Wardour Street, London

Wardour Street is a street in Soho, London. It is a one-way street south to north from Leicester Square, up through Chinatown, across Shaftesbury Avenue to Oxford Street. Read more on Wikipedia

Lowry refers to the street in his novel Under The Volcano; "He had not played one, and Hugh could play almost any kind of guitar, for four or five years, and his numerous instruments declined with his books in basements or attics in London or Paris, in Wardour Street night-clubs or behind the bar of the Marquis of Granby or the old Astoria in Greek Street, long since become a convent and his bill still unpaid there, in pawnshops in Tithebarn Street or the Tottenham Court Road...." (Pg. 158 )

The most famous night clubs in Wardour Street in the 1920s and 1930s were Chez Victor and the Cosmopolitan - there is no documentary evidence that Lowry visited either club.

Chez Victor was a very fashionable 1920s restaurant/night-club in Grafton Street (above Grafton Galleries). It was popularised by the then Prince of Wales and is best remembered as the place where Lesley Hutchinson (Hutch) serenaded Edwina Mountbatten and other rich socialites. It was owned by Victor Perosino. The club was raided in 1929 or 1930 and Perosino was deported – there are several versions of this tale which I can go into if you want. In the 1930s Chez Victor at 45 Wardour Street opened – I presume there is a connection.This appears to have been more of a restaurant – but was equally fashionable – I think it was still there at least to the late sixties. Chez Victor appears in most reminiscences of inter-war West End society. It was one of the key venues for the “Mayfair” set. Elvira Barney

Dinner At Eight 1933

Jan Gabrial states that her and Lowry went to see the film in London in 1933; "Later that week, after seeing Dinner At Eight and downing several cocktails, Malcolm became drunk and didactic and, of course we quarreled and separated." (Inside The Volcano Pg. 35).

Dinner at Eight is a Pre-Code 1933 comedy of manners/drama starring Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore, Lee Tracy, Edmund Lowe, and Billie Burke, and produced by MGM Studios. The film was adapted to the screen by Frances Marion and Herman J. Mankiewicz from the play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, with additional dialogue supplied by Donald Ogden Stewart. Produced by David O. Selznick, it was directed by George Cukor. Read more on Wikipedia

Dinner at Eight presents intersecting stories set during America's Great Depression that illustrate the rough passage from the old aristocracy, based on European customs and ancestral wealth, to the new aristocracy, hewn out of the free-for-all of 20th-century capitalism. Packed with capable actors allowed to shine in intimate, dialogue-heavy, extended takes, the movie offers an interesting study of culture, a thoughtful lesson on life, and an entertaining series of touching and amusing tales.

Cavalcade 1933

Jan Gabrial states that in November 1933 that she and Lowry went to see Coward's Cavalcade in London. We must assume that she is referring to the film rather than the stage production which ended its run in September 1932. The film version was directed by Frank Lloyd. The screenplay by Reginald Berkeley and Sonya Levien is based on the 1931 play of the same title by Noël Coward.

The film shows a view of English life from New Year's Eve 1899 through New Year's Day 1933, the film is presented from the point of view of well-to-do London residents Jane and Robert Marryot. Several historical events serve as background for the film, including the Second Boer War, the death of Queen Victoria, the sinking of the Titanic, and World War I.

The cast includes:


Diana Wynyard as Jane Marryot
Clive Brook as Robert Marryot
Una O'Connor as Ellen Bridges
Herbert Mundin as Alfred Bridges
Irene Browne as Margaret Harris
Margaret Lindsay as Edith Harris
John Warburton as Edward Marryot
Bonita Granville as Young Fanny
Douglas Walton as Soldier

Pudovkin's Deserter

The Deserter is a 1933 Soviet film directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin.

