The Postcard
A 'Silveresque' Series postcard published by Valentine & Sons Ltd. of Dundee and London.
The card was posted in Torquay on Monday the 28th. September 1959 to:
Mrs. Clayden,
Guest House,
16 Castlemain Avenue,
Southbourne,
Bournemouth,
Hants.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Am having a happy time
here, with good weather,
good food, and good friends.
It is very hilly, but there's no
scenery without hills, and I
manage most of them on
wheels of some sort.
The illuminations are
delightful, but I don't
suppose they rival Blackpool.
Looking forward to seeing
you on Sunday and hoping
you are enjoying Bournemouth.
Love from W."
Vane Hill
The attractive view of Vane Hill on the card no longer exists - three brutally ugly blocks of flats have replaced elegant Victorian villas on the hill. Apart from being an incongruent eyesore, the blocks completely overshadow and dominate the former Riviera Hotel.
To see the three blocks, please search for the tag 54TTH29
Vane Hill has been subjected to Croydonisation. Croydonisation is a pejorative term meaning the indiscriminate throwing up of assorted high-rise buildings in an area with little if any regard for their aesthetics or their effect on their immediate environment. Croydon in south London has led the way in this respect.
Torquay
Torquay is a seaside town in Devon, England. It lies 18 miles (29 km) south of the county town of Exeter, and 28 miles (45 km) east-north-east of Plymouth, on the north of Tor Bay, adjoining the neighbouring town of Paignton on the west of the bay and across from the fishing port of Brixham.
The town's economy, like Brixham's, was initially based upon fishing and agriculture; however, in the early 19th. century it began to develop into a fashionable seaside resort.
Later, as the town's fame spread, it was popular with Victorian society. Renowned for its mild climate, the town earned the nickname the English Riviera.
The writer Agatha Christie was born in the town and lived at Ashfield in Torquay during her early years. There is an "Agatha Christie Mile", a tour with plaques dedicated to her life and work.
The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning lived in the town from 1837 to 1841. This was on the recommendation of her doctor in an attempt to cure her of a disease which is thought likely to have been tuberculosis.
Her former home now forms part of the Regina Hotel in Vaughan Parade.
Gerard Hoffnung
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, the 28th. September 1959 was not a good day for Gerard Hoffnung, because he died on that day.
Gerard Hoffnung, who was born on the 22nd. March 1925, was an artist and musician, best known for his humorous works.
Raised in Germany, Hoffnung was brought to London as a boy, to escape the Nazis. Over the next two decades in England, he became known as a cartoonist, tuba player, impresario, broadcaster and raconteur.
After training at two art colleges, Hoffnung taught for a few years, and then turned to drawing, on the staff of English and American publications, and later as a freelancer. He published a series of cartoons on musical themes, and illustrated the works of novelists and poets.
In 1956 Hoffnung mounted the first of his "Hoffnung Festivals" in London, at which classical music was spoofed for comic effect, with contributions from many eminent musicians.
As a broadcaster he appeared on BBC panel games, where he honed the material for one of his best-known performances, his speech at the Oxford Union in 1958.
-- The Early Years
Born in Berlin, and named Gerhard, Hoffnung was the only child of a well-to-do Jewish couple, Hildegard and Ludwig Hoffnung. He was sent to England, where he attended Bunce Court School in 1938.
In 1939, his parents left Germany; his father went to Palestine to enter the family's banking business. Gerard went with his mother to London. She rented a house in Hampstead Garden Suburb, where Hoffnung lived for the rest of his life.
In 1939 he enrolled at Highgate School, where, according to one biographer, he was "remembered for his anarchic spirit".
Among the artists he most admired when he was growing up was Walter Trier, long associated with Lilliput magazine. Hoffnung had his first cartoon published in the same publication while he was still at school.
After leaving Highgate, Hoffnung studied at Hornsey College of Art, but was expelled for his lack of gravity in the life class. He then attended Harrow School of Art, after which he became a schoolmaster.
He was art master at Stamford School (1945–46) and assistant art master at Harrow School (1948), with an intervening and overlapping spell as a staff artist on the London Evening News.
Gerard was a staff artist to Cowles Magazines Inc. in New York in 1950, and otherwise pursued a career as a freelance cartoonist.
He contributed to Punch, The Strand Magazine and The Tatler, and to other British, continental, and American magazines.
He also produced advertising work for Kia-Ora, Guinness, and other companies. He presented one-man exhibitions of his work, including one at the Little Gallery, Piccadilly (1949), and two at the Royal Festival Hall (1951 and 1956).
