an artist's life by marilyn swann

8/10/2019 An Artist's Life by Marilyn Swann

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About the Author

Marilyn Swann grew up in Bexleyheath on the south-east edge of

Greater London mostly during WWII.

She attended Woolwich Polytechnic School of Art but family

conditions (and exams) put Art College out of the question.

A full time job in commercial art had to support her real job of

painting.

A discerning public bas bought some of her works, but not enough

for her to paint full time. This had to wait until her retirement at the

end of the twentieth century.

She now lives with her tortoise-shell cat in Gloucestershire.


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N

L I F E


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To every Artist everywhere


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M ari l yn Swann

N

L I F E


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Copyright Marilyn Swann

The right of Marilyn Swann to be identified as author of this work

has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any

means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or

otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this

publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims fordamages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British

Library.

ISBN 978 14963 464 9

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2014)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

LondonE14 5LB

Printed and bound in Great Britain


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Contents

Prologue 13

1 My Progenitors: The Whiddettss / The Swannss 19

2 Dont You Know Theres A War On? 35

3 Want of Youth 50

4 I Remember Bananas 57

5 Break A Leg 73

6 Sports and Pastimes 81

7 Sex 89

8 To Be Or Not To Be 97

9 Every Pictures Tells A Story (quote GMa G) 109

10 Food For The Soul 122

11 Light Fantastic 131GALLERY 140

12 Work 157

13 Its A Poor Heart That Neer Rejoices (quote GMa G) 167

14 I Go Dutch 175

15 Blighty 185

16 Once More Into The Breach 19817 Compensations 214

18 Golden Age 226

19 Silver: A Cats Life 236

20 Horses, Horses, Horses 253

21 To Rus And Back 268

22 Hell Said The Duchess, Waving Her Wooden Leg (Quote

GMa G) 284Epilogue 288


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P r o l o g u e

It is now the 1980s. Ive been around since 1932. Theyve been

eventful years, what with one thing and another!

This begins in 1988; My Mother HH (Hilda Helena) has flip-

flopped back to her bed with early-morning cup of tea cat

Samba is scowling blackly at the world concentrating on

digesting her breakfast Ive had the big heave-ho from work

(they call it early retirement) Perhaps Id better start writingmy book but, how to start?

This book has been gestating for some time. Notes scrawled

during breaks at work in the middle of the night at meal

times whenever a memory occurred! Mostly scribbled in the

train among the jabbing elbows, seat-room shuffling bottoms and

encroaching thighs of the great South London commuter public.

Second-hand typewriter squats, dark grey, accusing. Taking

up far too much space on my (one, redundant, wood) desk top.

My everyday memories clamour for immortality; together with

the familys accumulated stories, legends, tales and recollections.

The memories that silt up in your mind, from babyhood on!

I, myself, artist/painter, female, am the final result of the

union between two very different types of Southern England

families. The Ws and the Ss.

While my bucolic, God-fearing paternal forebears doggedlyplodded the rural south, minding cows, butlering and

housekeeping for the gentry, the Ws were shopkeeping, hat-

making and teaching. (Great-grandparents ran a plate glass

business in North London; Uncle Bill taught art in a special

school for boys; Aunt Nell was a headmistress and taught art and

handicrafts; Uncle Steve owned a farm and a butchers shop in

mid-Kent.) Highly charged, tempestuous people they were

forever churning over past wrongs, weeping over hurtful thingssaid, discussing passionately actions and dissecting motives and

intentions! However widely scattered, tied together with webs of

invisible bonds.


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I shall follow an august example, and indicate my

philosophical musings. Readers may care to skip them the first

time round, and use the second (if any) perusal of these pages, to

savour and inwardly digest.

*Everyone IS an island. Individual experience seeps into the

mind. Sinks in, nourishes, sheds off, drains through distils and

deposits; vaporises to form an element of mixed, accumulated

memories. The result is a mix of the individuals discoveries and

experiences blended with what they are taught. All the received

information is absorbed through the senses and each individual

have their own rules on what to retain and what to discard. A

mish-mash of the official, the personal, the family history,traditions and experiments not always correctly remembered or

interpreted all strained through one human mind; this book is

an exploration of my own element.

The notes for this bit were written on New Years Day 1986.

The annual concert from Vienna playing on the radio. Not

precisely my taste in music, but it serves to drown out some of

the so-called popular music blasting through the party wall of our

terrace house. Its a monotonous thump! Thump! Thump! With avoice of a tone-deaf youth wailing above it. People actually spend

their money on this totally unoriginal stuff and play it at

maximum sound level. Can they belong to the same (human) race

as I? If they do, I dont! The sounds are deliberately produced to

offend a normal ear, and the result used to cock-a-snook at

authority. The adolescent has always needed to rebel; with its

twin needs to be unlike the establishment but identical with itspeers, the new young. It has always been thus. As soon as they

have worked off the growing itch, destroying as much of the

achievements of society as they can conveniently lay hands on,

they tamely join in to continue the status quo! The trouble is

that nowadays many dont seem to grow out of it, the mature

adults continue their revolting attitudes. If this could improve

society, Id be all for it but Im afraid their values are wrong!

Gone are the days of the housewife carolling at her work and thedelivery man whistling a jaunty tune theyll both have ghetto

blasters, and music, like everything else, is for the benefit of big

business only.


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How many words make a book? Starting at the top, I counted

a Nancy Mitford chapter. About 350 words to a page, 13 pages to

a chapter, 21 chapters to a book. Ive done around 1,044 words

only 94,506 to go and I intended this to be a big book! The

illustrations are important, of course, and should pad it out quite a

lot. Have I got enough notes? Anyway, enough of this freestyle, I

must begin to actually use my notes! But where to start?

