An Autobiography

In every family there is usually one member who is a source of trouble and worry. My brother Monty was ours. Until the day of his death he was always causing someone a headache. I have often wondered, looking back, whether there is any niche in life where Monty would have fitted in. He would certainly have been all right if he had been born Ludwig II of Bavaria. I can see him sitting in his empty theatre, enjoying opera sung only for him. He was intensely musical, with a good bass voice, and played various instruments by ear, from penny whistles to piccolo and flute. He would never have had the application, though, to become a professional of any kind, nor, I think, did the idea ever enter his head. He had good manners, great charm, and throughout his life was surrounded by people anxious to save him worry or bother. There was always someone ready to lend him money and to do any chores for him. As a child of six, when he and my sister received their pocket money, the same thing invariably happened. Monty spent his on the first day. Later in the week he would suddenly push my sister into a shop, quickly order three pennyworth of a favourite sweet and then look at my sister, daring her not to pay. Madge, who had a great respect for public opinion, always did. Naturally she was furious about it and quarrelled with him violently afterwards. Monty would merely smile at her serenely and offer her one of the sweets.

This attitude was one he adopted throughout his life. There seemed to be a natural conspiracy to slave for him. Again and again various women have said to me, ‘You know you don’t really understand your brother Monty. What he needs is sympathy.’ The truth was that we understood him only too well. It was impossible, mind you, not to feel affection for him. He recognised his own faults with the utmost frankness, and was always sure that everything was going to be different in future. He was, I believe, the only boy at Harrow who was allowed to keep white mice. His housemaster, in explaining this, said to my father, ‘You know he really seems to have such a deep love of natural history that I thought he should be allowed this privilege.’ The family opinion was that Monty had no love of natural history at all. He just wished to keep white mice!

I think, on looking back, that Monty was a very interesting person. A slightly different arrangement of genes and he might have been a great man. He just lacked something. Proportion? Balance? Integration? I don’t know.

The choice of a career for him settled itself. The Boer War broke out. Almost all the young men we knew volunteered–Monty, naturally, among them. (He had occasionally condescended to play with some toy soldiers I had, drawing them up in line of battle and christening their commanding officer Captain Dashwood. Later, to vary the routine, he cut off Captain Dashwood’s head for treason while I wept.) In some ways my father must have felt relief–the Army might provide a career for him–especially just at this moment when his engineering prospects were so doubtful.

The Boer War, I suppose, was the last of what one might describe as the ‘old wars’, the wars that did not really affect one’s own country or life. They were heroic story-book affairs, fought by brave soldiers and gallant young men. They were killed, if killed, gloriously in battle. More often they came home suitably decorated with medals for gallant feats performed on the field. They were tied up with the outposts of Empire, the poems of Kipling, and with the bits of England that were pink on the map. It seems strange today to think that people–girls in particular–went around handing our white feathers to young men whom they considered were backward in doing their duty by dying for their country.

I remember little of the outbreak of the South African War. It was not regarded as an important war–it consisted of ‘teaching Kruger a lesson’. With the usual English optimism it would be ‘all over in a few weeks’. In 1914 we heard the same phrase. ‘All over by Christmas.’ In 1940, ‘Not much point in storing the carpets with mothballs.’–this when the Admiralty took over my house–‘It won’t last over the winter.’

So what I remember is a gay atmosphere, a song with a good tune–‘The Absent-Minded Beggar’–and cheerful young men coming up from Plymouth for a few days’ leave. I can remember a scene at home a few days before the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Welsh Regiment was to sail for South Africa. Monty had brought a friend up from Plymouth, where they were stationed at the moment. This friend, Ernest Mackintosh, always called by us for some reason Billy, was to remain a friend and far more of a brother than my real brother to me all my life. He was a young man of great gaiety and charm. Like most of the young men around, he was more or less in love with my sister. The two boys had just got their uniforms, and were intensely intrigued by puttees which they had never seen before. They wound the puttees round their necks, bandaged their heads with them and played all sorts of tricks. I have a photograph of them sitting in our conservatory with puttees round their necks. I transferred my girlish hero-worship to Billy Mackintosh. A photograph of him stood by my bed in a frame with forget-me-nots on it.

