THE END OF TIME | 2018

The new owners couldn't wait to take down
the Time Inc. sign. January 31, 2018. 
(Detail of photo with NY Times story.)

The Beginning of Time Two Yalies, Henry R. Luce and Briton Hadden, were cub reporters at The Baltimore News in 1922.

They pitched a crazy idea for a “news magazine.” It flew. They raised $86,000. They quit their jobs.

On March 3, 1923, they published the first issue of Time: The Weekly News-Magazine.

The End of Time Betsy Gleick, senior writer, Time: “[T]he Time Inc. sign [came] down [on January 31, 2018] and the Meredith sign [went] up basically the minute the deal closed. From the outside, the haste struck me as so depressing. Why the race to obliterate a great legacy?”

Summary of long history of Time in the New York Times, May 21, 2018.

SUFFOLK, NY | Tea-Party Zeldin Job Growth: POINT ONE %

The Congressman from CD 1 in Suffolk County, New York, was elected in 2014. He has made creating jobs a central part of his program. He said in 2016 he would go to Washington, work with the Tea Party to reduce environmental and other regulations, and "help grow our economy and create more good paying jobs".

How's it going with that, Mr. Zeldin?

Numbers just came out today for the fourth quarter of 2017. They show that Suffolk County ranked 309th out of the 347 largest counties for growth during 2017, fourth quarter compared with the fourth quarter of the previous year.

The growth rate was Point One Percent. That's one-tenth of one percent.

Compare that with Brooklyn (King's County), which grew 41 times as fast, 4.1 percent, and ranked 14th out of the 347 largest counties.

Zeldin has had two terms to prove he can make a difference in job growth. I would say he flunks his own test. He has not helped grow the economy. He has not created more good-paying jobs.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, data released May 23, 2018. www.bls.gov.

BIRTH | May 22 – Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle May 22, 2018–This day in 1859 was born Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. He was born in Edinburgh, where he grew up and studied medicine (and where I was earlier this month). Sherlock has been called the most famous fictional character of the last two centuries, along with Dracula and James Bond. This reference is from Charles McDermid in a Back Story for the NY Times to which I have been unable to link (it is part of an emailed Newsletter). Excellent Britannica biography here. His website here. Wikipedia entry, also good. Doyle is often referred to as "Conan Doyle". But he was baptized at St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh–with "Arthur Ignatius Conan" as his given names and "Doyle" as his surname. Ignatius of Loyola is the anglicized name of the founder of the Jesuit Order. Doyle's second wife was known as Jean Conan Doyle rather than Jean Doyle. Doyle's parents were both Irish Catholic, though his father was born in England. His mother was the inspiration of his life and she was a great story-teller. Alas, his father, although from a family with some fame in the art world, suffered from alcoholism and in 1864 the family dispersed to different homes in Edinburgh with some respite in 1867 as the family came together again in an inadequate tenement flat. Doyle's father suffered from mental illness later in his life and died in 1893, in Dumfries. Fortunately Doyle's talent was spotted by wealthy uncles and a lodger. He was sent away to school at nine years of age to a school that fed to the Jesuit Stonyhurst College. From there in 1875-76, he was educated at another Jesuit school, Stella Matutina in Feldkirch, Austria. He later rejected the Catholic faith and became an agnostic and mystic. In 1876-1881, Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, including periods working in different locations in England including Warwickshire and Shropshire. During that time, he studied practical botany and started writing short stories. His earliest extant fiction was "The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe", unsuccessfully submitted to Blackwood's Magazine. His first published piece, "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", set in South Africa, was printed in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal in 1879. The same year, he published his first academic article, on a poison. After his graduation from Edinburgh University with a Bachelor of Medicine degree in 1881, he was ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast. He completed his advanced Doctor of Medicine degree on tabes dorsalis in 1885. He set up a medical practice in Southsea in June 1882, with less than £10 (about $1,500 today) in his pocket. It was not successful, giving Doyle ample time to write fiction. He also wrote several articles denouncing anti-vaccinators. In early 1891, Doyle attempted the study of ophthalmology in Vienna, but his German wasn't up to all the medical terms and he quit. Returned to London, Doyle opened a small office and consulting room at what is now 2 Upper Wimpole Street. He never had luck with finding patients, giving him the time to develop a story featuring a man named Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson. The novel, A Study in Scarlet, initially had no luck. Then, to Doyle's initial delight, the book was accepted by Ward Lock & Co. It was 20 November 1886, and the wonderful publisher gave Doyle £25 (about $4,000 today) for all rights.  The piece appeared a year later in the Beeton's Christmas Annual and received good reviews in Edinburgh. Holmes said the character was partly based on a former university teacher. Robert Louis Stevenson, also born in Edinburgh, was able, reading the story in Samoa, to recognize that a medical school professor was the basis of the Sherlock character. A sequel was commissioned, and The Sign of the Four appeared in Lippincott's Magazine in February 1890, under agreement with the Ward Lock company. By now, Doyle started to feel exploited by his wonderful publisher and left Ward Lock, sending his stories to the Strand Magazine. Tired of his creation, Doyle tried to discourage his new publisher from demanding more work and raised his fee for new work to a level intended to send them away. Alas, the new magazine promptly accepted. He therefore became one of the best-paid authors of his era.  In December 1893, he went so far as to finish off both Holmes and his arch-enemy Professor Moriarty, sending them both over  the Reichenbach Falls to their deaths in "The Final Problem". The public was outraged. They cancelled 20,000 subscriptions to the Strand Magazine.  He was after a few years prevailed upon to revive Holmes in 1901 in the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. In 1903, Doyle came back to a Holmes short story after a ten-year lapse, with "The Adventure of the Empty House". Doyle explains that Moriarty had indeed fallen to his death, but Holmes wanted privacy and only faked his death.  Doyle eventually accumulated 56 short stories—the last published in 1927—and four novels about Holmes. Doyle was knighted for a report he wrote on the Boer War. He showed a deep interest in the supernatural and helped popularize a famous garden fairies hoax of the early 20th century. He died of a heart attack in 1930.

