(Author: Gwynne Schrire, Vol. 74, #1, Pesach, 2019)
My hands were genuinely shaking as I opened the packet I had just received and inside it found a very old scrapbook, nearly 120 years old as it turned out. A frail, tattered red cloth-bound book with Newspaper Cuttings inscribed in gold along the leather spine, it was filled with press clippings dealing with such subjects as the Anglo-Boer War, Queen Victoria, the death of Cecil John Rhodes and other ephemera from that time. There were also articles on Bringing up Our Children from the weekly The Gentlewoman and humorous takes on relationships between the sexes, one of which read as follows:
There was once a woman who held very broad views. Of these views she often spoke, as is the habit of those who hold them. But though she was very advanced, she had her little plans, just like the rest of us. One day, she was talking with a man who was interested in her and therefore, as she thought, in her views. For even advanced women make this error occasionally.
“If I were married”, she said, “I should never for one moment expect my husband to confide his past to me. I should consider it to be none of my business. Nor should I feel that he was necessarily immoral if he looked at any other woman but me. For that is idiotic, considering that men are only human”.
The man smiled approvingly. “You are quite right”, he said, “If more women were like you the world would be a happier place. But few are so broad minded”.“And then”, said the woman, “I should expect the same tolerance from him; for women are only human too”.
The man drew away his chair. “I fear”, said he somewhat coldly, “that you are carrying matters a little too far. The constitution of society requires some foundation. There are certainly things a man has a right to expect from his wife”.And he engaged himself to a girl who had just come from a convent school”.1
It is thanks to Stanley Dorman and his nephew Eddie Winterstein, who came across the scrapbook along with other papers at an auction that I was able to view this window into the past, now handed over for safekeeping to the Isaac and Jessie Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town.
Scrapbooking is a popular hobby and helps preserve documents important to those engaged in it – invitations, mementoes of holidays, theatre programmes and relevant newspaper cuttings. Nowadays, craft teachers and hobby shops are available to provide the necessary raw materials, information, ideas and ornamental stickers. However, the hobby is older than one might think. The word ‘scrapbook’ was first used in 1821 and its use as a verb was first recorded in 1879. A hundred years ago, scrapbooking was as popular as it is today and, like us, our Victorian ancestors used to glue into specially bound books newspaper clippings on subjects they were interested in, jokes, cartoons, visiting cards, invitations, stickers and other such items. As an article in an 1894 copy of The Lafayette Gazette said, material pasted into a scrapbook helps us “to keep for another time what one day made us smile or weep; a biography, a history, a journal written by a thousand other hands, and yet our own”.2 And this is what the book I saw achieves.
What was in the scrapbook and to whom did it belong? Whoever kept it was most unsystematic, pasting in articles from a wide assortment of papers with little chronological or thematic order. It starts in April 1899 with articles from two Johannesburg-based papers, the Standard and Diggers News and the Star, on the sudden death, in Lisbon from smallpox, of Mr W Campbell. This was glued on top of a copy of the Rand Jubilee Address to Queen Victoria that had been issued by Mr Campbell, who had taken a principal part in organising her diamond jubilee celebrations on the Witwatersrand. He must have been a close acquaintance judging by the number of articles about him and the fact that whoever began the scrapbook chose to begin it with two of them.
The next two clippings, entitled “Jews and the war” (possibly from the Argus) and “Jews in the war” (Cape Times) are dated eighteen months later. Both refer to an article in the Jewish World of 11 October 1900,3in which that paper’s editor John Raphael had complained to Potchefstroom Lt-General Edwards about his order regarding receipts for supply of horses, mules and wagons, which was intended to prevent the burghers from being swindled by the Jews. Raphael complained that the order was unfair and cruel, particularly as so many Jews were serving in the British army, with some having lost their lives or been wounded. He mentioned several names in this regard. One was ‘Mr Sam Marks of Pretoria’, who in the despatches issued by the War Office the previous week was specially mentioned for the assistance he had given in ameliorating the condition of the British prisoners in Waterval. Mr Marks, although a resident in the then existing republic, did for those that which others who were not burghers failed to do. The Cape Times article referred to his “unique distinction” of being mentioned in the despatch.
