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Fountains of memory in London and Paris

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THE FIRST TIME I visited Paris (France) was with my parents in 1968. We travelled there and back on the Silver Arrow (sleeper) train, which was loaded on to a ferry that plied between Dover and Dunkirk. We tried to sleep in our berths while the train was on board the ship, but I found that difficult mainly because I wanted to watch our train being loaded and unloaded at the channel ports. After returning from Paris, we disembarked from the train at London’s Victoria Station. Immediately after stepping on to the platform, my mother pointed excitedly at a lady exiting the carriage next to ours – our fellow passenger was Sir Winston Churchill’s wife.

During that first visit to Paris, my father pointed out something that sparked my interest. Painted dark green, it was a drinking fountain covered with a decorative dome, which was supported by four sculptures of ladies (caryatids) with bare arms. It was a Wallace Fountain, and after having it pointed out to me, I began spotting them in many parts of Paris,

In 1872 following the Siege of Paris (1870). Sir Richard Wallace paid for 50 of the so-called Wallace Fountains (as described above) to be installed in the city. Each of the drinking fountains is of the same design They were designed by Charles-Auguste Lebourg (1829-1906).

In 1959, a late cast of the of the Wallace Fountain was presented by the London Borough of Shoreditch to Hertford House in London’s Manchester Square. Hertford House is the home of the huge art collection that was established by Sir Richard Wallace, and is now a public art museum – The Wallace Collection.  So, it is appropriate that a cast of one of Wallace’s fountains stands close to the Collection’s main entrance.

A website (www.londonremembers.com/memorials/wallace-drinking-fountain)  revealed something of the history of London’s Wallace Fountain:

“c. 1904 four ornate fountains were installed in Shoreditch. This was done through the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association … Artistically designed water fountains were required and Dudley Fortescue found four designs that he liked, including this Wallace design, which he had seen and liked in Paris. The fountain was made and installed at The Oval, Windsor Terrace, EC1, on 19 July 1904. A newspaper report named an anonymous donor, ‘E. F. F.’.  Philanthropic men would sometimes give the name of a close female relative, rather than their own but, still, we cannot find an E. F. F. for Dudley Francis Fortescue, his wife being Lady Camilla Eleanor Fortescue, and the marriage having no issue. Perhaps the ‘E.’ was a misprint for ‘D.’? In 1959, when the fountain had ceased to function, the Wallace Collection asked Shoreditch Council if they could have it for Hertford House and it was installed in its current location in 1960.”

The fountain in Manchester Square bears the place name “Val d’Osne”. Another website (https://wallacefountains.org/fabrication-of-the-fountains/) explained:

“During the past 150 years there have been few changes to the methods used to manufacture Wallace Fountains. The decorative cast iron process was invented in France by Jean Pierre Victor André who established a successful, award-winning art foundry in 1835 and set up Val d’Osne, a workshop foundry in the Haute Marne region. The Val d’Osne foundry manufactured the first Wallace Fountains in 1872 and Val d’Osne markings can be found on the oldest fountains still operating in Paris.”

Today, the London’s Wallace Fountain is no longer functional, but every time I see it at Manchester Square, it brings back memories of my first of many visits to “The City of Light”.

My first visit to Paris

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WHILE SORTING THROUGH some old photographs, I came across some I had taken during my first visit to Paris. It was 1968 and I was 16. I travelled there with my parents on the overnight Silver Arrow, a train that was put on board a ferry to cross the English Channel. We stayed in a hotel on the Ile St Louis. Everything about the city both enchanted and amazed me.

Paris Gare du Nord

The photograph included in this post was taken through the window of my compartment in the Silver Arrow as soon as the train pulled into Paris Gare du Nord.

I have visited Paris many times since 1968, but it was during my first visit that the city impressed me most. Although the photographs I found brought back happy memories, I have no great yearning to visit Paris again in the near future.

A long way from Paris

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BANGALORE IS ABOUT 4800 miles from Paris (France). The French capital is noted for its gourmet delights, but on the whole the same cannot be said for Bangalore. One exception to this statement is Sunny’s restaurant currently located on Lavelle Road.

Arjun Sajnani created Sunny’s at least 25 years ago. Then, it was in a tall narrow house on a lane leading off Lavelle Road. The kitchen was on the ground floor and there were dining areas in the two floors above it. Often, Arjuna could be standing, working in the kitchen. Back in those early days, Sunny’s was one of Bangalore’s few suppliers of imported Western European cheeses, such as genuine parmesan.

