Youth at the Gate: A young woman’s memoir of life during the First World War

by Ursula Bloom

  On August the twenty-fifth Mother wrote again to my father and her letter gives a curious insight into a condition of that war, which people in the Second World War believed to be peculiar only to them.

  Hertford House,

  Walton-on-the-Naze.

  August the 25th, 1916

  Dear Harvey,

  I go to the Radium Institute at ten o’clock on Monday the fourth of September, and shall be there every day until 4 p.m. so I hope you will be able to come and see me there. I particularly want to see you. The Institute is in Riding House Street close to the Langham Church, Langham Place, you should have no difficulty in finding it. Let me know which days you will be up. I am not up to much today, as the Zepps were awful in the night, two bombs dropped close to this house, but fortunately neither of them exploded; we heard and saw about 80 dropped; they were over Harwich again, and the Zepps went over this house rather low, the engines being very noisy.

  As soon as we hear them coming we put on dressing-gowns and sit in the front garden, then we can see them and feel safer than in the house.

  Today there has been incessant firing at sea, very very heavy, and we expect Zepps tonight as they generally favour us with two nights in succession, and it is foggy. But Arthur will come round if there are any more tonight, and we have gas masks, etc. to prevent feeling the fumes, but it is very weird when they are about as we muddle round in the dark.

  Please write as soon as you can and say when you are coming. Ursula is better today, but the doctor says these alarms upset her, though London is worse to be in, I imagine.

  Yours affectionately,

  MARY

  (I have no recollection of being served with gas masks, and think these must have been something Arthur obtained for us, though I had no idea there were any in England at the time.)

  The Queen’s were moved to Frinton, and the Worcesters and Gloucesters came in their place. The change was unexpected, but somehow or other Arthur got himself ‘lent’ to the Worcesters and Gloucesters, with the most disastrous result.

  He had been with them but four days when his batman appeared, very pink in the face, with a note for me. It had been written in a hurry, telling me that there had been some ghastly misunderstanding which it was impossible to explain, but his Sam Browne had been removed, and he was now under arrest. He had not a clue what it was all about, he’d done nothing, but would I go to the telephone, ring up the Brigadier and ask for help?

  Privately I was afraid of the Brigadier, whom I always felt I should address as ‘Sir’, and I did not like this job, but I undertook it. The Brigadier was at home, and he received the information in a manner most martial, told me he would be with us shortly, and banged down the receiver.

  ‘I only hope he doesn’t think he is going to stay in this house,’ said Mother, aghast at the prospect.

  ‘Oh no. He’d go to the Marine or the Albion, surely? If he tries, we’ll tell him that Emily has left,’ I said.

  It was evening when the Brigadier walked in in a commanding manner, and with the air that only one who has served with the Madras Pioneers could produce. Everything was under control, above-board and ship-shape. He had interviewed the Colonel, who he thought was mad; he had insisted that Arthur was immediately released, which command had been complied with. He’d be along soon, and would tonight return to the Queen’s. I could not quite fathom what had happened, but Mother said that it was bound to be all right if the Brigadier had taken such action, and the thing to do was not to ask too much. It was a man’s war, anyway, and nothing to do with us.

  But I was dubious. It all seemed rather queer.

  We arranged to marry in the November.

  At this time my father appeared to have drifted apart from me. As a child I had been deeply devoted to both my parents, but now, over-sympathetic with my mother, I felt that he had not helped us as he might over the trouble about our being spies. I very much resented the fact that another woman, now living at the rectory, would be awaiting my mother’s death, which could not be far off. Yet over my coming marriage my father behaved with great generosity, for after discussing my marriage settlement with Arthur he settled £800 on me, which was almost everything he had. He came down to see us about this, a rather unhappy visit, with stormy autumn weather, and all of us gauche with one another, for the old friendliness was dead.