Did the scrapbook belong to someone Jewish?
A few pages later is an unidentified article, “Purchases of Estates”, which mentions inter alia that Isaac Lewis of the well-known firm of Messrs. Lewis and Marks had just purchased, for about £100 000, the beautiful estates in Kent and Sussex known as Hedgebury Park. Covering about 4436 acres, this included a magnificent mansion often visited by Disraeli. Lewis, the article states, would “ere long quit his beautiful house in Fitzjohn’s Avenue, St Johns Wood”.
Next follow articles from the Cape Times written in May 1900 by Rudyard Kipling about his visit to South Africa. Turn over the page, and it is now January 1901. The first clipping is about Dr W J Leyds,4followed by a Daily Mail of October 1901 on the Tobacco Trust and a 10 September 1900 item in the Natal Mercury e n t i t l e d ‘A corner in foodstuffs”.
Was the scrapbook compiled by a tradesman who dealt in tobacco and food and who was now sticking in at random news cuttings about people he knew that he had been collecting for a long time?
Still back in 1900, ‘Kruger’s Flight (Argus)is followed by a piece in the Natal Mercuryreading, “A new Johannesburg-Vereeniging railway is the only work going on. Everyday scores of people go out to see the work going on”, together with a clipping of Field-Marshall Lord Robert’s5 route to Pretoria showing all the railway sidings through which he would pass (Argus, 23.5.1900). After Cape Timesarticles on ‘Tobacco War Leaders’ and on Baden Powell Day6 comes a special Cape Times supplement on ‘Roberts Over The Vaal’
20 May 1900). Thereafter follow pages and pages dealing with the death of Queen Victoria (22 January 1901). These include a fifteen-page illustrated supplement on the Queen’s life and a clipping headed ‘News of the Day’ providing the invaluable information that she had reigned for sixty three years, seven months, two days and six and a half hours. The Daily Mail’s Edgar Wallace (later a popular detective writer who wrote 957 short stories and over 170 novels) favoured the readers with copies of messages he had received from native chiefs expressing their grief. Khama, Chief of the Bamgwato, telegraphed from Palapye, “She carried me in her arms. She was our ruler and father and mother, there is pain in all our hearts”. A Pondo chief telegraphed, “Tonight I shall look in the sky for another Star”.7
Loyalty to the Queen and the British Empire, in which Jews lived as equal citizens, formed an important part of Jewish identification in the Cape Colony, where the Jewish community shared in the fervent royalism of other British citizens. The community also had significant links to Anglo Jewry. A number of the original members of the Cape Town Hebrew Congregation (CTHC) had come from England as part of the 1820 Settler movement, synagogue services followed English norms and customs (the liturgy had been taken over almost entirely from the English Minhag) and the community’s ministers had trained in or been appointed from London by the British Chief Rabbi.8 At the consecration of the first synagogue in Cape Town on 15 September 1849, prayers were said for the Queen and the Royal Family.9 When the Green & Sea Point Hebrew Congregation drew up its constitution in 1926, it still contained clauses stating that “the form of the service shall be in accordance with the ritual adopted by the United Hebrew Congregation of the British Empire which is under the spiritual direction of the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire for the time being.”10
Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 was marked throughout the Empire by demonstrations of patriotism, in which Jews everywhere participated. The Jewish community of South Africa commissioned a magnificent stinkwood casket made by DE Isaacs & Co, a prominent furniture maker and committee member of the CTHC, and designed by Walter Isaacs. Measuring 24 by twelve by ten inches, it had a delicate carving of the Tables of the Covenant and the Ten Commandments surmounted by a crown on the top. Its corners were adorned with four richly-chased gold dolphins and rested on eagle’s claws and wings and the front of the case was ornamented with an elegant gold shield with the arms of the Cape Colony in relief with the Magen David in gold on the lid. It was small wonder that this gift was exhibited in the Imperial Institute together with gifts from other countries.11
And what did this magnificent and over the top stinkwood case enclose? An illuminated album containing what was later described by Rabbi Israel Abrahams as “the patriotic felicitation and devout good wishes of the Community”. The Paarl Hebrew Congregation, which had a close relationship with the CTHC’s minister Rev AP Bender, contributed three guineas towards the production of this ”souvenir album” to be presented as a jubilee gift and towards “framing photographs of same as a remembrance”, and one of its members, Charles Joel, decorated his Central Hotel with bunting along its length.12 The Cape Town Jewish Boys and Girls Guild set up by Rev Bender sent a donation to the fund for the enlargement of the new Somerset Hospital.13 Far more practical than an ornamented casket.14 The CTHC had a full choral service for the occasion, “which left a deep impression on all the worshippers.”15So it is not surprising that when the Queen died four years later, there was an equally over the top outpouring of loyalist grief.
