A LONDON FAMILY 1870-1900 by Molly Hughes. Penny Dolan

Bookshelves, like time capsules, give glimpses of past lives, stories and enthusiasms.

Decluttering, I came across a title my mother inherited from her oldest brother: A LONDON GIRL OF THE EIGHTIES by Molly Hughes. The merry, positive tone, read many decades before, did not feel ‘Victorian’ at all. 

This time, after a couple of chapters, I started looking for information on Molly Hughes. Back then, the task would have needed a bus ride to the public library before I could even begin. Now, ‘Molly’ simply appeared on my screen. 

I discovered that my book was, in fact, the middle title of a trilogy. Molly Hughes had written all three during her retirement, living in a cottage in Cuffley, Hertfordshire. Intrigued, and hoping that Molly’s memories might help with one of my own fictitious characters, I placed an order for the trilogy,

A LONDON FAMILY 1870-1900, the full second-hand trilogy, arrived on the front step, 

And then? I read them all.

A LONDON CHILD OF THE SEVENTIES, pub 1934.

Molly wrote her autobiography to show that ‘Victorian children did not have such a dull time as is usually supposed,’ and her own energy and appreciation of life seem the opposite of what the straight-laced term ‘Victorian’ once suggested.

Her parents, Tom and Mary Thomas, and their family led a quiet, respectable middle-class life in a three-storey house in Canonbury Park, North London. 'We were just an ordinary, suburban, Victorian family, undistinguished ourselves and unacquainted with distinguished people,' says Molly.

Tom, her father, is a stockbroker in the City. He and Mary are very aware of the flow of money, and the need to live according to their social class. Tom declares that ‘a settled income has its attractions possibly, but it can never be the fun of an unsettled one,’ letting the family enjoy the spending any windfall that comes their way, while living as cheaply as possible in between. 

Despite the optimism, daily life is not without problems. Mary, his wife, seems to manage the home without permanent servants or nursery help, and worries about afternoon visitors who stay until they must be offered food when nothing is left in the pantry. The family willingly  manage,avoiding parties and costly social obligations, although Molly describes her mother telling an over-long visitor how lovely she finds sitting in the dark, looking out at the street-lights. The visitor left,unaware Mary was concealing the results of an unpaid gas bill.

Tom and Mary clearly took pride in their four sons but, when Mary’s fifth baby proved a daughter, she was so delighted she leapt out of bed to see her, and made to lie down promptly for the sake of her health. Molly, as a result, always felt that, like Beatrice, a 'merry star’ had danced at her birth and, despite being the youngest, always felt loved and encouraged in whatever she wanted to do.

Each of her four brothers had a different character: the oldest, Thomas, was good at his studies, including Latin; the second - Vivian known as Dym - was quick at maths, science and had a secret love of poetry; the third, Charles, was only interested in art, painting and churches, while the youngest, Barnholt, tagged along after his brothers or lived in a world of his own.

The children were given a space of their own: a large third-floor room with a fire, a carpet, an ottoman, pictures that they liked and a window-seat that looked down and across the road junction. With few toys, they made use of a huge box of blocks, books and bits of furniture, and damaged toy soldiers to stage interesting battles and strategy games, along with cloaks, hats and dressing up clothes for acting out dramas and stories. The children had pens and ink for writing, paint & paper for drawing and sketching – a useful skill at a time when cameras were not available – as well as playing cards, all sorts of board games and a collection of much-loved, much-read story books. In addition, each boy had a shelf for their own interests and box of treasures, and Molly would surely have had one herself too.

Molly writes about visits to all sorts of amusements: the Boat Race; the Diving Bell at the Polytechnic, displays at the Agricultural Hall, or tickets to see Irving in ‘The Bells’, re-enacted at home, She also describes the older boys secretly daring each other to roof-high climbing challenges, or taking young Barnholt, disguised as Guy Fawkes, on a street-corner begging venture with a barrel-organ grinder, and other hidden activities. Molly describes many of these trips and incidents as well as if she had been present but she and her mother often stayed at home, whether from choice, because of Molly's youth or because of the cost. 