V-E DAY | East Hampton Star, May 3, 2018

RECTORYKIDS

Remembering V-E Day Guest Words | By John Tepper Marlin | May 3, 2018 - 1:59pm [Reposted by Permission]

Charles Miner Jr., World War II bomber pilot, investment banker, and summertime East Hampton resident, died in March at the age of 96. John Tepper Marlin

May 8 will be the 73rd anniversary of V-E Day, when World War II ended in Europe. I am on my way from London to Holland, where the 1945 liberation is celebrated on May 4. That day, I plan to be at the Cemetery of Heroes in Amsterdam to remember my relatives who gave their lives to fighting the monster Adolf Hitler through the Resistance.

East Hampton contributed many fighters to this effort. Some survived World War II with powerful stories. Charles Miner Jr., who died at 96 in March, was a bomber pilot in World War II. When he died, he was one of 480,000 surviving veterans of that war, out of more than 16 million Americans who served. 

Charlie was not related to me, but he was extremely helpful to my understanding his grandfather William H. Woodin, who was Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first Treasury secretary, and my own family during the war. 

As we talked one day, I became interested in his life story. Charlie had to leave Princeton before he graduated to join the Army Air Forces. “I was studying engineering and they wanted engineers, so I was called up,” he told me. “I went to a single-engine flying school, graduated in March 1943, and from there was sent to a sub depot in Charlotte, N.C., where they rebuilt planes that had crashed. I was given the job of test-flying the rebuilt planes before they were returned to their home bases. I got flying time in many types of aircraft.”

While assigned to the base, Charlie married in October 1944 a Southern belle, Mae Hoffman, who was called Maisie. “But just two weeks after we married, I had to report for combat training in two-engine bombers at the Greenville, N.C., Army Air Forces base. We were trained on the B-25 Mitchell bomber. We had three months’ training, doing mock bombing runs over Myrtle Beach at night.”