A memorial service was held in the synagogue on Saturday, 2 February 1901, and attended, as noted by Rabbi Abrahams in his history of the congregation, by all the leading Jews in the city including members of parliament, military officers and representatives of the law. The scrapbook includes the programme of this memorial service for her Most Gracious Majesty.16Not only has this been preserved, but glued into the scrapbook is the ticket admitting Mr Ellia Marks to the Memorial Service, a severe black edged postcard of Queen Victoria sent to “Dear Edie with love from Aunt Bertha” on 15 February 1901 and a black edged envelope addressed to F Marks, Muscliff House, Main Road, Cape Town sent from Hampstead on 25 November.
As an afterthought, on the same page as the postcard is a special edition of Grocott’s Daily Mail, dated 12 October 1899: ‘War Declared!! Martial Law Proclaimed’.17 On the following page is an article dated 17.12.1899 containing a Cape Times Supplement on the Battle of Colenso18 and on the next is an article by Rudyard Kipling and a cartoon:
She: “A man is the most sensible of all animals is he not?”
He (proudly): “Certainly”.
She: “Then I wonder why he doesn’t wear a loose comfortable collar like a dog”.
Thus, although the programme and postcard was not pasted in any order or with any acknowledgement of their importance, for the first time we have been given valuable clues to the identity of the scrapbook owner (and his/their attitude to tight collars). We know who Queen Victoria was but who was Ellia Marks? Who was Edie? Who was Aunt Bertha? Who was F Marks?
Ellia was the brother of Sammy Marks, who in turn was married to Bertha, daughter of Tobias Gutman with whom he had boarded in London as a young man. Guttman had paid for his passage to the Cape and given him a case of knives to sell when he arrived there. From these beginnings, Sammy famously went on to amass a very large fortune, dealing in coal, diamonds, steel, canning, glass, f lour mills, brick and tile factories and second class gin. Sammy went into business with his cousins Isaac and Barnett Lewis. Rabbi Abrahams remarked that “they built their vast fortunes from the humblest beginnings by dint of hard work and innate ability”.19They all joined the CTHC in 1874. Sammy was
generous to the Jewish community20 and loyal to his family, bringing out his younger brothers Ellia and Joseph. He put Ellia in charge of his Vereeniging Estates, which he managed before and during the Anglo-Boer Wa r.21 It explains why Ellia was interested in the progress of the Johannesburg-Vereeniging railway line and the various sidings on the way.
Sammy Marks (seated, left) with cousins Barnett and Isaac Lewis
Ellia married Isaac Lewis’ sister Frederica22and they had three children, Edith, Madge and Alex. No wonder, then, they had clipped the articles recording that Sam Marks had been mentioned in despatches and that his partner Isaac, Frederica’s brother, had bought a large estate.