Occasionally, the boys did include Molly: one afternoon, knowing she longed to take a bus ride, they smuggled her outside, up the ladder on the back of the bus, across the sloping roof and in beside the driver at the front of his horse-drawn bus. The boys also managed to divert their mother’s attention from the mud on their delighted sister’s shoes on their return. The book gives a remarkable picture of the sibling relationships; while Molly herself is eager to learn from her brothers, they in turn are eager she should not grow up as one of those despised ‘silly girls’ with no sense in her head.

Religious observance is still important or expected. On Sundays the whole family walk almost two miles to St Paul’s Cathedral for the service with its hour-long sermon and then back again, with occasional other churches to add variety. Only the glorious sound of the organs and the beauty of the choral music made the constant church-going bearable, says Molly. 

Molly's balance of topics in these books can be slightly idiosyncratic, but that also tells the reader what matters to the writer. For example, one chapter describes all the packing and preparation needed for a family trip to Cornwall, followed by a description of the whole journey by steam trains from St Pancras to Penzance. 

The Thomas family are visiting Reskadinnick, near Camborne, which Molly describes as ‘more than a mere home or house or farm.’ Built on land owned by her grandfather, who had been a mining-prospector all over the world, the secure and comfortable family home is managed by Tony, his daughter and Molly’s ‘golden aunt’. These chapters give the reader  a sense of the whole Cornish coastal setting, before mass tourism hits the landscape. That beauty and the carefree life in and around the house are clearly idyllic moments for Molly, her mother and all the family.

Gradually. though, the children get older. The boys are sent to school: Thomas to his father’s old school in Shrewsbury and the three younger boys to the Merchant Taylor School in London. Molly goes to school each day, and for a while all seems settled. Then, suddenly, on the final pages, after a diversion about the dreadful London smogs, tragedy strikes: their father is killed, and Molly's childhood is over.


A LONDON GIRL OF THE EIGHTIES, pub 1936.

After her father’s death, and its financial impact, Molly’s education has even more importance. Along with her friend Winnie, a kindred spirit, she studies for and passes the Oxford Senior Local Examination. This award was not enough to help Molly with her next ambition, that of becoming a pupil at the North London Collegiate School for Ladies. Fortunately, Tony, Molly’s beloved ‘golden aunt’, offers to pay her fees. Molly entrance is barred at the last moment: every pupil, no matter how knowledgeable, must be able to sew a buttonhole. Fortunately, after a weekend of practising, Molly is allowed to take her self-sewn button-hole along, and starts her first term.

The North London Collegiate was the first academic school for girls in London and was led by the famous headmistress Miss Buss who, with Miss Beale, was one of a pair of great protagonists for female education. In addition to the usual subjects, the rigorous timetable included the study of Maths, Science, Latin and Greek, although Molly's descriptions of the classes do not sound as startlingly exciting as she or we would wish. Aware of the prohibitive fees at NLCS, Buss also founded the less exclusive Camden School for Girls in 1871.

Molly was eager to earn her living by teaching, so she took up one of the places at the first teacher-training college in Cambridge, gaining a BA degree. As Molly writes about this first keen, excited but inexperienced cohort, she conveys a sense of the buzz and excitement of the time. Along with Molly, the students are all keen to learn and to help each other with their practice and visits, and talk about the methods of education, including the new European ideas.

Growing up with four brothers had definitely helped Molly become a strong-minded, capable and enthusiastic young woman. At the age of twenty-five, she was invited to take on the role of teacher-educator at Bedford College, London. Her work there, based on all the discussions in Cambridge, led to the inclusion of the history and theory of education, childhood development, classroom practice and other subjects that formed the familiar curriculum in colleges of education during the 20th century.

An aside: Molly’s romping style, and the successful outcome of her story in A LONDON GIRL might have been bitter reading for my mother. Her father, an old soldier, refused to sign the form granting her a place at the local grammar school, possibly because of the cost of the uniform. Instead, she stayed on, up in the top floor of the local authority school, taking a typing course instead. Not so long after, she ha joined the WAAF, and was working as a typist at Bomber Command.

A LONDON HOME OF THE NINETIES, pub 1937.

This last book in the trilogy, is about Molly’s marriage to Arthur Hughes, a barrister, after a ten year engagement. Molly, of course, (pictured below) knew she had to give up her work on marriage, so much of this book is about the work of managing their home in Ladbroke Grove, the birth of their first beloved daughter, and later, the arrival of their three boys. After Arthur's early death, Molly returned to teaching, eventually becoming a schools inspector and writer, living in a cottage in Cuffley.

