Authors: Diana Alexander
I was born in the 1930s, and that was when Pam lost a baby and never had any more. I didn’t get on with my own mother and I often used to wonder if I was meant to be Pam’s daughter because I grew to love her so much. For ages after she died I would wake up in the night and cry because I remembered she wasn’t there. I always felt a great sense of affinity with her.
One day I asked her if she was going on holiday and she told me she was off to Switzerland. She must have been about 84 at the time and she was driving there all on her own. When she got back I asked her if she had had a good time. ‘It was lovely, but I was sad that I couldn’t fit in any swimming,’ she told me.
Pam confessed to Pat that she had a terrible fear of fire which stemmed from a time when she was out to dinner and the stables of the house caught fire. ‘We formed a human chain in our evening gowns and poured water on the flames. Luckily we rescued all the horses.’ Could some of this fear also date back to when, as a little girl, she had reported a smell of burning but had not been believed and as a result the house which the family was renting was destroyed?
Pam often spent Christmas at Chatsworth and on one occasion she told Pat and I, well in advance, that this was going to be a white Christmas. ‘How do you know?’ we asked incredulously, wondering if long-range weather forecasting was yet another of her undiscovered gifts. ‘Well, it will just be Debo, Andrew and one or two other old people and we’ve all got white hair,’ she replied.
Joan Sadler, former principal of Cheltenham Ladies’ College, who came to live in the village not long before she retired, has an abiding memory of Pam: ‘She … once took me into her house and showed me a picture which had been painted by Hitler, hanging at the top of the stairs. Of course I knew he had been an artist, and it was a good painting, but I was absolutely flabbergasted.’
Julian Leeds, who had bought his house from Pam’s old and treasured friend Mr Mills, remembers Pam and Beetle on the village green. He also recalls an incident which shows that she was nobody’s fool. She had had the approach to her house resurfaced and the tarmac was still soft but somewhat rough. Margaret Budd and another friend were staying at the time and Pam persuaded them to spend most of the weekend tamping down the tarmac.
Despite the belief by her family that she ‘wasn’t good with staff’, the three cleaning ladies whom Pam employed while she lived at Woodfield House were very fond of her and took it upon themselves to find another suitable person to clean for Pam when they left. During the time that I worked at Woodfield, I would sometimes recruit my friend Pat Saunders to help with big projects, like cleaning and polishing the huge tiled floor with Cardinal Red polish, which had to be used until there was not a single scrape left in the tin. When I left Caudle Green to live near Cirencester and to work on the local newspaper, Pat was my obvious successor.
Pat first found favour with Pam when she scrubbed the flagstones in the hall, a task which I had never thought to tackle. ‘How wonderful!’ exclaimed Pam, and Pat secured her place on the Woodfield team. Pat said afterwards:
I absolutely loved working for her, we always had a joke and a laugh and I never went home without a smile on my face. I really enjoyed meeting her sisters – Lady Mosley and the Duchess were the ones who visited most. They were always very appreciative of the fact that I kept their rooms clean and tidy – I’m not sure if they knew that they were sharing the sheets, though.
Pam was really upset when eventually I had to leave but then Di and I thought of Celia Fitzpatrick who had just given up her previous cleaning job and we persuaded her to take over.
Celia’s husband Mike was the same farm foreman at the Miserden Estate who always found Pam’s and my procession of animals walking up the lane so amusing. Since the couple lived in Caudle Green, Celia already knew Pam: ‘I first met her when I went house-to-house collecting for the Arthritis Trust. I felt very shy and I didn’t like doing it but Pam was very keen to give and also produced a cauliflower from her garden. I felt pretty good after that.’
Celia brought a new dimension to the job since she was very handy with her needle. She made loose covers for Pam’s chairs and curtains for the comfortable flat which Pam created out of the attic rooms. ‘I also took up one of Lady Mosley’s skirts and later made a dress for her but I wasn’t very comfortable with that because I wasn’t really a dressmaker.’
