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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
Northumbria University, UK
Genocide has shaped human experience throughout history and is one of
the greatest challenges of the twenty-first century. Palgrave Studies in the
History of Genocide is dedicated to the study of this phenomenon across
its entire geographic, chronological and thematic range. The series acts
as a forum to debate and discuss the nature, the variety, and the concepts
of genocide. In addition to histories of the causes, course, and perpe-
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
time and space, and specific case studies.

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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

ISBN 978-3-319-69259-3 ISBN 978-3-319-69260-9 (eBook)
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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.
 2 THE REMEMBRANCE OF A GENOCIDE 27

Denial of the Armenian genocide continues to this day on an inter-

national level. In 1999, when the Congress of the United States wanted
to pass a resolution on the Armenian Genocide, the US government
received a letter from the Turkish embassy with the announcement that
“such an undesirable development would inevitably have consequences
on Turkish-American relations” (Dadrian 1999: 59). When in 2002, a
Swedish institute published a leaflet on the Armenian genocide, the
Swedish ambassador was summoned to the ministry of Foreign Affairs in
Ankara and here too was told that the Turks would immediately consider
sanctions.10
Because the West has interests in both Turkey and the Middle East,
Turkey’s demands are being negotiated and met, even in the United
States. Resolutions are delayed and possible propositions for recogni-
tion are under the banner of further investigation being pushed to the
background of the political landscape. Until 2003, only five countries in
Europe independently and officially recognized the genocide: Sweden,
France, Greece, Italy, and Switzerland. For other supranational organiza-
tions and institutions, the decision process about possible recognition of
the genocide is incredibly slow. It is only since 1987 that the European
Parliament11 has taken the official line that massacres occurred in the
Ottoman Empire. It was not until August 1985—although Lemkin has
argued for recognition of the Armenian genocide since the 1950s12—
that a “Sub-commission of Human Rights” of the United Nations

10 See the Dutch newspaper article “Armeense genocide leidt tot ruzie tussen Turkije en

Zweden” [Armenian genocide leads to arguments between Turkey and Sweden] in the
Dutch newspaper: NRC Handelsblad, 7 February 2002. For more information, I refer to
the following articles “Turkije en VS botsen over Armenië”, [Turkey and US collide over
Armenia] in NRC Handelsblad, 23 September 2002, “Holocaust in Armenië” [Holocaust
in Armenia] in De Volkskrant, 4 November 2000, “Paus zoekt hereniging in Armenië”
[The Pope seeks unification in Armenia] in Trouw, 26 September 2001. I also refer to the
book “The Key Elements in the Turkish Denial of the Armenian Genocide: A Case Study of
Distortion and Falsification”, Dadrian (1999).
11 This can be found in resolution A2-33/87, accepted on 18 June 1987. See also:

http://www.armenian-genocide.org/index.htm.
12 As presented in the introduction, Lemkin is the legal scholar who coined the term

“genocide”. In an unpublished autobiography, he wrote: “In Turkey, more than 1.2

million Armenians were put to death (…) all the Turkish criminals were released. I was
shocked. A nation was killed and the guilty persons were set free”. This quote can be found
in The Armenian Genocide, 1915–1923, published by Armenian Assembly of America.
28 A. Holslag

labelled the mass killings of the Armenians as a “genocidal act.” This

resolution was accepted—14 to 1–after 14 years of research. The Soviet
Union voted against the resolution and four countries abstained from
voting (Dadrian 1999: 36).13
The pressure imposed by the Turkish government must not be under-
estimated. It obstructs nations and organizations from recognizing the
Armenian genocide as an historical fact and even obstructs individuals
on a micro-level. This obstruction colours the Armenian identity. In the
1990s, the Netherlands was also affected by the Turkish policy of denial,
as the following story documents.

Case I: the monument in Assen.

In the fall of 1999, a man by the name of Nicolaia Romashuk, an

Armenian of Israeli heritage, submitted a request to the city council of
Assen, a small town in the north-eastern part of the Netherlands, to place a
monument for the victims of the Armenian genocide in the cemetery “De
Boskamp.” Although initially his request was granted, the city council with-
drew permission after several Turkish organizations submitted an objec-
tion. What followed was a legal battle that eventually took on international
proportions.

“I could never have suspected,” Nicolaia would tell me later, “that the row
would take such extremes. I remember that one time I walked down the
street and saw a group of young men handing out leaflets in which the
Armenian genocide was being denied and in which the Armenians, not the
Turks, were accused of mass killings.”

The reasons for Nicolaia’s request were twofold. First, he believed it

was simply time for a monument and it surprised him that other Dutch
Armenian organizations and foundations had not put in a similar request.
“In recent years, more and more Armenians have come to live in Assen.
Often, they are placed here in the shelters for asylum seekers. A friend and

13 The United Nations holds the following definition of the term “genocide”: “genocide
means any of the following acts with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,
racial or religious group as such by: (a) killing members of the group, (b) causing serious bodily
or mental harm to members of the group, (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of
life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, (d) imposing meas-
ures intended to prevent births within the group and (e) forcibly transferring children of the
group to another group” (Article II, 1948, United Nations, Genocide Convention).
 2 THE REMEMBRANCE OF A GENOCIDE 29

I started with a local magazine called Good Day and the reception was so
overwhelming that the time seemed right for a monument.” However,
there was a second reason, a deeply rooted reason that went back to his
childhood.

I was raised in Jerusalem and I remember how my grandma spoke about

the genocide. She could really scare me with her stories. She told me how
she fled from Turkey and how eventually her daughter (my mother) arrived
in Jerusalem. I was born near a cave in the mountain Zion. At a later age,
when I went to a monastery, there was a saying on the blackboard, which I
will always remember. “When our children forget the horrors, the whole world
will be cursed.” I did not want to forget, you see. I did not want to forget
my grandmother’s stories. I still feel her pain every day. At some point, I
received support from Armenian organizations and foundations and even
from the Armenian government. It was not their initiative, but they appre-
ciated my efforts. The only thing I wanted was a commemoration stone, as
was also placed in the United States, Belgium, Germany and France.

On 24 April 2000, a day on which the Armenian genocide is commemo-

rated, the stone was unofficially unveiled in the church of Almelo (a town
in the eastern part of the Netherlands). Nicolaia Romashuk, the patriarch
of Jerusalem, the Armenian ambassador and five Armenian members of
parliament were amongst the guests. Meanwhile, tensions between Turkish
and Armenian communities and the Turkish and Dutch government were
rising. The Netherlands was blamed as being partial to Armenians in the
Turkish newspapers and in the spring of 2000 the Turkish ambassador in
The Hague warned that the placing of a commemoration stone would
harm the bilateral relations.

“It was crazy,” Nicolaia told me. “The city council of Assen had, by this
time, received mail bombs from various Turkish groups from all over
Europe and was forced to change their email address. Turkish neighbours,
who I had known for years, started treating me with hostility.” The ques-
tion of whether or not the commemoration stone should be placed started
to take on another dimension. The discussion that developed between
Turkish, Dutch and Armenian representatives no longer revolved around
the monument, but whether or not the Armenian genocide actually had
occurred. Several Turkish “scientists” and representatives, amongst whom
were Professor Yusuf Halacoglu and spokesperson Yuksel Koc of the
Turkish community, were quoted in Dutch newspapers denying that a gen-
ocide had occurred. “There is no evidence for a genocide,” stated Yuksel
Koc. “We can imagine that he wanted to commemorate his ancestors with a
stone. If he would not give it political connotation, I would even help him
30 A. Holslag

put the stone there.” [author translation]14 In January 2001, Romashuk

appeared in court, where (as he states) he came forward with the “facts” of
the genocide. “I had to prove that the genocide had taken place.”

In March 2001, the judge gave a ruling. He dismissed the Turkish objec-
tions and agreed to the placement of the commemoration stone. However,
the inscription had to be changed. “The Netherlands had not officially
recognized the genocide, therefore the word was not allowed to appear
on the stone.”15 A compromise was made. “For the Armenians who have
fallen” was replaced by “in commemoration of our ancestors.”

