Lessons from Petlacala for Priti Patel, UK Home Secretary

 

By August an estimated 5,000 people had attempted to cross the Channel from France in small vessels: many in small inflatable overloaded boats with engines provided by unscrupulous people traffickers, some, acting alone, in much more precarious craft such as an inflated paddling pool propelled by shovels. This is a substantial increase compared to last year.

However, some 660,000 people who are not UK citizens move to the country annually, so 5,000 is 0.76% of total non-citizen migration. So, if such crossings this year have increased by  as much as 100%, the total increase in the number of people who arrive by such perilous means is 0.38% of annual inward migration. It is true that there are some special local circumstances that cause particular difficulties. Most of the people rescued from the crossings are landed in Dover. Those who are under 16 years old become the responsibility of Kent County Council, whose child care services struggle to cope. But in general one might argue quite reasonably that a country with our resources should not find it too difficult to deal humanely with an additional 0.38%. This is not to ignore the appalling crimes of the people traffickers, but rather to argue that we can deal humanely with their victims.

 

However, the plight of those who risk their lives in the Channel will never deter Ms Patel from seizing an opportunity to appear tough. She announced the appointment of a Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, and made herself look doubly robust by choosing a former Marine for the post. Exactly how desperate men, women and children in dangerous craft who risk their lives are a threat to the UK she did not specify. Nor are they terribly clandestine, since their very purpose is to be found and put ashore in the UK. To be just to her Commander, he has stressed that his role is to disrupt the business model of the people smugglers who exploit those desperate enough to risk their lives to reach our country. Whether the Patel plan is the right answer is a big question, but that will not trouble Ms Patel. Her principal focus seems to be to enhance her political reputation.

 

Ms Patel has received the rhetorical support of her Prime Minister, who cares as little for humanity as she does. He has denounced the “leftie lawyers” who make it difficult to deport the new arrivals. The Home Office, eager to reinforce the Prime Minister’s message, has issued an animated video in which they criticize “activist lawyers”. The Law Society has pointed out that to uphold humanitarian law by preventing the government from deporting people illegally is not activism – the lawyers in question are simply upholding the rule of law.

 

Ms Patel’s conjuring of threats out of the plight of people who have travelled for years through dangerous territories to reach the Channel is ably supported by some far more disreputable figures. A character called Nigel Farage made a video of himself at a hotel where people rescued from the Channel are being housed temporarily. “Nigel”, as he likes to be known familiarly to his admirers, asked to reserve a room, knowing that none is available. Of course, he had no real intention of staying at the hotel. His purpose was to be refused the God-given right of a British patriot to book the hotel room of his choice even when he has no desire to stay in it. The purpose of his video was to demonstrate that he had been denied his rights by these dark-skinned characters sponging off the British taxpayer.

 

In Epping another hotel houses unfortunate people rescued from their boats. An Epping councillor made a video in which he reported an increase in crime since the new residents arrived. Essex police has stated publicly that no such increase in crime has occurred. The councillor explains that the people of Epping do not want to become Hackney (for my US friends, Hackney is a London Borough with a very diverse population). Asked if he means that Epping should be all-white, he replied that of course that is what he means. Bad news for the 10% of Epping residents who do not meet his criteria to be rightful residents of the borough.

 

Ms Patel, the Prime Minister, “Nigel” and the Epping councillor, might learn a thing or two from the history of the little village of Petlacala, in the eastern mountains of Guerrero, Mexico. The village’s name means in Náhuatl “Place of the Mat Houses”, or “Place Where the Tribute is Stored”. Petlacala was founded in the 15^th, or possibly the early 16^th century, by a group of people who left the valley of Mexico to escape the tribute demands of the Aztec rulers of Tenochtitlan. Their journey of 800km lasted many years, perhaps several decades. At various points they stopped for  a while and settled to cultivate land to feed themselves. The people of Petlacala recorded the story of their migration in a document written partly in Náhuatl, partly in glyphs, with a map and pictures. It was kept by the village shaman, brought out for important ceremonies and to defend the lands of the community in the Spanish courts. We do not know when the first version was created. The current document is a 1953 copy of an earlier lienzo  (a document created on textiles) that was damaged by floods and a fire.

