through his own inadequacies.
I was born after the war, so it was only history to me. Had I realised, when I got so cross with my parents’ ineptitude, how close it still was to them, how they had already gone through the shock of seeing the kind of life they understood crumble, I would have been much more compassionate.
One windy March evening, when the children’s need of clothing seemed particularly dire, Mother decided to write to some of her old acquaintances to ask for second-hand clothing. After all, she said bitterly to Father, the most she could lose was a three-halfpenny stamp, since she appeared to have lost any friendship there was.
When the children had gone to bed, she sat at one end of the living-room table and wrote three letters, while I sat at the other end and did my homework.
Three days later, a scented letter dropped through our letter box. As far as I could remember, it was the first letter, other than a bill, which we had received since coming to Liverpool.
Opening it was a ceremony, carried out under the eager eyes of the entire family.
‘It’s from Katie,’ said Mother, naming a gay,childless married friend, as she slit the envelope with the kitchen knife.
It contained a single sheet of notepaper wrapped round a five-pound note. Katie was sorry about us and sent the enclosed with love. Mother had found a technique for adding to our income.
Until she had exhausted every possible person she could think of, Mother wrote at least one begging letter a week. She rarely got money out of the same person twice. But she had had an enormous circle of acquaintances, and when she ran out of these she wrote to the parents of the children’s friends and also moving letters to their teachers. After that, she wrote to people whose names she had picked out of library reference books.
She learned to write eloquently of the children’s woes and her own efforts to find work. She did not mention Father in letters to strangers, perhaps to give the impression, without actually saying so, that she was widowed. She frequently passed her efforts over to me to read – one of the few times when she took me into her confidence. I had never heard of confidence tricksters and I read them admiringly, believing them to be a perfectly honourable way of earning money. After all, Grandma had always said that charity was a great virtue, and we were certainly in need.
There were many professional begging letter writers in Liverpool at that time. Earnest gentlemen sat in their tiny bed-sitting rooms and wrote passionate appeals for help to any monied person who came to their attention. They invented whole families of starving children, aged parents in need of shoes, wives dying of tuberculosis, and so on. And they made a steady living at it. In contrast, Mother could say honestly that her children were in dreadful need, even if bad management was part of the cause of it.
Some well-to-do people, including Royalty, who were bedevilled by begging letter writers, would send the letters to a charitable organisation in the city, with the request that they investigate the need; it was remarkable how generous people were when the need was found to be genuine. I do not recollect, however, anyone coming to investigate us as a result of one of Mother’s letters.
Thanks to the kindness of many people unknown to me, a few comforts began to trickle into the house, amongst them a second-hand iron bed for me. The spring was hollowed out like a hammock and it was a number of years before I acquired a mattress. I shared it for a while with Edward, but it represented my first personal gain at home since we had arrived in Liverpool. It was at least another fiveyears before I got proper blankets and sheets for it; and lying chilled to the marrow through endless winter nights was one of the greater hardships for all the children.
Sometimes parcels of clothing or bedding arrived in response to the letters. Clothing for the younger children
I was born after the war, so it was only history to me. Had I realised, when I got so cross with my parents’ ineptitude, how close it still was to them, how they had already gone through the shock of seeing the kind of life they understood crumble, I would have been much more compassionate.
One windy March evening, when the children’s need of clothing seemed particularly dire, Mother decided to write to some of her old acquaintances to ask for second-hand clothing. After all, she said bitterly to Father, the most she could lose was a three-halfpenny stamp, since she appeared to have lost any friendship there was.
When the children had gone to bed, she sat at one end of the living-room table and wrote three letters, while I sat at the other end and did my homework.
Three days later, a scented letter dropped through our letter box. As far as I could remember, it was the first letter, other than a bill, which we had received since coming to Liverpool.
Opening it was a ceremony, carried out under the eager eyes of the entire family.
‘It’s from Katie,’ said Mother, naming a gay,childless married friend, as she slit the envelope with the kitchen knife.
It contained a single sheet of notepaper wrapped round a five-pound note. Katie was sorry about us and sent the enclosed with love. Mother had found a technique for adding to our income.
Until she had exhausted every possible person she could think of, Mother wrote at least one begging letter a week. She rarely got money out of the same person twice. But she had had an enormous circle of acquaintances, and when she ran out of these she wrote to the parents of the children’s friends and also moving letters to their teachers. After that, she wrote to people whose names she had picked out of library reference books.
She learned to write eloquently of the children’s woes and her own efforts to find work. She did not mention Father in letters to strangers, perhaps to give the impression, without actually saying so, that she was widowed. She frequently passed her efforts over to me to read – one of the few times when she took me into her confidence. I had never heard of confidence tricksters and I read them admiringly, believing them to be a perfectly honourable way of earning money. After all, Grandma had always said that charity was a great virtue, and we were certainly in need.
There were many professional begging letter writers in Liverpool at that time. Earnest gentlemen sat in their tiny bed-sitting rooms and wrote passionate appeals for help to any monied person who came to their attention. They invented whole families of starving children, aged parents in need of shoes, wives dying of tuberculosis, and so on. And they made a steady living at it. In contrast, Mother could say honestly that her children were in dreadful need, even if bad management was part of the cause of it.
Some well-to-do people, including Royalty, who were bedevilled by begging letter writers, would send the letters to a charitable organisation in the city, with the request that they investigate the need; it was remarkable how generous people were when the need was found to be genuine. I do not recollect, however, anyone coming to investigate us as a result of one of Mother’s letters.
Thanks to the kindness of many people unknown to me, a few comforts began to trickle into the house, amongst them a second-hand iron bed for me. The spring was hollowed out like a hammock and it was a number of years before I acquired a mattress. I shared it for a while with Edward, but it represented my first personal gain at home since we had arrived in Liverpool. It was at least another fiveyears before I got proper blankets and sheets for it; and lying chilled to the marrow through endless winter nights was one of the greater hardships for all the children.
Sometimes parcels of clothing or bedding arrived in response to the letters. Clothing for the younger children
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