Campaign beats loggers and saves Dorrigo National park

Dorrigo National Park today. What we have today is due to the activity of dedicated locals such as Ray Spinaze. This is the fourth and final in a short series on the early days of the Dorrigo National Park.

From the beginning, the trustees appointed to oversight the Dorrigo Nature Reserves faced a fundamental problem. They had responsibility, but no money.

The first small reserves had been created in 1901, the bigger Mountain Reserve in 1917. A first government grant of £5 was received in 1920. The next grant of £100 from unemployment relief funds did not come until 1933! It would be 1965 before there was enough money to employ the first ranger.

With the only income coming from the lease for grazing of a small portion of land, there was little that the trustees could do beyond some blackberry control and endeavouring to keep paths clear.

This created real governance problems as trustees lost heart, retired or died. Between 1940 and 1949 it appears that the Trust did not meet at all. Then came another of those energising events. 

There had been problems with illegal logging and shooting for some time.

In 1949, the Thora sawmill lodged an application to log the Park. As local member, Roy Vincent was able to block the application and get the Trust restructured, but in the absence of funding, the Trustees struggled.

In 1954, responsibility for the management of the Park was transferred to the Dorigo Shire Council, passing to the Bellingen Shire Council in 1957 following the forced merger of the Dorrigo and Bellingen Shires. A Management Committee was formed to oversight the Park in the place of the Trustees.

The merger of the two shires created bitter resentment on the Dorrigo Plateau Locals believed that they had little in common with the coast and that the merger would submerge their interests to their cost. This resentment turned into direct action when the Bellingen Shire Council recommended that logging be allowed in the Park.

Local solicitor Ray Spinaze led the Dorrigo response.

Born in 1914, Spinaze was a descendent of the Veneto (Italian) families who had been attracted to the South Pacific by the ill-fated dreams of the Marquis de Rays. When that failed, the survivors established New Italy between Byron Bay and Grafton, now a significant tourist destination.

Spinaze had been dux of Lismore High School and then trained as a solicitor. On the boat to Sydney for exams, much coastal travel was still done by steamer, he met Georgina Cochrane. The couple married in 1941 and then settled in Dorrigo where Spinaze had bought a practice.

Spinaze’s campaign blocked any attempt to log the Park. Because of the tensions between the Park management committee and Council, responsibility for the Park’s management was taken away from the Bellingen Shire Council and given back a newly reconstituted Trust.

The Park as we know it today had been born. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 18 December 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019  

The historic fight for Dorrigo National Park continues

 OVERLAP: PA Wright's campaign for the New England Park was supported by Roy Vincent, who led the campaign for Dorrigo. Both are case studies for activism. This is the third in a short series on the early days of the Dorrigo National Park.

In researching the history of the Dorrigo National Park I looked at the history of the New England National Park. This deserves a separate story, but I was struck by the way in which the same issues and indeed the same people were involved in the fight for both parks.

In both cases, you had a small number of locals who were prepared to fight to bring the park about.

In both cases, you had local members of Parliament who provided top cover and were prepared to cooperate across electorates to achieve common dreams, the creation of facilities for the North for the benefit of all. They did so despite some local opposition.

In both cases, you had local newspapers that were prepared to support action. I suspect that this was particularly important in Dorrigo where the Don Dorrigo Gazette was edited by Roy Vincent’s brother Reginald.

In both cases, you had common problems that had to be resolved to protect the parks from alienation and to fund development.

In 1923, Roy Vincent as local member had blocked attempts to alienate the Dorrigo Reserves, but he still faced all the problems I have talked about.

In 1927, Vincent tried to have the Dorrigo Mountain Reserves declared a National Park to protect it from alienation.

He was advised that there was no provision to allow this. However, the reserves were declared a fauna as well flora reserve. This, the Minister advised, meant that changes to boundaries would require approval of both houses of the state parliament, thus providing the same protection afforded to the Royal National Park and Ku-ring-gai Chase.  

