In his 1980 book, The Harmonious Circle, James Webb claimed;
There are two definite cases of suicide from the 1920’s which clearly illustrate the problems with which the moral censor must deal. I have cut – both here and in later references – any information which would enable a casual enquirer to identify the persons concerned. It would be quite possible for a seriously interested researcher to discover- in time- to whom the names “Mr. X” and “Mrs. Y” refer.
Mr X. was a British diplomat, described by a man who knew him as “the Harold Nicolson of the F.O. of these days……. It may have been through Rowland Kenny – who went from journalism to the Foreign Office – that he came in contact with Ouspensky and Orage. At all events, the diplomat was possibly the most distinguished recruit to the Prieure, which he seems to have visited during 1924.
This means he would have been there at the time of Gurdjieff’s “accident” and the resulting confusion. J.G.Bennett writes: “Some people went mad. There were even suicides. Many gave up in despair.” When pressed on the question of suicides, (In an interview with the author) he mentioned without naming him, the figure of Mr. X, and hinted that the effects of Gurdjieff’s closing his Institute were even more shattering than can be gathered from Nott and the de Hartmanns.
(Here I will note that Bennett had a history at hinting he knew things about Gurdjieff that others didn’t, and has been shown to have often over dramatisated events. He spent, at most, three months at the Prieure as opposed to long time residents Stanley Nott and Thomas and Olga de Hartmann. Their assessments have proved to be more accurate.)
His (Mr X) obituary stated that all his friends and colleagues had been surprised by his urgent request for transfer to the Middle East. They would have been even more surprised if they had known that Ouspensky had given him the task of contacting the Mevlevi dervishes and finding out all he could.
On the way to his new posting in the summer of 1925, the diplomat and his wife stayed for a few days at the Prieure, which was at this time in a state of suspended animation. They were befriended by Margaret Naumburg who saw Mr. X as a “typical” member of the English upper class……. From her letters to Jean Toomer, it is plain that the diplomat was distraught, although there is little to show what was really responsible……. But despite her feeling that Mr. X was trapped, even she was unprepared for the news reported by a London daily newspaper that he had shot himself two days after his arrival in the East. (pages 333, 334)
A second tragedy took place in the summer of 1927. This was the death of Mrs. Y, a former dancer at the Paris Opera, who had become intrigued with Gurdjieff’s ideas through an interest in the movements. She stayed at the Prieure until the demonstration in the Theatre des Champs-Elysees at Christmas 1923, and was then persuaded by her husband to abandon the American expedition and to return to London. It was probably in late 1923 that Mrs. Y was involved in an incident with Gurdjieff which has been described as “near rape.” Her husband came to Ouspensky’s lectures in Warwick Gardens, had nearly entered the Prieure himself, and is discreet: “There were strange rumours about G.,” he writes”..…….. I had a profound mistrust in the whole venture”……. Mrs Y seems to have been rendered permanently unstable by her experience, and may have made an attempt to return to Fontainebleau. Certainly during 1927 she was again in France. Her husband met her abroad and was shocked to discover how “ill” she was. Mrs. Y returned to England, where in the late summer of 1927, she fell from the upper-storey window in a south coast boardinghouse and was killed. The coroner recorded a verdict of suicide “whilst of unsound mind.”
Mrs. Y’s death occurred some eighteen months after she had given birth to a child. We do not know whether her final rejection by Gurdjieff took place before or after the birth. Under other circumstances it might be argued that if Gurdjieff banished her from the Prieure, this was because he considered it her role to look after her husband and family – indeed cases would be cited in which he did exactly this. But there is also the “near rape” to be taken into account, and its effect on a young woman who, as Mr. Y wrote, thought she had “seen visions of the new world, only to be rejected” Gurdjieff certainly showed a hardness of heart which was quite out of the ordinary. Later he referred to Mrs.Y as someone who “made trouble” for him. (pages 334, 335)
Mr X and Mrs. Y were Eric Forbes Adam and Doris Margaret Tyndall.
Sir Eric Graham Forbes Adam (1888 – 1925)
Daily Mirror, London, Front Page, 9 July 1925
Eric was born in Bombay, 3 October 1888. His father, Sir Frank Forbes Adam (1846-1926) was a British banker who made his fortune in British India and later returned to settle in Manchester. In the 1911 British Census, Eric (22) is listed as living with his parents, brother, sister and 10 servants at Mere Old Hall, in the village of Mere, near Knutsford, Cheshire, which was one of several properties they rented.
At Eton he was distinguished in games as well as work, and at Cambridge he continued the combination obtaining a double first in history and being twelfth man in the University cricket eleven.
