14. Marion Kidd and Elizabeth Lloyd
I have mentioned Miss Marion among my musical experiences. I wish I could call to mind many more events concerning this effervescent, life-enhancing personality. As to her actual effectiveness, it was generally recognized that girls just entering their teens were the hardest group to control. Most felt she did her level best. A few felt that her very exuberance exacerbated the problem. Mr. Griffiths wanted to plant “the wife” in there. After Miss Marion married and left, various people came and went, tending to prove she had been the young girls’ best guide after all.
I had fondly supposed that Mrs. McLellan, as she became, had spent her post-Caldecott days in quiet married bliss. A memoir by Damien* shows that the couple continued to dedicate themselves to therapeutic care for children, at Sea House, Dymchurch, and at Reinden Wood House, near Folkestone. After Marion’s premature death, Damien returned to his native Ireland, where he continued to work in the field of child care.
I have mentioned Miss Elizabeth already, too, and how could one write more than twenty lines about Caldecott without speaking of Miss Elizabeth? I wish it was as easy to analyse greatness as it is to deride faultlines. Miss Elizabeth, no less than Miss Leila and Miss Dave, belongs to the select list of truly remarkable people I have known. We might wonder why such an independent spirit did not branch out on her own. She gave the answer succinctly at the memorial service for Miss Leila in the Friends’ Meeting House. “It has been the greatest privilege of my life to have known and worked with Leila Rendel. She was a genius … and I do not use that word lightly”. Characteristically, when she came to write the history of the Community, she did not hesitate to criticise Miss Leila for holding on too long, when her powers were waning. That was Miss Elizabeth all over. Effusive in her praise, unstinting in her enthusiasms, she was also fearless in her criticism.
She was also a fine satirist. If you turn the pages of the few numbers of the Caldecott Herald that have come to light and can be read on this site, you will find examples of the long-running column where, in the guise of “agony” Aunt Peg, she gently demolished some of the more ridiculous events of the previous term. Later, in my time, she contributed “Fashion Notes” to the Herald. “Raincoats have been open and flapping this term, whatever the weather …” began one. At Talent Night, she could be devastating. Once she strode in, wearing some sort of artificial hair-piece, and explained in her best pseudo-TV style that she had only just caught the train here, it took her so long to get ready and “I didn’t know whether to wear a maxi or a mini” (how simple choice was in those days!). Then she got down to business. The framework was simple. “One day at Caldecott, the fire bell rang”. She then worked down the list of staff members and, sparing no one, told why each in turn did not bother to do anything. I just wish I could remember them all. Miss Morris, behind me, was soon exclaiming, “Ooh, I never said that!” Mr. Murphy (who worked in the West Wing after I moved to the Colt House), “said he was fair worn out, what with staff meetings till late and just grapefruit for breakfast”.
I mentioned how Miss Elizabeth readily plied me with a text for a Christmas opera I never managed to write. On another occasion, Betty Rayment told me that Miss Elizabeth was working on ideas to revise the form of the chapel service. Ever one to dream of great projects beyond my means, I said I had a few ideas too. Betty must have had excessive faith in me, for a day or two later Miss Elizabeth strode up to me in the grounds and said, just as one adult to another, “I hear you have some new ideas for the chapel service. Do let me have anything you’ve got”. I do not know whether Miss Elizabeth expected all that much from me, but it was her characteristic to encourage initiative wherever she found it. I do not recollect, by the way, that the chapel service ever did change its format in my days or Miss Elizabeth’s. Getting any changes past an ageing Miss Leila may have defeated even her.
Hierarchy implied that, whenever Miss Leila was unable, for any reason, to conduct the Chapel service herself, Miss Dave should have done so. For whatever reason, she firmly declined. Usually the task fell to Miss Elizabeth and, later, to Mr. King. Of the various people, some from outside, who gave chapel talks (sermons in all but name), Miss Elizabeth was one of the most frequent and the most inspiring, though Miss Leila on a good day could still pack a punch. The first time I heard Miss Elizabeth, she impressed me by stating that, in her view, chapel was “a place where different ideas should be put to you”. Some of her talks had only a token religious content, though moral issues were always to the fore. She was always ready to say her piece, but she was no believer in saying a hundred words where one or two would do. Once she strode up the aisle, took her place and said:
“Two men were taking a walk in the wilds when they saw a lion. ‘Let’s run’, said one of them. ‘No, God will save us’, said the other. ‘And why’, said the first, ‘should God do for us what we can perfectly well do for ourselves?’”