At the beginning, said Lewis Carol but he, of all people,

must have known there is no beginning! Or rather, there are many

beginnings. Lots of early memories jostle for first. One of my

first is of being lifted by my father to look over the back fence of

our dark garden to see The Crystal Palace burning.I can remember looking up through an oxygen tent at my

mother and father. HH says I must have been too young to

remember this, but I do! Another related hospital memory is of

helping nurses to roll bandagesbut this really was a lot later.

Some of my memories become confused with dreams. I

seldom fully remember dreams (not like HH who will tell you in

graphic detail, every morning of her nights adventures) mine

are usually of being late for something, or of missing something an exam or an appointment. There used to be recurring dreams

and continuing dreams. I never could really remember them, but I

knew theyd happened before. Then there was that young man

standing in a dim and shadowy street, the only colour being his

bright red hair!

These beginnings can have started long ago and will go on. I

carry the family tradition of being subject to tuberculosis. Mygrandfather (my real grandfather, not my grandmothers second

husband) was a TB subject, which may have explained why he

was like that

, as she expressed it, meaning sexy; confiding to me during

her last illness, when we had our only times alone together. This

was on one of my visits to give Eileen a break from nursing.

Grandads amorous nature came as a shock to his young bride

after their Gretna Green marriage. It would be a shock to anundomesticated type of girl at that time! It would mean that she

was embarking on a life of baby production line! One, or a miss,

every year from menstruation to menopause or death,


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whichever came first! A masculine dominated medical profession

didnt feel this was anything for the subject to complain of. One

of her surviving sons died of TB as well. From the other side of

the family, my father, CW (Charles William) had many

compulsory holidays in sanatoria and, if Id had children, I would

have passed on this doubtful gift to posterity, I suppose!

My final rail journey notebook begins with a holiday on the

Gower peninsula, soon after the death of CW (who lived to be

over eighty in spite of having only one half-lung in working

order).

It was a rainbow autumn. The one-storey hotel hugged the

side of a hill, and the windows looked out on a perfect view;small winding roads, dotted with little white houses, lined by

ragged hedges, straggled among tall, swelling hills skirted with

odd-shaped, many coloured fields and crowned with rocky,

shrubby cairns. A smudgy sea-cliff horizon of misty promontory

emphasised where sea and sky merged. It was a horse-riding

holiday.

Morgan, the goat, patrolled the paddock. Keeping an

autocratic eye on everything, from guests to cats, ponies andstable girls, chickens to visitors.

The stables stood out woodenly against the golden autumn

hillside. The view from the dining room mesmerised the

landlady, who you would think had seen enough of it, but who

would stand and gaze and gaze as much as any new guest. I also

could not tear myself away from it even when invited to join a

group of pleasant fellow guests at another table.I was feeling depressed, and in pain from a trigger finger

condition. My confidence in riding had been recently shaken by a

nasty fall, so I walked and sketched most of the holiday. Those

fantastic hills were irresistible to an artist, though not ideal to

walk on, owing to the loose tumbled rocks crowning each one.

The tracks that wound around the hills, under the rainbows,

discovered new and ever more unbelievable scenes at every step;

clear air, open skies, and staring sheep accompanied these walks.One morning, it was me staring at the sheep! During an after-

breakfast commune with nature from the hotel steps, I heard a

pattering noise coming along from behind the hedges of the road.


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The noise increased, and then resolved itself into a flock of sheep

pouring in through the gateway, to swirl round the empty car park

and sweep out again, heading in the general direction of Swansea.

Stunned, I gazed at the gateway as a harassed looking black-

and-white sheep dog skidded to a stop and stood gazing around,

panting and bothered. It looked at me. They went that way, I

said, pointing, and off went the flustered, furry guardian in hot

pursuit.

That reminds me of another pattering. HH and I were doing

our usual annual visit to see the Abbey Wood wild daffodils.

Now, of course, most of them have been stolen, but then, it was

wonderful to see the wooded slopes covered with wild blooms sonear London.

As a student at Woolwich Polytechnic in the 1950s, Id

sometimes take the long bus route past the Abbey when it

wasnt one! It was just a few lines of stone standing onthe bare

hillside. Then they did some digging and low and behold an

Abbey! No roof or doors, but definitely an Abbey! Bases of

pillars, rooms with windows, a chapel and cloisters. Theres a

nice little tea-place up there and, in spring, wed park the carunder the trees and walk along the low-fenced walks, through

coppices, looking at carpets of yellow flowers sprinkled with

stars of white wood sorrel. Have a leisurely cup of tea or an ice-

cream, clamber round the Abbey walls, gaze across the Thames

valley and wander the switch-back paths in the daffodils, back to

the car.

Thats where we heard the pattering. It sounded like a littlecataract, but there are no streams and no mountains. The sound

came from above. We looked up, and there were a crowd of

squirrels all tearing pell-mell down and round and round the

trunk of a tree. The sound was the tapping of their toes on the tree

bark. When their headlong dash reached the lower branches, they

all scattered into other neighbouring trees.

Another adventure with squirrels happened at the London

Zoo. This one was scampering distractedly backwards andforwards across its enclosure netting. I couldnt bear its agitation,

so put my hand through the mesh to stop its frantic rush. It

grabbed my finger and bit it! Theyve got long sharp front teeth


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that sink in deep and make you bleed a lot so the wound gets a

good wash; the creature whisked into its bedroom, somewhat

mollified, I hope.

Another squirrel tale happened at Eastbourne. The animals

were burrowing round in the fallen leaves peering and

searching into hollows and among the tree roots. One angry little

face surfaced beside my foot. I offered my closed fingers to it. It

took a finger and thumb in each of its tiny hands, leaned its entire

weight (about six ounces) against them, prised them open, gave a

snort of disgust at my empty hand and returned to its burrowing.

