During the nineteen-twenties Newbury was a trim, self-contained little town — an ancient borough - a market centre for local farmers and the horse-racing people of the downs. It was on the Great Western Railway, and the journey to Paddington took exactly one hour. There was a market on Thursdays and a fair at Michaelmas, though even in my infancy this had already ceased to have much to do with the local economy and had become largely a matter of coconut shies and roundabouts. But the weekly cattle-market was important business, with its herds and flocks driven along the dusty roads into town and usually, in the evening, two or three (or more) drunk and disorderly fellows man-handled away by the police. (Resisting the police was quite as common then as now.) In adolescence, during the late ‘thirties, I had no difficulty in recognizing Thomas Hardy’s Casterbridge, even though Newbury hadn’t actually got any sheep bleating within earshot of the magistrates’ courtroom. In 1921 the population was 12,295: in 1931, 13,340.
One or more of the family went into Newbury daily. In those days deliveries to the home by butchers, grocers and drapers were a matter of course, and as I grew older I got to know the delivery boys, who could sometimes be inveigled into a quick game of darts against the kitchen fence on their way from the back door. Darts was the limit, though. (‘Cricket? I’d get the sack!’ said the butcher’s boy when I suggested it one day.) Nevertheless my mother, delivery or no, liked to see what she was buying, particularly when it came to meat. There would be colloquies in the butcher’s with beehive-haired Mrs Leach reassuring my mother, and calling upon ‘Ar-thur!’ (ginger-moustached, bloody-handed, his cleaver hanging at the belt of his blue, white-striped apron) to corroborate her. My mother would pray my father’s name in aid as a sort of frightener. ‘Dr Adams wasn’t at all pleased with —’ ‘Dr Adams will certainly expect —’ In point of fact my father never ate a great deal and was not particular what it was. As my mother knew well, her act was a kind of charade. The Leaches, who were patients and had a prosperous farm out at Thatcham, respected and valued my father and wouldn’t have dreamed of putting anything across him. All my life, up to and during the Second War, we never dealt with any other butcher. Now, the shop’s long gone.
I first began ‘going down in the town’ with my mother while I was still in a push-chair; though it was never a case of being made to. You could come along or not as you pleased, unless you were particularly required for anything, such as buying a new pair of shoes or helping to choose a birthday present for someone like Jean or Ann. There were three ways of covering the mile and a half. You could walk; or you could go down in ‘Mavis’ (complete with Cecil); or you could latch onto my father as he set out on his morning rounds, usually about quarter to ten. What I liked best, in childhood, was walking down - from Wash Common it’s downhill all the way - and then meeting my father, at about twenty to one, at the South Berks Club and being driven home to lunch. The car would be parked close by the Club, alongside the Roary Water, as we called the white, tumbling outfall from the Hovis Mill. I was always happy enough to wait, leaning against the high iron railings and watching the turbulent Kennet foaming out from the mill ducts below. There were three of them, round-arched and dark-mouthed, though as a rule only two would be in use. The Roary Water was exciting and frightening, like a ghost story, because you were safely above it, and couldn’t have got over the spiked railings if you’d tried. But it was disturbing that the water came rushing so noisily out of the dark. (I remembered this, years later, when I first read Rasselas.)
One of my early memories is of walking hand-in-hand with my mother along Bartholomew Street, when we saw coming towards us a dirty, bearded man who was pushing up the roadway a homemade handcart, a thing of soap-boxes and old pram wheels. This was full of and hung about with dead rabbits. Their back legs were tied together and as the cart rattled along their ears and poor, eye-glazed faces swung and bobbed. The man, to leave his hands free, had tied the shafts with a bit of cord under his armpits, and as he went he was very deliberately skinning a rabbit with an old knife, and tugging off the loose fur where he had got a grip.
I burst into tears; from shock, I think, as much as pity. It was, of course, a piteous, ugly sight, but apart from that the man’s unconcerned, workaday air as he plied his knife made me realize in an instant that rabbits were things, and that it was only in a baby’s world that they were not.