As a whole, the LONDON FAMILY trilogy is a touching and complex portrayal of late Victorian family life, and has more in common with the liveliness of Nesbitt’s fictional families than I had expected, as well as revealing societal norms and changes during and since this period. 

Copies of A London Child may also be available from Persephone Books, with the charming cover below, titled '1 Canonbury Park North, Islington' and drawn by Ann Usborne.

An additional oddment: the hardback book that arrived here unseen was, to my surprise, a deft example of late century thriftiness. Someone had taken the trouble of rebinding the soft, original and unused Oxford paperback of A LONDON FAMILY, creating a sturdy cloth-covered hardback instead.  The front and back covers of the original paperback, with all the illustration and lettering, had been smoothly secured to the grey cloth binding, though they did not have the charm of the Persephone image above. Somehow, the neat practicality of the new binding felt very appropriate for Molly's determined account of her life.


Penny Dolan.

All Women's History Matters by Janet Few

 

Here on the History Girls’ website you will read posts about women’s history, posts about the history of women and sometimes, accounts of the lives of individual women. If you are a woman reading this, have you told your own story? Every woman’s life story is part of the fabric of women’s history, no story is too ‘ordinary’, no story is boring or irrelevant. History is weighted in favour of men; it is important to redress the balance.

Writing your life story can be a daunting and for some, a painful experience. At best, we relive life’s less than wise decisions and teenaged embarrassments, at worst, we confront traumas of the past that may have been left buried. Every woman owes it to herself to record an account of her life, the achievements and the hardships alike. For most of us, it is not going to become a best-seller, maybe no one will read it but the writing itself is a satisfying and cathartic process. Your story is about so much more than you, it is also about the history of the communities that you lived in, the schools you attended, the people whose lives you have touched. In a fast-changing society, the lifestyles of our childhoods seem like another world to subsequent generations.

 

Everyone can tell their own story; you don’t have to be a writer. Back in 2014, I set out to help eighty women recount their memories, with particular emphasis on the period 1946-1969. This era, like many others, was one of enormous change, as post-war Britain transformed into the ‘Swinging Sixties’. We moved from liberty bodices to mini-skirts , from ration books to ready meals. These years heralded the dawn of the National Health Service, the comprehensive education system, a new wave of feminism and conspicuous consumerism. In the end, those memories became a book,  Remember Then: women’s memories of 1946-1969 and how to write your own. The book has my name on the cover but the words are those of my eighty volunteers.

 

If you are wondering how to set about writing your own life story, here is some advice that others who have taken this step have found useful. Set yourself a deadline and make that realistic; there is nothing worse than not meeting self-imposed deadline. Most people find that about a year is a suitable time-scale. Divide the task into sections and subsections. Although the temptation is to write chronologically, it is actually easier and often more interesting, to take a thematic approach. Having said that, a timeline is helpful as a framework. Add key dates of births, marriages and death of those close to you. List house moves and changes of school and work. You can include holidays, concerts, sporting events and other special occasions. Don’t forget achievements, learning to  driving, passing an exam, winning a competition and anything else you are proud of. Note down local, national and international events that had an impact on your life. Raid your photograph album and any souvenirs you may have kept to help jog your memory; reminisce with contemporaries.

Then start to put notes together. Take a topic at a time; covering one a month works well. In this way you can write about, clothes, homes, neighbourhoods, work, leisure time, food, schools, celebrations and relationships with friends and family, for example. Let’s just think about the topic of clothes. There is no need to spend a whole day writing all you can remember about what you and your family used to wear. In ten to fifteen minutes you can write about footwear, or swimwear, or nightwear. The key is to break the task down into manageable chunks. When you are writing about homes, take one home at a time, one room at a time and describe it. As you do so, can you recall an incident that happened in that room? If so, include it at that point.