Later, Sunny’s shifted to larger premises on the corner of Lavelle and Vittal Mallya Roads, next to a petrol filling station. The dining area was elegant.

For a brief period, Arjun ran a restaurant serving delicious Sindhi dishes in his original premises. Sadly, he decided to discontinue this interesting eatery.

Even later, Arjun shifted his restaurant to its present location – a two storey villa constructed about 20 years ago. The balconies on the upper floor are supported by stout carved timber pillars which remind one of pillars that you can see in much older traditional South Indian edifices. Diners can sit at tables within the building, or in the garden surrounding it, or on the first floor balconies. At lunchtime on Christmas Day 2022, every table was occupied.

At each of Sunny’s different locations, the food has been magnificent. As our daughter correctly said, eating at Sunny’s is as good as eating in a good Parisian restaurant. Also, Sunny’s Italian food (mainly pasta and pizzas) is above average in quality.

Arjun is an actor and director of theater and films, in addition to being a restaurateur. Dramatic productions require many skills. The same is the case for running a restaurant. Some of the required skills are the same for restaurants and for stage/screen. A restaurateur has to perform well both in the kitchen and the dining room to satisfy his or her clientele. Arjun achieves this successfully. If you have never been to Sunny’s, give it a try!

An artist and teacher in West Hampstead

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WHILE I WAS STUDYING to become a dentist (in the late 1970s), I used to attend an etching and engraving class in a studio in West Hampstead’s Sumatra Road. The class was supervised by the owner of the studio, my mother’s cousin Dolf Rieser (1898-1983). Like my mother, he was born in South Africa. They were both born in King Williams Town, but he was 23 years older than her.

An engraving by Dolf Rieser

Dolf ‘s childhood memories evoke South Africa as it was at the turn of the century (19th/20th) and are recorded in his unfinished autobiography (dolfrieser.com). Here is an extract that gives a flavour of them:


“The climate of King William’s Town was particularly difficult to bear and my mother suffered greatly especially where her nerves were concerned. I vividly remember her awful attacks of migraine when she had to stay in a darkened room. In the end we decided to leave South Africa, as I shall relate later on . My uncle, my mother’s brother, was at that time living on the border of Basutoland. He was running a small trading post and also kept some horses and sheep. This place was right up on the high plateau and was called Moshes-Ford after the famous Basuto chief, Moshes. My uncle invited us up to him for a holiday and I think we first took a train and then had to continue by horse and carriage, which presumably was also the postal service at the time. I remember well an “ooutspan” for lunch near an immense field full of dried bones and skeletons. These were the remains of the “Rinderpest” which shortly before had nearly wiped out the cattle of South Africa. I played football with a cow or ox skull, very much to the annoyance of the grown-ups. The following night we had to spend at the German Pastor’s home and I remember how impressed I was with the enormous bed and unknown eiderdowns.”


The ’Rinderpest’ was a disease that afflicted cattle.

During his classes at Sumatra Road, he would regale us with stories of Paris in the 1920’s and 1930s, when he was there learning etching an engraving in the studios of both Stanley Hayter and Joseph Hecht. One story that sticks in my mind is how he used to attend the same Parisian café as Pablo Picasso. The great master sat at one table alongside the the other leading artists in Paris, and junior artists like Dolf sat close by at another table.

Dolf was an excellent teacher. He showed us how to etch and engrave. However, what impressed me most is that he had the ability to look at his students’ works in progress, understand what we were trying to achieve, and then provide constructive (rather than prescriptive) advice.

I really miss Dolf, even though it is so many years since he died. He had a wonderful sense of humour, was a wonderful raconteur, and, having once trained as a biologist (before becoming an artist), a wonderfully adventurous approach to his métier.

A benevolent dentist

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BEING A RETIRED dentist, I could not resist viewing a special exhibition held at the Museum of Freemasonry in Freemasons Hall in London’s Queen Street near Covent Garden. As a curious Londoner, visiting an exhibition in this imposing building had an additional attraction: a chance to see inside an edifice I have walked past many times, always wondering about it without ever entering it. I was alerted to the special exhibition by a message from a friend in Bombay, who keeps a close eye on current cultural events both in Bombay and London. She thought that this show would interest me because it is about the activities of a dentist, Bartolomeo (also known as ‘Bartholomew’) Ruspini (1728-1813).

