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THE TRANSGENERATIONAL
CONSEQUENCES OF THE
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
NEAR THE FOOT OF MOUNT ARARAT

ANTHONIE HOLSLAG

PALGRAVE STUDIES
IN THE HISTORY
OF GENOCIDE
Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide

Series Editors
Thomas Kühne
Clark University, USA

Deborah Mayersen
University of Wollongong, Australia

Tom Lawson
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Genocide has shaped human experience throughout history and is one of
the greatest challenges of the twenty-first century. Palgrave Studies in the
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tration of genocide, the series devotes attention to genocide’s victims,
its aftermaths and consequences, its representation and memorialization,
and to genocide prevention. Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide
encompasses both comparative work, which considers genocide across
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 Anthonie Holslag

The Transgenerational
Consequences of the
Armenian Genocide
Near the Foot of Mount Ararat
Anthonie Holslag
Research School for Memory, Heritage
and Material Culture, Faculty of
Humanities
University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide

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https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69260-9

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In Armenia, 1987

Into a basalt cavern I wandered

where the moon slid like a water snake

in white skin through the gullies

to the blonde and furry wheat.

I dug toward the damp smell of a water channel–

found a shard of a cross

its lacework a system of streams wound into a stone–

grapes and pomegranates pomegranatas

and grapes pulpy in my hands

Palmettos sawed my palms

A rising moon in the moss-grown stone mirrored the light

where winged griffins, those talismans of blood

flew into the arms of Christ

Down a gully like a volute

I found a way to the dry clay of the border

where a scimitar cut the horizon

Pegasus flew out of the tufa walls

into the white shroud of Ararat

and the ringing bells slid into the scree.

Down there I felt my name disappear

Peter Balakian (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
(reprinted with permission from June-tree: New and Selected
Poems 1974–2001)

v
 Preface

“Once upon a time…”

Gar u chgar; there was and there was not…

An Armenian storyteller once told me that Armenian stories could be
compared to flower petals. “The stories intertwine; they flow into one
another, one story leads to another and to another and to another,” and
while my research progressed, I began to understand what she meant.
Armenian literature, personal narratives and life histories are often stories
within stories within stories. The story frequently begins in the present
and goes back to the past, until a forgotten episode—a forgotten his-
tory—is uncovered by the narrator. After several attempts to write a grip-
ping version of my research, the Armenian way of telling a story inspired
the format of my book. Here too is a story within a story within a story.
I start with the story of the painter Arshile Gorky and the paintings of
his mother. Then I tell the story of the 800,000–1.5 million Armenians
who were slaughtered by the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1917.
Finally, I tell the story of contemporary Armenians in diasporic commu-
nities and how they experience their world, history and ethnic identity.
Underneath this story flows another story. This is a story of genocidal
violence and how scientists can approach these horrendous acts. This
story also includes anthropologic paradigms about identity making and
building and rebuilding and the story of intersubjectivity and what Van
de Port (1998) called “implicit knowledge.” The central questions I
strive to answer are: What impact does the genocide of 1915–1917 have

vii
viii    Preface

on the cultural experience of Armenians living in the Netherlands and

London? How do they construct their past and how does the past influence
their ethnic identity and day-to-day dealings?
The research presented here is not written in a traditional way. It has
no formal structure and does not comply with the criteria drawn by Aya
(1990): “A good rule for writers of expository prose is: at the beginning,
say what you plan to argue; in the middle, argue it; at the end, point out
what you have argued, noting what it means for further inquiry” (Ibid.:
93). My book is like an Armenian narrative, which is a story within a
story within a story, and where the loss and reconstruction of identity are
the major themes.
I present several interconnected arguments throughout this book. I
argue that to understand genocide and more specifically, genocidal vio-
lence, we cannot approach genocide as a physical act alone, but rather as
a social construct and cultural expression embedded in the social fabric
and the social imaginaire of the dominant culture group. I use hereby
the works of Staub (1989 and 2009), Baumann (1999, 2004) and
Semelin (2007). I make use of the concepts “continuum of destruction,”
“the endangered self-concept” (both in Staub 1989 and 2009), the pro-
cesses of identity making of Baumann and “imaginary constructs” based
on “identity,” “purity” and “safety” as emphasised by Semelin (Semelin
2007: 22). I argue that these constructions exist on every level in the
genocidal process: in the minds of the ideologists, identity entrepre-
neurs, politicians and those who lay the basis for the genocidal process
(and henceforth the violence). It is present in the mind of the decision
makers, bureaucrats and legislators, and all the way down to the soldiers,
citizens, neighbours and often special forces who were ordered to do the
killing. The “fear of losing the self-concept” and creating a counter iden-
tity lies at the base of all genocidal acts. By killing the Other, the Self is
safeguarded and even more importantly—constructed.
In my view therefore, an identity crisis and a pathological fixation on
identity by the perpetrators lie at the core of every genocidal violence.
This identity crisis is projected onto a minority group. And I purposely
use the word “pathological” since perpetrators are not reacting from
a positive self-image, but rather a negative self-image that has to be
strengthened and protected from the intangible Others (or at least in the
perpetrators’ minds).
This fixation, I will argue, is expressed in every phase of the genocidal
process. Therefore, social scientists can derive cultural meaning from the
violent acts themselves. Or to phrase it more plainly, if an identity crisis in
 Preface    ix

the minds of the perpetrators lies at the core of genocide, as both Staub
and Semelin claim, then this identity crisis (real or imagined) will be visi-
ble and acted out in the violence. This makes violence meaningful instead
of meaningless or incomprehensible. It shows the perpetrators’ intent,
and demonstrates the extent to which the violence is truly genocidal.
Additionally, I argue that the meaning of this violence becomes inter-
nalized and embodied by the victimized group and is expressed in day-
to-day life, in contemporary Armenian art, and literature and ceremonies
within present-day Armenian diasporic communities. These expressions
are transgenerational and even more importantly non-spatial in nature.
Thus, certain cultural symbols are used by first-, second-, third- and
fourth-generation Armenian survivors. These symbols are used not only
in the Dutch diasporic community, but also in the diasporic communities
in England and the United States and elsewhere in the world. I argue
that, from a social scientific perspective, this is a peculiar outcome, since
generally, diasporic communities adapt to the dominant culture group.
That the Armenians do so to a lesser extent speaks to the resilience of
their collective experiences and sense of loss. Thus, the weight of the
(collective) Armenian pain and history is engrained in the (re)construc-
tion of their Armenian identity. The Armenian genocide becomes an
inseparable part of the “Armenian self.”
Finally, I argue that the Armenian internalization of violence not only
brings cohesion, but ironically also causes friction and schisms within the
Armenian diasporic communities. These schisms are an integrated part of
an over-focus on identity and underlines the Armenian community’s fear
of (another) annihilation. These fears are both imagined and real, for the
Armenians have experienced exactly what the perpetrators projected—
their pathological fixation on identity or the self-concept and projecting
this on an Other that must be eradicated. This is a fear that can be traced
back to the impact that the Armenian genocide had on the psychology of
the survivors and the whole social fabric of the Armenian culture.
Westerners have to bear in mind that the Armenian genocide has had
no closure, and will not have closure until these horrendous acts are fully
recognized by the Turkish State and the international community. The
fact that Armenians’ pain has not been recognized is reopening the same
old stinking wound and perpetuates the last phase of genocide—denial of
history and remembrance.
Although this book is about the Armenian genocide and Armenian
identity, the analysis of this book is a starting point for future
x    Preface

comparative studies. In this sense, the book can be considered a case

study about genocidal violence and the genocidal processes and how
social history and ethnic identity are constructed.
It is my belief that the start of genocidal violence does not lie in the
macro social and political spheres alone. Genocide is also a cultural
expression. Before the physical act of genocidal violence occurs, the
dichotomy of insiders and outsiders or between pure and impure or
good and evil is already embedded in the minds of the perpetrators and
the social imaginary of the dominant culture group. These images are
further mobilized through propaganda.
In his excellent book, Purify and Destroy (2010), Semelin analyses
how the social imaginary is manipulated in the public domain. He argues
that this manipulation occurs on three distinct themes: identity, purity
and safety. Focusing on these themes, it is clear that the perpetrators’
goal is to create a mono-ethnic (or mono-national, or mono-religious,
etc.) identity. The nation state is considered saved if it is cleansed and
purified from these foreign elements
The need for a mono-ethnic identity can directly be linked to what
Staub (1989) considers a disruption of the self-concept, which is a condi-
tion wherein ideas about the self are existentially threatened by political
and economic uncertainties (Ibid.: 15). Some of these uncertainties are
real and physical, but when they are transferred into the political domain,
and when the focus on identity in the dominant culture group increases,
the threat becomes increasingly imaginary and even mythical.
Warfare and political and economic crises will further pressure the
genocidal process as Staub (1989), Sémelin (2010) but also Melson
(1992) point out. I then go a step further to claim that the dichotomy of
insiders and outsiders, and the way culture and identity are made in the
midst of this physical crisis becomes increasingly intense and it is within
this intensification that identity making, as argued by Baumann (2004),
should be explored. Identity making lies at the core of genocide. I
emphasise this specifically because this explanation implies that any given
society, in specific circumstances (political, economic and social), has the
potential to become locked into what I consider a pathological fixation
on identity, and can therefore potentially start ethnic cleansing and/or,
in a worst-case scenario, genocide.
By doing this, I step away from the historical and often essential
approach of studying genocides. For example, the Armenian genocide is
the outcome of the crumbling of the Ottoman society in the beginning
 Preface    xi

of the twentieth century, and thus it is culturally specific and bounded.

In the same way, I do not believe that the genocide of the Jews dur-
ing the Second World War, or the genocide of the Tutsis or the ethnic
cleansing and genocide of Bosnian Muslims in Bosnia and Serbia are
examples of essentially bounded incidents. While they have unique ele-
ments, they are also comparable.
If we study genocides as particular incidents alone we are analytically
limiting ourselves and are no longer approaching genocide as a compara-
ble process. Sure, there are essential and unique elements. The Armenian
genocide cannot be studied without mentioning the crisis in the
Ottoman Empire, and the persecution and mass killings of the Jews can-
not be studied without considering the consequences of the First World
War, the Treaty of Versailles and the crisis in Germany. The processes
behind these genocides do share commonalities; however, that reconfig-
ures the character of the genocidal process. By studying these events, we
can shed light on the commonalities.
I can best illustrate this with a small anecdote. In April 2010, I was
lecturing on the Armenian genocide and the consequences on the
Armenian identity. I was emphasizing the feelings of loss, emptiness and
suffering in the current diasporic communities. After the lecture a man
came to me and patted me silently on the back. “I am not Armenian,” he
said, “but I was touched by your story. What you just described also hap-
pened to my people. We can never forget the Holocaust.” He said these
words while he pressed a hand on his chest. He later explained to me that
the feelings of loss and emptiness, which I had described in my lecture,
were the same feelings he had experienced for years when he thought
about his own ethnic and religious background. He then made state-
ments that were comparable to phrases I had heard during my research.
“They have taken away my identity, you know. They punched a hole in
my heart” and “We have suffered more than anyone can comprehend.
We have to protect ourselves.”
Although in this book I only analyse the Armenian genocide and its
influence on the construction of the Armenian identity, I believe that my
findings can be applied to other ethnic groups who have survived such
horrendous acts. The sense of loss that the Armenians feel and experi-
ence daily can be compared to the sense of loss felt by Jews after the
Holocaust, or Bosnian Muslims after the ethnic cleansing and genocide
in Bosnia Herzegovina, or Tutsis after the genocide in Rwanda. This
book provides an analytical understanding of how collective suffering is
xii    Preface

prolonged and reproduced and how this suffering can be mobilized for
political agendas when the circumstances are right.
Although I will not discuss this political dimension of genocide in
detail in this book, my analysis contributes to an understanding of the
political processes such as inclusion and exclusion, discriminatory policies
or, in extreme cases, processes that Lemarchand (1998) called “counter-
genocide(s).” In a case study of the refugee camps in Tanzania, Malkki
(1995) was surprised that the acts of violence committed by Hutus dur-
ing the Rwanda genocide were similar to the acts of violence directed
at the Hutus themselves in 1972. Such acts included the impaling of
citizens, cutting foetuses from mothers’ wombs, forcing parents to eat
their children’s flesh and forcing parents and children to commit incest
(Malkki 1995; see also Shaw 2007: 138). Although not all Hutu perpe-
trators were descendants of survivors of massacres in Burundi in 1972,
and not all survivors of the Burundi massacres resorted to violence,
Rwandan refugees from Burundi were disproportionally involved in the
early stages of the killing during the genocide in Rwanda (Campbell
2010: 304). It is a disturbing and thought-provoking observation that
the once-victimized group became perpetrators using the same symbolism
and modes of violence as the original aggressors.
I do not claim that the Armenians commit genocide or similar acts of
violence today; rather, I argue that the transference of the pathological
fixation on identity from the aggressors to the victimized group can be a
starting point for further investigation.
In Chap. 1, I describe the life of Arshile Gorky and tell the story of
two significant portraits of a mother and her son. In Chap. 2, I present
the theoretical framework for this investigation. I discuss the background
of my research, give more in-depth explanations of the terminology of
the research question and present contemporary anthropological theories
on identity, identity making and the social construction of history.
Chapter 3 is contextual in nature. Here, I look at the development
and history of the present-day Armenian diasporic communities in
the Netherlands and London, examing them in comparison with the
Armenian diasporic in France. The questions that I address are as follows:
What can these comparisons tell us about the Dutch Armenian diasporic
community? How are the Armenian diasporic communities organised?
In Chap. 4 of Part I of the book, I examine the Armenian geno-
cide from an anthropological point of view. I focus on three elements
of genocide: the political and social causes, the symbolic meaning of
 Preface    xiii