Jan Gabrial states that her and Lowry went to see the film in London in 1933. (Inside The Volcano Pg. 34)

The film chronicles the tale of a strike on Hamburg's docks that was inspired by leftists. Livanov, their leader, finds that his weak heart cannot stand the strain of the strike; he must return to Russia to rest. While he is gone, the strike situation becomes more serious. The German government uses violent measures to repress the strike. Livanov feels he cannot lie idly by while his comrades are in danger. He returns to Germany to join them.

Cast:

Boris Livanov - Karl Renn
Vasili Kovrigin - Ludwig Zelle
Aleksandr Chistyakov - Fritz Muller
Tamara Makarova - Greta Zelle
Semyon Svashenko - Bruno
Dmitri Konsovsky - Strauss
Yudif Glizer - Marcella Zelle
M. Oleshchenko - Bertha
Sergey Martinson - Passer-by
Maksim Shtraukh
Sergei Gerasimov
Sergei Komarov - Worker
Vladimir Uralsky
Ivan Lavrov - Richter
Ivan Chuvelyev
A. Besperstny

In 1929, four years before making this film, V.I. Pudovkin and Sergei Eisenstein had collaborated on a Sound Manifesto that called for a radical use of asynchronous sound effects, which would be used in counterpoint to the screen image, rather than supporting it, as is normally the case. In DESERTER, Pudovkin put this theory into practice. Starring Boris Livanov as German dockworker Karl Renn, the film focuses upon a politically unconscious figure who learns the error of his ways. Renn becomes involved in picketing and demonstrating on the dock but walks out on his comrades one day, doubtful about the value of this kind of political activity. A kindly communist offers to send him to the Soviet Union as a member of a German delegation, and he eagerly accepts. When the delegation returns from the Soviet Union, Renn chooses to stay behind, finding a secure job as a specialist in a factory. Not long thereafter, he learns that the police have killed his closest friend, revolutionary Ludwig Zeile (Vasili Kovrigin), and he realizes that he must return to Germany and rejoin the fight. The soundtrack, which Pudovkin wrote at length about in FILM TECHNIQUE AND FILM ACTING, has an unusual density and complexity because of the technique of asynchronous montage; it could serve as an early example of musique concrete. Rotten Tomatoes

Victoria Railway Station, London

Victoria station also known as London Victoria, is a central London railway terminus and London Underground complex. It is named after nearby Victoria Street. The mainline station's most important longer-distance destinations include Brighton, Hove, Worthing, Eastbourne, Canterbury and Dover. In 1898 the LB&SCR decided to demolish its station and replace it with an enlarged red-brick Renaissance-style building. Since widening of the station was prevented by the existing LCDR station and the Buckingham Palace Road, increased capacity was achieved by lengthening the platforms and building crossovers, to allow two trains to use each platform simultaneously. Work was completed in 1908, and included the rebuilding of The Grosvenor Hotel at the same time. (Read more on Wikipedia)

Jan Gabrial arrived at the station on the 22nd September 1933 from Paris with the intention of meeting Lowry; "Malcolm not only failed to meet the channel ferry but even to return to London." (Jan Gabrial Inside The Volcano Pg. 22) and "Malcolm ..contended, not too convincingly, that we'd managed to miss each other...at Victoria Station." (Pg. 23).

South Hill Park Gardens

South Hill Park Gardens is a street in the Hampstead district of London. It is within the London Borough of Camden, and some of its houses overlook Hampstead Heath

South Hill Park was developed in 1878, when the street was laid out on land belonging to South End Farm owned by the dean and chapter of Westminster. The new Victorian houses were built with their better rooms facing the road rather than looking out over the wild Heath. The road forms a loop at its upper end, and originally the central area was a public garden. Later as the development gained in popularity, this garden was built upon and the new development was called South Hill Park Gardens, leading to the anomaly of a residential street with a different name on each side of the road. During the Second World War a V2 bomb destroyed several of the old Victorian houses. The hole left by the V2 on the west side of the road lay empty and forgotten for many years.

