Morocco Bound - The Notable Life of Albert William Searley

Whilst putting together some posters together to promote the manifold wonders of the Exeter Library Stack (which you can now get to browse yourself! Book here) I came across a volume with a beautiful decorated cover and spine – Moorish designs and lettering in time-faded gilt. Perfect, I thought, and took it from the shelf to take a picture. Something about it felt a little odd, however. Its pages were swollen, as if the book had been left out in the rain at some point in its long life. It soon became apparent that its state arose from far more fascinating factors. Factors which called for some serious stack sleuthing.  

The book was originally published by A&C Black in 1904, and describes the journeys made by Samuel Levy Bensusan through Morocco around that time. There are 74 colour plates comprising painted illustrations by A.S.Forrest (that’s A.S. for Archibald Stevenson) which offer a colourfully romanticised (or exoticised) vision of the country in the years before colonisation (it was made a French protectorate in 1912). However, there is a great deal more in this book than would have been found on its first publication. Someone has pasted in postcards, magazine illustrations and newspaper cuttings throughout. And photographs – lots of photographs. This is no act of book vandalism, however (of the kind which got Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell jailed for their cheeky literary amendments to library books in the early '60s). This is a richly enhanced book, and one which has left a very personal record of its former owner who eventually donated his collaborative volume to the Devon library collection. So who was he, and why did he do this? Let’s investigate.  

A bookplate tipped in to the pages prefacing the title and contents makes identification easy enough. This was a book formerly belonging to (Ex Libris) one A.W.Searley. The bookplate was designed by one J.W.Lias of Newton Abbot, which suggests that Searley was from these Devonshire parts. A little more investigation reveals the initials as standing for Albert William. Albert made his own journey to Morocco in 1909. We know this because he has pasted numerous of his own photographs onto any available blank page or space within the book. These are carefully framed in ruled pencil boxes, titled and identified in a neat ink-pen script and, in many cases, signed and dated; A.W.Searley 1909.  

These photographs appear to have been taken on a Brownie camera, the popular and affordable box contraption which was first manufactured in 1900. It made photography available to the masses, and with its easy portability saw the dawning of the age of the tourist snap. Searley’s pictures give a fascinating insight into a country on the cusp of hugely disruptive change; it was still to experience the volcanic ructions of the twentieth century, but they would make themselves felt soon enough. Searley seems mainly to have been based in Tangier, just over the straits from Gibraltar. There are various scenes from the city and its surrounds. One, of a gate with exquisite Moorish design, has two men standing on either side of its open doorway. One is in traditional dress, and one in modern military uniform, rifle by his side. It is a sign of things to come. But there are also some wonderful character studies: A group of men by a well; a snake-charmer; a water carrier; ‘a true believer’; a gambler (his makeshift table set up beneath the propped up shelter of a dismantled door); a medicine man; and a ‘conjuror’ (this one a particularly potent image).  

One of the photographs is titled ‘Babel’, a wry reference to the various adverts and notices on the white walls above an archway. Two gents in Edwardian dress and hats are walking away from the camera, as is a boy in a djellaba robe. It’s a sign that this is a city which is very much at the crossroads of cultures. Searley was certainly aware of this. Westerners appear in a number of his photographs, and he chooses to finish his personal selection with a photograph (placed beneath the words The End) which he titles East and West. In it a Moroccan man on a horse looks at the camera, as do a couple of women in Edwardian lace dresses who are passing by.  

                             

Searley’s interest in Morocco evidently continued after his return from the country. There are a number of newspaper cuttings and photographs which relate to its subsequent history, and other books about its culture. An article from the Daily Mail in 1911 reviews the memoirs of Emily Keene, a British traveller who married the Grand Shareef of Wazan (as he is referred to here) in 1873. If the name seems vaguely familiar it may be because she appeared as a character in The Young Indiana Jones. There are also cuttings relating to the Rif war of 1921-6, an anti-colonial conflict in which the Berber tribes of the Rif mountains in the north fought against the Spanish appropriation of Morocco as their ‘protectorate’ in 1920. Searley includes a picture of Abd el-Krim, the leader of the ‘Riffs’, as they are designated here. He has dated the cutting September 1924. It is clear that he was following affairs with a keen eye, and it is fairly evident where his sympathies lie.  

