You might be related.  Start your tree to find out. It's free!

We’ll search our network daily and notify you when we find family tree matches.

Start your tree
Added by dianaabbott1
Photo

Gwendoline Rose Watney

1885-1976
Born: St George Hanover Square, Middlesex, England
Died: Troutstream Hall, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, England

Footprints
 
Family Members
  • Getting family members ...
 
Life Story
  • Birth

  • Residence

  • Residence

  • Marriage

  • Death

  • Story: Notes For Gwendoline Watney

    <p>Was educated at home by a German governess. Read Natural Sciences at Girton Cambridge. At that time Cambridge denied degrees to women so she took BA at Dublin in Geology. In 1908 aged 31(?) she entered the United States with her father, and at that time was living at Buckhold. Was a missionary for YWCA in Japan, then housewife and Sunday School Teacher. Date of christening is taken from MEW's Journal. Gwendoline R. Barclay's Memories (The following notes were made by her on loose scraps of paper and are nearly all in the actual words that she wrote. Bits in brackets are added by Oliver and in some places he has shortened or edited what was actually written to make it easier to follow. There was some duplication etc in the originals, which were obviously written from time to time, without sometimes checking or linking up with what had been written before. She was always known in the family as Meenie, see below, and my father as Papa.) My Parents I never knew my grandparents, but they lived at Hailey Park, Croydon in my early childhood. My father, Herbert, was the youngest son in a family of three boys and five girls. He was much loved and his advice often sought by his sisters. He was at Rugby School and then at Cambridge, where he excelled in maths and rowed three times in the Oxford and Cambridge boat race (1863-1866). Graduating in 1866 he went into the family brewing business. Herbert, or Bertie as his sisters called him, had become a devoted servant of Jesus Christ through the ministry in the university of Moody and Sankey (not I was told in a meeting, but following some meetings and going out for a long walk alone in the country). He was not long in the business because he became uneasy about the effect of the products of his father's firm. A friend, Willie Rainsford, wrote in his diary of 1968: 'he had become intensely religious, and something had moved him to take an interest in the social problems of the city. The firm was one of the richest in London and on his own account, very unostentatiously, he had for some time been going round the public houses that bore the family name. The survey profoundly disgusted him. He sought out those who were visiting in the East End and found a Miss Logan at work there, and volunteered to help in any way she desired. He (thought himself) no good at speaking so he carefully collected information about hundreds of families that seemed to be in danger of complete collapse because of unemployment and drunkenness. (ORB clearly remembers being told by Meenie that he had started a Bible study in the brewery and that at one meeting one of the men asked him how he could carry on with the business as a Christian. When he asked why the man told him to go and visit the Pubs that carried the Watney name. He did and was shocked. Hence his interest in the East End) He and his friend, Willie Rainsford, developed a plan to encourage those who were willing to do so to emigrate to Canada. For a while he gave up almost everything else to develop this plan almost alone. He was 22 and Willie Rainsford 17. The Canadian authorities were consulted and they went over to Canada to check things out. It was a rough voyage of two weeks to Quebec, and then on to Toronto. In the end a party of 800 men, women and children sailed for Toronto, where the immigration authorities of Ontario had promised to obtain employment for them. It seems that these immigrants 'gave a very good account of themselves in their new land'. While he was abroad he had given much thought to his future and to the devastating effects of drink in East London in Watney public houses and particularly the evident effect on the neglected children of drunken parents. On coming home he told his father that he could no longer continue in the business. His father was very angry and told him he would be disinherited and would get nothing from him in future. He had married Sarah Louisa Rainsford, the sister of his friend Willie Rainsford, and for a time they were very hard up, but his Granny (or an aunt) had left him &sup1;300 and he managed to return to Cambridge to study medicine. He worked very hard and eventually became a consultant Physician at St. George's Hospital in London, which was then near to Hyde Park. He preached occasionally in chapels and sometimes went into Speakers Corner in Hyde Park to speak from a soap box. On one of those occasions a heckler shouted out 'there is not a word of truth in the Bible'. Watney, who had a ready wit replied, 'Well there is one verse that says "the churning of milk brings forth butter and the wringing of the nose brings forth blood" and if you don't believe it come up here and I will prove it'! We lived for a while in Wilton Crescent behind St. George's Hospital, where in fact I was born. He became reasonably well off and his father in his last illness called for him, acknowledged that Herbert had taken an