Amsterdam - Prinsengracht

 

Copyright - All images are copyright © protected. All Rights Reserved. Copying, altering, displaying or redistribution of any of these images without written permission from the artist is strictly prohibited.

Phellodendron amurense is a species of tree in the family Rutaceae, commonly called the Amur cork tree. It is a major source of huáng bò (Chinese: 黄柏 or 黄檗), one of the 50 fundamental herbs used in traditional Chinese medicine. The Ainu people used this plant, called shikerebe-ni, as a painkiller. It is known as hwangbyeok in Korean and (キハダ) kihada in Japanese.

 

It has been used as a Chinese traditional medicine for the treatment of meningitis, bacillary dysentery, pneumonia, tuberculosis, tumours, jaundice and liver cirrhosis.

 

Amur cork tree fruit oil is a pressed oil extracted from the fruit of Phellodendron amurense. The bark of the tree is an important herbal medicine in China. The oil has insecticidal properties similar to pyrethrum. The oil contains a variety of biologically active substances, including flavonoids (diosmin), alkaloids (berberine, jatrorrhizine, palmatine), saponins, and coumarins. Medicinal applications of the oil include treatment of pancreatitis, reduction of cholesterol and sugar in blood and the treatment of various skin diseases.

 

Оксамит амурський, амурське коркове дерево.

Дерево висотою до 20 (25) м. з густою шатроподібною кроною. Кора стовбура тріщинувата, сріблясто-сіра, оксамитова. Листя до 40 см завдовжки, складаються з 5-11 (13) яйцеподібно-ланцетних листочків, зверху темно-зелені, знизу сизуваті. Квіти одностатеві, жовто-зелені, довжиною 5 мм, зібрані в волоті довжиною до 10 см. Цвіте у червні.

Плід - куляста чорна кістянка діаметром близько 1 см, дозріває у жовтні.

Природно поширений на Півдні Далекого Сходу. Широко культивується в Україні. Тіньовитривалий, зимостійкий. Доживає до 250 – 300 років.

 

Олія плодів амурського пробкового дерева являє собою пресовану олію, одержувану з плодів Phellodendron amurense. Кора дерева є важливою лікувальною рослиною в Китаї. Олія має інсектицидні властивості, подібні до піретруму. Олія містить безліч біологічно активних речовин, у тому числі флавоноїди (діосмін), алкалоїди (берберин, ятроризин, пальматин), сапоніни та кумарини. Лікарське застосування олії включає лікування панкреатиту, зниження рівня холестерину і цукру в крові та лікування різних шкірних захворювань.

 

Ботанічний сад імені Фоміна. Київ. Україна.

Tivoli : Villa Hadrian - The wall of Pecile

 

Italiano : Villa Adriana

Costruita tra il 118 e il 134 fra i monti Tiburtini e la campagna Romana vicino a Tibur ( Tivoli ) .

Dopo 4 anni che la villa fu terminata l'Imperatore morì a Baia dove era andato per curarsi la cirrosi ,aveva 62 anni .

La villa è estesa 300 ettari ,ma ne è stata riportata alla luce solo un quinto ,perché gli scavi ci danno ulteriori notizie sul mondo Romano e gli scavi vanno a rilento .

E' una villa tipica della raffinatezza di questo imperatore .Dei nomi attribuiti solo Canopo è originale ,gli altri sono stati dati dopo .I successori di Adriano continuarono a frequentare la villa in estate ,Diocleziano la restaurò nel 3° secolo .Costantino prese innumerevoli opere d'arte per abbellire la nuova capitale ,l'odierna Istambul .

La villa era ricchissima di sculture e opere d'arte : fra queste il Discobolo di Mirone ( ora ai musei Vaticani ) , Tirannicidi ( ora a Napoli ) ,tre satiri a riposo do Prassitele / uno dei quali è ai musei Capitolini di Roma e tantissime altre .

 

English : Villa Adriana

Was built between 118-134 A.D.between the Tiburtini mountains and the Roman countryside near Tibur ( Today Tivoli ) .

Four years after the villa was finished ,Emperor Hadrian died in Baia ,where he had gone to treat cirrhosis of the liver at the age 62 .

The villa is 300 hectares wide ,but only a fifth has been brought to light ,because the lavations give us more news of the Roman words and are loving down ..

This villa is typical of the refinishment of this emperor .

Of the name attributed only Conopus is original ,the others were given by scholar in later times .

The successor of Hadrian continued to frequent the villa as summer residence .

Diocletian restored it in the 3th century .

Constantine plundered numerous works of art to embellish today's Istambul .

The villa was rich in sculptures and work of art ,among them the Discobolo di Mirone (now in the Vatican Museum ) ,Tyrannicidi ( now in Naples ) ,three satyrs in to take a break by Prassitele .One of which is at the Capitoline Museum in Rome and many other works that i am not here a list .

I was out for a walk along the Manawatu River path when I heard some jetboats approaching. I wasn't sure what I might be able to capture with the 24-105 lens I had on the camera and this boat with its unusual name caught my attention. A heavy crop but still of reasonable quality!

 

© Dominic Scott 2024

After coming home with only half a leg on the back we have been in the animal hospital where the plan was to amputate the rest of the leg. Unfortunately after several examinations they found miscellaneous more problems; worst of it cirrhosis of the kidney. As he would have never again a life without pain we decided to let him go. We had more than 13 wonderful years together.

Phellodendron amurense is a species of tree in the family Rutaceae, commonly called the Amur cork tree. It is a major source of huáng bò (Chinese: 黄柏 or 黄檗), one of the 50 fundamental herbs used in traditional Chinese medicine. The Ainu people used this plant, called shikerebe-ni, as a painkiller. It is known as hwangbyeok in Korean and (キハダ) kihada in Japanese.

 

It has been used as a Chinese traditional medicine for the treatment of meningitis, bacillary dysentery, pneumonia, tuberculosis, tumours, jaundice and liver cirrhosis.

 

Amur cork tree fruit oil is a pressed oil extracted from the fruit of Phellodendron amurense. The bark of the tree is an important herbal medicine in China. The oil has insecticidal properties similar to pyrethrum. The oil contains a variety of biologically active substances, including flavonoids (diosmin), alkaloids (berberine, jatrorrhizine, palmatine), saponins, and coumarins. Medicinal applications of the oil include treatment of pancreatitis, reduction of cholesterol and sugar in blood and the treatment of various skin diseases.

 

Оксамит амурський, амурське коркове дерево.

Дерево висотою до 20 (25) м. з густою шатроподібною кроною. Кора стовбура тріщинувата, сріблясто-сіра, оксамитова. Листя до 40 см завдовжки, складаються з 5-11 (13) яйцеподібно-ланцетних листочків, зверху темно-зелені, знизу сизуваті. Квіти одностатеві, жовто-зелені, довжиною 5 мм, зібрані в волоті довжиною до 10 см. Цвіте у червні.

Плід - куляста чорна кістянка діаметром близько 1 см, дозріває у жовтні.

Природно поширений на Півдні Далекого Сходу. Широко культивується в Україні. Тіньовитривалий, зимостійкий. Доживає до 250 – 300 років.

 

Олія плодів амурського пробкового дерева являє собою пресовану олію, одержувану з плодів Phellodendron amurense. Кора дерева є важливою лікувальною рослиною в Китаї. Олія має інсектицидні властивості, подібні до піретруму. Олія містить безліч біологічно активних речовин, у тому числі флавоноїди (діосмін), алкалоїди (берберин, ятроризин, пальматин), сапоніни та кумарини. Лікарське застосування олії включає лікування панкреатиту, зниження рівня холестерину і цукру в крові та лікування різних шкірних захворювань.

 

Ботанічний сад імені Фоміна. Київ. Україна.

I got the link of this picture of Keith Kanga my childhood friend through a Facebook message from another friend Rama Sethu Ranga Nathan November 2 at 10:54am

  

Dear Mr.Firoze Shakir,

Salam Mala Kum.

 

Greetings from Chennai.

 

Madukar Chandradas Was Also a Singer from Atomic Forest an

old friend of mine.In this collection you may see some of your friends and the Granny From Johnny's castle

 

I will be in Mumbai from 11 th Dec to 17 th Dec.for an AA Conference in St.Pious Church in Goregaun.

 

Would like to meet you and go on a street Shoot with you.

Kindly send your contact phone no's.

 

My respects to you.

God Bless.

Regards.

 

Rama Sethu

 

So with humble apologies to Madhoo I post this picture of Keith Kanga founder of Atomic Forest that was in the beginning was known as 100 Ton Chicken.

 

Keith studied at Cathedral & John Connon school for a short while and his principal those days was Mr Gunnery , Keiths life story is a saga of pain doom and misplaced martyred destiny.

 

Keith was one of the richest kids of mixed parentage his father Dossabhai Kanga was a Parsi businessman , highly educated cultured , and owned the famous New Era Printing Press at Worli , I saw his father once and that was when his body was being taken for funeral , I still remember it vividly.

 

He left behind his widow Gwendolyn Keiths mom and Keith..and a palatial house at Khatau Bhuvan that later on came to be called Jony Castle.

 

Keith mom sent Keith to a boarding school in Darjeeling and when she missed him , she would request my mom to allow me to stay with her this was my proximity with this motherly lady, the most beautiful the most gorgeous that God ever made.

 

I slept in her bedroom and we would endlessly talk about Keith she loved him far too much her only son and its tough to retrieve the long lost memories from the recycling bin of a past that has moved away fast and faded too.

 

I am 58 years old so memory is not in the best of health to reminisce old times..

 

Keith had a vibrant Parsi connection Keki Uncle Jangoo Uncle and many uncles as his mother loved company and lived on the edge , heavy drinking and late night parties was the order of the Kanga house.

 

Khatau Bhuvan had two wings I stayed in a servants quarters with 3 rooms at Wing A and my father Mohomed Shakir was the tenant of Late actor Nawab Kashmiri's family.

 

Nawab saab was already dead when we moved here from a hovel at Kurla and my dad worked at N Swamy Rao Tailors Wodehouse Road those day early 50 s .

 

Keiths mom died of cirrhosis of the liver, and after a legal battle Keiths custody was granted to his maternal grand mother we called Granny instead of his Parsi relatives .

 

Thus began the rise and fall of Keith Kanga the pioneer of Rock in Mumbai perhaps India too.

 

And I shall continue this episode on the picture of Granny in my next post.

 

We moved away from Jony Castle in 1963 and a short stint at Breach Candy we finally made Mohini Mansions Strand Cinema our home and I met Keith on and off.

 

In the 70 s I joined Burlingtons of Bombay at Taj Mahal Hotel and every night after my late shift I would meet Keith Kanga at Slip Disc the local hub of Rock Music and sit and chat with him..and he was very fond of me..

 

I called him Baba like all others did.

 

But before this meeting my father suffered a great financial loss and he was totally destroyed both in mind and body and this was during my SSC final exams , he had sent my mom sisters younger brother to Lucknow , Shakil one of my other brothers stayed with him in a lodge and our house at Mohini Mansions my dad gave away on rent , I did not want to go to Lucknow because of my impending exams Granny and Keith immediately gave me shelter and I stayed with them for about 6 months till my exams got over and good times bought my mom and the rest of the family back to Mumbai.

 

Those six months with Keith and Granny and a pet dog called Fu Fu was part of my poetic illusions..

 

Granny though a Jehovah witness racist and bigot towards all religion liked me because she knew I was Keiths favorite , thus began my Bible studies brain storming and every means to make me a Jeovahs witness , my baptism was to take place at Cuffe Parade that was only a sickly beach those days opposite the Badhwar Park but to my good luck it rained and the baptism was kept for a later date..

 

I was taken way reunited with my family with no dent to my spirituality , Jeovahs witness those days was intense hate for all and I do not want to blame Granny for her actions she never stood up for the recital of the National anthem when the movie ended pretending she had an injured leg.

 

She and both her doting grandson were destroyed but a religion that was totally anti human and a Lost Paradise and a Shaky Watch Tower.

 

She did not like Catholics be it Philip or Erwie Vaz or Appolonius who was Keiths constant help and drug mate.

 

Jimmy Baria who stayed on her wing at Jony Castle was never spared for being a fire worshiping Parsi.

 

The only friend ours who got special treatment was Vimal from Sri Lanka his father was a goldsmith at Gazdar Taj Mahal...Vimal studied at Campion was close to Keith too.

Than there was Dinshah Sanjana Rayomand Framroze, Soli, and many others but yes I remember Neil Chatophadya ..

 

I had once gone to Pune when Keith played for Three Coins.

 

Atomic Forest jammed with foreign players too ..like led zeppelin

 

It was at a bar many years later after Keith got married was usurped cunningly of all his property by a wily landlord it is alleged that I saw his obituary he had gone into the world of lost dreams unannounced and it was Keith Viegas another friend who had placed the obituary.

 

Keith Kanga touched everyone and through my blogs bits of memories I share Keith Kanga with all of you..

 

Yes Friends Die Friendship lives on Forever like a drop of molten tear on a wizened cheek of Hope ..

 

RIP

Keith Kanga of Atomic Forest

  

Dinshah Sanjana

Amazing recollection Firoze. I never met Keith's mother as I befriended Keith when I went to the Cathedral senior school from the middle school in the 7th standard... but the fate our families were intertwined much earlier. The Keki uncle a...nd Jangoo uncle you speak about were my father's brother-in-law and brother. Keith was a big inspiration to me while I was young and searching for my path in life. There were two real bands in my neighborhood..Waterfront and Naked Earth which transformed into AtomicForest. They both impacted me greatly and made me realize that I wanted to be musician and walk this path for the rest of my days.

Amsterdam - Korte Leidsedwarsstraat

 

Copyright - All images are copyright © protected. All Rights Reserved. Copying, altering, displaying or redistribution of any of these images without written permission from the artist is strictly prohibited.

Learn more about this fascinating bat from STRI Post-Doctoral Fellow Mariana Muñoz-Romo:

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKK8lbx9DSI&feature=emb_logo

 

Haven’t been out in the field much recently, so here is a picture from a few years back - a Fringe-lipped Bat - Trachops cirrhosis - from Chan Chich Lodge in Belize. It’s not a particularly interesting or compelling effort - but it turns out to be of at least minor importance.

 

By way of background, there are lots of environmentalists and scientists looking for images to illustrate their projects and flickr is an important searching ground. That’s one reason why I make a careful effort to title and tag my wildlife photos with as much data as possible.

 

In this case, a postdoctoral fellow in Central America needed a picture of Fringe-lipped Bat. In the last few days she was able to find in my photo stream the one I’ve put in the comments section below. On an off chance, she also asked via flickrmail if I had any images of this species showing an orange crust on its wings. The article she is writing concerns this component of the species’s physiology - apparently something related to its mating habits.

 

I didn’t recall any such thing, but did take a look through my Lightroom catalog. Sure enough, I found the above image from the same photoshoot. When I processed it and forwarded it to the researcher, she was ecstatic. Her joy in having an image perfect for her purposes gave me a nice feeling as well.

   

It's easy to take things for granted. I've worked so hard to get to where I am now (all those nites staying up to study, all that anxiety over whether I'll get a good score or get into a good med school, etc. etc.). But then these days, I've been feeling so exhausted at work that I've forgotten why I chose my profession. Today, I saw a patient who has cirrhosis from alcohol use.

 

me: are you still drinking?

patient: I quit 6 months ago.

me: so, not a single sip?

patient: well, a sip, here and there.

 

I went on for about 5 minutes explaining to him the irreversible liver damage caused by his alcohol use and how little reserve he has that any sips of alcohol would be unacceptable.

 

Sometimes, I worry that my patients will block me out mentally because I am being too preachy.

 

As I was walking out of the clinic, he stopped me and said: "all this time I've been in this hospital, you are the first doctor to tell me about my disease." I saw his look of appreciation. His acknowledgement touched my heart dearly. He reminded me of why I chose my profession because I knew that this new understanding was going to help him quit drinking. I think I made a difference, even if it was a small difference...

It makes sense that it should happen this way

That the sky should break, and the earth should shake

As if to say: sure it all matters but in such an

Unimportant way

As if to say:

 

Fly away, sweet bird of prey

Fly fly away

Nothing can stand in your way

Sweet bird, if you knew the words

I know youd say: fly, fly away

 

It makes sense that it should hurt in this way

That my heart should break, and my hands should shake

As if to say: sure it dont matter except in the most

Important way

As if to say:

 

Fly away, sweet bird of prey

Fly fly away

I wont stand in your way

Sweet bird, if you knew the words

I know that youd say: fly, fly away

 

It makes sense that it should feel just this way

That you slowly fade and yet still remain

As if to say: everything matter in such an invisible way

As if to say: its o.k.

Fly...away

 

~Poe

 

Seemed like an appropriate choice of songs, since it's about her dad dying. Hers just had cancer, instead of cirrhosis of the liver.

I can't find a lot of history on this pub, but the first Landlord was registered in 1861, The actor John Le Mesurier, used to drink there but he died in 1983 of cirrhosis of the liver. He now lies in the Churchyard of St Georges Church in the town.

 

Like all the pubs it is closed due to Covid-19.

 

Thanks to all who visit and comment it is appreciated

  

Bartolomé Maximiliano Moré is the king in Cuba. His posters are everywhere, he has clubs named after him and is revered almost as Fidel. He would be 100 in 2019, but died young at 43. His ancestors were Congo royals, so appropriately he was the leader. Early in his career he became best known in Mexico, Dominican Republic, Panama, Colombia, Brazil and Puerto Rico, before he returned to Cuba in early 50's. Oldest of 18 children he started playing music as a child with homemade instruments. He came to Havana as a teenager, but struggled, before his talent was recognized. Success, when it came was huge, but came with too much celebration. He became alcoholic and died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1963. The photo was taken in a Lula Lounge (Toronto part of Havana) at a tribute concert on Oct 11, 2019. Angel Luis Marquez singing with a group 'Guaracha y Son'.

 

75. TMR 2019- Oct-11, P1290128 (2019 Oct Lula Lounge) Uploaded 11. January 2020.

   

(And I Want To Dance) My apology to other James Brown fans.

 

Today, August 29, would be the 100th birthday of Charlie 'Bird' Parker. He lived too fast and died too young. He and a few other jazz musicians are credited with developing a jazz style that he called bebop in the 1950s. When he died at 35 years old, a beat jazz poet who shared a room with Bird, Ted Joans, went around NYC painting 'Bird Lives' as graffiti. Joans' motto was "Jazz is my religion, and Surrealism is my point of view".

 

Parker died on March 12, 1955, in the suite of his friend and patron Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter at the Stanhope Hotel in New York City, while watching The Dorsey Brothers' Stage Show on television. The official causes of death were lobar pneumonia and a bleeding ulcer, but Parker also had an advanced case of cirrhosis and had suffered a heart attack. The coroner who performed his autopsy mistakenly estimated Parker's 34-year-old body to be between 50 and 60 years of age.[Wikipedia]

French postcard in the Entr'acte series by Éditions Asphodèle. Mâcon, no. 003/3. Photo: Collection: B. Courte; D.R. W.C. Fields at the set of My Little Chickadee (Edward F. Cline, 1940). Caption: W.C. Fields' humour is as much in his films as in everyday life! At the entrance to the studio where he is shooting his film, he has posted the following sign: "No admittance to this stage (with or without pass). This includes studio employees!"

 

W. C. Fields (1880-1946) was an American comedian, actor, juggler, and writer, who became known as an entertainer in vaudeville shows and on Broadway at the turn of the century. In the 1920s, he starred in numerous silent film comedies. Fields' comic persona was a misanthropic and hard-drinking egotist, who remained a sympathetic character despite his supposed contempt for children and dogs. In the 1930s and 1940, he became one of Hollywood's best-known film comedians. Among his recognisable trademarks were his swollen nose, raspy drawl, and grandiloquent vocabulary.

 

W. C. Fields was born William Claude Dukenfield in the Philadelphia suburb of Darby, Pennsylvania, in 1880. He was the eldest of five children born to Cockney immigrant James Dukenfield and Philadelphia native Kate Felton. He went to school for four years, then quit to work with his father selling vegetables from a horse cart. At eleven, after many fights with his alcoholic father (who hit him on the head with a shovel), he ran away from home. For a while he lived in a hole in the ground, depending on stolen food and clothing. His first regular job was delivering ice. By age thirteen he was a skilled pool player and juggler and began working in vaudeville. At the age of 21, he travelled across North America and Europe with a juggling act. He gradually incorporated comedy into his act. He imagined faking failures and caught the objects with his feet or on the rebound, with leg movements that might themselves appear accidental to the spectator. The difficulty and mastery of his tricks led to unanimous critical acclaim for his juggling skills, which later earned him a place in the juggling hall of fame. The same was true of billiards, which he practised assiduously to the point of creating tricks, such as hitting the ball in such a way that it jumps backwards, high above the table, and then bounces off a part of his body before entering the pocket, with several variations. Deliberately dressed in ragged clothes, extravagant top hats that made him famous, and a fake black moustache (although he was blond), his original tricks brought him international success. At age twenty-three he opened at the Palace in London and played with Sarah Bernhardt at Buckingham Palace. He starred at the Folies-Bergere with young Charles Chaplin and Maurice Chevalier on the program. In 1906, he made his Broadway debut in the comedy 'The Ham Tree'.

 

In 1915, when he was thirty-five, W.C. Fields moved to New York and made his film debut in the 15-minute short silent film Pool Sharks (Edwin Middleton, 1915), produced by Gaumont. He also participated in the script. On stage, he introduced a few novelties into his cabaret act including a crazy golf game which was seen by impresario Florenz Ziegfeld who contracted him. Fields was a featured comedian in the Ziegfeld Follies from 1915 through 1921. He became a star in the Broadway musical comedy 'Poppy' (1923), about carnival life, in which he played a colourful small-time con man, snake-oil peddler Eustace McGargle. It led to a role in 'George White's Scandals'. His subsequent stage and film roles were often similar scoundrels or henpecked everyman characters. In 1925 D.W. Griffith made a film of 'Poppy, renamed Sally of the Sawdust (1925), starring Fields. He was a sensation in Hollywood and settled into a mansion near Burbank, California. He made several highly popular short films before focusing on features full-time. He made twelve silent films before his first talkie in The Golf Specialist (1930). When sound came W.C. Fields was out as casting agents didn't like his voice. It was only when Paramount was casting Million Dollar Legs (1931) and wanted all the comedians they could get that he got a part. His breakthrough as a film actor came in 1933 with International House directed by A. Edward Sutherland. In the same year, he played Humpty-Dumpty in the commercially unsuccessful Lewis Carroll adaptation Alice in Wonderland, in which numerous other film stars also appeared. On the other hand, the comedy It's a Gift (Norman Z. McLeod, 1934) was a great success. Fields plays a family man who is troubled by nagging wives, bratty Baby Leroy, noisy neighbors, and pesky strangers and seeks his fortune with an orange plantation in California. It contained his famous "sleeping on the back porch" stage sketch. Also in 1934, four more Fields films were released, including You're Telling Me! in which his character - an unsuccessful inventor - receives unexpected help from a princess. The unusual role names Fields bore in his comedies are noteworthy: Professor Eustance McGargle, Elmer Prettywillie, Augustus Q. Winterbottom, J. Effingham Bellweather, Rollo La Rue, Egbert Sousè ("accent grave over the e"), Harold Bissonette ("pronounced Bissonay"), Ambrose Wolfinger, Larson E. Whipsnade, Cuthbert J. Twillie or T. Frothingill Bellows. The names were chosen by himself.

 

W.C. Fields' most famous role was the good-natured but notoriously profligate Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield (George Cukor, 1935). David was played by Freddie Bartholomew, who was only ten years old. Fields admired the Charles Dickens book and wanted desperately to play Mr. Micawber in the film, so he agreed to forego his usual ad-libs and put aside his distaste at working with child actors. After the film's release, Fields received excellent reviews; the New York Times even saw Fields as a "spiritual descendant" of Mr. Micawber. David Copperfield was the only film in which he acted as the script dictated and he did not improvise spontaneously in front of the camera. In 1936, W.C. Fields was forced to temporarily stop working due to an illness exacerbated by his alcoholism. he even gave up alcohol during this convalescence. His contract expired and was not renewed. He then turned to the radio and appeared in mostly spontaneous dialogues on Charlie McCarthy's radio shows with Edgar Bergen. To his surprise, his trading insults with ventriloquist's dummy Charlie McCarthy made him famous again and in 1938, he returned to the big screen. In 1939 he switched to Universal where he made films written mainly by and for himself. He had two of his biggest film successes at Universal in 1940, one alongside Mae West in the frivolous comedy My little Chickadee (Edward F. Cline, 1940), the other in the title role in The Bank Dick (Edward F. Cline, 1940), one of his best-known films today. But his doctor's pleas for moderation did not help, and Fields persisted in his excessive consumption of alcohol, particularly gin. His last starring role was in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (Edward F. Cline, 1941). After long arguments with Universal, he secured almost complete artistic control over the film. The finished result enraged Universal Pictures and was a comedy full of surreal comedy and critical references to the Hollywood business. After that he largely retired from show business, taking only guest roles in a few feature films and occasional appearances on radio shows. In 1945, suffering from several illnesses (bouts of pneumonia, cirrhosis, etc.), he had to enter a sanatorium. He passed away in Pasadena in 1946. Ironically, W.C. Fields died on the holiday he always said he detested, Christmas Day. W.C. Fields was married in 1901 to Harriet Hughes, his partner in juggling performances at the time, and they had one child, William Jr. (1904). Although Hughes and Fields remained married until his death in 1946, they separated in 1908. He had another son with girlfriend Bessie Poole, named William Rexford Fields Morris (1917). His last mistress, Carlotta Monti, with whom he lived for 14 years, described some amusing and insightful anecdotes in the book 'W.C. Fields and Me'. He is interred at Forest Lawn, Glendale, CA, in the Great Mausoleum, Holly Terrace entrance, Hall of Inspiration. He was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Motion Pictures at 7004 Hollywood Blvd. and for Radio at 6316 Hollywood Blvd.

 

Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch, French, and English), and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Chan Chich is located in northwestern Belize near the Guatemalan border. The lodge is built among the ruins of a Mayan city, including a number of temples and several large pyramids containing the tombs of various rulers.

 

Some years ago, before Chan Chich was established, looters dug deep perpendicular trenches into the pyramids to reach the burial chambers. The trenches and burial rooms remain, the contents are now gone, detached from cultural context and scattered among private collections around the world.

 

Armed with a flashlight and a LEDGO LED panel attached to the flash hotshoe on my camera, I carefully entered the deepest of the tombs in search of bats to photograph. As I descended the narrow passage I could make out a number of bats clinging to the back wall. Turning to my head I looked into a side chamber opening to my right. It was full of bats. Startled by the light a number of them flew out brushing close enough that I could feel the air fanned on my face by their flight.

 

I crouched down and slowly moved forward, taking picture after picture. This photograph was taken from directly below a group of Fringe-lipped Bats - Trachops cirrhosis - clinging to the ceiling above me.

Silybum marianum- Milk Thistle

When grown on nitrogen rich soils, especially those that have been fed with chemical fertilizers, this plant can concentrate nitrates in the leaves that are implicated in stomach cancers.

  

Edibility. A mild flavour and somewhat mucilaginous texture. When boiled, the roots resemble salsify (Tragopogon hispanicus. Leaves - raw or cooked. The very sharp leaf-spines must be removed first, which is quite a fiddly operation. The leaves are quite thick and have a mild flavour when young, at this time they are quite an acceptable ingredient of mixed salads, though they can become bitter in hot dry weather. When cooked they make an acceptable spinach substitute.. Flower buds - cooked. A globe artichoke substitute, they are used before the flowers open. The flavour is mild and acceptable, but the buds are quite small and even more fiddly to use than globe artichokes - raw or cooked[4, 100]. They are best peeled and can be soaked to reduce the bitterness. Palatable and nutritious, they can be used like asparagus or rhubarb[12] or added to salads. They are best used in spring when they are young. A good quality oil is obtained from the seeds[4]. The roasted seed is a coffee substitute

  

Medicinal:= Milk Thistle has a long history of use in the West as a remedy for depression and liver problems. Recent research has confirmed that it has a remarkable ability to protect the liver from damage resulting from alcoholic and other types of poisoning. The whole plant is astringent, bitter, cholagogue, diaphoretic, diuretic, emetic, emmenagogue, hepatic, stimulant, stomachic and tonic. It is used internally in the treatment of liver and gall bladder diseases, jaundice, cirrhosis, hepatitis and poisoning The plant dramatically improves liver regeneration in hepatitis, cirrhosis, mushroom poisoning and other diseases of the liver. German research suggests that silybin (a flavonoid component of the seed) is clinically useful in the treatment of severe poisoning by Amanita mushrooms. Seed extracts are produced commercially in Europe

Silybum marianus or Milk thistle. Depending on where you're from other names are blessed milk thistle,Marian milk thistle,Mary milk thistle,Mediterranean milk thistle (where it originated from in the mountains of the region),and Scotch milk thistle.Now,I know the image appears to look tousled,but that's what the flower head looks like.Most milk thistles have a purple or pink flower head,but some have this rare white one you see here.That tiny oblong brown thing you see on the right side is the seed of the flower,it shows up well in the white flower head.It's called milk thistle for the milky-white veins in the leaves.There are many health benefits from this flowering plant, but it's been widely used in treatment for certain liver diseases such as cirrhosis,alcohol hepatitis,viral hepatitis and liver poisoning.There are many milk thistle supplements and extracts sold in the market,and you can even make your own.After all,the plant has been used as an herbal remedy for over 2,000 years! Now of course I'm not a physician,but maintaining a healthy lifestyle is the best medicine for living a longer and healthier life,any doctor will tell you that.

On the hidden gifts of alcopops and their sweet, sweet friends

 

We're Here: Crush a can day

Erdogan has recently shown a complete inability to gauge the anger of the country's Kemalists. He recently offended the secular followers of Atatürk with comments regarding a law aiming to reduce the consumption of alcohol. During a party meeting, Erdogan painted a rhetorical picture of an alcoholic populace: He spoke of police who continually find empty bottles in people's cars, of husbands who beat their wives and of fathers who are a poor influence due to their consumption of beer.

 

Most pointedly, however, he asked if Turkey wanted to follow a law passed by "two drunks" or the "law of God". Since then, the country has been filled with speculation as to who Erdogan may have been referring to. Many believe it was an attack on Atatürk and his Prime Minister Ismet Inönü, who were in office when the ban on alcohol in the country was lifted in 1926. Furthermore, Atatürk is rumored to have died from cirrhosis of the liver. As such, Erdogan's comments are seen as an attack on a national hero...

  

...taken by a derelict hotel in Lambi...

 

Kos, Greece...

This is an anonymously published postcard printed in Great Britain, it shows the view looking south in Lord North Street, Westminster and it dates from the mid 1960s. The houses in the street date from 1722 when the street was known as just North Street, running north from Smith Square where the church of St. John is located, often known as Queen Anne’s footstool because it looks like an upturned footstool and was built during the reign of Queen Anne. Today the houses are sold for vast amounts of money, they are the homes of Politicians and Captains of Industry. Former Prime Minister Harold Wilson lived here whilst in and out of office, Jonathan Aitken a former Conservative Minister and former guest of her Majesty lives here, all in all a very upmarket street. It was not always like this though, in 1868 many of the houses were occupied by Police families and later in the century they became little more than slums. During the 20th Century things looked up for the street and it became populated by civil servants and politicians, one of which was Brendan Bracken, an advisor to Winston Churchill. In 1936 he persuaded Westminster City Council to change the name of the street to Lord North Street after the Prime Minister who lost the thirteen American colonies because it sounded grander.

In 1868 North Street was the home of Inspector Bradstock and his wife of 26 years, Charlotte. He was an Inspector at King Street Police Station which was at 22, King Street, Westminster. King Street was situated on the north side of Parliament Square, it ran north to what is now King Charles Street, running parallel with Parliament Street. There were several streets running at right angles from King Street towards St. James Park, at one time in that small area now occupied by the Treasury building, there were fifty public houses, Oliver Cromwell lived there with his mother, Judge Jefferys lived in one of the side streets as did Isambard Kingdom Brunel, it was an ancient thoroughfare and was the route from Whitehall Palace to Westminster Abbey long before Parliament street was laid out.

On the 7th May Inspector Bradstock was night duty Inspector. At about 10.30p.m. a man was brought in having been arrested a short distance from the station at The Mitre and Dove public house which was on the corner of King Street and Great George Street. The man had been breaking glasses after drinking a glass of ginger beer; he was given into custody by the manager to PS 5A Huntley. The man’s name was James Joseph Smith aged 32 years, a Tailor from Leyton. When he was brought into the charge room, he appeared quite sober but began shouting, “murder, murder, they are after me”. The prisoner’s behaviour led one witness, Inspector David Baldwin to think that he was suffering from Delirium Tremens, the divisional surgeon was called. Inspector Baldwin later testified at the inquest that the prisoner was asked if he had a knife, the prisoner produced a large pair of scissors, but was not searched further because the charge was not a felony. The Divisional surgeon examined Smith and recommended that he be watched continuously. Smith was placed in a cell with an officer on duty outside the cell. At about 1.15 a.m. the following morning Inspector Bradstock visited the prisoner together with PC 12A Brown, Smith requested a drink of water which was provided by the Inspector. As the cup of water was handed over, Smith made a sudden movement towards Inspector Bradstock shouting “I will kill you”, and began stabbing him with a pair of scissors; Smith inflicted three wounds, two in the neck and one in the right arm, the two wounds in the neck were caused by one blow from the scissors which were open. Smith was restrained by other officers including an Inspector Thurgar who saw Inspector Bradstock’s tunic saturated in blood from the two wounds in his neck. When Smith was subsequently searched another pair of scissors was found, so in all Smith was in possession of three pairs of scissors when arrested. Inspector Thurgar took the wounded man to Westminster Hospital. The Hospital at this time was situated in Broad Sanctuary on the site of what is now The Queen Elizabeth II Conference centre, just a few hundred yards from the Police station, the Hospital was demolished in 1951. The house surgeon examined Inspector Bradstock and found a wound at the angle of his jaw to be one inch deep and just missing the jugular vein and a wound in his neck to be three quarters of an inch deep, the wound in his arm was one inch deep; he was treated and later discharged to his home in North Street, Smith Square.

On the 10th May Inspector Bradstock was visited at his home address by Mr. T. Holmes, the Chief Surgeon of The Metropolitan Police, he reported that the wounds were apparently healing and that he was getting on well. However, on the 14th May the wound in his right arm became infected and on 24th May he was admitted to St. Georges Hospital, Hyde Park Corner. He was attended by Mr. Holmes who was also a surgeon at the Hospital, Inspector Bradstock died on 2nd June. The death certificate records the cause of death as Erysipelas, which is an infection caused by the Streptococci bacteria, today the infection is more commonly called Cellulitis the symptoms of which are fever, chills and swelling at the wound site. The infection can lead to Bacteraemia (Infection of the blood) and Septicaemia (blood poisoning). In most cases the infection can be cleared up quite easily with a course of antibiotics, but in 1868 there was no such treatment.

The inquest was held at St. Georges Hospital by the Westminster Coroner, Mr. St. Clair Bedford on Thursday 4th June, when Smith had been questioned, he stated that a few months before he had fallen and injured his head and that on the day he was arrested he was on a holiday and could not remember what had happened. The story about the fall may have been true as subsequent enquiries confirmed. The jury returned a verdict of ‘Wilful murder’. At this point the Coroner paid tribute to Inspector Bradstock by stating that he had always found him to be a most efficient and respectable officer. The two men had known each other, at least professionally for over twelve years. Inspector Bradstock had been an Inspector at King Street since 1856 when he was involved in the investigation of ‘The Parliament Street Murder’ and had given evidence at the inquest. The funeral took place the next day on Friday 5th June, a procession left his home address in North Street for Brompton Cemetery led by the ‘S’ Division band. Estimates vary but some reports stated that the funeral was attended by 13 Superintendents, 125 Inspectors, 100 Sergeants and 1000 Police Constables.

The next day Smith appeared at Bow Street and was informed by the Magistrate Mr. Flowers that Inspector Bradstock had died and that the current charge of ‘Cutting and Wounding’ would be replaced by a charge of ‘Wilful Murder’. On Wednesday 10th June Smith appeared at The Central Criminal Court before Mr. Justice Blackburn, Smith was not legally represented. The Treasury Solicitor had instructed Messrs. Poland and Beasley to conduct the prosecution case. A jury was empanelled to decide on Smith’s competence to plead. The Chief Surgeon of Newgate Gaol, Mr. John Rowland Gibson was called to give evidence, he stated that Smith had been admitted to the gaol on Saturday 6th June and he had seen him every day since. Smith had told him that he had been followed for months previously by persons who wanted to murder him, and on the day of his arrest he had come to town and was again followed. He had gone into the public house and broken the glasses in order to be arrested and escape them. It appears that when Smith found himself in a cell, he was convinced he was in a worse position as his followers were outside the cell waiting to shoot him. It seems obvious that Smith was suffering from some sort of paranoia and was described in newspaper reports of the trial as ‘ a diminutive and wild looking man‘; at least he convinced Mr. Gibson that he was paranoid, he was the only witness called. In his opinion Smith was not in a fit state of mind to plead, or to defend himself on a charge of murder. Upon the evidence of Mr. Gibson, the jury found Smith to be insane. Mr. Justice Blackburn directed him to be kept in strict custody during Her Majesty’s pleasure. Smith was sent to Newgate Gaol until the 15th October when he was transferred to Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum where he became prisoner No. 602; he remained there for the next 34 years until he died of heart failure aged 66 years on 3rd November 1902. The building of Broadmoor had been enabled by The Criminal Lunatic Asylum Act 1860 and was completed and opened in 1863. During his time at Broadmoor Smith spent much of his time employed in the Tailor’s shop, the treatment at Broadmoor at this time, such as it was comprised of rest, exercise and work. The conditions were much better than the normal prison and slightly better than the workhouse, it would appear that Smith was well on his way to the workhouse when he murdered Inspector Bradstock; Smith was a married man with four children and was receiving 14/- shillings per week from The Guardians of the poor of the Parish of West Ham. Whilst at Broadmoor he had little or no contact with his family, Smith’s quarterly fitness reports continually record his state of mind as confused. In October 1878 the Superintendent of Broadmoor received a letter from a John Thomas who was writing on behalf of Smith’s mother, she was concerned because she had not heard from her son for two years and requested that he be asked to write to her. The staff were unable to induce him to write due to the disordered state of his mind.

Inspector Bradstock left a widow, they had no children. Charlotte died aged 48 years on 1st March 1871, less than three years after her husband‘s demise. The cause of death was recorded as Cirrhosis, usually caused by alcoholism but can also be caused by Hepatitis, either way a poor quality of life was often a complicating factor. I have visited Brompton cemetery but could find no trace of the grave, there are many broken gravestones and some which have lost the inscription due to weathering. He is in plot 52415 section ‘R’.

  

Oil on Canvas

(Sold)

 

Sun is dying as we surrender bit by bit. Once shining with all it's vigor how many lives it gave life to. Now the cirrhosis of our leadership eats away even the air we breathe. Just a few miles away someone is suffereing from norway and someone is dying of thirst...under this same sky. One who wants to buy this land cannot see the people but just this land.

I was riding to downtown Toronto on an errand and I noticed this man with his snappy hat. He was walking down the sidewalk and I circled around the block to see if I could meet him a block later in a spot more favorable for a portrait. It worked out. When I was more aware of his crooked stance and what appeared to be a movement disorder with his head. I wasn’t sure what to expect but I approached him anyway and when I introduced myself and my project he said “Go ahead. It’s ok.” We shook hands. Meet George.

 

I suggested we take a few steps off the sidewalk so I could park my bicycle and position him in a covered walkway to an apartment building. George was agreeable as I took a few photos and expressed concern for the bleeding wound on his arm. He told me it was from cirrhosis. I expressed concern since cirrhosis is a serious liver disease. He thought for a moment and said “No, I think it’s psoriasis… and I scratched it. It will be ok.”

 

When I told him it was his hat that first made me notice him and that it looked good on him he said a woman gave it to him. I teased him a bit by saying “You rascal you – accepting gifts from the women.” Without missing a beat his response was “I might as well; they’ve taken enough from me.” He had a twinkle in his eye. I was somewhat surprised by the witty reply because he looked like a man who has led a rough life.

 

George was born in Orillia, a city an hour and a half north of Toronto. I told him I’ve been there and he said “It’s where Gordon Lightfoot (the Canadian folksinger) is from.” I said “I know it is.” He said he spent quite a few years in British Columbia where he worked for the highway department. I said if he was building highways, that’s pretty tough work. He agreed. He said he came to Toronto a four years ago for surgery and has remained here. I didn’t get many details. George is 68 but it looks like he’s done a lot of living in those 68 years. He said “I’m a bandit and my woman works for the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police).” I wasn’t sure what to make of that but said they must be quite a combo. He said he’s done some song writing and plays the harmonica.

 

When I asked George his message to the project he said “Don’t do drugs and booze.” I asked if those had caused him trouble and he said “I quit soon after I started, but it’s a bad idea and I would tell others to avoid it.” We parted with another handshake and I told him he had really helped me on with my project. He said “Glad to help. Good luck with your project.” I told him to get his bleeding arm looked at by a clinic but he seemed to shrug off my concern.

 

Thank you George for stopping to chat and for participating in The Human Family project on Flickr.

 

This is my 280th submission to The Human Family Group on Flickr.

 

You can view more street portraits and stories by visiting The Human Family.

 

Follow-up:

See Comments (below). An old friend of George recognized him from the photo and later (May, 2017) added a sad note that George had died. I was sorry to hear that.

 

"Coffee has been a medical whipping boy for so long that it may come as a surprise that recent research suggests that drinking moderate amounts of

coffee (two to four cups per day) provides a wide range of health benefits.

Most of these benefits have been identified through statistical studies that track a large group of subjects over the course of years and match incidence of various diseases with individual habits, like drinking coffee, meanwhile controlling for other variables that may influence that relationship.

According to a spate of such recent studies moderate coffee drinking may lower the risk of colon cancer by about 25%, gallstones by 45%, cirrhosis of the liver by 80%, and Parkinson's disease by 50% to as much as 80%. Other benefits include 25% reduction in onset of attacks among asthma sufferers and, at least among a large group of female nurses tracked over many years, fewer suicides."

 

by coffeereview.com

  

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, also known as Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 until the Surname Law of 1934 (c. 1881 – 10 November 1938), was a Turkish field marshal, revolutionary statesman, author, and the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. He undertook sweeping progressive reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrializing nation. Ideologically a secularist and nationalist, his policies and socio-political theories became known as Kemalism.

 

Atatürk came to prominence for his role in securing the Ottoman Turkish victory at the Battle of Gallipoli (1915) during World War I. During this time, the Ottoman Empire perpetrated genocides against its Greek, Armenian and Assyrian subjects; while not directly involved, Atatürk's role in their aftermath has been controversial. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, he led the Turkish National Movement, which resisted mainland Turkey's partition among the victorious Allied powers. Establishing a provisional government in the present-day Turkish capital Ankara (known in English at the time as Angora), he defeated the forces sent by the Allies, thus emerging victorious from what was later referred to as the Turkish War of Independence. He subsequently proceeded to abolish the sultanate in 1922 and proclaimed the foundation of the Turkish Republic in its place the following year.

 

As the president of the newly formed Turkish Republic, Atatürk initiated a rigorous program of political, economic, and cultural reforms with the ultimate aim of building a republican and secular nation-state. He made primary education free and compulsory, opening thousands of new schools all over the country. He also introduced the Latin-based Turkish alphabet, replacing the old Ottoman Turkish alphabet. Turkish women received equal civil and political rights during Atatürk's presidency. In particular, women were given voting rights in local elections by Act no. 1580 on 3 April 1930 and a few years later, in 1934, full universal suffrage. His government carried out a policy of Turkification, trying to create a homogeneous, unified and above all secular nation under the Turkish banner. Under Atatürk, the minorities in Turkey were ordered to speak Turkish in public, but were allowed to maintain their own languages in private and within their own communities; non-Turkish toponyms were replaced and non-Turkish families were ordered to adopt a Turkish surname. The Turkish Parliament granted him the surname Atatürk in 1934, which means "Father of the Turks", in recognition of the role he played in building the modern Turkish Republic. He died on 10 November 1938 at Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, at the age of 57; he was succeeded as president by his long-time prime minister İsmet İnönü and was honored with a state funeral.

 

In 1981, the centennial of Atatürk's birth, his memory was honoured by the United Nations and UNESCO, which declared it The Atatürk Year in the World and adopted the Resolution on the Atatürk Centennial, describing him as "the leader of the first struggle given against colonialism and imperialism" and a "remarkable promoter of the sense of understanding between peoples and durable peace between the nations of the world and that he worked all his life for the development of harmony and cooperation between peoples without distinction". Atatürk was also credited for his peace-in-the-world oriented foreign policy and friendship with neighboring countries such as Iran, Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Greece, as well as the creation of the Balkan Pact that resisted the expansionist aggressions of Fascist Italy and Tsarist Bulgaria.

 

The Turkish War of Independence (19 May 1919 – 24 July 1923) was a series of military campaigns and a revolution waged by the Turkish National Movement, after parts of the Ottoman Empire were occupied and partitioned following its defeat in World War I. The conflict was between the Turkish Nationalists against Allied and separatist forces over the application of Wilsonian principles, especially national self-determination, in post-World War I Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. The revolution concluded the collapse of the Ottoman Empire; the Ottoman monarchy and the Islamic caliphate were abolished, and the Republic of Turkey was declared in Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. This resulted in a transfer of vested sovereignty from the sultan-caliph to the nation, setting the stage for Republican Turkey's period of nationalist revolutionary reform.

 

While World War I ended for the Ottoman Empire with the Armistice of Mudros, the Allied Powers continued occupying and securing land per the Sykes–Picot Agreement, as well as to facilitate the prosecution of former members of the Committee of Union and Progress and those involved in the Armenian genocide. Ottoman military commanders therefore refused orders from both the Allies and the Ottoman government to surrender and disband their forces. In an atmosphere of turmoil throughout the remainder of the empire, sultan Mehmed VI dispatched Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk), a well-respected and high-ranking general, to Anatolia to restore order; however, Mustafa Kemal became an enabler and eventually leader of Turkish Nationalist resistance against the Ottoman government, Allied powers, and separatists.

 

In an attempt to establish control over the power vacuum in Anatolia, the Allies agreed to launch a Greek peacekeeping force into Anatolia and occupy Smyrna (İzmir), inflaming sectarian tensions and beginning the Turkish War of Independence. A nationalist counter government led by Mustafa Kemal was established in Ankara when it became clear the Ottoman government was appeasing the Allied powers. The Allies soon pressured the Ottoman government in Constantinople to suspend the Constitution, shutter Parliament, and sign the Treaty of Sèvres, a treaty unfavorable to Turkish interests that the "Ankara government" declared illegal.

 

In the ensuing war, Turkish and Syrian forces defeated the French in the south, and remobilized army units went on to partition Armenia with the Bolsheviks, resulting in the Treaty of Kars (October 1921). The Western Front of the independence war is known as the Greco-Turkish War, in which Greek forces at first encountered unorganized resistance. However, İsmet Pasha (İnönü)'s organization of militia into a regular army paid off when Ankara forces fought the Greeks in the First and Second Battle of İnönü. The Greek army emerged victorious in the Battle of Kütahya-Eskişehir and decided to drive on the Nationalist capital of Ankara, stretching their supply lines. The Turks checked their advance in the Battle of Sakarya and eventually counter-attacked in the Great Offensive, which expelled Greek forces from Anatolia in the span of three weeks. The war effectively ended with the recapture of İzmir and the Chanak Crisis, prompting the signing of another armistice in Mudanya.

 

The Grand National Assembly in Ankara was recognized as the legitimate Turkish government, which signed the Treaty of Lausanne (July 1923), a treaty more favorable to Turkey than the Sèvres Treaty. The Allies evacuated Anatolia and Eastern Thrace, the Ottoman government was overthrown and the monarchy abolished, and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (which remains Turkey's primary legislative body today) declared the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923. With the war, a population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, and the abolition of the sultanate, the Ottoman era came to an end, and with Atatürk's reforms, the Turks created the modern, secular nation-state of Turkey. On 3 March 1924, the Ottoman caliphate was also abolished.

 

The ethnic demographics of the modern Turkish Republic were significantly impacted by the earlier Armenian genocide and the deportations of Greek-speaking, Orthodox Christian Rum people. The Turkish Nationalist Movement carried out massacres and deportations to eliminate native Christian populations—a continuation of the Armenian genocide and other ethnic cleansing operations during World War I. Following these campaigns of ethnic cleansing, the historic Christian presence in Anatolia was destroyed, in large part, and the Muslim demographic had increased from 80% to 98%.

 

Following the chaotic politics of the Second Constitutional Era, the Ottoman Empire came under the control of the Committee of Union and Progress in a coup in 1913, and then further consolidated its control after the assassination of Mahmud Shevket Pasha.[citation needed] Founded as a radical revolutionary group seeking to prevent a collapse of the Ottoman Empire, by the eve of World War I it decided that the solution was to implement nationalist and centralizing policies. The CUP reacted to the losses of land and the expulsion of Muslims from the Balkan Wars by turning even more nationalistic. Part of its effort to consolidate power was to proscribe and exile opposition politicians from the Freedom and Accord Party to remote Sinop.

 

The Unionists brought the Ottoman Empire into World War I on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, during which a genocidal campaign was waged against Ottoman Christians, namely Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians. It was based on an alleged conspiracy that the three groups would rebel on the side of the Allies, so collective punishment was applied. A similar suspicion and suppression from the Turkish nationalist government was directed towards the Arab and Kurdish populations, leading to localized rebellions. The Entente powers reacted to these developments by charging the CUP leaders, commonly known as the Three Pashas, with "Crimes against humanity" and threatened accountability. They also had imperialist ambitions on Ottoman territory, with a major correspondence over a post-war settlement in the Ottoman Empire being leaked to the press as the Sykes–Picot Agreement. With Saint Petersburg's exit from World War I and descent into civil war, driven in part from the Ottomans' closure of the Turkish straits of goods bound to Russia, a new imperative was given to the Entente powers to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war to restart the Eastern Front.

 

World War I would be the nail in the coffin of Ottomanism, a monarchist and multicultural nationalism. Mistreatment of non-Turk groups after 1913, and the general context of great socio-political upheaval that occurred in the aftermath of World War I, meant many minorities now wished to divorce their future from imperialism to form futures of their own by separating into (often republican) nation-states.

 

In the summer months of 1918, the leaders of the Central Powers realized that the Great War was lost, including the Ottomans'. Almost simultaneously the Palestinian Front and then the Macedonian Front collapsed. The sudden decision by Bulgaria to sign an armistice cut communications from Constantinople (İstanbul) to Vienna and Berlin, and opened the undefended Ottoman capital to Entente attack. With the major fronts crumbling, Unionist Grand Vizier Talât Pasha intended to sign an armistice, and resigned on 8 October 1918 so that a new government would receive less harsh armistice terms. The Armistice of Mudros was signed on 30 October 1918, ending World War I for the Ottoman Empire. Three days later, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)—which governed the Ottoman Empire as a one-party state since 1913—held its last congress, where it was decided the party would be dissolved. Talât, Enver Pasha, Cemal Pasha, and five other high-ranking members of the CUP escaped the Ottoman Empire on a German torpedo boat later that night, plunging the country into a power vacuum.

 

The armistice was signed because the Ottoman Empire had been defeated in important fronts, but the military was intact and retreated in good order. Unlike other Central Powers, the Allies did not mandate an abdication of the imperial family as a condition for peace, nor did they request the Ottoman Army to dissolve its general staff. Though the army suffered from mass desertion throughout the war which led to banditry, there was no threat of mutiny or revolutions like in Germany, Austria-Hungary, or Russia. This is despite famine and economic collapse that was brought on by the extreme levels of mobilization, destruction from the war, disease, and mass murder since 1914.

 

Due to the Turkish nationalist policies pursued by the CUP against Ottoman Christians by 1918 the Ottoman Empire held control over a mostly homogeneous land of Muslims from Eastern Thrace to the Persian border. These included mostly Turks, as well as Kurds, Circassians, and Muhacir groups from Rumeli. Most Muslim Arabs were now outside of the Ottoman Empire and under Allied occupation, with some "imperialists" still loyal to the Ottoman Sultanate-Caliphate, and others wishing for independence or Allied protection under a League of Nations mandate. Sizable Greek and Armenian minorities remained within its borders, and most of these communities no longer wished to remain under the Empire.

 

On 30 October 1918, the Armistice of Mudros was signed between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies of World War I, bringing hostilities in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I to an end. The Ottoman Army was to demobilize, its navy and air force handed to the Allies, and occupied territory in the Caucasus and Persia to be evacuated. Critically, Article VII granted the Allies the right to occupy forts controlling the Turkish Straits and the vague right to occupy "in case of disorder" any territory if there were a threat to security. The clause relating to the occupation of the straits was meant to secure a Southern Russian intervention force, while the rest of the article was used to allow for Allied controlled peace-keeping forces. There was also a hope to follow through punishing local actors that carried out exterminatory orders from the CUP government against Armenian Ottomans. For now, the House of Osman escaped the fates of the Hohenzollerns, Habsburgs, and Romanovs to continue ruling their empire, though at the cost of its remaining sovereignty.

 

On 13 November 1918, a French brigade entered Constantinople to begin a de facto occupation of the Ottoman capital and its immediate dependencies. This was followed by a fleet consisting of British, French, Italian and Greek ships deploying soldiers on the ground the next day, totaling 50,000 troops in Constantinople. The Allied Powers stated that the occupation was temporary and its purpose was to protect the monarchy, the caliphate and the minorities. Somerset Arthur Gough-Calthorpe—the British signatory of the Mudros Armistice—stated the Triple Entente's public position that they had no intention to dismantle the Ottoman government or place it under military occupation by "occupying Constantinople". However, dismantling the government and partitioning the Ottoman Empire among the Allied nations had been an objective of the Entente since the start of WWI.