Friedlander (1993) states that the commemoration of a traumatic experi-

ence can lead to acceptance of this experience: “Thus, if we make allow-
ance for some ritualized form of commemoration, already in place, we
may foresee in the public domain, a tendency toward closure without
resolution, but closure nonetheless” (Friedlander 1993: 133). In the
aforementioned case, however, Nicolaia Romashuk’s fight for his inter-
pretation of the past and his desire for a public commemoration was sup-
pressed by various organizations and institutions due to political interests
and hegemony.

14 See the newspaper articles “Die politieke lading stoort ons enorm” [The political charge

disturbs us] in Trouw, 22 September 2000 and “ArmeensTurkse dialoog weer doodverk-
laard” [Armenian and Turkish dialogue has ended again] in De Volkskrant, 1 February
2002. For other articles, see: “Standbeeld-affaire in Assen breidt zich uit” [The monu-
ment-gate in Assen expands] in De Volkskrant, 21 December 2000; “Mail bommen dup-
eren Assen” [Mailbombs in Assen] in Algemeen Dagblad, 21 August 2000; “Fel verzet tegen
monument Assen” [Protest against the monument in Assen] in Het Parool, 9 January 2001;
“Monument voor Armeniërs maakt Turken woedend” [Armenia monument angers Turkish
immigrants] in De Volkskrant, 9 May 2000; “Elke dag, elke minuut voel ik de pijn” [Every
day, every minute, I feel the pain] in Trouw, 22 September 2000; “Nooit vergeten, dat is
ons ingeprent” [Never forget, that is drilled into us] in De Volkskrant, 5 January 2001;
“Toch Armeens monument” [The Armenian monument will come] in NRC Handelsblad,
3 April 2001; “Rechter beslist over Armeense gedenksteen” [Court decides over Armenian
monument] in Trouw, 21 March 2001; “Armeniërs zegenen alvast de steen der conflicten”
[Armenians already bless the ‘monument of conflicts’] in Trouw, 24 April 2000; “De strijd
om een Armeense gedenksteen” [The struggle over an Armenian commemorative stone] in
Het Parool, 9 January 2001; and “Gedenksteen” [Commemorative Stone] in Trouw, 22
September 2000. I have received further information from the interview I conducted with
Nicolaia Romashuk on 4 June 2003.
15 The Netherlands officially recognized the Armenian genocide in 2004, but in an indi-

rect way. The Dutch parliament speaks of “the question of the Armenian genocide.”
 2 THE REMEMBRANCE OF A GENOCIDE 31

Nevertheless, this decision does not imply that in the recent years
there have not been changes. There has been an increase in scien-
tific interest about the Armenian genocide in the last decade, and even
in Turkey, the subject is slowly opening for reflection and deliberation.
However, this is not without struggle and tension. When the author
Orhan Pamuk stated in 2005, that “thirty thousand Kurds have been
killed, and a million Armenians,” he was both hailed by some left-wing
Turkish organizations and criticized and persecuted by ultra-national-
ists. Pamuk had criminal charges filed against him for his action, which
were dropped but then reinstated in 2011. During this same period, the
first Turkish schoolbooks were published that mentioned the Armenian
“massacres” and the first commemoration of the Armenian genocide,
on 24 April, was openly held in Istanbul in 2010.16 In 2013, Erdogan
even apologized for the atrocities (notice: not “genocide”) done to the
Armenian people.
So, Turkey has been in a strange dance of opening up on one hand
and denying on the other hand for the last two decades. This ebb and
flow is partly caused by international pressure and Turkey’s wish to
become a member of the EU as well as to internal politics. To the great
frustration of the Armenians in the diasporic, this issue seems to be a
process of one step forward and two steps back. The political landscape
in Turkey and its confrontation with its own past does not change as
quickly as the Armenian diasporic and some Western governments would
like. It will probably continue to remain slow with the current political
situation.
Turkey’s policy of denial has a counter effect for the country and is a
great burden for the Armenians in Armenia and the diasporic communi-
ties. It emphasizes the loss the Armenians have experienced and colours,
as I will explain later, the Armenian identity. The denial policies make the
Armenian identity more urgent and combative.

16 For further information about the changes within Turkey I refer to the following

articles: “ArmeensTurkse dialoog weer doodverklaart” [Armenian and Turkish dialogue

