HEARING LOST VOICES OF THE EDWARDIANS ...

When writing historical novels I try to read books or news articles that were actually published at the time - to get a feel for the structure of language; and also the usage of the slang. 

But something I found so interesting when creating The Last Days of Leda Grey was a book called Lost Voices of the Edwardians compiled by Max Arthur ~ which is simply made up of reflections from those who had actually lived at the time. 

Assembled from public and private archives - from people involved in various trades, from those who resided in country or town, whether children or adults, rich or poor - this is an extraordinary read which brings the era to vivid life.

From the Childhood chapters ...

From school I put in for a thrift form. I was given a corduroy suit and a pair of boots, and I cam home so proud of that suit. But when my father came home in the evening and saw it, he asked 'Where d'you get that from?" 'From school,' I said. "I signed the thrift form.' 'You can take it back.' Charity he wouldn't have. We had literally nothing to eat, but charity he wouldn't have.

From the Work chapters ...

I left school when I turned fourteen. I left at teatime, had a drink of tea with my dad, walked up to Seaham Colliery, signed on and started work the next morning. I was down the pit at ten minutes to five on the day after I finished school.

An unwelcome task the police had in those days was administering the birch to young offenders. My father who was a policeman, used to say how difficult it was to punish a bloke that he'd never seen before.

From Daily Life ...

You could get half a sheep's head in those days. There as a stall in Brick Lane. My mother used to buy them. They used to be very nice cold. Every poor person used to buy them, and tripe and all that kind of thing.

On Sunday you used to get the muffin man round. Muffins and crumpets. He had a huge tray on his head and it was always covered with green baize. He'd ring a bell, about four o'clock in the afternoon. If you wanted crumpets you'd just go out and buy them. And there was a winkle man who used to come round, and a man who came round with fish. He had a barrow with a couple of boxes of fish on it. He put out plaice, perhaps a dozen small dabs, a half dozen small haddocks - threepence the lot!

Long skirts  - oh, they were long ... when you went to go over a stile you had to hike them straight up. Once I had a lad and we were coming from Crookhall into Iveston and we had to get over this stile and it was a hobble and he just got a hold of my leg to pull it up. I waited till I got home and when I got to the door, and he was saying goodnight and I just spit in his face and said, 'Don't you come back any more.'

On Saturday afternoons we'd go to the Palace Cinema - a penny to go in and it was all silent movies with someone playing the piano - oh yes, they were good. They'd be playing while us kids were creating hell. Then we'd buy a bag of sweets when we came out.

From Politics and Suffragettes ...

There used to be political meetings in Shoreditch near St John's Road. I went to listen to Horatio Bottomley. He used to give a hundred weight of coal to the poor people of the area. My family got coal from him and they used to vote for him for that reason. I saw him. He was a big fat man, always well dressed. He was a very nice chap.

My first imprisonment was in Preston in 1909. I went on hunger strike but unfortunately, my fine was paid by my mother at the end of the week.

I remember the suffragettes. They used to have open air meetings in the side streets. I went in the evenings to listen. There'd be young girls standing up on a box or a table and they always had an answer to make the men look like fools. One evening, a m an shouted out, 'Don't you wish you were a man?' and the girl shouted back, 'Don't you wish you were?'

A NIGHT OUT AT THE CINEMA, A CENTURY AGO ...

The British Film Industry Archives has digitised many old silent films, a great number of which can be viewed for free on the BFI iplayer site. They also sell films on DVD, and some are released for theatre screens ~ such as A Night at the Cinema, which I was lucky enough to see when first starting to write a novel that is set in the world of Edwardian films. 

Such nights would often be made up of compilations of footage from several stand-alone short films, with a selection of different genres. Comedies, dramas, and travelogues, and also newsreels of war zones.

Stills from A Night at the Cinema

I viewed the films in Richmond upon Thames, at a small independent cinema. But, had I been around to go along when they were first released I might have seen them anywhere ~ in a brand new film theatre, or at the end of a seaside pier. There might be a screen set up in a shop, or in a church's social hall. And although the films were silent, the venue certainly wouldn't be, with music being a vital part of the moving picture industry. A solo piano or organ, or an entire orchestra might create the films' accompaniments ~ with different styles of melody to enhance the action or the mood. 

I recreated such an evening in my novel, The Last Days of Leda Grey. The following is an extract; a scene when the young Leda Grey, who has great aspirations to act on screen, goes along to the local seaside pier to see a showing of some films made in the local area. Those films are known as 'actuals', which means they don't have any actors as such, but exhibit natural settings with everyday people walking about ~ anyone who happened to be around when the director shot his film. It's in one of these moving picture shows that Leda has a starring role, and because of that she can hardly contain her joy when she goes to see the film.

