Ivor Weiss, Artist
The Onlooker, 1968
I visited Jermyn St in St James to meet Mark Weiss of the Weiss Gallery to hear about the life of his father, the painter Ivor Weiss (1919-1986) who was born in Stepney. The gallery was filled large bold paintings that possess a soulfulness and tender humanity. These pictures embody the cultural memory of the Jewish East End, speaking eloquently of a long life and a significant talent. Today one of Ivor Weiss’ paintings hangs in Sandys Row Synagogue in Spitalfields where it can be viewed on request.
“My father was one of four children. His parents were both Romanian Jews who came over to London at the end of the nineteenth century. We don’t know the exact dates, we have very little documentation of family history. My father’s father came from quite a well-to-do family in Bucharest. He was one of four or five children and his wife, whose maiden name was Wiseman, came from a very large family of twelve or thirteen. We don’t know when they got married but we do know they lived, as many immigrant Jews did at that time, in Stepney in the East End around Cable St. So my father was born a Cockney in Stepney in 1919.
His father was a Master Furrier and clearly was quite successful, although he was only naturalised in 1929. By that time, he had clearly made some money and was living in 33 Elgin Crescent, Westbourne Grove. My grandfather was a gambler and my father used to say that his mother was in tears at the end of the week because all the money his father had earned had been spent, betting on dogs and horses.
My father enlisted when war broke out in 1939 when he was only twenty years old. As a nice Jewish boy from the East End, he expected to be put into a force that suited him but instead he was enrolled in a Glaswegian regiment which he hated. He ended up in the Royal Corps of Signals and was posted to the North African campaign, ending up in Malta. There his artistic talents were first recognised and he attended an art school, winning a couple of prizes. When he was demobilised he went to Heatherley School of Art in Baker St and then St Martin’s in the Charing Cross Rd, where he met my mother Joan, who was also an art student and a painter. They married very quickly after that in 1949.
My father’s brother was a pilot in the RAF and had been seconded during the war to teach American pilots how to fly fighter planes and he married a Jewish lady in Montgomery, Alabama. There was still rationing after the war in this country and he invited my father over to Alabama to live. So my parents went to start a new life there and opened an art school called the Weiss Gallery. It was not easy for them because they were committed to their school being desegregated. They hated the situation, but they had spent all their money getting out there. I and my brother were born in America and, by 1955, they had saved enough money to return.
My father had an offer to be a stand-in art teacher at Lancing College for six months and then he got a job in a secondary modern in Brightlingsea, Essex, where my sister was born. To supplement his income, he used to teach evening classes. By chance, he was asked by a local lady if he could sell a painting for her, so my father brokered the sale of the picture to a local antique dealer and earned more money than he could make in a month. My parents drifted into art dealing from our home in Brightlingsea and, within a few years, made enough money to buy a big house in Colchester. My father had an intuitive eye, and he had studied Art History and technique, so he was well placed to become an art dealer, and my mother used to do the restoration. They made quite a formidable team and the business grew rapidly.
Yet he still had aspirations for his art and there came a watershed when Mr Weston, of the wealthy family who owned Fortnum & Mason, invited my father to paint for him and his friends in the south of France, but my father said, ‘No, I don’t want to leave my family.’ It was a fork in the road. If he had done that, he might have developed more of a career as a commercial painter. Having made that choice, painting remained a private exercise. He was never that prolific, and painting remained a personal and emotional thing for him. It was difficult, it was not something that came easy – the creation of pictures.
For the rest of his life, he and my mother concentrated on art dealing with him painting privately. But after a series of minor heart attacks, he had triple heart by-pass surgery and it proved the catalyst for him paint Judaic subjects. They are some of his most powerful works, drawing on the traditions he grew up with in the East End among Hassidic Jews.
My father died of a heart attack in 1986, at the time I opened up my gallery in London which we would have run together. His paintings remained hanging in the houses of members of the family and in storage with my mother until she died aged ninety-two. These are quite emotional paintings for us as a family.
