Mesene family history from Dionisios Grivas

Dionisios (Dennis) Grivas (shown left) is a nephew of Jimmy Mesene. Jimmy and his mother were brother and sister. He is currently researching the Mesene family history and below is the first instalment. Demetri Mesene was born on March 1908 in Cardiff, Wales. His father John Mesene worked as a sailor on merchant ships crossing the Atlantic. He was born in Ithaca Greece (1876) and sometime during the last decade of the 19th century he got off the ship to stay permanently and work in Cardiff. At that time Cardiff was a very important port and many Greeks had settled there. His Mother Dorothea Hughes, (adopted by her aunt last name Griffith), was born (1889) in Bristol and at a young age moved to Cardiff to find work. They got married in 1906 and operated together, at 32 Bute Street, a grocery, tobacco and spirits store on the ground floor and a boarding house on the first level where the family also lived. In the boarding house they provided room and board to mostly Greek sailors who were waiting for the arrival of the ship which would be able to employ them. That is the environment in which Demetri grew up as a young boy. It is very customary among Greeks to use the name Jimmy instead of Demetri. Business went well and in the mid 1910’s they moved to 40 Bute Street where it was now titled as Ship Chandler. In 1919 Jimmy travelled with his parents to Ithaca Greece to meet his Greek Grandmother. While on the island Jimmy’s mother became pregnant and gave birth to his sister Hytho (my mother). His parents and baby sister returned to Cardiff, Jimmy stayed with his grandmother in Ithaca and attended school. This is where he started playing music, although he was so young and against his grandmother’s will he joined a group of local musicians who played according to the local tradition at weddings, baptisms and other social functions. He had become the mascot of the island. He completed 3 years of schooling and then returned to Cardiff where his father’s business had improved further. They moved into a big house and lived in total comfort. In 1924 John Messene bought a merchant ship which he named Dolly. Jimmy was able to concentrate on his music and live in an affluent way; in 1925 his second sister is born, named Penelope. Jimmy’s mother was very musically inclined and she played either the piano or the kithar or both. John Mesenis’s bad business decisions led him to sell the ship to another Greek. He spent all the money in gambling. His financial situation deteriorated and eventually he committed suicide, in Athens in 1926. Jimmy was 18 years old. I had never heard that he attended University after he returned from Greece, most likely he studied music and helped his father with the business. Upon his father death his mother tried to maintain the business asking for Jimmy’s participation but Jimmy was not interested. They had to sell the big house and move into a smaller house. Jimmy was only interested in his music and that put a lot of friction among him and the family. In 1928 he travel to Canada where he stayed for a few months, before returning to England via New York where he most likely visited his father’s sister who lived in New York. In 1929 the family business went under the name Mesene and Son Provisions Merchant; Jimmy was in charge of the business but the business was liquidated in 1931, and while the business left a lot of debt apparently he paid off everybody to the last penny. After that he moved permanently to London where he concentrated on his composing and singing. Periodically he used to visit his mother, step father and sister in Cardiff and apparently the neighborhood became very alive as he used to have parties into the late night. Jimmy Mesene sung and played music with whoever asked him to so he did not have an elitist attitude neither was he a snob due to his success. In 1947 he left for the USA, the reason for leaving is not clear, my mother said that he could not face his tax issues. Most likely his then wife put pressure on him to leave England as she and his mother could not get along. My grandmother felt that she was not helping him to cut down his drinking. Hilda apparently had threatened my aunt Poppy “I will take him so far away that you will never see him again”. After he left he never communicated with any member of his family. In 1948 he appeared in New York where he used to go to a Café where immigrants and sailors from Ithaca used to gather. George Grivas who is still alive on the island told me that he wrote songs for others and one of his songs was such a success that made the singer rich. He also used to sing in night clubs but because he was not legally in the USA he had do all his transactions under the table. He had contacts with some of the big names in music of the time. Apparently he had some contact with the movie industry, where he wrote music and doubled for others. This apparently he did in England as well but because of his back issue according to my mother he was not shown on the screen. During the McCarthy era, in the USA, he was taken to Ellis Island, he tried to get a permanent resident visa. He did not get the visa and then moved to Canada most likely to the people he had visited in 1928. What he did there I do not know. In 1968 my mother found out that he lived in Canada. My sister Dorothea (Dolly) located him through the telephone directory. I spoke to him over the phone once, we spoke in Greek. I understood that he was very ill and that he was in need of money. While my sister was making plans to visit him he died on August 28th, 1969. My mother, aunt and everybody that knew him described him as a fun loving and very carefree person. His drinking habit though, many times led him to make the wrong decisions for himself. Dionisios Grivas, April 2015 A captain from Ithaki told me that he met Jimmy in Montreal a few times when he sailed with his ship to Montreal. He understood that Jimmy was doing odd jobs to facilitate the needs of the sailors on board the commercial vessels that were docking in Montreal. He looked good and he did not seem to be run down or anything of that short. Maybe he gave up music altogether and that is how he was making a living, going back to his father's occupation and what he had learned from him in his teenage years.. I found a letter from Hilda, Jimmy's wife to my mother after Jimmy had died with a return address on it. I wish I could go there and inquire with the neighbours. Another source of possible information I expect to get to, is the Saint Nicolas Greek Church in Cardiff where my grant father contributed to building it and exercised his religious rights. Dionisios Grivas, December 2015 A website (in Greek) that contains more pictures LIFO Music... These pictures have been added to this website here... Two pictures of Jimmy's sister Hytho, who was the mother of Dionisios Grivas, the writer of this page...

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