by Alison Bailey
I recently gave a talk to the Wendover Society for Amersham Museum on our local place names. As always, I started with an introduction on the museum’s activities and current exhibition, Marie-Louise in Amersham, which is about the Viennese artist Marie-Louise von Motesiczky who lived in Amersham in the 1940s. At this, a lady in the audience gasped and put her head in her hands. As luckily, this is not a response I normally get at my talks, I immediately stopped and asked the lady if she felt ok. She replied that she was fine but that she had known Marie-Louise as a child and had visited her many times. She had even sat for a portrait by the artist when she was four years old.
All the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as this was the first time that I had met anyone who knew the artist in Amersham. Whilst this elegant lady looked far too young to have been a child during the war, she explained that her mother, Margaret Harris, had been Marie-Louise’s close friend and that she had often played in the Motesiczky’s garden. This is her story:
Beryl Harris
Beryl came to live in Amersham as a baby in 1936 when her parents moved here from Pontnewydd in South Wales. Beryl’s father, Bert, had worked as a miner but had now found work at a factory in Slough (possibly Johnson & Johnson) and rented 52 New Road in Amersham Common. They knew the area as they had family already living in Chesham. Beryl’s brother, Brian, was seven years older and at school and soon very involved with the Boy Scouts, so Beryl had her mum to herself. She later went to school at Chenies, followed by Townsend Girls in Chesham, before she passed to Amersham’s Dr Challoner’s School, which was still co-educational at the time. Beryl’s mother, known as Peggy, later worked at Sainsbury’s in Sycamore Road.
Marie-Louise and Peggy
The Motesiczkys, émigrés from Vienna, arrived in Amersham in 1940 after moving from Hampstead to escape the Blitz. After lodging in Chesham Bois, they bought Cornerways on Chestnut Lane, just around the corner from the Harris’s home in New Road. Beryl does not know how Marie-Louise and her mother became friends, but they may have met shopping in Chestnut Stores on the corner of Chestnut Lane and New Road. Known as ‘Maggie’s’ after Margaret Atkins (later Goodchild) who ran the store, this was the only shop in the immediate neighbourhood and sold groceries, cigarettes and newspapers. It also had a telephone, which was widely used as few houses had their own phone in the 1940s. Marie-Louise was interested in people from all walks of life and was not concerned with usual snobberies that divided Amersham in the 1940s. Despite her aristocratic origins in Vienna, she did not see anything unusual in becoming firm friends with a young working-class couple from Wales. One of Beryl’s family photos shows Marie-Louise, Beryl, and her parents at the Bekonscot Model Village in Beaconsfield on a special day out.
According to Marie-Louise’s biographer, Jill Lloyd, Peggy was Marie-Louise’s closest friend in Amersham. Beryl remembers frequent visits to Cornerways which she found rather dark, as it was filled with antique, heavy Viennese furniture. Marie-Louise’s mother, Henriette was a large, rather forbidding old lady, sat in an armchair in the corner of the room. Beryl preferred to play outside in the lovely garden which was filled with flower borders and an expansive lawn.
Another of Marie-Louise’s friends and a frequent visitor to the house was the art collector, Lord Michael Croft (1916-1997) who supported the Artist’s Refugee Committee. He was introduced to Marie-Louise by the artist Oskar Kokoschka who hoped to matchmake. Marie-Louise, however, was already falling in love with the writer Elias Canetti, who was living close by in Chesham Bois. Whenever Croft visited, he would stay with the Harrises in their back bedroom and Beryl has a clear memory of dancing for him to generous applause.
The Portrait
When Beryl sat for her portrait, it was not in Marie-Louise’s studio at Cornerways but in the same back bedroom at 52 New Road. She sat in a small wicker chair in front of the fireplace, holding her beloved doll, Valerie. In the large pastel portrait, Beryl is wearing a white dress with puffed sleeves and has a severe page-boy bob which was very fashionable at the time.
Beryl remembers Marie-Louise as being very patient with her, although she wasn’t very accustomed to being with children. She described her as being “slightly mystical”. The portrait was treasured by her parents and hung for many years in the sitting room at New Road. However, at the time Beryl was mystified at why the artist had changed Valerie’s red bonnet to pale blue and had lightened her own hair so much.
When Beryl was nine, she modelled for Marie-Louise again, this time in the studio at Cornerways. She wore a red dress and was asked to sit with her hands in front of her. She remembers the artist debating whether she should hold her doll again or a knife! No trace of this portraits exist so presumably the sitting wasn’t a success.
Post War
The Harrises and Motesiczkys stayed friends when the war ended, and Marie-Louise moved back to Hampstead. When Beryl was working in London, she remembers catching a bus to visit Marie-Louise at her flat in Compayne Gardens, South Hampstead. Peggy and Bert Harris both died in 1978, however, the portrait is still cherished by Beryl and her family as a momento of the émigré artist who made such a lasting impression on a little girl’s life.