‘It is the blight man was born for.
It is Margaret you mourn for.’
My mother did the best she could: but I reckon I grew up a lot that morning.
Still, in those days there were plenty of living animals about Newbury in which you could take pleasure. Donkeys, trit-trotting with little carts, were quite an accustomed sight; so much so that sometimes, before going down in the town, I would put a carrot in my pocket, in case we met one. The cows, at close quarters, smelt sweet and warm. But best of all were the horses - beer horses, coal horses; Whitehorn the baker’s horse, dappled brown and white, a lighter, quicker fellow altogether, pulling his two-wheeled, box-shaped, enclosed delivery van which looked a bit like a hansom cab. There were fine carriages, too; Miss Myres and Miss Southby, both patients of my father, drove everywhere by coach; Miss Southby all in black, with an open-work, spotted veil and, of course, gloves; their coachman was tophatted, his whip upright in its stock beside him, tall as a spear. And it was by no means uncommon to see men riding on horseback with their parcels slung about them: they had been shopping. Gigs and traps, too, had certainly not gone out. I remember a pleasant maiden lady, Miss Spackman, giving me a lift one morning in her trap. I sat beside her fascinated as the horse took its time over defecating less than a yard before our eyes, Miss Spackman continuing to chat unconcernedly the while.
But the best chap to meet, as my father would have said, was the Water Gee-gee. The Water Gee-gee was very large, very white and, as I remember him, covered with creaking, brass-decorated harness. He wore blinkers, out of which he looked at you benevolently before you gave him a lump of sugar. When he stamped his hind hoof in the gutter it made a hollow, satisfying snack! His job was to pull the big tank-cart from which water ran onto the road out of perforations in a long, horizontal pipe at the back. If I give the impression that he did the job on his own and wasn’t controlled by a man, it is because he gave that impression himself. I suppose he’d done the job so often that he could do it on his head without bidding. It was exciting to see the water jets spurting onto the road and streaming down the camber, and then to watch the gutter turn into a running rill, empty cigarette packets and matchboxes floating along to the gullies and dropping in. We didn’t always meet him - no doubt he had his appointed districts and areas — but when we did, I was allowed to stand and watch him for quite a while. My mother seldom hurried, and possessed the kindness and imagination to understand that a leisurely encounter with the Water Gee-gee could make your day. I’m sure she herself enjoyed it, too. It was always pleasing to be able to say at lunch ‘Oh, and we saw the Water Gee-gee’; as who should say ‘We saw the Mayor.’ I was really thinking not so much of communicating my feelings, but rather of what I myself had felt.
The Mayor, in fact, was, as the Americans say, something else. Alderman Elsie Kimber was a legendary figure in Newbury. She came of the respectable family of Kimber the grocer’s and was middle-aged and unmarried. She had rimless glasses, wore a heavily-skirted, brown belted garment, sandals and no hat, and she rode a motor-bike. She was emancipated, bizarre, no fool and excellent company, even to a small boy. To me it seemed entirely natural that the Mayor should look somewhat unusual, as did, for instance, Beefeaters. I vaguely supposed that that was what mayors looked like.
To illustrate my mother’s gift of identifying with children, I must instance another time when we were down in the town together: I suppose I may have been five or six. We were walking up Batholomew Street from the southern end, by the railway bridge (and Kimber’s). In those days Newbury still had the sort of Thomas Hardyesque atmosphere which I have been trying to evoke, and there were still many dwelling-houses actually in the town, from working-people’s trim, small houses, fronting the street, to Dr Hickman’s beautiful house and garden (of which more anon) and the Dower House, long since become business premises. People lived in the middle of Newbury because they preferred to. (It was quiet then, see.) We were walking past a row of neat little dwellings, near Vincent’s the ironmongers, when suddenly, for some reason, I was greatly taken with the whitened step, the polished brass handle and gently gleaming panels which comprised a front door. Whoever owned it was obviously house-proud, but I didn’t consciously think of that: I just felt I liked it.