genocidal violence and the consequences of this violence. I argue that

if we can retrieve the meaning of violence, we can understand the pro-
cesses behind the violence and also, more important, understand the
social and cultural consequences of violence for the victimized group.
The questions I address are: Why are violent acts of genocide so grue-
some compared to other forms of collective violence? What is the sym-
bolic meaning of these acts? How can we connect these violent acts to
the identity crisis of the perpetrators and/or dominant culture group?
Whereas the early chapters address the loss of identity, the following
three chapters focus on the (re)construction of identity. In Chap. 5, I
explore how Armenians in the Dutch diasporic community reconstruct
their history and give meaning to their identity in day-to-day life while
showing how this identity can be connected to the Armenian genocide.
In Chap. 6, I discuss the complexities of the present-day Armenian
identity in the Netherlands. For even though ethnic identity is a vehi-
cle connecting Armenians, the preoccupation with this identity also
causes tension, friction and contention. The Armenian community in the
Netherlands is exceedingly divided. I analyse this struggle over identity
and connect it with the common experiences of collective violence and
how “others” within the community are created.
In Chaps. 7 and 8, I focus on how Armenians in the diasporic com-
munities interact with the “outside world.” How do they integrate but
also shield themselves from external influences and how do they try to
safeguard their identity from the dominant ethnic culture group? The
underlying question that I address is as follows: To what extent can my
observations be explained by transnationalism in general, and to what
extent can they be directly linked to the Armenian genocide?
In my conclusion, I summarize my findings, pose questions for fur-
ther research and return to where it all started—a beautiful but heart-
breaking painting of a mother and her son, upon which I can hopefully
now shed new light.
A story within a story within a story. Genocide is my focus, but I start
with a tale about a painting by a first-generation genocide survivor. A
painting with enormous emotional impact.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands Anthonie Holslag

xiv    Preface

Bibliography
Aya, R.R. 1990. Rethinking Revolutions and Collective Violence: Studies on
Concept, Theory and Method. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis.
Baumann, G. 1999. The Multicultural Riddle: Rethinking National, Ethnic, and
Religious Identities. New York and London: Routledge.
Baumann, G. 2004. Grammars of Identity/Alterity. In Grammars of Identity/
Alterity: A Structural Approach, ed. G. Baumann, and A. Gingrich. Oxford:
Berghahn Books.
Campbell, B. 2010. Contradictory Behavior During Genocide. In: Sociological
Forum, 25 (2): 296–314.
Lemarchand, R. 1998. Genocide in the Great Lakes: Which Genocide? Whose
Genocide? African Studies Review 41 (1): 1–18.
Malkki, L.H. 1995. Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory and National Cosmology
among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.
Melson, R.F. 1992. Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian
Genocide and the Holocaust. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Semelin, J. 2007. Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide.
London: Hurst and Co.
Shaw, M. 2007. What is Genocide?. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Staub, E. 1989. The Roots of Evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Staub, E. 2009. The Origins of Genocide and Mass Killing: Core Concepts.
In The Genocide Studies Reader, ed. S. Totten, and P.R. Bartrop New York:
Routledge.
Van de Port, M. 1998. Gypsies, Wars and Other Instances of the Wild: Civilisation
and Its Discontents in a Serbian Town. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University
Press.
 Acknowledgements

Even though it sounds like a cliché, a book is never written by one

person. Many people are involved that help you, inspire you or guide
you in direct or indirect ways. Even though my name is at the front I
could never have accomplished this without the inspiration and influ-
ence of many genocide scholars before me. I can’t thank them all. The
interdisciplinary field is simply too large, but some authors and theorists
are centralized in this book and I could never have come to the obser-
vations of identity building and identity destruction, which lies at the
core of my argument, without their meticulously accomplished research
and insights. Without their books and ideas I would never have estab-
lished the observation that genocide is culturally expressed in modes
of violence. And I owe deep gratitude to all those I interviewed in my
research. They showed me how this violence has affected them. Their
openness, their willingness to help me, sometimes even guide me, gave
me inspiration when the topic of this book brought me down. This
book is dedicated to them, my informants, their forefathers and the
ancestors of those who experienced first-hand the horrors of genocide.
It is also dedicated to the Church in Almelo who helped me with more
insights and interviews after a Dutch version of this book was published.
Additionally I would like to thank Hayk Demoyan from the Armenian
Genocide Museum in Yerevan. I will never forget the day that I stood
near Tsitsernakaberd looking at the shrouds of Mt. Ararat. I could not
see the mountain fully that morning. But I could feel its presence and
history. It changed me.

xv
xvi    Acknowledgements

Before I thank some of the scholars who helped me, directly or indi-
rectly, through the process of theorizing and doing research, I want to
thank two specific people at Palgrave Publishing. I think that my delays
and resetting the deadlines drove them nuts, yet they were always patient
and helpful to the point that deserves admiration. I want to thank
Carmel Kennedy who always politely reminded me of deadlines when
I had exceeded them (more than once). I also want to thank Emily
Russell who gave me the room and free reign to finish this book at a
slower pace. They didn’t had to, but their indirect trust in me, gave me
the energy I sometimes desperately needed. I would also like to thank
Thirza Fockert and Julia Challinor who helped me with the tedious work
of editing and rewriting. I also like to thank Vinothini Elango and every-
one in the team of Springer and Palgrave for helping me with the proofs.
Scholarly there are so many people I would like to thank that even if
I fill pages and I would probably still forget many names. If I do, please
forgive me. My first thanks go to Frank van Vree and Jojada Verrips who
were always brutally honest with me and sharpened my ideas. Secondly
I would like to thank Peter Balakian for letting me use his poem. This
was of extreme importance to me, as I didn’t want this book to start with
a non-Armenian voice. His poem Armenia, 1987 explores, addresses
and expresses the feelings many of my respondents felt, and doing that
in words and beautifully constructed sentences is a talent I simply do
not possess. Further I would like to thank Alexander Hinton, Armen
Marsoobian, Donna Lee-Frieze, Douglas Irving, Kjell Anderson, Adam
Jones, Gregory Stanton, Joop de Jong, Devon Hinton, Ria Reis and
many other scholars I met at universities or during conferences in Yerevan,
Buenos Aires and Siena and whose papers and lectures inspired me.
I would also like to thank some scholars I never met in person but
whose ideas formed this book. First I would like to thank belatedly Gerd
Baumann who helped me in looking differently at identities and iden-
tity building. Secondly, I would like to thank Ervin Staub, Mattijs van de
Port, Carol Kidron, Robert Melson, my personal hero Clifford Geertz
and many others. Their work and their ideas pulse through the heart of
this book.
Finally, I would like to thank Arijana Hergic and my son Mack.
Without their patience as “daddy disappeared once again in his study”,
utterly stressed and dissatisfied, this book would never be finished. I
know I was absent many times, but they understood the importance of
my research subject.
 Acknowledgements    xvii

Genocide studies is a painstaking topic to research. You are con-

fronted with horrific experiences and bloody eyewitness account. I can-
not imagine the horrors the victims and direct survivors experienced. I
can only imagine the aftermath and the pain that was still visible in my
respondents’ lives. This book is for them, together with my wish that this
horrific episode will one day be recognized for what it is: a genocide and
the destruction of a culture.
On the 17th of February 2018 good news befell on the Armenians in
the Netherlands. The Dutch parliament, after long negotiations, recog-
nized the Armenian genocide fully. Even though my research has been
done before this recognition the reconciliation process can finally start.
It will be a long process though, with a lot of bumps on the road. But
it can start now due to the resilience of the Dutch Armenians. Still, true
reconciliation can start if Turkey comes to terms with their own horrible
and bloody past.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands Anthonie Holslag

 Contents

1 Introduction 1

Part I Destruction of an Identity

2 The Remembrance of a Genocide 19

3 The Great Diaspora 57

4 The Loss of Identity 95

5 Intermezzo 187

Part II The Reconstruction of an Identity

6 Between Suffering and Resurrection 193

7 The Struggle for Identity 241

xix
xx    Contents

8 Jermag Charrt 257

9 Conclusion 277

Index 287
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 Geographic distribution of Armenians worldwide

in the twentieth century 61
Table 3.2 Migration flows of the Armenian population throughout
the twentieth century 62

xxi
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

“Have you ever heard of ‘Gorky’s curse’?” Nouritza Matossian asked

me on a cloudy Thursday afternoon in March 2003. We were at her
home in Hampstead (London) and I remember how tired I felt. Until
that moment, I had been conducting research for two full months. Since
my time in London was brief, I had filled my days with as many inter-
views as possible. Before I met with Nouritza, I had already spoken with
the Armenian ambassador to Great Britain, an Armenian artist and an
Armenian minister in London. I was actually too tired and too exhausted
to satisfactorily conduct another interview. Yet her story caught my
attention and would eventually be one of those interviews that turned
my whole research upside down. Nouritza continued:

There is a rumour going round the galleries of New York that Gorky’s
paintings are cursed. The painting The Orators has been damaged in
a fire in 1957. Another painting – The Calendars – has been completely
destroyed. Then there are rumours of paintings falling from walls and of
a black-haired ghost in a blue overcoat that visits Gorky’s old house in
Sherman, Connecticut. The art dealers I have spoken with in New York are
absolutely convinced that the work of Gorky is haunted.

© The Author(s) 2018 1

A. Holslag, The Transgenerational Consequences of the Armenian
Genocide, Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69260-9_1
2 A. Holslag

Nouritza Matossian1 is the author of the book, Black Angel: A Life of

Arshile Gorky (2001), and I first met her in February 2003 during a
symposium at the Armenian embassy in London. She told me then that
she was originally from Cyprus and had moved to England when she
was 16. Later, on the aforementioned afternoon in March, I arrived to
write down her life story and derive from what Geertz (1973) so poeti-
cally called the ‘the webs of meaning’: “… man is an animal suspended
in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take cultures to be those
webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science
in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning” (Geertz
1973: 5). As a student, this quote had continually inspired me; it gave
me a specific angle to view the dynamics of culture and cultural pro-
cesses. Cultures weren’t static, they were reproduced. They were webs
that created meaning and during my interview with Nouritza, I had a
better glimpse of these webs than I initially suspected.

I did not really know who Gorky was. I mean, I had heard of him, and
I had read something about his abstract art, but I had never seen any of
his works. I thought he was a Russian artist who had taken refuge in the
United States after World War I and the Bolshevist Revolution. He did
not carry an Armenian surname.2 Only much later I discovered that his
real name was Vosdanig Manoug Adoian. I remember how I walked into
Tate Gallery and how I was nailed to the ground when I saw her face on
the wall. The painting was called The Artist and his Mother and I recog-
nized it. There was something about those eyes. I don’t remember exactly
what, neither can I explain it, but they were so familiar to me that tears
welled up. Looking back, I recognized something in all of his paintings –
even the abstract ones. The Armenianness in his art was so obvious.3

1 Nouritza is one of only two informants in my book who gave me permission to use

their first and last name. All other names in my research are pseudonyms. When I asked
Nouritza during our interview if she wanted to be assigned another name, she looked at
me with a vague smile. “How many Armenians do you know who have written a biography
on Arshile Gorky?” she slyly answered. “I can hardly stay anonymous, regardless how well
intentioned your question is.”
2 Most Armenian surnames end with “-ian”, which means “daughter/son of father” but

also refers to a place of origin or the father’s profession.

