Farming, Fighting and Family

by Miranda McCormick

  ‘The engagement is announced between Elizabeth Brewer, youngest daughter of Mr. & Mrs. Donald Brewer of Broadstones, Nr. Westonbury, and Captain Vernon Keeler of the United States Army.’

  It is more than likely that during the winter of 1944–45, Pamela’s similar discovery that Holden Bowler had become engaged, caused her depression to descend into a full-blown nervous breakdown. She may well have been harbouring lingering, romantic notions that Holden might not have taken her abrupt dismissal of him at face value. Maybe he would seek her out once more, in which case she would willingly have let him back into her life, whatever the consequences. Now cold reality set in. Describing this period of her life in her later memoir, Pamela wrote: ‘I felt a complete failure. I had made a total mess of the past five years and, during the final winter of the war, I broke down completely.’

  The early months of 1945 were also an extraordinarily difficult time for Arthur Street. Not only was his wife Vera still away at the Ruthin Castle clinic, complaining that her stomach was no better, that the food did not suit her, and constantly begging him to come and fetch her home in the temperamental family car despite the treacherous road conditions (there had been widespread heavy snowfall that winter), but now he had to deal with the marked deterioration in his daughter’s health. Initially, Arthur kept this news from Vera to avoid worrying her, explaining instead the practical difficulties preventing him travelling to North Wales to collect her and suggesting other means by which she could get herself home, and also pointing out the effects her demands were having on him:

  Oh my dear, can’t you understand? I know your troubles and ailments loom large to you, but do try to minimize them and conquer them a bit more for my sake. For I’m about whacked, mentally, physically, and financially. You see, my income doesn’t come from a business, but out of me, from my personal efforts on paper. Please, you’ve never let me down yet, despite all your illnesses. Do try and help me now, for I need it.

  You see, like you, I am now getting sorry for myself, which is always a mistake. So I won’t indulge in it any more. Neither will you, unless you’ve forgotten the many good things in our life together during the last twenty odd years.

  Cheer up, old thing, and plan to get home some way or other …

  It seems that despite her husband’s pleading, Vera was still unwilling to take no for an answer, for in Arthur’s next letter he finally felt obliged to explain what had been happening back at Ditchampton Farm:

  Dear V,

  I’m afraid you will be very disappointed on reading this letter, for I have to tell you quite definitely that I cannot come up to drive you home … The real reason is that I cannot do it. I’m too done up, both physically and mentally …

  I have kept it from you all these weeks as you were ill yourself, but Pamela has been very ill during the last month. She had an utter collapse, gave up all hope of ever getting well, said that when David returned he would not want her, wept day and night, and could not sleep. Whether it is all due to a nervous breakdown or whether there is something wrong we don’t know but Buttar [the Streets’ GP] said we could do nothing until all the physical possibilities had been checked up.

  So for weeks now Vi and I have taken it in turns to sleep with Pam, I have taken her for a walk just before she went to bed, but neither she nor the person with her has had more than two hours sleep each night …

  The local doctors were mystified, and in order to rule out any hitherto overlooked physical problem, it was decided that Pamela should go to a London hospital for a thorough examination; Arthur would stay at the Savage Club until her results came through. During their time in London Arthur spent much of each day at Pamela’s bedside, and in the evenings wrote regular reports to Vera in Ruthin Castle. In one such letter he gave his own assessment as to how Pamela’s illness had developed, and how only she, ultimately, could pull herself out of it:

  What happened was that when David went away, she shut up shop, and built a wall round herself against anything to do with men. This would not have mattered if either of two things had happened. Had the war finished eighteen months ago, say, and he had come back and married her, this breakdown would not have happened, and she would have carried the strain that long. Secondly, having decided to shut the door to that side of life she should have filled the gap with some other interest – ambition, pride, career – in fact vice or virtue, anything being better than nothing. As you know she did not do this, and hence this illness.

  Poor kid, the way she leans on me up here is pathetic. I ring her up each morning at nine. I spend the visiting hours, 3 – 6, with her. Then when I get back here about 7, I ring her up to say goodnight …

  She will have a hard row to hoe her way back to health, for only she can do it. You and I must help all we can, but I’m hoping to get some definite directions in writing from the doctors, and then she must obey them, in spite of tears, headaches, no sleep, everything …

  This explanation of Pamela’s illness misses one vital ingredient. There is no reference whatsoever to her infatuation with Holden Bowler and her ensuing confused emotions. Possibly both she and her mother managed to conceal these elements from Arthur Street, fearful of his probable reactions.

  The decision to send Pamela to the hospital had not been taken lightly, for staying in London was a risky business; in early 1945 German V2 rockets were still regularly bombarding the capital, as Arthur explained in another letter to Vera once he and Pamela were safely back at Ditchampton Farm:

  That, of course, was my main worry last week. I had to take the decision to send Pam up to the Northern Hospital, knowing all the time that there was a certain amount of risk from bombing. Result was I didn’t get any sleep, for I would hear a bump somewhere, and then of course, wonder where. One morning at six I was awakened by a big bump, and it dropped quite close enough to the hospital to shake the glass out of the bedroom windows of the room above and the one below Pam’s. Which is near enough, believe me, too near to be funny. And of course, each day when a rocket dropped, some silly ass at the Savage would be sure to say I reckon that’s about four miles north of here, which is where Pam was, and I used to feel awful …

  The specialists at the Northern Hospital found nothing physically wrong with Pamela, so she and Arthur returned home, as his letter to Vera continues:

  However, all’s well that ends well, and we now have her home with all her fears explained away, but are still up against this sleeplessness. Vi and I are doing our best with walks and baths just before bed, whilst we are waiting a vacancy at a place where they give sleep treatment in such cases. If she can break this sleeplessness before it arrives, there may be no need for her to go, but it’s a wearing business meanwhile. I’m firmly convinced that once she settles down to natural sleep she will soon be quite fit again …

  The arctic conditions persisted, so collecting Vera from Ruthin was still out of the question. Instead Arthur wrote to her with regular updates from Ditchampton Farm:

  Dear V,

  This weather is a proper B----- Like you we are snowed up and it’s cold as hell.

  Well, we’ve had a week like a year. Pam was better at first on her return from London, but by last Monday the sleeplessness had got on her nerves, almost an obsession, and she was begging to go to the Staines Place for some sleep treatment …

  As a last resort, it was decided that Pamela should go to an experimental clinic suggested by the London specialists. Many years later Pamela set down her recollections of what proved to be an extremely unpleasant experience:

  My own sleeplessness came to such a pitch that a pioneer doctor in a nursing home at Staines tried to render me more or less insensate for three weeks. He said he had used such treatment to rest many overstressed members of the Services – mostly male, I think – with great success. But three weeks is a long time to be put out for the count. In my case it didn’t work. I was horribly sick.

  One of the conditions of the treatment was that there should be no initial
communication with family and friends, and having managed to get Pamela to Staines despite the icy conditions, it was a good three weeks before Arthur Street was able to see his daughter again. When he was finally allowed half an hour with her, he was so overcome with fatherly concern that afterwards he felt he had left many important things unsaid, as he explained in a letter written to her immediately following this visit:

  Look, here is one thing I meant to say, and didn’t. Get all the benefit you can from the treatment while you are at Staines, and realize without any question that when you are well enough to leave – say in a fortnight or so from now – you can come home for a long rest to get quite strong before you even think of anything else. The great thing to do is to get well – then everything will be easy, and I shall feel so happy and proud. I’m afraid all this sounds selfish of me, but until you are well and happy again I somehow shan’t be much good for anything myself.

  The only positive effect of Pamela’s illness was that it brought father and daughter closer together than ever before, as Arthur commented in one of his updates to Vera at about this time: ‘One good thing has come out of it all – that is that Pam and I are great friends, and she trusts me implicitly, even though all these doctors have, I’m afraid, proved me right and her wrong …’

  Another duty that fell to Arthur Street as a result of his daughter’s illness was to compose a letter to David McCormick, explaining why Pamela had been unable to write to him during the past few weeks. In a letter to Pamela at the Staines clinic dated 24 February Arthur told his daughter:

  I have written to David today, and told him why there was a gap in your letters to him, and that now you are on the road back to health all right, and will shortly be writing to him yourself. I complimented him on the boasted improvement in his Bridge, and also on the cheeriness of his letters to you, at any rate the bits of them that you have told me. Also that I am looking forward to sitting down with him as a partner, when we would challenge all comers. Also that no one in England would be more glad to see him back home than myself. I told him the catkins were on the hazel, that Mummy was better (she is definitely), that Violet was a tower of strength, Judy a ball of wool, and that I had a whiter poll than the one he remembered. I trust this fits the bill …

  The pioneer doctor at Staines probably helped Pamela more than she gave him credit for in her later memoir, as she clearly came home in an improved state, even though her return to full health was a long, gradual affair. Whilst the rest of the British population was following the unfolding events in Germany with quiet rejoicing, Pamela’s reaction was more muted:

  Once back at Ditchampton Farm I remained in limbo. Having sent my American packing, I now awaited the return of my English ‘intended’ but, I am ashamed to say, with trepidation. For there was no question now that we were winning the war. The British and American forces under Montgomery and Eisenhower were racing each other to Berlin. The Russians were closing in from the east. Apart from the unbelievably shocking discoveries of the Nazi death camps which did not really penetrate the national consciousness until later on at the Nuremberg trials, it seemed as if, daily, good news came in like that from Ghent to Aix. Hitler committed suicide in his bunker and when German High Command surrendered to Monty at Luneberg on May 5th and the armistice came two days later, I happened to be staying with my cousin in Romsey …

  My father drove down to collect me, knowing that the young man I hadn’t seen for five long years would soon be home. But, to my chagrin, I still felt wretched and confused …

  Having been reunited with his parents, David arranged to visit Pamela the very next day. Uppermost in both their minds would have been the all-important question: now that they were actually to meet again, how would they feel about one another? During those five long years of separation, had they merely been holding on to a dream? Both had their own reasons for wanting to get married. David, after his wartime adventures and privations, wanted nothing more than to settle down gratefully to a peaceful life with the young woman who had waited for him. For her part Pamela, at the ripe old age of 24, feared being left on the shelf, the pool of potential suitors having been so tragically depleted as a result of the war’s innumerable casualties. She clearly hoped to be able to rekindle her love for David, and forget her earlier infatuation with her American captain. However when they were finally reunited, David must have appeared a shadow of the handsome, newly commissioned officer to whom she had bidden farewell some five years previously. This is how, decades later, she described this crucial meeting:

  He was very thin, very pale and had the most enormous bump on his forehead. I was meeting the London train on Salisbury station a few days after V.E. Day. I wore a blue dress with white spots and bows on it, for which I had given several clothing coupons. I can’t remember if we kissed. I don’t think so, not until a little later on when we stopped on the way back to Ditchampton. We were both very nervous.

  He apologised for the lump on his forehead, explaining that on his first night of freedom some Belgians had entertained a whole bunch of prisoners of war rather too enthusiastically and afterwards he had met up with an anti-tank trap. He talked a great deal, not just to me, my parents and Vivi, but everyone he met. He so desperately wanted to get four years ‘in the bag’, as he called it, off his chest as quickly as he could …

  It was not merely David’s appearance and speech patterns that had changed. Pamela found certain aspects of his behaviour curious in the extreme:

  There were other after-effects from his incarceration, some understandable, others more unexpected. He scavenged. That is to say, whenever we went for a walk up to Grovely or down through Wilton, his eyes would be on the ground looking out for anything that might come in useful: a piece of wood, an old tin can, things like that. As for food, he couldn’t bear to see anyone leave anything on their plate. When my mother failed to eat her last few strawberries, he finished them off for her, although prisoners of war had been warned not to eat or drink too much too soon …

  During one of their first conversations, the ultra-conscientious Pamela had immediately owned up to her relationship with Holden Bowler: ‘I had, of course, told him about my American boyfriend almost as soon as we met, and he had said, in a shocked voice, “You didn’t sleep with him, did you?” When I assured him I had not, he looked infinitely relieved and the matter was closed.’

  Clearly David and Pamela needed time and opportunity to get to know one another again. As Pamela went on to explain in her memoir: ‘I don’t think either of us realised that we were two very different people from the ones who had had such a circumspect juvenile romance five years before; nor – which was even more important – that we had really known very little about each other even then.’ To accelerate the process, following his visit to Ditchampton Farm David took Pamela back with him to his parents’ home in Weybridge for a prolonged stay. How their relationship progressed was closely watched by David’s parents, and on 20 May Edward McCormick reported to Arthur Street:

  Dear Street,

  I have delayed writing to you for a few days as I wanted to have the two young people under observation for a while before doing so.

  They appear to be blissfully happy together.

  Unfortunately, they are, neither of them, in perfect health. It is possible that matrimony will prove the best doctor.

  It would be well, I think, if you and I could meet before long to talk things over. Will you have lunch with me in London some day next week. Any day and any place will suit me.

  My wife and I are already very fond of Pamela. She is a sweet and charming girl. We both feel so sorry for her and for you and your wife that Pamela has had this long period of ill health.

  We are taking good care of her. She has been sleeping fairly well and I think she looks a little better already than when she arrived here.

  I enclose a suggested draft ‘engagement’ announcement for the children.

  Phyl joins in best wishes to you both.


  Yours very sincerely,

  Edward McCormick

  Although the final version of Arthur Street’s reply no longer exists, a draft copy with many crossings-out reads as follows:

  My dear McCormick,

  Thank you so much for your charming letter. I agree with you that the children are very much in love with each other, and am thankful that the long period of waiting in uncertainty for both of them has at last come to an end.

  When David asked us if he could become engaged to Pamela, my wife and I told him that there was no young man to whom we should be more pleased to give her, but suggested that on the grounds of health it would be best not to rush things too quickly. David wanted to be married very soon. However, I managed to convince him that things had to be done with a certain amount of decorum; that before any announcement was made or anything definite settled he must first go home and talk it over with his mother and father; and that we should do nothing until we had heard from Mrs McCormick and yourself. We were glad that he took Pamela back with him, so that she would get a much-needed change from the setting in which she had been so ill and so worried with wondering about David’s safety, and also that you would be able to meet her again.

  The announcement you enclosed seems admirable, save that my wife wanted to delete the word Street after Pamela. I mentioned this to Mrs McCormick over the telephone this morning, and she agreed, and suggested that we should send it off. However, I have just talked with Pamela, and she wants to wait until Thursday after she and David have seen her doctor. So I shall wait for his report before I send it off.