The B-25 has been described as the most versatile bomber in World War II, named after the air power advocate Gen. Billy Mitchell. Nearly 10,000 of the bombers were built between 1941 and 1945. It was the most heavily armed airplane in the world, used in the historic Doolittle raid over Tokyo in 1942.

“We had a crew of five,” Charlie said. “Besides me, the pilot, we had a co-pilot, bombardier, radio operator, and gunner. Boeing strengthened the plane by adding a gun in its nose, which allowed us to shoot back at targets, but lowered the plane’s maximum speed.”

When was his first combat run? “After my training in Greenville, I was first sent to Corsica to be instructed by the more experienced [Royal Canadian Air Force] and especially [Royal Air Force] pilots who had been flying the B-25. Some of the R.A.F. and Italian pilots were daredevils. They didn’t seem to care whether they lived or died. We had the Mosquito, a laminated-wood plane that could break the sound barrier. The pilots loved it, and they would dive from 5,000 feet. But one day a pilot tried this and one of the wings just came off. The pilot, of course, went straight down with the plane and was killed.”

Miner paused and continued in his jaunty rat-a-tat style (he was a superb joke-teller): “We started flying missions out of Corsica. The Germans were pushed north in the Italian boot, so we relocated closer to the targets, in Fano, on the Adriatic in eastern Italy, about 150 miles south of Venice. My squadron flew 18 missions at 15,000 to 18,000 feet over the Brenner Pass in the Alps between Italy and Austria.”

How did he feel on these missions? Charlie slowed down. “Of course, the Alps were a majestic sight to look down on, but each flight was nerve-racking. We had to stay perfectly in box formation during the bomb run so that the bombardiers could be accurate. We had to keep to it so long as we had more bombs to drop. We could see yellow puffs below as anti-aircraft guns tried to shoot us down, but we were not allowed to take evasive action until our payload was dropped. As soon as we released the last bomb, it was a relief, we were all out of there in every direction, helter-skelter.”

It is easy to visualize Charlie keeping his formation while the flak was flying. His cousin Woody Rowe, in an interview with me, compared Charlie (whom he calls Chas) to his mother, Libby Woodin Rowe. She was a patient mother, although neither of her sons inherited her patience. But Woody told me that Charlie never seemed to be mad at anyone. Asked about it, Charlie thought and said, “I guess you’re right. Disappointed, perhaps, but not angry.”

I asked Charlie whether the anti-aircraft fire found its mark. “Yes,” he said. “We would find out when we returned to the base when a plane and crew were gone. We all paid our respects. But after that, we didn’t talk a whole lot about the ones who were gone. It was just the risk you took.”

Again, Charlie’s usual fast-paced speak­ing style became slower. He looked at me with the closest I ever saw him get to a tragic expression. “There was one pilot who seemed immortal. He was a major in the Army Air Forces. He finished 50 missions, which meant he could retire and go home. But he wanted to keep flying a couple more times, even though he didn’t have to. On his 51st mission, his plane was hit by flak and he bailed out. I remember seeing his parachute going down over the Alps. If he was lucky, he was rescued by one of the partisans below.”

“Did you ever find out what happened to him?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I never did.” He was silent for what seemed like a long time.

That was a personal moment for me as well, because my Dutch-born uncle Willem J. van Stockum worked hard to put himself in harm’s way. He was a bomber pilot for the R.A.F. and was hit by flak over France on June 10, 1944. I was 2 years old then, so I never got to find out from him what it was like being on the front lines of the air war against Hitler. He was flying with 10 Squadron, one of 126 squadrons serving with the R.A.F.’s Bomber Command. They were bombing a Luftwaffe airfield in Laval, France. His plane was hit by flak.

Bomber Command in World War II recruited 125,000 aircrew, of whom 57,205 were killed. That’s a 46-percent death rate. The queen unveiled a monument in 2012 to the extraordinary bravery of these R.A.F. aircrews.