3 The Armenianness in his art is however a point of discussion among art critics, art

historians and biographers, like Auping (1995), Spender (2001) and more recently
Herera (2003) who question the “Armenianness” in Arshile Gorky’s paintings. His style
is considered too “modern” and too “European” and too “American”-influenced to be
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

Nouritza’s life story is a familiar one, as I heard the same from other
female respondents of her generation. It is a story of resistance against
tradition and of finding a balance between the Armenian culture and the
culture of her Western host countries.
Nouritza was born in Cyprus on 24 April 1945—“a typical Armenian
day,” as she put it4—and lived in a district with Turkish and Armenian
immigrants. “We kind of had to rely on each other. Our grandparents
did not speak the Greek language and because of that we ended up
in the same district as other immigrants. I now speak fluent English,
Armenian, Greek and Turkish.” The Armenian language and history

interpreted as “Armenian.” The argument is that he used various styles throughout

his career; some of his paintings were abstract, others surreal and some cubist. As an
anthropologist, I follow these discussions with great interest. First, it places “European”
and “American” art outside an international and cultural continuum. Second, culture and
“cultural influences” seem to be set in a fixed state. If we follow these discussions closely,
European and American art seem to exist without influence from other schools or are only
being influenced by Western schools. The term Western indicates an emphasis on the word
“modern,” thus implying that non-Western cultural expressions are traditional. (This is also
shown in the European and American centrism in international analyses.) By approaching
culture as something that is fixed, the fluidity of culture and how non-Western art (if one
considers this dichotomy) can be incorporated in Western art is neglected. These analyses
indirectly imply that the Armenian style, whatever this is, is static, unchangeable and can
be recognized by specific criteria. This approach underestimates the fluidity of cultural
influences and specific themes—like frescoes, landscapes, cultural experiences—that are
depicted in an abstract form. There is a greater argument to make here as well. Denying
Arshile Gorky’s cultural heritage in his work is also denying the experiences that shaped
him as an artist. As Balakian (1996) emphasises:
Can one imagine writing about the poet and Holocaust survivor Paul Celan without
noting that he survived the Nazi’s extermination plan for the Jews? And that his
parents were Holocaust victims? Would one write about Marc Chagall’s early work
without delving into the climate of Anti-Semitism in Russia during the first decades
of the century? Or about Picasso’s paintings of the ‘30’s without a consideration of
what the Spanish Civil War meant to him? It should be equally unthinkable to write
about Gorky without articulating the context and facts of the Armenian Genocide?
(…) In an era before the Holocaust gave rise to a global discourse about genocide,
Gorky sought to express what had happened to him, his family and his people.
(ibid.: 60, 61)
Neglecting this dimension of Gorky’s work is therefore ignoring the historical and personal
impact the Armenian genocide had on him. It is in a way extending the discourse of denial,
even if unintended.
4 On April 24 Armenians commemorate the genocide, since on that day in 1915 a large

part of the Armenian elite was captured by the Ottoman rulers. This event is seen as the
onset of the genocide.
4 A. Holslag

were not taught in the English primary schools and Nouritza remembers
how on Saturdays she had Armenian lessons with other children her
age. “I think that is the first thing Armenian immigrants did; start an
Armenian primary school. The Turks and Greeks did not go to school.
The Armenians quickly realized that education was the single most
important thing to get ahead in the English society.”
Nouritza does not remember open hostility between Armenians
and Turks. What she does remember is the close-knit subculture the
Armenians developed within the district. “There were tunnels connect-
ing Armenian households together and especially the women used the
roofs to visit each other.”
Nouritza’s maternal grandmother had survived the genocide of
1915. “My father had come to Cyprus as a young boy in 1913. My
grandmother ended up in Cyprus during the exodus in 1918.” From
an early age, she had heard the stories of the death marches and how
her grandmother and her first daughter, Satarnik (Nouritza’s aunt),
made themselves as unattractive as possible. “They used ashes to rub
their skins with, which made them look unnatural and ill.” Satarnik did
not survive the death marches and her grandmother’s second daugh-
ter—Nouritza’s mother—was named in honour of her deceased sis-
ter. “It was a way to commemorate the past—an homage to their
firstborn.”
Nouritza grew up in a subculture that was trapped in a constant
sense of danger, partially due to the past and partially to the Armenians’
minority status in the district. “It was a community that constant felt
threatened. ‘Don’t carry any jewellery’, my grandmother would say over
and over again. ‘Don’t carry any jewellery, for they will cut off your fin-
gers to get them.’” Or: “Never build a house when there is a Turk close,
for you will irrevocably lose it”.5
As a young teenager, who in a large part received her education
at an English primary school and could identify with the English

5 In her research on the current Armenian community on Cyprus, Pattie (1997) points

out that the same feeling of risk still exists in the Armenian-Cyprian communities: “The
Armenians still in Cyprus watch and wait. They are not detached bystanders, for they have
developed a strong sense of being Cypriot as well as Armenian, but they feel just as strongly
their position as neither Turkish nor Greek. … They say, resignedly, that the real Armenian
story is that of moving and rebuilding.” (ibid.: 37—sic).
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

community more than her parents could, Nouritza experienced the

Armenian subculture on Cyprus as claustrophobic and confining due
to the community’s reaction to the Armenians’ perceived risk. “It was a
very patriarchal community. The preservation of the Armenian identity
was seen as a sacred goal. To marry a non-Armenian, an odar, was the
equivalent of death. You were banished from the community.”
At 16, Nouritza left for England, where she eventually married a
German–American musician.

I think I very deliberately did not choose an Armenian, although we did

have an Armenian wedding. The irony, therefore, is that in England,
more even than in Cyprus, I became aware of my Armenian cultural back-
ground. In Cyprus, you were part of a clearly defined community, whereas
here [in England] you only sporadically would meet Armenians. You did
not see each other that often. Only in England, I really became interested
in Armenian history.

Nouritza’s contact with Gorky’s paintings therefore was more than

an acquaintance between an art-lover and an artist. It was a meeting
between a painter who deliberately changed his surname, and a young
woman who was searching for the traces of her cultural heritage at that
time in her life.
Now, years later, that same woman was sitting in a half-dark living
room. “Take a look at this painting,” she said, while she sat down next
to me on the couch with an enormous book. It was a painting of a tall
boy, who was standing next to his mother, his dark eyes staring at the
spectator with a penetrating gaze. The woman looked fragile and pale
in comparison to the boy. “Pay attention to the hands, they are drawn
vague and volatile. The details are mostly in the face. As if Gorky forces
you to look at the faces, as if he preferred you to ignore everything
around it. Now look at this,” and she grabbed another book from the
small table in front of us and showed me a black and white picture of a
mother and a son. The comparisons between the picture and the paint-
ing were sublime. Maybe the dress of the woman had changed of motive
and colour, and Gorky had used his brown, blue and red pastel nuances
to bring a warmth, but also a haunting atmosphere to the canvas that
was missing from the black and white photograph. A single glance said
it all—this was a self-portrait. The painter clearly tried to tell us some-
thing here that would gain meaning in the context of his entire oeuvre.
Nouritza said, “It took him years to make this painting. There are a lot
6 A. Holslag

of sketches found in which he drew the face of his mother from different
angles. He eventually made two versions.” The eyes of the mother were
staring mysteriously at me. They were both sad and warm at the same
time. “Typical Armenian eyes,” Nouritza added, as if she had read my
mind.
Even before I started my research, I would go out socially with
a long-time Armenian friend. I remember in 2002, I went to a pizze-
ria and he introduced me to three other Armenians, which was a strange
and surreal experience. Here was my friend whom I had known for
years, but who I had never heard speak in a language I did not know.
I was cordially received at the table, and I remember that our conver-
sations quickly moved to politics, the Armenian genocide, Armenian art
and “Armenianness,”6 which as an anthropologist-to-be interested me
immensely. I heard a story that night, which I would hear later during
my research in several variations. It was a story about two Armenians who
did not know each other by name or face, but who recognized each other
as Armenians as soon as they passed each other on the street. “How can
that be?” I asked at one point during the conversation. “The eyes,” they
answered. “It’s the look in their eyes. You recognize it immediately.”
Now, a pair of those eyes was staring back at me from a book. “What
other paintings did he [Gorky] make?” I asked Nouritza. She at once
showed me a couple of photographs. These were pictures of busy and
abstract paintings, full of ink stains—or so they seemed to be to my
untrained eyes—that poured into each other, collided, and cut across the
canvas with lines and curves. Agony, Diary of a Seducer and They Will
Take My Island were titles that caught my gaze. They lacked the warmth
and softness of the first painting of a mother and a son. “Do you see it?”
she asked, simultaneously leafing through the book and looking at me.
“Do you see the difference? Between this painting (The Artist and His
Mother) and the paintings that followed?” I nodded. The first one was a
portrait and harmonious, the others were fragmented and abstract. “This
one was inspired by a picture, a memory before the genocide. The other,
darker works came in the time after…”

6 I have spoken with a variety of Armenians in several settings before, during and after my

research, but I am still surprised at how these subjects continuously blend together.
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

1.1  Arshile Gorsky
According to Turner (1988), cultural performances, such as art, movies,
music and theatre, are windows in which societies portray themselves,
windows from which we can derive meanings about life and the tangi-
ble world around us and how it is construed: “Cultural performances
[are] a … drawing board on which creative actors sketch out what they
believe to be more apt or interesting ‘designs of living’” (ibid.: 24). Still,
this is only one part of the whole story. Art not only gives meaning, but
is part of a larger entity, as Gorky himself stresses: “I don’t think there
is any absolutely original art in the purest sense of that term. Everyone
derives from accumulated experiences of his own culture and from what
he himself has observed. Art is a most personal, poetic vision or inter-
pretation conditioned by environment” (Mooradian 1978: 284).7 If art
is a reflection, then how was I to interpret those disparate paintings?
What were they telling me about Arshile Gorky, and by extension, about
“Armenianness”?
Arshile Gorky was born 15 April 1902 in the village Khorkom, south
of Lake Van in Turkey. He was the son of a relatively prosperous farm-
ing family, which possessed 300 sheep, 20 goats and 2 horses (Matossian
2001: 10). During his entire life, Gorky would romanticize his youth in
Khorkom, a youth he would later commit to canvas in several paintings
between 1936 and 1944. The paintings Image in Xhorkom (deliberately
misspelled to hide his background for art historians), Plow and the Song,
How My Mother’s Apron Unfolds in My Life, Water of Flowery Mill and
The Liver is the Cock’s Comb all depict his youth and homesickness for
his motherland. In 1945, he told his friend Breton about the extent to
which his past and his memories came together in his paintings.

7 There is a current debate between art historians about how many of these quotes are

actually from Arshile Gorky. It is suspected that the letters in Karlen Mooradian’s (Arshile
Gorky’s cousin) biography of Gorky were invented by the author. This would most likely
have been politically motivated. Matossian (2001: xiii, xiv), the only person other than
Mooradian who had access to the letters Gorky wrote to his sister, defends this theory. I
have stayed away from this debate as the authenticity of the letters has never been proven.
I defend my position from an anthropological point of view by stating that even if these
remarks were not made by Gorky, they would have been made by his cousin. Either way,
these comments reflect how the author (Gorky or Mooradian) thought about his Armenian
identity and heritage.
8 A. Holslag

I tell stories to myself, often, while I paint, often nothing to do with the
painting. Have you ever listened to a child telling that this is a house and
this is a man and this is the cow in the sunlight… while his crayon wanders
in apparently meaningless scrawl all over the paper? My stories are often
from my childhood. My mother told me many stories while I pressed my
face in her long apron with my eyes closed. She had a long white apron
like the one in her portrait and another embroidered one. Her stories
and the embroidery on her apron got confused in my mind with my eyes
closed. All my life, her stories and her embroidery keep unravelling pic-
tures in my memory as if I sit before a blank white canvas. (ibid.: 377)

Gorky’s mother played a very important role in his life. After his father
left for the United States in 1908, she was the only person aside from
his sister whom he trusted and depended on. His mother symbolized his
youth and innocence and the years before the genocide.
In November 1910, Gorky’s family moved to Aikesdan on the out-
skirts of Van. It was here, in 1912, that the photograph that became the
blueprint for his two paintings The Artist and His Mother was taken. In
letters to his sister, Gorky would often refer to this time in Aikesdan,
mentioning the beauty of the landscape, the mountains, the crops, the
flowers, which stayed with him and as he noted, became a part of his
paintings and psyche.

I communicate my innermost perceptions through art, my worldview. In

trying to probe beyond the ordinary and the known, I create an interior
infinity. Liver. Bones. Living rocks and living plants and animals. Living
dreams…these debts I owe to our Armenian art. Its multiforms, its many
opposites. The invention of our folk imagination. These I attempt to evoke
directly, that is the folklore and physical beauty of our homeland, in my
works. (Mooradian 1978: 275, 276)

On 28 June 1914, Franz Ferdinand was killed in Sarajevo. In the months

that followed, World War I broke out due to mutual treaties between
France, Russia and Great Britain on one side and Germany and Austria-
Hungary on the other. On 2 August 1914, the Ottoman Empire signed
a treaty with Germany to ensure protection against Russia, and on 29
October, Turkish troops attacked the Russian harbours of Odessa,
Sebastopol, Novorossisk and Feodosija (Keegan 2001: 241). Russia
declared war on the Ottoman Empire three days later, and in December
1914, Turkish troops invaded Russia through the Caucasian border.
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

For Gorky, these developments took place at a distance. Like others

in Van, he heard the rumours of the defeat of the Turkish troops, the
Russians’ advance, and the massacres that Turkish and Kurdish soldiers
had committed in several Armenian villages. Armenian leaders in Van
decided to put up defence lines and dig trenches around the city to pro-
tect themselves from possible bandits and Turkish troops. Gorky’s sister
Vartoosh recalled years later how she prayed with her family every night.
“In Aykesdan we prayed before going to sleep…. We only prayed that
God give peace, that war shouldn’t happen, and God guard our lives.
Mummy said this aloud and we made the cross and knelt” (Matossian
2001: 61, 62). On Monday 6 April, the city of Van was besieged by
Turkish and Kurdish troops under the leadership of Jevdet Bey (the gov-
ernor of the province). The bombardments immediately set the suburb
of Aikesdan on fire.8
The defence of Van—one of the few cities where Armenians success-
fully resisted the Turkish troops—has attained an almost mythical status
amongst Armenians. The Armenian defence lines held using only 300
rifles and 1000 pistols, and on 16 May, the Turkish platoons retreated
when the Russian troops arrived (Matossian 2001: 65). Gorky, who
was a messenger boy during the defence, never forgot the bloodbath
the Turkish troops left in the area. Fifty-five thousand Armenians were
found killed in a field nearby. Entire villages and churches were burned
to the ground and in the village of Akantz, the entire male population
(2500 men) was murdered in one afternoon, before the eyes of every-
body in the village (ibid.: 71). Many years later, in 1947, Gorky would
try to commit those images of pillars of corpses to canvas in his painting
Summation. This was an extraordinary act, since he rarely spoke about
the horrors of his youth. Gorky only mentioned his memories of these
massacres in a single letter to his sister.

I believe I have experienced more than my fellow artists. This does not
automatically enable me to know more. But it does enable me to respond
necessarily to more experiences than they have had the ability to observe
directly. As Armenians of Van…you know well how we were forced to expe-
rience with greater intensity and in a shorter time what others can only read
about while sitting in comfort. We lived and experienced it. The bloodshed

8 In the novel Aykesdane Ayrevoum E, by Kourken Mahari describes these events. The

title is freely translated in “Aikesdan is on fire”.

10 A. Holslag

of our people at the hands of the Turks, the massacres and genocide.9 Our
death March, our relatives and dearest friends dying in battle before our
eyes. The loss of our homes, the destruction of our country by the Turks,
Mother’s starvation in my arms. Vartoosh dear, how my heart now sinks in
even discussing it. (Mooradian 1978: 266, 267)

Meanwhile, the “Great Armenian Catastrophe” (as it was called before

the Second World War)10 became more widespread and organised in
the early months of 1915. Local governments were secretly assigned to
annex Armenian property, round up Armenian leaders and prepare the
Armenian population for large-scale deportations (Matossian 2001: 64;
Chaliand and Ternon 1983: 36). On 24 April 1915, new orders and
regulations were concretely manifested when 650 prominent Armenians
(doctors, writers, academics, poets, composers, politicians, and law-
yers) were rounded up. Some were tortured and executed and others
deported by train to the Syrian desert. In one firm sweep, the Armenian
community embedded in the Ottoman millet system was adrift.
On 15 June, the Russian offensive began to collapse and the Russian
soldiers were forced to retreat. Two hundred thousand Armenian refu-
gees travelled away from their homeland with the Russians. Gorky’s
mother decided to flee to Erevan (now Yerevan), and her daughter
Vartoosh remembered this journey vividly:

Walking night and day for eight days, our shoes were all gone. We clam-
bered over hills and fields. We slept at night a little bit but we had to wake
very early to set off because the people who left after us were all killed
on the field of Bergri. The Turks attacked and killed them, almost 40 or

9 The word “genocide” is peculiar in this letter and strengthens the argument that

the letters were fabricated. The word, even though first used in his book “Axis Rule of
Occupied Europe” by Lemkin in 1944 and later in 1945 and 1946, in his publications, the
word was not officially coined until 1948 during the Geneva Conventions. That this word
is used in a letter of 1947 either implies that Gorky was aware of the word or that the
letters are indeed fabricated. Before the word “genocide,” the Armenian massacres were
known as the Armenian Catastrophe. The truth is, we do not know. I leave it here because
it conceptualizes Gorky’s past, either through Mooradian or Gorky himself. It could be a
shifting of the words that Mooradian made on purpose to emphasize what happened to the
Armenians. See also footnote seven.
10 The word “genocide” is derived from the Greek word “genos”—which means race/

clan—and the Latin word “cide,” which is derived from the action “to kill” (Hinton 2002: 3).
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

50,000 were killed there. Some went down to Persia, but we took the
route to Erevan. (Matossian 2001: 80)

In August, Gorky’s family, the Adoians, arrived in Erevan. The city was
flooded with refugees who were famished and in search of food and
water. The American doctor, Ussher, who was working for the Red Cross
and had fled with the Armenians, would later record a vivid description
of this desperate situation in his memoirs.

We reached Igdir, Monday, August 10. During that week more than two
hundred and seventy thousand refugees poured over the border into the
Caucasus…the Erevan plain filled with a shifting multitude overflowing
the horizon, wandering aimlessly hither and thither; strangers in a strange
land, footsore, weary, starving, walking like lost and hungry children.
(Ussher 1917: 314)

In Erevan, Gorky quickly found a job in a carpet shop with the help of
family members who lived there, and in the years 1916 and 1917, the
family tried to build their lives again, as did thousands of other refugees.
On 28 May 1917, Russia and the Ottoman Empire signed a treaty and
in the fall of 1918, the Turkish government set up blockades to prevent
goods and products from reaching the New Armenian Republic. In the
winter that followed, 200,000 Armenians died—1/5th of the Armenian
population (ibid.: 97). Gorky’s mother was among them. She died of
starvation on 19 March 1919, in the company of her son and daugh-
ter. In an interview, years later, Vartoosh gave a detailed account of her
mother’s death.

She was debilitated, her stomach was swollen and her long fingers had
become spindly. Her eyes were sunken and cavernous, she had sores in her
mouth and her lips were coated and furry. She was dictating a letter to
her husband…. ‘Write that I can never leave Armenia. That I will never
come to America. They’ve abandoned us completely.’ Then suddenly we
saw that mother had died. (Matossian 2001: 98)

In 1920, Gorky and his sister travelled to the United States, where
Arshile would begin to focus on his art. In 1922, two paintings
appeared in an exposition, signed by an unknown “Ardie Gunn” and
“Ardie Colt” (ibid.: 125), and in 1923, a certain “Arshile Gorky” reg-
istered at the Boston University of Fine Art and Design. It is unclear
12 A. Holslag

why Gorky decided to change his name at this time. Some critics and
art historians argue that he did so for pragmatic reasons. Other biogra-
phers argue that his name change had a symbolic meaning. However, it
is important to place his metamorphosis in the context of the 1920s. In
that period, Armenians were known as “starving Armenians” and car-
ried the stigma of being “needy” due to several public charity events
in the 1920s. Arshile fought against this image and deliberately chose
a Russian surname, since in the eyes of most Americans, Russia had an
air of mysticism, courtesy and purity (ibid.: 131) and did not have the
same connotation as Armenian names. Since Arshile had lived in Russian
Armenia for several years and spoke the language, a Russian identity was
one he could easily assume. He had, after all, become politically aware in
Russia where he changed from a boy fleeing the war into a mature young
man who took responsibility for his sister.
The Russian poet Maxim Gorky was an important factor in Gorky’s
conscious awakening. Maxim, a hero for many Armenians, was a cel-
ebrated writer who had translated Armenian poets into Russian and
gained political attention in 1916 by condemning the massacres of poets
in Turkey (Matossian 2001: 91). The name “Gorky” was therefore a per-
fect pseudonym for Arshile; it was a Russian name, but referred indirectly
to his Armenian roots and the genocide.11
There is, however, another interpretation for the name change.
Matossian reminds us that in ancient times, in traditional Armenian
churches, priests sometimes distanced themselves from their family sur-
names and simultaneously adopted spiritual names. This change sym-
bolised a breach with the past and the start of a new Christian identity
(ibid.: 91). One could interpret Arshile Gorky’s name change in the
same way, and consider it an indication of a lost past, a breach with the
“before” and the starting point of a “new” identity that would never be
the same after the events he had experienced.
In the 1930s, Gorky worked as a teacher at the Grand Central School
of Art in New York and slowly created a name for himself in the art cir-
cuit. Gorky’s career from this time was uneven with several high points,
and particularly during and after the Depression, deep hardships and
poverty. From 1940, he painted his most famous paintings, which were

11 The name Maxim Gorky was in itself a pseudonym. Gorky means “bitter.” Arshile is

Russian for Achilles. The name translated therefore means Achilles the Bitter (Balakian
1996: 63).
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

admired for their expressive character and for the way he mixed abstract
and surrealist influences in his compositions. Still, he could not let go of
his past since it often came back in his sketches and paintings.
“Arshile Gorky,” as Matossian would tell me decades later in a dusky
living room, “was a man with a photographic memory. He could remem-
ber drawings and paintings within the finest detail and I am of the opin-
ion that he subconsciously incorporated the Armenian art he had seen in
his youth in his paintings. Take a look at these frescos,” she said, while
she reached for another book of photographs and put it on her lap. “The
static faces and oval eyes come back in his portraits. Or these Khachkars12
which are clearly incorporated in his abstract sketches. Retrospectively I
think that I recognized these Armenian references in his art. That is why
when I saw his paintings for the first time, I had such an emotional reac-
tion … The Armenian art is so strong and so subtle. It absorbs you.”
In the years between 1926 and 1944 Gorky obsessively worked on
two pieces that would make him famous, The Artist and His Mother,
based on the same photograph, but distinct in colours and back-
ground.13 The first painting, painted between 1926–1936, has warm
pastel colours, while the second painting, painted between 1929–1942,
is more expressive. Both paintings are now generally regarded as his mas-
terpieces and differ significantly from his other paintings. They are por-
traits, neither surreal nor abstract, and contrary to his other pieces, each
has a smooth surface without the thick daubs of paint that are character-
istic of most of Gorky’s work.14 The painter Schary explains how time
consuming this painting must have been:

12 Khachkars are Armenian stone crosses (sometimes also carved out of wood) and I was

told by several artists that these are specifically Armenian. The cross is the symbol of Christ.
The interwoven flower on top of it symbolizes eternity. The lines on the sides of the stone
are interwoven and have neither beginning nor end; they represent the connection between
humans and God. As another informant told me, the bow around the cross symbolizes
God’s reciprocity. It represents the relationship of the earth with God and God with the
earth. The stone cross shows this entire cycle.
13 The first painting of this set can be found in the Whitney Museum of Art in New York,

and the second painting in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. In the first
painting, the prominent colors are yellow and blue and the face of the mother is livelier.
In the second painting, the color red is more prominent and the mother’s face seems like a
death mask. I will come back to this in later chapters.
14 During this period, Gorky made two other portraits: Self Portrait (ca. 1937) and

Portrait of Master Bill (ca. 1937).

14 A. Holslag

This picture took a hell of a long time. He’d let it dry good and hard.
Then he’d take it into the bathroom and he’d scrape the paint down with
a razor over the surface, very carefully until it got as smooth as if it were
painted on ivory. You look at the picture and you won’t be able to tell how
he did it because there are no brushstrokes. Then he’d go back and paint
it again, all very fine and done with very soft camel-haired brushes. He
scraped it and he scraped it and he scraped it. Then he’d hold it over the
bath-tub and wipe off with a damp rag all the excess dust and paint he’d
scraped off. That’s how he got this wonderful surface. It’s the only paint-
ing he ever did that way. (Matossian 2001: 216, 217)

According to Matossian, the first painting of the set resembles the

Armenian frescos in the Church of the Holy Cross in Aghtamar in com-
position and colours, which Gorky studied during this period. The faces
are brought back to simple geometrical patterns. The eyes are oval and
dark (ibid.: 215), and the emphasis is on the faces. We also see the sym-
bolism of life and death, especially in the second version where the son
is colourful and vivid, and the mother is grey and deadly. Her eyes stare
accusingly from the canvas.
The paintings are more than a mere reproduction of a photograph.
They are memories, a story told in colours. The painting is a monument
to a mother who died because during the aftermath of the genocide
and was buried in a mass grave. Decades later, his sister still recalled the
moment that Gorky showed her one of the paintings for the first time.
He brought her into his studio and said: “‘Vartoosh dear, here is mother.
I am going to leave you alone with her’ …. Oh, I was so shocked!
Mother was alive in the room with me. I told her everything and I wept
and wept” (ibid.: 218).
In the years between 1946 and 1948 Gorky suffered a series of set-
backs. In 1946, he fell ill and had to undergo a bowel operation. In
1947 and 1948, he was regularly depressed and his marriage to his sec-
ond wife, Agnes Magruder, started to disintegrate. On 21 July 1948,
Arshile Gorky wrote the words “Goodbye my loveds15” on a wall with
white chalk, and committed suicide. He was 46 years old.
“He hanged himself,” Nouritza said, while she closed the book
and turned on a lamp. “I could never get rid of the thought that he

15 This is a literal translation of the Armenian words “Eem seereliners” (Matossian 2001:

475).
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

killed himself in the same way other artists were murdered in the old
Ottoman Empire.16 To understand Arshile Gorky is to understand
Armenia. He touches the core of our ‘being’–our essence. He represents
our identity.” I had heard this statement from another informant, whom
I refer to as Misha, further on in this book, and with whom I had had
numerous conversations about Armenian art. “The story of Gorky makes
me weep,” Misha once told me. “When I saw the paintings, tears were
streaming down my face.” I never really paid attention to these com-
ments at the time, but after my conversation with Nouritza, I suddenly
saw Misha’s comments in a new light. If performances are “reflections”
of communities and cultures, as Turner (1988) emphasizes, what could
the life story of Gorky—and the value it holds for Armenians—tell us
about Armenian culture and identity now? What symbolism was hidden
behind these stories and paintings?
I stood up, overwhelmed by the flood of information I had received,
and shook Nouritza’s hand. Outside it had already grown dark. For
the first time, I realised how everything in a culture is connected and
how subtle the webs of meanings are interwoven with each other
(using Geertz’s terminology [1973]). The story of Gorky, as Nouritza
had related to me that afternoon (and as I would later read in her
biography), is a tale about the Armenian identity. It is filled with cul-
tural constructions and concepts. It is an imagined landscape of how
the Armenian experience is supposed to be. I suddenly realised, while I
moved towards the door and thanked Nouritza again for the interview,
that my research question had to be adjusted straight away. My origi-
nal question was too naive and one dimensional, almost too static. My
original view lacked the dynamic and interwoven nature of the Armenian
experience. My original question—how does the Armenian genocide influ-
ence the contemporary Armenian cultural experience?—was too direct
and too simplistic. It did not encompass the themes of identity, national
feelings and ideas of “self”. How did a population manage to overcome
something as drastic and evasive as genocide? How does a community
survive such a blow?