 

A wave of seizures took place in the rest of the country in the following months. Citing Article VII, British forces demanded that Turkish troops evacuate Mosul, claiming that Christian civilians in Mosul and Zakho were killed en masse. In the Caucasus, Britain established a presence in Menshevik Georgia and the Lori and Aras valleys as peace-keepers. On 14 November, joint Franco-Greek occupation was established in the town of Uzunköprü in Eastern Thrace as well as the railway axis until the train station of Hadımköy on the outskirts of Constantinople. On 1 December, British troops based in Syria occupied Kilis, Marash, Urfa and Birecik. Beginning in December, French troops began successive seizures of the province of Adana, including the towns of Antioch, Mersin, Tarsus, Ceyhan, Adana, Osmaniye, and İslâhiye, incorporating the area into the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration North while French forces embarked by gunboats and sent troops to the Black Sea ports of Zonguldak and Karadeniz Ereğli commanding Turkey's coal mining region. These continued seizures of land prompted Ottoman commanders to refuse demobilization and prepare for the resumption of war.

 

The British similarly asked Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) to turn over the port of Alexandretta (İskenderun), which he reluctantly did, following which he was recalled to Constantinople. He made sure to distribute weapons to the population to prevent them from falling into the hands of Allied forces. Some of these weapons were smuggled to the east by members of Karakol, a successor to the CUP's Special Organization, to be used in case resistance was necessary in Anatolia. Many Ottoman officials participated in efforts to conceal from the occupying authorities details of the burgeoning independence movement spreading throughout Anatolia.

 

Other commanders began refusing orders from the Ottoman government and the Allied powers. After Mustafa Kemal Pasha returned to Constantinople, Ali Fuat Pasha (Cebesoy) brought XX Corps under his command. He marched first to Konya and then to Ankara to organise resistance groups, such as the Circassian çetes he assembled with guerilla leader Çerkes Ethem. Meanwhile, Kazım Karabekir Pasha refused to surrender his intact and powerful XV Corps in Erzurum. Evacuation from the Caucusus, puppet republics and Muslim militia groups were established in the army's wake to hamper with the consolidation of the new Armenian state. Elsewhere in the country, regional nationalist resistance organizations known as Şuras –meaning "councils", not unlike soviets in revolutionary Russia– were founded, most pledging allegiance to the Defence of National Rights movement that protested continued Allied occupation and appeasement by the Sublime Porte.

 

Following the occupation of Constantinople, Mehmed VI Vahdettin dissolved the Chamber of Deputies which was dominated by Unionists elected back in 1914, promising elections for the next year. Vahdettin just ascended to the throne only months earlier with the death of Mehmed V Reşad. He was disgusted with the policies of the CUP, and wished to be a more assertive sovereign than his diseased half brother. Greek and Armenian Ottomans declared the termination of their relationship with the Ottoman Empire through their respective patriarchates, and refused to partake in any future election. With the collapse of the CUP and its censorship regime, an outpouring of condemnation against the party came from all parts of Ottoman media.

 

A general amnesty was soon issued, allowing the exiled and imprisoned dissidents persecuted by the CUP to return to Constantinople. Vahdettin invited the pro-Palace politician Damat Ferid Pasha, leader of the reconstituted Freedom and Accord Party, to form a government, whose members quickly set out to purge the Unionists from the Ottoman government. Ferid Pasha hoped that his Anglophilia and an attitude of appeasement would induce less harsh peace terms from the Allied powers. However, his appointment was problematic for nationalists, many being members of the liquidated committee that were surely to face trial. Years of corruption, unconstitutional acts, war profiteering, and enrichment from ethnic cleansing and genocide by the Unionists soon became basis of war crimes trials and courts martial trials held in Constantinople.[citation needed] While many leading Unionists were sentenced lengthy prison sentences, many made sure to escape the country before Allied occupation or to regions that the government now had minimal control over; thus most were sentenced in absentia. The Allies encouragement of the proceedings and the use of British Malta as their holding ground made the trials unpopular. The partisan nature of the trials was not lost on observers either. The hanging of the Kaymakam of Boğazlıyan district Mehmed Kemal resulted in a demonstration against the courts martials trials.

 

With all the chaotic politics in the capital and uncertainty of the severity of the incoming peace treaty, many Ottomans looked to Washington with the hope that the application of Wilsonian principles would mean Constantinople would stay Turkish, as Muslims outnumbered Christians 2:1. The United States never declared war on the Ottoman Empire, so many imperial elite believed Washington could be a neutral arbiter that could fix the empire's problems. Halide Edip (Adıvar) and her Wilsonian Principles Society led the movement that advocated for the empire to be governed by an American League of Nations Mandate (see United States during the Turkish War of Independence). American diplomats attempted to ascertain a role they could play in the area with the Harbord and King–Crane Commissions. However, with the collapse of Woodrow Wilson's health, the United States diplomatically withdrew from the Middle East to focus on Europe, leaving the Entente powers to construct a post-Ottoman order.

 

The Entente would have arrived at Constantinople to discover an administration attempting to deal with decades of accumulated refugee crisis. The new government issued a proclamation allowing for deportees to return to their homes, but many Greeks and Armenians found their old homes occupied by desperate Rumelian and Caucasian Muslim refugees which were settled in their properties during the First World War. Ethnic conflict restarted in Anatolia; government officials responsible for resettling Christian refugees often assisted Muslim refugees in these disputes, prompting European powers to continue bringing Ottoman territory under their control. Of the 800,000 Ottoman Christian refugees, approximately over half returned to their homes by 1920. Meanwhile 1.4 million refugees from the Russian Civil War would pass through the Turkish straits and Anatolia, with 150,000 White émigrés choosing to settle in Istanbul for short or long term (see Evacuation of the Crimea). Many provinces were simply depopulated from years of fighting, conscription, and ethnic cleansing (see Ottoman casualties of World War I). The province of Yozgat lost 50% of its Muslim population from conscription, while according to the governor of Van, almost 95% of its prewar residents were dead or internally displaced.

 

Administration in much of the Anatolian and Thracian countryside would soon all but collapse by 1919. Army deserters who turned to banditry essentially controlled fiefdoms with tacit approval from bureaucrats and local elites. An amnesty issued in late 1918 saw these bandits strengthen their positions and fight amongst each other instead of returning to civilian life. Albanian and Circassian muhacirs resettled by the government in northwestern Anatolia and Kurds in southeastern Anatolia were engaged in blood feuds that intensified during the war and were hesitant to pledge allegiance to the Defence of Rights movement, and only would if officials could facilitate truces. Various Muhacir groups were suspicious of the continued Ittihadist ideology in the Defence of Rights movement, and the potential for themselves to meet fates 'like the Armenians' especially as warlords hailing from those communities assisted the deportations of the Christians even though as many commanders in the Nationalist movement also had Caucasian and Balkan Muslim ancestry.

 

With Anatolia in practical anarchy and the Ottoman army being questionably loyal in reaction to Allied land seizures, Mehmed VI established the military inspectorate system to reestablish authority over the remaining empire. Encouraged by Karabekir and Edmund Allenby, he assigned Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) as the inspector of the Ninth Army Troops Inspectorate –based in Erzurum– to restore order to Ottoman military units and to improve internal security on 30 April 1919, with his first assignment to suppress a rebellion by Greek rebels around the city of Samsun.

 

Mustafa Kemal was a well known, well respected, and well connected army commander, with much prestige coming from his status as the "Hero of Anafartalar"—for his role in the Gallipoli Campaign—and his title of "Honorary Aide-de-camp to His Majesty Sultan" gained in the last months of WWI. This choice would seem curious, as he was a nationalist and a fierce critic of the government's accommodating policy to the Entente powers. He was also an early member of the CUP. However Kemal Pasha did not associate himself with the fanatical faction of the CUP, many knew that he frequently clashed with the radicals of the Central Committee like Enver. He was therefore sidelined to the periphery of power throughout the Great War; after the CUP's dissolution he vocally aligned himself with moderates that formed the Liberal People's Party instead of the rump radical faction which formed the Renewal Party (both parties would be banned in May 1919 for being successors of the CUP). All these reasons allowed him to be the most legitimate nationalist for the sultan to placate. In this new political climate, he sought to capitalize on his war exploits to attain a better job, indeed several times he unsuccessfully lobbied for his inclusion in cabinet as War Minister. His new assignment gave him effective plenipotentiary powers over all of Anatolia which was meant to accommodate him and other nationalists to keep them loyal to the government.

 

Mustafa Kemal had earlier declined to become the leader of the Sixth Army headquartered in Nusaybin. But according to Patrick Balfour, through manipulation and the help of friends and sympathizers, he became the inspector of virtually all of the Ottoman forces in Anatolia, tasked with overseeing the disbanding process of remaining Ottoman forces. Kemal had an abundance of connections and personal friends concentrated in the post-armistice War Ministry, a powerful tool that would help him accomplish his secret goal: to lead a nationalist movement to safeguard Turkish interests against the Allied powers and a collaborative Ottoman government.

 

The day before his departure to Samsun on the remote Black Sea coast, Kemal had one last audience with Sultan Vahdettin, where he affirmed his loyalty to the sultan-caliph. It was in this meeting that they were informed of the botched occupation ceremony of Smyrna (İzmir) by the Greeks. He and his carefully selected staff left Constantinople aboard the old steamer SS Bandırma on the evening of 16 May 1919.

 

On 19 January 1919, the Paris Peace Conference was first held, at which Allied nations set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers, including the Ottoman Empire. As a special body of the Paris Conference, "The Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey", was established to pursue the secret treaties they had signed between 1915 and 1917. Italy sought control over the southern part of Anatolia under the Agreement of St.-Jean-de-Maurienne. France expected to exercise control over Hatay, Lebanon, Syria, and a portion of southeastern Anatolia based on the Sykes–Picot Agreement.

 

Greece justified their territorial claims of Ottoman land through the Megali Idea as well as international sympathy from the suffering of Ottoman Greeks in 1914 and 1917–1918. Privately, Greek prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos had British prime minister David Lloyd George's backing not least from Greece's entrance to WWI on the Allied side, but also from his charisma and charming personality. Greece's participation in the Allies' Southern Russian intervention also earned it favors in Paris. His demands included parts of Eastern Thrace, the islands of Imbros (Gökçeada), Tenedos (Bozcaada), and parts of Western Anatolia around the city of Smyrna (İzmir), all of which had large Greek populations. Venizelos also advocated a large Armenian state to check a post-war Ottoman Empire. Greece wanted to incorporate Constantinople, but Entente powers did not give permission. Damat Ferid Pasha went to Paris on behalf of the Ottoman Empire hoping to minimize territorial losses using Fourteen Points rhetoric, wishing for a return to status quo ante bellum, on the basis that every province of the Empire holds Muslim majorities. This plea was met with ridicule.

 

At the Paris Peace Conference, competing claims over Western Anatolia by Greek and Italian delegations led Greece to land the flagship of the Greek Navy at Smyrna, resulting in the Italian delegation walking out of the peace talks. On 30 April, Italy responded to the possible idea of Greek incorporation of Western Anatolia by sending a warship to Smyrna as a show of force against the Greek campaign. A large Italian force also landed in Antalya. Faced with Italian annexation of parts of Asia Minor with a significant ethnic Greek population, Venizelos secured Allied permission for Greek troops to land in Smyrna per Article VII, ostensibly as a peacekeeping force to keep stability in the region. Venizelos's rhetoric was more directed against the CUP regime than the Turks as a whole, an attitude not always shared in the Greek military: "Greece is not making war against Islam, but against the anachronistic [İttihadist] Government, and its corrupt, ignominious, and bloody administration, with a view to the expelling it from those territories where the majority of the population consists of Greeks." It was decided by the Triple Entente that Greece would control a zone around Smyrna and Ayvalık in western Asia Minor.

 

Most historians mark the Greek landing at Smyrna on 15 May 1919 as the start date of the Turkish War of Independence as well as the start of the "Kuva-yi Milliye Phase". The occupation ceremony from the outset was tense from nationalist fervor, with Ottoman Greeks greeting the soldiers with an ecstatic welcome, and Ottoman Muslims protesting the landing. A miscommunication in Greek high command led to an Evzone column marching by the municipal Turkish barracks. The nationalist journalist Hasan Tahsin fired the "first bullet"[note 4] at the Greek standard bearer at the head of the troops, turning the city into a warzone. Süleyman Fethi Bey was murdered by bayonet for refusing to shout "Zito Venizelos" (meaning "long live Venizelos"), and 300–400 unarmed Turkish soldiers and civilians and 100 Greek soldiers and civilians were killed or wounded.

 

Greek troops moved from Smyrna outwards to towns on the Karaburun peninsula; to Selçuk, situated a hundred kilometres south of the city at a key location that commands the fertile Küçük Menderes River valley; and to Menemen towards the north. Guerilla warfare commenced in the countryside, as Turks began to organize themselves into irregular guerilla groups known as Kuva-yi Milliye (national forces), which were soon joined by Ottoman soldiers, bandits, and disaffected farmers. Most Kuva-yi Milliye bands were led by rogue military commanders and members of the Special Organization. The Greek troops based in cosmopolitan Smyrna soon found themselves conducting counterinsurgency operations in a hostile, dominantly Muslim hinterland. Groups of Ottoman Greeks also formed contingents that cooperated with the Greek Army to combat Kuva-yi Milliye within the zone of control. A massacre of Turks at Menemen was followed up with a battle for the town of Aydın, which saw intense intercommunal violence and the razing of the city. What was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission of Western Anatolia instead inflamed ethnic tensions and became a counterinsurgency.

 

The reaction of Greek landing at Smyrna and continued Allied seizures of land served to destabilize Turkish civil society. Ottoman bureaucrats, military, and bourgeoisie trusted the Allies to bring peace, and thought the terms offered at Mudros were considerably more lenient than they actually were. Pushback was potent in the capital, with 23 May 1919 being largest of the Sultanahmet Square demonstrations organized by the Turkish Hearths against the Greek occupation of Smyrna, the largest act of civil disobedience in Turkish history at that point. The Ottoman government condemned the landing, but could do little about it. Ferid Pasha tried to resign, but was urged by the sultan to stay in his office.

 

Mustafa Kemal Pasha and his colleagues stepped ashore in Samsun on 19 May and set up their first quarters in the Mıntıka Palace Hotel. British troops were present in Samsun, and he initially maintained cordial contact. He had assured Damat Ferid about the army's loyalty towards the new government in Constantinople. However, behind the government's back, Kemal made the people of Samsun aware of the Greek and Italian landings, staged discreet mass meetings, made fast connections via telegraph with the army units in Anatolia, and began to form links with various Nationalist groups. He sent telegrams of protest to foreign embassies and the War Ministry about British reinforcements in the area and about British aid to Greek brigand gangs. After a week in Samsun, Kemal and his staff moved to Havza. It was there that he first showed the flag of the resistance.

 

Mustafa Kemal wrote in his memoir that he needed nationwide support to justify armed resistance against the Allied occupation. His credentials and the importance of his position were not enough to inspire everyone. While officially occupied with the disarming of the army, he met with various contacts in order to build his movement's momentum. He met with Rauf Pasha, Karabekir Pasha, Ali Fuat Pasha, and Refet Pasha and issued the Amasya Circular (22 June 1919). Ottoman provincial authorities were notified via telegraph that the unity and independence of the nation was at risk, and that the government in Constantinople was compromised. To remedy this, a congress was to take place in Erzurum between delegates of the Six Vilayets to decide on a response, and another congress would take place in Sivas where every Vilayet should send delegates. Sympathy and an lack of coordination from the capital gave Mustafa Kemal freedom of movement and telegraph use despite his implied anti-government tone.

 

On 23 June, High Commissioner Admiral Calthorpe, realising the significance of Mustafa Kemal's discreet activities in Anatolia, sent a report about the Pasha to the Foreign Office. His remarks were downplayed by George Kidson of the Eastern Department. Captain Hurst of the British occupation force in Samsun warned Admiral Calthorpe one more time, but Hurst's units were replaced with the Brigade of Gurkhas. When the British landed in Alexandretta, Admiral Calthorpe resigned on the basis that this was against the armistice that he had signed and was assigned to another position on 5 August 1919. The movement of British units alarmed the population of the region and convinced them that Mustafa Kemal was right.

 

By early July, Mustafa Kemal Pasha received telegrams from the sultan and Calthorpe, asking him and Refet to cease his activities in Anatolia and return to the capital. Kemal was in Erzincan and did not want to return to Constantinople, concerned that the foreign authorities might have designs for him beyond the sultan's plans. Before resigning from his position, he dispatched a circular to all nationalist organizations and military commanders to not disband or surrender unless for the latter if they could be replaced by cooperative nationalist commanders. Now only a civilian stripped of his command, Mustafa Kemal was at the mercy of the new inspector of Third Army (renamed from Ninth Army) Karabekir Pasha, indeed the War Ministry ordered him to arrest Kemal, an order which Karabekir refused. The Erzurum Congress was a meeting of delegates and governors from the six Eastern Vilayets. They drafted the National Pact (Misak-ı Millî), which envisioned new borders for the Ottoman Empire by applying principles of national self-determination per Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and the abolition of the capitulations. The Erzurum Congress concluded with a circular that was effectively a declaration of independence: All regions within Ottoman borders upon the signing of the Mudros Armistice were indivisible from the Ottoman state –Greek and Armenian claims on Thrace and Anatolia were moot– and assistance from any country not coveting Ottoman territory was welcome. If the government in Constantinople was not able to attain this after electing a new parliament, they insisted a provisional government should be promulgated to defend Turkish sovereignty. The Committee of Representation was established as a provisional executive body based in Anatolia, with Mustafa Kemal Pasha as its chairman.

 

Following the congress, the Committee of Representation relocated to Sivas. As announced in the Amasya Circular, a new congress was held there in September with delegates from all Anatolian and Thracian provinces. The Sivas Congress repeated the points of the National Pact agreed to in Erzurum, and united the various regional Defence of National Rights Associations organizations, into a united political organisation: Anatolia and Rumeli Defence of Rights Association (A-RMHC), with Mustafa Kemal as its chairman. In an effort show his movement was in fact a new and unifying movement, the delegates had to swear an oath to discontinue their relations with the CUP and to never revive the party (despite most present in Sivas being previous members).[120] It was also decided there that the Ottoman Empire should not be a League of Nations mandate under the United States, especially after the U.S Senate failed to ratify American membership in the League.

 

Momentum was now on the Nationalists' side. A plot by a loyalist Ottoman governor and a British intelligence officer to arrest Kemal before the Sivas Congress led to the cutting of all ties with the Ottoman government until a new election would be held in the lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies. In October 1919, the last Ottoman governor loyal to Constantinople fled his province. Fearing the outbreak of hostilities, all British troops stationed in the Black Sea coast and Kütahya were evacuated. Damat Ferid Pasha resigned, and the sultan replaced him with a general with nationalist credentials: Ali Rıza Pasha. On 16 October 1919, Ali Rıza and the Nationalists held negotiations in Amasya. They agreed in the Amasya Protocol that an election would be called for the Ottoman Parliament to establish national unity by upholding the resolutions made in the Sivas Congress, including the National Pact.

 

By October 1919, the Ottoman government only held de facto control over Constantinople; the rest of the Ottoman Empire was loyal to Kemal's movement to resist a partition of Anatolia and Thrace. Within a few months Mustafa Kemal went from General Inspector of the Ninth Army to a renegade military commander discharged for insubordination to leading a homegrown anti-Entente movement that overthrew a government and driven it into resistance.

 

In December 1919, an election was held for the Ottoman parliament, with polls only open in unoccupied Anatolia and Thrace. It was boycotted by Ottoman Greeks, Ottoman Armenians and the Freedom and Accord Party, resulting in groups associated with the Turkish Nationalist Movement winning, including the A-RMHC. The Nationalists' obvious links to the CUP made the election especially polarizing and voter intimidation and ballot box stuffing in favor of the Kemalists were regular occurrences in rural provinces. This controversy led to many of the nationalist MPs organizing the National Salvation Group separate from Kemal's movement, which risked the nationalist movement splitting in two.

 

Mustafa Kemal was elected an MP from Erzurum, but he expected the Allies neither to accept the Harbord report nor to respect his parliamentary immunity if he went to the Ottoman capital, hence he remained in Anatolia. Mustafa Kemal and the Committee of Representation moved from Sivas to Ankara so that he could keep in touch with as many deputies as possible as they traveled to Constantinople to attend the parliament.

 

Though Ali Rıza Pasha called the election as per the Amasya Protocol to keep unity between the "Istanbul government" and "Ankara government", he was wrong to think the election could bring him any legitimacy. The Ottoman parliament was under the de facto control of the British battalion stationed at Constantinople and any decisions by the parliament had to have the signatures of both Ali Rıza Pasha and the battalion's commanding officer. The only laws that passed were those acceptable to, or specifically ordered by the British.

 

On 12 January 1920, the last session of the Chamber of Deputies met in the capital. First the sultan's speech was presented, and then a telegram from Mustafa Kemal, manifesting the claim that the rightful government of Turkey was in Ankara in the name of the Committee of Representation. On 28 January the MPs from both sides of the isle secretly met to endorse the National Pact as a peace settlement. They added to the points passed in Sivas, calling for plebiscites to be held in West Thrace; Batum, Kars, and Ardahan, and Arab lands on whether to stay in the Empire or not. Proposals were also made to elect Kemal president of the Chamber;[clarification needed] however, this was deferred in the certain knowledge that the British would prorogue the Chamber. The Chamber of Deputies would be forcefully dissolved for passing the National Pact anyway. The National Pact solidified Nationalist interests, which were in conflict with the Allied plans.

 

From February to April, leaders of Britain, France, and Italy met in London to discuss the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire and the crisis in Anatolia. The British began to sense that the elected Ottoman government was under Kemalist influence and if left unchecked, the Entente could once again find themselves at war with the Empire. The Ottoman government was not doing all that it could to suppress the Nationalists.

 

Mustafa Kemal manufactured a crisis to pressure the Istanbul government to pick a side by deploying Kuva-yi Milliye towards İzmit. The British, concerned about the security of the Bosporus Strait, demanded Ali Rıza Pasha to reassert control over the area, to which he responded with his resignation to the sultan.

 

As they were negotiating the partition of the Ottoman Empire, the Allies were growing increasingly concerned about the Turkish National Movement. To this end, the Allied occupational authorities in Istanbul began to plan a raid to arrest nationalist politicians and journalists along with occupying military and police installations and government buildings. On 16 March 1920, the coup was carried out; several Royal Navy warships were anchored in the Galata Bridge to support British forces, including the Indian Army, while they carried out the arrests and occupied several government buildings in the early hours of the morning.

 

An Indian Army operation, the Şehzadebaşı raid, resulted in 5 Ottoman soldiers from the 10th Infantry Division being killed when troops raided their barracks. Among those arrested were the senior leadership of the Turkish National Movement and former members of the CUP. 150 arrested Turkish politicians accused of war crimes were interned in Malta and became known as the Malta exiles.

 

Mustafa Kemal was ready for this move. He warned all the Nationalist organisations that there would be misleading declarations from the capital. He warned that the only way to counter Allied movements was to organise protests. He declared "Today the Turkish nation is called to defend its capacity for civilization, its right to life and independence – its entire future".

 

On 18 March, the Chamber of Deputies declared that it was unacceptable to arrest five of its members, and dissolved itself. Mehmed VI confirmed this and declared the end of Constitutional Monarchy and a return to absolutism. University students were forbidden from joining political associations inside and outside the classroom. With the lower elected Chamber of Deputies shuttered, the Constitution terminated, and the capital occupied; Sultan Vahdettin, his cabinet, and the appointed Senate were all that remained of the Ottoman government, and were basically a puppet regime of the Allied powers. Grand Vizier Salih Hulusi Pasha declared Mustafa Kemal's struggle legitimate, and resigned after less than a month in office. In his place, Damat Ferid Pasha returned to the premiership. The Sublime Porte's decapitation by the Entente allowed Mustafa Kemal to consolidate his position as the sole leader of Turkish resistance against the Allies, and to that end made him the legitimate representative of the Turkish people.

 

The strong measures taken against the Nationalists by the Allies in March 1920 began a distinct new phase of the conflict. Mustafa Kemal sent a note to the governors and force commanders, asking them to conduct elections to provide delegates for a new parliament to represent the Ottoman (Turkish) people, which would convene in Ankara. With the proclamation of the counter-government, Kemal would then ask the sultan to accept its authority. Mustafa Kemal appealed to the Islamic world, asking for help to make sure that everyone knew he was still fighting in the name of the sultan who was also the caliph. He stated he wanted to free the caliph from the Allies. He found an ally in the Khilafat movement of British India, where Indians protested Britain's planned dismemberment of Turkey. A committee was also started for sending funds to help the soon to be proclaimed Ankara government of Mustafa Kemal. A flood of supporters moved to Ankara just ahead of the Allied dragnets. Included among them were Halide Edip and Abdülhak Adnan (Adıvar), Mustafa İsmet Pasha (İnönü), Mustafa Fevzi Pasha (Çakmak), many of Kemal's allies in the Ministry of War, and Celalettin Arif, the president of the now shuttered Chamber of Deputies. Celaleddin Arif's desertion of the capital was of great significance, as he declared that the Ottoman Parliament had been dissolved illegally.

 

Some 100 members of the Chamber of Deputies were able to escape the Allied roundup and joined 190 deputies elected. In March 1920, Turkish revolutionaries announced the establishment of a new parliament in Ankara known as the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNA) that was dominated by the A-RMHC.[citation needed] The parliament included Turks, Circassians, Kurds, and one Jew. They met in a building that used to serve as the provincial headquarters of the local CUP chapter. The inclusion of "Turkey" in its name reflected a increasing trend of new ways Ottoman citizens thought of their country, and was the first time it was formally used as the name of the country. On 23 April, the assembly, assuming full governmental powers, gathered for the first time, electing Mustafa Kemal its first Speaker and Prime Minister.

 

Hoping to undermine the Nationalist Movement, Mehmed VI issued a fatwa to qualify the Turkish revolutionaries as infidels, calling for the death of its leaders. The fatwa stated that true believers should not go along with the Nationalist Movement as they committed apostasy. The mufti of Ankara Rifat Börekçi issued a simultaneous fatwa, declaring that the caliphate was under the control of the Entente and the Ferid Pasha government. In this text, the Nationalist Movement's goal was stated as freeing the sultanate and the caliphate from its enemies. In reaction to the desertion of several prominent figures to the Nationalist Movement, Ferid Pasha ordered Halide Edip, Ali Fuat and Mustafa Kemal to be sentenced to death in absentia for treason.

 

On 28 April the sultan raised 4,000 soldiers known as the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye (Caliphate Army) to combat the Nationalists. Then using money from the Allies, another force about 2,000 strong from non-Muslim inhabitants were initially deployed in İznik. The sultan's government sent the forces under the name of the Caliphate Army to the revolutionaries to arouse counterrevolutionary sympathy. The British, being skeptical of how formidable these insurgents were, decided to use irregular power to counteract the revolutionaries. The Nationalist forces were distributed all around Turkey, so many smaller units were dispatched to face them. In İzmit there were two battalions of the British army. These units were to be used to rout the partisans under the command of Ali Fuat and Refet Pasha.

 

Anatolia had many competing forces on its soil: British troops, Nationalist militia (Kuva-yi Milliye), the sultan's army (Kuva-yi İnzibatiye), and Anzavur's bands. On 13 April 1920, an uprising supported by Anzavur against the GNA occurred at Düzce as a direct consequence of the fatwa. Within days the rebellion spread to Bolu and Gerede. The movement engulfed northwestern Anatolia for about a month. On 14 June, Nationalist militia fought a pitched battle near İzmit against the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye, Anzavur's bands, and British units. Yet under heavy attack some of the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye deserted and joined the Nationalist militia. Anzavur was not so lucky, as the Nationalists tasked Ethem the Circassian with crushing Anzavur's revolt. This revealed the sultan did not have the unwavering support of his own men and allies. Meanwhile, the rest of these forces withdrew behind the British lines which held their position. For now, Istanbul was out of Ankara's grasp.

 

The clash outside İzmit brought serious consequences. British forces conducted combat operations on the Nationalists and the Royal Air Force carried out aerial bombardments against the positions, which forced Nationalist forces to temporarily retreat to more secure missions. The British commander in Turkey, General George Milne—, asked for reinforcements. This led to a study to determine what would be required to defeat the Turkish Nationalists. The report, signed by French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, concluded that 27 divisions were necessary, but the British army did not have 27 divisions to spare. Also, a deployment of this size could have disastrous political consequences back home. World War I had just ended, and the British public would not support another lengthy and costly expedition.

 

The British accepted the fact that a nationalist movement could not be defeated without deployment of consistent and well-trained forces. On 25 June, the forces originating from Kuva-i İnzibatiye were dismantled under British supervision. The British realised that the best option to overcome these Turkish Nationalists was to use a force that was battle-tested and fierce enough to fight the Turks on their own soil. The British had to look no further than Turkey's neighbor already occupying its territory: Greece.

 

Eleftherios Venizelos, pessimistic of the rapidly deteriorating situation in Anatolia, requested to the Allies that a peace treaty be drawn up with the hope that fighting would stop. The subsequent treaty of Sèvres in August 1920 confirmed the Arab provinces of the empire would be reorganized into new nations given to Britain and France in the form of Mandates by the League of Nations, while the rest of the Empire would be partitioned between Greece, Italy, France (via Syrian mandate), Britain (via Iraqi mandate), Armenia (potentially under an American mandate), and Georgia. Smyrna would hold a plebiscite on whether to stay with Greece or Turkey, and the Kurdistan region would hold one on the question of independence. British, French, and Italian spheres of influence would also extend into Anatolia beyond the land concessions. The old capital of Constantinople as well as the Dardanelles would be under international League of Nations control.

 

However, the treaty could never come into effect. The treaty was extremely unpopular, with protests against the final document held even before its release in Sultanahmet square. Though Mehmed VI and Ferid Pasha loathed the treaty, they did not want Istanbul to join Ankara in nationalist struggle. The Ottoman government and Greece never ratified it. Though Ferid Pasha signed the treaty, the Ottoman Senate, the upper house with seats appointed by the sultan, refused to ratify the treaty. Greece disagreed on the borders drawn. The other allies began to fracture their support of the settlement immediately. Italy started openly supporting the Nationalists with arms by the end of 1920, and the French signed another separate peace treaty with Ankara only months later.

 

Kemal's GNA Government responded to the Treaty of Sèvres by promulgating a new constitution in January 1921. The resulting constitution consecrated the principle of popular sovereignty; authority not deriving from the unelected sultan, but from the Turkish people who elect governments representative of their interests. This document became the legal basis for the war of independence by the GNA, as the sultan's signature of the Treaty of Sèvres would be unconstitutional as his position was not elected. While the constitution did not specify a future role of the sultan, the document gave Kemal ever more legitimacy in the eyes of Turks for justified resistance against Istanbul.

 

In contrast to the Eastern and Western fronts, it was mostly unorganized Kuva-yi Milliye which were fighting in the Southern Front against France. They had help from the Syrians, who were fighting their own war with the French.

 

The British troops which occupied coastal Syria by the end of World War I were replaced by French troops over 1919, with the Syrian interior going to Faisal bin Al-Hussein's self-proclaimed Arab Kingdom of Syria. France which wanted to take control of all of Syria and Cilicia. There was also a desire facilitate the return of Armenian refugees in the region to their homes, and the occupation force consisted of the French Armenian Legion as well as various Armenian militia groups. 150,000 Armenians were repatriated to their homes within months of French occupation. On 21 January 1920, a Turkish Nationalist uprising and siege occurred against the French garrison in Marash. The French position untenable they retreated to Islahiye, resulting in a massacre of many Armenians by Turkish militia. A grueling siege followed in Antep which featured intense sectarian violence between Turks and Armenians. After a failed uprising by the Nationalists in Adana, by 1921, the French and Turks signed an armistice and eventually a treaty was brokered demarcating the border between the Ankara government and French controlled Syria. In the end, there was a mass exodus of Cilician Armenians to French controlled Syria, Previous Armenian survivors of deportation found themselves again as refugees and families which avoided the worst of the six years violence were forced from their homes, ending thousands of years of Christian presence in Southern Anatolia.[146] With France being the first Allied power to recognize and negotiate with the Ankara government only months after signing the Treaty of Sèvres, it was the first to break from the coordinated Allied approach to the Eastern question. In 1923 the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon under French authority would be proclaimed in former Ottoman territory.

 

Some efforts to coordinate between Turkish Nationalists and the Syrian rebels persisted from 1920 to 1921, with the Nationalists supporting the Faisal's kingdom through Ibrahim Hanunu and Alawite groups which were also fighting the French. While the French conquered Syria, Cilicia had to be abandoned.

 

Kuva-yi Milliye also engaged with British forces in the "Al-Jazira Front," primarily in Mosul. Ali İhsan Pasha (Sabis) and his forces defending Mosul would surrender to the British in October 1918, but the British ignored the armistice and seized the city, following which the pasha also ignored the armistice and distributed weapons to the locals. Even before Mustafa Kemal's movement was fully organized, rogue commanders found allies in Kurdish tribes. The Kurds detested the taxes and centralization the British demanded, including Shaykh Mahmud of the Barzani family. Having previously supported the British invasion of Mesopotamia to become the governor of South Kurdistan, Mahmud revolted but was apprehended by 1919. Without legitimacy to govern the region, he was released from captivity to Sulaymaniyah, where he again declared an uprising against the British as the King of Kurdistan. Though an alliance existed with the Turks, little material support came to him from Ankara, and by 1923 there was a desire to cease hostilities between the Turks and British at Barzanji's expense. Mahmud was overthrown in 1924, and after a 1926 plebiscite, Mosul was awarded to British-controlled Iraq.

 

Since 1917, the Caucasus was in a chaotic state. The border of newly independent Armenia and the Ottoman Empire was defined in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) after the Bolshevik revolution, and later by the Treaty of Batum (4 June 1918). To the east, Armenia was at war with the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic after the breakup of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, and received support from Anton Denikin's White Russian Army. It was obvious that after the Armistice of Mudros (30 October 1918) the eastern border was not going to stay as it was drawn, which mandated the evacuation of the Ottoman army back to its 1914 borders. Right after the Armistice of Mudros was signed, pro-Ottoman provisional republics were proclaimed in Kars and Aras which were subsequently invaded by Armenia. Ottoman soldiers were convinced not to demobilize lest the area become a 'second Macedonia'.[149] Both sides of the new borders had massive refugee populations and famine, which were compounded by the renewed and more symmetric sectarian violence (See Massacres of Azerbaijanis in Armenia (1917–1921) and Muslim uprisings in Kars and Sharur–Nakhichevan). There were talks going on with the Armenian Diaspora and Allied Powers on reshaping the border. Woodrow Wilson agreed to transfer territories to Armenia based on the principles of national self-determination. The results of these talks were to be reflected on the Treaty of Sèvres (10 August 1920).

 

Kâzım Karabekir Pasha, commander of the XV corps, encountered Muslim refugees fleeing from the Armenian army, but did not have the authority to cross the border. Karabekir's two reports (30 May and 4 June 1920) outlined the situation in the region. He recommended redrawing the eastern borders, especially around Erzurum. The Russian government was receptive to this and demanded that Van and Bitlis be transferred to Armenia. This was unacceptable to the Turkish revolutionaries. However, Soviet support was absolutely vital for the Turkish Nationalist movement, as Turkey was underdeveloped and had no domestic armaments industry. Bakir Sami (Kunduh) was assigned to negotiate with the Bolsheviks.

 

On 24 September 1920, Karabekir's XV corps and Kurdish militia advance on Kars, blowing through Armenian opposition, and then Alexandropol. With an advance on Yerevan imminent, on 28 November 1920, the 11th Red Army under the command of Anatoliy Gekker crossed over into Armenia from Soviet Azerbaijan, and the Armenian government surrendered to Bolshevik forces, ending the conflict.

 

The Treaty of Alexandropol (2—3 December 1920) was the first treaty (although illegitimate) signed by the Turkish revolutionaries. The 10th article in the Treaty of Alexandropol stated that Armenia renounced the Treaty of Sèvres and its allotted partition of Anatolia. The agreement was signed with representatives of the former government of Armenia, which by that time had no de jure or de facto power in Armenia, since Soviet rule was already established in the country. On 16 March 1921, the Bolsheviks and Turkey signed a more comprehensive agreement, the Treaty of Kars, which involved representatives of Soviet Armenia, Soviet Azerbaijan, and Soviet Georgia.

 

Throughout most of his life, Atatürk was a moderate-to-heavy drinker, often consuming half a litre of rakı a day; he also smoked tobacco, predominantly in the form of cigarettes. During 1937, indications that Atatürk's health was worsening started to appear. In early 1938, while on a trip to Yalova, he suffered from a serious illness. He went to Istanbul for treatment, where he was diagnosed with cirrhosis. During his stay in Istanbul, he made an effort to keep up with his regular lifestyle, but eventually succumbed to his illness. He died on 10 November 1938, at the age of 57, in the Dolmabahçe Palace.

 

Atatürk's funeral called forth both sorrow and pride in Turkey, and 17 countries sent special representatives, while nine contributed armed detachments to the cortège. Atatürk's remains were originally laid to rest in the Ethnography Museum of Ankara, but they were transferred on 10 November 1953 (15 years after his death) in a 42-ton sarcophagus to a mausoleum overlooking Ankara, Anıtkabir.

 

In his will, Atatürk donated all of his possessions to the Republican People's Party, provided that the yearly interest of his funds would be used to look after his sister Makbule and his adopted children, and fund the higher education of İsmet İnönü's children. The remainder was willed to the Turkish Language Association and the Turkish Historical Society.

Fredrick was on the corner of Erie and Michigan, reading. A closer look revealed he was reading the book of Psalms. In his earlier days he drank heavily, which damaged his liver. He has cirrhosis of the liver and hepatitis A, B, and C. So his health is a concern for him. He went to a drug treatment program and is now clean, so for the time being he's trying to raise money so he can go to college at Moody Bible. (He can get free tuition through them). He takes some of the money he receives and actually gives it to others in need on the street. He's concerned about how the winter is going to be this year. He's had a rough few days, so he was kind of depressed about that. His favorite verse in the Bible is Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." He's tries to be a "light" to the people who pass him by on the street, he said. His ultimate goal is to get into ministry and help other people.

For over 2,000 years people around the world have enjoyed milk thistle in their diet. Just about all parts of the plant have been used as food with no reports of toxicity. Although it can be used as food, milk thistle is better known as having medicinal benefits. It is a great tonic, increases appetite and aids in digestion. It is used by many people, including those who were addicted to alcohol to cleanse the liver. Milk thistle is used internally in the treatment of liver and gall bladder diseases, jaundice, cirrhosis, hepatitis and poisoning (including mushroom poisoning).

This is an illustration by Toronto artist Jody Hewgill

www.jodyhewgill.com

 

Billie Holiday

(April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959), also called Lady Day, was an American singer, generally considered one of the greatest female jazz voices of all time, alongside Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald.

 

Born Eleanora Fagan Gough, Billie Holiday had a difficult childhood which greatly affected her life and career. Much of her childhood is clouded by conjecture and legend, some of it propagated by herself in her autobiography published in 1956. This account is known to contain many inaccuracies. Her professional pseudonym was taken from Billie Dove, an actress she admired, and Clarence Holiday, her father. At the outset of her career, she spelled her last name "Halliday", presumably to distance herself from her neglectful father, but eventually changed it back to "Holiday".

 

She was born in Philadelphia but grew up in the Fells Point section of Baltimore, Maryland. According to her autobiography, her house was the first on their street to have electricity. Her mother Sadie moved to Philadelphia to hide her pregnancy. Sadie was allegedly only thirteen at the time of her birth (according to Ancestry.com, her Mother's birth year is 1896, making Billie's mother the age of 19 when she was born); her father Clarence Holiday, a jazz guitarist who would play for Fletcher Henderson, was 17. There is some controversy regarding Holiday's paternity, stemming from a copy of her birth certificate in the Baltimore archives that lists the father as a "Frank DeViese." Some historians consider this an anomaly, probably inserted by a hospital or government worker . Clarence Holiday accepted paternity, but was hardly a responsible father. In the rare times she did see him, she would shake him down for money by threatening to tell his then-girlfriend that he had a daughter. Recent research has proven that Frank De Viese is Billie's real father.

 

According to her autobiography, her parents married when she was three, but they soon divorced, leaving her to be raised largely by her mother and other relatives. At the age of ten, she reported having been raped, which resulted in her being sent to a Catholic reform school. It was only through the assistance of a family friend that she was released two years later. Sadie remarried and abandoned Billie. She was raised by a woman that she called grandma, Martha Miller. She started skipping school heavily, and in 1925, she was sentenced to a year at House of the Good Shepherd.

 

Scarred by these experiences, Holiday moved to New York with her mother in 1928. According to her accounts, she was recruited by a brothel, worked as a prostitute, and was eventually imprisoned for a short time. It was in Harlem in the early 1930's that she started singing for tips in various night clubs. According to legend, penniless and facing eviction, she sang "Body and Soul" in a local club and reduced the audience to tears. She later worked at various clubs for tips, and ultimately we know that she worked at Pod's and Jerry's, a well known Harlem jazz club. Not a lot is known about her early singing career, but we do know that she was working at a club named Monette's in 1933 when she was discovered by talent scout John Hammond.

 

Hammond managed to get Holiday recording sessions with Benny Goodman and booked her for live performances in various New York clubs. In 1935 her career got a big push when she recorded four sides that became hits, including "What a Little Moonlight Can Do" and "Miss Brown To You". This landed her a recording contract of her own, and from 1935 to 1942 she laid down masters that would ultimately become an important segment of early American jazz. Sometimes referred to as her "Columbia period" (after her label), these recordings represent a large portion of her total body of work.

 

During this period, the American music industry was still moderately segregated, and many of the songs Holiday was given to record were intended for the black jukebox audience. She was often not considered for the 'best' songs of the day, which were reserved for white singers. However, Holiday's style and fresh sound soon caught the attention of musicians across the nation, and her popularity began to climb. Peggy Lee, who began recording with Benny Goodman in the early 1940s, is often said to have emulated Holiday's light, sensual style.

 

In 1936 she was working with Lester Young, who gave her the now-famous nickname of Lady Day. Holiday joined Count Basie in 1937 and Artie Shaw in 1938. She was one of the first black women to work with a white orchestra, an impressive accomplishment at the time.

 

Holiday was working for Columbia in the late 1930's when she was introduced to a song entitled "Strange Fruit", which began as a poem about the lynching of a black man written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx. Meeropol used the pseudonym "Lewis Allen" for the work. The poem was set to music and performed at teachers' union meetings, where it was eventually heard by the manager of Cafe Society, an integrated nightclub in Greenwich Village, who introduced it to Holiday. Holiday performed the song at Cafe Society in 1939, a move that by her own admission left her fearful of retaliation. Holiday later said that the imagery in "Strange Fruit" reminded her of her father's death, and that this played a role in her persistence to perform it.

 

She approached Columbia about recording the song, but was refused due to the subject matter of the song. She arranged to record it with an alternate label, Commodore, Milt Gabler's alternative jazz label in 1939. She would record two major sessions at Commodore, one in 1939 and one in 1944. Although there were far fewer songs recorded with Commodore, some of her biggest hits were under this label, including "Fine and Mellow", "I Cover the Waterfront" and "Embraceable You". "Strange Fruit" was highly regarded and admired by intellectuals, and is in a large part responsible for her widespread popularity. "Strange Fruit's" popularity also prompted Holiday to record the type of songs that would become her signature, namely slow, moving love ballads.

 

It is widely conjectured that this is the period where Holiday first began what would become a long, and ultimately fatal, history of substance abuse. Holiday stated that she began using hard drugs in the early 1940s.

 

Her personal life was as turbulent as the songs she sang. She married trombonist Jimmy Monroe (a small-time drug dealer) on August 25, 1941. While still married to Monroe, she took up with trumpeter Joe Guy as his common law wife. She finally divorced Monroe in 1947, and also split with Guy. In 1947 she was jailed on drug charges and served eight months at the Alderson Federal Correctional Institution for Women in West Virginia. Her New York City Cabaret Card was subsequently revoked, which kept her from working in clubs there for the remaining 12 years of her life.

 

By the 1950s Holiday's drug abuse, drinking, poor taste in abusive men, and deteriorating health set her life on a slow and steady decline. Her voice coarsened and did not project the vibrance it once did. However, she seemed to stand as a prime example of the struggling artist, and projected a certain bittersweet dignity.

 

On March 28, 1952, Holiday married Louis McKay, a Mafia "enforcer." McKay, like most of the men in her life, was abusive, but did try to get her off drugs. They were separated at the time of her death. Holiday was also rather openly bisexual and was rumored to have had several affairs with notable stage and film actresses, including Tallulah Bankhead. She sometimes had friends call her "Bill." Gossip has it that she paid prostitutes to perform oral sex on her, which she called "french kissing." Holiday also had a relationship with Orson Welles.

 

Her late recordings on Verve are as well remembered as her Commodore and Decca work. From 1952 to 1959 Holiday released a little more than 100 new recordings for this label, which would constitute about a third of her recorded work. Her voice reflects a rugged timbre on these tracks, reflecting a vulnerability to the once grand and bold diva. Her performance of "Fine and Mellow" on CBS's The Sound of Jazz program is memorable for her interplay with her long-time friend Lester Young; both were less than two years from death.

 

Holiday toured Europe in 1954 and again from late 1958 to early 1959. While in London in February 1959, Holiday made a memorable televised appearance on the BBC's Chelsea at Nine, singing, among other songs, "Strange Fruit." Holiday made her final studio recordings (with Ray Ellis and his Orchestra, who had also recorded her Lady in Satin album the previous year — see below) for the MGM label in March 1959 (included in her complete Verve recordings collection.) These final studio recordings were released posthumously on a self-titled album, later re-titled and re-released as Last Recordings. She made her final public appearance at a benefit concert at the Phoenix Theater in Greenwich Village, New York City on May 25, 1959. According to the masters of ceremony at that performance, Leonard Feather (a renowned jazz critic) and Steve Allen, she was only able to make it through two songs, one of which was "Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do."

 

On May 31, 1959, she was taken to Metropolitan Hospital in New York, suffering from liver and heart problems. On July 12, she was placed under house arrest at the hospital for possession, despite evidence suggesting the drugs may have been planted on her. Holiday remained under police guard at the hospital until she died from cirrhosis of the liver on July 17, 1959 at the age of 44. In the final years of her life, she had been progressively swindled out of her earnings, and she died with only $0.70 in the bank and $750 on her person.

 

Her impact on other artists was undeniable, however; even after her death she influenced such singers as Janis Joplin and Nina Simone. In 1972, Diana Ross played her in a movie version of Holiday's autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues. To everyone's surprise, the film was a commercial smash and earned a Best Actress nomination for Ross. In 1987 U2 released "Angel of Harlem", a tribute to her.

 

Like many artists, the importance of Holiday's music and her influence were only truly realized after her death. She struggled against racism and sexism her entire career, and achieved fame despite a turbulent life. She is also often also cited as an example to the black and gay communities, both which admire her early efforts to stand up for equal rights, and to speak out against discrimination and racism. She is now considered one of the most important vocalists of the 20th century.

 

Billie Holiday is interred in Saint Raymond's Cemetery, Bronx, New York.

 

While instantly recognizable, Holiday's voice changed over time. Her first recordings in the mid-1930s featured a bouncy, girlish voice. By the early 1940s her singing became informed by her acting skill. It was during this time when she recorded her signature songs "Strange Fruit" and "I Cover the Waterfront". Many called her voice lovingly sweet, weathered and experienced, sad and sophisticated. As she aged, the effects of her drug abuse continued to ravage her range and her voice changed considerably, becoming somewhat rougher. Her last major recording, Lady in Satin, was released in 1958 and reveals a woman with an extremely limited range, but wonderful phrasing and emotion. The recording featured a backing from a 40-piece orchestra conducted and arranged by Ray Ellis, who said of the album in 1997:

 

I would say that the most emotional moment was her listening to the playback of "I'm a Fool to Want You." There were tears in her eyes...After we finished the album I went into the control room and listened to all the takes. I must admit I was unhappy with her performance, but I was just listening musically instead of emotionally. It wasn't until I heard the final mix a few weeks later that I realized how great her performance really was.

 

Billie was 5'5"

 

Her grandfather was one of seventeen children of a black Virginia female slave and a white Irish plantation owner.

 

The Black Eyed Peas paid her a tribute in a Coca Cola commercial

 

America's Next Top Model contestant Mercedes Yvette posed as Billie Holiday during a photoshoot in which the models had to portray a famous figure. The judges said that the photograph captured Billie's sweet sadness.

 

Holiday spent much of the 1930's working with famous jazz saxaphonist Lester Young. It was Young who gave Holiday the nickname Lady Day, and Holiday gave Young the nickname "Prez". The two were reunited at a performance on the CBS television special The Sound of Jazz on December 8, 1957. They were both on tour in Europe in March of 1959 when Young fell ill and had to return to New York. Young died on March 15, 1959 at the age of 49. According to renowned jazz critic Leonard Feather, who rode with Holiday in a taxi to Young's funeral, she told Feather on the ride over, "I'll be the next one to go". Holiday died almost exactly four months later.

On September 18,1994, the United States Postal Service honored Holiday by introducing a USPS sponsored stamp.

 

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000 (under the category 'early influence')

 

A statue of Holiday stands at the corner of Lafayette and Pennsylvania Avenues in Baltimore.

 

December 24, 1929, Sadie discovered Wilbert Rich (a neighbor) raping Billie. Wilbert was only sentenced 3 months in jail.

 

Sadie died October 6,1945.

 

While in the hospital, Billie hid her drugs in a Kleenex box, a nurse discovered it and she was arrested on her deathbed.

 

In April 2005, in honor of the 90th anniversary of Billie's birth, Columbia University's radio station, WKCR-FM (www.WKCR.org), broadcast a two-week marathon festival of Billie's music, pre-empting all regular programming.

 

Cousin of boxer Henry Armstrong

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Billie Holiday in Washington DC

 

Billie Holiday began appearing in Washington near the beginning of her career. In 1937 she appeared at the Howard Theatre as vocalist with the Count Basie Orchestra, returning for weeklong engagements as headliner in 1940 and 1941. She also performed on the bill at the Lincoln Theater near 12th and U Streets NW.

 

After her 1947 prison term for narcotics made it impossible for her to appear at Manhattan nightclubs, Billie began grueling years of incessant touring. In Washington she played Club Bali in 1948 and its sucessor, Cafe Trinidad, in 1954 . She also appeared at Bohemian Caverns at 11th and U Streets NW during the 1950s.

 

Two clubs where Billie appeared regularly were far from the U Street entertainment corridor.

Olivia Davis' Patio Lounge at 713 13th Street NW was a popular downtown stop for touring jazz musicians of the mid-1950s. Today it is remembered as the scene of a week-long Lester Young engagement that became the 5 CD set "Lester in Washington-1956". However, a recording of an October, 1956 Billie Holiday broadcast from the Patio Lounge is also available on CD.

 

In the 1950s, every big city had its "Brown Derby". The Washington version was far uptown at 3333A Connecticut Avenue NW. Despite its seeming isolation from city life, the Brown Derby presented Billie Holiday for several engagements and attracted top acts into the 1960s.

 

Although the scene they embodied has long since faded, most places where Billie Holiday performed can be visited today. The Lincoln Theatre was renovated with public funds in the 1990s and still hosts jazz events today. Unfortunately the Howard Theatre, renovated in the 1980s, failed to build an audience and today stands shuttered at the intersection of 7th Street, T Street, and Florida Avenue NW.

 

After closing for almost 30 years after the 1968 riot drove away a significant portion of its customer base, Bohemian Caverns is again a functioning nightclub with live music. Billie Holiday's portrait is displayed in the window enclosure just to the left of the traffic light. The Brown Derby is a restaurant, while the Cafe Trinidad is a theatrical performance space. Only the Patio Lounge, which closed in 1978, has been demolished.

        

The Postcard

 

A postally unused postcard that was published by Fotofolio of Box 661, Canal Sta., NY, NY. The photography was by Rollie McKenna. The card has a divided back.

 

Dylan Thomas

 

Dylan Marlais Thomas, who was born in Swansea on the 27th. October 1914, was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems 'Do not go Gentle Into That Good Night' and 'And Death Shall Have No Dominion.'

 

Dylan's other work included 'Under Milk Wood' as well as stories and radio broadcasts such as 'A Child's Christmas in Wales' and 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog'.

 

He became widely popular in his lifetime, and remained so after his death at the age of 39 in New York City. By then he had acquired a reputation, which he had encouraged, as a roistering, drunken and doomed poet.

 

In 1931, when he was 16, Thomas, an undistinguished pupil, left school to become a reporter for the South Wales Daily Post, only to leave under pressure 18 months later.

 

Many of his works appeared in print while he was still a teenager. In 1934, the publication of 'Light Breaks Where no Sun Shines' caught the attention of the literary world.

 

While living in London, Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara. They married in 1937, and had three children: Llewelyn, Aeronwy and Colm.

 

Thomas came to be appreciated as a popular poet during his lifetime, though he found it hard to earn a living as a writer. He began augmenting his income with reading tours and radio broadcasts. His radio recordings for the BBC during the late 1940's brought him to the public's attention, and he was frequently used by the BBC as an accessible voice of the literary scene.

 

Thomas first travelled to the United States in the 1950's. His readings there brought him a degree of fame, while his erratic behaviour and drinking worsened. His time in the United States cemented his legend, however, and he went on to record to vinyl such works as 'A Child's Christmas in Wales'.

 

During his fourth trip to New York in 1953, Thomas became gravely ill and fell into a coma. He died on the 9th. November 1953, and his body was returned to Wales. On the 25th. November 1953, he was laid to rest in St Martin's churchyard in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire.

 

Although Thomas wrote exclusively in the English language, he has been acknowledged as one of the most important Welsh poets of the 20th century. He is noted for his original, rhythmic and ingenious use of words and imagery. He is regarded by many as one of the great modern poets, and he still remains popular with the public.

 

-- Dylan Thomas - The Early Years

 

Dylan was born at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, the son of Florence Hannah (née Williams; 1882–1958), a seamstress, and David John Thomas (1876–1952), a teacher. His father had a first-class honours degree in English from University College, Aberystwyth and ambitions to rise above his position teaching English literature at the local grammar school.

