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MY ENGLISH GRANDPARENTS
by Elizabeth Swain
Leicester Nana, so named as that was where she lived in the East Midlands of England, was my father’s mother. His father had died when he was eight and Nana now lived with a daughter, Auntie Kathleen. When I visited I had to be on my best behavior. There were rules to be observed and manners were very important. But I was spoiled too.
I slept in a huge feather bed, unimaginably soft and cozy, and in the morning, Nana would bring me a tray of toast and marmalade, sometimes a boiled egg, and of course, a cup of tea. I sat up in bed and ate my breakfast, feeling very grand. Auntie Kathleen would leave for work and Nana and I would walk Judy, their very spoiled dog, who had a saucer of tea every time anyone else had a cup. Her meals were specially prepared and she usually had a bit of dessert too. The English are slightly eccentric in such matters.
Housework came next. The beds had aired so Nana and I made them up, hitting and pounding the feather mattresses, and then the daily dusting followed. Sometimes we had to polish the many brass ornaments or, worst of all. it was laundry day. We boiled the sheets and towels in a big copper vat, heated by gas, and turned the clothes with a big wooden pole. We rubbed the dirty spots on a washboard and then rinsed the sheets through water containing a lump of blue stuff, to make the sheets a perfect white. Next we dumped them in a tub of liquid starch before drawing them through a mangle (my job was to turn the crank) to squeeze out as much water as possible before hanging them on the line to dry. And of course they were then carefully ironed.
Some days we would bake cakes or Nana would make pastry so perfect I have never forgotten it. Unfortunately, lard was one of the key ingredients! When the chores were over, Nana, this seemingly starchy Victorian lady, would sit at the kitchen table, smoke a cigarette and down a pint of Guinness Stout. At the time I assumed it was some old lady medicine. Then she would get dressed in her signature gray skirt, white silk blouse, pearls, earrings (she had pierced ears, most uncommon at that time) and one of her beautiful hand-knitted cardigans. If there was shopping to be done we would take the fifteen minute walk to the local shops with our wheeled basket and visit the individual stores: the baker, the butcher, the grocer, the post office and so on … no supermarkets then.
After lunch came the funniest part of the day. Nana would sit in her armchair and read the newspaper. I was supposed to be reading but I watched her intently, waiting for the newspaper to slowly collapse onto her face as she drifted into her nap, the newspaper rising and falling to the rhythm of her genteel snores. Giggling, I then settled into my Enid Blyton.
Sometimes people would visit for tea: tiny tasty sandwiches, home made scones and cakes. And there were some local children I played with. In 1990 when my daughter and I were lying on a beach n Fiji we struck up a conversation with a neighboring couple. The man was from Leicester. “Oh, where in Leicester?” “ Knighton.” “Really. My grandmother lived opposite Knighton church.” “No! I lived down the street from the church!” We soon realized that we had played together nearly forty years earlier.
Auntie Kathleen would come home around six and then it was cocktail time. She and Nana drank something called a “gin and it,” that I assumed was some form of medicine for old ladies, like the Guinness. It certainly smelled like it. It was, I learned years later, a pretty dirty martini. After dinner Nana and Auntie Kathleen would knit (they made all of my sweaters and cardigans until they died) while we talked or listened to the radio. The radio shows were wonderful, serious drama and then the comedy series -- two I recall are the early Goon show and ITMA (short for It’s That Man Again), particularly the gardening section, in which the expert would answer every question with “I think the answer lies in the soil,” with a broad west country accent. I remember them more vividly than anything I saw on television in my teenage years. We had our first television when I was twelve, but by then I was getting more interested in being out of the house if I wasn’t doing my many hours of nightly homework.
In the winter we would fill our hot water bottles before curling up in the big feather beds. I loved the security of the routine in Leicester and the time to read the many books I carried everywhere. I loved the teas, the breakfasts in bed, learning to bake and knit. Sometimes we would get on a bus into the town and visit Auntie Kathleen at her bank. I was in awe of her having such an important job, but was sad she wasn’t married. Her fiancé had been killed in World War I and she never forgot him, or so I thought. After they were long gone, I discovered that Auntie Kathleen had brought home several suitors but my straight-laced, Victorian grandmother had proven very fascinating to too many of those suitors. Lesson. Don’t bring men home if your mother is single.