 

Don’t put this task off until next year, the year after or when you retire, make a start now. One word of warning, depending on who you decide to share your story with. Your
story is also the story of your parents, your siblings, your spouse and others whose lives have touched your own. You may have to face ethical dilemmas about what you share, who you anonymise and what you leave out. Of course you want to tell the complete story, the good, the bad and the ugly; a sanitised account of just the successes and the cheerful bits does you no favours and paints a distorted version of the past. History hurts, it can be an uncomfortable and dark place. We’ve have all made mistakes and done things that we regret and we shouldn’t airbrush this from our stories. Just be mindful of the impact on others whose lives have touched your own. Good luck.

I do remember them and I was there by Mary Hoffman

The Sixties, that is. I don't think it really hit me that the 1960s now count as history until I saw Angela Davis on Channel 4 News and realised it was part of a feature on 1968 and that was fifty years ago.

We have debated often on this blog what constitutes "history;" is it a generation ago, 25 or 30 years? Well 50 years certainly counts and this decade in my life was a momentous one on the national stage. In particular it was the time when young people became what is now called "woke" and social protest became effective, long before there were any social media to support it and help it spread.

As Angela Davis said, "I couldn't afford international phone calls – I had to write letters." (For those of you who don't know or can't remember who she is we'll get to her later on). Here is a snapshot both public and personal of the years about which it was said "if you can remember [them] then you weren't there."

It was the era of the Cold War, Apartheid, the Berlin Wall, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the Vietnam War and the reign of the Kray twins in London. It was also the time of the Beatles, flower power, psychodelia, the moon landing, the Civil Rights movement and the beginning of second wave feminism.

At the beginning of the decade my boyfriend was Roger Rees, who went on to become a huge star of stage and screen, living with a male partner for 34 years. (RIP, lovely Roger). Briefly in the middle I dated Roger Scruton and smoked pot (unconnected, though it would be a sort of explanation). Two months before the sixties ended I met the man I married three years later. Being neither gay nor Tory, he suits me very well.

1960 The Sharpeville Massacre opened the eyes of the rest of the world to what was going on in South Africa. For years and tears, till the end of Apartheid, we bought no South African fruit and veg. Harold MacMillan made his "Winds of change speech," To Kill a Mockingbird was published and in London there was the obscenity trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover. How well I remember the copy being passed round at school which fell open at the rude bits. When I read the whole novel I found it disappointingly dull.

1961 Charismatic and (relatively) young John F. Kennedy became President of the United States.

I can't honestly say I remember his election or inauguration but I remember the night of his assassination two and a half years later very well. My older sister and I were babysitting a friend's 8-months-old son and he would not sleep. Surely everyone who was alive and beyond babyhood then remembers that night? And I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 too. It was the period that shaped the consciousness of those who were young in the 60s. We really believed that WW3 was imminent and we were all going to die.

In the early 60s I joined CND, while I was still a schoolgirl.

1961 The Berlin Wall was erected as the effective division between not just the city but East and West Germany. I was amazed to discover it was as recent as that when researching my novel When she was Bad (written as Amy Lovell).

Catch-22 and The Pride of Miss Jean Brodie were published. The Beatles first played the Cavern Club though, as a Londoner, I had yet to hear of them. I fell in love in Spain with an English boy called Tony but omitted to discover his surname and his parents whisked him away before we could exchange addresses. He had a twin sister called Tina. The trial of Adolf Eichmann began in Jerusalem.

1962 The Cuban Missile crisis was in October/November. Earlier in the year Fonteyn and Nureyev first danced together and I was besotted with him (ever since his defection to Paris the year before and his arrival in the UK). I heard about Marilyn Monroe's death while I was on holiday with my parents in Spain. Max Perutz won the Nobel prize for Chemistry, which I didn't pay much attention to at the time, but I later met him In Cambridge as his daughter was a friend.

1963 Please, Please Me, introduced me to the Beatles and in particular George Harrison. The Bell Jar was published but I didn't read it till a year or two later.  And Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, though it took a while for feminism to reach these shores. Martin Luther King made his "I have a dream" speech and, on St. Cecilia's Day, JFK was assassinated in Dallas (see above). I don't think we knew if we were on the verge of something wonderful or something terrible. I'm still not sure.

"los Beatles" in Madrid

1964 The Civil Rights Act was signed by LBJ, though begun by JFK and his legacy. Another set of three initial, MLK, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The death penalty was at last abolished in the UK – another fact that surprised me with its lateness when I researched When she was Bad.

