Celebrating Joseph Grimaldi
Zaz the clown spins a disc for Joseph Grimaldi
Last week saw the one hundred and seventy-fifth anniversary of the death of the world’s most famous clown, Joseph Grimaldi, and a small group of devotees with painted faces gathered – as they do each year on the anniversary – at the former graveyard of St James’ Pentonville Rd to celebrate his memory, in the place where the bones of the great man lie interred.
The church was deconsecrated long ago and the churchyard cleared, reconstituted now as Joseph Grimaldi Park with his tombstone given pride of place in a location twenty feet from where he is actually buried. Nearby, the traffic roars up and down the Pentonville Rd with a ferocity unknown in Grimaldi’s day, yet the remains of thirteen hundred souls still lie here peacefully and, even though Grimaldi was decapitated before burial at his own request out of a morbid fear of being buried alive, his spirit becomes manifest each year when the clowns arrive to pay tribute.
On an occluded summer’s day, the sun broke through as the ‘Joeys’ came stumbling in one by one, wearing their big boots, enacting their crazy poetry of gurning, and bringing delight with old gags and dumb tricks. Resplendent in a garish suit of Buchanan tartan, Mattie, the curator of the clown museum and local resident who has lived thirty-five years years in Clerkenwell, gave a plain speech of remembrance before laying flowers for Grimaldi. At a distance, Puzzle the silent clown, wiped tears from his eyes as he stood under an umbrella in the sunlight while water pumped up through the handle cascaded down over the shade, making a suitable gesture to honour the man who developed the notion of the modern clown that is universally recognised today.
“It’s been low-key for donkeys’ years and we thought it would be nice to pay a bit more attention to it,” explained Bluebottle, rubbing his hands in delighted satisfaction at the turnout. A clown of twenty years experience, he was speaking to me as official secretary of Clowns International, the world’s largest clown organisation. By contrast, Fiasco the clown has only been doing it for six months, eagerly confiding that her sole ambition is “to bring people happiness and to entertain handicapped children.” Meanwhile, Zaz the clown who has been clowning since he was eleven and is now thirty-three, revealed that he had performed for Madonna’s children and been flown to India just to entertain at a party. And Jolly Jack confessed that he began clowning at the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 and never looked back. They were a quorum of fools, and we delighted at their high jinks and idiocy.
At the entrance to Joseph Grimaldi Park, two metal coffin lids set into the ground invite you to dance upon them, triggering the sound of bells. They propose the triumph of clowning over death and offer a metaphor for the human condition – that we are all but dancing upon our graves. Clowning and mortality are inextricable in this way. We need clowns to humble us by reminding us of our essential foolishness, to encourage us to seek joy where it flies, and to confront us with our flawed humanity, lest we should make the mistake of taking ourselves too seriously.
Fans young and old gather to celebrate Joey the clown.
Mattie the clown.
Fiasco the clown with ‘Daddy.’
Bluebottle the clown.
Jolly Jack the clown.
Puzzle the clown.
Professor Geoffrey Felix’s Punch & Judy Show – Mr Punch is 350 years old this year.
Musical coffins commemorating Joseph Grimaldi and Charles Dibdin invite you to dance upon them.
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A sombre moment of remembrance at Grimaldi’s grave.
Joseph Grimaldi (18th December 1778 – 31st May 1837)
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Yet More Trade Cards of Old London
After publishing selections of trade cards that might have been found in the eighteenth century by rummaging in a hypothetical drawer, searching down the back of a hypothetical sofa or under a hypothetical bed, it is my pleasure to show this further selection discovered beneath the hypothetical floorboards.
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
You may like to see my earlier selections
At the Fruit & Wool Exchange, 1937
After granting a temporary reprieve in March, Tower Hamlets Council meets today to decide whether to grant permission to demolish the historic Fruit & Wool Exchange in Spitalfields, and I am publishing these excerpts from a brochure to promote the Exchange produced in 1937.
You, as a fruit grower, are interested in three things. Growing your fruit. Shipping your fruit. And marketing your fruit. Of these three essentials, the first is entirely your own responsibility, the second is partially under your guidance, and the third?