Born near Bergamo in northern Italy, son of a minor member of the aristocracy, Ruspini was recognised as a surgeon by The College of Physical Sciences in Bergamo in 1758. He decided to specialise in dentistry and to further his skills, he travelled to Paris, which was then recognised for its training in this field. In those days, dentistry was not a recognised profession as it is nowadays. Most people who had dental problems, sought the assistance of hairdressers, blacksmiths, and others without any professional training. To distinguish himself from these untrained people, he called himself a ‘surgeon dentist’(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartholomew_Ruspini). Today, the people, whom you might call ‘dentists’ are in fact ‘dental surgeons’.  I was qualified to practise dentistry, and one of my dental degrees was ‘Batchelor in Dental Surgery’.

Ruspini arrived in England by May 1752. He married his first wife, Elizabeth Stiles, in 1757, five years before he was accepted as a member of The Burning Bush Lodge of the Freemasons in Bristol. Later, Ruspini went on to establish several new Freemasons lodges (https://rmsghistoryextra.wordpress.com/tag/elizabeth-orde/).  By 1766, he was practising in London under the patronage of the mother of King George III. He had already treated royalty, so great was his reputation as a healer of dental problems.  His acceptance into high society was no doubt facilitated by his renunciation of Roman Catholicism and his second marriage, in 1767, by which time his first wife had died, to Elizabeth Orde. The couple were to produce nine children, five of whom survived infancy. Two of his sons became surgeon dentists.

In an England, which was then not particularly friendly to foreigners, Ruspini was accepted well because of his good nature, excellent clinical skills, and great ability to get on well with people and to ‘network’ in high society. He was highly regarded as a Freemason. His skills on the dance floor, delight in display, and flamboyant character made him a wonderful masonic master of ceremonies. In keeping with the ideals of Freemasonry, Ruspini exhibited much benevolence: hospitality, generosity, kindness, and charity. An example of the latter was his important involvement in the founding of the Royal Masonic School for Girls (in 1788).

Ruspini had his main residence at 32 Pall Mall in London, but also visited Bath frequently. He was famed for his patented styptic, a substance that stemmed haemorrhage. He also created a dentifrice as well as an elixir for easing toothache.

In 1768, Ruspini published the first edition of his “Treatise on Teeth”. I found a copy of its eighth edition whilst searching online. The book is well-written and easy to read and, in many places, not too out of date. It would do first-year dental students no harm to read this informative book, well at least as far as the sections on “The Disorders of the Teeth”.  This section has become somewhat dated, but not altogether so. For example, the author advises that disorders might arise from:

“… any particles of food that stick between the teeth and putrify … the excessive use of smoking and chewing tobacco … sugar, when used immoderately, is another enemy of the Teeth … All mineral exhalations are also very pernicious, as we see by daily experience in all those persons who work in any of the quicksilver, lead, or copper mines etc…”

Of the causes of caries (tooth decay), Ruspini gives several, but does not mention sugar in connection with this common problem, despite what he wrote in the quote above. However, he did consider that sugar was important in another disorder:

“Children who eat too much sugar, or sweetmeats, generally have their gums corroded; confectioners and chemists are subject to this disorder …”

Although much can be criticised as being out of date in his book, Ruspini did a wonderful job of describing concisely and clearly what was known about dental anatomy and pathology in his time. Part of the book is dedicated to clinical case studies. One of these concerned:

“…Captain Nelson, of the Royal Navy, whom I accidentally met at Portsmouth…”

Ruspini cured him of a painful fleshy growth in his mouth, which other surgeons had wrongly diagnosed as syphilitic.

The book ends with adverts promoting Ruspini’s styptic balsam, elixir, and dentifrice powder. A copy of this book and another about his styptic are on display at the special exhibition in the beautiful library at Freemasons Hall. Other exhibits included documents, drawings, cartoons, and a few other objects. For me the great thing about the exhibition was not its contents but introducing to me a truly remarkable member of my profession.

Members of the public visiting Freemasons Hall in Queen Street are encouraged to see the magnificent collection of items and documents relating to freemasonry before seeing the exhibition dedicated to Ruspini. The museum contains a rich variety of exhibits, many of them displaying the Freemasons’ passion for the use of symbols, and most of them objects of great beauty. Not knowing anything about Freemasonry, this first visit to the museum was for me more a dazzling visual experience than a learning opportunity. On a subsequent visit, I hope to spend much more time examining the artefacts and their informative labels.

The Freemasons Hall is a ‘larger-than-life’, exuberant work of architecture and construction. It is the headquarters of the United Grand Lodge of England as well as the Supreme Grand Chapter of Royal Masons of England. The present building was designed by the architects Henry Victor Ashley (1872-1945) and Francis Winton Newman (1878-1953). It was built between 1927 and 1933 to commemorate the 3,225 Freemasons who died whilst on active service in WW1. Some say that the building is art-deco in style. This is the case, but there are also many elements in the design suggestive of a modern version of neo-classicism.

