Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

He's makin it all up SP - he's notoriously a story spinner ; tall tale teller ; a town crier ; a billboard man!

stop causing disillusionment among the ladies Jem and get back in ya garden shed!!

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Bournemouth’s radical Russian printers



The residents at Tuckton House. Tchertkov is fifth from the right wearing the cap. His wife Anna is in front of him to his right.

As places in which to foment revolution, Iford and Tuckton are about as unlikely as they get. However, their Edwardian residents included an enclave of radical Russians, exiled dissidents dedicated to the printing and distribution of the works of Tolstoy, which were then banned in their motherland.
They were lead by the wealthy Count Vladimir Tchertkov, the son of a general and childhood friend of Alexander III who ruled Russia as a despot following the assassination of his reformist father in 1881. Having embraced the devout Christian liberalism of his mother the Countess, Tchertkov was already at odds with the Tsarist regime and had resigned his military career in 1879, leaving court to throw himself into the education of the serfs. His first meeting with Tolstoy in 1883 united the two men in moral and religious solidarity as the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina would later be excommunicated by the Orthodox Church and censored by the State, which took exception to his anti-establishment stance.
By 1897 the authorities had also turned on Tchertkov, who chose to live abroad over internal exile and arrived in England to settle at Tuckton House, where Tolstoy had enjoyed a summer holiday in 1894. His mother, a committed Anglophile, had a holiday home called Slavanka in nearby Belle Vue Road in Southbourne-on-Sea, where it was hoped the apparent healing properties of the local water would improve her health.
Tchertkov brought with him thirty or so other émigrés, mainly middle-class artisans and professionals, who were resolved to publish the works of their mentor. To this end Tchertkov rented the old water works at Iford, built in 1875 as a pumping station by Bournemouth Gas & Water Company, and established the Free Age Press.
By 1900 the colony was organised in line with Tolstoyan principles of domestic simplicity and strict non-violence. It was an otherwise Spartan existence, teetotal and vegetarian, in which personal possessions were discouraged and although the tireless work ethic was anathema to the promotion of Bournemouth as the resort of pleasure and leisure, it soon attracted media attention.
In January 1902 the Daily Mail reported: ‘The inmates rise at six o’clock, the majority beginning the day with a sea bathe at Southbourne. At about nine a mouthful of vegetarian food is snatched, followed by work till one when a light vegetarian lunch is eaten. Then work again until seven or eight when the meal of the day is partaken. At this, all members of the community sit down together, no-one serving, no-one acting as servant. The most striking point in the whole Tolstoy gospel is the equality of master and servant.’
Tchertkov liaised with publishers, translators and distributors, smuggling the unexpurgated works to and from Russia. Tolstoy’s handwritten manuscripts were stored in a strong room with concrete walls eighteen inches thick – which were lined with firebricks, a steel grille door and a narrow iron-barred slit for ventilation. Considered fireproof, damp-proof and earthquake-proof, when the house was demolished in 1965 it took two workmen a full week to make a 15-inch hole in the wall!

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

I’m all for equality and all that, but no gargle!, sure what’s the point of working like a dorg if you can’t have a pint and a smoke at the end of the day, I do admire them but it wouldn’t be my cup of tea, maybe Spitty’s, he just loves grafting.
They say he's like a Camel and can go without a drink for two weeks.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Teetotal and Vegetarian, no way, after a days graft, I need a few drinks and a Bacon Butty.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

I am sure they had some vices, whether they shared them around is another matter.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

That's the trouble, some folks take inactivity to the grave.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Oh I say Spitty.
Are you grumpy?

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Never, but I recognise it. Actually, I'm not allowed to be Grumpy.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Well I should hope not, you are not one of dwarfs.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

heh - you callin me grumpy or summat ? - cos if so - well I'll go and get me big bruvver and get 'im to belt yuz up! see!