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Friday, April 16, 2021

HvS | Hilda van Stockum Road to Damascus 1933. Letters to ERM.

 Contents 

HILDA VAN STOCKUM’S ROAD TO DAMASCUS, 1933 1

1933 Letters to ERM from Dublin                             1

May 21, 1933: Fr. Colquhoun, Sandymount Church, Evie Hone, Grene 1

May 25, 1933: Violet, Rachel, Fr. Colquhoun, Weatherhead 2

May 26, 1933: Fr. Colquhoun, Oxford Group         3

29 May 1933: Oxford Group                                 4

2 June 1933: Commissions honest; exhibitions not 5

4 June 1933: Sandymount Church, Fr. Colquhoun 6

13 June 1933: Visit from Han and Hilda de Booy, Alfred Adler Talk 7

20 June 1933 Unfinished transcription                 9


HILDA VAN STOCKUM’S ROAD TO DAMASCUS, 1933 

1933 Letters to ERM

May 21, 1933: Fr. Colquhoun, Sandymount Church, Evie Hone, Grene

21 Upper Mount Street [Dublin]


D.[ear] Husband, 

I have really found the church that is going to help me. You know I met Father Colquhoun. This Sunday I went to early communion. The church is about 3 quarters of an hour away and I ran most of it because I was late. The service was beautiful. All the things that irritate me in the ordinary church.of.Ireland service were left off. There were no loud voices and there was lots of quiet. The words were uttered in the rhythmic murmur of a Catholic priest and not pronounced with a painful attempt at "feeling." Then, we didn't get a silly little cube of bread from which crumbs drop between your fingers but a real holy wafer—with a picture of the Eucharist on it. Something leapt in me when I saw it, a happiness filled me which I can't explain.


Evie Hone was there and took me back in her car to breakfast in her place. The sun shone on the profusion of flowers and in my heart. Evie told me that the wife of Father Colquhoun married him before he was an Anglo-Catholic and that she is terribly against his church. It is a great tragedy. I promised to pray for her. Mother, Violet and I went to High mass there at 11.30. Evie had given me an Anglo-Catholic prayerbook and all the devotions are in it! The Hail Mary, the Rosary and the Stations of the Cross! 


The High Mass was very beautiful. Father Colquhoun preached with strength and simplicity, but for the rest it was singing, burning candles and quiet times. Mother said it was the first time she felt reverent in a church and that she realised there was a side to God she knew nothing about. As for me, it was as if I were a starving babe and milk were slowly poured between my lips. Just think, I can have communion there every day! And I'm going to confession and to the retreat and I'm going to keep the fast days and novenas. 


You see, I've surrendered again and again but it isn't enough. My own fault [? soul?] is not enough. I want the support of others. The Oxford Group here is so weak, I feel I have to give there, but this church is going to feed me. If you read Evelyn Underbill’s book, "The life of the Spirit and the life of today,” you'll understand more about it. Oh, I'm so happy. I may make the sign of the cross, I may have a rosary, oh, I'm so happy.


The Oxford group has had a quiet time about whom to send to Waterford and they have chosen Mother and me. So we're going next week-end in a couple of cars, great fun. Yesterday I had a lovely walk with David through the park. All the hawthorns were in bloom and we rested in a sunny little valley with bridal trees in a row. We had a heart to heart talk. David [Grene, went to University of Chicago] likes Pic [Gwynne] very much, thinks she is just the girl for Willem.

May 25, 1933: Violet, Rachel, Fr. Colquhoun, Weatherhead 

D. H. [Dear Husband:]


I've heaps to tell you, it was quite an eventful day yesterday. First Father Colquhoun came to tea. Mother and Violet liked him extremely and we immediately started to talk about religion. I'm afraid I was rather irreverent in bits — but I made rather a good pun (though a wicked one). 


Rachel, Violet's friend, and I had had a discussion the day before about life after death. Rachel thought she would meet Jerome, her beloved there in the flesh, so to speak. She was indignant when I said did not believe I would live on in my present form, nor that I would be able to embrace you in Heaven. My idea of being sunk into God's reality and finding Him everything we found on earth and infinitely more, did not appeal to her. Afterwards I said to Violet that she would probably rush at Christ as soon as she'd entered Heaven, calling "Jerome! Jerome!" and she would never even look at the poor soul answering to that name. 


We discussed this question with Father Colquhoun and, he professed to lean towards my vision of Heaven. He said we ought to try even on earth to love God as manifested in people. After all, a lot of our possessive love is self-love. But he thought we might retain more of our individuality than I believed. 


"Oh, yes," I said casually. "If I meet a piece of God which is very like mother I'll know it's her." 


Here Father Colquhoun smiled and said: "That's extraordinary, isn't it? A piece of God! A piece of the Infinite." 


So, slap-boom, I said: "Obviously a piece which passes all understanding!" 


I’m afraid he looked non-plussed. He is an absolute dear, I think he likes having me in his church. I will have to go to confession and I like that but some things in the service still stick in my throat. I'll have to talk about them and get more light. 


We heard Weatherhead speak in the Wesleyan church on Stephen's Green. It was wonderful. We went there very early and took seats where we could have a good look at his face. The hall was packed, heaps of Church of Ireland, Oxford Group and B. U. people were there, also your friend Ginger Darling. And down below we saw Jan [HvS’s younger brother, at Trinity]. He had come of his own accord because he liked Weatherhead's book, Psychology in Service of the Soul, so much.