You may ask “Why is the London Fruit Exchange the best place to auction your fruit?” We answer the question in two ways. Firstly, we say, “Because the Exchange is the finest example in the world of a specialised fruit distribution centre.” Secondly, we point to the high reputation of the six Brokers who constitute the Exchange – John & James Adam & Co Ltd, Connolly Shaw Ltd, Goodwin Simons (London) Ltd, J.C. Houghton & Co (London) Ltd, Keeling & White Ltd, and Knill & Grant Ltd. One was flourishing back in 1740 and all have unblemished histories of financial soundness and high integrity. And these qualities, being so old are all the more jealously guarded.
Here you may be sure of a price that is as high as the market will stand. You may be sure that your fruit will be sold quickly while it is worth the most money. So sure may you be of these things, that, though many thousands of miles may separate you from your ships in the London Docks, you can always be certain that not a penny of your money is being thrown away by carelessness or delay.
It is often easier to understand the workings of a business if one knows how and why it was started – and so we will begin our story of the present Fruit Exchange by telling briefly where its roots lie, and how it grew to its present importance.
A century ago, there flourished in London four well-known Auction Fruit Brokers. To the fruit trade they were known as “The City Brokers.” With their headquarters at the City Sale Room, they handled a large proportion of London’s fruit business throughout the great industrial expansion of nineteenth century England. But with the twentieth century came greater and greater consumption of fruit, and in addition, London became a centre of fruit distribution for the Continent as well as the United Kingdom.
By 1929, the four Brokers of the City Sale Rooms made a great decision. They decided that by intelligent co-operation, it was in their power, and in the interests of the fruit trade, to form a central exchange for buyers and sellers. And so, in conjunction with the Central Markets Committee of the Corporation of London, these six firms organised and caused to be built the London Fruit Exchange. The first auction took place here in September 1929.
As an example of a specialised fruit distribution centre, the London Fruit Exchange is the finest in the world – in its one building are complete services for warehousing, sampling, buying and distribution, besides social amenities for the buyers who congregate there. Sales by auction are held here on every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Every sale day of the week, an average of 40,000 and 50,000 packages are offered for sale. On some occasions as many as 100,000 have been catalogued for sale on one day.
On the ground floor of the Exchange are spacious showrooms, in which can be exhibited 2,500 sample packages at one time. Here from 8am onwards, the buyers and the auctioneers examine and value the goods before the sales start. The Showrooms are connected with the Sales Rooms by electric indicators, which show at a glance which broker is selling at the moment and in which Sales Room. Immediately adjacent to the Sales Rooms are numerous telephone cabinets connected to a telephone operator. From these, buyers may swiftly communicate with their principals in Great Britain and the Continent to discuss the state of the market.
The sales take place from 10:30am in two inter-communicating auction rooms, providing seating for 1,000 buyers. These are fitted with every modern device for making business quick and easy. In each room, the Auctioneers speak into microphones connected to loudspeakers, which bring them into instant touch with every part of the room in which they are selling.
The important railways of Great Britain have offices within the Exchange itself, conveniently situated for the immediate use of buyers, and telewriters are installed in the Brokers’ offices which instantly link up with the principal ports of the United Kingdom, giving the latest market information up to the last second before the fruit is sold.
By these facilities, and by comfortable seating and central heating, the work of selling goes on smoothly and quickly. The seller has displayed his goods to his best advantage. The buyer is at his ease, and knows that he is dealing with honest men. Is it any wonder that prices at the London Fruit Exchange are uniformly good?
On the ground floor and basement of the Exchange, is warehouse accommodation capable of holding 200,000 packages. The basement is fed by electrical conveyors, gravity rollers and chutes, from the loading bays at ground floor level. There are fourteen loading bays, each wide enough to take two vehicles per bay. Twenty-eight vehicles can thus be loaded or unloaded simultaneously. Special traffic men are employed to regulate the vehicles, so that immediately a vehicle is loaded or unloaded, it is called out and another takes its place.
To do this work, a permanent warehouse staff is employed. During the busy season, it is necessary to employ additional labour, ranging from thirty to a hundred porters daily. At such times, the warehouse opens at 6am, and the business of loading and unloading, piling and sorting, continues smoothly and quickly until 10pm. At times, over 25,000 packages have been received and 25,000 packages despatched in one day. Taking the average weight of a package at 84lbs, this gives a total tonnage handled, piled and sorted in one day of 2,000 tons. All this work is done in a cool, even temperature, maintained on even the hottest days of summer by batteries of electric fans.
