Four Miles from Charing Cross

p. 1Chapter I

I was nine years old, with a crimson frock and highly starched white embroidered pinafore, dark hair which required many knobbly curl papers on Saturday nights and a fringe, when my parents brought me to Wandsworth to live with the gentleman known to me as Grandpa and to my father and his brothers as “The Governor”.

[in pencil: “1900”]

Spencer Park, with its very genteel houses, entirely surrounded an enchanting private park where the birds sang and nested amid the pink and white chestnut trees, and the sweet perfume of lilac, or flew chirping amid the golden chains of the laburnum and the budding walnut trees.

Old Bradford, the chief gardener, would have fallen in his tracks had a weed been found in his glowing flower beds or a dandelion on his immaculate lawns, where in summertime a comfortable brown horse gently dragged the lawn mower up and down.

The Park was sacred to the tenants of the surrounding houses, each of which had its private gate and key. And the rules of its use were as stern as any tribal laws of darkest Africa.

No games except the well-bred, non-turf-destroying recreation of croquet were permitted and the nicely p. 2brought-up children were trained not to walk upon the grass or pick a single flower. All was decorous, neat and deadly slow. Grandpa was a keen croquet player, but sad was the occasion if anyone so far forgot themselves as to defeat him. My Mother did so once, but never, never again.

On one inauspicious day an enterprising young lady broke every rule by slinging a hammock between two of the sacred trees and ensconcing her pretty person within it. But not for long! Grandpa, breathing fire and sulphur, appeared upon the scene and in vehement tones commanded her to remove the obnoxious object immediately. The lady, far in advance of her times, entirely refused to obey the voice of Authority. But a little thing like a girl in a hammock would not deflect Grandpa from what he considered his duty, so that without further argument he produced a business-like pocket knife and cut down the hammock, complete with girl. Rushing into her near-by home the girl’s complaints brought her Mother on the scene, brandishing a horsewhip with which she proposed to teach old Job Caudwell a lesson. But that wily gentleman had disappeared within the fastnesses of his own garden and the incident, as well as the gate, were closed.

p. 3A few years earlier, when Father and his brothers were boys at home, they had indulged in a continual feud with the girl-in-the-hammock’s elder brothers, so much so that one dark night they crept across the park to their adversaries’ garden gate, screwed several business-like screwdrivers into it and then knocked off the heads. No doubt the atmosphere was somewhat lurid round the said gate the next morning, but the Caudwells were all too far away to be inconvenienced by it.

Four Miles from Charing Cross! So stated the old indicator let into the railings of the L. & S.W. Railway on one side of Spencer Park. All cab fares were regulated by this radius and it was a sad story for those who lived outside it. Today if a London taxi-driver is asked to drive to Wandsworth Common he promptly refuses, with as much scorn as though the destination were somewhere in the Sahara Desert.

One such driver summoned by the receptionist of a Harley Street oculist, accepted a Wandsworthian temporarily blind in both eyes, and in much pain, then set him down in Sloane Square in the No.19, bus queue and told him he could find his way home. Money was no bait and only the kindness of the bus conductor and one of the passengers brought him safely home.

p. 4Wandsworth Common, supposedly the possession of the people for all time, is sadly cut up by two railway lines, various buildings, pre-fabs and other oddments.

Formerly it was wild and lovely, Spencer Park itself, being a delightful lake named the Black Sea, where yellow irises grew in profusion upon its borders. It was owned by a gentleman who added an island to it every time his wife presented him with an olive branch - this happy event occurring on thirteen occasions the corresponding number of islands arose above its waters.

The only water near it now is in the Frying-Pan, a deep hollow bordering the Windmill Road which fills with unwanted water immediately there is any rain. Several efforts have been made by the Borough Council to retain the water and turn it into an ornamental lake like its brothers on various other parts of the Common, but sooner or later the Frying-Pan springs a leak and all is dry until the next shower of rain. In the last world war it was turned into a reserve tank for fire-fighting. The water remained long enough for a confiding little water-fowl and family to move in and take up their residence, only to find that the water supply unaccountably failed and they were left high and dry.

An artificial tank was built near, beside a little thicket of cream flowering may bushes, which proved a p. 5handy receptacle for the infants of the neighbourhood to endeavour to drown themselves and bestow their rubbish.

Bordering the Frying-Pan was the fatal thirteenth tree where one day in high summer, three people were killed by lightning as they sheltered beneath its branches during one of Wandsworth’s worst thunderstorms; four more being killed under another tree about a mile away.

A double suicide has been credited to the old Black Lake, probably terminating a Victorian love affair.

Grandfather bought the second plot of ground in Spencer Park and had his house built to his own design entirely of concrete; floors, staircase, walls and ceilings, to obviate danger of fire. Four square, with a front door bell sufficiently loud to rouse the local Fire Brigade, it had a flat roof from which a considerable part of London was visible, including a first-class free view of the fireworks at the Crystal Palace. Later inhabitants had an equally interesting view of the approach of more deadly fireworks in the shape of flying bombs.

Grandma was scared to death of thunder and lightning, perhaps with good reason, seeing that in her childhood her nurse had been killed by her side during a storm. To overcome this trouble Grandpa had a room built in the heart of the earth beneath the house, very much like a railway p. 6carriage in shape, where Grandma retired out of reach of the lightning and of all but the worst claps of thunder. The afore-mentioned later inhabitants found it very handy as a ready-made air-raid shelter.

At the time of the family entering into residence the large plot of ground at the back of the house was uncomfortably symbolic of the stony ground mentioned in Holy Writ. But this did not worry Grandpa, who soon found a remedy. Collecting his three eldest sons every Saturday he promised them a day at the Crystal Palace when they had stoned the garden and in order that the thing should be done properly settled himself comfortably on the roof and watched proceedings. Paul, my father, the eldest, was tall with a long back, which grew very weary, but if he dared to stand erect and stretch himself, a voice, loud as the trump of doom, came from the roof announcing his inefficiency to all the world, “Lazy Paul! Lazy Paul!”. The garden was eventually stoned, entirely by this forced labour, but the treat to the Crystal Palace was discreetly forgotten and a neither of the poor young stone-removers dared to give a reminder.

Grandpa, in spite of his many gifts, had very little love of beauty for beauty’s sake, so that the garden which might have been so lovely was strictly utilitarian, black p. 7asphalt paths, with large beds of vegetables and fruit trees bordered by nasturtiums and a few bushes which bore huge pink blossoms with tightly packed petals rightly designated cabbage-roses.

Mother was allowed to pick the nasturtiums because they grew better if the flowers were gathered, but not another living thing was she allowed to touch, even though the fruit might rot and drop from the trees while she was buying what was necessary from the greengrocer. Even if an onion appeared in the stew Grandpa made severe enquiries as to its source.

I kept a diary in those days but as we were never allowed to have any visitors unless they were friends of Grandpa, the entries consisted chiefly of the romantic remark, “the gardener came”. This “No Visitor” regulation prevented my schoolfellows from Wandsworth High school coming to see me, the only entertainment I was able to offer being to conduct them across the Common within view of the gates and show them where I had the privilege of living. The gates were a copy of those of the old Manor House far away from London where Grandpa had spent his youth, with identical round knobs on either side. This, I understand, was a mistake on Grandpa’s part as these knob, p. 8strictly speaking, although often appearing on villas and like residences with such names as “Clovelly”, “Mentone” or “Kosey-Nook”, should only be used on the gates of an actual manor.

Wandsworth Manor, whose site is now covered by small streets, a fried fish shop, a first-class undertaker’s and other useful amenities, was a fine old house with that abomination of all cats, a monkey-puzzle tree, in the middle of a huge flower bed and a glorious staircase later removed to Scotland when the building was pulled down in 1891.

The same fate overtook the picturesque Fishmongers’ Alms-houses standing well back from East Hill with lawns and gardens in front, now occupied by blocks of unexciting flats, into the midst of which there later descended a landmine bringing with it grim death and agonising disaster. The lovely wrought-iron gateway, the only relic remaining of the original alms-houses, remained unhurt, with its proud coat of arms of the London County Council, yet not so proud as its former inscription, which the latter august body had ruthlessly removed, “All glory be to God only”. The ancient foundation was also known as St. Peter’s Hospital, a very suitable patron saint when it is remembered they were to provide a refuge in old age for “Citizen Fishmongers of London, or their widows, whose fortunes have p. 9failed through age, broken health, or adverse circumstances.”

A sinister and distinctly unhealthy tradition maintained there was a plague pit in the walled kitchen garden at the back of the alms-houses, one of those frightful deep caverns where by the light of flickering torches, London’s dead were nightly thrown during the Great Plague of 1665. The supposed site was marked by a stone statue of a man and his dog.

Two legends accounted for this statue, doing honour to both man and beast. The first declared it was the effigy of a gallant physician who at the time of the plague paid no attention to the warnings of his dog, who tried its canine best to prevent him from entering infected houses, and thus caught the dread scourge and gave up the ghost. The second story is more romantic, stating that the statue represents a hero who, after visiting the sick, contracted the plague which first appeared in his knee and was observed by the faithful dog who licked away the poisonous virus and thus saved his life. Unfortunately like the “poor wise man” of the book of Ecclesiastes no one knows what became of that same poor wise dog.

Other people, to whom romance is a mere waste of time, have said that neither tale is true, but merely an invention made up to explain the statue. In any case, p. 10supposed plague pit and statue are now completely buried beneath tons of bricks and mortar - a genuine human rabbit warren.

Opposite the Alms-houses stood the original Wesleyan church, also crushed into a pathetic mass of rubble by the land mine which caused such havoc on the other side of the road. John Wesley paid several visits to Wandsworth, prefacing his first appearance by the remark that he was going to preach to the “wicked Wandsworthians”, a not altogether tactful opening. It is to be hoped he did not get this impression from his wife, a lady who was courted by the fiery John when she lived in Love Lane, a romantic thoroughfare leading from Wandsworth to Putney through hedges thick with honeysuckle, now complete with rows of villas very much unadorned, petrol stations and motor buses, its entry into Wandsworth High Street being ominously designated an “Accident Black Spot”,

A picture of Wandsworth High Street taken in 1850 shows ladies gossiping to a man on horseback, with a shepherd leading his sheep quite happily down the middle of the road. Today such proceedings would have landed the whole lot in the neighbouring mortuary in double quick time.

The courtship in the honeysuckle environment of Love Lane apparently did not fulfil its early promise, for p. 11Mrs. John Wesley is said to have knocked her husband about quite shamefully. Evidently the great evangelist was another sample of the lamb at home and the lion in the chase.

His uncomplimentary name for Wandsworth was “Sleepy Hollow”, a title he would have rapidly altered if he had to nip across the High Street in this present year of Grace.

My Grandfather came to Spencer Park while Dr. Chave, a gentleman whose love for souls was somewhat sketchy, reigned as Vicar of the parish. The Reverend Edward William Tanner Chave, D.D., was noteworthy for a patriarchal grey beard, portentous clearings of the throat and the ownership of a pet pig, who even wandered into Confirmation classes to the infinite delight of the candidates.

The grounds of the vicarage, now covered by a block of exceptionally uninteresting flats, were really lovely, but were concealed by a high black fence, which must have been nearly a quarter of a mile in length, sheltering the doings of the said pig and his owners from the ignoble gaze of the proletariat.

Mrs. Chave never appeared in public without a red sunshade, whether out of extreme modesty befitting a Vicar’s wife, care of her complexion, or a superiority complex has never been revealed.

p. 12It is to be feared that Dr. Chave, whose thirty-four years in office was the longest to which any Vicar of St. Anne’s, Wandsworth has attained, did not die of overwork in pastoral visitation; rumour having even dared to suggest that he remarked if the church were empty he could not help it; but of course rumour may have been unjust. One invalid parishioner, upon whom he paid an occasional call, was always greeted by a mighty clearing of the ecclesiastical throat and the remark, “Ah, you are like the evergreen, you never fade”.

On one unfortunate occasion the old gentleman fell asleep during a service, being quite lost to the world when sermon time approached. There was a long pause, during which his faithful people imagined he was engaged in private devotion. The verger approached and tactfully aroused him, whereupon he muttered several times, “Fill ‘em up again. Fill “em up again.” After several repetitions the verger gave him a good shake, upon which he arose and noisily stumped out of the church.

His curate, later to become the celebrated Dr. Fellowes, the church music expert, tactfully completed the service. It can be assumed he did not choose “Awake, thou that sleepest”, as the text for his distinctly impromptu sermon.

p. 13Unfortunately my imperious grandfather, in his younger days a member of the revered order of churchwardens, found fault with Dr. Chave which resulted in a most frightful row, terminating in Grandfather shaking the dust of St. Anne’s from his shoes for ever, and alas the Church of England as well. As he was simmering in his wrath the Minister of the Wesleyan Chapel called and with brilliant strategy, combined with careful sympathy and well-applied flattery, secured the ruffled sheep for his own schismatic fold.

From that day onward Grandpa was seized with the grim fanatical zeal of the convert. John Wesley and his followers were exalted to the heavens, the church of his forefathers being utterly condemned as hopeless and helpless. Grandfather even went so far as to keep a horrid little scrapbook in which with fiendish glee he pasted every press cutting he could collect where any Anglican clergyman, Bishop, Priest or Deacon, had been so naughty as to break one of the Ten Commandments.

As a gesture of supreme defiance to every tradition of his former years he insisted on his gardener working on Good Friday, an action which in those days would not have have been considered strange by the Wesleyans, but which to church people would be regarded as nothing less than sacrilege.

p. 14My long-suffering Grandmother, herself the daughter of a lady who went to church every day of her life and was acquainted with that great Anglican saint and reformer, Dr. Pusey, used to say with bitter, though restrained passion, “I hate these Wesleyans.” Poor lady! It was not so much the Wesleyans she hated, as the med zeal of her husband. A faithful churchworker, she was torn away from all the spiritual consolations she had known and forced to worship in a white-washed tabernacle where the dominating feature was the pulpit in which a man, in those days often poorly educated, preached interminable sermons, interspersed with dreary, unsatisfying prayers in which the Almighty was informed of various things such as the state of the weather and the righteousness or otherwise of the assembled Congregation.

Much Anglican worship in those days was dreary, but it was counterbalanced by the glories of its liturgy, the beauty of its architecture and the glowing appeal of its music.

Sometimes in that old Wesleyan Chapel on St. John’s Hill, Brother This or That in the congregation would be asked to lead in prayer. The response to the request might often be embarrassing, as when the Brother turned p. 15his nasty little soul inside out, or as on the occasion when one gentleman explained at length to the host of heaven that his wife and daughter were miserable sinners, but that he himself had always served the Almighty “damned well.”

Grandfather took much delight in entertaining visiting preachers for the week-end, when Grandma was expected to provide meals fit for the gods on the ordinary housekeeping allowance. No drinks, of course, for Grandpa belonged to the Blue Ribbon Brigade and pursued his Temperance Crusade to such an extent, both at home and abroad, that it is amazing that not one of his family ever took to drink in later years out of sheer cussedness.

Fashionable temperance reformers of the day, of whom Grandpa was a well-known leader, loved to bestow royal blue buttons upon their converts. Grandpa always had a supply of these natty little adornments ready for every emergency.

Family Prayers were a great institution with Grandpa. Night and morning the household assembled in the dining-room at the sonorous roll of the gong in the hall - the maids in their starched cotton frocks, blue, pink or lavender, stiff white aprons and caps upon their heads complete with long streamers. I still remember as a little girl of nine, p. 16the shiny smell of the leather-seated chairs when we all turned round and knelt on the floor with our noses on the seats, exhibiting a queer posterior view to the Unseen Angels.

On one of these occasions in my Grandmother’s time a visiting local preacher took Grandpa’s place as “High Priest” of the ceremonies and delivered an extempore prayer of prodigious length. All might have been well if the gentleman had not asked for blessings upon the maids “those beauteous damsels who have so faithfully ministered to our comfort” and concluded his intercessions by commending for a special benediction “thine handmaid, the wife of our gracious host”. Grandma declared she would never entertain another local preacher if she lived for a thousand years. As for the beauteous damsels, they became so haughty, she could do nothing with them and they were soon radiating their charm in someone else’s household.

Not all the sermons to which St. John’s Hill congregation listened, comfortably seated on well-cushioned seats, were dull and dreary. For example, there was the one delivered by an enthusiastic preacher who probably saw an alarming number of his listeners falling asleep, their heads dropping down, then bobbing up with self-conscious wakefulness. In impassioned tones he spoke of the golden p. 17gates of heaven, of the wise virgins sedately entering with their flaming lamps all bright, of the awful clang as that eternal barrier closed behind the last of them; the frenzied rush of the foolish virgins, the awful cry of St. Peter, “Too late! Too late! Ye cannot enter now.”

Slowly and dramatically the preacher sank out of sight within the pulpit, one arm still waving over the edge, as his tremulous voice came from the hidden depths, “Too late’ Too late! Ye cannot enter now!” So far, so good! But unfortunately one unruly lock of hair stuck straight up within the line of vision keeping time with the moving hand, “Too late? Too late!”

One thing only gave any sense of spiritual enjoyment to my Grandmother, this being the funerals, and happy was she if one of these events fell on a Saturday or other holiday, when she could collect the whole family and take them with her. Poor little wretches! On the return journey she occupied the time by informing them that the next funeral they attended would be her own, a prophecy which took at least a dozen years to reach its fulfilment.

Not that she had not come near it several times, for she was a delicate woman and of the ten children, including two sets of twins, with which she presented Grandpa, five p. 18died in very early infancy. My father remembered one of them, Sidney, an exceptionally sweet natured little fellow who used to sit on the stairs sharing a boiled potato with his favourite cat.

Grandfather had all five buried in the old cemetery on Battersea Rise, not far from Clapham Junction, where they lie beneath a large and flat and most indigestible slab, with an outsize stone book on the top recording their names and the short span of their mortal lives. It is strange to think these infants were my Uncles and Aunts.

Mother was my Grandfather’s niece as well as his daughter-in-law, but she never came to Wandsworth until she was grown-up, when she arrived on a short visit. Grandpa met her at Clapham Junction and by way of a treat, immediately escorted her, plus bag and baggage complete, to the cemetery to admire the tombstone before he took her home.

The flying bomb which three quarters of a century later landed in the cemetery, turning up the earth and toppling over the grave-stones in a manner gruesome to behold, did not disturb the infant Caudwells’ monument.

Grandfather’s name being Job, he declared on being married that he would follow the example of his Biblical p. 19namesake and have seven sons and three daughters. And he succeeded! Happily he did not name the three girls after the daughters of Job the First - Jemima, Kezia and Karen-Happuch, but by the slightly more civilised ones of Rhoda, Adah and Afra.

One of Grandpa’s favourite hobbies was to lay foundation stones, so that chapels and halls far and near are emblazoned with his name - “Job Caudwell”. The procedure was usually the same. A Wesleyan Minister or local preacher would call and apply flattery of a rich and unctuous mixture into Grandpa’s attentive ear. “You know, my dear sir, what a faithful and God-fearing man we all know you to be, what an example of piety you set to us all!”

Grandfather would purr like a satisfied tiger whose waistcoat is comfortably distended and the minister would proceed.

“You know, Mr. Caudwell, there is that charming old village in Essex I mentioned to you last week. They are wanting someone to lay the stone for their little Bethel. Of course it means only a matter of two hundred or so pounds to put under the stone.”

Grandpa would begin to become a little fidgety. His p. 20visitor would give a genteel little cough and continue. “Of course, Mr. Caudwell, realising your generosity in the past, we could not possibly ask you again so soon - but there, the Lord loveth a cheerful giver and we know it is very hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

At this point, Grandfather, feeling his eternal salvation was in jeopardy, would hastily arise and seek his cheque book. With the result that a few weeks later he would sally forth in his festival garments to lay the foundation stone of still another schismatic place of worship.

The visible result of these activities was an ever-growing collection at home of the various trowels with ivory handles, many of them complete with leather cases lined with velvet, with which he was presented, the occasion and his name being neatly embossed on the electro-plated business end of the trowel.

My father, as his chief executor, had ultimately the task of disposing of the things. Several of the most handsome, if supplied with a fork, made quite natty fish servers, the rest he pressed upon members of the family, his visitors and his clerks. What with them and Grand- p. 21father’s very extensive library which was also parked on us for distribution, our home acquired the appearance of a super junk-shop.

p. 22Chapter II

I was not present at Grandfather’s funeral, being thought at the age of seventeen to be much too young, but I am told the oration was both meaty and lengthy, chiefly eulogising the departed as a junior mixture of Croesus and the Rothschild family. I remained alone at Spencer Park, awaiting the return of the funeral party, swathed in black, which being pale made me look like a walking corpse.

My step-grandmother being of a cheese-paring disposition, had sent to a warehouse in the Midlands for the mourning for the maids, a customary practice of those good old days. Unfortunately when those choosey young ladies saw how far it differed from the Paris models of their dreams, they refused to wear it. Step-grandma persuaded my too confiding Mother to send to the same firm for a grey cotton morning frock for “dear Irene”. All was well until it was washed, when it returned home like a jester’s parti-coloured hose, one side dark grey and the other light.

p. 23Grandfather was a great believer in tracts and used to have stacks of them sent to him, many of them dealing with “No Popery”, complete with tasty little pictures and descriptions of warm corners of hell, together with sob-stuff concerning children’s death-beds and the lightning-like conversions of really wicked sinners like you and me.

Father on some of his half-holidays, poor lad, used to be sent out to distribute these literary gems to passers-by in the street. Father’s technique in the matter was both studied and thorough. Well out of sight of the family residence’s windows he would thrust the whole bundle into the arms of the first suitable pedestrian, saying politely, “There Sir, (or Madam) that’s for you”. Taking to his heels he was lost to view round the nearest corner before the astonished receiver had time to collect his thoughts.

Allowing a suitable interval to expire, Father would return home to be questioned, “Well, Paul, have you distributed all those tracts?”

With the smile of a self-righteous cherub in his beautiful dark grey eyes, Paul would reply with perfect truth, “Yes, Father, every one!”

In these days the boyhood of my father and his brothers would be thought incredible. Their only recreations were p. 24to be taken to Chapel on Sundays and to work in the garden on holidays, with the consequence that Father developed such a loathing for gardens he would rarely ever even sit in one. On the few occasions he did any work in his own garden he usually fell into disgrace; for example when he proudly announced he had pulled up “all those ugly weeds at the bed next to the Hubbard’s garden”, which proved to be Mother’s cherished row of spinach. Another disastrous occasion was the time when he invited an amateur tree-lopper to prune the pear tree, with the result that the topmost branches immediately went wild, growing taller and taller every year until now they threaten to touch the heavens, so that our visitors stand beneath it, struck dumb with amazement.

Once or twice in their school-days Grandpa took his three eldest boys to Ramsgate as a great treat, about as much a treat as going to the dentist, for the discipline was even more severe than at home and Grandpa perpetually on the spot. Moreover for all his wealth Grandpa was a born miser so that literally not an unnecessary farthing was spent. The midday meal on these occasions consisted possibly of an apple, certainly of bread, cheese and raw onion, eaten with the aid of a pocket knife in some p. 25convenient spot. The search for this spot entailed walking for many weary miles so that the boys were at length so exhausted they did not care whether they ate bread, cheese and onions, or salmon mayonnaise.

Modern psychology may call it an inherited complex, but certainly uncooked cheese and raw onion give me nightmares of the most stupendous and virulent nature in which I witness murders, step on fields of snakes, or walk down Regent Street minus several of the upper garments usually worn in that aristocratic quarter.

At home, the boys lived under a discipline which was a cross between a monastery and a prison. Everything was considered wicked and prone to lead to eternal damnation. A game of cards was forbidden, they being designated the devil’s playthings; dancing, the theatre and the music hall were on the direct route hell; a glass of anything stronger than home-made lemonade was D.D., that is Drunkard’s Drink and led direct to delirium tremens and an early, dishonoured grave. Smoking could not have been considered more evil if tobacco had been compounded of the sulphur and brimstone which it is reputed compose the air of the lower regions. To use a swear word was an enormity too grave even to be contemplated.

p. 26It is curious to note that in his younger days Grandpa had been an inveterate smoker and enjoyed his long clay Churchwarden, but with him everything went in extremes, so that it was either all smoke in his youth, or no smoke in riper years.

With regard to things that were wicked, one of the preachers at St. John’s Hill expounded on an inauspicious day concerning sinfulness of possessing real silver, it being a luxury unbecoming to the followers of John Wesley, making them too much like the rich young man who was cumbered with great possessions.

Grandpa took the awful warning with lamb-like docility and to poor Grandma’s life-long despair went straight home and sold every silver thing he possessed, substituting anything strictly necessary for use, with the hypocritical gleam of electro-plate, so that among the ultimate wedding presents to his family were tea sets of that deceptive metal instead of the solid silver with which they would have been fashioned if that garrulous Minister had preached on some other subject.

But even Grandpa received a shock to his converted soul when calling unexpectedly a little later on the preacher he observed an interesting amount of silver quite p. 27ostentatiously displayed - an example of the old slogan, “Don’t do as I do, but do as I say.”

Grandfather’s severity to his sons was such that in their quite early childhood he decided they must no longer sit on chairs as it tempted them to loll about and be lazy, so he had four wooden stools made, with no backs, upon which those poor wretched boys always had to sit when at home, with their spines held straight up.

The slightest misdemeanour was visited with severe punishment, of which the favourites were whippings, bread and water instead of ordinary food for a certain number of meals, or going without any pudding for a week.

My Father, being the eldest, was considered the scape-goat for all the others, as he should have set a better example. He was always required to get at least 75% marks at school each week before he went to boarding school. If he fell beneath that, off came the pudding for a week, a really wicked punishment for a growing child, particularly as Father was never fond of meat. Fat he loathed with a sick aversion. This was discovered when he was not much more than a toddler, with the result that his plate was always loaded with fat which he was forced to eat, or fast entirely.

p. 28It is strange that Grandma in all these things took the part of her husband rather than that of her children, which would seem more natural, unless it were to make life a little less miserable with that brilliant, eccentric, sometimes charming, sometimes terrible man whom, when little more than a school-girl, she had taken for “better or for worse”.

On one occasion when Father had been put off his pudding for a week, a visitor was expected to midday dinner. Father, with a small boy’s feeling of overwhelming shame at such a procedure, asked Grandma beforehand if he might have his pudding on this occasion with nothing said, he being willing to go for a fortnight without any so that he should not be disgraced in the visitor’s eyes. Grandma promised faithfully he should have it, but when the pudding duly appeared and was set before her to serve, she looked round the table announcing, “Paul has been a naughty boy, so he is not to have any pudding”.

It would be interesting to know what modern psychology would make of that.

Grandpa retired early on the recommendation of a doctor who warned him he soon would be another sphere if he continued to work. He lived for a trifling fifty p. 29or sixty years after this warning and indulged in his favourite recreation of tree-lopping until almost the end.

Father was still a small boy when Grandpa withdrew from his office in the Strand and settled down as a gentleman of leisure, making himself a general nuisance to most of those with whom he came in contact, particularly to his wife and her maids, whom he accused of extravagant habits, which he strove to improve by continual examinations of the dustbin.

Before Grandfather’s retirement my Father was so young that he was generally in bed and asleep before Grandpa returned from the City. In the course of the evening, as he sat in conjugal bliss before the fire, Grandfather would enquire whether Paul had been a good boy during his absence. Grandma would at times declare sternly in the negative, when up would go the pair of them to Father’s room, haul the poor drowsy Paul out of his bed, to stand shivering in his little night-shirt while Grandpa applied the cane with considerable force and what one cannot help suspecting was a certain sadistic delight, this being sometimes even as late as twelve o’clock at night.

In after years Father and his brothers used to say they were surrounded by so many rules and inhibitions p. 30that it was almost impossible not to err in some way or another, the politics of Spencer Park being like the Mother of Parliaments, at times beyond understanding.

Uncle Eber, Father’s second brother, was possessed of a vivid personality which stood him in excellent stead as a popular Surgeon in later years. As a boy he was afraid of nothing and on one occasion when walking with his nursemaid outside the Plough Inn on St. John’s Hill near Clapham Junction, he petrified an important little man who was strutting along with his nose in the air by taking the pipe out of his mouth with the remark, “You filthy fellow, you are smoking”. The astonished victim opened his mouth to remonstrate, whereupon Eber replaced the offending pipe and taking to his youthful heels could not be seen for dust.

The Plough Inn was reputed to have been a favourite haunt of Dick Turpin, a suitable pied-à-terre when he was pursuing his highwayman activities on Putney Heath. In the second World War a bomb completely destroyed the Inn, directed by a man whose villainies exceeded those of the redoubtable Dick as the sun’s heat eclipses that of the earth.

The youngest brother, Ben, who arrived eight years p. 31after my Father, was truly the Benjamin of the family and he could do nothing wrong.

“My poor little Ben”, Grandpa would unctuously remark at Sunday dinner, “with all these big unkind brothers who make his life a misery. There, dear, there’s something nice for you to make up for it.”

And Ben’s plate would be heaped with delicacies while the other three boys had none.

As it was more than their place was worth to touch the infant, Ben throve like a green olive tree, improving his status by many a little tale out of school about his naughty cruel brothers.

Only on those rare occasions when Grandpa and Grandma were away did those young gentlemen come into their own and young Ben shown his proper place in the scheme of things. I regret to say that my Father, when carving, used to fill succulent morsels in which the soul of Ben delighted, with a generous supply of mustard, so that the poor child’s tongue hung out of mouth afterwards for a considerable period. Ben also loved jam tarts and used to eat the pastry all round first, reserving the centre until last. In Grandfather’s presence all went according to plan, but in his absence, a brotherly hand descended just as the pastry p. 32circle was eaten and brotherly fingers seized the luscious jammy portion, which was quickly lost to view within the fraternal jaws.

Psychologists might again be surprised to know that Ben - that youthful sneak - grew up to be a man possessed of real charm, kindliness and sympathy so that he was always my favourite among Father’s three brothers and more like my gifted and much-loved Father himself.

The severe arm of parental authority reached out to Father and his brothers even when they were sent to boarding school, for to the intense delight of their fellows they were provided with Inverness capes instead of overcoats. The three brothers quickly discarded them, suffering the winter days with a stoical heroism even easier to endure than being the laughing stock of the school. But it is to be feared that the lack of an overcoat laid the foundation of my Father’s bronchial weakness. He, poor lad, longed be a Priest of the Church of England but was never allowed to carry out his desire, Grandpa’s wish being that he should become a Wesleyan Minister. With this aim in mind, Father was sent to school with a double-breasted frockcoat at the age of sixteen to make him look as much like a Minister as possible. But Father, like the p. 33proverbial worm, turned very considerably so that eventually there was effected a compromise and he became a lawyer, beginning in Chancery Lane.

In some respects his vocation was not unlike that of the Priesthood he had been denied, for a lawyer is in some ways a Father Confessor in that he hears and keeps inviolate the secrets of many hearts, administering comfort, advice and consolation.

At school he was made to toe the Wesleyan line and on Sundays this sixteen year old schoolboy was sent out to drive a horse trap out into the villages to preach in tiny chapels to audiences of which individual members had the disconcerting habit of calling out “Alleluia!” or “Praise be to God!” at intervals during the discourse. The return journey across the lonely Somerset moors in the darkness of the wintry night must have been nerve-racking; the only light ,the lamp upon the gig, the only sound the clip-clop of the horse’s feet upon the hard road.

Grandfather never seemed to have tormented his younger sons with the idea of the Wesleyan Ministry, although they had their own troubles of a different nature. One was the wearing of queer clothes, often inherited from a former owner, a fact which the cruel schoolboy eyes of their p. 34fellows soon detected.

David, Father’s next brother, was provided one term with a pair of “how-do-ye-do’s” of an exceptionally vivid check, which caused great hilarity, until it was discovered that the wearer’s large feet were shod with boots of a decidedly heavy character, when it was found wisest to leave the owner alone, a procedure which was also found suitable when the poor lad arrived another term with a waistcoat contrived from one of Grandfather’s own more intimate garments, a form of martyrdom which only those who remember their own schooldays can realise.

Meanwhile Grandpa had evolved for his own wear a garment which can only be likened to a Priests chasuble, a comparison which had he known would almost have made him pass out. Composed of a square Scotch plaid, he had a hole cut in the middle to enable it to slip over his head. Wearing this, with the four points and the fringe flapping gracefully round his knees, topped by a round clerical hat, he quite happily and unconcernedly took his walks abroad. He had no imitators in this unique sartorial achievement.

It was extremely strange that anyone so wealthy could be so miserly. Among other property he owned the ground rents of several roads behind Clapham Junction, one row of p. 35houses being named “Caudwell Terrace” in his honour. In later years his second son, David, used to remark that if ever the “Governor” arrived in Heaven he would be found in a corner still counting his ground rents.

Away from home he was the life and soul of the party, so much so that he even baffled a celebrated thought-reader, who enquired whether he were always on the top of the world or whether he had ever in his life suffered from depression.

Depression was not the word for it - sometimes for days at the time he would lie in utter silence, refusing almost all sustenance, on the slippery leather-covered sofa in the dining-room with his face to the wall, indulging in super orgy of sulks, for no reason that anyone was ever able to fathom.

Meanwhile the household moved round on its tiptoes with hushed voices as though death hovered over it.

Grandma was intensely houseproud and wept real tears of anguish if she found any mark on the white edges of the stairs. During her frequent illnesses, when she often had to lie in bed, the unfortunate housemaid who tidied up her room was made to place every possible piece of furniture on to Grandma’s bed while that tiresome lady beneath a mountain of chairs, occasional tables and other oddments p. 36superintended operations.

My father was devoted to his parents, although they do not seem to have shown much love for him. An instance in Father’s early childhood is typical. Grandma and a sister-in-law were enjoying afternoon tea with a succulent supply of hot buttered toast. Father, very young and hungry, watched the disappearance of this well-buttered delicacy with eager eyes, so that Great-Aunt Martha said kindly, “May I give Paul a bit of toast?” To which Grandma replied hastily, “Certainly not, he is looking at it as though he wants some.”

Even in maturer years poor Paul as the eldest always seemed to have the thinnest time. During one of his Mother’s illnesses he spent every possible moment when not in Chancery Lane at her bedside, long hours which to a young man must have been intensely boring to say the least. One afternoon Eber, a gay young medical student from Westminster Hospital, arrived and took over for half-an-hour while Paul went out for a short walk across the Common, which in those days was wild and untamed, lovely with golden gorse bushes and in the early summer scented with the soft pink and white of wild roses.

Meanwhile Grandfather discovered Eber, smug and self- p. 37righteous, keeping watch in Grandma’s room. Nearly to end of the chapter all and sundry heard of dear good Eber sitting beside his poor suffering Mother’s bed, while lazy Paul was out enjoying himself.

Enjoying himself! There was not much of that for young Paul. Working hard for his articles as a budding lawyer he was only allowed enough money for stern necessities, that is a piece of bread and an orange with a glass of water for his midday meal and the fare to and from Chancery Lane. Very often even this was restricted and he had to walk both ways.

Grandfather at this time was a fierce and bigoted vegetarian, so that the tired and hungry Paul’s supper consisted of a dish of lentils and haricot beans, helped down with a dissertation from Grandpa on the iniquitous habits of those who at the same moment were sitting down to savoury meals of abhorrent butcher’s meat - juicy beef- steaks, royal sirloins or succulent legs of mutton.

Things became a little better when having obtained his articles Father had a small salary he could call his very own. It must have seemed like heaven.

And then one auspicious time, at a cousin’s wedding in the north of London, he saw coming down a staircase, p. 38a young girl with masses of rich auburn hair, a pale creamy complexion and merry laughing brown eyes, her beautiful figure graceful and erect in a gown of deep be plum colour. It was his cousin Ada, whom now he saw for the first time. And it was love at first sight. But Grandfather, who at the slightest sign of any of disobedience in the family immediately threatened to cut off the erring sheep from his will, disapproved of the marriage of first cousins, so that it was another four and a half years before Paul and Ada became man and wife. The wedding took place in the lovely old villages church of Mother’s home where she herself had been baptised, confirmed and made her first Communion. These two who had waited so long for one another were wedded quietly in the mellow sunshine of an early September morning. On their return from the honeymoon a fortnight later the glorious bells in the old Norman tower rang out in their honour far across the fields where the rich corn had but lately been harvested, through the luscious cherry orchards and down the little village street with its thatched and half-timbered houses.

Occasionally in the preceding years Grandpa had taken p. 39Grandma away to the sea or to various Hydros to endeavour to restore her fast-failing health. Here, conveniently forgetting his ban on dancing, Grandpa joined in all the fun and games, while his long-suffering wife lay upstairs in bed, enduring that sublime misery of illness away from home. In one gay Hydro he asked her to knit him some red socks that he might be more fittingly attired to dance with the ladies. Grandma’s reply was that at his age he ought to be thinking of another world.

Meanwhile, back in Spencer Park, Father and his brothers let themselves go with various Stag Parties at which the guests were Father’s young lawyer comrades, who had previously been warned by him that the Caudwell family was a very old one, with various ancient privileges and ceremonies, so that if anything occurred which might seem unusual they must not be surprised. On arrival, the guests were admitted by the page, an efficient youth much devoted to father, and ushered into a room where in the total darkness Father uttered grace in a tone of pontifical gravity.

They were then escorted to the dining-room, where having taken their seats the page arrived with a tray containing a large assortment of hats of various p. 40descriptions tastefully displayed - silk toppers, straw hats and tweed caps. Approaching Father, as deputy head of the family, with the solemnity of an archdeacon he offered his tray from which Father selected and put on the specimen he fancied - his example being followed by his brothers in strict order of seniority.

Fun and games for all followed the meal. On one occasion the room was thick with tobacco smoke and heavily perfumed with “drunkard’s drink”, cards circulating merrily, when there came a nerve-shattering peal at the front door bell. The sons of the house gave a concerted gasp of horror, “The Governor”. But if guardian angels can be presumed to watch over such a scene of conviviality they certainly did that night, for the heavy-handed bellringer was not the dreaded master of the house.

Exactly where Father came in on this party is rather difficult to ascertain, as he was always a non-smoker, practically a teetotaler and if possible an even greater duffer at card games than his daughter.

My Grandmother’s suffering life ended about a year before my Father’s marriage. The last journey she had taken to a Hydro in Yorkshire had proved an exceedingly expensive one, for she became so desperately ill that p. 41Grandfather hired a special train complete with engine-driver and guard all to themselves to bring her home, the doctor from the Hydro being also in attendance.

Grandpa acted the disconsolate widower for fourteen years. At great expense he erected a monument, composed of reddish brown granite brought specially from Aberdeen and set up in Wandsworth Cemetery beside the little chapel. A most heathenish erection, Grandfather always maintained at was the tallest in the cemetery. It consisted of a Cleopatra’s needle set upon so substantial a base that the mere sight of it gives one indigestion. Somewhere beneath it in the heart of the earth is the family vault conveniently fitted out with enough shelves for Grandma herself, Grandpa and the remaining four sons and daughter. No room was provided for any wife of the former or husband of the latter. It is simply a strictly cosy family affair.

Its amenities were further enhanced by a hefty iron railing and the addition on one side of the wedding-cake tiers on which the “needle” is erected, of the names of Grandpa’s ten children living and dead - those departed and buried in the cemetery on Battersea Rise being distinguished by the dates of their arrival and departure, the five still living having their names, but the dates p. 42politely left blank. Father being the eldest headed the list and succeeding Vicars of St. Anne‘s, Wandsworth, declared it positively gave them the creeps when they out of the cemetery chapel after a funeral, to see the name of their friend, Paul Caudwell, on a tombstone, when possibly they were having tea or supper with him the following day.

Alas for those conveniently arranged shelves in the vault, all four sons and the daughter were buried elsewhere in different corners of England. So was the second wife, to whom Aunt Afra had kindly bequeathed her own special shelf.

Perhaps it was as well that none of them claimed their rights, as to open the tomb is a major operation, requiring the removal of a substantial piece of the cemetery.

On the other side of the church stands the tomb of Mr.Nind, an exceedingly generous benefactor to many of the Wandsworth parishes, whose finances receive a pleasant share of “Nind’s Trust”. His monument contains two wedding cake tiers to Grandpa’s three, but the shaft consists of a really beautiful cross, set round with the circle of eternity.

p. 43No cross appears on Grandpa’s monument, as in his day no Wesleyan would dream of using any form of the sacred emblem, even in the Chapel, it being considered Popery of an extreme degree, leading direct to the Seven Hills.

Grandfather’s idea of Cleopatra’s Needle was copied in a lesser form on the opposite side of the pathway and twins appeared a few yards away on the same side. One or two Wandsworthians even so closely followed his example as to record the names of their dead and living offspring on neighbouring tombs.

