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Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky (Russian: Владимир Семёнович Высоцкий, IPA: [vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr sʲɪˈmʲɵnəvʲɪtɕ vɨˈsotskʲɪj]; 25 January 1938 – 25 July 1980), was a Soviet singer-songwriter, poet, and actor who had an immense and enduring effect on Soviet culture. He became widely known for his unique singing style and for his lyrics, which featured social and political commentary in often humorous street-jargon. He was also a prominent stage- and screen-actor. Though the official Soviet cultural establishment largely ignored his work, he was remarkably popular during his lifetime, and to this day exerts significant influence on many of Russia's musicians and actors.
Vysotsky was born in Moscow at the 3rd Meshchanskaya St. (61/2) maternity hospital. His father, Semyon Volfovich (Vladimirovich) (1915–1997), was a colonel in the Soviet army, originally from Kiev. Vladimir's mother, Nina Maksimovna, (née Seryogina, 1912–2003) was Russian, and worked as a German language translator.[3] Vysotsky's family lived in a Moscow communal flat in harsh conditions, and had serious financial difficulties. When Vladimir was 10 months old, Nina had to return to her office in the Transcript bureau of the Soviet Ministry of Geodesy and Cartography (engaged in making German maps available for the Soviet military) so as to help her husband earn their family's living.
Vladimir's theatrical inclinations became obvious at an early age, and were supported by his paternal grandmother Dora Bronshteyn, a theater fan. The boy used to recite poems, standing on a chair and "flinging hair backwards, like a real poet," often using in his public speeches expressions he could hardly have heard at home. Once, at the age of two, when he had tired of the family's guests' poetry requests, he, according to his mother, sat himself under the New-year tree with a frustrated air about him and sighed: "You silly tossers! Give a child some respite!" His sense of humor was extraordinary, but often baffling for people around him. A three-year-old could jeer his father in a bathroom with unexpected poetic improvisation ("Now look what's here before us / Our goat's to shave himself!") or appall unwanted guests with some street folk song, promptly steering them away. Vysotsky remembered those first three years of his life in the autobiographical Ballad of Childhood (Баллада о детстве, 1975), one of his best-known songs.
As World War II broke out, Semyon Vysotsky, a military reserve officer, joined the Soviet army and went to fight the Nazis. Nina and Vladimir were evacuated to the village of Vorontsovka, in Orenburg Oblast where the boy had to spend six days a week in a kindergarten and his mother worked for twelve hours a day in a chemical factory. In 1943, both returned to their Moscow apartment at 1st Meschanskaya St., 126. In September 1945, Vladimir joined the 1st class of the 273rd Moscow Rostokino region School.
In December 1946, Vysotsky's parents divorced. From 1947 to 1949, Vladimir lived with Semyon Vladimirovich (then an army Major) and his Armenian wife, Yevgenya Stepanovna Liholatova, whom the boy called "aunt Zhenya", at a military base in Eberswalde in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany (later East Germany). "We decided that our son would stay with me. Vladimir came to stay with me in January 1947, and my second wife, Yevgenia, became Vladimir's second mother for many years to come. They had much in common and liked each other, which made me really happy," Semyon Vysotsky later remembered. Here living conditions, compared to those of Nina's communal Moscow flat, were infinitely better; the family occupied the whole floor of a two-storeyed house, and the boy had a room to himself for the first time in his life. In 1949 along with his stepmother Vladimir returned to Moscow. There he joined the 5th class of the Moscow 128th School and settled at Bolshoy Karetny [ru], 15 (where they had to themselves two rooms of a four-roomed flat), with "auntie Zhenya" (who was just 28 at the time), a woman of great kindness and warmth whom he later remembered as his second mother. In 1953 Vysotsky, now much interested in theater and cinema, joined the Drama courses led by Vladimir Bogomolov.[7] "No one in my family has had anything to do with arts, no actors or directors were there among them. But my mother admired theater and from the earliest age... each and every Saturday I've been taken up with her to watch one play or the other. And all of this, it probably stayed with me," he later reminisced. The same year he received his first ever guitar, a birthday present from Nina Maksimovna; a close friend, bard and a future well-known Soviet pop lyricist Igor Kokhanovsky taught him basic chords. In 1955 Vladimir re-settled into his mother's new home at 1st Meshchanskaya, 76. In June of the same year he graduated from school with five A's.
In 1955, Vladimir enrolled into the Moscow State University of Civil Engineering, but dropped out after just one semester to pursue an acting career. In June 1956 he joined Boris Vershilov's class at the Moscow Art Theatre Studio-Institute. It was there that he met the 3rd course student Iza Zhukova who four years later became his wife; soon the two lovers settled at the 1st Meschanskaya flat, in a common room, shielded off by a folding screen. It was also in the Studio that Vysotsky met Bulat Okudzhava for the first time, an already popular underground bard. He was even more impressed by his Russian literature teacher Andrey Sinyavsky who along with his wife often invited students to his home to stage improvised disputes and concerts. In 1958 Vysotsky's got his first Moscow Art Theatre role: that of Porfiry Petrovich in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. In 1959 he was cast in his first cinema role, that of student Petya in Vasily Ordynsky's The Yearlings (Сверстницы). On 20 June 1960, Vysotsky graduated from the MAT theater institute and joined the Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre (led by Boris Ravenskikh at the time) where he spent (with intervals) almost three troubled years. These were marred by numerous administrative sanctions, due to "lack of discipline" and occasional drunken sprees which were a reaction, mainly, to the lack of serious roles and his inability to realise his artistic potential. A short stint in 1962 at the Moscow Theater of Miniatures (administered at the time by Vladimir Polyakov) ended with him being fired, officially "for a total lack of sense of humour."
Vysotsky's second and third films, Dima Gorin's Career and 713 Requests Permission to Land, were interesting only for the fact that in both he had to be beaten up (in the first case by Aleksandr Demyanenko). "That was the way cinema greeted me," he later jokingly remarked. In 1961, Vysotsky wrote his first ever proper song, called "Tattoo" (Татуировка), which started a long and colourful cycle of artfully stylized criminal underworld romantic stories, full of undercurrents and witty social comments. In June 1963, while shooting Penalty Kick (directed by Veniamin Dorman and starring Mikhail Pugovkin), Vysotsky used the Gorky Film Studio to record an hour-long reel-to-reel cassette of his own songs; copies of it quickly spread and the author's name became known in Moscow and elsewhere (although many of these songs were often being referred to as either "traditional" or "anonymous"). Just several months later Riga-based chess grandmaster Mikhail Tal was heard praising the author of "Bolshoy Karetny" (Большой Каретный) and Anna Akhmatova (in a conversation with Joseph Brodsky) was quoting Vysotsky's number "I was the soul of a bad company..." taking it apparently for some brilliant piece of anonymous street folklore. In October 1964 Vysotsky recorded in chronological order 48 of his own songs, his first self-made Complete works of... compilation, which boosted his popularity as a new Moscow folk underground star.
In 1964, director Yuri Lyubimov invited Vysotsky to join the newly created Taganka Theatre. "'I've written some songs of my own. Won't you listen?' – he asked. I agreed to listen to just one of them, expecting our meeting to last for no more than five minutes. Instead I ended up listening to him for an entire 1.5 hours," Lyubimov remembered years later of this first audition. On 19 September 1964, Vysotsky debuted in Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan as the Second God (not to count two minor roles). A month later he came on stage as a dragoon captain (Bela's father) in Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time. It was in Taganka that Vysotsky started to sing on stage; the War theme becoming prominent in his musical repertoire. In 1965 Vysotsky appeared in the experimental Poet and Theater (Поэт и Театр, February) show, based on Andrey Voznesensky's work and then Ten Days that Shook the World (after John Reed's book, April) and was commissioned by Lyubimov to write songs exclusively for Taganka's new World War II play. The Fallen and the Living (Павшие и Живые), premiered in October 1965, featured Vysotsky's "Stars" (Звёзды), "The Soldiers of Heeresgruppe Mitte" (Солдаты группы "Центр") and "Penal Battalions" (Штрафные батальоны), the striking examples of a completely new kind of a war song, never heard in his country before. As veteran screenwriter Nikolay Erdman put it (in conversation with Lyubimov), "Professionally, I can well understand how Mayakovsky or Seryozha Yesenin were doing it. How Volodya Vysotsky does it is totally beyond me." With his songs – in effect, miniature theatrical dramatizations (usually with a protagonist and full of dialogues), Vysotsky instantly achieved such level of credibility that real life former prisoners, war veterans, boxers, footballers refused to believe that the author himself had never served his time in prisons and labor camps, or fought in the War, or been a boxing/football professional. After the second of the two concerts at the Leningrad Molecular Physics institute (that was his actual debut as a solo musical performer) Vysotsky left a note for his fans in a journal which ended with words: "Now that you've heard all these songs, please, don't you make a mistake of mixing me with my characters, I am not like them at all. With love, Vysotsky, 20 April 1965, XX c." Excuses of this kind he had to make throughout his performing career. At least one of Vysotsky's song themes – that of alcoholic abuse – was worryingly autobiographical, though. By the time his breakthrough came in 1967, he'd suffered several physical breakdowns and once was sent (by Taganka's boss) to a rehabilitation clinic, a visit he on several occasions repeated since.
Brecht's Life of Galileo (premiered on 17 May 1966), transformed by Lyubimov into a powerful allegory of Soviet intelligentsia's set of moral and intellectual dilemmas, brought Vysotsky his first leading theater role (along with some fitness lessons: he had to perform numerous acrobatic tricks on stage). Press reaction was mixed, some reviewers disliked the actor's overt emotionalism, but it was for the first time ever that Vysotsky's name appeared in Soviet papers. Film directors now were treating him with respect. Viktor Turov's war film I Come from the Childhood where Vysotsky got his first ever "serious" (neither comical, nor villainous) role in cinema, featured two of his songs: a spontaneous piece called "When It's Cold" (Холода) and a dark, Unknown soldier theme-inspired classic "Common Graves" (На братских могилах), sung behind the screen by the legendary Mark Bernes.
Stanislav Govorukhin and Boris Durov's The Vertical (1967), a mountain climbing drama, starring Vysotsky (as Volodya the radioman), brought him all-round recognition and fame. Four of the numbers used in the film (including "Song of a Friend [fi]" (Песня о друге), released in 1968 by the Soviet recording industry monopolist Melodiya disc to become an unofficial hit) were written literally on the spot, nearby Elbrus, inspired by professional climbers' tales and one curious hotel bar conversation with a German guest who 25 years ago happened to climb these very mountains in a capacity of an Edelweiss division fighter. Another 1967 film, Kira Muratova's Brief Encounters featured Vysotsky as the geologist Maxim (paste-bearded again) with a now trademark off-the-cuff musical piece, a melancholy improvisation called "Things to Do" (Дела). All the while Vysotsky continued working hard at Taganka, with another important role under his belt (that of Mayakovsky or, rather one of the latter character's five different versions) in the experimental piece called Listen! (Послушайте!), and now regularly gave semi-official concerts where audiences greeted him as a cult hero.
In the end of 1967 Vysotsky got another pivotal theater role, that of Khlopusha [ru] in Pugachov (a play based on a poem by Sergei Yesenin), often described as one of Taganka's finest. "He put into his performance all the things that he excelled at and, on the other hand, it was Pugachyov that made him discover his own potential," – Soviet critic Natalya Krymova wrote years later. Several weeks after the premiere, infuriated by the actor's increasing unreliability triggered by worsening drinking problems, Lyubimov fired him – only to let him back again several months later (and thus begin the humiliating sacked-then-pardoned routine which continued for years). In June 1968 a Vysotsky-slagging campaign was launched in the Soviet press. First Sovetskaya Rossiya commented on the "epidemic spread of immoral, smutty songs," allegedly promoting "criminal world values, alcoholism, vice and immorality" and condemned their author for "sowing seeds of evil." Then Komsomolskaya Pravda linked Vysotsky with black market dealers selling his tapes somewhere in Siberia. Composer Dmitry Kabalevsky speaking from the Union of Soviet Composers' Committee tribune criticised the Soviet radio for giving an ideologically dubious, "low-life product" like "Song of a Friend" (Песня о друге) an unwarranted airplay. Playwright Alexander Stein who in his Last Parade play used several of Vysotsky's songs, was chastised by a Ministry of Culture official for "providing a tribune for this anti-Soviet scum." The phraseology prompted commentators in the West to make parallels between Vysotsky and Mikhail Zoschenko, another Soviet author who'd been officially labeled "scum" some 20 years ago.
Two of Vysotsky's 1968 films, Gennady Poloka's Intervention (premiered in May 1987) where he was cast as Brodsky, a dodgy even if highly artistic character, and Yevgeny Karelov's Two Comrades Were Serving (a gun-toting White Army officer Brusentsov who in the course of the film shoots his friend, his horse, Oleg Yankovsky's good guy character and, finally himself) – were severely censored, first of them shelved for twenty years. At least four of Vysotsky's 1968 songs, "Save Our Souls" (Спасите наши души), "The Wolfhunt" (Охота на волков), "Gypsy Variations" (Моя цыганская) and "The Steam-bath in White" (Банька по-белому), were hailed later as masterpieces. It was at this point that 'proper' love songs started to appear in Vysotsky's repertoire, documenting the beginning of his passionate love affair with French actress Marina Vlady.
In 1969 Vysotsky starred in two films: The Master of Taiga where he played a villainous Siberian timber-floating brigadier, and more entertaining Dangerous Tour. The latter was criticized in the Soviet press for taking a farcical approach to the subject of the Bolshevik underground activities but for a wider Soviet audience this was an important opportunity to enjoy the charismatic actor's presence on big screen. In 1970, after visiting the dislodged Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at his dacha and having a lengthy conversation with him, Vysotsky embarked on a massive and by Soviet standards dangerously commercial concert tour in Soviet Central Asia and then brought Marina Vlady to director Viktor Turov's place so as to investigate her Belarusian roots. The pair finally wed on 1 December 1970 (causing furore among the Moscow cultural and political elite) and spent a honeymoon in Georgia. This was the highly productive period for Vysotsky, resulting in numerous new songs, including the anthemic "I Hate" (Я не люблю), sentimental "Lyricale" (Лирическая) and dramatic war epics "He Didn't Return from the Battle" (Он не вернулся из боя) and "The Earth Song" (Песня о Земле) among many others.
In 1971 a drinking spree-related nervous breakdown brought Vysotsky to the Moscow Kashchenko clinic [ru]. By this time he has been suffering from alcoholism. Many of his songs from this period deal, either directly or metaphorically, with alcoholism and insanity. Partially recovered (due to the encouraging presence of Marina Vladi), Vysotsky embarked on a successful Ukrainian concert tour and wrote a cluster of new songs. On 29 November 1971 Taganka's Hamlet premiered, a groundbreaking Lyubimov's production with Vysotsky in the leading role, that of a lone intellectual rebel, rising to fight the cruel state machine.
Also in 1971 Vysotsky was invited to play the lead in The Sannikov Land, the screen adaptation of Vladimir Obruchev's science fiction,[47] which he wrote several songs for, but was suddenly dropped for the reason of his face "being too scandalously recognisable" as a state official put it. One of the songs written for the film, a doom-laden epic allegory "Capricious Horses" (Кони привередливые), became one of the singer's signature tunes. Two of Vysotsky's 1972 film roles were somewhat meditative: an anonymous American journalist in The Fourth One and the "righteous guy" von Koren in The Bad Good Man (based on Anton Chekov's Duel). The latter brought Vysotsky the Best Male Role prize at the V Taormina Film Fest. This philosophical slant rubbed off onto some of his new works of the time: "A Singer at the Microphone" (Певец у микрофона), "The Tightrope Walker" (Канатоходец), two new war songs ("We Spin the Earth", "Black Pea-Coats") and "The Grief" (Беда), a folkish girl's lament, later recorded by Marina Vladi and subsequently covered by several female performers. Popular proved to be his 1972 humorous songs: "Mishka Shifman" (Мишка Шифман), satirizing the leaving-for-Israel routine, "Victim of the Television" which ridiculed the concept of "political consciousness," and "The Honour of the Chess Crown" (Честь шахматной короны) about an ever-fearless "simple Soviet man" challenging the much feared American champion Bobby Fischer to a match.
In 1972 he stepped up in Soviet Estonian TV where he presented his songs and gave an interview. The name of the show was "Young Man from Taganka" (Noormees Tagankalt).
In April 1973 Vysotsky visited Poland and France. Predictable problems concerning the official permission were sorted after the French Communist Party leader Georges Marchais made a personal phone call to Leonid Brezhnev who, according to Marina Vlady's memoirs, rather sympathized with the stellar couple. Having found on return a potentially dangerous lawsuit brought against him (concerning some unsanctioned concerts in Siberia the year before), Vysotsky wrote a defiant letter to the Minister of Culture Pyotr Demichev. As a result, he was granted the status of a philharmonic artist, 11.5 roubles per concert now guaranteed. Still the 900 rubles fine had to be paid according to the court verdict, which was a substantial sum, considering his monthly salary at the theater was 110 rubles. That year Vysotsky wrote some thirty songs for "Alice in Wonderland," an audioplay where he himself has been given several minor roles. His best known songs of 1973 included "The Others' Track" (Чужая колея), "The Flight Interrupted" (Прерванный полёт) and "The Monument", all pondering on his achievements and legacy.