We say to you, the grower, and therefore the prime mover in this great industry, “We believe that you could choose no better way to consistently high prices and fair, reputable dealing, than of consigning more and more of your fruit to the handling of the London Fruit Exchange – the finest fruit auction centre in the world.”
Examine the Planning Application with English Heritage’s objections on pages 27 & 28 here
Read about the campaign to save the Fruit & Wool Exchange here
Visit the developer’s website here
Take a look at Paul Johnston and Dan Cruickshank’s alternative proposal here
Sign the petition to save the Fruit & Wool Exchange here
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Return of the Hamburgs & the Mekelburgs
Solomon & Joseph Mekelburg at Solomon’s stall in Goulston St, around 1940.
For centuries the histories of the Hamburg and Mekelburg families were intertwined, living in parallel streets in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam – even before coming as economic migrants to Spitalfields in the second half of the nineteenth century, where they intermarried, lived, and worked for three generations.
While the story of these two families and their complex interrelationships is without limit, the Spitalfields chapter begins with the arrival of Benjamin Hamburg in the nineteenth century and ends with the closure of M.Mack over a hundred years later. But it is a tale that would not be told at all, if it were not for John Marx, the grandson of Philip Mekelburg and Sarah Hamburg who were married at Sandys Row Synagogue in 1914. Five years ago, upon his retirement, John set out to trace descendants of all nineteen children of the first generation Mekelburg and Hamburg families in this country, and – astonishingly – he brought more than fifty of them together for a family reunion at Sandys Row earlier this month.
Cigarmakers Benjamin Hamburg and Isaac Mekelburg first came to London in the eighteen sixties and eighteen seventies respectively, and both married women who had come been born in Amsterdam. Benjamin and his wife Flora had ten children that survived, while Isaac and his wife Mary had nine. The Hamburgs lived at 24 Shepherd St (now Toynbee St) and the Mekelburg family lived round the corner at 2 Butler St (now Brune St), dwelling in close proximity just as they had done in Amsterdam. Twenty-three people lived in just five rooms and nine of the siblings were married nearby at Sandys Row Synagogue, including two marriages between the families.
All of the Mekelburg brothers worked in the fruit and vegetable trade. Solomon and Joseph Mekelburg had barrows in Petticoat Lane, and their endeavours evolved by 1922 into a wholesale business in the Spitalfields Market known as M. Mack, managed by Morris and Philip Mekelburg, that ran until the eighties when it closed prior to the move of the market to Leyton. The Hamburgs were known to have worked as upholsterers, shoe clippers, costermongers or tailors and, as the children of both families married, many moved from Spitalfields up to the newly built Boundary Estate occupying up to a dozen flats there, enacting the same culture of families living close-by that they had brought from Amsterdam.
John Marx’s research would barely have been possible without the internet. “It would have taken me a lifetime!” he acknowledged, “My son was looking on the web and discovered things about my mother’s family I didn’t know. I realised there was more to it than I ever imagined and curiousity drove me forward” As John discovered his living relatives that were previously unknown to him, he wrote to them all and then set out around the country to meet them face to face, pursuing a quest that culminated in the gathering in Spitalfields.
Anyone that walks through Spitalfields – more than anywhere else in London – cannot fail to wonder what became of all the people who have passed through these streets over the centuries, and the fascination of the Mekelburg/Hamburg reunion was that it provided a tangible answer to this intriguing question.
Most of those who came along did not know each other previously and many had not even been to Spitalfields before. People who had formerly been strangers discovered they were relatives as they visited the locations familiar to their forbears – which imbued the day with a certain sombre reverence as they recognised the poverty and deprivation of these recent ancestors. Yet it was John Marx who found the words which best expressed the emotional meaning of the occasion.“We remember the hardship they endured so that their children and their children’s children would benefit, and we have benefitted – which means they were successful.” he concluded, casting his eyes around the throng in the atmospheric old synagogue at Sandys Row where nine of the family had once married, in an earlier chapter of the same story which had brought everyone there that day.
Amelia & Isaiah Hamburg with their baby Mary, born in 1901.
First cousins Mary Mekelburg and Mary Hamburg
Amelia & Bella Mekelburg
Aaron Hamburg, c.1920.
Solomon Mekelburg and his stall in Goulston St in the twenties.
