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MM: My name's Margaret Mullett. The date is the eighteenth of April, 2011, and I'm interviewing Professor Robin Cormack in the guest house of Dumbarton Oaks. Also present, Shalimar Fojas White, Günder Varinlioğlu, and Rona Razon, who's going to ask questions about field work later on in the interview. Robin, do we have your permission to record?
RC: You do have my permission to record.
MM: Perhaps we could start with your career before you came to Dumbarton Oaks. Can you give us some highlights?
RC: The question I've often been asked—and I've never answered—is why I came into Byzantine studies at all. And, in a way, I'd like to give the long answer, which I've never given before, because so many other Byzantinists seem to have had an easier answer, like "I was born in Istanbul," or "I had an inspiration when I went to Trebizond when I was three, and I did this ever since," and this is not how it worked for me. And I more or less came into Byzantine studies by chance and happenstance, so could I just say how that happened? I was born in 1938 and I went to a school in the UK of a kind which no longer exists, although people are always trying to bring it back because it was thought to be such an academically successful system. So I went to what was called a grammar school in Bristol, which was a direct grant school and entry to that school was entirely by examination and for those who couldn't afford the very low fees there were scholarships. And I went to that school when I was seven. When I was eight, I started learning Latin and when I was nine, I started learning Greek. And my Greek teacher was a very unhappy, dissatisfied schoolmaster called Philip Sherrard who subsequently I became a colleague of in King's College, London and continually met after he moved to Greece and worked on Byzantine spirituality. And Philip, I suppose, was somebody who introduced me to Greece. In this school, at the age of twelve, you made a choice about your future examination subjects and I entered the Classics form with twenty-three other boys—it was a boys' school and from the age of twelve to fourteen we did a few other subjects—we dropped all subjects at the age of fourteen, in my case, because I was young in the class and then took university entrance at eighteen. So I was with a group and we were an exceptional group in the school, because all twenty-two of the twenty-three got scholarships to Oxford University to read Classics. What was good about the school was, first of all, it was by academic ability only—so you can see it was full of very bright boys—and secondly the schoolteachers at that time were quite exceptional. Every single Classics teacher had a first in Classics from Oxford University. In another generation these guys would not have gone to school teaching; they would have been university teachers. And indeed one of them still is—David Raven is still a lecturer in Classics in Oxford University now. So we had an exceptional teaching at school and we, for example, read the whole of Virgil and Homer in the original language at school. We were trained to do verse, we were trained in accents—we had a very great Classics training, with the result that when I went to Oxford to read Classics, I and all my fellow students from this school were incredibly disappointed. We thought that the dons at Oxford were self-indulgent and lazy and we all wanted to leave Classics. And all of us except one did so. The only one that remained in classics was W.V. Harris, who went to Columbia and is still there. All the rest of us said, "We must get out of this subject with no future," about which we were quite wrong probably but that's what we all decided. And I applied to go to the Courtauld Institute of Art in London to work in history of art—I wanted to move into modern art history, that was my aim, and I had to wait for a year before going there and I had my first job in the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, where they told me that I would be the only student at the Courtauld who knew how to hang a painting because every month I had to hang an exhibition. And my bosses were Roland Penrose and Herbert Read, who were quite famous critics and collectors at the time, and I learned a great deal from being at the ICA. I went to the Courtauld, after, for a second degree—a two-year degree—to do modern art. The system at the Courtauld was that your first year was spent in learning about the Renaissance and what art history was—this is the 1960s; what art history was in the 1960s was how to attribute, date, and find a provenance for a painting or any other work of art and that's what art history was. You didn't do any more than that; it was an un-theoretical, empirical subject extremely well taught at the Courtauld. And second year, I applied for the modern course but was taken aside by a medievalist, George Zarnecki, who suggested that with the language background I had, I would be much smarter to work in Byzantium or the Middle Ages. And he was extremely persuasive and so I moved, my second year of the Courtauld, to do a survey course on Byzantine art. My teacher was in the Warburg, another part of London University, Hugo Buchthal, and I went for my first class and he explained how the course worked. On paper, you did everything in Byzantium—architecture, arts, all periods. He said, "What happens on this course is that I teach you about manuscripts and you do the rest yourself." A very, I'm sure, typical way of learning in that period. Hugo Buchthal was an amazing art historian who had a complete photographic memory of every manuscript he'd ever looked at. And so as you discussed manuscripts and you would mention an image, you could see him turning over the pages in his mind until he said we've got the folio, 89 recto—that's the picture you mentioned. It was an extraordinary art experience. After that first degree at the Courtauld, I then started to work on a Ph.D. and I was interested in iconoclasm because André Grabar's book had come out, which was a very influential book on my years, and I wanted to work on Thessaloniki after iconoclasm. By this time, Hugo Buchthal, who'd been extremely disappointed not to become director of the Warburg Institute—the post went to Ernst Gombrich instead—in anger left the UK and went to New York to teach, which was a very good decision for him because the Ph.Ds in London, before me, he only had two Ph.D. students—Paul Hetherington, who was interested in Rome, and Cecelia Meredith, who worked on Codex Ebnerianus in Oxford and wrote an extremely good thesis on that subject. And I was the only other advanced student he had. Since he was leaving London, he explained he wouldn't be able to supervise me but by chance Cyril Mango had just been appointed to King's College so they were my two supervisors for my Ph.D. And the happenstance now is, why am I in Byzantine studies? Because Hugo Buchthal went to New York and the Courtauld decided to make an appointment in Byzantine art. It was a new appointment at the Courtauld—not at the Warburg—and it was a joint appointment in the University of London between the Slavic School and the post was advertised and I was the first person at the Courtauld ever to apply for a job rather than be appointed and there was a shortlist and the condition of the post was that you taught Slavonic, east European, and other art in two parts of London University and that the first year of the post you would learn Russian—it was an extremely useful thing to have done; very pleased with that. And so that's how my career began at the Courtauld Institute. I was appointed in 1966 and, apart from some years of leave, I then remained at the Courtauld until retirement in around 2004, when I went to the Getty and currently I do have a full-time lecturing post in Cambridge, in the Classics faculty, so I've gone back to the texts which I first learned.
MM: Let's look at it from the other end. How did you hear of Dumbarton Oaks, first, and what was its reputation in the world of Byzantine studies?
RC: The answer's quite easy. I heard of Dumbarton Oaks through Dumbarton Oaks Papers and Dumbarton Oaks Papers, when they came out, recorded the annual conferences. They were fantastically important volumes and one would rush to read them and that gave you the names of people who were either on the faculty at Dumbarton Oaks or who spoke at the conferences. In addition to that, Sirarpie Der Nersessian gave lectures in London in the sixties on Armenian art and by that time I believe she'd left Dumbarton Oaks and moved to Paris. She was an extremely charismatic lecturer, persuaded me that Toros Roslin was the greatest artist of the Middle Ages—a view I still hold, really. And so Dumbarton Oaks one knew through the papers and then I knew because Cyril Mango, who supervised me, had actually been at Dumbarton Oaks and then soon went back to Dumbarton Oaks.
MM: Great. So you were a Fellow, a Visiting Fellow, 1972-3, is that correct?
RC: That's correct.
MM: And you hadn't worked with D.O. before that; that was your first experience.
RC: That was my first experience with Dumbarton Oaks.
MM: So how did that come about? Someone suggested you apply? What was your project? Why did you decide to come?
RC: Okay. Positive and negative reasons. Cyril had suggested that at some point I should go to work at Dumbarton Oaks. In London that didn't seem the immediately obvious thing to do because the Warburg library is quite superb in Byzantine studies and certainly at that time, one felt, probably matched Dumbarton Oaks in terms of resources. But what was happening at the Courtauld was that the post I had turned out to be quite unsatisfactory, because a joint post turned out to be two full-time posts in two different parts of the University of London, teaching Russian art on a syllabus which couldn't be matched—I couldn't combine any teaching and so I was doing a phenomenal amount of teaching, going to meetings, and not getting any research done. So the attraction of Dumbarton Oaks was to get away from teaching and to have a year of research. And I actually gave in notice to the Courtauld and went to Dumbarton Oaks but was reappointed to the Courtauld singly, leaving the Slavonic school, when I came back, so I suppose you could say it was slight leverage also to go to Dumbarton Oaks in my personal career. But the main aim was to have unlimited time on research, partly because in my Ph.D.—I was appointed in the second year of my Ph.D., so I wrote my Ph.D. while teaching and without much research time. I'd spent one year in Greece and then just a few months in the library. And then I had to write the thesis in between teaching and learning Russian and going to Russia. I kind of needed a bit of space and Dumbarton Oaks certainly gave that space.
MM: And the project was Thessaloniki still, was it?
RC: I think so; basically to write up Thessaloniki, though in the end I never felt my thesis could turn into a book and so I published it as chapters and not as a book.
MM: And exhibitions, too?
RC: Yes, I started. I started doing exhibitions. My first exhibition was also in the seventies, an exhibition of Bulgarian icons which I did in Edinburgh. So I did my first experience of curating an exhibition around that time, as well.
MM: Can you remember your initial or first impressions of Dumbarton Oaks? Are they still fresh? Can you do that?
RC: I think they're pretty fresh. There's various layers of impressions—there's the good things and there's the bad things. And it was clearly a time of transition when I came to Dumbarton Oaks—absolutely obvious that things were changing, which actually was also true in the U.K. Universities changed an enormous amount in the early seventies, as university expanded and teaching and accountability became a major aspect of being a university teacher. And that was quite traumatic for a generation before mine, for whom university teaching had virtually no accountability, with the result that it always looked rather self-indulgent. And there were no projects. All research was individually motivated; one never cooperated with other people. And so that transition from what I would call self-indulgent to a greater accountability was beginning to happen in 1970. It was happening in London; it was clearly happening in Dumbarton Oaks. So my initial impressions were the formality of Dumbarton Oaks, the slight oddity that all the best offices were by the administrative faculty and visiting fellows were quite lucky—I was one of the last to get an office, a very small office—I was very, very pleased to have that. But there was obviously a difficulty of space and it was difficult to see how decisions about priority for space had actually been made. The good side was the book library; the way it was organized with art history at the center was quite amusing and there was a runner to the Library of Congress so any book not here, you simply filled in a list and they were brought by a runner the next day. And that was important for me because I was interested in interdisciplinary aspects of Byzantine studies and that could be fulfilled—the system, that was excellent.
MM: I wanted to ask about daily life—where you worked, where you ate, where you slept, and that kind of thing.
RC: Yes. There was a problem about daily life, because I had a wife and two small children and my wife gave up her job in mathematics teaching to come to Dumbarton Oaks and we were housed in McLean Gardens, up by the Cathedral in the apartment which in previous years had been occupied by Henry Maguire and his family, who had fully briefed us, in fact to enormous details like the fact that there were no egg cups for eating boiled eggs out of, a detail which never really worried us. McLean Gardens was quite a walk and we were advised not to walk. And we didn't have transport and there was no doubt that in that period spouses were excluded from participation in institute; they were not expected ever to appear or to be invited to any social occasions. And this was deeply resented by my wife, who spent the year being very angry, and our children, who were age four and five, went to excellent schools—one to a Montessori school—and so they, the children, were extremely happy, but my wife, who was after all a fellow academic but in mathematics, felt that the treatment of spouses was most regrettable and, in a way, my wife never forgave me for taking her to Dumbarton Oaks for a year. I'm no longer married to my first wife.
MM: So there were social events in Dumbarton Oaks, to which spouses were not invited as well as work. Did the tea still exist? Daily tea?
RC: Daily tea still existed. The problem with Dumbarton Oaks, in my time, was there'd been a major change: that Mildred Bliss had died fairly recently, that Ernst Kitzinger had decided he wished to go to Harvard to undertake teaching and therefore had to be replaced as director of studies, and there was a small faculty—Meyendorff I assume was on the faculty, certainly around. But Ihor Ševčenko and Cyril Mango were essentially the faculty and they made it quite clear that they were opposed to the appointment of William Loerke as Director of Studies, causing a pretty unpleasant atmosphere throughout my year. And this was exhibited by lunches where they generally spoke in languages not understood by William Loerke. And there was definitely a stand-off between the faculty and William Loerke, which I—all of us—felt was unnecessary, but we had to live with it and one of the things that William Loerke initiated was a seminar for the visiting fellows and Cyril Mango was asked to do a seminar and, perversely it seemed to me, he chose that we would work on a manuscript which was of such extraordinary difficulty and obscurity that it would hardly bring a group together. This was the letters of Ignatius the Deacon and the seminar consisted of translating those letters, which we found very, very difficult, all of us, and some discussion of the context of those letters. It's quite interesting that, years later, Cyril did publish an edition of those and our names are recorded as being in that seminar. It wasn't really an ideal subject to bring people together, though we certainly got more benefit out of that than had there not been a seminar at all. Otherwise, fellows—the Byzantine Fellows—gave a talk about their work and the seminars for the Pre-Columbians and Garden Fellows were separate. Having said that, I don't think there were any Garden Fellows. Betty MacDougall was in charge of the garden department, an extremely open and useful person to talk to. And I did go to some seminars for the Pre-Columbians. At that time the main interest was understanding language—it was a lot about language transcription and archaeology—extremely interesting to go to.
MM: But it was clearly a crucial time in D.O. and it was also the Golden Age, wasn't it? It was a time when archaeology seemed to be very dominant. Was that your impression?
RC: Yes. I mean, all the faculty were extremely positivist and empirical and that's the tradition I had been trained in. I haven't mentioned it, but before I went to university, in my gap year, I was trained in archaeology by a medieval archaeologist, Philip Rahtz, an absolutely brilliant English archaeologist of the same ability of Martin Harrison, whom I also knew. And so yes, positivism was absolutely—and empiricism—was the order of the day.
MM: If you look at the staff list for that period, it's extraordinary, the way resources were put into the material side of things. Were they around? Were they part of daily life or were they out in the field and occasionally came through?
RC: Well, the person who was working in the building was Robert Van Nice, and he was in the basement and was fascinating. I spent quite a number of visits going to ask Robert Van Nice about the work on St. Sophia. By this time it was supposedly drawing to an end, and he was obsessed by the paper that was going to be used in the printing, because he believed it was going to expand seasonally—it'd be larger in the winter and the summer and therefore his drawings would be inaccurate. He was also very angry that he'd been stopped by Paul Underwood and was not allowed to measure the minarets of St. Sophia. He was stopped one meter, I think, from the building because someone realized, no doubt quite correctly, that he would never finish if he really did what he wanted to; those drawings and talking to him about them were quite extraordinary, seeing the mason's mark on slabs, the detailed drawings. He was criticized by Ernest Hawkins for not asking any questions, and I don't know if that's an aspect or not. At that time, it was mooted that Rowland Mainstone should cooperate with him to write a joint book. And Rowland Mainstone did ask many questions, but they were entirely limited to the statics of the dome. Rowland Mainstone had no interest in Hagia Sophia except why the dome fell at various points. And they didn't get on, and that joint publication never happened. So, certainly Robert Van Nice was very much here. Peter Megaw came during the year and was present, and obviously William Loerke had to consider what the future of the field program would be, although this was already the period when permits for Turkey had come to an end because of the purchase of the Sion Treasure—and that was obviously an element at the time. Another big discussion at the time was whether Dumbarton Oaks should move to Harvard—that the whole place should move and become part of the Harvard campus. That was a very big, well-discussed issue in that year.
MM: So it wasn't just the library, it was actually the whole institute?
RC: The whole institution.
MM: Interesting.
RC: And one of the most exciting things that year was the concert of Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks Concerto in the Music Room because I think there's nothing more exciting than going to a performance of a piece of music in a place for which it was written—and that's an experience I've only really had repeated in San Marco in Venice, going to a concert of music composed for San Marco. I think that should be regular, though I do remember the permanent faculty—this had obviously happened before—they said that it was a tedious, inferior piece of music, which shouldn't be played. It was actually – Stravinsky being one of my favorite composers anyway, I thought it was a great thing to do. I hope it's often done.
MM: I was very fortunate to hear it when the Bliss symposium happened a couple of years ago. And it stood up extremely well.
RC: There were very few Bliss stories, but the one that I always remember—and I guess it's been recorded elsewhere—is that Mildred Bliss, on the whole, didn't have much interest in the Byzantine center but that to their surprise she turned up to one of the symposiums which was never published, which was the reconstruction of Holy Apostles in Constantinople. And it was noticed, I was told, that Mildred Bliss came to Underwood's reconstruction of the ground plan of the church and at the end asked him if she could have a copy of his plan. He went around to her place a few days later to give her a copy and asked her why she wanted a copy of the ground plan of Holy Apostles in Constantinople and the answer she gave was, "It looks as if it would be a great plan for a garden."
MM: Interesting. So, did you work with, did you have interactions with the collection when you were here? Was the museum – interactions with scholars?
RC: Yes. The curator was employed, and she was in the basement and I discussed various objects with her. I was particularly interested in the provenance of where things had come from. And in the seventies there was a general concern among all museum curators about how much information on file should be made public. And so that was some difficulty and Sue was uncertain what the correct protocol would be, but we did look at some files and noticed that the number of works that came through George Zakos documented as coming from the Lebanon, and obviously that was interesting for anybody who knew that George Zakos had a shop in Istanbul, in the bazaar, and that, therefore, provenance from the Lebanon from George Zakos was obviously an interesting provenance. This was the time when a book was written about George Zakos and other dealers; it's a book—I now can't remember the author and I haven't seen it since, but all dealers were given pseudonyms and George Zakos was called Gregory Omega. So I ought to find this description of George Zakos. So it was easy to see the museum. I was not allowed to see the Sion Treasure, which was not accessible for viewing by anybody—and anyway it was no doubt in desperate need of conservation. But otherwise any question to Sue Boyd, she would answer as well as possible and also comment on the inadequacies, as she saw it, of the Ross catalogue, which, on the whole, there was a feeling that it was good to have it, but it could have been done better.
MM: And she produced another –
RC: Of course. It was improved.
MM: How about photo collections. Was Marlia around here at that time?
RC: Yes, Marlia Mundell was in charge of photographic collections, and they were accessible and easy to use. In the course of that year, Marlia decided to leave Dumbarton Oaks and applied to the Courtauld to do an MA with me, the following year, so the next year Marlia Mango and Lucy-Anne Hunt and a third person did a course on Syrian and eastern Byzantine art, as part of the MA.
MM: And a lot came of that.
RC: Yes.
MM: How about publications? Did you see anything of Julia Warner at that time?
RC: One saw Julia Warner, but I had not much contact with publications.
MM: What about the Director of Studies? Did you have daily interaction with Loerke? What did the Director of Studies actually do in those days?
RC: Well, it was William Loerke's first year; there were all these big issues about the future of fieldwork, of Dumbarton Oaks, which I'm sure he was very concerned with. He certainly had an open door – his study. But obviously, the seminar chosen was one to which he, with no Greek, would never have come. It was carefully chosen to exclude William Loerke. He was very sociable, so we all went to William Loerke's house for Thanksgiving and met his wife and his family. I guess I didn't have very close relations with William Loerke because I was a Cyril Mango student and since all the tensions were between individuals, he would have assumed that I would be on the other side, I guess, though I gave him no reason to think that. And in the course of that year, he agreed that I could work with Ernest Hawkins on a project we had to publish the southwest rooms of St. Sophia. So, that was something for which I asked his permission and permission was given that that should be done. I guess that he was also very concerned with setting up the San Marco project, because Irina Andreescu was in her second year as a junior fellow, finishing her Ph.D. for Grabar in Paris, and she also had initiated the San Marco project, which was supported by Peter Megaw when he was here with Loerke and was to be headed by Otto Demus with whom Irina met. So in a way, the big discussions were setting up that project, which was obviously a complicated and difficult project to set up because it was essentially a photographic project, not in any way an examination project, and of course the ultimate difficulties about the project, was that Otto Demus had decided the answer to all the questions in the 1930s and just wanted to photograph in the 1970s, and when scaffolding went up, there then did become questions of how far you could recognize Byzantine and later restorations in San Marco.
MM: I'm not sure which way to go, whether to say, to ask – let's think about the intellectual life. You talked about the seminar and you all gave talks. And occasionally people would come in and give talks. What happened?
RC: There were very few talks from outside. I only remember one, which was a German scholar who talked about the bronze horse, and I only remember this occasion because of what I'd felt at the time was the outrageous introduction by Ihor Ševčenko, who introduced the visiting scholar with an introduction that took one hour and ten minutes and covered all the aspects that were going to be covered by the speaker, who had rather little to say when it finally came to speak. It was a very odd experience. So I don't remember many seminars. What was good was that in the second term, the speakers at the conference arrived, so Kurt Weitzmann came, who was speaking, and Hans Belting came, and others – and so one had the interaction with them to discuss their papers before the symposium, and that – it was the first time I had melt Hans Belting, and that was a very good interaction, and we also traveled together, both to Cleveland to see objects there and to New York. So, it became very, very useful for meeting researchers in the field from outside, as well as from inside.
MM: That was the provinces symposium?
RC: That was the provinces, yes.
MM: And they were there for what, a month beforehand?
RC: Two months, at least.
MM: Two months?
RC: I think Weitzmann came soon after Christmas. It was extremely interesting to meet Weitzmann, with whom I had a slightly difficult issue, because, not knowing I was going to meet him and being young, I had written an extremely hostile review of his latest book in Burlington Magazine. This was his publication of the Sacra Parallela, Paris Greek 923, and I'd written a long review attacking his methodology, his questions, the results, in fact every single thing about what he said, which I felt rather strongly, and still do, is a striking example of how not to study a manuscript. And I met him and he had read the review and he was very generous and said, "I'm perfectly happy with your criticism, but beware my students." And it's a prediction which turned out to be correct, that his teaching of his Ph.D. students was so extraordinarily thorough that, although Weitzmann's work I think had always been criticized in Europe—and not only by me; also, about the same time, by Christopher Walter, who, both of us said that his methodology of treating pictures as if they were text was inappropriate and seriously wrong and misleading and that the reconstruction of lost manuscripts was a cul-de-sac which we didn't like—but I think in the States, critiques of Weitzmann have only very recently emerged and his initial students maintained that methodology right up to the nineties. So it was extremely interesting to meet Weitzmann. He was not an easy person because he didn't like children and I happened to have children. He didn't like children because he thought they were full of germs, which is obviously quite correct, and he had always felt his health had been wrecked by his visits to St. Catherine's on Sinai and that he needed to be looked after, as indeed he was very well looked after by his wife. He retired that year, which was wonderful for me because Gary Vikan put on an excellent exhibition at Princeton of Princeton manuscripts, and there was a symposium at Princeton, and that was really one of the many important things I did while I was in the States during that year.
MM: So you traveled quite a bit – with Dumbarton Oaks people?
RC: I only traveled with Hans Belting or, to Princeton with Dumbarton Oaks people, though in my year there were two other English fellows, Elizabeth Jeffreys and Michael Jeffreys, who took it in turns—I can't remember which one was Fellow that year and which one was fellow the next year. And unlike us, they had a car, and so we did travel places in the region with them.
MM: Was Tyler a distant figure?
RC: Tyler was an extremely distant figure who maybe one met at the Christmas party in the distance. I had no contact with him at all.
MM: You were aware of the administrative structure; I mean it's something you have an eye for. Did you, at that time, see how the place was run, think about it, have ideas about it?
RC: I was aware of it. The big issues I think I've already mentioned, and there were all sorts of ways in which one could see that the Byzantine section was felt to be over-privileged by other sections, so there were certainly tensions in the place.
MM: Could Pre-Columbians come to lunch at that time?
RC: Yes.
MM: They did.
RC: Pre-Columbians were extremely extroverted and a good group in my year, but there was clearly a feeling that resources weren't necessarily allocated fairly. I wasn't privy to those conversations, but that was clearly thought to be so. I haven't mentioned: the Ševčenkos had an open house quite frequently; one used to go for drinks in their house and Ševčenko would show the latest books that he – or off-prints that he'd been sent. And so that was a way of keeping up. Ševčenko was very prominent. I remember an announcement he made at lunch one day, which was that he was sad to announce that the only other Byzantinist with a sense of humor had just died, Anatole Frolow, a rather typical Ševčenko announcement at that time. And the faculty – one thing I definitely remember with Ševčenko and how the library worked was that we had the system of taking out the tabs so you knew who had the book. I wanted a book on the inscriptions of Palestine. It was out to Ševčenko, so I went to his office and asked if I could use it and he graciously said, "You can have it for thirty minutes." When I got it to my office, I saw he'd already had it out for 25 years, so you can see that there were kind of hierarchies in Dumbarton Oaks.
MM: What about the fabled Mango-Ševčenko relationship?
RC: Actually, one was very unaware of the Mango-Ševčenko relationship. They were so united in their hostility to William Loerke that their personal relationship was on a high that year.
MM: What can you tell us about the library? I mean, apart from the plan to move it. Irene Vaslef, I think, comes in just about this time?
