THE EARTHRISE DIARY (NOV/DEC 2014)
DON DIESPECKER
© Text, Don Diespecker (2014); guest writers retain their ©
"...a photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image),
an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled
off the real, like a footprint or a death mask."
Susan Sontag: On Photography
Wyld trusts her readers to follow her, and we know
we’re in Australia, in the second chapter, because the birds are different: “A
currawong and a white galah are having it out; I can hear the blood-thick bleat
of them. A flying fox goes overhead and just like that the smell of the place
changes and night has settled in the air.” The story of the past is told in
present tense because the threats aren’t elusive and mysterious there; they’re
close and immediate and physical.
Maile Meloy
reviewing Evie Wyld’s All the Birds,
Singing in The New York Times (Sunday Book Review), June 13 2014.
The traditional model [of ‘ordinary consciousness’ or ‘consensus
reality’]* defines psychosis as a distorted perception of reality that does not
recognize the distortion. From the perspective of this [new]* multiple-states
model, our usual state fits this definition, being suboptimal, provides a
distorted perception of reality, and failing to recognize that distortion.
Indeed, any one state of consciousness is necessarily limited and only
relatively real. Hence, from the broader perspective psychosis might be defined
as attachment to, or being trapped in, any single state of consciousness.
*My parenthesis
inserts; DD
Roger N Walsh and
Frances Vaughan, (Eds.), Beyond Ego:
Transpersonal Dimensions in Psychology.
Note: in the event two old
b/w photos are included in this post the first (c 1903) will show Rudolph
Diespecker (1858-1920) and Elizabeth Diespecker (1867-1928), my paternal
grandparents, seated in deck chairs on a social occasion in the gardens of
their new home, Adstock House, Buckinghamshire, UK together with their four
sons in front of them (bottom right corner of group), Denny (1892-1948), Louis
1895-1969), Durbyn (1896-1977) and Jean (1898-1959); (the fifth son was Dick
(1907-1973). A second photo will show Lt Louis Diespecker, MC, Lt Denny
Diespecker and Sgt, later Lt Jean Diespecker at Vimy Ridge, France in
1917.
November/December 2014. Whatever else
has been going on in the world the weather here during both November and
December 2014 has certainly been notable: some of everything that’s springy or
summery. First the river at my doorstep has been worrisomely low and the
surrounding forest and local bush dry and dusty and clouds of road dust have
been blowing in the wind. The lawn’s new growth slowed and waited. Passing animals
at night browsed some new green grass on the river lawn and bandicoots
(probably) scratched holes in the hard earth searching for something tasty. A
wallaby (probably) snacked on new dahlias emerging and hesitantly rising. And
then the weather softened and there were showers and some rain but that didn’t
last and the river in the area of the rapids still looked more like dry broken
rock than fast flowing water, the bedrock and grey stones and the banks dry.
Some evenings were damp and at dusk a few hardy fireflies did some operational
flying. Birds sang but not very much. December has started with sounds and
fury: much of Eastern Australia has experienced unusual even rare weather at
this time: upper level atmosphere troughs and lower level ones vying to host
dense wet air from the tropics resulting in ugly and violent thunderstorms,
gales of cyclonic force, large hail, power failures and the miseries of
flooding—all of this unsettling many thousands in Eastern Australia:
Sydneysiders have had seven days in a row of this. Two of the big trees between
the house and the carport have been expertly felled; the third awaits a dry day
for a difficult operation: climbing, cutting and lowering some major limbs will
negate the danger of the double tree veering when felled onto the carport and
the water storage tank. Wood chips from earlier felling now mulch gardens at
the Thompsons and the Thompsons have kindly recovered the flood battered Dogs’
Garden here and mulched that too. Mention of recoveries and restorations
reminds me that I can now whistle again. Dental work and physiological changes
cancelled my once freely available whistle: it was nothing to write home about
but it was useful for expressing tunes and melodies. The whistle restoration
happened in the best way: one of the sturdy little shrike thrushes that visits
always hunts dietary variations along the outside of the house and paces the
timber deck on the east side. The thrush has a surprisingly big voice and a
good repertoire of songs. While writing one morning I tried to imitate one of
his songs and suddenly discovered that because I’d somehow assumed I could again
whistle notes I was partly successful in doing so. I stopped writing and worked
at it. The thrush seemed a little uneasy because as my whistling improved I
could easily copy the bird’s notes. And then I started to add notes of my own
at the end of some bars and he must have been certain then that there was
another thrush present and I felt obliged to stroll to the screen door and
explain that, mea culpa, the duet whistler was I and I alone. I can imagine the
bird at thrush therapy trying to explain this to the therapist… There’s this old human guy who thinks he’s a
thrush! The old fool doesn’t realize that it’s MY song and is for a certain female
bird of my acquaintance. What can I do to be rid of him?
AN INTERIOR MONOLOGICAL WALK
Walking meditations
seem fine when my mind is open and not entirely busy. What do I mean? I mean
walking briskly just walking along the road before sunrise is always a good
thing to do, a good experience except when I have to avoid a motorized local
hurrying past in a cloud of dust that includes occasional loose stones. The
walk is exercise the walk is work. The walk also enables the big gray muscle
between the ears to come along on the outing but preferably as a passive
passenger though always on the qui vive to alert emergency arrangements within
so that I can avoid being violently run down from without. Thus the run of the
mill walk is also a jour de fête, a Big Day not unlike
the experiences of Jacques Tati’s postman who enabled entertainment to
interrupt his postal duties. I need no bicycle no duty to interrupt my
participation in scenery and paddock mist and the elegance of sunlit trees
backed by clouds: it’s easily done. Get too involved in enabling the stored
past to emerge in imagery and almost everything else goes missing: pace,
birdsong, photo opportunities and both time and distance passing unseen and
almost beyond awareness. I can blame the interruptive tendencies on Family
Stuff on images from the past repeating such that The Walk changes apparently
without knowledge or permission of myself, the director the owner of the
imagery inside my head. Fascinating how we provide the means to make a simple
walk something unintended something deeper, a walk with a difference or a walk
with interior commentary in pictures and sometimes too with imagined sound
thrown in, in fact a meta-walk one almost more cerebral and cognitive than
physical or physiological. A value-added walk you might say. When that
interesting change takes place it’s quite like being at the movies or perhaps
dreaming. I don’t have to do anything special, either. It’s as if an event such
as many old family photos arriving via email has its own effects one of
which is an afterglow urging an insistence that all of those images are going
to hang about in a mindful corner until I’ve fully dealt with them (surely a
near impossible task that I’ve not enough spare time for).
Thus The Walk the otherwise brisk morning walk,
lower case, is one of the settings that easily assist me to inopportunely
notice repeatedly images that compel. I always walk the same route; it’s a
little like being on automatic. At least I’m acknowledging that, not goofing
off. Some of the emailed pictures sent by my cousin Louise from California
exist in her collection as glass sides more than a century old. One of these
astonished me when first glimpsed in the computer: a crowd in the early 20th
century family garden at Adstock, Buckinghamshire, UK: my grandparents, four of
their sons, one of those images representing my father but my eyes drawn first
to a bass drum in the crowd because some of that scene was familiar and I now
can remember the partly imaged brass band alongside an equally old part image
that’s been in my mind for most of my life: a glimpsed memory of the big bass
drum close up in a different enlargement of another picture taken in the same
gardens on that same day… My father, Durbyn (1896-1977) once had several such photos
enlarged, mounted on pasteboard or cardboard. I might mention that Rudolph, my
grandfather, was the only member of that family not born in Africa; he was a
Londoner. My remembering that drum that I first saw perhaps 80 years ago and
now instantly recognized in a different picture causes my catching my breath,
seeing a tumbled series of old remembered times of my father showing me
pictures in our house on Oxford Street in Victoria, BC, Canada in the 1930s.
