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Altagracia Nova
A-Nova Music
Saturday, Desember 3rd, 2016
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Published work. An older image taken for and used as ad for the Harl Taylor bag line. Funny tag line. :0).
Contrails.
National Geographic Magazine published photo.
See clouds album www.flickr.com/photos/whitecontrail/albums/72157719504928025
The Postcard
A postcard published by J. Beagles of London E.C. The photography was by W. & D. Downey.
The firm of J. Beagles & Co. was started by John Beagles (1844-1909). The company produced a variety of postcards including an extensive catalogue of celebrity (stage and screen) portrait postcards. After Beagle’s death, the business continued under its original name until it closed in 1939.
The card was posted on Tuesday the 8th. September 1903 to:
Miss Beryl Turner,
'Dunstead',
Langley Mill,
Nr. Nottingham.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"You forgot to give me
your Brighton address,
and therefore I send
these home.
J.G.N."
Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson
Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson (16th. January 1853 – 6th. November 1937) was an English actor and theatre manager.
He was considered the finest Hamlet of the Victorian era and one of the finest actors of his time, despite his dislike of the job and his lifelong belief that he was temperamentally unsuited to acting.
Forbes-Robertson's Early Years
Born in London, Johnston was the eldest of the eleven children of John Forbes-Robertson, a theatre critic and journalist from Aberdeen, and his wife Frances.
One of his sisters, Frances (1866–1956), and three of his brothers, Ian Forbes-Robertson (1859–1936), Norman Forbes-Robertson (1858–1932) and John Kelt (Eric Forbes-Robertson) (1865–1935), also became actors.
He was educated at Charterhouse School. Originally intending to become an artist, he trained for three years at the Royal Academy. He began a theatrical career out of a desire to be self-supporting, when the dramatist William Gorman Wills, who had seen him in private theatricals, offered him a role in his play 'Mary Queen of Scots'.
His many performances led him into, among other things, travel to the U.S., and work with Sir Henry Irving. He was hailed as one of the most individual and refined of English actors.
Johnston was a personal friend of the Duke of Sutherland and his family, and often stayed with them at Trentham Hall; he is known to have recommended to them various writers and musicians in dire need of assistance.
Forbes-Robertson first came to prominence playing second leads to Henry Irving before making his mark in the role of Hamlet. One of his early successes was in W. S. Gilbert's 'Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith'.
In 1882, he starred with Lottie Venne and Marion Terry in G. W. Godfrey's comedy 'The Parvenu' at the Court Theatre.
George Bernard Shaw wrote the part of Caesar in 'Caesar and Cleopatra' for him. Shaw stated:
"I wrote 'Caesar and Cleopatra' for Forbes-Robertson,
because he is the classic actor of our day, and had
a right to require such a service from me.
Forbes-Robertson is the only actor I know who can
find out the feeling of a speech from its cadence.
His art meets the dramatist’s art directly, picking it
up for completion and expression without
explanations or imitations … Without him 'Caesar
and Cleopatra' would not have been written".
Forbes-Robertson's other notable roles were Romeo, Othello, Leontes in 'The Winter's Tale', and the leading role in 'The Passing of the Third Floor Back'; performed on Broadway in 1908.
Forbes-Robertson's Later Years
Johnston did not play Hamlet until he was 44 years old, but after his success in the part he continued playing it until 1916, including a surviving silent film (1913).
In a theatre review of Forbes-Robertson’s performance in Hamlet published in The Saturday Review (2nd. October 1897) George Bernard Shaw wrote:
"Nothing half so charming has been seen
by this generation. It will bear seeing again
and again. … His intellect is the organ of his
passion.
His eternal self-criticism is alive and thrilling
as it can possibly be. Mr. Forbes-Robertson’s
own performance has a continuous charm,
interest and variety, which are the result not
only of his well-known grace and
accomplishment as an actor, but of a genuine
delight — the rarest thing on our stage —
in Shakespeare’s art, and a natural familiarity
with the plane of his imagination".
Forbes-Robertson The Artist
Forbes-Robertson was also a talented artist who painted a portrait of his mentor Samuel Phelps that currently hangs in the Garrick Club in London.
Forbes-Robertson - Relationships and Marriage
Forbes-Robertson acted in plays with the actress Mary Anderson in the 1880's. He became smitten with her, and asked her hand in marriage. She kindly turned him down, though they remained friends.
Later he and actress Beatrice Campbell enjoyed a brief affair during the time she starred with him in a series of Shakespearean plays in the mid-1890's.
In 1900, at the age of 47, he married American-born actress Gertrude Elliott (1874–1950), sister of Maxine Elliott, with whom he had four daughters.
Daughters of Forbes-Robertson and Gertrude Elliott
Their first daughter was Maxine Forbes-Robertson, known as 'Blossom', who married the aircraft designer F. G. Miles and became a director and designer of the Miles Aircraft company.
Their second daughter Jean Forbes-Robertson became an accomplished actress.
Their third daughter was Chloe Forbes-Robertson (1909–1947), an artist.
Diana Forbes-Robertson (1914–1988), their fourth daughter, was a writer who later wrote a biography of her aunt Maxine Elliott.
Knighthood
Johnston Forbes-Robertson was knighted in 1913 at the age of 60, at which point he retired briefly from acting.
American Farewell Tours
Johnston returned to the stage, however, for his first farewell tour of the US in 1914–1915. It began in with a three month run in New York, then travelled the country using eight railroad freight cars to carry the sets, costumes and props for eight shows.
There were also two passenger cars for the actors and personnel. His last appearance was at the Sanders Theatre in Boston with a performance of 'Hamlet'.
A second US farewell tour followed; it travelled to 122 towns, beginning in Detroit in October 1915, with four plays. The tour travelled to Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco — where he learned of the birth of his fourth daughter, Diana.
At this point they decided to reduce the itinerary to only three plays, by eliminating 'Caesar and Cleopatra' from the repertoire. In his autobiography he describes how, on one early morning, the set, including the sphinx, was piled onto a beach and set on fire.
The tour continued into Canada. His last performance as both Hamlet and as an actor, was in 1916 at the Sheldon Lecture Theatre of the University of Harvard, the stage of which had been made to replicate the stage of the Elizabethan Fortune Theatre especially for the Forbes-Robertson’s performance.
Forbes-Robertson's Literary Works
Johnston's literary works include 'The Life and Life-Work of Samuel Phelps' (actor and theatre manager) as well as his own autobiography 'A Player Under Three Reigns' (1925).
Death of Forbes-Robertson
On the 6th. November 1937 Forbes-Robertson died at St. Margaret's Bay, near Dover, Kent, and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, London on the 9th. November. Memorial services were held at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster, London.
A statue of Forbes-Robertson by Brenda Putnam (1932) can be found at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C.
Miss Gertrude Elliott
Gertrude Elliott (December 14th. 1874 — December 24th. 1950), later Lady Forbes-Robertson, was an American stage actress, part of an extended family of theatre professionals including her husband, Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, and her elder sister, Maxine Elliott.
Gertrude Elliott - The Early Years
May Gertrude Dermott was born in Rockland, Maine, a daughter of Thomas and Adelaide Hall Dermott. Her father was a sea captain born in Ireland, and her mother had been a schoolteacher.
Her older sister Maxine left the household for New York City at 16, and Gertrude soon followed. Both of them began using the surname "Elliott" as young women.
The Career of Gertrude Elliott
Elliott's career on stage began in 1894, with a role in Oscar Wilde's 'A Woman of No Importance', in a company that was touring New York state.
Both Elliotts joined a company in San Francisco that toured Australia in 1896. The company was run by Nat C. Goodwin, an actor who soon married Maxine Elliott.
Their company went to London in 1899, and the next year Gertrude was hired into the company of Johnston Forbes-Robertson; Gertrude Elliott and Forbes-Robertson married at the end of 1900, and continued to work together for much of their careers. She was, literally, Ophelia to his Hamlet, Desdemona to his Othello, and Cleopatra to his Caesar.
Away from the stage, Gertrude Elliott starred with her husband in a silent film version of 'Hamlet' in 1913, directed by their friend J. H. Ryley. She also appeared in a 1917 silent film, 'Masks and Faces'.
Gertrude Elliott was a co-founder and president of the Actresses' Franchise League.
Gertrude Elliott and the Great War
During World War I she managed the 'Shakespeare Hut' in Bloomsbury, a project of the YMCA for entertaining and raising morale among war workers.
In 1923, New Zealand gave Gertrude Elliott an award for her work with ANZAC troops during the war.
Personal life of Gertrude Elliott
Gertrude Elliott married English actor Johnston Forbes-Robertson in 1900. They had four daughters, including aircraft designer Maxine (Blossom) Miles, writer Diana Forbes-Robertson, and actress Jean Forbes-Robertson.
Johnston was knighted in 1913, making Gertrude 'Lady Forbes-Robertson' from that time. She was widowed when her husband died in 1937, and Gertrude died in 1950, aged 76 years. Her grandchildren include actress Joanna Van Gyseghem.
There is a plaque marking the birthplace of the Elliott sisters in the Trackside Station in Rockland, Maine.
Jane Arbor
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, the 8th. September 1903 marked the birth in Yeovil of Eileen Norah Murphy. Eileen was a British writer who under the pseudonym Jane Arbor wrote 57 romances for Mills & Boon between 1948 and 1985.
Jane wrote primarily doctor-nurse and foreign romances. Many of her doctor-nurse romances have been re-edited with different titles which include medical terms.
Jane lived in Preston, Sussex.
The Death of Jane Arbor
Jane died on the 4th. February 1994 aged 90 in Worthing, West Sussex.
This photograph was published online in an article in IN YOUR AREA - COMMUNITY NEWS on March 8th 2024 entitled:
'' Wood pigeon quandary and a trip to remember - Writer Sean Wood casts his mind back to a fortuitous trip to Dublin '' by Emma Boff.
With headquarters located at Reach Plc, Floor 23, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5AB this is a UK news and community website for many areas of the country.
The image had previously been selected for sale in the GETTY IMAGES COLLECTION on June 27th 2020 CREATIVE RF gty.im/1252613682 MOMENT ROYALTY FREE COLLECTION, becoming my 5,289th published (I now have 7000+).
©All photographs on this site are copyright: DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams) 2011 – 2020 & GETTY IMAGES ®
No license is given nor granted in respect of the use of any copyrighted material on this site other than with the express written agreement of DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams) ©
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Photograph taken at an altitude of Seventy metres at 08:02am on Friday 26th June 2020, of a an adult Male Woodpigeon (Columba palumbus)off Chessington Avenue in Bexleyheath, Kent.
Wood pigeons are the largest and most common pigeon in the UK, and forms part of the Dove and pigeon family, genus Columba, family Columbidae. Known locally as the 'Culver' in Southeast England, their name is often written in two forms, either as Woodpigeon or as Wood pigeon. Polumbus is the ancient Greek for “a diver”, derived from kolumbao meaning “to dive, swim, or plunge”. κόλυμβος is the Ancient Greek for Columba, which means “a diver”. These game birds are a protected by The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and with over five and a half million breeding pairs in the UK, they are classed as he UK conservation status, meaning they are of least concern.
They can weigh between 480-550g with a length from 40-42cm and a wingspan of 75-80cm.The common wood pigeon was originally described by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (Carl Von Linne after his ennoblement) in his 1758 and 1759 tenth editions of 'SYSTEMA NATURAE', where it was placed with all the other pigeons in the genus Columba and coined the binomial name Columba palumbus which is from the Latin palumbes for a wood pigeon. Of the five subspecies recognised worldwide, the Madeira species is now extinct.
Wood pigeon is also eaten regularly in the UK, a meaty bird with a distinctive deep gamey flavour. It is low in fat and high in protein and iron with a delicate texture that can be enjoyed at any time of the year. Commercially bought whole Wood pigeons sell from as little as a few pounds each.
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Nikon D850 Focal length 600mm Shutter speed: 1/200s Aperture f/6.3 iso320 Image area FX (36 x 24) NEF RAW L (8256 x 5504). NEF RAW L (14 bit uncompressed) Image size L (8256 x 5504 FX). Focus mode AF-C focus. AF-C Priority Selection: Release. Nikon Back button focusing enabled. AF-S Priority selection: Focus. 3D Tracking watch area: Normal 55 Tracking points.AF-Area mode single point & 73 point switchable. Exposure mode: Shutter Priority mode. Matrix metering. Auto ISO sensitivity control on (Max iso 800/ Minimum shutter speed 125). White balance on: Auto1. Colour space: RGB. Active D-lighting: Normal. Vignette control: Normal. Nikon Distortion control: Enabled. Picture control: Auto (Sharpening A +1/Clarity A+1)
Sigma 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3DG OS HSM SPORTS. Lee SW150 MKI filter holder with MK2 light shield and custom made velcro fitting for the Sigma lens. Lee SW150 circular polariser glass filter.Lee SW150 Filters field pouch.Nikon GP-1 GPS module. Hoodman HEYENRG round eyepiece oversized eyecup.Manfrotto MT057C3-G Carbon fibre geared tripod. Neewer Gimbal tripod head with Arca Swiss quick release plate.055XPROB Tripod 3 Sections (Payload: 5.6kgs). Mcoplus professional MB-D850 multi function battery grip 6960.Two Nikon EN-EL15a batteries (Priority to battery in Battery grip). Matin quick release neckstrap. My Memory 128GB Class 10 SDXC 80MB/s card. Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera bag.