From Paris we went to Dinard in Brittany.

The principal thing that I remember about Dinard is that I learnt to swim there. I can remember my incredulous pride and pleasure when I found myself striking out for six spluttering strokes on my own without submerging.

The other thing I remember is the blackberries–never were there such blackberries, great big fat juicy ones. Marie and I used to go out and pick baskets of them, and eat masses of them at the same time. The reason for this profusion was that the natives of the countryside believed them to be deadly poison. ‘Ils ne mangent pas des mûres.’ said Marie wonderingly. ‘They say to me “vous allez vous empoisonner’.’ Marie and I had no such inhibitions, and we poisoned ourselves happily every afternoon.

It was in Dinard that I first took to theatrical life. Father and mother had a large double bedroom with an enormous bow window, practically an alcove, across which curtains were drawn. It was a natural for stage performances. Fired by a pantomime I had seen the previous Christmas, I pressed Marie into service and we gave nightly representations of various fairy stories. I chose the character I wished to be and Marie had to be everybody else.

Looking back, I am filled with gratitude at the extraordinary kindness of my father and mother. I can imagine nothing more boring than to come up every evening after dinner and sit for half an hour watching and applauding whilst Marie and I strutted and postured in our home-improvised costumes. We went through the Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast and so forth. I was fondest of the part of principal boy, and borrowing my sister’s stockings in an attempt to produce tights I marched around and declaimed. The performance was, of course, always in French, as Marie could not speak English. What a good-natured girl she was. Only once did she strike, and that for a reason I simply could not fathom. She was to be Cinderella, and I insisted on her taking her hair down. One really cannot imagine Cinderella with a chignon on top of her head! But Marie, who had enacted the part of the Beast without murmuring, who had been Red Riding Hood’s grandmother–Marie, who had been good fairies, bad fairies, who had been wicked old women, who had enacted a street scene where she spat into the gutter in a most realistic fashion saying in argot ‘Et bien crache!’ which incidentally convulsed my father with mirth–Marie suddenly refused with tears to enact the part of Cinderella.

‘Mais, pourquoi, pas, Marie?’ I demanded. ‘It is a very good part. It is the heroine. It is Cinderella the whole play is about.’

Impossible, said Marie, impossible that she should enact such a role. To take her hair down, to appear with her hair loose on her shoulders before Monsieur! That was the crux. To appear with her hair down before Monsieur was to Marie unthinkable, shocking. I yielded, puzzled. We concocted a kind of hood that went over Cinderella’s chignon, and all was well.

But how extraordinary taboos are. I remember one of my friends’ children–a pleasant, amiable little girl of about four. A French nursery governess arrived to look after her. There was the usual hesitation as to whether the child would ‘get on’ with her or not, but everything appeared to be perfect happiness. She went out with her for a walk, chatted, showed Madeleine her toys. Everything seemed to be going perfectly. Only at bedtime did tears arise when Joan refused firmly to let Madeleine give her her bath. Her mother, puzzled, gave in on the first day, since she could understand that the child was perhaps not quite at home with the strangers yet. But this refusal continued for two or three days. All was peace, all was happiness, all was friendship, until bed and bath time. It was not till the fourth day that Joan, weeping bitterly and burying her head in her mother’s neck, said, ‘You don’t understand, Mummy. You don’t seem to understand. How can I show my body to a foreigner?’

So it was with Marie. She could strut about in trousers, show quite a lot of leg in many roles, but she could not take her hair down in front of Monsieur.

I imagine, to begin with, our theatrical performances must have been extremely funny, and my father at least got a great deal of enjoyment out of them. But how boring they must have become! Yet my parents were far too kind to tell me frankly that they couldn’t be bothered to come up every night. Occasionally they let themselves off by explaining that friends were dining and so they would not be able to come upstairs, but on the whole they stuck it nobly–and how I, at least, enjoyed performing before them.

