II
My mother married my father largely, it seems, to help him out with his five motherless children. Having any herself was a secondary consideration. But first she had a girl, then she had another girl, and it was very nice of course to have them, but slightly disappointing, because she belonged to the generation and the tradition that made a son the really important event; then I came and I was a fine healthy child. She was forty when I was born and my father was forty-nine. Four years later she had another son and four years later she had still another son. The desired preponderance of male over female was established and twice five made ten. The gap of two generations between my parents and me was easier in a way to bridge than a single generation gap. Children seldom quarrel with their grandparents, and I have been able to think of my mother and father as grandparents. Also, a family of ten means a dilution of parental affection; the members tend to become indistinct. I have often been called: ‘Philip, Richard, Charles, I mean Robert.’
My father was a very busy man, an inspector of schools for the Southwark district of London, and we children saw practically nothing of him except during the holidays. Then he was very sweet and playful and told us stories with the formal beginning, not ‘once upon a time,’ but always ‘and so the old gardener blew his nose on a red pocket handkerchief.’ He occasionally played games with us, but for the most part when he was not doing educational work he was doing literary work or being president of literary or temperance societies. My mother was so busy running the household and conscientiously carrying out her social obligations as my father’s wife that we did not see her continuously, unless on Sunday or when we happened to be ill. We had a nurse and we had each other and that was companionship enough. My father’s chief part in our education was to insist on our speaking grammatically, pronouncing words correctly, and using no slang. He left our religious instruction entirely to my mother, though he officiated at family prayers, which the servants were expected to attend, every morning before breakfast. Punishments, such as being sent to bed early or being stood in the corner, were in the hands of my mother. Corporal punishment, never severe and given with a slipper, was my father’s business. We learned to be strong moralists and spent a great deal of our time on self-examination and good resolutions. My sister Rosaleen put up a printed notice in her corner of the nursery—it might just as well have been put up by me: ‘I must not say bang bust or pig bucket, for it is rude.’
We were given very little pocket-money—a penny a week with a rise to twopence at the age of twelve or so, and we were encouraged to give part at least of any odd money that came to us from uncles or other visitors to Dr. Barnardo’s Homes and (this frightened us a bit) to beggars. There was one blind beggar at Wimbledon who used to sit on the pavement reading the Bible aloud in Braille; he was not really blind, but able to turn his eyes up and keep the pupils concealed for minutes at a time under drooping lids which were artificially inflamed. We often gave to him. He died a rich man and had been able to provide his son with a college education. The first distinguished writer that I remember meeting after Swinburne was P. G. Wodehouse, a friend of one of my brothers; he was then in the early twenties, on the staff of the Globe, and was writing school stories in The Captain magazine. He gave me a penny, advising me to get marsh-mallows with it. I was too shy to express my gratitude at the time; and have never since permitted myself to be critical about his work.
I had great religious fervour which persisted until shortly after my confirmation at the age of sixteen. I remember the incredulity with which I first heard that there actually were people, people baptized like myself into the Church of England, who did not believe in Jesus. I never met an unbeliever in all these years. As soon as I did, it was all over with my simple, faith in the literal fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. This was bad luck on my parents, but they were doomed to it. One married couple that I know, belonging to the same generation, decided that the best way in the end to ensure a proper religious attitude in their children, was not to teach them any religion at all until they were able to understand it in some degree of fulness. The children were sent to schools where no religious training was given. At the age of thirteen the eldest boy came indignantly to his father and said: ‘Look here, father, I think you’ve treated me very badly. The other chaps laugh at me because I don’t know anything about God. And who’s this chap Jesus? When I ask them they won’t tell me, they think I am joking.’ So the long-hoped-for moment had arrived. The father told the boy to call his sister, who was a year younger than him, because he had something very important to tell them both. Then very reverently and carefully he told them the Gospel story. He had always planned to tell it to them in this way. The children did not interrupt him. When finally he had finished there was a silence. Then the girl said, rather embarrassed: ‘Really, father, I think that is the silliest story I’ve heard since I was a kid.’ The boy said: ‘Poor chap. But what about it, anyhow?’