In observing the progress of the country he felt such affection for he was also unknowingly witnessing the shifting faultlines of twentieth century history, its progression towards catastrophic conflict. As the Spanish suffered a series of defeats, the discontent amongst the ranks of the colonial army was voiced by Major Francisco Franco, who openly threatened to disobey orders to retreat. The war was the making of the future fascist dictator, who would cast his shadow over Spain until his death in 1975, and by its cessation in 1926 he had risen through the ranks to become a precociously young brigadier general. When the French entered the conflict in 1925, they were led by Marshal Pétain who would become head of the defeated, Axis-compliant Vichy state from 1940-44. In a way, then, Searley’s enhanced book charts the transformation of the world in the harsh and unforgiving klieg light of the twentieth century. 

The lasting impression which Searley’s trip to Morocco made on him is also suggested by the programme which he has pasted on the back board of the book. This is for a ‘lantern lecture’ he gave on Morocco at Buckfast Abbey on October 29th 1921, some 12 years after his visit. The ‘programme’ of slides conjures a charming, impressionistic kaleidoscope of his journey: ‘memory and smells’; ‘queer mixture of ancient and modern’; ‘a great medicine man’; ‘public letter writer and story-teller'; ‘smoking kief’; ‘a journey to Spartel Lighthouse’; ‘constant fighting’; ‘Arab horses’; ‘the Mosque at Biskrah’; ‘Garden of Allah’; and, tellingly, ‘the first Motor in the Desert’. A small cutting pasted on the adjacent page reports on his ‘interesting lecture on Morocco at Buckfast’, and comments ‘besides telling much about a curious country, Mr Searley told especially (by his example) how a country ought to be visited, with open yes and an open mind’.  

                             

                                     

It’s also interesting that Albert Searley, a keen photographer, was still giving lantern lectures in the 20s. However, even if the box camera had made something approximating the modern snapshot available to the masses, it wouldn’t be until the mid-30s that the photographic slide was invented. For projection, it was still fragile glass slides which had to be carefully hauled to the lecture theatre and slotted into the lantern. Searley regularly used his photographs for illustrated lectures, and bequeathed part of his collection of slides to Torquay Museum. As the museum notes, some of these would have been used for lectures at the nearby Pengelly Hall. Some of Searley’s slides can also be found in digitised form on the University of Exeter’s Lucerna lantern slide database. Here, Searley is referred to as an ‘antiquarian and photographer’, and the pictures of church architecture, misericords and fonts point towards his interest in pre-modern history. Photographic collections in the SW Heritage catalogue suggest a co-existing interest in contemporary subject matter, however, with village scenes contrasting with depictions of local craft and industry (fishing, potter, shipbuilding) and everyday sights which now seem as strange and exotic as those he captured in Morocco (otter hunting, a man with a dancing monkey, bull droving through the street). Some of these can be found in a book of old Devon photographs put together by Brian Chugg, self-descriptively titled Victorian and Edwardian Devon from Old Photographs (available from the Exeter stacks).

 

                              

                              

                                                   

                                 

                               

Searley’s local history studies could be found within the pages of the annual Transactions of the Devonshire Association volumes, which date back to the 19th century (and which are available down in the stack). Particularly notable was his six part history of the manor of Haccombe, which lay just beyond the town of Kingskerswell where he lived for the greater part of his life. This thorough exploration of a geographically limited area was published in volumes 50-55, from 1918-24, illustrated by his own photographs, of course.  In it he traces the lineages of the De Haccombe, Archdeacon and Courtenay families, whose pedigree is given cold sculptural form in their tombs in St Blaise’s Haccombe. This small church, dating back to the 13th century, is found at the end of a winding lane which leads nowhere. It’s a grade I listed building and makes it into Todd Gray’s top 50 in his Devon’s 50 Best Churches (available in Devon Libraries). It is only open on certain days of the week, however, as I discovered to my disappointment after cycling down that lane.  

