Fair Girls and Grey Horses

by Christine Pullein-Thompson

  Mamma, proud, although she would never admit it, of our courage, and now confident of our riding, readily accepted an invitation from Mrs Greenwell, whose daughters rode correctly but carefully at Miss Lawrence’s, to try a pony she had bought. The Greenwells lived in an Edwardian house in Goring-on-Thames, a house so beautifully kept that in contrast The Grove seemed terribly shabby. The garden had terraces and gravel paths, along which it was suggested I should ride the pony, who must have been known to be difficult, because Mrs Greenwell, like Mrs Brownlow, said she didn’t want her children hurt. I was, for some reason, expected to ride first. The pony was well-rounded and almost too small for the elder, long-legged Greenwell girl, who was older and taller than us. And there was no saddle, presumably because the Greenwells did not want to buy one unless the pony proved suitable. Later, as a mother myself, I think I would have said ‘No, not bareback,’ but Mamma’s confidence in our skill seemed absolute. One of my sisters gave me a leg-up; I squeezed the pony’s sides with my calves; and the next moment he reared up and, before I could grab hold of his mane, I was sliding down his back; then I hit the gravel path hard, landing on my coccyx. Although I felt rather faraway, I was, seconds later it seemed, in Mrs Greenwell’s very feminine bedroom with cold cream being smeared on my bottom, But for me a quarter of an hour had gone missing, for I learnt on the way home that after my fall we had been shown white mice with pink eyes. ‘Surely you must remember them?’ my sisters said, but, although I had walked across the garden, round the house and up the stairs, the shock of the fall had for a time rendered me unconscious of my surroundings – a useful experience for a future pony book.

  Rearers we learnt to reject, unless they could be broken to harness; at first because the owner of a Peppard Common livery stables was killed when his rearing horse fell over backwards and crushed him against a tree; later because we knew they were usually incurable.

  Most of our cautionary tales came like this from our everyday life. We always drank carefully in summer, because a man had died after swallowing a wasp with his beer at the Woodcote Show, and, although Christine and I were for ever turning somersaults, we bore in mind that an acrobat, again at the Woodcote Show, had broken his neck fatally during a demonstration. Mamma, trying to teach us to be ready for every eventuality, told us never to go on expeditions or walks without a knife, a piece of string and sixpence. We were usually armed anyway with the sort of sheath knives, which are unlawful today, and there was plenty of string around, but how could we find sixpences when our tuppence-a-week pocket money rarely materialised? This was an example of our parents’ sometimes paradoxical behaviour, which we would never dream of mentioning.

  Josephine

  Cappy kept his pre-marriage promise to Mamma to give up bridge, but he taught us to play vingt-et-un and poker. I preferred acting charades and the paper games we played on birthdays. Consequences was popular with everyone, giving scope for bizarre meetings and snatches of dialogue, rather than the display of knowledge. Mamma was inclined to opt out of cards and, as Denis grew older, he began to resist family games altogether.

  As the twins have written, it became obvious that I was Cappy’s favourite child and ‘You ask him, you’re his favourite’ was used as a taunt. I didn’t want to be a favourite, I rated it as a nuisance, on a level with the nose-bleeds which now afflicted me, or the constant toothache as my adult teeth appeared, for some reason, full of holes.

  Cappy’s ferocity in protecting me could also be embarrassing. On a summer afternoon as we walked along the towpath looking for a picnic spot, a rowing coach on a bicycle – shouting at his eight through a megaphone – ran into me. I wasn’t hurt, but the paper bag I was carrying burst and twelve penny buns scattered. Cappy raged with noisy fury and refused to be mollified until the apologising coach had picked up every bun. I was deeply embarrassed and the crew, resting on their oars, watched with interest.

  We were taught to swim in the Thames – it was before the days of polio epidemics and no one bothered about sewage. I enjoyed the roped-off pool at Henley, even though it was unheated and one emerged blue with cold and trying to control chattering teeth, but I resented being made to practise on the floor at home. For some reason our generation was not taught to crawl; at Eton, Denis learnt to dive, but still swam with a solemn breaststroke. He taught us all to do honeypots, jumping in with your knees tucked under your chin and your arms embracing them.