Yet another squirrel tale: After a lot of local tree felling, there

was a refugee in the Close. It had been treed up a telegraphpole by a hunting cat. Other cats adopted a temporary truce and

sat around gazing up at the fugitive. I chased them away; and

eventually got the message through to the mystified squirrel, who

descended and headed for the safety of the back gardens.

Back to my Welsh holiday. I had one ride-out during my

holiday. We rode the winding lane to the sea, past winter-deserted

caravans. The vans pleasantly sited, each on a turfy, sandy knoll

among stocky seashore shrubs. The beach was too rocky for agallop and the wind and the rain of sea-mist whipped up frothy

spray from the manes of sea-horse waves and spattered our

horsesmanes and our faces with cold, sharp droplets.

I seem to have started my book, so here goes


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1M y P r o g e n i t o r s : T h e W h i d d e t t s s / T h e

S w a n n s s

One of my grandfathers was a Butcher the other

was a Baker. My father made some wooden

candlesticks (and I pottery ones).

My maternal grandmother Gatiss (formerly Whiddett, nee

Bishop) was at teacher training college when she met GrandpaW. Her father was too jealous of his girls to let them have

boyfriends let alone husbands. So they ran away to Gretna

Green. The small detail of qualifying exams didnt seem to her to

matter at the time, but she had ample years to regret her

permanent low paid status after her husbands death when she

had to bring up a family of six children alone. The man shortage

caused by the 1914 to 1918 war made immediate remarriagedifficult, especially as she wanted all the children off her hands

first.

All but one of her sisters managed to get married, in spite of

their father! Always a splendidly turned-out family, especially as

regards hats.

My Progenitors: The Ss

My paternal grandmother, on the other hand, had to acquire her

own education by doing domestic work in a school, and learning

by sitting on the edge of the teachers rostrum during lessons. Her

mother was housekeeper in the same household as her father was

butler. Family tradition has it that he had a cleft palate and

ferocious methods of family disciplinewhich included hanging

the children up by their thumbs as a punishment. Grandma

unconsciously wrung her hands as she spoke of it.

Dad was born half way up East Hill in Dartford, Kent (he

died half way down West Hill, but this was a moot point as he

was registered dead on arrival. Though we visited him all


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apprenticeship there. He was a carpenter and did most jobs in the

woodwork line, including cabinet making, joining, pattern

making, etc.

Halls has a ghost. I tried to interest them in a painting I did

from an old group photo (see illustration) and they invited HH

and I to their clubhouse for a drink. Afterwards, they took us

round the rooms. In one I felt a sudden enveloping chill and was

later told that this had been a favourite room of Ann of Cleeves,

after her disposal by Henry.

Ls husband survived the war and spent the rest of his life

driving oil tankers. Their first home was in that curious, flat, oil

pervaded area of South Essex by the Thames, and then theymoved to the Wirral and bought up a son and daughter, J and C.

Dads schooling began on the other side of the ten foot high

wall behind the giant rhubarb at the bottom of the garden. Before

he or his sisters were allowed to go to school in the mornings,

they had to furnish concrete proof of digestive regularity in the

draughty outside loo. Their mother inspected the evidence before

the children were allowed to leave the house. Regularity bowed

to regularity. I cant imagine them trying to explain to a teacher ifthey were late for school!

Many of their classmates hair were covered in nits and they

would often watch creatures crawl about on the head of the child

in front of them in class, and the children who had no shoes were

greatly despised.

CW interrupted his early working life for the First World

War. He volunteered while under age and joined the KingsRoyal Rifle Corps (that word corp, corpsealways strikes me as

so appropriate and ironic, as none of them really believe they

might become corpses, until they get into the front line and then

its a bit too late).

He reached the trenches in 1916, worked mostly with the

sappers of the regiment and reached the dizzy heights of Acting

Lance Corporal (unpaid) (in our family of course unpaid)!

They marched across France from Ypres (Wipers) toGermany five abreast, which meant the middle man walked in the

central gutter (but that was the way the British army marched)!

He never went abroad again and, after his description of a


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crowded troopship full of unaccustomed travellers fighting for the

port-holes, Im not surprised. He told the usual stories of the mud,

lice, rats, cold, wet, noise and he mentioned the stink of

repeatedly explosion-disinterred and reburied bodies. When

asked if hed been wounded, he said he had been killed four

times. I know he was hurt in the leg and spent some time on

Blighty leave after trench fever in the isolation hospital in, what

was then, the outskirts of Dartford. Incidentally, in the same

hospital that Olive was later to die of Parkinsons disease. I

believe that CWs illness was actually his first brush with TB.

When I was between the ages of five and ten, CW sometimes

took me to Sunday tea at 131, on his day off from work. Allspruced up, hair flattened with Brylcreem, wearing his best

flannel trousers and sports jacket. He had a disconcerting habit of

peering sideways at you as you walked beside him, checking your

sartorial condition; being totally non-fashion-conscious, this had

a very lowering effect on my spirits. Wed walk to the clock

tower to catch the trolley bus to Dartford church; from the stark

council estate atmosphere of our own street to the mellow yellow

brick villas and terraces of the old town polite surroundings,peopled by neat, dressed-in-Sunday-best, with clean hankie, and

prayer book clutched in scrubbed palm or gloved hand

summoned by church bell clamour from morning - front doors

back to Sunday roast kids to Sunday school while mother

washes up and father dozes in arm or deckchair till tea.