When Weatherhead appeared there was a hush. He must be nearing forty but he looks like a lad of twenty — slight and tall with a dark head formed like Jan's and a long narrow face with beautiful starry eyes. His whole face is bathed in spiritual light. Then he began to pray. His voice was like violin music. After some hymns and the first chapter of St. Paul to the Corinthians he started to speak. I can't possibly convey the charm of his words, the boyish way he gesticulated and the sincerity behind his words. He spoke of the power of God which is manifested more in the freedom he allows us than in displays like a thunderstorm. Afterwards he prayed and the congregation was mouse-still.

,

Afterwards I had a long talk with Jan. Weatherhead had moved him deeply. He ackknowledged that he had tried to approach God too much intellectually and he is now going to pray.


This morning I went to 6.30 High Mass at Sandymount and had communion. The discipline of daily communion is excellent but I feel some forms in the service are rather archaic. After Weatherhead's sermon I winced to see Christ held up as a sacrifice like Abraham but how can we offer Christ, when we ourselves have killed Him?

May 26, 1933: Fr. Colquhoun, Oxford Group

I've been to confession today. I was very nervous but it was beautiful. Father Colquhoun reminds me very much of a saint. He has a beautiful, loving atmosphere around him and I did feel strongly a spiritual help coming from the absolution. I cried like anything after it and felt as though I'd been washed clean. Now I walk every day the hour’s walk past the sea to the church at Sandymount and take H. Communion. It's so much easier to think of Christ and serve Him when you have a definite thing to do every day. Otherwise we so easily step back into the old ways. It's funny, since the confession I feel as though some queer power of love is being released in me. I feel I'm going to grow through the sacraments. Intellectually I'm not quite clear about them yet but I feel that will come, it's the humble acceptance and practice that counts.


Our Oxford Group is my discipline and my cross. I like the ladies in it and they all seem sincere but they are so different from myself that it really taxes my strength. But that is a good test of my charity and devotion are released through the church. Yesterday, in the cinema with Willem and Violet, I got frightened at the picture, which seemed full of the horrors of life. 


Then the cross suddenly drew near and I got a glimpse of something. My heart began to sing a hymn of love, big gulfs of strength were poured into me, all in a crowded cinema with cigarette smoke and organ-din. Later it faded but these moments are more and more frequent. I'm beginning to hope — to hope — you see it takes practice to draw near to God. Some of these Christians seem to think: surrender - Hups - guidance, hups - convert others - hups - and all is well. 


But to me it seems a more laborious process. Before I can change others I must first change more myself and certainly have a firmer grip of God. Unless you have a selfless love for God He can't use you but that's not so easy, you can't give it to yourself. But you can pray and live a sacramental life and then God will not let you thirst in vain. I'm so happy.


29 May 1933: Oxford Group

I've been to the Oxford Group meeting in Waterford this week-end. It was very hectic. We left here at about 2 and arrived there at 5.30. We had tea, quiet time, supper and a group meeting. There were many people invited and we all shared something. I said little for the more sharing I hear, the less words I think necessary. Just that it is a good thing to point out that it is sin which keeps us from God and not God's lack of interest. 


There were a lot of old gentlemen with beards there who looked like pious prophets, but I suppose their beards hid sinful hearts. I don't think the meeting was very exciting. The next morning I went to early mass (I have to go to mass every Sunday since I joined the Anglo-Catholic church) and was irritated by the rather vulgar atmosphere, not like some RC Churches in Dublin. 


When I came back we had breakfast and Quiet Time and then we all went to a Quaker meeting. It was rather interesting the Quaker idea is very like that of the Oxford Group. But dear me! To sit quiet for an hour in a musty hall when the sun is shining and the birds twittering! I thought it an ordeal! I think their spiritual ideal lacks the humility of accepting our human limitations. I was homesick for my little Sandymount church. 


Hilda Marsh came in and was delighted to see us. Mother and I went with her to her house. She lives in the school head's house with a lovely garden behind it and a way through to the school ground and the school. We had our meals with the school children in the dining room and Mother made them all laugh telling of my pranks of long ago. Hilda didn't seem altogether happy. Her husband seems kind but unresponsive and I feel she is rather lost in the school curriculum. 


The Sunday Afternoon meeting of the Oxford Group was rather good - though Mrs. Lamb led it and Mother and I both think she is not quite cured yet. She talks and talks and talks. No one else has a chance. Yet I like her. Mr. Pit did a grand thing. An enemy of his was at the meeting and at the end he explained this and how he had acted wrongly towards this man and advanced with outstretched hand to make it up. The man hardly responded, very ungracious, but it was grand to see Mr. Pit. 


When we went home at last we were all dead tired. We sang hymns most of the way. Mother is rather upset by the Group. The people in it disapprove of her because she does not believe in the atonement. I'm afraid our group is not what it should be. 


So I've decided, especially since you've encouraged me, to spend the rest of my money for Violet's portrait on going to the Oxford Group meeting in Oxford with Mother. I've another commission from Mrs. O' Connor, she is delighted with the picture of herself— thinks it's the best thing I've done. But she is going down to the South this week, as her husband has been transferred to Cork. So she has invited me to stay at her place in Cork and do a picture of herself and husband there. She has a huge park with a lake and a river. It'll be fun. She invited me for the whole month of July.

