The Cape Breton coal strike of 1981 was a strike by coal miners belonging to the United Mine Workers of America against the Cape Breton Development Corporation (DEVCO) of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. The strike, which was bitter and violent, began in the middle of July 1981, and ended in early October of that year.

Historical Context

Coal miners in Nova Scotia were first organized by the Provincial Workmen’s Association (PWA) in 1897. The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) attempted to organize the miners and supplant the PWA in 1908. The two unions fought for control, but in 1917 joined forces and formed the Amalgamated Mine Workers of Nova Scotia. The Amalgamated affiliated fully with UMWA a year later. Miners were represented continuously by UMWA over the next 80 years.

Strikes during this period were exceedingly rare. Nevertheless, major work stoppages occurred in 1920s. In 1920, the British Empire Steel Corporation (BESCO) took ownership of all gold, silver and coal mines in Nova Scotia. UMWA and BESCO had an extremely adversarial relationship. After BESCO slashed wages by a third in 1922, 12,000 outraged union members struck. Twelve hundred cavalry troops were sent to Cape Breton to keep order, and machine gun nests were set up to protection BESCO property. After eight months, BESCO agreed to cut wages by only 18 percent—an agreement neither side was very happy with.

During a steelworkers’ strike in the summer of 1923, mounted provincial police attacked a crowd of women and children on July 1, 1923 in what became known as Bloody Sunday. The miners’ union struck in protest. Federal troops were called in to break both strikes. Six months later, when the miners’ contract expired, BESCO proposed wage cuts totaling 20 percent. The union struck again, and a new contract restoring the wage cut was reached in April 1924.

Battle of Waterford Lake

Then on March 6, 1925, UMWA struck again, this time to win a wage increase to restore income to its 1922 levels. Twelve thousand miners walked out. BESCO police began terrorizing citizens in mining towns throughout the province, charging even small groups of people on horseback and beating anyone they caught. BESCO, which owned most of the electrical utilities and grocery stores in the mining towns, cut off credit. By June, thousands of families were on the verge of starvation. On June 11, approximately 3,000 men and boys gathered in the town of New Waterford and marched on the city’s BESCO-owned power plant, determined to restore water and power service to their homes. The strikers and their supporters were confronted by 100 mounted, armed police. In what became known as the “Battle of Waterford Lake”, the crowd attacked. Several policemen fired into the crowd, hitting three. Gilbert Watson and Michael O’Handley were wounded, but William Davis died from a bullet in the heart. Several days of rioting followed, and more than 2,000 Canadian Army soldiers were sent to the province on July 16, 1925, to restore order. It was the second-largest domestic use of military force in Canadian history (only the use of the Army during the North-West Rebellion in 1885 was larger). In the 1925 provincial election, Edgar Nelson Rhodes, a Conservative, was elected Premier of Nova Scotia. Rhodes quickly negotiated a temporary settlement of the strike under which a Royal Commission would investigate the dispute. A tentative settlement on the union’s terms was reached in August. Despite a brief resumption of strike activity on August 5, the strike ended on August 9, 1925.

The strike broke BESCO. The company was reorganized, and emerged in 1927 as the Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation. Technological innovation, the difficulty of mining coal (coal in Nova Scotia was increasingly mined from veins under the sea floor), and the availability of natural gas (piped in from oil fields in the West) led to rapid decreases in the amount of coal mined as well as the number of miners. The economic viability of the Nova Scotia mines declined significantly. In 1967, the Parliament of Canada nationalized the Cape Breton mines. The Cape Breton Development Corporation (DEVCO), a public company owned by the Government of Canada, took ownership of the mines.

Strike

On July 17, 1981, 3,500 miners in the Cape Breton coal fields went on strike against DEVCO. The miners sought a 60 percent wage increase over two years. It was the first strike since nationalization of the mines in 1967. But after a three-month-long strike in the United States in the spring of 1981, UMWA had little money left in the international union’s strike fund. The Nova Scotia miners were deeply angered that UMWA was unable to support their strike. To suppor the strike effort, the local union organized a United Mine Workers Wives Association to raise funds and provide food, financial support, and other charity for strikers’ families.

The 13-week strike was a bitter one. When the Cabinet of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau met in Sydney, Nova Scotia, in early September 1981, striking miners forced their way onto the airport tarmac and cornered Finance Minister Allan MacEachen and External Affairs Minister Mark MacGuigan to demand an end to the strike. Three federal mediators attempted to negotiate an end to the strike, and three times the miners rejected tentative contracts (the last one proposing a 50 percent wage hike over three years).

Vandalism against company property began in August, and quickly escalated. In mid-September, a bomb was detonated at a DEVCO mine, and DEVCO coal rail cars derailed at the company’s Lingan mine in New Waterford.

A fourth federal mediator arrived just days after the bombings. The strike finally ended on October 3, 1981, with a tentative agreement which raised wages 50 percent over two years. The pact was ratified by the union a few days later.

Aftermath

Seething over the international union’s inability to fund the strike, dissident miners attempted to organize their own union with the help and support of the Confederation of Canadian Unions (CCU). The attempt to decertify the United Mine Workers and replace it with a new union was part of a larger movement among Canadian labour unions to split away from their parent “international” unions in the U.S. Widespread discontent existed over the amount of dues sent to international union headquarters in America (many Canadian unions called them “profits”) and the relatively minor attention given to the problems of Canadian workers in return.

The CCU founded the Canadian Mineworkers Union, and began an organizing campaign in late 1981. In a federally-supervised union election in March 1983, the miners voted 1,750 to 1,393 against affiliating with the CMU. CMU forced a second election in March 1984, but the miners rejected disaffiliation a second time by a vote of 1,795 to 1,242. CMU’s support declined quickly thereafter, as miners became disenchanted with the constant campaigning for votes. UMWA was never challenged again, and continued to represent miners on Cape Breton Island for the next 17 years.

The economic viability of the Cape Breton coal mines continued to decline, however. DEVCO closed all mines in 2001, and the local UMWA union disbanded.

Filed under: Canada, Canadian History, Geology, History, Nova Scotia Tagged: Canada, Canadian History, Geology, History, Nova Scotia ]]> http://exequy.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/the-cape-breton-coal-strike-of-1981/feed/ 0 exequy Cape_Breton_coal_miner http://exequy.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/burying-the-hatchet-ceremony/ http://exequy.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/burying-the-hatchet-ceremony/#comments Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:02:10 +0000 exequy http://exequy.wordpress.com/?p=4000 ]]>

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The Burying the Hatchet Ceremony happened in Nova Scotia on June 25, 1761 and successfully ended a period of protracted warfare, which had lasted over seventy-five years and encompassed six wars, between the Mi’kmaq people and the British. The Burying the hatchet Ceremony was the culmination of a negotiated treaty that created an enduring peace and a commitment to obey the rule of law.

Despite the intentions of the British dignitaries who attended the ceremony and helped draft the treaty, many of the Treaty commitments were ignored by local settlers who migrated onto Mi’kmaq and Maliseet territories. Twenty-five years after the ceremony, some warfare returned as Maliseet and Mikmaq communities joined Americans against the British in the American Revolution.

Nova Scotians celebrate the Treaties of 1760-61 every year on Treaty Day (October 1).

The northeastern region of North American, encompassing New England and Acadia/Mi’kma’ki, increasingly became an area of conflict between the expanding French and British Empires. Expansion by both Empires, over a seventy-five-year period, through six wars brought the Mi’kmaq and Acadians into conflict with British New Englanders.

Frontier warfare against families was the Wabanaki Confederacy and New England approach to warfare since King William’s War began in 1688. Over this seventy-five years, there was a long history of the Wabanaki Confederacy (which included the Mi’kmaq) killing British civilians along the New England/ Acadia border in Maine.

In an effort to prevent these French and Wabanaki massacres of British subjects, many Massachusetts Governors, issued a bounty for the scalps of men, women, and children of the Wabanaki Confederacy. During Father Le Loutre’s War, Edward Cornwallis followed New England’s example when, after the Raid on Dartmouth (1749), he attempted to protect the first British settlers in Nova Scotia from being scalped by putting a bounty on the Mi’kmaq (1749).

During the final period of this conflict, the French and Indian War, French Officers, Mi’kmaq and Acadians carried out military strikes against the British, particularly after the deportation of the Acadians and the bounty proclamation of 1756. The Mi’kmaq and their French allies conducted the Northeastern Coast Campaign (1755) in Maine and extended this campaign into Nova Scotia, attacking civilians during the raids on Lunenburg. Following the British capture of Louisbourg in 1758, Quebec in 1759, and Montreal in 1760, French imperial power was destroyed in North America. With the loss of their French ally the Mi’kmaq recognized the need for a new relationship with the British.

There were various treaties signed with other tribes of the Mi’kmaq and Maliseet before the formal burying the hatchet ceremony. On 11 feb 1760, two tribes of the Passamaquoddy and St. John River came to Halifax with Colonel Arbuthnot and appeared before council, renewing the treaty of 1725, giving hostages or their good behavior. Truck houses for trade were established at Fort Frederick. Two days later, on Feb 13, a treaty was ratified with Roger Morris and one of the Mi’kmaq chiefs. The following month, 10 March 1760. Three Mi’kmaq chiefs Paul Laret, (LaHave); Michael Austine (Richibucto); Calude Renie (Cheboudie and Musquodoboit) made a treaty. The treaties continued even after the formal ceremony: on 15 October 1761, Jannesvil Peitougashwas (Pictock and Malogomish) made a treaty.

Former ally of Father Le Loutre, French priest Pierre Maillard accepted an invitation from Nova Scotia Governor Charles Lawrence to travel to Halifax and assist in negotiating with the Mi’kmaq peoples. He became a British official (“Government Agent to the Indians”, with an annual salary of £150). He asked for (and received) permission to maintain an oratory at a Halifax battery, where he held Catholic services for Acadians and Mi’kmaqs in the area. In his official capacity Maillard was able to obtain agreement from most of the tribal chiefs to sign peace treaties with the British in Halifax.

The Ceremony

On June 25, 1761, a “Burying of the Hatchet Ceremony” was held at Governor Jonathan Belcher’s garden on present-day Spring Garden, Halifax in front of the Court House.

Representing the colony were Belcher and four members of the Nova Scotia Council: Richard Bulkley, John Collier, Joseph Gerrish, and Alexander Grant. Also present were Admiral Lord Colville, commander-in-chief of British naval forces in North America, Major-General John Henry Bastide, the chief engineer in Nova Scotia and Colonel William Forster, the commander of Nova Scotia’s army regiments. These three men were accompanied by a detachment of soldiers.

There were at least four Mi’kmaq chiefs that signed the treaty: Jeannot Peguidalonet (representing Cape Breton), Claude Atouach (Shediac), Joseph Sabecholouet (Miramichi), and Aikon Ashabuc (Pokemouche). Representatives from other villages were also present at the treaty signing.

The occasion was one of “great pomp and ceremony”. The two parties faced each other near a British flag. French priest Pierre Maillard was in the middle acting as the interpreter. Belcher promised the crown would protect the Mi’kmaq from unscrupulous traders, protect their religion and not interfere with Catholic missionaries living among them. Belcher gave presents to each chief along with medals that were passed down through generations as testimony to the words that bound their people to uphold the peace. Both Belcher and the chiefs then moved to the flag post, where Belcher and the chiefs formally buried the hatchet.

One of the Mi’kmaq Chiefs declared that “he now buried the hatchet on behalf of himself and his whole tribe, a token of their submission and of their having made peace.” The Chief of the Cape Breton Mi’kmaq’s declared: “As long as the Sun and the Moon shall endure, as long as the Earth on which I dwell shall exist in the same State as you this day, with the Laws of your Government, faithful and obedient to the Crown”.

At the same time the hatchet was being buried, the Chiefs went through the ceremony of washing the paint from their bodies in token of hostilities being ended. The whole ceremony was concluded by all present drinking to the king’s health. The stone Halifax Provincial Court (Spring Garden Road) now stands beside the spot of the burial, a symbol of peace and the rule of law.

Aftermath

The British were relieved that a peace was reached. The vicar at St. Paul’s Church, Thomas Wood, praised Father Maillard for his efforts in negotiating it when he wrote, “Thanks to [Maillard] many Englishmen were saved from being massacred.” The Mi’kmaq retained a strong sense of themselves as a separate people. They still had their own language, a distinct material culture, trial institutions, and a spiritual life informed by Mi’kmaq tradition and an ongoing attachment to the Catholic Church, despite British attempts to converted them to Protestantism in the 1750s. The disrespect they often received from British colonists only served to emphasize their status as a separate nation.