My uncle Willem, a mathematician who worked in Einstein’s institute in Princeton, understood these numbers. He just had to do something about his country being occupied. His story is told in “Time Bomber” by Robert Wack. His crew of seven and another that came down on the same mission are buried in Laval. I have visited three times, including in 2014, when the French locals erected monuments to the two crews. A survivor of the bombing, of course a child at the time, said that my uncle’s flaming plane steered away from the house where she and her family lived, into an orchard.

This year I went with my wife, Alice, to see for the first time my uncle’s base, R.A.F. Melbourne near York, England. I am grateful to the 10 Squadron Association volunteers who helped us make the visit.

And I am grateful to the late Charlie Miner for helping me understand better what was facing this uncle I never knew. Whatever questions we have about the morality or effectiveness of indiscriminate bombing of civilians in World War II, our appreciation of the bravery of those who looked in the evil face of Hitler’s guns will never be sufficient.

---

John Tepper Marlin, a regular contributor to the “Guestwords” column, has had a house in Springs since 1981. He is writing a biography of William Woodin and a book about his Dutch relatives’ work in the Resistance.

Postscript: From the May 10 Issue

‘Remembering’

East Hampton

May 3, 2018

Dear David [Editor of the East Hampton Star], 

 John Tepper Marlin’s “Remembering V-E Day” beautifully conveys the stress, horror, and pride felt by soldiers and their families during World War II.

I thank him for writing it.

RICHARD ROSENTHAL

HOLLAND | The WW2 Honorary Graves Revisited

This is the section (33) of the cemetery that includes the executed
Resistance fighters who were referred to in Jan Campert's poem,
"De achttien dooden" ("The Eighteen Dead"). The graves of Gi and
 Janka are at the far end of the row. I have posted the poem at the end.

When I visited the Honorary Cemetery, the Eerebegraaf-plaats, in 2015 with Charles Boissevain (b. 1934), few other people were in the cemetery.

Yesterday, I went with many others to the cemetery, because it was May 4, Remembrance Day.

New Stories – Hans Nieuwenhuijzen

Since 2015, Charles has passed on to me during the period since he and I visited.

In particular, he wrote to me about a talk that Hans Nieuwenhuijzen gave to the Verzets Museum.

Starting Point to Cemetery. Road closed
to motor traffic.

Like Charles (and my eldest sister Olga), Hans was born in 1934. His father was in the Resistance together with Walraven "Wally" van Hall, about whom a Dutch film has just appeared. It won a prize, Aad van Hall told me on Thursday (May 3), for the first Dutch movie in 2018 to sell 100,000 tickets. He thinks they are now past 350,000 tickets and closing in on 400,000. That is a lot of tickets in Holland.

The movie, which is in Dutch, shows how Wally and his brother Gijs had two main ways of raising money.

One was borrowing money from Dutch people and giving them worthless old bonds – there would have been many of them after the Occupation – in exchange, keeping careful track of the numbers for use after the war. The Queen promised on Radio Orange to honor these debts and after the war every penny was repaid.

The other way they raised money was to rob the Nederlandsche Bank (the Dutch Central Bank).

They stole for the Resistance an enormous amount of money, perhaps the largest bank heist in history, by printing up counterfeit money or bonds [I am still trying to find out exactly what was done], and substituting them for those in the bank vault, while taking out the genuine cash or bonds for distribution to Resistance workers and onderduikers (literally "under-duckers" or "under-divers") such as Jewish refugees.

Dutch flag at half mast, before
 the silence.

Wally, along with the father of Hans and others, was caught in January 1945 and they were shot on February 12, 1945. They are buried at the Eerebegraafplaats Bloemendaal, which although named after nearby Bloemendaal is accessed only from the long road from Overveen. Charles and I visited the graves together in 2015.

Hans knew Charles Boissevain’s uncle Jan “Canada” Boissevain and his aunt Mies and their five children, who were living at Corellistraat 6, base of the deadly CS6 armed-resistance unit. His sons Janka and Gi, caught working for CS6 on Oct 1, 1943 and shot by the Nazis.

Hans told the story that Janka and Gi tried to escape to England on a home-made boat in the summer of 1940. At the Waddensea, just west of Friesland, they were caught by the Germans. They could have been killed for this.

Bell ringing started the remembrance. The
participants stood in silence for several
minutes. At the end, the nationally observed
minutes of silence. (Trains were stopped.)

Fortunately, their uncle Tom de Booy (married to Hilda Boissevain, sister of my grandmother Olga and Charles' grandfather Charles E. H.)  worked for the Dutch Boat Rescue Society at the place where Janka and Gi arrived as prisoners.

Uncle Tom had the presence of mind to tell  the Germans, laughing loudly, that this was just a student joke, that the boys had a bet that they could reach one of the Wadden islands on their home-made boat. Now they had lost the bet, and would have to pay for a lot of beer for their friends. The Germans saw this was plausible and they let Janka and Gi free.

Visiting the Eerebegraafplaats in 2018

On the way from the Overveen station to the Eeregraafplaats, I met a well-known Dutch (and German) actor, Chiem van Houweninge, and his wife Marina. Chiem is writing a script about another Resistance leader, Cees de Jong. He is a friend of Cees's son Jan. I wondered whether Loe de Jong, who wrote the 24-volume history of World War II in Holland, was related, and was told not to their knowledge.

Flag restored to top of the mast after the
minutes of silence.

Chiem wrote several film scripts that were made into movies, including:

• "Storm en Mein Hoof" (Storm in My Head)
• "Die Inbreeker" (The Burglar)
• "Dear Boys" (about Central Heating[?])

Chiem also wrote perhaps 500 situation-comedy scripts for Dutch and German television, many of them centered around a female doctor.

Chiem and Marina's son is also named Chiem and is also an actor. He played the part of the bad guy in the Walraven van Hall movie, Ross von Tonningen, the collaborator who headed the Nederlandsche Bank for the Reichscommissar Seiss-Inquart. After the war, von Tonningen was hanged and his wife was called the "Black Widow."

Two Brothers (Gi and Janka) and Their Co-Worker,
Walter Brandligt. Under Janka's name is the family
motto, which he scrawled on the wall.
"Ni regret du passé, ni peur de l'avenir."

Then I met Dr. Hildebrand de Boer, who gave me a lift up to the Eerebegraafplaats and also gave me a copy of his fine book of poems, one for each year he has been volunteering to drive older people some or all of the 4-km. trip to the Eeregraafplaats.

At the cemetery, I took a lot photos and show some of them here. In front of the graves of Gi and Janka, I was informed that the grandson of Walter was there, and we shook hands, took some photos and said we would be in touch!

The Poem by Jan Campert – Song of the Eighteen Dead

The poem by Jan Campert (1902-1943) is probably the most famous poem in Holland about World War II. He was a journalist and did theater reviews. After his country was invaded in 1940 and occupied by the Nazis, he helped Jews in trouble. He was arrested and taken to the Neuengamme concentration camp, where he was killed or died in 1943. 

With the grandson of Walter Brandligt.

Published illegally in 1943, his poem, “De achttien dooden” (“The Eighteen Dead”), tells of the execution by the Nazis of eighteen resistance fighters. These Eighteen, I was told, refer to those shot with Gi and Janka Boissevain. 

Jan Campert was the father of today's  popular Dutch novelist and poet, Remco Campert, who said: "Resistance starts not with big words but with small deeds."

The following English translation of Jan Campert's poem is by Cliff Credo; it is the only one I could find.

A cell is but six feet long

and hardly six feet wide,

yet smaller is the patch of ground,

that I now do not yet know,

but where I nameless come to lie,

my comrades all and one,

we eighteen were in number then,

none shall the evening see come.

O loveliness of light and land,

of Holland's so free coast,

once by the enemy overrun

could I no moment more rest.

What can a man of honor and trust 

do in a time like this?

He kisses his child, he kisses his wife

and fights the noble fight.