I am grateful to my friend in Bombay for introducing me to Ruspini and by doing so, giving me a reason to visit the remarkable London headquarters of the Freemasons.

Come up and see my etchings

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THE TOWER OF BABEL greeted anyone who climbed the staircase at my childhood home in Hampstead Garden Suburb. Well, actually it was a large engraving of the tower as imagined by Dolf Rieser (1898-1983). Dolf, who was born in King Williams Town in South Africa, was related to my mother’s grandmother Hedwig Ginsberg (née Rieser). My mother and Dolf were cousins. Even though they lived not far from us in north London, I saw little of Dolf and his family until about 1976 when I began studying dentistry. It was then that my uncle Sven, married to my mother’s sister, and his daughter told me that they were about to join the printmaking classes that Dolf held in his studio above his home in Sumatra Road, West Hampstead. As I liked drawing and painting, I signed up as well. The three of us attended the weekly evening classes that Dolf held on Tuesdays. Out of a class of on average six to eight students, three of us and the teacher were all closely related.

At the top of the stairs leading to the studio, there was a small colourful image created by the artist who is now very famous. It was a gift to Dolf given by the artist when both were living in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. Dolf, who had studied biology in Switzerland and was awarded a PhD in 1922 (https://dolfrieser.com/), began studying art in Munich in 1923, and then moved to Paris to study print-making in Atelier 17, the studio of the great surrealist painter and etcher Stanley Hayter (1901-1988) and the engraver Jozef Hecht (1891-1951).

In the compulsory half hour tea breaks during the classes, we used to sit with Dolf whilst he regaled us with tales about his life in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s. Every winter, he used to go to Switzerland to ski. He used to enter the railway station carrying his wooden skis, and Parisians would stop him to ask what they were. For, in those days, it might surprise you to learn, the average Frenchman was unfamiliar with skiing. Dolf used to visit the Café Les Deux Magots in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district of Paris, where he would enjoy the company of other artists. He told us that he often saw Pablo Picasso there, sitting at one of the tables. Dolf said that being a junior and relatively unknown artist at the time, he had to sit at a table near to Picasso’s, which was reserved for the ‘upper echelon’ of the artists community in the city. I cannot recall all that he told us, but much of it was both informative and highly entertaining, if not always entirely suitable for polite company. One bit of French that I learned from him during these entertaining intervals in the class was ‘poule de luxe’, which you can look up for yourself.

Dolf’s lofty studio had several large tables where we worked on our copper and zinc plates. At one end of the studio there was a raised platform, a gallery, on which there was a couch or bed.  The tables were surrounded with a great assortment of stuff, both works of art by Dolf and the plethora of materials and equipment need to make prints, not only on paper but also on plastic and silk, techniques he developed. There was a table with large shallow trays containing nitric acid in which plates of zinc prepared for etching were bathed. The acid in the trays was of variable concentration, unknown even to Dolf, who used to periodically chuck in unmeasured dollops of concentrated acid from brown glass Winchester bottles whenever he felt (rather than knowing for sure) it might be necessary. Often, he did not tell us when he was about to strengthen the liquid. This could prove difficult if someone were trying to make small delicate adjustments to his or her zinc plate. Occasionally, one or other of us would shout, dismayed:

“Oh, Dolf, you didn’t say you were adding acid. Now, see: the acid has eaten deeper than I was expecting.”

But the ever-ingenious Dolf usually always had a way of remedying what looked to be disastrous at first sight. Today, I doubt that the studio would have passed health and safety rules. There were no extractor fans above the acid baths to remove the toxic fumes emitted when a plate was in the acid. This did not bother any of us.

One end of the studio near the acid baths was dominated by a large, hand operated printing press. The etched or engraved plate was placed on a soft woollen cloth, after having been inked up. A sheet of damp paper was placed over the plate, and this was covered by another cloth. Then, Dolf or one of us turned the large wheel that drove the plate between a pair of metal rollers that applied high pressure to the dampened paper, driving it into the ink-filled grooves on the etched or hand-engraved plates.  When Dolf turned the large wheel, always moving his body rhythmically, he often used to say in Swiss German:

“Aber die Bewegung is immer die glierchen,” meaning ‘but the movement is always the same’.