This identity is corroborated by a confirmation copy of a telegram, on very fine paper not glued in but slipped loose at the back of the scrapbook, dated 6 January 1906. Sent from Johannesburg from “father”, it is addressed to Samuel Alexander Marks of 20 Hyde Park Place, and wishing him loving congratulations on his tenth birthday, with love to mother, Edie and Madge. But by 1906 the enthusiasm for scrapbooking had passed and most of the remaining pages were left blank.
So there we have the scrapbook of this branch of the Marks family – Ellia, his wife Frederica and their children Edie, Madge and Samuel Alexander (Alex), together with information on Ellia’s brother Sam, sister-in-law Bertha and brother-in law Isaac. But who actually kept the scrapbook and was responsible for selecting, clipping and pasting in the articles – Mr or Mrs Marks? And how did it land up a hundred years later with the other papers on auction?
From the 1899 battle of Colenso, the scrapbook skips eighteen months to an advert in the Standard and Diggers News for the products of Sammy Mark’s Hatherly Distillery (4 May 1901) and an Argus announcement that King Edward VII’s ascension to the throne would be proclaimed the next day at Cape Town’s Town House23 (25 January 1901). It is followed by articles on the Rhodes Scholarship, the attempted assassination of America’s President McKinley and on the death of Charlotte Yonge, a well-known authoress – my grandmother had given me one of her books (Cape Times, 2 July 1901).
Soon after, Ellie’s family were ensconced in England, judging by the papers they clipped. Instead of Grocott’s Daily Mail, Standard and Diggers, Cape Times and Argus, they were now reading the Westminster Gazette, Daily Mail, Globe, Pall Mall Gazette or Sun. The family were prolific newspaper readers.
One or more family members must have attended the millenary celebrations of King Arthur in Winchester, as there was a full page from The Daily Mail covering where to go and what to see, and a news cutting refers to a Jewish military service during Chanukah attended by the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayor (Times, 9 December 1901). Perhaps they were there too.
Apart from articles criticising the British lack of success in the Anglo-Boer War, Rhodes’ funeral, a yacht race and a full page on the life of Pasteur, the news cuttings now become more light hearted, with cartoons, jokes and interesting trivia, the diamonds to be worn at the coronation, suitable headgear, unusual shop signs and the gifts given to the new King by the Company Corporation of the City of London as part of his rents inherited from William the Conqueror – half a dozen old horse shoes, 61 nails, two bundles of faggots and a sharp and blunt hatchet. At the risk of gender generalisation, these were more likely to appeal to Frederica than to Ellie. There are also articles of cultural interest – an interview with actor Henry Irving and the sale of relics belonging to Charles Dickens, Charlotte Yonge and Rudyard Kipling. There are a number of articles dealing with the wholesale and retail trade of tobacco.
Seemingly out of place on a page dealing with “The Tobacco struggle: the Imperial Company Economises: Will there be a boycott”? (St James Gazette, no date) is a short clipping from the Lady’s Pictorial of 30 January 1892, which seems to hint at Frederica’s longstanding unhappiness in the way she is disregarded, hints that have also been shown in some of the jokes and cartoons she (presumably) has inserted about the attitude towards women. She was probably a supporter of the suffragette movement:
Yes, there’s where the offence comes in. Isn’t it odd that the moment a man or a woman lets other people see that he or she is thoroughly delighted with his or her individuality, talents, beauty, worldly position, everybody else begins to distrust that person”.
It must have been very meaningful to her, otherwise why would she have kept that tiny paragraph for ten years?
Surprisingly, an article on the death of C J Rhodes is followed by numerous clippings from The Gentlewoman: An Illustrated Weekly Journal for Gentlewomen published in London. These clippings date from 1891. Had Mrs Marks kept them for ten years and taken them to London with her and then decided to include them in the scrapbook when she had more time on her hands? As the journal was founded in 1890, presumably she had been a subscriber from its inception. Most were from the sections called “The Lady in Waiting”, and “Our Children and How to Educate them”. These included articles on corporal punishment, on when education should commence, on delicate and backward children, on preparatory schools, on pocket money and on books for growing maidens. Her concern for education is also shown with a 1902 clipping on “Teachers for Boer Infants” in the refugee camps.