This was unsatisfactory.

As local Armidale state parliamentarian and Vincent’s friend David Drummond later recorded in the context of the New England National Park, it was just too easy to bring in administrative changes in the final days of a parliamentary session when tired MPs could rubber stamp a change without realizing the implications. Legislation was required that would then force specific legislative action to amend to alienate land.

I haven’t traced through all the history here, but it would be 1967 before specific National Parks legislation was passed through the NSW Parliament by the then Lewis Liberal-Country Party Government.

Meantime, Vincent and the other Park supporters had other problems to deal with. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 11 December 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019  

Saving the Dorrigo Park

Roy Vincent's efforts protected the Dorrigo National Park at critical stages in its history.This is the second in a short series on the early days of the Dorrigo National Park.

Administrative history can be very boring, a list of dates and changes. Yet when you dig in, you find that those changes tell us much about our history.

You can also find yourself taken in unexpected directions, highlighting aspects of our history that extend far beyond the original question. Both are true of the early history of the Dorrigo National Park.

The 1901 gazettal of the two small reserves intended to protect waterfalls was followed by the 1917 reservation of a larger mountain area that now forms the core of the National Park. Separate trustees were appointed covering the two small reserves and the larger reserve.

The trustees appointed to the larger reserve included brothers Roy Stanley and Reginald Henry Vincent, members of that remarkable Vincent newspaper dynasty that played such a role in the history of the New England press and community life more generally.

In 1910, the brothers had established the Don Dorrigo Gazette and Guy Fawkes Advocate. Both were active in community life, including the campaigns for Northern development and the creation of a new state in Northern New South Wales. Both were committed to the preservation of the Dorrigo mountain reserve.

While Reginald Henry would remain as editor of the Don Dorrigo Gazette, in 1922 Roy was elected to the NSW Parliament as Member for Oxley. There he joined Michael Bruxner’s “True Blues”, the precursor of the NSW Country Party. 

Roy would remain an MP until 1953. From June 1932 to May 1941 he was Secretary for Mines and Minister for Forests, providing a degree of top cover that was important to the preservation of the Dorrigo reserves.

The new trustees faced problems. They had to deal with the spread of blackberries and other noxious weeds, as well as local pressures to log and develop the land. They also wanted to develop facilities. However, they had no money to do any of this.

These problems came to a head in 1923.

On 18 May 1923, Roy Vincent wrote to the Department of Lands as local member and a trustee seeking approval for the Trust to lease a small portion at the top of the Mountain Reserve for grazing purposes. This would provide the trustees with a small income and also help in blackberry control.

The following month, 8 June, the Secretary of the Trust (W H Jarrett) wrote to the Minister for Lands. Given problems with blackberries and fallen trees, he stated that a meeting of the trustees had decided to ask the Department to send an inspector to visit the reserve with a view to alienating the whole reserve for development.

This move blind-sided Roy Vincent. On 2 July he wrote to the Minister in protest. Had all the trustees been consulted? As a trustee, he was totally opposed to the alienation of a single acre of this magnificent reserve, apart from the previous request to lease a portion for grazing.

Roy Vincent prevailed. Dorrigo was saved, but problems still lay ahead.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 4 December 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019  

Reserved for recreation

Hard yakka: Clearing the Dorrigo brush was back-breaking work for the early selectors. The establishment of the Dorrigo Reserves, now National Park, helped preserve some of the original landscape. This is the first in a short series on the early days of the Dorrigo National Park

The Dorrigo National Park is rightly seen as one of the small jewels in New England’s crown. I wonder how many know its story or indeed that of the New England National Park, the third oldest in NSW.

According to Howard directed Stanley’s History of the Dorrigo National Park, our story begins on 29 March 1900 when Edward Ebsworth, the District Surveyor at Grafton, directed surveyor H A Evans to determine the position of two waterfalls (now the Sherrard and Newell Falls) near the road.