‘Look, Mummy,’ I said. ‘What a wonderfully good door for knocking on!’
‘Why, so it is, dear,’ answered my mother. ‘A very good door for knocking on.’
I knocked on it with my knuckles. My mother knocked on it with her knuckles. We became absorbed.
‘A very good door for knocking on!’
‘Yes, yes!’
All of a sudden the door opened, and I had a glimpse of a lady in carpet slippers and an apron. But only a glimpse. My mother clutched my hand and together we sped away up the street - simply hared, as she herself would have said. Five minutes later we had forgotten all about it, and were watching a horse repeatedly tossing his head to get the last out of the bottom of his nosebag, while at each toss the chaff flew round his ears and the flies buzzed up in a cloud.
We were not, of course (ah! those class-conscious days), on visiting terms with tradespeople; you didn’t ask tradespeople to tennis parties or anything like that. Nevertheless my father – and my mother – had many friends among tradespeople in the town, most of whom were always ready to oblige Dr Adams. One of these was Mr Tufnell (old Tuffy) and his protegee, Miss Rowle (Rowley, as everyone called her). ‘Do you mean Miss Rowle?’ snapped one of the lady assistants one day, when I asked for her. She (rightly) thought it disrespectful for a little boy to use the nickname. ‘No, I don’t: I mean Rowley,’ I replied. And I got away with it.
Mr Tufnell was fond of telling how he had first come to Newbury as a poor boy with a shilling in his pocket. (That would have been in the eighteen-eighties, I suppose.) He was now the proprietor of a thriving newsagent’s and toyshop, a tobacconist’s and also of one of the town’s two cinemas. I believe he was unmarried. So it was Rowley — dear, kind, unmarried, middle-aged, bubblingly cheerful Rowley — who ran the newsagent’s, supplied us with newspapers and helped my father and my mother in all sorts of little ways. For example, on the strength of a telephone call she would pick up a prescription which had been made up at the chemist’s, and it would be delivered with the newspaper next morning. Or she would take charge of a basket of shopping (Tufnell’s was near both the club and the ‘bus terminus) while my mother walked the length of Northbrook Street to buy something else. When I wanted to buy cigarettes (half a crown for fifty) for my father’s birthday, Rowley would buy them for me, as I was, of course, under age.
The last favour which Rowley ever did for me was in 1946, at the end of the war. I had learned of the death of my dearest friend in Tunisia, and had there and then sat down in the College Bursar’s office in Oxford and copied out his commanding officer’s account of his death (no duplicating machines then) in my own hand. Returning to Newbury I gave it, weeping, to Rowley and she typed it for me.
Mr Mann was the floor manager at Toomer’s, the ironmonger we favoured. He was middle-aged, tall and shiningly bald, in a long brown shop-coat buttoning down the front. He seemed just right for the arrays of smooth, flashing saucepans, spades and pails over which he presided. I liked the shop because it was spacious, light and full of hard, clean things which could be touched and even played with, without anybody minding. (They couldn’t soil or break.) Also, it stocked exciting goods like clock golf sets and mousetraps (both box and break-back).
Mr Mann was another friend who was ready to do anything for my father, and I think with good reason. At one time he was not well and that, of course, is as much as I know about his illness, except that we can presume from the story that it was something internal, like rupture or hernia. He didn’t seem to be getting any better and accordingly he wasn’t confident in the treatment he was receiving or the doctor who was prescribing it. Being afraid, he spoke in confidence to my father and asked his advice. This was a ticklish situation, since he was someone else’s patient and, if there really was no more that could be done, didn’t want all the invidious trouble of changing doctors. My father connived at the secrecy. One evening, after the shop was shut, he privily joined Mr Mann, who pulled down all the blinds of the display windows and stripped off. The big display window had powerful electric lights and here, among the trowels, frying-pans and mowing-machines, my father gave Mr Mann a full examination. All I know is that his diagnosis was a different one from the other doctor’s, and that whatever ensued made Mr Mann better. One day, several years afterwards, I remarked to my sister that Mr Mann seemed devoted to my father. ‘Oh, yes,’ she replied, ‘I rather think Father saved his life -or something like that.’
