1. The camp

I knew a little about war-time internment on the Isle of Man.

A few years ago we visited the museum that commemorates the WWI internment camp at Knockaloe.

And family lore includes the story of my mother's grandmother, forced to vacate her house in Onchan so that it could be used (along with lots of others) for the purposes of internment in WWII. That complex is described here: "What might have been considered the 'best' camp to be in was Onchan Camp (Royal Avenue West and Belgravia Road). Physically one of the largest camps in terms of size, the site contained space to grow vegetables, keep chickens, play football and to generally be able to move around -- a luxury not enjoyed in many of the other camps. It also held a large number of academics and artists and as a result there were art exhibitions staged in the camp and a full programme of lectures and classes that internees could attend at the 'Onchan Youth College and University' within the camp."

Ali Smith's Summer, however, featured in some detail the workings of another camp: Hutchinson Camp on Hutchinson Square, which we'd passed a couple of times on our forays through Douglas.

That camp opened in June 1940, with the boarding houses that lined the square and Broadway holding 1,100 internees: "[It] became a centre for artistic and academic endeavour more by accident than design because of the large number of artists and academics who happened to be interned there...

"The camp initially held German and Austrian refugees but as more internees were released to work for the Allied war effort and the smaller camps began to close, the remaining internees were moved to Hutchinson Camp. Finally in 1943 even Hutchinson Camp was closed, until it reopened as a camp for military prisoners of war and then finally closed in 1944."



Ali Smith always does detailed research, so I've no doubt that her fictional portrayal of Daniel Gluck and his father is based on real events. But it IS fiction, so caveat lector:

Daniel's father explains how he grew up in England from infancy, but never applied for his papers. A serious mistake, as he now acknowledges...

Many people, whether British or Manx, Smith tells us, don't really understand that Germans are not necessarily Nazis, and indeed, might hate the Nazis even more than they do. As a result, there are a few scary stories involving birds definitely not of a feather being forced to flock together. At the interim camp in Ascot, for example, Jew-hating blackshirts are bunged in with Jews. At Olympia, former concentration camp inmates are housed with Nazi devotees: "In Butlin's Holiday Camp," says one character, "a pastor stood up on Sunday and asked God for Nazi victory."

But having landed in Douglas, Daniel's group of internees doff their hats at the war memorial on the promenade, as they make their way to the camp: "That sure don't seem very Nazi, the NCO said."

And life without freedom begins:

"They got sorted into groups of thirty, told to take a house on the square, told which houses were free. The houses were holiday houses, guest houses, the landladies long gone taking the carpets and most of the furnishings with them. The windows were painted blue, blackout. The houses were lit with red bulbs. They were bare, a few chairs, makeshift tables. But the bedrooms had beds. There was water, cold. The kitchens had gas for cooking...

"Poor man's riviera! That's what they call this place when there's not a war on.

"But there's a green grass square in front of the houses and it's got flowers, annuals, in the borders fresh-cut into it, and beyond it through the wire down the hill a view of the sea."


"The Daily Mail says you're getting a sea air holiday here, a boy of ten says to Daniel a week later through the wire... The Daily Mail says you've luxury sunbathing beds and miniature golf and more money than we've got and hot water and coal. You get sugar and milk and eggs for your breakfast. Fried by landladies..."

Good old Daily Mail. Always helpful...

These people were most unjustly detained, but they were treated relatively humanely. When a sergeant hollers at the internees to move quicker on their march from the boat, someone pipes up and says the man in front is in his 70s, and can't move quicker, and so neither can they. The hollerer pipes down. "Now THERE's a turn up for the books, Daniel's father said. THERE'S a different fishkettle. Might be all right here, you know."

Daniel also describes a trip to the cinema: 400 people; two guards; The Great Dictator. And then they go back to the camp for a concert. There are lectures on all sorts of topics: Goethe, Plato, Rilke... And Commandant Captain Hubert Daniel sounds like a good sort: He gives the artists studios, and the writers books; he ensures the mail passes.

"It sounds very unlike a prison, [Elizabeth] says.
"A prison is a prison, he says. Whatever you fill the time with."

And in the letter he writes but doesn't send to his missing sister, Daniel remarks: "We have been here behind the wire all through the bright open door of the summer."

For Daniel's father, this is his second misfortune. Daniel says: "Well. I was hardly in, in for comparatively no time. And it was awful. It was exceptional. And it was still awful. But we weren't in for long. My father, he'd been interned for six years, the whole first war. Wakefield. Lofthouse. Lofthouse was a good camp, high class, fee-paying, my mother paid for it. But still he came out mad, very weak, bleak. Ruined his health. Sick man the rest of his life."

He remembers his surprise when his father tells him he is hopeful this imprisonment won't last so long: "It's different this time. It's a different place, now, England, his father says. Its better self has come to the fore." He cites various people who have spoken out on their behalf: Mrs Rathbone, the Bishop of Chichester, Mr Wedgwood, Young Mr Foot. "It couldn't be more different. They know about fairness now."

Well, maybe... At any rate, they're home by the end of January 1941. Daniel joins the Royal Navy.



***

Many extraordinary people were housed in Hutchinson Camp. Among them:

-- Fred Uhlman, a painter and writer, who put together a book of sketches of camp life


-- Kurt Schwitters, a Dadaist painter and performative artist (famous for barking, and for making sculptures from dried porridge, which then grows mould)



-- Rawicz and Landauer, extraordinary pianists (whom my father used to mention); they staged concerts that the local people also came to enjoy (staying on the other side of the wire, of course)

-- Hugo Dachinger, "a significant protagonist in the history of Austrian art"


***

The Hutchinson Camp magazine, called simply The Camp, is available here. No. 1 is dated 21 September 1940. And the Manx Museum has many holdings relating to internment, catalogued here.




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2. The camera

What we're talking about here is the Great Union Camera Obscura that stands up on Douglas Head. It's open on summer weekends, providing the sun is shining.

It was kind of shining the day we went. When we set off for a family breakfast, it was fair beaming. But by the time we'd munched our way through Noa's sterling avo and eggs, this curious thing called inversion had set in. We knew inversion from the couple of months we spent in San Francisco many years ago. Over there, they called it the marine layer, and it's essentially a sea mist. Today it was stopping the Great Union Camera Obscura from functioning optimally, so the cheerful guardians let us in for free. We still found it pretty impressive...


According to the leaflet they gave us, a basic camera obscura works by letting light into a dark room (ie, the "camera obscura") via a small aperture, so that images of the outside world are projected onto a wall. Add a tilting mirror, and you can direct the projected image elsewhere, eg a table top.



This particular camera obscura dates from 1892 (the original one having burned down). The previous year, its promoter, Mr J.R. Fielding, had invented and patented a 12-lens camera obscura. Others had only a single lens, so part of the picture that appeared on the table surface was always upside down to some sections of the audience. Scientifically challenged Terns don't quite understand that, but the point is that the multiple lenses projected down onto separate tables, and the "Great Union" refers to the blending of these pictures.



Camera obscuras (or should that be camerae obscurae...?) could be found in many seaside resorts (Douglas had more than one). They were very popular in Victorian times, and I can completely understand why. They're effectively the first moving pictures... You're looking at the image, and then suddenly you realize the water is rippling, or the tree branches are moving, or a seagull has shot across the frame. No doubt you could organize your mates to do shenanigans outside...




Once you've seen all you want to see, you can follow the track down to the beach:






And finally, you make your way round to the harbour and the bus: