The Ozanam School – Compton Avenue

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I am not very interested in cars.  As I browsed through the dozens of postcards showing Brighton, I nearly passed this one by.

Old cars in front of an hotel
Image courtesy of Image: Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove

When I looked at the back of the postcard on-line, I found the following advertisement:

The wording of the advertisement reads: “English in England – Sea-bathing. Do you wish your child’s holidays to be both pleasant and useful? Enquire at the Ozanam School (Château d’Asnières – Department of the Seine) or at the Ozanam School (60 Compton Avenue, Brighton, England for details of an organized excursion next August.”

Read more: The Ozanam School – Compton Avenue

The ad continues by giving exact details of the journey to and from Paris.  The whole holiday would cost 285 francs.

My hunt was on to find out more about the Ozanam School in Brighton and its connections with France. The first challenge was to find the date of the postcard.

The picture on the card held a significant clue: the black crêpe seen below the hotel windows. There had been an important death.  It had to be either Queen Victoria (1901) or King Edward VII (1911).  I tried the latter one.  Saturday 20 May 1911 was the day of King Edward’s funeral.  It was also the day on which the Sussex Automobile Club held their sixth annual meeting at the Old Ship Hotel in Brighton. The photograph had been taken on that day.

I had never heard of an Ozanam School, but quickly learned that Frederick Ozanam (1813-1853) had been a Catholic teacher and writer who had founded the Society of St Vincent de Paul, a charity to help the poor.

18th century grand house behind a high wall and metal gates
ASNIÈRES – ÉCOLE OZANAN – ANCIEN CHÂTEAU Anciennes cartes postales, Public domaine, via Wikimedia Commons

The school in Asnières, however, seemed to be for the sons of the wealthy.  It was described as an école écclésiastique and was a private, incorporated company owned by a Monsieur Fillon.  The school had opened in about 1892 and went into liquidation soon after M. Fillon’s death in 1913.

The only other remaining traces of the Brighton school are a couple of advertisements in La Croix newspaper:

A French newspaper snipped about a French school in Brighton
Source: Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France. La Croix, 22 sept. 1915

To put the snippet into more standard French : Rentrée des classes.  Pendant la guerre, envoyez vos fils à Ozanam College, 60 Compton Avenue, Brighton, Angleterre.  Études de français, anglais, sports. Incomparable plage.  Traversée facile et sûre.  Écrivez au Supérieur. [Start of term. Send your sons to Ozanam College, 60 Compton Avenue, Brighton, England. Subjects: French, English, sport. Unrivalled beach.  The crossing is easy and safe.  Write to the Head Teacher.]

I first came across Abbé Lucien Vaucher when he was described in the Brighton Gazette (23 April 1913) as the “proprietor of a French School in Compton-avenue”. Kelly’s Directories of 1905, 1911 and 1913 state quite clearly that at the 60 Compton Avenue address was the “Ozanam French School  (Rev. Dr. P. A. Paris, Director)”.  I can find no trace of the Rev. Dr. Paris.  Lucien Vaucher made a much greater mark on society.

Priest though he was, Father Vaucher seemed to be somewhat of a hothead: in December 1912 he was fined “20/- (£1.00) and costs or 7 days’ imprisonment” for riding “a motor cycle recklessly” in York Place, Brighton.  He soon redeemed himself, however, by his service in the Great War.  From evidence in a book dedicated to clergy who had served at the time, Fr. Vaucher had “done  his bit” both for France and for Britain:

Newspaper snippet in French about Abbé Vaucher
Source: Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France. « Le clergé du diocèse de Nancy pendant la guerre 1914-1918 : Livre d’or » by l’abbé R. Hogard.

The text reads: Abbé Lucien Vaucher. Teacher of English. Ordained 1904; mobilised 2 August 1914.  Nurse in the 23rd Section. Nurse (August 1914 – April 1916). Interpreter attached to the British Army (August 1916 – March 1919). Somme, Belgium.

But there was more.  Much more.  And I learned about it from The Iowa Falls Gazette.  In 1916, a correspondent of the Gazette by the name of Verne Marshall, filed an extensive report on his visit to the Hôpital Gama in the town of Toul.  The battles of Verdun, 50 miles away, had only just begun but the author writes of the hundreds of injured soldiers which were already being cared for in the hospital. In the last few paragraphs of his article, Marshall wanted to lighten the tone.  He describes a concert he attended. The piece ends with these lines:

“Afterwards we went across the road and attended a tea party at which Lucien Vaucher, priest, soldier, professor, scholar – and postmaster pro tem at the l’hospital [sic] Gama, was the host. … It was a very pleasant affair, and Vaucher, who is a man amongst men, proved himself a prince of good fellows in addition of his other numerous qualifications.”

Fr. Vaucher returned to ecclesiastical life in his home town of Nancy where became an honorary chaplain at the Cathedral and taught in a local boys’ school.  He did not live to see another world war: he died in February 1939 aged just 51 years old.

The 1911 census was taken on Sunday 2 April.  It would appear, therefore, that the 12 boy pupils at the Brighton school were not there just for their summer holiday.  They were in Brighton for at least a year, purportedly to learn English.  However, both teachers, 35 year-old Michel de Rivière and a younger man, Maurice Richard (24), were French nationals. The likelihood is that teaching was very largely in French.

Despite the Ozanam principals of helping the poor, it would seem that this school catered mainly for the wealthy.  It was not only the principal teacher who had the aristocratic particule ‘de’ attached to his name.  As ever, it has been easier to trace the careers of the nobility (or ‘nobs’) than those of more humble folk.

Of the 12 pupils present on that April day in 1911, three were from aristocratic families.

The oldest was René d’Estainville, aged 20.   In later years, he worked as an agent for the Lanson champagne company, and on his marriage certificate, in 1930, described himself as commerçant [merchant].  He could just as well have put ‘playboy’.  That 1930 marriage was to Rita Redhead, an actress.  Their wedding was a grand event in Paris with Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail, in attendance.  Why was the newspaper mogul there? Partly because the bride was cousin to his daughter-in-law.  Partly because Rita had previously been his Lordship’s mistress for several years – a truly May to December affair, Rothermere being 30 years older than Miss Redhead.  Rita, however, was managing to move from one titled partner to another: by the time René and Rita married, the groom was comte [Count] René d’Estainville.

