Childhood in Chesham
The house where I was born was in Newtown, Chesham – the bit that was added to the original town, so most of the houses were of a similar type, about six in a row, and most of them had the front door opening straight into the room. Our group of five houses were really grand as we had a hall, mind you it was only about 3’ wide, but we also had a bay window. How’s that for being one up on the majority?
I will describe the house starting at the road. There was a footpath for pedestrians, then up four steps to the front door. The small garden was mostly grass. The ‘front room’ was narrow, but there was a fireplace, the fire always lit on Sundays. The curtains at the window were made of cretonne with the pattern on one side only. The patterned side was always facing out, so passers by could see the fancy side.
The next room was the kitchen where there was the cooking range. This range had to be black-leaded every day and the fender and fire irons kept shining brightly. Mother was a good cook and produced satisfying meals even when funds were low.
The next room was the scullery, which was narrower to allow for a path down the outside. In the scullery there was another cooking range, which was never used, and a copper in the corner. This copper was to boil the linens and clothes on Mondays. The fire had to be lit and the water put in the tub by the pail and the clothes added and stirred occasionally. By mid afternoon it was ready to be taken out and put through the mangle. Anything not suitable to be boiled had to be rubbed by hand or scrubbed on a board. Mother made use of the hot water from the copper by swilling down the path at the side. This path was made of bricks and would get slippery if not kept clear, so she would swill the hot water down and scrub vigorously with the bass broom.
The next room down (reached from outside) was the woodhouse, used for coal and wood. And then came the outside toilet (wc = water closet). This was a flush cistern, high up on the wall, to take advantage of gravity. This room was always kept white washed. The seat of operation was a wooden platform with the appropriate hole in the middle, and the other necessity was squares of newspaper on a string hanging from a nail.
The next thing was up four steps to the garden, which was a good length, as it was for most houses, so that crops could be grown to feed the family.
There were three bedrooms upstairs, each with a fireplace, but the fire was not lit except when there was illness. We had a candle for lighting upstairs. Each bedroom had a washstand and the crockery to go with it.
My mother served in her brother’s fruit and vegetable shop, and she was young when she got married in 1903 and had her first baby. Like a lot of young people, they did not have a lot of money; so her sister in law said it would be a good idea if Mother did some of her washing for which she offered to pay two pence a dozen. They were the big things like sheets, and everything had to be just so! Later on Mother started taking in lodgers and continued to do so for many years (until the day she died).
I was a very puny baby. One neighbour took a look at me and said’ “Do you reckon you’ll be able to rear her?” As my brother Horace was ten years older than me, I did not get to know him until he was grown up.
Horace left school when he was 14 and started work at Mash and Austin, who had a big farm and orchards growing apples, mostly Bramley. They also had a large farm at Little Marlow and offices in London. Mash and Austin supplied many of the large hotels in London and also took produce to the big liners that docked at Southampton. When Horace had been working there for a year or two, he was ordered to take one of the smaller lorries, on his own, to Little Marlow for something. He was delighted with the idea of his first trip on his own, and he called in at home to see if I would like to go for a ride with him. I thought that was very exciting. I don’t remember much about the trip, but I was told about it afterwards. Evidently he hit a man riding a bicycle and the cycle flew up to the windscreen and I caught a blow. When we got home, Mother heard us coming and Horace was saying, “Don’t cry Duckie”, so that scared her. However, Horace offered to carry me down to the doctors, while everyone was saying, “Don’t let her fall asleep.” The result was two swollen black eyes.
Horace went on to become one of the best and most reliable drivers in the firm, and often had to go straight to the liners at Southampton with the produce. Mother and I went with him on one such trip and we were able to go aboard the Mauritania – one of the biggest at the time. The daughter at the Little Marlow farm was very struck on Horace and in consequence, she and her parents often invited his little sister – me – for a holiday there. I enjoyed it very much seeing the working horses, and wondered quite a bit about the two-seater lavatory in the garden shed. In spite of the efforts of Ida and her parents, Horace did not take the bait.
The other thing I remember about my brother is seeing him going out in the evenings as a very fashionable young man with a straw boater and a walking stick, used as an accessory to twirl around, and he wore spats.
Horace always spent some time in his bedroom, where he made wireless sets from instructions in a magazine. One day he let me put on the headphones and listen. Amid the crackles and noises I heard some muffled talking and I thought it was wonderful. He shouted down to Mother that he ‘had the Ague’. She hurried up to him thinking he was in distress, but he meant that, with delicate adjusting of the cat’s whisker, he had managed to contact a station in the Hague in Holland.
Mother was a very good housewife. With all the scrubbing and shining, she still found time for hobbies. She made the traditional rag rugs, and lovely paper flowers – roses and curly-headed chrysanthemums and carnations in particular. I still remember how to fold and curl the petals. The results were appreciated when she gave them for a sale of work at the chapel.
She was a good cook and made the most of what was available. She bought half a pig from a neighbour at one time. Many people had a fine mesh cage hanging outside the house where the food remained fresher for longer. Chicken was a luxury only being around at Christmas. For weeks before Christmas Mother would buy and save something towards making Christmas puddings. Having made them and put a saucer on top, and tied securely in a pudding cloth, she would cook them all day in the copper in the scullery. At the end of the day she would put them on the wide rim of the copper to cool off. She always made six or more. Supper was more of a meal especially at weekends and Christmas, when for grown-ups at any rate, it was cold meat and parsnips and potatoes and plenty of mince pies. Eggs had to be preserved in isinglass, but they were never as good as new laid.