He was appointed to a clerkship in the Foreign Office in 1913, passed an examination in international law two years later and was given the rank of Third Secretary in the diplomatic service while he was employed at the Peace Conference. He was promoted to be First Secretary at the Foreign Office in 1922, and made C.M.G. in the following year, when at his own request he left the Foreign Office to go to Constantinople as First Secretary. He was in the Eastern Department at the Foreign Office, specialised in Near Eastern affairs, and was regarded as a leading expert on Turkey. (Manchester Guardian, 9 July 1925)
He married on 23 November 1918, the eldest daughter of Dr. R.W. Macan, then Master of University College, Oxford, Agatha Perrin Macan (1884 – 1956), widow of the Reverend Sydney Spooner. A son, Christopher Eric Forbes Adam was born on 12 February 1920 in Kensington, London
Eric was a brilliant and prodigious worker
His ten years work at the Foreign Office and in the Diplomatic Service placed him in reputation among the most brilliant of the younger men and one of the most stimulating colleagues. So far as his work is concerned, he is remembered best for the scholarly light he threw on the muddled state of affairs in the Near East, especially during the 1919 Paris Conference.(Manchester Guardian, 9 July 1925)
Before his appointment to Constantinople about 18 months ago, he had been ever since the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, one of the most strenuous and successful workers in the Eastern Department of the Foreign Office, where his learning and untiring zeal soon earned for him the attention of the late Marquis Curzon. The British portion of the voluminous correspondence exchanged with the French Government over the Franklin-Bouillon Treaty with Angora (Ankara-my insert) was largely from the pen of Mr. Forbes Adam, and a brilliant piece of argument and style. In 1922 he accompanied Lord Curzon to Paris on the occasion of the several conferences held there on the subject of the Turko-Greek crisis, and in the following year the brunt of the Lausanne Conference fell mainly on his shoulders, so far as the more scientific labours of the British delegation were concerned.
The late diplomat had a distinguished and winsome personality. His urbanity and consideration for others was unfailing, and the abrupt and premature ending of a career probably destined to real eminence will be mourned by all who came in contact with him, and not least by those members of the Press whose privilege it had been to know him and realise his worth and charm of manner. (The Daily Telegraph, London, 9 July 1925)
He attended the London and San Remo Conferences in 1920 (The Times, London, 9 July 1925)
PARIS (en route to Lausanne) With Lord Curzon are ……. and experts including Mr. Alan Leeper. Mr Harold Nicolson and Mr Forbes Adam (The Observer, 19 November 1922)
Few British delegations abroad have been served so well by their experts as was Lord Curzon’s delegation by Mr. Forbes Adam, Mr Harold Nicholson and Mr. Alan Leeper. (Manchester Guardian, 9 July 1925)
Lord Curzon headed the British delegation to the post WWI peace talks. Paris (18 January 1919- 21 January 1920), London (21 February – 12 March 1921), Lausanne (21 November 1922- 31 January 1923)
His foreign office experts in Near Eastern affairs were Allen Leeper (1st secretary), Harold Nicolson (2nd secretary) and Forbes Adam (3rd Secretary)
Allen Leeper and Forbes Adam both had double barrelled non hyphenated surnames. For Alexander Wigram Allen Leeper (1887 Melbourne- 1935 London) see
https://mgs.vic.edu.au/about/our-people/meet-our-alumni/mr-alexander-wigram-allen-leeper-cmg-cbe
Harold Nicolson had previously been third secretary at the British Embassy in Constantinople (January 1912 to October 1914).
Forbes Adam and J. G. Bennett
In a talk, reproduced only in the posthumously assembled, The Sevenfold Work, Bennett stated:
When I made contact with the Work it had nothing whatever to do with anything that I did. …… I simply met people, by sets of independent coincidences; Ouspensky, de Hartmann and Gurdjieff in Turkey, and Forbes Adams in London. Forbes Adams began talking to me about the Work – he had met Ouspensky – and was determined to bring me into the Work; he had no idea of my previous contacts. (page 100)
Bennett probably first met Forbes Adam at the 1921 London Peace Conference (21 February – 12 March 1921) where Bennett was the Turkish translator for the Turkish Nationalist Ankara delegation.
He (Robert Vansittart, then Lord Curzon’s private Secretary) wanted me to go every morning to the Foreign Office and report their (Ankara delegation – my insert) reactions to the proceedings of the Conference. My morning coat arrived just in time for me to meet the Orient Express on 18th February (1921), only three weeks after my arrival. (from Constantinople- my insert). (J G Bennett, Witness page 76)
(Vansittart was the one who responded to Mrs Bennett’s telegraph to the Prime Minister in 1928 for help getting Bennett’s released from the Athens prison.)
