THE EARTHRISE DIARY (WINTER 2015)
DON DIESPECKER
© Text, Don
Diespecker (2015); guest writers retain their ©
There surely has never been such affection as there
was between the two sisters. All the years they were apart they wrote to one
another every week and when Elizabeth [and Dick] came to stay with us after
Rudolph died and prior to returning to Canada, when she arrived they talked the
whole night and never even thought of going to bed! Elizabeth wasn’t quite
sixteen when their mother died [1882] and Harriett 22 so I suppose they grew
very close to one another.
Joan
Evard-Ray (letter to DDD July 1 1993)
LOVE: SELECTED STORIES is an anthology
of short stories old and new (about 36,000 words). Of these narratives three
are partly set in Bellingen, Dorrigo, and the Bellinger River Valley; others
are set in Africa, Greece, France, Iran and Spain. ‘The Bellinger Protocol’ is
a (magic reality) caprice. ‘Dragonfly’ is an interior monologue set in an
imagined Vietnam. ‘Season of Love’ is largely interior monologue and set in the
mountains surrounding Pilgrim’s Rest (in the era when it was in the old
Transvaal). Several stories are fictionalized non-fiction (e.g., ‘A Circuit of
Fields’ is excerpted from a non-fiction essay and set in pre-revolutionary
Iran). Most of the narratives derive from real people in real locales.
Don Diespecker (April
2015)
SUCCESS: is a novel that lightly explores Love’s Roundabout diplomatically in
Vienna, youthfully in Paris, Australians and Americans predominating (about 107-k words), my self-publishing blurb for SUCCESS)
Don
Diespecker (August 2015)
[Joan Didion] once delivered a lecture called “Why I Write.” She began
by pointing out that the sound you hear in those three words is “I, I, I.”
Louis Menand: Out of Bethlehem. The Radicalization of Joan
Didion (THE NEW YORKER, August 24 2015) excerpted in Work in Progress and presented by
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, August 2015)
CHARIVARI
August 2015. I
rarely dominate this blog with excessive references to myself but I’m doing it
in this edition because it looks to me like a good idea. Also, I recently
self-published a new novel and I’m feeling pleased with myself for having taken
the time and made the effort, so a little self publicity in this Diary is good
for my self-esteem. Selfish? Yes, sure, I’m the most interesting person I know!
Reading books written by other writers, sitting in the winter sun, doing
unrelated stuff other than writing my
own novels all have their appeal, but there’s nothing quite as satisfying and
pleasurable for me as my writing a book to completion. Also, quoting myself in
Diary epigraphs seems harmless enough (and I’ve briefly described it in
Creative Writing and my list of eBooks below: maybe SUCCESS would make an entertaining movie?). The Earthrise Diary is
seen (and hopefully also read) in other parts of the world (for example in
Canada, the USA, South Africa, the UK, France and Germany). Epigraphs and
blurbs might therefore be considered as good PR as well as responsible
advertising and possibly, also of some interest to readers of this Diary.
I’ll begin with some back listed autumn notes.
(MAY 2015). If you were here now,
dear Diary reader, and perhaps not entirely familiar with the Australian
seasons you might be thinking: “Summer”
because I’ve begun drafting the Winter Diary on Tuesday May 5 2015 in the “last” month of our southern hemisphere autumn
and the predicted temperature here today is 28˚C and that temperature certainly
is summery. There recently have been
hot and cold days, very wet days (and even a few snowy days way down south of
here) and during this past weekend, May 3 and 4, the second East Coast Low has
affected weather from Queensland’s east coast to southern New South Wales.
There have been deaths caused by torrential rain and flooding and the
destruction of properties, and the isolation of many more properties associated
with the dramatic weather. There was also a so-called minor flood here on
Saturday and Sunday, May 3 and 4. On Sunday morning I was exploring some damage
to the riverbank here and was surprised to see a small black snake motionless
in the garden. It was less than a half metre long. I bent down curiously and
was tempted to pick it up by the tail (but resisted the impulse). Although the
snake looked undamaged perhaps it had been knocked about by flood debris in the
river. Eventually it moved slowly away toward Big Lawn. Last night, soon after
midnight, I heard some scrabbling or scuffling and thought it would likely be a
mouse or antechinus (the marsupial mouse) trying to come into the house or
possibly trying to get out and sat up anyway and switched on a torch just in
case there was a pesky snake muscling its way in for a night-time snack. As
strange as it may seem I saw in the torchlight what looked like some two metres
of snake hanging from a beam outside
my bedroom and above the adjacent deck. Fortunately the snake had been and gone
and had simply left its unwanted skin behind (a seasonal shedding). My seasonal
thinking emerged for previewing as: this snake and perhaps others have mistaken
the mild to warm weather as proper spring weather and they’re going to be both
confused and seriously annoyed…
In other words, these sightings and intuitions have been
parts of a False Spring (and presumably a consequence of global warming and
climate change).
(May 9 2015) and I’ve been able to walk the
road again without encountering any flooded bridges or traffic hazards (the
Plain’s Bridge always clears soon after a flood simply because it’s higher;
Richardson’s Bridge, the next one downriver, is lower and remains part flooded
for a longer period). I noticed there were squashed frogs here and there and at
least two small snakes: both road-kill,
as we might ungenerously say. Frogs used always
to reappear on the road or roadside after heavy rain or flooding but not always in this era and snakes large
or small will occasionally in any season be caught on the road or killed by passing
traffic, yet here again were road-kill squashed frogs and squashed small snakes
and it’s still autumn. I returned and was stepping up from the road to my lawn
when I saw the small snake I’d met days ago near the belvedere. Again I
considered picking it up to see if it was injured (but didn’t). When I gently
touched it with my boot it launched in to what seemed, again, spring fighting
season or spring active mode. How strange is that? Perhaps this will all be
well understood in the future, so despite this not being a breathlessly newsy
story I’ll leave it in place for now. Playfully I imagine that if this Diary
can still be read in 2115 some herpetologist historians might be tickled to
read these modest words...
It’s now May 27 2015
and I’m cold, chilled, tired because it’s late in the day and I’ve been awake
since 04:40, have driven to Coffs Harbour and returned in one piece (as well
the still almost new Honda), have found sufficient dried wood to get the slow
combustion heater unhurriedly going at its miserably slow pace (to be fair,
this is a barn of a house for a relatively small and courageous little slow
combustion heater being required to dominate a tremendous volume of cold air).
Sigh. Now I’m reminded of exploring great palaces in Vienna and wondering at
the big tubby apparently ceramic “stoves” in some rooms that were supposed to
accomplish the palatial heating: I doubt they could ever have perfectly
succeeded in those enormous inside spaces.
(May 31 2015).
Farewell to autumn (or to fall as
autumn is more generally referred to in Canada and the USA).
June 14 2015.
Following gloomy days of frequent showers and dampness all around and mushrooms
and toadstools squeaking with pleasure, today is sunny and mild (to 21˚) in
spite of the forecast being for likely showers. Twenty-one degrees is unusual
here in midwinter. No rain has fallen since dawn. Nice. Once the sun has got
going and there’s good light I can see that the Japanese maple near the road is
showing us what she’s got: her eastern flanks are nicely red or russet with a
touch of yellow and each time I glance in her direction there is glorious
colour. The colour on that eastern (river) side becomes more diffuse, more
notable through the day. The tree although certainly Japanese-looking and of
course is also North American looking, encourages me to perceive it also as a
non-deciduous African thorn tree, one awaiting giraffes to breakfast on its
laden branches or that will enable lions to snooze in its meagre shade
following a night hunt and a tasty meal of wildebeest… It’s the shape of the tree that enables my misperceiving.
It seems impossible for me to not see that, to not perceive it that way: it’s
all in the sculpted (pruned) shape of its branches. On the way across the wet
grass to the road for my walk I stop to photograph the maple (I’m facing east)
because the old gingko on the riverbank grows straggly beyond the maple and the
gingko is overall decidedly yellow or dare I say golden: almost of the leaves.
The day continues mild to warm and even summery.
June 15 2015. I
swear there are more coloured Japanese maple leaves this morning than there
were yesterday! Surely leaves take a rest at night? Or do they manage to colour while sleeping? Who can say?