I knew the task that I began,

a task with hardships laden,

the heart that couldn't let it be

but shied not away from danger;

it knows how once in this land

freedom was everywhere cherished,

before the cursed transgressor's hand

had willed it otherwise.

Before the oath can brag and break

existed this wretched place

that the lands of Holland did invade

and for ransom her ground has held;

Before the appeal to honor is made 

and such Germanic comfort

our people forced under their control

and looted as a thief. 

The Catcher of Rats who lives in Berlin

sounds now his melody,—

as true as I shortly dead shall be

Graves of Hendrik de Jong and Walraven van Hall.

my dearest no longer see

and no longer shall the bread be broke

and share a bed with her—

reject all he offers now and ever

that sly trapper of birds. 

For all whom these words think to read

my comrades in great need and those who stand by them through all

in their adversity tall,

just as we have thought and thought

on our own land and people—

a day does shine after every night,

as every cloud must pass.

I see how the first morning light

through the high window falls.

My God, make my dying light—

and so I have failed

just as each of us can fail,

pour me then Your grace,

that I may like a man then go 

if I a squadron must face.

Comment by JTM: "Squadron" on the last line doesn't seem to be the right word. It was used of cavalry or airplanes, not firing squads...

EDINBURGH | Visit to The Lord Lyon

Coat of Arms of The Lord Lyon King of
Arms of Scotland.

Oxford, April 29, 2018–I was in Edinburgh earlier this week and visited the offices of The Lord Lyon King of Arms of Scotland.

The office is centrally located in Edinburgh, on West Register Street. 

Unlike most other countries where the heraldry authorities are private or nonprofit and honorific, the Scottish heraldry office was made part of the government. The heraldry code has the force of law in Scotland, and The Lord Lyon can prosecute, which is rare or unique in the world (South Africa can prevent use of a coat of arms).

Approach to the National Records of Scotland,
on West Register Street. There is construction.

The portrait in the lobby of The Lord Lyon is that of past Lord Lyon Sir Malcolm Rognvald Innes of Edingight KCVO WS FSA Scot. He held the post for 20 years, 1981-2001. The current Lord Lyon is the third since 2001.

He was born on May 25 in a year ending in 8. His portrait shows him in the tabard of The Lord Lyon. He is now Orkney Herald Extraordinary.

I had contacted The Lord Lyon's office to ask about the possibility that the stars in the Stars and Stripes were inspired, directly or indirectly, by the mullets in the Douglas or Murray (Moray) coats of arms.

Elizabeth Roads, Snawdoun Herald and Lyon Clerk at the Court of the Lord Lyon kindly responded to my query, wondering how I would associate with Scotland the Washington family, which prior to the emigration of two sons of Lawrence Washington lived in Sulgrave Manor, Northampton, way down south, not far from Oxford.

The National Records of Scotland.

I responded that the family originally lived in Washington on the River Wear, then part of the Palatine Principality and See of Durham, near Scotland. 

Before George Washington's ancestors were called Washington, they were Wessyngton, and before that Hertburn, after the places they resided, near what became the city of Newcastle. 

George Washington's Ancestors

The Ur-Washington was Sir William fitz Patrick de Hertburn, eldest son of Sir Patrick fitz Dolfin Raby and grandson of Dolfin fitz Uchtred. 

Sir Patrick fitz Dolfin Raby was born before 1136 at Hertburn, a younger son of Dolfin fitz Uchtred. Upon his marriage to Cecily de Offerton, he became known as Sir Patrick de Offerton and Le Hirsel. The Le Hirsel land lies on the north bank of the River Tweed two miles NW of Coldstream. He died c. 1190.

Sir William fitz Patrick de Hertburn was born c. 1150 in Hertburn, near Stockton-on-Tees (about halfway between Newcastle and York). He married twice, gaining Stockton lands with his first marriage and gaining royal relatives with his second marriage to Marjory (Margaret) de Huntingdon, Countess of Richmond. Sir William and Countess Margaret were close in age, although this was her third marriage.