Amazing how memory serves us almost immediately when it’s required: there’s no
discussion or hesitancy: memory manifests immediately, just like that! A
hundred odd years ago Adstock house had ornamental gardens and ponds and
although I’ve visited the place three times, little remained of the gardens when
I last was there with Louise and son Nick (1995, I think). These and other
similar pictures blur in and out of my awareness whilst walking with the power
of old images predominant in my mind. Whether sought after or not memory’s
images conveniently appear: they present as though selected, seemingly filed as
if in a computer. There they are: they’ve been ‘there,’ been available to me
for all these years. Very old dream images review to show themselves too as if
having waited patiently for any timely or random call that might require them
to once again present in consciousness. The immediacy of the walk is still
effective: I know I’m moving, one leg before the other, but those old pictures
and their remembered images now jostling in memory, that’s what has precedence
such that the images have undoubtedly dominated what might have been emptiness,
calm, occasional awareness of birdsong or of the impressive bunches of tiny
flowers creamy white and wet covering all the bigger native privet trees on the
roadside: I’d be even more interested in seeing them were I not so taken with
the old pictures in my head, their images settling, making themselves at home
in my capacious memory banks. I walk more briskly. I intentionally push the
images into a corner. I start to see the real world. There’s a possible camera
shot now: there’s mist on the neighbor’s long paddock and the new tall and slim
trunks of riverside trees through the mist and in between myself and the mist
there are brown dock plants that look wintery and lifeless in this December
summer against the green of the paddock. An even darker brown than the horses
in the paddock all of them looking up noticing my scheduled appearance before
dropping their heads to the wet grass and continuing to feed.
How about the horses and do they store map-like
images of passers by? How else would they recognize me eye me, ID me in an
accomplished way?
Something else comes to mind: I’ll certainly be
cutting the number of Diary postings now if only to give me more headroom for all
the traffic passing through: no, not road traffic, head traffic, busy stuff
clamoring in my mind. Sorry. Fiction writing is what I like best to write. Note
to myself: Don, return ASAP to the interrupted future of the current story, the
protagonists at a loose end in a bar in Paris where they’ve grown unruly and
combative, surprisingly, because they’re really also considerate and mild
mannered (or so I thought); now they’re been determinedly and even forcefully
singing numbers from the musical theatre which baffles me because they’re
returning from the Opera and a production of La Bohème. You take your eyes off
characters and they play up! Mimi and Rudolfo. My Tom and Martha both have
voices and can sing. Also are just teenagers. What will they do next? I really
must get forward to them soonest. Did my grandfather Rudolph like Puccini and
did Rudolph know Bohème? Does it matter? Only to me because I know he liked
Lehar’s Merry Widow, as did my father as do I. What if I write Martha and Tom a
scene for them to sing Merry Widow songs? Is worth a try. A flock of cockatoos
sulphur crested perhaps fly over whitely now.
CHARIVARI
November has had its
moments but has passed fast. That’s a pretty lame statement but will make sense
to those readers who now may appreciate that they are as am I in the reality of
Older while also remembering Younger as being metaphor for
experiencing of all kinds including rites of passage at some considerable time
in the past. The spring weather has also produced the hottest November on
record in parts of the country. Most of us older persons probably become more
energy conscious on very hot days. The days now also seem busier, shorter, more
filled with work, with chores, with all of us doing the best that we can to
stay on top of essential Stuff. I have no doubt about this often-confronting
matter: many family and friends have gone on ahead as it were and the gaps that
remain are often palpable. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t rue the day or regret
unduly all of the opportunities missed when younger or the precious times
wasted: time spent doing that is generally wasted time. I do however sometimes
reflect on the long ago past, smile at some of the images drifting through and
notice with a twinge of regret or a jolting wince some of the worst of the
terrible choices, the resoundingly bad decisions.
And now it’s December
and there has thankfully been some storm rain and thundery showers so the
weather feels a little kinder than it has been. In the gardens nearly 30
dahlias have risked their urgent lives to stick their heads out of the hot soil
and head for the sky. The air is oppressive. And some browsing creature of the
night has cropped the heads of several juvenile dahlias but not so badly that
the new plants are unable to recover.
And as mentioned I see evidence also on the small River Lawn where
there’s been nighttime cropping (wallabies, most likely) of some nice new
spring grass. This is also the time of the eucalyptus barks splitting and
shedding: long crackly dry bark streamers hang like stiff snakes before
clattering down to litter the lawn. Parts of the lawn below the water tank and
carport are red with fallen flowers from the high flame trees and in one place
the red has changed to a shade of pink because jacaranda flowers also have
fallen on the green grass. Imagine what Monet might have painted had he been
able to see that (or imagine what any number of Australian painters might make
of it now—and should I run for my paint box and have a go myself? I’ve cleverly
snapped some photos with the mobile phone and have only to discover how I might
possibly get those images out of the phone and in to the Mac…
Much of November has
been particularly tight and urgent because I’ve been attempting too many
cerebral and cognitive somersaults more or less in the same crowded timeslots:
there’s the draft novel with its working title, “Success,” a sequel to the
recent eBook, Happiness; there are the usual chores and the ‘restoration’ of
the 30-years old house; there are increasingly rare quiet moments of reading
outside in my garden in the shade at the lawn-edge belvedere; and there’s been
the hair-raising burst of Family History Stuff that often seems more wearing
and even unsettling than everything else combined. Family with an upper case F
is always special and so much of that specialness resides in old photos, old
documents: they have peculiar fascinations that seem all their own and are
always compelling. If I or you or we stare long enough at an old photo and
particularly at the faces of family and ancestors we enable neurological events
that encourage us to ponder on connections that are subtle, creative,
experimental. We may imagine words as speech remember the voice of the person
whose image is depicted. We might ponder how an ancestor that predates our era
might sound when speaking: what she might say and how her voice might have
sounded. We might even fantasize an ability to see the world through those
imaged eyes, ‘see’ in our minds the surroundings we have noticed in the old
photos but bring them to life as it were: grass and leaves might rustle as if
in a movie. Suddenly we’re trying hard to create dialogue between those images:
it is as if we each have abilities to write plays, scripts, produce movies. And it also is as if we somehow contrive
to bring the past into the present and make it very nearly authentic at least
in the theatres of our minds. Sontag was so accurate when she indicated photos
being much more than mere images; some photographic images encourage the mind’s
uncannily accessing associated images that somehow have been on file sometimes
for most of my life. Eeriness too, abounds. And when we examine old photos more
closely with a magnifying glass and reminisce to our selves about the feel of
corduroy or a silk scarf or a straw hat or a beret, we each will know that
there is a wealth of information in such images.
Blood being thicker
than water, the Family History Stuff has been unavoidable and also compelling.
Old photographs and old documents received mostly from my cousins and also from
John Mellors in the UK who is writing about and researching aspects of the
Royal Latin School (RLS) in Buckingham (UK) where my father and two of his four
brothers were RLS pupils, having left South Africa with their mother when the
Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) began. To his great credit John has found
photos and documents that none of us has previously seen or have been aware of.
You’ll have noticed that the epigraphs above imply aspects of the inner life,
the stream of consciousness that concerns and involves us all and which also is
one of the most exciting parts (at least it is for me) of creative writing, of
writing plays and novels for example, especially so-called literary novels.
I’ve been looking through some of my old photos from long ago because other old
photos from the past have been arriving suddenly from family and new friends
unheralded, innocently attached to emails.
