In one of
my previous blogs I mentioned the suffragist Lady Emily Lutyens. Emily was née Bulwer Lytton, daughter of
the Viceroy of India Robert, and wife of one
of the most prominent architects of her time, Edwin Lutyens. Edwin became
famous as a country-house architect, but even more so as the architect of New
Delhi, a job which he got through his father-in-law of course. Emily
became a member of the Theosophical Society in 1910. As an upper-class lady she became a pillar in the financial and
social support of the Society. Theosophical connections or influence do not interest me much this time, however. I am more interested in the architect Edwin himself and his connections. Because these eventually, in a wide arch and only indirectly, come back to my own family. More precisely: my mother. It is too amusing a story not to tell, with an unusual twist, interesting historical dimensions and even a connection with art! It also serves to tell how someone can strike a deep note within someone else, without ever hearing how effective the strike had been.
In 2008 my now late mother
Nely (she died16/8/2010) dug into a
box full of scraps and pictures and pulled out two old invitation cards, the
crease held together with Sellotape. There were letters written on the back of
both cards. ‘Look. I have always kept these. Isn’t this funny?’, she asked me,
and handed me the cards.
I asked her for the story behind it.
As a
fifteen-year old girl my mother was naturally taught English as part of the curriculum
of the Marnix Gymnasium in Rotterdam. In one of her study books she found a
model letter, addressed to someone living at ‘17 Leicester Road, London, West
1’. On impulse she sent a letter to this address, curious to know who would be
living there. After quite some time, on 19 February 1939,
she indeed received a postcard, coming from 17 Leicester Road, Wanstead, London E 2. It read:
As there is no Leicester Road in “London, West 1”, your letter wandered around London, until the postman thought it might be intended for me. So I am sending you this card, as you request, in order to show you that your message had been delivered + to express the hope that you will continue your English studies in which you have already made good progress.
I know
Rotterdam.
(Charles Bressey)
Because at that time it was popular for teenagers to have pen friends abroad, my mother wrote this Mr. Charles Bressey immediately again, asking if he could help her find a female pen friend. There came no answer. To her utter surprise however, she came across a newspaper item on him a few weeks later. It was about a film on his work and his person. He appeared to be a well-known engineer! Immediately my mother sent a letter, in which she wrote: ‘Now I know why you don’t answer: you are too busy!’
A while
later she received an answer. It was written on the back of two invitation
cards.
Dear Miss
Luitse.
As you have
been so clever in finding out all about me, I think you deserve a letter, and
then I will ask one of the girls at our high school to continue the
correspondence.
I have just
come (18.15) from the Reception given to the French President, and I had
intended to go home to dress for dinner with the Timber Trade Federation but
there is not [enough] time, so I have come to a restaurant for a meal and while it is
cooking I will write you a note on the back of the invitation cards. My writing
is not so clear as yours, unfortunately, owing to my habit of dictating to
stenographers.
It amused
me to read your cutting from a Dutch paper about the film concerning London,
upon which I have been engaged, - for I had seen no mention of it in English
papers (which I have little time to read). This year I am particularly busy
because I am president of the Chartered Surveyors’ Institution and also of the
Junior Institution of Engineers. Thus I have little leisure to bestow upon my
two grandsons.
In bidding you “goodbye”, let me say how much I
hope that you will play a useful, helpful part in life and try to make other
people happy, - at the sacrifice of your own interests:
“Und setzet ihr nicht das Leben ein,
Nie wird euch das Leben gewonnen sein.”
(I expect you read German poetry.)
With all good wishes
sincerely yours
(Bressey’s signature)
Indeed, the
two cards are dated on the same day: 22 March 1939. I hope Bressey had already taken his
decorations with him that morning, which were required at the dinner
that evening…
At home I
searched internet for information on this man. Judging by his invitation cards,
he should surface somewhere in the upper regions of society.
He did - although
the Wiki page on him had not been published yet; it was published 14 February
2009.
Sir Charles
Herbert Bressey (3/1/1874 – 14/4/1951) was the son of an architect, received a
thorough education and went to France and Germany for further schooling. During
World War I he was a military road engineer in France and Belgium. In 1919
Bressey became Divisional Road Engineer for the London area, climbed up in
the hierarchy until he succeeded his boss Sir Henry Maybury as the Director-General
of Roads in 1928. In 1935 he was appointed by the Minister of Transport to
prepare a report on London's future road transport requirements, up to the
mid-1960s. He retired in 1938. 
One needs
to know that motorized traffic was booming at the time and that speed and
uncontrolled driving made heaps of victims in London. Because of that, in 1934 the
Minister of Transport, Sir (again…) Leslie Hore-Belisha had introduced the
driving test, and a beacon - black and white striped pole, orange lighted ball on top - marking pedestrian crossings. This 'Belisha beacon' still is a typical, unique feature
of the London traffic system today.
While he
studied European cities and called on experts for the next few years, Bressey was
assisted in his research work for the report by Edwin Lutyens. Was that why he
knew Rotterdam? Most likely. The final report of the research, The Highway
Development Survey, 1937 for Greater London, was published on 16 May 1938.
In it, Bressey proposed a series of high capacity motorways radiating outwards
from the city, triple-story parking garages, large roundabouts and he made recommendations for a series of orbital roads around
the city. 
Searching again
recently for this blog, someone had been so kind to upload the film my mother must
have read about in the newspaper in 1939. It is called The City, from the series If War Should Come. The
film is a long stretch, but worth viewing:
My main interest at this moment – and I’m sure it would have been my mother’s in the first place – is meeting the man behind the invitation cards. In person. Bressey shows himself not only as a model British well-educated gentleman, but also as a very shy and modest person, hardly looking into the camera at all. His ardent love for his work shows in the way he directs the attention away from himself immediately to the plans, and in the way he moves his fingers over the maps and touches the paper.
Bressey
kept his promise: my mother did get her pen friend after all. However: it was
no success. There might have been too many cultural differences. Besides, Rotterdam
was bombed shortly after, on 14 May 1940. Attention was quickly needed elsewhere. After the war
my newly-wed parents emigrated to Canada, on the day Bressey
died.
My mother
never forgot Bressey's lines of poetry. She lived her life accordingly and once
in a while recited them, moralistically, to us, children. Back then, we
hadn’t the foggiest about the story behind it or who wrote the lines, and
she never told us. Now I know: they were taken from the war trilogy Wallensteins Lager (1797/8), written by the
German philosopher Friedrich Schiller.