by Mary Soames
For the next ten years my life was essentially Chartwell-based, with visits to London only for day trips or short visits. For a few years after Winston’s serious financial losses in the Great Wall Street Crash in October 1929, my parents either stayed at the Goring Hotel near Victoria Station or rented houses for the parliamentary sessions.
I was now nearly seven, and had received no formal education. Nana must, I suppose, have begun teaching me to read and write, and my mother had started to teach me French. Diana, who (in a model grown-up sisterly way) gave me some French lessons while our mother was away in the winter of 1928, wrote to her that she found she had taught me a “terrific lot already.” Strangely enough, the only recollection I have of being slapped by my mother was related to reading a French book in bed with her: I must have worn out her patience, and she gave me a good cuff! Now, in the autumn of 1929, I started to attend a small school in Limpsfield, about four miles from Chartwell—Irwin House. Clementine wrote to Winston: “Mary has become a school-girl! Every morning, arrayed in a blue tunic, white shirt & scarlet girdle Moppet motors her to a little school where she is being taught to read & count.” The headmistress was Miss Grace Raikes, a large, tall, and imposing lady with a beehive hairdo. (I wonder if it was a wig?) I started school with the strict instruction—which would certainly not be necessary now—that as I was naturally left-handed I was not to be forced to use my right hand, as was common practice at the time.
Someone who would become a great feature in our lives in school holidays now appeared on the scene—a charming, silver-haired, vivacious Frenchwoman, Madame Gabrielle L’Honoré. Soon after her arrival, Clementine wrote to Winston (who was on a lengthy Canadian-American tour): “Madame L’Honoré is the most tremendous success. She looks like Madame de Pompadour, takes away all Diana’s young men from her, & would lure a deaf & dumb ourang-outang to speak French.” For the next nine or ten years “Madame” came in the summer, and sometimes in the Christmas holidays too, to teach me French—and she made it all so much fun. Deft with her fingers, she made marvellous marionettes, and we constructed a theatre and presented plays written by ourselves; she was a mine of inventiveness and imagination. To the English books Nana had read to me were now added Les Malheurs de Sophie, Sans Famille, and Les Misérables.
Because Madame only came to us in holiday time, she was at pains to keep desk work to a minimum: the result was that my spoken French and comprehension were way ahead of my knowledge of grammar and my capacity to express myself in writing. At school I spoke French more fluently and with a much better accent than most of my classmates—and, indeed, of some of the mistresses, which did not increase my popularity; on the other hand, I lagged well behind the other pupils in written work. But Madame’s methods gave me a taste for speaking and reading French, and as my parents were strong Francophiles I grew up with a deep attachment to France and its people. I loved listening to my father recount episodes in Gallic history—his great heroine was Joan of Arc. All this was to be an enrichment to me throughout my life.
I now settled down to the usual routine of term time and holidays. In the mornings I had to attend to my animals before breakfast, and when goats joined the menagerie I had to get up really early to feed and milk them and tether them out. Nana and I breakfasted in the dining room, which has lovely arcaded windows, and on some mornings the valley below the house, stretching away to Hever and Penshurst, was filled with swirling mist—sometimes one could not see down to our lakes. Nana used to say: “The sea’s coming in! There’s a tidal wave! You must escape at once!” The waiting school car was the rescue boat and only I could go: I had while she counted to ten to decide on two things or people I could take with me to safety. I cannot remember if my choice ever varied, but usual choices were my pug dog and my add-a-pearl necklace (I evidently had a prudent streak). On looking back, perhaps dear Nana may have felt a little sad that Mr. Pug and my jewels had priority over her.
For a time in the late afternoons, back from school without yet the slavery of homework, I had freedom to enjoy all my Chartwell occupations, and in spring and summer I soon disappeared into the garden, accompanied by the dogs, perhaps to find Doris Hill, or to visit whatever great projects were in progress. While my father was constructing the redbrick walls which now surround the kitchen garden, he had the delightful idea of building a little one-room cottage in the line of the wall for Sarah and me: it was meant for us both, but Sarah, who had started at boarding school in 1927, outgrew its pleasures fairly soon, and this charming dwelling became known as the Marycot.
