In the event, the insurance world in Chicago proved something of a closed shop. David briefly took up a job on Wall Street with an investment banking firm with a semi-promise of being seconded to their London office; however the offer of a London job failed to materialise, and in the autumn the young McCormicks decided to cut their losses and return to England. Getting a passage home was by no means easy, owing to a prolonged dock-workers’ strike; however David and Pamela managed, by the skin of their teeth, to acquire two berths on the Queen Elizabeth with the help of what Pamela later called ‘a rather shifty type in a travel agency who told us that “the boys in the back room are kinda thirsty”’. Pamela’s joy on reaching England could not have been greater. Her parents and her cousin Vivi were all on the dock to greet the young couple, and her diary entry for the day in question contains, amongst other ecstatic remarks: ‘Dear Old England, no police with guns.’ She had finally made it home. Many decades later, reflecting on this period of her life, Pamela asked herself: ‘What on earth would I have done if I’d married my American?’
On returning to England, David and Pamela found themselves back to square one, once again heavily dependent on their parents. In her unpublished autobiography Pamela wrote of the immediate post-war years:
Reading my diaries for those years just after the war makes me amazed how much we relied on and took for granted from the older generation: the practical help in the form of cash handouts, lending of cars, the constant providing of accommodation and food; for rationing was still severe, although my own parents, living on a farm, seemed to be forever coming up with produce of one sort or another. Indeed, even during the war, my future mother-in-law used to say she didn’t know what she would have done without the little parcels – perhaps not strictly legal – of butter made by Vivi, which arrived from time to time. There was one occasion when my well-meaning mother posted her some home-bottled blackcurrants, which exploded in the Weybridge post office and caused a considerable amount of alarm and damage. They had so little in common, the two sets of parents, yet the four of them pulled together nobly on our behalf.
In early 1947 David at last managed to land a job in a stock-broking firm for which one of his prisoner-of-war friends worked, and shortly afterwards he and Pamela acquired a small flat off Hyde Park Square. This was not, in those days, a particularly fashionable part of London – indeed prostitutes walked the nearby streets; but Pamela revelled in finally having a home of her own, and threw herself whole-heartedly into its furnishing and decoration. Another of Pamela’s artistic talents, painting furniture, was once again put to good use, and she took pride and pleasure in tending the little flat’s window boxes – her first ‘garden’. Oxford Street, with its cheaper, tempting versions of Dior’s ‘New Look’ fashions, was within easy reach, as were many of David and Pamela’s newly married young friends, with whom they socialised.
But however much Pamela enjoyed living in London, the same could not be said for David, who frequently arrived home at the end of a working day completely exhausted, often needing to be given supper in bed. The term ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ had not yet been coined, but this was almost certainly still afflicting him at the time. After his lengthy wartime incarceration, commuting to and from a cramped City office seemed to David too akin to being cooped up in prison camp, and he yearned to be his own master in a wide-open space. Finding City life increasingly intolerable, he consulted his father-in-law, initially without Pamela’s knowledge, about the possibility of a layman such as himself taking up farming. In My Father, A.G. Street, Pamela reflected on how her father rose to the challenge:
I suppose my father’s feelings about the matter must have been very mixed. He knew that my husband did not know wheat from barley or an Ayrshire cow from a Friesian. He knew that he did not have very much capital to invest, and the risk was obviously very great. On the other hand, he was always willing to help anyone ‘have a go’. He reckoned that young people were like unbroken colts. One could never do anything with the ones who dug their heels in and refused to ‘go’, but one could do anything with the ones who would.
Accordingly, Arthur Street set about finding a suitable farm within easy reach of Ditchampton Farm, from where he could dispense advice and loan men and machinery as required. In early 1948 he negotiated, on David’s behalf, and with the help of a large agricultural mortgage, the purchase of some 600 acres of farmland in Steeple Langford, some 6 miles west of Wilton down the Wylye Valley. This came with a small, redbrick modern house in the orchard (which Pamela later described as resembling a police station) rather than the original old farmhouse, which was still occupied by the late farmer’s widow; for this reason the farm was being sold relatively cheaply. Even so, the responsibility for such a purchase did not come lightly to Arthur Street, as Pamela recounted:
After my father had bought the Manor Farm, Steeple Langford, on our behalf, I understand he went home feeling sick. He never liked dealing in large sums of money, and now he had pledged somebody else’s. The enormity of the undertaking must have hit him so that even his enthusiastic optimism was open to doubts.
Arthur Street need not have worried. David proved a keen and apt pupil. He still suffered from tiredness, but as Pamela later wrote: ‘It seemed to be a much more natural tiredness than the devastating kind which had afflicted him in London.’
David and Pamela stayed at Ditchampton Farm until they were able to move into their new home; meanwhile the Street parents gave them every help and encouragement, as exemplified in a further extract from My Father, A.G. Street:
One night, when some new heifers arrived for us at the station, I remember sitting in the car with my father, whilst, in semi-darkness, my husband chivvied the last reluctant animal through thick mud at the entrance to one of our fields. It seemed to me to be a far cry from Threadneedle Street, and my father must have been thinking much on the same lines. ‘Bless my soul,’ he remarked, ‘I never thought to see that young man doing anything like this. Isn’t it wonderful?’
Certainly ‘Operation Farming’, as David and Pamela called it between themselves, got off to a good start. This is how she later explained her father’s role:
My father promised to oversee the venture for a year, teach my husband all he could and, because of his many friends and acquaintances in the farming world, make sure his son-in-law got every conceivable advantage – from engaging the right staff and seeing he got the right discount from seed merchants to never letting him be ripped off by cattle dealers, who negotiated the buying and transportation of our dairy herd. In fact, such was my father’s reputation that we got preferential treatment all round and, what is more, from one quite unexpected quarter: the glorious summer of 1949 which produced a bumper harvest. ‘I will look after you for twelve months,’ my father said, ‘but after that I will never visit or give advice unless requested.’ And he was as good as his word.
David was well aware of the enormous debt he owed his father-in-law towards the end of his first year of farming. With harvest safely gathered in, he went to spend a few days with his parents in Weybridge, during which he wrote Arthur Street a long, thoughtful letter expressing his gratitude for the countless ways the latter had helped him during the preceding year. It is something of a master-class in the art of the ‘thank you letter’, and as such deserves to be quoted almost in its entirety. Dated 25 August 1949, it reads:
To The Best Unpaid Foreman in Wilts, Ditchampton Farm, Wilton
Dear Father-in-Law,
Although my first year’s farming will not be completed until October 11th, and your stewardship will not therefore be officially over until that date, it would seem that with the harvest behind us the yearly farming cycle is completed and the results of our endeavours approximately known. I feel therefore that it is opportune to try to express to you my appreciation and gratitude to you for all that you have done to make my entry into farming the success which it has undoubtedly been.
Looking back I don’t qui
te know how it all came to pass. I remember that in a fit of ill health and depression over City life I asked you if you thought it would be possible for a person like myself with no knowledge of farming or country life to take a farm, and start farming under the guidance of an expert such as yourself, and if you would be prepared to give me that necessary guidance. You immediately said you did and you would. I don’t think at the time I fully realised quite how much I was asking of you, and I rather doubt that you quite realised to how much time and worry you were committing yourself. Though perhaps you did. At any rate shortly afterwards you telephoned, knowing that I had some £15,000 at my disposal, to ask for my sanction to offer up to £33,000 for a farm, which must have been a great responsibility to take upon yourself. Next I heard you had bought the Manor Farm on my behalf for £27,000. It is for this, for putting your experience as a dealer to my great advantage and buying the farm at an unquestionably bargain price, that I must first thank you …
Next I should like once again to thank you and Mrs. Street for putting us up at Wilton for a long period while moving and starting farming, and for all the help you both gave us in preparing our house and furniture, and in moving from London to our new home.
Then I must thank you for the actual farming. Not only for the general principles, the way the farm should be run, the policy, the labour and implements necessary, the crops to be grown and the livestock to be purchased, but also for putting all your own men and implements at my disposal, for producing combines, balers, drills, etc., at Steeple Langford just when they were required, and for even planning your own farming to fit in with mine so that this could be done to my greatest advantage. Then I must thank you apart from farming policy for all the detailed work and time you have spent during the year to ensure that the year was a success, for all the trips to Steeple Langford that you have made to start us off on jobs and to see that they were being carried out correctly, to solve any problems immediately they arose, and for the sheer drudgery of filling up another’s countless forms as well as all your own ones. Next for introducing me to all the local experts, and seeing that I met everyone in the district who might be of assistance to me in the business of farming, and for helping me through your personal contacts and friendships in such ways as obtaining credit facilities and instruments on test etc.
Then I must thank you for your friendly counsel in assisting me towards appreciation and correct valuation of country life and sport, and finally for your valiant attempts to teach me something about the rudiments of farming. And here I must thank you for your wonderful tolerance and patience. Many a time when a fairly important decision was needed, I know you have quietly explained the pros and cons and left the actual decision to me accordingly, when you must have been very tempted to just say ‘Do this’, or ‘Do that’. And many a time you have painstakingly explained farming procedure to me to pass on to my men, when it would have been far easier for you to drive down to Steeple Langford and tell the men what to do yourself.
What do I owe you for all you have done? In terms of money I have said, I know, that the farm owes me a good £500 for my services. If so, what does it not owe you for yours? In terms of gratitude, which is, I know, all that I am allowed to offer – well, it can’t be expressed in a letter …
You have enabled me to fit myself into a job that seems worthwhile, and into a way of life that seems clean and honest, and it is my great hope and wish that time will prove that you have found a suitable tenant for the Manor Farm.
Thank you.
David
It seems appropriate that this family memoir, which began with farming, has come a full circle and now ends with farming. In terms of his love of the land, whilst Arthur Street might have felt justifiably proud of his contribution to the war effort, he would surely have derived almost equal satisfaction on receipt of his son-in-law’s thank you letter, in particular its closing paragraph.
