Europe 1931--1934

  At graduation, he who came first in the class always won the McLennan travelling scholarship of $1000. In our year, the faculty had agreed that the runner up would be recommended for a Province od Quebec scholarship, never theretofore given to an architect from McGill. Montgomery came first and got the scholarship: I came second and the appropriate letter went off to Quebec. But it was always a long shot, and in any case the award would not be announced for a couple of months, so in order that Monty and I could at least spend the summer together in England, Dad paid my passage, and on June 10 the family gave me a big send-off on the ``Duchess of York'' to Southampton---Monty was to follow 2 or 3 weeks later.

The ship was not very full and I had a 4-berth ``tourist'' cabin to myself. The passenger list was made up mostly of American and a few Canadian Rotarians and their wives and/or daughters en route to a convention in Vienna. Among the others were Mrs. Eve (aunt of Dick) and her sons Brian and Dennis, from Guilford (Surrey), who invited me---a loner---to join their table for meals. There was also Alan Gordon, a cruise director for Raymond Whitcomb Travel, who was in charge of the Rotarian crowd---which did not prevent him joining ours, which included also two other Canadian fellows and four girls, two American, one English and one French. This group segregated itself from the masses and spent a very enjoyable 7 days on board. (Later on, the Eves were very kind to me, often having me for weekends at their home in Guilford, and at Easter 1933 taking me as their guest for a long week-end in Amsterdam).

Arrived in London June 17 (or 18 by boat-train, I spent my first two and a half weeks visiting my three aunts and related cousins and their friends: the de Lotbinières at Crowthorne, Violet Howden and her son Ian at Taplow opposite Maidenhead, Aunt Alice and the Marriotts at Streatham and the Stevensons in London. This amounted to a crash introductory course in the English, their society, their country and London. On my second night, from Crowthorne, the de Lotbinières took me to the Aldershot Tattoo, a truly brilliant spectacle faultlessly presented---including perfect detail control of the heavy traffic to it on the approach roads for miles around.

On July 4 I met Montgomery at his boat train, and three days later we purchased our Singer touring car for £ 80, and set off on an 8-week tour of England and Scotland: south-west to Exeter, noth up the west side to Edinburgh, clockwise around Scotland---Oban, to Inverness, Elgin, Aberdeen--- and south down the east side to Norwich and back via Cambridge to Taplow where we spent some three weeks sponging rather shamefully on Aunt Violet, as our headquarters while we made our next plans.

(For more detail of these days, should anyone want more, but mostly for laughs, I suggest reference to my diaries June '31 to Jan '33, as well as to various 'photo albums.)

It was during this interlude---specifically on Sept. 5---that I had a cable from Dad telling me that I had been given the Provincial Scholarship, and furthermore that, quite unexpectedly, the $1200 p.a. was renewable for two extra years. This was tremendous luck for me (and must have been a rather bitter frustration for Monty). So, after another few weeks in London, Monty and I set sail on October 8 from Millwall Dock, aboard the ``S.S.Mode'', a Swedish freighter, via the Kiel canal and the Baltic for Stockholm. We entered its harbour, through the archipelago, at dawn, with the sun reflected off the church spires and the 3 crowns of the town hall tower.

We spent a month in Stockholm entranced by Swedish architecture old and new, and charmed by the people. There we initiated a policy which was to prove very successful---to call upon the No. 1 architect of any city we visited. In Stockholm it was white-haired Ragner Östberg, famous in that he had just won the R.I.B.A. gold medal for the new Town Hall. He could not have been more hospitable, spending a whole morning with us, arranging for a whole day's tour visiting new industrial and housing projects as guests of the Svenska Coöperative Society, and finally giving a wonderful dinner party for us--- two young students---at his home, with his two daughters, 2 young Swedish architects (and 11 different alcoholic beverages with which to exchange sköls throughout the evening). From Stockholm we went to Gothenberg and then Copenhagen for a couple of weeks, and there we changed our plans and, instead of going to Germany and clockwise through Europe in the winter months, we returned to London. On November 24 we crossed from Esbjerg to Harwich in the worst sea I ever experienced: we had starved ourselves on the trip from Copenhagen, to save money, the stuffed ourselves on rich Danish food (included) on the boat before it left port. I was so sick all the way that I genuinely wished I could die.

