 'Enemy's shells damage undefended British towns for the first time in the history of our country'

          
                                                                            Diagram from The Sphere showing position of fleet & their targets

Not everyone reflected the pathos and fiery rage of the now-famous recruiting posters.  The Sketch instead showed the window of a Scarborough antiques dealer with a portrait of Lord Kitchener still defiantly hanging in the window, despite the damage done to the rest of the shop front.  The Bystander displayed a cheeky sarcasm with a double-page spread picturing, 'The Havoc Wrought on England's Great East Coast Stronghold.'  Appealling to its sophisticated readership, it lampooned the German attack treating the enemy's 'frightfulness' and unsporting brand of warfare with a contemptuous tongue in its cheek. 

'The lives of good and brave German soldiers and sailors have been avenged at the expense of English hotel-keepers, shopmen, clerks, artisans, women and children,' it remarked acidly, continuing, 'For the "Scharnhorst", Germany exacted the price of Scarborough Grand Hotel; for the "Gneisenau" she has the grocer's shop of Mr Merry Weather... By sheer inadvertence, it must be admitted, some shells fell at Hartlepool, which has since been discovered by the Germans to have forts and a dockyard.  But these accidental lapses into fair warfare will occur even in the best regulated Navies.'

German satirists were at work too and in the humorous magazine, Lustige Blatter in January 1915, John Bull was pictured being hit in a somewhat sensitive area by the artist W. A. Wellner - proof perhaps that Germany had felt the attack entirely justified and comparatively successful.

        

Not to be outdone, in February 1915, The Tatler published a cartoon based on the famous 'Skegness is so bracing' poster by John Hassall.  'With apologies to John Hassall', J. H. Thorpe (who joined the Artists' Rifles) gave his own homage to the iconic illustration, making a small adjustment whereby Hassall's old salt was forced to hop around to avoid shells falling on the beach around him.  It is one of many cartoons that show the characteristically self-deprecating British sense of humour; able to laugh at themselves even in the darkest of times.  Whether such a cartoon would have been as popular to readers of more jingoistic daily papers such as the Morning Post or John Bull is debatable.

 

York railway station with H. L. Oakley's iconic 'Think' poster & another encouraging men to join up and avenge the East Coast bombardments.

            Advertisement for Scarborough as a holiday resort in June 1914

                                                                    

Our store of material documenting this devastating day 100 years ago looks at the event from all angles.  We have maps and diagrams analysing the attack from magazines like The Sphere and Illustrated War News and even advertisements from the summer of 1914 promote the bracing air of Scarborough as the ideal holiday tonic.  We have also recently added James Clark's famous painting, 'The Bombardment of the Hartlepools' (top left picture at start of this post) to our collection from Hartlepool Art Gallery, while a commemorative booklet, 'The Bombardment of Scarborough,' has come to us via David Cohen Fine Art and includes many photographs and illustrations.

                                                

                                            

                                        

An excellent, detailed account of the day war came to Britain's shores can be read here at the North East at War website

http://www.thenortheastatwar.co.uk/in_your_town/hartlepool/when-death-came-out-of-the-mist

Luci Gosling

 See more on the East Coast bombardments here:  http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=29631

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Royal Sacrifice - Prince Maurice of Battenberg

On this day 100 years ago, the Great War claimed the life of a young and popular member of the royal family - Prince Maurice of Battenberg.  Maurice was the youngest son of Princess Beatrice and Prince Henry of Battenberg, and consequently the youngest grandchild of Queen Victoria.  Born at Balmoral, Maurice inherited his father's dark good looks, and spent much of his childhood, with his three older siblings, in the company of his regal grandmama who made no secret of the fact the Battenberg offspring and particularly Maurice, were her favourite grandchildren.  He attended Wellington College where he was a Lance Corporal in the OTC, and reputedly one of the finest marksmen at school.

As a young man, Maurice was handsome, dashing and popular. He slotted comfortably into the social scene, causing ripples of excitement when he appeared at balls during the 1914 Season.  Photographs of him from this period show him at the races or at Cowes, top hat cocked at a rakish angle, cigarette in mouth, quite the man-about-town.   His penchant for fast cars led to several brushes with the law, including two speeding fines, but a streak of recklessness only enhanced his charms.  When he was caught speeding on the Hampton Court Road on 8 May, with a recorded speed of 34mph, the Prince was reported in the newspapers to have grumbled, ‘You fellows are always out trapping on race days,’ a comment that suggested he was not unfamiliar with driving at such speeds on non-race days.

  

Maurice in childhood, with his grandmother, Queen Victoria, and, in the summer season of 1914, at the races.