This referred to a slightly lewd joke he often told us. It went like this. Two Swiss peasants come to Zurich, where they decided to employ the services of a prostitute for the first time in their lives. To save money, they agreed that only one of them should pay for the experience. When the chosen one had finished with the prostitute, he joined his friend, who asked him how it was. The other fellow replied that it was quite pleasant, adding: “Aber die Bewegung is immer die glierchen.”

Printing was always a messy business. To remove the ink from one’s hands, we used a petroleum-based jelly often used by motor mechanics, which Dolf kept in his studio. Removing the ink from one’s hands was easier than removing the lacquer that was painted on to zinc plates to prevent acid from reaching parts that were not to be etched. To explain, a zinc plate is covered with lacquer, which is then removed with tools of varying sharpness to expose parts of the plates which the artist requires to be etched.  This is of course an oversimplification. Dolf who was very inventive showed us many other techniques for producing etched plates. It is likely that his early training in science helped him to develop interesting new ways in printmaking. Dolf maintained an interest in science, as is exemplified by his book “Art and Science”, published in 1972. Its opening words are:

“Art and science are generally considered totally different disciplines. The aim of this book is to draw attention to some of the qualities they share.”

Dolf was a superb teacher. Although the students in our classes were of mixed ability, he brought out the best in each and every one of us. I found that he was particularly good on critiquing composition. The compositions and ideas embodied in his own creations were mostly superb. He used to look at one’s work, immediately understand what we were trying to achieve, and to nudge us gently and constructively in such a way that we ended up with what we were hoping to produce and express.

Once, he held an exhibition of our, his students’, work in his studio and asked us to invite our friends. At the end of the evening, Dolf had sold several of his own prints, but none of us managed to sell any that we had created. Dolf told us off, saying that none of us had worked hard enough, if at all, on getting our friends to buy our works.

After Dolf’s wife died, he continued the classes, but used to be reluctant to see us leave at the end of the evening. I liked Dolf so much that I was always sad when the classes came to an end. However, after he became a widower, we used to follow the classes by walking with him to a Turkish restaurant nearby in Willesden, where we all enjoyed a late supper with him.

The last time I saw Dolf was when he was lying in a hospital bed near the end of his life. Even in hospital, he was in reasonably high spirits, telling his visitors stories and jokes. His house in Sumatra Road still stands. I do not know whether his wonderful studio is still being used to create works of art, but it is with Dolf and his students that I will remember it.

Finally, having read the above, I hope that you will not get the wrong idea when I invite you to “come up and see my etchings”. Many years ago, a young lady did accept this invitation when I made it; she is now my wife.

The year 1889 and me

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SOMETIMES, FAMILIARITY BREEDS contempt. In my case it was Hampstead. I lived close to this picturesque urban village in north London for the first thirty years of my life, visiting the place frequently and becoming very familiar with it.  During the following twenty-five years, although I did not regard it with great contempt, I ‘went off’ the place. Now, in my sixties, I have renewed my liking and appreciation of Hampstead’s uniqueness. My wife and I enjoy making excursions to Hampstead, often having coffee at Louis Hungarian Patisserie on Heath Street, where we went for our first ‘date’ back in about 1970.

BLOG ANNO date

Yesterday, after having been confined to our locality for three months by fairly strict ‘lockdown’, we drove to Hampstead, and enjoyed cups of coffee, maybe not London’s very best but quite acceptable, at a tiny outdoor table next to Louis. I looked across Heath Street from where we were sitting and stared at the Hampstead branch of Tesco’s. This run-of-the-mill supermarket is housed in a building with light red tiling and brickwork with stone window settings. Above Tesco’s, there is an old sign in bas-relief that reads “EXPRESS DAIRY COMPANY LTD” and next to that, there is a plaque with the date “AD 1889”.

The year 1889 has had a special significance for me since I attended the Hall School, a prestigious preparatory school for boys near Swiss Cottage, between the years 1960 and 1965. The Hall School was founded in 1889 and celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1964, while I was still studying there. I do not know why, but since that anniversary, the date 1889 has always had a special significance in my mind.

The founding of a preparatory school in 1889 is one insignificant reason to remember this year. More importantly it was the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution.  To celebrate the centenary of the storming of the Bastille in 1789, Paris hosted the Exposition Universelle in 1889. A souvenir of that grand fair still stands today in its full splendour: the Eiffel Tower. This well-known landmark of Paris was inaugurated on the 31st of March 1889. I learnt that Eiffel’s Tower was completed in 1889 long after I had learnt about the date when my preparatory school was founded.