Whether familiar or not
at all familiar there is nothing quite like an old photo to provoke wonder, remembrance
and sundry related images. Whenever I examine a familiar old photo that
includes an image of myself I recognize myself confidently and that confidence
certainly depends considerably on my apparent age as represented in the photo…
When I see my imaged self at age ten or seven or perhaps six, five, and even
four or possibly three I think, yes, that’s certainly me: not only can I see
that it’s me but I can often recall the particular photographic occasion, the
actual experience, remember having been at a particular location, being present
and looking at the photographer if not the camera lens which if you remember,
could be seen to click and move at the right moment. Such experiences will be
familiar to you too, dear Reader, I’m sure. And there are other images that I
unhesitatingly recognize as being representations of myself although these are
images from which I cannot quite recover the memory of having been there facing
the camera in those lens and shutter moments because I was too young to remember
my awareness of the occasion and it all took place a very long time ago. I may
examine the photo with a magnifying glass, look closely at other images
included in the frame, even recognize the people, the garden or house or beach
or river in the background yet I cannot always remember having been present at
the time when I was literally in the frame during those historical seconds. I
can see that I was present but the
remembrance of that time past eludes my comprehension here now in the
everlasting present. I’m writing not of a single ‘photographic reality’ but of
at least two such realities: the one so well remembered, the other related
reality being one that has always been so well unremembered or disremembered
that I cannot grasp even a present day glimpse of having been ‘there’ at the
time. Perhaps there is a third reality too, one in which I’m pretty sure that
the image is of me because I recognize myself but with the proviso that nothing
else looks remotely familiar or explicable (Where
was that picture taken? What was the
occasion? What age was I? Why are all of the markers the clues missing
or for some reason completely forgotten and beyond my ability to recall or to
recover anything of them?).
Switching from
photographs briefly to retrospection, here again is one of the most important
notions I learned from psychology (which is, after all, the logic of the psyche
whether modern psychologists realize this or they remain stuck in one of those
queer places that dumbly and deceptively are represented as being psychology, such as behaviorism).
Julian James, an American psychologist has written:
Or introspect on when you last went swimming: I suspect you have an
image of a seashore, lake, or pool which is largely a retrospection, but when
it comes to yourself swimming, lo! Like Nijinsky in his dance, you are seeing
yourself swim, something that you have never observed at all.
Julian Jaynes (1976): The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown
of the Bicameral Mind).
The experience of
suddenly realizing the truth of that startling retrospection revelation is
likely to shock many reading of its
existence for the first time. And it doesn’t have to be swimming: it may be any
experience that we remember well. We should remember too that it is not quite the same imagery that we see
on each remembered occasion of a particular event in time: the image is not
filed as undyingly unique so that it always will ‘come up’ as precisely ‘the
same’: each time we retrospect in this remarkable manner we will see a varied
image, a new edition, as it were, of that particular scene or event from the
past. How have we evolved this astonishing ability, one that seems universal?
Not only do we possess this ability we will have been able to use it
productively from an early age. We do this so easily and so well that most of
us most of the time may be largely unaware of possessing and using this great
asset. The ability to see one’s self in images as if seen by another seems
entirely magical. I wonder might we be the only species able to do this?
On a different but relevant note,
writing also begins in the mind. In my experience of writing about almost
anything over 75 years or so (including juvenile stories, poems and diaries),
the narrative starts in my mind generally as glimpsed images, fuzzy scenes, and
with faces that sometimes I associate with words that apparently either arrive or are somehow created by my enterprising and obliging
brain (as though without any effort from myself)—whatever else I might be doing at the time. I read best during the
day and particularly in my garden; I read sketchily at night and often with
radio or TV on. Images that are motivating and helpful for me I welcome
unreservedly as inspirations or even suggestions for want of a better name
because they arrive without being invited or summoned. Strangely, the most
promising ideas and images turn up like movie trailers when I’m tired, sitting
up in bed, casually relaxing with the TV on and with my mind comfortably
engaged and I’m always surprised when an idea or a neat image lands and I
always grab a pen gratefully and scribble notes on anything available like the
margins of a newspaper or the TV Guide or one of my notebooks if I can find it
easily.
This current narrative
that you’re now reading is not a suggestion
or a universal prescription for creative writing for the world: it’s a
shorthand explanation scribbled whilst sitting in front of the Mac’s keyboard
of how I usually start a narrative. How other writers begin narratives may be
vastly different than my experience.
Remember when we used
always to write everything with pen on paper before perhaps typing a first
draft? Remember typewriters? Computers now encourage the shortest, quickest and
most convenient way to herd words into sentences and to save them at least for a while and perhaps for years without their
being destroyed by moth and rust and rodents—and lightning strikes. My computer enables the stretching of
time for me.
Sometimes too when I’m
walking briskly for exercise early in the morning and even while watching tiny
finches bouncing along the top wire of fences these nicely imaged notions
flutter into my perspective where they’re duly and respectfully received with
thanks. How this happens for me might very well be a mystery or it might be
perfectly normal: it hardly seems to matter because at times it’s as if I’m
running on automatic; perhaps others have similar experiences. In our time the
world and communications seem faster than ever: to participate sensibly many of
us think and write faster than we might have done 20- or 30- or 50-years ago:
it is as if, for myself, the older I get the faster I work. What undoubtedly
matters for me is that the grey stuff in my head continues to fire, to light up
in the appropriate manner and sufficiently for me to grasp what I can whilst
the going’s good. And I always have pen and notebook in my pocket. Writing makes me happy: it’s my
favorite occupation and I’ll do it at the drop of a hat; I’ll even start writing
about anything at all to see where it might take me. This ‘creative act’ is
healthy and health promoting. I commend it to everybody. Writing is also
therapeutic and we don’t have to be ill to enjoy
the experience of word herding.
There isn’t quite a tradition of writing it down in my family, but some
of the family (and associated and related families) I’ve belonged to since 1929
do write a bit. Also, I’m very interested in family history and like nothing
better than to read anything from the past that has been important and worth
recording. When I left home aged twenty-one I asked my father, Durbyn if he
would please write some of the family history for me: his memoir, “Bear Fat”
still exists in MS and I’ll be including excerpts in future Diaries. There have
been other inspirational family members and they too continue to offer a
special encouragement from the past: the ancestor who wrote Pardes David (The Garden of David;
Sulzbach, 1786) was my great-great-great-great grandfather, Rabbi David Dispeck
(1715-1793), ‘Talmudic scholar and homilist’.
In more recent times,
my late uncle, Richard, always “Dick” in the Family (1907-1973) trained as a
journalist (Victoria College, BC). He was the published author of many magazine
articles, poems and stories and worked as a journalist (Victoria Colonist; in the late 1920s). He was a reporter before and
after World War II on the Vancouver News
and was news editor, program director and production chief of radio station
CJOR. He was also radio director and columnist for the Vancouver Province and was an executive with Vancouver advertising
and public relations agencies. Dick served with the Canadian Army from 1939 to
1945 (Major Dick Diespecker was the wartime Radio Liaison Officer for Canada).
Dick’s Prayer for Victory was read
and broadcast during World War II in a number of countries and his 1950 prose
and verse novel, Elizabeth (Dent),
was well received. He was my mentor and we corresponded when I was a teenager
in South Africa.
"Writing in the
family" is a notion that I like to muse on. My cousin Jill whose essays and memoir pieces have appeared
in these Diary pages presently encourages her grandchildren and her young
relatives to write, e.g., grandchildren Ali with a Drama degree writes, directs
and acts in her own plays; Sasha, who journals whilst traveling; and Jill’s
nieces Beth who writes and presents her own puppet shows and Katie who is
learning to be an illustrator. It’s almost as though there’s a ‘writing bug’ or
a gene for writing currently surfacing in the greater Family. Between us there
are: memoir, essay, puppet show scripts, stage plays, novels and caprice and
histories. This is a family that loves to write!
All this by way of
including an introduction and some of the writing I’ve been alluding to. Jill
continues this theme below:
CREATIVE WRITING
INTRODUCING SASHA
JILL ALEXANDER
Vancouver’s Café Deux Soleils has been in existence for
20-years and is a popular thriving venue today.
When Sasha was little, she and her Dad often went for Sunday
Breakfast to Café Deux Soleils and being Sasha’s grandmother I
was often invited to join them. This restaurant continues to be a favourite
with locals who have lived and spent time around Commercial Drive in Vancouver.
“The Drive” is home to many working class ethnicities and still has a definite
character: warm and friendly. Here there is the coffee bistro where the
Portuguese have long congregated and there is another similar coffee bistro
favoured by the Italians and another that’s popular with West Indians, and
there are too, shops where specialty foods can be purchased.
