My maternal grandmother, Nadia, was, when a teenager, a circus dancer of great renown and beauty. This is her story as she told it to her husband, my grandfather, Henry Lister ‘Hoppy’ Hopkin.

“They came from Odessa, on the Black Sea,” said Nadia, talking of her parents.

Her father Engel Yerasulmsky had been a tailor, and a very good tailor by all accounts, successful enough to make a decent living. But he got into trouble through backing a bill for a friend. When his friend was unable to pay Engel, the guarantor, found himself similarly insolvent. The upshot was that he and his family were exiled to Krasnoyarsk, central Siberia.

This was not as bad as might be have been for it was to this town in Central Siberia that the Czar had sent a large amount of officers – for daring to mutiny – with their families. These good people had realised that they had to do something about their new location and successfully turned it into quite a fashionable venue.

And it was here that Nadieshda Alexandrovna, – Nadia – or Granny Hoppy as I called her, was born, in 1889, as were her eight siblings.

The eldest son, Leon, would become an entertainer in his own right.

Then there was Luba – the eldest daughter would eventual marry an American and live in Hawaii – subsequent to a proposal from Louis Leonowens – the famous son of Anna Harriette Leonowens (see ‘Anne and the King of Siam’ and the musical ‘The King and I’), who she turned down. Lovely Luba was to become a Japanese prisoner in the war and had to endure the worst of the worst. After the war she lived on the east coast of Malaya in Kota Bharu where she had a restaurant which my cousin, Michael, visited in 1953.

Then another child, then Nadia, then Mischa, then Joseph – later adopted by a family the family befriended on the Trans Siberian Express who fell in love with him – and finally, Sonia – called Sophie – the youngest daughter who was aged only eight when they arrived in Bangkok.

But that’s getting a little ahead of the story.

Father Engel did not want to spend the rest of his life in Krasnoyarsk. So one day hearing of the building of the Trans-Siberian railway and learning that the line would pass though their region on its way to Vladivostoc, he asked those in charge if they were looking for workers. He told them his profession and was immediately offered a job repairing and supplying new clothes for the workers for theirs were rapidly turning into rags.

And when he asked if he would take his family as well they were more than happy to make room for them – all ten of them. In fact those building the railway needed people with many different talents, as at one stage there was a total of 84,000 employed on the line.

But the family little cared about the hard work or the crowded conditions on the train for it meant ….. escape, though at a very slow pace. It meant escape from Siberia, from Russia, and with it a chance to reinvent them, to make their fortune and, best of all, a chance to be free, for Russia was changing. There had been one revolution and who knew what was to come.

Though they did not know it when they boarded the train it was to be the skills of the workers they met who would shape their future. For some of these were circus people who, as they befriended them they were happy to show them various tricks, juggling routines and how to do the exciting Russian dancing with those terpsichorean acrobatics. These were abilities that they could take anywhere in the world.

Eventually, they reached the sea and the port of Vladivostoc.

Though their education was rudimentary they were now very talented and could speak a smattering of half- a dozen languages.

They became famous as ‘The Engel family of Russian Dancers.’

Father Engel called himself Professor Engel, Magician and Illusionist. He would do clever tricks with cards, saw his fair daughters in half, suspend them in mid-air and make them disappear from chests. Many years later I asked Granny, then living in Paddington, about these tricks and how they were done, but she refused to tell me. She seemed slightly bored with this type of show business saying, in her rolling Russian accent, “Don’t be silly, lovely boy. It’s all so very simple.” She never gave anything away. Magician’s daughters keep trade secrets

Wherever they went they were a prodigious success. The girls Nadia, Luba and little Sonia sang English songs as well as dancing, and their quaint accents in which they sang were a tremendous hit with English and American audiences. For quite a while they were with Colonel Frank Fillis’s circus where the girls formed half of the ‘Six English Rosebuds’, though none of the six came from England or anywhere near it!

So that was how the family made their way as strolling players through the Far East via Manila where Nadia learned some Spanish, and India till eventually in 1912 they arrived in Bangkok, Siam.

Here Farther Engel embarked on a new line of business. One that was nearly as good as the stage, e.g. that of running an hotel and restaurant. It also provided music and dancing and gay revelry. The hotel was called the Commercial Hotel and lived up to its name. It was popular and proved a paying proposition. And here as The Engel family, they danced and sang before Indian Maharajahs and Sultans – the Sultan of Johore – always being always closely shepherded by Ma Engel.

And it was to one of these musical evenings, held at the Royal Palace, that the King of Siam, King Vajiravudh, gave the three girls most handsome gifts, gifts of jewellery and bracelets and rings. One of which still survives in within the family, a bracelet of ticles – ancient Thai gold coinage rolled in the shape of a flattened peanut – a bracelet a King gave to a beautiful lady who captivated him by dancing for him in his palace.

In 1916 Nadia married Hoppy and they had two children, Nadia and Mary.

Mary would marry Joseph Bulmer Hepworth, grandson of Joseph Hepworth, another tailor, the founder of Hepworth’s Tailors, now known as NEXT and they would have three children, Joseph, Louise and Carolyne.

Joe Hepworth C August 2010