June 16 2015.
Gosh! All the leaves are now coloured: big patches that are orange
(more or less) and other parts similar, but the hue brownish. Everything
changes (especially while we sleep).
And here it is August!
August used to be undoubted winter, but this time it’s now decidedly spring
despite the False Spring dating back to May… See how everything changes?
August 17 2015. Yesterday I found a small plant growing wild in the
winter lawn and prized it loose and then planted it next to the begonias.
Plants here will often take root and get on with life without elaborate
gardening procedures (watering, e.g.). Callous? No, time saving and
experimental. And last night for the first time in weeks, there was some rain
that was much needed. At lunchtime I responded to a springtime urge to get the
mower out, half fill its tank and administer a spray can squirt of that remarkable
invention, “Start Ya Bastard.” The mower started with a roar and I was able to
cut widening circles around the Dogs’ Garden. I like mowing in spring or in a
False Spring, which is what seems to be presently occurring here. That first spring mowing was very satisfying and is for me a movement
meditation, unhurried and even heady (perhaps the exhaust smoke in my face
contributes something to that experience). Thereafter I could glance through
the window seeing apparent Crop Circles on the lawn. Nice. I won’t be surprised
should passers by stop to photograph the Circles…
Novel Writing
In times
past when I was a teenager I avidly read How
To books and articles, especially those that inveigled would-be writers
into their becoming proper writers, real writers. Some of those writings were
particularly directed at those scribblers wanting to be writers of novels… I
suspect that in this era writers increasingly imagine their personal ways into composing narratives that any one
of us may begin with an idea, a memory, an image or an urge, a something or
other that we savor or relish or that we love. More lightly: we use our heads
and access our hidden writers… We don’t have to have huge IQs or giant
intellects or be inspired by a writer’s heritage or even by vanity. I write
every day. I do this for pleasure. Pleasure!
I can’t help it and pleasure is high on my list of Good Things, anyway. Also
and before you sigh and move on to something less annoying or more palatable:
writing, in my opinion is surely one of the best of therapies for most of us who are able and in whatever way to string
words together. Writing comes from our experiencing of the world and is enabled
by e.g., memory and imagination and a determined motivation to express some of
what goes on in our individual psyches.
You can see your words appearing before you on the computer screen as
you tap the buttons and keys, or you can see the words flowing apparently from
the tip of your pencil or pen and impressing themselves on paper. Trust me, I
was a fully trained psychologist, a fully trained psychotherapist in both
Australia and America, license-eligible to practice in faraway California if I
badly enough wanted to follow that distant path, but I used also to be a
prize-winning psychologist in Australia who then in middle age became a
university academic. Without boasting unduly I make the point because when I
decided to enroll (part-time) for a BA as a mature age student (aged 32 and
married with family) it was for one prime reason: by properly studying in a
disciplined way English literature and psychology, I chose to believe that
intention to study for a BA would surely improve my fiction writing ability and
it probably did. I went on to complete a BA (Hon’s) and to win the Ward Prize
for experimental psychology and later, gain a PhD. I had chosen to study
psychology as useful for my writing, not as a career possibility.
So what’s
this got to do with writing novels? My answer: everything and nothing. I’m not
in the least recommending that anybody reading this would be wise to follow the
path I chose. We all make choices if we’re capable of doing that effectively,
choices that will best serve us. I studied English and psychology as well as
philosophy as parts of a plan to improve my writing. Some of what I learned and
some of what I taught has been very helpful for my writing. In old age my
writing is best served by my living quietly on a riverbank and partly in a
forest in an odd pole house that my ex-partner and I built together in 1984/5.
I’m still happily present and have lived here longer than I’ve lived anywhere
else in the world. All of the materials I require for my writing are right here
right now. There are the inspirational river, the majestic trees and a
beautiful place in which to allow my imagination free reign. The most important
of these is also the most vital: my imagination
harnessed to many of the varied experiences
of my life.
As
somebody once observed: “With our imaginations we make the world.”
Editorial Writing (Mine, Yours, Ours and Theirs)
One of
the cute things about being my own editor is that I can and do adopt Editorial
Stances and I always triple-check my inclinations to do so from the dizzy
heights of a soapbox. More often than not such drafts are filed in the round
wicker cabinet never to see the light of day; occasionally a draft or part of a
draft will be preserved for a while in “Diary Spare Parts.” I’m often reluctant
to publish notions in a blog that look arrogant or irresponsible but I tend to
make exceptions for prose that looks interesting and perhaps deserving of a
second chance.
Sometimes
editorial writing looks unmistakably like Hot Air, i.e., it’s merely my
inflated opinion and as much as I might like some of the phrasing or
exaggerated flows of syntax, if the words don’t communicate meaning, they’re
probably not worth preserving. Lecturing to students in a university ‘stadium
theatre’ sometimes is like editing in rarified air: as much as students may
have learned a thing or two from my acquired teachings, I certainly have
learned a great deal from bright students.
Stage
fright will be a learning experience whatever else it might be. Being or
becoming the half decent editor of anything, of any kind of narrative,
hopefully will have benefited from our having acquired learning in for example university lecture theatres. In
these places teachers and students interact and learn from each other. In such
places all intending or proto
writers, journalists and editors will be obliged to experience themselves
working the high wire without a net. The ability to think clearly and to speak
sensibly while facing bright students is paramount. Good places to practice
these may be found in good universities where the teacher has the sense to
enable students to do some of the teaching by encouraging their asking
questions, making comments, discussing and directly challenging. To edit
anything one needs to know something of everything, to have experiences of
being in the world.
I’m
suggesting that the myriad experiences of life are a sound basis for teaching,
for learning and for encouraging the critic within each of us. If any of us
have mere opinions that can’t be supported by evidence or by experience then
we’re not ready to teach or to edit: we have to first learn something about
being a person. Learning from students will also benefit when we obligingly
make transitions from consensus reality or ‘ordinary consciousness’ and use our
cognitive abilities with enthusiasm.
CREATIVE WRITING
August 8 2015. Last week and with the generous technical assistance
of my friend, Kerry, I was able to self-publish SUCCESS, my quite long novel (107-k words) set principally in Paris
and Vienna and in which two groups of characters/protagonists in those two
places vie for page space in pairs of related chapters generally alternating in
one location or the other. In other words, the narrative, the story is really two stories that appear
to be merging. There also are perhaps unexpected asides to the reader and
additionally there are the precocious actions and experiences of the younger
characters and protagonists. As well, there are apparently several unidentified
narrators… I wrote the book purely for pleasure. Writing books that might take
years to complete has no appeal: I do the research, I make endless notes and I
progress the dual story daily. Writing every day or as regularly as possible is
very appealing. Taking breaks from long hours at the computer necessarily
requires regular exercise or physical work (gardening, building walls, walking).
Eating as well as possible and only when I’m hungry, sleeping four or five
hours every twenty-four suits me, too. My only advice on writing creatively
that may be useful to all writers: the way to work on my writing when I’m not
writing is to not attempt writing in
my head when I’ve more important matters to attend to (like other aspects of
living, socializing, driving, cutting firewood). Multitasking has to be limited
because it’s fatiguing. I write the narrative when I’m in front of the
keyboard; when away from the computer I avoid obsessing about the developing
narrative. I do my best when not writing, to leave the narrative to itself; I
allow the story to mature, to ripen on it’s own. Fanciful? Yes, and yet
everyone that writes may detect aspects here of an approach that will work for
you.
Every
writer will know that when we complete a day’s work and experience
satisfaction, pleasure or happiness, we each will understand exactly what is
needed to tell our stories in our own ways.
