Page 25 - Joseph Wright of Derby: Virgils's Tomb & The Grand Tour.

The porch to Elbridge, 1961. From left to right: the writer then 17, Charles Francis Matthiesen with Charles, 1962.
the boxer dog, Francis Matthiesen and my mother, Olga Matthiesen née Bode.

of wedlock’ as the saying then went. In order to meet the then current proprieties my birth certificate showed me
as my mother’s second husband’s child with the name of Patrick Tarrash and thus I remained for some 7-8 years,
I recall not which. Meanwhile my mother and Walter Tarrash naturally split which caused me much distress as I
adored him and not unnaturally considered him my father.17 My biological father (Matthiesen) bought a house at
115 Clifton Hill, NW8 for this new and perhaps totally unanticipated or planned third family.When a small child
I used to play hide and seek between the gooseberry bushes and spying my papa I would whoop “Peeps” with glee. Soon
this became a moniker for my father transmuted to‘Pepys’ and as such he was thenceforward known by all his close circle.

Shortly after the war my father’s eldest daughter, Maren, living in Switzerland, married a dashing young insurance salesman
as her second husband.As a nurse they had met in wartime after he had had had a severe motorcycle accident. His name
was J.P.‘Tavi’ Durand (1924-1986). My father set up a business for them entitled Galerie Durand-Matthiesen and for a
number of years oversaw it personally since Durand had no artistic training.The gallery, run from a far more prestigious
house than my poor father ever had in London, much to the distress of my mother, was first located in the Rue Bellot and
subsequently for many years at Rue Munier-Romilly close by the Russian church in the old town. I used to visit to ski then
at the beginning of my teens with my nephew Serge and remember being in trepidation ofTavi who was cruelly harsh with

17. In effect no one really came ‘clean’ as to who my genetic father was though I long suspected until I was about 18 causing much confusion and some
strife but as a result I was blessed with two ‘fathers’, two sets of birthday and Christmas presents and double visits at school!The greatest sagacity was
shown by my parents in the matter of religion which they agreed not to enforce upon me in a partisan fashion (my mother had first been brought up as
Russian Orthodox, then Lutheran).Thus when I was eleven and as Sacristan and Chief Chorister I decided to have myself baptised in the Anglican faith
without outside intervention.

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