12

The New Age of Light

It took a French artist, recently arrived in London in 1870, having fled the Franco-Prussian War, to see the exquisitely romantic spirit: Claude Monet’s 1871 painting The Thames Below Westminster bathed the new Victoria Embankment and the rebuilt Houses of Commons in the rosy smoke of sunset. Where others might have seen pomp wreathed in the vapours of industry, Monet’s vision softened the heart of this imperial realm. He gave it a glowing twilight evanescence, the river and the buildings and the jetty sitting on it suggestive of silence. But lovers had seen the possibilities too; the river had only been recently embanked, a vast engineering project undertaken by Joseph Bazalgette, and what he had conjured for the first time in London was a riverside esplanade.

The trees had been planted but were as yet young and slender; the road for horses and carriages was wide but not always busy. Thanks to Bazalgette’s other terrific innovations in terms of London’s sewerage, the river itself, although still filthy with a variety of waste, was no longer noxious; the strong tides bore the effluvia fast down into the darkness of the east.

Severin Bastendorff would surely have come here with his sweetheart, Mary Pearce, in the early days of their courtship; how could a recent arrival in London not be desperate to see both the heart of government but also the sophisticated marvel of a curving riverside path, lit prettily with gas flames, and gazing across south at the misty darkness of the Lambeth shore? How could he and Mary not spend a hazy summer’s evening talking and walking, taking in the splendour of the new Somerset House, or the quiet gardens leading to the Temple Inns of Court? Couples walked from Westminster to Blackfriars arm in arm; stopping to look up as mighty locomotives on the bridge above heaved from their platforms at Charing Cross across the water towards the countryside of the south. To a young man from Luxembourg, all of this must have dazzled and beguiled with possibilities.

This was a time in which German-speakers were met with a growing measure of friendly curiosity (except in the East End, where young Irish men fought furiously with young Germans); one syndicated newspaper article detailed what kind of evening one might have in a German restaurant (of which more, such as Kuhn’s, were being established in the area just north of Oxford Street). The article described a cosy room, lit with gas jets and wreathed in rich cigar smoke, where one would sit at long wooden tables with random companions to partake of soup and meat and then drink Bavarian beers and lagers while engaging in lively political debate.

The sense was given that the atmosphere of these establishments was a shade more thoughtful than the typical English pub.

A native Luxembourgian like Bastendorff might also have been heartened to see a large number of rather fashionable little French restaurants around Leicester Square and Soho, advertising their tables d’hote, and serving such items as veal cutlets in white sauce with onion puree. There was also the sumptuous continental sophistication of the recently opened Café Royal, just off Piccadilly, noted not only for its Gallic cuisine but also its magnificent cellar. But if this was rather beyond the means of a young furniture maker, then there was still good wine to be found in small French bars a few yards up the road off the Shaftesbury Avenue.

For Mary Pearce, who as far as can be gathered was a native Londoner, the prospect of romance with a German-speaking man (fast becoming fluent in English but still heavily accented) might have carried a sense of removing herself from the more straightforward class expectations. She lived with her mother amid the close-built terraces of Kentish Town, a mile or so north of King’s Cross. It is not recorded how she and Bastendorff met; but it is known that he was a restless soul, given to long evening walks. And there is every possibility that she was in service. Throughout the middle years of Victoria’s reign, the number of young women employed as domestic servants increased enormously. Severin’s older brother, Joseph, had met his wife-to-be when she was in service.

However they first encountered one another, Severin and Mary must have made a handsome couple; she, dark and grave, and he, red-haired and whiskered and healthy.

This was a city on the edge of electricity; while the thick industrial fogs of night were being softened with the pale flicker of gas light, there were men of science demonstrating their remarkable new developments in electrical illumination, in the streets and in the music halls. And some of these important innovators were German. (Indeed, in May 1879, the Royal Albert Hall, already bathed in the cream-tinged glow of early electric light, devoted a widely attended evening to the possibilities of this science, including incandescent lamps designed by the firm of Dr Siemens. He had already demonstrated how electric light might be used at sea; now he was telling his audience that this new luminous age would soon be changing homes and streets.)

Meanwhile, the city had other more immediate wonders for young courting couples to enjoy. The vogue for Germanic entertainment extended mostly to orchestral music, but there were other attractions too: ‘Professor Herrmann, the world-famed conjuror, unique in his style, and the celebrated Praeger Family, performing every evening at eight’ announced the advertising for the Egyptian Hall theatre in Piccadilly. Elsewhere, ‘Herr Carl Fittig, Professor of the Zither, who had the honour of performing before their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales’ was pleased to announce his return to the London stage.