Note
* A little under £4,000 in today’s money.
Epilogue:
‘Lest We Forget’
It is a curious perception, shared as children by many ‘baby-boomers’ such as myself (so called because we were part of the population explosion that occurred in the two decades immediately following the end of the Second World War) that the cataclysmic events of only a few years before our birth might as well have taken place almost a century earlier. For us, they were history – though not the kind we learnt at school. Our parents rarely referred to ‘the war’ in our presence, anxious to shield us from hearing about the hardships and atrocities they had experienced and witnessed. They wanted to create a new world of peace and prosperity for the next generation. When I look back at my childhood in the 1950s – possibly influenced by memories of grainy images of early black and white television – I see myself living in a kind of grey cocoon. For me, these so-called ‘austerity years’ did indeed feel very safe, though this might have been partly a result of my mother’s over-protectiveness. We lived simply and frugally. Christmas and birthdays may have been the highlights of the year, but there were no expensive presents. Fortunately my mother’s artistic talents came in handy here. As a small child I collected miniature teddy bears, and one of my best presents was homemade: my mother concocted a magnificent bed for my little bears out of an old shoebox and scraps of upholstery fabric. My father also did his bit. Post-war rationing continued well into the 1950s, and in a gesture that would horrify today’s childcare experts, I understand that when I was a baby he gave up most of his weekly sugar ration for use in my milk-bottle.
Born a few days after the Manor Farm’s first harvest, I grew up blissfully unaware of such sacrifices, happy enough in an only child’s world of the imagination. Little did I realise how very difficult both my parents were finding this period of their lives. It is clear from my mother’s diary entries for early 1949 that finding herself pregnant filled her with dread. As the preceding pages make at times painfully clear, my poor mother was terrified of responsibility, of which she regarded parenthood as the ultimate. She would have far preferred to create in other ways, principally writing. Conscientious as always, however, she put the family first, though occasionally still managed to compose articles and poems which were accepted in certain magazines of the day, notably two poems in Punch in the early 1950s. One was a humorous reflection on the differences between modern-day farming, with its reliance on new machinery that was constantly breaking down, and the traditional, well-tried methods of the past. It was illustrated by no less an artist than E.H. Shepard.*
In the mid 1950s my father was diagnosed with severe angina. A complete rest was prescribed, and having made suitable arrangements with a neighbouring farmer regarding the running of the Manor Farm, my parents set sail for a lengthy stay in South Africa. Presumably my father wanted to revisit, in peacetime, the country that had so appealed to him when his troop ship called there en route to Egypt over a decade earlier.
I was packed off to stay with my Street grandparents, who had now taken over the tenancy of the Mill Farm, South Newton, since Ditchampton Farm’s land had been required for new post-war housing. I revelled in the comparative freedom I was allowed in which to roam their extensive gardens, and became particularly close to my grandfather Street during this period. We had pet names for each other; having heard one of the farm staff refer to me as a ‘chip off the old block’, my grandfather dubbed me ‘Chip’, insisting that I call him ‘Chap’ in return. I became the inspiration for one of his later novels, Bobby Bocker, about a small child left under similar circumstances with a crusty old widowed grandfather. He introduced me to all kinds of activities which fascinated me, such as dog training, fishing for minnows with a jam-jar in a shallow stretch of the River Wylye, and flying a box kite on the end of a fishing rod and line on the top of the Wiltshire Downs. How he found time for this I cannot imagine, for he was still pursuing his three careers of farming, writing and broadcasting as prodigiously as ever. He would continue to be a regular panellist on Any Q
uestions? and write his weekly article for Farmer’s Weekly till his final illness over a decade later.
The spell in South Africa evidently did my father good, and on their return my parents might have expected their fortunes to improve. In a material sense, they did. The farm prospered, to the extent that in the early 1960s my father had built up sufficient collateral to make what proved to be a shrewd investment in a run-down block of flats in London’s West End, which he refurbished and sold on at a considerable profit. This, in turn, enabled him to purchase, a few years later, half the adjoining farm in the Wylye Valley and the Elizabethan farmhouse that went with it. Our days in the ‘police station’ were over.
Ill health, however, continued to dog our little family. Neither of my parents had fully recovered from the trauma, both physical and psychological, of the war years. Nor did it help that in my early years I suffered from a succession of severe bronchial colds; for my mother, nursing me through these became something of an obsession.
I have often wondered whether, with their differences in upbringing and aspirations, my parents should ever have married, though chance meetings during the war years led to many unlikely bedfellows and my parents were no exception. Despite their lengthy correspondence (carried out under strict censorship), when they were reunited at the end of the war they still knew relatively little about one another; both were trying to present themselves to each other in the best possible light. My mother was, obviously, a virgin on her wedding day, probably no longer physically attracted to my father; many decades later she intimated that she married him more out of pity than passion. Sadly events ultimately conspired to put these two decent, well-meaning people at odds with one another, and my parents parted company shortly after their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.
Farming, Fighting and Family Page 33