I went out with the British delegation. (J G Bennett, Witness, page 77)
Bennett’s recollections from here on are episodic and not linear and seem to be from different times.
It happened that after the close of the Conference, MacDonald was fighting a by-election at Woolwich. On an impulse I offered to go and canvass for him (J G Bennett, Witness, page 80)
The East Woolwich by-election was declared 2 March 1921 so this could not have been after the Conference ended.
After he told his wife he was going alone back to Turkey he later says
By one of those coincidences that mean more than our carefully planned actions, I went that afternoon to visit Ouspensky, then living in a hotel in Russell Square. It was our first meeting since he had left Turkey several months earlier, and he told me of the success he had met with in London, and of the lectures he was giving to a group of theosophists and psychologists. ((J G Bennett, Witness, page 81)
However, Ouspensky wasn’t in London till early August 1921.
In July 1921, we returned to Turkey…… We reached Sofia just as a general strike had been declared in Greece ((J G Bennett, Witness, pages 95, 96)
The General Strike in Greece started 18 August 1923. (Daily Herald, London, August 22, 1923)
Bennett was appointed head of Military Intelligence in Constantinople in September 1919. ((J G Bennett, Witness, page 30)
The intensity with which I worked can be gauged from the fact that at the end of twelve months the numbered reports personally written by me were well over a thousand. ((J G Bennett, Witness, page 76)
A probable exaggeration by Bennett. He would have had to have written over three reports a day, seven days a week, all year.
Forbes Adam must have read these reports from the description below
He was in the Eastern Department at the Foreign Office, specialised in Near Eastern affairs, and was regarded as a leading expert on Turkey ……………… At the time of the Anatolian war (15 May 1919- 11 October 1922 – my insert) his expert knowledge of Smyrna and its hinterland, geographical, economic, and political, was valued as highly by Mr. Lloyd George as his knowledge of Thrace was valued later by Lord Curzon at the Lausanne Conference. (Manchester Guardian, 9 July 1925)
Bennett was the one reporting on “Smyrna and its hinterland, geographical, economic, and political.” There is no evidence that Forbes Adam was in Turkey before his appointment as 1st secretary to the British Embassy, Constantinople in 1923.
Forbes Adam Suicide
The most detailed description is from the French newspaper Stamboul (Constantinople), 8 July 1925 below (in French)
For STAMBOUL ORGANE DES INTERETS FRANCAIS DANS LE LEVANT see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Stamboul
THE SUICIDE
of the first secretary
from the British Embassy
MR. FORBES ADAM KILLS HIMSELF AT HIS
HOME OF ATAS-PACHA
Yesterday, in the afternoon, deplorable news circulated in Pera, stirring the Diplomatic circles. The first secretary of the British Embassy had just ended his life by shooting himself in the head.
The fact had occurred in the morning, but we had been able to keep it secret, because it was necessary to inform the diplomatic representation, which is in residence in the Bosphorus. All the members of the embassy rushed by car and the police were immediately called.
Young, like most members of the English diplomatic staff, he had come here with his wife and only child. But instead of staying at the embassy hotel, he had a house in this district of Ayas-Pasha exposed to the sun and the breeze of the Bosphorus, and where the vicinity of the German hospital used to be, that is to say those who do not accommodate themselves to the unhygienic conditions of the narrow arteries of Pera.
The dwelling chosen by Mr. Adam Forbes is located in one of the side streets which one leaves on the right after having passed the German embassy, then the hospital of Gumuch-Sou. It is a new construction in reinforced cement, on one floor, formed from the union of two adjoining houses. Built by Turks for Turks, they were furnished with lattices, which their new occupant had kept.
Mr. and Mrs. Forbes had already made a few trips to Europe, mainly to settle their little boy in Switzerland. Mr. Forbes had only been home for a few days from his leave. We had since noticed his worried look. His wife had been concerned about it, and his colleagues had wondered why.
But no one had made an observation. Now, yesterday morning, Mr. Forbes got up early to go to the embassy at Yenikevy. When the housekeeper arrived to start her shift, she found Mrs. Forbes busying herself with the lunch preparations.
She was unaware of the drama that had just taken place in the bathroom adjoining the bedroom. Indeed, after dressing, Mr. Forbes had passed into that room, and there he had lodged a bullet in the head. He had then rolled on the floor, losing his blood from the wound.