Mrs Mann was expert in making wine, and we used to come in for this in a considerable way. Much later, during the war, whenever I managed to get home on leave in summer, I used to fill my father’s silver hip-flask with Mrs Mann’s dandelion or cowslip and take it trout-fishing with me. It was extremely potent. You had to watch it, and I seldom, if ever, emptied the flask.
The most spacious shop premises in Newbury at that time were Camp Hopson’s, who covered everything from haberdashery through men’s and women’s tailoring to carpets, upholstery and removals. (They still do.) As a little boy I was always impressed by the air of quiet, controlled activity and order, carried on by what seemed a great many black-clad, committed people intent on the tasks of the business; by the division of the place into different departments and the differences in atmosphere between each. The rooms seemed huge, extending back deeply from the street front almost like corridors, and the old-fashioned wooden counters very broad and solid.
In several of the departments there were ‘overhead railways’ which carried cash and bills from the counters to the central cashier’s office at the back. When a purchase was made, the bill and cash were put by the shop assistant into a screw-top container, about as big as two fists, made to run along an overhead wire. This was then ‘fired’: a spring was released, the head of which struck the container and impelled it hard along the wire. It fairly flew off on its course, with a characteristic swishing noise which I can hear now, and you could watch its flight to the cashier’s - a good, long way, too. Then, after a brief interval, it would return with the receipted bill and the change, arriving back with a loud ‘ping’ and a sudden stop. Sometimes there might be as many as four of these containers in flight at once, their frantic speed dominating the otherwise quiet department. I was always sorry to leave. I could have watched them for half an hour on end.
At times one would meet with the imposing figure of old Mr Camp, now well on in years, stout and impressive, an Elgarian figure with a dark suit, white hair and moustache and a rubicund face. He walked slowly, in a majestic manner, seldom speaking much. I realize now that he must have been born some time during the eighteen-fifties.
After the close-set chessboard of the haberdashery, the carpet department appeared vast - by far the biggest room I had ever been in. It was all open and unencumbered, with a large, low central platform on which carpets were laid out for display. It seemed as big as a field, and was filled with the true smell of carpets - the strawy smell of the new backing - as with the scent of grass. The carpet department was, I could sense, unique: there were no overhead wires and no money ever seemed to change hands. The shopmen were different, too. A few were ‘proper’ shopmen: others wore caps and green baize aprons. (They, too, of course, were in the correct uniform for their job.)
Yet another acquaintance of my father was Mr Gibson, a jeweller and watchmaker in the arcade. Mr Gibson was urbane and polite, a pleasant, courteous man; imposing, too, for he was on the large side and always wore a dark suit, with a waistcoat and a thin gold watch-chain across it. It was he who once said to me, quietly and positively, ‘Of course, Dr Adams has got more brains in his little finger than all the other doctors at the hospital put together; only he can’t get them over.’ It was true: my father’s reticence and practice of saying what he had to say and letting people take it or leave it confined those who liked and trusted him to such as had the sensitivity to perceive what lay within. He was often brusque, but he was usually right as well.
With certain tradespeople in the town his friendship was warmer, involving an element of the comical which drew him out of his customary gravity; and of these I remember particularly the Merry Mosdell and the True Messiah.
My father was always extremely careful about money. No doubt he had to be. For instance, he himself never used toothpaste, which he considered a waste of money. Using nothing but water and a toothbrush, he succeeded in keeping his teeth into old age. Although he advised me against toothpaste (‘Only making some nasty old millionaire richer, my boy’) he didn’t actually prohibit any of us from using it. I’ve always preferred to use it myself, but I never asked him for money to buy it.
