Authors: Virginia Nicholson
distinct landmarks that interrupt the muffled scenery: a steeple, a tree, a
tower. For Doris Smith, that tower was her mother. Marriage ‘wasn’t to
be’. Sometimes she regretted it. But Doris’s mother was an invalid and this
fact, as she said, ‘planned my life’. Mother couldn’t be left. There was a
sister who cared for her during the day while Doris was at work; then when
Doris came home, it was her turn. It left no time for anything else, ‘. . . and if I had got married, what would have happened to Mother?’ What had been the high point of her life? I asked her. The drifts cleared; Doris’s reply was faint but unhesitating: ‘It was when I got my college certificate, which meant I could earn more money to look after Mother. The extra salary meant I was able to help more.’ Nothing was more prominent in this
woman’s century-long life than the attachment and sense of responsibility
she felt towards her ailing parent.
In such relationships, devotion was assumed on both sides, but daughters,
willing and loving as they might be, often found themselves imprisoned by
their sense of filial duty. There were cases where young women who might
have married felt unable to leave because of family responsibility. If they
worked, they did so in order to contribute to the family budget. And
consciously or not, the older generation often leant on unmarried daughters
to stay that way, on the assumption that their place was the parental home.
Radclyffe Hall’s novel
The Unlit Lamp
() explores the tug of love that left Joan Ogden a spinster, shackled to her needy mother. The claims of Elizabeth, her closest female friend, and Richard, who wants to marry her,
fail to weigh beside those of the traditional mother-daughter bond. But
Richard is appalled:
‘How long is it to go on,’ he cried, ‘This preying of the weak on the strong, the old on the young; this hideous, unnatural injustice that one sees all around one, this incredibly wicked thing that tradition sanctifies? . . . She’s like an octopus
Caring, Sharing . . .
who’s drained you dry . . . a thing that preys on the finest instincts of others, and sucks the very soul out of them.’
Margaret Howes, another resident of a care home in the west of England,
now in her late nineties, might not have described her mother as an octopus, but she was like Joan Ogden in feeling unable to put her own needs first.
A matter-of-fact and intelligent woman, Miss Howes was stoical about the
raw deal life had dealt her; for there was something tragic, if unsensational, about her situation. Imperceptibly, over time, Margaret’s mother robbed her of the ability to love.
As a young woman Margaret had ambitions to be a teacher or a nurse, but
she was persuaded out of them. The training would have meant residence in
a hostel, and Mrs Howes needed her daughter at home. Instead, she lowered
her sights and got a job as a dressmaker. Margaret’s mother also was a
semi-invalid (is it uncharitable to speculate that these weakly women might
perhaps have recovered if left to their own devices?). In any case, it was
particularly impressed upon Margaret that as a girl her place was at home,
looking after her mother. The job at a West End garment wholesaler’s was
designed to help contribute towards her mother’s hospital bills, which
would otherwise have completely drained her father’s earnings as a railway
boiler-maker.
Any thoughts Margaret might have had of marriage, or even of a better
career, were ruled out by her circumstances. ‘I would have liked to have
trained as a nurse, but my parents couldn’t afford it. My mother’s attitude
was that it was all right for my brother to leave home, but if I wanted to
that was different. According to Mother, what was wrong with home?’
Escape via marriage was simply impractical. For a start, according to Mrs
Howes, it was impossible to ‘throw yourself ’ at a man. ‘
He
will find
you
. . . and I never had time, or any money. Women did not go out to work, and if a girl married she expected her husband to keep her. It was just not
the thing for married women to go to work. My mother was in and out of
hospital so many times, and I was never free. I think, looking back, there was possibly a bit of moral blackmail. My brother could do what he liked, he got married and had children, but a girl’s function was to stay at home . . .’.
Both Margaret’s parents died when she was in her thirties, and she was
overwhelmed with relief at finally finding freedom. But by then the loving
impulse had, in her view, atrophied in her. ‘I wouldn’t describe myself as
a very emotional person. Over the years, not having any emotional stimulus
when I was at the right age for it, it hasn’t been fostered . . . and then it dies. Love isn’t everything in life . . .’
Singled Out
Suffocated by her mother’s needs, Margaret Howes turned her back on
intimacy, looked solitude in the face, and learnt over the years not to pity herself. ‘Lonely? Well, I’ve lived alone for many, many years, and it’s gone on so long now that one doesn’t feel it so much. It’s what one has become accustomed to. The difficulties that occurred were my own difficulties,
not someone else’s difficulties.’ During the Blitz she and her mother had
sheltered from bombs in the coal-cellar together, and after her death
the fear and loneliness of the air-raids so crushed her that she could
almost have wished her mother back; but it was never so bad again. She
got a place at Bedford College to study social sciences, acquired a dog,
developed a thirst for education, travel, walking and agriculture, and ended up working in local government. ‘Life’s a gamble, but it’s also what you make it. If you ask me who the most important person is in my life, it’s
myself,’ she said.
*
Synonymous with home, mothers at the turn of the century were established
as the gravitational centre of a child’s universe. The novelist Phyllis Bentley described her mother Eleanor (always known by her husband as Nellie) in terms of the very architecture that sheltered them: she was ‘the queen of
the house, the pillar, the roof-tree . . . we were all attached to her . . . with every fibre of our being’. When Phyllis’s own dreams of marriage receded, the pull of home drew her inexorably to her mother’s side; with few intervals, she remained there until her mother’s death at the age of ninety-one, by which time Phyllis herself was fifty-five.
Nellie was widowed in . There were three sons, but Phyllis, as
unmarried daughter, now became responsible for her mother. This responsibility invaded every aspect of her life for the next twenty-three years.
