Childhood Memories: Part 1

Whenever I read shocking details about fathers’ cruelty to their children, I recall my own childhood, and images of my father as a very loving, caring parent who would never have harmed any of his children come to mind.

My earliest memory is of the day I took my first faltering steps.  It would have been early summer of the year 1929.   I remember standing on the rough ground in the farmyard of Lord Bessborough’s estate in Piltown, Southern Ireland, while my father faced me, a few inches away, with his arms outstretched.  Wobbling on my little fat legs, I made a super-human effort to stay upright and reach him, but then came a moment of despair and a sense of failure that still haunts me.  My father moved back a fraction, encouraging me to go that little bit further. I was about to tumble in defeat when he rushed forward and swept me up in his arms.  That incident typifies his role in our early lives.    

We lived in the hunting-lodge on the estate.  My father was the carpenter during the rebuilding of Bessborough House which had been burnt down by the IRA, like so many other houses of English aristocrats during and leading up to the early years of Irish independence.  His workshop was on the far side of the big house, and I loved to go across and watch him at work.  I can still hear the rasp of the saw, and smell the resin, and see his look of utter concentration as he chiselled and planed, hammered and sawed.  He was a master craftsman who took great pride in his work.  He whistled and sang hymns to express his joy in what he was doing.  He had served his apprenticeship under his own father on the de Vesci estate in Abbeyleix.  Not only are such craftsmen long gone, but English estates like Bessborough and Abbeyleix no longer exist in Ireland.  Nor are there any members of my family surviving there.

The smell or sight of a hospital always takes me back in memory to when I was two. My mother led my brother and me into a darkened room in Ardkeen Hospital in Waterford.  My father was propped up in bed in the far corner and when I saw him, I freaked in terror.  Running to my brother, I dragged him to the door, crying, ‘Teddy and I go get a new Daddy.  Old Daddy’s ears dirty.’  His head was swathed in bandages through which bright red blood seeped.  Tears ran down his cheeks and I remember dashing back and leaning over the bed, kissing him and telling him I wouldn’t leave him.  His tears made a deep impression on me.  It would be many years before I learned about the hardships and dangers he had bravely faced throughout his life which explain his compassion and sensitivity towards us.

On that occasion in 1930 he had been riding his Norton motor bike and had crashed when a herd of cows stampeded and trampled over him.  He was severely concussed and out of work for many months.  After he died in 1966, my Uncle Charlie told me that the Daily Mail had a fund that paid my mother £1 a week while Dad was in hospital.  Uncle Charlie had worked in the Daily Mail office in London after his discharge from the RAF after World War1.  It was the newspaper my family read in those days.

After the accident my mother never allowed my father near a motor bike again.  He had a push bike and often took me for a ride on the crossbar.

I was almost seven when I learned to ride a bicycle.  My brother was to give me his little red bike while he would have a new boy’s bike.  Out on the gravel drive in front of the big house, my father sat me on the saddle and taught me to pedal. Suddenly, he let go and off I sped.  Soon I panicked and wanted to stop.  I couldn’t brake so I rode on to the grass and came a cropper.  Tears of frustration followed, but my father placed me on the saddle again.   ‘You can’t start school until you can cycle the two miles to Fiddown station to catch the train to Waterford every morning,’ explained Dad.  He was teaching me a lesson that I never forgot.  ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try again and keep on trying till you do succeed.’

I couldn’t wait for that first day in school, but soon I hated the place.  There were two teachers and I was in Miss W’s class.  She put the fear of God in us.  My parents had already taught me to read and write and do my addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and money sums.  My father taught me to read from the Authorised Version of the Bible.  Firstly, he taught me 1 Samuel, Chapter 3, by heart and then he went through the printed version, word by word.  Each word in turn was spelt out.  “That is the letter ‘s’.  Now see how many ‘esses’ you can find.” 

Having learned my Bible stories and prayers and hymns, I was well ahead of the others in school, and thus, there was little new to learn, apart from the Irish language that was by then compulsory in all Irish schools.   I was terrified of the teacher as I watched her caning other children and beating them about the legs or head for failing to recite their tables or spell set words.

We had to take our lunch with us but some of the poorer children would have nothing.  We were sent out into the playground, whatever the weather, to play and to eat our lunch.  There were no facilities for making hot drinks.  Nor was the playground supervised.

I loved the summer evenings back on the estate when my father and brother and I played cricket, my father being bowler and my brother batsman while I fielded.  We had real cricket bats, balls and wickets as my grandfather had been secretary of the Abbeyleix Cricket Club.  Apparently, he often boasted of the time they challenged a British army team to a match and beat them!  My father idolised his own father, a stern old Victorian man with a great love of all things British.  Only recently my cousin told me that on Armistice Day, 1918, grandfather hung the Union Jack from the family home and next day all his cattle were found poisoned in the fields.  The farm was an extra source of income.

In 1935 Bessborough House was sold to an order of priests.  As we moved away, I wept for the loss of those beautiful surroundings.  We had the run of the estate, and my love of nature stems from those early years.