'A Happy Accident of War' by Karen Maitland

Daffodils in the hedgerow in Tamar Valley
Photo:Tony Atkin

‘Daffy-down-dilly is new come to town, with a yellow petticoat, and a green gown.’

A traditional nursery rhyme recorded in Songs for the Nursery, 1805

Daffy-down-dilly, is an old name for the daffodil dating back to 1500’s. Other ancient English names for the flower were affodil, affodilly, dilly, daff-a-down-dilly or the Lent lily. And, if you are lucky enough to find yourself in the beautiful Tamar Valley on the border of Devon and Cornwall at this time of year, you will discover that the high banks that line the narrow winding lanes around the villages of Weir Quay and Bere Alston are bursting with daffodils. Not just the plain yellow ones you might expect, but white ones too, and double blooms with twisted petals, or vivid orange trumpets. Between February and May, you can spot as many as 15 different varieties growing wild in the hedgerows and woods there, a riot of perfumed flowers – all as a result of a happy accident from a much darker time in world history.

Wild Daffodil known as the 'Lent Lily'
Photo: Meneerke bloem

As early as 1597, John Gerard noted in his herbal, ‘Historie of Plants’ that ‘The common wilde Daffodill growth wilde in fields and sides of woods in the West parts of England.’ But he added that, unlike the ancient Greek nymphs who went out to gather wild daffodils, Londoners had no need to seek out the wild ones, since daffodils grew ‘in great aboundance’ in London gardens.

But in the sheltered and sunny Tamar valley of Devon, daffodils came into bloom much earlier than the rest of England, not that this was much use to the locals. You can’t eat daffodils and in fact, country folk were wary about even bringing them into the house. There was an old superstition in Devon that if these flowers were brought inside, no ducks would be hatched that year on that farm. On the Isle of Man, daffodils in the house would prevent geese hatching and if daffodils were brought indoors when hens were sitting on eggs in Hertfordshire, it was said no chicks would hatch. 

Flower Women of Covent Garden 
Photo: LSE Library
From 'Street Life in London, 1877
By John Thomson & Adolphe Smith

But by the 19th century, gardens had become a luxury in London and in the other rapidly expanding and overcrowded industrial towns and few city dwellers hatched their own poultry. So, the scented golden daffodils, far from being ‘unlucky’, were prized in the soot-caked towns as welcome sign of spring. Enterprising Devonians began to gathered both wild and cultivated blooms which they sent down the Tamar River by ‘market boat’ to the great port of Plymouth, where the wives of merchants had money enough to spare for such luxuries. 

But with the building of the railways across England, suddenly a very large and lucrative market for daffodils opened up. From 1865 onwards, daffodils grown in the warm fields of the Tamar could be taken by river boat to the railway stations and thence by train to Covent Garden market in London. So, more and more fields were planted up with this botanical gold.

Bere Alston Station, Devon 1930
Photo: Roger Griffith

So, important was the trade that in 1890, a railway station was built at the village of Bere Alston where daffodils and other market garden produce could be loaded directly on to trains for London, eliminating the need to carry them down river by boat. This ensured the blooms reached London faster and in better condition. 

Many different varieties were cultivated in the Tamar valley to extend the flowering season. One, known as the ‘Whitsun Lily’ because it blooms late in May, was a beautiful double white blossom, which had been discovered in a local hedge in 1880, and was so prized in London it was transported packed in boxes lined with blue tissue paper to help preserve its strong sweet perfume.

Maximus superbus
Photo: Uleli

Some varieties they grew were old and native to England, such as the daffodil now known Maximus superbus, a large yellow trumpet with twisted petals which was has been recorded since the mid-16th century. Perhaps Shakespeare was thinking of this one when he wrote in The Winter’s Tale (1610) - ‘Daffodils that come before the swallow dares and take the winds of March with beauty.’ (take is used here in the Elizabethan sense, meaning to ‘enchant’ or ‘bewitch’) 

But the Tamar farmers began to try other varieties too, such as Van Sion, a double star-shaped daffodil developed by a Flemish man recorded as living in London in 1620. In fact – whisper this if you dare – some Devonians even lay claim to making the sweet-scented daffodil a more popular button-hole for the Welsh on St David’s Day than the pungent leek, when a Devon engineer discovered the pretty yellow daffodil known as Sir Watkin in 1810, and introduced it to Wales.