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LATITUDE: N 51d 28m 28.12s
LONGITUDE: E 0d 8m 10.47s
ALTITUDE: 57.0m
RAW (TIFF) FILE: 130.00MB NEF: 93.0MB
PROCESSED (JPeg) FILE: 22.00MB
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PROCESSING POWER:
Nikon D850 Firmware versions C 1.10 (9/05/2019) LD Distortion Data 2.018 (18/02/20) LF 1.00
HP 110-352na Desktop PC with AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU 64Bit processor. Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB Data storage. 64-bit Windows 10. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. WD My Passport Ultra 1tb USB3 Portable hard drive. Nikon ViewNX-1 64bit Version 1.4.1 (18/02/2020). Nikon Capture NX-D 64bit Version 1.6.2 (18/02/2020). Nikon Picture Control Utility 2 (Version 2.4.5 (18/02/2020). Nikon Transfer 2 Version 2.13.5. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit.
So you're just hiking along, enjoying the scenery, and suddenly you come upon a wall of graffiti. The peacefulness, the sense of solitude, spoiled...
Actually, finding something like this really magnifies the isolation. People lived here long ago but there are no other signs. The lower part of Dominguez had many boulders like this, one in particular was covered with art. If there's any interest, I'll put that one up as well.
This is an HDR image.
"M.V. QUEEN OF COQUITLAM, Province of British Columbia, Ferry Division - B.C. Ferries, Victoria, B.C.
The Queen of Coquitlam, built in 1976, is one of the newer ships of the British Columbia Ferry system. She is 139.3 metres (457') in length and carries 320 cars and 1100 passengers."
Color photo by B.C. Jennings.
Majestic Post Card
Published, distributed and © by Stan V. Wright Ltd., Victoria, B.C.
Sister ship to the M.V. Queen of Cowichan. Both "C-Class" double-ended super ferries lauched in 1976 at a cost of $20 million each.
these are my pictures from the photo walk on saturday.
to tell you the truth, since this was my first time as a leader, i was much more worried that everyone was having fun than shooting. but fun, they had, and shoot, i did... a few shots, at least.
thanks, Scott Kelby , thanks RC Concepcion
thanks, everyone who worked on the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk
and thanks everyone who came and made it wonderful!
i so want to do this again!
The Wheeling Intelligencer published on Wednesday, July 15th, 1908:
An historic landmark, probably one of the most important remaining in West Virginia, has been removed. The demolition of the Betty Zane cabin, located on Market alley, between Main and Market streets, was completed yesterday, negotiations for the purchase of the place by the local chapter of the Daughters and Sons of the Revolution having fallen flat.
Offers to Mr Feinler were far below the value of the ground occupied by the historic old cabin. It is understood that a number of offers were made by private parties who hoped to secure the property and sell it to the City or state for a large sum.
Many public spirited citizens of Wheeling extensively discussed the advisability of purchasing the property and presenting it to the city to be retained and preserved as a memorial of Wheeling’s early days and the stirring times of Indian warfares. Their offer for the property, however, is said to have been, far below its real value.
Work is soon to he started on a handsome new brick structure that is to replace the old relic.
The famous old building will not be lost to history, however, as M.r Feinler has artfully stored away the logs and in fact every visage of the structure. Many additional relics, bearing out the theory that it was without doubt the original Betty Zane cabin or “powder house,” were discovered when the workmen were excavating in the crude foundations.
Mr. Feinler will begin work on the new building as soon as practicable. It will be a three-story brick structure. The first floor will be used as a business house, and the second and third for flats. The plans will be prepared by Architect Leiner. The brickwork contract has been awarded to Contractor Hamilton and the woodwork will be done by McDonald Brothers.
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On Saturday, May 18th, 1946, the Intelligencer further reported:
Wheeling’s early history is inseparably tied up with Betty Zane’s girlish heroics and one Andrew Christian Maximilian Hess, is seeing to it that the remaining vestige of her sojourn here are preserved for posterity.
When it became known that the logs from the original Betty Zane cabin, which stood for years and years in the Stone & Thomas alley, were stored in an old residence in North Wheeling; a house that was to be razed for the building materials it contained, Andrew bought them and turned them over to Oglebay Park.
The timbers are about 18 inches wide and four inches thick and are excellently preserved, being of walnut. Just what disposition of them will be made at the park is not determined at this time, but they will likely be utilized in a special Betty Zane room for one of the buildings on Oglebay’s blueprints for the future. There are too few of the Zane logs to reconstruct a complete cabin. During the years, some of the cabin’s original logs were used for making gavels for various organizations.
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In the July 2, 1976, Bicentennial edition of the Wheeling News-Register/Intelligencer, the newspaper reported:
"The cabin, located in Stone's Alley, was dismantled about 1910, the logs stored by Mrs. Gibson Caldwell, later by Andrew C. M. Hess. They were presented to Oglebay Park when Wilson Lodge was built and today are an integral part of the Betty Zane room there."
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- Photograph from the collections of the Ohio County Public Library Archives.
➤ Visit the Library's Wheeling History website
The photos on the Ohio County Public Library's Flickr site may be freely used by non-commercial entities for educational and/or research purposes as long as credit is given to the "Ohio County Public Library, Wheeling WV." These photos may not be reproduced in any format for profit or other presentation without the permission of The Ohio County Public Library.
➤ Contact the Ohio County Public Library to request permission for use or publication of materials.
The Postcard
A postcard that was printed and published by Ingram Clark & Co. Ltd. of Ilfracombe. The Candar Hotel caught fire and was subsequently demolished. The fire started at 2:30am on the night of 2nd. September 1983 in the shopping arcade under the Candar hotel. In this fire one life was lost.
The Candar Arcade site became the Candar sheltered residential apartments. The opening of Candar apartments was the last public engagement performed by Charles and Diana, as the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1992.
The card was posted in Barnes, London S.W.13 on Monday the 9th. June 1924 to:
Miss G. Jones,
Scarth Lodge,
Scarth Road,
Barnes,
London S.W.
Local.
The pencilled message on the divided back was as follows:
"So sorry we were out.
Shall be in on Tuesday
evening if you are out
for an hour. Shall be
very pleased to see you.
Love Adam."
Ilfracombe
The novelist Frances Burney stayed in Ilfracombe in 1817. Her diary entries record early 19th.-century life in Ilfracombe: a captured Spanish ship; two ships in distress in a storm; the visit of Thomas Bowdler; and her lucky escape after being cut off by the tide.
A few years later in the 1820's, a set of four tunnels were hand-carved by Welsh miners to permit access to the beaches by horse-drawn carriage as well as on foot. Previously access was gained by climbing the cliffs, rounding the point by boat, swimming or at the lowest tides clambering around the rocks of the point.
These tunnels led to a pair of tidal pools, which in accordance with Victorian morals, were used for segregated male and female bathing. Whereas women were constrained to a strict dress code covering up the whole body, men generally swam naked. The tunnels are still viewable, and are signposted as Tunnels Beaches.
In 1856 writer Mary Ann Evans (pen-name George Eliot) accompanied George Henry Lewes to Ilfracombe to gather materials for his work Seaside Studies published in 1858.
In more recent times actor Peter Sellers lived in the town when his parents managed the Gaiety Theatre. He first stepped on the stage there, and reputedly played the drums. Another actor Terry Thomas visited the town frequently to stay with his sister, and in the same period, Joan and Jackie Collins were schooled here and boarded in the town.
In the last two decades, the town has been home to many artists including Damien Hirst, and George Shaw, a runner up for the Turner Prize.
There is an annual art festival when local artists open their homes for visitors to see their work, and up to 10 permanent art galleries.
The town's first lifeboat was bought in 1828, but a permanent service was not available until the Royal National Lifeboat Institution built a lifeboat station at the bottom of Lantern Hill near the pier in 1866. The present station at Broad Street dates from 1996.
In 1911, the Irish nationalist Anna Catherine Parnell (sister of Charles Stewart Parnell) drowned at Ilfracombe, and is buried in the churchyard at Holy Trinity.
Miss Alice Frances Louisa Phillips (born on the 26th. January 1891 at 85 High Street, Ilfracombe) and her father Mr Escott Robert Phillips (born in 1869 in Cardiff) held 2nd. Class Ticket No. 2 on the Titanic, and set sail from Southampton on the 10th. April 1912 heading for New Brighton, Pennsylvania. Alice was rescued in boat 12, but her father was lost in the disaster.
-- The Great Fire of Ilfracombe
The Great Fire of Ilfracombe started on the night of the 28th. July 1896 in the basement of Mr. William Cole's ironmongery and furniture shop on the corner of Fore Street and Portland Street.
In total 35 houses and business premises were destroyed. Later that year the local volunteer firemen who attended the fire were presented with medals and £2 each at a dinner in their honour at the Royal Clarence Hotel.
Since 1896 there have been at least 10 other major fires in Ilfracombe, the most recent occurring in April 2008.
George Mallory
So what else happened on the day that Adam posted the card?
Well, the 9th. June 1924 (or possibly the 8th. June 1924) marked the death of George Mallory.
George Herbert Leigh Mallory, who was born in Cheshire on the 18th. June 1886, was an English mountaineer who took part in the first three British expeditions to Mount Everest in the early 1920's.
Mallory was introduced to rock climbing and mountaineering as a student at Winchester College. After graduating from Magdalene College, Cambridge, he taught at Charterhouse School whilst climbing in the Alps and the English Lake District.
George served in the British Army during the Great War, and fought at the Somme.
After the war, Mallory returned to Charterhouse before resigning to take part in the 1921 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition.
In 1922, he took part in a second expedition to make the first ascent of the world's highest mountain, in which his team achieved a record altitude of 26,980 ft (8,225 m) without supplemental oxygen.
During the 1924 expedition, Mallory and his climbing partner, Andrew "Sandy" Irvine, disappeared on the northeast ridge of Everest. The pair were last seen when they were about 800 vertical feet (245 m) from the summit.
Mallory's ultimate fate was unknown for 75 years, until his body was discovered on the 1st. May 1999 by an expedition that had set out to search for the climbers' remains.
Whether Mallory and Irvine reached the summit before they died remains a subject of debate, of various theories, and of continuing research.
George Mallory - The Early Years
George Mallory was born in Mobberley, Cheshire, the son of Herbert Leigh-Mallory (1856–1943), a clergyman who changed his surname from Mallory to Leigh-Mallory in 1914.
His mother was Annie Beridge (1863–1946), the daughter of a clergyman in Walton, Derbyshire. George had two sisters and a younger brother, Trafford Leigh-Mallory, the World War II Royal Air Force commander. George was raised in a ten-bedroom house on Hobcroft Lane in Mobberley.
In 1896, Mallory attended Glengorse, a boarding school in Eastbourne. At the age of 13, he won a mathematics scholarship to Winchester College. In his final year there, he was introduced to rock climbing and mountaineering by a master, R. L. G. Irving, who took a few people climbing in the Alps each year.
In October 1905, Mallory entered Magdalene College, Cambridge, to study history. He was a keen oarsman, and rowed for his college.
While at Cambridge University, he became good friends with future members of the Bloomsbury Group, including Rupert Brooke, John Maynard Keynes, James Strachey, Lytton Strachey, and Duncan Grant.
Among these friends, particularly Lytton Strachey, his letters attest a flirtatious, homoerotic and "explicitly gay" friendship. In 1909, Lytton Strachey wrote of Mallory:
"Mon Dieu!—George Mallory! … He's six-foot high,
with the body of an athlete by Praxiteles, and a
face - oh incredible - the mystery of Botticelli, the
refinement and delicacy of a Chinese print, the
youth and piquancy of an unimaginable English
boy."
After gaining his degree, Mallory stayed in Cambridge for a year writing an essay he published as Boswell the Biographer. George lived briefly in France before he began teaching at Charterhouse School in 1910, where he met the poet Robert Graves, then a pupil.
In his autobiography, 'Goodbye to All That', Graves remembered Mallory fondly, both for the encouragement of his interest in literature and poetry, and his instruction in climbing. Graves recalled:
"Mallory was wasted as a teacher
at Charterhouse. He tried to treat
his class in a friendly way, which
puzzled and offended them."
While at Charterhouse, Mallory met his wife, Ruth Turner (1892–1942), who lived in Godalming, Surrey, and they were married in 1914, six days before Britain entered the Great War.
George and Ruth had two daughters and a son: Frances Clare (1915–2001), Beridge Ruth, known as "Berry" (1917–1953), and John (b. 1920).
During the Great War, in December 1915, Mallory was commissioned in the Royal Garrison Artillery as a second lieutenant and was promoted to lieutenant on the 1st. July 1917. Mallory relinquished his commission on the 21st. February 1920, retaining the rank of lieutenant.
After the war, Mallory returned to Charterhouse, but resigned in 1921 to join the first British expedition to Mount Everest. Between expeditions, he attempted to make a living from writing and lecturing, with only partial success. In 1923, he took a job as a lecturer with the Cambridge University Extramural Studies Department. He was given temporary leave so that he could join the 1924 Everest attempt.
Climbing in Europe
In 1910, in a party led by Irving, George and a friend attempted to climb Mont Vélan in the Alps, but turned back shortly before the summit due to Mallory's altitude sickness. In 1911, Mallory climbed Mont Blanc, and made the third ascent of the Frontier ridge of Mont Maudit in a party again led by Irving.
According to Helmut Dumler:
"Mallory was apparently prompted by a
friend on the Western Front in 1916 to write
a highly emotional article of his ascent of
this great climb."
This article was published as 'Mont Blanc from the Col du Géant by the Eastern Buttress of Mont Maudit' in the Alpine Journal.
The article contained George's question, "Have we vanquished an enemy?" [i.e., the mountain] to which he responded, "None but ourselves."
By 1913, Mallory had ascended Pillar Rock in the English Lake District, with no assistance, by what is now known as "Mallory's Route" - currently graded Hard Very Severe 5a (Yosemite Decimal Rating 5.9).
One of Mallory's closest friends and climbing companions was a young woman named Cottie Sanders, who became a novelist with the pseudonym of Ann Bridge. The nature of their relationship is elusive; Sanders was either a "climbing friend" or a "casual sweetheart".
