My mother, Angela, was born on July 24, 1935, in Shimla, India.
Shimla, which lies in the Himalayan foothills, was the summer capital of the British Raj. When the Americans built their own summer retreat in the Philippines, in Baguio, Shimla was their inspiration. Angela’s father, Geoffrey, was born in Lucknow, India and her mother, Doris, was born in what was then Bombay but is now Mumbai. Three of her four grandparents were also born in India, and the fourth was born in London. Shimla, at the time, was Simla. Somewhere along the line, it picked up the h.
While I’m not finished exploring my father’s side of the family yet, it seemed time to start diving into my mom’s side. While my father’s family tree is almost purely American, my mother’s side is purely British. My father’s side kept, more or less, together; my mother’s side scattered. Today, my maternal first cousins live in Australia, South Africa, and Canada. All those places were former British colonies, and all are about as far apart as you can get. One of the remarkable side benefits of working with the international companies of Jersey Boys was that I was able to reconnect and spend time with each of them. I was often also able to see my second cousins in London.
Mom never met any of her grandparents. My grandfather’s parents died before she was born. My grandmother’s had moved back to England, and they died before my mother moved there herself. She does remember talking to her grandfather on specially placed calls over Christmas, though. There was always a lot of drama, or palaver as she said, around the calls because the long-distance connections were never good and there was always a lot of yelling to be understood.
My grandfather was a shy man with a very pronounced and occasionally violent stutter. We lived with him for several years in his wonderful old house in South Africa when we were small. My sister and I were a little terrified of him, and also shy around him. He was a very kind and generous, gentle man but not given to talking very much. At dinner, he would address his conversation to our mother. He’d talk about us, but not directly to us. “What d-d-did Richard and Susan d-d-d-do today?” After we’d had our baths and were in our pajamas, we were sent into his study to say goodnight to him. “Goodnight, Grandfather.” “G-g-good night, Richard. Goodnight, S-s-susan.”
My grandmother, on the other hand, was, if truth be told, a piece of work. She’d moved from India with my mother and Uncle Michael and Aunt Barbara near the beginning of World War II. The Mutiny was underway. That’s how I grew up hearing about it, but what it really was, was, the Indian War of Independence. The Indian people spent decades trying to get out from under the oppressive yolk of the British. The British, with my family’s help, fought as long as they could to keep that from happening. Once the British entered World War II, their attention and resources were needed in Europe, so they finally made plans to withdraw. My grandfather, who was a British Civil Servant, stayed behind after the family left for some years to facilitate the ultimate transfer of power.
When that was done in 1947 and he finally followed the family to South Africa, he was already getting ready to retire. My grandmother, however, was having none of that. She had grown used to moving around in society in India and she wanted to maintain the excitement of that lifestyle. The life my grandfather offered was far too provincial for her. One of the stories we grew up hearing was the day Grandma Doris finally burst into Grandfather’s office and announced, “Geoffrey, I’m leaving you.” In one of the few times he ever spoke without a hint of a stammer, he calmly replied, “Shall I drive you to the train?”
My grandmother would go on to marry two other men and then, finally, near the very end of her life, much to our surprise, she moved back in with my grandfather. He died soon after that and she, who was already showing signs of dementia, moved into a nursing home. We morbidly joked that she’d killed off husbands number 2 and 3 and had come back to finish the job with number 1.
I remember my grandmother as being strict but fun. We stayed with her several times while husband number 3 was still alive. She was always game for an adventure, and we went on several driving safaris with her. We got a flat tire once in the middle of Kruger National Park and she made us all get out to fix it. “Mother, we are in the middle of lion country!” my mother said. “Keep an eye out then,” was her reply as she sorted out the tire.
All of this to say, that without contact with her grandparents, and with a shy father and a galivanting mother, my own mother was not on the receiving end of nearly the same number of stories that my father was. That’s not to say that there aren’t any – there are. It’s just a bit harder to get at them. Thankfully, Mom’s still playing with her full set of marbles. Some of them, however, have been sitting at the bottom of the bag for a while so we’ve started trying to shake them up a bit.