The daffodil business was blooming. But in 1939, came disaster in the form of the World War II. Britain could no longer rely on imported food. All over country, flowers and lawns in parks and gardens were dug up and the land re-planted with food crops. The daffodil fields of the Tamar could not be spared. The bulbs were torn up. But what to do with them? Daffodil bulbs are poisonous so they could not be fed to livestock, but the fields needed to be cleared swiftly. So, the bulbs were dumped in the surrounding hedgerows to rot. But some took root and began to naturalize – rays of golden sunshine in the darkest hours of the war. 

Ice Follies 
Photo: Phil Sangwell

After the war, bulb fields were once again planted, some with new varieties such as the white Ice Follies brought over from the Netherlands in 1953, as a vigorous grower. But as country railway lines and stations were closed, the trade never thrived again in the Tamar as it had before the war, and when rail transport for daffodils finally ended in 1969, the Ice Follies too were dug up and tossed into the hedges and verges. But like their older cousins, these daffodils still run wild in valley, bringing joy.

In some of the former fields left to pasture,
the daffodils still come up each spring.
Photo: Tony Atkin
geograph.org.uk

If you discover a daffodil growing wild and want to know if it is one of the old varieties, a rough guide is that those which existed before 1890, have thin, twisted or rolled petals which are separated at the base, and often twisted leaves too. Varieties developed since 1890 have broader flatter petals that overlap at the base. Enjoy your dilly spotting this spring!

Small boats in the English Channel by Janie Hampton

Refugees in small boats are much in the news, with governments determined to stop them coming, send them back, or keep them incarcerated in camps. In the summer of 1940, there were refugees in small boats in the English Channel. This is the story of one such refugee family.

Amsterdam, early 20th Century

The Kleins were a hard-working, bourgeois, Jewish family with a comfortable home in Amsterdam. When on 10 May, 1940, the German army invaded Holland, Simon and Maria Klein knew they had to leave everything behind.

Simon had already been a refugee twice. Born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in about 1900, his parents sent him to Leipzig to escape conscription, and a few years later his relations told him to go to Holland. ‘The land of the free,’ they said. He found work in a firm of tailors’ accessories and married the owner’s niece, Maria. As the representative of “Double-weave underwear” Simon took Maria to Germany but after a few years they returned to The Netherlands with their two small children. ‘In Amsterdam nobody took any notice what religion you were,’ remembered their daughter Josephine. ‘Whether you were Jewish or gentile didn’t make any difference.’

In the late 1930s cousins from Germany stayed with the Kleins en route for America, travelling on through Belgium and France. But by May 1940, that route was blocked.

German soldiers in Amsterdam, May 1940. 

Josephine, 13, and her brother Eli, 15, were asleep on the night of 14 May 1940, when their mother told them to dress quickly and grab their gas masks. With their uncle Ralph, the Klein family took a taxi twenty miles west to the fishing town of Ijmuiden. In the dark harbour, crowds of people were trying to get away from the advancing German army. Mr Klein had struck a deal with a man who owned a small rowing boat, and then given extra money for water and food. The Kleins climbed on board, as more people swarmed down the steps and jumped in.

It was soon full but even so, there were more desperate people. ‘Take me…’ ‘For mercy’s sake, take my son!’ ‘Let my wife come with you!’

German invasion 1940, from The Second
World  War, W. Churchill, 1948.

As Mr Klein pushed off, tears were streaming down his face. The boat was about 15 foot long, and there was only just room to sit down. None of the dozen people on board were sailors, so Eli and another boy, both Boy Scouts, took the oars. As they rowed into the dark water they could see the flashes of guns behind the town of Ijmuiden. Mr Klein’s plan was to row out to sea, where they would be picked up by a passing ship.

Day came, and night again, and another day, with a rising wind at night and waves that crashed against the boat. They had been tricked and they had only one orange between them and a small tank of water, which they drank from a thimble. There were no passing ships.