The French brothers Édouard and André Michelin were also involved in revolution, but not the political sort. In 1889, they ran a rubber factory and within a short time they had invented the air-filled pneumatic tyre. Since those early days, the Michelin company has been a major manufacturer of objects that revolve – rubber tyres.

To encourage and assist motorists, Michelin began publishing both excellent road maps and useful guidebooks. Some of the guidebooks contain recommended restaurants and hotels and others (the ‘Green Guides’) provide useful sight-seeing information for tourists. The awarding of stars for culinary excellence by Michelin has made or broken restaurants in France and elsewhere. To lose a Michelin star is a life-changing disaster for some chefs.   

I have been collecting Michelin guidebooks since just after I left the Hall School. Some of my earliest specimens were published before WW1 when motoring was in its infancy. Immediately after WW1, Michelin published a series of about ten special guidebooks to areas that were affected badly during the war. I have a few of these. They contain much information including photographs of places taken before and after the War. Many of the post-war photographs show sights that resemble the ruins of central Hiroshima after the Atomic Bomb exploded. Heavy bombardment of buildings with ‘conventional’ weapons produced horrendous devastation.

When I began contemplating writing this piece, I knew about 1889 in connection with my old school, the centenary of the French Revolution, and the Eiffel Tower, but not about the foundation of Michelin. As for the former Express Dairy in Hampstead, the plaque with the date 1889 most likely refers to the year in which that branch of the Express Dairy Company was established.  The buildings on that particular stretch of Heath Street, which was built-up in the Victorian era, were constructed in the 1880s.

For many centuries, Hampstead has been the haunt of academics, artists, actors, politicians, and writers. So, it comes as no surprise that the former Express Dairy that I was staring at from my table at Louis has at least one interesting historical connection. In February 1916, the Bolshevik revolutionary Maxim Litvinov (1856-1951) proposed to Ivy Low, whom he married.  He proposed and she accepted inside the Express Dairy in Hampstead’s Heath Street (see: https://prod.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n04/gabriele-annan/ivy-s-feelings). I doubt that I would have ever known that had it not been for the Hall School instilling in me a certain interest in the year 1889.

 

 

Defeated by snow and meeting Churchill’s widow

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WHEN I WAS SIXTEEN, that was in 1968, I made two memorable trips. The first was a youth hostelling trip in Wales and the other, which followed soon after that, was my first visit to Paris.

PARIS Clouds over the Beacons_800 BLOG

Three good friends of my age and I travelled by train to Chepstow in South Wales. Our plan was to walk from one youth hostel to the next, carrying our baggage in rucksacks.

 From Newport, we struggled along footpaths by the east bank of the River Wye until we reached the village of St Briavels. The youth hostel was housed in parts of the place’s mediaeval castle, whose construction began in the early 12th century.

We were assigned beds in a dormitory. At night I struggled to make myself comfortable in the shroud-like sheet sleeping bag that was required by guests staying in British youth hostels. In those days, I used to find it difficult falling asleep in places away from home. St Briavels was no exception. In the middle of the night I felt the urge to go to the loo, but because I was anxious about walking across the dark castle courtyard to the hostel’s only toilets, I remained becoming increasingly uncomfortable until day broke.

The eight mile hike from Newport to St Briavels had been a hard, tiring ‘slog’. We were not looking forward to doing something similar the next day. We walked a few miles until we reached a main road, and then boarded a local bus. At this point, dear readers, you need to know that in 1968 youth  hostels were only supposed to be used only by travellers making their way under ‘their own steam’ (i.e by walking, cycling, canoeing, horse-riding etc.), but not by motorised transport.

We reached the small town of Crickhowell and walked from there towards an isolated youth hostel on the edge of the Brecon Beacons mountain range. The Nantllanerch youth hostel, which only functioned between 1966 and 1969, was about a mile from the house where its warden lived. We were the only people staying in this un-manned hostel miles away from anywhere. It had no electricity and the chemical toilets were attached to septic tanks. Lighting was via gas lamps fuelled from a cylinder. This delightful place was also supplied with an out-of-tune upright piano. We stayed there for two nights, using the day between them to climb one of the nearby peaks. I had never climbed a mountain or a significant hill before. Every time I saw what I hoped was the summit, it proved to be a ridge behind which there was another gruelling climb. After that experience, I decided that Everest was not for me. However, a few years later, I did climb, or rather scramble up, Mount Ventoux in the south of France.