Royal Institute of British Architects,

26th November, 1931

    Mr. J. Campbell Merritt and his friend
Mr. Montgomery come to me with strong recommendation
from the School of Architecture at McGill University.
Having completed their studies for the A.R.I.B.A., they
are over here to get further experience.
    They are particularly interested in some of the
newer methods of construction. The writer will be
greatly obliged for any assistance given to them, or
any opportunities afforded them for seeing what the
mother country has to show in this direction.

We stayed in London for 12 weeks before resuming our tour of Europe. Having spent one night in the Strand Palace Hotel we were lucky to find, on the third try, a room in a quite luxurious boarding house on Beaufort Street. just off the Kings Road in Chelsea, with most congenial landlord and -lady, fellow boarders and neighbours, all of whom did much to entertain us. We worked in the R.I.B.A. library (where I learned much about Euroean architecture not learnt at McGill) mostly, and we took very good advantage of all London had to offer---educaltionally, culturally, socially and playfully. It was a truly great interlude. (Again, see diary Vol. 3)

Then, at the end of February I had my first flight, when Monty and I took an Imperial Airways ``Heracles'' to le Bourget and Paris. There we put up in a ``confort moyen'' hotel in the Rue du Bac, Rive Gauche. My scholarship (particularly its renewability for the full 3 years) required that I report to the Quebec representative in Paris. He objected to my travel plans and wanted me to go to the Beaux Arts school in Rome; this caused me a couple of weeks worry and much negotiating, but I fianlly got my way with a little help. (A quotation from le Corbusier in one of my notebooks annoyed the gentleman considerably but may secretly have tempered his judgement" ``To send architectural students to Rome is to cripple them for life''.) This meant that I could take things leisurely, whereas poor Monty with ony a year to spend, after only a week in Paris had to take off on a restricted itinerary. So he set out for Stuttgart and a tour of Germany and the low countries, and back to London, returning to Canada in September.

A week after Montgomery's departure, I headed south, alone, en route to Italy. It was mid-March, and after a stop of a couple of days in Lyon I had it in mind to see some Alps and hopefully to get a spot of spring sun and even some skiing. So from Chambery I took a side trip up to the village of Bourg-St.Maurice and there found snow. At a good little family hotel, that cost me 40 francs ($1.60) full board, I was able to rent skis and borrow the patrons boots! In retrospect I shudder at my foolhardiness, but for three days I skied alone in unknown country, cimbing in sticky heavy snow, watching small and large avalanches on the nearby petit St. Bernard and surounding mountains, and resting in hot spring sunshine high above the village. Had I realized how foolish I was I would not have enjoyed it as I did, but I got away with it luckily and was certainly delighted with my first experience of Alps. (There were two more in store for me

On my way again I stopped briefly in Milan, then much longer in Florence then (foolishly shunning Rome because I thought ``too much classic''!) I turned north to Venice and Verona, and all these three cities I found beautiful and fascinating---although much rain in Venice was depressing and took the sparkle out of it. In Florence I met Howard Ross, a Montreal friend (later McGill Chancellor).`On Easter Sunday he and his siter (Mrs.`Birks) took me to a fascinating religious ceremony ``Scoppio del Carro'', which involved a mechanical ``dive'' which, travelling on a wire, came whoosing out og the Duomo, swung at high speed three times around the Piazza, where several hundred natives and tourists were gathered, and finally set off a great display of fireworks with the flame carried all along in its beak. In Florence, Fiesole and Verona I spent some time sketching. But I was impatient for some modern buildings (perhaps it was subconscious recall of le Corbusier's comment that turned me away from Rome ) and so from Verona I went direct to Munich.

The new German architecture was refreshing and exciting to discover. I had already been doing most of my sightseeing on foot, but in all the German cities I outdid myself covering the centres and the suburbs in long all day walks in all weather. In Munich I bought a Zeiss ``baby-box'' camera, for very few marks, which enabled me to record everything I wanted cheaply and much quicker than sketching. I have an album full of the tiny snaps.) In the Hofbrauhaus I tried, again, to like beer, but still was able to down only half a stein. Leaving Munich, a porter at the railway station aksed me ``Nichtraucher?'', to which I replied ``Nein, Stuttgart!''