Another expense which annoyed him was that of having his hair cut. To have it done at home was not an option, since that would have been low class and bad form. The best hairdressers in Newbury charged about one shilling and threepence, as far as I recall - too much for my father, anyway. What he wanted was a working-class hairdresser who would nevertheless understand who he was and treat him accordingly. After a good deal of reconnaissance, he discovered Mr Mosdell.
Mr Mosdell cut hair at sixpence a time. He cut it most acceptably. He was a quiet man with a low, pleasant voice - I suppose he may have been about fifty at the time - and I think he was probably deferential to everybody as part of the job. His shop, complete with striped pole outside, was conveniently situated at the junction of Bartholomew Street and Market Street. In the window was a canary in a cage, and most months of the year the gas fire was on. The shop had a characteristic, warm smell; of shaving soap, bay rum and some kind of emollient jelly used for cuts or sore necks and chins. It was a cosy place, and I never minded waiting there.
I realize now that it was chiefly the sound of Mr Mosdell and his shop which has remained with me. Mr Mosdell had some handicap to one of his feet, which caused his movement round the chair to consist of a firm, hard step with one foot followed by a quick slide with the other. As he worked he talked quietly, with pauses between, and as a rule kept the conversation two-way by asking questions. My father, who liked and respected him, tended to become more fluent than usual.
Mr M. (in a low voice, spoken only to the customer in the chair):
‘They’ve been saying, Doctor’ (snip, snip) ‘that it’s very likely to turn out’ (snip, snip) ‘a wet summer.’ (Bonk, slide.) ‘What do you think?’
Dr A.: ‘’Shouldn’t be surprised. ‘Dare say it’ll rain if it can.’
Mr M.: ‘If it rains in July’ (snip, snip) ‘’may clear up for August, and that’ll be good for the holidays, won’t it? I’m just going to take the clippers now, Doctor. Will you be going away yourself at all?’
Dr A.: “Shouldn’t think so.’ (In fact, as I have said, he never went away.) Half-singing, ‘Oh, I don’t like to be beside the seaside.
Mr M. (bonk, slide): “Doesn’t suit everybody. ‘Gets very crowded these days, Doctor, don’t you think?’ (Soft susurration of clippers.) ‘Sit down, Mr Inch; I’m just on finished with Dr Adams.’
Dr A.: ‘Yes, I do. Waste of money as a rule, I think. Much better stay here.’
The snug shop, with Mr Mosdell’s conversation, which was much the same to everyone, was another thing that made you feel grown-up, for your hair needed cutting like anyone else’s, and at the end you were always asked if you wanted anything on it, even though you’d said no many times. (Well, you might have changed, mightn’t you? And it made a polite conclusion.)
However, there was more than this to Mr Mosdell. He was a serious self-educator. I don’t know whether or not he was a member of the W.E.A., but he certainly studied a great deal. I remember sitting in his chair one morning while he snipped away, talking knowledgeably about the Pharaohs and the culture of ancient Egypt. Yet there was nothing in the least boastful or pretentious about this. He certainly wasn’t showing off, and I think the proof is that although at the time I had known him for some while, this side of him came to me as a surprise. I only hope I didn’t show it for I was a tactless boy.
He once told me a story of his youth. ‘When I was a young fellow, a friend of mine and me, we used to go out most Sundays and walk to Reading along the Bath Road. About eighteen miles I suppose. Of course, in those days there were no cars, no motorbikes, nothing o’ that. It was a nice country walk: we used to pick the flowers. We’d get to Reading in the late afternoon and there was a little cafe which was always open on Sundays. We used to have eggs and bacon and sausages and from there it was only a bit of a stroll to the station. We’d catch the train back to Newbury in the evening.
‘One Sunday evening we were just finishing up at the cafe when Reg, my friend, says to me “You sure of the time, Bill? Only it feels later, somehow.” We found my watch had stopped! Dear oh law! We fairly pelted down to the station, just in time to see the train going out. It was the only train there was.’