"Oh, what a thrilling visit! Sitting in the darkness, while the glow from the projector’s lamp shone through the theatre on the pier. And Rex was there, on Theo’s lap, because whatever Papa said the dog was all grown up by then, and sometimes even well behaved, especially when bribed with sweets. Theo and I were giggling at the way he dribbled, slathered, chewed, and how his tongue kept slurping out while sucking toffees from his teeth. But such high spirits were soon lost when Theo touched my arm and warned, ‘Leda, you won’t be too upset if they don’t show our film tonight? I see the stage’s menu card says nothing of the promenade.’

          I felt such panic rise inside when I also read that menu card, where every feature mentioned was to be an actual of the town, with titles like A Cliff Top Walk, or A Visit to the Aquarium. But Theo was right. There was no sign of any Brightland Promenade.

           Taking my brother’s hand in mine, I squeezed it hard, and harder still as every moving film was played, and even though each one was short, two or three minutes at the most, for me they seemed to last an age. The lantern’s rattle was too loud. The piano’s notes were jangling. The sneezes, and the hacking coughs. The peanut shells that two old ladies crunched and cracked in seats behind. All that noise! My fraying nerves. I couldn’t begin to enjoy the show ~ until the last film flickered up. The slightest judder of the frame, and then four curling corner scrolls around the fancy title script: A VIEW OF BRIGHTLAND PROMENADE!

          Too soon we saw the words, THE END, and while my brother clapped and whooped I couldn’t move a single inch. I was feeling quite delirious, shivering with excitement, thinking my heart might burst with pride when Papa smiled and gave a sigh, and then his murmur in my ear. ‘Well, I may be biased ... but the very best was saved till last. My daughter was magnificent!’

            ‘Oh, Papa? Was I really?’ It had all been over in a flash. I only wished the frames could roll right back and then run through again, for people in the seats around to look at me and realise that I had been the girl in white whose face filled up the final frames.

        But would they know me anyway? They’d see a girl who’d spent all afternoon in brushing out her hair, a hundred times to make it shine, and nothing like the frizzy mess when she’d been on the promenade. They wouldn’t see the waif and stray dressed in her shabby muslin dress for, very much to my dismay, Mrs C had gone and laundered it. It was dripping on the garden line, and I’d been forced to wear my green. The one she liked to see me in, always saying it suited my colouring. But what an irony it was that, whereas my white was much too large, the green had shrunk when in the wash. The hems too short, the bodice tight … so tight that I could barely breathe when the final curtain fell again, when we sat there waiting patiently for the director to appear, to bow and give a little speech, as was the usual way of things. But no. There was no sign at all of the man who, just the day before, had stood behind his camera in the back of the open horse-drawn cab.

          The theatre’s lights blazed up to leave me standing in a giddy daze while we shuffled through the narrow aisle that led towards the exit doors ... though before we left the foyer to walk back down the pier again, Papa approached the manager (that gentleman well known to him through shared professional ventures, with my father photographing acts for the hall’s publicity and such), and said, after some other chat, ‘If you happen to see Monsieur Beauvois ... the chap who made these actuals ... won’t you tell him I would be so pleased if he’d visit my studio in the Lanes … or if he’d like to come along and dine in Brunswick Crescent. I would also be obliged if you could ask if there might be a chance for me to purchase a copy of the final film. The one called Brightland Promenade.’"


Extract from an unapproved proof copy of The Last Days of Leda Grey.
Copyright Essie Fox.

LIFE IN EDWARDIAN ENGLAND ...

While researching my latest novel, The Last Days of Leda Grey, I read and very much enjoyed Robert Cecil's Life in Edwardian England.

Cecil writes of Queen Victoria's reign as being a time of stability. Even if the 'widow' was often dour, she ruled over an era of great transformation with new inventions and discoveries. A time of great social movement too, with the building of the railroads and the rise in industrialisation. And when she finally came to die Great Britain was in a state of shock, with Henry James and Marie Correlli both quoted as saying the very same words: 'We all feel motherless today.'

King Edward's reign did not start well. On the original Coronation day, 26 June 1902, the king was not in the best of health, later being diagnosed as suffering from appendicitis. The event was postponed until August, by which time everyone in the country was in the mood to celebrate, with the wealthy hosting dinners, and with commoners in the streets and pubs singing songs like 'Dolly Gray', or 'The Honeysuckle and the Bee.'

