A fellow called Osbert

     Having been a licensed tour guide for many years in Spain’s Canary Island of Tenerife, I often stop to consider how very much the island has changed since I was a little boy growing up in the Orotava Valley.

     I also ask myself to what extent those wonderful travel guide authors in the 19th and early 20^th centuries were influential in converting a gentle, sleepy island into the massive tourist destination it is today.

The main activity in the port of Puerto de la Cruz was fishing.

Note the number of boats pulled up on the beach.

     I would say those early travellers and travel guide authors like Samuel Brown were certainly influential, of course, but I’m not sure they would be happy to accept responsibility. I also doubt very much if the subject of this post, Osbert Ward, would have claimed any credit. Although the town of Puerto de la Cruz is delightful, spilling over with cosmopolitan colour and tradition, Osbert Ward would probably have liked the charms, the Canary Island architecture and the tranquility of the old town to have remained untouched, as they were. Of course, it was still just a quaint little town of less than 6,000 inhabitants.

     Born in 1856, Osbert Ward was advised to winter in the Orotava Valley to recover from lung-related health problems when he was in his twenties. He first came to the island in the early 1800s. A decade later, after wintering at the Grand English Hotel, which is how the Taoro Hotel was originally named, Osbert Ward and his wife, Eleanor Louise, decided to take up permanent residence in Puerto. 

Osbert Ward was a guest at the Grand English Hotel (The Taoro) 

   

The Grand English Hotel was advertised in Osbert Ward's guide book.

Note the "sanitary arrangements carried out by a certificated English plumber"!

     Like many other travellers from Victorian Britain, he wanted to show gratitude to his hosts, the local inhabitants in the Orotava Valley, for their renowned hospitality and generosity. He felt indebted to the place in which he recovered his health. What better way, he thought, than to spread the news about his charming valley and Puerto de la Cruz? Consequently, he set about writing a quaint, informative and observant little guidebook, The Vale of Orotava, first published in 1886.

Osbert Ward's delightful little guide book.

This particular image is of the 1903 edition.

     Osbert Ward also played a full part in “British colonial” aspects, taking prominent roles in institutions like All Saints Church and the English Library. In that sense, as so many selfless residents of energetic character do today, he was always willing to do his bit for the community. 

The English Library

        According to historian and distinguished British resident, the late Mr. Austin Baillon, Osbert Ward did all he could not only for the British colony but also to promote the importance and unique nature of northern towns like La Orotava and Puerto de la Cruz.

Austin Baillon's wonderful resumé about residents from the British Isles in Tenerife is found in this book, Misters: británicos en Tenerife

     It appears one or two members of the English-speaking community, like Osbert Ward, often appeared to possess mild eccentricities. It amused the local population. Perhaps it was because British and Irish travellers behaved so very differently on occasions, as if they were a unique breed, which they probably were! Osbert Ward's peculiar black hat never went unobserved, and local kids referred to the motorcar he owned in the 1930s as the flying bed. I would like to know why. Surely he wasn’t another Caractacus Potts! 

     What I am certain of is that Osbert Ward was a true British gentleman and a stickler for detail. He was also a perfectionist and a keen observer. This is evident from some of his observations.

      For example, upon what to wear in winter months, Osbert Ward suggested visitors from the British Isles pack warm clothing one would wear in a cool English summer  although, he added, they might find the climate a bit hot to begin with. As we discover ourselves today, the damp cool air coming off the Atlantic gets into our bones, even in June! Osbert Ward warned, they break out into very light clothes with, occasionally, disastrous consequences to themselves.

      Riders, he recommended, should bring their own saddles, especially the ladies if they wished to be comfortable. Perhaps it is because horse-riding was very much not a thing women were expeted to do in Tenerife, and therefore saddles were not suitably designed.

It was very common for British visitors to hire a horse from José Morisco in Puerto de la Cruz.

Note how many, like Ward, still referred to the town with its original name, "Port Orotava".

He, like José Bethencourt, would also offer his services to guide one to Mount Teide along the mule tracks. There were no proper roads to the mountains until 1941.

