For some reason, different in each case perhaps, Barnholt was every one’s favourite. In a moment of confidence Dym told me how, long ago, the family had gone for a holiday, leaving Barnholt, a tiny boy, with the servants (for some unknown reason). ‘We came back unexpectedly’, said Dym, ‘and I ran ahead and caught sight of Barney in the window.’ Here Dym shuddered as he added, ‘His face was such a picture of misery that I have never been able to forget it.’
One reason, common to us all, for loving Barnholt a bit extra came from an incident of his fifth year. Although it happened when I was too young to know anything about it, I heard the story often enough to make the details always clear to me, even to the name of the culprit. This was a girl, Emma Lazelle, who took the four boys out for a walk one afternoon. I should have been taken too, no doubt, only that perambulators were newfangled things in those days, and we never had one; a baby too big to be carried stayed at home. In due course the party returned to tea, and only then discovered that Barnholt was missing.
‘Where did you see him last?’ ‘Who was he walking with?’ ‘Where did you go?’ ‘Why didn’t you keep looking round?’ Mother rained such questions on Emma’s head, without waiting for replies. But when she caught the word ‘canal’, and realized that Barnholt might have fallen into it, she stopped talking and faced despair. Fortunately my father came home soon, and went at once to the Police Station, assuring mother that (he canal was out of the question. He did not elaborate his reasons for this statement, but it acted well. He drew blank at the Police Station, but was told that inquiries would be made.
Mother belonged to that school of thought that hopes to hasten a person’s return by watching the road. For three nights and the best part of three days she hardly left the dining-room window which commanded the front gate. Strange to say, even the neighbours whose names we didn’t know were interested. The wives saw mother hour after hour in the window, and the husbands talked it over with my father in the train going to the City. It was this kind of primitive S.O.S. that was successful at last, for the police in those days had no efficient means of rapid communication.
On the afternoon of the third day, when mother had begun to lose heart and strength, the gate was pushed open, and a neighbour from the house opposite ran up our path waving her hand excitedly. Mother rushed to the door and heard the words blurted out, ‘Your little boy is found.’ The watch at the window was now a different business, and presently a policeman appeared leading Barnholt by the hand. The little fellow looked very jolly, and his first words were never forgotten: ‘Are those for me?’—as he spied some ripe gooseberries on the table.
It seemed that he had wandered far afield, had been found by a policeman, and could give no information beyond that his name was Barney, his mother’s was Mamma, and he lived in the ‘black house’. (This was because the next door to us had been newly painted, making ours look dirty.) The police had evidently been kind to him, but all that he was ever able to tell us was that they had given him some bread and butter and a halfpenny. In fact to him the incident had been a pleasant interlude.
As for me, the last of the family, my luck began at birth. Mother often told me of the scene. The doctor said to her, ‘I think you have four boys, Mrs. Thomas?’ ‘Yes, yes…and I suppose this is another,’ she replied in a resigned tone. ‘Well, this is a little girl.’ Whereupon my mother jumped up excitedly, crying, ‘Let me see her, let me see her!’ And it was only by swift appliances on the doctor’s part that her life was saved. So from the very first I have never had the feeling of being an ‘unwanted female’.
II. Ups and Downs
A SETTLED income has its attractions possibly, but it can never be the fun of an unsettled one. My father was on the Stock Exchange, and wavered between great affluence and extreme poverty. Neither he nor mother had a saving or economical disposition, but lived happily always, neither elated by wealth nor depressed by the lack of it.
We children were never aware of any money troubles, if such they could be called, for they made little difference to us. At no time were we allowed to spread our butter too thick. If things were going well, my father had no thought of enlarging his establishment or otherwise incurring bothers. His idea was that we should all enjoy ourselves a bit more along the old lines. When a shrinkage came we didn’t notice much deprivation, or if we did it was put down to the weather. An oft-repeated family slogan was, ‘Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed’. This happy-go-lucky attitude to life may be immoral from one point of view, but I have found it an excellent preparation for the continual uncertainties of my own lot.