According to historian John G. Reid, the treaties of 1760-61, while they contain statement of Mi’kmaw submission to the British crown, what is known of the surrounding discussions, combined with the strong evidence of later Mi’kmaw statements, indicates that a friendly and reciprocal relationship was the real intent. The Mi’kmaw leaders who came initially to Halifax in 1760 had clear goals that centred on the making of peace, the establishment of a secure and well-regulated trade in commodities such as furs, and an ongoing friendship with the British crown. In return, they offered their own friendship and a tolerance of limited British settlement, although without any formal land surrender. To fulfill the friendly and reciprocal intent of the treaties, further British settlement of land would need to be negogiated and, in exchange for sharing the land, presents would be given to the Mi’kmaq. The documents summarizing the peace agreements failed to establish specific territorial limits on the expansion of British settlements, but they assured the Mi’kmaq access to the natural resources that had long sustained them along the regions’ coasts and in the woods.

As the New England Planters and United Empire Loyalists began to arrive in the Mi’kmaki in greater numbers, economic, environmental and cultural pressures were put in the Mi’kmaq with the erosion of the intent of the treaties. The Mi’kmaq tried to enforce the treaties through threat of force. At the beginning of the American Revolution, many Mi’kmaq and Maliseet tribes were supportive of the Americans against the British. They participated in the Maugerville Rebellion and the Battle of Fort Cumberland in 1776. (Mí’kmaq delegates concluded the first international treaty, the Treaty of Watertown, with the United States soon after it declared its independence in July 1776. These delegates did not officially represent the Mi’kmaq government, although many individual Mi’kmaq did privately join the Continental army as a result.) During the St. John River expedition, Col. Allan’s untiring effort to gain the friendship and support of the Maliseet and Mi’kmaq for the Revolution was somewhat successful. There was a significant exodus of Maliseet from the St John River to join the American forces at Machias, Maine. On Sunday, July 13, 1777, a party of between 400 and 500 men, women, and children, embarked in 128 canoes from the Old Fort Meduetic (8 miles below Woodstock) for Machias. The party arrived at a very opportune moment for the Americans, and afforded material assistance in the defence of that post during the attack made by Sir George Collier on the 13th to 15 August. The British did only minimal damage to the place, and the services of the Indians on the occasion earned for them the thanks of the council of Massachusetts. In June 1779, Mi’kmaq in the Miramichi attacked and plundered some of the British in the area. The following month, British Captain Augustus Harvey, in command of the HMS Viper, arrived in the area and battled with the Mi’kmaq. One Mi’kmaq was killed and 16 were taken prisoner to Quebec. The prisoners were eventually brought to Halifax, where they were later released upon signing the Oath of Allegiance to the British Crown on 28 July 1779.

As their military power wained in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Mi’kmaq people made explicit appeals to the British of the reciprocal intent of the treaties and the duty of the British to give “presents” to the Mi’kmaq for occupying Mi’kma’ki. In response, the British offered charity or, the word most often used by government officials, “relief”. And relief always came with strings attached. The Mi’kmaq must give up their way of life and begin to settle on farms. Their children were to be sent for a proper education to British schools.

Filed under: Canada, Canadian History, History, Nova Scotia Tagged: Canada, Canadian History, History, Nova Scotia ]]> http://exequy.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/burying-the-hatchet-ceremony/feed/ 0 exequy micmac-a http://exequy.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/beaubears-island/ http://exequy.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/beaubears-island/#comments Wed, 12 Jun 2013 00:14:06 +0000 exequy http://exequy.wordpress.com/?p=3993 ]]>

Beaubears Island is an island at the confluence of the Northwest Miramichi and Southwest Miramichi Rivers near Miramichi, New Brunswick. The island is most famous for being the site of an Acadian refugee camp during the French and Indian War. The camp was under the command of leader of the Acadian resistance to the expulsion, Charles Deschamps de Boishébert et de Raffetot. The island is named after Pierre Beaubair, superintendent of the colony.

The island is home to two National Historic Sites of Canada:

Beaubears Island Shipbuilding National Historic Site of Canada, and

Boishébert National Historic Site of Canada.

The shipbuilding site occupies the eastern end of the island; the Boishébert site comprises the rest of the island, and adjacent Wilson’s Point. Both sites are administered by Parks Canada in collaboration with the Friends of Beaubears Island. The sites retain 200-year-old Eastern White Pines; thus the parks are significant from the perspectives of both human and natural history.

History

Prior to Acadian settlement in the region, the Mi’kmaq people camped on the island.

Boishébert and the Acadians

During the French and Indian War, Charles Deschamps de Boishébert et de Raffetot led the Acadian and Mi`kmaq resistance to the Expulsion of the Acadians. Toward this end, to help Acadians evade capture, Boishébert set up an Acadian refugee camp on the Island. The Camp was named Camp de l’ Esperance. The camp lasted between 1756 – 1759.

After Louisbourg fell on 26 July 1758, French officer Boishébert withdrew, with the British in pursuit. Boishebert brought back a large number of Acadians from the region around Port-Toulouse (St. Peter’s, Nova Scotia) to the security of his post at Beaubears Island on the Miramichi River.

During the Ile Saint-Jean Campaign and the St. John River Campaign the number of Acadian refugees increased dramatically. The camp had eventually 900 French refugees. Over 200 of the refugees died at the camp. During the war, the camp was protected by a battery of 16 French cannons at French Fort Cove.

During the Gulf of St. Lawrence Campaign, on September 15, 1758, Brigadier James Murray was at Miramichi and discovered that there were many Acadian refugees at a settlement about ten leagues up the Miramichi River which had fled during the Ile Saint-Jean Campaign. According to Murray, all of the Acadians were starving. They had sent most of their effects on to Canada and expected so to go there themselves.

The first shipyard was established by James Fraser and James Thom (1790). For the first half of the eighteenth century, the Fraser shipyard was considered the most important commercial establishment in New Brunswick. The 1850s were regarded as the golden age of Miramichi shipbuilding with yards in operation from Beaubears Island. Harley continued to build ships and in 1866 launched what is believed to be the last vessel constructed at Beaubears, the barque La Plata.

By the end of the 19th century, the island appears to have been deserted. It was acquired by the O’Brien family in 1920 and willed to the government of Canada in 1973 following the death of Joseph Leonard O’Brien, a former lieutenant governor of New Brunswick.

Beaubears Island Shipbuilding National Historic Site of Canada, also known as J. Leonard O’Brien Memorial, is the only known, undisturbed archaeological site associated with the national significance of the 19th century wooden shipbuilding industry in New Brunswick. In accordance with O’Brien’s wishes, the island was willed to Parks Canada and remains an integral part of Canadian history as a whole.

Jurriaen Aernoutsz (or Aernouts) was a Dutch colonial navy captain, who briefly conquered the capital of Acadia, Fort Pentagouet in Penobscot Bay (present day Castine, Maine) and several other villages, and renamed the colony New Holland during the Franco-Dutch War.

The commander of the frigate Flying Horse, based at Curaçao during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, Aernoutsz was dispatched by the governor of Curaçao to fight French and English ships in the North Atlantic after the Netherlands recaptured New York City. By the time he reached New York, however, the English and the Dutch had made peace in the Treaty of Westminster — but with the Franco-Dutch War still underway, Aernoutsz met with John Rhoades and decided to attack Acadia.

On August 10, 1674, Aernoutsz and the crew of the Flying Horse captured Fort Pentagouet in two hours. He then sailed up the Bay of Fundy, pillaging several French posts along the coast and ending at Fort Jemseg, which he also captured. Aernoutsz claimed Acadia as the Dutch territory of New Holland, burying bottles at both Pentagouet and Jemseg to assert his claim, and remained in Acadia for about a month. He subsequently returned to Boston in mid-September, disposing of his pillage and selling the cannon from Pentagouet to the government of Massachusetts.

Aernoutsz then returned to Curaçao in October, leaving Rhoades and company in Boston with orders to return to Acadia to maintain possession of the territory. Once in Acadia, Rhoades began seizing New England vessels coming to trade with the Wabanaki Confederacy. As a result, the government of Massachusetts apprehended the party and tried them as pirates, during which time the French regained control of the territory without any military opposition.

The Dutch continued to consider New Holland part of their colonial empire in North America, appointing Cornelius Van Steenwyk as Dutch governor of the territory in 1676, but this was largely a paper designation — in actual practice, the region remained under French control and sovereignty. Shortly after his appointment, Van Steenwyk sent a Dutch expedition to reoccupy Pentagouet, but they were turned back by three British warships from Boston. The Dutch continued to claim sovereignty over Acadia on paper until 1678, when they surrendered the claim at the end of the war.

Noel Doiron (1684 – December 13, 1758) was a leader of the Acadians, renown for the decisions he made during the Deportation of the Acadians. Doiron was deported on a vessel named the Duke William (1758). The sinking of the Duke William was one of the worst marine disasters in Canadian history. The captain of the Duke William, William Nichols, described Noel Doiron as the “head prisoner” on board the ship and as the “father” to all the Acadians on Ile St. Jean (present-day Prince Edward Island).

Second only to Evangeline, the most well known Acadian story of the Victorian era was that of Noel Doiron (1684-1758). For his “noble resignation” and self-sacrifice aboard the Duke William, Doiron was celebrated in popular print throughout the 19th century in England and America. Doiron also is the namesake of the village Noel, Nova Scotia and the surrounding communities of Noel Shore, East Noel (also known as Densmore Mills), Noel Road and North Noel Road.

Queen Anne’s War

Noel Doiron was born at Port Royal, Acadia but he lived most of his childhood at Pisiquid in the Parish of St. Famille (present day Falmouth, Nova Scotia.

During Queen Anne’s War, Noel Doiron was taken as a prisoner of war to Boston by Colonel Benjamin Church. In February 1704, New France orchestrated a raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts. During the raid, New England prisoners were taken back to Quebec. One of the prisoners taken was John Williams. Five months later Church was sent to Acadia to retaliate for the raid and to capture prisoners to ransom the release of those taken in Quebec. In June 1704, Church came from Boston with 17 vessels and 550 men. He torched Acadian hamlets in an expedition that raided Grand Pré, Pisiguit, and Beaubassin. When Church returned to New England, he boasted that only five dwellings remained in all Acadia. He also took 45 prisoners, two of which were Noel Doiron, age 20, and his future wife Marie Henry.

While forcibly removed from their homes, Doiron, Marie and the other Acadian hostages were initially permitted to roam freely in the streets of Boston, much to the dismay of New Englanders. On November 14, 1704 the Massachusetts House of Representatives expressed the opinion that the Acadians in the town were “under little or no restraint, which this House apprehend not safe.” The House demanded the hostages be imprisoned at Castle Island, just off the shore of Boston, and Fort Hill. Apparently, the prisoners were not immediately arrested because on November 24, 1704, the Boston selectmen requested of the Governor of Massachusetts “to restrain the French Prisoners from going about the town at their own pleasure, least their so doing may prove hazardous to this town.”

The first group of Acadian prisoners were returned to Acadia in 1705. Noel and Marie Doiron were delayed in returning because the New Englanders refused to release the notorious privateer Pierre Maisonnat dit Baptiste until John Williams was released. After two years in exile, Noel Doiron and the other Acadian prisoners finally returned to Acadia along with Pierre Masonnait. They arrived at Port Royal on September 18, 1706. Within three days of their arrival, Noel and Marie had their first child, who was born while imprisoned in Boston, and baptized at Port Royal. A marriage ceremony quickly followed.

Life in Vila Noel, Acadia

By 1714, Doiron and his family were established in Noel, Nova Scotia. The Doiron family grew to include five sons and three daughters—one son died in Vila Noel before 1746. The three daughters would marry and leave the village while the surviving sons married and remained with their parents. Doiron lived in the village for 40 years. During that time he and his family built dykes that still exist in the community as well as a chapel at Burntcoat Head, Nova Scotia (formerly known as Steeple Point). As with most Acadians in the Cobequid region, Noel was likely a cattle farmer involved in supporting trade with the French Fortress of Louisbourg.

King George’s War

During King George’s War, Doiron was involved in the aftermath of the Battle of Grand Pré. Upon wounded French soldiers returning to Chignecto, they stopped at the village of Noel. There they were met by Doiron’s priest and taken care of until they continued their journey.

Father Le Loutre’s War

Early in Father Le Loutre’s War, the British established Halifax and built fortifications in all the major Acadian Communities. Shortly after, Noel’s priest was arrested by the British and marched to Halifax. In response to the war and the British taking firm control over Acadia, the inhabitants of the parish sent a request for assistance to Acadians residing in Beaubassin. The message stated that British soldiers,

… came furtively during the night to take our pastor and our four deputies … [A British officer] read the orders by which he was authorized to seize all the muskets in our houses, thereby reducing us to the condition of the Irish … Thus we see ourselves on the brink of destruction, liable to be captured and transported to the English islands and to lose our religion.

Early in 1750, Noel Doiron and his family joined the Acadian Exodus and left mainland Nova Scotia for Pointe Prime, Ile St. Jean (present day Eldon, Prince Edward Island).