Café Deux Soleils is a home for healthy comfort food. It is
a large open room with picnic tables, lots of windows, local art on the walls,
a play area for kids and the extensive menu on a chalk board behind the serving
counter. This is also a place for Vancouver Poetry Slam events plus comedy and
live music.
Sasha had left home at 18 and moved into a big old house
with eleven others close to “The Drive” so I wasn’t surprised when she
suggested we go there for brunch. I had phoned her with an invitation for a
chance to get caught up on her latest plans.
Over brunch she shared with me the news that she was going
to New Orleans with The Rossi Gang. The Rossi Gang is comprised of six
excellent young musicians who also live at the house and play Jazz there. They
have a special love for New Orleans style Jazz. Most of them, including Sasha,
have known each other since Elementary school and are close friends.
I knew Sasha wrote copiously in her diary about her many
adventures. I was surprised and honoured when she asked if I might like her to
read me something she had written about one of her trips. She took the car keys
and went for her diary then settled in to read about a recent trip to a music
festival north of Vancouver. She and her friends were travelling in an old car
that broke down and was towed away with all their gear. However they carried on
undeterred and hitched rides to the festival.
Her style of writing engaged me totally and I really enjoyed
her account of this trip. Since then she has been on several more adventures
and so I asked her to write a piece about her trip to the Yukon before she
headed off again to New Orleans this time a planned trip of five months.
I was very happy to get an email with her Yukon story, which
she wrote the day she left on her new adventure.
Jill Diespecker Alexander is a retired nurse
and business owner and is presently writing her life story.
DAWSON CITY
SASHA FERGUSSON
Dawson City, YT, a
small town in Northwestern Canada close to the US Alaska border was the heart
of the Klondike Gold-rush in 1896-1899. Today the population is roughly 1,300.
In winter the sun shoots its feeble rays over the frozen horizon for less than an
hour each day. Those tough enough to brave this kind of climate may witness the
beautiful aurora borealis, the northern lights, in the dark freezing sky. The
summer on the other hand is one long shining day and this inspires thousands of
ambitious tourists to make the long journey north to this magical place. Every
day of the summer feels like a festival.
I arrived in Dawson for
the first time at 6-pm on Tuesday June 25 2014. George, the old sweetheart from
the Maritimes who gave me my last ride all the way from Pelly's Crossing let me
off out in front of the General Store. It looked closed and the sign was hand-painted
in hokey cowboy font. Rain was coming down. My pack was wet and heavy. With no
plans or connections in this town whatsoever the first thing I did was go
straight to the park cause I know that's where to go if you're arriving in a
new place all on your own. Sure enough I quickly made friends with seven or
eight kids playing banjos and harmonicas under the gazebo.
"Does anyone need
some wine?" I said. Of course everyone did. Then they were interested to
know how I got to Dawson. It’s after all basically the end of the road and you
have to be somewhat committed to make it all the way up there. So I told them a
few tales. They especially liked to hear about my travels to New Orleans. Half
of them had been there and the other half had plans to go. One kid with tattoos
all over his hands had a little yeller puppy named Po-boy just like the New
Orleans style sandwich.
In exchange for my
stories, and for the wine, my new friends took me on a good long romp and
showed me round town. Everybody in gumboots and suspenders the dogs in bandanas
we splashed in the potholes down 3rd Avenue to Dawson's oldest standing bar,
The Pit, which has low ceilings and a very uneven dirt floor. The pool table
was propped up on two corners by pieces of Styrofoam so the balls wouldn't all
roll to one end. There was a great old-fashioned rock-‘n’-roll band playing on
stage. The place was sweaty and packed full of young adventurers clinking foamy
beers and laughing. It was St. Jean Baptiste Day. Everyone was determined to
get drunk and sing tonight! I guess I arrived on the perfect day! We danced and
stomped until the band stopped and then we sang and danced and stomped some
more until they told us we really had to leave.
After that I was pulled
into a van and taken down to the river for the after parties. Four or five bonfires
blazed all along the water each with its slightly different scene and varying
combinations of instruments playing. These were the kinds of punks with
feathers stuck in their fiddles and bones around their necks. Most of them were
living in the bushes in big impressive camps. The music was excellent. We
roasted corn in the fire and drank blackberry wine...all in daylight of course
even though it was very late at night.
On my second day in
Dawson around 2-pm I was standing on the corner outside the Downtown Hotel
barroom talking to some friendly strangers about one thing or another and I got
a tap on my back and I turned around. There was this girl I knew standing there
with short brown hair and squinty curious eyes. Her name is Alice and we didn't
know each other well. She didn't even recognize me from behind, just tapped my
shoulder because she recognized the horn I was holding: a hundred-years-old
euphonium battered with dents and with a distinctive warp in its bell. It was
one she used to play years ago borrowed from the bandleader of a Serbian brass
band she and my boyfriend played in back in Vancouver. We recognized each other
and spoke at the same time, like "What are you doing here?" She said
she was playing trumpet with a band at the Pit that evening and I should come
watch. I said of course I would.
Every day I spent in
Dawson was an adventure that could be made into a story. Unfortunately I don’t
have time to write it all down because I’m leaving this afternoon to drive back
to New Orleans. I’ll be keeping a daily journal during my trip down.
Sasha Fergusson is the eighteen-years old granddaughter of Jill
Alexander, born and raised in East Vancouver, B.C, currently romping around the
continent to find what's good.
MURIEL’S AUTOGRAPHS
PETER THOMPSON
Prior to my father’s
passing my good friend Bob had collected some boxes of Old Stuff from Dad’s
home. Dad had earlier been unable to
return to his beloved Villa 148. Several months ago we received a phone call
from Dad’s old mate, Doug (whom I’ve also known for more than 50-years). Doug
had helped dispose of my father’s belongings. "You'd better get
down here ASAP or there'll be nothing left," was Doug’s message.
"Just a few boxes, everything else has been taken care of," he
explained. My wife Dee and I live nearly 500-km away to the north in the
Bellinger Valley. There was no chance of our getting down quickly. What were we
to do? The decision was made to call in a favour from my friend, Bob who
also just happened to live quite near to Dad's villa.
Bob is only too happy
to help his old friends Pete and Dee so the next day he heads across to Villa
148 with the idea of picking up the boxes. Bob introduces himself to Dad's old
friends who are helping out and is shown into the sunroom where to his
surprise there are more than a dozen
boxes of assorted Stuff'.
"Bloody Thomo!
Just a few boxes he says!" Good old Bob, never afraid of a challenge,
starts loading his ute. Once the boxes are all in including being stacked on
the back and front seats right up to the roof Bob can only just see through a
small patch of windscreen. Luckily he doesn't have far to drive and no police
are encountered en route to his house otherwise he surely would be booked.
Fast forward to
November and December, now. I finally make it down to Bob’s to pick up the
'few' boxes. After enjoying a cup of Atomic-made
coffee Bob leads us out to the shed.
"Bob, I had no
idea there was going to be this much absolutely no idea, mate!" Bob just
laughs and recalls his big surprise back at the villa all those months
ago. We are now in the same predicament that Bob was in back in June. I
quickly deduce that there’s no way we’re going to fit it all in, in one load.
We decide to go through some of the boxes and take the most 'vulnerable' items
back on the first trip: there are things like old family films, projectors and
very old photographs.
While Bob, our son, James,
Dee and myself are sorting things out we notice a grey box underneath what
appears to be some music CD’s. Bob comments that he thinks there might be more
in the grey CD holder. We pull out the grey plastic box to find a silver plaque
attached with the inscription: MURIEL
ANNIE CROOK and on one end a sticker with the words, Northern Suburbs Crematorium. This
Container Is The Repository For The Cremated Remains Of The Late…
What a surprise and
we’re all flabbergasted: dear Great Aunty Muriel's ashes! I tell James that
these are the ashes of his Great, Great Aunty Muriel. Dad was always good at
keeping secrets and had never mentioned Muriel’s ashes. It seems that Muriel
had been in Dad's cupboard for twelve years and she's now 'out of the closet,’
so to say!