Mrs. Forbes had of course heard a muffled detonation, but she had thought it had come from somewhere else. So when she returned to her bedroom, and found her husband not there, and began to look for him, she uttered an awful cry. The servant had not recovered from her surprise when she saw her mistress turn round, holding her head with both hands and barely able to utter a few words to tell her that her husband had killed himself.
She threw herself on a couch. Then, having regained her senses a little, she ran to the telephone to notify the embassy in Yenikeny. Over there, we guess it, there was general consternation. But orders were immediately given, and after a few minutes Mr. Forbes’ colleagues were speeding along the road to Pera, and among them the Charge d’Affaires. These gentlemen, after having noted the things, telephoned the director of the police, who was not long in coming himself by car, shortly followed by the competent magistrates, They made the findings and questioned the two women. Then they lifted the corpse to place it on the bed, for nothing had been disturbed in the room. The head was bandaged, then covered with a veil to hide the skin. Soon a coffin was brought in and the body was placed in it.
The body was watched that night in the room transformed into a burning chapel. But Mrs. Forbes Adam was not left at home there and these gentlemen took her to Yenikeuy, where she spent the night with the family of one of them. From all sides, touching proofs of sympathy went to the young woman so cruelly affected and to whom we hereby express our respectful condolences.
THE FUNERAL It took place this morning at Haider-Pacha
The British papers reported in less, and sometimes invented, detail
The details of the tragedy at the British Embassy have now been ascertained. Mr. Eric Graham Forbes Adam, First Secretary at the embassy, had recently travelled to Switzerland to place his child in a school there. On his return he appeared to be melancholy, but there was nothing to indicate that he intended to commit suicide. In the morning, he dressed and then fired a revolver bullet into his head, death being instantaneous. His wife, entering the room at that moment to call her husband to breakfast, saw the tragedy and fainted after calling a servant, who telephoned to the Embassy and the police.
Members of the Diplomatic Corps and representatives of the authorities attended the funeral.
The Adam family lived a somewhat retired life, keeping one servant, who left in the evening. Mr. Adam recently took part in a meeting of occultists in Switzerland. (The Daily Telegraph, London, 11 July 1925)
Mr. Forbes Adam is stated to have been suffering from neurasthenia. (Manchester Guardian, 11 July 1925)
Lady Adam, who is at Buxton, stated yesterday that her son, who was 36, had no worries so far as she was aware. “He got back to Constantinople, after two months leave in London,” she said. (Birmingham Gazette, 9 July 1925)
As to the reason given for his suicide, neurasthenia, an ill-defined medical condition of the time, (characterised by lassitude, fatigue, headache, and irritability, associated chiefly with emotional disturbance), is far too vague to make a modern diagnosis. It could be depression, a bipolar condition, migraines, a brain tumour, etc.
Unlike Bennett I felt singularly ill, and did not realize that my trouble was mainly fatigue and strain ((J G Bennett, Witness, page 73), overwork doesn’t seem to have been a factor, as they had just returned from a two month leave in London.
The report that he had recently taken part in a meeting of occultists in Switzerland is strange. It is possibly confusing his claimed attendance at Gurdjieff’s mother’s funeral at the Prieure on June 28 1925 (Gurdjieff, Moore page 214) with taking his son to Switzerland.
Moore incorrectly adds that Forbes Adam had departed to take up a diplomatic posting in Constantinople, where he had in fact been posted since 1923. From her death certificate Gurdjieff’s mother died on 22 June 1925. (Serge Troude email, 25 January 2008)
Forbes Adam, Ouspensky and Gurdjieff
Forbes Adam couldn’t have spoken to Bennett about Ouspensky during the London Conference, as Ouspensky only arrived in London early August 1921 (Ouspensky’s letters to Bragdon). While Bennett says he resigned from the army shortly after the conference and went back to Turkey it is not at all clear when he first met Ouspensky in London and when Forbes Adam tried to interest him in Ouspensky.
Ouspensky’s first lectures were in November 1921 (Metz notes of same) so the earliest Forbes Adam could have meet Ouspensky was in late 1921.
He could also have met Gurdjieff during Gurdjieff’s three London visits, where Gurdjieff gave lectures on 13 February (Metz Notes of same), 5 March (Taylor/Benham), and 15 March 1922, (Metz Notes of same) to Ouspensky’s students. He didn’t travel to Lausanne for the Peace Conference till November that year.