16 This is an issue Nouritza also brings up in her book. There she writes: “I recalled pho-

tographs of Armenians hanging from gallows in public squares with idle Turkish soldiers
leaning on their rifles. Had Gorky punished himself for a dreadful crime?” (Matossian
2001: xii).
16 A. Holslag

When I rode back home in the subway, I asked myself the questions
that, in all honesty, I should have asked myself at the start of my field-
work. What is Armenianness? How do Armenians view their world? And
what was, judging by the emotional reaction of my informants, the all-
encompassing meaning of Gorky’s paintings of a mother and her son?

Bibliography
Auping, M. 1995. Arshile Gorky: The Breakthrough Years. New York: Modern Art
Museum of Fort Worth/Rizzoli.
Balakian, P. 1996. Arshile Gorky and the Armenian Genocide. In Art in America
84: 58–67.
Chaliand, G. and Ternon, Y. 1983. The Armenians: From Genocide to Resistance.
London: Zed Press.
Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books Inc.
Herrera, H. 2003. Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work. New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux.
Hinton, A.L. (ed.). 2002. Genocide: An Anthropological Reader. Malden, MA:
Blackwell Publishers.
Keegan, J. 2001. De Eerste Wereldoorlog 1914–1918. Amsterdam: Balans/Van
Halewijck.
Lemkin, R. 1944. Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of
Government, Proposals for Redress. New Jersey: The Lawbook Exchange Ltd.
Matossian, N. 2001. Black Angel: A Life of Arshile Gorky. London: Pimlico.
Mooradian, K. 1978. Arshile Gorky Adoian. Chicago: Gilgamesh.
Pattie, S.P. 1997. Faith in History: Armenians Rebuilding Community. London:
Smithsonian Institution Press.
Spender, M. 2001. From a High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Turner, V. 1988. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ Publications.
Ussher, C.D. 1917. An American Physician in Turkey: A Narrative of Adventures
in Peace and in War. Boston: Taderon Press.
 PART I

Destruction of an Identity
 CHAPTER 2

The Remembrance of a Genocide

We are an old people, Tony. The first Christians. We are the oldest people on
earth and great injustice has been done to us. To understand us, you also have
to understand our past…
Informant Arpine (United Kingdom), 31 March 20031
Of all the nations of the world no history has been so blameless as the history of
the Armenian people…
William Ewart Gladstone, 24 September 18962

The research questions I stated, and which I revised after meeting with
Nouritza Matossian, are as follows: What impact does the genocide of
1915–1918 have on the cultural experience of Armenians living in the
Netherlands? How do they construct their past and how does the past
influence their ethnic identity and day-to-day lives?
To sketch the background of the research question, it is neces-
sary that I look at the context in which these questions were posed.
Although the Armenian genocide is not the only tragedy that has
befallen the Armenians throughout the centuries, the genocide has
had an entirely different impact than earlier persecutions. I will argue

1 Arpine and the names that follow are pseudonyms, as is customary in anthropology.
This to guarantee the privacy and anonymity of my informants.
2 William Ewart Gladstone was an English politician, who in 1896 gave a passionate

speech about the Armenian massacres in the Ottoman Empire.

© The Author(s) 2018 19

A. Holslag, The Transgenerational Consequences of the Armenian
Genocide, Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69260-9_2
20 A. Holslag

that the goal of this genocide was distinct. Second, the construction of
the Armenian past in the Netherlands is by no means self-evident. The
Dutch government had not officially recognized the Armenian geno-
cide before 2004, which is when most of my fieldwork took place. Yet
the Dutch government still speaks of “the events during the First World
War” and avoids, if it can, the word “genocide” in its dealings with the
Turkish government. The Dutch government’s refusal to officially rec-
ognize the genocide influenced the opinions of my respondents in the
field. Therefore, it is important to consider the political context of this
research, the denial politics of Turkey and the significance of remem-
brance in the Dutch-Armenian diasporic community. Here again is a
story within a story. This is a story of the Armenian people, the moun-
tain Ararat and how a gruesome and violent event is neglected in cur-
rent international politics.

2.1  The Armenian People

Since Armenians put great value on their vast history and past, it is impor-
tant to provide a broad outline of the historical path of the Armenian
people. Arpine, an informant in the United Kingdom, explained to me
that the Armenians are the “oldest nation” in the world. They are the first
Christian nation (even though this is debated by scholars) and a nation
that had specific characteristics, mainly a common language and reli-
gion. Even though these aspects shaped the Armenian “identity,” I argue
that ethnic and national identities are relatively “modern” identities.
Although it would take more historic exploration, I strongly believe that
the primary identity indicators for Armenians in ancient times were kin-
ship, property, to some extent language and trade. Later, and on a more
abstract level, religion bound the Armenian community together. It was
not until the nineteenth century and the rise of nation states and nation
state building that national and ethnic identities gained importance. This
is an important nuance because often people who look at history through
national or ethnic glasses can twist and change history to such an extent
that it explains their current situation. Or as Sémelin (2007) warns us:

In history there is nothing more dangerous than interpreting events in the

light of the aftermath. Every historian risks being ensnared by the tempta-
tion to pre-determine the logic of a historical event because of being him-
self in the comfortable position of knowing the outcome. (ibid.: 62)
 2 THE REMEMBRANCE OF A GENOCIDE 21

In this light, I first lay out Armenian history and emphasize that
Armenian history is a history of occupation and repression with relatively
short moments of independence. I also show that because of this spe-
cific history, kinship and trade became extremely important; it was one of
the few ways for Armenians to stay independent while living in occupied
empires. But there is another important emphasis here to which I return
implicitly and explicitly in later chapters. Even though the genocide of
1915–1917 was unprecedented in scale and had a different intent than
previous mass killing and pogroms, for many Armenians the genocide of
1915–1917 is only one dark chapter among many dark chapters, and one
that influences their identity and how they perceive their past.
Historically, since the fifth century BC, the region known as Armenia
was a territory stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea, to the
highlands of Anatolia and Persia, and all the way to the northern bor-
der of contemporary Syria and the Euphrates. This area has had a vio-
lent history, mainly caused by its economic importance. Armenia was
a crossroad between East and West, where many trade routes—linking
Jerusalem, the Mongolian Empire, the German Empire and in later peri-
ods the Frankish Empire—came together (Demirdjian 1989: 3). The
Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Seljuks, Mongolians, Persians and later
Ottomans and Russians all fought for this territory. Armenia, and cer-
tain parts of Armenia, have been annexed by other countries and empires
throughout the centuries, and thus the borders have been difficult to
identify, since they have changed time and time again.
The name Armenians is first found in Persian writings in approxi-
mately 521 BC, when King Darius I Hystaspes from Iran described
three battles with a people—“Armenioi” (his word)—who successfully
opposed the royal armies (Lang 1981: 41). In later periods, Hecataeus
and Herodotos also referred to “Armenians” as a separate group. The
Armenians call themselves Hay and their territory Hayastan (“histori-
cal Armenia”), referring to their ancestors, the people of Hayasa, who
fought against the Second Hettitian Empire from 2000 BC until 1500
BC (Demirdjian 1988: 2). This “ethnic” group came into being as a
mixture of Hurrian, Urartian and Indo-European speaking people who
developed their own language while living in the area surrounding the
Ararat mountain (Redgate 1998: 13).
However, for contemporary Armenians their origin goes back even
further. According to legends and myths, after the destruction of the
Tower of Babel, the Armenian forefather, Haïk (the son of Thorgom
22 A. Holslag

and the grandson of Gomer, who was the grandson of Noah), fled the
tyranny of the Babylonian king and settled in a valley near Mt. Ararat
(Mouradian 1996: 14). This myth connects Armenians directly to Noah
and indirectly to the Ark, which after the Flood, was stranded on the
mountain (a mountain called Masis by the Armenians). This legend is
retold in Armenian communities today, for reasons I explain later.
The political entity of Armenia first came into being in 612 BC,
when the Urartian Empire collapsed and the Armenian Kingdom was
declared independent under King Yerwant (also known as Orontos).
This kingdom, however, did not exist long, as it was attacked by the
Achaemenidean Kingdom of Persia. In 331 BC, large parts of the ter-
ritory were captured by Alexander the Great. After Alexander died,
his Macedonian Empire was divided by his two commanders-in-chief.
Ptolemy founded a Greek empire in Egypt, while Seleucus expanded his
empire so even larger parts of Armenia fell under his influence (Sipaan
1993: 28, 29). Between 189–160 BC, a war broke out between the
Romans and the Seleucians, during which two independent Armenian
states were shaped in the confusion that followed: one called Great-
Armenia and one in Sophen, which was called Little Armenia (ibid.:
30). King Ardaxes I unified Great and Little Armenia by making several
truces with the Romans. The Kingdom flourished due to the internal
weaknesses of the mighty neighbouring states (Persia and the Roman
Empire) and expanded both politically and economically.
In 314 AD, under Tiridades III, Christianity was introduced as a
state religion. In 387 AD, after a bloody war, Armenia was divided
between the Persian and the Roman empires (ibid.: 32). With this divi-
sion, Armenia lost its relative independence and political unity, and in
428 AD the Armenian monarchy collapsed (Redgate 1998: 6). However,
despite the conquests, a certain feeling of unity and cohesion amongst
the Armenian people was sustained. This cohesion can partly be contrib-
uted to the unifying factor of the Armenian Orthodox Church, but also
to the Armenian alphabet designed by the monk M. Masjdots in 406 AD
(Demidrjian 1988: 2).
When historic Armenia came under the governance of the Seljkus, many
Armenians fled to Cilicia, where in 1080 AD an independent Republic was
declared (Demirdjian 1989: 2). This is also considered the first Armenian
Republic. In 1198, both the Byzantines and the Seljuks recognized the
Republic as an independent state (Sipaan 1993: 36). Cilicia was invaded
in 1375 AD and in the fifteenth century it came under Ottoman rule
 2 THE REMEMBRANCE OF A GENOCIDE 23

(Redgate 1998: 6; Demirdjian 1989: 4). Since there were no longer any
Armenian political institutions, the Armenian Orthodox Church became
the representative of Armenian communities divided over several empires.
A significant number of Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire, and oth-
ers in Persia. This was a division that led to two distinct dialects still in use
today—Western and Eastern Armenian (Herzig 1996: 248, 249).
When we look at history of the Armenian people from a bird’s-eye
view, it is a history of bloodshed and a stateless population. Multiple
rulers over the centuries governed the various Armenian tribes that
resided between the borders of several kingdoms and empires. The pri-
mary Armenian identity was based on kinship relationships, the local
region and the economic networks that came into existence through
a conglomerate of trading routes. Secondary identity indicators, espe-
cially at a later date, were religion and the Armenian language. An
Armenian national or ethnic identity as we know it today was not
in existence in the first centuries after Christ. After 314 AD, when
Christianity became a state religion, a religious dimension appeared in
the Armenian identity, but it is important not to overestimate its influ-
ence since religion was often a tool for economic needs. Trading net-
works and kinship were the most important components of the primary
Armenian identity.
This is not to say that the Armenians did not form a distinct and sepa-
rate identifiable group. They had their own language, religion and cus-
toms.3 Due to their economic interests, Armenians easily adjusted to the
dominant culture both in the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire,
and managed to claim their own status. An Armenian national iden-
tity only developed over the course of the nineteenth century (due to
the democratic and nationalistic movements in Europe) and even then,
only in the higher classes of the Armenian community. The ordinary
Armenian farmer or merchant living in the Ottoman Empire was hardly
politically aware when World War I broke out or when the genocidal
process started in 1915.

