Out of the Woods But Not Over the Hill

by Gervase Phinn

  ‘I have a pet theory about first names,’ another head teacher told me. ‘Over the many years I have been in education, I have come to the conclusion that Shakespeare got it wrong when he said that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. I learned very early on that boys called Richard tend to be well-behaved, quiet children who work hard, Matthews are very polite and thoughtful, Dominics are little charmers, Damiens have far too much to say for themselves and Kevins are accident-prone. Penelopes tend to be lively and interested, Jennys tend to be sporty, Traceys too big for their boots and Elizabeths little darlings.’

  ‘And what about the boy called Gervase?’ I asked.

  ‘I have never taught one,’ she told me. Then she thought for a moment. ‘However did you manage,’ she asked, ‘growing up in Rotherham, with a name like that?’

  Famous Forebears

  There’s a television programme which investigates the family history of celebrities. It has revealed some amazing facts and fascinating characters. Some of the forebears were rich and illustrious, others dark and villainous, which surprised, horrified and sometimes moved to tears their celebrated descendents. When I was young, reading adventure stories and blessed with an over-developed imagination, I thought that I might one day discover I was descended from someone great and good and that I would inherit a grand fortune.

  A friend of mine has been researching his family history and discovered that he had many a distinguished ancestor, including the first professor of mathematics at Cambridge University and friend of Prince Albert, a number of eminent vicars of Dent and possibly General John Lambert of Calton Hall, Kirkby Malham, architect of the Cromwellian Protectorate. On a recent literary-themed cruise, a fellow author and speaker was Lucinda Dickens-Hawksley, the great, great, great granddaughter of Charles Dickens and one who could rattle off a veritable plethora of famous forebears. Then there was the young man in a school in Harrogate who told me he had much to live up to, being the direct descendant of Scott of the Antarctic.

  My father-in-law has traced his family back several generations and has found a number of illustrious ancestors, including the Methodist preacher and theologian Joseph Bentley, author of How to Sleep on a Windy Night. I can certainly vouch for the veracity of the title; the collection of sermons put me to sleep in minutes.

  I did once think I might be related to the great and the good when I received a letter from a Miss Marjorie Mangham-Phinn, in which she claimed kinship. Having researched her own family history, Miss Mangham-Phinn had discovered that one of her most famous ancestors was Thomas Phinn, an eminent Victorian philanthropist and worthy. She maintained that Trollope based his character Phineas Finn, the decent, strikingly handsome young heartbreaker who charmed himself into polite society, on her distinguished ancestor. Thomas Phinn, she informed me, was the Member of Parliament for the elegant city of Bath from 1852 until 1855. She had an idea we might be related since Phinn is a most unusual name.

  When I was asked to speak at the Bath Literary Festival, in the magnificent Guildhall, in 2005, I had the opportunity of meeting my supposed ancestor. His marble bust had a prominent place in the entrance of the Guildhall. Styled as a Roman statesman with luxuriant curls, large honest eyes and prominent nose, he did bear a striking resemblance to my brother, Alec. I was introduced to my audience, on this occasion, by the present MP for Bath, Don Foster. Later, he very kindly researched Thomas Phinn for me in the archives of the Houses of Parliament.

  Thomas Phinn. Hall – Staircase, Inner Temple, London. 41 St James’s Street, London. Brook’s and Reform. Born at Bath 1814, the son of Thomas Phinn of Bath, Surgeon, by Caroline, daughter of Richard Bignall, Esq. of Banbury. Unmarried. Educated at Eton and Exeter College, Oxford where he was 1st class in Classics 1837. Was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1840 and joined the Western Circuit.

  The impressive entry in The Who’s Who of British Members of Parliament, Volume 1, 1832–1885 continues to describe the glittering, if rather curtailed, political career of Thomas Phinn, QC, Liberal Member of Parliament, Secretary to the Admiralty, who was fiercely in favour of ‘vote by ballot and the fullest development of free-trade principles’. It was he who voted for an inquiry into Maynooth, the Irish seminary from which so many missionary priests came over the water to England, so I guess he must have had some Irish connections.