That Forbes Adam was part of Ouspensky’s group and he and his family went over to the Prieure with others from London is confirmed by
At the time of our arrival in 1924 there were many English disciples of this new movement. A Harley Street doctor, Eric Forbes Adam – the Harold Nicolson of the foreign office of those days -with his wife and child; Clifford Sharpe, the editor of The New Statesman, with his wife also; Dulce Leggatt, an English actress, with her fiancé Finch, a promising violinist; Rosemary, an American friend of Jesmin; an English chartered accountant with his wife and stepson; Orage and Jesmin and several others. (Ian Black, A Friend of France, page 16)
Black speaks of meeting his future wife, Doris and her preparing for the public Movements demonstrations in Paris. These was at the end of 1923 so his visit couldn’t have been in 1924, but 1923. The Lausanne Peace conference finished in January 1923 and sometime after Forbes Adam requested to be posted to Constantinople. He and his family probably stayed at the Prieure before taking up the position.
Philip Noel Baker’s (1889-1982, the distinguished Quaker, peace campaigner, Labour Member of Parliament and Labour Peer, acknowledgements of Forbes Adam’s contributions to the Balfour Declaration and the possibility of the creation of a Jewish State are recorded in the House of Commons and House of Lords debates in Hansard. (The official report of all U.K. Parliamentary debates.)
MIDDLE EAST
House of Commons Debate, 31 May 1967, vol 747 cc102-212.
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1967/may/31/middle-east#column_126
Mr. Philip Noel-Baker
Secretary on the tone and temper of the speech which he has made today and on the practical proposals which he has put forward. He will, I hope, forgive me if later I add some further suggestions about the action which we might take.
Long years ago, I had a strange introduction to the problems of the Middle East. At the Peace Conference in Paris in 1919, I was converted to Zionism by Lawrence of Arabia and the Emir Feisal. I was head of the League of Nations section in the British delegation. A Cambridge friend, Eric Forbes Adam, was head of the mandate section negotiating the Palestine Mandate with Dr. Weizmann. I found it hard to think that a Jewish National Home could be imposed on an Arab country. I thought that the Mandate would be a millstone around the shoulders of the League.
At last, Forbes Adam made me meet Lawrence and the Emir Feisal. They said: “Yes, we want the Jews in Palestine. We want them to come. In race, we are cousins. They will bring us capital, brains and knowledge. Together with their experts, we will make our desert countries blossom like the rose.”
House of Lords Debate, 09 July 1980 ,vol 411 cc1176-279
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1980/jul/09/africa-and-the-middle-east#column_1176
Lord Noel-Baker
In 1919, after the First World War, I had the privilege of being a temporary official at the Peace Conference in Paris. I was the head of the section dealing with the League of Nations under the great Lord Robert Cecil, Viscount Cecil of Chelwood. I had a colleague in the delegation who had been a close friend at Cambridge, Eric Forbes-Adam, who was in charge of drafting the Palestine mandate with the help of the eminent Dr. Weizmann. The Palestine mandate was to be exercised by Britain under the authority and the supervision of the League of Nations. It was therefore necessary that Forbes-Adam and I should consult together almost every day, and almost every day I said to him, “I don’t believe it can be done. I don’t believe you can bring great numbers of people into a country where a population already holds the whole of the land, which they have had for centuries under their government and control, and that you can have peace”. At last Forbes-Adam grew weary of my constant refrain and said, “Look, book a date for lunch on Friday week and don’t let us talk about this again until then”.
On Friday week he mobilised at lunch himself and me, Lawrence of Arabia and the Emir Feisal, later King Feisal, the leader of the Arabs at the Peace Conference. At the beginning of the meal, the Emir Feisal, translated by Lawrence, explained to me why the Arabs were in favour of the Balfour Declaration, why they wanted a national home for Jews in Palestine.
Eric Graham Forbes Adam is buried in the British Haider Pasha cemetery, Istanbul, where the thousands of British soldiers who died in the Crimean War lie. His gravestone inscription reads
(Then you ?) BEING ROOTED & GROUNDED IN LOVE MAY BE ABLE TO COMPREHEND WITH ALL SAINTS WHAT IS THE BREADTH & DEPTH & LENGTH & HEIGHT
(Ephesians 3: 18)
Eric Graham Forbes Adam’s grave
Doris Margaret Black (nee Tyndall) (1899-1927)
Webb references, Doris Tyndall (The Harmonious Circle, pages 333-35, 362-63, 384) as Mrs Y, and claimed she killed herself because of her involvement with Gurdjieff.
Jessmin Howarth disputes this account.
Jessmin
Re pages 35, 362, 384 – About “Mrs. Y”…… I could add something which casts another light on her ”suicide.”