In the Autumn of 1933, Lowry went to live with Hugh Sykes Davies at South Hill Park Gardens . Sykes Davies had been approved by Arthur Lowry to act as a "guardian" so that Lowry could stay in London after his problems in Devon during the Summer of 1933. (Gordon Bowker Pursued By Furies Pg. 165). Sykes Davies was living with Betty May at the time - Sykes Davies told Gordon Bowker; "There was one other person present ...connected rather with me than with him. She had a tendency to drink rather a lot, too - one of Epstein's old models." (Gordon Bowker Malcolm Lowry Remembered Pg. 68). Lowry told Jan Gabrial that he Sykes Davies and Betty May had "enlisted him as caretaker, though who was to care for whom may well have been the matter under discussion in Leicester." (Jan Gabrial Inside The Volcano Pg. 34). Jan's reference is to Lowry's meeting with his father to sanction the "guardianship" of Sykes Davies. 

Jan Gabrial visited and briefly stayed at the flat in South Hill Park Gardens; "Later we had supper with Hugh Sykes Davies and Betty May.... We are invited back for dinner tomorrow together with an ex-lover of hers, Edgell Rickword...." (Jan Gabrial Inside The Volcano Pg. 33); Jan and Lowry stayed at South Hill Park Gardens in early November 1933 while Sykes Davis and Betty May where away; "I had a bath and we finished the third of four bottle, then having borrowed one of Betty's gowns, I crawled into bed beside Malc." (Pg.35);

John Edgell Rickword

John Edgell Rickword, MC (1898-1982) was an English poet, critic, journalist and literary editor. He became one of the leading communist intellectuals active in the 1930s.


He was born in Colchester, Essex. He served as an officer in the British Army in World War I, having joined the Artists' Rifles in 1916, being awarded a Military Cross. He was a published war poet, and collected his early verse in Behind the Eyes (1921).He went up to the University of Oxford in 1919, staying only four terms reading French literature, and leaving when he married. He then took up literary work in London. He reviewed for the Times Literary Supplement, which led to his celebrated review of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Read more on Wikipedia

Jan Gabrial refers to her and Lowry meeting Rickword at Hugh Sykes Davies and Betty May's flat at Southill Gardens in a diary entry dated Sunday, October 29th 1933; "We are invited back for dinner tomorrow together with an ex-lover of hers (Betty May), Edgell Rickword. I wish Malcolm could be as relaxed as Hugh about these overlapping relationships." (Jan Gabrial Inside The Volcano Pg. 33).

Betty May

In the Autumn of 1933, Lowry went to live with Hugh Sykes Davis at South Hill Park Gardens in Hampstead, London. Sykes Davies had been approved by Arthur Lowry to act as a "guardian" so that Lowry could stay in London after his problems in Devon during the Summer of 1933. (Gordon Bowker Pursued By Furies Pg. 165). Sykes Davies was living with Betty May at the time - Sykes Davies told Gordon Bowker; "There was one other person present ...connected rather with me than with him. She had a tendency to drink rather a lot, too - one of Epstein's old models" (Gordon Bowker Malcolm Lowry Remembered Pg. 68).

Born in the East End of London, Betty May became the model and muse to the bohemian elite of London. She sat for Augustus John, Jacob Kramer and caught the attention of Jacob Epstein at the Café Royal where they were all "regulars".She was known as the Tiger Woman - because of her party trick: putting a saucer of brandy on her back, on all fours. Boundary Gallery

Betty May by Epstein 1919

Tiger Woman My Life by Betty May; A beast of a book - literally, because it is very hard to find and also because its value derives from its connection to the Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley. Briefly, Betty May was born in in Canning Town, (around Tidal Basin) London where she endured an extremely rough childhood. She became an artist's model, moved in decidedly bohemian circles and migrated to Paris where she hung out with the Apaches (motorised robbers mostly). She was known among the Apaches as 'The Tiger-Woman.' Five feet tall and of a witchy appearance she was not a woman to cross, at one point she threatened to murder Crowley. She was married three times, her second husband divorced her because of her overuse of cocaine; having cleaned up she married again for love. Her third husband Raoul Loveday whom she had met at the Harlequin club in London was a young Oxford graduate and keen Egyptologist. Together they made a fateful journey to Crowley's retreat Thelema Abbey in Cefalu, Sicily.