Old Mr. Nind, whose monument vies with Grandfather’s in height, was another wealthy eccentric who went about looking like the world’s worst tramp. On one occasion when he was walking up West Hill a generous lady, thinking he did not possess enough money for his next meal, slipped a shilling into his hand. He accepted it without demur.

In later years a Requiem has been said annually at All Souls’ Tide in the little church which stands between Grandfather’s and Mr. Nind’s tomb, and the Holy Eucharist offered for the repose of those, many of them now unknown to men, but known to God, whose bodies lie in that vast burial ground.

p. 44It is a solemn and poignant service, the worshippers approaching in the early morning, often through a soft November mist, behind which those beyond the Veil seem very close. On the great forest of tombstones the chrysanthemums, last flowers of autumn, glow in rich tints of orange and gold, crimson and brown, white and rose, the leaves from the overshadowing trees falling softly, silently to the ground. Only the trains rattling down the railway cutting at the far side of the cemetery, or perhaps the quick flight of an aeroplane, speak of the hurried bustling life beyond the gates.

Inside the church the congregation, many of them but recent mourners, with flowers in their hands to place new-made graves, sang softly.

“One family, we dwell in him,
One Church, above beneath,
Though now divided by the stream,
The narrow stream of death.”

And at the altar the Priest pleads the One Eternal sacrifice, the precious Body and Blood of the Redeemer, for the departed souls that they may rest in eternal light, joy and peace.

p. 45Chapter III

After the death of Grandmother, the home at Spencer Park was run by two faithful maids, Wallace and Emma. My recollections of Emma came years later long after she had left and entered the state of matrimony, as she used to call on us at intervals and ask for a gift of Father’s nether garments, which most happily exactly fitted her husband. He seemed to wear out a considerable number of that useful article of attire and probably, as a small boy once remarked of his parent, “not-with-standing.” Where Emma’s husband obtained the other garments he presumably wore remains a profound mystery!

Wallace and Emma inhabited a bedroom with a due East aspect somewhat apart from the rest of the house. Being human they felt the cold and unbeknown to the family, privately indulged in a cosy little fire. One evening the whole house was filled with smoke in a manner alarming to feel, smell and behold. Grandfather sat in p. 46his easy chair in his usual attitude, his legs crossed, aggravatingly wagging his toe. Although the room was like a London fog of richest vintage, not by a single word or sign did he acknowledge anything unusual. The frantic Wallace and Emma finding the smoke came from their so far happily secret fire, made frantic efforts to put it out. Nothing was said and the maids began again to breathe freely, hoping they had not been discovered, until one unhappy day a walk to the other end of the garden revealed that Grandfather had been up to the flat roof of the house and securely tied a sack over their particular chimney. There were no more cosy fires in their bedroom, only the usual atmospheric conditions when a room faces north-east.

Yet when Grandfather fancied a little fire for his own convenience things were entirely different, especially in the bonfire line, as he made a practice of having a real hefty one, worthy of Guy Fawkes’ night, on the occasions when a tennis party was being held in the park, announcing that it was such a very healthy smell. The comments of the tennis players were fiery, but certainly not healthy.

The kitchen had a pleasant outlook on the garden p. 47including those people who took an airing down its asphalt paths. One visitor drew a remark from a watching housemaid.

“My! How she do waddle:”

To which came the swift answer.

“My! She do!”

Most of the bedrooms were named different colours. Whether the Blue Room were so called because it faced due east and turned its inmate that colour, is not recorded. I remember I had a violent bilious attack in the Green Room, which made that title quite appropriate. All the doors had chirpy little knockers which gave a note of gaiety to that otherwise somewhat gloomy house.

Grandfather loved to think the place was haunted, but some people rather lost faith in the idea after one of his daughters-in-law, hearing spooky noises in the dead of night, looked over the banisters and saw him moving the furniture in the hall.

His only surviving daughter, my Aunt Afra, loved to frighten people with tales of spectral visitations. When quite a child she had her cousin Bertha to stay with her for a few days and sleep in her room. On retiring for the night naughty Afra told Bertha the room was p. 48haunted and there was no telling what she might see and hear before morning’s dawn. Bertha heroically said she did not believe in such rubbish and that if one said on’s prayers properly before getting into bed all would be well.

But alas, for this expression of faith, for at that very moment her portmanteau moved across the floor, followed by a chair or two and other bits of furniture. The result on poor Bertha was quite catastrophic, but Afra watched unmoved, knowing that it was no ghostly intervention, but merely her young rascals of brothers pulling strings beneath the door, which they had previously laid under the carpet, after attaching them to moveable bits of furniture.

Grandfather had one special friend, Dr. March, a retired medical man who lived on the other side of the Park. Real cronies, they indulged in terrific rows and at one time wrote the most scurrilous letters to each other in the local paper. Having thus publicly told the world in general exactly what they thought of eachother they were as friendly as ever.

Some years previously, ween Dr. March had been in practice, he had attended Grandma and was so ill-advised p. 49as to order her some brandy. Grandpa, that rigid, blue-button teetotaler, refused to allow it, so the wily old doctor delivered it in a medicine bottle. But the even more wily Job Caudwell took the cork out of the bottle and indulged in a generous sniff. The result was awful and Grandpa told the doctor his hat was too often in his hall and he hoped never to see it there again. But the affair blew over and all was and joy - until the next time!

Dr. March was immensely proud of the luscious black grapes in his greenhouse. In my ignorance I thought grapes just grew, but not a bit of it; for they seem to be quite chancey things requiring endless attention. The old doctor spent much money on them and possessed a small library dealing with their culture. An ancient nurseryman who lived opposite spent hours with him in the greenhouse ostensibly attending to the grapes, but in reality discussing all the spicy gossip of the neighbourhood. Some of it was later dished up for Mrs March’s benefit; it is to be feared the remainder was strictly pour les hommes.

Mrs. March decided that 5 p.m. was the correct time for “John’s” dinner and it was served on the dot. John p. 50himself never never noticed the time and had to be hauled in from his gardening and made to wash his hands. Their niece, Lily, a beloved friend of our family, often stayed with them for months at the time, but if she were delayed in town after a matinée it was more than her place was worth to be late for that sacred dinner, so she used to buy a huge wedge of Genoa cake and eat it, saying when she arrived home that she had already dined.

Visitors to the March establishment were served with an excellent tea at 4.30, after which they would stay gaily chatting about this and that, not knowing they were running the risk of sending Mrs. March into a fit and the cook into a herculean rage owing to the postponement of that violated dinner hour.

Dr. and Mrs. March had an adopted daughter, Trotty, who married a so-called doctor, whose mother was real Italiano, with long hands, finger nails to match and a yellow face due not to art, but to nature. Before the marriage the young man used to spend long hours at the March’s describing the vast number of patients who had consulted him that day and how they were all coming again. After the marriage his medical zeal seemed sadly to decline and on one occasion poor Trotty had to go round p. 51to all his patients saying her husband could not call thatt day as he had been kept awake during the night by the attentions of an insect whose name is not usually mentioned in select society. The end was tragedy, for the pair moved to Africa, where the delicately-nurtured Trotty, unused to roughing it, caught a fever and died. Probably for her it was the happiest solution to her many problems!

Mrs. March was a nice old dear, but had an irritating habit of resuscitating the doctor’s small shortcomings, so that he used to whisper confidentially to Lily,

“Don’t do anything to offend your Aunt, my dear, or she will remember it all the days of her life and forget all the nice things you have ever done.”

Another eccentric, old Mr. Hansler, lived in a charming house on the other side of the Park with masses of scarlet-berried pyracanthas over the porch. Modern taste has converted the house into flats, building pieces all round it, in front and on the top, so that now it looks like a square cardboard box. At one time Mr. Hansler announced the end of the world would come on a certain specified date. On the day in question my Aunt Afra sent a maid with a polite note enquiring If he had gone to heaven.

p. 52As a small girl I used to love to look over Grandfather’s garden wall on Sunday mornings and watch the old gentleman coming across the Park from church. When nearing home he used to stop dead, take out a large white pocket handkerchief and well polish his shoes before disappearing from view through his own garden gate.

When at length the old gentleman died, Mother bought two of his pictures, one a lovely scene of mist breaking over soft coloured mountains and alarmingly horned Highland cattle in the foreground approaching over a stony path with green bracken and brown reeds on either side. The other picture was much more coy - a peasant girl in a scarlet bodice and green shawl, fallen asleep in her chair. A dark-haired man kneeling behind her is deftly extracting a love-letter from her pocket. I fear there will be trouble if ever that girl wakes up.

Grandfather, although often so careless of his own appearance, had a profound respect for anything which upheld the family’s honour. For this reason he really spread himself on the Caudwell coat-of-arms, with its splendid motto, In Deo Spes, “Hope in God”, emblazoning it on his notepaper, his envelopes and his bookplates.

Unfortunately he passed from this scene of action p. 53many years before a great-grandson proudly bore it emblazoned upon his pram, like a scion of the House Royal. The shield bears three fishes’ heads, the crest being a militant looking cock, with a sabre in his mouth. This appearance of the fish, the cock and the sword have made me wonder whether St. Peter were the patron saint of the family, seeing that he was a fisherman and drew his sword in the Garden of Gethsemane to protect the beloved Person of his Divine Master, only to deny him before the “cock crew thrice”, even as that Master had warned him.

A less picturesque tradition states that the Caudwell family and minions had fish for supper when encamped one night dangerously near an enemy district. Unfortunately after supper they all fell asleep, plus the sentries. In the midst of darkest night a cock crew suddenly and violently, awaking them just in time to spoil the enemy’s stealthy approach.

When Father, at the age of eighteen obtained his London B.A. degree with honours in that mysterious subject entitled, “Mental and Moral Science”, Grandfather’s delight knew no bounds and Father was made to have all his clothes, even down to his collar and cuffs, marked p. 54“Paul Caudwell. B.A.” Well-starched, spotless cuffs, which spent the majority of their existence sliding down over the knuckles, were then deemed essential to every gentleman’s attire, both young and old.

Grandfather’s love of having his name on everything began early, for I possess a tiny tin box, gaily painted in gold, red and blue, which if turned upside down reveals in bold lettering the inscription, “Job Caudwell, Drayton Manor, 1834”. A wooden box, shaped like a miniature Noah’s Ark, is inscribed “J.C. 1833”.

In adult years his name appeared in most unexpected places - on all his gardening tools burnt into the wood of the handles, engraved on the brass labels attached to the key of each door in the house, even embossed on his brass shoe-horns. His clocks bore his name round their dials in place of numerals, one o’clock beginning the circle with “J” for “Job”. There being only eleven letters in his name, twelve o’clock was marked by a shield bearing the family motto, “In Deo Spes”. To each of his sons he presented a watch and two clocks with their names used in the same way instead of numerals. Father’s name, “Paul” and his second brother, “Eber’ both made the requisite twelve letters; Uncle “David” had thirteen p. 55letters, so the two “ll”s in Caudwell were interlaced together for twelve o’clock. Uncle “Ben” had but eleven letters, so had the shield and motto for twelve o’clock like his father.

Grandfather and his ten children had but one christian name each - and not very christian at that, some of them, including his own. My Mother and I also have but one each also. In fact our little family, Paul, Ada and Irene have but twelve letters in the total of our christian names and Mother’s spells the same backwards and forwards - a distinct difference from one of my schoolfellows, “Theophila Phillipa Frances Milne Robertson,” whose full name thus designated had to be inscribed on every sheet of examination paper.

Grandfather’s stern hand on his children lasted long after they were grown up, which is shown by his treatment on one occasion when Father spent the weekend with his Uncle and Aunt, his fiancée’s parents, going straight to Chancery Lane from Paddington on Monday morning, where he was kept working very late. Ten o’clock precisely was the Cinderella hour at Spencer Park, when all Grandfather’s flock were expected to be safely gathered beneath his roof and presumably nothing but sudden death p. 56would be forgiven the unfortunate sheep who arrived after the hall clock had struck that fatal hour. On this unhappy evening poor Father arrived direct from Chancery Lane, but on the wrong side of 10 p.m., to find every door locked and the house in total darkness. In vain he knocked and rang that terrifying front door bell, but all to no effect. It was after zero hour and he was locked out of his home, with the result that a neighbour took pity on him and put him up for the night. Did that worry Grandfather? Not a bit! He simply sat and wagged his everlasting toe.

Grandfather knew London by heart, including its short cuts. When on a visit he used to take Mother to see the sights, even penetrating into the sinister byways of the Seven Dials which stood near the present Cambridge Circus. In this case so dangerous was the locality he warned mother to look at no one, to avoid any expression of distaste or surprise and to keep close to him.

Wandering through some of the old squares of aristocratic Mayfair and Belgravia was amusing though sometimes terrifying, in a different sense from the Seven Dials, for if Grandfather saw a front door open p. 57he would conduct Mother inside, examine and admire the furniture and fittings of the hall and then walk out as coolly as if it were his own home. It was amazing they were never caught thus trespassing. But if this unfortunate occurrence had transpired, Grandfather, with the air of a Grand-Duke and the smile of a visiting seraph would have glided out of the situation with everything pleasant and comme il faut.

An incident illustrating his infinite resource occurred in a short cut down some unsavoury back streets in Battersea when he was accompanied with both Father and Mother. A child appeared in sight torturing a mouse tied to a piece of string. Grandfather grasped the situation in a split second and seizing an unsuspecting tabby dozing nearby he hurriedly carried it to the mouse. In a few more seconds, cat, mouse, string, Grandfather, Paul and Ada, had disappeared and the street was empty as Aberdeen on a Flag Day, with the exception of the bereft child yelling its head off for its Mother.

After his marriage my Father did not return to live in Wandsworth for twelve years, when I was just nine years old. In the meanwhile my Aunt Afra had deserted the parental roof and gone to live in various apartments p. 58in Putney from which when she and her landlady ceased to be bosom friends, her fiancé rescued her at various intervals, with with the fur flying freely from both Auntie and the landlady.

Our arrival at Spencer Park was due to the fact that Father had been appointed Solicitor to the Borough of Battersea, a post which he was destined to hold for twenty-seven years. Grandfather had urged him not to take a house saying that he freely gave his own house to him, Father meanwhile to be prepared to foot the bill for all housekeeping expenses. But the fact that Father, his wife and inoffensive child were living rent free did not suit two of his brothers and truly fearsome was the jealousy it caused, a jealousy which the strange contrary temperament of my Grandfather delighted to foster. Curiously also this jealousy was chiefly vented on Mother and me, rather than on Father. Dear Father! So extreme was his loyalty to his family that not even the most outrageous unkindness brought more than a quiet rebuke.

The day on which Mother and I entered Spencer Park was the beginning of a year of Purgatory, so deeply engraved on my childish mind that even to this day I p. 59never pass the house with its grim stone walls, flat roof and ivy-circled windows, without an inward shudder.

Mother had brought two well-trained maids with her, buxom farmers’ daughters and great was their horror at the state of the house and furniture to which Grandfather’s very inefficient staff had lowered it. Moth and rust indeed did corrupt and spiders reigned unmolested. Even the removal men coughed and choked, grumbling ferociously.

Early in the evening one of my Uncles and his wife descended upon the turbulent scene, the latter, also a cousin, and a life-long friend of my Mother, demanding supper for her poor husband who was tired and hungry after his day’s work in the bank. Grandfather retired to the garden, returning with a large bundle of spring onions which he delivered into the fastidious hands of Esther, Mother’s housemaid, demanding they should be prepared for supper - a good half-hour’s work. Esther took an immediate dislike to my Uncle, the first cause of the trouble, a dislike which increased to a positive hatred on future occasions, when she complained to my Mother he used to “walk right over her” when she answered his imperious ring at the front door.

A reign of terror began for me. Grandfather disliked p. 60all children, so that I was never allowed to speak in his presence unless someone spoke to me, which in such an Arctic atmosphere, as far as I was concerned, was a very rare occurrence. At mealtimes I was placed at the other end of the long dining-room table in case my short, dangling legs should come into contact with any part of my Grandfather’s sacred person. As I was not allowed to speak nor to touch anything on the table, darling Mother used to keep her glance continually on me, so that if I wanted bread, water, salt or a second helping, I gazed solidly at the desired article until it arrived on my plate.

One day I borrowed the “Swiss Family Robinson” from Grandfather’s extensive library and went out to read it on the garden seat. Grandfather found me - and I never touched anything of his again! Not in his lifetime anyhow, but the fatal “Swiss Family Robinson” now lives happily in my bookcase between Sax Rohmer’s “Tales of Chinatown” and W.W. Jacob’s “Captains All”.

One night, I heard a strange sound I could not identify and in an agony of terror I cried, “Daddy! Daddy!” In a moment that dear person arrived from on the other side of the passage, minus his p. 61coat and waistcoat. It was practically the only time in my life I saw my Father without these useful garments, except during his many illnesses when he was in bed, or wearing a dressing-gown.

“Daddy,” I said urgently, “Daddy: What is that noise?”

Soothingly he replied, “Nothing, my dear, only the steam roller going home!” I was immediately comforted. But on maturer consideration now, I wonder - Was it the steam-roller? Do they usually go home between ten and eleven p.m.?

I took a lifelong dislike to gardening while living in Spencer Park, a dislike which has increased with each advancing year, owing to an incident on one semi-tropical summer day, a Saturday morning, when Grandfather conducted me into the garden and set me to weed his beastly onion bed. Miserably I toiled beneath that burning sun, faint and giddy with the heat, yet not daring to leave my task, my little hands getting grubbier and more oniony every minute. At length, when half-unconscious, my Mother’s beloved voice spoke to me and her tender arms lifted me up, carrying me indoors and laying me on my little bed with tears not far from her eyes. To this day, a raw p. 62onion is to me the most obnoxious item of an Englishman’s diet and even the customary rubbing of the salad bowl with its odoriferous person has no charm for me.

Those were the early days of the bicycle or velocipede, when the “Penny-Farthing” had become a museum piece and the shape which is still modern had become the fashion. Gentlemen toiled upon them for many miles wearing voluminous “plus fours”, horrid flat tweed cloth caps and “Norfolk” jackets, that is, coats a little longer than a dinner jacket, fastened down the front and belted at the waist, a coat which was favourable to all except those endued with “too too solid flesh”.

A family who owned large and romantic vineyards in Portugal lived with four sons and three daughters at the other end of Spencer Park. They kept a “Penny-Farthing” bicycle, with its one immense wheel and second tiny apologetic one, the rider’s seat fearsomely erected somewhere between heaven and earth, beside the great kitchen range, both polished to an amazing degree. It was a real old-time kitchen, complete in its entirety until Adolf Hitler’s airmen blasted the final member of the family, youngest of them all, out of house and home.

p. 63It was a basement kitchen, with dark, breakneck stairs leading from the upper quarters, a freezingly cold stone floor, that awful kitchen range which ate up buckets of coal like the insatiable furnace of a giant, glittering steel meat covers vast in circumference on the walls, a wonderful collection of china, including many colourful jugs on the dresser and an interesting view from the top of the window of people’s feet passing to go to the front door. The front door itself was approached by a long flight of steps which were hearth-stoned every day, and guarded by large tubs bearing agapanthus plants with their lovely blue blossoms. Agapanthus the flower of love! But love was not encouraged within its walls, for after her husband died, the disconsolate widow took a huge dislike to any idea of her daughters getting married. She was a regal little person with very long skirts which swept the pavements and her friends’ doorsteps as she moved on her stately progress. She answered to the name of “Mamma” uttered in suitably deferential tones and wore immense Spanish earrings of golden filigree, of great beauty, reaching almost to her little black-clad shoulders. Their weight was too much for her tiny ears, so that at times p. 64they forced their way gradually through the living flesh and new holes had to be pierced. She was a true subject of Queen Victoria, greatly resembling her in mind and body - religious, autocratic, haughty, yet generous and hospitable, a veritable matriarch in all her ways.

Her’s was a home filled with endless visitors and a table overflowing with luxuries, complete with the superb port from the family vineyards. Yet in spite of enormous, most generous fires, the atmosphere of the house throughout the winter was usually Arctic.

Fun and games for the young people abounded and the girls’ beautiful dolls’ house was an exact replica of the first home to which the late lamented Mr. Dixon had brought his young bride. The drawing-room, a large apartment with many windows and a very small fireplace, contained more chairs than I have ever seen in a private house, but like so much early Victorian furniture there was not a really comfortable one among them. The mantelpiece was four deep with ornaments, priceless china mingled with oddments worth only a few pence. The grand piano was entirely covered with knick-knacks of every description, good, bad and distinctly indifferent.

Coloured models of the peasants and oxen who worked p. 65in Mr. Dixon’s Portuguese vineyards abounded and special features under glass cases were churches exquisitely fashioned from cardboard with every detail complete, made by Mr. Dixon’s own hands. The whole room was a museum piece, with its setting of the rich rose-red carpet entirely covering the floor. Here, well into the beginning of the first World War, Francie, the last surviving daughter, held her At Homes on every Saturday afternoon, when a most luxurious tea was served and everyone was pressed to consume a large quantity of cakes. The cakes were always the same variety, sent as a “standing order” from Arding and Hobbs every week. Dear Francie, she always wished everything to remain as she had known it from her earliest youth and how bitterly she was to suffer from change, bereavement and upheaval in her latter years. And how dearly we loved her!

Mrs. Dixon slept in a huge fourposter which long after her death in its voluminous depths remained exactly as she left it on her last journey to Wandsworth Cemetery, until heavy bombing made the house uninhabitable. The latter end of the bedstead was even more honourable than its beginning, for its beautiful carved posts were converted into standard candlesticks for use before the p. 66altars in two churches.

A room in the basement of the house, distinctly reminiscent of the tank inhabited by the clerk in Dickens’s “Christmas Tale”, was used in the good old days as a sleeping apartment for the butler, but in my day that gentleman had departed with the crinolines, the bustles, the pointed shawls and the bonnets of a previous generation. Not that the bonnets were so very far away, for even in my childhood and early youth old-fashioned people would say, meaning of course, a hat, “Put on your bonnet, my dear”.

Old ladies still wore the bonnet itself, dainty creations usually black, made of silk and lace trimmed with flowers or ostrich feathers and tied under their chins with wide satin ribbons of blue or lavender, acting as a frame to their white hair and sweet, calm faces.

Only one of Francie’s four brothers married, the other three lived at home until the day of their death, although one owned a delightful country house, a yacht and a car. In his latter days he became a permanent invalid and sat a great deal in the old nursery, a delightful first-floor room with a large window overlooking Wandsworth p. 67Common, so situated that it appeared as if one were sitting among the tree-tops. In a corner of the room, opposite the dwarf bow-fronted chests of drawers which stood on either side of the fireplace, were cases continually filled with pots of delicious jams and chutney which he presented to his fortunate visitors.

Two half-tame pigeons lived in one of the tall trees at back of the house, whom Francie named “Mr. and Mrs. Wilberforce”.

The Reverend Francis Evelyn, one of the clergy of St. Anne’s, who was connected with Wilberforce himself, expressed himself as much intrigued to find he was related to a pigeon!

A quince tree also grew in the garden, surely one of the nearest in England to Charing Cross!

The third brother resided for years on the top floor. Downstairs an entire room was consigned to his collection of newspapers, of which never a one was ever thrown away so that they stretched from floor to ceiling. As a sideline he collected an enormous quantity of hats in which he rivalled Mr. Churchill, while of cameras he had at least twenty, most of which mysteriously disappeared on the first of the five occasions when the p. 68house was blasted in the second World War.

As time went on, two of the daughters fell in love, the elder of them with a Canon, the other with a nice young Priest, son of a house on the other side of the Park, whose immaculate appearance even in boyhood days led my father and his brothers to name him, “Old Collar-and-Cuffs.”

But even these very eligible suitors did not commend themselves to the mother’s matriarchal eyes, so that one propitious day the Canon’s beloved disappeared from the home nest, returning a few hours later to announce she was married, and that was that!

The Reverend Collar-and-Cuffs was not so fortunate, for his girl, one of those truly beautiful characters which it is a privilege and honour to know as a friend, refused her lover’s urgent entreaties to become his bride, remaining at home to help nurse a querulous mother and afterwards her sister and three brothers through many long and weary years. One by one she watched them pass from earthly sight and be carried down the great steps between the blue-flowered agapanthus to their rest in the family vault, leaving her utterly alone, the last brave, pitiful survivor of the family, with her adored p. 69home so badly blasted with bombing that it was no longer habitable. Much as I loved her I never dared to ask her if she could answer the perpetual riddle, “Is it better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all?”

Her lover was faithful to her, literally even unto death, after nearly half a century of devotion he was found one Sunday morning by his churchwarden dead beside his bed from heart failure. The whole of his life had been devoted to one unattainable, beloved woman and the service of Holy Church.

By the same hand of coincidence that same beloved woman was found by her maid lying stricken down on the rose-coloured carpet of her bedroom. For a day and a night she lay unconscious, then passed to the nearer Presence of the God she had served for over seventy years with the deepest devotion. And none of us who had loved her so dearly could grudge her that passing, nor the reunion with him whose ring with its flashing great diamonds remained upon her finger until the end.

In the days when we first came to Spencer Park this sorrowful romance was only in its infancy, but tragedy had recently visited the house. The only son p. 70of the Canon and his wife, just twelve years old, on a visit to his grandparents, playing with his proud possession of a new bicycle, was killed directly outside their gates.

This shocking incident so impressed my own parents, that I, who was not an only son, but certainly an only child, was never allowed to own a bicycle from that day this. Seeing that from my youth up I have never been good at balancing myself on anything that was not good solid earth, I do not think my parents were altogether unwise.

In St. Anne’s, Wandsworth, our mutually beloved church, the sorrowing family erected a beautiful window of softly tinted glass, showing the Child Christ, another twelve-year old beloved only Son, standing in the midst of the grave, heavily-bearded doctors of the law, both “hearing them and asking them questions.” In certain lights the golden-haired head of the Divine Child glowed with a soft, almost supernatural radiance. But the window, erected in remembrance of a deep sorrow, was itself destined for tragedy, as it crashed in fragments into the churchyard when nearly half a century later a flying-bomb shook the building to its very foundations. Out of the pathetic heap of shattered glass I salvaged the head of the Christ Child, still lovely and unharmed.

p. 71Chapter IV

In the days that Father and Mother brought their nine-year old daughter and all their worldly goods to take up their residence with Grandfather, Spencer Park was so refined that not even a duster or a pair of stockings was allowed to be visible to the neighbours, however discreetly it might hang on a modest clothes line.

Such articles, seemingly so indecent in the Park Rule of Life, were hung up to dry concealed in sheds and outhouses. No brass plate, except that of a doctor - not even a lawyer - was permitted on those sacred front gates or pillars, the doctor’s plate evidently being permitted, so that if anyone felt like departing out of this sinful world his household would know where to go for help in the matter, that is to say, naturally to prevent him from leaving them.

Today, many of the beautiful old houses are turned into flats, with rows of washing, not only in the gardens p. 72but even visible from the street, intimate garments hanging today in the windows. How are the mighty fallen! A long row of “pre-fabs” now forms part of the scenic attractions facing Grandfather’s and the neighbouring houses, where children play and scream both night and day, walking on the fences, scrambling over any waiting cars, scuffling about in the front gardens. Grandfather would certainly never have lived out his eighty-seven and a half years if these things had happened in his day, especially as other people’s children were his pet abomination, to be classed with Popery, dogs and strong drink, all closely connected with the Evil One.

I was allowed to walk decorously in the garden on the dark asphalt paths between the cabbages and gooseberry bushes, with the strict understanding that my youthful fingers never strayed either to the right or the left. A delightful crab-apple tree stood in the centre of the garden, its fruit glowing in scarlet and gold like super cherries. I was allowed a few of them and scrunched happily into their bitter centres. Jurd, the kind old gardener, asked when superfluous flowers were thrown on the bonfire, that some might be given me, but he was met with a stern refusal.

On one occasion Grandfather p. 73ordered him to pull up all the ripening strawberry plants and burn them. The astonished Jurd ventured to enquire the reason.

“So that my grand-daughter shall not come into the garden before I am up in the morning and help herself.”

He need not have worried - I should as soon have dared to pull the hair out of his white beard.

Jurd was a philosophical old dear, who did not believe in taking life too hardly. Rebuked one day by Grandfather for not pulling up as many weeds as that gentleman considered fitting Jurd replied happily,

“Oh, but sir, if I pull them all up today, I shan’t have any next time.”

Another compassionate friend in my childish loneliness was Bradford, the chief gardener of the Park and I spent many pleasant hours watching him work and admiring his “oly-awks” (hollyhocks).

The lady next door objected that our maids took too much interest in her back premises from the vantage point of a staircase window outside their bedroom door. She therefore erected a large square board, painted a funereal black, which completely obstructed the erring domestics’ view. But Grandfather, although not at all above spoiling p. 74any little enjoyment of this kind himself, would certainly not allow a neighbour to do it for him, so that the board mysteriously disappeared and Grandfather again continued to sit in his favourite chair wagging his toe and saying nothing.

One day the Park was roused to a state of apprehension by reason of the strange noises proceeding from old Job Caudwell’s garden. But it was only the gentleman himself returning a tin tea tray he had borrowed from Mother and using it as a drum, as of all unsuitable places, he returned it to her at the bottom of the garden.

Years before, when he and Grandma were away from home, my father and his brothers turned the garden into a military camp, shouting stentorian orders at intervals during the night.

Somewhere in the very early morning when mankind is supposed to be at its lowest ebb and dead asleep, the young Caudwells carried the heavy dinner gong into the garden and banged it with a vigour that must have carried the sound in that quiet hour as far as Clapham Junction, half a mile away. Every bedroom window in the Park went up, but of the Caudwells there was no trace. It is wonderful that none of the neighbours complained to p. 75Grandfather on his return of these nocturnal escapades, but either they stood in too much awe of that formidable gentleman himself, or perhaps in the kindness of their hearts, knowing the very grim time his family usually endured, allowed the young monkeys to enjoy themselves for once without fear of a shattering punishment.

Grandfather had a great liking for choice fruit, so that when strawberries were served he took not only the lion’s share, but also the little lions’ share as well, so that the latter unfortunates were only treated to a few unripe, or else squashy varieties. My Uncle David explained that this was due to a strawberry mark which Grandfather bore upon his person and that he “couldn’t help it”! I wonder!! I have a mole on my left foot, but it does not make me in the least anxious to include moles in my diet.

Soon after we went to live with him old Dr. March gave Mother a gorgeous bunch of his celebrated grapes, which she took home and showed to Grandfather. That ingenious gentleman said confidentially,

“The maids are sure to help themselves to these if you leave them about. You just let me lock them in my strong room.”

p. 76Mother handed them over with a parting glance at their luscious purple beauty and truly it was in reality a parting glance, for she never saw them again.

Mother always provided a large bowl of fruit on the sideboard and on seeing some oranges there Grandfather said kindly,

”You know, Ada, you need never provide oranges for me, as I do not like them.”

Shortly afterwards Mother was seated in a somewhat sheltered summer-house in the garden when she perceived grandfather in the distance happily engaged in sucking an orange. But by the time he had seen her no sign of the fruit was visible and he himself bore the innocent expression of the cat who has just utilised the canary for his elevenses.

One memory of those days was that of a huge tree condemned to be cut down in the Park. My childish eyes which had watched the operation with much interest opened wide with horror and aversion when its interior was seen to be full of maggots of revolting and vast dimensions.

Several times before we discovered our beloved St. Anne’s, Mother took me to St. Paul’s Church on p. 77St. John’s Hill. Not far away was the fine building of the Girls’ Royal Masonic School with its beautiful central tower and lovely Assembly Hall. The College of Preceptors examination was held here into which in due course I entered. For the Euclid examination, my fellow victims and I from Wandsworth High School went armed with mathematical instruments of varied and de luxe degree. The Freemason Girls, who took the examination with us, came with a few very simple implements and passed with flying colours. I regret to say we made rather a poor show in the mathematical results.

The girls attended St. Paul’s Church on Sundays, walking in a decorous crocodile, dressed in royal blue frocks with navy coats and hats, an outstanding feature being their lovely hair worn long, and whether curly or straight, groomed to such perfection that it shone with a delicious silky lustre. The girls have long since vanished and their school ruthlessly demolished to make room for huge rabbit warrens of flats, unromantically entitled Peabody Buildings.

Wandsworth High School was a beautiful old house standing back at the top of East Hill behind a high wooden fence, its stately front door being reached by p. 78a majestic flight of stone steps on either side terminating in a platform, on which the portly presence of the Head Mistress could stand in regal command surveying the landscape on the day of the Annual Garden Party. The schoolrooms and indeed every room in the house had lovely oak doors, black with age and furnished with brass drop-handles. Many of the windows reached from floor to ceiling which assisted in turning me into a solid block of ice, with cruel sensations in my hands and feet, throughout the winter.

In front of the house was a large and velvety lawn on whose sacred turf we were never allowed to set our sacrilegious feet, nor in the delicious little copse with the tiny winding path between it and the road, with the one exception on the day of the aforesaid Garden Party. We had our own small gate, through a little shrubbery to a door at the side of the house which led straight into our cloakroom. A large gravelled playground lay behind into which I was literally driven during “Recess”. As unhappily, like my Father and Mother before me, I regret to say I heartily dislike all games, my appearance was never greeted with any enthusiasm. I honestly tried to do p. 79my best, but balls always slipped through my butter fingers, tennis ended in my falling backwards on my head and the great community swing on which other girls could balance with ease was as dangerous for me as a speed track, so that if ever players were being picked for rounders or any similar game, I used to hear loud uncomplimentary remarks,

“Oh, don’t have Irene Caudwell on our side, she is sure to give a catch or never hit the ball at all.”

Soon after I left for Putney High School, the three Miss Trittons having retired and gone to live at Worthing, the lovely old house was demolished and its beautiful grounds built over with small shops and a very early Cinema, whose flickering screen guaranteed a headache thrown in gratis with its primitive programme. A Mineral Water Company has replaced the Cinema, and has also incorporated quite skilfully another old Wandsworth House, the whole giving quite a pleasing appearance painted in green and cream. Where once the dainty little copse hid behind the tall fence it is now possible to buy fish or greengrocery, have one’s hair permed, or replace ones’ wireless set. But I preferred the tiny copse.

The first bomb to drop in this part of Wandsworth p. 80during the 1939-45 War, fell in the road outside, reducing the Congregational Church and hall opposite into a pitiful mass of ruins, so that for many years the congregation was obliged to worship in Wandsworth Technical College at the bottom of the hill. Mr. Townsend, the well-known dental surgeon a few doors away, just managed to drag his receptionist out of danger before the window crashed in and it was many days before he or any of the neighbouring residents had any water supply, owing to the bursting of the huge main outside.

In the days when I first attended the High School Mother lived in anguish during those afternoons when the Wesleyan Minister called to see Grandfather, for sooner or later that well-meaning reverend gentleman would suggest they should engage in prayer. Whereupon Mother, kneeling piously upon the hearthrug, would have one unhappy ear open for me to rush gaily into the room from school, or the housemaid to knock upon the door and enter. It may all have been quite right and proper and highly commendable, but one certainly does not feel one’s best kneeling on the hearthrug with a gentleman deep in extempore prayer at four o’clock in the afternoon.

Grandfather had been a widower for fourteen years p. 81and never had the heart to see his wife’s grave. But in spite of this tender affection for the dear departed he began taking trips to the Crystal Palace wearing a fetching white waistcoat, a flower in his buttonhole and a very up-to-date hat. One day when Mother was brushing him down before he started off, she remarked innocently,

“Grandpa, I believe you are going to meet a lady.”

To which that gallant gentleman, then in his eightieth year, replied grimly,

“Whatever I promise, that I shall perform.”

The following winter, Grandfather, according to custom, retired to Bournemouth for several months, ostensibly for his health which up-to-date had apparently given very little trouble except for an attack of shingles, when Mother had the task of ironing his back.

Not long after Christmas Father received a letter in grandfather’s characteristic writing, large, clear and original, in which he announced that he had married a “dear Christian lady” and “he would treat the family as they treated her”! A further announcement stated he would bring his bride home in three weeks and in the meantime would we find another house and clear out.

p. 82The old gentleman had conveniently forgotten he had given the present one to Father on our coming to Wandsworth, nor did my Father ever allude to the matter.

The “dear christian lady”, of forty-six summers, or the look of her, more likely winters, duly arrived with the bridegroom, complete with quite a pleasant little fortune of her own, from which on exceedingly rare occasions I was treated to a shilling. She also brought with her a most peculiar cough which she politely shielded with her hand, squinting down both sides of her nose at the same time.

Before the arrival of these two love-birds, and sickeningly affectionate they were in public too, my unfortunate Mother tramped the streets in the snow looking for a house. The only one available was about a third of the way down the mile-long Earlsfield Road, with an interesting view from its upper windows of the cemetery on the other side of the deep railway cutting, including a really excellent sight of the Caudwell tomb, of which Grandma was the sole occupant. For the few years we loved there the sound of the funeral bell, tolling, tolling, above the sound of the passing trains, was in our ears for six days out of seven.

p. 83Father quickly named the next door garden but one, “Hampton Court”, as it contained an amazing and monumental set of arches, like stage scenery depicting the entrance to some baronial castle. Behind it was a small portion land, a few yards square, to which the owner always referred as the orchard. It was a perfect example of not seeing the wood for the trees, for so closely were they planted they could scarcely breathe, their branches interlocking like a jig-saw puzzle. The aforesaid owner spent much valuable time wondering why he never had any fruit.

Next door but one on our other side lived one of Wandsworth’s best loved citizens, Dr. Tod Thyne. His predecessor had suffered from a mania for building, so that the house stretched the whole way up the garden, through a succession of rooms, outhouses, conservatories and what-not, ending in a wash-house where in later years a pet chow bit his little master, the youngest son of the house, another Tod, right through his flesh to the thigh bone.

When we were his neighbour the doctor kept several St. Bernards in an enclosure at the top of the garden, magnificent creatures who scared me to death. He made his rounds seated in his open carriage, driven by William, p. 84his coachman, and always wore a silk hat tilted on to his nose. Often Mrs. Thyne sat beside him, with the current baby on her knee, a new one every year as regular as clockwork. At night, like other members of his profession, the doctor kept a red lamp burning high up beside his gate that his house might be speedily located In times of emergency.

Some of the streets off Garratt Lane, which the doctor served were extremely unsavoury in those days and rumour said even the police gave them a miss after dark and preferred to hunt in couples, even in the daytime. But Mr. Thyne could go alone and unmolested into any house or any street at any hour, welcomed and beloved.

A small part of this slumland, only a mile from Wandsworth Common, still remains and the costermongers and rag-and-bone men who are its chief residents stable their horses in the back garden, in a few cases having to lead then through the house via the front door. Life is colourful in those parts with street fights and other attractions to counteract the odours and other drawbacks of the neighbourhood.

In the morning, women with large hats and golden earrings used to emerge with baskets of flowers, a baby p. 85skilfully wrapped in a shawl wound round its Mother’s generous figure. Today the flowers and the baby are more usually carried in an antique perambulator, the mother’s shawl being substituted by a fur coat, which evidently started life as a rabbit or more distressingly, as someone’s pet cat. Until quite recent years they sold bunches of lavender with the old London cry, raucous and discordent, yet strangely appealing, “Buy my sweet lavender”.

One afternoon a gipsy from Wardley Street was knocked down, but not seriously injured, outside our house. With the instinctive claustrophobia of her race she would not come even inside the gate, but sat on a chair on the pavement, refusing all help except a glass of water which she did not drink, but used to bathe her face.

The following morning she arrived with a huge basket of Michaelmas daisies, dripping with water, evidently hoping we would buy the lot.

Despite his own large family the doctor’s generosity was prodigious and many a patient was sent round to the kitchen for some food or a hot drink, with perhaps an old pair of shoes or a garment thrown in, while the numbers who wriggled out of paying him anything with some tale p. 86of real or fancied woes must have been legion.

To visit his surgery was as good as a pantomime. Two or three patients were often being treated at the same time, [the] while the doctor filled boxes so over-flowing with ointment it was difficult to get the lid on and the sticky pink substance slithered down the sides, as he ejaculated at intervals in a deep voice, “Don’t trouble, Don’t trouble!” He listened to very little the patients said, gave them one quick look, made an immediate diagnosis, then turned and filled a medicine bottle. Yet so brilliant was that diagnosis he seemed to cure everyone and all felt perfectly safe in his hands. I suppose some of his patients died occasionally, but no one seemed to hear of it.

Sometimes he would realise that he had slightly mixed the sexes in his surgery, when the superfluous male or female would be turned out into the passage and the remaining two or three dealt with more or less en bloc. The doctor would then emerge from the door and call out, “Next, please.” Those who had been turned out would edge back into the surgery while two or three more would disentangle themselves from the crowd in the waiting-room and file into the passage.

p. 87The door being generally left ajar, interesting pieces of conversation drifted out, enlivening the time of waiting.

