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Churchill's Iceman_The True Story of Geoffrey Pyke_Genius, Fugitive, Spy

Page 42

by Henry Hemming


  44 ‘specimens’: Ibid., p. 11

  44–5 ‘There were whites . . . brothel’: Ibid., p. 10

  46 ‘hopeless depression’: Ibid.

  47 ‘I would lie’: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. 113

  47 ‘loft vibrate’: Ibid., p. 123

  47 ‘All night long’: Ibid., p. 124

  47 ‘finally vomiting’: Ibid., p. xv

  48 ‘only connection’: Ibid., p. 71

  48 ‘to think too much’: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground & The Double, transl. Constance Garnett (Digireads), 2008, Chapter 2

  48 ‘not the months’: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. 61

  48 ‘I could feel’: Ibid., p. 56

  48 ‘I could almost hear’: Ibid., p. 76

  48 ‘sarcasm of a Voltaire’: Ibid., p. 100

  49 ‘with that roll’: Ibid., p. 76

  49 ‘real hunger’: Ibid., p. 74

  49 ‘rooted objection’: Ibid., p. 80

  49 ‘sinking fast . . . creature’: Ibid., p. 99

  49 Modern studies: See John J. Gibbons, Nicholas de B. Katzenbach, Confronting Confinement, The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons, June 2006, accessed at www.vera.org on 17 August 2012

  49 ‘mental breakdown’: Falk, ‘My Experiences’, p. 17

  49 ‘jolly evenings’: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. 75

  50 ‘moved in the matter’: Reginald Drake to R. Banfield, 4 July 1916, 101570/MI5/G, KV 2/3038

  50 ‘owed my liberation’: Falk, ‘My Experiences’, p. 7

  50 ‘given away’: M. L. Ettinghausen, ‘Some Extracts from the Memoirs of an Octogenarian Jewish Bookseller’, Transactions: The Jewish Historical Society of England (London: University College), vol. 21, 1968, p. 194

  50 Edward Lyell Fox: Thomas Boghart, Spies of the Kaiser (London: Palgrave Macmillan), 2004, p. 63

  50 American ambassador intervened: Special Branch would reach a similar conclusion in 1916: ‘the American Ambassador was invoked to save his [Pyke’s] life if he had been arrested as a spy.’ Basil Thomson to Reginald Drake, 26 June 1916, KV 2/3038

  51 ‘overgrown . . . observant’: Falk, ‘My Experiences, p. 17

  51 ‘pessimist and cynic’: E. M. Falk, ‘My Experiences During the Great War 1914–1918 as Published in Blackwoods Magazine in January 1915 with some Additions’, GB 206, RUH 22, p. 25

  51 ‘dirtiest stable’: Israel Cohen, The Ruhleben Prison Camp (London: Methuen), 1917, p. 46

  51 ‘recoiled . . . shudder’: Ibid., p. 50

  51 ‘atmosphere . . . mud’: Pyke, To Ruhleben, pp. 122–123

  51 ‘its little windows’: Cohen, The Ruhleben Prison Camp, p. 50

  52 ‘doctor’s mentality’: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. 128

  52 ‘human kindness’: Ibid., p. 145

  52 era of daring getaways: GP Notebook, 8 August 1941

  53 ‘Before a problem’: GP to Jon Kimche, 14 January 1945

  53 ‘become so garrulous’: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. 131

  54 ‘bank holiday crowd’: Ibid., p. 116

  54 ‘very gloomy’: Ibid., p. 134

  54 ‘insane belief’: Ibid., p. 133

  54–5 ‘essentially English’: Falk, ‘My Experiences . . . with some Additions’, p. 25

  55 ‘We were both . . . got out?’: Pyke, To Ruhleben, pp. 134–135

  56 ‘made no sign’: Ibid., p. 136

  56 ‘a little shy’: Ibid., p. 137

  56 ‘By admitting’: Ibid.

