A few photos from my afternoon stroll here in Hittarp yesterday:
Tuesday, 17 March 2020
Portrait of a Hungarian nobleman
"Count László Széchenyi de Sárvár-felsővidék (18 February 1879 – 5 July 1938) was an Austro Hungarian military officer, Imperial Chamberlain, diplomat and venture capitalist. His great-uncle was István Széchenyi. László Széchenyi married Gladys Vanderbilt, the youngest daughter of Alice Claypoole Gwynne and Cornelius Vanderbilt II." --
"Count László Széchenyi was the inventor of the submarine wireless telegraphy, for sending and receiving sound-wave vibrations underwater. The machine was successfully tested with then U.S. Secretary of the Navy George von Lengerke Meyer, in Newport, Rhode Island. Széchenyi, along with David C. Watts, formed the Submarine Wireless Company to produce it."
"Shortly before the War, Count László Széchenyi de Sárvár-felsővidék tried to become a financial Napoléon in Hungary and met his Waterloo very quickly. He is said to have lost $4,000,000 which is supposed to have come largely from his wife. He was a member of the ‘Magnates Group’ which speculated in mines, railroads and other enterprises. They failed to calculate the impact of the World War, and suffered a complete smash as a result of the fall in value of their shares." --
Diplomatic career
"The Kingdom of Hungary and the United States signed a treaty establishing friendly relations on August 29, 1921. On January 11, 1922, Count László Széchenyi presented his credentials as Hungary's first Minister to the United States. He served in that role until March 31, 1933. He was transferred to the same post at the Court of Saint James in England in 1933." --
"Count László was twenty-eight years old, when he met Gladys Vanderbilt (1886–1965), the seventh and youngest child of Alice Claypoole Gwynne and Cornelius Vanderbilt II, the president and chairman of the New York Central Railroad. Gladys grew up in the family home on Fifth Avenue in New York City, and their summer "cottage," The Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island. They married on January 27, 1908, at her family home in New York City, after their meeting in Berlin near her twenty-first birthday in 1907.[ Their early married life was spent in Hungary raising their five children."
(Wikipedia)
Monday, 16 March 2020
US diplomat Alvey A. Adee riding to work (1914)
This 1914 photo by Harris & Ewing shows 72 year old US diplomat Alvey Augustus Adee, Second Assistant Secretary of State, riding to work on his bicycle. My colorization of a picture in the Library of Congress archive.
An article by Peter Bridges in the American Diplomacy web gives us this information about Adee´s bicycle hobby:
"At some point in the 1890s Adee began annual cycling trips to Europe. He took as much as two months’ leave each spring—which successive Secretaries of State granted, presumably on the basis that the reliable Adee would be in charge of the department during their own summer vacations—and he would do between 1,500 and 2,000 miles on his ‘wheel’ through Europe, alone or with a friend or two. His most frequent companions were Alexander Thackara, a senior American consular officer, and Thackara’s wife, who was the daughter of General William T. Sherman, the Civil War commander. France was Adee’s favourite cycling ground, but he also toured Italy, Germany and the Alps. At least once, in 1895, he cycled through England and Scotland, where he is said to have met Woodrow Wilson, then a professor at Princeton University, and to have continued his tour together with the future President."28
"Adee also cycled to the State Department while living in Washington, and was the only official permitted to bring his bicycle into the State Department building and stand it in a particular place in the corner.29 But Adee did not always live in Washington."
If you are interested in US diplomatic history, the article by Peter Bridges is well worth reading: