ebook History of Watertown, Wisconsin
R. D. B.
1864 – 1948
Editor, London Daily Express, 1902-1033
Click
to enlarge
Watertown
Historical Society Collection
Ralph
Blumenfeld
1879
DAVID & RALPH BLUMENFELD
c.1880
-- -- PRINTER FOR GLOBE MILL
A young visitor of note [to Globe Mill] was Ralph Blumenfeld, delivering to the
mill office business forms printed at his father's shop where was published
"The Weltbuerger"—a
German language paper of wide local distribution and influence. The smell of printer's ink pointed his career
of great prominence in journalism—first at the age of twenty-seven as editor of
the "New York Herald" and
later in still greater fields as editor and chairman of the Board of the
world's most widely circulated paper, "The
London Daily Express." Today [1945]
at eighty-two, Ralph Blumenfeld has seen his recent book, "Hometown" (Watertown), go into its third edition for his
English public. Source: "The
Globe Milling Company, Watertown, Wisconsin, 1845-1945."
1890
10 22 MANAGING EDITOR, LONDON EDITION OF THE NEW YORK HERALD
Another
Watertown boy, Ralph Blumenfeld, has been heard from in a way pleasing to his
many friends, having received a fine promotion.
He is now in London, England, filling the position of managing editor of
the London edition of the The New York Herald.
1901
08 11 HARPER'S MONTHLY
ARTICLE
Ralph D. Blumenfeld, son of D. Blumenfeld of this
city, contributed an article to the August number of Harper's Monthly Magazine, the subject of which is "A Hundred
Years' War of Today," in which he deals with the resistance of the people
of Achin in Sumatra to the Hollanders and other European nations. He draws a comparison between the British in
South Africa and what has been done for years in Achin. The article is a well written one. WDT >-> Link to the article
1908
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.
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.
1933 PORTRAIT OF RALPH BLUMENFELD. Watertown
Historical Society Collection
12 22 
“To Edward Broenniman
from his old Watertown friend, Ralph Blumenfeld.”
1948 PROFILE
OF RALPH BLUMENFELD
In the
annals of newspaper work there were few men who rose to greater prominence and
achieved greater success than Ralph D. Blumenfeld, the former Wisconsin boy who
died recently after having been editor of the London Daily Express. Born
in 1863 in Watertown, he was the son of David Blumenfeld, editor and proprietor
of the Watertown Weltburger, a German language newspaper.
The
man, who was generally regarded as the doyen of Fleet Street, attended the
public schools of Watertown until he was 11 years old, when he joined the force
of telegraph messengers for the Western Union company. Like other ambitious young men, he learned
telegraphy and was soon skillful enough to act as a substitute in several small
towns in Wisconsin and Illinois.
While
acting as a substitute in Sycamore, III. he became acquainted with the
president of a small railroad who took particular notice
of the young man's ambitious ways and got a position for him in Kansas City,
where he took press dispatches. In that
capacity he gained the reputation of being the most skillful operator in that
city, though he was only 15 years old at the time.
Later
young Ralph got a position in the Western Union office in Milwaukee, where his
work was appreciated to such an extent that he was sent to New York, where he
made the acquaintance of James Gordon Bennet, the famous publisher of the New York Herald. Bennett hired the young man and sent him to
London to cover Queen Victoria's jubilee and later made him co-manager of the
European office of the United Press association.
London
life was not agreeable at first to Blumenfeld and he returned to America to
report the Garfield campaign for the New
York Herald. Afterward he reported
the proceedings of Congress at Washington for the Press association.
When
Congress adjourned, he was called to New York and accepted the night editorship
of the Evening Telegram. After serving in that capacity for four
months he transferred to the Herald
as city editor.
In
1890 he was sent to London to assume the editorship of the London edition of
the Herald. In London the 27-year-old
American newspaperman quickly found his feet.
He had a flair for making quick, friendly contacts, especially with
influential people. The days when his
London lodging was a $10-a-week apartment with "use of bath if
vacant," were an old memory. He had
his manservant now, and in the house which he shared with three well known
London personalities a butler served the wines.
He was a highly paid and, as he subsequently admitted, a spoiled) young
man.
Blumenfeld
was 29 when Bennet switched him to New York to act as business manager of the Herald.
But Blumenfeld now wanted to live in England, and when the new Herald building was up
he quit and went into the typesetting business, in which he made a lot of
money.
But
one night he met a friend who remarked casually, "I hear you're in
business now," and then turned his back on Bumenleld. "I didn't sleep all night,"
Blumenfeld later declared. "It
taught me a lesson I hadn't learned all the years I'd been in journalism. It showed me that a journalist is as big as
his paper, and outside of his paper, he's only as big as himself. That night I decided to get back into
journalism. I should be a rich man today
if I'd stayed in business, but I should have missed most of the things that
make life, my life anyway, worth living."