  Food problems were again besetting us. In London Tuesdays were to be meatless days, whilst in the country Wednesday was the allotment. There was a shortage of potatoes, so that we had five potatoless days, which was difficult, for the bread had become most unpleasant, and there was really nothing to eat as a vegetable save mangolds, turnips, and such.

  But on October the first The Bing Boys came to London, and Arthur rushed up to see it, and promised to take me later. George Robey was wonderful, Vi Loraine a joy, and within twenty-four hours all London was singing:

  If you were the only girl in the world,

  And I was the only boy.

  I went up one day to see Mrs. Denham-Cookes, who had commanded the visit. Wedding presents were pouring into the house at Walton, and she gave me a ruby crescent brooch, whilst my sister-in-law, who could have had no imagination (or, as my brother commented, ‘too much’), gave me a silver mustard-pot! Visits to Prince’s Gate were uncomfortable, the only person I could like there being the butler, who was a darling, but I hardly dared say that in case it emphasized my commonness.

  We were arranging to take a furnished house in Frinton, and to give up Hertford House, which would be too much for Mother. She was to live at The Cedars on the front (then a boarding-house) about twenty houses from Thalassa, which I took.

  Arthur had sent me over to get a suitable house, his instructions being that it must be better than the Colonel’s and to hell with the cost! The agent telling me that Thalassa would be billeted if I did not take it, and that the landlord was in a tizzy over this, I offered thirty shillings a week, and to my own huge surprise, got it. It had ten bedrooms, three sitting-rooms, a huge lounge hall, with spacious garden, and faced the greensward.

  Arthur was disappointed that it was cheap, for his mother said that anything cheap was common, so that I felt crushed. I engaged a cook, Mrs. Fanthorpe, a parlourmaid, a housemaid, a tweeny. Arthur’s batman would help, and his old manservant who was in the regiment would come to us as butler. Then he insisted that I must have a personal maid, because Ma had one. I engaged a genteel creature of whom I was afraid, and was dubious of the success of this venture, and how correct I was!

  So I made all the preparations to become rich.

  We were to be married at Frinton church, and the reception was to be at the Beach House Hotel. Mother and I were being flung into multitudinous expenses that we could not afford, yet determined to give the right impression. My wedding dress was five pounds (mercifully I did not realize how inferior it was), and I had made all my own lingerie with Mother’s help, but neither of us would have admitted this, in case we lost prestige, for in those days it was not clever to do things oneself.

  We pretended to be what is euphemistically known as ‘comfortably off’. We made our plans, trying to conceal the fact that we were attempting the impossible, and the night before my marriage we gave a party at the Marine Hotel.

  That afternoon I went to the local pawnshop, and pawned the little silver brushes and boxes which I had collected from childhood. With the money I went to kind old Mr. Barker at the Marine and explained that I wanted to pay for the party myself, and he was to tell Mother only when she came to pay the day after tomorrow. He was very sweet, he looked at me with gentle eyes, I think he guessed how poor I was, but he said nothing.

  Mother and I walked to the hotel that evening, both of us praying that the morrow, my wedding day, would be a ‘good day’, the unhappy phrase which is forced on the fatally sick.

  The night was fair.

  There was the familiar scent of tamarisk and brine, and we spoke little, but that was the last time when we should ev
er be really alone with each other in the dear old fond relationship. In that few minutes’ walk we came closer than ever again in the few weeks that were left to her. The sea beat against the stone wall and searchlights swept the sky. To me it seemed that we parted for ever as we entered the Marine that night.

  I have always thought of it that way.

  Chapter 11

  The wedding day was dense with fog and melancholy with foghorns coming from the sea. But it was a ‘good day’ for Mother. The personal maid who had arrived last night was already making her presence felt in a house which was vainly trying to conceal the narrowness of its means from her. It was with some agility that I got down at six to set her breakfast, pretending that ‘the woman’ had been in! It was maddening that she did not like eggs and was fussy about her toast.

  She then wished to press the wedding dress and did not like the kitchen table. The morning was beset with worries.