In 1974 Melodiya released the 7" EP, featuring four of Vysotsky's war songs ("He Never Returned From the Battle", "The New Times Song", "Common Graves", and "The Earth Song") which represented a tiny portion of his creative work, owned by millions on tape. In September of that year Vysotsky received his first state award, the Honorary Diploma of the Uzbek SSR following a tour with fellow actors from the Taganka Theatre in Uzbekistan. A year later he was granted the USSR Union of Cinematographers' membership. This meant he was not an "anti-Soviet scum" now, rather an unlikely link between the official Soviet cinema elite and the "progressive-thinking artists of the West." More films followed, among them The Only Road (a Soviet-Yugoslav joint venture, premiered on 10 January 1975 in Belgrade) and a science fiction movie The Flight of Mr. McKinley (1975). Out of nine ballads that he wrote for the latter only two have made it into the soundtrack. This was the height of his popularity, when, as described in Vlady's book about her husband, walking down the street on a summer night, one could hear Vysotsky's recognizable voice coming literally from every open window. Among the songs written at the time, were humorous "The Instruction before the Trip Abroad", lyrical "Of the Dead Pilot" and philosophical "The Strange House". In 1975 Vysotsky made his third trip to France where he rather riskily visited his former tutor (and now a celebrated dissident emigre) Andrey Sinyavsky. Artist Mikhail Shemyakin, his new Paris friend (or a "bottle-sharer", in Vladi's terms), recorded Vysotsky in his home studio. After a brief stay in England Vysotsky crossed the ocean and made his first Mexican concerts in April. Back in Moscow, there were changes at Taganka: Lyubimov went to Milan's La Scala on a contract and Anatoly Efros has been brought in, a director of radically different approach. His project, Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, caused a sensation. Critics praised Alla Demidova (as Ranevskaya) and Vysotsky (as Lopakhin) powerful interplay, some describing it as one of the most dazzling in the history of the Soviet theater. Lyubimov, who disliked the piece, accused Efros of giving his actors "the stardom malaise." The 1976 Taganka's visit to Bulgaria resulted in Vysotskys's interview there being filmed and 15 songs recorded by Balkanton record label. On return Lyubimov made a move which many thought outrageous: declaring himself "unable to work with this Mr. Vysotsky anymore" he gave the role of Hamlet to Valery Zolotukhin, the latter's best friend. That was the time, reportedly, when stressed out Vysotsky started taking amphetamines.
Another Belorussian voyage completed, Marina and Vladimir went for France and from there (without any official permission given, or asked for) flew to the North America. In New York Vysotsky met, among other people, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Joseph Brodsky. In a televised one-hour interview with Dan Rather he stressed he was "not a dissident, just an artist, who's never had any intentions to leave his country where people loved him and his songs." At home this unauthorized venture into the Western world bore no repercussions: by this time Soviet authorities were divided as regards the "Vysotsky controversy" up to the highest level; while Mikhail Suslov detested the bard, Brezhnev loved him to such an extent that once, while in hospital, asked him to perform live in his daughter Galina's home, listening to this concert on the telephone. In 1976 appeared "The Domes", "The Rope" and the "Medieval" cycle, including "The Ballad of Love".
In September Vysotsky with Taganka made a trip to Yugoslavia where Hamlet won the annual BITEF festival's first prize, and then to Hungary for a two-week concert tour. Back in Moscow Lyubimov's production of The Master & Margarita featured Vysotsky as Ivan Bezdomny; a modest role, somewhat recompensed by an important Svidrigailov slot in Yury Karyakin's take on Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Vysotsky's new songs of this period include "The History of Illness" cycle concerning his health problems, humorous "Why Did the Savages Eat Captain Cook", the metaphorical "Ballad of the Truth and the Lie", as well as "Two Fates", the chilling story of a self-absorbed alcoholic hunted by two malevolent witches, his two-faced destiny. In 1977 Vysotsky's health deteriorated (heart, kidneys, liver failures, jaw infection and nervous breakdown) to such an extent that in April he found himself in Moscow clinic's reanimation center in the state of physical and mental collapse.
In 1977 Vysotsky made an unlikely appearance in New York City on the American television show 60 Minutes, which falsely stated that Vysotsky had spent time in the Soviet prison system, the Gulag. That year saw the release of three Vysotsky's LPs in France (including the one that had been recorded by RCA in Canada the previous year); arranged and accompanied by guitarist Kostya Kazansky, the singer for the first time ever enjoyed the relatively sophisticated musical background. In August he performed in Hollywood before members of New York City film cast and (according to Vladi) was greeted warmly by the likes of Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro. Some more concerts in Los Angeles were followed by the appearance at the French Communist paper L’Humanité annual event. In December Taganka left for France, its Hamlet (Vysotsky back in the lead) gaining fine reviews.
1978 started with the March–April series of concerts in Moscow and Ukraine. In May Vysotsky embarked upon a new major film project: The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed (Место встречи изменить нельзя) about two detectives fighting crime in late 1940s Russia, directed by Stanislav Govorukhin. The film (premiered on 11 November 1978 on the Soviet Central TV) presented Vysotsky as Zheglov, a ruthless and charismatic cop teaching his milder partner Sharapov (actor Vladimir Konkin) his art of crime-solving. Vysotsky also became engaged in Taganka's Genre-seeking show (performing some of his own songs) and played Aleksander Blok in Anatoly Efros' The Lady Stranger (Незнакомка) radio play (premiered on air on 10 July 1979 and later released as a double LP).
In November 1978 Vysotsky took part in the underground censorship-defying literary project Metropolis, inspired and organized by Vasily Aksenov. In January 1979 Vysotsky again visited America with highly successful series of concerts. That was the point (according to biographer Vladimir Novikov) when a glimpse of new, clean life of a respectable international actor and performer all but made Vysotsky seriously reconsider his priorities. What followed though, was a return to the self-destructive theater and concert tours schedule, personal doctor Anatoly Fedotov now not only his companion, but part of Taganka's crew. "Who was this Anatoly? Just a man who in every possible situation would try to provide drugs. And he did provide. In such moments Volodya trusted him totally," Oksana Afanasyeva, Vysotsky's Moscow girlfriend (who was near him for most of the last year of his life and, on occasion, herself served as a drug courier) remembered. In July 1979, after a series of Central Asia concerts, Vysotsky collapsed, experienced clinical death and was resuscitated by Fedotov (who injected caffeine into the heart directly), colleague and close friend Vsevolod Abdulov helping with heart massage. In January 1980 Vysotsky asked Lyubimov for a year's leave. "Up to you, but on condition that Hamlet is yours," was the answer. The songwriting showed signs of slowing down, as Vysotsky began switching from songs to more conventional poetry. Still, of nearly 800 poems by Vysotsky only one has been published in the Soviet Union while he was alive. Not a single performance or interview was broadcast by the Soviet television in his lifetime.
In May 1979, being in a practice studio of the MSU Faculty of Journalism, Vysotsky recorded a video letter to American actor and film producer Warren Beatty, looking for both a personal meeting with Beatty and an opportunity to get a role in Reds film, to be produced and directed by the latter. While recording, Vysotsky made a few attempts to speak English, trying to overcome the language barrier. This video letter never reached Beatty. It was broadcast for the first time more than three decades later, on the night of 24 January 2013 (local time) by Rossiya 1 channel, along with records of TV channels of Italy, Mexico, Poland, USA and from private collections, in Vladimir Vysotsky. A letter to Warren Beatty film by Alexander Kovanovsky and Igor Rakhmanov. While recording this video, Vysotsky had a rare opportunity to perform for a camera, being still unable to do it with Soviet television.
On 22 January 1980, Vysotsky entered the Moscow Ostankino TV Center to record his one and only studio concert for the Soviet television. What proved to be an exhausting affair (his concentration lacking, he had to plod through several takes for each song) was premiered on the Soviet TV eight years later. The last six months of his life saw Vysotsky appearing on stage sporadically, fueled by heavy dosages of drugs and alcohol. His performances were often erratic. Occasionally Vysotsky paid visits to Sklifosofsky [ru] institute's ER unit, but would not hear of Marina Vlady's suggestions for him to take long-term rehabilitation course in a Western clinic. Yet he kept writing, mostly poetry and even prose, but songs as well. The last song he performed was the agonizing "My Sorrow, My Anguish" and his final poem, written one week prior to his death was "A Letter to Marina": "I'm less than fifty, but the time is short / By you and God protected, life and limb / I have a song or two to sing before the Lord / I have a way to make my peace with him."
Although several theories of the ultimate cause of the singer's death persist to this day, given what is now known about cardiovascular disease, it seems likely that by the time of his death Vysotsky had an advanced coronary condition brought about by years of tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse, as well as his grueling work schedule and the stress of the constant harassment by the government. Towards the end, most of Vysotsky's closest friends had become aware of the ominous signs and were convinced that his demise was only a matter of time. Clear evidence of this can be seen in a video ostensibly shot by the Japanese NHK channel only months before Vysotsky's death, where he appears visibly unwell, breathing heavily and slurring his speech. Accounts by Vysotsky's close friends and colleagues concerning his last hours were compiled in the book by V. Perevozchikov.
Vysotsky suffered from alcoholism for most of his life. Sometime around 1977, he started using amphetamines and other prescription narcotics in an attempt to counteract the debilitating hangovers and eventually to rid himself of alcohol addiction. While these attempts were partially successful, he ended up trading alcoholism for a severe drug dependency that was fast spiralling out of control. He was reduced to begging some of his close friends in the medical profession for supplies of drugs, often using his acting skills to collapse in a medical office and imitate a seizure or some other condition requiring a painkiller injection. On 25 July 1979 (a year to the day before his death) he suffered a cardiac arrest and was clinically dead for several minutes during a concert tour of Soviet Uzbekistan, after injecting himself with a wrong kind of painkiller he had previously obtained from a dentist's office.
Fully aware of the dangers of his condition, Vysotsky made several attempts to cure himself of his addiction. He underwent an experimental (and ultimately discredited) blood purification procedure offered by a leading drug rehabilitation specialist in Moscow. He also went to an isolated retreat in France with his wife Marina in the spring of 1980 as a way of forcefully depriving himself of any access to drugs. After these attempts failed, Vysotsky returned to Moscow to find his life in an increasingly stressful state of disarray. He had been a defendant in two criminal trials, one for a car wreck he had caused some months earlier, and one for an alleged conspiracy to sell unauthorized concert tickets (he eventually received a suspended sentence and a probation in the first case, and the charges in the second were dismissed, although several of his co-defendants were found guilty). He also unsuccessfully fought the film studio authorities for the rights to direct a movie called The Green Phaeton. Relations with his wife Marina were deteriorating, and he was torn between his loyalty to her and his love for his mistress Oksana Afanasyeva. He had also developed severe inflammation in one of his legs, making his concert performances extremely challenging.
In a final desperate attempt to overcome his drug addiction, partially prompted by his inability to obtain drugs through his usual channels (the authorities had imposed a strict monitoring of the medical institutions to prevent illicit drug distribution during the 1980 Olympics), he relapsed into alcohol and went on a prolonged drinking binge (apparently consuming copious amounts of champagne due to a prevalent misconception at the time that it was better than vodka at countering the effects of drug withdrawal).
On 3 July 1980, Vysotsky gave a performance at a suburban Moscow concert hall. One of the stage managers recalls that he looked visibly unhealthy ("gray-faced", as she puts it) and complained of not feeling too good, while another says she was surprised by his request for champagne before the start of the show, as he had always been known for completely abstaining from drink before his concerts. On 16 July Vysotsky gave his last public concert in Kaliningrad. On 18 July, Vysotsky played Hamlet for the last time at the Taganka Theatre. From around 21 July, several of his close friends were on a round-the-clock watch at his apartment, carefully monitoring his alcohol intake and hoping against all odds that his drug dependency would soon be overcome and they would then be able to bring him back from the brink. The effects of drug withdrawal were clearly getting the better of him, as he got increasingly restless, moaned and screamed in pain, and at times fell into memory lapses, failing to recognize at first some of his visitors, including his son Arkadiy. At one point, Vysotsky's personal physician A. Fedotov (the same doctor who had brought him back from clinical death a year earlier in Uzbekistan) attempted to sedate him, inadvertently causing asphyxiation from which he was barely saved. On 24 July, Vysotsky told his mother that he thought he was going to die that day, and then made similar remarks to a few of the friends present at the apartment, who begged him to stop such talk and keep his spirits up. But soon thereafter, Oksana Afanasyeva saw him clench his chest several times, which led her to suspect that he was genuinely suffering from a cardiovascular condition. She informed Fedotov of this but was told not to worry, as he was going to monitor Vysotsky's condition all night. In the evening, after drinking relatively small amounts of alcohol, the moaning and groaning Vysotsky was sedated by Fedotov, who then sat down on the couch next to him but fell asleep. Fedotov awoke in the early hours of 25 July to an unusual silence and found Vysotsky dead in his bed with his eyes wide open, apparently of a myocardial infarction, as he later certified. This was contradicted by Fedotov's colleagues, Sklifosovsky Emergency Medical Institute physicians L. Sul'povar and S. Scherbakov (who had demanded the actor's immediate hospitalization on 23 July but were allegedly rebuffed by Fedotov), who insisted that Fedotov's incompetent sedation combined with alcohol was what killed Vysotsky. An autopsy was prevented by Vysotsky's parents (who were eager to have their son's drug addiction remain secret), so the true cause of death remains unknown.
No official announcement of the actor's death was made, only a brief obituary appeared in the Moscow newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva, and a note informing of Vysotsky's death and cancellation of the Hamlet performance was put out at the entrance to the Taganka Theatre (the story goes that not a single ticket holder took advantage of the refund offer). Despite this, by the end of the day, millions had learned of Vysotsky's death. On 28 July, he lay in state at the Taganka Theatre. After a mourning ceremony involving an unauthorized mass gathering of unprecedented scale, Vysotsky was buried at the Vagankovskoye Cemetery in Moscow. The attendance at the Olympic events dropped noticeably on that day, as scores of spectators left to attend the funeral. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to catch a glimpse of his coffin.
According to author Valery Perevozchikov part of the blame for his death lay with the group of associates who surrounded him in the last years of his life. This inner circle were all people under the influence of his strong character, combined with a material interest in the large sums of money his concerts earned. This list included Valerii Yankelovich, manager of the Taganka Theatre and prime organiser of his non-sanctioned concerts; Anatoly Fedotov, his personal doctor; Vadim Tumanov, gold prospector (and personal friend) from Siberia; Oksana Afanasyeva (later Yarmolnik), his mistress the last three years of his life; Ivan Bortnik, a fellow actor; and Leonid Sul'povar, a department head at the Sklifosovski hospital who was responsible for much of the supply of drugs.
Vysotsky's associates had all put in efforts to supply his drug habit, which kept him going in the last years of his life. Under their influence, he was able to continue to perform all over the country, up to a week before his death. Due to illegal (i.e. non-state-sanctioned) sales of tickets and other underground methods, these concerts pulled in sums of money unimaginable in Soviet times, when almost everyone received nearly the same small salary. The payouts and gathering of money were a constant source of danger, and Yankelovich and others were needed to organise them.
Some money went to Vysotsky, the rest was distributed amongst this circle. At first this was a reasonable return on their efforts; however, as his addiction progressed and his body developed resistance, the frequency and amount of drugs needed to keep Vysotsky going became unmanageable. This culminated at the time of the Moscow Olympics which coincided with the last days of his life, when supplies of drugs were monitored more strictly than usual, and some of the doctors involved in supplying Vysotsky were already behind bars (normally the doctors had to account for every ampule, thus drugs were transferred to an empty container, while the patients received a substitute or placebo instead). In the last few days Vysotsky became uncontrollable, his shouting could be heard all over the apartment building on Malaya Gruzinskaya St. where he lived amongst VIP's. Several days before his death, in a state of stupor he went on a high speed drive around Moscow in an attempt to obtain drugs and alcohol – when many high-ranking people saw him. This increased the likelihood of him being forcibly admitted to the hospital, and the consequent danger to the circle supplying his habit. As his state of health declined, and it became obvious that he might die, his associates gathered to decide what to do with him. They came up with no firm decision. They did not want him admitted officially, as his drug addiction would become public and they would fall under suspicion, although some of them admitted that any ordinary person in his condition would have been admitted immediately.
On Vysotsky's death his associates and relatives put in much effort to prevent a post-mortem being carried out. This despite the fairly unusual circumstances: he died aged 42 under heavy sedation with an improvised cocktail of sedatives and stimulants, including the toxic chloral hydrate, provided by his personal doctor who had been supplying him with narcotics the previous three years. This doctor, being the only one present at his side when death occurred, had a few days earlier been seen to display elementary negligence in treating the sedated Vysotsky. On the night of his death, Arkadii Vysotsky (his son), who tried to visit his father in his apartment, was rudely refused entry by Yankelovich, even though there was a lack of people able to care for him. Subsequently, the Soviet police commenced a manslaughter investigation which was dropped due to the absence of evidence taken at the time of death.
Vysotsky's first wife was Iza Zhukova. They met in 1956, being both MAT theater institute students, lived for some time at Vysotsky's mother's flat in Moscow, after her graduation (Iza was 2 years older) spent months in different cities (her – in Kiev, then Rostov) and finally married on 25 April 1960.
He met his second wife Lyudmila Abramova in 1961, while shooting the film 713 Requests Permission to Land. They married in 1965 and had two sons, Arkady (born 1962) and Nikita (born 1964).
While still married to Lyudmila Abramova, Vysotsky began a romantic relationship with Tatyana Ivanenko, a Taganka actress, then, in 1967 fell in love with Marina Vlady, a French actress of Russian descent, who was working at Mosfilm on a joint Soviet-French production at that time. Marina had been married before and had three children, while Vladimir had two. They were married in 1969. For 10 years the two maintained a long-distance relationship as Marina compromised her career in France to spend more time in Moscow, and Vladimir's friends pulled strings for him to be allowed to travel abroad to stay with his wife. Marina eventually joined the Communist Party of France, which essentially gave her an unlimited-entry visa into the Soviet Union, and provided Vladimir with some immunity against prosecution by the government, which was becoming weary of his covertly anti-Soviet lyrics and his odds-defying popularity with the masses. The problems of his long-distance relationship with Vlady inspired several of Vysotsky's songs.
In the autumn of 1981 Vysotsky's first collection of poetry was officially published in the USSR, called The Nerve (Нерв). Its first edition (25,000 copies) was sold out instantly. In 1982 the second one followed (100,000), then the 3rd (1988, 200,000), followed in the 1990s by several more. The material for it was compiled by Robert Rozhdestvensky, an officially laurelled Soviet poet. Also in 1981 Yuri Lyubimov staged at Taganka a new music and poetry production called Vladimir Vysotsky which was promptly banned and officially premiered on 25 January 1989.
In 1982 the motion picture The Ballad of the Valiant Knight Ivanhoe was produced in the Soviet Union and in 1983 the movie was released to the public. Four songs by Vysotsky were featured in the film.