honourable path, and gave him a piece of land in Wandsworth that had nothing to do with the brewery and proved quite valuable. We settled in a very nice house with a park in Pangbourne called Buckhold (Buchholz=Beech Wood). This had been built in 1885 by the architect Waterhouse, who also built Easneye and Girton College. Here he bred pedigree Jersey Cattle, which won numerous prizes, and Exmoor ponies which he cross bred with an Arab stallion. He loved all the trees and woods and cared for them greatly. He arranged shooting parties for friends and in-laws etc. Meenie comments that she didn't like these parties, with all the dead birds laid out in rows and hearty men with very muddy boots who praised his shooting and his cigars. Meenie says that in her childhood she does not remember him shooting himself or smoking. The last straw was when someone's shooting dog got hold of her doll. 'I was devastated (she writes) father and mother replaced the doll - but there is no love like an old one'. When well advanced in years my father started a water company - by private Act of Parliament - for several nearby villages, where there were periodic outbreaks of typhoid. One 'model village' boasted some prominent people including another doctor and a Poet Laureate. When my father asked for the well to be investigated it was found to contain a dead horse and other unsavoury objects. They then agreed to take water from his new Bradfield Water Company and they never had another outbreak of typhoid. He had had a new well dug with a windmill and then later an electric pump for the company. In my early school days my mother had a persistent cough and so she and my father, with the two oldest girls, May and Eva, spent many winters in Spain or finally Madeira. Here again typhoid was a problem so he had a new well dug, but people threw rubbish into it and it had to be abandoned. Our family was considered very fussy in that we would only drink boiled water - until the British Consul's wife died of typhoid. The daughters ran a small school for local poor children, as they spoke good Portuguese, and also an English language Sunday School. But my mother could not bear separation from the four younger children so they returned to England. (Presumably the daughters were there to look after their mother, when he frequently had to return to his job in London. May cared for her to her death and then cared for her father, running the household for many years). We called my father 'Pusseou' which was roughly the Portuguese for a little pool, because he had a round bald patch on his head. An English visitor one day said' fancy calling that stern man 'Pussy'. We had to enlighten her about this and assured her that father was neither stern nor a pussy! He loved his staff and used to visit the cottages to give help where needed. He went teetotal for a few years by agreement with his gamekeeper, who had become a heavy drinker, but alas, someone persuaded the man to have a drink and he relapsed so it was of no avail. He normally kept a good cellar for guests. He built a 'coffee house' for labourers to enable them to keep out of the Pubs and supported a Bible colporteur to go round the villages. My mother's parents had lived in Dundalk, near Dublin, where my grandfather was a vicar. (Meenie was always proud of her Irish ancestry, and supplied us with Irish sayings and witticisms.) My mother was pretty and lively, with a very moving mezzo-soprano voice, which nearly always made my sister Dora cry. She could administer correction when necessary to the appropriate quarter with the back of a hair brush. She had been very frail for several years and had very painful rheumatoid arthritis in her hands. She died aged 40, leaving us seven children, aged between 22 and 9, when I was 10 (or 11 ?). I remember my father taking each of us in turn on his knee and weeping for us when he told us of her death. As she had been so frail for several years we were not devastated by her death and were soon able to rejoice for her. Father called us all into the schoolroom as we waited to go to the funeral and explained for us younger ones the miracle of the resurrection in terms of a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. We were all dressed in deep mourning for the funeral and did not understand why everyone was so upset and why our German nurse took the brightly coloured roses out of Lily's and my hats and told us we were naughty when we laughed at some little joke. (For the rest of her life Meenie had absolutely no fear of death and taught us all the same attitude. When she was within a few weeks of her own death I visited her very soon after Papa had died. She asked if he was still alive and when I told her, her response in her frailty was quite consistently 'How lovely for him'.) Home Life Soon after my mother died I went through a time of depression. I was just 11 years old, and father had bought for us three smaller girls a girl's bicycle. Till then I had ridden a boy's bicycle. It was a novelty then (about 1896) for girls to bicycle, and I was quite excited about it, but unaccountably sad. Lily and I slept together and after getting into bed I was in tears for several nights. Lily asked me what was the matter, and I could only answer, 'I don't know , but I feel sad'. 'Have you ever asked God to forgive you your sins?' Lily asked me. 'No, not really', was my answer. 