Fragment 2 - The Life & Times of a Social Experiment

Jun 29, 2023

The first fragment of this tale, which concluded with an introduction to George, resulted in some kind comments from various readers. So, without further ado, it’s time to put Nellie centre stage. A big Thank You for your interest and support.

Introducing Nellie

Nellie was born on 9^th September 1898. Yes, a genuine Victorian! Ten years older than George, she was the fourth of five children, all girls, born to a Plymouth sign-writer, Albert Spencer Vodden, and his wife. The sequence ran: Dorothy, Hilda, Phyllis, Nellie, Lucy.

Nellie expressed particular pride in two aspects of her history. First, in the Huguenot past of the Vodden family and, second, her love of England.

Apropos immigration into Britain there have almost certainly been more references to the Huguenots in the past twenty or so years than there were in the previous 250 years. An increasing number of commentators, it seems, claim that Britain is a nation built on the skills and energies of immigrants. This is a wild exaggeration but it is certainly true that the Huguenots were the largest immigrant group until the current wave initiated by the British Labour government of 1997 under the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Blair.

After the Reformation there was an ongoing battle between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. France was resolutely Catholic but the Edict of Nantes, enacted in 1598, brought a degree of religious tolerance to that country, Then, in 1685, the Edict was revoked. Suddenly this meant that the only way to be sure of keeping body and soul intact (literally) was to convert to Catholicism or get the hell out of France.

British historian George Macaulay Trevelyan (1876-1962) wrote vividly about this time:

Thousands of men and women, who refused to abjure their faith, were crowded into damp and loathsome prisons and pestiferous ‘hospitals’, where assailed with stripes, ill-usage and insult, and exposed to the company of diseased and criminal wretches, they suffered things as horrible as depraved ingenuity could invent.”1

Escape, obviously, was the safest outcome. However:

By an excess of cruelty the Protestants were forbidden to emigrate; the roads and ports were watched against the families flying by night. … [However] the bulk of the Protestant population disappeared for ever out of France.2

Over a period of 40 years (roughly, 1675-1715) Huguenots escaped to Holland, Brandenburg and England, around 50,000 taking refuge (hence the term refugee) here in England.

This is quite impressive because the English did not have a history of welcoming incomers. Quite the opposite, in fact. For a very long time the English regarded people from other English towns as ‘foreigners’. As Trevelyan points out:

Throughout the seventeenth century York refused to admit ‘foreigners’, English or Dutch.

“Where’s he from?”
“Leeds.”
“Leeds! Foreigners!”
“But it’s only 30 miles from York.”
“Doesn’t matter, mate. He’s a foreigner.”

The Huguenots, as it turns out, had two distinct advantages when it came to breaking through this barrier. First, their Protestant beliefs and matching prejudice against Roman Catholicism aligned with the English view. Second, many of them were skilled in crafts that were in high demand: silk weaving, silver-and gold-smithing and more. Hmm, more ways to make money? What’s not to like? Pragmatism is an English virtue.

Perhaps this helps explain the artistic skill of Nellie’s father? He was a commercial artist, a painter of public house signs. Did the arty bit stem from his Huguenot DNA?

In addition to her attachment to her Huguenot roots, Nellie also had a passionate devotion to England. For me, the lyrics that she sometimes sang of There’ll Always Be An England3 encapsulate the sense of patriotism that she exhibited – above all else, a sense of place:

There'll always be an England
While there's a country lane
Wherever there's a cottage small
Beside a field of grain

The song was a big hit after the outbreak of the Second World War. Understandably so. It is a romanticised, rosy-tinted spectacles’ view of things, but Nellie felt it and it stood her in good stead. After all, her life was extraordinarily difficult: most of the time we lived in real poverty, but she rarely complained and never blamed others for our situation. She would never have complained that something or other was anyone else’s fault and would be amazed that any domestic issue might be described as somehow “the government’s fault.”

Nested inside her love of England was a particular affection for the area where she was born and raised – the county of Devon. So, for example, she regaled me with stories about the derring-do of Sir Francis Drake (c. 1540-1596). Between 1577 and 1580, Drake was the first Englishman, and the third person ever, to circumnavigate the globe. Then, in 1588, if the tales are to be believed, he played a major role in defeating the Spanish Armada.

He had taken a snare drum with him on his round the world trip and, shortly before he died, sent it to his family home at Buckland Abbey, near Yelverton, Devon, with the promise that, if England was ever again threatened, the drum was to be beaten and he would return to help save the day. As a consequence of this, the first poem that I ever learned and was forced to spout on request for visitors was Drake’s Drum by Henry Newbolt (1862-1938):

Drake he’s in his hammock an’ a thousand miles away,
(Capten, art tha sleepin’ there below?)
Slung atween the round shot in Nombre Dios Bay,
An’ dreamin’ arl the time O’ Plymouth Hoe.
Yarnder lumes the Island, yarnder lie the ships,
Wi’ sailor lads a-dancin’ heel-an’-toe,
An’ the shore-lights flashin’, an’ the night-tide dashin’,
He sees et arl so plainly as he saw et long ago.

Drake he was a Devon man, an’ ruled the Devon seas,
(Capten, art tha’ sleepin’ there below?)
Rovin’ tho’ his death fell, he went wi’ heart at ease,
A’ dreamin’ arl the time o’ Plymouth Hoe.
Take my drum to England, hang et by the shore,
Strike et when your powder’s runnin’ low;
If the Dons sight Devon, I’ll quit the port o’ Heaven,
An’ drum them up the Channel as we drumm’d them long ago.