Even in the 1980s, when most people had given up turning their sheets ‘sides to middles’, Pam’s careful nature would not let her throw worn sheets away. Celia had the job of carefully renovating them, but even when they, too, had worn out they were still not completely discarded. Pam would make periodic visits to the hospital in nearby Cirencester where some unsuspecting receptionist was presented with a pile of ancient sheets for use among the patients. What became of them in an age of throwaway equipment is not known, but they were obviously graciously received because Pam always returned home with a smile on her face. ‘They were
so
pleased to have them and said they would be very useful,’ she would say.
‘It was always “make do and mend” and I did a lot of the mending,’ said Celia.
The one thing that none of the cleaning ladies was allowed to do was to dust the oak beams in Pam’s bedroom because she didn’t want the dust falling on the bed. Neither was she keen on them cleaning too often in her little writing room where she kept her family photographs because the carpet didn’t fit properly and they ran the risk of making the situation worse by vacuuming too vigorously.
Celia enjoyed being among the many books and reading the ones which Pam lent her, particularly those about the adventures of her mother, Sydney, her aunts and uncles, and her grandfather Thomas Gibson Bowles during the time when they lived on their boat. She was also very keen on wildlife and loved to see the birds which visited Pam’s bird table, including a pair of kingfishers. Pam would make cakes to give all her cleaning ladies and she was always keen to distribute recipes for cheap, nourishing meals like brisket and brawn. Celia remembered:
Once, when we couldn’t leave the village by car after a heavy snowfall, Mike brought milk and bread back by tractor from Miserden but he also went to see if he could bring anything else home for anyone. He was somewhat nonplussed when Pam said she would like some sauerkraut but, determined not to be beaten, he managed to find some for her. She was always very kind to us and after Mike had had his stroke, I happened to mention that he needed something to put his feet up on. Next time I went she had found a footstool for him.
Pat, Celia and I are all agreed that working for Pam was a particularly happy time in our lives. ‘She was a real one off. She told us all stories and jokes and loved to make us laugh. We loved her and we even loved the cleaning,’ said Pat.
We also agree that the cleaning would have been much easier if Pam hadn’t been so keen to preserve water, her attitude to which is best summed up in a conversation with her friend, the writer and aesthete James Lees-Milne:
I never allow my daily to clean the bath because she wastes so much water. And another thing I strongly urge is, if you must run the hot water tap waiting for the water to get hot, always run it into a bucket or two, to be kept handy. Then you can take the buckets of tepid water downstairs and out into the vegetable garden where it will always be welcome.
This story was relayed by James Lees-Milne to Diana, who in turn put it in a letter to Debo. The sisters shrieked with laughter over it: ‘Why water? It’s as though she lived in Greece and dreaded the well giving out …’ Yet the whole truth is even more astonishing. Pat and I both remember that Pam would have liked us to use cold water for the cleaning; it was us who persuaded her to let us run the lukewarm water into buckets and take it to the garden. In truth, water conservation was something Pam had learnt from her mother: Sydney had spent the greater part of her childhood sailing with her father, so she was always made aware that fresh water was a precious commodity and it is said that she would only pour herself half a glass at a time in order to ensure none was wasted.
Keen to do her bit for the village, which had received her with such open arms, Pam agreed to stand for the Brimpsfield Parish Council which included Caudle Green. Debo wrote to Diana from Lismore Castle:
I’d have given anything for you to have been here last night. Woman got out all her papers about standing for the Parish Council from her Unscratchable and Derek Parker Bowles teased her and made us die. She is truly wondair. She isn’t going to be there for polling day neither has she canvassed a soul. Nevertheless she is referred to as Councillor Jackson and her advice is sought re everything from drains to foreign policy … She loves being teased by someone like that.
Since she didn’t canvass, she didn’t get in, which was probably just as well. Her humour and originality would probably have gone down like a lead balloon in the seriousness of local politics. (The Unscratchable in which she had carried her papers was an attaché case of fine leather which Pam would allow no one to touch in case it got scratched. It travelled in a cloth bag of its own so as not to be damaged.)