  The entry in The Times, 1 November 1866, announced, with great regret, the sudden death of Thomas Phinn:

  He was yesterday apparently in his accustomed excellent health and spirits, but on returning to his chambers in Pall-mall about 7 o’clock he complained of a pain in the region of his heart, and after a few minutes expired.

  Much as I would like to claim the eminent Thomas Phinn as an ancestor, and perhaps lay claim to his fortune and that wonderful marble bust, my sister Christine, guardian of the family archive (a few scribbled letters, birth and death certificates and a battered album of faded sepia photographs), gave me the low-down on our branch of the Phinns. On the distaff side of the family, I am descended from the Brothers of Portumna, County Galway, whose notoriety was that they made coffins for the victims of ‘The Great Irish Potato Famine’. On my father’s side were the Macdonalds of South Uist, who eked out a living on that bleak island of great melancholic stretches of heather-covered moors and bog land in the Outer Hebrides. The headstone of an ancestor, one Ranald Macdonald, is somewhat ambiguous in its dedication. Perhaps he had a reputation for untrustworthiness or was a noted sheep-rustler, for the inscription on his gravestone reads:

  Let all the world say what it can,

  He lived and died an honest man.

  I felt it politic not to delve further into my ancestry.

  A Father of the Old School

  ‘Education, education, education.’ This was my father’s mantra well before Tony Blair made it his clarion call. My father, a steelworker for most of his life and with little formal education, but with a sharp intelligence and lively sense of humour, was ruthless in his determination to provide for and protect his family. He recognised that the central factor in achieving any sort of real advancement in life was ‘a good education’.

  My father once told me that he had passed his scholarship examination to attend grammar school, but his step-father felt it was best for him to leave school. Like many a youngster at that time, largely because of lack of the necessary money to pay for books, equipment and the uniform, he was denied the opportunity to continue his studies. At fourteen, when his mother died, he went to live on an uncle’s farm, before joining the army on his seventeenth birthday to become a despatch rider. Although he never said so, I guess my father deeply regretted not having had the opportunity of a good ‘schooling’, but he never saw education as a possible route to better things for himself. He perhaps knew by the age of thirty, with a wife and young family, that it was too late for him. He believed, as did my mother, that the key to success lay not in wealth but in education. Education opened doors and he was determined that his children should take every opportunity to receive the best education on offer. He had seen first hand, during his army service and latterly working in the steelworks, what a gulf there existed in the world in opportunity, wealth and education – how the officers and the managers were set apart from others by dint of what he called ‘their schooling’.

  Following my father’s death, when I broached the subject of his scholarship examination with my mother, she told me that my father was quite content with his lot in life and never aspired to anything more. He loved his family and provided for us, enjoyed the simple things in life but was unambitious. I cannot believe that. I cannot believe that he was happy working in the steel-works with all the noise, heat, oil, dust and dirt. As a boy, on my way to watch Sheffield United I remember well the bumpy bus rides from Rotherham to Sheffield via Attercliffe, past the dark and dirty place where he worked for thirty or more years. As I looked down from the top deck of the bus on that grim environment, as young as I was, I knew I wanted more ou
t of life than this.

  My parents were of ‘the old school’ when it came to education. Unless I was at death’s door, I had to attend school, do my homework, listen to my teachers and do as they said, and if I were to get into any trouble at school I would be in twice as much trouble at home. Sometimes I felt they supported the school a little too much. I recall once, when I was about ten, I was presented with my school dinner on a plastic plate and wouldn’t eat it. There was a slice of pale cold meat edged in fat, a dollop of cold mashed potatoes and sliced carrots swimming in greasy gravy. None of the healthy fare served up in schools today and none of the choices. I folded my arms and resolutely refused to pick up my knife and fork. I was made to remain in the corner of the hall when it had been cleared after dinnertime, with the plate on a table in front of me. I was told I would not be allowed to go until it was eaten. I finally did as I was told and then went to the boys’ toilet and was promptly sick. When I relayed this dreadful injustice to my parents at tea time, my father, looking over his glasses, merely remarked, ‘Put it down to experience, son. Now eat your tea.’