Frederica’s feelings regarding education and respect for women were shown early in the scrapbook with an article from the Cape Times of 25 May 1902 harshly criticising remarks by a Mr Treves at the Reform Club. Treves had been quoted as saying, “there were two plagues in South Africa – the plague of f lies and the plague of women. The f lies could be got rid of but that of woman was absolutely a terror”. Treves had to apologise for his sweeping statement, which amounted to a condemnation of all efforts of amateur nurses as a blot in the campaign. The Cape Times correspondent fully acknowledged the generous efforts made by many wealthy persons in organising private hospitals and the many who had unsparingly devoted both money and time to the welfare of the sick and wounded soldiers. What Frederica’s role had been during the war is unknown, but Sam had given a wagon and mule team for use as an ambulance, fitted out Dr Boris Liknaitzky and sent grapes to the hospitals and £1000 to the International Red Cross.24As Ellie was in charge of the Vereeniging Collieries during the war, he and Frederica would most likely have been involved and she would have been understandably annoyed by Treves’ remarks.
After many pages from The Gentlewoman, the scrapbook returns to clippings from the 1902 St James Gazette, on rank and fashion, ending with an article from that paper dated 27 March 1902 on Rhodes’s funeral entitled “A Prince in Israel”. This includes the unpleasantly antisemitic canard “He could fight for wealth like any Hebrew yet his life was simple and he would throw his gold away with both hands to serve any cause on which his heart was set”. It concludes, ‘Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fell this day in Israel.”
The last completed page is an item devoted to the Oxford and Cambridge boat race written by Etherington-Smith. There the scrapbook ends, with many blank pages still to be covered.
Tucked loose in the front of the book is a page of the Westminster Gazette 20.1.1901 on coronation medals and a page of The Times, 23.9.1902 and at the back of the book is a complete and unclipped copy of the Globe of 3 June 1902 and a page of St James Gazette of 14 July 1902. I could see nothing in them that would merit their being kept. Also at the back is the 1906 telegram already mentioned by Ellie for his son’s 10th birthday and their tickets to the gala performance at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, on 7 July 1903 given in honour of the visit of the President of the French Republic, Emile Loubet. 25 Their excitement at scoring a place on the guest list was such that both their tickets have been preserved in the scrapbook – seats number K27 and 28 in the orchestra stalls – printed on a firm buff card with the French and British emblems along with scroll work with f lowers and a French Republic badge together with the folder in which they were enclosed. Levee dress was required – full dress uniform or court dress. But the enthusiasm for the scrapbook had passed and the telegram and the tickets were just slipped loose into the back.
The probable answers to the initial questions posed are that the scrapbook belonged to Sammy Mark’s brother and his wife, who was probably the keeper of the scrapbook, as being a fashionable pursuit for a Victorian gentlewoman of means, but how it ended up on auction 120 years later is anyone’s guess.
The Marks scrapbook provides a window into the interests of this family as shown by the articles of political, financial, cultural and personal interest they chose to preserve. The Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois contains a collection of 43 scrapbook volumes of letters, newspaper clippings, and memorabilia kept by a poet Martin F. Tupper (1810-1889), which researchers have found to be a direct source of material culture, providing detailed insights about the culture at large as well as about individual collecting habits.26 It is to be hoped that future researchers who page through this scrapbook will similarly find much information of interest to them.
Gwynne Schrire, a veteran contributor to Jewish Affairs and long-serving member of its editorial board, is Deputy Director of the Cape Council, SA Jewish Board of Deputies. She has written, co-written and edited numerous books on local Jewish and Cape Town history.
Grave of Ellia Marks, Bulawayo Jewish Cemetery.