 He joined the King's Royal Rifle Corps in 1911, in honour of his elder cousin, Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein who had been a member of the same regiment and had died of enteric fever in 1900 while serving in the Boer War.  It is characteristic that he was among the first to go to France, departing with his regiment on 12 August, just a week after the declaration of war. He took part in the Retreat from Mons and survived a number of near misses, including, reported The Bystander, on 7 October, 'a narrow escape from death, a bullet from a German rifle passing through the peak of his cap.'  The men each side of him were hit, one fatally.  His luck ran out on 27 October.  While leading an advance at Zonnebeke during the 1st Battle of Ypres, he was hit by shrapnel from a shell and died within minutes.  In The Tatler's 28 October issue it was noted by Eve, the magazine's gossip columnist, that Maurice had been mentioned in General French's despatches.  By the next week, she was writing, 'Poor Prince Maurice of Battenberg was only twenty-four' (in fact he was twenty-three) - a the very outset of 'the morn and liquid dew of youth'. 

     
Princess Beatrice with her four children, Ena (later Queen Ena of Spain), Alexandra, Leopold, and in the sailor suit, Maurice.  Right picture shows Prince Maurice with his two elder brothers in full dress uniform.

Maurice was buried in Ypres cemetery, his mother, Princess Beatrice, refusing Lord Kitchener's offer to bring her son's body home, asking, 'Let him lie with his men'.  She took solace in her continuing hospital work where she met and felt some solidarity with the many other women who had lost or had sons maimed in the war.

'Nothing could touch and help me more to bear this great trial, than to know that others feel for me', she wrote.  'To lose a beloved promising young man is a terrible trial, but I can look back with pride on him, and on his work nobly fulfilled, and life willingly given for his King and Country'.

                                                   

Grave of Prince Maurice of Battenberg pictured in the Illustrated War News.  His grave can be visited today at Ypres Town Cemetery.

Luci Gosling

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Images taken from the collections of Charlotte Zeepvat and The Illustrated London News archive at Mary Evans.  See more on Prince Maurice of Battenberg here:  http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=29086

Blog article extracted and adapted from 'Great War Britain' by Lucinda Gosling (History Press).

 

 

 

Pekin Camp at Mount Kemmel - the Chinese Labour Corps on the Western Front

We added this rather fascinating postcard, a view of 'Pekin Camp' near Kemmel Hill in Belgium, to our site the other day.  The extraordinary Chinese style 'paifang' or 'pailou' arch or gateway gives a strong hint about its occupants, for the site was one of those accommodating members of the Chinese Labour Corps (C.L.C.) during the war.

Pekin Camp - Postcard from the Grenville Collins Collection

From 1916, as casualties mounted on the Western Front, there was an urgent need to raise a labour force to take over the heavy and miscellaneous work behind the lines thus freeing up men for combatant duties.  The British, following the French lead, signed an agreement with China - at the time a non-belligerent nation - whereby Chinese recruits would travel the great distance to Europe in order to meet this need.  The majority of men were recruited from the rural Shandong (Shantung) province of China; beginning their journey from their homes in remote villages at recruitment centres and then training camps located at Tsangkou, about 10 miles from the former German port of Tsing-tau, or at Wei-hai-wei (then a British colony).  

                                                    
                                                      Chinese labourers arriving at Boulogne      

Here, 32 sections, each comprising 15 men, headed by a lance-corporal, would form a company of 490 men  and pass through a series of stages in readiness for their role on the Western Front.  Their hair, including their pigtail (queue) was shorn off, they would vaccinated, washed and given clean clothes, noticeably thinner than their traditional padded jackets.  Identification was by number, rather than name, recorded on a brass bracelet worn by each man.  Fingerprints were taken too, with a thumb print marked on a wooden tag worn around the neck.  This dehumanising process was described by a Times correspondent in 1919 who observed that, 'The contrast between the coolies before and after passing through the "sausage machine" was extremely ludicrous.  In spite of his dirt, the coolie in his padded robes and with his long pig-tail possessed a dignity of his own, of which, alas! scarcely a vestige remained when he was shot out at the other end, his hair cropped close to the skull, and his person clad in garments which, though clean, afforded scant protection against the icy blasts chronic at Tsangkou at that season of the year.  Formerly the coolie was paid a small sum for the sacrifice of his queue, but the practice was subsequently discontinued, though the authorities must have netted a substantial profit from the sale of all this human hair.'  

                                                                                                                                                                                            

Tank Corps Central Workshops, Teneur, N. France

After the so-called 'sausage machine' would be a long and arduous three-month journey across the Pacific, in a sealed train through Canada, across the Atlantic to Liverpool from where they would then travel south to Folkestone to depart for France.  Tragically, some C.L.C. members died before they had even set foot on French soil.  A number are buried in Liverpool, thousands of miles from their home. 