We left Nantllanerch and used public transport to reach Brecon, where we spent another night in a youth hostel. Then, again disobeying the rules, we travelled a long way using public transport to Great Malvern, where we spent another two nights. On the day between them, we completed a lovely walk along the ridges connecting the peaks of the Malvern Hills. I fell in love with Great Malvern and have revisited this mainly Victorian resort often.

Every time one left a youth hostel, the warden was required to stamp our Youth Hostel Association booklets with the hostel’s official stamp. On leaving Great Malvern, we notice that the warden had placed the hostel’s stamp upside down in each of our booklets. We wondered why. Long after we had returned to London from Great Malvern, we discovered the reason. An upside-down stamp was to warn the wardens of other youth hostels that the bearer of this stamp had caused trouble or breached a rule. The warden at Great Malvern must have realised that our itinerary as recorded by the hostels in which we had stayed could not have been undertaken without making use of motorised transport along the way.

I loved my first youth-hostelling trip and felt sure that my first trip to Paris, which followed it, would be an anti-climax. But I was wrong. I  travelled with my family to Paris on the Night Ferry train, which was boarded in the evening at Victoria station in London. There were two platforms at the station dedicated to the Night Ferry trains. To enter them, one needed not only tickets but also passports. Our family occupied two neighbouring compartments. My sister and I shared one of these. It was equipped with two berths, one above the other, and a basin with water taps.

The Night Ferry travelled to Dover, where the sleeping cars, such as we occupied, ran along rails into those in the hold of a cross-channel ferry. We all remained in our compartments. After a while, our carriages were pulled out of the ferry and onto the rails at the French port of Dunkirk. I could not sleep a wink. I stared through the glass of the window of our compartment throughout the night. There was not much to see during the sea crossing, but things improved at Dunkirk, where our carriage was shunted around a huge floodlit marshalling yard for what seemed like several hours. As dawn broke, we set off through France towards Paris.

Paris was a wonder, an ‘eye-opener’ for me. I loved everything about it, especially the metro with its curious pervasive characteristic smell and some of its trains that whooshed along on rubber tyres instead of metal wheels. In those far off days, the entrances to station platforms were provided with doors, ‘portillons’, which closed automatically just before a train left the station. These were supposed to prevent passengers from rushing to board the train just before its doors closed. Once, I got caught behind a closed portillon just after my parents and sister had passed through on to the platform. For a moment, I felt panicked, but the family waited for me to be liberated. Above ground, some of the metro stations were decorated with art-nouveau metal work. I loved this because I was already very keen on this artistic style.

We stayed in a small hotel on the Ile St Louis, a peaceful oasis separated from the rest of Paris by the River Seine. It was the nicest place I have stayed in the city. On my first visit, I loved the bookshops on Place St Michel and the well-stocked record shops nearby. We did a great deal of sight-seeing including a visit to the Louvre. What I remember most about this world-famous collection was rather mundane. We had left our coats at a garde-robe near one of the entrances. By the time we had paid our respects to the Mona Lisa and many other great works of art, we had forgotten where we had left our belongings. We spent longer looking for our coats than we had done admiring artworks.

My parents, who were not keen on visiting places that were neither churches nor museums, did take us up the Eiffel Tower, but only to its lowest viewing platform. What impressed me there were the lifts that climbed at an angle rather than vertically. My first visit to Paris was followed by many more, always enjoyable and always eliciting in me the same sense of wonder as my first.

We returned to London on the Night Ferry, arriving at Victoria in the morning. After we had stepped down onto the platform, my mother pointed to a lady disembarking from the next carriage to ours and said to us excitedly:

“Look, there’s Lady Churchill.”

It was Winston’s widow. I had been at the Hall School in Belsize Park when in early 1965, my class gathered around a small black and white TV to watch Winston’s funeral, ‘live’, as it happened.

The next year, following the success of our first hostelling trip in Wales and nearby, my three friends and I decided to go back to Wales on another hostelling trip. The first hostel on our itinerary was at Capel-y-Ffyn in the Brecon Beacons National Park, just north of the ruins of Llanthony Abbey. We booked in and woke up the next morning to discover that the ground was covered with a thin layer of snow. Then, fate struck.

 I had promised to telephone my over-anxious mother every day. So, I went to the village telephone box and rang her. She told me that she had heard that there was snow falling in Wales. I told her how little we had seen. She replied that we were to return to London immediately. I do not know what she was imagining. She might have thought that snow in Wales was likely to be as dangerous as blizzards in the Arctic.