 

Thomas had one sibling, Nancy Marles (1906–1953), who was eight years his senior. The children spoke only English, though their parents were bilingual in English and Welsh, and David Thomas gave Welsh lessons at home.

 

Thomas's father chose the name Dylan, which means 'Son of the Sea', after Dylan ail Don, a character in The Mabinogion. Dylan's middle name, Marlais, was given in honour of his great-uncle, William Thomas, a Unitarian minister and poet whose bardic name was Gwilym Marles.

 

Dylan caused his mother to worry that he might be teased as the 'Dull One.' When he broadcast on Welsh BBC, early in his career, he was introduced using this pronunciation. Thomas favoured the Anglicised pronunciation, and gave instructions that it should be spoken as 'Dillan.'

 

The red-brick semi-detached house at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive (in the respectable area of the Uplands), in which Thomas was born and lived until he was 23, had been bought by his parents a few months before his birth.

 

Dylan's childhood featured regular summer trips to the Llansteffan Peninsula, a Welsh-speaking part of Carmarthenshire, where his maternal relatives were the sixth generation to farm there.

 

In the land between Llangain and Llansteffan, his mother's family, the Williamses and their close relatives, worked a dozen farms with over a thousand acres between them. The memory of Fernhill, a dilapidated 15-acre farm rented by his maternal aunt, Ann Jones, and her husband, Jim, is evoked in the 1945 lyrical poem 'Fern Hill', but is portrayed more accurately in his short story, 'The Peaches'.

 

Thomas had bronchitis and asthma in childhood, and struggled with these throughout his life. He was indulged by his mother and enjoyed being mollycoddled, a trait he carried into adulthood, and he was skilful in gaining attention and sympathy.

 

Thomas's formal education began at Mrs Hole's Dame School, a private school on Mirador Crescent, a few streets away from his home. He described his experience there in Reminiscences of Childhood:

 

"Never was there such a dame school as ours,

so firm and kind and smelling of galoshes, with

the sweet and fumbled music of the piano lessons

drifting down from upstairs to the lonely schoolroom,

where only the sometimes tearful wicked sat over

undone sums, or to repent a little crime – the pulling

of a girl's hair during geography, the sly shin kick

under the table during English literature".

 

In October 1925, Dylan Thomas enrolled at Swansea Grammar School for boys, in Mount Pleasant, where his father taught English. He was an undistinguished pupil who shied away from school, preferring reading.

 

In his first year, one of his poems was published in the school's magazine, and before he left he became its editor. In June 1928, Thomas won the school's mile race, held at St. Helen's Ground; he carried a newspaper photograph of his victory with him until his death.

 

During his final school years Dylan began writing poetry in notebooks; the first poem, dated 27th. April 1930, is entitled 'Osiris, Come to Isis'.

 

In 1931, when he was 16, Thomas left school to become a reporter for the South Wales Daily Post, only to leave under pressure 18 months later. Thomas continued to work as a freelance journalist for several years, during which time he remained at Cwmdonkin Drive and continued to add to his notebooks, amassing 200 poems in four books between 1930 and 1934. Of the 90 poems he published, half were written during these years.

 

In his free time, Dylan joined the amateur dramatic group at the Little Theatre in Mumbles, visited the cinema in Uplands, took walks along Swansea Bay, and frequented Swansea's pubs, especially the Antelope and the Mermaid Hotels in Mumbles.

 

In the Kardomah Café, close to the newspaper office in Castle Street, he met his creative contemporaries, including his friend the poet Vernon Watkins.

 

-- 1933–1939

 

In 1933, Thomas visited London for probably the first time.

 

Thomas was a teenager when many of the poems for which he became famous were published:

 

-- 'And Death Shall Have no Dominion'

-- 'Before I Knocked'

-- 'The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower'.

 

'And Death Shall Have no Dominion' appeared in the New English Weekly in May 1933:

 

'And death shall have no dominion.

Dead men naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the

west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and

the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they

shall rise again

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

And death shall have no dominion'.

 

When 'Light Breaks Where no Sun Shines' appeared in The Listener in 1934, it caught the attention of three senior figures in literary London - T. S. Eliot, Geoffrey Grigson and Stephen Spender. They contacted Thomas, and his first poetry volume, '18 Poems', was published in December 1934.

 

'18 Poems' was noted for its visionary qualities which led to critic Desmond Hawkins writing that:

 

"The work is the sort of bomb

that bursts no more than once

in three years".

 

The volume was critically acclaimed, and won a contest run by the Sunday Referee, netting him new admirers from the London poetry world, including Edith Sitwell and Edwin Muir. The anthology was published by Fortune Press, in part a vanity publisher that did not pay its writers, and expected them to buy a certain number of copies themselves. A similar arrangement was used by other new authors, including Philip Larkin.

 

In September 1935, Thomas met Vernon Watkins, thus beginning a lifelong friendship. Dylan introduced Watkins, working at Lloyds Bank at the time, to his friends. The group of writers, musicians and artists became known as "The Kardomah Gang".

 

In those days, Thomas used to frequent the cinema on Mondays with Tom Warner who, like Watkins, had recently suffered a nervous breakdown. After these trips, Warner would bring Thomas back for supper with his aunt.

 

On one occasion, when she served him a boiled egg, she had to cut its top off for him, as Thomas did not know how to do this. This was because his mother had done it for him all his life, an example of her coddling him. Years later, his wife Caitlin would still have to prepare his eggs for him.

 

In December 1935, Thomas contributed the poem 'The Hand That Signed the Paper' to Issue 18 of the bi-monthly New Verse.

 

In 1936, Dylan's next collection 'Twenty-five Poems' received much critical praise. In 1938, Thomas won the Oscar Blumenthal Prize for Poetry; it was also the year in which New Directions offered to be his publisher in the United States. In all, he wrote half his poems while living at Cwmdonkin Drive before moving to London. It was the time that Thomas's reputation for heavy drinking developed.

 

In early 1936, Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara (1913–94), a 22-year-old blonde-haired, blue-eyed dancer of Irish and French descent. She had run away from home, intent on making a career in dance, and at the age of 18 joined the chorus line at the London Palladium.

 

Introduced by Augustus John, Caitlin's lover, they met in The Wheatsheaf pub on Rathbone Place in London's West End. Laying his head on her lap, a drunken Thomas proposed. Thomas liked to comment that he and Caitlin were in bed together ten minutes after they first met.

 

Although Caitlin initially continued her relationship with Augustus John, she and Thomas began a correspondence, and by the second half of 1936 they were courting. They married at the register office in Penzance, Cornwall, on the 11th. July 1937.

 

In early 1938, they moved to Wales, renting a cottage in the village of Laugharne, Carmarthenshire. Their first child, Llewelyn Edouard, was born on the 30th. January 1939.

 

By the late 1930's, Thomas was embraced as the "Poetic Herald" for a group of English poets, the New Apocalyptics. However Thomas refused to align himself with them, and declined to sign their manifesto.

 

He later stated that:

 

"They are intellectual muckpots

leaning on a theory".

 

Despite Dylan's rejection, many of the group, including Henry Treece, modelled their work on Thomas's.

 

During the politically charged atmosphere of the 1930's, Thomas's sympathies were very much with the radical left, to the point of holding close links with the communists, as well as being decidedly pacifist and anti-fascist. He was a supporter of the left-wing No More War Movement, and boasted about participating in demonstrations against the British Union of Fascists.

 

-- 1939–1945

 

In 1939, a collection of 16 poems and seven of the 20 short stories published by Thomas in magazines since 1934, appeared as 'The Map of Love'.

 

Ten stories in his next book, 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog' (1940), were based less on lavish fantasy than those in 'The Map of Love', and more on real-life romances featuring himself in Wales.

 

Sales of both books were poor, resulting in Thomas living on meagre fees from writing and reviewing. At this time he borrowed heavily from friends and acquaintances.

 

Hounded by creditors, Thomas and his family left Laugharne in July 1940 and moved to the home of critic John Davenport in Marshfield, Gloucestershire. There Thomas collaborated with Davenport on the satire 'The Death of the King's Canary', though due to fears of libel, the work was not published until 1976.

 

At the outset of the Second World War, Thomas was worried about conscription, and referred to his ailment as "An Unreliable Lung".

 

Coughing sometimes confined him to bed, and he had a history of bringing up blood and mucus. After initially seeking employment in a reserved occupation, he managed to be classified Grade III, which meant that he would be among the last to be called up for service.

 

Saddened to see his friends going on active service, Dylan continued drinking, and struggled to support his family. He wrote begging letters to random literary figures asking for support, a plan he hoped would provide a long-term regular income. Thomas supplemented his income by writing scripts for the BBC, which not only gave him additional earnings but also provided evidence that he was engaged in essential war work.

 

In February 1941, Swansea was bombed by the Luftwaffe in a three night blitz. Castle Street was one of many streets that suffered badly; rows of shops, including the Kardomah Café, were destroyed. Thomas walked through the bombed-out shell of the town centre with his friend Bert Trick. Upset at the sight, he concluded:

 

"Our Swansea is dead".

 

Soon after the bombing raids, he wrote a radio play, 'Return Journey Home', which described the café as being "razed to the snow". The play was first broadcast on the 15th. June 1947. The Kardomah Café reopened on Portland Street after the war.

 

In May 1941, Thomas and Caitlin left their son with his grandmother at Blashford and moved to London. Thomas hoped to find employment in the film industry, and wrote to the director of the films division of the Ministry of Information (MOI). After initially being rebuffed, he found work with Strand Films, providing him with his first regular income since the Daily Post. Strand produced films for the MOI; Thomas scripted at least five films in 1942.

 

In five film projects, between 1942 and 1945, the Ministry of Information (MOI) commissioned Thomas to script a series of documentaries about both urban planning and wartime patriotism, all in partnership with director John Eldridge:

 

-- 'Wales: Green Mountain, Black Mountain'.

-- 'New Towns for Old' (on post-war reconstruction).

-- 'Fuel for Battle'.

-- 'Our Country' (1945) was a romantic tour of Great

Britain set to Thomas's poetry.

-- 'A City Reborn'.

 

Other projects included:

 

-- 'This Is Colour' (a history of the British dyeing industry).

-- 'These Are The Men' (1943), a more ambitious piece in which Thomas's verse accompanied Leni Riefenstahl's

footage of an early Nuremberg Rally.

-- 'Conquest of a Germ' (1944) explored the use of early antibiotics in the fight against pneumonia and tuberculosis.

 

In early 1943, Thomas began a relationship with Pamela Glendower; one of several affairs he had during his marriage. The affairs either ran out of steam or were halted after Caitlin discovered his infidelity.

 

In March 1943, Caitlin gave birth to a daughter, Aeronwy, in London. They lived in a run-down studio in Chelsea, made up of a single large room with a curtain to separate the kitchen.

 

The Thomas family made several escapes back to Wales during the war. Between 1941 and 1943, they lived intermittently in Plas Gelli, Talsarn, in Cardiganshire. Plas Gelli sits close by the River Aeron, after whom Aeronwy is thought to have been named. Some of Thomas’ letters from Gelli can be found in his 'Collected Letters'.

 

The Thomases shared the mansion with his childhood friends from Swansea, Vera and Evelyn Phillips. Vera's friendship with the Thomases in nearby New Quay is portrayed in the 2008 film, 'The Edge of Love'.

 

In July 1944, with the threat of German flying bombs landing on London, Thomas moved to the family cottage at Blaencwm near Llangain, Carmarthenshire, where he resumed writing poetry, completing 'Holy Spring' and 'Vision and Prayer'.

 

In September 1944, the Thomas family moved to New Quay in Cardiganshire (Ceredigion), where they rented Majoda, a wood and asbestos bungalow on the cliffs overlooking Cardigan Bay. It was here that Thomas wrote the radio piece 'Quite Early One Morning', a sketch for his later work, 'Under Milk Wood'.

 

Of the poetry written at this time, of note is 'Fern Hill', believed to have been started while living in New Quay, but completed at Blaencwm in mid-1945. Dylan's first biographer, Constantine FitzGibbon wrote that:

 

"His nine months in New Quay were a second

flowering, a period of fertility that recalls the

earliest days, with a great outpouring of poems

and a good deal of other material".

 

His second biographer, Paul Ferris, concurred:

 

"On the grounds of output, the bungalow

deserves a plaque of its own."

 

The Dylan Thomas scholar, Walford Davies, has noted that:

 

"New Quay was crucial in supplementing

the gallery of characters Thomas had to

hand for writing 'Under Milk Wood'."

 

-- Dylan Thomas's Broadcasting Years 1945–1949

 

Although Thomas had previously written for the BBC, it was a minor and intermittent source of income. In 1943, he wrote and recorded a 15-minute talk entitled 'Reminiscences of Childhood' for the Welsh BBC.

 

In December 1944, he recorded 'Quite Early One Morning' (produced by Aneirin Talfan Davies, again for the Welsh BBC), but when Davies offered it for national broadcast, BBC London initially turned it down.

 

However on the 31st. August 1945, the BBC Home Service broadcast 'Quite Early One Morning' nationally, and in the three subsequent years, Dylan made over a hundred broadcasts for the BBC, not only for his poetry readings, but for discussions and critiques.

 

In the second half of 1945, Dylan began reading for the BBC Radio programme, 'Book of Verse', that was broadcast weekly to the Far East. This provided Thomas with a regular income, and brought him into contact with Louis MacNeice, a congenial drinking companion whose advice Thomas cherished.

 

On the 29th. September 1946, the BBC began transmitting the Third Programme, a high-culture network which provided further opportunities for Thomas.

 

He appeared in the play 'Comus' for the Third Programme, the day after the network launched, and his rich, sonorous voice led to character parts, including the lead in Aeschylus's 'Agamemnon', and Satan in an adaptation of 'Paradise Lost'.

 

Thomas remained a popular guest on radio talk shows for the BBC, who stated:

 

"He is useful should a younger

generation poet be needed".

 

He had an uneasy relationship with BBC management, and a staff job was never an option, with drinking cited as the problem. Despite this, Thomas became a familiar radio voice and well-known celebrity within Great Britain.

 

By late September 1945, the Thomases had left Wales, and were living with various friends in London. In December, they moved to Oxford to live in a summerhouse on the banks of the Cherwell. It belonged to the historian, A. J. P. Taylor. His wife, Margaret, became Thomas’s most committed patron.

 

The publication of 'Deaths and Entrances' in February 1946 was a major turning point for Thomas. Poet and critic Walter J. Turner commented in The Spectator:

 

"This book alone, in my opinion,

ranks him as a major poet".

 

From 'In my Craft or Sullen Art,' 'Deaths and Entrances' (1946):

 

'Not for the proud man apart

From the raging moon, I write

On these spindrift pages

Nor for the towering dead

With their nightingales and psalms

But for the lovers, their arms

Round the griefs of the ages,

Who pay no praise or wages

Nor heed my craft or art'.

 

The following year, in April 1947, the Thomases travelled to Italy, after Thomas had been awarded a Society of Authors scholarship. They stayed first in villas near Rapallo and then Florence, before moving to a hotel in Rio Marina on the island of Elba.

 

On their return to England Thomas and his family moved, in September 1947, into the Manor House in South Leigh, just west of Oxford, found for him by Margaret Taylor.

 

He continued with his work for the BBC, completed a number of film scripts, and worked further on his ideas for 'Under Milk Wood'.

 

In March 1949 Thomas travelled to Prague. He had been invited by the Czech government to attend the inauguration of the Czechoslovak Writers' Union. Jiřina Hauková, who had previously published translations of some of Thomas' poems, was his guide and interpreter.

 

In her memoir, Hauková recalls that at a party in Prague, Thomas narrated the first version of his radio play 'Under Milk Wood.' She describes how he outlined the plot about a town that was declared insane, and then portrayed the predicament of an eccentric organist and a baker with two wives.

 

A month later, in May 1949, Thomas and his family moved to his final home, the Boat House at Laugharne, purchased for him at a cost of £2,500 in April 1949 by Margaret Taylor.

 

Thomas acquired a garage a hundred yards from the house on a cliff ledge which he turned into his writing shed, and where he wrote several of his most acclaimed poems. To see a photograph of the interior of Dylan's shed, please search for the tag 55DTW96

 

Just before moving into the Boat House, Thomas rented Pelican House opposite his regular drinking den, Brown's Hotel, for his parents. They both lived there from 1949 until Dylan's father 'D.J.' died on the 16th. December 1952. His mother continued to live there until 1953.

 

Caitlin gave birth to their third child, a boy named Colm Garan Hart, on the 25th. July 1949.

 

In October 1949, the New Zealand poet Allen Curnow came to visit Thomas at the Boat House, who took him to his writing shed. Curnow recalls:

 

"Dylan fished out a draft to show me

of the unfinished 'Under Milk Wood'

that was then called 'The Town That

Was Mad'."

 

-- Dylan Thomas's American tours, 1950–1953

 

(a) The First American Tour

 

The American poet John Brinnin invited Thomas to New York, where in 1950 they embarked on a lucrative three-month tour of arts centres and campuses.

 

The tour, which began in front of an audience of a thousand at the Kaufmann Auditorium in the Poetry Centre in New York, took in a further 40 venues. During the tour, Thomas was invited to many parties and functions, and on several occasions became drunk - going out of his way to shock people - and was a difficult guest.

 

Dylan drank before some of his readings, although it is argued that he may have pretended to be more affected by the alcohol than he actually was.

 

The writer Elizabeth Hardwick recalled how intoxicated a performer he could be, and how the tension would build before a performance:

 

"Would he arrive only to break

down on the stage?

Would some dismaying scene

take place at the faculty party?

Would he be offensive, violent,

obscene?"

 

Dylan's wife Caitlin said in her memoir:

 

"Nobody ever needed encouragement

less, and he was drowned in it."

 

On returning to Great Britain, Thomas began work on two further poems, 'In the White Giant's Thigh', which he read on the Third Programme in September 1950:

 

'Who once were a bloom of wayside

brides in the hawed house

And heard the lewd, wooed field

flow to the coming frost,

The scurrying, furred small friars

squeal in the dowse

Of day, in the thistle aisles, till the

white owl crossed.'

 

He also worked on the incomplete 'In Country Heaven'.

 

In October 1950, Thomas sent a draft of the first 39 pages of 'The Town That Was Mad' to the BBC. The task of seeing this work through to production was assigned to the BBC's Douglas Cleverdon, who had been responsible for casting Thomas in 'Paradise Lost'.

 

However, despite Cleverdon's urgings, the script slipped from Thomas's priorities, and in early 1951 he took a trip to Iran to work on a film for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The film was never made, with Thomas returning to Wales in February, though his time there allowed him to provide a few minutes of material for a BBC documentary, 'Persian Oil'.

 

Early in 1951 Thomas wrote two poems, which Thomas's principal biographer, Paul Ferris, describes as "unusually blunt." One was the ribald 'Lament', and the other was an ode, in the form of a villanelle, to his dying father 'Do not go Gentle Into That Good Night". (A villanelle is a pastoral or lyrical poem of nineteen lines, with only two rhymes throughout, and some lines repeated).

 

Despite a range of wealthy patrons, including Margaret Taylor, Princess Marguerite Caetani and Marged Howard-Stepney, Thomas was still in financial difficulty, and he wrote several begging letters to notable literary figures, including the likes of T. S. Eliot.

 

Margaret Taylor was not keen on Thomas taking another trip to the United States, and thought that if he had a permanent address in London he would be able to gain steady work there. She bought a property, 54 Delancey Street, in Camden Town, and in late 1951 Thomas and Caitlin lived in the basement flat. Thomas described the flat as his "London House of Horror", and did not return there after his 1952 tour of America.

 

(b) The Second American Tour

 

Thomas undertook a second tour of the United States in 1952, this time with Caitlin - after she had discovered that he had been unfaithful on his earlier trip. They drank heavily, and Thomas began to suffer with gout and lung problems.

 

It was during this tour that the above photograph was taken.

 

The second tour was the most intensive of the four, taking in 46 engagements.

 

The trip also resulted in Thomas recording his first poetry to vinyl, which Caedmon Records released in America later that year. One of his works recorded during this time, 'A Child's Christmas in Wales', became his most popular prose work in America. The recording was a 2008 selection for the United States National Recording Registry, which stated that:

 

"It is credited with launching the

audiobook industry in the United

States".

 

(c) The Third American Tour

 

In April 1953, Thomas returned alone for a third tour of America. He performed a "work in progress" version of 'Under Milk Wood', solo, for the first time at Harvard University on the 3rd. May 1953. A week later, the work was performed with a full cast at the Poetry Centre in New York.

 

Dylan met the deadline only after being locked in a room by Brinnin's assistant, Liz Reitell, and was still editing the script on the afternoon of the performance; its last lines were handed to the actors as they put on their makeup.

 

During this penultimate tour, Thomas met the composer Igor Stravinsky. Igor had become an admirer of Dylan after having been introduced to his poetry by W. H. Auden. They had discussions about collaborating on a "musical theatrical work" for which Dylan would provide the libretto on the theme of:

 

"The rediscovery of love and

language in what might be left

after the world after the bomb."

 

The shock of Thomas's death later in the year moved Stravinsky to compose his 'In Memoriam Dylan Thomas' for tenor, string quartet and four trombones. The work's first performance in Los Angeles in 1954 was introduced with a tribute to Thomas from Aldous Huxley.

 

Thomas spent the last nine or ten days of his third tour in New York mostly in the company of Reitell, with whom he had an affair.

 

During this time, Thomas fractured his arm falling down a flight of stairs when drunk. Reitell's doctor, Milton Feltenstein, put his arm in plaster, and treated him for gout and gastritis.

 

After returning home, Thomas worked on 'Under Milk Wood' in Wales before sending the original manuscript to Douglas Cleverdon on the 15th. October 1953. It was copied and returned to Thomas, who lost it in a pub in London and required a duplicate to take to America.

 

(d) The Fourth American Tour

 

Thomas flew to the States on the 19th. October 1953 for what would be his final tour. He died in New York before the BBC could record 'Under Milk Wood'. Richard Burton featured in its first broadcast in 1954, and was joined by Elizabeth Taylor in a subsequent film. In 1954, the play won the Prix Italia for literary or dramatic programmes.

 

Thomas's last collection 'Collected Poems, 1934–1952', published when he was 38, won the Foyle poetry prize. Reviewing the volume, critic Philip Toynbee declared that:

 

"Thomas is the greatest living

poet in the English language".

 

There followed a series of distressing events for Dylan. His father died from pneumonia just before Christmas 1952. In the first few months of 1953, his sister died from liver cancer, one of his patrons took an overdose of sleeping pills, three friends died at an early age, and Caitlin had an abortion.

 

Thomas left Laugharne on the 9th. October 1953 on the first leg of his trip to America. He called on his mother, Florence, to say goodbye:

 

"He always felt that he had to get

out from this country because of

his chest being so bad."

 

Thomas had suffered from chest problems for most of his life, though they began in earnest soon after he moved in May 1949 to the Boat House at Laugharne - the "Bronchial Heronry", as he called it. Within weeks of moving in, he visited a local doctor, who prescribed medicine for both his chest and throat.

 

Whilst waiting in London before his flight in October 1953, Thomas stayed with the comedian Harry Locke and worked on 'Under Milk Wood'. Locke noted that Thomas was having trouble with his chest, with terrible coughing fits that made him go purple in the face. He was also using an inhaler to help his breathing.

 

There were reports, too, that Thomas was also having blackouts. His visit to the BBC producer Philip Burton a few days before he left for New York, was interrupted by a blackout. On his last night in London, he had another in the company of his fellow poet Louis MacNeice.

 

Thomas arrived in New York on the 20th. October 1953 to undertake further performances of 'Under Milk Wood', organised by John Brinnin, his American agent and Director of the Poetry Centre. Brinnin did not travel to New York, but remained in Boston in order to write.

 

He handed responsibility to his assistant, Liz Reitell, who was keen to see Thomas for the first time since their three-week romance early in the year. She met Thomas at Idlewild Airport and was shocked at his appearance. He looked pale, delicate and shaky, not his usual robust self:

 

"He was very ill when he got here."

 

After being taken by Reitell to check in at the Chelsea Hotel, Thomas took the first rehearsal of 'Under Milk Wood'. They then went to the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village, before returning to the Chelsea Hotel.

 

(Bob Dylan, formerly Robert Zimmerman, used to perform at the White Horse; Dylan Thomas was his favourite poet, and it is highly likely that Bob adopted Dylan's first name as his surname).

 

The next day, Reitell invited Thomas to her apartment, but he declined. They went sightseeing, but Thomas felt unwell, and retired to his bed for the rest of the afternoon. Reitell gave him half a grain (32.4 milligrams) of phenobarbitone to help him sleep, and spent the night at the hotel with him.

 

Two days later, on the 23rd. October 1953, at the third rehearsal, Thomas said he was too ill to take part, but he struggled on, shivering and burning with fever, before collapsing on the stage.

 

The next day, 24th. October, Reitell took Thomas to see her doctor, Milton Feltenstein, who administered cortisone injections. Thomas made it through the first performance that evening, but collapsed immediately afterwards.

 

Dylan told a friend who had come back-stage:

 

"This circus out there has taken

the life out of me for now."

 

Reitell later said:

 

"Feltenstein was rather a wild doctor

who thought injections would cure

anything".

 

At the next performance on the 25th. October, his fellow actors realised that Thomas was very ill:

 

"He was desperately ill…we didn’t think

that he would be able to do the last

performance because he was so ill…

Dylan literally couldn’t speak he was so

ill…still my greatest memory of it is that

he had no voice."

 

On the evening of the 27th. October, Thomas attended his 39th. birthday party, but felt unwell, and returned to his hotel after an hour. The next day, he took part in 'Poetry and the Film', a recorded symposium at Cinema 16.

 

A turning point came on the 2nd. November. Air pollution in New York had risen significantly, and exacerbated chest illnesses such as Thomas's. By the end of the month, over 200 New Yorkers had died from the smog.

 

On the 3rd. November, Thomas spent most of the day in his room, entertaining various friends. He went out in the evening to keep two drink appointments. After returning to the hotel, he went out again for a drink at 2 am. After drinking at the White Horse, Thomas returned to the Hotel Chelsea, declaring:

 

"I've had eighteen straight

whiskies. I think that's the

record!"

 

However the barman and the owner of the pub who served him later commented that Thomas could not have drunk more than half that amount, although the barman could have been trying to exonerate himself from any blame.

 

Thomas had an appointment at a clam house in New Jersey with Todd on the 4th. November. When Todd telephoned the Chelsea that morning, Thomas said he was feeling ill, and postponed the engagement. Todd thought that Dylan sounded "terrible".

 

The poet, Harvey Breit, was another to phone that morning. He thought that Thomas sounded "bad". Thomas' voice, recalled Breit, was "low and hoarse". Harvey had wanted to say:

 

"You sound as though from the tomb".

 

However instead Harvey told Thomas that he sounded like Louis Armstrong.

 

Later, Thomas went drinking with Reitell at the White Horse and, feeling sick again, returned to the hotel. Dr. Feltenstein came to see him three times that day, administering the cortisone secretant ACTH by injection and, on his third visit, half a grain (32.4 milligrams) of morphine sulphate, which affected Thomas' breathing.

 

Reitell became increasingly concerned, and telephoned Feltenstein for advice. He suggested that she get male assistance, so she called upon the artist Jack Heliker, who arrived before 11 pm. At midnight on the 5th. November, Thomas's breathing became more difficult, and his face turned blue.

 

Reitell phoned Feltenstein who arrived at the hotel at about 1 am, and called for an ambulance. It then took another hour for the ambulance to arrive at St. Vincent's, even though it was only a few blocks from the Chelsea.

 

Thomas was admitted to the emergency ward at St Vincent's Hospital at 1:58 am. He was comatose, and his medical notes stated that:

 

"The impression upon admission was acute

alcoholic encephalopathy damage to the brain

by alcohol, for which the patient was treated

without response".

 

Feltenstein then took control of Thomas's care, even though he did not have admitting rights at St. Vincent's. The hospital's senior brain specialist, Dr. C. G. Gutierrez-Mahoney, was not called to examine Thomas until the afternoon of the 6th. November, thirty-six hours after Thomas' admission.

 

Dylan's wife Caitlin flew to America the following day, and was taken to the hospital, by which time a tracheotomy had been performed. Her reported first words were:

 

"Is the bloody man dead yet?"

 

Caitlin was allowed to see Thomas only for 40 minutes in the morning, but returned in the afternoon and, in a drunken rage, threatened to kill John Brinnin. When she became uncontrollable, she was put in a straitjacket and committed, by Feltenstein, to the River Crest private psychiatric detox clinic on Long Island.

 

It is now believed that Thomas had been suffering from bronchitis, pneumonia and emphysema before his admission to St Vincent's. In their 2004 paper, 'Death by Neglect', D. N. Thomas and Dr Simon Barton disclose that Thomas was found to have pneumonia when he was admitted to hospital in a coma.

 

Doctors took three hours to restore his breathing, using artificial respiration and oxygen. Summarising their findings, they conclude:

 

"The medical notes indicate that, on admission,

Dylan's bronchial disease was found to be very

extensive, affecting upper, mid and lower lung

fields, both left and right."

 

The forensic pathologist, Professor Bernard Knight, concurs:

 

"Death was clearly due to a severe lung infection

with extensive advanced bronchopneumonia.

The severity of the chest infection, with greyish

consolidated areas of well-established pneumonia,

suggests that it had started before admission to

hospital."

 

Thomas died at noon on the 9th. November 1953, having never recovered from his coma. He was 39 years of age when he died.

 

-- Aftermath of Dylan Thomas's Death

 

Rumours circulated of a brain haemorrhage, followed by competing reports of a mugging, or even that Thomas had drunk himself to death. Later, speculation arose about drugs and diabetes.

 

At the post-mortem, the pathologist found three causes of death - pneumonia, brain swelling and a fatty liver. Despite Dylan's heavy drinking, his liver showed no sign of cirrhosis.

 

The publication of John Brinnin's 1955 biography 'Dylan Thomas in America' cemented Thomas's legacy as the "doomed poet". Brinnin focuses on Thomas's last few years, and paints a picture of him as a drunk and a philanderer.

 

Later biographies have criticised Brinnin's view, especially his coverage of Thomas's death. David Thomas in 'Fatal Neglect: Who Killed Dylan Thomas?' claims that Brinnin, along with Reitell and Feltenstein, were culpable.

 

FitzGibbon's 1965 biography ignores Thomas's heavy drinking and skims over his death, giving just two pages in his detailed book to Thomas's demise.

 

Ferris in his 1989 biography includes Thomas's heavy drinking, but is more critical of those around him in his final days, and does not draw the conclusion that he drank himself to death.

 

Many sources have criticised Feltenstein's role and actions, especially his incorrect diagnosis of delirium tremens and the high dose of morphine he administered. Dr C. G. de Gutierrez-Mahoney, the doctor who treated Thomas while at St. Vincent's, concluded that Feltenstein's failure to see that Thomas was gravely ill and have him admitted to hospital sooner was even more culpable than his use of morphine.

 

Caitlin Thomas's autobiographies, 'Caitlin Thomas - Leftover Life to Kill' (1957) and 'My Life with Dylan Thomas: Double Drink Story' (1997), describe the effects of alcohol on the poet and on their relationship:

 

"Ours was not only a love story, it was

a drink story, because without alcohol

it would never had got on its rocking

feet. The bar was our altar."

 

Biographer Andrew Lycett ascribed the decline in Thomas's health to an alcoholic co-dependent relationship with his wife, who deeply resented his extramarital affairs.

 

In contrast, Dylan biographers Andrew Sinclair and George Tremlett express the view that Thomas was not an alcoholic. Tremlett argues that many of Thomas's health issues stemmed from undiagnosed diabetes.

 

Thomas died intestate, with assets worth £100. His body was brought back to Wales for burial in the village churchyard at Laugharne. Dylan's funeral, which Brinnin did not attend, took place at St Martin's Church in Laugharne on the 24th. November 1953.

 

Six friends from the village carried Thomas's coffin. Caitlin, without her customary hat, walked behind the coffin, with his childhood friend Daniel Jones at her arm and her mother by her side. The procession to the church was filmed, and the wake took place at Brown's Hotel. Thomas's fellow poet and long-time friend Vernon Watkins wrote The Times obituary.

 

Thomas's widow, Caitlin, died in 1994, and was laid to rest alongside him. Dylan's mother Florence died in August 1958. Thomas's elder son, Llewelyn, died in 2000, his daughter, Aeronwy in 2009, and his youngest son Colm in 2012.

 

-- Dylan Thomas's Poetry

 

Thomas's refusal to align with any literary group or movement has made him and his work difficult to categorise. Although influenced by the modern symbolism and surrealism movements, he refused to follow such creeds. Instead, critics view Thomas as part of the modernism and romanticism movements, though attempts to pigeon-hole him within a particular neo-romantic school have been unsuccessful.

 

Elder Olson, in his 1954 critical study of Thomas's poetry, wrote:

 

"There is a further characteristic which

distinguished Thomas's work from that

of other poets. It was unclassifiable."

 

Olson went on to say that in a postmodern age that continually attempted to demand that poetry have social reference, none could be found in Thomas's work, and that his work was so obscure that critics could not analyse it.

 

Thomas's verbal style played against strict verse forms, such as in the villanelle 'Do not go Gentle Into That Good Night'.

 

His images appear carefully ordered in a patterned sequence, and his major theme was the unity of all life, the continuing process of life and death, and new life that linked the generations.

 

Thomas saw biology as a magical transformation producing unity out of diversity, and in his poetry sought a poetic ritual to celebrate this unity. He saw men and women locked in cycles of growth, love, procreation, new growth, death, and new life. Therefore, each image engenders its opposite.

 

Thomas derived his closely woven, sometimes self-contradictory images from the Bible, Welsh folklore, preaching, and Sigmund Freud. Explaining the source of his imagery, Thomas wrote in a letter to Glyn Jones:

 

"My own obscurity is quite an unfashionable one,

based, as it is, on a preconceived symbolism

derived (I'm afraid all this sounds woolly and

pretentious) from the cosmic significance of the

human anatomy".

 

Thomas's early poetry was noted for its verbal density, alliteration, sprung rhythm and internal rhyme, and some critics detected the influence of the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins, had taught himself Welsh, and used sprung verse, bringing some features of Welsh poetic metre into his work.

 

However when Henry Treece wrote to Thomas comparing his style to that of Hopkins, Thomas wrote back denying any such influence. Thomas greatly admired Thomas Hardy, who is regarded as an influence. When Thomas travelled in America, he recited some of Hardy's work in his readings.

 

Other poets from whom critics believe Thomas drew influence include James Joyce, Arthur Rimbaud and D. H. Lawrence.

 

William York Tindall, in his 1962 study, 'A Reader's Guide to Dylan Thomas', finds comparison between Thomas's and Joyce's wordplay, while he notes the themes of rebirth and nature are common to the works of Lawrence and Thomas.

 

Although Thomas described himself as the "Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive", he stated that the phrase "Swansea's Rimbaud" was coined by the poet Roy Campbell.

 

Critics have explored the origins of Thomas's mythological pasts in his works such as 'The Orchards', which Ann Elizabeth Mayer believes reflects the Welsh myths of the Mabinogion.

 

Thomas's poetry is notable for its musicality, most clear in 'Fern Hill', 'In Country Sleep', 'Ballad of the Long-legged Bait' and 'In the White Giant's Thigh' from Under Milk Wood.

 

Thomas once confided that the poems which had most influenced him were Mother Goose rhymes which his parents taught him when he was a child:

 

"I should say I wanted to write poetry in the

beginning because I had fallen in love with

words.

The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes,

and before I could read them for myself I had

come to love the words of them. The words

alone.

What the words stood for was of a very

secondary importance ... I fell in love, that is

the only expression I can think of, at once,

and am still at the mercy of words, though

sometimes now, knowing a little of their

behaviour very well, I think I can influence

them slightly and have even learned to beat

them now and then, which they appear to

enjoy.

I tumbled for words at once. And, when I began

to read the nursery rhymes for myself, and, later,

to read other verses and ballads, I knew that I

had discovered the most important things, to

me, that could be ever."

 

Thomas became an accomplished writer of prose poetry, with collections such as 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog' (1940) and 'Quite Early One Morning' (1954) showing he was capable of writing moving short stories. His first published prose work, 'After the Fair', appeared in The New English Weekly on the 15th. March 1934.

 

Jacob Korg believes that one can classify Thomas's fiction work into two main bodies:

 

-- Vigorous fantasies in a poetic style

-- After 1939, more straightforward

narratives.

 

Korg surmises that Thomas approached his prose writing as an alternate poetic form, which allowed him to produce complex, involuted narratives that do not allow the reader to rest.

 

-- Dylan Thomas as a Welsh Poet

 

Thomas disliked being regarded as a provincial poet, and decried any notion of 'Welshness' in his poetry. When he wrote to Stephen Spender in 1952, thanking him for a review of his Collected Poems, he added:

 

"Oh, & I forgot. I'm not influenced by

Welsh bardic poetry. I can't read Welsh."

 

Despite this, his work was rooted in the geography of Wales. Thomas acknowledged that he returned to Wales when he had difficulty writing, and John Ackerman argues that:

 

"Dylan's inspiration and imagination

were rooted in his Welsh background".

 

Caitlin Thomas wrote that:

 

"He worked in a fanatically narrow groove,

although there was nothing narrow about

the depth and understanding of his feelings.

The groove of direct hereditary descent in

the land of his birth, which he never in

thought, and hardly in body, moved out of."

 

Head of Programmes Wales at the BBC, Aneirin Talfan Davies, who commissioned several of Thomas's early radio talks, believed that the poet's whole attitude is that of the medieval bards.

 

Kenneth O. Morgan counter-argues that it is a difficult enterprise to find traces of cynghanedd (consonant harmony) or cerdd dafod (tongue-craft) in Thomas's poetry. Instead he believes that Dylan's work, especially his earlier, more autobiographical poems, are rooted in a changing country which echoes the Welshness of the past and the Anglicisation of the new industrial nation:

 

"Rural and urban, chapel-going and profane,

Welsh and English, unforgiving and deeply

compassionate."

 

Fellow poet and critic Glyn Jones believed that any traces of cynghanedd in Thomas's work were accidental, although he felt that Dylan consciously employed one element of Welsh metrics: that of counting syllables per line instead of feet. Constantine Fitzgibbon, who was his first in-depth biographer, wrote:

 

"No major English poet has

ever been as Welsh as Dylan".

 

Although Dylan had a deep connection with Wales, he disliked Welsh nationalism. He once wrote:

 

"Land of my fathers, and

my fathers can keep it".

 

While often attributed to Thomas himself, this line actually comes from the character Owen Morgan-Vaughan, in the screenplay Thomas wrote for the 1948 British melodrama 'The Three Weird Sisters'.

 

Robert Pocock, a friend from the BBC, recalled:

 

"I only once heard Dylan express an

opinion on Welsh Nationalism.

He used three words. Two of them

were Welsh Nationalism."

 

Although not expressed as strongly, Glyn Jones believed that he and Thomas's friendship cooled in the later years because he had not rejected enough of the elements that Thomas disliked, i.e. "Welsh nationalism and a sort of hill farm morality".

 

Apologetically, in a letter to Keidrych Rhys, editor of the literary magazine 'Wales', Thomas's father wrote:

 

"I'm afraid Dylan isn't much

of a Welshman".

 

FitzGibbon asserts that Thomas's negativity towards Welsh nationalism was fostered by his father's hostility towards the Welsh language.

 

Critical Appraisal of Dylan Thomas's Work

 

Thomas's work and stature as a poet have been much debated by critics and biographers since his death. Critical studies have been clouded by Thomas's personality and mythology, especially his drunken persona and death in New York.

 

When Seamus Heaney gave an Oxford lecture on the poet, he opened by addressing the assembly:

 

"Dylan Thomas is now as much

a case history as a chapter in the

history of poetry".

 

He queried how 'Thomas the Poet' is one of his forgotten attributes. David Holbrook, who has written three books about Thomas, stated in his 1962 publication 'Llareggub Revisited':

 

"The strangest feature of Dylan Thomas's

notoriety - not that he is bogus, but that

attitudes to poetry attached themselves

to him which not only threaten the prestige,

effectiveness and accessibility to English

poetry, but also destroyed his true voice

and, at last, him."

 

The Poetry Archive notes that:

 

"Dylan Thomas's detractors accuse him

of being drunk on language as well as

whiskey, but whilst there's no doubt that

the sound of language is central to his

style, he was also a disciplined writer

who re-drafted obsessively".

 

Many critics have argued that Thomas's work is too narrow, and that he suffers from verbal extravagance. However those who have championed his work have found the criticism baffling. Robert Lowell wrote in 1947:

 

"Nothing could be more wrongheaded

than the English disputes about Dylan

Thomas's greatness ... He is a dazzling

obscure writer who can be enjoyed

without understanding."

 

Kenneth Rexroth said, on reading 'Eighteen Poems':

 

"The reeling excitement of a poetry-intoxicated

schoolboy smote the Philistine as hard a blow

with one small book as Swinburne had with

Poems and Ballads."

 

Philip Larkin, in a letter to Kingsley Amis in 1948, wrote that:

 

"No one can stick words into us

like pins... like Thomas can".

 

However he followed that by stating that:

 

"Dylan doesn't use his words

to any advantage".

 

Amis was far harsher, finding little of merit in Dylan's work, and claiming that:

 

"He is frothing at the mouth

with piss."

 

In 1956, the publication of the anthology 'New Lines' featuring works by the British collective The Movement, which included Amis and Larkin amongst its number, set out a vision of modern poetry that was damning towards the poets of the 1940's. Thomas's work in particular was criticised. David Lodge, writing about The Movement in 1981 stated:

 

"Dylan Thomas was made to stand for

everything they detest, verbal obscurity,

metaphysical pretentiousness, and

romantic rhapsodizing".

 

Despite criticism by sections of academia, Thomas's work has been embraced by readers more so than many of his contemporaries, and is one of the few modern poets whose name is recognised by the general public.

 

In 2009, over 18,000 votes were cast in a BBC poll to find the UK's favourite poet; Thomas was placed 10th.

 

Several of Dylan's poems have passed into the cultural mainstream, and his work has been used by authors, musicians and film and television writers.

 

The long-running BBC Radio programme, 'Desert Island Discs', in which guests usually choose their favourite songs, has heard 50 participants select a Dylan Thomas recording.

 

John Goodby states that this popularity with the reading public allows Thomas's work to be classed as vulgar and common. He also cites that despite a brief period during the 1960's when Thomas was considered a cultural icon, the poet has been marginalized in critical circles due to his exuberance, in both life and work, and his refusal to know his place.

 

Goodby believes that Thomas has been mainly snubbed since the 1970's and has become: "... an embarrassment to twentieth-century poetry criticism", his work failing to fit standard narratives, and thus being ignored rather than studied.

 

-- Memorials to Dylan Thomas

 

In Swansea's maritime quarter is the Dylan Thomas Theatre, the home of the Swansea Little Theatre of which Thomas was once a member. The former Guildhall built in 1825 is now occupied by the Dylan Thomas Centre, a literature centre, where exhibitions and lectures are held and which is a setting for the annual Dylan Thomas Festival. Outside the centre stands a bronze statue of Thomas by John Doubleday.

 

Another monument to Thomas stands in Cwmdonkin Park, one of Dylan's favourite childhood haunts, close to his birthplace. The memorial is a small rock in an enclosed garden within the park, cut by and inscribed by the late sculptor Ronald Cour with the closing lines from Fern Hill:

 

'Oh as I was young and easy

in the mercy of his means

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like

the sea'.

 

Thomas's home in Laugharne, the Boathouse, is now a museum run by Carmarthenshire County Council. Thomas's writing shed is also preserved.

 

In 2004, the Dylan Thomas Prize was created in his honour, awarded to the best published writer in English under the age of 30. In 2005, the Dylan Thomas Screenplay Award was established. The prize, administered by the Dylan Thomas Centre, is awarded at the annual Swansea Bay Film Festival.

 

In 1982 a plaque was unveiled in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. The plaque is also inscribed with the last two lines of 'Fern Hill'.

 

In 2014, the Royal Patron of The Dylan Thomas 100 Festival was Charles, Prince of Wales, who made a recording of 'Fern Hill' for the event.

 

In 2014, to celebrate the centenary of Thomas's birth, the British Council Wales undertook a year-long programme of cultural and educational works. Highlights included a touring replica of Thomas's work shed, Sir Peter Blake's exhibition of illustrations based on 'Under Milk Wood', and a 36-hour marathon of readings, which included Michael Sheen and Sir Ian McKellen performing Thomas's work.

 

Towamensing Trails, Pennsylvania named one of its streets, Thomas Lane, in Dylan's honour.

 

-- List of Works by Dylan Thomas

 

-- 'The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: The New Centenary Edition', edited and with Introduction by John Goodby. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2014.

-- 'The Notebook Poems 1930–34', edited by Ralph Maud. London: Dent, 1989.

-- 'Dylan Thomas: The Film Scripts', edited by John Ackerman. London: Dent 1995.

-- 'Dylan Thomas: Early Prose Writings', edited by Walford Davies. London: Dent 1971.

-- 'Collected Stories', edited by Walford Davies. London: Dent, 1983.

-- 'Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices', edited by Walford Davies and Ralph Maud. London: Dent, 1995.

-- 'On The Air With Dylan Thomas: The Broadcasts', edited by Ralph Maud. New York: New Directions, 1991.

 

-- Correspondence

 

-- 'Dylan Thomas: The Collected Letters', edited by Paul Ferris (2017), 2 vols. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Vol I: 1931–1939

Vol II: 1939–1953.

-- 'Letters to Vernon Watkins', edited by Vernon Watkins (1957). London: Dent.

 

-- Posthumous Film Adaptations

 

-- 2016: Dominion, written and directed by Steven Bernstein, examines the final hours of Dylan Thomas.

-- 2014: Set Fire to the Stars, with Thomas portrayed by Celyn Jones, and John Brinnin by Elijah Wood.

-- 2014: Under Milk Wood BBC, starring Charlotte Church, Tom Jones, Griff Rhys-Jones and Michael Sheen.

-- 2014: Interstellar. The poem is featured throughout the film as a recurring theme regarding the perseverance of humanity.

-- 2009: A Child's Christmas in Wales, BAFTA Best Short Film. Animation, with soundtrack in Welsh and English. Director: Dave Unwin. Extras include filmed comments from Aeronwy Thomas.

-- 2007: Dylan Thomas: A War Films Anthology (DDHE/IWM).

-- 1996: Independence Day. Before the attack, the President paraphrases Thomas's "Do not go Gentle Into That Good Night".

-- 1992: Rebecca's Daughters, starring Peter O'Toole and Joely Richardson.

-- 1987: A Child's Christmas in Wales, directed by Don McBrearty.

-- 1972: Under Milk Wood, starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, and Peter O'Toole.

 

-- Opera Adaptation

 

-- 1973: Unter dem Milchwald, by German composer Walter Steffens on his own libretto using Erich Fried's translation of 'Under Milk Wood' into German, Hamburg State Opera. Also at the Staatstheater Kassel in 1977.

 

-- Final Thoughts From Dylan Thomas

 

"Somebody's boring me.

I think it's me."

 

"Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

 

"When one burns one's bridges,

what a very nice fire it makes."

 

"I think, that if I touched the earth,

It would crumble; It is so sad and

beautiful, so tremulously like a dream."

 

"An alcoholic is someone you don't like,

who drinks as much as you do."

 

"I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me,

and my enquiry is as to their working, and my

problem is their subjugation and victory, down

throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-

expression."

 

"The only sea I saw was the seesaw sea

with you riding on it. Lie down, lie easy.

Let me shipwreck in your thighs."

 

"Why do men think you can pick love up

and re-light it like a candle? Women know

when love is over."

 

"Poetry is not the most important thing in life.

I'd much rather lie in a hot bath reading

Agatha Christie and sucking sweets."

 

"And now, gentlemen, like your manners,

I must leave you."

 

"My education was the liberty I had to read

indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes

hanging out."

 

"I'm a freak user of words, not a poet."

 

"Our discreditable secret is that we don't

know anything at all, and our horrid inner

secret is that we don't care that we don't."

 

"It snowed last year too: I made a snowman

and my brother knocked it down and I knocked

my brother down and then we had tea."

 

"Though lovers be lost love shall not."

 

"Man’s wants remain unsatisfied till death.

Then, when his soul is naked, is he one

with the man in the wind, and the west moon,

with the harmonious thunder of the sun."

 

"And books which told me everything

about the wasp, except why."

 

"We are not wholly bad or good, who live

our lives under Milk Wood."

 

"Love is the last light spoken."

 

"... an ugly, lovely town ... crawling, sprawling ...

by the side of a long and splendid curving

shore. This sea-town was my world."

 

"I do not need any friends. I prefer enemies.

They are better company, and their feelings

towards you are always genuine."

 

"This poem has been called obscure. I refuse

to believe that it is obscurer than pity, violence,

or suffering. But being a poem, not a lifetime,

it is more compressed."

 

"One: I am a Welshman; two: I am a drunkard;

three: I am a lover of the human race, especially

of women."

 

"I believe in New Yorkers. Whether they've ever

questioned the dream in which they live, I wouldn't

know, because I won't ever dare ask that question."

 

"These poems, with all their crudities, doubts and

confusions, are written for the love of man and in

praise of God, and I'd be a damn fool if they weren't."

 

"Before you let the sun in, mind he wipes his shoes."

 

"Nothing grows in our garden, only washing.

And babies."

 

"Make gentle the life of this world."

 

"A worm tells summer better than the clock,

the slug's a living calendar of days; what shall

it tell me if a timeless insect says the world

wears away?"

 

"Time passes. Listen. Time passes. Come

closer now. Only you can hear the houses

sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt

and silent black, bandaged night."

 

"Rhianon, he said, hold my hand, Rhianon.

She did not hear him, but stood over his bed

and fixed him with an unbroken sorrow. Hold

my hand, he said, and then: Why are you

putting the sheet over my face?"

 

"Come on up, boys - I'm dead."

 

"Life is a terrible thing, thank God."

A quick shot of this Alsike Clover, taken while I was watching a family of Eastern Kingbirds yesterday afternoon.

 

"Trifolium hybridum, the alsike clover,[3] is a plant species of the genus Trifolium in the pea family Fabaceae. The stalked, pale pink or whitish flower head grows from the leaf axils, and the trifoliate leaves are unmarked. The plant is up to 40 centimetres (1.3 ft) tall, and is found in fields and on roadsides – it is also grown as fodder (hay or silage). Originated in mainland Europe.

 

Despite its scientific name, alsike clover is not of hybrid origin. The plant gets its common name from the town of Alsike in Sweden from which Linnaeus first described it. He thought it was a cross between white clover (T. repens) and red clover (T. pratense), but in this he was mistaken and it is a separate species." From Wikipedia.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trifolium_hybridum

 

"Alsike clover, in either hay or pasture form, is poisonous to horses. It can trigger a severe skin reaction to sunlight or it can kill horses within 24 hours of exposure.

 

The alsike clover plant contains a toxin, thought to be an alkaloid, which damages liver cells. It is also called big liver disease because the liver swells in size.

 

Prolonged exposure to the alsike clover toxin ultimately results in liver cirrhosis, the same severe liver scarring that occurs in people who drink large amounts of alcohol." From The Western Producer.

 

www.producer.com/2004/09/alsike-clover-can-be-deadly-to-h...

 

What a huge storm we had last night - so much lightning and thunder and rain. After the serious hailstorm that hit the city the day before, and which I missed because I was out of the city photographing birds, I thought I would go for a short drive to my 'usual' area. There is a risk for a thunderstorm developing this afternoon and the same for tomorrow. Our temperature is only 17C as I type (at 11:15 am).

 

How is it that one of my favourite pairs of Mountain Bluebirds is good at seeing and catching Tiger Moths? Two years ago, the male of this pair also caught a Tiger Moth and gave me the chance to take a shot or two (seen in a comment box below the last photo posted this morning). I have only ever once seen a Tiger moth species, and it was unlike the ones in these two photos. They really are beautiful. I wonder if they taste as good as they look : ) I am always thankful when the Bluebirds are active, though before too long, their babies will have fledged and all will have disappeared.

 

I was happy to find a few different birds, including a family of Eastern Kingbirds, a Cedar Waxwing, a Bald Eagle, Red-winged Blackbird, and a very distant Great Blue Heron standing at the far edge of a pond.

Surprisingly, because the metals are such perfect expressions of archetypal energies, we can actually learn quite a bit about people by studying the properties of metals and the behavior of planets. That same correspondence exists in the human temperament. For instance, the leaden person is someone who has, like Saturn, lost their bid to become a star. They have accepted a mere physical existence and believe the created world is all that counts. The positive characteristics of the saturnine person are patience, responsibility, somberness, structure and realism, true knowledge of history and karma. The black messenger crows of Chronos bring black moods, depression and despair to us, but they also alert us to illusion and fakeness in our lives.

While we have already discussed the planetary archetypes, it is worth reminding ourselves at this point exactly how the alchemists looked on the relationship between the planet and its metal. They believed that the metals had the same “virtue” as the corresponding planet, that a single spirit infuses both the planet and the metal. In other words, the planet was a celestial manifestation and the metal a terrestrial manifestation of the same universal force. Therefore, the metals are the purest expression of the planetary energies in the mineral kingdom, which is the basis for material reality on earth. The next stage of evolution on our planet is the plant kingdom, and the alchemists assigned a metal and its corresponding planet to describe the characteristics of every known herb, flower, and plant. Similarly, on the next level in the evolution of matter in the animal kingdom, all creatures carry their own metallic or planetary signatures, which are expressed in their behavior. In human beings, the alchemists referred to the sum total of the cosmic signatures of the metals as a person’s “temperament.” Originally, that word referred to the metallurgical process of “tempering” or mixing different metals to produce certain characteristics in an alloy. Although the alchemists considered lead the lowest of the base metals, they treated it with a great deal of respect, as they did its corresponding planet Saturn. Lead was said to carry all the energy of its own transformation, and it was that hidden energy that the alchemists sought to free. To the alchemists, the ancient metal was a powerful “sleeping giant” with a dark and secret nature that encompassed both the beginning and end of the Great Work.

Lead is the heaviest of the seven metals; it is very tied to gravity, form, and manifested reality. It is also a very stubborn metal known for its durability and resistance to change. Lead products dating from 7000 BC are still intact, and lead water pipes installed by the Romans 1,500 years ago are still in use today. Alchemists depicted lead in their drawings as the god Saturn (a crippled old man with a sickle), Father Time, or a skeleton representing death itself. Any of these symbols in their manuscripts meant the alchemist was working with the metal lead in the laboratory or a leaden attitude in his accompanying meditation.Lead is a boundary of heaviness for matter. Metals of greater atomic weight are too heavy and disintegrate over time (by radioactive decay) to turn back into lead. So radioactive decay is really a Saturnic process that introduces a new characteristic in the metals – that of time. All the hyper-energetic metals beyond lead are trapped in time to inexorably return to lead. There is no natural process more unalterably exact than radioactive decay. Atomic clocks, the most precise timekeeping devices we have, are based on this leaden process. Geologists measure the age of radioactive rocks by how much lead they contain, and the age of the earth is estimated by taking lead isotope measurements. In many ways, lead carries the signature of Father Time.Native lead, which is lead metal found in a chemically uncombined state, is actually extremely rare. It is found in the earth's crust in a concentration of only about 13 parts per billion. Lead does not form crystals easily, and thus the pure mineral form is very rare and extremely valuable as rock specimens. Such elemental lead can also be found in very unusual “metamorphosed” limestone and marble formations that are equally rare.Surprisingly, lead is in the same group in the Periodic Table as gold, and when it occurs in nature, it is always found with gold and silver. In fact, the chemical symbol for lead (Pb) is from the Latin word plumbum, which means “liquid silver.” We derive our words “plumbing” and “plumb bob” from the use of lead in those applications. In the smelting of silver, lead plays an important role by forming a layer over the emerging molten silver and protecting it from combining with the air and splattering out. The volatile molten lead covering is gradually burnt away, until only the pure silver metal “peeks out” (in the smelter’s terminology) in a stabilized form. Thus, lead protects and even sacrifices itself for the nobler metals.The planet Saturn and its metal and the planet have the same symbol (L) in alchemy. The Hermetic interpretation is that the symbol is basically the cross of the elements that depicts the division between the Above and Below or spirit and matter. The lunar crescent of the soul is below the cross, representing the manifestation (or entrapment) of soul below in matter. Despite these associations with the noble metals, lead itself never makes it to such heights among the metals. The silvery luster of fresh cut lead quickly fades, as if it were “dying” before your eyes. Furthermore, alchemists considered lead to be “hydrophobic” or against the life nourishing archetype of water. Lead ores lack the slightest water content and tend to form machine-like structures.The most common ore of lead is galena, which also contains the noble metals silver and gold. Galena is lead sulfide, a favorite of rock collectors because of its distinctive cubic shapes, characteristic cleavage, and high density. In fact, the structure of galena is identical to that of natural table salt. The two minerals have exactly the same crystal shapes, symmetry and cleavage, although galena crystals are thousands of times larger. Some galena may contain up to 1% silver and often contains trace amounts of gold. The large volume of galena that is processed for lead produces enough silver as a by product to make galena the leading ore of silver as well Galena definitely has the signature of lead. Its color is silver gray with a bluish tint. The luster ranges from metallic to dull in the weathered faces, and the isometric crystals are opaque to light. The massive crystals of galena almost always take the form of a cube or octahedron, and the cleavage is perfect in four direction always forming cubes. Because of the perfect cleavage, fractures are rarely seen and the dark crystalline structure is nearly perfect.Lead is also found in other sulfuric minerals like calcite and dolomite, as well as lead oxidation minerals such as and anglesite and cerussite, which is found in the oxidation zone of lead deposits usually associated with galena. Some formations show cerussite crusts around a galena core as if the act of oxidation was frozen in time. Cerrussite is lead carbonate and also a favorite of rock hounds. Its very high luster is due mostly to the metallic lead content, and just as leaded crystal glass sparkles more brilliantly because of its lead content, so too does cerussite. Cerussite has one of the highest densities for a transparent mineral. It is over six and a half times as dense as water. Most rocks and minerals average only around three times the density of water. Cerussite is famous for its great sparkle and density, and its amazing twinned (or double) crystals. The mineral forms geometrically intricate structures and star shapes that simply amazing to behold – sometimes the twinned crystals form star shapes with six "rays" extending out from the star.When freed from its ores, lead metal has a bluish-white color and is very soft – capable of being scratched by a fingernail. With its dull metallic luster and high density, lead cannot easily be confused with any other metal. It is also malleable, ductile, and sectile – meaning it can be pounded into other shapes, stretched into a wire, and cut into slices. However, lead is a dark, sluggish, base metal. Of the seven metals, it is the slowest conductor of electricity and heat, the least lustrous or resonant. Its Saturnic signature of heaviness is expressed not only in its being the heaviest metal but also in its tendency to form inert and insoluble compounds. No other metal forms as many. Although it tarnishes upon exposure to air like silver, lead is extremely resistant to corrosion over time and seems to last forever. Lead pipes bearing the insignia of Roman emperors, used as drains from the baths, are still in service. The surface of lead is protected by a thin layer of lead oxide, and it does not react with water. The same process protects lead from the traditional “liquid fire” of the alchemists – sulfuric acid. In fact, lead bottles are still used to store the highly corrosive acid. Lead is so inalterable, that half of all the lead in the world today is simply recovered from scrap and formed directly into bullion for reuse.Lead is truly a destroyer of light. It is added to high-quality glassware (lead crystal) to absorb light reflections and make the glass clearer. Lead salts in glass are not changed by light but change light itself by absorbing it. Incoming light in lead crystal meets with high resistance, but once it is within the glass, light is immediately absorbed or dispersed without any reflected light escaping. Sheets of lead are also impermeable to all forms of light, even high energy X-rays and gamma rays, which makes lead the perfect shield against any form of radiation and is why it is used to transport and store radioactive materials.Lead is an extremely poor conductor of electricity and blocks all kinds of energy transmission. Indeed, one of the signatures of lead is its ability to “dampen” or absorb energy. Unlike other metals, when lead is struck, the vibrations are immediately absorbed and any tone is smothered in dullness. Lead is an effective sound proofing medium and tetraethyl lead is still used in some grades of gasoline as an antiknock compound to “quiet” the combustion of gasoline.Thin lead sheets are used extensively in the walls of high-rise buildings to block the transmission of sound, and thick pads of lead are used in the foundations to absorb the vibrations of street traffic and even minor earthquakes. Lead sheets are widely used in roofing to block solar rays, and lead foil is used to form lightproof enclosures in laboratory work. Ultimately, lead corresponds to the galactic Black Hole that absorbs all forms of radiation and light.Lead reacts with more chemicals than any other metal, however, instead of producing something new and useful, lead “kills” the combining substance by making it inert, insoluble and unable to enter into further chemical reactions. Its salts precipitate out of solutions heavily and copiously. Lead has the same effect in the plant kingdom. It accumulates in the roots and slows down the “breathing” process in plants. Young plants are adversely affected by even the smallest amount of lead in the soil.Lead is poisonous and accumulates over time in the bones of the human body, where it cannot be flushed out. It has also been found in high concentrations in gallstones and kidney stones. The old alchemical graphic for lead – a skeleton – was grotesquely appropriate. The symptoms of lead poisoning (known as “Saturnism”) are lack of energy, depression, blindness, dizziness, severe headaches at the back of the head, brain damage, attention deficit disorder, learning disabilities and mental retardation, antisocial behavior and anger, atrophy of muscular tissue and cramping, excess growth of connective tissue resulting in a rigid appearance, rapid aging, coma, and early death. Rats fed only 5 parts per million of lead had a lifespan 25% shorter than normal rats. Children are especially vulnerable to lead poisoning, and it is believed to be an important factor in stillborn fetuses. Children with more than just 0.3 parts per million of lead in their blood suffer a significant slowing of brain function and corresponding drop in IQ. Lead in paint has caused mental retardation and premature aging in hundreds of children who ingested old flaking paint from the walls of their homes. Lead paint was used extensively until the poisonous effects were documented in the 1960s. Because of its lasting durability, lead paint is still used outdoors in advertising and the yellow lines on highways and curbs. The subtly controlling aspect of those applications is another signature of lead and of “leaden” persons in general.Not surprisingly, lead has found use as an insecticide and was even once considered for use as a military weapon. Lead metal reacts violently with fluorine and chlorine to form the highly poisonous gases, lead fluoride and lead chloride. Lead is also used in all kinds of ammunition – another appropriate application of lead’s esoteric signature as Father Time and the Grim Reaper. There are many research studies linking lead exposure to anger and violence, especially in adolescents. One recent study of all counties in the United States conducted by Colorado State University revealed that the murder rate in counties with the highest lead levels were four times higher than in counties with the lowest levels of lead.More benevolent uses of lead are in storage batteries, covering for underground and transoceanic cables, waste plumbing, shielding around X-ray equipment and nuclear reactors, solder, pewter, fine lead crystal glass, and flint glass with a high refractive index for achromatic lenses.Even the elemental metal carries the seed of its own redemption. The alchemists knew that Fire is lord over lead, for the metal has a low melting point and is easily separated from its ore by roasting in an open flame, and the metal itself melts in a candle flame. Lead expands on heating and contracts on cooling more than any other solid heavy metal. (Silver is the opposite and is considered an antidote to lead.)Perhaps owing to its dual nature, lead carries deeply hidden within its structure the fire of its own transformation. Many lead salts reveal a whole rainbow of brilliant colors, with the solar colors of yellow, orange, and red predominating. This is why lead has been used in paints for so many centuries. Finely divided lead powder is pyrophoric (“fire containing”) and easily catches fire or erupts spontaneously in flames. When made into a fine powder, lead metal must be kept in a vacuum to keep from catching fire. Otherwise, it ignites and burns down to a bright yellow ash, revealing its deeply hidden solar signature. So, the wonder of lead is that hidden deep inside the gray, dead metal is a tiny, eternal spark that is the seed of its own resurrection. In the eyes of alchemists, this makes lead the most important metal despite its unattractive darkness. For dull lead and gleaming gold are really the same things, only at different stages of growth or maturity.The Secret Fire inside lead is really the alchemical basis for transforming lead into gold, and correspondingly, gives mankind hope for its own spiritual transformation. That tiny spark of light in the darkest part of matter makes resurrection part of the structure of the universe. So, deep down inside, the metal lead also yearns to be transformed. It wants to rise in the air and fly, leave matter and form behind, and be free as Fire. Lead unites two contrasting forces: rigid heaviness and revivifying inner fire. Archetypically, the lead process is concerned with death and resurrection. Greek myth says that after death our soul is put on a scale, and the weights of the scale are made from lead, the metal that carries Saturn's signature.Lead is used in magical rituals, spells, and amulets to promote contact with deep unconscious levels (the underworld), deep meditation, controlling negativity, breaking bad habits and addictions, protection, stability, grounding, solidity, perseverance, decisiveness, concentration, conservation, and material constructions (buildings). Pick up a hunk of lead and the first thing you notice is its weight – its connection to gravity. It is that connection to something beyond matter and light, the very form of the universe that is the physical basis for this experiment. During the winter months, preferably on some clear night in late January or early February, go outside and find the planet Saturn in the northern sky. Relax and try to focus all your attention on the golden sphere. Relax completely with an open and quiet mind. Become empty and let the planet influence you. Do this until you feel a real connection with the distant planet. Continue gazing upon Saturn and place a piece of lead metal in your hand. You should be able to feel a strange resonance building. That eerie, cold vibration is not your imagination. It is what alchemists refer to as the “call of lead.” You are experiencing the metal’s true signature or living correspondence with its planetary twin.The strange connection between lead and Saturn has been documented by modern scientists, who have shown that lead compounds react differently depending on Saturn’s position in the sky. For instance, solutions of lead nitrate produce the greatest weight of crystallization (or manifestation) during February, when Saturn rules the sky, and the least during June, when Saturn is barely visible. Lead compounds also exhibit different properties when Saturn aligns with other planets. For example, lead sulfate solution rises 60% higher on strips of filter paper during conjunctions of Saturn with Mars than at other times. It is also known that the ease of making lead solutions (the “solubility coefficient” of lead) varies with the position of Saturn relative to the other planets. NASA is even considering a series of astrochemical experiments to see if the Saturn-lead effects become more pronounced in outer space.Surprisingly, because the metals are such perfect expressions of archetypal energies, we can actually learn quite a bit about people by studying the properties of metals and the behavior of planets. That same correspondence exists in the human temperament. For instance, the leaden person is someone who has, like Saturn, lost their bid to become a star. They have accepted a mere physical existence and believe the created world is all that counts. The positive characteristics of the saturnine person are patience, responsibility, somberness, structure and realism, true knowledge of history and karma. The black messenger crows of Chronos bring black moods, depression and despair to us, but they also alert us to illusion and fakeness in our lives. Surprisingly, because the metals are such perfect expressions of archetypal energies, we can actually learn quite a bit about people by studying the properties of metals and the behavior of planets. That same correspondence exists in the human temperament. For instance, the leaden person is someone who has, like Saturn, lost their bid to become a star. They have accepted a mere physical existence and believe the created world is all that counts. The positive characteristics of the saturnine person are patience, responsibility, somberness, structure and realism, true knowledge of history and karma. The black messenger crows of Chronos bring black moods, depression and despair to us, but they also alert us to illusion and fakeness in our lives. Surprisingly, because the metals are such perfect expressions of archetypal energies, we can actually learn quite a bit about people by studying the properties of metals and the behavior of planets. That same correspondence exists in the human temperament. For instance, the leaden person is someone who has, like Saturn, lost their bid to become a star. They have accepted a mere physical existence and believe the created world is all that counts. The positive characteristics of the saturnine person are patience, responsibility, somberness, structure and realism, true knowledge of history and karma. The black messenger crows of Chronos bring black moods, depression and despair to us, but they also alert us to illusion and fakeness in our lives. Because the lusterless metal is so “dead” and resists interaction with other substances, it is used as containers for acids, like automobile batteries, and is used as a lining in pipes that carry corrosive substances. Similarly, the lead tempered person is like an acid-proof container that stores up caustic feelings and anger. Phrases like “acid tongued” and “vitriolic” have their origins in this alchemical process of storing negative emotional energy.On the psychological level, lead is symbolic of a person’s inertness and unwillingness to change. There is a denial of all higher or spiritual energies, and the alchemists often portrayed the leaden person as lying in an open grave or hopelessly chained to matter in some way. A feeling of being trapped in material reality is symptomatic of a leaden attitude. Leaden people are stubborn, unyielding, and often control other people by making them wait. They must always be right, rarely accept blame or admit to being in error, and have no real regard for the truth of a situation. They may be religious but not spiritual. They tend to be suspicious of genius and inspiration, which they will often attribute to fantasy, They feel threatened by freedom of thought and expression, and sometimes use ridicule or try to “push people’s buttons” to control it. They tend to be very uncreative, judgmental, and smug.On the other hand, leaden people are grounded, earthy, and practical. They are good friends during times of bereavement – a rock of support at funerals and deathbeds. Such people secretly crave stimulation, excitement, and new ideas. They gravitate to people who supply energy and entertainment in their lives. This craving for stimulation often makes them focus on nervous energy instead of higher inspiration. Therefore, Saturn’s children can be very reactive and excitable instead of lethargic, as they try to escape from their prison of matter.As soon as bright, fresh lead metal is exposed to air, it forms a dull-gray oxide layer called the “litharge” that resists any further chemical interaction. In alchemy, air is associated with spiritual energy, and lead reacts to it by instantly forming a barrier or blocking it. Likewise, one of the distinguishing characteristics of someone with a lead temperament is their lack of interest in spiritual ideas. There is also a general lack of interest in life in general, and leaden people often seem lazy, lethargic, or unresponsive.In the individual, lead absorbs the inner light or insight necessary for personal growth and blocks all outside “radiations,” such as attempts at spiritual instruction by others. Because psychological lead absorbs both the deeper vibrations of intuition and higher spiritual energies and aspirations, the person with a lead temperament is uninspired, unimaginative, and lacks that creative spark so necessary for positive change. Before long the lead person starts to feel trapped in his or her dull environment and seeks out excitement, death-defying feats, lively people, and challenging conversation. Their favorite color is often red, and unconsciously, they are seeking the alchemical element of Fire. Fire is one of the Four Elements that represents activity, energy, creative thinking, and transformation. Fire is the tool alchemists use to begin the transmutation of lead into gold as well as transform leaden consciousness into a golden awareness of higher reality. In the laboratory, the changes in the metal and in the alchemist take place simultaneously. Otherwise, there can be no real transformation. The alchemists transmuted the Lead temperament using the Fire operation of Calcination. Physically, lead and Saturn rule the bones, teeth, spleen, and slow chronic processes such as aging. The therapeutic effects are contracting, coagulating, drying, and mineralizing. Saturn-ruled plants enhance the structures of life. They give a sobriety of disposition, en-abling one to see limitations. These plants give steadiness, solidity of pur-pose, subtlety, diplomacy, patience, and an ability to work on the physical plane better.Saturnic or leaden energies are needed for those who have a hard time finishing pro-jects or for those with plenty of ideas but never realize them. Alchemists seeking to produce physical effects found in saturnine elixirs the essential vibratory rate that enabled materialization. Alchemists seeking to produce physical effects found in saturnine elixirs the essential vibratory rate that enabled materialization. Generally speaking, any other elixir mixed with a Saturn elixir will be earthed, which makes them of great value when working on physical plane phenomenon. Their physical therapeutic properties become refrigerant, anti-pyretic, sedative, styptic, and astringent.For instance, if one mixes a saturnine elixir with a mercurial one, the alchemists believed it would release knowledge contained in secret magical manuscripts or in ancient hermetic traditions, because the Saturn-Mercury vibration contains all hidden knowledge of an esoteric nature within it. Alchemical oils were mixed in the same way. For example, to treat leukemia, alchemists would prescribe an equal mixture of lead oil and gold oil. The alchemists made an Oil of Lead that was good for “growth of bones after breaking, strengthening the skeleton, osteoporosis and atrophy of the bones, stimulation of the spleen, drying tissue, reducing secretions and discharges, stopping bleeding, reducing fever, increasing patience, and stopping visions and an overactive imagination.” They also suggested it for hallucinations due to neurological disorders that have delirious after-effects such as encephalitis and post-traumatic stress syndrome. In the “like cures like” philosophy of homeopathy, lead is used to treat sclerosis, the hardening of bones and arteries, which is the hallmark of old age and signature of lead. The homeopathic name of lead is Plumbum metallicum. Native tin is known as stannum, which is the Latin word for tin and also gives the metal its chemical symbol (Sn). The alchemical symbol is K, which shows the lunar principle of soul above the cross of the elements or emerging from the darkness of matter.

Tin is a shiny, silvery-white metal that is malleable, somewhat ductile and sectile, and seems like a perfected form of lead to the casual observer. In fact, the Romans called tin Plumbum album or “white lead.” Tin resists weathering and does not oxidize, and tin utensils buried underground or lost at sea in sunken ships shone like new when rediscovered after hundreds of years. “Tinkers” were gypsy craftsmen who wandered from neighborhood to neighborhood in Europe repairing tin kettles and utensils or melting them down and recasting them. Native or elemental tin is extremely rare in nature and is found with gold and copper deposits. The metal was considered “semi-noble” in ancient times and was used for jewelry in Babylonia and Egypt. The Romans used it to make mirrors, and it was used as coinage in Europe at one time.

Tin has a highly crystalline structure, and due to the breaking of these crystals, a "cry" is heard when a tin bar is bent. Unlike lead, tin has pleasing acoustic effects and is used in the making of bells. The crystals in common grey tin have a cubic structure, but when heated or frozen it changes into white tin, which has a tetragonal structure. After further heating or freezing, white tin disintegrates into a powdery substance. This powder has the ability to “infect” other tin surfaces it comes in contact with by forming blisters that spread until all the metal “sickens” and disintegrates. This transformation is encouraged by impurities such as zinc and aluminum and can be prevented by adding small amounts of antimony or bismuth to the metal. The sickness of tin was called the “tin plague” and was the scourge of tin roofs during Europe’s frigid winters. The mysterious effect was first was first noticed as “growths” on organ pipes in European cathedrals, where it was thought to be the work of the devil to disfigure god’s work.Tin metal has only a few practical uses and most tin is used in alloys. Bronze is an alloy of 5% tin and 95% copper, and the development of bronze by humans marked a new age of advancement known as the Bronze Age. Most solder is a combination of tin and lead; pewter is also an alloy of tin and lead. Other tin alloys are used to make tin cans and tin roofs, and tin has significant use as a corrosion fighter in the protection of other metals. Tin resists distilled, sea and soft tap water, but is attacked by strong acids, alkalis, and acid salts. When heated in air, tin forms tin oxide, which is used to plate steel and make tin cans. Other uses are in type metal, fusible metal, Babbitt metal, and die casting alloys. Tin chloride is used as a reducing agent and mordant in calico printing. Tin salts sprayed onto glass are used to produce electrically conductive coatings, which are used for panel lighting and for frost-free windshields. Window glass is made by floating molten glass on molten tin to produce a flat surface. A crystalline tin-niobium alloy is superconductive at very low temperatures, and shoebox-sized electromagnets made of the wire produce magnetic fields comparable to conventional electromagnets weighing hundreds of tons.The distribution of tin on earth follows an ecliptic at an angle of 23.5 º to the equator that is an exact track of the orbit of Jupiter slicing through the planet. Even stranger, these jovian forces seem to form tin veins that zigzag through the rocks in a lightening bolt pattern. This is no haphazard effect, but an astonishing confirmation of Jupiter freeing the metals from their Saturnic prison on earth. Goethe was just one great alchemical philosopher who believed this. “A remarkable influence proceeds from the metal tin,” he wrote. “This has a differentiating influence, and opens a door through which a way is provided for different metals to be formed from primeval rocks.”Tin ore minerals include oxide minerals like cassiterite and a few sulfides such as franckerite. By far the most tin comes from cassiterite or tin oxide. Reduction of this ore in burning coal results in tin metal and was probably how tin was made by the ancients. Cassiterite is a black or reddish brown mineral that has ornately faceted specimens with a greasy, high luster. It is generally opaque, but its luster and multiple crystal faces cause a sparkling surface. Cassiterite has been an important ore of tin for thousands of years and is still the greatest source of tin today. Most aggregate specimens of cassiterite show crystal twins, with the typical twin bent at a near-60-degree angle to form a distinctive "Elbow Twin." Other crystalline forms include eight-sided prisms and four-sided pyramids. Cassiterite is sometimes found in nature associated with topaz and fluorite gemstones.Tin has a surprising affinity for silica and shares its crystalline structure. In the jovian ring on our planet where native tin is found, the metal lies in silica veins of quartz and granite. In the body, high concentrations of tin and silica are found in the boundary layer of the skin, and tin reacts with silica acid in many of the “shaping” processes of growth. In the Middle Ages, sick people were served food on a tin plate and drinks in a tin vessel to help them regenerate and recover their strength. Today, we know that tin acts as a bactericide and pesticide.Native tin is known as stannum, which is the Latin word for tin and also gives the metal its chemical symbol (Sn). The alchemical symbol is K, which shows the lunar principle of soul above the cross of the elements or emerging from the darkness of matter.

 

Tin is a shiny, silvery-white metal that is malleable, somewhat ductile and sectile, and seems like a perfected form of lead to the casual observer. In fact, the Romans called tin Plumbum album or “white lead.” Tin resists weathering and does not oxidize, and tin utensils buried underground or lost at sea in sunken ships shone like new when rediscovered after hundreds of years. “Tinkers” were gypsy craftsmen who wandered from neighborhood to neighborhood in Europe repairing tin kettles and utensils or melting them down and recasting them. Native or elemental tin is extremely rare in nature and is found with gold and copper deposits. The metal was considered “semi-noble” in ancient times and was used for jewelry in Babylonia and Egypt. The Romans used it to make mirrors, and it was used as coinage in Europe at one time.

Tin has a highly crystalline structure, and due to the breaking of these crystals, a "cry" is heard when a tin bar is bent. Unlike lead, tin has pleasing acoustic effects and is used in the making of bells. The crystals in common grey tin have a cubic structure, but when heated or frozen it changes into white tin, which has a tetragonal structure. After further heating or freezing, white tin disintegrates into a powdery substance. This powder has the ability to “infect” other tin surfaces it comes in contact with by forming blisters that spread until all the metal “sickens” and disintegrates. This transformation is encouraged by impurities such as zinc and aluminum and can be prevented by adding small amounts of antimony or bismuth to the metal. The sickness of tin was called the “tin plague” and was the scourge of tin roofs during Europe’s frigid winters. The mysterious effect was first was first noticed as “growths” on organ pipes in European cathedrals, where it was thought to be the work of the devil to disfigure god’s work.Tin metal has only a few practical uses and most tin is used in alloys. Bronze is an alloy of 5% tin and 95% copper, and the development of bronze by humans marked a new age of advancement known as the Bronze Age. Most solder is a combination of tin and lead; pewter is also an alloy of tin and lead. Other tin alloys are used to make tin cans and tin roofs, and tin has significant use as a corrosion fighter in the protection of other metals. Tin resists distilled, sea and soft tap water, but is attacked by strong acids, alkalis, and acid salts. When heated in air, tin forms tin oxide, which is used to plate steel and make tin cans. Other uses are in type metal, fusible metal, Babbitt metal, and die casting alloys. Tin chloride is used as a reducing agent and mordant in calico printing. Tin salts sprayed onto glass are used to produce electrically conductive coatings, which are used for panel lighting and for frost-free windshields. Window glass is made by floating molten glass on molten tin to produce a flat surface. A crystalline tin-niobium alloy is superconductive at very low temperatures, and shoebox-sized electromagnets made of the wire produce magnetic fields comparable to conventional electromagnets weighing hundreds of tons.The distribution of tin on earth follows an ecliptic at an angle of 23.5 º to the equator that is an exact track of the orbit of Jupiter slicing through the planet. Even stranger, these jovian forces seem to form tin veins that zigzag through the rocks in a lightening bolt pattern. This is no haphazard effect, but an astonishing confirmation of Jupiter freeing the metals from their Saturnic prison on earth. Goethe was just one great alchemical philosopher who believed this. “A remarkable influence proceeds from the metal tin,” he wrote. “This has a differentiating influence, and opens a door through which a way is provided for different metals to be formed from primeval rocks.”Tin ore minerals include oxide minerals like cassiterite and a few sulfides such as franckerite. By far the most tin comes from cassiterite or tin oxide. Reduction of this ore in burning coal results in tin metal and was probably how tin was made by the ancients. Cassiterite is a black or reddish brown mineral that has ornately faceted specimens with a greasy, high luster. It is generally opaque, but its luster and multiple crystal faces cause a sparkling surface. Cassiterite has been an important ore of tin for thousands of years and is still the greatest source of tin today. Most aggregate specimens of cassiterite show crystal twins, with the typical twin bent at a near-60-degree angle to form a distinctive "Elbow Twin." Other crystalline forms include eight-sided prisms and four-sided pyramids. Cassiterite is sometimes found in nature associated with topaz and fluorite gemstones.Tin has a surprising affinity for silica and shares its crystalline structure. In the jovian ring on our planet where native tin is found, the metal lies in silica veins of quartz and granite. In the body, high concentrations of tin and silica are found in the boundary layer of the skin, and tin reacts with silica acid in many of the “shaping” processes of growth. In the Middle Ages, sick people were served food on a tin plate and drinks in a tin vessel to help them regenerate and recover their strength. Today, we know that tin acts as a bactericide and pesticide.

Flowers last longer in tin vases, and food has been preserved in the tin cans (actually a thin layer of tin on iron) for over a century. Beer (ruled by the jovial Jupiter) is said to taste best from a tin mug. Jupiter rules growth, the metabolic system, the liver, and the enrichment of the blood from food. Jupiter therapeutic effects are anti-spasmodic and hepatic. Jupiter-ruled plants preserve the body and promote healthy growth and are the natural healing herbs of the planetary system. They af-fect the mind in such a way as to promote an understanding of ritual form from the highest point of view, and religious leaders, doctors, lawyers, etc. will find great benefit from jovian herb remedies. They also attune one to the wealth vibration and open up channels for growth and expansion, materi-ally as well as spiritually.Jupiter controls the circulation of blood in the human body. If mixed with a solar herbal eider, it will give the alchemist access to the highest plane. Jupiter-Mercury combinations produce insight into the philosophical principles of any system and their part in the cosmic scheme and provide an intuitive understanding of the great spiritual masters. This particular herbal mixture also produces a lightheartedness and gaiety, which can be very useful to those with a predisposition to depression or gloominess. The physical properties of such a mixture are anabolic and antispasmodic.The alchemists made an Oil of Tin that was used to treat the liver (jaundice, hepatitis, cirrhosis), certain types of eczema, liquid ovarian cysts, inflammatory effusions, pleurisies, acne, water retention, and certain types of obesity. This oil was said to be excellent for someone "loosing shape." The oil was also used as a sweat inducer, wormer, antispasmodic, cathartic, and laxative.The polar (opposite) metal to tin is mercury, and Oil of Tin was said to be an excellent antidote for mercury poisoning, and likewise mercury was said to balance the bad effects of tin. Tin and mercury oil combined are said to provide deep insight and cure lightheadedness and certain phases of manic-depressive syndrome.The homeopathic form of tin is called Stannum, a remedy which is said to strengthen and regenerate muscle and brain tissue. It is also a remedy for the joints and connective tissue of ligaments and cartilage. Stannum is allegedly beneficial in liver disease and is used for congestion, hardening, encephalitis, and other illnesses where the fluid balance is upset.During the early Spring, preferably sometime in March, go outside and find the red planet Mars in the night sky. Relax and try to focus all your attention on the tiny red sphere. Relax completely with an open and quiet mind. Become empty and let the planet influence you. Do this until you feel a real connection with the distant planet. Continue gazing upon Mars and place a piece of iron in your hand or a small cast iron pot or other object but not something of made of steel or chromed. You should be able to feel a resonance building. It is what alchemists refer to as the “call of iron.” You are experiencing the metal’s true signature or living correspondence with its planetary twin. See how your feelings compare to how the alchemists felt about this powerful metal.When mixed with solar herbs, iron herbs increase energy and activate the energetic potentials of other herbs. Martian elixirs release the action poten-tial of the soul of something. When mixed with other herbs, martian herbs acti-vate the potentialities of the other herbs to a great degree making them more forceful in applica-tion and generally more active. Mars herbs are wonderful tonics when mixed with Sun herbs. The combination gives great physical energy, tones the muscles, and increases sexual potency. They also provoke self-reliance, spontaneity, and indepen-dence of attitude. If the alchemist is involved in magical evocation, a mixture of a mars, moon, and mercurial elixirs will help produce the physical plane vehicle of manifestation.Copper is a reddish-brown metal with a bright metallic luster. It is in the same group in the Periodic Table as gold, and like gold, it is remarkably ductile. It is also very malleable and sectile (it can be pounded into other shapes and cut into slices) and is an excellent conductor of heat and electricity. Molten copper is a sea green color, and copper tarnishes with a green color and burns with a blue-green flame with flashes of red, and the alchemists sometimes described Venus, the metal’s archetypal planetary source, as dressed in a blue cloak over a red gown.Pick up a piece of copper and the first thing you notice is its surprising feeling of warmth and moisture. It is that connection to something archetypal and nourishing that makes up the signature of this metal. It is easy to connect with copper, just as its planet (Venus) is easy to see in the sky. It is so brilliant it is often mistaken for a bright star or even a UFO. The best time to see it is in the early evening or morning when it is close to the horizon. In fact, Venus has been called both the “Morning Star” and the “Evening Star” and is associated with magical energies. It is the “first star I see tonight” upon you make you wish that will come true with the sympathetic venusian energies. On some clear night or morning, go outside and find the planet Venus. Relax and try to focus all your attention on the brilliant white sphere. Relax completely with an open and quiet mind. Become empty and let the planet influence you. Do this until you feel a real connection with the distant planet. Continue gazing upon the planet and grab a piece of copper, a fistful of pennies, or even a copper cooking utensil. You should be able to feel a warm resonance building. That deep and soothing vibration is not your imagination. It is what alchemists refer to as the “call of copper.” You are experiencing the metal’s true signature or living correspondence with its planetary twin.The venusian signature gives refinement of senses and the ability to appreciate beauty. Artists, actors, and others in the public eye will find these elixirs a great aid to performing their work. Venus herbs also enhance the taste perceptions, promote affection, give an amiable disposition, and make one more psychically sensitive to astral influences. For those who feel a lack of charm, or some of the softer human qualities, a venusian elixir will stimulate the right vibration in your aura. Venusian elixirs also promote harmony and balance within our being and in our dealings with others. Venusian elixirs are said to give access to that realm of the astral that is intimately connected with the working and forces of the most intimate magic of nature. They are a great aid to alchemists who wish to make herbal alchemy their life work, as they open up the human consciousness to the secrets of the plant kingdom. Naturalists will find these elixirs most illuminating, as they will give conscious con-tact with the various “deities” of long past nature religions.Mercury is truly unique. It is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature and the heaviest natural liquid on the planet. According to alchemical theory, all the metals began in the liquid state on deep in the earth, but only mercury was able to retain it original innocence and life force and resist taking on a final form, and for that reason, the ancients called it Mercurius vivens (the “living mercury”). This silvery liquid metal (also known as “Quicksilver”) was known to ancient Chinese and Hindus before 2000 BC and has been found in sacred tubes in Egyptian tombs dated from 1500 BC. It was first used to form alloys with other metals around 500 BC. The Greeks applied germ-killing ability of mercury in healing ointments (to the benefit of those afflicted with wounds and skin infections), and in the Middle Ages, Paracelsus used it successfully to treat syphilis. However, the ancient Romans applied mercury compounds for long-term use in cosmetics, and many beautiful women eventually died of its cumulative poisonous effects. Today, many popular brands of eye makeup still contain low levels of mercury.In the East, metallic mercury was the main ingredient in most Tantric medicinal preparations. In his travels through India, Marco Polo observed that many people drank a concoction of mercury and sulfur twice monthly from early childhood with no observable ill effects. They believed the drink gave them longevity. Tantric alchemists in India still take metallic mercury in place of food as an elixir of life, although they caution that the body must be perfectly attuned and strengthened to tolerate the intense cosmic infusion of life force. In Indian alchemy, mercury is called rasa, which refers to the subtle essence that is the origin of all forms of matter. The cosmic chaos from which the universe sprang is called the Rasasara or “Sea of Mercury.” The craft of alchemy is referred to as Rasayana or “Knowledge of Mercury.” Go outside on the night of the full moon and gaze up at the silver orb. Relax and try to focus all your attention on the surface of the moon. Relax completely with an open and quiet mind. Become empty and let our closest planetary body influence you. Do this until you feel a real connection. Now, pick up piece of silver jewelry or dinnerware, and hold it in your left hand until it gets warm. You should be able to feel a liquid-like sensation of cool metallic energy. This is what alchemists refer to as the “call of silver.” You are experiencing the metal’s true signature or living correspondence with the moon itself. Try to remember how this feels in your body. Has the taste in your mouth changed? Has your eyesight altered? How does your skin feel.The alchemists prepared an Oil of Silver they used to treat disorders of the brain and cerebellum, reduce stress, balance emotions, improve memory, treat nervous disorders and epilepsy, improve both melancholia and mania. It was also used as a physical purgative and mental purifier. It was said to affect the subconscious mind, see into the past clearly, remove fears and blockages, allow one to unwind, produce “homey” feelings, give a feeling of grace and sensitivity, and enhanced imagination.Using elaborate mixing and heating techniques, Egyptian alchemists tried making gold by changing the proportions of the Four Elements in the base metals or by attempting to speed up natural growth of lesser metals into gold. Around 100 AD, Egyptian alchemist Maria Prophetissa used mercury and sulfur to try to make gold. Around 300 AD, the alchemist Zosimos, whose recipes often came to him in dreams, was working to transmute copper. “The soul of copper,” he wrote must be purified until it receives the sheen of gold and turns into the royal metal of the Sun." A technique known as "diplosis" (“doubling”) of gold became popular. One such recipe called for heating a mixture of two parts gold with one part each of silver and copper. After appropriate alchemical charging that brought the seed of gold alive, twice as much of a gold as originally added was produced. Egyptian alchemists believed that the gold acted as a seed in metals, especially copper and silver. According to their view, the seed of gold grew, eating the copper and silver as food, until the whole mixture was transformed into pure gold.Gold is a stubbornly pure metal when it comes to reacting or even associating with “lesser” elements. That signature explains a lot of the chemical characteristics of gold. Unlike nearly every other metal, there are no plants that contain even trace amounts of metallic gold. There are very few gold ores, because the noblest metal never alloys with the baser metals, but does alloy with the noble metal silver and makes an amalgam with mercury.Gold is extremely ductile, malleable, and sectile, and so soft it can be cut with a knife, which makes gold impractical to use for tools. It is also very heavy. A gold bar is twice as heavy as an equal-sized bar of lead. Furthermore, gold embodies an inner equilibrium of forces that make it pretty much indestructible. Gold never tarnishes like copper or silver or rust like iron and, whether found buried in the ground, at the bottom of the ocean, in an ancient tomb, or in the ring on your finger, it always looks the same. It cannot be damaged by heat and was considered completely inalterable until around 1100 AD, when alchemists concocted a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids known as Agua Regia (“Royal Water”) that could dissolve gold. The immortal metal is endlessly recycled, and all the gold known today is very nearly equal to all the gold that has ever been mined. One ounce of gold can be stretched into a single wire 35 miles long, or it can be beaten to just a few atoms thick. It is the most flexible, enduring, and beautiful of all metals.

Gold shows a distinct affinity for sulfur and forms an ore with a rare element called tellurium. It is one of the few elements gold easily bonds with. In fact, telluride is rarely found without gold. Gold also appears in minerals that are part of a group of tellurium sulfides called the tellurides. However, the amount of gold in these minerals is really miniscule next to the amount of gold found in its native metallic state. Native gold seems to like the company of the purest white quartz and is also found mixed with deposits of pyrite and a few other sulfide minerals. Gold is six times rarer than silver, and it takes about three tons of gold ore to extract an ounce of gold metal.Around the world, nearly every culture associated their supreme god or goddess with gold. For many centuries only the images of gods graced gold coins, until Alexander the Great began the trend of rulers’ images appearing on gold coins around 30 BC. Even the most primitive societies recognize the sacred properties of gold. For example, the Makuna tribes of modern Brazil believe that gold contains “the light of the sun and stars." The chemical symbol for gold (Au) comes from the Latin word aurum meaning "gold.” The alchemical cipher for gold is a rendition of the sun (A), and gold was considered a kind of congealed light. Sol is the King of alchemy, and his royal purple-red color is revealed in gold colloidal solutions, and red is his symbolic color. Sol Philosophorum was the name the alchemists gave to this living spirit of gold, which they saw as the refined essence of heat and fire. Gold was known and considered sacred from earliest times. Gold became popular because it reminded people of the sun with its warm, life-giving properties. Because of its imperishability, the ancient Chinese thought that gold conveyed immortality to its owners. Egyptian inscriptions dating back to 2600 BC describe these same associations with gold. Gold replaced bartering around 3500 BC when the people of Mesopotamia started using it as a kind of money because of it eternal value. By 2800 BC, gold was being fashioned into standardized weights in the form of rings. People started carried black stones called “touchstones” onto which they scraped a piece of gold to leave a streak. Depending on the brightness of the streak, one could estimate how much gold was in the sample. Around 1500 BC, Mesopotamian alchemists discovered a process for purifying gold known as "cuppellation," which involved heating impure gold in a porcelain cup called a “cuppel.” Impurities were absorbed by the porcelain, leaving a button of pure gold behind. Later alchemists used cuppels to test the quality of their transmutations.Using elaborate mixing and heating techniques, Egyptian alchemists tried making gold by changing the proportions of the Four Elements in the base metals or by attempting to speed up natural growth of lesser metals into gold. Around 100 AD, Egyptian alchemist Maria Prophetissa used mercury and sulfur to try to make gold. Around 300 AD, the alchemist Zosimos, whose recipes often came to him in dreams, was working to transmute copper. “The soul of copper,” he wrote must be purified until it receives the sheen of gold and turns into the royal metal of the Sun." A technique known as "diplosis" (“doubling”) of gold became popular. One such recipe called for heating a mixture of two parts gold with one part each of silver and copper. After appropriate alchemical charging that brought the seed of gold alive, twice as much of a gold as originally added was produced. Egyptian alchemists believed that the gold acted as a seed in metals, especially copper and silver. According to their view, the seed of gold grew, eating the copper and silver as food, until the whole mixture was transformed into pure gold.According to the medieval alchemists, Nature sought continually to create the perfection achieved in gold, and they looked at every metal as gold in the making. Alchemists also thought that the objective of every metal was to become gold, and every metal was tested for corrosion and strength and ranked as to how far it was from gold. Many alchemists felt that mercury was the closest metal to gold and that it could be transmuted directly into gold. Their intuition was correct, for mercury can indeed be turned into gold. Gold and mercury are next to each other on the Periodic Table. Mercury is element 80 (has 80 protons) and gold is element 79 (has 79 protons). In the 1960s, physicists were able to knock out a proton in mercury atoms using neutron particle accelerators, and thereby create minute quantities of gold.Gold is at the head of the metals, paired with what in the medieval mind was the strongest planet, the Sun. The alchemists were obsessed with gold’s signature of perfection. Medieval Italian alchemist Bernard Trevisan speculated, "Is not gold merely the Sun’s beams condensed into a solid yellow?" Seventeenth-century alchemist John French asked fervently: “Is there no sperm in gold? Is it not possible to exalt it for multiplication? Is there no universal spirit in the world? Is it not possible to find that collected in One Thing which is dispersed in all things? What is that which makes gold incorruptible? What induced the philosophers to examine gold for the matter of their medicine? Was not all gold once living? Is there none of this living gold, the matter of philosophers, to be had anymore?”Gold is highly valued in the everyday world too. It is used as coinage and is a standard for monetary systems in many countries. It is used to make jewelry and artwork, and also in dentistry, electronics, and plating. Since it is an excellent reflector of infrared energy (such as emerges from the sun), the metal is used to coat space satellites and interstellar probes. Chlorauric acid is used in photography for toning the silver image. It is also used in medicine to treat degenerative diseases such as arthritis and cancer.Chemist Lilly Kolisko performed experiments with gold chloride and showed its chemical behavior coincided with events that altered the strength of the sun, such as the weakening in solar forces during solar eclipses or their increase during the summer solstice. Moreover, she found that both silver and gold salts seemed to be equally influenced by the sun. In the case of silver, it was the forms or patterns that changed, whereas in the gold, it was the colors that changed. Silver shapes moved from jagged spikes to smooth rolling forms but the colors remained hues of grey, while the basic shape of gold patterns remained the same but the colors changed from brilliant yellows through violet to reddish-purple hues. This work presents an amazing confirmation of how the King and Queen, Sol and Luna, work together in creation, with the female principle representing soul and form and the male principle representing spirit and energy. Kolisko’s innovative work with the metals is presented in the Appendix. Her work has been duplicated by dozens of other chemists and has been confirmed many times.The signatures of gold are invoked in rituals, magical spells, and talismans concerning solar deities, the male force, authority, self-confidence, creativity, financial riches, investments, fortune, hope, health, and worldly and magical power. Gold talismans can be very expensive, but you can make one of gold colored cardboard or write the symbols on it with gold paint or plate an object with gold. Gold jewelry is said to improve self-confidence and inner strength. To charge water with the signature of gold, put a gold object in a glass of water and let sit in the sunlight for 6-10 hours.During sunrise or sunset, face the sun and try to feel it archetypal presence. If not too bright, gaze into the rising or setting sun and try to see the metallic solar disk of which the Egyptian alchemists spoke. Relax and try to focus all your attention on the golden sphere. Relax completely with an open and quiet mind. Become empty and let the presence at the center of our solar system influence you. Do this until you feel a real connection with the distant sun. Continue facing the sun as you pick up a piece of gold jewelry or a vial of pure gold flakes (such as sold in some novelty shops) into your right palm. You should be able to feel a electric warmth building. That eerie, warm vibration is not your imagination. It is what alchemists refer to as the “call of gold” – the resonation of the metal with its “planet.” You are experiencing the metal’s true signature or living correspondence, and for gold, this is the most perfect expression of all materials. If you can connect with this archetype, you will realize that it a very personal as well as divine presence. As Above, so Below. This is perfection on all levels of your mind, body, and soul resonating with the perfection inherent in the Whole Universe.For those with weaker wills or loss of contact with the divine presence, gold represents a psychological cure. The solar essences gives great ambition, courage, self-re-liance, dignity, authority, and the ability to manage oneself and others. The creative principle, no matter how small and insignificant it is within us can be enhanced to a great degree by tapping into the solar archetype. Just as the Sun represents the di-vine creative force in our immediate solar system, gold represents the same thing in our inner temperament. For lasting manifestation, the golden temperament needs to be firmly grounded in the world, and the danger at this phase of transformation is that the individual become too focused on the workings Above and forget his or her connection to the real world. Gold and the blazing Sun correspond to personal ambition, courage, and creative energy and vitality, but without a constant effort to remain pure and alive in the real world, the golden temperament can quickly transmute into the leaden qualities of despair, poor self esteem, lack of confidence, and impurity. Most important for the golden temperament, however, is to realize that once having reached this plateau, one has certain personal and karmic obligations. The golden attitude of this temperament is what brings the rewards of health, wealth, and happiness through synchonistic responses from the universe. Go against these archetypal powers at this level of achievement and even the slightest deviation from the golden path of righteousness and personal integrity can have disastrous and immediate consequences. The alchemists transmuted the Gold temperament using the operation of Coagulation.Chrysotherapy is the name given to healing with gold. The mystical metal has been used for both spiritual and medical purposes as far back as ancient Egypt. Over 5,000 years ago, the Egyptians used gold in dentistry and ingested it for mental, bodily, and spiritual purification. The ancients believed that gold in the body worked by stimulating the life force and raising the level of vibration on all levels. In Alexandria, alchemists developed a powerful elixir known as “liquid gold,” which reportedly had the ability to restore youth and perfect health. In ancient Rome, gold salves were used for the treatment of skin ulcers, and today, gold leaf plays an important role in the treatment of chronic skin ulcers. The great alchemist and founder of modern medicine, Paracelsus, developed many highly successful medicines from metallic minerals including gold. In medieval Europe, gold-coated pills and “gold waters” were extremely popular. Alchemists mixed powdered gold into drinks to "comfort sore limbs," and today, it is widely used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. In the 1900s, surgeons implanted a $5.00 gold piece under the skin near an inflamed joint, such as a knee or elbow. In China, peasants still cook their rice with a gold coin in order to help replenish gold in their bodies, and fancy Chinese restaurants put 24-karat gold-leaf in their food preparations.The alchemists believed that gold represented the perfection of matter, and that its presence in the body would enliven, rejuvenate, and cure a multitude of “dis-eases.” Gold is never corrodes or even tarnishes, is completely non-toxic, and exhibits no interactions with other drugs. Gold is the only heavy metal that has a right-hand atomic spin and is therefore easily tolerated by the body.The alchemists believed that gold represented the perfection of matter, and that its presence in the body would enliven, rejuvenate, and cure a multitude of “dis-eases.” Gold is never corrodes or even tarnishes, is completely non-toxic, and exhibits no interactions with other drugs. Gold is the only heavy metal that has a right-hand atomic spin and is therefore easily tolerated by the body.Sun-ruled plants affect the soul in its positive phase of manifestation, which manifests on the personal level as our idea of ourselves as a progressive unified entity. Solar herbs help us realize our evolutionary epoch as an individual among many other individuals, helping to synthesize and synchronize our goals with those of the macrocosm. In this sense they are ego fortifiers, but with a divine purpose.Solar herbs heal inferiority complexes, bolstering people and giving them a sense of purpose beyond the norm. The Sun represents the Christ and Osiris consciousness in man, as well as Hercules in his monumental strength. For those with weaker wills, Sun ruled herbs will provide the springboard for more posi-tive action; they also bestow the quality of generosity to our souls. Solar plants, when alchemically charged, will reveal the divine purpose of our solar system, and will let you be-come aware of the will of God in manifestation. Solar essences give great ambition.

 

www.azothalchemy.org/metals.htm

  

Dutch postcard by Takken, no. 461. Photo: Universal International.

 

Tall, sultry, green-eyed blonde Peggie Castle (1927-1973) was an American actress who specialised in playing the "other woman" in B-movies. Castle was Miss Cheesecake in 1949.

 

Peggie (sometimes written as Peggy) Castle was born as Peggy Thomas Blair in Appalachia, Wise County, Virginia, in 1927. Her mother was Elizabeth Blair. Her father, Doyle H. Blair, was a director of an industrial relations firm. When the family moved to Hollywood, he was hired as a studio manager at Goldwyn Studios. He also worked as a business manager for Donald O'Connor. Kater, Peggie changed her surname Blair at the first studio in which she worked. She took lessons in drama when she was 8 years old. Castle graduated from Hollywood High School and attended Mills College for two years. Castle's first work as an actress came in the soap opera 'Today's Children'. Then a spot on Radio Theatre in 1947 brought her a screen test offer from 20th Century Fox. According to Hollywood lore, Castle was discovered by a talent scout while eating a shrimp cocktail in the seafood bar of the Farmer's Market in Beverly Hills. She was signed to a seven-year contract with Universal-International and made her film debut in the 1947 film When a Girl's Beautiful. In 1949, she was named "Miss Cheesecake" by the Southern California Restaurant Association. Later that year, the Junior Chamber of Commerce named Castle "Miss Three Alarm". She later appeared in the films Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949), Payment on Demand (1951), The Prince Who Was a Thief (1951), Invasion U.S.A. (1952), 99 River Street (1953), Beginning of the End (1957) and Arrivederci Roma (1957). She often starred in Westerns, appearing in nearly a dozen between Wagons West (1952) and Hell's Crossroads (1957).

 

In the 1950s, Peggie Castle moved into television. She appeared in multiple guest roles on Fireside Theater, Cheyenne, 77 Sunset Strip, and The Restless Gun. In 1957 she appeared as Amy Gordon on Cheyenne in the episode titled The Spanish Grant. In 1957 she played defendant Sally Fenner in the Perry Mason episode, The Case of the Negligent Nymph. Also in 1957 she was a primary star on Gunsmoke, playing a forlorn Nita Tucker in the episode Chester’s Murder. From 1959 to 1962, she co-starred in the television Western series Lawman — her first continuing series. Her role as saloon owner Lily Merrill brought out a new dimension of Castle's talent. She stated, "For the first time in my life I'm a singer — that's the producer's opinion, not mine." Her final on-screen role was a guest appearance in a 1966 episode of The Virginian. In 1958, Castle acted with Jesse White in a stage production of 'A Hole in the Head' at the Civic Playhouse in Los Angeles. In 1960, Castle and Peter Brown (who also was a regular in Lawman) traveled to rodeos, performing as a song-and-dance team. Castle stressed, "We're very careful not to sing any romantic songs," treating the act more like a brother-sister team. The duo's stops included St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Albuquerque. In 1960, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Castle was married four times. She married Revis T. Call, a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army in 1945, in Los Angeles. Following that marriage, she began using Peggy Call as her professional name. They divorced in 1950. She married Universal publicist Robert H. Raines in 1951 and they divorced in 1954. In 1955, Castle married producer and director William McGarry. They had a daughter, Erin McGarry. Castle divorced McGarry in 1969. In 1971, Castle married Arthur Morganstern, her fourth husband. They remained married until Morganstern's death in 1973. Castle suffered from alcoholism. In 1969, she attempted suicide by taking an overdose of barbiturates and slashing her wrists. She was later committed to California's Camarillo State Hospital for her alcoholism, but she regressed after her release. In 1973, her third husband, William McGarry found her body on the couch of her Hollywood apartment. Her death was later determined to be caused by cirrhosis. She was only 45.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. D. 85. Photo: Universal International.

 

Tall, sultry, green-eyed blonde Peggie Castle (1927-1973) was an American actress who specialised in playing the "other woman" in B-movies. Castle was Miss Cheesecake in 1949.

 

Peggie (sometimes written as Peggy) Castle was born as Peggy Thomas Blair in Appalachia, Wise County, Virginia, in 1927. Her mother was Elizabeth Blair. Her father, Doyle H. Blair, was a director of an industrial relations firm. When the family moved to Hollywood, he was hired as a studio manager at Goldwyn Studios. He also worked as a business manager for Donald O'Connor. Kater, Peggie changed her surname Blair at the first studio in which she worked. She took lessons in drama when she was 8 years old. Castle graduated from Hollywood High School and attended Mills College for two years. Castle's first work as an actress came in the soap opera 'Today's Children'. Then a spot on Radio Theatre in 1947 brought her a screen test offer from 20th Century Fox. According to Hollywood lore, Castle was discovered by a talent scout while eating a shrimp cocktail in the seafood bar of the Farmer's Market in Beverly Hills. She was signed to a seven-year contract with Universal-International and made her film debut in the 1947 film When a Girl's Beautiful. In 1949, she was named "Miss Cheesecake" by the Southern California Restaurant Association. Later that year, the Junior Chamber of Commerce named Castle "Miss Three Alarm". She later appeared in the films Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949), Payment on Demand (1951), The Prince Who Was a Thief (1951), Invasion U.S.A. (1952), 99 River Street (1953), Beginning of the End (1957) and Arrivederci Roma (1957). She often starred in Westerns, appearing in nearly a dozen between Wagons West (1952) and Hell's Crossroads (1957).