CLOSE SHAVING AND THE FIFO
DARK MARAUDERS
DON DIESPECKER
Brush
turkeys are frequent visitors to Earthrise. So too, are many other birds plus
an occasional fox or a wallaby and possums at night behave as if they own the
entire place Although many wild creatures do
live on this 10.2-ha property (especially birds) local brush turkeys get a
special mention for two good reasons: Earthrise is only one of the places they
regularly visit; also, and because I see
them arriving from elsewhere (they fly in from across the river) they
obviously look like visitors because
they live at a place (or places) that is not Earthrise. So many other birds and
different other species are transients and are simply here for moments of
foraging or browsing and then move on elsewhere. It’s nice of them all to visit
and I enjoy their visits. The turkeys are welcome too, of course: it’s just
that when brush turkeys visit they’re here to work, here to do a job. They’re annoyingly FIFO workers, Fly In Fly
Out that studiously ignore the usual courtesies…such as workplace agreements,
scavenging rights and such garden arrangements as might exist seasonally: they
boldly behave pretty much like absentee landlords dropping in whenever it
pleases them to. It’s invariably the manner of the turkeys’ arrival that demands attention and is
frequently irksome. Sometimes there’s only one bird, quite often two of them.
The purpose of the brush turkeys is apparently
to browse the steep forested slopes behind the house. I use the term browsing loosely. In their quest for
grubs and other such attractive edible prey these relatively large birds also
unintentionally cultivate the soil by digging and fiercely scratching and
turning over the ground’s surface, scattering and tearing aside loose leaves,
forest litter and anything that they can methodically rearrange: actions that
most often look like spirited raking. However,
turkeys do much more of course: these engineering birds with powerful claws are
most importantly also mound builders
and their very large mounds are used to incubate their eggs. These cheeky
flyers pay no rent, no tithing: Earthrise is for them an Exploitative Place
(and I don’t really mind because I quite like their style).
*
I’m
shaving in semi darkness at a time between first light and sunrise. I’ve not switched
on the electric light: the gardens are always beautiful in this shadowy natural
light despite the near darkness. I see across Big Lawn and beyond to the
upstream bends. Big Lawn has been wild and wooly all winter. I never mow in
winter. Winter allows flood-dumped seeds and tiny would-be colonizing plants
the grace to grow free. Some of these surreptitious miniature plants mingle
with native violets now flowering in winter. Whenever I’m outside I notice that
these covert violets are frequently tiny enough to hide behind pink flowering
clover and difficult to see. I know they’re there because I see them clearly at
lunchtime when I sit outside, looking and seeing. As well, I can almost see
these miniscule plants as glimpsed images in my mind whilst looking
appreciatively through my bathroom window, watching and waiting for the sun.
Sometimes
shaving before sunrise I see one and often two brush turkeys arrive for work.
They come from across the river, sometimes Flying In from the middle of the
Plain’s Bridge and often walking purposefully all the way and looking stately
as though of the stockbroker class. They touch down at the riverbank-lawn-edge
horizon or covertly climb to the lawn edge where they initially may appear near
the weedy dahlia garden and suddenly, even awkwardly they pause there at once
and as if in new personas looking uneasy, nervous or possibly embarrassed and I
don’t know why. (I no longer chase them from spring-planted dahlia tubers that
they used to enjoy digging up and that was years ago before I used chicken wire
fencing; and the dogs could never catch them (intentionally, I like to think) and the four-footers now long gone
to that great paddock in the sky. I pause to watch. This duo can’t possibly be
Old School survivors of those dahlia days? That was years ago, fifteen or even twenty years past. They’re both so black
and there’s something of the peacock in them, too. It’s not yet light enough to
see the bare red skin around their necks or the yellow folded neck skin that’s
like a bright wattle, either. That loose and colorful neck skin is as obvious
as the dangling taster cup of the sommelier. What might these dignified birds
be experts or managers of, at least when they’re relaxed and efficient? If
they’re experts at anything other than mound building, it’s non-observance of
the proprieties. The now hesitant turkeys remind me too of country folk
sometimes at sea in the unfamiliar city and waiting for the lights to change to
green. Perhaps it’s the house, for years painted forest green and now
re-establishing its presence dynamically in white (with added blue trim). Are
the turkeys apprehensive near white houses, Aegean-island-looking-houses? Are
they playing a game?
Big Lawn
has just received its First Spring Mow and perhaps the circles that I’ve mown
around the Dogs’ Garden deter the birds because they’re increasingly nervous.
I’d have thought that when the birds run and they’re about to do that right now
they might be enjoying an enlivening run on safe ground rather than a frantic gallop
as if charging the guns at Balaklava. The ground isn’t quite flat but it’s flat
enough and sufficiently grassy for all creatures to safely enjoy: turkeys can see that the way ahead is clear and
entirely free of snakes and goannas. There they go now, flat-out running as
though in a race! Except that the mown circles seem to be of interest to them
as does the low stonewall surround of the Dogs’ Garden: the glances aside, the
checking of pace as though pulling at invisible reins. Something almost stopped
them, some sightseeing thing! Perhaps they can see me, the shadowy figure
forever poised, razor in hand, motionless in the dark bathroom? They’re safely
across now, the broad corridor as I see it but perhaps it’s Close Shave Alley
to the turkeys. Now the birds can securely pause almost out of my sight, the
trees interceding. From the speed of that crossing you’d think at the very
least they’d outsmarted a distant sniper.
And now
that they’re on the other side of the lawn, they saunter astonishingly away, as languid as battle horses now at
their ease in a lush paddock, and then turn to the hillside slopes and their
morning work. I don’t get it at all: not that I need to, but I’d love to know
why they don’t simply stroll across this particular area of grass in a
civilized way. Somehow it must either be myself or be my house that perhaps
over distance dominates Close Shave Alley: the turkeys seem intuitively to know
what’s risky and what is not.
Seeing is
an experience I relish: we may see in real time and we also may see in review,
later. Glimpsed afterthoughts and remembered sights are imaged in our minds.
Standing shaving and seeing outwards through the glass and down to Big Lawn
also enables those images acquired live in real time to accompany my viewing
from up here in the dark bathroom. That’s surely a kind of magic, magic meaning
more or less, “great powers.” I wonder, do animals and birds have that ability,
that power: if not, why not?
Shaving I
remember yesterday’s lunchtime view of Big Lawn from my sunlit garden chair. I
remember allowing my eyes to wander over the great forest of wild lawn with
here and there a single grass blade wavering or a long thin spiky lomandra leaf
oscillating, just a single strand of each plant. I see those movements as images
remembered. Standing shaving I also
glimpse the remembered me at lunchtime yesterday sitting seeing what could be
seen. I see as imaged, myself seeing: how I’d lean forward to see better
something demanding my puzzled attention: a (possibly?) blue-tinged extremely
high-speed flying insect darting brilliantly in the sun. This very fast aerial insect dashes, bobs and
abruptly shifts in bursts of speed both horizontally and vertically. The tiny
creature bobs and changes position so remarkably fast that my slow human eyes cannot ever see any of those abrupt and
startling shifts that apparently instantly change its position. The
insect flier is here in one moment
and a meter or two away suddenly there.
An aircraft would be torn asunder attempting such abrupt velocities, so too
would human aviators surely be torn apart. This tiny springtime insect flier is
a mere two or three millimeters in size at most. Not only can it fly superbly,
it seems to move instantaneously up or down in space. The tiny creature seems
as fast as a speeding bullet and can presumably dodge something as predictable
as a slowly falling tree. How magical would that be?
I know
when I stand on the walkway of Richardson’s Bridge to watch the swallows that
they’re seeing the world in what would be for me a very special way. The
swallows move briskly at speed, dodging, banking, climbing, diving and hurtling
through the spans beneath me, always unerringly.
And at
lunchtime when much of the grass was dry enough to mow I brought the mower down
and cut circular swathes around the Dogs’ Garden, toppling and tumbling the
huge grass forests dear to the insect world, razing minute orchid-like lawn
flowers and the tiny blooms of tropical chickweed.
And now
I’m remembering again the tiny high velocity spring bug that can move at
lightning speed. I also realize that from force of habit I always place my
chair where it’s least likely to be destroyed by a big branch falling from
above. I invariably look up to see the array of Killer Branches or Widow Makers
and then look to see the best direction in which to rise and then run speedily
if I hear a branch cracking on high. I’m just as rational, perhaps, as the
safety-first turkeys: Big Lawn might also be a Close Shave Alley for me, for
anybody silly enough to ignore the overhead threat. I know that I have to be
cautious when I sit near the belvedere’s big trees and I accordingly look up to
see the great trees against the sky: high branches serve as my warning system.