     Tipping anybody for the slightest reason was quite an established habit amongst wealthy Victorian travellers. Osbert Ward himself was a generous tipper. Nevertheless, he warned against over-tipping the boys who came with the horses. The effect is only to spoil the market, as the saying is!

      Wages were so low, he pointed out, that a small tip would represent quite a fortune. A man´s daily wage in the 1890s was only one and a half pesetas. Mr. Ward regretted the English visitor tended to have a habit of giving money to the children who followed their carriages begging. The result of this practice was that the urchins became a real nuisance and had been known to throw stones at people who refused to give them a coin or two! Such were the ways in the old, old days!

     Like many British residents living in the Valley of Orotava, Osbert Ward lived to a ripe old age of 93. Perhaps it was a daily intake of gofio, as my father joked on his own way to his century! Osbert Ward, who was predeceased by his wife Eleanor, is buried with her in la chercha, as the English Protestant cemetery in Puerto was known to the local inhabitants. As he remarked in his book, one could not choose a more restful place to lay one´s bones in!

The eternal resting place of Osbert Ward and his wife Eleanor in "La Chercha",

Puerto de la Cruz

     Mr. Ward´s guidebook, The Vale of Orotava is today considered a valuable source of interest to historians and is mentioned in nearly all bibliographies of books and articles related to early travellers to Tenerife. It is packed with gems, like this hand-drawn map.

 

Note the main carriage roads, in those days still simple dusty tracks, the bridle paths, and references to important British interests such as the Grand English Hotel, All Saints Church, the English Library and British-built and owned mansions Risco de Oro, San Antonio and El Robado.

By John Reid Young, author and Canary Island tour guide.

Books by John include:

The Skipping Verger and Other Tales, a selection of historical, very short stories.

A Shark in the Bath and Other Stories, a selection of longer, semi-biographical short stories.

El Hombre de La Guancha y otras Historias, a selection of short stories in Spanish.

The Journalist, a novel described as a political thriller.

For more information, or if you would like to read any of my books, please click on the images to the right of the web version of this page.

Please sign up for an occasional newsletter here:

 https://mailchi.mp/249fadd56fdd/author-john-reid-young

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A Scottish Tajinaste - from Puerto de la Cruz in Tenerife to the banks of the River Esk.

     Well, perhaps! 

     This is not a tale about a bold and fearsome Highlander. Quite the contrary. It is simply a way of paying a small tribute to a gentle and beautiful species of plant which is endemic to the Canary Island of Tenerife.

     Visitors to the landscapes of Las Cañadas, at the base of Mount Teide, are always stunned by the natural park's spectacular extraterrestrial scenery, by the sharp, black obsidian sparkling in the sunlight, by the turquoise hydrothermal sub-volcanic rocks painting abstract works of volcanic art, by the extraordinary array of lavatic colours, or by the pumice dunes which were once mined by an Anglo-French company.  

The San José mines, another planet in Tenerife

 

Like abstract volcanic art

     However, if one is lucky enough to be in Tenerife during the late spring and early summer one will also be greeted by the splendid sight of Echium Wildpretii. This biennial wonder stands out against the harsh, black, red and brown lava flows in regimental groups on the hillsides above sedimentary deserts, or in the Ucanca plain like the one pictured below, or even on their own, protected by phonolite towers at the base of Mount Teide volcano.

A tower of jewels in the Ucanca plain, with Mt Teide behind

A cluster of Echium wildpretii with a dense mist creeping across the caldera

     One of the theories behind the name tajinaste is that it derives from a pre-Hispanic indigenous word, tainast, meaning “needle”. When the basal rosette suddenly shoots up to produce the amazing “tower of jewels”, it certainly looks like a giant needle. The silver sheen on the velvety leaves add an exotic touch to the echium, even before producing hundreds of scarlet red flowers right up to their spiked tips.

