An Autobiography Read online

  ‘But what do you actually do about it?’ I asked with curiosity.

  ‘Any stomach can be trained. Very small doses at first. It doesn’t matter what it is. Eggs, now, used to make me sick, and toasted cheese gave me the most terrible pains. But just a spoonful or two of boiled egg two or three times a week, and then a little more scrambled egg and so on. And now I can eat any amount of eggs. It’s been just the same with toasted cheese. Remember this, your stomach’s a good servant, but a bad master.’

  I was much impressed and promised to follow her advice, and I have done so–though it has not presented much difficulty, my stomach being definitely a servile one.

  III

  When my mother had gone abroad with Madge to the South of France after my father’s death, I remained at Ashfield under the tranquil eye of Jane for three weeks by myself. It was then that I discovered a new sport and new friends.

  Roller-skating on the pier was a pastime much in vogue. The surface of the pier was extremely rough, and you fell down a good deal, but it was great fun. There was a kind of concert-room at the end of the pier, not used in winter of course, and this was opened as a kind of indoor rink. It was also possible to skate at what was grandly called the Assembly Rooms, or the Bath Saloons, where the big dances took place. This was much more high-class, but most of us preferred the pier. You had your own skates and you paid twopence for admission, and once on the pier you skated! The Huxleys could not join me in this sport because they were engaged with their governess during the morning, and the same held for Audrey. The people I used to meet there were the Lucys. Although grown up, they had been very kind to me, knowing that I was alone at Ashfield because the doctor had ordered my mother abroad for change and rest.

  Although I felt rather grand on my own, one could get weary of that feeling. I enjoyed ordering the meals–or thinking I was ordering the meals. Actually we always had for lunch exactly what Jane had made up her mind we were going to have beforehand, but she certainly put up a good show of considering my wildest suggestions. ‘Could we have roast duck and meringues?’ I would ask and Jane would say yes, but she was not sure about the ordering of the duck, and that perhaps meringues–there were no whites of egg at the moment, perhaps we had better wait until some day when we had used the yolks for something else; so that in the end we had what was already sitting in the larder. But dear Jane was very tactful. She always called me Miss Agatha and allowed me to feel that I was in an important position.

  It was then that the Lucys suggested that I should come down and skate with them on the pier. They more or less taught me to stand up on my skates, and I loved it. They were, I think, one of the nicest families I have ever known. They came from Warwickshire, and the family’s beautiful house, Charlecote, had belonged to Berkeley Lucy’s uncle. He always thought that it ought to have come to him but instead of that it had gone to his uncle’s daughter, her husband taking the name of Fairfax-Lucy. I think the whole family felt very sad that Charlecote was not theirs, though they never said anything about it, except amongst themselves. The oldest daughter, Blanche, was an extraordinarily handsome girl–she was a little older than my sister and had been married before her. The eldest son, Reggie, was in the army but the second son was at home–about my brother’s age–and the next two daughters, Marguerite and Muriel, known to all as Margie and Noonie, were also grown-up. They had rather slurred lazy voices that I found very attractive. Time as such meant nothing to them.

  After skating for some time, Noonie would look at her watch and say, ‘Well, did you ever, look at the time now. It’s half-past one already.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘It will take me twenty minutes at least to walk home.’

  ‘Oh you’d better not go home, Aggie. You come home with us and have lunch. We can ring up Ashfield.’

  So I would go home with them, and we would arrive about half-past two to be greeted by Sam the dog–‘Body like a barrel, breath like a drainpipe,’ as Noonie used to describe him–and somewhere there would be some kind of meal being kept hot and we would have it. Then they would say it was a pity to go home yet, Aggie, and we would go into their school-room and play the piano and have a sing-song. Sometimes we went on expeditions to the Moor. We would agree to meet at Torre station and take a certain train. The Lucys were always late, and we always missed the train. They missed trains, they missed trams, they missed everything, but nothing rattled them. ‘Oh well,’ they would say, ‘what does it matter? There’ll be another one by and by. It’s never any good worrying, is it?’ It was a delightful atmosphere.

  The high spots in my life were Madge’s visits. She came down every August. Jimmy came with her for a few days, then he had to get back to business, but Madge stayed on to about the end of September, and Jack with her.

  Jack, of course, was a never-ending source of enjoyment to me. He was a rosy-cheeked golden-haired little boy, looking good enough to eat, and indeed we sometimes called him ‘le petit brioche’. He had a most uninhibited nature, and did not know what silence was. There was no question of bringing Jack out and making him talk–the difficulty was to hush him down. He had a fiery temper and used to do what we called ‘blow up’ he would first get very red in the face, then purple, then hold his breath, till you really thought he was going to burst, then the storm would happen!

  He had a succession of Nannies, all with their own peculiarities. There was one particularly cross one, I remember. She was old, with a great deal of untidy grey hair. She had much experience, and was about the only person who could really daunt Jack when he was on the warpath. One day he had been very obstreperous, shouting out ‘You idiot, you idiot, you idiot’ for no reason whatever, rushing to each person in turn. Nannie finally reproved him, telling him that if he said it any more he would be punished. ‘I can tell you what I’m going to do,’ said Jack. ‘When I die I shall go to Heaven and I shall go straight up to God and I shall say “You idiot, you idiot, you idiot’.’ He paused, breathless, to see what this blasphemy would bring forth. Nannie put down her work, looked over her spectacles at him, and said without much interest: ‘And do you suppose that the Almighty is going to take any notice of what a naughty little boy like you says?’ Jack was completely deflated.

  Nannie was succeeded by a young girl called Isabel. She for some reason was much addicted to throwing things out of the window. ‘Oh drat these scissors,’ she would suddenly murmur, and fling them out on to the grass. Jack, on occasions, attempted to help her. ‘Shall I throw it out of the window, Isabel?’ he would ask, with great interest. Like all children, he adored my mother. He would come into her bed early in the morning and I would hear them through the wall of my room. Sometimes they were discussing life, and sometimes my mother would be telling him a story–a kind of serial went on, all about mother’s thumbs. One of them was called Betsy Jane and the other Sary Anne. One of them was good, the other was naughty, and the things they did and said kept Jack in a gurgle of laughter the whole time. He always tried to join in conversation. One day when the Vicar came to lunch there was a momentary pause. Jack suddenly piped up. ‘I know a very funny story about a bishop,’ he said. He was hastily hushed by his relations, who never knew what Jack might come out with that he had overheard.

  Christmas we used to spend in Cheshire, going up to the Watts’. Jimmy usually got his yearly holiday about then, and he and Madge used to go to St. Moritz for three weeks. He was a very good skater, and so it was the kind of holiday he liked most. Mother and I used to go up to Cheadle, and since their newly-built house, called Manor Lodge, was not ready yet, we spent Christmas at Abney Hall, with the old Wattses and their four children and Jack. It was a wonderful house to have Christmas in if you were a child. Not only was it enormous Victorian Gothic, with quantities of rooms, passages, unexpected steps, back staircases, front staircases, alcoves, niches–everything in the world that a child could want–but it also had three different pianos that you could play, as well as an organ. All it lacked was the light of
day; it was remarkably dark, except for the big drawing-room with its green satin walls and its big windows.

  Nan Watts and I were fast friends by now. We were not only friends but drinking companions–we both liked the same drink, cream, ordinary plain, neat cream. Although I had consumed an enormous amount of Devonshire cream since I lived in Devonshire, raw cream was really more of a treat. When Nan stayed with me at Torquay, we used to visit one of the dairies in the town, where we would have a glass of half milk and half cream. When I stayed with her at Abney we used to go down to the home farm and drink cream by the half-pint. We continued these drinking bouts all through our lives, and I still remember buying our cartons of cream in Sunningdale and coming up to the golf course and sitting outside the club house waiting for our respective husbands to finish their rounds of golf, each drinking our pinta cream.

  Abney was a glutton’s paradise. Mrs Watts had what was called her store-room off the hall. It was not like Grannie’s store-room, a kind of securely-locked treasure house from which things were taken out. There was free access to it, and all round the walls were shelves covered with every kind of dainty. One side was entirely chocolates, boxes of them, all different, chocolate creams in labelled boxes…There were biscuits, gingerbread, preserved fruits, jams and so on.

  Christmas was the supreme Festival, something never to be forgotten. Christmas stockings in bed. Breakfast, when everyone had a separate chair heaped with presents. Then a rush to church and back to continue present opening. At two o’clock Christmas Dinner, the blinds drawn down and glittering ornaments and lights. First, oyster soup (not relished by me), turbot, then boiled turkey, roast turkey, and a large roast sirloin of beef. This was followed by plum pudding, mince pies, and a trifle full of sixpences, pigs, rings, bachelors’ buttons and all the rest of it. After that, again, innumerable kinds of dessert. In a story I once wrote, The Affair of the Christmas Pudding, I have described just such a feast. It is one of those things that I am sure will never be seen again in this generation; indeed I doubt nowadays if anyone’s digestion would stand it. However, our digestions stood it quite well then.

  I usually had to vie in eating prowess with Humphrey Watts, the Watts son next to James in age. I suppose he must have been twenty-one or twenty-two to my twelve or thirteen. He was a very handsome young man, as well as being a good actor and a wonderful entertainer and teller of stories. Good as I always was at falling in love with people, I don’t think I fell in love with him, though it is amazing to me that I should not have done so. I suppose I was still at the stage where my love affairs had to be romantically impossible–concerned with public characters, such as the Bishop of London and King Alfonso of Spain, and of course with various actors. I know I fell deeply in love with Henry Ainley when I saw him in The Bondman, and I must have been just getting ripe for the K.O.W.s (Keen on Wallers), who were all to a girl in love with Lewis Waller in Monsieur Beaucaire.

  Humphrey and I ate solidly through the Christmas Dinner. He scored over me in oyster soup, but otherwise we were neck and neck. We both first had roast turkey, then boiled turkey, and finally four or five slashing slices of sirloin of beef. It is possible that our elders confined themselves to only one kind of turkey for this course, but as far as I remember old Mr Watts certainly had beef as well as turkey. We then ate plum pudding and mince pies and trifle–I rather sparingly of trifle, because I didn’t like the taste of wine. After that there were the crackers, the grapes, the oranges, the Elvas plums, the Carlsbad plums, and the preserved fruits. Finally, during the afternoon, various handfuls of chocolates were fetched from the store-room to suit our taste. Do I remember being sick the next day? Having bilious attacks? No, never. The only bilious attacks I ever remember were those that seized me after eating unripe apples in September. I ate unripe apples practically every day, but occasionally I must have overdone it.

  What I do remember was when I was about six or seven years old and had eaten mushrooms. I woke up with a pain about eleven o’clock in the evening, and came rushing down to the drawing-room, where mother and father were entertaining a party of people, and announced dramatically: ‘I am going to die! I am poisoned by mushrooms!’ Mother rapidly soothed me and administered a dose of ipecacuanha wine–always kept in the medicine cupboard in those days–and assured me that I was not due to die this time.

  At any rate I never remember being ill at Christmas. Nan Watts was just the same as I was; she had a splendid stomach. In fact, really, when I remember those days, everyone seemed to have a pretty good stomach. I suppose people had gastric and duodenal ulcers and had to be careful, but I cannot remember anybody living on a diet of fish and milk. A coarse and gluttonous age? Yes, but one of great zest and enjoyment. Considering the amount that I ate in my youth (for I was always hungry) I cannot imagine how I managed to remain so thin–a scrawny chicken indeed.

  After the pleasurable inertia of Christmas afternoon–pleasurable, that is, for the elders: the younger ones read books, looked at their presents, ate more chocolates, and so on–there was a terrific tea, with a great iced Christmas cake as well as everything else, and finally a supper of cold turkey and hot mince pies. About nine o’clock there was the Christmas Tree, with more presents hanging on it. A splendid day, and one to be remembered till next year, when Christmas came again.

  I stayed at Abney with my mother at other times of year, and always loved it. There was a tunnel in the garden, underneath the drive, which I found useful in whatever historical romance or drama I was enacting at the moment. I would strut about, muttering to myself and gesticulating. I daresay the gardeners thought that I was mental, but I was only getting into the spirit of the part. It never occurred to me to write anything down–and I was quite indifferent to what any gardeners thought. I occasionally walk about nowadays muttering to myself–trying to get some chapter that won’t ‘go’ to come right.

  My creative abilities were also engaged by embroidery of sofa cushions. Cushions were most prevalent at that time, and embroidered cushion-covers always welcome. I went in for an enormous bout of embroidery in the autumn months. To begin with I used to buy transfers, iron them off on the squares of satin, and start embroidering them in silks. Disliking the transfers in the end as being all the same, I then began to take flower pictures off china. We had some big Berlin and Dresden vases with beautiful bunches of flowers on them, and I used to trace over these, draw them out, and then try to copy the colours as closely as possible. Granny B. was very pleased when she heard I was doing this; she had spent so much of her life in embroidery that she was glad to think a grand-daughter took after her in that way. I did not reach her heights of fine embroidery, however; I never actually embroidered landscapes and figures, as she did. I have two of her fire screens now, one of a shepherdess, the other of a shepherd and shepherdess together under a tree, writing or drawing a heart on the bark of it, which is exquisitely done. How satisfying it must have been for the great ladies in the days of the Bayeux Tapestry, in the long winter months.

  Mr Watts, Jimmy’s father, was a person who always made me feel unaccountably shy. He used to call me ‘dream-child’, which made me wriggle in agonised embarrassment. ‘What is our dream-child thinking of?’ he used to say. I would go purple in the face. He used to make me play and sing sentimental songs to him, too. I could read music quite well, so he would often take me to the piano and I would sing his favourite songs. I didn’t like them much, but at least it was preferable to his conversation. He was an artistic man, and painted landscapes of moors and sunsets. He was also a great collector of furniture, particularly old oak. In addition he and his friend Fletcher Moss took good photographs, and published several books of photographs of famous houses. I wish I had not been so stupidly shy, but I was of course at the age when one is particularly self-conscious.

  I much preferred Mrs Watts, who was brisk, cheerful, and completely factual. Nan, who was two years older than I was, went in for being an ‘enfant terrible’, and took a special pleasure
in shouting, being rude, and using swear words. It upset Mrs Watts when her daughter fired off damns and blasts. She also disliked it when Nan used to turn on her and say: ‘Oh don’t be such a fool, Mother!’ It was not the sort of thing that she had ever envisaged a daughter of hers saying to her, but the world was just entering into an age of plain speaking. Nan revelled in the role she was playing, though really, I believe, she was quite fond of her mother. Ah well, most mothers have to go through a period in which their daughters put them through the mill in one way or another.

  On Boxing Day we were always taken to the pantomime in Manchester–and very good pantomimes they were. We would come back in the train singing all the songs, the Watts rendering the comedian’s songs in broad Lancashire. I remember us all bawling out: ‘I was born on a Friday, I was born on a Friday, I was born on a Friday when (crescendo!) my mother wasn’t at ‘ome!’ Also: ‘Watching the trains coom in, watching the trains go out, when we’d watched all the trains coom in, we watched the trains go OUT.’ The supreme favourite was sung by Humphrey as a melancholy solo: ‘The window, The window, I’ve pushed it through the window. I have no pain, dear Mother now, I’ve pushed it through the window.’

  The Manchester pantomime was not the earliest I was taken to. The first I ever saw was at Drury Lane, where I was taken by Grannie. Dan Leno was Mother Goose. I can still remember that pantomime. I dreamt of Dan Leno for weeks afterwards–I thought he was the most wonderful person I had ever seen. And there was an exciting incident that night. The two little Royal princes were up in the Royal Box. Prince Eddy, as one spoke of him colloquially, dropped his programme and opera glasses over the edge of the box. They fell in the stalls quite near where we were sitting, and, oh delight, not the Equerry but Prince Eddy himself came down to retrieve them, apologising very politely, saying that he did hope they hadn’t hurt anyone.