'Then you had better get out of bed now and do it right away'. This was wise 13-year-old Lily's advice. I got out of bed and asked for and received forgiveness, and immediately the Peace of God filled my child heart. I have often and often been desperately unworthy of the name of Christian. I was born in our house in Wilton Crescent in 1885. Schooling was at home with governesses, many of them German, so that the family learnt German. (Evidently life was full of fun.) To tell a lie was the biggest ever offence in our family - very occasionally someone did tell a lie but it was generally restrained for fear of the very mild punishment that would be meted out. The girls were free to go into the park. Lily, the next older sister of the two brothers and five girls, used to go into a wood and have imaginary tea parties with her dolls. (Meenie once told us 'I full of bravery decided one day that I too would go for a walk all on my own. They saw me off only to see me running back very soon because I had gone round a corner and met a very large crow'!) When I was quite young our German Nanny warned my mother that I would grow up to be frivolous, apparently because I was always playing with my dolls. Mother replied that it meant that I was happy playing on my own. I was rather a cry baby when small, and father didn't stop us teasing each other as he was sure it would help us to face some of the knocks of life later on. He said 'it saves parents a lot of trouble as the children bring one another up'. My older sister Dora used to take me on her knee and comfort me when I was teased and when my mother died she charged Dora, then nearly 15,' to take care of the little ones'. That was Lily, me and Martyn. How wonderfully she always fulfilled this charge. We had a sort of Parliament held on the top 4 steps of a big staircase, and we sat very strictly by age, Willie on the top step and Martyn and I on the bottom step and discussed I can't tell what - but it was very 'important'. Dora taught me to read when I was about 5&frac12; or 6 and father gave her a 5 shilling piece as a reward. Martyn and I were very close to each other, only 18 months apart, and our love for each other helped us both when were rather lonely in our teen ages. We both had migraine as children, like our father, and Martyn, used to say to me 'Mussen (his queer German for little mouse) am I going to die?' but when writing this he is nearly 80. We had marvellous aunts, both Watney and Rainsford, who were always ready to help when anybody was abroad or flu swept through the whole family. Their prayers and love sustained us through the long years. The Rainsford uncles, with an Irish brogue, were a delight with their funny stories, sometimes wildly exaggerated. Our Watney Aunt Mary occupied Hailey Park after the grandparents died. She used to be teased by my father and amused us by bringing out her snowy white Victorian handkerchief and waving it at my father and calling out Bertie, you naughty boy!', which amused us greatly to hear him called that. Aunt Mary used to go out for a drive every day armed with tracts and pious leaflets and tell us where to throw them out of the window. We children considered it almost a disgrace to be unwell and were past masters at hiding our feelings. Lily taught me never to let on if I cut my finger with a sharp knife at table 'just hold it to drip over a red place in the carpet or they will give you a baby knife again'. 'If you feel ill', she said, 'never do up your shoebuttons, then if you feel queer or turn pale, bend down to do them up and you will soon get a better colour'. Our old country doctor was a dear family friend. He told my father that he had two standard medicines in his surgery, different colours but both very effective. He died in a flu epidemic after a drive in his open dog cart, which taught us early on about death. Death had no terrors for any of us - father and mother had deeply taught us the great truths of the Christian Faith and we never doubted that we should see our mother again. I went through a dreadful stage as a teenager, or 'backfish' as it was then called. I was unattractive and plain and unkind to the people I loved. (ORB wonders if she really was plain. Before long photographs show her to have become a very beautiful young woman). I was jealous of the people who were praised, or I thought better loved than myself - which made me nastier than ever. I get quite hot and bothered when I remember my catty behaviour. I spent hours alone, or with my sister Lily, catching butterflies and bird's nesting and playing the piano. Cambridge and Edinburgh My older brother Willie went to Cambridge, where he never got deeply involved in Christian things. He was an engineer and was called up in world war one. 