CW and I would walk up the hill from the church. (Never

trust a church clock, my father said!) At 131 hed ring theclamorous front door bell, that worked with an enormous wing

nut, which would be answered by Grandma to the sound of soft

lamentations

Oh dear, Ive nothing to give you for tea if only Id

known... while the spirit of the house welcomed and drew you

in, past the front doors coloured glass panel, through the dimly-

lit hallwaypast the stiffly formal hardly-ever-used front parlour

to the living/dining room full of dark warm wood furnituredark tessellated red velour table cloth; Olives shrouded treadle

sewing machine in the corner by the window and Grandad in

waistcoat and watch chain in his fireside armchair (he once gave


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me a half-crown, so huge it was, it completely covered my palm,

hard and shining bright). They used to tease him about his Kaiser

moustachesilky white, with a very faint yellow tobacco stain.

The crisp, white table cloth with the white lace-edge would

be spread over the table and the nothing to give you would

appear. Thin bread and butter, home-made jam in its pot inside a

silver holder, with a matching spoon to scoop out a portion to put

on the side of your plate (my usual habit of balancing a slice of

bread, butter and jam poised over up-spread finger tips and thumb

was politely suppressed in homage to the delicate bone china).

Eggshell thin matching tea cups, sugar bowl, jug and tea pot.

There would be thinly sliced ham, salad-stuff from the garden,crumbly rich fruit cake, crisp syrup-flavoured flap-jacks,

miraculous Victoria sponges firm and light, sandwiched with a

thin layer of butter and jam between the two golden sections

(when they were young the children used to vie with each other to

take the cake out to the pantry after tea to steal another slice).

Theres a knock on the door. Probably Tim, someone says,

hide the cake!

Tim was a lifelong friend of Os, as her parents were lifelongfriends of her, Os parents. I never knew her real name, she was

nicknamed after Tiny Tim because she was small and had a

permanent limp. She outlived all the Dartford crowd. She rode a

heavy, upright old-fashioned bicycle literally to her dying day,

being killed by a heavy lorry! A short time before she died, she

asked me to visit her we had no relations left in Dartford by

then and had completely lost touch. She gave me her completeworks of Shakespeare, Falstaff edition.

After tea, with everything cleared away, the white table cloth

gathered together and ritually shaken outside the back door to get

rid of the crumbs. The cakes restored to their homes in their

heavily decorated, solid biscuit tins, all-over decorated with

abstract designs and flowers and scenes, and as opulently scented

inside as their rich, delicious contents. Then another ritual: a look

at the garden conducted by a suitably proudly bashful grandad.Down one step from the dining room, through the heavy, looped

back, fringed velvet curtain, into the stone flagged kitchen with

its ochre coloured stoneware sink under the huge brass tap


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perched high on the cold water pipe; scrubbed wood table and big

always-cool walk-in pantry with one tiny high-up window. Out

through the back door and along the stone-paved passageway

between the next door fence and the coal bunker and outside

lavatory with high diamond-shaped little ventilation holes.

Completely covering the one-storey outhouse section was a

magnificent cotoneaster shiny tiny dark green leaves, dotted

with small clumps of creamy blossom in spring and smothered in

orange berries in winter. A flagged access path to the neighbours

on the other side ran across the back of the house and a hedge-

and-fence with picket gate protected the garden proper. First a

narrow brick path led past a little lawn damply hedged in withrose trees, sparrow grass, chrysanthemums, lily of the valley,

London pride and annuals, and a trellised rose bush on the

creosoted potting shed; then a narrow cinder path took over,

leading to the giant rhubarb jungle, past neat rows spanning the

dark, fine, powdery earth plot. Rows of carrots, onions, salad

stuff, beans, peas, potatoes, pinks and sweet peas. The garden

was about four yards wide and thirty yards long; with a long

wooden hut next door where they bred cairn terriers.Grandmas watchtower was at the upstairs front window

when she could no longer rush around. A solid, little, well

rounded figure usually in navy blue silk dress with little white

dots. She always had a pleasant expression on her softly wrinkled

face, and was always a little breathless she still shared in

community life from her upstairs window hung with heavy,

scratchy, creamy, lacy linen curtains. She would wave toacquaintances and beckon friends in for a cup of tea, out of the

busy street outside. The chair she sat in was mahogany, heavily

carved with a small upholstered panel in the back and a sprung

upholstered seat. It now stands in my living room.

They were gentle, quiet Church of England people. But they

had their rebels against somnolent suburban conformity; as well

as great grandpa, there was an aunt who moved to Devon in order

to live with her new man without benefit of clergy and withoutlosing her pension, which she felt she had thoroughly earned for

the rest of her life. It was an unusual and brave thing to do in

those days.


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My Progenitors: The Ws

The first husband of Miss Bishop was my grandfather (Joseph)

W. He was a butcher and the lived on the isle of sheep (Sheppey)

she was a tiny birdlike creature who didnt appear to be strong

enough for any normal lifebut she had a baby or a miss every

year of her first marriage. She was subject to bronchitis but lived

well into her eighties.

Josephs business was to supply the ships in Queensborough

Harbour. There was a long shed in the yard behind their family

home shop in the High Street. Sheep went in at one end of theshed, and joints of meat came out the other!

Business meetings were, of course, conducted aboard ship;

convivial affairs in the captains cabins, from which the usually

abstemious Joseph would weave his happy way home.

After the silting up of the harbour, the butchers shop became

a sweet shop with a seasonal side-line in Christmas toys. This

bazaar was set up in a big, three-windowed room upstairs. Long

after her official departure for bed, HH would be sitting in one ofthe big window seats reading the Christmas stock of story books

by the light of the street lamps. HH adored her father Come

on, Toby, hed say.

The children all helped themselves from the big jar of

raspberry drops on the end of the counter on their way in and out

of the house; and a cupboard in the boys bedroom was found to

be full of empty condensed milk tins! I wonder how much profitthe shop showed?