  56–7 ‘artificially calm’: Ibid., p. 170

  57 ‘In view of the danger’: Falk, ‘My Experiences’, p. 18

  57 ‘infinitely greater’: Ibid., p. 19

  57 ‘Far more courage’: GP Notebook, 8 August 1941

  57 ‘a strong presentiment’: Wallace Ellison, ‘My First Escape from Ruhleben’, accessed at http://www.archive.org/stream/escapede00elli/escapede00elli_djvu.txt on 3 November 2011

  58 ‘behaved . . . caddishly’: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. 172

  58 ‘make it safe’: GP Notebook, 8 August 1941

  59 ‘a natural calm’: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. 170

  60 ‘out-manoeuvring’: Ibid., p. 142

  62 ‘rattling wires’: Falk, ‘My Experiences’, p. 18

  62 ‘walked on’: Ibid., p. 19

  62 ‘depended on lifting’: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. 173

  63 exercises for a weak heart: Ibid.

  63 ‘elbows aching and brows wet’: Ibid.

  63 ‘positive genius’: Falk, ‘My Experiences’, p. 18

  63 ‘sheer hard thinking’: Falk, ‘My Experiences . . . with some Additions’, p. 28

  64 ‘twigs underfoot’: Falk, ‘My Experiences’, p. 19

  64 the first fence: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. 174

  64 ‘Seeing him in difficulty’: Falk, ‘My Experiences’, p. 20

  64 the third fence: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. 174

  64 ‘great deal of difficulty’: Ibid., p. 175

  65 heart thumping: Ibid.

  65 ‘I had got to the top’: Ibid., p. 176

  65 ‘Was it a constable?’: Falk, ‘My Experiences’, p. 20

  66 ‘rare beatitudes’: Draft written in early October 41, GP Notebook

  How to Become Invisible

  68 ‘I repeated’: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. 142

  69 ‘go forward’: Ibid., p. 141

  69 ‘something utterly . . . impossible’: Ibid., p. 145

  70 ‘great charm about Arsène’: Ibid.

  73 ‘Everything looked different’: Ibid., p. 180

  73 ‘Before Pyke could’: Falk, ‘My Experiences’, p. 21

  73 ‘my pocketbook’: Ibid., p. 18

  74 ‘great, big fat things’: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. 181

  74 ‘whether he had any notion’: Falk, ‘My Experiences’, pp. 21–22

  74 ‘hot coals’: Ibid., p. 22

  75 Blumenthal and Herr Referendar: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. 166

  76 valleys near Goslar: Falk, ‘My Experiences’, p. 22

  76 ‘a bright sun’: Ibid., p. 23

  77 forest deserted: Falk, ‘My Experiences . . . with some Additions’, p. 27

  77 ‘Fugitives please note’: Falk, ‘My Experiences’, p. 26

  78 ‘I lacked the nerve’: Falk, ‘My Experiences . . . with some Additions’, p. 40

  78 ‘extremely addicted’: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. 181

  78–9 ‘Burglary . . . catch you’: Ibid., pp. 184–185

  79 ‘Red Indian dictum’: Ibid., p. 184

  79 ‘In suave tones’: Falk, ‘My Experiences’, p. 29

  80 ‘How our boots’: Ibid., p. 26

  80 ‘suicidal, in view’: Ibid., p. 27

  81 ‘a buxom dame’: Ibid.

  82 ‘Madam, in these days’: Ibid., pp. 27–28

  83 ‘that hunted feeling’: Falk, ‘My Experiences . . . with some Additions’, p. 39

  83 ‘respective merits’: Falk, ‘My Experiences’, p. 30

  83 factory description: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. 201

  84 ‘end of our journey’: Falk, ‘My Experiences’, p. 29

  84 ‘Get your legs in’: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. 202

  84 ‘nothing exciting’: Ibid.

  85 ‘frightful Prussian’: Ibid.

  85 ‘Section A’: Ibid., p. 203

  85 ‘bored young farmer’: Ibid.

  85–6 ‘the one wish’: Ibid., p. 206

  86 ‘suddenly pitched’ and ‘I shall never forget’: Falk, ‘My Experiences’, p. 31 and E. M. Falk, undated letter, GB 206, RUH 22, p. 5

  87 ‘for my sight and ears’: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. 209

  88 ‘Instead of turning’: Ibid., p. 212

  89 ‘until a full stop is reached’: Ibid., p. 213

  89 ‘I ached’: Ibid.