And she marched back to her seat, puffing her cheeks and shrugging her shoulders. We had an extra fifteen minutes of free time before dinner that Sunday. Short measure, but how many other sermons can you remember from start to finish half a century later? No complaints about the theology, but I have always understood that, if you meet a lion out in the wilds, the worst thing you can do is to run.
A word about Miss Elizabeth’s strange tics, which we spent much time trying to imitate. The periodic twitching of one or other shoulder may have been involuntary; I suppose the relentless puffing of her cheeks was controlled, though she may have become unaware she was doing it. Less strangely, she had a small black and white dog called Jasper, as excitable as herself but less disciplined.
Of the various staff that read to us, Miss Elizabeth was second only to Mrs. Robson – her inspiring delivery did not embrace the various voices as Mrs. Robson’s did. She was widely read, and a poet herself, but did not press the heavy end of literature upon us. I remember her reading Gerald Durrell’s “My Family and Other Animals”, pausing from time to time to express admiration for the author’s mother. “I wish I had a mother like that”, she remarked more than once. I wonder what sort of a mother she did have? A more serious book, but not oppressively so, was Steinbeck’s “The Moon is Down”. She liked this, but maybe she was suspicious of authors who lay the gloom and doom on too thick, for she found “The Grapes of Wrath”, by the same author, unreadable. Incidentally, do people still exist who pronounce “wrath” to rhyme with “north”? As a show of independence, I promptly read “The Grapes of Wrath” and found it overpoweringly moving. I have not returned to either of these for many years. Perhaps today I would agree with Miss Elizabeth that “The Moon is Down” is a more balanced work.
Miss Elizabeth had charge of the library. The shelves on the side of the fireplace, and those on the left as you faced the window (some of which were “false” books concealing a not very secret door), were Lord Brabourne’s. The most precious were off limits, others could be read there but not taken away. They were hardly children’s reading anyway. The shelves on the windows side were the Community books. Some were old classics, some were old children’s books by authors like Edith Nesbit, mainly remembered even then for “The Railway Children”. There was also a long series about twins from different countries. I remember the Swiss twins got caught in an avalanche**. Moving up towards the windows overlooking the Downs, the books took on a more modern look and were stiffened each term by a substantial loan from Kent County Library. Miss Elizabeth was always ready to advise us and to find something suitable for each person. Nor did she discourage exploration, even when she had her doubts. When I insisted on taking out Stanley Weyman’s “The Long Night”, she merely remarked, “Golly! Can you read that?” I did my best, but gave up half way through.
I last saw Miss Elizabeth more than fifteen years after her retirement, around 1985. I was visiting Betty Rayment with my future wife, Anna. Effie Devenish was also there and drove us over to Miss Elizabeth’s cottage in Alderwasley, Derbyshire. She seemed as energetic as ever. A long-time Labour supporter, she was trying to come to terms with the recently re-elected Mrs. Thatcher. “Here to stay, I’m afraid, like the weather. But an incredible woman, amazing”.
Miss Elizabeth had an aunt called Miss Rowson – “Miss Roe” – who had apparently introduced her to the Community in the first place. Accounts elsewhere on this site show that Miss Roe had a major role years back. I remember her in my first years as a very old lady, almost completely deaf, partly blind and with a worn-out voice you struggled to hear. She helped wipe the dishes in the pantry – her dedication to the Community was such that, rather than enjoy well-earned retirement, she still wished to contribute in some small way. If it was your turn to help in the pantry, at the end she offered you a sweet from a tin she kept there. Sweets from Miss Roe were apparently very special in some way and she was most offended if you did not take them gratefully. This was a problem for me, since my mother had taught me not to eat sweets. “Oh, don’t have one”, she muttered indignantly as she saw me hesitating. I think she must have been sharp-tongued once.
Of the various other staff who struggled with the girls as the old guard melted away, Miss Bosworth was particularly appreciated and stayed longer than most.
* https://www.warrenpress.net/FolkestoneThenNow/MemoriesOfReindenWoodHouseTherapeuticCommunity.html, viewed 19.5.2024.
** Wikipedia tells me that this series, by the American writer Lucy Fitch Perkins, came out between 1911 and 1938.