After Mallory died, Cottie wrote a memoir of him, which was never published, but provided much of the material used by later biographers such as David Pye and David Robertson in the novel 'Everest Dream.'
Climbing in Asia
-- The First Expedition
Mallory participated in the initial 1921 Mount Everest expedition that explored routes up to Everest's North Col. The expedition produced the first accurate maps of the region around the mountain, as Mallory, his climbing partner Guy Bullock, and E. O. Wheeler of the Survey of India explored in depth several approaches to its peak.
Under Mallory's leadership, and with the assistance of around a dozen Sherpas, the group climbed several lower peaks near Everest. George and his party were almost certainly the first Westerners to view the Western Cwm at the foot of the Lhotse face, as well as charting the course of the Rongbuk Glacier up to the base of the North Face.
After circling the mountain from the south side, his party finally discovered the East Rongbuk Glacier - the highway to the summit now used by nearly all climbers on the Tibetan side of the mountain.
By climbing up to the saddle of the North Ridge (the 23,030 ft (7,020 m) North Col), they identified a route to the summit via the North-East Ridge over the obstacle of the Second Step.
-- The Second Expedition
In 1922, Mallory returned to the Himalayas as part of the party led by Brigadier General Charles Bruce and climbing leader Edward Strutt, with a view to making a serious attempt on the summit.
Eschewing their bottled oxygen, which was at the time seen as going against the spirit of mountaineering, Mallory, along with Howard Somervell and Edward Norton, almost reached the crest of the North-East Ridge.
Despite being hampered and slowed by the thin air, they achieved a record altitude of 26,980 ft (8,225 m) before weather conditions and the late hour forced them to retreat.
A second party led by George Finch reached an elevation of around 27,300 ft (8,321 m) using bottled oxygen both for climbing and - a first - for sleeping. The party climbed at record speeds, a fact that Mallory seized upon during the next expedition.
-- The Third Expedition
Mallory organised a third unsuccessful attempt on the summit, departing as the monsoon season arrived. On the 7th. June 1922, while he was leading a group of porters down the lower slopes of the North Col of Everest in fresh, waist-deep snow, an avalanche swept over the group, killing seven Sherpas.
The attempt was immediately abandoned, and Mallory was subsequently accused of poor judgement, including by expedition participants such as Dr. Longstaff.
'Because It's There'
Mallory is famously quoted as having replied to the question, "Why did you want to climb Mount Everest?" with the retort, "Because it's there." George's reply has been called "the most famous three words in mountaineering".
Questions have arisen over the authenticity of the quote, and whether Mallory actually said it. Some have suggested that it was a paraphrase by a newspaper reporter, but scrutiny of the original Times report leaves this unresolved.
The phrase was certainly consistent with the direct quotes cited in the report, so it appears not to misrepresent Mallory's attitude.
Mallory's Last Climb
Mallory joined the 1924 Everest expedition, led, as in 1922, by Gen. Charles Bruce. Mallory, who was 37 at the time of the expedition, believed his age would make this his last opportunity to climb the mountain, and when touring the US proclaimed that the expedition would successfully reach the summit.
Mallory and Bruce made the first attempt, which was inexplicably aborted by Mallory at Camp 5. Norton and Somervell then set off from Camp 6, and in perfect weather, Norton managed, without oxygen, to reach 28,120 ft (8,570 m), a new record height.
On the 4th. June 1924, Mallory and Andrew Irvine set off from Advanced Base Camp (ABC) at 21,330 ft (6,500 m) and had already begun using oxygen from the base of the North Col, which they climbed in 2+1⁄2 hours.
Mallory had been converted from his original scepticism about oxygen usage by his failure on his initial assault, and the very rapid ascent of Finch in 1922.
At 08:40 on the 6th. June, they set off, climbing to Camp 5. On the 7th. June, they reached Camp 6. Mallory wrote that he had used only 3⁄4 of one bottle of oxygen for the two days, which suggests a climb rate of some 856 vertical feet per hour.
On the 8th. June, expedition member Noel Odell was moving up behind the pair in a "support role". Around 26,000 ft (7,925 m), he spotted the two climbing a prominent rock step, either the First or Second Step, about 13:00, although Odell might, conceivably, have been viewing the higher, then-unknown, "Third Step". Odell later reported:
"At 12.50, just after I had emerged from a state of
jubilation at finding the first definite fossils on Everest,
there was a sudden clearing of the atmosphere, and
the entire summit ridge and final peak of Everest were
unveiled.
My eyes became fixed on one tiny black spot silhouetted
on a small snow crest beneath a rock step in the ridge;
the black spot moved. Another black spot became
apparent, and moved up the snow to join the other on
the crest.
The first then approached the great rock step and shortly
emerged at the top; the second did likewise. Then the whole
fascinating vision vanished, enveloped in cloud once more".
At the time, Odell observed that one of the men surmounted the Second Step of the northeast ridge. Apart from his testimony, though, no evidence has been found that Mallory and Irvine climbed higher than the First Step; one of their spent oxygen cylinders was found shortly below the First Step, and Irvine's ice axe was found nearby in 1933. They never returned to their camp.
Presumably, Mallory and Irvine died either late the same evening or on the 9th. June. The news of Mallory and Irvine's disappearance was widely mourned in Britain, and the two were hailed as national heroes.
A memorial service was held in London at St Paul's Cathedral on the 17th. October. It was attended by a great assembly of family, friends, and dignitaries including King George V and members of the royal family, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, and his entire Cabinet.
Mallory's will was proven in London on the 17th. December; he bequeathed his estate of £1706 17s. 6d. (roughly equivalent to £103,517 in 2021) to his wife.
Lost on Everest for 75 Years
After their disappearance, several expeditions tried to find their remains, and perhaps, determine if they had reached the summit. Frank Smythe, when on a 1936 expedition, believed he had spotted a body below the place where Irvine's ice axe had been found three years earlier:
"I was scanning the face from base camp through a
high-powered telescope when I saw something queer
in a gully below the scree shelf. Of course, it was a long
way away and very small, but I've a six/six eyesight and
do not believe it was a rock.
This object was at precisely the point where Mallory and
Irvine would have fallen had they rolled on over the scree
slopes."
Smythe wrote this in a letter to Edward Felix Norton. He kept the discovery quiet as he feared press sensationalism, and it was not revealed until 2013, after the letter was found by his son when preparing his biography.
In late 1986, Tom Holzel launched a search expedition based on reports from Chinese climber Zhang Junyan that his tent-mate, Wang Hungbao, had stumbled across "an English dead" at 26,570 ft (8,100 m) in 1975.
On the last day of the expedition, Holzel met with Zhang Junyan, who reiterated that, despite official denials from the Chinese Mountaineering Association, Wang had come back from a short excursion and described finding "a foreign mountaineer" at "8,100 m." Wang was killed in an avalanche the day after delivering his verbal report, so the location was never more precisely fixed.
In 1999, the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition arrived at Everest to search for the lost pair. Within hours of beginning the search on the 1st. May, Conrad Anker found a frozen body at 26,760 ft (8,157 m) on the north face of the mountain.
As the body was found below where Irvine's axe had been found in 1933 at 27,760 ft (8,461.25 m), the team expected it to be Irvine's, and were hoping to recover the camera that he had reportedly carried with him.
They were surprised to find that name tags on the body's clothing bore the name of "G. Leigh Mallory." The body was well preserved, due to the freezing conditions. A brass altimeter, a stag-handled lambsfoot pocket knife with leather slip-case, and an unbroken pair of snow-goggles were recovered from the pockets of the clothing.
Personal effects, including a letter and a bill from a London supplier of climbing equipment, confirmed the identity of the body. The team could not, however, locate the camera that the two climbers took to document their final summit attempt.
Experts from Kodak have said that if a camera is ever found, some chance exists that its film could be developed to produce printable images, if extraordinary measures are taken. Kodak have provided guidance as to the handling of such a camera and the film inside, in the event that it is found.
Before leaving the site of Mallory's death, the expedition conducted an Anglican service for the climber, and covered his remains with a cairn on the mountain.
Sir Edmund Hillary, who with Tenzing Norgay is credited with reaching the Everest summit first, welcomed news of the discovery of Mallory's body, and described as "very appropriate" the possibility that Mallory might turn out to have summited decades earlier. Hillary said:
"He was really the initial pioneer of the
whole idea of climbing Mount Everest."
The 1999 research team returned to the mountain in 2001 to conduct further research. They discovered Mallory and Irvine's last camp, but failed to find either Irvine or a camera. Another initiative in 2004 also proved fruitless.
Reaching the Summit
Whether Mallory and Irvine reached Everest's summit is unknown. The question remains open to speculation, and is the topic of much debate and research.
Mallory's Body
When found, George's body was sun-bleached, frozen, and mummified.
Judging by a serious rope-jerk injury around Mallory's waist, which was encircled by the remnants of a climbing rope, he and Irvine were apparently roped together when one of them slipped.
Mallory's body lay 300 metres (1000 ft) below and about 100 metres (300 ft) horizontal to the location of the ice axe found in 1933, which is generally accepted from three characteristic marks on the shaft as belonging to Irvine.
That the body was relatively unbroken, apart from fractures to the right leg (the tibia and fibula were broken just above the boot), as compared to other bodies in the same location that were known to have fallen from the North-East Ridge, strongly suggests that Mallory could not have fallen from the ice axe site, but must have fallen from much lower down.
The other significant find on Mallory's body was a severe, golf ball-sized puncture wound in his forehead, the likely cause of his death.
The unusual puncture wound is consistent with one inflicted by an ice axe, leading some to conclude that, while Mallory was descending in a self-arrest "glissade", sliding down a slope while dragging his ice axe in the snow to control the speed of his descent, his ice axe may have struck a rock and bounced off, striking him fatally.
Two items of circumstantial evidence from the body suggest that he attempted, or reached, the summit:
-- Mallory's daughter said he carried a photograph of his wife on his person with the intention of leaving it on the summit. The photograph was not found on Mallory's body. Given the excellent preservation of the body, its garments, and other items including documents in his wallet, this points to the possibility that he reached the summit and left the photo there.
On the other hand, Wang (who is known to have taken Mallory's ice axe) might also have taken the photograph for identification purposes, and no one who has subsequently reached the summit has reported seeing any evidence of the photograph or any other trace of their presence there.
-- Mallory's unbroken snow goggles were found in his pocket, suggesting that Irvine and he had made a push for the summit and were descending after sunset. On his attempt a few days earlier, Norton had suffered serious snow blindness because he did not wear his goggles, so Mallory would be unlikely to have dispensed with them in daylight, and given their known departure time and movements, it is unlikely that they would have still been out by nightfall had they not attempted the summit pyramid.
An alternative scenario is that Mallory carried an extra pair, and the pair he was wearing was torn off in his fall.
The Difficult "Second Step"
Experienced modern climbers have mixed views on whether Mallory was capable of climbing the Second Step on the North Ridge. This is now surmounted by a 15 ft (4.6 m) aluminium ladder fixed in place by Chinese climbers in 1975 to bridge this very difficult pitch.
Austrian Theo Fritsche repeated the free climb solo in 2001 under conditions that resembled those encountered during the 1924 Everest expedition, and assessed the climb as having a grade of 5.6–5.7. Fritsche completed the climb without supplementary oxygen, and believes that Mallory could, weather permitting, have reached the summit.
In June 2007, as part of the 2007 Altitude Everest expedition, Conrad Anker and Leo Houlding free-climbed the Second Step, having first removed the Chinese ladder (which was later replaced).
Houlding rated the climb at 5.9, just within Mallory's estimated capabilities. The climb was part of an expedition which tried to recreate the 1924 climb. Eight years earlier, Anker had climbed the Second Step as part of the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition, but had used one point of aid by stepping on a rung of the ladder, which blocked the only available foothold.
At that time, Anker had rated the climb at 5.10, which he considered to be beyond Mallory's capabilities, but after the June 2007 climb, he changed his view and said that Mallory "could have climbed it".
Noel Odell believed that he had seen Mallory and Irvine ascend the Second Step, but eventually changed his story to say it was the First Step. Towards the end of his life, however, he reaffirmed his original view. Recent observations taken from Odell's vantage point by other climbers suggest that Odell would have probably seen the men at the Second Step as he had initially reported.
Theories
A number of different outcomes have been proposed, and new theories continue to be put forward. Most views have the two carrying two cylinders of oxygen each, reaching and climbing either the First or Second Step, where they are seen by Odell.
At this point, two main alternatives remain: either Mallory takes Irvine's oxygen and goes on alone (and may or may not reach the summit); or both go on together until they turn back (having used up their oxygen, or realising that they will do so before the summit).
In either case, Mallory slips and falls to his death while descending, perhaps caught in the fierce snow squall that sent Odell to take shelter in their tent.
Irvine either falls with him, or in the first scenario, dies alone of exhaustion and hypothermia high up on the ridge.
The hypothesis advanced by Tom Holzel in February 2008 is that Odell sighted Mallory and Irvine climbing the First Step for a final look around while they were actually descending from a failed summit bid.
Assessments by Other Climbers
-- Ang Tsering
Ang Tsering, a Sherpa member of the 1924 British Everest Expedition, was interviewed in 2000 by Jonathan Neale. Ang recounted:
"What I liked about George Mallory
was that he was so friendly."
-- Harry Tyndale
Harry Tyndale, one of Mallory's climbing partners, said of Mallory:
"In watching George at work, one was conscious
not so much of physical strength as of suppleness
and balance; so rhythmical and harmonious was
his progress in any steep place that his movements
appeared almost serpentine in their smoothness."
-- Geoffrey Winthrop Young
Geoffrey Winthrop Young, an accomplished mountain climber, held Mallory's ability in awe:
"His movement in climbing was entirely his own.
It contradicted all theory. He would set his foot
high against any angle of smooth surface, fold
his shoulder to his knee, and flow upward and
upright again on an impetuous curve.