Doris Tyndall was one of my Eurythmics pupils in Paris. Irish, about twenty years old, very pretty, and charming and naive, she and her mother, a widow, also pretty, charming, and naive, lived for each other. I have never seen mother and daughter so devoted to each other.
Toward the end of my time at the Opera, I allowed Doris to join the class. She and her mother were enjoying life in Paris, and although Doris was supposedly engaged to a decent, well-bred Englishman, she gave the impression of being in no way anxious to settle down to married life.
A few months after I entered the Prieure, Doris and her mother came to see me. Mr, G. met them and invited them for a visit.
Doris was fascinated by the Movements and in a little while she more or less stayed at the Prieure. Her mother stayed nearby in Fontainebleau and often joined us.
Doris found the farm life congenial. She had been brought up in the country in Ireland. She looked like a happy peasant in her cotton dresses and headscarf, and all the young men found her adorable, I don’t think she flirted intentionally. She was really serious about the Movements, especially when Mr. G. announced that he would be taking some pupils to America.
But finally, Mr. G. said he was tired of all the men at the Prieure looking at Doris like hypnotised sheep, and that it was time Doris learnt that she could not behave in her flirtatious way and not expect someone to call her bluff. He advised Mrs. Tyndall to get her married and withstood all her and Doris’ pleading to be allowed to be part of the Movements group going to America. This was a terrible blow to Doris.
Anyway, Doris did marry early in 1924. After a year or so her husband had a temporary job abroad. Since Doris was expecting a child, she did not go with him, but went back to live with her mother again and insisted on staying with her even when her husband came back. They realised that she was really disturbed (schizophrenia?) and when her mother, Mrs Tyndall, wanted to marry again, the doctors advised her to put Doris into a nursing home for a while to accustom her to the impending separation. The doctors at the nursing home finally advised Mrs Tyndall that it would be better if she discontinued her visits. Doris saw her leaving and became distressed she had not come in to say “Goodbye.”
According to an attendant who was in her room with her, Doris leaned out of the window and shouted: “Mama, come back! Mama don’t leave me here.” Then fell (?), jumped (?), or threw herself (?) from the second-storey window.
This happened in 1927, almost three years after leaving the Prieure.
It is true that Mrs Tyndall made a point in 1923 and 1924 of telling a lot of people in London the “Mr. G. had invited Doris into his bed,” and the Ouspenskys may have heard the gossip.
The scandal reached New York when we were there and Mr. G. upbraided me one day saying the “trouble” was my fault for having brought to the Prieure “two such idiot women.”
(It’s up to Ourselves, pages 68,69).
Webb’s account is also based partly on Doris’ husband’s book, Ian E Black, A Friend of France, Jonathon Cape, London 1941, which again tells a slightly different story, marked by Black’s dislike of Gurdjieff and his discretion about his wife’s illness.
My few weeks of holiday passed quickly, but not before Doris had decided to stay at least three months at the Prieure. I returned to London with an introduction to the lectures of Ouspensky, and a determination to return to Fontainebleau as soon as I could. That autumn I went to the meetings of Ouspensky in Warwick Road.
I made a short visit to Fontainebleau before Christmas. Doris was completely occupied by the work of the Institut. There was to be a demonstration of the dances and exercises at the Theatre des Champs Elysees, and Gurdjieff was planning a visit to New York with his best pupils. I felt an outsider; like a visitor to a sanatorium. I had a few minutes talk with Gurdjieff alone, and told him that I was thinking of giving up my work and coming to join him. ‘Not yet,’ he said, ‘but in ten years time when you have learned your lesson in the world, we will meet again.’ I was disappointed; but after the threat I had made of leaving London, for what must have seemed a mad pursuit, my employers gave me more responsible work, which later took me to Vienna.
Doris returned from Fontainebleau for a holiday in London. The demonstration in Paris had caused an uproar. The audience had been divided between excitement at the originality of what they had seen, and disgust at what to them had seemed the severe discipline of the exercises. Gurdjieff was now a man of remarkable interest, and his followers were full of the mission they were to take to New York. But beneath the outward success there were strange rumours about Gurdjieff. Much as I had been affected by my visits to Fontainbleau, and the meetings in the Warwick Road, I had a profound mistrust of the whole venture. I persuaded Doris to remain in London and abandon the journey to America. I did not see Gurdjieff again for four years, when I met him by accident at the Café de la Paix.
From that day I have never seen him again. The Institut is closed, but the Prieure which I have revisited is now owned by a happy French family, and its sinister atmosphere has vanished.
