Where Charity Begins

 

The manner in which we view those in need has changed drastically in half a century and that’s almost a matter for some rejoicing, even among those who definitely feel so-so about charity to begin with.   I should emphasise that I am among those feeling so-so, in fact very much so.  This is not because I disapprove of helping those in need but more on account of a very unpleasant experience with those dispensing measures of altruism and generosity many years ago.  

I was living in a damp Paddington basement with my three-year-old son, not one of those houses owned by the infamous Peter Rachman but one owned by a landlord in many ways similar, Herbert Mortiboy.    This was a time when pre-school education was considered to be of vital importance and keen young mothers were urged on every side to ensure that their under fives were attending the most desirable pre-schools where Early Reading Programmes abounded and they learned to tie their shoe-laces.  The awful alternative was something called Day Care run by the local council where the queues for acceptance were endless and tied shoe-laces were unheard of.  I definitely wanted the former for Patrick and the daily sessions at Aunty Moira’s Nursery School nicely coincided with my part time job.  The problem was that at the time I could not really afford the elevated fees.   You definitely paid through the nose, as my mother would say – and maybe did say - for tied shoelaces.

Someone suggested that I apply for financial help via a well-known aid agency.   The finer details of the organisation have become lost over time and all I now remember is that it was somehow connected with the Royal Engineers and had been suggested because of my father’s war service.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was not required to descend into the depths of Chatham or Maidstone or Gillingham for the required interview, but was instead directed to a rather plush office in Mayfair.   My evaluator was a ferocious woman with natural voice projection and an impressive title and I only wish I could recall her full name.  I will call her Lady Shout-a-Lot.    She was ably assisted by a non-titled minion, tall and thin and slightly stooped and very much in awe of her aristocratic colleague.

I had spent a lot of time on my letter of application.  It was typed on white quarto paper, spelled and punctuated perfectly and this Lady Shout-a-Lot now waved at me in a most threatening manner announcing - `So you own a typewriter I see.’   Her assistant clasped her hands together in horror and echoed ….. `a typewriter’.     They managed to make it sound like a serious offence which was odd. 

I was then allowed to re-iterate the reasons why I needed financial help from them over the next few months or perhaps, heaven forbid, even one year.    After listening with an air of impatience my titled interrogator said in a tone of some triumph - `And you have included a telephone number in your contact details – am I to assume that you also have a telephone?’    At this the subservient subordinate very nearly choked on her next sharp intake of breath repeating `- a telephone!’   

I nervously explained the concept of shared hallway telephones in the rooming houses that proliferated West London at that time but the blank look in their eyes convinced me that this was a notion neither of them was at all familiar with.  Perhaps they had never ventured into the dark and dingy streets of Paddington and Bayswater.

I don’t now recall the finer details of the remainder of the interview, such as it was.   I do remember, however, the next prime demand thrown in my direction by she of the cut glass accent - `Miss Hendy, explain exactly how fond you are of the child.’    This was most unexpected and met of course with an embarrassed silence whilst I fumbled nervously through the various responses I might give.    Lady Shout-a-Lot did not like silences and she impatiently repeated the sentence, reformed as a question - `Exactly how fond are you of this child?’  

It was at this juncture that I simply burst into tears and was unable to say anything further.   Meanwhile my aristocratic persecutor explained with some relish that it was all very well to sit there crying but she could hardly condone handing over any of The Organisation’s precious funds to someone who owned both a typewriter and a telephone and what’s more lived close to central London.  Neither she nor her assistant owned typewriters, nor did they live as centrally as I did.  But even more importantly I seemed incapable of making the sensible decision to give up my child to a family who would be able to give him those educational advantages I seemed to think he needed.

I can’t remember what happened next and whether I stopped crying for long enough to say something flippant or cryptic before I left.  Somehow I doubt it.  I do know that since that afternoon when I was so thoroughly reduced to tears in that Mayfair office, I have viewed all charities with great suspicion.   Recently I was cautiously pleased to be told how much they have changed in the intervening years. 

A FURTHER WORSHIP .......

 

As befits a great cathedral city, Canterbury is of course associated with a number of writers of whom Geoffrey Chaucer is the most immediately obvious.    Admittedly I found him mostly incomprehensible until in the mid 1990s a friendly English Literature teacher engaged in revealing the joys of The Canterbury Tales to a group of 8-10year-olds (who appeared not to be having the problems with the writer that I had) showed me how to crack the Middle English code.   Once accomplished I realised that it’s relatively easy to become addicted to the works of someone born as long ago as the fourteenth century.    

The poet Patience Agbabi who lives in Gravesend with her family cites Chaucer as a major influence on her own work so clearly he was never quite as impenetrable to her as he was to me ensuring she became addicted long before I did.

Christopher Marlowe was born in Canterbury and attended the King’s School, going from there to Cambridge on a scholarship.  Strangely little is known about his life although he is reputed to have been a spy and he was killed in a tavern brawl in 1593 at the age of only 29.  

Another famous King’s School old boy was William Somerset Maugham who was brought up in his clergyman uncle’s family in Whitstable.  It’s claimed that in his autobiographical novel Of Human Bondage, Whitstable becomes Blackstable and Canterbury, Tercanbury.   H.G. Wells who I recently learned is another Kentish writer was also prone to somewhat unimaginatively disguising place names.  He hailed from Bromley but in The New Machiavelli calls it Bromstead.   Before he began to write full time he was a teacher like yet another Bromley writer, Richmal Crompton author of the Just William books.  She was the Classics mistress at Bromley High School for Girls and lived locally in Cherry Orchard Road where she seemed to be able to combine writing with teaching reasonably effortlessly.

Poet Wendy Cope who I only came across a week or two ago was born in Erith.  Like Wells and Crompton she was drawn to teaching and taught for years before concentrating completely on writing.  It’s definitely true these days that most writers will need something other than their writing with which to support themselves but possibly this was not quite so crucial in the past.

One particularly acclaimed writer who found the Kentish countryside to provide a great deal of inspiration for his work, is H.E. Bates who lived in an old granary in Little Chart for 40 years.  He was apparently a very keen gardener and his home was renowned for his ability to turn acres of rough ground into a riot of colour.  He is said to have written a number of gardening books.  

I was recently told that Maisie Stone creator of Annie Violet the Story of an Edwardian Servant Girl is from the Gravesend area and lived locally for a number of years.   I haven’t yet read it but a few days ago I read, and enjoyed  Gravesend Girl Jennifer Barraclough’s just published novella, Cardamine from Overcliff Books.

My search for Kentish writers, most particularly those of North Kent, and even more particularly of the Gravesend area, turned up some interesting information even if not all of it is relevant.

Apparently R.M. Ballantyne lived in Ramsgate researching for The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands …. Frances Hodgeson Burnett based The Secret Garden on a house she rented in Rolvenden ….. Sir Philip Sidney, Elizabethan poet lived at Penshurst Place ….. Frederick Forsyth was born in Ashford and went to school in Tonbridge …..  George Orwell lived in Paddock Wood during his hop picking sojourns …..  John Evelyn lived at Sayes Court in Deptford which is sometimes seen as London and sometimes as North Kent, depending upon the view of the individual ……  TS Eliot wrote Part III of The Wasteland in Margate whilst recovering from a nervous breakdown.

And there are certain to be more from Gravesend lurking in the dusty corners of the world-wide-web.

A WORSHIP OF WRITERS

Apparently it was as long ago as the fifteenth century that collective nouns emerged as being all the rage.   We are all familiar with a Gaggle of Geese, a School of Fish and a Pride of Lions but many equally colourful terms have been lost over the superseding centuries.     Few of us would be equally familiar with a Smack of Jellyfish, a Business of Ferrets or an Impatience of Wives.   I found myself particularly taken with a Rascal of Boys and could almost see the exasperating bunch of them – I certainly could hardly wait to resurrect a Worship of Writers!   Along with a Gang of Labourers and a Sentence of Judges it does seem an inordinately apt piece of jargon.  

Writers, would-be-writers and once-were-writers are everywhere of course but from time to time over the years it is those of Kent I find myself to be particularly drawn to.   The county has spawned a great many outstanding wordsmiths over the centuries.   Despite Mr Jingle’s observation in The Pickwick Papers, that Kent was primarily known for its apples, cherries, hops and women, that is not altogether accurate. 

Dickens was the first local writer of note that I became familiar with and this was precisely because so much of his work was set in the countryside around me, the towns and villages I already knew well and his characters reliably could be found favouring the very same taverns and ale houses supported by members of my own family.   This admiration of all things to do with Dickens was fostered by local schools so that there were few North Kent children who were not completely comfortable with the early life of Dickens by the time they were eight or nine years old even if they were not yet mature enough to read him for themselves.   Primary school excursions in the final term of the school year had already ensured that most of us knew about the little row of infant graves in the churchyard of St James Church, Cooling that we thereafter identified as Pip’s Graves, giving us relatively painless access into Great Expectations and we certainly became more and more familiar with A Christmas Carol each year at the appropriate time.  So firmly was Charles Dickens linked with the local area that I was surprised as I grew older to find him also inextricably connected to London and even more startled to learn he had actually completed David Copperfield in Broadstairs which to me at the time seemed a great distance from the Thames Estuary.