I regret that I never asked my father questions about the East End and he never discussed it. Sorting out my mother’s affairs, I could not even find a marriage certificate, and I realised they had never talked about their wedding and I had never asked, and how sad that is. As children, we never questioned our parents about their past. They grew up through the horrors of the Second World War and, the generation before, they endured the First World War. My grandfather served with great distinction, but had a horrendous time and had nightmares about it for the rest of his life. He did not want to talk about it.
My father was remarkable man and one of the things that strikes me, when I think about him, is that he never made enemies – which is a rare thing in this life. He was multi-talented, he taught pottery, he could make enamel jewellery, he could make furniture, all sorts of things.“
The Discussion, 1968
Four Drinkers, 1968
Seated cCouple, fifties
The Anchor Inn, Brightlingsea
The Park Bench, 1967
Woman in Pub, 1981
Boredom, 1964
The Waiting Room, 1964
The Last Supper, 1972
The Elders, 1972
Seated Rabbi, 1972
Approaching Storm, 1966
Wivenhoe Creek, 1966
Ivor & Joan Weiss
In the studio in the fifties
Ivor Weiss painting in the eighties
Ivor Weiss (1919-86), Self Portrait mid-eighties
Paintings copyright © Estate of Ivor Weiss
In & Out The Eagle
On dark nights when the rain beats at my window and the wind moans down my chimney, I dream of leaving the gloomy old house and joining excited crowds, out in their best clothes to witness the spectacular entertainments that London has to offer. The particular theatre I have in mind is The Grecian Theatre attached to the Eagle Tavern in Shepherdess Walk, City Road between Angel and Old St.
The place seems to have developed quite a reputation, as I read recently, “The Grecian Saloon is really a hot house or a black hole, for the number of human beings packed in there every night would induce a supposition there was no other place of entertainment in London. At least two thousand persons were left unable to procure admission.” This was written in 1839, demonstrating that the popular art of having a good time is a noble tradition which has always thrived in the East End, outside the walls of the City of London.
“Up and down the City Road, in and out the Eagle, that’s the way the money goes…” The Eagle public house in the rhyme still exists to this day, though barely anything remains of the elaborate entertainment complex which developed during the nineteenth century – apart from a single scrapbook that I found in the archive of the Bishopsgate Institute. All the balloon ascents, the stick fights, the operas, the wrestling and the wild parties may be over, and the thrill rides closed long ago, but there is enough in this album to evoke the extravagant drama of it all and fire my imagination with thoughts of glamorous nights out on the town.
You only have to imagine walking through Brick Lane and up to Shoreditch on a Saturday night, through the hen parties and gangs of suburban boys out on a bevy, amidst the intoxicated, the drugged and the merely overexcited, to get a glimpse of what it might have been like two hundred years ago when as many as six thousand attended events at the Eagle Tavern.
On the site of the eighteenth century Shepherd & Shepherdess Pleasure Garden, the Grecian Saloon developed at the Eagle Tavern to provide all kinds of entertainments, from religious events to conjuring and equestrian performances. There is a tantalising poetry to the hints that survive of these bygone entertainments, because sentences like “We are glad to find that little Smith has recovered her hoarseness” and “We have little to find fault with save that the maniac was allowed to perambulate the gardens without his keeper” do set the imagination racing.
There are many fine coloured playbills in the cherished album, crammed with enigmatic promises of exotic thrills. I wonder who exactly was the beautiful Giraffe Girl or General Campbell, the smallest man in the world. Amongst so much hyperbole it is disappointing to learn that the central attractions are merely supported by the “artistes of acknowledged talent.”
Elaborate pavilions with all manner of special effects were constructed at the Grecian Saloon, which in turn became the Grecian Theatre in 1858 where Marie Lloyd made her stage debut, aged fifteen. Eventually the building was acquired in 1882 by General William Booth of the Salvation Army and the parties came to an end.
Yet this site saw the transition from eighteenth century pleasure garden to nineteenth century music hall. And when you come to think of the many thousands of souls who experienced so much joy there over all those years, it does impart a certain sacred quality to this location, even if it is now mostly occupied by Shoreditch Police Station.