I have asked many of my acquaintances at what point in their childhood or adolescence they became class-conscious, but have never been given a satisfactory answer. I remember when it happened to me. When I was four and a half I caught scarlet fever; my younger brother had just been born, and it was impossible for me to have scarlet fever in the house, so I was sent off to a public fever hospital. There was only one other bourgeois child in the ward; the rest were all proletarians. I did not notice particularly that the attitude of the nurses or the other patients to me was different; I accepted the kindness and spoiling easily, because I was accustomed to it. But I was astonished at the respect and even reverence that this other little boy, a clergyman’s child, was given. ‘Oh,’ the nurses would cry after he had gone; ‘Oh,’ they cried, ‘he did look a little gentleman in his pretty white pellisse when they came to take him away.’ ‘He was a fair toff,’ echoed the little proletarians. When I came home from hospital, after being there about two months, my accent was commented on and I was told that the boys in the ward had been very vulgar. I did not know what ‘vulgar’ meant; it had to be explained to me. About a year later I met Arthur, a boy of about nine, who had been in the ward and taught me how to play cricket when I was getting better; I was then at my first preparatory school and he was a ragged errand-boy. In hospital we had all worn the same hospital nightgown, and I had not realized that we came off such different shelves. But now I suddenly recognized with my first shudder of gentility that there were two sorts of people—ourselves and the lower classes. The servants were trained to call us children, even when we were tiny, Master Robert, Miss Rosaleen, and Miss Clarissa, but I had not realized that these were titles of respect. I had thought of ‘Master’ and ‘Miss’ merely as vocative prefixes used when addressing other people’s children. But now I realized that the servants were the lower classes, and that we were ourselves.
I accepted this class separation as naturally as I had accepted religious dogma, and did not finally discard gentility until nearly twenty years later. My mother and father were never of the aggressive, shoot-’em-down type. They were Liberals or, more strictly, Liberal-Unionists. In religious theory, at least, they treated their employees as fellow-creatures. But social distinctions remained clearly defined. That was religion too:
I can well recall the tone of my mother’s voice when she informed the maids that they could have what was left of the pudding, or scolded the cook for some carelessness. It was a forced hardness, made almost harsh by embarrassment. My mother was gemütlich by nature. She would, I believe, have given a lot to be able to dispense with servants altogether. They were a foreign body in the house. I remember what the servants’ bedrooms used to look like. By a convention of the times they were the only rooms in the house that had no carpet or linoleum; they were on the top landing on the dullest side of the house. The gaunt, unfriendly-looking beds, and the hanging-cupboards with faded cotton curtains, instead of wardrobes with glass doors as in the other rooms. All this uncouthness made me think of the servants as somehow not quite human. The type of servant that came was not very good; only those with not particularly good references would apply for a situation where there were ten in the family. And because it was such a large house, and there was hardly a single tidy person in the household, they were constantly giving notice. There was too much work they said. So that the tendency to think of them as only half human was increased; they never had time to get fixed as human beings.
The bridge between the servants and ourselves was our nurse. She gave us her own passport on the first day she came: ‘Emily Dykes is my name; England is my nation; Netheravon is my dwelling-place, and Christ is my salvation.’ Though she called us Miss and Master she spoke it in no servant tone. In a practical way she came to be more to us than our mother. I began to despise her at about the age of twelve—she was then nurse to my younger brothers—when I found that my education was now in advance of hers, and that if I struggled with her I was able to trip her up and bruise her quite easily. Besides, she was a Baptist and went to chapel; I realized by that time that the Baptists were, like the Wesleyans and Methodists, the social inferiors of the members of the Church of England.
I was brought up with a horror of Catholicism and this remained with me for a very long time. It was not a case of once a Protestant always a Protestant, but rather that when I ceased to be Protestant I was further off than ever from being Catholic. I discarded Protestantism in horror of its Catholic element. My religious training developed in me a great capacity for fear (I was perpetually tortured by the fear of hell), a superstitious conscience and a sexual embarrassment. I was very long indeed in getting rid of all this. Nancy Nicholson and I (later on in this story) were most careful not to give our four children an early religious training. They were not even baptized.
The last thing that is discarded by Protestants when they reject religion altogether is a vision of Christ as the perfect man. That persisted with me, sentimentally, for years. At the age of nineteen I wrote a poem called ‘In the Wilderness.’ It was about Christ meeting the scapegoat—a silly, quaint poem-and has appeared in at least seventy anthologies. Its perpetual recurrence. Strangers are always writing to me to say what a beautiful poem it is, and how much strength it has given them, and would I, etc.? Here, for instance, is a letter that came yesterday:
