VICTORIAN HANGOVER

Chapter 13

Auntie Dick

I was disgusted at being condemned to yet another school, for I was by now longing to get out into the world and into war work as all my contemporaries were doing. I was, to a certain extent, consoled by the fact that my new school was in London. At last, after more than eight long years, I was to return to the London for which I had never ceased to crave.

This school was apparently chosen for me on exactly the same principles as the two previous ones had been; which was nothing to do with the type of school, or standard of education, but merely because my parents happened to know someone connected with it. In this case it was one of the joint Heads, whom my parents had known in her childhood at Hemel Hempstead, and whose father was one of Jack’s godparents. Miss Phillips had recently started a Church Secondary School in collaboration with Miss Moberley Bell, and this was the only school at which I got down to work properly, and got a really good modern education.

The school was, however, only for day girls, there was no boarding accommodation, which meant that I had to live in digs. Auntie Dick, who had a charming house on Campden Hill, within easy reach of the school, was most anxious that I should live with her and Uncle Wynnard, during term time, but Mother would have none of it. She considered Auntie Dick “Worldly”, and preferred that I should live with a painfully respectable and excruciatingly dull and proper Wesleyan widow, and her two appallingly prim daughters.

There had never been any love lost between Mother and Auntie Dick, and quite naturally the latter was deeply hurt and angered at Mother’s refusal of her offer. Had I known of it at the time, no amount of disapproval on Mother’s part would have kept me away from Auntie Dick, I only knew her very slightly, but from my first vision of her I laid my heart at her feet, and it remained there till her death. She never came to stay with us at home; she and Uncle Wynnard had called to see us once, and that had been enough for her. The primitive conditions at home horrified her, as did anything crude and inelegant.

Auntie Dick was one of the most exquisitely lovely people I have ever seen. She was very slender — in fact Mother remarked once in somewhat disparaging tones that she “looked as if she had been pulled through a ring” - with a halo of pale ash-blond curls; her skin was of a transparent pallor, and her eyes were a pale translucent sea-green, with a strikingly dark band of colour round each iris. Her features were clear cut and delicate, with a slight lift of unconscious arrogance. Agnes used to tell me that when Auntie Dick and her younger sister, Auntie Emma, who died before I was born, were out walking together as young girls, they were both so lovely that it was quite the usual thing for passers-by to stop and turn round to stare at them. Judging by photographs, Auntie Emma must have been an exquisite creature too, though I have been told that her hair was a bright corn gold, with a delicate wild rose complexion. Auntie Dick was the pure ice-maiden, and her personality gave the effect of a cold suppressed flame behind the ice. I do not recall that she often spoke or asserted herself in any way, but she had only to enter the room and all eyes turned to her. It was impossible to be aware of anyone else when she was present. She was always completely detached and aloof, a strange, unearthly creature moving among ordinary mortals and making them appear coarse and mundane by comparison. She had a brilliant wit, and a most amusing tongue, when she cared to exert herself, and was also an accomplished pianist and artist. But she never seemed to do anything much, and she never needed to. Her beauty and strange cold radiance were quite sufficient justification for her existence. 

It was enough that she was.

 Uncle Wynnard

Her husband, Uncle Wynnard, was her complete antithesis. He was stout and stocky, with a short black beard, and a robust enjoyment of life. He adored Auntie Dick, and never seemed able to understand how she could have come to marry him. He was a most lively and entertaining person, kindly and warmhearted, and hid a remarkable intellect behind a facade of completely idiotic chatter. His tough appearance was surprisingly belied by his high pitched speaking voice, though he somehow managed to sing among the basses in the Bach choir. The family never appreciated Uncle Wynnard at his true worth, and never attempted to hide from him their conviction that Auntie Dick had thrown herself away on him. This was where Father, together with many others of the family, made a very bad, and as it proved, costly mistake. Uncle Wynnard, though one of the most unassuming of men, held a very high position on the financial staff of the Times, and was, I believe, Financial Editor eventually. No one holding such a position, could have been the fool that the family seemed to consider him, and if only Father had accepted his expert, and readily offered, advice, he would not have suffered the terrible financial losses which left him and Mother almost penniless towards the end of their lives.