RC: Yes, she was certainly there. Yes. The problematic of the library – in terms of art history it was brilliant; it really had everything you needed. Finding texts was somewhat more difficult. And that was exaggerated by one of the fellows in my year, Mr. Stephen Gero, who for some reason only worked at night and had an office, which was locked during the day. But he removed all the Bonn Corpus, for example, to his office, and so we all had a bit of a problem with texts because they weren't easy to find and they'd all moved to Mr. Gero's room. Mr. Gero had a very difficult year because, although he'd recently finished his thesis with Ševčenko, Ševčenko made it quite clear that he thought the thesis was a waste of space, really, and that looking for eastern sources of iconoclasm had been a fruitless pursuit. So I think that Stephen Gero was not a particularly happy man, that year. But he certainly didn't make life easy for us. But the combination of the Library of Congress and the art history made the library excellent. However, it was very slow in acquiring books, particularly from Greece. And also, binding meant that the books that had come in the previous year were now all the way at the binder. In a rather bizarre way, I lost out on, in my year at Dumbarton Oaks, on recent literature. It took me some years to catch up, because the one thing that you couldn't read here was the recent literature, unless you went around to Ševčenko's office, who, of course, was being sent every offprint that was ever written and had a full-time secretary to acknowledge his off-print collection.
MM: But presumably if the scholars were in the attic, in the third floor, the periodicals were not up there and art history was not up there at that time?
RC: I don't remember where the periodicals were. I simply don't remember.
MM: But there was still a sense that books were all over the house?
RC: Yes, absolutely. Yes.
MM: All over.
RC: Yes, you collected. But, I mean, I guess that you collected a lot of books at the beginning of your year and thereafter you basically – most people seemed to have in their rooms what they needed.
MM: I think I probably want to ask you your comparative reactions now. You've been back as a visiting scholar for almost a month. How do you feel about similarities and differences?
RC: Since the seventies, I've called in on Dumbarton Oaks while Giles Constable was director and later, and so I met Kazhdan here, but this is certainly the most substantial amount of time I've spent since – it's a long time ago, isn't it? And, I mean, everything about the place is very different, even though physically the front door may be the same. There's a feeling of access and openness and friendliness, which certainly was not what one felt back in the 1970s. My initial feeling about the library was that it was absolutely brilliant compared to what it was before. I have in the course of the month had some misgivings about the way the library works and I'm sure it will have to evolve further. What one notices is the expansion of the Museum and the expansion of the Museum offices—and the combination of Pre-Columbian and Byzantine in the Museum. But there's a very much greater feel of activities and interaction – I mean it is a very different place, both physically and socially and intellectually. It's active in a different way, which, as I said, you would expect because there's been a change from personal scholarship to projects. And that has been such a phenomenal change in the way academics have worked between then and now. But certainly Dumbarton Oaks has participated in that revolution.
MM: And you could argue that it was actually quite early in the game, through the big fieldwork projects, which were so much a part of that Golden Age period.
RC: Yes, except the big fieldwork projects were actually begun by Whittemore and inherited by Dumbarton Oaks. So they didn't actually initiate; they made the decision to continue and I think that the fieldwork done, when taken over by Dumbarton Oaks, in Cyprus and in Istanbul, particularly, was the highlight – or one felt that was the importance of Dumbarton Oaks, that whereas other places were letting material decay, decline, that Dumbarton Oaks was in the forefront of preservation, conservation, and study. And certainly when I came, that was my picture of Dumbarton Oaks. My picture of Dumbarton Oaks was the extraordinary importance of its activities, but I would, as I say, modify that by saying they made the decision to continue rather than to start those activities. And from the beginning, it seems to me, Dumbarton Oaks was an academic-centered institution.
MM: I ought to link a little bit to the fieldwork questions that Rona's going to ask you, I think, and ask you about your own participation. So you talked, during your year here, and then you did the work. I was trying to figure out whether it was before or after you did the room over the southwest ramp. It was afterwards.
RC: It was after that. That was initiated while I was here and, while I was looking at materials in the photographic library, I was also in touch with Ernest Hawkins and he, who I'd met before—and it's conceivable that we'd talked about this project before, but certainly it came together by an agreement with Ernest that we could handle the permit difficulties—because it would be impossible to be officially working for Dumbarton Oaks; at the same time, William Loerke agreed that the work could be published by Dumbarton Oaks but by this time Dumbarton Oaks was forbidden to work in Turkey as a result of purchasing the Sion Treasure. That had caused a great deal of concern, particularly among British archaeologists. And Martin Harrison came to Dumbarton Oaks to beg Dumbarton Oaks to give back the Sion Treasure and not to continue with this. And I met Martin Harrison and Nezih Firatlh, the director of the archaeological museum, and they felt very strongly that Dumbarton Oaks would always be punished until the treasure was returned.
MM: So, you spent that summer in Istanbul.
RC: That's right.
MM: And I seem to remember you were very kind to young scholars who were visiting at that time. You entertained us in the Dumbarton Oaks apartment.
RC: The Dumbarton Oaks apartment was really useful. And it was not only a base for others working in Istanbul, but it had a library there and it was absolutely invaluable being there. Yes, all sorts of people came, and I obviously remember that Lee Striker was working at Kalenderhane and Martin Harrison was working—I guess it must have been finishing off on Sarachane, on St. Polyeuktos—and seeing those two operations going on was extremely exciting.
MM: How long had D.O. had that space?
RC: I don't know, because Ernest, until that time, had had an apartment at Moda on the other side of the Bosporus and so, because he had been required to retire by William Loerke that year—something about which he had a considerable anger and bad feelings—and so as he retired he gave up his apartment in Moda, and therefore he was also staying in the Dumbarton Oaks flat, which he hadn't done before. I simply don't know—Michael Hendy was there. I just don't know how long it had been or how long it went on for, but for that year it was really important.
MM: Did Richard Anderson come through?
RC: Yeah. Yes.
MM: Was he – did he come through often in Georgetown, as well?
RC: No.
MM: So he was basically in the field.
RC: Yes.
MM: That was quite a commitment, in a sense, to have an architect on staff all the time.
RC: Yes, but we didn't – I mean, we only knew him socially. He wasn't any part of the projects. And I will perhaps come back to the other things I did with Ernest later on.
MM: Before I hand over, is there anything else that you remember from the D.O., the academic side of it, that you haven't talked about?
RC: I haven't talked about some of the personality clashes, which in a way should be on record. And an obvious personality clash was between Cyril Mango and Ernst Kitzinger. I don't know how far this has been recorded but—this might take a few minutes, but the – because of my age I was able to meet: Buchthal was my supervisor, Cyril was my supervisor and Kurt Weitzmann, who again like Buchthal had a phenomenal photographic memory for images—and as much as I disagree with his methodology, I've never disagreed with his datings and re-datings of material, in which I think he's always been great. I met Otto Demus, who also had a phenomenal eye and was the most, probably the most generous art historian. I mean he never wrote a review which wasn't positive. And his book on mosaics in Norman Sicily I think every student should continue to read. And I've mentioned Nersessian and I met André Grabar in Paris but not here. But I didn't meet Kitzinger until after I'd been to Dumbarton Oaks. Because he had personally appointed William Loerke, his name came up quite often when I was here. And the most surprising episode for me was the review by Cyril Mango in the Times Literary Supplement, TLS, of the collected papers of Kitzinger, edited by Eugene Kleinbauer, when a devastatingly hostile review came out in, I guess, the eighties, which was both unfair and, I thought, mean-minded but embarrassingly often correct, in that he had seen the problematic in some of the philosophical thoughts of Kitzinger. And so I think that that publication probably did shift perceptions of the importance of Kitzinger in art historical work and began to undermine his theoretical interest. But when I did read Kitzinger, he seemed to be the most generous of that generation in sharing ideas. Whereas Weitzmann would tell you what he thought, Kitzinger would ask you what you thought and it seemed to me that partly lay in his different career, because when he left Germany he had to write his Ph.D. thesis in three months. When he left Germany, he left of his own will and came to London without any employment and he made his living by writing reviews for the Times Literary Supplement, for which he was paid, and that was enough to keep him going. And he wrote his book on the collection of the British Museum. And, he explained, that's how he survived. And when war broke out he was sent to Australia, and on the boat to Australia he learned Russian, spent his time learning Russian. When he arrived in Australia, a telegram came from Dumbarton Oaks, inviting him to Dumbarton Oaks, so he then went from Australia to Dumbarton Oaks, where he then remained until just before I came. And he invited Cyril Mango to Dumbarton Oaks, having read Cyril's thesis on the Brazen House. So when he arrived, Kitzinger said, "You're fully untrained in art history; you should go on some courses." Cyril resented this, and it began a kind of mission against art historians who were trained but impractical. And he always quoted Kitzinger being in his house in Dumbarton Oaks, unable to work out how to use a hedge trimmer and somehow this became Cyril's metaphor for the incompetence of art historians. And they were obviously completely conceptually ill-matched for each other, and Cyril, when I talked about this review, said, basically said, "I wanted to put on paper why art historians are so bad at doing Byzantine studies." Kitzinger, I tried to—they were both at Oxford—I tried to invite them to meet each other and they both told me they would never be in the same room as each other again. So their feelings were very strong, and recently in the Getty I read the Kitzinger archive and the letters he wrote at this time – [pause to change AV tape]
RC: I want just to finish this important episode, I think, in, really, in intellectual history. I read the archive of Ernst Kitzinger, which is complete in boxes at the Getty and the correspondence that he received after the review—he wrote to various people saying, what should he do about this review by Cyril Mango—and the few replies he got all said the same, which is what advice I would have given too: don't do anything. Don't write a letter, complaining, because if you do, it will give Cyril Mango the chance to write yet another devastating comment. Unfortunately, Ernst did not take the advice he was given, wrote a letter, and got an even more unpleasant follow-up letter from Cyril Mango. As I said, I think that it was written in an unpleasant way. Intellectually, I think it's a very important critique and it's something that – you now can't look at Kitzinger's attempts to explain stylistic evolution without taking the caveats of Cyril into account. But what you see is one man who had no interest in theory, Cyril Mango, I would say, and one who had enormous interest in theory and was always struggling to find new theory. So that is important. And I did talk to Cyril about theory, because I wrote a book, Writing in Gold, in the mid-eighties, which was a complete change of approach for me from positivistic art history into theoretical art history—the main impetus was Michel Foucault's work. And I asked Cyril, since he could have gone to Foucault's lectures in Paris and could have read the works, what the influence of Foucault was on him and he simply said, "I don't have time to read books like that." As just one final footnote on my personal career, I do think that the change and the move into theory in Byzantine art history and other subjects has been a really exciting thing. For me, because I was trained in Classics and came to Byzantium—from the ancient world to the modern—my theoretical frameworks have always come from Classics. And Foucault and post-structuralism permeated Classics in the early eighties, and that's where I came from. And I've always found that there's a difference of mentality between those who come into Byzantium from the Classics—those who find it at the end, as it were, of the sequence—and those who come in from the modern, looking back, and find it rather at the beginning of the sequence. And I think there is a healthy disconnection between approaches of people from where they've come at the subject.
MM: Alright, thank you very much. This is the point we'll move to fieldwork questions.
RR: Hello. Thank you, again. My name is Rona Razon. I'm here on behalf of the Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives. First let's talk about Ernest Hawkins. So, specifically, when did you meet him and what was your relationship with Hawkins?
RC: Okay. I think it's well stated by Steven Runciman in his autobiography that people who went to Istanbul in the fifties and sixties – they all seemed to have an introduction to Ernest Hawkins. They somehow managed to find him somewhere, and he would take them around the city. Ernest Hawkins also lived in London in the winter. And I met – I was introduced to Ernest Hawkins by Hugo Buchthal in the winter of 1963-1964 in London. He explained that—have I got the years correct?—he explained that he would be putting up a scaffold in St. Sophia in the summer and that I would be welcome to go, but actually as a student I didn't have the funding to go. But as far as I can see, every other Byzantinist went and went up the scaffolding to see the apse Virgin. And when Ernest came back in the winter he did explain to me what had happened. The only person who didn't go was Ernst Kitzinger. And the scheme of that work—they had permission to put up a scaffolding in the apse because Ernest always felt that the Whittemore job in the 1930s had been inadequate and that the dispute about the date of the virgin could be solved with a reexamination. And the plan was for Cyril Mango and Ernest Hawkins to look at the archaeology and for Kitzinger to write on the iconography of the virgin. It was well known that Ernst Kitzinger had vertigo and had never been up a scaffolding in Sicily, so that all his work in Sicily was done from photographs. They constructed a very special scaffolding for St. Sophia, which was—apparently it was just like a staircase, a covered staircase from the gallery. And it was constructed so that Ernst wouldn't even know he'd done anything to go up a staircase into an area. Even so, it was a step further than Ernst took and so the iconography was never published. But Kurt Weitzmann, for example, went up the scaffolding and informed Ernest that the mosaic was definitely fourteenth century, and Ernest was very pleased that when he went down the scaffolding he agreed it was ninth century, and that was one of Ernest's triumphs in his view. To me, the archaeology and the subsequent report by Cyril Mango and Ernest is absolutely convincing that the mosaic as we see it is the mosaic uncovered by—inaugurated by Photius in Lent, 867. And I think it's slightly unfortunate that Dumbarton Oaks, later on, even published an article by Nicolas Oikonomides, incompetently, from the archaeological point of view, attacking this view. And I was a lot less angry than Ernest Hawkins was, though. And he was hopping mad about the publication by Oikonomides. And I think it hasn't helped the subject for it to be published in such a prestigious journal, such an ill thought-out contribution to the subject, but there you are, that's a bit of my prejudice, but I'm reporting Ernest Hawkins' very strong feelings that the question was solved by the archaeology and that work was done for Dumbarton Oaks.
RR: So did you meet him before your fellowship, or...?
RC: Yes, so I met him in the winter 1963-4 and I subsequently was in Greece for a year, for my research in 1965, and then went to Istanbul and visited the monuments he was working on. So, at that time he was not doing much on Sophia, he was working on Fethiye Djami, work was being finished on Fethiye Djami, and he was working the Kariye Djami, and what was important to learn from Ernest was his methodology, because what was utterly striking about Ernest, since he was trained as a sculptor and not as a Byzantinist, and went to Istanbul in 1938 as part of Whittemore's team to conserve—so he always looked at Byzantium with a sculptor's and a painter's eye and the question he always asked in building was, "What did it look like before the artist began work? What were the problems that the artist faced when he worked, and how did he solve them?" And that was his systematic method. And the outcome of that was, he revolutionized the description of how mosaics were made. He worked out that the current view, which you'll see expressed by Underwood and Kitzinger and many others before Ernest changed it, was that mosaics were made in the studio with a cartoon, carried down to the church and fixed on. He showed how that was completely impossible, because the effects of light position and curvature were taken into account and this meant that the mosaics could only have been made in situ. And that gradually shifted the way that Underwood and Kitzinger wrote. That also came out in the important article by Underwood in the Dumbarton Oaks Papers on the Nicaea mosaics. That was a paper completely initiated by Ernest, because Ernst Kitzinger, in his paper on art between Justinian and iconoclasm, had argued a nonsensical analysis that the Nicaea mosaics – Ernest went through with Underwood how you should actually read the evidence of sutures and how the work was done and that – nobody's ever doubted that we understand the secrets of work in Nicaea, as published in Dumbarton Oaks, a very important paper.
RR: Well let's go back a little bit, to when he started in Hagia Sophia, in 1938. When we talked before, you mentioned that he was recruited by Thomas Whittemore. So, what were the challenges that he encountered with Whittemore and other fieldworkers at that time?
RC: Well the work had begun earlier. Apparently, Whittemore, when he needed more workers, would go during the recession in England and advertise and pick people up. Alwyn Green was one of the other people that were picked up, who did the work of the facsimiles; I think, in Dumbarton Oaks, they're done by Alwyn Green. And I think that they worked together but they were highly temperamental artists and they disagreed with each other and Ernest Hawkins had a sneaking admiration for Whittemore, although he was a class of diplomatic American completely outside his experience. And he had a sneaking admiration because, of course, Whittemore did delegate everything—not only the work but even the writing, the so-called, the preliminary reports; the work on Hagia Sophia, published under the name of Whittemore, are attributed by Ernest and others to Anatole Frolow, who wrote them in Paris and they were not written by Whittemore at all. And so there were obviously tensions, but he gave them work and Ernest never went back to being an artist, except, in his later years he went back to life drawing classes, but he never – it ended his belief that he was going to be an important British sculptor. He changed into a conservator and Byzantinist, so Whittemore changed his life and he was very happy with that change, though his wife was never very happy, because she just wanted him to live in London and be a sculptor. She was never comfortable with his nomadic life between Cyprus, Istanbul, and Chios. So I think that he was a critical part of the team. He claims that it was he that persuaded Whittemore to start work in the Kariye Djami, because Whittemore only had permission from Ataturk to work in Hagia Sophia. So I think Ernest must have been quite a nuisance, even, to Whittemore, but that's kind of – they got along with each other.
RR: Was he close to any other fieldworkers in Hagia Sophia?
RC: Alwyn Green was the person he was closest to and he corresponded with Alwyn Green right up to – so, he was still writing in the nineties – so, up to both their deaths, they were in close contact. And when I asked questions about the thirties, I used to write to Alwyn Green to ask if he could remember things which Ernest couldn't remember.
RR: Let's talk about your relationship with Ernest when you started working with him at Hagia Sophia, between '72 and '73, is that correct?
RC: Yes.
RR: So when you started, here in Dumbarton, you also started working with Ernest Hawkins?
RC: We discussed what possibly I could do. It was agreed in Dumbarton Oaks that we could go there. The problem – so I worked with Ernest, and although previously when I'd seen Ernest he was officially working for Dumbarton Oaks, everything was organized so that there were problems in the Fethiye Djami in that when he asked the Turkish laborers to rebuild a wall, they would rebuild it in Ottoman style and not in Byzantine style and they had to take it down again and rebuild it. The problems with my work were quite different and so you have to contextualize this, that going to work in Hagia Sophia in the summer of 1973 meant we could not mention the word "Dumbarton Oaks." We were given permission to work and used Underwood's material, which I'd read, but in Istanbul we went to the director of Hagia Sophia and asked permission to look at the icons in the southwest rooms. We knew—Ernest knew—that the icons that were removed from Turkish immigrants in 1917 were stored in those rooms and that if we said that we were going to look at those, we'd actually confess what our plan really was. So I'm afraid it was a bit underhand. The director agreed we could work in the southwest rooms for two weeks and that we would be supervised by Şinasi Bey, who was an assistant, and that all our time would have to be with Şinasi as the commissar. We were perfectly happy with that except that Şinasi had a drink problem and tended to arrive late in the morning—we arrived at six in the morning and waited for him to arrive, any time between six and ten. And we also had to take him out to lunch. So Şinasi was both an essential part of our work but also made it slightly more difficult. We went into the southwest rooms, knowing that what we wanted to do was understand the sequence of the mosaics, describe them, and to clarify exactly what had happened to that part of St. Sophia, which was an addition to the building – of the original Justinian building. It was part of the picture of the palace. Şinasi was slightly surprised when we put up a scaffolding up to the height of the mosaics, but we said this was necessary to photograph the icons from the scaffolding—and of course we didn't actually look at the icons at all in the two weeks. But, we just managed, working fast, to take enough photographs and to look in detail at everything in those rooms and we both felt at the end of that time that we had solved the secrets of the work in those rooms. And that we published and we felt that publication was archaeologically accurate and I don't think it's been challenged since; that was good. We hoped in that time to do work in the southwest buttress. The chapel had been photographed, and Ernest thought it eleventh century. Şinasi was unable to find the key and we never got into the southwest buttress. I've been in it another time, but I never got in that time, so that work we didn't do.
RR: And this project was financed by Dumbarton Oaks, correct?
RC: I think it was financed by us. I may have got my fares to Istanbul, but we stayed in the apartment.
RR: The Dumbarton Oaks apartment?
RC: The Dumbarton Oaks apartment. So in that sense it was financed, but any costs I think we probably covered ourselves.
RR: What were the challenges working with – between Hawkins and Underwood. What did Hawkins think of Underwood?
RC: Okay. Yes. Can I just say two other things I didn't say and then come back to that, because that leads on to Kariye Djami.
RR: Sure.
RC: Subsequent to that work, in either the next year or the year after, having established a relationship with the director, we went out and we put scaffolding up in front of the Deësis mosaic, and we did about seven days on the Deësis mosaic, which we weren't quite comfortable about results – we thought we dated it – we weren't quite comfortable and so we kind of always published that in dribs and drabs. We've never done a full publication of our reasons for that. And we also – I have to say I can't remember when this happened, but I spent a month with Ernest in St. Sophia when the bronze doors of the vestibule were brought back. And maybe you know what year that was but I can't remember what year that was, but I do remember the quite extraordinary circumstance that the bronze doors had been taken down, left out in the atrium, the front of St. Sophia, had been robbed by thieves – enough of the bronze had been stolen that to – this has never really been confessed, but there were then conservationists from Rome—Madame Borrelli—did a remake of the lost bits of the bronze doors. And then – and I think they may even have been taken to Italy, but I don't know how that was done. Then, the doors had to be put back. And Ernest and I were there, because nobody knew how to get the doors back. They'd been taken off so many years before, even the floor had been filled in and there were no workers. And it seems, judging from the photographs here in the Archive, that the only workers we could find were an aged Armenian team, and they may have been the ones that took it down – took the doors down. And it was quite extraordinary having six aged Armenian laborers putting up these massively heavy doors. And we had to dig out a hole to put the base in. We had to put them up. And we worked at night, because we tried working during the daytime but there was no – people had to come through those doors. And Ernest used to get extremely angry, because instead of going into St. Sophia they would stop and watch us digging up a hole. And I remember Ernest saying, "You've come to see the greatest monument that man has ever put up and all you're doing is watching us digging a hole. Go away." So we worked at night, which – maybe sometimes slept – Ernest had a stove and two camp beds up in one of the rooms of the gallery of St. Sophia and I feel very fortunate to have been at night in St. Sophia, because it takes people a long time to appreciate the size and scale of St. Sophia, but you sure appreciate much quicker if you're there in the dark. So I did work with Ernest on the Deësis and on putting up those doors and obviously he was regarded by St. Sophia as an American worker from Dumbarton Oaks, but a person in his own right, as well. He played the ambiguity of his position to allow us to work there.
RR: Because when you worked with this door project, it was a secret project, right?
RC: Yes.
RR: And it was financed by –?
RC: It was financed by FIAT. For St. Sophia, though, obviously the monograms and so on are published in Dumbarton Oaks papers, so not only did I do the work in the dark, I can see my memories of it are rather obscure as well.
RR: Why was it a secret project?
RC: Because it was being covered up, that there had been damage done to the doors. And I don't know why they were ever taken off. I think the whole episode is obscure to me.
RR: Well, Hawkins – I believe you said before that Hawkins thought of Kitzinger and Underwood as armchair scholars?
RC: Yes. I've tried to write up something about Ernest's relationship in the recent publication of the Kariye Djami, under an article called "The Talented Mr. Hawkins," where I do try and portray him as a kind of extreme British 1930s artist, up against very professional American academics, and I tried to portray the views that Ernest had of Dumbarton Oaks, which were really, in the event, unjustified, but which he certainly felt very strongly. He felt that the fieldwork program – that he did, unrecognized, a great deal of work, that Underwood spent insufficient time in the field to be able to write the kind of report that Ernest would have preferred, and so there certainly was a tension between Ernest's work in the field and those people who came from the States.
RR: So, Hawkins also worked in Cyprus with Peter Megaw. First, I'm just curious: why, because Megaw's name is Arthur Hubert Stanley – so why Peter?
