When I look at the present members of my mother’s family and see that it is chock full of teachers, social workers, carers, liberal academics and the like, it’s hard to believe that they all spring from (what is now regarded to be) politically insalubrious stock. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that my maternal grandfather’s forebears made a mint out of slavery and sugar in Tobago, but what I’d forgotten until recently were the mutterings about one of my maternal grandmother’s relations who, if the story is to be believed, came over from Belgium in the 19th century and earned a living as a black and white minstrel.
Well, a bit of cursory research shows it to be sort of true. There was a Gustave Chaudoir who studied music at the Brussels Conservatoire and, after arriving in England, composed for the music hall. As this source puts it:
“I Lub a Lubly Girl, I Do” was written by Brandon Thomas, with music composed by Gustave Chaudoir, musical director of the Moore and Burgess Minstrels.
I won’t bore you with further genealogical details, but the snappily dressed man pictured for this week’s Elegantly Dressed Wednesday is my great-grandfather, Gustave Félix Chaudoir. This Gustave was a (British) cavalry sergeant in World War One, during which he was gassed. He claimed to have had only one dream in his life: that he was riding across the Somme on the back of a gigantic rabbit.
In peace time, Gustave was a chartered surveyor who practised in North London, living with his family in Dartmouth Park, near Highgate. And judging by the photographs I have been looking at recently, he was always impeccably dressed. In my wardrobe I have a grey suit jacket that he had made in Savile Row: it’s a bit grubby, but the cut is sublime.
The photograph in this post shows Gus on a trip to Belgium. In case you hadn’t worked it out, he’s the one who’s sitting down, not the waiter who appears to be enveloped in a haze of fag smoke.
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