has ended again] in De Volkskrant, 1 February 2002; “Ephimenco”[opinion piece] in
Trouw, 26 April 2001, “Het was een geweldige tragedie” [It was a great tragedy] in De
Volkskrant, 9 May 2000; “Je gelooft die onzin toch niet? Wij Turken doen zulke dingen
niet” [You don’t believe that nonsense do you? We Turkish are not capable of this.] in
NRC Handelsblad, 6 May 2002; and “Een taboe op de helling” [A taboo under review] in
Trouw, 9 February 2001.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 “I don't care none ef it was,” snapped Mr. Ezell. “And, besides,
whut's that got to do with it—with the principle of the thing? It was
a deliberate insult flung right in the face of the late Southern
Confederacy—that and nothin' short of it. Well, I stood it jest as long
as I natchelly could—and that wasn't very long, neither, lemme tell
you, gentlemen.”
“Then whut?” inquired Sergeant Bagby, bending forward in his
seat.
“Then I up with my cheer and chunked it right through their dad-
burned, lyin' sheet—that's whut I done! I busted a big hole in her
right whar there was a smart-alecky Yankee colonel sailin' acrost on
a horse. I says: 'Here's a few reinforcements frum the free state of
Georgia!' And I let him have it with the cheer, kefrblim! That there
battle broke up right then and there. And that's how I come to go to
the calaboose.”
Mr. Bloomfield, now rigidly erect, and with no grin on his face,
opened his lips to say something; but Sergeant Bagby beat him to it.
“Pardner,” he asked incredulously, “did they lock you up jest fur
doin' that?”
“No,” said the heated Mr. Ezell, “they didn't really lock me up a-
tall. But the secont I throwed that cheer there was a lot of yellin'
and scrabblin' round, and the lights went up, and the string band
quit playin' its piece and here come a-runnin' an uppidy-lookin' man
—he was the one that run the show, I take it—bleatin' out somethin'
about me havin' broke up his show and him wantin' damages. He
made the mistake of grabbin' holt of me and callin' me a name that I
don't purpose to have nobody usin' on me. He wanted damages.
Well, right there he got 'em!”
He raised a bony fist, on which the knuckles were all barked and
raw, and gazed at it fondly, as though these were most honourable
scars.
“So then, after that, a couple of them other show people they
drug him away frum whar he was layin' on the floor a-yellin',” he
went on, “and a town policeman come in and taken me off to the
calaboose in a hack, with a crowd followin' 'long behind. But when
we got there the gentleman that was runnin' the place—he wore
blue clothes and I jedge from his costume and deportment he must
'a' been the town marshal—he listened to whut we-all had to say,
and he taken a look at that there showman's busted jaw and sort of
grinned to hisse'f; then he said that, seein' as all us old soldiers had
the freedom of the city for the time bein', he 'lowed he'd let the
whole matter drop right whar it was providin' I'd give him my solemn
promise not to go projectin' round no more movin'-picture places
endurin' of my stay in their midst. Well, ef they're all like the one I
seen to-day it's goin' to be a powerful easy promise fur me to keep—
I know that! But that's how I come to miss the doin's this evenin'—I
missed my dinner too—and that's how I come to be walkin' way out
here all by myse'f.”
In the pause that followed Mr. Bloomfield saw his chance. Mr.
Bloomfield's voice had a crackling tone in it, like fire running through
broom-sedge.
“Lookyhere, my friend!” he demanded crisply. “Ain't you been kind
of flyin' in the face of history as well as the movin'-picture industry?
Seems to me I recall that you pleg-taked Rebs got a blamed good
lickin' about ever' once in so often, or even more frequently than
that. If my memory serves me right it seems to me you did indeed!”
Mr. Ezell swung in his chair and the spots in his cheeks spread
until his whole face burned a brick-dust red.' Sergeant Jimmy Bagby
threw himself into the breach. Figuratively speaking, he had both
arms full of heartsease and rosemary.
“In reguards to the major here”—he indicated Mr. Bloomfield with
a gracious gesture of amity—“I furgot to tell you that he taken a
rather prominent part—on the other side frum us.”
As Mr. Ezell's choler rose his brows came down and lowered.
“Huh!” said Mr. Ezell with deadly slowness. “Whut's a Yankee doin'
down here in this country?”
“Doin' fairly well,” answered Mr. Bloomfield. “F'r instance, he's
payin' taxes on that there house next door.” He flirted his whiskered
chin over his left shoulder. “F'r instance, also, he's runnin' the leadin'
tannery and saddle-works of this city, employin' sixteen hands
regular. Also, he was elected a justice of the peace a week ago last
We'nesday by his fellow citizens, regardless of politics or religion—
thanky for askin'!
“Also,” he went on, his freckles now standing out beautifully
against a mounting pink background—“Also and furthermore, he
remembers distinctly having been present on a number of occasions
when he helped to lick you Seceshers good and proper. And if you
think, my friend, that I'm goin' to abate one jot or tittle from that
statement you're barkin' up the wrong tree, I tell you!”
Now behold in the rôle of peacemaker Sergeant Jimmy Bagby
rising grandly erect to his full height, but keeping his feet and ankles
in the foottub.
“Say, listen here, Major,” he pleaded, “ef you kin kindly see your
way dear to abatin' a few jots on behalf of Indiana I'll bet you I kin
induce Georgia to throw off every blamed tittle he's got in stock. And
then ef Indiana kin dig up another of them delightful teacups of his'n
I believe I kin guarantee that Kintucky and Georgia will join him in
pourin' a small but nourishin' libation upon the altar of friendship,
not to mention the thresholds of a reunited country. Ain't I got the
right notion, boys? Of course I have! And then, as soon as we-all git
settled down agin comfortable I'm goin' to tell you two boys
something mighty interestin' that come up oncet when I was on
hand and heared the whole thing. Did I mention to you before that I
belonged to King's Hell Hounds?”
Diplomacy surely lost an able advocate in the spring of 1865 when
Sergeant Bagby laid down the sword to take up retail groceries. As
soothing oil upon roiled waters his words fell; they fell even as sweet
unguents upon raw wounds. And, besides, just then Mr. Ezell caught
a whiff of a most delectable and appealing aroma as the sergeant,
on concluding his remarks with a broad-armed gesture, swished his
teacup directly under Mr. Ezell's nose.
 Probably not more than ten or twelve minutes had pleasantly
elapsed—it usually took the sergeant twenty to tell in all its wealth of
detail the story of what General Breckinridge said to General
Buckner, and what General Buckner said in reply to General
Breckinridge, and he was nowhere near the delectable climax yet—
when an interruption came. Into the ken of these three old men,
seated in a row upon the parsonage porch, there came up the street
a pair whose gait and general air of flurriment and haste instantly
caught and held their attention. Side by side sped a young woman
and a young man—a girl and a boy rather, for she looked to be not
more than eighteen or, say, nineteen, and he at the most not more
than twenty-one or so. Here they came, getting nearer, half-running,
panting hard, the girl with her hands to her breast, and both of them
casting quick, darting glances backward over their shoulders as
though fearing pursuit.
“Well,” said Mr. Bloomfield, “all the excitement appears to be
happenin' round here this afternoon. I wonder now what ails them
two young people?” He squinted through his glasses at the nearing
couple. “Why, the gal is that pore little Sally Fannie Gibson that lives
over here on the next street. Do tell now!”
He rose; so, a moment later, did his companions, for the youth
had jerked Doctor Grundy's gate open and both of them were
scudding up the walk toward them. Doubtless because of their
agitation the approaching two seemed to notice nothing unusual in
the fact that these three elderly men, rising at their coming, should
each be holding in his right hand a large china teacup, and that one,
the central figure of the three, and the largest of bulk, should be
planted ankle-deep and better in a small green tub, rising from it at
an interested angle, like some new kind of plump, round potted
plant.
“Oh! Oh!” gasped the girl; she clung to the lowermost post of the
step-rail. “Where is Doctor Grundy, please? We must see Doctor
Grundy right away—right this minute!”
“We want him to marry us!” exclaimed the youth, blurting it out.
 “We've got the license,” the girl said. “Harvey's got it in his
pocket.”
“And here it is!” said the youth, producing the document and
holding it outspread in a shaking hand. It appeared crumpled, but
valid.
It was but proper that Sergeant Bagby, in his capacity as host pro
tem, should do the necessary explaining.
“Well now, young lady and young gentleman,” he said, “I'm sorry
to have to disappoint you—monstrous sorry—but, to tell you the
truth, the Reverend Doctor Grundy ain't here; in fact, we ain't lookin'
fur him back fur quite some time yit.”
“He is reunionisin' at the Pastime Skating Rink,” volunteered Mr.
Bloomfield. “You'll have to wait a while, Sally Fannie.”
“Oh,” cried the girl, “we can't wait—we just can't wait! We were
counting on him. And now—Oh, what shall we do, Harvey?”
Shrinking up against the railing she wrung her hands. The
sergeant observed that she was a pretty little thing—small and
shabby, but undeniably pretty, even in her present state of fright.