 

Offerings of food placed in front of the Lienzo de Petlacala, San Pedro Petlacala

        The Códice de Totomixtlahuaca, late 16th century. Totomixtlahuaca is about 100km south of San Pedro Petlacala 

 

There are several similar documents in other villages in eastern Guerrero. All tell similar stories of groups that fled tyrannical rulers, violence or famine. In all cases the journeys lasted a number of years. Along the way they relied on the benevolence, or at least the tolerance, of local peoples to allow them to farm land temporarily so that they could feed themselves. The documents describe the formal etiquette and rhetoric involved when requesting land. The newcomers would offer the local ruler gifts, but would modestly emphasize that their gifts were poor. The local ruler would respond respectfully, humbly belittling his merits. The documents do not record whether some requests for land were refused. It is quite possible that the new arrivals were not always made welcome. Nevertheless, they were able to keep moving in search of a place to make their permanent home, eventually achieving their wish. Thus, they received sufficient helping hands from strangers to reach a place of safety.

 

A rain ceremony, San Pedro Petlacala

Now, we should not imagine that the people of Petlacala and other villages in the region settled into a peaceful existence where all prospered and never exchanged an angry word. Conflict with other villages was the norm in 15^th and 16^th century Mexico. Petty warfare was simply a fact of everybody’s life, whether newcomer or long-term resident. Nevertheless, many groups of people were able to wander in search of a better place to live, relatively unimpeded, to till fields to sustain themselves, and eventually to negotiate a place to make permanent new homes. Newcomers and existing communities spoke to one another respectfully and obeyed norms of behaviour and hospitality.

 

San Pedro Petlacala, general view

How differently we behave in the prosperous “global” Britain of which our government likes to boast. Our government demonizes the vulnerable and desperate. The goal is to spread alarm and portray the government as a stout defender against threats. A previous Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron once referred in the House of Commons to “swarms” of migrants crossing the Mediterranean. I wrote to my MP to decry the dehumanizing of fellow human beings. His initial response was that the term was uttered in the heat of debate. I replied that nothing Mr Cameron said in the Commons was unscripted and unintentional. He then explained that the term was used to expose the “open door immigration policy” of the Labour opposition. In other words, our Prime Minister depicted vulnerable people as mere insects to score a political point.

 

 

A Prime Minister, a Composer and Who Shot J R Ewing?

 

A chilly day in November 1980 I was waiting at the entrance to the Algonquin Hotel in to meet Harold Macmillan and escort him to a suite where he was to be interviewed for the Casper Citron Show, a New York radio institution. I was nervous: I had never met a (former) Prime Minister before. Mr Macmillan was in New York for the great publishing event of the year, the launch of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians in the Starlight Roof of the Waldorf Astoria.

 

The Algonquin Hotel, 44th Street, New York. The hotel was famous as a place where literary New York would meet.

 

I was Vice President of Grove’s Dictionaries, Inc., a Delaware corporation, with its office in Washington, DC, and a very modest four members of staff. Even before publication day we had sold 3,000 sets at about $1,000 each. Macmillan arrived with a well-prepared quip to flatter a young employee. “Is this the face that sold 3,000 sets?”

 

Harold Macmillan and President Kennedy

 

I was to learn that Macmillan was a consummate performer. The Casper Citron Show was his first, and least high-profile, media event. He had a number of anecdotes and witty remarks prepared for the interview. As we progressed to increasingly high-profile interviews, he told the same stories, and cracked the same jokes, polishing them so that for the biggest event they would be pitch perfect.

 

Casper Citron

 

The big event was the Dick Cavett Show on PBS television, filmed not in a hotel suite, but in a theatre in New York with a live audience. When we arrived at the theatre, there was a long line of people waiting to be admitted, but as members of Macmillan’s retinue we were ushered immediately to front row seats. In those days, TV cameras were large pieces of equipment connected to their power by large cables, which radiated out from the “living room” set. When Cavett introduced him, Macmillan walked towards the set, and then made a big show, leaning on his stick, of being apprehensive about stepping across the cables. This was a ploy to convince Cavett that he was dealing with a frail old man. That old man just happened to have a razor sharp mind and the wiles of a fox.

 

Dick Cavett interviewing Winton Marsalis

 

 Pinchas Zukerman

The really big night was on St Cecilia’s Day (the patron saint of music), 22 November 1980. This was to be a big occasion, in a spectacular setting, enhanced by a few dozen trees. The line-up was also spectacular. We had hired as our publicist a young woman, Stephanie Cooper,  who specialized in the Classical music scene. Stephanie was a friend of Pinchas Zukerman, so she booked him and his accompanist to play two sonatas. His fee was $10,000: I remember the number well since my annual salary at the time was $35,000. Our speakers, apart from Macmillan, and Stanley Sadie, the editor of Grove, were the composer Virgil Thomson, and Leonard Bernstein. The mercurial Bernstein was a real coup for our event. He had agreed to attend on three conditions: that we provide a car to collect him and take him home, that he be given a free set of Grove, and that we provide his personal bottle of his favourite whisky.

 

Virgil Thomson

 

The evening was proceeding splendidly when Bernstein was invited to speak. Macmillan rose from his chair on stage and held out his hand, but rather than shaking hands Bernstein enveloped the old man in a startling bear hug. Bernstein would refer to Grove in his speech as “a great achievement”, a remark that our copywriter noted and which we used in publicity for many years until ordered to desist by Bernstein’s lawyers. However, his opening comment was somewhat tactless. He remarked that the British are good at dealing with setbacks. For example, they can be engulfed in a political scandal (a reference to the Profumo affair) and go on to produce this “wonderful achievement”.

 

Leonard Bernstein

 

Then he turned to what he had really come to say. Bernstein had been a great admirer of J F Kennedy and a regular guest at his White House (Macmillan, incidentally, had been a friend of JFK and of his wife Jackie). It happens that JFK was shot on St Cecilia’s Day 1963. The New York Times traditionally ran a front page story on 22 November to mark the day, but in 2001 the JFK story was displaced to the inside pages by the revelation of who had shot J R Ewing in Dallas the previous night. Bernstein was outraged and used our event to lambast the fickle American public. One of our guests, the actor and TV personality Kitty Carlisle Hart, was heard to remark “Lennie’s flipped again”. Then a man in the audience stood up to shout Bernstein down.

 

With the help of another guest, my boss Nicky Byam Shaw, the chairman of Macmillan Publishers, managed to persuade Bernstein to return to his bottle of whisky. After months of planning, I was dismayed that my big evening in New York City had descended into a shouting match. However, this incident confirmed that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Associated Press put a report of the rumpus on its wire service and over the next days press clippings from all over the USA arrived in quantities we could never have dreamed of without the help of Lennie Bernstein. I recall customers replying, when I asked how they had heard of Grove, “that Bernstein business”.

 

The Starlight Roof, Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Park Avenue, New York

 

The Waldorf launch was without doubt the most spectacular event in my publishing career, which would last another 36 years. And Grove was the most successful element of that career. Before the second edition, published in 2001, we sold tens of thousands of sets in hardback, a deluxe edition bound in North African goat skin, and a paperback. We had some celebrity customers. Paul Simon’s office called one day to ask if we could deliver a set the same day if it was paid for by a cashier’s cheque. The next week we saw a photo of Simon on the front cover of a magazine, his set of Grove displayed behind him. Brian Eno once told an interviewer, who asked him what were the rewards of success, that it meant that he could buy a set of Grove.

 

Perhaps one of my more exotic sales took place in a hotel lobby in Washington, D C. A Korean choral director, aptly named Dr Bang Song Song, had called our office to ask if he could pay for two sets with travellers’ cheques. South Korea was a military dictatorship and foreign currency was difficult to obtain in Korea. Since he was traveling on official business Dr Bang had special access to dollars. We met in the lobby, he signed the cheques and we delivered his books to Seoul. I met Bang Song Song again in 2001 at the residence of the British Ambassador in Seoul, who was holding a reception to mark the publication of the second edition of The New Grove. I don’t think he recognized me, but Bang Song Song is a name I will never forget.

 

When I worked at Macmillan, I learned that one of my friends there had her own Bernstein story. Alison had worked for a music publisher. Bernstein was in London and wanted to see the conductor’s score of the piece he was to conduct. Now, large scores are expensive and are not reproduced in multiple copies. Bernstein had a cigarette hanging from his lips as he pored over the score. The ash at the end of the cigarette grew longer and longer, threatening to fall on the precious score. Alison did not dare tell the great man to stop smoking, so she decided to blow the ash away from the score – and all over Bernstein’s suit.

 

I have always been grateful to Lennie Bernstein for unwittingly giving my publishing career a small boost, even though I felt decidedly ungrateful that night in 1980.

75 Years Ago in Rangoon

 

Today is the 75^th anniversary of VJ (Victory in Japan) Day. I heard some veterans, including one from Ghana drafted at age 18 to defend the Empire, interviewed on the radio and cast my mind back to my father-in-law, Ron Waddams, who was in Rangoon that day, aged 25.

