them over chairs and tables so as to make ourselves residences, out of which we emerged on all fours.
I remember little of my brother and sister, and I presume this is because they were away at school. My brother was at Harrow and my sister at Brighton at the Miss Lawrences’ School which was afterwards to become Roedean. My mother was considered go-ahead to send her daughter to a boarding school, and my father broad-minded to allow it.
But my mother delighted in new experiments.
Her own experiments were mostly in religion. She was, I think, of a naturally mystic turn of mind. She had the gift of prayer and contemplation, but her ardent faith and devotion found it difficult to select a suitable form of worship. My long-suffering father allowed himself to be taken to first one, now another place of worship.
Most of these religious flirtations took place before I was born. My mother had nearly been received into the Roman Catholic church, had then bounced off into being a Unitarian (which accounted for my brother never having been christened), and had from there become a budding Theosophist, but took a dislike to Mrs Besant when hearing her lecture.
After a brief but vivid interest in Zoroastrianism, she returned, much to my father’s relief, to the safe haven of the Church of England, but with a preference for ‘high’ churches. There was a picture of St. Francis by her bed, and she read The Imitation of Christ night and morning. That same book lies always by my bed.
My father was a simple-hearted, orthodox Christian. He said his prayers every night and went to Church every Sunday. His religion was matter-of-fact and without heart-searchings–but if my mother liked hers with trimmings, it was quite all right with him. He was, as I have said, an agreeable man.
I think he was relieved when my mother returned to the Church of England in time for me to be christened in the Parish Church. I was called Mary after my grandmother, Clarissa after my mother, and Agatha as an afterthought, suggested on the way to the church by a friend of my mother’s who said it was a nice name.
My own religious views were derived mainly from Nursie, who was a Bible Christian. She did not go to Church but read her Bible at home.
Keeping the Sabbath was very important, and being worldly was a sore offence in the eyes of the Almighty. I was myself insufferably smug in my conviction of being one of the ‘saved’. I refused to play games on Sunday or sing or strum the piano, and I had terrible fears for the ultimate salvation of my father, who played croquet blithely on Sunday afternoons and made gay jokes about curates and even, once, about a bishop.
My mother, who had been passionately enthusiastic for education for girls, had now, characteristically, swung round to the opposite view. No child ought to be allowed to read until it was eight years old: better for the eyes and also for the brain.
Here, however, things did not go according to plan. When a story had been read to me and I liked it, I would ask for the book and study the pages which, at first meaningless, gradually began to make sense. When out with Nursie, I would ask her what the words written up over shops or on hoardings were. As a result, one day I found I was reading a book called The Angel of Love quite successfully to myself. I proceeded to do so out loud to Nursie.
‘I’m afraid, Ma’am,’ said Nursie apologetically to mother the next day, ‘Miss Agatha can read.’
My mother was much distressed–but there it was. Not yet five, but the world of story books was open to me. From then on, for Christmas and birthdays I demanded books.
My father said that, as I could read, I had better learn to write. This was not nearly so pleasant. Shaky copybooks full of pothooks and hangers still turn up in old drawers, or lines of shaky B’s and R’s, which I seem to have had great difficulty in distinguishing since I had learned to read by the look of words and not by their letters.
Then my father said I might as well start arithmetic, and every morning after breakfast I would set to at the dining-room window seat, enjoying myself far more with figures than with the recalcitrant letters of the alphabet.
Father was proud and pleased with my progress. I was promoted to a little brown book of ‘Problems’. I loved ‘Problems’. Though merely sums in disguise, they had an intriguing flavour. ‘John has five apples, George has six; if John takes away two of George’s apples, how many will George have at the end of the day?’ and so on. Nowadays, thinking of that problem, I feel an urge to reply: ‘Depends how fond of apples George is.’ But then I wrote down 4, with the feeling of one who has solved a knotty point, and added of my own accord, ‘and John will have 7.’ That I liked arithmetic seemed strange to my mother, who had never, as she admitted freely, had any use for figures, and had so much trouble with household accounts that my father took them over.
The next excitement in my life was the gift of a canary. He was named Goldie and became very tame, hopping about the nursery, sometimes sitting on Nursie’s cap, and perching on my finger when I called him. He was not only my bird, he was the start of a new secret Saga. The chief personages were Dickie and Dicksmistress. They rode on chargers all over the country (the garden) and had great adventures and narrow escapes from bands of robbers.
One day the supreme catastrophe occurred. Goldie disappeared. The window was open, the gate of his cage unlatched. It seemed likely he had flown away. I can still remember the horrible, dragging length of that day.
It went on and on and on. I cried and cried and cried. The cage was put outside the window with a piece of sugar in the bars. My mother and I went round the garden calling, ‘Dickie, Dickie, Dickie’. The housemaid was threatened with instant dismissal by my mother for cheerfully remarking, ‘Some cat’s got him, likely as not,’ which started my tears flowing again.
It was when I had been put to bed and lay there, still sniffing spasmodically and holding my mother’s hand, that a cheerful little cheep was heard. Down from the top of the curtain pole came Master Dickie. He flew round the nursery once and then entered his cage. Oh that incredulous wonder of delight! All that day-that unending miserable day–Dickie had been up the curtain pole.
My mother improved the occasion after the fashion of the time.
‘You see,’ she said, ‘how silly you have been? What a waste all that crying was? Never cry about things until you are sure.’
I assured her that I never would.
Something else came to me then, besides the joy of Dickie’s return, the strength of my mother’s love and understanding when there was trouble.
In the black abyss of misery, holding tight to her hand had been the one comfort. There was something magnetic and healing in her touch. In illness there was no one like her. She could give you her own strength and vitality.
III
The outstanding figure in my early life was Nursie. And round myself and Nursie was our own special world, The Nursery.
I can see the wallpaper now–mauve irises climbing up the walls in an endless pattern. I used to lie in bed at night looking at it in the firelight or the subdued light of Nursie’s oil lamp on the table. I thought it was beautiful. Indeed, I have had a passion for mauve all my life.
Nursie sat by the table sewing or mending. There was a screen round my bed and I was supposed to be asleep, but I was usually awake, admiring the irises, trying to see just how they intertwined, and thinking up new adventures for the Kittens. At nine-thirty, Nursie’s supper tray was brought up by Susan the housemaid. Susan was a great big girl, jerky and awkward in her movements and apt to knock things