RC: I don't know. Everybody called him Peter, always. That was what you called him. I mean, Megaw was trained, I think, as an architect in England, or at least professionally trained. But he went out to the British School at Athens in around 1935, '36, and he wrote a phenomenally important article called "Some Notes on Some Little Byzantine Churches," which actually solved the chronology of most little Byzantine churches in a wonderfully understated way. This was a period at the British School when I knew many people who went there – it was kind of a Boy Scout era at the British School, where they literally wore shorts and tramped all over Greece and looked at monuments. And Megaw must have tramped to all these buildings he talked about; he must have been extremely energetic. And he—and this is the important contact with me—he began to look at the drawings of the British architects for the school made in the 1880s and 1890s, particularly on Thessaloniki, and his project was to publish a corpus of the monuments of Thessaloniki. And this I learned later on. But Megaw, in I think 1936, was appointed director of antiquities in Cyprus, as part of the British Civil Service. And he clearly did a fantastic job in giving, really, very good professional British attitudes, using them inside but without being colonial, so that the whole antiquities service in Cyprus, I think, owed a lot to his administration; he was a great administrator and that's where he worked with his Greek wife, Electra. And the problem with Electra was that for tax reasons, she couldn't – she had to be in Greece. And they both wanted to live in their house in Hampstead, but they only ever stayed there a month a year, for tax reasons. So, Megaw worked in Cyprus, and he worked with Ernest. Ernest started the project in Asinou with Peter Megaw – that was definitely a personal project of theirs. And they then recommended Dumbarton Oaks take it over. Megaw had to leave his post in Cyprus because of political changes and he became director of the British School at Athens in about 1964, which was lucky for me because that's when I went out as a research student to Greece, so he was the director there. And without that I had a problem, because I was living in Thessaloniki and that caused administrative problems in Greece because I was the first supported Greek government scholar who had not been in Athens and it was conditioned that you had to register as a student in Thessaloniki but they had no way you could register as a foreign student. And the Dean of Arts, faculty, Linos Polites, a wonderful Byzantinist, tried the whole year to get me registered but I failed to do that. And then, when I came to Athens to work in the British School library, I was told I wasn't allowed to work in it because their rules were: you had to live in Athens and not Thessaloniki to work in the library, so Peter somehow got me. So that was my contact and I think it must have been this time that Ernest and Peter recorded the work on Zeyrek Djami, on Pantokrator, which was a Dumbarton Oaks project but which they did together. So they were a kind of team, it seems to me, that came into Dumbarton Oaks. And obviously they published Kanakaria. The working was a team with each other on Cyprus—I'm never quite clear what the relation with Dumbarton Oaks was for Kanakaria. And I'm not sure what relation with Kiti, which has never been published and I'm not sure where the manuscript of that is.
RR: So, what year was this when Hawkins and Peter Megaw were together in Cyprus?
RC: In the sixties. I don't, I mean – Pantokrator is, the work is – I think one probably can work all that out from preliminary reports in D.O.P. And I'm not sure, not quite clear. And maybe not clear because Ernest probably wasn't. Ernest was completely hopeless in terms of secretarial organization and he kept getting things wrong, sending a card to the wrong places, so he would never be sure who he was working for, whether he was working for Peter or for himself or whatever. So that makes perfect sense that I'm not very clear, since I can see it partly through Ernest's eyes. I mean, basically I met Ernest and he showed me the various works they were doing in the sixties. I worked with him in the seventies. In the late seventies and eighties we traveled together because he wanted to have seen every Byzantine mosaic, so we went to Sicily, for example. We went to Poreč. So I traveled a lot with him and when he died he gave me all his papers and all his slides, and his slides are in the Courtauld and are being digitized; and the papers I still have and, although I've always wanted a student to work on them, there isn't very much new in his papers that isn't published so they're not of great value, but in the end a home needs to be found for Ernest's papers. He did not want his slides to be – he didn't give them to Dumbarton Oaks because he was not allowed to photograph on Dumbarton Oaks scaffolding; that was only official photographers who were allowed to. And he was extremely angry that he had to take all his own photographs surreptitiously and unofficially. So he didn't feel they should go to Dumbarton Oaks, since they had been – his work had been officially, kind of, banned.
RR: How was it traveling with him? How was that? How was he, as a person?
RC: Ernest was appallingly energetic, very fidgety, apparently required no sleep whatever; and so he was not an easy person to travel with. Even on our visit to Sicily, on which I learned a lot, because the great issue between Demus and Kitzinger is: what's original, and what is not? And we just spent a lot of time with binoculars, trying to find out a methodology of how you decide, in Monreale, what's original and what's not. And his methodology was: if you can see a part which looks absolutely 12th century, then you look for the sutures and outside the suture it will probably be later. But I think there still remains a difficulty of how much re-working has been done in Monreale—probably rather a lot. But that's what we worked on. But meanwhile, walking through the street, because he had his bag snatched and his binoculars snatched and so he wasn't a, kind of, easy person to travel with, except that intellectually he's very exciting to be with.
RR: You mentioned before that he was forced to retire from Dumbarton Oaks—is that correct? Can you tell us about that?
RC: That's how he put it. And I guess he was probably 70, but he could not see how any professional rules would apply to him, basically. And he certainly had so much – you could do anything in Istanbul under the name of Ernest Hawkins. He thought that Dumbarton Oaks, by giving up the fieldwork program and by not using him, was really wasting resources that had been so important.
RR: You mentioned a while ago that he thought that Thomas Whittemore's work was inadequate in the 1930s. How so? How?
RC: His word would be, a bit highfalutin. I mean, he did not think it was down to earth, practical, careful enough. And it's true. If you go through those enormously long descriptions of the mosaics – real flowery language and not very accurate. So, it looks – he felt that it's a façade: it looks like a highly careful piece of work but actually it's all a bit of a façade. And it wasn't quite as careful. And that's why redoing the apse mosaic was, for him, an absolutely major, important reworking of inadequately done work, he thought.
RR: You mentioned a while ago that you traveled with Hans Belting. Can you talk a little bit about Hans Belting and where you traveled with him? What was your relationship with him?
RC: Yes, alright. I met Hans Belting in Dumbarton Oaks and very much enjoyed traveling around places in the States, but that – we went, for example, to see the Cleveland marbles and the tapestry in Cleveland where Alice-Mary Talbot's husband was the curator at the time and took us in on a closed day and we spent a whole day with them. And obviously we were very interested in the question of whether the Cleveland marbles were fakes, which was a big issue in the seventies, to some extent still is, and what you could say about the tapestry. So we, on the whole, looked at works of art together. I think an interesting case of more separation from Hans Belting was over Fethiye Djami. When Cyril decided to publish the Fethiye Djami, he decided that he would do the history; Hans would do the style and would do the iconography. And Hans applied for scaffolding but that was refused because he applied through the name of Dumbarton Oaks, so that was inevitably refused. Ernest was very angry and said, "If you'd asked through Ernest, it would've gone up." And then Hans wrote his piece and subsequent to that, Ernest and I went back to Fethiye to analyze Hans' work and we both came to the conclusion that he'd gone seriously wrong in Fethiye. And I published a critique of that in an article, which actually came out in Greek, so not many people may have read it. Basically, Ernest and I looked at the mosaics and came to the conclusion that they were all done by one artist, whereas I think Belting had dozens of workshops in a church, you know, which you could hardly get two people into. So we criticized the notion of a series of three or four workshops, we criticized the notion of developing style. In particular, we criticized the notion that some parts of the mosaic had a mixture of fresco technique and mosaic technique and that this was a positive method of the artist, which could be picked up in Kiev and other places. The reason for that particular fact in Fethiye is because those mosaics are in very dark places where no light came and you can see that the artist has economized on materials where you could never see the mosaic. So we thought that – this is very much an Ernest Hawkins and in that case positivist Cormack view against the extraordinary formalist, abstract views of Belting. So, in that sense, I've always enjoyed being with Belting but I've always, kind of, disapproved of his formalist work. And when he was writing his big book on lightness, we talked on the telephone and he compared it with Writing in Gold, which he said was very trendy and he said his book was very traditional—and it's actually true; although people think Belting is trendy, he's incredibly traditional and working absolutely in the parameters of Otto Demus, as a stylistic – he's a stylistic formalist, I think, in many ways; does it very elegantly, in very, very difficult German.
RR: So, when did you meet him exactly?
RC: I met him at Dumbarton Oaks, when I came.
RR: So, seventies?
RC: Yeah.
RR: Let's go back to Cyril Mango. What was your relationship with him, besides – we know your relationship with him as an advisor. Did you work with any projects with him at all?
RC: No. Just, when he was in London he was working on Neophytos and—that's the hermitage in Cyprus—and we talked quite a lot about it, but he'd already done the work with Ernest. So, basically my relation was that he was my Ph.D. advisor and we met on infrequent, irregular occasions and talked about issues, and when I sent in written work, he was not the kind of supervisor that sent it back with any comments, except references you'd missed. I think I missed a reference on this about the iconography ascension in Ukrainian in 1892. And I would say, "Send me this one," on a postcard. I'd discovered that this reference was only available at Dumbarton Oaks. And I'm afraid I've never followed it up—so be it. So, the benefit of talking to Cyril Mango is his extraordinary clear mind, his ability to talk through a subject on his terms, giving the pros and the cons—very positivist, and this is the claim he makes in his critique of Kitzinger, that he's a naïve positivist, I think he calls himself. But he is extremely good at balancing facts, one against the other, and coming to a pragmatic conclusion. In the years that I was at Dumbarton Oaks, he was writing his book on Byzantine architecture and he appeared to write that between ten o'clock and midnight, regularly. I mean, he had his day completely organized, what was done, but between ten and midnight, he would be in Dumbarton Oaks, typing his manuscript and thinking it through and quite often, at lunchtimes here he might talk about what he was going to talk about, so putting his ideas together. And that book is an extremely careful, analytical balancing of facts with, of course, a subtext of extreme polemics against Krautheimer's work on Byzantine architecture, so it's a book with a purpose, because he particularly disapproved of the theoretical framework of Krautheimer, which he thought was inherited by Tom Matthews, and is polemic against functional architecture – it's extremely strong in that book. But that was – so I always found Cyril extremely good at just sitting down and giving you an opinion very well thought, usually ungenerous toward any critique but carefully thought through. And that has remained Cyril's strength. His extremely articulate and careful description of a city, particularly of Constantinople, where he grew up, was discovered by Ernest Hawkins when he was a schoolboy, fourteen. Ernest, actually, as far as I know, brought Cyril into the orbit of Byzantine studies by treating him—as me and others—to "please come and look at this. What do you think?" And so, Ernest, I believe, was as much a teacher of Cyril as he was of me.
RR: Do you still correspond with him today?
RC: With Cyril?
RR: Mhm.
RC: Not much. Cyril has felt that those who moved into theory have always taken a wrong turn. And he – we asked him to do the history for the Byzantium exhibition, which I was the curator for, at the Royal Academy, and he willingly did that but he did not so willingly come to the exhibition. He came to the opening, I think; I doubt he came again. So he's – Cyril is now somewhat of a recluse in the countryside outside Oxford. I last saw him at a really good day on Sinai, on the manuscripts at St. Catherine's on Sinai, which he chaired. He was a good chairman, but actually slightly misinformed on some of the literature, but he is – Cyril has never deviated in his methodology ever. And he's always used his own talents to the maximum ability. He drew his own ground plans for the architecture book, he takes his own photographs. He's an extremely practical person and an extremely precise scholar with an extremely good knowledge of Greek, but in some ways slightly too good, so that the book which most people use of Cyril Mango's, Sources and Documents, which he put together very quickly and had just done before I came to Dumbarton Oaks – he himself said it was a great pity that the Greek text could not be reproduced side by side with the English translations, and I have found, using his translations, that very often they're not translations, they're paraphrases. And I think his facility with Greek meant he sometimes didn't use a dictionary, when somebody who was less able might have realized there was a difference between Medieval Greek and Classical Greek. And he's made a number of mistranslations. But usually it's not mistranslation so much as paraphrases. And I think that book, in particular—it's so important in the subject—you should never use those passages without checking the Greek, and I'm sure Cyril would say exactly the same.
RR: You talked about how you became interested in Byzantine and Classical studies. So, why Thessaloniki in particular?
RC: Really because Grabar's book gives the materials from Thessaloniki and because it was rather clear to me that people had totally underestimated the materials in Thessaloniki. And I wasn't the only person that thought this. So when I arrived in Thessaloniki and went to Hagia Sophia, which was going to be the center of my thesis, I met two other research students who'd come to the same conclusion: Jean Spieser, who was also there to work on St. Sophia, and a German scholar who was also to work on St. Sophia. We kind of divided up the territory, and so the German scholar then worked on St. Irene in Constantinople, instead of St. Sophia, and Jean-Michel Spieser worked on St. Demetrios; and I worked on St. Sophia. So it became slightly awkward, a few years later, when I came across the W.S. George drawings of St. Demetrios, because it kind of wasn't my territory; I'd ceded St. Demetrios to Spieser. But I did publish that. So, it was striking when I went to spend a year in Thessaloniki how nobody ever visited the place—very few people there. Unlike my contemporary, Julian Gardner, who was in Rome, who was networking every single day of his life in the British School at Rome, in Thessaloniki I became the local guide for visiting British government ministers who had to go to Thessaloniki. And also there was a British Council office there so I went there but I was required to go to lectures in the university—even though I couldn't get registered—and I soon opted out of those. They were given by Stylianos Pelekanides, and they were a translation into Greek of Grabar's L'iconoclasme byzantin, which, good book though it was, I reckoned I didn't need to go to a rather long series of lectures which were no more than translation. And Pelekanides was a rather odd art historian; I did meet Chatzidakes and Xyngopoulos. I met them, had appointments to meet Xyngopoulos in Thessaloniki and these were very impressive scholars and I was very lucky to meet them. But it was absolutely clear that the monuments of Thessaloniki were not well known and that when you read people who talked about them, they hadn't been to the monuments; they used the old plans of Letourneau and Diehl or in the nineteenth century. So I was—I think it was a good place to go: I was able to get to Mt. Athos from there, I traveled to Cappadocia from there, which was very around-the-bend. But I got to know very well the monuments of north Greece and I still feel that people don't know them as well as they should—really a fantastically exciting place to be.
RR: And currently, your research interest is in the cultural history of the Monastery of St. Catherine at Sinai, is that correct?
RC: Yes. I first went to St. Catherine's in 1971 with a small group, which in retrospect was quite amusing. It was organized by Hugo Buchthal to see the manuscripts. And I went with Beat Brenk, Hans Belting, Hans L'Orange, Bezalel Narkiss, and me. And I went for a month to the monastery, which at that time was in Israel. And you fly to the Santa Catarina airstrip. The only obligation was to take food for a month with you. And so I spent a month in the monastery then and saw a lot of material. And over the years I've been back more and more frequently, and I've been fortunate enough to be inside most of the parts of the monastery, including the storerooms. And I – what I want to talk about in my book is not the art history, because the art history of Sinai is not going to be published for another 50 years, there's so much, but the feeling that you get in Sinai of: why do people want to live at the end of the world? So it's a kind of cultural history of the solitary – and partly how Sinai can both be the most exciting cultural center and also the most remote, so that's the paradox at the center of the book. But, simply trying to write down those bits of work I've done, but obviously one by one the icons, the manuscripts, and all the other objects and the architecture will be published by art historians, but that's going to take a long time.
RR: Is there anything else that you would like to add that I haven't asked you?
RC: Yeah. What I wanted to do in my first job was work in Russian and I learned Russian. And there was endless money in the sixties and seventies to work in Russia, basically as a spy. And since my boss was actually Blunt, all this was quite interesting, although when I first was going to Moscow I went to Anthony to ask if he'd got any advice on visiting Russia and he said, "I only visited Russia once, with Ellis Waterhouse, in the 1930s and it was a dreadful place and I never wanted to go back," which in retrospect, since he emerged as a spy for the Russians, was an interesting comment. I thought that visiting Novgorod, Pskov, other places for which I got visas in the Soviet Union, was immensely exciting. I was able to go to Georgia, to Armenia. I had money to go anywhere. But at that time the rules of access for foreign scholars were extremely strict so in the Lenin library in Moscow you could order a manuscript but you were not allowed to write notes or have a microfilm or take photographs. So I felt that the obstacles for working in Russia were too difficult, and actually I shifted into working in Turkey, at Aphrodisias, so I became the medieval consultant for Kenan Erim at Aphrodisias; we did publications of Aphrodisias. And then, I moved back into Greece and –
RR: So, around what year was this when you went to Russia?
RC: I went to Russia in every year from 1968—except the years in Dumbarton Oaks—for the next ten years. I saw – you know, I got quite an expertise in Russian material, but just felt the hazards. And what I would say for any person now is that there remains opportunity in Russia, and there's immense opportunities in the New York Public Library; the Slavonic holdings are unbelievably rich. I only discovered these about five years ago, when I was taken around, because Trotsky worked in the New York Public Library and in the twenties invited the librarians to purchase libraries and materials – quite unbelievable, the richness of the material in New York, including photographs of all the Russian monasteries as they were in the nineteenth century with the pieces which in 1917 were removed from them in situ. So, one thing I shall never do but think should be done is to work out the sources, the inventories, where things were in the nineteenth-century Russia, which are now in museums. So I regret not having worked in Russia, but there's so much to do in Byzantine studies – I mean it's just, it's still the fastest growing subject in art history, in my view.
RR: What are your future projects or lectures, besides the research project that you're doing now?
RC: Well I've just recently finished an article to be published in a conference on the Anglican cathedral at Khartoum, because I've been able to go to Sudan. And that article is about how the work of George and Weir Schultz in the late nineteenth century in Greece influenced their later work and in particular influenced the design of the new twentieth-century building in Khartoum, how it relates actually to St. Demetrios; the model is St. Demetrios. And how Demetrios is reinterpreted as primitive Christianity in Sudan. So I think that's one of the things I've published. And I'm also working on a book on Classicism, which is about continuity and discontinuities, but somehow that's got subsumed to Sinai, which is at the center of what I'm doing.
RR: Do you have any advice to future scholars, Byzantinists out there?
RC: We had a conference—and I'm sure Margaret Mullett was present at this in London—where we lined up every generation of Byzantinists, from Steven Runciman in his nineties—were you one of them, Margaret?
MM: I chaired it.
RC: You chaired it – where people were asked what the priority was and the younger you got, the less you thought Greek was a priority, it transpired. I think that the problem for Byzantinists is always going to remain languages. You can't but admire people like Cyril and Ihor, who already had about ten languages by the age of sixteen and learned a few more, but learning languages is absolutely essential in this subject; you've got to go on doing it. You have never learned enough, and languages do get easier. They get more difficult as you get older, but easier as you learn more, so my advice certainly is that in this subject you must use languages, you've got, somehow or other, to have a familiarity with Latin and Greek, but that wonderful things are written in nineteenth-century Tzarist Russian. They're not easy to read, but their nineteenth-century material is good. My own program is that what an art historian has to do is to be interdisciplinary and to balance empirical knowledge of the objects, the material objects, with methodologies and ways of looking at it; and that the challenge of art history, but particularly Byzantine art history, is how to balance theory and object-led art history. And, you know, I think some people have done it better than others, but it's the challenge for everybody.
RR: Well let's go back to the Byzantine Institute. If we could talk about Nicholas Kluge and his work –
RC: Yes, I mean, Ernest must have had some contact with Kluge, but basically Kluge was a photographer for the Russian Institute and also recorded in St. Demetrios and in Nicaea. And Kluge's work is basically held by Alicia Bank in the Hermitage—I think that's who it went to—and she gave a print of his records of Kiti to Ernest, which Ernest gave to me, in his will. So, Kluge's work is—and all the work done by the Russian Institute—is extremely important. Kluge was a recorder for them. I thought that his work was not as good as the work of W.S. George, when you could compare them. And it's slightly more colorful and less accurate, but it's quite atmospheric. Beyond that, Ernest certainly talked about the Russians: Karadakov, who went to Prague; Frolow and Kluge went to Paris. But they were an older generation, even than Ernest. So I know their importance but I know nothing about them personally.
RR: Did he mention anything about Kluge's death? Because I read in one of Hawkins' notebooks, where he states he was hospitalized all of a sudden, and then a few months later he dies, I believe in 1947. Do you know anything about that?
RC: No, no I know nothing about that. No. I mean, it does remind you: one of Ernest's complaints about fieldwork in Istanbul was that the – he wasn't allowed to photograph. The photographers came out and took photographs and then went back to Dumbarton Oaks, and they never knew what photographs were taken or whether they'd come out. I mean, you know, in Dumbarton Oaks they did, but Ernest actually didn't know what records had been taken – it was a kind of ignorance on the ground.
RR: Well, if you want to, Günder and Shalimar, do you have any more questions?
GV: Since you started to talk about Hawkins, may I ask a question about him?
RC: Yeah.
GV: You mentioned previously that it was possible to do any work under Ernest Hawkins, because he had built relationships with the Turkish authorities. And his relationship with Dumbarton Oaks was very clear. How was that possible? How did he manage to be in good contacts with Turkish authorities even after the Sion Treasure problem?
RC: Because he was a complete individual in his own right, extremely attractive person. He wined and dined everybody that mattered. He was, socially, extraordinarily expert and likable, so I think people just liked Ernest. His Turkish was bizarre in the extreme, as all his foreign languages were, but everybody kind of worked out the sort of thing he was saying without knowing exactly what he was saying. And so it was just immense good will and also the belief in Istanbul that he'd done a very good job and that he was the right expert. And he had made it quite clear that his expertise were different from Italian restorers, who would take mosaics off and redo them, so he had managed to sell his particular brand of scholarship and expertise—rightly—and that was how it worked.
GV: My second question is regarding Aphrodisias. How did you get involved with the project? Was it through Kenan Erim, or –?
RC: Yes. What's odd about Aphrodisias – when it started, with National Geographic money, it was the quickest dig that there ever was in Turkey, I suspect – I mean, they used bulldozers to get rid of the mosque and the Turkish village to get down to the Classical area – got rid of it very, very quickly. And also he wanted results for funding, because funding had to be done every year, with the result that—I guess the date would be about 1962—by the '80s, all that material had been got but nobody had studied it. Kenan didn't find it easy to get on with other scholars, but there was – a lot of expertise came from the UK, so Joyce Reynolds worked on the inscriptions, and then she trained Mary Beard and Charlotte Roueche to work on inscriptions. Mary decided that wasn't the direction she wanted to go, so Charlotte took those over. Michael Hendy came from England to work on coins. So, when Kenan thought that somebody ought to look at the medieval finds, it wasn't surprising that he asked advice from Joyce Reynolds and found somebody in the UK, so he asked me if I would look at the materials. It was a pretty severe shock to see the condition of the materials in Aphrodisias, because, while it's true that Kenan had kept the objects, as soon as he discovered that something was medieval, he stopped excavating it, so looking at medieval meant looking at churches, which had been abandoned as soon as it was discovered they were churches. Also, the medieval materials were not well recorded in the notebooks. Only ancient sculptures were recorded. And he had made the terrible mistake of – all the photography was done in Polaroids. So by the time I came, the Polaroids were faded, the notebooks were thin, and the labels on the objects had been eaten by mice. So, one was actually starting from first beginnings. That was possible in the temple, though actually the temple wasn't completely excavated. But tri-conch church was something that I worked on and I published a really important fragment of a sixth-century angel, Michael, which I put together, which I published but which has subsequently disappeared, I believe due to a fire in the storerooms. So, actually I had immense respect for Kenan Erim's ability to find things and his ability to reconstruct broken sculpture, which is a wonderful expertise. But as a social place to go, Aphrodisias was pretty hateful and no one was happy there. I happened to overlap with Martha Joukowsky, who was working on the prehistoric materials and Martha, who's a millionaire, used to order beer for us but it went into the kitchens and we were not allowed to go into the kitchens so she'd spent all this money on beer, which we were not allowed to go and get a beer during the hot afternoons; and it was very weird to work on a site with a treasure-hunting archaeologist, as he fully realized. And the annual visits, which I was at, between Hanfmann from Sardis—we went to Sardis and they came to us—you couldn't see two more different kinds of excavations. But all of us had a kind of sneaking admiration that Kenan Erim had got the funding for Aphrodisias – and the finds are just phenomenal. You know, it's a wonderful site to have worked on and I think that currently, through the work of Bert Smith and NYU and the digitizing of all the notebooks, that it's a much better place to work now. It's a very good site. But you had to have been there.
RR: You had briefly talked about Robert Van Nice a while ago. Would you like to add anything—more information about him? How was your relationship with him?
RC: Bob Van Nice would – any question you asked him, he would open his notebooks, his photographs, and he would submerge you in material. And you got the feeling that Bob Van Nice was submerged in a mass of material – graffiti, whatever it was, he had recorded it and he always said that he had a mortgage out on St. Sophia – if it went up for sale, he should have the first option on it. And, seeing him working in the building and seeing the accuracy of his methodology, it was very, very impressive. I mean, I think that is an absolute model, that book, for any architectural record—it's beautiful.
RR: Did you collaborate with him with any projects at all, small or large?
RC: No, I mean, I asked him questions about things. But he was a model thinker. Really, I think. I mean he just had too much material. He never got out from beneath it, it seemed to me.
RR: Did he have any help at all, or was he just working by himself?
RC: His family used to help him. I think he did have help, but basically –
RR: His family?
RC: I think his family did a bit. But basically he was a one-man band, definitely.
RR: His family helped him with his projects?
RC: I think his daughter – didn't his daughter used to go out to Istanbul? I don't remember this clearly at all, but that was – he was doing a project, but it was a one-man project. That's what academic studies were like until quite recently. People – you know, research was what you could do, yourself, not what you could do with a group. And except for archaeologists, who learned to work in teams, I think others didn't. Archaeologists were brilliant at working in teams.
RR: How about David?