Edward VII in coronation robes 

Edward's reign was anything but dour. Generous and politically tolerant (if privately known to be prone to foul language and frequent explosions of a bad temper), the king performed well as a diplomat who represented his country abroad. He was not much interested in the worlds of literature or art, but he loved many other pleasures in life. There was hunting and horse racing. There were weekends at country house parties, where his many lovers could be met - with scandals then reported on in the Monday morning newspapers. 

For some this was all too shocking, but the common people loved their king - perhaps because he sometimes strove to live his life as 'one of them'. In the final February of his life he was recognised on Worthing Pier - having dozed off while sitting there, wrapped in a fur coat to keep out the chill. Perhaps it was due to such outdoor pursuits that the king then contracted Bronchitis and died at the age of sixty-eight.

When we look back on Edward's reign it conjures a glamorous picture in which the 'white collar' middle class (who often considered themselves to be above the artisans and craftsmen) lived in airy new-built houses in leafy garden suburbs; where the streets and pavements were well exposed by electric, rather than gas lit lamps. If peeping through windows with lace and plush curtains, their dining tables would be laid with the dishes that wives and servants concocted - with the preparation of recipes sometimes even taking days. There were the fancy restaurants where gourmand dishes were prepared, like The Trocadero, or The Ritz. And then, there was Romano's, where a gentleman might not take his wife...

At Romano's ... Italiano's
It's a Paradise in the Strand
At Romano's - as Papa knows -
Where the wines and the women are grand!

For the poorer folk there was beer, not wine. There were also packs of cigarettes - with women often becoming addicted, though few of them smoked in public. But still, so many people lived in dreary states of penury, with very few luxuries at all. 

                                         Edwardian harvest, from the Heritage Explorer site.

At least, in the countryside, there would be certain times of the year when food was in abundance, with vegetables being freshly grown, and animals reared on nearby farms. But city life was very hard, not to mention the long and arduous hours that many spent in factories. And then there were the mines. The production of coal might well have been the source of vital energy, and the backbone of the economy, but the miners' wages were in decline between 1900 and 1911. 

All across the industrial board wages were stagnating while the cost of living continued to rise. Those who owned their own houses were forced to take in lodgers; who could not afford more than a room, and often had to share that too. It was not at all unusual for every member of a family who happened to be old enough to hold down a job of one type or another; therefore providing a financial buffer against the others falling ill.

There was no social security. Not until 1906 was it a legal necessity for the Workmen's Compensation Act to result in injured employees being supported by their firms. It is also no coincidence that in 1906 there were 692 pawnshops within a radius of ten miles around the London Royal Exchange. 

In 1902, Jack London described the East End as being -

'...the sight of abject poverty, while five minutes walk from almost any point will bring one to a slum; but the region my hansom was now penetrating was one unending slum. The streets were filled with a new and different race of people, short of stature, and of wretched or beer-sodden appearance. We rolled along through miles of ... squalor, and from each cross street and alley flashed long vistas of brick and misery.'

Jack London spoke of viewing the city from the back of a hansom cab, but the Edwardian era also saw the combustion engine, with horse-drawn vehicles travelling alongside brand new motor cars. It wasn't just cars - the earliest of which still had the look of cabs, with chauffeurs sitting high on top. The invention of the pneumatic tire meant that bicycles and tricycles were also very widely used - and by women as well as the gentlemen. This in turn led to changes in fashion, and the introduction of knickbockers: the frilly knee length pairs of drawers that were worn underneath long frocks and skirts.

The use of cars also went on to influence fashions of the times. The large hats that women often wore were replaced by motor bonnets, to protect their hair from gusts of wind. The first vehicles were not enclosed. Often there was no windscreen. So veils or goggles protected the eyes from any grit that was thrown up. Long dust coats in the summer, and leather capes in winter months.

Another form of transport - though more definitely of the leisure type - were the popular hot air balloons, not to mention the airships that then had the additions of propellers and engines. It wasn't very long before aeroplanes were in the skies - with the Wright brothers creating a machine that then 'took off' in every way. In 1909, Louis Bleriot flew a monoplane to make the first Channel crossing - after which the military began to take an interest, with substantial investment funds then being secured in a parliament debate.

And planes would be used in warfare, not that long after Edward's death, when the long 'Edwardian summer' would come to a sudden tragic end and descend into the chaos that we now recall as the First World War.

MAGNUS VOLK'S ELECTRIC RAILWAY IN BRIGHTON

While researching Edwardian history for my novel, The Last Days of Leda Grey, I came across some photographs of an old electric railway. For quite a long time I was going to use those details in the novel's plot, though eventually it turned out to be one of the elements I cut. Still, I think it's a story that should be shared, not least because Volk's Railway still runs on the Brighton seafront today ~ and hopefully will for many years.

