by Mary Soames
Brought up chiefly among grown-ups, I was compensated for the lack of companionship of children of my own age by a procession of pets. Starting with rabbits, I soon progressed to a nursery dog and cat; the orphan lambs; bantams; goats; budgerigars; a pair of canaries (Percy and Lucy); two orphan fox cubs (for a season only); and an exquisite little marmoset—which, however, succumbed quite soon, I fear, to indifferent care and draughts. Most companionable among my menagerie were, of course, my dogs—for to Punch, the beige pug, acquired when I was about four, was added in 1931 Jasper, an enchanting Blenheim spaniel given to me by Cousin Sunny (my father’s kinsman, the ninth Duke of Marlborough), whose exceptionally beautiful and eccentric wife, Gladys, bred them in great numbers. To mark the Marlbrouckian connection—which my father, in an early history lesson, explained to me—my puppy’s kennel name was Jasper, Prince of Mindleheim. I must have evidently been much impressed by my new dog’s noble descent, for I wrote to my ducal cousin (somewhat muddling the degree of our consanguinity):
CHARTWELL
WESTERHAM, KENT
JULY 24TH 1931
Dear Uncle Sunny
I am sending you a snapshot of the little Blenheim you gave, he is such a darling and I love him very much. Do you think you could ask Cousin Gladys to let me have his pedigree he is admired wherever we go and people ask how he is bred, and I should so much like to have it.
Your affectionate niece,
Mary Churchill
Sadly, Jasper was run over by a motorcycle outside Chartwell gates when he was only three years old: I was heartbroken. But presently Nana gave me a rough-and-tumble Lakeland terrier called Paddy, who lived to a ripe old age.
My pug, Punch, had the distinction of having a poem written by my father in his honour. At one point he became desperately ill (distemper, I suppose), and both Sarah and I were in floods of tears: my father, greatly concerned for us in our anguish, composed this touching ditty, which was chanted by the family while Punch was ailing:
Oh, what is the matter with poor Puggy-wug?
Pet him and kiss him and give him a hug.
Run and fetch him a suitable drug,
Wrap him up tenderly all in a rug,
That is the way to cure Puggy-wug.
Happily, dear Punch recovered, and he too survived to a ripe and rather cantankerous old age: there is a snapshot of him looking very venerable in 1938.
The dog population at Chartwell was at various times augmented by Sarah’s chocolate spaniel (not for nothing called Trouble), given her by her devoted beau Harry Llewellyn, and Randolph’s fox terrier, Harvey—his name deriving from Dr. Johnson, who, referring to his patron Henry Hervey, said: “If you call a dog Hervey I shall love him.” Considering my mother was not particularly animal-minded, I think on reflection she was very long-suffering, for the dogs strayed all over the house, and cocked their legs with impunity: I regret to say Punch was a bad offender in this respect. Even Papa rebelled on one occasion, writing to my mother in April 1935, while she was travelling abroad: “I have banished all the dogs from our part of the house. Punch is in the nursery. Trouble is with Arnold [the farm bailiff] and Harvey is with Howes [the chauffeur]. I really think you will have to buy a new strip of carpet outside my landing.”
It was not only in the house that pet life was the cause of vexation. When I was about thirteen the two nanny goats acquired by my father as “nibblers” had in the natural course of events become a mini-flock, and were my especial charge; I used to get up very early in term time to feed them and picket out the adults to perform their allotted task of keeping the orchard grass short, their kids being free to scamper round. Sometimes, if I had carelessly picketed one within reach of an apple tree, I would return from school to find outraged grown-ups—and an apple tree whose bark had been neatly, expertly, and fatally “ringed.” If Mama was at home, the worst of the storm broke at once: if she was away, it was almost worse waiting for it to brew up and explode on her return.