  

The Dorrigo Plateau was then being cleared and developed for settlement, creating the cultural landscape we know today. Evans was to “measure an area surrounding each waterfall sufficient to protect it with a view to its reservation from sale.”

Evans reported from his camp on 31 August 1900. He recommended reservation of two areas totaling around 8.1 hectares.

This would give ample room for “sight seers and others to ramble about on these areas and enjoy the scenery of the waterfalls, the pretty pieces of brush and bush and the landscape and seascape generally”.

Ebsworth successfully recommended to his Minister that Evan’s proposal be approved, On 19 February 1901, the Government Gazette carried a notice under Section 101 of the Crowns Land Act 1884 reserving the two areas for Public Recreation and the preservation of native flora.

The two areas might have been of sufficient size to allow visitors to ramble (or scramble!) around, but did little for the protection of native flora. However, in July 1917, a much larger area of 1,659 hectares on the Dorrigo Mountain was explicitly reserved for the preservation of native flora.

I haven’t properly researched the general history of either public spaces or national parks. However, a few general points are worth noting because they set a context for our story.

The idea of reservation of land for parks or other public purposes such as commons was well established. The idea that ordinary citizens should have access for recreation, enjoyment and access to nature to the equivalent of the parks established and enjoyed by aristocrats became well established during the 19th century. 

In Sydney, both the Royal National Park (1879) and Ku-ring-gai Chase (1894) were explicitly intended for public recreation.

The idea of preservation of flora and fauna had also become well established, if sometimes in the breach.

We can see all these elements in the initial establishment of the Dorrigo Reserves. However, the administrative and funding arrangements for the Reserves left much to be desired,

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 27 November 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019  

A remarkable life: Frewen's final chapter

Jerome Park, Hugh Frewen's final home.This is the seventh and final in my series on the sprawling life and times of Captain Hugh Frewen. 

 1922 was a fateful year in the life of Hugh Frewen.

His period as a political agent in Iraq had come to an end as had his marriage to donna Maria Nunziante. He now married Rosalind Jones, the daughter of a gardener on an adjoining estate. This marriage would bring three sons and two daughters to add to the two sons from his first marriage.

Restless, Frewen joined a proposed British Pacific Scientific Expedition to New Guinea as entomologist, sailing for Australia with his new wife towards the end of 1922.

The Expedition’s patron died while they were en-route and Frewen and his wife decided to leave the ship at Adelaide and settle in Australia under the patronage of the Governor of South Australia.

There Frewen found work hard to come by. “It came as a shock” Frewen wrote later, “to discover that Englishmen of good general education, but without capital or specialized training, were apparently not in demand in that part of the Empire.”

In South Australia, Frewen worked variously as a bulder’s labourer, as a journalist and radio broadcaster and real estate and securities salesman. He continued writing and became involved in politics and public commentary. 

In 1927, the Frewens moved to Queensland where Frewen again pursued varied activities, adding company promoter and orchid collecting to his list of occupations. By 1931, the Frewens were in severe financial difficulties.

Through happenstance, they were able to move onto a small block at Tyringham where the family built their own home from local timber and established a small holding that provided food and a small income.

Around 1938 they acquired a block on the Dorrigo where Frewen built another home that he named Jerome Park after his mother’s family.

It was during the Tyringham period that Frewen became involved in activities directed at agricultural and economic development and the achievement of self-government for New England.

As the war ended, still restless and still in love with exploration and the sea, Frewen left the family at Dorrigo and went trading around Fiji and the Pacific Islands. Finally, he retired to Dorrigo where he died in 1967.

It had been a remarkable life, a life I have only sketched in these columns. Frewen had inherited his father’s curious mind, his love of writing, his restless spirit. To some degree too, he had also inherited that sometimes lack of commercial practicality that led to his father’s nickname, Mortal Ruin.