As for the FIFO worker turkeys: I still don’t yet know what it is that makes
particular parts of the green sward that is Big Lawn such a dangerous challenge for brush turkeys. I don’t
really need to know: I’m just curious to understand.
KIN
DON DIESPECKER
The memoir below, was filed as “Gourdon, Sep 26 2000.’ ©
text 2000 and 2015 Don Diespecker.” The travels described were made in 1998 and
the text has been lightly re-edited for this Winter 2015 edition of the Diary.
One of the four principals in this memoir was my cousin, the late Gene
Diespecker, who passed away in 2001.
In Easter 1998 I was
in Gourdon with my Canadian cousins and our German friend, Ilse. Ilse greatly
admires everything French and we all have a taste for the wines of the region,
not to mention the food. Gene (now deceased) used once to be an Anglican
minister; he later lived modestly with his family on a small farm in British
Columbia and was also at that time a benevolent prison officer. His sister,
Jill, is rare in our hugely dispersed family, having been a successful person
in business, now retired, who lives in North Vancouver, British Columbia. Prior
to retirement Jill together with her friend and colleague, Gill, directed a
health and beauty enterprise. Ilse is a teacher, an historian, a scholar and
author. I'm a retired academic, psychologist and psychotherapist, and have
since learned that retirement is the busiest time of life; I was born in
British Columbia and unlike my cousins, I grew up in South Africa and also have
lived in the UK although I have lived for most of my life in Australia.
Gourdon is an interesting old town though not nearly as
interesting as many other old towns in a region that contains Lot, Périgord,
Dordogne, Cantal and Auvergne. To wander through these landscapes is a joy. In
ways reminiscent of longish sea voyages one is out of time, intentionally cut
off and somewhat in retreat. A few days earlier we were in Bavaria in Diespeck,
the town near Nürnberg that gave our family its name. We discussed much history
and visited the old Jewish cemetery surrounded by oak trees up on the hillside.
The cemetery had never been vandalised during the time of the Third Reich and
the locals blinked whenever we said our family name because prior Diespecker
families were pre-the Holocaust, the Shoa. In the cemetery there was a section
dedicated to members of the Wehrmacht who
had served in the Great War and I wondered whether contemporary locals
considered that unusual. I also wondered how many German and non-German members
of our greater family might have been shooting at each other during the Great
War, as we used to refer to it in the era prior to World War Two.
Although I'd toured the region by car years before in 1957
it was the first time any of us had ever visited Gourdon and we made it our
base for daily trips. There were features of the town that seemed almost
familiar to us as strangers: the busy open market, the old buildings and the
entire town rising above a mound that seemed a lively hub of humanity. Perhaps
I'll revisit one day and repeat some of the tour. I remember the hotel with
pleasure. It was nothing fancy and as with any French hotel that boasts a
restaurant we were well served with good food and good wine. The clearest
images I remember are dinner scenes: we'd look at the menu and think hard on
the choices while the young waitress smiled understandingly because we were
foreigners and a menu of delicious options in France can be a trial for anyone.
I always make a quick choice because I think first impressions are surely worth
something. While the others rolled their eyes and groaned I'd look about and
was always touched to see that the evening dinner ritual was never disturbed by our intrusion. In
some ways we perhaps seemed to be only partly visible to locals. I thought that
was respectful. I remember a family that I first met on the stairs one evening.
They were an elderly couple plus their married children with their spouses, a
baby and a little black poodle. The poodle was clearly part of the family. At
table the small black dog was perfectly tolerated and no one turned a hair when
the dog sat up on a chair and received portions and tit bits with excited
pleasure. I doubt anyone in that comfortably full restaurant saw that as
remarkable, other than us, the obvious foreigners. We were after all the
outsiders. The French are accepting and tolerant in ways I had never really
appreciated when I was younger.
I remember another thing about those dinners: how good
sorbet can be at the end of the meal. One sorbet contained berries and that reminded
me of the early 1930s during the Depression in British Columbia. Dad used to
grow raspberries and loganberries in the back yard where they were trained up
against the house and the garage and there were always late summer blackberries
in the lanes. That remains true in North Vancouver, Jill reminded us: you could
have a second breakfast walking those lanes.
We can't effectively compare a casual hotel meal in a French
town with a similar meal taken in Canada or South Africa or Australia; the
world isn't quite like that. And then I remembered another time on that trip
when we were over in Burgundy, staying at a small hotel in Beaune. As was our
custom at the end of each day we'd meet for wine and cheese before dinner. We
were in my room and talking history and sipping red wine and taking bites of
Cantal on leftover lunchtime baguette.
I don't recall how it came up but there was a memory of wartime at Pilgrim's
Rest up in the Drakensberg in the Eastern Transvaal where we once lived and I
talked about those times. I was just a kid in those days but the older guys,
the ones we admired because they made swing-out ropes over the swimming pool
and knew everything about life--they soon went off to the War and most of them
were killed in the Western Desert at much the same time. The entire village was
stunned, I recalled and I choked on my words; my boyhood grief had lain waiting
all those years and I was glad I was with family.
The long-ago War started me thinking about the river at
Pilgrim's Rest, the Blyde. ‘Blyde’ pronounced more or less as blay-duh (and not as ‘blide’) means happy
in Afrikaans. Pilgrim’s is in an alpine region of the so-called Middle Veld at
an altitude of 1,310-m. Here in New South Wales, I’m a mere 50-m above sea
level. I live in the bush and on the banks of a river, the Bellinger, that’s similar
to the Blyde, although the Bellinger may flood in any month. Thinking on that
reminded me of yet another far-off river, the Cowichan that hurried through the
woods on Vancouver Island; the Cowichan is my primary river, the first river in
time for me. We used to go up to the Cowichan on vacation even in the
Depression years because Dad’s brother, Eugene (always “Jean” in the family),
Jill’s father, had a cabin there and he kindly shared it with his four brothers
for short vacations. We'd drive up in an old Graham Paige: Mom and Dad and
Deirdre and me with our family pet, Wolf, a German shepherd. No one had much
money in those days, but almost everyone seemed to own a car. The enormous
trees made the woods gloomy except when the sun got through the canopy to the
forest floor that was always damp and had a good earthy smell. Nearby was a
rail track and logging trains went by regularly. The driver and the fireman would
wave down to us from the enormous steam locomotive while we gathered wild blue berries,
locally called Oregon grapes, in the bracken along the line.
The timber cabin was close to a cold-water creek and high
above the river where we used to float on old inner tubes and swim or paddle and
also fish for trout. The cabin walls were covered in coloured tracings of the
best fish Dad and his brothers had caught when fly-fishing. Remembering the
cabin now I can still imagine the smell of trout frying in a pan of butter that
Dad sometimes prepared outside over a campfire.
In Africa the Blyde had long slow pools with rushes and reeds
in places and there were shadowy parts that ran through black wattles as well
as some white water rapids in places. The Australian trees in and around
Pilgrim’s Rest, the Eucalypts and wattles, in and around Pilgrim’s, the
Eucalypts and wattles, weren’t grown until well after gold was discovered in
the 1870s but they always looked natural there in the high country. Near the
river there used to be great plantations of so-called blue gums that were grown
for timber props in the mines. Downstream there were rapids and then shallows
with coloured gravels patterning the bottom. Some afternoons after school we
would ride out to First Drift on our bikes (a drift is a ford). There's a rock shelf near the suspension bridge
and we'd lie flat and peer down to watch rainbow trout hanging there in the
current, waving their fins slowly in the clear stream.
In the Gourdon hotel restaurant Ilse and my cousins were
discussing fish and I was eating mine almost without noticing. Then I realised
something else: that when I was eleven years old and swimming in the Blyde and
sometimes learning to fly-cast with Dad, our long-lost recently-found cousin
Joel (now deceased) who was the same age as I, together with his family had
been a refugee. The family was arrested in Spain then separated and gaoled
until the end of WW2. They'd fled Germany and lived for a time in Marseilles
before the War caught up with them; miraculously they were eventually freed and
reunited and they all reached Palestine. Jill and Gene and I later went to
Israel and met Joel and Sarah (now deceased); they lived on kibbutz near
Jerusalem. Our 18th century ancestor, Rabbi David Diespeck was three
times married. In the 1990s it was time for the descendants to meet each other
and to try and figure out how we'd become so separated.