She now dealt with all the household bills and business matters, with travel and holidays; her money, and above all her time, were not her own, and when her mother fell ill she nursed her. Even when she was away from
home Phyllis wrote to Nellie every day. In the gaps she was struggling to
write novels. She was endlessly patient.
For Nellie could be a monster, terrifyingly unpredictable. Impetuous
and wilful, she could not understand her children’s feelings, enraging and
distressing them. On a good day she would happily spend hours reminiscing,
vividly drawing on her fascinatingly detailed memories of Huddersfield
history, which Phyllis then used to embroider her own narratives. But all
too often, particularly when the Depression of the early s hit the family textiles business, Nellie would allow rage, fear and impatience to get the
Caring, Sharing . . .
better of her: ‘If you don’t finish that novel soon, I shall leave you and go away!’ she would cry.
As her health deteriorated Nellie’s demands grew while her patience
dwindled yet more. It fell to Phyllis to keep her petulant mother entertained, and taking the frail invalid shopping, on outings, or to the theatre was an ordeal. Too proud to be helped, but too weak to walk far, she would fight
every offer of assistance. Risking the wrath of policemen, Phyllis would
park the car in front of a theatre in the pouring rain, settle her mother into the auditorium, before dashing back to re-park and return soaked and dishevelled to her own seat just in time for the curtain to rise – only to
have her mother complain peevishly, ‘Where have you been all this time?
Your hair’s very untidy . . .’ When she could no longer leave the house,
Nellie became increasingly difficult and eccentric. She developed an obsession with wanting to warm and air clothes. Phyllis would go out for half an hour and return to find underwear, sheets or even mattresses strewn
around the open hearth; ‘I was terrified lest something catch fire.’ Nellie
endlessly scolded her daughter for her inadequacies; she was late, messy,
neglectful. ‘ ‘‘I hope you never write another novel!’’ she exclaimed once
angrily when I did not run fast enough to answer her bell. ‘‘Every time
you
write a novel
I
age ten years.’’ ’
But Phyllis never wavered in her care and love. Nellie always came first.
Only when work made inescapable demands did she leave her mother; for
nothing else would she abandon her. ‘For though I sometimes felt a frustration, a bitterness, a resentment almost amounting to hatred of my mother, I also loved her, and could not break her heart.’ On the rare occasions
when Nellie was quiescent, she would lay her head on her daughter’s breast
and, one evening, when Phyllis had washed her, combed her and tucked
her up, she settled on her pillows, looked up lovingly, and said, ‘I hope
when you grow old you’ll have somebody as nice as you to look after you.’
It was reward enough.
Resolute and saintly, Phyllis would have given up writing to look after
her mother, if they had not needed that income to help pay for her care.
The novels and articles were a necessity, not a luxury, but she was beset
with difficulties in getting them written. She had to cook, serve and clear
meals, dust and clean, dress and nurse the invalid. Getting a few hours to
herself was incredibly hard. Her work suffered, she fell ill, and for the last five years of her mother’s life she was almost unable to write.
At last in Nellie died, quietly, in her daughter’s arms. What kind
of love was this, that consumed and almost destroyed the bestower? Phyllis
Bentley’s feelings for her mother were a stressful and complicated mix
Singled Out
of love, rage, tenderness, pity, resentment. Nellie’s needs replaced those of husband, child and, almost, career. No marriage could have asked more of her. Their relationship drained Phyllis of all her emotional resources; she
gave it all she had to give. And when it was over:
I am fully aware how ungrateful, how cruel, how tragic for my mother it sounds when I say that the five years after her death were a period of great personal happiness for me. But so it was.
Uncomplicated delight in simple things now returned to her life. The
weather, cups of tea, the sea, walks on the Pennines, train journeys,
friendships:
After April I was free to enjoy all these ordinary pleasures of humanity without a sense of guilt. I was no longer neglecting my duty if I indulged in them. Free, and without a sense of guilt – those are the operative words . . . I crammed my life joyously with activities.
Phyllis’s literary career continued to flourish, and her belief in the brotherhood of man sustained her enterprise. Recognition and admiration came to her in her lifetime. Anyone pitying the spinster for her loveless life might well consider how depleting and exhausting love can be, and how its converse – solitude, independence and the freedom to work – can liberate
and fulfil.
*
It was Angela du Maurier’s view that spinster daughters never quite flew
free. Never having a husband, the gold standard for all their relationships
and achievements was a parental one. She confessed that in her own case,
even years after their deaths, her parents’ influence continued to cramp her vision. ‘Daddy’ always wore a tie; he would never have worn shorts, even in summer. What a deplorable fashion! And nobody’s housekeeping
measured up to Mummie’s.
The writer Elizabeth Goudge, born in , was another of these uncritical spinster daughters. As an only child, she revered her parents. Her father, an ordained academic, was a pious, hard-working man, a vigorous, manly scholar of monk-like simplicity. Her mother was intrepid, charming, vivaci— ous and something of a grande dame. But she too was ill. When Elizabeth
was quite a small child, Ida Goudge collapsed with terrible pains in her
head; some form of poisoning appeared to have nearly paralysed her and
Caring, Sharing . . .
she could barely move. Ida’s youth was over, and from that time on, with
periodic remissions, she was never well again. For her daughter, from then
on, everything outside caring for her took second place.
Elizabeth, a much-loved child, grew up surrounded by beauty, in Wells,
Ely, Oxford and Hampshire. But her schooling was inadequate, and her
memoirs reveal a kind of passive helplessness in the face of fate. In Ely
straight after the war she fell in love. ‘It ended in tears, of course. Does not every first love end in tears?’ What then was to become of her?
Parents of that era realised that unless their daughters had exceptional beauty and charm they would not marry. The First World War left few young men alive. The phrase used at that time, ‘the lost generation’, sounds poetical but it was the truth . . . And so at that time there were millions more women than men in England.