  Cappy enjoyed picnics, and when we could swim, trips to the river at Shiplake became a regular Sunday afternoon entertainment. He tried to overcome Mamma’s dislike of cutting sandwiches and filling thermoses by presenting her with an elegant picnic set. It was known as Little Boy Blue and included a special container for his constantly forgotten sugar.

  I was finding the twins far too energetic. Now that they accepted me as a playmate they demanded that I raced and chased with them all day long. Mamma said, later, that I held my own and developed a lot of low cunning, and I suppose fishing was an example of this. There were no anglers in the family, but I must have observed that it was a solitary pursuit for I bought a rod and, sitting on the river bank, could tell the twins to go away, they were frightening the fish.

  When the parents had recovered from the episode of Billy, they decided that though Mr Sworder had cheated them over Countess’s age and health, he had been honest in selling her as a suitable mount for ‘the kiddies’, and they decided to give him a second chance.

  This time we all drove to Crowthorne, and Mr Sworder, square, watch-chained and wearing the sort of loud check suit favoured by bookies, produced bananas for ‘the kiddies’ and then showed us two grey ponies in his paddock. The taller one, with the high action of a harness pony, was, he said, too lively for us, the other – a thirteen-hand grey mare called Sylvia – was a ride and drive pony. She had drawn a phaeton, but was safe with ‘kiddies’, and, aged seven (Mr Sworder’s ponies were always seven, the age of equine maturity), was priced at twenty guineas complete with saddle and bridle.

  I stood with Denis, as Mamma rode Sylvia round the bare, wire-fenced paddock and, sensing his disapproval, asked, ‘Don’t you like her?’ ‘She’s already much too small for me,’ he pointed out. And it began to dawn on me that one pony couldn’t suit us all; we needed two.

  The parents bought Sylvia and in the car on the way home we agreed that as Mr Sworder obviously thought up names for his ponies on the spur of the moment, no bad luck would be involved in changing them, and somehow Milkmaid was decided upon – Milky for short.

  Having been a harness pony, Milky’s favourite pace was a fast trot, she preferred roads to woods and fields and had her fair share of obstinacy. When she didn’t wish to leave the yard she ran backwards, and when otherwise thwarted she would try to get her own way with slow-motion, but not particularly unseating, bucks. Mamma and Denis took her out hacking on their own, but the twins and I went for walking rides, along the bridleways and through beechwoods, riding in turn while the other two walked with Mamma and the dogs.

  Josephine and Diana with Milkmaid

  The discovery of Ginger changed this. His owner kept him, a quiet but obliging chestnut cob, at Blount’s Court Farm and would hire him for a small sum, which meant that we could take it in turn to go for proper hacks with Mamma. In the holidays turns became fewer because Denis would ride Ginger and Mamma Milky, so we were always longing to ride and we fantasized about the day when we could have a pony apiece.

  A complete riding outfit was purchased – we had been riding hatless and in our uniform of aertex shirts and grey flannel shorts. Mamma was quite firm: as there was only one pony, only one set of riding clothes was needed and we must share. We were approximately the same size, so there was no problem about fitting, except for the cap; brown velvet, cork-lined and bought from Harrods, it was the first of the modern hard hats to appear, and must have fitted Christine, whose head was always larger than mine.

  We were entered for our first gymkhana, an experience that should have put
me off them for life. Not only was there the struggle of getting into and out of the jointly owned jodhpurs in the back of the car, but the parents had entered me for a thread needle race without a trial run. Though Cappy suffered from an astigmatism and read with spectacles or a monocle and Mamma was short-sighted, it hadn’t occurred to them that their children – apart from Denis being colour-blind – might have less than perfect eyesight. Severely astigmatic, I was quite incapable of threading anything but the largest darning needle.