On the third morning Josephine noticed the water rising in the boat, and quickly used her gas-mask box to bail out the sea water. The next day they sighted land. They believed they had rowed the hundred miles to the east coast of England. But they had simply drifted down the coast of Holland, towards another invaded port, possibly The Hague. Starving and parched with thirst, the Kleins and their passengers turned out towards the open sea again, and kept bailing.

Dunkirk in 1940

 As a Girl Guide, Josephine had learned to read the stars and she worked out North . But no-one had the energy to row, as they drifted in the English Channel. She tried to get the others to sing Guide songs but everyone was too thirsty. The days were hot for May, and the nights were pitch-dark. Twice they saw aeroplanes. One open plane dipped towards them and the pilot pointed with his arm towards England. They couldn’t lie down and sea water sloshed in the bottom of the boat. An  elderly couple sat up straight as if on a bus, and never spoke a word.

More than week after they left Holland, a British destroyer sighted the tiny boat. By then they were semi-conscious, and their feet were swollen from the sea water.  The British sailors carried them on board and they were taken to a hospital in Maidstone. The hospitals in Kent were all on stand-by for the imminent evacuation from Dunkirk: fully staffed but still empty.

The Kleins were soon recovering from ‘trench foot’ and when the evacuation  from Dunkirk began, they were sent to a refugee hostel in Chelsea filled with Belgian fishing families and run by English lady aristocrats.

Other refugees from The Netherlands in London, May 1940. Princess Juliana of the Netherlands pushing her daughter Princess Irene, with her heir Princess Beatrix beside her. Her friend Elizabeth Van Swinderen points out London barrage balloons.

The Kleins wanted to go to America, but they couldn’t get passports, so they settled in Chester. They were welcomed by neighbours with fresh vegetables, school uniforms and support. Josephine made friends through the local Girl Guides and then the Sea Rangers. European Girl Guides arriving in Britain were called not ‘Refugee Guides’, but ‘Golondrinas’, or ‘Swallows’.

Josephine Klein wrote Our Need for Others 

and Its Roots in Infancy, 1987,  and 

Doubts & Certainties in  the Practice 

of Psychotherapy, 1995. . 

After she left school, Josephine read French and Sociology at the University of London, became a social worker and then a psychotherapist and co-founder of the Refugee Therapy Centre in London. Eli joined the British army, and then went into business, married happily and had three children.

When refugees arrived in Britain in small boats 75 years ago, they were welcomed. Nobody described the men who sold the boats as ‘people traffickers’, nor the refugees as ‘illegal immigrants’. They too were escaping war and persecution, just as people from Syria and Mali are today. The 20^th Century refugees contributed to Britain, and helped make it the country it now is.

www.janiehampton.co.uk   @janieoxford

HIDDEN IN PLAIN VIEW by Karen Maitland

Entrance to the synagogue on Rhodes
Photo: Wkinght94

In recent months the attention of Europe’s finance ministers has been focused on Greece and I was delighted to see a letter in the national papers signed by authors and academics reminding the world of the huge legacy Greece has bequeathed to the world, from art and architecture to science, maths, astronomy, philosophy and literature. But we forget it gave us something else too. In spite of the periods of bitter civil war, there have been many centuries when Greece and Greek island people have shown us how it is possible for communities from different religions and backgrounds to live together in peace and tolerance, and with compassion for one another.

On holiday in the Greek Islands last summer, with five minutes to spare before the bus left, I managed to find the Square of the Martyred Jews in Rhodes city and, wandering into the street behind it, stumbled across one of the loveliest synagogues I’ve ever visited – Kahal Kadosh Shalom (Holy Congregation of Peace). Built in 1577, it is thought to be the oldest surviving synagogue in Greece still in use. I managed to return a few days later and spend several hours looking round the synagogue which has beautiful mosaic floor made from sea-pebbles and an amazing Jewish museum.

The Palace of the Grand Masters, Rhodes

Jewish presence on the island of Rhodes dates back to 2nd century BCE and is mentioned in the book of Maccabees. In 1500, the Grand Master of the Knights Templars expelled the Jewish community living on the island. But in 1522, Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire invited Jews to come to Rhodes and start a new community. Many of the Jews who came were Sephardim fleeing the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition and they found a life of peace and acceptance on the island, developing their own unique form of music and song which is heard nowhere else. By 1920’s, the Jewish population on Rhodes was around 4,500 people worshipping in six synagogues.