 

 

Ron Waddams, Self-portrait, oil on canvas, 1943-1946?

 

Ron was a member of the 61 Indian Reproduction Group I. E., a unit composed of artists, designers and printers formed to print maps for the commanders of the 14^th Army as they planned to Burma Campaign. They left Greenock, Scotland, on 23 February 1943 aboard an ancient merchant ship, to sail in convoy via Dakar and Freetown, with a brief stop in Cape Town, to Durban. A hot, sweaty, smelly journey, perfumed by boiled cabbage, sleeping in hammocks or on tables. Two months later they boarded a re-purposed P&O cruise liner (more cabbage, no luxuries) bound for Bombay, where they arrived in June 1943.

 

 

Ron Waddams, The Mess Deck, watercolour on paper, 1943. This was painted in late February or early March 1943 

 

The 61 Group spent the next two years travelling round India and finally into Burma with all the equipment needed to run a mobile print shop. Their first stop was Dehra Dun in the foothills of the Himalayas. From there they headed south to Bangalore, taking time to visit the Taj Mahal en route. Then they headed northeast, via Madras and Calcutta to Comilla (now Bangladesh). The next stop, Imphal, was their last in India. On 28 April 1944 they entered Burma, travelling for a month by road and river barge.

 

 

Ron Waddams, View from Mussoorie N. India, watercolour on paper, 1943 or 1944. Mussoorie is a Himalayan hill station, 35km. from Dehra Dun

   

A description of the unit at work in a 1944 Christmas programme tells us that the 61 group included Jack Charlesworth, a photographer, whose tenor voice could be heard singing oratorios; ‘Honest’ Ron Armstrong, a draughtsman who longed for the glamour of a dance hall; among the platemakers were Maurice Eyers, who played his flute into the small hours, and Bob Howkins, a long-suffering supporter of Stockport FC; the presses were managed by Bob Tavernor, a veteran lithographer, and kept running by Andy Howe’s expertise with his hammer, wire and pliers; and the stores were run by Ted Carliget, who reclined “like some prosperous ironmonger behind his healthy walrus.” The group commander was Capt. “Eddie” L. Baker, whose avuncular face smiles out from the Foreword.

 

 

Ron Waddams, Early Evening View from the Back of his Tent, watercolour on paper, 1944. The camp was at Thondebavi, near Bangalore

 

When the group gathered in Rangoon in 1945 for a photo it numbered some 50 men, British and Indian, including four Sikhs. Such units typically employed British soldiers for the pre-press, and printing work. Indian soldiers, from a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds, provided administration, security, transport and catering.

 

 

 Ron Waddams, Indian Sepoy, pencil on paper, 1945 or 1946. Probably drawn in Rangoon

 

The three-year journey of the 61 Group had moments of comfort, such as Christmas 1944, marked in Comilla with a souvenir programme designed by Ron. Christmas Eve was celebrated with a darts competition, “traditional Housey-housey” and a buffet, washed down with “spirits and a wholesome brew”. Christmas day began with breakfast at 9am, followed by six a side football. Dinner at 1:30 consisted of roast duck, roast potatoes, peas and carrots, and savoury stuffing, followed by Christmas pudding, cheese, bread rolls and mince pies. Pilsner beer, lime cordial, whisky, brandy, rum and gin quenched thirsts. Cricket was played at 3:30, followed by high tea at 5:00. The evening’s fun began at 6:00: a quiz contest, a musical contest, sticking the tail on a donkey, and “several dramatic sketches by well known artistes”. The troops were asked “to cause the civilians in the village as little annoyance as possible.” 

 

 

 Ron Waddams, Christmas Card, 1945

 

However, military accommodation in a tropical climate, long arduous journeys with heavy equipment, and demanding work in very difficult circumstances required enormous resilience. Many months were spent living in tents. In Comilla they lived in a “basha”, a hut whose thatched roof was home to rats who loved to gnaw on clothing unless it was taken to bed inside each man’s mosquito net. The rats soon took to gnawing on the mosquito nets. Catching and killing a rat in bed was an essential skill. In Burma tropical rain made the road impassable. They slept in their trucks and breakfasted on tea and biscuits. One night on the river in Burma an emotionally-disturbed Indian sepoy shot dead two Indian soldiers.