'For conscience sake' he said he must join up in the 'war to end wars'. He led his men 'over the top' in France and was never heard of or seen again, he was merely reported 'missing'. (He left a widow and two young children, neither of whom married). Four of the rest of us became missionaries. My father was very much ahead of his time in believing in higher education for women and sent two of my sisters (Lilly and Dora, the latter becoming Mrs Hammie Thompson) to train as Doctors at the Royal Free Hospital and sent me to Cambridge. My father died of heart disease aged 89. (ORB, remembers, aged about 4, being taken into his room where because he had Angina he was kept permanently in bed, which may well have killed him!) I never went to school and I think hid this rather shameful fact from my Cambridge friends, but we had wonderful governesses and I made up for it by going to Bedford College in London in 1903 to take the Cambridge entrance exam and then went to Girton College, Cambridge in 1904 for four years including a period of fossil research on graptolites, which gave me super times in the Yorkshire hills. (Papa always maintained that she would have been given a first class degree but for the great prejudice against women ever outdoing the men. That she was chosen for research, and could have gone on in research, showed that they thought her unusually capable.) I enjoyed Cambridge enormously and became active in the CU and President of the College group. We were not allowed to go into the rooms of men students except with a chaperone, and one day getting soaked cycling the three miles in from Girton, I dared to go into my brother Martin's rooms to dry out before church. I was spotted doing such a shocking thing and was roundly ticked off by the Girton College Principal for having set such a bad example: 'and you are the President of the Christian Union'. In fact I had gone to his rooms not infrequently to give him a few bits of advice about his exams and I thought the rules stupid and ignored them. (She was also captain of the College Boat Club and rowed well.) In the time at Girton, 1904-8, I had met Gurney Barclay (now Papa) at his Cambridge home, Binbrook, on Grange Road. He and his first wife Gillian gave generous hospitality to students for Sunday teas and hymn singing. (He had graduated in 1900). We girls often went, cycling in from Girton or Newnham, partly to meet our brothers (One wonders if it was also to meet other young men, but she does not mention that!). We thought Gillian lovely and frail. She was often lying on the sofa. We were fairly tough hockey players and were used to cycling or walking in from Girton against wind, snow and rain. Gillian charming and gentle, seemed to belong to another world, though we knew she understood us. Girton was great happiness, though the Sunday boiled eggs tasted queer and long skirts made it difficult to run down the long, long corridors, unless you lifted them up to mini-skirt length. My friends taught me many things. Not to talk with an 'Oxford accent', how to pray naturally in a small prayer group, and gradually I learnt to express myself in public at small impromptu debates. In 1907 I faced a crisis. I went to hear John R. Mott, the great American student evangelist and missions leader, speaking to undergraduates. Amongst other things he told us of the Japanese farmers who were willing to sell their young daughters for life to the brothels, so as to be able to extend their farm holdings. I thought of my home and all the love and education and care that I had and I knew that my work was not to be fossil hunting, but going to the far corners of the earth to proclaim Christ. Soon after, at a student conference in the Lake District, I became enrolled as a 'Student Volunteer', committed to foreign service. There followed a year of training at the Presbyterian Women's Missionary College in Edinburgh. I learned the more precise pronunciation of the Scots (not to drop the Hs in what and where etc for instance) but I also saw much poverty and drunkenness among respectable women on Saturdays, which was a new and dreadful experience to me. We visited many of the poor flats and gathered the children into kindergartens and play centres. I became known as Miss Watery! Japan I used to play the piano for my uncle Marcus Rainsford when he was at Buckhold very ill in 1910. He pleaded with me 'Don't go out as a missionary' but by then I had set my sails and the winds of God blew steadily Eastwards. In 1911 I sailed for Japan on a German ship to work with the YWCA amongst the women in Tokyo. I was seen off at Southampton by my father and two oldest sisters and had to hide my emotions from my fellow passengers. (The journey usually took 5-6 weeks, so one did not come home often.) We were a very mixed bag of passengers: the German Crown Prince, an indiscreet man, and his charming wife, who spoke English, a quiet Chinese lady, who wore a rope of pearls in her stunning black hair for late dinner at night, a dear elderly Missionary couple and a happy company of young missionaries bound for India and China etc. There was much music made by passengers on the beautiful German pianos and the German stewards and an orchestra provided music for gala nights. By a mistake in the Kobe office of the shipping company, nobody met me when we docked on a Sunday morning. I had a pretty miserable two hours waiting quite alone, surrounded by my luggage. However eventually two attractive American YWCA secretaries arrived and bore me off and we were soon getting acquainted. I was thrilled at all the new sights and sounds of Japan. One sound was always to me so utterly typical of Japan - the klipklops of the wooden clogs that people wore on hard surfaces. We three girls reached Tokyo by train and lived in a small Japanese house, with a small formal garden with stone lanterns, paved patio and miniature trees. We studied Japanese hard for about 5-6 hour a day at a language school and had much fun and lovely holidays in the mountains. We belonged to three different denominations and went to the corresponding different Japanese churches, getting to know the various