 

In the 1950s, Peggie Castle moved into television. She appeared in multiple guest roles on Fireside Theater, Cheyenne, 77 Sunset Strip, and The Restless Gun. In 1957 she appeared as Amy Gordon on Cheyenne in the episode titled The Spanish Grant. In 1957 she played defendant Sally Fenner in the Perry Mason episode, The Case of the Negligent Nymph. Also in 1957 she was a primary star on Gunsmoke, playing a forlorn Nita Tucker in the episode Chester’s Murder. From 1959 to 1962, she co-starred in the television Western series Lawman — her first continuing series. Her role as saloon owner Lily Merrill brought out a new dimension of Castle's talent. She stated, "For the first time in my life I'm a singer — that's the producer's opinion, not mine." Her final on-screen role was a guest appearance in a 1966 episode of The Virginian. In 1958, Castle acted with Jesse White in a stage production of 'A Hole in the Head' at the Civic Playhouse in Los Angeles. In 1960, Castle and Peter Brown (who also was a regular in Lawman) traveled to rodeos, performing as a song-and-dance team. Castle stressed, "We're very careful not to sing any romantic songs," treating the act more like a brother-sister team. The duo's stops included St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Albuquerque. In 1960, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Castle was married four times. She married Revis T. Call, a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army in 1945, in Los Angeles. Following that marriage, she began using Peggy Call as her professional name. They divorced in 1950. She married Universal publicist Robert H. Raines in 1951 and they divorced in 1954. In 1955, Castle married producer and director William McGarry. They had a daughter, Erin McGarry. Castle divorced McGarry in 1969. In 1971, Castle married Arthur Morganstern, her fourth husband. They remained married until Morganstern's death in 1973. Castle suffered from alcoholism. In 1969, she attempted suicide by taking an overdose of barbiturates and slashing her wrists. She was later committed to California's Camarillo State Hospital for her alcoholism, but she regressed after her release. In 1973, her third husband, William McGarry found her body on the couch of her Hollywood apartment. Her death was later determined to be caused by cirrhosis. She was only 45.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

West-German card by Kolibri-Verlag, no. 1486. Photo: United Artists. Peggie Castle in The Long Wait (Victor Saville, 1954).

 

Tall, sultry, green-eyed blonde Peggie Castle (1927-1973) was an American actress who specialised in playing the "other woman" in B-movies. Castle was Miss Cheesecake in 1949.

 

Peggie (sometimes written as Peggy) Castle was born as Peggy Thomas Blair in Appalachia, Wise County, Virginia, in 1927. Her mother was Elizabeth Blair. Her father, Doyle H. Blair, was a director of an industrial relations firm. When the family moved to Hollywood, he was hired as a studio manager at Goldwyn Studios. He also worked as a business manager for Donald O'Connor. Kater, Peggie changed her surname Blair at the first studio in which she worked. She took lessons in drama when she was 8 years old. Castle graduated from Hollywood High School and attended Mills College for two years. Castle's first work as an actress came in the soap opera 'Today's Children'. Then a spot on Radio Theatre in 1947 brought her a screen test offer from 20th Century Fox. According to Hollywood lore, Castle was discovered by a talent scout while eating a shrimp cocktail in the seafood bar of the Farmer's Market in Beverly Hills. She was signed to a seven-year contract with Universal-International and made her film debut in the 1947 film When a Girl's Beautiful. In 1949, she was named "Miss Cheesecake" by the Southern California Restaurant Association. Later that year, the Junior Chamber of Commerce named Castle "Miss Three Alarm". She later appeared in the films Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949), Payment on Demand (1951), The Prince Who Was a Thief (1951), Invasion U.S.A. (1952), 99 River Street (1953), Beginning of the End (1957) and Arrivederci Roma (1957). She often starred in Westerns, appearing in nearly a dozen between Wagons West (1952) and Hell's Crossroads (1957).

 

In the 1950s, Peggie Castle moved into television. She appeared in multiple guest roles on Fireside Theater, Cheyenne, 77 Sunset Strip, and The Restless Gun. In 1957 she appeared as Amy Gordon on Cheyenne in the episode titled The Spanish Grant. In 1957 she played defendant Sally Fenner in the Perry Mason episode, The Case of the Negligent Nymph. Also in 1957 she was a primary star on Gunsmoke, playing a forlorn Nita Tucker in the episode Chester’s Murder. From 1959 to 1962, she co-starred in the television Western series Lawman — her first continuing series. Her role as saloon owner Lily Merrill brought out a new dimension of Castle's talent. She stated, "For the first time in my life I'm a singer — that's the producer's opinion, not mine." Her final on-screen role was a guest appearance in a 1966 episode of The Virginian. In 1958, Castle acted with Jesse White in a stage production of 'A Hole in the Head' at the Civic Playhouse in Los Angeles. In 1960, Castle and Peter Brown (who also was a regular in Lawman) traveled to rodeos, performing as a song-and-dance team. Castle stressed, "We're very careful not to sing any romantic songs," treating the act more like a brother-sister team. The duo's stops included St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Albuquerque. In 1960, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Castle was married four times. She married Revis T. Call, a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army in 1945, in Los Angeles. Following that marriage, she began using Peggy Call as her professional name. They divorced in 1950. She married Universal publicist Robert H. Raines in 1951 and they divorced in 1954. In 1955, Castle married producer and director William McGarry. They had a daughter, Erin McGarry. Castle divorced McGarry in 1969. In 1971, Castle married Arthur Morganstern, her fourth husband. They remained married until Morganstern's death in 1973. Castle suffered from alcoholism. In 1969, she attempted suicide by taking an overdose of barbiturates and slashing her wrists. She was later committed to California's Camarillo State Hospital for her alcoholism, but she regressed after her release. In 1973, her third husband, William McGarry found her body on the couch of her Hollywood apartment. Her death was later determined to be caused by cirrhosis. She was only 45.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Dutch postcard by Takken / 't Sticht, no. 160. Photo: Universal International.

 

Tall, sultry, green-eyed blonde Peggie Castle (1927-1973) was an American actress who specialised in playing the "other woman" in B-movies. Castle was Miss Cheesecake in 1949.

 

Peggie (sometimes written as Peggy) Castle was born as Peggy Thomas Blair in Appalachia, Wise County, Virginia, in 1927. Her mother was Elizabeth Blair. Her father, Doyle H. Blair, was a director of an industrial relations firm. When the family moved to Hollywood, he was hired as a studio manager at Goldwyn Studios. He also worked as a business manager for Donald O'Connor. Kater, Peggie changed her surname Blair at the first studio in which she worked. She took lessons in drama when she was 8 years old. Castle graduated from Hollywood High School and attended Mills College for two years. Castle's first work as an actress came in the soap opera 'Today's Children'. Then a spot on Radio Theatre in 1947 brought her a screen test offer from 20th Century Fox. According to Hollywood lore, Castle was discovered by a talent scout while eating a shrimp cocktail in the seafood bar of the Farmer's Market in Beverly Hills. She was signed to a seven-year contract with Universal-International and made her film debut in the 1947 film When a Girl's Beautiful. In 1949, she was named "Miss Cheesecake" by the Southern California Restaurant Association. Later that year, the Junior Chamber of Commerce named Castle "Miss Three Alarm". She later appeared in the films Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949), Payment on Demand (1951), The Prince Who Was a Thief (1951), Invasion U.S.A. (1952), 99 River Street (1953), Beginning of the End (1957) and Arrivederci Roma (1957). She often starred in Westerns, appearing in nearly a dozen between Wagons West (1952) and Hell's Crossroads (1957).

 

In the 1950s, Peggie Castle moved into television. She appeared in multiple guest roles on Fireside Theater, Cheyenne, 77 Sunset Strip, and The Restless Gun. In 1957 she appeared as Amy Gordon on Cheyenne in the episode titled The Spanish Grant. In 1957 she played defendant Sally Fenner in the Perry Mason episode, The Case of the Negligent Nymph. Also in 1957 she was a primary star on Gunsmoke, playing a forlorn Nita Tucker in the episode Chester’s Murder. From 1959 to 1962, she co-starred in the television Western series Lawman — her first continuing series. Her role as saloon owner Lily Merrill brought out a new dimension of Castle's talent. She stated, "For the first time in my life I'm a singer — that's the producer's opinion, not mine." Her final on-screen role was a guest appearance in a 1966 episode of The Virginian. In 1958, Castle acted with Jesse White in a stage production of 'A Hole in the Head' at the Civic Playhouse in Los Angeles. In 1960, Castle and Peter Brown (who also was a regular in Lawman) traveled to rodeos, performing as a song-and-dance team. Castle stressed, "We're very careful not to sing any romantic songs," treating the act more like a brother-sister team. The duo's stops included St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Albuquerque. In 1960, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Castle was married four times. She married Revis T. Call, a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army in 1945, in Los Angeles. Following that marriage, she began using Peggy Call as her professional name. They divorced in 1950. She married Universal publicist Robert H. Raines in 1951 and they divorced in 1954. In 1955, Castle married producer and director William McGarry. They had a daughter, Erin McGarry. Castle divorced McGarry in 1969. In 1971, Castle married Arthur Morganstern, her fourth husband. They remained married until Morganstern's death in 1973. Castle suffered from alcoholism. In 1969, she attempted suicide by taking an overdose of barbiturates and slashing her wrists. She was later committed to California's Camarillo State Hospital for her alcoholism, but she regressed after her release. In 1973, her third husband, William McGarry found her body on the couch of her Hollywood apartment. Her death was later determined to be caused by cirrhosis. She was only 45.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, also known as Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 until the Surname Law of 1934 (c. 1881 – 10 November 1938), was a Turkish field marshal, revolutionary statesman, author, and the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. He undertook sweeping progressive reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrializing nation. Ideologically a secularist and nationalist, his policies and socio-political theories became known as Kemalism.

 

Atatürk came to prominence for his role in securing the Ottoman Turkish victory at the Battle of Gallipoli (1915) during World War I. During this time, the Ottoman Empire perpetrated genocides against its Greek, Armenian and Assyrian subjects; while not directly involved, Atatürk's role in their aftermath has been controversial. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, he led the Turkish National Movement, which resisted mainland Turkey's partition among the victorious Allied powers. Establishing a provisional government in the present-day Turkish capital Ankara (known in English at the time as Angora), he defeated the forces sent by the Allies, thus emerging victorious from what was later referred to as the Turkish War of Independence. He subsequently proceeded to abolish the sultanate in 1922 and proclaimed the foundation of the Turkish Republic in its place the following year.

 

As the president of the newly formed Turkish Republic, Atatürk initiated a rigorous program of political, economic, and cultural reforms with the ultimate aim of building a republican and secular nation-state. He made primary education free and compulsory, opening thousands of new schools all over the country. He also introduced the Latin-based Turkish alphabet, replacing the old Ottoman Turkish alphabet. Turkish women received equal civil and political rights during Atatürk's presidency. In particular, women were given voting rights in local elections by Act no. 1580 on 3 April 1930 and a few years later, in 1934, full universal suffrage. His government carried out a policy of Turkification, trying to create a homogeneous, unified and above all secular nation under the Turkish banner. Under Atatürk, the minorities in Turkey were ordered to speak Turkish in public, but were allowed to maintain their own languages in private and within their own communities; non-Turkish toponyms were replaced and non-Turkish families were ordered to adopt a Turkish surname. The Turkish Parliament granted him the surname Atatürk in 1934, which means "Father of the Turks", in recognition of the role he played in building the modern Turkish Republic. He died on 10 November 1938 at Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, at the age of 57; he was succeeded as president by his long-time prime minister İsmet İnönü and was honored with a state funeral.

 

In 1981, the centennial of Atatürk's birth, his memory was honoured by the United Nations and UNESCO, which declared it The Atatürk Year in the World and adopted the Resolution on the Atatürk Centennial, describing him as "the leader of the first struggle given against colonialism and imperialism" and a "remarkable promoter of the sense of understanding between peoples and durable peace between the nations of the world and that he worked all his life for the development of harmony and cooperation between peoples without distinction". Atatürk was also credited for his peace-in-the-world oriented foreign policy and friendship with neighboring countries such as Iran, Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Greece, as well as the creation of the Balkan Pact that resisted the expansionist aggressions of Fascist Italy and Tsarist Bulgaria.

 

The Turkish War of Independence (19 May 1919 – 24 July 1923) was a series of military campaigns and a revolution waged by the Turkish National Movement, after parts of the Ottoman Empire were occupied and partitioned following its defeat in World War I. The conflict was between the Turkish Nationalists against Allied and separatist forces over the application of Wilsonian principles, especially national self-determination, in post-World War I Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. The revolution concluded the collapse of the Ottoman Empire; the Ottoman monarchy and the Islamic caliphate were abolished, and the Republic of Turkey was declared in Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. This resulted in a transfer of vested sovereignty from the sultan-caliph to the nation, setting the stage for Republican Turkey's period of nationalist revolutionary reform.

 

While World War I ended for the Ottoman Empire with the Armistice of Mudros, the Allied Powers continued occupying and securing land per the Sykes–Picot Agreement, as well as to facilitate the prosecution of former members of the Committee of Union and Progress and those involved in the Armenian genocide. Ottoman military commanders therefore refused orders from both the Allies and the Ottoman government to surrender and disband their forces. In an atmosphere of turmoil throughout the remainder of the empire, sultan Mehmed VI dispatched Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk), a well-respected and high-ranking general, to Anatolia to restore order; however, Mustafa Kemal became an enabler and eventually leader of Turkish Nationalist resistance against the Ottoman government, Allied powers, and separatists.

 

In an attempt to establish control over the power vacuum in Anatolia, the Allies agreed to launch a Greek peacekeeping force into Anatolia and occupy Smyrna (İzmir), inflaming sectarian tensions and beginning the Turkish War of Independence. A nationalist counter government led by Mustafa Kemal was established in Ankara when it became clear the Ottoman government was appeasing the Allied powers. The Allies soon pressured the Ottoman government in Constantinople to suspend the Constitution, shutter Parliament, and sign the Treaty of Sèvres, a treaty unfavorable to Turkish interests that the "Ankara government" declared illegal.

 

In the ensuing war, Turkish and Syrian forces defeated the French in the south, and remobilized army units went on to partition Armenia with the Bolsheviks, resulting in the Treaty of Kars (October 1921). The Western Front of the independence war is known as the Greco-Turkish War, in which Greek forces at first encountered unorganized resistance. However, İsmet Pasha (İnönü)'s organization of militia into a regular army paid off when Ankara forces fought the Greeks in the First and Second Battle of İnönü. The Greek army emerged victorious in the Battle of Kütahya-Eskişehir and decided to drive on the Nationalist capital of Ankara, stretching their supply lines. The Turks checked their advance in the Battle of Sakarya and eventually counter-attacked in the Great Offensive, which expelled Greek forces from Anatolia in the span of three weeks. The war effectively ended with the recapture of İzmir and the Chanak Crisis, prompting the signing of another armistice in Mudanya.

 

The Grand National Assembly in Ankara was recognized as the legitimate Turkish government, which signed the Treaty of Lausanne (July 1923), a treaty more favorable to Turkey than the Sèvres Treaty. The Allies evacuated Anatolia and Eastern Thrace, the Ottoman government was overthrown and the monarchy abolished, and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (which remains Turkey's primary legislative body today) declared the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923. With the war, a population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, and the abolition of the sultanate, the Ottoman era came to an end, and with Atatürk's reforms, the Turks created the modern, secular nation-state of Turkey. On 3 March 1924, the Ottoman caliphate was also abolished.

 

The ethnic demographics of the modern Turkish Republic were significantly impacted by the earlier Armenian genocide and the deportations of Greek-speaking, Orthodox Christian Rum people. The Turkish Nationalist Movement carried out massacres and deportations to eliminate native Christian populations—a continuation of the Armenian genocide and other ethnic cleansing operations during World War I. Following these campaigns of ethnic cleansing, the historic Christian presence in Anatolia was destroyed, in large part, and the Muslim demographic had increased from 80% to 98%.

 

Following the chaotic politics of the Second Constitutional Era, the Ottoman Empire came under the control of the Committee of Union and Progress in a coup in 1913, and then further consolidated its control after the assassination of Mahmud Shevket Pasha.[citation needed] Founded as a radical revolutionary group seeking to prevent a collapse of the Ottoman Empire, by the eve of World War I it decided that the solution was to implement nationalist and centralizing policies. The CUP reacted to the losses of land and the expulsion of Muslims from the Balkan Wars by turning even more nationalistic. Part of its effort to consolidate power was to proscribe and exile opposition politicians from the Freedom and Accord Party to remote Sinop.

 

The Unionists brought the Ottoman Empire into World War I on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, during which a genocidal campaign was waged against Ottoman Christians, namely Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians. It was based on an alleged conspiracy that the three groups would rebel on the side of the Allies, so collective punishment was applied. A similar suspicion and suppression from the Turkish nationalist government was directed towards the Arab and Kurdish populations, leading to localized rebellions. The Entente powers reacted to these developments by charging the CUP leaders, commonly known as the Three Pashas, with "Crimes against humanity" and threatened accountability. They also had imperialist ambitions on Ottoman territory, with a major correspondence over a post-war settlement in the Ottoman Empire being leaked to the press as the Sykes–Picot Agreement. With Saint Petersburg's exit from World War I and descent into civil war, driven in part from the Ottomans' closure of the Turkish straits of goods bound to Russia, a new imperative was given to the Entente powers to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war to restart the Eastern Front.

 

World War I would be the nail in the coffin of Ottomanism, a monarchist and multicultural nationalism. Mistreatment of non-Turk groups after 1913, and the general context of great socio-political upheaval that occurred in the aftermath of World War I, meant many minorities now wished to divorce their future from imperialism to form futures of their own by separating into (often republican) nation-states.

 

In the summer months of 1918, the leaders of the Central Powers realized that the Great War was lost, including the Ottomans'. Almost simultaneously the Palestinian Front and then the Macedonian Front collapsed. The sudden decision by Bulgaria to sign an armistice cut communications from Constantinople (İstanbul) to Vienna and Berlin, and opened the undefended Ottoman capital to Entente attack. With the major fronts crumbling, Unionist Grand Vizier Talât Pasha intended to sign an armistice, and resigned on 8 October 1918 so that a new government would receive less harsh armistice terms. The Armistice of Mudros was signed on 30 October 1918, ending World War I for the Ottoman Empire. Three days later, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)—which governed the Ottoman Empire as a one-party state since 1913—held its last congress, where it was decided the party would be dissolved. Talât, Enver Pasha, Cemal Pasha, and five other high-ranking members of the CUP escaped the Ottoman Empire on a German torpedo boat later that night, plunging the country into a power vacuum.

 

The armistice was signed because the Ottoman Empire had been defeated in important fronts, but the military was intact and retreated in good order. Unlike other Central Powers, the Allies did not mandate an abdication of the imperial family as a condition for peace, nor did they request the Ottoman Army to dissolve its general staff. Though the army suffered from mass desertion throughout the war which led to banditry, there was no threat of mutiny or revolutions like in Germany, Austria-Hungary, or Russia. This is despite famine and economic collapse that was brought on by the extreme levels of mobilization, destruction from the war, disease, and mass murder since 1914.

 

Due to the Turkish nationalist policies pursued by the CUP against Ottoman Christians by 1918 the Ottoman Empire held control over a mostly homogeneous land of Muslims from Eastern Thrace to the Persian border. These included mostly Turks, as well as Kurds, Circassians, and Muhacir groups from Rumeli. Most Muslim Arabs were now outside of the Ottoman Empire and under Allied occupation, with some "imperialists" still loyal to the Ottoman Sultanate-Caliphate, and others wishing for independence or Allied protection under a League of Nations mandate. Sizable Greek and Armenian minorities remained within its borders, and most of these communities no longer wished to remain under the Empire.

 

On 30 October 1918, the Armistice of Mudros was signed between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies of World War I, bringing hostilities in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I to an end. The Ottoman Army was to demobilize, its navy and air force handed to the Allies, and occupied territory in the Caucasus and Persia to be evacuated. Critically, Article VII granted the Allies the right to occupy forts controlling the Turkish Straits and the vague right to occupy "in case of disorder" any territory if there were a threat to security. The clause relating to the occupation of the straits was meant to secure a Southern Russian intervention force, while the rest of the article was used to allow for Allied controlled peace-keeping forces. There was also a hope to follow through punishing local actors that carried out exterminatory orders from the CUP government against Armenian Ottomans. For now, the House of Osman escaped the fates of the Hohenzollerns, Habsburgs, and Romanovs to continue ruling their empire, though at the cost of its remaining sovereignty.

 

On 13 November 1918, a French brigade entered Constantinople to begin a de facto occupation of the Ottoman capital and its immediate dependencies. This was followed by a fleet consisting of British, French, Italian and Greek ships deploying soldiers on the ground the next day, totaling 50,000 troops in Constantinople. The Allied Powers stated that the occupation was temporary and its purpose was to protect the monarchy, the caliphate and the minorities. Somerset Arthur Gough-Calthorpe—the British signatory of the Mudros Armistice—stated the Triple Entente's public position that they had no intention to dismantle the Ottoman government or place it under military occupation by "occupying Constantinople". However, dismantling the government and partitioning the Ottoman Empire among the Allied nations had been an objective of the Entente since the start of WWI.

 

A wave of seizures took place in the rest of the country in the following months. Citing Article VII, British forces demanded that Turkish troops evacuate Mosul, claiming that Christian civilians in Mosul and Zakho were killed en masse. In the Caucasus, Britain established a presence in Menshevik Georgia and the Lori and Aras valleys as peace-keepers. On 14 November, joint Franco-Greek occupation was established in the town of Uzunköprü in Eastern Thrace as well as the railway axis until the train station of Hadımköy on the outskirts of Constantinople. On 1 December, British troops based in Syria occupied Kilis, Marash, Urfa and Birecik. Beginning in December, French troops began successive seizures of the province of Adana, including the towns of Antioch, Mersin, Tarsus, Ceyhan, Adana, Osmaniye, and İslâhiye, incorporating the area into the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration North while French forces embarked by gunboats and sent troops to the Black Sea ports of Zonguldak and Karadeniz Ereğli commanding Turkey's coal mining region. These continued seizures of land prompted Ottoman commanders to refuse demobilization and prepare for the resumption of war.

 

The British similarly asked Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) to turn over the port of Alexandretta (İskenderun), which he reluctantly did, following which he was recalled to Constantinople. He made sure to distribute weapons to the population to prevent them from falling into the hands of Allied forces. Some of these weapons were smuggled to the east by members of Karakol, a successor to the CUP's Special Organization, to be used in case resistance was necessary in Anatolia. Many Ottoman officials participated in efforts to conceal from the occupying authorities details of the burgeoning independence movement spreading throughout Anatolia.

 

Other commanders began refusing orders from the Ottoman government and the Allied powers. After Mustafa Kemal Pasha returned to Constantinople, Ali Fuat Pasha (Cebesoy) brought XX Corps under his command. He marched first to Konya and then to Ankara to organise resistance groups, such as the Circassian çetes he assembled with guerilla leader Çerkes Ethem. Meanwhile, Kazım Karabekir Pasha refused to surrender his intact and powerful XV Corps in Erzurum. Evacuation from the Caucusus, puppet republics and Muslim militia groups were established in the army's wake to hamper with the consolidation of the new Armenian state. Elsewhere in the country, regional nationalist resistance organizations known as Şuras –meaning "councils", not unlike soviets in revolutionary Russia– were founded, most pledging allegiance to the Defence of National Rights movement that protested continued Allied occupation and appeasement by the Sublime Porte.

 

Following the occupation of Constantinople, Mehmed VI Vahdettin dissolved the Chamber of Deputies which was dominated by Unionists elected back in 1914, promising elections for the next year. Vahdettin just ascended to the throne only months earlier with the death of Mehmed V Reşad. He was disgusted with the policies of the CUP, and wished to be a more assertive sovereign than his diseased half brother. Greek and Armenian Ottomans declared the termination of their relationship with the Ottoman Empire through their respective patriarchates, and refused to partake in any future election. With the collapse of the CUP and its censorship regime, an outpouring of condemnation against the party came from all parts of Ottoman media.

 

A general amnesty was soon issued, allowing the exiled and imprisoned dissidents persecuted by the CUP to return to Constantinople. Vahdettin invited the pro-Palace politician Damat Ferid Pasha, leader of the reconstituted Freedom and Accord Party, to form a government, whose members quickly set out to purge the Unionists from the Ottoman government. Ferid Pasha hoped that his Anglophilia and an attitude of appeasement would induce less harsh peace terms from the Allied powers. However, his appointment was problematic for nationalists, many being members of the liquidated committee that were surely to face trial. Years of corruption, unconstitutional acts, war profiteering, and enrichment from ethnic cleansing and genocide by the Unionists soon became basis of war crimes trials and courts martial trials held in Constantinople.[citation needed] While many leading Unionists were sentenced lengthy prison sentences, many made sure to escape the country before Allied occupation or to regions that the government now had minimal control over; thus most were sentenced in absentia. The Allies encouragement of the proceedings and the use of British Malta as their holding ground made the trials unpopular. The partisan nature of the trials was not lost on observers either. The hanging of the Kaymakam of Boğazlıyan district Mehmed Kemal resulted in a demonstration against the courts martials trials.

 

With all the chaotic politics in the capital and uncertainty of the severity of the incoming peace treaty, many Ottomans looked to Washington with the hope that the application of Wilsonian principles would mean Constantinople would stay Turkish, as Muslims outnumbered Christians 2:1. The United States never declared war on the Ottoman Empire, so many imperial elite believed Washington could be a neutral arbiter that could fix the empire's problems. Halide Edip (Adıvar) and her Wilsonian Principles Society led the movement that advocated for the empire to be governed by an American League of Nations Mandate (see United States during the Turkish War of Independence). American diplomats attempted to ascertain a role they could play in the area with the Harbord and King–Crane Commissions. However, with the collapse of Woodrow Wilson's health, the United States diplomatically withdrew from the Middle East to focus on Europe, leaving the Entente powers to construct a post-Ottoman order.

 

The Entente would have arrived at Constantinople to discover an administration attempting to deal with decades of accumulated refugee crisis. The new government issued a proclamation allowing for deportees to return to their homes, but many Greeks and Armenians found their old homes occupied by desperate Rumelian and Caucasian Muslim refugees which were settled in their properties during the First World War. Ethnic conflict restarted in Anatolia; government officials responsible for resettling Christian refugees often assisted Muslim refugees in these disputes, prompting European powers to continue bringing Ottoman territory under their control. Of the 800,000 Ottoman Christian refugees, approximately over half returned to their homes by 1920. Meanwhile 1.4 million refugees from the Russian Civil War would pass through the Turkish straits and Anatolia, with 150,000 White émigrés choosing to settle in Istanbul for short or long term (see Evacuation of the Crimea). Many provinces were simply depopulated from years of fighting, conscription, and ethnic cleansing (see Ottoman casualties of World War I). The province of Yozgat lost 50% of its Muslim population from conscription, while according to the governor of Van, almost 95% of its prewar residents were dead or internally displaced.

 

Administration in much of the Anatolian and Thracian countryside would soon all but collapse by 1919. Army deserters who turned to banditry essentially controlled fiefdoms with tacit approval from bureaucrats and local elites. An amnesty issued in late 1918 saw these bandits strengthen their positions and fight amongst each other instead of returning to civilian life. Albanian and Circassian muhacirs resettled by the government in northwestern Anatolia and Kurds in southeastern Anatolia were engaged in blood feuds that intensified during the war and were hesitant to pledge allegiance to the Defence of Rights movement, and only would if officials could facilitate truces. Various Muhacir groups were suspicious of the continued Ittihadist ideology in the Defence of Rights movement, and the potential for themselves to meet fates 'like the Armenians' especially as warlords hailing from those communities assisted the deportations of the Christians even though as many commanders in the Nationalist movement also had Caucasian and Balkan Muslim ancestry.

 

With Anatolia in practical anarchy and the Ottoman army being questionably loyal in reaction to Allied land seizures, Mehmed VI established the military inspectorate system to reestablish authority over the remaining empire. Encouraged by Karabekir and Edmund Allenby, he assigned Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) as the inspector of the Ninth Army Troops Inspectorate –based in Erzurum– to restore order to Ottoman military units and to improve internal security on 30 April 1919, with his first assignment to suppress a rebellion by Greek rebels around the city of Samsun.

 

Mustafa Kemal was a well known, well respected, and well connected army commander, with much prestige coming from his status as the "Hero of Anafartalar"—for his role in the Gallipoli Campaign—and his title of "Honorary Aide-de-camp to His Majesty Sultan" gained in the last months of WWI. This choice would seem curious, as he was a nationalist and a fierce critic of the government's accommodating policy to the Entente powers. He was also an early member of the CUP. However Kemal Pasha did not associate himself with the fanatical faction of the CUP, many knew that he frequently clashed with the radicals of the Central Committee like Enver. He was therefore sidelined to the periphery of power throughout the Great War; after the CUP's dissolution he vocally aligned himself with moderates that formed the Liberal People's Party instead of the rump radical faction which formed the Renewal Party (both parties would be banned in May 1919 for being successors of the CUP). All these reasons allowed him to be the most legitimate nationalist for the sultan to placate. In this new political climate, he sought to capitalize on his war exploits to attain a better job, indeed several times he unsuccessfully lobbied for his inclusion in cabinet as War Minister. His new assignment gave him effective plenipotentiary powers over all of Anatolia which was meant to accommodate him and other nationalists to keep them loyal to the government.

 

Mustafa Kemal had earlier declined to become the leader of the Sixth Army headquartered in Nusaybin. But according to Patrick Balfour, through manipulation and the help of friends and sympathizers, he became the inspector of virtually all of the Ottoman forces in Anatolia, tasked with overseeing the disbanding process of remaining Ottoman forces. Kemal had an abundance of connections and personal friends concentrated in the post-armistice War Ministry, a powerful tool that would help him accomplish his secret goal: to lead a nationalist movement to safeguard Turkish interests against the Allied powers and a collaborative Ottoman government.

 

The day before his departure to Samsun on the remote Black Sea coast, Kemal had one last audience with Sultan Vahdettin, where he affirmed his loyalty to the sultan-caliph. It was in this meeting that they were informed of the botched occupation ceremony of Smyrna (İzmir) by the Greeks. He and his carefully selected staff left Constantinople aboard the old steamer SS Bandırma on the evening of 16 May 1919.

 

On 19 January 1919, the Paris Peace Conference was first held, at which Allied nations set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers, including the Ottoman Empire. As a special body of the Paris Conference, "The Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey", was established to pursue the secret treaties they had signed between 1915 and 1917. Italy sought control over the southern part of Anatolia under the Agreement of St.-Jean-de-Maurienne. France expected to exercise control over Hatay, Lebanon, Syria, and a portion of southeastern Anatolia based on the Sykes–Picot Agreement.

 

Greece justified their territorial claims of Ottoman land through the Megali Idea as well as international sympathy from the suffering of Ottoman Greeks in 1914 and 1917–1918. Privately, Greek prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos had British prime minister David Lloyd George's backing not least from Greece's entrance to WWI on the Allied side, but also from his charisma and charming personality. Greece's participation in the Allies' Southern Russian intervention also earned it favors in Paris. His demands included parts of Eastern Thrace, the islands of Imbros (Gökçeada), Tenedos (Bozcaada), and parts of Western Anatolia around the city of Smyrna (İzmir), all of which had large Greek populations. Venizelos also advocated a large Armenian state to check a post-war Ottoman Empire. Greece wanted to incorporate Constantinople, but Entente powers did not give permission. Damat Ferid Pasha went to Paris on behalf of the Ottoman Empire hoping to minimize territorial losses using Fourteen Points rhetoric, wishing for a return to status quo ante bellum, on the basis that every province of the Empire holds Muslim majorities. This plea was met with ridicule.

 

At the Paris Peace Conference, competing claims over Western Anatolia by Greek and Italian delegations led Greece to land the flagship of the Greek Navy at Smyrna, resulting in the Italian delegation walking out of the peace talks. On 30 April, Italy responded to the possible idea of Greek incorporation of Western Anatolia by sending a warship to Smyrna as a show of force against the Greek campaign. A large Italian force also landed in Antalya. Faced with Italian annexation of parts of Asia Minor with a significant ethnic Greek population, Venizelos secured Allied permission for Greek troops to land in Smyrna per Article VII, ostensibly as a peacekeeping force to keep stability in the region. Venizelos's rhetoric was more directed against the CUP regime than the Turks as a whole, an attitude not always shared in the Greek military: "Greece is not making war against Islam, but against the anachronistic [İttihadist] Government, and its corrupt, ignominious, and bloody administration, with a view to the expelling it from those territories where the majority of the population consists of Greeks." It was decided by the Triple Entente that Greece would control a zone around Smyrna and Ayvalık in western Asia Minor.

 

Most historians mark the Greek landing at Smyrna on 15 May 1919 as the start date of the Turkish War of Independence as well as the start of the "Kuva-yi Milliye Phase". The occupation ceremony from the outset was tense from nationalist fervor, with Ottoman Greeks greeting the soldiers with an ecstatic welcome, and Ottoman Muslims protesting the landing. A miscommunication in Greek high command led to an Evzone column marching by the municipal Turkish barracks. The nationalist journalist Hasan Tahsin fired the "first bullet"[note 4] at the Greek standard bearer at the head of the troops, turning the city into a warzone. Süleyman Fethi Bey was murdered by bayonet for refusing to shout "Zito Venizelos" (meaning "long live Venizelos"), and 300–400 unarmed Turkish soldiers and civilians and 100 Greek soldiers and civilians were killed or wounded.

 

Greek troops moved from Smyrna outwards to towns on the Karaburun peninsula; to Selçuk, situated a hundred kilometres south of the city at a key location that commands the fertile Küçük Menderes River valley; and to Menemen towards the north. Guerilla warfare commenced in the countryside, as Turks began to organize themselves into irregular guerilla groups known as Kuva-yi Milliye (national forces), which were soon joined by Ottoman soldiers, bandits, and disaffected farmers. Most Kuva-yi Milliye bands were led by rogue military commanders and members of the Special Organization. The Greek troops based in cosmopolitan Smyrna soon found themselves conducting counterinsurgency operations in a hostile, dominantly Muslim hinterland. Groups of Ottoman Greeks also formed contingents that cooperated with the Greek Army to combat Kuva-yi Milliye within the zone of control. A massacre of Turks at Menemen was followed up with a battle for the town of Aydın, which saw intense intercommunal violence and the razing of the city. What was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission of Western Anatolia instead inflamed ethnic tensions and became a counterinsurgency.

 

The reaction of Greek landing at Smyrna and continued Allied seizures of land served to destabilize Turkish civil society. Ottoman bureaucrats, military, and bourgeoisie trusted the Allies to bring peace, and thought the terms offered at Mudros were considerably more lenient than they actually were. Pushback was potent in the capital, with 23 May 1919 being largest of the Sultanahmet Square demonstrations organized by the Turkish Hearths against the Greek occupation of Smyrna, the largest act of civil disobedience in Turkish history at that point. The Ottoman government condemned the landing, but could do little about it. Ferid Pasha tried to resign, but was urged by the sultan to stay in his office.

 

Mustafa Kemal Pasha and his colleagues stepped ashore in Samsun on 19 May and set up their first quarters in the Mıntıka Palace Hotel. British troops were present in Samsun, and he initially maintained cordial contact. He had assured Damat Ferid about the army's loyalty towards the new government in Constantinople. However, behind the government's back, Kemal made the people of Samsun aware of the Greek and Italian landings, staged discreet mass meetings, made fast connections via telegraph with the army units in Anatolia, and began to form links with various Nationalist groups. He sent telegrams of protest to foreign embassies and the War Ministry about British reinforcements in the area and about British aid to Greek brigand gangs. After a week in Samsun, Kemal and his staff moved to Havza. It was there that he first showed the flag of the resistance.

 

Mustafa Kemal wrote in his memoir that he needed nationwide support to justify armed resistance against the Allied occupation. His credentials and the importance of his position were not enough to inspire everyone. While officially occupied with the disarming of the army, he met with various contacts in order to build his movement's momentum. He met with Rauf Pasha, Karabekir Pasha, Ali Fuat Pasha, and Refet Pasha and issued the Amasya Circular (22 June 1919). Ottoman provincial authorities were notified via telegraph that the unity and independence of the nation was at risk, and that the government in Constantinople was compromised. To remedy this, a congress was to take place in Erzurum between delegates of the Six Vilayets to decide on a response, and another congress would take place in Sivas where every Vilayet should send delegates. Sympathy and an lack of coordination from the capital gave Mustafa Kemal freedom of movement and telegraph use despite his implied anti-government tone.

 

On 23 June, High Commissioner Admiral Calthorpe, realising the significance of Mustafa Kemal's discreet activities in Anatolia, sent a report about the Pasha to the Foreign Office. His remarks were downplayed by George Kidson of the Eastern Department. Captain Hurst of the British occupation force in Samsun warned Admiral Calthorpe one more time, but Hurst's units were replaced with the Brigade of Gurkhas. When the British landed in Alexandretta, Admiral Calthorpe resigned on the basis that this was against the armistice that he had signed and was assigned to another position on 5 August 1919. The movement of British units alarmed the population of the region and convinced them that Mustafa Kemal was right.

 

By early July, Mustafa Kemal Pasha received telegrams from the sultan and Calthorpe, asking him and Refet to cease his activities in Anatolia and return to the capital. Kemal was in Erzincan and did not want to return to Constantinople, concerned that the foreign authorities might have designs for him beyond the sultan's plans. Before resigning from his position, he dispatched a circular to all nationalist organizations and military commanders to not disband or surrender unless for the latter if they could be replaced by cooperative nationalist commanders. Now only a civilian stripped of his command, Mustafa Kemal was at the mercy of the new inspector of Third Army (renamed from Ninth Army) Karabekir Pasha, indeed the War Ministry ordered him to arrest Kemal, an order which Karabekir refused. The Erzurum Congress was a meeting of delegates and governors from the six Eastern Vilayets. They drafted the National Pact (Misak-ı Millî), which envisioned new borders for the Ottoman Empire by applying principles of national self-determination per Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and the abolition of the capitulations. The Erzurum Congress concluded with a circular that was effectively a declaration of independence: All regions within Ottoman borders upon the signing of the Mudros Armistice were indivisible from the Ottoman state –Greek and Armenian claims on Thrace and Anatolia were moot– and assistance from any country not coveting Ottoman territory was welcome. If the government in Constantinople was not able to attain this after electing a new parliament, they insisted a provisional government should be promulgated to defend Turkish sovereignty. The Committee of Representation was established as a provisional executive body based in Anatolia, with Mustafa Kemal Pasha as its chairman.

 

Following the congress, the Committee of Representation relocated to Sivas. As announced in the Amasya Circular, a new congress was held there in September with delegates from all Anatolian and Thracian provinces. The Sivas Congress repeated the points of the National Pact agreed to in Erzurum, and united the various regional Defence of National Rights Associations organizations, into a united political organisation: Anatolia and Rumeli Defence of Rights Association (A-RMHC), with Mustafa Kemal as its chairman. In an effort show his movement was in fact a new and unifying movement, the delegates had to swear an oath to discontinue their relations with the CUP and to never revive the party (despite most present in Sivas being previous members).[120] It was also decided there that the Ottoman Empire should not be a League of Nations mandate under the United States, especially after the U.S Senate failed to ratify American membership in the League.

 

Momentum was now on the Nationalists' side. A plot by a loyalist Ottoman governor and a British intelligence officer to arrest Kemal before the Sivas Congress led to the cutting of all ties with the Ottoman government until a new election would be held in the lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies. In October 1919, the last Ottoman governor loyal to Constantinople fled his province. Fearing the outbreak of hostilities, all British troops stationed in the Black Sea coast and Kütahya were evacuated. Damat Ferid Pasha resigned, and the sultan replaced him with a general with nationalist credentials: Ali Rıza Pasha. On 16 October 1919, Ali Rıza and the Nationalists held negotiations in Amasya. They agreed in the Amasya Protocol that an election would be called for the Ottoman Parliament to establish national unity by upholding the resolutions made in the Sivas Congress, including the National Pact.

 

By October 1919, the Ottoman government only held de facto control over Constantinople; the rest of the Ottoman Empire was loyal to Kemal's movement to resist a partition of Anatolia and Thrace. Within a few months Mustafa Kemal went from General Inspector of the Ninth Army to a renegade military commander discharged for insubordination to leading a homegrown anti-Entente movement that overthrew a government and driven it into resistance.

 

In December 1919, an election was held for the Ottoman parliament, with polls only open in unoccupied Anatolia and Thrace. It was boycotted by Ottoman Greeks, Ottoman Armenians and the Freedom and Accord Party, resulting in groups associated with the Turkish Nationalist Movement winning, including the A-RMHC. The Nationalists' obvious links to the CUP made the election especially polarizing and voter intimidation and ballot box stuffing in favor of the Kemalists were regular occurrences in rural provinces. This controversy led to many of the nationalist MPs organizing the National Salvation Group separate from Kemal's movement, which risked the nationalist movement splitting in two.

 

Mustafa Kemal was elected an MP from Erzurum, but he expected the Allies neither to accept the Harbord report nor to respect his parliamentary immunity if he went to the Ottoman capital, hence he remained in Anatolia. Mustafa Kemal and the Committee of Representation moved from Sivas to Ankara so that he could keep in touch with as many deputies as possible as they traveled to Constantinople to attend the parliament.

 

Though Ali Rıza Pasha called the election as per the Amasya Protocol to keep unity between the "Istanbul government" and "Ankara government", he was wrong to think the election could bring him any legitimacy. The Ottoman parliament was under the de facto control of the British battalion stationed at Constantinople and any decisions by the parliament had to have the signatures of both Ali Rıza Pasha and the battalion's commanding officer. The only laws that passed were those acceptable to, or specifically ordered by the British.

 

On 12 January 1920, the last session of the Chamber of Deputies met in the capital. First the sultan's speech was presented, and then a telegram from Mustafa Kemal, manifesting the claim that the rightful government of Turkey was in Ankara in the name of the Committee of Representation. On 28 January the MPs from both sides of the isle secretly met to endorse the National Pact as a peace settlement. They added to the points passed in Sivas, calling for plebiscites to be held in West Thrace; Batum, Kars, and Ardahan, and Arab lands on whether to stay in the Empire or not. Proposals were also made to elect Kemal president of the Chamber;[clarification needed] however, this was deferred in the certain knowledge that the British would prorogue the Chamber. The Chamber of Deputies would be forcefully dissolved for passing the National Pact anyway. The National Pact solidified Nationalist interests, which were in conflict with the Allied plans.

 

From February to April, leaders of Britain, France, and Italy met in London to discuss the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire and the crisis in Anatolia. The British began to sense that the elected Ottoman government was under Kemalist influence and if left unchecked, the Entente could once again find themselves at war with the Empire. The Ottoman government was not doing all that it could to suppress the Nationalists.

 

Mustafa Kemal manufactured a crisis to pressure the Istanbul government to pick a side by deploying Kuva-yi Milliye towards İzmit. The British, concerned about the security of the Bosporus Strait, demanded Ali Rıza Pasha to reassert control over the area, to which he responded with his resignation to the sultan.

 

As they were negotiating the partition of the Ottoman Empire, the Allies were growing increasingly concerned about the Turkish National Movement. To this end, the Allied occupational authorities in Istanbul began to plan a raid to arrest nationalist politicians and journalists along with occupying military and police installations and government buildings. On 16 March 1920, the coup was carried out; several Royal Navy warships were anchored in the Galata Bridge to support British forces, including the Indian Army, while they carried out the arrests and occupied several government buildings in the early hours of the morning.

 

An Indian Army operation, the Şehzadebaşı raid, resulted in 5 Ottoman soldiers from the 10th Infantry Division being killed when troops raided their barracks. Among those arrested were the senior leadership of the Turkish National Movement and former members of the CUP. 150 arrested Turkish politicians accused of war crimes were interned in Malta and became known as the Malta exiles.

 

Mustafa Kemal was ready for this move. He warned all the Nationalist organisations that there would be misleading declarations from the capital. He warned that the only way to counter Allied movements was to organise protests. He declared "Today the Turkish nation is called to defend its capacity for civilization, its right to life and independence – its entire future".

 

On 18 March, the Chamber of Deputies declared that it was unacceptable to arrest five of its members, and dissolved itself. Mehmed VI confirmed this and declared the end of Constitutional Monarchy and a return to absolutism. University students were forbidden from joining political associations inside and outside the classroom. With the lower elected Chamber of Deputies shuttered, the Constitution terminated, and the capital occupied; Sultan Vahdettin, his cabinet, and the appointed Senate were all that remained of the Ottoman government, and were basically a puppet regime of the Allied powers. Grand Vizier Salih Hulusi Pasha declared Mustafa Kemal's struggle legitimate, and resigned after less than a month in office. In his place, Damat Ferid Pasha returned to the premiership. The Sublime Porte's decapitation by the Entente allowed Mustafa Kemal to consolidate his position as the sole leader of Turkish resistance against the Allies, and to that end made him the legitimate representative of the Turkish people.

 

The strong measures taken against the Nationalists by the Allies in March 1920 began a distinct new phase of the conflict. Mustafa Kemal sent a note to the governors and force commanders, asking them to conduct elections to provide delegates for a new parliament to represent the Ottoman (Turkish) people, which would convene in Ankara. With the proclamation of the counter-government, Kemal would then ask the sultan to accept its authority. Mustafa Kemal appealed to the Islamic world, asking for help to make sure that everyone knew he was still fighting in the name of the sultan who was also the caliph. He stated he wanted to free the caliph from the Allies. He found an ally in the Khilafat movement of British India, where Indians protested Britain's planned dismemberment of Turkey. A committee was also started for sending funds to help the soon to be proclaimed Ankara government of Mustafa Kemal. A flood of supporters moved to Ankara just ahead of the Allied dragnets. Included among them were Halide Edip and Abdülhak Adnan (Adıvar), Mustafa İsmet Pasha (İnönü), Mustafa Fevzi Pasha (Çakmak), many of Kemal's allies in the Ministry of War, and Celalettin Arif, the president of the now shuttered Chamber of Deputies. Celaleddin Arif's desertion of the capital was of great significance, as he declared that the Ottoman Parliament had been dissolved illegally.

 

Some 100 members of the Chamber of Deputies were able to escape the Allied roundup and joined 190 deputies elected. In March 1920, Turkish revolutionaries announced the establishment of a new parliament in Ankara known as the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNA) that was dominated by the A-RMHC.[citation needed] The parliament included Turks, Circassians, Kurds, and one Jew. They met in a building that used to serve as the provincial headquarters of the local CUP chapter. The inclusion of "Turkey" in its name reflected a increasing trend of new ways Ottoman citizens thought of their country, and was the first time it was formally used as the name of the country. On 23 April, the assembly, assuming full governmental powers, gathered for the first time, electing Mustafa Kemal its first Speaker and Prime Minister.

 

Hoping to undermine the Nationalist Movement, Mehmed VI issued a fatwa to qualify the Turkish revolutionaries as infidels, calling for the death of its leaders. The fatwa stated that true believers should not go along with the Nationalist Movement as they committed apostasy. The mufti of Ankara Rifat Börekçi issued a simultaneous fatwa, declaring that the caliphate was under the control of the Entente and the Ferid Pasha government. In this text, the Nationalist Movement's goal was stated as freeing the sultanate and the caliphate from its enemies. In reaction to the desertion of several prominent figures to the Nationalist Movement, Ferid Pasha ordered Halide Edip, Ali Fuat and Mustafa Kemal to be sentenced to death in absentia for treason.

 

On 28 April the sultan raised 4,000 soldiers known as the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye (Caliphate Army) to combat the Nationalists. Then using money from the Allies, another force about 2,000 strong from non-Muslim inhabitants were initially deployed in İznik. The sultan's government sent the forces under the name of the Caliphate Army to the revolutionaries to arouse counterrevolutionary sympathy. The British, being skeptical of how formidable these insurgents were, decided to use irregular power to counteract the revolutionaries. The Nationalist forces were distributed all around Turkey, so many smaller units were dispatched to face them. In İzmit there were two battalions of the British army. These units were to be used to rout the partisans under the command of Ali Fuat and Refet Pasha.

 

Anatolia had many competing forces on its soil: British troops, Nationalist militia (Kuva-yi Milliye), the sultan's army (Kuva-yi İnzibatiye), and Anzavur's bands. On 13 April 1920, an uprising supported by Anzavur against the GNA occurred at Düzce as a direct consequence of the fatwa. Within days the rebellion spread to Bolu and Gerede. The movement engulfed northwestern Anatolia for about a month. On 14 June, Nationalist militia fought a pitched battle near İzmit against the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye, Anzavur's bands, and British units. Yet under heavy attack some of the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye deserted and joined the Nationalist militia. Anzavur was not so lucky, as the Nationalists tasked Ethem the Circassian with crushing Anzavur's revolt. This revealed the sultan did not have the unwavering support of his own men and allies. Meanwhile, the rest of these forces withdrew behind the British lines which held their position. For now, Istanbul was out of Ankara's grasp.

 

The clash outside İzmit brought serious consequences. British forces conducted combat operations on the Nationalists and the Royal Air Force carried out aerial bombardments against the positions, which forced Nationalist forces to temporarily retreat to more secure missions. The British commander in Turkey, General George Milne—, asked for reinforcements. This led to a study to determine what would be required to defeat the Turkish Nationalists. The report, signed by French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, concluded that 27 divisions were necessary, but the British army did not have 27 divisions to spare. Also, a deployment of this size could have disastrous political consequences back home. World War I had just ended, and the British public would not support another lengthy and costly expedition.

 

The British accepted the fact that a nationalist movement could not be defeated without deployment of consistent and well-trained forces. On 25 June, the forces originating from Kuva-i İnzibatiye were dismantled under British supervision. The British realised that the best option to overcome these Turkish Nationalists was to use a force that was battle-tested and fierce enough to fight the Turks on their own soil. The British had to look no further than Turkey's neighbor already occupying its territory: Greece.

 

Eleftherios Venizelos, pessimistic of the rapidly deteriorating situation in Anatolia, requested to the Allies that a peace treaty be drawn up with the hope that fighting would stop. The subsequent treaty of Sèvres in August 1920 confirmed the Arab provinces of the empire would be reorganized into new nations given to Britain and France in the form of Mandates by the League of Nations, while the rest of the Empire would be partitioned between Greece, Italy, France (via Syrian mandate), Britain (via Iraqi mandate), Armenia (potentially under an American mandate), and Georgia. Smyrna would hold a plebiscite on whether to stay with Greece or Turkey, and the Kurdistan region would hold one on the question of independence. British, French, and Italian spheres of influence would also extend into Anatolia beyond the land concessions. The old capital of Constantinople as well as the Dardanelles would be under international League of Nations control.

 

However, the treaty could never come into effect. The treaty was extremely unpopular, with protests against the final document held even before its release in Sultanahmet square. Though Mehmed VI and Ferid Pasha loathed the treaty, they did not want Istanbul to join Ankara in nationalist struggle. The Ottoman government and Greece never ratified it. Though Ferid Pasha signed the treaty, the Ottoman Senate, the upper house with seats appointed by the sultan, refused to ratify the treaty. Greece disagreed on the borders drawn. The other allies began to fracture their support of the settlement immediately. Italy started openly supporting the Nationalists with arms by the end of 1920, and the French signed another separate peace treaty with Ankara only months later.

 

Kemal's GNA Government responded to the Treaty of Sèvres by promulgating a new constitution in January 1921. The resulting constitution consecrated the principle of popular sovereignty; authority not deriving from the unelected sultan, but from the Turkish people who elect governments representative of their interests. This document became the legal basis for the war of independence by the GNA, as the sultan's signature of the Treaty of Sèvres would be unconstitutional as his position was not elected. While the constitution did not specify a future role of the sultan, the document gave Kemal ever more legitimacy in the eyes of Turks for justified resistance against Istanbul.

 

In contrast to the Eastern and Western fronts, it was mostly unorganized Kuva-yi Milliye which were fighting in the Southern Front against France. They had help from the Syrians, who were fighting their own war with the French.

 

The British troops which occupied coastal Syria by the end of World War I were replaced by French troops over 1919, with the Syrian interior going to Faisal bin Al-Hussein's self-proclaimed Arab Kingdom of Syria. France which wanted to take control of all of Syria and Cilicia. There was also a desire facilitate the return of Armenian refugees in the region to their homes, and the occupation force consisted of the French Armenian Legion as well as various Armenian militia groups. 150,000 Armenians were repatriated to their homes within months of French occupation. On 21 January 1920, a Turkish Nationalist uprising and siege occurred against the French garrison in Marash. The French position untenable they retreated to Islahiye, resulting in a massacre of many Armenians by Turkish militia. A grueling siege followed in Antep which featured intense sectarian violence between Turks and Armenians. After a failed uprising by the Nationalists in Adana, by 1921, the French and Turks signed an armistice and eventually a treaty was brokered demarcating the border between the Ankara government and French controlled Syria. In the end, there was a mass exodus of Cilician Armenians to French controlled Syria, Previous Armenian survivors of deportation found themselves again as refugees and families which avoided the worst of the six years violence were forced from their homes, ending thousands of years of Christian presence in Southern Anatolia.[146] With France being the first Allied power to recognize and negotiate with the Ankara government only months after signing the Treaty of Sèvres, it was the first to break from the coordinated Allied approach to the Eastern question. In 1923 the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon under French authority would be proclaimed in former Ottoman territory.

 

Some efforts to coordinate between Turkish Nationalists and the Syrian rebels persisted from 1920 to 1921, with the Nationalists supporting the Faisal's kingdom through Ibrahim Hanunu and Alawite groups which were also fighting the French. While the French conquered Syria, Cilicia had to be abandoned.

 

Kuva-yi Milliye also engaged with British forces in the "Al-Jazira Front," primarily in Mosul. Ali İhsan Pasha (Sabis) and his forces defending Mosul would surrender to the British in October 1918, but the British ignored the armistice and seized the city, following which the pasha also ignored the armistice and distributed weapons to the locals. Even before Mustafa Kemal's movement was fully organized, rogue commanders found allies in Kurdish tribes. The Kurds detested the taxes and centralization the British demanded, including Shaykh Mahmud of the Barzani family. Having previously supported the British invasion of Mesopotamia to become the governor of South Kurdistan, Mahmud revolted but was apprehended by 1919. Without legitimacy to govern the region, he was released from captivity to Sulaymaniyah, where he again declared an uprising against the British as the King of Kurdistan. Though an alliance existed with the Turks, little material support came to him from Ankara, and by 1923 there was a desire to cease hostilities between the Turks and British at Barzanji's expense. Mahmud was overthrown in 1924, and after a 1926 plebiscite, Mosul was awarded to British-controlled Iraq.