When we first went to Chartwell there were ponies, among them my father’s polo ponies, and a rather old groom—Mr. Best—who had been the Campbell-Colquhouns’ coachman and had stayed on with us. In 1926 there was a “crisis,” the first—but certainly not the last—about the expense of running Chartwell, and a memorandum survives from Winston to Clementine proposing a series of draconian measures to effect economies: among the resolutions listed, all the ponies were to be sold (“except Energy and her foal”), and the groom dispensed with. I do not remember any polo ponies, so I think they must have all departed fairly soon; but there is a photograph of me at about that time on Judy, a piebald pony, whom I do remember, so she obviously escaped the “purge”—as did Mr. Best, who stayed on, finally retiring in about 1932. Judy lived to a venerable old age also, pensioned off out at grass.
There was always a nursery cat: the one I chiefly recall was a plebeian “moggy,” very suitably called Tinker. There were others, but none made a mark outside our nursery world until the advent of Tango, the most beautifully and richly marked marmalade kitten. He was greatly admired by the whole household, and at first I used to carry him round to call on his fans, cradled in my arms; but as he grew to cat’s estate, Tango perceived that the fleshpots of “upstairs” life were superior to those on offer in the nursery—as was (he evidently and snobbishly opined) the company: so he transferred himself to the upper regions of the house, where he was fulsomely welcomed by all, and became the apple of my father’s eye. He had cream from a saucer (sitting in a chair or on the table), slept where he liked (mostly on beds—any visitor being regarded as particularly fortunate should the cat’s choice fall on his or her bed), and was sketched and painted by the famous artist William Nicholson, who stayed a great deal while painting a conversation piece of my parents. Mr. Cat, as he came to be called, lived to an advanced age; when he died, in the week of the fall of Tobruk in 1942, the Prime Minister’s staff kept this domestic sadness from him until the news from the battlefront was better.
ANOTHER GREAT SOURCE of concern, companionship, and occupation for me was my family of dolls: Kate, Christopher, Muriel Davina, and Jane, acquired over a period of time and in no particular sequence (though they eventually assumed the above order), their sizes bearing little relation to their allotted ages. Kate, the eldest, was a “nice little girl,” with flaxen hair in plaits (which really plaited); she looked charming, my French tutor Mme. L’Honoré having made her a very chic dress. Christopher was a “proper tomboy” in shorts and football boots; Muriel Davina (thus named, I think, for some distant relations of Nana’s with whom I once stayed in Scotland), physically the largest of my “collection”—china-faced, with wonderful eyelashes—was perpetually about eighteen months old. Finally there was Jane—she must have been my first rag doll, and was much battered about, having lost one eye; having no hair, she always wore a bonnet, and she spent a lot of time in bed.
My “family” was of great importance to me. I was “Mrs. Davis” (and required to be addressed thus); the existence of Mr. Davis was wrapped in mystery: I thus was the precursor by half a century of that social-problem figure known as the Single Mother. My “nursery” was well provided with dolls’ furniture, baths, bottles, perambulators, cots, and other equipment, and my children had a well-stocked wardrobe. I spent long happy hours organizing my family: bathing them, dressing them, feeding them, and accompanying all these procedures with my own running commentary, delivered out loud, along with a flood of instructions, scoldings, and admonitions, accompanied by frequent slappings or shakings administered as necessary. As I myself learned to read, the Davis nursery world enjoyed long sessions of being read aloud to—and of course its inhabitants all said their prayers.
Along with “Mr. Cat,” my family of dolls had the great distinction (not enough appreciated by them or me at the time) of being drawn by William Nicholson—our beloved cher maître, as we all called him—who spent many hours in the nursery doing the portraits of the Davis family.
*
* *
* Victor’s family at Fairlawne had long been friends of Clementine, and he would soon be our neighbour at Chartwell. Victor was at this time also a political friend and supporter of Winston.