My father reported the important occasion of my first public engagement to my mother while she was away on a round of visits with Diana:
Mary’s house is growing and I hope to have a treat for you when you come … Mary has taken the greatest interest in the work and laid the foundation stone with great ceremony. She was presented with a bouquet by the Prof. [Professor Lindemann] and then manifested a great desire to make a speech. We all had to stand for five minutes while she remained in deep thought, her lips frequently moving over the sentences. In the end she said she regarded it as a great honour to have been called upon to lay this foundation stone and that she hoped she would spend many happy hours in the house when it was finished. (Loud cheers.)
Incidentally, this occasion was also recorded in a picture painted by my father from a snapshot the Prof took of the occasion: it hangs in the studio at Chartwell now.
The Marycot was the source of endless delight and occupation for me and my friends. It had a real small coal range, a dresser, kitchen table, and chairs; china had been specially chosen and there were all the utensils required for baking. Under Nana’s tuition I learned to make drop scones and (very rocky) rock cakes, and I am afraid “cottage” teas were inflicted on long-suffering friends and relations. Furnishing the Marycot, and providing extra accessories, gave wonderful opportunities for very welcome presents: Nana particularly outdid herself in imagination and generosity. Just before my seventh birthday, my mother wrote to Winston, who was in America:
Moppet who always thinks of the most enchanting gifts is having a Dove Cot made for her—It will be erected (the night before) near Mary’s cottage & she will find in it a pair of white fantail pigeons—I am green with envy as it is much nicer (as usual) than my present which is a tiny brass chandelier with 4 arms to hang from the ceiling of the cottage. You are giving her a lovely swing which (also in the night) will be put up outside the red brick wall. The swing will unhook & a trapeze can be substituted.
NANA WAS A DEVOUT ANGLICAN, and prayers at bedtime were a ritual—always related to the daily happenings of my life, with earnest petitions for the needs of animals and humans alike. My parents were not churchgoers (except for rites of passage), and I do not recall very early experiences of going to church. Chartwell geographically lies in the parish of Crockham Hill, but inasmuch as parochial matters impinged on our family’s life we regarded beautiful Norman St. Mary’s, Westerham, as “our” church (no doubt my parents were dunned for good causes in both parishes). But in 1930 a very remarkable priest, Melville Williams, aged forty, with his charming, selfless wife, Mary, and their large and still growing family, came to be priest-in-charge at St. Andrew’s, a modern church (the present building dating from 1895) in Limpsfield, the village a few miles from Chartwell where I attended school. Melville Williams had fought in the Great War, and then served in India, reaching the rank of captain; he had entered Holy Orders after retiring from the army. A dedicated priest, a brilliant communicator, and a dynamic personality, he soon made waves throughout and beyond the scattered community which was his charge. Nana heard about the lively children’s service he held on Sunday afternoons, to which children from far and wide soon flocked. For five years of his time at St. Andrew’s, “Father Bill,” as he was unstuffily (for those days) known, was to have a profound influence on me, for which I have ever been grateful. Through his children’s service we were all grounded in the fundamentals of catechismic knowledge; there
was the minimum of “tiny tottery,” and we were gradually grafted on to the main worship of the church by attending Sung Eucharist (whose central importance he strongly stressed over Mattins, which most then regarded as the “normal service”). Soon the Mattins congregation consisted of only the more elderly and hidebound parishioners. Mr. Williams had a great feel for language and—reflecting his Welsh background—for choral music and congregational singing. And of course, at that time the language of the liturgy was that of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. I was rooted and grounded in that, and have so much of it still by heart—as I have hymns, learned through constant repetition: the simple Victorian verses that have come down the generations, the wonderful rhythms and cadences of Wesley, the poetry and mysticism of George Herbert, and so many others marking the stages of the Christian year and religious experience, as do the collects, with their matchless symmetry—the supreme exemplars, surely, of “Thought for the Day.” By sheer accident, governed by the year of one’s birth, for Anglicans of my generation our religious education and early churchgoing were steeped in the old Prayer Book and King James Bible, while for younger generations these have become the texts of history or literature lessons. Now we must accept the amiable banality of the successive newer forms of worship, where the search to supply “something for everyone” has resulted in reams of unmemorable language, and a Book of Common Worship which is almost impossible to find one’s way about. (Forget about travelling with it—or, a consideration which was certainly present for many of my generation, going into battle with it!)