Going to visit Peterborough Nana and Grandpa, my mother’s parents who lived mid-way between the East Anglian coast and the Midlands, was a very different matter. They doted on me and I was totally spoiled. They lived in a big old, rambling three-story Victorian house and it certainly wasn’t dusted every morning. It seemed to me there were hundreds of rooms and I loved to explore and open the cupboards to find endless treasures. I think my grandparents were probably serious hoarders. I loved finding old dresses and shoes that my mother had worn in the thirties and loved to try them all on, feeling like a fabulously wicked woman.
In Peterborough I had lots of second cousins and great aunts and uncles all over the place since my grandparents both came from families of around twelve children. The extended family was from all walks of life. Uncle Tom was a postman and Uncle Harold a dentist, but my favorite was Auntie Flo, married to another Uncle Harold, and she presided over her own large, working-class family. Uncle Harold worked in a factory and would come for lunch every day, very dirty. Water came from a pump over a big kitchen sink and he would take off his shirt and put his head and chest under the cold water from the pump to clean up. Then whoever was around would assemble at the big dining room table. Somehow food for eight, ten, twelve people would appear and as we ate, the conversation was loud, topical, and full of left wing passion. Auntie Flo’s youngest daughter, Jill, was about eight years older than I and I loved to spend time with her, going to the swimming pool or the park. I probably drove her mad, but she was patient.
I remember we always went to the Music Hall when I was there and I saw some famous icons of that theatrical genre, people I discovered more about in graduate school decades later. I especially remember the singer Marie Lloyd Junior and a famous male impersonator, and many magicians. I think I saw Gracie Fields too. There was also a good repertory company in town and by the age of eight or so, I was seeing quite a few plays. And at Christmas I saw the Pantomime, an entertainment that told a classic fairy tale, such as Cinderella or Aladdin, but there were certain conventions: the wicked old women in the stories were played by men in drag, usually famous comedians, and the leading young man was always played by a beautiful woman in fishnet tights and high heels, a singer and dancer. There was audience participation, lots of singing and slapstick humor. The tradition continues today but seems to be largely unknown in the U.S.
Life in Peterborough was far more spontaneous than in Leicester. Grandpa would devise quizzes for me and we would play card games, and I loved to go to the Bowling Green with him. He was a very good at Bowls as I remember and may have been the president of the local club. He also was a great storyteller and loved to tell of his brother, my great uncle George who ran away to Canada to make his fortune in some gold rush and got attacked by Indians. He made peace with them and married Auntie Mabel, an Indian squaw, as he told it. She visited us in England when I was a teenager, but my mother was rather cool to her as she was convinced that she was hoarding some gold shares that Uncle George had left to us all. We’ll never know, but she seemed like nice old lady and after all she had sent me a doll every Christmas that I could remember.
Peterborough Nana had long silver hair, coiled in a bun. She was tiny and she and I had the only blue eyes in three generations of dark haired brown-eyed Cranes and Swains. She and Grandpa had married very young and were still totally in love and I could feel how good that was. Nana made the best fudge and toffee I have ever eaten and I am mad I never got the recipe. She was a seamstress and in early days had earned a living doing that. Now she just sewed beautiful dresses for me and later for my younger sister. When my mother was young she had made all of her clothes and word has it she was quite a fashion plate as a result. Those dresses in the cupboards that I loved to try on were the proof. Grandpa had begun working life at thirteen as a bricklayer, but eventually owned the building company and was very successful. I remember some talk of a nervous breakdown when I was about twelve. He had made bad business decisions and so lost a lot of money. He died in a nursing home when I was fourteen. Nana struggled bravely on without the man who had been at her side for fifty years and died of pneumonia after a fire in her house, caused by a faulty electric blanket.
Leicester Nana had bowel cancer and was an invalid for two years, dying when I was about fifteen. I was puzzled by all these deaths so close to each other, and my parents retained a British reticence about it all, so I didn’t really take them in properly. Once I went to University I didn’t see Auntie Kathleen much, and then I moved to the United States. My father’s death in 1965 was very hard for her as she had doted on him all her life. I was glad that I brought my new husband to meet her in 1967, a year before she too died.
Most of my real memories of my grandparents and Auntie Kathleen are from before I was a teenager. I learned to bake, to sew, to knit and to play bowls from them. I learned from the Leicester side of the family that life can have structure and order, and from the Peterborough side, that it can be deliciously spontaneous, and both are good. And I think I learned acceptance from loving them all for their wonderful eccentricities.
EndHousework came next. The beds had aired so Nana and I made them up, hitting and pounding the feather mattresses, and then the daily dusting followed. Sometimes we had to polish the many brass ornaments or, worst of all. it was laundry day. We boiled the sheets and towels in a big copper vat, heated by gas, and turned the clothes with a big wooden pole. We rubbed the dirty spots on a washboard and then rinsed the sheets through water containing a lump of blue stuff, to make the sheets a perfect white. Next we dumped them in a tub of liquid starch before drawing them through a mangle (my job was to turn the crank) to squeeze out as much water as possible before hanging them on the line to dry. And of course they were then carefully ironed.
Some days we would bake cakes or Nana would make pastry so perfect I have never forgotten it. Unfortunately, lard was one of the key ingredients! When the chores were over, Nana, this seemingly starchy Victorian lady, would sit at the kitchen table, smoke a cigarette and down a pint of Guinness Stout. At the time I assumed it was some old lady medicine. Then she would get dressed in her signature gray skirt, white silk blouse, pearls, earrings (she had pierced ears, most uncommon at that time) and one of her beautiful hand-knitted cardigans. If there was shopping to be done we would take the fifteen minute walk to the local shops with our wheeled basket and visit the individual stores: the baker, the butcher, the grocer, the post office and so on … no supermarkets then.
After lunch came the funniest part of the day. Nana would sit in her armchair and read the newspaper. I was supposed to be reading but I watched her intently, waiting for the newspaper to slowly collapse onto her face as she drifted into her nap, the newspaper rising and falling to the rhythm of her genteel snores. Giggling, I then settled into my Enid Blyton.
Sometimes people would visit for tea: tiny tasty sandwiches, home made scones and cakes. And there were some local children I played with. In 1990 when my daughter and I were lying on a beach n Fiji we struck up a conversation with a neighboring couple. The man was from Leicester. “Oh, where in Leicester?” “ Knighton.” “Really. My grandmother lived opposite Knighton church.” “No! I lived down the street from the church!” We soon realized that we had played together nearly forty years earlier.
Auntie Kathleen would come home around six and then it was cocktail time. She and Nana drank something called a “gin and it,” that I assumed was some form of medicine for old ladies, like the Guinness. It certainly smelled like it. It was, I learned years later, a pretty dirty martini. After dinner Nana and Auntie Kathleen would knit (they made all of my sweaters and cardigans until they died) while we talked or listened to the radio. The radio shows were wonderful, serious drama and then the comedy series -- two I recall are the early Goon show and ITMA (short for It’s That Man Again), particularly the gardening section, in which the expert would answer every question with “I think the answer lies in the soil,” with a broad west country accent. I remember them more vividly than anything I saw on television in my teenage years. We had our first television when I was twelve, but by then I was getting more interested in being out of the house if I wasn’t doing my many hours of nightly homework.
In the winter we would fill our hot water bottles before curling up in the big feather beds. I loved the security of the routine in Leicester and the time to read the many books I carried everywhere. I loved the teas, the breakfasts in bed, learning to bake and knit. Sometimes we would get on a bus into the town and visit Auntie Kathleen at her bank. I was in awe of her having such an important job, but was sad she wasn’t married. Her fiancé had been killed in World War I and she never forgot him, or so I thought. After they were long gone, I discovered that Auntie Kathleen had brought home several suitors but my straight-laced, Victorian grandmother had proven very fascinating to too many of those suitors. Lesson. Don’t bring men home if your mother is single.
Going to visit Peterborough Nana and Grandpa, my mother’s parents who lived mid-way between the East Anglian coast and the Midlands, was a very different matter. They doted on me and I was totally spoiled. They lived in a big old, rambling three-story Victorian house and it certainly wasn’t dusted every morning. It seemed to me there were hundreds of rooms and I loved to explore and open the cupboards to find endless treasures. I think my grandparents were probably serious hoarders. I loved finding old dresses and shoes that my mother had worn in the thirties and loved to try them all on, feeling like a fabulously wicked woman.