clergy or ministers well. The Presbyterian, Dr. Uemura had a fine library from which we could always borrow books. His elder daughter is now a Presbyterian Minister and BD of Edinburgh. I felt the need of a closer contact with the Japanese schoolgirls, students and business girls whom we met at church services or in the Bible-study groups in the YWCA. Therefore while continuing with language study I went on my bicycle to live in one of the Boarding Houses, which were a major feature of the YMCA work in the cities of Japan. The other residents were all young Japanese girls, none of whom spoke more than a few words of English and the 'Matron' was a Christian widow also without English. I therefore had to try to talk Japanese and the girls had much amusement at my efforts to express myself, but we really got to know each other as we shared meals and the big community bath and family prayers led by the Matron. One of my most vivid memories is of hearing the Dead March from Handel's 'Saul' played by a band from a British Naval vessel in Yokohama harbour for the funeral of the Japanese Emperor, Meiji, who gave his name to the great period of Japanese awakening by the influx of western education and scientific experience in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We YWCA secretaries were allowed to stand on the route of the funeral procession if we wore deep mourning. This involved the borrowing of black hats and dying of blouses and skirts. When dressed for the occasion we really were a queer crowd and had no end of unfunereal laughs. It was a lovely clear early autumn evening when the long procession made its silent way from the Imperial palace in Tokyo, over bridges spanning the inner and outer palace moats, to the deeply sanded road below the palace, where we and hundreds of other teachers were standing 2 or 3 deep on either side of the road. The silence was most impressive and there were no words spoken. We were told not to lift our heads as the funeral car drawn by white oxen passed by. The route was lit by pine flares in metal baskets above our heads. Shinto priests in white robes walked by the funeral cars and mournful flutes were played - but most mournful of all was the noiseless tread of the British Naval company playing Handel's Dead March, followed by Chopin's Funeral March - which always speaks to me of the Resurrection Hope. Some minutes of absolute silence were observed at midnight throughout the whole of Japan. This is the first occasion on which such a time of national silence was observed anywhere as far as I can recollect. Caroline Macdonald, a Canadian, was our senior chief in the YWCA. She later did a notable work in the prisons for which she received a decoration from the Japanese government. At one time she was visiting as many as 10 criminals who were condemned to death for murder, and not a few were wonderfully converted. When she died her work was carried on by a converted murderer, and when I left Japan in 1926, he drove me in a taxi to the station, for which he paid as a thank offering for my prayers while he had been long years in prison and for the paint box I had sent him through Caroline Macdonald. Marriage and Home Life After about three and a half years in the YWCA I developed acute appendicitis, followed by malaria and my father and the two oldest sisters came out (to make sure that I was all right and to look after me). They went on up the Yangtze to West China to visit Dora and Lily, who were medical missionaries there. It was decided that I had better take an early furlough so as to fully recover my health (people usually came home only every five years), before returning to the work in the YWCA. So in 1915 I came home to recuperate at Buckhold, but 'the best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley'. I met Gurney and we fell violently in love! (Papa records that they had met in Japan at some conference after the death of Gillian. They used to relate how an aunt had tactfully invited them to stay with her for a bit and Papa took Meenie out for a country walk, which ended up with them in a very muddy field - not quite the thing for long skirts and ladylike shoes - but when we asked her if that didn't put her off she replied: 'I wasn't going to lose a good man for a bit of mud!') Father, May and Eva gave us a wonderful wedding reception, and we were married in Bradfield Church, with a sermon by Edward Woods (one of Papa's closest Cambridge friends and by then his brother in law). Roddie seemed to quite approve of me, and he was an easy, chubby little 6 year old, who loved playing Ludo (a dreadful game!) and drawing pictures of shooting parties. All our children were born in Japan and what joy they gave to our Japanese friends and untold joy, with some anxieties, to us and various doctors. (ORB can just remember Papa being rather tense when Alec was born, no doubt remembering what had happened to Gillian.) Through the years in Japan and England apart from ordinary illnesses we had appendicitis, Tetanus, Mastoid operation, malaria, broken pelvis, collar bone, ankle, wrist and endless flu, scarlet fever and three down at the same time with Paratyphoid - quite a catalogue. Our Hoddesdon doctor said to me one day: 'if you keep monkeys you must expect monkey tricks'. In 1915 we three sailed with a Miss Jordan, an Irish governess for Roddie, and settled into Matsue (This was a market town on the north coast of the