I was in Stuttgart on April 11, the day the second election was held in which Hitler was involved, and my diary records an early return bulletin: Hindenburg: 22,200; Hitler: 8,100; Thalmann: 3,700. About a month later in Berlin I stood at the edge of a crowd listening to Hitler ranting over a loudspeaker---I don't remember that I actually saw him. Eight months later Hindenburg appointed him Chancellor, on his way to Dictatorship. From Stuttgart to Heidelberg to Frankfurt, and thence to Mainz to board a Rhine steamer for the marvellous down-river trip with all the castles to Cologne. Thence by train to Dusseldorf & Magdeberg, two cities with particularly interesting buildings, and on to Berlin, and there I spent a month in a comfortable and reasonable ``christlicher hospiz'' presided over by a little old hunchback porter named Twietz. I got to know the city well, and liked it. I wlaked and walked, sometimes taking a bus or U-bahn to a new siedlung and tramping from one new housing development to another: one was called ``Oncle Toms Hutte''; another was at Spandau with the prison where later Rudolphe Hesse was to be kept. I pestered officials and thus got into and was shown through numerous new buildings like the Broadcasting House and its Funkturm, and Templehof Airport, etc. Following policy I even called on the famous Erich Mendelsohn in his office, when he invited me to tea at his brand new fascinating house on the Potsdam lakes, and gave me a note to his publisher for books at half price!

Thanks to Frau Schultz (sister of Helen's friend Kathleen Fyshe, aunt of Hazel's & my friend Tom Fyshe), ex-Montrealer married to a German surgeon, I had quite an enjoyable social life in Berlin. She had me to a few meals and got me into a students' club, Humbold Haus, where I met a number of students of various nationalities including a couple of English girls whith whom I took in various entertainments ranging from a couple of Wagner's ``Ring'', a few concerts, ``Die Schöne Heena'', to the only auto race I ever saw.

From Berlin I went to Hamburg where I concentrated entirely on buildings and more day long excursions on foot. Once after prowling around all day in heavy rain I was on my way back to my hospiz, thoroughly drenched, when down a side street I spotted an interesting looking new building. It turned out to be a synagogue and I presented myself, looking like a drowned rat, and my R.I.B.A. student introductory card (in several languages) at the side door. The woman who answered took one look at me, barely glanced at the card, closed the door in my face mumbling ``ein Augenblick bitte'', returning seconds later and offering me 5 pfenning. Spluttering a protest, and ``no thanks'', I shoved the card under her nose again---she was then most apologetic and I was allowed in to see and sketch.

Next I arrived in Amsterdam, on June 1 (1932), where I spent a week or so before setting out---on the anniversary of my leaving Montreal---on my hotel-keeper's bicycle on a two week circuit of Zuid Holland. This took me first to Hilversum where I discovered for myself the exciting town hall, and true to policy called on its designer, the cuty architect Dudok, and got his blessing to study and sketch the famous building, and all his schools. Then after a side jaunt to a couple of the quaint oldcostumed villages by the Zuider Zee, I went on clockwise through Utrecht, Gouda, Rotterdam, Delft, the Hague (and Scheveningen) and up the coast to Haarlem and so back to Amsterdam. At Noordwyk on the sea I climbed the dyke and was able to see across the flat country the spres and towers of each and all of the cities and towns I had been through on the bicycle. The only rain occurred in Haarlem, and I avoided it spending a pleasant few hours in the Franz Hals museum. Another few days in AMsterdam I spent largely in the Rijks Museum and other galleries admiring Rembrandt and the Dutchmen I liked.

June 17, at den Haag, completed my full first year in Europe. It had cost me, including all travel since landing at Southampton, almost exactly $1200, the amount of the Provincial Scholarship for a year.

In Belgium I made thre short stops inAntwerp, Brussels and Ghent, none of which interested me very much, and then spent a few days in Bruges, chiefly for its watercolour potential (but achieved no success). Thence I did a tour of the battlefields and monuments of W.W.1. I was being more of a tourist than a student at this point, but I did pay my respects to Amiens cathedral before finishing off my 5 month continental tour back in Paris.