Betty May writes that she detested Crowley but it appears that Loveday was captivated by his personality. Loveday died at Thelema after an illness in slightly mysterious cicumstances. Betty May surmises it was after drinking tainted water at a nearby monastery but the rumour (completely false) was that he expired after drinking cat's blood in a magick ceremony. The newspaper went mad in England and America with headlines such as 'Varsity Lad's Death. Enticed to 'Abbey'. Dreadful ordeal of a young wife...' This is where Crowley's reputation as the Great Beast was made. Betty May, obviously no innocent, was cast as the 'Young English bride' 'Girl-wife' 'Parlour Puss' and Loveday as her 'boy-husband.'  Bookride

Betty May's life was still affected by Crowley while Lowry was living at South Hill Park Gardens.(Read more here)

Jan Gabrial refers to her and Lowry meeting Betty May several times in the Autumn of 1933;  in her diary on Sunday, October 29th 1933 she wrote; "Later we had supper with Hugh Sykes Davies and Betty May, the famous "Tiger Woman". She was a favourite of Jacob Epstein's  and is said to have known everyone, even Ernest Dowson and Oscar Wilde, though this seems impossible. But she is fascinating, warm, friendly, and very very attractive, as well as a wizard cook. We are invited back for dinner tomorrow together with an ex-lover of hers, Edgell Rickword. I wish Malcolm could be as relaxed as Hugh about these overlapping relationships." (Jan Gabrial Inside The Volcano Pg. 33); Jan and Lowry stayed at South Hill Park Gardens in early November 1933 while Sykes Davis and Betty May where away; "I had a bath and we finished the third of four bottle, then having borrowed one of Betty's gowns, I crawled into bed beside Malc." (Pg.35); "Betty May returned, radiant, just as we were setting off for the Palladium and an indifferent show" (Pg. 35). Jan also related how she and Lowry went to the Marquis of Granby and The Plough pubs with Betty May and Edgell Rickword after Kleinfled's (Fitzroy Tavern). Betty then took them to Smokey Joe's, "a non-alcoholic speakeasy-cum-lesbain pub" (Pg. 36).

Birmingham, England

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England.


Lowry, Jan Gabrial and Tom Forman stayed overnight in the city after being forced to land at Castle Bromwich Aerodrome en route from Heston to RAF Hooton Park as part of their trip to North Wales in September/October 1933. Jan recalled the stay when she was interviewed by Gordon Bowker; "Finally we landed in Birmingham. Birmingham and Bismark, North Dakota, I think, will go down in my memory as the two most God-awful places that I have ever been to in my life. We had steak and kidney pie, which was cold and which I threw up as soon as I got to my room, and it was an utterly disastrous town and gloomy." (Gordon Bowker Malcolm Lowry Remembered Pg. 94)

RAF Hooton Park

RAF Hooton Park, on the Wirral Peninsula, Cheshire, was a Royal Air Force station originally built for the Royal Flying Corps in 1917 as a training aerodrome for pilots in World War I. During the early/mid 1930s, it was one of the two airfields (with Liverpool Speke) handling scheduled services for the Merseyside region. Hooton Park was home to No. 610 (County of Chester) Squadron and, post World War II, to No. 611 (West Lancashire) and No. 663 (AOP) Squadron.

On 28th September 1933, Lowry and Jan Gabrial landed at the aerodrome with Tom Forman, a friend of Lowry's from Cambridge, who had hired a plane to fly from Heston Aerodrome via Castle Bromwich Aerodrome en route to North Wales. (Jan Gabrial Inside The Volcano Pg. 26).

Lowry refers to Air Force Officers at Woodside Ferry in his short story 'Goya The Obscure' who could have been on their way to RAF Hooton Park. 