There were tears in her eyes. The boy was trembling.
“You'd both better come in and take a cheer and ca'm yourselves,”
said the sergeant. “Let's talk it over and see whut we-all kin do.”
“I tell you we can't wait!” gulped the girl, beginning to sob in
earnest. “My stepfather is liable to come any minute! I'm as 'fraid as
death of him. He's found out about the license—he's looking for us
now to stop us. Oh, Harvey! Harvey! And this was our only chance!”
She turned to her sweetheart and he put both his arms round her
protectingly.
“I know that stepfather of yours,” put in Mr. Bloomfield, in a tone
which indicated that he did not know much about him that was good
or wholesome. “What's his main objection to you and this young
fellow gittin' married? Ain't you both of age?”
“Yes, we are—both of us; but he don't want me to marry at all,”
burst from the girl. “He just wants me to stay at home and slave and
slave and slave! And he don't like Harvey—he hates him! Harvey
hasn't been living here very long, and he pretends he don't know
anything about Har-rr-r-vey.”
She stretched the last word out in a pitiful, long-drawn quaver.
“He don't like Harvey, eh?” repeated Mr. Bloomfield. “Well, that's
one thing in Harvey's favour anyway. Young man,” he demanded
briskly, “kin you support a wife?”
“Yes, sir,” spoke up Harvey; “I can. I've got a good job and I'm
making good pay—I'm in the engineering crew that came down from
Chicago last month to survey the new short line over to Knoxville.”
“Oh, what are we wasting all this time for?” broke in the desperate
Sally Fannie. “Don't you-all know—didn't I tell you that he's right
close behind us? And he'll kill Harvey! I know he will—and then I'll
die too! Oh, don't be standing there talking! Tell us what to do,
somebody—or show us where to hide!”
Mr. Bloomfield's dappled hand waggled his brindled whiskers
agitatedly. Mr. Ezell tugged at his hickory neckband; very possibly his
thoughts were upon that similar situation of a Northern wooer and a
Southern maid as depicted in the lately interrupted film drama
entitled At the Cannon's Mouth. Like a tethered pachyderm,
Sergeant Bagby swayed his form upon his stationary underpinning.
“Little gal, I most certainly do wisht there was something I could
do!” began Mr. Bloomfield, the spirit of romance all aglow within his
elderly and doubtless freckled bosom.
“Well, there is, Major!” shouted the sergeant suddenly. “Shore as
gun's iron, there's somethin' you kin do! Didn't you tell us boys not
half an hour ago you was a jestice of the peace?”
“Yes, I did!”
“Then marry 'em yourself!” It wasn't a request—it was a
command, whoopingly, triumphantly given.
“Cumrud,” said Mr. Bloomfield, “I hadn't thought of it—why, so I
could!”
 “Oh, could you?” Sally Fannie's head came up and her cry had
hope in it now. “And would you do it—right quick?”
Unexpected stage fright overwhelmed Mr. Bloomfield.
“I've took the oath of office, tubby sure—but I ain't never
performed no marriage ceremony—I don't even remember how it
starts,” he confessed.
“Think it up as you go 'long,” advised Sergeant Bagby.
“Whutever you say is bindin' on all parties concerned—I know that
much law.” It was the first time since the runaways arrived that Mr.
Ezell had broken silence, but his words had potency and pith.
“But there has got to be witnesses—two witnesses,” parried Mr.
Bloomfield, still filled with the buck-ague qualms of the amateur.
“Whut's the matter with me and him fur witnesses?” cried
Sergeant Bagby, pointing toward Mr. Ezell. He wrestled a thin gold
band off over a stubborn fingerjoint. “Here's even a weddin' ring!”
The boy, who had been peering down the silent street, with a
tremulous hand cupped over his anxious eyes, gave a little gasp of
despair and plucked at the girl's sleeve. She turned—and saw then
what he had already seen.
“Oh, it's too late! It's too late!” she quavered, cowering down.
“There he comes yonder!”
“'Tain't no sech of a thing!” snapped Sergeant Bagby, actively in
command of the situation. “You two young ones come right up here
on this porch and git behind me and take hands. Indiana, perceed
with your ceremony! Georgia and Kintucky, stand guard!” With big
spread-eagle gestures he shepherded the elopers into the shelter of
his own wide bulk.
A man with a red, passionate face and mean, squinty eyes, who
ran along the nearer sidewalk, looking this way and that, saw
indistinctly through the vines the pair he sought, and, clearing the
low fence at a bound, he came tearing across the grassplot, his
heels tearing deep gouges in the turf. His voice gurgled hoarsely in
his throat as he tried to utter—all at once—commands and protests,
threats and curses.
From somewhere behind Sergeant Bagby's broad back came the
last feebly technical objection of the officiating functionary:
“But, cumruds, somebody's got to give the bride away!”
“I give the bride away, dad-gum you!” blared Sergeant Bagby at
the top of his vocal register. “King's Hell Hounds give the bride
away!”
Thus, over his shoulder, did Sergeant Bagby give the bride away;
and then he faced front, with chest expanded and the light of battle
in his eyes.
Vociferating, blasphemous, furious, Sally Fannie's tyrant charged
the steps and then recoiled at their foot. A lean, sinewy old man in a
hickory shirt barred his way, and just beyond this barrier a stout old
man with his feet in a foot-tub loomed both large and formidable.
For the moment baffled, he gave voice to vain and profane
foolishness.
“Stop them two!” he yelled, his rage making him almost
inarticulate. “She ain't of age—and even ef she is I ain't agoin' to
have this!” “Say, ain't you got no politeness a'tall!” inquired Mr. Ezell,
of Georgia. “Don't you see you're interruptin' the holy rites of
matrimony—carryin' on thataway?”
“That's whut I aim to do, blame you!” howled the other, now
sensing for the first time the full import of the situation. “I'll
matrimony her, the little——” He spat out the foulest word our
language yields for fouler tongues to use. “That ain't all—I'll cut the
heart out of the man that interferes!”
Driving his right hand into his right trousers pocket he cleared the
three lower steps at a bound and teetered upon his toes on the very
edge of the fourth one.
In the act of making his hand into a fist Mr. Ezell discovered he
could not do so by reason of his fingers being twined in the handle
of a large, extra-heavy ironstone-china teacup. So he did the next
best thing—he threw the cup with all his might, which was
considerable. At close range this missile took the enemy squarely in
the chest and staggered him back. And as he staggered back,
clutching to regain his balance, Mr. Bloomfield, standing somewhat
in the rear and improvising as fast as his tongue could wag, uttered
the concluding, fast-binding words: “Therefore I pernounce you man
and wife; and, whatever you do, don't never let nobody come
betwixt you, asunderin' you apart!”
With a lightning-fast dab of his whiskers he kissed the bride—he
had a flashing intuition that this was required by the ritual—shoved
the pair inside Doctor Grundy's front hall, slammed the door behind
them, snatched up Sergeant Bagby's rusted rifle from where it
leaned against Doctor Grundy's porch post, and sprang forward in a
posture combining defence and offense. All in a second or two Mr.
Bloomfield did this.
Even so, his armed services were no longer required; for Sergeant
Jimmy Bagby stepped nimbly out of his tub, picked it up in both
hands and turned it neatly yet crashingly upside down upon the
head of the bride's step-parent—so that its contents, which had
been cold and were still coolish, cascaded in swishing gallons down
over his person, effectually chilling the last warlike impulse of his
drenched and dripping bosom, and rendering him in one breath
whipped, choked and tamed.
“With the compliments of the Southern Confederacy!” said
Sergeant Bagby, so doing.
The shadows on the grass lay lank and attenuated when the folks
came back from the Pastime Rink. Sergeant Bagby sat alone upon
Doctor Grundy's porch. There were puddles of spilt water on porch
and step and the walk below, and a green foot-tub, now empty,
stood on its side against the railings. The sergeant was drawing his
white yam socks on over his water-bleached shanks.
“Well, suh, Jimmy,” said Judge Priest as he came up under the
vines, “you certainly missed it this evenin'. That was the best speech
Gen'l Tige Gracey ever made in his whole life. It certainly was a
wonder and a jo-darter!”
 “Whut was the subject, cumrud?” asked Sergeant Bagby.
“Fraternal Strife and Brotherly Love,” replied the judge. “He jest
natchelly dug up the hatchet and then he reburied her ag'in—
reburied her miles deep under Cherokee roses and magnolia
blossoms. But how's your feet? I reckon you've had a purty toler'ble
lonesome time settin' here, ain't you?”
“I see—love and war! War and love,” commented the sergeant
softly.
Before answering further, he raised his head and glanced over the
top of the intervening hedge toward the house next door. From its
open door issued confused sounds of which he alone knew the
secret—it was Georgia trying to teach Indiana the words and music
of the song entitled Old Virginny Never Tire!
“Oh, my feet are mighty nigh cured,” said he; “and I ain't had such
a terrible lonesome time as you might think fur either—cumrud.”
“That's the second time you've called me that,” said Judge Priest
suspiciously. “Whut does it mean?”
“Oh, that? That's a fureign word I picked up to-day.” And Sergeant
Bagby smiled gently. “It's a pet name the Yankees use when they
mean pardner!”
 VI. ACCORDING TO THE CODE

T
HE most important thing about Quintus Q. Montjoy, Esquire,
occurred a good many years before he was born. It was his
grandfather.
In the natural course of things practically all of us have, or
have had, grandfathers. The science of eugenics, which is
comparatively new, and the rule of species, which is somewhat older,
both teach us that without grandfathers there can be no
grandchildren. But only one in a million is blessed even unto the
third generation by having had such a grandfather as Quintus Q.
Montjoy had. That, indeed, was a fragrant inheritance and by day
and by night the legatee inhaled of its perfumes. I refer to his
grandfather on his father's side, the late Braxton Montjoy.
The grandfather on the maternal side must have been a person of
abundant consequence too, else he would never have begat him a
daughter worthy to be mated with the progeny of that other
illustrious man; but of him you heard little or nothing. Being long
deceased, his memory was eclipsed in the umbra of a more
compelling personality. It would seem that in all things, in all that he
did and said in this life, Braxton Montjoy was exactly what the proud
grandsire of a justly proud grandscion should be. He was a
gentleman of the Old School in case that conveys anything to your
understanding; and a first family of Virginia. He was a captain of
volunteers in the War of Eighteen-Twelve. He was a colonel in the
Mexican war; that though was after he emigrated out over the
Wilderness Trail to the newer and cruder commonwealth of
Kentucky. He was one of the founders of our town and its first mayor
in that far-distant time when it emerged from the muddied cocoon of
a wood-landing on the river bank and became a corporation with a
charter and a board of trustees and all. Later along, in the early
fifties, he served our district in the upper branch of the State
Legislature. In the Civil war he would undoubtedly have been a
general—his descendant gainsaying as much—except for the
unfortunate circumstance of his having passed away at an advanced
age some years prior to the beginning of that direful conflict.
Wherefore the descendant in question, being determined that his
grandfather should not be cheated of his due military meed by
death, conferred an honourary brevet upon him, anyway.
Nor was that all that might be said of this most magnificent of
ancestors—by no means was it all. Ever and always was he a person
of lofty ideals and mountainous principles. He never drank his dram
in a groggery nor discussed the affairs of the day upon the public
highway. Spurning such new-fangled and effetely-luxurious modes of
transportation as carriages, he went horseback whenever he went,
and wheresoever. In the summer time when the family made the
annual pilgrimage back across the mountains to Old White Sulphur
he rode the entire distance, both going and coming, upon a white
stallion named Fairfax. To the day of his death he chewed his
provender with his own teeth and looked upon the world-at-large
through eyes, unlensed.
Yet he might have owned a hundred sets of teeth or five hundred
pairs of spectacles, had he been so minded, for to him appertained
eighty slaves and four thousand acres of the fattest farm lands to be
found in the rich bottoms of our county. War and Lincoln's
Proclamation freed the slaves but the lands remained, intact and
unmortgaged, to make easier the pathways of those favoured beings
of his blood who might come after him. Finally, he was a duellist of a
great and fearsome repute; an authority recognised and quoted, in
the ceremonials of the code. In four historic meetings upon the field
of honour he figured as a principal; and in at least three more as a
second. Under his right shoulder blade, a cousin of President
Thomas Jefferson carried to his grave a lump of lead which had
been deposited there by this great man one fair fine morning in the
Valley of Virginia, during the adjudication, with pistols, of a dispute
which grew out of a difference of opinion touching upon the proper
way of curing a Smithfield ham.
 We did not know of these things at first hand. Only a few elderly
inhabitants remembered Braxton Montjoy as he had appeared in the
flesh. To the rest of our people he was a tradition, yet a living one,
and this largely through virtue of the conversational activities of
Quintus Q. Montjoy, the grandson aforesaid, aided and abetted by
Mrs. Marcella Quistenbury.
I should be depriving an estimable lady of a share of the credit
due her did I omit some passing mention of Mrs. Quistenbury from
this narrative. She was one who specialised in genealogy. There is
one such as she in every Southern town and in most New England
ones. Give her but a single name, a lone and solitary distant
kinsman to start off with, and for you she would create, out of the
rich stores of her mind, an entire family tree, complete from its
roots, deeply implanted in the soil of native aristocracy, to the
uttermost tip of its far-spreading and ramifying branches. In the
delicate matter of superior breeding she liberally accorded the
Montjoy connection first place among the old families of our end of
the state. So, too, with equal freedom, did the last of the Montjoys,
which made it practically unanimous and left the honour of the
lineage in competent hands.
For Quintus Q.—alas and alackaday—was the last of his glorious
line. Having neither sisters nor brothers and being unmarried he
abode alone beneath the ancestral roof tree. It was not exactly the
ancestral roof tree, if you wish me to come right down to facts. The
original homestead burned down long years before, but the present
structure stood upon its site and was in all essential regards a
faithful copy of its predecessor.
It might be said of our fellow-townsman—and it was—that he
lived and breathed and had his being in the shadow of his
grandfather. Among the ribald and the irreverent stories circulated
was one to the effect that he talked of him in his sleep. He talked of
him pretty assiduously when awake; there wasn't any doubt of that.
As you entered his home you were confronted in the main hall by a
large oil portrait of an elderly gentleman of austere mien, wearing a
swallow-fork coat and a neck muffler and with his hair brushed
straight back from the forehead in a sweep, just as Andrew Jackson
brushed his back. You were bound to notice this picture, the very
first thing. If by any chance you didn't notice it, Quintus Q. found a
way of directing your attention to it. Then you observed the family
resemblance.
Quintus Q., standing there alongside, held his hand on his hip
after exactly the same fashion that his grandfather held his hand on
his hip in the pictured pose. It was startling really—the reproduction
of this trait by hereditary impulse. Quintus Q. thought there was
something about the expression of the eyes, too.
If during the evening some one mentioned horses—and what
assemblage of male Kentuckians ever bided together for any length
of time without some one mentioning horses?—the host's memory
was instantly quickened in regard to the white stallion named
Fairfax. Fairfax achieved immortality beyond other horses of his
period through Quintus Q. Some went so far as to intimate that Mr.
Montjoy made a habit of serving hams upon his table for a certain
and especial purpose. You had but to refer in complimentary terms
to the flavour of the curly shavings-thin slice which he had deposited
upon your plate.
“Speaking of hams,” he would say—“speaking of hams, I am
reminded of my grandfather, the old General—General Braxton
Montjoy, you remember. The General fought one of his duels—he
fought four, you know, and acted as second in three others—over a
ham. Or perhaps I should say over the process of smoking a ham
with hickory wood. His antagonist was no less a person than a
cousin of President Thomas Jefferson. The General thought his
veracity had been impugned and he, called the other gentleman out
and shot him through the shoulder. Afterwards I believe they
became great friends. Ah, sir, those were the good old days when a
Southern gentleman had a proper jealousy of his honour. If one
gentleman doubted another gentleman's word there was no
exchange of vulgar billingsgate, no unseemly brawling upon the
street. The Code offered a remedy. One gentleman called the other
gentleman out. Sometimes I wish that I might have lived in those
good old days.”
Sometimes others wished that he might have, too, but I state that
fact in parenthesis.
Then he would excuse himself and leave the table and enter the
library for a moment, returning with a polished rosewood case borne
reverently in his two hands and he would put the case down and
dust it with a handkerchief and unlock it with a brass key which he
carried upon his watch chain and from their bed of faded velveteen
within, bring forth two old duelling pistols with long barrels, and
carved scrolls on their butts and hammers that stood up high like the
ears of a startled colt. And he would bid you to decipher for yourself
the name of his grandfather inscribed upon the brass trigger guards.
You were given to understand that in a day of big men, Braxton
Montjoy towered as a giant amongst them.
Aside from following the profession of being a grandson, Quintus
Q. had no regular business. There was a sign reading Real Estate
and Loans upon the glass door of his one-room suite in the Planters'
Bank building, but he didn't keep regular hours there. With the help
of an agent, he looked after the collecting of the rents for his town
property and the letting upon shares or leaseholds of his river-
bottom farms; but otherwise you might say his chief occupation was
that of being a sincere and conscientious descendant of a creditable
forebear.
So much for the grandfather. So much, at this moment, for the
grandson. Now we are going to get through the rind into the meat
of our tale:
As may be recalled, State Senator Horace K. Maydew, of our town
and county, being a leader of men and of issues, once upon a time
hankered mightily to serve the district in Congress and in the
moment that he could almost taste of triumph accomplished had the
cup dashed from his lips through the instrumentality of one who,
locally, was fancied as being rather better than a dabster at politics,
himself. During the months which succeeded this defeat, the
mortified Maydew nursed a sharpened grudge toward the enemy,
keeping it barbed and fletched against the time when he might let
fly with it. Presently an opportunity for reprisals befell. Maydew's
term as State Senator neared its close. For personal reasons, which
he found good and sufficient, the incumbent did not offer as a
candidate to succeed himself. But quite naturally, and perhaps quite
properly, he desired to name his successor. Privily he began casting
about him for a likely and a suitable candidate, which to the