 

The echium's rosette, like a creature from another planet

     Until I read an article in The Scotsman newspaper in June 2000, I always thought this extraordinary plant could only be found in the high, arid and volcanic landscapes of Tenerife and La Palma. However, The Scotsman reported that a five foot tall Echium Wildpretii was flourishing at Inveresk Lodge Garden which is just south of Musselburgh. In fact, that particular plant had been grown from seed at Tresco Abbey on the Scilly Isles, where the climate allows a variety of tropical plants to flourish. Now I understand that this “Tower of Jewels”, as it has become known by horticulturists, can be found not only in the Canary Islands and Scotland but throughout the world, if planted in well drained, not very rich soils, and that its cousins, the blue Echium candicans and Echium fastuosum, also known as The Pride of Madeira, do well in New Zealand. 

     Two more specie of Echium are pictured below. The top image shows a pair of Echium simplex under the beautiful dragon tree inside the small botanical garden behind the town hall in the town of La Orotava. The second image is of one of my favourites, the Echium virescens, this cluster captured inside the pine forests at Aguamansa.

Above, Echium simplex and below, the Echium virescens

     Nevertheless, the Tower of Jewels was given the specific “Widpretii” epithet in honour of Hermann Joseph Wildpret, a Swiss-German botanist who became principal gardener at the famous Botanical Gardens in Puerto de la Cruz on the island of Tenerife in 1860.

     Wildpret is believed to have sent Kew Gardens Tajinaste seeds, which the plant produces in small capsules after the flowering phase. From Kew, seeds were sent all over the world. The name Echium possibly stems from the Greek echis, meaning “viper”, perhaps due to what some researchers suggest was an ancient belief that the echium vulgare could be used as an antidote if bitten by an Adder. 

An Echium vulgare or viborera on the northern slopes below Izaña 

     The blossoming Tower of Jewels is also a favourite for bees, especially the Amegilla canifrons, the Canary Island Blue-banded bee. Apiaries high in the pine forests of Tenerife produce one of the best of the island’s magnificent honeys. The Black Canary Island bee, related to the African bee, has also adapted to the contrasting climate at high altitude and has developed a preference for the pollen produced by species like the flowering Echium, the Retama and the Teide Violet.

The dazzling scarlet flowers of the Echium wildpretii attracting a blue-banded bee

     Honey from the Echium wildpretii is today considered one of the finest in the world. It should have a smooth, creamy texture with colour ranging from almost transparent to light beige. Visitors to Puerto de la Cruz and other traditional towns in the Canary Islands will be able to find jars of Tajinaste honey in small specialist shops. Nevertheless, the lack of snows to soak into the volcanic soils in the alpine highlands around Mount Teide in recent years has taken a toll and authentic Tajinaste honey is becoming more difficult to find.

Miel de Tenerife honey (Courtesy Cabildo de Tenerife)

By John Reid Young, author and Canary Island private tour #guide.

Books by John include:

The Skipping Verger and Other Tales, a selection of historical, very short #stories.

A Shark in the Bath and Other Stories, a selection of longer, semi-biographical short stories.

El Hombre de La Guancha y Otras Historias, a selection of short stories in Spanish.

The Journalist, a novel described as a political thriller.

For more information, or if you would like to read any of my books, please click on the images to the right of the web version of this page.

You can also sign up for an occasional newsletter on this link:

 https://mailchi.mp/249fadd56fdd/author-john-reid-young

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theskippingverger

X: @reidten

Instagram: authorjohnreidyoung

 

 

Jean Batten, a star burning herself out on the island of Tenerife

     They searched for her everywhere. They searched for her across Europe. They searched as far as the Canary Island of Tenerife. Nobody knew where she was. Very few people seemed to care, and yet the lady was the great Jean Batten, one of the British Empire’s greatest aviators.

     People had grown accustomed to her disappearing for years at a time. There was no one to miss her until after she had died.

     She died on 22^nd November, 1982, just five weeks after leaving London for the last time. She had booked herself in to a cheap hotel in Mallorca. She was like any other anonymous, lonely guest. An infection developed in a leg after she had been bitten by a dog. She had refused to see a doctor. She refused to see anyone, in fact, except the little lady who ran the cheap hotel. She died, as she had lived for so many years, alone.