A great feature of St. Andrew’s church life became the yearly Nativity play, written, produced, and directed by Mr. Williams. Performed for several successive nights, this ambitious project engaged the enthusiasm and involvement of our congregation, and many people (some of whom rarely crossed the threshold of any church) were drafted to help with specialized skills in carpentry, stage lighting, costumes, and so on. A fruitful recruiting ground for helpers was the bar at the Carpenters’ Arms, the popular pub in Limpsfield Chart (a hamlet southeast of the main village); aunts, cousins, and grandmothers of the performers were eager assistants.
The scenes of the Nativity were depicted on a large stage covering the whole area of the choir, and were introduced by a mother reading the Christmas story to her children at bedtime. During the three or four years this play was performed the younger cast members were promoted from the listening children or shepherd boys on the hill to more prominent roles, according to the rate of individual growth and talent. Thus I progressed from the smallest child to the older, rather bossy one—who was always putting the others in their place—and then to the innkeeper’s daughter. Mr. Williams was, I think, the sole arbiter of casting, and some of the “lead parts” revealed unexpected talent in normally quite unremarkable members of the congregation: I remember a thrilling, rather fierce Gabriel, a horrendously frightening Herod, and a wonderfully pompous High Priest, Zachariah (who usually read the Old Testament lessons at Mattins, had a double-barrelled name, and didn’t have to act at all). The part of the Blessed Virgin Mary was taken by a different girl every year, and in 1935, the last year the play was performed, I was chosen for the role: Nana coached me for hours, as I had to recite the entire “Magnificat”—the “ ‘Marseillaise’ of the Church,” Mr. Williams said.
It was during these “St. Andrew’s years” that I made some life-lasting friends. I got to know the Williams children very well: when they came to Limpsfield they were five strong, soon to become six with the arrival of Janet; the seventh and youngest, Veronica, born after Mr. Williams had moved to another parish, was to become my goddaughter. In this wonderfully lively family group I naturally gravitated to those round my own age, my immediate contemporaries being Nancy and David—I was generally more at ease with girls than boys, who rather alarmed me, and to the gaggle of Williams brothers I think I must have seemed a rather odd, prissy little creature. It was very salutary for me, brought up virtually as an only child, to experience the rough-and-tumble of parsonage family life. Mary Williams was very sweet to me, and allowed me to help her in the kitchen, where I became quite good at making jellies and large quantities of Bird’s Custard.
At this time also Mrs. Saunders and her two daughters, Betty and Eve, who also went regularly to St. Andrew’s, came into my life. Margaret Saunders was a rich widow whose largeish house and garden gave on to the golf course at Limpsfield Chart; Betty and I were the same age, and Eve was four years younger. Betty was dark-haired, plain, and partly disabled down her right side from a paralysis sustained at the time of her birth; but she was plucky and tenacious, and managed to keep up with her sister and me pretty well, though the sheer effort of doing so made her seem somewhat dour. Eve—in striking (and painful) contrast—was a pretty, blonde, blue-eyed, fairylike figure, with an easygoing, fun-loving disposition. The girls and I became great friends, and I was often asked to Ballards Mead, with or without Nana. Although she was kindness itself, Mrs. S. somewhat alarmed me: she had very shiny round glasses and a rather loud voice, and seemed to fill whatever room she was in. She genuinely loved music, and participated enthusiastically in singing in church (always having a large hymnbook with the tunes in it, which greatly impressed me); but her voice had a very strange “wobble” to it, which was quite embarrassing if one was in the pew in front of her. She was immensely hospitable, and her house always seemed full of people—including a stream of nice young overseas servicemen and -women whom she had to stay under the auspices of a hospitality organization. A few years on, Eve would marry one of them: a charming, good-looking officer of the Royal Canadian Navy who swept her off to Canada soon after the war.