Life on Ile St. Jean

Noel and Marie Doiron spent eight years at Pointe Prime, Ile St. Jean. Life there was difficult. The summer before the Noel Bay settlers arrived, a field mouse infestation had destroyed the crops on the island. The next summer a plague of locusts appeared and the following summer brought with it a blistering drought. The census of 1752 reported: “the greater number amongst them had not even bread to eat … [many] subsisted on the shell fish they gathered on the shores of the harbour when the tide was out.” Food shortages were exacerbated when the French government ordered Acadians to cease fishing and focus exclusively on crop production—crops were required for troops at Louisbourg. Faced with severe food shortages, the officials of Ile St. Jean pleaded for assistance from Louisburg, Quebec and France.

In 1752, the former residents of the Noel Bay settlement were joined at Pointe Prime by their former priest, Jacques Girard. Two years earlier, in March 1750, when Governor Edward Cornwallis arrested Girard, he confined him to the Governor’s home in Halifax. Girard was charged with providing aid to representatives of the French Crown. After giving an oath to Cornwallis that he would never return to the Cobequid, Girard was re-assigned to the Piziquid (present day Windsor, Nova Scotia). He resumed his priestly duties until he was “rescued” by forces loyal to the French Crown and transported to Point Prime on Ile St. Jean. In a letter dated August 24, 1753, Girard wrote on the plight of the Pointe Prime Acadians:

Our refugees … this winter will not be in any condition to work, they lack tools, they cannot find shelter from the rigor of the cold by day or night. Most of the children are so naked that they cannot hide it. And when I come into the houses, they are all in the ashes near the fire, they hide and take flight without shoes, without stockings, without shirts and all are not reduced to such extremity but almost all of them are miserable.

On October 27, 1753, Girard wrote that the situation remained unchanged. Despite these deprivations, the inhabitants of Pointe Prime were able to construct a parish church and a parochial home at their own expense.

French and Indian War

During the French and Indian War, the British began the Expulsion of the Acadians from mainland Nova Scotia in 1755. Many Acadians fled to Ile Saint Jean, putting further stress on scarse resources. A year later, in 1756, the continued famine on Ile St. Jean prompted authorities to relocate families to Quebec. This year of severe famine also marked the death of a Pointe Prime resident: one of Doiron’s daughters-in-law.

In 1758, after the Siege of Louisbourg (1758), the British began the Ile Saint-Jean Campaign to expel the Acadians, including Noel Doiron and his family, from Ile Saint Jean. The British authorities had given up on their earlier attempts to assimilate the Acadians into the American colonies and now wanted them returned directly to France. Approximately 4,600 Acadians lived on Ile St. Jean: a third were deported to France, a third eluded their British captors, and a third died en route to France.

On October 20, 1758, Noel Doiron and most of the other inhabitants from the Noel Bay embarked for passage from Ile St. Jean to France on the Duke William. Captain William Nichols’ account of the voyage across the Atlantic notes that the Duke William sprang a leak on the fifth day after leaving for France. The leak was sealed after nine days; however, on December 11 a more serious leak was discovered that threatened to compromise the completion of the voyage. The next day, those aboard the Duke William witnessed the sinking of the transport vessel Violet and the loss of 300 other Acadians who were on board.

On December 13, two vessels approached the Duke William. Believing help had arrived, all assumed their ordeal had concluded. It was stated in one report, that upon seeing the approaching vessels, Noel Doiron gripped the Captain “in his aged arms and cried for joy.” The two vessels, however, refused to provide assistance and continued on their way. According to Nichols, Doiron again embraced the captain and requested that he, the captain, “… and his people [the crew] … endeavor to save their own lives in their boats, and leave them [the Acadians] to their fate, as it was impossible the boats could carry all.” Two lifeboats were on board and these were lowered into the North Atlantic carrying only the captain, his crew, and the parish priest.

Captain Nichols later recorded that during the departure Doiron reprimanded a fellow Acadian for trying to board a lifeboat while abandoning his wife and children. Captain Nichols records Doiron’s final encounter with his priest Girard: “the priest went and gave his people his benediction: then, after saluting the old gentleman [Noel Doiron], he tucked up his canonical robes, and went in the boat.” The captain reported that Doiron and the other Acadians “in their last moments … behaved with the greatest fortitude.” The Captain recorded that he and Doiron took “… leave of each other with tears in their eyes, and the captain requested that his people keep the boats near the ship, which he was determined not to quit himself until it was dark.”

Doiron’s priest Girard wrote that he “laid off the ship about half an hour, when their cries, and waving us to be gone, almost broke our hearts.” The Duke William drifted, according to Girard, “till it fell calm, and as [it] went down her decks blew up. The noise was like the explosion of a gun, or a loud clap of thunder.” The Duke William sank about 20 leagues from the coast of France in the English Channel shortly after 4:00 p.m. on December 13, 1758. Noel Doiron died on board along with his wife, Marie, five of their children with their spouses and over thirty grandchildren.

Vaslav Nijinsky  ( March 12, 1889/1890 – April 8, 1950) was a Russian danseur and choreographer of Polish descent, cited as the greatest male dancer of the early 20th century. He grew to be celebrated for his virtuosity and for the depth and intensity of his characterizations. He could perform en pointe, a rare skill among male dancers at the time and his ability to perform seemingly gravity-defying leaps was legendary.

Nijinsky was introduced to dance by his parents, who were senior dancers with the travelling Setov opera company and his early childhood was spent touring with the company. Aged 9 he joined the Imperial Ballet School in St Petersburg, the pre-eminent ballet school in the world. In 1907 he graduated and became a member of the Imperial ballet starting at the rank of coryphée instead of in the corps de ballet, already taking starring roles. The choreographer and dancer Bronislava Nijinska was his sister and worked with him much of his career.

In 1909 he joined the Ballets Russes, a new ballet company started by Sergei Diaghilev which planned to show Russian ballets in Paris, where productions of the quality staged by the Imperial ballet simply did not exist. Nijinsky became the company’s star male dancer, causing an enormous stir amongst audiences whenever he performed, although in ordinary life he appeared unremarkable and even boring to meet. Diaghilev and Nijinsky became lovers, and although Nijinsky had unparalleled ability, it was the publicity and opportunity provided by Diaghilev’s company which made him internationally famous. In 1912 Nijinsky began choreographing his own ballets, including L’après-midi d’un faune (1912), Jeux (1913), and Till Eulenspiegel (1916). At the premier of Le Sacre du Printemps (1913) fights broke out in the audience between those who loved and hated a totally new style of ballet. Faune frequently caused controversy because of its sexually suggestive final scene. Jeux was originally conceived as a flirtatious interaction between three males, although Diaghilev insisted it be danced by one male and two females.

In 1913 Nijinsky married Hungarian Romola de Pulszky while on tour with the company in South America. She had seen the Ballets Russes perform in 1912 and thereafter ‘stalked’ the company and Nijinsky. Nonetheless, no one was more surprised than she was when Nijinsky asked her to marry him, in broken French since neither was fluent in the same language. The marriage caused an immediate break with Diaghilev, who dismissed Nijinsky from the company. With no alternative employer available, he attempted to form his own company but this was not a success. He was interned in Hungary during World War I under house arrest until 1916, finally being allowed to leave after intervention by Diaghilev, who wanted him to perform in an American tour, and supported by calls for his release from many powerful world figures.

Nijinsky became increasingly mentally unstable with the stresses of having to manage tours himself and deprived of opportunities to dance, which had always been his total obsession. After a tour of South America in 1917, and due to travel difficulties imposed by the war, the family settled in Switzerland, where his mental condition continued to deteriorate. The rest of his life was spent suffering from mental illness which incapacitated him beyond the ability to dance again in public.

Vaslav Nijinsky was born in 1889 or 1890 in Kiev, Russian Empire, as Wacław Niżyński, to ethnic Polish parents, touring dancers Tomasz Niżyński (b. 7 March 1862) and Eleonora Bereda (b. 28 December 1856). Nijinsky was christened in Warsaw and considered himself to be a Pole despite difficulties in properly speaking the language due to his childhood spent in Russia’s interior where his parents worked.

Eleanora, with two brothers and two sisters, was orphaned while still a child and started to earn her living as an extra in Warsaw’s Grand Theatre Ballet (Polish: Teatr Wielki), becoming a full member of the company at age thirteen. In 1868 she was talent spotted and moved to Kiev as a solo dancer. Tomasz also attended the Wielki Theatre school, becoming a soloist there before at age 18 accepting a soloist contract with the Odessa Theatre. The two met, married in May 1884 and settled to a career with the travelling Setov opera company. Tomasz was premier danseur, and Eleanora a soloist. Eleanora continued to tour and dance while having three children, Stanislav Fomitch (b. 29 December 1886 in Tiflis); Vaslav; and Bronislava Fominitchna (‘Bronia’, b. 8 January 1891 in Minsk). Both boys received training from their father and appeared in an amateur production of Hopak in Odessa in 1894.

Josef Setov died about 1894 and the company disbanded. Thomas attempted to run his own company, but this was not a success, so he and his family became itinerant dancers, his children appearing in the Christmas show at Nizhny Novgorod. In 1897 Thomas and Eleanora separated after Thomas had fallen in love with a dancer, Rumiantseva, while touring in Finland. Eleanora moved to 20 Mokhovaya Street in St Petersburg with her children. She persuaded a friend from the Wielki Theatre, Victor Stanislas Gillert, who was at the time teaching at the Imperial Ballet School, to help get Vaslav into the school, and he arranged for Enrico Cecchetti to sponsor the application. Bronia entered the school two years after Vaslav. Their brother became increasingly mentally unstable and was admitted to an asylum for the insane in 1902.

Imperial Ballet School

In 1900 Nijinsky joined the Imperial Ballet School, where he initially studied dance under Sergei Legat and his brother Nicholas, and studied mime under Pavel Gerdt, all principal dancers at the Imperial Russian Ballet. At the end of the one year probationary period, his teachers agreed upon his exceptional dancing ability and he was confirmed as a boarder at the school. He appeared in supporting parts in “Faust”, as a mouse in “The Nutcracker”, a page in “Sleeping Beauty” and “Swan Lake” and won the Didelot scholarship. During his first year, his academic studies had covered work he had already done, so his relatively poor results had not been so much noted. He did well in subjects which interested him, but not otherwise, and was warned in 1902 that only the excellence of his dancing had prevented his expulsion from the school for poor results. This laxity was compounded through his school years by his frequent choice as an extra in various productions, taking him away from classrooms for rehearsals and spending nights at performances. He was teased for being Polish, and with the nickname “Japonczek” for his faintly Japanese looks at a time Russia was at war with Japan. Even his dancing ability raised the resentment of some of his classmates. An incident in 1901 when one of the class deliberately caused him to fall led to his being in a coma for four days.

Mikhail Oboukhov became his teacher in 1902, and awarded him the highest grade he had ever given to a student. He was given student parts in command performances in front of the Czar of Paquita, The Nutcracker and The Little Horse. In music he studied piano, flute, balalaika and accordion, receiving good marks. He had a good ability to hear and then play music on the piano, though his sight reading was relatively poor. Against this, his behaviour was sometimes boisterous and wild, resulting in his expulsion from the school in 1903 for an incident involving students shooting at the hats of passers-by with catapults while being driven to the Mariinsky Theatre in carriages. He was readmitted to the school as a non-resident after a sound beating and restored to his previous position after a month’s probation.

In 1904 at the age of just fourteen, Nijinsky was selected by the great choreographer Marius Petipa to dance a principal role in what proved to be the choreographer’s last ballet, La Romance d’un Bouton de rose et d’un Papillon, but the work was never performed due to the out-break of the Russo-Japanese War.

On Sunday 9 January 1905, Nijinsky became part of the Bloody Sunday massacre in St Petersburg, where a group of petitioners led by Father Grapon attempted to present their petition to the Czar. The crowd was fired upon by soldiers, leading to an estimated 1000 casualties. Nijinsky was caught in the crowd on Nevsky Prospect and propelled towards the Winter Palace. Cossacks charged the crowd, leaving him with a head wound. The following day, he returned to the scene with a friend whose sister was missing. She was never found. Nijinsky became calmer and more serious as he grew older, but continued to make few friends, which continued through his life. His reserve and apparent dullness made him unappealing to others except when he danced.

The 1905 annual student show included a pas de deux from The Persian Market danced by Nijinsky and Anna Fedorova. Oboukhov amended the dance to show off Nijinsky’s abilities, drawing gasps and then spontaneous applause in the middle of the performance with his first jump. In 1906 he was part of the Mariinsky production of Don Giovanni, in a ballet choreographed by Michel Fokine. He was congratulated by the director of the Imperial Ballet and offered a place in the company despite still being more than a year from graduation. Nijinsky chose to continue his studies. He tried his hand at choreography, with a children’s opera, Cinderella, with music by another student, Boris Asafyev. At Christmas he played the King of the Mice in The Nutcracker. At his graduation performance in April 1907, he partnered Elizaveta Gerdt, again choreographed by Fokine. He was congratulated by Prima ballerina Mathilde Kchessinska of the Imperial ballet, who invited him to partner her. His future career with the imperial ballet was guaranteed to begin at the mid-rank level of coryphée, rather than in the corps de ballet. He graduated second in his class, though with top marks in dancing, art and music.