This time I spent five whole weeks in and around Paris, and thanks to the fact that a few Montreal pals were about and Alan Gordon, my old friend from the ``Duchess of York'', was also in town, I did and saw a lot that I cetainly would not have by myself. With the boys from home there were nights on the town visiting the well known spots. It was in Lipps brasserie that I at last took to beer. On one of these pub crawls, on the rue Blondel my friend DaveMcKenzie seemed to have disappeared, and since he was always unpredicatble and in need of looking after, I plunged into the nearby well-known establishment which was not on our itinerary) and barged around looking for him until I was bodily ejected, only to find Dave happily sitting on a window sill with his feet dangling just above my head. Through Alan Gordon and his travel business associates, as well as some of his American tourist clients, I enjoyed a good many free meals at gourmet restaurants. All in all, my spartan living while travelling about chnaged in Paris to relative debauchery and cancelling out of my economies; but I am sure it was all highly educational and well worth it---at any rate it was a lot of fun. It ended up with a few seaside days in Etretat on the Normandy coast, and a day in Rouen whence to Dieppe -- Newhaven and England.

So, after six months on the Continent, I was back in London in mid-August 1932, and with my friends in Beauford Street, and of course at Taplow. Montgomery had gone home to Canada. Don Blair, another McLennan scholarship winner ('32) arrived and he and I spent 2 weeks on the Isle of Wight, before he took off on his continent tour. Then Mother came over for a month to visit her sisters and see me. So no work was done for another six weeks!

On October 3 I started in on a course, chiefly design, at the Architectural Association School in Bedford Square. The contemporary architecture of Europe was very much in evidence there and it was quite a new experience. I moved into London House, a very comfortable residence in Bloomsbury for students in various disciplines, and of various nationalities, creeds and ages from all over the Empire. And so started a different phase with lots of serios work and somewhat less gadding about but none the less enjoyable. I managed to hold my own fairly successfully at the A.A. and also got in a good deal of extracurricular ``culture''---lectures, theatre, music---as well as some recreation and exercise.

The Christmas ``vac'' was spent in and above Chamonix with Mackenzie and Blair: there was no snow below Mont Blanc and we moved up to a small village at the valley head where we found enough snow to slide around a bit and where we spent New Year's Eve with the villagers drinking mostly their wine. One rainy day we walked through a half-mile long tunnel into Switzerland and back, in order to get our passports stamped! At Easter that year, 1933, the Eves took me as their guest to Amsterdam for a few days. I seemed to acquire the English habit of dashing over to the Continent at every opportunity.

The summer of 1933 was spent mostly in France. I started in Paris for a few days with Alan Gordon and spent a week-end on the beach at Granville in Normandy. Thence, alone, I visited Mont. St Michel and went south via Le Mans to the Loire and travelled up it from west of Tours through to Orleans, looking at the Châteaux, and back via Chartres to Paris. My memory of sequence on this trip is hazy, and I had ceased to keep a diary back inJanuary in the routine of London and the A.A. But at some point I found myself in Brittany where I spent a few weeks at a delightful little pension called ``A l'Abri des Flots'' right on the shore outside Cancale, on the east side of the St. Malo peninsula. There, in the company of Eric Riordan (of Montreal) and May Riach, a rather special one of the Chelsea friends, we loafed, and walked and bussed about the area---St. Malo, Dinard, St. Servau, and out the Pointe de Grouin where we found lots to sketch and photograph. Our patron at ``l'Abri'', a fisherman, would produce freshly caught fish for our breakfast on the terrace every morning, and we ate, sketched & slept and lazed very happily before returning to our respective home bases.

In October I registered for the Town Planning course at the University of London, and that kept me well occupied most of the winter. I still lived in London House, and the route to work was still via Guilford Street and Russell Square and behind the British Museum. Later, for about six weeks, I worked in a rather unimportant architect's office just to see how the English handled their practices. But again, at both Christmas and Easter I was off out of England for a holiday.