An indulgence that mother often permitted herself was a drive in Hyde Park. Not far from us was a ‘Jobbing Stable’, which provided us with a victoria and a sprucely dressed red-faced old coachman named Henry. He would dash up at o’clock, flicking his whip, and mother and I, all beautifully dressed, would get in, and be driven round among all the other carriages. How dull the saloon cars of today seem to me in comparison! Sometimes the Princess of Wales would pass us in the Row. I suppose I looked eager and excited and very young to be there, for once she smiled on me.
Now my father’s pleasures took another direction. Not much more than a boy himself (for he married at the age of twenty-three) he loved cricket and all its social accompaniments. When money was plentiful he would take the boys, and often mother and me as well, in a wagonette to a cricket match, and give us all a big lunch, and invite any cricketers home to supper. Mother had a kind of fixed idea of a spread at home, no matter where we had been, so that we were always glad to get back. I don’t think she intended it exactly, but this certainty of a cheerful meal, even when it could not be expensive, on our return home had a subtle influence on us.
When there was no outing possible, we played cricket in our back garden, and broke windows frequently. Each smash was a joy to me, because I loved to watch the glazier at his miraculous job. He always gave me a lump of putty which I made into dolls’ cups and saucers, and snakes for Barnholt.
Among the many cricketers coming and going there was one who was so constantly staying with us that I looked on him as a kind of uncle. But we always called him by his full name, Charlie Absalom, so that I thought it was one word. He was a well-known cricketer of the time, and played I think for England against Australia. His travelling-kit was extremely simple, and he used to say that his packing up was done in two movements—gathering up his night-shirt with one hand and aiming it into his portmanteau wherever that happened to be. His jolly face made up for the fierceness of his black beard, which I fancy he cultivated on the model of Grace.
Of course Charlie Absalom played cricket with the boys and me in the back garden, gave me underhands when he bowled and easy catches when he batted (not that I caught them), and broke his due share of windows. I can hear his cheery voice calling out, ‘Coosh! there goes another!’ Mother never scolded when anything whatever was broken. As she justly remarked, ‘People don’t break things on purpose, and if you blame them they get nervous, and are more likely to break more.’ And she was far too sensible to suppose that you can play cricket properly with half your mind engaged in fearing what the ball may break.
Some of the highest spots of my childhood were those sunny Saturday afternoons when my father came home early with the word ‘Kew’ on his lips. Mother would throw aside any other plan, we all got ready in a trice, and trooped off in a body to the station at Canonbury. We did not make for the Gardens, as you might suppose, but always for the walk along the river bank to Richmond. This was wilder than the Gardens, allowing greater freedom of enterprise. Here were giant chestnut-trees, and competition in collecting the nuts. Whenever I pick up one today it brings back to me with its glossy lustre those rapturous afternoons. On our left we had glimpses of the Gardens, separated from us by a moat, and on our right ran the river, gay with rowing-boats, and every now and then sending ashore the wash of a pleasure-steamer, making ‘real waves’.
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bsp; After our walk, doubled by our scampering to and fro, we were ready for tea in a Richmond shop, and home again by train, to count our spoils and have endless games of conkers.
Another occasional playground for us was Epping Forest. The whole region was familiar ground to my father and mother, for here they had lived, during one of the depressed financial times, for several years in a tiny cottage, actually within the forest. It bore the charming name of Little Monkhams, and is now replaced by a row of villas. Little it certainly was, and I have often wondered how we all got in. Here the three youngest of us were born. Mother had a notion that it was improper to consult a doctor until the actual crisis, and Charles, who arrived unexpectedly at Christmas, was all but dead before the doctor could be fetched. The cottage was not only far from other habitations but was of the most primitive kind. Once, in a thunderstorm, the front windows blew out on to the lawn. Mother thought this very funny. But she must have been glad when a stroke of better fortune enabled us to move into the ample house in Canonbury.