Later that evening in Gourdon we sat talking about some of
the places we'd visited. We'd been over to Cahors one day and wandered about
the wet and windy streets. Later when the sun came out we walked across the big
14th century Valentré bridge: it's a stone bridge with high roofed
towers and set above a barrage that pools the river. It's funny how one thing
reminds me of another: that surprising stone bridge at Cahors is so old yet it
looks strong enough to last for hundreds more years. The Joubert Bridge over
the Blyde at Pilgrim’s Rest is also stone-built with big arches and barely a
century old. I remember when we were about ten years old how Leonard Franck
would sometimes climb up on the undressed and very uneven stones of the parapet
and calmly walk across; he was the only kid game enough to do that. The low-level
bridge next to where I live now in Australia is timber: all the timber bridges
in the valley become submerged in floods and are sometimes destroyed; I saw the
one here torn away and washed down in a 1985 flood. It was replaced, of course,
but its successor is also vulnerable. Nothing is permanent.
I've just remembered another hotel-restaurant, at Souillac,
and again the meal was excellent, but I remember it for a peculiar reason. The
woman who served at table was always so busy in the crowded restaurant and she
appeared to be eating on the wing: a succulent mouthful in the kitchen perhaps
was a delicate clandestine cud as she swiftly served. I'd not seen that before
and not since.
All of that was in an early spring. When I think now of that
tour, there are hundreds of images to choose from all of them poignant and
beautiful. There was the winding road that led up into the hills between Brive
and Souillac where it was cold and drizzly and as we drove higher there were
sleet and snow showers. Early flowers bloomed in the falling snow and when we
stopped for breaks the silence was eerie. While in Montignac we visited the
nearby Lascaux caves. I once again sat in the big church at Montignac: it
seemed unchanged in more than 40 years. And there was the old three arches
stone bridge with its water level quay for fishermen. When the river rose, the
long flat quay was submerged. The low quay was carefully designed, I imagine,
and located in a sweeping bend of the river where it also prevented scouring.
There's also a restaurant on the corner of the street leading away from
Montignac to the caves where we all ate paté
followed by entrecote in wine sauce and then sorbet. It's strange how some
things again come to mind.
I'm not a religious person; not a church-going person, being
dismayed by organized religions although I won second prize for attendance at
the Methodist Church Sunday school when I was about 11 years old. I tried hard
but couldn't remember where or when I'd last been to any kind of church service
other than marriage ceremonies (mine, for example) although I've wandered
through hundreds of churches in many countries. When my companions suggested we
all go to church at Gourdon on Easter Sunday I felt embarrassed and nearly
didn't go. That was a most peculiar experience for me. I again saw in my mind's
eye the kindly face of the long-ago Anglican archdeacon as he tried to persuade
my mother to urge me toward communion; and I remembered how cross he became
when she and I both turned him down. My mother's people were all Scots. Then I
thought myself a hypocrite to have married, the first time, in a Church of
England. My sister married a Christian Scientist, I recall, and her second
marriage was to a Christadelphian. My great grandfather outdid us all: born Samson
Diespecker, a Bavarian Jew who converted to Christianity when he adopted
“Louis” as his first name (which I hadn't known until recently). He married my
great grandmother, whose first name was Christian, in 1850 at St Martin in the
Fields, London. Assimilation is a powerful thing. I often puzzle about our
ancestry having been a secret in my father's family.
In the church at Gourdon that Easter it was damp and cold
and there was a strong whiff of candle smoke. I followed most of the service
although I didn't try to sing in French. I think the experience was probably
more important for my companions. In some ways it was important for me too, but
I was hardly present, if you know what I mean. Perhaps I was a little
embarrassed in that place and because I'm an outsider I started thinking of
something that wouldn't be embarrassing. While candles smoked and voices rose
and fell around me I visualised the springtime view from my Australian house;
it's a soothing experience that calms the mind. The surface of the river at all
times is worth seeing. When you look down to the river there's a long stretch
between the bends and there's often a wavering stab of blue on the surface
reflected from the sky. Beyond that and downstream the top of the river is like
burnished gold with a smear of light green along its surface. On the right side
going down past the cool rainforest creek that I (used to) drink from it's a
darker green. The shimmer in the middle of the stretch comes from the skyline
top of the ridge against the sky where the setting sun behind me lights up big
old trees bared from dieback. The whites and also the living greys of those old
trees in the forest pour a meld of stunning mixed lights down to the surface.
The picture of this is framed by straight bloodwoods close by and by some thin
young flooded gums. There are hanging-over casuarinas along the banks down
toward where some bedrock islands stick up proud of the stream and if you
search hard you can generally see a duck or two far off or a cormorant drying
its wings. I know it as a wondrous river, a river to dream on and to remember
by.
Now I'm home again and France is far off, and it's again springtime
here. It's been so warm and dry, perhaps too dry. The snakes are out and about.
I've seen a young fox for three days in a row. As I drink breakfast coffee he
ambles along the edge of the lawn on the riverbank. He has patches of black fur
and looks oddly distinctive. There are fires all over the region now and the
valley is often filled with smoke and that's a worry. Yesterday the morning was
damp and grey but by noon a wind got up, one of those late westerlies we
normally get at the end of winter. It was a cleansing strong wind and branches
flew about like arrows, and then it died down and everything was still. The air
was like crystal and I could see exactly what I'd been thinking on when I was in
the church at Gourdon.
I know we're never alone and barely separated, and if we're
all standing on the earth somewhere we're surely connected even though
Australia is the world's greatest island. Looking at the river now I'm
wondering if I might again be more intimately in contact with my dispersed
family were we all to dip our fingers in the water at the same time, in the
river here, under a tap there. Then we'd all be in touch at the same time.
FAMILY HISTORY
Dear
Reader,
Please
read this opening par before moving on: you might have information or a
suggestion that would enable the explanation of a perplexing Family Story that
sometimes seems a mystery to many in our “greater family”. If you are a South
African McGregor and perhaps descended from or related to the Harriett Foster
Bradley (1859-1932) who married Alexander McKirdy McGregor (1852-1889) at
Graham’s Town, Cape Colony, in 1883, I’m a grandson of Harriett’s sister, Ann
Elizabeth Bradley (1867-1928). The mystery I refer to is quite recent: in 1908,
Rudolph (who following his father’s example, was aka “Louis”) Diespecker
(1858-1920) and Ann Elizabeth Bradley Diespecker, together with their five sons
sailed from the UK to Canada as almost penniless migrants and traveled as far
west as was possible. They settled in Victoria, British Columbia. The long
journey was not easily undertaken: the sisters Ann Elizabeth Diespecker (always
“Elizabeth” in the family) and Harriett Foster McGregor were Bradley sisters.
Harriett, then a widow in Durban and Elizabeth were close and wrote regularly
to each other. None of their correspondence seems to have survived: we
(Diespecker cousins) have not been able to find any of Elizabeth’s letters to
Harriett (or to anybody else). Might there be a McGregor who has inherited any
of the missing letters, especially letters written by Elizabeth to Harriett?
I have guessed
at the reason(s) for that long journey to British Columbia at a time when post
Boer War/Guerrilla South Africa surely beckoned (and where Harriett and other
relatives lived) and have discussed those speculations elsewhere (interested
readers may find these in my eBooks THE
ANNOTATED “ELIZABETH” and THE SPECIAL
INTELLIGENCE OFFICER, listed below). Evidence
that might be found in letters written by Harriett and Elizabeth would help
explain why so many of Elizabeth and Rudolph’s descendents, like myself, were
born in Canada rather than in the UK or South Africa.
Welcome
to David Luke’s compilation of birth, marriage and death records re the
McGregors and Lukes (see below). That document may also be relevant to the
above “mystery”.