  90 ‘that red-roofed cottage’: Ibid., p. 246

  90 ‘How did you get through’: Falk, ‘My Experiences’, p. 32

  91 ‘To him I feel’: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. xv

  92 ‘the joy of that first bath’: Falk, ‘My Experiences’, p. 32

&
nbsp; 92 ‘base of German agents’: Falk, ‘My Experiences . . . with some Additions’,

  94–7 newspaper headlines: The story even made it to New Zealand and Australia: ‘Escapees from Prison Camp’, Hawera and Normanby Star, 26 July 1915; ‘Escapees from Germany, Sensational Adventures’, Poverty Bay Herald, 27 July 1915; ‘Escape from Prison, Wonderful Exploit of Three Englishmen, A Walk Through Germany’, Ashburton Guardian, 27 July 1915

  97 GP and Falk meet Asquith: We know from Teddy Falk’s obituary that he met Asquith, and it is reasonable to assume that Pyke would have been invited to Downing Street as well. Falk Obituary, undated, GB 206, RUH 22

  Pyke Hunt, Part 1

  99 Kell’s war: Christopher Andrew, Defence of the Realm (London: Penguin), 2010, p. 29

  100 Cambridge population: Christopher N. L. Brooke, A History of the University of Cambridge, vol. IV, 1870–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1993, p. 331

  100 GP mind wandering: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. xvi

  100 ‘not a desirable’: Charles Holland quoted in Leonard Dunning to Vernon Kell, 13 December 1915, KV 2/3038

  101 ‘neither included nor’: ‘Geoffrey Pyke: Thrilling Story of His Escape from Ruhleben’, Cambridge Daily News, 9 December 1915

  101 ‘You must remember’: A. J. P. Taylor, The Trouble Makers (London: Penguin), 1957, p. 134

  102 case passes to MO5(g): Leonard Dunning to Vernon Kell, 13 December 1915, KV 2/3038/62527

  102 warrant for GP’s post: Vernon Kell to Charles Holland, 17 December 1915, KV 2/3038/62527

  102 ‘unsettled sort’: Charles Holland to Vernon Kell, 19 December 1915, KV 2/3038/63757

  102 letters reveal nothing: The only letter kept by MI5 came from Clara Melchior, in Copenhagen, who had taken issue with a point made by Pyke a Fortnightly article. Melchior was author of Familienminder (Copenhagen, 1915), and may have taken exception to Pyke’s claim that 60,000 men guarded the Kiel Canal

  102 ‘manoeuvring, single-handed’: Reginald Drake to Chief Constable, County Constabulary, Bodmin, 22 June 1916, KV 2/3038

  102 ‘the day he left’: Ibid.

  103 ‘movements and associates’: Ibid.

  103 ‘awkward gaps’: Ibid.

  104 ‘dirty dog’: Letter to Admiral W. Reginald ‘Blinker’ Hall, quoted in Andrew, Defence of the Realm, p. 82

  104 ‘whence he disappeared’: Reginald Drake to Basil Thomson, 22 June 1916, KV 2/3038

  104 ‘movements of a boat’: It is possible that he was tipped off by the young MI5 officer Hinchley Cooke, later an MI5 interrogator, who was in Falmouth at the time keeping an eye on the flow of German women passing through Falmouth to Holland. Report from District Intelligence Director ‘on movements of a boat owned by PIKE’, 22 June 1916, KV 2/3038

  104 ‘boasts of having’: Basil Thomson to Reginald Drake, 26 June 1916, KV 2/3038

  105 ‘dazzling display’: Taylor, The Trouble Makers, pp. 134–135

  105 ‘enable one to see England’: Thomas Hardy, ‘Let Us Now Be Praised By Famous Men’, Cambridge Magazine, 11 November 1916

  105 ‘almost a traitor’: GP, proposed broadcast to the German people, 1939

  106 ‘no practical knowledge’: R. Banfield to Reginald Drake, 30 June 1916, KV 2/3038