“Covered with spots is she? That’s chicken-pox right enough. Just let me look to see if she has any below her elbows: or knees, because that would be smallpox.”

Dramatic pause while the patient apparently exhibits the loose ends of her anatomy.

“One spot on the elbow, but nothing lower. Take her home and put her to bed in a room alone. I will call later.”

The people in the hall faded away as far as possible as the spotty child and her mother emerged. Meanwhile the next patient took his turn.

“You know, doctor, I’ve a cough on me just like an old empty barrel. It fair brings me ‘eart off its ‘ook. Just listen, doctor.” There followed an unpleasant exhibition of the said cough and the patient continued,

“Me mates down at the Works ses I oughter be in the churchyard with a cough like that, but I see, ‘Well, see here, don’t save up for me wreath until I’ve seen the doctor!”

The patient would emerge clutching a large medicine p. 88bottle and a box of pills which he rattled against his ear with keen satisfaction. Glancing round the assembly in the passage he observed, “A rare one to put you on your feet is the old doctor. Pull you out of hell, he would, if you was unlucky enough to get there. Always swear by him, I do, ever since he got the old woman through her first. Mighty queer she was too. I thought it was her for the blooming undertaker, straight I did.” No one making any response to this intimate family history, the loquacious gentleman moved on and a woman’s voice, low and confidential, would be heard through the door.

“But doctor, I have had ten. Surely I can’t have another.”

A somewhat embarrassed silence fell upon the inmates of the passage and the doctor’s voice would be heard.

“But, my good woman, you never can tell with boils, how many you will have, or where.”

A visit from Dr. Thyne to our house was usually a lengthy though pleasant business. Unless it were a case of serious illness he would arrive at tea-time and lie far back in a green velvet chair by the fire, his teacup and saucer precariously perched beneath his chin on the top of his black bow tie.

p. 89It was one of his rare times of leisure, when in his delightful Scotch voice he would tell tales of his beloved native land, until some of the wild romanticism, the beauty of of mountain and of heather-covered moor, the chill of the mist, or the stately beauty of Edinburgh, a lovely city, came vividly into our more prosaic London home. One story concerned a lady who received her lover unbeknown. All went well until unhappily footsteps were heard approaching and the lady hurriedly popped her swain into a convenient cupboard, which closed with an ominous click. Whether the lady were one of the absent-minded kind who cheerfully mislay umbrellas, handbags, gentlemen friends and other property, never troubling to search for them, is unknown, but some unsuspecting person who opened the cupboard about twenty years later had a rare scare when this special gentleman friend’s skeleton fell out.

Another of Dr. Thyne’s stories concerned the return home from a party of a gentleman in Edinburgh, who had obviously wined as well as dined. Arrived in his own street he held securely to a lamppost, enquiring of a passing policeman where Mr. Jones lived.

“But,” said the surprised constable, “you are Mr. Jones.”

p. 90“Yes, I know I am,” was the reply, “but where do I live?”

Gas fires were the doctor’s pet abominations and his endeavours to get rid of the one in Father’s bedroom were truly herculean. In vain Father explained that the ash from a coal fire made his bronchitis worse; the doctor only shook his head and returned to the attack. The plea that to carry coal from our cellar to Father’s room was like a short excursion with a mountain of luggage took no effect upon him; the triumphant assertion that hospitals, nursing homes and the sacred precincts of Harley Street were warmed by gas made not the slightest impression. Not until I one day visited his surgery and found it snug and warm with a somewhat decrepit gas stove did I realise it was still another case of “Don’t do as I do, but do as I tell you”.

Having been brought up as a strict Presbyterian, all swear words were anathema to the doctor, but it was with huge and naughty relish he loved to tell the tale of a local Vicar who provoked beyond endurance by some recalcitrant parishioners brought out a vigorous “Damn” at a public meeting.

One day when the doctor called to see my Mother, who was suffering from a first attack of that agonising malady, “Trigeminal Neuralgia”, familiarly known as Tic Doulureux, p. 91I had just returned from a holiday with odd bits of gravel in my knees. All my life I have disliked picnics, beach huts, country cottages and other specimens of simple life. On this occasion I was on my way to a picnic in a beach but at Tankerton, with a kettle in one hand and various impediments in the other. The cliff path was very slippery and down I went on both knees. Although for one awful moment I thought I should pitch to the bottom of the cliff, contrary to the done thing on such occasions, as portrayed by many novelists, I did not see the whole of my life in the few seconds before I found I had only fallen a few inches.

Dr. Thyne, on hearing from Mother what had happened, remarked, “Don’t trouble! Just sit down.”

I subsided on to the couch at the foot of Mother’s bed and the doctor produced a bottle of iodine from one pocket and a penknife from the other, with which he proceeded to remove the gravel, repeating at intervals, “Don’t trouble! Don’t trouble!” Those skilful surgeon’s fingers were ruthless, yet tender and their ministrations completely successful. Dear Dr. Thyne! How many could arise and call him truly blessed, and yet like the really great, how humble a spirit!

p. 92He wore himself out in devotion equally to the poor and needy as much as to the better endowed, passing on to Higher Service at comparatively early middle age. In the long funeral cortège which passed our house on the last sad journey to Magdalen Road Cemetery perhaps the most pathetic feature was his empty car driven by the faithful William, long-since promoted from coachman to chauffeur, his kind face grim with a deep and genuine grief. John Tod Thyne, a beloved physician! May he rest in eternal light, joy and peace!

A bed now stands in Bolingbroke hospital bearing his name. The money to endow it came from many people of different ranks. The Anchor Mission in Garratt Lane undertook a three months copper collection from the vicinity, some contributors even borrowing the coppers to keep up their subscriptions.

G.A. Henty, that prolific novelist and writer for boys, was an old friend of my Mother’s family. He spent the end of his life in Battersea near Clapham Common. Years after his death I saw a photograph of his funeral at St. Paul’s Church, Battersea (then known as New Wandsworth) and recognised among the mourners a small girl in a tam-o’-shanter with a large pom-pom on the top p. 93as myself. Among Mother’s household treasures is a brooch shaped like a Maltese Cross composed of bronze beaten into gold in an intricate pattern which “G.A.” gave her on his return from a trip to India in the suite of the Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward VII). “G.A.” on the same occasion also showed Mother a collection of exquisite Indian bangles inviting her to take her choice. But alas, made for the tiny hands of zenana ladies, they were just too small to slip over Mother’s shapely, though British, knuckles.

A small conservatory, whose roof leaked perpetually, led from our drawing-room into the garden. A Passion Flower climbed inside its walls and ceiling, that lovely, symbolic blossom filling the place with beauty, mingled with a certain amount of awe, so perfectly does it symbolise the sufferings of the Sacred Redeemer, its glorious rainbow-coloured corona, symbolic of the crown of thorns, the similitude of three crosses in the centre, the perpetual tiny drops of moisture upon the petals, speaking of the sweat of anguish, the twisted green tendrils showing the rope which bound the Saviour’s hands, the spear-like leaf telling of the sword which pierced his sacred side!

p. 94Winkie, our beloved Tabby, a pathetic stray when he came to reside in our front garden, refused like modern domestic helps to “sleep in” even if it rained heavens hard or the snow were on the ground. Several times we forced him to stay indoors, only to find everything moveable thrown onto the floor in the morning. One night we shut him in the conservatory; next day our precious Passion Flower hung in festoons.

Dear faithful Winkie! Years later when we left him in kind hands for a fortnight while we went to Switzerland he almost died of grief. The evening we returned he lay almost lifeless for hours in Mother’s lap while she literally wept over him. The next door neighbour sent in a piece of breast of chicken with which Mother gently fed him so that he gradually recovered. But he was never the same jolly, healthy cat; eight of his nine lives had gone in that brief fortnight of grief and he only lived another year.

Mother was ill for quite a long time in those early days in Earlsfield Road. At one time she was ordered a large belladonna plaster on her back which was eventually to be pulled off. Father was asked to oblige; he gave a feeble tug, and a small corner having departed from p. 95Mother’s skin Father discovered if he did not hurry away he would be late for the office. I was summoned to the fray, removed a slight bit more, pictured the whole of Mother’s skin coming off and found it was time to go to school. The maid was then invited to take her turn - she gave one slight pull, screamed and fled, so that it was Mother herself who eventually pulled the thing off her poor shrinking back.

Some of the medicine she was ordered in those days was so nauseously penetrating that she was obliged to take it in the garden, no doubt leaving the neighbours to conjecture which drain had been opened and whether they should send a complaint to the Borough Council.

On some days, when the wind was in certain directions, a most disconcerting odour, greasy and sickening, stole up from Earlsfield, so revolting to Mother that she was obliged to close the windows. It came from a factory in Garratt Lane which stewed up bones to make “ivory” knife handles. A slaughter house stood not far from it where the poor animals who were to feed the London Zoo received their death blows. The men who performed this odious task wore rubber boots deep in the blood which flowed over the floor. The imagination shrinks p. 96at the scenes of horror, of piteous terror, which the walls of that abattoir must have witnessed.

Nice clean sheep - unlike the sad grey woollies which appear at intervals in Hyde Park - were brought for a few days to graze on Wandsworth Common between North and West Side, fated, poor innocent things, to be slaughtered either at Hickman’s or at North’s the butchers on St. John’s Hill.

Great hay waggons were driven through the High Street in those days to be stacked at Anstee’s, opposite Putney Bridge Road. Next door was a forge where children loved to watch the bellows, as well as the forge at North Street, now Fairfield Street, and celebrated for flats and the Gas Works, where children with whooping cough used to be taken to enjoy the smell of gas. Another forge stood on the site of the old Town Hall, but with the coming of the motor car and bus it disappeared, together with Webb’s the saddler’s shop close by.

Saturday nights were really exciting in Wandsworth Town with stalls vivid with naphtha flares all along the High Street. One stall made toffee while you waited, great long ropes, succulent and sweet. Pink and white “walking sticks” with crook handles, flavoured with p. 97cinnamon or peppermint ran it very close in patronage. Crockery stalls offered a complete tea set in white and gold for two shillings and sixpence, a blue and white dinner service complete with a mammoth soup tureen for three shillings and sixpence and a real family teapot for sixpence.

The florist’s stall sold rose bushes at three for a shilling or fourpence each and fine roots of varied plants for the garden, five for twopence.

A shilling bought enough bacon to last a family of six until the following Saturday. Those certainly were the days!

And throughout the evening, far above the naphtha flares, the raucous voices of the hawkers, the shifting, good-humoured crowd, the bells of the parish church made sweet and joyous melody, their ringers just visible through a window in the old square tower.

Mingled with the bells came the sound of the Salvation Army singing as they marched. Their bandsmen with heroically puffed out cheeks came to escort them to their Citadel in York Road, on one of whose walls is a stone, recording it was laid by Job Caudwell.

Opposite the church was a butcher’s shop which made p. 98a speciality of selling off all its meat on Saturday night. Taking a prime joint off a hook the chief assistant would bawl benevolently, “Who wants this for two shillings?” The first eager customer to catch his eye had it straight away and wonderful were the bargains bought beneath the shadow of the old parish church - prime steak, as much as comfortably could be carried for a shilling; leg of lamb for about two shillings; twelve pounds of brisket of beef for another shilling, all sanctified for the Sunday dinner by the pealing of the church bells. The sellers were picturesque features of the scene, wearing alike both in winter and summer straw hats of the “boater” variety and blue and white cotton aprons, one end generally coyly tucked up into the belt. In those days the butchers’ shops bore large cards entitled “Customers waited on Daily”, or “Families Provided”. The latter provoked the question from a small child as to whether this were the place from which Baby Brother and herself had been bought.

The meat was delivered at the customers’ houses in strong handsome baskets by gay young lads, whistling cheerfully, and garbed in bright “butcher-blue” cotton suits with the usual blue and white checked or striped p. 99aprons. They arrived at the gate driving carts like square boxes tilted dangerously on two high wheels, the driver seated precariously on the top, cracking his whip and urging the pony at breakneck speed. To see them go round a corner, the butcher boy swaying to and fro, the horse’s hoofs striking sparks from the roadway, was truly terrifying.

A similar sight on a much grander scale was provided by the fire engines with their magnificent horses, as, the foam flecking from their lips, the bell clanging, they galloped madly up the steep expanse of East Hill while everything scurried to the sides of the road to let them pass and mothers clutched their children tightly in their arms. Always I feared with a cold shudder of horror that the horses would stumble and fall, but although half-wild with the excitement of the moment, those superbly trained animals never stumbled, nor did their driver allow them to get out of the control of his strong, skilful hands.

The sight of the fire engine, particularly in a crowded street, always brings a thrill, a quick subconscious realisation of the strength of fire, its terror of life and death, the age-long struggle of man p. 100against the primeval forces of nature, but some of the romance of the fire brigade, its wild heroic beauty have been Iessened by the coming of the motor engine.

p. 101Chapter V

Just round the corner of Wandsworth High Street, at the bottom of St. Anne’s Hill, outside the “Two Brewers”, stood the charcoal oven with its fragrant smell of roasting chestnuts and “Murphies”, steaming hot and delicious. Being a well-brought up little girl I never dared to buy any, much as my heart, or perhaps the region under my pinafore, longed for them.

Behind the “Two Brewers”, hidden from the bustle of the main street, there still remains a charming little courtyard with cottages which might have been lifted direct from some country town.

A trace-horse had his stand close by to give the aid of his powerful limbs to heavy horse-drawn vehicles on their weary progress up East Hill.

Half-way up the slope of the Hill is “The Elms”, until recently a doctor’s house, standing back from the road. The upstairs drawing-room has a lovely carved wooden mantelpiece of great antiquity showing ducks sailing on the Wandle in the days of the ancient bridge, p. 102erected by order of Queen Elizabeth I.

Her descendant on the throne of Great Britain and Ireland, Queen Victoria, used often to patronise Wandsworth, driving either to a glass shop standing above little steps with an iron balustrade where the new Municipal Buildings give quite an aristocratic appearance to the High Street, or else to her dressmaker in Geraldine Road. The appearance of the little dumpling of a lady, with her regal presence must have caused much excitement among the Wandsworthians.

The back garden of “The Elms” slopes up through grass grown terraces, overgrown with blackberry bushes to a small square building amid the trees, built with enormous thick beams, heavy brickwork, an outside staircase and three windows on its upper floor, from which in former days a clear view of Wimbledon was obtained. It resembles a similar building on Telegraph Hill where it is known that in the old days signalling by means of mirrors was carried out.

“The Elms” at one time belonged to two old ladies. When the hedge and fields at the end of their property gave place to the villas and backyards of Ridgemount Road the horrified ladies caused the erection of a p. 103brick wall twenty feet high, so that the eyes of the proletariat should not feast on their doings. It is still complete with substantial buttresses and gives quite an educational idea of the Great Wall of China.

When Herndon Road on the east side of the garden arrived in the course of “progress” the ladies erected a tall wooden hoarding which now, like the ladies themselves, has gone the way of all earthly things.

A romantic rumour states that a tunnel ran from the cellars of “The Elms”, under East Hill to Wandsworth House opposite, but no trace of it can be found, although workmen laying tramlines on the spot years ago found traces of brickwork. Rumour also tells that “The Elms” housed the frail, but undoubtedly beauteous, lady friends of some notability at Wandsworth House. The lovely wrought iron gateway of the latter between its tail pillars has vanished and part of the house itself is converted into a public garage, complete with petrol pumps. The former inhabitants, the Misses Cunley, were visited by friends in carriages and pair complete with coachman and footman. Many and rare must have been the antiques which were sold when the old ladies had passed to their rest. One sensational item comprised p. 104two old flower stands, apparently worth about five shillings each but which brought in the sum of two hundred pounds.

Not far away at St. Anne’s Hill, then known as “The Grove”, lived some friends of ours in another old Wandsworth house with lovely sweet scented lilac trees, mauve and white in the back garden,. The lady of the house, handsome and upright, her hair piled high, her silver crucifix round her neck, sweet and dainty in her silks and laces, sat enthroned in her drawing-room, surrounded by four daughters, all dressed in white. Many visitors came to that drawing-room, including the various generations of clergy at St. Anne’s and from those days comes the sad story of the Curate and the Cake-basket. This unhappy young man, true to the type pictured in the penny novelettes of the period, was so shy and so clumsily polite that one afternoon he knocked over the three-tiered cake-stand, scattering the contents far and wide, so that slices of bread and butter stuck to the glass of the china cabinets.

Old Dr. Chave, the long-lived Vicar of St. Anne’s, whose quarrel with Grandfather threw him into the arms of the Wesleyan Methodists, was bidding the stately lady p. 105of the house goodbye in the hall at Christmastime, when one of her naughty young sons drew attention to the fact that his mother was standing beneath the mistletoe. The gallant Vicar stepped forward and kissed her at the precise moment that a maid appeared upon the scene. With commendable presence of mind the clerical gentleman slipped on the polished floor, sitting down with a most unecclesiastical bump upon the ground.

His vicarage, a white-walled house with extensive grounds stretched for nearly a quarter of a mile to Garratt Lane, then truly a lane with hedges blossoming with honeysuckle and wild roses, has been replaced by a great viaduct connected with the Wandsworth Sewerage System. “Living Chess” was played at some of his successors’ Garden Parties on the lovely lawns. The flower-beds rich with rainbow coloured blossoms, the tall gracious trees, all are gone, leaving only blocks of somewhat depressing flats, from which even the name “Vicarage Terrace” has now departed. “Sic transit gloria Mundi.”

The Wandle really was silvery in those days, flowing between flowery tree-lined banks beneath Queen Elizabeth’s bridge in the High Street, to lose itself a short distance p. 106away in the all-embracing arms of Father Thames. Romantic rumour maintains that the Virgin Queen used to sail in all the pomp and circumstance of her Royal Barge up the little inlet where the Wandle emerges into the stream of the great river, but it must have been much wider in those days or the Royal Lady would have certainly undergone great risk of running aground and being seriously late for her appointments.

Pope wrote of the Wandle, as “The blue, transparent Vanalis”. In ancient times Wandsworth had to contribute salmon to the Monks of Westminster, which in 1450 gave rise to a most violent dispute. In these days of modern development of the fair land of England the only salmon found near the Wandle appears in tins strictly graded.

Water from the Wandle was at one time suggested as a beverage and a prospectus of a company proposed to be formed in 1833 propounded a scheme to supply the southern suburbs of London, including Clapham, Battersea and Wandsworth itself, with “pure and wholesome water” taken from the Wandle.

The prospectus further stated the river had been surveyed, gauged and analysed by eminent “chymists” and proved to be a pure unadulterated stream”. A gruesome p. 107sideline was the further reference given by a Parliamentary statement of 1828 concerning the danger of Thames water which had formed the supply up to 1833 and into which one hundred and twenty-nine common sewers, numerous gas houses, dyeworks, etc. discharged their refuse between Chelsea and London Bridge. But even this horrid thought did not rouse interest in the Wandle waters and Wandsworth failed to take its place with Harrogate, Vichy and Aix-les-bains.

Isaac Walton speaks of the Wandle trout, speckled with marble spots like tortoise, whom another writer credits with a most unchristianlike obstinacy and immoral shrewdness.

One author described the Wandle between the High Street and the Thames as “the sink of Surrey” but lest this should be misunderstood, the explanation is that he merely meant to convey the information that the water from outlying Surrey sank away at this spot into the Thames. We Wandsworthians hope that was his meaning, but it is rather shattering to discover the London County Council classifies the river from which our home town received its name, as a sewer.

To be perfectly honest, a stranger standing on the p. 108modern bridge in the High Street looking down upon its greasy, murky waters might be tempted to think the L.C.C. was not very far wrong. Only a very blue sky reflected in its depths and the sight of the great trees in King George’s Park a few hundred yards away, could disillusion him and even so, he should be strongly discouraged from looking northwards over the other side of the bridge.

Wandsworth considers itself a maritime borough seeing that the Wandle empties itself into the Thames, which latter river flows into the sea, although admittedly some distance away, with all London’s bridges in between. The Borough Coat-of-Arms with its up-to-date motto “We Serve”, has as its crest a ship in full sail, its figurehead being a saucy-looking dragon with its tongue well out.

The sad tears which ornament the shield are said to represent those shed by the Huguenots who in the latter half of the seventeenth century found refuge beside the “Silvery Wandle” when religious persecution drove them from their own beloved land of France.

They worshipped in a little approximately one hundred year old building just off the High Street, which received the name of the “French Chapel”, to be replaced p. 109in 1882 by a “Memorial Chapel” built as a mark of gratitude to the Huguenot Settlers. It is now occupied by the firm of Crookes’ Laboratories Ltd. whose celebrated halibut-liver oil and capsules save many citizens of this realm from an early grave, so that the site having ministered to souls for nearly four hundred years has now undertaken the care of bodies. In March 1948 the laboratory made a gracious gesture to its former occupants by erecting a tablet commemorating the past associations.

The Huguenots did not only weep when they came to Wandsworth but proved themselves of real solid worth to the community, introducing market gardening, which still survives near my home in the form of Neal’s Nursery, where gentlemen who have undergone a rest cure or otherwise in the prison are greeted on their exit from those formidable doors by a view over quick-set hedges of neat rows of roses, cabbages, ornamental shrubs and youthful trees. A narrow path leads through the centre, where the wild “tea” plant sheds its soft foliage and wee mauve flower over the wooden palings. Here the public are permitted to wander and imagine themselves at a distinctly considerable distance p. 110from Charing Cross.

To those who walk a few yards farther on over Heathfield Road bridge and look over the low wall, a row of quaint cottages is revealed with little gardens running down to them filled with old-fashioned flowers and bushes cut into the form of birds.

Close by are the dangerous cross-roads at the top of Earlsfield Road, which have witnessed many accidents, the most spectacular being a baby-car which turned violently upside down and from which the four occupants emerged only very slightly harmed. Another event was the running of a lorry full tilt into the corner fence to the extreme surprise of the chickens who lived the other side. As it contained a variety of handcuffed convicts the situation was somewhat awkward. Neither of these gentlemen was apparently much hurt and they were provided with seating accommodation on the edge of the Common until another vehicle came to their rescue. It is very convenient that for a number of years a doctor has lived in a house on one of the corners.

It can be very windy there also as I found one day in a heavy gale when I was blown off the pavement into the street. Happily one of the many cars and p. 111lorries which in later years have torn across that spot regardless of cross-roads, thirty miles an hour limit and prettily worded exhortations erected by a trusting Borough Council, was not passing at the time. Simultaneously with my displacement from the pavement a long wooden fence on the opposite corner crashed to the ground with a horrid shattering which if there had been a passerby would have immediately rendered him a patient for the neighbouring doctor, or a candidate for the not far distant cemetery.

Another nasty experience befell me at that same corner on a recent cold Christmas morning as about 1.30a.m. I was returning from the Midnight Mass at St. Anne’s.

A car stood outside the corner house, apparently unoccupied. Yet a sinister foreboding seemed to tell me that all was not well. Somewhat shrinkingly I looked closer and saw that the driver’s door was wide open, and, a most unusual occurrence, lying flat back against the side of the car. Still more timidly I moved round the car and looked in at the open door. There, in the cold, dark loneliness of that early Christmas morning, I saw the driver fallen forwards over the wheel, ominously silent and still, his hands hanging limply p. 112down on either side, to all appearances dead! Had he had a fit? Was he murdered? Or was it a heart attack? Horrified, I retreated to the pavement considering my next move. Obviously I could not leave him there. At that nasty moment an angel in the form of a man came off the Common and advanced towards me, looking, it must be confessed, extremely taken aback when I addressed him, saying there was an unconscious person in the car beside us.

But the angel was possessed of considerable resource and presence of mind. Telling me to remain on the pavement, but not on any account to move away as he might want me for a witness, he went round to the open door of the car and spoke to the corpse. For a few moments all was silence, till apparently the angel shook the corpse, when it suddenly and revoltingly came to life and was most loudly and horribly ill.

“That’s right,” said the angel, “you will feel better now.”

The process was repeated several times until even if the corpse felt better I certainly felt worse. In desperation, shivering with cold, and somewhat squeamish under the pinafore, I enquired whether I might go home.

p. 113The angel came to me, telling me that I had probably saved a life that night, for if the corpse had awakened and tried to drive the car in that unhappy state he would certainly have killed himself or someone else. To this flattering statement the angel added that he lived quite near and would deal with the matter and that I must go home at once. I obeyed him and it did not take me very long either.

Over an extremely welcome cup of coffee I meditated on the extreme contrast between the beauty of the Midnight Mass with its lights and incense, the white vestments of the clergy gleaming with blue and silver orphreys, the lovely singing of the angels’ hymn, “Glory to God in the highest and in earth peace goodwill towards men”, the supreme moment when God incarnate, the Babe of Bethlehem came again verily and truth to his faithful people as they knelt before the altar - and so short a time later that sordid scene when man in celebrating that same Holy Birth had permitted himself to sink to so low a level.

A fortnight later on the same spot I met the angel again and recognising him endeavoured to express my heartfelt gratitude for his knight-errantry to a lady p. 114in distress.

The angel responded suitably, then added, “Had you gone when the lady and gentleman stopped their car and asked if they could be of assistance? They drove the man’s car on to the Common to park it for the night and took him and his wife home in their own car.”

“His wife”, I gasped. “I did not see her.”

“No,” replied the angel, “I am not surprised. She had fallen under the seat at the back of the car.”

Well! Well! Well! But it is evident that the Good Samaritan still walks this queer world of ours!

Close to this corner are long gardens at the back of a row of delightful old-fashioned houses whose ancient windows look on to the lime and chestnut trees bordering the Common where in winter youths in decorative pullovers play football often slithering and sliding on the sloshy ground. The owner of the end house, whose side window shows the view of a gracious antique spinning-wheel, walking in her garden where lilac trees hang over the high wall, found a child helping herself generously at the flower-beds. On being questioned, the infant replied, “We have no flowers at home, so father says it is only right we should have some of yours.”

p. 115But to return to the Huguenots, those stern God-fearing refugees of three hundred years ago. They brought not only market-gardening to Wandsworth and a strict observance of the religion of the Reformation, but also a very hush-hush process of felt hat-making, contrived from the hair of bears, beavers and rabbits. The fame of their achievement spread throughout the world and no one who considered himself anyone, would have been seen outside his door unless he were wearing a “Wandsworth hat”. But even greater glory was forthcoming when the Huguenot refugees added to their work the industry of making the red hats for the Cardinals, so essential a part of those exalted ecclesiastics’ equipment that the “Cardinal’s Hat” has become a symbol of his office.

A few recollections of the Huguenots still remain in Wandsworth, the chief being their ancient cemetery, where at the top of East hill the road forks on the one side in a straight line through miles of small shops to Vauxhall, on the other side to Clapham with its wide, very tame Common, incorporating the old parish church and attractive round pound, all embraced in the wide sprawling arms of the Borough of Wandsworth.

p. 116The noisy clanging trams which formerly swayed and jostled on one side of the little Huguenot cemetery have now passed to their rest, but a multitude of buses, roaring and squeaking, pass by continually, and on either side, cars, lorries, bicycles, contribute their share of shaking to the ancient dust which lies beneath the drooping trees, the soft green mounds of turf, and the grey tomb-stones bending sideways with honourable age. A little winding path passing through the cemetery connects the two main roads. Merely to set one’s foot upon it brings a sweet, unearthly calm, a peace set in the midst of turmoil, a sensation of eternal rest, of a glory of life everlasting.

On one side of the path a tomb ornamented with a stone crown and bow of ribbon bears the inscription, “Miss Sally Grose, Died December 21, 1704, Aged 10 years and 2 months.”

Funerals in those old days often took place at night and it must have been a grim and awe-inspiring sight to see the torchlit procession moving up East Hill to the dark tree-shadowed cemetery.

A more ancient name for the Huguenot Cemetery is Mount Nod, not because the bodies of its inhabitants p. 117are asleep, but probably owing to an ancient British place of worship, “Nudd” being the Pluto, or God of the setting sun. It is not difficult to visualise an ancient stone altar set on the top of the hill looking westwards across the sparsely inhabited valley to the wooded hill of Wimbledon, behind which the sun would sink majestically to rest in a glory of crimson and gold. What form of worship, what sacrifices and tears were offered at that stone altar none can tell, but to those who stand on the steps of St. Anne’s Church a quarter of a mile away, some of the glory of those sunsets can still be revealed, particularly on a night when angry storm clouds throw the crimson and gold into even wilder splendour.

Other memories of the Huguenots are retained only in the names “Huguenot Place” and the block of flats magnificently entitled “Huguenot Mansions”. The “French Horn”, a house of refreshment conveniently near, bears a less romantic remembrance.

The Presbyterians were first established in Wandsworth in 1572, over a hundred years earlier than the Huguenots, their coming being endorsed by a document entitled the “Orders of Wandsworth”. An old press cutting records p. 118that it was lawful to “assassinate any man who opposed the Gospel”. It is to be hoped the law is not still in force or the cemeteries would soon be over-crowded.

One zealous Nonconformist endeavoured to assassinate Sir Christopher Hatton, believed to be an enemy of Puritans. Unfortunately he stabbed another man by mistake, which made things very awkward all round.

But that was very long before we came to live in the Earlsfield Road. As an only child I suppose I was lonely, but never when I was at home, only when I was among other children whose teasing ways I never understood, so that school life was a veritable purgatory. At home I had Winkie, my cat and my beloved dolls, especially Eva, a white beauty, whose complexion early suffered from the effusion of my kisses, and Topsy, a demure looking little person with close black curls and a face of the same colour. These two important little people had to be undressed and provided with their nightgowns before my darling long-suffering Mother saw me safely tucked up myself.

I also had a perpetual delight in the shape of an extensive dolls’ house composed of orange boxes, where I continually changed the wallpaper, carpets and furniture, p. 119probably to the disgust of the miniature cook and housemaid who resided in the kitchen department with their cooking stove and other accessories, dressed in correct uniform - pink print frock, white cap and apron for cook; black frock, lace-edged apron and cap for the housemaid.

An early love of Fairs found expression in a social event entitled a “Pin Bazaar”, where my Mother was the sole customer and armed with quantities of pins, purchased for ten, fifteen or twenty of this commodity, various articles she did not require, mostly of my own manufacture - pen-wipers, pin-cushions, a few sweets, or miniature blotting books. At the end of the Sale, which I enjoyed hugely, the pins were all returned to Mother for a future occasion.

At the top of the garden I possessed a minute piece of landscape laid out as a farm, with fields, hedges and other agricultural necessities. Close by was my seesaw, on which my little friends performed much braver antics than myself and usually left me stranded out in the cold, wondering whatever people could see in tea-parties when the guests took no notice of their youthful hostess.

One day I decided to see how many times I could run round the seesaw without collapsing. Happily my godmother p. 120found me not long before this would have happened as I certainly did not feel too good when she rescued me.

My Christmas parties were more enjoyable, for Father used to give a wonderful conjuring entertainment, at least to our youthful eyes it was wonderful, with flowers growing miraculously out of empty pots, yards and yards of narrow strips of coloured paper, blue, green, yellow, red, purple, orange, flowing at a tap of his magician’s wand from a tinkling tambourine; and, best of all, quantities of pink and white sugared almonds falling like luscious rain from his Sunday tall silk hat.

I suffered from one serious drawback in the fact that my birthday came only four days after Christmas, with the result that although everyone expected both a Christmas and birthday present from me, they only returned me a combined effort to cover both days. Only those whose birthdays fall in that same period will appreciate to the full this devastating experience.

Earlsfield Road was more interesting than it is in these days when it seems to be more or less a speedway to Wimbledon, its straight mile-long length acting as a strong temptation to even the most conscientious motorist. But in those days there were few cars and the horse with his rhythmical, sometimes dancing, hooves, p. 121his glossy back, and occasional high-pitched laugh, supremely held his own.

One of my youthful obsessions was that I should see a horse fall down, a horrid sight which my youthful eyes had witnessed on more than one occasion, the dear patient beast, lying in a suffering heap, his eyes wide and terrified, a band of men hurriedly loosening his traces and lifting him to his feet. Happily I never saw anything worse than this, but it was more than enough for me.

Another horrid sight, fortunately very rare today, was a gentleman or even a lady who had enjoyed decidedly more than “one over the eight” and rolled gaily or half-unconsciously from one side of the road to the other, occasionally not disdaining the use of a lamp standard as a leaning post. These gentry I avoided like the plague, for fear of what might come next.

A lunatic boy with an enormous lolloping head, which moved continually from side to side with a sickeningly circular movement, was another of my youthful antipathies. Poor lad! He was always surrounded by a mob of children, pitifully endeavouring to shake them off, together with their cruel laughter and teasing.

p. 122Another suffering, unhappy creature passed our house one day, a large brown bear, led by a string, painfully walking down that long, long hill on his back legs. Whether animals have a future existence, a Paradise where they will have no fear and no torture, is known only to their Creator, but it is certain that one day when the Archangels sound the trumpets of judgement and the Great Books are opened, many a man and woman will be convicted before the Great Throne for torture and suffering inflicted on the animal creation.

One strange sight in this metropolitan area was a drove of pigs who waddled and grunted up the road, to the wild terror of my cat who was visiting a sweetheart in a house closeby and nearly lost all his nine lives at the sight of them.

The muffin-man passed down the road in those good old days, tinkling his bell, his long flat basket, with its green baize cover, perched precariously on his head.

A smiling little basket-maker used to move briskly along the pavement, his small form concealed by the large firm baskets he had made or mended, destined for the butcher, the baker or the grocer.

p. 123The descendants of the men who used to sit on the pavements mending cocoanut mats and cane chairs still come to the door with hanks of cane and twine in their hands, with the same unlikelihood of their job being a lasting one as earlier in the century. There is also an occasional visit from the gentry guaranteed to grind knives and scissors into a form that will never cut anything again and charge the earth for doing it.

The ingratiating individual still calls occasionally who has just laid a room for your neighbour down the road and has a roll of linoleum left over which he is prepared to sell at such a ridiculously low figure he is really giving it to you. My advice is to allow him to keep it for himself. One of our confiding maids bought his roll for several pounds and asked him to take it to her sister in a road about a mile away, to which he consented with overwhelming courtesy. The sister is still awaiting for the linoleum, or perhaps this is scarcely correct, as in the interval she has passed into a realm where linoleum is not required and our maid has married the sorrowing husband.

The man with his raucous cry, “Ripe Strawberries”, used to be a regular visitor during the season, but is p. 124now a very rare bird. The rag-and-bone man with his tinkling bell and pretty little pony is a far more familiar sight and seems to have an enormous number of twin brothers, exactly like himself. None of them has ever been seen to do any business, but his cart is always full of junk and mysteriously bulging sacks so that he and his kind evidently do not perambulate the road merely for their health.

The cats-meat man with his Pied Piper following of felines and canines, for the moment all strictly under the olive branch, no longer makes his round with his basket containing wooden skewers stuck with two revolting pieces of meat.

The person who used to put a small packet of impossible sized needles marked, “Please spend a penny on a poor old man”, has evidently long since been gathered to his fathers, so evidently have the many hefty, ruffianly looking beggars who used to frighten our smartly uniformed maids into giving them coppers from their wages. These of course may now be converted and working in Government offices complete with perms and shiny attaché cases containing their knitting.

A favourite pastime of mine in those early days p. 125was climbing up the staircase banisters on the outside - a precarious journey which was never discovered by an adult and one which I certainly should not care to attempt in these my maturer years.

Soon after my first decade, St. Anne’s held a missionary exhibition in the Town Hall. Together with other innocent children I had my face and hands well browned, and dressed in a sari took part in the missionary tableaux. In one scene the heavy front curtains of the stage caught in a tall screen bringing it down with a crash with me underneath it, from which I had to crawl in full view of the audience, who probably thought it was the kind of thing that happened in India.

In the refreshment department an hour or so later, the churchwarden remarked to my Mother that he had been in India and that in my make-up I was exactly like an Indian child. Seeing the fright I looked my Mother was certainly not flattered, especially as I was meant to appear of a very low caste indeed.

A few weeks later, with the aid of some enthusiastic small cousins, I reproduced the tableaux in our boxroom at the top of the house. The outdoor scenes were represented by branches of privet taken from the garden p. 126and stuck into cracks of the floor. The indoor ones, particularly the palace of the Rajah, were rich with everything colourful I could beg or borrow from my long-suffering Mother.

As the English lady doctor I miraculously restored the Rajah’s best wife to the land of the living and in the dispensary scene cured a variety of ailments. All went well until I opened a medicine bottle to fill it with one of my life-giving elixirs. Alas! It was one of Mother’s bottles which had once contained her evil‑smelling medicine and had not found its way to the dustbin. The efficient lady doctor staggered backwards, the patients gasped, and the audience, being nearer the door, made a hurried and undignified exit.

It was for occasions such as these that Mother made boxes of home-made sweets, dates, raisins and prunes stuffed with chocolate or cocoanut fondant; pink and white shaggy shapes made of castor sugar with walnut or hazel-nut or the top, flavoured with almond, lemon or chopped nuts. I loved to help her prepare them, but I fear my help was more in the line of continual tasting, rather than actual assistance.

My Mother, even in those days, was growing deaf, p. 127owing to scarlet fever when a school-girl, so that she feared that malady almost as much as the plague or smallpox. Great was her horror to find the boy next door was suffering from that disease and blowing bubbles from his bedroom window in the direction of my own.

We had various maids, smart girls with caps and aprons, who usually came from Mrs. Woodham’s Registry Office on St. Anne’s Hill, opposite the Sorting Office. Rumour said the lady found situations for the girls, then offered them something better. Her knowledge of the private business of all the gentry of the neighbourhood was prodigious and her generosity in retailing it perfectly astounding. Her discrimination between gentry and “real gentry” was unerring.

Often dreadful altercations took place in front of her door on the flight of steps leading up from the narrow pavement. Irate mistresses complained bitterly of the appalling maids she had sent them, and that she was never to send them any more like that again. To which she would reply loudly and emphatically that certainly she would not - never no more!

The mere sight of her filled me with unreasoning terror, but to do her justice she was always courteous p. 128to my Mother and sent her good maids who only left us to be married or to leave the neighbourhood.

One of these girls came from a family of ten, her father being a stalwart Battersea policeman. She was a thorough Cockney who described herself as being “not so green as she was cabbage-looking”. Her tales of her family’s doings were a continual delight.

“Mum went out to buy some bloaters. One wasn’t half a big ‘un, so she picked ‘im out by ‘is tail saying that one would do for her. And when ‘e was cooked ‘e was that salty she couldn’t eat ‘im. Serves you right, Mum, we all ses, fer being so greedy.”

It was in those early years that I was taken out of bed one evening and wrapped in many shawls, allowed to watch the mile-off spectacle of McMurray’s paper-mills in Garratt Lane flaming up into the blackness of the wintry sky. A few years previously a firework factory near the old inn, “The Leather Bottle”, caught on fire. That was real melodrama free and gratis for the youngsters, as the factory was burnt right out and the fireworks exploded in all directions. Real tragedy accompanied this super Guy Fawkes display, for several of the girl workers were killed. Their pitiful, shattered young bodies were buried in one grave in Magdalen Road Cemetery, just behind the Chapel. Each p. 129girl had a separate stone with her name, but they are all indecipherable now.

I did not see a great deal of my Grandfather in those days, as he usually called when I was at school and as no children were allowed in that Holy of Holies where he resided at Spencer Park it was not until the last year or two of his life that I forgot my fear of him and began to love him for his brilliant mind and the real affection he then showed me.

He often arrived at our house with a present for Mother of seakale beet, a detestable vegetable which tastes like solidified water. But as Grandfather with all his wealth, used to point out, it was so economical, as its lower halves could be cooked like celery and its uppers like spinach. Of all the other good things in his well-stocked garden, we saw very little, except an occasional basketful of crab-apples, or a few of his really delicious Spanish radishes, a winter delicacy in shape like a small turnip, coal-black on the outside and snow-white inside, sweet as a nut. I have never seen or heard of any since his day. Grandfather also had radishes which grew on little bushes and some strange vegetables called Colrabbi.

p. 130At Christmas time he sent to each of his grandchildren a five-shilling postal order, accompanied by a letter stating that this munificent gift must be put immediately into the Post Office Savings Bank. I hope I have never been a worse hypocrite than when I wrote a letter of fulsome gratitude by return. In those days one penny a week was considered quite sufficient pocket money for all boys and girls until well into their teens. Many quite charming toys, including small dolls and furniture for their residences, could be obtained for a penny and the gift of that coin by a generously-minded adult would provide an ecstatic half-hour in a toy-shop deciding how best to spend it.