Early career

Nijinsky spent his summer after graduation rehearsing and then performing at Krasnoe Selo in a makeshift theatre with an audience mainly of army officers. These performances frequently included members of the Imperial family and other nobility whose support and interest were essential to a career and each dancer who appeared before the Tsar received a gold watch inscribed with the Imperial Eagle. The family moved to a larger flat on Torgovaya Ulitsa buoyed by Nijinsky’s salary, his new earnings from giving dance classes himself, and his sister too was now employed by the ballet company. The new season at the Mariinsky theatre began in September 1907 with Nijinsky employed as coryphée on a salary of 780 roubles per year.

He appeared with Sedova, Lydia Kyasht and Karsavina. Kchessinska partnered him in La Fille Mal Gardée, where he succeeded in an atypical role for him involving humour and flirtation. Designer Alexandre Benois proposed a ballet based upon Le Pavillion d’Armide choreographed by Fokine to music by Nikolai Tcherepnin. Nijinsky had a minor role, but one which allowed him to show off his technical abilities with leaps and pirouettes. The partnership of Fokine, Benois and Nijinsky was to repeat throughout his career. Shortly after, he upstaged his own performance, appearing in the Bluebird pas de deux from the Sleeping Beauty, partnering Lydia Kyasht. The Mariinsky audience was well familiar with the piece, but exploded with enthusiasm for his performance and his appearing to fly, an effect he continued to have on audiences with the piece during his career.

In subsequent years, Nijinsky was given several soloist roles. In 1910, Mathilde Kschessinska selected Nijinsky to dance in a revival of Petipa’s Le Talisman, during which Nijinsky created a sensation in the role of the Wind God Vayou.

Ballets Russes

A turning point for Nijinsky was his meeting Sergei Diaghilev, a celebrated and highly innovative producer of ballet and opera as well as art exhibitions, a man who concentrated on promoting Russian visual and musical art abroad, particularly in Paris. The 1908 season of colorful Russian ballets and operas, works mostly new to the West, was a great success, leading him to plan a new tour for 1909 with a new name for his company, the now famous Ballets Russes, with choreographer Michel Fokine and designer Léon Bakst. Nijinsky and Diaghilev became lovers for a time, and Diaghilev was heavily involved in directing and managing Nijinsky’s career.

1909 opening season

During the winter of 1908/9, Diaghilev started planning for the 1909 Paris tour of opera and ballet. He gathered together a team including designers Alexandre Benois and Leon Bakst, painters Nicholas Roerich, Alexander Glazunov and Konstantin Korovine, composers Glazunov and Tcherepnin, regisseurs Vsevolod Meyerhold and Alexander Sanine and other ballet enthusiasts. As a friend and as a leading dancer, Nijinsky was part of the group, although his sister recorded that he felt intimidated by the august and aristocratic company. Fokine was asked to start rehearsals for the existing Le Pavillion d’Armide and for Les Sylphides, an expanded version of Fokine’s Chopiniana. Fokine favoured expanding the existing Une Nuit d’Egypte for a further ballet, but although Diaghilev accepted the idea of an Egyptian theme, he required a comprehensive rewrite involving new music, to create a new ballet Cléopâtre. To round out the program, they needed another ballet, but without sufficient time decided on a suite of popular dances collected together, to be called Le Festin. Anna Pavlova, Karsavina and Nijinsky would be principal dancers, Fokine insisted that Ida Rubenstein would appear as Cleopatra and Nijinsky insisted that his sister should have a part. Fokine noted Nijinsky’s great ability at learning a dance and precisely what a choreographer wanted. Diaghilev departed for Paris in early 1909 to make arrangements, which were immediately complicated on the day of his return, 22 February 1909, by the death of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovitch, who had sponsored an application by Diahgilev for an imperial subsidy of 100,000 roubles for the tour.^[19]

Rehearsals started on 2 April at the Hermitage Theatre, which the company had been granted special permission to use along with loans of scenery. No sooner had rehearsals started but the permission was withdrawn, going the same way as the imperial subsidy. Diaghilev managed to raise some money in Russia, but now relied significantly on Gabriel Astruc, who had been arranging theatres and publicity on behalf of the company in France, to also provide finance. Plans to include Opera had to be dropped because of the lack of finance and logistical difficulties in obtaining necessary scenery at short notice and for free.

Diaghilev and Nijinsky travelled to Paris ahead of the rest of the company. Initially Nijinsky stayed at the Hôtel Daunou, but moved to the Hôtel de Hollande together with Diaghilev and his secretary, Alexis Mavrine, before the arrival of the others. Members of the company had noticed Diaghilev keeping a particularly proprietorial eye on Nijinsky during rehearsals in Russia, and the travel arrangements and accommodation were taken as confirmation of a relationship. Prince Lvov had visited Nijinsky’s mother in St Petersburg, telling her tearfully that he would no longer be taking a special interest in her son, but he nonetheless advanced a significant sum to Diaghilev towards the tour’s expenses. Mavrine was known to have been Diaghilev’s lover, but left the tour together with Olga Pedorova shortly after it had begun.

The season of colorful Russian ballets and operas, works mostly new to the West, was a great success. The Paris seasons of the Ballets Russes were an artistic and social sensation; setting trends in art, dance, music and fashion for the next decade. Nijinsky’s unique talent showed in Fokine’s pieces such as Le Pavillon d’Armide (music by Nikolai Tcherepnin); Cleopatra (music by Anton Arensky and other Russian composers) and a divertissement La Fête. His expressive execution of a pas de deux from The Sleeping Beauty (Tchaikovsky) was a tremendous success.

Later seasons

In 1910, he performed in Giselle, and Fokine’s ballets Carnaval and Scheherazade (based on the orchestral suite by Rimsky-Korsakov). His portrayal of “Petrushka” the puppet with a soul, was a remarkable showmanship of his ability to transform into this characters. His partnership with Tamara Karsavina, also of the Mariinsky Theatre, was legendary, and they have been called the “most exemplary artists of the time”.

Ballets choreographed by Nijinsky

Nijinsky took the creative reins and choreographed ballets which pushed boundaries and stirred controversy. His ballets were L’après-midi d’un faune (The Afternoon of a Faun, based on Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune) (1912); Jeux (1913); and Till Eulenspiegel (1916). In The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps), with music by Igor Stravinsky) (1913), Nijinsky created choreography that exceeded the limits of traditional ballet and propriety. For the first time, his audiences were experiencing the futuristic, new direction of modern dance. The radically angular movements expressed the heart of Stravinsky’s radically modern score. Unfortunately, Nijinsky’s new trends in dance caused a riotous reaction at the Théâtre de Champs-Élysées when they premiered in Paris. As the title character in L’après-midi d’un faune, in the final tableau (or scene), he mimed masturbation with the scarf of a nymph, causing a scandal; he was defended by such artists as Auguste Rodin, Odilon Redon and Marcel Proust. Violence broke out in the audience as The Rite of Spring premiered. The theme of the ballet centered around a young maiden who was sacrificing herself by dancing until she died. The theme, the difficult music of Stravinsky combined with the heavy, pedestrian movement of Nijinsky’s choreography, led to a violent uproar, one which didn’t seem displeasing to Diaghilev.

Marriage

Nijinsky’s work in choreographing ballets had proved controversial, badly received by critics and time consuming in rehearsal. He was asked to begin preparing a new ballet, La Légende de Joseph, but aside from the difficulties created by his working methods, Diaghilev came under pressure from financial backers and theatre owners for productions more in the style of previous work. Although Diaghilev himself had become unhappy with Fokine’s work, thinking he had lost his originality, he was now obliged to employ him for two new ballets, including Joseph. Relations between Diaghilev and Nijinsky had deteriorated under the stress of Nijinsky’s becoming principal choreographer and his pivotal role in the company’s financial success. Diaghilev could not face Nijinsky to tell him personally that he would no longer be choreographing the ballet, but instead asked his sister Bronia Nijinska to deliver the bad news. The company was to embark on a tour of South America in August 1913, but Nijinska herself, who had always worked closely with Nijinsky and been a strong support to him, could not accompany the tour because she had married in July 1912 and was now pregnant. In October that year, their father had died while on tour with his dance company. Diaghilev did not accompany the South American tour, claiming the reason was a prediction made to him that he would die on the ocean. Others have suggested the reason had more to do with wanting to spend time away from Nijinsky and enjoy a holiday in Venice, “where perhaps adventures with pretty dark-eyed boys awaited him”.^[23] Thus Nijinsky set sail on a 21-day sea voyage in a state of turmoil and without the people who had been his closest advisers in recent years.^[24]

The tour party included Romola de Pulszky, whose father Count Charles Pulszky was a Hungarian politician, while his wife, Emilia Márkus was a famous actress. In March 1912 the recently engaged Romola was taken to see the Ballets Russes in Budapest by her prospective mother-in-law and was greatly impressed. Nijinsky had not been performing, but she returned the following day and saw him: “An electric shock passed through the entire audience. Intoxicated, entranced, gasping for breath, we followed this superhuman being… the power, the featherweight lightness, the steel-like strength, the suppleness of his movements..” Romola broke off her engagement and began following the Ballets Russes across Europe, attending every performance she could. Nijinsky was difficult to approach, being always accompanied by a ‘minder’. However, Nijinska befriended Adolf Bolm, who had previously visited her mother, thereby gaining access to the company and backstage. She and Nijinsky shared no common language; she spoke French but he knew only a little, so many of their early conversations involved an interpreter. When first introduced to her, he gained the impression she was a Hungarian prima ballerina and was friendly. Discovering his mistake, he ignored her thereafter.

Romola did not give in. She persuaded Diaghilev that her amorous interests lay with Bolm, that she was rich and interested in supporting ballet. He was persuaded to allow her to have ballet lessons with Enrico Cecchetti, who accompanied the troupe coaching the dancers. Nijinsky objected to her presence with the professionals and Cechetti warned her against becoming involved with Nijinsky (who was “like a sun that pours forth light but never warms”), but Diaghilev’s endorsement meant that Nijinsky paid her some attention. Romola took every opportunity to be near Nijinsky, booking train compartments or cabins close to his, despite probably being warned that he was homosexual by Marie Rambert, who Romola befriended and who was also in love with Nijinsky. As a devout Catholic, she prayed for his conversion to heterosexuality. In later life, Romola was to have lesbian relationships, and it is possible the androgynous nature of much of Nijinsky’s dancing was part of his appeal for her. She referred to him as Le Petit, and wanted to have his child.

On board ship, Romola had a cabin in first class, which allowed her to keep a watch on Nijinsky’s door, while most of the company were exiled to second class. She befriended his masseur and was rewarded with a rundown on his musculature. Determined to take every opportunity, she succeeded in spending more and more time in his company. The unexpected friendliness was noticed by Baron de Gunsbourg, an investor in the Ballets Russes, who had been tasked with keeping an eye on the company. Instead of reporting back to Diaghilev on what was occurring, Gunsbourg agreed to act on Nijinsky’s behalf in presenting a proposal of marriage to Romola. Romola thought a cruel joke was being played on her, and ran off to her cabin crying. However, Nijinsky asked her again, in broken French and mime, and she accepted. Although Gunsbourg had a financial interest in Ballets Russes, he was also interested in forming his own company, and a split between Diaghilev and his star dancer might have presented him with an opportunity.

When the ship stopped at Rio, the couple went straight to buy wedding rings. Adolph Bolm warned Romola not to proceed, saying “It will ruin your life”. Gunsbourg hurried to arrange the marriage, getting permission by telegram from Romola’s mother so an express wedding could take place once the ship arrived at Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the couple were married on 10 September 1913 and the fact was announced to the world’s press. Back in Europe, Diaghilev “gave himself to a wild orgy of dissipation…Sobbing shamelessly in Russian despair, he bellowed accusations and recriminations; he cursed Nijinsky’s ingratitude, Romola’s treachery, and his own stupidity”.

As the company was due to start performing immediately, there was no honeymoon. A few days after the marriage, Nijinsky tried to teach Romola some ballet, but she was not interested. “I asked her to learn dancing because for me dancing was the highest thing in the world”, “I realized that I had made a mistake, but the mistake was irreparable. I had put myself in the hands of someone who did not love me.” Romola and Nijinsky did not share accommodation until after the season was safely underway, when she was eventually invited to join him in separate bedrooms in his hotel suite. She “almost cried with thankfulness” that he showed no interest in making love on their wedding night.

