Wep’s 1956 Romanian adventure: Remembering Stephania Rotaru 16 yrs on

Around about 1972, Wep drafted the following letters. It is not known whether they were ever sent. It would be nice to think that he was able to re-establish contact with Stephania Rotaru but I suspect it never happened. There is a good chance Stephania is still alive (81yrs in 2016) and if so, I hope she learns of this blog and I get the chance to meet with her one day and share some of these old recollections – Peter Pidgeon

[Most likely addressed to the Director, Institutul Roman Pentru, Relatile Culturale cu Strainatatea, Bucaresti]

Dear Sir,

During Oct 1956 I had the honour of being a guest in your Institute. The charm and beauty of your country continues to grow in my memory.

Two charming young ladies met me on arrival from Australia at Bucuresti airport. Being a sentimentalist, I would like (after all these years) to convey to each a remembrance of thanks and appreciation.

Is it possible for your department to forward these remembered friends the enclosed letters. I suppose they have both married and changed names. Could you please go through the records and forward these notes? These were very nice to a lonely stranger from the Antipodes. If it is not possible to trace these girls after all the years, would you please return the letters (which are not important) to me or advise me that.

IMG_9996

To the bossy little unabashed girl who loved artists.

 For no reason at all, since I was looking at gloomy television forecast of the earthquake doom of San Francisco, I remembered my mica mamitza Stephania. How I must have bored you – yet you and Utzo were tolerant of me.

Stefania Rotaru, Wep's interpreter and guide, looks out from anYou will not remember my unexpressed enjoyment of a picnic lunch by the roadside of chicken and capsicums & what-here you. Or even my picking up of the old mother-in-law pears outside Aiud. Or the way the wine master made the motions of kissing your hand in the cellars after we had drunk & exulted about his collective brandy.

Can you remember (no, it was meaningless work for you) as I do in your new and strange land being up above Sinai, cold as frogs with snow all about and the (to me) silly little falsetto whistles from the express so far below in the valley where you made me get with the Perronts(?).

Stefanie Rotaru outside the Cabana Cioplea, Predeal, Romania; 12You will not remember Utzo bumping a mudguard & having to get it fixed at Orasul Stalin (Brasov) and you drearily walking with me all over town looking for him & eve(ntually) finding the villain near the railway crossing & the pigs squealing off in the trucks. No of course not. But I remember your charming boyfriend who broadcast in English. He was very nice yet I suppose you never got around to marrying him. So many things I recollect after sixteen years, so meaningless, so really unnecessary to any great communist purpose as you had at that time.

The remembrance of your Madonna almond eyes dissolved all the edges off your brittle independence. Why was your boyfriend so much softer and tolerant?

However, if I was too shy or too lousy to show it – I loved you for being my mamitza, still do.

No matter if you are fat and nearly forty – full of bambinos & polenta, please say one kind memory if you remember.

You must remember photographs I sent you, the magnificent church at Alba Lulia.

An excess of vino has occasioned all these sentimental reminiscences. If ever the message arrives to you, please send me a little note – tell me if you are happy – don’t, if you are not.

It may surprise you that I remember almost every day and every meal I had with you in Bucaresti & all over.

Arrivederci.

Bill Pidgeon (Wep) outside the Cabana Cioplea, Predeal, Romania;
Bill Pidgeon (Wep) outside the Cabana Cioplea, Predeal, Romania; 12 October 1956
Bill Pidgeon (Wep), his sight failing, at work on what would become his last portrait, of fellow artist and friend Venita Salnajs Zusters in Dec 1971. Bill was diagnosed with glaucoma just months prior to his trip to Romania in 1956.

Wep’s 1956 Romanian adventure: Summer in Romania

Republica Populara Romina BUCURESTI – B-dul Nicolae Balcescu

SUMMER IN ROMANIA

by

W.E. Pidgeon
P. O’Shaughnessy
F. Hardy

“Being the impressions of three Australians visiting Romania”.

 

[Transcribed from a draft of a proposed book in three parts by artist, William Edwin Pidgeon; writer, Frank Hardy; and actor, Pat O’Shaughnessy who were the three invitees to Romania and who were subsequently spied upon by ASIO for possible subversive activities. Wep’s archives contain several letters between himself and Frank Hardy in an attempt to get Frank to complete his section. In the end, Frank failed to live up to his end of the agreement and in 1958, Wep approached Clem Christesen, editor of Meanjin journal who himself had visited Romania in 1957. Clem advised he would like to publish it as a small book and urged to proceed without Hardy; perhaps even an article in Meanjin as well. Wep was reluctant feeling it was unfinsihed without Hardy’s contribution. Funding was also a problem and it is not yet determined whether it ever did get published.]

 

PART ONE – AN ARTIST’S IMPRESSIONS

Two girls who met me at the airport said it was a Romanian “Indian Summer”.

The airfield boundaries simmered and jingled in a brown haze of Australian like heat, and apart from the presence of the fancy buildings and the strange rapid speech, I could have been back home.

A re-emergence of summer had stretched right back over Europe-perhaps had heated the Hungarians into their disastrous autumn.

Beneath the photographically watchful eyes of Stalin and Gheorghiu Dej, my hostesses introduced themselves with the ease and grace which, I found later, was part of the charm of the Rumanians. Somehow they reflected this smoothness of the boulevarded approach of the city to come.

It was a nice city from the air-not over big-ringed by lakes and an easy countryside. Comfortable looking too.

But what can one see from 1000 m of the lives, aspirations, frustrations and despairs of a million people below?

Sleek, efficient Mrs Suteu, responsible for the care of English-speaking visitors, and young Stefanie Rotaru, with Italian Madonna eyes, did their best to explain.

Bucharest, founded on the site of a Roman Fortress, has had a long and chequered history, overrun often by Turkish, Austrian, German and Russian invaders.

Many armies, sweeping into Romania, carrying off the produce of its soil; but the people remaining; proud of their distant Roman connections; speaking a Latin language; maintaining their distinctive quality; an isolated group now associated with others of alien tongue in a common endeavour to achieve some measure of the theoretically perfect state of socialist welfare.

Down the broad tree-lined streets, through the swelling autumn leaves, past the showpiece parks, past the patient women sweepers, and squashing over the mongrel chestnuts which an occasional stooping figure is gathering for pig food. Past the Russian Memorial, its beds ablaze with red salvia, threading through the once ritzy embassy quarters, and down a long and narrow shopping street to the Athenee Palace Hotel which sits on the end of the square that fronts the ex-royal palace. The Athenee, main accommodating house for foreign visitors; in prewar days the stomping ground of elegant women, diplomats, officers and big commercial men; now a bedlam of tongues, skilfully unscrambled by the young interpreters. It is as though one were living under the clock in the Central Railway Station. It is all talk, meetings and appointments-interminable comings and goings. Rough red wines, beer, the inevitable tzuica (plum brandy) and the favourite dry white wine-a hock drunk with mineral water-and food! Mountains of food, at prices well beyond the average pocket. Tiny national flags brighten the tables, identifying this group as Bulgarians, that as Koreans, another as Swedes, there are Italians, and here Australians. Footballers, union delegates, poets, marksmen, painters and agriculturalists, anything you like, some on goodwill missions, others on jours of critical investigation, some merely competitive sportsmen from neighbouring Communist states, but all guests of the Romanian government which seeks to extend its relations with foreign countries.

I never had time to see the inside Bucharest. What lay behind the diverse facades, those plastered fillers that sat so discreetly behind the fading leaves. Many must have been built since 1918, for the population was then only 350,000. French culture dominated the city, influencing much of the domestic architecture with its delegates. The hierarchy appear to reside in the more well kept of these homes, while others with a tired look, are rumoured out to those of more humble status. No one seems interested in the maintenance of these often charming lodgings, for revolutionaries societies are inordinately proud of, and busy with, their latest and greatest projects. Over occupied mansions are falling apart at the corners, while the interiors of full of inhabitants who are seething with dialectical ideas on how to build the future.

Their enthusiasm is tremendous, and is apparently projected completely outward in terms of bigger and better edifices for the glory of the socialist state. The visitor is whisked off to the barren acres, whereon more and more monotonously designed workers’ flats in varying states of construction rise out of the ground like an overnight crop of our own seaside flats. But the new amenities are there-more light, better plumbing, more playgrounds, more space.

Whole suburb-the 23rd August suburb, brought into being as a celebration of the National Liberation Day (August 23 is the national holiday of the Rumanians. On that date the whole country celebrates the anniversary of the day in 1944, when the Romanian Communist Party led the outbreak of insurrection against the Germans). Everything is new and wonderful and breathtaking for the people, because it has been built by the people for the people.

The 23rd August Open-Air Theatre, which I would have liked to have seen in operation, but did not-a beautiful concrete shell, with a neo-Grecian concrete stage beneath a lovely autumn night. It is in projects like this that one senses the urge for the full life. People with scarcely a pants to their suit clamouring for, and getting, riches in the simplicities of art. Occupying considerably less space than a Drive in Movie, the theatre is quite elemental ineffective design (see illustration).

Copy of Wep's Part One: An Artist's Impressions; 25 foolscap pag

In a large recreation ground in front of the entrance to the theatre the more active and intrepid of the 23rd of Augustians can devote themselves to soccer, high jumps and sundry other death-defying sports. A steel tower 80 metres high caters for those who are too rugged for the Greek chorus. Just for fun one can climb up this glorious symbol and leap therefrom to the ground-with the aid of a small parachute, if you are so inclined. Fortunately, my interpreter Stefanie, was not an enthusiast. Behind all this the 23rd August Steelworks belches fourth flame for the future.

Also included in this terribly healthy suburb is the 23rd August Stadium. An enormous bowl, bulldozed out of the ground; a concrete saucer seating 100,000 people around a standard Olympic field.

Combinatul Poligrafic Casa Scînteii "I.V.Stalin" now known as Casa Presei Libere (House of the Free Press), Bucharest, Romania; 5 October 1956. Construction began in 1952 and was completed in 1956. The building was named Combinatul Poligrafic Casa Scînteii "I.V.Stalin" and later Casa Scînteii (Scînteia was the name of the Romanian Communist Party's official newspaper). It was designed by the architect Horia Maicu, in the style of Soviet Socialist realism, resembling the main building of the Moscow State University, and was intended to house all of Bucharest's printing presses, the newsrooms and their staff. - http://www.flickr.com/photos/cristina_/336794051/ viewed 4 Jul 2011
Combinatul Poligrafic Casa Scînteii “I.V.Stalin” now known as Casa Presei Libere (House of the Free Press), Bucharest, Romania; 5 October 1956.

But Bucharest’s real pride and joy is the Scinteia House Printing Centre, situated by the lovely Lake Herastrau at the edge of the city. Set in 98 acres of formally laid out parkland, this huge building, designed in typically Russian neoclassical style, is 220 yards in length and depth, and culminates in a tower 327 feet high. The central block accommodates the Cultural Administration offices and the literary workers. The wings, stretching to each side and behind, how’s the machinery which produces practically all Rumania’s newspapers, educational publications and cultural and scientific books. Begun in 1950, Scinteia had one rotary newspaper press in operation by 1951. By 1953 twelve presses were producing, on the average 2,500,000 newspapers a day. The building was completely finished 23rd August Day 1956. Daily production also includes 50,000 magazines and 80,000 to 100,000 books. The floorspace is vast, allowing more than ample clearance for all machines and the whole place is extremely clean; in fact, the working conditions could not be bettered. There is a concert hall, library, club, canteen and so on.

When you leave you sign the Visitors Book saying how fine it is (which it is), you feel that it’s all happened before; this tagging round on some Good Fellowship excursion, through a new steelworks or the latest in synthetic biscuit factories.

Massive buildings, showpieces, impressive portents of the future they may be-but I liked better to wander alone early in the morning round the more ordinary parts of the city and to watch its life begin.

Down past the ex-Royal Palace, unimpressive and dead looking in the cool autumn mist, yet alive within, for it houses now the capital’s Art Gallery, with its superb El Grecos and carefully roped off Rembrandts.