It had been a long journey from the America in the gilded age through the courts of Europe to the Dorrigo Hills, one that provides yet another thread in the fascinating history of New England.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 25 September 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019    

Frewen sympathetic to Arab situation

So far, our journey through the life of Captain Hugh Frewen has taken us from America in the gilded age, through the courts of Europe past the Wyoming cattle boom and then Nigeria, followed by the killing fields of Gallipoli and the Western Front.

Now the next stages in our journey take us to Australia via Iraq.

The war had added to Frewen’s restlessness. He had a knack of finding himself in complex historically important situations. He was also what we would call today a whistleblower, one who saw what he perceived to be wrongs and who used his family connections to try to right things.

He was in Northern Nigeria at a critical stage in the formation of the colony of Nigeria. There he had raised concerns about British currency profiteering with his father, leading to the establishment of a committee of inquiry.

At Gallipoli, Frewen had raised his concerns about certain aspects of British leadership with his cousin Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty. Now the pattern would repeat itself in Iraq.

 Frewen came to Iraq on the staff of Lieutenant-General Sir Aylmer Haldane, the British commander in Mesopotamia. There he found himself almost by accident as Special Services Officer in Mosul following the sudden death of his predecessor. .

Here for a little while did I contrive

To measure wits with Oriental wiles

(my predecessor had been burnt alive).

There is some ambiguity about Frewen’s role in Iraq. 

English blue stocking: Gertrude Bell, Babylon, 1909. She regarded Hugh Frewen as naive, inclined to speak tosh. Frewen had a different view.This is the sixth in a short series on the life and times of Captain Hugh Frewen.

Writing much later, Frewen’s autobiographical notes had an understandable tendency to centre on his own role. This contrasts with the views of Gertrude Bell, the English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator and archaeologist who played such a key role in the establishment of the kingdoms of Iraq and Jordan,

Bell met Frewen in passing when he was a member of I Branch. She thought he was naive and inclined to speak tosh, an example of the way that Britain was wasting money in Iraq!

What is clear is that Frewen, like so many British of that generation including Lawrence of Arabia, fell in love with the Arabs and took their side. He also came to support and identify with Iraq’s King Feisal, “a truly regal personage”.

Frewen had a particular dislike for the British High Commissioner, Sir Percy Cox.  He was “tall, cadaverous, tight-lipped as a Spanish Hidalgo….straight out of the pages of Don Quixote”.

Frewen by-passed Cox, arguing to Feisal that Iraq must establish direct representation in London. This happened, but it meant that Frewen became persona-non-grata, moving yet once more, this time to Australia.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 14 August 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019    

Hugh Frewen joined the battle at Gallipoli

A Royal Naval Division recruitment poster from the Great War. Sub Lieutenant Hugh Frewen RNVR was one of their recruits.This is the fifth in a short series on the life and times of Captain Hugh Frewen.

The First World War broke out on 28 July 1914. In August, Hugh Frewen’s cousin Winston Churchill, now First Lord of the Admiralty, decided to expand the Royal Naval Division as a military force to support naval operations.

The new battalions were formed from navy reservists, surplus seamen and volunteer recruits. A new Royal Naval Division headquarters and training camp was established at Blandford in Dorset.

One of those who volunteered to join was Sub Lieutenant Hugh Frewen RNVR, training with the newly formed Benbow battalion. Following training, the battalion embarked for Gallipoli.

On 30 May 1915, Frewen landed with the first reinforcements at Cape Hellas, being promoted in the field to Lieutenant RNVR.

 In early August, Frewen took part in the disastrous landing at Sulva Bay. Following the death of their company commander, Frewen with half the company made their way along the beach to join the ANZAC forces at ANZAC Cove. 

At ANZAC Cove, Frewen was attached to the ANZAC forces in what appears to have been an engineering role, taking part in the construction of the light tramway which linked the Cove with Shrapnel Valley and Lone Pine.

I think that it was this period that helped form Frewen’s later interest in the possibility of moving to Australia. 

