Pamela’s poem ‘Harvest Lament or Combined Operation’ in Punch, 1952, illustrated by E.H. Shepard.
On their separation, my mother went to stay in the little London top-floor flat that my father had managed to retain from his property venture a decade earlier. She fully intended to return to her beloved Wiltshire once the dust had settled. Meanwhile, however, she made contact with her father’s old friend, the historian Sir Arthur Bryant,* who took her under his wing and persuaded her to remain in London. A long association ensued, which gave her the entrée in the London literary world she had always secretly craved. She went on to become a prolific author; by the end of her life she had three works of non-fiction and nineteen novels to her credit – no mean feat.
Further details leading up to my parents’ divorce and the course of their subsequent lives are beyond the scope of this volume. One small episode is, however, relevant to this story.
In the late 1980s my mother, once again alone in her little flat, received a surprise visit from her American wartime boyfriend, Holden Bowler. He and his wife Ann (also a Wiltshire girl whom he met and married during the latter months of the war) had family domiciled in England, and on one of their trips to see their relatives in what he described as ‘the Old Country’, Holden managed to track down my mother via her publishers. From then on, Holden and Ann visited my mother whenever they came to London, and continued to correspond – swapping photographs of their grandchildren – for the rest of their lives. Ann was particularly tactful in disappearing on shopping expeditions in order to give my mother and Holden the opportunity, à deux, to ‘chew the cud’. His reappearance in my mother’s life was the inspiration for one of her later novels, Hindsight. There is a particularly poignant passage in Hindsight, clearly based on a conversation that must have taken place between Holden and my mother during one of these visits. The protagonists, now in their latter years, reminisce about their wartime romance. The fictional Holden, ‘Rex’, asks the fictional Pamela, ‘Anna’, why she cast him out of her life so abruptly towards the end of the war. This is how she replies:
‘I realise I acted monstrously and I often wondered if I could ever be forgiven, but … you see, I was afraid of you.’
‘Afraid?’
‘Yes. Well, more afraid of myself, perhaps. I suppose it sounds incomprehensible now. I mean when one thinks of today’s youth.’
When he did not answer, she went on, quietly, ‘You see, I wanted you to make love to me.’
‘Was that so very terrible?’
‘Fifty years ago and in the way I was brought up, yes.’
It is clear that the stigma of becoming pregnant out of wedlock and the disgrace this would heap upon the family was drummed into my mother at a tender age; Arthur Street would have been at great pains to prevent his daughter committing the same misdemeanour as he himself had committed in his youth. And indeed, the circumstances of her birth were subsequently a source of great unhappiness for his other, ‘unofficial’, daughter, who he never felt able to acknowledge.
* * *
Whatever twists and turns my parents’ and grandparents’ post-war lives – and those of their contemporaries – eventually took, it was their contribution to the Second World War effort that we should remember forever with deep gratitude. Their wartime sacrifices enabled my generation, and hopefully many British generations to come, to live in peace and freedom. The compilation of this volume has been my own way of thanking them.
Notes
* Illustrator of, inter alia, A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh series and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.
* Arthur Bryant wrote the Foreword to My Father, A.G. Street.