The sweet-shop was usually patronised at the rate of a halfpenny or even a farthing a visit and I remember to this day the devastating experience of irretrievably dropping a whole pennyworth of cocoanut ice in a muddy spot on Wandsworth Common. Many years later a beneficent Borough Council marked almost the exact place with an Air Raid Siren whose screech was distinctly far-reaching.

Several people of my acquaintance were dragged from the wreckage of their homes after a bomb had exploded a hundred yards away, one of them being rescued from a p. 131blocked air raid shelter, from which she had torn away the emergency bricks with her own poor hands, being carried to safety by the tender pitiful arms of the air raid wardens. Although she returned to her shattered home at the first sign of dawn, it was scandalous to find how many of her possessions had already been stolen. Not that this was always the case, for in many Wandsworth homes, certified unsafe for habitation, where all the windows were gone and sometimes part of the walls, pictures, ornaments and furniture, mute and pathetic wreckage of war, remained for weeks, thick with the cruel, stifling bomb dust, yet otherwise untouched.

But this was many years after we school girls used to visit our favourite sweet shop “Bloss”, at the entrance to the High Street, next door to Garry the veterinary surgeon and close to Stampers, the coach builders who had the annual honour of sumptuously lining the coach of the Lord Mayor of London. It was only a few minutes run down East Hill to “Bloss’s”, but I fear it often accounted for our being home late from school at teatime. A succulent portion of that said teatime for me often consisted of thick slices of bread with a p. 132deep layer of raspberry jam, crowned with a generous supply of cream.

Bloss’s was also the official “tuckshop” of the Technical Institute opposite, to whose students it supplied ices and hot drinks, imbibed on high stools like a modern snack-bar. The Proprietor, whose kind heart thoroughly understood the ways of that baffling creature, the schoolboy, allowed a small credit on the hot drink account. When the height of this credit was reached, so gentlemanly were the whole proceedings that not a word was uttered, but instead of the requested lime or lemon drink the customer was confronted with a “peppermints” beverage, which when tasted proved to be nothing more exciting than plain hot water.

A sideline on the Bloss establishment was the sale of mulberry leaves from a tree in their garden for the nourishment of the silkworms which many boys and girls kept as pets for their soft golden silk. I possessed some once myself, but their fat, bloated caterpillar bodies as they grew to maturity gave me the shivers and I never really liked them.

Old Wandsworth was rich with many mulberry trees, another inheritance from the Huguenots who had carried p. 133on their silk industries in the district.

The registers of Wandsworth parish church contained many interesting entries, one being in 1545, that “kine were kept by the church” and let out to the inhabitants on hire, under sureties. A payment for repairing the parish umbrella is also recorded. Whether this useful and presumably sizeable article were used for sheltering dainty ladies stepping from their carriages on wet days, or to save the parson from a drenching when conducting funerals in the graveyard round the church, is unrecorded.

Many plague entries appear in these registers round that fatal year of 1665, a reminder that the village of Wandsworth so fair and peaceful amid its cornfields and orchards, beside its silvery, dancing river where many watermills made rippling music, lay on the main highway from London to Portsmouth. Very soon the dreadful disease made its appearance among the terror-stricken inhabitants; the awful red cross was painted upon their doors and as the sinister death-cart rumbled nightly down the street, accompanied with the raucous cry, “Bring out your dead”, the Wandsworthians bore out the bodies of those who perhaps but a few hours before had been healthy, loving husbands, wives, sweethearts or friends.

p. 134Two plague-pits were dug in the neighbourhood, where beneath the fitful light of a torch, the dead were tumbled in with frightened haste and no “benefit of clergy”. They probably contained not only the poor dreadful bodies of Wandsworth’s own victims, but also possibly some of those brought from the “villages’, of Westminster and Charing, or even farther, from the City of London itself.

That some of the victims may have escaped the death‑cart and mass burial is possible from the records of Wandsworth Parish Church, many of the entries bearing the letter “P” showing the owners of the names died from the Plague.

A number of other entries record death from drowning, probably due to the many mills which worked on the banks of the Wandle; thirteen corn mills being mentioned in Domesday Book. One sinister entry for January 2nd, 1670 records “Richard Langham, Miller, Murthred”.

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A curious fate befell these treasured registers of Wandsworth Parish Church. During the Second World War the Vicar and churchwardens quite rightly decided that the church safe did not provide sufficient security, so they were removed to the vaults of the Bank which stood p. 135conveniently next door. But strange and unpredictable are the ways of modern warfare. A high explosive bomb shattered the Bank to pieces. The vaults remained unharmed, but into them soaked quantities of water, used to quench the fire, so that when the precious registers were retrieved the pages with their historic entries were stuck fast together in a noisome mass of pulp. The church lost the top of her tower, but the safe remained inviolate and unharmed. It is evidently possible sometimes to be too careful in this modern world of unforeseen terror and catastrophes.

Wandsworth Parish Church can also claim its Martyrs, for on July 8th, 1539, the Vicar, John Griffiths, together with his chaplain and two members of his household, endured the terrible fate of being hanged, drawn and quartered in the neighbourhood of the Old Kent Road for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, which secured ecclesiastical predominance to the Crown, excluding the authority of the Pope. Legend relates that the unfortunate Vicar left his dying curse upon all things ecclesiastical in Wandsworth. A letter written on the date of his very unpleasant exit from things temporal, states, “This day the Vicar of Wandsworth p. 136suffered at St. Thomas à Watering with another Priest and two Friars. God have mercy upon them if it is his pleasure!” The last words suggest a rather unkind doubt. St. Thomas à Watering was a church on the Canterbury Road, now the Old Kent Road, where the pilgrims to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket watered their horses at a brook at the end of Albany Road.

The melancholy note of the deep-toned bell which sounds across the valley from the Roman Catholic Church of St. Thomas of Canterbury on West Hill bears the name of John Griffiths, the fine tower which enshrines it being erected in 1927 to his memory. Certainly the bell sounds as though in perpetual mourning.

The Friends’ Meeting House not far from the Parish Church, was first erected in 1674. Its successor, built in 1778 still remains, its heavy iron and wooden door leading direct from the pavement of the busy, noisy High Street into a colonnaded porch with stone floor. The actual Meeting House on the right with its half-panelled walls and Madonna blue cushioned seats receives a generous supply of sunshine from the great South window.

Beyond is the ancient graveyard, tended with loving p. 137care, where the white tombstones stand in a soft green lawn, bordered with a walled garden beautiful with many-coloured snapdragons and gracefully drooping wisteria. An astonishing peace and quiet pervades this old and tiny graveyard, a sense of calm and other worldliness, so that it is difficult to realise the incessant traffic and bustle of the London streets are literally but a few yards distant. Rather comes the remembrance of the Divine Words, “Come ye apart and rest awhile”.

The land was originally held by one Joan Stringer under the Lord of the Manor. She was buried in the little graveyard wrapped in a woollen shroud in accordance with the prevailing law passed in 1666 to encourage the woollen industry, “One or more of the relatives of a deceased person shall see within eight days after the death and make affidavit under the hand and seal of two or more witnesses that the person buried was buried in a woollen shroud and not a linen shroud.” The Act was repealed in 1814, a year before the Battle of Waterloo.

The Quakers found the first winter in their new Meeting House very chilly as the heating apparatus was an extremely chancey affair. On one occasion the caretaker’s wife was “one and a half hours a-laying p. 138and a-lighting and a-blowing the fire to a good heat”.

The caretaker’s house still stands next to the Meeting House, quaint and old-world, its front door opening straight into the street.

A famous member of the congregation was Robert Barclay, who founded the brewery of Barclay, Perkins and Company. He owned a large family of pretty children and a very handsome garden and altogether lived in great style.

Daniel Hanbury, the head of “Allen & Hanbury”, was appointed Reader of Scripture at the morning meetings in 1899. He and his daughter Rachel were among some of the last burials in the little graveyard.

Knowing the abstinence and sobriety of the Quakers and the relative smallness of the Wandsworth congregation, it is a little surprising to read that at a feast in 1728 eight gallons of beer were consumed and 5/4 spent on wine and tobacco.

On this occasion twenty-five pounds of “loyne of beef and suet” were provided for the total cost of 7/6; twenty-nine pounds of veal at 4 1/2d per pound; a peck of beans for 10d., “pudings” 9/3, and various other delicacies including “6 cabbidges, 6 colloflowers and cucumbers p. 139with salad.” The servants who waited at this feast came off rather poorly with 1/10d. between them.

Four of the “Friends” refused to share in this feast at the Rose and Crown but “stayed and ate by themselves at Ye Ram.”

“Ye Ram” still stands near by at the four cross roads, joined by the big brewery which bears its name. When the pungent, though not altogether unpleasant, smell of its brewing spreads in the direction of Charing Cross, we local inhabitants have a sure sign that the wind is in the due west and that mackintoshes and umbrellas may soon be needed. The magnificent horses which two abreast draw the brewery drays are always sleek, shining and perfectly groomed. They win many prizes for their owners. On one occasion when some of the beer barrels were being rolled down the opening in a pavement leading to the cellar, one of the horses decided he would like to follow the barrel. His descent into the cellar was fairly easy going but returning him to terra firma was distinctly a major operation.

p. 140Chapter VI

A fountain used to stand in the centre of the cross roads at Wandsworth High Street, where children delighted in pressing a knob in the metal lion’s head which produced a stream of water from his mouth. A very unhygienic metal mug to match was conveniently suspended on a chain, but careful mothers forbade their children to use it, saying it would give them sore mouths.

The famous Surrey Iron Railway, opened for traffic in 1803, started in York Road close by at the mouth of the Wandle and was the wonder of its time, having trucks run on rails drawn by horses, actually as many as five wagons of coal jogging merrily along behind one care‑free horse, at the amazing speed of four miles an hour, forerunner of the more modern invention of the railway, even now sometimes known as the “Iron Horse”.

Real “pea-soup” fogs were a familiar winter experience in Wandsworth in the early part of this century, thick p. 141and yellow, with a penetrating chill which permeated through the thickest clothing and found its horrid way into every corner of the house. Often it turned black with soot and smoke, so that the use of a handkerchief covered its white surface with myriads of black specks. Traffic crawled along, often in a long string of vehicles, a man with a lantern leading. At nightfall it was like a city of the dead, with nothing but the occasional careful footfalls of some pedestrian shuffling and coughing along his blackened-out path.

The modern Wandsworthian knows little of these things, for it is but rarely that such a fog as this descends upon his head.

When at the latter end of my schooldays I attended Putney High School, it was a terrifying experience on a foggy day to cross the centre of Wandsworth High Street, where five roads converged, with the trams coming in four directions. Unseen in the murky thickness, their warning bells could be heard all around, and the only solution was to “cut and run”, hoping for the best.

My father always hated fogs ever after my Grandmother took him out in one as a young man with a bronchial cold to see an old lady at Norwood, which p. 142nearly ended his career before it had begun. In later years he looked upon fogs as an invention of the devil, apparently specially staged for his downfall. In the years of failing health after his retirement Mother and I drew the curtains at the first approach of twilight, so that if there should be the faintest suspicion of a mist he would not see it. Dear Daddy! Always his brilliant legal brain was too shrewd for as and we would find him peering between the curtains fully aware of even a far-off wisp of mist. So allergic was he to fogs that Mother and I have often declared the word would be found written across our hearts on our decease, as Mary of England is reputed to have said that ”Calais” would be inscribed upon her own.

I took a wicked delight in collecting the evidence of thick fogs in most unlikely places, including one which descended on me straight from the bright blue sky one golden morning on the Cornish cliffs. New items in this collection were continually paraded before my Father to show him that his pet aversion existed and flourished in other places besides this dear London of ours.

Close to the five cross roads in Wandsworth High Street was one of the ancient mills on the Wandle, still p. 143in my more youthful days engaged as flour mills. A lovely rambling garden ran beside the homestead, where bees worked amid the rainbow coloured blossoms and ancient trees leant over the river. Summer visitors to that house always returned home laden with armfuls of flowers, distinctly less embarrassing than the occasion when a Vicar of St. Anne’s attending a wedding reception at Arding & Hobbs, was presented with the bride’s bouquet to place in the church and returned from that busy shopping centre with the bridal lilies carried in his arms without any wrapping to shield them.

Another old picturesque house was also the property of the mill-owners, its ancient door opening straight into the street - the beginning of Garratt Lane, where formerly hedges sweet with honeysuckle sheltered the fields. Today many hundreds of small shops and tiny dwelling places, numerous public houses, several bus routes and two cemeteries, mark its curving length to the noise and turmoil of Tooting Broadway.

The old Mill House, with its quaint rooms just below street level was at one time the local Creche, more familiarly the Wandsworth and appropriately known as the “Wandsworth Screech”.

p. 144Round the corner in the High Street was the Old Town Hall, which still stands next to its very ”top drawer” brother, Wandsworth Civic Centre; a model building, complete with carefully kept flower beds which give a lovely touch of colour to the neighbourhood.

The porch to the Old Town Hall with its glass roof top and three open sides was a veritable wind trap, and was the scene of a regrettable incident one stormy night when our former churchwarden’s wife, while waiting for a cab to take her home after a parish festivity, had her dainty frock and petticoats blown completely above her head.

Many of our parochial gaieties took place in that old Town Hall, before we had a sufficiently large parish hall of our own.

One of my earliest recollections was a Borneo Missionary Exhibition, largely organised by our friends, the Sharp family, two of whose daughters went to work in the diocese of Sarawak in that wild tropical land, where their brother was Archdeacon. Many were the hair-raising tales they told of the vast jungle, in which no roads seemed to exist and most of the traffic took place on the mysterious rivers, where orchids drooped from the over‑ p. 145hanging trees and the native villages consisted of one immensely long hut, raised high on stakes to discourage visits from the snake family and any friends or neighbours who might fancy another human head for their collection.

Head-hunting being their best loved industry, young ladies refused to accept the attentions of any gentleman who did not have the requisite number of human heads, properly smoked and neatly attached by the hair to his girdle. It is astonishing how very small and how very black these heads became when smoked by means of the Sarawak recipe.

Admiral Wonham, who lived on West Side, used to tell hair-raising stories of those old head-hunting days when his ship took him on business to that alarming island. When friends and neighbours, enemies and the naturally deceased did not provide sufficient heads for the family or private collection, envious eyes were cast upon the British Cemetery where continual guard of any new-made grave had to be kept. One British resident, whose house followed the prevailing fashion of being built high above the ground, was so unfortunate as to lose his wife. In order to keep her poor remains intact he buried her deep in the ground beneath the p. 146house and set a reliable watch to keep guard each night. At the end of two years the faithful husband felt he might with safety withdraw the guard. But in the morning the grave had been rifled and the poor head removed.

Those were the days when at a native banquet the centrepiece of the table decoration might be reminiscent of the latter end of St. John the Baptist, consisting of one or more freshly obtained human heads, nattily decorated with bright green leaves.

Yet in spite of these unpleasant tendencies the Sharps never came to any harm and such was the honour of those wild savages that Miss Caroline would sometimes in her missionary work sleep alone in a room in a Borneo village, the only white person within a range of miles, a native woman lying all night as guard on the outside threshold of her door. The guest room in which she was thus received usually contained as a special mark of honour and respect, the family basket of smoked heads, swinging above the bed. The basket being always extremely shallow, was inclined to sway alarmingly on a windy night, so that Caroline lay in terror that one of the heads, which seemed to peep over the side p. 147at her, might roll down on her own innocent person.

Admiral Wonham, at that long-ago exhibition delighted also in telling the story of a noble lord who on visiting Sarawak, saw a scruffy-looking white man sitting on a fence smoking an ancient “naughty wicked pipe” and paying no respect to the representative of the peerage. To whom his Lordship said, “Here, you, haven’t you any manners? Don’t you know I am Lord Elgin?” To whom the scruffy one replied, “Indeed! Well, I am the Bishop of Sarawak.” And so he was - the famous Bishop Mcdougal, to whom the present church in Borneo, which bore torture and persecution with such unflinching loyalty from the Japanese in the Second World War, inherited much of the faith and courage he had instilled into its ancestors.

Another early recollection of old Wandsworth Town Hall was a Children’s Fancy Dress Ball, for which Messrs. Arding & Hobbs of Clapham Junction, familiarly known as “Ardinanobbs” transformed my white silk Confirmation dress into the gorgeous apparel of a Fairy Queen, with a golden crown set with such huge pearls that had they been real, would have made me a rival of the Rothschilds in riches.

p. 148Many gay and happy Bazaars took place there in which the discreet but decidedly drab colouring of the Hall was concealed by scenery of a Tudor village, an old-time garden, or an amazing decor of the countries of the world, where an African kraal appeared quite happily between a Japanese tea garden and an Indian Bazaar. For one of these occasions a lady performed the amazing feat of making 180 yards of crochet.

Mother and I often took a bag and basket stall, the baskets all her own handiwork, made of raffia, guaranteed to last at least thirty years.

On one such occasion we dressed as South Sea Islanders, with the swirling raffia dresses of many colours, ornamented with bead necklaces and imitation tropical flowers in our hair. The effect was described as most realistic, only slightly dimmed in glory by the Vicar, Canon Eglington, referring to us as the “Haystacks”.

Canon Eglington, “Eggie-Peggie” as he was often affectionately called, was a real caution, a man of great saintliness of character, possessed with vast stores of humour, unbounding kindness, a certain brusqueness of manner and an indomitable will. As an example of the latter, he changed St. Anne’s from p. 149being what was known as “Broad Church” into an Anglo‑Catholic parish in about two Sundays, a feat which not one in a thousand of his clerical brethren could have accomplished without losing half the congregation.

His appearance on arrival was distinctly sketchy, so much so that my Mother seeing him for the first time at the top of our road mistook him for the dustman, but he soon smartened up, until he even reached the sartorial height of silk bows on his slippers.

His first letter to the parish, before his arrival, sounded the key-note of his faith and his life: “I shall have nothing very fresh to bring you except my belief in the Gospel of the love of God in Christ, and to tell you that when we have seen Jesus we have seen God. That is my one and supreme conviction.”

Elsewhere in the magazine he described his occupations in the parish he was leaving - St. Paul’s, Lorrimore Square: “Inspector of drains and gutters, window examiner, goat-driver (this last occupation being the preventing of said animal making its breakfast from the geraniums round the War Memorial), kid-chaser (human kids these, not the offspring of the afore-mentioned goat), weed extractor and couple disturber” (presumably p. 150not a popular role, this last task).

His powers were such that even the gentlemen of the parish were persuaded to attend the Bazaars in fancy dress, astonishing and magnificent raiment, often hired from Clarksons. The suggestion of a member of that renowned firm that one of the churchwardens should appear as Mephistopheles, his personal appearance lending itself admirably to the personification, did not meet with the enthusiasm that might have been expected. One respectable sidesman, brother of an Archdeacon, appeared dressed as Bill Sikes, or some such ruffian, carrying his dinner in a large red handkerchief with such realism that he was nearly turned out into the street as an unsuitable visitor.

Canon Eglington’s sister was the opener at one of these Bazaars, a thrilling office which I have performed on various occasions. Instead of the customary bouquet presented by a frightened silk-clad child who resents the kiss she is given, Mrs. Bulstrode, on the instigation of her naughty brother, was presented with a Christmas pudding in a basin and two rabbits dangling from a string. Although the latter were quite defunct, they happily still wore their fur coats.

At another Bazaar a blind man, wearing dark glasses p. 151and a heavy muffler, presented himself at the door saying he would like to be taken round the hall. Canon Eglington, with his usual kindness, undertook the task and a little handicapped by a stiff knee, dragged the somewhat decrepit blind man up the long flight of stairs into the main hall, introduced him to the stall-holders, describing the scenery and the fancy dresses, at the end of which effort the “blind one” enquired in a familiar voice quite different from his previous tones, “Ever been had?”, revealing himself to “Eggie-Peggie’s” disgusted awakened eyes as one of his own assistant clergy.

His three curates adored him, obeying his every word and wish from love, as much as from a sense of-duty. On one occasion a lady called to see him and sat long in the Vicarage study discoursing about her soul. But Eggie-Peggie’s curiously light brown eyes, with their boyish twinkle, had perceived some very masculine boots beneath the fair penitent’s long skirts, so that he played up well to the occasion and only when she had exhausted her repertoire did he reveal that he had recognised his naughty curate arrayed in the house‑keeper’s clothes.

p. 152One year the parish went all “Olde Englishe, by the simple expedient of weird and wonderful additions to “Ye handbooke” - “Ye St Anne’s Fayre to be held at Ye Wandsworth Towne Hall. Ye Trams and ye Busses pass ye Doores.”

“Ye Busses” still passe “Ye Doores”, but happily for all concerned “Ye Trams” have passed into well‑earned oblivion.

One of Arthur Eglington’s first efforts in the parish was to instal a new heating apparatus of which achievement he wrote, “Although people may think their Vicar a nasty High Churchman, they will at least remember he looked after their bodies as well as their souls.” He also suggested that electric bathchairs for himself and his three clergy would enable them to get round the parish more comfortably.

Typical of his whimsical personality was the truly divine gift of often laughing at himself, for example, the following notice in the parish magazine, “We desire to thank two of our best friends for the gift of matting along the South Aisle, it was a good thing done, for the Vicar nearly cracked his skull one morning walking up the aisle on the old matting. Somebody said it p. 153was a matter of interest, for at least they would have ascertained if there were anything in it. They would never discover otherwise.”

So devoted was he to his parish that it was a major operation to persuade him to take a holiday. On one occasion when this had been successfully manoeuvred, an admiring lady wrote him several “billets doux”, to which he sternly replied, “If I get any more of these I shall publish them in the Parish Magazine.” And he would have certainly done so, to the extreme delectation of the congregation if the lady had not realised that in her case the course of true love was hopeless.

His announcement on the Sunday before a Harvest Thanksgiving that anything would be acceptable for the decorations down to a pair of kippers, brought a response from “Mrs.” Churchwarden, who tastefully suspended that succulent delicacy on a wire from the chancel screen close to the Vicar’s stall. Preaching on the same occasion at the Children’s Service, Eggie-Peggie startled his youthful congregation by enquiring if they could see a cow in church. After much craning of necks failed to locate the quadruped, he pointed to the groceries tastefully arrayed beneath the pulpit. “There’s your p. 154cow, children, in that bottle of Bovril.”

At another Children’s Service he delighted his youthful audience by picturing the treasures found in an average boy’s pocket, asking them to name some of them. As each was mentioned he took it out of his own pocket - string, knife, marbles, sticky sweets, bits of wire, the stump of a pencil and kindred objects.

The Sunday School Treat to Bognor consisted in hiring a whole train into which were packed mothers, friends, relatives, members of the congregation and hundreds of excited children, who usually ate the capacious lunch brought from home by the time they had been travelling for half-an-hour. Before leaving the Church the Canon held a short service in which, from the pulpit, he warned the children not to eat the heads and tails of the shrimps.

Arrived at Bognor everybody on leaving the train was lined up in procession and, headed by the Salvation Army Band loaned for the occasion, marched gleefully through the streets to the Front. I am ashamed to say that my father’s friend, the Vicar’s Warden, with his wife and myself were cowardly enough to walk on the pavement trying to look as though we did not belong to Canon p. 155Eglington’s circus. Nor did we lunch on mushy sandwiches from paper bags sprawling on the beach, but with our feet under a well-appointed table in one of the best hotels. There are limits even to the loyalty owed to one’s Vicar.

One Sunday evening he deserted St. Anne’s to preach at Walworth, where one of his former curates was Vicar. Unhappily he delayed his arrival, appearing at later than the eleventh hour in the vestry where clergy and choir were anxiously awaiting him. Diving into his coat pocket he extracted a large black bottle. Dumping it on the vestry table he remarked to the embarrassed Vicar,

“There you are, my boy! I know you like a glass of beer for your supper.”

I fear that Eggie-Peggie was not above bestowing nicknames, including that of “Old Butter-Beans”, for a neighbouring Vicar. Of the next parish to St. Anne’s he once wrote, “We have heard it called St. Barnabus, or St. Bananabus, but fortunately never St. Barabbas.”

His choirmen received a surprise one Sunday evening when Eggie-Peggie surreptitiously introduced a bugler just behind the choir stalls, who joined in the service with such dramatic suddenness that the choirmen remarked afterwards he practically blew off their back hair.

p. 156This might have been a major tragedy, for some of these gentlemen had very little back hair to lose.

Arthur Eglington’s scheme for the re-decoration of the large, magnificently proportioned chancel of St. Anne’s was not among his many successes. To be truthful it was really dreadful. His architect described it as Byzantine, but it far more resembled the worst modern effort on an arty-crafty teashop. Unhappily the poor fellow had none of the coloured marbles, liquid gold and semi-precious stones with which the Byzantine artist was able to work, so used paint instead - crude buttercup yellow, startling reds and greens, an inferior gold which quickly turned to earth colour and an anaemic pink, the latter producing specially catastrophic effect upon the angels in the ceiling. Having plastered all the stonework of the chancel in these colours, he placed above the sculpture of the Last Supper at the High Altar a colossal figure of the Lord Christ, seated in judgement in a position distinctly reminiscent of Buddha, whose lower garments took exactly the folds of a crinkly cornflour blancmange. This travesty of a figure of the Blessed Redeemer held in his hand an object supposed to be an orb. The architect, on it first being completed, p. 157asked me what I thought it resembled. Being young and foolish and apparently somewhat lacking in tact I replied with the exact truth,

“Well, to my mind it looks like a sprouting onion.”

Obviously this was not the right answer and the questioner seemed to take rather a dislike to me.

This same endeavour to speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, inherited from my legal father and encouraged by my Mother and other people anxious for the welfare of my often erring soul, brought me into trouble on another occasion. Being commissioned by a Missionary Society to write a scene for a Pageant set in the Arctic regions, I was invited to meet the Bishop of that far off diocese to gain some local colour. Happily his Lordship was in England on leave and proved to be all he was reputed - a man of great charm and spirituality, whose self-sacrificing labours for his chilly diocese were certainly not exaggerated.

In the course of his talk he drew me a neat little diagram, asking me what I thought it represented. The most profound study on my part could only liken it to one object, so that trying to look as intelligent as possible, I replied, p. 158“A poached egg, my Lord.”

Over the Bishop’s charming, expressive face appeared a look of deep disappointment.

“Oh, no, it is a walrus hunter hiding behind a block of ice.”

With a laudable endeavour to improve the situation, I apologised,

“Well, I have never seen a walrus, only a gentleman in our choir whom we thought resembled one, nor of course have I ever seen a walrus hunter. Otherwise undoubtedly I should have recognised him in your picture.”

This time I had evidently given the right answer and all was peace and joy.

To return to our massacred chancel! In the centre of the ceiling the intersections were cut off, forming a flat surface on which was painted a lamb, whose front foot juggled in a most unseemly way with a Resurrection banner, the animal in question being locally known as the “Antelope”, or the “Greyhound”. Presumably somewhat overawed at the final effect the architect placed wooden trellis work such as might be used for climbing roses or Virginian creeper, over the two East windows that the light might fall more kindly on his Byzantine masterpiece.

p. 159One touch of real beauty was the Dresden blue colouring behind the cream sculptured figures of the ”Last Supper” above the High Altar, which still was retained when Father Warren, the succeeding Vicar, had the whole chancel washed over in a pleasing scheme of cream and blue and the trellis work removed, releasing an amazing amount of presumably holy dirt and restoring the view of the trees through the clear glass.

Another innovation by Canon Eglington was the Annual Grand Children’s Fancy Dress Ball held in the Wandsworth Baths, the business part of this establishment being firmly boarded over during the winter months. At these parties the Canon helped himself to a wooden spoon from the refreshment counter, clinging to it all the evening as if it were a mascot. All adults, except the long-suffering Sunday School teachers, were ordered off the floor, parents and friends being allowed to watch the enjoyment of their own particular Peter or Dorothy from the gallery, incidentally bruising themselves from head to foot on the iron girders, all for the price of one shilling. On occasions these parties were honoured by the presence of Dr. Garbett, Bishop of Southwark, afterwards Archbishop of York, and his p. 160gracious, much-loved mother.

Of Canon Eglington’s personality many stories can be told - of the huge bunch of violets which arrived for my mother on Christmas Eve, or his appearance one dark night on our doorstep with what appeared to be a long black snake turned round his middle, but which proved to be a deaf aid he had borrowed for my Mother. Unfortunately it made her very giddy, upon which misfortune the Canon, with his customary twinkle, remarked it was a pity as he certainly did not wish to make such an estimable lady any more giddy than she was already.

We saw him in many unconventional situations, such as hearing confessions by the light of a candle stump precariously lodged on the end of a pew at the back of the church, while in the chancel one of my sacred plays was being rehearsed, complete with thunder and lightning effects. Another memory is of finding him seated in a ditch on the broad highway, somewhere between Wandsworth and the coast, with his churchwarden in attendance, while being sought far and wide by the Parochial Outing, of which he was the supposed organiser. Several times on those outings the charabanc stopped at various villages and houses where his former parishioners resided, when he “popped p. 161out” for two minutes, returning with marmalade, pots of honey, pickles and other oddments and a kindly smirk, like the cat who has licked the top off the milk.

His arrangements for interviewing a certain prospective curate were certainly unique, as he appointed the interview on the steps of the Kennington Theatre, mentioning he would be easily recognisable “seeing I am not handsome.”

Vivid were the blushes of his staff when he referred in a sermon to the probability that the junior members of the congregation would doubtless prefer to confide their spiritual difficulties to his handsome curates rather to an old fossil like himself. The “old fossil” was at that time in his early fifties and in his rugged features and penetrating, infinitely kind, strangely light brown eyes was the reflection of his unique personality.

The end came with tragic suddenness - a few days in a nursing home near our house, an operation in King’s College Hospital from which he never recovered consciousness and at the early age of fifty-four, after years of acute suffering of which few but his intimate friends were aware, he passed beyond the Veil. The news reached me as I stood among the ferns beneath the may tree in our garden, and the sudden tolling of St. Anne’s bell through the still p. 162August air warned the parish that their beloved friend and Vicar had been called to his rest.

The great church, large as a small cathedral, was crowded for the funeral and great was the surprise of the large number of clergy who attended that in his will he had ordered that every Priest who attended his burial should receive two pounds.

“Isn’t our Eggie-Peggie a scream?” one of his predecessors had remarked after preaching at a Festival Service. And so he was - and a great saint as well!

My first Vicar at St. Anne’s, when I was very young, was Norman Campbell, a genial, regal-looking Scotchman, of the clan of Argyll, six feet four inches in his socks, with a close-cut beard, a playful disposition, and a shining top hat. On the one occasion when his tremendous height was completed with a workman’s cloth cap, the effect was so appalling that one of his lady workers nearly passed out. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say he knew everyone in his huge parish and his progress down a street was like a royal procession, with the famous hat being removed with a gracious bow every few yards. Each churchgoer received a visit from him at least once a year, if only for ten minutes. He and p. 163his four curates left the Vicarage every day after lunch, to visit, each in his own constituency. One of these clergy, later an Archdeacon in a northern diocese, has described his introduction to the parish.

“In the course of about two hours we must have made about thirty visits. It was like being driven before a gale. He would ring the bell and if no steps were heard within about thirty seconds he was off to the next house. No visit seemed to last longer than two minutes. As soon as we were in, there was rich flow of enquiry, humorous raillery, all the members of the family were mentioned, I suppose my name must have come in somewhere, but in what seemed a flash we were out again with “Not at all, not at all!” from Norman Campbell - the parting phrase is worth recalling - it was the answer to apologies which were never made and never could be made, because there was never time!”

It was on one of these parochial visitations by a junior curate that he called when an elder daughter had just washed her long and abundant hair. The young lady with great presence of mind, dived under the table where her brothers and sisters were groaningly pursuing their homework. The long heavy table cloth of the period p. 164completely hid her somewhat sketchy apparel and streaming hair so that she amused herself during the unsuspecting curate’s visit by pinching the legs and ankles of her brothers and sisters, daring them to betray her presence.

It was in Norman Campbell’s regime that Ann Sayers reigned in all her glory, trailing a short black train behind her. Officially entitled a “pew opener”, apparently inherited from the days when the seats were tall with neat little doors, she fussed round the worshippers, welcoming the elite into their seats, for which seat they had each paid one guinea a year and inserted their visiting card in a neat little brass frame on the bookrest in front of them. Even so, no one was permitted to enter even their own seat until she gave permission. To the lesser fry who inhabited the free seats Ann Sayers paid no attention whatsoever.

As a sideline she was an upholsteress and occupied a strategic window not far from the church from which the comings and goings of the parishioners were kept well under observation. Weddings and funerals were her speciality and she kept a best bonnet with strings tied under the chin for these occasions, ornamented with a coquettish white feather for the matrimonial ceremonies p. 165and discreet black for the internments, extremely convenient for those desiring to be up-to-date in parochial affairs and who saw her pass down the street.

Ann Sayers’ exact duties in the church were uncertain but seemed chiefly to consist of getting into everybody’s way at any important function, to such an extent that at the wedding of the churchwarden’s son he became so confused he wondered whether he were being married to her, or to the bride of his choice.

She divided weddings into two distinct classes - “carpet” and “ordinary”. For the former an imposing length of crimson felt was unrolled from the chancel steps to the far-off west door, that the bride’s train might trail gracefully upon it. Marriages of lesser degree were distinctly beneath the pale and had to put up with bare stones, their skirts gathering up a considerable amount of the white hearth stoning with which they were then covered.

Ann Sayers’ reign began in the time of the Reverend Dr. Chave, the owner of the pet pig, whose perfections were often extolled to his successors by way of rebuke in the sentence beginning, “Me and the Doctor  . . . “ and one of her favourite remarks was “Ann Sayers will do that”. Her far-reaching whisper, “Suck it”, to the fashionable bride, complete with red carpet, organ, choir, masses of p. 166lilies and orange-blossom, whose miserable third finger had swollen out of all proportion to the wedding ring, had to be heard to be fully appreciated. The occasion on which she sniffed loudly and long, prowling round the font, during a Baptism, bent completely double, saying repeatedly, “Dreadful smell of gas,” nearly caused the reverend Canon who was conducting the service, to drop the baby, as he struggled with suppressed and unholy mirth.

One of the old lady’s special duties was to collect the pew rents, for which she journeyed from house to house, with her black bonnet, voluminous cape and a shiny bag of distinctly legal appearance.

The good old soul was not averse to a polite drop of “Scotch”, which she drank with great appreciation and much nervous terror, starting up should there be a ring at the front door for fear it might be the Vicar. At the Old People’s Outing she shone with great glory as “one of the staff”, obliging by a recitation reputed to be as long as one of the Vicar’s sermons.

Another celebrity was “Old Charlie”, whose appetite on these and similar occasions was prodigious. A well-meaning person who endeavoured to draw him into conversation just as strawberries and cream had been p. 167served, received the rebuke, “These moments ain’t to be lost”.

Of Norman Campbell’s assistant clergy I have varied recollections. The first I remember, now an Archdeacon known by the parochial Church Lads’ Brigade as “Lucky Luke”, had a wonderful gift for teaching the Faith and I owe him much. With a group of girls from St. Anne’s Catechism, which he founded, he prepared me for Confirmation with extraordinary care and patience. Of the private interview which he held for each of us I can only remember sitting one end of the long table in the Vicarage dining‑room, while he from the other end enquired whether I had special sins on my conscience. My childish heart beat agitatedly as I hurriedly looked back over the few years of my life, while he comfortingly assured me that if there had been anything very dreadful I should have easily remembered it.

Mr. Bolton, one of his successors, was another friend of my family, a tall, delightful, occasionally absent‑minded product of Harrow and Trinity College, Oxford, with a most infectious laugh, which could set a whole theatre laughing anew when it thought it had finished. He was highly amused, though distinctly startled, one p. 168day in the vestry when having completed a marriage ceremony, the best man gave him a staggering nudge in the ribs, pressing a half-sovereign - they were real gold in those days - into his hand with the remark,

“Here you are, old boy. I can see that’s what you are waiting about for.” The foundations of Harrow and Oxford must have shaken.

In those days I was a naughty little schoolgirl who adored everything connected with my beloved church, but who was not above being afflicted with giggles on inappropriate occasions, an unfortunate characteristic inherited from my merry young Mother.

Especially do I remember the occasion when Mr. Bolton became muddled with the pronunciation of “Deuteronomy” in the reading of the first Lesson at Evensong and after various tongue-twisting attempts gave it up as hopeless. His unhappy endeavours to say “British Bishops” on another occasion were pathetic, but I would defy anyone who once went wrong on that particular phrase to get it right without much effort.

The senior curate at that time was Mr. Austen, descendant of the celebrated “Jane”, who delighted in collecting blood-curdling tales from the poorer part of p. 169the parish to retail to Mr. Bolton at Vicarage meal-times, a procedure which almost put that poor young gentleman off his feed. Yet that same Mr. Bolton later became a chaplain in the first World War, courageously facing death and seeing it in its most horrid forms. It is not always the man who, naturally immune to dreadful sights, or in a moment of sudden emergency, wins the Victoria Cross, is the greater hero, but the one to whom the sight of blood and death give unspeakable torture, who is often the greater, though usually unacknowledged hero.

Mr. Bolton always seemed to be the person to take weddings which roamed a little from the beaten track. At one time a nervous bridegroom, trying like Adam of old to put the blame on Eve, nudged his bride with a loud whisper,

“Buck up, old girl, buck up.”

In those good old days when a marriage Registry Office was regarded as an ante-chamber to Hell, the number of weddings at St. Anne’s at such festivals as Easter, Christmas and Whit Sunday were astounding. At that time all marriages had by law to be celebrated before 3 p.m. so that it was often impossible for the p. 170clergy to fit them all in between the services. Sometimes as many as seven weddings were held at once, the couples kneeling in a long row, the same service being used for all, with of course the necessary individual portions being said separately for each bride and groom.

Then was Ann Sayers in the height of bliss, as before the ceremony she marshalled brides, grooms, bridesmaids, best men and visitors into their proper places, the while the clergy waited on the chancel steps, fervently hoping the names on the papers in their hands corresponded with the neat slips on the row of kneelers at their feet. Perhaps Ann Sayers’ greatest hour was before the procession to the Vestry to sign the registers, when in a voice like a sergeant-major on parade she announced, “Brides and bridegrooms, come forth!”

Among Baptisms taken by Mr. Bolton was one held while the Vicar was on holiday. On his return the mother remarked, “Whiles you was away, Sir, I took the childer up to the church and your young man up there did what he could for them.”

It was about this time that a lady in the parish named Mrs. Griffin presented her startled husband with triplets. For their names she patriotically chose, p. 171”Red”, “White” and “Blue”. But Norman Campbell, foreseeing trouble for the innocent infants should they go through life as “Red Griffin”, “White Griffin” and “Blue Griffin” respectively, courteously reminded the patriotic one that Holy Church can only baptise with a really Christian nomenclature, so that the three each received a second name. I rather believe the whole thing was rather too much for the unfortunate little Blue Griffin and he departed hurriedly out of this mortal life.

One baby taken to be baptised took an instant dislike to the whole procedure, nearly yelling the church down. The nervous young curate on duty that afternoon - it was Easter Sunday with many children to be baptised, all rather inclined to join in the chorus - said hurriedly to the mother, “Baby may be hungry. You had better sit down at the back of the church and feed him.” The embarrassed mother meekly obeyed, using the method which Eve employed for her children - no polite feeding bottle held at an angle.

An old-fashioned lady in the parish decorated the font on every occasion with a generous underlay of moss, which seeing she used the same moss year in and year out, emitted an odour decidedly of the earth, earthy. One p. 172of the clergy, losing his way amid the said moss, flowers and foliage which completely concealed the real purpose of the font, dabbed a huge piece of the moss on the face of the baby he was baptising. One of his colleagues, a sufferer from hay fever, used to punctuate the ceremony with violent sneezes, like very secular “Amens”. Owing to this same affliction he always removed the lovely, heavily scented lilies from the High Altar before celebrating the Holy Communion.

Chapter VII

p. 173Owing to my Mother’s deafness we always sat in the front seat in church. One Sunday morning when she and my Father were away, Winifred, a schoolgirl as naughty as myself, was with me. The other end of the pew being against a pillar, a little door led into it, opening into the aisle. The old gentleman who habitually inhabited the corner forgot to push home the bolt, with the consequence that when he knelt down the door opened and he shot out a considerable distance into the aisle. A piece of silk embroidery, coloured according to the Church’s season and entitled a “pulpit fall” hung from the desk on which the preacher placed his notes. True to its name, it fell off one Sunday, narrowly escaping Mother’s best hat.

Norman Campbell, true aristocrat that he was, treated all his people alike and might be seen, complete in his silk hat and clerical frock coat, picking up and kissing p. 174a poor, not over-clean child, or helping to push some sketchy-looking woman’s pram, full of rags and bones, up a steep hill, a sight that nowadays would bring reporters and photographers from miles away. Nor did he ever refer to his staff as “curates”, but always as “colleagues”.