In October, Frewen returned to his battalion at Cape Helles taking command of C Company. The following month, he was invalided with malaria after six months campaigning under almost continuous fire.

Frewen would go on to serve on the Western Front with the Royal Naval Division, finishing the war as a Captain, RNVR. 

The war placed great strain on Frewen’s marriage to donna Maria Nunziante.

The couple had married on 21 February 1914. Two sons followed, Hugh and Jerome.

Now I think that Maria, a noted beauty, had become bored and perhaps frustrated with her husband. It also seems that Hugh Frewen had fallen in love with another woman.

The pair divorced In January 1922. Maria would marry and then divorce Marchese Strozzi of Florence before marrying Irish banker Benjamin Guinness.

On Hugh’s side, his restless spirit was about to take him in yet new directions.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 7 August 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019   

A restless, curious spirit

Romantic figure: Jennie, Lady Randolph, Churchill. In 1914 Hugh Frewen introduced her to Montagu Porch who would become Jennie's third husband. This is the fourth in a short series on the life and times of Captain Hugh Frewen 

In 1944, Hugh Frewen published an autobiography, Imogene an odyssey. In her forward to the book, Dame Mary Gilmore wrote that it was a record of impressions and reflections in verse during journeys across four continents and over many countries.

It is also the story of a man from his birth to his arrival on “the rolling hills and downs of Dorrigo” where he would spend the last years of his life.

It is clear from the story that Frewen had inherited his father’s love of travel, his restless spirit and his insatiable curiosity.

In 1908, the 25 year old Frewen was appointed as an assistant resident and private secretary to Sir Percy Girouard, the Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Nigerian Protectorate. When Girouard left in 1909, Frewen became a political officer in charge of a Nigerian hill station.

In Nigeria, Frewen met Montagu Porch who was also working in the Colonial Service. Porch was six years older than Frewen and had an equally restless spirit. They became friends.

This was a fateful friendship.

Randolph Churchill had died in 1895. Jennie, Lady Randolph Churchill, then married the much younger George Cornwallis-West, a captain in the Scots Guards. The couple drifted apart, divorcing in 1914. 

Frewen then introduced Porch to his Aunt Jennie. She was 23 years older than Porch. As had happened with Cornwallis-West before him, Porch was instantly smitten and pursued her over the next four years. The couple finally married in 1918.

He has a future”, Jennie said, “and I have a past, so we should be all right.” This proved to be the case. “My second marriage was romantic but not successful, my third marriage was successful but not romantic”, Jennie later wrote.

 In 1913, Frewen resigned from the Colonial Office and returned to England.

He had become concerned about what he saw as British profiteering on Nigerian currency issues, concerns that he raised with father Moreton who was briefly a British MP.

Hi father raised the matter in the House of Commons, leading to the appointment of a commission of inquiry. Frewen felt obliged to resign his position as a consequence.

The next year, 21 February 1914, Frewen married donna Maria Nunziante, the daughter and co-heiress of the Italian Duke of Mignano. War clouds were now looming over Europe, clouds that would soon sweep up Hugh Frewen.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 31 July 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019   

Hugh Frewen Jr, the son of Mortal Ruin

Speculator: Morton Frewen lost a great deal of money on grandiose schemes. This is the third in a short series on the life and times of Captain Hugh Frewen 

Born in 1853 and educated at Eton College and Trinity College Cambridge, Hugh Morton Frewen came from an old and wealthy English-Irish landowning county family.

In 1881 Morton married Clara Jerome at Grace Church New York. It must have seemed a fine match to Clara’s mother, one suiting her dynastic ambitions. Sadly, appearances can be deceiving. Clara did find love, but not dynastic success.

Morton Frewen would acquire the nickname Mortal Ruin because of his habit of borrowing and losing money on grandiose schemes. In the words of the great imperial writer Rudyard Kipling, Frewen lived “in every sense, except what is called common sense, very richly and wisely to his own extreme content”.