     Jean Batten spent sixteen of those absent years in the Canary island of Tenerife, having arrived there with her ageing mother in 1966. They took an apartment in the coastal village of San Marcos. Not long after that, Jean's mother died.

     After the death of her mother, Jean bought a tiny flat in the thriving tourist resort of Puerto de la Cruz in order to be closer to her mother, who was buried in the town's English Cemetery. Jean lived in virtual seclusion. She only surfaced from time to time, by invitation, when she thought stories of her past might rekindle some sort of glory. 

The entrance to the English Cemetery in Puerto de la Cruz

A plaque on a cemetery niche, Ellen Batten's final resting place

     Many of those who met Jean Batten would criticise her aloof nature. Perhaps most people never got close enough to Jean to understand the reasons behind her distant, peculiar ways. Few British residents in Tenerife managed to get remotely close to Jean. When they did, they realised she rarely opened up any windows for people to peep inside. 

     One of those people was Annette Reid. During an interview for a New Zealand Television documentary, Annette Reid, the wife of the last British Honorary Vice Consul in the town of Puerto de la Cruz, said she didn't think Jean Batten had any close friends. A generous and observant lady, Annette could not have put it better, when asked to describe the aviator.

     “She seemed to be like a wonderful star that shot across the firmament and then burnt itself out like a comet, until there was nothing left”.

Annette Reid M.B.E.

https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/jean-batten-the-garbo-of-the-skies-1988

     Things could have been so very different for Jean Batten. Born in New Zealand in 1909, her interest in flying began as a child when she would watch the old flying boats land and take off at a local flying school. The pattern of her life began to take shape when her mother, Ellen, arranged for Australian flying hero, Charles Kingswood Smith, to take her for a spin. Jean knew immediately what she wanted in life but her father, Frederick, was bitterly opposed to her ambitions. He had dreamed of his girl becoming a concert pianist. 

     Ellen took Jean to England, supposedly to study music at the Royal College of Music. Mother and daughter had other plans. Within days of arriving in the United Kingdom in 1930 Jean Batten was learning to fly at a Harrow aerodrome.  

     When news of the mother-daughter conspiracy reached Frederick Batten in New Zealand, he promptly cut off her allowance and that of her mother’s. The two women were left stranded and penniless. Her father and mother, a failed actress, had been separated for a number of years. It was believed he had numerous girlfriends. They were not precisely the best of friends. 

     In spite of a disconcerting nature and her rapid decline in years to come, Jean Batten was without doubt a remarkable individual. With just twenty hours of flying hours noted in her log book Jean announced she was going to attempt to fly solo to Australia. She wanted to beat the record set by the great Amy Johnson. 

Amy Johnson, of Gypsy Moth fame, flew for the Air Transport Ministry during WW2.

She lost her life after parachuting into the Thames Estuary in bad weather.

     Jean Batten was attractive and sometimes charming when she needed to be. On one voyage to New Zealand, she met Flying Officer Fred Truman. At the time, he was serving in the RAF in India. She persuaded him to lend her five hundred pounds. It was all he had, and it was quite a sum in those days. Truman was one of the many men to fall for Jean's charms. With his money she was able to negotiate sponsorships for her flight and promptly lost interest in the poor man. A number of years later Fred Truman wrote and asked if she would pay him back. She told him to join the queue. He had been one of her stepping-stones.

     Back in New Zealand, Jean Batten made some inroads into restoring her relationship with her father, who also gave funds for her new adventures.

     On her return to England, Jean was provided with a second hand De Havilland Gipsy Moth by another hopeful courtier. She made her first attempt to fly solo to Australia in April 1933. She was lucky to survive a horrifying experience when caught up in a vicious sandstorm over the Syrian Desert. The little biplane got into a spin which she just managed to control within feet of the ground. A few hours later she made two forced landings, near Bagdad and then close to Karachi when her engine blew up and the Gipsy Moth ended up in pieces. Miss Batten stepped out unscathed. Any ordinary mortal may have given in, but she was not ordinary. 