Muriel Crook was one of
my late grandmother’s siblings, one of five and was born in 1897 in Brighton,
Victoria. She lived for almost 101 years. I remember her as a wonderful,
interesting Auntie with a stern look and eyes that seemed a bit sad and sort of
red-rimmed. Muriel loved to travel especially in "The Orient" as it
was called in those days. I remember that when I was a child we visited her in
Sydney. We had always to be mindful of our manners when visiting Auntie Muriel.
If we were really lucky she'd offer us an exotic drink, like ginger ale,
something we never had at home. I
also recall only too well those beautifully wrapped little souvenirs she'd give
to her niece and nephew on her return from those faraway places, like Japan!
Muriel had remained a spinster her entire life unlike her siblings who all
married. I guess that's one reason for traveling: no kids to slow you down.
Grandma, Muriel's sister, always said that no man was good enough for Muriel.
And what to do with
Muriel's ashes?
A family meeting this
Christmas will determine Muriel’s final resting place. Perhaps Melbourne where
she was a child, or Japan (a good excuse for a trip) though I’m not sure about
Japanese customs…
We joke about stumbling
into Muriel after all these years and her being locked in Dad's cupboard and
not ever mentioned. We will have to find a final resting place now that Great
Auntie Muriel has more or less found us.
Bob phones a few days
later to see how we’re going with Auntie Muriel. He sounds a bit anxious to say
the least. Early that day Bob was out for his run and thinking of our find the
previous day chuckling and jogging up the hill behind his house. While running
he suddenly feels a 'flicking' sensation on the back of his legs. He stops, spins
around but there’s nothing, not even a loose stick. Bob wonders if he's
offended Great Auntie M!
That night Bob explains
what had happened to his friend, Monique. They decide to head over to the shed
where we'd found the ashes two days earlier so as to rummage through the
remaining boxes without really looking for anything in particular. There they
find a mini filing cabinet—you know. the type with just two small drawers. Bob
and Monique open the drawers to find them full of old postcards. Bob reaches in
and pulls out a single card, turns it over to read the signature and sees that
it’s Muriel's.
Back at home in The
Valley we start to unpack the boxes. There are all sorts of things but mainly there
are photograph albums and slides. The first album opened just happens to
contain a beautiful image of Great Auntie Muriel as a young woman in her early
20’s an image I've not previously seen and it’s quite striking. Further digging and delving reveals that
Muriel was able to write shorthand at a rate of 180 words per minute, an almost
unbelievable feat for a young girl just fifteen years of age!
We also find old
correspondence from the GPO in Sydney where Auntie M worked for more than 30
years. During this time she received numerous commendations and letters of
appreciation for her outstanding work from the GPO’s postal commissioner. She
was photographed with Prime Minister Menzies and had even received a medal from
HM King George V for outstanding services to the Crown. She had also served the
High Court of Australia as secretary to Justice Owen in 1933. In those days the GPO was responsible
for the distribution of telephones. Auntie M was pictured in promotional material
for the latest telephone (‘phones,’ as they were then called) one that featured
bells inside the phone!
Surely one of the most
interesting family history items is great Auntie Muriel's autograph book with
its first entry made in 1907: cheeky little poems, limericks and sketches
penned and penciled more than 100 years ago: beautiful insights into the minds
of Muriel's family and friends and almost a time-traveling experience for us in
2014.
Thank you Great Auntie
Muriel for continuing to enrich our lives!
Peter Thompson is becoming a keen observer of family history.
FAMILY HISTORY
Often
there are old family documents and photos to be found and frequently these
disappear over time because there is insufficient or inadequate storage space
and even because such materials are considered unimportant. Letters sent from
the Western Front during the Great War (1914-1918) have sometimes been ‘saved’
by their having been published in newspapers: my cousin, Rik Diespecker, has
two such ‘newspaper preserved’ letters, each of them written originally by our
late uncle, Louis Diespecker in 1915 and they are reproduced below.
Also, it
might be interesting for some Diary readers to read the two letters and then
consider this notion: “Hardly an exact science, the astrological categorizing of
literary authors will strike the credulous and satisfy the cautions in its
practice of associating Zodiac signs with literary themes and story-writing
with ancient mythologizing. Although I doubt my late Uncle Louis would have
been considered a ‘literary author’ but let’s see what astrologists might think
in regard to the letters below. Louis Cyril Diespecker was born March 10 1895 (Pisces
authors are categorized by being born between February 19 and March 20).
“Pisces
authors are the notorious dreamers of the literary world. Interested in
companions, renunciation, the beginnings and endings of the human time cycle,
they absorb the collective unconscious and display sensitivity to human
suffering. “I believe” is the Piscean watchword, leading to visionary fatalism
or to the transformation of the commonplace.” The author discusses writings by
Ralph Ellison, and Jack Kerouac (and mentions also Philip Roth and John Updike).
Nina Straus, “The Astrological Author” (ND, appended in The Literary Almanac; The Best of the Printed Word; 1900 to the Present. New York: MJF
Books, 1997.
Dick
Diespecker, on the other hand was a literary author (e.g., his poetry and plays
and especially his prose and verse novel, Elizabeth)
was born March 1 1907 and therefore also was a ‘Pisces author’.
(Victoria Colonist, May 18
1915 p 7). VICTORIA GUNNER DESCRIBES ATTACK. Bombardier Diespecker Tells of the
Attack Made on Canadian Line During Latter Part of April.
The following letter
has been received from Bombardier Louis C Diespecker, 3rd Battery, 1st
Artillery Brigade, and is dated April 27, the time when specially severe
attacks were made by the Germans upon the part of the battle line held by the Canadian
contingent:
“Since I last wrote we
have had plenty of excitement and are again in action.
A big attack was made on us (when, I may
not say), but I will attempt to describe it. Everything was calm, with an
occasional shell being fired by both sides, when suddenly every gun of the
enemy’s seemed to be fired at once. Shells were landing everywhere, “Black
Marias’” “Weary Willies,” “Jack Johnson’s,” “Coal Boxes,” etc. This lasted
several hours, and the din was increased by our guns, then suddenly the rifle
fire broke out. Then I had to take a wounded man to the dressing station, about
two miles back.
“When I got back, the
battery was hooked up and was going to a new position. I had to get my horse
saddled and we went at full gallop down a road that was being swept with rifle
and artillery fire, passing dead horses and men. I came through O.K. We took up
a position yesterday which we could get to only by galloping down a road with
“Jack Johnsons” flying all round, dead horses and men everywhere. The horse
next to me was killed and my own horse knocked over and wounded in three
places. One piece of shell went through my coat. The gas from the shells is
awful: one can hardly breathe and one’s eyes are running. I have not slept for
three days. It is certainly a veritable hell here.
“We are allowed to
write only two letters a week. I got a parcel from the Government and a letter
from the Railways Department, so please thank them, it was a fine parcel. I am
writing this while lying in a field with a telephone, and do not know if, you
will get the letter. Later still—O.K.”
(Victoria Colonist, July
17 1915, p 7) VICTORIAN’S ESCAPE Bombardier Diespecker Tells of Exciting
Experience in Dug-Out—Shell Explodes Prematurely
Bombardier Louis C.