Joseph Mekelburg (right) and his son Teddy (left) behind their stall in the thirties.
Solomon and his daughter Mary in the forties.
Solomon Mekelburg in the fifties.
Premises of M.Mack (trading name of Mekelburg family wholesale business) in the eighties.
The reunion of the descendants of the Hamburgs and the Mekelburgs at Sandys Row Synagogue.
The bimah cover at Sandys Row Synagogue created for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 has been brought out for the current jubilee.
M.Mack photograph copyright © Philip Marriage
Reunion photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Find out more at www.sandysrow.org.uk
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Alice Pattullo, Illustrator & Printmaker
Alice Pattullo only moved to London at the beginning of this year, coming – like so many other young artists before her – to make her way in the world. And, last week, I visited Alice in the room in the shared house in Leyton which serves both as her studio and her living space, where she works seven days a week creating a prolific output of lively and distinctive graphics.
“I had a plan,” Alice explained, her eyes lighting up in excitement, “One, find a house to live in. Two, do what I wanted to do.” Fortunately, a monthly commission from Coast magazine and regular work for English Folk Song & Dance Society publications covers Alice’s rent and gives her the basis upon which to create her own personal work, alongside a steady flow of other illustration jobs. “I can’t really stop,” she admitted to me, “you are working on one thing and it always leads to another thing. There is no distinction between my life and work. It could be really hard to motivate yourself in this situation but, because there’s so many things I want to do, that keeps me going.”
Originally from Newcastle, Alice graduated from Brighton College of Art in 2010 with a first class degree and an enthusiastic no-nonsense attitude. Her small room is lined with a colourful array of the work of twentieth century illustrators she admires and that she has found in markets and sales. Her desk is piled with her sketchbooks which she fills with designs and motifs that she scans into her computer where she reassembles and manipulates them into finished compositions. Impressively, Alice seems equally comfortable with the act of drawing as with digital creation.
I first became aware of Alice’s illustrations when I saw the beautiful print she had created inspired by my story about Steve Brooker, the mudlark, and the confidence and witty ingenuity of her style was immediately apparent. “All my work for the past few years has been about superstitions, folklore, traditions and customs.” Alice told me, “and since being in London I’ve been doing more stuff to do with being here.” Alice showed me two richly coloured prints that she has made as the beginning of a projected series illustrating all the livery companies of the City of London. “It’s about the celebration of a craft,” Alice declared, choosing the Worshipful Company of Glovemakers and the Worshipful Company of Basketmakers to start, as companies that are still involved in their respective trades. “It’s quite a good way to make a little money, and you’re not waiting for someone to give you a job,” she outlined, speaking modestly of these handsome prints that she produces in small editions at low prices to keep them moving.
There is a spirited quality to all of Alice’s work that I find irresistibly appealing. And I admire the way she has adopted her own subject matter and created her own momentum, thereby attracting commissions to keep herself going. Alice has no regrets about moving to London.“It’s been a good decision, I’ve already got so much more work,” she confirmed for me, breaking into a delighted smile.
The Worshipful Company of Glovers
The Worshipful Company of Basketmakers (with the figures of the giants Gog & Magog)
Pearly King & Queen
The Harvest Festival of the Sea
Swan Upping commissioned by the Shopfloor Project
Glandford Shell Museum
Cats at Brighton Museum
Alphabet of Superstitions
A IS FOR ALLAN APPLE. If a girl sleeps with an Allan apple under her pillow over Halloween she will dream of her future husband. If you eat one on Halloween you will be very fortunate in the year to come.
B IS FOR BEES. Bees are seen as sacred as they were thought to be divine messengers and foretellers of the future.You should never kill a bee, and you should always tell the bees of any change in circumstance in the home otherwise they will pine and die, or fly away – a grave misfortune.
C IS FOR CIGARETTE. You should never light three cigarettes from a single match otherwise misfortune will fall upon he who holds the third.
D IS FOR DOGS. Gabriel’s hounds are a pack of spectral dogs that haunt the skies.Anyone who hears or sees the hounds is doomed to s premature death.
E IS FOR EVIL EYE .He who bears the evil eye can bring illness and misfortune to humans and animals alike and can even destroy inanimate objects simply by looking at them.
G IS FOR GLOVES. If you drop your gloves you should always allow someone else to pick them up for you otherwise bad luck will follow.And if they are returned to you then you can expect a pleasant surprise.