 

Since 1917, the Caucasus was in a chaotic state. The border of newly independent Armenia and the Ottoman Empire was defined in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) after the Bolshevik revolution, and later by the Treaty of Batum (4 June 1918). To the east, Armenia was at war with the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic after the breakup of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, and received support from Anton Denikin's White Russian Army. It was obvious that after the Armistice of Mudros (30 October 1918) the eastern border was not going to stay as it was drawn, which mandated the evacuation of the Ottoman army back to its 1914 borders. Right after the Armistice of Mudros was signed, pro-Ottoman provisional republics were proclaimed in Kars and Aras which were subsequently invaded by Armenia. Ottoman soldiers were convinced not to demobilize lest the area become a 'second Macedonia'.[149] Both sides of the new borders had massive refugee populations and famine, which were compounded by the renewed and more symmetric sectarian violence (See Massacres of Azerbaijanis in Armenia (1917–1921) and Muslim uprisings in Kars and Sharur–Nakhichevan). There were talks going on with the Armenian Diaspora and Allied Powers on reshaping the border. Woodrow Wilson agreed to transfer territories to Armenia based on the principles of national self-determination. The results of these talks were to be reflected on the Treaty of Sèvres (10 August 1920).

 

Kâzım Karabekir Pasha, commander of the XV corps, encountered Muslim refugees fleeing from the Armenian army, but did not have the authority to cross the border. Karabekir's two reports (30 May and 4 June 1920) outlined the situation in the region. He recommended redrawing the eastern borders, especially around Erzurum. The Russian government was receptive to this and demanded that Van and Bitlis be transferred to Armenia. This was unacceptable to the Turkish revolutionaries. However, Soviet support was absolutely vital for the Turkish Nationalist movement, as Turkey was underdeveloped and had no domestic armaments industry. Bakir Sami (Kunduh) was assigned to negotiate with the Bolsheviks.

 

On 24 September 1920, Karabekir's XV corps and Kurdish militia advance on Kars, blowing through Armenian opposition, and then Alexandropol. With an advance on Yerevan imminent, on 28 November 1920, the 11th Red Army under the command of Anatoliy Gekker crossed over into Armenia from Soviet Azerbaijan, and the Armenian government surrendered to Bolshevik forces, ending the conflict.

 

The Treaty of Alexandropol (2—3 December 1920) was the first treaty (although illegitimate) signed by the Turkish revolutionaries. The 10th article in the Treaty of Alexandropol stated that Armenia renounced the Treaty of Sèvres and its allotted partition of Anatolia. The agreement was signed with representatives of the former government of Armenia, which by that time had no de jure or de facto power in Armenia, since Soviet rule was already established in the country. On 16 March 1921, the Bolsheviks and Turkey signed a more comprehensive agreement, the Treaty of Kars, which involved representatives of Soviet Armenia, Soviet Azerbaijan, and Soviet Georgia.

 

Throughout most of his life, Atatürk was a moderate-to-heavy drinker, often consuming half a litre of rakı a day; he also smoked tobacco, predominantly in the form of cigarettes. During 1937, indications that Atatürk's health was worsening started to appear. In early 1938, while on a trip to Yalova, he suffered from a serious illness. He went to Istanbul for treatment, where he was diagnosed with cirrhosis. During his stay in Istanbul, he made an effort to keep up with his regular lifestyle, but eventually succumbed to his illness. He died on 10 November 1938, at the age of 57, in the Dolmabahçe Palace.

 

Atatürk's funeral called forth both sorrow and pride in Turkey, and 17 countries sent special representatives, while nine contributed armed detachments to the cortège. Atatürk's remains were originally laid to rest in the Ethnography Museum of Ankara, but they were transferred on 10 November 1953 (15 years after his death) in a 42-ton sarcophagus to a mausoleum overlooking Ankara, Anıtkabir.

 

In his will, Atatürk donated all of his possessions to the Republican People's Party, provided that the yearly interest of his funds would be used to look after his sister Makbule and his adopted children, and fund the higher education of İsmet İnönü's children. The remainder was willed to the Turkish Language Association and the Turkish Historical Society.

Vintage postcard. Photo: Triangle.

 

English comedian Charles ‘Charlie’ Chaplin (1889-1977) was one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. His most famous role was that of The Tramp with his toothbrush mustache, undersized bowler hat and bamboo cane who struggled to survive while keeping his dignity in a world with great social injustice. Chaplin used mime, slapstick and other visual comedy routines, and he not only starred in his films, but also directed, wrote and produced them, and composed the music as well. His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 years, from the Victorian stage and the Music Hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer, until close to his death at the age of 88. Author George Bernard Shaw called Chaplin "the only genius to come out of the movie industry".

 

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in 1889, in London, England. His parents were both entertainers in the music hall tradition; his father, Charles Spencer Chaplin Sr., was a vocalist and an actor and his mother, Hannah Chaplin, a singer and an actress with the the stage name Lilly Harley. They separated before Charlie was three. He lived with his mother and his older half-brother Sydney. Chaplin's father was an alcoholic and had little contact with his son, though Chaplin and Sydney briefly lived with their father and his mistress, while their mentally ill mother lived at an asylum. Hannah's first crisis came in 1894 when she was performing at The Canteen, a theatre in Aldershot. The theatre was mainly frequented by rioters and soldiers. Hannah was injured by the objects the audience threw at her and she was booed off the stage. Backstage, she cried and argued with her manager. Meanwhile, the five-year old Chaplin went on stage alone and sang a well-known tune at that time, Jack Jones. The young Chaplin brothers forged a close relationship in order to survive. They gravitated to the Music Hall while still very young, and both of them proved to have considerable natural stage talent. At eight Charlie toured in a musical, The Eight Lancaster Lads. Nearly 11, he appeared in Giddy Ostende at London's Hippodrome. Chaplin's early years of desperate poverty were a great influence on his characters. Themes in his films in later years would re-visit the scenes of his childhood deprivation in Lambeth. His father died of cirrhosis of the liver when Charlie was twelve in 1901. Chaplin's mother died in 1928 in Hollywood, seven years after having been brought to the US by her sons. Unknown to Charlie and Sydney until years later, they had a half-brother through their mother. The boy, Wheeler Dryden, was raised abroad by his father but later connected with the rest of the family and went to work for Chaplin at his Hollywood studio.

 

From age 17 to 24 Charlie Chaplin was with Fred Karno's English vaudeville troupe. He first toured the United States with the Fred Karno troupe from 1910 to 1912. After five months back in England, he returned to the US for a second tour. In the Karno Company was also his brother Sydney and Arthur Stanley Jefferson, who later became known as Stan Laurel. In late 1913, Chaplin's act with the Karno Troupe was seen by Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, Minta Durfee, and Fatty Arbuckle. Sennett hired him for his studio, the Keystone Film Company as a replacement for Ford Sterling. Chaplin had considerable initial difficulty adjusting to the demands of film acting and his performance suffered for it. After Chaplin's first film appearance, Making a Living (1914, Henry Lehrman) was filmed, Sennett felt he had made a costly mistake. Mabel Normand persuaded him to give Chaplin another chance, and she directed and wrote a handful of his earliest films. He first played The Tramp in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914, Henry Lehrman). This picture saw him wearing baggy pants borrowed from 'Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle', size 14 shoes belonging to Ford Sterling (and worn upside down to keep them from falling off), a tiny jacket from Keystone Kop Charles Avery, a bowler hat belonging to Arbuckle's father-in-law and some crepe paper belonging to Mack Swain (which became the tramp's mustache). The only item that actually belonged to Charlie was the whangee cane. Two films Chaplin made in 1915, The Tramp and The Bank, created the characteristics of his screen persona. Chaplin was influenced by his predecessor, the French silent film comedian Max Linder, to whom he dedicated one of his films. Quickly the little tramp became the most popular Keystone star. From the April 1914 one-reeler Twenty Minutes of Love (1914, Charles Chaplin, Joseph Maddern) onwards he was writing and directing most of his films, by 1916 he was also producing, and from 1918 composing the music. He made 35 films in 1914, moved to Essanay in 1915 and did 14 more, then jumped over to Mutual for 12 two-reelers in 1916 and 1917. In 1918 he joined First National (later absorbed by Warner Bros.) and in 1919 formed United Artists along with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith. His first full-length film was The Kid (1921) with Jackie Coogan; his first for UA, which he produced and directed himself, was A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (1923) starring Edna Purviance. Chaplin continued to play the Tramp through dozens of short films and, later, feature-length productions. In only a handful of films he played characters other than the little tramp. The Tramp was closely identified with the silent era, and was considered an international character; when the sound era began in the late 1920’s, Chaplin refused to make a talkie featuring the character. City Lights (1931) featured no dialogue. Chaplin officially retired the character in Modern Times (1936), which appropriately ended with the Tramp and his girl (played by Chaplin’s third wife, Paulette Godard) walking down an endless highway toward the horizon. The film was only a partial talkie and is often called the last silent film. The Tramp remains silent until near the end of the film when, for the first time, his voice is finally heard, albeit only as part of a French/Italian-derived gibberish song. This allowed the Tramp to finally be given a voice but not tarnish his association with the silent era.

 

Charlie Chaplin’s high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin's identification with the left ultimately forced him to resettle in Europe during the McCarthy era in the early 1950’s. Chaplin's political sympathies always had laid with the left. His silent films made prior to the Great Depression typically did not contain overt political themes or messages, apart from the Tramp's plight in poverty and his run-ins with the law, but his 1930’s films were more openly political. Modern Times (1936) depicts workers and poor people in dismal conditions. In The Great Dictator (1940) Chaplin plays a humorous caricature of Adolf Hitler. Some thought the film was poorly done and in bad taste. However, it grossed over $5 million and earned five Academy Award Nominations. The final dramatic speech in The Great Dictator, which was critical of following patriotic nationalism without question, and his vocal public support for the opening of a second European front in 1942 to assist the Soviet Union in World War II were controversial. Chaplin declined to support the war effort as he had done for the First World War which led to public anger, although his two sons saw service in the Army in Europe. For most of World War II he was fighting serious criminal and civil charges related to his involvement with 22-year old actress Joan Barry. In 1943 he was accused of fathering her child; the papers made much of the scandal, but it was proved in a court trial that he was not the father. The same year he entered his fourth marriage, to Oona Chaplin, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill. After the war, his black comedy, Monsieur Verdoux (1947) showed a critical view of capitalism. Chaplin's final American film, Limelight, was less political and more autobiographical in nature. Limelight also featured Claire Bloom and Chaplin’s longtime friend, Buster Keaton. In 1952, Chaplin left the US for what was intended as a brief trip home to the United Kingdom for the London premiere of Limelight. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, learned of the trip and negotiated with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to revoke Chaplin's re-entry permit, exiling Chaplin so he could not return for his alleged political leanings. His following European-made film, A King in New York (1957), satirized the political persecution and paranoia that had forced him to leave the US five years earlier.

 

Charles Chaplin made his home in Vevey, Switzerland. His final two films were made in London: A King in New York (1957) in which he starred, wrote, directed and produced; and A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), which he directed, produced, and wrote. The latter film stars Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando, and Chaplin made his final on-screen appearance in a brief cameo role as a seasick steward. He also composed the music for both films. The theme song from A Countess From Hong Kong, This is My Song, reached number one in the UK as sung by Petula Clark. Chaplin also compiled a film The Chaplin Revue (1959) from three First National films A Dog's Life (1918), Shoulder Arms (1918) and The Pilgrim (1923) for which he composed the music and recorded an introductory narration. As well as directing these final films, Chaplin also wrote My Autobiography, between 1959 and 1963, which was published in 1964. He briefly and triumphantly returned to the United States in April 1972, with his wife Oona, to receive an Honorary Oscar, and also to discuss how his films would be re-released and marketed. Chaplin's last completed work was the score for his film A Woman of Paris (1923), which was completed in 1976, by which time Chaplin was extremely frail, even finding communication difficult. Charles Chaplin died in his sleep in Vevey, Switzerland on Christmas Day 1977. He and Oona had eight children, including film actress Geraldine Chaplin. From his marriages he had a total of 11 children. In 1921 Chaplin was decorated by the French government for his outstanding work as a filmmaker, and was elevated to the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1952. In 1929, at the first Oscar awards, he won a special award "for versatility and genius in writing, acting, directing and producing" The Circus (1928). In 1975 he was named Knight Commander of the British Empire. And in 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Chaplin the 10th Greatest Actor on The 50 Greatest Screen Legends list. His bowler and cane were sold for $150,000 in 1987.

 

Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Amy Smith (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 129/7. Photo: United Artists. Charlie Chaplin and Harry Myers in City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931).

 

English comedian Charles ‘Charlie’ Chaplin (1889-1977) was one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. His most famous role was that of The Tramp with his toothbrush mustache, undersized bowler hat and bamboo cane who struggled to survive while keeping his dignity in a world with great social injustice. Chaplin used mime, slapstick and other visual comedy routines, and he not only starred in his films, but also directed, wrote and produced them, and composed the music as well. His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 years, from the Victorian stage and the Music Hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer, until close to his death at the age of 88. Author George Bernard Shaw called Chaplin "the only genius to come out of the movie industry".

 

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in 1889, in London, England. His parents were both entertainers in the music hall tradition; his father, Charles Spencer Chaplin Sr., was a vocalist and an actor and his mother, Hannah Chaplin, a singer and an actress with the the stage name Lilly Harley. They separated before Charlie was three. He lived with his mother and his older half-brother Sydney. Chaplin's father was an alcoholic and had little contact with his son, though Chaplin and Sydney briefly lived with their father and his mistress, while their mentally ill mother lived at an asylum. Hannah's first crisis came in 1894 when she was performing at The Canteen, a theatre in Aldershot. The theatre was mainly frequented by rioters and soldiers. Hannah was injured by the objects the audience threw at her and she was booed off the stage. Backstage, she cried and argued with her manager. Meanwhile, the five-year old Chaplin went on stage alone and sang a well-known tune at that time, Jack Jones. The young Chaplin brothers forged a close relationship in order to survive. They gravitated to the Music Hall while still very young, and both of them proved to have considerable natural stage talent. At eight Charlie toured in a musical, The Eight Lancaster Lads. Nearly 11, he appeared in Giddy Ostende at London's Hippodrome. Chaplin's early years of desperate poverty were a great influence on his characters. Themes in his films in later years would re-visit the scenes of his childhood deprivation in Lambeth. His father died of cirrhosis of the liver when Charlie was twelve in 1901. Chaplin's mother died in 1928 in Hollywood, seven years after having been brought to the US by her sons. Unknown to Charlie and Sydney until years later, they had a half-brother through their mother. The boy, Wheeler Dryden, was raised abroad by his father but later connected with the rest of the family and went to work for Chaplin at his Hollywood studio.

 

From age 17 to 24 Charlie Chaplin was with Fred Karno's English vaudeville troupe. He first toured the United States with the Fred Karno troupe from 1910 to 1912. After five months back in England, he returned to the US for a second tour. In the Karno Company was also his brother Sydney and Arthur Stanley Jefferson, who later became known as Stan Laurel. In late 1913, Chaplin's act with the Karno Troupe was seen by Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, Minta Durfee, and Fatty Arbuckle. Sennett hired him for his studio, the Keystone Film Company as a replacement for Ford Sterling. Chaplin had considerable initial difficulty adjusting to the demands of film acting and his performance suffered for it. After Chaplin's first film appearance, Making a Living (Henry Lehrman, 1914) was filmed, Sennett felt he had made a costly mistake. Mabel Normand persuaded him to give Chaplin another chance, and she directed and wrote a handful of his earliest films. He first played The Tramp in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice (Henry Lehrman, 1914). This picture saw him wearing baggy pants borrowed from 'Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle', size 14 shoes belonging to Ford Sterling (and worn upside down to keep them from falling off), a tiny jacket from Keystone Kop Charles Avery, a bowler hat belonging to Arbuckle's father-in-law and some crepe paper belonging to Mack Swain (which became the tramp's mustache). The only item that actually belonged to Charlie was the whangee cane. Two films Chaplin made in 1915, The Tramp and The Bank, created the characteristics of his screen persona. Chaplin was influenced by his predecessor, the French silent film comedian Max Linder, to whom he dedicated one of his films. Quickly the little tramp became the most popular Keystone star. From the April 1914 one-reeler Twenty Minutes of Love (Charles Chaplin, Joseph Maddern, 1914) onwards he was writing and directing most of his films, by 1916 he was also producing, and from 1918 composing the music. He made 35 films in 1914, moved to Essanay in 1915 and did 14 more, then jumped over to Mutual for 12 two-reelers in 1916 and 1917. In 1918 he joined First National (later absorbed by Warner Bros.) and in 1919 formed United Artists along with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith. His first full-length film was The Kid (1921) with Jackie Coogan; his first for UA, which he produced and directed himself, was A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (1923) starring Edna Purviance. Chaplin continued to play the Tramp through dozens of short films and, later, feature-length productions. In only a handful of films he played characters other than the little tramp. The Tramp was closely identified with the silent era, and was considered an international character; when the sound era began in the late 1920’s, Chaplin refused to make a talkie featuring the character. City Lights (1931) featured no dialogue. Chaplin officially retired the character in Modern Times (1936), which appropriately ended with the Tramp and his girl (played by Chaplin’s third wife, Paulette Godard) walking down an endless highway toward the horizon. The film was only a partial talkie and is often called the last silent film. The Tramp remains silent until near the end of the film when, for the first time, his voice is finally heard, albeit only as part of a French/Italian-derived gibberish song. This allowed the Tramp to finally be given a voice but not tarnish his association with the silent era.

 

Charlie Chaplin’s high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin's identification with the left ultimately forced him to resettle in Europe during the McCarthy era in the early 1950s. Chaplin's political sympathies always had laid with the left. His silent films made prior to the Great Depression typically did not contain overt political themes or messages, apart from the Tramp's plight in poverty and his run-ins with the law, but his 1930s films were more openly political. Modern Times (1936) depicts workers and poor people in dismal conditions. In The Great Dictator (1940) Chaplin plays a humorous caricature of Adolf Hitler. Some thought the film was poorly done and in bad taste. However, it grossed over $5 million and earned five Academy Award Nominations. The final dramatic speech in The Great Dictator, which was critical of following patriotic nationalism without question, and his vocal public support for the opening of a second European front in 1942 to assist the Soviet Union in World War II were controversial. Chaplin declined to support the war effort as he had done for the First World War which led to public anger, although his two sons saw service in the Army in Europe. For most of World War II he was fighting serious criminal and civil charges related to his involvement with 22-year old actress Joan Barry. In 1943 he was accused of fathering her child; the papers made much of the scandal, but it was proved in a court trial that he was not the father. The same year he entered his fourth marriage, to Oona Chaplin, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill. After the war, his black comedy, Monsieur Verdoux (1947) showed a critical view of capitalism. Chaplin's final American film, Limelight, was less political and more autobiographical in nature. Limelight also featured Claire Bloom and Chaplin’s longtime friend, Buster Keaton. In 1952, Chaplin left the US for what was intended as a brief trip home to the United Kingdom for the London premiere of Limelight. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, learned of the trip and negotiated with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to revoke Chaplin's re-entry permit, exiling Chaplin so he could not return for his alleged political leanings. His following European-made film, A King in New York (1957), satirized the political persecution and paranoia that had forced him to leave the US five years earlier.

 

Charles Chaplin made his home in Vevey, Switzerland. His final two films were made in London: A King in New York (1957) in which he starred, wrote, directed and produced; and A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), which he directed, produced, and wrote. The latter film stars Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando, and Chaplin made his final on-screen appearance in a brief cameo role as a seasick steward. He also composed the music for both films. The theme song from A Countess From Hong Kong, This is My Song, reached number one in the UK as sung by Petula Clark. Chaplin also compiled a film The Chaplin Revue (1959) from three First National films A Dog's Life (1918), Shoulder Arms (1918) and The Pilgrim (1923) for which he composed the music and recorded an introductory narration. As well as directing these final films, Chaplin also wrote My Autobiography, between 1959 and 1963, which was published in 1964. He briefly and triumphantly returned to the United States in April 1972, with his wife Oona, to receive an Honorary Oscar, and also to discuss how his films would be re-released and marketed. Chaplin's last completed work was the score for his film A Woman of Paris (1923), which was completed in 1976, by which time Chaplin was extremely frail, even finding communication difficult. Charles Chaplin died in his sleep in Vevey, Switzerland on Christmas Day 1977. He and Oona had eight children, including film actress Geraldine Chaplin. From his marriages he had a total of 11 children. In 1921 Chaplin was decorated by the French government for his outstanding work as a filmmaker, and was elevated to the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1952. In 1929, at the first Oscar awards, he won a special award "for versatility and genius in writing, acting, directing and producing" The Circus (1928). In 1975 he was named Knight Commander of the British Empire. And in 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Chaplin the 10th Greatest Actor on The 50 Greatest Screen Legends list. His bowler and cane were sold for $150,000 in 1987.

 

Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Amy Smith (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

The Postcard

 

A Colourmaster postcard that was distributed by Dragon Publishing Ltd. of Llandeilo. The photography was by Roger Vlitos.

 

On the divided back of the card is printed:

 

'Dylan's Writing Shed,

Laugharne, Dyfed.

In this converted garage with

views over the Taf estuary and

Sir John's Hill, Dylan Thomas

wrote much of his finest poetry.

Along with his last home, The

Boat House, it is preserved in

memory of the poet.'

 

Dylan Thomas

 

Dylan Marlais Thomas, who was born in Swansea on the 27th. October 1914, was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems 'Do not go Gentle Into That Good Night' and 'And Death Shall Have No Dominion.'

 

Dylan's other work included 'Under Milk Wood' as well as stories and radio broadcasts such as 'A Child's Christmas in Wales' and 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog'.

 

He became widely popular in his lifetime, and remained so after his death at the age of 39 in New York City. By then he had acquired a reputation, which he had encouraged, as a roistering, drunken and doomed poet.

 

In 1931, when he was 16, Thomas, an undistinguished pupil, left school to become a reporter for the South Wales Daily Post, only to leave under pressure 18 months later.

 

Many of his works appeared in print while he was still a teenager. In 1934, the publication of 'Light Breaks Where no Sun Shines' caught the attention of the literary world.

 

While living in London, Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara. They married in 1937, and had three children: Llewelyn, Aeronwy and Colm.

 

Thomas came to be appreciated as a popular poet during his lifetime, though he found it hard to earn a living as a writer. He began augmenting his income with reading tours and radio broadcasts. His radio recordings for the BBC during the late 1940's brought him to the public's attention, and he was frequently used by the BBC as an accessible voice of the literary scene.

 

Thomas first travelled to the United States in the 1950's. His readings there brought him a degree of fame, while his erratic behaviour and drinking worsened. His time in the United States cemented his legend, however, and he went on to record to vinyl such works as 'A Child's Christmas in Wales'.

 

During his fourth trip to New York in 1953, Thomas became gravely ill and fell into a coma. He died on the 9th. November 1953, and his body was returned to Wales. On the 25th. November 1953, he was laid to rest in St Martin's churchyard in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire.

 

Although Thomas wrote exclusively in the English language, he has been acknowledged as one of the most important Welsh poets of the 20th century. He is noted for his original, rhythmic and ingenious use of words and imagery. He is regarded by many as one of the great modern poets, and he still remains popular with the public.

 

Dylan Thomas - The Early Years

 

Dylan was born at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, the son of Florence Hannah (née Williams; 1882–1958), a seamstress, and David John Thomas (1876–1952), a teacher. His father had a first-class honours degree in English from University College, Aberystwyth and ambitions to rise above his position teaching English literature at the local grammar school.

 

Thomas had one sibling, Nancy Marles (1906–1953), who was eight years his senior. The children spoke only English, though their parents were bilingual in English and Welsh, and David Thomas gave Welsh lessons at home.

 

Thomas's father chose the name Dylan, which means 'Son of the Sea', after Dylan ail Don, a character in The Mabinogion. Dylan's middle name, Marlais, was given in honour of his great-uncle, William Thomas, a Unitarian minister and poet whose bardic name was Gwilym Marles.

 

Dylan caused his mother to worry that he might be teased as the 'Dull One.' When he broadcast on Welsh BBC, early in his career, he was introduced using this pronunciation. Thomas favoured the Anglicised pronunciation, and gave instructions that it should be spoken as 'Dillan.'

 

The red-brick semi-detached house at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive (in the respectable area of the Uplands), in which Thomas was born and lived until he was 23, had been bought by his parents a few months before his birth.

 

Dylan's childhood featured regular summer trips to the Llansteffan Peninsula, a Welsh-speaking part of Carmarthenshire, where his maternal relatives were the sixth generation to farm there.

 

In the land between Llangain and Llansteffan, his mother's family, the Williamses and their close relatives, worked a dozen farms with over a thousand acres between them. The memory of Fernhill, a dilapidated 15-acre farm rented by his maternal aunt, Ann Jones, and her husband, Jim, is evoked in the 1945 lyrical poem 'Fern Hill', but is portrayed more accurately in his short story, 'The Peaches'.

 

Thomas had bronchitis and asthma in childhood, and struggled with these throughout his life. He was indulged by his mother and enjoyed being mollycoddled, a trait he carried into adulthood, and he was skilful in gaining attention and sympathy.

 

Thomas's formal education began at Mrs Hole's Dame School, a private school on Mirador Crescent, a few streets away from his home. He described his experience there in Reminiscences of Childhood:

 

"Never was there such a dame school as ours,

so firm and kind and smelling of galoshes, with

the sweet and fumbled music of the piano lessons

drifting down from upstairs to the lonely schoolroom,

where only the sometimes tearful wicked sat over

undone sums, or to repent a little crime – the pulling

of a girl's hair during geography, the sly shin kick

under the table during English literature".

 

In October 1925, Dylan Thomas enrolled at Swansea Grammar School for boys, in Mount Pleasant, where his father taught English. He was an undistinguished pupil who shied away from school, preferring reading.

 

In his first year, one of his poems was published in the school's magazine, and before he left he became its editor. In June 1928, Thomas won the school's mile race, held at St. Helen's Ground; he carried a newspaper photograph of his victory with him until his death.

 

During his final school years Dylan began writing poetry in notebooks; the first poem, dated 27th. April 1930, is entitled 'Osiris, Come to Isis'.

 

In 1931, when he was 16, Thomas left school to become a reporter for the South Wales Daily Post, only to leave under pressure 18 months later. Thomas continued to work as a freelance journalist for several years, during which time he remained at Cwmdonkin Drive and continued to add to his notebooks, amassing 200 poems in four books between 1930 and 1934. Of the 90 poems he published, half were written during these years.

 

In his free time, Dylan joined the amateur dramatic group at the Little Theatre in Mumbles, visited the cinema in Uplands, took walks along Swansea Bay, and frequented Swansea's pubs, especially the Antelope and the Mermaid Hotels in Mumbles.

 

In the Kardomah Café, close to the newspaper office in Castle Street, he met his creative contemporaries, including his friend the poet Vernon Watkins.

 

1933–1939

 

In 1933, Thomas visited London for probably the first time.

 

Thomas was a teenager when many of the poems for which he became famous were published:

 

-- 'And Death Shall Have no Dominion'

-- 'Before I Knocked'

-- 'The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower'.

 

'And Death Shall Have no Dominion' appeared in the New English Weekly in May 1933:

 

'And death shall have no dominion.

Dead men naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the

west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and

the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they

shall rise again

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

And death shall have no dominion'.

 

When 'Light Breaks Where no Sun Shines' appeared in The Listener in 1934, it caught the attention of three senior figures in literary London - T. S. Eliot, Geoffrey Grigson and Stephen Spender. They contacted Thomas, and his first poetry volume, '18 Poems', was published in December 1934.

 

'18 Poems' was noted for its visionary qualities which led to critic Desmond Hawkins writing that:

 

"The work is the sort of bomb

that bursts no more than once

in three years".

 

The volume was critically acclaimed, and won a contest run by the Sunday Referee, netting him new admirers from the London poetry world, including Edith Sitwell and Edwin Muir. The anthology was published by Fortune Press, in part a vanity publisher that did not pay its writers, and expected them to buy a certain number of copies themselves. A similar arrangement was used by other new authors, including Philip Larkin.

 

In September 1935, Thomas met Vernon Watkins, thus beginning a lifelong friendship. Dylan introduced Watkins, working at Lloyds Bank at the time, to his friends. The group of writers, musicians and artists became known as "The Kardomah Gang".

 

In those days, Thomas used to frequent the cinema on Mondays with Tom Warner who, like Watkins, had recently suffered a nervous breakdown. After these trips, Warner would bring Thomas back for supper with his aunt.

 

On one occasion, when she served him a boiled egg, she had to cut its top off for him, as Thomas did not know how to do this. This was because his mother had done it for him all his life, an example of her coddling him. Years later, his wife Caitlin would still have to prepare his eggs for him.

 

In December 1935, Thomas contributed the poem 'The Hand That Signed the Paper' to Issue 18 of the bi-monthly New Verse.

 

In 1936, Dylan's next collection 'Twenty-five Poems' received much critical praise. In 1938, Thomas won the Oscar Blumenthal Prize for Poetry; it was also the year in which New Directions offered to be his publisher in the United States. In all, he wrote half his poems while living at Cwmdonkin Drive before moving to London. It was the time that Thomas's reputation for heavy drinking developed.

 

In early 1936, Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara (1913–94), a 22-year-old blonde-haired, blue-eyed dancer of Irish and French descent. She had run away from home, intent on making a career in dance, and at the age of 18 joined the chorus line at the London Palladium.

 

Introduced by Augustus John, Caitlin's lover, they met in The Wheatsheaf pub on Rathbone Place in London's West End. Laying his head on her lap, a drunken Thomas proposed. Thomas liked to comment that he and Caitlin were in bed together ten minutes after they first met.

 

Although Caitlin initially continued her relationship with Augustus John, she and Thomas began a correspondence, and by the second half of 1936 they were courting. They married at the register office in Penzance, Cornwall, on the 11th. July 1937.

 

In early 1938, they moved to Wales, renting a cottage in the village of Laugharne, Carmarthenshire. Their first child, Llewelyn Edouard, was born on the 30th. January 1939.

 

By the late 1930's, Thomas was embraced as the "Poetic Herald" for a group of English poets, the New Apocalyptics. However Thomas refused to align himself with them, and declined to sign their manifesto.

 

He later stated that:

 

"They are intellectual muckpots

leaning on a theory".

 

Despite Dylan's rejection, many of the group, including Henry Treece, modelled their work on Thomas's.

 

During the politically charged atmosphere of the 1930's, Thomas's sympathies were very much with the radical left, to the point of holding close links with the communists, as well as being decidedly pacifist and anti-fascist. He was a supporter of the left-wing No More War Movement, and boasted about participating in demonstrations against the British Union of Fascists.

 

1939–1945

 

In 1939, a collection of 16 poems and seven of the 20 short stories published by Thomas in magazines since 1934, appeared as 'The Map of Love'.

 

Ten stories in his next book, 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog' (1940), were based less on lavish fantasy than those in 'The Map of Love', and more on real-life romances featuring himself in Wales.

 

Sales of both books were poor, resulting in Thomas living on meagre fees from writing and reviewing. At this time he borrowed heavily from friends and acquaintances.

 

Hounded by creditors, Thomas and his family left Laugharne in July 1940 and moved to the home of critic John Davenport in Marshfield, Gloucestershire. There Thomas collaborated with Davenport on the satire 'The Death of the King's Canary', though due to fears of libel, the work was not published until 1976.

 

At the outset of the Second World War, Thomas was worried about conscription, and referred to his ailment as "An Unreliable Lung".

 

Coughing sometimes confined him to bed, and he had a history of bringing up blood and mucus. After initially seeking employment in a reserved occupation, he managed to be classified Grade III, which meant that he would be among the last to be called up for service.

 

Saddened to see his friends going on active service, Dylan continued drinking, and struggled to support his family. He wrote begging letters to random literary figures asking for support, a plan he hoped would provide a long-term regular income. Thomas supplemented his income by writing scripts for the BBC, which not only gave him additional earnings but also provided evidence that he was engaged in essential war work.

 

In February 1941, Swansea was bombed by the Luftwaffe in a three night blitz. Castle Street was one of many streets that suffered badly; rows of shops, including the Kardomah Café, were destroyed. Thomas walked through the bombed-out shell of the town centre with his friend Bert Trick. Upset at the sight, he concluded:

 

"Our Swansea is dead".

 

Soon after the bombing raids, he wrote a radio play, 'Return Journey Home', which described the café as being "razed to the snow". The play was first broadcast on the 15th. June 1947. The Kardomah Café reopened on Portland Street after the war.

 

In May 1941, Thomas and Caitlin left their son with his grandmother at Blashford and moved to London. Thomas hoped to find employment in the film industry, and wrote to the director of the films division of the Ministry of Information (MOI). After initially being rebuffed, he found work with Strand Films, providing him with his first regular income since the Daily Post. Strand produced films for the MOI; Thomas scripted at least five films in 1942.

 

In five film projects, between 1942 and 1945, the Ministry of Information (MOI) commissioned Thomas to script a series of documentaries about both urban planning and wartime patriotism, all in partnership with director John Eldridge:

 

-- 'Wales: Green Mountain, Black Mountain'.

-- 'New Towns for Old' (on post-war reconstruction).

-- 'Fuel for Battle'.

-- 'Our Country' (1945) was a romantic tour of Great Britain set to Thomas's poetry.

-- 'A City Reborn'.

 

Other projects included:

 

-- 'This Is Colour' (a history of the British dyeing industry).

-- 'These Are The Men' (1943), a more ambitious piece in which Thomas's verse accompanied Leni Riefenstahl's footage of an early Nuremberg Rally.

-- 'Conquest of a Germ' (1944) explored the use of early antibiotics in the fight against pneumonia and tuberculosis.

 

In early 1943, Thomas began a relationship with Pamela Glendower; one of several affairs he had during his marriage. The affairs either ran out of steam or were halted after Caitlin discovered his infidelity.

 

In March 1943, Caitlin gave birth to a daughter, Aeronwy, in London. They lived in a run-down studio in Chelsea, made up of a single large room with a curtain to separate the kitchen.

 

The Thomas family made several escapes back to Wales during the war. Between 1941 and 1943, they lived intermittently in Plas Gelli, Talsarn, in Cardiganshire. Plas Gelli sits close by the River Aeron, after whom Aeronwy is thought to have been named. Some of Thomas’ letters from Gelli can be found in his 'Collected Letters'.

 

The Thomases shared the mansion with his childhood friends from Swansea, Vera and Evelyn Phillips. Vera's friendship with the Thomases in nearby New Quay is portrayed in the 2008 film, 'The Edge of Love'.

 

In July 1944, with the threat of German flying bombs landing on London, Thomas moved to the family cottage at Blaencwm near Llangain, Carmarthenshire, where he resumed writing poetry, completing 'Holy Spring' and 'Vision and Prayer'.

 

In September 1944, the Thomas family moved to New Quay in Cardiganshire (Ceredigion), where they rented Majoda, a wood and asbestos bungalow on the cliffs overlooking Cardigan Bay. It was here that Thomas wrote the radio piece 'Quite Early One Morning', a sketch for his later work, 'Under Milk Wood'.

 

Of the poetry written at this time, of note is 'Fern Hill', believed to have been started while living in New Quay, but completed at Blaencwm in mid-1945. Dylan's first biographer, Constantine FitzGibbon wrote that:

 

"His nine months in New Quay were a second

flowering, a period of fertility that recalls the

earliest days, with a great outpouring of poems

and a good deal of other material".

 

His second biographer, Paul Ferris, concurred:

 

"On the grounds of output, the bungalow

deserves a plaque of its own."

 

The Dylan Thomas scholar, Walford Davies, has noted that:

 

"New Quay was crucial in supplementing

the gallery of characters Thomas had to

hand for writing 'Under Milk Wood'."

 

Dylan Thomas's Broadcasting Years 1945–1949

 

Although Thomas had previously written for the BBC, it was a minor and intermittent source of income. In 1943, he wrote and recorded a 15-minute talk entitled 'Reminiscences of Childhood' for the Welsh BBC.

 

In December 1944, he recorded 'Quite Early One Morning' (produced by Aneirin Talfan Davies, again for the Welsh BBC), but when Davies offered it for national broadcast, BBC London initially turned it down.

 

However on the 31st. August 1945, the BBC Home Service broadcast 'Quite Early One Morning' nationally, and in the three subsequent years, Dylan made over a hundred broadcasts for the BBC, not only for his poetry readings, but for discussions and critiques.

 

In the second half of 1945, Dylan began reading for the BBC Radio programme, 'Book of Verse', that was broadcast weekly to the Far East. This provided Thomas with a regular income, and brought him into contact with Louis MacNeice, a congenial drinking companion whose advice Thomas cherished.

 

On the 29th. September 1946, the BBC began transmitting the Third Programme, a high-culture network which provided further opportunities for Thomas.

 

He appeared in the play 'Comus' for the Third Programme, the day after the network launched, and his rich, sonorous voice led to character parts, including the lead in Aeschylus's 'Agamemnon', and Satan in an adaptation of 'Paradise Lost'.

 

Thomas remained a popular guest on radio talk shows for the BBC, who stated:

 

"He is useful should a younger

generation poet be needed".

 

He had an uneasy relationship with BBC management, and a staff job was never an option, with drinking cited as the problem. Despite this, Thomas became a familiar radio voice and well-known celebrity within Great Britain.

 

By late September 1945, the Thomases had left Wales, and were living with various friends in London. In December, they moved to Oxford to live in a summerhouse on the banks of the Cherwell. It belonged to the historian, A. J. P. Taylor. His wife, Margaret, became Thomas’s most committed patron.

 

The publication of 'Deaths and Entrances' in February 1946 was a major turning point for Thomas. Poet and critic Walter J. Turner commented in The Spectator:

 

"This book alone, in my opinion,

ranks him as a major poet".

 

From 'In my Craft or Sullen Art,' 'Deaths and Entrances' (1946):

 

'Not for the proud man apart

From the raging moon, I write

On these spindrift pages

Nor for the towering dead

With their nightingales and psalms

But for the lovers, their arms

Round the griefs of the ages,

Who pay no praise or wages

Nor heed my craft or art'.

 

The following year, in April 1947, the Thomases travelled to Italy, after Thomas had been awarded a Society of Authors scholarship. They stayed first in villas near Rapallo and then Florence, before moving to a hotel in Rio Marina on the island of Elba.

 

On their return to England Thomas and his family moved, in September 1947, into the Manor House in South Leigh, just west of Oxford, found for him by Margaret Taylor.

 

He continued with his work for the BBC, completed a number of film scripts, and worked further on his ideas for 'Under Milk Wood'.

 

In March 1949 Thomas travelled to Prague. He had been invited by the Czech government to attend the inauguration of the Czechoslovak Writers' Union. Jiřina Hauková, who had previously published translations of some of Thomas' poems, was his guide and interpreter.

 

In her memoir, Hauková recalls that at a party in Prague, Thomas narrated the first version of his radio play 'Under Milk Wood.' She describes how he outlined the plot about a town that was declared insane, and then portrayed the predicament of an eccentric organist and a baker with two wives.

 

A month later, in May 1949, Thomas and his family moved to his final home, the Boat House at Laugharne, purchased for him at a cost of £2,500 in April 1949 by Margaret Taylor.

 

Thomas acquired a garage a hundred yards from the house on a cliff ledge which he turned into his writing shed, and where he wrote several of his most acclaimed poems. To see a photograph of the interior of Dylan's shed, please search for the tag 55DTW96

 

Just before moving into the Boat House, Thomas rented Pelican House opposite his regular drinking den, Brown's Hotel, for his parents. They both lived there from 1949 until Dylan's father 'D.J.' died on the 16th. December 1952. His mother continued to live there until 1953.

 

Caitlin gave birth to their third child, a boy named Colm Garan Hart, on the 25th. July 1949.

 

In October 1949, the New Zealand poet Allen Curnow came to visit Thomas at the Boat House, who took him to his writing shed. Curnow recalls:

 

"Dylan fished out a draft to show me

of the unfinished 'Under Milk Wood'

that was then called 'The Town That

Was Mad'."

 

Dylan Thomas's American tours, 1950–1953

 

(a) The First American Tour

 

The American poet John Brinnin invited Thomas to New York, where in 1950 they embarked on a lucrative three-month tour of arts centres and campuses.

 

The tour, which began in front of an audience of a thousand at the Kaufmann Auditorium in the Poetry Centre in New York, took in a further 40 venues. During the tour, Thomas was invited to many parties and functions, and on several occasions became drunk - going out of his way to shock people - and was a difficult guest.

 

Dylan drank before some of his readings, although it is argued that he may have pretended to be more affected by the alcohol than he actually was.

 

The writer Elizabeth Hardwick recalled how intoxicated a performer he could be, and how the tension would build before a performance:

 

"Would he arrive only to break

down on the stage?

Would some dismaying scene

take place at the faculty party?

Would he be offensive, violent,

obscene?"

 

Dylan's wife Caitlin said in her memoir:

 

"Nobody ever needed encouragement

less, and he was drowned in it."

 

On returning to Great Britain, Thomas began work on two further poems, 'In the White Giant's Thigh', which he read on the Third Programme in September 1950:

 

'Who once were a bloom of wayside

brides in the hawed house

And heard the lewd, wooed field

flow to the coming frost,

The scurrying, furred small friars

squeal in the dowse

Of day, in the thistle aisles, till the

white owl crossed.'

 

He also worked on the incomplete 'In Country Heaven'.

 

In October 1950, Thomas sent a draft of the first 39 pages of 'The Town That Was Mad' to the BBC. The task of seeing this work through to production was assigned to the BBC's Douglas Cleverdon, who had been responsible for casting Thomas in 'Paradise Lost'.

 

However, despite Cleverdon's urgings, the script slipped from Thomas's priorities, and in early 1951 he took a trip to Iran to work on a film for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The film was never made, with Thomas returning to Wales in February, though his time there allowed him to provide a few minutes of material for a BBC documentary, 'Persian Oil'.

 

Early in 1951 Thomas wrote two poems, which Thomas's principal biographer, Paul Ferris, describes as "unusually blunt." One was the ribald 'Lament', and the other was an ode, in the form of a villanelle, to his dying father 'Do not go Gentle Into That Good Night". (A villanelle is a pastoral or lyrical poem of nineteen lines, with only two rhymes throughout, and some lines repeated).

 

Despite a range of wealthy patrons, including Margaret Taylor, Princess Marguerite Caetani and Marged Howard-Stepney, Thomas was still in financial difficulty, and he wrote several begging letters to notable literary figures, including the likes of T. S. Eliot.

 

Margaret Taylor was not keen on Thomas taking another trip to the United States, and thought that if he had a permanent address in London he would be able to gain steady work there. She bought a property, 54 Delancey Street, in Camden Town, and in late 1951 Thomas and Caitlin lived in the basement flat. Thomas described the flat as his "London House of Horror", and did not return there after his 1952 tour of America.

 

(b) The Second American Tour

 

Thomas undertook a second tour of the United States in 1952, this time with Caitlin - after she had discovered that he had been unfaithful on his earlier trip. They drank heavily, and Thomas began to suffer with gout and lung problems.

 

It was during this tour that the above photograph was taken.

 

The second tour was the most intensive of the four, taking in 46 engagements.

 

The trip also resulted in Thomas recording his first poetry to vinyl, which Caedmon Records released in America later that year. One of his works recorded during this time, 'A Child's Christmas in Wales', became his most popular prose work in America. The recording was a 2008 selection for the United States National Recording Registry, which stated that:

 

"It is credited with launching the

audiobook industry in the United

States".

 

(c) The Third American Tour

 

In April 1953, Thomas returned alone for a third tour of America. He performed a "work in progress" version of 'Under Milk Wood', solo, for the first time at Harvard University on the 3rd. May 1953. A week later, the work was performed with a full cast at the Poetry Centre in New York.

 

Dylan met the deadline only after being locked in a room by Brinnin's assistant, Liz Reitell, and was still editing the script on the afternoon of the performance; its last lines were handed to the actors as they put on their makeup.

 

During this penultimate tour, Thomas met the composer Igor Stravinsky. Igor had become an admirer of Dylan after having been introduced to his poetry by W. H. Auden. They had discussions about collaborating on a "musical theatrical work" for which Dylan would provide the libretto on the theme of:

 

"The rediscovery of love and

language in what might be left

after the world after the bomb."

 

The shock of Thomas's death later in the year moved Stravinsky to compose his 'In Memoriam Dylan Thomas' for tenor, string quartet and four trombones. The work's first performance in Los Angeles in 1954 was introduced with a tribute to Thomas from Aldous Huxley.

 

Thomas spent the last nine or ten days of his third tour in New York mostly in the company of Reitell, with whom he had an affair.

 

During this time, Thomas fractured his arm falling down a flight of stairs when drunk. Reitell's doctor, Milton Feltenstein, put his arm in plaster, and treated him for gout and gastritis.

 

After returning home, Thomas worked on 'Under Milk Wood' in Wales before sending the original manuscript to Douglas Cleverdon on the 15th. October 1953. It was copied and returned to Thomas, who lost it in a pub in London and required a duplicate to take to America.

 

(d) The Fourth American Tour

 

Thomas flew to the States on the 19th. October 1953 for what would be his final tour. He died in New York before the BBC could record 'Under Milk Wood'. Richard Burton featured in its first broadcast in 1954, and was joined by Elizabeth Taylor in a subsequent film. In 1954, the play won the Prix Italia for literary or dramatic programmes.

 

Thomas's last collection 'Collected Poems, 1934–1952', published when he was 38, won the Foyle poetry prize. Reviewing the volume, critic Philip Toynbee declared that:

 

"Thomas is the greatest living

poet in the English language".

 

There followed a series of distressing events for Dylan. His father died from pneumonia just before Christmas 1952. In the first few months of 1953, his sister died from liver cancer, one of his patrons took an overdose of sleeping pills, three friends died at an early age, and Caitlin had an abortion.

 

Thomas left Laugharne on the 9th. October 1953 on the first leg of his trip to America. He called on his mother, Florence, to say goodbye:

 

"He always felt that he had to get

out from this country because of

his chest being so bad."

 

Thomas had suffered from chest problems for most of his life, though they began in earnest soon after he moved in May 1949 to the Boat House at Laugharne - the "Bronchial Heronry", as he called it. Within weeks of moving in, he visited a local doctor, who prescribed medicine for both his chest and throat.

 

Whilst waiting in London before his flight in October 1953, Thomas stayed with the comedian Harry Locke and worked on 'Under Milk Wood'. Locke noted that Thomas was having trouble with his chest, with terrible coughing fits that made him go purple in the face. He was also using an inhaler to help his breathing.

 

There were reports, too, that Thomas was also having blackouts. His visit to the BBC producer Philip Burton a few days before he left for New York, was interrupted by a blackout. On his last night in London, he had another in the company of his fellow poet Louis MacNeice.

 

Thomas arrived in New York on the 20th. October 1953 to undertake further performances of 'Under Milk Wood', organised by John Brinnin, his American agent and Director of the Poetry Centre. Brinnin did not travel to New York, but remained in Boston in order to write.

 

He handed responsibility to his assistant, Liz Reitell, who was keen to see Thomas for the first time since their three-week romance early in the year. She met Thomas at Idlewild Airport and was shocked at his appearance. He looked pale, delicate and shaky, not his usual robust self:

 

"He was very ill when he got here."

 

After being taken by Reitell to check in at the Chelsea Hotel, Thomas took the first rehearsal of 'Under Milk Wood'. They then went to the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village, before returning to the Chelsea Hotel.

 

(Bob Dylan, formerly Robert Zimmerman, used to perform at the White Horse; Dylan Thomas was his favourite poet, and it is highly likely that Bob adopted Dylan's first name as his surname).

 

The next day, Reitell invited Thomas to her apartment, but he declined. They went sightseeing, but Thomas felt unwell, and retired to his bed for the rest of the afternoon. Reitell gave him half a grain (32.4 milligrams) of phenobarbitone to help him sleep, and spent the night at the hotel with him.

 

Two days later, on the 23rd. October 1953, at the third rehearsal, Thomas said he was too ill to take part, but he struggled on, shivering and burning with fever, before collapsing on the stage.

 

The next day, 24th. October, Reitell took Thomas to see her doctor, Milton Feltenstein, who administered cortisone injections. Thomas made it through the first performance that evening, but collapsed immediately afterwards.

 

Dylan told a friend who had come back-stage:

 

"This circus out there has taken

the life out of me for now."

 

Reitell later said:

 

"Feltenstein was rather a wild doctor

who thought injections would cure

anything".

 

At the next performance on the 25th. October, his fellow actors realised that Thomas was very ill:

 

"He was desperately ill…we didn’t think

that he would be able to do the last

performance because he was so ill…

Dylan literally couldn’t speak he was so

ill…still my greatest memory of it is that

he had no voice."

 

On the evening of the 27th. October, Thomas attended his 39th. birthday party, but felt unwell, and returned to his hotel after an hour. The next day, he took part in 'Poetry and the Film', a recorded symposium at Cinema 16.

 

A turning point came on the 2nd. November. Air pollution in New York had risen significantly, and exacerbated chest illnesses such as Thomas's. By the end of the month, over 200 New Yorkers had died from the smog.

 

On the 3rd. November, Thomas spent most of the day in his room, entertaining various friends. He went out in the evening to keep two drink appointments. After returning to the hotel, he went out again for a drink at 2 am. After drinking at the White Horse, Thomas returned to the Hotel Chelsea, declaring:

 

"I've had eighteen straight

whiskies. I think that's the

record!"

 

However the barman and the owner of the pub who served him later commented that Thomas could not have drunk more than half that amount.

 

Thomas had an appointment at a clam house in New Jersey with Todd on the 4th. November. When Todd telephoned the Chelsea that morning, Thomas said he was feeling ill, and postponed the engagement. Todd thought that Dylan sounded "terrible".

 

The poet, Harvey Breit, was another to phone that morning. He thought that Thomas sounded "bad". Thomas' voice, recalled Breit, was "low and hoarse". Harvey had wanted to say:

 

"You sound as though from the tomb".

 

However instead Harvey told Thomas that he sounded like Louis Armstrong.

 

Later, Thomas went drinking with Reitell at the White Horse and, feeling sick again, returned to the hotel. Dr. Feltenstein came to see him three times that day, administering the cortisone secretant ACTH by injection and, on his third visit, half a grain (32.4 milligrams) of morphine sulphate, which affected Thomas' breathing.

 

Reitell became increasingly concerned, and telephoned Feltenstein for advice. He suggested that she get male assistance, so she called upon the artist Jack Heliker, who arrived before 11 pm. At midnight on the 5th. November, Thomas's breathing became more difficult, and his face turned blue.

 

Reitell phoned Feltenstein who arrived at the hotel at about 1 am, and called for an ambulance. It then took another hour for the ambulance to arrive at St. Vincent's, even though it was only a few blocks from the Chelsea.

 

Thomas was admitted to the emergency ward at St Vincent's Hospital at 1:58 am. He was comatose, and his medical notes stated that:

 

"The impression upon admission was acute

alcoholic encephalopathy damage to the brain

by alcohol, for which the patient was treated

without response".

 

Feltenstein then took control of Thomas's care, even though he did not have admitting rights at St. Vincent's. The hospital's senior brain specialist, Dr. C. G. Gutierrez-Mahoney, was not called to examine Thomas until the afternoon of the 6th. November, thirty-six hours after Thomas' admission.

 

Dylan's wife Caitlin flew to America the following day, and was taken to the hospital, by which time a tracheotomy had been performed. Her reported first words were:

 

"Is the bloody man dead yet?"

 

Caitlin was allowed to see Thomas only for 40 minutes in the morning, but returned in the afternoon and, in a drunken rage, threatened to kill John Brinnin. When she became uncontrollable, she was put in a straitjacket and committed, by Feltenstein, to the River Crest private psychiatric detox clinic on Long Island.

 

It is now believed that Thomas had been suffering from bronchitis, pneumonia and emphysema before his admission to St Vincent's. In their 2004 paper, 'Death by Neglect', D. N. Thomas and Dr Simon Barton disclose that Thomas was found to have pneumonia when he was admitted to hospital in a coma.

 

Doctors took three hours to restore his breathing, using artificial respiration and oxygen. Summarising their findings, they conclude:

 

"The medical notes indicate that, on admission,

Dylan's bronchial disease was found to be very

extensive, affecting upper, mid and lower lung

fields, both left and right."

 

The forensic pathologist, Professor Bernard Knight, concurs:

 

"Death was clearly due to a severe lung infection

with extensive advanced bronchopneumonia.

The severity of the chest infection, with greyish

consolidated areas of well-established pneumonia,

suggests that it had started before admission to

hospital."

 

Thomas died at noon on the 9th. November 1953, having never recovered from his coma. He was 39 years of age when he died.

 

Aftermath of Dylan Thomas's Death

 

Rumours circulated of a brain haemorrhage, followed by competing reports of a mugging, or even that Thomas had drunk himself to death. Later, speculation arose about drugs and diabetes.

 

At the post-mortem, the pathologist found three causes of death - pneumonia, brain swelling and a fatty liver. Despite Dylan's heavy drinking, his liver showed no sign of cirrhosis.

 

The publication of John Brinnin's 1955 biography 'Dylan Thomas in America' cemented Thomas's legacy as the "doomed poet". Brinnin focuses on Thomas's last few years, and paints a picture of him as a drunk and a philanderer.

 

Later biographies have criticised Brinnin's view, especially his coverage of Thomas's death. David Thomas in 'Fatal Neglect: Who Killed Dylan Thomas?' claims that Brinnin, along with Reitell and Feltenstein, were culpable.

 

FitzGibbon's 1965 biography ignores Thomas's heavy drinking and skims over his death, giving just two pages in his detailed book to Thomas's demise.

 

Ferris in his 1989 biography includes Thomas's heavy drinking, but is more critical of those around him in his final days, and does not draw the conclusion that he drank himself to death.

 

Many sources have criticised Feltenstein's role and actions, especially his incorrect diagnosis of delirium tremens and the high dose of morphine he administered. Dr C. G. de Gutierrez-Mahoney, the doctor who treated Thomas while at St. Vincent's, concluded that Feltenstein's failure to see that Thomas was gravely ill and have him admitted to hospital sooner was even more culpable than his use of morphine.