 

 

 Ron Waddams, View of His Tent, watercolour on paper, 1945. Painted at Imphal (now Bangladesh)

 

The Group returned to the UK in 1946. Release papers dated 19/06/1946 of Sergeant Waddams, Ronald Herbert, gave him the following testimonial:

 

A careful and efficient litho-draughtsman and photo-writer who has a sound knowledge of his job. A studious type, who, though somewhat retiring is capable of carrying responsibility with efficiency and decision.

 

 

 Ron Waddams, Shwedago Pagoda From Lim Chin Tsong's Palace, watercolour on paper, Rangoon, 1945. The Shwedagon Pagoda is also known as the Great Dagon Pagoda or the Golden Pagoda. Tradition holds that it was built 2,600 years ago. It may be the oldest Buddhist pagoda in existence. Lim Chin Tsong was a wealthy Chinese merchant who built a palace in a mixture of Eastern and Western styles between 1915-1918

 

Many years later, Ron would recall his experiences in India and Burma as formative. He emerged from war a pacifist, internationalist, socialist, determined to speak out against the wrongs he had witnessed. He wrote some four decades later: “I lived through World War 2, when there was more barbarity on a massive scale man against man. While serving with the British army in India and Burma, I saw poverty and hunger”. Nevertheless, war never dimmed his optimism. He had written a poem in Bangalore in 1944:

 

            Wars a thousand more will bring strife

            Till perfection’s blissful days come;

            Never man lose faith in your life,

            Your’s the noble birth, your’s the sum.

 

Ron was a meticulous man. He recorded his experiences in writing, on camera, drawings, and in watercolours sent home to his family. My next writing project will be a book about the 61 Group and, I hope, an exhibition of Ron’s watercolours, drawings, photos and memorabilia.

 

J Jenkins, Caricature of Ron Waddams, black pencil and watercolour on paper, 1945 or 1946? The artist may be the member of the 61 Group referred to in the Christmas 1944 programme as "Old Jenky"

The murky mystery of a Haifa family portrait

A few years ago my sister found among our late mother’s papers a photograph of a Middle Eastern family, which bore an inscription in Arabic on the reverse. We knew that our father had spent some time in Palestine, so I asked her to send me a scan, and I decided to investigate.

 

My father, Douglas (“Doug”) Jacobs, was born in 1912 in Grundisburgh, a small Suffolk village near Ipswich, the largest town in the county. Doug was awarded a scholarship to Woodbridge School, a prestigious public (for my American friends, this means private) school. So , like his two brothers (George and Leslie) who also won scholarships, he received an education superior to that available in the village school. Their education, and a general move from the land to towns and cities, was a ticket to a life very different from that of the farmworkers of Grundisburgh. George worked in the insurance business in Cambridge, Leslie in local government in Preston, Lancashire. My father travelled the shorter distance to Ipswich, where he worked for the local Cooperative Society as a shop assistant and, later, as a warehouse manager.

 

Warrant Officer First Class Douglas Jacobs, c.1945

As the country prepared for war Doug decided to volunteer for the Royal Ordnance Corps, where he managed supplies of ammunition and other supplies for the fighting troops. When war broke out he was sent to the Loire Valley, only to be evacuated from St. Nazaire on 17 June 1940 on board a butter boat. He was then sent to the estate of the Marquis of Aylesbury in Wiltshire to train for operations in the Middle East.

I knew from the little he told me that Doug spent some time in Palestine, where he learned Arabic, needed to manage his workforce of Arab and Jewish workers. He witnessed at first hand the tensions that would later result in what Palestinians call the nakba (“catastrophe”), whose consequences Israelis and Palestinians live with to this day. He told me once that he had been urged more than once to sack his Arab workers, but had refused to do so. In addition to his military duties, Doug acquired an orange grove to supply fruit to British soldiers. He also supplied oranges to the officers’ mess, but the officers were required to pay for their fruit.

Life in Palestine was  hard. A fellow soldier committed suicide and Doug was sick several times, once with desert sores, a very painful condition. However, Doug enjoyed organizing things and was evidently good at his job. He was promoted four times, eventually to Warrant Officer First Class in 1945. He was twice “mentioned in despatches”, and awarded the oak leaf decoration as a result.

