A new racquet; promise of a green belt; a personal triumph; Jill has a baby; a tree from Canada; Mr Burdett retires; “These Americans!”; irritating evangelists; a hedgehog is saved, a visit to Scotland – perhaps, and ravaging beauty, nearly, if not quite, divine.
“This afternoon, I was just finishing painting the Lesser Dodder”, writes Gran on September 2nd 1958, “when Jane arrived home from Scotland. She had had a wonderful holiday and had a great deal to tell”. Not only had she brought her mother some flower samples from the north, but:
She also brought me a superb new tennis racquet, the best on the market, which I could hardly wait to try. I did, however, wait till after tea and then Jane and I went up for a game. The racquet was wonderful and we had some splendid games. Although I actually won the first set we were very closely matched in spite of the score of 6 – 0, but in the second one the first game took twenty minutes with an uncountable number of deuces, and we were forty minutes playing three games. Jane eventually won the set at 8 – 6 and we had been playing an hour and a half.
Gran cannot wait to use her new racquet again and she bemoans the fact that she has a “full week ahead and I go to Kingston next Monday!”
A couple of days later:
We had good news this evening! The two remaining yew trees opposite here, my favourites, are to stay and a green belt to be right opposite this house, with shops further up and behind the yews but hidden from our view. It could have been so much worse, and, whilst I shall never cease to regret our lovely “opposite wood”, I am consoled by the preservation of, at least, two of our much-loved yews.
Well, in hindsight, it seems that Gran’s feelings of consolation were premature: just a single yew remains and there are shops opposite The Ridge, unscreened and in full view. No doubt we shall read her views on this in a future journal!
The Bassett Garden Club Show is due on the 6th. Gran spends three hours of the day before, setting up her pictures “amid the clamour and bustle of all the other exhibitors at work”. On the day, she enthuses particularly about the exhibited flowers, adding also “there were some wonderful tapestries and needlework pictures shown by Mrs Rieve, and a demonstration hive of bees on a stall where honey was for sale”. She continues:
I enjoyed a personal triumph also, for my flower paintings found great favour and I met some very interesting people, among whom were several fellow artists and naturalists… An odd occasion for such to take place perhaps, but I also had a long and somewhat profound talk with the Rector of Bassett, Mr Shale, arising from my flowers and his admiration for them.
The last of that day’s news comes:
…when Jean Hockridge ran in to say that Tommy Fowler wanted me on the phone! Not unexpectedly it was to tell me that Jill had a son this morning, three days after her first wedding anniversary! May all go well with Mother and Babe, God bless them.
In Kingston-upon-Thames for two days, Gran visits her usual haunts; Adrian’s grave, of course, with his Mother, and also Kew Gardens, about which she has this to say:
We went in at the Lion Gate and walked past Queen Anne’s Cottage to the Lake. Emerging from the tree-lined path into the open we noticed immediately a new, long and low building near the river and discovered that it housed and enormous tree trunk. I obtained the details about it from one of the gardeners later. It is a Douglas Fir; two hundred and thirty-three feet long, and has been presented to Kew Gardens by the State of British Columbia to replace the existing flagstaff, which was shortened by eighty feet last year.
The donors defrayed the expenses of shipping the huge trunk to the Port of London, after which Kew meets the cost of transport and erection. It was brought up the Thames on tugs and engineers brought it ashore and housed it in its present place until it is sufficiently weathered and passed by the Ministry of Works for erection.
Home again on September 12th, Gran spends the afternoon:
…quietly, knitting for Jill’s baby, who has been named Mark Anton Nunn Brewster, with the result that we already call him Julius Caesar. Such is the working of the Goater mind – or perhaps it is the Adamson one! This evening Jane and I went blackberrying but found only a poor few. But we enjoyed our outing together.