René d’Estainville was a sportsman.  Described as “the well-known sportsman and ‘bobber’ ” in The Sketch newspaper (August 1931) he was renowned for his skill at bobsleighing at St Moritz in winter.  But perhaps marriage suited René.  When journalist Priscilla mentioned the d’Estainvilles in The Tatler later the same year, she says of him in an aside “(René does not seem to be quite the lad he used-to-was in his gay bat’chlor days does he?)”.

The couple, who had two daughters and a son, stayed together until René died in February 1977.

But perhaps it is unfair to stress the frivolous side of René d’Estainville’s life.  In the Great War he had been a captain in the N77 Squadron and in July 1917 had, with his co-pilot, brought down an enemy ‘plane following a dogfight above one of the many forests in eastern France.  For his exploits he had won the Croix de Guerre, awarded  pour conduite exceptionnelle [for outstanding conduct].

The second aristocrat was recorded in the census simply as Jean de Maillé.  Presumably the enumerator did not have room to write in full Arthur Jean Foulque Marie de Maillé de la Tour Landry. There is little to tell of Jean. He volunteered to join the army in 1917, just three weeks before his 18th birthday. He trained as a pilot, starting in March 1917 rising through the ranks to become brigadier and then quartermaster.  He died on 28 August 1918 at a military hospital within the grounds of the Château of Versailles.  As his older brother had died 10 months earlier in one of the Rumanian campaigns, Jean would, in later life, have also been a count – after all, his grandfather was a duke. It was not to be.

Third in age was Jehan Cuny d’Azerailles (aged 13 in 1911).  There is no doubt that Jehan was illegitimate, although acknowledged by his father.  The puzzle is the aristocratic name: Cuny d’Azerailles does not appear in newspapers or official records. The use of the name may have been snobbery on the mother’s part or simply an indication that she wished to compensate for her son’s illegitimacy by using such a grand patronym.  My research indicates that it is highly likely that the well-know sportsman and champion tennis player of the 1930s was the same person as the little boy who had received part of his education in Brighton.

Youngest in the class was 12 year old Bernard Maridort.  Too young to serve for long toward the end of WW1, Bernard survived and spent many of the interwar years as a colonialist in Gabon.  Once France had been occupied in 1940, he was prompt to leave Gabon to join the Free French Forces in Brazzaville (Congo).  Bernard was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 1949 for his management of colonial forestry in West Africa. He probably retired soon after, but lived a good few more years.  Bernard Maurice Roger Maridort died aged 77 in the quiet town of Tours on the peaceful banks of the Loire river.

As far as I can tell, the Ozanam school in Compton Avenue did not survive beyond 1915. Many of the parents may have recalled their boys to France in 1914, leaving Lucien Vachier (or Father Paris) in a difficult financial position.  However, I feel it is more likely that Fr Vacher himself felt the call of duty.  It was more important for him to close the school and join up than to continue his Brighton (ad)venture.

John Tilt and his royal patrons

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This little snippet, found by chance on-line, whetted my appetite.  I had to find out more about Jean or John Tilt, a Brighton lad, and his connection to France:

No. 425- By Order of the King who authorises John Tilt esq, born 28 September 1783 at Brighton in England, to make his domicile in France and there to enjoy the exercise of his civil rights for as long as he shall continue to reside there. (Paris, 12 November 1826) Source BnF/Gallica

Why would Charles X extend such hospitality to an Englishman?  And why, seven years later, would Louis-Philippe, King of the French, allow a pension of 1,000 francs to the same man? Tilt (Jean) was listed as a minster of the Anglican Church who had lost his fortune, that is to say, he had lost his ecclesiastical living.  Not the usual beneficiary of a Catholic king’s bounty.

Read more: John Tilt and his royal patrons

Source BnF/Gallica

I’ll start by going back a generation.

Thomas Tilt, John’s father, was a native of Kidderminster. He arrived in Brighton in 1776.  In their mid-20s, he and his wife Mary already had three sons, four more children would be born in Brighton.  Thomas soon took over the running of the Castle Inn which stood on the Old Steine at the heart of Brighton. So very conveniently near the Marine (later Royal) Pavilion.  So far so English.  So far so Anglican.

The Castle Inn in 1801, the large building centre left of the engraving.  Image courtesy of the Society of Brighton Print Collectors / Regency Society of Brighton and Hove

All William and Mary’s sons seem to have had a good education. Of the Tilt brood, the eldest son William, born in 1773, was educated at Lewes Grammar School, then Eton and finally Trinity College, Cambridge.  He became an Anglican clergyman.

Second son Thomas followed in his father’s footsteps by renting out accommodation for visitors to the burgeoning tourist town that Brighton was becoming. The fourth child, Andrew, became a colonel in the army, serving in France, the West Indies and Canada.  Of the two girls, little is known: Sarah died aged 13, although Mary outlived them all.  She died in 1863, her 80th year.

Born in 1783, John / Jean Tilt was the couple’s the sixth child and fifth son.  He does not seem to have been physically adventurous like Andrew.  Nor was he conventional like brother William.  Nor was he a businessman like Thomas jnr. John was, however, perhaps the most interesting of the bunch.

John seemed restless.  He made a start on a career by becoming a schoolmaster in Southwick, near Brighton but in an advert he placed in the London Courrier and Evening Gazette, he tells prospective clients that he has “been several years in France”.  Later reports suggest that his stay of “several years” may not have been voluntary.  If it can be assumed that he went to France aged about 20, he would have found himself trapped in an enemy country.  Napoleon declared war against Britain in 1803.

Back in England, two major events happened in John’s life in 1809: he married Elizabeth Gates and he moved his school from Southwick to Bedford Square, at “the Western extremity of Brighton”. Not surprisingly, John’s school specialized in languages: “Latin, Greek, French and lastly Hebrew” (Sussex Advertiser  12 July 1819).  He also turned his hand to writing school books.  His first publication was rather expensive (at 5 shillings).  It advertised itself as:

Three sons were born to John and Elizabeth between 1813 and 1817. Less than two years after the birth of his youngest child, John decided that school-mastering was not for him, so he enrolled at St Alban Hall, an Oxford college.  Aged 34 and with three children under the age of seven, John Tilt became a clergyman – although it would appear he never attended lectures and maybe never set foot in “his” college.