During the month of September that we stayed in Dinard my father was happy to find some old friends there–Martin Pirie and his wife and two sons, who were finishing off their holidays. Martin Pirie and my father had been at school together at Vevey, and close friends ever since. Martin’s wife, Lilian Pirie, I still think of as one of the most outstanding personalities I have ever known. The character that Sackville West drew so beautifully in All Passion Spent has always struck me as a little like Mrs Pirie. There was something faintly awe-inspiring in her, slightly aloof. She had a beautiful, clear voice, delicate features and very blue eyes. The movements of her hands were always beautiful. I think Dinard was the first time I ever saw her, but from then on I saw her at frequent intervals, and I knew her up to the age of eighty odd when she died. All that time my admiration and respect for her increased.

She was one of the few people I have met whom I consider had a really interesting mind. Each of her houses was decorated in a startling and original manner. She did the most beautiful embroidered pictures, there was never a book or a play she had not read or seen, and she always had something telling to say about them. Nowadays I suppose she would have embarked upon some career, but I wonder, if she had done so, whether the impact of her personality would have been as great as it actually was.

Young people always flocked to her house and were happy to talk to her. To spend an afternoon with her, even when she was well over seventy, was a wonderful refreshment. I think she had, more perfectly than anyone I have ever known, the art of leisure. You found her sitting in a high-backed chair in her beautiful room, usually engaged with some needle-work of her own design, some interesting book or other by her side. She had the air of having time to talk with you all day, all night, for months on end. Her criticisms were caustic and clear. Although she would talk about any abstract subject under the sun she seldom indulged in personalities. But it was her beautiful speaking voice that attracted me most. It is such a rare thing to find. I have always been sensitive to voices. An ugly voice repels me where an ugly face would not.

My father was delighted to see his friend Martin again. My mother and Mrs Pirie had much in common, and immediately engaged, if I remember rightly, in a frenzied discussion about Japanese art. Their two boys were there–Harold, who was at Eton, and Wilfred, who I suppose must have been at Dartmouth, as he was going into the Navy. Wilfred was later to be one of my dearest friends, but all I remember about him from Dinard was that he was said to be the boy who always laughed out loud whenever he saw a banana. This made me look at him with close attention. Naturally, neither of the boys took the least notice of me. An Eton schoolboy and a naval cadet would hardly demean themselves by paying attention to a little girl of seven.

From Dinard we moved on to Guernsey, where we spent most of the winter. As a birthday present I was given a surprise of three birds of exotic plumage and colouring. These were named Kiki, Tou-tou and Bebe. Shortly after arrival in Guernsey, Kiki, who was always a delicate bird, died. He had not been long enough in my possession for his decease to occasion violent grief–in any case, Bebe, who was an enchanting small bird, was my favourite–but I certainly enjoyed myself in a lavish way over the obsequies of Kiki. He was splendidly buried in a cardboard box with a lining of satin ribbon supplied by my mother. An expedition was then made out of the town of St. Peter Port to an upland region where a spot was chosen for the funeral ceremonies, and the box was duly buried with a large knot of flowers placed upon it.

All that of course was highly satisfactory, but it did not end there. ‘Visiter la tombe de Kiki’ became one of my favourite walks.

The great excitement in St. Peter Port was the flower market. There were lovely flowers of every kind and very cheap. According to Marie it was always the coldest and windiest day when, after inquiring, ‘And where shall we go for a walk today, Mees?’ Mees would reply with gusto, ‘Nous allons visiter la tombe de Kiki.’ Terrible sighs from Marie. A two-mile walk and a great deal of cold wind! Nevertheless, I was adamant. I dragged her to the market, where we purchased exciting camellias or other flowers, and then we took the two-mile walk lashed by wind and frequently rain as well, and placed the floral bouquet with due ceremony upon Kiki’s grave. It must run in one’s blood to enjoy funerals and funeral observances. Where indeed would archaeology be if it had not been for this trait in human nature? If I was ever taken for a walk in my youth by anyone other than nurses–one of the servants, for instance–we invariably went to the cemetery.

How happy are those scenes in Paris at Pere Lachaise, with whole families attending family tombs and making them beautiful for All Souls Day. Honouring the dead is indeed a hallowed cult. Is there behind it some instinctive means of avoiding grief, of becoming so interested in the rites and ceremonies that one almost forgets the departed loved one? I do know this, that however poor a family may be the first thing they save for is their funeral. A sweet old dear who worked for me at one time said, ‘Ah, hard times, dearie. Hard times indeed they’ve been. But one thing, however short I’ve gone and all the rest of us, I’ve got my money saved to bury me decent and I’ll never touch that. No, not even if I go hungry for days!’

IV

I sometimes think that in my last incarnation, if the theory of reincarnation is right, I must have been a dog. I have a great many of the dog’s habits. If anybody is undertaking anything or going anywhere I always want to be taken with them and do it too. In the same way, when returning home after this long absence I acted exactly like a dog. A dog always runs all round the house examining everything, sniffing here, sniffing there, finding out by its nose what has been going on, and visiting all its ‘best spots’. I did exactly the same. I went all round the house, then went out in the garden and visited my pet spots there: the tub, the see-saw tree, my little secret post overlooking the road outside in a hiding place up by the wall. I found my hoop and tested its condition, and took about an hour to satisfy myself that all was exactly as it had been before.

The greatest change had taken place in my dog, Tony. Tony had been a small, neat Yorkshire terrier when we went away. He was now, owing to Froudie’s loving care and endless meals, as fat as a balloon. She was completely Tony’s slave, and when my mother and I went to fetch him home Froudie gave us a long dissertation on how he liked to sleep, what exactly he had to be covered with in his basket, his tastes in food, and what time he liked his walk. At intervals she broke off her conversation with us to speak to Tony. ‘Mother’s lovely,’ she said. ‘Mother’s handsome.’ Tony looked very appreciative at these remarks, but nevertheless seemed to take them as no more than his due. ‘And he won’t eat a morsel,’ said Froudie proudly, ‘unless you give it him by hand. Oh no, I have to feed him every single little piece myself.’

I noticed a look in my mother’s face, and I could see that Tony was not going to receive quite that treatment at home. We took him home with us in the hired cab which we had got for the occasion, plus his bedding and the rest of his possessions. Tony, of course, was delighted to see us, and licked me all over. When his dinner was prepared and brought, Froudie’s warning was proved true. Tony looked at it, looked up at my mother and at me, moved a few steps away and sat down, waiting like a grand seigneur to have each morsel fed to him. I gave him a piece and he accepted it graciously, but my mother stopped that.

‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘He will have to learn to eat his dinner properly, as he used to do. Leave his dinner down there. He’ll go and eat it presently.’

But Tony did not go and eat it. He sat there. And never have I seen a dog more overcome with righteous indignation. His large, sorrowful, brown eyes went round the assembled family and back to his plate. He was clearly saying, ‘I want it. Don’t you see? I want my dinner. Give it to me.’ However, my mother was firm.

‘Even if he doesn’t eat it today,’ she said, ‘he will tomorrow.’ ‘You don’t think he’ll starve?’ I demanded.

My mother looked thoughtfully at Tony’s immensely broad back. ‘A little starvation,’ she said, ‘would do him a world of good.’

It was not till the following evening that Tony capitulated, and then he saved his pride by eating his dinner when nobody was in the room. After that there was no further trouble. Days of being treated like a Grand Duke were over, and Tony obviously accepted the fact. Still, he did not forget that for a whole year he had been the beloved darling of another house. Any word of reproof, any trouble he got into, and immediately he would sneak off and trot down to Froudie’s house, where he obviously told her that he was not properly appreciated. The habit persisted for quite a long time.

Marie was now Tony’s nurse-attendant, in addition to her other duties. It was amusing to see Marie arrive when we were playing downstairs in the evening, an apron tied round her waist, saying politely, ‘Monsieur Toni pour le bain.’ Monsieur Tony would immediately try to get down on all fours and slide under the sofa, since he had a poor opinion of the weekly bath. Extracted, he was carried off, his tail drooping and his ears down. Marie would report proudly later on the amount of fleas that were floating on top of the Jeyes fluid.

I must say that now dogs do not seem to have nearly as many fleas as they did in my young days. In spite of baths, brushing and combing, and large amounts of Jeyes fluid, all our dogs always seemed to be full of fleas. Perhaps they frequented stables and played with other flea-ridden dogs more than they do now. On the other hand they were less pampered, and they did not seem to live at the vets as much as dogs do today. I don’t remember Tony ever being seriously ill, his coat seemed always in good condition, he ate his meals, which were the scraps from our own dinner, and little fuss was made about his health.

But much more fuss is made about children now than was then the case. Temperatures, unless they were high, were not taken much notice of. A temperature of 102, sustained for twenty-four hours, would probably involve a visit from the doctor, but anything under that was given little attention. Occasionally, after a surfeit of green apples one might have what was termed a bilious attack. Twenty-four hours in bed with starvation usually cured that quite easily. Food was good and varied. I suppose there was a tendency to keep young children on milk and starch far too long, but certainly I, from a young age, had tastes of the steak that was sent up for Nursie’s supper, and under-done roast beef was one of my favourite meals. Devonshire cream, too, was eaten in quantities; so much nicer than cod liver oil, my mother used to say. Sometimes one ate it on bread and sometimes with a spoon. Alas! You never see real Devonshire cream in Devon nowadays–not as it used to be–scalded and taken off the milk in layers with its yellow top standing in a china bowl. There is no doubt about it, my favourite thing has been, is, and probably always will be, cream.

Mother, who craved for variety in food as well as in everything else, used from time to time to have a new craze. One time it was ‘there’s more nourishment in an egg’. On this slogan we had eggs at practically every meal till father rebelled. There was also a fishy period, when we lived on sole and whiting and improved our brains. However, having made the round of the food diets, mother usually returned to the normal; just as, having dragged father through Theosophy, the Unitarian church, a near miss of becoming a Roman Catholic, and a flirtation with Buddhism, she returned at last to the Church of England.

It was satisfactory to come home and find everything just as usual. There was only one change, and that was for the better. I now had my devoted Marie.

I suppose that until I dipped a hand into my bag of remembrances I had never actually thought about Marie–she was just Marie, part of my life. To a child the world is simply what is happening to him or her: and that includes the people in it–whom they like, whom they hate, what makes them happy, what makes them unhappy. Marie, fresh, cheerful, smiling, always agreeable, was a much appreciated member of the household.

What I wonder now is what it meant to her? She had been, I think, very happy during the autumn and winter that we spent travelling in France and the Channel Islands. She was seeing places, the life in the hotels was pleasant, and, strangely enough, she liked her young charge. I would, of course, like to think that she liked me because I was me–but Marie was genuinely fond of children, and would have liked any child that she was looking after, short of one or two of those infantile monsters that one does encounter. I was certainly not particularly obedient to her; I don’t think the French have the capacity for enforcing obedience. In many ways I behaved disgracefully. In particular I hated going to bed, and invented a splendid game of leaping round all the furniture, climbing up on wardrobes, down from the tops of chests of drawers, completing the circuit of the room without ever once touching the floor. Marie, standing in the doorway, would moan: ‘Oh, Mees; Mees! Madame votre mère ne serait pas contente!’ Madame ma mère certainly did not know what was going on. If she had made an unexpected appearance, she would have raised her eyebrows, said, ‘Agatha! Why are you not in bed?’ and within three minutes I would have been in bed, scurrying there, without any further word of admonition. However, Marie never denounced me to authority; she pleaded, she sighed, but she never reported me. On the other hand, if I did not give her obedience, I did give her love. I loved her very much.

On only one occasion do I really remember having upset her, and that was entirely inadvertent. It happened after we had come back to England, in the course of an argument on some subject or other which was proceeding quite amicably. Finally, in exasperation, and wishing to prove my point of view, I was saying: ‘Mais, ma pauvre fille, vous ne savez done pas les chemins defer sont: At this point, to my utter amazement, Marie suddenly burst into tears. I stared at her. I had no idea what was the matter. Then words came amongst the sobs. Yes–she was indeed a ‘pauvre fille‘. Her parents were poor, not rich like those of Mees. They kept a cafe, where all the sons and daughters worked. But it was not gentille, it was not bien élevée of her dear Mees to reproach her with her poverty.

‘But, Marie,’ I expostulated, ‘Marie, I didn’t mean that at all’.’ It seemed impossible to explain that no idea of poverty had been in my mind, that ‘ma pauvre fille’ was a mere expression of impatience. Poor Marie had been hurt in her feelings, and it took at least half an hour of protestations, caresses, and reiterated assurances of affection before she was soothed. After that, all was healed between us. I was terribly careful in future never to use that particular expression.

I think that Marie, established at our house in Torquay, felt lonely and homesick for the first time. No doubt in the hotels where we had stayed there had been other maids, nurses, governesses, and so on–cosmopolitan ones–and she had not felt the separation from her family. But here in England she came in contact with girls of her own age, or at any rate of not much more than her own age. We had at that time, I think, a youngish housemaid and a parlourmaid of perhaps thirty. But their point of view was so different from Marie’s that it must have made her feel a complete alien. They criticised the plainness of her clothes, the fact that she never spent any money on finery, ribbons, gloves, all the rest of it.

Marie was receiving what were to her fantastically good wages. She asked Monsieur every month if he would be so kind as to remit practically the whole of her pay to her mother in Pau. She herself kept a tiny sum. This was to her natural and proper; she was saving up for her dot, that precious sum of money that all French girls at that time (and perhaps now, I do not know) industriously put by as a dowry–a necessity for the future, for lacking it they may easily not get married at all. It is the equivalent, I suppose, of what we call in England ‘my bottom drawer’, but far more serious. It was a good and sensible idea, and I think in vogue nowadays in England, because young people want to buy a house and therefore both the man and the girl save money towards it. But in the time I am speaking of, girls did not save up for marriage–that was the man’s business. He must provide a home and the wherewithal to feed, clothe and look after his wife. Therefore the ‘girls in good service’ and the lower class of shop-girls, considered the money they earned was their own to use for the frivolous things of life. They bought new hats, and coloured blouses, an occasional necklace or brooch. One might say, I suppose, that they used their wages as courting money–to attract a suitable male of the species. But here was Marie, in her neat little black coat and skirt, and her little toque and her plain blouses, never adding to her wardrobe, never buying anything unnecessary. I don’t think they meant to be unkind, but they laughed at her; they despised her. It made her very unhappy.

It was really my mother’s insight and kindness that helped her through the first four or five months. She was homesick, she wanted to go home. My mother, however, talked to Marie, consoled her, told her that she was a wise girl and doing the right thing, that English girls were not as far-seeing and prudent as French girls. She also, I think, had a word with the servants themselves and with Jane, saying that they were making this French girl unhappy. She was far away from home, and they must think what it would be like if they were in a foreign country. So after a month or two Marie cheered up.

I feel that, at this point, anyone who has had the patience to read so far will exclaim: ‘But didn’t you have any lessons to do?’

The answer is, ‘No, I did not.’

I was, I suppose, nine years old by now, and most children of my age had governesses–though these were engaged, I fancy, largely from the point of view of child care, to exercise and supervise. What they taught you in the way of ‘lessons’ depended entirely on the tastes of the individual governesses.

I remember dimly a governess or two in friends’ houses. One held complete faith in Dr Brewer’s Child’s Guide to Knowledge–a counterpart of our modern ‘Quiz’. I retain scraps of knowledge thus acquired–‘What are the three diseases of wheat?’ Rust, mildew, and soot.’ Those have gone with me all through life–though unfortunately they have never been of practical use to me. ‘What is the principal manufacture in the town of Redditch?’ ‘Needles.’ ‘What is the date of the Battle of Hastings?’ ‘1066.’