An old married servant of ours, a Mrs. Pearce, lived at Theydon Bois, and used to welcome us at her cottage whenever we could come. She regaled us with milk from her own cow, with butter of her own make, and hot scones for tea. A scamper in the Forest was the chief item in the programme, and on one occasion, still dark in my memory, we all set out in the usual style—the boys and I with Mrs. Pearce’s little girl running ahead among the trees, while mother and Mrs. Pearce came on behind at a slow pace. Stopping to gather some grasses I forgot the others, and when I looked up was dismayed to see Charles just disappearing round a turn in the path some way on. I called out and ran as fast as my little legs would carry me, but I was only six years old and had little hope of catching them up. However, I still ran and tried to shout at the same time till I came to a place where the path divided. Which to take? I tried one a little way…and then ran back and tried the other. Then I found yet another path. Then I screamed and ran wildly this way and that. But there was dead silence, and on all sides the dark depths of the forest. Then the awful truth dawned on me that I was lost. Why are children told the story of the Babes in the Wood? With this in mind, I prepared to die. I lay down and waited for the birds to cover me with leaves. My hopeless misery is as vivid to me as if it had happened yesterday. I don’t know how long I lay thus, but it cannot have been more than a quarter of an hour. I had not really strayed far from the main path, and I was soon found. The indescribable joy of hearing mother’s voice calling me! I rushed to her, burbling out incoherences, but she never knew, no one ever knew, what it had been like. The glorious old forest is near my home today and I love to visit it, but its depths always hold a sinister flavour for me.
During the winter there were few recreations, however well off we might be. We all hated ‘parties’, because it meant being fixed into best clothes and behaving properly instead of having a good romp. The boys used to go to the theatre and music halls. The latter sounded rather dull, but mother explained that they were not dull, only not very nice. However, it made no difference to me what they were like, since I was never allowed to go even to a theatre. Tom and Charles were our theatre-tasters, and they went to see everything that Irving did. Charles told me the story of The Bells, which frightened me a bit, but I never tired of Hamlet, and watching Charles, who was tall and dark and thin, striding about the house in imitation of Irving, with his chin stuck out, bidding me go to a nunnery, or stabbing an imaginary Polonius hiding behind the red dining-room curtains. Bernardo, Francisco, Horatio, what good mouthfuls they made! ‘Stand and unfold yourself’, I would shout, and ‘Get thee to bed, Francisco.’ Our old family volume of the Tragedies, with Kenny Meadows’s illustrations, still opens at Hamlet.
When the mood took us we would push back the dining-room table and act charades. The main point was to appear different from usual, putting on a bonnet of mother’s, a pillow to make us fat, my father’s top hat or overcoat. When other amusements failed we fell back on games. Mother possessed a marvellous box, replete with everything necessary. It opened out in compartments, revealing chessmen fixed on to holders, draughts, bezique-cards, cribbage-board, dominoes, and packs of ordinary cards. I can’t remember when I didn’t know how to play chess, not to mention all the other games.
My father liked a rubber of whist, and I was taught to make a fourth in my tenderest years. The scoring, rapidly muttered by my father, was quite beyond me, but I drew a certain comfort from hearing him announce that honours were easy. I dealt with extreme slowness, hugging the pack tightly, dreading the disgrace of a misdeal. The others would sit back and wait with ostentatious patience until I had finished. A few clear rules I clung to, such as ‘never revoke’, ‘third player play his highest’. This was a sore trial to me if I held the ace of trumps. The glory of having it was balanced by the pain of parting with it. What I liked was to hoard my trumps as a surprise for the end. Dym, who had an unaccountable way of knowing what cards I had, used to impress on me that there were only two excuses for not returning your partner’s lead—sudden illness, or not having any of the suit. And mother, gazing at the ceiling while I was hesitating, would refer casually to the ‘thousand men now driving cabs in London because they wouldn’t lead trumps’. So, as you will guess, the glory of winning a trick was quite wiped out by the misery of having to lead. I did my best to avoid Dym as a partner, owing to his horrible questions at the end: ‘My dear child, didn’t you see my call for trumps?’ My father or Tom was the best partner, for he would let bygones be bygones, and had no hopes of improving me.