John was now a fully fledged Reverend. The title Rev. may well have improved sales of his books.

Morning Post, Thursday 20 January 1820 ©The British Library Board

In 1823, he was given the curacy at All Hallows Church, Lombard Street in London.  Perhaps now was the time to settle down.  Instead, he found Catholicism – five years before the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829.  It was an audacious move.  The story is told in detail by La Quotidienne on 12 December 1824.  Here are the bare bones of the story as told by the newspaper:

One day, John Tilt, a good Anglican, heard that a Catholic priest, Prince Alex de Hohenlohe, had recently cured two nuns in Ireland of an unspecified illness.  This he had achieved through the medium of prayer, and remotely, from his monastery in Germany.  Tilt was initially skeptical of what the Catholic church considered miraculous.  First, he examined in detail this particular miracle.  Then he set about delving into the phenomenon in general.  When he learned that each century had famous examples of miracles, he came to the conclusion that l’église à laquelle il était attaché n’était point la vraie Église. [The Church to which he was attached was not the true Church.]

After long discussions with eminent Catholics he made up his mind et fit son abjuration, le 29 juillet [he abjured on 29 July] in the chapel of St Mary’s, Moorfields in the City of London. His wife followed his example, despite also being an Anglican born and bred.

The newspaper was not slow to recognize that the couple had children and, henceforth, no income. This, it stated, would be a problem, but the Tilts were strong in their belief.  The couple were confirmed in their new faith by no less a person than William Poynter, who the newspaper called, inaccurately, Bishop of London.

Whether Elizabeth Tilt spoke French is not clear.  No matter! The family (John?) decided that Catholic France was a better place to live than their home country.  Almost immediately on his arrival in France, John was given a post as a senior librarian in the Sorbonne.  The Étoile newspaper reveals that the Ministre des affaires ecclésiastiques et de l’instruction publique [Minister for Church Affairs and Public Education] who appointed John Tilt was doing so, not out of charity but because

M. Tilt est un homme instruit, en état de rendre des services à l’église dans l’étude des langues anciennes et des matières de controverse. [Mr Tilt is an educated man and is in a position to be of service to the Church through his studies of ancient languages and polemics.]

Somewhat later, English newspapers told the story differently – and rather more pithily:

A jesuit (sic) got hold of him, and he being a man of unstable mind, perverted him to the Catholic faith.  He renounced Protestantism, and fled to Paris where he had the enviable distinction of being pointed out [appointed?] sub-librarian to some Bibliotheque there … and betook himself to the sophistry of Catholicism, which was more congenial to his elastic conscience and utter destitution of principle … The Age Sunday 07 February 1830

Strong words indeed. 

Perhaps John Tilt was not a good librarian.  The family’s affairs do not seem to have gone well. There is nothing to show when or why he left the Sorbonne, but in 1833, King Louis-Philippe was persuaded that the family needed financial support.  The King stepped in and awarded Jean Tilt a pension of 1,000 francs.

A series of letters in the Cambridgeshire archive reveal the extent to which Richard Huddleson, a wealthy Catholic of Sawston Hall near Cambridge, also supported the family financially.

This help appears to have started in 1837 as the result of an appeal sent to Huddelston from a friend of his, Kenelm Digby.  Tilt and Digby lived in the same street in the centre of Paris. Digby had been moved by the plight of the family.  He wrote to Huddleston and Huddleston must have sent funds immediately, for within three weeks Tilt had written his thanks to his benefactor in a letter dated 19 November 1837 from N0 48 rue de Grenelle. 

Alas, the situation did not improve for the family.  By 1841 matters had gone from bad to worse: Digby was asking for Huddleston’s help once again.

The family to whom you were so generous last year is reduced low indeed.  The father for some days was near losing his reason.  Absolute starvation was near being their end.  Mr Hunt is voucher for their honesty.  We are going to get one son apprenticed and to pay £30 for him.  £20 is wanting.  We are going to place one daughter in a convent school to get her education perfected… Young Tilt who was near dying of hunger in Paris last winter has just had an offer through us of being a Partner to a Surgeon apothecary of Southampton.  I have not yet received his answer to say whether he will be tempted by it to abandon his dear old Father and Mother in Paris. (Letter dated 27 August 1841 from Springfield House, Polygon, Southampton)

Two years later, John Tilt was dead leaving his wife, yet again, to rely on the charity of Richard Huddlestone.

…  Poor Mrs Tilt is residing with her son, the Doctor.  Their address is No 11 rue de la Paix. I shall say nothing to her about your last letter. & indeed I shall not probably see her, but as I have given you her address, I shall not have to reproach myself for your alms will be grateful to her.  Her own recovery is considered miraculous.  She is respected by all who know her and she has to struggle with poverty with her son. (Letter dated 6 June 1843 from Digby to Huddleston)

“Poor Mrs Tilt” may, in fact, have had a better life following the death of her husband.  Her three boys had been brought up in France and each was in a position to support her in her old age.

Postscript

John Tilt’s eldest son became a Catholic priest.  When he died, aged just 47, in 1859 he had spent several years as Missionary Rector of the fledgling St Mary’s Catholic Chapel in Richmond as well as undertaking “religious instruction” of the pupils at St Mary’s Collegiate Catholic School.  When he had had to retire through ill health in 1859 his congregation gave him 105 guineas, much of the money coming from “the munificent donation of the French Royal Family at Claremont and Twickenham” – that is, the deposed Orléans family who had fled France after the 1848 revolution.

Second son, Edward John, graduated as a doctor in Paris in 1829.  He returned to England and became eminent in the realm of women’s health.  He had brough with him from France enlightened ideas about the menopause and gynaecology in general.  He did not die until 1893, at which time the British Medical Journal gave him a 20-line obituary and he appears at some length in the Dictionary of National Biography.

Third son, William Henry (aka Henri) Gates Tilt is more of a mystery. He lived most of his life in England and seemed to have private means from property.  His links with France, and in particular with the town of Rennes in Britanny, remained strong: two of his daughters were born in Rennes in the late 1850s; one of his twin sons married a woman who had been born and, much later, died in that same town; the other son married a woman from Saint-Brieux, just 60 miles from Rennes. 