  I cantered down the ring, dismounted and then stayed struggling with my needle while all the other competitors remounted and raced back; at last a kindly steward told me I could give up. The parents greeted me with sarcastic references to ‘The boy stood on the burning-deck,’ and the twin waiting to compete began to drag the riding clothes from me.

  A much greater pleasure was provided by Dinah’s puppies. Five tiny black sausages, with blunt noses, floppy ears, and mostly with Barney’s white waistcoat, they had the delicious smell of young animals, which reaches its highest form in puppies and foals. We loved teaching them to lap and spent hours in puppy games. The only horror was the visit of the vet to dock their tails, a necessary horror, we were told, if they were to find happy homes; no one wanted spaniels with long waving tails.

  A new generation of bantams was growing up. I remember three speckled hens named Lucy and The Screamers and we each tamed our own chick – mine, Piebald Jimmy (a misnomer – she turned out to be a hen), Diana’s Roly Poly and Christine’s Fi Fi. We trained them to ride on our shoulders and Mamma allowed them into tea, when they perched on the backs of our chairs and were fed on cake.

  Though no one but Nana cared if we looked like ragamuffins, the parents did insist on their own brand of social graces. We were taught to speak loudly and clearly – on the grounds that older people were often deaf – and to look people firmly in the eye. My father was also passionate about handshakes, he was convinced that they demonstrated a person’s character and immediately invalidated his theory by making us practise. We all had to shake hands with him exerting exactly the right pressure, though a painfully firm grip was considered less heinous than a limp or, worst of all, a clammy handshake.

  We were taught to be polite to servants; it was permissible to insult your peers, to cheek your superiors, but to be rude to an employee, who risked losing a livelihood if he or she answered back, counted as a deadly sin.

  Mamma believed that the custom of servants addressing the children of their employers as Master and Miss was demeaning for the adults and bad for the children and she did her best to discourage it. The maids obliged, except when answering the door to strangers; then their knowledge of what was proper overcame them and in mincing tones they would offer to see if Miss Josephine was at home.

  Bowley had no problem, he accepted us as equals and informed Mamma that though Denis and I enjoyed a racy conversation, ‘the twins leave the orchard when the talk gets coarse.’

  Fred Kew also clung to prefixes for a time. He had been invited to shoot over our fields and would wander round with a gun after work. He took Denis rabbiting, provided him with a ferret and, when he came home after his first half at Eton, observed dryly to Mamma, ‘How Master Denis’s language has come on this term.’

  We had a copy of The Three Little Pigs which we enacted with great vigour. The twins insisted that I was the sensible pig who built his house of stone, Diana was the one who built with sticks and Christine was happy to be the silliest one who built with straw. I also saw myself as the sensible pig, but was surprised that they gave me the part so readily, though it was hardly a compliment for, at that time Christine, in particular, equated sense with tedium.

  We liked rousing poetry, preferably Scottish, and rather despised poems about babbling brooks and flowers. Young Lochinvar coming out of the west and all the laments of the displaced and exiled Scots; I could recite ‘The Fighting Téméraire’ and ‘Fidele’s Grassy Tomb’ – we were learning and writing poetry for fun.

  We each adopted a Scottish character: Diana was Cameron of Lochiel, Christine Cluny Macpherson, and I, hankering for the high life, settled for Walter Scott, Duke of Buccleuch. Armed to the teeth with toy guns and swords we jumped out on Sid Pearce, walking in Spring Wood with his ‘young lady’, and demanded ‘Cavalier or Roundhead?’ He was not pleased and plainly had no views on the English Civil War. At that time we were always being someone; if you wished to change character, you were required to turn round twice.

  As soon as I could read, I had devoured Black Beauty eight times, sobbing over Ginger and the hardness of human life. At The Grove I embarked on the books, outgrown by the Cannan girls and Denis, which filled the nursery shelves. There was Little Lord Fauntleroy, Misunderstood and The Crofton Boys – in which the youthful hero has his crushed foot amputated without an anaesthetic. The Fairchild Family – ours was the expurgated Edwardian edition without the gibbet, but still full of awful warnings.