2 June 1933: Commissions honest; exhibitions not

Here life is jogging on. Mrs. Conner’s portrait is getting good. It's the kind of portrait that make people take notice. Very big with draped curtains, satin chair and big landscape in the background. We had the first really nice Oxford Group meeting in our house Wednesday evening. It is mixed and I do think one needs mass [?].


They all were delighted with my work and Mrs. Lamb is thinking of giving me a commission to do her daughter. Mother [Olga Emily Boissevain van Stockum] is now converted to the Anglo-Catholic Church. I believe it will do her a lot of good. She is losing her fear of the supernatural. Aunt Hilda and uncle Han [de Booy; Hilda is Olga’s sister] are coming over in the middle of June.


It will be great fun. Little Christie Coyle is going to have her first communion on Saturday. Mainie Jellett and I had a discussion on art today. We came to the conclusion that the only decent way to live, for an artist, is to live by commissions —- that exhibitions are of the Devil. Fancy making a lot of work on chance that someone might like it, and then show it like a pavement artist! I feel lovely when I do work for Mrs. Conner, knowing that I am fulfilling a demand and am worthwhile.


We also had a discussion on modern art. It seems that the latest abstract paintings are very like close-up photographs of serge or corduroy, so we both think the end will be that the canvas is left in its maiden beauty and admired for its own sake [Yes, that was the end… of the beginning—JTM]. We talked about the future of abstract painting. Mainie thinks it will be useful for decorating modern architecture. I agree with her, only modern architects hate their creations being decorated. 


She said it is such nonsense, people saying they don't "understand" modern art—for they don't understand old-fashioned art either. I replied that art is not only for connoisseurs. My mother and our nurse had both an admiration for Dostoyevsky but on different levels. Mother understood D.’s astounding insight into spiritual realities and Miss Moonch thought he wrote thrilling who-done-its. Old masters always do, sometimes, to me but there are so many people who don't understand it at all. Mainie agreed that abstract painting will never supersede natural work.

4 June 1933: Sandymount Church, Fr. Colquhoun

On Saturday morning Christie got her first communion. She looked lovely in the clothes I knitted and her sister and I went with her. I brought her a rosary, I hope she'll use it. The family is not very religious.


The Conners came for lunch that day and admired all my pictures. They are very appreciative. From three to seven I had a retreat at Sandymount Church. That was lovely. Father Colquhoun is really a first-rate Peron and his addresses are wonderful. I started being very sleepy—getting up at 5.30 every day does make one seedy after lunch — but at the end of the retreat I was wide awake and happy as a lark. Father C.’s last sermon was very useful and to the point— it was about spiritual progress. 


His first one had been about "faith" and his second on conversion. He started his last one saying that our first conversion does mean a turning of the Will towards God but does not mean the highest spiritual grace. He said it is only through long growing towards God that we attain real spiritual heights and therefore he was going to give me some hints as to what we must do:


I - Self-examination. This has to be done every evening but need never become morbid since we would find, besides faults, also the beneficient working of the Holy Spirit in us. It need not take long but was necessary as a daily exercise. It would lead to continual penitence, which is an attitude of the soul and not a momentary emotion but self-knowledge, without which no one can grow.


II - Mortification. This, he said, is no morbid thing either. Every athlete who wants to attain something has to practice it. It means the emptying of self. Without discipline the soul is of no use to God. There are two kinds or mortification, external and internal. 

External

A - Avoidance of sin - and its occasions, which is by no means easy and will result in bearing a real cross, 

B - Effort to fill our soul with the opposite virtue, for the Devil is only banished by the presence of the Holy Spirit. 

C - External mortification, which means the mortification of the senses. The example he gave was that of sight. He said we had to learn to see what was truly significant and to turn our eyes away from mere distraction or we would become prey to senseless curiosity. This would lead to true observation which is attending to the significant. We must have out attention under control. 

D - Mortification of the tongue. Of course this would not be necessary if we were wholly charitable in our hearts but as long as we are imperfect it is necessary that we should realise our responsibilities and not say hastily things of which we would only become ashamed or harm others with. The best way to overcome this is to make a habit to speak as though in the presence of God. 

Interior

Then there is the interior mortification of heart and mind, to make the will united with the Will of God, the response to the guidance of God, the intention to abandon immediately for the love of God whatever is evil or dangerous. 

A - Mortification of thought. By making God and God's things the centre of our interest. It is impossible to prevent wrong suggestions or imaginations but it is possible to reject them. 

B - Mortification of desire. Mortifying our natural attractions and aversions; our hopes, fears, depression, anger, etc. which drive us into sin and which come from lack of mort. of desire. We must realise that our life is supernatural which must involve mortification of instinctive desires. All desires can be sublimated to the love of God and to do that means the mortification of self

C - Mortification of judgement; it is generally warped by prejudice and peculiarities. Judgement is only right if it is in accord with God's will. 

D - Detachment which means the acceptance from the hands of God. Any suffering and troubles which may happen to us. 


And then, he said, there are three last things: 1 prayer, 2 meditation, 3 sacraments.

  1. Prayer. We must pray without ceasing, with perseverance. 
  2. Meditation. We must set aside a definite time each day for meditation.
  3. Sacraments. We must use the sacraments regularly whether we are in the mood or not, they don't depend on our mood but on our will.

Don't you think this good advice? 


I am discovering Thomas à Kempis.


Things are developing here - Grene has proposed to Violet. I hope she accepts him.