RC: Yes. David Winfield's career is really important, I think. He, as he put it – he had a disastrous student career in Oxford, and the one thing they told him was he wasn't going to be an academic. And he left Oxford. I don't know why he got interested in wall painting— but he went to Yugoslavia, as it then was, and he was trained on Sopočani by Serbian restorers. And he was then discovered by David Talbot Rice, who'd got permission to work on St. Sophia at Trebizond and needed somebody to do the work and hired David to do the work. So David went out, and again we've got the position of the academic in the UK and the worker in the field, thinking he's carrying all the work. David took photographs, which were printed up, he said, locally in Trebizond, and would sell them to Talbot Rice, who thought – completely misunderstood them because they were so badly printed up. They were much better than that and then, the publication of Trebizond – he used these badly printed-up Turkish Trebizond photos, which is why the plates in the book are absolutely dreadful. The problem – problematic at Trebizond is what exactly the dating is and Winfield and Talbot Rice thought it dated to the 1260s. And the funny thing is it looks awfully like Sopočani and there's an awful lot of repainting there. And I asked David about the wall, and I said, "There's repainting there, isn't there?" and he said, "Look, I didn't do it. I think some of the Turkish assistants did it." But how did Turkish assistants manage to work in the style of Sopočani, I've always found slightly baffling. And so certainly what they found at Trebizond was extremely disappointing from the point of view that it was a funded project, which didn't look too good. And I think it was a bit enhanced, somehow. And obviously David has been attacked. He, at the same time, worked for Michael Gough on Eski Gumus, on the rock-cut church at Eski Gumus, and restored those works for the British Institute at Ankara. And of course there's a lot of repainting in Eski Gumus, as well. And it means that a number of people have criticized David Winfield's work at Asinou and Lagoudera, saying that there is repainting on it. I do not know the truth; I know that David says there's not repainting in those churches. But his early reputation has somehow clouded – what may be gossip or what may be accurate, I don't know. The important thing, it seemed to me, because I visited David at Lagoudera, is his cooperation with June Winfield, his wife. They worked extremely well together and she's more of an artist than him. And in some ways, he's followed the Ernest Hawkins principle of trying to work out exactly, from first principles, how the monument was painted. And that led to his article in Dumbarton Oaks Papers on methods, which is, I mean, exactly an Ernest Hawkins methodology. And Ernest read that article and approved of most of the things that are said – it says a lot of very good things. But David has always been kind of self-consciously anti-academic. And the feature of his writing, which is usually a bit verbose – but it's also aggressively simple – so, in his work on Georgia – he did important work in Akhtala, on Georgian buildings; when he reported those, he always described churches as being either square or rectangular or oblong or cross-shape. This was kind of anti-Krautheimer, to over-simplify things. So there's a kind of faux naïveté in Winfield that is perhaps, I think, intentional. But his work is exactly in the tradition of Ernest. They knew each other; they both worked together on Asinou to start with. And it's exactly the same principles of seeing how the artist worked on the spot and June then did a lot of reproduction—drawings and copies; and in Asinou she did a lot of copies of the frescos. And so he's a real hands-on, not angry anti-academic but just anti-academic, really. But not angry in the way that Ernest was. And after Lagoudera was finished, then David returned to England, where he surprisingly became a restorer-advisor for the National Trust, which is the state—I'm not sure if it's state or private, whether it's English Heritage or National Trust—anyway, a very official body for English country houses. David took a lot of very good photographs, of which the negatives for a number are in the Courtauld Institute in London, but I believe that his negatives and the photographs he took to the Hebridean island where he lives were lost in a fire. So I believe that it's very important to pick up on the copies that David had made both, I think, for Dumbarton Oaks and for the Courtauld, because I think the negatives don't exist anymore.
RR: Well thank you very much for your time and for sharing your story with us. Thank you.]]>
IU: You are welcome.
ABF: Can you tell us about how you and your husband, Paul Underwood, first came to Dumbarton Oaks and about your memories?
IU: My husband was teaching at Cornell, and I came down in advance to find an apartment here, when he was granted a fellowship as a Junior Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks. And he had written in advance to say I was coming to Washington. I had never been in the city before. It was 1943 – the war – and I found it rather overwhelming, but I went to Dumbarton Oaks and introduced myself, and John Thacher was very gracious. And his – maybe his secretary, I don't remember what position she held – turned out to be a classmate of mine in college. So, they were both very gracious, but they were not much help about apartment-hunting. But I finally found one in an apartment building and I went back to Ithaca, and my mother and husband and I came to Washington that fall, so it must have been September, probably, 1943. And my introduction to Mr. and Mrs. Bliss – by the way I had been rather impressed, even on my short interview with John Thacher, by the rather rarefied atmosphere at Dumbarton Oaks in those days. But when I came here my first introduction to the Blisses was a series of concerts that were held in the Music Room, and at that time open only to, of course, Mr. and Mrs. Bliss, and to the Fellows at Dumbarton Oaks and, of course, the Director of Studies also, and the head of the study of garden architecture and so on, and the Pre-Columbian, but no outside people. And they were wonderful concerts – really it was a great privilege to be there. I think probably Mrs. Bliss did most of the selection of the people who performed there. But I still remember my first meeting with her. Of course, we were advised that formal attire was rather expected. And we lived in Arlington and we had no car, so we had to travel by bus – we were rather poor too – we traveled by bus. You know, I had a long evening dress, and my husband was in formalwear. And we enjoyed the concert very much, and at the end Mr. and Mrs. Bliss were at the entrance to the Music Room, and we would make our way out and thank them for the concert. So, this was the first time we had met, and Mrs. Bliss looked at me and she said, "Oh, your dress is such a lovely color. I wonder if I might have it for cushions later." I looked at her; I thought, "How am I supposed to react to this?" you know? I thanked her very much. I don't know what I said – I really don't – but I was rather startled. So, that was not a very good beginning to our acquaintance. But she, you know, she thought she was – she didn't know how the other half lived. And she didn't quite know how to approach, so she wasn't very comfortable, I suppose. I assume. Anyway, that was my initial impression of her. And then after that I didn't have much contact with Dumbarton Oaks at first, because I was rather bored, and I wanted a job, so I applied to the Signal Corps and they were very interested at first because I had taken a course on crypto-analysis at Cornell that one of the professors was giving. It was just for his entertainment, really, but several of us took it – among the students too. And so when they heard that I had taken this course, my interviewer was very interested. Oh yes. But he asked me if I had any relatives abroad, and I said, "Yes, I'm French. I have relatives in France still." And he said, "Oh well then, I'm sorry. You're a security risk." And I said, "But they're on the right side!" He said, "No, I'm sorry, we can't consider you." And so I went home, and I was rather distressed, and in the same building was a young lady, a young woman – we had met at Cornell; she was in the Music Department – we were friendly with her there and we continued to be friendly here, and she said, "Well, try O.S.S.," and I said, "No, if the Signal Corps won't have me, O.S.S. isn't going to have me." O.S.S. – you're too young to know – is the predecessor to C.I.A. She said, "Try; I know they're looking for people." So I went to O.S.S., and they took me. So I had a job, and that was fine. And then the next thing you'll be interested in – well, my husband was happy at the change at Dumbarton Oaks, and the Director of Studies was Koehler at the time, Wilhelm Koehler; I think his first name was Wilhelm . I was rather sorry at that, because being French, I would have loved it if I had been there when Focillon was the Director of Studies, but he was gone, and it was a German instead. And I knew that Mrs. Bliss was very much of a Francophile. Anyway...what was I saying?
CW: You got a job at O.S.S.
IU: O.S.S., yeah. So, my husband was getting accustomed to Dumbarton Oaks, and he was quite happy. And he had studied publications of Koehler at Princeton, so he knew all about him, and so on, and it was very nice, very comfortable. And then, what happened next? Oh, there came the Conference –
CW: The Dumbarton Oaks Conference in '44.
IU: Yes, that was set up preliminary to the San Francisco.
CW: Right.
IU: And at that time we lived on the estate. We lived in the villa that had been originally the kennels for the dogs parading through the estate, when it was under the Blisses.
ABF: Was this by the garden? Were you right nearby the garden?
IU: It's in a hollow of the estate, and when it was turned over to Harvard, they changed it – no, before that, they changed it into a villa for Mrs. Clark, I think her name was, who was the curator, the librarian of Mrs. Bliss's rare books collection. And at that time, as I said, our apartment was in Arlington, and it was very hot. No air conditioning, of course, at that time. And I was working long hours too, at O.S.S. sometimes, when we had a report to get out. So, she said, "I'm going away for the summer for two months. Why don't you come and stay in the villa?" So we thought, "Well, fine." She had no kind of air conditioning, but it was in the hollow. In fact it was a little bit dank, but it was cool, it was cool, and there was room for my mother and Paul and me. And that's where we lived during the Conference. And it was an amusing time, because I can still remember our laundry man coming to the villa with our laundry, furious, angry. He said, "I'm an American citizen, and I have to come here under armed guard to deliver your laundry."
CW: Because the Conference was still going on.
IU: Oh yeah, oh yeah. And my husband said to me, "You know, Irène, I go up in the elevator, and there is the Secretary of State, and he greets me, and I know he thinks I'm one of his young men," you know. "Every morning, we go up and we greet each other." So, it was a really amusing time. I remember he called me once and he said, "I forgot to pick up our eggs;" – which were delivered at the front entrance – "do you mind picking them up when you come home?" So, I said, "Okay," so I rang the bell, and of course it was after working hours at Dumbarton Oaks, and I don't know who it was who answered, but it was one of the bright young men still there, and I said, "I'm sorry, but I'm Mrs. Underwood," and he said, "Oh yes, the Underwood eggs," and he got them for me.
ABF: Did you meet any big political personalities while you were there?
IU: Not political, but we met the President of Harvard, because he was part of the Conference, and he lived in one of the suites, I don't know whether it was the east end or the west end of the Fellows Building. Are you familiar with the Fellows Building?
CW: We live there, yes.
IU: Oh, you live there. I think it was probably the east little apartment there. And so we would spend evenings with him. It was very interesting. But other than that we didn't meet any of the others, no, no. But the scholars were still permitted to use their studies, which by the way were still under the roof where the domestics lived before it was given to Harvard. You know, I used to tease my husband and say he was in an ivory tower during the war, but he said, "No, you don't know what the offices, our studies, are like, under the roof, with no air conditioning."
CW: Right, it must have been hot.
IU: It was very hot. But that changed shortly thereafter, and then they were moved down, and they each had their little offices, and it was very nice. So, what else? Well, that was about it during the war, yeah. And then I left O.S.S., I went to the State Department briefly, when they were going to divide O.S.S. into the C.I.A. and part of it went to the State Department, and I was going to the State Department to hold the French desk until the rest of it came over there, and they wanted to be sure, because the man was leaving who was on the French desk at that time in biographical intelligence. So, I went there briefly, and I hated it. I really hated the State Department. It had a lot of red tape, which we never had in O.S.S., because they were mostly from the academic world, or refugees, and we were free spirits, but not in the State Department. So, I decided to leave. And anyway we wanted a child, and my doctor said, "You have to rest. You can't work these long hours." So, I had worked at the French Supply Mission, which was an easy, easy job, and then my daughter was born.
ABF: That was 1947?
IU: She was born, yeah. How did you know that?
ABF: We did our research.
IU: And I had a difficult time adjusting to being at home, so Dumbarton Oaks was very paternalistic in some ways, and I had a job, a temporary job, with the Byzantinische Zeitschrift. Do you know anything about that?
CW: No.
IU: No. Well, it was a research tool set up for scholars, and we were – well, I'll let someone over there describe it for you – but anyway, I worked on that for a time. And then Mrs. Bliss had a collection of the letters of Franz Liszt, and she wasn't satisfied with the translation that she had had made, so she asked Libby Bland – do you know about Libby Bland?
ABF: No, who is that?
IU: She was – at that time I wasn't sure whether she was really the curator of the Byzantine collection or whether there was somebody above her; I've forgotten – but later she became curator of the Byzantine collection of art. And Mrs. Bliss asked her if she would do a new translation, and Libby asked me if I would help. So, I said yes, I realized it was a pretty bad translation. I don't know who did it, if it was just a student or what. So, we both worked on that, and that was a temporary job. And then after that, sometime later, I was in charge of photography at Dumbarton Oaks – not the taking of photographs, no no, but the collection, organizing it and getting into the files and so on.
CW: Photographs of the collection or the gardens, or everything?
IU: Everything, pretty much – mostly of the artwork. No, actually, this was only of the artwork, the Byzantine Collection. But those were all temporary, part-time jobs, and then after that my husband went to Turkey for the first time I think in 1949, was it, or '50?
ABF: Well, in 1950, he took over Whittemore's position.
IU: Yeah, but before that he had gone. That was very amusing. Whittemore – you probably know about Thomas Whittemore – was getting on in age, and A.M. Friend, who was at the time Director of Studies at Dumbarton Oaks and who had been my husband's professor both as an undergraduate and as a graduate student, thought, "Well, somebody has to take over the Byzantine Institute; why doesn't Dumbarton Oaks do it? And why doesn't somebody learn about the work while Whittemore is still there?" So he sent my husband over as a sort of a – casing the joint, to see how things were going. Whittemore was a fantastic character. He was really something.
ABF: When did you meet him?
IU: I never met him, but I heard all these stories about him. So my husband gets to Istanbul and he knows there's an Englishman on the staff of the fieldwork under Whittemore, and so he makes contact with – oh dear, what is his name? I've forgotten.
ABF: It wasn't Ernest Hawkins?
IU: Yes, it was Ernest Hawkins. And Whittemore was very possessive of anything to do with the work, so he gave my husband a tourist's introduction to the work, you know, but not in the way they actually did the work, and all that, but he took him around to see it. But my husband and Ernest would meet in coffeehouses, and Ernest would tell him more about what was going on. So, my husband had a pretty good idea by the time he had finished his first trip to Istanbul, and then when Whittemore died – in the State Department, actually, he collapsed – Dumbarton Oaks took over the Byzantine Institute, and my husband was sent there as the director of the fieldwork, to take Whittemore's place and to take over. And I think he – well, I know he really enjoyed it, but it was a tricky position, because I don't know how – Whittemore was a very persuasive character, and how he managed to get Atatürk to agree to change these churches which had been turned – well they were either not used at all, and nothing was done about them, or Hagia Sofia, the greatest church in Istanbul and the one that the Greeks still revere, had been turned into a mosque, and somehow Whittemore persuaded Atatürk to turn all the Byzantine churches back into not churches, but museums. And so that's how the work started, trying to preserve the mosaics and the wall paintings.
CW: Right.
IU: Yeah, I don't know what got me on that, but anyway. What else can I say?
ABF: Was your husband excited about taking this job which would take him away from D.C. to Istanbul for such a long period of time?
IU: Well, originally he went from April to I don't know, I don't remember the dates, but November, maybe, or maybe a little earlier than that. The rest of the time – you couldn't do it in the wintertime; it was too cold – no, he was all right with that. I mean, he didn't like to travel, that's true. But he stayed put in Istanbul, except when he went to Cyprus. Of course they started doing fieldwork in Cyprus too. And he had a young Turk who was on the faculty of Robert College become more or less his mouthpiece between the Turks and taking care of official documents he had to give and so on, except once Ercüment forgot about taxes, and my husband had to appear in court, I think, and it was rather iffy, but – so, I don't know how long he did that before we joined him. I think our first trip there – you probably have this down pat, but I don't.
ABF: Was it 1952?
IU: '52, I think, yes.
ABF: Yeah.
IU: Was it '52 or was it...?
ABF: Your first winter – he writes about your first winter as being in 1953 and it was so cold that you had to put on all the clothes you brought with you.
IU: That was the second trip we took. We went earlier than '53.
ABF: Okay.
IU: Yeah. We went – I think –
ABF: – would that have been '51, maybe?
IU: '51, I think, yes, '51 we went.
CW: You, and Sarah went with you?
IU: Yeah, she went the first time, yeah. And then we came back. And then we went again in '53. We came back in '52. I don't know have the dates pat, but anyway, we were there from '53 to '55.
ABF: Okay.
IU: Yeah. And our first trip – well, my husband had gone in '50, '51, and '52 – no, when did I say? – when did we first go there?
ABF: '51, I think.
IU: '51, yeah. But he had gone there in '50.
ABF: Yeah.
IU: And prior to that he had been there once before.
ABF: Right – because there's correspondence from that time.
IU: And then we decided we would go together, and we went for one season and came back to Dumbarton Oaks, and then we went in '53, again as a family, and stayed until we came back in '55, yeah. And from then on he commuted, without us. Sarah and I stayed here. But the first time we went, that was really quite exciting, because when we were on the plane, they told us that unfortunately they had to circle, because the landing gear was sort of iffy, and they didn't know. So, they had to lighten the load of the fuel, so they went round and round, and my daughter at the age of four had been very good, really, on the trip, but she got sick at that point from the circling, you know. And then they decided, well – this was in Ireland – we're going to land, we're going to dive, we're going to go up and dive, to see if that will loosen the landing gear, so they did that. It didn't work. So, they said, "Now we're going to land." And who was on the plane but Danny Kaye? And we thought, you know, while they were doing all this, we thought, "Well, he should come out and entertain us."
CW: To lighten the mood a little bit.
IU: He was in first class. But he didn't come out, and he had quite an entourage with him. But they went up and they dove, and the landing gear came out, but in landing they burnt one of the wheels, so they couldn't go on with that plane. I don't know. So we had to get off the plane, and they changed, but we went on finally. And when we got to London the next day, where we were changing planes, nothing was in the paper about the Underwoods being on the plane, but "Danny Kaye" – a banner headline – "In Near Crash." So that was my first experience in Turkey. And it was very pleasant, because we had rented a villa up the Bosporus, or Dumbarton Oaks had rented a villa up the Bosporus, in what had originally been, of course, a Greek village, and it was charming. And there were a Greek family who I think Alexander had worked for – Whittemore – anyway we became friendly with them, and it was very pleasant. And the head of Saucony-Vacuum, one of the big oil companies, for the whole of the Near East, had been a friend of Thomas Whittemore, and Whittemore had put him up whenever he came to Istanbul, and in fact when my husband came Whittemore put him up – I don't mean Whittemore, I mean what was his name, A.V. Walker. Walker was his name, the head of the oil company – and he was very – he liked us, and he liked Sarah too, my little girl. She was very good with him, and he was very good with her. Except he would invite us to lunch sometimes, and there would be the former Spanish ambassador, the former whatever, or the current somebody or other, you know, high up, and he would invite Sarah too, at the age of four, the first time we went there. And I would always wonder, "What are we going to go through this time?" I remember at one lunch, she was at his right hand, and she turned to him and said, "You put crumbs on my seat," and he laughed and he said, "Yes, I did." It was weird. And then the time he was at our house, and so was the head of Robert College, Dr. Black, and his wife, and there was Sarah – she always came, I mean – so in the middle of lunch she turned to A.V. Walker, she said to him, "Mr. Walker, you have a beautiful garden," and then somehow I could see her thinking, and she turned graciously to Dr. Black and Mrs. Black, and said, "Mrs. Black, you have a wonderful garden." So she handled that quite well. Actually, this was not her first trip. This was – no, it was her first trip, I think. Yeah.
ABF: If she was four, then it must have been the first trip, I think.
IU: It must have...well, I don't know, because when we went back I put her in a French school, Notre Dame de Sion, she hated that, although she knew a little French, because my mother and I spoke French, but I never attempted to speak French with Sarah, which was my mistake. I really should have. But my husband did not speak French; he understood it and he read it, but he didn't speak it. He had a few words, of course, but so – what did I start to say?
ABF: Your daughter, you put her in school.
IU: Oh yeah, I put her in that French school, and she hated it. And so I put her in the English High School for Girls. Each nationality that had trade relationships with Turkey – France, Italy, Germany, I don't know what else, but those were the big three – they each had their own schools. Of course, they had to teach Turkish, which my daughter flunked, and Turkish language and history, I think.
ABF: She was tiny, wasn't she?
IU: Yes. This was the second trip, not our final trip, when she was five, maybe. But she's small now, she still is. But I put her in the English High School. When we came back, Sirarpie der Nersessian was at Dumbarton Oaks. She had been my professor at Wellesley, and in fact I had done special honors with her at Wellesley, so when she greeted me in the library – I knew she was at Dumbarton Oaks, but the first time I saw her, I was in the Georgetown Library, and she came in with her sister, and you know, we embraced, we were friends. And her sister looked at her and she said, "Are you always this affectionate with your students?" "Oh," she said, "no, no, no, no, but this is special." So when we came back from Turkey I told Sirarpie that Sarah had been to her school, and Sarah was right there, and so Sirarpie turned to her and said, "You went to the English High School? That's where I went to school. Tell me, is the salon still to the right of the building? Do you have to curtsy before the mistress?" Sarah said, "Yes, yes." It's so funny, you know: my child and my professor going to the same school in Turkey. Well, Sirarpie, as you probably know, had to flee Turkey at the time of the massacre, and I remember when Jack Thacher asked her to attend a dinner he was giving for the Turkish ambassador, and Sirarpie was – really she didn't want to go. She thought, "I can't take this." She and her sister had both fled with nothing, nothing. And you know they had to work their way eventually to Paris, but first they had to work in Switzerland and so on, until they got to Paris, and they were finally able to establish themselves there. She went to the Sorbonne. But they had a brother who changed his name to a Turkish name, and for years they didn't speak, and we knew nothing about him, until finally – I think Sirarpie waited until the second time we went to Turkey to tell us that yes, she had a brother there; before that she had never mentioned him. So, it was very hard for her to attend this dinner with the Turkish ambassador, but she thought, "Well, I'm at Dumbarton Oaks. What else can I do?" So, that was that. What else can I tell you?
CW: So you lived in an apartment, or in a villa, that Dumbarton Oaks owned?
IU: Right.
CW: At first.
IU: They rented that the first time. But the second time we went my husband had rented a house – not a house, yes, a house – in the city itself, and it was an old Turkish house, and well, it was an unhappy time in our family, because I had a breakdown while he was away in Salonica, attending a conference, and it was a very bad time, but he came back and we eventually moved to an apartment building, which was better, because there was a French family there – in fact, there were two. One of them, he was the manager of the gasworks in Istanbul, and the other one was a man that my family – and oh, he was the one that Paul had come to know, because being manager of the gasworks for the city, he had to okay the pipe work and everything. When they laid new foundations for a new building or dug up an old building or whatever, he was involved. So, he had become interested in archaeology. And he became interested in the work of the Byzantine Institute, and so my husband and he were good friends, and so I already knew these people. I had met them before. And they were in the same building, and that made it much easier for me. And then I also did volunteer work at the Y, Y.W.C.A., teaching a very small group of young women English. And that was amusing. But I made the mistake of asking them, I said, "I love Turkish cooking. I want recipes." So, they gave me recipes, but unfortunately every time we had a meeting, they would say, "Did you try this? Did you try that?" And I never did, of course, because Turkish recipes, you have to prepare them in advance, everything is done in advance, so you're very relaxed at the time, but I wasn't going to do that when I had a maid; why should I? And they always wanted to talk about movies, and I didn't know about that. You know, movies weren't my great interest at the time. And when we had lived on the shore of the Bosporus before, in the villa, there was a very nice Turkish family next door with two grown daughters, and I think they were still going to Robert College at the time – yes they were – and they became very friendly with us, and they loved Sarah, and they were forever talking about movies and wanted to know all about the stars, and I couldn't help them very much, but – and I think we went once or twice to the movies together, but they were very nice. Unfortunately, when we came back I looked them up and the younger daughter had insisted on taking a job, and her parents would have nothing more to do with her. She would have stayed home, and they would have selected a husband for her, and it was very sad. And so my daughter went to this high school, and that was very pleasant. And then came the riots in fifty –
IU: I can't remember when they came.
CW: In September '55?
IU: Probably.
CW: Over Cyprus.
IU: Yes.
CW: Yes.