  I had no time for E. Nesbit’s magic stories, but I took the Bastables to my heart. Oswald, Dora, Dickie, Noel, Alice and H.O. were absolutely real to me and became close friends. Sibling tensions and jealousies I understood and I always identified with the feelings of an older child, threatened by the ambitions of the next one down. Oswald had trouble with Dickie, and Sam – in The Stokesley Secret – had even greater difficulties with his younger brother, Hal. I think I recognised that Diana and I were locked in the same sort of unspoken rivalry.

  I read Henty. In the company of complacent, clean-limbed, clear-eyed and insensitive young Britons I shot the Fuzzie-Wuzzies and outwitted cunning yellow Chinamen. The Young Franc-Tireurs, a story of the Franco-Prussian war, made a great impression on me. For though the French brothers compare unfavourably with the two British boys – slightly effeminate, they do not play manly games – they all join the guerrillas and fight bravely against the Germans, only to lose. It was the first time I realised that wrong could triumph.

  And there was Knights at Bay, in which the Christian hero, wounded and captured, is nursed back to health by a Turkish infidel, a most civilized enemy who provides cooling sherbet. This endorsed my innate optimism that all infidels were not devils nor all Chinamen cunning. A more practical part of me loved what we called ‘hammety-bang books’, in which the battle is for survival: Out on the Pampas, another Henty, in which a female character is capable of shooting as well as cooking; The Children of the New Forest, in which I identified with Humphrey, who caught and domesticated the wild ponies and cattle, rather than with the older and more political Edward. And in so many children’s classics, the girls’ roles – truthfully mirroring their times – were drearily inferior. Jo March in Little Women was a great improvement, but I resisted all adult attempts to identify me with her because I hated to be called Jo. When I was very small I had answered to Jo-Jo, but as soon as I could speak, I insisted on Josephine.

  At ten I read Jane Eyre and fell in love with Mr Rochester, though I did feel doubtful about marriage when Jane found him blind and covered in egg stains. Another heroine, Daphne Vereker in Ian Hay’s A Safety Match, increased my doubt about the female role, for when she escapes the self-sacrificing life of the rectory by marrying the successful Juggernaut, her life of luxury makes her tiresomely unhappy. It is only when her husband is blinded – in a pit accident – and needs her to deal with the egg stains etc, that she too becomes fulfilled. This vital connection between blind heroes and true love seemed thoroughly unsatisfactory to me.

  I took to deathbeds. In The Green Graves of Balgowrie the two heroines, brought up in isolation in a freezing Scottish house, both die of TB. Little Paul in Dombey and Son; Charlotte M. Yonge’s families, doubly decimated by scarlet fever, carriage accidents and more TB. Yonge’s sorrowing orphans, suffering invalids and a trial for murder were strong stuff and I wept happily.

  In comparison the children’s books of the thirties appeared tame. The adventures in Swallows and Amazons seemed feeble and the fact that the children e
stablished a naval hierarchy and obeyed without discussion amazed us. Though Denis, when at home, was indisputably our leader, we often argued with him and would not fag for him without bribes; we would never have said ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ My leadership role was even more precarious. ‘Don’t you tell us what to do,’ was the twins’ threatening response to anything resembling an order.

  The first pony books – Moorland Mousie, Skewbald, the Story of a Pony and others – were in the Black Beauty mould, but though the pony was rounded up from the wild, broken in, stolen by gypsies and cruelly treated by uncaring owners, Anna Sewell’s acknowledgement of the human predicament was missing. Seeking a diet of Victorian melodrama, I began to buy the works of Nat Gould at sixpence a time. His racing novels, full of gambling and nobbling and the horse whippings of cads on the steps of London clubs, also had a emotional storyline: wrongly accused jockeys would be cleared on the final page, while supposedly orphaned stable boys were reunited with long-lost mothers of noble blood.

  Realizing that I didn’t know enough of the world to write about deathbeds and battles, I joined the twins in starting endless works about ponies. They all began, ‘The sun was shining when I was born’ and went on to describe the foal’s first meeting with ‘Man’. Sometimes they reached the breaking-in stage before petering out.