 

Caitlin Thomas's autobiographies, 'Caitlin Thomas - Leftover Life to Kill' (1957) and 'My Life with Dylan Thomas: Double Drink Story' (1997), describe the effects of alcohol on the poet and on their relationship:

 

"Ours was not only a love story, it was

a drink story, because without alcohol

it would never had got on its rocking

feet. The bar was our altar."

 

Biographer Andrew Lycett ascribed the decline in Thomas's health to an alcoholic co-dependent relationship with his wife, who deeply resented his extramarital affairs.

 

In contrast, Dylan biographers Andrew Sinclair and George Tremlett express the view that Thomas was not an alcoholic. Tremlett argues that many of Thomas's health issues stemmed from undiagnosed diabetes.

 

Thomas died intestate, with assets worth £100. His body was brought back to Wales for burial in the village churchyard at Laugharne. Dylan's funeral, which Brinnin did not attend, took place at St Martin's Church in Laugharne on the 24th. November 1953.

 

Six friends from the village carried Thomas's coffin. Caitlin, without her customary hat, walked behind the coffin, with his childhood friend Daniel Jones at her arm and her mother by her side. The procession to the church was filmed, and the wake took place at Brown's Hotel. Thomas's fellow poet and long-time friend Vernon Watkins wrote The Times obituary.

 

Thomas's widow, Caitlin, died in 1994, and was laid to rest alongside him. Dylan's mother Florence died in August 1958. Thomas's elder son, Llewelyn, died in 2000, his daughter, Aeronwy in 2009, and his youngest son Colm in 2012.

 

Dylan Thomas's Poetry

 

Thomas's refusal to align with any literary group or movement has made him and his work difficult to categorise. Although influenced by the modern symbolism and surrealism movements, he refused to follow such creeds. Instead, critics view Thomas as part of the modernism and romanticism movements, though attempts to pigeon-hole him within a particular neo-romantic school have been unsuccessful.

 

Elder Olson, in his 1954 critical study of Thomas's poetry, wrote:

 

"There is a further characteristic which

distinguished Thomas's work from that

of other poets. It was unclassifiable."

 

Olson went on to say that in a postmodern age that continually attempted to demand that poetry have social reference, none could be found in Thomas's work, and that his work was so obscure that critics could not analyse it.

 

Thomas's verbal style played against strict verse forms, such as in the villanelle 'Do not go Gentle Into That Good Night'.

 

His images appear carefully ordered in a patterned sequence, and his major theme was the unity of all life, the continuing process of life and death, and new life that linked the generations.

 

Thomas saw biology as a magical transformation producing unity out of diversity, and in his poetry sought a poetic ritual to celebrate this unity. He saw men and women locked in cycles of growth, love, procreation, new growth, death, and new life. Therefore, each image engenders its opposite.

 

Thomas derived his closely woven, sometimes self-contradictory images from the Bible, Welsh folklore, preaching, and Sigmund Freud. Explaining the source of his imagery, Thomas wrote in a letter to Glyn Jones:

 

"My own obscurity is quite an unfashionable one,

based, as it is, on a preconceived symbolism

derived (I'm afraid all this sounds woolly and

pretentious) from the cosmic significance of the

human anatomy".

 

Thomas's early poetry was noted for its verbal density, alliteration, sprung rhythm and internal rhyme, and some critics detected the influence of the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins, had taught himself Welsh, and used sprung verse, bringing some features of Welsh poetic metre into his work.

 

However when Henry Treece wrote to Thomas comparing his style to that of Hopkins, Thomas wrote back denying any such influence. Thomas greatly admired Thomas Hardy, who is regarded as an influence. When Thomas travelled in America, he recited some of Hardy's work in his readings.

 

Other poets from whom critics believe Thomas drew influence include James Joyce, Arthur Rimbaud and D. H. Lawrence.

 

William York Tindall, in his 1962 study, 'A Reader's Guide to Dylan Thomas', finds comparison between Thomas's and Joyce's wordplay, while he notes the themes of rebirth and nature are common to the works of Lawrence and Thomas.

 

Although Thomas described himself as the "Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive", he stated that the phrase "Swansea's Rimbaud" was coined by the poet Roy Campbell.

 

Critics have explored the origins of Thomas's mythological pasts in his works such as 'The Orchards', which Ann Elizabeth Mayer believes reflects the Welsh myths of the Mabinogion.

 

Thomas's poetry is notable for its musicality, most clear in 'Fern Hill', 'In Country Sleep', 'Ballad of the Long-legged Bait' and 'In the White Giant's Thigh' from Under Milk Wood.

 

Thomas once confided that the poems which had most influenced him were Mother Goose rhymes which his parents taught him when he was a child:

 

"I should say I wanted to write poetry in the

beginning because I had fallen in love with

words.

The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes,

and before I could read them for myself I had

come to love the words of them. The words

alone.

What the words stood for was of a very

secondary importance ... I fell in love, that is

the only expression I can think of, at once,

and am still at the mercy of words, though

sometimes now, knowing a little of their

behaviour very well, I think I can influence

them slightly and have even learned to beat

them now and then, which they appear to

enjoy.

I tumbled for words at once. And, when I began

to read the nursery rhymes for myself, and, later,

to read other verses and ballads, I knew that I

had discovered the most important things, to

me, that could be ever."

 

Thomas became an accomplished writer of prose poetry, with collections such as 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog' (1940) and 'Quite Early One Morning' (1954) showing he was capable of writing moving short stories. His first published prose work, 'After the Fair', appeared in The New English Weekly on the 15th. March 1934.

 

Jacob Korg believes that one can classify Thomas's fiction work into two main bodies:

 

-- Vigorous fantasies in a poetic style

-- After 1939, more straightforward

narratives.

 

Korg surmises that Thomas approached his prose writing as an alternate poetic form, which allowed him to produce complex, involuted narratives that do not allow the reader to rest.

 

Dylan Thomas as a Welsh Poet

 

Thomas disliked being regarded as a provincial poet, and decried any notion of 'Welshness' in his poetry. When he wrote to Stephen Spender in 1952, thanking him for a review of his Collected Poems, he added:

 

"Oh, & I forgot. I'm not influenced by

Welsh bardic poetry. I can't read Welsh."

 

Despite this, his work was rooted in the geography of Wales. Thomas acknowledged that he returned to Wales when he had difficulty writing, and John Ackerman argues that:

 

"Dylan's inspiration and imagination

were rooted in his Welsh background".

 

Caitlin Thomas wrote that:

 

"He worked in a fanatically narrow groove,

although there was nothing narrow about

the depth and understanding of his feelings.

The groove of direct hereditary descent in

the land of his birth, which he never in

thought, and hardly in body, moved out of."

 

Head of Programmes Wales at the BBC, Aneirin Talfan Davies, who commissioned several of Thomas's early radio talks, believed that the poet's whole attitude is that of the medieval bards.

 

Kenneth O. Morgan counter-argues that it is a difficult enterprise to find traces of cynghanedd (consonant harmony) or cerdd dafod (tongue-craft) in Thomas's poetry. Instead he believes that Dylan's work, especially his earlier, more autobiographical poems, are rooted in a changing country which echoes the Welshness of the past and the Anglicisation of the new industrial nation:

 

"Rural and urban, chapel-going and profane,

Welsh and English, unforgiving and deeply

compassionate."

 

Fellow poet and critic Glyn Jones believed that any traces of cynghanedd in Thomas's work were accidental, although he felt that Dylan consciously employed one element of Welsh metrics: that of counting syllables per line instead of feet. Constantine Fitzgibbon, who was his first in-depth biographer, wrote:

 

"No major English poet has

ever been as Welsh as Dylan".

 

Although Dylan had a deep connection with Wales, he disliked Welsh nationalism. He once wrote:

 

"Land of my fathers, and

my fathers can keep it".

 

While often attributed to Thomas himself, this line actually comes from the character Owen Morgan-Vaughan, in the screenplay Thomas wrote for the 1948 British melodrama 'The Three Weird Sisters'.

 

Robert Pocock, a friend from the BBC, recalled:

 

"I only once heard Dylan express an

opinion on Welsh Nationalism.

He used three words. Two of them

were Welsh Nationalism."

 

Although not expressed as strongly, Glyn Jones believed that he and Thomas's friendship cooled in the later years because he had not rejected enough of the elements that Thomas disliked, i.e. "Welsh nationalism and a sort of hill farm morality".

 

Apologetically, in a letter to Keidrych Rhys, editor of the literary magazine 'Wales', Thomas's father wrote:

 

"I'm afraid Dylan isn't much

of a Welshman".

 

FitzGibbon asserts that Thomas's negativity towards Welsh nationalism was fostered by his father's hostility towards the Welsh language.

 

Critical Appraisal of Dylan Thomas's Work

 

Thomas's work and stature as a poet have been much debated by critics and biographers since his death. Critical studies have been clouded by Thomas's personality and mythology, especially his drunken persona and death in New York.

 

When Seamus Heaney gave an Oxford lecture on the poet, he opened by addressing the assembly:

 

"Dylan Thomas is now as much

a case history as a chapter in the

history of poetry".

 

He queried how 'Thomas the Poet' is one of his forgotten attributes. David Holbrook, who has written three books about Thomas, stated in his 1962 publication 'Llareggub Revisited':

 

"The strangest feature of Dylan Thomas's

notoriety - not that he is bogus, but that

attitudes to poetry attached themselves

to him which not only threaten the prestige,

effectiveness and accessibility to English

poetry, but also destroyed his true voice

and, at last, him."

 

The Poetry Archive notes that:

 

"Dylan Thomas's detractors accuse him

of being drunk on language as well as

whiskey, but whilst there's no doubt that

the sound of language is central to his

style, he was also a disciplined writer

who re-drafted obsessively".

 

Many critics have argued that Thomas's work is too narrow, and that he suffers from verbal extravagance. However those who have championed his work have found the criticism baffling. Robert Lowell wrote in 1947:

 

"Nothing could be more wrongheaded

than the English disputes about Dylan

Thomas's greatness ... He is a dazzling

obscure writer who can be enjoyed

without understanding."

 

Kenneth Rexroth said, on reading 'Eighteen Poems':

 

"The reeling excitement of a poetry-intoxicated

schoolboy smote the Philistine as hard a blow

with one small book as Swinburne had with

Poems and Ballads."

 

Philip Larkin, in a letter to Kingsley Amis in 1948, wrote that:

 

"No one can stick words into us

like pins... like Thomas can".

 

However he followed that by stating that:

 

"Dylan doesn't use his words

to any advantage".

 

Amis was far harsher, finding little of merit in Dylan's work, and claiming that:

 

"He is frothing at the mouth

with piss."

 

In 1956, the publication of the anthology 'New Lines' featuring works by the British collective The Movement, which included Amis and Larkin amongst its number, set out a vision of modern poetry that was damning towards the poets of the 1940's. Thomas's work in particular was criticised. David Lodge, writing about The Movement in 1981 stated:

 

"Dylan Thomas was made to stand for

everything they detest, verbal obscurity,

metaphysical pretentiousness, and

romantic rhapsodizing".

 

Despite criticism by sections of academia, Thomas's work has been embraced by readers more so than many of his contemporaries, and is one of the few modern poets whose name is recognised by the general public.

 

In 2009, over 18,000 votes were cast in a BBC poll to find the UK's favourite poet; Thomas was placed 10th.

 

Several of Dylan's poems have passed into the cultural mainstream, and his work has been used by authors, musicians and film and television writers.

 

The long-running BBC Radio programme, 'Desert Island Discs', in which guests usually choose their favourite songs, has heard 50 participants select a Dylan Thomas recording.

 

John Goodby states that this popularity with the reading public allows Thomas's work to be classed as vulgar and common. He also cites that despite a brief period during the 1960's when Thomas was considered a cultural icon, the poet has been marginalized in critical circles due to his exuberance, in both life and work, and his refusal to know his place.

 

Goodby believes that Thomas has been mainly snubbed since the 1970's and has become: "... an embarrassment to twentieth-century poetry criticism", his work failing to fit standard narratives, and thus being ignored rather than studied.

 

Memorials to Dylan Thomas

 

In Swansea's maritime quarter is the Dylan Thomas Theatre, the home of the Swansea Little Theatre of which Thomas was once a member. The former Guildhall built in 1825 is now occupied by the Dylan Thomas Centre, a literature centre, where exhibitions and lectures are held and which is a setting for the annual Dylan Thomas Festival. Outside the centre stands a bronze statue of Thomas by John Doubleday.

 

Another monument to Thomas stands in Cwmdonkin Park, one of Dylan's favourite childhood haunts, close to his birthplace. The memorial is a small rock in an enclosed garden within the park, cut by and inscribed by the late sculptor Ronald Cour with the closing lines from Fern Hill:

 

'Oh as I was young and easy

in the mercy of his means

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like

the sea'.

 

Thomas's home in Laugharne, the Boathouse, is now a museum run by Carmarthenshire County Council. Thomas's writing shed is also preserved.

 

In 2004, the Dylan Thomas Prize was created in his honour, awarded to the best published writer in English under the age of 30. In 2005, the Dylan Thomas Screenplay Award was established. The prize, administered by the Dylan Thomas Centre, is awarded at the annual Swansea Bay Film Festival.

 

In 1982 a plaque was unveiled in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. The plaque is also inscribed with the last two lines of 'Fern Hill'.

 

In 2014, the Royal Patron of The Dylan Thomas 100 Festival was Charles, Prince of Wales, who made a recording of 'Fern Hill' for the event.

 

In 2014, to celebrate the centenary of Thomas's birth, the British Council Wales undertook a year-long programme of cultural and educational works. Highlights included a touring replica of Thomas's work shed, Sir Peter Blake's exhibition of illustrations based on 'Under Milk Wood', and a 36-hour marathon of readings, which included Michael Sheen and Sir Ian McKellen performing Thomas's work.

 

Towamensing Trails, Pennsylvania named one of its streets, Thomas Lane, in Dylan's honour.

 

List of Works by Dylan Thomas

 

-- 'The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: The New Centenary Edition', edited and with Introduction by John Goodby. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2014.

-- 'The Notebook Poems 1930–34', edited by Ralph Maud. London: Dent, 1989.

-- 'Dylan Thomas: The Film Scripts', edited by John Ackerman. London: Dent 1995.

-- 'Dylan Thomas: Early Prose Writings', edited by Walford Davies. London: Dent 1971.

-- 'Collected Stories', edited by Walford Davies. London: Dent, 1983.

-- 'Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices', edited by Walford Davies and Ralph Maud. London: Dent, 1995.

-- 'On The Air With Dylan Thomas: The Broadcasts', edited by Ralph Maud. New York: New Directions, 1991.

 

Correspondence

 

-- 'Dylan Thomas: The Collected Letters', edited by Paul Ferris (2017), 2 vols. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Vol I: 1931–1939

Vol II: 1939–1953.

-- 'Letters to Vernon Watkins', edited by Vernon Watkins (1957). London: Dent.

 

Posthumous Film Adaptations

 

-- 2016: Dominion, written and directed by Steven Bernstein, examines the final hours of Dylan Thomas.

-- 2014: Set Fire to the Stars, with Thomas portrayed by Celyn Jones, and John Brinnin by Elijah Wood.

-- 2014: Under Milk Wood BBC, starring Charlotte Church, Tom Jones, Griff Rhys-Jones and Michael Sheen.

-- 2014: Interstellar. The poem is featured throughout the film as a recurring theme regarding the perseverance of humanity.

-- 2009: A Child's Christmas in Wales, BAFTA Best Short Film. Animation, with soundtrack in Welsh and English. Director: Dave Unwin. Extras include filmed comments from Aeronwy Thomas.

-- 2007: Dylan Thomas: A War Films Anthology (DDHE/IWM).

-- 1996: Independence Day. Before the attack, the President paraphrases Thomas's "Do not go Gentle Into That Good Night".

-- 1992: Rebecca's Daughters, starring Peter O'Toole and Joely Richardson.

-- 1987: A Child's Christmas in Wales, directed by Don McBrearty.

-- 1972: Under Milk Wood, starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, and Peter O'Toole.

 

Opera Adaptation

 

-- 1973: Unter dem Milchwald, by German composer Walter Steffens on his own libretto using Erich Fried's translation of 'Under Milk Wood' into German, Hamburg State Opera. Also at the Staatstheater Kassel in 1977.

 

Final Thoughts From Dylan Thomas

 

"Somebody's boring me.

I think it's me."

 

"Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

 

"When one burns one's bridges,

what a very nice fire it makes."

 

"I think, that if I touched the earth,

It would crumble; It is so sad and

beautiful, so tremulously like a dream."

 

"An alcoholic is someone you don't like,

who drinks as much as you do."

 

"I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me,

and my enquiry is as to their working, and my

problem is their subjugation and victory, down

throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-

expression."

 

"The only sea I saw was the seesaw sea

with you riding on it. Lie down, lie easy.

Let me shipwreck in your thighs."

 

"Why do men think you can pick love up

and re-light it like a candle? Women know

when love is over."

 

"Poetry is not the most important thing in life.

I'd much rather lie in a hot bath reading

Agatha Christie and sucking sweets."

 

"And now, gentlemen, like your manners,

I must leave you."

 

"My education was the liberty I had to read

indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes

hanging out."

 

"I'm a freak user of words, not a poet."

 

"Our discreditable secret is that we don't

know anything at all, and our horrid inner

secret is that we don't care that we don't."

 

"It snowed last year too: I made a snowman

and my brother knocked it down and I knocked

my brother down and then we had tea."

 

"Though lovers be lost love shall not."

 

"Man’s wants remain unsatisfied till death.

Then, when his soul is naked, is he one

with the man in the wind, and the west moon,

with the harmonious thunder of the sun."

 

"And books which told me everything

about the wasp, except why."

 

"We are not wholly bad or good, who live

our lives under Milk Wood."

 

"Love is the last light spoken."

 

"... an ugly, lovely town ... crawling, sprawling ...

by the side of a long and splendid curving

shore. This sea-town was my world."

 

"I do not need any friends. I prefer enemies.

They are better company, and their feelings

towards you are always genuine."

 

"This poem has been called obscure. I refuse

to believe that it is obscurer than pity, violence,

or suffering. But being a poem, not a lifetime,

it is more compressed."

 

"One: I am a Welshman; two: I am a drunkard;

three: I am a lover of the human race, especially

of women."

 

"I believe in New Yorkers. Whether they've ever

questioned the dream in which they live, I wouldn't

know, because I won't ever dare ask that question."

 

"These poems, with all their crudities, doubts and

confusions, are written for the love of man and in

praise of God, and I'd be a damn fool if they weren't."

 

"Before you let the sun in, mind he wipes his shoes."

 

"Nothing grows in our garden, only washing.

And babies."

 

"Make gentle the life of this world."

 

"A worm tells summer better than the clock,

the slug's a living calendar of days; what shall

it tell me if a timeless insect says the world

wears away?"

 

"Time passes. Listen. Time passes. Come

closer now. Only you can hear the houses

sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt

and silent black, bandaged night."

 

"Rhianon, he said, hold my hand, Rhianon.

She did not hear him, but stood over his bed

and fixed him with an unbroken sorrow. Hold

my hand, he said, and then: Why are you

putting the sheet over my face?"

 

"Come on up, boys - I'm dead."

 

"Life is a terrible thing, thank God."

 

Fredrick was on the corner of Erie and Michigan, reading. A closer look revealed he was reading the book of Psalms. In his earlier days he drank heavily, which damaged his liver. He has cirrhosis of the liver and hepatitis A, B, and C. So his health is a concern for him. He went to a drug treatment program and is now clean, so for the time being he's trying to raise money so he can go to college at Moody Bible. (He can get free tuition through them). He takes some of the money he receives and actually gives it to others in need on the street. He's concerned about how the winter is going to be this year. He's had a rough few days, so he was kind of depressed about that. His favorite verse in the Bible is Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." He's tries to be a "light" to the people who pass him by on the street, he said. His ultimate goal is to get into ministry and help other people.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, also known as Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 until the Surname Law of 1934 (c. 1881 – 10 November 1938), was a Turkish field marshal, revolutionary statesman, author, and the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. He undertook sweeping progressive reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrializing nation. Ideologically a secularist and nationalist, his policies and socio-political theories became known as Kemalism.

 

Atatürk came to prominence for his role in securing the Ottoman Turkish victory at the Battle of Gallipoli (1915) during World War I. During this time, the Ottoman Empire perpetrated genocides against its Greek, Armenian and Assyrian subjects; while not directly involved, Atatürk's role in their aftermath has been controversial. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, he led the Turkish National Movement, which resisted mainland Turkey's partition among the victorious Allied powers. Establishing a provisional government in the present-day Turkish capital Ankara (known in English at the time as Angora), he defeated the forces sent by the Allies, thus emerging victorious from what was later referred to as the Turkish War of Independence. He subsequently proceeded to abolish the sultanate in 1922 and proclaimed the foundation of the Turkish Republic in its place the following year.

 

As the president of the newly formed Turkish Republic, Atatürk initiated a rigorous program of political, economic, and cultural reforms with the ultimate aim of building a republican and secular nation-state. He made primary education free and compulsory, opening thousands of new schools all over the country. He also introduced the Latin-based Turkish alphabet, replacing the old Ottoman Turkish alphabet. Turkish women received equal civil and political rights during Atatürk's presidency. In particular, women were given voting rights in local elections by Act no. 1580 on 3 April 1930 and a few years later, in 1934, full universal suffrage. His government carried out a policy of Turkification, trying to create a homogeneous, unified and above all secular nation under the Turkish banner. Under Atatürk, the minorities in Turkey were ordered to speak Turkish in public, but were allowed to maintain their own languages in private and within their own communities; non-Turkish toponyms were replaced and non-Turkish families were ordered to adopt a Turkish surname. The Turkish Parliament granted him the surname Atatürk in 1934, which means "Father of the Turks", in recognition of the role he played in building the modern Turkish Republic. He died on 10 November 1938 at Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, at the age of 57; he was succeeded as president by his long-time prime minister İsmet İnönü and was honored with a state funeral.

 

In 1981, the centennial of Atatürk's birth, his memory was honoured by the United Nations and UNESCO, which declared it The Atatürk Year in the World and adopted the Resolution on the Atatürk Centennial, describing him as "the leader of the first struggle given against colonialism and imperialism" and a "remarkable promoter of the sense of understanding between peoples and durable peace between the nations of the world and that he worked all his life for the development of harmony and cooperation between peoples without distinction". Atatürk was also credited for his peace-in-the-world oriented foreign policy and friendship with neighboring countries such as Iran, Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Greece, as well as the creation of the Balkan Pact that resisted the expansionist aggressions of Fascist Italy and Tsarist Bulgaria.

 

The Turkish War of Independence (19 May 1919 – 24 July 1923) was a series of military campaigns and a revolution waged by the Turkish National Movement, after parts of the Ottoman Empire were occupied and partitioned following its defeat in World War I. The conflict was between the Turkish Nationalists against Allied and separatist forces over the application of Wilsonian principles, especially national self-determination, in post-World War I Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. The revolution concluded the collapse of the Ottoman Empire; the Ottoman monarchy and the Islamic caliphate were abolished, and the Republic of Turkey was declared in Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. This resulted in a transfer of vested sovereignty from the sultan-caliph to the nation, setting the stage for Republican Turkey's period of nationalist revolutionary reform.

 

While World War I ended for the Ottoman Empire with the Armistice of Mudros, the Allied Powers continued occupying and securing land per the Sykes–Picot Agreement, as well as to facilitate the prosecution of former members of the Committee of Union and Progress and those involved in the Armenian genocide. Ottoman military commanders therefore refused orders from both the Allies and the Ottoman government to surrender and disband their forces. In an atmosphere of turmoil throughout the remainder of the empire, sultan Mehmed VI dispatched Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk), a well-respected and high-ranking general, to Anatolia to restore order; however, Mustafa Kemal became an enabler and eventually leader of Turkish Nationalist resistance against the Ottoman government, Allied powers, and separatists.

 

In an attempt to establish control over the power vacuum in Anatolia, the Allies agreed to launch a Greek peacekeeping force into Anatolia and occupy Smyrna (İzmir), inflaming sectarian tensions and beginning the Turkish War of Independence. A nationalist counter government led by Mustafa Kemal was established in Ankara when it became clear the Ottoman government was appeasing the Allied powers. The Allies soon pressured the Ottoman government in Constantinople to suspend the Constitution, shutter Parliament, and sign the Treaty of Sèvres, a treaty unfavorable to Turkish interests that the "Ankara government" declared illegal.

 

In the ensuing war, Turkish and Syrian forces defeated the French in the south, and remobilized army units went on to partition Armenia with the Bolsheviks, resulting in the Treaty of Kars (October 1921). The Western Front of the independence war is known as the Greco-Turkish War, in which Greek forces at first encountered unorganized resistance. However, İsmet Pasha (İnönü)'s organization of militia into a regular army paid off when Ankara forces fought the Greeks in the First and Second Battle of İnönü. The Greek army emerged victorious in the Battle of Kütahya-Eskişehir and decided to drive on the Nationalist capital of Ankara, stretching their supply lines. The Turks checked their advance in the Battle of Sakarya and eventually counter-attacked in the Great Offensive, which expelled Greek forces from Anatolia in the span of three weeks. The war effectively ended with the recapture of İzmir and the Chanak Crisis, prompting the signing of another armistice in Mudanya.

 

The Grand National Assembly in Ankara was recognized as the legitimate Turkish government, which signed the Treaty of Lausanne (July 1923), a treaty more favorable to Turkey than the Sèvres Treaty. The Allies evacuated Anatolia and Eastern Thrace, the Ottoman government was overthrown and the monarchy abolished, and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (which remains Turkey's primary legislative body today) declared the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923. With the war, a population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, and the abolition of the sultanate, the Ottoman era came to an end, and with Atatürk's reforms, the Turks created the modern, secular nation-state of Turkey. On 3 March 1924, the Ottoman caliphate was also abolished.

 

The ethnic demographics of the modern Turkish Republic were significantly impacted by the earlier Armenian genocide and the deportations of Greek-speaking, Orthodox Christian Rum people. The Turkish Nationalist Movement carried out massacres and deportations to eliminate native Christian populations—a continuation of the Armenian genocide and other ethnic cleansing operations during World War I. Following these campaigns of ethnic cleansing, the historic Christian presence in Anatolia was destroyed, in large part, and the Muslim demographic had increased from 80% to 98%.

 

Following the chaotic politics of the Second Constitutional Era, the Ottoman Empire came under the control of the Committee of Union and Progress in a coup in 1913, and then further consolidated its control after the assassination of Mahmud Shevket Pasha.[citation needed] Founded as a radical revolutionary group seeking to prevent a collapse of the Ottoman Empire, by the eve of World War I it decided that the solution was to implement nationalist and centralizing policies. The CUP reacted to the losses of land and the expulsion of Muslims from the Balkan Wars by turning even more nationalistic. Part of its effort to consolidate power was to proscribe and exile opposition politicians from the Freedom and Accord Party to remote Sinop.

 

The Unionists brought the Ottoman Empire into World War I on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, during which a genocidal campaign was waged against Ottoman Christians, namely Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians. It was based on an alleged conspiracy that the three groups would rebel on the side of the Allies, so collective punishment was applied. A similar suspicion and suppression from the Turkish nationalist government was directed towards the Arab and Kurdish populations, leading to localized rebellions. The Entente powers reacted to these developments by charging the CUP leaders, commonly known as the Three Pashas, with "Crimes against humanity" and threatened accountability. They also had imperialist ambitions on Ottoman territory, with a major correspondence over a post-war settlement in the Ottoman Empire being leaked to the press as the Sykes–Picot Agreement. With Saint Petersburg's exit from World War I and descent into civil war, driven in part from the Ottomans' closure of the Turkish straits of goods bound to Russia, a new imperative was given to the Entente powers to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war to restart the Eastern Front.

 

World War I would be the nail in the coffin of Ottomanism, a monarchist and multicultural nationalism. Mistreatment of non-Turk groups after 1913, and the general context of great socio-political upheaval that occurred in the aftermath of World War I, meant many minorities now wished to divorce their future from imperialism to form futures of their own by separating into (often republican) nation-states.

 

In the summer months of 1918, the leaders of the Central Powers realized that the Great War was lost, including the Ottomans'. Almost simultaneously the Palestinian Front and then the Macedonian Front collapsed. The sudden decision by Bulgaria to sign an armistice cut communications from Constantinople (İstanbul) to Vienna and Berlin, and opened the undefended Ottoman capital to Entente attack. With the major fronts crumbling, Unionist Grand Vizier Talât Pasha intended to sign an armistice, and resigned on 8 October 1918 so that a new government would receive less harsh armistice terms. The Armistice of Mudros was signed on 30 October 1918, ending World War I for the Ottoman Empire. Three days later, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)—which governed the Ottoman Empire as a one-party state since 1913—held its last congress, where it was decided the party would be dissolved. Talât, Enver Pasha, Cemal Pasha, and five other high-ranking members of the CUP escaped the Ottoman Empire on a German torpedo boat later that night, plunging the country into a power vacuum.

 

The armistice was signed because the Ottoman Empire had been defeated in important fronts, but the military was intact and retreated in good order. Unlike other Central Powers, the Allies did not mandate an abdication of the imperial family as a condition for peace, nor did they request the Ottoman Army to dissolve its general staff. Though the army suffered from mass desertion throughout the war which led to banditry, there was no threat of mutiny or revolutions like in Germany, Austria-Hungary, or Russia. This is despite famine and economic collapse that was brought on by the extreme levels of mobilization, destruction from the war, disease, and mass murder since 1914.

 

Due to the Turkish nationalist policies pursued by the CUP against Ottoman Christians by 1918 the Ottoman Empire held control over a mostly homogeneous land of Muslims from Eastern Thrace to the Persian border. These included mostly Turks, as well as Kurds, Circassians, and Muhacir groups from Rumeli. Most Muslim Arabs were now outside of the Ottoman Empire and under Allied occupation, with some "imperialists" still loyal to the Ottoman Sultanate-Caliphate, and others wishing for independence or Allied protection under a League of Nations mandate. Sizable Greek and Armenian minorities remained within its borders, and most of these communities no longer wished to remain under the Empire.

 

On 30 October 1918, the Armistice of Mudros was signed between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies of World War I, bringing hostilities in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I to an end. The Ottoman Army was to demobilize, its navy and air force handed to the Allies, and occupied territory in the Caucasus and Persia to be evacuated. Critically, Article VII granted the Allies the right to occupy forts controlling the Turkish Straits and the vague right to occupy "in case of disorder" any territory if there were a threat to security. The clause relating to the occupation of the straits was meant to secure a Southern Russian intervention force, while the rest of the article was used to allow for Allied controlled peace-keeping forces. There was also a hope to follow through punishing local actors that carried out exterminatory orders from the CUP government against Armenian Ottomans. For now, the House of Osman escaped the fates of the Hohenzollerns, Habsburgs, and Romanovs to continue ruling their empire, though at the cost of its remaining sovereignty.

 

On 13 November 1918, a French brigade entered Constantinople to begin a de facto occupation of the Ottoman capital and its immediate dependencies. This was followed by a fleet consisting of British, French, Italian and Greek ships deploying soldiers on the ground the next day, totaling 50,000 troops in Constantinople. The Allied Powers stated that the occupation was temporary and its purpose was to protect the monarchy, the caliphate and the minorities. Somerset Arthur Gough-Calthorpe—the British signatory of the Mudros Armistice—stated the Triple Entente's public position that they had no intention to dismantle the Ottoman government or place it under military occupation by "occupying Constantinople". However, dismantling the government and partitioning the Ottoman Empire among the Allied nations had been an objective of the Entente since the start of WWI.

 

A wave of seizures took place in the rest of the country in the following months. Citing Article VII, British forces demanded that Turkish troops evacuate Mosul, claiming that Christian civilians in Mosul and Zakho were killed en masse. In the Caucasus, Britain established a presence in Menshevik Georgia and the Lori and Aras valleys as peace-keepers. On 14 November, joint Franco-Greek occupation was established in the town of Uzunköprü in Eastern Thrace as well as the railway axis until the train station of Hadımköy on the outskirts of Constantinople. On 1 December, British troops based in Syria occupied Kilis, Marash, Urfa and Birecik. Beginning in December, French troops began successive seizures of the province of Adana, including the towns of Antioch, Mersin, Tarsus, Ceyhan, Adana, Osmaniye, and İslâhiye, incorporating the area into the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration North while French forces embarked by gunboats and sent troops to the Black Sea ports of Zonguldak and Karadeniz Ereğli commanding Turkey's coal mining region. These continued seizures of land prompted Ottoman commanders to refuse demobilization and prepare for the resumption of war.

 

The British similarly asked Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) to turn over the port of Alexandretta (İskenderun), which he reluctantly did, following which he was recalled to Constantinople. He made sure to distribute weapons to the population to prevent them from falling into the hands of Allied forces. Some of these weapons were smuggled to the east by members of Karakol, a successor to the CUP's Special Organization, to be used in case resistance was necessary in Anatolia. Many Ottoman officials participated in efforts to conceal from the occupying authorities details of the burgeoning independence movement spreading throughout Anatolia.

 

Other commanders began refusing orders from the Ottoman government and the Allied powers. After Mustafa Kemal Pasha returned to Constantinople, Ali Fuat Pasha (Cebesoy) brought XX Corps under his command. He marched first to Konya and then to Ankara to organise resistance groups, such as the Circassian çetes he assembled with guerilla leader Çerkes Ethem. Meanwhile, Kazım Karabekir Pasha refused to surrender his intact and powerful XV Corps in Erzurum. Evacuation from the Caucusus, puppet republics and Muslim militia groups were established in the army's wake to hamper with the consolidation of the new Armenian state. Elsewhere in the country, regional nationalist resistance organizations known as Şuras –meaning "councils", not unlike soviets in revolutionary Russia– were founded, most pledging allegiance to the Defence of National Rights movement that protested continued Allied occupation and appeasement by the Sublime Porte.

 

Following the occupation of Constantinople, Mehmed VI Vahdettin dissolved the Chamber of Deputies which was dominated by Unionists elected back in 1914, promising elections for the next year. Vahdettin just ascended to the throne only months earlier with the death of Mehmed V Reşad. He was disgusted with the policies of the CUP, and wished to be a more assertive sovereign than his diseased half brother. Greek and Armenian Ottomans declared the termination of their relationship with the Ottoman Empire through their respective patriarchates, and refused to partake in any future election. With the collapse of the CUP and its censorship regime, an outpouring of condemnation against the party came from all parts of Ottoman media.

 

A general amnesty was soon issued, allowing the exiled and imprisoned dissidents persecuted by the CUP to return to Constantinople. Vahdettin invited the pro-Palace politician Damat Ferid Pasha, leader of the reconstituted Freedom and Accord Party, to form a government, whose members quickly set out to purge the Unionists from the Ottoman government. Ferid Pasha hoped that his Anglophilia and an attitude of appeasement would induce less harsh peace terms from the Allied powers. However, his appointment was problematic for nationalists, many being members of the liquidated committee that were surely to face trial. Years of corruption, unconstitutional acts, war profiteering, and enrichment from ethnic cleansing and genocide by the Unionists soon became basis of war crimes trials and courts martial trials held in Constantinople.[citation needed] While many leading Unionists were sentenced lengthy prison sentences, many made sure to escape the country before Allied occupation or to regions that the government now had minimal control over; thus most were sentenced in absentia. The Allies encouragement of the proceedings and the use of British Malta as their holding ground made the trials unpopular. The partisan nature of the trials was not lost on observers either. The hanging of the Kaymakam of Boğazlıyan district Mehmed Kemal resulted in a demonstration against the courts martials trials.

 

With all the chaotic politics in the capital and uncertainty of the severity of the incoming peace treaty, many Ottomans looked to Washington with the hope that the application of Wilsonian principles would mean Constantinople would stay Turkish, as Muslims outnumbered Christians 2:1. The United States never declared war on the Ottoman Empire, so many imperial elite believed Washington could be a neutral arbiter that could fix the empire's problems. Halide Edip (Adıvar) and her Wilsonian Principles Society led the movement that advocated for the empire to be governed by an American League of Nations Mandate (see United States during the Turkish War of Independence). American diplomats attempted to ascertain a role they could play in the area with the Harbord and King–Crane Commissions. However, with the collapse of Woodrow Wilson's health, the United States diplomatically withdrew from the Middle East to focus on Europe, leaving the Entente powers to construct a post-Ottoman order.

 

The Entente would have arrived at Constantinople to discover an administration attempting to deal with decades of accumulated refugee crisis. The new government issued a proclamation allowing for deportees to return to their homes, but many Greeks and Armenians found their old homes occupied by desperate Rumelian and Caucasian Muslim refugees which were settled in their properties during the First World War. Ethnic conflict restarted in Anatolia; government officials responsible for resettling Christian refugees often assisted Muslim refugees in these disputes, prompting European powers to continue bringing Ottoman territory under their control. Of the 800,000 Ottoman Christian refugees, approximately over half returned to their homes by 1920. Meanwhile 1.4 million refugees from the Russian Civil War would pass through the Turkish straits and Anatolia, with 150,000 White émigrés choosing to settle in Istanbul for short or long term (see Evacuation of the Crimea). Many provinces were simply depopulated from years of fighting, conscription, and ethnic cleansing (see Ottoman casualties of World War I). The province of Yozgat lost 50% of its Muslim population from conscription, while according to the governor of Van, almost 95% of its prewar residents were dead or internally displaced.

 

Administration in much of the Anatolian and Thracian countryside would soon all but collapse by 1919. Army deserters who turned to banditry essentially controlled fiefdoms with tacit approval from bureaucrats and local elites. An amnesty issued in late 1918 saw these bandits strengthen their positions and fight amongst each other instead of returning to civilian life. Albanian and Circassian muhacirs resettled by the government in northwestern Anatolia and Kurds in southeastern Anatolia were engaged in blood feuds that intensified during the war and were hesitant to pledge allegiance to the Defence of Rights movement, and only would if officials could facilitate truces. Various Muhacir groups were suspicious of the continued Ittihadist ideology in the Defence of Rights movement, and the potential for themselves to meet fates 'like the Armenians' especially as warlords hailing from those communities assisted the deportations of the Christians even though as many commanders in the Nationalist movement also had Caucasian and Balkan Muslim ancestry.

 

With Anatolia in practical anarchy and the Ottoman army being questionably loyal in reaction to Allied land seizures, Mehmed VI established the military inspectorate system to reestablish authority over the remaining empire. Encouraged by Karabekir and Edmund Allenby, he assigned Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) as the inspector of the Ninth Army Troops Inspectorate –based in Erzurum– to restore order to Ottoman military units and to improve internal security on 30 April 1919, with his first assignment to suppress a rebellion by Greek rebels around the city of Samsun.

 

Mustafa Kemal was a well known, well respected, and well connected army commander, with much prestige coming from his status as the "Hero of Anafartalar"—for his role in the Gallipoli Campaign—and his title of "Honorary Aide-de-camp to His Majesty Sultan" gained in the last months of WWI. This choice would seem curious, as he was a nationalist and a fierce critic of the government's accommodating policy to the Entente powers. He was also an early member of the CUP. However Kemal Pasha did not associate himself with the fanatical faction of the CUP, many knew that he frequently clashed with the radicals of the Central Committee like Enver. He was therefore sidelined to the periphery of power throughout the Great War; after the CUP's dissolution he vocally aligned himself with moderates that formed the Liberal People's Party instead of the rump radical faction which formed the Renewal Party (both parties would be banned in May 1919 for being successors of the CUP). All these reasons allowed him to be the most legitimate nationalist for the sultan to placate. In this new political climate, he sought to capitalize on his war exploits to attain a better job, indeed several times he unsuccessfully lobbied for his inclusion in cabinet as War Minister. His new assignment gave him effective plenipotentiary powers over all of Anatolia which was meant to accommodate him and other nationalists to keep them loyal to the government.

 

Mustafa Kemal had earlier declined to become the leader of the Sixth Army headquartered in Nusaybin. But according to Patrick Balfour, through manipulation and the help of friends and sympathizers, he became the inspector of virtually all of the Ottoman forces in Anatolia, tasked with overseeing the disbanding process of remaining Ottoman forces. Kemal had an abundance of connections and personal friends concentrated in the post-armistice War Ministry, a powerful tool that would help him accomplish his secret goal: to lead a nationalist movement to safeguard Turkish interests against the Allied powers and a collaborative Ottoman government.

 

The day before his departure to Samsun on the remote Black Sea coast, Kemal had one last audience with Sultan Vahdettin, where he affirmed his loyalty to the sultan-caliph. It was in this meeting that they were informed of the botched occupation ceremony of Smyrna (İzmir) by the Greeks. He and his carefully selected staff left Constantinople aboard the old steamer SS Bandırma on the evening of 16 May 1919.

 

On 19 January 1919, the Paris Peace Conference was first held, at which Allied nations set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers, including the Ottoman Empire. As a special body of the Paris Conference, "The Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey", was established to pursue the secret treaties they had signed between 1915 and 1917. Italy sought control over the southern part of Anatolia under the Agreement of St.-Jean-de-Maurienne. France expected to exercise control over Hatay, Lebanon, Syria, and a portion of southeastern Anatolia based on the Sykes–Picot Agreement.

 

Greece justified their territorial claims of Ottoman land through the Megali Idea as well as international sympathy from the suffering of Ottoman Greeks in 1914 and 1917–1918. Privately, Greek prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos had British prime minister David Lloyd George's backing not least from Greece's entrance to WWI on the Allied side, but also from his charisma and charming personality. Greece's participation in the Allies' Southern Russian intervention also earned it favors in Paris. His demands included parts of Eastern Thrace, the islands of Imbros (Gökçeada), Tenedos (Bozcaada), and parts of Western Anatolia around the city of Smyrna (İzmir), all of which had large Greek populations. Venizelos also advocated a large Armenian state to check a post-war Ottoman Empire. Greece wanted to incorporate Constantinople, but Entente powers did not give permission. Damat Ferid Pasha went to Paris on behalf of the Ottoman Empire hoping to minimize territorial losses using Fourteen Points rhetoric, wishing for a return to status quo ante bellum, on the basis that every province of the Empire holds Muslim majorities. This plea was met with ridicule.

 

At the Paris Peace Conference, competing claims over Western Anatolia by Greek and Italian delegations led Greece to land the flagship of the Greek Navy at Smyrna, resulting in the Italian delegation walking out of the peace talks. On 30 April, Italy responded to the possible idea of Greek incorporation of Western Anatolia by sending a warship to Smyrna as a show of force against the Greek campaign. A large Italian force also landed in Antalya. Faced with Italian annexation of parts of Asia Minor with a significant ethnic Greek population, Venizelos secured Allied permission for Greek troops to land in Smyrna per Article VII, ostensibly as a peacekeeping force to keep stability in the region. Venizelos's rhetoric was more directed against the CUP regime than the Turks as a whole, an attitude not always shared in the Greek military: "Greece is not making war against Islam, but against the anachronistic [İttihadist] Government, and its corrupt, ignominious, and bloody administration, with a view to the expelling it from those territories where the majority of the population consists of Greeks." It was decided by the Triple Entente that Greece would control a zone around Smyrna and Ayvalık in western Asia Minor.

 

Most historians mark the Greek landing at Smyrna on 15 May 1919 as the start date of the Turkish War of Independence as well as the start of the "Kuva-yi Milliye Phase". The occupation ceremony from the outset was tense from nationalist fervor, with Ottoman Greeks greeting the soldiers with an ecstatic welcome, and Ottoman Muslims protesting the landing. A miscommunication in Greek high command led to an Evzone column marching by the municipal Turkish barracks. The nationalist journalist Hasan Tahsin fired the "first bullet"[note 4] at the Greek standard bearer at the head of the troops, turning the city into a warzone. Süleyman Fethi Bey was murdered by bayonet for refusing to shout "Zito Venizelos" (meaning "long live Venizelos"), and 300–400 unarmed Turkish soldiers and civilians and 100 Greek soldiers and civilians were killed or wounded.

 

Greek troops moved from Smyrna outwards to towns on the Karaburun peninsula; to Selçuk, situated a hundred kilometres south of the city at a key location that commands the fertile Küçük Menderes River valley; and to Menemen towards the north. Guerilla warfare commenced in the countryside, as Turks began to organize themselves into irregular guerilla groups known as Kuva-yi Milliye (national forces), which were soon joined by Ottoman soldiers, bandits, and disaffected farmers. Most Kuva-yi Milliye bands were led by rogue military commanders and members of the Special Organization. The Greek troops based in cosmopolitan Smyrna soon found themselves conducting counterinsurgency operations in a hostile, dominantly Muslim hinterland. Groups of Ottoman Greeks also formed contingents that cooperated with the Greek Army to combat Kuva-yi Milliye within the zone of control. A massacre of Turks at Menemen was followed up with a battle for the town of Aydın, which saw intense intercommunal violence and the razing of the city. What was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission of Western Anatolia instead inflamed ethnic tensions and became a counterinsurgency.

 

The reaction of Greek landing at Smyrna and continued Allied seizures of land served to destabilize Turkish civil society. Ottoman bureaucrats, military, and bourgeoisie trusted the Allies to bring peace, and thought the terms offered at Mudros were considerably more lenient than they actually were. Pushback was potent in the capital, with 23 May 1919 being largest of the Sultanahmet Square demonstrations organized by the Turkish Hearths against the Greek occupation of Smyrna, the largest act of civil disobedience in Turkish history at that point. The Ottoman government condemned the landing, but could do little about it. Ferid Pasha tried to resign, but was urged by the sultan to stay in his office.

 

Mustafa Kemal Pasha and his colleagues stepped ashore in Samsun on 19 May and set up their first quarters in the Mıntıka Palace Hotel. British troops were present in Samsun, and he initially maintained cordial contact. He had assured Damat Ferid about the army's loyalty towards the new government in Constantinople. However, behind the government's back, Kemal made the people of Samsun aware of the Greek and Italian landings, staged discreet mass meetings, made fast connections via telegraph with the army units in Anatolia, and began to form links with various Nationalist groups. He sent telegrams of protest to foreign embassies and the War Ministry about British reinforcements in the area and about British aid to Greek brigand gangs. After a week in Samsun, Kemal and his staff moved to Havza. It was there that he first showed the flag of the resistance.

 

Mustafa Kemal wrote in his memoir that he needed nationwide support to justify armed resistance against the Allied occupation. His credentials and the importance of his position were not enough to inspire everyone. While officially occupied with the disarming of the army, he met with various contacts in order to build his movement's momentum. He met with Rauf Pasha, Karabekir Pasha, Ali Fuat Pasha, and Refet Pasha and issued the Amasya Circular (22 June 1919). Ottoman provincial authorities were notified via telegraph that the unity and independence of the nation was at risk, and that the government in Constantinople was compromised. To remedy this, a congress was to take place in Erzurum between delegates of the Six Vilayets to decide on a response, and another congress would take place in Sivas where every Vilayet should send delegates. Sympathy and an lack of coordination from the capital gave Mustafa Kemal freedom of movement and telegraph use despite his implied anti-government tone.

 

On 23 June, High Commissioner Admiral Calthorpe, realising the significance of Mustafa Kemal's discreet activities in Anatolia, sent a report about the Pasha to the Foreign Office. His remarks were downplayed by George Kidson of the Eastern Department. Captain Hurst of the British occupation force in Samsun warned Admiral Calthorpe one more time, but Hurst's units were replaced with the Brigade of Gurkhas. When the British landed in Alexandretta, Admiral Calthorpe resigned on the basis that this was against the armistice that he had signed and was assigned to another position on 5 August 1919. The movement of British units alarmed the population of the region and convinced them that Mustafa Kemal was right.

 

By early July, Mustafa Kemal Pasha received telegrams from the sultan and Calthorpe, asking him and Refet to cease his activities in Anatolia and return to the capital. Kemal was in Erzincan and did not want to return to Constantinople, concerned that the foreign authorities might have designs for him beyond the sultan's plans. Before resigning from his position, he dispatched a circular to all nationalist organizations and military commanders to not disband or surrender unless for the latter if they could be replaced by cooperative nationalist commanders. Now only a civilian stripped of his command, Mustafa Kemal was at the mercy of the new inspector of Third Army (renamed from Ninth Army) Karabekir Pasha, indeed the War Ministry ordered him to arrest Kemal, an order which Karabekir refused. The Erzurum Congress was a meeting of delegates and governors from the six Eastern Vilayets. They drafted the National Pact (Misak-ı Millî), which envisioned new borders for the Ottoman Empire by applying principles of national self-determination per Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and the abolition of the capitulations. The Erzurum Congress concluded with a circular that was effectively a declaration of independence: All regions within Ottoman borders upon the signing of the Mudros Armistice were indivisible from the Ottoman state –Greek and Armenian claims on Thrace and Anatolia were moot– and assistance from any country not coveting Ottoman territory was welcome. If the government in Constantinople was not able to attain this after electing a new parliament, they insisted a provisional government should be promulgated to defend Turkish sovereignty. The Committee of Representation was established as a provisional executive body based in Anatolia, with Mustafa Kemal Pasha as its chairman.

 

Following the congress, the Committee of Representation relocated to Sivas. As announced in the Amasya Circular, a new congress was held there in September with delegates from all Anatolian and Thracian provinces. The Sivas Congress repeated the points of the National Pact agreed to in Erzurum, and united the various regional Defence of National Rights Associations organizations, into a united political organisation: Anatolia and Rumeli Defence of Rights Association (A-RMHC), with Mustafa Kemal as its chairman. In an effort show his movement was in fact a new and unifying movement, the delegates had to swear an oath to discontinue their relations with the CUP and to never revive the party (despite most present in Sivas being previous members).[120] It was also decided there that the Ottoman Empire should not be a League of Nations mandate under the United States, especially after the U.S Senate failed to ratify American membership in the League.

 

Momentum was now on the Nationalists' side. A plot by a loyalist Ottoman governor and a British intelligence officer to arrest Kemal before the Sivas Congress led to the cutting of all ties with the Ottoman government until a new election would be held in the lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies. In October 1919, the last Ottoman governor loyal to Constantinople fled his province. Fearing the outbreak of hostilities, all British troops stationed in the Black Sea coast and Kütahya were evacuated. Damat Ferid Pasha resigned, and the sultan replaced him with a general with nationalist credentials: Ali Rıza Pasha. On 16 October 1919, Ali Rıza and the Nationalists held negotiations in Amasya. They agreed in the Amasya Protocol that an election would be called for the Ottoman Parliament to establish national unity by upholding the resolutions made in the Sivas Congress, including the National Pact.

 

By October 1919, the Ottoman government only held de facto control over Constantinople; the rest of the Ottoman Empire was loyal to Kemal's movement to resist a partition of Anatolia and Thrace. Within a few months Mustafa Kemal went from General Inspector of the Ninth Army to a renegade military commander discharged for insubordination to leading a homegrown anti-Entente movement that overthrew a government and driven it into resistance.

 

In December 1919, an election was held for the Ottoman parliament, with polls only open in unoccupied Anatolia and Thrace. It was boycotted by Ottoman Greeks, Ottoman Armenians and the Freedom and Accord Party, resulting in groups associated with the Turkish Nationalist Movement winning, including the A-RMHC. The Nationalists' obvious links to the CUP made the election especially polarizing and voter intimidation and ballot box stuffing in favor of the Kemalists were regular occurrences in rural provinces. This controversy led to many of the nationalist MPs organizing the National Salvation Group separate from Kemal's movement, which risked the nationalist movement splitting in two.

 

Mustafa Kemal was elected an MP from Erzurum, but he expected the Allies neither to accept the Harbord report nor to respect his parliamentary immunity if he went to the Ottoman capital, hence he remained in Anatolia. Mustafa Kemal and the Committee of Representation moved from Sivas to Ankara so that he could keep in touch with as many deputies as possible as they traveled to Constantinople to attend the parliament.

 

Though Ali Rıza Pasha called the election as per the Amasya Protocol to keep unity between the "Istanbul government" and "Ankara government", he was wrong to think the election could bring him any legitimacy. The Ottoman parliament was under the de facto control of the British battalion stationed at Constantinople and any decisions by the parliament had to have the signatures of both Ali Rıza Pasha and the battalion's commanding officer. The only laws that passed were those acceptable to, or specifically ordered by the British.

 

On 12 January 1920, the last session of the Chamber of Deputies met in the capital. First the sultan's speech was presented, and then a telegram from Mustafa Kemal, manifesting the claim that the rightful government of Turkey was in Ankara in the name of the Committee of Representation. On 28 January the MPs from both sides of the isle secretly met to endorse the National Pact as a peace settlement. They added to the points passed in Sivas, calling for plebiscites to be held in West Thrace; Batum, Kars, and Ardahan, and Arab lands on whether to stay in the Empire or not. Proposals were also made to elect Kemal president of the Chamber;[clarification needed] however, this was deferred in the certain knowledge that the British would prorogue the Chamber. The Chamber of Deputies would be forcefully dissolved for passing the National Pact anyway. The National Pact solidified Nationalist interests, which were in conflict with the Allied plans.

 

From February to April, leaders of Britain, France, and Italy met in London to discuss the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire and the crisis in Anatolia. The British began to sense that the elected Ottoman government was under Kemalist influence and if left unchecked, the Entente could once again find themselves at war with the Empire. The Ottoman government was not doing all that it could to suppress the Nationalists.

 

Mustafa Kemal manufactured a crisis to pressure the Istanbul government to pick a side by deploying Kuva-yi Milliye towards İzmit. The British, concerned about the security of the Bosporus Strait, demanded Ali Rıza Pasha to reassert control over the area, to which he responded with his resignation to the sultan.

 

As they were negotiating the partition of the Ottoman Empire, the Allies were growing increasingly concerned about the Turkish National Movement. To this end, the Allied occupational authorities in Istanbul began to plan a raid to arrest nationalist politicians and journalists along with occupying military and police installations and government buildings. On 16 March 1920, the coup was carried out; several Royal Navy warships were anchored in the Galata Bridge to support British forces, including the Indian Army, while they carried out the arrests and occupied several government buildings in the early hours of the morning.