I have a tall stack of photographs and letters from Mom’s side, too. When I was about twelve or thirteen, I had gotten interested in our family tree and started asking questions. In a few letters to my mother that were saved, my grandfather, knowing this, wrote down a few things that have already proven to be helpful.
In the pile, I found a posed photograph from India of my grandmother with some other people who aren’t identified. My mother and her brother and sister are also in the picture as young children. I also found a studio portrait of a man that I don’t recognize at all. I was sitting on the floor in the living room looking at it, when the sun caught the bottom of the picture and I saw that it had been signed in pencil, “Love, Edwin.” I can’t be sure, but it looks to me that the man in white on the far right of the group picture might be the same guy.
Who is Edwin? I emailed both pictures to my mother and sister. The group picture, my mother said, was of Nanny’s wedding. Nanny, of course, being the 3rd adult from the right. She looks straight out of Central Casting. The man she married, we think, is the one with the medals fourth from the right. So far, nobody has any idea who the man in white is except for the fact that his name might be Edwin. My mother is the girl in front, trying to wriggle away from him. My Aunt Barbara is the girl in the middle and the boy on the left is my Uncle Michael. Grandma Doris is the chic woman standing to the far left holding the black clutch.
My mother then said that the woman standing behind Michael was a cousin, but she didn’t know her name. A short while later, came another email. She’d come up with her name, Elizabeth. At the time, Elizabeth was thought to be the spitting image of the actress Hedy Lamarr. From India, she had moved to London during the war and had married an American pilot, and then moved to Alabama.
That rang a bell. There was a mention of Elizabeth in one of the letters I had just read. Grandfather’s mother Nora died of blackwater fever when my grandfather was still an infant. Nora had three brothers and two sisters. One of those brothers was a Brigadier named Frank Gilbert Keating Jackson who had a command in Bangalore, India. He’d invited my grandfather to stay with him when Geoffrey first got back to India and started working there after university. Brigadier Jackson was Elizabeth’s father.
Elizabeth stayed with Geoffrey and Doris in Karachi, India during the winter of 1938/39. She was 19 at the time and Mom was 3 ½. She did marry an American during the war, but he was a medical officer, not a pilot. They also had, indeed, moved to Eufaula, Alabama.
My sister then chimed in, that we had visited her once. Really? How on earth did she remember that? The more we took it apart, the more information we all remembered. We had taken a car trip one summer from New Jersey down to New Orleans. That my sister and I are still speaking after being in the backseat of an unairconditioned 2-door ford Maverick for two weeks in the height of summer in the deep South is a testament to the current strength of our relationship. During that trip, we went to Natchez, Mississippi, and took a steamboat cruise. That part, I remember. I have some Kodak Instamatic pictures of us on the boat. We also, apparently, while we were down there, visited Cousin Elizabeth. Thinking about it now, I have a dim memory of a front walk with flowers, but that’s all I can come up with.
Mom can’t remember Nanny’s name. “We just called her Nanny!” In that era, many unmarried young British women without prospects or family connections would take jobs as nannies or tutors in far-flung places with the hopes of finding a husband. That seems to be what Nanny had done. She had emigrated from Scotland. To avoid scandal, Nanny would invite soldiers over to have tea with her and the children. Clearly, that stratagem worked as Nanny eventually bagged one.
My maternal tree is not going to unfurl its leaves with the same relative ease that my paternal one has done. It is going to involve more work and research to coax some of the stories out of the wood. I am hoping that my cousins and sister will chime in when something I’ve written makes them remember something else or correct me when I’ve gotten something wrong.
I know that my mother will.
I’m so excited to read your first post about the McElhinny’s, Richard! Had no idea about the stutter and what a fabulous story there. I will send this to Jo as it would be great for her to read it to my dad and possibly get a memory or two from him.