IU: And I remember I was visiting, spending the evening – I went from our apartment to another apartment building down the hill on the same street, where there was an English couple who had two sons, and the two sons went to the English High School for Girls, which was co-ed, never mind that the girls were still in the title, but – and our driver would take our three children, the two boys and Sarah, to school every day, and we became friends with this English – he was, I think, at the British Consulate. I don't remember what position he had there. So, I was spending the evening there, and we were having a very nice quiet time, and suddenly my husband came over, and I said, "What?" and he said, "You have to come home right away, right away." So, I said, "Okay. What's happened?" He said, "Well, there's rioting in the city, and you'd better come home," so we walked home – it was just down a few blocks – and as we walked home there was this group of men coming up from below with clubs, whatever they could grab, and they were coming up the hill looking very, very serious, and Paul said, "Hurry, hurry, we'll get home." So, we went home, our bell rang, and it was the janitor of our apartment building, looking very upset – he was Turkish. And he said, "Madame, do you have a Turkish flag?" And I said, "No, I don't have a Turkish flag." Well, the building was owned by Greeks, and he wanted to be sure that we had a sign that, you know, said, "We're okay; no, we're not Greek." But we didn't have it, so we said, "No, we can't help you. We'll just have to take our chances." Well, nothing happened, except down the street there was a little grocery shop, and they ruined that completely, and the main drag, all merchandise – the refrigerators, whatever – were in the streets. They totaled all the shops; the Greek and the Armenian and the Jewish shops were all totaled. And then we saw them the next day – but the next morning, my husband was worried, because on his staff he had both Turks and Greeks, and he thought, "I wonder how things are," and when his driver came in the morning, he said, "Alexander, you have to take me into the old city, because I don't know what's happening there." And so he agreed, and they drove into the Old City, and he found that the Turkish members of his staff had taken in the Greek members for the night, so they were safe. So that was good. But later in the day – oh, Sarah wasn't home: she had been spending the weekend at Robert College, because the president had a daughter, and they had just come – the Valentines became good friends with us – had just come that summer to take over the position of president of Robert College, and Sarah had been spending the weekend there with their daughter; she was a year or two older than Sarah. And I said to Paul, "I want to go up to Robert College and get Sarah. I want her to be home with us." And he said, "Yeah, I think you're right, maybe," and I said, "We'll take some bread with us," because we were sure that all the shops had been looted all the way up the Bosporus too. So we called, got hold of Alexander, and said, "You've got to take us up the Bosporus." And he said, "Oh, I really don't want to," because he was from Syria, I think, and he was a Christian, and of course nobody was supposed to know that, and he was afraid for his life, you know, if they discovered it. But he finally agreed to take us. And it was all right; we got there okay. Except for, when we got there we found that the Valentines had just received the day before their pictures and other things from the States, and they were busy hanging up pictures, very calmly. We entered their living room and said, "What are you doing? Do you know what's happening in town?" "No, no." They didn't know anything about it. And I said, "We've brought you some bread, because we were afraid you were running out of, you know, bread, anything." Oh, they were just amazed that anything had happened. So, we got Sarah; we got home okay. But a day or two later the World Bank was meeting in Istanbul at the time, and among the members of the Bank was Crainer T. Young, he was a friend of the Blisses, and they knew Jack Thacher, and they were interested in the art and so on. They were in Istanbul because of the meeting of the World Bank. Crainer was not familiar with the city so my husband asked me to accompany him to wherever he wished or I suggested he see. Unfortunately, I had not realized he was an avid photographer. He began to snap the all too evident signs of the recent rioting – merchandise strewn all over the main drag from all the Greek shops etc. I asked him to put away his camera, "In this tense atmosphere, we might be attacked." "You're right, he said." She wasn't with us; it was only Crainer. So, we got together, and he had his camera with him, and we went into the city, and the stupid man was taking pictures, and you know, the main street was filled with this merchandise; nothing had been cleaned up. And it was just horrible, and he was taking pictures. And I said, "Crainer, put away your camera; you know, they'll see you, and we'll be attacked if we continue." "Oh," he said, "you're right; you're right." So we got through all right, and it worked fine. In fact, as we were going home later that year, I mean going back to America, we met them in Naples and we had dinner together, and it was very pleasant. And Mrs. Young said to Sarah, "Would you like to see the kitchen?" She said, "Oh, yes!" So, they went off to the kitchen together, you see, which the Italians were always happy to have people do that in the hotels; you know, you could go and see whatever was being done. So, Sarah enjoyed that. But that meeting and the World Bank, and of course the Turks were ashamed to have the World Bank see all this destruction, but it was their doing. And then that fall – November, I think it was – we left – or maybe late October – we left for the States.
ABF: Did you see the Blisses in Istanbul?
IU: No, they didn't come out, but the – I never remember whether it's the Kress or the Kresge –
ABF: Yeah, the Kresses.
IU: Kress Foundation. They came out while we were there, and they were entertained.
ABF: It seems as if your husband was not only working on the restoration, but dealing with all these potential benefactors who were coming through, or handling all of the finances, and these letters make it seem like he –
IU: Well, I wasn't aware of all that he did. He didn't hide things from me, but I didn't think to ask very much. And unless I was personally involved – I didn't entertain the Kresses when they came, but I know there was a dinner for them at Robert College, and we were all together, and so I met them – but he probably saw many more people that he didn't tell me about, that I don't know, unless I was involved in some way.
ABF: It seems very remarkable, looking at his letters, all that he was managing to do while he was there.
IU: Yes. Well, as I say, he didn't tell me all that happened. He protected me, as it were, I think. But he enjoyed it, and we had this good friend who became his assistant, really, and he took care of the official part with the Turks – a very good friend – and he used to take us on sightseeing tours, and have us to his house, which was an old Turkish home with decorations of flowers, of course, because they could never have figurative decorations now. And it was really lovely; we enjoyed meeting, you know, the real Turks. And unfortunately, he's retired now from the faculty at Robert College, and he's not doing very well in old age, not accepting it very well, which is bad, and I haven't seen him. I saw him last – I don't remember when my last trip to Turkey was, in the '80s. I did see him then, but – we correspond at Christmas, but that's not great. So that's about it.
ABF: And do you remember seeing other Dumbarton Oaks scholars while you were there, like I know that Kitzinger came and stayed with you in October 1963?
IU: He did?
ABF: That's what the letter said.
IU: I'm going to see if I can see these letters, yeah.
ABF: They're there, at Dumbarton Oaks.
IU: I don't even know the name of the director. Joe, what's the name of the director?
ABF: Ziolkowski.
IU: Oh, yes, somebody told me that.
IU: Does he have a family?
ABF: Yes.
JM: He has a wife too; it's a very good addition to Dumbarton Oaks.
IU: Oh, good, I'm glad to hear that, because the one before that, I don't think – well no, well yeah, he's Director. But it's still Alice-Mary, right, who is Director of Byzantine Studies, but she's going to retire, isn't she?
ABF: Yeah, mhm.
JM: She's gonna stay one more year.
IU: One more year, yeah.
ABF: Yeah, Alice-Mary told us all about you.
IU: She did?
ABF: She did. She had very kind things to say.
IU: She did? I remember once Philip Grierson was giving a little cocktail party before dinner – and dinner too, I guess – outside, and I was early, and I didn't want to be early, so I was looking into this – there used to be a sort of an antique shop at the corner, I think – and I was looking in the window there, and so I was sauntering around, wasting time, and Alice-Mary came by, and she said, "What are you doing on a street corner, Mrs. Underwood?" So I said, "Well, I'm early, I'm early." Oh, dear.
ABF: I'm just wondering if we could go back for just a second to sort of the early days and if you could –
IU: Yes, you should have stopped me.
CW: No, no.
ABF: No, no, we wanted to hear it as you remember it before we asked questions. But do you remember going to teas with Mrs. Bliss or any of those other sort of rituals besides the music concerts?
IU: Oh, I meant to tell you about the teas. Yes, the teas were originally in the Music Room, which was not – they were too formal, really. It was cold, and I didn't enjoy that particularly. But then they moved to the Founders' Room – I hope it's still called that. It's on the right-hand side down the hall.
ABF: In the Main Building?
IU: Yes, yes. At the main entrance, the main entrance to the house, beyond that, when you still go down the hall, there's a relatively small room on the right, which has – I think it has bookcases; I've forgotten now – and it used to be called the Founders' Room, I think.
JM: I think it was called the Study, and the larger room was the Founders' Room.
IU: Oh, was it? The larger room, I know, is now called the Founders' Room, but I thought the other one was – well no, probably. I don't know, I don't know.
JM: I'm as confused as you are; I've only been here 33 years.
IU: No, but I've forgotten. My memory is not reliable. Anyway, you think it was called the Study. Well, that was a smaller room, and it was very nice, and Mrs. Bliss would occasionally appear, even though Harvard had had the gift for some time now, you know, of Dumbarton Oaks, and usually it was the scholars, and they didn't have to come – I don't think my husband ever came. I don't know whether he did or not. But the younger Fellows would certainly come, and Mrs. Bliss's maid, the maid who had been her personal maid – and I don't know whether she still had duties at their home in Georgetown – but she would be there at tea time, and she would make the most delicious butter sandwiches, just butter – they were so good – on very lovely bread. So, one day Sarah and I were walking in the gardens, and I had on a denim skirt, and she had on denim slacks, and she said, "Oh, let's go to tea." And I said, "Sarah, we can't go to tea. Look at us!" And she said, "Oh, come on, Mom. I know everybody there!" she said. So, I let myself be persuaded. And unfortunately it was one of the days when Mrs. Bliss had chosen to come. And we were sitting around having tea. And as I said, Mrs. Bliss, she always tried to be friendly, you know, but she didn't quite know, so she turned and she said, "And to whom does this belong?" pointing to Sarah. And I said, "She's mine, Mrs. Bliss! She's mine!" You know, our encounters were rather strange, Mrs. Bliss' and mine.
ABF: Do you remember Mr. Bliss as well?
IU: No, no. He didn't show up very much. Well, I knew him, of course, and one of the things I remember, when he died, Mrs. Bliss, who I think had a rather soft spot for my husband, who was quite handsome – they met in the hall, and she said, "Oh, Underwood" – everybody was by their surname; she never – "I wonder, you know, Mr. Bliss, we found that he had many shirts that he didn't wear, and I was wondering if you would like them." He was just as thunderstruck as I had been in my encounters. I said, "How did you handle that?" That's one encounter he told me about. And he said, "Well, I didn't quite know, but I finally said, 'You know, Mrs. Bliss, Mr. Bliss was a much taller man than I, and I'm afraid perhaps they wouldn't fit me.'" What else could he say? I thought it was such a strange suggestion, you know. But I knew who he was, of course. We shook hands, and I went through receiving line after receiving line, and there he was, so of course I knew him. But I remember their golden anniversary, they had a reception, and there was a line to go to greet them. It went from R Street all the way to the front bit, to the main entrance of the house, you know; people waited to see them. And we were in line, we were near the R Street entrance, actually; suddenly, the word came down the line, "Mrs. Bliss would like to see Underwood; Mrs. Bliss would like to see Underwood." My husband was very reserved, and finally it reached us. And Paul was looking at us, and I said, "Well, Paul, she wants to see you; you'd better go." So poor Paul, he had to walk all the way up to the front of the line; I don't know why she wanted to see him at that point. I never did learn why she called him. He probably told me, but it didn't stick. That was so funny. Oh dear. But I really didn't know Mr. Bliss. He seemed very nice, you know. He didn't spend much time at Dumbarton Oaks. She, of course – her great interest was the garden, and she still planned, she and her landscape architect – Farr –
ABF: Beatrix Farrand.
IU: Yeah. – planned a water garden, and I mean it was pebbles imported from Scotland, and I don't know what's happened to that part of –
ABF: It's still there.
CW: By the pool, yeah.
IU: Is it still a water garden? I mean, is there water on it?
CW: It's just pebbles now; it doesn't have water.
JM: The design was flawed and wouldn't hold the water, and they redid it at the cost of many tens of thousands of dollars, and they did it wrong, and it didn't hold again.
IU: Now it holds? It never held? Before that it was a tennis court. And I remember during the war diplomats would come there and play, you know, and there were also victory gardens on the grounds that the staff had, little plots where you could grow vegetables. We never had one; we were not gardeners. So, it was a great experience, really.
ABF: Did it seem as if there was a very clearly defined social hierarchy among the scholars who were working there?
IU: No.
ABF: With regard to who was invited to lunch there?
IU: When ambassadors were invited to dine at the Fellows Building, I don't know who hosted the dinner – Mrs. Bliss or Jack Thacher. When the French ambassador came, the Underwoods were invited – I assume because of me. And when the Turkish ambassador was invited, Sirarpie Der Nersessian, an Armenian scholar, was invited – because she was born in Istanbul? I don't really know whom Mrs. Bliss invited to their home from Dumbarton Oaks. I remember there was Fanny Bonajuto, for example. Have you heard of her? She was assistant to Julia Warner, who was in charge of publications at one time, and Fanny came from a very good family in Italy, and she had married a Sicilian prince, and so she was a principessa – how do you pronounce it in Italian? Principessa or whatever.
CW: Principessa.
IU: – And she was invited to Mrs. Bliss's for lunch. Mrs. Bliss never invited me. Oh, I didn't tell you about the Christmas – I've got to – Well, the Christmas party, the Blisses.
JM: I'd like to just put another tape in before you do this. We'll run out of tape. Just pause for a minute, please.
IU: But don't waste your tape; it's just going to be one story.
JM: Well, I only have three minutes. So let me just pause.
IU: The Blisses used to give – I remember one, but I think it was more than one time – a Christmas party at their house. The members of Dumbarton Oaks received pointsettias at Christmas time and flowering plants at Easter; Mr. Kearney, head of the grounds, would deliver them, also presents from Mrs. Bliss. One year, I remember the card that came with it. I don't know whether it was always to the wives or whether I just misread the card that came with it and thought it was addressed to me. And I looked at it and I couldn't make out what it was; it was a little case – I don't even remember what it was made of. So, I wrote a thank-you note – I don't know how I phrased it, because I didn't know what the object was, but I phrased it somehow – thanking Mrs. Bliss. It was meant for my husband. And she was, she really – I heard – gave Kearney a hard time for delivering the wrong thing, delivering it supposedly to me when it should have been to my husband. I don't know what happened. I was so embarrassed to have this whole thing here. But the one I was going to tell you about, the Christmas party that I remember, was at their home in their rumpus room, where there was a Picasso on the wall, and you name it, you know, but it was what they termed the "rumpus room." And it was just for the Dumbarton Oaks Fellows and wives. And 1952 was the first year that my husband was to be accompanied by our daughter and me for his yearly sixth-month directing of the work in Istanbul, and Mrs. Bliss had presents for everybody there at the party. And mine was a very nice fitted toilet case. And I thought that was so nice, really so very, you know, gracious and very thoughtful. Usually it was her social secretary who selected them. I'm sure she gave her a list and said, "Get something," you know, so that was very nice. But like everything that Mrs. Bliss did, there was always something. Children were not invited to this party. Now that was okay with us, because my mother lived with us, and so I had a live-in babysitter, you know, Sarah's grandmother. But the Van Nices did not have a mother living with them, and they kept their children in the car, in the street, all during this party. Now, really, I would not have done that. I'm sorry. But I thought that was so bad. But you know, Mrs. Bliss didn't think of the problems that parents have sometimes. So, that was sad. That was all I was going to say.
ABF: Well, we don't want to keep you any longer, but we'd love to keep going.
IU: No really, I must go.
ABF: Well, thank you very, very much.]]>
EE: Yes, twenty-second.
GB: 2009. And we sit here together in the Fellows Building with former Fellows here in our Guest House. And we have a wonderful special guest here, Elizabeth Ettinghausen, former Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks in 1945, '44–'45. So we were just about to talk about your, at that time, not-yet-husband, Richard Ettinghausen.
EE: Yes, for the opening of Dumbarton Oaks, Mrs. Bliss had a special invitation, the note, whatever it was. And my husband, I mean Richard Ettinghausen, and others were invited, among them Weitzmann, Kurt Weitzmann. And the question was: who would sit to the right of Mrs. Bliss? And I don't remember the details anymore. I think Kurt Weitzmann was a little older. At first she wanted Richard Ettinghausen to be to her right and then she realized or was told that Kurt Weitzmann was older and therefore he should be to the right, her right. And Richard Ettinghausen was to her left.
GB: Ah. Do you know –
EE: Of course, I wasn't here.
GB: You weren't here. And you knew about, of course, the event through your husband.
EE: Yes.
GB: Do you know where this took place?
EE: No.
GB: I guess it was the Music Room, but I'm not sure about that.
EE: I really don't know.
GB: Yeah. That's nice – choosing who's first according to seniority, that's interesting. Now, Elizabeth, we would be very interested in learning more about your first visit, when you arrived here to come as a Junior Fellow –
EE: Yes.
GB: – and how this came about.
EE: I was told that I should go to Harvard and ask them about it, because somebody had suggested that I go to – that maybe that would be a possibility, to become a Fellow here. So I went to Harvard University, and I was given the names, whom I should interview with. It was, first of all, Professor–Director Paul Sachs, and then Koehler, and also one other person, one other professor. And I'm not sure whether I met Blake there, too, Richard Blake. I did meet him here and I was very much – everyone was very much impressed by him. He was very, very nice, really, and very kind to all the Fellows. What was so exciting about him: he was married to a Georgian princess. But we were told there were a lot of princesses in Georgia.
GB: So you went to Paul Sachs and to Koehler up in Cambridge.
EE: Yes, that's right, and it was a very nice interview. He was very friendly and I don't remember anymore what he asked or anything like that. I just told him what I had done and where I had been before, which was in Istanbul.
GB: So, what had you done by then? What was your kind of scholarly –
EE: Well, I had done my MA, which I did on Byzantine tiles from a certain site, which had been excavated by the department where I worked, but it was before me so I never saw the excavation. But I was asked to work on the tiles from – Byzantine tiles from that site. Now, hardly any Byzantine tiles were known or had been excavated before that. At that time, there was a great deal of freedom in the Museum, the Topkapi Sarayi Museum in Istanbul, and I could go, which would be impossible now, of course, to go through big stacks of material – whatever it was; I mean, of course the tiles, but also look, I could find other tiles or anything like that and nobody supervised me. I felt actually a bit – I was a little bit scared, really, but of course I didn't do anything wrong; but how could I prove it? Well, it was very nice. I even was then told by the chemist connected with the Museum how to clean them, which I did, not too much, I hope. And then I worked on that and the drawing, the pictures and everything, and then for my PhD thesis I did something quite different. And then later on, many years later, I was asked by André Grabar to write an article on that for the Cahiers archéologiques, which I did. I was – I wrote that when I was, when my elder son was four months old. And I wrote it all, worked on it and wrote it all at night.
GB: And that was later, as you said.
EE: That was in – he was born in '52, so I worked on it, beginning of '53. I think it was published a few years later.
GB: Yes. So, if you'll allow me, we may come back to the interview you had with Paul Sachs and Koehler and to introduce yourself, to present yourself as a young Byzantine art historian and eager, I guess, to continue and to take the opportunity to study at Dumbarton Oaks. What did you know at that time about the Dumbarton Oaks institute?
EE: Nothing.
GB: Nothing. So, soon after you learned that you had been accepted, you arrived. And how was this, kind of, arriving time for you? How, yeah, did you get the whole institute to understand and how was the set-up at that time?
EE: Well there were three other Fellows besides me; we lived upstairs here in this building. Paul Underwood, who was married, lived outside so I met him at the library and for meals here, for lunch here. In fact, he asked me, always, to translate anything in Italian for him, which I didn't know well. I knew Latin well enough, but somehow I could always satisfy him – it wasn't too much, but still. They were all very nice, the Fellows.
GB: And you were a Junior Fellow –
EE: I was a Junior Fellow.
GB: – at that time, having finished the Ph.D.
EE: Yes.
GB: And you were a Fellow here, which meant something different from the work the Fellows, Junior Fellows, nowadays do and –
EE: Well, there was one exception. One person didn't have a Ph.D. yet and worked on this, her thesis, but she had already quite a lot of experience. It just happened that she hadn't done it yet.
GB: Do you remember her name?
EE: Margaret Ames – Alexander.
GB: Margaret Alexander.
EE: Well, Ames. Ames was her name at that time. She wasn't married.
GB: Okay, thank you. That's important. And your co-Fellows: you remember three.
EE: Well, she was one of them.
GB: She was one of them.
EE: And Rosalie Green and Josephine Harris.
GB: And Josephine Harris.
EE: Yes and, of course, we saw – there was a sensation – that we had a nun here, also.
GB: And that is Sister Monica.
EE: Sister Monica Wagner, yes. That's right. She came a little bit later. She came, I think, in spring.
GB: Aha. So you were –
EE: And she was here, of course, for meals. She was here only for lunchtime, of course. And she had to answer some unusual questions, I would feel, but she was always of good humor and she didn't mind that, because one person asked, for instance, "Well, which church do you like to go to especially? I mean, one church versus another church," and she said, of course being Catholic, "They're all alike." Actually it was Professor Vasiliev who asked that question.
GB: You were four, five – five young scholars. Young women, which is quite amazing.
EE: Not so amazing during the war. It was still war.
GB: Wow. Okay. That is interesting.
EE: I would say that's the reason.
GB: Was that a topic of this being, kind of, discussed or mentioned, wanting to work here? Or was that such a, kind of, just everyday life fact that it was not even remarked on?
EE: No, it wasn't remarked on. And the advantage was – so we were four women upstairs. At that time we couldn't have had a man there to – now of course this is a different situation.
GB: Yeah, yeah, this is very interesting indeed. Yeah. So Paul Underwood was not living here in this building; it was just the five of you – four of you.
EE: Four, yes. And of course Monica – Sister Monica, of course, didn't live here.
GB: Oh, she didn't live here?
EE: Oh, she couldn't have.
GB: No, she couldn't have. So she was here in a –
EE: The same way as Paul Underwood, coming to the library to do her work.
GB: That's interesting. Now, your work when you were here as a Junior Fellow – can you describe this a little bit, what you did, what you researched, and what kind of – what your scholarly life as a Junior Fellow was at the time?
EE: Yes. One was supposed to divide one's time half, really half and half, for research, one's own research on the one hand, and working for the archives for Dumbarton Oaks – archives of monuments, all the publications of monuments – and all details, everything within the monuments – of different regions. And each person was assigned to a different region and I, of course, was assigned to where I had been before: to Istanbul, Constantinople.
GB: So you were looking into photos, our photos of –
EE: Not just photos.
GB: Archival material.
EE: The articles, all articles that were published, all photos that were published. And also I had some photos, which I had taken, and I also contributed some of those.
GB: What was the goal of this work? Do you remember having been told a certain project mission or goal, doing this type of archival – how would we describe it nowadays? – maybe a kind of database, to set it up, on Byzantine monuments all over the eastern world, or maybe not just eastern but Byzantine world.
EE: The Byzantine world, yes, because one was doing it for Tunisia, for instance. And it could have been expanded, of course, to all regions. Rosalie Green did it, for instance – she did it for Jerusalem. And Josephine Harris did Egypt, I believe. Yes, definitely she did Egypt.
GB: So you were told to just look into what we had collected already at that time or was there a system?
EE: No, go through it – get the bibliography and except the – what was published. It is a kind of index, like the Index of Christian Art, but with more detail.
GB: Yeah, indeed with all the monuments.
EE: Which one could have updated, of course, if one had continued.
GB: Yes, indeed. Where were you placed? Where was your office and the office of the other Fellows? Where did you work?
EE: We didn't have offices. We were in the library, on the big table in the center of the library, which was on the second floor of the main building.
GB: The books around you –
EE: Yes, and sometimes one needed interlibrary loan books, which one could get. I remember, for my own research I did some of that. Maybe also otherwise; that I don't remember. But I remember specifically that I did for my own research.
GB: Mentioning the library, who were the librarians at that time?
EE: I see her in front of me and I can't think of her name now. She was very good and very nice. Actually, the person really in charge was Barbara Sessions, but the one who was active, you know, helping you with getting the particular book or something like that was the person whose name I can't think of. She had blonde hair, she was very slim and very nice, very fast always. Everybody was very cooperative. Oh yes, and there, of course, if you had something, for instance, in Russian, there was Mrs. Scheffer. And I did something absolutely terrible by having a Bulgarian book – asking her. And she said – she didn't see the cover, and I didn't think of it. Of course, Bulgarian is not Russian. It's similar. And she first said, "Oh but that's terrible Russian. That's not proper Russian." And then, but she was kind enough and she was able to – I didn't need too much, but I needed a few things.
GB: So there was one librarian. Is that correct? She was the librarian and she was –
EE: Mrs. Scheffer was just – this other – well there were more than one but I don't remember the others.
GB: What do you remember about the acquisition policy? How many books – what was the policy of acquiring books for the Dumbarton Oaks Library? Was there, kind of, a "we would get all books we know of," or what was the policy?
EE: I don't know about the policy, but I think certainly all the main books. And every week, and possibly more often, maybe twice a week, books came from the Library of Congress, also.
GB: Aha, so there was an exchange with the Library of Congress.
EE: But also with other libraries, of course.
GB: With other libraries, of course, yes.
EE: But this was more regular. Of course, this was not just for us. This was for the professors as well, or more so, perhaps.
GB: When you found any book, which was not in the library, you would have told the librarian and she would have looked into either first looking into acquiring it, purchasing it, or first looking into where we could get it from a different library?
EE: I only had the experience that she was getting it from interlibrary loan, but there may have been cases when she'd ordered the book – that's possible, too.
GB: So that was your work for hire, so to speak, and that was half-day. And then there was the other side of your research, and maybe you want to talk a little bit about the research part you conducted at that time and how it was perceived here at Dumbarton Oaks.
EE: Well, I tried to find out more about the, for instance, the representations – I mean the art of designs one finds of tiles and collectibles, where else you find them, and comparisons and so on and how it came about that one had tiles at all. I have developed more interpretations since then, of course.
GB: And was the library and the environment of help – adequate for your study and research? How did you communicate with your co-Fellows about your research? Did this happen at all or was there, kind of, everybody quietly researching?