main island, Honshu, from which Papa's uncle, Barclay Buxton, had established a chain of pioneering churches, largely by the training of Japanese evangelists. He is still remembered in Japan as a pioneer in developing indigenous leadership.) It was a happy time and the Japanese clergyman's wife became a real friend. There were a few spinster elderly missionaries in the district and John Mann, with his wife and two boys and a girl, lived only an hour away by train. (He was a CMS Missionary, later to become bishop there, and we used to join them sometimes for holidays on the mountain, Daisen. Otherwise there were no European children around). Then after two years Gordon was born in Tokyo, and what a joy he and the other three, born in Kobe, gave to us and our Japanese friends. Neighbours would come in at 9 am to see the baby bathed, and of course the inevitable cup of tea had to be prepared. But we had a clever cook and his wife to help and so I was able to continue to carry on some YWCA work and embark on a Thursday Sunday School with the help of a gifted Japanese girl. She taught me how to tell Bible stories to children - but, alas, she went wrong with a young man and became very ill. How tragic it was when even a trusted ordained man lapsed into immorality. (Meenie also taught some English in the nearby High School so as to get good local contacts. The name Meenie arose because 'Mummy' sounded just like the word for beans, and if we children called out 'Mummy, Mummy' it gave the impression that we were desperately hungry for beans. We had to think of something else. The last thing she was was mean.) Miss Jordan and Roddie sailed home in 1919 for Roddie to go to school (staying in the holidays with an uncle and aunt, who had boys of about the same age. This was Papa's parson brother, Uncle David and Aunt Lettice) and in 1920 we followed for a furlough divided between High Leigh, Buckhold and Cromer, returning for our last tour in Matsue 1921-1926. It was an awful wrench to leave Japan in 1926 (after 15 years), but it was inevitable as there was no one from Buckhold who could help us, Dora was in West China with her family (and home schooling even with a governess sometimes, was becoming inadequate). It was difficult to settle down in England. (They lived in Rosehill, a large house with a large garden next door to High Leigh, in Hoddesdon, which they rented from two maiden aunts, who no longer wanted such a large place.) Gurney had deeply absorbing and interesting work at the CMS office in London and I had a small YWCA in Hoddesdon and Sunday School work as well as the five children to look after. (She was also in some demand to sing at a variety of Christian and secular occasions as she had an excellent voice and by no means every one had a radio. She became quite a considerable character in the Town doing a variety of good works for needy people.) Second World War Before the war broke out we were in touch with Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria, (whose freedom in Britain depended on someone to sponsor them. A committee in the area with which Meenie was involved arranged for housing on arrival.) One old lady of 90 stayed with us for a while, but she was frail and died before long in the London Hospital. Her son and daughter and married grandson all managed to emigrate to Australia. One day the telephone rang and a local lady, who was involved with the refugees, asked me if I would like to put up a Baroness! I replied that someone more ordinary would suit us better, but she had nowhere else to go, so she came to us. She was an ex-actress, a Viennese, with limited English. We had many laughs over my partly forgotten German and her quaint English. "Under my hair a worm has picked me." turned out to mean "a midge has stung me". Another favourite phrase of hers was: "I can nozzing make". This being interpreted means: "I do not know what to do." (Meenie was frustrated by the fact that she took about 1&frac12; hours each morning to get herself presentable.) She was a courageous woman and later earned her living by teaching German and French. A young niece of hers also came and stayed at Rosehill with us, but emigrated later with her parents to America. Our great mainstay during the war was a German Jewish woman, Mrs. Porak, who worked as our cook for a number of years. Women and girls were at first only allowed to enter Britain to do domestic work or to nurse. Her two girls aged 11 and 13 soon joined her and we got places for them in the Mary Datchelor School, which evacuated from London to south Wales. Both of them stayed with us in the holidays, and then began training as nurses at Bamado's, while their mother valiantly struggled with cooking English meals and learning English. Alas her husband died, she was told of 'heart failure', in a Nazi prison. 