And there were charitable events to be attended too. ‘The Chevalier de Kontski, pianist to the Emperor of Germany, and Herr Wilhelm Ganz, Grand Organist of the Grand Lodge of England, will play a grand duo on two pianos to raise money for the City of London lifeboat fund,’ announced The Times. And to the east of the City, where there had stood for some years a dedicated ‘German Hospital’ for German speakers in the suburb of Dalston, there was another fund-raising event which was to be attended, among others, by Count Bernstoff, Count Buest and Gustavus Kottengell.

The Bastendorffs were sharp and fast adapters to nuances of class. And the romance between Severin and Mary deepened to the point in 1872 when he asked for her hand in marriage, and she accepted. The wedding was in St Pancras parish church.

The furniture trade was expanding fast for the brothers. The Bastendorffs were honing their Chinese-styled bamboo work. As well as cane chairs with latticed geometrical motifs suggestive of Chinese architecture, they also produced occasional tables, fireplace screens, and ornamental stands for flower vases. The growing popularity of such pieces reflected a young and upcoming middle class, moving to the new suburbs in Kentish Town, Holloway and Plaistow, and favouring lighter furnishings than the previous generation.

The Bastendorff brothers soon broke away from partnerships with others just off the Tottenham Court Road and made their enterprises more family-oriented. It would not be too long before they were hiring more staff.

When Severin and Mary had the first of their children, whatever lodgings they had the lease on were not going to be sufficient for very long. The ideal was to combine more comfortable surroundings for the babies while also possibly finding room for a much larger furniture workshop.

In the streets all around, putative landlords were taking leases on the four and five storey houses that clustered around the University of London and the British Museum. The economics were straightforward: if one could keep the house filled with tenants, one would have no difficulty paying for both the lease and the maintenance. And so it was that Severin alighted on 4, Euston Square.

And while the Bastendorffs were not rich, they had certainly hit a plateau of financial ease; enough for them to acquire their own horse and trap (though the horse might also have been used for deliveries for the furniture business throughout the week). And what this city also offered – as well as a kaleidoscope of different entertainments – was the weekend prospect of escaping into the airy heights of Hampstead Heath. These would have been marvellous adventures for the Bastendorff toddlers; the horse drawing them up past Euston and Camden New Town, and then the foothills of the Heath at Gospel Oak. In the summer, the heath was wild with hares; and as well as the middle-class picnickers, there were also numbers of boys and girls who had trailed up from humbler homes in Clerkenwell and Islington, and who were enjoying foraging for horseradish, sorrel and wild garlic.

It was in the mid-1870s that Severin Bastendorff expanded his interests in sporting pursuits; he was keen on fishing, for instance, and acquired a circle of friends with whom he would ride out to the Welsh Harp reservoir to the north-west of London. Added to this, the fast and regular railway services from London out into the countryside of Kent facilitated his other burgeoning enthusiasm. The silent marsh country close to where Charles Dickens had set the opening chapters of Great Expectations was a lure to a number of men with shotguns aiming to pick off as many birds as they could.

The appearance of respectability seemed very important to Bastendorff. He cultivated a thick beard. Unlike many craftsmen (and according to later illustrations taken from photographs) he sported a collar and tie and frock coat.

Nor did Severin or his brothers confine themselves to England in the mid-1870s; they made journeys back to Luxembourg, and across that border to Germany.

And at some point in the mid-1870s, Severin’s younger brother, Peter made the voyage to England to join his brothers. Peter was said to resemble Severin quite strongly, except that his hair was more blond than red and when he first arrived in the capital, he scarcely had any facial hair at all. Peter was also very shy in those first few weeks; he had no English. Among his brothers, he could quite happily speak either in German or the local Luxembourgian dialect, but it was said that when faced with female company, he became blushingly tongue-tied.

This was not to remain the case for long; indeed, as the courts would soon hear, there was one young woman that Peter would call, in a joke cockney accent, ‘his missus’. And there were none who could have foreseen just how toxic young Peter Bastendorff’s first serious sexual relationship would be.

As with the tenants at number 4, Euston Square, who came and went with some regularity, so too was there a changing roster of servants. In 1876, Mary Bastendorff placed an advertisement in a local St Pancras newspaper for a maid-of-all-work. There was a reply from a 22-year-old, who had been in a situation in a Bloomsbury house just a few streets away in Torrington Square. She seemed efficient and intelligent; it was clear that Mary wanted to delegate as much of the running of 4, Euston Square as possible.

And three years later, it was this maid, Hannah Dobbs who was sitting in Tothill Fields House of Correction awaiting her arraignment on a charge of wilful murder. No-one – not even Hannah herself – could have anticipated the shocks that were to come.