In 1986 the official Vysotsky poetic heritage committee was formed (with Robert Rozhdestvensky at the helm, theater critic Natalya Krymova being both the instigator and the organizer). Despite some opposition from the conservatives (Yegor Ligachev was the latter's political leader, Stanislav Kunyaev of Nash Sovremennik represented its literary flank) Vysotsky was rewarded posthumously with the USSR State Prize. The official formula – "for creating the character of Zheglov and artistic achievements as a singer-songwriter" was much derided from both the left and the right. In 1988 the Selected Works of... (edited by N. Krymova) compilation was published, preceded by I Will Surely Return... (Я, конечно, вернусь...) book of fellow actors' memoirs and Vysotsky's verses, some published for the first time. In 1990 two volumes of extensive The Works of... were published, financed by the late poet's father Semyon Vysotsky. Even more ambitious publication series, self-proclaimed "the first ever academical edition" (the latter assertion being dismissed by sceptics) compiled and edited by Sergey Zhiltsov, were published in Tula (1994–1998, 5 volumes), Germany (1994, 7 volumes) and Moscow (1997, 4 volumes).
In 1989 the official Vysotsky Museum opened in Moscow, with the magazine of its own called Vagant (edited by Sergey Zaitsev) devoted entirely to Vysotsky's legacy. In 1996 it became an independent publication and was closed in 2002.
In the years to come, Vysotsky's grave became a site of pilgrimage for several generations of his fans, the youngest of whom were born after his death. His tombstone also became the subject of controversy, as his widow had wished for a simple abstract slab, while his parents insisted on a realistic gilded statue. Although probably too solemn to have inspired Vysotsky himself, the statue is believed by some to be full of metaphors and symbols reminiscent of the singer's life.
In 1995 in Moscow the Vysotsky monument was officially opened at Strastnoy Boulevard, by the Petrovsky Gates. Among those present were the bard's parents, two of his sons, first wife Iza, renown poets Yevtushenko and Voznesensky. "Vysotsky had always been telling the truth. Only once he was wrong when he sang in one of his songs: 'They will never erect me a monument in a square like that by Petrovskye Vorota'", Mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov said in his speech.[95] A further monument to Vysotsky was erected in 2014 at Rostov-on-Don.
In October 2004, a monument to Vysotsky was erected in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica, near the Millennium Bridge. His son, Nikita Vysotsky, attended the unveiling. The statue was designed by Russian sculptor Alexander Taratinov, who also designed a monument to Alexander Pushkin in Podgorica. The bronze statue shows Vysotsky standing on a pedestal, with his one hand raised and the other holding a guitar. Next to the figure lies a bronze skull – a reference to Vysotsky's monumental lead performances in Shakespeare's Hamlet. On the pedestal the last lines from a poem of Vysotsky's, dedicated to Montenegro, are carved.
The Vysotsky business center & semi-skyscraper was officially opened in Yekaterinburg, in 2011. It is the tallest building in Russia outside of Moscow, has 54 floors, total height: 188.3 m (618 ft). On the third floor of the business center is the Vysotsky Museum. Behind the building is a bronze sculpture of Vladimir Vysotsky and his third wife, a French actress Marina Vlady.
In 2011 a controversial movie Vysotsky. Thank You For Being Alive was released, script written by his son, Nikita Vysotsky. The actor Sergey Bezrukov portrayed Vysotsky, using a combination of a mask and CGI effects. The film tells about Vysotsky's illegal underground performances, problems with KGB and drugs, and subsequent clinical death in 1979.
Shortly after Vysotsky's death, many Russian bards started writing songs and poems about his life and death. The best known are Yuri Vizbor's "Letter to Vysotsky" (1982) and Bulat Okudzhava's "About Volodya Vysotsky" (1980). In Poland, Jacek Kaczmarski based some of his songs on those of Vysotsky, such as his first song (1977) was based on "The Wolfhunt", and dedicated to his memory the song "Epitafium dla Włodzimierza Wysockiego" ("Epitaph for Vladimir Vysotsky").
Every year on Vysotsky's birthday festivals are held throughout Russia and in many communities throughout the world, especially in Europe. Vysotsky's impact in Russia is often compared to that of Wolf Biermann in Germany, Bob Dylan in America, or Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel in France.
The asteroid 2374 Vladvysotskij, discovered by Lyudmila Zhuravleva, was named after Vysotsky.
During the Annual Q&A Event Direct Line with Vladimir Putin, Alexey Venediktov asked Putin to name a street in Moscow after the singer Vladimir Vysotsky, who, though considered one of the greatest Russian artists, has no street named after him in Moscow almost 30 years after his death. Venediktov stated a Russian law that allowed the President to do so and promote a law suggestion to name a street by decree. Putin answered that he would talk to Mayor of Moscow and would solve this problem. In July 2015 former Upper and Lower Tagansky Dead-ends (Верхний и Нижний Таганские тупики) in Moscow were reorganized into Vladimir Vysotsky Street.
The Sata Kieli Cultural Association, [Finland], organizes the annual International Vladimir Vysotsky Festival (Vysotski Fest), where Vysotsky's singers from different countries perform in Helsinki and other Finnish cities. They sing Vysotsky in different languages and in different arrangements.
Two brothers and singers from Finland, Mika and Turkka Mali, over the course of their more than 30-year musical career, have translated into Finnish, recorded and on numerous occasions publicly performed songs of Vladimir Vysotsky.
Throughout his lengthy musical career, Jaromír Nohavica, a famed Czech singer, translated and performed numerous songs of Vladimir Vysotsky, most notably Песня о друге (Píseň o příteli – Song about a friend).
The Museum of Vladimir Vysotsky in Koszalin dedicated to Vladimir Vysotsky was founded by Marlena Zimna (1969–2016) in May 1994, in her apartment, in the city of Koszalin, in Poland. Since then the museum has collected over 19,500 exhibits from different countries and currently holds Vladimir Vysotsky' personal items, autographs, drawings, letters, photographs and a large library containing unique film footage, vinyl records, CDs and DVDs. A special place in the collection holds a Vladimir Vysotsky's guitar, on which he played at a concert in Casablanca in April 1976. Vladimir Vysotsky presented this guitar to Moroccan journalist Hassan El-Sayed together with an autograph (an extract from Vladimir Vysotsky's song "What Happened in Africa"), written in Russian right on the guitar.
In January 2023, a monument to the outstanding actor, singer and poet Vladimir Vysotsky was unveiled in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, in the square near the Rodina House of Culture. Author Vladimir Chebotarev.
After her husband's death, urged by her friend Simone Signoret, Marina Vlady wrote a book called The Aborted Flight about her years together with Vysotsky. The book paid tribute to Vladimir's talent and rich persona, yet was uncompromising in its depiction of his addictions and the problems that they caused in their marriage. Written in French (and published in France in 1987), it was translated into Russian in tandem by Vlady and a professional translator and came out in 1989 in the USSR. Totally credible from the specialists' point of view, the book caused controversy, among other things, by shocking revelations about the difficult father-and-son relationship (or rather, the lack of any), implying that Vysotsky-senior (while his son was alive) was deeply ashamed of him and his songs which he deemed "anti-Soviet" and reported his own son to the KGB. Also in 1989 another important book of memoirs was published in the USSR, providing a bulk of priceless material for the host of future biographers, Alla Demidova's Vladimir Vysotsky, the One I Know and Love. Among other publications of note were Valery Zolotukhin's Vysotsky's Secret (2000), a series of Valery Perevozchikov's books (His Dying Hour, The Unknown Vysotsky and others) containing detailed accounts and interviews dealing with the bard's life's major controversies (the mystery surrounding his death, the truth behind Vysotsky Sr.'s alleged KGB reports, the true nature of Vladimir Vysotsky's relations with his mother Nina's second husband Georgy Bartosh etc.), Iza Zhukova's Short Happiness for a Lifetime and the late bard's sister-in-law Irena Vysotskaya's My Brother Vysotsky. The Beginnings (both 2005).
A group of enthusiasts has created a non-profit project – the mobile application "Vysotsky"
The multifaceted talent of Vysotsky is often described by the term "bard" (бард) that Vysotsky has never been enthusiastic about. He thought of himself mainly as an actor and poet rather than a singer, and once remarked, "I do not belong to what people call bards or minstrels or whatever." With the advent of portable tape-recorders in the Soviet Union, Vysotsky's music became available to the masses in the form of home-made reel-to-reel audio tape recordings (later on cassette tapes).
Vysotsky accompanied himself on a Russian seven-string guitar, with a raspy voice singing ballads of love, peace, war, everyday Soviet life and of the human condition. He was largely perceived as the voice of honesty, at times sarcastically jabbing at the Soviet government, which made him a target for surveillance and threats. In France, he has been compared with Georges Brassens; in Russia, however, he was more frequently compared with Joe Dassin, partly because they were the same age and died in the same year, although their ideologies, biographies, and musical styles are very different. Vysotsky's lyrics and style greatly influenced Jacek Kaczmarski, a Polish songwriter and singer who touched on similar themes.
The songs – over 600 of them – were written about almost any imaginable theme. The earliest were blatnaya pesnya ("outlaw songs"). These songs were based either on the life of the common people in Moscow or on life in the crime people, sometimes in Gulag. Vysotsky slowly grew out of this phase and started singing more serious, though often satirical, songs. Many of these songs were about war. These war songs were not written to glorify war, but rather to expose the listener to the emotions of those in extreme, life-threatening situations. Most Soviet veterans would say that Vysotsky's war songs described the truth of war far more accurately than more official "patriotic" songs.
Nearly all of Vysotsky's songs are in the first person, although he is almost never the narrator. When singing his criminal songs, he would adopt the accent and intonation of a Moscow thief, and when singing war songs, he would sing from the point of view of a soldier. In many of his philosophical songs, he adopted the role of inanimate objects. This created some confusion about Vysotsky's background, especially during the early years when information could not be passed around very easily. Using his acting talent, the poet played his role so well that until told otherwise, many of his fans believed that he was, indeed, a criminal or war veteran. Vysotsky's father said that "War veterans thought the author of the songs to be one of them, as if he had participated in the war together with them." The same could be said about mountain climbers; on multiple occasions, Vysotsky was sent pictures of mountain climbers' graves with quotes from his lyrics etched on the tombstones.
Not being officially recognized as a poet and singer, Vysotsky performed wherever and whenever he could – in the theater (where he worked), at universities, in private apartments, village clubs, and in the open air. It was not unusual for him to give several concerts in one day. He used to sleep little, using the night hours to write. With few exceptions, he wasn't allowed to publish his recordings with "Melodiya", which held a monopoly on the Soviet music industry. His songs were passed on through amateur, fairly low quality recordings on vinyl discs and magnetic tape, resulting in his immense popularity. Cosmonauts even took his music on cassette into orbit.
Musically, virtually all of Vysotsky's songs were written in a minor key, and tended to employ from three to seven chords. Vysotsky composed his songs and played them exclusively on the Russian seven string guitar, often tuned a tone or a tone-and-a-half below the traditional Russian "Open G major" tuning. This guitar, with its specific Russian tuning, makes a slight yet notable difference in chord voicings than the standard tuned six string Spanish (classical) guitar, and it became a staple of his sound. Because Vysotsky tuned down a tone and a half, his strings had less tension, which also colored the sound.
His earliest songs were usually written in C minor (with the guitar tuned a tone down from DGBDGBD to CFACFAC)
Songs written in this key include "Stars" (Zvyozdy), "My friend left for Magadan" (Moy drug uyekhal v Magadan), and most of his "outlaw songs".
At around 1970, Vysotsky began writing and playing exclusively in A minor (guitar tuned to CFACFAC), which he continued doing until his death.
Vysotsky used his fingers instead of a pick to pluck and strum, as was the tradition with Russian guitar playing. He used a variety of finger picking and strumming techniques. One of his favorite was to play an alternating bass with his thumb as he plucked or strummed with his other fingers.
Often, Vysotsky would neglect to check the tuning of his guitar, which is particularly noticeable on earlier recordings. According to some accounts, Vysotsky would get upset when friends would attempt to tune his guitar, leading some to believe that he preferred to play slightly out of tune as a stylistic choice. Much of this is also attributable to the fact that a guitar that is tuned down more than 1 whole step (Vysotsky would sometimes tune as much as 2 and a half steps down) is prone to intonation problems.
Vysotsky had a unique singing style. He had an unusual habit of elongating consonants instead of vowels in his songs. So when a syllable is sung for a prolonged period of time, he would elongate the consonant instead of the vowel in that syllable.
Virtue In World
maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Serena%20Solace/63/183/1222
Maitreya-Slink Physique and Hourglass- Belleza Venus-Freya and Isis.
Can be worn seperate
REFORD GARDENS | LES JARDINS DE MÉTIS
Beautiful flowers at Reford Gardens.
Visit : www.refordgardens.com/
From Wikipedia:
Elsie Stephen Meighen - born January 22, 1872, Perth, Ontario - and Robert Wilson Reford - born in 1867, Montreal - got married on June 12, 1894.
Elsie Reford was a pioneer of Canadian horticulture, creating one of the largest private gardens in Canada on her estate, Estevan Lodge in eastern Québec. Located in Grand-Métis on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, her gardens have been open to the public since 1962 and operate under the name Les Jardins de Métis and Reford Gardens.
Born January 22, 1872 at Perth, Ontario, Elsie Reford was the eldest of three children born to Robert Meighen and Elsie Stephen. Coming from modest backgrounds themselves, Elsie’s parents ensured that their children received a good education. After being educated in Montreal, she was sent to finishing school in Dresden and Paris, returning to Montreal fluent in both German and French, and ready to take her place in society.
She married Robert Wilson Reford on June 12, 1894. She gave birth to two sons, Bruce in 1895 and Eric in 1900. Robert and Elsie Reford were, by many accounts, an ideal couple. In 1902, they built a house on Drummond Street in Montreal. They both loved the outdoors and they spend several weeks a year in a log cabin they built at Lac Caribou, south of Rimouski. In the autumn they hunted for caribou, deer, and ducks. They returned in winter to ski and snowshoe. Elsie Reford also liked to ride. She had learned as a girl and spent many hours riding on the slopes of Mount Royal. And of course, there was salmon-fishing – a sport at which she excelled.
In her day, she was known for her civic, social, and political activism. She was engaged in philanthropic activities, particularly for the Montreal Maternity Hospital and she was also the moving force behind the creation of the Women’s Canadian Club of Montreal, the first women club in Canada. She believed it important that the women become involved in debates over the great issues of the day, « something beyond the local gossip of the hour ». Her acquaintance with Lord Grey, the Governor-General of Canada from 1904 to 1911, led to her involvement in organizing, in 1908, Québec City’s tercentennial celebrations. The event was one of many to which she devoted herself in building bridges with French-Canadian community.
During the First World War, she joined her two sons in England and did volunteer work at the War Office, translating documents from German into English. After the war, she was active in the Victorian Order of Nurses, the Montreal Council of Social Agencies, and the National Association of Conservative Women.
In 1925 at the age of 53 years, Elsie Reford was operated for appendicitis and during her convalescence, her doctor counselled against fishing, fearing that she did not have the strength to return to the river.”Why not take up gardening?” he said, thinking this a more suitable pastime for a convalescent woman of a certain age. That is why she began laying out the gardens and supervising their construction. The gardens would take ten years to build, and would extend over more than twenty acres.
Elsie Reford had to overcome many difficulties in bringing her garden to life. First among them were the allergies that sometimes left her bedridden for days on end. The second obstacle was the property itself. Estevan was first and foremost a fishing lodge. The site was chosen because of its proximity to a salmon river and its dramatic views – not for the quality of the soil.
To counter-act nature’s deficiencies, she created soil for each of the plants she had selected, bringing peat and sand from nearby farms. This exchange was fortuitous to the local farmers, suffering through the Great Depression. Then, as now, the gardens provided much-needed work to an area with high unemployment. Elsie Reford’s genius as a gardener was born of the knowledge she developed of the needs of plants. Over the course of her long life, she became an expert plantsman. By the end of her life, Elsie Reford was able to counsel other gardeners, writing in the journals of the Royal Horticultural Society and the North American Lily Society. Elsie Reford was not a landscape architect and had no training of any kind as a garden designer. While she collected and appreciated art, she claimed no talents as an artist.
Elsie Stephen Reford died at her Drummond Street home on November 8, 1967 in her ninety-sixth year.
In 1995, the Reford Gardens ("Jardins de Métis") in Grand-Métis were designated a National Historic Site of Canada, as being an excellent Canadian example of the English-inspired garden.(Wikipedia)
Visit : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsie_Reford
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Visit : www.refordgardens.com/
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LES JARDINS DE MÉTIS
Créés par Elsie Reford de 1926 à 1958, ces jardins témoignent de façon remarquable de l’art paysager à l’anglaise. Disposés dans un cadre naturel, un ensemble de jardins exhibent fleurs vivaces, arbres et arbustes. Le jardin des pommetiers, les rocailles et l’Allée royale évoquent l’œuvre de cette dame passionnée d’horticulture. Agrémenté d’un ruisseau et de sentiers sinueux, ce site jouit d’un microclimat favorable à la croissance d’espèces uniques au Canada. Les pavots bleus et les lis, privilégiés par Mme Reford, y fleurissent toujours et contribuent , avec d’autres plantes exotiques et indigènes, à l’harmonie de ces lieux.
Created by Elsie Reford between 1926 and 1958, these gardens are an inspired example of the English art of the garden. Woven into a natural setting, a series of gardens display perennials, trees and shrubs. A crab-apple orchard, a rock garden, and the Long Walk are also the legacy of this dedicated horticulturist. A microclimate favours the growth of species found nowhere else in Canada, while the stream and winding paths add to the charm. Elsie Reford’s beloved blue poppies and lilies still bloom and contribute, with other exotic and indigenous plants, to the harmony of the site.
Commission des lieux et monuments historiques du Canada
Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.
Gouvernement du Canada – Government of Canada
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Wells Cathedral is a magical place to me, having cast a spell over me from the very first time I laid eyes on it as a seven-year old when it started to be a regular break on our journeys south west for childhood holidays. Although it wasn't the first cathedral I'd encountered it was the first I'd seen after developing a more conscious interest in church art and architecture and it seemed to me like something from another world (which in many ways it is). I never forgot the impression it made, its beauties inside and out, and having not visited for nearly three decades I decided getting reacquainted was long overdue.
Described as England's 'Queen amongst cathedrals' it is not as huge as some but it is as beautiful as any, and its setting within the enclosure of a charming cathedral close that constitutes a large part of this modestly-sized but picturesque cathedral-city just adds to its qualities. Its three towers beckon the visitor through the turreted gates that connect the close to the market place and to walk through these and behold the west facade for the first time is an unforgettable experience. The central tower is a beautiful example of Somerset's pinnacled late Gothic masterpieces, and yet it almost disappears, practically forgotten, when one encounters the rich display between the two western towers with their curiously flat parapets. These towers are also mainly 15th century work, but below them, and built two centuries earlier, the facade unfolds like a huge screen covered with niches, most of which remarkably retain their original statues, the largest display of medieval sculpture surviving in England.