Northcliffe
gave Blumenfeld a job as news editor on the Daily
Mail. Then, in 1904, when he was 40,
he went to the paper which was to be his mooring for the rest of his
journalistic life. He became the editor
of the Daily Express. Now he sat in a room in Shoe Lane, off Fleet
Street, and looked down on that narrow ravine which offers more tributes to
history than almost any other spot in London except Westminster Abbey and the
Tower.
Rudyard
Kipling wrote prophetic letters to Blumenfeld and came to see him in Shoe
Lane. Winston Churchill would ring up to
explain his policy of holding up the budget.
He was a power; he was also a personality. He got on well with everyone and was accepted
everywhere.
The Daily Express at that time was, in the
editor's own phrase, underpowered and over-whistled. Max Aitken, a wealthy young man, became
interested in the paper and put up $200,000 to keep it afloat. Aitken provided energy behind the paper, while
R. D. B., as Blumenfeld became known in London, provided the wisdom, the
experience, the poise, the indestructible prestige and much of the political
acumen. The Express soon fought the Daily
Mail to a standstill and boasted a circulation of 2,000,000 a day.
R. D.
B. now had a London flat and a country home.
He had joined the happy and graceful life of a literary and artistic
colony in Essex. His neighbors were
artists, poets and writers, with a general and a scientist or two.
One of
his friends was H. G. Wells and much of the conversation in Well's book, "Mr. Britling"
took in place in R. D. B.'s quiet garden.
Suave,
smiling, dark-eyed, soft-voiced, shrewd, subtle, with an ambassadorial presence
and charm, R. D. B. has for many years spoken for the British newspaper world
on many official and social occasions.
He could have been Sir Ralph, but he declined the honor; he preferred
the acknowledgment of election to the British Tory stronghold, the exclusive
Carleton Club (he was the first Jew to be admitted to that august
company).
Very
deep roots he put down in the country of his adoption, where he knew everybody
who was anybody. But the faint,
unmistakable accent remained.
In
1932, after having been a dominant figure in international journalism, R. D. B.
resigned the; editorship of the Express
to devote himself to independent writing.
He published two books, "R D. B.'s Procession," and "Home
Town." The latter told of his 16 years in Watertown where the world famous editor first got the smell of printer's ink in
his father's German language newspaper.
Blumenfeld
made several visits to this country during his long residence in England, and was last here in 1933. The
Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, 07 23 1948
1957
07 30 A portrait [1933] 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.
2008
LONDON CALLING! LONDON CALLING!
OCTAGON HOUSE GETS VISIT FROM
GRANDSON OF FAMOUS EX-RESIDENT
In May
of this year we were treated to a visit from David Eliot, grandson of famed
ex-resident Ralph David Blumenfeld, former editor of London Daily Express. Mr.
Blumenfeld was born in Watertown in 1864 and rose through the ranks of the
publishing business to become the editor of the newspaper with the largest
circulation in the world.
We
were very honored to meet the soft-spoken Mr. Eliot and his traveling
companion, Barbara Dicks. Both of them
had been in the publishing business and while this wasn’t Mr. Eliot’s first
trip to the States, it was his first visit to his grandfather’s birthplace and
we were pleased to be on hand to greet him and show him some of the materials
on his family that we held in our archives.
He
also toured our museum buildings and took a trip around town to visit spots
that were important to his ancestors.
His great-grandfather was David Blumenfeld, the founder and long-time
editor of “Der Watertown Weltburger”, which was a German-language newspaper
published in the city from 1857 to 1932.
Today the original publishing firm that put out the paper continues as Wepco Printing on N. Fourth Street.
While
here we produced a photo of R. D. Blumenfeld and his grandsons, including Mr.
Eliot taken in 1935 which he had fond memories of. He didn’t have a great deal to say about his
famous ancestor, other than he was a kindly old gentleman, “who often gave me a
sixpence”. We asked Mr. Eliot if he
could investigate the copyright of his grandfather’s very excellent memoir
“Hometown”, because we are very interested in reprinting this scarce resource
as part of our “Hometown History Series” of publications. He stated that on his return to England he
would look into the matter. We hope to
hear from him soon and extend our desire to meet with him again one day soon.
Cross References:
Close friend of
G. A. Stallmann
DAVID BLUMENFELD HOME / 811 N Fourth
1955
from ancestry.com:
Blumenfeld’s son:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Elliot_(railway_manager)
History of Watertown,
Wisconsin