senator's understanding meant one who would be biddable,
tractable and docile. Before he had quite agreed with himself upon a
choice, young Tobias Houser came out into the open as an aspirant
for the Democratic nomination, and when he heard the news
Senator Maydew re-honed his hate to a razor-edge. For young Tobe
Houser, who had been a farmer-boy and then a country school
teacher and who now had moved to town and gone into business,
was something else besides: He was the nephew of Judge Priest, the
only son of the judge's dead sister. It was the judge's money that
had helped the young man through the State university.
Undoubtedly—so Maydew read the signs of the times—it was the
judge's influence which now brought the youngster forth as an
aspirant for public office. In the Houser candidacy Maydew saw, or
thought he saw, another attack upon his fiefship on the party
organisation and the party machinery.
On an evening of the same week in which Tobe Houser inserted
his modestly-worded announcement card in the Daily Evening News,
Senator Maydew called to conference—or to concurrence—two
lieutenants who likewise had cause to be stalwart supporters of his
policies. The meeting took place in the living room of the Maydew
home. When the drinks had been sampled and the cigars had been
lighted Senator Maydew came straight to the business in hand:
“Well, gentlemen,” he said, “I've got a candidate—a man none of
us ever thought of before. How does the name of Quintus Q.
Montjoy seem to strike you?”
Mr. Barnhill looked at Mr. Bonnin, and Mr. Bonnin looked back at
Mr. Barnhill. Then both of them looked at Maydew.
 “Montjoy, eh?” said Barnhill, doubtfully, seeming not to have heard
aright.
“Quintus Q. Montjoy you said, didn't you?” asked Bonnin as
though there had been any number of Montjoys to choose from. He
spoke without enthusiasm.
“Certainly,” answered Maydew briskly, “Quintus Q. Montjoy,
Esquire. Any objections to him that you can think of, off-hand?”
“Well,” said Mr. Barnhill, who was large of person and slow of
speech, “he ain't never done anything.”
“If I'm any judge he never will do anything—much,” supplemented
Mr. Bonnin, who was by way of being small and nervous.
“You've said it—both of you,” stated their leader, catching them up
with a snap. “He never has done anything. That gives him a clean
record to run on. He never will do anything—on his own hook, I
mean. That'll make him a safe, sound, reliable man to have
representing this district up yonder at Frankfort. Last session they
licked the Stickney warehouse bill for us. This season it'll come up
again for passage. I guarantee here and now that Quint Montjoy will
vote right on that proposition and all other propositions that'll come
up. He'll vote right because we'll tell him how to vote. I know him
from the skin out.”
“He's so powerfully pompious and bumpious—so kind of cocksure
and high-an'-mighty,” said Mr. Barnhill. “D'ye reckin, Hod, as how
he'll stand without hitchin'?”
“I'll guarantee that, too,” said Senator Maydew, with his left eyelid
flickering down over his left eye in the ghost of a wink. “He don't
know yet that he's going to be our candidate. Nobody knows it yet
but you and me. But when he finds out from us that he's going to
have a chance to rattle round in the same seat that his revered
granddaddy once ornamented—well, just you watch him arise and
shine. There's another little thing that you've overlooked. He's got
money,—plenty of it; as much money as any man in this town has
got. He's not exactly what I'd call a profligate or a spendthrift. You
may have noticed that except when he was spending it on himself
he's very easy to control in money matters. But when we touch a
match to his ambition and it flares up, he'll dig down deep and
produce freely—or I miss my guess. For once we'll have a campaign
fund with some real money behind it.”
His tone changed and began to drip rancour:
“By Judas, I'll put up some of my own money! This is one time
when I'm not counting the cost. I'm going to beat that young
lummox of a Houser, if it's the last thing I do. I'm going to rub his
nose in the mud. You two know without my telling you why I'd
rather see Houser licked than any other man on earth—except one.
And you know who that one is. We can't get at Priest yet—that
chance will come later. But we can get his precious nephew, and I'm
the man that's going to get him. And Quint Montjoy is the man I'm
going to get him with.”
“Well, Hod, jest ez you say,” assented Mr. Barnhill dutifully. “I was
only jest askin', that's all. You sort of tuck me off my feet at fust, but
the way you put it now, it makes ever'thing look mighty promisin'.
How about you, Wilbur?” and he turned to Mr. Bonnin.
“Oh, I'm agreeable,” chimed Mr. Bonnin. “Only don't make any
mistake about one thing—Houser's got a-plenty friends. He'll give us
a fight all right. It won't be any walkover.”
“I want it to be a fight, and I don't want it to be a walk-over,
either,” said Senator Maydew. “The licking we give him will be all the
sweeter, then.”
He got up and started for the telephone on the wall.
“I'll just call up and see if our man is at home. If he is, we'll all
three step over there right now and break the news to him, that the
voice of the people has been lifted in an irresistible and clamorous
demand for him to become their public servant at his own expense.”
The Senator was in a good humour again. “And say, Hod, whilst I'm
thinkin' of it,” put in Mr. Barnhill sapiently, “ef he should be at home
and ef we should go over there, tell him for Goddle Midey's sake not
to drag in that late lamentable grandpaw of his'n, more'n a million
times durin' the course of the campaign. It's all right mebbe to
appeal to the old famblies. I ain't bearin' ary grudge ag'inst old
famblies, 'though I ain't never found the time to belong to one of
'em myself. But there's a right smart chance of middle-aged famblies
and even a few toler'ble new famblies in this here community. And
them's the kind that does the large bulk of the votin' in primary
elections.”
We've had campaigns and campaigns and then more and yet
other campaigns in our county. We had them every year—and we
still do. Being what they were and true to their breeding the early
settlers started running for office, almost before the Indians had
cleared out of the young settlements. Politics is breath to the nostrils
and strong meat to the bellies of grown men down our way. Found
among us are persons who are office-seekers by instinct and office-
holders by profession. Whole families, from one generation to
another, from father to son and from that son to his son and his
son's son become candidates almost as soon as they have become
voters. You expect it of them and are not disappointed. Indeed, this
same is true of our whole state. Times change, party lines veer and
snarl, new issues come up and flourish for awhile and then are cut
down again to make room for newer crops of newer issues still, but
the Breckinridges and Clays, the Hardins and Helms, the Breathitts
and Trimbles, the Crittendons and Wickliffes, go on forever and ever
asking the support of their fellow-Ken-tuckians at the polls and
frequently are vouchsafed it. But always the winner has cause to
know, after winning, that he had a fight.
As goes the state at large, so goes the district and the precinct
and the ward. As I was saying just now, we have had warm
campaigns before now; but rarely do I recall a campaign of which
the early stages showed so feverishly high a temperature as this
campaign between Quintus Q. Montjoy and young Tobias Houser for
the Democratic nomination for State Senator. You see, beneath the
surface of things, a woman's personality ran in the undercurrents,
roiling the waters and soiling the channel. Her name of course, was
not spoken on the hustings or printed in the paper, but her influence
was manifest, nevertheless.
 There was one woman—and perhaps only one in all that
community—who felt she had abundant cause to dislike Judge Priest
and all that pertained to him by ties of blood, marriage, affection or
a common interest. And this person was the present wife of the Hon.
Horace K. Maydew, and by that same token the former wife of old
Mr. Lysander John Curd. Every time she saw Congressman Dabney
Prentiss passing by, grand and glorious in his longtailed coat and his
broad black hat and his white tie, which is ever the mark of a
statesman who is working at the trade, she harked back to that day
when Judge Priest had obtruded his obstinate bulk between her
husband and her husband's dearest ambition; and she remembered
that, except for him, she might now be Mrs. Congressman Maydew,
going to White House receptions and giving dinners for senators and
foreign diplomats and cabinet officers and such. And her thoughts
grew bitter as aloes; and with rancour and rage the blood throbbed
in her wrists until her bracelets hurt her. Being minded to have a
part and a parcel in the undoing of the Priest plans, she meddled in
this fight, giving to Mr. Montjoy the benefit of her counsel and her
open, active advocacy.
Perhaps it was because he inclined a flattered ear to the lady's
admonitions rather than to her husband's subtler chidings that Mr.
Montjoy confirmed the astute Mr. Barnhill's forebodings and refused
to stand without hitching. He backed and he filled; he kicked over
the traces and got tangled in the gears. He was, as it turned out,
neither bridle-wise nor harness-broken. In short he was an amateur
in politics, with an amateur's faults. He took the stump early, which
was all well and good, because in Red Gravel county if a candidate
can't talk to the voter, and won't try, he might just as well fold up his
tents like the Arab and take his doll rags and go on about his
business, if he has any business. But against the guidance and the
best judgment of the man who had led him forth as a candidate, he
accepted a challenge from young Houser for a series of joint
debates; and whilst Mr. Barnhill and Mr. Bonnin wagged their
respective heads in silent disapproval, he repeatedly and persistently
made proclamation in public places and with a loud voice, of the
obligation which the community still owed his illustrious grandparent,
the inference being that he had inherited the debt and expected to
collect it at the polls.
It is likewise possible that Candidate Montjoy listened over-much
to the well meant words of Mr. Calhoun Tabscott. This Mr. Calhoun
Tabscott esteemed himself a master hand at things political. He
should have been, at that. One time or another he had been on
opposite sides of every political fence; other times he bestraddled it.
He had been a Greenbacker, a Granger, and a Populist and once,
almost but not quite, a Republican. Occasions were when, in rapid
succession, he flirted with the Single Taxers, and then, with the coy
