Five Brothers in London

The five Gelardi brothers in London around 1898. Standing (Left to Right): Romolo and Giulio. Seated (Left to Right): Cesare, Gustave and Ernesto.

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Five Brothers in London

By this time, as the nineteenth century drew to a close, three of Gustave’s brothers had arrived in London. At some point, after the opening of the Walsingham House Hotel, Gustave’s brother Ernesto came to the UK from Italy so clearly, like Gustave, he had not remained in Mrs. Grisewood’s employ for long.

Gustave – no doubt through the contacts he had been building up – found Ernesto a position as a butler in Ascot. There he met and married Anna Rassier, a wealthy German woman with whom he bought a hotel in Folkestone. When she died, Ernesto married her sister Franziska in 1915. They had two daughters, Berta and Theresa (who we shall meet again in my father Bertie’s story). Berta’s ambitions were in acting, and she appeared most notably as Esther Summerson in the 1920 film version of Bleak House, directed by Maurice Elvey. A contemporary review in the film industry publication Kine Weekly praised the film’s design: ‘The costumes, make up and scenic effects are all excellently modelled on Phiz’s drawings.’

Ernesto was not the only brother that Gustave helped. He had earlier also found Cesare a butler’s position in Kensington, but there was friction when a relationship Cesare was having with a maid, Hannah Wareham, resulted in her pregnancy. They married when she was three months pregnant in December 1895. Gustave’s indignation doesn’t make sense, considering that his wife Emily gave birth so soon after they married, which further arouses curiosity about what might have surrounded those circumstances.

Whatever disappointment Gustave expressed towards Cesare, it didn’t last – when he took up as general manager of the Cadogan Hotel, it was Cesare he hired as his assistant. Cesare learned from his older brother and acquired the skills necessary to move on and run a highquality establishment of his own. He did so by emigrating, maybe to establish himself away from Gustave and the relatively small world of

(Below): A still from the 1920 silent film of Bleak House, in which Berta Gelardi (though credited with the name of Berta Gellardi) took the part of Esther Summerson.

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(Top, Above, Left): The Cadogan in London is now a Belmond hotel. The blue plaque on the wall commemorates Lillie Langtry who lived in this house, and when her home was incorporated into an enlarged Cadogan hotel, she remained in residence, keeping her bedroom for many years. In the early twentieth century after Gustave was appointed general manager, he employed his younger brother Cesare as his assistant.

hospitality in Britain, becoming the general manager of the Windsor Hotel in Montreal. Years later, my father Bertie would visit him there with my grandfather Giulio.

Cesare must have had a fine apprenticeship under his elder brother Gustave’s guidance because at that time, the Windsor was the largest and best hotel in all of Canada. It first opened its doors in 1878 as a reflection of the wealth, opulence and opportunity offered by the commercial dominance of Montreal which at that time was Canada’s largest and most prosperous city.

Its owners, a group of six Canadian businessmen lead by William Notman – whose photography business had gained an international reputation – deliberately modelled the hotel on the original WaldorfAstoria in New York on 5th Avenue and 34th Street which was demolished to build the Empire State building – my grandfather Giulio Gelardi would manage the new Waldorf-Astoria on Park Avenue in later years.

By the time Giulio’s elder brother Cesare Gelardi arrived in Canada to run the Windsor, the hotel had suffered a devastating fire in 1906 that destroyed much of the building, but this was used as an opportunity to renovate and expand with the addition of a new Windsor Annexe wing, which increased the total number of rooms from 368 to 750.

The hotel welcomed politicians, business leaders, royalty and other luminaries such as writers Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling and Oscar

(Left): Cesare Gelardi emigrated to Canada to run the Windsor Hotel in Montreal – then the country’s most prestigious hotel, situated near the station of what at the time was Canada’s most prosperous city.

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Wilde and film stars such as Sarah Bernhardt, Fanny Davenport and Dolores Costello.

The Windsor sat at the epicentre of Montreal’s social scene and as such it hosted both the annual St Andrew’s Society Ball and the Winter Carnival Ball for decades. Later in the twentieth century, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth stayed there just before the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.

Sadly it was yet another fire that put paid to the Windsor Hotel, when in 1957 much of the building was so badly damaged that only the 200 rooms in the Windsor Annexe remained. The hotel never regained its stature, due in part to increased competition from newer downtown hotels, and it finally closed in 1981 to be converted into office buildings.

My grandfather Giulio also arrived in London unannounced during the 1890s, the fourth brother to arrive in the capital. His own memoirs make it quite clear why he hadn’t

(Top): The grand Dining Room of the Windsor Hotel with its magnificent rotunda. (Centre): A rare picture of the kitchens and staff. (Above): The prestigious St Andrew’s Society Ball was held at the Windsor Hotel in its early years. (Right): It also hosted King George VI and Queen Elizabeth during their state visit to Canada in May 1939.

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given advance warning of his arrival: ‘My two elder brothers, Gustave and Ernesto, were by now quite well established in England; but feeling that since they had had a bad experience with Cesare when he arrived in England, they might have tried to stop me leaving Italy, I hadn’t told them of my plans and was arriving quite unheralded.