H IS FOR HORSE SHOE. The common horseshoe is the best known lucky amulet. However it will only bring you it’s lucky properties if it is hung with it’s prongs pointing up. If the point down all the good luck will fall out.
I IS FOR ITCHING. Having an unexplained sensation in the body, for example an itch is suggested to have a significance depending on where it is.An itch in your: Right ear =Your mother is thinking of you. Left ear =Your lover is thinking of you. Eyes = A pleasant surprise if it is your right, a disappointment if it is your left. Cheeks = Someone is talking about you. Hands = Your right means you will be getting money soon, your left means you will be losing some. Nose = You will be kissed, cursed, vexed or shake hands with a fool!
J IS FOR JACKDAW. Rain is foretold if you see jackdaws fluttering round the top of a building and it is an omen of death if one should fly down the chimney.
K IS FOR KNIFE. To give a knife as a present will ‘cut’ the friendship.This can be counteracted though if the receiver gives something back in return – as though ‘buying’ the knife.
L IS FOR LADDER. A well known superstition is that it is unlucky to walk under a ladder but the bad fortune comes as the shape the ladder makes from leaning against a wall is the triangle of the Holy Trinity and walking through it suggests a sympathy for the Devil!
M IS FOR MERRYBONE. If two people hold each end of the forked bone found between the breast and neck of a fowl and break it while forming a secret wish, he who gets the larger half can be assured his wish will come true.
N IS FOR NAILS. Cutting your nails at sea will provoke a storm. If a young unmarried woman cuts the nails on her right hand she will rule her husband.A child’s nails should never be cut or he will become ‘light fingered’ but can be nibbled off by his mother.
O IS FOR ONION. Snakes have an aversion to onions so to protect against their attacks it is wise to carry a raw onion in the hand.
P IS FOR PINS. See a pin and pick it up all day long you will have good luck.
Q IS FOR QUELLING. To quell the waves in a storm it is suggested that you throw a pack of playing cards directly into the waves.
R IS FOR RAVEN. To see one raven is lucky, tis’ true, but it’s certain misfortune to light upon two and meeting with three is the Devil.
S IS FOR SCISSORS. Like giving a knife as a present, scissors too will cut the friendship.To drop a pair of scissors is thought to be unlucky and if they fall with the points facing downwards there will be a death shortly in the house.
T IS FOR TATTOOS. A sailor without tattoos is like a ship without grog. Not seaworthy.
U IS FOR UMBRELLA. You shouldn’t open an umbrella indoors otherwise it will bring misfortune to the whole household.
V IS FOR VULTURE. Vultures are birds of ill omen as it thought the can predict death and have an unsettling diet of corpses.
W IS FOR WOOD. Touching wood is thought to be an action that will help counteract the threat of evil. It is usually done when someone is thought to have tempted fate.
X IS KISSING. An unexpected kiss from a tall dark stranger is certain to be followed by a proposal of marriage. But beware! Kissing a man with a moustache should not be lightly undertaken – if a hair attaches to your lips you will never get married!
Y IS FOR YELLOW HAMMER. The yellowhammer is considered an ill omened bird as it is egg is covered in serpent like marks associating it with the Devil.
Z IS FOR ZODIAC. Each ‘house’ in the zodiac has it’s own unique character and people born within the dates are supposed to share similar traits.
Alice Pattullo in her room in Leyton.
Illustrations copyright © Alice Pattullo
Visit www.alicepattullo.com to discover a list of stockists of Alice’s prints.
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This Was My Landscape
My Backyard, E.13 (1961) by John Claridge
“My bedroom and darkroom. What more could you want? Somewhere to get your head down. Somewhere to get your print down.”
When William Wordsworth was growing up, he had an overwhelming epiphany of the power of the landscape while out in a boat upon Grasmere beneath a starry sky, and photographer John Claridge had an equally influential experience at a similar age – in a very different kind of environment – while out on a night’s ratting expedition at a piggery next to the London Docks. “There was the glow of the lights of the dock, but all around us were vast expanses of darkness,” he told me in his excitement at recalling the wonder of the East End during his childhood in the nineteen fifties, in the days before the halogen glow which obscures the stars today.
