An extract from the above private publication, with the kind permission of June's son, Tony Cope who is my 4th cousin.
My Mother, as a young woman was beautiful, with a lively mind
and an artistic talent which saw her enrolled as a student at the
Slade School of Art. She was an accomplished painter, played the piano, sang with a pleasant contralto voice, and enjoyed her group of friends who met regularly. Once she wrote a play for them. She accompanied her father on some of
his trips. A photo shows her on a donkey in the Swiss Alps when,
at the age of sixteen, she went to Switzerland with him as he
attended an Esperanto conference. Full of spirit, she became the
first lady motor cyclist in the North of England, graduating to
a three-wheeler Morgan.
On the outbreak of WWII her life changed radically. Her household staff was reduced to one elderly maid. Her one chance to be in the world on
her own came during First World War when she was accepted as
a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse at St Bartholomew’s
Hospital in London. She loved her year of nursing and for the
rest of her life quoted from her experiences there, experiences
which, combined with Victorian views on aspects of health,
were freely offered to the family.
A charming photo exists of her in an army ward, a beautiful
young woman who would gladden the hearts of the soldiers
she nursed.
Returning home to St Helens she stated that she
wished to have a job, and briefly worked in a bank. But her
father exclaimed, “Do you want people to think that I cannot
support my daughter!” and so a potentially active life became
frustrated and channelled into domesticity.
She loved a young
solicitor for many years who being a Catholic decided to marry
within his religion. Hilda eventually married my father William Herbert 'Bertie' Pollitt when she was 34. He had faithfully waited for her. They
were married by the Congregational minister, Mr L Beaumont
in the Independent Chapel, Ormskirk Street, St Helens on
21 April 1923. The registrar was my uncle Ernest, C.E.B.
Griffin, Registrar of Marriages. They spent their early days in
Wednesbury and Nuneaton in Warwickshire, where my brother, William Alfred, and I were born. Bill and I had a French nanny when young.
Because of the shocked state in which children returned after holidays spent in heavily bombed areas, Huyton College eventually moved part of the school to Rydal, in the Lake District. Parents were asked to find rooms to stay during the holidays. We bought a caravan which stayed on Rydal Farm, and there my brother, mother and I lived during school holidays. My father occasionally visited. Looking back I admire my Mother as I recall her sitting on the steps of the caravan peeling potatoes for a hot evening stew for us. Food was severely rationed. A ‘still life’ painting by my Mother which I loved, was lost when she and my father emigrated to retire in Durban, South Africa.
When my mother was old I moved her to an ‘over 55’ conversion of an elegant beach front hotel. There she had a comfortable apartment, a ‘home’ with her personal Zulu maid Leggina caring for her. My husband, Trevor and I visited her almost daily. She lived to the age of 97. After her death Trevor and I left apartheid South Africa to live in Australia.
My mother used to
tell me that her mother (Georgina Spry Gordon Barlow) was the daughter of a feminist
and on marriage was told “never stop your subscription
to the suffragettes”. In turn my grandmother passed
on similar advice to my mother who advanced on that
by telling me never to marry, but should I do so, not to
marry a Scot. She thought them the most pampered
and chauvinistic of males. This could suggest that my
parent’s marriage was unhappy, but this was not the
case. Only once did my parents hurt each other–a hurt
that was soon healed.
My grandmother lived in times when many
children were born, some only to die in infancy.
Did this make her tougher than today’s mothers
who are able to choose a carefully spaced family?
My mother used to tell me of grannie’s comment
if any of her seven children were ill. Putting her
hooky nose around the bedroom door she would say
“If you’re ill, you’re better dead”. It was uncle Harold
who used to sit by my mother’s bed stroking her
hand (and telling her how beautiful her hands were).
He was the one who nursed her it seems.
If grannie was a remote rather than comforting mother
figure to her young brood, she emerges as a mother
who clearly understood the needs of questing minds
when her bright young teenagers entered their student
days. My mother talked of the regular evenings when grannie would leave loaves of bread and treacle and
jugs of beer on the table and ‘the boys’ and their friends
would debate into the small hours. These were their
lively student days when in their various chosen careers
they studied at Liverpool University