'It is impossible' she said, 'he is a very strong man'. She had been receiving small Red Cross letters from him at rare intervals, but his handwriting rapidly deteriorated and before long she was notified of his death. No doubt his very considerable wealth was seized by the Nazis. She showed immense courage and when I praised her for it one day she said: 'If it had not been for prayer I should never have got through it.' As a German refugee the police often came to enquire after her or required her to report at the police station (men were many of them transported to Canada for a while as none knew if they might be spies). She was amazed at the courtesy of our police, and at being offered a chair while they looked through her credentials. They asked us if we were sure that she was a genuine refugee and I replied: "I can only tell you that her husband has been imprisoned by the Nazis for a long time and that when the wireless gives good war news she dances with joy in the kitchen." She had been imprisoned by Hitler, but had managed to get out. (Meenie needed some help in the house because of all these visitors and the evacuees from London. See below.) We were in Dumfriesshire on holiday when war was declared. We had known that it was obviously imminent and the evening radio said that children and mothers would be evacuated from London. Papa had to go to CMS in London and I got on the London night train immediately and reached Hoddesdon in time to make up 8 beds and many milk puddings for those that we expected to receive. (The rest of us were to follow by car when it was clear if London and surrounding areas were safe from air raids.) Sunday morning I went to the Quaker meeting as it was nearer than the Parish Church. After about 15 minutes of silent meditation some one present announced that Britain was at war with Germany. Everybody sat on quietly except an air-raid warden and myself. (ORB thinks that she remembers wrongly. War was declared when we were still in Dumfriesshire, as she says. It was in the Quaker Meeting that the first air raid warning sounded and only she and the warden left. Although very widespread air raids were expected.) The sirens then sounded an air-raid warning and I thought that I ought to get quickly to Rosehill as our Baroness and her niece, and a 15 year old cook we had, might be agitated. (There was very little work available for girl school leavers then except domestic work. As the war progressed and factories developed young women moved to the factories and Meenie had to run the house on her own with the German cook.) I telephoned the billeting officer and asked for the 8 evacuees who were due to come to us. We worked hard to put up 'blackout' on the windows and make more milk puddings and then by noon the evacuees arrived - a mother, who dissolved into tears, and 5 children aged between 3 -10 years. Each child was grasping a bag of mixed sweet biscuits which they had been provided with on leaving London 2 days before. On arrival in Hoddesdon the family had been split up into two groups, because of the difficulty of billeting, but the mother was soon all smiles when she had all her 5 chicks around her and we all had tea on the lawn in bright sunshine. (The air raid alarm was a false alarm). Before long number 6 was born in Ware and then the mother and baby and the 3 year old went back to London, as the war seemed so phoney. The elder four children lived with us for most of the war years. They were very nice children - rather under-nourished and apt to quarrel, but sitting on chairs and a very occasional early-to-bed discipline kept us all happy and united. The exception was the oldest boy aged 10 who disliked country life and would not join in the tobogganing in winter or picking blackberries in autumn etc. After about two years he went back to his parents in London. One of the boys, Bobby, was at first considered the naughty one of the family. "Bobby done it" was the frequent tale, though sometimes an alibi settled his innocence. We found out that what he needed was lots of outdoor occupation. The little girls were unusually pretty and people used to envy us our retinue of evacuees! Bobby is now happily married and lives in the far north of Canada. He was converted through a London City Missionary in his teens and married a girl he had met in the Hoddesdon Baptist Church. They correspond with us every year. (ORB can add that, helped by Meenie and Papa, he loved the country and went into farming in Canada. His children are all active Christians and that they are returning to Hoddesdon to celebrate their Golden Wedding in 2002.) Early in the war we were warned by the Government that on leaving the house with our evacuee children we must always carry our gas masks with us. Therefore when going for country walks we always piled the gas masks into a push chair, left this on the outskirts of a wood, or edge of a field, and after gathering primroses or blackberries we collected the gas masks and returned home. (Meenie liked to pick large quantities of primroses so that she could sell them for CMS, by a postal service.) Later on as it became clear that there were not going to be any gas attacks we kept the family gas masks in a neat row in a safe back passage, which the authorities considered as safe as an air raid shelter. Except for one occasion we never took the children out of their beds when the sirens sounded, but I used to sit up into the small hours through the worst air raids in case it became necessary to go down into that back passage. The children never woke when the sirens sounded, and when their parents came and stayed with us for an occasional week-end they were astonished at their calmness and well being. One considerable scare was in November 1940. (Meenie wrote about it in a letter to all the family.) 