Down to the bottom end of the town, passing some womenfolk queued up for short supplies. Round by the old massive Palace of Justice, a turn to bring you down by the river, the Domboditza, of which it is said, “he who drinks of the waters comes to drink again”. Not that one can imagine accepting any part of this now scruffy stream which seems to disappear beneath the bustling square, perhaps to re-appear somewhere further on in an even sadder state. Up the ancient hill to arrive at the heart of the old civic centre, and a short way on, the barracks alongside as your footsteps clatter over the cobbled streets, through which the laden tram cars run down to the city and a new day.

Back over the river, dawdling to watch the little stands offering their freshly cooked pastries and sweets. Through a fine park its drives and footways circling the lake, the skiffs quietly moored and the statues gleaming in the early light. Through a market square to which the outside peasants have brought, in their quaint carts, the daily offering of vegetables and fowl.

A cold snap has stampeded the proletariat into doing up their shirt collars, and an amazing collection of headwear comforts the hitherto hatless heads. Caps, berets, battered felts, and occasional homberg, and assorted styles in strakan bob up and down the streets. Now looming up a railway station to dole and dreary to be associated with the romance, fictional and otherwise of the Orient Express. It IS Bucharest Station and London is a whole continent off.

Later you realise you have got yourself bushed, for maps of the city seem to be unobtainable, and in the quiet residential area no recognisable landmark is in sight. It is impossible to ask where you are, or the way back. Nothing for it but to follow a tramline and hope it leads you to, and not from, the city itself. It is a lucky day and a couple of miles more place you nicely on the spot and just in time for breakfast at the pub. Such pleasant and completely unrestricted wandering sets you up in the receptive mood for the conducted round that starts at nine.

Museums, art galleries, Pioneers palaces, Houses of Creation-everything that is visible and tangible evidence of economic emergence. The sensing of it all as a national possession, makes the people feel that the construction, or whatever it is, is in itself unique, whereas it is the relationship of the thing to society, that is unique. Rumanians are building big-but so is every other country in the world. What is of real interest is the hearts and minds of the men and women; strange ways, remaining strange, because there is no easy communication with them; for even the most willing interpreter, as I had, leaves you with but half a tongue. You are seated down to a great deal of bones from which the meaty subtleties are gone before you start.

But you can sense the enthusiasm. Bookshops jammed with paper backed volumes on every cultural and technical subject. Foreign language books in English, French, German and Russian-above all Russian-the secondary educational language-all the scientific works copied straight from the Soviet presses. It is somehow moving to see these, until recently, comparative illiterate people taking such huge gulps of knowledge-it is a banquet, and all are feasting.

Wep's interpreter, Stefania Rotaru, and possibly their driver, Ute, at a rest stop outside the Hotel Cota 1400, Sinaia whilst crossing the Carpathian Mountains on the way to Orasul Stalin (Brasov), Romania; 12 October 1956
Wep’s interpreter, Stefania Rotaru, and possibly their driver, Ute, at a rest stop outside the Hotel Cota 1400, Sinaia whilst crossing the Carpathian Mountains on the way to Orasul Stalin (Brasov), Romania; 12 October 1956

It was very pleasant to be driven 200 miles or more up country. Ute, the chauffeur, was twenty-three, Stefania twenty-one, so in good spirits, I stripped a few years and the picnic atmosphere was not altogether extinguished. At my least request we would pull up, either to paddle in the oil wells of Ploesti, contemplate the tobacco crops near Sibui, take a photo of Aiud, or scramble off the road near Sebes to gather the wild small pears which a passing peasant couple happily observed were, “Pere padurete pentru soacre” (wild pears for the mother in law). How right they were. But the chicken and ham and beer by a stream in the Carpathians had more than made up for that. In the night the high shrill notes of the locomotives bounced back and forth between the mountains until they slowly echo off and join the silence of the snow and pines.

In Orasul Stalin dear Ute, in our absence, had squeezed a mudguard, God knows against what other car. For cars were few and far between as the girl and I found out when we looked for him as we passed down the long dark street that had neither turning nor offshoot for a mile and whose houses were shuttered against the night and the dark silhouettes which moved in and file down the highway and who were the lifeblood and hope of the radiant town of Stalin to come. From the hills came this sweep of the chill winds bearing with them from the railway yards the grunts of the socialist pigs on the way to the proletarian ham. And still no Ute. But he turned up later, car and all, not a bump to be seen.

My mica mamitza (little mother-I had to call her that because I could hardly eat or drink without her help) was somewhat sour-but, being young, she forgot quickly when dear old Ute later at the Hotel dinner offered her his latest in the dancing line. Greatly emboldened, I asked a Hungarian lass for a dance. Beyond the marble floor, in the more reticent cubicles, sat the English ambassador, ginger-ish and impenetrable. I enjoyed my dance but neither of us could make any sense of my execrable pidgin German. But it made her laugh.

Transylvania-I suppose everybody has licked their lips in Ruritanian contemplation of princes and swarthy knights, of Draculas, werewolves, vampires and crosses of oak.

Transylvania-musical comedy-“the Gypsy Baron” and all that, perhaps true in the far off; but on to Cluj the road cuts through a plateau as commonplace as the Monaro complacently rolling its brown ancient plains against the Australian Alps.

And not a fence to be seen. All the land so carefully gone over and worked through the centuries that each square foot is recognisable, and forever placed in its relationship with its neighbour stop whole families of peasants stop of their timeless four wheeled carts, drawn by a pair of oxen, or more expensive horses, streaming out of the frequent hamlets, towards their known and inviolate plot, marked only by the mutually recognised boundaries invisible in the waiting soil. Here the cart rests, and the oxen go to the plough, the man to his furrows and the women to their cutting and sowing. All day in the fields with a break for the midday meal and a pull at the painted clay water pitchers calling in the shade of the wagon. At dusk, a heel to toe stream back to the village, the younger people exchanging carts-holding hands.

Compactly built villages reflect the native love of colour. Long continuous plastered walls, broken by the courtyard entrances arching over the sturdy wooden doors, are reminders of the days of fortification was more than a picturesque design. The individual residences gaily painted in pinks, ochres, greys, whites and ultramarine.

And the shepherds; older than revolution and war, dressed as you fondly hoped they would be. In tight white trousers, white aprons, embroidered waistcoats and sheepskin cloaks, they shout and batter the sheep (so many of them the black and long-haired dreams of fairy tales), off the road before the approach of the imperious car.

The small flock of bleating animals, three belonging to one of the peasants in the village, five belonging to another, to others, one, four, two or six, all slowly eating their way to the higher pastures with the community shepherd their guide and protector as in Biblical days. In the fenceless pastures they must be watched, in the mountains there are wolves, so their shepherd is always with them, and with him his flute and his folksongs.

TWO

The Rumanians are energetic in keeping their folk music vital and alive. Everything possible is being done to record and print extent tunes from every province in the country, and much encouragement is given to the emergence of new themes of folk song. Ballads like “The Song of the Tractor” or “The Light (electric) Has Come” extoll the symbols of the new life in the same way as other generations honoured the images significant to them.

The music which is collected by the Folklore Institute could nominally be divided into three categories:

  1. Cantice Batrineste — historical or legendary ballads
  2. Doine — love songs and elegies
  3. Hore — lively lyrics and dances

The three principal dance forms being:

  1. Batuta — an ancient national dance performed by men only
  2. Pe-Picior — in which each man has from 2 to 5 partners
  3. Hora — a round dance with swaying rhythmic movement embodying varying steps and tempo.

From Leon Feraru’s “Development of Romanian Poetry”, we learn that the doina is the lyric poetry of the Romanian peasantry, and expressed almost all emotions, but is usually offered as a song of longing, or sorrow. By some strange convention, perhaps derived from the peasant’s love of nature, or some primitive form of nature worship, the doina usually begins with the words “A green lead of a … (Rose, oak, or some other flour or tree)”.

“The doina tells of need, grief, textile and death. It takes the shape of threat against oppression, it celebrates wine and carousel, contemplates and worships the Creation. And persistently it intones love. The doina follows the peasant, step-by-step, from infancy until his end — from lullaby to elegy”.

Longing is the grand theme. An unknown author says, “Longing is the invention of the Devil. Longing torments the soul, clings to the soul like a rambler and puts the heart on fire.” The sign is equally disturbing: “I have side so much,” laments one doina, “I have side so hard, that my heart pains me, my soul burns. I have side so much that the Lord became angry, and not it no longer snows, it no longer rains and no longer falls the dew.”

There now exists a considerable number of popular folk music orchestras, the most famous being the Barbu Lautaru ensemble (lautari meaning village fiddlers). This group was formed some years ago for the purpose of experimenting with the further progression of folk music, which to these people, is a living art, capable of greater expression and expansion. These groups present airs from the most remote areas and generally help to keep the Rumanians keenly aware of their own rich musical heritage, as against the pop and bepop of overseas infiltration. The peasants are being taught to make their flutes and suchlike instruments in a standard pitch-they are taught ensemble work, and the tutors in turn, learn from the peasants who are often extremely individualistic in their musicianship. It is, in fact, a two scheme of education.

In the Athenee Concert Hall I heard the Barbu Lautaru group give a most exciting two hours concert, playing the whole time with seemingly inexhaustible vehemence. Forty-five musicians-tarragots-all playing in ruthless fury. The emotion flowing in controlled and canalised perfection-faster and faster and faster to an atomic cessation. The great seething vibrance cut dead, with the precision of a guillotine, by the downbeat of conductor Budisteanu’s baton. Soloists were many who had been proclaimed laureates of their craft at different musical festivals, the most popular being Maria Tanase, a slender good-looking girl who sang Gypsy songs with passion. The great cries of “Bis! Bis! Bis!” (which means encore) were ignored only by sheer physical exhaustion.

This is not intellectual music. The innumerable dances and laments that poor fourth from all the provinces of Romania come from the heart the erstwhile illiterate peasant. His grief, his Geordie, his dancing, and his history are all put to music, and passed on in the most indelible way father to son, and from mother to daughter. Music without the complications of intellectually constructed form. As elemental as the earth, and the people who grew and died on it.

More serious music is not neglected. At the concert Hall I heard a visiting Yugoslav conductor give a combined classical and modern performance; and a few days later, a chamber music recital led by a leading Italian artist.

Apart from the two hot months August and September, the opera houses in Bucharest and the bigger provincial towns are open every night to full houses. Prices are not low, although there are concession nights for youth and factory worker groups. The Opera and Ballet Theatre of the Romanian People’s Republic in Bucharest was built in a few months for the World Youth Festival of 1953. Much involuntary labour was incorporated in the building. The interior is most comfortable, and largely elegant with its sweeping stairways and marbled paved foyers and bars.

THREE

Being largely of Latin descent the Rumanians are quite at home with the emotionalism of the Italian Opera. I had the good fortune to see performances of Aida and Rigoletto, but missed seeing any of the works of the Russian composers.

Presentation of both these works was on spectacular and traditional lines. There was none of that portable stage ware one associates with touring opera companies. Egyptian gods (albeit papier-mâché), so tall their heads were lost in the heights of the stage, really moulded gates, columns, stairways and triumphal arches, and lavish costuming contribute to the sumptuousness of the production. I am not qualified to add that the music and singing was on the same plane. Possibly not. And almost nightly change of program over ten months of the year would, I imagine tax the resources of the greatest of artists.

As most of these operas and concerts begin about 7:30 p.m., and you cannot have your dinner at the hotel before 8:30 p.m., you are often distracted by the thoughts of food. But at 10:30 p.m. the artistry is over and the eating begins. The Athenee Palace Hotel Orchestra plays tirelessly-folk songs, Viennese waltzes, German Polkas, English ballads, and even an occasional American hit-sad to say the musicians confessed complete ignorance of Waltzing Matilda-but if I could have hummed the tune with any assurance at all, I am sure they would have played it.

Confronted with a lavish menu, and surrounded by gargantuan eaters, you give due consideration to the right dish. There is no hurry, for the dining room will not be closed until 2:30 a.m.. Lots of people are fond of your interpreter, and you are not altogether isolated because of your linguistic disabilities.

I have long wondered at the curious differences in prices on the menu. Not that it matters much anyway, because it is all on the house so to speak, and if you and your interpreter invite guests to join you, they too, are on the house. It is months now since I started to marvel at this menu, and I have not yet ceased.