Magnus Volk was born on October 19, in the year of 1851. The son of a German clock-maker he was born and raised in Brighton, growing up to make his name as an electrical engineer. He was, as a small aside here, the very first person in Brighton to install electric lights at home. But today, he is most widely known for Volk’s Electric Railway, first opened in 1883 and running along the Brighton front ~ from Black Rock to what was then Chain Pier.

Powered by an electric dynamo (problems could occur when the sea sprayed up and the railway lines became too wet) this narrow gauge seafront railway soon became a popular tourist attraction.

Sadly, the original passenger car ~ which carried up to twelve passengers, had mahogany sides and blue velvet curtains ~ was eventually scrapped, with the damp and the salt in the atmosphere only adding to the general wear and tear. 

The boarding stations changed as well, with the latest constructed in 1998. And at times the railway line has closed - either due to adverse weather conditions, to the building of groynes upon the beach, the construction of the Black Rock Lido, or during the time of World War II when much of the sea front was damaged.

But Volk's old railway carries on. And, more recently, in 2014, the line received a heritage grant which hopefully will now provide the costs of creating a new ticket centre set in the town Aquarium. It will also help with all the work to restore the damaged cars, and the creation of educational material regarding the railway’s history.

In the meantime, for more detailed information and current news about the line, please do take a look at the excellent website: VERA (Volk’s Electric Railway Association).

CLEOPATRA ON THE SILENT SCREEN ...

If you mention Cleopatra today most people will probably recall the glamorous Elizabeth Taylor in her most sensual, voluptuous prime in the 1963 film of that name. 

Earlier, in 1946, Vivien Leigh starred against Claude Raines in Caesar and Cleopatra. 

Before that, in 1934, Claudet Colbert sizzled on the screen in a version by Cecil B. DeMille.

But there were also silent films that depicted the mythical femme fatale, with some of them created at the dawn of the age of cinema - and one of the very earliest was the short French horror, Cleopatre, also known as Robbing Cleopatra’s Tomb.

Directed by Georges Méliès and released in 1899, the plot involves an archeologist who visits a tomb and then disturbs the mummified corpse of an ancient queen, who he goes on to resurrect.

Sadly, that film is now lost to us, as so many early movies are. But we still have records of the work created by Helen Gardner, a seductively beautiful actress who is known as one of the very first ‘vamps’ - not in the sense of a vampire hell-bent on sucking her victims' blood, but because any man would be powerless to resist the danger of her charms.

Having first appeared in films produced for the New York Vitagraph company, Helen Gardner gained some great acclaim when playing the parts of femme fatales, such as Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair - before she then went on to use investment from her mother to start up her own company.

The Helen Gardner Picture Players first created Cleopatra. Based on a play by Victorien Sardou, this lavish black-and-white silent film was released in November 1912. It lasted for just over an hour (which was long by standards at the time) and showed a series of tableaux where the queen is on screen with her various lovers; from the likes of a lowly fisherman slave, to the Roman general, Marc Antony.

The film promoted itself with the line: ‘The most beautiful motion picture ever made.’ And you can still judge for yourself today, with the film being available on various accounts on Youtube.

Theda Bara

Then again you might prefer a film that came a little after that; the one that starred Theda Bara, whose image has very much inspired the fictional Edwardian actress whose story is found in my forthcoming novel, The Last Days of Leda Grey.

Much like my central character, Theda Bara (born in Ohio in 1885 as Theodosia Burr Goodman) had the sort of dark seductive looks that were perfect when she came to play the part of the Serpent of the Nile.

 

The Fox film studio even created a fictional history for their star, who was billed as being the Egyptian-born daughter of a French actress and an Italian sculpter, who had spent many of her childhood years living in the shadow of the Sphinx.

When she starred as Cleopatra, that film version had been inspired by the work of the Victorian novelist, H. Rider Haggard - just as a film in my novel is based on his thrilling adventure story, She.

Theda Bara's film is lost, the last two prints of it being burned in a fire at the Fox studio vaults in 1937. Even so, some fragments do remain, along with stills that clearly show just how glamorous the settings were; not to mention the actress's sex appeal, and the most provocative costumes that some critics called ‘objectionable’. 

The film was heavily censored with scenes being cut where they happened to show a close-up of Bara’s navel, or with her legs or breasts exposed, or embraces that suggested sex.

Coming out in 1917, this scandalous Cleopatra was one of Hollywood’s most sensual films at the time. It was also very elaborate, and to give some idea of its scope and ambition, over 2,000 staff were employed backstage, and it cost around $500,000 - which amounts to many millions now.

If only we could see it, but some fragments on Youtube must suffice - along with all the remaining stills that go some way to show us just how alluring Theda Bara was.