     Her incredible determination attracted more money. On her returned to England Jean immediately received the sponsorship she was hoping for, this time from Lord Wakefield and Castrol Oil. She had become potential publicity material.

     Only one year after nearly losing her life on that first attempt to fly solo to Australia, Jean set off again. The second flight also ended in disaster due mainly to her familiar, stubborn refusal to accept sound advice. Not heeding warnings from the French authorities, Jean Batten crossed the Mediterranean against a strong headwind. The aircraft ran out of fuel close to Rome and crashed. What a fool I have been, she later noted. Again, she was extremely lucky and escaped with just a cut lip and a black eye.

Jean Batten was ruthlessly tenacious

     The whole world realised now that Jean was ruthlessly tenacious and she attracted huge admiration. On her third attempt to fly to Australia she made it. Her record-breaking flight took 22 hours and 30 minutes. It was an astonishing achievement, especially as she had flown through the wall of death, a ferocious monsoon over Burma. 

     Pilots flying larger aeroplanes were later to describe similar experiences as penetrating a dense, black wall of water. Soon after arriving in Australia, Jean Batten sent a cable to the only person to ever have a hold on her, a very strong hold indeed. It was to her mother. 

     Darling, we have done it, the aeroplane, you and me. 

     The welcome Miss Batten received in Australia was overwhelming. Mission accomplished. She had obtained the fame which she and her mother had yearned for. Her extraordinary determination also helped them become economically independent.

     Jean very quickly learned to behave like a heroic celebrity. She also forgot how to behave like an ordinary woman, if she ever was an ordinary woman. That failing was perhaps to become her worst enemy in future years.

Batten, no ordinary woman (Courtesy Penguin Books New Zealand)

     As researchers discovered, very few people were ever able to break through Jean's glamorous exterior. She became totally self-interested. After a while, she began to bore people. Many could not understand what appeared to be an obsession for pleasing her mother. After flying back to England, so becoming the first woman to make a return flight, she crossed the South Atlantic to Brazil in a Percival Gull monoplane in 1935.

Jean Batten and her Percival Gull (Courtesy Mary Evans Picture Library)

     Charles Lindberg, the great American aviator, was fascinated by her. Jean was only 26, with the world at her feet and the promise of a wonderful life ahead. He invited Jean to tour the USA with him. Her mother said don’t accept, so she didn’t accept the invitation. Nobody could ever find the reason for such a compulsively possessive relationship.

     Jean and Ellen Batten retreated to the English countryside, and Ellen would rarely allow anyone to even speak to her daughter, the outstanding young lady aviator. Jean was also distancing herself from people. She was on a pedestal and didn’t know how, or was unwilling to get down off it. Her manner also began to betray an extraordinary and sad insecurity. If only she could have been free again, in the sky or simply untied to her beloved mother.

     Jean Batten caught a fleeting glimpse of freedom, of happiness or of emotional independence after another record-breaking flight from England to New Zealand in 1936. She was the heroine once again. She also met Beverly Shepherd, an airline pilot in Australia. He asked her to marry him and she accepted, but kept their engagement quiet until she could speak to Mummy. Soon after their secret engagement, a small passenger plane disappeared during a flight between Brisbane and Sidney. The co-pilot was among those killed. It was Beverly Shepperd.

     Although she tried to recover from this tragedy in 1937, by flying solo back to England again in just five days and eighteen hours, Jean Batten now clung on even more to her mother. Her days of fame fast began to cloud over. Described as the Empire’s Queen of the Skies, this beautiful girl with dark black hair and ivory skin, she hung up her white flying suit for the last time in 1939. The news was all about war. Jean became a thing of the past.

     She tried and failed to enlist as a woman ferry pilot. She was desperate, as all loyal citizens were, to do her bit. She made a few speeches to raise money for the war effort. There was a brief glimmer of hope. She fell in love again, this time with a bomber pilot. Unfortunately he was killed on a mission. She fell deeper into her mother's life. She would only ever be absolutely happy when flying high in the sky, tempting destiny with her achievements.