During the 1914/18 war, there was another side line. The

Christmas room was converted into a teashop for the young

soldiers and airmen camped nearby. They were bored and not

very well housed or fed, so the place was always thronged (an

early unofficial NAAFI I suppose). A queue of young men would

form and pass cups of tea back to the tables. Later, food was sold

as well and the children would get up early to help serve. Theyworked out their early crushes and bouts of hero-worship on these

romantic strangers. Some became friends, Teddy for instance


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gave Lily a big teddy bear and HH a beautifully illustrated book

of fairy stories.

In those days domestic help was very cheap and there was

usually a girl to help in the house and an old washerwoman was

employed whose homespun philosophy once impelled her to

advise that one should not bring back remediesof the past. Very

perspicacious of her to put her finger on the main mental

characteristic of the family. The ones I later got to know all

tended to allow past experiences spoil their present pleasures!

Clever girls were expected to make their own clothes (but by

that time there were cheap clothes available, so at least they were

not expected to make their brothers clothes too). HHs friend,Dorry, had rich parents so she could afford the best cloth at two

shillings and sixpence a yard and she always made three dresses

for each summerpale blue, pale yellow and pale green. HH got

stuff at sixpence a yard. Dorrys family had a tennis court and a

car.

HH was having tea at a nearby relatives house when her aunt

casually mentioned the need for a few extra shillings for a

shopping expedition. Uncle slapped down his newspaper with theexclamation, My God! Lally, HH leaped up and rushed

home in tears! Another teatime visit experience of hers involved

her brother bursting in to order her home to get his tea!

One winter the house caught fire. A beam above the fireplace

had apparently been smouldering quietly for months before

bursting into flames and setting the building ablaze. In all the

kerfuffle, the younger children were asleep upstairs forgotten,when HH, eight years old, went upstairs and got them out, totally

unnoticed! The neighbours put the fire out before the fire engine

arrived but, according to the local press, the blaze was brought

under control by the tact and promptitude of the local brigade.

The children were all too young for military service in the

1914/18 war, but they all caught the flu in the epidemic that was

one of its aftermaths; and when they all came to, found that

Joseph senior had died.Lily senior could not take over the butchery side of the

business and, owing to the lack of manpower, many men in the

teaching profession having being butchered in the war, she got a


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job as a teacher in spite of her interrupted college studies, and

became the breadwinner to all seven of them in the family. They

moved to Dumurg Avenue, next to the little school, and the

children began the difficult experience of being taught, amongst

other children, by their own mother.

One of the pupils was reprimanded concerning personal

hygiene; its mother pointed out that the child came to school ...

to be learned, not to be smelled! Another child left a

neighbouring house every day to the shrill sound of his mothers

voice calling, Have you got your bevour, Cecil. (Bevour was a

local term for lunch.)

HH remembers sitting in school, watching the livestock crawlaround the long dark hair of the child in front. One pair of pretty

twins had the last laugh, after needing the attentions of Nitty

Norah, the visiting school nurse. Their shorn hair grew again

beautifully curly, making them even prettier.

Dumurg Avenue, in spite of its grand name, was an unmade

road with one row of terraced houses. It ended abruptly at farm

fields and, in summer, the family could pop over the fence and

picnic in sight of home.One unqualified teachers salary must have been

uncomfortably stretched to keep seven people, but the children

never understood the difficulties and always resented the abrupt

way they were turned out into the world of wage-earners! The

two boys went to work at the local pottery, which probably

seemed a better place than the chemical works that scented the

Queensborough air, but it couldnt have done Harolds tendencytowards TB much good. The disease was a certain killer in those

days (it still was when, decades later, I was discovered to have a

scar on my lung!) and Harold lived long enough to join the police

force before succumbing. Young Joseph, the artistic one, died

very young in a lunatic asylum. HH and Lily had an exaggerated

fear of madness with Lily worrying about it on her deathbed,

and HH displaying a terror of going near the local mental

hospital; they were both very individual, almost eccentric, but inno-way mad. HH remembered being taken to see young Joseph.

Lying in bed, he gazed at them with big brown eyes, begging to

be allowed to come home the mental condition was possibly a


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overture. Concerts, of course, were out of the question (unless

you grew up in a cultured or a rich family and could afford the

cost of travelling to hear the famous regional orchestras or the

Proms) there were occasional concerts on the BBC between

talks, plays, variety and sport on the Home Service, and these

were the only hope for most people who loved music. One

consequence of this form of musical education were the gaps in

my knowledge. For instance, I didnt know the second movement

of the Emperor for years that particular disc of the set had

been broken otherwise it would never have come into my

possession! I never really took to concerts even later, when they

were more accessible to me always preferring the radio orrecordings. Perhaps because Id got used to the natural breaks

during my early listeningwhen the record had to be turned over

or the machine needed rewinding. Also I was afraid of my

irritating dry-throat cough disturbing the other members of the

audience.

In those years of clothing coupons, never enough to obtain

even the tatty materials and badly made clothes available to us

poorer civilians, I received a very acceptable present from uncleT; it was a Wrens uniform. We never liked to ask and to this

day, how he acquired it remains a mystery?

Lily and Tom built a beautiful garden stepped into the steep,

chalky plot of land behind their terrace house, which they

irrigated by pumping the bathwater out of the bathroom window.

To this garden, her budgerigars (Gregory Peck and grey Spooky),

the Navy Wives, local history and the Admirals bunfights, shedevoted the rest of her life. Her other interest was her

grandchildren her two sons set up homes as far north as

possible and her running battle with the cretinous man next

door. He was unmarried and, after being disappointed of stepping

into Toms shoes, after the latters death, apparently comforted

himself by poisoning Lilys plants through the fence and playing

music at decibel levels that rocked the block! One Christmas as I

stepped through her door on a visit, I remember being blastedthrough the party wall by ... peace on earth and mercy mild.

Luckily, all the main living rooms were on the opposite side of


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the house. When she was eventually driven to try to do something

about it, a court ruled that they should BOTH keep the peace!