My Dad was never much good at growing vegetables, but my Uncle Will was. He lived a short distance away, and I often went to get a pottle of potatoes and other veg. There was never much money to spend of presents at Christmas, but I always hung my sock at the end of the bed on Christmas Eve, and was happy to find a chocolate mouse plus an orange and apple and a shiny penny. One wonderful day I had a doll. She had a beautiful face and hair, and Mother made clothes for her including a cloak and a cape and I had a lot of pleasure with her. Another toy I had was a cut-out book of cardboard doll and clothes that I could cut out and fix on her, changing the dresses and coats according to my games.
The house was lit by gas with a light available in every room, but we always used candles upstairs. Cooking was done on the kitchen range and this was the only heating in the house.
When I was very young I caught scarlet fever. This was a serious disease and in most cases the patient was moved to an isolation hospital and the house had to be fumigated. Mother objected when they started to take me away, so they accepted her pleas when she said she would keep me in just two rooms. They probably gave another squirt of disinfectant and let it go at that. Nobody else caught the disease from me.
At some period in my young days, I was given two pence a week. For this, I did a bit of dusting or such like, but I got the joy of spending my two pennies. The decisions often took a long time, choosing between sherbet dabs or gobstoppers or liquorice strings or how about a jar of lemonade powder to mix our own lemonade drink!
Another event I enjoyed was when we could buy cakes from the cake shop. The small cakes were one penny each or seven for sixpence, and I loved selecting my favourites from the arrangement displayed.
We played many games; each one seemed to have a season to be popular. Sometimes it was marbles, another time hopscotch, or hoops, or skipping, or spinning tops. Sometimes when it was getting dark we would play “Moonlight, starlight, the bogey won’t come out tonight”. Many children devised their own entertainment. Some of the boys made a form of truck. They got a soap box from the grocer and some wheels that had been thrown away, and with a bit of string on the front, they had their own truck which they used for carting things about – sometimes a little brother or sister! Sometimes they raced in them, with many grazed knees to prove it. When boys got older they were happy to make their own music. The songs and tunes from the music halls in London filtered down through the country and they were melodies that could be taken up and whistled or played on the mouth-organ or Jew’s harp. I loved to hear it!
When I was five years old I started school at Townsend Road in the infants section and I was very happy there. My granddad lived close by, and when my mother had been visiting him, she would meet me when I left school and give me a ride home on the carrier of her bicycle. We both wobbled a lot but never fell off. This Granddad Hearn was a fine looking man and I never saw him unless he was wearing his bowler hat, indoors as well as out. My other Granddad Charles Reading went to America during the gold rush, as a barber, but I don’t think he stayed very long. I never saw either of my Grandmas.
After infant’s school moved to the juniors. It was the same building but with a different teaching staff. I remember the head mistress as she had two thumbs on one hand. At eleven years old I went to White Hill school. At all the schools we were taught to have good manners and respect for other people. My exam results were always very good. Discipline was very strict, and slaps on the hand were common. One teacher slapped everyone in the class because no one would own up to talking while she was out of the room – I hope her arm ached! I never had the cane, but several children did, and some of them got another hiding when they got home, for doing something that deserved the cane. As well as lessons we had exercise and sports like hockey, netball and stool ball. I was in the school choir and we won several shields for beating the opposition at trials.
At home we had a piano and I was sent to have piano lessons, where I was always given a new piece to learn before the next week. Mother said I must always do one hour’s practice each evening before I went out to play. Now is the time for me to confess to my misdemeanours. Hearing my friends at play outside, and having done half an hour or so of piano practice, I quietly moved the hands of the clock forward about ten minutes, and Mother thought I had done my time, so I went out to play, always remembering to put the clock hands back again when I came in. I was never caught on this trick. In spite of all this, I became a good pianist.
Mother often sat in the front room by the window to watch the traffic that came down Nashleigh Hill and then to the left hand bend on to the town. At one time she watched a motorcycle and sidecar come down the hill and straight across the road. Nobody could understand it, but since then I know how difficult it is to drive a sidecar combination round a left hand bend.
Easter Sunday was a very special day because we could start wearing our summer dresses and it was extra special if we had something new, be it only a ribbon. Sundays were days when no work should be done, and I know that Mother was horrified when someone told her they had seen my cousins doing some knitting on a Sunday.
I left school when I was fourteen and went to work in a tailoring establishment where they made men’s suits. I had to learn the proper tailoring trade from the beginning. For the first year I was paid five shillings a week; the second year seven shillings and six pence; and the third year ten shillings a week. There were two sections in the workroom, each headed by a man. One was named Tom Perkins and the other was Fred Jerome – always known as Jerry. From the windows of the workroom we could notice people walking in the street below, so we saw and passed opinions amongst ourselves. There was one young married woman who had a child and we could not decide whether she was pregnant again. One of the girls asked her if she was expecting and she said, very seriously, “Yes, Charlie has sinned again.” She was from a very religious family. Poor Charlie!
I joined a cycling club. It was good exercise and great fun. And that is another story!