CHAPTER 2
A Widening World
IN EARLY NOVEMBER 1924—THE SAME YEAR OUR FAMILY MOVED into Chartwell—my father became Chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin’s newly elected Conservative government. Naturally, as I was aged just two years old, this important development in my father’s career escaped my attention—but it considerably affected my life. In early January 1925 we moved out of No. 2 Sussex Square in Bayswater (where I had been born, but which I do not remember at all, although I suppose I must have spent some time there) into the Chancellor’s official residence, No. 11 Downing Street. It was then a charming family house (not, as present needs dictate, invaded by offices and in part arranged as a flat for the Chancellor and his family). The main rooms looked out over No. 10’s large garden, which the Prime Minister usually shared by mutual courtesy with his colleague in No. 11. I quite often played in the garden, and sometimes came across Mr. Baldwin, who was very benevolent: I would scramble up onto his knee while he was sitting reading the newspapers, and converse with him, until the poor man was liberated by Nana or the nurserymaid, Gladys, arriving on the scene.
Beyond the garden wall stretches Horse Guards Parade, affording the inhabitants of Downing Street the most splendid view of all the events which take place on that most spacious and splendid of parade grounds. A snapshot memory for me is of kneeling on a window seat one grey foggy morning, hearing sad music, and watching a horse-drawn gun carriage bearing a flag-covered coffin and escorted by troops proceed slowly across Horse Guards Parade and disappear under the archway. I was told it was Earl Haig (Commander-in-Chief Western Front in the First World War) being borne to his military funeral: that was January 1928, and I was five.
The Great War was still a brooding shadow less than a decade since its ending, and personal griefs lay very near the surface. Nana’s brother Mark, a lieutenant, had been killed in action, aged nineteen, leading his men in August 1918. His photograph in uniform always stood on Nana’s dressing table. Every 11 November while we lived in London she took me with her to stand with the great crowds that gathered near the Cenotaph to mark Armistice Day, the anniversary of the day the Armistice was signed in 1918, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Today the event is commemorated on Remembrance Sunday, the Sunday nearest to 11 November; then, the whole country stopped as the hour struck on the day itself. I remember the red London buses drawing to a halt, and people walking on pavements stopping in their tracks and standing motionless. I felt the solemnity and the heavy grief of the crowds, and although I cringed at the cannon announcing the two minutes’ silence, I stood ramrod still. Then (as now) two minutes seemed an eon of time: looking up I saw grave, desolate faces, and the slow tears trickling down Nana’s cheeks. Afterwards, when we got home, she would remove last year’s poppy from the frame of Mark’s photograph, and replace it with the new one.
During these years Nana and I spent the winter months in London, except for Christmas and New Year, when the whole family returned to Chartwell. My day and night nurseries at No. 11 were on the second floor, right over that famous front door: one day I was caught trying to pour water on the policeman on duty below—I can’t remember whether I succeeded in doing so before I was whisked away and much scolded. My London life, like that of most well-found children at that time, involved a lot of getting in and out of leggings and good tailored coats; gloves were de rigueur whether it was cold or not. I went to Macpherson’s gym near Sloane Square, where I wore a blue knitted jersey and knickers, and climbed and jumped and marched like anything. There was also much walking in St. James’s Park, and feeding the ducks, which is fun at any age. In the Park was an open-air school, to which the children came, I was told, from very poor homes: there were no school meals then, and the government wives formed a roster for supplying and serving hot soup to the children at their break-time throughout the winter. Mummie took me with her when it was her turn, giving me my first experience of “do-goodery”: the children looked very pale, and I felt embarrassed and useless.
For the rest of the year, Chartwell was always home base; and although a quiet fell on the house upstairs when my parents departed for London or on their travels, my delightful nursery life continued, punctuated by the excitement of their coming home again, perhaps with one or more of my siblings, heralding much coming and going of guests and general activity both in and out of doors. The “Big Ones” were all at various stages of their education during these No. 11 years, and mostly away at boarding schools or, in Diana’s case, in Paris being “finished”: I was suitably impressed in the year she came out (1928), when I watched her practicing her curtsey in the drawing room, with a sheet pinned to her shoulders for a train, and her three white feathers fixed rather haphazardly on the back of her head.