The French Army's contingent of Chinese labourers had begun to arrive in France in July 1916 and in January 1917, the first transport ship carrying 1088 labourers in support of the British Army embarked for Europe.  On arrival, they would pass through the vast C.L.C. depot at Noyelles-sur-Mer and allocated to work on what might be a multitude of tasks:  digging miles of trenches close to the front line (and often within range of shell fire), building roads, working at ammunition dumps, felling timber, salvage work and unloading at ports and stations.  Some carried out skilled mechanical duties for the Tank Corps, including repair of engines.  Others diversified into entertainment, introducing an element of Oriental exoticism into concert parties at the Front.  The end of the war saw no reduction in the work required of the C.L.C.  They were given the dirtiest and often most dangerous of jobs - exhuming bodies from battlefield graves and reburying in designated war cemeteries, or clearing areas of ordnance-filled land.  It is interesting to note that the thousands of temporary wooden crosses marking the graves of the fallen, would, in many cases, have been made by members of the C.L.C.  For working a ten hour day, seven days a week, and receiving just three days of leave a year, a labourer would receive payment of one French franc per day, plus his family at home would receive a monthly bonus of ten Mexican dollars.      

Above: Chinese water-carrier at  Sergeant Ernest Blaikley, 28Th Battalion London Regiment (Artists' Rifles)  

Estimates vary, but approximately 150,000 Chinese served as labourers on the Western Front, almost 100,000 of whom were with the British Army.  At least 10,000 Chinese lost their lives in the process, many to the Spanish flu pandemic, but others to enemy action.  Chinese scholars estimate the casualties to be far higher, perhaps as many as 20,000.  Segregated from the rest of the Army in barbed wire camps, the C.L.C. were treated as the lowest of ranks.  The five Chinese men who were recognised for bravery at the front were not awared the Military Medal, but instead a lesser-value award known as the Meritorious Service Medal.  Each man who had served with the C.L.C. received the British Army medal at the end of the war, cast, consipicuously, in bronze rather than the usual silver.

 
Chinese Labour Corps Leaving for China by Bryan de Grineau at Le Havre, Illustrated London News, 21 Feb 1920

A campaign to recognise the forgotten and relatively unsung contribution of the C.L.C. to the Allied war effort, Ensuring We Remember, is vigorously underway with plans to erect a statue in London in memory of these men.  A recent Guardian article throws the spotlight on this campaign and emphasises how the services of the C.L.C. were soon forgotten, with no permanent memorial to the Chinese, save for the cemetery at Noyelles.  

Interest piqued by the postcard of Pekin Camp, I was curious to see what else there might be in the archive on the C.L.C. and searched the ILN for possible references.  There are only a few, but nevertheless some significant additions - a photograph showing men at prayer on Chinese New Year's Day (February 11th)  at one of the camps, and a page of sketches (above) by the ILN's special artist, Bryan de Grineau showing the C.L.C.'s departure from Le Havre in February 1920 .  Intriguingly, the pictures depict a figure who, according to the ILN, was a prominent figure in the C.L.C. - the Rev. J. Webster, a well-known Missionary whose, 'devoted work of the Chinese Section of the British Y.M.C.A.' made him, 'beloved of the Chinese.'  It is interesting to note too that the ILN pointed out, 'the Chinese Labour Corps has its own Roll of Honour, containing a total of 2000 dead.  A special Chinese cemetery has been constructed at Noyelles.  Every man of the survivors will receive the two British war medals.'                                                                      Above: Chinese men at prayer at CLC camp, New Year's Day, 1918

These references, while making no suggestion that the members of the C.L.C. were treated particularly well, nevertheless asserts that their role was not at all underestimated, at least in the immediate aftermath of the war.  The Times article is similarly praiseworthy of the C.L.C. though the tone reminds of their designated servile status:

'I shall always retain a soft place in my heart for the Shantung coolie.  If his faults are conspicuous, his virtues are not less so.  He soon learns to appreciate fair and considerate dealing and shows marked attachment to a popular officer, beyond whom he refuses to look.'

Earlier in the article:

'They dug hundreds of miles of support trenches in forward areas well within shell range.  Although I have seen no figures on the subject, I know that a fair number of Chinese have been killed and wounded by enemy action since they went to France.'

These were men who left their homes and travelled halfway across the world to fulfil an essential role in the most hostile of conditions.  Let us hope that a memorial to the Chinese Labour Corps will become a reality; a permanent, and dignified reminder of an extraordinary contribution. 

See a full selection of images here:  http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=28822

Ensuring We Remember website - http://ensuringweremember.org.uk/

 

Luci Gosling

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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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