3 It is important that this should not be overestimated. Language was closely connected

to the Church. Outside the Church people spoke distinct dialects. It was only in the nine-
teenth century, due to the rise of secularization, that the linguistic monopoly of the church
was broken. Since that time there has been a distinction between Ashkharhaparr (Armenian
spoken language) and Krapar (classic Armenian), which was mainly used in the Church
and for education (Demirdjian 1989: 13).
24 A. Holslag

Since World War I, there have been two officially independent

Armenian Republics. In 1918, due to the weakening of Russia and the
Ottoman Empire, a second Armenian Republic was created and annexed
by the Soviet Union in the winter of 1920 (Suny 1983: 29). In 1991,
after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the final and third Armenian
Republic was founded, which remains today.
Therefore, the Armenian past is a past of war. The people have been
continuously scattered and suppressed as superpowers and various
empires have seized their historic territory. However, there is a differ-
ence between those wars and the systematic massacre of the Armenians
in 1915. The wars were motivated by political and economic means
and interests. The genocide was aimed at the total annihilation of the
Armenian people, a destruction that Turkey continues to deny to this
very day.

2.2  The Denial of a History

In the book Wages of Guilt, Buruma (1994) describes a Germany in
which notions of guilt about World War II form the basis of a new
German identity. The collective feeling of guilt forms a fictitious divi-
sion between the present and the past; it reminds Germans about the
atrocities they committed as a people and the barbaric character (from
the native point of view) that is the deeply rooted in their German
identity. These feelings of guilt are more than a break with the past,
they are also a warning for the future, as Buruma shows when he par-
aphrases the fears of the West German writer Grass about unification
with the GDR: “Auschwitz … should have made any type of unifica-
tion impossible. A united Germany is a threat to itself and the world”
(Buruma 1994: 17).
A similar process was discovered by Thomas (2002) when she
observed a Japanese photographic exhibition about the 1940s in
the Museum of Art in Yokohama. Displaying selected photographs
in a specific order, she was able to present a new meaning to the past.
Depictions of traditional Japanese women alternated with pictures in
which Westerners were practicing violence against other Westerners
(Thomas 2002: 242). The narrative of the exhibition was not the story
of Japan in opposition to the West, but of how the Japanese had suf-
fered equally with other nations in the 1940s and had committed similar
 2 THE REMEMBRANCE OF A GENOCIDE 25

atrocities (ibid.: 243).4 A feeling of shame—not guilt—, in particular a

feeling of shame for all humanity, had an important role in this exhibi-
tion. Here, again, one can speak of a fictitious division between the pre-
sent and the past. The modern Japanese and the modern Westerner were
confronted with what humans were capable of in dire circumstances.
The Japanese were not placed above humanity, rather they were a part of
it. Shame was the binding factor.
Turkey, contrary to Germany and Japan, never officially acknowledged
the atrocities it committed during the First World War. Although there
have been military tribunals and some leaders of the genocide were con-
victed at a later date,5 the tribunals were abolished and a strong policy of
denial was implemented when Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) came to power
in 1922–1923. This occurred despite the fact that in 1919, Ataturk
made the following confession: “Our countrymen have committed ter-
rible crimes. They organized deportations and massacres, burned babies
alive and brought Armenians in unbearable situations that no people in
the entire history of man has ever known.”6
The background of this policy of denial has to be sought, according
to De Man (1970), in the process of nation-forming and the urge for
modernity. By “forgetting” and “denying” parts of the collective history,
the present becomes the starting point for the future (De Man 1970:
388). The past is being placed, as it were, in differential time. It is sepa-
rated and far away from the contemporary now and the collective we. The
official reading of Turkey is that although skirmishes between Ottoman
and Armenian troops occurred, the incidents cannot be interpreted as an

4 It is important to note that Japan, contrary to Germany, has undergone one of the larg-

est actions of retaliation then any modern nation had to endure. It would be interesting to
conduct further research into the influence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the collective
history and identity of the Japanese people and on how in their emic points of view on
their role in World War II is being approached and interpreted.
5 On 5 July 1919, out of 130 suspects, the leaders of the Ittihad regime—Talât, Enver

and Dr. Nazim—were sentenced to death. Other members of the party received a sen-
tence of 15 years of imprisonment with heavy labor (Dadrian 1997: 331). Many of them
managed to avoid their sentences by fleeing abroad, and on 13 January 1921 the military
tribunals were abolished (ibid.: 333). See also Zwaan (2001: 427) and Melson (1992:
148–152).
6 From the Dutch newspaper Trouw, 26 April 2001. Opinion piece: “Ephimenco”.
26 A. Holslag

organized persecution. The Armenians were “victims” of a brutal war, not

of a targeted campaign, and the Ottomans not the Turks were responsible
for the possible massacres. According to the Turkish interpretation of the
events, the death toll was therefore considerably lower.7 In some cases,
the events and the death tolls were even reversed, meaning that it was not
Armenians who were killed, but rather Turkish citizens. An example of
this is a museum in Erzurum that currently displays skeletons of Turkish
victims who were found in mass graves and murdered by the “rebellious
Armenians,”8 whereas photographs and evidence of the Armenian victims
are totally absent in the museum.9
In his research on the building and rebuilding of the present-day
Turkish State, Üngör (2008 and 2010) implies and may give another
reason why the Turkish government still denies its genocidal past. From
Üngör’s point of view, the Armenian genocide was part of a larger cam-
paign of social engineering in Eastern Anatolia (ibid.: 16). Even though
this campaign was the most violent from 1914–1918, when not only
Armenians were killed and deported but also Greeks, Syriacs and Kurds
(ibid.: 18), the social engineering didn’t stop in 1923 when Atatürk came
to power, but continued (in aggressive but new ways) until at least 1950.
From this analysis, Turkey does not recognize its genocidal past for it
is embedded in the history of the New Turkish Republic. Recognizing
the Armenian genocide is also recognizing and confronting the atrocities
and outwashes of the social engineering campaigns on which the mod-
ern Turkish nation is built. The denial is not only used to create what
De Man (1970) considers a fictitious “starting point,” but also as a way
of avoiding the whole scale of social engineering and ethnic cleansing in
Eastern Anatolia, from which the “Kurdish question” still remains.

7 There are various estimates of the death toll. Lewis (1961) states that 1.5 million

Armenians were killed. The Turkish historian Professor Yusuf Halacogly estimates the num-
ber of deaths at 56,610 (See an interview with him in the article “Armeens-Turkse dialoog
weer doodverklaard” [Armenian-Turkish dialogue declared dead] in the Dutch newspaper:
De Volkskrant, 1 February 2002.) An estimate between 800,000 and 1.5 million is, accord-
ing to some scientists, the most plausible (Zwaan 2001: 426, 427).
8 This is what Zwaan (2001) calls “the reversal of truth”, in which the perpetrators are

declared victims and the victims, perpetrators (ibid.: 428).

9 In the Armenian community in London circulates an illegal videotape with the title “A

Journey Through Western Armenia.” In this documentary, a Scottish camera man secretly
goes into the museum and films the skeletons that are on display under the sign “geno-
cide”. Most of the skeletons are probably Armenian.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 When I arrived, he was practising chip-shots in his sitting-room. I
noticed that he seemed to be labouring under some strong emotion,
and his first words gave me the clue.
“She’s going away to-morrow,” he said, abruptly, lofting a ball over
the whatnot on to the Chesterfield.
I was not sure whether I was sorry or relieved. Her absence would
leave a terrible blank, of course, but it might be that it would help him
to get over his infatuation.
“Ah!” I said, non-committally.
Chester addressed his ball with a well-assumed phlegm, but I
could see by the way his ears wiggled that he was feeling deeply. I
was not surprised when he topped his shot into the coal-scuttle.
“She has promised to play a last round with me this morning,” he
said.
Again I was doubtful what view to take. It was a pretty, poetic idea,
not unlike Browning’s “Last Ride Together,” but I was not sure if it
was altogether wise. However, it was none of my business, so I
merely patted him on the shoulder and he gathered up his clubs and
went off.

Owing to motives of delicacy I had not offered to accompany him

on his round, and it was not till later that I learned the actual details
of what occurred. At the start, it seems, the spiritual anguish which
he was suffering had a depressing effect on his game. He hooked
his drive off the first tee and was only enabled to get a five by means
of a strong niblick shot out of the rough. At the second, the lake hole,
he lost a ball in the water and got another five. It was only at the third
that he began to pull himself together.
The test of a great golfer is his ability to recover from a bad start.
Chester had this quality to a pre-eminent degree. A lesser man,
conscious of being three over bogey for the first two holes, might
have looked on his round as ruined. To Chester it simply meant that
he had to get a couple of “birdies” right speedily, and he set about it
at once. Always a long driver, he excelled himself at the third. It is, as
you know, an uphill hole all the way, but his drive could not have
come far short of two hundred and fifty yards. A brassie-shot of
equal strength and unerring direction put him on the edge of the
green, and he holed out with a long putt two under bogey. He had
hoped for a “birdie” and he had achieved an “eagle.”
I think that this splendid feat must have softened Felicia’s heart,
had it not been for the fact that misery had by this time entirely
robbed Chester of the ability to smile. Instead, therefore, of behaving
in the wholesome, natural way of men who get threes at bogey five
holes, he preserved a drawn, impassive countenance; and as she
watched him tee up her ball, stiff, correct, polite, but to all outward
appearance absolutely inhuman, the girl found herself stifling that
thrill of what for a moment had been almost adoration. It was, she
felt, exactly how her brother Crispin would have comported himself if
he had done a hole in two under bogey.
And yet she could not altogether check a wistful sigh when, after a
couple of fours at the next two holes, he picked up another stroke on
the sixth and with an inspired spoon-shot brought his medal-score
down to one better than bogey by getting a two at the hundred-and-
seventy-yard seventh. But the brief spasm of tenderness passed,
and when he finished the first nine with two more fours she refrained
from anything warmer than a mere word of stereotyped
congratulation.
“One under bogey for the first nine,” she said. “Splendid!”
“One under bogey!” said Chester, woodenly.
“Out in thirty-four. What is the record for the course?”
Chester started. So great had been his preoccupation that he had
not given a thought to the course record. He suddenly realised now
that the pro., who had done the lowest medal-score to date—the
other course record was held by Peter Willard with a hundred and
sixty-one, achieved in his first season—had gone out in only one
better than his own figures that day.
“Sixty-eight,” he said.
“What a pity you lost those strokes at the beginning!”
“Yes,” said Chester.
He spoke absently—and, as it seemed to her, primly and without
enthusiasm—for the flaming idea of having a go at the course record
had only just occurred to him. Once before he had done the first nine
in thirty-four, but on that occasion he had not felt that curious feeling
of irresistible force which comes to a golfer at the very top of his
form. Then he had been aware all the time that he had been putting
chancily. They had gone in, yes, but he had uttered a prayer per putt.
To-day he was superior to any weak doubtings. When he tapped the
ball on the green, he knew it was going to sink. The course record?
Why not? What a last offering to lay at her feet! She would go away,
out of his life for ever; she would marry some other bird; but the
memory of that supreme round would remain with her as long as she
breathed. When he won the Open and Amateur for the second—the
third—the fourth time, she would say to herself, “I was with him when
he dented the record for his home course!” And he had only to pick
up a couple of strokes on the last nine, to do threes at holes where
he was wont to be satisfied with fours. Yes, by Vardon, he would take
a whirl at it.