Margaret's brothers were William the Lion, King of Scotland, and Malcolm IV, the Maiden King of Scotland. Her father was Henry, Earl of Northumberland and Huntingdon, and her paternal grandfather was David I, King of Scotland and saint. Her youngest brother, David Earl of Huntingdon, was ancestor of the de Bruce and Balliol families. Countess Margaret's four times great-grandparents were Beatrix, Queen of Scotland and Crinan the Thane. 

So Hertburn acquired new lands and noble connections  with his new bride. He assumed tenancy of the Wessyngton  lands from the Prince Bishop of Durham at a cost of four pounds per year. He had received the Wessyngton property in trade for his Stockton lands – a good move, since he was already heir to the lands at Offerton, just across the River Wear from Washington. Given his huge step up in status, Hertburn took on the name William de Wessyngton in 1183. He died c. 1190.

Sources for the above include: 1. Audrey Fletcher, Posting as Washington Lass 
2. Archaeology Data Service, UK, 1960 


Comments:

• Today The Hirsel is the seat of the Earls of Home, and the 14th Earl, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, was British Prime Minister in 1963-1964 when I was a student at Oxford – he contributed an article to a magazine I edited, Oxford Tory. I served as General Agent of the Oxford University Conservative Association when Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, now Baron Selkirk of Douglas, was President.
• George Washington's hero was General William Braddock of the Coldstream Guards. Together they attacked Fort Duquesne, which was renamed Pittsburgh, after Pitt the Elder, who was the patron of the war against the French in North America. Braddock gave Col. Washington his sash and Washington is shown wearing it in several portraits.

Visit to the office of The Lord Lyon in Edinburgh. L to R: (1) Snawdoun Herald and Lyon Clerk, Elizabeth Roads. (2) Portrait of Immediate past Lord Lyon, Sir Malcolm Rognvald Innes of Edingight KCVO WS FSA Scot, with a magnificent estoile above. (3) Your blogger with what seems to be a tiny coronet in chief.

Visit to The Lord Lyon

Snawdoun Herald again was kind enough to respond and wondered why a family so well-connected by marriage would wish to connect to the humbler (at the time) Douglas arms.

My answer is that the Washington coat of arms was not created until after the Battle of Crécy, by which time the Douglas family was ennobled and well established.

At this point there are so many clues and question marks that I am pausing in my quest. A good time to visit Snawdoun Herald and the office of The Lord Lyon!

Also see: My Visit to the College of Arms in London

CLUBLAND | Some Good Ideas

I have been staying at some Reciprocal Clubs in Scotland and England, and a couple of ideas make a lot of sense to me:

1. Open. Insert chain goes through the sleeve

of a coat and the loop on an umbrella. Put the

bottom of the chain through the locking hole.

REPLACE A CLOAKROOM ATTENDANT.  Instead, use chains and keys. Some clubs in New York have two cloakrooms or add a cloakroom for special events. Surely one cloakroom could be self-service, for people who are not worried sick that someone will steal their coat (has never happened to me in 50 years of using a New York club). 

Every club of course needs a concierge for people with valuables like a computer in their bag, or a suitcase. One club in New York seems to be  totally trusting about books and book bags. 

2. Lock, after first putting a £1 coin in a 

slot (it can be recovered when the coat is 

picked up).

Here's what a London club does. It has a long wall of coat hooks, and you protect your coat from theft or careless coat pickup by locking the coat to the hook with a chain.

With modern computer advances, there must be a more efficient way of doing this that does not require a coin.

Maybe a credit card could be used to close and then reopen the lock. It would also provide evidence if the club had problems with their system or there was a dispute about ownership of the coat.

3. Take away the plastic key, which

opens the lock on your return.

IPHONE RECHARGING. Another innovation I saw at a London club was the use of an iPhone recharging station. 

It looks like a set of post office boxes but inside each one is a plug to recharge an iPhone. This is valuable for people who can leave their iPhone while they have a meal or a drink, and pick it up recharged on their way out.