Currently visitors are directed to enter via the cloisters on the south side rather than through the surprisingly small, almost apologetic doorways burrowed through the base of this astonishing facade, so it is important to spend some time absorbing it before entering the building. Once inside the effect is rather calmer than the riot of ornamentation on the west front, and the scale a little more intimate and inviting than many cathedral interiors. Most of it is early 13th century and harmonious in style, but it is a later addition that draws the eye looking down the nave, the unique 'scissor arches' installed to brace the crossing in order to stabilise the central tower following signs of movement. The transepts beyond are of the same date and design as the nave, whilst further east the more ornate choir is a little later, being completed in the early 14th century. Beyond this the retrochoir and polygonal Lady Chapel with their delicate pillars and vaults form one of the most delightful and visually satisfying of English medieval interiors.
Furnishings and features of interest are plentiful as one explores the church admiring the beauty of its architecture, with much medieval glass surviving at the east end, the east window and the adjoining clerestories having survived almost intact (more survives in the choir aisles and lady chapel though aside from the traceries most is in a fragmentary state). Many medieval bishops effigies are to be seen (many forming a posthumous 13th century commemoration of earlier Saxon bishops) along with three chantry chapels. In the north transept is the famous medieval astronomical clock with its painted dials and jousting knights marking the quarter hours.
One of the most exquisite features is the chapter house also on the north side, approached via a delightfully timeworn staircase and covered by a particularly attractive vaulted ceiling. It is one of the highlights of the building and shouldn't be missed. The cloisters on the south side are also a delight to wander through and were one of the last major additions to the cathedral.
Wells Cathedral is without a doubt one of the country's greatest treasures and in my mind one of the most beautiful churches anywhere and even its surroundings are a joy to explore. It is sad to think of it closed at present owing to the current lockdown, it deserves to be visited and enjoyed again by all once the present crisis is over.
Vintage postcard. Ricky Nelson in Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959).
American singer Ricky Nelson (1940-1985) was one of the first teenage stars in America. He started his career in his parents' television series The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet. In the late 1950s, he had such hits as 'Hello Mary Lou' and he starred in the Western Rio Bravo (1959) with John Wayne.
Eric Hilliard 'Ricky' Nelson was born in Teaneck, New Jersey, in 1940. His father, Ozzie Nelson, was a bandleader, and his mother, Harriet Hilliard, was a singer in his father's band. As a child, Ricky and his older brother David performed in their parents' radio show (1940-1952), in the film Here Come the Nelsons (Frederick De Cordova, 1959), and in the television series 'The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet' (1952-1966). All episodes of the series were written by Ozzie Nelson, who also directed and often incorporated Ricky's actual songs into the shows. Ricky became one of the first teenage stars in America when his rock and roll career took off in 1957. His first single, which he wanted to impress his girlfriend with, was released in April 1957 by the Verve record company and had 'I'm Walkin' (originally by Fats Domino) as its B-side. Nelson's cover version rose to #4 on the best-selling charts and reached #17 on the Billboard Hot 100. The A-side, featuring the song 'Teenager's Romance', was even more successful and rose to #2 on the best-selling charts and #8 on the Billboard Hot 100, respectively. His appearance with the songs on his parents' television show played no small part in the rapid success of his first record. In the following years, he became extremely popular with well-known hits like 'Hello Mary Lou', 'Travelin' Man' and 'Poor Little Fool'. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, he had 29 Top 40 hits, and only Elvis Presley and Pat Boone sold more records in the United States. Compared to his success in the US, his international success remained rather modest. His most successful song in Europe was 'Hello Mary Lou'(1961). Ricky Nelson also worked as an actor. In 1959, he starred in the film Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959) with John Wayne and Dean Martin, and he performed the songs 'My Rifle, My Pony and Me' and 'Cindy, Cindy'. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Newcomer for his performance in the film. Alongside Jack Lemmon, Nelson starred in the comedy The Wackiest Ship In The Army (Richard Murphy, 1960),
With the release of the LP 'Rick is 21', Nelson dropped the "y" from his name and released under the name 'Rick Nelson' from September 1961. He made a promo clip for the hit 'Travelin' Man' (1961), which is considered the first video clip ever made. The promo clip consists of images of places that are sung about in the song. In 1963 he signed a 20-year contract with Decca Records, but after 'For You' (1964) he had no more major hits. The 'British Invasion' of the English beat groups also meant a career break for him, as for many other teenage idols. In 1966, the last episode of the TV series 'The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet' ran, leaving him without an important mainstay of his success. Nelson changed his musical style and went from Rock and Roll more into country music. His fans did not appreciate this very much. He took on two more roles in TV Westerns also starring his wife Kristin Harmon, The Over-The-Hill-Gang (Richard Murphy, 1969) starring Walter Brennan, and The Resurrection of Bronco Billy (James R. Rokos, 1970) starring Johnny Crawford. Nelson wrote the song 'Garden Party' (1972), in response to the unwillingness of the public to grant him a new repertoire. The song promptly became a hit, Two years later, another modest success followed with 'Windfall'. In the 1970s and 1980s, he fell into oblivion, until 1985, when he successfully participated in a series of golden oldie concerts in England. This led to a similar tour in the southern United States. During this tour, on New Year's Eve 1985, he died in a plane crash in Texas. His girlfriend Helen Blair and all the members of the Stone Canyon Band died with him. He was 45 years old. From 1963 to 1981, Nelson was married to Kristin Harmon, the older sister of actor Mark Harmon. Their twin sons, Gunnar and Matthew, later formed the pop group Nelson, which had a number one hit in America in 1990 with '(Can't live without your) love and affection'. Their daughter, Tracy Nelson, starred in the series 'Father Dowling Mysteries'. Ricky Nelson was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood.
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch and German) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Les Jardins de Kerdalo
Le parc a été créé en 1965 par Peter Wolkonsky, peintre et grand amateur de jardins à l'anglaise.
D'une modeste ferme blottie au sein d'un vallon surplombant la rivière Le Jaudy, Peter Wolkonsky a su créer un exceptionnel jardin de 18 hectares. Les lieux originaux sont métamorphosés ; les bâtiments rénovés, agrandis et transformés en un magnifique manoir breton.
Il creuse des bassins, aménage des cascades et des escaliers d'eau, façonne des pavillons, une grotte, des parterres et des terrasses.
Ce jardin botanique présente une très grande collection de plantes : magnolias, camélias, rhododendrons, Tilia henryana, Podocarpus salignus, Taiwania crytomerioides, Arbutus, andrachnoides, Magnolia sprengeri "Diva" etc... tout le long de la vallée ainsi que 4 carrés de vivaces situés dans un jardin clos sous le manoir.
Sur les terrasses à l'italienne, poussent des plantes d'Australie, de Nouvelle Zélande ainsi que des plantes méditerranéennes.
Depuis son décès en 1997, sa fille Isabelle, et son époux Timothy Vaughan continuent son oeuvre.
The park was created in 1965 by Peter Wolkonsky, painter and large amateur of gardens to English.
Of a modest farm snuggled within a small valley overhanging the river Jaudy, Peter Wolkonsky create an exceptional garden of 18 hectares.
The original places are metamorphosed; buildings renovated, increased and transformed into a splendid Breton manor.
It digs basins, arranges cascades and staircases of water, works houses, a cave, floors and terraces.
This botanical garden presents a very large collection of plants: magniolias, camellias, rhododendrons, Tilia henryana, Podocarpus salignus, Taiwania crytomerioides, Arbutus, andrachnoides, Magniolia sprengeri “Diva” etc… all the way along the valley as 4 squares the long-lived ones under the manor located in a garden closed the manor.
On the terraces with Italian, plants of Australia, New-Zealand News push as well as Mediterranean plants.
Since its death in 1997, his daughter Isabelle, and her husband Timothy Vaughan continues his work.
Jacques-Louis David est un peintre et conventionnel français né le 30 août 1748 à Paris et mort le 29 décembre 1825 à Bruxelles. Il est considéré comme le chef de file du mouvement néo-classique, dont il représente le style pictural.
Portrait de Juliette Blait de Villeneuve (1824)
Huile sur toile
Exposition Jacques-Louis DAVID
15 octobre 2025 - 26 janvier 2026
Musée du Louvre
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Website : GALERIE JUGUET
© All rights reserved ®
Website : MÉMOIRE DES PIERRES
© All rights reserved ®
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Voici une fiche d’analyse complète, structurée, puis une description détaillée, et enfin le contexte biographique et stylistique.
FICHE D’ANALYSE D’ŒUVRE
L’œuvre est attribuée à la période d’exil de David en Belgique)
Nature de l’œuvre
Il s’agit d’un portrait réalisé dans la dernière phase de la carrière de David. L’œuvre appartient au genre du portrait mondain, mais conserve la rigueur classique caractéristique du peintre.
DESCRIPTION DE L’ŒUVRE (analyse formelle)
La jeune femme représentée est assise, vue à mi-corps, dans une pose élégante mais sobre. Son buste est légèrement tourné, créant une ligne diagonale douce qui anime la composition. Elle porte une robe légère, souvent de couleur claire, dont les drapés délicats rappellent le goût néoclassique pour l’antique. La texture du tissu est traitée avec une extrême finesse : David traduit la matière par de légers jeux de lumière.
Son visage, d’une grande douceur, est particulièrement mis en valeur. La carnation est lumineuse, lissée, sans marque du pinceau : on reconnaît ici la recherche davidienne d’un idéal de pureté. Les yeux, calmes et légèrement perdus dans la rêverie, donnent au portrait une dimension introspective.
Le fond, très épuré, presque neutre, détache clairement la figure et renforce sa présence. Aucun décor inutile : l’artiste concentre l’attention sur l’expression, la forme et la silhouette.
La lumière, douce et orientée, modèle délicatement les volumes du visage et des mains, créant un effet d’harmonie et d’équilibre.
L’ensemble inspire retenue, élégance et noblesse morale, qualités recherchées dans le portrait aristocratique du début du XIXᵉ siècle.
INTERPRÉTATION
Ce portrait n’est pas seulement la représentation physique d’une jeune femme :
Il exprime un idéal de beauté classique, épuré, régulier, mesuré.
Il met en valeur l’aura morale du modèle : calme, pudeur, modestie.
L’absence d’ornements luxueux suggère que la dignité intérieure prime sur l’apparence.
On retrouve ici la volonté de David de peindre non pas ce que l’œil voit mais ce que l’âme doit admirer.
CONTEXTE BIOGRAPHIQUE
À partir de 1816, Jacques-Louis David vit en exil à Bruxelles, après son implication politique auprès de Napoléon. Il y mène une vie relativement paisible, entouré de commanditaires privés, notamment des aristocrates revenus en grâce sous la Restauration.
À cette période :
David abandonne les grandes compositions historiques
Il se consacre principalement au portrait, un genre qu’il avait toujours pratiqué mais où il excelle désormais par sa sensibilité et son allègement du style.
Son style devient moins sévère : les contours s’adoucissent, la lumière devient plus intime, les visages plus humains. Ce portrait est représentatif de cette maturité sereine.
CONTEXTE STYLISTIQUE
Le tableau appartient au Néoclassicisme, mouvement artistique dominant à la fin du XVIIIᵉ siècle, dont David est la figure majeure.
Cependant, ce portrait témoigne d’une évolution vers une esthétique préromantique, notamment perceptible dans :
L’expression intérieure
La douceur du regard
L’intonation sentimentale du portrait
On observe un équilibre entre la rigueur classique (ligne claire, composition simple)
et une sensibilité émotionnelle nouvelle qui annonce l’époque romantique.
Conclusion
Ce portrait illustre la dernière période de David :
Plus intime,
Moins héroïque,
Mais toujours guidée par la recherche d’harmonie, de noblesse et d’idéal.
Il montre comment un grand maître du Néoclassicisme a su adapter et renouveler son art tout en conservant sa rigueur et son exigence esthétique
CES PHOTOS NE SONT PAS À VENDRE ET NE PEUVENT PAS ÊTRE REPRODUITES, MODIFIÉES, REDIFFUSÉES, EXPLOITÉES COMMERCIALEMENT OU RÉUTILISÉES DE QUELQUE MANIÈRE QUE CE SOIT.
UNIQUEMENT POUR LE PLAISIR DES YEUX.
The Photograph
A 5" x 10" high-definition glossy photograph published by Rotary Photographic of London EC.
George Robey
Sir George Edward Wade, CBE, known professionally as George Robey, was an English comedian, singer and actor in musical theatre, who became known as one of the greatest music hall performers of the late 19th. and early 20th. centuries.
As a comedian, he mixed everyday situations and observations with comic absurdity. Apart from his music hall acts, he was a popular Christmas pantomime performer in the English provinces, where he excelled in the dame roles.
He scored notable successes in musical revues during and after the Great War, particularly with the song "If You Were the Only Girl in the World", which he performed with Violet Loraine in the revue The Bing Boys Are Here (1916).
One of George's best-known original characters in his six-decade long career was the Prime Minister of Mirth.
Born in London, Robey came from a middle-class family. After schooling in England and Germany, and a series of office jobs, he made his debut on the London stage at the age of 21, as the straight man to a comic hypnotist.
Robey soon developed his own act, and appeared at the Oxford Music Hall in 1890, where he earned favourable notices singing "The Simple Pimple," and "He'll Get It Where He's Gone to Now".
In 1892, he appeared in his first pantomime, Whittington Up-to-Date in Brighton, which brought him to a wider audience. More provincial engagements followed in Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool, and he became a mainstay of the popular Christmas pantomime scene.
Robey's music hall act matured in the first decade of the 1900's, and he undertook several foreign tours. He starred in the Royal Command Performance in 1912, and regularly entertained before aristocracy.
George was an avid sportsman, playing cricket and football at a semi-professional level. During the Great War, in addition to his performances in revues, he raised money for many war charities, and was appointed a CBE in 1919.
From 1918, he created sketches based on his Prime Minister of Mirth character, and used a costume he had designed in the 1890's as a basis for the character's attire.
George made a successful transition from music hall to variety shows, and starred in the revue Round in Fifty in 1922, which earned him still wider notice. With the exception of his performances in revue and pantomime, he appeared as his Prime Minister of Mirth character in all the other entertainment media including variety, music hall and radio.
In 1913 Robey made his film debut, but he had only modest success in the medium. He continued to perform in variety theatre in the inter-war years and, in 1932, starred in Helen!, his first straight theatre role. His appearance brought him to the attention of many influential directors, including Sydney Carroll, who signed him to appear on stage as Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1 in 1935, a role that he later repeated in Laurence Olivier's 1944 film, Henry V.
During the Second World War, Robey raised money for charities and promoted recruitment into the forces. By the 1950's, his health had deteriorated, and he entered into semi-retirement. George was knighted a few months before his death in 1954.
-- George Robey - The Early Years
Robey was born on the 20th. September 1869 at 334 Kennington Road, Kennington, London. He would later claim that he was born in the more affluent area of Herne Hill, although this was incorrect. His birthplace in Kennington is a three-storey house above a shop, which was then a hardware outlet. The shop is now home to a sushi restaurant called Sushi Essence.
In the 1860's, Kennington Road was a wealthy area mainly inhabited by successful tradesmen and businessmen. By the 1880's however, the area had fallen into a decline, and was considered by locals to be one of the most impoverished areas in London. The comedian Charlie Chaplin, who had a poor and deprived upbringing, was born in the same road 18 years after Robey.
George's father, Charles Wade, was a civil engineer who spent much of his career on tramline design and construction. Robey's mother, Elizabeth Mary Wade, née Keene, was a housewife; he also had two sisters.
George's paternal ancestors originated from Hampshire; his uncle, George Wade, married into the aristocracy in 1848, a link which provided a proud topic of conversation for future generations of the Wade family.
When Robey was five, his father moved the family to Birkenhead, where he helped in the construction of the Mersey Railway. Robey began his schooling in nearby Hoylake at a dame school. Three years later the family moved back to London, near the border between Camberwell and Peckham.
At around this time, trams were being introduced to the area, providing Charles Wade with a regular, well-paid job.
To fulfil an offer of work, Charles moved the family to Germany in 1880, and Robey attended a school in Dresden. He devoted his leisure hours to visiting the city's museums, art galleries and opera houses, and gained a reasonable fluency in German by the time he was 12.
He enjoyed life in Germany, and was impressed by the many operatic productions held in the city, and by the Germans' high regard for the arts.
When he was 14, his father allowed George to move in with a clergyman's family in the German countryside, which he used as a base while studying science at Leipzig University. In order to earn money, he taught English to his landlord's children, and minded them while their parents were at work.
Having successfully enrolled at the university, George studied art and music, and stayed with the family for a further 18 months so he could complete his studies before returning to England in 1885. He later claimed, apparently untruthfully, to have studied at the University of Cambridge.
There is no evidence that Robey enrolled at Cambridge or indeed any other English university, as fees in Victorian England were beyond the reach of someone like Charles Wade. Members of the theatrical community were nevertheless convinced of his attendance at Cambridge.
The theatre critic Max Beerbohm wrote that Robey was one of the few distinguished men to emerge from the campus, but the English writer Neville Cardus was more sceptical, wondering how someone from the University of Cambridge could end up in the music hall.
Robey's biographer, Peter Cotes, concludes that he likely played along with the assumptions that he was a Cambridge graduate in order to fit in with the higher circles of society.
At the age of 18, Robey travelled to Birmingham, where he worked in a civil engineer's office. It was here that he became interested in a career on the stage, and often dreamed of starring in his own circus.
He learned to play the mandolin, and became a skilled performer on the instrument. This drew interest from a group of local musicians and, together with a friend from the group who played the guitar, Robey travelled the local area in search of engagements.
Soon afterwards, they were hired to play at a charity concert at the local church in Edgbaston, a performance that led to more local bookings. For his next appearance, Robey performed an impromptu version of "Killaloo", a comic ditty taken from the burlesque Miss Esmeralda.
The positive response from the audience encouraged him to give up playing the mandolin to concentrate instead on singing comic songs.
-- George Robey's London Debut
By 1890 Robey had become homesick, and so he returned to South London, where he worked for a civil engineering company. He also joined a local branch of the Thirteen Club, which charged members a fee of half a crown a year. The club members, including both amateur and professional performers, were devoted to the idea of flouting superstition while staging concerts in public houses and small venues across London.
