The world shook twice in 1906, the minor of those events being the San Francisco Earthquake on April 18th. On August 6th Mum was born, in Hackney, East London. Her mother was a schoolteacher and her father had a drapery stall, selling buttons and bows, in Dalston market.
Mum lived for 100 years which is awesome. It becomes even more awesome when you begin to position her age next to other events. Imagine..... When she was born aeroplanes were just about managing to fly a couple of hundred yards before crashing back down to earth, she was three before the first one managed to cross the English channel, she was 4 when the first useful radio message crossed the Atlantic and she once told me that the first thing she could really remember was the image of the sinking Titanic on the front page of the newpaper on April 16th 1912.
When she was 18 she didn’t have the vote only women over the age of 30 had that and they had to be householders, the wives of householders, occupiers of property with at least an annual rent of £5 or be graduates of a British university.
She was already 30 when the first television transmission went out, though I doubt she saw it happen, a television set cost the same as a car and the signal only covered North London.
I imagine that helping her father on the market stall kindled the interest she was later to have in clothes and fashion, shaping the next step in her life’s adventure. At the age of 16 she leaves school, and heads off to the West End.
She starts as an assistant in an Haute Couture establishment in Mayfair, run by a formidable figure known only as "Monsieur". She soon shows her talents and within a short time she becomes a buyer, specialising in hats.
Imagine. The Duchess of Wherever draws up outside in her horse drawn carriage and demands to see the latest hats from Paris. Mum duly runs backwards and forwards between the Duchess and the storeroom, presenting her ladyship with a choice of exquisite miniatures of the latest millinery creations direct from Paris. The Duchess makes her choice, mum puts on her coat (and doubtless her hat) and heads off to Victoria station, the Boat train and Paris. She buys the hat, stays overnight in a small hotel and then does the journey in reverse, voilà. Thus she learnt her French and that’s why perhaps it stayed with her all of her life, marking what, I suspect, was the happiest time of her life.
The rest we all know about – She got married to this handsome dark brooding type called Harry, magician, musician and entrepreneur, had three wonderful children and settled down, uncomfortably, I suspect, indeed I know, into suburbia.
Any excuse to get out was taken.
Well do I remember my father leaving the house at 8.45, to go to "the office" closely followed on the next train to town by my mother, with me in tow. A race against time round the West End stores (let’s face it, our mother was a shopoholic long before the phrase was coined) and back again, metamorphosing into the dutiful housewife in apron and smiles as my father hauled his briefcase grumpily up the garden path. They coexisted through thick and very thin for 58 turbulent years and she made quite sure there was never a dull moment. She was a feminist before that phrase was coined too, and she was involved at several levels with the National Council of Women.
In her last days she retreated further and further backwards into her mind. How strange is the human brain! With age, distant memories strengthen and recent memories fade. On my last visit to see her, with Jane and Julia, she appeared a little lost and a little confused, so we asked her what her fathers name was.. Joseph came the certain reply, Her mother’s? Dinah .. and mine?.. she struggled, peered and faltered, then in a tiny voice came out with Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, What's in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. She smiled, nodded off to sleep, and to me those were her last words. What a beautiful, fitting, cultured and gentle end to a long, eventful and most extraordinary life.
And so we draw to a close. All things come full cycle. Whatever you believe in, or don’t believe in, it come to the same in the end, dust to dust, ashes to ashes.
We miss you already.
Goodbye
Peter Charles