     The two ladies lived in Jamaica for a while, where they might have mingled with other celebrities like Noel Coward or Ian Fleming who was inventing James Bond, but they kept themselves to themselves. Dr. Jacobs, a famous psychologist in Jamaica said Jean Batten came across as a celebrity waiting for applause. It was a similar tale wherever she went. They left Jamaica almost secretly and lived out of a suitcase, travelling through Europe for the next seven years. They then bought an apartment in a small village near Malaga called Los Boliches. In English this means the marbles. 

     Nobody was ever given an address and before long they moved to Tenerife, taking an apartment in the beautiful coastal village of San Marcos. 

San Marcos, as it was before modernisation works interfered with the natural flow of the water and most of the sand disappeared

     San Marcos was considered the gem of the north. Fishermen still hauled their boats up onto the sand, and sold some of their catch to the popular old fish restaurants on the sand. To the locals Jean was just an anonymous foreigner, a slightly odd señora with an old mother who died.

     Without her mother, Jean Batten’s growing eccentricity became more acute. She tried a comeback and flew to England where she died her hair jet black, bought a mini skirt and had a couple of face-lifts. She attracted temporary public interest and died her hair blonde. She was sixty. The world no longer knew who she was and really wasn’t concerned.

     So our record-breaking heroine aged alone in Tenerife. One day she must have understood that her star was indeed burning out because she suddenly sold her flat in Puerto de la Cruz and flew to London where she began to leave her possessions and memorabilia at strategic places like the RAF Museum in London. After that, she disappeared for good. 

     The truth about her death, registered in Palma on 22^nd November 1982, was not discovered until 1987. The local authorities had sent notice of Miss Batten’s death to the New Zealand Embassy in Madrid. But there had never been a New Zealand Embassy in Madrid. Nobody claimed to know the lonely old foreigner. She was buried in common grave with fifty other angels. At least she would not be alone any more.

     In honour Jean Batten a small aircraft rally took place in 1989 from Britain to Tenerife and a plaque was unveiled in Puerto de la Cruz. It seems to have been removed but visitors today who walk along the pier from their cruise ships in the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife will see a reference to her in the avenue of illustrious visitors.

     

Jean Batten, recognised as one of Tenerife's most illustrious visitors

By John Reid Young, author and Canary Island tour guide.

Books by John include:

The Skipping Verger and Other Tales, a collection of short stories.

A Shark in the Bath and Other Stories, a collection of short stories.

El Hombre de La Guancha y Otras Historias, a collection of short stories in Spanish.

The Journalist, a novel.

For more information, or if you would like to read any of my books, please click on the images to the right of this page.

Please sign up for an occasional newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/249fadd56fdd/author-john-reid-young

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theskippingverger

Twitter: @reidten

Instagram: authorjohnreidyoung

 

A lady artist in Tenerife

 

     Very much a Victorian lady, Marianne North was almost certainly one of the best- known British painters, scientists, and explorers who fell for the once unspoilt charms of Spain's Canary Island of Tenerife during the 19^th century. 

     A vast number of her paintings of island scenery and plants hang alongside other works of art from exotic and faraway lands inside her own pavilion at Kew Gardens, the Marianne North Gallery, and they are a testament to her love of Tenerife.

Inside the Marianne North Gallery at Kew.

(Courtesy Kew Gardens)

     She was born in Hastings in 1830, the eldest daughter of a prosperous and distinguished family. Her father, Frederick North, was a Justice of the Peace and Liberal M.P. for Hastings, her mother the daughter of Sir John Marjoribanks, 1st Baronet of Lees in the County of Berwick. 

     After originally studying music, specifically as a singer with a fine voice, Marianne turned to painting after her voice failed. She was artistic by nature and lucky enough to be surrounded by several influential friends. 

     Charles Darwin was a principal source of advice and encouragement during her frequent travels overseas. Always interested in plants, she also established an early relationship with Kew Gardens, for whom she collected unusual samples with her father.

Her fearless travels have been a source of inspiration to many writers and illustrators.