13 June 1933: Visit from Han and Hilda de Booy, Alfred Adler Talk

(21 Upper Mount Street, Dublin)


My own dearest husband,


Thank you ever so much for your last letter, you are a dear. I like the way in which you are giving away our children before we've yet properly got them. I have already given you permission to give away any of my worldly possessions which you may think fit.


Mine are yours and yours are mine, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness in health, till death do us part, amen.


I'm glad that you approve of my Anglo-Catholic faith. Mother has made her confession too, and she is terribly happy. Of course I'll go to Calvary [Episcopal Church, in Chelsea, New York City?] with you every Sunday. I want the Anglican church for daily Holy Communion, which is becoming a necessity to me, and for confession.


I enclose a letter from the American couple that had tea with us. Who knows, we might meet them again!


I have to tell you something very sad about the boy I wrote to you about some months ago. The one that told us about that self-governing school. We had not seen him since, for he did not like walking, and mother did not know how to entertain him. Jan could not get on with him, because all he was interested in was Jazz music, motor racing, etc. He used to tear along the roads on his motorbike and two days ago he smashed against a motorvan and got killed on the spot.


When I heard it I felt terribly guilty, for I had forgotten him in our prayers, and mother felt the same because she had not invited him again. It is so terrible never to be able to make up for an omission like that.


I'm beginning to believe in evil spriits, and I believe that it was them that Christ delivered us from, when we, through our foolish sinfulness had given them power over us. I believe the Cross was Christ's victory over Satan and that if we make the sign of the Cross when we are tempted the evil goes. What otherwise do the words Christ spoke: forgive them for they know not what they do! mean, if it is not that we in our weakness have played into the hands of Satan far more terrible than we in our blindness can see? 


And, as Leslie Weatherhead points out, if it was not something supernatural, something far greater than any of us can comprehend what happened to the Cross, why did Christ shrink so from the ordeal? Has not Socrates died calmly, and have not countless martyrs gone singing to their death? If you feel God not quite near yet, try the Anglican way with confession and communion, it is helping me where my own efforts have grievously failed. I'm really beginning to feel Christ growing in me.


Oom [Uncle] Han [de Booy] and tante Hilda have arrived, and it is such fun! They are greatly in favour of the groups, and tante HIlda is thrilled to witness one of our meetings on Wednesday.


They went in raptures over my story (I sent away the pictures today, with all the new black and white pictures. Take care that none get lost, some of them are quite small.) Tante Hilda was also very interested to see the work of my National School [Dublin] pupils, which has progressed amazingly. She is going with me on Saturday to see them work. I will enquire about those scholarships or whatever they are. 


Dearest, let’s both hold our [first] anniversary of marriage [June 27] in a special way. Let’s spend it in prayer.


Later. Pic Gwynn and I were walking in the coronation plantation yesterday where we picnicked with tante Hilda and Oom Han. She said something very true and significant. She said: “Believers and unbelievers both err in trying to pin God down. You can't pin Him down.”


We also talked about my father [Captain Abram van Stockum]. She said if anyone made you believe in supernatural values it was he. Pic is a darling. She can quite understand and speak Dutch now with such an adorable accent! 


Tante Hilda told us very interesting things yesterday. Pic took us out in her car and Tante HIlda told us that Alfred Adler, the famous psychoanalyst [noted especially for his theory of the inferiority complex—JTM] has been visiting Holland. One afternoon he devoted to explaining cases of difficult children, written down on pieces of paper by the parents. Tante HIlda says it was marvelous what he could deduce from a few difficulties, dreams, etc. The whole character of the parents and all sorts of facts which weren't mentioned. 


Tante Hilda treated Ot to this lecture and Ot sent in a paper with difficulties about Tompie and Elsbeth. It seems Tompie is developing all sorts of queer traits and Elsbeth is also difficult. Tante Hilda says there was an awful silence while Adler explained the case. He said: “This is a very nice little boy, gentle and good of full impulses but he has been spoilt by his mother when he was very small and is now jealous of his little sister. But there is no harm in him. And now I must say something terrible - something cruel. The Mother beats this little boy.” 


Tante Hilda says a shiver went through the audience the way he said it: "Why does she beat such a boy? There is no necessity for it. Who should be beaten?" And then the whole audience shouted: "The Mother!”


Tante Hilda says it is awful the way Tompie is beaten and the senseless way he is punished when he has done nothing very wrong. She says she went on her knees to Ot once, telling her that the boy was not the kind of boy who should be beaten. Tom generally does the beating but Ot allows and encourages it. I was horrified, aren't you? 


Adler said: "And then the parents excuse the beating of their children by saying the children want it. Of course they want it! It's often the only way in which they get undivided attention. When will parents stop punishing their children, realising it does not help? The only way you can bring up a child is by eliciting his cooperation - not making a slave of him. In the end it is only the parent who will be the slave.

20 June 1933 Unfinished transcription


Thursday, April 15, 2021

WOODIN | Tum Tiddily Tycoon, Music

April 16, 2021—Music: Tum Tiddily TycoonTime, Monday, Jan. 26, 1931


The following excellent text could be lost to researchers if I don't post it here because the first word was scanned in "Turn" instead of "Tum" and therefore cannot be found by a searchbot looking for Tum Tiddily... This is a 1931 article about Will Woodin's music:


Things generally known about William Hartman Woodin of Manhattan: He is president of American Car & Foundry Co., largest, most potent railway equipment plant in the world; board chairman of American Locomotive Co.; a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and of 18 corporations. He was one of the potent Wet Republicans who marched to the aid of Alfred Emanuel Smith in 1928. He has been a decorative member of the Mayor's committee for the entertainment of distinguished visitors. His collection of U. S. gold pieces is the finest there is; he wrote a standard volume on the subject (The United States Pattern— Trial and Experimental Features). He has a rare collection of rare books. A thing little known about William Hartman Woodin until last week: He writes music. He has "never known such a thrill" as when his father gave him, a shop hand at the family foundry, $500 and his fellow workers congratulated him, for molding and annealing singlehanded a perfect car wheel. But in later life he has obtained minor thrills composing songs. Last year the name "Will Woodin" was given as the composer of a bookful of children's jingles. And last week William Hartman Woodin was the name listed as composer of four unpretentious musical impressions which Conductor Henry Hadley's Manhattan Orchestra played in St. George's Church. Fairly descriptive were the titles "Chinese Magic," "The Unknown Soldier" (inspired by a monument in Budapest, guarded always by a soldier on horseback), "Souvenir de Montmarte," "Tartar Dance." Composer Woodin relates that it was in the 1880's, when he, 18, was recovering from a throat operation in Vienna, spending his time in the Volksgarten listening to Johann Strauss conduct his own waltzes, that he became "really musical." As a child, piano-scales had bored him, so he had taken up violin, then the banjo and guitar. Vienna and Strauss made him want to know more. He began seriously to study the zither, laid a good musical foundation. No matter how busy making wheels & cars, William Woodin always found time to sing his children to sleep, playing his accompaniments on the guitar or zither. Many of the melodies were original and the book into which they found their way last autumn was called Raggedy Ann's Sunny Songs, lyrics and drawings by Johnny Gruelle, creator of Raggedy Ann. Some of the lyrics: Little Wooden Willie, People thought him silly 'Cause he had a knot hole In the middle of his head. So he put a hat on And since he has that on Folks who called him silly, Think he's very wise instead. Oh the tired old horse can scarcely drag his feet, If he gets much worse he'll be too tired to eat. He's so old and stiff, he isn't worth his keep, He would go to bed but he'd be too tired to sleep. There was a time so I am told He ran away with Grandpa Cole, He smashed the buggy on the pole, But that was long ago. Now the tired old horse is happy in his way, For he dreams he still can hear his master say, "Tum tid-di-ly um bum, Giddap!" Composer Woodin has six grandchildren for whom he has built a playroom on the top floor of his Manhattan penthouse. He tries out his children's songs on them, finds them frank critics. Concerning his grown-up music and its performance, Composer Woodin is modest, hopes people will not think he considers himself a budding Beethoven.

http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,769498,00.html


Sunday, March 28, 2021

WALLY VAN HALL | The Resistance Banker

Tilly and Wally van Hall,
married, March 1, 1932
March 28, 2021—I have seen "The Resistance Banker" three times. The first time was in Zaandam, in April 2018, a month after it first came out in Holland. It was then available only in Dutch with English subtitles. It was a great movie even when seen in Dutch. I was impressed.

It was the most-watched movie in Holland in 2018. It won the Dutch equivalent of the Oscar, the Golden Calf, and it grossed $4 million, which is good for a movie in Dutch.

The main heroes are Walraven (Wally) van Hall and—in real life and in the movie—his wife Tilly den Tex van Hall. Netflix dubbed the Dutch movie in English. It is available to anyone with a Netflix account here: https://www.netflix.com/title/80244019.

I watched the Netflix version twice this week, once alone and two days later again with my wife Alice. This movie is excellent for two kinds of people: (1) Those who think they know a lot about World War II, and (2) Those who don't. It gives a vivid idea of what Resistance in Holland meant, and this is not something that World War II buffs generally know much about.

The movie has great value as a reminder of what the Greatest Generation in Europe faced on the home front—for Europeans, World War II in Europe was not just, or even primarily, about the battlefields. As a military force, the Dutch did not last long. The Nazi Occupation took them by surprise (they had been promised the right to remain neutral, as the Dutch were nominally in World War I) and the war played out in homes and workplaces. 

A True Hero

There were many who would like to be remembered as heroes, but the documented heroes are few in number. Mostly people put their heads down and just tried to survive, which was not easy. Many collaborated in one way or another, usually because they were afraid of their lives and the lives of their families. A few felt they had to do their duty as Dutch citizens, which meant resisting the Nazi occupation.

Wally and his brother Gijs van Hall succeeded in raising today's equivalent of one billion dollars. He did this in part by counterfeiting Treasury bonds and substituting the fake bonds for real ones in the vaults of the Dutch central bank. The proceeds of the sale of the real bonds went to Resistance groups and people entitled to pensions and salaries that the Nazi government would not pay. He also borrowed money from prominent Dutch people, giving them out-of-date stock certificates or one-guilder notes, keeping track of the numbers so they could be redeemed after the war. 

When the Queen returned to Holland after the war, she repaid every obligation. All the money was accounted for. We know all this because of the meticulously documented work of the late Dr. Louis (Loe) de Jong (1914-2005). He wrote—in Dutch only, alas—a formidable 14-volume history of World War II in Holland. 

Dr. de Jong was not given to lavish praise of many of the Dutch Resistance leaders.  But because the Nationaal Steun Fonds (National Support Fund, NSF) enabled so many other activities of the Dutch Resistance, de Jong considered Wally to be Holland's most important underground worker during the war. 