One of his predecessors in the next parish, afterwards Canon Browne of Roehampton, used to ride down Garratt Lane, then bordered with hedges, on a coster-barrow.

At a Mission held at St. Mary’s our own daughter church, we had as Chief Missioner, a Suffragan Bishop, assisted by Canon Rhodes Bristow, who was helped on his way one evening by one of the natives, with the encouraging remark, “Say, Mate, if yer wants that there bloke in the short trousers, he’s gone round the corner.”

One priest, another famous Missioner, used to become exceedingly excited and bang the Bible with his fist and give violent kicks to the pulpit. No chance for forty winks when he was preaching!

In my childhood the district round St. Mary’s was very rough, if not dangerous and one of our clergy had to run for his life to the church for safety when he p. 175chivalrously interfered to protect a lady who was having a first-class fight with her spouse in the centre of the road. A few streets away my Mother was once pelted with rotten potatoes, a sure sign she was not very welcome.

The doors of some of the houses in the poorer parts of the parish when opened, frequently set free such an odour of cabbage, onions, stale tobacco, half-dried washing, inefficient sanitation and the like, that I have sometimes stood literally petrified, even forgetting my errand. One friend of my Mother’s, who bravely entered one such house, sat down and promptly fainted. And she was not one of the fainting sort either.

The inhabitants of these homes were quite oblivious to their shortcomings, nor were they in the least bit reticent about their family history, their very unpleasant interiors, or revolting operations.

Said one woman to me of a child about seven or eight standing beside her:-

“Ah! Miss, he have always been delicate like. Got a awful cough! It will be the death of him one of these days. He will soon be in his box a-kicking up the daisies.”

As I looked with an inward shudder at the poor, p. 176pathetic, little fellow, I fear I remembered the tale of the woman who said to a kindly district visitor:‑

“He’s got a cough on him like an old empty barrel. You just cough for the lady, Jimmie!”

My confirmation was held in St. Mary’s, our daughter church, by the first Bishop of Southwark, old Dr. Talbot. The tumult outside the doors was awful, and as my Mother tried to get in, the crowd was so rough and so hostile that the brass rim of the ivory-bound prayer book she carried was wrenched right off. During the service, Dr. Talbot paused once to ask the churchwardens to open the locked doors to which the mob seemed to be applying battering rams and endeavour to obtain a little quiet, as he could not ask for the gift of the Most Holy Spirit of God, with the laying on of hands, amid such noise and turmoil.

The high lights of one’s life, moments of rapture, of ecstasy, of deep devotion, remain indelibly fixed in the mind, so that to this very hour I seem to be able to feel again the firm touch of the Bishop’s hand on my bowed, white-veiled head and hear the words,

“Defend, O Lord, this thy child with thy heavenly grace, that she may continue thine for ever, and daily p. 177increase in thy Holy Spirit more and more, until she come unto thy everlasting kingdom. Amen.”

Later I was to receive a heartbreaking blow, for it had been arranged I should be confirmed with Frances, my best friend, but when the time came some re-arrangement of the seating was made so that Frances was confirmed with a mutual friend and I with a girl I knew but slightly. When all was over I heard Frances say to her companion, “I am so glad I was confirmed with you.”

She was the second friend who had failed me. The first, Violet, was a fellow schoolgirl, who in the manner of the tribe, assured me I was her only love. I adored her with all the doting affection of an only child, a love which set her high on a pedestal, faultless and adorable. But she left me without a word for Helen of the thick, fuzzy hair and I learnt all too soon the bitterness of unrequited love, a bitterness which a child can feel far more acutely than its elders imagine.

Norman Campbell’s discipline over his junior clergy was exemplary, but they were a joyously happy family, so much so that when one of them left his celibate roof to enter the sunny pastures of Holy Matrimony, the Vicar shook his head mournfully, ever after referring to that p. 178happily married Priest as “Poor Young”.

Another of them, returning from a continental holiday, was greeted at the church gates by an improvised band of tin tea-trays, wielded by his colleagues. One morning, the Priest who was to celebrate the Holy Communion that day was having his bath when one of his colleagues locked his bedroom door, with the result he had to take the service in his pyjamas, happily completely covered by his cassock.

Norman Campbell himself was always at his happiest when among the children. On snowy days the little monkeys used to wait for him to come out of the Vicarage that they might snowball his immaculate top hat. Taking it off he got his own back on them and there was a merry fight all down St. Anne’s Hill until he ran into the Schools for refuge.

In those days I attended St. Anne’s Catechism, an excellent system of church education for children founded on the method practised at St. Sulpice, Paris.

Occasionally parents were invited and Mother has recollections of our “organist”, a young gentleman in his twenties, who played all the “Amens” on his knees, then turned to look at my very attractive Mother. As p. 179was right and proper, she endeavoured to keep her eyes piously shut during the prayers, but could not refrain from occasional peeps to see if the organist were still on his knees. Poor lad! He came from a queer family and rumour states that some of them chased each other round their dining-room table with a carving knife. Of course that may have been their idea of amusement, but it is the last we heard of them.

At Christmas we Catechism boys and girls gave a party to the little waifs and strays from the Workhouse, ourselves in party garments, our guests in humbler raiment, their faces shining with soap, excitement and a certain amount of terror, but certainly not so demure as on Sunday mornings when the poor little wretches occupied the back seats at Mattins, where they certainly were not seen nor very much heard. At our Christmas party, their hands sticky with sweets, they delighted to suspend themselves from the buttons of Mr. Bolton’s Saville Row suit while that noble-hearted man gave an excellent imitation of appearing to like it.

During my very youthful days wonderful Exhibitions were held at Earls Court, not a series of boring curios laid out in rows with outsize photographs behind them, p. 180but an “All the Fun of the Fair” Exhibition, set against a scenic background, incredibly realistic. My most vivid memory is of “Venice” so true to life with its Rialto, its gondolas and palaces, that I gasped with delighted recognition when a few years later I saw the real thing.

Rows of miniature shops, with fascinating wares from all the world over, were a special feature, at each door of which lurked its owner like a spider in a web awaiting his prey. The unwary often found themselves with long strings of beads thrown over their heads, or bright jewelled butterflies clipped on to their persons by a quick-fingered, laughing shopman from some Latin country, who chose this method to command custom. Walking down this promenade, wearing a floppy leghorn hat trimmed with cherries, I was quickly accosted as “Mees Cherreeze”.

The “Topsy-Turvey” house was not far away, a dwelling in which the pointed roof stood upon the ground and the front door pointed to the sky. The household cat, happily of the stuffed variety, was poised precariously somewhere between heaven and earth.

The water chute was my chief delight, but not one p. 181to be too lightly or too often indulged, for it cost what in those days was an exorbitant price, sixpence, the whole of six weeks’ pocket money. But it was a delightful thrill, as seated in a frail craft, one slid hurriedly from a precipitous height plunging several times up and down in the water below with an accompaniment of delighted shrieks and clouds of spray. At night the illuminations, consisting very largely of myriads of varicoloured fairy lamps, were a dream of loveliness, especially where they were reflected in the lake. Perhaps it was because I saw these Exhibitions with the unsophisticated eyes of childhood, they appeared so outstandingly beautiful and romantic, yet in all the varied, often splendid experiences of later life, the Earls Court Exhibitions still hold a very high place in my regard.

My first visit to the Crystal Palace was to see the pantomime, “Bluebeard”. To my nine-year old eyes the sight of that promiscuous gentleman’s harem hanging up in a cupboard by their hair was as bad as a nightmare. The famous fireworks did not receive as much appreciation as they deserved, for I never cared for them and in later years Hitler’s all-night “fireworks” over my rooftop gave me p. 182a life-long distaste for them. The only snag in the whole happy outing was that although situated a comparatively short distance from Wandsworth, both Earls Court and the Crystal Palace involved one of those wearisome cross-country journeys in which even now the outlying suburbs of London delight, so that the return home was a veritable Via Dolorosa.

One of my uncles, a clever surgeon, whose bloodcurdling stories used to terrify my youthful days, loved making fireworks, and also demonstrating them at children’s parties. He was kindness and hospitality personified, but even this could not warm the damp, dark garden where the fireworks shot up into the November sky or spit spitefully and uncomfortably near me upon the ground.

Schooldays were not very happy. Never being good at games, I much preferred to sit by the fire during recess in the winter, rather than run about and probably fall down in the ice-bound playground, certainly to get short of breath. My exploits at running were somewhat similar to a friend who at his Public School sports laboriously arrived at the winning post, to be asked if he were taking part in the present race or the last one.

p. 183Unfortunately it was the latter!

Dancing classes were a nightmare. Being tall for my age I was always dumped in the back row to show as little as possible.

No prizes or certificates were ever given; merit was to be our only reward and certainly cheaper. Our only Treat was the Annual Garden Party. And what a Treat! All dressed in white, whether to represent angels or virgins was never revealed, we were expected to entertain our parents - a few uncomfortable fathers in morning dress and silk hats which latter presented a continual problem as to their disposal, and mothers in their best bibs and tuckers, trying to think their own offsprings were the most beautiful and gifted of the whole collection. My naughty mother, knowing I looked like Banquo’s ghost when dressed entirely in white, used to slip a rose-pink sash round my youthful waist, which rather spoilt the head-mistress’s regard for her.

The high light of the party was the French master, a young and handsome gentleman with a saucy black moustache and hair to match, who used to play Hide-and-Seek with us when the parents had offered their polite “thank you for a pleasant afternoon” and gladly returned home.

p. 184At one Garden Party we searched high and low for Monsieur without success and no wonder - for he was hiding in the Head Mistress’s bedroom, a sanctuary into which even the boldest of us dare not venture.

The Head Mistress, whose two sisters much objected to being called “Smarion” and “Srosamund” instead of “Miss Marion” and “Miss Rosamund”, gave us a wonderful grinding in spelling for which I am much more grateful now than I was at the time. She herself was addicted to sudden sneezes and kept her pocket handkerchief somewhere inside her frock, which entailed frantic fumbling round her bosom and even down her back to retrieve it, during which process if one of us had so much as smiled I fear that unfortunate girl would have been expelled. I suffered untold torture holding back my mirth, especially as I was usually in the front row and my friend Winifred, who shared the desk for two, had a nasty habit of touching my foot with her own traitorous toe.

The Head Mistress often used to say in a lesson “Let us think aloud”! But it was she who did the thinking and also the recital thereof. It would certainly not have been expedient for us to have uttered some of our thoughts.

p. 185Shakespeare was her great delight and she used to laugh heartily at jokes which were so much Greek to us. I found it an excellent opportunity to laugh at private jokes between Winifred and myself, thereby gaining much unearned merit at my appreciation of the great “William’s” masterpieces.

Being a Nonconformist her patron saints were Luther and Calvin and we heard so much about them that even to this day the mention of their names makes me want to scream.

Being one of the few Church girls in the school I was subject to a certain amount of petty persecution. As my friend Violet scornfully remarked,

“There is too much going down on your knees in your church. Besides, who would want to listen to a Minister with his shirt hanging out of his trousers.”

Morning prayers in the Assembly Hall were rather an ordeal. The Head Mistress’s idea of devotion was a passage from the Old Testament, preferably from the Book of Chronicles. She had a peculiar habit of chanting, her voice rising higher and higher up the scale, as she declaimed:

“Now the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, or Rehoboam, or Amaziah, and all that he did, are they not written in p. 186the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah.”

Some of the said acts being not quite comme il faut she would stop abruptly as the narrative became really interesting, give a loud cough, then say;

“Ah, now where were we? Oh, yes, verse twenty-six.”

Which verse was much farther down the page and adroitly missed the naughty things between, which we took particular notice to read privately.

For months each year we practised a Cantata with which to regale our parents at the Garden Party. As I could never reach any high notes it was decided I was a contralto and with my friend Winifred, was placed on that side of the room where our idea of contralto was to sing soprano an octave lower, which device was apparently never detected.

Our long-suffering parents must have found those Cantatas excruciating boredom, for there was no acting in them, or any fancy dresses, just rows of us in our white frocks, trilling indefinitely concerning flowers and birds and similar innocuous objects.

One hot summer we practised for days in the boiling sun in the playground, rehearsing a grim exhibition entitled “Flag Drill”, while “Smarion”, our instructress, p. 187stood beneath a shady tree under a tasty parasol, urging us to put more life into it.

As usual, I was put in the back row, but a day or two before the Garden Party I was turned out, together with the Mayor of Wandsworth’s elder daughter, as even our most conscientious efforts were said to spoil the show. The Mayor’s daughter sat on a window sill and wept, but I was too proud to let my rage and humiliation dissolve into tears. My Mother had another engagement on the Garden Party day that year.

One Friday morning I sprained my ankle on the way to school close to home doing a first-class skid on a piece of orange peel. When I hobbled into the school I was sent straight home, being told I had mumps, which were in season at the moment. The following Monday was a half-term holiday and great was the surprise of the Mistress who called to enquire for me to find her patient enjoying a children’s party. But I don’t think my ankle has ever been the same from that two mile walk after the sprain.

Modern science explains that a pain in the toe may be caused from a germ in the throat, or a stiff knee from a rotten tooth, but a sprained ankle as one of the p. 188symptoms of mumps has yet to be discovered.

End of term was always an ordeal for me as I had no brain for mathematics and in examinations on these subjects was always at the tail end of the class with a few marks given me out of pity. For such subjects as Scripture, Composition, History and the like I was so unfortunate as to come out at the top, with the result that on the last day of term the Head Mistress used to rebuke me before the whole school, saying it was very wrong, as during the term I had been sixth or seventh, proving, so she said, I had been lazy all the time until the examinations when I had worked extremely hard. Alas, like the sermon in church, it was impossible to answer back and tell her I certainly had not worked any harder for the exams. But I fear her Nonconformist mind would not have believed me.

Unknowingly of course, she almost ruined my career by telling me I should never make a writer, I had too much imagination. But the clergy of St. Anne’s told me otherwise and gave me every encouragement.

Schoolgirl fashions in those days did not run to uniform, only a blue and white ribbon on a sailor hat, which made me look an utter fright, especially during the time when I insisted on copying my faithless friend p. 189Violet and wear my hair scraped tightly back from my forehead.

Sixpenny charms were much in vogue one year, tied at intervals on a cord round the neck reaching nearly to the waist, or jangling round the wrist on thin silver bangles. How the Mistresses endured their constant tinkling is a mystery to me! Some of the charms were really pretty and amazing value for the money - miniature wheel-barrows, watering-cans, locks, birds, animals or musical instruments. A penny a week being the recognised salary for all children up to quite an advanced age, we used to save up this princely sum or any “tips” bestowed on as by generous visitors to the house, then hurry to handsome Mr. Gassett, with his magnificent moustache and kindly interest in us, who used to keep a jeweller’s shop on East Hill, eventually to be shattered to pieces in the Second World War.

It is surprising we were allowed to wear these “charms”, for it was not thought the correct thing for a girl much under seventeen or eighteen to wear jewellery, and a dainty little silver ring my godfather gave me, which he had picked up in Jersey, was only allowed to make its appearance on very special occasions, together with a p. 190pretty silver bird brooch which my Mother gave me after my confirmation and a gold cross and chain presented by my Father for the same event.

Poor Uncle Godfather - that visit to the Channel Islands was nearly the end of him, for he was so ill one of his brothers stayed all night beside him for fear he should jump, or fall overboard. A compassionate lady on the deck said she would never forget him as long as she lived. This could scarcely have been a case of love at first sight, for nothing could be less romantic than acute mal de mer. Another relative, journeying to Antwerp in a terrible storm, feared greatly the ship would go down, but long before the Belgian coast appeared on the horizon his great fear was that it would not go down. But he lived to tell the tale. I fear the Caudwells are not a seafaring folk. Only one of them ventured on a short spell as a sailor, but by the time he had brought back one or two gruesome stuffed alligators he decided that “East, West - home’s best.”

My Mother’s standard of truthfulness was so high that to “tell a story” was a sin of the deepest dye, so that the occasion when a schoolfellow’s paintbox fell out of its locker behind me and its manifold contents dropped out singly, great was my inward fury when the p. 191Mistress conducting the class refused to believe my word when I truthfully declared I had nothing to do with it. I took a dislike to paintboxes from that very day.

We had a craze for pencil-boxes about that time and the girl whose box had several stories which slid out in various directions, completely fitted with an innumerable array of pencils, pens and indiarubbers was the millionaire of her class and treated with becoming reverence. My boxes never reached a higher elevation than the first floor, which provided me with a distinct inferiority complex.

A terrified boy used to arrive in the playground each day during recess from a cake shop close to the school with a tray of buns and cakes. Those with very affluent purses spent as much as twopence on a rich and indigestible pastry - the rest spent a modest halfpenny on a large and tasty bun stuffed with currants and very sticky on top. One day the boy’s feminine customers upset his tray, with the result we were all summoned before the Headmistress for a severe reprimand.

Mercifully I had been plentifully supplied with refreshment from home that day, so had not been near the young p. 192gentleman, who was always entitled the BOY, in very big capital letters.

With all due respect, none of my schoolfellows seem to have been very exciting. Minita, a half-Spanish girl, was the only boarder and was possessed of gay rolling eyes and a number of outlandish Christian names which used up a considerable amount of the alphabet. Vera was always dressed in white, literally from top to toe, very off-white in the winter. She lived on the West Side of Wandsworth Common, beneath the shade of the magnificent row of chestnut trees, known as the Twelve Apostles, which still lift their lovely creamy candles of blossom every springtime. Dorothy resided in Spencer Park and drove a tiny carriage, with two delectable Shetland ponies, complete with tossing manes and luxuriant tails. Her front garden was a mass of luxuriant and expensive flowers, like a rainbow resting on the ground. In the autumn every plant was pulled up, entirely fresh ones appearing the following year.

Mildred, May, Elsie and Ida lived near me and were blessed with magnificent curling hair worn loose to their waists, each a different shade, so that seen together they looked like an advertisement for a brand of shampoo powder.

p. 193Irene, the first of the name, after myself, was much disgruntled to find me already in possession, which was only equalled by my annoyance at her arrival.

Quite recently we won a large jar of sweets at a raffle in a bazaar which I opened in her parish. We shared them very amicably - in fact I had the lion’s share, as she generously gave me the stoppered bottle in which they were contained.

Winifred lived in Huguenot Mansions just opposite the old cemetery of that name, which in 1874 had been put decently in order with a comment in the local paper “It is to be hoped when the ground is put into proper repair that the churchwardens will take care that horses, etc. are not allowed to wander over the graves of the departed.”

In 1911 the Borough Council erected a Memorial bearing the inscription, “Here rest many Huguenots who on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, left their native land for conscience sake and found in Wandsworth freedom to worship God after their manner. They established important industries and added to the credit and prosperity of the town of their adoption.” It would be interesting to know how much of this inscription is read or understood by the present Wandsworthians who p. 194wait at the bus stop on the other side of the low wall.

Winifred and her mother were of that charming, effervescent disposition which is always ready and willing to undertake anything, only to send a graceful excuse for doing it by the very next post. Any minor ailments were never considered of sufficient urgency to call in the doctor - they merely crossed the road to the greengrocer at the opposite corner, bought some apples or a cauliflower and asked his advice. Some of their chief friends were a young Priest and his wife belonging to the neighbouring parish. He had great gifts of oratory and used actually to pack his large church to overflowing for his Women’s Afternoon Services, at which he and the congregation wept happily together. After he left Wandsworth I did not see him for many years until one day at a lunch party he was my opposite neighbour. He arranged to ring me up a few days later to spend a day with himself and his wife, but the ring never came. He died suddenly before he could send it.

Winifred and I were “bosom friends” and many a time arrived home late from school through loitering about deep in schoolgirl giggles and chatter. One old gentleman we often met we named “Toffee” from the colour p. 195of his suit. Two coats of different colours emerged with varying lengths from beneath the top one which was the shade of pale almond rock.

Winifred’s mother told me her daughter was “true as steel” and would be a lifelong friend. If this were correct, then I fear her lifetime must have been short, for I heard no more of her after the family moved suddenly to Inverness.

Years afterwards I met a very delightful Russian lady who lived in an adjoining flat. Although it was only the second, and proved to be the last time I ever saw her, she insisted on presenting me with a packet of suet, it being a time when such a commodity was practically unheard of in this dear land of ours. I made a pudding with it next day, but unhappily it was like the manna which the disobedient Israelites kept for the Sabbath Day and the odour thereof travelled a quite considerable distance. But even this did not lessen the value of the entente cordiale gift.

From time to time flowers from our gardens were taken by us and presented to the Headmistress before Morning Prayers. She looked extremely startled when I offered a huge bunch of sweet smelling may, evidently having p. 196been brought up in the tradition it was unlucky, rather than that it symbolises the merry month of Mary, Queen of Saints.

Two terrible fires occurred in my early days - the burning of the great paper mill in Garratt Lane and the complete destruction of Arding & Hobbs, the large store at Clapham Junction, a mile away from my home. So sudden and awful was the latter that within about ten minutes the great tower had crashed down into the building. The store was crammed with Christmas shoppers and it was a miracle that all reached the street in safety without a hair of their heads being singed. Only on an upper floor came stark and dreadful tragedy where some of the assistants were trapped. One of their number, a man most appropriately named “Noble”, saved several of the girls and gave his own life in the act. So fierce were the flames that the next day turkeys could be seen hanging in a provision shop on the opposite side of the road roasted on their hooks. There were no motor fire engines in those days, only the brave, handsome horses. As they stood calm and proud in that terrific heat amid the smoke and crackling of the flames the firemen continually poured buckets of water over them to prevent p. 197blisters forming on their glossy coats.

When my Mother was a boarder at a Select Establishment for Young Ladies at Abingdon, she used to buy needles and cotton at a tiny shop in that pretty old-fashioned town. She may have been served by a young apprentice who was there at the time, but it was nearly half a century before she knew that young apprentice had become the founder and owner of the store named after him - Arding & Hobbs.

Mother and I saw Mr. Arding when his life work had crashed in blackened ruins, a horrid mass of twisted girders, charred wood and unrecognisable fragments. He was a brave, but broken man, struggling magnificently, and successfully to maintain his business. He showed us the great safe which had fallen from the tower through the various floors, lying buried amid smouldering fragments for a whole week. The interior of the safe was unharmed, the papers only slightly discoloured, but the parchment deeds were a mass of undistinguishable pulp.

My father, being solicitor to the Borough of Battersea, in which borough Arding & Hobbs is situated, was present at the enquiry as to the cause of the fire, but like so incidents, it was never satisfactorily solved. many similar p. 198One theory was that the windows being decorated with quantities of cotton wool to represent snow, an assistant reached for an umbrella required by a customer and smashed an electric bulb and that was distinctly that!!

Clapham Junction close by, through which it is said a train a minute passes day and night, was originally a small station opened in 1846 and gave rise to the old story of the distracted lady who enquired from a porter farther down the line, “Does this train clap at Stopham Junction?”

My father remembered as a boy when the “Falcon”, a public house conveniently situated outside the Junction and opposite Arding & Hobbs, was a quaint old inn facing a brook, with a yard in the foreground containing a tree and a horse-trough. A well-known sketch of the period by Nixon, entitled “Undertakers regaling themselves at Death’s door”, is not so grim as it sounds, as it merely referred to the name of the innkeeper - Mr. Robert Death.

Much of the prosperity in that district belonged to the Bolingbroke family, of which the most celebrated was Henry St. John, who had far from a bed of roses as Prime Minister to Queen Anne. He was buried in the crypt of Battersea Parish Church, close by the river.

p. 199The churchwardens’ records of that parish are of much interest. In 1580 -83 is an entry of Fines collected owing to “Absence from Divine Service”. If these fines were still inflicted some churches would quickly acquire a millionaire’s banking account.

In 1602 the sum of fourpence was expended on a new “ower glass”, which hints at the prodigious length of the sermon.

Included in a gift of a gentleman named Thomas Phetyplece were “the longe ladder, the great Iron Hooke” with its two ropes and the twelve “bucketts”. Evidently this was the parochial fire equipment, kept at the church as being the most convenient spot. The great “Iron Hooke” was attached to a long pole and used for gripping the ridge pole of a house and tearing down the blazing thatch which in many instances formed the roof.

In 1760 a notice appeared that “stray dogs be shot and dead ones drove ashore (from the river)” to be buried at the cost of the churchwardens.

Those who brought their departed relatives or friends for burial in the churchyard were evidently treated sympathetically. Ancient practice placed the body on the bier, shrouded but uncoffined. Should a family on p. 200occasion be too poor to provide the requisite shroud the churchwardens produced one for the sum of 1/6 from the “Church Expenses Fund”. At one time these obliging gentlemen lent an empty coffin in which at the lych gate the shrouded body was placed and thence carried to the graveside, where it was taken out for burial and the coffin returned to storage for the next unhappy occasion. In 1649 the Battersea records mention, “Payd for a Coffing to be remaining to the parishe for poore people. 2/6.”

In 1875 that zealous parish Priest, Canon Erskine Clarke, came to Battersea, where he erected a large number of churches and is rumoured to have lamented that whenever he built one the Devil set up a chapel opposite.

Canon Clarke made some horrid discoveries in the crypt of his church, which was redolent with odour, but certainly not that of sanctity. One of his curates wrote years later, “there were three hundred coffins in faded trappings stacked in the crypt and people used to tip the old caretaker woman - whose description of her duties to the Vicar was, ‘Please, Sir, I keeps the people out of the seats’ - to walk them around the narrow alleys between the coffins. From time to time a coffin p. 201burst and the church was redolent of deceased citizen.” One cannot but feel that the living citizens were blessed with most efficient guardian angels and cast-iron throats that they did not succumb to diphtheria or some other evil-minded germ.

Canon Erskine Clarke hurriedly put an end to all this, obtaining an Order in Council for a rearrangement of the poor bodies so that they were soon all neatly laid away in the aisles of the crypt beneath a nice hefty foot of solid concrete.

The crypt having thus been made healthy and comfortable it served for “the assembling of the female candidates for Confirmation.”

p. 202Chapter VIII

I regret to say that in spite of endless music lessons and much patience on the part of my teacher, Miss Wood, a dainty little lady who appeared one day gowned like a princess and the next as though she were clothed from a rag-bag, I was never musically inclined. I practised for many dismal hours in the drawing-room on the Broadwood piano with its fretwork front, through which peeped folds of rose-coloured silk, till in summer my fingers seemed to stick to the keys and in winter were just cold, aching stumps. I even entered a South London Musical Festival, playing a duet with a fellow sufferer, a tall, fair headed boy, who was as scared as I was myself.

Miss Wood used to count with her head and foot and voice, “One, two, three - one, two, three,” but it never made any sense to me and however I managed to play classical pieces and apparently creditably, is one of p. 203the major mysteries of my life.

Miss Wood inhabited two floors on a corner of Earlsfield Road, with a fascinating turret window. She was owned by a white terrier who did very much as he liked. One day while surveying the landscape from a window above the front door he overbalanced, falling in a direct hit on an unfortunate woman who happened to be passing. There was distinct unpleasantness all round.

Dear Miss Wood used to give an Annual Musical party to parents where everything was high thinking and very comme il faut. Successfully hiding her emotions beneath a very stylish silk frock she sat near the piano encouraging our musical efforts and endeavouring not to notice the ominous sounds from various corners of the room, these being caused by the falling of some treasured ornament. Unfortunately the room was crowded with china, photo frames and antiques, so that by the time the grand piano, the pupils and the guests were safely inside, the slightest movement caused alarming vibrations, if not worse, among her treasures.

Some of the names in our district are so familiar, they do not seem strange, but an outsider might think them curious. Among various families we have had p. 204Herring and a Haddock; a Cherry and an Orange; a Shilling, a Golds and a Penny; a Swallow; a Nightingale and a Swift; a Short and a Long; a Bird and a Catt; a Lamb and a Bear. A number of streets were named by the landowner from holiday resorts visited by himself and his wife - Killarney, Crieff, Swanage, Barmouth, Cader, and Pentland.

One house was name “Mynsawiski” - its next door neighbour being appropriately designated “Staggerholm”; they sound a distant relation of “Happylands“, which appears in the long desert of Wandsworth Road between Battersea and Lambeth. “The Curett’s Egg” emerged as the title of a house in Swaffield Road after an air raid which undoubtedly had only left “parts of it good”.

The people at a corner house in the next road to us kept a small private zoo and great was the excitement among the locals when one morning two of the snakes went for a walk in the neighbourhood all by themselves.

Our own Earlsfield Road is a mile long, with a deep railway cutting at the end of the gardens and banks lovely in early summer with white sweet-smelling may and golden gorse. As the wind sweeps through it from the blue Surrey hills a dozen miles away on the far horizon p. 205the long grass bends and sways, like an incoming tide of jade and emerald. But as the fruit blossom fades and falls in the gardens and the June roses come out to greet the sun, the grass gradually bleaches and becomes a source of very real danger. A stray spark from an engine and in a few minutes great volumes of smoke sweep upwards and the ominous crackling of swift-moving flame sends us to our telephones to dial “999. Fire”. The wood of our ancient, but precious, garden fences is like tinder, so that it is with deep thankfulness we hear in an incredibly short time the deep “clang, clang, clang” of the fire engines’ bells as they sweep up the road in all their scarlet splendour. The men leap from them, swiftly unrolling their great hoses, running them through our gardens, often just as a sinister flame touches one of the fences. This excitement is repeated several times during the summer and by a coincidence usually about lunch time; until at last the railway authorities send men with scythes to cut the banks and then carefully set it on fire themselves. They find a strange harvest in the deep grass at the other end of the road, where some of the residents use the banks as a dump ground for old pots and pans, p. 206unwanted iron bedsteads, broken china, bits of bicycles and other cast-offs of modern civilisation, all carefully thrown over so that they land outside their neighbour’s fence instead of their own.

Seen from the gardens, or from the trains, the railway bank with

its grass, its wild flowers and shrubs appears a delightful place to take a pleasant “country walk”. This is strictly forbidden, but on one occasion with much difficulty I managed to clamber over our fence in search of a dearly-loved missing cat. It was terribly hard going and involved stumbling, falling, slipping, sliding upon the sloping bank with nowhere flat to place one’s unhappy feet. Nor were the hidden blackberry briars and stinging nettles conducive to real enjoyment, to say nothing of the prospect of meeting any of the rats who enjoy its sanctuary and whom some of my cats have put out of action and then laid on the lawn for my shrinking inspection.

One night when a very young girl I was awakened by groans in the wee small hours and while I was hesitating whether I should call my father, fell again comfortably asleep. It was an action I have deeply regretted, for in the morning I heard that a sailor, travelling p. 207with two companions from Portsmouth, had had a few words, with the result they had pitched him out of the train window. When he was found both his legs were amputated. Poor agonised soul! I have often wondered whether, if I had given the alarm, he might have been found earlier.

Earlsfield Station has quite pleasant, but very airy platforms. The approach from the street to the thirty-seven steps which lead to the platform is dark, depressing and often distinctly smelly. Some years ago a box addressed to a house a little distance off arrived too late at the station for delivery and was placed overnight in the booking office. The first person to undo the door in the morning had a rare scare, for the box had broken open in the night and snakes of every age and length were slithering about the room, disappearing into holes in the walls, curling round one another and the furniture. This was a long, long time ago but I always remember it whenever I climb that interminable flight of steps and sniff that most peculiar atmosphere.

Burglars used to find our side of the road a happy hunting-ground, with a fine way of escape through the long gardens on to the railway bank, a dive p. 208across the railway lines, a scramble up the opposite side, a short walk along the top, then through the cemetery where the dead told no tales, and all was well with the wicked!

This resort for light-fingered gentry is not so popular since the railway was electrified. Nice live rails require very careful manoeuvring on a dark night and no self-respecting burglar would work by moonlight. The tall wire fences which now run along the top of our gardens present another slight deterrent for an easy getaway.

Two gentry years ago invaded our house, which was then a few doors away from my present home and packed up quite a nice number of our treasures in a sack while we slept the sleep of the just - we hope - upstairs. One of them, sitting on the stairs to take off his boots, dropped the jemmy out of his pocket on the blue and white tiles of the hall. Picking up the aforementioned sack, he and his companion fled, both being caught, the first by a night watchman, who suspicious of a bulging sack at 3 a.m. in the morning chased him for two miles with ultimate success; his companion being arrested later in the day in an extremely respectable public-house on p. 209Wandsworth Common. Most of our treasures, plus the sack, were found, cast away in a ditch. Among these beloved household gods was a wedding present to my parents, a reputed Sheffield plate cake basket. After this unhappy adventure when it had returned from Scotland Yard they regularly took the thing up to their bedroom every night, to discover twenty years later it was only electro plate after all. Its next public appearance was at the parish rummage sale.

On the appearance of the two thieves at the South Western Police Court, one of them sadly observed,

“Lor, lumme, if we had known it was a lawyer’s house, we might have rumbled it would be unlucky, seeing as the profession is so much like our own!”

On his release from Wandsworth Prison a year or so later this gentleman immediately called on us asking for money to make a fresh start, a process to which he was evidently quite accustomed. Father gave him a shilling and a recommendation to the Salvation Army. He was very soon home again in the prison, charged with stealing his brother-in-law’s bicycle.

Soon after moving to the top of Earlsfield Road, when I was rapidly growing upwards out of all my clothes, p. 210I was promoted to the work of a Sunday School teacher at our Mission Church, and on the first day of every week for eight years faced a class of naughty little girls only a few years younger than myself, who knew perfectly well they scared the life out of me and acted accordingly. A favourite device was to share a large sweet which was passed from hand to hand and mouth to mouth, but which I was never quick enough to detect. On Festivals when we attended the Children’s Service in church my shuddering eyes used to observe very large and extremely dirty handkerchiefs spread on the floor. An enquiry invariably brought the answer,

“Mother said I wasn’t to scratch my new shoes.”

The same handkerchiefs, perhaps a trifle smaller, were pinned to the children’s frocks with safety pins when their owners attended the Annual Summer Outing.

One of these children’s mother suffered from a “bad leg”, a very bad leg indeed, for I knew when that small girl had arrived in class even if she had come in right behind me. Ugh!!

Their comments on some of my lessons were entertaining, such as:

“Teacher, did you know Nehemiah?”

“St. Francis was very seasick.”

p. 211All pot-flowers die on Mother and me in an incredibly short space of time, however much we try to make household pets of them. Once, only once, did we ever shine in this line of horticulture, when my geranium won a prize at the Sunday School Flower Show. The picture I won I keep to this day in a box with a card showing a cat which squeaks just like a kitten when it is pressed in the midriff. Many of my good honest cats have been deceived by it and diligently searched the room to see what beastly little kitten is poaching on their preserves.

My work with the Sunday School ended somewhat abruptly when one of my little dears came up to see me suffering from measles which I caught in a most virulent form. It developed on holiday at Bournemouth with my Father, with the result he had to have my hotel bedroom disinfected, while I languished alone in a nursing home for six dreary weeks.

Previously, at the age of eighteen, when I ought to have known better, I caught chickenpox. Two things about this illness I specially remember, the first, crawling out of bed and tottering to the looking glass to see my face. I saw it, or rather a pair of horrified p. 212dark eyes in the midst of a mass of frightful sores. The second memory is of one night, delirious with the frightful irritation, I bounced up and down between the sheets, saying aloud, “I must break this bed - I must - I must!” And I did!

In my very early days, like many children of the period, I slept on a “chair bedstead”, a wonderful piece of furniture composed of an iron frame and legs, which piled with black cushions ornamented by large red and yellow flowers could form what was known as an “easy chair”. Extended with two more legs which had been tucked under the cushions it made quite a comfortable bed for a small person, its only drawback being an unpleasant tendency to fold up and return to a chair about 3 a.m. on a cold morning.

It always reminded me of the story of the patent bedstead which acted as an alarm clock of a particularly efficient character. No reaching out of bed and shutting off the alarm with this contrivance for on reaching the appointed hour it suddenly shut up, landing the occupant on the floor and at the same time playing a few bars of music to cheer him up. There were two two tunes, “We won’t go home till the morning” for the convivial, and “Awake, my p. 213soul and with the sun the daily course of duty run”, for the more sober-minded. The story ends sadly, for one night a bishop was staying in the household and some officious person set the alarm, so that in the early hours his astonished lordship was suddenly pitched out of bed to the tune of “We won’t go home till morning”. We are not told what the reverend gentleman remarked.

In the days when I was still a child, makers of patent medicines used to circulate horrid little booklets through the letter-box, describing the symptoms of loathsome complaints with letters from Mrs. Hadsome of Too-too-in-the-Marsh or Mr. Going-Strong of Healthborough. The letters gave details, dreadful in the extreme, of their ailments, and their miraculous recovery, owing to this special medicine, which was now being taken regularly by the whole family, including Baby Bill, aged three weeks. These booklets I read in the privacy of my bedroom, shivering with terror as I felt in myself the beginning of every symptom.

Canon Oswald Craig, the second Vicar of St. Anne’s that I remember, had an embarrassing experience one evening when the Bishop of the diocese dined at the Vicarage, for the chicken provided for the occasion p. 214had long since reached the age of retirement, with the consequence it was very, very tough and so defied the Vicarage carving knife that it eventually landed on the floor, after bringing up blisters on the agitated Canon’s hands. “Chicken” was certainly not the right name for that antique bird.

It was Canon Craig who had the bright idea of having classes to teach the girls of the parish a little home nursing, for which I often have had cause to bless his name. The charming lady doctor who taught us was anxious that one of us should act as “mannequin” for the rest of the class to learn how to give an invalid a blanket bath in bed, but we all went on strike, so that she substituted a large doll.

In the bandaging class I nearly lost a friend, as I bandaged her pretty plump arm so tightly that it began to swell to quite an alarming degree, bulging out in fleshy tucks.

I was a dismal failure in Canon Craig’s Folk Dancing class - it was about as easy for the instructress as teaching ballet to a Polar bear.

In those days the White Slave Traffic did quite an amount of business in this island, shipping unfortunate p. 215girls to South America, so that Canon Craig summoned the girls of the parish and their mothers to attend a meeting to be addressed by a lady from the Vigilance Society whose work saved many young women from this dreadful fate. She was an eloquent speaker, who warned us from going anywhere with a stranger, or accepting any article of food or drink from anyone we did not know, however plausible or fashionably attired.

A girl I knew, came up from the suburbs one day alone in a train with a beautifully dressed lady who suddenly became faint and ill. The girl was exceedingly sympathetic, helped her out of the train at Victoria and at the lady’s request, called a taxi. The lady, still very faint, asked the girl if she could possibly see her home, as she felt so ill. The girl willingly responded and was stepping into the taxi, when she found a hand on her arm and looked round into the stern eyes a policeman, who enquired:-

“Do you know this lady?”

“No,” answered the girl, “she was very faint in train and I am seeing her home.”

“I think not,” said the policeman, grimly. “That is if you want to see your home and friends again.”

p. 216The lady made a swift recovery and a rapid retreat.

Thanks to the speaker from the Vigilance Society I had a lucky escape myself a few years later. During the First World War I was acting as private secretary to the Commandant of the Kensington branch of the Red Cross. On one of the numerous Flag Days for our Allies we were short of workers, so that my Commandant sent me into the Brompton Road, in the full glory of my uniform, to do my utmost with a detestable tray of flags. It was a bitterly cold day, but business was quite good. A well-dressed lady, with an ingratiating smile like a Cheshire cat, bought a flag and commiserated with me concerning the weather.

“You must be perished with cold standing about in the street. I have such a cosy little flat round the corner. Do come and have a nice hot cup of coffee.”

I answered with extreme politeness.

“Thank you very much, but I am not allowed to leave my post, while I am on duty.”

“Well, then, let me bring you some coffee in a thermos flask.”

I again thanked her, but with increasing suspicion.

“It is most kind of you, but I should not be allowed p. 217to take it in uniform.”

The lady was most persistent and positively badgered me but in the end she very unwillingly faded out of the picture.

I reported the incident to my Commandant on my return, to which that kind and far-seeing lady replied grimly.

“It is a mercy you didn’t go with her, Caudwell, or we should certainly never have seen you again.”

My education before these events and after I left Putney High School consisted of French lessons at the Convent of the Presentation on West Hill, Continental tours, and six months at a Literary Salon.

The nuns at the Convent wore huge white starched head-dresses which stuck out on either side of their faces like wings in the wrong place. They spoke no English and were really charming creatures, who often took me round the garden to admire the “salade”. They had been turned out of France in one of the religious persecutions. To their credit they never attempted the slightest amount of proselytizing, although they questioned me very often about the Church of England and were greatly astonished to find our Creeds and our p. 218Sacraments were the same as their own.