I include
here another transcript of a hand-written letter taken from correspondence with
my cousin, the late Joan Evard-Ray. The letter dated July 1 1993 was written at
Kloof Rest Home, 40 Abelia Road, Kloof, 3610, RSA.
*
Dear
Donald,
Thank you
for your letter and all the enclosures. I take it you don’t want them back; if
you do let me know. Not having any of these new instruments you will have to
put up with my handwriting, never too good at the best of times!
Like you
I don’t know when Alex McGregor arrived in South Africa and more unknown still
is when and why his father, William, was here; I presume he must have come to
work with Alexander. I know the old man owned land in Mossel Bay [Cape Colony]
as there was a note from a lawyer there about a payment: the old man is in a
photo I have & is wearing a wide-brimmed panama hat and looking like a
Southern Plantation gentleman. I wonder if he was ever in America?
According
to the book I read about Pauling (Kruger said that the PEA, the Portuguese East
Africa [Mozambique] to the Transvaal border Railway) had to be laid by that
consortium and the Transvaal would see about their own construction to their
border with PEA). Harriett had her money stolen by a Durban lawyer: he had
appointed himself executor of Alexander McGregor’s estate. Sir Thomas Tancred
had just paid in 1,000 pounds sterling to the estate, a big sum in those days
and when the lawyer died suddenly not long after, there wasn’t a bean left: the
lawyer had gone through that and the rest of the estate (about 5,000 pounds).
Alexander must have known Pauling in the Cape as he is mentioned in his
(Alexander’s) diary of 1882. Unfortunately the diary is just strings of figures
and specifications for buildings &c and he, Alexander, is also mentioned in
Pauling’s book. I think Alexander
must have gone to PEA in late 1888. He and Harriett came back from a trip to UK
just before July 1887 when a baby girl was born in KWT [King Williamstown].
[Alexander] was then already in Lourenço Marques when Harriett was awaiting the
birth of my Mother, Buntie, in KWT in 1889. [Note that Buntie was a lifelong
nickname: her real name was also
Harriett, after her mother; there
were two Harriett Foster McGregor’s, mother and daughter]. Two [family]
addresses in KWT were Thomas Street [from 1887] (where the baby was born) and
Turbine Lane from where she [‘she’ is, I think, Elizabeth Mary Atherden Carly
Bradley, my maternal great grandmother. DD] was buried December 1888. The
Municipal Offices were very helpful when I was there in 1942. Grahamstown on
the other hand just couldn’t be bothered. There was an old photograph on the
verandah of a house in KWT, right on the road, and all the family hanging over
a picket fence: great grandfather Edmund, my grandmother and grandfather, your
grandmother (Ann Elizabeth), Uncle Willie, Uncle Frank and my Uncle Edmund as a
baby (must have been 1884). As a family they all kept together and always moved
as a body, Grahamstown to KWT and KWT to Durban.
If only
you had been interested earlier there was so much I could have sent you. There
were two beautiful studio portraits of Elizabeth [Ann Elizabeth Bradley
Diespecker] taken not long before she died that I destroyed though of course
you may have them, or Deirdre. Did you know her [Ann Elizabeth] nickname was Snub for the obvious reason:
she had a snub nose? She was apparently very sensitive about it and any photos
had to be taken at just such an angle to minimize it! Harriett’s nickname I
regret to say was Fatty, also for the obvious reason: both she and Elizabeth
were very big women. There surely
has never been such affection as there was between the two sisters. All the
years they were apart they wrote to one another every week and when Elizabeth
[and Dick] came to stay with us after Rudolph died and prior to returning to
Canada, when she arrived they talked the whole night and never even thought of
going to bed! Elizabeth wasn’t quite sixteen when their mother died [1883] and
Harriett twenty-two so I suppose they grew very close to one another.
Harriett
was one of the foundation scholars of the Diocesan School for Girls in
Grahamstown in 1874. I think she always said her name was always on the school
register, preceded by Maud Ayliff. You will have seen Rev Ayliff’s name on the
list of Good Templar office bearer’s you sent me. She was very happy there and
could always tell me stories of her school days. On the other hand Elizabeth
was very unhappy there; later the Wesleyan Church opened their own Wesleyan
Girls’ school and she transferred. I don’t think that school lasted very long.
The Cape Government must have taken it over as it became Victoria Girls’ School
and I think it is now part of Graham College. I wonder if she went to school in
KWT. I don’t remember hearing anything about it.
Rudolph
and Elizabeth must have had a very short courtship: Alexander [McGregor] died
in Durban in December 1889 and Harriett had come up to be with him (probably
she had to go back to KWT, pack up and bring all the family up with her so that
surely wouldn’t have been before February 1890 or so, and then Rudolph came to
Durban to start everything off! I always understood seeing Harriett was just a
side issue of the visit. I wonder what the real object of his visit was? I can
quite think that R & E went by ship to LM [Lourenço Marques, now Maputo],
only an overnight journey. It would have been the easiest and more or less the
only way of getting there except overland by ox wagon; the railway from here to
Johannesburg certainly wasn’t laid by then, nor the Transvaal to Portuguese
East Africa [Mozambique] [line].
EDB
[Edmund Durbyn Bradley] certainly was never
in Kimberley: he stayed in Durban with Harriett until he died in 1897. If
Elizabeth ever went it would have been after she married. Also, I had never
heard of them being in UK in 1897. (1) Don’t forget that your father
was born at Sabie in September 1896 so I can’t think that that is correct. Both
Denny and Louis were born in Harriett’s house in Durban.
All I
know about Jimmy (James) Diespecker [James Edward Lance D, son of Jules (Rudolph’s
elder brother (2) was that Harriett looked after him and it was
because of him being treated with laudanum for the dysentery that my Uncle Alec
[McGregor] nearly died. He had a cough so Harriett told him to take some cough
mixture (to encourage her children to take any medicine she apparently always
pretended she couldn’t take it but
they were big and brave and they could). She was just in time to see Alec pour
a big dose of the laudanum and when she shouted to him not to take it he
promptly did and they ran around and around the garden throwing water over him
at one corner and giving him black coffee at the next and so on until he was so
full of liquid he couldn’t swallow any more! However, he survived. As you say,
Jimmy’s mother must have died very young; I often wondered why Harriett was
asked to take care of him. (3).
I went
through the Huguenot records: dozens of volumes in the Guildhall Library in
London but found only one ‘Durban’: Anthony Joseph Durban son of John Durban by
Margaret his wife and born at Montauban, France (Naturalization Act presented
to the Lords 1706-7, January 31), but whether he was anything to do with us I
don’t know. I went to Montauban last time I was in France in 1982: a new town
down by the railway and the old township on the hill. Not speaking French I
couldn’t do anything about information and not knowing how they keep their
records I just had to leave it There were even earlier Huguenots, weavers who
settled in Canterbury (there were several Durban’s there) and there is still a
Huguenot church service of a Sunday afternoon in the Cathedral and in French!
The earliest Durban I found was a Peter Durban, a shepherd, French-born and
dwelling at Athorn in Kent, married to an Englishwoman denization1-7-1544, that
was pre-Huguenot I think. Though I
can’t imagine him being an ancestor nevertheless I find the old records
fascinating. The records of St Mary and St James, Dover, were really an
eye-opener: a woman found dying under a hedge and all the poor babies born “the
wrong side of the blanket” and if they died having to be buried outside the
graveyard! The good old days! However, this is all a digression. I also went
twice to the County Records Office in Maidstone, Kent: one time they were quite
helpful; the second time, very much on their dignity and said I would have to
make an appointment! The same happened to me at Canterbury Cathedral: the first
time the Librarian relented and I spent a couple of days there having to book a
place from one day to the next. When I was going to the UK in 1986 I wrote from
home and said I was expected to be in Canterbury on the 1st of
December and wanted to see the records of St James and St Mary and was
astounded when I arrived at the Library to find the huge volumes all waiting at
a place booked for me! One has to book a table from day to day: the place is
always full. If you could find an agent who reads that old script it would be
interesting to see how far back the Atherden’s went.
