Dora died at 1.30 a.m. in Minehead Nursing Home.
Entry in the Agapemone diary for
Saturday, 10 January 1953
I grew surprisingly close to my mother that year, to the extent of sleeping in the second bed in her large bedroom next door to Katie’s Room, at the west end of the mansion. I had a perfectly good bedroom of my own, but now Margaret was there only infrequently and the courage I got from her proximity in the next room had fled as the huge house grew emptier with each of my visits. I had grown so used to sleeping in a dormitory containing upwards of a dozen girls, I found the silence unnerving. So I took to creeping down to my mother’s room on the floor below and sliding into the second bed there. Eventually, she got one of the KP to make up the other bed permanently.
But there were disadvantages to sharing a room with my mother: she snored. So did Gay, who slept on an old chaise longue at the other side of the room. I soon found if I wasn’t asleep by the time the pair of them came to bed, it would be hours before tiredness shut out the constant rumble.
* * *
The previous year, Trudel Lederman had given birth to a daughter and named her Ruth. My grandmother had been ecstatic. ‘Come, give me your arm,’ she had commanded my mother one morning. Together, the two walked up the long, tiled passage, past the kitchens towards the side door, which I used every evening to visit the little family in the trim cottage across the lawn. As my grandmother made her slow, careful way through the mansion accompanied by my mother, heads popped out of rooms to stare in amazement at the unaccustomed sight.
‘We’re going to visit the baby,’ my mother explained as they passed.
‘They have named her Ruth, after me,’ added my grandmother proudly.
Not strictly true, but who’s quibbling?
Slowly they made their way across the grass.
‘You can go now, Lavita,’ she said as they neared the Ledermans’ front door, which had been flung open in welcome by Trudel.
The baby, as all babies were in those days, had been placed outside in her pram, covered with netting to keep away the sundry cats which roamed the estate. After exchanging smiles of understanding with Trudel, my mother dropped back to join me. Together, we watched Granny approach the pram. Trudel removed the netting and my grandmother bent to inspect the tiny sleeping girl, reaching out a tentative finger to the infant’s downy cheek.
It wasn’t the last time my grandmother went to see the baby and her visits revealed a tender, loving side to the fierce woman who headed the community. They also had a subtle impact on the community’s acceptance of the young strangers and within days there was a constant stream of elderly women admiring the tiny figure in the pram.
Baby Ruth was also a magnet for Waa. She loved babies, having raised two generations of children that were not hers. ‘They were such beautiful children,’ she would tell me, referring to her first generation of charges, my mother and two uncles. ‘I could hardly believe it when Belovèd called me into his study one day and asked me to be David’s nurse.’ She had cared for the baby boy as if he were hers, watching over him every second of the day, sleeping in his nursery at night.
What she didn’t tell me was how, shortly after David’s birth had been registered by the local registrar, Waa had unwisely ventured outside the community. She had no idea the registrar had been interviewed by a local newspaper about his visit to the notorious Agapemone, so she had set off, pushing the baby in his carriage, down a local lane. She had gone barely 100 yards when she found herself surrounded by a crowd of reporters, yelling questions at her about the baby’s parentage. The young nanny from this enclosed community had no idea that the birth of her charge would have scandalised society – and galvanized the press, both national and local. Editors had sent their star reporters down to hunt out the latest titbits about a community that had been making headlines for 50 years. Frightened, but determined they would not get close to David, Waa turned her back on them and scuttled to the safety of the mansion, pushing the pram before her.
The next day, yet another story appeared in the newspaper. Accompanying the article was a drawing of the back view of a young Edwardian woman pushing a pram, her face half-turned in anxiety.
Waa loved to tell me stories of when my mother and uncles were children. Even a quick glimpse at the youngest member of the Lederman family was enough to jog her memories of life in the Agapemone long ago – how David hated picnics but would endure them, and how one day Pat had ridden his bicycle down the terrace at top speed, crashing through the china and sandwiches just as she had laid out the children’s picnic. ‘Oh, he was a naughty boy. But it was just devilment. There was no malice in him,’ she laughed indulgently. And she would tell me of brushing Lavita’s long black hair with 100 strokes each night and how it grew so long that Lavita could sit on it.
One morning, even Emily Hine inched her way across the lawn to pronounce that she was aghast at the way Ruth’s mother put the baby outside in her pram in all weathers. She told Trudel it wasn’t healthy to expose such a small baby to so much fresh air. Trudel listened politely and continued the practice. Eventually, after a few days of muttering, Emily gave up criticising.