Uncle Wynnard. and Auntie Dick had no children, which was another reason for Mother’s disapproval. Auntie Dick was not at all strong and found children exhausting. Her house and ménage were as exquisite as herself, and even on the rare occasions when we three were taken to visit her from Ealing, the atmosphere of her surroundings enchanted me. Of late years Jack has told me that he never liked Auntie Dick. Although at no stage was he ever a rough or clumsy boy, yet she and her surroundings always made him feel as if he were all hands and feet, and she, quite unintentionally, induced in him a severe inferiority complex. He always felt that she was despising him as being a “great rough boy”, though he was never anything of the sort, nor do I believe she ever so considered him. To me she had always shown as much affection as she was capable of showing, and I am sure she was as much aware of the affinity between us as I was. For one thing I was her name sake, and for another I had much the same colouring, though I can never hope to claim a fraction of her looks.

Fairy godparents

Despite the fact that Mother would not agree to my living with them, and how I raged when in later years this came to my knowledge, Uncle Wynnard and Auntie Dick were absolute fairy godparents to me all the time I was at the school in London. Nearly all my half term holidays and Sundays I spent with them, and at their house I revelled in the intellectual and artistic circle in which they moved. It was at their house that I met [Green Mansions] W.H.Hudson, and Leonard Huxley, the father of [Professor of Zoology] Julian and [Brave New World] Aldous, and many others of their ilk. I remember Mr. Hudson as a silent, hawk-faced old man, who looked like a caged wild creature in that elegant drawing room. His eyes had the far-away gaze of those accustomed to great distances, and he seemed to find it difficult to focus either his eyes or his mind on the pettinesses of civilization. Auntie Dick and Uncle Wyrmard had continued the friendship started by my grandmother, and Mr. Hudson seemed happier and more at his ease in their company than in most other houses. After his death, Uncle Wynnard was one of his executors, and was largely responsible for the editing and production of the beautiful definitive collection of his works. He was also an active participant in the erection of the memorial to Mr. Hudson which stands in Hyde Park. I was there at the unveiling. There had been a great deal of controversy about getting Epstein to design the now famous “Rima”, and I shall never forget the hush of dismay that spread over the assembly when it was revealed at the unveiling. A few advanced spirits approved, and applauded but most of the company literally gasped with horror. That must have been in the early 1920's when Epstein was still considered incredibly shocking by the die hards.

Dr. Leonard Huxley was the son of the Professor Huxley, who had been a great friend of the family in the older generation of my grandmother and Sir John Evans, and Leonard was a friend and contemporary of Father, Uncle George and Auntie Dick. He became “Uncle Leonard” to me, and I still treasure a small volume of his poems which he gave me, and in which he had written on the flyleaf a special set of verses commemorating the long association of our families.

It was Auntie Dick and Uncle Wynnard who introduced me to the wonders of Covent Garden Opera, Queen’s Hall and Albert Hall concerts and to the glories of the Bach Choir. It was they who took me to Burlington House to the opening of the Royal Academy, to Lords’, to the Boat Race and to the Tournament at Olympia. We always went everywhere in a style and comfort which in themselves were an unbounded delight to me. They both wore full evening dress on such occasions as demanded it, and even though my plain little wardrobe could not rise to the same heights, I did the best I could and made up for deficiencies by basking in reflected glory.

I believe Auntie Dick’s fingers itched to get me properly dressed, for Mother never had any ideas on that subject, but she was far too tactful to risk annoying Mother by doing so, and thus making things even more difficult for Father. We went everywhere by taxi, and always had the best seats in the house, and under their kindly guidance and teaching I learnt the fundamentals of good taste and intellectual appreciation which have paid dividends during my whole life.