  106 ‘should he transgress’: Reginald Drake to R. Banfield, 4 July 1916, KV 2/3038

  106 Signals offices contacts MI5: The Chief Officer at the War Signal Station in St Anthony had written to Admiral Denison in Falmouth who wired the MI5 District Intelligence Director, who passed the news on to Drake, 6 July 1916, KV 2/3038

  106 MI5 directive: MI5 to all British ports, the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the Permit Office, Scotland Yard, The French High Command (G.Q.G.), Glasgow Police and M.I.1.c., 13 July 1916, KV 2/3038

  108 ‘First World War’s best sellers’: Knightley, The First Casualty, p. 89

  108 ‘writes extraordinarily well’: Punch, vol. 150, 8 March 1916

  108 ‘narrative . . . thrilling’: The Chicago Tribune, 29 April 1916

  108 ‘Very exciting’: Advertisement, The Times, 25 February 1916

  108 ‘“Thrilling” has become’: Country Life, 26 February 1916, pp. 321–2

  109 ‘too young and too clever’: Punch, vol. 150, 8 March 1916

  109 ‘irreverent cleverness’: Spectator, vol. 116, 4 March 1916, pp. 321–2

  109 ‘doggedness’ and ‘courage’: E. M. Falk, undated latter, GB 206, RUH 22, p. 4

  109 ‘pro-German publication’: CID to MI5, 22 November 1917

  110 RP conscientious objector: Richard Pyke eventually enlisted in the Army on 14 September 1917 before joining the RAF in April 1918. Richard Pyke, The Lives and Deaths of Roland Greer (London: Richard Cobden-Sanderson), 1928, p. 118

  110 ‘centre of life’: Virginia Woolf, The Question of Things Happening: The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Vol. 2: 1912–1922 (London: Hogarth), 1976, p. 210. She may have met Pyke in late 1916: ‘O my God! what an evening . . . Strange figures . . . Mrs Hannay, an artist – Pike (sic) an inventor, Scott a don. Stove smoked, fog thick. Trains stopped. Bed.’ Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf, Vintage, 1997, Chapter 21, ‘Seeing Life’, VW to DG, 17 December 1916

  110 ‘zenith of disreputability’: Leonard Woolf, Beginning Again: An Autobiography of the Years 1911 to 1918 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), 1975, p. 216

  110 ‘overpowering aroma’: Douglas Goldring, Odd Man Out (London: Chapman and Hall), 1935, p. 267

  110 ‘fresh deformity’: Virginia Woolf to Lady Ottoline Morrell, November 1919, in Woolf, The Question, p. 399

  111 GP and Margaret Chubb members of ‘1917’: Richard Pyke talked about his brother and Margaret Chubb belonging to a London circle ‘which envious outsiders delight to term a “clique,” but which its languid members more often call a “crowd.” [. . .] the Bloomsbury crowd whom they so often met’, R. Pyke, Roland Greer, p. 225

  How to Raise Your Child (and Pay for It)

  114 ‘so charmed’: As told to Lampe by Mary Pyke and Nathan Isaacs, Lampe in a letter to David Pyke

  116 ‘a hasty temper’: R. Pyke, Roland Greer, p. 5, p. 8

  116 ‘Myra was consumed’: Ibid., p. 9

  116 ‘fist flourished’: Ibid., p. 74

  116 ‘irresistibly impelled’: Ibid., p. 19

  116 ‘only formidable opponent’: Ibid., p. 55

  116 ‘pushed his elbows’: Ibid., p. 35

  116 ‘on the side of his head’: Ibid., p. 36

  116–7 ‘mother chased them round’: Lancelot Law Whyte, Focus and Diversions (New York: George Braziller), 1963, p. 92

  117 ‘playing at pork butchers’: R. Pyke, Roland Greer, p. 67

  118 ‘Not only could’: Ibid., p. 63

  118–9 ‘running . . . public school’: Pyke, To Ruhleben, p. 70

  119 ‘malicious devils’: R. Pyke, Roland Greer, p. 265

  119 when things were at their worst’: Lampe, Pyke, p. 30

  119 ‘beastly’: Audrey Coppard and Bernard R. Crick, Orwell Remembered (British Broadcasting Corporation), 1984, p. 23