Diespecker, who is serving with the 1st Canadian Artillery Brigade
at the front, has written the following interesting letter from the front line:
Letter received from
Bdr. Louis C. Diespecker, 1st Artillery Brigade:
“We have not had much
excitement since I last wrote. I had a narrow escape yesterday. I was in a
telephone dugout, which was about 4 feet deep and had two rows of sandbags on
three sides. We did not sand-bag the side that was near the guns as we wanted
(illegible) and No. 1 gun was firing as far as it could to the right, and the
shells were going right over the corner of our dug-out. We had been firing
nearly all day, and I was in the dug-out on the telephone. I had a chair to sit
on, and my head was a few inches from the roof. Well, the gun had orders to
fire and there was a terrific explosion and the place was filled with smoke and
dust. I was hit in the neck with a piece of earth, and it hurt, believe me. The
major with another man was on one of the other telephones; he was hit with
several chunks of earth in the back of the neck. We both thought that we were
hit, but when we found that we were unhurt, we laughed at the explosion, which,
by the way, was caused by a ‘premature’ or, in other words, the shell burst at
the muzzle of the gun. Well, today, one of the men noticed a big piece of wood
had been chopped out of the beam over my head, and he also saw a big hole in
one of the sand-bags on the far side of the dug-out. Well, do you know, a big
chunk of shell had passed a few inches over my head, and had buried itself in
the sand-bag on the side of the dug-out.
“I saw General Currie a
few days ago.”
A BRIEF LOCATER
DON DIESPECKER
Prologue
These Notes are based on earlier NOTES made by my cousin,
Joan Evard-Ray (1916-1995). They may assist explanations re the 1890 ‘primary
meeting’ of my paternal grandparents, Ann Elizabeth Bradley (AEB) and Rudolph
Solon Diespecker in Durban (at Harriett McGregor’s house, Harriett Foster
Bradley McGregor (HFBMcG) having been my grandmother Elizabeth’s sister). Also
living at Rose Cottage with his widowed daughter, my great grandfather himself
a widower following the death of Elizabeth Mary Atherden Carly Bradley in
1882). Please note that the name Harriette is also spelled Harriett (generally
in Joan’s NOTES).
Given that families in the 19th century were
generally larger than they are now in the early 21st century, most
of the siblings of Ann Elizabeth and Harriett are not included here, i.e., I
focus on AEB and HFBMcG, their marriages, their children (only because the
McGregors and Diespeckers (and associated families) are cousins. Similarly the grandchildren of Elizabeth and Rudolph, their marriages and their children, are for the most part, not included here, either.
My late sister, Deirdre June Diespecker’s birth and death dates are included
because she was the only grandchild to have known Elizabeth (or ‘Mommygan,’ as Elizabeth
was known to Deirdre, that ‘children’s name’ is also on Elizabeth’s gravestone
in Victoria, BC). Please note also that this document drafted in October 2014
is only a ‘shorthand’ reference or ‘brief’ relevant to ‘notable’ or ‘key family
figures’ of our recent past. Readers will be able to identify major figures
preceding the marriages of Rudolph Diespecker and Ann Elizabeth Bradley and the
McGregor-Bradley marriages. Appendices to the current document will be added as
“APPENDIX ‘A’ &c and these will be progressively added to editions of this
Brief Locater. The Appendices are intended to provide additional information to
this Brief Locater (family history enthusiasts may eventually be enabled to
merge the various documents into one…that will then be more a time line and less a brief Locater).
Please note that (a) many of the family members whose names
appear in this document were better known or more frequently known either by
their preferred names, their borrowed or self-chosen names or by their
rearranged and shortened names (e.g., Ann Elizabeth Bradley Diespecker was always ‘Elizabeth Diespecker;’ Rudolph
Solon Diespecker (RSD) was generally and better known, particularly in his
early years, as ‘Louis Rudolph Diespecker’ except when his correct name was
essential (as it was, e.g., in the British Army List). Further, although the
marriage details of RSDs parents are included here, other of the family members
Samson (aka ‘Louis’ and later ‘Lewis’ Diespecker) and Christian Warmington are
not included here: details of the Jewish Diespecker families in Germany
particularly in Diespeck, Baiersdorf, Fürth and elsewhere in Bavaria and
Franconia, despite variations in the spelling of the family name, have been
recorded, despite the Holocaust, in considerable detail elsewhere: i.e., a
‘shorthand’ version of those long and detailed records dating to the early
seventeenth century is not presently available for inclusion in the Diary.
Prolegomena Bradleys
and McGregors.
C 1760 Captain
Atherden [died 1815]: his daughter, Sarah, married Cornelius Carly.
1796 William
Bradley, son of William and Sarah born March 14 (St Matthew, Bethnal Green,
London). Baptised April 10 1796 (father, William, identified as “weaver”).
1819 William
Bradley, bachelor, married Ann Thompson,
spinster, December 12 at St Bartholomew the Great Parish Church (London).
Witnesses were William Bradley and Sarah Bradley.
1824 Samson Diespecker, born
Aschaffenburg, Kingdom of Bavaria.
1825 Elizabeth Mary
Atherden Carly born March.
1829 Edmund Durbyn Bradley
born March 24 (7th of 10 children).
1850 (St.
Martin in the Field, (Trafalgar Sq, London) Parish of Middx, March 7,
"Lewis" Diespeiker [sic] (who we know is really Samson Diespecker),
Commercial Traveler (whose father was allegedly "Antonio Diespeiker"
[sic] a grocer), married Christian Warmington, spinster, daughter of Richard
Warmington, a builder (Richard Warmington and Sarah Wickerson were the
witnesses) (I DOUBT the "Antonio" &c &c (although there was an Italian London connection, but
that's another story). The fact is that an apostate Jew married by Licence a
Christian in a Christian church in London. Samson had migrated to the UK in the
Year of Revolutions (1848) and became a naturalized British subject in 1853
(his papers were approved and signed by Viscount Palmerston, then British home
secretary).
1850 (Parish Church, Saint
Giles, Camberwell, Surrey), October 10 Edmund Durbyn Bradley (straw bonnet
manufacturer, resident High Street, Newington Butts), son of William Bradley
(also a straw bonnet manufacturer), married spinster Elizabeth Mary Atherdon
[sic] Carly at Camberwell Green, daughter of Cornelius Carly. Witnessed by
Cornelius Carly, HK Bradley, Eliza Eleanor Bradley and Henry Bradley.
1852 Alexander McKirdy
McGregor born October 31 Rothsay B(illegible), Scotland.
1858 Rudolph Solon
Diespecker, born July 5 (Finsbury St Luke), Middx. London, UK (fourth of seven
children; three girls).
1859 Harriett Foster
Bradley, born De Crespigny Park (London) September 13.
1860 Emily Carly, youngest
daughter of C Carly, Esq., (of the Folkestone-road) married Henry Peake of
New-bridge on May 15 at the Parish church, Hougham (an extract from The Dover Chronicle and Kent and Sussex
Advertiser, May 19 1860).
1862 “Arrivals in Table Bay,
RM St “Dane,” 500 tons. Passengers: [included] Mr ED Bradley, Mrs Bradley, and
four children” (an extract from, The Cape
of Good Hope Government Gazette, Friday, July 18 1862).
1862 “Arrival in Algoa Bay (Port Elizabeth) “Earl of Southesk” bk, 335 tons from Table Bay 18th July
to this port. Cargo general. Passengers [included]: Mr. and Mrs. Bradly [sic],
and family.” (The Cape of Good Hope
Government Gazette, Friday, August 1 1862).
1867 Ann Elizabeth Bradley
born Grahamstown, Cape Colony May 11, Baptismal certificate 1775 (1868) records parents as Edmund Durban
[sic] and Elizabeth Mary Bradley.
1875 Louis [sic] Diespecker
[i.e., Samson], wine merchant, died aged 50 years April 7 at Colebrook Row,
Islington, London “R [udolph] son present at the death.” RSD was then aged 16
years.
1882 Death of Mrs ED Bradley
reported in the Graham’s Town Journal
March 3 (Elizabeth Mary Atherden Carly Bradley).
1883 Alexander McKirdy
McGregor married Harriet [sic] Foster Bradley at Grahamstown, Cape Colony
February 28 1883.
1885 Alexander Durbyn
Bradley McGregor born November 21 at Stoke Newington (London) UK
1889 Harriett [sic] (BUNTY) Foster McGregor, born King
William’s Town, Cape of Good Hope, May 20 (daughter of Alexander McKirdy Mc
Gregor and Harriette Foster Bradley McGregor).