     Marianne North began travelling with her father Frederick when she was still very young, and in 1848 accompanied him as far as Vienna, Turkey, Syria and Egypt. But it was only after he died that she truly became a member of that very determined British group of lady travellers and adventurers, visiting Asia, Africa, Australia and America. 

     In Africa she carried out valuable botanical work studying and painting plants and animals. In North America she painted the Niagara Falls and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. In the south she captured some of the most fascinating varieties of exotic plants and animals.

Mount Teide, floating on a nebulous horizon, has always been an inspiring sight.

     It is exactly one hundred and fifty years ago, in 1875, that Marianne North visited Tenerife. Like so many other travellers before her, she may well have been tempted to explore the island by the sight of Mount Teide from out in the Atlantic, or influenced by so many other travellers before her. 

     She headed straight for the Orotava Valley after hearing so much about its stunning beauty. However, she was disappointed to find that so many of the trees and flowers described by naturalists like Baron Friedrich Alexander von Humboldt, in 1799, had been replaced by a Central American cacti variety over the years for the sake of the Canary Island cochineal dye industry. 

Marianne North hard at work.

(Courtesy National Portrait Gallery, London)

     Nevertheless, there was enough to enchant and interest her, and she spent three months painting intensely, illustrating the great variety of colour in the island, often with Mount Teide in the background and palms, cacti, dragon trees and aloes abound in her landscapes.

She captures the north of Tenerife perfectly. 

With a snow-capped Teide Volcano in the distance, euphorbias, cacti and agaves adorn the Tacoronte clifftops.

(Courtesy Kew Gardens)

     She became a guest at Sitio Litre, the house of Mr and Mrs Charles Smith at the time, and many of her paintings capture the amazing variety of flora in the gardens, which are famous and open to the public today. Of roses in these gardens Marianne North is known to have said “I have never smelt roses so sweet as those”. 

One of the most beautiful dragon trees (Dracaena draco) possibly painted at Sitio Litre. Notice the beautiful pumpkins, a common sight in rural areas of Tenerife.

(Courtesy Kew Gardens)

     Marianne North was also a writer, evidencing that her interest in different corners of the globe, and consequently in the island of Tenerife, was not only artistic but also of an anthropological nature. She became charmed by local customs, and by the gentle nature of the inhabitants. 

The two original volumes of "Recollections of a Happy Life".

     Indeed, in her autobiography, “Recollections of a Happy Life”, she emphasises her fondness of Tenerife and its people. She remarked “These people are so friendly and their gardens are marvellous. The ladies flirt with their fans and have flowers in their hair. They behave in a very ladylike manner although they possess no more education than that received in some convent”.

     At heart she was most interested in the preservation of nature, of course, so I do wonder what she would think if she were to spend a holiday in the Canary Islands today. Perhaps, if Marianne North were still alive, some politicians might consider her a radical ecologist! 

     We might presume that as long ago as the 1870s the natural treasures of Tenerife would still have been relatively undisturbed by human progress. Nevertheless, Marianne North lamented, even then, “It is sad to see how civilised people can destroy natural treasures in such a short period of time, when neither animal nor savage has ever done any harm in centuries”.  

By John Reid Young, author and Canary Island tour guide.

Books by John include:

The Skipping Verger and Other Tales, a collection of short stories.

A Shark in the Bath and Other Stories, a collection of short stories.

El Hombre de La Guancha y Otras Historias, a collection of short stories.

The Journalist, a novel.

For more information, or if you would like to read any of my books, please click on the images to the right of this page.

Please sign up for an occasional newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/249fadd56fdd/author-john-reid-young

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theskippingverger

Twitter: @reidten

Instagram: authorjohnreidyoung

#artist #travel #art #history

CARNIVAL

The first carnival parade in Puerto de la Cruz

          There were six magnificent chariots, invented with exquisite imagination. There were groups playing percussion instruments and singing Canary Island folk songs. There were ladies and gentlemen dressed like seventeenth century aristocrats, mounted on a brigade of horses. They all sailed passively along the dusty lanes and into the cobbled streets of the old port. It was the beginnings of what was to become a tradition and it happened just over a century ago.