* * *
I was due to take tea with Emily and, as usual, I had a question. I had overheard Uncle David and my mother discussing how they had wanted Ann to be a debutante. A debutante? I had only a vague idea of what debutantes were.
‘Were you ever a debutante, Emily?’ I asked when we were settled with our tea and stale arrowroot biscuits.
‘No, Kitty. I was never pretty and I wouldn’t have liked all those parties.’ She smiled. ‘I’m afraid I was rather a disappointment to my dear parents.’
‘Why, if you were a nurse?’
‘No one wanted to marry me.’ She paused to take a sip of tea. ‘But I didn’t care for marriage. Then I met your grandfather.’
‘Where did you meet him?’
‘He was preaching in his London church and he seemed to be speaking to me alone.’ She smiled again and her eyes grew dreamy. Somewhere a clock chimed the half-hour. There was a gurgle from her radiator, as the huge boiler sent water coursing through the system, trapping a myriad air bubbles. ‘And so here I am.’
‘But you took tea with Queen Victoria,’ I urged, ‘so you would know about debutantes.’
Emily looked suspicious. ‘Why are you so anxious to know about debutantes, young lady?’
‘Mummy and Uncle David wanted Ann to be presented at court,’ I said.’
‘What nonsense!’ the old lady burst out.
I was taken aback. ‘Ann would make a very good debutante,’ I replied. ‘She’s beautiful and she loves clothes.’
‘Your mother and uncle know perfectly well none of you girls can be debutantes. Goodness knows, they’ve been enough of a disappoint—’
She stopped and shot me a look.
‘Besides, your parents are divorced. The King and Queen won’t have anything to do with anybody who has a divorce in the family. And quite right too.’ She reached for her gold-topped cane and thumped the carpet, as if summoning a servant.
‘Well, I think it’s pretty unkind.’ It was becoming increasingly obvious my parents’ divorce was why we were so ‘peculiar’, to quote Ann’s former boyfriend. ‘It’s not our fault.’
* * *
I hadn’t heard about the passing of ‘dear Dora’ until I came home for the Easter holidays and then it was only a passing remark between Uncle David and Mummy about the cost of funerals.
‘Who’s dead?’ I asked.
The two glanced at me. ‘Dora Beddow,’ replied Uncle David.
‘Did I know her?’
‘It was long before your time,’ replied my uncle.
I ran through the list of old ladies I lived with. The name didn’t ring a bell. ‘So, she didn’t live here?’
‘No,’ my uncle answered shortly.
A couple of evenings later I lay in bed listening for the approach of Mummy’s footsteps, followed by the tap, tap of Gay’s long nails on the linoleum edging the Indian rug which ran the length of the upstairs passage.
‘Mummy,’ I called, as her shadow darkened the doorway.
‘You should be asleep,’ she replied.
‘Tell me about the violet seller.’
My mother could never resist her oft-told tale about the coloured sketch of a Victorian violet-seller which hung on her bedroom wall. The young girl is leaning forward, offering her bunch of violets, eyes huge and soulful beneath her tumble of dark hair. Once again she told me how her father had gone to London on a visit and come across the picture in a shop in Cheapside. ‘It reminded him so much of me that he bought it and brought it home.’
She loved the picture, especially as her father had arrived with it at a difficult time, after her mother had accused her of ‘looking like a little red Indian’, with her long, straight black hair – which was not meant as a compliment. The picture now hangs in my home.
But that night I had an ulterior motive: I wanted to know more about Dora and had learnt that the circuitous route was the best way to get information. ‘Why didn’t Dora Beddow live here?’
‘It was all a long time ago, Kitty. And it’s long past your bedtime.’
* * *
It was Dora Beddow’s mother, Rebecca, who first became enamoured with my grandfather – and perhaps also of his teachings. Rebecca’s husband, Frederick, was a wealthy industrialist and accountant from the English Midlands who had helped set up the Vis Vitae Bread Company in London as a way of diversifying his now-considerable wealth. But the company, founded around 1887, had soon run into financial difficulties and Frederick Beddow, as a member of the board of directors, had proposed Charles Stokes Read as a new director to help the company regain its financial health. That decision was to have catastrophic consequences for Mr Beddow.
Rebecca Beddow soon struck up a friendship with Sarah Read. She went with Sarah and Charles to hear the dashing Reverend Pigott preach in various rented halls and, like so many women living at the dawn of the twentieth century, Mrs Beddow sensed that for all her worldly goods something was missing from her life. She was bored and dissatisfied but, unlike other women who were beginning to question their lack of rights, had no interest in women’s suffrage.
Reverend Pigott gave her life meaning. He promised her salvation and fulfilment. The simple message, couched in convoluted and colourful language studded with references to the erotic Song of Solomon, soon had her spellbound. And for a woman of her class and attitude, she saw that by her association with the Reads, she had also found entrée to an inner circle whose members included wives of members of parliament. She also found the Reverend Pigott attractive.
At first, Frederick, as so many husbands before and since, was merely relieved his wife had found some way of occupying herself and their musically inclined daughter Dora. Dora, by now in her teens, had become so accomplished on the piano that Dear Belovèd asked her to accompany his services. Soon, Frederick found himself and his younger child, Arnold, helping to distribute Agapemonite literature. For a time, Frederick even took on the job of keeping the books for the Somerset Abode of Love. But gradually he began to sense that his family was being torn apart: he and Arnold on one side, and Rebecca and Dora on the other. And by the time he realised, it was too late. He had been replaced in his wife’s and daughter’s affections by the Reverend Pigott.
Frederick argued. He threatened. He even pleaded, as much as a Victorian industrialist could bring himself to plead. It was no good. Rebecca and Dora were leaving him to go where the Reverend Pigott led. Soon whispers reached Frederick’s ears that his wife was having an affair with Pigott. Was it any wonder that in 1905 Frederick would be one of the directors to vote Charles Stokes Read off the board of the Vis Vitae Bread Company?
* * *
It was late spring in 1984. My sister had driven down from London to Dorset to stay with Hope Walpole and Lucy Bertram, two elderly sisters who, as children, had spent part of each year in the Abode of Love. Their father had contributed £1,000 to the building of the Ark of the Covenant in London and the whole family had regularly been invited down to stay during the school holidays. They had soon made friends with our mother. Now in their 70s, they were only too happy to talk about the old days, even into a tape recorder.
‘Belovèd used to have his services in what was called Eden . . . his sermons were wonderful,’ said Hope, the elder of the two.
‘Were they wonderful because of the way he told them or because of the content?’ asked Ann.
‘Both,’ the sisters chorused.
‘They were quite uplifting,’ Hope continued. ‘Well, as we came out – we’d all come out, sort of in procession – he would be standing at the door to sort of welcome everybody. As we went by, he would sometimes say something, or just smile, and just occasionally he would step forward and kiss us. That was a great honour, of course.’
‘Did he kiss the men and the women?’ Ann asked.
‘I didn’t see him doing it to any of the grown-ups,’ answered Hope.
The two sisters talked about the wonderful holidays they enjoyed, so far from the smoke and dirt of London: the wonderful food, the frequent picnics – which our mother loathed – learning to dance, the plays the ‘young ones’ put on, the tennis parties. Hope recounted how one day she had smashed a window when a tennis shot went awry. ‘Oh, you’ve no idea.’ She giggled at the memory. ‘All the elderly people came along to see the damage I had done.’
‘What about Dora Beddow?’ Ann asked.
‘She used to play the organ,’ recounted Hope. She and another young woman, one of Charles Read’s daughters, also typed up the sermons, which were then reproduced and distributed to each follower, both in the Agapemone and in its scattered pockets across England, Norway and even North America. As the community aged, Dora took over the buying of food, driving into Bridgwater three times a week to purchase supplies.
‘Did grandfather have an affair with her?’ Ann suggested.
‘There was something,’ admitted Lucy. She recounted how one day she had asked Lavita, then a teenager, why Belovèd went to Dora’s room every afternoon. Belovèd would have then been in his early 70s and Dora some 30 years younger. ‘I’ll tell you when you’re older,’ Lavita had replied loftily. The question was never satisfactorily answered.
‘Was he an attractive man?’ Ann asked.
‘Yes, I suppose he was,’ replied Hope. ‘He had a very nice, gentle manner. Yes, I would say he was a very lovable person.’
But love wasn’t everything, as it never is. Eventually, long after my grandfather’s death, Dora would leave the community, disillusioned. ‘What fools we have been,’ she told my paternal grandmother and her sister, Great Aunt Tup. Dora was 74 when she died in Minehead Nursing Home.