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