1890 Ann Elizabeth Bradley
(spinster, resident at Durban) married Louis [sic] Rudolph Diespecker
(bachelor, contractor, resident at Lourenço Marques, Mozambique) at the
Wesleyan Church, Musgrave Road, Durban, Colony of Natal December 1 (a witness
was the British Consul at Lourenço Mrques, E Smith-De la Cour).
1892 Rudolph Edmund
Atherden (DENNY) Diespecker born at
Harriett McGregor’s Rose Cottage, Durban, Natal August 8.
1893 Christina [sic]
[Christian] Diespecker [Samson Diespecker’s widow] aged 65 years, died 41a [?]
Lavender Road, Stroud Green, [Hornsey, Middx.] “F [Friedricke]” Diespecker,
daughter, present at the death.”
1894 Rudolph Edmund
Atherden (DENNY) Diespecker baptized
at Wesleyan-Methodist Chapel, (Berea) Durban April 4 witnessed by parents RSD
and AED (their residence recorded as “Lourenço Margues (Delagoa Bay”) (possible
‘evidence’ the parents were then living in Mozambique and visiting Durban).
1895 Louis Cyril Diespecker
born at Harriett Foster McGregor’s Rose Cottage, Durban, Natal, March 10. Note: copy of unusual baptismal certificate (St John’s Lydenburg, Diocese
of Pretoria, August 9 1921)
recording March 16 1896 baptism of
Louis Cyril that was witnessed by ED Bradley, LR Diespecker [i.e., Rudolph or
RSD] and HF McGregor. This indicates that Edmund Durbyn Bradley, Louis Cyril’s
grandfather, had traveled from Durban to Lydenburg (the ZAR, i.e., Transvaal,
together with his daughter (the widow Harriett Foster Bradley McGregor) and
that they had been present in the South African Republic (or Transvaal) at
Lydenburg with AEBD and RSD, the parents of the newly christened Louis Cyril.
1896 Durbyn Charles
Diespecker born at Sabie, Transvaal (ZAR), September 26.
1897 Edmund Durbyn Bradley
died November 29 at Durban, Natal.
1898 Eugene Jules (JEAN)
Diespecker born at Willowmore, Cape Colony, December 5.
1898 Baptism Durbyn Charles
Diespecker and Eugene Jules Diespecker, at St Matthews’s Church, Willowmore,
Cape Colony. Witnesses to DCD baptism: were RSD and brother Alfred and Alfred’s
wife, Ella Diespecker. Witnesses to EJD baptism: RSD and AEBD.
1907 Richard Ernest Alan
(DICK) Diespecker born Adstock, Bucks, UK, March 1.
1911 Harriett Foster
McGregor (BUNTY) married René
Schneider (changed to Evard-Ray January 1918) Durban, Natal June 21. TWO
children: Alphonse Durbyn Alexander (ALEX)
born April 27 1912) (died?); and Joan Madelaine born Durban, March 18 1916;
died Kloof, Natal, 1995.
**1916 Alexander Durbyn
Bradley McGregor (GOGGIE) married
Mildred Ellen Nimmo (b July 10 1889, Durban) October 14 1916 (their children:
Trelss 1918-1943; Atherden Nimmo 1919-?; Milton 1928-1928; Lloyd 1929-2014;
Alexander Hay 1936-?
1920 Rudolph Solon
Diespecker died at Wynberg, near Cape Town, Union of South Africa May 25.
1928 Ann Elizabeth Bradley
Diespecker died Victoria, BC, Canada February 29.
1932 Harriett Foster
Bradley McGregor died Durban, Natal December 14.
1948 Rudolph Edmund
Atherden (DENNY) died Victoria, BC,
Canada July 13.
1959 Eugene Jules (JEAN) died Victoria, BC, Canada
September 21.
1969 Louis Cyril Diespecker
died Hong Kong June 16 1969.
1970 Harriett (BUNTY) Foster McGregor Evard-Ray died
Durban, Natal.
1973 Richard Ernest Alan (DICK) Diespecker died San Francisco,
California, USA February 11 1973.
1977 Durbyn Charles
Diespecker died Pretoria, Transvaal RSA
(Republic of South Africa) November 12.
**1994 Deirdre June
Diespecker Rose Kieser born Pilgrim’s Rest, Transvaal Province, Union of South
Africa June 25 1921, died Pretoria, RSA (Republic of South Africa) October 15
1994.
**Though four of the
five children of Elizabeth and Rudolph’s marriage married and had children most
of those details have not been included in this document.
© Text Don Diespecker
October 30 2014.
APPENDIX A. Transcription of
(1990s) NOTES by Joan Evard-Ray: (March 18 1916-1995)
OUR GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER CARLY’S FAMILY
AND THE ATHERDENS
JOAN EVARD-RAY
CARLY is an Anglo-Saxon name
deriving from Churl—a freeman and small farmer. The Saxons settled in the south
of England (Wessex). The Carlys came from a small place in Sussex, Brightling.
When I went there in 1977 there were still Carlys in the village but I didn’t
have time to do much about that; there was only one bus a day there from Battle
and we (a friend and I) had to walk about three miles to Brightling Woods
Corner to catch the bus back to Battle.
Our great-great
grandfather Cornelius Carly just appears and disappears. I haven’t been able to
find out anything about him except his death in Dover in 1876. There was
nothing traceable about him: there were dozens of other Carlys in
Brightling—the graveyard was full of them. [Aunt] Harriett always said that our
family was among the very early followers of Wesley so perhaps Cornelius was
never baptized in the C of E.
Cornelius Carly was
born in 1798 or 1799: he was 52 years old in the 1851 Census so his age depends
upon the month of his birth; he died October 7 1876 at Park Place, Dover. He had married Sarah Atherden baptized
August 25 1799 at St Mary or St James, Dover (I didn’t note which but all the
Atherdens were at either one of the other church). They had three daughters:
1. Elizabeth Mary Atherden (EMA) b March 19 1829 baptized
June 26 1829 at the Wesleyan Chapel called Walworth Wesleyan Chapel situated in
Walworth Parish, Camberwell, Surrey (UK). The father was a featherbed and
mattress maker (I have one remaining cushion made from the feather bed that EMA
brought to Grahamstown [Cape Colony] with her).
2. Sarah married Joseph Thompson, a London contractor
(from what his daughter told Harriett he seems to have been a real chancer).
Their children were: Joseph; Lily; Emily and I think a Charles who was a
doctor. Unfortunately I tore up a lot of old letters from Lily and Emily when I
came up here [to Kloof Retirement Home] so am not too sure what’s what as old
Joe married three times! Lily married Dr James Rigby of Preston: he was a
Coroner and one of his sons acted as his clerk in the Court; there were several
other sons. Mabel married Leigh (there were two sons and a daughter). Lilian
married Talbot; there were no children. Joe married Sophie Weldon (he lived in
London and was the most handsome old man, he had a long thin aristocratic
face—like Denny, I always thought.
3. Emily Annie married Henry Peake of New Bridge, Dover
(a chemist). She had two sons and a daughter. She died when very young (I don’t
think any of the children were even six to eight years old; she was another
heart casualty, as was her eldest sister (EMA). When I was in Dover Library
enquiring about Henry Peake and the Atherdens, Peake was an Alderman; a woman
there found a lot of marriage bonds for Atherdens. I can’t imagine what that
was all about. We corresponded for some time and she sent me strings of names
of Atherdens that didn’t get me much further. I remember one of them was a
Philadelphia Atherden that rather fascinated me! When I received these dozens
of name s from Canterbury it really was a lovely job sorting them all out and
deciding which were ours. I am sending you an old Dover Chronicle of 1860 [see
The Earthrise Diary {Late Spring 2014}] that this woman sent me and in which
the marriage of Henry Peake and Emily Carly is recorded and I have marked. I am
giving just our direct line of Atherdens: I have whole families but I don’t
think they concern us. I was sorry that I couldn’t get further back than 1738:
I just couldn’t read the writing beyond then—it seemed all long tails and had me
completely stumped. Atherden is also a very old name from a time before there
were proper surnames: denotes where
the person lived: at the dene, i.e., valley. I don’t suppose you a big
photograph of an old man that hung in the dining room at Musgrave Road [I
certainly do and still have the copy! DD]: that was Captain Atherden, our
(three greats) grandfather. There was no Christian name so that was an added
handicap but I had such a stroke of luck with that; he was a ship’s captain so
I went to Lloyds of London but was told the lists were alphabetical under the
names of the ships; however, I asked to see the registers of 1814, 1815, 1816…he
was lost in the North Sea in 1815 and I struck him almost straight away and the
register actually gave his initial, T, so I was able to connect him up with
Thomas (the ship was a schooner, “Charles,” 118 tons, 10 ft draft; British;
London to Rotterdam. Condition E (the list goes AEIOU); Rigging, 1).