'We have had quite a 'party' the last 2 days. Friday night was the noisiest we have had yet. The windows and doors rattled violently, at one time even the telephone bell tinkled with the shaking. Some of the bombs whizzed unpleasantly, and there were about 3 colossal bangs. Next morning we heard that there was an unexploded 'landmine' on the High Leigh playing field, (these were similar to marine mines, with very considerable explosive ability). Another land mine had gone off near Lady Tree's and a smaller mine had crashed on the Lampits fence just opposite their lodge. The Lampits people had had their water and gas supplies cut off, but only three panes of glass broken. When we called at about 4 p.m. the crater was being filled in and the gas pipes had already been mended and water nearly so; so that was quick work. Meanwhile we had a visit from the police in the morning telling us to keep all windows and doors open in case the landmine at High Leigh went off. You can imagine that life was a bit chilly. We had to put all our china and food into a splinter-proof place and slept in rooms not facing High Leigh. Happily Roddie and Gordon (who were based at home then, while the other three of us were at boarding schools in the country or at Cambridge) were not at home so we could dispose of the Whites, the evacuee children, in East facing rooms. Things were a bit complicated by Mrs Porak being away visiting her girls in Wales. Sunday morning was fine and sunny. Dadda went off in the car to preach at Ware, and Bobby and Beryl White to Church with the Westons. They had hardly all dispersed when the police again appeared and told me to clear out of the house as quickly as possible as the mine was likely to go off at any moment. You can imagine that I moved my pins (i.e. legs) in a hurry. I sent our visitor to Ware to tell Dadda to come to another house in town for the night as he was not due home until 6 pm. I hastily filled a case and took Leslie (White) by the hand to a house down Lord Street. I made several journeys to and fro to Rosehill, gathering more clothes, our Sunday dinner, Dadda's umbrella - my bicycle laden with eggs, bacon, margarine, tea and a suit case! I pressed a passing motor into my service and they, rather unwillingly, took a basket of shoes - a spare pair for every member of the household - and another suit case of clothes for our visitor - to the Quaker Hall. Then I laid out much rich food in the shape of milk, rabbit stew and a small piece of margarine on the floor for the kitten and leaving all the windows open and locking all the doors, as advised by the police, went and gathered all the Whites (the evacuees) into a safer house in Lord Street. The lady there fed them all with our Sunday joint, salad and pudding while I arranged billets for the night with friends in Hoddesdon. After lunch in the tiny 2-room cottage in Lord Street I repacked the suitcases and baskets in three lots for the various billets and with the help of one of the hosts piloted the evacuees to her home. Meanwhile Dadda knew nothing of the situation and I could not get him on the phone as the Ware Vicarage had been bombed out a few weeks before and the Vicar was in lodgings unknown to me. Just when I was going to help their host to put the children to bed on her drawing room floor a special constable arrived in full uniform to say that the Navy had removed the mine to a gravel pit away from High Leigh and had "drawn its teeth"! Anyway we left the children with their host and by then Papa appeared in the car and, after being fed, joined our guest and me at Rosehill. The kitten was heard mewing somewhere upstairs and was finally located as shut in the hot cupboard! I suppose she had crept in when I had seized a batch of clean clothes belonging to the Whites at about 11.30 a.m.! You can imagine it has all been rather entertaining and exhausting. Bobby said to me several times today: "Fancy doing all this on a Sunday! It would have been better on a Saturday wouldn't it, Mrs. Barclay." To which I replied that Adolph neither kept Sunday himself nor allowed others to do so. Our chief feelings tonight are of great thankfulness to God at letting us still keep our home, and escaping at least a big shock and shaking up. Now goodnight, and may God's keeping and care be upon you all.' In January 1944 Celia came and stayed with us for a while with little Naomi as she had had the 'flu (Gordon was in the RAMC in Burma by then.) Our doctor advised her not to return to her flat in Hampstead for a few days so as to recover fully. During those days the ceiling over Naomi's cot was brought down by a nearby bomb and smashed the cot. It was a wonderful deliverance. Often and often our brothers and sisters and their marriage partners, our sons and Ruth and our daughters in law have rescued Gurney and me when ill. They have visited us, fed us, cooked for us, knitted for us, taken us into their homes, comforted us, driven us by car to the sea to recuperate, introduced us to first class doctors and so saved our pockets from paying huge fees. In this list of benefactors I include Rhoda, Christina, Jean, Celia, Dorothy and Daisy and of course the four boys and Ruth. Blessings on every one of their heads. At the end of it all I can say: "When all thy mercies, oh my GOD, my rising soul surveys; transported with the view I am lost in wonder in wonder love and praise." Let me never forget that I am a person who is daily needing and receiving, with a truly thankful heart, the ever amazing forgiveness of GOD.</p>

 
 
Do you know more about this person's life story? Contact profile creator dianaabbott1
Errors OccurredX
Errors Loading Page_