In Peterborough I had lots of second cousins and great aunts and uncles all over the place since my grandparents both came from families of around twelve children. The extended family was from all walks of life. Uncle Tom was a postman and Uncle Harold a dentist, but my favorite was Auntie Flo, married to another Uncle Harold, and she presided over her own large, working-class family. Uncle Harold worked in a factory and would come for lunch every day, very dirty. Water came from a pump over a big kitchen sink and he would take off his shirt and put his head and chest under the cold water from the pump to clean up. Then whoever was around would assemble at the big dining room table. Somehow food for eight, ten, twelve people would appear and as we ate, the conversation was loud, topical, and full of left wing passion. Auntie Flo’s youngest daughter, Jill, was about eight years older than I and I loved to spend time with her, going to the swimming pool or the park. I probably drove her mad, but she was patient.
I remember we always went to the Music Hall when I was there and I saw some famous icons of that theatrical genre, people I discovered more about in graduate school decades later. I especially remember the singer Marie Lloyd Junior and a famous male impersonator, and many magicians. I think I saw Gracie Fields too. There was also a good repertory company in town and by the age of eight or so, I was seeing quite a few plays. And at Christmas I saw the Pantomime, an entertainment that told a classic fairy tale, such as Cinderella or Aladdin, but there were certain conventions: the wicked old women in the stories were played by men in drag, usually famous comedians, and the leading young man was always played by a beautiful woman in fishnet tights and high heels, a singer and dancer. There was audience participation, lots of singing and slapstick humor. The tradition continues today but seems to be largely unknown in the U.S.
Life in Peterborough was far more spontaneous than in Leicester. Grandpa would devise quizzes for me and we would play card games, and I loved to go to the Bowling Green with him. He was a very good at Bowls as I remember and may have been the president of the local club. He also was a great storyteller and loved to tell of his brother, my great uncle George who ran away to Canada to make his fortune in some gold rush and got attacked by Indians. He made peace with them and married Auntie Mabel, an Indian squaw, as he told it. She visited us in England when I was a teenager, but my mother was rather cool to her as she was convinced that she was hoarding some gold shares that Uncle George had left to us all. We’ll never know, but she seemed like nice old lady and after all she had sent me a doll every Christmas that I could remember.
Peterborough Nana had long silver hair, coiled in a bun. She was tiny and she and I had the only blue eyes in three generations of dark haired brown-eyed Cranes and Swains. She and Grandpa had married very young and were still totally in love and I could feel how good that was. Nana made the best fudge and toffee I have ever eaten and I am mad I never got the recipe. She was a seamstress and in early days had earned a living doing that. Now she just sewed beautiful dresses for me and later for my younger sister. When my mother was young she had made all of her clothes and word has it she was quite a fashion plate as a result. Those dresses in the cupboards that I loved to try on were the proof. Grandpa had begun working life at thirteen as a bricklayer, but eventually owned the building company and was very successful. I remember some talk of a nervous breakdown when I was about twelve. He had made bad business decisions and so lost a lot of money. He died in a nursing home when I was fourteen. Nana struggled bravely on without the man who had been at her side for fifty years and died of pneumonia after a fire in her house, caused by a faulty electric blanket.
Leicester Nana had bowel cancer and was an invalid for two years, dying when I was about fifteen. I was puzzled by all these deaths so close to each other, and my parents retained a British reticence about it all, so I didn’t really take them in properly. Once I went to University I didn’t see Auntie Kathleen much, and then I moved to the United States. My father’s death in 1965 was very hard for her as she had doted on him all her life. I was glad that I brought my new husband to meet her in 1967, a year before she too died.
Most of my real memories of my grandparents and Auntie Kathleen are from before I was a teenager. I learned to bake, to sew, to knit and to play bowls from them. I learned from the Leicester side of the family that life can have structure and order, and from the Peterborough side, that it can be deliciously spontaneous, and both are good. And I think I learned acceptance from loving them all for their wonderful eccentricities.