Drake he’s in his hammock till the great Armadas come,
(Capten, art tha sleepin’ there below?)
Slung atween the round shot, listenin’ for the drum,
An’ dreamin arl the time o’ Plymouth Hoe.
Call him on the deep sea, call him up the Sound,
Call him when ye sail to meet the foe;
Where the old trade’s plyin’ an’ the old flag flyin’
They shall find him ware an’ wakin’, as they found him long ago!

Ah, well, there we have it, complete with cod West Country dialect. Today, of course, Drake is most likely to be castigated and ‘cancelled’ for his piracy and playing a part in the slave trade. But, from an English perspective, he clearly also did some good by ‘singeing the king of Spain’s beard’.4

So, despite her harsh existence, Nellie was a patriot. George was, too, but Nellie was more vocal about it all. Back in those days, civic society was typified more by mutual respect than by what passes, these days, for ‘compassion’. In my view, American historian, moralist and social critic Christopher Lasch (1932-1994) got this exactly right when he wrote5:

A misplaced compassion degrades both the victims, who are reduced to objects of pity, and their would-be benefactors, who find it easier to pity their fellow citizens than to hold them up to impersonal standards, attainment of which would entitle them to respect.

Nellie would have been horrified had anyone pitied her. Her stoical view was formed from her earliest days. Her father painted public house signs. This meant that upon taking receipt of his weekly wages he was in exactly the right place to spend it all on booze without having to waste precious time actually searching out a hostelry. The inevitable domestic result was poverty, in response to which Nellie also became a staunch teetotaller and a member of the Wesleyan branch of Methodism.

In “Whatever Happened to Tradition?”6, Tim Stanley writes about the two strands of Methodism. Primitive Methodism “stressed service to the poor and found a natural home in the Labour Party.” Wesleyan Methodism, which was named for the brothers John Wesley (1703-1791) and Charles Wesley (1707-1788), “emphasized the doctrine of free will – that we must be free to choose to do the right thing.” Practiced by a modest and often impecunious segment of society, Wesleyan Methodism is based on a socially conservative (with a small ‘c’) view of the world. In fact, I think a majority of the British working class in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were economically left of centre but socially right of centre. As it happens, George always voted Labour and Nellie always voted Liberal although, now, neither the Labour party nor the Liberal party seem to be anything like they were in the twentieth century.

Despite the chronic domestic problems Nellie had fond memories of her father as an avid reader – she would tell me of his love of the works of Charles Dickens, and how he would read late into the night by candle- or gas-light.

The most important event in Nellie’s young life was the First World War, from 1914 to 1918. She was aged 16 to 20 years at the time, an extraordinarily important and formative segment of any life. And the war indelibly touched the Vodden family. The eldest child, Dorothy, never married. The next in line, Hilda, did marry and, in short order, was rendered a widow. She was lovely and I remember her with great fondness. She never remarried; marriage, to her, was sacred, so how could she? Next in line, Phyllis, married and her husband, Charlie, worked in Plymouth dockyard as a caulker: caulking involved working in dark, dangerous conditions inside the hulls of ships to seal the metal seams. And the youngest sister, Lucy, enjoyed a good marriage.

I have no idea how Nellie felt through the 1920s and into the 1930s but, around 1935, she met George and, on 3 July 1937, George and Nellie were married at the Wesley Methodist Chapel, Ebrington Street, Plymouth. I know from Nellie that the chapel had become important in both of their lives. The officiating minister was a Reverend Martin whose surname I was subsequently given as a middle name. Just a handful of years after the wedding the building was destroyed in one of the German bombing raids.

Apropos naming, I was named David for David Foot Nash, who became my godfather. From the online Dictionary of Methodism I learn that he was a

Plymouth solicitor, born on 28 August 1902, the son of James L. Nash, a Plymouth fruit merchant and Janie Foot, eldest daughter of Isaac Foot Senr. In 1921, at the age of 18, he became a Wesleyan Methodist local preacher of evangelical bent, associated with Plymouth Central Hall. During the Anglican-Methodist Conversations of the 1960s, he was at first strongly opposed to the proposals, but later wrote Their Finest Hour (1964) in support of them. He was Vice-President of the Conference in 1963. He died on 11 March 1972.

I remember being introduced to him on just one occasion when I must have been eight or nine years old. We were on a family visit to Plymouth and George took me to meet David Foot Nash. What do I remember of the meeting? He gave me a ten shilling note (50 pence in today’s money but worth a lot more at that time). Yes, I admit it, it’s pathetic that all I remember is the money.

An adoption plan

I presume that between 1937 and 1945 the happy couple had at least a few goes at creating their own progeny, although George was away for a chunk of that time owing to the inconvenience of the aforementioned global conflict. Whatever, it is quite clear that, by 1945, they had given up any hope. In that year, Nellie celebrated her forty-seventh birthday so I guess it was a reasonable conclusion. They decided to go for adoption.

Later, I learned that their adoption campaign was boosted by the supportive interventions of a Canon from Lincoln cathedral. A Canon, by the way, is a priest with special responsibility for a cathedral ‘or certain other churches that are styled collegiate churches’ (Wikipedia). Lincoln, as you will soon see, figures in this history but I did not know who the Canon was until much later when, in a letter to me in 1984, adopted godfather Rupert Bliss clarified the mystery.

So, should they have been allowed to adopt? Almost certainly, No. But they were. And I loved them for I knew nothing else in the whole world.

Aargh! by David Pinder

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