Born in 1881 in Bruges, from an Irish father Henry English and a Belgian mother, Marie Dinnewet. She’s the oldest sister of Joe, a painter, best known for his work as a graphic designer for ‘de frontbeweging’ the flemish emancipation movement during WW1. When he died of an appendicitis in 1918, he became one of the main symbolic heroes of the nationalist movement, a movement that still is politically pivotal in Belgium’s ever evolving state structures. It’s his story mainly that has got me into this realm of archives and history that has been driving my work.
In 2017 I made ‘Mystic Landscape’ a photography project and exhibition about Joe when Hilde Verstraete contacted me. She handed over a box of Molly’s belongings that had been in her family. Hilde was the granddaughter of Karel Verstraete, a friend to the family. They lived in Molenbeek, a few blocks where I live now, and Molly was a regular guest. While I had some idea of her existence, I got completely intrigued by the life she had lived. So when I was live online with my series ‘The Archive of Untold Stories’, I dedicated a whole broadcast to her life story, based on the archive materials that I received from Mrs. Verstraete and other pieces that were kept in our family archive.
Her story goes as follows: She left the family at a young age and although she had a physical handicap, she led her life independently. She was travelling and working in England mostly but I could trace her all over Europe. Her network must have been impressive, keeping a constant correspondence between them and home. I collected more of her story through a correspondence she had with Kathleen Molloy, who lived in Waterford, the birth town of Henry. Those letters span a period between 1937 and 1955 and were kept by Kathleens kin who still live in Waterford.
Molly was living in Potters Bar, England at the time WW1 broke out. She was the nanny of Pubi, for a Hungarian family that was working in the banking world. She helped her two sisters and the youngest brother Pat who fled the country, for a place to stay in London. She kept in touch with Joe in Veurne, on the Belgian side of the front as well as her brother Willy who had moved to Canada in 1911. She was able to pass on news and goods through a smuggling route via the Netherlands. One of those things was passing on the news of the birth (and later some pictures) of my grandfather, Raf English who was born in february 1915 in Bruges. (Joe and Raf would never meet)
When WW1 ended she kept in touch with Elisa, Joe’s wife, who died in 1926 of breast cancer, leaving Raf and his sister Lieve to the care of Michael English, the second brother, a priest and chamberlain to the bishop of Bruges. He also ran the parental embroidering atelier where four other sisters made their living. Eventually the kids were sent to boarding schools.
Molly, Michael and Willy kept in touch with the Hungarian family, who lost everything in the war and were in great despair: there’s stories of Willy sending them pots of honey with gold pieces hidden inside.
Molly had a position in Biarritz shortly after ww1, later in the Continental Hotel in Knokke. She ran a children’s orphanage in Hasselt and frequently stayed at the governor’s house there. At the start of WW2, she fled for England again, hoping to get a position at the Belgian government in exile, as was promised to her. But at 60, no one was keen on hiring her, so it took quite a while before she was eventually hired at the Belgian Ministry of Colonies in London.
My grandfather Raf was first captured by the Germans as a prisoner of war in 1940, defending the Belgian border as a regular soldier. He got freed in 1941 and later took up the uniform as a prison guard for the Germans, thus actively taking part in the collaboration. Being brought up in an entourage where the Flemish nationalism turned into new order idea’s, there’s a certain logic to that, being the son of the icon of that movement.
Molly returned to Belgium after the war, but couldn’t work anymore. As she was injured during a blitz in 1940, her already handicapped leg worsened and spinal problems came on top of that. But she kept her good spirit, working at the house with father Michael and her sisters, mending clothes, or at the governor’s hotel in Hasselt. In the letters we have to Kathleen Molloy, she never mentions anything anymore about my grandfather Raf.
When Bruges was liberated in 1944, Raf had fled the country with the Germans to Sudetenland, leaving behind his wife Marie Josée and three kids, the youngest being my mother. When Germany surrendered in 1945, he was sent back to Belgium, arrested in Brussels and sent to prison camp. He was pardoned in 1951. His wife and kids had a terrible time from may ’44 on during two waves of repression. Psychologically fragile and damaged, she was diagnosed a schizophrenic and had numerous electroshock treatments. It is probably one of the reasons she never could adapt to modern life anymore. At her death in 2000, the house where she had lived had stayed untouched since the 1950-ies, leaving the family a time capsule. An overload of archival material that we are still processing, studying and publishing. It included some writings of Molly already, but nothing like the treasure I got from Mrs. Verstraete. Molly, immobile by then, moved to a hospice in Gistel in 1953, where she passed away in 1955.
