You can be with old people, even those getting on a bit, and never suspect that whole continents of experience are there, just behind those ordinary faces. Best to be old yourself to understand, if not one of those percipient children made sensitive by having to learn watchfulness, knowing that a glance, a tiny gesture may mean warnings or rewards. Two old people may exchange a look where tears are implicit, or say, ‘Do you remember…’ signposts to something worth remembering for thirty years. Even a tone of voice, a warmth, or irritation, can mark a ten-year love affair, or an enmity. Writing about parents, even alert offspring or children may miss gold. ‘Oh, yes, that was when I was living in Doncaster that summer with Mavis.’
‘You were what? You never mentioned that.’
Writing about my father’s imagined life, my mother’s, I have relied not only on traits of character that may be extrapolated, or extended, but on tones of voice, sighs, wistful looks, signs as slight as those used by skilful trackers. More than once did my father say, with a laugh, talking about some girl in his youth, ‘But I liked her mother even more.’ From there came Alfred’s intimacy with Mary Lane.
Bert was his childhood friend, a young man’s mate. They had good times together in boys’ pastimes and when Bert went with my father to the races, ‘Oh, I did so love the horses,’ said my father. Meaning the animals themselves. ‘Bert and I went up to Doncaster when we could. But I was on my guard – I could easily be taken over by it all – those horses thundering down the straight with the sun on their hides, the smell of them, the slippery run of your hand on a rump. But Bert wasn’t so cautious, not in that or in anything. I used to have to watch for Bert. He didn’t care enough about himself.’
Once in Banket, in Rhodesia, for no reason I can remember, there was a Danish woman visiting. She was a large, laughing, ruddy-faced woman and I remember to this day sitting as a small girl on her lap, in her arms, thinking, She likes me, she likes me better than my mother does. And my father most certainly did like her. From that afternoon so long ago came Betsy, Alfred’s wife: I enjoyed giving him someone warm and loving.
William, Emily McVeagh’s husband, came from the little picture of my mother’s great love that lived on her dressing-table. But, strange, it was a cutting from a newspaper in that leather frame, not a portrait from a studio or a friendly snap. Yet she talked as if she and he were to be married. It was a sensitive, cautious face, the sort of face you’d cast in a film as the lover too shy to speak his love, or whose first love died young, leaving him grieving and for ever unable to love another. Even as a child I would look at that face and think, Well, you wouldn’t have had much fun with that one. Meaning fun, the kind of good times my father talked about in London before the war.
Daisy was my mother’s great friend all her life until, after many decades of writing England to Africa, Southern Rhodesia to London, they met again and I think did not find much in common. Daisy in life did not marry, but she was of the generation that did not find husbands: they were killed in the war, the war to end all wars.
Both Emily and Alfred, when young, knew how to make the most of London. They went to the theatre – my father loved the music hall; my mother enjoyed concerts; they had supper at the Trocadero, and the Café Royal. What energy they had, both of them. Cricket, tennis, hockey, picnics, parties, dances.
Cedric and Fiona, the young couple who liked Emily, were suggested by the couples, younger than she was, who befriended my mother. She always had admirers, younger, sometimes much richer, who liked her energy, her humour, her flair, her impetuous way with life. She also had male admirers. The one place in my mother’s imagined life where I have taken serious liberties is her friendship with Alistair. He loved her but she did not know it, or didn’t want to know it. This was suggested by the time after my father’s death when my brother and I tried to persuade her to marry again. It was partly selfish: we made no excuses about wanting that formidable energy directed away from us. But there was also concern for her. She had had that long bad time, nursing – years of it – with nothing in her life but a very sick man, her husband, who needed her every minute. Now there were men who wanted to marry her, sensible, quite impressive men, one a bank manager – surely up her street – another a well-off farmer. She could at last stop worrying about money, have decent holidays, companionship. But our attempts were met not only without enthusiasm but as if what we were suggesting was out of the question. But why? demanded my brother. Why not? I pressed and persuaded. It was her incomprehension that silenced us. That we should suggest such an impossible, inconceivable thing! How could we? ‘How could I marry anyone but your father? And besides, I must devote myself to my children.’ Who were grown-up, with lives well away from her.
We actually discussed it, my brother and I, though chat about the emotions was not really our habit. ‘But why not one of them?’ demanded my brother. ‘So-and-so – he’s a perfectly decent chap, isn’t he? What is the matter with Derek, then, or Charles? I think he loves her, you know,’ said Harry, blushing at this inordinate use of language. ‘Why shouldn’t she have something nice happen to her at last?’ But no. Anyone would think we were suggesting she should mate with King Kong.
‘You know,’ my brother tried again, in a fever of embarrassment, ‘you know, Mother, I think Charles is really keen on you.’
‘You really are so funny, you two,’ said my mother, briskly.
From The London Encyclopaedia, edited by Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert, 1983
Royal Free Hospital, Pond Street, Hampstead, NW3
Founded by William Marsden, a young surgeon who was inspired with the idea of free admissions to hospitals when he found a young woman dying on the steps of ST ANDREW’S CHURCH IN HOLBORN and was unable to get admission for her at any of the London hospitals which all then demanded letters of recommendation from a subscriber. On 14 February 1828, Marsden met members of the CORDWAINERS’ COMPANY at the Gray’s Inn Coffee House where they resolved to found the first hospital to admit patients without payment or a subscriber’s letter. The hospital opened on 17 April 1828 under the patronage of King George IV and with the Duke of Gloucester as its first President. It has continued to receive royal patronage ever since. The original site was a small rented house at No.16 Greville Street, HATTON GARDEN, with only a few beds. The hospital, though familiarly called ‘The Free Hospital’, was officially known as the London General Institution for the Gratuitous Care of Malignant Diseases. In 1837, when Queen Victoria became Patron, she asked that it should henceforth be known as the Royal Free Hospital. In the first year 926 patients were treated. In the second year the hospital dealt with 1,551 cases. In 1832 over 700 cholera patients were treated. A matron and nurse were employed while the epidemic lasted. In 1839 another house was acquired and the number of beds rose from 30 to 72.
With rapidly growing public support, a larger building was necessary, and in 1843 the hospital moved to a site in GRAY’S INN ROAD which had formerly been the barracks of the Light Horse Volunteers. The lease was purchased on 31 August 1843. The hospital extended its facilities on the new site, the Sussex Wing being opened in 1856 in memory of the Duke of Sussex. In 1877 the teaching of students began, and thus the hospital became one of the first of the London undergraduate teaching hospitals. The Victoria Wing with an out-patient department was added in 1878; and the Alexandra Building was opened by the Prince of Wales in 1895. The numerous benefactors included Lord Riddell, Sir Albert Levy, Free-masons, and several of the CITY LIVERY COMPANIES. Apart from the pioneer principle of its inception, the Royal Free took a leading part in two other important aspects of hospital work, the introduction of women medical students in 1877 and of a Lady Almoner in 1895. The admission of women to study medicine was the most momentous step in the history of the hospital and the provision of clinical facilities for women students marked the triumphant climax of a struggle for recognition that had been going on for some years by a small group of brave and deter mined women led by Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake. Until 1894 all the medical members of the consultant and resident staff were men, but in that year Miss L.B. Aldrich-Blake was appointed as honorary anaesthetist. In the following year she obtained the MS London, the first woman to secure this qualification, and she subsequently became a distinguished surgeon on the hospital staff. In 1901 women were accepted as resident medical officers.
In 1921 it became the first hospital in England to have an obstetrics and gynaecology unit. In 1926–30 the Eastman Dental Hospital was built to the designs of Burnet, Tait and Lorne. The Royal Free suffered severe damage in the Second World War, with considerable loss of beds. In 1948, with the inception of the National Health Service, the Royal Free Hospital became the centre of a group of hospitals which included the HAMPSTEAD GENERAL HOSPITAL, the ELIZABETH GARRETT ANDERSON HOSPITAL, the London Fever Hospital (Liverpool Road), the North West Fever Hospital (Lawn Road) and subsequently also New End and Coppetts Wood Hospitals. The ELIZABETH GARRETT ANDERSON HOSPITAL later separated from the group while the HAMPSTEAD GENERAL, North West Fever and London Fever Hospitals were incorporated with the parent hospital and its medical school in the new Royal Free Hospital, which was built on its present site to the designs of Watkins, Gray, Woodgate International. The first patient was admitted in October 1974; the hospital was in full use by March 1975; and was officially opened by the Queen on 15 November 1978. There are now 1,070 beds comprising 852 in the new building, 144 at New End Hospital (New End, NW3) and 74 at Coppetts Wood Hospital (Coppetts Road, muswell hill, N10).