Before me is a copy which quotes (as part of the cold buffet preceding the main courses) Sardines a L’huille Jugoslave — 22.50 Lei-the dearest dish in the place. Sardines, mark you!

Taking the Lei as a unit we get the following comparisons:

Salade cavaire carpe is only 5.40, and you get more than you can eat-very good too, even if it is not the high and mighty sturgeon.

3.50 for 100 grams of lemon when it is only 5.85 for the best part of ½ pound of ham. And 5.40 for a great plateful of wonderful smoked pork. 7.50 for an omelette aux fines herbes, and for a mere 9.40 a whacking huge plate of roast pork, or 11.80 for half a chicken; 11.40 for vol-au-vent financiere.

Only 1.55 for pickled whole capsicums, 1.25 for cucumber with a dressing: that 7.40 four filtered coffee. But then coffee is a distant import and is paid for in a hard currency market.

So you can see not too many Rumanians eat out of their own purse in this establishment-especially when they know that one meal will set them back the best part of a week’s wages. But it is no worse than eating at the Ritz.

Speaking of prices, I suppose everyone likes to know what people behind the Iron Curtain can buy with the money they earn. It is extremely difficult for a stranger to form any idea of what the standards of living are. By and large the Rumanians are not well dressed. They spend a lot of money on food because they have the great appetite. Their rents are fixed at a low normal rate of 5 – 6% of their weekly income. With the unskilled worker’s wage at 600 Lei a month, the figures I quote from shop windows in the provincial town of Cluj may give you some idea of what he can do with his earnings.

Men’s Lei Women’s Lei
Suit 500 – 1000 ready-made frock 120 – 230
Overcoat 400 – 800 Costume 400
Shirt 80 high-heeled shoes 380
Tie 20 – 60 flat shoes 140
Hat 60 costume jewellery 20 – 90
Pyjamas 120
Shoes 140 – 400
Potatoes (kilogram) 0.65 Lei
Cabbage (about 2 pounds) 1 Lei
Butter (kilo) 18 Lei
Pork (kilo) 10 Lei
Cognac (bot) 90 Lei
Vodka (bot) 22 Lei
Tzuica (bot) 31 Lei
Beer (bot) 8 Lei

Bicycle 860 Lei

Motorbike (imported) 16,000 Lei

(FOOTNOTE – on the foreign exchange market the Lei is held at about ¼ to 1/6 Australian this may not be a real value rate for no foreigner could exist for a week paying on this basis)

FOUR

As an artist I was primarily interested in the conditions and functions of the artist in a socialist state.

It is apparent that given the necessary ability, and the willingness to accept theory of socialist art, he is very well off indeed. In fact, he enjoys, relative to his society a much more exalted position in the social scale than does his counterpart in the Western world.

As a unit of promulgation of socialist consciousness he has special privileges and responsibilities of which I will speak later. Like all other workers, he belongs to the Union, in his case, The Plastic Arts Union, which looks after his social welfare, supervisors and commissions his work.

The youth who desire to become artists are selected from the final school grade, and are admitted to the Institute of Plastic Arts where they are given an allowance during thorough six-year course of training which lies ahead.

The Institute in Bucharest, which teaches hundreds of students (among them some Chinese and English), places a great emphasis on draughtsmanship in the academic manner. This is understandable, as art as officially conceived in Romania, as a tutorial aim, and is to be clearly understood by the populace. Drawing is emphasised in pencil and charcoal, pen and ink, in lithography, wood engraving and etching.

Sculpture, or more precisely, modelling in clay, dominates the final year of the course. Ceramics and allied arts are taught to a high standard. The quality of painting was generally disappointing. During the sixth year the student is fully supported before his examination for graduation into the Artists’ Union. After graduation he is under no direction for two or three months, during which time he may go where ever he chooses (still under full allowance) to gather material and ideas for the commencement of his career.

Those students whose aptitude is not considered worthy of continual encouragement by the Union may apply to some other union admission to its particular craft. Failures at graduation may apply for enrolment in allied artistic cooperatives in which a measure of artistic feeling is combined with craftsmanship-the Artisan trades, such as stonemasonry, woodcarving, decoration, etc.

To get back to our young artist.

If he has an idea for a painting, or a series of sketches he approaches the Artists’ Union suggests his ideas and is well received, obtains a loan from the Union to enable him to complete his project.

Having completed his work, he submits it to a committee appointed by the Union, and if approved of, is purchased, and a deduction is made in respect of the loan advanced.

If he should happen to sell his work to an individual, or some unattached co-operative, he still repays the Artists’ Union the sum advanced

If he is on the ball, our artist is now established.

Usually sells his work through the Union, and its local committees; much as if he were to sell through, the commission by, the various selection boards of societies of artists which exist in Australia of course there is nothing to stop him selling his work to individuals, from what little I could see, I doubt whether any individuals were either willing, or economically capable of doing so.

The fundamental patron is the State-or, if you like, the Unions, and other bodies associated with the apparatus collective management. From here we move into the consideration of what all this works out in terms of the living wage.

In Romania, all major buildings and projects, in, or under planned, production are obliged to allocate a certain percentage (I was informed by a sculptor it was equivalent to a minimum of 10 shillings per £1000) of the total cost to the Plastic Arts Fund, which discusses the artistic problems involved, how they should be distributed, and to which artist or artists. Unfortunately I neglected to ask whether these allocations were made on a competitive, or roster basis.

This is undoubtedly constant and practical support from artists from governmental levels.

The Plastic Union also stages exhibitions (the works in which are for sale), encourages discussions between artists and laymen, and generally makes every attempt to synthesise their often opposed points of view.

To give a better idea of how successful artists may become, I quote a few figures from Mr Maxy, Director of the Bucharest Art Gallery, and well-established artist.

As the average wage for an unskilled labourer would be the vicinity of 600 Lei a month, and for a skilled worker, such as a typesetter, 1000 Lei a month, Mr Maxy’s figures seemed to me to suggest the height of affluence. Nevertheless, they received corroboration in other parts of the country so I suppose it does apply to the top man, at least.

An established artist, having made an approved suggestion to the Artists’ Union, will receive 2000 – 3000 Lei a month during the period of his idea’s incubation and appearance.

If his production is satisfactory to the Artists’ Union (which virtually means that it will be accepted by the State), he will be paid anything from 15,000 – 20,000 Lei for and heroic historical picture or 8,000 – 15,00 for a significant landscape.

It is possible for him to earn as much as 40,000 Lei for a grandiose project, or even to name his own fee for what he submits. Mr Virgil Fulicea of Cluj, is one of those who reap the benefits of these arrangements. A sculptor strong, fluent and acceptable concepts, he had in his studio a major work of three peasant girls from the Fagaras region wearing costumes that survive from the Daccian (Roman) days vigourous and optimistic in design, this over life-size work was worth, in the plaster cast, 35,000 Lei to him. It represented six months work and the State pays for and arranges the bronze casting of it. One could hardly grumble at that.

He told me that for the big works it was usually he, one day or month, so to speak, and someone else, the next.

Of course, he does not get this fee all the time. I understand there are certain fixed prices-minimum, average and maximum and that juries consider the necessity, appropriateness and value of the ideas submitted.

On top of all this the living and creative conditions of the artist are given special consideration, for it is the accepted thing in this society that the artist should be spared all possible distractions.

If the artist’s work and ideas are well received he may be allocated special quarters in one of the numerous Houses of Creation, which resemble private hotels housing a community of interests. He is given accommodation, congenial working quarters, and dining and assembly facilities.

I visited two such establishments in Bucharest.

Firstly, the Magosoaia Palace which had been taken over for sculptors, although at the time I saw it, it was not completely ready for occupation. The beautiful palace, built byBrancoveanu in 1724, is small gracefully designed and overlooks formal gardens which lead down to the river lined with rushes alive with the sunlight and the wind.

The architecture with its warm bricks and slender pillars has a Muslim touch, probably influenced by the Turks who dominated the country from many generations. Byzantine gold mosaics paves the main foyer where now the proletarian artist treads and meditates.

House of Creation number two was a much more modest affair, set in a nice clump of trees in the best residential area of the town itself, and is the workplace of painters and top sculptors, Medres and Baraski. Monstera Deliciosa was set in pots around the veranda facing the lawns.

Heroes of Romanian history were lying dismembered in the studios. A plaster head of Balcescu, two feet six from the neck up, lies alongside an equally gargantuan shin and foot of Eminescu. All these bits and pieces awaiting dispatch to the foundry, from whence, assembled and in bronze, they will brave the elements in noble and optimistic city squares.

Newspaper artists working for the daily press get 500 – 600 Lei for each cartoon that appears. They are not on the staff, and are a body of freelance men who make themselves available at extra short notice, like their colleagues anywhere else in the world. So we see that even three or four drawings of week puts these men in the upper crust bracket.

I did not have time to find out how the Artisans, like ceramic workers, woodcarvers, wrought iron workers, embroiderers and the like were paid, but their productions had the technical excellence, and were quite as skilful in design as those of the traditional folklore masters.

I attended the opening of the Biennial Exhibition of Romanian Decorative Art in a new modern Gallery in Bucharest. 280 artists had sent in over 2000 exhibits, most of which were on show, and extremely well done in a form of modernised traditionalism.

The exhibition’s sponsors were the Ministry for Culture, the Union of Plastic Arts, the Ministry for Light Industry, and the Artisan’s Cooperatives. In his official speech Mr Mac Constantinescu sculptor, and Professor of Decorative Art, made the following points.

“Romanian art faces now social aspects of life, and if there are many difficulties to be contended with, it is for us to find a way to surmount them.

There is no doubt there are still great problems, but if all creative forces are stimulated, the artist, or Artisan, knows that in overcoming them he will be able to do something for society, and will be aware of the importance of his work in the decorative ensemble.

If we fight for the development of artistic personality and creative imagination, our decorative arts will be a great success in our days.

Experiments and innovations in the technical and conceptual points of view, which are presented at this exhibition are, and must be, welcome. The task of the exhibition is to submit the exhibits to the critical appreciation of the public. Only thus are we able to choose or select the most worthy from the exhibition, and only thus can we progress.”

I think that within these few remarks one finds the central problem of social start. Or, to be more explicit, the essential contradiction in Socialist realism which has not yet been synthesised. On the one hand we have the demand for “experiments and innovations from the technical and conceptual points of view,” on the other, that these experiments and innovations the only worthy when accepted by the public.

This is a fine and forward-looking thought inferring the best of all possible publics. But no one could seriously dispute the insufficiency of the general public as the final arbiters of what is, and what is not, valid in art at the immediate time of its production. The public has always been a generation behind in the appreciation of the great revolutionaries in any of the arts. Can one imagine how a Cézanne would fare under the critical direction of the masses? Genius is inevitably ahead of contemporary thought and cannot be conditioned by. That genius is rare, so it doesn’t matter, is beside the point. Even the talented artist must have the right to experiment in terms of vision beyond the immediate comprehension of the public.

No doubt a free Socialist art is possible. But there is little evidence that socialism has yet brought forth anything of universal significance in the plastic arts. It is possible to sympathise with the aspirations of socialism yet be completely unmoved by its artistic lecturings. I feel that the Rumanians, and artistic race, are somewhat ware of this, although at the present stage of their social development they are overburdened with official Soviet dogma on such matters. In theory the Rumanians are free to paint in any manner they choose so long as they are sincere and passionate in their interpretation of life (Mr Mircea Deac, who is Director of the Fine Arts Department, a member of The Plastic Arts Union, and art critic, informs me that there is nothing to stop an artist painting in any style whatever, that official recognition is given to those who are sincere, and present the socialistically conceived realities of life. The artist is expected to describe life passionately, and the form in which the artist elects to do so is left to him.) But who was the adjudicator of passion and sincerity?

In practice, the artists reflect the official directives of the optimistic and heroic socialism in terms of naturalism that is to be understood by the dullest of wits. Art is used as an instrument in the education of the masses, and in this respect much of it is scarcely different in essence (although it is in aim) from the insinuative commercial artwork produced in the West.

It is interesting to note a few remarks in “The Literary Gazette” (Romanian) by art critic Petru Comarnescu. Speaking of world-famous abstract sculptor Brancusi, a Romanian, long resident in France, Cormarnescu says; inter-alia…

  • That Brancusi enriched universal culture by his works which had their roots in the primitive forms of his own country’s folk wood carvings
  • that although he worked abroad he never forgot his formative background Gorj, where he was born; and always maintained relationships with his homeland although he is now 80 and lives in Paris.
  • that he went to Paris in 1904 and followed the classical sculptors from Michelangelo to especially Rodin will stop in 1915 became influenced by Romanian folklore and woodcarving, and while he was now placing less stress on naturalistic human form, the abstractions which were emerging Web-based, not on cubist theory, but on Romanian folk art and symbolism.
  • That his work was not empty of human content, and that his imitators followed only the abstract and decorative surface elements of his work, and that their work is null and void, because they missed the inner convictions of Brancusi’s art;
  • that he was striving to seek for the essence of the subject and that it was not easy to understand the abstract portraits which pretend to express human form;
  • that he was mainly influenced by Romanian peasant and Byzantine art which is not concerned with human form;
  • that present art critics (I presume Comarnescu means Romanian critics) say Brancusi is presenting reality in an archaic way, insofar as he maintains geometric form rather than humanistic appearance;
  • that Brancusi, well appreciated in the West and in India, is universally discussed, and should be discussed in Romania because his work is inspired by Romanian folk art-art which is polished by the hand of a great contemporary sculptor;
  • that we (Rumanians) must observe that Brancusi’s art not only expresses the old primitive times, but is an example for our own young artists to find new ways of expression appropriate to their feelings, and with the new demands of their contemporary life.

There it is. Partly a nationalistic claim, partly an acknowledgement of the greatness of his art. And while appreciation of such formers admitted, one, casually at least, finds little tolerance of this style in practice.

However, the artistic Rumanians may yet find room for another innovator, such as Brancusi, one who, while not immediately intelligible to the public, will not be constrained by official thinking.

I excuse myself quoting Russian sources, but I think they indicate generally the socialist idea.

In Bucharest I read in the “Soviet News” (Oct. 16. 1956) an article entitled “Granting Indulgence to Modernism?” by Mattias Sokolsky. Speaking of musicians, which we can equate with artists, he says; “As for dodecafonia, it was never prohibited in this country and is not prohibited now. Even if the idea should it ever occur to anyone to do so, the fact remains there is nothing to prohibit. Dodecafonia has never presented any temptation to Soviet composers. Dodecafonia is something alien to their aesthetic tastes, their ethical views and their creative aspirations.

Soviet musicians write for the people-that is their credo, the force that unites them. In this they strive to carry on the traditions of the classics. Dodecafonial music, on the other hand is egoistic. It is music not even for a chosen few that at best for a single person. The platform of the dodecafonists can hardly hope to unite musicians, for by its very nature it estranges the musician from life, turns him into an egocentric. And it is not a question of the individual inclinations or good intentions of the dodecafonist. It is a question of a whole system of views, the very essence of dodecafonia, which is divorced from the life and interests of the people.

Slonimsky is therefore wrong in thinking that the indulgence will be granted to Modernism.”

NOTE: (“today Modernism in music means dodecafonia. True, this tendency dates back to Arnold Schenberg, is 12 tone system is usually considered the beginning of dodecafonia.” Same article).

Earlier I. Moskvin has said, “The prime maxim of Socialist Realism is that Art shall be true to life. We learned to see life in its movement, in its development, in its endless variety. In the USSR new human relations are developing on the basis of a totally new socialist attitude towards labour, property and the home country. It is its mission to reflect this new outlook. Its fulfilment requires a deep insight into human psychology, emotional power and monumental form.”

Also Karl Radek said, “Socialist Realism means not only knowing reality, as it is that whether it is moving. It is moving towards socialism, it is moving towards the international proletariat. And a work of art created by a socialist realist is one which shows wither that conflict of contradicts is leading which the artist has seen in life and reflected in his work.”

Soviet author Yuri Clesha, thus, “When we speak of art, we sometimes forget that there are in the world to irreconcilable social systems… That the difference between our country and Europe is immense, not only in the economic and political system but in spirit, in ideas-that is to say in the very things which are expresses. We forget that the artist of the West and the artist of this socialist land of ours expresses different ideas and that there is more essential difference between them than between economists and soldiers because the artist not only defines what has taken place but also conjectures what will occur, foretells the future.”

This Socialist Realism is an emotional concept not easy to define-and because of my inability to read the Romanian literature about it-and the inadequacy of non-specialist translation-I feel at a considerable disadvantage in attempting to explain convincingly the attitudes involved.

Suffice it to say that what appeared to be the most acceptable artistic subjects almost invariably spring from an illustrative idea. Pictures of modern and ancient protagonists in the drama of struggle against oppression-genre pictures of workers building and making a new society, and peasants in various rural occupations.

In sculpture, much the same story, although done with more conviction; the heroic figure lending itself more aptly to the massive and elemental forms unadulterated by the atmospheric detains which weaken the impact of the paintings.

An element of expressionism appears and within certain realistic limits is well handled will stop abstraction and the incidental ‘isms’ seem to be completely absent. Art becomes the somewhat bread-and-buttery diet of the many rather than the marijuana of the few.

For a well balanced and simplified outside viewpoint on socialist realism, the words of Professor Radhakamal Mukerjee, eminent Indian sociologist, could scarcely be bettered. I quote at length:

“all authors, painters, sculptors, actors and playwrights receive an encouragement unknown in any other country in the modern world. The State gives regular orders to painters and sculptors for the purpose of decorating public institutions, parks and factories, and also arranges for the cheap supply of materials they use. Artists are relieved once for all of the anxiety lest the products of their art should find no sale-so wide has become the demand for works of art. There are also special cooperatives for authors, painters, sculptors and other artists which also help them on a new and lavish scale. On the other hand the artists must be true to the proletarian ideal, and view life as the proletariat view it. In the first place the artists and public are readily brought into intimate touch with one another. Thus a painter, a sculptor, the novelist or a dramatist are expected and encouraged to meet their audience and to discuss with them the principles of artistic production and obtain their criticisms and suggestions. If the artists do not follow the generally prescribed path of Socialistic Realism, the ruling party in Soviet Russia is strong and resolute enough to discourage any individualistic deviations. Ideological opposition as well as the withholding of orders and ostracism are enough to check the erring spirit. In painting, for instance the object of proletariat art is to give pleasure and regard life with optimism, and the dominant themes are modern life with its fresh possibilities and strong wave of optimism as well as neutral subjects. Landscapes, still-lifes, interiors and above all portraits, are still permissible themes for Soviet painters. But strenuous resistance is offered to ‘painting which distorts the lines of reality and pictures chaotic fragments in place of landscape and people; which shows humdrum and insipid themes instead of joy and heroic reality.’ The majority of good Russian painting is a revolution of the new landscape the new people expressing the sincerity, joy and aspirations of a people working towards a higher social integration and harmony. It is also significant that many of the master artists are coming from the working class. At the same time the danger of the working class, who have not obtained adequate artistic education in such a short period of emancipation, suppressing stylistic distinctiveness of individual artists is not small. If new styles of mass art cannot obtain free expression due to the verdict of the proletariat which is apt to develop standardised artistic outlook and tastes, Soviet art may degenerate into a mere pictorial representation of the environment without any profound implications in emotional experience and form of expression.

Yet there is no doubt that there has been a gain to art to the world in that at least in one country art is a social inspiration, is far removed from a filling in the abstract that subsists on the support of a small coterie, but expresses the emotional experience of the community at large whose restrictions to it have an immediate effect on the attitude and style of the artist…

No state in any other country has been so active in both the encouragement of artists and the diffusion of artistic education and culture among the people. Only where art ceases to be an individual experience and a luxury for the few, but represents a mass experience for the enjoyment of all can it play its due role in the organisation of society. (The Social Function of Art — Radhakamal Mukherjee. Hind Kitabs Ltd. Bombay 1948).

Wep’s 1956 Romanian adventure: 24 Nov; London – another look in at the Tate

Sat 24-Nov-56:  Bought ticket to Zurich – sent off books to self & S. Rotaru. Tate Gallery in afternoon.

1956 MM-DD WEP Romania_0149

Sat 24th of Nov 56
London

Sweetheart,

Oh girl, oh girl, oh boy! Is is good is sit down? Have had it again!

Bustled round Oxford St and Piccadilly trying to buy some string, get books all cleared away-went to Thomas Cook’s and got my ticket to Zürich. Pretty near all set-must go through all the bits and pieces of paper etc.-to see what I can clear out to make space and save weight. There seems a lot of fiddly little things I want to arrive back with to save all the filthy delay of surface post. Superficial odds and ends-just to have something to show what’s been doing. Oh-perhaps fell finish up getting posted like the rest of the stuff.

Went to the Tate Gallery after a few Guinness and sandwiches and spent the best part of three hours there, and left completely wrung out. It is very difficult to take all these pictures in-so many one has seen reproductions of. And rarely do the reproductions have the soft and convincing atmosphere, or colour relation, that is inherent in the originals. Somehow they always harden up and become more aggressive, more blatantly colourful than the paintings from which they were taken. Van Gogh’s sunflowers have so much more vitality and tenderness. Saw the original of that painting in our hall too, incidentally. A couple of Gauguin, much more impressive in reality. Dozens and dozens of things you’d recognise, I have seen. It gets tiresome. I’ll get it back stop all very much to the good I think, because you get the feeling you’d like to experiment and get at it a bit yourself. But apart from making some contact with Ampol (if the commission is still available) I want to sit down for a couple of days. I haven’t done so, except in a plane, or a train, all whilst eating, or writing, since I got off at Rome. I warn you, I am only 11 stone with sports coat, jumper, and overcoat on. Anyhow I am sure you will spoil me-and fatten me up for the Xmas killing. I love you.

Talking of Xmas-Regent St and Oxford have now got all Xmas trees, coloured lights, and Father Xmas out, and the place is quite bright, but bloody cold. It makes me glad that Xmas will be at home with my highly specialised family-would be the very end to get stuck here (or anywhere else) alone when all the spirit is building up, and the half crowns are jingling in your pocket. A very great number of 2/6 pieces here-more than florins. Never quite sure whether I am planking down 2/6 or 2/-. In any case they hardly last long enough to notice. Grog is a colossal price over here-Sherry 3/- glass, claret 2/6 small glass, Scotch 2/6 or 2/9, gin and tonic 2/4 or 2/10. 1/3 bottle (they make beer in little bottles like the tiny Guinness Stout you might have seen) beer 1/1 -stout 1/5 – 1/6 equivalent to about 3 glass to bottle. Consequently everybody is very sober over here.

I’m not very verbose tonight but want, very much, for you both to get a letter are day practically up till the day before I arrive-that way you will not be stamping about the unpruned rose bushes wondering what has happened to your errant (hah! hah! That’s a laugh) husband. I should be in bed with you before you finish reading my last note-and you had, very definitely, be prepared to like it.

Enough for now, I’ll see if I can squeeze a number drop out of this pen in the morning, when the alleged daylight arrives. And with that I give you another consignment of good old home spun love. Kiss, kiss, SAOH.

Sunday morning [25 Nov 56]. Woke early, about 4:30-and read till 5:30-thought I’d give Morphens another visit and stayed with him till 8 a.m. when breakfast brought me to. I am about to wash ½ doesn’t handkerchiefs, one day for the way home-have a horrible pile of dirty ones. Roley’s place was the only opportunity I have had to boil them up and iron them. Nevertheless we manage along and I hope to get home reasonably clean. I’ll diagnose my dirty stuff when you are not looking. It has been raining during the night which seems all to the good as it is now warmer and not so foggy. This is my second last letter as after tomorrow nothing can beat me bringing personal tidings of joy and affection for my two very dear people. I send you a great deal of love darling, and for Graham a great anxiety to see how he has grown-and how long, if not taller, young Trellie has grown. Love, love and more love from your very close at hand husband,

Bill.

Wep’s 1956 Romanian adventure: 22 Nov; London – preparing to leave for home

Thu 22-Nov-56: Bought suit at Harrods. Went out to see John St John in evening.

1956 MM-DD WEP Romania_0138

Read this first. It is first in the sequence of 2.