  On the Road to Reading

  Thinking over what gave me the most pleasure in my childhood, I should place, first and foremost, reading. My mother, a natural storyteller, taught me nursery rhymes and read from picture books. I knew all the old favourites – Chicken Licken, The Gingerbread Man, The Giant Turnip, Rumpelstiltskin, The Magic Porridge Pot and many more – before I started school. Most evenings, before I went to bed, she would read aloud with me snuggled up next to her. I loved listening to the story, following the words on the page as she read and feeling that special physical closeness. Sometimes she would change a word, take a bit out or add something, and I could tell and told her so. I might not be able to read those black marks on the page but I knew the stories so well. Later, when the story was told and the light turned off, I would close my eyes and dream of a world peopled with the magical characters I had encountered in the book.

  My father too captured my imagination with his stories. He would bring back books from Rotherham Library to read, or buy a couple of old tattered versions of the classics from the market, taking out his finds from the brown paper carrier bag where they had been hiding between the vegetables and fruit. Once, he arrived from the market with a large hard-backed tome called King of the Fighting Scouts, which depicted on the front cover a garish illustration of a soldier on a rearing horse, hacking his way through a horde of savages. For several nights my father read a couple of chapters, only to arrive at the denouement to discover that the last few pages of the book were missing. Undeterred, he made the end up.

  My father took over from my mother this nightly ritual of reading to me when I was eight or nine. He would read a chapter or two at a time, ending on a high note and thus whetting my imagination for more. I would be keen for the next instalment the following night and be up those stairs in my pyjamas, face washed, teeth brushed, ready and waiting. It was a really clever way of making me go to bed at night. Boys who have had this sort of upbringing, where fathers tell them stories, read to them and associate reading with great pleasure and affection, learn to love books. A magical world is opened up to them.

  A Grandparent’s Prerogative

  The relationship between grandparents and their grandchildren is rather different from that between parents and their children. I know this to be true because I am told frequently enough by my own grown-up children that I am ‘much softer’ with Harry and Megan, my grandchildren, than I ever was with them. Of course I am. It’s the grandparents’ prerogative. We grannies and grandpas are more tolerant and patient; we are better listeners, less critical and, dare I say it, more indulgent than we were with our own offspring.

  My mother and father were loving, supportive and dedicated parents. I was never slapped and rarely shouted at but they were firm and decisive in their treatment of their four children, insisting on best behaviour, no answering back and good manners. If we persisted in demanding something, my mother’s predictable retort would be: ‘I want, doesn’t get.’ My father’s favourite expression was: ‘I’ve warned you once, I won’t tell you again.’ Growing up, I knew the parameters.

  One morning, when the family was on holiday in Blackpool, I bought a set of false teeth made out of pink and white rock with pink sugar gums. I was about six or seven at the time. Much to my father’s irritation, I kept on clacking the teeth like castanets as we walked along the prom. Finally I was warned that, should I persist in the annoying clacking of the teeth, they would go in the sea. When I continued, the teeth were snatched from my hand and thrown over the promenade wall to disappear into the ocean. ‘I did warn you,’ said my father calmly, and strolled on. It was a good lesson to learn for a prospective teacher: if you warn a child you will do something, then do it.

  When she became a grandma, my mother would often come around to our house for Sunday lunch. From her vantage point in the comfortable chair in the corner of the lounge, she would watch me attempting to bring up my children. One Sunday, I had occasion to chastise my son Matthew, then aged six, for his untidy bedroom. Stabbing the air with a finger, I ordered him, ‘Up those stairs now, young man, and tidy your room. Do you follow my drift?’

  ‘Your father used that expression,’ my mother interrupted. ‘I don’t suppose you knew what it meant when you were a boy, and I don’t suppose your Matthew knows what it means either.’