EE: More or less it was everybody for himself or herself. I mean, you could, of course, if you wanted to especially discuss something, but basically it was each one for himself or herself, while that had been very different before, because there were seminars every week while Professor Koehler was in charge here and in residence here, which was the year before I came here. There were these seminars and working together and reporting about one's work and one's questions and interchange. And that was not the case while I was here the first year, not at all, because the professors in residence were not in the field at all. I mean, they were historians and not really interested in art history. And the second year it was Professor Friend, formerly from Princeton. He was interested in some projects – if that fitted in, fine, and if it didn't fit in then it wasn't of much interest to him. There was one person who worked with him; it was Rosalie Green, because he was interested in that project, but that was it, really.
GB: So, compared to what we have now: every week a research report; the fellows have to present and the interest, of course, not only in exchanging research ideas and topics; but presenting it to the community is very much, of course, in the foreground today. At least – correct me if I'm wrong. And I'm trying to explain this with my mind. In those years, the primary interest point in Dumbarton Oaks, having you here, was to get to develop a database and to, yeah, get this built up, and to, of course, provide the opportunity, the outstanding opportunity to, beyond that, do research in your specific area. It was more the kind of, almost a position, which – actually I say "position" because I know this structure similarly from the German Archaeological Institute, where I actually was at a time one of those – that's not the term they use – but a hired staff person to do half-day work for the Institute and half-day I had to do my research, but in a way nobody cared about that research because that was kind of an add-on to the proper hired work. Is that something, that picture I –
EE: Well, I would say it simply was not structured at all. There was no structure. You were here on your own. You could hook up with anybody else if you wanted to and if you felt it would do, it would advance your project or help somebody else to advance his or her project, but otherwise there was no structure, really.
GB: And were there meetings to follow up on the database work, on your proper assignment?
EE: No, none whatsoever.
GB: And how did this kind of –
EE: You simply did what you did and when each project – let's say working on such-and-such a church – was finished, you handed it over to be typed, because you just – there were no computers, of course. You wrote it by hand, really, and then it was formalized.
GB: I have on this list of 1944–45 another category and that's "Fellows," and Fellows here listed are Milton Anastos –
EE: Oh yes, of course. Anastasios. Anastasis, Anastasis. I'm sorry, of course. How could I say that?
GB: Yes, I see it is incorrectly spelled. And Peter Charanis.
EE: Yes, that's right and he was married to a Belgian.
GB: Can you explain a little bit where the position of being Fellows – what they contributed to the Dumbarton Oaks Harvard community?
EE: Well, they were much more advanced scholars. While the Junior Fellows were at the beginning of any career, Peter and Milton were both in the midst of their career, more or less in their midst. They gave papers at symposia; they worked on the more advanced projects. I remember Mr. Friend asked Peter Charanis to work on a special project of a church that doesn't exist anymore, but there were some records about it, a poem actually it was, a longer poem, and he worked on that, for instance.
GB: So they had similar assignments to do specific research, the Fellows, Milton and Peter.
EE: Well they – I don't think it was obligatory for them to do it, but once they were Fellows they were asked and they could agree or maybe they could also disagree. It was a special project, though, what Mr. Friend was interested in, so he asked about that. But I don't think it was, so to say, the bylaws that he had to designate a particular topic or anything like that. It was just a personal matter.
GB: And they were studying with you in the reader room in the second level of the main house?
EE: No, I think they were somewhere else, because there wasn't enough space.
GB: So they might have had offices or –
EE: I think there were some other rooms where they could be, but basically there were no offices in that sense and certainly not that everybody had an office to him or herself.
GB: What do you remember about the main house first level at that time? Was the library –
EE: No, no, there was no library. Well, there may have been some books. Yes there were books, of course. In one room downstairs, there were books. But I think there were also more general books, not just something about the early Christian, Byzantine art, but the Blisses' collection, for a private collection, some of it, I think.
GB: Do you remember the term "Founders' Room" at that time? And this place—do you remember what was going on in that space or was that a library space? Were there books in there?
EE: Yes. But it was also a kind of reception room.
GB: We will come back to the receptions and the more, kind of, social life, but let me ask you now a little bit about the other scholars, resident scholars at that time now that we have learned about the Junior Fellows, the Fellows, and you have mentioned already Albert Friend. And there were more professors in residence.
EE: Yes, there were Mr. and Mrs. Young, Sirarpie Der Nersessian, who had been professor at Wellesley before.
GB: How was the relationship with Sirarpie, she being a young woman as well –
EE: Not so young.
GB: Yeah. Right. Yes.
EE: It was fine and we usually had arranged for dinner – there was no dinner on Sundays here, so we made our own dinner and Miss Der Nersessian usually joined in. We did it together.
GB: Albert Friend – how was – he seemed to have had a major impact regarding the suggestions, regarding the research part. Is that right?
EE: Not for the Junior Fellows. Well, except for he was interested in what Rosalie Green did, but otherwise no. I mean one could, of course, ask him or get advice but one had to specially go and ask for it. He never asked you about it.
GB: And then we have at that time Edward Kennard Rand and Alexander Vasiliev.
EE: Well yes, they were professors in 1944 already and they were not art historians. Professor Rand was particularly interested in Carolingian manuscripts and he did a lot of work – not the pictures, the miniatures, but the text – and he was very much interested in all of the signs, the pinpricks and so on and that he continued to talk about time and again when I was in residence.
GB: And Alexander Vasiliev.
EE: He came a bit later. I don't remember exactly when. I would say he loosened things up and made it much more lively and interesting, because he was a very interesting person of course and very Russian in a very pleasant way.
GB: Do you remember specific – or specifically –
EE: No, he was interested in, much more interested in music, I mean also in music and so on. Actually Koehler had started that. He got us a record player and records so we could have music, also.
GB: He and the Fellows.
EE: Yes, here. It was right here.
GB: You were listening to records together?
EE: Oh, of course, yes, yes. It might have been right after lunch, for instance, or in the evening, so we could do that. That's how I got to know some music very well.
GB: Lunch is a good topic.
EE: That was on the big table, and the two professors – La Piana and Rand – were at the ends and the Fellows in between.
GB: So you had to appear, to have lunch and dinner together.
EE: I suppose so. I don't remember about dinner, but there must have been dinner. And of course, there were servants and one was served. One never got up or anything.
GB: Was there communication going on over lunch? How was that?
EE: Yes. Well it was particularly Professor Rand who spoke and you listened.
GB: Scholarly exchange or everyday small talk?
EE: Well, it wasn't very scholarly. It was not very exciting. Well, I'm sorry, but Mr. Rand was not his former brilliance anymore, and that was the reason.
GB: I see.
EE: And La Piana also talked, but always trying to be very, very nice to Mr. Rand and taking him as the head of it all.
GB: At that time who was the director of Dumbarton Oaks? It was kind of –
EE: It was – oh my God.
GB: It must have been Thacher.
EE: Thacher, yes. He came once in a while. I mean, of course you saw him at the main building.
GB: Why that? You saw him at the main building?
EE: No, well sometimes, because that's where he was, that's where his office was, too.
GB: Mhm. Do you remember where his office was? In the main house on the first level, where it is now?
EE: Yes.
GB: And, he being the director of the Dumbarton Oaks institute, filling the specific role, what did you understand of that role at that time? How did you feel about the overall mission if we want to use this word, which is of course not the word you would have used at the time, but what was the, kind of, general mission of the Dumbarton Oaks institute?
EE: Well, he was a very good go-between – the Blisses and the institute, Dumbarton Oaks, and you saw him a great deal with the Blisses. And he understood very well to implement also what Mrs. Bliss really hoped the institute would be like and he was, of course, director of the museum, which was in storage then.
GB: Which was packed, indeed.
EE: Yes, because of the war.
GB: Yes. So you did not get to see an object while you were here – is that correct?
EE: No. Some pictures I saw.
GB: Oh yes, some pictures, but no –
EE: No, it was impossible. And one understood very well why.
GB: Yeah? Why?
EE: Well because of the war, the danger of possibly some problems.
GB: Did you feel this – I mean, being here, I mean, sure we know that at that time there was quite some realistic fear or reason to be afraid. What was the situation in Washington and Dumbarton Oaks besides that the collection was stored, protected, and downstairs in storage, in the basement.
EE: Well I didn't know. I didn't know. I did know that the downstairs, the basement, was taboo for anybody in Dumbarton Oaks, at least the Fellows, because there were government projects going on. Well it was really – in fact the president of Harvard was intimately connected with that, and he came for visits from time to time. So I met him that way also because he came to lunch sometimes.
GB: The president of Harvard University?
EE: Yes. Well, it was the Manhattan Project, as I now know, but not then, of course.
GB: The Byzantine galleries being closed, because of the collection being stored – did you ever enter that space? Was it just closed because it was empty, or was there anything – I mean, thinking of the Barberini sarcophagus, for example, which was certainly –
EE: There were a few pieces I knew. I don't remember details anymore, I must admit.
GB: Well, it was a closed-off area, so it was not of any interest and, of course, it was not really a happy story, to be not up but in protection, in storage. So, Thacher was, well, trying to do the best, to make the best out of the situation and to, of course, as you said, to work with the Blisses closely.
EE: Yes, and also he was very good, I suppose, in spreading the news of Dumbarton Oaks, I assume. I mean, he was very good at parties and so on, so he knew – he met a lot of people and knew a lot of people in Washington. And I'm sure from that point of view he was very useful for spreading the word – what Dumbarton Oaks was.
GB: So there was some interest in connecting to the social life of Washington?
EE: Absolutely. But that was he alone.
GB: But not the Blisses?
EE: Oh, the Blisses, of course, were. Oh yes. But I mean not the people for, not the Fellows or the professors or so.
GB: So let's talk a little about receptions and the Blisses. At first maybe about your – as a Fellow – your meetings or whenever you had a chance to meet and talk with Robert and Mildred Bliss. Did this happen on a regular basis?
EE: She came to tea. I don't know whether there still is tea being served, probably not, but then it was de rigueur, one could almost say, to come to tea, and Mrs. Bliss appeared a great many times – not every time, not every day, but most days, or often, let's say.
GB: Was it once a week, the tea, or –
EE: No, no, every day. I mean, except for weekends. There was tea and cookies or anything. I think rather fancy, too.
GB: So that was kind of a break in the afternoon. Is that what I am to understand?
EE: Yes.
GB: Yeah. Nice. So that everybody came together for a short time I guess – an hour maximum or even two of them.
EE: Probably not as long as that. And Mrs. Bliss talked also to, of course, to the professors and to Fellows, but also to the Junior Fellows.
GB: Was she curious about finding out what you were up to, regarding your research, or was she curious about hearing your opinion about Dumbarton Oaks institute, or –
EE: No, never, no. It was rather what you were doing.
GB: Researching.
EE: What work you were doing.
GB: And do you remember being asked – Mildred Bliss asking you about what your research, what she kind of asked?
EE: No, I must admit I don't remember, but she did ask, yes. I don't know how interested she really was in the specifics. She was, I think, more interested in the general and what went on in general. And the sort of policy and strategy.
GB: When she was present, did you talk or did she mention any kind of objects in the sense of collecting, of her passion of collecting art, which we, as we see now, is quite a major part.
EE: Oh yes, yes.
GB: Did she mention this? Did she talk about, "Oh, I have seen recently something coming up?"
EE: No, no I don't remember that. I don't think that; it could have happened that she talked about such a thing to somebody, but certainly not to, so to say, everybody present.
GB: Another point which is, of course, very related to Mildred Bliss is the garden. Was that a topic or how did you –
EE: Oh yes, and I do remember, also, for instance, I once looked and said, "Well, I don't see – whatever it was, a tree or shrub or what and I was told, "No, Mrs. Bliss had changed her mind. She wanted it to be changed." She was very active in helping with the design for the garden. Of course she had a very well known garden architect.
GB: Beatrix Farrand.
EE: Yes, that's right. Who also did some work at Princeton, Princeton University, but on a very small scale there.
GB: I do not know, I cannot remember if Beatrix Farrand was – no, she was no more around. She had to agree, setting it up in the very beginning, the twenties, and by the forties, she, I think, was no more around Dumbarton Oaks, but she was certainly –
EE: No, she definitely wasn't around when I was here. And I think in some cases that Mrs. Bliss did it on her own, and I wouldn't be surprised, because Mrs. Bliss was extraordinarily intelligent and clever and just as her range of knowledge was amazing, so I'm sure she had learned a great deal from Beatrix –
GB: Farrand.
EE: Farrand, yes. And could design things on her own, too.
GB: Yeah, yeah. We know of many projects where she was really the designer and participated in all kinds of different things with a high interest in every little detail. Do you know how the gardens were administered at that time? How were they maintained? What about the gardeners and the staff?
EE: Well, I don't remember the name of the head gardener anymore, but he was an important person, of course. We always – we talked to him and so on. And the associate gardeners – I suppose they were the two who lived in this house at the corner there.
GB: The double cottage.
EE: Yes, the double cottage
GB: Which is nowadays security.
EE: And at night I understand there was somebody, a guard; there was a dog going around. I've never seen him but that doesn't mean that he wasn't there, of course.
GB: Could you enter the main house at any time? Was it, so to speak, open to go back to the office or to study?
EE: That I don't know. I only heard that, you see, and I don't know anything more about that.
GB: There was one important feature attached to the gardens at that time, as nowadays, and that's the pool.
EE: Oh yes.
GB: You used the pool? You were allowed to use the pool?
EE: Yes, oh yes, yes.
GB: And everybody shared the pool?
EE: All the members of the – the Fellows and professors, yes.
GB: Was there kind of a senior Fellows hour or –
EE: No, no it was simply whoever wanted to go, whenever, could go there and, I mean, not normally during work hours.
GB: And at that time the pool is – of course the public came to visit the gardens or were the gardens closed as well – I mean specifically in this year were the gardens open to the public? Do you remember?
EE: There were times when they were open, yes. I think it was from two to four or something like that. I think we usually went, you see, after work, so it was a little bit later except for weekends, and I don't remember how that worked with the public and the – because we certainly couldn't be there when the public came and there were – and guests could come, too. I mean if they had permission from, I suppose, the director. My – Richard Ettinghausen, for instance, was a friend of the director and therefore he could go and use the pool.
GB: And you met your husband –
EE: I met him, yes. I didn't meet him at the pool, but I met him at the library and I asked him for some advice. And also it was the head of the library, Barbara Sessions, who was a friend of my future husband, and we were good friends. She was very, very friendly and very nice and, of course, she was a friend of the Blisses, so – and so we went on some outings because she liked to walk, and we both liked to walk, too.
GB: That means, mentioning your future husband, that there were – visiting scholars, we would say nowadays – there were scholars who stopped by, who had a specific period of study time they spent here at Dumbarton Oaks. Is that what I understand?
EE: Yes, there were some.
GB: And they were sitting, then, again, in the library and next to you and the other Junior Fellows or were they at any kind of specific place?
EE: They were in various places, I think.
GB: Various places. And that must have been, then, on that second level, which –
EE: I would think so.
GB: – I understand was at that time the main library research space.
EE: I assume that's where they were.
GB: Talking about receptions, or the Blisses, Mildred Bliss especially being present in the afternoon for the tea hour or the tea gathering: were there any kind of other specific events you had been invited to?
EE: Lectures.
GB: Lectures. Public lectures? Were they open to the public, as it is nowadays, or was it –
EE: I doubt whether they were open to the public, but to, I suppose, to scholars or friends, of course, of the Blisses.
GB: In the Music Room?
EE: Yes, in the Music Room and those were always very nice events, of course, and then there were concerts also and those were special events and the finest event was, of course, the symposium. Always.
GB: Yes, the annual Byzantine Spring Symposium.
EE: Yes.
GB: Do you remember the symposia you have attended – was it something very outstanding compared to the symposia of the recent past, which you have, of course, attended on some occasions?
EE: Well, I'm –
GB: Can you describe the sort of atmosphere, the set-up, and, of course, the scholarly contributions?
EE: I suppose it would be very hard for me to judge, really, because I was, after all, at the beginning, and it all seemed marvelous, so insofar – perhaps I would say later on it was perhaps not as marvelous, but because I knew more, so no, I don't think there's any conference ever which is all tops – I mean every scholar absolutely perfect and so on. And I could, of course, discriminate much more and notice the differences much more than I could at the beginning.
GB: What was the –
EE: But it was – there were outstanding scholars who came.
GB: What was the general atmosphere compared to a nowadays symposium, where we have a lot of discussions and open the floor, of course, and ask the public – nowadays it's indeed the public – of course, the interested public, who is invited to attend the symposium. What do you remember about that aspect when – the years you were here?
EE: I'm not quite sure how I should answer that.
GB: Was it more – I mean, I, looking at the pictures we have of the symposia and the speakers, it looks to me much more formal and going of course by the appearance of the gentlemen, the speakers, and it's just that the only way, incorrectly, I guess, you project that into the audience or into the place where it took place and you think that this was probably more, kind of, formal, overall formal event.
EE: Oh, absolutely.
GB: Yeah, we talked about the symposia at that time.
EE: Yes, well, I think especially we Junior Fellows felt that way – that was the apex of the whole year. And the great scholars came and they discussed matters, and that was very interesting, of course, to hear them sometimes agree and sometimes not agree. These semi-gods acting like that, that meant something very special, of course. And the lunches and the dinners and everything – that was wonderful and speaking with those special scholars. And they were all very nice and open. Well, and otherwise you wouldn't encounter them quite so much, all that easily.
GB: Kurt Weitzmann and Hugo Buchthal, for example, both – did you meet them here at Dumbarton Oaks?
EE: Yes, I met them here first, for the first time. Later on they became friends, but that was when I wasn't a Fellow anymore.
GB: But you got introduced to Kurt Weitzmann while you were here.
EE: Yes, absolutely. Oh, yes. It was a very nice encounter. He was always very, very jovial and very nice, easy to talk to.
GB: Ernst Kitzinger?
EE: Of course, yes, I met him. Well, I'd met him before because he came once in a while. I mean, he was working for the O.S.S. at that time, Office of Strategic Services, but he came sometimes as a, just, visitor to see the people, and so I met him. And then there was the famous dance, also, yes. And I wasn't prepared for anything like that. I didn't have a formal dress, so I had to buy that, and actually the other fellows helped me with that, because I didn't know where to go or what to do, so – and that was a very nice occasion, too, and of course there were people from outside who came. Oh, yes, there was one other person, who was – he had been a fellow here. He was Greek and so was his wife, and he worked at the embassy, at the Greek embassy.
GB: It was not Milton, no?
EE: No, no, not Milton. Milton was American.
GB: Yeah. Maybe Pelopidas Stephanou?
EE: No.
GB: Um –
EE: I think it was something with "A", but I'm not quite sure. Very nice person, whom I met that way, also. Now, maybe he hadn't been a Fellow here, but he was coming to lectures and whatnot, and thus Margaret had met him. That's all I can think of. There were a number of people who came to the lectures who were not directly connected but were very much interested in early Christian, Byzantine art, I suppose, and that's how they came here—for lectures and so on.
GB: When you were here, something very specific and nowadays a rare historical moment or, actually, event took place and that is what we would call nowadays the United Nations Conversations.
EE: Well, yes, that happened during the summer and therefore we couldn't be here. Of course, we didn't know what was going on, but it was something government, we were told, or so – so we had to leave.
GB: So you were not informed in any detail about that – of course, for security reasons.
EE: Exactly, oh absolutely, and also it wasn't yet certain what was going to happen – I mean what the result would be. So many people, when one said, "I work in Dumbarton Oaks" – "Oh, you're connected with the UN." And I had to inform them, "No, no, no, that happened to take place here, but it had nothing to do with Dumbarton Oaks; it's just the place that was handed over to them for the summer."
GB: And as far as I remember from what I have read about it, it was indeed that the start of the fellowship term had to be postponed, I think. You had to leave, of course, for several – it was, kind of, already booked but then extended – it got into more rounds and additional discussions. And I don't know if you remember that, but that's, I think, what I gather from the reports: that the fellows had to be a little bit late, in fact.
EE: Yes, I think, I don't remember specifically but just very vaguely I remember something for me that was lucky, actually, because I had gotten sick – I had had a very severe case of infectious hepatitis while I was in Turkey and it was a sad thing, because I was told Iran has just a more liquid yogurt, and I didn't know that it was mixed with water. If I had known that – I was told it's just more liquid. If I had known that it was mixed with water, I would never have taken it. And I got very sick from that, and I had a relapse at that time. So it was good that it started later. I had to be on a diet for quite a while.
GB: One point I had noted down is about Koehler, and although you said that Koehler was not here – you have heard about that – the event or the years before, about his role –
EE: Yes, and I missed that very much, really.
GB: That is my interest, actually, when you say you missed it: so, is that in retrospect or is it that you had known already at the time when you were here that the earlier years starting in 1940, until 1943, were under a different guidance because of Koehler and how he thought that Fellows at the institute could be built up – was it that you knew?
EE: No, I didn't know about it at all. I didn't know that – how it worked before. Koehler had not told me.
GB: How'd you learn about that – do you remember?
EE: It was from, especially, Margaret Ames and also Josephine Harris, who told me.
GB: So, your co-Fellows told you.
EE: Yes, they told me.
GB: And how did they talk about that time? That was a really interesting time.
EE: They loved it. They all thought it was wonderful.
GB: Can you explain what they thought and what it was?
EE: Well, it was a collaboration. I mean, one's work was being discussed and helped by discussing it not only with Professor Koehler but with the other Fellows also, in an informal but formal way – I mean, by getting together.
GB: And that's what they called seminars.
EE: Yes.
GB: Was it on a regular basis?
EE: It was on a regular basis, yes. And that – I realized I felt a little bit footloose as a result of it, having heard what it was, because when Professor Koehler came, it was for – oh, I don't know – two days or something like that, so really he couldn't do much and you couldn't get much from that, because he came for other, mainly other purposes.
GB: But he came to visit Dumbarton Oaks when you were here. But, he did not –
EE: He didn't stay.
GB: And were there any kind of discussions between you and the other Fellows, how to, maybe, get back to this, or why this had stopped, or was there any kind of understanding –
EE: No, it was – that was never being discussed, and I didn't have the initiative at that time, at all. I was too junior, really. I mean I had to adjust to a new life. Today, yes, I would do something –
GB: It seems –
EE: – or try to do something.
GB: – as if there was a common sense that this was very much appreciated –
EE: But it was something of the past.
GB: Yeah. It was something of the past, which was not – no more the everyday life of the institute. Yeah, that is very interesting. That is very –
EE: And I would say that Margaret Ames and Josephine Harris had gotten all the groundwork done this way, and they had found all the right directions and it wasn't so important for them to get any help or further directives. But, as far as I am concerned, it would have been a great help.
GB: Were they conducting – no, actually, you had said they all had their Ph.Ds already.
EE: Well, Margaret Ames didn't.
GB: Margaret Ames didn't, so she – but you said she was on her own track, so to speak. She did not necessarily need any more guidance –
EE: Well, I suppose she was getting it also when she – where did she get her Ph.D? I forget where she got it, really. But, well, it was – for her, at that stage, it was more cumulative. You see, she had to explore more, other sites, also. But the basic part was already there – of basic directives or direction.
GB: You weren't able to take that into the next, following year, actually, or following years. I see that both of you left after that year and only Rosalie Beth Green continued to stay so that the only one to benefit was her, I think, she is listed under this '45-'46 fellowship year. You came to the end of your term – of your years at some point and you – did you know where to go and did you get any kind of support or advice from the co-Fellows –?
EE: Oh no, nothing whatsoever.
GB: – or was it just a, kind of, natural coming-to-the-end of the fellowship?
EE: That was it, yes.
GB: And when you left, what was your, kind of –
EE: Well that was – in May I got engaged, so before I left – not that I told anybody, though.
GB: Oh, yeah? No?
EE: No. Well, Barbara Sessions, I think, knew. But otherwise, no, nobody. And I got married in the fall, September of '45. And then I helped my husband.
GB: And you moved – well, you lived –
EE: First in Washington, D.C. and then we moved to outside Vienna, Virginia, to the country. And there we did a lot of work for the house, something I'd never done before – but everything. I was a contractor and I did painting and I did woodwork and I did everything. Oh, and garden work.
GB: And while you were here, in Vienna, which is not far away, by – no, actually, it's –
EE: No, it's in northwestern Virginia.
GB: Did you come back to Dumbarton Oaks? Sure, I guess, as you continued –
EE: Yes, I did. Not very much.
GB: And your husband was still working here, I mean researching, conducting research here at Dumbarton Oaks?
EE: Here? I don't think so. I mean, he came before maybe once for research but mainly for just visiting Thacher or some other friends he had.
GB: So when you decided to stay here in D.C., was this because of –
EE: Because my husband was curator at the Freer Gallery, in charge of the Islamic department.
GB: Until when?
EE: Until '65
GB: So that's a long time.
EE: Yes. Well, we had moved back then, to Washington. I was very much – I wanted very much to go back, because it was difficult, really, always that long drive and so on.
GB: And I guess you connected, then – through the professional relationship and work relationship – you connected more to the Freer-Sackler Gallery and the landscape at that time – of course, such institutions stood in a different all-around shape, I think, an organization, than nowadays – but particularly your focus shifted toward that.