Dismissal from Ballets Russes

On returning to Paris, Nijinsky anticipated returning to work on new ballets, but Diaghilev was not to be found. Eventually a telegram was received informing Nijinsky that he was no longer employed by the Ballets Russes. Nijinsky had missed a performance in Rio when Romola was ill, and this was stipulated as a sackable offence in the dancers’ standard contracts. Diaghilev also usually dismissed dancers who married. This was perhaps beside the point, since Nijinsky had never had a contract, nor wages, all his expenses having been paid by Diaghilev, although his mother received an allowance of 500 francs per month (other senior dancers had received 200,000 francs for a six-month season). Fokine was re-employed by Diaghilev as choreographer and premier danseur, accepting on the condition that none of Nijinsky’s ballets would be performed. Leonide Massine joined the company as the new attractive young lead for Joseph.

The Ballets Russes had lost its most famous and crowd-pulling dancer, but Nijinsky’s position was even more difficult. He appears not to have appreciated that the consequence of his marriage would be a break with Diaghilev’s company, although many others immediately expected this would be the result. The Ballets Russes and the Imperial Russian ballet were the pre-eminent ballet companies in the world and uniquely had permanent companies of dancers staging full-scale new productions. Not only had Nijinsky left the Imperial ballet on doubtful terms, but he had not been granted exemption from compulsory military service in Russia, something that was normally given to its dancers. He could find only two offers, one a position with the Paris Opera which would not start for more than a year, the other to take a ballet company to London for eight weeks to perform as part of a mixed bill at the Palace Theatre. Anna Pavlova sent him a caustic telegram, reminding him that he had disapproved some years before when she had appeared there in vaudeville. On another occasion, he had told a reporter “One thing I am determined not to do, and that is to go on the music-hall stage”.

Bronia was still in St Petersburg following the birth of her child and Nijinsky asked her to be part of his new company. She was glad to do so, being concerned at how well he could cope without his customary supporters. When she arrived, there was friction between her and Romola: Bronia was critical that the new central figure in her brother’s life showed so little organisational ability; Romola resented the closeness between brother and sister both in their shared language and in ability to work together in dance. The final company had only three experienced dancers: Nijinsky and Bronia plus her husband. Scenery was late, Fokine refused to allow the use of his ballets, there was inadequate time to rehearse, and Nijinsky became “more and more nervous and distraught”. Diaghilev came to the opening night in March 1914.

The audience divided between those who had never seen ballet who objected to the delays necessary for scene changes, and those who had seen Nijinsky before who generally felt something was lacking (“He no longer danced like a god”). On another night, when the orchestra played music during the scene change so as to calm the audience, Nijinsky, having expressly banned this, flew into a rage and was discovered half dressed and screaming in his dressing room. He had to be calmed down enough to perform. He jumped on a stagehand who had flirted with Romola (“I had never seen Vaslav like that”). A new program was to be performed for the third week, but a packed house had to be told that Nijinsky was ill with a high temperature and could not perform. He missed three days, and the management had had enough. The show was cancelled and Nijinsky was left with a considerable financial loss. Newspapers reported a nervous breakdown.

Later life

Romola was now pregnant, so the couple returned to Vienna where Kyra was born on 19 June 1914. The start of World War I meant that Nijinsky became an enemy Russian citizen under house arrest and could not leave the country. The war made problems for the Ballets Russes too: it was hard to obtain dancers and Fokine had returned to Russia. Diaghilev started negotiations for Nijinsky to work once more for the company in October 1914, but could not obtain Nijinsky’s release until 1916 after complex negotiations and a prisoner exchange with the United States, where it was agreed Nijinsky would dance and choreograph for the Ballets Russes’ tour. King Alfonso XIII of Spain, Queen Alexandra, Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna, Emperor France-Josef and the pope all interceded on his behalf.

Nijinsky arrived in New York 4 April 1916. The tour had already started in January with a number of problems: Faun was considered too sexually explicit and had to be amended; Scheherazade including an orgy between black and white did not appeal to racist Americans; and ballet aficionados were calling for Nijinsky. Romola took over negotiations, demanding Diaghilev pay Nijinsky for the years he had been unpaid by the Ballets Russes before he would dance in New York. This was settled after another week’s delay by a downpayment of $13,000 against the $90,000 claimed, plus a fee of $1000 for each performance in America.

Negotiations with Otto Kahn of the Metropolitan opera led to a further tour being agreed across the US for the autumn. Kahn did not get on with Diaghilev and insisted Nijinsky should manage the tour. Massine and Diaghilev would return to Europe, leaving Nijinsky to dance and manage for a salary of $60,000. Nijinsky was to prepare two new ballets. Rehearsals for Till Eulenspiegel did not go well, Nijinsky again had difficulty explaining to the dancers exactly what he needed them to do and would explode into rages. Pierre Monteux, the conductor, refused to take part in performances because he did not want to be associated with failure. Nijinsky twisted his ankle, postponing the season’s opening for a week and his own appearance by two weeks. Still rehearsals for Eulenspiegel had not been completed and it had to be improvised during its first performance. Nevertheless it was well received, and Nijinsky’s performance in Faun was considered better than Massine’s. As the tour progressed, Nijinsky’s performances received steady acclaim, although his management was haphazard and contributed to the tour’s loss of $250,000.

It was around this time in his life that signs of his schizophrenia were becoming apparent to members of the company. Following the tour, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and taken by his wife to Switzerland, where he was treated unsuccessfully by psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler.

Nijinsky spent the rest of his life in and out of psychiatric hospitals and asylums. During the last days of the Second World War he danced in public for the last time. He encountered a group of Russian soldiers decamped outside of Vienna, playing traditional folk tunes. Inspired by the music and his reunion with his countrymen, he leapt into an exquisite dance, astounding the men with the complexity and grace of his figures. The experience restored some of Nijinsky’s capacity for communication, after having maintained long periods of almost absolute silence. Nijinsky died in a clinic in London on April 8, 1950, and was buried in London until 1953 when his body was moved to Montmartre Cemetery in Paris beside the graves of Gaétan Vestris, Théophile Gautier, and Emma Livry.

Legacy

Nijinsky’s daughter Kyra married the Ukrainian conductor Igor Markevitch, and they had a son named Vaslav. The marriage ended in divorce.

Nijinsky’s Diary was written during the six weeks he spent in Switzerland before being committed to the asylum, combining elements of autobiography with appeals for compassion toward the less fortunate, and for vegetarianism and animal rights. Nijinsky writes of the importance of feeling, as opposed to reliance on reason and logic alone, and he denounces the practice of art criticism as being nothing more than a way for those who practice it to indulge their own egos rather than focusing on what the artist was trying to say. The diary also contains bitter and conflicted thoughts regarding his relationship with Diaghilev.

As a dancer, Nijinsky was extraordinary for his time. He is responsible for changing audiences’ perspective of the male dancer. He was a sensual performer and although he wore revealing costumes, he looked androgynous.

Nijinsky is immortalized in numerous still photographs, many of which were made by E.O. Hoppé, who extensively photographed the Ballets Russes London seasons between 1909 and 1921. However, no film exists of Nijinsky dancing; Diaghilev never allowed the Ballets Russes to be filmed because he felt that the quality of film at the time could never capture the artistry of his dancers, and that the reputation of the company would suffer if people saw it in only short jerky films.

Charles Ogier de Batz de Castelmore, Comte d’Artagnan  (c. 1611 – 25 June 1673) served Louis XIV as captain of the Musketeers of the Guard and died at the Siege of Maastricht in the Franco-Dutch War. A fictionalized account of his life by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras formed the basis for the d’Artagnan Romances of Alexandre Dumas, most famously including The Three Musketeers. The heavily fictionalized version of d’Artagnan featured in Dumas’ works and their subsequent screen adaptations is now far more widely known than the real historical figure.

D’Artagnan was born near Lupiac in south-western France. His father, Bertrand de Batz (de Baatz), was the son of a newly ennobled merchant, Arnaud de Batz, who purchased the castle of Castelmore. Charles de Batz went to Paris in the 1630s, using the name of his mother, daughter of an illustrious family, Françoise de Montesquiou d’Artagnan. D’Artagnan found a way to enter into the Musketeers in 1632, perhaps thanks to the influence of his family’s friend, Monsieur de Tréville (Jean-Armand du Peyrer, Comte de Troisville). While in the Musketeers, d’Artagnan sought the protection of the influential Cardinal Mazarin, France’s principal minister since 1643. In 1646, the Musketeers company was dissolved, but d’Artagnan continued to serve his protector Mazarin.

Career

D’Artagnan had a career in espionage for Cardinal Mazarin, in the years after the first Fronde. Due to d’Artagnan’s faithful service during this period, Louis XIV entrusted him with many secret and delicate situations that required complete discretion. He followed Mazarin during his exile in 1651 in the face of the hostility of the aristocracy. In 1652 d’Artagnan was promoted to lieutenant in the Gardes Françaises, then to captain in 1655. In 1658, he became a second lieutenant in the newly reformed Musketeers. This was a promotion, as the Musketeers were far more prestigious than the Gardes-Françaises.

D’Artagnan was famous for his connection with the arrest of Nicolas Fouquet. Fouquet was Louis XIV’s finance commissioner and aspired to take the place of Mazarin as the King’s advisor. Fouquet was also a lover of grand architecture and employed the greatest architects and artisans in the building of his Chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte. He celebrated the completion with a most extravagant feast, at which every guest was given a horse. The king however felt upstaged by the grandeur of the home and event and, suspecting that such magnificence could only be explained through Fouquet’s pilfering the royal treasury, three weeks later had d’Artagnan arrest Fouquet. To prevent his escape by bribery, d’Artagnan was assigned to guard him for four years until Fouquet was sentenced to life imprisonment.

In 1667, d’Artagnan was promoted to captain-lieutenant of the Musketeers, the effective commander as the nominal captain was the King. As befitted his rank and position, he could be identified by his striking burgundy, white and black livery—the colours of the commanding officer of the Musketeers. Another of d’Artagnan’s assignments was the governorship of Lille, which was won in battle by France in 1667. D’Artagnan was an unpopular governor and longed to return to battle. He found his chance when Louis XIV went to war with the Dutch Republic in the Franco-Dutch War. After being recalled to service, d’Artagnan was subsequently killed in battle on June 25, 1673, when a musket ball tore into his throat at the Siege of Maastricht. The French historian Odile Bordaz believes that he was buried in Saint Peter and Paul Church in Wolder, the Netherlands.

Portrayals in fiction

The real d’Artagnan’s life was used as the basis for Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras’ novel Les mémoires de M. d’Artagnan. Alexandre Dumas in turn used de Sandras’ novel as the main source for his d’Artagnan Romances (The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After and The Vicomte de Bragelonne), which cover d’Artagnan’s career from his humble life’s beginnings in Gascony to his death at Maastricht. Although Dumas knew that de Sandras’s version was heavily fictionalised, in the preface to The Three Musketeers he affected to believe that the memoirs were real, in order to make his novel more believable.

D’Artagnan is initially portrayed by Dumas as a hotheaded youth, and tries to engage the Comte de Rochefort and the three musketeers, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis in single combat. He quickly becomes friends with the musketeers, and has a series of adventures which put him at odds with Cardinal Richelieu, then First Minister of France. In the end, Richelieu is impressed by d’Artagnan, and makes him a Lieutenant of the Musketeers. This begins his long career of military service, as detailed in the sequels to Dumas’s famous novel. Some scholars believe aspects of D’Artagnan are drawn from the life and character of Dumas’s mulatto father, the General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, as when D’Artagnan challenges Porthos, Athos, and Aramis to duels on the same afternoon, when Dumas describes his face as “brown,” or on an incident in General Dumas’s youth when he was insulted, or on General Dumas’s youthful companionship with fellow soldiers in the Queen’s Dragoons.

D’Artagnan’s role among the Musketeers is one of leadership (his skills and brains impress the musketeers greatly), but he is also regarded as a sort of protégé given his youth and inexperience. The musketeers (especially Athos) see him not only as a best friend and fellow musketeer (despite his initial job as a guard) but as a son. They are very protective of him, though they usually let him take care of himself like the others.

Another Comte d’Artagnan, Pierre de Montesquiou, contributed the idea that Dumas’s d’Artagnan should become a Marshal of France. Towards the end of the story, his death at the siege of Maastricht is given an extra tragic twist – he is mortally wounded whilst reading the notice of his promotion to the highest rank.

In other works

French poet Edmond Rostand wrote the play Cyrano de Bergerac in 1897. After one of the play’s famous scenes, in which Cyrano defeats Valvert in a duel while completing a poem, d’Artagnan approaches Cyrano and congratulates him on his fine swordsmanship.

In Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver a story of d’Artagnan’s death is related by one of the characters, Half-Cocked Jack.