I think
definitely it isn’t Elizabeth’s writing in that letter: if I remember, she had
a very angular writing and not so big as that of the letter: if you had written
prior to 1989 when I tore so much up. She sent me some lace when I was born and
the note that came with it is still intact. Did you know that Elizabeth dealt
in lace (4)? Presumably it was to make some money but whether the
first time she was in Canada or the second (the first time after Adstock was
sold?) I have often wondered how Rudolph lost his money and Adstock had to be
sold?
A lot of
this will be of no use to you but one thought leads to another and I can just
go on and on (a really garrulous old lady) but you have no idea what pleasure
it has been to me to write all this for you!
Thank you
for the news of the family. I am pleased Carl is working again. I note you say
you are happier by yourself; so am I. I was never intended to live with other
people; I sometimes wonder what the hell I am doing here, but needs must!
I hope
all of this reaches you safely: as I said I have had everything photocopied and
I shall keep those. Some of this will be of use to you I hope.
Affectionately
Joan.
Editor’s
Notes
1. Elizabeth and Rudolph and their sons,
Denny, Louis and Durbyn (b Sept 1896) spent several months in the UK in 1897 (a
Jubilee Year).
2. Prudence Nicholas (granddaughter of
Jules Diespecker), together with her son, John-Henry Nicholas now thought to be
resident in the UK (August 2015).
3. James (“Jimmy”) Edward Lance Diespecker
was born March 10 1888 in Kimberley, Cape Colony (his parents were Jules and Mabel
Evelyn Theresa Diespecker). James also worked with Rudolph Diespecker on the
Selati Railway (Transvaal) and later served in France during the Great
War.
4. The 1912 edition of Henderson’s Victoria
City Directory includes “Mrs A. Elizabeth Diespecker as the proprietor of The
Real Lace Shop (331 Douglas Street” noting that this address is also her home
address). Louis C Diespecker (clerk) at E. Crow Baker is also listed as living
at 331 Douglas Street, as is Rudolf [sic], clerk at the Royal Bank in Victoria,
B.C. Note also that the 1910-11 (Henderson’s) City Directory lists A E
Diespecker at 1214 Broad St and living at 831 [sic: should be 331?] Douglas
Street. The entry that follows is to “Diespecker, Rudolph, mining engineer,”
living at 331 Douglas Street. (Henderson’s Victoria City Directory photocopied
pages by courtesy of Rik Diespecker).
Elizabeth’s signatures, first as witness to her sister’s marriage to
Alexander McGregoron in 1883, and second, on her marriage certificate, are the
only examples I have of my grandmother’s handwriting. (DDD August 2015). Note
also: that the first of the edited/transcribed letters written by RSD to
Elizabeth and privately published by Rik Diespecker in 1991 as “Diary of
Rudolph Diespecker, Dec 4 1909 to Jan 30, 1912, ” is dated December 4 1909 and
that it was written at Millerton, North Dakota. Subsequent letters were written
at Niagara Falls, Ontario, Dec 7), Leigh Valley, NY, on board the Whitestar
Line’s ADRIATIC Dec 8 1909, at sea
Dec 11 1909, disembarked at Plymouth Dec 16 1909 and following a short time in
the UK, RSD then sailed to South Africa from the UK, a passenger on the RMS NORMAN. RSD reached Cape Town January 4
1910. The last of those letters was written in the Transvaal, January 30 1912.
DAVID LUKE
1820: William McGregor born in Glasgow, Lanark, Scotland.
Parents: John McGregor and Jane Ross.
(Date approximate. Sources: Scotland Census 1851 and Cape
Province Death Notice, 1880).
(No birth record found in ScotlandsPeople; parents names
from Death Notice 681/1880).
1821: Jean Hamley born in Glasgow, Lanark, Scotland.
(Date approximate. Sources: Scotland Census 1851 and England
Death Index).
(No birth record found in ScotlandsPeople).
1841: 5th Dec: William and Jean married in Glasgow.
(Imaged original banns from ScotlandsPeople).
1848: John McGregor born in Rothesay, Bute, Scotland.
(Date approximate. Source: 1851 Scotland Census. No birth
record found).
(Name “John” lends support to name of William’s father).
1851: 30th March: Resident at 13 Bridgend Rd., Rothesay,
Bute, Scotland. (With John (3).
(1851: Scotland Census. Imaged from ScotlandsPeople).
1851: 1st November: Alexander MacGrigor (sic) born.
Rothesay, Bute, Scotland. Baptised 31st Nov.
(Image of original in Statutory Register; ScotlandsPeople).
1858: 31st October 6hr20m a.m.: Flora McGregor born. Rothesay, Bute, Scotland. Father: Mason.
(Image of original in Statutory Register; ScotlandsPeople).
1861: 7th April: William (38), Jane (38), John (14),
Alexander (9) and Flora (2) resident at 32 Columnshill St., Rothesay, Bute,
Scotland.
1861: Scotland Census; Image from ScotlandsPeople).
1864: 14th January, 3h0m a.m.: Thomas Stewart McGregor born.
Rothesay, Bute, Scotland. 13 Columnshill Place, Rothesay. Father: builder
(Mason). Mother formerly Heamly [sic].
(Ancestry.com and Scotland select Births and Baptisms,
1564-1950 and image, ScotlandsPeople).
1871: 2nd April: William and John (both Stone Masons)
resident in Barrow, Lancashire, England, as “lodgers”. Jane (44) [sic], Flora (12) and Thomas (7)
resident at 34 Delf Lane, Kirkby, Lancashire as lodgers. An Alexander McGregor
(Stone Mason) was resident at 12 Taylor’s Court, Bootle Street Manchester as
lodger. (Some doubt, as his birthplace is given as Argyleshire, Scotland).
1871: England Census. Images from “Ancestry.ca”
1873: 2nd Q: John McGregor died in Barrow. Age
25.
(Death index: Ulverston 8e 501).
1873: Nov/Dec: William McGregor sailed to Cape Town on the
“Syria”. Apparently going to Port Elizabeth with a party of Stone Masons, apparently
unaccompanied by family.
(South African Passenger Lists eGGSA. Transcription).
1874: 4th Q: Flora McGregor married William Luke
in Barrow in Furness, Lancashire, England. Witnesses do not include McGregor
family (copy of original marriage certificate).
1875: 4th November. William Alexander Luke born in
Barrow-in-Furness (copy of original birth registration).
c 1875: William McGregor moved to Mossel Bay, Cape. He
bought a plot of land and bought or (probably) built a cottage. He and his
business partner built the Second Dutch Reform Church (copy of his will and
other probate documents) (Web tourist site for Mossel Bay).
1877: 4th Q Jennie McGregor Luke born in
Barrow-in-Furness (recorded as “Jane”, this varied throughout her life).
(Free BMD Birth Index: Barrow-in-Furness, v8e p832).
1879: 5th February, family sailed to Cape of Good Hope on SS
Conway, disembarked at Mossel Bay. Passengers were “Mrs McGregor” (mother
Jane), “Mr A. McGregor” (Alexander) “Mr W. Luke” (William), “Mrs Luke” (Flora,
sister of Alexander), “Miss Luke (Jennie) and “Master Luke” (William
Alexander).
(Transcript by: Trisha McLeod. From British Mail 01 Mar
1879.)
1879: 17th September: Flora McGregor Luke born at Aliwal,
Cape of Good Hope. Baptised 31st, October at St. Peter’s Anglican Church,
Mossel Bay. Sponsors were Alexander McGregor, Jane McGregor and Flora Luke
(mother) (Image of Parish record).
1880: 5th September: William McGregor died at Bedford, Cape.
Aged 60.
(Transcription of Death Notice DN 681/1880 (Will and
disbursements both on file).
1881, 3rd April: Most of the family was back in England. But
not Alexander. Flora (mother) and Jenny [sic] (3) and Flora McGregor Luke (1)
were visiting (friends?) in Newbarns, Barrow Lancashire.
Jane McGregor (60) and William (Alexander) Luke (5) were
visiting Henry Luke, (Flora’s brother-in-law) and family in Clipstone,
Nottinghamshire; they were joined by Jane’s youngest son Thomas (17) (No
evidence that he ever went to South Africa).
No record of William Luke (Flora’s husband).
(England Census 1881, images).