The Limes Convent School 1902-1916

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Writing this postcard to a pupil at a prestigious boys’ Catholic school in western France, Marie explains the layout of her school.

Postcard supplied by Anthony Beeson,  See also “North Brighton through Time” by A Beeston

Cher Gratien, je t’envoie ma pension.  Où je te mets une + c’est notre classe, une X c’est la réfectoire, ++ notre dortoir.  Merci pour la carte.  Il fait un temps magnifique depuis quelques jours. J’ai eu la visite de René samedi, il va très bien et te souhaite … bonjour. [Dear Gratien, I’m sending you our boarding school.  Our classroom is where I have put a + for you, an X is for the refectory, ++ our dormitory.  Thank you for the card.  The weather has been magnificent for the last few days.  René visited on Saturday, he’s very well and says “hello”.]

The writer was French but was clearly was at ease in writing in English.  She was resident in no ordinary English ladies’ school.  No 157 Preston Road, opposite Preston Park in Brighton, was a convent school run by French nuns.  The 1911 census shows that 10 of the 11 nuns teaching at the school had been born in France, as had all 15 pupils.  Even the 15 year old servant, Anna Pescher, was a French national.

Read more: The Limes Convent School 1902-1916

For the first few years of the 20th century, French politics had a considerable impact on girls’ education in Brighton.

In 1901, la loi des associations was passed by a Republican government.  On the surface, this law seemed very positive:  for the first time since the revolution in 1789, groups of more than 20 people could gather together legally to pursue their own interests (occasionally subversive, of course).  Nowadays, this law is used to help voluntary groups run their activities.

However, at the time the law came into force, there was continuing suspicion of religious groups.  The 1901 law was seen as a way of curbing their hold over young minds.  One of the many new rules stipulated that associations which had an “earned income” (usually from teaching, in the case of nuns) would now be taxed on the value of their, often very extensive, lands and properties.  Owning property therefore became prohibitively expensive for religious communities.

Most congregations, such as that of les Sœurs de la Providence de Portieux (Sisters of Providence of Portieux), ploughed their income from their fee-paying students into schools for the poor in the same neighbourhood, or into other charitable activities. This did not allay the government’s suspicion of them.  By 1904 many congregations, both male and female, had delegated their teaching sisters to set up convents, and particularly convent schools, abroad. Sussex and Kent were at the forefront of welcoming them.  Brighton and Hove in particular.

The Community of the Sisters of Providence of Portieux had been founded in the Vosges region (north-east) of France in 1762.  As a religious order, they had flourished, surviving the French Revolution, Napoleon and the Franco-Prussian War (1870).  The Law of Association in 1901 lead to hundreds of the sister leaving the dozens of schools they had founded across France.  In the Paris region alone, seven schools were shut and the nuns dismissed. 

 La Libre Parole 26 July 1902 Source: BnF Gallica

[The school premises was closed last Tuesday.  More than 1,240 Sisters of Providence have already returned to the mother-house in Portieux (Vosges).  This congregation has no communal assets and its income is used exclusively in helping the unfortunate.]

Not all French people wanted to see nuns ousted from their teaching post as reported by The Sphere, Saturday 2 August 1902 Image © Illustrated London News Group. Image created courtesy of The British Library Board.

When a group of refugee Sisters of Providence arrived in Brighton, they were able to settle in The Limes in Preston Road. At The Limes they set about establishing a school. 

The Limes c. 1960 Image courtesy of the Regency Society of Brighton and Hove

The Limes had been built in 1878.  It was a large, detached house, symmetrical in plan and had four floors, including a basement. It was not the largest of the houses along Preston Road, but it had the advantage of having a coach-house and a two-storey cottage in the grounds.  The park opposite was well patrolled by members of the local police force as well as its formidable but watchful park keeper. It was a suitable place for young ladies to walk and take exercise. 

The Limes was used as a comfortable family home for the final 20 years of the 19th century. The last private owner was John Salkeld Horsley.  Horsley ran a cycle shop at 4 Pool Valley.  As cycling became a popular and affordable pastime – even for ladies – Horsely made enough money to move both his shop and his home to 75 Grand Parade in about 1902 or 1903.  The Limes became available.  To let or to buy is not known.  The Sisters of Portieux were able to acquire the property and set up their convent and school.

Little is known of the pupils:  The card below was sent on 18 May 1907 by the three Parazols sisters, Léontine (aged 11), Adeline (10) and Raymonde (a few days before her sixth birthday).  The desire of many Catholic parents to keep their girls in a convent school is perhaps exemplified, if rather to an extreme, by the Parazols family.  M. and Mme Parazols had sent their three girls away to England at a time when the family was already mourning the loss of four babies who had died in the five years between 1899 and 1900.  Each had died either at birth or within a few weeks of birth.

Post card from the personal collection of the Suzanne Hinton

Raymonde Parazols was not the only “tiny” in the school.  Both Adrien Lenfant and Jean Rozière, the only two boys in the school, were aged just eight years old when they appear in the 1911 census for the school.

Adeline Parazols died in France, apparently homeless, aged 34; Raymonde married in France; Adrien and Jean would have been too young to serve in WW1.  Reliable sources show that Adrien lived to the age of 87, dying in 1990 in France.

Extensive searches for information about the nuns or about the other pupils has been unfruitful.

The school had vanished from Preston Road by 1916.  Perhaps it was no longer needed by the Sisters of Providence.  A convent school run by a similar community had been flourishing in Bexhill since 1898. Many French parents would be glad that their daughters were out of harm’s way in England during the fighting on French soil in WW1 – but would also feel it prudent to ensure that the girls were further inland, far from any threat of attack or even invasion.

The Limes was subsequently used as a residence for a Ministry of Labour (re)training centre.  In 1921, the house and outbuilding were home to about 30 men, mostly in their 20s and early 30s and mostly handicapped following their war injuries.  The atmosphere must have been very different from the sedate young ladies’ school of just a very few year previously.

J.E.C Bodley, spur to the Entente Cordiale?

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John Edward Courtenay Bodley moved into 24 Brunswick Terrace, Hove in 1904.   He must have liked Hove.  Within two years he had moved just 400 yards west, to 2 Adelaide Mansions, also on the seafront.

Oscar Wilde and JECBodley in 1875: Image from ‘Oscar Wilde’, by Richard Ellmann (1987)., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Read more: J.E.C Bodley, spur to the Entente Cordiale?