London
22 November 1956

Dearest,

I am writing this in a little bar I may have mentioned I found behind the rooms I live in. It, this bar, is the pleasantest place I have been in because I have had some Guinness this afternoon-and I have had them because of your kindness and (not to really play the thing to death) love. This relaxation would not have been on unless I had found a barmaid to talk to for a little while when I was in Fleet Street. Whatever is-is, and I am here in the midst of a truly English pub with a wonderful black whale of a woman whose superb skin moves with the greatest mobility on, and over the long, half existing (longitudinally) fang of a front tooth. She has a lush and full mooned mouth and would have been a good sort 20 years, and 10 stone ago. But she has the Cockney humour-and has put her golden black sequin dress on for the customers tonight. She waddles like an enormous Rabelaisian dark and is full of the guts that the English are endowed with. She complains about the miseries, and rationing is, and the ineptitude of the British approach to the Suez. She has had the pub blown down over her ears and is still here-and is prepared to take more.

These English are a queer mixture of reticence and violence or not violence rather-resistance and always the courage of resistance. There are quiet, docile and un-movable. I at least prefer their sort of queerness to that of the terrible goofs of USA paratroopers who walked loud mouthed through the White Tower in the Tower of London and shattered everything with their uncouth and insensitive remarks. I will yet meet an Australian who would have been so corny. What started this black whale off on her tirade of what the English can take was an American from a posh (really not posh) pub over the way. He said God, what’s wrong with the English? I’m freezing to death over yonder pub? So on and so on. The black behemoth says-“you send us the oil, and we’ll heat you buggers”. However-this is all part of talking to you sweetheart and I find I need it.

This burst of expression is wholly and totally new and I love you for it. I really didn’t tell you about the sequins that cascaded down the ample hills of her body. They came like a waterfall from the neck to the naval and then disappeared in the abyss. Nor did I tell you about the slice of Melton Mowbray pie which is good cold and which you will find in Cassell’s cookery book.

Thursday,

22 Nov 56 London

Dorothy Darling,

It is an extremely cold, and damn near freezing night, and although I have put the radiator on I couldn’t resist the temptation to sit clad in your beautiful dressing gown. I know you don’t mind me wearing it, because to me it is a symbol of your warmth-your arms tightly enfolding the shivering remnants of your lamented, but not yet late, husband. If you turn out to be as warm as this old Jaeger model, you’ll be doing well, but if you are not more animated, I may as well languish to death in the gelid English world, and make and bequeath all my unsupported goods to you as a memorial to an unrequited love. Further than saying, I like this here dressing gown, and that it weighs too much, this subject is dismissed until the evening of the 2nd day of December 1956.

This is all very wonderful, writing to you, saying what I like, without fear of an answering letter, or the impossible, inconceivable, delayed and oral reply. I can say I love you, or go and jump in the lake, and it will not make the slightest difference, because, when you see me you will forget what you wanted to say, and there will be nothing left to you to do that kiss me, and beam your beamest smile. I have seriously thought of wearing the dressing gown board the plane, and posting my overcoat back home-but somehow I don’t think I can carry it off with the necessary aplomb.

I love you. Write in the flaming heart and with arrows, daggers, swords, and axis, inextricably mingled like this

1956 MM-DD WEP Romania_0143

Now if that doesn’t convince you that I am fond of you. Nothing will!

I have just about finished all my chores in London. Two things left to do-apart from weighing and packing up (in the last gallop to the galleries). Went down to Harrods and found that, although it is supposed to be the best shop in London, their prices were more than comparable with the others and the fit as good as one could wish for. I do hope you like my suit. Pretty conservative, like everything that I have bought, when in my right senses.

I wouldn’t be surprised that I could go on quite a while writing to you, just being with you, even if it all looks a bit wishy-washy when read back a week later. Underneath the extended extravagance there is an urgency for your presence. A positive, and fundamental need that no amount of talking to others can satisfy. I have been out to see a character, a writer named John St John, whom I met in Romania. There’s nothing much to report in that direction, except that I gave me a break from this room for 2 ½ hours. Also, today I bought for Stefanie Rotaru, the little Romanian girl, a copy of my book at home, called “The Loom of Language” and also a primer of Pitman’s Shorthand. These were just a small thankful remembrance of her care of me. I thought I may as well post them from here as from Australia.

I am looking forward to that sun, and to seeing new walking, or nearly running, so purposefully in front of me. Just like I used to secretly admire you when you ran down to the pool at Dee Why with Hans and Graham, and when you insisted on walking up to the top of Palm Beach with Graham and I late one evening. And again when you were so far ahead of me-you and Graham and the girl from West Australia-in the drizzle down at Kiama. Do you remember too, one night at East Beach, when something went wrong, and we stamped madly up and down the beach, and you left your footprints in the sand and I was left alone and the ways washed them from all traces and yet could not eradicate them from my memory. Somewhere in all the turmoil, self-hypnosis, or perhaps, the seed of love, dug into my existence, and I must sit up and try to write you out, or into, my being. The ring around the moon, the curved shoe of liquid sand, your disappearing figure in the night, all combining into one recollected affection-even if it were misplaced at the time. And you knew that too, because you wanted me to keep my scrawled reactions to our angry parting. All this is part now of our collective body. So many of your remembrances are mine too, and mine yours. I say now during these weeks away many of the things I would have left unsaid at home. Perhaps, because I was never lonely enough to expose myself sentimentally-now it doesn’t matter because you have to read them whether you like it or not. And I have to say them either to myself, or to you, if you wish to listen. Had I spoken them to you, who knows, a word here or there may have broken the thread on which these dreams are hung. Strangely, all my thoughts are centred on our relations between sand and sea. It is remote of course, which is the answer. The night too, at Palm Beach when I laboriously carried up 2 nips of whiskey which were promptly kicked into the thirsty sand, as if it hadn’t more liquid than enough when my parched mind & gut were seeking it.

And the day Graham and I had waited for your plane to land at Tamworth-when Graham was as thrilled as I, to see you, at last walking like a solid little statue towards an unforeseeable future. I think you had on that tartan sort of costume-that I wouldn’t be sure of-but you were there-and ours was a curious, sinful delight. I hope you feel something of that when I come towards you both on Sunday. I shall come with more understanding than when I left. Let me hope to keep it-for you.

Your Bill

Wep’s 1956 Romanian adventure: 15-17 Nov; London – shopping for a suit and coat

Thu 15-Nov-56: 2nd wedding anniversary, received cake from Dorothy. Had a look at Lincoln’s Inn. Tried on a suit & walked around shops in afternoon. Went dinner with Rex Reinits Chelsea
Fri 16-Nov-56:    Went shopping, failed to get coat for Dorothy. Went to Museum in afternoon for hour.

1956 MM-DD WEP Romania_0115

Debenham Court [Possibly now the Radisson Blue Edwardian Sussex Hotel]
Granville St [Granville Place]
London
15 Nov 56

Dear sweet two-year-old wife,

Am sorry to report a fairly unrewarding day in so far as finding a suit for myself is concerned. I’ve been to Simpsons, whose stock is shockingly meager in 2 piece suits (mostly 3 piece) and that applies to all the shops-but I’m hanged if I’m going to buy a waistcoat two. Most of the suits a single breasters-and pretty well all the fabrics in different-or to light-or too loud. I only tried one suit on at Simpsons. A nice dark, but a bit loud on the stripe. Also the collar was cut down to low. God knows my neck’s long enough without isolating it. Austin Reeds had nothing I could see. Aquascutum’s apparently had the stuff but nothing under 27 to 33 gns which is on 33 to 40 gns. I reckon I could get a first-class job made for that in Sydney-and not be buying just because I have only a little time left. I find it difficult to make any decision. Go back to Simpsons early next week. I have had dinner out with the Rex Reinits and thoroughly enjoyed it. They have a flat in Chelsea and they have been married (I take it) only a little over 12 months. Although both of them have lived over here in different spots for quite some years. She [Thea] is Australian too. I think he must have married her last time he was back home, also I gather this is about his third effort. Anyway they made me happy about my 2nd anniversary and wished me the best. We played all the Romanian records and there are some really fine pieces amongst the collection. One we gave full marks to was a “doina” sung by a woman on the fact that when her love is far away she has to find comfort in other things (not men) she has to sublimate her love. At least that is the theory, or the text, of the song-so Stefania told me. It was a very beautiful and haunting melody. Lovely, and I didn’t mind the last they made when I said the love had to find comfort in other things. I will regard it as our anniversary piece. It was the first time I had heard the records at all. The fast violin pieces so recall to me that different little groups of players I had heard and the Romanian orchestra I had told you of. It was a fine clear night so I walked home a quite considerable distance, through Chelsea, and up by Hyde Park, along the ritzy hotel area. Past the Hyde Park Hotel, the Dorchester, etc. Park Lane as the street is called is I am told the great stamping ground for the girls who work at night. Even when I came after 1 o’clock there were quite a few about. But I guess I look to married and purposefully going somewhere, which I was. Surprisingly,-you’d never pick some of them to be what they are-not at least in the street lights. Some very young and quickly it’s quite attractive. God knows how many times they had been to the cost and up again, by the time I saw them. Chatting away together, comparing shoes and what not. Just like dames waiting for the bus.

I’m off to bed now, this little break with you has soothed me off into an approximate sleep. So I may as well take advantage of my stricken mood to rest myself in recuperative slumber. Good night-my dearest wife-and thank you again for the cable and the thought of getting me a dressing gown. I really couldn’t carry it back I’m as heavy as hell as it is.

8 p.m. Friday [16 November 1956]. Am back in my room after a frustrating day. Fortunately there is a radiator here-and by magic shilling in the electricity meter slot makes it work. So at least I can be warm. I saw a Rodex coat I liked for you yesterday and went back early this morning to buy it. Unfortunately it was the wrong size, and, as it is just about the end of the selling season (everybody wears a coat now) I couldn’t get one to fit. All sorts of other patterns and colours but the bloody one I wanted. Spent all morning walking all over London trying to get one without success. The flaming goons makes so many slightly different styles for the individual shop buyer’s tastes that no two shops seem to carry the same thing. I had them ring Rodex but they couldn’t help. It has now become a dammed fixation with me. I’ll have to get them to make one now and post it out. I’m very disappointed I couldn’t bring it back as a surprise-but there it is. I had to mention it-so don’t go buying yourself one in the meantime. I’m sure you’ll like it. It is quite plain and won’t date anyway. Heavens knows you’ll need it to the winter. I like going around looking for things for you-but I’m afraid I have to give it up now. Bought myself a pair of grey corduroy slacks at Selfridges-very good and only 49/6. Selfridges here is like David Jones or Myers.

Had pork chops and chips for tea. Went down to the museum again for a while this afternoon and sort of reassessed my verdict on Indian sculpture. It is better than I first thought-must have been very tired when I went before. In any case I’ve had walking around and wished to hell I was home with you both. Not looking forward to this extra week and a half, one tiny bit. I need some coupling, bad. I think I’ll go to bed and read-lots and lots of love and kisses for you my darling. Your Willie loves you very much. XXXXXXX SAOH.

Saturday morning 8:30 a.m. [17 Nov 1956]. Dear sweet beautiful lady, and wife, and mistress. Your lover is strong and gay after a good rest and an early arising. Breakfast of bacon and egg and grapefruit juice, which is brought up to my room (everyone’s room) has been satisfactorily stowed away. The day is getting lighter-albeit the fainthearted English effort of brightness-and nothing yet has happened to throw me into the very pits of despair. I’m in a great bum-slapping mood-and I would have you know it. Today I shall relax for the pleasures seeing. Am going to the Portobello market with the Reinits this morning for an hour to observe the costers at work. Later I shall either look at the Victoria and Albert Museum or take a bus ride out to Hampstead Heath which everybody has heard of and which I like to see what’s like. There’s a professor character-Jock Marshall lives out that way too. I may try and renew an old acquaintance. I’m very loving and cheerful. Have been thinking this trip to Zürich over and have decided to go by train-hoping to see something thereby Holland, Germany and Switzerland. It will cost me only £5 more than if I catch the plane here. I think I told you for £4 I can get on at London. It would cost me another £2 to stay here for accommodation so that £6 from £11 the other way (with a night at pub in Zürich) would cost = £5 which I am sure is a cheap tourist trip through three countries.