Initially, Moreton took Clara to live on the large ranch he had acquired in Wyoming, the Prince of Wales Ranch. Wyoming was in the middle of a cattle boom, and Frewen was seeking to build a cattle empire there as part of the boom.

Frewen built a huge log cabin castle/mansion to house his new bride. This new house quickly burnt down. Worse was to follow.

The cattle boom had been based on speculation connected with the expansion of European settlement into new territories. This was unsustainable.

As the Wyoming cattle boom came to an end, Morton Frewen’s venture collapsed. He had arrived with 16,000 pounds capital. He left with debts of 30,000 pounds.

Our New England hero, Hugh Frewen Jnr, was born in 1883, the first of three surviving children. His sister, Clare Consuelo Frewen, became a writer, journalist and sculptress who mixed with the elites and, among other things, was Charlie Chaplin’s lover.

Hugh Frewen grew up in the old manor house of Brede Place., a house that his mother somehow managed to keep despite the family’s financial tribulations. Frewen loved Brede Place, “its stones of hoary grey, set in the foreground of a fairy bay, with land-locked waters rippling into foam.”

Life wasn’t always easy for the boy. This was a world that mixed access to the British and European aristocracy and intelligentsia with the embarrassment of a father who sometimes could not pay the school fees!

Despite the problems, it seems to have been a happy time. Frewen loved his father and did not share the negative perceptions that had formed about him.

I am not sure what Frewen did first after leaving school, but from 1906 to 1909 he was private secretary to Sir Percy Girouard, the Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Northern Nigeria and then, a little later, political officer in charge of a Nigerian hill station.

This position marks the start of the journey that would finally bring Hugh Frewen to Dorrigo’s quiet green hills. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 24 July 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019   

Three sisters in Europe: Jeromes in the court of Napoleon III

The Jerome sisters: Jennie (1854-1921), Clara (1851-1935) and Leonie. Their mother wanted them to marry well. She was successful. This is the second in a short series on the life and times of Captain Hugh Frewen 

In 1867, Clarrisa (Clara) Jerome and her three daughters – Jennie, Leonie and Clarita (also Clara) - sailed for Paris and the Court of Emperor Napoleon the Third. There Clara expected to find husbands for the girls that would fulfill her most ambitious dynastic ambitions. 

Napoleon III was then near the end of his reign, although that was not clear at the time.

A nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, he had become President of the French Republic on 20 December 1848. Four years later he seized direct power to reestablish the Napoleonic Empire.

Napoleon III was a considerable reformer who shared his uncle’s vision of a great French empire. He reformed public administration, expanded French power and rebuilt Paris.

The Paris you see today with its boulevards, a Paris much loved by many Australians, is the creation of Napoleon III and his main agent, Baron Haussmann, the prefect of the Seine.

Napoleon III may have been a reformer, but he had failed to modernize the French military. When war began with Prussia in 1870, the French suffered a humiliating defeat. Napoleon III was captured and then deposed.

Clara Jerome moved the girls to London where they cut a considerable swath through London society. They were young, wealthy and attractive.

The beautiful Jennie was the first to marry. On 15 April 1874 she married Lord Randolph Spencer-Churchill at the British Embassy on Paris.

The couple had met the previous August at a sailing regatta at Cowes on the Isle of Wright, introduced by the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. Randolph was quickly smitten.  They became engaged within three days, although it took several months to agree marriage settlements.

Jennie was a remarkable woman, the subject of many stories, some even true! What is relevant from our viewpoint is that in November 1874 their first son, Winston, was born.

In 1984 the eldest Leslie sister, Leonie, married the wealthy Irish landowner and Baronet Sir John Leslie. They would have four sons.

Between these two weddings, Clara (Clarita) married Moreton Frewen at Grace Church New York on 2 April 1881. Frewen came from an old and wealthy English-Irish county family. This marriage marks the start of the New England connection in our story.