‘Whatever happened, Mr Mosdell?’
‘Why, we walked it; every step of the way. ‘Took us all night; we were tired out already, you see. And of course we knew our parents would have no idea what had happened to us or where we were. Three times we were stopped by policemen that night. We got back home just in time to shave and go to work.’
That would have been, I suppose, in the ’nineties or about the turn of the century, when the Bath Road was still much as it had always been. It must also have been before Mr Mosdell acquired his bad foot, however that came about.
My father always liked to mention at home that he was going to have his hair cut. I think he reckoned he had a bargain, and he certainly liked Mr Mosdell’s conversation. ‘I’m going to see the Merry Mosdell after I’ve been to the hospital,’ he would say, ‘so I may be late for lunch.’ And off he would set in high good humour, perhaps singing
‘She was once my Twanky-doodleum, but now alas she
Plays kissy-kissy with an officer in the Artill eree.’
Or again,
‘I should like to meet ’im with ‘is nice, new tart.
Then hup would go Antonio and ‘is ice cream cart.’
In time the Merry Mosdell grew old, and my father bestirred himself on his behalf. In those days it was not altogether easy to get into almshouses in Newbury if you had no church connections. I don’t know about the Merry Mosdell, but my father certainly had none. He had been a boy at a Woodard school (King’s College, Taunton) in the eighteen-eighties, and this had effectually turned him against church-going for life; though he habitually read the Bible, and during the war told me that he used to pray for my brother and myself. However, he had enough local influence to get the Merry Mosdell and Mrs M. appointed to a comfortable almshouse in the Newtown Road, and thus confirmed his good will towards another friend.
In 1946, when my father lay dying, I used to use part of the precious petrol ration to drive the Merry Mosdell the mile from the almshouse to our home, where he would shave my father in bed. The talk was the same. Like bird-song, it didn’t change.
The True Messiah was likewise a fine stroke of domestic economy. Brassicas, and vegetables such as parsnips and carrots, we never needed to buy; nor apples, for we ate our own. But exotic fruit had to be bought. Market day in Newbury was Thursday, and of course fruit was sold cheaper there than in the fruiterers’ shops. The marketeers didn’t deliver, but none the more for that. It was easy enough - yes, it was - to park the car in the marketplace. The problem was to find a market fruiterer of quality, for of course more than one of them tended to sell inferior stuff mixed up with what you saw on top. However, fortunately my father discovered the True Messiah - and believed.
J. Messaias and Co. were an authentic London East End Jewish family business, with a regular circuit round market-towns of the south country. Unless you had yourself been entirely lacking in wit and humour, it would have been difficult not to develop a relationship with the two brothers.
‘’Ere, Doctor, I’ll tell yer what. Yer go’er watch aht yer don’t get this ‘ere vitamin deficiency what they’re all on abaht naow.’
‘Do you suffer from it?’
‘Never in yer life! You ’ave a coupla pahnds o’ these ’ere oranges wot I bin keeping for yer special, Doctor, and yer’ll keep yerself away from yerself. ‘Be dancin’ on the ’igh wire. Wrap ’em up fer the doctor, Joe. ’Ere, ’e can’t carry that lot. Tike ’em across to ‘is car.’
Bananas, oranges, lemons, tomatoes and grapefruit were what my father bought, together with pears in season. (We grew pears, but not always successfully.) Grapefruit were the latest thing; quite a novelty. For some reason it became my brother’s job to ‘do’ them in the evenings before he went to bed. This meant cutting them in half, loosening each segment and then sprinkling on the sugar ‘to soak in’ during the night. When he had finished, he put them away in the cool, stone-shelved larder against next morning’s breakfast. Yet somehow I never took to them; too bitter.