On. fine Sunday mornings Uncle Wynnard , immaculate in morning coat, striped trousers, top hat, spats, lavender gloves and discreet buttonhole, would take me walking in Kensington Gardens by the Round Pond, where we watched the model yachts. He was a great sportsman in many spheres, an accomplished mountaineer, a crack shot. He always shot at Bisley each year and went deer-stalking from the shooting box of friends in the Highlands. He was also an expert judge of cricket and rowing, and an ardent fisherman. His study was packed with guns, fishing rods, alpenstocks, hobnailed boots and gear of every sort. He was also an accomplished music and art critic, and a boyhood friend of Rudyard Kipling, with whom he maintained a lifelong friendship. He had an absolutely prodigious memory, and his conversation and companionship contributed far more to my education than all I ever learnt at school. He could, and did, talk by the

hour on every subject under the sun, and never tired of my eager questions. If from Auntie Dick I learned the refinements and elegancies of life, from Uncle Wynnard I acquired a breadth of outlook and knowledge of every sort and kind, for which I can never be sufficiently grateful.

Yet this was the man, who, because he chose to present a talkative and inconsequent front to the world, and who never asserted himself or gave himself airs, was patronized and mildly sneered at by most of my family. Even after Auntie Dick’s death in 1920 his kindness to me never flagged. Her death broke his life completely, but he knew how I adored her, and I was sufficiently like her to keep something of her alive before his eyes.

I believe Uncle Wynnard and Auntie Dick were anxious to adopt me as their own daughter, and would have arranged for my presentation at Court and a first class Season to follow, but this by no means accorded with Mother’s ideas for one destined to be a missionary. How much she knew of all my doings in their fascinating and stimulating company I couldn’t say, and what Father thought of it all I never knew. One of Father’s nicknames in his family was “Brer Rabbit”, and certainly he had brought the principle of  "he lay low, he say nuffin’ " to a fine art.

Chapter 17

Auntie Dick

One day Miss McGregor came looking for me with a message that Miss Phelps wanted to see me. I at once cast about wildly to try and remember some forgotten sin, but Miss McGregor just looked at me with a grave, kind expression, which sobered me immediately.

I made my way up to Aunt Janey’s room, where she was still in bed. She made me get a chair and sit down beside her, while I became more and more bewildered and vaguely apprehensive. She then told me that she had just received the news of Auntie Dick’s sudden death the previous day. I remember dropping my head in my hands and sitting perfectly still and silent for so long that Aunt Janey reached out and touched me gently to rouse me. No other death of any relation of friend, not even the deaths of my parents, has ever had such a profound effect upon me, I felt as if a part of myself had been torn away.

Aunt Janey then told me that Auntie Dick had merely felt slightly unwell for a couple of days, and had stayed in bed. No undue anxiety was felt, as she was never strong and quite frequently spent a day in bed for a rest. Uncle Wynnard had gone off as usual to the office, leaving her in the competent care of the maids. The cook, an elderly and lifelong retainer, had come up to Auntie Dick’s room for her daily orders, and Auntie Dick had just finished giving directions for dinner when she lay back quite quietly, and was gone. There had been no long illness, no distressing symptoms; she had passed out of the world with the same aloof and self-contained elegance with which she had passed through it.

I saw her in her coffin. She looked utterly lovely and quite unchanged, for the pallor of death was no different from her natural pallor in life. Her beautiful pale hair and exquisite features gave her the aspect of an angel in a Church window. The sight of death was not new to me. Mother had broken me in to it at a very early age, when she had sent me to see Dr. Bruce after his death while I was still quite a child, and in subsequent years she had sent me to see one and another of our departed friends in the village. I never liked these visits, but in later years I have been thankful for this early initiation when I have witnessed the shock and horror of my contemporaries, who had not had my uncompromising upbringing, on their first sight of death.

Uncle Wynnard sent all her lovely clothes to me. There were several trunks full, and they lasted me for years. The amazing thing though so closely did I feel bound to her that it did not seem strange at the time - was that every single item of her wardrobe fitted me perfectly. Even her shoes and tailor made costumes fitted me as if they had been made to measure on me. I loved her clothes, and was overjoyed to find I could wear them all, chiefly because they were hers, but also because they were of a style and quality that had never come my way before.

She had also left all her own money to me. It was left for Uncle Wynnard’s use during his lifetime, to come to me at his death, but the kind old man made it over to me before his death, and although it was not a vast fortune, it went far towards establishing my financial independence.

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