But in 1944, the island was occupied by the Nazis and on 23rd July, a roundup of Jews began with 1673 Jews arrested and deported to Auschwitz. Only 150 survived the death camp. Today only a few Jewish families still live on Rhodes.

Interior of the Rhodes synagogue. Photo by Sailko

But through the darkness of that dreadful time, two stories from that period blaze with light. In 1944, when the Rabbi of the synagogue realised the Jews were about to be rounded up, he was fearful for the safety of their 800 year old Torah scroll and other holy manuscripts, so he took them to a close Muslim friend of his on the island - the Mufti of Rhodes. The Muslim leader said that it gave him the greatest joy in the world to cradle the precious sefer torah in his arms, and he laid it in the one place he knew the Nazis would never look for a Jewish scroll – the pulpit of the mosque! There it remained safely hidden in plain view for the whole of the war, until finally it could be restored to the Jewish Community. You can still see it in the synagogue today.

Interior of the synagogue on Rhodes showing the
floor mosaic of pebbles. Photo by Sailko

The second story concerns Bey Selahattin Ulkumen, the Muslim Consul-General of Turkey, who risked much to rescue 39 Jews from Rhodes and 13 from Cos who would otherwise have been deported to Auschwitz. In 1990, in gratitude and recognition for the Jewish lives he saved, B’nai B’rith and Yad Vashem declared him ‘Righteous among the Nations’. When the Muslim leader was asked why he had done it he simply said ‘I have to do my duty for my people and the Jews of Rhodes are my people.’

If you find yourself in the city of Rhodes this summer you can take a fascinating tour of the ancient Jewish quarter either doing it yourself using the guide book on sale in the synagogue shop or as a historical walk led by a member of the congregation. But even if you don’t have time for that, do stop in at the synagogue which is open all throughout the summer for tourists and visitors. You’ll be assured of the warmest of welcomes.

Procrastination and Hedgerow Jelly by Janie Hampton

While thinking about my blog for History Girls, my mind wandered and I looked out of the window.

What did I see?

The view from my study

A reason to leave my desk - my vegetable bed was calling out to be hoed. This was an ideal opportunity for procrastination. Without my immediate intervention the as-yet-inedible beetroot had only hours to live.  The tiny seedlings would soon get smothered in giant horrible weeds. So out into the garden I went, picked up the hoe, and noticed it needed sharpening. Looked for the sharpening stone, I wondered what the proper name for a sharpening stone is. 

As I spotted it on the shed shelf, I remembered it is a whetstone, spelled with an ‘h’. Is that to do with water or something quite different? Made mental note to look it up.  Sharpened hoe. On the way down the garden path I noticed the courgettes needed watering.  So the hose had to be untangled. And on it went- one procrastination opportunity surpassing the last. By lunchtime I had found the whetstone, sharpened the hoe, sliced through several rows of weeds, watered the courgettes, and the beans for good measure, put the garden tools in a neat row, and even swept the ground beneath them. I’d also learned that whet is from the Anglo-Saxon whaet, meaning keen or bold which led to sharpen or stimulate (as in ‘appetite’.) But I was still no further on with my blog.

I am skilled in the art of procrastination, defined as  'putting off,  delaying,  deferring,  postponing, especially something that requires immediate attention.’ Crastimus is the Latin for ‘pertaining to tomorrow’ – and we all know that tomorrow never comes. It’s the Roman equivalent of ‘manana’. Synonyms include ‘dithering, stalling, delaying tactics and vacillations’, to which I would add ’seeking out distractions, around any corner.’ 

I suspect that most History Girls and our readers indulge in various levels of procrastination, and can spot a handy distraction a mile off.  The most rewarding kinds of procrastination for writers are those that somehow connect to the writing one is supposed to be doing.  While researching my book ‘How the Girl Guides Won the War’, I found a Second World War recipe that took procrastination to new levels. In one fell swoop, I could procrastinate and be ‘researching’ my book at the same time: the recipe demonstrated the historical economics of food rationing, the philosophy of Make Do and Mend and offered an opportunity to practice Real History. And unlike most procrastinations and distractions, there is something delicious to eat at the end.