1883: 28th February: Alexander McKirdy McGregor married
Harriet Foster Bradley in Grahamstown, Cape. He was resident in Keiskamahoek
and listed his “Profession” as “Construction”.
This was the first time the middle name “McKirdy” appeared.
He later signed Alexander McK or Alexander M. His Death Notice did not record
the “McKirdy”. No trace of the original family name that he chose to add,
presumably to distinguish himself from other Alexander McGregors. There was at
least one other in the Eastern Cape at the time.
(Photocopy of the original register supplied by Don
Diespecker).
THE EVENTS RELATING TO ALEXANDER AND HARRIET’S LIFE FROM
THIS DATE ARE WELL DOCUMENTED IN THE NOTES OF JOAN EVARD-RAY AS TRANSCRIBED BY
DON DIESPECKER.
1891: 1st Q: Thomas Stewart McGregor (William and
Jane’s youngest son) married Alice Holt in Barrow-in-Furness. Alice was born in
Barrow in 3rd Q 1861, to Thomas Holt (1833-1914) and Jane Stables
(1834-1912). Thomas and Alice McGregor had 5 children: Thomas (b 1894),
Alexander (b 1896), William Luke (b 1897), Flora (b 1900) and John (b 1902).
Jane (Thomas’s mother) went to live with them.
1900: 1st Q: Jane McGregor (78) died in Barrow-in-Furness.
1925: 3rd Q: Alice McGregor (64) died in
Barrow-in-Furness.
1940: March: Thomas McGregor died in Barrow-in-Furness.
A NUMBER OF McGREGORS ARE PRESENTLY LIVING IN
BARROW-IN-FURNESS.
RETURNING TO THE LUKE-McGREGORS:
1882: 20th April: Henry Luke (later Henry Stuart (baptism in
Durban in 1892) or Henry Stewart) was born to Flora and William in Exning,
Newmarket, Cambridgeshire, England. This was the home of William’s brother,
then a rich jockey. The informant was Flora, on the 15th June. William’s
occupation is given as “stableman”. (So William was in England in the 3rd Q of
1881, perhaps he did go back to England with the others in 1881 and was missed
by the 1881 census.
(Document image, baptism: on file).
1886: 16th June: William (now in Durban working as a groom
employed by Mr. E. Shepstone, Esq.) applied to “The European Immigration Board“
for assisted passages for his wife (30) and 4 children. His application was
approved in August. He paid £12 per passenger.
(Document images on file).
1888: 5th June: Lilian Luke was born to William and Flora in
Durban, Natal. (She was the only daughter who was not given the middle name of
McGregor).
1888: 15th August:
Lilian was baptised at St. Paul’s Church, Durban (Church of the Province
of SA: from an image of the original parish record).
1888: 17th August: Lilian was buried at St. Paul’s, aged 10
weeks (image of original Parish record).
1889: 20th November: Alexandra McGregor Luke was born to
William and Flora in Durban (image of original parish Baptism record).
1891: 21st April: William Luke died.
(eGSSA library, transcript of newspaper. On file.)
1891, 9th August: Katherine Alice McGregor Luke was born to
Flora and the late William.
(eGSSA library, transcript of newspaper. On file.)
1892, 16th May: Henry Stuart Luke, Alexandria (sic) McGregor
Luke and Catherine (sic) McGregor Luke were baptised at St.Paul’s Church in
Durban.
(Image of original parish record)
1901, 31st March: Jennie (McG L) is in England with Ann
Elizabeth Diespecker (Bradley) and her 4 boys.
(Image of England Census and much detail in Earthrise
Diaries)
1903: 26th November: William Alexander Luke married Rosa
Sarah Kent-Smith at St. Paul’s Church Durban, by license. His occupation was
“traveller” (JMcGL (his son) said he was a salesman for a liquor company). The
witnesses were not family members, for some reason (image of original marriage
certificate from parish register).
1904: 17th February:
Jennie McGregor Luke (26) married Herbert William Brook (24) at St.
Cyprian’s Church in Durban. Her
address was Enfield Rd, Durban. His occupation was “electrician”. Witnesses
were H.S. Luke (Henry Stuart, her brother) and Flora McGregor Luke (her sister)
and a Kent-Smith (her brother William’s wife’s family). Married by license.
(Image of original marriage certificate)
1910: 10th December: Henry Stuart Luke married Constance
Emma Thorpe, a widow (born Cowlwell) by license by a Marriage Officer, in
Durban. Witnesses were not family. (This is odd since he had been a witness at the
other family marriages and which were in church. A possible reason is that she
appears to have been Roman Catholic) (image of original marriage certificate).
1911: 9th August: Katherine Alice McGregor Luke (20, a
minor) married Herbert Walker (40 by birth certificate, but claiming 36 in
later documents) at St. John’s Church, Durban. His profession was given as
“Mining Engineer”. Witnesses were
H.S. Luke (her brother) and an A.P. Brook (?), (image of original marriage
certificate).
Between about 1911 to 1913 Flora Luke and 5 of her children,
2 sons-in-law, a daughter-in-law and 4 grandchildren all immigrated to New
Zealand.
The exception was the oldest son, William Alexander, who
remained in Durban and moved later to Harrismith, with his wife (Rosa Sarah
Kent-Smith) and 4 surviving children (twins and a son died as infants).
THE KNOWN FACTS ABOUT THE McGREGOR LUKES THAT DESCENDED FROM
WILLIAM ALEXANDER LUKE WILL BE THE SUBJECT OF A SEPARATE NOTE. (The writer,
David McGregor Luke, is one of them.)
Downstream from Richardson's (Aug 2015)
DON DIESPECKER’S EBOOKS
One of my novels, The
Selati Line, is a South African railway story, a mobile or even picaresque
story and also a road story. Several of my novels start as if in the minds of fictive characters in airplanes (usually a
Tiger Moth): somewhere up in the clouds above the Bellinger River. The imagined flyer (usually a quite
elderly person who once was a teenage young woman in the Air Transport
Auxiliary) imagines the story
unfolding in a place beneath. Happiness,
for example, begins on the nearby
Trunk Road between Bellingen and Thora and soon makes a second start on
Darkwood Road (right outside the house where I’m now writing this). The Overview (a novella) starts in the
air (directly above my house). The new sequel to Happiness, Success starts
in the air, too. That most distinguished writer, the American James Salter (who
once was a Korean War flier) uses the device of ‘the unnamed narrator’) to tell
some of his stories: I like that notion and also employ a variation of it.
(1) Finding Drina is a light-hearted sequel to my two print novels (now also available
as eBooks) published in one volume as The
Agreement and it’s sequel, Lourenço
Marques whereas 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-k 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 36-k words).
(20) Bear Fat A
Memoir by Durbyn C Diespecker (1896-1977) with
Notes and a Biography Edited by Don Diespecker. (This partial memoir that I’d invited in 1950
was written by my father between 1950 and 1969 and describes aspects of his
life in South Africa, the UK and British Columbia, Canada; non-fiction; about
48-k words).
(21) Love. Selected Stories is an anthology of short stories old and
new. Of these narratives three are set or partly set in Bellingen, Dorrigo, and
the Bellinger River Valley; others are set in Africa, Greece, France, Iran and
Spain. “The Bellinger Protocol;” is a (magic reality) caprice. ‘Dragonfly’ is
an interior monologue set in an imagined Vietnam; ‘Season of Love’ is largely
interior monologue and set in the mountains surrounding Pilgrim’s Rest (then in
the Transvaal. Several stories are fictionalized non-fiction (e.g., ‘A Circuit
of Fields’ is excerpted from a non-fiction essay and set in pre-Revolutionary
Iran) and most of the narratives derive from real people and real locales
(about 36-k words).
(22) Success, a novel, begins in the air,
gets under way in the house on the river, moves to Vienna and Paris and is
apparently narrated by several different writers including one or two who seem
unnamed or unidentified. The story develops around Martha Haley, now about
sixteen years old and her new friend, Tom Pearce, aged seventeen: their parents
are also in Paris (about 107-k words).
Thank you to my guest
writer, Professor David McGregor Luke, and with my best wishes to all Diary
readers, from Don. don883@bigpond.com