September 13th:
I went out for the day today, to visit the Masonic Old People’s Flats at Hove, and it made a very pleasant outing… At Mansbridge I was sorry to see that the marsh has been drained and the land reclaimed, presumably for building, and this means, not only the loss of many plants, but also of a favourite roost for Pied Wagtails, who had frequented the area for several years.
Of the Masonic building, she writes:
I must say that the flats themselves were very excellent and everything was provided for the comfort and convenience of the residents, but how I should hate to live in a place like Hove and in such an enormous block of flats. The “wonderful” view, for which we were taken up to the roof, consisted of miles and miles of rooftops and the dizzy height made me long to be at ground level again.
On the following day, Mr Burdett, Rector of Compton, gives his last Service, as he, Gran tells us, retires next week. She attends evensong, during which her mind wanders and she hopes that she will like his successor as much as she has liked him. And later that evening, Gran and Jane collect Bracken for the mulch heap, “with myriads of midges making it far from a comfortable job”.
A full day with her friend Mrs Way, botanising and bird-watching in Dorset adds a number of new flowers to Gran’s personal list on September 15th, and on the next day, she sadly says goodbye to Jane, who returns to Nottingham, at Winchester Station, writing how much she will miss her, though adding:
But there is always much to do and I hurried home again to paint, getting very hot as the sun had come out and was shining brilliantly. I painted the lovely Dorset Heath and, with the briefest possible stop for tea, the Viper’s Grass, but by then the light was failing.
She describes a day working at Fowler’s on the 18th – mainly orders for the Queen Elizabeth and “the usual Castle boat”:
The first Freesias were in – delightful as always, and some very lovely new, deep pink Carnations. Bob, so newly a Grandfather, was back from Canada and the U.S.A., and in a fortnight’s time Tommy sails in the “Saxonia” to see her first Grandson.
Gran walks to Shawford Parish Hall on the 20th:
…for the Presentation to Mr and Mrs Burdett, who are leaving Compton on Thursday… I was delighted to see, close to the bypass road, a single Autumn Ladies’ Tresses (Spiranthes spiralis) at the foot of the downs. I had not seen this Orchid at Shawford for several years. It was a moving but happy little ceremony when, after tea, Mr and Mrs Burdett were presented with a beautiful tea-service of their own choice, a cheque for three hundred and twenty-six pounds and a book containing a list of subscribers. Mr Burdett confessed, in his speech of thanks, that he was completely overwhelmed and quite speechless at the munificence of the gift and the generosity of the parishioners, and I must say that, for the size of the parish, the amount collected was quite amazing and a splendid indication of the respect and affection which we feel for our Rector.
She walks home over the downs, finding more Ladies’ Tresses, and listens that evening to The Last Night of the Proms, enjoying at the end, a “witty little speech” by Sir Malcolm Sargent.
A letter from Jane at this time brings cheer to Gran’s heart:
…she is happily resettled in Nottingham and hopes to manage a course of skating instruction this Winter, if the time of a dancing class which she takes can be changed to another evening. I hope she is able to do this for, as a child, she showed great promise at skating and always enjoyed it, though she had to rely on Nature’s freezing of the lake in Cranbury Park.
Gran has written many times of the Small Wintergreen Pyrola minor plants growing wild locally but disappearing under urban development. She has “saved” some and nurtured them in the garden of The Ridge. She writes on the 24th:
I took my few plants of Wintergreen and my painting of it, to show the owners of the house which has been built on its habitat. The girl was most interested and co-operative but her husband was out, so I left the plants for him to see. Both are anxious to save the Wintergreen if it is still there, and want to locate it, and possibly name their house “Pyrola” in its honour. I forgot to ask their name, but the girl loves growing things…
She delivers flowers on the United States early next morning, and, as is often the case, she is unimpressed by the Americans she meets:
After staggering aboard the “United States” with a huge basket of flowers (whose handle bore a whole spray of green Cymbidium Orchids) I was asked by the recipient to stand it on the porthole ledge behind a sofa! Since it almost occupied, eventually, the whole length of a cupboard top, which constituted one entire wall of the cabin, one would have thought she could see at first sight that it would not fit there, without my having to tell her so. “But”, she wailed, “I always have them there!” These Americans!! As I left the cabin, I was rewarded with a quarter of a dollar. It will go into Barry’s coin collection no doubt – I cannot see myself going to the bank to change a quarter of a dollar, – about 1/4d. After some lunch in town I did some necessary but uninteresting shopping, except perhaps, my bathroom curtain material, green with seagulls on it.