 

So what else can we discover about Albert William Searley. Well, the Ancestry family history site, available for use in Devon libraries, will tell us something of his origins, life and career. From the 1861 census we find baby Albert living in Ide with his father, John, and his mother, Amelia, along with their sister in law Elizabeth. John is recorded as being a ‘farmer of 14 acres’. So young Albert didn’t come from a family with a scholarly background, nor one which would probably have brought him up with the expectation of further education and travel. By the 1871 census, John has died and Amelia’s occupation is recorded as ‘housekeeper’. 11 year old Albert is at school and living in Beer with his mother, sisters Isabella and Alice, brother Walter and 4 other rent-paying householders. The 14 acre farm is no more. By 1881 Albert is studying at Southampton College, where he also taught. By 1891 he has become a schoolteacher and is married, to Alice, and is living in a household which also includes his sister Alice and a servant, Matilda Elliot. So he has now taken his place amongst the middle classes. As if to affirm this, Freemason’s registers reveal that he joined the St John’s Lodge in Torquay in 1885. By 1901 he has two children, Henry and Eveline, and his become a ‘staff instructor and inspector of schools’ for Devon County Council. His family lives in Fore Street in Kingskerswell, the town where he would live until the end of his days. He now has two servants, Elizabeth Crocker and the wonderfully named Maud Fester. So things are definitely looking up. By 1911, shortly after his Morocco trip, he has become Inspector of Manual Education to DCC. His 86 year old mother has joined the household, with Elizabeth Crocker still providing loyal service.  

We can learn a few more personal details from the obituary which appeared in the 1942 volume of the Transactions of the Devonshire Association (the association on whose council he had been a regular member, and of which he had been Vice-President on three occasions). He had taught at Kingskerswell National School, and has also played organ in the parish church. His work in manual training included instruction in wood carving in secondary schools across Devon. There’s no mention of Morocco, but the obituary author notes that ‘he travelled extensively abroad, visiting many European countries, including Germany and Sweden. In the latter he was for some time a student under Professor Solomon, the eminent teacher of woodcraft, and accompanied his relative, Mr Charles Henry Fox-Strangways on several of his geological surveys’. So we can add woodcarving and geology to his already comprehensive list of interests (as well as noting another top flight Victorian name). The obituary goes on to note that ‘he was an expert photographer, and accumulated a large and valuable collection of slides, presented by him to the City Library. It is to be feared that this, with most of the contents of the Library, has recently been destroyed’. This immediately brings us up short. Of course, this was the year of the Exeter Blitz, a terrible historical moment whose 80th anniversary has recently been commemorated in Exeter Library and elsewhere. I wonder if Albert heard the planes flying towards the estuary from his sickbed, or even saw the sky glowing from the city aflame.  

The obituary concludes by noting that he was a keen collector of stamps and books on local history, a great walker (‘in his younger days’) and ‘skillful gardener’, and ‘a noted chessplayer’. He was working on a history of Kingskerswell, but sadly the deterioration of his sight put paid to this. He also designed the reredos in Fitzford church, Tavistock and the Kingskerswell war memorial. It can certainly be said that he led a full and richly productive life. The impression I get is of a man from a fairly humble background who took an immense pride in what he did and who loved to share his knowledge and experiences. The enhanced and personalised book on Morocco which he left to the library is one indicator of this. Another can be found in the rather touching emendations he has made within. On the shield of the quill-bearing knight on his personal bookplate he has neatly inked in his one official qualification: F.R.Hist.S. This stands for Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. His pride in the recognition this represented for him can be further seen in his correction of what he evidently saw as a minor but important error on the programme for his Morocco lecture at Buckfast Abbey. The printers had given his qualification as F.R.H.S. Albert has added a little ‘ist’ in the relevant place. I find this oddly moving. It’s the act of someone who wasn’t expected to achieve academic or scholarly recognition, whose background didn’t include such an educational path as a given. Albert was a man who seems to have been fascinated by the world, by its past and by its present. He passed that fascination on to others through his work as teacher and instructor, and through his lantern lectures. I am sure that fascination was fanned by, and part of his knowledge was acquired through visits to Exeter Library when it was still a part of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum. I sense that he was fulfilled in his life, perhaps even, I like to think, happy. Albert William Searley, it was a pleasure getting to know you. And thankyou for leaving us your beautifully enhanced book. It is a treasure.