A Vicarage Family: A Biography of Myself

by Noel Streatfeild

  Granny had started to decline much more dramatically. One holiday when the children had stayed in the house she was walking about as usual, and the next visit she seldom moved off a sofa. When she was outside in the garden somebody, usually Aunt Sophie, pushed her in a bathchair. Beyond her gate she travelled as she had always done – in the victoria.

  The children, when they climbed out of the train at Westerham, were not surprised nobody was on the platform to meet them. The porter lifted the shabby trunks out of the van.

  ‘Here you are! I said to Mr Burridge, better than the last time he met you – just after Christmas that was, and snowing terrible.’

  The trunks were left on the platform for the carrier’s cart to bring up to The Little House later in the day, so the children trooped into the station yard. There, as they expected, Burridge was sitting waiting on the driving seat of the victoria.

  All her married life Granny had somehow obtained certain comforts and refinements to which she was used, and which she had no intention of giving up. One was a carriage and another was a coachman.

  It had always been impossible for Grandfather to afford a full-time coachman, but he knew his Dymphna and had found a compromise. A fawn coat was tailored to fit the then handyman and a top hat with a windmill-like cockade attached to it. The family crest was painted on the doors of the second-hand victoria. Then three rugs were bought. For Grandmother, one fur and one holland, and for the man who was to drive, a dark blue one.

  From then on, whenever Grandmother decided to go out calling, or to take little comforts to someone who was ill, a large bell was rung to warn the handyman. He downed tools at once and clumped off to the stable yard. There he would harness the horse to the victoria, wash his hands under the pump, pull on his uniform coat, put on his top hat and his gloves. Then he would climb on to the box and carefully arrange his rug over his muddy working boots and corduroy breeches. Then, looking every inch a liveried coachman, he would drive to the front door.

  Presumably all the houses at which Burridge took his mistress to call knew he could never get off his box outside the front door. For the children noticed that when one or the other of them were taken out calling by their grandmother, someone was always about to hold the horse and open the carriage door. Probably, after the door was shut, the carriage was driven round to the back door and there Burridge, who by then would be Mr Burridge, would be invited in to have something to keep out the cold, or wash out the dust, according to the season. Nobody of course being so rude as to mention the corduroys and the boots.

  For a long time the children had suffered silently in case one day Grandmother left a house without warning, to find Burridge was not waiting outside the front door. Presently they learnt this never happened. This made them guess Granny and her friends knew as well as they did that Burridge (who, as handyman, could not aspire to the butler’s pantry or the housekeeper’s room) was in the servants’ hall having his little something. They realized this because the moment Granny talked of leaving the hostess would ring a bell and when the butler came she would say:

  ‘Order Mrs Strangeway’s carriage to be brought round.’

  In the station yard, delighted to see him, the children greeted Burridge. How was he? How were George, Fred, Tom, Martha, May and Tabitha? How were … But there Burridge stopped them.

  ‘Time enough for all that later. You come up on the box beside me, Miss Louise and Master Dick. Only Master John is to sit with his back to the horse, for I’ve got more to do than clean out your Granny’s carriage where one of you has been sick.’

  The children knew Burridge would say this because once, when he was very small, Dick had been sick on the fur rug, but every other time when one or other of them was affected by sitting back to the horse, they had time to say: ‘Stop please, Burridge,’ which he always did immediately and they had climbed out and were sick discreetly by the side of the road. Granny thought a child’s place was on the back-to-the-horse seat, and if it made them feel sick the lesson in self-control was valuable. So, however often they were sick, there was no suggestion of their not being taken for drives or being allowed to sit on the box or beside Grandmother facing the horse. If they were all staying in the house at the same time, on the drive to and from the station two of them had to sit on the box, but it was the only occasion when it was permitted.

  On the drive through Westerham, Burridge always retailed news which might be important to one or other of the children.

  ‘Mrs Minns has her Golden Sovereigns waiting for you.’ Mrs Minns was Nanny, known to the children as Grand-Nanny, and her Golden Sovereigns was a form of immensely strong beef tea, which she made herself and insisted on all members of the family drinking after a journey. ‘Your Uncle Matthew is home, so there’s to be a funeral Sunday, Master John, which he’s counting on you to help him with.’

  On most fine Sundays when an uncle was home there was a funeral in the afternoon. There was no difficulty in finding a suitable corpse, for if no bird or animal had come to a natural end, a crow or rabbit was shot.

  The funeral cortège followed a well-laid plan. The girls wore black crêpe round their hats and all the children wore crêpe arm bands. At the head of the procession walked the youngest child present, ringing at a doleful speed a handbell. Then came the other children each carrying flowers or a tiny wreath. Beside them, or sometimes bringing up the rear, walked the family dogs, each with a crêpe bow tied to its collar. The hearse was a green cart.

  This cart was a feature of the grandparents’ home. It was big enough to hold four small children. It was used for toboganning down the slope of the lawn, and for fetching logs and fir cones from the woods. No picnic could have taken place without it.

  On a funeral afternoon, on one of the seats of the green cart the coffin – a cardboard box – was laid. This was covered with a piece of black velvet. Behind the green cart walked an uncle draped in a tablecloth. Granny would beg the uncle who was taking the part of the clergyman not to be irreverent – not that it really crossed her mind that one of her boys could be. Just how irreverent the officiating uncle was depended on whether any of his brothers were there to lead him on. Certainly, when several uncles were present, the mutters coming from the parson caused a lot of subdued laughter. For the extra uncles, dressed in top hats with crêpe streamers, were within hearing as they were the undertaker’s men.

  At the graveside a hymn was sung. The first verse established the identity of the corpse.

  ‘Found in the garden

  Dead in his beauty,

  Oh, that a .. …’

  – and here was inserted rabbit, crow, frog or whatever it was –

  ‘Should die in the spring.

  Bury him carefully

  In pitiful duty.

  Muffle the dinner bell.

  Solemnly ring.’

  The service, to words composed by the uncle, was short or long according to his audience. When there were undertaker’s men present part of it was sometimes in Latin.

  No one but family was ever present at a funeral, but of course all the staff knew they took place. No doubt Burridge, when he said there would be a funeral, had already said to Uncle Matthew: ‘I caught a rat (or whatever it was) yesterday. I got it hung up ready for the funeral come Sunday.’

  Now Burridge turned to more personal matters.

  ‘No harm in being warned, Miss Vicky, but your grandfather’s been carrying on alarming at morning prayers so I hear, on account of a bit of impertinence in the kitchen. But now you’ve come you must expect him to turn his prayers on to you. There’s ever so tiny a little sapling come up in the garden, that place you painted last summer, Miss Isobel. I didn’t pull it up, not before you saw it knowing what strange fancies you artists get. Miss Sophie has put away ever so nice a bit of velvet to make Jackie a coat, Miss Louise. How’s he keeping?’

  Louise raised her flower-like face to Burridge.

  ‘He’s very well, thank you, Burridge, but he can do with a
change of air.’

  Victoria made seasick noises.

  Burridge outside the family treated the children with respect, but when alone with them he was a disciplinarian.

  ‘You don’t seem to be improving, Miss Vicky. You let your little sister be. Well, Master Dick, how’s that school?’

  Dick adored Burridge.

  ‘I’m getting on much better now that I have spectacles. I couldn’t see that blackboard properly without them.’

  Burridge remembered a piece of news.

  ‘We had snow here Shrove Tuesday, so Miss Sophie fetched in a shovelful for the pancakes, and so did Mrs Burridge for our’n. Lovely they were, there’s no proper pancake not without a spoonful of snow in it.’

  At the top of the hill Burridge stopped the carriage outside the gates and slashed at them with his whip. Immediately a child so fair she was almost white-haired shot out of the lodge to open them.

  Martha was almost the same age as Louise and, if Dick were not staying in the house, the two were sometimes allowed to play together.

  ‘Hullo, Martha!’ Louise shouted.

  But Burridge wanted none of that.

  ‘Open the gate, lass, remember Mrs Strangeway is waiting, hurry now.’

  Suddenly they were inside the front door and, one after another, in Aunt Sophie’s arms. Then, as they moved into the hall, all those things that were part of staying with Granny and Grandfather were with them: the chimes of the clocks, which were special to the house; the smell of pot-pourri; Pears’ soap; mustiness; cedar wood and wood smoke. Things that were so much part of the house that, ‘It smells like at Grandfather’s’, or ‘It sounds like at Grandfather’s’, was part of the children’s language. None of the five noticed that they felt different, but each of them relaxed. Then they looked expectantly at Aunt Sophie, waiting for the proper words to be said.

  ‘Run up to Grand-Nanny, darlings, for your Golden Sovereigns.’

  8

  Grand-Nanny

  Grand-Nanny was an institution. Ageless, unchanging, understanding, she was security on two legs. To each of her ten original nurslings even more perhaps than their parents she stood for ‘home’. The seven sons who had married had each in turn brought the girl he was engaged to for Nanny to look over. Always her shrewd eyes took them in before she asked her first question: ‘Can you needle?’ Each of her nurslings, especially those who worked in India, when they came on leave, having greeted their parents, was up the stairs two steps at a time to hug Nanny.

  Stories of Grand-Nanny were legion. Some she repeated herself, others were told of her. ‘When my ten were small one or other of them would be sent to stay with your Granny’s family. Everything of the best there would be in those houses, for they did not have to count the pennies same as we had to. But I was not going to have the staff looking down their noses at us. There was a very nice dressing gown we had, and I put it away special for visiting. Every child wore that dressing gown one time or another, so I called it Brotherly Love. “Don’t you forget to pack Brotherly Love,” I would say to my nursery maid, “we don’t want to be shamed, do we?”’

  Then there was the story of the French boots. The children had no idea what French boots were but they loved hearing about them. ‘Another thing I kept for a visit to your Granny’s relations,’ Grand-Nanny would say, ‘was a little pair of French boots. Beautiful they were but they never fitted one of my ten. But who was to know that? Every evening when visiting I put those little boots out to be cleaned, thinking to myself: “I’ll let them see we know what’s what”.’

  One story shocked the children for it made their grandmother sound so selfish.

  ‘It was cruelly hard work bringing up all those children with only a little nursery maid to help. In those days new babies were carried for the first three months. You see, they wore long clothes, every inch clear starched. Your Granny had been used before she married to having her own maid and didn’t seem able to manage without. So it was one of my tasks to sit up to undo her gown and brush her hair – lovely hair she had. But many a night I would drop to sleep over my ironing board waiting for her. You see, when they went out to dinner it was often past midnight before the carriage got home.’

  Their mother told the children that when she first met Grand-Nanny she kept a cow. It was tethered to the back door and, according to Grand-Nanny, she went down and fetched a jug of milk as and when she wanted it. ‘There’s nothing for children like milk fresh from the cow, Mrs Jim,’ she told me. ‘If you want children to keep well see the froth from the milking is still on the milk.’

  Children were Grand-Nanny’s life, so when her nurslings had babies Nanny was waiting. When a new baby was expected, or a child needed special cosseting, it was to Grand-Nanny they were sent. She had a genius for handling children. She was strict in a way but more as if she ruled a kingdom than imposed her will. ‘These are my rules,’ she seemed to say, ‘and if you live in my kingdom you have to accept them; but if you don’t want to there’s plenty of other places to go.’

  The children’s father and his brothers and sisters, and their children, had never disputed Nanny’s laws; in fact, as the uncles and aunts grew older, they cherished them, for they made them feel children again. ‘That’s no subject to cause an argument while you’re having your tea, it only brings on indigestion,’ Nanny would say. Or, ‘Such nonsense this talk of not sleeping well. Count a flock of sheep carefully, as you’ve always done, and you’ll be asleep before you can say Jack Robinson. But mind, you’ve been over-exciting yourself; that’s what started the trouble.’ To each one of her boys back on leave from India it was his first tea with Nanny that made him feel he was really home.

  But bringing up babies and little children was Nanny’s work and with them she was extraordinary. Louise, as a tiny thing, had suddenly refused to eat. Everything was tried, the doctor was in despair certain she would die. Then the children’s father had said: ‘I’ll take her to Nanny’. Nanny received little Louise, who was skin and bone by that time, calmly, merely remarking: ‘Children always eat in my nursery’. And Louise ate. The stories of what she had done for the children of the family were endless but no one knew how she worked her cures, they were her secrets. ‘I have my ways,’ was all she would say.

  Grand-Nanny always looked the same. She wore black, with full skirts, and a high neck with a little bit of lace round it. On her head was a white cap. Old ladies – and Nanny must have been nearly sixty at the time of the family’s move to Eastbourne, which was considered old – wore caps in those days. Round her waist she tied an apron, which changed according to what she was doing. That morning because she had made the Golden Sovereigns it was made of coarse linen. But at some time in the day she would change that for a black silk one to mark her position in the house – as if it needed any marking.

  Though she was Nanny or Grand-Nanny to her family and all their friends, she was Mrs Minns – spoken in capitals, to the rest of the staff and to any visiting servants, such as coachmen, who came to the house. Nanny’s ‘Mrs’ was not honorary, as it often was for a cook. She had been married and widowed about a year before the children’s father was born. Her husband had been a gamekeeper, and while he lived she had been wonderfully happy. But he died of pneumonia and she had decided to return to her profession of children’s nurse.

  It was Aunt Sophie who had told the children Nanny’s story. ‘So she came to us,’ she said, ‘and we became her children. But every year, when the day comes round that her husband died, you can see she is feeling sad, for she has never forgotten him. Our love for her has comforted her a bit, but nothing is the same as having your own family, is it?’

  None of the children was old enough to see the pathos of that statement from Aunt Sophie – condemned almost from birth to dedicating her life to her parents. Years later, when Nanny died, the children were to remember Aunt Sophie telling them Nanny’s story. It so happened that at the time the eight boys she had reared were in England.

  Th
e Little House was quite a distance from the church but they would not allow their old Nanny’s body to be taken to it by hearse, instead they – each of whom she had carried in her arms – carried her to her grave on their shoulders.

  ‘She would have liked that,’ Isobel was to write to Victoria. ‘You remember when we were children Aunt Sophie said how their love had tried to comfort her.’

  But all that was a long way ahead, and Grand-Nanny was very much herself the day the children arrived.

  ‘Here you are, dears. I’ve got your Golden Sovereigns waiting. Now run along and tidy. You girls can use the WC up here, you boys run down to the one next to the smoking room. There’s a jug of hot water in the basin at the end of the passage.’

  Brown Pears’ soap, which smelt faintly of disinfectant and was opaque instead of solid, like cakes of soap at home, was as much a part of Grandfather and Granny’s house as the agapanthus plants which grew in the summer in green tubs on either side of the front door. It helped to produce atmosphere.

  ‘Well,’ said Grand-Nanny as the children sat round her table drinking their soup, ‘so you are moving. How do you feel about it?’ She looked at Isobel, so it was she who answered.

  ‘It’s a much more important parish for Daddy.’

  Nanny looked up from a table napkin she was darning.

  ‘It was time they found him something important to do. I always knew he was born for great things. Such a funny little boy he was, not like the others at all.’

  They had heard this before but enjoyed hearing it again.

  ‘Tell how the boy hit him,’ Victoria urged.

  Grand-Nanny smiled.

  ‘At a party it was. Let me see, your father was there and so was yours, Master John, and your Aunt Hetty, and I was carrying your Uncle Freddy – long clothes the baby had, every inch clear starched. So your father would have been about six. After tea there were games and races and such, and your father won some prize another boy wanted. Instead of asking for the prize, which I shouldn’t wonder if your father wouldn’t have given him, the boy gave your father a punch in the face.’