The Literary Salon, just off Piccadilly, was quite a different proposition, run very efficiently by an ex-Girton girl, distinctly gone to seed. She was really rather a dear, although her felt hat had collected the dust of many years upon its surface. She prescribed an amazing collection of books for our “homework”, but when it came to Balzac, my Father said he would be ashamed to ask for that gentleman’s works at the local Public Library. Which made things rather awkward!

The ecclesiastical line of thought and reading which most interested me was looked upon by the rest of the class as extremely peculiar and the only time I came into my own was a day when our tutor was ill and her place suddenly taken by her brother, a very delightful Anglican Priest.

The class was quite mixed. One very pretty girl, with dark waving hair, natural, not permed in those days, who often wore a scarlet silk blouse, was invited out to lunch one day by our tutor. As they approached the restaurant the girl asked to be excused for a few minutes. On reappearing a short while later, she was dressed in quite different clothes, airily explaining:

p. 219“Oh, I have just pawned my other things round the corner. I thought I should like a change.”

It was rather earlier than this that my innocent Mother came in touch with a celebrated murderer. Having been troubled with deafness ever since scarlet fever as a child she was always ready to try any new remedy and on one occasion spent some honest money on a wonderful contraption she bought from a firm in town, which like so many articles foisted on the suffering deaf proved worthless. Great was her astonishment later to find the plausible gentleman who had sold it proved to be the notorious “Dr.” Crippen, who cut his wife into neat little slices which he put into the kitchen range, then absconded with a girl, Ethel le Neve, the latter dressed as a boy. The pair were recognised on a trans-Atlantic liner, it being the first time in human history that a ship was kept in touch with Scotland Yard by means of wireless. The case proved to be the debut of that famous scientific detective, Sir Bernard Spilsbury.

Mother has been extremely shy of all so-called deaf aids from that very hour.

Various maids with neat black frocks, white aprons and daintily starched caps served us in those days. As they generally left us for wedded bliss we gained p. 220quite a reputation as a stepping-stone to matrimony.

One or two of them could have gained the front row among the world’s best liars, especially a young widow, who wore combs set with brilliants beneath her cap, apparently bought in the days when good old Woolworths was in reality a “sixpenny” store. Her story of their acquisition was that her late lamented husband had done a good turn to the town of Poitiers, whereupon the Mayor gave them a grand reception, treated them like royalty and presented her with the said combs. One could only feel that the gift was scarcely worthy of so celebrated a town, or else that the funds at the disposal of his Worship the Mayor ran unexpectedly short.

Another amazing adventure related by the lady concerned the time of the terrible Silvertown explosion at Woolwich, where she was engaged on clerical work - or so she said! News was brought to her and several others that the place would blow up in half an hour, whereupon she very wisely beat a hasty retreat. The explosion occurred when she was in the train homeward‑bound. The train lay down flat on its side on the line, then stood up again and quite nonchalantly continued on its journey. The next morning, on entering her office, p. 221which apparently bore a charmed life, she found a fireman’s helmet on her ledger, complete with the fireman’s head inside, the remainder of the unfortunate gentleman having apparently dissolved into the air. I fear she was a descendant of Ananias and Sapphire.

“Bessie” only laughed once all the years she was with us. It was so alarming a spectacle that we lived in constant terror as to whether it would happen again. On her days off, when she went to meet her young man, she wore her abundant black hair piled in roll upon roll upon the top of her head like shelves in a pantry. One winter’s night when she came in the snow had settled in layers on each shelf.

One young person, a bit dim in the intellect, came to my Mother one day looking extremely scared.

“Please, there’s a man in the ‘all. I can’t get ‘im out.”

“But why did you let him come in?” said Mother.

“Please, ‘m! ‘E would come in, I couldn’t keep ‘im out. Will you put ‘I’m out! ‘E’s gone in the drawing-room, so you just look an see ‘e ain’t put any of them bits of china in ‘is pockets. Just watch out, they don’t look bulgy.”

p. 222Distinctly apprehensive, my Mother hurried into the drawing-room, to find, comfortably seated in a chair and smiling beatifically, our very delightful old friend, the second curate, known in the parish surreptitiously as “Baby Bolton”, owing to a song with which he had obliged at a parish function, with the unfortunate finale, “He sat upon the baby on the shore.”

Mother entertained her visitor to tea, crushing down her giggles every time her eyes lit upon the pockets in his perfectly tailored suit.

The same maid was responsible for another alarm, as one morning she startled as at breakfast:

“Please ‘m, there’s a parcel in the shed. I’m sure there’s a dead baby in it. Will the Master please come and see!”

Without any undue enthusiasm the Master went to make an inspection. All was well - for although I have forgotten the contents of the parcel, it was certainly something quite innocent.

A similar alarm disturbed the decorum of the Church Army Hostel next to St. Anne’s Vicarage where a parcel exuding a distinctly gory substance was discovered just inside the gate. A policeman having been summoned, he p. 223prodded the object with much distaste, producing more gore, then deciding to open it, disclosed the form of a very dead and neatly skinned rabbit.

Not long afterwards a story went the rounds, of a lady living in a flat whose beloved pussy having died she decided the only way to dispose of him was in a parcel over Putney Bridge. She took a tram at twilight and hung about the bridge awaiting the opportunity when no one would be looking, but alas that opportunity never came, so she took pussy home again, where she thought she would take one more last farewell. With much grief she opened the parcel, to find inside it a particularly succulent leg of mutton. Someone who found poor pussy must have had a still bigger surprise.

Slightly reminiscent of this story is the adventure of a friend of mine, of most exemplary character, who returned home after a bus ride to find two crook-handled umbrellas hanging on her arm, without the slightest idea how they arrived there.

Another of our maids, who was blessed with luxuriant, though somewhat coarse, black hair had enjoyed the distinction of sitting in a shop window in town, her tresses like a magnificent shawl spread over her shoulders, p. 224advertising a well-known hair restorer. It must have been a deadly dull way of earning a living, as she had to sit with her back to the window gazers, neither seeing nor hearing their admiration.

”Hilda” was a delightful personality, endued with all the quick wit, the humour and the kindness of the true Cockney. She was a finely built girl who complained that her very comfortably cushioned posterior always seemed to be in somebody’s way. Her home was close to the Northcote Road, that colourful market where the buses edge carefully behind the rows of stalls and in Hilda’s day a shrill-voiced woman armed with a fragrant basket, used to scream,

“Here you are! All that lot of mint for a penny! Make your mutton taste like lamb, dear!”

Close to her was an ancient personage, suitable for the part of Methuselah on the stage, who also carried a basket of greenery and announced in a voice of deepest anguish and despair,

“Chickweed for singing birds! Chickweed for singing birds.”

Hilda’s two chief gifts were making my nightdresses and breaking crockery. The latter she always blamed p. 225to her posterior which apparently bumped into things unknown to its owner. She became engaged to a bright little ex-Bombardier, to whom she usually referred as “Pore Billy”, and who had been the prize boxer of his regiment. The wedding feast took place at her brother‑in-law’s establishment and it was not till all the numerous guests had departed it was discovered that those who had been the life and soul of the party and consumed quantities of food and drink were known to neither bride nor groom, each thinking they were the friends of the other.

The honeymoon lasted for the weekend only, no more of that blissful time being desired and the bride returned to daily work with us on the Monday, announcing that pore Billy had been round the world and knew a thing or two, so that she would remain with us for “keeps”, as there would be no family. Unfortunately something went wrong and within a year Mother was summoned to see Hilda with a tiny black head lying beside hers on the pillow. Unlucky Hilda! She would have made such a kind and loving mother, Pore Billy a devoted father, but none of their several children ever survived.

One of her cousins came to an untimely end, she p. 226Being one of the unfortunate “Brides in the Bath”, married to the unpleasant gentleman who, having managed to divert his newly wed wives’ savings to himself, neatly drowned them in their bath. He was also one of Sir Bernard Spilsbury’s successful cases.

One of our housekeepers, a nice widow whose children felt she was too superior to wash our plates and clean our doorstep, gave me a rare fright one night when my parents were away. I was awakened at midnight by a knocking at my door and a terrified sepulchral voice:-

“Let me in, Miss Irene, let me in!”

Jumping out of bed and unlocking the door I found our widow shaking with terror. Pushing me on one side, she rushed into the room and locked the door.

“There’s a burglar downstairs, Miss Irene. I have heard him.”

Even an amateur, at his very first house-breaking, would by this time have been far distant, considering the frightful noise our widow had made. In the moonlight I could see her eyes glittering like a madwoman and as she stood between the door and myself the situation was not too good. Happily all ended well, with the discovery that the “burglar” was our next door neighbour going to bed very late, putting up his shutters at the drawing‑ p. 227room window.

Another widow who came to us just before Father went to hospital for one of his operations might have been photographed as the world’s model housekeeper - hair parted neatly in the middle, a motherly expression, combined with that of a seraph, a spotless frock and apron, hands that were equally skilful at cooking or housework.

Truly man only looketh on the outward appearance and we should have done better to have remembered Sam Weller’s father’s advice, “Beware of Widders”, for we heard from our opposite neighbours that one night she was escorted all down the road with a delighted rowdy company of men and boys who propped her against our gatepost, from which position she fell p. 228head first into our hitherto respectable garden.

A little later she picked herself up and rang the front door bell. Innocent and unsuspecting I opened it, to find her standing on the doorstep smiling inanely. Somewhat scared I helped her into the kitchen where she leant against the dresser still smiling. Mother and I, fearing she was going to have a fit, telephoned the doctor, our young friend, Dr. Jimmie Thyne. On his arrival a few minutes later he had no illusions about any fits, but sternly commanded her to walk across the kitchen, to which she responded by a very zig-zag progress towards the ideal boiler. Jimmie then said sternly:-

“Say ‘Constantinople’”, to which she replied thickly:-

“I ain’t going to say ‘Conshshtanshinople’.”

Whereupon Jimmie grasped her arm with all his six foot, broad-shouldered force,

“Up you go to bed.”

And somehow he pushed her up to her second floor room, leaving Mother and me to finish the job. We dragged off her frock, her boots and her pearl necklace, but by that time she was snoring on the bed, so we left her to get on with it.

p. 229Jimmie, our kind and devoted doctor and friend, once said to me he thought his would only be a short life. Whether this fancy were due to the second sight possessed by many Scotchmen one cannot tell, but it was a true prophecy, for only a few years later, at the beginning of the Second World War he volunteered for active service and in less than a month went down in a torpedoed battleship, tending the wounded until the very end. Yet another instance of that greater love which gives its own life for a friend.

He came to see us the day before he joined up and as he said Goodbye and rode away, a cold stab seemed to touch my heart, so that I felt that in this world I should never see him again.

Our second house in Earlsfield Road, No.19, was a charming home with honeysuckle and jessamine outside the French windows leading into the garden and a great tub of tiny bluebells beneath the shade of the pear trees. A summerhouse at the top of the garden was the scene of some of my early literary efforts.

“Braemar” was the name on the front gate leading along the neat gravel path to the porch over-shadowed by a rosy japonica, and it was at Braemar that I p. 230accomplished the difficult process of growing up. My hair, which until I was eighteen had hung down my back, tied with a huge black silk bow at the nape of my neck, was now piled on top of my head, with fashionable pads inserted at the sides to make it stick out. “Perms” were yet to be invented, but there was the torturing process of back-combing to give a fluffy appearance; strands of the hair being taken and combed underneath towards the head. Removing the tangles at night was real torture. Hats were as large as cart‑wheels and skewered on the head by pins a foot or more in length with enormous heavy tops.

A fashion of the day was to cover these tops with vari-coloured sealing wax, often formed into flower-like shapes. Some people were very clever at this “arty-crafty” work, but my efforts only looked a mess.

Dresses with inner lace slips at the neck were the mode, with horrible bits of whalebone inserted at intervals to make them stand up. Skirts modestly reached the ankles and collected mud and dust galore upon the hems, which were reinforced with a brushlike edging, in which one’s heels caught on any and every occasion. It was almost an impossibility to carry p. 231anything upstairs with both hands, as one hand was needed to hold up the skirt to prevent stepping on it. Full well do I remember one rose-pink frock with countless rows of tiny frills, bestowed on me when my skirts were first “let down” after I left school. On countless occasions I forgot to hold it up when running upstairs, until I heard one of the frills give an ominous “zippp…”

Hot water bottles were little known and only used for the very aged or those in extremis. An occasional concession on a very cold night was a specially prepared glazed brick heated in the oven, then wrapped in a flannel bag and placed in the bed, where it soon became literally stone cold.

Flannel petticoats were still in use and dreadful knitted woollen vests which like the black woollen stockings tickled like a hair shirt and were reduced to the consistency of a board when washed. Other underclothes and nightgowns were made of best calico, which struck a chill through to the marrow in one’s bones, especially on Sundays when they were first put on with other “clean clothes”.

It was about this time that Father and Mother attended the Lord Mayor’s Banquet. Mother, with her p. 232auburn hair piled high, was dressed in a close fitting black velvet frock with a train. A fancy black silk loop was attached, through which she could slip her finger and raise the train out of harm’s way when too many men’s clumsy feet surrounded her. Over the black velvet was cunningly draped a shawl-like scarf of English handmade needle-run lace, patterned with tiny roses. She and Grandmother Elizabeth had worn it at their respective weddings. Happily Father did not share the unhappy fate of so many men, who in their evening clothes look like waiters who have temporarily mislaid the napkins over their arms.

It was also about this time that my Grandfather died at the age of eighty-seven and a half, game to the last, even to chopping down trees. During the last two or three years I learnt to love him, for with my adolescence his dislike of children vanished, so that I was occasionally smuggled into his house for tea, which consisted of highly coloured iced cake, price sixpence a pound and bread, topped with very inexpensive butter. “Smuggled” was the right word, for I had strict instructions not to tell anyone but Father and Mother of my visit, for fear that any other member of the family might not p. 233like it.

Grandfather used to ask many questions about St. Anne’s, shivering with interested horror at the High Church practices. In vain he endeavoured to win me over to one of his pet theories - that the Resurrection did not take place on Easter Sunday. By this time we grandchildren, eight in number, received a ten shilling postal order at Christmas, with the same instructions as formerly, that it was to be put straight into the Post Office Savings Bank. The same letter of deep gratitude also had to be written. Mother, who possessed the gift of making things rhyme, produced a poem on several occasions which acknowledged the gift set as though it had set me up for life.

Those were the days when a death in a family necessitated mourning of the deepest dye, presumably as a slight hint that even the best of folks might not have followed the strait and narrow way, a denial of the glory of the Christian faith which over the open grave can utter the Saviour’s triumphant words, “I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in me though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”

p. 234For my Grandfather’s funeral Mother’s mourning garments were trimmed with deep bands of crape and Father’s silk hat bore a black band of incredible width. A frock of dense black, unrelieved with white was considered correct for seventeen-year old “me”.

p. 235Chapter IX

Immediately after I left school Mother and I took part in the English Church Pageant in the grounds of Fulham Palace, under the inspiration of that dearly‑loved Bishop of London, Winnington-Ingram, whose voice with its slightly husky note became as familiar as his wide friendly smile.

The Devil always seems to have a spite against pageants, appearing to rejoice in providing copious showers from above and oceans of sticky mud beneath. Our Pageant quite came up to form in this particular, yet succeeded in being magnificent. The scene allotted to Wandsworth and Putney was the acquittal of the Seven Bishops.

Mother and I were some of the foremost who had to run shrieking with joy to welcome the Bishops as they emerged from their prison gates. One evening an enormous jovial auctioneer from Putney stepped suddenly p. 236backwards upon one of my toes. From that hour it ceased being a really happy carefree toe. The Bishops, having passed out of sight beyond the trees, the gates reopened to allow the coach and pair of the Lord Chief justice to pass through. This gentleman having held unpleasant views concerning the reprieved Bishops was greeted with torrents of abuse and an ugly rush on the coach. Some nights we were rather too realistic and nearly overturned the coach, complete with the Lord Chief Justice, so that the coachman turned white with the stupendous effort of keeping his prancing, terrified horses under control. I always hate to see horses trying to stand on their tails with their front paws in the air, so that I took particular care to hurl my abuse at the Lord Chief Justice from a safe distance.

Even in those days Mother was rather deaf. On several occasions we took part in the episode showing Latimer preaching. A photograph of the scene taken unknown to us one evening showed Mother close up to the Pulpit with her hand up to her ear, an excellent example of how to listen to a sermon.

Some very prim and proper persons objected to the charming gold and black, quite discreet, draperies worn p. 237by the girl dancers at the Coronation jollifications of King Edward VI. But as Grandma Elizabeth, that dear lady of very saintly memory, used to remark,

“My dear, if you see people extra-prudish, or over-religious, beware of them.”

The ladies who objected to the King Edward’s dancers should have seen Eve in one of my own Passion Plays the other side of London!

I think I could literally count on one hand the number of times I remember my Father going out in the evenings, except to his business meetings at the Battersea Town Hall. The first time in my recollection was to a Variety Entertainment in the West End with a brother‑in-law up from the country. The theatre was apparently so astonished to see him that it caught on fire - a conflagration which was happily soon put out, but not before most of the audience had made a hurried exit. Daddie and Uncle remained in their seats, explaining afterwards that their overcoats were in the cloakroom.

A second occasion was the inauguration of the great organ in Battersea Town Hall, for whose installation Father had taken a considerable part. My Godmother, up from the country, with Mother, put on their Sunday p. 238best to grace the seats of the Mighty with Father.

At the last moment that fastidious gentleman decided he was not wearing the most suitable trousers. As though anyone would be looking at his trousers on such an occasion! But he insisted on changing them, with the unhappy result their arrival was so retarded that he and his two disgruntled ladies occupied the back seat in the gallery.

His third evening outing was to a Victory Ball in the same Town Hall, after the First World War. For several weeks beforehand he and I had private dancing lessons where we were able to pass muster with our instructors, but provided really comic turns when dancing together. Somehow we scraped through the Victory Ball, returning home in the small hours to find Father had forgotten to move his latchkey into his evening suit. This was awkward, seeing as Mother was too deaf to hear us knock and it would practically take the trump of doom to wake our housekeeper. Father was unsuccessfully endeavouring to open a window catch with his penknife, when we were suddenly enveloped in the bright light of a bull’s eye lantern and a policeman’s voice sternly hailed us.

Father pulled out his watch with “Paul Caudwell”

p. 239round the dial in place of the numerals, remarking,

“If you can get me into my house I can show you two clocks with my name round the dials like this.”

The policeman concentrated on the housekeeper’s room, flashing his light continuously across her window, accompanied by a considerable portion of gravel from the path. After some time the lady awoke and eventually let us all in at the front door. The policeman having identified Father’s watch with the two clocks was regaled with half-a-sovereign and light refreshment of a liquid nature. We parted very good friends.

Fortunately the maid we disturbed from her slumbers was not the one whom Mother rounded up before Father on a charge of stealing.

“Call yourself a gentleman, do you!” cried the infuriated damsel, “accusing me of being a thief!”

“Oh, no,” said Father, with his usual legal calm, “Certainly not! I have never called myself anything.”

Father was usually unfortunate when trying to become the “handy-man” about the house. His beautifully shaped fingers, although so neat and meticulous with everything they touched, seemed to go all to pieces if he used a hammer, so that it was I who became the p. 240amateur carpenter.

On the occasion of King George V’s Coronation, Father was perched uneasily on the top of the steps in the drawing-room doing something above a brand-new china cabinet. Mother and I were in the garden with a friend hoping to hear the Minute Guns which would proclaim the Crown was safely on the royal head. Instead, we heard a violent crash from the house. Rushing in, we discovered the cabinet, a dish belonging to our precious hand-painted Rockingham dessert service, a tea table, the steps and Father, all mixed together on the floor, very much in bits and pieces, Father happily being the only portion that was not even chipped.

It was when he was well over forty, that Father discovered he could paint in oils and took several lessons from a somewhat moth-eaten artist who ran a picture shop as a sideline. In the latter capacity he managed to encumber our house with various gilt frames of prodigious size and alarming weight, together with a habit of shedding small pieces of their decorations at frequent intervals, which is was my unhappy duty to re-stick with seccotine, and an abundance of patience. In Father’s boyhood days he had expressed a wish to paint, but Grand‑ p. 241father, who like one of our former kings had not much use for “Bainting or Boetry”, although he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, persuaded Father it was a messy job, which was quite sufficient to put Father off the idea. Yet somewhere the artist’s outlook took root in his clever brain, for whenever Mother asked him to describe a person his nimble fingers produced a two-minute sketch with exactly that individual’s characteristics. Such as the picture of Grandfather in his cope-like overcoat. Chiefly I remember a sketch of “Stanley Carrots”, a youthful gentleman whose large eyes and forehead, topped with orange-coloured hair used to appear unexpectedly, facing the wrong way for decorum, over the top of the pew in front of Father in his own youthful days. “Bessie Milner”, was another lightning sketch, a study of a relative of Alfred Harmsworth, afterwards Lord Northcliffe. Bessie appeared in a small hat, which crowned a large face covered tightly with the spotted net veil of the period.

The moth-eaten artist proved an excellent instructor and in a very short time Father in his very limited time was painting really beautiful pictures, copied and enlarged from postcards or colour prints. One of p. 242his first attempt was a large copy of Soord’s “Lost Sheep”, that lovely picture where the Divine Face of the Good Shepherd is hidden, as he bends over the fearful precipice to gather the frightened lamb in his arm and silhouetted dark against the distant mountains the waiting vultures take their flight. This picture, mounted on a strong pole, was carried night after night, through the streets of Wandsworth during a ten days Mission, followed by a long procession of men, robed in cassocks, full white surplices and black velvet skull‑caps, the two latter having been concocted by the devoted fingers of their respective wives. At the end of the Mission the picture was hung in our daughter church, St. Mary the Virgin, Iron Mill Place, where it was badly damaged in the Second World War owing to exposure to the weather when the building was several times blasted.

Its companion picture, a copy of Hoffman’s “Gethsemane”, was painted by Father a short time later and shows the Lord Christ kneeling before a rock in that sinister garden. The Agony is over, the complete surrender to the Will of God has been made. A ray of moonlight piercing the dark clouds falls full upon p. 243the upturned Face, the clenched hands, the lovely blue of the robe. The Son of God has accepted the burden of man’s redemption, the coming torture, the approaching Cross, the ignominious death. But there is more than that in the serene beauty of the Face and Figure, a foreshadowing of “Resurgam” - the Resurrection and the life everlasting.

A somewhat different use of Father’s brush was in connection with St. John the Baptist. The picture of his head, neatly arrayed on a dish in the process of being presented by that little minx, Salome, to King Herod, hung behind the drawing-room door in Mother’s old home. The sight of the dead, bearded face, surrounded by gore, made my childish heart sick with horror. Many years later, when it came into our possession, Father, Mother and I all felt squeamish at the sight of it, until he had a brain-wave, deciding that as it was one of Herod’s birthday presents it should present to be a surprise, one of those surprises you know is coming. He therefore painted a cunningly draped black veil over the head and dish and all was well. Eventually the picture was discovered to be the work of a minor Old Master and we joyfully sold it.

p. 244What became of Father’s painted veil remains a mystery!

As he grew more skilful Father spent an occasional, very occasional day off, either in the National Gallery, or the Victoria and Albert Museum, producing several delightful copies of pictures far exceeding in merit the ordinary student’s “pot boiler”. Sad indeed was the time when he no longer had the strength or will to take up his beloved paint brushes. But a little later, when all the posters of the district announced his death, one of them printed beneath it, ”Solicitor, Scholar and Artist,” and even in our grief my Mother and I rejoiced at the tribute.

Twice his painting had caused him severe trouble. The first was at the National Gallery where, stepping back from his picture to compare it with the original, his stool slid along the highly polished floor, taking him with it in a very nasty fall. Somehow he managed to get home on the good old 77 bus from Charing Cross and crawl to our gate from the top of the road, where the Mother put him to bed and sent for the nearest doctor. He was a strange individual, who gave a look at Father, made no examination whatever and sent him one pill. Father recovered, possibly from sheer astonishment!

p. 245One morning, quite early, the same doctor arrived on our doorstep in a pair of carpet slippers and somewhat sketchy attire, and began walking in, saying to our maid,

“I have come to see the person who has fallen out of the window.”

“Fallen out of the window,” said the maid, “no one here!”

Happily she was right and it proved to be the maid at a neighbouring house, who apparently walking in her sleep, had fallen into the garden from her bedroom window, a matter of twenty-five or thirty feet, yet by some miracle was not only alive, but without a single broken bone. She was also treated to a casual inspection and one pill.

Father’s chief managing clerk, another lawyer, whose unfortunate initials were “A.S.P.”, fell over the tall bannisters of his home near St. Anne’s one Boxing Day, causing an unkind rumour to fly round the parish that it was Father and not himself. Mr. “A.S.P.” was uninjured, but he must have had a nasty surprise. His brother-in-law nearly followed his example, by suspending himself precariously over the hall nailing a tiger skin on to the staircase wall - in my opinion a very unsuitable p. 246place for a tiger skin and an ideal residence for the Moth Family.

Father’s second adventure while painting was in his studio, in the part of the house then known as the attic, but in these more enlightened days described throughout Wandsworth as the second floor and in many instances advertised as an ideal flat complete with H & C; mention not being made of the thirty-one stairs required to reach it. Father’s studio was heated by one of those ancient death-traps, comprised of pieces of asbestos in a round openwork container warmed by gas. One day, literally by the mercy of heaven, I had one of those mysterious urges which come perhaps from the of the Ministry of the Holy Guardian Angels, to see how Father was progressing with his latest picture.

I mounted the stairs and as I approached the studio door Father opened it and stood swaying in the entrance, while the fumes from that horrid heating contraption nearly knocked me over.

“I feel so ill,” said Father, “I can’t think what is the matter.”

I knew at once and realised that as he had practically no sense of smell and could scarcely distinguish p. 247scent of a rose from a cauliflower, he had been asphyxiated. Hastily calling Mother, we managed with much difficulty to half-drag, half-carry him down the stairs to his bed and then summon the doctor. This time it was our old friend Jimmie Thyne, who soon put matters right, but we were only just in time.

Later that evening I thoroughly enjoyed smashing that gas stove to pieces and dropping the remains in the dustbin.

Dear Daddie! He always looked somewhat pensive on Mothering Sunday, the fourth Sunday in Lent, when like all nicely-brought-up church children I presented my Mother with a gift, so that I gave him a tie at the same time, that he might not feel left out in the cold. These tokens of affection being offered at breakfast time he used immediately to leave the table and hurry up to his room, reappearing wearing a beatific smile and the new tie.

Occasionally Father took me with him when he visited barristers in chambers in the precincts of the Temple and round Chancery Lane. He disappeared into the inner sanctuary with his shiny black deed bag. I remained in the clerks’ office, usually a glorified cupboard p. 248with a smell of stale sandwiches and mouldy looking documents tied with red tape, ornamented with spiders’ webs. But it was all full of interest. Sometimes Father would take me into the Law Courts where important looking barristers in gown and wig with sheaves of papers fluttered among distracted clients, terrified witnesses and austere Judges.

The Court of Appeal fascinated me most - the three Appeal Lords in their robes, with the Counsel trying to wreck each other’s case in an atmosphere of decorum, uncommonly like a church. Here, with the exception of the House of Lords, the highest Court in the Empire, no witnesses are called, only the wretched plaintiff and his adversary fidget in their seats, or stare stolidly in front of them, vainly endeavouring to understand the flow of legal language which will win or lose them their case.

Father always declared that the best lunch in London was to be enjoyed at the Law Society in Chancery Lane, but as in those days no lady was allowed into the sacred precincts of its restaurant, I had to be content with tea at the A.B.C.

Sometimes we turned into the National Gallery or p. 249the Victoria and Albert Museum on the homeward journey. One day I wandered into an adjoining room to my Father where a gentleman was showing the pictures to some admiring lady friends. I was much intrigued when he pointed to a low-hanging one with his foot, for my careful upbringing would not even have allowed me to point at it with my finger. I was even more intrigued, when my Father coming into the room the gentleman entered into conversation with him. It was John Burns, “Honest John”, as he named himself, the celebrated Labour Member for Battersea, who proclaimed that no one should have more than £400 per annum, but who did himself quite well in a pleasant house on Clapham Common, where callers were often informed that “Honest John” would be with them in a minute, he was just cleaning his boots!

Another idea Father had in connection with my education was to have me in his office for a short time to learn the rudiments of business methods. The office was very pleasant, up a flight of steps with large columns on St. John’s Hill, a few hundred yards from where many years later the first flying bomb to fall in this district was to descend with its fiery load, bringing widespread misery and destruction.

p. 250Father’s own room was at the back, where quite according to legal traditions a grape vine looked in at the window, spreading its dainty leaves and tiny rope-like tendrils in picturesque confusion. Of grapes I remember none, but if they were, I fear they were very very sour and distressingly small and hard, for the window faced directly north and would have given an interesting view of the other side of the river had not interfering houses and chimney pots stood in the way. A mile or so away on Lavender Hill, from the top of the side streets near the Town Hall, the towers and pinnacles of Kensington, on a morning where there is a suspicion of mist, float in the air, blue and mystical in a golden haze.

The secrets of many hearts must have been revealed in that quiet room where my Father interviewed his clients, and they were secrets which were well kept, for Father regarded his profession in something the same way as a Father Confessor his confessional, or a doctor his consulting room, where burdened souls come for comfort and advice, whispering things which will never be repeated. Father considered that his work was such that it should never be discussed at home and it was only from other p. 251people we heard of his successes, or knew the names of his clients.

From his private secretary I learnt to type with all my fingers instead of with the amateur’s first two fingers only, also that if one makes a mistake in typing a letter it is certain sure it will be followed by two more, as they always seem to hunt in triplicate. I was also initiated into the mysteries of carbon copies, letter files, elastic bands and office tea.

The very efficient secretary eventually fell in love with “George”, a romantic brother of the office caretaker, who arrived home after the First War wounded and covered with glory. Mother and I visited him in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, of which the only recollection I have is going up in a large lift with one of the porters, who pointing to a nasty looking tin in the corner, remarked pleasantly,

“You’d never believe there’s a man’s tongue in that, now would you! But there is, they’ve just taken it out.”

Mother and I were willing to believe anything, provided we were not expected to view the evidence.

Various secretaries followed - one poor girl lost her leg, but fortunately not in Father’s office.

Another apparently lived on eucalyptus and a cheap perfume p. 252of most appalling vintage. Occasionally, when Father began to break down with increasing ill-health, she used to come to our house for dictation in the afternoon, to save Father having to go twice to the office. Our home was like an open-air sanatorium after she had gone, as Mother rushed round opening every window, whatever the weather, to get rid of the odour of eucalyptus-cum-perfume.

One of the office boys had a curious habit which much annoyed our maids, of vigorously scrubbing his feet on the hall door-mat, before going out of the house.

Mother, in common with many deaf people, has a very strongly developed sense of smell, so that she always said the passing of the choirboys by her seat in church in the winter was like a procession of eucalyptus and paregoric. Nothing in our larder ever has the chance of enjoying corruption, for Mother is aware of it the moment it starts on the downward path. She can trace the smell of gas to its source as surely as a bloodhound the scent of its victim, and knows if anyone is smoking from every corner of the house. The very opposite to Father, for where she would be almost fading out from some obnoxious odour he would remark that he was not sure, perhaps there was something unusual!

p. 253Moths are another arch-enemy of Mother and no sooner does she see one than she dances round the room, clapping her hand in the hope the obnoxious insect is between them. Usually this hope is unjustified and the insect escapes to the top of the curtain or is caught by the cat, who joins in the hunt with delighted co-operation. These manoeuvres often take place in the midst of an interesting conversation, whereupon Father in his day would lie back in his chair, with a sigh of complete resignation.

“It is no good talking to your Mother, my dear, while there is a moth in the room.”

The Caudwells have the unfortunate affliction of sneezing violently. Mother, being Father’s first cousin, is no exception, and once really going is kept busy for several minutes. Father’s face used to wear the the same look of martyred resignation as during the moth episodes, and sitting back he would merely remark,

“All over for some time!”

But Mother was a mere amateur in the art compared with one of our clergy, whose sneeze one Sunday morning while a colleague was preaching, almost shook that poor lad out of the pulpit and caused the Vicar to take a p. 254hasty look round to see if he and the church were still in status quo.

My Father’s sense of law and order was colossal. Even when desperately ill he would struggle to sit up in bed to shave while a nurse or I held the mirror. Sometimes the barber came and for the last two years the doctor advised him to grow a beard, a smartly pointed affair like a French artist, but it was not our “Daddy”, so that Mother and I never think of him with it.

Every sock, handkerchief and collar in his chest of drawers was as carefully arranged as if it were mathematically set in position, often he would jump up from a meal several times to put a picture straight, where our less meticulous vision could see nothing amiss. His sister, my Aunt Afra, when staying with us, used to go round the room before his arrival from his office, putting the pictures slightly askew and altering the ornaments just “to give Paul something to put straight.”

Rows of little windows, heavily barred, dark and sinister by day, except when one of the occupants hangs his shirt or towel out against the wall for reasons unknown to any but himself, vivid spots of light after dusk, extinguished precisely at 9.30, are the most p. 255easily observed features of His Majesty’s Guest-House, otherwise known as Wandsworth Prison.

Residents of Wandsworth away from home, who in all innocence reveal the name of their home town, grow accustomed to the tactless remark,

“Wandsworth! Oh, yes, that is where they hang people! Do you see anything of the executions?”

To which the answer is emphatically, “Certainly not!”

Originally named the Surrey House of Correction, it was built in 1851 on the site of what was formerly the house of the curate-in-charge of St. Anne’s, Wandsworth. Reputed to be the healthiest spot in London, the prison, with its five arms stretching like a starfish from its round central tower, bears a strong resemblance to its brother structure at Dartmoor. The life that circulates behind its immensely high walls is as secret and far removed from Wandsworthians as if the whole edifice were surrounded by an iron curtain which only lifts by an inch or so during long intervals.

Somewhere within its innermost mysteries there occurs at times the execution of a person who has transgressed the laws of both God and man. Often I p. 256have wished that the date of execution need not be announced in the Press.

Sometimes at night, on the eve of an execution, I have looked out of my window, where behind the dark, graceful silhouette of a Scotch fir in my garden, the moonlight has thrown a mystic mantle of silver over the prison buildings a quarter of a mile away, turning even their sinister outline into a thing of beauty. And I wonder whether the man in the condemned cell, who so long has been watched day and night lest he cheat the hangman’s noose, is awake, perhaps tossing and turning on his narrow bed. Is he penitent, or merely resentful that his sin has found him out? Has he said his prayers tonight, or will he go down into the darkness that most awful thing on the face of the earth - an unrepentant sinner, his brother’s blood upon his hands?

Some years ago, the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, in whose parish the prison now stands, together with my own parish of St. Anne’s, in which it stood before St. Mary Magdalene’s existed, observed the laudable custom of mentioning the name of the criminal before the altar at the first service of the day on the morning of his execution. An excellent practice, but it would p. 257have been even better if prayers had also been offered for the soul of the victim, who had probably been hurried out of the world with no time for repentance.

Until the beginning of this century an execution was a signal for the general public to take a self‑bestowed holiday. Streaming across the gorse-covered common, laughing, shouting, joking, they assembled outside the prison entrance, flanked on either side by the barn-like respective residences of the Governor and the Chaplain, waiting to hear the tolling of the bell and to see the notice, stating that justice had been done, which is always fixed to the massive door after an execution. Those a little farther off were rewarded by seeing a black flag hoisted upon the central tower.

In my younger days I have heard that dreadful bell, fifteen solemn strokes, one a minute, but the black flag was abolished much earlier. The fifteen minutes tolling was eventually reduced to one single stroke and now it has gone the way of the black flag. Perhaps it is a pity, as the tolling, even if only once, acted as a reminder to pray for the soul of the condemned.

Rumour used to state that the prison clock, with p. 258its far-reaching note, can always be relied upon to tell the proper time, as it dare not do otherwise, seeing that on the morning of an execution, news of the prisoner’s reprieve or unexpected evidence in his favour might arrive. And there would be no remedy if he had already been executed owing to the prison clock being fast.

Another rumour states that a certain gentleman whose father had been the unfortunate centre of one of these episodes, on being asked by a stranger the cause of his parent’s decease, replied,

“He was assisting at a special function and the platform gave way.”

A certain Wandsworthian has been known to answer when urged to hurry or he would be late for an appointment.

“Don’t worry! I am like a man going to be hanged. They can’t get on with the job without me.”

A few years ago a certain lady, an anti-capital punishment campaigner, used to descend on the prison before an execution with a loud-speaker van. The said van used to parade down our road playing, “Abide with me”, until the horrid event in the prison was ended.

Meanwhile the lady had rows of people on their knees p. 259outside the prison doors sobbing and praying in real mass hysteria. After one or two little melodramas of this description a cordon of police guarded the entrance to the three roads leading to the prison.

At midday the roads swarm with the non-resident warders going home to their dinner, very smart and spruce in their dark uniform, a mysterious chain hanging in a loop from under the coat, said to hold a whistle tucked into the trouser pocket.

The Heathfield Road, in which the prison stands, is very eerie at night, consisting of the long wall of the prison on one side and for most of the way market gardens with a low quick-set hedge on the other side, an unhealthy combination for women and girls after dark.

One Sunday morning, in the old days when we wore long skirts with braid round the bottom to preserve the edges, a friend of mine was walking along this road on the way to St. Anne’s, when a roughly dressed man approached her and opening a business-like clasp-knife remarked,

“There is a piece of braid coming off your skirt, Miss, let me cut it off for you.”

Knowing it was untrue and taking an instant dislike p. 260to the speaker, she gathered up the skirt and ran, never pausing till she reached the more salubrious precincts of the Earlsfield Road.

In the daytime small bands of prisoners in the care of warders sometimes march down the Heathfield Road from some outer part of the buildings where they have been working. Formerly their clothing was generously embroidered with broad arrows, denoting their present residence, now they are dressed in quiet grey and for the most part look as mild and behaved as a religious procession. But I wouldn’t trust them, for I have inherited my Father’s belief that the habitual criminal can look as guiltless as when he lay in his Mother’s arm, while it is the innocent person accused of breaking the law, who appears flustered, ashamed and beside himself.

I rarely look at the faces in these pathetic processions, though often I remember the words of the litany, “That it may please thee to show thy pity upon all prisoners and captives,” or those other words spoken long ago, “There, but for the mercy of God, goes myself.”

Before the trees in our garden spread wide and high, people standing outside our gate could see by the side of our house, right through the garden p. 261to a few of the prison cells in the distance. By some mysterious means, known to prisoners, they were able to find out who was in those actual cells, so that on Sunday afternoons pathetic little groups stood outside our gate waving handkerchiefs, perhaps holding up a baby, in the vain hope that a young father behind one of those far-off barred windows might be able to see his little child. We did not like it, but we never had the heart to send them away.

During the First World War, when for a time it became a Military prison, Mother and I sometimes responded to the handkerchiefs and towels frantically waved to attract our attention as we stood at the top of the garden watching the troop trains, or those sadder ones marked with huge red crosses, where white-veiled nurses moved down the corridors, or leant over the sadly burdened stretchers. Many of these trains discharged their suffering, agonised loads at Clapham Junction, placing them in long lines of waiting ambulances and bringing them to the “Patriotic”, a former orphanage for children of soldiers, sailors and airmen, temporarily transformed with its pleasant acres of grounds just beyond the “Four miles from Charing Cross” limit, into the Third p. 262London General Hospital, where above the central door, the noble figure of St. George, Patron of England, is carved, the slain dragon at his feet.

One of our maids, daughter of a policeman at Chichester, confessed she had more than once felt her father’s belt round her naughty little self, when he had seen her gaily hanging on to the back of a cart. Every afternoon when she went up to change from her pink or blue cotton frock into a black dress with frilly white apron and cap, in which with her rosy face, flushed cheeks and baby blue eyes she looked really charming, she used to wave from her bedroom to a prisoner in one of the top cells.

One morning she came to Mother with a terror-stricken face, showing a letter which had just arrived on the door-mat, addressed to “The Maid of the House, in which the writer in loverlike terms announced he was the prisoner to whom she had waved so many times and that he had been released that very day. The letter ended by asking her to meet him outside the gate that evening at 8:30 p.m. Father met him instead! He did not call again.

On a more recent occasion I opened the door myself to an ingratiating individual who informed me he also had just been released from prison and thought it a p. 263Christian act to tell me he and his comrades in neighbouring cells saw me getting up every morning. Knowing my windows are so situated as to make this impossible, I sternly replied, “You are quite mistaken.”

To which he answered, “But I am sure of it; you have yellow curtains.”