Whatever may have happened unseen the while
between him and the cliff… the look, and indeed
the result, were always the same - a continuous
undulating movement so rapid and so powerful
that one felt the rock must yield, or disintegrate."
The First "Real" ascent, or Just to the Summit?
If evidence were found that showed that Mallory or Irvine had reached the summit of Everest in 1924, advocates of Hillary and Norgay's first ascent maintain that the historical record should not be changed to state that Mallory and Irvine made the first ascent.
-- 1965 Mount Everest summiteer H. P. S. Ahluwalia claims that without photographic proof, no evidence shows that Mallory reached the summit and:
"It would be unfair to say that the
first man to scale Mount Everest
was George Mallory".
-- Mallory's son John Mallory, who was three years old when his father died, said:
"To me, the only way you achieve a summit
is to come back alive. The job is only half
done if you don't get down again".
-- Edmund Hillary echoed John Mallory's opinion, asking:
"If you climb a mountain for the first time and die on the
descent, is it really a complete first ascent of the mountain?
I am rather inclined to think personally that maybe it is quite
important, the getting down, and the complete climb of a
mountain is reaching the summit and getting safely to the
bottom again."
-- Hillary's daughter, Sarah, when asked about her father's take on the debate, said:
"His view was that he had got 50 good years
out of being conqueror of Everest, and, whatever
happened, he wasn't particularly worried. That's
my feeling as well."
-- Chris Bonington, the British mountaineer, argued:
"If we accept the fact that they were above the
Second Step, they would have seemed to be
incredibly close to the summit of Everest, and I
think at that stage something takes hold of most
climbers… And I think therefore taking all those
circumstances in view… I think it is quite conceivable
that they did go for the summit… I certainly would
love to think that they actually reached the summit
of Everest. I think it is a lovely thought and I think it is
something, you know, gut emotion, yes I would love
them to have got there. Whether they did or not,
I think that is something one just cannot know."
-- Conrad Anker, who found Mallory's body in 1999, free-climbed the Second Step in 2007 and who has worn replica 1924 climbing gear on Everest, said:
"I believe it is possible, but highly
improbable, that they made it to
the top."
Anker cited the difficulty of the Second Step and the position of Mallory's body. He said that, in his opinion:
"I don't believe they made it… the climbing up there
is so difficult, and I think that Mallory was a very good
climber, and part of being a good climber is knowing
when you're at too much of a risk, and it's time to turn
back.
I think he saw that, and he turned back and it was
either he or Irvine as they were descending the
Yellow Band slipped and pulled the other one off, the
rope snapped and he came to his rest."
-- Robert Graves, who climbed with Mallory, in his autobiography recounts the story, at the time famous in climbing circles, about an ascent that Mallory made as a young man in 1908:
"My friend George Mallory once did an inexplicable
climb on Snowdon. He had left his pipe on a ledge,
half-way down one of the Liwedd precipices, and
scrambled back by a short cut to retrieve it, then up
again by the same route.
No one saw what route he took, but when they came to
examine it the next day for official record, they found an
overhang nearly all the way.
By a rule of the Climbers' Club, climbs are never named
in honour of their inventors, but only describe natural
features.
An exception was made here. The climb was recorded
as follows:
'Mallory's Pipe, a variation on route 2; see adjoining map.
This climb is totally impossible. It has been performed
once, in failing light, by Mr G. H. L. Mallory.'"
The route is now called "Mallory's Slab", a hard V Diff on Y Lliwedd.
The Legacy of George Mallory
Mallory was honoured by having a court named after him at his alma mater, Magdalene College, Cambridge, with an inscribed stone commemorating his death set above the doorway to one of the buildings.
The Friends of Magdalene Boat Club was renamed the Mallory Club in recognition of his achievements in exploration and rowing at the college.
Two high peaks in California's Sierra Nevada, Mount Mallory and Mount Irvine, located a few miles southeast of Mount Whitney, were named after them.
The Times obituary of George Finch called Mallory and Finch "The two best alpinists of their time".
Mallory was captured on film by expedition cameraman John Noel, who released his film of the 1924 expedition, 'The Epic of Everest.' Some of his footage was also used in George Lowe's 1953 documentary 'The Conquest of Everest'.
A documentary on the 2001 Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition, 'Found on Everest', was produced by Riley Morton.
Mallory was played by Brian Blessed in the 1991 re-creation of his last climb, 'Galahad of Everest'.
In Anthony Geffen's 2010 documentary film about Mallory's life and final expedition, 'The Wildest Dream', Conrad Anker and Leo Houlding attempted to reconstruct the climb, dressed and equipped like Mallory and Irvine.
'Everest', a proposed Hollywood version of the 1924 attempt, adapted from Jeffrey Archer's 2009 novel 'Paths of Glory', had first Tom Hardy and then Benedict Cumberbatch slated to play Mallory, by 2014 it was evident that the film was no longer in production. As of late 2021, it is in production again, with Ewan McGregor starring as Mallory.
In April 2015, it was announced that Michael Sheen would play Mallory in a biopic titled 'In High Places', to be written and directed by James McEachen, but as of 2020, McEachen's website stated that it had not been funded.
Tragedy in the mountains has proved a recurring theme in the Mallory line. Mallory's younger brother, Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, met his death on a mountain range when the Avro York carrying him to his new appointment as Air Commander-in-Chief of South East Asia Command crashed in the French Alps in 1944, killing all on board.
A memorial window to George Mallory along with a memorial plaque to Trafford can be found at St. Wilfrid's Church, Mobberley.
Mallory's daughter, Frances Clare, married physiologist Glenn Allan Millikan, who was killed in a climbing accident in Fall Creek Falls State Park, Tennessee.
Frances Mallory's son, Richard Millikan, became a respected climber during the 1960's and '70's. Mallory's grandson, also named George Mallory, reached the summit of Everest in 1995 via the North Ridge with six other climbers as part of the American Everest Expedition of 1995. He left a picture of his grandparents at the summit, citing "unfinished business".
Belgian rock band Girls in Hawaii's song "Mallory's Height" on their 2013 album 'Everest' is a homage to Mallory.
I got one of my photos published in this magazine: Landscape Trades .
It's in April's edition and it will be available online in May =)
I'm really proud and excited about it :)
Big thanks to Melissa Steep (art director).
©2010, FUSINA Dominik
"One instant urban portrait per day" project...
Don't forget to visit and comment my (h)UMAN PORTRAIT photoblog. Thanx.
Publishing date : 07/11/2010
Location : Villefranche (France)
Don't use or publish that photo without my permission.
Aujourd'hui, j'ai demandé à mon ami Georges d'oser se mettre devant mon objectif, le temps d'un petit portrait légèrement improvisé. Il a gentiment accepté.
Roméo, chanteur et compositeur.
Roméo est son nom de scène. Dans la vie de tous les jours, on l'appelle tous Georges. Dans nos souvenirs de jeunesse, il a été le jeune adolescent à la voix d'ange et faisait rêver toutes les... "mamans". Sa chanson fétiche "Maman" ou encore "Ave Maria" lui valurent de recevoir plusieurs disques d'or... qu'il n'est jamais allé chercher !
Il a aussi accompagné nos Noëls en compagnie de Tino Rossi avec "Petit Papa Noël". Qui l'aurait oublié ?
Ce glorieux passé n'est pas parti aux oubliettes, même si depuis bien longtemps, il a laissé les plateaux de télé pour celui des bureaux de rédaction ; il nous propose désormais de partager son expérience en donnant des cours de chant dans un petit village haut perché, dans les hauteurs des monts du Beaujolais. En tendant bien l'oreille, on l'entend au loin faire ses vocalises... ;)
Sacré Rom... Georges !
ENGLISH TRANSLATION :
Note: John faced some cancer in 2015. Sondra is his wife...
How tardy and bizarrely uncharacteristic of me to "come up short" Carol, on the genealogical history of the deceased equine entity called Tony.
Actually the initial send had more text....in my whimpering inadequacies.... I encountered a road block that was insurmountable for my chemo-laced brain.....I cried until Sondra came to my mewling puddle of shameful "masculine-tech" whining on the floor.....she tried to solve the dilemma .....and had "lift-off" for only a portion of the rocket.....basically it was a cluster fuck, a message that was intended for one planet.....but the message splintered,........you received some of the text, and some of it will arrive on Saturn's second inner ring, around 2525. The video that I tried to include with the text....imploded, folding in-ward unto itself.....consuming its life and frames until it resembled a tiny black jube-jube lying on the sidewalk.........not even the slugs were interested.
Tony was 22 when he died.....born in Saskatchewan......had papers.....not the kind of papers that illegal refugees have....but papers that proved he was pure Percheron. Tony was and is the only papered horse we have ever owned. Both his parents....sire and brood mare were registered Percheron. Percheron is a French heavy horse breed.....that basically opened the west, plowed the soil and pulled the goods.
In my world, being papered and registered means nothing....what does matter .......do I like what I see. And with Tony ....it was all good.
I'n John R's world of horses, registered and papered has meaning.
Sondra and I bought Tony along with another horse named Spider.....they were a team.....had worked as a team, pulling wagons and sleighs and also as a logging team for a teamster/logger/farmer/truck-driver from the 100 Mile House area of BC's Caribou region. Spider was a giant of a horse, also Percheron, not registered and not papered. Spider weighted about a ton, Tony was around 1800 lbs......
Spider was tall, quite a bit taller than Tony, so they looked a bit mis-matched....both horses were black as coal..........Tony had one white sock, rear right, if you are looking up the dirt chute........and both had their tails docked.... I'm not a fan of docked tails, but that's the way they came.
The year was 2004, when we heard about these boys being available.....we already had a team.....two wonderful Belgian/Percheron crosses, both unpapered and un-registered, that were named Pat and Mike, that we bought in 1999.
We were thinking of easing up on using Pat and Mike, as we were logging quite a bit. We wanted a younger team.....and Tony and Spider were around 10 ......a little side bar to horse trading.....a horse trader if he's trying to sell a horse , when confronted with the question .....
"so, how old is this horse"......will almost always tell you, he's 9. (old enough to know better but young enough to be strong and eager)(keep that in mind Carol, when it comes time to trade the old boy in)
To really know how old a horse is.....you look at his teeth, and if you know how to read the markings on their teeth, you can come to within a year or two. Many a 9 year old has turned out to be 17 or even older.
Sondra and I heard about the big blacks being for sale.....made some time to come up from the farm to have a look.
Always an adventure....searching out horses.
So up to the 100 Mile House area.....it was early summer....this area, high in elevation, excels in showing its beauty during the summer. It's sparsely populated.....a few small towns dot the region, to offer commerce and alcohol......the area is home to ranches, lots of large acreages, raising and growing beef..... As well as the ubiquitous logging industry.......give us some trees to exploit.
It's a gorgeous part of the province Carol, a high plateau, spotted with numerous lakes, expansive lodge pole pine forests, and these old, well worn ranch settlements.
It was one of these ranches that Tony and Spider were residing ......log house, log out-buildings, log fences, log barn.........right on the edge of a good sized lake.
Tom the owner was ready for us when we arrived....horses were at the hitching rail....harnessed and ready to perform.
But you never jump right into the task at hand .....you have to have the BC chats first.....sort of like kicking the tires when you are looking to buy a "new to you" truck......so the three of us are walking around the horses, hands running over their bodies, asking questions that don't always pertain to horses, "do you know such and such, he has a logging team near Princeton"......." where did these boys come from"...."when did you last use them"....."any problems"....."how are their feet"........"do these boys come with the harness"..... "how long have you lived up here"......."no kidding, I know Ted Guisbrech, we logged together over near Rock Creek".........and so on.
Then .....you ask if it would be ok to see them walk around.........he may say sure, take the lines, or he may say....sure, let me walk them first and then you can have a go.
All this seemingly unimportant prater......registers...it is all telling us about his relationship with his horses.....does he want to make sure the horses are calmed down when it comes time for us to drive them, .......does he think they might be a bit spooky if we take the lines.....is he setting the standard by showing us how he handles them.....all part of the game.
I want him to walk the horses around, to see what kind of relationship he has with them.....how he holds the lines ......where he stands.....how he gets them to move, does he "kiss them up", or "click" them up .....(two very distinct sounds in the horse world)....or does he remain silent, and communicate through the lines.....do they move on their own, when he grabs the lines......does he say their names to get them to move.......does he hold the lines....firm.......loosely.....does he slap the horses rears with the lines to get them to walk.....all of this shows me how this guy gets along with his horses.....gentle, coarsely, frantic, lazy, attentive, casual, ....and this gives me some incite into what we might be buying.
It's such a dance.....you want it to fall into place....you've invested 6 hours of travel one way......you like the initial viewing.....you need a team .....you want it to work. The foot work, the rhythm, the music, the touch, all these "things" need to be right for the dance to feel good...the flow....and eventually the coupling.
Where was I. .....oh yea.... Tom is walking the boys around, they have their harness on, the harness is well worn, with some minor binder-twine fix-it's......binder-twine....the non-natural material they use to tie bales of hay with.....it is ubiquitous with the horse world.....binder-twine is the rural duct-tape....you use it everywhere to tie down, to tie up, to keep apart, to shorten and to lengthen, you use it for clothes lines, and dog leashes, you use it to mark the planting lines for lettuce and carrots.....It almost always comes in the colour orange.....but now they have introduced the colour blue. It the very old days they used wire to wrap bales.