 

An Indian Army operation, the Şehzadebaşı raid, resulted in 5 Ottoman soldiers from the 10th Infantry Division being killed when troops raided their barracks. Among those arrested were the senior leadership of the Turkish National Movement and former members of the CUP. 150 arrested Turkish politicians accused of war crimes were interned in Malta and became known as the Malta exiles.

 

Mustafa Kemal was ready for this move. He warned all the Nationalist organisations that there would be misleading declarations from the capital. He warned that the only way to counter Allied movements was to organise protests. He declared "Today the Turkish nation is called to defend its capacity for civilization, its right to life and independence – its entire future".

 

On 18 March, the Chamber of Deputies declared that it was unacceptable to arrest five of its members, and dissolved itself. Mehmed VI confirmed this and declared the end of Constitutional Monarchy and a return to absolutism. University students were forbidden from joining political associations inside and outside the classroom. With the lower elected Chamber of Deputies shuttered, the Constitution terminated, and the capital occupied; Sultan Vahdettin, his cabinet, and the appointed Senate were all that remained of the Ottoman government, and were basically a puppet regime of the Allied powers. Grand Vizier Salih Hulusi Pasha declared Mustafa Kemal's struggle legitimate, and resigned after less than a month in office. In his place, Damat Ferid Pasha returned to the premiership. The Sublime Porte's decapitation by the Entente allowed Mustafa Kemal to consolidate his position as the sole leader of Turkish resistance against the Allies, and to that end made him the legitimate representative of the Turkish people.

 

The strong measures taken against the Nationalists by the Allies in March 1920 began a distinct new phase of the conflict. Mustafa Kemal sent a note to the governors and force commanders, asking them to conduct elections to provide delegates for a new parliament to represent the Ottoman (Turkish) people, which would convene in Ankara. With the proclamation of the counter-government, Kemal would then ask the sultan to accept its authority. Mustafa Kemal appealed to the Islamic world, asking for help to make sure that everyone knew he was still fighting in the name of the sultan who was also the caliph. He stated he wanted to free the caliph from the Allies. He found an ally in the Khilafat movement of British India, where Indians protested Britain's planned dismemberment of Turkey. A committee was also started for sending funds to help the soon to be proclaimed Ankara government of Mustafa Kemal. A flood of supporters moved to Ankara just ahead of the Allied dragnets. Included among them were Halide Edip and Abdülhak Adnan (Adıvar), Mustafa İsmet Pasha (İnönü), Mustafa Fevzi Pasha (Çakmak), many of Kemal's allies in the Ministry of War, and Celalettin Arif, the president of the now shuttered Chamber of Deputies. Celaleddin Arif's desertion of the capital was of great significance, as he declared that the Ottoman Parliament had been dissolved illegally.

 

Some 100 members of the Chamber of Deputies were able to escape the Allied roundup and joined 190 deputies elected. In March 1920, Turkish revolutionaries announced the establishment of a new parliament in Ankara known as the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNA) that was dominated by the A-RMHC.[citation needed] The parliament included Turks, Circassians, Kurds, and one Jew. They met in a building that used to serve as the provincial headquarters of the local CUP chapter. The inclusion of "Turkey" in its name reflected a increasing trend of new ways Ottoman citizens thought of their country, and was the first time it was formally used as the name of the country. On 23 April, the assembly, assuming full governmental powers, gathered for the first time, electing Mustafa Kemal its first Speaker and Prime Minister.

 

Hoping to undermine the Nationalist Movement, Mehmed VI issued a fatwa to qualify the Turkish revolutionaries as infidels, calling for the death of its leaders. The fatwa stated that true believers should not go along with the Nationalist Movement as they committed apostasy. The mufti of Ankara Rifat Börekçi issued a simultaneous fatwa, declaring that the caliphate was under the control of the Entente and the Ferid Pasha government. In this text, the Nationalist Movement's goal was stated as freeing the sultanate and the caliphate from its enemies. In reaction to the desertion of several prominent figures to the Nationalist Movement, Ferid Pasha ordered Halide Edip, Ali Fuat and Mustafa Kemal to be sentenced to death in absentia for treason.

 

On 28 April the sultan raised 4,000 soldiers known as the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye (Caliphate Army) to combat the Nationalists. Then using money from the Allies, another force about 2,000 strong from non-Muslim inhabitants were initially deployed in İznik. The sultan's government sent the forces under the name of the Caliphate Army to the revolutionaries to arouse counterrevolutionary sympathy. The British, being skeptical of how formidable these insurgents were, decided to use irregular power to counteract the revolutionaries. The Nationalist forces were distributed all around Turkey, so many smaller units were dispatched to face them. In İzmit there were two battalions of the British army. These units were to be used to rout the partisans under the command of Ali Fuat and Refet Pasha.

 

Anatolia had many competing forces on its soil: British troops, Nationalist militia (Kuva-yi Milliye), the sultan's army (Kuva-yi İnzibatiye), and Anzavur's bands. On 13 April 1920, an uprising supported by Anzavur against the GNA occurred at Düzce as a direct consequence of the fatwa. Within days the rebellion spread to Bolu and Gerede. The movement engulfed northwestern Anatolia for about a month. On 14 June, Nationalist militia fought a pitched battle near İzmit against the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye, Anzavur's bands, and British units. Yet under heavy attack some of the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye deserted and joined the Nationalist militia. Anzavur was not so lucky, as the Nationalists tasked Ethem the Circassian with crushing Anzavur's revolt. This revealed the sultan did not have the unwavering support of his own men and allies. Meanwhile, the rest of these forces withdrew behind the British lines which held their position. For now, Istanbul was out of Ankara's grasp.

 

The clash outside İzmit brought serious consequences. British forces conducted combat operations on the Nationalists and the Royal Air Force carried out aerial bombardments against the positions, which forced Nationalist forces to temporarily retreat to more secure missions. The British commander in Turkey, General George Milne—, asked for reinforcements. This led to a study to determine what would be required to defeat the Turkish Nationalists. The report, signed by French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, concluded that 27 divisions were necessary, but the British army did not have 27 divisions to spare. Also, a deployment of this size could have disastrous political consequences back home. World War I had just ended, and the British public would not support another lengthy and costly expedition.

 

The British accepted the fact that a nationalist movement could not be defeated without deployment of consistent and well-trained forces. On 25 June, the forces originating from Kuva-i İnzibatiye were dismantled under British supervision. The British realised that the best option to overcome these Turkish Nationalists was to use a force that was battle-tested and fierce enough to fight the Turks on their own soil. The British had to look no further than Turkey's neighbor already occupying its territory: Greece.

 

Eleftherios Venizelos, pessimistic of the rapidly deteriorating situation in Anatolia, requested to the Allies that a peace treaty be drawn up with the hope that fighting would stop. The subsequent treaty of Sèvres in August 1920 confirmed the Arab provinces of the empire would be reorganized into new nations given to Britain and France in the form of Mandates by the League of Nations, while the rest of the Empire would be partitioned between Greece, Italy, France (via Syrian mandate), Britain (via Iraqi mandate), Armenia (potentially under an American mandate), and Georgia. Smyrna would hold a plebiscite on whether to stay with Greece or Turkey, and the Kurdistan region would hold one on the question of independence. British, French, and Italian spheres of influence would also extend into Anatolia beyond the land concessions. The old capital of Constantinople as well as the Dardanelles would be under international League of Nations control.

 

However, the treaty could never come into effect. The treaty was extremely unpopular, with protests against the final document held even before its release in Sultanahmet square. Though Mehmed VI and Ferid Pasha loathed the treaty, they did not want Istanbul to join Ankara in nationalist struggle. The Ottoman government and Greece never ratified it. Though Ferid Pasha signed the treaty, the Ottoman Senate, the upper house with seats appointed by the sultan, refused to ratify the treaty. Greece disagreed on the borders drawn. The other allies began to fracture their support of the settlement immediately. Italy started openly supporting the Nationalists with arms by the end of 1920, and the French signed another separate peace treaty with Ankara only months later.

 

Kemal's GNA Government responded to the Treaty of Sèvres by promulgating a new constitution in January 1921. The resulting constitution consecrated the principle of popular sovereignty; authority not deriving from the unelected sultan, but from the Turkish people who elect governments representative of their interests. This document became the legal basis for the war of independence by the GNA, as the sultan's signature of the Treaty of Sèvres would be unconstitutional as his position was not elected. While the constitution did not specify a future role of the sultan, the document gave Kemal ever more legitimacy in the eyes of Turks for justified resistance against Istanbul.

 

In contrast to the Eastern and Western fronts, it was mostly unorganized Kuva-yi Milliye which were fighting in the Southern Front against France. They had help from the Syrians, who were fighting their own war with the French.

 

The British troops which occupied coastal Syria by the end of World War I were replaced by French troops over 1919, with the Syrian interior going to Faisal bin Al-Hussein's self-proclaimed Arab Kingdom of Syria. France which wanted to take control of all of Syria and Cilicia. There was also a desire facilitate the return of Armenian refugees in the region to their homes, and the occupation force consisted of the French Armenian Legion as well as various Armenian militia groups. 150,000 Armenians were repatriated to their homes within months of French occupation. On 21 January 1920, a Turkish Nationalist uprising and siege occurred against the French garrison in Marash. The French position untenable they retreated to Islahiye, resulting in a massacre of many Armenians by Turkish militia. A grueling siege followed in Antep which featured intense sectarian violence between Turks and Armenians. After a failed uprising by the Nationalists in Adana, by 1921, the French and Turks signed an armistice and eventually a treaty was brokered demarcating the border between the Ankara government and French controlled Syria. In the end, there was a mass exodus of Cilician Armenians to French controlled Syria, Previous Armenian survivors of deportation found themselves again as refugees and families which avoided the worst of the six years violence were forced from their homes, ending thousands of years of Christian presence in Southern Anatolia.[146] With France being the first Allied power to recognize and negotiate with the Ankara government only months after signing the Treaty of Sèvres, it was the first to break from the coordinated Allied approach to the Eastern question. In 1923 the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon under French authority would be proclaimed in former Ottoman territory.

 

Some efforts to coordinate between Turkish Nationalists and the Syrian rebels persisted from 1920 to 1921, with the Nationalists supporting the Faisal's kingdom through Ibrahim Hanunu and Alawite groups which were also fighting the French. While the French conquered Syria, Cilicia had to be abandoned.

 

Kuva-yi Milliye also engaged with British forces in the "Al-Jazira Front," primarily in Mosul. Ali İhsan Pasha (Sabis) and his forces defending Mosul would surrender to the British in October 1918, but the British ignored the armistice and seized the city, following which the pasha also ignored the armistice and distributed weapons to the locals. Even before Mustafa Kemal's movement was fully organized, rogue commanders found allies in Kurdish tribes. The Kurds detested the taxes and centralization the British demanded, including Shaykh Mahmud of the Barzani family. Having previously supported the British invasion of Mesopotamia to become the governor of South Kurdistan, Mahmud revolted but was apprehended by 1919. Without legitimacy to govern the region, he was released from captivity to Sulaymaniyah, where he again declared an uprising against the British as the King of Kurdistan. Though an alliance existed with the Turks, little material support came to him from Ankara, and by 1923 there was a desire to cease hostilities between the Turks and British at Barzanji's expense. Mahmud was overthrown in 1924, and after a 1926 plebiscite, Mosul was awarded to British-controlled Iraq.

 

Since 1917, the Caucasus was in a chaotic state. The border of newly independent Armenia and the Ottoman Empire was defined in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) after the Bolshevik revolution, and later by the Treaty of Batum (4 June 1918). To the east, Armenia was at war with the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic after the breakup of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, and received support from Anton Denikin's White Russian Army. It was obvious that after the Armistice of Mudros (30 October 1918) the eastern border was not going to stay as it was drawn, which mandated the evacuation of the Ottoman army back to its 1914 borders. Right after the Armistice of Mudros was signed, pro-Ottoman provisional republics were proclaimed in Kars and Aras which were subsequently invaded by Armenia. Ottoman soldiers were convinced not to demobilize lest the area become a 'second Macedonia'.[149] Both sides of the new borders had massive refugee populations and famine, which were compounded by the renewed and more symmetric sectarian violence (See Massacres of Azerbaijanis in Armenia (1917–1921) and Muslim uprisings in Kars and Sharur–Nakhichevan). There were talks going on with the Armenian Diaspora and Allied Powers on reshaping the border. Woodrow Wilson agreed to transfer territories to Armenia based on the principles of national self-determination. The results of these talks were to be reflected on the Treaty of Sèvres (10 August 1920).

 

Kâzım Karabekir Pasha, commander of the XV corps, encountered Muslim refugees fleeing from the Armenian army, but did not have the authority to cross the border. Karabekir's two reports (30 May and 4 June 1920) outlined the situation in the region. He recommended redrawing the eastern borders, especially around Erzurum. The Russian government was receptive to this and demanded that Van and Bitlis be transferred to Armenia. This was unacceptable to the Turkish revolutionaries. However, Soviet support was absolutely vital for the Turkish Nationalist movement, as Turkey was underdeveloped and had no domestic armaments industry. Bakir Sami (Kunduh) was assigned to negotiate with the Bolsheviks.

 

On 24 September 1920, Karabekir's XV corps and Kurdish militia advance on Kars, blowing through Armenian opposition, and then Alexandropol. With an advance on Yerevan imminent, on 28 November 1920, the 11th Red Army under the command of Anatoliy Gekker crossed over into Armenia from Soviet Azerbaijan, and the Armenian government surrendered to Bolshevik forces, ending the conflict.

 

The Treaty of Alexandropol (2—3 December 1920) was the first treaty (although illegitimate) signed by the Turkish revolutionaries. The 10th article in the Treaty of Alexandropol stated that Armenia renounced the Treaty of Sèvres and its allotted partition of Anatolia. The agreement was signed with representatives of the former government of Armenia, which by that time had no de jure or de facto power in Armenia, since Soviet rule was already established in the country. On 16 March 1921, the Bolsheviks and Turkey signed a more comprehensive agreement, the Treaty of Kars, which involved representatives of Soviet Armenia, Soviet Azerbaijan, and Soviet Georgia.

 

Throughout most of his life, Atatürk was a moderate-to-heavy drinker, often consuming half a litre of rakı a day; he also smoked tobacco, predominantly in the form of cigarettes. During 1937, indications that Atatürk's health was worsening started to appear. In early 1938, while on a trip to Yalova, he suffered from a serious illness. He went to Istanbul for treatment, where he was diagnosed with cirrhosis. During his stay in Istanbul, he made an effort to keep up with his regular lifestyle, but eventually succumbed to his illness. He died on 10 November 1938, at the age of 57, in the Dolmabahçe Palace.

 

Atatürk's funeral called forth both sorrow and pride in Turkey, and 17 countries sent special representatives, while nine contributed armed detachments to the cortège. Atatürk's remains were originally laid to rest in the Ethnography Museum of Ankara, but they were transferred on 10 November 1953 (15 years after his death) in a 42-ton sarcophagus to a mausoleum overlooking Ankara, Anıtkabir.

 

In his will, Atatürk donated all of his possessions to the Republican People's Party, provided that the yearly interest of his funds would be used to look after his sister Makbule and his adopted children, and fund the higher education of İsmet İnönü's children. The remainder was willed to the Turkish Language Association and the Turkish Historical Society.

Spanish postcard by Chocolate Amatller, serie 9, no. 11. Photo: publicity still for A Dog's Life (Charles Chaplin, 1918).

 

English comedian Charles ‘Charlie’ Chaplin (1889-1977) was one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. His most famous role was that of The Tramp with his toothbrush mustache, undersized bowler hat and bamboo cane who struggled to survive while keeping his dignity in a world with great social injustice. Chaplin used mime, slapstick and other visual comedy routines, and he not only starred in his films, but also directed, wrote and produced them, and composed the music as well. His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 years, from the Victorian stage and the Music Hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer, until close to his death at the age of 88. Author George Bernard Shaw called Chaplin "the only genius to come out of the movie industry".

 

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in 1889, in London, England. His parents were both entertainers in the music hall tradition; his father, Charles Spencer Chaplin Sr., was a vocalist and an actor and his mother, Hannah Chaplin, a singer and an actress with the the stage name Lilly Harley. They separated before Charlie was three. He lived with his mother and his older half-brother Sydney. Chaplin's father was an alcoholic and had little contact with his son, though Chaplin and Sydney briefly lived with their father and his mistress, while their mentally ill mother lived at an asylum. Hannah's first crisis came in 1894 when she was performing at The Canteen, a theatre in Aldershot. The theatre was mainly frequented by rioters and soldiers. Hannah was injured by the objects the audience threw at her and she was booed off the stage. Backstage, she cried and argued with her manager. Meanwhile, the five-year old Chaplin went on stage alone and sang a well-known tune at that time, Jack Jones. The young Chaplin brothers forged a close relationship in order to survive. They gravitated to the Music Hall while still very young, and both of them proved to have considerable natural stage talent. At eight Charlie toured in a musical, The Eight Lancaster Lads. Nearly 11, he appeared in Giddy Ostende at London's Hippodrome. Chaplin's early years of desperate poverty were a great influence on his characters. Themes in his films in later years would re-visit the scenes of his childhood deprivation in Lambeth. His father died of cirrhosis of the liver when Charlie was twelve in 1901. Chaplin's mother died in 1928 in Hollywood, seven years after having been brought to the US by her sons. Unknown to Charlie and Sydney until years later, they had a half-brother through their mother. The boy, Wheeler Dryden, was raised abroad by his father but later connected with the rest of the family and went to work for Chaplin at his Hollywood studio.

 

From age 17 to 24 Charlie Chaplin was with Fred Karno's English vaudeville troupe. He first toured the United States with the Fred Karno troupe from 1910 to 1912. After five months back in England, he returned to the US for a second tour. In the Karno Company was also his brother Sydney and Arthur Stanley Jefferson, who later became known as Stan Laurel. In late 1913, Chaplin's act with the Karno Troupe was seen by Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, Minta Durfee, and Fatty Arbuckle. Sennett hired him for his studio, the Keystone Film Company as a replacement for Ford Sterling. Chaplin had considerable initial difficulty adjusting to the demands of film acting and his performance suffered for it. After Chaplin's first film appearance, Making a Living (Henry Lehrman, 1914) was filmed, Sennett felt he had made a costly mistake. Mabel Normand persuaded him to give Chaplin another chance, and she directed and wrote a handful of his earliest films. He first played The Tramp in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice (Henry Lehrman, 1914). This picture saw him wearing baggy pants borrowed from 'Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle', size 14 shoes belonging to Ford Sterling (and worn upside down to keep them from falling off), a tiny jacket from Keystone Kop Charles Avery, a bowler hat belonging to Arbuckle's father-in-law and some crepe paper belonging to Mack Swain (which became the tramp's mustache). The only item that actually belonged to Charlie was the whangee cane. Two films Chaplin made in 1915, The Tramp and The Bank, created the characteristics of his screen persona. Chaplin was influenced by his predecessor, the French silent film comedian Max Linder, to whom he dedicated one of his films. Quickly the little tramp became the most popular Keystone star. From the April 1914 one-reeler Twenty Minutes of Love (Charles Chaplin, Joseph Maddern, 1914) onwards he was writing and directing most of his films, by 1916 he was also producing, and from 1918 composing the music. He made 35 films in 1914, moved to Essanay in 1915 and did 14 more, then jumped over to Mutual for 12 two-reelers in 1916 and 1917. In 1918 he joined First National (later absorbed by Warner Bros.) and in 1919 formed United Artists along with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith. His first full-length film was The Kid (1921) with Jackie Coogan; his first for UA, which he produced and directed himself, was A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (1923) starring Edna Purviance. Chaplin continued to play the Tramp through dozens of short films and, later, feature-length productions. In only a handful of films he played characters other than the little tramp. The Tramp was closely identified with the silent era, and was considered an international character; when the sound era began in the late 1920’s, Chaplin refused to make a talkie featuring the character. City Lights (1931) featured no dialogue. Chaplin officially retired the character in Modern Times (1936), which appropriately ended with the Tramp and his girl (played by Chaplin’s third wife, Paulette Godard) walking down an endless highway toward the horizon. The film was only a partial talkie and is often called the last silent film. The Tramp remains silent until near the end of the film when, for the first time, his voice is finally heard, albeit only as part of a French/Italian-derived gibberish song. This allowed the Tramp to finally be given a voice but not tarnish his association with the silent era.

 

Charlie Chaplin’s high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin's identification with the left ultimately forced him to resettle in Europe during the McCarthy era in the early 1950s. Chaplin's political sympathies always had laid with the left. His silent films made prior to the Great Depression typically did not contain overt political themes or messages, apart from the Tramp's plight in poverty and his run-ins with the law, but his 1930s films were more openly political. Modern Times (1936) depicts workers and poor people in dismal conditions. In The Great Dictator (1940) Chaplin plays a humorous caricature of Adolf Hitler. Some thought the film was poorly done and in bad taste. However, it grossed over $5 million and earned five Academy Award Nominations. The final dramatic speech in The Great Dictator, which was critical of following patriotic nationalism without question, and his vocal public support for the opening of a second European front in 1942 to assist the Soviet Union in World War II were controversial. Chaplin declined to support the war effort as he had done for the First World War which led to public anger, although his two sons saw service in the Army in Europe. For most of World War II he was fighting serious criminal and civil charges related to his involvement with 22-year old actress Joan Barry. In 1943 he was accused of fathering her child; the papers made much of the scandal, but it was proved in a court trial that he was not the father. The same year he entered his fourth marriage, to Oona Chaplin, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill. After the war, his black comedy, Monsieur Verdoux (1947) showed a critical view of capitalism. Chaplin's final American film, Limelight, was less political and more autobiographical in nature. Limelight also featured Claire Bloom and Chaplin’s longtime friend, Buster Keaton. In 1952, Chaplin left the US for what was intended as a brief trip home to the United Kingdom for the London premiere of Limelight. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, learned of the trip and negotiated with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to revoke Chaplin's re-entry permit, exiling Chaplin so he could not return for his alleged political leanings. His following European-made film, A King in New York (1957), satirized the political persecution and paranoia that had forced him to leave the US five years earlier.

 

Charles Chaplin made his home in Vevey, Switzerland. His final two films were made in London: A King in New York (1957) in which he starred, wrote, directed and produced; and A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), which he directed, produced, and wrote. The latter film stars Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando, and Chaplin made his final on-screen appearance in a brief cameo role as a seasick steward. He also composed the music for both films. The theme song from A Countess From Hong Kong, This is My Song, reached number one in the UK as sung by Petula Clark. Chaplin also compiled a film The Chaplin Revue (1959) from three First National films A Dog's Life (1918), Shoulder Arms (1918) and The Pilgrim (1923) for which he composed the music and recorded an introductory narration. As well as directing these final films, Chaplin also wrote My Autobiography, between 1959 and 1963, which was published in 1964. He briefly and triumphantly returned to the United States in April 1972, with his wife Oona, to receive an Honorary Oscar, and also to discuss how his films would be re-released and marketed. Chaplin's last completed work was the score for his film A Woman of Paris (1923), which was completed in 1976, by which time Chaplin was extremely frail, even finding communication difficult. Charles Chaplin died in his sleep in Vevey, Switzerland on Christmas Day 1977. He and Oona had eight children, including film actress Geraldine Chaplin. From his marriages he had a total of 11 children. In 1921 Chaplin was decorated by the French government for his outstanding work as a filmmaker, and was elevated to the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1952. In 1929, at the first Oscar awards, he won a special award "for versatility and genius in writing, acting, directing and producing" The Circus (1928). In 1975 he was named Knight Commander of the British Empire. And in 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Chaplin the 10th Greatest Actor on The 50 Greatest Screen Legends list. His bowler and cane were sold for $150,000 in 1987.

 

Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Amy Smith (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 875. Photo: Paramount.

 

W. C. Fields (1880-1946) was an American comedian, actor, juggler, and writer, who became known as an entertainer in vaudeville shows and on Broadway at the turn of the century. In the 1920s, he starred in numerous silent film comedies. Fields' comic persona was a misanthropic and hard-drinking egotist, who remained a sympathetic character despite his supposed contempt for children and dogs. In the 1930s and 1940, he became one of Hollywood's best-known film comedians. Among his recognisable trademarks were his swollen nose, raspy drawl, and grandiloquent vocabulary.

 

W. C. Fields was born William Claude Dukenfield in the Philadelphia suburb of Darby, Pennsylvania, in 1880. He was the eldest of five children born to Cockney immigrant James Dukenfield and Philadelphia native Kate Felton. He went to school for four years, then quit to work with his father selling vegetables from a horse cart. At eleven, after many fights with his alcoholic father (who hit him on the head with a shovel), he ran away from home. For a while he lived in a hole in the ground, depending on stolen food and clothing. His first regular job was delivering ice. By age thirteen he was a skilled pool player and juggler and began working in vaudeville. At the age of 21, he travelled across North America and Europe with a juggling act. He gradually incorporated comedy into his act. He imagined faking failures and caught the objects with his feet or on the rebound, with leg movements that might themselves appear accidental to the spectator. The difficulty and mastery of his tricks led to unanimous critical acclaim for his juggling skills, which later earned him a place in the juggling hall of fame. The same was true of billiards, which he practised assiduously to the point of creating tricks, such as hitting the ball in such a way that it jumps backwards, high above the table, and then bounces off a part of his body before entering the pocket, with several variations. Deliberately dressed in ragged clothes, extravagant top hats that made him famous, and a fake black moustache (although he was blond), his original tricks brought him international success. At age twenty-three he opened at the Palace in London and played with Sarah Bernhardt at Buckingham Palace. He starred at the Folies-Bergere with young Charles Chaplin and Maurice Chevalier on the program. In 1906, he made his Broadway debut in the comedy 'The Ham Tree'.

 

In 1915, when he was thirty-five, W.C. Fields moved to New York and made his film debut in the 15-minute short silent film Pool Sharks (Edwin Middleton, 1915), produced by Gaumont. He also participated in the script. On stage, he introduced a few novelties into his cabaret act including a crazy golf game which was seen by impresario Florenz Ziegfeld who contracted him. Fields was a featured comedian in the Ziegfeld Follies from 1915 through 1921. He became a star in the Broadway musical comedy 'Poppy' (1923), about carnival life, in which he played a colourful small-time con man, snake-oil peddler Eustace McGargle. It led to a role in 'George White's Scandals'. His subsequent stage and film roles were often similar scoundrels or henpecked everyman characters. In 1925 D.W. Griffith made a film of 'Poppy, renamed Sally of the Sawdust (1925), starring Fields. He was a sensation in Hollywood and settled into a mansion near Burbank, California. He made several highly popular short films before focusing on features full-time. He made twelve silent films before his first talkie in The Golf Specialist (1930). When sound came W.C. Fields was out as casting agents didn't like his voice. It was only when Paramount was casting Million Dollar Legs (1931) and wanted all the comedians they could get that he got a part. His breakthrough as a film actor came in 1933 with International House directed by A. Edward Sutherland. In the same year, he played Humpty-Dumpty in the commercially unsuccessful Lewis Carroll adaptation Alice in Wonderland, in which numerous other film stars also appeared. On the other hand, the comedy It's a Gift (Norman Z. McLeod, 1934) was a great success. Fields plays a family man who is troubled by nagging wives, bratty Baby Leroy, noisy neighbors, and pesky strangers and seeks his fortune with an orange plantation in California. It contained his famous "sleeping on the back porch" stage sketch. Also in 1934, four more Fields films were released, including You're Telling Me! in which his character - an unsuccessful inventor - receives unexpected help from a princess. The unusual role names Fields bore in his comedies are noteworthy: Professor Eustance McGargle, Elmer Prettywillie, Augustus Q. Winterbottom, J. Effingham Bellweather, Rollo La Rue, Egbert Sousè ("accent grave over the e"), Harold Bissonette ("pronounced Bissonay"), Ambrose Wolfinger, Larson E. Whipsnade, Cuthbert J. Twillie or T. Frothingill Bellows. The names were chosen by himself.

 

W.C. Fields' most famous role was the good-natured but notoriously profligate Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield (George Cukor, 1935). David was played by Freddie Bartholomew, who was only ten years old. Fields admired the Charles Dickens book and wanted desperately to play Mr. Micawber in the film, so he agreed to forego his usual ad-libs and put aside his distaste at working with child actors. After the film's release, Fields received excellent reviews; the New York Times even saw Fields as a "spiritual descendant" of Mr. Micawber. David Copperfield was the only film in which he acted as the script dictated and he did not improvise spontaneously in front of the camera. In 1936, W.C. Fields was forced to temporarily stop working due to an illness exacerbated by his alcoholism. he even gave up alcohol during this convalescence. His contract expired and was not renewed. He then turned to the radio and appeared in mostly spontaneous dialogues on Charlie McCarthy's radio shows with Edgar Bergen. To his surprise, his trading insults with ventriloquist's dummy Charlie McCarthy made him famous again and in 1938, he returned to the big screen. In 1939 he switched to Universal where he made films written mainly by and for himself. He had two of his biggest film successes at Universal in 1940, one alongside Mae West in the frivolous comedy My little Chickadee (Edward F. Cline, 1940), the other in the title role in The Bank Dick (Edward F. Cline, 1940), one of his best-known films today. But his doctor's pleas for moderation did not help, and Fields persisted in his excessive consumption of alcohol, particularly gin. His last starring role was in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (Edward F. Cline, 1941). After long arguments with Universal, he secured almost complete artistic control over the film. The finished result enraged Universal Pictures and was a comedy full of surreal comedy and critical references to the Hollywood business. After that he largely retired from show business, taking only guest roles in a few feature films and occasional appearances on radio shows. In 1945, suffering from several illnesses (bouts of pneumonia, cirrhosis, etc.), he had to enter a sanatorium. He passed away in Pasadena in 1946. Ironically, W.C. Fields died on the holiday he always said he detested, Christmas Day. W.C. Fields was married in 1901 to Harriet Hughes, his partner in juggling performances at the time, and they had one child, William Jr. (1904). Although Hughes and Fields remained married until his death in 1946, they separated in 1908. He had another son with girlfriend Bessie Poole, named William Rexford Fields Morris (1917). His last mistress, Carlotta Monti, with whom he lived for 14 years, described some amusing and insightful anecdotes in the book 'W.C. Fields and Me'. He is interred at Forest Lawn, Glendale, CA, in the Great Mausoleum, Holly Terrace entrance, Hall of Inspiration. He was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Motion Pictures at 7004 Hollywood Blvd. and for Radio at 6316 Hollywood Blvd.

 

Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch, French, and English), and IMDb.

 

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Vintage card. Photo: Universal.

 

Tall, sultry, green-eyed blonde Peggie Castle (1927-1973) was an American actress who specialised in playing the "other woman" in B-movies. Castle was Miss Cheesecake in 1949.

 

Peggie (sometimes written as Peggy) Castle was born as Peggy Thomas Blair in Appalachia, Wise County, Virginia, in 1927. Her mother was Elizabeth Blair. Her father, Doyle H. Blair, was a director of an industrial relations firm. When the family moved to Hollywood, he was hired as a studio manager at Goldwyn Studios. He also worked as a business manager for Donald O'Connor. Kater, Peggie changed her surname Blair at the first studio in which she worked. She took lessons in drama when she was 8 years old. Castle graduated from Hollywood High School and attended Mills College for two years. Castle's first work as an actress came in the soap opera 'Today's Children'. Then a spot on Radio Theatre in 1947 brought her a screen test offer from 20th Century Fox. According to Hollywood lore, Castle was discovered by a talent scout while eating a shrimp cocktail in the seafood bar of the Farmer's Market in Beverly Hills. She was signed to a seven-year contract with Universal-International and made her film debut in the 1947 film When a Girl's Beautiful. In 1949, she was named "Miss Cheesecake" by the Southern California Restaurant Association. Later that year, the Junior Chamber of Commerce named Castle "Miss Three Alarm". She later appeared in the films Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949), Payment on Demand (1951), The Prince Who Was a Thief (1951), Invasion U.S.A. (1952), 99 River Street (1953), Beginning of the End (1957) and Arrivederci Roma (1957). She often starred in Westerns, appearing in nearly a dozen between Wagons West (1952) and Hell's Crossroads (1957).

 

In the 1950s, Peggie Castle moved into television. She appeared in multiple guest roles on Fireside Theater, Cheyenne, 77 Sunset Strip, and The Restless Gun. In 1957 she appeared as Amy Gordon on Cheyenne in the episode titled The Spanish Grant. In 1957 she played defendant Sally Fenner in the Perry Mason episode, The Case of the Negligent Nymph. Also in 1957 she was a primary star on Gunsmoke, playing a forlorn Nita Tucker in the episode Chester’s Murder. From 1959 to 1962, she co-starred in the television Western series Lawman — her first continuing series. Her role as saloon owner Lily Merrill brought out a new dimension of Castle's talent. She stated, "For the first time in my life I'm a singer — that's the producer's opinion, not mine." Her final on-screen role was a guest appearance in a 1966 episode of The Virginian. In 1958, Castle acted with Jesse White in a stage production of 'A Hole in the Head' at the Civic Playhouse in Los Angeles. In 1960, Castle and Peter Brown (who also was a regular in Lawman) traveled to rodeos, performing as a song-and-dance team. Castle stressed, "We're very careful not to sing any romantic songs," treating the act more like a brother-sister team. The duo's stops included St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Albuquerque. In 1960, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Castle was married four times. She married Revis T. Call, a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army in 1945, in Los Angeles. Following that marriage, she began using Peggy Call as her professional name. They divorced in 1950. She married Universal publicist Robert H. Raines in 1951 and they divorced in 1954. In 1955, Castle married producer and director William McGarry. They had a daughter, Erin McGarry. Castle divorced McGarry in 1969. In 1971, Castle married Arthur Morganstern, her fourth husband. They remained married until Morganstern's death in 1973. Castle suffered from alcoholism. In 1969, she attempted suicide by taking an overdose of barbiturates and slashing her wrists. She was later committed to California's Camarillo State Hospital for her alcoholism, but she regressed after her release. In 1973, her third husband, William McGarry found her body on the couch of her Hollywood apartment. Her death was later determined to be caused by cirrhosis. She was only 45.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

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French postcard in the 'Centenaire de la Naissance de Charlie Chaplin 1889-1989' series by Bubbles Inc., Star 150, 1989. Photo: United Artists. Charlie Chaplin and Harry Myers in City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931).

 

English comedian Charles ‘Charlie’ Chaplin (1889-1977) was one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. His most famous role was that of The Tramp with his toothbrush mustache, undersized bowler hat and bamboo cane who struggled to survive while keeping his dignity in a world with great social injustice. Chaplin used mime, slapstick and other visual comedy routines, and he not only starred in his films, but also directed, wrote and produced them, and composed the music as well. His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 years, from the Victorian stage and the Music Hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer, until close to his death at the age of 88. Author George Bernard Shaw called Chaplin "the only genius to come out of the movie industry".

 

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in 1889, in London, England. His parents were both entertainers in the music hall tradition; his father, Charles Spencer Chaplin Sr., was a vocalist and an actor and his mother, Hannah Chaplin, a singer and an actress with the stage name Lilly Harley. They separated before Charlie was three. He lived with his mother and his older half-brother Sydney. Chaplin's father was an alcoholic and had little contact with his son, though Chaplin and Sydney briefly lived with their father and his mistress, while their mentally ill mother lived at an asylum. Hannah's first crisis came in 1894 when she was performing at The Canteen, a theatre in Aldershot. The theatre was mainly frequented by rioters and soldiers. Hannah was injured by the objects the audience threw at her and she was booed off the stage. Backstage, she cried and argued with her manager. Meanwhile, the five-year-old Chaplin went on stage alone and sang a well-known tune at that time, Jack Jones. The young Chaplin brothers forged a close relationship in order to survive. They gravitated to the Music Hall while still very young, and both of them proved to have considerable natural stage talent. At eight Charlie toured in a musical, The Eight Lancaster Lads. Nearly 11, he appeared in Giddy Ostende at London's Hippodrome. Chaplin's early years of desperate poverty were a great influence on his characters. Themes in his films in later years would re-visit the scenes of his childhood deprivation in Lambeth. His father died of cirrhosis of the liver when Charlie was twelve in 1901. Chaplin's mother died in 1928 in Hollywood, seven years after having been brought to the US by her sons. Unknown to Charlie and Sydney until years later, they had a half-brother through their mother. The boy, Wheeler Dryden, was raised abroad by his father but later connected with the rest of the family and went to work for Chaplin at his Hollywood studio.

 

From age 17 to 24 Charlie Chaplin was with Fred Karno's English vaudeville troupe. He first toured the United States with the Fred Karno troupe from 1910 to 1912. After five months back in England, he returned to the US for a second tour. In the Karno Company was also his brother Sydney and Arthur Stanley Jefferson, who later became known as Stan Laurel. In late 1913, Chaplin's act with the Karno Troupe was seen by Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, Minta Durfee, and Fatty Arbuckle. Sennett hired him for his studio, the Keystone Film Company as a replacement for Ford Sterling. Chaplin had considerable initial difficulty adjusting to the demands of film acting and his performance suffered for it. After Chaplin's first film appearance, Making a Living (Henry Lehrman, 1914) was filmed, Sennett felt he had made a costly mistake. Mabel Normand persuaded him to give Chaplin another chance, and she directed and wrote a handful of his earliest films. He first played The Tramp in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice (Henry Lehrman, 1914). This picture saw him wearing baggy pants borrowed from 'Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle', size 14 shoes belonging to Ford Sterling (and worn upside down to keep them from falling off), a tiny jacket from Keystone Kop Charles Avery, a bowler hat belonging to Arbuckle's father-in-law and some crepe paper belonging to Mack Swain (which became the tramp's mustache). The only item that actually belonged to Charlie was the whangee cane. Two films Chaplin made in 1915, The Tramp and The Bank created the characteristics of his screen persona. Chaplin was influenced by his predecessor, the French silent film comedian Max Linder, to whom he dedicated one of his films. Quickly the little tramp became the most popular Keystone star. From the April 1914 one-reeler Twenty Minutes of Love (Charles Chaplin, Joseph Maddern, 1914) onwards he was writing and directing most of his films, by 1916 he was also producing, and from 1918 composing the music. He made 35 films in 1914, moved to Essanay in 1915, and did 14 more, then jumped over to Mutual for 12 two-reelers in 1916 and 1917. In 1918 he joined First National (later absorbed by Warner Bros.) and in 1919 formed United Artists along with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and D.W. Griffith. His first full-length film was The Kid (1921) with Jackie Coogan; his first for UA, which he produced and directed himself, was A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (1923) starring Edna Purviance. Chaplin continued to play the Tramp through dozens of short films and, later, feature-length productions. In only a handful of films, he played characters other than the little tramp. The Tramp was closely identified with the silent era, and was considered an international character; when the sound era began in the late 1920s, Chaplin refused to make a talkie featuring the character. City Lights (1931) featured no dialogue. Chaplin officially retired the character in Modern Times (1936), which appropriately ended with the Tramp and his girl (played by Chaplin’s third wife, Paulette Godard) walking down an endless highway toward the horizon. The film was only a partial talkie and is often called the last silent film. The Tramp remains silent until near the end of the film when, for the first time, his voice is finally heard, albeit only as part of a French/Italian-derived gibberish song. This allowed the Tramp to finally be given a voice but not tarnish his association with the silent era.

 

Charlie Chaplin’s high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin's identification with the left ultimately forced him to resettle in Europe during the McCarthy era in the early 1950s. Chaplin's political sympathies always had laid with the left. His silent films made prior to the Great Depression typically did not contain overt political themes or messages, apart from the Tramp's plight in poverty and his run-ins with the law, but his 1930s films were more openly political. Modern Times (1936) depicts workers and poor people in dismal conditions. In The Great Dictator (1940) Chaplin plays a humorous caricature of Adolf Hitler. Some thought the film was poorly done and in bad taste. However, it grossed over $5 million and earned five Academy Award Nominations. The final dramatic speech in The Great Dictator, which was critical of following patriotic nationalism without question, and his vocal public support for the opening of a second European front in 1942 to assist the Soviet Union in World War II were controversial. Chaplin declined to support the war effort as he had done for the First World War which led to public anger, although his two sons saw service in the Army in Europe. For most of World War II he was fighting serious criminal and civil charges related to his involvement with 22-year old actress Joan Barry. In 1943 he was accused of fathering her child; the papers made much of the scandal, but it was proved in a court trial that he was not the father. The same year he entered his fourth marriage, to Oona Chaplin, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill. After the war, his black comedy, Monsieur Verdoux (1947) showed a critical view of capitalism. Chaplin's final American film, Limelight, was less political and more autobiographical in nature. Limelight also featured Claire Bloom and Chaplin’s longtime friend, Buster Keaton. In 1952, Chaplin left the US for what was intended as a brief trip home to the United Kingdom for the London premiere of Limelight. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, learned of the trip and negotiated with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to revoke Chaplin's re-entry permit, exiling Chaplin so he could not return for his alleged political leanings. His following European-made film, A King in New York (1957), satirized the political persecution and paranoia that had forced him to leave the US five years earlier.

 

Charles Chaplin made his home in Vevey, Switzerland. His final two films were made in London: A King in New York (1957) in which he starred, wrote, directed and produced; and A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), which he directed, produced, and wrote. The latter film stars Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando, and Chaplin made his final on-screen appearance in a brief cameo role as a seasick steward. He also composed the music for both films. The theme song from A Countess From Hong Kong, This is My Song, reached number one in the UK as sung by Petula Clark. Chaplin also compiled a film The Chaplin Revue (1959) from three First National films A Dog's Life (1918), Shoulder Arms (1918), and The Pilgrim (1923) for which he composed the music and recorded an introductory narration. As well as directing these final films, Chaplin also wrote My Autobiography, between 1959 and 1963, which was published in 1964. He briefly and triumphantly returned to the United States in April 1972, with his wife Oona, to receive an Honorary Oscar, and also to discuss how his films would be re-released and marketed. Chaplin's last completed work was the score for his film A Woman of Paris (1923), which was completed in 1976, by which time Chaplin was extremely frail, even finding communication difficult. Charles Chaplin died in his sleep in Vevey, Switzerland on Christmas Day 1977. He and Oona had eight children, including film actress Geraldine Chaplin. From his marriages, he had a total of 11 children. In 1921 Chaplin was decorated by the French government for his outstanding work as a filmmaker and was elevated to the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1952. In 1929, at the first Oscar awards, he won a special award "for versatility and genius in writing, acting, directing and producing" The Circus (1928). In 1975 he was named Knight Commander of the British Empire. And in 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Chaplin the 10th Greatest Actor on The 50 Greatest Screen Legends list. His bowler and cane were sold for $150,000 in 1987.

 

Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Amy Smith (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5709/1, 1930-1931. Photo: SF / United Artists. Charlie Chaplin in City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931).

 

English comedian Charles ‘Charlie’ Chaplin (1889-1977) was one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. His most famous role was that of The Tramp with his toothbrush mustache, undersized bowler hat and bamboo cane who struggled to survive while keeping his dignity in a world with great social injustice. Chaplin used mime, slapstick and other visual comedy routines, and he not only starred in his films, but also directed, wrote and produced them, and composed the music as well. His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 years, from the Victorian stage and the Music Hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer, until close to his death at the age of 88. Author George Bernard Shaw called Chaplin "the only genius to come out of the movie industry".

 

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in 1889, in London, England. His parents were both entertainers in the music hall tradition; his father, Charles Spencer Chaplin Sr., was a vocalist and an actor and his mother, Hannah Chaplin, a singer and an actress with the the stage name Lilly Harley. They separated before Charlie was three. He lived with his mother and his older half-brother Sydney. Chaplin's father was an alcoholic and had little contact with his son, though Chaplin and Sydney briefly lived with their father and his mistress, while their mentally ill mother lived at an asylum. Hannah's first crisis came in 1894 when she was performing at The Canteen, a theatre in Aldershot. The theatre was mainly frequented by rioters and soldiers. Hannah was injured by the objects the audience threw at her and she was booed off the stage. Backstage, she cried and argued with her manager. Meanwhile, the five-year old Chaplin went on stage alone and sang a well-known tune at that time, Jack Jones. The young Chaplin brothers forged a close relationship in order to survive. They gravitated to the Music Hall while still very young, and both of them proved to have considerable natural stage talent. At eight Charlie toured in a musical, The Eight Lancaster Lads. Nearly 11, he appeared in Giddy Ostende at London's Hippodrome. Chaplin's early years of desperate poverty were a great influence on his characters. Themes in his films in later years would re-visit the scenes of his childhood deprivation in Lambeth. His father died of cirrhosis of the liver when Charlie was twelve in 1901. Chaplin's mother died in 1928 in Hollywood, seven years after having been brought to the US by her sons. Unknown to Charlie and Sydney until years later, they had a half-brother through their mother. The boy, Wheeler Dryden, was raised abroad by his father but later connected with the rest of the family and went to work for Chaplin at his Hollywood studio.

 

From age 17 to 24 Charlie Chaplin was with Fred Karno's English vaudeville troupe. He first toured the United States with the Fred Karno troupe from 1910 to 1912. After five months back in England, he returned to the US for a second tour. In the Karno Company was also his brother Sydney and Arthur Stanley Jefferson, who later became known as Stan Laurel. In late 1913, Chaplin's act with the Karno Troupe was seen by Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, Minta Durfee, and Fatty Arbuckle. Sennett hired him for his studio, the Keystone Film Company as a replacement for Ford Sterling. Chaplin had considerable initial difficulty adjusting to the demands of film acting and his performance suffered for it. After Chaplin's first film appearance, Making a Living (Henry Lehrman, 1914) was filmed, Sennett felt he had made a costly mistake. Mabel Normand persuaded him to give Chaplin another chance, and she directed and wrote a handful of his earliest films. He first played The Tramp in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice (Henry Lehrman, 1914). This picture saw him wearing baggy pants borrowed from 'Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle', size 14 shoes belonging to Ford Sterling (and worn upside down to keep them from falling off), a tiny jacket from Keystone Kop Charles Avery, a bowler hat belonging to Arbuckle's father-in-law and some crepe paper belonging to Mack Swain (which became the tramp's mustache). The only item that actually belonged to Charlie was the whangee cane. Two films Chaplin made in 1915, The Tramp and The Bank, created the characteristics of his screen persona. Chaplin was influenced by his predecessor, the French silent film comedian Max Linder, to whom he dedicated one of his films. Quickly the little tramp became the most popular Keystone star. From the April 1914 one-reeler Twenty Minutes of Love (Charles Chaplin, Joseph Maddern, 1914) onwards he was writing and directing most of his films, by 1916 he was also producing, and from 1918 composing the music. He made 35 films in 1914, moved to Essanay in 1915 and did 14 more, then jumped over to Mutual for 12 two-reelers in 1916 and 1917. In 1918 he joined First National (later absorbed by Warner Bros.) and in 1919 formed United Artists along with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith. His first full-length film was The Kid (1921) with Jackie Coogan; his first for UA, which he produced and directed himself, was A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (1923) starring Edna Purviance. Chaplin continued to play the Tramp through dozens of short films and, later, feature-length productions. In only a handful of films he played characters other than the little tramp. The Tramp was closely identified with the silent era, and was considered an international character; when the sound era began in the late 1920’s, Chaplin refused to make a talkie featuring the character. City Lights (1931) featured no dialogue. Chaplin officially retired the character in Modern Times (1936), which appropriately ended with the Tramp and his girl (played by Chaplin’s third wife, Paulette Godard) walking down an endless highway toward the horizon. The film was only a partial talkie and is often called the last silent film. The Tramp remains silent until near the end of the film when, for the first time, his voice is finally heard, albeit only as part of a French/Italian-derived gibberish song. This allowed the Tramp to finally be given a voice but not tarnish his association with the silent era.

 

Charlie Chaplin’s high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin's identification with the left ultimately forced him to resettle in Europe during the McCarthy era in the early 1950s. Chaplin's political sympathies always had laid with the left. His silent films made prior to the Great Depression typically did not contain overt political themes or messages, apart from the Tramp's plight in poverty and his run-ins with the law, but his 1930s films were more openly political. Modern Times (1936) depicts workers and poor people in dismal conditions. In The Great Dictator (1940) Chaplin plays a humorous caricature of Adolf Hitler. Some thought the film was poorly done and in bad taste. However, it grossed over $5 million and earned five Academy Award Nominations. The final dramatic speech in The Great Dictator, which was critical of following patriotic nationalism without question, and his vocal public support for the opening of a second European front in 1942 to assist the Soviet Union in World War II were controversial. Chaplin declined to support the war effort as he had done for the First World War which led to public anger, although his two sons saw service in the Army in Europe. For most of World War II he was fighting serious criminal and civil charges related to his involvement with 22-year old actress Joan Barry. In 1943 he was accused of fathering her child; the papers made much of the scandal, but it was proved in a court trial that he was not the father. The same year he entered his fourth marriage, to Oona Chaplin, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill. After the war, his black comedy, Monsieur Verdoux (1947) showed a critical view of capitalism. Chaplin's final American film, Limelight, was less political and more autobiographical in nature. Limelight also featured Claire Bloom and Chaplin’s longtime friend, Buster Keaton. In 1952, Chaplin left the US for what was intended as a brief trip home to the United Kingdom for the London premiere of Limelight. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, learned of the trip and negotiated with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to revoke Chaplin's re-entry permit, exiling Chaplin so he could not return for his alleged political leanings. His following European-made film, A King in New York (1957), satirized the political persecution and paranoia that had forced him to leave the US five years earlier.

 

Charles Chaplin made his home in Vevey, Switzerland. His final two films were made in London: A King in New York (1957) in which he starred, wrote, directed and produced; and A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), which he directed, produced, and wrote. The latter film stars Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando, and Chaplin made his final on-screen appearance in a brief cameo role as a seasick steward. He also composed the music for both films. The theme song from A Countess From Hong Kong, This is My Song, reached number one in the UK as sung by Petula Clark. Chaplin also compiled a film The Chaplin Revue (1959) from three First National films A Dog's Life (1918), Shoulder Arms (1918) and The Pilgrim (1923) for which he composed the music and recorded an introductory narration. As well as directing these final films, Chaplin also wrote My Autobiography, between 1959 and 1963, which was published in 1964. He briefly and triumphantly returned to the United States in April 1972, with his wife Oona, to receive an Honorary Oscar, and also to discuss how his films would be re-released and marketed. Chaplin's last completed work was the score for his film A Woman of Paris (1923), which was completed in 1976, by which time Chaplin was extremely frail, even finding communication difficult. Charles Chaplin died in his sleep in Vevey, Switzerland on Christmas Day 1977. He and Oona had eight children, including film actress Geraldine Chaplin. From his marriages he had a total of 11 children. In 1921 Chaplin was decorated by the French government for his outstanding work as a filmmaker, and was elevated to the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1952. In 1929, at the first Oscar awards, he won a special award "for versatility and genius in writing, acting, directing and producing" The Circus (1928). In 1975 he was named Knight Commander of the British Empire. And in 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Chaplin the 10th Greatest Actor on The 50 Greatest Screen Legends list. His bowler and cane were sold for $150,000 in 1987.

 

Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Amy Smith (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Almost five years ago I came out of hospital..

I had looked many times on the website of the kennel with fox-terriers.. and when I looked again I noticed there was a litter of puppies.

I called the owner and was allowed to watch... He took the puppies from the litter and I sat on the floor.. three little boys crept around to me and very soon crept one of the puppies on my lap.. he managed to wriggle up and sat on my shoulder.. I got a lick in my neck and face and I was falling in love.. This had to be.. This little puppy dog had chosen me....

Was it my perfume or was it to myself.. let me dream that it was me.. :)

He always follows me in everything.

 

Sometimes I do not know ... I will write / tell or not ...

My health goes with ups and downs because I have Ankylosing Spondylitis and Crohn's disease.

I'm feeling very tired a long time.. i have fever since September.. and there are several studies done in the hospital.. Meanwhile, the diagnosis is: Primary sclerosing cirrhosis (PSC).. a disease in which inflamed bile ducts slowly damage the liver.. No rosy news.. because it can not be cured and that means a lot in the future.. I hope that the new drugs and spring will give me more energy..

 

ill.. with ups and downs.. and I think it is time for a new UP... :)

I dream about a next holiday.. dreams.. traveling with our motorhome through Europe.. or taking a flight back to Nepal.. a big wish.. because.. if you been once there.. you fall in love with the people in the mountains.. making new plans.. Life Now..

But also dreams by all the nice pictures I made...

.

Sorry to everyone..

for the silence on my side...

I'll try to be some more present on flickr..

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the death of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and is a very important day to the Republic of Turkey..

   

10th Nov is the date that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk passed away at the Dolmabahche Palace in Istanbul

 

Personal life

Main article: Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's personal life

Mustafa Kemal married Latife Uşaklıgil. They divorced after 3 years of marriage. Atatürk adopted seven daughters and a son. In his leisure time, he enjoyed reading, horseback riding, chess and swimming. He was also an avid dancer and enjoyed both the waltz and traditional Zeybek folk dances. Atatürk published many books and kept a personal journal. The "Nutuk," a thirty-six hour speech written and given by Mustafa Kemal to the Grand National Assembly over the course of six days that describes events leading to the formation of the Republic of Turkey, was first published in 1927 and then has been re-published several times.

 

During 1937, indications of Atatürk's worsening health started to appear. In the early 1938, while he was on a trip to Yalova, he suffered from a serious illness. He was recommended to go to İstanbul for treatment, where he was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver.[96] During his stay in İstanbul, he made an effort to keep up with his regular lifestyle for a while. He died on 10 November 1938, at the age of 57. Atatürk's funeral called forth both sorrow and pride in Turkey, and seventeen countries sent special representatives, while nine contributed with armed detachments to the cortège.[97] On November 1953, Mustafa Kemal's remains were taken from the Ethnography Museum of Ankara.[98] Atatürk finally came to rest at his mausoleum, the Anıtkabir. In his will, he donated all of his possessions to the Republican People's Party, bound to the condition that, through the yearly interest of his funds, his sister Makbule and his adopted children will be looked after, the higher education of the children of İsmet İnönü will be funded, and the Turkish Language Association and Turkish Historical Society will be given the rest.

   

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%c3%bcrk#Personal...

 

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PS....am working on a few photos today in processing therefore I will catch up later this evening..have a wonderful Monday my friends and sorry for my absense over the weekend..just needed a few days off..