In his Erasmus Lectures on the Dutch Resistance given at Harvard in 1988, de Jong was cautious. He quoted Dutch historian Johan Huizinga: "History, like good sherry, should be dry" (de Jong, Erasmus Lectures, Harvard, 1988, 30). However, on the subject of Wally's stewardship of Resistance funds, de Jong is sweet:

[T]he underground movement in the Netherlands was unique insofar as it numbered one secret organization whose sole task was to collect the money needed to keep all other groups in action and to provide financial support to many of the thousands in hiding. [...] The total expenses of this financial organization alone amounted to a [1988] value of perhaps $500 million [i.e., more than $1 billion in 2021 using the BLS inflation calculator], and when liberation came, all expenses were accounted for, not a single dime having been misappropriated, and all the people and companies from whom money had been borrowed were repaid by the government (de Jong, 46-47).

Coming from a dry historian who is careful with his words, such high praise of Wally is astounding.

The Dutch put "The Resistance Banker" up for an Oscar as the best foreign film of 2018.  It did not win. At the end of this post I suggest a few reasons why not, and why the world needs an American version of the movie.

The Resistance and the Holocaust

The horror of the Holocaust in Holland is told in the movie in three ways:

  • First, near the opening of the movie, Wally's fellow banker Isaak Meijer, who is Jewish, misses an appointment with him. Wally is concerned and walks to Isaak's  house. He finds Isaak hanged and his wife and daughter dead in front of cups of tea.  On the table is the Occupation's instructions for them to leave their home and turn off utilities. Their house has been taken over, as happened to all Jewish Amsterdammers not living in the confined ghetto. Knowing what they faced, the family chose to end their lives. At this point, Wally is recruited by a Resistance leader with a naval background to raise money for Dutch merchant-marine pensioners whose stipends have been cut off.
  • Later, a freight car filled with people passes a passenger car. These are prisoners headed for the deadly concentration camps.  The passengers, realistically, averted their eyes. Tragically, social-service records in Holland were kept by religion, since welfare was distributed through church institutions. This made it easy for SS trackers in Holland to pursue their genocidal mission. In other occupied countries, the Wehrmacht was in charge; they were more interested in waging war than racial extermination. 
  • The movie alludes briefly at the end to how much Wally and the Resistance did to hide or find safe passage for Jewish targets. He received a posthumous Yad Vashem award after the war, and these have not been given out lightly.
What did the Resistance do about the Holocaust? It found hiding places for some Jewish families. It forged papers for them. It managed to get some out via train to Belgium and France; they had a connection in Paris who would meet the trains. It provided information to the Jewish community. It bombed record centers where the Nazi administration was preparing its systematic genocidal program. It targeted Dutch collaborators and S.S. officers. These are some of the activities of the Resistance that Wally van Hall's money financed. The total amount that Wally obtained was one hundred million Dutch guilders, or half a billion euros in today's money.

The moment when Wally is captured in a roundup of Resistance workers is economically captured by his son Aad falling out of a tree and Tilly dropping a plate. Tilly is credibly played by Fockeline Ouwerkerk. Wally's brother Gijsbert ("Gijs") van Hall is well portrayed as less brave than Wally, but someone who came through for him in many ways. Gijs survived to tell the story and was elected Mayor of Amsterdam after the war. 

Family Connections

When I was in Holland in 2015 and 2018, I visited with two of Wally's three children (Adrienne, Aad and Mary-Ann). All three are now deceased. The two older ones, Adrienne and Wally, are shown at the beginning of "The Resistance Banker." All of them are shown as children in a photo of Wally and Tilly and family, posted by a Florida-based blogger named Toritto.  https://toritto.wordpress.com/2018/10/10/banker-to-the-resistance-walraven-van-hall/. I mention also in my 2015 visit with a van Hall daughter relative, Ellen van Wurpel. https://inezmb.blogspot.com/2016/03/boissevain-american-descendants-of.html.

Also, I have previously posted about Tilly van Hall. Her maiden surname was den Tex (in Dutch it would be hyphenated with the husband's name first: Tilly van Hall-den Tex). My 2015 post about Tilly is here: http://nyctimetraveler.blogspot.com/2015/07/anna-mathilde-tilly-den-tex-1907-1988.html. It shows, with help from my cousin Charles Leidschendam Boissevain, also alas deceased, how the children of Charles Boissevain the newspaper editor, my grandmother Olga's father, are related in multiple ways to the van Halls and den Texes, on both sides of the marriage.

My mother, Hilda van Stockum, had many Dutch relatives who wrote to her about Wally and Tilly van Hall. These letters were used when she wrote her two books on the Dutch Resistance and the Holocaust, The Winged Watchman (Farrar Straus 1962 and Bethlehem Books/Ignatius Press, 1995) and The Borrowed House (Farrar Straus 1975 and Purple House Press, 2016).

Need for an American Version of the Movie

As someone said to me, "for a Dutch movie, this is a great production." I agree. Also, to my mind, Netflix did an excellent post-production job getting the film ready for an American audience, although there were a few lapses, as when the American-English-dubbed voice of Wally (played by Barry Atsma) refers to Jaap (pronounced Yaap in Dutch) using the English pronunciation of "J".

Here is a review that suggests some reasons. The first half is a bit slow in building, and for an American audience the movie might be puzzling because the things Americans  remember most about World War II are the U.S. military intervention and the encounters such as the Normandy landing. The concept of Nazis being put in charge of institutions, and how that works out in practice, might be more understandable in 2021 than it was in 2018, as we better understand the extent to which a misinformation campaign can capture people's minds.  https://readysteadycut.com/2018/09/12/the-resistance-banker-review/.