‘When I got to London the reception was cold and reserved, but not unfriendly. Gustave loved me I was sure. He had been proud of my success at school and though rather disappointed that I had not achieved my ambitions to become a lawyer, he believed in my

intelligence and my courage to make good whatever career I would undertake… I insisted with my brother that he should try me at some work at once. He relented and put me in the kitchen to work with the Chef. The hotel – Walsingham House – was a big establishment. I worked and learned as hard and as quickly as possible and kept away from the family for some months. Slowly I gained the confidence of my brother and his senior management and was put to work in the office.’

Sure enough, Giulio gradually won Gustave’s trust and worked his way

(Above): The Promenade des Anglais in Nice around 1900. The seven-kilometre promenade was financed by English residents and completed in 1824. Ever since it has been a magnet for visitors, artists and residents to enjoy the Mediterranean sunshine. It also encouraged yet more winter visitors which is why Gustave and Giulio invested in their own hotel project in the South of France.

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up in the organisation; he clearly became so dependable that Gustave founded the Gelardi Hotel Company with him, putting all their money into a venture that they hoped would make their fortunes on the French Riviera.

Europe’s aristocracy ‘discovered’ what is now known as the French Riviera in the early part of the nineteenth century when they started decamping to Nice and Cannes for the winter. Many fine second homes were built, including what is now the Musée Masséna, originally built for Prince Victor d’Essling, the grandson of Napoleon’s General Maréchal Massena, and the Musée des Beaux Arts in Nice, first constructed for the Ukrainian Princess Elisabeth Vassilievna Kotschoubey.

The British upper classes also made the Mediterranean a winter destination, so much so that they banded together to pay for the construction of the seaside walkway on Nice’s seafront – mainly so they might have somewhere to walk without being harassed by the many beggars who had flocked from the surrounding countryside to Nice after successive poor harvests. Work started in 1820 and it became known as the Promenade des Anglais in 1860, after Nice became part of France when Emperor Napoleon III was granted the Duchy of Savoy and the County of Nice by the Kingdom of Sardinia’s Prime Minister Count Cavour as a major part of the price for French support for the unification of Italy.

As more people flocked to Nice and Cannes, so larger and more luxurious hotels were opened – in Nice for example, the Excelsior Régina Palace that opened in 1897 and welcomed Queen Victoria through its doors and the Hotel Negresco in 1912; and in Cannes, the Splendid was extended and upgraded in 1905 and the Carlton opened in 1913.

So in the early part of the twentieth century, the south of France was undoubtedly a place of opportunity for hoteliers with vision and funding. No wonder, then, that Gustave and Giulio enthusiastically sought their share of this glowing business opportunity. They had the skills to run a luxury hotel and they managed to bring together a range of investors with the capital to make it all possible.

They included stockbrokers, merchants and ‘gentlemen’, as well as Lady G. D’Arcy Osborne – a relative of the Duke of Leeds – and also Alan Doulton from the famous Doulton pottery company; perhaps most interesting of all was Amédée de Guerville.

(Above): Gustave and Giulio attracted a wide range of investors to the Gelardi Hotel Company He was elected president of the Valescure Golf Club in 1909 – one of the the very first golf courses to have been constructed in France. Inevitably, it was British visitors passing the winter months in St Raphael who had first established what was then a nine-hole course in 1895. Amédée de Guerville recruited the famous golf architect Harry Colt to extend the course to eighteen holes in 1910.

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(Below): The sad story of the downfall of the Gelardi Hotel Company, as related by the Secretary Ernest Baker to the Registrar of Companies in London. He also commissioned the British firm Boulton & Paul to build the clubhouse which was fabricated in the firm’s works in Norwich before being transported to the south of France and erected in situ – an early example of prefabricated building.

How Gustave and Giulio got to meet Amédée we don’t know. However, he clearly knew the St Raphael area and was equally clearly an influential character in the region, so it perhaps comes as little surprise that when it was established in 1911, the Gelardi Hotel Company bought a plot of land covering some 150 acres in Valescure at the foot of the Esterel that bordered the golf course. Given that the area had already attracted many British visitors, on the face of it, this seemed a safe investment. Léon Sergent was appointed as architect for the proposed new hotel and again, this appeared a safe choice as between 1880 and 1919 he built many villas and hotels for the British in the St Raphael area.

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(Left and Berlow): The tragedy of the failure of the Gelardi Hotel Company was that Gustave and Giulio’s instincts were absolutely correct: there was strong demand for this sort of hotel in the south of France, as the Golf Hotel of Valescure’s later success proved.

A Parisian builder started construction of the new hotel but understandably stopped work when the building was only partially completed because he was not being paid. Presumably the shareholders had put up sufficient capital and had seen the budgets for the project but according to a report to Companies House in 1917 by the company secretary Ernest Baker: ‘The building was only partially completed when the Company ran short of funds and the contractor refused to complete the job until further money was forthcoming. This money the Company was unable to obtain and to add to the difficulties the Chairman of the Company (a London Surveyor) committed suicide in August 1912. This gentleman had had the whole Company’s finances under his special charge and his assistant was the Secretary to the company until he resigned in 1912 and I was appointed in his place.

