Cyril's Green Modernity

 Which fan of 20th century art doesn't love a good linocut? A truly modern form of art, using a universally known form of material. The images are deceptively simple, clean and crisp, perfect for the "machine age". Personally I'm a fan of Cyril Power. His 1930s linocuts depicted such contemporary themes as speed trials, escalators and tube trains full of commuters. It's all movement; people and their machines getting around.

My favourite Cyril Power print is "The Sunshine Roof".

Again, it's people on the move, this time on board a bus. And what is the dominant colour? Green of course. A bus full of people in green coats and hats sitting on green seats. Many of Cyril's prints feature green despite his being economical with colour. He had his eye on what was happening in the 1930s, and his eye picked out the green craze. 

Green Shirts

 In June 1937, the Lancashire Evening Post reported the following:

"Three members of the Social Credit Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland were charged at Luton today with wearing political uniforms at an open air meeting. The magistrates dismissed the case.

The Chief Constable said that permission was given to an organisation who, according to their notepaper, were known as "Green Shirts", to hold an open air meeting.

On April 24th, police officers saw a procession headed by five men beating green drums and five people carrying banners with a "K" and a reversed "K" in white on them. This was the Social Credit Party.

The men were wearing green shirts with green collars and ties and the majority were wearing mackintoshes or overcoats. They were all wearing armlets,  with the emblem of the party on them in white.

One speaker at the meeting wore a green jersey or shirt, green tie and a fawn raincoat with an armlet and badge. Another was wearing an ordinary suit with a green tie, armlet and badge in his lapel.

Mr David P Kennedy, defending, submitted that the prosecution had not proved that the men were wearing a distinctive dress of the same colour, pattern and appearance."

The 1930s are overshadowed by political uniforms and shirts of a certain hue, and this resulted in the banning of large scale meetings attended by people in uniforms. But the Green Shirts are less well remembered and as this shows, not taken as seriously.

The Social Credit Party was established in the early 1930s and grew out of the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift. This was a youth movement set up to answer the scouts and its military undertones - the Kibbo Kift's aims were peaceful and centred around nature. The aims of the political party were complex but ultimately wanted social and economic equality. They disbanded in the Second World War and any attempts to revive the party after the war seem half hearted and short lived. 

So why would the party choose green shirts? Probably the links to the countryside orientated Kibbo Kift and a wish to link themselves with Robin Hood. But judging by the article above, they were a bit of a ramshackle band of warriors who were unable to sort out a proper uniform, and didn't want to take off their overcoats. 

Green can have an association with madness - think arsenic and green ink letters - combined with their ramshackle appearance they were perhaps treated as cranks and therefore treated leniently and with a knowing smirk. 

Green may have been fashionable, but this shows it was not a serious colour and didn't hold any sinister undercurrents. 

A Bit Green and a Bit Blue

 In the mid 1930s, the vogue grew for blue as well as green. People flocked to the newly built lidos. Wealthier people went on cruises and the lower middle classes dreamed about going on one. Water - the green sea and the blue pool -  had a lot of influence on fashion. Navy style was chic.

This was reflected in the trend for aquamarines in jewellery. In 1933, the Middlesex County Times told us that the stone had been revived on a large scale, and jewellers were busy teaming them with sapphires and diamonds.

At Cowes in 1934, anyone who was anyone was wearing aquamarines teamed with their navy blue and white outfits.

In her memoir "The Girl with the Widow's Peak" Lady Ursula d'Abo fondly remembered her father, the Duke of Rutland, giving her an aquamarine brooch as a coming out ball gift in the mid 1930s. Meanwhile her sister, Lady Isobel was given items of jewellery which used the stone at her wedding in 1936. 

In early 1939, when Molly Bishop married Lord George Scott, she wore a wedding gown sewn with aquamarines.

Why this colour? I suppose it was the water-borne extension of the outdoor craze. Living on an island with such emphasis on our navy it was going to happen. Was it a subconscious way of putting "clear blue water" between ourselves and the worrying developments on the continent. 

Stable on the Table

 

This extract from the shopping pages of the 1938 edition of Good Housekeeping magazine suggest that things were getting a bit out of hand by the end of the decade. The hunting, golfing and racing theme is taken to extreme lengths here, with the suggestion that one uses little plastic racehorses as a table decoration. Show all the world you're a racing type by having your own personal colours painted on.

Unexpected Places

 

This advertisement from the August 1938 edition of Good Housekeeping magazine shows the extent to which marketing departments jumped on the green and pleasant land bandwagon. Even Players cigarettes were taking out full page ads to let us know that theirs was the brand stocked in village shops off the beaten track. You were free to explore the countryside, because it would never mean having to go without your fags. Players were smoked by all those in tweeds and plus-fours. Perhaps if you couldn't get out to the countryside, then you could shut your eyes while having a smoke and pretend that you were on a village green.

The Green Woman of Firbeck Hall

 In March 1936, the South Yorkshire Times newspaper reported that the Firbeck Hall Ghost had made a return. The apparition, seemingly dressed in a green cloak, was said to be bothering the residents of the newly opened Country Club at the site with knockings, movements and wails. 

The story behind the Green Woman of Firbeck went as follows - in the Civil War, a beautiful young woman who lived at the Hall with her Royalist family, fell in love with a Cromwellian officer who lived nearby. They would meet in secret in the woods at night, and thought that they were getting away with it. However, one night, the woman's brother was there waiting for them and thrust his sword into the Cromwellian officer. In her grief, the woman threw herself into the pond - her body was recovered the next day, covered in slime and pondweed which created what looked like a green gown.

In her 1930s incarnation, she was said to be "upsetting the minds of the club servants." But isn't it interesting how, at a time of such obsession with green, this was when she made her comeback appearance...it's almost as if minds were open and ready to receive her.

Firbeck Hall has been in and out of use, and in and out of the local papers. Here's the most recent report with photos of the location:

https://www.worksopguardian.co.uk/news/people/take-a-look-inside-the-abandoned-firbeck-hall-near-worksop-before-restoration-work-began-3203497

Download a few ghost stories of my own for 95p - click here

Emeralds Were To Die For

The fashion for green in the 1930s naturally extended to jewellery, with emeralds and jade being in demand. 

A short story by G.B. Stern appeared in the May 1937 edition of Woman's Journal magazine. It was called 'Alas! Dear Love' and it was an unfortunate tale of a wife who is shot dead in her bed, presumably for the emerald necklace that she had been showing off that evening. However it turns out that her husband had done the shooting, because he had recently been told that he had a terminal illness and he just knew that his wife wouldn't be able to live without him. How kind of him to put her out of her misery like that. The 1930s were indeed strange days...

He gave her the emerald necklace as an alibi and hid it in his bureau after the deed had been done. Would that really have escaped the police? Anyway, here is the description of the emeralds:

"They were lovely stones, steady green fire...all the while the green stones were flashing against her skin as she twined them round her wrist, heaped them into her palm, even rubbed them with sensuous little cries of pleasure up and down her cheek."

Steady on, old gal. But with the illustrative drawing we get the message, emeralds were THE gift to give in 1937, so in demand that a murder for their possession is taken for granted even by the CID.