I give you the big kiss-I am upmost lark like in my mood. Funny odds and ends one sees here in London. Blokes having a cheese roll with a cheese all smothered in mustard washed down with their awful black flat draught beer. Another character, having ½ beer ½ cider in his glass-ugh! Pubs at lunchtime are more like cafes-tablecloths, hot meals, men and women, a glass or two each and a gossip for the lunch hour. Fires in the lounges and plenty of Cockney and bally high class accent coming from all quarters of the compass.

I’m going out now to get a few things done early so will get this off. Please forgive the dreadful dreary nurse of the early part of this letter. I couldn’t bring myself to rewrite it. A fine, firm, squeeze for you-and my love to the old super mechanic Graham and his working hound Nortey Trellie. If he could teach her to talk she could do the messages while he sat around on his great fat ass. Poor Tommy [O’Dea]-that radio must have him horrified. Why don’t you send grain with it up in the bus to Ferries at Lane Cove. Opposite the post office. Another, even firmer hug for you, in private.

Love, love, love, from your own particular man

Bill

1956 MM-DD WEP Romania_0113 1956 MM-DD WEP Romania_0112

Looking up Shaftesbury Avenue from Regent Street at Piccadilly Circus, London; 15 November 1956

London, UK

London NW3, UK

London W11 2DY, UK

Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL, UK

Westminster, London W2 2UH, UK

London, UK

53 Park Lane, London W1K 1QA, UK

23-25 Leinster Square London W2 4NE, UK

100 Regent Street London W1B 5SR, UK

203 Piccadilly St. James's, London SW1Y, UK

400 Oxford Street, London W1A 1AB, UK

London W1H, UK

London, UK

London, UK

London WC2A, UK

Wep’s 1956 Romanian adventure: 3-5 Nov; Paris – stuck in a Christian Dior parade

Sat 3-Nov-56:    Day at the Daily Express while Roley worked.
Sun 4-Nov-56:   Went to Embassy church & dinner on pig. Went to concert. Roley went to Vienna.
Mon 5-Nov-56: Weary, Odilon Roden exhibition, later to the Louvre – too dark to see the Rembrandts etc.

1956 MM-DD WEP Romania_0081

Paris
Monday
5th Nov ‘56

My darling Dorothy,

I got a letter from you this morning dated 29th Oct. That is a week ago and you called me a big monster because I hadn’t said I hadn’t got a letter from your affectionate heart. Please forgive me if I have not mentioned the joy they gave me. I am sure I must have done so. To tell the truth, it is only since I got to the Paris address that I have been getting anything. I know it is not your fault. I had one letter in Romania. One you had written just after the beautiful letters I picked up at the Hotel Austria. So you will forgive me. I asked them to mail my Romanian mail to Paris – but nothing has arrived so I guess everything is just any old-how in the east. I don’t suppose I’ll ever get the beautiful books they were to have forwarded. All the mail goes or did, through Hungary, so you can imagine that the chances of receiving anything at all are pretty hopeless.

Roley Pullen at his apartment, 31 Quai des Grand Augustins, Paris; 3 November 1956

Roley has just been sent to Hungary, much against his wishes. However, he has arrived at Vienna as the border is about to be closed again – So I guess things may be alright for him. I took the liberty of getting him to put me on the phone to Robert Edgley & asking him to see what he could do for him in the way of local information, etc. I am leaving for London at 8am on Wednesday. I was to have gone on Friday but McNulty sent me a cable from New York to say that he will probably be there till the 18th. As I would like to see him, I thought I’d leave a little later for London & fly direct if I can. You have had a couple of pretty mad – but, I assure you, earnest letters from me. If anything in them has distressed you in any way put it down to tired and excited ramblings. I want you not to think I am lurching all over the city. I am not. There is a lot to do, and see, and perhaps I cannot cope with it all without an occasional savage outburst – Giving the theatre of the brain a flutter – if you understand – Not that I didn’t mean a word of my love making – but perhaps then it would have been more obscene – and not so beautifully obvious. Anyway I meant every word of it and you have to like it or lump it. Roley got me into a Christian Dior parade the other afternoon. I went alone & had to flash my passport to get in. Got stuck behind three rows of chairs & without a cigarette the two hours of so called parading became even more murderous than conceivable – because I couldn’t get out. All but one of the models looked like creatures from Buchenwald concentration camp. Pin stick limbs, but interesting faces. Very much like Nefertiti because the wizard profiles were capped by flat top haps like Romanian Astrakhan shepherd hats. All the winter clothes were finished off with these type of hat.

1956 MM-DD WEP Romania_0083

I thought some of the winter type coats very nice. Quite your line. I understand your taste, but I haven’t got the money to risk a failure. I should like to have seen you, with your very forthright walk, modelling one or ten of them. The walk you wear when I first remember you running down the side of the pool at Dee Why the day you took off and sat on my costume, and took the little Dutch monster with you into the pool. Your little eyes were so purposeful and your behind wagged as if you were just about fifteen and it hadn’t sat on a hat or swimming pants or even a box of delights for twenty or thirty six years. I think it was on Feb the two-th of something. But it was a wonderful day, because I met you when you got off the bus and you were wagging it from work. I remember Christine saying you were a nice girl. But I had no idea that should agree so seriously with her. I thought she was right, but didn’t realise that I would be so convinced of it later. In fact I never thought then that I would be in love with you – I suppose I was, but wouldn’t admit it even to myself – because how could I, when I was, oh – well – you know, I loved Jess too. And it’s because I love you I can now say that. You understand now.

Bill Pidgeon (Wep) admiring Roley Pullen’s minitiature carousel at Roley’s appartment, 31 Quai des Grand Augustins, Paris; 3 November 1956

Roley has a musical merry-go-round that makes everybody who sees it want to cry because it is so wonderfully static & old world. And all the four figures who are seated on alternate donkeys and rabbits have their tails dropped off with age and the mange of neglect. With the inevitability of last year’s newsreels, the dear little clown clothed figures trace their fixed and inevitable course, centrifugally around the music of a tinkling and passé empire of France. They wear pantaloons & red velvet bows – cockades and pointed vermillion shoes. One of them, who wears a little peaked donkey hat with a feather in it is so like Graham, I could weep. Some of the horses they are not horse, but they had almost the privilege of being horses, are without tails and hooves. They are dusty, but are ennobled with age and affection. The base is ancient pink & contains the most sentimental music it is the pleasure of any cavalier to ride to. I have just wound it up. And all the figures go la-de-da-de-la in an inevitable circle with Graham, not the most elegantly dressed, riding on the only horse with a tail, in poised and delicate finality.

You know what the trouble with me is, I am not doing enough work. I’m building up & am near explosion point. The absorption rate is high & I guess, apart from the London galleries, I have seen almost every picture worthy seeing or which has been reproduced. The Louvre gives me the flaming horrors. I have been there four times without decently seeing a picture. It is so dismally dark. So is Paris this time of the year – Gives you the thing. Spent another quid having a look at Odilon Redon exhibition (plus catalogue) this morning. Only vaguely knew of him. Beautiful lovely work. So many of the masters are disappointing in the original. By and large, you could give me the early Italian and or Christian painters for my cup of tea.

This is becoming a long letter, my darling and is like my reactions to all external stimuli. I like getting letters from you but I would rather be home. I find the idea of spring hard to conceive. Really the weather here is the end! I’ve seen the sun twice. They tell me the grey of London is worse.

Please don’t expect much from me from London. I shall write only when I madly need you. Not that, that wouldn’t be every day I could make it. But I have had sending news reports, and would as soon be home. The winter 1956 timetable says my plane will get in at 7.20pm on Nov. 25. I do not want you to meet me. I would really much rather get a cab from the city and walk into my home with my people there. I do very really mean this. I would rather kiss you in Northwood than in Mascot or Sydney. I can take you both together in my arms at home. Please let me come home alone. I don’t want anyone else to help me see you all for the first time after all this much of the world. I don’t mind that vulgar Trellie being there. Will you please get this into your thick head? Also, please don’t write any letters I would miss. I can’t stand it. Save your affection up for my arrival. The letter I got today was dated Mon 29 Oct. That is a week’s delay. So don’t write anything I wouldn’t get by the 18th. I might have to go to Zurich by train. Anyway, I’ll let you know pronto. Seems very sad that the last letter I’ll get from you will just about answer this. Please tell me you love me. Tell Graham I’;; send a post card from London, or Calais, or Folkestone. Tell him I’ll only have about half an hour to nick up the Eiffel Tower. Tomorrow I’ll be awful busy. I love you, and miss you, my dear wife.

Bill

P.S. That letter from Orasul Stalin – Stefanie registered it – I didn’t tell her to – perhaps she had no faith in the post.

P.S.S. No man in his youth would be so dependent on a fickle – unpredictable woman – and what is more – shall not be! XXXXXXX

Margaret Murray at Roley Pullen’s apartment, 31 Quai des Grand Augustins, Paris; 3 November 1956
Margaret Murray at Roley Pullen’s apartment, 31 Quai des Grand Augustins, Paris; 3 November 1956
Bill Pidgeon (Wep) at Roley Pullen’s apartment, 31 Quai des Grand Augustins, Paris; 3 November 1956

Wep's notes at the Christian Dior Fashion Parade, Paris, 1956 Wep's notes at the Christian Dior Fashion Parade, Paris, 1956

Wep’s 1956 Romanian adventure: 11-13 Oct; Road trip to Sinaia and Orasul Stalin (Brasov)

Thu 11-Oct-56:  Met Artist Union caricaturists
Fri 12-Oct-56:     Sinaia 2:30pm through Ploesti & top of mountain
Sat 13-Oct-56:   Orasul Stalin had picnic lunch just below snow line. Staying at Carpati Hotel [now the Aro Palace]. Cabaret night at hotel

1956 MM-DD WEP Romania_0050

Thurs, 10 Oct [11 Oct 1956]

Dorothy – I write it that way because I sometimes say it with affection. Tonight I don’t need and dear or darling, to go with it. I say it, the way, maybe seldom, it can be said over your shoulder when you least expect it. When for the simple reason that my barriers are down and I realise that you and Graham are all I have and you are smothered in zut. This corn makes me embarrassed, possibly sick. But there is nothing like a bit of corn at times for sentiment. False or true is for you to decide. I worry about Graham – Are you & he getting on smoothly? I hear roundaboutly that I leave on the 18 Oct. [Unrest was brewing in Hungary and they wanted to get Wep out before the Soviets swept in.] How & in what direction I don’t know but will advise you later. Tomorrow or Friday I am going to Siniai, & other odd centres finishing at Cluj. We are going in a car, which is a real luxury. My stomach has finally rebelled against the excessive quantities of food. I have got to the stage where I could scream for nothing but a plate of bacon & eggs for dinner. I have been treated like one of the ex Arch Dukes – nothing is too much for the Institute to arrange. Tonight I met about 6 – 8 newspaper cartoonists in their Artists Union Palace. All very trying at first, but finished up like newspaper men anywhere else in the world. They gave me, on behalf of the Union about 6 massive volumes on Rumanian Art. I shall have to trust to chance with the Rumanian post or charter another plane to bring them all home. Their ignorance of Australia is abysmal, as is ours of Rumania. Am dreading the plane trip back, but am looking forward to being home. How Beryl Whiteley, manages to stick all this time away, is beyond me. Just near the pub is the gallery [The National Museum of Art of Romania], where this afternoon, I found 3 Rembrandts, I was disappointed in, 2 Brueghels, so, so. But all in all there are so many artists who speak a message across the years. That is something of the sublimity of the human spirit. No one is alone if they can see & feel what other humans (with all the same problems) have managed to transmit through the ages, since they were conceived. It is a direct contact with any other, possibly, important being, but most of all, a human trying to communicate something of wonder, & mystery, of being. The newspaper artists have asked me to do a drawing for the paper. I shall oblige in the morning. I have met no artists (fine) of any sort. If I don’t report the good gen on Rumania it is not my fault. I have done my best to find out what Socialist Realism means to these people. I believe I have arrived at an approximation of the truth. Once again, spare the mother, and spoil the child. I’m 12,000 miles away, thinking of you, & your nicest points – of Graham, and his unknown problems, and of what Sydney is looking like. Goodnight my dear folk,

Bill

The Rumanian People's Republic, Political and Administrative Map, Rumania Today, No 2, 1961, p2
The Rumanian People’s Republic, Political and Administrative Map, Rumania Today, No 2, 1961, p2
Peles Castle, Sinaia, Romania; 12 October 1956
Peles Castle, Sinaia, Romania; 12 October 1956
Peles Castle, Sinaia, Romania; 12 October 1956

Sinaia 11pm [Fri 12 Oct 1956]. I am up in the hills where King Carol & such dynasty had one of their 142 castles. Socially, it would be like Moss Vale or Bowral. You know the palace & all the wealthy hangers-about. Many fine & expensive homes all in the most appalling taste – the palace [Castelul Peles (Peles Castle)] probably being the worst – a bastardised mixture of Tudor & Renaissance with many statues & stairways onto the lawns. All horribly expensive – and rather sad when you think of the draining out of the peasant lives that went to its building. I, perhaps thinks only that way because it was late in the afternoon, getting dark, & the forest surrounding, silent & sombre in its autumnal death. Just now a train whistle blew & its echos resounds in the valley – even the initial blast was nothing like ours – Quite different – like a high pitched squeal.