Images courtesy © Bishopsgate Institute
Frank Derrett, Photographer
Recently I published Frank Derrett’s splendid photographs of the West End in the seventies which Paul Loften rescued from a skip and donated to the Bishopsgate Institute.
At first, these pictures appeared to be anonymous but when I examined the transparencies closely, I found several were annotated by a neat italic hand on the cardboard mount, including a name, F.L. Derrett, and an address, 56 Jessel House, Judd St, WC1.
These notes were upon a poignant set of images of interiors – that I assume are Jessel House – which I find especially fascinating. Taken at Christmas, they record an abundance of cards and festive decorations. Upon closer examination, they reveal an enthusiasm for ballet and there are letters from the Royal household framed upon the wall.
At this point, I called in Vicky Stewart, Spitalfields Life’s own private investigator, who famously discovered the location of Horace Warner’s Spitalfields Nippers a few years ago, to see what she could find about the mysterious F.L. Derrett.
Frank Lionel Derrett was born in 1912 and lived at Jessel House his whole life. Frank worked as a clerk at the British Museum from when he was twenty-seven years old in 1939. His father had been killed in Greece at the age of thirty-four, during the First World War, when Frank was only five. He and his mother lived together in Jessel House through the rest of the century, until Frank’s death in January 1995 at the age of eighty-two. It was shortly after this that Paul Loften saved Frank’s photos.
So now these photographs that Frank took in his sixties are all we have. There is a certain intimacy, even affection, in his colourful pictures, taken by Londoner to whom these locations were familiar. They reveal a delight in a London that was all local for Frank, living in Bloomsbury. It was natural for him to walk to work at the British Museum and then into the West End in search of entertainment. The photographs tell me that Frank loved London.
An enthusiasm for ballet and Lotte Lenya
Letters from the Royal household
Clint Eastwood at Christmas
Whidbourne St
London Wall
The Marie Lloyd in Hoxton
Windmill at Wimbledon
Frank’s florist, Annie in Marchmont St – where he bought flowers for his mother
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
You may also like to take a look at
Shakespeare’s Mulberry To The Rescue!
Click to look inside Shakespeare’s Mulberry as cultivated by David Garrick
Many readers will remember the unhappy day in September 2018 when Tower Hamlets Council voted to approve Crest Nicholson’s appalling London Chest Hospital redevelopment which damages the listed building and entails digging up the historic BETHNAL GREEN MULBERRY.
After two years of bureaucratic rigmarole, that permission has now been formally granted which means we can challenge it in the High Court. Already, we have employed top Environmental Lawyer Susan Ring of Harrison Grant Solicitors who has established there are grounds for Judicial Review and we must raise £10,000 to proceed before November 20th or the ancient Bethnal Green Mulberry will be dug up.
We are doing this with the help of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S MULBERRY. In 1610, the poet planted a Mulberry tree in his garden in Stratford upon Avon. Unfortunately so many tourists came seeking branches as souvenirs that the owners cut it down in 1770. But the great Shakespearian actor David Garrick rescued a cutting which flourishes to this day.
We are offering a cutting of David Garrick’s tree to everyone who contributes £100 or more to our legal fund. This is a once in a lifetime chance to acquire a scion of Shakespeare’s Mulberry and enjoy a living connection to the world’s greatest writer.
Click on the link below to contribute and then send an email to the East End Preservation Society (eastendpsociety@gmail.com). You will receive your rooted cutting next year and together we will Save The Bethnal Green Mulberry.
CLICK HERE TO SAVE THE BETHNAL GREEN MULBERRY
We are delighted to welcome Dame Judi Dench as patron of our campaign
William Hogarth’s painting of Huguenot David Garrick who began the Shakespeare revival by playing Richard III at Goodman Fields Theatre in Aldgate in 1741
My Staffordshire figure of William Shakespeare flanked by Sarah Siddons as Lady Macbeth and her brother John Phillip Kemble as Hamlet
Our logo by Paul Bommer
Click here to read my feature in The Daily Telegraph about the scandal of the Bethnal Green Mulberry
Read more here about the Bethnal Green Mulberry
The Fate of the Bethnal Green Mulberry
The Reckoning With Crest Nicholson
Jemmy Catnach’s Cries Of London
Jemmy (James) Catnach of Monmouth Court was celebrated for publishing ballads, penny awfuls, and children’s farthing and halfpenny chapbooks. As publisher, compositor and poet, he established the Seven Dials Press in 1813.