I was not dull or lonely during my parents’ weekday absences (governed by the sittings of Parliament) or their holidays away from home. I had my animals to look after, my dolls and all my friends “downstairs” to call upon, and when I was old enough to go to the gardens and the garage yard on my own, I had my outdoor calls to make as well.
Nana in all matters ruled my existence. Always loving, and always there, she could also be quite stern; I wanted her approbation above all things, and looked to her for enlightenment on all matters. Her lieutenant was a charming and excellent nurserymaid called Gladys (or Addi-Addis to me), who had been in my parents’ service as under-housemaid at Sussex Square since early 1921; in the reorganization of the nursery that autumn following Marigold’s death she was appointed nurserymaid under the newly arrived Nana. She was a treasure, and stayed with us till 1927, when she left to take a job as a fully fledged nanny—but even after that, for several years she used to come back to look after me when Nana was on holiday, using up some of her own precious holiday to do so. I never lost touch with beloved Addi-Addis, and used to visit her right up to her death in the 1970s.
Domestic service often offered romantic opportunities. While Gladys was with us she met our very good-looking footman, Alfred Blackwell, who left us to take up gardening (he would eventually become Head Gardener at Bristol Zoo): he and Gladys were married in 1930. Round the same time another romance developed in our household which was of great interest to me. In 1928 a very nice young chauffeur, Sam Howes, came to us, starting at No. 11: about a year later, Olive, a charming and excellent parlour maid, joined the staff. Working both in London and at Chartwell, they were soon courting, and in 1932 Olive gave up her job to marry Sam. Together they set up house in one of the cottages in the stable yard at Chartwell, and Olive would often come back to help out up at the “big house.” I had made great friends with Olive, and she would most hospitably often ask me in to tea, after which Sam would let me sit on his wonderful motorbike. Sam and Olive had no children, but Olive must have had a miscarriage in the early days of their marriage, for one day she told me she had “lost” her baby. I didn’t actually know she had had a baby, and I did feel it was rather careless of her—but fortunately I sensed the subject was a delicate one and restrained myself from saying what I thought. Sam and Olive left in 1935: no doubt he was looking for better pay than could be found in private service, and as he was a clever engineer he found work with (I think) Rolls-Royce in the Midlands. After the war they emigrated to the United States, where again Sam’s skills ensured him a career in engineering. After he retired he and Olive came to England quite often; they got in touch with our family again, and in the last years of my mother’s life always came to see her on their visits. On these occasions I was overjoyed to see again such wonderful friends from my childhood days.
One very important person on the estate was of course the head gardener, Mr. Hill; he had succeeded Waterhouse, the Campbell-Colquhouns’ gardener, and continued at Chartwell till his death
from cancer in 1944. Mr. Hill and his extremely handsome wife had a daughter, Doris, who was two years older than I; we made firm friends and spent a lot of time playing together—indeed, she was my principal outdoors companion for a number of years. We lost touch with the coming of the war; she married one of the gardeners at Chartwell, and lived in Westerham: I’m happy to say we are now in contact again, and she has filled in gaps in my memory of the “old days.”
I have already mentioned my visits to the secretaries, and their patient indulgence towards me. Mrs. Pearman, who came in 1929, and Grace Hamblin, who arrived in 1932 to help her with the ever-increasing load of literary work, reigned over the office in my childhood. After nine years in post Mrs. Pearman became seriously ill and had to retire; she died in 1941. Grace, who was only twenty-four when she came to help out, soon became a linchpin, beloved and trusted by us all. She lived with her parents (her father was the head gardener at a neighbouring property), and when I first knew her she worked entirely at Chartwell, though from the beginning of the war she came to London and worked as my mother’s private secretary. I could not manage the required “Miss Hamblin” and called her “Hambone.” When Grace died in 2002, in her ninety-fifth year, I realized I had known and loved her for seventy years.