 

          It was February 1910, in fact, and almost every inhabitant in what was then a busy trading port watched in amazement and delight as a brilliant spectacle of two thousand participants from all over the Orotava valley took part in what was the first ever carnival parade to be held in Puerto de la Cruz. It was the birth of what has become a famous, colourful, noisy, joyous, popular, carnival festival.

 

          Most of those who led the parade were members of wealthy families in the Orotava Valley.  A good number were from the British and other foreign communities. The initiative came from the recently constituted Tourism Committee and the owner of a local newspaper called Arautápala, a well-travelled gentleman who had witnessed a similar event at Nice on the French Riviera.

          The six chariots, one of which was designed by local artist and photographer, Marcos Baeza, comprised one of Columbus’s ships, a Viking longboat manned by members of the British community, a Zeppelin airship with an elegant crew of German residents, a Swiss country scene, a tray of fruit and vegetables and another one depicting a colourful basket of island flowers.

  The Viking longboat manned by British residents in 1910

(note the Martianez cliffs behind)

          The chariots representing ships almost certainly stemmed from original Roman traditions. Whether modern carnival revellers wish to believe it or not, the word carnival may not only have its origins in the Latin carnem levare, the abandoning of meat for Lent. 

          Instead, carnivals may owe their origins much more to the satirical parades in ancient Rome when Bacchus, the God of Wine, permitted disguises to hide immoral public exhibition, when the God’s personal priest led the parade on a ship mounted upon wheels. His vessel was called the carrus navalis, the naval chariot. 

          Others suggest the word carnival actually derives from another Roman festival, navigium isidis to honour Goddess Isis, navigium being th Latin for ship. 

The Navigium Isidis procession in Rome

(by American orientalist artist Frederick Arthus Bridgman in 1902)

          Of course the devotion of man to wearing disguises possibly originates in ancient Egypt, Greece or even Japan. But it was the flamboyant and inventive Venetian Italians who introduced masks to hide faces, not just as a source of amusement but also to avoid recognition and punishment whilst committing a vengeful crime, participating in a conspiracy or being carnally unfaithful.  

 

          The parade in 1910 took the British Vikings, the German Zeppelin, the Spanish caravel and the rest of the magnificent procession along the Calle Valois, up the hill as far as the magnificent Taoro Hotel and then down again to the main square in the heart of the town. 

The Grand Taoro Hotel with the snow-capped Mt Teide behind

          Not one of these foreign residents and friends could possibly have imagined that just four years later they would be cruelly battling against one another from other kinds of grey, armoured vessels in a bloody war. Yet, it was there at the Plaza del Charco square where a great battle took place as participants and onlookers had the most tremendous fun bombarding each other with flowers and petals. This too became a tradition. The party didn’t end there. 

          Although the Spanish Civil War and its hungry aftermath dampened such celebrations, and carnivals were virtually forbidden during the earlier years of the Franco dictatorship, the splendid ball at the Taoro Hotel on the eve of the carnival parade became a yearly event. This dance actually took over from private functions because, prior to that first carnival parade of 1910, wealthy families in Tenerife, as they would do in Spain and France, had traditionally celebrated fancy dress dances in their own grand houses. 

          It was only after the Orotava Valley began to attract the first foreign, and especially British travellers, towards the end of the 19^th century, that businessmen realised an annual public carnival would help bring a new form of lucrative tourism to Puerto de la Cruz. Indeed it did, and if we can learn from history and the elegance of the old ways, perhaps Puerto’s carnival could once more help the town revive its once booming tourism industry.

 

By John Reid Young, author and Canary Island tour guide.

Books by John include:

The Skipping Verger and Other Tales, a collection of short stories.

A Shark in the Bath and Other Stories, a collection of short stories.

El Hombre de La Guancha y Otras Historias, a collection of short stories.

The Journalist, a novel.

For more information, or if you would like to read any of my books, please click on the images to the right of this page.

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