Hearing of George's talent, the founder of the club, W. H. Branch, invited Robey to appear at Anderton's Hotel in Fleet Street, where he performed the popular new comic song "Where Did You Get That Hat?".
Robey's performance secured him private engagements for which he was paid a guinea a night. By the early months of 1891, Robey was much in demand, and he decided to change his stage name. He swapped "Wade" for "Robey" after working for a company in Birmingham that bore the latter name.
It was at around this time that he met E. W. Rogers, an established music hall composer who wrote songs for Marie Lloyd and Jenny Hill. For Robey, Rogers wrote three songs: "My Hat's a Brown 'Un", "The Simple Pimple," and "It Suddenly Dawned Upon Me".
In 1891 Robey visited the Royal Aquarium in Westminster where he watched "Professor Kennedy", a burlesque mesmerist from America. After the performance, Robey visited Kennedy in his dressing room, and offered himself as the stooge for his next appearance.
They agreed that Robey, as his young apprentice, would be "mesmerised" into singing a comic song. At a later rehearsal, Robey negotiated a deal to sing one of the comic songs that had been written for him by Rogers.
Robey's turn was a great success, and as a result he secured a permanent theatrical residency at the venue. Later that year, he appeared as a solo act at the Oxford Music Hall, where he performed "The Simple Pimple" and "He'll Get It Where He's Gone to Now".
The theatrical press soon became aware of his act, and The Stage called him:
"A comedian with a pretty sense of
humour who delivers his songs with
considerable point and meets with
all success".
In early 1892 Robey starred alongside Jenny Hill, Bessie Bonehill and Harriet Vernon at the Paragon Theatre of Varieties in Mile End, where, according to his biographer Peter Cotes:
"He stole the notices from
experienced troupers".
That summer, Robey conducted a music hall tour of the English provinces which began in Chatham and took him to Liverpool, at a venue owned by the mother of the influential London impresario Oswald Stoll. Through this engagement Robey met Stoll, and the two became lifelong friends.
In early December, Robey appeared in five music halls a night, including Gatti's Under the Arches, the Tivoli Music Hall and the London Pavilion.
In mid-December, George travelled to Brighton, where he appeared in his first Christmas pantomime, Whittington Up-to-Date. Pantomime became a lucrative and regular source of employment for the comedian. Cotes calls Robey's festive performances:
"The cornerstone of his comic
art, and the source of some of
his greatest successes".
-- Music Hall Characterisations
During the 1890's Robey created music hall characters centred on everyday life. Among them were "The Chinese Laundryman" and "Clarence, the Last of the Dandies". As Clarence, Robey dressed in a top hat and frock coat, and carried a Malacca cane, the garb of a stereotypical Victorian gentleman.
For his drag pieces, the comedian established "The Lady Dresser", a female tailor who was desperate to out-dress her high class customers, and "Daisy Dillwater, the District Nurse" who arrived on stage with a bicycle to share light-hearted scandal and gossip with the audience before hurriedly cycling off.
With Robey's popularity came an eagerness to differentiate himself from his music hall rivals, and so he devised a signature costume when appearing as himself: an oversized black coat fastened from the neck down with large, wooden buttons.
George also wore black, unkempt, baggy trousers and a partially bald wig with black, whispery strands of dishevelled, dirty-looking hair that poked below a large, battered top-hat.
He applied thick white face paint, and exaggerated the redness on his cheeks and nose with bright red make-up; his eye line and eyebrows were also enhanced with thick, black greasepaint. He held a short, misshaped, wooden walking stick, which was curved at the top.
Robey later used the costume for his character, The Prime Minister of Mirth. The outfit helped Robey become instantly recognisable on the London music hall circuit. He next made a start at building his repertoire, and bought the rights to comic songs and monologues by several well-established music hall writers, including Sax Rohmer and Bennett Scott.
For his routines, Robey developed a characteristic delivery described by Cotes as:
"A kind of machine-gun staccato
rattle through each polysyllabic line,
ending abruptly, and holding the
pause while he fixed his audience
with his basilisk stare."
-- Success in Pantomime and the Provinces
At the start of 1894, Robey travelled to Manchester to participate in the pantomime Jack and Jill, where he was paid £25 a week for a three-month contract. He did not appear in Jack and Jill until the third act, but pleased the holiday crowds nonetheless.
During one performance the scenery mechanism failed, which forced him to improvise for the first time. Robey fabricated a story that he had just dined with the Lord Mayor before detailing exactly what he had eaten. The routine was such a hit that it was incorporated into the show as part of the script.
In the final months of 1894, Robey returned to London to honour a contract for Augustus Harris at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, the details of which are unknown.
In September he starred in a series of stand-up comedy shows that he performed every September from 1894 until 1899. These short performances, in English seaside resorts including Scarborough and Bournemouth, were designed chiefly to enhance his name among provincial audiences.
For the 1895 and 1896 Christmas pantomimes, he appeared in Manchester and Birmingham respectively, in the title role of Dick Whittington, for which he received favourable reviews and praise from audiences.
However despite the pantomime's success, Robey and his co-stars disliked the experience. The actress Ada Reeve felt that the production had a bad back-stage atmosphere, and was thankful when the season ended, while the comedian Barry Lupino was dismayed at having his role, Muffins, considerably reduced.
On the 29th. April 1898, Robey married his first wife, the Australian-born musical theatre actress Ethel Hayden (shown in the photograph), at St. Clement Danes church in the Strand, London. Robey and Ethel resided briefly in Circus Road, St John's Wood, until the birth of their first child Edward in 1900.
They then moved to 83 Finchley Road in Swiss Cottage, Hampstead. Family life suited Robey; his son Edward recalled many happy experiences with his father, including the evenings when he would accompany him to the half-dozen music halls at which he would be appearing each night.
By the start of the new century, Robey was a big name in pantomime, and he was able to choose his roles. Pantomime had enjoyed wide popularity until the 1890's, but by the time Robey had reached his peak, interest in it was on the wane.
A type of character he particularly enjoyed taking on was the pantomime dame, which historically was played by comedians from the music hall. Robey was inspired by the older comedians Herbert Campbell and Dan Leno, and, although post-dating them, he rivalled their eccentricity and popularity, earning the festive entertainment a new audience.
In his 1972 biography of Robey, Neville Cardus thought that:
"George Robey was at his
fullest as a pantomime Dame".
In 1902 Robey created the character "The Prehistoric Man". He dressed as a caveman, and spoke of modern political issues, often complaining about the government "slapping another pound of rock on his taxes".
The character was received favourably by audiences, who found it easy to relate to his topical observations. That year he released "The Prehistoric Man" and "Not That I Wish to Say Anything" on shellac discs using the early acoustic recording process.
Robey signed a six-year contract in June 1904 to appear annually at, among other venues, the Oxford Music Hall in London, for a fee of £120 a week. The contract also required him to perform during the spring and autumn seasons between 1910 and 1912.
Robey disputed this part of the contract, and stated that he agreed to this only as a personal favour to the music hall manager George Adney Payne, and that it should have become void on Payne's death in 1907.
The management of the Oxford however counter-claimed, and forbade Robey from appearing in any other music hall during this period. The matter went to court, where the judge found in Robey's favour.
Robey was engaged to play the title role in the 1905 pantomime Queen of Hearts. The show was considered risqué by the theatrical press. In one scene Robey accidentally sat on his crown before bellowing:
"Assistance! Methinks I have
sat upon a hedgehog."
'Hedgehog' is a British slang term for an unattractive woman. It is also used to describe a seductively elusive and promiscuous male.
In another sketch, the comedian mused:
"Then there's Mrs Simkins, the swank!
Many's the squeeze she's had of my
blue bag on washing day."
Robey scored a further hit with the show the following year, in Birmingham, which Cotes describes as:
"The most famous of all famous
Birmingham Theatre Royal
pantomimes".
Robey incorporated "The Dresser", a music hall sketch taken from his own repertoire, into the show.
Over the next few years George continued to tour the music hall circuit both in London and the English provinces, and recorded two songs, "What Are You Looking at Me For?" and "The Mayor of Mudcumdyke", which were later released by the Gramophone and Typewriter Company.
-- George Robey's Involvement in Sport
Off-stage, Robey led an active lifestyle, and was a keen amateur sportsman. He was proud of his healthy physique, and maintained it by performing frequent exercise and following a careful diet.
By the time he was in his mid-thirties, George had played as an amateur against Millwall, Chelsea and Fulham football clubs. He organised and played in many charity football matches throughout England, which were described by the sporting press as being of a very high standard, and he remained an active football player well into his fifties.
Robey became associated with cricket by 1895 when he led a team of amateur players for a match at Turney Road in Dulwich. In September 1904, while appearing in Hull, he was asked by the cricketer Harry Wrathall to take part in a charity cricket match at the Yorkshire County Cricket Club.
Robey played so well that Wrathall asked him to return the following Saturday to take part in a professional game. That weekend, while waiting in the pavilion before the game, Robey was approached by an agent for Hull City A.F.C., who asked the comedian to play in a match that same afternoon. Robey agreed, swapped his cricket flannels for a football kit and played with the team against Nottingham Forest as an inside right.
By 1903 Robey was playing at a semi-professional level. He was signed as an inside forward by Millwall Football Club, and scored many goals for them. He also displayed a good level of ability in vigoro, an Australian sport derived from both cricket and baseball which was short-lived in England.
Two years later George became a member of the Marylebone Cricket Club, and played in minor games for them for many years. He gained a reputation at the club for his comic antics on the field, such as raising his eyebrows at the approaching bowler in an attempt to distract him.
The writer Neville Cardus was complimentary about Robey's cricket prowess, and called him "an elegant player" whose performances on the cricket field were as entertaining as they were on the stage. Although a versatile player, Robey thought of himself as a "medium-paced, right-handed bowler".
Robey was asked to help organise a charity football match in 1907 by friends of the Scottish football trainer James Miller, who had died the previous year. Robey compiled a team of amateur footballers from the theatrical profession, and met Miller's former team Chelsea Football Club at their home ground. The match raised considerable proceeds for Miller's widow. Robey was proud of the match and joked:
"I just wanted to make sure that
Chelsea stay in the first division."
-- George Robey the Violin Maker
In his spare time, Robey made violins, a hobby that he first took up during his years in Dresden. He became a skilled craftsman of the instrument, although he never intended for them to be played in public.
Speaking in the 1960's, the violinist and composer Yehudi Menuhin, who played one of Robey's violins for a public performance during that decade, called the comedian's finished instrument "very professional".
Yehudi was intrigued by the idea that a man as famous as Robey could produce such a "beautifully finished" instrument, unbeknown to the public.
Robey was also an artist, and some of his pen and ink self-caricatures are kept at the National Portrait Gallery, London.
-- High-Profile Audiences
Robey's first high-profile invitation came in the first decade of the 1900's from Hugh Lowther, 5th. Earl of Lonsdale, who hired him as entertainment for a party he was hosting at Carlton House Terrace in Westminster.
Soon afterwards, the comedian appeared for the first time before royalty when King Edward VII had Robey hired for several private functions. Robey performed a series of songs and monologues and introduced the "Mayor of Mudcumdyke", all of which was met with much praise and admiration from the royal watchers.
He was later hired by Edward's son, the Prince of Wales (the future King George V), who arranged a performance at Carlton House Terrace for his friend Lord Curzon.
In July 1912, at the invitation of the impresario Oswald Stoll, Robey took part for the first time in a Royal Command Performance, to which Cotes attributes:
"One of the prime factors in
his continuing popularity".
King George V and Queen Mary were "delighted" with Robey's comic sketch, in which he performed the "Mayor of Mudcumdyke" in public for the first time. Robey found the royal show to be a less daunting experience than the numerous private command performances that he gave during his career.
-- George Robey's Film Debut
Robey's first experience in cinema was in 1913, with two early sound film shorts: "And Very Nice Too," and "Good Queen Bess", made using the Kinoplasticon process, where the film was synchronised with phonograph records.
The following year, George tried to emulate his music hall colleagues Billy Merson and Charlie Austin, who had set up Homeland Films and found success with the Squibs series of films starring Betty Balfour.
Robey met filmmakers from the Burns Film Company, who engaged him in a silent short entitled "George Robey Turns Anarchist", in which he played a character who fails to blow up the Houses of Parliament.
George continued to appear sporadically in film throughout the rest of his career, although never achieving more than a modest amount of success.
-- George Robey in the Great War
At the outbreak of the Great War, Robey wanted to enlist in the army but, now in his 40's, he was too old for active service. Instead, he volunteered for the Special Constabulary, and raised money for charity through his performances as a comedian.
It was not uncommon for him to finish at the theatre at 1:00 am and then to patrol as a special constable until 6:00 am, where he would frequently help out during zeppelin raids.
George combined his civilian duties with work for a volunteer motor transport unit towards the end of the war, in which he served as a lieutenant. He committed three nights a week to the corps while organising performances during the day to benefit war charities.
Robey was a strong supporter of the Merchant Navy, and thought that they were often overlooked when it came to charitable donations. He raised £22,000 at a benefit held at the London Coliseum, which he donated in the navy's favour.
In 1914, for the first time in many years, Robey appeared in a Christmas pantomime as a male when he was engaged to play the title role in Sinbad the Sailor; Fred Emney Senior played the dame role.
Although the critics were surprised by the casting, it appealed to audiences, and the scenes featuring Robey and Emney together proved the most memorable.
During the war the demand for light entertainment in the English provinces guaranteed Robey frequent bookings and a regular income. His appearances in Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Glasgow were as popular as his annual performances in Birmingham. His wife Ethel accompanied him on these tours, and frequently starred alongside him.
By the Great War, music hall entertainment had fallen out of favour with audiences. Theatrical historians blame the music hall's decline on the increasing salaries of performers and the halls' inability to present profitably the twenty or thirty acts that the audiences expected to see.
Revue appealed to wartime audiences, and Robey decided to capitalise on the medium's popularity. Stoll offered Robey a lucrative contract in 1916 to appear in the new revue 'The Bing Boys Are Here' at the Alhambra Theatre, London.
Dividing his time between three or four music halls a night had become unappealing to the comedian, and he relished the opportunity to appear in a single theatre. He was cast as Lucius Bing opposite Violet Loraine, who played his love interest Emma, and the couple duetted in the show's signature song "If You Were the Only Girl in the World", which became an international success.
This London engagement was a new experience for Robey, who had only been familiar with provincial pantomimes and week-long, one-man comedy shows. Aside from pantomime, he had never taken part in a long-running production, and he had never had to memorise lines precisely or keep to schedules enforced by strict directors and theatre managers.
The Bing Boys Are Here ran for 378 performances, and occupied the Alhambra for more than a year. The theatrical press praised Robey as:
"The first actor of the halls".
George made two films towards the end of the war: The Anti-frivolity League in 1916, and Doing His Bit the following year.
-- Zig-Zag to Joy Bells
Robey left the cast of The Bing Boys during its run, in January 1917, in order to star at the London Hippodrome in the lavishly staged revue Zig-Zag!.
Robey included a sketch based on his music hall character "The Prehistoric Man", with Daphne Pollard playing the role of "She of the Tireless Tongue". In another scene, he played a drunken gentleman who accidentally secures a box at the Savoy Theatre instead of an intended hotel room.
The audience appeared unresponsive to the character, so he changed it mid-performance to that of a naive Yorkshire man. The change provoked much amusement, and it became one of the most popular scenes of the show. Zig-Zag ran for 648 performances.
Stoll again secured Robey for the Alhambra in 1918 for a sequel, The Bing Boys on Broadway. The show, again co-starring Violet Loraine, matched the popularity of its predecessor, and beat the original show's run with a total of 562 performances.
Robey returned to the London Hippodrome in 1919 where he took a leading role in another hit revue, Joy Bells. Robey played the role of an old-fashioned father who is mystified over the changing traditions after the First World War.
He interpolated two music hall sketches: "No, No, No," which centred on turning innocent, everyday sayings into suggestive and provocative maxims, and "The Rest Cure," which told the story of a pre-op hospital patient who hears worrying stories of malpractice from his well-meaning friends who visit him.
Joy Bells ran for 723 performances.
In the Italian newspaper La Tribuna, the writer Emilio Cecchi commented:
"Robey, just by being Robey, makes us
laugh until we weep. We do not want to
see either Figaro or Othello; it is quite
enough for Robey to appear in travelling
costume and to turn his eyes in crab-like
fashion from one side of the auditorium
to another.
Robey's aspect in dealing with his audience
is paternal and, one might say, apostolic."
In the early months of 1919, Robey completed a book of memoirs, 'My Rest Cure', which was published later that year. During the run of Joy Bells he was awarded the Legion of Honour for raising £14,000 for the French Red Cross.
George declined a knighthood that same year because, according to Cotes, he was worried that the title would distance him from his working-class audiences; he was appointed a CBE by George V at Buckingham Palace instead.
On the morning of the penultimate Joy Bells performance, Robey was invited to Stoll's London office, where he was offered a role in a new revue at the Alhambra Theatre. On the journey, he met the theatre impresario Sir Alfred Butt, who agreed to pay him £100 more, but out of loyalty to Stoll, he declined the offer and resumed his £600 a week contract at the Alhambra.
-- George Robey in the Inter-War Years
On the 28th. July 1919, Robey took part in his second Royal Command Performance, at the London Coliseum. He and Violet Loraine sang "If You Were the Only Girl in the World".
A gap in the Alhambra's schedule allowed Stoll to showcase Robey in a new short film. "George Robey's Day Off" (1919) showed the comedian acting out his daily domestic routines to comic effect, but the picture failed at the box office. The British director John Baxter concluded that producers did not know how best to apply Robey's stage talents to film.
By 1920 variety theatre had become popular in Britain, and Robey had completed the successful transition from music hall to variety star. Pantomime, which relied on its stars to make up much of the script through ad lib, was also beginning to fall out of favour, and his contemporaries were finding it too difficult to create fresh material for every performance; for Robey, however, the festive entertainment continued to be a lucrative source of employment.
Robey's first revue of the 1920's was Johnny Jones, which opened on the 1st. June 1920 at the Alhambra Theatre. The show also featured Ivy St. Helier, Lupino Lane and Eric Blore, and carried the advertisement "A Robey salad with musical dressing".
One of the show's more popular gags was a scene in which Robey picked and ate cherries off St. Helier's hat, before tossing the stones into the orchestra pit which were then met by loud bangs from the bass drum.
A sign of George's popularity came in August 1920 when he was depicted in scouting costume for a series of 12 Royal Mail stamps in aid of the Printers Pension Corporation War Orphans and the Prince of Wales Boy Scout Funds.
Neville Cardus, in The Darling of the Halls (1972), writes:
"I think Robey's Mother Goose was, as far
as I know, the greatest piece of acting of
what is called the 'Dame' that I have ever
seen.
But then again his Dame Trot in Jack and
the Beanstalk was great comic acting.
It was incredible. Really a piece of wonderful
acting in a few minutes – acting you would
put on the same plane as you would any
great actor of the time."
The revue Robey en Casserole (1921) was next for Robey, during which he led a troupe of dancers in a musical piece called the "Policemen Ballet". Each dancer was dressed in a mock police uniform on top and a tutu below.
However the show was the first failure for George under Stoll's management. That December Robey appeared in his only London pantomime, Jack and the Beanstalk, at the Hippodrome. His biographer, Peter Cotes, remembered the comedian's interpretation of Dame Trot as:
"Enormously funny: a bucolic caricature
of a woman, sturdy and fruity, leathery
and forbidding.
Robey's comic timing was in a class of
its own."
In March 1922 Robey remained at the Hippodrome in the revue Round in Fifty, a modernised version of Round the World in Eighty Days, which proved to be another hit for the London theatre, and a personal favourite of the comedian.
Stoll brought Robey to cinema audiences a further four times during 1923. The first two films were written with the intention of showcasing the comedian's pantomime talents: 'One Arabian Night' was a reworking of Aladdin, while 'Harlequinade' visited the roots of pantomime.
-- Marriage Breakdown and Foreign Tours
One of Robey's more notable roles under Stoll was Sancho Panza in the 1923 film Don Quixote, for which he received a fee of £700 a week. However the amount of time he spent working away from home led to the breakdown of his marriage, and he separated from Ethel in 1923. He had a brief affair with one of his leading ladies, and walked out of the family home.
Robey made a return to the London Hippodrome in 1924 in the revue Leap Year. Leap Year was set in South Africa, Australia and Canada, and was written to appeal to the tourists who were visiting London from the Commonwealth countries.
Robey was much to their tastes, and his rendition of "My Old Dutch" helped the show achieve another long run of 421 performances.
Sky High was next, and opened at the London Palladium in March 1925. The chorus dancer Marie Blanche was his co-star, a partnership that caused the gossip columnists to comment on the performers' alleged romance two years previously. Despite the rumours, Blanche continued as his leading lady for the next four years, and Sky High lasted for 309 performances on the West End stage.
The year 1926 was lacking in variety entertainment, a fact largely attributed to the UK general strike that had occurred in May of that year. The strike was unexpected by Robey, who had signed the previous year to star in a series of variety dates for Moss Empires.
The contract was lucrative, made more so by the comedian's willingness to manage his own bookings. He took the show to the provinces under the title of Bits and Pieces, and employed a company of 25 artists as well as engineers and support staff.
Despite the economic hardships of Great Britain in 1926, large numbers of people turned out to see the show. George returned to Birmingham, a city where he was held in great affection, and where he was sure the audiences would embrace his new show.
However, censors demanded that he omit the provocative song "I Stopped, I Looked, I Listened" and that he heavily edit the sketch "The Cheat". The restrictions failed to dampen the audiences' enthusiasm, and Bits and Pieces enjoyed rave reviews. It ran until Christmas and earned a six-month extension.
In the spring of 1927 Robey took the opportunity to tour abroad, when he and his company took Bits and Pieces to South Africa, where it was received favourably. By the time he had left Cape Town, he had played to over 60,000 people, and had travelled in excess of 15,000 miles.
Upon his return to England in October, George took Bits and Pieces to Bradford. In August 1928, Robey and his company travelled to Canada, where they played to packed audiences for three months.
It was there that he produced a new revue, Between Ourselves, in Vancouver, which was staged especially for the country's armed forces. The Canadians were enthusiastic about Robey; he was awarded the freedom of the city in London, Ontario, made a chieftain of the Sarcee tribe, and was an honorary guest at a cricket match in Edmonton, Alberta. George described the tour as "one of unbroken happiness."
In the late 1920's Robey also wrote and starred in two Phonofilm sound-on-film productions, Safety First (1928), and Mrs. Mephistopheles (1929).
In early 1929 Robey returned to South Africa and then Canada for another tour with Bits and Pieces, after which he started another series of variety dates back in England. Among the towns he visited was Woolwich, where he performed to packed audiences over the course of a week.
In 1932 Robey appeared in his first sound film, The Temperance Fête, and followed this with Marry Me, which was, according to his biographer A. E. Wilson, one of the most successful musical films of the comedian's career. The film tells the story of a sound recordist in a gramophone company who romances a colleague when she becomes the family housekeeper.
By the later months of 1932, Robey had formed a romantic relationship with Blanche Littler (1897–1981), who then took over as his manager. The couple grew close during the filming of Don Quixote, a remake of the comedian's 1923 success as Sancho Panza.
Unlike its predecessor, Don Quixote had an ambitious script, big budget and an authentic foreign setting. Robey resented having to grow a beard for the role, and disliked the French climate and gruelling 12-week filming schedule. He refused to act out his character's death scene in a farcical way, and also objected to the lateness of the "dreadfully banal" scripts, which were often written the night before filming.
-- Venture Into Legitimate Theatre
Until 1932 Robey had never played in legitimate theatre, although he had read Shakespeare from an early age. That year he took the part of King Menelaus in Helen!, which was an English-language adaptation by A. P. Herbert of Offenbach's operetta La belle Hélène.
The show's producer C. B. Cochran, a longstanding admirer of Robey, engaged a prestigious cast for the production, including Evelyn Laye and W. H. Berry, with choreography by Léonide Massine and sets by Oliver Messel.
The operetta opened on the 30th. January 1932, becoming the Adelphi Theatre's most successful show of the year. The critic Harold Conway wrote that, while Robey had reached the pinnacle of his career as a variety star, which only required him to rely on his "breezy, cheeky personality", he had reservations about the comedian's ability to "integrate himself with the other stars ... to learn many pages of dialogue, and to remember countless cues."
After the run of Helen!, Robey briefly resumed his commitments to the variety stage before signing a contract to appear at the Savoy Theatre as Bold Ben Blister in the operetta Jolly Roger, which premiered in March 1933.
The production had a run of bad luck, including an actors' strike which was caused by Robey's refusal to join the actors' union Equity. The dispute was settled when he was included as a co-producer of the show, thus excluding him as a full-time actor. Robey made a substantial donation to the union, and the production went ahead.
Despite its troubles, the show was a success, and received much praise from the press. Harold Conway of the Daily Mail called the piece:
"One of the outstanding triumphs
of personality witnessed in a
London theatre".
Later that year, Robey completed his final autobiography, 'Looking Back on Life'. The literary critic Graham Sutton admired Robey for his honest and frank account, and thought that he was "at his best when most personal".
-- George Robey's Shakespearean Roles
According to Wilson, Robey revered Shakespeare and had an "excellent reading knowledge of the Bard" even though the comedian had never seen a Shakespeare play. As a child, he had committed to memory the "ghost" scene in Hamlet.
Writing in 1933, Cochran expressed the opinion that Robey had been a victim of a largely conservative and "snobbish" attitude from theatre managers, that the comedian was "cut out for Shakespeare", and that if he had been frequently engaged in playing the Bard's works, then "Shakespeare would probably have been popular."
In 1934, the theatre director Sydney Carroll offered Robey the chance to appear as Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, but he initially declined the offer, citing a hectic schedule, including a conflict with his appearance in that year's Royal Variety Performance on the 8th. May.
George was also concerned that he would not be taken seriously by legitimate theatre critics, and knew that he would not be able to include a comic sketch or to engage in his customary resourceful gagging.
In the same year, Robey starred in a film version of the hit musical Chu Chin Chow. The New York Times called him "a lovable and laughable Ali Baba".
At the start of 1935 Robey accepted his first Shakespearean role, as Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1, which surprised the press and worried fans who thought that he might retire the Prime Minister of Mirth.
The theatrical press were sceptical of a music hall performer taking on such a distinguished role; Carroll, the play's producer, vehemently defended his casting choice. Carroll later admitted taking a gamble on employing Robey, but wrote that:
"George Robey has unlimited courage
in challenging criticism and risking his
reputation on a venture of this kind; he
takes both his past and his future in both
hands, and is faced with the alternative
of dashing them into the depths or lifting
them to a height hitherto undreamt of."
Carroll further opined that:
"Robey has never failed in anything he
has undertaken. He is one of the most
intelligent and capable of actors."
Henry IV, Part I opened on the 28th. February at Her Majesty's Theatre, and Robey proved himself to be a capable Shakespearean actor, though his Shakespearean debut was marred initially by an inability to remember his lines.
A journalist from The Daily Express thought that Robey seemed uncomfortable, displayed a halting delivery and was "far from word perfect".
Writing in The Observer, the critic Ivor Brown said of Robey's portrayal:
"In no performance within my memory
has the actor been more obviously the
afflicted servant of his lines and more
obviously the omnipotent master of the
situation".
Another journalist, writing in the Daily Mirror, thought that:
"Robey gave 25 percent of
Shakespeare and 75 percent
of himself".
In any event, such was Robey's popularity in the role that the German theatre and film producer Max Reinhardt declared that, should the opportunity arise for a film version, the comedian would be his perfect choice as Falstaff.
Cotes described Robey as having:
"A great vitality and immense command
of the role. He never faltered, he had to
take his audience by the throat and make
them attentive at once because he couldn't
play himself in."
Although George was eager to be taken seriously as a legitimate actor, Robey provided a subtle nod in the direction of his comic career by using the wooden cane intended for the Prime Minister of Mirth for the majority of his scenes as Falstaff.
The poet John Betjeman responded to the critics' early scepticism:
"Variety artistes are a separate world
from the legitimate stage. They are
separate too, from ballet, opera, and
musical comedy.
It is possible for variety artists to
appear in all of these. Indeed, no one
who saw will ever forget the superb
pathos and humour of George Robey's
Falstaff".
Later, in 1935, Blanche Littler persuaded Robey to accept Carroll's earlier offer to play Bottom, and the comedian cancelled three weeks' worth of dates. The press were complimentary of his performance, and he later attributed his success to Littler and her encouragement.
-- George Robey's Later Career: 1936–1950
Robey was interviewed for The Spice of Life programme for the BBC in 1936. He spoke about his time spent on the music hall circuit, which he described as the "most enjoyable experience" of his life.
The usually reserved Robey admitted that privately he was not a sociable person, and that he often grew tired of his audiences while performing on stage, but that he got his biggest thrill from making others laugh.
He also declared a love for the outdoors, and mentioned that, to relax, he would draw "comic scribbles" of himself as the Prime Minister of Mirth, which he would occasionally give to fans. As a result of the interview he received more than a thousand fan letters from listeners.
Wilson thought that Robey's "perfect diction and intimate manner made him an ideal broadcast speaker". The press commented favourably on his performance, with one reporter from Variety Life writing:
"I doubt whether any speaker other than
a stage idol could have used, as Robey
did, the first person singular almost
incessantly for half an hour without
causing something akin to resentment. ...
The comedian's talk was brilliantly
conceived and written."
In the later months of 1936, Robey repeated his radio success with a thirty-minute programme entitled "Music-Hall", recorded for American audiences, to honour the tenth birthday of the National Broadcasting Corporation. In it, he presented a montage of his characterisations, as well as impressions of other famous acts of the day.
A second programme, which he recorded the following year, featured George speaking fondly of cricket and of the many well-known players whom he had met on his frequent visits to the Oval and Lord's cricket grounds over his fifty-year association.
In the summer of 1938 Robey appeared in the film A Girl Must Live, directed by Carol Reed, in which he played the role of Horace Blount. A report in the Kinematograph Weekly commented that:
"The 69-year-old comedian
is still able to stand up to the
screen by day, and variety
by night."
A journalist for The Times opined that Robey's performance as an elderly furrier, the love interest of both Margaret Lockwood and Lilli Palmer, was "a perfect study in bewildered embarrassment".
Robey made his television debut in August 1938, but was unenthused with the medium, and only made rare appearances. The BBC producer Grace Wyndham Goldie was dismayed at how little of his "comic quality" was conveyed on the small screen.
Goldie thought that Robey's comic abilities were not limited to his voice, and depended largely on the relation between his facial expressions and his witty words. She felt that:
"He should be forbidden, by his own
angel, if nobody else, to approach
the ordinary microphone".
Nonetheless, Goldie remained optimistic about Robey's future television career. The journalist L. Marsland Gander disagreed, and thought that Robey's methods were "really too slow for television".
That November, and with his divorce from Ethel finalised, Robey married Blanche Littler, who was more than two decades his junior, at Marylebone Town Hall.
At Christmas, he fractured three ribs and bruised his spine when he accidentally fell into the orchestra pit while appearing in the 1938–39 pantomime Robinson Crusoe in Birmingham. George attributed the fall to his face mask, which gave him a limited view of the stage.
The critic Harold Conway was less forgiving, blaming the accident on the comedian's "lost self-confidence" and opining that the accident was the start of Robey's professional decline.
-- George Robey in the Second World War
Aware of demand for his act in Australia, Robey conducted a second tour of the country at the start of 1939. While he was appearing at the Tivoli Theatre in Sydney, war broke out with Germany.
Robey returned to England and concentrated his efforts on entertaining in order to raise money for the war effort. He signed up with the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) for whom he appeared in a wide range of shows, and also in his own one-man engagements.
He would sometimes turn up unannounced to perform at hospitals, munition factories, airfields, anti-aircraft posts and other venues where there was an audience of just a few people.
During the 1940's, Robey appeared predominantly in troop concerts as himself, but caused controversy by jokingly supporting the Nazis and belittling black people during his act. His intentions were to gently poke fun at the "Little Englanders", but audiences thought that he was sympathising with Nazism.
George's jocular view that a defeat for Hitler would mean a victory for bolshevism was highlighted in a series of controversial interviews, which caused him much embarrassment when challenged and which he regretted afterwards. His views became known in the press as "Robeyisms", and they drew increasing criticism, but his Prime Minister of Mirth remained popular, and he used the character to divert the negative publicity.
Cotes wrote that:
"Robey was not a politician, merely a
jingoist, who lived long enough to feel
that his little-Englander outlook was
causing him acute embarrassment, and
his army of admirers deep dismay."
Robey starred in the film Salute John Citizen in 1942, about the effects that the war had on a normal British family. In a 1944 review of the film, Robey was described as being "convincing in an important role" but the film itself had "dull moments in the simple tale".
That Christmas, Robey travelled to Bristol, where he starred in the pantomime Robinson Crusoe. A further four films followed in 1943, one of which promoted war propaganda while the other two displayed the popular medium of cine-variety. Cine-variety introduced Robey to the Astoria in Finsbury Park, London, a venue which was used to huge audiences and big-name acts and was described as "a super-cinema".
During the early months of 1944, Robey returned to the role of Falstaff when he appeared in the film version of Henry V, produced by Eagle-Lion Films. The American film critic Bosley Crowther had mixed opinions of the film. Writing in The New York Times in 1946, he thought that:
"It showcased a fine group of British film
craftsmen and actors who contributed to
a stunningly brilliant and intriguing screen
spectacle. Despite this, the film's additional
screenplay was poor, and Falstaff's deathbed
scene was non-essential and just a bit
grotesque."
Late in 1944, George appeared in Burnley in a show entitled Vive Paree alongside Janice Hart and Frank O'Brian. In 1945, Robey starred in two minor film roles, as "Old Sam" in The Trojan Brothers, a short comedy film in which two actors experience various problems as a pantomime horse, and as "Vogel" in the musical romance Waltz Time.
-- George Robey's Final Years
George spent 1947 touring England, while the following spring he undertook a provincial tour of Frederick Bowyer's fairy play The Windmill Man, which he also co-produced with his wife.
In June 1951, now aged 81, Robey starred in a midnight gala performance at the London Palladium in aid of the family of Sid Field who had died that year. For the finale, Robey performed "I Stopped, I Looked, I Listened" and "If You Were the Only Girl in the World". The rest of the three-hour performance featured celebrities from radio, television and film.
The American comedian Danny Kaye, who was also engaged for the performance, called Robey:
"A great, great artist".
The same month, Robey returned to Birmingham, where he opened a garden party at St. Mary and St. Ambrose Church, a venue in which he had appeared at the beginning of his career. On the 25th. September George appeared for the BBC in an edition of the radio series Desert Island Discs for which he chose among others "Mondo ladro", Falstaff's rueful complaint about the wicked world in Verdi's opera Falstaff.
For the rest of the year Robey made personal appearances opening fêtes and attending charity events.
Robey took part in the Festival of Variety for the BBC in 1951, which paid tribute to the British music hall. For his performance, he adopted an ad-lib style rather than use a script. His wife sat at the side of the stage, ready to provide support should he need it. Robey's turn earned the loudest applause of the evening.
The following month Robey undertook a long provincial tour in the variety show Do You Remember? under the management of Bernard Delfont. After an evening's performance in Sheffield, he was asked by a local newspaper reporter if he considered retiring. The comedian quipped:
"Me retire? Good gracious, I'm too
old for that. I could not think of
starting a new career at my age!"
In December 1951, he opened the Lansbury Lodge home for retired cricketers in Poplar, East London; he considered the ceremony to be one of the "happiest memories of his life."
By early 1952, Robey was becoming noticeably frail, and he lost interest in many of his sporting pastimes. Instead, he stayed at home and drew comic sketches featuring the Prime Minister of Mirth.
In May he filmed The Pickwick Papers, in which he played the role of old Tony Weller, a part which he had initially turned down on health grounds. The following year, and in aid of the games fund, he starred as Clown in a short pantomime at the Olympic Variety Show at the Victoria Palace Theatre.
Organisers asked for him to appear in the Prime Minister of Mirth costume instead of the usual clown garb, a request the comedian was happy to fulfil.
-- Sir George Robey's Knighthood and Death
In the early months of 1954, a knighthood was conferred on Robey by Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother at Buckingham Palace. However during the following weeks, George's health declined; he became confined to a wheelchair, and spent the majority of his time at home under the care of his wife.