Bibliography
Beaton, Cecil, The Years Between: Diaries 1939–44, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965
Beevor, Antony, The Second World War, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012
Brittain, Vera, Testament of Youth, Victor Gollancz, 1933
Dady, Margaret, A Woman’s War: Life in the ATS, The Book Guild, 1986
Daily Telegraph, The, World War II: Eyewitness Experience, Eaglemoss Publications, 2010
De Courcy, Anne, Debs at War, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005
Dimbleby, Jonathan, Destiny in the Desert: The Road to El Alamein, Profile Books, 2012
Farmer, Alan, The Second World War, Hodder Education, 2004
Gilbert, Adrian, POW: Allied Prisoners in Europe 1939–1945, John Murray, 2006
Gillies, Midge, The Barbed-Wire University: The Real Lives of Prisoners of War in the Second World War, Aurum Press, 2011
Ginn, Peter, Goodman, Ruth, Langlands, Alex, Wartime Farm, Mitchell Beazley, 2012
Goodenough, Simon, War Maps, Macdonald & Co., 1982
Goodman, Jean, Seago: A Wider Canvas: The Life of Edward Seago, The Erskine Press, 2002
Hastings, Max, All Hell Let Loose: The World at War 1939–1945, Harper Press, 2011
Hastings, Max, Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940–45, Harper Press, 2009
Last, Nella, Nella Last’s War: The Second World War Diaries of Housewife, 49, Falling Wall Press, 1981
McCormick-Goodhart, Henrietta L., Hands Across the Sea: Reminiscences of an Anglo-American Marriage, copyright H.L. McCormick-Goodhart 1921, privately printed; Second Printing 2004, copyright 2004 The Family of H.L. McCormick-Goodhart, McClain Printing Company, Parsons, West Virginia
Middleboe, Penelope, Edith Oliver: from her Journals 1924–48, Weidenfield & Nicholson, 1989
Milburn, Clara, Mrs Milburn’s Diaries: An Englishwoman’s Day to Day Reflections, 1939–45, ed. Peter Donnelly, Harrap, 1979
Nicholson, Virginia, Millions Like Us: Women’s Lives in War & Peace, 1939–1949, Penguin/Viking, 2011
Smith, Daniel, The Spade as Mighty as the Sword: The Story of the Dig for Victory Campaign, Aurum Press, 2011
Somerville, Donald, The Complete Illustrated History of World War II, Lorenz Books, 2008
Street, A.G., Farmer’s Glory, Faber & Faber, 1932
Street, A.G., Strawberry Roan, Faber & Faber, 1932
Street, A.G., Wessex Wins, Faber & Faber, 1941
Street, A.G., Hitler’s Whistle, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1943
Street, A.G., From Dusk till Dawn, Blandford Press, 1943, revised 1945
Street, A.G., Holdfast, Faber & Faber, 1946
Street, Pamela, My Father, A.G. Street, Robert Hale, 1969
Street, Pamela, Many Waters, Robert Hale, 1985
Street, Pamela, Hindsight, Robert Hale, 1993
Street, Pamela, Poems by Pamela Street, Delian Bower Publishing, 2000
Thomasson, Anna, A Curious Friendship: The Story of a Bluestocking and a Bright Young Thing, Macmillan, 2015
Wall Street Journal, the editors of the, American Dynasties Today: Astor – Cabot – DuPont – Ford – Guggenheim – McCormick – Mellon – Sears, Dow Jones-Irwin, Inc., 1980
Plates
A.G. Street.
Vera Foyle and Arthur Street in ‘courting’ days.
Pamela’s five-year diary – typical page.
Arthur, Vera and Pamela Street at a puppy show, 1938.
Arthur and Pamela in hunting clothes, Broadchalke, 1938.
Ditchampton Farm’s Christmas card 1938, designed by Pamela.
Pamela, Jorrocks and the float, autumn 1939.
The ‘hut’, Tower House Emergency Military Hospital, Salisbury.
David and Pamela, Bleadon, Weston-super-Mare, 1941.
Pamela, April 1941.
David’s goodbye letter to Pamela and slip.
Crossing the equator, May 1941.
David in Cairo, 1941.
David (on left) by the Pyramids, August 1941.
Mess tent at Rakam Bay, August 1941.
David’s ‘bedroom’, Rakam Bay.
David in the desert.
Telegram reporting David missing, February 1942.
Pamela in ATS uniform, 1942.
Pamela’s portrait as Frontispiece in The Field, 1943.
Early censo
red letter from David to his parents, 1942.
The filming of Strawberry Roan in 1944, with William Hartnell and Carol Raye.
David’s POW identity card, 1943.
Room 14, Oflag VA, Weinsberg; David middle row, second from left.
Oflag VA, Weinsberg, 1944.
David’s Christmas greetings to his American godfather, 1943.
David and Bill (Quilly) Kerruish, Stalag 383, Straubing, 1945.
Arthur and Vera Street, Phyllis and Edward McCormick, 3 July 1945.
David and Pamela’s wedding, 3 July 1945.
Pamela’s portrait by Philippe Halsman for Pond’s, 1946.
‘The Smart Set’, Herald American, 25 July 1946.
David McCormick, the Managing Director of Massey Harris, Arthur Street at the Bath & West Show, 1949.
Street/McCormick family, 1951.
Pamela’s Christmas card from the Manor Farm, Steeple Langford, 1951.
Copyright
First published in 2015
The History Press
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This ebook edition first published in 2015
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© Miranda McCormick, 2015
The right of Miranda McCormick to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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EPUB 978 0 7509 6564 4
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Farming, Fighting and Family Page 34