Notorious for playing fast and loose with the truth, he published a sensational pamphlet in 1818, claiming that a butcher in Drury Lane was selling sausages made of human flesh, and ended up in the Middlesex House of Detention in Clerkenwell.
Such was Catnach’s love for ballads, he kept a fiddler on the premises at one time so that ballad singers could come in and audition their compositions for publication. Of all the Cries of London I have published these are most modestly produced and crudely wrought images, yet I love them for their strong images and graphic vitality.
Clothes Pegs, Props & Lines – Come buy and save your clothes from dirt, they’ll save you washing many a shirt!
Filberts – I sell them for a groat a pound and warrant them all good and sound!
Sweep – If you rightly understand me, with my brush, broom and my rake, such cleanly work I’ll make…
Peas & Beans – Come buy my Windsor beans and peas, you’ll see no more this year like these!
Toys for Girls & Boys – only a penny, or a dirty phial or bottle
Strawberries – Strawberries & cream are charming and sweet, mix them and try how delightful to eat
When Good Friday comes, Hot Cross Buns!
Oranges – I sell them at two for a penny, ripe, juicy and sweet, just fit for to eat, so customers buy a good many
Milk Below! – Rain, frost or snow, or hot or cold, I travel up and down, the cream & milk you buy from me is the best in town for custards, puddings, or for tea, there’s none like those you’ll buy from me
Crumpling Codlings – Come buy my Crumpling Codlings, some of them you may eat raw, of the rest make dumplings
Cherries – Here’s round and sound, black and white heart cherries, twopence a pound!
Toy Lambs to sell – If I had as much money as I could tell, I never would cry young lambs to sell!
You may also like to take a look at these other sets of the Cries of London I have collected
More John Player’s Cries of London
More Samuel Pepys’ Cries of London
Geoffrey Fletcher’s Pavement Pounders
William Craig Marshall’s Itinerant Traders
H.W.Petherick’s London Characters
John Thomson’s Street Life in London
Aunt Busy Bee’s New London Cries
Marcellus Laroon’s Cries of London
William Nicholson’s London Types
Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana of 1817
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana II
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana III
Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders
More of Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders
Adam Dant’s New Cries of Spittlefields
CLICK TO BUY A SIGNED COPY OF CRIES OF LONDON FOR £20
14 Whitechapel Bell Foundry Poems
The Bell Foundry Public Inquiry continues at 10am today, with live-tweeting at @savethewbf.
CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE INQUIRY
Dan Thompson wrote these fourteen short poems about the Whitechapel Bell Foundry and its bells, as part of his project to write one hundred poems about one hundred places in England. These are complemented with photographs by Charlotte Dew.
The Whitechapel Sound
I
The clapper strikes the place-bell’s rim,
a 1930s tune by Mears and Stainbank.
Down in a spireless church on the coast –
Captain Sophie Littlechild leads the band
in a Kent Treble Bob Major,
ringing a Kentish rag.
The changes are heard up in the Cinque Port.
Eight still bells hold the peace
they’ve kept since before the Great War:
but the bells of St Clements sound,
‘Oranges and lemons, oranges and lemons.’
II
In the Arundel Tower at Canterbury.
Dunstan’s Bell sounds the hour
for pilgrims at the site of the martyr.
Thomas gave his will
to find freedom in the will of god.
He has been killed for his faith:
so we mourn –
he has been elevated to the company of saints:
so we rejoice.
He has been killed:
the bells will be silent for a year.
‘It is only in these our Christian mysteries that we can rejoice and mourn at once for the same reason’.
III
An old signalling-station,
a tower that flies the White Ensign,
the Prime Minister sung in the choir
as the bells brought by boat,
floated down the Estuary,
pealed over war graves
and Bones’ fields.
