website watertownhistory.org
ebook History of Watertown,
Wisconsin
Ralph D. Blumenfeld
1908
01 08 Ralph Blumenfeld, who was born and reared in this city, and a son
of Mr. and Mrs. D. Blumenfeld, will probably become the editor of the London Times, London, England, as a result
of the change in the ownership of that powerful and historic journal.
Mr. Blumenfeld
began his newspaper work in the office of the Weltbuerger, the German newspaper in this city,
owned and published by his father for fifty years. After leaving that paper he did work as a
telegraph operator and then returned to journalism and also became a
contributor to many of the leading magazines and newspapers in this country.
He rose from the
ranks as a “cub reporter,” has been a war correspondent and for a time held a
high place in the New York Herald,
which he left to join the Paris edition of the James Gordon Bennett
publications. He then became managing
editor of The London Express, which
started the movement in England to Americanize the London press. He has been the right-hand man for the
Harmsworth interests.
Pioneer
Recollections:
Settlers in Watertown were educated
Watertown
Daily Times 08 16 1924
The
following article recently appeared in the St.
Paul Pioneer Press and tells of early-day immigrants from Germany.
The
ambitious plumber or baker or butcher of today no doubt would be shocked to
learn that men of their trades discoursed learnedly on Main Sreet on certain
passages of Theocritus or Homer, Schopenhauer or Kant more than half a century
ago. This happened in Wisconsin in the
early fifties and sixties, and more particularly so in Watertown according to a
story told The Associated Press by Ralph D. Blumenfeld, a former Watertown man,
but now chairman and editor of the London
(English) Daily Express.
Mr.
Blumenfeld recites that Watertown became the haven for exiled German educators,
lawyers and other learned men, who fled their native land following the
revolution of 1848.
There was
a great influx of these men, says Mr. Blumenfeld. Since they all could not practice law or
teach the dead languages, they took to other pursuits, so that it was no
uncommon thing to hear on Main street a tavern-keeper, a grocer or a cobbler
disputing vigorously on certain dissertations of ancient men of different
schools of philosophy. It was a strange
and fascinating mixture of the sublime and ridiculous.
The
editor relates an instance, when the “fancy” baker, depositing his little
basket of confections at the Blumenfeld garden gate, joyfully explain to
Blumenfeld that he had translated successfully the latest philosophical tract
of Bacchilydes.
“The
music teacher, who imparted to me the secrets of the violin – sometimes rather
forcibly – pulled out a photograph showing his uncle in the fell panoply of a
minister of state in the old Kaiser’s entourage”, states Mr. Blumenfeld.
“These
university men, with their quaint traditions, their deep learning and their
pride, dominated our town to such an extent that all other people, not of
German descent, perforce had to accommodate themselves to conditions of
learning German at the risk of going under.
Thus it was that even the Irish immigrants and the Welsh farmers and the
Yankee storekeepers and the sons and daughters all talked German. I remember even an Indian youth out on the
Hustisford road speaking German more fluently than English.”
At
that time in Watertown, Mr. Blumenfeld adds, there was but one dress suit, a
relic of the forties, although a number of the ladies of the Blumenfeld family
circle of acquaintance possessed evening gowns, carefully and reverently laid
away in lavender.
The
first dress suit ever seen by Mr. Blumenfeld was when he was 10 years old, and
this was worn by an actor in shows of the “East Lynn” or “Camille” type.
People
in those early Watertown days, the editor states, walked to social events and
there were not such smart social events nowadays “where folks drive over
beautifully paved roads to a mansion, to meet a smartly dressed company, all in
the most acceptable evening dress, with a table decorated and laid as
artistically as could be found anywhere, and where followed a dinner party flow
of conversation quiet in keeping with what one might call the best traditions
of Mayfair.”
Mr.
Blumenfeld has been a resident of London for twenty years, returning at times
to Watertown, where he says he likes to revisit the scenes of his youth.
_________________________________________________________________________
1914
Ralph
D. Blumenfeld, author of "R. D. B's
Diary," "R. D., D's
Procession' " and "In the
Days of Bicycles and Bustles," and one of Great Britain's outstanding
newspaper editors who started his career in Watertown, rising to the editorship
of The London Daily Express, is hard
at work on another volume, this one dealing with boyhood reminiscences of
Watertown in the ‘60s and '70s.
Blumenfeld Home
811 N Fourth
Word
that he is at work on this volume has been coming in for some time. Mr. Blumenfeld is said to be planning to give
Watertown's old Sixth ward (now the Sixth and
Thirteenth wards) generous mention in his book, because he was born and lived
in the old Sixth Ward. The Blumenfeld home was in North Fourth Street, directly
north of the Oscar Maerzke home.
Son of David Blumenfeld
His
father was David Blumenfeld,
for many years editor and publisher of the German
language weekly, Der Weltbuerger.
Visits to Home Town
Mr.
Blumenfeld, who has paid infrequent visits to Watertown in the last two
decades, has nevertheless a great love for his old home town and a feeling of
loyalty to his boyhood home. He has never failed to write glowingly and
tenderly of this city. And those people
from here who have visited him in London, where he has lived for many years,
have always come back with words of praise for him.
Mr.
Blumenfeld visited, here in 1921 and has also been back several times since
then, but his visits have been brief. Just prior to the outbreak of the war he
was planning another trip here and had written that he hoped to spend a winter
in Arizona. Before the war he spent his winters in Italy, where he found the
climate more to his liking than any Britain could offer, but since the war he
has refused to leave London and his country home at Muscombs, Great Easten,
Dunmow, Essex. He has gone through repeated bombings
and borne up bravely along with the rest of the British people. In his letters
to friends here he has also spoken his mind about the Nazi war machine. He
never was one to mince words.
Friend of Joe Davies
One of
Mr. Blumenfeld's favorite American friends is Joseph
E. Davies, another native son of Watertown, who has frequently been his
guest in England and who served as ambassador to the Soviet Union.
Mr.
Blumenfeld has paid many tributes in writing to Mr. Davies and Mr. Davies'
stature in the British mind can be seen in the fact that the famous British
newspaper, The London Times, known as
"The Thunderer," recently devoted an entire column to a report of the
address Mr. Davies gave a short time ago at the governors' conference at
Columbus, Ohio. The article appeared in the issue of Sunday, June 22. For
anyone to get an entire column in a newspaper in Great Britain these days, where newsprint is rationed, is somewhat of a
feat in itself. The column the London
Times devoted to a report and praise of Mr. Davies is wider than the
regulation newspaper column in the United States.
The
accompanying picture is one Mr. Blumenfeld had taken in this county, during his
last visit in Milwaukee.
Lauds Davies
From
another source, the Daily Times has
obtained a copy of a letter which Mr. Blumenfeld recently wrote to Mr. Davies
under date of June 23 and in which he makes mention of the book he is working
on.
This
letter, so typical of Mr. Blumenfeld, says:
My Dear
Joe:
Your
contribution to the Allied cause is so much ahead of the average that I feel
diffident in emphasizing it, for you have said all the things that wanted
saying so effectively, so sensibly and so devoid of frills and embroidery that
there is nothing more to be said by others, less qualified to speak. Here is an
example in the form of an extract from yesterday’s Times in which your Columbus address to Governors is summarized
with skill and judgment.
I am
proud to be able to proclaim you to all and sundry of my friends and
acquaintances as a follow Watertowner. "You are keeping Watertown on the
map and are making the old burg take on the appearance of a great center of
wisdom, and exposition. Keep it up, and the next time you come over here on a
mission (you do these things superlatively well) you must come down and put in
a day or so with me in my medieval retreat where we may sit down and compare
Watertown with Athens and ancient Welsh culture.
I
mention Wales and as I am still struggling with my boyhood reminiscences of
Watertown in the '60s and '70s. I propose to call it “My Home Town" and a
good deal of it is concerned with the 6th ward and its émigré citizens who came
from all parts of Europe and I am doing my best to say nice things about the I
Welsh settlement on the west side, the Davies, Evans, Jones, Howell, Griffith
and so on contingent. I think it was your father Edward Davies, wasn’t it, who
owned a wagon factory close to Manngold’s hotel; or was it on the next street
by Bennett’s machine shop? I hope to
finish the cursed thing one day. I have
nothing to guide me except my memory and it is a long stretch back to 1864 when
I first shook the 6th ward with my entry into this hectic live.
Once
more my salutations,
Yours
ever,
Ralph D.
Blumenfeld
Ralph
Blumentfeld Banqueted in London
About
50 years ago Ralph Blumenfeld left Watertown to seek his fortune
elsewhere. His great ambition was to
some day become an editor. It was long
after leaving his home town that this ambition developed. He was picked up by the renowned James Gordon
Bennett, the editor of the New York
Herald, who later took him to Europe and placed him in charge of the Paris
edition of the New York Herald, and
still later he was picked up by the owner of the Daily London Express and made editor of that paper, which
connection he still ably holds. Lately a
banquet was held at the Hotel Victoria in London by 700 employees of the paper
to celebrate Mr. Blumenfeld’s 25th anniversary on the paper, a fine testimonial
heard of with pleasure here by his old Watertown friends.
1957 07 30
A
portrait of the late Ralph D. Blumenfeld has been added to the historical
collections at the Octagon House. Mr. Blumenfeld who became known as “R.D.B.” to readers of
British newspapers, was the author of several books, among them “Home Town” in
which he recalled persons and events associated with early Watertown and his
boyhood here. It was the most successful
of his several books and went through numerous editions. Mr. Blumenfeld was born in Watertown in 1864
and died at his country estate, Great Easton, Dunmow, Muscombs, Essex in England in 1948.
He served as editor of the London
Daily Express from 1902 to 1933. He
visited Watertown several times during his later years and each time went to
Oak Hill Cemetery to pause at the graves of his parents, Mr. and Mrs. David
Blumenfeld. His father was for many
years editor and publisher of the German language weekly here, the Watertown Weltbuerger.
