23. Ethel Davies
Miss Dave has already been a constant presence in this narrative – and well she might. As with Miss Elizabeth, I find myself regretting how much more difficult it is to do justice to the truly remarkable people than to pick holes in those that were in some way wanting. What I would like to do first, though, is draw attention to a serious injustice. In the Guardian obituary of Mr. King, it was stated that he became Director on the death of Miss Leila in 1969. This is repeated in Wikipedia. The latter, at least, could be corrected. Miss Leila, on her partial retirement in late 1968, was named Warden, while Mr. King became Co-Director with Miss Dave. Nevertheless, I have communications from the Community with letterheads showing Miss Dave only as Director in July 1971, then from early 1972 with Mr. King added below her. The situation as perceived by those attending Caldecott during those years was that Miss Dave took Miss Leila’s place and Mr. King took Miss Dave’s. The one thing she resolutely did not do was take Chapel. I have even seen it stated somewhere that Miss Dave stayed on a few years as second Director under Mr. King. This is insulting to her memory. Miss Elizabeth’s history of the Community is quite clear on this point: for a few years, until her retirement in 1972, Miss Dave was its Director, assisted by Mr. King. A conversation I had with staff member David Carver in the term following Miss Leila’s death confirms this. If, at a staff meeting, all the staff wanted to do something and Miss Dave did not agree, I asked, could she overrule them? His response was that “Yes, she could, but she wouldn’t”. He explained that in any organization, it was necessary to have someone who could, if necessary, have the final word. And that person, at that time, was Miss Dave.
That said, her period as Director was an interregnum. At this stage in her life, and Caldecott’s, she did not attempt to do other than administrate the structure she had inherited, which she did with her customary firm efficiency, while preparations were made for the full scale reorganization in family-type groups that was to be Mr. King’s task. The principal necessity, in these years, was to find a plausible Co-Director who could support Mr. King when he fully took over.
Would Miss Dave have wished to do more? Her loyalty to Miss Leila was unfailing, yet I was deeply struck to read that she told Miss Elizabeth she wished she had persuaded Miss Leila to retire fifteen years earlier than she did. This is amazing. Not just two or three years, when it was obvious to all and sundry that Miss Leila was slipping, but fifteen! That takes us back to the mid-fifties. It also raises a question that Miss Elizabeth will surely have asked herself, even if she did not venture to raise it with Miss Dave. If Miss Leila had retired around 1955, Miss Dave would have taken her place as Director. Did she have plans, ideas that she would have liked to pursue? It sounds as if she might have. She was the last person to want the position for a matter of personal prestige. In 1955, she would already have been 58, but she was at the height of her powers and remained so until her retirement.
It will be said that Miss Dave was essentially an administrator, a steady hand on the tiller, the interpreter of Miss Leila’s flights of genius. I do not think Miss Dave would have had the force and the imagination to found a children’s nursery against all odds, to implement revolutionary ideas of children’s education and to lead Caldecott through all the vicissitudes and changes of address that eventually bore fruit in a long period of stability at Mersham le Hatch. But by 1955, times were changing and, in any case, the flights of genius could have come from the right Co-Director. So just let me fantasize for a moment. The Community guided through the later fifties and the sixties by Miss Dave as Director and Miss Elizabeth as Co-Director. There is a dream ticket for you!
Back to real life. After Miss Leila’s death was announced, a very young girl, not long at Caldecott, asked Betty Rayment in awestruck tones: “Will Miss Dave be Miss Leila now?” Evidently, no one had explained to her that Miss Leila was the name of the imposing lady who had still presided over the more important events. She had supposed that, where other institutions have a Head or a Chief or even a Boss, the strange place she had come to had a “Missleila”. Of course, nobody could become Miss Leila, but how to describe Miss Dave?