The next girl to leave the nest in Queenborough was my

mother, HH. Of her, one school examiner remarked this girl is

too clever to be wasted on a five shilling a week job. Which, of

course, was precisely what happened she became a cashier at

the Co-op. She kept the staff amused; one thing was her

impersonation of the manager. Then she went on to nursing. First

at a cockroach-infested general hospital from which she fled

home to a none too welcoming L senior, who wanted to send her

straight back! Then to a childrens hospital in West Norwood

among other young trainee nurses in crisp white uniforms. Thiswas a much better place with good food memorable bread-and-

dripping, and a big bowl of fruit on the table for them to help

themselves, and tennis courts for their recreation. One of the

patients was a Japanese pilot who had burnt himself terribly

steering his plane away from crashing on houses. What a

Japanese pilot was doing in a childrens hospital in England

around 1924, I dont know! All of his face that was visible were

two, bright, dark eyes among the bandages.HH never took her State Register exams, preferring to go into

private nursing as the impersonal regulations of a big

establishment would not have suited her. One job, nursemaid to a

little boy, gave her a glimpse into how the other half live. Tables

groaning under loads of delicious food the master had a pair of

natty little clippers to cut up the duck. At her first meal with the

family she asked for duck and was never asked to chooseagain. She went with them on holiday to a high-class hotel and

one day CW rode down on his motorbike to see her and, though

the family were not going to need her services that day, they

would not let her go out with him! HH thinks it was plain

selfishness, but it may have been intended as a discipline to

protect her honour; if so, they neednt have bothered, CW was the

soul of honour and anyway felt that she would not marry him if

they had a full affair (one of the polite ways of referring to sexualintercourse in those days). HH says he was a virgin when they

married, the same as her, and she felt this was a reason for the

marriage being unsatisfactory in that department. HH found a


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uninhabitable. The housing situation by then was such that

everybody had to go on inhabiting it! HH and I agreed that we

would have needed to have been paid to live there, but E loved

her flat. True, it is a well-designed space for one person to live in

if you didnt mind living with the noise of five other families.

Another oddity was that she didnt care for West Indians, and that

area had a very high proportion of that group of people in

residence! She also had other incomprehensible phobias. It was

most unpleasant to hear her spit out the sentence, Theyre Jews,

of course, (applying this last to even the British Royal family)!!!

We cannot account for her rabid racism, there is nothing like it in

any of the rest of the family. There are good and bad in everyhuman community; how it is possible for a human being, in full

possession of their faculties to hate, regardless of individual

personality, a whole group of people? Even some Fascists

possibly didnt really understand what they were into? Possibly!

She wrote poetry, very turgid, surrealistic stuff, judging from

a small sample she once showed me about waterfowl and muddy

water. A youthful attempt at the genre, remembered with typical

sibling-savagery was:

The cricketers look nice in the distance

Wearing their flannels so white

My brother is very persistence

In going there every night

One of her more recent memorable remarks was when thetrain stopped at Erith station, You can get off ere ith you like!

Lily seniors second husband was a merchant seaman and

they lived in his home port of Liverpool. The third member of

that particular family was Peter the budgerigar, he had been the

runt of the litter and Lily and Billy G gave him a home rather

than letting him be destroyed. Peter flew free around the home,

hopping round the table at meal times helping himself to a little

salt and a little butter off each plate. Billy and Peter tookreciprocal devotion to its limit, Peter being discovered dead in his

cage in the morning of the night Billy died. The only bit of family

lore about Billy that I can remember was one Christmas. We went


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to spend the festive season with them and the only thing I can

remember from the visit (I was very young) was the step of a

factory that made soft drinks stained like a Pollock picture in

brilliant dribbles and splatters of different colours; the story is of

Billy, sitting replete in a state of euphoria saying, It couldnt

have been a better bird, (in that case, the Turkey).

W was the baby of the family. Such a tiny baby, that she had

to be carried on a cushion and could have fitted in a milk bottle.

She, of course, grew to be the tallest of the lot. She was still at

school when all the rest had gone. She remembers waking up one

night and, attracted by the sound of high jinks going on between

Lily senior and a party of her fellow teachers, going downstairs;welcomed with applause of the assembled company turned

around the little trap-door in her pyjamas opened, and herself

despatched back to the bed with a light smack on her bottom to

a more general applause. After Lily seniors retirement they

moved from Dumurg Avenue to a bungalow in Chichester Road,

near Gravesend.

W went into business, as office work was then called,

finishing up in the Civil Service, during the war in the civilianrank of SC in the WO and similar rank later in the FO. She was

the bohemian one having an unhappy love affair with a

married mansharing a flat in Chelsea with a girl friend (the

flat she sublet on her marriage, and would have been its owner

still if her husband, unknown to her, had not made it part of an

exchange bargain in one of their house moves)! It was in one of

the streets off the Kings Road, in a beautiful Georgian terracehouse, with wrought iron balconies supporting a grape vine and

Victorian lavatories decorated with bunches of blue cornflowers.

I went to her wedding reception there and she gave me a copy of

the Phaidon Leonardo. The groom got plastered on the wedding

feast wine and could be heard throwing up among the blue

cornflowers. They moved round a lot following his work,

bringing up three children and finally retiring to a cottage in the

Fens then finally, finally retiring to a pretty little terrace houseon the south coast. Ws life seems to have run on a lot of uncanny

parallels to my own artistic leanings, Civil Service, Open


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University, Peace Pledge Union, living and working in London

and a propensity towards falling for unsuitable men.

Each Whiddett sister was a crowd in herself get all of them

in one room on a visit (a thing which very seldom happened, they

were not all on speaking terms at one time very often) and the air

would be supercharged with crackling electric personality energy.

Eileen, an enthusiastic conversationalist in general, would slump

silent in a corner when the other three rampaged into full flood.