Tom walks the boys around the corral.....whoa-ing them up then asking them to step up(move ahead).....making them "gee" and "haw".....right and left......I watch how his hands work the lines.....lightly.....aggressively.....does he verbally communicate or is it all done with touch (pressure with the lines)......so the lines are long strips of leather or polypropylene that are attached to the bridle, a sort of head set that has the bit, the metal bar that is inserted to the horses mouth, attached to......so every time you pull on the lines it activates the bit......in a good or bad way.....gentle with the lines equates to gentle with the bit......aggressive with the lines, equates to harsh rough bit movement..........I'm certain Carol you've experienced this with the Hun. To get his attention (his noodle buried in a Conan movie) you sometimes have to jerk his bit.
So what you want to see as a perspective buyer, is the owner driving the horses around in a calm atmosphere.....no rodeos.....using "soft" hands........you want the horses displaying a zen.......a zone where they are willing to do what you ask of them.
Think Pointer Sisters......."I want a man with a slow hand....I Want a lover with an easy touch. I want a lover who will take some time. Not come and go in a heated rush"
Now that's what makes a perfect teamster.......Sondra points out that in the equine world, every teamster thinks he has soft hands. Phew, was that air leaving my body!
Then we attach the horses to the double-tree......sometimes made from hard wood and now usually made from metal.....this is the devise that is attached to two big leather straps that are attached to the horses harness.....these straps are called tugs....and then the double tree is attached to the device you want the horses to pull....ie. a wagon, a sleigh, a rake, a mower, or for our purposes a log. The double tree drags on the ground, so sometimes does not drag smoothly, as it gets caught up on debris , small babies, stumps, empty beer cases, that sort of thing......logging horses get acclimatized to this irregular pull and constant clanging, and are not spooked by the sound or pull.....uninitiated horses go ballistic....as they can never run away from the ragged feel, and the scary sound.
Tony and Spider were great.....and after numerous manoeuvres and requests.....lots of backing up, going forward.....asking them to take one step forward and whoa......asking them to stand while putting the lines on the ground......some horses will creep forward....
hooking them up to a big log and pulling it around.....doing the same tasks that we asked of them without the log..... we put them back to the hitching rail......removed their harness.
I ask Tom how "they load"......how easily do they go in a trailer.....a very important feature.....especially for people who move their horses around....like horse loggers.....always going to different sites.......some horses react to trailers like a 9 year old boy going to the dentist.....it can be hell.....and I've participated in many "rodeos" trying to get unwilling horses in a trailer. Both hard on the horse and the handler. Feet stepped on, smashed around by hyper animals, and that's before you get them in the trailer..... Securing them in the trailer is even more ramped up in terms of activity. So having calm, easy going horses to load...can be the deal sealer or breaker.Tom assures me that they "load easy"
We let the horses cool down......and then I picked up every foot......you want a cooperative horse when trimming hooves.....looked in their mouths to check teeth......hands feeling all over their bodies.....feeling and looking for bumps, irregularities, sores.....seeing how the harness fits them, any rubs, buckle wear, .......you try and do a full inspection..........just like the 50 point checkup that your Audi receives every 6 months.
For me it's all fun.....a chance to visit with another teamster.....to check out his stock....see new country.... hear some new lies and stories.
All the while the test drive and chit-chat is happening, Sondra and I are communicating about what we think about the team.....likes and dislikes....this is all done without talking....it's done with eyes, eye brows, facial wrinkles, nostril flares, smiles, hands, and head nods.....we don't want to diss the owner about the abilities of his team, or challenge anything he says about them.....we just register silently the good and bad......we didn't drive 6 hours to tell someone they have a badly mannered team of horses. It's a sort of rural respect and politeness that seems to prevail in rural Canada.
More generalized talk takes place....we find out more about his place.....some of the jobs he did with the team.....his daughter comes out of the house and jumps up on a saddle horse and rides around.....learn that he's bought a truck and car wash in 100 Mile House.....very entrepreneurial ...... He wanders off to feed some animals.... And Sondra and I kick a few horse buns around and decide yes, we want the team......
The negotiations are straight forward....we pay $4000....
In most horse transactions you buy the horse and the seller provides you with a halter and a lead rope......usually the most worn out and manure stained ones he can find in the tack shed.....often repaired with binder-twine, that use to be orange.
We manage, through friendly haggling, to get the harness, a double tree, and some pieces of harness "thrown in" with the 4 grand. We are happy with the deal, he's happy with the deal.
He agrees to feed the horses for a week, and Sondra and I will return the following weekend with our horse trailer, pick them up and bring them to Trinity Valley.
This adventure was wonderful.....a great way to start a new relationship with a new team......we were anxious to play with them, learn more about them.......and see what they could do.
The boys turned out to be all we wished for.....great addition to our already mature and well behaved team of Pat and Mike.....
Spider as he got older developed a rear hip malfunction.....that eventually made it very difficult for him to get up, after he would lie down for a rest and or a roll. At the end I was having to lift him up with the tractor....too complicated to describe, believe me it was as hard on me as it was on Spider.....Spider learned not to lie down too much .....and when he did, he'd try to position himself strategically on a slope so when it was time for lift-off, gravity would help. One time Spider lay down in his corral....winter time....in a hollow and couldn't rise up......thrashed around for awhile, making his bed a skating rink....total ice, caused by his body heat, ..... and even more difficult for him......finally as darkness was settling in I managed to get him up......this was becoming a problem.
In spring time I had a chat with the big boy......I was tiring of the effort it took to get him back up on all "four"...... Eventually the time came and he had his final lie-down.......
After Spider died, Tony was confused and then sad.....no more mate.....these horses when they are teamed up.....often act as one......they eat side by side, they rest side by side......when one heads off in a direction, the other one will follow......when one decides to let it all out and race around the field, full throttle, the other one copies. They are often joined at the hip. So Tony was bummed when Spider passed on, ........and he got little sympathy from the other team......at this point on the calendar, our original team of Pat and Mike, had both died, and we had bought another team, Jackie and Star, younger than both Spider and Tony, and this new team became our "go to team".
Jackie and Star, also Percheron's, also black, but with un-cropped tails, dragging on the ground, beautiful, true warriors......Don Monjoy was so proud of us for staying black, and staying Perch......this team was young, bold, frisky, and dominating. So Tony went to the bottom of the pecking order, and just wasn't too sure where he fit in. Sondra and I continued to show love and attention his way.....and Sondra would harness him and drive him around, but we always felt he was somewhat confused.......and missing his mate. But through that wondering, he was always a treat to be around.....he was extremely handsome.....very curious.....enormously smart.........and we always said he had a great ass.... And we will miss him.
Well now he can rejoin Spider......they can be a team again.
This photograph was published in the Illustrated Chronicle on the 25th of November 1915.
During the Great War the Illustrated Chronicle published photographs of soldiers and sailors from Newcastle and the North East of England, which had been in the news. The photographs were sent in by relatives and give us a glimpse into the past.
The physical collection held by Newcastle Libraries comprises bound volumes of the newspaper from 1910 to 1925. We are keen to find out more about the people in the photographs. If you recognise anyone in the images please comment below.
Copies of this photograph may be ordered from us, for more information see: www.newcastle.gov.uk/tlt Please make a note of the image reference number above to help speed up your order.
Published in January 1894 by The Historical Publishing Company, author J. W. Buel, this book contains 300 photographs of the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and the California Midwinter Fair in 1894.
The Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the New World in 1492. At the core of the fair was an area that quickly became known as the White City for its buildings with white stucco siding and its streets illuminated by electric lights.
The California Midwinter International Exposition—also known as the Midwinter Fair—was held in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park from January 27 to July 4, 1894. Following on the heels of the World’s Columbian Exposition, it showcased selected exhibits from Chicago’s spectacular commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s journey to America as well as an impressive number of new exhibits at its specially constructed fairground, Sunset City.
The Kaiser Permanente Center for Total Health is looking forward to a day of service. Martin Luther King, Jr. Monument, Washington, DC USA
Published in Weekend Flashback: 1/17-1/20 | We Love DC
A collaboration of drawings by my friend Alice Pattullo and myself. They were made into a small self-published zine, and a set of 3 posters (digitally printed onto cartridge paper)
Published in Elegant Magazine Liquid Dreams Issue! And made cover =)
Model: Anita Mwiruki
Makeup, Hair, Body paint: Liz Kiss
Cathedral Mountain is in the background. Got a much better view of cathedral later in the day.
We scrambled up to Mount Ossa - highest mountain in Tasmania, at 1,614 metres (5,295 ft)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Ossa_(Tasmania)
Day 4 of Overland Track
Australia oz2009 319
Goethe's Secret Revelation PART TWO THE RIDDLE IN FAUST Esoteric Two Addresses given 11nth and 12th March, 1909, at Berlin . It was in August, 1831, that Goethe sealed up a packet and handed it to his faithful secretary Eckermann and prepared his testamentary directions for the editing of this sealed-up treasure. This packet contained in a comprehensive way the whole striving of Goethe's life. It contained the second part of Goethe's Faust; which was not to be published until after Goethe's death. Goethe was aware that in this work he had given the contents of his rich, many-sided, far-reaching and deeply-penetrating life to human existence, and the importance of this moment for him may be gathered from the words he uttered at the time, ‘I am now finished my life's true work, anything I do further and whether I do it or not, is all the same!’ If we permit a fact such as this to work on the soul we can say: It would not be easy for a human life to become fruitful for the rest of humanity in a more beautiful, harmonious way, or indeed to become fruitful in a more conscious manner. There is something deeply affecting in the thought of Goethe's life at this point of time — for he lived barely one year longer — in that he should have visited Ilmenau once more and there re-read the beautiful verse he had written on the 7th of September, 1783, when he was still a comparatively young man.‘Above all heights Is rest, In the tree tops Thou feelest Scarce a breath,The birds are silent in the woods, Only wait, soon Thou too shalt rest.’One may well ask whether these lines may not have signified at that time a frame of mind regulating Goethe's ideas in a new way as he re-read them in the evening of his life with affecting tears.Goethe's Faust is truly a testament of the very first order when considered with reference to its literary and intellectual standpoint.In 1831 Goethe finished the work which had occupied him from his earliest youth, having worked energetically from the year 1824 at the second part of Faust. We find that Goethe knew from the beginning of 1770 that he had what may be called the Faust disposition and that he began in 1774 to write down the first part of Faust, returning again and again to this poem in the most important moments of his life.Notably he took the first part of Faust with him when he went to Weimar and owing to his position there entered the great world. Certainly it was not produced there. But because one of the Weimar Court ladies, Fräulein von Göchhausen, preserved a copy of the Faust which Goethe took with him to Weimar, we to-day possess the form in which it was when he took it there. We therefore know the form in which Faust was printed for the first time and published in 1790, and further we know the setting in which the whole of Goethe's works appeared in 1808 in the first edition. All that we have of Faust, including that very important document which Goethe left as his testament, shows us the different stages of Goethe's growth. It is endlessly interesting to observe how these four stages of Goethe's Faust-creation appear to us in different ways, according to its inner nature, and how they represent a crescendo in the whole of Goethe's life-endeavour. What Goethe took with him to Weimar is a literary work of a quite personal character into which he had poured the feelings, the degrees of knowledge and also the despair of knowledge, as they went with him through the Frankfort time into the Strassburg time and also into the first Weimar period. It is the work of a man hotly striving after knowledge, striving to feel himself into life, experiencing every despair that an upright honourable man can go through, and all this he had poured into this work. All this is in the first part of Faust. But when Faust appeared in 1790 as a fragment, it was recognized that Goethe had worked at it and transformed it out of a longing lying deep in his soul and inner life which had become enlightened through his contemplation of Italian nature and of Italian works of Art. Out of this personal work of one who had been tossed to and fro in life's storms there emerged the work of one, who to a certain degree, had become unshackled and who had a very clear view of life before his soul.Then came the time of Goethe's friendship with Schiller. The time when in his inner being he learned to know and experience a world which had long become rooted within him. A world of which one can say that he who experiences it has had his spiritual eyes opened, so that he can see into the surrounding spiritual world. And now Faust's personality becomes a being placed between two worlds, between the spiritual world to which man can raise himself through purification, through the ennobling of himself and that world which drags him down. Faust becomes a being placed between the world of good and the world of evil. And while previously we saw in Faust the life of the single striving personality, now we see before us a great conflict carried on between the good and evil powers around man. Man is thus placed in the centre as the worthiest object for which the good and evil beings fight in the world. Though in the very beginning Faust is seen as a man doubting all knowledge, he now comes before us as one placed between heaven and hell. Thus the poem reaches an essentially higher stage and a higher existence.In the form in which Faust appears in 1808 it seems as if thousands of years of human development resound. We are reminded of the great dramatic representation of man's life produced in ancient times in the Book of Job, where the evil spirit went among men and stood up before God, and God said to him: ‘Thou hast been to and fro on the earth, hast thou considered my servant Job?’ What is here said we find in the poem, ‘The Prologue in Heaven’ where God speaks with Mephistopheles, the messenger of the evil spirituality: ‘The self in them expands to a spiritual universe.’ At that time at Frankfort he had the feeling, ‘Away from the mere striving after ideas! Away from the merely perceptive sense observation! There must be a path to the sources of existence!’ and he came into touch with what one can call alchemistic, mystical and theosophical literature. He himself attempted the practice of alchemy. He relates how he came to know of a work through which many sought for similar knowledge at that time, Welling's ‘Opus Mago-Cabalisticum et Theosophicum.’ This book was much thought of then as giving a knowledge of the sources of existence. Goethe studied by degrees Paracelsus, Valentinus and above all a work which from its whole method must have produced a deep impression on all those who strove after such knowledge, ‘Aurea Catena Homeri.’ This was a representation of nature the Mystics in the Middle Ages believed to see. The study of these mystical, alchemistic, theosophical books must have had a similar effect on Goethe to that which a man striving to-day after the same things would experience if he took up the books of Eliphas Levy or any other thinker on the same lines. Indeed at that time these things must have had an even more bewildering effect upon Goethe because these different writers no longer really understood the magic, theosophy, etc., of which they wrote. It was impossible to speak in direct way of the real grandeur and meaning of these things, proceeding from an ancient wisdom which had lived in human souls, for the meaning was hidden under an outer garb which included all kinds of physical and chemical forms. For those who merely saw what appeared outwardly in these books it was the greatest nonsense, and at that time it was most difficult to penetrate behind these secrets and arrive at the real meaning. But we must not forget that Goethe from his deep striving for knowledge had developed an intuitive mind. He must have been greatly pleased when on opening the ‘Aurea Catena Homeri’ he saw on the first page a symbol which had a deep effect on his soul; two triangles interlaced; in the corners the signs of the planets, drawn in a wonderful way, a flying dragon wound round in a circle, beneath which another dragon had fixed stiffening itself, and when he read the words on the first page, saying that the flying dragon symbolizes the stream which sends those forces which stream down from out of the Cosmos to the stiffened dragon, showing how heaven and earth hang together, or as it is expressed there: ‘How the spiritual forces of heaven pour into the earth's centre.’These mysterious signs and words must have made a great impression upon Goethe. For instance, those which depict the whole growth of the earth: ‘From chaos to that which is called the universal quintessence’ — a remarkable sentence, curiously mixed up with signs of a chaotic nature, still undifferentiated right through the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, right up to man and to that perspective to which man is developing in ever greater refinement. But it was not easy to find a way of penetrating to the deeper meaning. So Goethe left Frankfort in a frame of mind which can be described in the following words: I have found nothing. These seekers into nature can only give me dry, empty ideas; anything that can be squeezed out of them is but life's water. I have busied myself with much that has come down to us from the past from those who declare that they saw into the secrets of life. But the way, the way drives one to despair!This was sometimes the mood in Goethe's soul. He was not to be bewitched by easy speculations or philosophizing, or by confused symbols and explanations from those old books, which worked so wonderfully and forebodingly on him. They looked at him with their mysteries as something to which he could find no way. But anyone who knew Goethe's soul, knew the seed was already sown in his soul which was to germinate later. But he felt himself as one who was rejected and unworthy to unravel the secrets of life. Then he went to Strassburg.There he met people who must have interested him in one way or the other. He got to know Jung-Stilling with his deeply mystical soul, who owing to the development of peculiar forces generally found sleeping in men, had looked deeply into the hidden side of existence. He met Herder at Strassburg, who had gone through similar moods and who in times of desperation had often been at the point of a denial of future life. In Herder he learnt to know a man who suffered from a surfeit of life and who said, I have studied much, discerning sundry things connected with men's works and men's strivings on the earth. But he was unable to say to himself, I have had one moment when my longing after the sources of life has been satisfied. This was when he was ill and inclined to deny everything with bitter irony. Yet it was Herder who pointed out many depths in the riddles of life, and Goethe found in him a truly human Faust. But that side of negation which is not the outcome of mockery and scorn Goethe learnt to know later through his friend Merck. Goethe's mother who disliked criticism of people and all moralizing said of Merck, he can never leave Mephistopheles at home, in him we are quite used to it. In Merck Goethe found a disclaimer of much that is worth striving for in life. Over against all these impressions which Goethe received from the Strassburg people, it was through Nature and his observation of Nature that many of life's puzzles were cleared up for him.At the same time we must think of Goethe as a man possessed of a sharp, penetrating mind; he was not an unpractical man. He was an advocate, but only practised for a short time. Those who knew Goethe's work as an advocate and later as a Minister, were acquainted with his eminently practical mind. As advocate he knew little more than what he had learnt by heart from law books. But he was a man able to decide very quickly on any point laid before him; such a man can also map out clearly life's course.Let us consider Goethe when during his Italian journey, he gradually arrived at the discovery of the primeval plant, he collected stones, prepared himself diligently to take up the work of research, and did not seek to know immediately ‘how one thing strives to enter another’ but said to himself: ‘If you would gain a premonition’ of ‘how one thing works and lives in another’ as heavenly powers rise and fall, offering each the ‘golden urn,’ examine the vertebras of the spinal column and the way in which one bone is connected with the next; and how one faculty helps another. Seek in the smallest thing the picture of the greatest.Goethe became a very diligent student during his travels in Italy, examining everything. He formed the opinion that if an artist acted ‘according to the laws which are followed by nature herself’ and understood by the Greeks, the divine will be present in his works even as it is in the works of creation. For Goethe, art is a ‘manifestation of the secret laws of nature.’ The creations of the artists are works of nature on a higher stage of perfection. Art is man's continuation and conclusion of nature. ‘For since man is the head of nature so he regards himself as a complete nature, but also as one which can call forth a further rise. He strives for this through the acquisition of all accomplishments and virtues which call for choice, order, harmony, and meaning, and at last rises to the production of the work of art.’
We can say that during the Italian journey everything that came before Goethe took on definite forms and through inner soul experiences appeared clearly before him. So once again he took up ‘Faust,’ and we perceive how he endeavoured to bring the separate parts into union. But we also perceive how he interested himself in an objective manner in what Faust could become for the people of the North. In Italy he became particularly conscious of the great difference between people who had been brought up amid classical surroundings and those who had not. He found it strange that so little should be heard in Rome of ghost stories such as were common in the North. In the Villa Borghese he wrote at this time the ‘Witches Kitchen’ scene, as one who had lost touch with all such things, but also as one who recalled to memory the spirit of the earth. When he had previously written about the earth spirit, he represented it in such a way that Faust turned away from it, as from a ‘hideous worm.’ But the fact of turning away from it, even without understanding why, remains in the soul and works on further, as it did in Goethe. But those who become impatient and refuse to wait until after long years the seed grows, are unable to see the way clearly. And when in Italy Goethe knew that a turning away from the terrible countenance would have its effect upon his soul, and now these words arise:‘Sublime Spirit, thou gavest me, gavest me all For which I begged. It was not without reason That thou didst turn thy face in fire to me And for a kingdom gavest me the glorious nature With strength to feel it and to enjoy it. Not A coldly astonished gaze didst thou grant to me But didst permit me to look into her profound bosom As into that of a friend. Past me didst thou lead the ranks of the living And didst teach me to know, in the quiet bushes, In air, and in water, my brother. And when the storm roared and rattled in the woods And there fell the neighbouring branches of the giant fir Squashing the undergrowth and in their fall Sounding like thunder in the hollow of the hills, Thou didst lead me to a safe Grotto, where Thou didst show me myself and opened my heart To deep and secret wonders.’Before Goethe, there stands the possibility of the human soul, through its own development expanding to a spiritual universe. Through a patient sacrificial resigned search, the fruits stand before his soul which as germs were planted when he came into touch with the earth spirit. We can see through this monologue in ‘Wald und Höhle’ (wood and grotto) what a forward jerk this was towards the ripening of the fruits in his soul, for it shows us that the seed already sown was not sown in vain. And as a warning to have patience, to wait until such seeds had ripened in his soul, that fragment of ‘Faust’ meets us which appeared with this setting in 1790. And now we see how Goethe finds the way step by step after being led to his ‘safe grotto where the secret deep wonders of his own heart were opened to him,’ he obtains that comprehensive survey which bids him no longer abide with his own sorrow, but teaches him to rise above his sorrow, to send his foreseeing spirit out into the Macrocosmos, watch the fighting of the good and evil spirits and see men on their battle ground. And in ‘Faust’ in 1808 he sent out beforehand the ‘Prologue in Heaven:’Raphael: ‘The sun-orb sings, in emulation, 'Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round: His path predestined through Creation He ends with step of thunder-sound.’We next see how the macrocosmic Mights oppose the forces of the great world. We see too from out the experiences of Goethe's soul, what a remarkable light falls on the two dragons with which at one time in his youth he came in touch.‘Faust’ is such a universal poem because it contains so many warnings. It also gives us that golden saying: ‘Wait in confidence for the development of thy inner forces, even if that means waiting a very long time!’ These words also sound as a warning which stand as an attribute before Faust, when Goethe looks back to those ‘fluctuating figures which in early days had once shown a troubled countenance’ but which now are flooded with light. Now he had waited so long that the friends who had taken such a vivid interest in Faust as he had appeared to them in the first form, had died, and those who had not died were very far away. Goethe had been obliged to wait for the development of the seed already sown in him.Now these striking words meet us:‘My sorrow speaks to an unknown crowd, Their applause e'en makes my heart feel heavy, And those who once delighted in my song If they still live, in other lands are scattered.’No longer did it matter to those who in youth had felt with him. He had had to wait, as the last lines of this dedication so beautifully express it — ‘What was once a reality to me, has gone into the unreal: but what has remained for me and appears to outer vision as unreal, that to me is now true, and it is only now that I can give it as truth.’ So we see how this poem, even if only looked at in such an external manner as we have to-day, leads us into the depths of the human soul.‘Faust’ was begun in a desultory manner, some parts being pushed in between others, and therefore Goethe was unable to show in a continuous way what he had experienced in his soul. But something else led to the fact that Goethe expressed his deepest experiences in ‘Faust.’The ‘Helena scene’ also belongs to the first part of ‘Faust’ written by Goethe. But we find it was not included even in the ‘Faust’ of 1808. Why not? Because the manner in which Goethe had finished ‘Faust’ at that time would not allow it. What Goethe wished to say through the Helena scene was the expression of such a deep premonition of the deepest riddle of existence, that the first part was not sufficiently prepared to allow of this. Only when Goethe had reached an advanced age, was he able to give a true form to what really was the inner work of his life.We see how his mind had expanded so that he was able to grasp the worlds of the macrocosm, as expressed in the ‘Prologue in Heaven.’ We shall also see the way in which Goethe represents the stages of the soul's experience, leading men from the first stage up to that of imaginative vision, where the soul penetrating ever deeper and deeper, bursts at last the doors of the spiritual world, which Mephistopheles would close. Goethe also represents these inner experiences. For he places in the second part of ‘Faust’ the experiences of a soul through secret scientific study, and we see here one of the deepest riddles of existence, which if recognized, would be found to be an announcement of Western spiritual science given in imposing language. One is tempted to place such a poem as the ‘Bhagavad Gita’ and the second part of ‘Faust’ side by side. For great and powerful wisdom speaks out of such Eastern writings. It seems as if the gods themselves desired in them to speak with men to express the wisdom out of which the world was formed. Indeed it is so.Now let us look at the second part of ‘Faust.’ Here we see a striving human soul which has raised itself to spiritual vision from outer physical perception; we see how it has worked its way up to true clairvoyance when Faust enters the spiritual world and finds the spiritual choir around him ...‘Hearken! Hark! — The Hours careering Sounding loud to spirit-hearing. See the new-born day appearing! Rocky portals jarring shatter, Phœbus' wheels in rolling clatter, With a crash the Light draws near! Pealing rays and trumpet-blazes — Eye is blinded, ear amazes: The Unheard can no one hear!’Faust II, Act I.to that passage where Faust is outwardly dazzled, so that the outer world is lost to his perception and he says to himself: ‘Only within shines clear light! ...’ up to that passage in which the soul works itself up to the spheres of world existence, where the spiritual worlds are to be seen in all their purity, and the riddle of the world discloses itself to the soul. This is a way which we must designate as an esoteric one.The way in which we can penetrate from the outer to the inner life of Goethe's world enigma, we shall see to-morrow, and we shall also see from out of what depths Goethe spoke the word which at last gave him the certainty he needed with reference to all the longings, all the sorrows, pains and strivings for knowledge in his life.‘Whoever zealously strives We can redeem him; And if love from above Feels an interest in him, The blest choir will be there With a friendly greeting.’We shall consider to-morrow how Goethe solved this riddle of existence, and how that which lives in the soul can rise up to its true home. It will give us the answer to what Goethe placed as the riddle of his existence and about which he gives us such a hopeful answer at the end of the second part of ‘Faust:’‘For the spiritual world, That noble member, Is saved from evil. Whoever strives zealously We can redeem him! ...’This tells us Faust can be saved and those spirits will not conquer who by bringing men into the material bring them also to destruction.
I like to take pictures and to present them - now there's an interview, introducing me, sorry to say: in German language - but the photos there don't need any translation, isn't it? www.happyphoton.de/2009/10/08/interview-dietmar-fritze/ + but because I've been asked, what is your favorite photographer: here is, what I've written on INGE MORATH
+
After working on Time Out for ten issues i finally have one of my shots on the cover.
For this we hired a model and makeup artist and it was thought up by our art director.
My job was easy really. Just the one light needed and shot in our meeting room.
Day 244 ~ Published
My image of Rocky, taken just a few months before we lost him, was reviewed by Sarah Wilkerson in a section of Click Magazine called “Why it Works.” She says,
The organized chaos of patterns, shapes, and surfaces, with light reflecting off of them in so many different ways, is a feast for the eyes. Strong lines and a very low perspective draw the eye deeply into the scene. The framing creates a fantastic contradiction between the primary subject and the visual experience; we observe a lazy dog, but the viewer’s experience is much more active. While the dog sleeps, the viewer’s eyes move about, exploring the house: into the back room, up the stairs, even into the kitchen via reflection of the door.
Statue of WC Wentworth, Department of Lands building, Bridge St, Sydney.
Each facade has 12 niches whose sculpted occupants include explorers and legislators who made a major contribution to the opening up and settlement of the nation. Although 48 men were nominated by the architect, Barnet, as being suitable subjects, most were rejected as being 'hunters or excursionists'. Only 23 statues were commissioned, the last being added in 1901 leaving 25 niches unfilled (Devine, 2011). In Nov 2010 - a new statue of colonial surveyor James Meehan (1774-1826) was created and placed in an empty niche on cnr. Loftus/Bent Streets.