For many months we regretted this sudden break (Pages 18, 19)
Doris and I were married in the summer of 1924, and as I had been ordered a rest by my doctor, I had two months of freedom from my work. We left London on a cold and foggy afternoon for the South of France. When I awoke my first morning at Beaulieu, (sur Mer – my insert) and saw the blue sky and blue sea, I was completely happy.
Marriages Black; Tyndall– On the 28th Sept., at Kensington, Ian Black, of S. Kensington, to Doris, only daughter of the late Rev. Cecil C.R. Tyndall and Mrs Tyndall. (The Times Oct 1, 1924)
At Beaulieu we tried to forget that we must return to London. We felt that we should be happy for ever if we could settle at Vence or Saint Paul, which in those days had not been spoilt by tourists; but at last, the dreaded day of our return was reached. We found a small flat in London and the next year was full of anxiety.
After our daughter was born in January 1926, we agreed Doris should take a holiday in France, and that, after spending two weeks in Paris, she should go to Levens, a village in the hills above Nice, where we had friends nearby. We arranged for our child to stay with a relative in England, and that I should take my summer holiday at Levens.
The Great Strike took place in spring of that year and all business was brought to a standstill. Conditions in our firm became worse. I decided to join Doris in Paris and see if I could find work there, and realize our ambition of living together in France. I was full of optimism in Paris, but the few days I could afford passed quickly and without result. On almost the last day of my visit, Doris met in our hotel a Swiss friend, whom she had known in Geneva. He asked us to lunch with Gottlieb Suter, whose family Doris had also known in Switzerland, and a young man named Marc Chavannes (founded Banque Chavannes) (Page 24-25)
On my way to Vence (outside Nice) in July (1926)
When I arrived at St.Raphael, and drove along the coast to Vence (outside Nice) in the sunshine, my every wish seemed fulfilled; but I was shocked to find how ill Doris had been. As she could not bathe and needed the mountain air, we spent a quiet six weeks in the hills. We came to love the villages and the simple life of the peasants around us; but the day came when I had to again leave her, and we were never to live in Paris together as we had hoped. (Page 26)
She joined me in London in the spring of 1927, and I took a small office in the City, as his London representative.
In August, Doris died in England. She had come with me to Paris to see new doctors, and returned to London with her mother. It had been a cruel separation for her to leave France, which was her spiritual home. Perhaps because of her Irish blood, she hated middle-class life in England. All her life, she had fought to escape the influence of relatives, and had been torn between the loyalty of her family and her conviction that she would never be happy in England. (Page 29)
Doris Black ‘s Death Record. Cause of death -fractured skull from throwing herself out of a window while being of ‘unsound mind’
Doris’ parents, the Reverend. Cecil Charles Robert Tyndall (1869-1917) and Margaret Pickerel Ferens (b. 1866) were relatively old (for the times) when they married on October 11, 1889. He was 29, recently ordained as a priest, and she was 32. A year later on 6 October 1899 their only child, Doris was born. Cecil died in 1917 leaving assets in probate of only 9 pounds, 10 shillings, and 2 pence. Eight years later on 18 July 1925, Margaret remarried, this time to 67 year old widower and solicitor, Francis John Haxby Robinson. Francis died four years later on 7 October 1929 leaving 38,605 pounds to Margaret, the equivalent of two million pounds in today’s currency. She lived well into her seventies.
The Irish connection was through Doris’s paternal grandfather, Thomas Harmon Tyndall. Their paternal family were noted Protestant Unionists from County Waterford, Ireland, going back to Robert Tyndall (1800-1880) who was a magistrate for counties Kilkenny and Wexford and was high sheriff of Kilkenny in 1884. Their seat was Oaklands, where Doris appeared to have spent much of her childhood .
Oakland House New Ross County Wexford
http://www.lukekehoe.com/uploads/1/2/2/6/12263583/oaklands.pdf
Was Gurdjieff responsible for the suicide of two pupils who had been at the Prieure in 1923 ?