To which I answered truthfully and even more sternly, “We have lived forty years in this house and have never had yellow curtains at the back windows.”

His little game of apparent blackmail was spoilt.

On the morning on which our former burglar called to see Father to ask for money Mother and I went to the prison to ask the Governor whether a man of that name had been released that day. We were ushered through the tiny door in the great entrance, through a second huge door of iron like a portcullis and into a waiting room where another visitor was sitting on the end of a bench, peeling lumps of grease off his nether garments with an out-size pocket knife.

In a short time we were ushered into the “Presence”, an ideal Governor for such an establishment, courteous, but cold as ice and stern as a whole tribe of judges. Without any expression on his mask-like countenance he p. 264informed as that our man had been released that morning and knowing his record, he would give orders to the police that our house should be watched until my Father came home. A polite, but frigid bow and we were escorted back into the street.

Occasionally a prisoner escapes. Before the railway line between the prison and our gardens was electrified they sometimes came across the line and through our gardens to the Earlsfield Road. Now, happily, like the would-be burglars, they live in wholesome fear of the live rail.

More than once, from gardens more accessible to the deep railway cutting than ours, a child from one of the houses has strayed on to the embankment, seeking wild flowers or a lost ball and reaching the live rail, has lost its precious little life.

One escaped prisoner who crossed the line early one summer morning, climbed into a garden a few doors from us, found the son-of-the-house’s sports clothes on the line, changed into them and dropped his own into the dustbin. The side entrance being easier to manipulate than many of our houses, he slipped out into the Earlsfield Road equipped in sports vest and shorts like the young p. 265men, who with shoulders well back, heads up and hearts going pit-a-pat, sprint round the neighbourhood for exercise when most people are still in bed.

Another gentleman provided an interesting melodrama for an hour and a half one Sunday afternoon by escaping from the prison yard and climbing to the top of a chimney stack forty feet from the ground, which he used as a pulpit. Throwing off his prison-grey overalls he appeared in his birthday dress and sitting on the edge of the chimney stack, which to say the least must have been extremely hard, he dangled his legs inside, proceeding to hold forth concerning his grievances to the crowd assembled in the Heathfield Road. The grievances in question appeared simply to consist of the fact that the amenities of the prison did not quite come up to those of the Ritz or the Dorchester, a not altogether surprising state of affairs.

The warders staged an interesting man-hunt with scaling ladders, which the prisoner still seated on his chimney stack, pushed away time after time.

But all good things come to an end and eventually several warders, using two ladders at once, managed to grasp him and politely wrapping him in a blanket fastened p. 266round him like a parcel, removed him from his exalted position and the view of the multitude. Like many interesting stories this one ended abruptly, for no one outside the prison knows what happened next.

The last rocket in the Second World War to fall on this district, dropped on a corner of the prison grounds, doing extensive damage to property, but happily causing no loss of life. It must have been nearly half a mile from us, on the extreme outskirts of the prison territory, yet clouds of thick black dust came through the closed windows of the room in which Mother and were sitting, like a dense, gritty fog.

One of our young servers was in St. Anne’s Vicarage at the moment - his family were buried in the ruins of their home, but were all rescued alive, practically uninjured, except for shock.

One dreadful night, when Wandsworth had a very good idea of the meaning of Hell, with bombs dropping continuously, planes flying overhead hour after hour, and gunfire exploding without ceasing, the prisoners in their cells went berserk, adding to the general horror by screaming and howling like caged wild beasts. It was awe-inspiring and frightful, like a scene from p. 267Dante’s Inferno.

Occasionally we hear them shouting to one another, but this was the only occasion we have ever heard them seized with genuine mass terror. And no wonder!

One of the prison chaplains, a nice old gentleman, a friend of my Father, lived in our road, but I never liked him so much after he announced cats were a necessary evil. He had an elderly housemaid of more than three-score years and twenty who fell downstairs and ended her career in domestic service. I think his must have been one of the last families in this district to dine at night in the full glory of several wine-glasses and elegant finger bowls.

Springfield Mental hospital, a mile or so away, was for some years served by our clergy from St. Anne’s, who had strange experiences during their ministrations, for example, one woman who jumped up during a sermon in the hospital chapel, asking in no uncertain voice, “What have you done with my seven children?”

The same priest was also distinctly taken aback on an occasion when he was giving some of the inmates their Communion at the altar rail and found one of them kneeling with a hefty slice of bread in his hand.

p. 268One evening I attended Evensong as one of the guests and was accommodated with a seat near the sanctuary, set sideways so that the whole congregation was visible and there was not the eerie feeling that one of them might be playing some unpleasant trick behind. It was a strange congregation, the womens’ hats being at every angle, as naturally no hatpins were allowed, and not the slightest notice was taken of one man who every few minutes rose from his seat, throwing his long arms high in the air, then decorously re-seated himself. I fear I must confess I was not sorry when the service ended, as I found it all very harrowing.

Many of the inmates responded well to the Chaplain’s efforts - in others the mere sight of him seemed to rouse the devil in them. Father Warren, who was very sensitive to atmosphere, always declared he could sense the evil in some of the cases and in his opinion they were living examples of demoniac possession, such as those recorded in the Bible. One woman threw a heavy plate at him, but he just managed to duck down and avoid it. Another attempted to embrace him, but I believe that time he took to his heels and fled.

Father Warren, to whose friendship, sympathy and p. 269unfailing kindness, my family and I owe much gratitude, abhorred a draught above all things and his first glance on entering a room was to see whether there were any floating about. By a strange coincidence his Memorial set up in St. Anne’s some years after his sudden death, was a porch inside the south door, of oak, so that the faithful need no longer have their feet frozen with the icy blast in winter, nor feel unpleasant breezes slipping down inside their collars during the sermon. Inside the porch, facing the entrance is a lovely crucifix of the same oak, an arresting Figure, whose youthful head bears no Crown of Thorns, but is regal with the perfection of Divine love.

Father Warren was always full of resource. One Sunday, as he stood at the altar, he put his foot through the hem of his alb with a horrid sound of rending linen. Nothing daunted, he stooped down, tore off what remained, then stepped out of it and proceeded with the service.

From somewhere before his time comes the sad story of the choirman whose teeth fell out as he was singing enthusiastically during the procession round the church. Another circumstance, to which it is wiser not to assign a date, is that of the lady who announced herself the p. 270Spiritual Bride of the Vicar, proceeding to give that reverend gentleman unpleasant frights and generally constitute herself Public Nuisance Number One. Her playfulness in knocking off the Rural Dean’s hat in the open street and the unfortunate result of a sermon preached on a text from the Song of Solomon, resulted in the lady being removed to one of His Majesty’s institutions where such cases receive careful attention.

Another undated incident was the discovery by the People’s Warden of numerous empty tins of fruit on the church roof, carefully “lost” by generations of choirboys, including his own model sons. There was also the little matter of the vestry inkstand, whose roomy drawer housed an interesting collection of extraneous objects found in the almsbags, particularly buttons of high and low degree.

The organist who delighted to play unsuitable music, such as “Here comes the bogey man!”, should not be forgotten, nor that perfect verger, who with eyes fixed on the hymnbook he held in one hand, while singing with great fervour, “Change and decay in all around I see,” shook a small, screaming, wriggling boy by the ear with complete nonchalance and perfect rhythm.

Quite recently I feel I rescued one of our choirboys p. 271from an untimely end, as I caught him in the very act of popping into his mouth one of the tablets I keep for moth prevention in the Vestment chest, under the impression it was a new kind of sweetmeat.

Another adventure in which I figured was at Christmas‑tide, on an evening when the Mayor and Corporation attended St. Anne’s in all their full glory. A candle on one of the Christmas trees by the chancel wall set light to the dark fir branch on which it was fixed, transforming it into a mass of glittering gold. With praiseworthy zeal the Mayor leapt from his seat, endeavouring to quench the fire with his bare hands. I hurriedly followed him and seizing a flower vase from the lectern, threw the water over the blaze with as much respect to the person of His Worship, the First Citizen of the Borough, as was possible under the circumstances. Meanwhile the calm, musical voice of Father Warren continued without the slightest interruption, “… and that they may truly please thee, pour upon them the continual dew of thy blessing…”

The incident was a reminder of the evening when all the lights suddenly went out, leaving the congregation in the same condition as the old riddle informs us Moses p. 272once found himself. The assistant priest who was reading the prayers manfully continued without a pause, “Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O lord…”

In the Parochial Hall at an extremely decorous Missionary Meeting, while we sang with enthusiasm,

“Feed the faint and hungry heathen,
With the richness of thy Word,”

the Vicarage dog marched up to the platform with an outsize slice of bread and butter firmly held between his teeth.

Unfortunately on these occasions I suffer agonies with suppressed laughter.

One evening, again in our Parochial Hall, Canon Theodore Wood, the Rural Dean, was presiding over his Ruridecanal Conference and everything was as proper as prunes and prisms, including the Rural Dean himself, who had a grave and dignified presence, six feet high and a good many inches wide.

In the Conference was a certain priest who for many years had been writing an extremely abstruse book on the Most Holy Spirit of God, which judging from the descriptions he generously afforded to the Deanery on p. 273every occasion ad lib and certainly ad nauseam, had not an earthly chance of seeing publication. On this particular evening the poor old dear several times endeavoured to raise the subject, but the Rural Dean, not wishing to see the rest of the Conference slide out of the door with a bow to him and a muttered excuse of urgent business elsewhere, ignored the author. At length, waving a large umbrella in the air, he marched up to the centre of the room and shaking the umbrella in the Rural Dean’s face, shouted, “I will talk about my book! I will! I will! I will!”

But he didn’t! One look from the Presence and he hurriedly returned to his seat, appearing suddenly to have become several inches shorter and decidedly thinner.

Canon Wood was then Vicar of St. Mary Magdalene, Wandsworth Common. His vicarage had stained glass over the front door with the words in white lettering, “Benedictus Benedicat. Peace be within thy walls.”

His garden at the back, behind the long wooden fence, was exquisite in the spring with masses of crocuses, purple, gold and white beneath the budding trees. He was a great naturalist and many birds found sanctuary in his garden, although in the house he was reported to have a p. 274>cat on every chair and cats and birds when mixed together are apt to end in a minus quantity on the part of the birds.

p. 275Chapter X

Opposite our house there lived “Mr. Doncaster”, the Editor of a famous horticultural magazine, who cultivated many rare flowers, which probably took the place in his life of ordinary amusements, since, poor soul, he was stone-deaf.

Standing at my own front door during a terrific thunderstorm in the company of two coalmen I had called in for shelter, we saw lightning strike the house next door to Mr. Doncaster and flames burst from the tiled roof, Within a very few moments the torrential rain had extinguished them. Quite a different gift from the sky than the block of ice which a few years later fell into Swanage Road and broke into pieces. Rumour reports that a plane was passing at the moment, which makes it difficult to decide whether it or the heavens were the guilty party.

A few doors away lived a charming old couple who p. 276might have walked straight out of a fashion plate of last century. She with her black satin frock and dainty white lace cap, he with his courtly grace and upright bearing! His progress down Earlsfield Road was always a slow one, as with his handsome walking‑stick he meticulously removed into the gutter every piece of paper, shred of orange peel, or other foreign matter which he met.

A certain stretch of pavement round the corner in Heathfield Road always seemed to attract worms from the gardens. The poor creatures lay wriggling and dying, longing for their native earth, where, as they always give me the creeps, I prefer for them to be hidden. But I could not bear to see them in their misery, so with inward shudders I used to pick them up in my gloved fingers and drop them back in the gardens, where I left them to look after themselves. The low walls which support the little wooden fences over which I threw them, have their own historic interest, for some of their rough grey stones came from the old residence, “Stone House” which formerly stood on the spot, built from the stones of Old London Bridge which stood more or less intact for six hundred and fifty years.

p. 277Another delightful old gentleman a few doors from us, spent many hours in the Prison trying to interest the inmates in spiritual matters, until failing health prevented him. He used to walk up the road twirling his umbrella in a somewhat alarming manner and always had a fund of interesting stories. One morning, after a night when bombs had been dropping hour after hour and guns roaring, popping, screaming, screeching, from dusk to dawn, he observed to me we had never been nearer heaven than during the previous hours of darkness. I dared not hurt his feelings by telling him that to my wicked mind it had been far more like the other place, usually unmentionable in polite society.

One night we were awakened in the very early hours by a prodigious noise on the front door made by someone banging on the panels with the flat of his hands. Heard in the dead of night it sounded like an old-fashioned battering-ram.

Father emerged on to the landing in his dressing-gown and in an interval enquired what was the matter. A very thick and shaky voice answered impatiently.

“Let me in! Let me in! I live here!”

“Indeed you don’t,” replied Father, “go to your own p. 278home - this is mine.”

The battering-ram started with renewed vigour, interspersed with “Let me in! Let me in!”

Father took no notice and returned to his room, from whose window he eventually recognised a neighbour from lower down the road swaying uncertainly towards the gate. The gentleman, in his own social circle was usually known by the nickname of “Tricky”, for reasons which would be indiscreet to mention.

Father Maurice Child, the instigator of the first Anglo-Catholic Congress, a priest of many gifts, published my first literary effort when he was one of the moving spirits of a Church Publishing Firm. It was an Anthology for the Sick, entitled “In the Morning”, a copy of which was graciously accepted by Queen Alexandria. This was followed by my first book on the ceremonial of the English Church, which involved several visits to Father Child’s home in Ebury Street, where his valet popped his head round the door at discreet intervals as a chaperon, with even discreeter enquiries as to whether any of his services were needed. My recollections of Father Child’s study are of brightly striped antimacassars, a coloured picture of a gay-looking St. Maurice, his patron saint, and a multitude of p. 279beautiful objects gathered from the many corners of the world where his adventurous spirit had led him. At sixteen years of age he wrote Thomas Cook & Son, asking them to book him to Kerguelen, the farthest point he could find from any land. They took his request quite seriously and eventually he saw that solitary island.

I last saw him not long before the accident which caused his death at a comparatively early age. He was then Rector of the little church at Cranford which stands in the middle of lovely park lands. As he met me he laid a cucumber on the church wall, remarking it was for tea and then conducted me over the ancient church. The most interesting feature to my eyes, being the lady sacristan of St. Anne’s, Wandsworth, was his amazing collection of vestments of every shade and colour, some of the most beautiful being of Spanish embroidery, a mass of trailing flowers.

A small room opened out from his study, “papered” entirely with cigarette wrappers from all over the universe, an amazing and extremely colourful form decoration.

My public literary efforts began at the mature age of eleven with a harrowing short story on the Readers’

p. 280Own Page in “Sunshine”, a popular children’s magazine. It concerned a lost child and the death and burial of the wicked nurse who had stolen her from her home. This was followed by an even more tragic story of a Vicar, whose only child died in his arms immediately after he had baptised her  . . .  “the look of pain fled, and was replaced by one of angelic sweetness, which even parted her pale lips. She looked up smiling into her father’s face, then closed her eyes and lay rigid and still in his arms. Verily she had become an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven.” For this heartrending effusion I received three times as many votes as the second most popular contribution, together with a copy of “Home Influence”.

In private life I was Editor at twelve years old of a Magazine entitled “Joy Bells”, which contained stories, recipes, suggestions for handwork, archeology, competitions, “Moments with my Readers”, puzzles and illustrations, the latter distinctly sketchy. One extract, apparently lifted from a more adult journal, told the lamentable story of a Fiji cannibal chief who for every human body he devoured all by himself, placed a stone on his estate. At his ultimate decease these p. 281stones numbered eight hundred and twenty-two.

Whether he himself eventually formed the menu for a friend’s dinner is not mentioned.

An interesting sidelight on the prices of the day is the announcement that a prize, amount conveniently not specified, would be given for the best-dressed halfpenny doll. A doll for a halfpenny! Could ever such things have existed?

At sixteen I had written a novel entitled “Leonard Montaigne or the New Curate”. I fear Leonard was rather smug, a romantic mixture of Galahad, Romeo and St. Paul.

Mother and I announced his existence to Miss Major, the Headmistress of Putney High School, later to become the Principal of Girton. That charming lady welcomed me as a pupil, but could offer no advice as to the future of Leonard. She had me thoroughly examined by the school doctor, who took an undue interest in my spine and kept me shivering in my chemise for a considerable time in a large and chilly room.

The school was then situated near East Putney Station and one of my

form mates looked down with haughty pride upon the rest of us as her own home a few doors away entertained one of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race crews.

p. 282Added to this great glory was the fact, announced to us with great unction, that she used a clean pair of stockings every day.

“Leonard” was not quite dead and buried when I left school. With much trepidation Mother and I took him to visit a firm of publishers, one of the most pathetic business ventures I have ever had the misfortune to behold. It was a one-room, one-man affair, of which the proprietor was stone-deaf. He was a person of great personal charm and good education, but the poor fellow had not a ghost of a chance. His tiny office was crowded from floor to ceiling with books and manuscripts. Being too poor to have any clerk and too deaf to hear a bell he had a weight on a piece of string facing him inside the door. Anyone knocking sent the weight up, leaving it suspended until he saw it had moved. He offered to publish Leonard if I would pay £40 towards the cost. Happily I refused and probably thereby saved my literary reputation, for I fear poor Leonard would have proved very much of an “also ran”.

It was about this time I sent a nauseatingly pious report of an Ordination Service to the “Church Times”, which must have immediately found its way into the p. 283editorial waste-paper basket.

My first article appeared in the “Challenge”’, an excellent church paper destined to have but a short life. The article was an account of the Christmas Crib, which following the example of the churches, we set up each year in our own home. Composed of ivory coloured figures of the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph, the Holy Child, the Ox and the Ass, it stands on a table just inside our hall door in a little thatched stable, surrounded with variegated holly and other evergreens. Two robins perch on the stable floor, close to a pair of tiny cats, all on friendly terms with one another in the Presence of their Baby King and Creator, who lies upon his bed of straw. A strange sense of peace, of awe, and of mystery surrounds this little model of the First Christmas, so that all who come to the front door step inside and stand in silence, gazing upon the Holy Mother and her blessed Babe, whether they be milkman, grocer, butcher, postman, friends, neighbours, or people selling brushes or stationery pads. Perhaps to some of them it is their only glimpse of the real meaning of the Christmastide p. 284festivities, “…And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

My article on our Christmas Crib gained me an interview with “Urbanus”, that gifted writer who has written so many delightful articles in the ”Church Times”. He gave me much valuable advice with regard to a literary career, for which I shall always be grateful.

My biography of that heroic apostle to the lepers, Father Damien, “Damien the Leper Saint”, brought me into contact with the publisher, J.G. Lockhart, himself the author of various famous biographies. It also gave me a large number of reviews, mostly extremely kind, the others being entirely contradictory, one saying I was obviously a Roman Catholic, another that it was quite certain I was not so. Among many letters I received one from President Roosevelt and an extremely abusive one from a Protestant organisation, together with a pile of tracts sent anonymously from a similar source. The cream of the latter presentation was a quotation concerning Purgatory:- “The fire that purges those souls, those both happy and unhappy souls, p. 285surpasses all the torments that are to be found in this miserable life of man, or are possible to be invented. Out of which assertion it clearly follows that the furious fits of the stone, fever, or raging gout, the tormenting colic, with all the horrible convulsions of the worst diseases, nay, though you join racks, gridirons, boiling oil, wild beasts, and a hundred horses drawing several ways and tearing one limb from another, with all the hellish devices of the most barbarous and cruel tyrants, all this does not reach the least part of the mildest pains in purgatory.”

Against this interesting description was drawn a long line with the words, “Your fate”, written against it. which, to say the least, seemed rather unkind, besides being distinctly uncalled-for. And how different from the sublime words of the Holy Redeemer to the dying penitent thief crucified in excruciating torture beside him. “Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise!”

“With me in Paradise!” What words of comfort to those who watch beside a deathbed, or stand in lonely desolation beside an open grave!

Another quite juicy tract was entitled “Secrets of a Mormon’s Harem,” although what that had to do with p. 286Father Damien or me is beyond my understanding. A paragraph in a third one, marked with a red pencil, kindly informed me that the Secretary of the Association would be glad to help me. Nothing doing, thank you! I don’t like their suggestions of my ultimate fate.

My long series of sacred plays began with the script for some Bethlehem Tableaux shown in the great chancel of St. Anne’s. At the first performance, just before the curtain went up, the Archangel Gabriel unhappily trod on a flex which lit the whole of one side of the picture. We were unpopular for some time with the churchwardens, as we grabbed all their spare candles and fixed them on the chancel wall. Our popularity was not enhanced on the next occasion by the frolicsome choirboy who ran along the chancel wall and knocked a piece of the Bath stone off the corner.

My first play, “The Mystic Tree”, Legends of the Holy Cross, began with a scene outside the Garden of Eden, preceded by such realistic thunder and lightning on the organ that a lady in the congregation remarked afterwards that she was “took with just the same pains as during an ordinary storm” and had to say sternly to herself:

“Now just you hold tight to your seat and you won’t p. 287have no trouble.” Apparently she held sufficiently tightly and all was well.

A London picture paper photographed the play, but unhappily became a little mixed between the scene with King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and the one showing St. Helena, with her private chaplain, the Bishop Macarius, discovering the True Cross, so that in the picture marked “King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba“, her majesty wore a chain with a crucifix and Solomon appeared in a cope and mitre. The real king Solomon, a headmaster in private life, usually forgot his regal status, and stood with his thumbs tucked into his armholes as though addressing his schoolboys, an action which required a certain amount of manoeuvring to find the said armholes amid his gorgeous Eastern raiment.

But he made a magnificent king in the prime of his manhood. A few years later he mentioned he had never a day’s illness in his life and before the week was completed was stricken with a mortal illness.

I nearly ended my career when playing the Queen of Sheba at St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, as in the semi-darkness behind the scenes I stepped from the lofty stage into space. Happily the strong arm of King Constantine, p. 288acting with lightning resource, dragged me back into safety.

My first Passion play, based on the events of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, entitled “By Thy Cross and Passion”, contained two sentences for a Roman soldier, “Until death, my lord” spoken to Pontius Pilate; the second to myself, Claudia Procula, that gentleman’s wife, “It shall be done.”

The tall, magnificent-looking sidesman who took the part in St. Anne’s Church and many other parishes both sides of the River Thames, could never remember which was which of the two phrases, so that until his scene he was always found distractedly trying to learn his part. Sad indeed was the occasion when one of the Archangels, forgetting his celestial origin, hid the poor fellow’s book of words.

One of the most interesting performances to ourselves as amateur actors was an evening in a church near Cambridge Circus. We were invited by Father Clarence May, who used to hold a procession one night each week with Crossbearer, surpliced choir and a faithful body of laymen through the London streets, gathering on their way any who cared to follow them.

p. 289On this night Father May collected sufficient people from the streets to fill the church, a motley audience of widely different status, from those in gala evening dress down to Bill and ‘Alf with brightly coloured handkerchiefs knotted round their necks. Some of the women may even have followed the same profession as Mary Magdalene. But they were a wonderful audience, perfectly silent, in awe and reverence. Perhaps never before had they realised that the empty Cross, draped with the sinister white winding sheet, the sorrowing women and St. John, grouped around it, was a real thing, an historical event, not merely a picture in a book or an echo from some long forgotten Sunday School.

We gave several performances of “By Thy Cross and Passion” in the chancel of St. Peter’s, Walworth, being regaled afterwards in the crypt with enormous ham sandwiches of a most succulent flavour. Little did we know that one night in the future that crypt would become a shambles of heartrending magnitude, where numbers of people sheltering in it would be torn literally limb from limb when a high explosive bomb exploded beside it.

At Hampstead, our host, an Archdeacon, sprained his ankle in the churchyard just before the performance, p. 290but heroically endured to the end, seated on a table with his legs stretched out straight before him. I fear he must have suffered greatly, not from us, it is to be hoped, but from his ankle.

Of all the theatricals in which I have taken part some of the most thrilling were the pageants in the Albert Hall arranged by the S.P.G. (Society for the Propagation of the Gospel) and produced by Mr. Henry Millar. We had many hundreds of players, who swarmed around the neighbouring streets in the garments and complexions of every nation under the sun. My most exciting part was that of St. Mary Salome with the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. John and St. Mary Magdalene, heartbroken beneath the empty Cross, in a tableau staged in a frame like a giant picture in front of the great organ. St. Mary Magdalene, a charming figure in her Eastern robes with rows of silver coins round her forehead, was Miss Rosamund Essex, the author of the Pageant, later to become the Editor of the “Church Times’.

One of St. Anne’s clergy, the Reverend Arthur Body, son of the famous Canon Body of Durham, took the part of the High Priest of Israel and was an impressive figure with his robes edged with fringe, golden bells p. 291and pomegranates, his nose enlarged by the professional maker-up to turn him into a true Israelite. The golden bells behaved quite nicely, adhering to him to the end, merely proving a little embarrassing, as they always betrayed his whereabouts. The pomegranates were not so faithful, leaving his person at the slightest excuse, so that they proved an almost minus quantity at the end of the performances.

One evening he forgot to remove his spectacles, for which lapse the producer could have quite happily assisted him from this planet, particularly as not only being an anachronism, the glasses caught the spot lights turning them into beams of dazzling magnificence. He had a nasty scare himself on the first night of the pageant, in the scene of the Presentation of the Holy Child in the Temple. Preparing to receive in his arms a heavy stone Bambino he discovered it was made of celluloid, light as thistledown, which practically bounced.

Dear old Father Body, with his round, rosy face like an elderly cherub, his beaming smile and his fund of stories was much beloved. He used to walk up and down his study in a regular path like a contented caged lion. During the seventeen years he was at St. Anne’s he wore out several strips of linoleum which he conscientiously laid on the floor save the vicarage carpet. His room p. 292was almost as austere as a monastic cell. There were some pictures on the walls but he took so little interest in them that he could never tell what they represented.

Another friend in the S.P.G.Pageant was Father Stopford of St. Andrew’s, Earlsfield, who had a hobby for collecting walking sticks and queer birds. The latter were nothing whatever to do with his parishioners, although most parishes can produce several excellent specimens. Father Stopford had a particularly sinister creature to which he was devoted. It was armed with an awful beak, the terror of Father Stopford’s charming young wife. It lived on the landing and every feminine passer-by kept her skirts tightly round her when she passed him, as his extremely outsize beak came through the bars of his cage like a flash of lightning.

During the long years I have spent at St. Anne’s I have known eight Vicars and curates innumerable - curates tall and curates short, curates fat and curates thin, curates young and curates old, over three dozen of them and all of them friends of my family. “Lucky Luke” is now an Archdeacon, “Tom Tiddler” and several others Canons or Rural Deans. Some of them had celebrated ancestors - the Reverend F.W. Austen, descended from the p. 293famous “Jane”; the Reverend F.A. Evelyn, whose relative was the John Evelyn of our history books and friend of King Charles; the Reverend C. Leigh-Hunt, a descendant of Leigh Hunt the author and poet.

Father Evelyn was an excellent amateur actor and was the first to introduce Bethlehem Tableaux in the parish, in which I appeared as the Angel of the Lord in flowing white robes and enormous wings to a group of rightly scared shepherds. Father figured as one of the Wise Men, in company with the churchwardens, all three the last men in the world one would expect to see in a tableau. Mother was a picture as the Angel of Glory, robed in white with enormous wings, holding high the crown of victory above the empty Cross, her auburn hair a burning gold in the radiance of the spot light.

At one of the presentations the Wise Men’s incense was missing. The lady playing “Anna” solved the mystery.

“I gave it to the doves,” she said “they seemed hungry and I thought it was their food, poor little things.”

“Harmless as doves” did not suit these two little creatures, who carried by St. Joseph, appeared in their wicker cage in the scene of the Presentation in the Temple as models of their tribe. But off stage p. 294they were more like Kilkenny cats, quarrelling and swearing at one another in a manner alarming to see and hear.

Father Morton, a young Welshman, with coal-black hair, left us to act as a chaplain in Maymyo, Burma. He left the town at the “eleventh hour” before the entrance of the Japanese, snatching up a white silk stole, the only possession with which he started that long, agonising Via Dolorosa known as the “Burma Road”. On his arrival in England after his escape, his thick dark hair had turned white as snow.

Father Schooling, one of our very few married clergy, brought with him a charming young wife. Their eldest child, Antony, was the first baby I ever held in my arms and felt like an enormous, squirming mass of jelly which petrified me with terror lest I should drop it, or rather him. Father Schooling himself suffered much for some weeks before Christmas by the money-extracting efforts of small children bawling through his letter-box, “No-ell, No-ell”, but he never carried out his threat of giving them a little practical demonstration that “’ell” really did exist.

One of our Vicars had a charming old father, a p. 295Prebendary in the West Country, who looked exactly like Father Christmas and was locally known as “Punch.” He presented a very nice clock to St. Anne’s vestry which remained there quite happily until the day when the Vicar met a pleasant man in the churchyard with a brown paper parcel. Fortunately for the charming young man, but not so good for us, the Vicar did not hear his father’s gift ticking inside the parcel.

One of our curates was an Australian, quite a nice young fellow, but with no ginger in his composition. Canon Craig told him he was no good here and had better return to his own country. He did so and soon became a violent convert to Rome, preaching outside his own old church, which certainly seems rather tactless.

My first recollections of World War I are of a solemn working party in our parochial hall where I was young and too gay, so that Mother reproved me privately, saying that war was a very serious thing. Her rebuke was rather spoilt by one of the clergy tearing sheets into bandages with one tremendous “zipppp“ from top to bottom, shrieking with laughter at the same time.

Soon afterwards I became private secretary to the Red Cross Commandant at the Patriotic, then converted p. 296into the Third London Hospital, its beautiful old buildings surrounded with lines of huts, where wounded by their hundreds were brought from the Somme and many other battlefields. Miracles of healing took place in those long wards, but often a gun carriage came through the gates with its escort, their solemn burden borne beneath the Union Jack. Usually the interment took place in Wandsworth Cemetery so that we heard the plaintive cry of the bugles in the “Last Post” and the quick firing of the rifles, paying the last earthly tribute of honour.

My Commandant’s work was to run the six hostels in the neighbourhood for the Red Cross personnel at the hospital. She was a charming person and nominally I was her secretary, but this covered a multitude of duties. I quickly discovered that when confronted with some odd job which I did not understand I was merely told to “find out”.

I immediately fell into the deadly sin of pride in my uniform, but was often in trouble concerning my hat which would never sit straight on my head, but always slid into an angle. Commandant gave me up as hopeless in the end, easing her own official conscience by saying I must have an extra bump on my head. I politely agreed, p. 297with a sidelong glance at the Commandant’s own daughter, whose hat was at an even more precarious and becoming angle than my own.

The Quartermaster, “Quartie”, was delightful and might have taken a prize in a show for the world’s thinnest lady. My chief remembrance of her is fishing out her face flannel from half way down the bath drain.

Our head cook always liked her bed under a window so that she could feel the rain on her face at night. What happened to her pillow is a mystery! Her assistant objected strongly to be called “Ass-Cook”, on Commandant’s time sheets, so that I always typed “Asst.-Cook” and all went well.

Queen Amelie of Portugal was working as a nurse in the hospital, but she did not come under our jurisdiction.

One little problem awaited me each Sunday. The Vicar tried to instil into our minds that the National Anthem was a prayer, insisting that during war-time we should all kneel at each service when it was played. Commandant heard of this departure from orthodox custom and sternly reminded me that as I was wearing the King’s uniform I must stand. But, alas, I was not brave enough to stand alone in the front seat in a church as p. 298large as a small cathedral, filled with many people who had known me from childhood, so that I slithered guiltily to my knees, happily conscious that Commandant was safely tucked up in her own church at Kensington.

After a year at the Third London General Hospital different arrangements were made for the Red Cross personnel, and we gradually closed our hostels. We girls, including our senior officers, moved all the furniture from one hostel to another, with the exception of carpets and wardrobes. I must confess I hated carrying washstands and their china accessories along West Side beneath the shade of the great chestnut trees, and meeting the Vicar and sundry other friends and acquaintances. My comrades were spared many of my blushes, as ours was the Kensington Division of the Red Cross, London 42, and their homes were in that aristocratic suburb.

At the end of the year in Wandsworth we moved to Grosvenor Gardens, where the Stars and Stripes of the American Embassy next door floated gracefully on its pole. Here I had an office of my own, shared on alternate days by a colleague. During my hours of duty no swearing or smoking was allowed therein. We were responsible p. 299for all the Red Cross girls, other than nurses, passing through London, whether for a night or a week. They used to bring luggage, evidently composed of lead, which my girl orderlies were expected to drag to the dormitories up countless stairs. They usually seemed to arrive when the said orderlies were off duty or missing, so that to my disgust it was I who had to carry their weighty possessions to the top of the house. I usually requested that they should hang on to the other end of the handle themselves, to which they usually responded very ungraciously, enquiring for the non-existent porter. I have had a queer feeling round my middle ever since.

Typhoid was raging in Serbia at the moment and great excitement was roused in my office when one of the girl laboratists on her way to that afflicted country arrived with her hair bobbed. To us it was an entirely new fashion, as the only ones at that time with shorn heads were “little ladies” in Belgium whom their compatriots discovered fraternising with German soldiers, and to whom they applied the scissors with uncompromising force.

But for Serbia, teaming with typhoid germs, long hair was a menace. Many of the germs were supposed to lie the ground waiting for the unwary so that our girls p. 300going to that country were provided with long, somewhat baggy trousers, tightly fastened round the ankles.

Matches were very scarce in that first World War and for a whole year Mother did not strike one at all, a wonderful effort considering that all our lighting, cooking and heating, with the exception of the kitchen range and one coal fire, were by gas. She used to go about the house with long paper spills, lighting them from by-passes or the fire, then run like a hare to the room where she wanted a light, freely scattering black paper ash en route, which she followed up with the dining-room shovel and hearthbrush.

Air Raids in those days were announced by maroons, star-like cyclamen-coloured gunfire, assisted by Special Constables on bicycles, with whistles, and a loud monotonous cry, “Take Cover! Take Cover!”, the procedure being reversed when danger was over, with the Special Constables joyously shouting, “All Clear”.

Zeppelins sailed majestically over the sky like huge silver sausages illuminated in the search-lights and were an awful sight indeed when our gunners caught them they sank to earth a flaming hell of death destruction. Twice from our tall windows in the p. 301Earlsfield Road we saw this happen. Our awe and pity struggled with feelings of thankfulness that a danger was past.

The first daylight raid was one lovely summer morning when Mother and I were at the top of the garden and hearing gunfire saw airmen fighting immediately over our heads. Never have we run so fast, as collecting the cat and our maid, we hurried into the cellar for the first and only time in two World Wars. Arrived in the compartment known in better times as the wine cellar, our maid’s heart attack was so alarming that we forgot about any air raid.

It was the daylight attack which surprised everyone, as hitherto our enemies had only visited us on very dark nights, which accounts for a notice in St. Anne’s parish magazine for 1917, announcing,

“A Meeting of parishioners to discuss the Memorial to the late Norman Campbell on Monday, February 5th at 8.30p.m. (There will be a good moon that night).”

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918, found me very unromantically making a steamed pudding of sausage meat, a small amount of fat and some war-time flour. I rushed into the garden, p. 302standing beneath the green and yellow of the variegated holly, to hear that last maroon sound its ”All Clear”, the end of the war that was to prevent all future warfare. For twenty-one years!! Twenty-one anxious uneasy years!

St. Anne’s Church, rumoured to hold 2,000 people, was packed to capacity that night, shouting its Te Deum in frenzied, over-wrought thanksgiving, and the twenty-one crazy, fantastic years between two wars began upon the morrow.

Three hundred and thirteen names were later engraved on St. Anne’s War Memorial, inscribed in gold lettering on panels at the west end of the church, incorporating a new doorway, surmounted by the words, “Make them to be numbered with thy saints in glory everlasting.” Unfortunately the spacing being longer than the quotation, a very inappropriate dagger was placed after the word “everlasting”. Names of several of my contemporaries, brothers of my friends, appear in that long, noble list, young Captains and Lieutenants barely out of their teens, mown down with myriads of their comrades in that long battle line from the Channel to the Alps.

But life went on, the dead past had buried its dead. The survivors began to return, grown strangely older.

p. 303London staged a wonderful Victory March for the Allied Troops, which I watched from an extremely unsafe balcony in the Vauxhall Bridge Road.

General Pershing with his Americans led the procession, many of them with mauve and pink sweet-peas stuck upon their bayonets. Marshall Foch, Generalissimo of the Allied Amies, that man of such small stature, yet gigantic personality, received an ovation which nearly shook us off our hazardous perch on to the top of him. Douglas Haig, also Beatty, walking at the head of the Naval section, his hat at its well-known jaunty angle, received rapturous cheers, together with all the Allied contingents. I trust it was not British pride alone, which throughout the two-hour procession, decided that in all that superb marching, it was our own soldiers who won the greatest admiration. It is said that a French lady observing their handsome faces and superb physique remarked ecstatically, “What lovers they would make!” To which her companion replied, “Not they! They are as cold as ice!”

That night, General Pershing, addressing the U.S.A. troops at the Palace Theatre, remarked,

“The people of London and Great Britain are trying p. 304to kill us with kindness. As far as I am concerned I do not think I shall last much longer!”

Many gay picnics were held on the steps and porches of Belgrave Square. On one door an envelope was pinned with the polite message, “Many thanks for the loan of your steps.” The evening on the whole was very noisy, but it was a “sober” crowd, which had evidently imbibed the contents of the tea pot or soft drinks rather than stronger refreshment.

The Royal Borough of Kensington held a Victory Procession of its own on a later day, in which the Red Cross marched valiantly and wearily behind the regiments. We lined up in a side road leading on to the High Street and I was in trouble from the very first. Putting my foot into a paper bag, which the devil or man had placed on the pavement, I stumbled, throwing the whole line off its balance. It was not the first or last time I have wished to vanish completely from the sight of all men.

It looks so easy as the troops march along behind their band with every limb and muscle in rhythmic accord. But to me it was a nightmare. As the Commandant’s secretary I had had very little time for drill, the bands p. 305seemed far away; the roads as hard as iron and the effort to keep in step, superhuman. Exhausted, with every scrap of self-esteem lost, even before we reached Barkers, my heart sank to unprecedented depths at the gardens which ended our journey, where the order was given for the troops to fall out and take their ease, while the Red Cross remained on duty to regale them with endless cups of tea and mountains of provender. I somehow staggered home hours later.

Soon afterwards Commandant gave her staff a Victory party at her own beautiful home in Kensington, which as she rightly said, was so fully furnished that there was no room even for an extra chair. After wartime austerities it was marvellous, for the whole programme consisted of nothing but non-stop refreshments, so that for the second time I staggered home from Kensington in a state of exhaustion.

Kensington Division of the Red Cross gave us a Fancy Dress Victory Ball at which I appeared as Belgium, arrayed in black, yellow and red and a genuine Belgian soldier’s cap with its gay swinging tassel. It was an evening of intense misery, for after one or two gentlemen, was whose knowledge of dancing was not much more brilliant p. 306than my own, had trodden my toes nearly out of permanent shape, I retired to a corner, a most unhappy wallflower longing for the time to go home.

Much the same experience befell me at a banquet of the Authors’ Society where I remember Dr. Cronin as one of the principal guests, having just set the dovecots of Harley Street a flutter with his novel, “The Citadel”. The banquet was excellent and the company at my table delightful, but alas for me, they all lived at a distance and departed before the ball which followed. I was left alone in a vivid flame-coloured frock, watching all the friendly groups enjoying themselves while I sat desolate and self-conscious longing for my taxi. At length, in sheer desperation I went to the cloakroom and passed the time talking to the attendant. It was degree better than acting like a forsaken Cinderella.

On August 4th 1919 I saw the Royal River Pageant from an enclosure in Battersea Park on the water’s edge, reserved for officials of the Borough and their female belongings. Our dear official, the Solicitor to the Council, took the day off to enjoy his studio and paintbrushes; Mother and I went to see the show. And a wonderful sight it was; the King and Queen, Princess p. 307Mary, the Prince of Wales and Prince Albert in the royal barge with its vividly clothed oarsmen, the Admiralty barge, the five miles of boats of every description, the tugs hiding their squat tough exteriors with garlands.

Not the least among that long procession were the small open boats filled with Merchant Seamen and festooned not with Victory garlands, but with ropes to which men drowning in the cruel relentless sea might cling for safety. Simple, everyday things, just lengths of rope, yet in their very simplicity symbolising the central meaning of all that victory pageantry for it was in just such boats as these that men, women and children had suffered unspeakable sufferings after their ships had been torpedoed, wandering for days and nights at the mercy of wind and wave and it was to ropes such as these that exhausted men clung when the boats were overfall.