‘Thursday,’ my father would say. ‘What d’you want me to get from the True Messiah? Dee-ee-eeply wailing, dee-ee-eeply wai ailing —’
Like all the upper middle classes in those days, I was brought up to regard Jews as beyond the pale (have you actually read Bulldog Drummond?), but it didn’t count if the Jews were (a) reliable tradespeople or (b) ladies and gentlemen (like the Behrends). As I grew older, it amused me to observe how my mother was able without - apparently - the least sense of inconsistency, to switch almost between two breaths. ‘Mrs Somerset says those nasty Jews are building a lot more houses up at Donnington.’ ‘Oh, Daddy’ (for she called him Daddy, as we did), ‘Mrs Cohen rang up, and said Wendy seemed to be getting over the ‘flu very well, but could you go in and see her this afternoon or tomorrow morning? She asked about Katharine: we had quite a little chat.’
Now that I have two Jewish publishers, a Jewish accountant and a Jewish literary agent, I feel I have unravelled this strange tangle in which I became unconsciously enmeshed during childhood.
Mr Dalby was an archetypal figure; and indeed I can never go into a greenhouse without remembering him. He was head gardener to that same, fearsome Mr Baxendale, at his fine establishment above the race course, on the edge of Greenham Common. Mr Baxendale was a patient, and it was while sitting in the car one morning in the drive outside his house, waiting for my father, that I first watched red squirrels. They came down from a cedar and scampered about on the grass.
Mr Dalby was always correctly dressed as a head gardener, in shirt-sleeves, brown waistcoat with watch-chain, and a brown bowler hat. He had a short beard, too. Towards me he was grave though kindly in manner. He must have been a north countryman, for I remember how oddly it struck me that he talked of ‘cootting off the boods’. His long, knowledgeable conversations with my father, as they walked together through the greenhouses, made me realize that gardening is not a job or a hobby but a sacred responsibility (as to Adam and Eve). Years later, when I first became a householder in Islington, and encountered a neighbour – a barrister - who did nothing whatever to his back garden, it embarrassed me as an indecency might have. I did not avoid him, but I avoided all mention of the matter, which seemed inexcusable.
Mr Dalby was an expert on carnations. They grew for him in hundreds; scarlet, white, streaked, lemon yellow, pink and darkest red. Their scent, above the still, ferny pool for the watering-cans, also seemed coloured; opulent and sumptuous as oriental robes, intensely aristocratic yet in no way frightening (like the parties). It was at one and the same time natural, yet a smell of culture and wealth, so that one thought of languid, slant-eyed beauties with fans, leaning upon curved bridges beneath cobalt-blue skies, gazing down at the golden fishes half visible below their roof of water-lilies. One carnation does not possess this magical quality. It requires hundreds, blooming on the stem in humid, windless air.
The scale on which Mr Dalby was able to do things enraptured me. He had about twelve people under him. There were whole beds of penstemon and gladioli, banks of lilies blooming half beneath the trees, expanses of bright red salvias, whole hothouses full of great mop-head chrysanthemums. Through my father I had already learned to love roses: it was through Mr Dalby that I learned to love ferns. I had hitherto had little or nothing to do with ferns. The south country, unlike, say, the Lake District, has few wild ones, and what there were in our conservatory had never caught my eye beyond the primulas and cyclamen. Mr Dalby had fern-houses; and to me, with my penchant for a surrounding refuge, for seclusion and solitude, these were wonderful places. There were no colours; only the various ranks of varied green rising all around: no scents except the smell of moist greenery; no sound except the infrequent drip of a tap into water. I used to try to be left alone in the fern-houses. Then - or so it seemed - the singularity of each fern - the undivided fronds of a Hart’s Tongue, the lacy, weightless quality of a Maidenhair - could impart itself. You had to keep still as though you were watching birds; ferns spoke in low voices. They didn’t come at you like orchids (for Mr Dalby had those, too. Yet somehow they didn’t bowl me over; he sensed this and wisely refrained from dwelling on them).
Mr Dalby once gave me a maidenhair fern for a personal possession. It was a scion, for I remember him potting it himself It grew and thrived, and remained healthily in the conservatory until Oakdene was sold in 1939. What happened to it then I don’t know.