clothes. I must say my mourning clothes were about the only consolation to me at that time. I felt important, worth-while and part of things when I put on my black clothes.
Then there were more whispers of ‘Really, Clara must be made to rouse herself.’ At intervals Grannie would say, ‘Wouldn’t you like to read this letter I’ve had from Mr B. or Mrs C.? Such a beautiful letter of condolence, really I think you would feel most touched by it.’ My mother would say fiercely, ‘I don’t want to see it’.
She opened her own letters but threw them aside almost immediately. Only one she treated differently. ‘Is that from Cassie?’ Grannie asked. ‘Yes, Auntie, it’s from Cassie.’ She folded it up and put it in her bag. ‘She understands,’ she said, and she went out of the room.
Cassie was my American godmother, Mrs Sullivan. I had probably seen her as a small child, but I only remember her when she came to London about a year later. She was a wonderful person: a little woman with white hair and the gayest, sweetest face imaginable, bursting with vitality, with a strange joyousness about her–yet she had had one of the saddest lives possible. Her husband, to whom she was devoted, had died quite young. She had had two lovely boys, and they too had died, paralysed. ‘Some nursemaid,’ said my grandmother, ‘must have let them sit on the damp grass.’ Really, I suppose, it must have been a case of polio–not recognised at that time–which was always called rheumatic fever, the result of damp, and which resulted in crippling paralysis. Anyway, her two children had died. One of her grown-up nephews, who was staying in the same house, also had suffered from paralysis and remained crippled for life. Yet, in spite of her losses, in spite of everything, Aunt Cassie was gay, bright, and full of more human sympathy than anyone I have ever known. She was the one person mother longed to see at that time. ‘She understands, it is no good making consoling phrases at people.’
I remember that I was used as an emissary by the family, that somebody–perhaps Grannie, or perhaps one of my aunts–took me aside and murmured that I must be my mamma’s little comforter, that I must go into the room where my mother was lying and point out to her that father was happy now, that he was in Heaven, that he was at peace. I was willing–it was what I believed myself, what surely everyone believed. I went in, a little timid, with the vague feeling which children have when they are doing what they have been told is right, and what they know is right, but which they feel may, somehow or other, for a reason that they don’t know, be wrong. I went timidly up to mother and touched her. ‘Mummy, father is at peace now. He is happy. You wouldn’t want him back, would you?’
Suddenly my mother reared up in bed, with a violent gesture that startled me into jumping back. ‘Yes, I would,’ she cried in a low voice. ‘Yes, I would. I would do anything in the world to have him back–anything, anything at all. I’d force him to come back, if I could. I want him, I want him back here, now, in this world with me.’
I shrank away, rather frightened. My mother said quickly, ‘It’s all right, darling. It’s all right. It’s just that I am not–not very well at present. Thank you for coming.’ And she kissed me and I went away consoled.
PART III
GROWING UP
I
Life took on a completely different complexion after my father’s death. I stepped out of my child’s world, a world of security and thoughtlessness, to enter the fringes of the world of reality. I think there is no doubt that from the man of the family comes the stability of the home. We all laugh when the phrase comes, ‘Your father knows best,’ but that phrase does represent what was so marked a feature of later Victorian life. Father–the rock upon which the home is set. Father likes meals punctually; Father mustn’t be worried after dinner; Father would like you to play duets with him. You accept it all unquestioningly. Father provides meals; Father sees that the house works to rule; Father provides music lessons.
Father took great pride and pleasure in Madge’s company as she grew up. He enjoyed her wit and her attractiveness; they were excellent companions to each other. He found in her, I think, some of the gaiety and humour my mother probably lacked–but he had a soft spot in his heart for his little girl, the afterthought, little Agatha. We had our favourite rhyme:
Agatha-Pagatha my black hen,
She lays eggs for gentlemen,
She laid six and she laid seven,
And one day she laid eleven!
Father and I were very fond of that particular joke.
But Monty, I think, was really his favourite. His love for his son was more than he would feel for any daughter. Monty was an affectionate boy, and he had great affection for his father. He was, alas, unsatisfactory from the point of view of making a success of life, and father was unceasingly worried about this. In a way, I think, his happiest time, where Monty was concerned, was after the South African War. Monty obtained a commission in a regular regiment, the East Surreys, and went straight from South Africa, with his regiment, to India. He appeared to be doing well and to have settled down in his army life. In spite of father’s financial worries, Monty at least was one problem removed for the time being.
Madge married James Watts about nine months after my father’s death, though a little reluctant to leave mother. Mother herself was urgent that the marriage should take place, and that they should not have to wait longer. She said, and truly I think, that it would be even more difficult for her to part with Madge as time went on and their companionship drew them closer. James’s father was anxious for him to marry young. He was just leaving Oxford, and would go straight into the business, and he said it would be happier for him if he could marry Madge and settle down in their own home. Mr Watts was going to build a house for his son on part of his land, and the young couple could settle down there. So things were arranged.
My father’s American executor, Auguste Montant, came from New York and stayed with us a week. He was a large stout man, genial, very charming, and nobody could have been kinder to my mother. He told her frankly that father’s affairs were in a bad mess, and that he had been extremely ill advised by lawyers and others who had pretended to act for him. A lot of good money had been thrown after bad by trying to improve the New York property by half-hearted measures. It was better, he said, that a good deal of the property should be abandoned altogether to save taxes. The income that was left would be very small. The big estate my grandfather had left had disappeared into thin air. H. B. Claflin & Co., the firm in which my grandfather had been partner, would still provide Grannie’s income, as the widow of a partner, and also a certain income for mother, though not a large one. We three children, under my grandfather’s will, would get, in English currency, £100 a year each. The rest of the vast amount of dollars had been also in property, which had gone down hill and fallen derelict, or had been sold off in the past for far too little.
The question arose now whether my mother could afford to live on at Ashfield. Here, I think, mother’s own judgment was better than anyone else’s. She thought definitely that it would be a bad thing to stay on. The house would need repairs in the future, and it would be difficult to manage on a small income–possible but difficult. It would be better to sell the house and to buy another smaller house somewhere in Devonshire, perhaps near Exeter, which would cost less to run and would leave a certain amount of money from the exchange to add to income. Although my mother had no business training or knowledge, she had really quite a lot of common sense.
Here, however, she came up against her children. Both Madge and I, and my brother, writing from India, protested violently against selling Ashfield, and begged her to keep it. We said it was our home and we couldn’t bear to part with it. My sister’s husband said he could always spare mother a small addition to her income. If Madge and he came down in