Seby Havy (via Flickr) Picture taken in Predeal (see on googlemaps today's location: www.google.ro/maps/@45.4819932,25.565765,3a,75y,22.36h,79...)
A stop at Predeal, Romania; 12 October 1956
A stop on the way from Sinaia to Predeal, Romania; 12 October 19
A stop at Predeal, Romania; 12 October 1956
Seby Havy (via Flickr) - I am not 100% sure (let's say 98%) but the photo is taken in Predeal (see googlemaps for nowaday's location: www.google.ro/maps/@45.5083145,25.5754042,3a,75y,108.78h,...). In the right, just behind the walking man is the railway road Bucharest-Brasov. I am also suspecting the sheds from right and from left (that's one is for sure) belonged to CFR (Romanian National Railway Society)
A stop at Predeal, Romania; 12 October 1956
Cabana Cioplea, Predeal, Romania; 12 October 1956
Cabana Cioplea, Predeal, Romania; 12 October 1956
Stefanie Rotaru outside the Cabana Cioplea, Predeal, Romania; 12
Stefanie Rotaru outside the Cabana Cioplea, Predeal, Romania; 12 October 1956
Bill Pidgeon (Wep) outside the Cabana Cioplea, Predeal, Romania;
Bill Pidgeon (Wep) outside the Cabana Cioplea, Predeal, Romania; 12 October 1956

The driver took us further up the mountain this afternoon – and we visited an hotel [Cabana Cioplea near Predeal, now the Complex Verona Predeal Hotel] for the worker built at about 4,000 ft. Wonderful skiing country. Even this afternoon there was lots of snow around the building & on the road & pines leading to it. Higher, the mountains were completely covered – It was very beautiful – Sinaia, below in the valley, the fine crisp air & the trees all gold & red – with pines still holding snow.

The palace [Peles Castle] is now a museum.

Palace (Hotel), near Strada Octavian Goga, Sinaia; 12 October 1956
Behind the Palace (Hotel), on Strada Octavian Goga, Sinaia; 12 O
Behind the Palace (Hotel), on Strada Octavian Goga, Sinaia; 12 October 1956
http://www.casino-sinaia.ro/en/
Casino Sinaia, 2nd Carol I Avenue, Sinaia, Romania; 12 October 1956
[Bucarest, Romania 1956]
Wep’s painting of Casino Sinaia, Romania, which he painted in 1957

This very big hotel [Hotel Palace Sinaia] is full of workers on a free holiday. The very fine casino [Casino Sinaia] across the park from my window – now a clubhouse for the proletariat. All rather funny & just somehow. The peoples who were pressed to build these really quite amazing flamboyancies are now roaming around all over them like flies. As yet, they don’t look like they belong. More piercing whistles from the trains – sound rolling down & around the mountains like wine on the palate. After dinner I sat and watched the crowd dancing on the marble floor to the accompaniment of a dreadful German dance band played back on tape recorded from a German broadcast. Later a Russian band music – which, anyway was better to dance to because of its less sentimental quality. During the re-playing a Russian (people mixer) dance called a Pearinita was played. Jolly to watch – somehow charming – they are all in a moving ring & one person in the centre has a handkerchief which he or she places before one in the ring. The one chosen drops out and both kneel with one knee on the handkerchief & kiss. The partner chosen then chooses someone else – and so on.

Was lovely to see & walk on the snow – These Carpathian Mountains are beautiful – Its all like a dream – but the flaming dysentery I have copped for the day spoilt it a bit. I miss you both very much – even the lovely cool (cold to some) weather, hardly makes up for it all. Tomorrow I hope to take some photographs of the village. The way up did not seem real – It is the first I have really seen of European dinkum country – All somehow most intangible – & strange – something for the memory to hold.

Saturday night – (Orasul Stalin) [13 Oct 1956]

Orasul Stalin (Brasov), Romania; 13 October 1956
Orasul Stalin (Brasov), Romania; 13 October 1956
Brasov Council Square (Piata Sfatului) viewed from behind the Bl
Brasov Council Square (Piata Sfatului) viewed from behind the Black Church (Biserica Neagra), Orasul Stalin, Romania; 13 October 1956

Dear Girl. These cities look so nice by night – all the lovely silhouettes of the churches & ex municipal Halls have an unreality of sight. When you have a perfect half moon & 1,000 ft of mountain coming straight up your backyard things are not the same. I am in Orasul Stalin, nee Brashov and I don’t care for it. Most depressing. Not so much the town as the inhabitants. It’s a thing I can’t get accustomed to. During the day the inhabitants look like something out of the tip. In the evening they dress up & look & act normal enjoyable folk. I shall work it all out with your help. This place is only about 80 miles out of Bucharest yet the people are different in appearance & attitude. It’s like going from Sydney to Marulan and being in another country. Here, mostly Hungarian or German is spoken and the people have a different look. The hotel orchestra, for one thing, is sharper & keener & so is the service in the pub. I am on the eighth floor of this place & have a beautiful room with bath, etc. All these places seem to be mad with the horror of cold air. Despite the fact that winter temperatures get below 20°F zero they put on woollies. Sheepskin coats, overalls & eiderdowns when the temperatures are only 56° – 60°F cool (that is). Why do I try to keep on beefing out information about this trip. It is obvious to you I cannot cope with the multitudinous aspects. I will remember this night sitting in the best of rooms in the pub [Carpati Hotel] of Orasul Stalin (Brashov) mostly because it is cool & I can see the lights of the city and there are absolutely no motor headlights and I needed you here to keep remembrance with me. I fear that there may be some sourness between me & the driver & interpreter. I have been not arrogant. Manners may be mistaken. Wendy could be just the same. They are not old enough to realise the impoliteness of speaking their own tongue amongst their colleagues who can speak English too. That is when    I can’t it simply at the moment!

I came over the Carpathians (Alps) today & struck quite a bit of snow. Took some pictures but doubt if they will be any good. I got a couple taken of me just to prove that I have been here.

At a rest stop whilst crossing the Carpathian Mountains between Ploesti and Sinaia on the way to Orasul Stalin (Brasov), Romania; 12 October 1956
Bill Pidgeon (Wep) at a rest stop whilst crossing the Carpathian Mountains between Ploesti and Sinaia on the way to Orasul Stalin (Brasov), Romania; 12 October 1956
At a rest stop whilst crossing the Carpathian Mountains between Ploesti and Sinaia on the way to Orasul Stalin (Brasov), Romania; 12 October 1956
Wep’s interpreter, Stefania Rotaru, and possibly their driver at a rest stop outside the Hotel Cota 1400, Sinaia whilst crossing the Carpathian Mountains on the way to Orasul Stalin (Brasov), Romania; 12 October 1956

You know, it’s very odd to think that I am sitting in the 8th floor of a hotel in Orasul Stalin (which no one in Australia has heard of) & the room is over steam-heated (I have all the windows open) and there is an occasional horn blowing & probably quite a few people walking around somewhere – and all this rather dreary & old world city is the centre of many lives & deaths & aspirations & frustrations that one has never heard of, and that in Djataka [Jakarta?] in Java, the same relationships between failure & success, (as in Singapore & Rome & Venice) are all going on – and what does one do about it? Or can, for that matter? Millions of them living, hoping, and failing and dying, – some of them blessed with one who abides, many of them so completely alone. It does matter. I am convinced that the problem of living is dreary, anywhere in the world. People are the important units. The landscape is adaptable & suits all types. God, so much of this country looks like Australia. But the mountains are covered in autumn trees, golden & yellow leaves everywhere & whole thing like a photograph of it. It is all so bloody park like – give me the bush with its hard & mystic quality. The more I see of this park land the more I would like to suddenly transport its natives to beat the impact of our aridity & subtlety of colour. Dear Girl, I don’t expect how, to get any letters from you. But I hope you are getting along happily with Graham. I don’t speak much of him, but he is constantly in my thoughts. I know you understand. I wish you were with me. It would be very gay and sympathique. Much love & absence make the heart grow fonder; to you and the squab.

XXX with love,

Bill

Oil well near Ploesti, Romania; 12 October 1956
According to an acquaintance who grew up in Romania (Mona), the paint on the trees was to stop rabbits. Wep did a painting based on this scene
Near Peles Castle, Sinaia, Romania; 12 October 1956

[Romanian village]
[Romanian village near Peles Castle, Sinaia]
[Romania 1956]
[Romanian village near Peles Castle, Sinaia]

Strada Octavian Goga Sinaia, Romania

Bulevardul Carol I 2 Sinaia, Romania

Bulevardul Libertății Predeal, Romania

Aleea Peleșului 2, Sinaia, Romania

Calea Victoriei 49-53, Bucharest, Romania

Bulevardul Eroilor 27 Brașov 500030, Romania

Strada Episcopiei 1-3, Bucharest, Romania

Wep’s 1956 Romanian adventure: 6-9 Oct; Bucharest and its monuments

Sat 6-Oct-56:      Saw Pioneers Palace [Cotroceni Palace]. Did some washing in afternoon. Had fair bit of claret with dinner with Charles Grant.
Sun 7-Oct-56:     Nothing much done. Somewhat seedy. Saw Rigoletto in evening.
Mon 8-Oct-56:   Met Deac at Ministry of Culture – Acamadic library – Maxy artist. Much moi.
Tue 9-Oct-56:     Palace by the lake. Decorative art show. Big walk about Bucharest. Got pushed. Followed my nose out. Missed my mummy

1956 MM-DD WEP Romania_0045

This endearing note was written on Saturday night 6 Oct.

Dorothy – It means you so close – then it goes away. A symbol of sound that is a life line to – oh go and pull your big head in! I can’t be bothered about a resume of what I see & do. What people do & think is more important than anything in the world. When I see a Englishman who has spent 4 years in Rumania learning art abasing himself before a girl – any girl – perhaps she was tired – she deserved to be escorting Chinese through Rumania. However this character loves this girl and it is very trying because she has had him. Personally I’d give them both away. Please do not be jealous of my Stephania – She is only 21 and always delighted to be away from me. My conversation is so gay. Yet she’s kind and the affection I need to project must go to her. You know what a girl of that age thinks of an ancient like me. I am not Freddy Thomas O’Dea the pincher.

I wish I was getting as hot (that means weather heat) in Northwood as I am here. I have just washed all my socks & thingamys. I am strictly informed that the femme de chamber will do all these unnecessary chores – Like Hell. Little Willie gives none a nylon garment. I have done them.

Sunday morning [7 Oct 1956], in the cold light of day. 8am. This overseas travelling can get very tiresome. I have got to the stage where, looking at buildings & scenery, becomes as interesting as a stranger’s photographs of his backyard & family. When all the impressions are simmered down, the things I shall remember most, will be the paintings I have seen. They give out to the heart directly – They alone have the commodity of spirit – the intimacy, one so urgently needs.