Some people found her a little intimidating. Even Miss Elizabeth recalled finding her so at first, difficult though it is to imagine Miss Elizabeth intimidated by anything or anyone. My own mother had a problematic relationship, since it irked her that her letters to Miss Leila were always answered by Miss Dave. She detected a tone of reproof in Miss Dave’s words, almost a “dressing down”. I later became aware that there were many more of these letters than I had imagined. It was a regular occurrence, at least once during each holiday, that my mother would sense or suppose some inadequacy in Caldecott’s treatment of me. She would rise from her seat declaring, in the tones of one in the early stages of getting thoroughly worked up, “I’m going to write to that old cow …” The “old cow” was Miss Leila, since my mother believed in going straight to the top, and also thought that Miss Leila was “an old dear”, which is not quite how I would have put it. I inevitably implored her not to write and fondly imagined that I prevailed. Betty Rayment told me she thought most of the threatened letters had been written and would have been preserved in the Caldecott Archive with copies of Miss Dave’s replies. I have not investigated. This is a prelude to saying that I may have found her intimidating at first, at an age when I was likely to be intimidated by any grown up, but in my memories she is not so. Apart from Miss Rayment, it was Miss Dave to whom I found it easiest to turn in need, and I always found her supportive and understanding.
Miss Dave was unfailingly erect and neat in her appearance, her hair drawn into a tight bun and held with a hairnet. Neatness seems to have been innate to her. Once, when one of us grumbled over our maths homework in the Prep Room, she remarked, “I find nothing pleasanter to look at than a nice page of maths”. She would walk around the grounds gathering any litter she saw on the ground. When she bade farewell on her retirement, her last words were, “I wonder who I shall bequeath my love of tidiness to? Mr. King, perhaps”. She had a way of gently chiding you, as if to say, “Oh, how silly you are” (sometimes she said just that), but in an affectionate, understanding way. She seemed to empathize with your silliness even when she disapproved of it. She had a way of making one word in her sentences seem as if in italics, implying mild reproof. “It isn’t mannerly to act like that”. When there was nothing specific to complain of, both she and Miss Leila could always fall back on “I don’t like your tone”. Patrick Delware, in all innocence, called her bluff over the italicized word. He had been nattering in the prep room about (I think) trains, and when he finally stopped she said, “Have you got a thing about trains?” “Yes,” he said eagerly, “it’s a little book with pictures of all the trains in it”. She had clear ideas about what people could or could not do. On one of my return visits, post-1971, she remarked, “Quentin de Lisle was here last week. He’s gone into social work. MOST unsuitable, but you could never argue with Quentin”.
It was to Miss Dave, rather than Miss Leila, that I turned when in need of advice. This was partly a question of availability. Miss Leila, except at mealtimes and when laboriously negotiating the stairs, was perched in her sitting room at the top of the house and one could not just barge in without being summoned. Miss Dave was in the Yellow Office at specific times of day, and often outside those hours. Moreover, she was usually to be found around the first floor or in the grounds. If not otherwise occupied, she was always ready to listen, especially if you helped her pick up litter at the same time. If I was unwell and Mr. Marshall thought I could just put up with it, a word with Miss Dave would get me into the sickroom. She also did the rounds of the sickroom each day, usually sitting on the end of your bed and chatting about what you were reading, though she did suspect your motives if you seemed to be enjoying your “time off” too much. “What could be pleasanter?” she remarked on finding me in a sickroom by myself with the radio pouring out classical music. Apart from availability, I found Miss Dave more helpful than Miss Leila. Doubtless things were different years before, but you could not be sure that Miss Leila had understood what you were saying, and she might reply by talking about something else. In a Community that was fast disintegrating, Miss Dave seemed an oasis of stability.
I exchanged several letters with Miss Dave after leaving. Probably there were more than I have conserved. In one, which I cannot find, she mentioned a younger contemporary of mine who had gone out to Australia and was now back at Caldecott again, bitter about “the wide open spaces he did not find” *. In a letter dated 22 April 1973, she wrote, “I am enjoying my retirement & being alone. Of course there is so much activity so near at hand that I can’t feel lonely. I go away at the end of May for two weeks, my first holiday for over a year. The dogs make it difficult. Lady still goes on”. A reminder that the one downside of Miss Dave was her tetchy old retriever, Lady.
Sadly, not long after this she had a stroke that impeded her speech. I saw her once more and it was painful to see her struggling to get the words out, while still as mentally alert as ever. That September, she did not go to Reunion, sending instead a message, read out by Mr. King, that she did not wish to come and “be a wet blanket”. I believe she was not in residence at Hatch Common House that day, to avoid any risk of visits. She died in 1974.
* Sadly, this young man can be named: Terence (“Terry”) Bromley. He went back to Australia for good, married, had children and died some years ago.