The Saxonia sails for Canada, with Tommy Fowler aboard, on October 1st. In Tommy’s luggage, is “the little coat which Jane had knitted for Jill’s baby, Mark”. Gran is pleased for Tommy (maiden name, Joan Tomlinson) probably her greatest, and certainly her longest-standing friend, hoping that she “will have the enjoyable and carefree holiday that she deserves, since she has been unwell and suffering from exhaustion”.
And Gran hears from her friend two days later:
A letter from Tommy, “High Seas Mail”, written on board the “Saxonia” came today, telling of her pleasure and mounting excitement at the prospect of seeing Jill and her baby next week. Bon Voyage and happy holiday to her…
As has happened before, Gran’s good manners prevent her refusing an invitation by her neighbours to attend an evangelical meeting. And, as before, the event makes her cross. This is what she writes:
I went with the Hockridges to an Evangelical film entitled “The Stones Cry Out”. The film was wonderful and thought-provoking, being about the ruins of Babylon and Tyre and the fulfilling of the prophecies, but I always come away feeling irritated. Why do the speakers, with sublime self-righteousness, address us all as though we have no foreknowledge of God and the love of Christ, but are waiting to be “converted” by them? They might at least give us the credit for some religious feeling. My opinion is that it is only those with any who would go at all, but there is also a vast number of people who do not go because they already have their own faith and attend their own churches. I only go to please the Hockridges who are very good neighbours and friends.
I was further irritated tonight by an old clergyman, Methodist, I think, who greeted my by name and then said he was pleased to see that I was interested in something else besides tennis! I should hope so – fancy a mind only full of tennis!
Book 75
On October 12th, as she follows her daily routine, going down the garden to read the thermometer, Gran is “much mystified by a scratching and scuffling sound down in the air-raid shelter, where only some oddments of wood are now kept, and thought it might be a Rat”. She continues:
Later I heard it again and was determined to investigate though I did not want to go down into the shelter with the unknown visitor. The rake solved it and hooked the wood up. Then it hauled up the old wooden crate in which we used to drop the milk into the shelter to keep cool before we had a refrigerator, and the mystery was solved. A poor little Hedgehog had crawled through the bars of the crate and then his prickles would not allow him to get out again and he was trapped. How long he had been struggling I have no idea, but a chisel quickly prised off the bars and I gently shook him out.
She offers the wobbly animal milk and bread; the latter is spurned but, with Gran supporting it with one hand, and the saucer of milk being topped up several times, she writes that it “…drank steadily for close on an hour”. Gran makes a bracken-filled shelter for it and hopes it will be okay. The next morning there is no sign of it.
Mid-month:
A long letter from Barry today did much to lift the depression that I have felt lately and his suggestion at the end holds great hope for a wonderful holiday – if nothing prevents me at the last moment. He wants to book up for me to go to Aviemore for sixteen days next June, at his expense – dare I hope that my dream of seeing Scotland may be fulfilled?
October 21st:
Sunset was obscured by cloud but this evening brought me an unforgettable experience whose beauty, pathos and charm lifted my soul to heights far removed from everyday life. I went to the Gaumont Theatre in Southampton to see a performance of the ballet, “Giselle”, performed by London’s Festival Ballet with the beautiful and fabulous Beryl Grey as guest prima ballerina in the name part and Anton Dolin, its artistic producer, as the chief male dancer.