That Christmas, on my third attempt, I fanally found real skiing, going for two weeks to Kitzbühel along with Dave Mackenzie, who was doing medicine at Cambridge, and a group of Oxford and Cambridge lads and lasses. We spent all our days on the surrounding mountains---the Hanneckahm, the Kitzbüler Horn, which we had to climb; and the Ehrenbachhöhe which had a funicular but which we also sometimes climbed to save money. We used skins, and heel springs for the first time, and we had almost perfect snow conditions the whole time. And in ignorance we skied various places where we should not have been in winter---once across an avalanche fall, once edging aross a steep icy slope well above the tree line where a side-slip would have meant trouble. After a day's trip on the mountains we would ski home along the valley stopping at little farmhouse pubs for a litre of helle bier. And the evenings were sometimes spent dancing at the swank hotel (where the Prince of Wales went the following year putting Kitzbühel on the jet-set map), or more often in pubs---bierkellers---dancing to accordion music and watching the local boys doing the schuhplätler. Once, after midnight, we were singing our way home down the main street when, on an uppermost balcony of one of the chalets there appeared a very irate old gentleman, in nightshirt and nightcap, who berated us for making so much noise. Friend Mackenzie, always the happiest of the gang, could think of nothing better but to shy a snowball at him ---and hit him. Within a very few moments all four of us had been arrested by the local Heimwehr (the militia then stationed in the town to offset increasing Nazi activity---there were occasionally swastika bonfires lit up on nearby hillsides). We were marched off to the local knink where we cooled our heels for half an hour or so until the garrison commander apeared, turning out to be the old boy Dave hed hit with the snowball! He was quite angry for a while, but remembered he had been a boy himself once, and he sent us off to bed with a warning and a grin. On our second day in Kitzbühel, Dave and I, and one other of our group, had the temerity to enter a local slalom race: obviously, as Canadians, we knew all about skiing---even though we had done no real skiing for three winters. I had the bad luck to run No. 3, and was thrown off the course about half way down, having sat on it several times. I think the other two did better, but certainly did not place.

Because my lectures at the University started earlier than those at Oxford & Cambridge, I had to cut my Kitzbühel holiday a bit short. So I was given the job of escorting two English school boys home to London---their mother wanting to stay longer. This meant that for the only time in Europe I travelled first class, with sleeper, and at Victoria was met and driven home to London House in a Rolls Royce with a chaufeur.

With the second term of Town Planning at U. of L., and a final 6 or 8 months of dear old London, and England, my three year postponement of getting down to earning my living gradually began to wind down, but not without a few final flings. At Easter, again with Mackenzie, I took a 13 day cruise on the S.S. Montrose (C.P.O.S.---the fare I believe was £ 13) from Liverpool to Lisbon, Gibraltar, Casabalnca, Madeira and back to Southampton. We each got fairly involved on board, and frequently saw each other only at meals or in our cabin at night, but each was able (of necesssity) to disengage within a short time after returning to our respective academic pursuits. And again, in May, Mackenzie, who was doing post-grad medicine at Cambridge, invited me to his college's (Trinity Hall) ``1 & 3'' Ball, part of Cambridge Eights Week. I borrowed a car and took along my friend May Riach, and a new set of tails I had blown myself to, and a very good time as had by all---including the traditional all night dance followed by breakfast and punting on the river still in ball attire.

I still lived in London House to the end, but of course visited the aunts, especially those at Crowthorne and Taplow, and spent a lot of time in Chelsea and some tripping about the ``home counties''. And early in August 1934, I said goodbye to London friends and with very considerable sadness took a night train at King's Cross for Edinburgh and thence to Grangemouth up the Forth, and sailed on the ``Melmore Head'', around the north of Scotland, for Montreal. I spent much of the voyage sitting on deck trying to play the accordion I had bought a year earlier from Brian Eve. And 13 days later, having blown the ship's siren at, and been answered by, the Metis lighthouse, I disembarked at Sorel and somehow caught the night St. Lawrence Special to Metis---the only place I had ever felt any homesickness for---where the family was summering as usual. I was able to stand the Metis ambiance for only 3 days, and took the train alone to 90 Westmount Blvd. It seems my outlook on life had changed.