 

Anis Abou Ziad and his family, March 1942

The photo that my sister had found was clearly connected to Doug’s time in Palestine. The only English element of the inscription on the reverse reads: “Anis Abou Ziad. Wife. Fuad. George. Georgetta.” For some reason one of the four children is not named. My best man was an Arabic specialist and kindly translated the Arabic for me: "Memento of the sincere love and friendship of my good friend Alustan Jacob with his esteemed family.  Anis Ilyas Bou Zayd. Overseer of the Wadi al-Qarar station.  March 1942.” The family are elegantly dressed. Anis, the patriarch, stands firmly upright, a look of proud authority on his face. He has the air of a man with an important place in society. His wife, on the other hand, seems to betray slight nerves. The eldest son has a somewhat quizzical expression.

 

The inscription on the reverse of the photo

Anis clearly valued his relationship with my father. But there was much that the photograph did not tell me. What was Anis overseer of? Why was he working with my father? He identified the family members in English, but wrote the rest of the inscription in Arabic, perhaps indicating that he knew my father could read and understand it.

My work took me to many university campuses in the USA. If there was a Middle Eastern Studies department on campus, I would visit and ask a professor if she/he knew where Wadi al-Qarar is. Invariably, the professor would volunteer to research the place name, but equally invariably would report that the place could not be found. After a while I gave up.

 

Later, I commissioned a book from a great historian of Islam, Carole Hillenbrand. I showed Carole the photo and she sent it to a Palestinian friend at Cambridge. He replied that he was confident that the family were Palestinian Christians, because the un-named “Wife” was wearing clothes identical to those of his own family of the time. He also pointed out that embossed on the photo at bottom left is: C. Sawides, photo, Haifa. Thus, it was taken in a city that is now in Israel, but which in 1942 was Palestinian.

 

The junction at Wadi Sarar station

I continued to be frustrated that I could not locate Wadi al-Qarar. Then I had a breakthrough. Two years ago, we were dealing with the Palestinian mission in London concerning the donation of a painting by Jan’s father. I mentioned the Wadi al-Qarar mystery. The consul asked to see the image and inscription. He told me that the station was, in fact, Wadi Sarar station, also known as Junction station. A wadi is a dry riverbed.

 

Wadi Sarar Station

I discovered that, since the early 20^th-century, the Jaffa to Jerusalem line of Palestine Railways had run along the Wadi al-Sarar. Wadi Sarar station was the fourth stop after leaving Jerusalem. In 1941 the Royal Engineers built an Ammunition Depot sidings there. This track was 10.8km. long. Its construction involved 16,848 man hours of platelaying. According to a study of the Palestine Railways  1945-1948, Wadi Sarar was considered a major depot. The scale of the Royal Engineers' work would seem to confirm that this was an important supply depot. Presumably the depot kept Doug Jacobs and Anis Abou Ziad pretty busy. Their responsibilities probably made them important men.

 

Douglas Jacobs (back row, centre), Palestine, c.1942. Judging by the shadows, this was taken when the sun was at its highest, but several of the men were wearing sweaters, so this may not have been a hot day. One of the Arab workers seems to be a young boy.

My father’s stay in Palestine was brought to an end by preparations for D Day. A few days after the first landings he drove a truck off a landing craft at Caen. He finished the war in Belgium.

 

Douglas Jacobs (back row, centre), Belgium, c.1945

I reflected on the contrast between Wadi al-Sarar and the village green at Grundisburgh, with its oh-so-English church and the Dog pub. Doug Jacobs must have had quite a capacity for endurance. The testimonial in his discharge book in 1945 reads:

 

“A warrant officer whose absolute reliability, foresight and judgement have gained for him the complete confidence both of his officers and of his men. An invaluable man in any high grade supervisory post”

 

This is all I know of the Palestinian episode in my father’s life. I will never know exactly what kind of relationship he had with Anis Abou Ziad, nor whether he met the family of which the overseer was so proud. Nor will “Wife” ever emerge from obscurity to be given her name. 1945 was the end of Doug's military career. He returned to work at the Cooperative Society in Ipswich, and to meet his eldest son, Antony, born while Doug was absent on military duties. What happened to Anis and his family we do not know. It is likely that he lost the position of which he seemed so proud in the nakba of 1948. The photo belongs to a society now lost in a tragic conflict between peoples who claim the same land as their ancestral home.

Mr. J M W Turner goes fishing and collects ships made of mutton bones

Last week Jan and I made our first train journey in months. We had bought tickets for a visit in March to Sandycombe Lodge, J M W Turner’s Italianate country house in St Margarets, west London, but our visit was postponed because of the lockdown. A friend managed to re-book our visit for 23 July, the first day that the house had opened since March.