By the time of his arrival in Hove, J. E. C. Bodley was  50 years old and a highly respected writer on France. When he died, exactly 100 years ago, on the 28th May 1925 the London Times said of him:

His magnum opus was his two volumed work on France, which in many ways paved the way for the sympathies necessary to the Entente [Cordiale of 1904], for he wrote at a time of great hostilities between the countries.

The first edition of the magnum opus in question had been published in 1898.   Since 1890 he had immersed himself in the politics, cultures and institutions of France.

So keen was his desire to get to know France that he explains in Part II of the introduction to the book:

I came to France in May 1890 and wrote the last lines of these volumes more than seven years later, having in the interval not spent seven weeks away from French soil.

We must remember that in the 1890s, following the Franco-Prussian war, Alsace and Lorraine had been lost to Germany and that Algeria was an integral part of France – not a colony but a fully fledged département.

Despite having started his professional career as a barrister, Bodley had already made friends in high places in France before 1890.  We could almost accuse him of name dropping when he lists such grandees of French literature and politics as Ernest Renan, Hyppolite Taine and Georges Clemenceau amongst his friends and acquaintances.

Bodley’s must have been pretty resilient physically.  In 1891 alone he lists staying in 16 different towns during his round-France travels – but then he was only in his late 30s and presumably quite fit.

1891 was to change his life.

After passing some months in Paris I set out again in 1891 returning to Lyons [sic] … Thence I went to Marseilles and stayed long enough to get a certain insight into the life of the composite population. Crossing to Algeria, during a long visit I was able to examine the peculiar system of administration … After a brief summer season in Paris, we …

“I” has changed to “we”.  In May 1891, 37 year old Bodley married Evelyn Frances Bell at Algiers “in the Republic of France” as it says on the marriage certificate.  The bride was just 21 years old. She was the daughter of a wealthy iron founder from Middlesborough.  Her family regularly spent the winter in Algiers and her father eventually became the British Consul General of that city.

The newspaper, Le Temps, makes a very revealing, perhaps very Gallic, comment on why this marriage might have taken place:

M. Bodley avait, jusqu’alors, voyagé seul. Cette solitude nuisait à son enquête, parce que un célibataire étranger n’est point admis facilement dans l’intimité de nos demeures, et que les familles françaises – même celles où il y a des jeunes filles à marier – sont entourées par un amoncellement de fortifications qu’on ne peut pas renverser si l’on n’est pas aidé, dans cet assaut, par une frêle main de femme. [Up to that point, Mr Bodley had travelled alone. His single state was hindering his research, for an unmarried foreigner is not easily admitted into our homes and French families – even those with marriageable daughters – are surrounded by many a battlement which cannot be overrun without the help of a wife’s delicate hand.]

Once wed, the Bodleys criss-crossed France as Bodley had done before their marriage. Following another summer break in Paris, the couple visited Le Mans, Angers, Vannes, the Morbihan region, Nantes, La Rochelle, Bordeaux, “several Pyrenean towns”, Lourdes, Carcassonne, Toulouse, Limoges. “Then we drove through George Sand’s country, lingering in many a forgotten town and village in the Creuse and the Indre”.

The word “drove” presents a conundrum.  Motor cars were in their very earliest days and unreliable on long journeys.  One of the Bodleys’ journeys was made by river, down the Rhone valley.  Le Temps, on 21 July 1901, maintained that M. Bodley se servit de nos chemins de fer, choisissant volontiers les trains omnibus qui déposent, en des localités peu connues, les voyageurs curieux.  [Mr Bodley readily uses our railways, choosing slow trains which leave the inquisitive traveller in little-known places.]  Bodley was known to dislike modern roads “filled with automobiles” (in the 1890s!).   I’m sure that any train journey they made would have been in a first class carriage.

With wonderful masculine understatement, Bodley continues: “The circumstances of my life now made prolonged journeys somewhat difficult.”  This was an oblique reference to the fact that Evelyn had given birth, in Paris, to their first child, Ronald, on 3 March 1892.  The travels did not stop.  The couple’s second son Josselin was born 17 months later at Vaux in the Hautes-Alpes.

The list of the Bodleys’ travels over the next two years makes exhausting reading.  However, by 1896 the couple had settled briefly in the chateau of Sucy-en-Brie, just 11 miles south-east of Paris.  It was in the chateau that their third child, Yveline Courtney Bodley was born.

Birth certificate of Yveline Bodley 1895. Transcript below.

Du treize décembre mil huit cent quatre vingt quinze, à midi, Acte de naissance de Bodley Yveline Courtenay du sexe féminin, née hier, douze, à dix heures dix minutes du soir au château de Sucy, domicile de ses père et mère, en cette Commune, fille légitime de Bodley John Edward Courtenay, sans profession, âgé de quarante deux ans, et de Bell Evelyn Frances, son épouse, sans profession, âgée de vingt six ans, tous deux demeurant au château de Sucy en cette Commune. Les témoins  ont été …  [On 13th December 1895, at midday, birth certificate of Bodley Yveline Courtenay (sic), girl, born yesterday, 12th at 6.10 in the evening at the chateau of Sucy, residence of her father and mother, in this district, legitimate daughter of Bodley John Edward Courtenay, of no profession, aged 42 and of Bell Evelyn Frances, his wife, of no profession, aged 26, both residing at the chateau of Sucy in this district.  The witnesses were …]

As with most of their temporary homes, the couple were renting – in this case from Henry Bruce Meux, heir to the English Meux brewing company.  Meux had inherited the chateau from his aristocratic mother, but never lived in it.

Le château de Sucy-en-Brie Image: Chabe01, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;

When living in Sucy, Bodley was proud to reveal that “Ludovic Halévy … was my neighbour for two pleasant summers.”

Plan of Sucy-en-Brie. Image: Roland45, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons (Adapted)

Ludovic Halévy was famed as the joint librettist for most of Offenbach’s operettas and of Bizet’s Carmen.  He lived just a few yards from the chateau in a vast house called Haute Maison. Writing to his cousin, Bizet’s widow, in late August 1895, Halévy gives us a glimpse of Eveline Bodley just a few months before she gave birth to her daughter:

Sucy est plus calme , et peut-être, je crois, trop calme à notre jolie voisine, Madame Bodley. Elle a été fort surprise quand Louise lui a dit que tout dormait vers dix heures du soir … [Sucy is quieter, and perhaps, I think, too quiet for our pretty neighbour, Mrs Bodley.  She was very surprised when Louise told her that everyone was in bed by about ten in the evening …]

This portrait of Madame Bodley by Léon Bonnat  hung in the salon of the chateau in Sucy-en-Brie.