In spite of these alleviations the London winters were long and dark and cold. Fogs in those days were far worse than the mild affairs we have today—far blacker and more solid. The boys liked a frost so as to get some skating in Regent’s Park or at Hendon, or even some sliding at Finsbury Park. But I never had the courage to try, and hated the cold. I think mother felt the same, for she used to proclaim as soon as October dawned: ‘Now, children, remember, the month after next the days will begin to lengthen.’
And of course lean times were vaguely felt by us all, however much the high spirits of our parents hid them. One day I heard my father say to mother, ‘Never mind, Mary, whatever happens you and I are in the same boat—so nothing matters.’ I knew then that something must be going wrong, but his words, and the pleasure in mother’s face, pushed deep down into me a sense of happy security.
Two incidents during such lean periods caused more merriment than distress. One autumn afternoon a friend dropped in to tea, and, in the teeth of mother’s increasing coolness of manner, kept staying on and on. It grew dusk, but still no signs of departure. At last mother announced in firm tones that she was very fond of sitting in the gloaming and watching the lamplighter dodging from side to side. With that she rose markedly, adding that she did not wish to force her friends to engage in such simple pleasures. Whereupon the friend, with a nervous giggle and a ‘You are so funny, Mrs. Thomas’, reached the door and went, never suspecting that our gas had been cut off by the Company.
At another time of poverty my mother had bought a pair of kippers for supper, to regale my father after the children were in bed. He managed to get some stout to add to the feast. Just as all was ready who should arrive but Aunt Polly, ‘only for a minute, dear’. But the savoury smell was too much for her, and she consented to stay to supper. The nakedness of the land was only too clear to her, but instead of declaring (as poor mother had to) that kippers disagreed with her, she did her good deed by pouring the small remains of the stout into a bottle ‘against another time’. Alas, she must needs select the bottle in which was an iron ration of whisky, hoarded by us in case of illness. Among Polly’s many shortcomings this particular folly rankled longest in mother’s mind.
I suppose it must have been during a lean year, when we were devoid even of servants, that my father would inaugurate some lark. One afternoon he came home early and suggested that it was just the sort of day for making toffee. The boys sprang to
the idea, but mother hesitated, as she didn’t know quite how to make it. But when my father said that he knew all about it because they had made it at school once, we all followed him in a glad rush to the kitchen. Barnholt was sent to the grocer close by for ‘a pound of his worst butter’. All grins, Barnholt flew forth on his errand. The grocer was annoyed at such a request, but, as Barnholt pointed out to him, if he had a best butter he must have a worst. Not seeing the obvious retort to this, he grumblingly served out a pound of something which my father declared to exceed his worst expectations. Meanwhile mother had brought out sugar, and, after much searching of cupboards, some treacle. All was put in a saucepan and Dym was placed to stir it over the fire, while Charles measured out a tablespoonful of vinegar. My part was to get in every one’s way and ask why each thing was done. My father’s explanation of the vinegar was peculiar, having some strange reference to the Franco-Prussian War. When mother had greased some flat tins the mixture was poured into them, and we had to wait a bit till it was set. I can’t remember what it tasted like, but I know we were all in a glorious mess.
Another time it was a Welsh rabbit that my father had a mind for, and a syndicate was again formed for its creation. In this case the Franco-Prussian ingredient was a little beer. My father did the careful stirring this time, and two of the boys got round his legs making toast. Mother hovered around, shaking her head, prophesying indigestion and the doctor. But she ate her share and wished it had been bigger.
The best of these impromptu feasts was a positive shoal of sprats that my father came home with one evening. ‘They’re practically alive,’ said he, ‘and they were almost giving them away in Farringdon Market. Now, Mary, bring out your biggest frying-pan and some dripping, make up the fire, and you boys put the plates to warm. You shall have some fish on them before you know where you are.’ And lo, it was so. There was a sizzling and a tossing, and soon the crisp little fish were tumbling on to our outstretched plates, while mother was cutting bread and butter as fast as she could. I have had elegantly dressed sole at a grand dinner, salmon straight from the Dart, trout fresh from a Welsh stream, and perch that I caught myself in a Canadian river, but no fish has ever had the magic quality of those sprats ‘given away’ in London and cooked by my father.
A London Child of the Seventies Page 2