Sam Cooke (January 22, 1931 – December 11, 1964) was a popular and influential American gospel, R&B, soul, and pop singer, as well as songwriter and entrepreneur. Indeed, musicians and critics today recognize him as one of the originators of soul music and among the most influential singers in postwar American popular music.

James Brown is known as the “Godfather of Soul,” yet Cooke’s status as the “King of Soul” perhaps best reflects his stature and legacy. He had 29 Top 40 hits in the United States between 1957 and 1965, including major hits like “You Send Me,” “Chain Gang,” “Wonderful World,” and “Bring It On Home To Me.” His elegiac ballad “A Change is Gonna Come,” recorded in 1963 and released just after his death in 1964, has come to be regarded as one of his greatest and most socially conscious compositions, although overshadowed on the charts by the emergence of the Beatles.

Cooke was among the first modern black performers and composers to set the precedent of attending to the business side of his musical career by founding both a record label and a publishing company. He also took an active part in the Civil Rights Movement, refusing to perform to segregated audiences and seeking through his song-writing and singing to bridge gaps between blacks and whites. Sam Cooke died in compromising circumstances at age 33, just as he was approaching his creative zenith. A consummate artist, Cooke was a unifying voice whose broad appeal in an increasingly polarized society was tragically cut short.

Biography

Sam Cooke was born Samuel Cook in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He was one of eight children of Annie Mae and Rev. Charles Cook, a Pentecostal minister. The family moved to Chicago in 1933. Cooke began his musical career with his siblings in the Singing Children, followed by a turn in his teenage years as a member of the gospel group, the “Highway QCs”. In 1950, at the age of 19, he joined The Soul Stirrers and achieved significant success and fame within the gospel community. For six years he was the reigning voice of gospel; Cooke would have been famous for his role in the Soul Stirrers, even if he had not crossed over to pop.

Solo career

There was a considerable taboo against gospel singers performing secular music. Cooke’s first pop single, “Lovable” (1956), was released under the alias “Dale Cooke” to avoid offending his group and alienating his gospel fan base. However, the alias failed to hide Cooke’s unique and distinctive vocals. No one was fooled. Art Rupe, the head of Specialty Records, gave his blessing for Cooke to record secular music under his real name, but was unhappy about the type of music Cooke and his producer, Bumps Blackwell, were making. Rupe expected Cooke’s secular music to be similar to that of another Specialty Records artist, Little Richard. When Rupe walked in on a recording session and heard Cooke covering Gershwin, he was quite upset.

After an argument between Rupe and Blackwell, Cooke and Blackwell left the label, and Cooke signed with Keen Records in 1957, after which Cooke burst onto the pop scene with the 1957 release of his million-selling single, “You Send Me.” The song’s innovative blend of Gospel, Pop, and R&B earned him the title of “The Man Who Invented Soul” and stayed on the charts an amazing 26 weeks, rising to #1 in both the Pop and R&B markets, spending six weeks on the Billboard R&B chart and three weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart at #1. After the success of his second single, “I’ll Come Running Back to You,” Cooke created a publishing imprint and management firm. He then left Keen to sign with RCA Victor, where his first single was the famous, “Chain Gang,” which was followed by the singles “Sad Mood,” “Bring it on Home to Me” (with Lou Rawls on backing vocals), “Another Saturday Night” and “Twistin’ the Night Away.” Cooke released a critically acclaimed blues-inflected LP in 1963, “Night Beat.”

In all he had 29 top 40 hits on the pop charts, and an amazing 34 Top 40 R&B hits over his eight-year pop career, with most like “You Send Me” and “I’ll Come Running Back to You” written by Cooke himself. Cooke also wrote and recorded such classics as “Chain Gang,” “Only Sixteen,” “Cupid,” “Wonderful World,” “Having a Party,” and “A Change is Gonna Come,” and was among the original inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1986. Cooke was known for having written many of the most popular songs of all time in the genre, yet, in spite of this, is often unaccredited for many of them by the general public.

Social and political stands

Sam Cooke is remembered as a pioneer both socially and musically. Blessed with a keen sense of vision and foresight, Sam Cooke was one of the first artists to capitalize on the crossover appeal of popular music by intentionally recording songs that targeted both the black and white markets. In addition to being an accomplished singer, songwriter, and producer, he was remembered as the first artist to take a political stand and refuse to sing to segregated audiences.

He recognized the politics of the music industry early in his career. At a time when record labels often left even the most talented and successful artist broke and penniless, Sam Cooke was one of the first artists, black or white, to buck the system and demand ownership of his career. He signed an unprecedented deal with RCA, in 1960, after coming to the agreement that they let him retain control of the copyrights to his music. He was the first African-American artist to own a record label, and he established his own management company and music publishing company as well.

Record labels

In addition to his success in writing his own songs and achieving mainstream fame — a truly remarkable accomplishment for an R&B singer at that time—Cooke continued to astonish the music business in the 1960s with the founding of his own label, SAR Records, which soon included The Simms Twins, The Valentinos, Bobby Womack, and Johnnie Taylor. Yet, his legacy as a record company owner and record producer has been relatively ignored.

Cooke and fellow musician and friend, J. W. Alexander, started the SAR and Derby labels in 1957. Along with the record company, they had their own music publishing companies: Kags Music Co. (BMI) and Malloy Music Co.(ASCAP)The SAR label was geared for the rhythm ‘n’ blues market, while its companion label, Derby, was pop-oriented. The two record labels showcased the skills of Cooke and Alexander as songwriters and producers; they did most of the production and a great deal of the songwriting on everything they recorded.

The label can’t be properly understood without understanding how strong the gospel connection was with almost every artist on the label. In a much smaller and more intimate fashion, SAR was a kind of family-affair record company: Close friends and long-term associates from their years on the gospel circuit were called in by Cooke and Alexander to record for the label.

It was dissolved shortly after Cooke’s death in 1964. The rights to the recordings and the publishing were bought up shortly thereafter by Allen Klein, who was Cooke’s last manager. Fifty-seven singles and Four LPs were issued on the Sar label, and 11 45s and two LPs on Derby Records.

Death

Cooke died under precarious circumstances at the young age of 33 on December 11, 1964 in Los Angeles. He was shot to death; the court verdict was justifiable homicide, though many believe that crucial details did not come out in court or were buried afterward. The details of the case involving Sam Cooke’s death are still in dispute.

Posthumous releases followed, many of which became hits, including “A Change Is Gonna Come,” an early protest song which is generally regarded as his greatest composition. After Cooke’s death, his widow, Barbara, married Bobby Womack. Cooke’s daughter, Linda, later married Bobby’s brother, Cecil Womack.

How it happened

The official police record states that Cooke was shot to death by Bertha Franklin, the manager of the Hacienda Motel, where Cooke had checked in earlier that evening. Franklin claimed that Cooke had broken into the manager’s office/apartment in a rage, wearing nothing but a shoe and an overcoat (and nothing beneath it) demanding to know the whereabouts of a woman who had accompanied him to the motel. Franklin said that the woman was not in the office and that she told Cooke this, but the enraged Cooke did not believe her and violently grabbed her, demanding again to know the woman’s whereabouts. According to Franklin, she grappled with Cooke, the two of them fell to the floor, and she then got up and ran to retrieve her gun. She said that she then fired at Cooke in self-defense because she feared for her life. According to Franklin, Cooke exclaimed, “Lady, you shot me,” before finally falling, mortally wounded.

According to Franklin and to the motel’s owner, Evelyn Carr, they had been on the phone together at the time of the incident. Thus, Carr claimed to have overheard Cooke’s intrusion and the ensuing confrontation and gunshots. Carr called the police to request that they go to the motel, informing them that she believed a shooting had occurred.

Court investigation and verdict

A coroner’s inquest was convened to investigate the incident. The woman who had accompanied Cooke to the motel was identified as Elisa Boyer, age 22, who had called the police that night shortly before Carr did. Boyer had called the police from a phone booth near the motel, telling them she had just escaped from being kidnapped.

Boyer told the police that she had first met Cooke earlier that night and had spent the evening in his company. She claimed that after they left a local nightclub together, she had repeatedly requested that he take her home, but that he instead took her against her will to the Hacienda Motel. She claimed that once in one of the motel’s rooms, Cooke physically forced her onto the bed and she was certain he was going to rape her. According to Boyer, when Cooke stepped into the bathroom for a moment, she quickly grabbed her clothes and ran from the room. She claimed that in her haste, she had also scooped up most of Cooke’s clothing by mistake. Boyer said that she ran first to the manager’s office and knocked on the door seeking help. However, she said that the manager took too long in responding, so, fearing Cooke would soon be coming after her, she fled the motel altogether before the manager ever opened the door. She claimed she then put her own clothing back on, stashed Cooke’s clothing away and went to the phone booth from which she called police.

Boyer’s story is the only account of what happened between the two that night. However, her story has long been called into question. Due to inconsistencies between her version of events and details reported by other witnesses, as well as other circumstantial evidence (for example, cash Cooke was reportedly carrying that was never recovered, and the fact that Boyer was soon after arrested for prostitution), many people feel it is more likely that Boyer went willingly to the motel with Cooke, and then slipped out of the room with Cooke’s clothing in order to rob him, rather than in order to escape an attempted rape.

Ultimately though, such questions were beyond the scope of the investigation. Its purpose was simply to establish the circumstances of Franklin’s role in the shooting, not to determine what had explicitly happened between Cooke and Boyer before the shooting.

Two points combined to make Franklin’s explanation valid. 1) Boyer’s leaving the motel room with almost all of Cooke’s clothing in tow (regardless of exactly why she did so) combined with the fact that 2) tests showed Cooke was inebriated at the time, provided a plausible explanation for Cooke’s bizarre behavior and state of dress, as reported by Franklin. This explanation, together with the fact that Carr’s account of what she said to have overheard corroborated Franklin’s version of events, was enough to convince the coroner’s jury to accept Franklin’s explanation that it was a case of justifiable homicide. And with that verdict, authorities officially closed the case on Cooke’s death.

Dispute

However, some of Cooke’s family and supporters have rejected not only Boyer’s version of events, but also Franklin’s and Carr’s. They believe that there was a conspiracy from the start to murder Cooke, that this murder did in fact take place in some manner entirely different from the official account of Cooke’s intrusion into Franklin’s office/apartment, and that Franklin, Boyer and Carr were all lying to provide a cover story for this murder.

My brother was first class all the way. He would not check into a $3 a night motel; that wasn’t his style (Agnes Cooke-Hoskins, sister of Sam Cooke, attending the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 2005 tribute to Cooke).

In her autobiography, Rage To Survive, singer Etta James claimed that she viewed Cooke’s body in the funeral home and that the injuries she observed were well beyond what could be explained by the official account of Franklin alone having fought with Cooke. James described Cooke as having been so badly beaten that his head was nearly decapitated from his shoulders, his hands were broken and crushed and his nose was mangled.

Nevertheless, no solid, reviewable evidence supporting a conspiracy theory has been presented to date. Cooke was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Glendale, California.

Legacy

Cooke’s influence has been immense: Even people who have never heard one of his records have still heard his voice and phrasing if they have listened to any Rod Stewart or Southside Johnny. Other rock artists with a notable Cooke heritage include The Animals, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, Van Morrison, James Taylor, the Beatles (particularly John Lennon), John Mayer, Bruce Springsteen, Steve Marriot, Terry Reid, Steve Perry, and numerous others, while R&B and soul artists indebted to Cooke include Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Lou Rawls, Al Green, and many more. Shortly following his passing, Motown Records released We Remember Sam Cooke, a collection of Cooke covers recorded by The Supremes.

In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him #16 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

“Wonderful World”

“Wonderful World” was a featured song in the film National Lampoon’s Animal House, the one song in that film that was not a “party” song. The song was also featured in the film Hitch starring Will Smith, Eva Mendes, and Kevin James.  After being featured prominently in the 1985 film Witness (starring Kelly McGillis and Harrison Ford), the song gained further exposure and became a hit in the United Kingdom, reaching Number 2 in re-release.

“Wonderful World” was also covered for many years by the Jerry Garcia Band.

The well-known verse of “Wonderful World”—”Don’t know much about [history, geography, and so on]“—provided the inspiration for titles of several books authored by writer Kenneth C. Davis. Davis’ books explored both basic and lesser-known facts about those subjects.

Cultural reference

Tupac Shakur mentions Cooke in his song “Thugz Mansion” “Drinkin’ peppermint schnapps with Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke, then a girl named Billie Holliday sang, sitting there kickin’ it with Malcom [X.], ’til the day came.”

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A Kibbutz , plural Kibbutzim , from the Hebrew word meaning “gathering” or “together,” is an Israeli collective community. The Kibbutzim movement combines socialism and Zionism in a form of practical Labor Zionism, founded at a time when independent farming was not practical. Forced by necessity into communal life, and inspired by their own socialist ideology, kibbutz members developed a pure communal mode of living that attracted interest from the entire world. Of particular interest was their collective mode of child-rearing, in which the children, like all their property, were considered as under collective ownership and responsibility. The Children’s Societies provided a place and adults who raised all the children together, meeting their parents only at scheduled visits.

While the kibbutzim lasted for several generations as utopian communities, most of today’s kibbutzim are scarcely different from the capitalist enterprises and regular towns to which they were originally supposed to be alternatives. Today, farming has been partially abandoned in many cases, with technology industries commonly replacing them. Nuclear families have replaced the Children’s Societies.

Though the kibbutz movement never accounted for more than seven percent of the Israeli population, it did more to shape the image Israelis have of their country, and the image that foreigners have of Israel, than any other Israeli institution.

Ideology of the Kibbutz movement

The spiritualism of the pioneers of the kibbutz movement consisted of mystical feelings about Jewish work, articulated by labor Zionists like Berl Katznelson, who said, “everywhere the Jewish laborer goes, the divine presence goes with him.”

In addition to redeeming the Jewish nation through work, there was also an element of redeeming Eretz Yisrael, or Palestine, in the kibbutz ideology.

Kibbutz members took pleasure in bringing the land back to life by planting trees, draining swamps, and countless other activities to make the land more fertile. In soliciting donations, kibbutzim and other Zionist settlement activities presented themselves as “making the desert bloom.”

The first kibbutzniks hoped to be more than plain farmers in Palestine. They wanted to create a new type of society where there would be no exploitation of anyone and where all would be equal. The early kibbutzniks wanted to be both free from working for others and free from the guilt of exploiting hired work. Thus was born the idea that Jews would band together, holding their property in common, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

Kibbutz members were not orthodox Marxists. Marxists did not believe in nations, whereas those kibbutzniks who leaned toward nationalistic Zionism did. Traditional Marxists were hostile to Zionism, even its communist manifestations. Although kibbutzniks practiced communism themselves, they did not believe that communism would work for everyone. Kibbutz political parties never called for the abolition of private property; Kibbutzniks saw kibbutzim as collective enterprises within a free market system.

History

Origins

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, conditions were especially hard for the Jews of the Russian Empire. It was the underlying policy of the Russian government in its May Laws to “cause one-third of the Jews to emigrate, one-third to accept baptism, and one-third to starve.” Except for a wealthy few, Jews could not leave the Pale of Settlement; within it, Jews could neither live in large cities, such as Kiev, nor any village with fewer than 500 residents, even if a person needed rural medical recuperation. In case any Jews made their way into Moscow, in 1897, the Moscow Chief of Police offered a bounty for the capture of an illegal Jew equal to the capture of two burglars.

Jews responded to the pressures on them in different ways. Some saw their future in a reformed Russia and joined Socialist political parties. Others saw the future of Jews in Russia as being out of Russia, and thus emigrated to the West. Last, but not least, among the ideological choices that presented themselves to Jews in late nineteenth century Russia was Zionism, the movement for the creation of a Jewish homeland in the cradle of Judaism, Palestine, or, as Jews called it, Eretz Yisrael.

In the 1880s, approximately 15,000 Jews, mostly from southern Russia, moved to Palestine with the dual intentions of living there and farming there. This movement of Jews to Palestine in the 1880s is called the “First Aliyah.”

The First Kibbutzim.

The Jews of the First Aliyah generation believed that Diaspora Jews had sunk low due to their typical disdain for physical labor. Their ideology was that the Jewish people could be “redeemed physically as well as spiritually by toiling in the fields of Palestine.”

The Biluim came to Eretz Yisrael with high hopes of success as a peasant class, but their enthusiasm was perhaps greater than their agricultural ability. Within a year of living in Palestine, the Biluim had become dependent on charity, just as their scholarly brethren in Jerusalem were. Thanks to donations from extremely wealthy Jews, such as Baron Edmond James de Rothschild, the Biluim were able to eventually prosper. Their towns, Rishon LeZion, Rehovot, and Gedera developed into dynamic communities while their culture of labor evolved: Instead of cultivating the soil on their own land, the Biluim hired Arabs to work the land in their place.

Tensions flared up once again in Russia in the first years of the twentieth century, which inspired another wave of Russian Jews to emigrate. As in the 1880s, most emigrants went to the United States, but a minority went to Palestine. It was this generation that would include the founders of the kibbutzim.

Most members of the Second Aliyah wanted to farm the land, but becoming independent farmers was not a realistic option. In 1909, Joseph Baratz, nine other men, and two women established themselves at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee near an Arab village called “Umm Juni.” These teenagers had hitherto worked as day laborers draining swamps, as masons, or as hands at the older Jewish settlements. Their dream was now to work for themselves, building up the land.

Ottoman Palestine was a harsh environment, quite unlike the Russian plains the Jewish immigrants were familiar with. The Galilee was swampy, the Judean Hills rocky, and the South of the country, the Negev, was a desert. Living collectively was simply the most logical way to be secure in an unwelcoming land. On top of considerations of safety, there were also those of economic survival. Establishing a new farm in the area was a capital-intensive project; collectively the founders of the kibbutzim had the resources to establish something lasting, while independently they did not.

They called their community “Kvutzat Degania,” after the cereals where they grew up. Their community would grow into the first kibbutz. Baratz wrote about his experiences:

We were happy enough working on the land, but we knew more and more certainly that the ways of the old settlements were not for us. This was not the way we hoped to settle the country—this old way with Jews on top and Arabs working for them; anyway, we thought that there shouldn’t be employers and employed at all. There must be a better way.

Development

Despite facing significant difficulties, kibbutzim grew and proliferated. By 1914, Degania had fifty members. Other kibbutzim were founded around the Sea of Galilee and the nearby Jezreel Valley. The founders of Degania themselves soon left Degania to become apostles of agriculture and socialism for newer kibbutzim.

Kibbutzim and the whole Jewish community in Palestine grew as a result of the increase in Anti-Semitism in Europe. In contrast to the prediction anti-Zionist Jews had made prior to World War I, the spread of liberal ideas was not irreversible and the position of Jews in many Central and Eastern European societies actually deteriorated. To escape the pogroms, tens of thousands of Russian Jews immigrated to Palestine in the early 1920s, in a wave of immigration that was called the “Third Aliyah.” In contrast to those who came as part of the Second Aliyah, these youth group members had some agricultural training before embarking and had already held meetings and made preparations to begin kibbutz life.

Kibbutzim founded in the 1920s, tended to be larger than the kibbutzim founded prior to World War I. Degania had only twelve members at its founding. Ein Harod, founded only a decade later, began with 215 members. Altogether, kibbutzim grew and flourished in the 1920s. In 1922, there were scarcely 700 individuals living on kibbutzim in Palestine. By 1927, the kibbutz population was approaching 4,000. By the eve of World War II, the kibbutz population was 25,000, 5 percent of the total population of the whole Yishuv settlement.

Challenges

The establishment of Israel and the flood of Jewish refugees from Europe and the Muslim world presented challenges and opportunities for kibbutzim. The immigrant tide offered kibbutzim a chance to expand through new members and inexpensive labor, but it also meant that Ashkenazi kibbutzim would have to adapt to Jews whose background was far different from their own.

Many of the kibbutzim were secular, even staunchly atheistic, although they wanted their new communities to have Jewish characteristics nonetheless. Friday nights were still “Shabbat” with a white tablecloth and fine food, and work was not done on Saturday if it could be avoided. Kibbutzniks marked holidays like Shavuot, Sukkot, and Passover with dances, meals, and celebrations.

A major challenge that kibbutzim faced was the question of how to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern Jews, or mizrahi. Many kibbutzim found themselves hiring Mizrahim to work their fields and expand infrastructure, but not actually admitting very many as members. Since few Mizrahim would ever join kibbutzim, the percentage of Israelis living on kibbutzim peaked around the time of statehood.

Kibbutzniks enjoyed a steady and gradual improvement in their standard of living in the first few decades after independence. In the 1960s, kibbutzim actually saw their standard of living improve faster than Israel’s general population. The prestige that kibbutzniks enjoyed in Israel in the 1960s was reflected in the Knesset. When only four percent of Israelis were kibbutzniks, kibbutzniks made up 15 percent of Israel’s parliament.

Life in the Kibbutzim

Until the 1970s, the principle of equality was taken extremely seriously by all kibbutzim. Kibbutzniks did not individually own animals, tools, or even clothing. All gifts and income received from outside were turned over to the common treasury.

Social lives

Social lives were held in common as well. At some kibbutzim husbands and wives were discouraged from sitting together at communal meals, as marriage was a kind of exclusivity.

Although major decisions about the future of the kibbutz were made by consensus or by voting, day-to-day decisions about where people would work were made by elected leaders. Typically, kibbutzniks would learn their assignments by reading an assignment sheet.

Kibbutzim attempted to rotate people into different jobs. One week a person might work in planting, the next with livestock, the week after in the kibbutz factory and the following week in the laundry. Even managers would have to work in menial jobs. Through rotation, people took part in every kind of work, but it interfered with any process of specialization.

From the beginning, Kibbutzim had a reputation as culture-friendly and nurturing of the arts. Many kibbutzniks were and are writers, actors, or artists. In 1953, Givat Brenner staged the play My Glorious Brothers, about the Maccabee revolt, building a real village on a hilltop as a set, planting real trees, and performing for 40,000 people. Like all kibbutz work products at the time, all the actors were members of the kibbutz, and all were ordered to perform as part of their work assignments.

Children

The arrival of children at a new kibbutz posed certain problems. If kibbutzniks owned everything in common, then who was in charge of the children? This question was answered by regarding the children as belonging to all, even to the point of kibbutz mothers breastfeeding babies which were not their own.

In the 1920s kibbutzim began a practice of raising children communally away from their parents in special communities called “Children’s Societies,” or Mossad Hinuchi. The theory was that trained nurses and teachers would be better care-providers than so-called amateur parents. Children and parents would have better relationships due to the Children’s Societies, since parents would not have to be disciplinarians, and there would exist no Oedipus complex. Also, it was hoped that raising children away from parents would liberate mothers from their “biological tragedy.” Instead of spending hours a day raising children, women could thus be free to work or enjoy leisure.

In the heyday of Children’s Societies, parents would only spend two hours a day, typically in the afternoon, with their children. As children got older, parents would sometimes go for days on end without seeing their offspring, except from chance encounters on the grounds of the kibbutz. Kibbutzim Children’s Societies were one of the features of kibbutz life that most interested outsiders.

Some children who went through Children’s Societies said they loved the experience, others remain ambivalent, while still others maintain that growing up without one’s parents was very difficult. Years later, a kibbutz member described her childhood in a Children’s Society:

“Allowed to suckle every four hours, left to cry and develop our lungs, we grew up without the basic security needed for survival. Sitting on the potty at regular intervals next to other children doing the same, we were educated to be the same; but we were, for all that, different … At night the grownups leave and turn off all the lights. You know you will wet the bed because it is too frightening to go to the lavatory.”

Gender roles

In the early days of the kibbutz movement the Kibbutzim tended to be male-dominated. The original female members had to perform many of the same tasks given to the male members, such as working in the fields. In many cases the women were still expected to perform traditional female roles, such as cooking, sewing, and cleaning in addition.

Eventually women in all the kibbutzim were allowed and even expected to do the same work as men, including armed guard duty. The desire to liberate women from traditional maternal duties was another ideological underpinning of the Children’s Society system. Interestingly, women born on kibbutzim were much less reluctant to perform traditional female roles. It was the generation of women born on kibbutzim that eventually ended the Societies of Children. Also, although there was a “masculinization of women,” there was no corresponding “feminization” of men. Women may have worked the fields, but men did not work in childcare.

Psychological aspects

In the era of independent Israel kibbutzim attracted interest from sociologists and psychologists who attempted to answer the question: What are the effects of life without private property? Or, what are the effects of life being brought up apart from one’s parents?

Two researchers who wrote about psychological life on kibbutzim were Melford E. Spiro (1958) and Bruno Bettelheim (1969). Both concluded that a kibbutz upbringing led to individuals’ having greater difficulty in making strong emotional commitments thereafter, such as falling in love or forming a lasting friendship. On the other hand, they appeared to find it easier to have a large number of less-involved friendships, and a more active social life.

Other researchers came to the conclusion that children growing up in these tightly knit communities tended to see the other children around them as ersatz siblings and preferred to seek mates outside the community when they reached maturity. Some theorized that living amongst one another on a daily basis virtually from birth on produced an extreme version of the Westermarck effect, which subconsciously diminished teenage kibbutzniks’ sexual attraction to one another. Partly as a result of not finding a mate from within the kibbutz, youth often abandoned kibbutz life as adults.