Portrait of Madame Bodely
Léon Bonnat, “Portrait d’Evelyn Frances Bodley”, 1895 (huile sur toile / H. 81,6 cm ; l. 65,4 cm / numéro d’inventaire : CM 859 / © Bayonne, musée Bonnat-Helleu / cliché A. Vaquero)

From late 1900 until 1904, the couple spent most of their time at the Château Bellefontaine in Biarritz, where on one notable occasion in April 1902, according to the New York Herald “the King honoured Mr Bodley, the author of ‘France’ and Mrs Bodley with his company at breakfast on Sunday.”  This may well have been the day on which Edward VII, as yet uncrowned, asked Bodley to write The Coronation of Edward the Seventh: A Chapter of European and Imperial History (published  in 1903)

Château Bellefontaine, Biarritz. Built in 1880. Image: Remi.touja Creative Commons 4.0

There are no clues to the circumstances which brought Bodley to Hove in 1904.  This was a turbulent time in his life.  His fourth child had died, aged just 2, that September while the couple were staying at the Château Bellefontaine; in the same year, Bodley and his wife sought, acrimoniously, a divorce which was not granted.  The couple separated and by 1908, they had managed to divorce.  Their 15 year old daughter seems to have sided with her father.  The 1911 census lists Alix Yveline Ava Courtney Bodley as living at 2 Adelaide Mansions with her father and two servants.

La Folie Boulart, formerly Château Bellefontaine, now a private hotel. The house at Adelaide Mansions was extremely modest by comparison. © La Folie Boulart / M. Pierre Delalonde

2 Adelaide Mansions was advertised for sale by Maple and Co. in 1903.  It is possible that Bodley bought the house at this time, or perhaps he rented it from the purchaser.  Either way, it was a stunning property:

… the exceedingly attractive and commanding MARINE MANSION, known as 2 ADELAIDE MANSIONS, HOVE, replete with every comfort and upon which large amounts have been lavishly expended on the internal appointments and decorations which are of a most handsome and costly description. The Mansion occupies a very choice position, directly facing the sea, in the most fashionable part of Hove, opposite the private lawns to which there is right of access, is of imposing elevation and in perfect order.  It contains 11 bedrooms, large bathroom with tiled walls and floor, and Roman bath (hot and cold), and sea water supplies, wide stone staircase and secondary ditto, exceedingly elegant drawing room, 48ft. 2in. by 24ft., handsome oak-panelled dining room, 27ft. 4in. by 17ft. 7in., morning room, smoking room, very pretty winter garden,… vestibule entrance hall, lavatory, kitchen, butler’s pantry and bed room, servants’ hall and usual offices, dinner lift, electric light, gas, electric bells and speaking tubes are fitted to the mansion.

Adelaide Mansions are numbered 1 to 4 from right to left.

Why would Bodley want to live in such a large house?    Firstly, he was used to living in chateaux, staying in embassies and occupying other grand residences.  Compared to his homes in Sucy-en-Brie and in Biarritz, he was downsizing.  Secondly, it is possible that, having been a guest in so many notable French homes, he was obliged to do a great deal of reciprocal entertaining.  Alix Bodley, later Viscountess Waverly, became a society hostess admired, amongst many others, by Winston Churchill. Her skills may have been honed in Adelaide Mansions.

During his time in Hove, Bodley continued writing: 20,000 words on France for the 10th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; numerous introductions to books by other writers; a two-part lecture on “The Church in France” given to the Royal Institution in 1906; L’Age Mécanique et le Déclin de l’idéalisme en France  (published in 1913) and much, much more.  Soon after the end of WW1, at about the time he left Hove, Bodley published the curiously titled “The Romance of the Battle-Line in France”.

The aim of the book was worthy.  Soldiers who had fought and suffered in France might come to be curious about the places in which they had suffered.  Those who had lost friends and family might want to know more about the place in which their loved ones had died. To some extent, Bodley was cashing in on nostalgia.

Bodley continued to live in Adelaide Mansions until about 1919.  His daughter, now known as Ava, married in February 1925, exactly three months before her father’s death… and four years after her father had married Phyllis Helen Lomax who was some 30 years Bodley’s junior.

Bodley did not live to know the grief of losing his own two youngest sons by his marriage to Phyllis: both men were in their early twenties, both were killed within six weeks of each other in 1944, John in Italy, Thomas in Belgium.  Their mother  lived until 1968 in Cuckfield, Sussex,  where her husband, John Edward Courtney Bodley, had died 43 years earlier.

Not all sweetness and light (2)

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“Ah, well, there’s one good thing,” continued Sukie, rubbing the tea-caddy with her apron, “stranger he is, but he’s not one of them nasty French critturs.”

Sukie was a maid-of-all work depicted in a fictionalised account of the Hine family. The account represents the attitudes toward France during much of the early to mid-nineteenth century.

Sukie watched over by her master, Mr Hine. Illustration by Lucy Kemp-Welch from “Round About a Brighton Coach Office” by Maude Egerton King. Published 1896
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Brighton seen by the French – 1878

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In January1878, the Journal Amusant could not resist having a little fun at the expense of Brighton. Our town was, after all, a serious rival to Le Touquet (or Paris-Plage as the French know it).

First to draw the attention of Mars, the illustrator, was the entertainment on the West Pier.

THE PERFORMING FLEAS ON THE WEST PIER – The caption reads: My poor performing fleas have disappeared! Everyone here! Search yourselves!
All images are from Le Journal Amusant, 3 January 1878. Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France

Courtesy of Signor Ubini, performing fleas appeared for many a summer season of the 1870s on the West Pier.

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French Cinema in Brighton (6) : North Road

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By the mid-1970s, the Continentale cinema had stopped showing French films.  BBC television had  started showing them from the mid-1950s.  Jean Renoir’s ‘French Can Can’ was shown on the single-channel BBC almost as soon as it was released in 1955.  Who would show French films to a Brighton audience in Brighton?