My friends and I knew that my mother’s orders were never to be questioned. It was with great sadness that we packed up (while the snow was melting) and returned to London. My mother’s over-anxiety had wrecked our adventure.

Years later, my wife and I were entertaining the mother of one of my friends on the sabotaged trip. Then in her late eighties, she could still remember being amazed at the time when she heard how my mother had reacted to the news of snow falling in Wales.

To my great relief, my three disappointed friends remained friendly with me despite my vicarious role in greatly abbreviating what promised to be a great trip. Sadly, of the three one died a few years ago. A spot of snow never put him off risking his life more excitingly during his colourful career. Nor, did it deter the rest of us from doing many things that would have given my late mother cause for great anxiety.

 

Photo showing clouds over the Brecon Beacons in south Wales

Paris

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Wallace ladies_500

 

The recent tragic conflagration of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris and its resultant degradation of one of the world’s best-known buildings evoked a sensation that I had not experienced since 1976. In that year, there was a devastating earthquake in the Friuli area of north-east Italy. 

We had good friends living in that area. They had taken us to see many  unique masterpieces of Longobard art and architecture that existed in the area. When we first heard the news, we were extremely worried about the fate of our friends, who, luckily, all survived. We were also concerned about the works of art and architecture we had grown to love.  Fortunately, most of these were restored eventually.

Ten years before the earthquake in Friuli, there was a terrible flood in Florence in November 1966. About 100 people were killed, and many, many valuable works of art perished in the oil-filled flood waters. Our family was extremely upset because we used to visit the Tuscan city every year to see old friends and to enjoy its rich artistic heritage.

We did not visit Florence the following year because of the damage, but recommenced our annual visits in 1968. For years after the flood, the height of the flood water levels was visible on the walls of buildings where central heating oil from the city’s boilers and tanks had mixed with the water and made indelible stains.

The fire in Paris brought back feelings of horror and disbelief that i had experienced in 1966 and ten years later. 

The picture illustrating this blog piece is a reminder of another tragedy that hit Paris: The Siege of Paris (1871) and the Commune. During those difficult times, there were great water supply problems. The English philanthropist Richard Wallace (1818-1890) built a number of drinking fountains for the people of Paris. Each was decorated with the four sculpted ladies shown in my illustration.

Already, many people are offering to donate money to help restore Notre Dame to its former glory. Had he been alive, i am sure Richard wallace would have been a willing contributor.

Come up and see my etchings…

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“Come up and see my etchings…” is often interpreted as being an invitation to sexual adventures. But when I used to say those words, there were, actually, genuine etchings to be viewed.

My late mother had a cousin Dolf Rieser (1898-1983; https://dolfrieser.com/biography/), who used to hold classes to teach etching and engraving. He lived in West Hampstead. I used to attend his classes onc evening a week while I was a dental student (1976-82). Dolf was an excellent teacher and an inventive artist. His comments on composition were constructive and and always apt.  

Dolf, who had a doctorate in some aspect of biology, became interested in art long before WW2. In the compulsory tea breaks that we had during the classes, he would tell us about his life as a young artist in Paris. He would frequent the same cafés as Picasso and other famous artists. The great artists in Paris during the thirties sat at one table presided over by Picasso. Budding artists like Dolf sat at neighbouring tables.  He was very proud of a small picture by Joan Miró, which hang next to the door to his studio in London. Miró, who was five years older than Dolf, had presented his picture to his young friend ( i.e. Dolf).

Having studied in Switzerland, Dolf had learnt how to ski in the 1920s. He used to ski every year in Switzerland while he was becoming an artist in Paris. He told us that in the thirties when he used to arrive at the railway station in Paris in order to visit the mountains with his skis, people would stop him to ask him what he was carrying because in those days hardly anyone in Paris went skiing. Few people in Paris had ever seen skis.

I loved the classes. It was wonderful becoming so immersed in what I was doing that I lost all sense of time and, more importantly, everything that was worring me at the time evaporated from my head during the three hours each week while I was engrossed in creating an artwork.

I graduated as a dentist in early 1982 and went into practice. Soon after that, Dolf died. Also, my urge to create artworks (prints, drawings, and paintings) seemed to disappear. I suppose that was because I was working all day with my hands in the surgery, my need to do fiddly manual tasks in my spare time, such as drawing and etching, diminished.

By now, you are probably wondering whether I ever invited anyone to come up and see my etchings. Well, of course I did, but I will not tell you whom I invited. Suffice it to say that the woman I eventually married has a good collection of my works!

 

The picture is a detail of an etching by Adam Yamey