“It was a different kind of landscape – without fields – but it was a landscape I loved, the landscape I grew up with,” John confessed, remembering the acres of bombsites and craters, wasteland and allotments that he once knew, and which he recorded in this vibrant set of pictures published today for the first time. “When I was fifteen, I was interested in motorbikes, girls and photography, though I couldn’t say in what order,” he admitted to me with a laugh.
There is a certain cast of occluded light shared by many of these photographs that is partly the result of the London smog of that era, partly mist off the river and partly the light of the early morning when John delighted to explore the East End. “I’m still an early riser, from the days of getting up at five to do my paper round.” he explained, “I’d have breakfast with my dad and listen to his stories – that was my education – then I’d cycle around in the dawn delivering papers before school each morning. You always expected something to happen, but you had to let it happen – that was part of the excitement of seeing something that you weren’t expecting to see, and then you wanted to share it.”
In the post-war East End, prior to redevelopment, the open spaces created a landscape of possibility where nature thrived, where anyone could have an allotment, and where John liked to go scrambling on his motorbike. It was a landscape that offered emotional freedom and creative space to John, who as a fan of Dan Dare and Flash Gordon, was off on his own imaginative journey.
Then, at seventeen, John had his first exhibition of photographs and Dennis Bailey, Art Director of Town Magazine, declared “They have shades of Walker Evans and Bill Brandt.”
“I didn’t even know who they were,” John revealed to me with a shrug. Yet John’s talent took the young photographer on a journey far from his native landscape, giving him a career filled with globe-trotting assignments. Today these early pictures record a place that no longer exists except as a personal landscape of memory. They show how the first landscape that met John’s eyes became the landscape upon which his vision as a photographer was shaped. And it is an epic landscape.
East End Blossom, E.1 (1960). “Blossom on a bomb site.”
Canning Town Bridge in the Fog, E.16 (1965). “Shot from my motorbike (Triton) – stopped, of course.”
Sewer Bank Rd, E.13 (1964). “My house was just over the fence to the right.”
Ford & Vauxhall, E.15 (1960). “Turner Prize?”
Clearing a Bomb Site, E.13 (1961). “The next street to where I lived.”
Iron Bridge, E.16 (1964). “An iron bridge across the railway line, not far from the docks.”
The East End Horse, Allen Gardens, Spitalfields (1972). “The horse takes a break from the harness of a dray cart.”
Smoke, E.16 (1963). “Winter’s morning looking towards Canning Town. I used to take my old scrambler motorbike and ride the bomb craters there.”
Vicky Park, E.3 (1962). “Where I used to take the occasional girlfriend.”
Canal, E.3 (1968). “Early morning, grey day but full of expectation.”
After the Rain, E.16 (1982). “That beautiful smell after everything’s had a good wash.”
Scrap Yard, E.16 (1982). “Sometimes it got muddy.”
The Path, E.7 (1960). “Neglected cemetery, always so quiet.”
Allotments, E.6 (1963). ” This area always had a strange presence, a symbiosis between industrial and natural.”
The Small Creek, E.3 (1987). Daybreak.
Along the Track, E.16 (1973). “Shot from a parapet, early morning above the rail-track. I wanted a bit of height.”
Rooftops, E.3 (1982). “There was always a great man-made sculpture around, not to every one’s taste but I liked it.”
Slag Heaps, E.6 (1963). “This area seemed to always have a greyness that sat in the sky.”
Spillers, E.16 (1987). ” I loved these buildings, it was like walking into an early sci-fi movie.”
Photographs copyright © John Claridge
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Along the Thames with John Claridge
Bernard Kops, Writer
“It’s amazing I have lived so long, after all the drugs that I have taken in my life!” declared Bernard Kops with a certain genial alacrity – speaking now as a sprightly eighty-six year old – when I visited him and his wife of fifty-eight years, Erica, in Finchley last week. Yet once he told me his stories of growing up in Stepney Green in the nineteen thirties, I understood how those experiences might instill a keen will to live which could, in part at least, account for his glorious longevity.