‘Since that date the finances of the Company have not improved, the Paris Contractor has stepped in and obtained possession of the property in France and the Company is without funds of any description’.

Robert Menzies, surveyor of 17 Victoria Street, London is registered as one of the Gelardi Hotel Company’s shareholders so presumably it was he who was the chairman who brought the business down. The Gelardi Hotel Company was struck off the register of UK companies and dissolved on 3 January 1919.

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However there is no doubt at all that the project could and should have been a great success were it not for the presumed embezzlement. The site was bought at auction in 1924 by Paul L’Hermite who finished the work and opened Le Golf Hôtel on Valentine’s Day 1925. The rollcall of guests in those early years is astonishing: Lord Mountbatten, the Duke of Windsor, King Leopold III of Belgium, Prince Bertil of Sweden and King Umberto of Italy. And then after the Second World War, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Laurel and Hardy and many more international celebrities.

The Gelardi Hotel Company had been a disaster but the setback didn’t appear to hinder Giulio. As we will see, he was a remarkable man, whose life spanned the greatest changes of the mid twentiethcentury, from the First World War and early years in London, to what could have been a very dangerous relationship in Italy with Benito Mussolini, negotiating the real-life intricacies of prohibition in New York and a brush with his own mortality during the German bombing Blitz of London during the Second World War.

All five brothers were united in London in 1899 with the arrival of the youngest, Romolo. At first he worked at the Henry Gaze company – one of the world’s first travel companies and at the time a rival of the better-known Thomas Cook company.

He was based at various tourist offices owned by the Gaze House of London: the Strand, Piccadilly, Queen Victoria Street and the Old Bailey; he also worked for a while at their other offices in Rome.

When the company was dissolved in 1903 he was recruited by his brother Gustave to work as controller and help out in reception and general management at the Grand Hotel in Folkestone which opened to great acclaim that year.

Romolo stayed there until 1907 when he moved to Venice as secretary/controller of the Hotel Royal Danieli – then, as still today, one of the finest hotels in Italy. Originally the

(Below): Romolo Gelardi worked at the Henry Gaze company when he first came to London in 1899. By that time it was already a well-established international travel agency and a serious competitor to the Thomas Cook company.

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(Above): The Hotel Royal Danieli, overlooking the Venice Lagoon and situated just 200 metres from St Mark’s Square, as it was when Romolo took up his position as secretary/ controller in 1907. (Left): as it is today.

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(Below): On his return from Venice Romolo moved further north in England, to the Clevedon House Hotel where he and his wife Katharine worked for a while. (Bottom): The hotel is now the well-known Golf Hotel, situated right next to the Wood Hall Spa Golf course. fourteenth century home of the Dandolo family, the iconic building overlooking St Mark’s basin was opened as a hotel in 1824. By the time Romolo arrived it had been transformed and modernised with the adoption of electric lighting, central heating and lifts to all floors. Along with the Gritti Palace and other properties in Venice, the Danieli had also become part of the Compagnia Italiana Grandi Alberghi (CIGA), founded by Count Giuseppi Volpi in 1906 and often described as the first luxury hotel chain in the world – which would later be run by Romolo’s older brother Giulio, my grandfather.

Romolo returned to London in 1909 where he married Katharine Neale and was employed for the summer as manager of the Clevedon Hotel at Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire, where Katharine also worked as a book-keeper.

Later that year they moved to Brussels where Romolo was appointed assistant manager of Wietcher’s Hotel, part of the Carlton Group. Two years later he was on the move again, this time heading for Canada and the Windsor Hotel in Montreal where his brother Cesare was general manager. Romolo was chief steward for a while before crossing the border into the United States where he lived in New York City while working at various establishments before retiring to Flushing, New York state. He died in 1964.

As a footnote to that time when all five of the Gelardi brothers were in London, their mother Carlotta also came to England some time early in the twentieth century. The 1910 census shows that she was living with Giulio at that time. She finally died in Bexhill on 16 April 1923 from a combination of gangrene which had infected her foot and congestion of the lungs. At her death she was attended by her son Ernesto.

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(Above): The Gelardi Family and friends in London about 1900, which clearly shows that some were better than others at keeping still during the long exposures required at that time. Front row, left to right: Gustave; Theresa (daughter of Ernesto); Vera (Elvera) (daughter of Gustave); Renato Bausch (reclining, a family friend who worked at the Walsingham House Hotel along with Gustave); Berta (daughter of Ernesto); and Giulio. Middle row, left to right: Emily (wife of Gustave); Anna Marie (wife of Ernesto); Hannah (wife of Cesare); Unknown though perhaps wife of Renato Bausch; Unknown, possibly Franziska Katherine Rassier, younger sister of Anna Marie and future wife of Ernesto; and Carlotta (Giuseppe’s widow and mother of Gustave, Ernesto, Cesare, Giulio and Romolo). Back row, standing, left to right: Ernesto; Cesare; and Romolo.

(Left): Carlotta Gelardi in 1908.

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