Of Beryl Grey’s performance, Gran records:
Her vivacity and the wonderful use of her very beautiful hands charmed me in the early stages of the story, but as the poor, demented girl, her reason lost when brutally informed of her lover’s perfidy, she was superb and I felt choked with emotion.
And continues:
The second act… belonged perhaps, chiefly to Anton Dolin, the tragic, remorseful lover, which he portrayed with tremendous force and tragedy, but again Beryl Grey seemed unearthly in her spiritual and ethereal loveliness and the audience was held spellbound until the last moment of Anton Dolin’s despair. As the curtain fell applause broke out with a deafening roar, and again and again the Principals appeared… to receive the plaudits of the crowd in front of the curtain but all were loth to let [Beryl Grey] go.
I came home feeling that I would like to go every night but I am sure that nothing could surpass “Giselle” as I saw it this evening and such ravaging beauty was something nearly, if not quite, divine.
Article series
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 1)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 2)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 3)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 4)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 5)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 6)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 7)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 8)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 9)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 10)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 11)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 12)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 13)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 14)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 15)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 16)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 17)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 18)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 19)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 20)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 21)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 22)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 23)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 24)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 25)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 26)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 27)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 28)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 29)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 30)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 31)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 32)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 33)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 34)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 35)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 36)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 37)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 38)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 39)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 40)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 41)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 42)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 43)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 44)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 45)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 46)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 47)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 48)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 49)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 50)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 51)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 52)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 53)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 54)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 55)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 56)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 57)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 58)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 59)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 60)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 61)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 62)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 63)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 64)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 65)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 66)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 67)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 68)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 69)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 70)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 71)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 72)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 73)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 74)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 75)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 76)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 77)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 78)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 79)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 80)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 81)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 82)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 83)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 84)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 85)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 86)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 87)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 88)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 89)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 90)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 91)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 92)
- Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 93)
We absolutely love reading these diaries, Rick. Thank-you for all the time you take uploading them.
My grandparents were Mary and Frank Harding, who lived on Merdon Avenue, and, I believe were very good friends with your gran, known by my family as ‘Aunty Bunny’. I still live with my husband and two children in Chandlers Ford, so enjoy hearing her detailed descriptions of how it once was.
It is also a joy to learn what a fine painter she was, and the wealth of wildflowers she painted. What a talent! I can imagine my gran relishing visits from Aunty Bunny and seeing her latest paintings.
I’m prompted to write to you today as I’m reading this from a rather soggy caravan in St Andrews. My husband comes from Glasgow, and so Scotland is our second home. The call of the hills (and family!) draw us to holiday each year north of the border. I see that you live in Dunblane, so I particularly appreciate all your efforts to give your gran’s diaries a local audience via the Chandlers Ford Today blog. I am also currently trying to inspire my children to write diaries, so the timing couldn’t be better!
Kind regards, Jo Hutchison
(nee Harding – daughter of Tim Harding)
Jo – how fabulous to see your comment! Yes, Gran mentions the Harding family, calling them “My Harding family”, almost every week. In the last section that I edited, though didn’t include in the Post, she says, after surprising the family that she turned up for her usual weekly afternoon tea in awful weather, that her regular welcome there was one of her most “treasured privileges”. I’d love to know more detail of what became of the members of that special family, especially Antony, whom Gran appeared to be “grooming” (in the nicest possible way) as a keen naturalist.
I’m very glad to hear of your interest in all this; comments like yours keep me going…
Rick Goater
Obscure question of the week:
a few weeks ago, I read in these “40 years in Chandlers Ford” articles about a bird species that can be easily recognised by it’s way of perching in a tree looking along, rather than across, the branch. There was even a photo (stock image) of such a bird.
But now I can’t find it. I’ve even had a trawl through the photos in the media library. Did I dream it? If I did, it was a very vivid and memorable dream.
Found it; I didn’t dream it. Nightjar, described in part 91 🙂