Bernard’s father left Rotterdam with his family in 1902, hoping to get to New York, but when he bought his ticket it only took him as far as London. The ticket office in Amsterdam explained that he could collect the second part of his ticket to New York from Mr Smith on arrival in London, but when he arrived in the Port of London and asked for Mr Smith everyone laughed at him. And thus it was that Bernard’s father’s dream of America was supplanted by the East End. Later, the relatives in Amsterdam implored Bernard’s father to return with his family prior to the outbreak of World War II, believing that Holland would remain neutral and Bernard remembers his father weeping because he could not afford the tickets to return. Yet those relatives were all killed by the Nazis and Bernard’s father’s impecunious situation was the salvation of his immediate family.
Such is the equivocal nature of Bernard Kops’ inheritance and, even now, looking back from his current perspective as the father of four children, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, it colours all experience with a certain sentiment, cherishing the fleeting brilliance of life.
“I couldn’t have done anything without Erica,” he assured me last week, prefacing our conversation, when I visited him in the Victorian apartment block in Finchley where he has lived for the last half century, moving there from Soho in the days when it was an enclave of writers and artists. Walking down the long passage in his modest basement flat, I found him in a peaceful room looking out onto the garden where we chatted beneath the poster for “The Hamlet of Stepney Green.” Bernard’s first play launched him as one of the new wave of young playwrights from the East End, alongside Arnold Wesker and Harold Pinter, that came to define British theatre in the post-war era. “There were actors who couldn’t fathom what we were doing, but we brought the streets into the theatre,” Bernard explained, “I still think of myself as a street person, I come from a verbal culture where everybody was always talking all the time.”
Recalling his childhood, he said, “Everyone was starving in those days before the war. And when my sister Phoebe came home and she had got a job, we were all overjoyed. But then she came back from the sweatshop and said the boss has been feeling her up. ‘She’s not going back,’ said my mother. ‘We need the money,’ said my father. Because we were so poor, every day was a battle. My whole life was a drama.”
“I was different from my brothers and sisters, and I don’t know why,” Bernard confessed, still bemused by his literary talent, “My mother recognised it, she used to say, ‘He’s the one that’s going to take me to Torquay one day.’ That was her measure of success.” One of Bernard’s earliest memories is of hiding under the table to eavesdrop on the adults and his mother asking, “Where’s my Bernie?” which was the cue for him to jump out and delight her.
As a child, Bernard knew that it was not safe for him to stray up the Cambridge Heath Rd towards Bethnal Green because that was where the fascist blackshirts were. Yet on the day that war was declared, when Bernard’s mother gave him sixpence to seek his own amusement, he took a bus through the danger zone up to the West End where – at eleven years old – he discovered a vision of whole other world that he realised his mother had never seen. Then, walking down Brick Lane one day just after the war, a young man stopped Bernard and asked what he was mumbling under his breath and Bernard admitted he was speaking poetry. Realising that Bernard had never read any poetry, he gave Bernard a slim volume of Rupert Brooke published by Faber and Faber. “So I read Grantchester and I thought it was fantastic,” Bernard recalled fondly, “I went to the library and asked, ‘Have you got any more Faber and Faber books like this?’ The library gave me freedom.”
In common with generations of writers and artists from the East End, Bernard Kops educating himself using the collection at the former Whitechapel Library next to the Whitechapel Gallery. From here, Bernard took classes in drama at Toynbee Hall which focused upon improvisation – inventing plays – and it gave him the technique to launch himself as playwright. This was a move that eventually led him to live in Soho, enjoying the company of his literary peers, and he recalls returning from there to Hanbury St to visit Colin McInnes while he was writing Absolute Beginners, in which Bernard appears in a barely fictionalised form as “Mannie Katz.”
In summation,“I’m a poet basically,” he announced to me with a diffident smile.
All this time, Erica had been sitting across the room from us, encouraging Bernard by making small appreciative noises and completing the odd stray sentence in a story she has heard innumerable times. In a prolific career including plays, screenplays, poems, novels and autobiography, life has not run entirely smoothly for Bernard who succumbed to drug addiction and depression, yet overcame both afflictions with Erica’s support to reach his current state of benign equanimity. “I said to her, the moment I met her, that I was going to marry her, and she thought I was absolutely mad,” Bernard confided, raising his voice and catching Erica’s eye provocatively. “And I haven’t changed my mind,” confirmed Erica with a nod from the other side of the room, folding her hands affectionately.
Whitechapel Library, Aldgate East
Bernard & Erica
For You
May 2012
(This is the first publication of a new poem)
Bernard Kops
Portraits copyright © Lucinda Douglas-Menzies
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