Looking back, Clara Jerome’s dynastic objectives for her daughters may have seemed ambitious, but certainly they had all married well with multiple connections into the British upper class.  

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 17 July 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019   

Postscript

I love my readers.I Got this nice email from Associate Professor Richard Scully from the University of New England. Richard is an expert in this area of European history.

Dear Jim, 

I enjoyed your piece on the Jerome sisters in the Express. 

Would just note that Louis Napoleon actually seized dictatorial power a little shy of three years (not four) after his election as President (on 2 December, 1851). His coup established him as President for 10 Years, and enabled him to consolidate his personal power.  

Once totally secure, he called a national plebiscite a year later (November 1852) which asked the people whether he should become Emperor of the French. The vote was affirmative, and he assumed the title one year exactly after his original coup. 

It would also be contentious to argue that the French army was not modernised. The experience of the Italian war of 1859 and the conflicts in Mexico, Africa, China, and Indochina would belie this. Rather, it was a failure of command and strategy that toppled the French in 1870-1, when faced with German armies (and commanders) hardened by two more recent wars (1864 & 1866) with lessons learned from the American Civil War as well. French re-modernisation had commenced in earnest, but the emperor (by now quite enfeebled) misjudged his timing and diplomacy completely, giving his armies too little time to implement everything. 

Best,
Richard

They are fair points. Checking around, I found this rather nice piece on Quora, Why did France lose to Prussia so quickly in the Franco-Prussian war?, which provides more information on the reasons why the French lost.

The Captain's adventure - from wealth and power to the Dorrigo Hills

NEW YORK MARRIAGE: Clarissa (Clara) Jerome nee  Hall. This is the first in a short series on the life and times of Captain Hugh Frewen 

Many remarkable stories are to be found hidden within the history of the broader New England, stories once well known but now much diminished by time. This is one-such story.

I am not sure when I first met Captain Hugh Frewen (or Cappie as he was known), but it must have been in the early sixties. I clearly remember him from New England New State Meetings and from our car drive on Sydney. There he stood out in his tropical drill suit, frail but still erect.

At the time, I had no idea of his history. He was just a friend of my grandfather's.

I did find out a little later that he was Winston Churchill’s first cousin when I found a letter in my grandfather’s papers from Clementine Churchill to Hugh Frewen.

In 1943, David Drummond had published a book called Australia’s Changing Constitution: No states or new states. Frewen sent a copy to Winston Churchill asking him to read it.

Clementine replied to say that Winston had yet to read it, perhaps not surprisingly in the circumstances, but had asked her to thank Hugh and say that he would read it. Drummond had annotated the letter to say that Hugh was Churchill’s cousin.

I knew little more until I watched a BBC TV series telling the story of his mother and her sisters. I was immediately caught.

There was such an enormous difference between the quiet hills of Dorrigo where High Frewen spent the last years of his life and the world of sometimes wealth and imperial power that Hugh Frewen came from.

We can begin our story in 1849 with the marriage in New York of Leonard Jerome and Clarrisa (Clara) Hall. The couple had four daughters, one of whom died young.

Known as the King of Wall Street, Leonard Jerome was a flamboyant and successful stock speculator and railway investor who made and lost several fortunes.

Jerome was very much a New York man, part of that period of American history known as the Gilded Age. New York was his power base, his home. There he spent money on supporting the arts, on building race tracks and mansions.

The Jerome Mansion on the corner of Madison Avenue and 26th Street had a six-hundred-seat theatre, a breakfast room which seated seventy people, a ballroom of white and gold with champagne and cologne-spouting fountains!

His wife’s needs were  different. While a recognized beauty of the Gilded Age, she suffered from a degree of insecurity. Her sole goal, a biographer tartly recorded, was to ensure that each of her daughters married nobly and lucratively.

In 1867, Clara and her three daughters sailed for Europe, starting the next stage in our story.  

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 10 July 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019