-- Musical Drawings
Hoffnung developed a distinctive style which owed something to the German illustrator Wilhelm Busch. He mainly drew with a mapping pen and Indian ink, and also used watercolours and wax crayons. His illustrations in colour for Colette's libretto for Ravel's opera 'L'Enfant et les Sortilèges' were outstanding.
Much of Hoffnung's humour centred on the world of music, particularly the various instruments of the orchestra with which he was fascinated. He published a series of books of cartoons poking gentle fun at conductors and orchestral instrumentalists.
Examples include the drawing of a musician being devoured by the serpent he is trying to play; another shows a singer whose waistcoat buttons are control knobs labelled On/off, ppp/fff, Wobble, and Sobs.
He depicted Malcolm Sargent as "Elegantemente", conducting with a full-length mirror at the front of his rostrum. After Hoffnung's death, some of the cartoons were turned into short animated films in the television series 'Tales from Hoffnung' (1965).
-- Broadcasts and Concerts
In 1950 Hoffnung began a career as a broadcaster for the BBC, as both raconteur and regular contestant in panel games including 'One Minute Please', the predecessor of 'Just a Minute'. He was, in the words of Ingrams:
'A brilliant improviser with a dry wit
and a masterly sense of timing'.
Probably the best-known example of Hoffnung as a humorous speaker is an account of a bricklayer's misfortunes when raising some bricks in a barrel to the top of a building. It was part of a speech given to the Oxford Union on the 4th. December 1958.
Among Hoffnung's other well-known subjects were his supposedly helpful advice to tourists in London:
'Have you tried the famous echo
in the Reading Room of the British
Museum?'
Also allegedly genuine letters in fallible English from continental hoteliers:
'There is a French widow in every
bedroom affording delightful
prospects'.
In 1956 Hoffnung took part in one of the popular 'April Fool's' concerts in Liverpool, organised by Fritz Spiegl.
He took up the idea, and presented a similar, but larger-scale, concert at the Festival Hall in November the same year, in which Spiegl joined him. The 'Hoffnung Music Festival' played to a sell-out audience in the hall and to BBC viewers throughout Britain.
The success of this concert led to two more Hoffnung Festivals, the third of them presented as a tribute after his death. They featured contributions from distinguished musicians. Donald Swann revised Haydn's Surprise Symphony to make it considerably more surprising. Malcolm Arnold wrote A Grand, Grand Overture, scored for orchestra and vacuum cleaners, and dedicated to US President Hoover.
Franz Reizenstein's Concerto Popolare featured a battle between the soloist, playing the Grieg Piano Concerto, and the orchestra, determinedly playing Tchaikovsky. Sir William Walton conducted a one-note excerpt from his cantata Belshazzar's Feast: the word 'Slain!' shouted by the chorus.
Hoffnung learned to play the tuba well enough to play the solo part in the Tuba Concerto by Vaughan Williams in a serious concert at the Festival Hall, and was an active participant in Morley College Orchestra, a respected amateur ensemble in London.
-- Personal Life
In 1952 Hoffnung married Annetta Perceval, née Bennett. They had one son, Ben, and one daughter, Emily, who became respectively a timpanist and a sculptor. Hoffnung's uncle was Bruno Adler, a German art historian and writer who, during the war, wrote for the German language department of the BBC.
In addition to his public persona as an eccentric and wit, Hoffnung had a deeply serious and moral side. He joined the Quakers in 1955, and was active in their prisoner visiting scheme.
According to a biographical sketch by Joel Marks:
"Hoffnung's outlook on race relations,
homosexuality, nuclear disarmament,
the treatment of animals (especially
hunting) and, for that matter, the music
of Bartók and Schoenberg was liberal
and impassioned."
-- Hoffnung's Death and Legacy
A week before he died, he took part in a show at the Festival Hall in aid of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, along with Peggy Ashcroft, Benjamin Britten, C. Day Lewis, Michael Redgrave and others.
Hoffnung collapsed at his home on the 25th. September 1959, and died of a cerebral haemorrhage three days later in New End Hospital at the very young age of 34. The obituarist in The Times concluded:
"Hoffnung was among other things
an artist, a musician, a linguist, a
raconteur, a Quaker, a bon viveur,
a prison visitor and a mime.
It is usual to say that a man has left
behind a gap that cannot be filled.
For Gerard Hoffnung there would
be needed a handful of men, all of
them greatly gifted."
Posthumous exhibitions of Hoffnung's work include those at the Berlin Festival (1964); the Brighton and Edinburgh festivals (1968); the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York (1970); the Royal Festival Hall (1984); and Orleans House Gallery, Twickenham, London (1992).
'Only Sixteen'
Also on the 28th. September 1959, the Number One chart hit in the UK was 'Only Sixteen' by Craig Douglas.