As for us ordinary mortals with no, or diluted, W blood in our

veins, we could but concentrate on weathering the storm of

words, enthusiasms, memories and debate; as sentences, phrases,

laughter, illustrated with impersonations and spurts of regionalaccents exploded around us in unstoppable gusts and whirlwinds,

crashing against walls, rebounding off doors and battering on

windows, whose glass and curtains miraculously withstand the

tempest!

To finish the Ws early years here are some deathless lines

from one of their childhood plays:

The King is wownded

Not mortually I hopeMortually, I fear


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2

D o n t Y o u K n o w T h e r e s A W a r O n ?

Whores and Wars. If men didnt go to them, there

wouldnt be any.

Our part of the family: HH, JK, CW and I, lived on a plateau

beside the Thames River. The real yeti, the original ice monster,

was the prehistoric Ice Age.

*I think the prehistoric ice cap that covered the NorthernHemisphere melted, if such a cataclysm can be called anything so

prosaic as melt, from here! It drained down into the shallow clay

basin that was later to sprawl into another monster spreading

tentacles out across, heath and woodland; the great icy claws

retreating scraped the soft earth into deep scratches, gouging

scars into the landscape that still existat Greenwich the slope is

relatively gentle and the wounds have become two house-lined

hills that descend on each side of the observatory promontory.

Another can still be traced where a church stands out above the

Woolwich ferry. The first deeply obvious scar carves its way

down through Plumstead common to the flat river marshlands

that line both banks of the river Thames length until it muddily

oozes into being a sea at Southend beyond the great bulges of

Sheppey and Grain. Around Blackheath to Erith, the whole

landscape is like a great rumpled bed, all folds and hummocks ofland. The roads have to scramble up and down to the rhythm of it.

A pleasant, wide, tree-lined streeted area like Belvedere has to

abandon its orderly, civilised centre to roll down in steep hills

carrying precariously balanced houses in an elemental swoop

down to the flat expanse of gap-toothed Thamesmead. Turning an

ordinary street corner in Plumstead or Woolwich becomes an

adventure, as the landscape takes a sudden dive, and vistas of

Londons towers and misty streets are revealed at your feet.Where Bexleyheath and Erith meet, they crumple into canyons

that still carry ancient woodland. Undergrowth and forest cling to

their sides. Rain-water-gouged channels descend through groves


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of gnarled tree scattered slopes, patched with rough grass and

bracken. Roads have to take a circumspect way carefully along

the tops of the ridges to maintain a level surface and then

suddenly abandon themselves, in the necessity of plunging down

into town centres and old shipping wharves and docks alongside

the river.

It was beside the Thames marshes that my branch of the

family began and will probably end.

Typically, my mother met my father when she missed the last

bus home. She must have been returning to Chichester Road,

because she had missed the last bus from Dartford station. The

way led through the desolate part-wilderness, part-industrialisedand part-farmlands with a few speculative building estates and

old houses dotted about, by the Thames marshes between

Dartford and Gravesend. CW saw her waiting at the bus stop and,

on finding how far she had to travel, told her she was lucky to

have met a friendly native, walked with her to his own front door,

and apparently liking what he had found, walked the extra few

miles past it, to her, or rather Grandmas door. His current

engagement was terminated, he sold his BSA motor bicycle, theygot married, had a homely honeymoon in Dorset and settled

down in a flat in Barnehurst where they were allowed one bath a

week and the use of the washing line on Mondays, wet or fine!

HH was attempting to teach CW to dance when I came between

them. The first floor flat, obviously unsuitable for a baby, and L

senior at that moment embarking on her second marriage moved

to Liverpool, so they rented the Chichester Road bungalow fromher.

Bob, a big black and white Labrador type dog came with the

house and constituted himself my constant guardian. No

tradesman, visitor or council worker was allowed near me.

Behind the house was a big oak tree and I would lie in my pram

and gaze up at the most beautiful view in the world through

leafy branches at sunny sky and clouds.

Another doggy story HH standing transfixed at thewashing-up, watching myself, then a toddler, crawling through

the fence to retrieve my ball from between the paws of the savage

and, no doubt bemusedAlsatian dog next door.


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The problem of that district was the permanent layer of grey

dust that floated from the cement factory and settled on

everything. It spread a grey shroud over roads, paths, window

ledges, roofs; the cabbages in the gardens and the fresh, new

leaves on spring time branches were all smothered with it.

Windows could not be left open, however hot the weather and the

atmosphere altogether so unhealthy that it came as a mixed curse

when the bungalow was sold over our heads.

It was during the thirties depression, and CW was out of

work most of this time. One job he did have was at Rotherhithe

and another at Elmers End. He could not afford public transport,

so had to ride his push-bike the twenty miles there and back eachday. The Rotherhithe route took him along Watling Street, up

Shooters Hill (a cup of tea at the shack, still existing, on the top

of Blackheath). He always had a proper breakfast and, one

morning as HH washed up, CWs hand appeared with a bunch of

red roses through the kitchen window.

Holidays from work in those days were unpaid, so he never

took holidays! HH sometimes took us children to the sea for a

week and he would either join us, or do the home decorating,during that weekend. Later, when the children were older, HH

would go on holidays alone and I continued the tradition when I

became a wage (of a sort) earner. JK, like her father, never

wanted to go away for holidays; probably both had found their

enforced absences from home enough to last a lifetime! They

both liked their living routine to go on undisturbed, HH and I

both needed an occasional jolt to keep the adrenalin flowing.Also, for CW, the exercise he got searching for jobs probably

lasted the rest of his life. There were no agencies or job centres,

or even proper Labour Exchanges then, so job-hunting was

literally on your bike, going round looking for job vacancy

notices posted up outside factories and workshops. My parents,

like every other working class household, could not dream of

having a telephone. As soon as it became at all possible, HH

insisted on installing a phone. No neighbour was likely to be onthe telephone, so any family emergency meant a trip to the

nearest public box probably some distance but not likely to

be vandalised!


