beefsteak pies, huge tarts, and gargantuan steam puddings would be put on the table. Mother would say, ‘Only enough for two, remember, Jane,’ or ‘Only enough for four,’ but Jane could never understand. Jane’s own scale of hospitality was terribly expensive for the household; every day of the week, seven or eight of her friends were wont to arrive for tea, and eat pastries, buns, scones, rock cakes and jam tarts. In the end, in desperation, seeing the household books mounting up, my mother said gently that perhaps, as things were different now, Jane would have one day a week when she could have her friends. This would save a certain amount of waste, in case a lot was cooked and then people did not turn up. Thenceforward Jane held court on Wednesdays only.
Our own meals was now very different from the normal three-or four-course feasts. Dinners were cut out altogether, and mother and I had a macaroni cheese or a rice pudding or something like that in the evening. I’m afraid this saddened Jane a great deal. Also, little by little, mother managed to take over the ordering, which formerly had been done by Jane. It had been one of my father’s friend’s great delights, when staying in the house, to hear Jane ordering on the telephone in her deep bass Devonshire voice: ‘And I want six lobsters, hen lobsters, and prawns–not less than…’ It became a favourite phrase in our family. ‘Not less than’ was not only used by Jane but also by a later cook of ours, Mrs Potter. What splendid days for the tradesmen those were!
‘But I’ve always ordered twelve fillets of sole, Ma’am,’ Jane would say, looking distressed. The fact that there were not enough mouths to devour twelve fillets of sole, not even counting a couple in the kitchen, never appeared to enter her head.
None of these changes were particularly noticeable to me. Luxury or economy mean little when you are young. If you buy boiled sweets instead of chocolates the difference is not noticeable. Mackerel I had always preferred to sole, and a whiting with its tail in its mouth I thought a most agreeable looking fish.
My personal life was not much altered. I read enormous quantities of books–worked through all the rest of Henty, and was introduced to Stanley Weyman (what glorious historical novels they were. I read The Castle Inn only the other day and thought how good it was.) The Prisoner of Zenda was my opening to romance, as it was for many others. I read it again and again. I fell deeply in love–not with Rudolf Rassendyll, as might have been expected, but with the real king imprisoned in his dungeon and sighing. I yearned to succour him, to rescue him, to assure him that I–Flavia, of course–loved him and not Rudolf Rassendyll. I also read the whole of Jules Verne in French–Le Voyage au Centre de la Terre was my favourite for many months. I loved the contrast between the prudent nephew and the cocksure uncle. Any book I really liked I read over again at monthly intervals; then, after about a year, I would be fickle and choose another favourite.
There were also L. T. Meade’s books for girls, which my mother disliked very much; she said the girls in them were vulgar and only thought of being rich and having smart clothes. Secretly, I rather liked them, but with a guilty feeling of being vulgar in my tastes! Some of the Hentys mother read aloud to me, though she was slightly exasperated by the length of the descriptions. She also read a book called The Last Days of Bruce, of which both she and I approved heartily. By way of lessons, I was put on to a book called Great Events of History, of which I had to read one chapter and answer the questions about it set in a note at the end. This was a very good book. It taught a lot of the main events that happened in Europe and elsewhere, which one could link on to the history of the Kings of England, from Little Arthur onwards. How satisfactory to be firmly told So-and-So was a bad king; it has a kind of Biblical finality. I knew the dates of the Kings of England and the names of all their wives–information that has never been much use to me.
Every day I had to learn how to spell pages of words. I suppose the exercise did me some good, but I was still an extraordinarily bad speller and have remained so until the present day.
My principal pleasures were the musical and other activities into which I entered with a family called Huxley. Dr Huxley had a vague but clever wife. There were five girls–Mildred, Sybil, Muriel, Phyllis and Enid. I came between Muriel and Phyllis, and Muriel became my special friend. She had a long face and dimples, which is unusual in a long face, pale golden hair, and she laughed a great deal. I joined them first in their weekly singing-class. About ten girls took part in singing part-songs and oratorios under the direction of a singing-master, Mr Crow. There was also ‘the orchestra’ Muriel and I both played mandolines, Sybil and a girl called Connie Stevens the violin, Mildred the ‘cello.
Looking back on the day of the orchestra, I think the Huxleys were an enterprising family. The stuffier of the old inhabitants of Torquay looked slightly askance at ‘those Huxley girls’, mainly because they were in the habit of walking up and down The Strand, which was the shopping centre of the town, between twelve and one, first three girls, arm in arm, then two girls and the governess; they swung their arms, and walked up and down, and laughed and joked, and, cardinal sin against them, they did not wear gloves. These things were social offences at that time. However, since Dr Huxley was by far the most fashionable doctor in Torquay, and Mrs Huxley was what is known as ‘well connected’, the girls were passed as socially acceptable.
It was a curious social pattern, looking back. It was snobbish, I suppose; on the other hand, a certain type of snobbishness was much looked down upon. People who introduced the aristocracy into their conversation too frequently were disapproved of and laughed at. Three phases have succeeded each other during the span of my life. In the first the questions would be: ‘But who is she, dear? Who are her people? Is she one of the Yorkshire Twiddledos? Of course, they are badly off, very badly off, but she was a Wilmot.’ This was to be succeeded in due course by: ‘Oh yes, of course they are pretty dreadful, but then they are terribly rich.’ ‘Have the people who have taken The Larches got money?’ ‘Oh well, then we’d better call.’ The third phase was different again: ‘Well, dear, but are they amusing?’ ‘Yes, well of course they are not well off, and nobody knows where they came from, but they are very very amusing.’ After which digression into social values I had better return to the orchestra.
Did we make an awful noise, I wonder? Probably. Anyway, it gave us a lot of fun and increased our musical knowledge. It led on to something more exciting, which was the getting up of a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan.
The Huxleys and their friends had already given Patience–that was before I joined their ranks. The next performance in view was The Yeomen of the Guard–a somewhat ambitious undertaking. In fact I am surprised that their parents did not discourage them. But Mrs Huxley was a wonderful pattern of aloofness, for which, I must say, I admire her, since parents were not particularly aloof then. She encouraged her children to get up anything they liked, helped them if they asked for help, and, if not, left them to it. The Yeomen of the Guard was duly cast. I had a fine strong soprano voice, about the only soprano they had, and I was naturally in the seventh heaven at being chosen to play Colonel Fairfax.
We had a little difficulty with my mother, who was old-fashioned in her views about what girls could or could not wear on their legs if they were to appear in public. Legs were legs, definitely indelicate. For me to display myself in trunk hose, or anything of that kind, would, my mother thought, be most indecorous. I suppose I was thirteen or fourteen by then, and already five foot seven. There was, alas, no sign of the full rich bosom that I had hoped for when I was at Cauterets. A Yeoman of the Guard’s uniform was adjudged all right, though it had to be made with unusually baggy plus-four trousers, but the Elizabethan gentleman presented more difficulties. It seems to me silly nowadays, but it was a serious problem then. Anyway, it was surmounted by my mother saying that it would be all right, but I must wear a disguising cloak thrown over one shoulder. So a cloak was managed out of a piece of turquoise blue-velvet among Grannie’s ‘pieces’. (Grannie’s pieces were kept in various trunks and drawers, and comprised all types of rich and beautiful fabrics, remnants which she had bought in various sales over the last twenty-five years and had now more or less forgotten about.) It is not terribly easy to act with a cloak draped over one shoulder and flung over