IV
Along the Estuary, on the hour,
promenaders at Herne Bay,
and pleasure-trippers boarding Thanet wherries,
ghost figures on a ghost pier,
set their watches by the bell in
Mrs Thwaytes’ Clock Tower.
The hour drifts on the tides
to sea forts, pirate radio stations,
across the windfarms.
V
On the line between English and Danish,
Christopher Wren built a church,
German thunderbolts destroyed it –
the spire burning like a candle-
the Royal Air Force restored it.
Sign and countersign, fall and rise –
‘They held out their arms for you to pass under’
The man who burnt
Hamburg and Dresden
stands outside.
‘Lord, do you want us to
call fire down from heaven
to destroy them?’
VI
Two Sticks and Apple,
Ring the Bells at Whitechapple
When I am Rich,
Ring the Bells at Fleetditch
We were made in this place
Ring the Bells at Boniface.
VII
Big Ben in
The Elizabeth Tower,
St Paul’s, Westminster Abbey –
London rings.
The bells in Wren’s
St Mary-le-Bow
would have been heard
six miles to the east,
five miles to the north,
three miles to the south,
four miles to the west.
In St Andrew by the Wardrobe,
the bell rings by itself
when the vicar in Avenbury dies.
VIII
Be not afeard,
the isle is full of the
noise of bells –
Work No 1197:
All The Bells.
The wide bell
rings low and so loud,
nine hundred million people
can hear it.
IX
Before each service,
the tenor rings seventeen times,
once for each of the Lewes martyrs:
one ring more than
the years of protestant
Thomasina Wood’s life.
X
Target 53.
The Kampfgruppe dropped marker flares
at the corners of the city.
From 20,000 feet, a cathedral looks like a factory.
St Michael’s burned, a magnesium flame
melting lead, catching in the oak roof.
The water ran dry before midnight.
Churchill stood on the
Air Ministry roof, waiting
for bombs that never fell on London.
The old Pack & Chapman bells,
‘each bell of good, bold and pleasing tone,
a very fine peal of ten’, recast,
rang as the bombs fell.
XI
Habemus vicarium at Granchester –
‘we have a vicar, we have a vicar’
XII
Wind the handle,
a turn for each day of the year,
and Great Tom will mark the hour.
Cover the fire.
Two bells call the curfew,
one hundred and one rings.
Cover the fire.
Cover the fire.
XIII
The edge, the Borders,
St Andrew’s in Penrith,
where Kathleen Raine
sat out the war.
‘Write
me a piece about the
grave, James Joyce’.
Ken Twentyman will
show you the Fire Bell,
the Market Bell,
the Curfew Bell –
the Morta Bell for death.
XIV
After each round of bells
is a moment of silence,
change, before the bells
ring round again. In the
peace after and before
you can hear Whitechapel.
___________
Footnotes
I St Mary’s, Walmer, Kent: St Peter’s, Sandwich, Kent (where the bells last rung in 1913), St Clement’s
II Quote from TS Eliot Murder In The Cathedral.
III St Peters in Thanet, Broadstairs: the local farmer is Mr Bones.
IV Herne Bay Clocktower
V St Clement Danes, the RAF church. Quote from George Orwell Nineteen Eighty Four and Luke 9:54.
IX St Thomas, Lewes
Dan Thompson, Peace Poet
You may also like to read about
Nigel Taylor, Tower Bell Manager
Hope for The Whitechapel Bell Foundry
A Petition to Save the Bell Foundry
Great Tom At St Paul’s
The Bell Foundry Public Inquiry continues at 10am today, with live-tweeting at @savethewbf.
CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE INQUIRY
Like bats, bells lead secluded lives hibernating in dark towers high above cathedrals and churches. Thus it was that I set out to climb to the top of the south west tower of St Paul’s Cathedral to visit Great Tom, cast by Richard Phelps at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in 1716.
At 11,474lbs, Great Tom is significantly smaller than Great Paul, its neighbour in the tower at 37,483lbs, yet Great Paul has been silent for many years making Great Tom the largest working bell at St Paul’s and – now Big Ben (30,339lbs) has fallen silent during renovations – Great Tom has become London’s largest working bell.
