The photograph above was taken in 1907 or 1908 on an outing from Ghent to Knokke by members of the radical groups Reiner Leven and De Flinken. When I first posted a copy of this photo, nearly a year ago, I was unsure of the identities of the people in the picture. I hadn’t realised – or at least, I hadn’t been able to confirm – that the group included Gerard Ceunis and the woman who would become his wife, Alice Van Damme. However, I’ve now traced the photograph to its source, in the catalogue of the Letterenhuis – the Museum of Flemish Literature, based in Antwerp – which helpfully names those featured in the photo.
From left to right, the photograph shows: Augusta de Taeye, Melanie Lorein, Lisbeth Verwest, Raymond Limbosch, Céline Dangotte, Gerard Ceunis and Alice Van Damme.
Augusta de Taeye (1885 – 1976) was a feminist teacher and educational pioneer. She married the educator and science populariser Leo-Michel Thiery (1877 – 1950). They were the parents of Herman Thiery, who wrote under the name Johan Daisne (see the previous post).
Melanie Lorein (1886 – 1977) was at one time linked romantically with the pioneering historian of science George Sarton (see his daughter May Sarton‘s memoir I Knew a Phoenix, which I wrote about here), though he would eventually marry another Flinken member, Mabel Elwes. Melanie would marry the Polish-born socialist Viktor Alter (1890 – 1941), though she remained in Belgium when he returned home to lead the Jewish socialist Bund. He was executed in one of Stalin’s purges in 1941.
Lisbeth Verwest (1885 – 1921) was a poet. She would marry the painter Robert Aerens. She is the ‘Tantelle’ of Johan Daisne’s novel Lago Maggiore (see this post). Having become ill while her husband was serving at the front in the First World War, she died in a sanatorium in 1921.
Raymond Limbosch (1884 – 1953) was a poet and philosopher. He would marry Céline Dangotte.
Céline Dangotte (1883 – 1975) inherited her mother’s interior design business but in later life also became known as a writer. She was married to Raymond Limbosch. May Sarton wrote a tribute to her in her essay collection A World of Light and fictionalised her life story in the novel The Bridge of Years.
It’s wonderful to have another photograph of Gerard Ceunis, as there are so few of him in the public domain. He’s dressed quite formally here, as I suppose was the style at the time, though his hair looks rather longer and more unruly than in later photographs of him as an established businessman in England. It’s also wonderful to have a picture of him alongside, and smiling at, Alice who, unfortunately, has turned away from the camera at the key moment.
The copy of the photograph in the Letterenhuis collection is from the archives of Johan Daisne. Alice Van Damme is referred to in the catalogue as ‘Lize’, which appears to have been the version of her name by which Daisne knew her: in Lago Maggiore he writes about staying with ‘Aunt Lize and Uncle Gerard’ in Hitchin in the summer of 1929. Daisne seems to have regarded a number of the members of Reiner Leven and De Flinken as his aunts and uncles.
The sheer happiness that these young people felt in each other’s company shines through this photograph from more than a century ago. Less than a decade later, the cataclysm of a world war and the invasion of their country would scatter them to the four winds and utterly change their lives.
The Quest for Ceunis 