  119 ‘One ceased so completely’: Harold Nicolson, Some People (London: Folio Society), 1951, pp. 22–26

  119 ‘blamed the Wellington system’: James Lees-Milne, Harold Nicolson: A Biography, 1886–1929 (London: Chatto & Windus), 1980, p. 12

  120 ‘most dismal period’: Evelyn Waugh, A Little Learning (London: Penguin), 1990, Chapter 4

  120 ‘an English public schoolboy’: Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians, Kindle locations 2614–2623

  122 ‘a silly business’: GP suicide note, 21 February 1948

  123 ‘a real marriage’: 60 G. Bernard Shaw, ‘Getting Married’, Prefaces (London: Paul Hamlyn), 1965, p. 30

  124 ‘highly scientific’: Bankruptcy Hearing No. 243 of 1928, ‘Geoffrey Nathaniel Pyke’, BT 226/4520

  126 ‘proprietary rights . . . happy’: A. S. Ramsey Papers, Part 1

  127 ‘awfully pleased’: 13 January 1923 [incorrect date], F. P. Ramsey Papers, Part 1
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  127 ‘wonderful afternoon’: F. P. Ramsey Papers, Part 1

  127 ‘Geoff told me’: Ibid.

  128 GP develops financial model: ‘Statement by G. N. Pyke’, Bankruptcy Hearing No. 243 of 1928, ‘Geoffrey Nathaniel Pyke’, BT 226/4520

  128 ‘now made £500’: Diary, 8 February 1924, A. S. Ramsey Papers, Part 1

  130 ‘lived almost as one’: Institute of Education, London – N1/D/2, p. 7

  130 ‘undoubtedly an educational genius’: William van der Eyken and Barry Turner, Adventures in Education (London: Allen Lane), 1969, pp. 21–22

  133–4 ‘If we invited’: John Cohen quoted in David Lampe, Pyke, p. 19

  134 average IQ: van der Eyken and Turner, Adventures, p. 27

  134 ‘ten most difficult’: Ibid.

  135 ‘The method of remaining’: Ibid., p. 30

  135 ‘I must say. . . crachat upon her’: James Strachey to Alix Strachey, 17 February 1925, Perry Meisel & Walter Kendrick, Bloomsbury/Freud: The Letters of James and Alix Strachey (London: Chatto & Windus), 1986, p. 205

  135 children building others: School Notes, 10 November 1924

  135 ‘pre-genital brothel’: van der Eyken and Turner, Adventures, p. 37

  136–7 ‘explicitly requested’: Lydia A. H. Smith, To Understand and to Help (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses), 1985, p. 69

  137 ‘individual aggressiveness’: van der Eyken and Turner, Adventures, p. 34

  137 ‘merely a demonstration’: J. D. Bernal, Microcosm, undated MSS, JDB Papers, B.4.1

  137 ‘a charming and good-natured’: Lettice Ramsey Memoir, F. R. Ramsey Papers, 3/1

  137 ‘cured of such wishes’: James Strachey to Alix Strachey, 3 November 1924, Meisel & Kendrick, Bloomsbury/Freud, p. 107

  137 Ramsey resenting GP joking: Frank Ramsey to Lettice Baker, 28 December 1924, F. R. Ramsey Papers, 2/2(2)

  138 ‘a fine exhibition’: John Rickman, ‘Susan Sutherland Isaacs’, The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, vol. 31, 1950, p. 282

  138 ‘Geoffrey turned more’: Institute of Education, London – N1/D/2, p. 8

  138 ‘she didn’t feel any’: Ibid.

  138 ‘very real love’: Ibid.

  138–9 ‘blessing and active’: Ibid.

  139 ‘he had not been’: Philip Graham, Susan Isaacs: A Life Freeing the Minds of Children (London: Karnac), 2009, p. 138

 

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