Wentworth, William Charles (1790–1872)
by Michael Persse
This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 2, (MUP), 1967
William Charles Wentworth (1790-1872), explorer, author, barrister, landowner, and statesman, was the son of Catherine Crowley, who was convicted at the Staffordshire Assizes in July 1788 of feloniously stealing 'wearing apparell', was sentenced to transportation for seven years, reached Sydney in the transport Neptune in June 1790, and in the Surprize arrived at Norfolk Island with the infant William on 7 August. Dr D'Arcy Wentworth, who also sailed in the Neptune and Surprize, acknowledged William as his son. He accompanied his parents to Sydney in 1796 and then to Parramatta, where his mother died in 1800. In 1803 he was sent with his brother D'Arcy to England. Writing home from their first school at Bletchley in 1804, he told of a visit to his father's patron and kinsman: 'We waited, one day, on Lord Fitzwilliam, at his request, he seemed glad to see us, and presented each of us with a guinea … We are going on in our Latin studies &c., to the satisfaction of our Master, and hope that we shall continue to do so, well knowing how essentially necessary a good education is to our future welfare in life'. In the holidays they stayed with their father's agent, Charles Cookney. In 1805 Mrs Cookney wrote of William to Dr Wentworth that 'a Surgeon is a very improper profession for Him as from the Cast in the Eye it leads Him differently to the object he intends'. They went on to the Greenwich school of Dr Alexander Crombie, a liberal scholar whose published works ranged over philology, politics, economics, agriculture, science, and theology.
Failing to win a place in the military academy at Woolwich or in the East India Co., Wentworth returned to Sydney in 1810 somewhat at a loose end. He was soon riding Gig, his father's grey gelding, to victory in the Hyde Park races. In October 1811 Lachlan Macquarie appointed him acting provost-marshal. He was granted 1750 acres (708 ha) on the Nepean, where his estate, Vermont, is still a Wentworth property.
He rapidly became a familiar figure around Sydney, with his tall frame, thick shoulders, Roman head, and auburn hair, his rugged and untidy person. He tended to speak in magniloquent abstractions, his harsh voice resounding with rhetoric and sarcasms and classical allusions; yet he showed a keen eye for detail. He seemed already something of a Gulliver in Lilliput. He knew that his father was slighted by the exclusives, that 'aristocratic body' who, he later wrote, 'would monopolize all situations of power, dignity, and emolument … and raise an eternal barrier of separation between their offspring and the offspring of the unfortunate convict': and the knowledge bred in him a determination to destroy their power.
Yet he was no leveller, no democrat. Men must be free, but free to rise—and his own family especially. Like his father he was a monopolist at heart. His adventurous spirit, drought, and the desire to discover new pastures led him in May 1813, in company with William Lawson, Gregory Blaxland, four servants, four horses, and five dogs, to take part in the first great feat of inland exploration, the crossing of the Blue Mountains. At the end of their twenty-one-day passage, as he later wrote,
The boundless champaign burst upon our sight
Till nearer seen the beauteous landscape grew,
Op'ning like Canaan on rapt Israel's view.
Uncertain that they had really crossed the mountains, he wrote in his journal: 'we have at all events proved that they are traversable, and that, too, by cattle'. The discovery gave impetus to great pastoral expansion in which Wentworth amply shared. He was rewarded with another 1000 acres (405 ha) . On the mountain journey, according to his father, he had developed a severe cough; to recover his health and to help his father secure valuable sandalwood from a Pacific island he joined a schooner as supercargo in 1814. He was nearly killed by natives at Rarotonga while courageously attempting to save a sailor whom they clubbed to death. The captain died, and Wentworth, with knowledge gained on his earlier voyage from England and no mean mathematical skill, brought the ship safely to Sydney.
The Sydney Gazette was then subject to official censorship. The nearest approach to a free press in Governor Macquarie's régime were the anonymous 'pipes', of which the most celebrated was the one directed, in 1816, against Colonel George Molle, the lieutenant-governor, for his hypocrisy towards Macquarie. The furore resulting from it lasted for more than a year, till Dr Wentworth revealed that William, on his way to England, had written from Cape Town admitting authorship. Other 'pipes' are in his hand. Their political importance was greater than their literary merit, though it is not fanciful to see Wentworth as a key figure in early Australian literature. The alliance between literature and politics was close, each needing freedom in which to breathe. He helped to keep satire alive in the time of Macquarie and was later to lead it from darkness into light.
In 1816 Wentworth arrived in London and enlisted Fitzwilliam's aid in persuading his father that the army was no longer a feasible career for him now that the Napoleonic wars were over. In February 1817 he entered the Middle Temple to prepare himself to be 'the instrument of procuring a free constitution for my country'. He wrote to Fitzwilliam of 'the more remote objects' of his ambition: 'It is … by no means my intention in becoming a member of the Law to abandon the Country that gave me birth … In withdrawing myself … for a time from that country I am actuated by a desire of better qualifying myself for the performance of those duties, that my Birth has imposed—and, in selecting the profession of the Law, I calculate upon acquainting myself with all the excellence of the British Constitution, and hope at some future period, to advocate successfully the right of my country to a participation in its advantages'.
This remained the master-plan, but for a time he was characteristically restless. He unsuccessfully petitioned the Colonial Office to allow him to explore Australia from east to west. He spent more than a year in Europe, chiefly in Paris, to the benefit of his French but the annoyance of Fitzwilliam. His health improved but he was very short of funds. He saw much of the Macarthurs. In 1819 he published A Statistical, Historical, and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and Its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land, With a Particular Enumeration of the Advantages Which These Colonies Offer for Emigration and Their Superiority in Many Respects Over Those Possessed by the United States of America. Young John Macarthur had suggested that he write it, and it owed much to conversations with old John, who with little sympathy with Wentworth's constitutional ideas later denounced the book, but whose faith in Australian wool was infectious. Wentworth hoped ardently to marry Elizabeth Macarthur. He envisaged a great Wentworth-Macarthur connexion at the head of the pastoral aristocracy dominating the New South Wales of his dreams, and he seemed about to achieve 'a union' which he described to his father as 'so essential to the happiness of your son and to the accomplishment of those projects for the future respectability and grandeur of our family, with the realisation of which I have no doubt you consider me in a great measure identified'. But his hopes were dashed by a quarrel with her father over a loan of money.
A new blow fell. In 1819 H. G. Bennet declared in his Letter to Lord Sidmouth that D'Arcy Wentworth had been sent to Sydney as a convict. Mortified by this slander, William rushed to his father's defence, ready to spill the last drop of his heart's blood in reparation. His own investigations proved disquieting. They revealed that his father was never a convict but had indeed been tried four times in England for highway robbery, though finally acquitted. Wentworth rebuked Bennet and later Commissioner John Thomas Bigge, who repeated the slander in his report, but his pride had suffered a rude shock, though not a shattering one. The greatness of his family and the glory of his country were the two almost synonymous preoccupations of his mind: and the two now became one as Wentworth, wounded in heart and pride, resolutely identified himself with the interests of the Australian-born.
His book did much to stimulate emigration and was reissued in revised and enlarged editions in 1820 and 1824. The various strands in his education are clearly seen in it: the classical, in its rhetorical style and arguments from ancient history; the mathematical, in its calculations about wool as 'the most profitable channel of investment offered in the world'; the scientific, in descriptions of the natural scene; and the legal, in the reforms proposed for New South Wales. After the 'description', he attacks the existing autocracy and presses for a nominated legislative council and an assembly elected on a small property franchise: ex-convicts are not to be denied either membership or the vote. No taxation should be imposed without parliamentary sanction. There should be trial by jury, a proper process of appeal, and free migration. Such reforms will realize the emancipists' dream: to raise Australasia 'from the abject state of poverty, slavery, and degradation, to which she is so fast sinking, and to present her with a constitution, which may gradually conduct her to freedom, prosperity, and happiness'; its future will then be theirs, and Wentworth's. Yet the book is no tract for democracy. Landed property is 'the only standard' he conceives 'by which the right either of electing, or being elected, can in any country be properly regulated'. The council 'bears many resemblances to the House of Lords': 'It forms that just equipoise between the democratic and supreme powers of the state, which has been found necessary not less to repress the licentiousness of the one, than to curb the tyranny of the other'.
He was called to the Bar in February 1822, and decided then to 'keep a few terms' at Cambridge. Soon after entering Peterhouse, he competed for the chancellor's gold medal for a poem on Australasia. His poem, placed second to W. M. Praed's, was speedily published, with a dedication to Macquarie. Rhetorical and realistic, it ends with a bold prophecy of the day when Britain is vanquished and her spirit rises again in the antipodes:
May all thy glories in another sphere
Relume, and shine more brightly still than here;
May this, thy last born infant, then arise,
To glad thy heart and greet thy parent eyes;
And Australasia float, with flag unfurl'd,
A new Britannia in another world.
He returned to Sydney in 1824, determined 'to hold no situation under government': 'As a mere private person I might lead the colony, but as a servant of the Governor I could only conform to his whims, which would neither suit my tastes nor principles'. In the third edition of the Description he had attacked the report of Commissioner Bigge as 'nauseous trash': it was hostile to Macquarie and it played into the hands of the exclusives. He had some influence on the New South Wales Act of 1823, which instituted a nominated Legislative Council and permitted trial by jury in civil actions only when demanded by both parties. With him came Dr Robert Wardell, a lawyer who had edited the Statesman. Their plan was that each in his sphere, Wardell in journalism and Wentworth at the Bar, should champion the emancipists and smaller free settlers and campaign for a free press, trial by jury, and self-government.
On 14 October 1824 the first issue of the Australian, the plant for which they had brought from London, boldly declared: 'Independent, yet consistent—free, yet not licentious—equally unmoved by favours and by fear—we shall pursue our labours without either a sycophantic approval of, or a systematic opposition to, acts of authority, merely because they emanate from government'. Audacity triumphed. They had not sought permission to publish the paper, but Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane thought it 'most expedient to try the experiment of full latitude of freedom of the Press'; despite Colonial Office objections approval continued well into the reign of his successor. The exclusives bitterly prophesied 'a nation of freebooters and pirates', but they could do nothing while the Australian retained Government House favour.
Meanwhile Wentworth seized every opportunity to attack the exclusives, and awaited a pretext for attacking autocratic government. In October 1825 he arranged a meeting for free inhabitants to consider a farewell address to Brisbane, acknowledging his emancipist sympathies. He called the first draft a 'milk and water production', and in the revised document the 'two fundamental principles of the British constitution' were demanded: trial by jury and representative government. He spoke passionately against the exclusives, the 'yellow snakes of the Colony'.
The wind turned in November 1826 with the death of Private Sudds in circumstances partly arising from the commutation by Governor (Sir) Ralph Darling of the sentence on him and Private Thompson. Wentworth seized on the alleged illegality of Darling's act and with violent invective demanded his recall. The affair rapidly developed into a bitter feud.
At a crowded meeting on Anniversary Day in 1827, which resulted in a petition calling for an elective assembly of at least a hundred members, Wentworth also called for trial by jury and taxation by consent. The newspapers inflamed public opinion against Darling, whose alleged treatment of Sudds Wentworth described as 'murder, or at least a high misdemeanour'. Convinced that Wentworth, a 'vulgar, ill-bred fellow' and a 'demagogue', was 'anxious to become the man of the people' by insulting the government, and that 'nothing short of positive coercion' would curb the licentiousness of the press, Darling submitted to the Legislative Council two bills, to regulate newspapers and to impose a stamp duty. Chief Justice (Sir) Francis Forbes refused to certify the licence clauses of one as 'not repugnant to the laws of England'. Wentworth attacked the other because blanks had been left for rates of duty to be inserted later; when they were filled in Forbes would not certify it and the Act though passed by council was suspended and later disallowed. Darling saw no alternative but to prosecute for seditious libel.
The resulting cases occupied the Supreme Court through 1828 and 1829. Wentworth surrendered his shares in the Australian and acted as defending counsel. He overwhelmed the lamentably weak Crown prosecutors with torrents of invective and brilliant marshalling of his facts. Darling wrote that he and Wardell kept 'the Court and the Bar by their effrontery and talent equally in subjection'. When Wardell was tried, he challenged the jury as nominees of the governor, who could deprive them of their commissions if they failed to convict. Finally in 1829, as a result of Wentworth's insistent demands, civilian juries were allowed in civil cases on the application of both parties and the approval of the Supreme Court.
A draft of 'impeachment' prepared by Wentworth against Darling did little damage to the governor's reputation at the Colonial Office, but it certainly undermined Wentworth's, so intemperate was its language. Darling served his six-year term, and departed in 1831 to the accompaniment of a riotous celebration at Wentworth's estate overlooking the harbour. The Australian reported: 'upward of 4,000 persons assembled at Vaucluse to partake of Mr Wentworth's hospitality and to evince joy at the approaching departure. The scene of the fête was on the lawn in front of Mr Wentworth's villa, which was thrown open for the reception of all respectable visitants, while a marquee filled with piles of loaves and casks of Cooper's gin and Wright's strong beer, was pitched a short way off. On an immense spit a bullock was roasted entire. Twelve sheep were also roasted in succession; and 4,000 loaves completed the enormous banquet. By 7 p.m. two immense bonfires were lighted on the highest hill … Rustic sports, speeches, etc., etc., whiled away the night; and morning dawned before the hospitable mansion was quitted by all its guests'.
By taking up the fight against autocracy and by his imperious courage and oratory in the defence of emancipists at the Bar Wentworth had awakened a political instinct among the smaller people of Sydney and become their hero. He had touched both journalism and the Bar with the fire of his brilliance and given them definition, direction, and the vision of greatness: he may justly be called their prophet in the Australian nation, if not the prophet of that nation itself. The larger fight remained: for the great goal of self-government. But, even as the people of Sydney were flocking out to Vaucluse to join with the popular hero in celebration of the tyrant's departure, changes in Wentworth's own life and activities were beginning to cause disillusion among many who only partially understood his aims. With the swelling tide of immigration into New South Wales, the exclusive-emancipist issue was receding into the background of politics. So fast were events moving that in 1835, when Darling was cleared of Wentworth's charges and knighted, there were few in Sydney who showed concern.