I had a great deal of fun with Betty and Eve, the Williamses, and other local children of our age-group. Usually organized by Mrs. S. and Nana between them, we had picnics and skating expeditions to the ice rink at Purley, as well as much larking round in the Ballards Mead garden. I particularly remember how “our” grown-ups devised our participation in the parade of floats in Oxted to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary in May 1935. Our theme was “Fruits of the Empire,” and some creative genius built a large wooden construction representing a “tin” of canned fruits which was borne on the Saunderses’ car, out of which our group, disguised individually (with varying degrees of success) as fruits from the Empire, were seen to be emerging: it was all great fun, and I think we won a prize. A great personal Jubilee treat for me was being taken by Papa and Mummie to Westminster Hall to witness the King and Queen receiving Loyal Addresses from both Houses of Parliament on 9 May: I was rising thirteen, and it was my first “state” occasion.
It was thanks to the Saunders family that I had my first taste of Scotland; they often took a house in some remote and beautiful part of the Highlands, and invited several friends to stay, including Nana and me. There we children all ran wild in the heather, climbing the mountain, and (predictably) one day losing ourselves in an impenetrable mist: on being found, needless to say, we were all much scolded by the panicked grown-ups. I remember picnics on the wonderful empty beaches near Ardnamurchan Point, and swimming in the crashing breakers—cold; very cold; but not nearly so icy as the dark and rather sinister depths of Loch Awe.
In the early years of her marriage to Winston, and as their nursery increased, Clementine always wanted—and tried—to spend seaside and holiday time with the babies; but as she became increasingly involved in her husband’s political life, this became harder to arrange. There was a tug-of-love: Winston loved his children, but he always wanted her with him; much though she loved us, her priority was quite clear—then and always.
By the time I came along, after the agony of beloved Marigold’s death, nursery life had been reconstructed with the blessed advent of Nana. But now the three elder children had their pressing claims, and again letters between Winston and Clementine are full of these: Randolph’s first reports from Eton; Diana’s French family; Sarah’s worrying “glands.” Inevi
tably, knowing that I was in Nana’s safekeeping—and that, as we have seen, Winston was very good at holding the fort with the stay-at-home child—Clementine concentrated on the bigger ones, especially, of course, in their school holidays. I never even thought about it at the time, but looking back it must have seemed quite strange to outsiders that nearly all my “away” holidays—to Devonshire, to Scotland, and later to France—were with Nana, whose role over the years developed seamlessly from nanny to duenna.
I found a revealing sentence in one of Clementine’s letters to a former secretary, Margery Street (Streetie), who had come to us in that year of grief and loss—1921—and had stayed for twelve years before leaving in 1933 to go out to Australia to nurse a desperately ill sister. Clementine missed her very much, and they corresponded regularly thereafter: my mother’s letters are full of news about our family and household which Streetie had got to know so well. In September 1934 she wrote from Chartwell with all the news, and, telling Streetie what great delight her birthday telegram had caused me, continued: “She and Nana have just returned from a fortnight spent in Brittany with the Grant Forbes. You know they live quite close at Squerryes & have also a villa near Dinard. Before that they [Mary and Nana] were for the same length of time in Argyllshire with Mrs Saunders (another neighbour) so I have been quite deserted.” The pattern of these holiday travels with Nana repeated itself for several summers, and although they freed Clementine to make plans with Winston or the older girls, with long hindsight I see that those Scottish and French jaunts were factors in Clementine’s slowly—and at first subconsciously—growing perception that she was increasingly playing an almost peripheral role in my life.
I loved my parents unquestioningly, and my mother I held in considerable awe: I thought her very beautiful, sought to please her, and greatly feared her displeasure. My relationship with Nana was quite different—much more natural and workaday—and I turned to her for everything.