Sir,—I heard with great delight your beautiful poem ‘In the Wilderness,’ broadcast from 2LO last night, and am writing to you because your poem has given me strength and hope. I am a gentlelady in need—in great need—not of a gift, but of a loan, on interest of 5 per cent. I also need a kind friend to show me human sympathy and to help me if possible by an introduction to a really upright and conscientious London solicitor who will fight my cause, not primarily for the filthy lucre, but because it is waging the the battle of Right against the most infamous Wrong. First of all I ask you to believe that I am writing you the simple truth. I also am gifted as a writer, but as my physical health has always been a great struggle, and poverty from my childhood has been my lot, and I will not stoop to write down to the popular taste, and perhaps, also, because I have no influential friends to give me a helping hand, I earn very little by my pen. But I know how to wield a pen, and I am going to put myself into this letter just as I am—I am not apt to deceive, I hate lies and every form of deception. This letter is ‘a bow sent at a venture,’—to see if you would like to help a literary sister who is being gravely wronged by her only near relative, an abnormal woman, who has hated her for years without any cause. To be very direct—I need £10 for one year at 5 per cent.—to be repaid £10, 10s. 0d. I need it at once, very urgently—to pay arrears of furnished digs—£3, 13s. 0d.—Milk Bill 16s. 8d., Grocery Bill 10s. 6d. and coal 1s. 8d.—then to leave Bolton (the black town of mills which fogs incessantly) and go for a change to Blackpool: then to go up to Town to put my legal business into a London solicitor’s hands. I will sign a Promissory Note for £10, 10s. 0d., to repay a year hence. I am cultured and and highly educated and well-born. I was trained to teach on the higher schools and I hold high testimonials for teaching. But I overworked and at last became consumptive, and had tuberculosis of both lungs. It was taken early and I am relatively cured. But my teaching career is broken, and I do so love teaching. In consequence of this I have a monthly pension from a Philanthropic Society of £2, 11s. 8d. But it is so tiny, I cannot possibly live on it, squeeze as I may. But an inheritance of over £1000 is mine, which is being wrongly withheld from me by the rogue of a solicitor in whose hands it is. I had one brother and one sister. The brother had saved money, and insured himself in many ways against his old age. The sister was well married to a man in good position; heartless, and hardened with her worldly life, and abnormally unnatural. She was expelled from two schools. She contracted an insane hatred of me, her little sister, and being full of cupidity, has tried to rob me of the little I have. My brother intended me to be his heir and inherit all his money. He wrote her this. But he was not a good brother and I did not visit him. He was a widower without offspring. Then he died suddenly in 1926, Xmas. She got to his house and wired me the death. Afterwards she wrote a few lines but never told me the date of the funeral and has hid everything about his affairs from me—his declared heir! She declared there was no Will to be found, and when I arrived in the Midlands from Yorkshire and got to his Vicarage she, with her woman friend, had locked me out of the house, to prevent my search for the Will! Upon advice I issued a Caveat and they at once violated the Caveat, and began to arrange for the sale of furniture! I heard of it by chance and stopped the sale. Then I was taken ill with my lungs in Derbyshire, whither I had returned after engaging a lawyer to safeguard my interests on the spot. They then corrupted my solicitor, who let me down badly, and I was ill in Derby. They warned the Caveat, and I could not enter an appearance, so it became abortive. Then my sister got herself made sole Administratrix. I had intended to apply to be joint Administratrix. Then began a series of fraudulent acts and maladministration. Her solicitor is a rogue and he is trying to force me to ‘approve’ his unsatisfactory accounts by withholding my share until I sign an undertaking not to proceed against them afterwards. One item in accounts is falsified which I can prove, and other gross acts of fraud can be proved. Foul play has been pursued throughout, and they are now shadowing me everywhere by hired agents who find out the solicitors I employ and buy them off, or otherwise prevent their acting against them for me. It is the grossest case imaginable. I hold all my documents and can prove everything. I have a clear and strong case. But I need a London solicitor—away from the North where my sister lives in Northumberland—and I will not sink my moral principle to accept, not my lawful Half-Share, but what they choose to offer me, namely £919, 13s. 3d. and 18 months’ interest. I want the Court to take over the administration. I have applied to the solicitor for an advance upon my share and he refuses again in order to compel me to sign this infamous agreement. I had £50 in advance in 1926 which is shown in accounts. I just need this £10 now so as to pay up here and get to Blackpool—for I have been ill again with my lungs, and I badly need a change.
Will you help a stranger with this not very big loan, and on interest? I would bring all the accounts and papers to show you when I come to town. And if I have found a friend in you, I shall indeed thank God. You can trust me. I am worthy, though I can give no references, because the people are dead. But I think you do not like being ‘bullied’ with such things. I am middle-aged, but a child in heart—original—and just myself, and look rather ridiculously young, without any artifice or makeup.
But apart from the loan, I need a friend. The family used to sneer at me that I ‘never made friends for what I could get out of them.’ Truly I never did. I like rather to help others myself. I should like to help you if I could in any way. I just love to serve. My life has been lonely, and both parents are dead, and I don’t make friends lightly. So that is all. But I won’t finish without telling you that I love the Master, the Lord Jesus Christ, as you love Him, and trust Him in all this darkness. I always like to bring His Name in—and so good night—I would be thankful if you will write to me in a registered letter. Some of my letters have gone astray, I fear I do not trust the woman in these lodgings, and my letters are going to a shop to be called for.
I am, dear Sir,
Yours very truly
* * * * * (Miss).
P.S.—Do you think you could get a letter to me by Saturday? I do so love your poems.
I put this in here because it is not a letter to answer, nor yet somehow a letter to throw away. The style reminds me of one of my Irish female cousins. And that again reminds me of the ancient Irish triad—‘Three ugly sisters: Chatter, Poverty, and Chastity.’