The cinema at 64 North Street would.  Originally opened in 1911 as the Bijou Electric Empire, the tiny 400-seater cinema at the heart of Brighton’s shopping area evolved over the years.

Image Courtesy of Mike Blakemore via Creative Commons
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Chargois et Burluraux à Brighton

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I don’t know whether Pierre Chargois and Jean Nicolas Burluraux left Rupt-en-Woëvre in north-east France together in 1850, or even if they left at much the same time. They were both in their mid-twenties. Their small home town had a population of just 665. They may well have been related. The population was slowly declining and the two young men were part of that decline. The movement away from the countryside to the towns had begun. Pierre and Jean Nicolas had decided that they would go further than the nearest big town, Verdun.

Pierre’s father, Richard, was a merchant and had already crossed the Channel with his merchant father, Jean who was a frequent visitor to England. The two young men would sell high quality basket ware. It is likely that Jean Nicloas was a skilled basket weaver as one of the main crops in the very water-rich Rupt valley was osier or willow cane.

Osier Cutting by H. R. Robertson. Source: Life on the Upper Thames. Credit: the University of Toronto and the Internet Archive https://victorianweb.org/history/work/22.html

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The marquis de Conflans and a pub in Hove

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When you next pass The Poets’ Corner pub in Montgomery Road, Hove, look up. At roof level you will see two effigies of racehorses. The one below is Eclipse.

The Poets' Corner pub and Eclipse

Eclipse was one of the greatest horses of the latter years of the 18th century, both as a racer and at stud. He started his racing career aged five in 1769, but was retired young, after a mere 18 races, because not only was he undefeated, but he won his races by such a large margin that no other owners would enter their horses against him. The only time he won a race in Sussex was at the Lewes course in July 1769.

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French Cinema in Brighton (5) 1946-1985

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When Roger and I settled down in our cinema seats we were in for rather a surprise.  The date was Wednesday 2 August 1972.  We were at the Continentale Cinema in Sudeley Place, Brighton.  The film was Le souffle au cœur [‘Murmurs of the Heart’ aka ‘Dearest Love’].  The film was billed as a comedy-drama.  We, (an ‘old’ married couple in our late 20s) were rather taken aback by the scenes of incest toward the end of the film – despite it being “all done in the best of possible taste”. 

Entrance to small cinema 1960s

Continentale Cinema, Sudeley Place about 1961 © Rosalind Davidson

Read more: French Cinema in Brighton (5) 1946-1985

The Continentale had opened originally as The Sudeley Place Picture House in the 1920s. Later, when the theatre went by the name of The Playhouse Cinema, one of the first films screened in June 1949 was “the prize French film l’Idiot” with the ravishingly handsome Gérard Philippe and Edwige Feuillère.  A month later, Pierre Fresnay was appearing in La Fille du Diable. More French films followed in the next couple of years.

Admittedly, the Playhouse Cinema had a bit of a reputation for ‘naughty’ French films.  Perhaps we can blame the Watch Committee of Brighton for that.  In mid-June 1950, the cinema was showing Jean Vigo’s Zéro de conduite. The advert for the film which appeared in the Worthing Herald was unusual (or inspired to catch a certain kind of audience):

Later that same week, the minutes of the Watch Committee recorded that:

“The Chief Constable [of Brighton] presented a report dated 27 June 1950 on the film Zéro de Conduite which was showing at the Playhouse, Sudeley Place, Brighton.  Resolved: that in future, whenever applications are received to show uncensored films, the Town Clerk be instructed to enquire of the British Board of Film Censors the reason for the refusal to issue a certificate.” (Watch Committee Minutes DB/B/12/49)

So the Watch Committee seems to have been hedging its bets along the lines of “we will allow the film to be shown, but just in case there are any complaints, we’ll cover our backs.”

In 1951, the Playhouse became the Continentale.  This was distasteful to some, exciting to others.  It might mean (possibly sexually explicit) French films.  One of the first films to be shown, in March 1952 was Plus de vacances pour le bon Dieu (1949).  The film was advertised with the French title – none of this hiding behind an English translation. Granny need not have worried.  This film was about a group of Parisian urchins out to kidnap a dog to amuse themselves during the long summer holidays.  No nudity, a little drama and a happy ending. The film had been classified as “Certificate A” (not suitable for children under 16 years old) … but then, Disney’s “Snow White” had also been deemed “A Cert” by the censor a few years earlier. 

It must be assumed that Plus de vacances was subtitled.  Hardly likely to attract the local urchins in Kemp Town.  However, in the following week, local Francophiles would have been able to decipher this offering: advertised as ‘Caroline Sherie’, those in the know would have been delighted to point out that the name of the film was Caroline Chérie (1951), an historical comedy that comes nowhere near the bodice-rippers that were thought to be connected to French cinema. ‘Art films’ were a staple of the Continentale with films by Marcel Carné, Jean Cocteau, Marcel Pagnol, René Clair, Jacques Becker and Julien Duvivier.  However, films by these cinéastes were often accompanied by films with titles such as ‘Flesh and Fantasy” (1943) and ‘Isle of Sinners’ (Dieu a besoin des Hommes, 1950) neither of which was nearly as shocking as Granny may have thought.  

Whereas the 1960s was to be the decade of the French cinema auteur, the 1950s were still dominated by actors such as Louis Jouvet, Fernandel, Raimu (the complete Marseille trilogy of Marius, Fanny and César was shown at the Continentale in 1953), Jean Gabin, Simone Signoret and Arletty.

1954 saw a modest acceptance of French films in the more “popular” cinemas.  Jacques Tati’s Les vacances de M. Hulot (1953), a largely silent film with English voice-over by Christopher Lee, had arrived in Brighton at the Astoria by April 1954.  Being more sophisticated than the Odeon, the Continentale had already screened Tati’s Jour de Fête (1949) in November 1953 along with Pépé le Moko (1937), starring Jean Gabin.  It is hard to find another French film in mainstream Brighton and Hove cinemas until September 1959 when Jacques Tati’s most recent film (at the time), Mon Oncle, was put on at the Odeon in West Street.