Eventually I discovered John Buchan also favoured Broadstairs as a writing environment and produced The Thirty-Nine Steps whilst convalescing there.  In fact the steps down to the sea from North Foreland provided inspiration for the title.   Considering all that maybe it wasn’t too bad a place despite all the unpleasant things my mother had to say about it but it was never going to be listed among my favourites.  I was always much more comfortable in Ramsgate and Margate so when I found that well known writer, Frank Muir who I greatly admired, was actually born in Ramsgate I of course immediately read his autobiography – A Kentish Lad.   Later I learned that he was in error with the title and it should have been A Lad of Kent since Ramsgate is definitely east of the Medway.   Perhaps that simply didn’t matter.

Another Man of Kent, Arthur Thorndike, lesser-known brother of the famous actress Sybil hailed from Rochester and used the Romney Marsh as the setting for his Doctor Syn books.   I have never read these books but apparently Dr Syn was the vicar of of Dymchurch parish by day and the leader of a gang of smugglers by night, and known as The Scarecrow.   I’m told that in Dymchurch there is still a Day of Syn festival during each August of even numbered years where locals in costume re-enact scenes from the books.   They sound worth reading don’t they?

Over time I have become increasingly fond of the great Romney Marsh and delighted that it is really and truly part of Kent, if somewhat distant from Northfleet and Gravesend.   I fully expected to find that one of my favourite childhood writers, Monica Edwards was actually from one of the little marshland villages and disappointed to learn that she was in fact born in Belper which is near Derby.   She certainly wrote very convincingly of the area so I refuse to believe that she had no connection with the marsh at all. 

With Monica still lingering in mind it was reassuring to learn that Dymchurch was a favoured holiday destination for E (Edith) Nesbit and that she lived for several years at Halstead where she first devised the idea for The Railway Children.   The local station was originally called Halstead for Knockholt and became Knockholt in 1900.  Although her writing for children is Edwardian in nature for the majority of young readers then and now it is more than stimulating, Edith herself caused a great deal of comment and gossip whilst living on the Marsh.   Her domestic situation would be considered scandalous even by today’s standards but in the early nineteen hundreds must have caused endless comment across the marshland villages.   It is said that some time passed before St Mary’s parishioners would allow her grave to be indicated in any way.   This was a pity because by the time she died the more disreputable aspects were well and truly in the past and she was contentedly married to a decent, doting man, Thomas Terry Tucker, who gave her his total love and attention.  His enduring love must have felt quite unfamiliar after years of marriage to Hubert Bland who demanded a great deal and gave very little to the relationship other than the children of his various mistresses some of whom were dutifully brought up by the ever-faithful Edith.

Noel Coward also lived on the marsh at one time but when his house was requisitioned by the army during WW2 he moved on to St Margaret’s Bay, Dover having purchased a house aptly named White Cliffs.  He eventually sold White Cliffs to Ian Fleming who used it as a weekend cottage and did a fair amount of writing there.   Various references to Kent appear in his books including the local golf club in Goldfinger, although renamed. 

I very much wanted to find writers with more direct links to Gravesend and I spent a lot of time searching for them, largely without success.  Strangely I even failed to find any writing groups, get togethers for those interested in writing although there were plenty of people who will help you with your writing if that’s what you want, ever helpful and checking spelling and sentence structure.   Do the residents of Gravesend and its environs not encourage writers?   It was almost discouraging enough to turn me back in the direction of Dickens.  But casting him firmly aside because he gets altogether too much mentioning without really trying, I found that Joseph Konrad meandered in and around the town when he was busy producing Heart of Darkness and seemed in fact quite familiar with the place.  The town is given more than a casual mention in the book.   That was immediately heartening of course and I can’t think why I wasn’t aware of it when I first read the book as a teenager, possibly I thought he was referring to another more exotic Gravesend perhaps the one closer to New York.  

Eventually I came across Angela Young’s Hollow Victory which I rather enjoyed, particularly her descriptive passages about the town and the river.   I also enjoyed J.J. Irwin’s Once a Boy which is a memoir about growing up in a house in Waterdales in the 1950s and full of reminiscences that are immediately familiar to any of us growing up nearby at the same time.   Then I found all the detailed booklets by Alex Pavitt concerning his own memories of the local area of his childhood including fascinating history of the various streets and shops.  His photos and the illustrations within add a great deal of extra interest to these jam-packed volumes.   Lynda Smith’s book on Rosherville Gardens, The Place to Spend a Happy Day is also an informative read.  

Try as I might though I could find little or no fiction other than Hollow Victory mentioned above, which was disappointing.   However, before I turned somewhat reluctantly back towards Dickens, I was somewhat comforted by the fact that Jennifer Barraclough, who grew up in one of what I most definitely regarded as the very grand houses on The Overcliff is still writing.  She is most definitely from Gravesend and what’s more her last book was set on the marshes close to Gravesend and called You Yet Shall Die.  I’m not completely sure what she is writing at the moment but it’s certain to be worth reading!