Much more successful was the Silver Jubilee party which she held in her cowshed and to which she invited the whole village. She wrote enthusiastically to Debo:
We are deep in our Jubilee Party arrangements. Just only the people of Caudle Green and it will be on the Monday because all the other parties are on the Tuesday. It will be a barbecue, Sausages from the Moncks [
sic
], rolls from the Nudist Colony!!! A real Cheddar Cheese in its own skin, a barrel of jolly beer, some of the Appenzeller eggs pickled in vinegar as one sees them in Pubs. There will be a bonfire and games, three-legged and sack races etc etc. And the room with the great west window (the cow shed) is to be tidied for the occasion – it’s exactly what we need with light and water laid on!
Debo and Diana chuckled at the idea of holding a party in a farm building but it was exactly the right place; the party was a huge success, as Pam related to Diana, who in turn told Debo in a letter:
The farmer on the hill said no he wouldn’t come and he was sure his sons had a party already, well one day before, he
caved
in and of course they all
loved
it. I knew they would. Most people said yes at once when they heard it was in my cow shed, but some said no, but in the end they all
caved
in. I just got hold of the monks and the nudists
*
for more sausages and rolls, we hung up tea towels everywhere and of course everyone
loved
it, and we lit our bonfire when the Queen lit hers. One man who had said no came in the end with two guests, he just
caved
in at the last moment. I knew he would, I said to Mr Mills, they are sure to want to come and of course they did. They just
caved
in.
Such enthusiasm was so infectious that Pam’s Jubilee party was a talking point for weeks, and more than thirty years later my daughter Emily remembered her delight when she discovered that Pam had dyed some of the Appenzeller eggs red, white and blue for the occasion.
Another village gathering to which Pam went regularly was Tea Cups, started by her nearest neighbour Barbara Rowlands, who lived in what had once been the Woodfield House chauffeur’s cottage. In fact, when Barbara decided to sell up and move into nearby Cheltenham, Pam bought the cottage which again became part of Woodfield and still belongs to Debo’s daughter, Lady Emma Tennant, who inherited the estate. Tea Cups took place once a month during the winter in different houses in Caudle Green and everyone who lived there was invited. It was an excellent way of people keeping in touch during the bad weather when they were less likely to be walking on the green or in their gardens.
Pam took her turn in hosting Tea Cups at Woodfield and everyone enjoyed their visits to her large, cosy kitchen with its pale-blue Rayburn and highly polished tiled floor. She also enjoyed visiting the homes of her neighbours. ‘I can still picture her sitting at the head of our table, drinking her cup of tea and I remember her telling us how when she and her sisters were out for a walk with Nanny in London, they would ring the front door bells of the big houses and run away. They were obviously no different from village children,’ said one of her neighbours, Christine Whitaker.
In 1977, the same year as the Silver Jubilee, Pam celebrated her 70th birthday. Diana and Debo hired a flat in Rutland Gate, close to where the family had spent time in London as children, and hosted a small party for her. In a letter to Jessica, describing the event, Debo wrote:
It was like a Jubilee Street Party, squashed up like sardines. I think she rather loved it. Derek Jackson came all the way from Paris for the night, insisted on sitting next to her, huge bunch of red roses and VAST cheque as present, and he took her back to Claridges where they quaffed champagne till one in the morning. Do you think he’ll marry her again?
Although she and Derek remained very good friends until the end of his life, Pam had now settled into a contented late middle age at Woodfield House, surrounded by her animals and her many friends. She would have been unwilling to change it even for the man who had been the love of her life.
She did, however, shortly before her 70th birthday, buy Riverside Cottage, opposite the Swan Inn at Swinbrook, as a precaution in case Woodfield became too much for her to manage. She rented it to various tenants and she and I would drive over (always with Pam at the wheel) to clean it every time a new tenant was due to arrive. She never lived there in the end; she was too content in Caudle Green. Instead, she created the flat in the attics at Woodfield and made sure every tenant was a strong young man who could chop logs, clear snow and generally help her to go on living there. Pam was nobody’s fool and the arrangement suited everyone. She made many new young friends who insisted on inviting her to their dinner parties. ‘Oh, Diana, you’ve no idea. They pour different wine into the same glass and sometimes even mix the wine if you haven’t quite finished,’ she once told me, raising her eyebrows in mock horror. But she would never refuse an invitation and she made a great impression on the young people she met, most of whom had never heard of the Mitford sisters.