In the mid-1950s, the ‘naughty’ Continentale was showing films such as La Symphonie Pastorale (1946, Certificate A) based on the novel of the same name by André Gide. By the 1960s, the novel had become a set text for A-Level students studying French, many of whom would have later been shown the film at school.

A well-thumbed teacher’s copy (mine) of La Symphonie Pastorale featuring Michèle Morgan in a clip from the film © S. Hinton

Cover of a book with girl sitting in snow

As far as French films were concerned, the Continentale was given a run for its money by the Paris Continental cinema in New Road.

In the last week of August 1957 from Sunday to Wednesday at the Paris Continental you could watch ‘A Pig across Paris’ also known in its country of origin as La traversée de Paris (1956).  The film had nothing to do with farming or livestock. It was “a cynical and unconventional portrayal” of black-marketeering during the Occupation of France.  And it was a comedy. From Thursday to Saturday, the supporting short was the wonderful fantasy of childhood Le ballon rouge [‘The Red Balloon’].

The front cover of my copy of Le ballon rouge

1959 was the year of the birth of the Nouvelle vague [French New Wave] of adventurous young film makers such as François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol.  It would appear that the Paris Continental Cinema in New Road, Brighton pipped the Continentale to the post in first showing a New Wave film: ‘The 400 blows’ (Les 400 coups 1959 directed by François Truffaut) was shown on 2 September 1960 but for one day only.  The film must have been successful with Brighton audiences.  The Paris Continental programmed the film again, but this time for a full seven days, in July 1961.

There was clearly some anxiety amongst cinema managers as far as French films were concerned.  A cinema manager wanted to ensure that he was not overstepping the mark by showing risqué French films. On 24 March 1958, he brought in our old friends, the Watch Committeeto watch Femmes de Paris (1953).  The committee “visited the Continentale Cinema, Sudeley Place, and viewed privately the above mentioned film prior to considering an application from Mr G H Fernie, Manager of the Paris Cinema, for permission to show the film in Brighton in April next.”  Permission was given as an ‘A’ certificate film: at the time, the A certificate merely meant that a child under 12 had to be accompanied by an adult – this was later replaced by the ‘Parental Guidance’ certificate.

It was indeed the Paris Continental and not the Continentale which showed the film on several weeks between June and December 1958.  Possibly the minute secretary at that Town Hall meeting had got his or her cinemas mixed up.

The British ambivalence about sex is clearly shown in a review of Femmes de Paris:

“… this must surely be the dizziest, funniest naughtiest film ever to be shown in Eastbourne.  Crammed with pretty girls, who bare themselves at the slightest pretext … “Femmes de Paris” is the most tintillating [sic] spectacle imaginable.  Apart from making cinema history in Britain by showing nudes who move, the daring film is hilariously funny…” Eastbourne Express 7 June 1958

Brighton and Eastbourne did not really seem to share the same angst as other parts of the country.

Les Femmes de Paris was still showing at the Paris Continental in December 1958 – and was programmed with the cheeky Clochemerle ­– an X-rated film (“Explicit Content – For public exhibition when no one under 18 present”).  Clochemerle is based on the novel of the same name.  The basic story is very Gallic:  the Socialist mayor of the town of Clochemerle wishes to construct a public convenience directly behind the parish church; the incumbent priest will do all he possibly can to thwart the plan.

At the same time as Les Femmes de Paris was being shown at the Paris Continental, in 1958, the Continentale in Sudeley Place was showing much tamer fare: ‘The Bells of St Mary’s’ with crooner Bing Crosby.

Brigitte Bardot hit the screen of the Paris Continental with her first film Et Dieu créa la femme (1956), but not until February 1959, by which time it had already been screened in Hove, Hailsham and Horsham. But then most cinemas, suburban or otherwise, seemed only too keen to show films featuring the ‘sex kitten’ of the 1950s and 60s.

The Paris Continenal cinema in 1963.  Closed and awaiting demolition. Image courtesy of the Regency Society

A old, ornate cinema prior to demolition in 1961
Cinema with posters for French films

It was however, the Continentale which was the flagship for French films in Brighton.  Students from the local Art College, the College of Technology and the newly founded University of Sussex at Falmer seem to have been keen cinemagoers, as they recount on the My Brighton and Hove website.  

Continentale Cinema, Sudeley Place about 1961 © Rosalind Davidson

The Sussex Daily News had a very observant film reviewer.  He (less likely she) spotted that, not only was the Continentale showing a filmed version of Verdi’s opera ‘Il Trovatore’ but that:

In the same programme, however, is a little gem which no one who has not yet seen it is advised to miss [sic].  This is a sparkling French comedy called “Drole de Drame,” which puts it right into the front rank of its kind.  There are most worthy performances from M. Louis Jouvet, M. Jean-Louis Barrault and Mlle. Françoise Rosay to name a few.

Unfortunately for the Continentale, as local cinema historian David Fisher points out, after extensive refurbishment in 1965 the cinema’s programmes changed “to art-house films in the evening, pornographic films in the afternoon.”  By 1969 the cinema was showing mainly X-rated films (no admittance to patrons under 18 years old!). 

However, even then, when for example the first of the Angélique series (1964) or Mon Amour, Mon Amour (1967) reached the Continentale in January 1969 and February 1970 respectively, not only were they French-language films but, perhaps more surprisingly, the original French names were posted on the advertising boards and in the newspapers.  Both, of course, would have shocked Granny terribly. The irony is that the latter, at least, has become somewhat of a classic, being both a rare film to be directed by a woman (Nadine Trintignant) in the 1960s, and one of the first roles for later superstar Jean-Louis Trintignant.

By the mid-1970s, programmes at the Continentale tended to be characterised by programmes such as this one for the week of August 1974 (same film both afternoon and evening):

  • In Love with Sex (English, X-rated);
  • Hot and Naked’ [Quand les filles se déchaînent ] (French, X-rated);
  • Quiet days in Clichy (Danish, X-rated)
  • Cold Blooded Beast (Italian horror, X-rated).
  • And my own favourite title? It was difficult to choose between these two which I spotted in the listings for late 1986: ‘Knickerbockerless’ and ‘Sister Susie’s Sexsations’.

The Continentale “closed until further notice” in late December 1986. That “further notice” never came.

So in the 1970s, where could the cinephiles and Francophiles of Brighton and Hove go to get their “fix” other than by watching television? To be continued.