To reach Great Tom, I had first to climb the stone staircase beneath the dome of St Paul’s and then walk along inside the roof of the nave. Here, vast brick hemispheres protrude as the reverse of the shallow domes below, creating a strange effect – like a floor of a multi-storey car park for flying saucers. At the west end, a narrow door leads onto the parapet above the front of the cathedral and you descend from the roof of the nave to arrive at the entrance to the south west tower, where a conveniently placed shed serves as a store for spare clock hands.
Inside the stone tower is a hefty wooden structure that supports the clock and the bells above. Here I climbed a metal staircase to take a peek at Great Paul, a sleek grey beast deep in slumber since the mechanism broke years ago. From here, another stone staircase ascends to the open rotunda where expansive views across the city induce stomach-churning awe. I stepped onto a metal bridge within the tower, spying Great Paul below, and raised my eyes to discern the dark outline of Great Tom above me. It was a curious perspective peering up into the darkness of the interior of the ancient bell, since it was also a gaze into time.
When an old bell is recast, any inscriptions are copied onto the new one and an ancient bell like Great Tom may carry a collection of texts which reveal an elaborate history extending back through many centuries. The story of Great Tom begins in Westminster where, from the thirteenth century in the time of Henry III, the large bell in the clocktower of Westminster Palace was known as ‘Great Tom’ or ‘Westminster Tom.’
Great Tom bears an inscription that reads, ‘Tercius aptavit me rex Edwardque vocavit Sancti decore Edwardi signantur ut horae,’ which translates as ‘King Edward III made and named me so that by the grace of St Edward the hours may be marked.’ This inscription is confirmed by John Stowe writing in 1598, ‘He (Edward III) also built to the use of this chapel (though out of the palace court), some distance west, in the little Sanctuary, a strong clochard of stone and timber, covered with lead, and placed therein three great bells, since usually rung at coronations, triumphs, funerals of princes and their obits.’
With the arrival of mechanical clocks, the bell tower in Westminster became redundant and, when it was pulled down in 1698, Great Tom was sold to St Paul’s Cathedral for £385 17s. 6d. Unfortunately, while it was being transported the bell fell off the cart at Temple Bar and cracked. So it was cast by Philip Wightman, adding the inscription ‘MADE BY PHILIP WIGHTMAN 1708. BROUGHT FROM THE RVINES OF WESTMINSTER.’
Yet this recasting was unsatisfactory and the next year Great Tom was cast again by Richard Phelps at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. This was also unsuccessful and, seven years later, it was was cast yet again by Richard Phelps at Whitechapel, adding the inscription ‘RICHARD PHELPS MADE ME 1716’ and arriving at the fine tone we hear today.
As well as chiming the hours at St Paul’s, Great Tom is also sounded upon the death of royalty and prominent members of the clergy, tolling last for the death of the Queen Mother in 2002. For the sake of my eardrums, I timed my visit to Great Tom between the hours. Once I had climbed down again safely to the ground, I walked around the west front of the cathedral just in time to hear Great Tom strike noontide. Its deep sonorous reverberation contains echoes of all the bells that Great Tom once was, striking the hours and marking out time in London through eight centuries.
Above the nave
Looking west with St Brides in the distance
Spare clock hands
Looking east along the roof of the cathedral
Up to the clock room
The bell frame for Great Paul in the clock room
Great Paul
Looking up to Great Paul
Looking across to the north west tower from the clock room
Looking along Cannon St from the rotunda
Looking south to the river
Looking across to the north west tower
Looking down on Great Paul
Looking up into the bell frame
Looking up to catch a glimpse of Great Tom, St Paul’s largest working bell
Great Tom cast by Richard Phelps in Whitechapel in 1716, engraved in 1776 (Courtesy of The Ancient Society of College Youths)
Great Tom strikes noon at St Paul’s Cathedral
You may also like to read about
A Petition to Save the Bell Foundry
Save the Whitechapel Bell Foundry
So Long, Whitechapel Bell Foundry