NOTES
- “Fables for the fair,” undated, unnamed newspaper clipping.
- Publication: The Lafayette Gazette (Lafayette, La.) Source publication date: October 06, 1894 Scrapbooks as a history of life, of feeling, of the emotions of one’s heart: Perspectives on our place in time from 1894.
- The handwritten 10 Octobers date on the Cape Times is incorrect.
- Willem Johannes Leyds, former State Attorney of the SA Republic, was its diplomat during the Anglo-Boer War and tried unsuccessfully to win support for the Boer cause in Europe.
- After a string of defeats, Frederick Sleigh Roberts, later Earl Roberts, took over command of the British forces and was accompanied by the despatch of huge reinforcements. His strategies devised included burning farms and setting up concentration camps.
- Lieut-Gen Robert Baden-Powellsuccessfully defended the town in the Siege of Mafeking and later founded the Boy Scouts Association.
- No newspaper name or date to this clipping.
- Simon, John, ‘A Study of the Nature and Development of Orthodox. Judaism in South Africa’, MA thesis, Department of Jewish Studies, University of Cape Town, 1996, 85. https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/item/17381/thesis_hum_1996_simon_john_ian.pdf?…
- Herrman, Dr Louis, ‘The Cape Town Hebrew Congregation 1841-1941: A Centenary history’, CT Hebrew Congregation, 22
- Gross, Sam L, ‘Our congregation’ in Rosh Hashana Green & Sea Point Hebrew Congregation, 1997-5758, 44.
- Abrahams, Israel, The birth of a Community: A History of Western Province Jewry from Earliest times to the end of the South African war, 1902, CT Hebrew Congregation, 1955, 121. The gifts are being digitized by Academics from King’s College London working with the Royal Household. Singh, Anita, ‘Queen stunned by inventory of historical Royal gifts’, Telegraph, 1 April 2015.
- Press, Charles, The Light of Israel: The Story of the Paarl Jewish Community, Jubilee Productions, Paarl, 1993, 15. The book contains a photograph of rhea Paarl Central Hotel decorated with bunting for the Queens’ I Diamond Jubilee, 113.
- Abrahams, 95.
- A similar casket also with a congratulatory address was presented by the Jews of Southern African when King Edward VII became King in 1901. By then the family was in London and were not involved in the affairs of the CTHC although messages of congratulations were sent to the colonial office on the occasion of his coronation from “the Zionist and Jewish residents at the Cape of Good Hope” according to the Jewish Chronicle.
- Abrahams, 121
- The order of Service lists Rev Lyons reading Psalms 90 and 91, and the Kaddish, the choir sang the anthem ‘And I will remember unto thee the loving kindness of thy youth and Oh shelter us beneath the shadows of thy wings, and; As for man, they days are grass”. Rev A Hoffenberg recited Proverbs 31 and Psalm 23 and Rev AP Bender gave an address and the memorial prayer.
- Founded in 1870, Grocott’s Mail is South Africa’s oldest surviving independent newspaper and is still published in Grahamstown.
- A humiliating British defeat on 15.12.1899.
- Abrahams, 35.
- In 1892 Marks and Lewis donated money towards the endowment of a Chair of Hebrew at the South African College, which was to become the University of Cape Town, and Sammy also donated money to buy school furniture for the Jewish public schools established at Hope Mill, up the road from the CTHC (Abrahams, 90).
- Mendelsohn, Richard, Sammy Marks: The uncrowned king of the Transvaal, David Philip, Cape Town, 1991, 117.
- Ibid, 34.
- The Old Town House), built in 1755 in the Cape Rococo style, now houses the Michaelis Collection of Dutch art from the 17th Century Golden Age donated by Jewish mining magnate Sir Max Michaelis.
- Mendelsohn, 116.26 15 April 2014, https://nonsolusblog.wordpress.com/2014/04/15/victorian-scrapbooks-rediscovered/