 

Sandycombe Lodge, front elevation. Note that windows were eliminated after construction of the central structure

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) was the son of William, a barber and wigmaker who had a shop in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, and Mary, a butcher’s daughter. Mary became mentally ill when Turner was ten years old. She died in 1804 in Bethlehem Hospital (Bedlam). Turner was a prodigy. He entered the Royal Academy of Art school aged 14. His first painting was accepted for the Academy’s summer exhibition a year later. He was appointed professor of perspective in 1804, rather poignantly the year his mother died.

 

Sandycombe Lodge, rear elevation. Note the decorative brickwork

Design sketches for Sandycombe Lodge, c.1809-1811, Tate

Turner’s studio and London residence (now demolished) was in Harley Street. He bought two plots of land in St Margarets, one for his house and gardens, another for the pony that pulled his trap. He designed the house himself, apparently with advice from his architect friend John Soane, whose own house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields is today a museum. The arches in the hallway of Sandycombe Lodge are said to be Soanian in style. The central portion of the house was built first. This was a very small residence: a basement kitchen, a ground floor entrance hall and sitting room, and two bedrooms on the first floor. An elegant staircase occupied a substantial part of the ground and first floors. Two wings (a dining room and a little parlour) were added later. Based on close study of the brickwork, conservators have learned that Turner changed his mind as construction proceeded: he was clearly more concerned with getting the design just right than with any costs involved in adjustments mid-works.

The staircase

The original plot, acquired in 1807, was some 2 acres. The garden included two ponds. Apparently, Turner was fond of fishing. The house is not far from the Thames, so he could bring his catch back from a fishing trip and keep it alive in the ponds until he fancied it for supper. The house was his escape from the busy life of a successful and fashionable painter. His father ran both the Harley Street house/studio and the St Margaret’s home. He was also the cook. According to our guide, Turner was careful with money. His father walked from St Margarets to Harley Street, which Google tells me is a journey of some 9^1/2 miles, until he discovered that a passing wagon or cart would take him in exchange for a glass of gin.

 

Design sketch for Sandycombe Lodge, c.1809-1811, Tate

Sandycombe Lodge floor plan

The house is first recorded in the Rates Book in 1813. Turner owned it until 1826, by which time his father had become too infirm to manage both houses. Subsequent owners sold much of the land and the condition of the house deteriorated. During World War II the house was a factory for the manufacture of airmen’s goggles. Shortly after the end of the war, the local council intended to demolish it, but it was bought and saved by Ann Livermore, a musicologist who wrote a history of Spanish music, and her husband Harold, a specialist in Portuguese history. However, they lacked the funds to conserve the house. It was in a very bad state when the Livermores died. By this stage nothing survived of the interior as it was when Turner lived in it. Turner’s sketches of design ideas for the house survive in Tate Britain. The only record of the finished house is a drawing by William Havell, a friend of Turner. 

Sandycombe Lodge, after William Havell, engraved by W. B. Cooke, published 1814, Tate

Conservators were able to find fragments of evidence to guide their work. For example, small traces of marbling (real marble was too costly) in the hallway enabled conservation to reproduce its original appearance. Conservators also know from documentary evidence that Turner had some model ships in glass cases. Apparently, French prisoners of war (this was the time of the Napoleonic wars) made models, mostly from mutton (a large part of a prisoner’s diet) bone. Two enthusiasts have donated models of the type Turner would have owned (but not made of mutton bone) in two glass cases in the sitting room.

 

J. M. W. Turner, Windsor Castle from the River, oil on mahogany veneer, c.1807

Turner’s father’s bedroom is now an small exhibition space. We were lucky to find that the initial exhibition had been extended because of the lockdown. On display were five oil sketches of Thames landscapes on mahogany. When Turner lived in Isleworth, he bought a boat as his floating Thames studio. The common practice at the time was to sketch landscapes in pencil and then to paint the scene in oils in the studio. Turner was innovative in sketching in oils. One of the landscapes is local to us: Windsor Castle seen from the Thames just upstream from where Eton Bridge and the Eton boat houses now stand. Turner clearly knew how to make the most of his materials. One of the sketches on display uses the wood grain to represent ripples on the water. This must be the smallest exhibition space in London, but since only two people at a time are allowed into the room, visitors have time to examine the works closely at leisure.

One of the two wings. This is the dining room wing