EE: Well yes, one year we went to the Middle East. That was nineteen fifty-fi – well, oh, before that, one year before that, I worked at the State Department, which was actually a very interesting experience. It was in the research department on the Middle East. The only problem was that I didn't dare to discuss anything about the Middle East because I wasn't sure whether I'd read it at documents in the State Department or in the press. So I kept quiet. But I read about some friends of ours, also, who were in the Middle East. It was broadening my experience, I would say. And then, of course, when we went to the Middle East, for one year – actually it was even fourteen months – we went over Europe to the Middle East to countries I'd never been – my husband had never been – to. He knew a great deal about it, but he had never visited there. And we started, from Italy we went to – we flew, for me it was my first flight, to Egypt and the Patriarch, the Patriarch of Cairo, was on the same plane, and it was his first flight and my first flight. There were very few passengers. It was an Alitalia plane. And he would say, "Oh look down here! No look down there!" So we were like two children, really. It was very exciting.
GB: Speaking of this makes me realize that you came, of course, from Europe to America for your fellowship by boat.
EE: By boat.
GB: And not at all by airplane.
EE: No, by boat. It was, it took a month to get here, and my parents and I were the only passengers. It was on a freighter, an American freighter. And it was – well, we saw something; nothing happened, but we saw something of what – of the war, of course. First of all, it was all darkened – or blackened. And it was interesting to learn about the experience of the sailors. They were informed that I was a – well, a fairly young person, of course. They'd have to behave, so to say. So they treated me like a sister, and they told me all kinds of stories of their lives.
GB: How old were you?
EE: Pardon?
GB: How old were you at the time?
EE: I was twenty-four, I think. So it was quite an experience being exposed to American life, not of exactly the type of person I would normally meet. But there were also some, of course, who went rather into the Merchant Marine than joining the regular forces.
GB: How did it come that you were on that boat, on that carrier, as the only family, you said?
EE: Yes. Well, my father had connections, all kinds of connections. He had connections from Istanbul with the British and the Americans.
GB: And you came from Istanbul? That's where you –
EE: From Istanbul we went to Cairo and from Cairo, then, to – on the boat, on the Liberty Ship.
GB: And you lived in Istanbul.
EE: For almost five years.
GB: Five years.
EE: At first I didn't continue my studies there, and then I was advised that I could do that and I did. And I learned. I took courses in four languages: in Turkish, in German, French, and English.
GB: At the university?
EE: Yes, Istanbul University. I mean, it was professors from different countries. Of course, it was all translated into Turkish, but I took the original. One of my teachers was Runciman and he taught, of course, history, but also art – Byzantine art.
GB: Was that how you got started, the interest –
EE: Pardon?
GB: Is that how your interest got started or piqued in –
EE: Well, it was, I mean – in Istanbul you can't avoid it, almost.
GB: Well, you could have had an interest in later, Ottoman art and –
EE: I developed that there, actually, but I was extremely lucky in Vienna, because I – Sedelmeier was the chief of the art history department. He had just come in when I started. And the last term I had with him – he not only did the general history of art course (he did it over four years), but also then special courses in whatever interested him or he had worked on. And that was on St. Sophia. So I knew quite a bit about it, as a result of it. And when I saw it for the first time, in Istanbul then, the amazing thing was, I noticed the chandeliers so much and they bothered me so much that I couldn't really enjoy and understand the space and the greatness of the church. And I went out again, quite disappointed and went another day, again, and then I didn't see the chandeliers, but I saw the space and ever since then I've seen the space – and of course all the details.
GB: That is amazing to think of Sedelmeier giving a lecture, or a seminar, on Hagia Sophia.
EE: No. He had worked on that.
GB: He had worked on it?
EE: Yes.
GB: I didn't know that. That's interesting.
EE: On the baldacchino system, especially, yes.
GB: An architectural component.
EE: Yes, well the domes and the semi-domes and so on. And that's how he got to it. And that was always very interesting for me, then. I mean, I saw things differently from, probably, what – people who really know structures and so on, of course, too, but for me it was the essence or the most important part. So I saw it differently, probably, from others.
GB: And before Istanbul, you lived in Vienna.
EE: Oh yes, yes I was born in Vienna and went to school in Vienna.
GB: Now of course, you, what – that your life would be directed in quite a – by a marriage of course, and coming – something very important, that you would have, you would have never thought of that, that this was going to be life altering, so to speak, which is of course not true, but one – at the end of the fellowship, so to speak, that was quite amazing to see that you continued your professional interest and found a wonderful husband and together you could manage to work in the area of architecture, and that's what you do, up to today, which is amazing to think. And looking back and seeing this –
EE: Well, I think, actually, it was very lucky for me that in Istanbul, for instance, the emphasis was really on Near Eastern archaeology, so I also – I mean I took also history of art but also Near Eastern archaeology – so I got a broader vision, which actually Sedelmeier had started for me, because he was very much interested in the broader vision. I know some of my fellow students in Vienna criticized him: "Oh, some details are not right." But it meant a great deal to me. There were other professors who went into details. So I saw the advantages of the one and the other. But you know there are some who never see the broader picture, which is a pity.
GB: How would you characterize the Dumbarton Oaks tenure and your fellowship here, with this respect, regarding the overall scholarly interest and what you just formulated – you mentioned the broader picture – and cross-cultural exchanges and –
EE: Except for, I would say, except for the lectures and more so the symposium, it didn't further that. But I think things have changed. I mean, everything has changed. Not here. Life has changed; everything has changed. It's much more open to other cultures in general. And so, of course it would be also in Dumbarton Oaks.
GB: Yeah, indeed. Very much so and I think that is – it's good to look at this change.
EE: The broader picture.
GB: Not only the different disciplines, which at that time didn't even exist here at Dumbarton Oaks. There was no Pre-Columbian Department. There was no Garden-Landscape Department. And not only having these two other – so important – other branches or disciplines at Dumbarton Oaks, but to connect them, to exchange and to see the Fellows exchanging ideas freely across the aisle, so to speak, which is really quite nice. And I understand that this was, indeed – if we again apply this term, which is not correct, because there was no talk about a mission at that time – but if we think of the mission of a research institute, that has very much changed, you know, from an institute which was, at that time, I understand, driven by establishing at such a – I forget the term. There was a term at the time, how they called this database work. I can't remember, but I read it somewhere. But this was a kind of major point of activity of the institution, to develop this pool of material culture, evidence, records, and with that, of course, to facilitate research and to offer this to other Byzantine scholars and to everybody who's interested –
EE: I remember Kitzinger once mentioned to me that it was quite helpful for some work he did.
GB: He did. So he took advantage of that.
EE: Yes, because he knew about it, of course. And he took advantage of it.
GB: That's interesting. Yeah.
EE: If I may say one other thing, I think Mrs. Bliss would be really delighted that the broader vision has been reached, because she was that kind of – just as that quotation –
GB: Yes, indeed. Yeah, that's interesting, because, I mean, I see this, I read this out of what I know of correspondence we now know about and so on, but that you say this – that is, of course, you with your knowledge of her as a person. You have experience; you have encounters. How would you – why do you – can you expand on this? Can you – when you think of her and how you perceived her, was it because she was just the kind of lady walking into this place and embracing this place by nature of being the owner, previous owner, at least, of that place? That's what I see – what she has really created, an all-over Bliss creation, the collection they collected, the gardens they built up from scratch, the house they bought but very much remodeled, rebuilt – was that what I – was that what she, kind of – was that her realm when you –
EE: Well, she may not have known it then, but I have the feeling she would be pleased. Sometimes, you don't know exactly what you want, that is, how you can realize or what you can realize, but I think it would be – not only for Mrs. Bliss but also for Mr. Bliss.
GB: How do you remember the proper introduction? How were they introduced or were you introduced to the Blisses? Like, "This is Mildred and Robert Bliss," or, "These are the founders of the institution," or how was that, kind of –?
EE: I don't know. I only know that I just met them, and I don't think anything was said, because I was probably told beforehand, so: "May I introduce –"
GB: Because I ask – we know and we learned from various sources that they were very modest, indeed, about their donations, about participating, about funding projects, about supporting artists; often it was done anonymously. They didn't want to be named on all sorts – so, that's in a way what I, kind of, – just, you know, from being told or having read, I think that is very much confirmed through what you – you can't remember what you, basically –
EE: Of course, times were very different. So, and she was used to – both of them were used to being in certain circles and that there were certain behaviors and formalities and all that – that would be different. And I'm sure, I have the feeling they would understand the difference.
GB: They were very much open-minded regarding the avant-garde. I mean, they were very much – well, it's maybe wrong to say they were contemporary regarding their living taste of, the set-up of houses – it was very, I think, traditional and very much, of course, according to the Zeitgeist of the time.
EE: Yes, that's right.
GB: But at the same time we know – not only because they, as I said, supported artists, contemporary artists, but, of course, music – and by the way, which reminds me that you had heard Stravinsky – that you attended the premiere of Stravinsky's concerto.
EE: Yes. That's right. I heard it the other day, by the way, on the radio again.
GB: But not conducted by Stravinsky, I guess.
EE: I guess not.
GB: So that was indeed –
EE: Oh yes, indeed.
GB: Do you remember the occasion? It was while you were here on your fellowship?
EE: Yes, I think so.
GB: And you met him. You were introduced to him.
EE: Well yes, I somehow met him. I mean I didn't talk to him at length.
GB: And you may know – I don't know if you know – that later on they commissioned a piece by Copland, so again a contemporary.
EE: No, I didn't know that.
GB: And later on, late, very late, Dumbarton Oaks commissioned a piece for their—well, on the anniversary for the Blisses, 100th anniversary, and by coincidence it would just be the year we had premiered here at Dumbarton Oaks – it was indeed the year of the opening of the reinstalling there in 2008, which was the 100th wedding anniversary of the Blisses. It was a kind of nice –
EE: And, uh?
GB: Oh, Joan Tower, the composer, an American contemporary composer—she's quite known and it's –
EE: Great, wonderful.
GB: With Stravinsky, the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, Copland's piece, and Joan Tower's piece, which is, I've forgot the title; it's Dumbarton Oaks Quintet, or something like that – no, actually that's – I think, the Dumbarton Quintet, if I'm not wrong. And we had all the three pieces.
EE: Wonderful.
GB: And it's just wonderful to see and to hear the three different pieces and to know about the three different musicians and composers and to link all these to the Blisses as the one couple, who connected so many arts and so many visionary ideas in their life.
EE: I should, perhaps, say something that I was told, true or false – that Mrs. Bliss expected that all the scholars would just go to the garden and they would discuss things like in ancient Athens or so. And, well, we shook our heads over that – that it was not – it doesn't work that way. But, I think she would have understood that it doesn't work that way. I mean, it was understandable with her background, her upbringing, and so on – and the time was different – and it has changed and as through scholarly discussions and so on, this was, perhaps, more forward-looking, I mean different, already, formally. And she didn't know that. But I still think – I mean it's wonderful what she has done, really. I appreciate it much more now than I did then, to be quite frank.
GB: Yeah, it is again a nice confirmation of what I know only by reading letters and other articles, which have been written in the meantime about the Blisses. She very much understood the gardens as an essential part of the Dumbarton Oaks research institute and she liked the idea of the scholars walking and getting inspired and talking and exchanging ideas by walking and encountering this landscape, this extraordinary space she created, which is kind of an ideal, like, locus amoenus. And it was maybe a paradise, even, what we may call an ivory tower, but the ivory tower very much with an extension, which is indeed this kind of muse temple of thought-provoking ideas – inspiring. And it's very much what she expressed in her last will, that this scholarship and the lives of the scholars at Dumbarton Oaks should never be de-attached from the gardens and from the trees, not just a nice, green landscape around the house, which is the library and collection. It's really a part of it and that's quite interesting.
EE: I didn't realize that, but I must say, personally, I went through the garden a great deal. I mean, instead of going over the street, I went through the garden, through what then was called the Fellows Building. And, well the gardens meant a great deal to me. So, in being unaware of that, it did help me.
GB: Did you see changes? Did you see changes over the past recent years? Have you looked into the gardens? Is it still the same or is it changed?
EE: No, it's very different, of course, because of the new buildings – for me, new buildings.
GB: And the public part of the gardens – the rose terrace and the fountain.
EE: There was a fountain before.
GB: Mhm, yeah, I know that. It's the setting and the park-scape parts that are totally the same, unchanged, but one should not forget that the gardens, the trees, of course, change. So, I say this because only over the past two years we have fought and had many losses, many trees lost to lightning.
EE: Oh, that also. Well, you have those ancient white oaks.
GB: Yeah. They would be interesting to – and I guess you haven't had a chance to walk –
EE: No, unfortunately not. I mean, I walked in that part [points to her left, east of the Fellows Building/Guest House] and that is, of course, entirely different, because they're, so to say, formal walks now. Paths, I should say. But that's, of course, necessary under the circumstances.
GB: That's so wonderful that you – to have you sharing all these memories with us and –
EE: Well, I hope I contributed something, at least.
GB: Oh yeah, oh yeah, indeed. It is a very, very specific year, or years, here and it's – yes – a treasure of recollections.
EE: I mean it's, of course, personal recollections and objectively it may be different, slightly different.
GB: That's exactly what we all have: personal recollections. And they each piece together, so to speak, and there's history at the end – it's history. And that's very much appreciated. Do you remember the – you remember quite well the year that was your arrival and – because I'm not sure if we are even correct in our documents. When you arrived – and you said in May – your marriage was in the fall of '45, yeah? And you –
EE: No, no. Yes.
GB: Was it '45?
EE: No, you see, I was here in '43-'44 to '45.
GB: So you arrived in '43, in fall of '43?
EE: Yes, in late fall. I didn't get here at the beginning of the year, because I wasn't here yet. I mean I wasn't here yet in this country.
GB: You arrived in this country in '43.
EE: Yes.
GB: So you were pretty new to the country.
EE: I was quite new. I also experienced Ellis Island for three days, which for me was an interesting experience. It wasn't the same for my father, of course. But I was young, you know. I could take things like that. I just observed. And actually it's very good for everybody to once experience being confined. One understands things better, certain things much better that way – [laughs] Well.
GB: Thank you so much. That was really wonderful.
EE: Well it's a pleasure to be here. And if I can contribute anything, I'm delighted, of course.
GB: Well, whatever memories and recollections you have, please continue to send us an email and share them and maybe some memories will come up and –
EE: Sometimes. It could happen, yes.
GB: This was wonderful, wonderful.
EE: Now perhaps I should say one thing about Professor Friend, because the way I put it sounds, actually, negative, I think, and I don't want that to be the case. He just was interested in certain things in a, perhaps, different way.
GB: Yeah. So I think that we have covered quite a lot: various aspects, Fellows, research, professors, social life, dancing –
EE: [Laughs] Oh yes.
GB: –lunches, the Blisses, the United Nations –
EE: Perhaps I should – I don't think that came up, actually, that we were invited also at the Blisses. I mean we Fellows. That may have been at the end of the year, but I don't remember. Maybe in connection with a symposium or something, which was very nice, of course. So I saw their house and –
GB: Their house in Georgetown. So they really cared. I mean it was – they were present and they were engaged. They were really active.
EE: It was their children.
GB: Yeah, yeah indeed. Yep. Yep. Wonderful.
EE: Well, thank you very much.
GB: Oh, I would – it's my pleasure.
EE: Do you know how to turn it off?]]>
ABF: So, can you start off by telling us how you ended up with a job at Dumbarton Oaks in 1975?
DP: I had left the Air Force and been in college for about a year, pretty much without direction actually. And a friend of my mother's told her that Dumbarton Oaks was looking to hire someone. And although I was a native Washingtonian I had no idea what Dumbarton Oaks was. With that lead, I called down here and spoke to a gentleman that was – I think they called him superintendent of the buildings at the time – and he told me to come in for an interview.
ABF: And so what were your first impressions when you got here?
DP: When I walked through the door, it was a completely different configuration from what it is now. The security officer's desk, as you walked through the front door, was to the left. It was in a corner. And you looked at a curved wall that ran around the mosaic on the floor. There were these two alabaster lights at that corner. And I didn't know if I was in an apartment building or a funeral home. [laughter] That's what I thought. And this voice called to me from the corner, and I turned and looked, and I saw the guy standing there. And literally I came down here not knowing what this place did; didn't know of its existence.
ABF: So, who told you then? What did you think of it?
DP: The gentleman I interviewed with, Michael Dziedzic, was the gentlemen – since passed away about a year ago – and it was much, much different from the way we do things now. I talked to him for maybe half an hour, and he said, "OK, I'll see you tomorrow." And I said, "Wait a minute." I was not ready to be hired that quickly. And I think we got along well because we both had an Air Force background. He had retired from the Air Force, and I had just been out not very long. I had come from the security police division of the Air Force, and a component of the job that I was hired for had security work in it – didn't tell me much about the rest of the work. I kind of danced around it, and I'm not sure why, but he really wouldn't specify what I was going to do if I wasn't going into security. But it worked out. I took the job. I took another day, I remember that. When he said, "I'll see you tomorrow," I thought, "Hold on. Give me 24 hours to digest this." That was February 27, 1975, I think I started working here.
CW: What was security like then? Did they still have the dogs?
DP: No. They had a system that had been installed in the early sixties from ADT Company. The building was zoned off into different sections. During the day there was only one security officer on duty. And in the evenings there were two. If you had an alarm – and the officer stayed in the building; they didn't go out. They stayed in the Main House. They hired a service to patrol the grounds, and that was just in the summer. Matter of fact, in the wintertime, they dropped that person. But the security of the Main House, how it was zoned off, was if an alarm tripped in a certain zone, you had an idea of an area to go to. Nothing was specific. You may have to go check ten offices to find out what caused that alarm to go off. And it was already getting antiquated by then. There were a lot of failures in it. I thought its time had just about run out. They would just bypass parts of it when they couldn't figure out how to fix something. They would just chuck a window out to keep the nuisance alarms down.
CW: Was that improved soon after you got there?
DP: It really didn't get improved until the eighties when they did the first major upgrade of the security system. It had reached the point where ADT didn't want to work on it because they had to scavenge their parts from other buildings. The materials weren't even available to them any longer. So, we knew sooner or later the whole place was going to have to be renovated security-wise. The whole approach to security had changed by the time renovations came about. You don't alarm individual windows like that any longer. You alarm the room.
ABF: What were your responsibilities when you first started?
DP: I was on the maintenance staff, so I had parts of the building to just clean and to care after. It varied throughout the years. I kept being moved around. And then I was either working security in the galleries in the afternoon or filling in on the evening shifts. I think what helped me a great deal here was I was one of the few people that paid a great deal of attention to the security. I had come from that background. Every time something would come up, a question of how to do something, I would always think back to what we did in the military, because my last two years I was stationed at Andrews with a group called the National Emergency Airborne Command Post. It's a flying command center for the President, and it's a high security area. If an issue came up of, "How do you want to do this?" I would think, "Well, what did we do back there?" And it would always apply. It was very helpful.
ABF: Who did you get to know well in these first years that you had working as a guard, with maintenance?
DP: Well, look, all the guys in the day crew that I knew. A good friend of mine was Luis Guerrero, who passed away mid-eighties. Silvio – you've talked to Silvio. Tony Pereira – I worked together with him until he retired. So, actually for about ten years, I was the new guy. For the first ten years of working here, I was the new guy. Nobody came behind me. Or a few people came and would leave right away – didn't want to stay or didn't particularly like the work and left. A really good friend of mine was Alex De Boeck, who was the assistant superintendent, I believe his title was at the time. And he worked – this buildings department, we did a little bit of everything then. One of the places that I ended up working with Alex was in the mailroom. And that's where we used to actually package the books and everything right from Dumbarton Oaks and send them out. So, I would help Alex in the mailroom. I was working weekends then. It was a busier time on the weekends than during the week, visitor-wise. There was much more contact with the public.
ABF: So, you also worked on Sundays?
DP: Yes, did that for about fifteen years. I was off in the middle of the week. I wanted to tell you something about Alex. It's completely slipped my mind now.
CW: Was he an artist?
DP: He was. Some of his stuff's still around here.
CW: Did you know Astor Moore?
DP: Yes. We weren't close, but I knew him.
CW: Did you spend a lot of time in the collection when you were on security on the weekends?
DP: Yeah, we were so busy in those days with visitors that I remember they used to station one of the security officers – would be in the Pre-Columbian wing at the entrance to get everybody to move to the right. Because instead of just entering the gallery and being able to move any direction you wanted to go, we had to keep everybody moving in one pattern, because it was just so crowded.
ABF: Really?
DP: Yeah. I never knew how anybody enjoyed themselves in that situation. You couldn't see anything. But there were just huge crowds back then.
CW: So this was in the mid- to late-seventies?
DP: Yes. Early eighties. When they first did the renovations of the third floor and the rest of the house, but mainly the third floor – I think they started that in '79 – and we ended up being closed to the public for a year and a half or two years. The galleries were closed. It just didn't seem like it came back the way it was before. Gardens have always done well.
ABF: Did you know a lot of the garden staff also?
DP: Not real well. Don Smith, who we talked about earlier, I knew him.
ABF: Were you friends?
DP: Yeah. In fact, Don wanted me to take the house. I don't remember who told me that, but I remember someone saying to me when Don was asked about it, he said, "Yeah, I'd want him to move in there."
ABF: Can you tell us about the circumstances under which you became assistant superintendent of the building and museum in '83?
DP: Unfortunately the gentlemen I spoke of earlier, Mr. Dziedzic, had a series of health problems. He had a heart attack and came back for a while, and I think he had another one before he finally retired. While he was out, I took over different things. I was asked to and did. And again I was working with Alex very closely all that time. So, Alex and I kind of did a lot of the duties that Mike used to take care of. I can't remember the dates when his successor came along. Ron Williams – before he came in the assistant director at that time was who I got the word from – Judy Siggins was the Assistant Director at the time. They wanted to do something to acknowledge what I had done, that I had stepped up during that period and helped them out. And again, the security end of it came into play. So, I believe that Alex was given some title like Assistant Superintendent for Services and I received Assistant Superintendent for Operations. It was something like that. I think that's what it was: I think it was just an acknowledgement that I had stepped up and done more than what I was actually being compensated for. And this was a way to reward me for it.
CW: Did you work then with the museum people in terms of installing security devices in the collection at all?
DP: No. No, when the renovations came – I can't think of the name of the company. I think it was Henry Adams. And I think they in turn hired a security consultant – came in and they really didn't seem to ask for a lot of input from us. That's my impression now. As much as they came in and said, "This is what you're going to do. This is what we need to do, and this is how we're going to do it." Not, "What do you think we should do?"
ABF: Did you have contact with the director at this time, when you were promoted?
DP: Yes, that was Robert Thomson. He was quiet. He was a quiet man. So, I don't remember – he didn't entertain a lot. I don't remember a lot of our contacts. It was Robert that promoted me to Manager of Buildings, and again we ended up in a situation where a lot of changes were going on. The Systems Director was leaving. Robert was going to leave fairly soon. Mr. Williams – who had followed Mr. Dziedzic as superintendent – Mr. Williams ended up with a ton of health problems related to his back. He was out quite a bit. And again, the same thing started happening. I started taking on more responsibilities. It had just reached a point where we knew with all of these people leaving that something had to be done. They were gracious enough. When I say they, I mean Mr. Robert Thomson and Judy Siggins. When it was obvious that Mr. Williams wasn't going to return, they started bringing in people. In fact, I think they hired headhunters to find someone to be superintendent. Alex and I would take these people around the property and around the buildings. Then they'd call us in and say, "What do you think of them?" And if Alex or I said, "I can't work with this guy," they said, "That's it, end of story. Thanks." Dumbarton Oaks ended up, over the course of I don't know how many months those searches went on, offering the job twice, and both times they turned it down. I think one person just went back to where he worked and said, "Look what they're going to offer me," and ended up staying. And another fellow who was over at Catholic University came in, and I remember sitting down in the office with him looking at Alex and I and said, "This is my third visit, and I've seen what Alex does. Don, I've seen what you do. So, what the hell am I going to do?" [Laughs.] I said, "Well, I don't really know. I mean, the administration is asking for you to do this, and we've tried to come up with some things." And he said, "I wasn't even looking for a job. I'm kind of happy where I am. But when someone called me I thought, 'Well I'll come look at it and see.' But I just don't see it." So, he didn't take it. The only thing I had a problem with – I wasn't afraid to take the job at that point. By then I'd been here quite a while, and I didn't know anything about engineering. I told the director that. I said, "I'm completely at the mercy of whatever the engineer would tell me." This guy's name was Jim Arter, the chief engineer, and he and I got along fabulously. Robert Thomson actually took it back a step to where it had been before Mr. Williams was here. He divided those two departments so that I would become manager of buildings and Jim would run engineering. With that being settled, that's when I was made Manager of Buildings.
ABF: So, that was in '88?
DP: Yeah, late '88, I think.
ABF: So, at that point, did you feel at home at Dumbarton Oaks?