Castle Bromwich Aerodrome

Castle Bromwich Aerodrome was an early airfield, situated to the north of Castle Bromwich in the West Midlands of England. The site now falls within the City of Birmingham. A large piece of Warwickshire grassland (Castle Bromwich playing fields) became the privately-owned Castle Bromwich aerodrome, when  The Midland Aero Club established itself, and a hangar was built for the aeroplanes. It became a stopping place during early air races. At the start of World War I the War Office requisitioned the airfield for use by the Royal Flying Corps and flying schools in 1914, when proper roads and buildings were established. In 1915 No. 5 Reserve Aeroplane Squadron was formed, later becoming the No 5 Training Squadron. Nine other Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force squadrons resided at the airfield during and just after World War I. After the war, Imperial Airways started a service from London. In the inter war years, the aerodrome had a dual military and civilian function.

On 28th September 1933, Lowry and Jan Gabrial landed at the aerodrome with Tom Forman, a friend of Lowry's from Cambridge, who had hired a plane to fly to RAF Hooton Park on the Wirral en route to North Wales. They flew from Heston Aerodrome with the intention of landing at RAF Hooton Park but had to land at Castle Bromwich Aerodrome because of poor weather.(Jan Gabrial Inside The Volcano Pg. 26). In an earlier account Jan Gabrial told Gordon Bowker that they stayed overnight in Birmingham before continuing the flight the next day. (Gordon Bowker Malcolm Lowry Remembered Pg. 94)

Heston Aerodrome

Heston Aerodrome was a 1930s airfield located to the west of London, UK situated on the border of the Heston and Cranford areas of Hounslow. Heston Air Park was conceived by fellow pilots and aircraft co-owners Nigel Norman and Alan Muntz in 1928, and it was constructed by their new company, Airwork Ltd. It was officially opened on 5 July 1929, to coincide with hosting the two day King's Cup air race. By then, the Airwork Flying School had become well established, many privately-owned aircraft had moved in, and the Household Brigade Flying Club, also known as the Guards flying club, had moved from Brooklands. Frequent public events helped promote Heston as a major centre of private flying, air displays, public demonstrations of new aircraft types, 'garden parties', air races, and as the starting point for long-distance flight record attempts.

Lowry, Jan Gabrial and Elizabeth Cheyne flew from the airfield with Tom Forman, a friend of Lowry's from Cambridge, who had hired a plane to fly to Hooton Aerodrome on the Wirral en route to North Wales. On 26th September 1933, they had to cancel their trip to Wales because of poor weather flying instead to Woodley Airfield amongst other airfields. (Jan Gabrial Inside The Volcano Pg 24). Lowry and Jan Gabrial with Tom Forman made a short flight on the 27th September from Heston to an unidentified airfield after once again cancelling their trip to Wales. The three flew from Heston on 28th September 1933 en route to RAF Hooton Park but had to land at Castle Bromwich Aerodrome because of poor weather.

Woodley Airfield

On Tuesday September 26th 1933, Lowry, Jan Gabrial and Elizabeth Cheyne flew from Heston Aerodrome to an airfield near Reading in a plane flown by Tom Forman, a friend of Lowry's from his Cambridge University days; "But because today was glorious, we flew instead to Reading, stopping at several airports for cocktails and for brandy." and "Though the plane was very tiny, flying is a marvelous sensation, especially the takeoffs and since we were all quite tight I have no clear memories of our return." (Jan Gabrial Inside The Volcano Pg. 24)

The airfield which Lowry flew to was most likely Woodley near Reading which had once called Reading Aerodrome. Charles Powis opened the airfield in 1928 on a 100-acre (0.40 km2) field belonging to Sandford Farm. In 1932, F.G. Miles came to Woodley and joined forces with the firm Philips & Powis in the production of the Miles Hawk aeroplane, leading to the foundation of Miles Aircraft Ltd which continued producing aircraft in Woodley until after World War II.