  My father arrived at eleven in considerable agitation because his suit had been put by for some years and, growing stouter, he could not imagine how he would kneel without splitting the trousers. What would the Denham-Cookes say if this crisis arose?

  I felt ill. I had a few days ago had a bad attack of influenza, and having got over the worst, we hoped, the doctor suggested I should be buoyed up with brandy. I have never been an ambitious tippler and by midday I was in an inebriated daze.

  In this daze I drove over to Frinton, where it seemed the whole of the British Army were lining the street. The tiny church was already full as I tottered into it, to stand mutely whilst they sang that unending ‘Voice that breathed o’er Eden’, my father on my left, deeply and vigorously bass, and the best man on my right, in a pathetic falsetto. The service started late because the three clergymen had disagreed in the vestry. The local incumbent, the regimental chaplain, and the head chaplain all fighting about which bit of the service the others should take, and apparently all wanting the vital bits for themselves.

  I thought I should drop. Never have lilies shaken more twitteringly than they did that day!

  In the end it passed off reasonably and there was one agonizing moment when I heard an appalling crack beside me and thought my father’s trousers had gone bang; in my agony I let my lilies slip for good. It was really the best man who had been nothing but a nuisance from the first and dropped his prayer book. In the foggy vestry nobody kissed me. I was introduced for the first time to my new brother-in-law Lord Arthur Hill, who had married Mimi, Arthur’s half-sister. It was something of a shock to marry a young man of twenty-five and find you have a brother-in-law advanced into the seventies, but that was what happened. I had never seen more black overcoats with astrakhan collars, and I left that church not realizing that none of my new in-laws intended to honour the reception but returned at once to London.

  I never saw the archway of swords, or the confetti, or the soldiers. In the car Arthur said, ‘I hope you’ll never regret this,’ but I find all gentlemen say that when you marry them, for the same solicitation was repeated by a naval officer (at that very moment playing Pin Pool in Hong Kong) nine years later on.

  The reception was dreary, and it was regrettable that later the officers of the Queen’s hit on the delicious idea of going out on to the greensward and having a game of hockey with their swords, which got them into serious trouble later on with the C.O. who was definitely not amused. I drove away in a Daimler car wearing an impressive matron’s toque, which I prayed would make me look really old. That illusion vanished in the hall when Richard Aldington’s mother said, ‘Darling little Ursula doesn’t look fifteen, does she?’

  I did not kiss Mother goodbye. I couldn’t do it. I hope she understood.

  I passed out just beyond the level crossing. It was all that brandy! My hat fell off, and Arthur put his boot through it in error, so the matron’s toque served no purpose whatsoever. We pushed it out of the window just before we got to Colchester, because it looked so peculiar that we could take it no further with us.

  ‘Dammit, I’ll never get married again,’ Arthur told me as I fainted, recovered, then fainted again, and he whipped a flask out of his pocket. ‘I’ve emptied it five times myself already, now you have a go!’ he suggested.

  Believing that gentlemen always knew best, I did have a go, which only made me worse. We stayed that night at Berners Hotel, where all the older men wore armlets with G.R. on them (George Robey had said, ‘All those jolly decent chaps who wear my initials on their armbands’), for these were men under Lord Derby’s scheme. Early next morning Arthur went off to visit Ma, which was a mistake for they had a shocking row, whilst I went out shopping. Mother had given me two pounds to spend, and I went to Selfridge’s and sent it to her in food parcels, which gave me immense joy. When I came back I was being paged, but as I did not recognize the name as being my own I took no notice, which was the reason why I was very late at Lord Lurgan’s lunch-party, another blot on my unhappy copybook.

  Later that day Arthur and I and the lady’s maid went down to Bournemouth which Ma had insisted was the only place for a respectable honeymoon, and as we had only a very brief leave, we returned the next morning and dined that night at a small dinner-party at Prince’s Gate. Ma did not attend it, and I rather wished my sister-in-law had kept away, for she was no help to me.

