Jacquie enjoying a brace of buff butlers, Janie & Kim’s party, 2016
I was so saddened to learn that Jacquie died on 27 November. She, and the Briegal family of which she was the matriarch, had been part of my family life for as long as I can remember…indeed, longer than I can remember.
Jacquie was my second cousin. Her mother, Sadie, was my mother’s first cousin. Thus I was, technically speaking, Jacquie’s generation in my family. Through one of those generation shift things that happens in some families, I am a similar age, indeed a bit younger than, my own generation’s children. Jacquie and Len were good pals with my parents. I am good pals with Mark and Hilary and Adam. Jacquie’s mother Sadie and my Grandpa Lew Marcus…well, that’s another story. Family legend has it that Jacquie’s lovely father, Josh Moliver, would patch up the frequent tiffs between Sadie and Lew, by visiting with a bottle of schnapps as a peace offering.
Just in case you think this flashback doesn’t go back far enough, my mother actually attributed the friction between her father Lew and Sadie to the previous generation; Jacquie’s grandmother Annie:
Auntie Annie [Kraika, nee Marcus] used to make big about Lew and Beatrice’s [my parents’] “premature baby” Harry!! Fell out over it at times. Sadie & Lew were always falling out and then making up!
As my Uncle Harry was “prematurely” born just after the first world war (and just a few months after my grandparents got married), I am resuscitating a broyges that dates back more than a century. You can thank me (or quarrel with me) afterwards for that.
There are/were many branches to the Marcus family, from whence this connection comes, but somehow the Kraika/Moliver/Briegal connection (Jacquie’s) and the Pizan/Green connection, plus my own branch of the Marcus family remained solid despite various family upheavals over the last century or so.
Thus, perhaps unusually, these second cousin branches are amongst my closest relatives and people with whom I feel the closest familial ties. Janie takes pains to say that she hasn’t a clue who ANY of her second cousins might be and indeed has no contact even with her first cousins.
Anyway, this tribute is about Jacquie, not family trees, but my point is, my own memories of Jacquie, over many decades, are mostly associated with the sort of events which most of us enjoy with close family and close friends.
My diaries, covering the 1970s and 1980s, have many mentions of visiting the Briegals or the Briegals visiting us. In those days, this might be for second night of Pesach (Passover), sometimes breaking the fast at my parents’ place, sometimes around the Xmas seasonal holidays (I remember mum and dad doing New Years Eve with Jacquie and Len quite often) or random “no reason” get togethers.
My dad was a real “cobblers children” photographic man when it came to documenting family events with pictures – he tended not to do it. It wasn’t really the thing to photograph “regular” family gatherings back then.
On occasion, my mum and dad would go for short break holidays with Jacquie and Len. Jacquie was very tolerant of my mum, who could be awkward at times but basically had a good heart and Jacquie recognised that. Perhaps more importantly to Jacquie (or just as importantly), my Dad and Len enjoyed each other’s company and especially enjoyed having a few glasses of wine together.
By the end of the 1990s, the Christmas tradition shifted from mum & dads, or Jacquie & Len’s place, to Janie’s place, as we always felt a desire to reciprocate the warm hospitality we had enjoyed at other times of the year.
Janie tended to do almost all of the catering role – the centrepiece very often being a roast goose, because Dad and Len were partial to goose. Jacquie could be encouraged to “go with the flow” and make sure that my mum didn’t fret. On the one occasion that Janie’s mum, The (now late) Duchess of Castlebar, also attended, Jacquie did a great job of preventing Len from throttling the Duchess. Jacquie was a great reconciler; by all accounts like her dad in that respect.
My job at Christmas was to devise games and miscellaneous entertainments for those days. I recently found an old box with index cards, post-it notes, dice and bundles of 5p pieces. I recognised the materials for charades and that type of game, but I cannot recall what we were doing with all of those dice and shilling-bits. Must have been part of one of the games, but I only remember us talking crap, not playing craps!
By the late noughties, though, dad and then, soon after, Len, died. The family gatherings for a heimische Christmas didn’t seem appropriate any more, so we started going to restaurants together instead.
Strangely, while rummaging for something completely different earlier today, I stumbled across some misfiled papers – our order at The Devonshire for Xmas 2010:
I can also authoritatively tell you from my markings on the wine list that we ordered the Pelorus Cloudy Bay fizz, Argentinian Chardonnay, Chianti (Len & Dad would have approved), and Californian Orange Muscat for pudding.
Even more latterly, Jacquie kept the family gathering tradition going for so-called fast-breaking until she was just shy of 90 years old. The International Pickled Herring Of The Year Competition (IPHY Awards) attracting global audiences and acclaim.
But really I should leave the last word to Jacquie herself. She really was very patient and kind with my mum, even towards the end for mum, when dementia was setting in and mum’s manner increasingly random.
The following short “vox pop” was filmed, I think by Kim, at the little party we threw for my mum at “Noddyland” (our house) when mum turned 90, in 2012.
Jacquie’s death really is the end of an era for our family. But she will live on in the hearts of all who knew her and loved her.