Prior to the internet and digitised records, James Webb did an extraordinary job in researching the material for his book, but as he says
The book is largely based on unpublished documents and interviews – some with people now dead…………
However, in only a few cases have I introduced the names of living persons whose role in events has hitherto been unknown. This is largely because of the particular problems of gathering information about ” the Work” involving threading my way through the labyrinth of “political” complications, some of which were probably real, others, almost certainly manufactured. Some of my informants asked me not to use their names, others did not mind being mentioned, and some actually forbade me to use any information without stating from what source it came……... In order to eliminate such uncertainties and to avoid employing a large cast of peripheral characters, I have reduced most of my informants to anonymity. The reader will have to accept my word that (to take some examples), “a pupil of Ouspensky’s,” ” a follower of Orage,“ or “an inmate of the Prieure” actually exists, and my judgement of each as a reliable source of information. (page 12)
Over fifty years later, it is possible to have a good grasp of who most of these people were and to be able to assess the veracity of their recollections. The use of the term “inmates“, to describe the inhabitants of the Prieure, reveals a common bias from that period, with its suggestion of some kind of madness going on. Similarly Ian Black talks about its “sinister presence”. From a modern day perspective this was very likely imagined, because of the new nature of Gurdjieff’s Institute . There was also the element of shock for the mainly middle and upper class English , with no previous experience of domestic, physical and outdoor labour.
By the time of Bennett’s re-creation of similar conditions to the Prieure, with his 1970’s ten month residential courses at Sherborne, pursuing similar aims, this was taken to be nothing out of the ordinary or sinister. Today, spiritual, new age, and secular residential retreats, work periods, conferences, training courses etc. are part of modern life.
Reliance on personal recollections and a certain amount of hearsay, can be shown, by cross checking with official documents, old newspapers and travel records, to be prone to getting dates wrong or informations from different periods mixed together or confused. This is especially true in Webb’s account, and James Moore’s later embellishment of Forbes Adams attendance at the Prieure.
Forbes Adam’s stellar ten year career at the British Foreign Office, which doesn’t appear to have been interrupted by service in the British army during the 1914-1918 World War, was at a period of great International change and in participated in mediating that change ” the brunt of (the conference work) fell mainly on his shoulders”.
He willingly attended the Prieure in the later part of 1923, with both his wife and child, before taking up their posting in Constantinople. Webb mistakes this for the year for 1924 and then insinuates that the drama following Gurdjieff near fatal car accident somehow affected Forbes Adam. In 1923, after ten years of being an office expert on the Middle East and Turkey, my guess is he (and his wife) were looking forward to experiencing a different environment. This was not a decision prompted by Ouspensky or Gurdjieff. At the time Constantinople was considered one of the premier diplomatic postings.
They are recorded as making several leave periods back to London and to settle their son, Christopher, in a Swiss School. It wasn’t till they visited the Prieure during their 1925 leave that there is any mention of Forbes Adam being unsettled. It is unusual that in their residence in Constantinople they only employed one non resident servant and no mention is made of a nanny for their son, quite an uncommon situation for a couple of their standing and class.
This is speculation on my part, but if Forbes Adam took his son to school in Switzerland in June 1925 at the end of his two months leave in England, he may have had to witness his five years old son’s distress at being left on his own, in a strange place, in a foreign country. Though this was common for upper class boys at the time, no emotion was expected to be shown. Compounding this, he then possibly attended a very emotional funeral for Gurdjieff’s mother in a short space of time. These two dramatic events and the expectation/stress of having to keep a “stiff upper lip” at all times, in keeping with his position, may have compounded what had been troubled him enough to take his own life.
As for Doris Tyndall, as Jessmin Howarth recounts, she was upset by Gurdjieff’s admonishment and refusal to include her in the Movements group travelling to America but there is no evidence of Webb’s claim that she “ seems to have been rendered permanently unstable by her experience”. At least her husband makes no mention of it and they went on to marry and happily holiday in the South of France. Her “illness” seems to have emerged in 1925 with the birth of her child, which may have triggered post partum psychosis, which was further exasperated by the re marriage of her mother in the same year. While a relative took care of her child she required further rest in the South of France. When her husband joined her he was shocked at how “ill” she was, but he didn’t specify whether it was a physical or mental illness. He also mentions that he and her mother took her in 1927 to Paris to see unspecified doctors and that she then returned with her mother to London. By this time her mother had been remarried for two years, so Jessmin Howarth’s account of her mother having her hospitalised and the fatal consequences are most likely correct. This happened four years after she left the Prieure and can hardly be said to be the consequence of Gurdjieff’s actions.
James Charles Napier Webb (1946-1980)
https://www.joycecollinsmith.co.uk/other-works/an-appreciation-of-james-webb
The great tragedy and irony of James Webb’s life is that he, some two years younger than Forbes Adam, also committed suicide by shooting himself. Joyce Collin-Smith’s observations of his agitated state in his last days may offer a clue to Forbes Adam’s similar state of mind. Both had wrestled with the contradictions posed by Gurdjieff’s ideas, but I believe other factors contributed to their deaths.
Gurdjieff Research 