The Dutch movie misses the full potential of the story for American and British film audience. It would be helpful to elaborate on connections that the historical characters had with the rest of the world. For example, Wally and Gijs went to work for Wall Street in the period before and after the Crash of 1929. This is not mentioned and is a glaring omission. Imagine what that must have been like for them. How much they must have learned about downsides to the stock market...

Something about that year could usefully substitute for the fuzzy-boat images that the Dutch version uses—they might be heart-warming for some, but for others they might seem lazy. A blockbuster American feature film could be made out of this idea of a banker risking his life to help the Resistance, under the nose of the Nazis. The Anglo-American view of bankers as benignly addicted to acquisition could do with this portrait of someone at a bank selflessly serving his country. I posted something along these lines in 2018: http://nyctimetraveler.blogspot.com/2018/05/wally-van-hall-movie-in-english.html.

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

ICAO | 75th Anniversary

ICAO logo, introduced 1955.
March 24, 2021— It's the 75th Anniversary of the creation of the International Civil Aviation Organization, ICAO. 

My Dad's work for the United Nations began with his being sent to San Francisco for the formation of the U.N. in 1945. He represented the Bureau of the Budget. He had worked for FDR since 1933, the entire FDR term. One of the first acts of the U.N. was to create a conference in Chicago to establish a U.N. organization concerned with airline safety. 

ICAO was set up originally as PICAO (Provisional ICAO). Spike Marlin was the Secretary of PICAO. At Chicago they selected the location of the new agency, Montreal. They picked this city for three reasons, my Dad told me:

  • Montreal didn't have a U.N. agency and it wanted one.
  • IATA, the airline fare-setting cooperative, was already based in Montreal.
  • Montreal is bilingual, English and French, and this somewhat mollified the francophones, who were annoyed that only English would be used to communicate with air traffic control towers. (In Quebec, local airlines still use both languages.) The two-language rule was overridden in the case of airline communications because one language was hard enough for pilots to learn.

Spike went to work for the organization when it was created and the family of six moved from Washington to Montreal in 1946. He worked for the agency for 17 years, until 1963. "I gave them the best years of my life," he said. He directed the ICAO's technical assistance program, which accounted for 1,500 staffers of the 1,700 employed by the agency.

From ICAO, he went to Geneva to become the third-ranking official at the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees. He was in that post for two years, and then went to work for the U.S. Department of State as Director of International Recruitment in the International Organizations bureau. His job was to find Americans to fill U.N.posts coming vacant. 

When he retired from the State Department he was recruited by the AARP to create the International Federation on Aging, to do research on and coordinate national policies about the problems of an aging world. 

https://my.faa.gov/focus/articles/2020/12/AVS_FLYER_AVS_ICAO.html

Story in the Montreal Star about Spike's work on keeping
open the Leopoldville airport, 1950s.




WESTMOUNT | Lansdowne Avenue, 1950s

Marlin family photos from the 1950s. Did Peggy come over from Itreland? Did the VW bus come over from France? This would have been in 1955 or 1956.

Mr Beausang, Muirreann Beausang, Spike, Hilda, Lis, X, Peggy, Y

Sunday, March 21, 2021

DEATH | St. Benedict (480-529)

 St. Benedict writing The Rule.
Painting by Herman Nieg,
Heiligenkreuz Abbey, Austria
.

March 21, 2021—The death of St. Benedict is remembered today or tomorrow. Its sesquimillennial* will be celebrated in A.D. 547. Even before that, Benedictines around the world will be celebrating another sesquimillennial in eight years, namely the foundation of the first Benedictine monastery in Subiaco, Italy (east of Rome, near the ruins of Nero’s ancient palace) in A.D. 529.

*Sesquimillennial is a mashup of four Latin words, semi+que+mille+annus. It means half+and+thousand+years, in other words, fifteen hundred years.  

St. Benedict founded twelve monasteries, each with twelve monks, before moving on to Monte Cassino, where he built a large monastic town for monks and nuns. He died there from an illness at sixty-seven years of age. Historians have noted that he died not long after when the Justinian plague pandemic (541-542) swept through Italy, leaving the impression that this probably killed him. 

His Rule of St. Benedict has guided many men and women in their monastic communities to follow the teachings of Jesus. How many? Well consider that in A.D. 1100, the monastery of Cluny (in Burgundy) alone controlled one thousand independent abbeys. In 1912 there were 700 Benedictine communities with twenty-three thousand monks and nuns. Projecting from those numbers back over fourteen centuries and forward to another century, one gets to a likely million professed Benedictines and counting, even with the periodic persecution of monks and disestablishment of monasteries and convents. http://archive.osb.org/gen/hicks/ben-15.html#TopOfPage


Some monasteries have relied on contributions from the faithful, guest house fees, or land rents in places where they have had land to rent. Their primary mission from St. Benedict’s time was to educate children—mostly, historically, boys. A subsidiary role, which became preeminent in some monasteries, was copying sacred texts. These copies were extremely valuable and could be sold. The monasteries and convents have also earned income by making wine and famed eponymous liqueurs, cheese and a variety of other products (candles, cups, soaps, cakes, chocolates, herbs). The Trappists make beer.


The Benedictines were divided by gender, but women were allowed to become heads of their communities. The Abbess of the French Fontevraud Royal Abbey, which followed the Rule of St. Benedict, was in charge of a huge abbey with monks as well as nuns.


Benedictines are by design not worldly, but they have income from their work. In this way they are not beggars (the Franciscans and Dominicans rely on gifts). But Benedictines are contemplative rather than worldly; the Jesuits are by design active in the world. Of the 266 popes to date, only eleven were Benedictines. Benedict XVI said in his first papal appearance that he named himself for St. Benedict of Nursia, and also Benedict XV, who was an active peacemaker in World War I. Most monks in the middle ages were Benedictines. Most of the other western monastic orders were created as spinoffs of the Benedictines, for example, the Cistercians, and their spinoff the Trappists (who are vegetarians, for example)..


The above note was prompted by emails from Ampleforth College, York, England, which your blogger attended for three years and from Portsmouth Abbey School, which I also attended for three years. Here is the Portsmouth celebration:

https://mailchi.mp/portsmouthabbey.org/the-transitus-of-st-benedict?e=63e11c9b6b.

Saturday, March 13, 2021

PUSHCART PRESS | 50 Years of Brilliance

Pushcart Prize XLV (45)
Just Out!
March 13, 2021—I have in hand my 2021 Pushcart Prize XLV (Number 45). It is 50 years since my friend Bill Henderson started the annual Pushcart Prize collection of the "Best of the Small Presses." 

He and his wife Genie (who serves as archivist for LTV of East Hampton) have been near neighbors for 40 years  in The Springs, a hamlet on the East End of Long Island.

The Pushcart Prize collection this year has 64 hand-curated stories, poems, essays and memoirs, plucked from the pages of pre-eminent private (small) publishers. 

These days it is easy enough to self-publish books and post essays. This creates the problem of sifting through the sheer volume of material to pull out the best. 

It's better than the old way, when a few gatekeepers controlled access to the publication pulpits. That was  too restrictive.

The modern problem is that we need more evaluators. Not gatekeepers, but guides to the best.

For 50 years, Bill has been offering a solution. There are so many small presses that someone should be able to get their work published somewhere. The problem is to identify the gold in the pan, to find the diamonds in the rough. Bill started to do that, hunting for the best writing in the small presses, giving prizes and publishing the best in an annual volume, the Readers Digest of small presses. 

Open for Nominations Each Year
As the 2021 edition says on the copyright page, "Nominations for this series are invited from any small, independent, literary book press or magazine in the world, print or online." (Or, indeed, from anyone who reads one or more of these publications.) 

Bill Henderson
How can Bill keep up with the hundreds of small presses listed (pp. 495-502), with twenty pages of names and addresses of those that published nominated writing for the 2021 edition (pp. 511-530)? How could he be in touch with thirty pages of authors, seventy to a page (pp. 535-576)?

The key to the sustainability of all this effort is in the list of the editors, who review the nominated writing as well as suggesting their own. They are in the front of the book (pp. 7-9). The list goes on for three pages, even though only the editors for the current issue are included.

Bill Henderson (R) with George
Plimpton upon publication of
Pushcart X (#10).
The last remaining group is tucked in among the small presses (pp. 503-509), the supporters of the nonprofit that pays for the Pushcart Prizes or Fellowships. I have hastened to get Alice and myself included among the sponsors of the next round, and I encourage you to do the same. 

Send your check to Fellowships, P.O. Box 380, Wainscott, NY 11975. The giving categories are 0-$249, $250-$999, $1,000-$4,999 and $5,000 and more. 

Donors to Pushcart include such public-spirited people as Hilaria and Alec Baldwin and Joyce Carol Oates (who has been helping the publication from the beginning).

Bill has been honored with the well-deserved 2020 Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts for his creation and maintenance of the Pushcart Prize Collection.




BIRTHDAY | Uncle Sam (1852-present)

March 13, 2021—This day in 1852, the Writer's Almanac reminds us, Uncle Sam was born as a national figure. His likeness was first drawn as a cartoon in the New York Lantern by Frank Henry Bellew. It is his 169th birthday. 

The portrait of him drawn for a U.S. Army recruiting poster in 1917 by James Montgomery Flagg is called "the most famous poster in the world."   https://s.si.edu/3tgBRqV.

Tuesday, January 19, 2021

INSURRECTION | The Constitution's Writers Feared Tyrants, including Mobs

David Lefer
January 19, 2021—The epiphany of January 6 will be two weeks ago tomorrow, when President Joe Biden will be inaugurated.

It is a good time to remember an event six years ago, long before social distancing put an end for a while to in-person events, that the Harvard Club of New York created a book expo. 

There I became interested in a book by David Lefer on The Founding Conservatives. I wrote about his book afterwards in a post on the Oxbridge Pursuivant blog site.

The book's theme is that in writing the Constitution conservatives like Madison and Hamilton were building in protections against hostile mobs. They had good reason. During the debate over ratifying the document, which took place in Philadelphia, a mob captured and took hostage some members of the state assembly to get them to vote their way.

Conservatives were concerned that they were trading American freedom from tyranny by George III and Lord North for tyranny by  mobs at home. They would have been particularly appalled by a political party or faction, whether on the right or left, trying to overturn the results of an election by appealing to a mob.

I was especially interested in what Lefer had to say about John Dickinson of Delaware. Another person that interested me was William Livingston, who represented New Jersey at the Constitutional Convention.