You, who are acquainted with these links, will no doubt say that
the task which Chester Meredith had sketched out for himself—
cutting two strokes off thirty-five for the second nine—was one at
which Humanity might well shudder. The pro. himself, who had
finished sixth in the last Open Championship, had never done better
than a thirty-five, playing perfect golf and being one under par. But
such was Chester’s mood that, as he teed up on the tenth, he did
not even consider the possibility of failure. Every muscle in his body
was working in perfect co-ordination with its fellows, his wrists felt as
if they were made of tempered steel, and his eyes had just that
hawk-like quality which enables a man to judge his short approaches
to the inch. He swung forcefully, and the ball sailed so close to the
direction-post that for a moment it seemed as if it had hit it.
“Oo!” cried Felicia.
Chester did not speak. He was following the flight of the ball. It
sailed over the brow of the hill, and with his knowledge of the course
he could tell almost the exact patch of turf on which it must have
come to rest. An iron would do the business from there, and a single
putt would give him the first of the “birdies” he required. Two minutes
later he had holed out a six-foot putt for a three.
“Oo!” said Felicia again.
Chester walked to the eleventh tee in silence.
“No, never mind,” she said, as he stooped to put her ball on the
sand. “I don’t think I’ll play any more. I’d much rather just watch you.”
“Oh, that you could watch me through life!” said Chester, but he
said it to himself. His actual words were “Very well!” and he spoke
them with a stiff coldness which chilled the girl.
The eleventh is one of the trickiest holes on the course, as no
doubt you have found out for yourself. It looks absurdly simple, but
that little patch of wood on the right that seems so harmless is
placed just in the deadliest position to catch even the most slightly
sliced drive. Chester’s lacked the austere precision of his last. A
hundred yards from the tee it swerved almost imperceptibly, and,
striking a branch, fell in the tangled undergrowth. It took him two
strokes to hack it out and put it on the green, and then his long putt,
after quivering on the edge of the hole, stayed there. For a swift
instant red-hot words rose to his lips, but he caught them just as they
were coming out and crushed them back. He looked at his ball and
he looked at the hole.
“Tut!” said Chester.
Felicia uttered a deep sigh. The niblick-shot out of the rough had
impressed her profoundly. If only, she felt, this superb golfer had
been more human! If only she were able to be constantly in this
man’s society, to see exactly what it was that he did with his left wrist
that gave that terrific snap to his drives, she might acquire the knack
herself one of these days. For she was a clear-thinking, honest girl,
and thoroughly realised that she did not get the distance she ought
to with her wood. With a husband like Chester beside her to
stimulate and advise, of what might she not be capable? If she got
wrong in her stance, he could put her right with a word. If she had a
bout of slicing, how quickly he would tell her what caused it. And she
knew that she had only to speak the word to wipe out the effects of
her refusal, to bring him to her side for ever.
But could a girl pay such a price? When he had got that “eagle” on
the third, he had looked bored. When he had missed this last putt, he
had not seemed to care. “Tut!” What a word to use at such a
moment! No, she felt sadly, it could not be done. To marry Chester
Meredith, she told herself, would be like marrying a composite of
Soames Forsyte, Sir Willoughby Patterne, and all her brother
Crispin’s friends. She sighed and was silent.

Chester, standing on the twelfth tee, reviewed the situation swiftly,

like a general before a battle. There were seven holes to play, and
he had to do these in two better than bogey. The one that faced him
now offered few opportunities. It was a long, slogging, dog-leg hole,
and even Ray and Taylor, when they had played their exhibition
game on the course, had taken fives. No opening there.
The thirteenth—up a steep hill with a long iron-shot for one’s
second and a blind green fringed with bunkers? Scarcely practicable
to hope for better than a four. The fourteenth—into the valley with the
ground sloping sharply down to the ravine? He had once done it in
three, but it had been a fluke. No; on these three holes he must be
content to play for a steady par and trust to picking up a stroke on
the fifteenth.
 The fifteenth, straightforward up to the plateau green with its circle
of bunkers, presents few difficulties to the finished golfer who is on
his game. A bunker meant nothing to Chester in his present
conquering vein. His mashie-shot second soared almost
contemptuously over the chasm and rolled to within a foot of the pin.
He came to the sixteenth with the clear-cut problem before him of
snipping two strokes off par on the last three holes.
To the unthinking man, not acquainted with the layout of our links,
this would no doubt appear a tremendous feat. But the fact is, the
Greens Committee, with perhaps an unduly sentimental bias towards
the happy ending, have arranged a comparatively easy finish to the
course. The sixteenth is a perfectly plain hole with broad fairway and
a down-hill run; the seventeenth, a one-shot affair with no difficulties
for the man who keeps them straight; and the eighteenth, though its
up-hill run makes it deceptive to the stranger and leads the unwary
to take a mashie instead of a light iron for his second, has no real
venom in it. Even Peter Willard has occasionally come home in a
canter with a six, five, and seven, conceding himself only two eight-
foot putts. It is, I think, this mild conclusion to a tough course that
makes the refreshment-room of our club so noticeable for its sea of
happy faces. The bar every day is crowded with rejoicing men who,
forgetting the agonies of the first fifteen, are babbling of what they
did on the last three. The seventeenth, with its possibilities of holing
out a topped second, is particularly soothing.

Chester Meredith was not the man to top his second on any hole,
so this supreme bliss did not come his way; but he laid a beautiful
mashie-shot dead and got a three; and when with his iron he put his
first well on the green at the seventeenth and holed out for a two,
life, for all his broken heart, seemed pretty tolerable. He now had the
situation well in hand. He had only to play his usual game to get a
four on the last and lower the course record by one stroke.
It was at this supreme moment of his life that he ran into the
Wrecking Crew.
 You doubtless find it difficult to understand how it came about that
if the Wrecking Crew were on the course at all he had not run into
them long before. The explanation is that, with a regard for the
etiquette of the game unusual in these miserable men, they had for
once obeyed the law that enacts that foursomes shall start at the
tenth. They had begun their dark work on the second nine,
accordingly, at almost the exact moment when Chester Meredith was
driving off at the first, and this had enabled them to keep ahead until
now. When Chester came to the eighteenth tee, they were just
leaving it, moving up the fairway with their caddies in mass formation
and looking to his exasperated eye like one of those great race-
migrations of the Middle Ages. Wherever Chester looked he seemed
to see human, so to speak, figures. One was doddering about in the
long grass fifty yards from the tee, others debouched to left and right.
The course was crawling with them.
Chester sat down on the bench with a weary sigh. He knew these
men. Self-centred, remorseless, deaf to all the promptings of their
better nature, they never let any one through. There was nothing to
do but wait.
The Wrecking Crew scratched on. The man near the tee rolled his
ball ten yards, then twenty, then thirty—he was improving. Ere long
he would be out of range. Chester rose and swished his driver.
But the end was not yet. The individual operating in the rough on
the left had been advancing in slow stages, and now, finding his ball
teed up on a tuft of grass, he opened his shoulders and let himself
go. There was a loud report, and the ball, hitting a tree squarely,
bounded back almost to the tee, and all the weary work was to do
again. By the time Chester was able to drive, he was reduced by
impatience, and the necessity of refraining from commenting on the
state of affairs as he would have wished to comment, to a frame of
mind in which no man could have kept himself from pressing. He
pressed, and topped. The ball skidded over the turf for a meagre
hundred yards.
“D-d-d-dear me!” said Chester.
 The next moment he uttered a bitter laugh. Too late a miracle had
happened. One of the foul figures in front was waving its club. Other
ghastly creatures were withdrawing to the side of the fairway. Now,
when the harm had been done, these outcasts were signalling to him
to go through. The hollow mockery of the thing swept over Chester
like a wave. What was the use of going through now? He was a
good three hundred yards from the green, and he needed bogey at
this hole to break the record. Almost absently he drew his brassie
from his bag; then, as the full sense of his wrongs bit into his soul, he
swung viciously.
Golf is a strange game. Chester had pressed on the tee and
foozled. He pressed now, and achieved the most perfect shot of his
life. The ball shot from its place as if a charge of powerful explosive
were behind it. Never deviating from a straight line, never more than
six feet from the ground, it sailed up the hill, crossed the bunker,
eluded the mounds beyond, struck the turf, rolled, and stopped fifty
feet from the hole. It was a brassie-shot of a lifetime, and shrill senile
yippings of excitement and congratulation floated down from the
Wrecking Crew. For, degraded though they were, these men were
not wholly devoid of human instincts.
Chester drew a deep breath. His ordeal was over. That third shot,
which would lay the ball right up to the pin, was precisely the sort of
thing he did best. Almost from boyhood he had been a wizard at the
short approach. He could hole out in two now on his left ear. He
strode up the hill to his ball. It could not have been lying better. Two
inches away there was a nasty cup in the turf; but it had avoided this
and was sitting nicely perched up, smiling an invitation to the
mashie-niblick. Chester shuffled his feet and eyed the flag keenly.
Then he stooped to play, and Felicia watched him breathlessly. Her
whole being seemed to be concentrated on him. She had forgotten
everything save that she was seeing a course record get broken.
She could not have been more wrapped up in his success if she had
had large sums of money on it.
 The Wrecking Crew, meanwhile, had come to life again. They had
stopped twittering about Chester’s brassie-shot and were thinking of
resuming their own game. Even in foursomes where fifty yards is
reckoned a good shot somebody must be away, and the man whose
turn it was to play was the one who had acquired from his brother-
members of the club the nickname of the First Grave-Digger.
A word about this human wen. He was—if there can be said to be
grades in such a sub-species—the star performer of the Wrecking
Crew. The lunches of fifty-seven years had caused his chest to slip
down into the mezzanine floor, but he was still a powerful man, and
had in his youth been a hammer-thrower of some repute. He differed
from his colleagues—the Man With the Hoe, Old Father Time, and
Consul, the Almost Human—in that, while they were content to peck
cautiously at the ball, he never spared himself in his efforts to do it a
violent injury. Frequently he had cut a blue dot almost in half with his
niblick. He was completely muscle-bound, so that he seldom
achieved anything beyond a series of chasms in the turf, but he was
always trying, and it was his secret belief that, given two or three
miracles happening simultaneously, he would one of these days
bring off a snifter. Years of disappointment had, however, reduced
the flood of hope to a mere trickle, and when he took his brassie now
and addressed the ball he had no immediate plans beyond a vague
intention of rolling the thing a few yards farther up the hill.
The fact that he had no business to play at all till Chester had
holed out did not occur to him; and even if it had occurred he would
have dismissed the objection as finicking. Chester, bending over his
ball, was nearly two hundred yards away—or the distance of three
full brassie-shots. The First Grave-Digger did not hesitate. He
whirled up his club as in distant days he had been wont to swing the
hammer, and, with the grunt which this performance always wrung
from him, brought it down.
Golfers—and I stretch this term to include the Wrecking Crew—
are a highly imitative race. The spectacle of a flubber flubbing ahead
of us on the fairway inclines to make us flub as well; and, conversely,
it is immediately after we have seen a magnificent shot that we are
apt to eclipse ourselves. Consciously the Grave-Digger had no
notion how Chester had made that superb brassie-biff of his, but all
the while I suppose his subconscious self had been taking notes. At
any rate, on this one occasion he, too, did the shot of a lifetime. As
he opened his eyes, which he always shut tightly at the moment of
impact, and started to unravel himself from the complicated tangle in
which his follow-through had left him, he perceived the ball breasting
the hill like some untamed jack-rabbit of the Californian prairie.
For a moment his only emotion was one of dream-like
amazement. He stood looking at the ball with a wholly impersonal
wonder, like a man suddenly confronted with some terrific work of
Nature. Then, as a sleep-walker awakens, he came to himself with a
start. Directly in front of the flying ball was a man bending to make
an approach-shot. Chester, always a concentrated golfer when there
was a man’s work to do, had scarcely heard the crack of the brassie
behind him. Certainly he had paid no attention to it. His whole mind
was fixed on his stroke. He measured with his eye the distance to
the pin, noted the down-slope of the green, and shifted his stance a
little to allow for it. Then, with a final swift waggle, he laid his club-
head behind the ball and slowly raised it. It was just coming down
when the world became full of shouts of “Fore!” and something hard
smote him violently on the seat of his plus-fours.
The supreme tragedies of life leave us momentarily stunned. For
an instant which seemed an age Chester could not understand what
had happened. True, he realised that there had been an earthquake,
a cloud-burst, and a railway accident, and that a high building had
fallen on him at the exact moment when somebody had shot him
with a gun, but these happenings would account for only a small part
of his sensations. He blinked several times, and rolled his eyes
wildly. And it was while rolling them that he caught sight of the
gesticulating Wrecking Crew on the lower slopes and found
enlightenment. Simultaneously, he observed his ball only a yard and
a half from where it had been when he addressed it.
Chester Meredith gave one look at his ball, one look at the flag,
one look at the Wrecking Crew, one look at the sky. His lips writhed,
his forehead turned vermilion. Beads of perspiration started out on
his forehead. And then, with his whole soul seething like a cistern
struck by a thunderbolt, he spoke.
“!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” cried Chester.
Dimly he was aware of a wordless exclamation from the girl beside
him, but he was too distraught to think of her now. It was as if all the
oaths pent up within his bosom for so many weary days were
struggling and jostling to see which could get out first. They
cannoned into each other, they linked hands and formed parties,
they got themselves all mixed up in weird vowel-sounds, the second
syllable of some red-hot verb forming a temporary union with the first
syllable of some blistering noun.
“——! ——!! ——!!! ——!!!! ——!!!!!” cried Chester.
Felicia stood staring at him. In her eyes was the look of one who
sees visions.
“***!!! ***!!! ***!!! ***!!!” roared Chester, in part.
A great wave of emotion flooded over the girl. How she had
misjudged this silver-tongued man!
She shivered as she thought that, had this not happened, in
another five minutes they would have parted for ever, sundered by
seas of misunderstanding, she cold and scornful, he with all his
music still within him.
“Oh, Mr. Meredith!” she cried, faintly.
With a sickening abruptness Chester came to himself. It was as if
somebody had poured a pint of ice-cold water down his back. He
blushed vividly. He realised with horror and shame how grossly he
had offended against all the canons of decency and good taste. He
felt like the man in one of those “What Is Wrong With This Picture?”
things in the advertisements of the etiquette-books.
“I beg—I beg your pardon!” he mumbled, humbly. “Please, please,
forgive me. I should not have spoken like that.”
“You should! You should!” cried the girl, passionately. “You should
have said all that and a lot more. That awful man ruining your record
round like that! Oh, why am I a poor weak woman with practically no
vocabulary that’s any use for anything!”
Quite suddenly, without knowing that she had moved, she found
herself at his side, holding his hand.
“Oh, to think how I misjudged you!” she wailed. “I thought you cold,
stiff, formal, precise. I hated the way you sniggered when you
foozled a shot. I see it all now! You were keeping it in for my sake.
Can you ever forgive me?”
Chester, as I have said, was not a very quick-minded young man,
but it would have taken a duller youth than he to fail to read the
message in the girl’s eyes, to miss the meaning of the pressure of
her hand on his.
“My gosh!” he exclaimed wildly. “Do you mean—? Do you think—?
Do you really—? Honestly, has this made a difference? Is there any
chance for a fellow, I mean?”
Her eyes helped him on. He felt suddenly confident and masterful.
“Look here—no kidding—will you marry me?” he said.
“I will! I will!”
“Darling!” cried Chester.
He would have said more, but at this point he was interrupted by
the arrival of the Wrecking Crew, who panted up full of apologies;
and Chester, as he eyed them, thought that he had never seen a
nicer, cheerier, pleasanter lot of fellows in his life. His heart warmed
to them. He made a mental resolve to hunt them up some time and
have a good long talk. He waved the Grave-Digger’s remorse airily
aside.
“Don’t mention it,” he said. “Not at all. Faults on both sides. By the
way, my fiancée, Miss Blakeney.”
The Wrecking Crew puffed acknowledgment.
“But, my dear fellow,” said the Grave-Digger, “it was—really it was
—unforgivable. Spoiling your shot. Never dreamed I would send the
ball that distance. Lucky you weren’t playing an important match.”
 “But he was,” moaned Felicia. “He was trying for the course
record, and now he can’t break it.”
The Wrecking Crew paled behind their whiskers, aghast at this
tragedy, but Chester, glowing with the yeasty intoxication of love,
laughed lightly.
“What do you mean, can’t break it?” he cried, cheerily. “I’ve one
more shot.”
And, carelessly addressing the ball, he holed out with a light flick
of his mashie-niblick.
“Chester, darling!” said Felicia.
They were walking slowly through a secluded glade in the quiet
evenfall.
“Yes, precious?”
Felicia hesitated. What she was going to say would hurt him, she
knew, and her love was so great that to hurt him was agony.
“Do you think—” she began. “I wonder whether—It’s about
Crispin.”
“Good old Crispin!”
Felicia sighed, but the matter was too vital to be shirked. Cost
what it might, she must speak her mind.
“Chester, darling, when we are married, would you mind very, very
much if we didn’t have Crispin with us all the time?”
Chester started.
“Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “Don’t you like him?”
“Not very much,” confessed Felicia. “I don’t think I’m clever
enough for him. I’ve rather disliked him ever since we were children.
But I know what a friend he is of yours—”
Chester uttered a joyous laugh.
“Friend of mine! Why, I can’t stand the blighter! I loathe the worm! I
abominate the excrescence! I only pretended we were friends
because I thought it would put me in solid with you. The man is a
pest and should have been strangled at birth. At school I used to kick
him every time I saw him. If your brother Crispin tries so much as to
set foot across the threshold of our little home, I’ll set the dog on
him.”
“Darling!” whispered Felicia. “We shall be very, very happy.” She
drew her arm through his. “Tell me, dearest,” she murmured, “all
about how you used to kick Crispin at school.”
And together they wandered off into the sunset.
 CHAPTER V
THE MAGIC PLUS FOURS