4. Edward Atherden died March 20 1760 (having married
Martha who died December 25 1768). Son Thomas was baptized December 12 1740 and
died between 1805 and 1808—minor [miner?] who married Elizabeth Singleton May
12 1761 (mother Martha was a witness) and he had signed with an X, the only one
of the Atherdens who did so). Their son Thomas was baptized September 21 1766
and married Mary Buxell November 23 1790: he was the Captain son Thomas
baptized May 25 1796 and a daughter Sarah was baptized August 25 1799: who
married Cornelius Carly. It was guess work that gave me these leads. Brightling
seemed a likely place because an English cousin said that the Carlys were
farmers there in the 18th century. Knowing the Atherdens came from
Kent and that Thomas was a merchant Captain I decided to try Dover!
MY EBOOKS
For those readers
who browse for eBooks here again are descriptions of the first of the online
books: they can be found on Amazon/Kindle sites. E.g., see
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Don+Diespecker
(1) Finding Drina is a light-hearted sequel
to my two print novels (not available as eBooks) published in one volume as The Agreement and it’s sequel, Lourenço Marques. Finding Drina is written in three parts and in three different
styles that also are intended homage pieces (to GG Marquez, Ernest Hemingway
and Lawrence Durrell); thus this little book is also meta-fiction (novella,
about 30-k words).
(2) The Earthrise Visits is an Australian
long story set at Earthrise (about 20-k words): an old psychologist meets a
young literary ghost from the 1920s (his girlfriend meets her, too) before a
second old literary ghost, unaware of his spectral state, arrives unexpectedly.
(3) Farewelling Luis Silva is an Australian
dystopian long story partly set in Australia, Portugal and France (about 23-k
words). A sniper meets an Australian Prime Minister, an old lover and a
celebrity journalist; three of them meet a terrorist in Lisbon where there is a
bloody assassination.
(4) The Selati Line is an early 20th
century Transvaal train story, road story, flying story, a caper story and also
a love story sequel to The Agreement
and Lourenço Marques, lightly
written and containing some magical realism. A scene-stealing child prodigy keeps the characters in order
(novel, about 150-k words).
(5) The Summer River is a dystopian novel
(about 70-k words) set at Earthrise. A General, the déjà vu sniper, the
Australian Prime Minister and the celebrity journalist witness the murder of a
guerrilla who had also been an Australian university student; they discuss how
best to write an appropriate book about ‘foreign invasions’ (novel, about 70-k
words).
(6) The Annotated “Elizabeth.” I examine
and offer likely explanations as to why my uncle published a mixed prose and
verse novel in which his mother is portrayed as the principal protagonist and I
suggest why the book Elizabeth
(published by Dick Diespecker in 1950) is a novel and not a biography, memoir
or history (non-fiction, about 24-k words).
(7) The Overview is a short Australian
novel set at Earthrise (about 32.5-k words) and is also a sequel to The Summer River.
(8) Scribbles from Earthrise, is an
anthology of selected essays and caprice written at Earthrise (about 32-k
words). Topics are: family and friends, history of the Earthrise house, the
river, the forest, stream of consciousness writing and the Earthrise dogs.
(9) Here and There is a selection of Home
and Away essays (about 39-k words). (‘Away’ includes Cowichan (Vancouver
Island), 1937 (my cabin-boy year), The Embassy Ball (Iran), At Brindavan
(meeting Sai Baba in India). ‘Home’ essays are set at Earthrise and include as
topics: the Bellinger River and floods, plus some light-hearted caprices.
(10) The Agreement is a novel set in
Mozambique and Natal during December 1899 and the Second Anglo-Boer War: an
espionage yarn written around the historical Secret Anglo Portuguese Agreement
(1899). Louis Dorman and his brother, Jules, feature together with Drina de
Camoens who helps draft the Agreement for the Portuguese Government. British
Intelligence Officers, Boer spies and the Portuguese Secret Police socialize at
the Estrela Café (about 62-k words).
(11) Lourenço Marques is the sequel to The Agreement. Mozambique in September
1910. The Estrela café-bar is much frequented and now provides music: Elvira
Tomes returns to LM from Portugal and is troubled by an old ghost; Drina and
her companion return with an unexpected new member of the family; Louis faints.
Joshua becomes a marimba player. Ruth Lerner, an American journalist plans to
film a fiesta and hundreds of tourists visit from the Transvaal. Drina plays
piano for music lovers and plans the removal of an old business associate
(novel: about 75-k words).
(12) The Midge Toccata, a caprice about
talking insects (inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories). This book has a
splendid new cover designed by my cousin, Katie Diespecker (fiction, caprice,
about 26-k words).
(13) Happiness is a short novel set at
Earthrise. The ‘narrator’ is again the very elderly ex-ATA flier who
unexpectedly meets and rescues a bridge engineer requiring urgent
hospitalisation: she gets him safely to hospital in his own plane. She also
‘imagines’ an extension to her own story, one about a small family living
partly in the forest and on the riverbank: the theme is happiness. Principal
protagonist is a 13-years old schoolgirl, apparently a prodigy: she befriends a
wounded Army officer and encourages his plans. Her parents are a university
teacher and a retired concert pianist. The family pets can’t resist being
scene-stealers in this happy family (novel, about 65-k words).
(14) The Special Intelligence Officer is
part family history as well as a military history and describes the roles of my
late grandfather in the Guerrilla War (1901-1902) in Cape Colony. The Guerrilla
War was the last phase of the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). The title of
the book is taken from Cape newspapers of the time: Capt Rudolph Diespecker was
a District Commandant; his responsibilities included intelligence gathering
that led to the capture, trial and execution of a Boer Commandant who was
wrongly framed as a ‘Cape rebel,’ when he was legally a POW (Gideon Scheepers
was never a Cape rebel, having been born in the Transvaal (the South African
Republic,) one of the two Boer Republics (non-fiction, about 33-k words).
(15) The Letters From Earthrise, an
anthology of my columns and other essays and articles written for the Australian Gestalt Journal between 1997
and 2005 (fiction and some non-fiction, about 70-k words).
(16) The Darkwood
is a dystopian novel set at Earthrise in the not too distant future (about 80-k
words). Earthrise is again central to other themes.
(17) Bellinger; Along
The River is an anthology of personal essays relative to my home and the
property, Earthrise, and the river at my doorstep (aspects and descriptions of
the river, including flooding) (nonfiction, about 28-k words)
(18) Reflecting:
an anthology of personal essays about the gardens, butterflies, a caprice, and
other motivating factors at my home, Earthrise: mostly non-fiction (20,300
words)
(19) Idling: is a
collection of personal essays about seeing; a military history essay; a
speculation about lawns; a working visit to Griffith University; periods of
enforced idleness as “Don’s Days Out” in Coffs Harbour (mostly non-fiction;
about 35,600 words).
Thank you to my guest writers, Jill Alexander, Sasha
Fergusson, and Peter Thompson; thank you to my cousins, Louise Lee, for
permission to use materials from her Family Collection and to Rik Diespecker
who forwarded materials from his Family Collection).
Best wishes and season’s greetings to all Diary Readers and
happy holidays to all from Don.
Don Diespecker