Yesterday – in a funny old cellar, I together with a practically deaf painter from Iceland, were shown quite a collection of French masters. Renoir, Utrillo, Dufy, Marquet, etc. They were all in this cellar because the house was being redecorated to exhibit them properly. They belonged to a wealthy man named Zambaccian, and have been given to the State. His son showed them to us – and when we had finished very generously gave us 2 volumes on the Rumanian masters Grigorescu & Petrascu, of whose works, we also saw many. Very good too. The Institute has given me 2 magnificent volumes too. Christ, my luggage is getting heavy. I love you. I love you. I love you. I was not as bad last night as the above script suggests. Must have been the reaction from all this English talk. I gave my little mother time off from midday Sat. till tonight at 7pm when we go to the opera again.

Sunday night. [7 Oct 1956] Saw Rigoletto & it was very good indeed. The costumes were beautifully worked – I suppose there are plenty of good needle workers in this part of the world. The Opera House itself is a lovely building & was put up in a very short time during 1953 – in order to have its opening night coinciding with the World Youth Festival held here that year. The opera house has fine spacious lounges & gracious stairways. Had dinner at 11 o’clock and am now about to wash a shirt & retire to the cot. Good night, sweetie.

Monday night. [8 Oct 1956] 9.30pm. Have had dinner – went in at 8pm when the dining room opened. Am very tired – probably bored – living the life of a sponge – sopping up this & that – and giving nothing out. Perhaps it is a reaction from a flat afternoon – most of the galleries & cultural centres are closed to allow staff the time off for weekend work. We just sort of mooned around. The lass doesn’t like leaving me alone because it’s her job to interpret. And consequently there is nothing much I can do about dicing her. I’d have felt better if I had gone for a couple of miles walk. I don’t like getting too far off the beaten track because of the complete lack of oral communication – and the absence of a map of the city. It really is a nicely laid out place. I can imagine that when the consumer goods are coming through & the general standard of living rises this Bucharest will be as beautiful as its layout & buildings deserve.

Saturday and Sunday the multitudes come out in the Sunday best & roam all over the city – greatly improving the tone of the joint. Am getting to the stage of an affection for it. The climate & colour of the buildings remind me of home. In a few days I shall be going up to Sinaia & Transylvania & will visit a city named Cluj. I was wrong about the letter cost, it is only 5/6. Showed Stephanie your photo & Graham’s and photos of the paintings – she seemed to like them – and said you were very nice (what else could she do? P.S. I know she meant it.). She introduced me to her boyfriend, a nice looking young German who has been living in Rumania quite a few years, and he is an announcer on the radio station – knows 5 languages. My girl when she is not shepherding the dumb oxes like me also works for radio, as a translator & reader in English. These people are very keen & avid for study. You really sense them building something. Sitwell’s photos of the Rumanian women may be authentic for the peasants, but in the city there is a minority of really good lookers. Not presented at their best, an absence of lipstick & smart clothes. Waiting for the letter from you and Graham which I know should turn up soon. One does get lonely even in the midst of plentitude. Bought Graham the treble only tunes of 225 Rumanian Folk Pieces – dance, etc. They were collected & collated by the Institute for Folklore, etc. Didn’t seem to be able to get any two hundred piano collections. Seeing that none of it is played on the piano in the native habitat – I don’t suppose it matters much. Some day he may be able to transpose the tunes with his own bass & elaboration. At least the genuine fiddle line is clear in selection. Too tired darling to continue. Keep on being fond of me & pray added strength to my failing bones.

Tuesday night. [9 Oct 1956] 12.30am. I have arranged to be left alone for a day – that is tomorrow. I awoke at 5am this morning – had some drops & tried to sleep – but at 6 o’clock decided to get up. At 7am. Went for a walk over Bucharest without a map (and a dull, promising rain, morning) – sufficient to say that I got bushed for about ¾ hour but by the cunning devices of following a trolley bus wires (in the right direction) I contacted civilization & managed to get back to the pub only ¼ hour late for my appointment to see things. For nearly 2 ½ hours I walked Bucharest, in all sorts of quarters. Poorish indifferent, grand & flamboyant. I think this place has got it! It has individuality – all the residences are different. I’ll do it again with a camera. The parks & boulevards are superb & very grubby. My mother and I run out of conversation fairly quickly because she is too young. I regard her as a favourite niece. I wish you were here- as much as I wish you were with me anywhere else I have been. The things I have seen that I can never talk to you about, or make you see them with my amazed eyes. Sometimes, please darling, let me get drunk and tell you how I have felt about these sights. I don’t want to talk to others – to you, I wish to give a picture, with you beside me – although I know it won’t work. Rome has already become a sort of dream one would think up from a postcard. St Mark’s Square in Venice is still pretty real. One of the sights of the world. The huge Irrawaddy River spilling all over the low lying land in the Calcutta Delta. I shall not forget. Or – for that matter any other God damned thing I saw. I’d like to be home now telling you with my head on your lap, and you going to sleep, before I had finished. Wished you could have been with me out at the Maraseojowc(?) Palace this morning – It was the residence of the last Prime Minister, King Michael had. Fan Fuming –tastic. Has been turned into a sculptural museum & part of a hotel for creative artists where they can rest their poor weary brains in a couple of months beatific contemplation. I’m sick of stuffing food down my gullet. I’m sick of eating at 12 o’clock in the night. (I’ve just heard a Jugo-Slav conductor presiding over the local Philharmonic) I’m not quite sure whether I was not happier alone. I’ve seen so many things I’m not at all certain if I shall ever get them in the right sequence. Apart from the fact of going there – and the must of seeing their galleries, I feel as if I couldn’t care less about Paris & London. It has been very hot but now is cold & wet. When you get this letter on a spring morning – think a message to me across this way. My love to you darling & Graham,

from your husband Bill

Wep refers to this as the Maraseojowc (unidetified?) Palace, the last residence of King Michael. However I believe this to be Elizabeta Palace and not the same
Believed to be a sculptural museum and hotel for creative artists, Bucharest, Romania; 9 October 1956 (Wep refers to this as the Maraseojowc (unidentified?) Palace, the last residence of King Michael. However I believe this to be Elizabeta Palace and not the same.)

Wep refers to this as the Maraseojowc (unidetified?) Palace, the last residence of King Michael. However I believe this to be Elizabeta Palace and not the same

Wep refers to this as the Maraseojowc (unidetified?) Palace, the last residence of King Michael. However I believe this to be Elizabeta Palace and not the same

Wep refers to this as the Maraseojowc (unidetified?) Palace, the last residence of King Michael. However I believe this to be Elizabeta Palace and not the same

Wep refers to this as the Maraseojowc (unidetified?) Palace, the last residence of King Michael. However I believe this to be Elizabeta Palace and not the same

Believed to be a sculptural museum and hotel for creative artists, Bucharest, Romania; 9 October 1956 (Wep refers to this as the Maraseojowc (unidentified?) Palace, the last residence of King Michael. However I believe this to be Elizabeta Palace and not the same.)

Wep refers to this as the Maraseojowc (unidetified?) Palace, the last residence of King Michael. However I believe this to be Elizabeta Palace and not the same

Lake Cismigiu, Cismigiu Gardens, Bucharest, Romania; 10 October
Lake Cismigiu, Cismigiu Gardens, Bucharest, Romania; 10 October 1956
Strolling around Bucharest, Romania; 10 October 1956
Strolling around Bucharest, Romania; 10 October 1956
Strolling around Bucharest, Romania; 10 October 1956
Strolling around Bucharest, Romania; 10 October 1956
Bucarest, la ville at ses monuments by Grigore Ionesco; c.1956
Bucarest, la ville at ses monuments – Grigore Ionesco; c.1956

Wep’s 1956 Romanian adventure: 3-4 Oct; Bucharest – first impressions

Wed 3-Oct-56:   Left 9am arrived Bucharest 2:30. 2 girls met me. Staying at Hotel Athénée Palace.

1956 MM-DD WEP Romania_0033

Hotel Athénée  Palace
Bucarest 3 Wed 56

Darling Dorothy

It was sweet of you to send a cable for my arrival. Two lasses from the Institute met me at the airport. We had hardly completed the formalities establishing our identity when they, with, I think, real pleasure, said they had a cable for me. It did me a lot of good, and on the strength of it, I will never say a harsh word to you again. Thank you little wife.

A car brought us to the hotel at 3 pm after getting my room for me, the lasses left & I had a sleep & a wash. At 5 pm, one of them, who has been assigned to me as an interpreter, returned with the car & we did a trip around the city.

I’m too tired to do this letter justice, so will go to sleep & finish it in the morning. It’s a treat to think that I will not be packing & frantically worrying about catching planes. Goodnight darling & thanks again.

Bucaresti - B-dul Nicolae Balcescu, Republica Populara Romina; 1956
Bucaresti – B-dul Nicolae Balcescu, Republica Populara Romina; 1956

6.20 am. [Thu, 4 Oct 1956] The weather is warm to hot. Somewhere in the 70’s – They are having an Indian Summer, I am told, after a cold September. The leaves have just begun to fall off the thousands of trees which are in this capital. The Bucharestians are extremely park conscious and in addition to what were obviously many fine parks & practically all tree lined streets. The Republic has extended the park lands & playing fields. God what a sentence!

This city has for the past century been under the influence of French culture, which has resulted in a lighter & more elegant approach to architecture & city layout. Practically all the streets look like ceremonial drives. The approach in from the airport is really fine. Two, single way broad streets flanked by trees, parks, and ritzy ex-bourgeois homes (now legations & what not). This hotel happily in the classiest centre & almost alongside the art gallery, is obviously a posh reminder of the pre war days. High class & kept in good order, good service. Telephones in rooms, H & C water, bidets, service call buttons, nice carpets. Just so. A fine dining room, good menu, with many items orchestra, good wine. All is provided, & whatever we do, or have, is fixed up by the girl who signs a chit. They even gave me an envelope with 500+ something lei in it, for spending money. (The average wage for a month here is 600 lei.) Am getting treated like a fighting cock. I like the city – in appearance, as I said, much gayer, most of the buildings light in colour, off whites & cream etc, rather like Sydney. Nice sight from the air too with lakes & a river. Most noticeable is the absence of motor cars. There are singularly few and these constantly blowing horns to clear the myriads of pedestrians who seem to swarm all over the streets. The cars they have are mostly Russian made. Plenty of trams full to the eye teeth. Great contrast in clothing. Some very unkempt – some extra spruce. However, more of that later. I really haven’t seen anything on foot yet. Last night we went for a walk round the shops. Big crowds. Practically all the shops are state owned & show a variety of utilitarian goods. Some few of the state shops are now beginning to feature more individual & better quality stuff, which naturally becomes dearer. A few privately owned shops specialise in hand made wear with the style improved & also the price.

The govt. is really out to raise the cultural level of the people. Books are very cheap, plenty of exhibitions, concerts and plays. I did see an open air theatre & was quite impressed – must attend a performance there. Sport too is intensely catered for. They have built a big concrete Olympiad bowl with a fine field & running tracks etc. They have bull dozed the earth up into a great round ring & poured concrete seats all around the field. 100,000 people capacity. Nearby is the nuttiest thing ever. A high tower with a desk on top. The tower is nearly 300 ft high & is for those who like to try a parachute jump. My interpreter is not of these. Quite a few cinemas showing Russian & Continental films. I am to meet the gentlemen from the Institute this morning – and will then know what’s what.

Most likely looking out over the rooftops and courtyard below fr Most likely looking out over the rooftops and courtyard below fr

[Believed to be the view from Wep’s room on the fifth floor of the Athénée Palace Hotel, Bucharest, Romania; Oct 1956]

It is a lovely morning with sun streaming over the roof tops beyond the courtyard below. I am on the fifth floor of the hotel. There’s not much to add at the present except to say that I feel quite relaxed although tired. I’m happy about my quarters & the city, and am sure everything will be very pleasant.

Lots of love darling – for you an imagined kiss & a frolic – for Graham a big affectionate pat on the head – and for Trellie a vulgar tickle.

Bill

P.S. Am getting the lass (Stefania Rotaru by name) to help me get Graham some music of Rumanian folk songs & some records.

The Rumanian cookery is based on French lines.

Another, & some more of the aforementioned thoughts.

Bye now!

At the moment I am standing in the street in the sun outside the hotel. There is a late American Chrysler standing here – and the folk are around it like flies. Got an American No. plate on it too. ODD.

 1956 MM-DD WEP Romania_0034

Strada Episcopiei 1-3 Bucharest, Romania

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