  ‘Thank you, Mother,’ I said, pompously. I turned back to my son. ‘Go on, up those stairs and tidy your room or you’ll go without your tea.’

  Matthew at first looked suitably contrite. Then a small smile appeared on his lips, then a grin, to be followed by giggles and finally guffaws. I ballooned with anger. Then I caught sight of my mother in the mirror. She was sitting behind me, pulling the most ridiculous faces and wiggling her fingers in front of her nose.

  ‘Mother!’ I snapped. ‘I am trying to instil some discipline. You are not helping matters.’

  ‘Oh, do be quiet,’ she said. ‘You’re not talking to teachers now.’

  ‘Mother . . .’ I began.

  ‘Don’t mother me,’ she said. ‘You sound like Hitler on a soapbox. He’s a lovely little lad is Matthew. There are more important things in this world than an untidy room, you know. And, as I remember, your bedroom was a tip when you were a boy.’

  My Irish grandmother certainly had a soft spot for me, the youngest of her grandchildren. When I was asked to submit a piece for the anthology Grandparents, edited by Sarah Brown in support of the charity PiggyBankKids, I wrote about this remarkable woman who had a profound influence on my life. Grandma Mullarkey took a particular interest in my reading and writing. One of my most vivid early memories of my grandma was when she read to me from a small hard-backed picture book, about the shrewd little boy who outwits the greedy tiger. I soon knew the story of Little Black Sambo by heart. This simple little story stirred my imagination. Little Black Sambo was the first black child I encountered in a book and I delighted in his sheer joy, courage and cleverness.

  As an older child I would take along with me on my visits the book of the moment, and we would read quietly together. At other times she would read to me from one of the large illustrated books she kept on a shelf near her bed. One favourite was The Swiss Family Robinson with its garish coloured plates and big print. I loved the story, where all the members of the shipwrecked family worked happily together under the benign guidance of a father who was both strong and wise and who sported bulging muscles and a long chestnut beard.

  When my grandma read, I thrilled at the sound of the words, the rhythms and the rhymes, and would sit goggle-eyed at the power of her voice and her extraordinary memory. She knew passages of verse by heart and had a natural feel for measure and stress.

  It was my Grandma Mullarkey who bought me my first dictionary when I started secondary school, and the treasured portable Olivetti typewriter with the black and red ribbon. I would sit with it on my lap feeling like ‘a r
eal writer’.

  Like many of Irish stock, my grandmother possessed that Celtic combination of levity and seriousness. Laughter and tears were never far apart. She was a keen and discerning reader, an avid letter writer and a fine storyteller. She delighted in telling amusing anecdotes, embroidering the stories with facial expressions and comic voices. There was the time, she told me, when the turkey arrived from her cousins in Ireland and had to be collected from Masborough Station on Christmas Eve. The bird, recently killed, had been stuffed in a cardboard box, fully feathered and still possessing its head and claws. Christmas dinner didn’t take place until much later that evening and by then everyone had lost their appetites.

  There was the story too of my Uncle Jimmy, her only son, who, instead of going to Mass on Sunday, would spend the time swimming in the Rotherham Canal, until the fateful day when he was caught red-handed by his father. A neighbour had seen young Jimmy and informed upon him. Grandfather Mullarkey, unseen by his son, collected the pile of clothes left on the bank and waited until the miscreant emerged from the smelly water. Jimmy didn’t seem all that concerned that his clothes had gone and set off home in his wet underpants before his father emerged from his hiding place and confronted him. Grandma found the incident very funny and chuckled at the memory. Her husband, she said, was not amused.

  I loved to listen to her tales and I had an inkling early on that some were just a little far-fetched. I remember once she told me of when a fellow parishioner went on a pilgrimage to Rome with the Union of Catholic Mothers. In St Peter’s Square, amidst the throng, the woman was excited to hear from her friend that His Holiness himself would soon be making an appearance on his balcony to give his blessing. At that very moment, the Pope appeared. The woman was said to have remarked to her companion: ‘Oh, speak of the devil.’