DP: Did I what?
ABF: Did you feel at home at Dumbarton Oaks by that time?
DP: Oh yeah. Yeah.
ABF: And you moved in –
DP: That wasn't until '92. So, I'd been manager of the buildings about three years when they asked me to move on. Don retired. I'm not sure what the thinking was behind it. I don't know if it was a security issue versus putting the Superintendent of Gardens in there. I don't know if that had anything to do with it or not, but the Superintendent of Gardens position was changing. The Chief Engineer, Mr. Arter, had just left, and by then I'm working for Angeliki Laiou, who was the director and had been for two or three years at that point. So, I'm the known entity at that point. So, I think that's one of the reasons I was asked to move in.
ABF: So, did you get to know Angeliki Laiou?
DP: Yeah. We worked – I don't know how many years she was here, nine or something like that.
CW: And it was under her that La Quercia, the new Fellows apartment, was acquired, right?
DP: Yes, sir.
CW: And so were you involved in setting that up, as the new residence for the Fellows?
DP: In staging it, and moving furniture there and things like that, yeah. It was pretty chaotic because we used to have – I think by the time we left up Wisconsin Avenue here, 2702 Wisconsin. We were notorious for that building.
ABF: Why?
DP: The resident manager there just hated us. I don't know why but she just hated us. And I think we had somewhere between eleven and thirtee apartments there, spread out over eight floors of the building. But she just despised us. And I think they were glad to see us go, and we were glad to leave.
ABF: That seems odd. You can imagine that the scholars living there were pretty tame.
DP: I don't remember any – party-wise I think the biggest disaster we had up there was one Fellow, their apartment went up in flames. And the fire department, in order to get to the apartment, had to go through her apartment. If you haven't seen the building, there is no way – the apartment that caught on fire was in the back of the building, and her apartment is in the front. It's just a narrow alley, so there's no way to get fire equipment down to the back of the building, so they took a ladder up, busted through her windows, and went through her apartment then down the hallway to the apartment that was on fire. So, that just cemented our relationships with her. [Laughs.] I forgot what we did, but we did something to make amends. I think she got a table broken or something other happened when the fire department was in there, so Astor Moore repaired all that stuff for her. We took it back up and sent her flowers. I forget all the stuff they did. It was a great idea, whoever had it – I guess Angeliki – to put all the Fellows in one building like that. It made them closer, because, like I said, in that place they were spread out over the entire apartment building.
ABF: What were the other big projects that were undertaken during that time that you were involved in?
DP: Gosh, the excavation and renovation of the courtyard gallery and the offices downstairs. I was here when the renovation of this building was done, but there were two renovations of this building. All those big projects like that – even the Director's house across the street, when that came on – usually there was a project manager brought in to run those, so I was always peripheral, personnel-wise, of those issues. I'd be called in to ask about certain questions or needs. That was about it. I really didn't have a hands-on, choose a contractor, or have to oversee them.
ABF: Did you also get to know some of the scholars who were here often?
DP: Yeah.
ABF: Like Alexander Kazhdan?
DP: Yeah. We were not real friendly with the Russians when he first showed up here. And I remember all these boxes and boxes of books arriving prior to his arrival. Again, I was working with Alex at that time pretty closely in the mailroom, and we were told to put the books away, and I think we took a closet or somewhere in the building. Don't talk about it. So, he kind of arrived here in these mysterious circumstances at the time. I remember him and his wife telling us their first impressions of getting here and walking in the Safeway and just being overwhelmed by seeing all these goods for sale. I helped him and his wife move into what's now the security cottage up at the corner. 3201, they were in. And I was up helping them one day – I was assembling a bed for them – and Mrs. Kazhdan says to me that she was impressed that Americans were so good with their hands. And then she said, "Well, that's cause we have nothing to put together." [Laughs.] I was one of the first people to get to the pool. He unfortunately died there. It was not a pleasant evening, but it was something he always enjoyed. He always did laps in the swimming pool.
ABF: Were there any other scholars that stuck in your mind?
DP: Oh, I wouldn't know where to begin. Some of them I've known or known of them since '75, they're still coming back here. Some I'm closer to than others. Some that I look forward to seeing, sit down and have lunch with or a cup of coffee. The current director of Pre-Columbian studies, Joanne Pillsbury, I've known for years, I think I knew her when she was a Junior Fellow here. I've known a lot of people go from Junior Fellows, came back as Senior Fellows fifteen years later. But Joanne stands out. Elizabeth Boone was director over there before. I'm very good friends with the Fellow – I don't know if he's in the field anymore – Eric McGeer – who was at Harvard for a while and was at McGill in Montreal for a while.
ABF: Did you overlap at all with Betty Benson?
DP: Yes. Betty was here when I started. She was the Director of Pre-Columbian Studies. And I learned through the other Fellows that she actually put that together, pretty much everything you saw over there at that time – just a wonderful person.
CW: Before you came here, we've heard that there were some ghost stories that Mario has in particular. Do you know anything about those?
DP: From late '88 till '08, I'm manager of buildings. I think I've always had one security officer who would swear that Mrs. Bliss was around somewhere. [Laughs.] Never got a confirmed sighting – that I could confirm, put it that way – but it seemed like I always had somebody saying, "Boy, strange things happen around here at night." I said, "Yeah, I guess so." – especially when it was just two security officers by themselves in that big house at night. I did that before promotions, and you're walking around a building that size at night, and a piece of machinery kicks on, and you almost jump out of your skin because you didn't expect it. I never saw anything. [Laughs.]
ABF: What do they say they saw?
DP: They claimed they've seen her up in the Main House. And it's always her. I've never heard anybody say anything about Mr. Bliss. I'm not sure why it works that way. And Alex – I don't know how many people I've ever told this story to – Alex told me this story, that when Mrs. Bliss passed away, they had a house at 28th and Q Street. And Alex's job – this was before I came here, and I forgot who else he said he was with – they would go down to the house to check on the house. And Alex claimed that they walked into the house one day and they went up to the second floor and he heard something. He looked around and saw the keys to a closet there. And there was a key in the door, and keys hanging from it, and the keys that were hanging from it were swinging back and forth, back and forth. He actually had to go over and grab the keys to stop. Now that's not on the property here, but that's the most descriptive story I ever heard. There's someone on the staff right now who thinks they see things. They even mentioned it about the library. I don't see, how can it be the library? It's a new building. It didn't exist before that. But there's always been someone. But firsthand knowledge – I don't have a story for you.
CW: So, your duties didn't change too much if the Director was different?
DP: No. They really didn't – found out that our facilities department, a lot of the jobs I had over the years came about as once you did something, it was yours. You really didn't quite understand it, but once you did something, it became part of your job. I know what I was thinking about earlier, when I was talking about Alex. Not only did we do the mailroom at that time, we also ran the gift shop. That became another component of what we did. Sometimes I'd spend my time in the afternoons sitting in the gift shop.
CW: Behind the cash register?
DP: Yeah. And they had a coatroom. They actually had an old desk that they'd roll over and put in front of one of the doors. They put an old cash register that you had to crank to get the numbers up on it. That was the gift shop. They had so few items that at the end of the week, Alex would sit down and look through the prices. And by looking through the prices he'd be able to tell you what books sold. It was just a blank receipt with numbers on it. It didn't give you anything. So, I was glad in the last few years that I was here that the institution had grown to the size it had, that people were starting to look at it like, "Why is this person doing what they're doing." We lost the gift shop some time ago, and that was good. Mailroom duties got assigned to certain people, so we finally acknowledged that that takes a lot of time up, and you can't be doing all these different things. I thought the institution had reached a point – I'm drifting a little here, but bear with me – Dumbarton Oaks almost every year would send me to the national conference on cultural protection that the Smithsonian puts on. We brought down Michele Trifiro, who was head of Harvard museum security one year, and she was to go with me. She was going to give an assessment of the security here and attend the conference with me. And I remember we were walking around once and her surprise when I received a call that a roofer was here. And I said, "I've got to go. I've got to go up on whatever roof we were going to." And she said, "What's that got to do with you?" And I said, "Well, I do roofs, too." So, that was to me the first recognition almost of, if you're doing security component, you should be doing security component instead of running around and taking care of the mail room part of the time and seeing that the gift shop was staffed and seeing if the Xerox machines are working. Now you're going up on a roof. I'm drifting here, but that incident has always stood out in my mind like it was a takeoff point of, I've got somebody who recognizes that security needs more attention than it's getting.
ABF: When was that?
DP: Oh, has to be early '90s. I'd say '90 or '91, somewhere in there. I think it was before Angeliki got here.
ABF: So, who was responsible for re-assigning some of these tasks that before had fallen on your shoulders?
DP: That's taken place recently, in the next couple years. Happened after Professor Keenan got here, and then really took off when Jan got here. As I was preparing to leave, Mike Steen told me that one of the things he wanted to sit down and do is sit down and figure out who does what and why do they do it. And that had been brought up five or six years earlier, but really nothing had happened with it.
ABF: And do you think that was because you had just been here so long –?
DP: I think so.
ABF: – and had just done all these different things that you could just sort of –?
DP: I think so. I guess that once you did them, you kind of had them. I don't want to sound pompous or anything, but very often when some of our scholars that know me, Joanne or any of the people we talked about earlier, would introduce me to somebody new who came, they would say, "This is Don Pumphrey. He – well, he does everything." They didn't know how to categorize what I was doing.
ABF: Did it ever start to feel like too much, so that you wanted to get people hired to unload some of this?
DP: Yeah.
ABF: So, who was of particular help to you?
DP: Particular help was the staff that's on now. Mario Garcia and Embry Davis. Especially when Mr. Davis came on, I really wanted to try to push him along because he was a retired D.C. police officer. Where he didn't have a museum security background, he certainly had a police background to know how to run. And the security component was getting bigger and bigger. They were hiring more and more and more officers.
ABF: People like Eric you hired?
DP: Eric, I think, was the first person I hired. He actually came on the house staff and then went over to security.
ABF: So, you said that you started to – as these tasks began to be reassigned in the last several years.
DP: Yeah.
ABF: So, what were the circumstances under which that finally really happened?
DP: I think a lot of it started happening when Professor Keenan created a position of Director of Facilities. Then the position started to get broken down some. But I don't think it really took off until recently.
ABF: Was it something about the way Keenan wanted to organize the institution?
DP: I think so.
ABF: So, how was that different from what you had seen before?
DP: I had always reported to the Assistant Director, up to that point. The Assistant Director's position was kind of all-encompassing in that she worked with the Fellows – she ran the fellowship program – and she kind of was the de facto H.R. director. We didn't have an H.R. director for years and years.
ABF: Until Maria?
DP: Until Maria came in. And again I don't know the details of it but obviously Professor Keenan had a different idea of how the organization should function in that way. When Gay announced her retirement, instead of an Assistant Director they hired the Facilities Director. And then that got broken down a little more in that he had five or six departments reporting to him, and then during his time here – we're talking about Mike Getter now who was the Facilities Director then – two of those departments were taken away and moved into the museum branch. Those things started to change four or five years ago.
CW: Were there ever any security incidents when you were here?
DP: No. [Laughs.] We had more incidents of visitors being hurt, is what comes to my mind, of somebody falling or walking into something. I don't – I can't think of, during the time from '88 to '08, any thefts or attempted break-ins or anything like that. We'd have the occasional trespasser that we'd have to get off the property and the biggest headache I used to have security-wise was that swimming pool. People would come in regularly, and you'd hear people talking about it at parties. "Oh yeah, I know Dumbarton Oaks. When I was in college I used to go swimming there in the middle of the night." So what I did – at that point we still had the contract service in the gardens. I told the company we had at that point, it was just one guy, "I don't want you to patrol at night. I want you to sit at the swimming pool. 'Cause anybody that's coming over the walls is coming for the swimming pool. And you sit there and you just wait for them. When they get there, take them out." We would ask for identification and we'd tell them if they came back we were going to call the police on them next time and things like that. It took a while, but slowly it just faded away. I don't know if word got out that there's no sense in doing it because the guy's going to be there waiting for you when you get there, but it just slowly died away, and I never hear much about it anymore.
CW: We were just talking about the biggest security threats were people coming into the gardens to swim in the pool.
DP: Yeah. Everybody would tell me that.
ABF: School kids?
DP: College kids. College kids. Yeah. We had a Georgetown student one night who came up from the bars in Georgetown and was banging on the North Vista door trying to get in. He thought he was at his dorm. [laugher].
DP: And the guard inside was yelling at him to get away from the door, and police response was almost nil. And it took almost two hours for the police to get there. I guess they didn't think it was much of an issue.
ABF: A drunk nineteen-year-old kid.
DP: Yeah, eventually he passed out, was sleeping on the steps. They were out looking for him, and he comes over the wall where the cops were. They said, "Come here. We want to talk to you." And the guys told me he had damaged a screen, and the guy called me at the office about two days later, very apologetic, very embarrassed obviously, and he said, "I'll do anything you want." I said, "I'm just curious." I said, "Where the hell did you think you were?" He said, "Sir, last thing I remember is leaving Chadwick's in Georgetown." And he said, "I thought I was at the dorm." I said, "Well, you took a right when you should have took a left." He brought a check that afternoon for whatever amount of money we said it was for the screen. I just left him thinking about that. I didn't tell him we weren't going to prosecute. I had no intention of doing that. But I didn't let him know that, just let it die. So, security-wise that was the biggest thing, that swimming pool. I was not a big fan of the swimming pool.
ABF: So, no big heists of a famous pre-Columbian object?
DP: No. As I said, from '88 to '08 I was Facilities Manager. I don't recall an attempt, even anything I thought was an attempt. An occasional trespasser. Most people just wanted to come in the gardens at night. For whatever reason, they wanted to come in the gardens at night. I always thought we were fortunate, kind of out of the way. I subscribed to all these museum alert things and crime reports from around the country, and I always worried because so much of it takes place in Europe, that I thought someday somebody's going to catch on and start pulling this stuff in the U.S. – especially with how brazen they are in European countries about it. I mean, if you walk in the door with weapons, nobody's going to stop you. I'm glad to see security upgrades being done before this last renovation. I think it made a great deal of difference. I know they pay a lot more attention to how they attach the objects to the wall or to cases. And I'm not sure there's anything in that building you can just grab and run out the door with.
ABF: What about who can enter the building, and the whole key card –
DP: I was so glad to see that happen. I know there were a lot of people – a lot of the older scholars – thought this was terrible. I think in many ways, they thought of D.O. as a country club. And everybody knew everybody. That was my explanation to one of the Fellows who was quite upset about the key cards. I said – I'd been there thirty years at that point – I said, "I can certainly remember the time when I could walk around the buildings and the grounds and everybody I saw I knew. But it's reached a point I don't know these people. I don't know if they're supposed to be here or they're not supposed to be here. So, I was an advocate for the key card entry system and wearing ID cards. Again, people didn't like that. They just didn't want to wear ID cards. They said, "We're not big enough." I'd say, "Yeah, we are. If you don't know everybody, you're big enough."
ABF: How big was the staff when you first got here? Because now there are like 88 staff members, or something like that.
DP: Yeah, it was tiny. Probably in the thirties, because –
ABF: Almost tripled.
DP: Yeah. There was no publications department when I started. I think there were two people in finance. No H.R. department. We have a lot of joint fellowships now that we didn't have back then. They're not staff, but still. And the facilities staff has just – like I said they used to have one or two security guards working at any one time, and now some shifts have five people on them. So, it's quite a bit more people than when I started.
ABF: Do you think the character of the institution has changed a lot as a result?
DP: Yeah. I think there is a campus mentality. It used to be, Dumbarton Oaks was thought of as the Main House. That's Dumbarton Oaks. I think during Keenan's administration and the expansion and the additional buildings, it's become more of a campus atmosphere. And you have to think of the institution like that now, because everything doesn't happen just in that Main House any longer.
CW: It does feel somewhat spread out.
ABF: Were you in favor of the expansion?
DP: Yeah. We were falling all over each other in that house. There was nowhere to go. The hallways were crowded. I was delighted from the security angle when I found out how many cameras were being brought in. I put a camera at the pool, by the way. [Laughs.] That was another thing that can take care of a lot of those problems, when you can see the pool. I think what I heard from one of the surveys they did, we were told that the architects said they'd seen a building that was one hundred thirty or one hundred forty percent of capacity, but this was the first place they been to that they'd looked at – it was nearly two hundred percent of capacity. It was almost double what was in there that should be in there comfortably.
ABF: People also seem to miss the close-knit atmosphere that was provided by that environment, which was what you were probably used to also.
DP: Yeah. I do have to say that when I cam here, there was what a lot of the staff that worked in maintenance and facilities thought of – again I'm going back to the '70s – would be referred to as an upstairs-downstairs mentality. There were different levels of strata here, who you talked to and who you interacted with. And I think those barriers came down over the years. I think of Dumbarton Oaks as an elite institution, but I definitely think it's more friendly across all lines than it was back in the '70s.
ABF: Did it feel very rigid and uptight and old-fashioned?
DP: When I started, yes. And the first change that I noticed in that was when Giles Constable became Director. I would credit him with knocking a lot of that down.
ABF: What in particular do you remember?
DP: [Laughs.] What jumps to mind, if I can – well there's no reason I should edit this story, so I'm going to tell you the story. I'd not been here very long and I was sitting at the front desk, that security desk that I described to you. And he came in and he went to the left and he sat there. The door back then opened in, not out, as fire codes now require. But it opened in and when it opened in it had a throw bolt on the inside. We locked the door. And it was a weekend. There was a gentleman named Jose Garcia who later transferred over into accounting and was in accounting for I don't know how many years – quite a bit. But at the time he was still working in security. He was a Cuban refugee who had slowly worked his way back up the ladder to accounting practices that he used to do in Cuba. Anyway, he was on the desk. I relieved him for lunch or something like that. And I'm sitting at the desk just – it's a Saturday or Sunday – deathly quiet in that building. I was probably reading the paper or something. And the Director came out. I guess he was going for lunch or whatever he was doing. And he got to the door, and he turned the handle and he looked at me and said, "Could you show me how to open this?" And I thought, "What the hell? He doesn't know how to open a door?" So I got up and walked around and opened the door and let him out. And when Jose came back, I told him, I said, "This bizarre thing happened. The director came and tried to open the door and couldn't." He just started laughing. He says, "Don, he expects you to get up and open the door for him." A little light bulb went on and I said, "Oh, I get it." I hadn't been exposed to something like that before. In the military you salute or you acknowledge somebody but you don't go open the door for them or something like that. And the reason that stands out so much in my mind is that when Giles Constable came, by then I'd been conditioned. And he came out one day, and I went to open the door, and he said, "I don't want you to do that. Don't do that. I can let myself in and out." And I thought, "Changes are coming." [laughter]
DP: And I think that was the beginning of it. It was met with resistance. There was an old guard here that did not want to give up those privileges. It's a pretty distant memory now.
ABF: What were some of the other things that began to change under Constable that you really felt in terms of the social atmosphere of the place?
DP: Giles really opened us up to the public. I think that when I came in, D.O. was not public-friendly in that we were not trying to get people to come in and see the place. It was an academic institution first and foremost, and that was just a sideline and I think Giles really opened us up to the public. He gave more interviews to the press. We saw ourselves in the paper a lot more. And attendance started going up. And then we reached a point like I described earlier where we had to push people through Pre-Columbian in a certain direction because it just got too crowded. Slowly during his tenure, a lot of that old guard left, and he replaced them with people who do not have the – again what I'd refer to as upstairs-downstairs attitude of staff.
ABF: Who were some of those people?
DP: That were here when I came in?
ABF: Yeah, that ended up leaving under Constable.
DP: They ended up leaving on the fact that they retired. I mean, I don't think it was any that were pushed out, but they saw the difference and I don't know what their reasons were. I remember Eleanor Ostermeier was one. Lucy Baglia was the accounting person.
ABF: What was Eleanor's job?
DP: I don't know what her title was, but it was like the assistant director. Actually I shouldn't say Lucy Baglia. She's not who I wanted to make reference to. There was someone before her that I have to make reference to because Tony Pereira would always tell me the story of going into finance and speaking to this woman about paperwork. He needed to get a house. And her response to him was, "What do you need a house for?" I thought, "Okay, that fits into that category I was looking at." But it wasn't Lucy Baglia. Sorry, I really can't think of any other names. But Giles – and I've seen it swing different ways. I thought Angeliki was more in that vein too, in that she liked the public here. It's not as forward about it as Giles was, but she enjoyed the public here. And I think we went a little bit backward with Professor Keenan. I think Professor Keenan's mission was to get this library and renovations taken care of. It was not real – if they show up, people show up. If they don't, they don't. That's it. And my impression in the brief period I had to work with Jan is he was going to try to bring the public back in again. That's one aspect I've seen switch with directors.
ABF: What about Thomson?
DP: What's so hard to remember about Robert – and I've always thanked him for giving me the opportunity – he gave me to be Manager of Buildings. He was the only director during the time I was here that – I think Robert stayed five years and I always had the impression he was ready to pack up and leave after about three, like he really didn't like this job as much as some of the other directors had. He wanted to do other things. I think it was more of a burden to him than he thought it would be – that's my impression. Giles stayed nine or ten years, and Angeliki did. Keenan was here seven or so. But Robert was the only one who did one term and left at the end of that five-year appointment.
CW: Yeah, that's true.
ABF: So, Constable came very shortly after you got here, right?
DP: Yeah. I think '81. No, that's been before that.
DP: '77. So, yeah.
ABF: So, you were here right in what many, many people have talked about as one of the key transitional periods for Dumbarton Oaks.
DP: Well, with Tyler leaving and Constable coming. Yeah I think it is because Tyler also is the godson of the Blisses. So, there's your connection, and then the connection's gone. Slowly started to see some of the old Bliss people fade away too from the concerts. That was another aspect of what facilities – I worked all the concerts. And I'd hear from the guys that who had been here for many years before I was here, "Oh yeah, she's a friend of Mrs. Bliss;" "This was a friend of the Blisses." They start fading away at about the same time.
ABF: And they also were pretty old. So, did it feel like there was just a younger crowd here with Constable then?
DP: Yes. Like a shot of new blood.
CW: Were you working security at the concerts?
DP: I don't know what you'd call it. I guess we were security, ushers. We did a little bit of everything. We had so many people. We used to work five or six people at concerts. When I left here in May, maybe two of us would work – two or three. But we used to do everything. There were guys that used to open car doors for people. There was an actual coatroom where you could check your coats. It was a big event.
ABF: How did people get invited to them?
DP: Back in that day, I understand that for a long time when I first came here there was a waiting list to get tickets to the D.O. concerts. And it was the same people over and over again that were friends with the Blisses. Now I actually think they're out there soliciting people to come to the concerts, the attendance has fallen off so badly. And it's still quite an older group of people. I just left here and Ned Keenan's been gone maybe a year now and Ned would come over to me at the concerts. I'd be just looking at the crowd, seeing who's sitting where and what seats were empty and where to move people. And Ned would – even then, just a year or two years ago – Ned would walk up to me and whisper in my ear, "Makes you feel young, doesn't it?" [Laughs] "Yeah, when I look at this group. Yeah!"
ABF: I guess to sum up, are there any other stories you'd like to tell us about or any other things you have changed or not changed about the place that you would want put down?
DP: I don't know. I'll probably be thinking about this the rest of the day. Thinking, "Yeah, I should have told them that story." Or something like that will cross my mind. I really feel personally like – I used to have a rabbit's foot in my back pocket. This is just unbelievable. I came to work here and thought I'd be here six months. And thirty-three years later I left. Really, I didn't see much future here. We used to close – when I first came to work here – we would close July 1st to the public – the gardens, the museum, everything. July 1st to the day after Labor Day. And I worked, I think it was Fridays through Tuesdays then and I was off Wednesday and Thursday. But when that change came in July you got the weekends off. And it was a Giles move. It was a Giles Constable move to keep us open year around and to start charging in the gardens, which set some people on edge. And I'm drifting here, but it was Giles's idea to stay open year around. And I remember going to Mr. Dziedzic who hired me – I'd been here a few years – and I said, "Listen, I'm leaving." And he's upset, and he said, "Why? What's going on? Why are you leaving?" And I said, "Well if I'm going to be working year around, all these weekends like this, I'm not going to work every weekend. He said, "No, no. We're going to work something out. We'll work something out. Don't be hasty." He said, "Don, I think you have the potential to run this department someday." And I just laughed at him. I said, "Yeah, like that's going to happen." And I always remember that. I didn't think it would happen. Over and over again I've thought, "Boy, just a rabbit's foot in your pocket. You took a job, thought you were going to be at for six months. You ended up working at, to me, one of the greatest institutions I've ever been around. And for God's sakes you got to live here for fifteen years. You got to live in a house that – people would give their eye teeth to live back here in this place. It's like you're living in the country, yet you're half a block from Wisconsin Avenue – ten minutes, you're in Georgetown, you're in the thick of things. I've just felt very fortunate. That's about it.
ABF and CW: Thank you.]]>