In May he opened a British Red Cross fête in Seaford, East Sussex, and, a month later, made his last public appearance, on television as a panellist in the English version of The Name's the Same.
Wilson called Robey's performance "pathetic" and thought that:
"He appeared with only
a hint of his old self".
By June George had become housebound, and quietly celebrated his 85th. birthday surrounded by family; visiting friends were organised into appointments by his wife Blanche, but theatrical colleagues were barred in case they caused the comedian too much excitement.
Robey suffered a stroke on the 20th. November 1954, and remained in a semi-coma for just over a week. He died at the age of 85 on the 29th. November 1954 at his home in Saltdean, East Sussex, and was cremated at the Downs Crematorium in Brighton.
Blanche continued to live on the Sussex coast until her death at the age of 83 in 1981.
-- Sir George Robey's Legacy
Following his death, Robey's costume for the Prime Minister of Mirth was donated to the London Museum.
In his lifetime, Robey helped to earn more than £2,000,000 for charitable causes, with £500,000 of that figure being raised during the Great War.
In recognition of his efforts, the Merchant Seaman's Convalescent Home in Limpsfield, Surrey, named a ward after him, and the Royal Sussex Hospital later bought a new dialysis machine in his memory.
-- Tributes to George Robey
News of Robey's death prompted tributes from the press, who printed illustrations, anecdotes and reminders of his stage performances and charitable activities. A reporter from the Daily Worked wrote:
"Knighthood notwithstanding, George
Robey long ago made himself a place
as an entertainer and artist of the people."
A critic for the Daily Mail wrote:
"Personality has become a wildly
misused word since his heyday, but
George Robey breathed it in every
pore."
In Robey's obituary in The Spectator, Compton Mackenzie called the comedian:
"One of the last great figures of
the late Victorian and Edwardian
music-hall."
In December 1954, a memorial service for Robey was held at St. Paul's Cathedral. The diverse congregation consisted of royalty, actors, hospital workers, stage personnel, students and taxi drivers, among others.
The Bishop of Stepney, Joost de Blank, said:
"We have lost a great English music
hall artist, one of the greatest this
country has known in the late
nineteenth and twentieth centuries."
Performers gave readings at the service, including the comedian Leslie Henson, who called Robey:
"That great obstinate
bullock of variety".
Robey's comic delivery influenced other comedians, but opinions of his effectiveness as a comic vary. The radio personality Robb Wilton acknowledged learning a lot from him, and although he felt that:
"Robey was not very funny, but
he could time a comic situation
perfectly."
Similarly, the comedian Charlie Chester admitted that:
"As a comedian, Robey still didn't
make me laugh, although he was
a legend whose Prime Minister of
Mirth character used a beautiful
make-up design."
Robey's biographer Peter Cotes disagreed with these assessments, praising the comedian's "droll-like humour," and comparing it in greatness to Chaplin's miming and Grock's clowning. Cotes wrote:
"His Mayor, Professor of Music, Saracen,
Dame Trot, Queen of Hearts, District Nurse,
Pro's Landlady, and of course his immortal
Prime Minister, were all absurdities: rich,
outsize in prim and pride, gloriously
disapproving bureaucratic petty officialdom
at its worst, best and funniest."
Violet Loraine called her former co-star:
"One of the greatest comedians
the world has ever known".
The theatrical producer Basil Dean opined that:
"George was a great artist, one of
the last and really big figures of
his era. They don't breed them like
that now."
The actor John Gielgud, who remembered meeting Robey at the Alhambra Theatre in 1953, called the comedian:
"Charming, gracious, and one of the
few really great ones of the music
hall era."
5360.2
REFORD GARDENS | LES JARDINS DE METIS
Gentiana Alpina | Gentiane des Alpes
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit : www.refordgardens.com/
From Wikipedia:
Elsie Stephen Meighen - born January 22, 1872, Perth, Ontario - and Robert Wilson Reford - born in 1867, Montreal - got married on June 12, 1894.
Elsie Reford was a pioneer of Canadian horticulture, creating one of the largest private gardens in Canada on her estate, Estevan Lodge in eastern Québec. Located in Grand-Métis on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, her gardens have been open to the public since 1962 and operate under the name Les Jardins de Métis and Reford Gardens.
Born January 22, 1872 at Perth, Ontario, Elsie Reford was the eldest of three children born to Robert Meighen and Elsie Stephen. Coming from modest backgrounds themselves, Elsie’s parents ensured that their children received a good education. After being educated in Montreal, she was sent to finishing school in Dresden and Paris, returning to Montreal fluent in both German and French, and ready to take her place in society.
She married Robert Wilson Reford on June 12, 1894. She gave birth to two sons, Bruce in 1895 and Eric in 1900. Robert and Elsie Reford were, by many accounts, an ideal couple. In 1902, they built a house on Drummond Street in Montreal. They both loved the outdoors and they spend several weeks a year in a log cabin they built at Lac Caribou, south of Rimouski. In the autumn they hunted for caribou, deer, and ducks. They returned in winter to ski and snowshoe. Elsie Reford also liked to ride. She had learned as a girl and spent many hours riding on the slopes of Mount Royal. And of course, there was salmon-fishing – a sport at which she excelled.
In her day, she was known for her civic, social, and political activism. She was engaged in philanthropic activities, particularly for the Montreal Maternity Hospital and she was also the moving force behind the creation of the Women’s Canadian Club of Montreal, the first women club in Canada. She believed it important that the women become involved in debates over the great issues of the day, « something beyond the local gossip of the hour ». Her acquaintance with Lord Grey, the Governor-General of Canada from 1904 to 1911, led to her involvement in organizing, in 1908, Québec City’s tercentennial celebrations. The event was one of many to which she devoted herself in building bridges with French-Canadian community.
During the First World War, she joined her two sons in England and did volunteer work at the War Office, translating documents from German into English. After the war, she was active in the Victorian Order of Nurses, the Montreal Council of Social Agencies, and the National Association of Conservative Women.
In 1925 at the age of 53 years, Elsie Reford was operated for appendicitis and during her convalescence, her doctor counselled against fishing, fearing that she did not have the strength to return to the river.”Why not take up gardening?” he said, thinking this a more suitable pastime for a convalescent woman of a certain age. That is why she began laying out the gardens and supervising their construction. The gardens would take ten years to build, and would extend over more than twenty acres.
Elsie Reford had to overcome many difficulties in bringing her garden to life. First among them were the allergies that sometimes left her bedridden for days on end. The second obstacle was the property itself. Estevan was first and foremost a fishing lodge. The site was chosen because of its proximity to a salmon river and its dramatic views – not for the quality of the soil.
To counter-act nature’s deficiencies, she created soil for each of the plants she had selected, bringing peat and sand from nearby farms. This exchange was fortuitous to the local farmers, suffering through the Great Depression. Then, as now, the gardens provided much-needed work to an area with high unemployment. Elsie Reford’s genius as a gardener was born of the knowledge she developed of the needs of plants. Over the course of her long life, she became an expert plantsman. By the end of her life, Elsie Reford was able to counsel other gardeners, writing in the journals of the Royal Horticultural Society and the North American Lily Society. Elsie Reford was not a landscape architect and had no training of any kind as a garden designer. While she collected and appreciated art, she claimed no talents as an artist.
Elsie Stephen Reford died at her Drummond Street home on November 8, 1967 in her ninety-sixth year.
In 1995, the Reford Gardens ("Jardins de Métis") in Grand-Métis were designated a National Historic Site of Canada, as being an excellent Canadian example of the English-inspired garden.(Wikipedia)
Visit : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsie_Reford
Visit : www.refordgardens.com
LES JARDINS DE MÉTIS
Créés par Elsie Reford de 1926 à 1958, ces jardins témoignent de façon remarquable de l’art paysager à l’anglaise. Disposés dans un cadre naturel, un ensemble de jardins exhibent fleurs vivaces, arbres et arbustes. Le jardin des pommetiers, les rocailles et l’Allée royale évoquent l’œuvre de cette dame passionnée d’horticulture. Agrémenté d’un ruisseau et de sentiers sinueux, ce site jouit d’un microclimat favorable à la croissance d’espèces uniques au Canada. Les pavots bleus et les lis, privilégiés par Mme Reford, y fleurissent toujours et contribuent , avec d’autres plantes exotiques et indigènes, à l’harmonie de ces lieux.
Created by Elsie Reford between 1926 and 1958, these gardens are an inspired example of the English art of the garden. Woven into a natural setting, a series of gardens display perennials, trees and shrubs. A crab-apple orchard, a rock garden, and the Long Walk are also the legacy of this dedicated horticulturist. A microclimate favours the growth of species found nowhere else in Canada, while the stream and winding paths add to the charm. Elsie Reford’s beloved blue poppies and lilies still bloom and contribute, with other exotic and indigenous plants, to the harmony of the site.
Commission des lieux et monuments historiques du Canada
Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.
Gouvernement du Canada – Government of Canada
© Copyright
This photo and all those in my Photostream are protected by copyright. No one may reproduce, copy, transmit or manipulate them without my written permission
Packwood House, owned by the National Trust since 1941 is a Tudor Manor House. It was built in the mid16th century, starting life as a modest farmhouse. The gardens have a fine collection of yews, of which over a 100 go to make up a representation of 'The Sermon on the Mount'.
Virtue In World
maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Serena%20Solace/63/183/1222
Maitreya-Slink Physique and Hourglass- Belleza Venus-Freya and Isis.
Can be worn seperate
Excursion boat ride to Locust Grove, Poughkeepsie, New York
Photographed by George Ehler Stonebridge
Local villager in the Meghwal village of Bhirandiara.
These tribals came many years ago from Rajasthan to Gujarat and mainly produce leather goods. As with most of the tribals in the area the women also produce vibrantly embroidered clothes, mainly for their own use.
Experimenting using the pen tool in Illustrator to create simple shapes, and then playing with that single component to create something bigger.
Click here for my DA account.
© 2010 Matthew Willmott
These two lovely girls, total strangers by the way, were kind enough to pose for me. I love Ukrainian people. They're kind, modest, and lots of fun to live with.
Modest Jester. Costume worn in Venice, Italy for Carnival in 2007. Color photography by Donna Corless.
Prints and notecards are available in my Venice Carnival 2007 Gallery.
If the link is broken, please see the Venice Carnival 2007 Gallery at PhotosAndArt.com.
I recently made a modest art-historical discovery when I happened across an obscure reference to early illustrations by the American painter, art instructor and art school director Channel Pickering Townsley (1867-1921).
Chan is best known today for the California Impressionist works and European city scenes he painted in the first two decades of the 20th century.
However, these recently rediscovered pieces, which are not mentioned in Chan's biographies, reveal that he was already an accomplished artist by the mid-1890s.
The small item from the 7 April, 1909, issue of The Great Bend Weekly Tribune, of Great Bend, Kansas, that put me on the trail of Chan's forgotten illustrations appears below.
They appeared in Ellen P. Allerton's Walls Of Corn and Other Poems, collected and published by Eva Ryan.
Astonishingly, the 1894 book is still available through Amazon and other retailers as a modern reproduction of the original. It is likely the quality of the images is higher in the original than in the copy. www.amazon.com/Ellen-Palmer-Allertons-Walls-Other/dp/1164...
Townsley's name appears quite clearly on some of these works. Whether the others bear his name is a matter of conjecture. Marks that resemble indistinct letters can be found in the general area of the lower right corner. For what it is worth, the artist did not sign all his paintings.
Chan was about 27 years old when the book was published. It remains to be determined when these works were created relative to Townsley's considerable formal art education in New York and Paris.
The illustrations appear in the same order as in the original. Immediately below you will find the poem that was the inspiration for the image.
© 2022 A. Davey
=======================
A Lesson for the New Year, by Ellen Palmer Allerton
The last night of the year, I sat alone
Beside the dying fire. The whole house slept.
Naught stirred the silence, save the wind's low moan.
As sadly through the naked streets it crept,
The fall of embers and the clock's low beat,
That mark the passing years with tiring feet.
I am weary; and the coming year
Seemed but an added load that pressed me sore.
The morrow would bring friends, and I should hear
The tread of many feet upon the floor.
I longed for quiet; I was vexed with care;
Just then my burden seemed too great to bear.
I thought of my unopened book, my pen,
Lying long idle, rusting in its place.
Could I but take them to some lonely glen
Where toil were not, nor any human face!
“Twere joy," cried I, so fretful was my mood
"To dwell one year in utter solitude."
Have then thy wish!" Was uttered sad and low;
I turned, and one stood by me, fair and tall,
And from his countenance with light aglow,
A look of pitying grief on me did fall.
"Have then thy wish!" He stooped and touched mine eyes'
And I stood dumb, overwhelmed with strange surprise.
The silent room had vanished and the wood,
Peopled with birds, that tilled its aisles with song
Compassed me round with sweet green solitude;
A clear stream trailed its silvery thread along;
And close beside it stood a rustic cot.
Piled high with volumes, and here toil was not.
Fruits for my food fell lightly at my feet;
I was alone; through all that lovely place
I knew that I might wander, and not meet,
In hill or hollow, any human face.
Within my books, all wit and wisdom blent.
I had my wish: was I therewith content?
Nay, verily. A sharp grief pierced me through,
My spirit sank, oppressed with midnight gloom,
While trees hung o'er me wet with heaven's dew.
I felt as one walled up within a tomb.
I sought my books: locked were their stores from me;
The hot tears dimmed my sight. 1 could not see.
I tried my pen in vain. No words would come.
Thought was an arid desert, wide and gray.
From which no streams would flow. My soul was dumb
With utter loneliness; but could I pray?
I cast me on the fragrant, dewy sod,
My face pressed in the grass and cried to God.
"Oh! Give me back," I prayed, "The dear days gone
The toilsome days, so full of crowded care
The hands I clasped, the lips that pressed my own.
For these, for these, could I all burdens bear!"
I started, for a rustling robe trailed near:
And "Have again thy wish!" fell on my ear.
Again I felt soft, gentle fingers press
Mine eyelids down; and lo! The dear old room,
The smiling lamp light home's blessed homliness!
The lonely wood was gone, its grief, its gloom:
And close within my call my dear ones slept.
For very joy I bowed my head and wept.
The fire was dead, the moon shone on the snow,
The wailing wintry wind blew bitter sold,
And yet I laid me down with heart aglow,
For all life's leaden care seemed turned to gold.
I slept the sleep of peace: I rose at morn,
Strong in the glad New Year - as one new born.
=======================
From:
Ellen P. Allerton's Walls Of Corn and Other Poems
Collected And Published With
Memorial Sketch By
Eva Ryan.
Illustrated.
Press of
The Harrington Printing Co
Hiawatha, Kansas.
Copyrighted, 1894,
=======================
ALLERTON, Mrs. Ellen Palmer, poet, born in Centerville, N. Y.. 17th October, 1835. Her ancestors were of Knickerbocker blood. She received a district-school education and afterwards spent a few terms in academies, but never graduated.
Her marriage to Alpheus B. Allerton, took place in 1862, soon after her removal to Wisconsin. Mr. and Mrs. Allerton were both invalids in Wisconsin, but in 1879, traveled to Kansas in a wagon, cooking their own meals and getting health and happiness out of the journey.
They selected for a home an unimproved farm, a quarter section, on very high land in Brown county, in sight of Padonia, Hamlin, Falls City and Hiawatha.
They now have a handsome home and every comfort that prosperity brings in its train.
Mrs. Allerton composed and recited verses before she could write, but offered little to the press until she was past thirty years of age.
Her first poems were published in "The Jefferson County Union," Ex-Governor Hoard's paper. Later she contributed to Milwaukee and Chicago papers, and was at one time book-reviewer for the Milwaukee "Sentinel."
She has published one volume, "Poems of the Prairies." (New York, 1886). She is considered one of the leading authors of Kansas. As a woman and as a writer she is quiet and sensible.
At her home in Padonia she has a wide circle of loving friends, and throughout the West the hearts that hold her dear are legion.
From:
A Woman of the Century
Fourteen Hundred-Seventy Biographical Sketches
Accompanied By Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life
Edited By Frances E. Willard And Mary A. Livermore
Assisted By A Corps Of Able Contributors
Buffalo, Chicago, New York
Charles Wells Moulton
1893
California Community College Wrestling Tournament. The 2022 Modesto Invitational hosted by Modesto Junior College on October 8th. Photos by John Sachs for Tech-Fall.com
In Frame: Nila Ahmed
Outfit by Irani Borka Bazar,
Makeup: Bhubon Howlader,
Photography by Sharif Ahmed
Photo Copyright 2012, dynamo.photography.
All rights reserved, no use without license
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Hong kong)
Hong Kong, officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, is an autonomous territory south to Mainland China and east to Macao in East Asia. With around 7.2 million Hong Kongers of various nationalities[note 2] in a territory of 1,104 km2, Hong Kong is the world's fourth most densely populated country or territory.
Hong Kong used to be a British colony with the perpetual cession of Hong Kong Island from the Qing Empire after the First Opium War (1839–42). The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 and acquired a 99-year lease of the New Territories from 1898. Hong Kong was later occupied by Japan during the Second World War until British control resumed in 1945. The Sino-British Joint Declaration signed between the United Kingdom and China in 1984 paved way for the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong in 1997, when it became a special administrative region (SAR) of the People's Republic of China with a high degree of autonomy.[15]
Under the principle of "one country, two systems",[16][17] Hong Kong maintains a separate political and economic system from China. Except in military defence and foreign affairs, Hong Kong maintains its independent executive, legislative and judiciary powers.[18] In addition, Hong Kong develops relations directly with foreign states and international organisations in a broad range of "appropriate fields".[19] Hong Kong involves in international organizations, such as the WTO[20] and the APEC [21], actively and independently.