1965 Malcolm X was assassinated. T S Eliot died a more peaceful death but I was sad to see him go. The bombing of North Vietnam by the US and South Vietnam intensified, though I don't think I knew about it then, not till much later in 1967/68. I certainly didn't know about the marches to Montgomery now well-known from the film Selma. I spent the summer in Florence, determining much of the rest of my life. I'll be there again in a week's time. The Race Relations Act was passed in the UK.

1966 The demonstrations against the Vietnam War really picked up in the US, where I spent the summer but I'm ashamed to say they didn't feature in my awareness.  I was living in a flat in NYC on the Upper East Side, wearing clothes bought in Carnaby Street ad eating Euphrates crackers with Philadelphia cheese and ground pepper, living a life incomprehensible to my parents.

I took more notice of the conviction of the Moors murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley and the disaster in Aberfan that killed over a hundred children. And hearing about the flood in Florence that destroyed or damaged so much art. Never dreaming that fifty years later I would be writing about it in in an App on Michelangelo.*

1967 Elvis Presley got married! If this had happened a few years earlier, I would have been devastated. At the age of fourteen, I had decided he would marry me. And indeed he did meet Priscilla when she was about that age, so it wasn't quite as delusional as some of my crushes. (OK, it was still delusional). But now I was older and wiser and graduated a month after this seismic event. It was followed by the "Summer of Love," which wasn't for me, though I loved the dresses and the music and the pacifism.

1968 Martin Luther King was assassinated and Bobby Kennedy, who had been going to run for President, was killed two months later.  This was when I really became aware of what was happening in Vietnam, appalled by the pictures in the newspapers. I started a Postgrad linguistics course at UCL, taught be Michael Halliday, who died a few weeks ago. This was another profound influence on the direction my life would take.

Angela Davis in the middle

Angela Davis was a Black activist and feminist who we were just about to hear about in the UK, though she wasn't arrested till the following year. Her stencilled face with its distinctive Afro hair appeared on walls in the UK. (She was found not guilty and has had a distinguished academic career). She is still an activist.

In France, "les evènements," the student riots, took place in Paris and beyond, protesting against capitalism, consumerism and American influence. They were accompanied by national strikes.

Czechoslovakia was invaded by the USSR. We had Czech students stranded at UCL and I remember vividly the marches, occupations and the fundraising Czech Appeal to help students cut off from families and finds.

1969 Richard Nixon became President of the United States. The Charles Manson "family" murdered Sharon Tate and four others and two more people the next day. The murders seemed even more horrific because Tate was eight months pregnant. She was married to Roman Polanski.

The Beatles gave a last impromptu performance together on a rooftop. Monty Python got its first TV airing. My sister and I stayed up late to watch the moon landing. It was her birthday, a fact that neither of us remembered later until reminded. It kept being delayed so we set an alarm and got up again in the early hours to watch it.

I moved into my first flat in London in Swiss Cottage, sharing with two others. Became a vegetarian. And at a Halloween party in Roehampton met my husband-to-be. 

So those were the 60s, those were, remarkable in so many ways but viewed through the eyes of a teenager turning into an adult, a girl who had crushes on public figures and boys she met in real life, turning into a woman with a degree, some knowledge and and a serious relationship. What began as a sort of Adriana Mole view of the world turned to a commitment to civil rights, pacifism, feminism and socialism. When my first book was published in 1975, my publisher Rex Collings said drily, "I don't think we'll put on the jacket flap that you are a vegetarian, feminist, socialist" and he was probably right. But I am all those things and my views were formed in the decade I do remember, in spite of the pot. And I was there.




* Buried Alive: the Secret Michelangelo took to his grave, is an App created by Time Traveler Tours & Tales  and can be downloaded for free on to iPhones and Android devices.

When she was Bad by Amy Lovell is published by the Greystones Press and available in paperback and on Kindle.


All photos are from Wikimedia Commons
(The montage at the top of the page is by Vitek - the images are:

1. The Beatles in America.JPG
2. CheHigh.jpg
3. Mao Zedong portrait.jpg
4. Kennedyb.jpg
5. AABAP.gif
6. Woodstock redmond stage.JPG
7. Bruce Crandall's UH-1D.jpg
8. Martin Luther King - March on Washington.jpg)