Economics

Even prior to the establishment of the state of Israel, kibbutzim had begun to branch out from agriculture into manufacturing. Kibbutz Degania, for instance, set up a factory to fabricate diamond cutting tools; it now grosses several million dollars a year. Kibbutz Hatzerim has a factory for drip irrigation equipment. Hatzerim’s business, called Netafim, is a multinational corporation that grosses over $300 million a year. Maagan Michael branched out from making bullets to making plastics and medical tools. Maagan Michael’s enterprises earn over $100 million a year. A great wave of kibbutz industrialization came in the 1960s, and today only 15 percent of kibbutz members work in agriculture.

Future

Kibbutzim have gradually and steadily become less collectivist. Rather than the principle of “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” kibbutzim have adopted “from each according to his preferences, to each according to his needs.”

The first changes to be made were in utilities and in the dining hall. When electricity was free, kibbutzniks had no incentive to save energy. In the 1980s, kibbutzim began to meter energy usage. Having kibbutzniks pay for energy usage required kibbutzniks to have personal money.

Eating arrangements also had to change. When food was free, people had no incentive to take the appropriate amount. Every kibbutz dining hall would end the night with enormous amounts of extra food; often this food would be fed to the animals. Now 75 percent of kibbutz dining halls are pay as you go a la carte cafeterias.

Though Kibbutzniks see their neighbors more than other Israelis, they have begun to live private lives. Most kibbutz dining halls are no longer even open for three meals a day. Group activities are much less well attended than they were in the past and are now infrequently scheduled.

In the 1970s, nearly all kibbutzim abandoned Children’s Societies in favor of the traditional nuclear family. The reasons were many. Some kibbutzim believed that communal life for children led to psychological problems; some said that giving up one’s children was too great a sacrifice for parents.

Kibbutzniks no longer expect to transform the rest of Israel, or the globe, into one large collectivist project, but they have not given up on changing the world in smaller ways. Kibbutzniks are prominent in Israel’s environmental movement. Some kibbutzim try to generate all their power through solar cells. Kibbutzniks are also prominent among Israel’s peace activists.

Legacy

Although there may be hundreds of entities in Israel calling themselves kibbutzim, the collectivist impulse is gone. Some kibbutzim have been criticized for “abandoning” socialist principles and turning to capitalist projects in order to make the kibbutz more self-sufficient economically. Numerous kibbutzim have moved away from farming and instead developed parts of their property for commercial and industrial purposes, building shopping malls and factories on kibbutz land that serve and employ non-kibbutz members while the kibbutz retains a profit from land rentals or sales. Conversely, kibbutzim which have not engaged in this sort of development have also been criticized for becoming dependent on state subsidies to survive.

Nonetheless, kibbutzniks played a role in Yishuv society and then Israeli society, far out of proportion to their population. From Moshe Dayan to Ehud Barak, kibbutzniks have served Israel in positions of leadership. Kibbutzim also contributed greatly to the growing Hebrew culture movement. Likewise, kibbutzim have disproportionately affected the views that the rest of the world has of Israel and the image Israelis have of their country.

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Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (January 27, 1832 – January 14, 1898), better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician, logician, clergyman, and photographer who is best remembered today as one of the world’s most beloved authors of children’s stories and nonsense poetry. Carroll’s genius for surreal storytelling, wordplay, and pure humor has made him one of the most enduring and critically acclaimed of all writers in the genre. His most famous works are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems “The Hunting of the Snark” and “Jabberwocky.”

Carroll’s facility at word play, logic, and fantasy has delighted audiences ranging from children to the literary elite. But beyond this, his work has become embedded deeply in modern culture, and he has influenced a wide range of artists, from other children’s writers to literary giants such as Jorge Luis Borges and James Joyce.

Life

Antecedents

Dodgson’s family was predominantly northern English, with some Irish connections. Conservative and High Church Anglican, most of Dodgson’s ancestors were British Army officers or Church of England clergymen. His great-grandfather, also Charles Dodgson, had risen through the ranks of the church to become a bishop; his grandfather, another Charles, had been an army captain, killed in action in 1803, when his two sons were hardly more than babies.

The elder of these sons—yet another Charles—was Carroll’s father. He reverted to the other family business and took holy orders. He went to Rugby School, and from there to Christ Church, Oxford. He was mathematically gifted and won a double first degree which could have been the prelude to a brilliant academic career. Instead he married his first cousin in 1827, and retired into obscurity as a country parson.

Young Charles

Young Charles Dodgson was born in the little parsonage of Daresbury in Warrington, Cheshire, the oldest boy and already the third child of the four-and-a-half year old marriage. Eight more were to follow and, remarkably for the time, all of them—seven girls and four boys —survived into adulthood. When Charles was 11, his father was given the living of Croft-on-Tees in north Yorkshire, and the whole family moved to the spacious Rectory. This remained their home for the next twenty-five years.

In his early years, young Dodgson was educated at home. His “reading lists” preserved in the family testify to a precocious intellect: At the age of seven the child was reading The Pilgrim’s Progress. He also suffered from a stammer—a condition shared by his siblings—that often influenced his social life throughout his years. At twelve he was sent away to a small private school at nearby Richmond, where he appears to have been happy and settled. But in 1845, young Dodgson moved on to Rugby School, where he was evidently greatly depressed.

Oxford

He left Rugby at the end of 1849 and, after an interval which remains unexplained, went on in January 1851 to Oxford, attending his father’s old college, Christ Church. He had only been at Oxford two days when he received a summons home. His mother had died of “inflammation of the brain”—perhaps meningitis or a stroke—at the age of forty-seven.

His early academic career veered between high-octane promise and irresistible distraction. He may not always have worked hard, but he was exceptionally gifted and achievement came easily to him. In 1852, he received a first in Honour Moderations, and shortly after he was nominated to a Studentship by his father’s old friend Canon Edward Pusey. However, a little later he failed an important scholarship through his self-confessed inability to apply himself to study. Even so, his talent as a mathematician won him the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship, which he continued to hold for the next twenty-six years. The income was good, but the work bored him. Many of his pupils were older and richer than he was, and almost all of them were uninterested. However, despite early unhappiness, Dodgson was to remain at Christ Church, in various capacities, until his death.

Dodgson the artist

From a young age, Dodgson wrote poetry and short stories, sending them to various magazines, enjoying moderate success. Between 1854 and 1856, his work appeared in the national publications, The Comic Times and The Train, as well as smaller magazines like the Whitby Gazette and the Oxford Critic. Most of this output was humorous, sometimes satirical, but his standards and ambitions were exacting. “I do not think I have yet written anything worthy of real publication (in which I do not include the Whitby Gazette or the Oxonian Advertiser), but I do not despair of doing so some day,” he wrote in July 1855.

In 1856, he published his first piece of work under the name that would make him famous. A very predictable little romantic poem called “Solitude” appeared in The Train under the authorship of “Lewis Carroll.”

In the same year, 1856, a new Dean, Henry Liddell, arrived at Christ Church, bringing with him his young family, all of whom would figure largely in Dodgson’s life, and greatly influence his writing career over the following years. Dodgson became close friends with the mother, Lorina, and the children, particularly the three sisters: Ina, Edith, and Alice Liddell. Although Dodgson himself later denied his “little heroine” was based on any real child,, he is widely assumed to have derived his own “Alice” from Alice Liddell. There is an acrostic poem at the end of Through the Looking Glass which supports this view. Reading downward, taking the first letter of each line, spells out Alice’s name in full. The poem has no title in Through the Looking Glass but is usually referred to by its first line, “A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky.”

Though information is scarce, it does seem clear that his friendship with the family was an important part of his life in the late 1850s, and he grew into the habit of taking the children (first the boy, Harry, and later the three girls) on rowing trips to nearby Nuneham or Godstow.

It was on one such expedition, on July 4, 1862, that Dodgson invented the outline of the story that eventually became his first and largest commercial success. Having told the story to Alice Liddell, she begged him to write it down. Dodgson eventually presented her with a handwritten, illustrated manuscript entitled Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, in November 1864.

Before this, the family of friend and mentor, George MacDonald, read Dodgson’s incomplete manuscript and the enthusiasm of the MacDonald children encouraged Dodgson to seek publication. In 1863, he had taken the unfinished manuscript to Macmillan the publisher, who liked it immediately. After the possible alternative titles Alice Among the Fairies and Alice’s Golden Hour were rejected, the work was finally published as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, in 1865. The illustrations this time were by Sir John Tenniel; Dodgson evidently realized that a published book would need the skills of a professional artist.

The overwhelming commercial success of the first Alice book changed Dodgson’s life in many ways. The fame of his alter ego, Lewis Carroll soon spread around the world. He was inundated with fan mail and with sometimes unwanted attention. He also began earning quite substantial sums of money. However, perhaps oddly, he didn’t use this income as a means of abandoning his post at Christ Church which he apparently disliked.

In 1872, a sequel—Through the Looking-Glass—was published. Its somewhat darker mood possibly reflects the changes in Dodgson’s life. His father had recently died (1868), plunging him into a depression that would last some years.

In 1876, Dodgson produced his last great work, The Hunting of the Snark, a fantastic nonsense poem exploring the adventures of a bizarre crew of variously inadequate beings, and one beaver, who set off to find the eponymous creature.

The later years

Over the remaining twenty years of his life, throughout his growing wealth and fame, Dodgson’s existence remained little changed. He continued to teach at Christ Church until 1881, remaining in residence there until his death. His last novel, the two-volume Sylvie and Bruno, was published in 1889 and 1893 respectively. Its extraordinary convolutions and apparent confusion baffled most readers, achieving little success. He died at his sisters’ home in Guildford on January 14 1898 of pneumonia following influenza. He was not quite sixty-six years old. He is buried in Guildford at the Mount Cemetery.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a work of children’s literature which is generally acclaimed as Dodgson’s masterpiece. It tells the story of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit-hole into Wonderland, a fantasy realm populated by talking playing cards, anthropomorphic creatures, and other fantastical beings.

The tale is fraught with satirical allusions to Dodgson’s friends and to life in the United Kingdom during the mid nineteenth century in general. The Wonderland described in the story is a place where logic and rules and reality are turned upside-down in ways that have made the story enduringly popular with adults, as well as children.

The book is often referred to by the abbreviated title Alice in Wonderland. This alternate title was popularized by the numerous film and television adaptations of the story produced over the years.

History

Alice was first published on July 4, 1865, exactly three years after the Dodgson and the Reverend Robinson Duckworth rowed in a boat up the River Thames with three little girls:

• Lorina Charlotte Liddell (aged 13) (“Prima” in the book’s prefatory verse)
• Alice Pleasance Liddell (aged 10) (“Secunda” in the prefatory verse)
• Edith Mary Liddell (aged 8) (“Tertia” in the prefatory verse)

The journey had started at Folly Bridge near Oxford, ending five miles away in the village of Godstow. To while away time the Reverend Dodgson told the girls a story that, not so coincidentally, featured a bored little girl named Alice who goes looking for an adventure.

The girls loved the story so much that they asked Dodgson to write it down for them. He eventually did so and on November 26, 1864, he presented Alice with the first manuscript version of the story, which was titled Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. According to Dodgson’s diaries, in the spring of 1863, he gave the unfinished manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground to his friend and mentor George MacDonald, whose children loved it. On MacDonald’s advice, Dodgson decided to submit Alice for publication. Before he had even finished the manuscript for Alice Liddell, he was already expanding the 18,000 word original to 35,000 words, most notably adding the episodes about the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Tea-Party. In 1865, Dodgson’s tale was published as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by “Lewis Carroll.”

The entire print run sold out quickly. Alice was a publishing sensation, beloved by children and adults alike. Among its first avid readers were the young Oscar Wilde and Queen Victoria. The book hasn’t been out of print since. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has been translated into over 50 languages, including Esperanto and Faroese. There have now been over a hundred editions of the book, as well as countless adaptations in other media, especially theater and film.

Plot summary

In the novel, a girl named Alice is bored while on a picnic with her older sister. Everything changes when, idly looking around, she sees a passing white rabbit, dressed in a waistcoat and muttering “Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear!” The rabbit, who seems to be in a dire hurry, quickly scurries by, and Alice, without a second’s pause, follows after him down a rabbit-hole.

As soon as she’s entered the rabbit-hole, Alice finds herself floating down into a dream world unlike anything she could have ever imagined. As she attempts to follow the rabbit, she has myriad adventures: She grows to gigantic size and later shrinks to a the size of a miniature; she meets a group of small animals stranded in a sea of tears; she gets trapped in the rabbit’s house when her body spontaneously enlarges again; she meets a baby which changes into a pig, and a cat which disappears leaving only his smile behind; she goes to a never-ending tea party run by a lunatic in a hat; she goes to the shore and meets a Gryphon and a wisecracking turtle; and finally, she attends the trial of the Knave of Hearts, who has been accused of stealing tarts. After all of these fantastic adventures, Alice reaches the end of Wonderland and wakes up, back with her sister.

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