Hedgerow Jelly - free from a hedge near you

Find some hedges in late August or September, preferably containing many varieties of fruit-bearing bush.

Blackberries in July, waiting for you.

Harvest the fruit on your own and the time spent is both ‘exercise’ (walking along a hedgerow) and ‘work’ (you are silent, so obviously thinking important thoughts). If this stretches your conscience too far, then go with some friends as ‘recreation’ - an essential time of ‘re-making your creativity’. Wander  down lanes in the countryside, or  seek out rogue wild bushes in parks and along footpaths in cities. Carry a woven basket for authenticity, or a cotton bag for Green credentials, or a plastic supermarket bag for practicality.

Pick as many berries as you can find, or can be bothered to pick, or can carry. Mix together hawthorn, rose hips, elderberries, both black and red blackberries (red contain more pectin which helps jelly to set), crab apples, wild gooseberries and raspberries. Do not include holly, ivy, privet, yew nor deadly nightshade – they are all poisonous.

The Army & Navy Stores Catalogue of 1940 had all the equipment needed for jam-making

After washing them in a colander, boil up the berries together in a little water until soft, and then mash them up a bit.  Then put into some clean, old tights, and hang from the back of a chair over a large bowl to drip overnight. If you wish to remain historically accurate, use cotton muslin or an old, clean tea towel. In the morning, or after a few hours, squeeze the tights (or muslin) to get out all the juice.  Put the seedy pulp into the compost, or feed to wild birds or your chickens.

For every pint of thick red juice, add one pound of sugar. In a big jam-pan, boil up until the jelly reaches a lovely rolling setting point - drop a blob on a bottle from the fridge. If it sets like jelly, stop cooking. Don’t let it burn. With practice, you can tell when it’s ready: the boiling jelly rolls at a certain speed and plays a certain note.

Delicious and healthy jelly to be proud of

Pour into very clean glass jars, or tea cups if you don’t have enough jars. Put circles of greaseproof paper on the surface of the jelly, and screw on a metal lid while still hot. For presents, add circles of dress fabric or old shirts, tied with brown string. You can use ribbon, but it is a bit twee.

Make labels that say ‘Best War-time Hedgerow Jelly, 2015’. Then get back to work.

During breaks, eat this delicious, clear, red jelly with bread, or meat, or cheese. Or put some in hot water on cold winter days to remind you of sunnier times.

         After your berry-picking walk, sit down with a friend and chat to a squirrel.

If you don’t manage to make this jam this year, then don’t worry, next year will do instead. It’s a deadline that you are allowed to miss.

www.janiehampton.co.uk  Photos copyright Janie Hampton 

Memory and Humanity, by Clare Mulley

In 1939 Dame Stephanie Shirley’s father, a distinguished German judge, tried to prepare his daughters for a new life in England by teaching them some useful phrases. ‘Slow-combustion-cooker’ was one. Another was ‘wined-screen-wiper’. Stephanie was five years old; her elder sister, Renate, was nine. The girls were leaving Vienna on one of the kindertransport trains bringing Jewish children out to London Liverpool Street Station. They did not know anyone else, they did not even know how to ask for the loo, but they made it to England, sleeping on corrugated cardboard laid out the floor, or sometimes in luggage racks, occasionally frightened by interruptions from uniformed guards, and remembering above all the oily smell of the sea and the nauseous night crossing. When they arrived at Liverpool Street station, ‘we spilled out, speechless and wide-eyed, as if in a dream’. Each child had a luggage label around their neck, as if they were lost luggage, ‘which in a sense we were’, she says.

Stephanie in the 1940s
(Courtesy of Dame Stephanie Shirley)

Yesterday marked the 70^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Russian Red Army - now Holocaust Memorial Day - and Dame Stephanie was speaking at London’s Wiener Library, the world’s oldest Holocaust archive, under the theme of ‘Keeping the Memory Alive’. For Dame Stephanie, memory has proved complex. Arriving at such a young age, her memories of her journey and arrival are emotional as well as factual. Was the platform really silent, as she remembers but now doubts it could have been? Were the trains really sealed, as she has read, although she recalls one boy being repeatedly sick outside?