38/40

The cat, Samba, wants to type here is her own personal

unassisted statement:

,. l lk po

Perhaps she knows what it means!

A terrace, working class house cost 100 then and they

didnt even have the 10 needed for the deposit. So when we had

to move it was again on your bike for CW, this time looking for

houses for rent. If only the fashion for building your own home

had come a bit sooner (this happened in the short period of time

between the improvement of wages mostly due to war work

and the clamp down of Building Restrictions intended, some

thought, to preserve the countryside but, of course, givingcapitalist business interests the most advantages)! He could have

carried out most of the work himself as he had all the skills

(except electrician to a professional standard) that would have

been necessary. His family had always disapproved of hire

purchase and his political views were against private property,

but I think HH could have probably bought him round to the idea

if it had been more generally practised. There was a family

around the corner who lived in a House That Jack Built youveguessed it husbands name was Jack! It was a small bungalow

and is still lived in! The present owners have adapted and added

to it, so Jack would never recognise it if he should come back, but

he wont hes been dead these many decades!

We moved to Blackfen, where I distinguished myself by

falling into a tin bath of scalding hot water. We hadnt been in the

district long enough to be on any doctors panel so, that Sunday,CW was again on his bike looking for a doctor. The one he

eventually found was an Indian, very unusual residents in this

country at that time, and even rarer as doctors! The skin came off

my hand like a glove and the scars went up my arm and across

my chest, but I had kept my head above water. The only reminder

of the incident was my left hand which always looked like an old

persons my right hand has caught up now! The house had no

hot water in the upstairs bathroom so HH used to carry it up formy nightly bath. It was My Fault as she was taking me upstairs

with all my three years old imperiousness I ordered her back

for the water and then fell in it, possibly with a little help of a


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slight push from the vessel that unexpectedly over-balanced me!

The scene as it appeared to CW, called in from the garden,

standing nonplussed at the foot of the stairs, was of HH with a

dripping and steaming bowl in one hand and a dripping and

steaming, screaming me in the other, half-way up the stairs.

Our next move was to Park Mead where we rented a nice end

of terrace house in a one-sided street beside, and about twenty

feet below, Rochester Way, now the A20 perpetually roaring

and wheel-screeching, then a fairly busy road that was only noisy

on Saturday nights from the charas full of cockneys whizzing

down to the seaside. Danson Park swimming pool was directly

opposite. The park was always pleasant with its lake and tree and(now long gone) statue lined, walks. I once saw my phantom

lover there.

While we were in Park Mead, I was packed off on a visit to

Lily junior in Rochester, a four-year-old alone in the train, with

the guard keeping an eye on me. A bit woebegone (remembering

my previous period away from home, at a convalescent home

after my brush with scarlet fever plus pneumonia. It was at

Dymchurch and the only memories I have of it is of paralysinghome-sickness, the horsey woman in charge and her dogs (my

only friends, those dogs) and a lovely tall sun-beamed hallway

with a parcel from home waiting on the window sill and

almost irretrievably losing a mothball up my nose because I liked

the smell). My aunt, Lily junior, encouraged me on the walk back

from the station with promises of tinned tomato soup. I think it is

from that visit that I have distinct impressions of stealing sweetsfrom the sweet tin and accidentally treading on a precious plant

while helping with the gardening, all with no repercussions or

recriminations. No wonder Lily became my favourite aunt,

together with W who, come to think of it, was not really so very

much older than I! When I got home, there was a little red-faced

wailerJK! (Jennifer Kaye).

JK was two years old when she broke her arm on a pot of

jam. It was a two pound jar in the recently delivered box ofgroceries standing at the bottom of the stairs that she had just

tumbled down! Even such as we had routine tradesmens

deliveries in those days. Very few people had cars (think of it


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streets and streets and no parked cars) and the butcher, baker

and grocer were eager to give service for custom. Greengrocers

with horse and cart came on the rounds to sell to you outside your

own front door. In those days there was usually a housewife in a

rented house all day. Jobs were scarce and there was not the need

for both partners to work to pay off a mortgage.

At the end of the road there was a rough patch of ground

where I used to dig up horseradish to sauce our roast beef.

Barbara, next door, and I both caught mumps and went off to

hospital together. Our mums used to get maudlin together over

cups of tea and the wind-up gramophone playing the little toys

you love so much, are waiting for your tender touch: In everynook and corner you are missing. Much later, Barbaras elder

sister married an American serviceman. They had children of

their own and they adopted others. One day the children were all

watching TV, one boy went out for cigarettes and, on his return,

found all his brothers and sisters dead from television fumes; this

was in the early sixties.

Our landlord needed to repossess the house for his own

family, so CW rode again! Eventually, he found a terrace rabbithutch, one of a group of twenty-four built around a frying pan

shaped close. Built in the thirties, and an architectural prize

winner at that, they were nevertheless only just big enough for a

couple with two children maximum. Ours was grimy and

neglected, set between two hard plots of tangled garden. The

main advantage to CWs eye was the garage at the bottom of the

garden for his workshop with good alleyway access, but HH saton the stairs and cried on the day we moved in it was such a

come-down from our previous house. Maybe this was why the

place always had a slightly mournful, haunted air to me. This, in

spite of the fact that it had everything I could possibly want as a

child mostly nice neighbours, good playing areas with

fascinating little spaces among bushes and sheds in the garden,

close to wild fields, and within small-leg walking distance of

Dartford heath and the river Cray to get damp and grubby andsmothered in hayseeds in. Behind us there was a big nursery

garden full of glass-houses. The glass was all smashed, I think

an artist's life by marilyn swann

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