Hong Kong is one of the world's most significant financial centres, with the highest Financial Development Index score and consistently ranks as the world's most competitive and freest economic entity.[22][23] As the world's 8th largest trading entity,[24] its legal tender, the Hong Kong dollar, is the world's 13th most traded currency.[25] As the world's most visited city,[26][27] Hong Kong's tertiary sector dominated economy is characterised by competitive simple taxation and supported by its independent judiciary system.[28] Even with one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, it suffers from severe income inequality.[29]
Nicknamed "Pearl of the Orient", Hong Kong is renowned for its deep natural harbour, which boasts the world's fifth busiest port with ready access by cargo ships, and its impressive skyline, with the most skyscrapers in the world.[30][31] It has a very high Human Development Index ranking and the world's longest life expectancy.[32][33] Over 90% of the population makes use of well-developed public transportation.[34][35] Seasonal air pollution with origins from neighbouring industrial areas of Mainland China, which adopts loose emissions standards, has resulted in a high level of atmospheric particulates in winter.[36][37][38]
Contents
1 Etymology
2 History
2.1 Prehistory
2.2 Imperial China
2.3 British Crown Colony: 1842–1941
2.4 Japanese occupation: 1941–45
2.5 Resumption of British rule and industrialisation: 1945–97
2.6 Handover and Special Administrative Region status
3 Governance
3.1 Structure of government
3.2 Electoral and political reforms
3.3 Legal system and judiciary
3.4 Foreign relations
3.5 Human rights
3.6 Regions and districts
3.7 Military
4 Geography and climate
5 Economy
5.1 Financial centre
5.2 International trading
5.3 Tourism and expatriation
5.4 Policy
5.5 Infrastructure
6 Demographics
6.1 Languages
6.2 Religion
6.3 Personal income
6.4 Education
6.5 Health
7 Culture
7.1 Sports
7.2 Architecture
7.3 Cityscape
7.4 Symbols
8 See also
9 Notes
10 References
10.1 Citations
10.2 Sources
11 Further reading
12 External links
Etymology
Hong Kong was officially recorded in the 1842 Treaty of Nanking to encompass the entirety of the island.[39]
The source of the romanised name "Hong Kong" is not known, but it is generally believed to be an early imprecise phonetic rendering of the pronunciation in spoken Cantonese 香港 (Cantonese Yale: Hēung Góng), which means "Fragrant Harbour" or "Incense Harbour".[13][14][40] Before 1842, the name referred to a small inlet—now Aberdeen Harbour (Chinese: 香港仔; Cantonese Yale: Hēunggóng jái), literally means "Little Hong Kong"—between Aberdeen Island and the southern coast of Hong Kong Island. Aberdeen was an initial point of contact between British sailors and local fishermen.[41]
Another theory is that the name would have been taken from Hong Kong's early inhabitants, the Tankas (水上人); it is equally probable that romanisation was done with a faithful execution of their speeches, i.e. hōng, not hēung in Cantonese.[42] Detailed and accurate romanisation systems for Cantonese were available and in use at the time.[43]
Fragrance may refer to the sweet taste of the harbour's fresh water estuarine influx of the Pearl River or to the incense from factories lining the coast of northern Kowloon. The incense was stored near Aberdeen Harbour for export before Hong Kong developed Victoria Harbour.[40]
The name had often been written as the single word Hongkong until the government adopted the current form in 1926.[44] Nevertheless, a number of century-old institutions still retain the single-word form, such as the Hongkong Post, Hongkong Electric and the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.
As of 1997, its official name is the "Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China". This is the official title as mentioned in the Hong Kong Basic Law and the Hong Kong Government's website;[45] however, "Hong Kong Special Administrative Region" and "Hong Kong" are widely accepted.
Hong Kong has carried many nicknames. The most famous among those is the "Pearl of the Orient", which reflected the impressive nightscape of the city's light decorations on the skyscrapers along both sides of the Victoria Harbour. The territory is also known as "Asia's World City".
History
Main articles: History of Hong Kong and History of China
Prehistory
Main article: Prehistoric Hong Kong
Archaeological studies support human presence in the Chek Lap Kok area (now Hong Kong International Airport) from 35,000 to 39,000 years ago and on Sai Kung Peninsula from 6,000 years ago.[46][47][48]
Wong Tei Tung and Three Fathoms Cove are the earliest sites of human habitation in Hong Kong during the Paleolithic Period. It is believed that the Three Fathom Cove was a river-valley settlement and Wong Tei Tung was a lithic manufacturing site. Excavated Neolithic artefacts suggested cultural differences from the Longshan culture of northern China and settlement by the Che people, prior to the migration of the Baiyue to Hong Kong.[49][50] Eight petroglyphs, which dated to the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600 BC – 1066 BC) in China, were discovered on the surrounding islands.[51]
Imperial China
Main article: History of Hong Kong under Imperial China
In 214 BC, Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a centralised China, conquered the Baiyue tribes in Jiaozhi (modern-day Liangguang region and Vietnam) and incorporated the area of Hong Kong into his imperial China for the first time. Hong Kong proper was assigned to the Nanhai commandery (modern-day Nanhai District), near the commandery's capital city Panyu.[52][53][54]
After a brief period of centralisation and collapse of the Qin dynasty, the area of Hong Kong was consolidated under the Kingdom of Nanyue, founded by general Zhao Tuo in 204 BC.[55] When Nanyue lost the Han-Nanyue War in 111 BC, Hong Kong came under the Jiaozhi commandery of the Han dynasty. Archaeological evidence indicates an increase of population and flourish of salt production. The Lei Cheng Uk Han Tomb on the Kowloon Peninsula is believed to have been built as a burial site during the Han dynasty.[56]
From the Han dynasty to the early Tang dynasty, Hong Kong was a part of Bao'an County. In the Tang dynasty, modern-day Guangzhou (Canton) flourished as an international trading centre. In 736, the Emperor Xuanzong of Tang established a military stronghold in Tuen Mun to strengthen defence of the coastal area.[57] The nearby Lantau Island was a salt production centre and salt smuggler riots occasionally broke out against the government. In c. 1075, The first village school, Li Ying College, was established around 1075 AD in modern-day New Territories by the Northern Song dynasty.[58] During their war against the Mongols, the imperial court of Southern Song was briefly stationed at modern-day Kowloon City (the Sung Wong Toi site) before their ultimate defeat by the Mongols at the Battle of Yamen in 1279.[59] The Mongols then established their dynastic court and governed Hong Kong for 97 years.
From the mid-Tang dynasty to the early Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Hong Kong was a part of Dongguan County. During the Ming dynasty, the area was transferred to Xin'an County. The indigenous inhabitants at that time consisted of several ethnicities such as Punti, Hakka, Tanka and Hoklo.
European discovery
The earliest European visitor on record was Jorge Álvares, a Portuguese explorer, who arrived in 1513.[60][61] Having established a trading post in a site they called "Tamão" in Hong Kong waters, Portuguese merchants commenced with regular trading in southern China. Subsequent military clashes between China and Portugal, however, led to the expulsion of all Portuguese merchants from southern China.
Since the 14th century, the Ming court had enforced the maritime prohibition laws that strictly forbade all private maritime activities in order to prevent contact with foreigners by sea.[62] When the Manchu Qing dynasty took over China, Hong Kong was directly affected by the Great Clearance decree of the Kangxi Emperor, who ordered the evacuation of coastal areas of Guangdong from 1661 to 1669. Over 16,000 inhabitants of Xin'an County including those in Hong Kong were forced to migrate inland; only 1,648 of those who had evacuated subsequently returned.[63][64]
British Crown Colony: 1842–1941
A painter at work. John Thomson. Hong Kong, 1871. The Wellcome Collection, London
Main articles: British Hong Kong and History of Hong Kong (1800s–1930s)
In 1839, threats by the imperial court of Qing to sanction opium imports caused diplomatic friction with the British Empire. Tensions escalated into the First Opium War. The Qing admitted defeat when British forces captured Hong Kong Island on 20 January 1841. The island was initially ceded under the Convention of Chuenpi as part of a ceasefire agreement between Captain Charles Elliot and Governor Qishan. A dispute between high-ranking officials of both countries, however, led to the failure of the treaty's ratification. On 29 August 1842, Hong Kong Island was formally ceded in perpetuity to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under the Treaty of Nanking.[65] The British officially established a Crown colony and founded the City of Victoria in the following year.[66]
The population of Hong Kong Island was 7,450 when the Union Flag raised over Possession Point on 26 January 1841. It mostly consisted of Tanka fishermen and Hakka charcoal burners, whose settlements scattered along several coastal hamlets. In the 1850s, a large number of Chinese immigrants crossed the then-free border to escape from the Taiping Rebellion. Other natural disasters, such as flooding, typhoons and famine in mainland China would play a role in establishing Hong Kong as a place for safe shelter.[67][68]
Further conflicts over the opium trade between Britain and Qing quickly escalated into the Second Opium War. Following the Anglo-French victory, the Crown Colony was expanded to include Kowloon Peninsula (south of Boundary Street) and Stonecutter's Island, both of which were ceded to the British in perpetuity under the Convention of Beijing in 1860.
In 1898, Britain obtained a 99-year lease from Qing under the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory, in which Hong Kong obtained a 99-year lease of Lantau Island, the area north of Boundary Street in Kowloon up to Shenzhen River and over 200 other outlying islands.[69][70][71]
Hong Kong soon became a major entrepôt thanks to its free port status, attracting new immigrants to settle from both China and Europe. The society, however, remained racially segregated and polarised under early British colonial policies. Despite the rise of a British-educated Chinese upper-class by the late-19th century, race laws such as the Peak Reservation Ordinance prevented ethnic Chinese in Hong Kong from acquiring houses in reserved areas such as Victoria Peak. At this time, the majority of the Chinese population in Hong Kong had no political representation in the British colonial government. The British governors did rely, however, on a small number of Chinese elites, including Sir Kai Ho and Robert Hotung, who served as ambassadors and mediators between the government and local population.
File:1937 Hong Kong VP8.webmPlay media
Hong Kong filmed in 1937
In 1904, the United Kingdom established the world's first border and immigration control; all residents of Hong Kong were given citizenship as Citizens of United Kingdom and Colonies (CUKC).
Hong Kong continued to experience modest growth during the first half of the 20th century. The University of Hong Kong was established in 1911 as the territory's first higher education institute. While there had been an exodus of 60,000 residents for fear of a German attack on the British colony during the First World War, Hong Kong remained unscathed. Its population increased from 530,000 in 1916 to 725,000 in 1925 and reached 1.6 million by 1941.[72]
In 1925, Cecil Clementi became the 17th Governor of Hong Kong. Fluent in Cantonese and without a need for translator, Clementi introduced the first ethnic Chinese, Shouson Chow, into the Executive Council as an unofficial member. Under Clementi's tenure, Kai Tak Airport entered operation as RAF Kai Tak and several aviation clubs. In 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out when the Japanese Empire expanded its territories from northeastern China into the mainland proper. To safeguard Hong Kong as a freeport, Governor Geoffry Northcote declared the Crown Colony as a neutral zone.
Japanese occupation: 1941–45
Main article: Japanese occupation of Hong Kong
The Cenotaph in Hong Kong commemorates those who died in service in the First World War and the Second World War.[73]
As part of its military campaign in Southeast Asia during Second World War, the Japanese army moved south from Guangzhou of mainland China and attacked Hong Kong in on 8 December 1941.[74] Crossing the border at Shenzhen River on 8 December, the Battle of Hong Kong lasted for 18 days when British and Canadian forces held onto Hong Kong Island. Unable to defend against intensifying Japanese air and land bombardments, they eventually surrendered control of Hong Kong on 25 December 1941. The Governor of Hong Kong was captured and taken as a prisoner of war. This day is regarded by the locals as "Black Christmas".[75]
During the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, the Japanese army committed atrocities against civilians and POWs, such as the St. Stephen's College massacre. Local residents also suffered widespread food shortages, limited rationing and hyper-inflation arising from the forced exchange of currency from Hong Kong dollars to Japanese military banknotes. The initial ratio of 2:1 was gradually devalued to 4:1 and ownership of Hong Kong dollars was declared illegal and punishable by harsh torture. Due to starvation and forced deportation for slave labour to mainland China, the population of Hong Kong had dwindled from 1.6 million in 1941 to 600,000 in 1945, when the United Kingdom resumed control of the colony on 2 September 1945.[76]
Resumption of British rule and industrialisation: 1945–97
Main articles: British Hong Kong, 1950s in Hong Kong, 1960s in Hong Kong, 1970s in Hong Kong, 1980s in Hong Kong, and 1990s in Hong Kong
Flag of British Hong Kong from 1959 to 1997
Hong Kong's population recovered quickly after the war, as a wave of skilled migrants from the Republic of China moved in to seek refuge from the Chinese Civil War. When the Communist Party eventually took full control of mainland China in 1949, even more skilled migrants fled across the open border for fear of persecution.[69] Many newcomers, especially those who had been based in the major port cities of Shanghai and Guangzhou, established corporations and small- to medium-sized businesses and shifted their base operations to British Hong Kong.[69] The establishment of a socialist state in China (People's Republic of China) on 1 October 1949 caused the British colonial government to reconsider Hong Kong's open border to mainland China. In 1951, a boundary zone was demarked as a buffer zone against potential military attacks from communist China. Border posts along the north of Hong Kong began operation in 1953 to regulate the movement of people and goods into and out of the territory.
Stamp with portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, 1953
In the 1950s, Hong Kong became the first of the Four Asian Tiger economies under rapid industrialisation driven by textile exports, manufacturing industries and re-exports of goods to China. As the population grew, with labour costs remaining low, living standards began to rise steadily.[77] The construction of the Shek Kip Mei Estate in 1953 marked the beginning of the public housing estate programme to provide shelter for the less privileged and to cope with the influx of immigrants.
Under Sir Murray MacLehose, 25th Governor of Hong Kong (1971–82), a series of reforms improved the public services, environment, housing, welfare, education and infrastructure of Hong Kong. MacLehose was British Hong Kong's longest-serving governor and, by the end of his tenure, had become one of the most popular and well-known figures in the Crown Colony. MacLehose laid the foundation for Hong Kong to establish itself as a key global city in the 1980s and early 1990s.
A sky view of Hong Kong Island
An aerial view of the northern shore of Hong Kong Island in 1986
To resolve traffic congestion and to provide a more reliable means of crossing the Victoria Harbour, a rapid transit railway system (metro), the MTR, was planned from the 1970s onwards. The Island Line (Hong Kong Island), Kwun Tong Line (Kowloon Peninsula and East Kowloon) and Tsuen Wan Line (Kowloon and urban New Territories) opened in the early 1980s.[78]
In 1983, the Hong Kong dollar left its 16:1 peg with the Pound sterling and switched to the current US-HK Dollar peg. Hong Kong's competitiveness in manufacturing gradually declined due to rising labour and property costs, as well as new development in southern China under the Open Door Policy introduced in 1978 which opened up China to foreign business. Nevertheless, towards the early 1990s, Hong Kong had established itself as a global financial centre along with London and New York City, a regional hub for logistics and freight, one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia and the world's exemplar of Laissez-faire market policy.[79]
The Hong Kong question
In 1971, the Republic of China (Taiwan)'s permanent seat on the United Nations was transferred to the People's Republic of China (PRC), Hong Kong's status as a recognised colony became terminated in 1972 under the request of PRC. Facing the uncertain future of Hong Kong and expiry of land lease of New Territories beyond 1997, Governor MacLehose raised the question in the late 1970s.
The British Nationality Act 1981 reclassified Hong Kong into a British Dependent Territory amid the reorganisation of global territories of the British Empire. All residents of Hong Kong became British Dependent Territory Citizens (BDTC). Diplomatic negotiations began with China and eventually concluded with the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. Both countries agreed to transfer Hong Kong's sovereignty to China on 1 July 1997, when Hong Kong would remain autonomous as a special administrative region and be able to retain its free-market economy, British common law through the Hong Kong Basic Law, independent representation in international organisations (e.g. WTO and WHO), treaty arrangements and policy-making except foreign diplomacy and military defence.
It stipulated that Hong Kong would retain its laws and be guaranteed a high degree of autonomy for at least 50 years after the transfer. The Hong Kong Basic Law, based on English law, would serve as the constitutional document after the transfer. It was ratified in 1990.[69] The expiry of the 1898 lease on the New Territories in 1997 created problems for business contracts, property leases and confidence among foreign investors.
Handover and Special Administrative Region status
Main articles: Transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong and 2000s in Hong Kong
Transfer of sovereignty
Golden Bauhinia Square
On 1 July 1997, the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China took place, officially marking the end of Hong Kong's 156 years under British colonial governance. As the largest remaining colony of the United Kingdom, the loss of Hong Kong effectively represented the end of the British Empire. This transfer of sovereignty made Hong Kong the first special administrative region of China. Tung Chee-Hwa, a pro-Beijing business tycoon, was elected Hong Kong's first Chief Executive by a selected electorate of 800 in a televised programme.
Structure of government
Hong Kong's current structure of governance inherits from the British model of colonial administration set up in the 1850s. The 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration states that "Hong Kong should enjoy a high degree of autonomy in all areas except defence and foreign affairs" with reference to the underlying principle of one country, two systems.[note 3] This Declaration stipulates that Hong Kong maintains her capitalist economic system and guarantees the rights and freedoms of her people for at least 50 years after the 1997 handover. [note 4] Such guarantees are enshrined in the Hong Kong's Basic Law, the territory's constitutional document, which outlines the system of governance after 1997, albeit subject to interpretation by China's Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPCSC).[95][96]
Hong Kong's most senior leader, Chief Executive, is elected by a committee of 1,200 selected members (600 in 1997) and nominally appointed by the Government of China. The primary pillars of government are the Executive Council, Legislative Council, civil service and Judiciary.
Policy-making is initially discussed in the Executive Council, presided by the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, before passing to the Legislative Council for bill adoption. The Executive Council consists of 30 official/unofficial members appointed by the Chief Executive and one member among them acts as the convenor.[97][98]
The Legislative Council, set up in 1843, debates policies and motions before voting to adopt or rejecting bills. It has 70 members (originally 60) and 40 (originally 30) among them are directly elected by universal suffrage; the other 30 members are "functional constituencies" (indirectly) elected by a smaller electorate of corporate bodies or representatives of stipulated economic sectors as defined by the government. The Legislative Council is chaired by a president who acts as the speaker.[99][100]
In 1997, seating of the Legislative Council (also public services and election franchises) of Hong Kong modelled on the British system: Urban Council (Hong Kong and Kowloon) and District Council (New Territories and Outlying Islands). In 1999, this system has been reformed into 18 directly elected District Offices across 5 Legislative Council constituencies: Hong Kong Island (East/West), Kowloon and New Territories (East/West); the remaining outlying islands are divided across the aforementioned regions.
Hong Kong's Civil Service, created by the British colonial government, is a politically neutral body that implements government policies and provides public services. Senior civil servants are appointed based on meritocracy. The territory's police, firefighting and customs forces, as well as clerical officers across various government departments, make up the civil service.[101][102]