Dame Stephanie Shirley, Weiner Library, London
for World Holocaust Day 2015
(Courtesy of the Weiner Library)

More than this, while Dame Stephanie vividly remembers her father’s last attempts to teach them a little English, perhaps as much as a distraction during their desperate farewell as anything else, she found that in England she soon ‘deliberately forgot’ her German. She quickly bonded with her warm foster family, her aunty and uncle – people who did not know her but had saved her and her sister, and who joyfully took on the role of parents. Brought up within the Church of England, she now has no faith. Incredibly, both her Jewish father and Gentile mother survived the war, but although Dame Stephanie spent time with them individually, she did not live with them again. In 1951, she and her mother adopted an English name when they took British citizenship – choosing Brooke after the quintessentially English poet. ‘I found that name change empowering', Dame Stephanie says, and so much did she inhabit her new name that once, when post arrived under her German name, she had reached the second flight of stairs to her apartment before she realized it was meant for her. As an adult she even found herself giving 1939 as her date of birth on official forms, ‘entirely subconsciously’.

Since then Dame Stephanie has taken steps to remember her past. She, her sister and mother returned to Vienna to meet old friends. Their mother had sentimental memories of the city, but Dame Stephanie found strangers asking her whether she was from the camps - so rare was it to see a Jewish face. At that point she knew that Vienna meant nothing to her, and ‘felt the weight of the past vanish’. She and her sister passed time wondering, as people walked by, ‘what were you doing when they threw stones at me’.

Dame Stephanie vowed to make hers ‘a life worth saving’. Brilliant at maths and business and fascinated by computers she set up a pioneering software company. Seeing the numbers of women now out of work, she promoted innovative home-working and flexible hours for an all-female workforce. She gave 25% of her company to the team, and they built it together, until in 2001 many were millionaires and Dame Stephanie herself was on the Sunday Times female rich list, just a few places below the Queen. She is no longer on that list. She reinvested over £15 million in IT and donated £50 million to autism organizations, following the death of her only son who was autistic.

Dame Stephanie is proud of her Jewish heritage but chose to become aligned not with refugee organizations or Jewish groups, but with IT development and autism, the passions of her life. She has chosen her own identity, but that does not mean she wishes to forget her past or has a simplistic view of who she is. When asked why she did not choose to live in Israel she has replied that she is not Jewish. When asked why she does not visit as a tourist, she says she feels she cannot go as a tourist because she also is Jewish.

Dame Stephanie says her terror of persecution was deep-rooted. For a long time she felt such hatred, bound up with survivors’ guilt, that she could not revisit her past. But although seeing images of Auschwitz are still almost more than she can bear, last night she said that, ‘Germany has made impressive efforts to come clean with its Nazi past’ and ‘it is precisely for people like me to reach out’.

Dame Stephanie's autobiography, Let IT Go
(Courtesy of Dame Stephanie Shirley)

It is important both to honour the memory of those killed, of those who resisted, and those who had no such opportunity, and also to work towards preventing the repetition of atrocities. Another former kindertransport veteran at the Wiener Library event told me that Hitler had been encouraged by the lack of international memory of the Turkish genocide of the Armenians in 1915. Remembering makes repetition less possible.

Dame Stephanie's life talks of courage, determination, identity and above all humanity. Asked about growing anti-Semitism she talks also about rising anti-Muslim feeling, and her opinion that that some politicians are doing Britain ‘an enormous disservice’ by pushing anti-immigration. ‘My own belief,’ she told me at the end of the talk, ‘is that people are people, and most people are just trying to get on with their own lives’. What we need to do is take small steps against intolerance.

Not so long ago, Dame Stephanie, now in her 80s, was driving through the countryside when she saw a large swastika painted on a barn. Her first reaction was horror, a rush of painful memories. Her second was to find the farmer and explain how this graffiti made her feel, and how important it was to get it removed. The farmer did not consider it his responsibility. She then went to the local police station with similar lack of result. Finally she bought a large tin of paint, got up at 4am the next morning, and went and painted over it herself. I will remember her example.