Inside our enclosure all was calm, dignified and in keeping with the pageantry, until suddenly a horde of Battersea’s proletariat gate-crashed, saying they had as much right there as ourselves. Perhaps they had! Mother and I quickly left them to enjoy it. It is always wise to realise when you are not wanted.

The River Pageant was staged exactly five years p. 308to the day when war had been declared - August Bank Holiday, 1914. All that morning crowded trains of khaki-clad Territorials hurried along the railway line at the bottom of our garden, bound for summer manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain. By nightfall they were returning, ready for the first stage of those bloodstained “Manoeuvres” in Flanders’ water-logged trenches, in Gallipoli, and in other far-distant battlefields. The first “War to end War” had sounded its sinister bugles.

p. 309Chapter XI

Much illness came to our little family during those years between the two wars. Harley Street and its surroundings, with its grim Queen Anne and Georgian rooms, heavy oil paintings and sombre furniture, became depressingly familiar.

Father went in for quite spectacular treatments, baths that bubbled like soapy soda water, or long weeks orange juice and water, from which he returned so altered that even Mother did not at first recognise him when he stepped from the train.

His diet after that special outing consisted of outlandish little bits and pieces of raw carrot, tough lettuce, and other mysterious oddments served in tiny dishes all round him, so that it took up a considerable amount of the dining-room table. Mother and I, groaning inwardly, had an ordinary meal on what was left of the space.

p. 310Everyone who met Father during those long years of illness advised something different, so that the menu changed from day to day, even from meal to meal.

Mother used to be distinctly embarrassed and not a little annoyed when presents of food arrived from chance acquaintances, with a little note saying they had heard we could not get this special item, when all the time time we had stacks of it, or else it was a thing which would have half-killed Father. It is asking for trouble to endeavour to feed other people’s husbands, pets or children.

One special patent medicine filled Mother with horror, but Father simply loved it and after every meal spread the contents of the bottle over the table counting the number that remained.

Dear Daddie! He tried so hard to get well for our sakes as much as his own and used to go into an operation with as little unconcern as entering his office. It was a sad day when his health forced him to give up his beloved work and from that day he slowly but steadily grew worse, until after years of suffering he was taken for the last time to St. Anne’s Church, where amid a crowded congregation we heard those glorious words, p. 311“I am the Resurrection and the Life” and the great building echoed with the magnificent music of Chopin’s Funeral March. But never had I realised so fully the great length of the church, as I followed my Mother’s fragile figure from the front seat to the west doors.

On one of Mother’s visits to a specialist I thought my earthly career had ended. It was a wried experience. The specialist was a radiologist on Putney Hill, whose consulting room was filled with amazing and terrifying contraptions. He and the nurse having laid Mother flat on a stretcher with alarming wires and other oddments above her, he told me to sit beside her and hold her hands. As an after-thought he showed me a wire a few inches from my foot,

“Don’t touch that wire, otherwise you will be dead immediately. It is charged with an enormous power of electricity.”

Not exactly enjoying myself, I sat rigid as stone, while the radiologist disappeared into a large black box and the nurse turned out the lights. There were several flashes while he took photographs and all seemed well until suddenly that alarming wire touched my foot.

All was silent and pitch dark. For a few moments I p. 312wondered if I was dead. It was most uncanny. Then suddenly the lights went on, revealing Mother smiling sweetly and enquiring if all were over.

I also made an enquiry, asking why I was still alive. The radiologist was quite unmoved, merely saying he had switched off the current, which made the wire jump. So that was that!

I contributed a certain amount to these family medical experiences, being carried out of the house one Sunday morning on a stretcher in a rigor, my teeth chattering like castanets. On arrival at the Bolingbroke Hospital I was soon on the operating table under the wonderful hands of Sir Zachary Cope, the “Great White Chief” of Harley Street, whose ancestors lived in our neighbourhood. A few days later, lying in my private ward with its French windows opening on to Wandsworth Common, where the trees were turning to amber and gold, a large and lengthy bunch of chrysanthemums was brought in and laid on my chest. I was too weak to do anything about it and found it distinctly disconcerting when another nurse arrived, remarking cheerfully:-

“You did give me a start when you moved. I thought you were dead and nicely laid out, flowers and all.”

p. 313The Second World War came in less than twelve months from the time when my Father had passed to his rent. We remained in Wandsworth all the time, my Mother sleeping in her own “first floor front” quite calm and serene, while obeying Air Raid Wardens’ instructions, I spent many nights on a mattress in a corner of the drawing-room. Our housekeeper slept in the morning room, emerging at intervals to enquire whether the aeroplanes chasing each other above the roof were inhabited by Germans or own boys of the R.A.F.

Being brought up from my Mother’s knee to be truthful I fear I erred from accuracy when I replied that no doubt they were some of ours.

But of all the horrors of those nerve-racking years, the worst was the flying-bomb, with its rhythmic “chug-chug-chug,” followed by a sudden silence in which the world seemed to stand still, waiting for the explosion with its accompanying death and destruction.

A typical morning during the flying bomb season was while out shopping I had to take shelter three times; on the first occasion the grocer grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into a little dark cubby-hole at the top of his cellar stairs; the second bomb to arrive found p. 314me talking to the Sister-in-Charge of the Church Army Hostel, who hurried me into the basement into her store cupboard, where we sat amid jams and pickles until the evil thing had passed us by. The third caught me alone in the church as I was attending to my sacristan duties in the vestry. This one passed directly overhead, sounding as though it were just coming down. I dived under a pew and lay flat literally in the dust.

It will be remembered we were instructed to lie flat whenever expecting a bomb to drop, but I never saw anyone do so in the street. Once I looked up and saw aeroplanes fighting above my head. A Good Samaritan clutched my hand and ran me up the street, round the corner and into a doctor’s surgery. The place was composed mainly of glass, which was really worse than the open street, but somehow we felt safer and in any case were surrounded by remedies if they did not join us in bits and pieces. I am not sure that we were not in a better position than a friend of mine who with bombs dropping in front of her was seized by a butcher and thrust into his refrigerator.

St. Anne’s received the blast from many bombs, gradually losing every window but one. The climax came with a second flying bomb close by when one of the great p. 315girders across the nave cracked and hung in a “V” shape over the centre of the church. We were classed as a ”dangerous structure” but all the services were carried on as usual in the aisles, which fortunately terminate in two chapels. It was often a crush in spite of the evacuation of a large number of the congregation, often stone-cold, very draughty and extremely dark. Noisy too, for even a slight breeze set all the first-aid blackout in the glassless windows flapping and shaking.

Two of the people killed by that second flying bomb near the church were pathetic old ladies, who had a premonition that this would be their end, so that at the sound of a siren they always hurried to the house of a friend nearly opposite. This time they did not have time to leave their home. Nor did they ever leave it, until their poor little broken, lifeless bodies were reverently lifted from the ruins. A few days later they had a double funeral in the Lady Chapel of St. Anne’s.

It was a strange life for Londoners in those days, for even such simple things as going shopping or to church might mean one would never see one’s home again - either it or oneself being blown to bits.

Twice the majority of children in the neighbourhood p. 316were evacuated, until our large Sunday School was reduced to a membership of two brothers. The Vicar, Father Stradling, a few months later to become Bishop of Masasi, Central Africa, conducted the two Sunday School “classes” in his study, one at either end of the room, the whole “School” retreating to the cellar when a flying bomb was heard approaching.

Father Stradling had an ingenious arrangement when fuel became short, of converting the Vicarage dining-room into three, by means of tall bookcases. The farthest end was his bedroom, with picture nails acting as a wardrobe; the middle became the dining-room proper; the part near the door his study. Quite cosy and entirely comme il faut, a suitable preparation for his future “palace” in Masasi, which consisted of a hut divided in two - one half a bedroom, the other a study, with a verandah which often served as a reception area, where he conducted many interviews, including divers matrimonial cases.

Bombs upon the living were certainly the worst, but bombs upon the dead, falling among the graves in Wandsworth Cemetery and the old burial ground on Battersea Rise had a gruesome horror of their own.

p. 317Forty-two thousand bombs of various descriptions fell in the Borough of Wandsworth, of which one hundred and twenty-four were flying-bombs. One estimate stated that every time one of these exploded an average of four hundred houses received more or less injuries. Thirteen hundred people in the Borough were killed and many thousands injured. It is with deep thankfulness I can record that although my dear home was blasted we were able to live in it throughout the war period.

One neighbour not far away refused to leave her badly damaged house and remained in it while ultimately the upper floor was removed and the remainder converted into a bungalow.

Other people’s bombs are always boring, so that I mention only a few events of the second World War concerning Wandsworth. For many months and even years I slept on that mattress in a corner of the drawing-room floor - some nights when bombing continued from dusk to dawn in most of my clothes with my shoes and handbag beside me, a suitcase full of necessities within reach, in case I had literally to run for my life.

Many a time the house shook to its foundations and a number of windows disappeared, to be replaced by the p. 318beneficent Borough Council with stiffened white linen or thick black paper. At the height of the raid seasons I used to go round two or three times a day endeavouring to nail up the bits and pieces which had been blown down. One lady to whom I mentioned I lived in a “blasted” house looked down her nose and registered shock, but a Canon of Southwark to whom I told the story agreed that it was the only suitable adjective.

One Sunday after a sleepless night, we found the whole neighbourhood covered with ash and charred paper. Fearing it might be a new weapon and possibly poisoned, I gingerly picked up a burnt sheet of paper from the lawn, on which were decipherable just five words, “Og the King of Basan.” That special text from Holy Writ can rarely have given greater comfort, proving this was in itself no terrifying new power of destruction, although the result of destruction, being the result of the bombing and consequent setting on fire of a huge paper industry a short distance away.

Taking a bath in those days was a hazardous undertaking, as it might culminate in the unpleasant experience of a young lady about a mile away who was blown complete with bath, out into the street.

p. 319One awful night seven hundred incendiaries fell on our road and the one parallel to us. Hearing the crackling I opened the front door, to be greeted with a sheet of flame, a terrific smell of sulphur and all hell let loose. For the moment I could do nothing but shut the door. A few minutes later there came a loud knock. An apologetic and most polite Air Raid Warden stood on the doorstep.

“Excuse me, Madam! Your house is on fire.”

“What can I do about it?”

“Nothing, Madam, except shut the door and wait for the fire engine. You have no tin hat.”

So that settled that problem! In the meanwhile, I handed out one of the buckets of sand always ready in the hall, to extinguish the fire burning merrily by the gate and shortly afterwards discovered an unexploded incendiary in an upstairs window sill. How many houses blazed that night it is difficult to say, but the work of the wardens and firemen was beyond praise, for not one of the houses was destroyed.

After my own blaze had been put out, it was discovered the top room next door at the back of the house was on fire. No firemen were available, but a tall ladder was p. 320found on which a warden stood pouring in buckets of water through the window, which we filled from our scullery taps. His method of returning the buckets was to throw them into the courtyard about twenty feet below, each being greeted by my housekeeper in a tone of deepest anguish.

“Oh, Miss Irene! My bucket!”

Somewhere towards midnight, dirty, weary, yet triumphant, our houses saved, our neighbours and ourselves comforted, we prepared for some sleep, when a friend arrived with her two maids to spend the night, as there was an an unexploded bomb in her front garden.

About half past eleven one evening during an air raid, when I was listening to an enemy plane which seemed to be developing an unpleasant habit of cruising over our house, I heard a queer noise at the front door. Creeping out into the dark hall in my stockinged feet, I realised it was a burglar running his hands up and down the door endeavouring to insert a jemmy. There was a distinctly nasty tone about it! I crept noiselessly to the front door mat, put my mouth in just about the position I judged his face would be and in the deepest, loudest voice I could muster, enquired what the gentleman p. 321wanted. Deep silence ensued, until I shouted again, when quick footsteps crunched along the gravel. Opening the door on the chain I saw my visitor hurrying out of the gate. In response to my telephone call two policemen arrived to search the premises. They discussed the situation with deep bass voices in the hall, close by the open dining-room door, where our housekeeper slept on the big chesterfield. She was a very bad sleeper, poor soul, and often said she had been awake all night. But she heard nothing on that occasion!

Friends to tea in the flying-bomb season was a hazardous experience, for we often had to make a hurried exit into the passage by the kitchen, or the cupboard under the stairs, while one of them made its horrible sinister progress above the house, suddenly cutting out. Time seemed to stand still as we waited for the sickening explosion, then rushed out of the house to see in what direction the dreadful, mushroom-shaped pilar of smoke would arise, symbol of the death and destruction beneath. One afternoon, Father Curwen, Vicar of All Saints, Walworth, had to rush out into the passage with us three times during tea. The third time he brought his cup and cake with him.

p. 322On another occasion one friend vanished into the cellar, another one went under the dining-room table. Perhaps we ought to have joined them! I don’t know!

My brave little cat, Whiskers, a half-Persian tabby, took it all in his stride. Only on nights when the gunfire was very heavy did I bring him in his basket from the kitchen and put him beside my mattress on the drawing-room floor. He usually spent part of the rest of the night walking up and down my spine, possibly to assure himself I was still there. I was very much there!

Father Curwen was one of London’s hero-priests, who bit by bit, saw his whole parish literally blown to pieces - the church, the Vicarage, the hall, the rest centre and complete streets containing the homes of his people. The Vicarage collapsed around him as he stood on the landing, so that he had to climb to safety down what had a few minutes earlier been the roof. Many times he escaped death, as he endeavoured to minister to his people. For a time he, his assistant priest, his housekeeper, and his deaconess occupied a room in the church hall, using it as living, eating and sleeping quarters, sharing it with six air-raid wardens at night. Outside the crowded room it was one continual round of heartrending scenes - death, mutilation, bereavement, lost and p. 323shattered homes, ruins and destruction.

St. Anne’s was restored in 1948. Fear had been expressed that the famous Pepper Pot tower would have to be lowered owing to ominous cracks. To everyone’s joy this was avoided, for so skilful were the contractors they actually moved huge blocks of damaged stonework, replacing them with new pieces. They had a terrifying lift consisting of a board and a light rail in front, which took the workmen up to the top of the tower. The first time the Vicar, Father Bear, was taken up to inspect the work, he was told just to hold on to the person who was working the contraption. He did hold on and to much faith as well. Posterity will know he did go up, for his portrait appeared in the local Press, close up to the Cross, with his hair, always so immaculately neat, flying in all directions. An expression of patient endurance completes this picture of the twelfth Vicar of St. Anne’s, Wandsworth.

The re-dedication of the restored tower took place on a platform not far from the summit on a cold morning with an icy wind. A photograph shows the Bishop of Kingston looking distinctly chilly in his gaiters, shaking hands with the chief workman, surrounded by p. 324brave mortals, including the Vicar, a churchwarden, the contractor and the Rural Dean. We more timid females were assembled on the church green many feet below, desperately hoping that none of those so far on high would descend suddenly upon our heads. One or two of the more cautious gentlemen did not find their faith sufficient to make the return journey on the lift, so descended less romantically and more slowly by way of the workmen’s ladders.

It was a happy day when the heavy network of scaffolding came down and the Pepper Pot Tower, one of Wandsworth’s best known landmarks was fully revealed once more. During the air raids, just as the peasant on the Roman Campagna looks each morning towards the dome of St. Peter’s, so the residents of Southfields on the other side of the Wandle looked across the valley when the hours of darkness and terror had passed, to see that the Pepper Pot surmounted with its Cross still pointed upwards into the heavens, triumphant and unhurt.

But a day was approaching, a day tragic indeed in the history of the church, for at three o’clock on a lovely June afternoon in 1950, one of the clergy saw smoke issuing from the Pepper Pot Tower.

p. 325The church was on fire! And from a cause which apparently will always remain obscure. Men had been working on a small hole in the lead of the roof that morning. Beyond that nothing is known!

Within a few minutes of the alarm flames began to appear, the Pepper Pot acting as a giant chimney. Fifty fireman and eight engines were quickly on the scene, and by their valiant efforts, saved the church from utter destruction. The wind was in the west, so that the west door was free from smoke and volunteers of every description rushed in to save the ornaments, vestments and carpets. Women threw down their shopping baskets to leave their hands free, and everything was flung down onto the green before the great west doors, or hurried into the Vicarage.

On receiving the news, I hurriedly drove as near as I could do the east end, then leaving the car, ran through a dense, black cloud of smoke, with my handkerchief to my mouth and nose, to see with a sorrow too deep for tears, the fierce gold and red flames flickering through the roof of the church in which I had worshipped with so many dear to me for nearly all my life. As I entered the west doors the roof was blazing from end to end.

p. 326I hurried into the vestry but almost everything had been removed. A fireman’s voice behind me spoke sternly,

‘’Come out of this at once, Madam! I don’t want your death on my shoulders as well as everything else.”

Grasping an electric fire in one hand and two antique pictures of the church in the other, I ran out underneath a cascade of water from the galleries above my head. A few minutes later, I stood at the great west door looking into a scene of indescribable desolation - smoke and flames in the roof, thousands of cascades of water from the burning timbers, the crucifix above the pulpit hanging upside down on its nail! A few seconds later the central portion of the roof crashed in with a thunderous roar. I turned away from the horror and destruction to see the Vicar, who, visiting in the parish, had heard no news of the tragedy. He proved himself a brave and calm leader, so that within a short time he had restored order out of the chaos and before darkness hid the shattered ruins from our sorrowing eyes, the parish hall had been turned into a temporary church, with its smaller room as a vestry. The next morning the Holy Communion was celebrated in the hall, as had been the custom in the church for so many years. And even p. 327while the firemen were still fighting the flames the Bishop of Kingston and the Mayor of Wandsworth arrived to offer their sympathy.

In less than eighteen months, mainly through Father Bear’s untiring efforts the second time for the restoration of the church, it stood again, its wounds healed, its interior more beautiful than ever before. Resurgam, I wrote at the end of my article in the “Wandsworth Borough News” describing the fire and a wonderful Resurgarn it proved to be.

Lead had not been used on the roof this time - too many light-fingered gentry were interested in it, so that copper has taken its place. I have been hoping the copper would turn the delightful green one sees in country districts, but I understand our London soot and grime prevent this pleasing effect.

The fashion for lead-stealing is not confined to our generation, for in 1827 portions of lead piping were surreptitiously removed from outside St. Anne’s so that some brilliant person evolved the plan by which the churchwardens instructed the Beadle to remove the valuables to the house of the Parish Clerk after the Sunday services. Each of these gentry was rewarded p. 328two and a half guineas per annum for his trouble, “a barrow for conveying the paraphernalia to and from the church” being procured for one pound, eight shillings.

It is with a shudder one thinks of that “paraphernalia”, for assuredly the Communion plate must have been included in it. The whole transaction savours oddly of that class of society which regularly visits a building adorned with three golden balls after the requirements of Sunday have been duly met.

Bolingbroke Hospital is the last survivor of the five houses known as Five Houses Lane, or “Trotting Mile”, where Earl Bolingbroke used to exercise his horses and which now bears his name.

In those good old days the little river Falcon flowed gently at the end of the grounds of Bolingbroke House, with white swans lazily moving upon its surface. Birds sang in the tiny wooded copses and flew across the sloping lawns.

Northcote Road, with its shops and coster barrows is now built above the pleasant little river. Rumour states it still can be seen and even heard, through a grating at the bottom of Battersea Rise, but only a person out for suicide would endeavour to locate it in p. 329the centre of those perilous crossroads. The lawns, the gardens, the copses, all are gone, replaced by a nightmare of so-called “development”, in other words, terraces of small, ugly houses each occupied by several families, complete with “all the week round” washing very much in the foreground.

Those were the days of the stretcher ambulance, a horribly grim sight, which persisted even as late as my younger days. The patient, usually the victim of a street accident, lay prone on a contrivance resembling a wide plank on wheels, with a black macintosh covering. The patient’s suffering face was mercifully, though suffocatingly, concealed by a hood of the same funereal material, but if he were tall his boots stuck out pathetically at the bottom, a sight which my childish eyes first encountered near Charing Cross and which I have never forgotten. In this case the boots were very stiff and the owner very dead. The unfortunate occupant of this wheeled stretcher was pushed along the streets to the hospital, usually by a policeman, escorted by a morbid crowd of inquisitive busybodies.

Canon Erskine Clarke, that genial old Vicar of Battersea who attributed his length of years to “good p. 330conscience and an easy bank balance”, founded “The Bolingbroke Self-Supporting Hospital and Home in Sickness”, soon to be shortened to the “Bolingbroke Pay Hospital”. It was set on its feet by a fancy dress ball in the Albert Hall, fully pictured in the ‘Illustrated London News” of February 17th 1883, where Turk and Infidel, Claude Duval and Julius Caesar, Faust, Mephistopheles and Marguerite danced gaily together in aid of what eventually became one of the happiest of London’s hospitals.

Viscount Bolingbroke is buried in the crypt of the ancient church of St. Mary’s, Battersea with the inscription, “Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, Secretary of State to Queen Anne. Born 1678. Died 1751.”

In the chancel above the Viscount’s supposed resting place are the figures of two young men in brass, separated from each other by an ominous inscription.

“As we were, so are ye,
As we are, so shall ye be,
Yourselves by us see here which Iie,
Who died to live, though born to die.”

My only recollection of the church is a Requiem for men of the district who had fallen in the 1914-1918 p. 331War. The trench-warfare of those days accounted for the distressingly long death roll. The Mayor of Battersea and his attendant satellites attended in state, complete with my Father as the Borough Solicitor, in correct mourning attire of long frock coat, black tie, pin-stripe trousers and shiny tall silk hat. I occupied a humble seat farther down the nave where I listened with much surprise to a hymn in which some lines were something to the effect of

“Here and now we leave our lamb,
In the bosom of Abraham. “

Father Abraham must have been a little surprised at the age of some of the “lambs” thus added to his flock.

p. 332Chapter XII

Numerous have been the people who have pushed open our green gate and walked beside the ferns and blue veronica on the rockery to our door. At one time a chestnut tree shed its soft pink blossoms over the path, but its roots beginning to break down the street wall and small boys threatening to break our windows throwing sticks into the branches for the elusive “conkers”, we were sadly forced to order its destruction.

Our greengrocers in the early days came from Peckham, bearing the name of Mr. and Mrs. Kettle. The lady’s mother bore the appropriate name of Mrs. Parsley. Mr. Kettle, a Boer War veteran eventually died and a bewildered assistant arrived, dressed in obsolete khaki and a Cockney smile, announcing that “Mrs. Kettle was queer and he didn’t know the housen.”

Our oilman at that time, a Mr. Laban Crook, drove a horse and cart like a miniature shop, packed inside p. 333and out with brooms and brushes, clothes baskets, soap, bean-sticks, candles, soda, oil, rope, and oddments galore, the whole lit at night by a swinging lantern. Laban himself took amazing weekends, trying to see as much as possible of the world in that limited space of time, spending the whole time travelling, with perhaps only an hour or so at his destination - Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and even farther afield.

Various visitors came to see us, now long passed away. Cousin Zerah used to love to “pop over”, unfortunately this “popping” was generally at a most inconvenient time, just as we were spring-cleaning with workmen encamped on the stairs, or on a Bank holiday when the larder was looking very sorry for itself. In those days no self-respecting housewife offered anything out of a tin to a guest. Father forbade anything of the sort, except pineapple, to be used at any time, which distinctly spoilt all hospitable feelings for unexpected guests on a Bank Holiday. And dear Cousin Zerah used to look really awful, with a sandy beard turning grey, an astonishingly checked tweed suit completed by a flat cloth cap and an alarming capacity for raking up past bits of personal and family history much better left decently dead and buried.

p. 334His wife was one of the most lovely women I have ever seen, a real English beauty, whose charming face and figure always seemed to retain their youth. At that time anything but a straw hat in summer for the ladies was considered impossible, yet Cousin May with a black velvet hat against her golden hair appeared like the mixture of an English rose and the Rue de la Paix.

Cousin Zerah bought a car in the early days of their invention and set out on its first journey to make an impression upon us. Unfortunately he made a very different impression on a milk-cart which for the time being prevented the car from shedding its lustre upon Wandsworth. It shed many oddments on another journey before it came to a standstill, so that Cousin Zerah’s son had to walk back two miles to pick up the various nuts, bolts and other sundries with which it had generously strewn the highway.

Even in these later days motoring can be a bit chancey. For example, a Bishop of our acquaintance, living not far from here, drove to the north of London for a dental appointment. Coming out from the ordeal he jumped in the car and started home, thinking as he drove round Regents Park there was something very p. 335“funny-peculiar” with his brakes. Arrived at the first garage, he made the horrid discovery he was in someone else’s car. With much presence of mind and a right-about turn, he drove back to the dentist where his own car was waiting, perfectly smug and respectable. Within a few seconds he had slipped into it and driven off - which shows how even a Bishop can inadvertently trip up.

Cousin Frank, Vicar of several famous London churches, and a man much revered, had a wonderful gift for collecting things, money, books, china, wealthy godparents for his numerous children and a wonderful reputation for himself. He really was an old dear, although prone to admire one’s possessions in such a way that one was bound to present them to him.

“Dear Paul”, he would say to my father, “why there is the very book I have hunted in shops for years to find. So useful for my sermons! And here it actually is at last in your library. You must let me borrow it and not ask it back too soon.”

Or to my Mother, “Ada, my dear, I have been admiring your wonderful collection of old china and I noticed one single cup and saucer. Now we have an old tea set just the same with one single cup and saucer missing.

p. 336Mary has tried everywhere to try to match it and to think you have one exactly like it. Dear me! What a coincidence! Such lovely colouring too - not perhaps quite in harmony with the other pieces in your cabinet.”

Small wonder that Cousin Frank raised the money to build a beautiful church in one of London’s slums. For he was a faithful, well-loved priest with only the one little failing. And much of his begging was for other people! One of his organists was the celebrated Dr. Monk, author of many well-loved hymn tunes including “Abide with me”. His playing of the Passion music often brought people to tears.

Cousin Frank’s stock of stories was prodigious, until one had heard them all and he started again. We came into this category, as he used to take two hours over a meal, laying down knife and fork for long intervals to recount episodes from his clerical life. It was an amazing assortment, concerning rogues and saints, people who had seen far, far better days and those who rarely in their lives had had enough to eat, brawling by night and day, dead dogs and cats, stale fish and other unsavoury oddments in his tiny strip of garden, the one pear on his tree stolen year after year. Thirteen p. 337families, including thirty-five children, were found in one house, five people in a bed and a corpse lying night after night in the same place.

Grim stories very often, laced with humour and pathos, such as the dying costermonger who asked for his donkey to be brought to the window that he might have a last fond look at him.

A night School effort for little ruffians off the street began with an enormous tea, where the visitors were so ravenous they drank the contents of the slop-basins. Some of them hoped to do a little business on the side with umbrellas, walking-sticks, hats and coats.

And one teacher, merely turning his head, found his gold tiepin gone for ever. A favourite sport was to pelt Cousin Frank and his helpers with pease pudding, extremely unpleasant when nicely wedged into the luxuriant whiskers or beards of the period.

Unfortunately Cousin Frank’s lengthy mealtimes caused much disorganisation in our household, with downright mutiny in the kitchen.

A major catastrophe happened to Mother when a very fastidious uncle came to tea and the home-made cake being cut, a whole family of ants ran out in all p. 338directions. Poor Mother! That particular uncle had no sense of humour.

Another visitor, “Uncle Moses”, an uncle by “adoption”, had a wife who strongly objected to be known as “Aunt Moses”. She was the possessor of various very smelly poodles, one particularly odoriferous object she claimed was desired by everyone who saw him. Mother, overcome by his close proximity, was rash enough to say she did not want him, which offended Auntie Moses for life. She died some years later of a strange illness, whereby she was covered with black blisters, which Mother always thought were caused by her habit of smothering her malodorous pets with kisses.

Some of our most pathetic visitors were Belgian soldiers on leave from defending their sad, heroic little country, in the neighbourhood of Dixmude. It was a little disconcerting when they passed up their cups minus the saucers for extra helpings of tea. One was the batman of an officer friend of ours, an amusing fellow with an excellent excuse for every lack of service, exclaiming when the buttons he was supposed to have sewn on, fell off in shoals,

“Tiens, Monsieur, the cotton must have been rotten.”

p. 339Dassy, an older Man, spoke nothing but Flemish, but in his dark eyes was surprising gratitude for the little we were able to do for him, mingled with the pathos of one who has lost his home and all dear to him in the unknown horrors on the other side of No-Man’s-Land.

Among our many clerical visitors was one of the celebrated priest-workmen. For some time he worked on weekdays in a munition factory, leaving the Vicarage in his blue boiler suit and doing a full week’s work with the other factory hands. Whether on day or night shift he never missed his daily Communion at the altar, his weekend duties of assisting in the parish as a priest and often other bits of parochial work in his so-called hours of rest and recreation. Few people, if any, guessed the mental and physical strain he must have undergone.

Miss Ayscough Smith, an earlier visitor, came with us on various Continental tours, accompanied with an assortment of umbrellas for various occasions, including one for use on the Calais boat to prevent her seeing the unpleasant and unfortunate incidents which happened to her fellow travellers. Quite a useful idea, for what the ear hears is not as bad as what is seen by the eye.

p. 340Norman Campbell, my childhood’s Vicar, was adored and worthy of a working man’s epitaph, spoken many years later, “’E were the best man wot ever stepped in shoe leather.”

My most poignant recollection was of his holding on to the great brass eagle in the church, endeavouring to read the lesson and coughing, choking with the terrible disease which eventually forced him to resign the living.

St. Anne’s, the “Pepper Pot Church”, so named from her tall round tower, which looks as though it only needs to be turned upside down to shake that sneezy condiment far and near, was filled to capacity in his days and on festivals even its 1350 seats had to be complemented by chairs down the nave.

At Harvest Thanksgiving the chancel wall was packed solidly with flowers and fruit, all intervening spaces being filled with pot ferns laid sideways, so that the congregation when seated could see neither altar nor choir. Great sheaves of corn, vast loaves with huge plaits of dough across their backs, formed an earthly Paradise for Mr. and Mrs. Mickey Mouse and family.

“The Spread Eagle”, an ancient coaching inn, still flourishes at the corner of one of the five cross roads p. 341in Wandsworth High Street, from which a three-horse bus, owned by “Tubby Wells” of the former “Antelope” inn nearly opposite, who acted as the conveyance’s conductor, used to start precisely at 9 a.m. with his familiar cry, “Now for the City! Bank! Bank! All the way to the City, gents!”

The “Spread Eagle” Tavern contained apparently the only room in the district suitable for public meetings and also conveniently situated for “Quick Ones” or other light refreshment when business was terminated. In 1851 a meeting was called to discuss the contemplated erection of a Turnpike Gate at the cross roads outside, now one of the easiest spots in the Borough to stage a sudden and sticky death. The proposal for the gate was turned down, partly by the remembrance that any persons living in All Saints parish on the one side, wishing to attend St. Anne’s church on the other side and vice versa would have to pay a toll, a truly shocking state of affairs!

The “Battle of Wandsworth”, happily a bloodless affair, was inaugurated at the “Spread Eagle”. The combatants were the inhabitants who strove to preserve the Common against the Lord of the Manor, Lord Spencer;

p. 342parts of Spencer Park, the L.S.W. Railway, the Patriotic School and various private personages having encroached upon it, as well as helping themselves freely to the existing gravel pits. The battle was triumphantly won by the people, when on April 24th 1871, a Bill was passed in Parliament, receiving the Royal Assent in July, declaring the Common “free and open forever”.

How the pre-fabs which now appear on large portions of its surface agree with this “eternal” free and open clause is a mystery!

On the other side of the High Street from the “Spread Eagle” a Mr. Crook in 1840 established a small wholesale and retail Beaver Hat Factory, afterwards becoming one of the first makers of the silk topper, which seems nowadays only to be used as the badge of undertakers and the uniform of bridegrooms and their unhappy “best men”. But in the good old days even builders’ men, with tool-bags on their backs and newspaper boys wore toppers. The gentlemen of the neighbourhood when they played cricket on Wandsworth Common were in the inevitable topper and frock coats. How this headgear remained in position is another mystery!

An ancient advertisement of the period, showing the p. 343amenities of an establishment known as the Wandsworth Cricketers’ Cigar Stores, offers snuff among its other commodities and pictures a negro gentleman in a kilt swearing horribly at a black cat on the top of a barrel marked “Best Tobacco”. The cat is returning the unseemly language in good measure and the whole thing appears to be the firm’s signature tune.

Down Lodge Hall, farther up the High Street, built on the site of one of the four Ancient Manors of Wandsworth, is celebrated for visits from the famous American Revivalists Moody and Sankey, said to be responsible for such outstanding hymnology as

“Take this pil…
And take this pil…
And take this pilgrim home.”

with its companion lyric

“Come down Sal…
Come down Sal…
Come down Salvation, Come!”

The Wagner Festival at Bayreuth seems far removed from this Borough, yet Mr. Richard Keene, of Wandsworth was commissioned to make the huge dragon for the performance of “The Ring”, Mr Keene being said to be the only man in Europe capable of making the monster with its three sections of body, its jaws that really p. 344opened and eyes which actually rolled. The contract also included a large snake, a bear, a magpie, various sacrificial beasts and a pair of ravens, the whole to be completed in a few weeks for a payment of £500. Alas! All did not go according to plan and while Wagner tore his hair, urgent telegrams were despatched between Bayreuth and London.

“For heaven’s sake have the bear sent off before the last part of the dragon. Siegfried is to be rehearsed again next week. The King will be here and Wagner will be in despair if the bear is wanting. Car has arrived. Rams still missing, body of Fafner (dragon) ditto.”

Telegram from London to Bayreuth:

“Case with Fafner’s (dragon’s) legs left last Saturday; case with remainder of body to go tonight or tomorrow; bear tomorrow or Friday, Fafner’s head Saturday or Monday.”

Hundreds of telegrams were despatched to stationmasters requesting them to search for the crate containing Fafner’s head, which was found at the eleventh hour, so that the stage carpenters put the monster’s oddments together just before the dress rehearsal, only to find p. 345his concertina-like neck was missing. With marvellous ingenuity the stage manager introduced some lathes and canvas by which he fitted the great head on to the body, but Fafner was unable to prance and corvett according to orders. Nor did the neck arrive in time for any performance that summer, having journeyed in the hold of a packet boat bound for Beirut in Syria. No doubt our worthy Wandsworthian, Mr. keene, badgered by his customers with their snakes and sacrificial beasts, had spelt the Bavarian “Bayreuth” by the name of its Syrian sister ”Beirut”. His shop, derelict and unused, where he hung up his snakes and dragons to dry, still stands

The Green Coat School of Wandsworth was founded in 1720 “for the maintaining of a free school for the education of twenty-five children at the least of the poorest people of the said Parish of Wandsworth for ever.”

“Ever” is a very long term and the school was pulled down in 1812 and its green-clothed children transferred to the Auxiliary National Schools upon the same site, All Saints, the school of Wandsworth Parish Church. The endowments were shared with my own Church school of St. Anne’s whose scholars wear green in their uniform in honour of their predecessors. A lady living in p. 346Wimbledon Park Road in 1928 dug up in her garden one of the brass buttons the original scholars wore on their “stout suits of green serge”. It is inscribed “Wandsworth Free School, 1720.” The Rules of the School, twenty-three in number, were inscribed on a parchment roll ten feet long which still exists in excellent preservation.

One of these rules directs the parents ”to submit the children at the proper times to be reasonably chastised for their faults, and to forbear coming to the school on such occasions”, that “the children might not be countenanced in their Faults nor the Master Interrupted or Discouraged in the performance of his Duty for their good.” Poor little sinners! It was evidently no case of “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”

In 1752, thirty-two years after the founding of the Greencoat School, complaint was made that the road in which it stood was so “ruinous, miry, deep and broken,” that “the King’s subjects cannot drive or ride along it without great danger to their lives and the loss of their goods.”

Danger of another character seems to have threatened Father Warren, one of St. Anne’s well-loved Vicars, p. 347when he received the following communication written on a postcard.

”To Warren
Place two pounds under the mat outside our door, otherwise your life will be in danger.
Signed The Hand.
P.S. Have it there by 10.30 tonight.”

An interesting drawing of a hammer and sickle was displayed beside the anonymous signature. Father Warren did not put any money under the Vicarage doormat, nor did any untoward vengeance fall upon him.

The good ship “Wandle”, one of the transport vessels belonging to the Wandsworth Gas Company, bringing coal from the Tyne in 1916 and armed only with a gun on a swivel astern, was attacked by a submarine, twelve shots being exchanged during an engagement lasting an unpleasant half-hour. But so skilful was Captain Mastin, the “Wandle’s“ chief, that he saved his brave little ship and after his last few shots the submarine entirely disappeared, apparently into Davy Jones’ Locker.

The little “Wandle”’s injuries consisted of damage to the port lifeboat and davits and the reception of some shrapnel unfortunately “stopped” by Selby Robson, p. 348a fireman from South Shields. The ship put back into the Tyne for repairs to itself and Mr. Robson before returning home in triumph on May 4th. All up the Thames, from Gravesend to Wandsworth, a super blowing of sirens greeted the brave little vessel. Captain Mastin and his crew were carried shoulder high to a waggon, where the Captain was presented with a cheque on behalf of the Gas Company to share with himself and his crew.

St. Anne’s church was one of the first buildings to be lit by gas, so that in 1829 it was possible to say Evensong after dark instead of during Sunday afternoon.

The marvellous gaslight was then a distinctly chancey and alarming infant, being very blue and emitting sundry peculiar bubbling noises. It is to be feared that even with its assistance large type prayer books were a necessity.

In 1834 the Wandsworth and Putney Gas Light and Coke Company was formed, with a capital of £5.000. Two men were employed as a whole time job to make the gas, one at the munificent sum of 25/- per week, the other, presumably the mate, receiving the lesser sum of one pound.

For two hundreds years a couple of gunpowder ware- p. 349houses stood near the present Wandsworth gasworks, but local inhabitants considering there was a nasty tone about them, they were removed.

Not far away, in my own parish, Iron-Mill Place and Iron Mill Road keep evergreen the memory of the Munition factory which operated on that site, happily removed long years before the Second World War, when several bombs fell in the neighbourhood.

Nearby in Garratt Lane during the 1914-18 war, shells were made at a factory near our St. Mary’s Mission Church and it was a treat for the children to hear them tried out  . . .  “Pop! Pop! Pop!”

Airships were manufactured at the “Veritas” Gas Mantle factory and when finished came through the big gates mounted on tractors looking like a sausage lover’s nightmare. They were made by women, seated on the polished floors of the factory, covering the framework and attaching the ropes.

Wandsworth Bridge, which connects that noble Borough with Fulham, consisted at one time of a suspension bridge, over which frail structure rival bus drivers, related to Sam Weller, Senior, used to race two abreast, causing the whole thing to shake like a jelly, as probably did p. 350the nerves of the unfortunate passengers.

Five times during last century the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race was rowed from Wandsworth to Putney instead of from Putney to Mortlake. In January 1881 the river was frozen over and blocked with ice, an unpleasant occurrence which Nature happily has not seen fit to repeat.

Wandsworth’s first effort at protection against fire resulted in a building entitled the Fire Engine house, erected in 1752. Workmen started to dig on the west side of the church, but found so many rather newly buried corpses that the Vicar hastily stopped their efforts and Viscount Bolingbroke gave a site in the Plain, not far from the church.

Four hundred and twenty-five years before in 1327 during the reign of Edward II, who came to a distinctly sticky and unpleasant end in Berkeley Castle the same year, Wandsworth was destroyed by fire.

Yet even with the Fire Engine House’s amenities it is doubtful whether Wandsworth would have been spared the same fate in a violent conflagration, for the keys were held by the Vicar and Wardens, which would have made things distinctly awkward should those gentlemen p. 351prove to be “not at home”.

W.S. Penley, the originator of that evergreen character, “Charley’ s Aunt” lived in Eglantine Road and attended St. Anne’s church. Penley as a boy, was a chorister at Westminster Abbey and later became, as well as a comedian, the proprietor of a Church Family newspaper. He evidently loved to shed the mantle of the burlesque, so that on one occasion at a party of distinguished and exalted guests, on being pressed to amuse the company, he gave not the expected comic turn, but sang in a rich bass voice one of Handel’s sacred solos.

A tablet on No. 172 Trinity Road records that Thomas Hardy, the novelist, once lived there; No. 195 almost exactly opposite was once the residence of a former Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, whose Welsh characteristics and shock of thick white hair were a familiar feature of activities under the shadow of “Big Ben” in the earlier part of the century. The Ministry of Health now pursues its mysterious beneficial ceremonies in his Wandsworth home.

On the other side of the Borough at Holly Lodge, p. 352Wimbledon Park Road, George Eliot resided, the lady who took a man’s name, probably thinking no one would read her books if it were known they were written by a woman.

I have always hoped for the best for myself in this respect.