reluctance of one who is half-converted, harkened to the
blandishments of the Socialists. Had he been old enough he would
have been either a Know-Nothing or a Whig—either or perhaps both.
In 1896 he quit the Silver Democrats cold, they having obtusely
refrained from sending him as a delegate to their national
convention. Six weeks later he abandoned the Gold Democrats to
their fate because they failed to nominate the right man for
president. It was commonly believed he voted the straight
Prohibition ticket that year—for spite.
In the matter of his religious convictions, Mr. Tabscott displayed
the same elasticity and liberality of choice. In the rival fields of
theology he had ranged far, grazing lightly as he went. When the
Cumberland Presbyterians put chime bells in their spire, thereby
interfering with his Sunday morning's rest, for he lived just across
the street, he took his letter out of the church and thereafter for a
period teetered on the verge of agnosticism, even going so far as to
buy the works of Voltaire, Paine and Ingersol combined and
complete in six large volumes. He worshipped a spell with the
Episcopalians and once during a space of months, the Baptists had
hopes of him. Rumour had it that he finally went over to the
Methodists, because old Mr. Leatheritt, of the Traders National Bank,
who was a Baptist, called one of his loans.
Now, having been twice with Judge Priest in his races for the
Circuit Judgeship and twice against him, Mr. Tabscott espoused the
Montjoy candidacy and sat in Mr. Montjoy's amen corner, which,
indeed, was altogether natural and consistent, since the Tabscotts,
as an old family, dated back almost as far and soared almost as high
as the Montjoys. There had been a Tabscott who nearly fought a
duel himself, once. He sent the challenge and the preliminaries were
arranged but at the eleventh hour, a magnanimous impulse
triumphed over his lust for blood, and for the sake of his adversary's
wife and helpless children, he decided to spare him. Mr. Tabscott felt
that as between him and Mr. Montjoy a sentimental bond existed.
Mr. Montjoy felt it, too; and they confabbed much together regarding
ways, means and measures somewhat to the annoyance of Senator
Maydew who held fast to the principle that if a master have but one
man, the man should have but one master.
The first of the joint debates took place, following a barbecue, at
Gum Spring School-house in the northenhost corner of the county
and the second took place three days later at the Old Market House
in town, a large crowd attending. Acrimony tinctured Mr. Montjoy's
utterances from the outset. Recrimination seemed his forte—that
and the claims of honourable antiquity as expressed in the person of
its posterity upon a grateful and remembering constituency. He bore
heavily upon the fact—or rather the allegation—that Judge Priest
was the head and the front of an office-holding oligarchy, who
thought they owned the county and the county offices, who took
what spoils of office and patronage they coveted for themselves, and
sought to parcel the remainder out among their henchmen and their
relatives. This political tyranny, this nepotism, must end, he said,
and he, Quintus Q. Montjoy, was the instrument chosen and
ordained to end it. “Nominate Montjoy and break up the County
ring,” was the slogan he carried on his printed card. Therein, in
especial, might be divined the undermining and capable hand of
Senator Maydew. But when at the second meeting between the
candidates Mr. Montjoy went still further and touched directly upon
alleged personal failings of Judge Priest, one who knew the inner
workings of the speaker's mind might have hazarded a guess that
here a certain lady's suggestions, privately conveyed, found
deliverance in the spoken word.
The issue being thus, by premeditated intent of one of the two
gentlemen most interested, so clearly and so acutely defined, the
electors took sides promptly, becoming not merely partisans but
militant and aggressive partisans. Indeed, citizens who seldom
concerned themselves in fights within the party, but were mainly
content to vote the straight party ticket after the fighting was over,
came out into the open and declared themselves. Perhaps the most
typical exemplar of this conservative class, now turning radical, was
offered in the person of Mr. Herman Felsburg. Until this time Mr.
Felsburg had held to the view that needless interference in primary
elections jibed but poorly with the purveying of clothing to the
masses. Former patrons who differed with one politically were apt to
go a-buying elsewhere. No matter what your own leanings might be,
Mr. Felsburg, facing you across a showcase or a counter, without
ever committing himself absolutely, nevertheless managed to convey
the impression that, barring that showcase or that counter, there
was nothing between him and you, the customer—that in all things
you twain were as one and would so continue. Such had been his
attitude until now.
When Mr. Montjoy speared at Judge Priest, Judge Priest remained
outwardly quite calm and indifferent, but not so Mr. Felsburg. If he
did not take the stump in defence of his old friend at least he
frequented its base, in and out of business hours, and in the fervour
of his championship he chopped his English finer and twisted his
metaphors worse than ever he had done before, which was saying a
good deal.
One afternoon, when he returned to the store, after a two-hours'
absence spent in sidewalk argument down by the Square, his
brother, Mr. Ike Felsburg, who was associated in the firm, ventured
to remonstrate with him, concerning his activities in the curbstone
forum, putting the objections on the grounds of commercial
expediency. At that he struck an attitude remotely suggestive of a
plump and elderly Israelitish Ajax defying the lightning.
 “Listen here, you Ike,” he stated. “Thirty years I have been
building up this here Oak Hall Clothing Emporium, and also hats,
caps and gents' furnishings goods. You—you can run around with
your lodge meetings and your benevolence societies, and all this
time I work here, sweating like rats in a trap, and never is a word
said by me to you, vicer or verser. I ask you as brother to brother,
ain't that so, or ain't it? It is,” continued Mr. Herman, answering his
own question.
“But, Hermy,” interjected Mr. Ike, put on the defensive by the turn
which the argument had taken, “but, Hermy, all what I have said to
you is that maybe somebody who likes Montjoy would get mad at
you for your words and take their custom up the street.”
“Let 'em!” proclaimed Mr. Herman with a defiant gesture which
almost upset a glass case containing elastic garters and rubber
armbands, “let 'em. Anybody which would be a sucker enough to
vote for Montjoy against a fine young fellow like this here Houser
would also be a sucker enough to let Strauss, Coleman & Levy sell
him strictly guaranteed all-wool suitings made out of cotton shoddy,
and I wouldn't want his custom under any circumstances
whatsoever!”
“But, Hermy!” The protest was growing weaker.
“You wait,” shouted Mr. Herman. “You have had your say, and now
I would have mine, if you please. I would prefer to get one little
word in sideways, if you will be so good. You have just now seen me
coming in out of the hot sun hoarse as a tiger from trying to
convince a few idiots which they never had any more sense than a
dog's hind leg and never will have any, neither. And so you stand
there—my own brother—and tell me I am going too far. Going too
far? Believe me, Mister Ike Felsburg, I ain't started yet.”
He swung on his heel and glared into the depths of his
establishment. “Adolph,” he commanded, “come here!” Adolph came,
he being head salesman in the clothing department, while Mr. Ike
quivered in dumb apprehension, dreading the worst and not
knowing what dire form it would assume.
 “Adolph,” said Mr. Herman with a baleful side-glance at his
offending kinsman. “To-day we are forming here the Oak Hall and
Tobias J. Houser Campaign and Marching Club, made up of
proprietors, clerks, other employees and well wishers of this here
store, of which club I am the president therefrom and you are the
secretary. So you will please open up a list right away and tell all the
boys they are already members in good standing.”
“Well, now, Mr. Herman,” said Adolph, “I've always been good
friends with Quintus Q. Montjoy and besides which, we are
neighbours. No longer ago than only day before yesterday I
practically as good as promised him my vote. I thought if you was
coming out for Houser, some of us here in the store should be the
other way and so——”
Mr. Herman Felsburg stilled him with a look and removed his hat in
order to speak with greater emphasis.
“Adolph Dreifus,” he said with a deadly solemnity, “you been here
in this store a good many years. I would assume you like your job
here pretty well. I would consider that you have always been well
treated here. Am I right, or am I wrong? I am right! I would assume
you would prefer to continue here as before. Yes? No? Yes! You
remember the time you wrote with a piece of chalk white marks on
the floor so that that poor nearsighted Leopold Meyer, who is now
dead and gone, would think it was scraps of paper and go round all
day trying to pick those chalk marks up? With my own eyes I saw
you do so and I said nothing. You remember the time you induced
me to buy for our trade that order of strictly non-selling Ascot
neckties because your own cousin from Cincinnati was the salesman
handling the line which, from that day to this, we are still carrying
those dam' Ascot ties in stock? Did I say anything to you then?
“No! Not a word did I say. All those things is years past and I have
never spoken with you regarding them until to-day. But now, Adolph,
I must say I am ashamed for you that you should pick on that poor
Leopold Meyer, who was blind like a barn-door. I am ashamed for
you that you should boost up that cousin of yours from Cincinnati
and his bum lines. If I should get more ashamed for you than what
already I now am, there is no telling what I should do. Adolph, you
will please be so good as to remember that all persons that work in
this here Oak Hall Clothing Emporium are for Tobe Houser for State
Senator and no one else, whatsoever. Otherwise, pretty soon, I am
afraid there will be some new faces selling garments around here.
Do I make myself plain? I do!
“My brother—the junior partner here”—he dwelt heavily upon the
word junior, making of it a most disqualifying adjective—“he also
thinks in this matter the same way as I do. If you don't believe me,
ask him for yourself. There he stands like a dumb engraved image—
ask him.”
And Mr. Ike, making craven surrender, raised both hands in token
of his capitulation and weakly murmured, “Yes.”