By his father's death in 1827 Wentworth added greatly to his landholdings. In that year he bought Vaucluse, about six miles (9.6 km) from Sydney on the south side of the harbour, and later enlarged it to 500 acres (202 ha) . The cottage there was rebuilt into a stately mansion which, in the years after Wentworth's marriage in 1829, provided the setting for both his family life and his activities as statesman. It was adorned with riches from the old world and became a sign of the new time, spacious and leisured, that was coming to the rich in New South Wales. With his large legal earnings, Vaucluse, his father's estate at Homebush, and one sheep station after another (he acknowledged fifteen at one time) Wentworth more and more felt himself the prototype of a new nobility, a governing class which would adapt to Australian conditions the way of life of the Whig aristocracy of eighteenth-century England. His own way of life became spacious even to the point of lapses from his marriage vows.
With Darling's successor, Governor (Sir) Richard Bourke, a kinsman of Edmund Burke, whose patron Fitzwilliam had been, Wentworth had much in common, though not even Bourke could persuade him to accept nomination to the Legislative Council, in which the governor's own liberal measures were frequently frustrated by the exclusives. In London there was growing support for Wentworth's policies: the Reform Act and events in Canada were fostering a climate of opinion favourable to constitutional change. After the murder of Wardell in 1834, William Bland stepped into his place as Wentworth's chief supporter. At the foundation-day meeting in 1833 another petition for self-government was drafted, which was presented to the Commons by Lytton Bulwer.
In 1835 the Australian Patriotic Association was formed to agitate for an amended constitution. Sir John Jamison was president, Wentworth vice-president, and Charles Buller its agent in London. With Bland's assistance Wentworth drafted two alternative bills for the consideration of the British government: one providing for a nominated council and an elected assembly on the model of Canada; the other for a single house of fifty members, one-fifth nominated and the rest elected on a property franchise similar to that of the 1832 Reform Act in Britain. With support in Sydney from Bourke and his successor, Sir George Gipps, and in London from Buller, Wentworth's second bill was adopted, with modifications, in an Act granting a degree of representative government in 1842. In an enlarged Legislative Council the proportion of nominees became one-third, and the property qualification for electors of the remaining twenty-four members was high enough to exclude two-thirds of the adult male population. Though the governor retained control of colonial revenue, he ceased to preside over the Legislative Council and was replaced by an elected Speaker.
In his book Wentworth had commended simultaneously a wide franchise and a property qualification for electors. The 1827 petition had demanded suffrage for 'the entire of the free population'. Now the eighteenth-century Whig in him was running stronger and he was more apt to equate political capacity with property and poverty with ignorance. He had given up his legal practice and was concentrating on his landed interests. Though he was still far less wealthy than James Macarthur, who had gone to England on behalf of the exclusives to oppose the demands of the Australian Patriotic Association, Wentworth's riches were increasing rapidly, and the onset of middle age, his experience of the crowd, and the shift in the balance of population caused by assisted migration all tended to strengthen his conservatism. The intention of the British government to abolish convict transportation and to raise the price of crown land drew the exclusives and Wentworth into a common opposition to any change in the condition allowing them cheap land and labour.
The leading emancipists now found themselves together with the exclusives on the side of the rich. Wentworth now belonged to the pastoral aristocracy he had envisaged in 1819 and it was faced with stern threats. When he expressed approval of the idea of importing coolie labour from Asia, he alienated many former supporters together with the radicals among the recent immigrants. In January 1842 the Australian summed up the popular feeling: 'Mr Wentworth … was an influential man. His day is gone by. His opinion is worth nothing … Certainly he first taught the natives of this colony what liberty was, but he has betrayed them since and they have withdrawn their confidence from him'.
In 1839 Wentworth was recommended for appointment to the Legislative Council by Gipps, but was soon at enmity with the new governor. In 1840, in direct opposition to declared British policy, humanely conceived, Wentworth and some associates bought from seven Maori chieftains, for a song, nearly a third of New Zealand, urging them, moreover, not to acknowledge Queen Victoria without proper safeguard. Gipps, aghast at such a 'job', blocked the scheme in the Legislative Council. But he misunderstood Wentworth. This bid was no jobbery, but Elizabethan in spirit and characteristically splendid and defiant. It would have made him the greatest landowner on earth; frustrated, he swore 'eternal vengeance'. The enmity between Wentworth and Gipps bedevilled almost every issue until the governor's departure in 1846. It was comparatively easy for Wentworth to lead others against Gipps. As with Darling, he set out to wreck his opponent's policies, but although he was frequently depicted as an unscrupulous politician his powers were bent passionately on ends that seemed to him greater than person or reputation, his own or anybody else's.
Wentworth entered the Legislative Council in 1843 at the head of the poll for Sydney. He wished to be Speaker but was passed over in favour of his enemy, Alexander McLeay. However, with his unrivalled knowledge of parliamentary procedure and colonial affairs, he immediately assumed practical leadership of the council. His achievement was already remarkable. He was an orator of immense power, whether bludgeoning an opponent, or fumbling and growling and calling for his 'extracts', or rising, with harsh and rasping voice, to a broken sublimity of language which moved and enlightened even his enemies. All were affected by the impact of his personality. Robert Lowe, mellifluously, dartingly, could mock what he had said, but the twain never really met, for they were of two different orders of being. Though he could marshal arguments brilliantly Wentworth relied little on subtlety or logic. He created a mood and stormed rather than seduced the mind. Careless and even slovenly in manners and dress (he now wore corduroys with his badly-fitting morning-coat), he had, while knowing his power, an unconscious arrogance and was in all things the observed of all observers.
He led the squatters in their demand for new land regulations and, since imperial control over crown land was an obstacle to their interest, for a surrender of that control to the Legislative Council. The squatters wanted security of tenure so that they could improve their runs without fear of displacement. Through a Pastoralists' Association, a select committee of the Legislative Council, a paid agent in the House of Commons, and in other ways they waged unceasing war against Gipps's policies. They won most of their demands in the Imperial Act of 1846, which gave them security, for varying periods in the 'settled', 'intermediate', and 'unsettled' districts, unless someone would pay £1 an acre for the land they leased, and this they could thwart by purchasing key-points on their runs, such as around the waterholes. In a sense the squatting age was now over. Henceforward the graziers could build spacious homesteads and develop the way of life of a landed, governing class, whatever political power Wentworth and his followers might win for them.
Because pastoral interests were strong in the part-elective Legislative Council Wentworth was able after 1843 to establish again a leadership of the colony as a whole. He was never again popular as he had been in 1831. At times he was distinctly unpopular but the power of his personality continued to sway even the crowd. In the 1848 election, after a public outcry over the renewal of transportation, he again headed the Sydney poll, though Bland was defeated altogether. In 1851, when his unpopularity stood at its height through his insistence on a preponderance of squatter-controlled rural representation over that of Sydney and his opposition to a wide franchise and to the 'spirit of democracy abroad', he came in third, but was still returned.
Though frequently accused of inconsistency, Wentworth followed unswervingly the same ideals throughout his career. He believed profoundly in intellect, and his fury at unintelligent officialdom, military autocracy, and the social pretensions of the unimaginative exclusives (the imaginative, such as John Macarthur, he admired) sprang from the same source as his distrust of mob rule: a hatred of anything which would prevent the human mind and spirit from developing their latent powers. He at no time denied the right of the intelligent poor to aspire to the seats of government, but they must first become 'men of substance', participating in one of the great interests on which the welfare of the community depended. Pre-eminent among these was the landed interest which, because of his realistic appraisal of the Australian economy no less than his inherited or acquired Whiggism, he believed was the one to which, as he told them in 1851, the inhabitants of Sydney 'were indebted for all their greatness, all the comforts, all the luxuries, that they possessed'. He told them, too, with no little courage, that he 'agreed with that ancient and venerable constitution that treated those who had no property as infants, or idiots, unfit to have any voice in the management of the State'. The way out of infancy, or idiocy, was through intellect and property: but essential to these, and to the management of the state, was education — and Wentworth's pioneering of both primary and university education in Australia is among the noblest of his achievements.
He played a leading part with Lowe, his erstwhile opponent, in establishing in 1848-49 the first real system of state primary education in New South Wales. Hitherto primary teaching—and most of the children of the colony had none—had been conducted predominantly by the various religious denominations, with much sectarian bitterness. New South Wales was on the brink of gaining responsible government; but this, he argued, would be workable only through national education. Should they fail to give the youth of the colony 'the education which would furnish them with the knowledge of the responsibilities they undertook, the achievement of responsible government will be not to achieve a blessing, but to achieve the greatest curse it is possible to conceive'. He went on in 1849-50 to lead the movement that resulted in the founding of the first full colonial university in the British empire, the University of Sydney. He saw this as serving two ends: 'to enlighten the mind, to refine the understanding, to elevate the soul of our fellow men'; and to train men to fill 'the high offices of state'. He deplored the religious bigotry which had obstructed education: the university should be 'open to all, though influenced by none'. But he denied vigorously that his university would promote infidelity: he believed that 'the best mode of proving the divinity of the great Christian Code was to advance the intellect of those who trusted and relied upon it … It was not by stinting the intellect that Christianity was to be promoted'. The university would leave religious education to constituent colleges which he envisaged 'in every part of the colony'. Wentworth also helped to endow the university and was a member of its first senate.
In 1844, after a collision between Gipps and the Legislative Council, Wentworth had advocated 'that control of the Ministers and the Administrators of the Colony … which can only exist where the decision of the majority can occasion the choice—as well as the removal—of the functionaries who are entrusted with the chief executive departments'. He lost enthusiasm for this kind of responsible government after Governor Sir Charles FitzRoy eased the friction between executive and legislature, and turned instead to demands for self-government with full control of crown lands and colonial revenue. These demands, expressed in the Remonstrances of 1850 and 1851, remained urgent when gold was discovered, but the pastoral ascendancy seemed likely to be seriously threatened by 'pure democracy'. Although in 1852 the Colonial Office finally agreed that New South Wales should have responsible government, only a limited form of individual responsibility of some members of the executive was provided by the select committee which drafted the constitution in 1853. With Wentworth as chairman it recommended a lower house of fifty members elected on a £10 property franchise, and a nominated upper house consisting of members of a hereditary colonial peerage. The rural bias of the proposed lower house and the idea of a peerage were vociferously opposed in Sydney, by the press and by orators representing nearly every shade of political and social opinion. Wentworth vigorously defended his peerage scheme—which was a logical outgrowth of his basic ideas and assumptions and by no means the ridiculous proposal it has been represented as, then and since—but public opinion was so strongly against it that the bill, as eventually passed, contained in its stead provisions for a legislative council shorn of the hereditary principle altogether. Wentworth, with Edward Deas Thomson, colonial secretary for New South Wales, with whom he had been much associated through the lack of interest shown by Governor FitzRoy in colonial politics, sailed for England in 1854. In July 1855 he had the satisfaction of seeing the new Constitution made law, despite the deletion of his favoured safeguard against rash amendments to it, and the early death of the General Association of the Australian Colonies which he conceived as the forerunner of a 'Federal Assembly with power to legislate on all internal subjects'.
His life's work triumphantly achieved, he spent his remaining days in England except for a brief return to Sydney in 1861-62, when he was prevailed on to accept the presidency of the Legislative Council during a crisis, and stood out for the nominative as against the elective principle. He had consolidated his fame more by staying away, and being remembered for his great achievements, than if he had returned and been drawn—as he must have been—into the political fray and tried—as he would have done—to stem the democratic tide. In England he became a member of the Conservative Club, and lived at Merly House, near Wimborne, Dorset. There he died on 20 March 1872, survived by his wife Sarah, second daughter of Francis Cox, an emancipist blacksmith, whom he had married in 1829, and by five of their seven daughters and two of their three sons. His probate was sworn at £96,000 in Sydney and £70,000 in London. As he had wished, his body was brought to Sydney, and after a state funeral on 6 May 1873 was laid to rest in a vault excavated in a rock on his estate at Vaucluse. A chapel erected over his tomb, portraits by Richard Buckner in the chamber of the Legislative Assembly in Sydney and by James Anderson in the Mitchell Library, and a statue in Carrara marble by Tenerani in the Great Hall of the University of Sydney are his tangible memorials.
His intangible, and truer, memorial is much more than can easily be estimated in present-day Australia. With all his apparent contradictions, more than any other man he secured our fundamental liberties and nationhood. He looked backward in many things to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; yet he built, with the strength that his sense of history gave him, for the future. He was a child both of the English past and of his own time. He was an heir to the Whig tradition, with its faith in aristocratic and classical values and in British political institutions as established, more or less, by the Glorious Revolution and the politicians of the eighteenth century, and at the same time a child of the romantic movement. The chief intellectual influence upon him was Burke's oratory, with all its rhetoric and splendour and its evocation of the greatness of Augustan Rome and England. Emotionally, however, he was more Byronic, a force of nature of the kind which blazed in the sky of his boyhood in the person of Napoleon. He had breathed the air of Liberal Toryism abroad in England in the early 1820s. The subjection of his proud and romantic nature to the classical restraints of law and politics, though sometimes imperfectly achieved, increased rather than diminished his achievement. In his determination to secure in his own country those free institutions which in eighteenth-century England bore an aristocratic form, he may have regretted that their very freedom would allow them to become democratic; but their freedom was more important to him than their form. His love of Australia was, he confessed, the 'master passion' of his life. He felt a natural kinship with the founding fathers of the United States. It is his chief claim to greatness that, more than any other, he secured in Australia, in one lifetime, the fruit of centuries—what he, in common with other men of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, revered as the fundamental liberties of the British Constitution
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