“After all,” said the young man, “golf is only a game.”

He spoke bitterly and with the air of one who has been following a
train of thought. He had come into the smoking-room of the club-
house in low spirits at the dusky close of a November evening, and
for some minutes had been sitting, silent and moody, staring at the
log fire.
“Merely a pastime,” said the young man.
The Oldest Member, nodding in his arm-chair, stiffened with horror,
and glanced quickly over his shoulder to make sure that none of the
waiters had heard these terrible words.
“Can this be George William Pennefather speaking!” he said,
reproachfully. “My boy, you are not yourself.”
The young man flushed a little beneath his tan: for he had had a
good upbringing and was not bad at heart.
“Perhaps I ought not to have gone quite so far as that,” he
admitted. “I was only thinking that a fellow’s got no right, just
because he happens to have come on a bit in his form lately, to treat
a fellow as if a fellow was a leper or something.”
The Oldest Member’s face cleared, and he breathed a relieved
sigh.
“Ah! I see,” he said. “You spoke hastily and in a sudden fit of pique
because something upset you out on the links to-day. Tell me all. Let
me see, you were playing with Nathaniel Frisby this afternoon, were
you not? I gather that he beat you.”
“Yes, he did. Giving me a third. But it isn’t being beaten that I mind.
What I object to is having the blighter behave as if he were a sort of
champion condescending to a mere mortal. Dash it, it seemed to
bore him playing with me! Every time I sliced off the tee he looked at
me as if I were a painful ordeal. Twice when I was having a bit of
trouble in the bushes I caught him yawning. And after we had
finished he started talking about what a good game croquet was, and
he wondered more people didn’t take it up. And it’s only a month or
so ago that I could play the man level!”
The Oldest Member shook his snowy head sadly.
“There is nothing to be done about it,” he said. “We can only hope
that the poison will in time work its way out of the man’s system.
Sudden success at golf is like the sudden acquisition of wealth. It is
apt to unsettle and deteriorate the character. And, as it comes almost
miraculously, so only a miracle can effect a cure. The best advice I
can give you is to refrain from playing with Nathaniel Frisby till you
can keep your tee-shots straight.”
“Oh, but don’t run away with the idea that I wasn’t pretty good off
the tee this afternoon!” said the young man. “I should like to describe
to you the shot I did on the—”
“Meanwhile,” proceeded the Oldest Member, “I will relate to you a
little story which bears on what I have been saying.”
“From the very moment I addressed the ball—”
“It is the story of two loving hearts temporarily estranged owing to
the sudden and unforseen proficiency of one of the couple—”
“I waggled quickly and strongly, like Duncan. Then, swinging
smoothly back, rather in the Vardon manner—”
“But as I see,” said the Oldest Member, “that you are all
impatience for me to begin, I will do so without further preamble.”

To the philosophical student of golf like myself (said the Oldest

Member) perhaps the most outstanding virtue of this noble pursuit is
the fact that it is a medicine for the soul. Its great service to humanity
is that it teaches human beings that, whatever petty triumphs they
may have achieved in other walks of life, they are after all merely
human. It acts as a corrective against sinful pride. I attribute the
insane arrogance of the later Roman emperors almost entirely to the
fact that, never having played golf, they never knew that strange
chastening humility which is engendered by a topped chip-shot. If
Cleopatra had been outed in the first round of the Ladies’ Singles,
we should have heard a lot less of her proud imperiousness. And,
coming down to modern times, it was undoubtedly his rotten golf that
kept Wallace Chesney the nice unspoiled fellow he was. For in every
other respect he had everything in the world calculated to make a
man conceited and arrogant. He was the best-looking man for miles
around; his health was perfect; and, in addition to this, he was rich;
danced, rode, played bridge and polo with equal skill; and was
engaged to be married to Charlotte Dix. And when you saw Charlotte
Dix you realised that being engaged to her would by itself have been
quite enough luck for any one man.
But Wallace, as I say, despite all his advantages, was a thoroughly
nice, modest young fellow. And I attribute this to the fact that, while
one of the keenest golfers in the club, he was also one of the worst
players. Indeed, Charlotte Dix used to say to me in his presence that
she could not understand why people paid money to go to the circus
when by merely walking over the brow of a hill they could watch
Wallace Chesney trying to get out of the bunker by the eleventh
green. And Wallace took the gibe with perfect good humour, for there
was a delightful camaraderie between them which robbed it of any
sting. Often at lunch in the club-house I used to hear him and
Charlotte planning the handicapping details of a proposed match
between Wallace and a non-existent cripple whom Charlotte claimed
to have discovered in the village—it being agreed finally that he
should accept seven bisques from the cripple, but that, if the latter
ever recovered the use of his arms, Wallace should get a stroke a
hole.
In short, a thoroughly happy and united young couple. Two hearts,
if I may coin an expression, that beat as one.
 I would not have you misjudge Wallace Chesney. I may have given
you the impression that his attitude towards golf was light and
frivolous, but such was not the case. As I have said, he was one of
the keenest members of the club. Love made him receive the joshing
of his fiancée in the kindly spirit in which it was meant, but at heart
he was as earnest as you could wish. He practised early and late; he
bought golf books; and the mere sight of a patent club of any
description acted on him like catnip on a cat. I remember
remonstrating with him on the occasion of his purchasing a wooden-
faced driving-mashie which weighed about two pounds, and was,
taking it for all in all, as foul an instrument as ever came out of the
workshop of a clubmaker who had been dropped on the head by his
nurse when a baby.
“I know, I know,” he said, when I had finished indicating some of
the weapon’s more obvious defects. “But the point is, I believe in it. It
gives me confidence. I don’t believe you could slice with a thing like
that if you tried.”
Confidence! That was what Wallace Chesney lacked, and that, as
he saw it, was the prime grand secret of golf. Like an alchemist on
the track of the Philosopher’s stone, he was for ever seeking for
something which would really give him confidence. I recollect that he
even tried repeating to himself fifty times every morning the words,
“Every day in every way I grow better and better.” This, however,
proved such a black lie that he gave it up. The fact is, the man was a
visionary, and it is to auto-hypnosis of some kind that I attribute the
extraordinary change that came over him at the beginning of his third
season.

You may have noticed in your perambulations about the City a

shop bearing above its door and upon its windows the legend:
COHEN BROS.,

Second-hand Clothiers,
 a statement which is borne out by endless vistas seen through the
door of every variety of what is technically known as Gents’ Wear.
But the Brothers Cohen, though their main stock-in-trade is garments
which have been rejected by their owners for one reason or another,
do not confine their dealings to Gents’ Wear. The place is a museum
of derelict goods of every description. You can get a second-hand
revolver there, or a second-hand sword, or a second-hand umbrella.
You can do a cheap deal in field-glasses, trunks, dog collars, canes,
photograph frames, attaché cases, and bowls for goldfish. And on
the bright spring morning when Wallace Chesney happened to pass
by there was exhibited in the window a putter of such pre-eminently
lunatic design that he stopped dead as if he had run into an invisible
wall, and then, panting like an overwrought fish, charged in through
the door.

The shop was full of the Cohen family, sombre-eyed, smileless

men with purposeful expressions; and two of these, instantly
descending upon Wallace Chesney like leopards, began in swift
silence to thrust him into a suit of yellow tweed. Having worked the
coat over his shoulders with a shoe-horn, they stood back to watch
the effect.
“A beautiful fit,” announced Isidore Cohen.
“A little snug under the arms,” said his brother Irving. “But that’ll
give.”
“The warmth of the body will make it give,” said Isidore.
“Or maybe you’ll lose weight in the summer,” said Irving.
Wallace, when he had struggled out of the coat and was able to
breathe, said that he had come in to buy a putter. Isidore thereupon
sold him the putter, a dog collar, and a set of studs, and Irving sold
him a fireman’s helmet: and he was about to leave when their elder
brother Lou, who had just finished fitting out another customer, who
had come in to buy a cap, with two pairs of trousers and a miniature
aquarium for keeping newts in, saw that business was in progress
and strolled up. His fathomless eye rested on Wallace, who was
toying feebly with the putter.
“You play golf?” asked Lou. “Then looka here!”
He dived into an alleyway of dead clothing, dug for a moment, and
emerged with something at the sight of which Wallace Chesney,
hardened golfer that he was, blenched and threw up an arm
defensively.
“No, no!” he cried.
The object which Lou Cohen was waving insinuatingly before his
eyes was a pair of those golfing breeches which are technically
known as Plus Fours. A player of two years’ standing, Wallace
Chesney was not unfamiliar with Plus Fours—all the club cracks
wore them—but he had never seen Plus Fours like these. What
might be termed the main motif of the fabric was a curious vivid pink,
and with this to work on the architect had let his imagination run free,
and had produced so much variety in the way of chessboard squares
of white, yellow, violet, and green that the eye swam as it looked
upon them.
“These were made to measure for Sandy McHoots, the Open
Champion,” said Lou, stroking the left leg lovingly. “But he sent ’em
back for some reason or other.”
“Perhaps they frightened the children,” said Wallace, recollecting
having heard that Mr. McHoots was a married man.
“They’ll fit you nice,” said Lou.
“Sure they’ll fit him nice,” said Isidore, warmly.
“Why, just take a look at yourself in the glass,” said Irving, “and
see if they don’t fit you nice.”
And, as one who wakes from a trance, Wallace discovered that his
lower limbs were now encased in the prismatic garment. At what
point in the proceedings the brethren had slipped them on him, he
could not have said. But he was undeniably in.