  Just when I was breaking down, the kind old butler offered me a pudding and lowered his head close over me. ‘Don’t pay any attention to any of them,’ he whispered.

  I have always been eternally grateful to him for his goodness of heart; he was a darling and the best of the lot, as I have said before.

  On the return journey to Frinton I broached a subject near my heart. We had this large house of ten bedrooms, half of them empty, and I did not want Mother to continue at The Cedars. I wanted to get her into my own house with me. Arthur looked at me and frowned.

  ‘It could not be for very long,’ I said humbly, and then in bald words, the confession I had never made before because it hurt too much: ‘She is dying.’

  He said: ‘Ma’s been dying for years, didn’t you know? Mummy’ll see Ma out.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  He was definite. ‘Ma said you’d try to do this, and it’s no good. This is our home and our home it is going to stay. I’m not having it any other way.’

  I dared not argue.

  We drove home on that bitter night, and on entering the hall found all the servants lined up to wish us well, marshalled by the butler. I wished them anything but well. Arthur shook hands all round, and ordered a bottle of port and another of sherry for the kitchen to drink our health, and I went to my room. Even that was no longer my own, for there was the personal maid wanting to know ‘which evening gown Madam would require’.

  The only consoling note was from Joscelyn. Earlier in the year I had sent him certificates to apply for compassionate leave to come and see Mother. I dared not tell her of this, in case it was refused; now it had been accepted and he was already on his way. He would be back by December.

  When I approached Arthur about this, he agreed to our putting Joscelyn up, for he was in a jovial mood, but within the week some idiot in the mess said to him, ‘So now you’ve got all the family hanging round your neck, haven’t you?’

  That started trouble!

  There was no doubt about it, he had a violent temper, and the first time I saw him go white with rage and throw a decanter across the room, I very nearly collapsed. I had never known that people could behave like that, and when he recovered a trifle I said so.

  ‘But darling nincompoop, that’s nothing!’ said he. ‘One of my ancestors strangled his valet in a rage! A grandsire shot a footman. We’re nice little fellows when you get to know us!’

  He did not understand that a new diamond brooch did not settle a scene of that sort, and felt that I was unreasonable. It all came of that daft country rectory where I had been brought up, and where nobody knew how many blue peas made seven!

  The Times had rai
sed its price to a penny-halfpenny. Ruination, said Mother. Other papers became a penny, and this at the time when all the world was thinking that the war would go on for ever, and believing that the only decent thing it had produced was The Bing Bays are here, with Vi Loraine and George Robey singing:

  If you were the only girl in the world,

  And I was the only boy …

  Food tickets were on the way. Just at first I was confronted with the agonizing experience of trying to housekeep on six guineas a week and feed five servants who ate like horses, and who would not conform to voluntary rationing. The personal maid was the worst. She turned up her nose at margarine, which we felt should cover one meal a day. ‘I’ll teach her!’ said Arthur. ‘Nothing but margarine is to be served in the dining-room.’

  So margarine was served in the dining-room, which alas only made more butter for the kitchen, and set him gibbering with rage. I said that all my life I had dressed and undressed myself, and could see no reason why I could not continue to do it this way. He felt that Ma would think it was wrong if I did not have the personal maid. Nothing, thought I, could be more unpleasant than having her, but I dare not argue.

  In spite of the food troubles, at that very time Whiteley’s were advertising hams at one and eightpence a pound, Christmas cakes from four shillings to five guineas (inscribed with Allied flags and colours), and an enchanting item which intrigued me called an ‘Entente Gateau’, a fresh Genoa cake, decorated with Allied flags or representative colours (one and ninepence and three shillings).

  There was an unfortunate incident when the glass coffee percolator which had been a wedding present blew up at dinner, bursting like a bomb and nearly drenching the butler. This was the first occasion on which I had heard bad language, for until that hour in my girlish innocence I had believed that ‘damn’ and ‘blast’ were the only swear words in existence. I was quickly disillusioned.