The third of the joint debates, which, as it turned out, was to be

the last one of the series, began according to schedule and
announcement at the boat store corner in the presence of an
assemblage mustering up in the hundreds. In fact the Daily Evening
News reporter, in the introductory paragraph of his account, referred
to it, I believe, as “a sea of upturned faces.” Mr. Montjoy led off first.
He had his say, for the better part of an hour, speaking with much
fluency from a small board platform that was built up against the
side of the old boat store and occasionally, with a fretful shake of his
head, raising his voice so it might be heard above the rumbling
objurgations of the first mate of the Cumberland Queen who, thirty
yards down the old gravel levee, was urging his black rousters to
greater speed as they rolled the last of a consignment of tobacco
hogsheads across the lower wharf boat and aboard the Queen's
boiler deck. Mr. Montjoy concluded with a neat verbal flourish and
sat down, mopping his moistened brow with a square of fine
cambric. Mr. Montjoy never permitted him-self to sweat and in
public, at least, he perspired but seldom; but there were times when
he did diffuse a perceptible glow.
His rival arose to answer him. He started off—Houser did—by
stating that he was not running on his family record for this office.
He was running on his own record, such as it was. Briefly, but
vigorously, he defended his uncle; a thing he had done before.
Continuing, he would say Mr. Montjoy had accused him of being
young. He wished to plead guilty to that charge. If it were a defect,
to be counted against him, time would probably cure him of it and
he thought the Senate Chamber at Frankfort, this state, provided a
very suitable spot for the aging process. (Laughter and applause.)
He had a rather whimsical drawl and a straightforward,
commonplace manner of delivery.
He continued, and I quote:
“Some of you may have heard somewhere—casually—that my
opponent had a grandfather. Stories to that general effect have been
in circulation for quite some little time in this vicinity. I gather from
various avenues of information that my opponent is not exactly
ashamed of his grandfather. I don't blame him for that. A person
without many prospects so far as the future is concerned is not to be
blamed for dwelling rather heavily upon the past. But, fellow
citizens, doesn't it strike you that in this campaign we are having
altogether too much grandfather and not enough grandson?
(Renewed laughter from the Houser adherents and Mr. Montjoy's
face turning a violent red.) It strikes me that the stock is sort of
petering out. It strikes me that the whale has bred a minnow.
“And so, in light of these things, I want to make this proposition
here and now: I want every man in this county whose grandfather
owned eighty slaves and four thousand acres of bottom lands to
vote for Mr. Montjoy. And all I ask for myself is that every man
whose grandfather didn't own eighty slaves and four thousand acres,
should cast his vote for me.” (A voice, “My grandpop never owned
nary nigger, Toby,—I reckin you git my vote without a struggle,
boy.”)
 Along this strain Mr. Houser continued some minutes. It was a line
he had not taken in either of his previous arguments with his
opponent. He branched away from it to tell what he meant to do for
the people of the district in the event of his nomination and election
but presently he came back again to the other theme, while Judge
Priest grinned up at him from his place in the edge of the crowd and
Mr. Montjoy fidgeted and fumed and wriggled as though the chair
upon which he sat had been the top of a moderately hot stove. From
these and from yet other signs it might have been noted that Mr.
Montjoy, under the nagging semihumorous goadings of young
Houser, was rapidly losing his temper, which, by our awkward Anglo-
Saxon mode of speech, is but another way of saying he was not
losing his temper at all but, instead, finding out that he had one.
The Cumberland Queen blew her whistle for departure and as the
roar died away Mr. Houser might be heard in the act of finishing a
sentence touching with gentle irony upon the topic which seemed so
to irk and irritate Mr. Montjoy. He never finished it.
Up, from his chair, sprang Mr. Montjoy, and shook a knotted fist
beneath Mr. Houser's nose.
“How dare you?” he demanded. “How dare you indulge in your
cheap sarcasm—your low scurrilities—regarding one of the grandest
men the Southland ever produced?”
His voice turned falsetto and soared to a slate-pencilly screech:
“I repeat it, sir—how dare you—you underbred ignoramus—you
who never knew what it was to have a noble grandfather! Nobody
knows who your grandfather was. I doubt whether anybody knows
who your father——”
Perhaps it was what Mr. Montjoy appeared to be on the point of
asserting. Perhaps it was that his knuckles, as he brandished his fist
in Mr. Houser's face, grazed Mr. Houser's cheek.
Mr. Houser stretched forth a solid arm and gripped a handful of
sinewy fingers in the lapels of Mr. Montjoy's coat. He didn't strike Mr.
Montjoy, but he took him and he shook him—oh, how he shook him.
He shook him up and down, and back and forth and to and fro and
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