C/O Mrs Clive
Brympton D’Evercy
Somersetshire
August 10th 1939.
Dear Daddy
We had a most satisfactory visit to Forde Abbey on Tuesday. In the morning the Collingwood’s took Cyril and Michael to Crewkerne to do some shopping and I was left to my own devices, I walked up to Odcombe to see a wren’s nest I had discovered last week. The two hungry babies that I saw last week were fully fledged and fluttering round. I rescued one which fell on his back and put him back into the nest; he did not seem hurt.
We did not get to Forde until 4:30 as Mrs Clive had forgotten that she had invited some people to lunch and could not get rid of them very early. Of course there were several people there as usual. General Snow (Cousin Tom) in an invalid chair and a Sister of Mercy who was his eldest daughter, several grey-haired ladies and one or two younger ones. Geoffrey (Mrs Roper’s eldest and only surviving son, hair to the property) is a very charming man, but considerably aged. He cannot spare much time for social life. He has to be up at 5 a.m. and works very hard indeed. I think the estate is a very great responsibility. Mrs Clive says there is not much money there, and he is giving up his chickens and running a nursery. He markets the fruit and vegetables. The fruit is lovely. There are rows of greenhouses (as Michael says) “just like Kew Gardens”. We even found an orange tree with quite a lot of ripe looking fruit but its purpose was decorative only, of course not commercial.
The lawns, lakes and flowers gardens are exquisite but I did not see much of them. Miss Marsh wanted to hear all the news so I sat and talked to her most of the time while Cyril and Michael went with Geoffrey to introduce queen bee into the hive. She had just arrived by post in a wooden box sealed at one end with sugar and with a little netting window at the other. The other bees eat off the sugar door and release her. This was all very interesting and I was sorry to miss it. Geoffrey lit up a smoke box, and by pumping bellows he blew smoke at the bees to dope them. He had to brush several stings out of his hands when he had finished handling the hive, in spite of the smoke, and Cyril said that the black retriever “Jackdaw” yelped as if he had been stung too.
After that they went to see the wire enclosure where the cattle graze. The park land or meadow whatever it is, is so big that they have a wire enclosure which they move about as required. Wire alone will not keep the cattle in, however, as they will push through or under it, but Geoffrey has introduced an idea from America which soon teaches them to keep clear of it altogether. The wire is charged with electricity, not enough to hurt them but enough to startle anyone who touches it. Michael was most impressed and kept pretending to be a cow and getting a shock.
I met Diana (i.e. Mrs Geoffrey Roper who had the bad motor accident two years ago) again, of course, and the two little boys, who are very sweet. Very pretty children both of them, and the family are expected to be increased shortly. Young Mark had a plaster on his forehead as he had tumbled off the donkey and hit a stone. His father says that John (the younger, aged 2½) shows signs of being the more capable rider of the two. He is really beautiful though still in petticoats and rather “coy” with strangers.
Mrs Clive and Mrs Roper dashed about the garden with a trowel, admiring and gloating respectively over rare trifles of vegetation. Part of the time Cyril and I followed to carry Mrs Clive’s loot. She says she hates to visit a garden and go away empty handed – a thing which she admits that she very rarely does. Little scraps grown from seeds sent from all over the world were carefully uprooted and wrapped in newspaper. Other little morsels in pots (destined to become large trees at some very remote future date) were collected from frames and handed over to Cyril, Mrs Roper meanwhile enlarging on the beauty that each would ultimately achieve, and Mrs Clive gloating with enthusiasm and beaming with joy as her pile of spoil grew larger.
A most satisfactory visit all round, as we discovered when on the way home Mrs Clive espied a large newspaper parcel by her chauffeur’s feet.
“Trask, what is your loot?”
“Pardon? Madam.”
“I see you have managed to get some loot as well. What is it?”
“Oh! That, Madam, carnations, Madam, they was being thrown away”
“Thrown away? What for? Why should anyone throw away perfectly
good carnations, Trask?”
“I dun’no, Madam – too many of one colour I expect, Madam, and as they was being thrown away, I thought they might as well be thrown to Odcombe, Madam.”
“Quite right, Trask. Quite right.”
Yesterday Mrs Clive went to Taunton and asked if we’d like to go with her and call on Mrs Brain, while she went to a meeting. But we thought that visiting two days running would be too much strain especially for Michael so we turned it down and went walking instead. She did intend spending the day in Taunton, the morning on the bench (i.e. the bench of magistrates, of whom Mrs Clive is one) and the afternoon at this business meeting. But on ordering her car the great Trask informed her that she was not due on the bench that day at all. It was last Wednesday when she had gone to London for the day on business, and next Wednesday when she had invited 300 people to tea in her garden!
As a gardener she is great, but at keeping appointments she does not seem to shine. But she is so nice. We went to Ham Hill today in the wind and rain. Michael has been waiting for two years to repeat his first visit there. Every day we have told him to wait until we had better weather for the view, but we dared delay no longer. Mrs Clive was sending Trask to Yeovil to meet a train and bring back a visitor to tea and to spend the night. She ordered him to take us to Ham Hill on the way (it lies in the opposite direction) and to pick us up and bring us home on the way back!
Cedric Collingwood has been working on the farm all this week as the farmer is short-handed and as his family all went to Cornwall for the day leaving here at 8 o’clock, we had him to dinner and took tea out to him in the fields after we returned from Ham Hill. It has poured pretty well all day, so he was glad of it. He is a very shy solitary sort of young man, but very pleasant. Aunt Amy would love him, he has a wild poetic sort of look. A student of nature and with deep firm views on subjects like peace and war, which have to be wrung from him, as he rarely volunteers a remark.
Yesterday evening we had Malcolm Grey down to supper again, and fed him and filled his pockets with refreshment for the morrow. He has settled down well, and although still under canvass, and still wet and underfed and worked until he is fit to drop from 6 a.m. until 6:30 p.m., he seems on the whole happy. This will be my last letter from here as we return home on Saturday morning with a firm resolve to return next year.
Tomorrow, if it is not too far away, we want to see the sheep dipped. We met 70 on their way back today. Those lovely horned Dorset sheep which look so Biblical and we watched the shepherd catch one with his crook, aided by his dog, and anoint and bind up a sore ear. He said there were 300 more waiting to be dipped, and we thought it would be interesting to see if we can manage it.
The hay crops around here have never been cut and will now be no use as hay even if they do get some sun. The wheat is ready for cutting but is waiting for the rain to stop, and all the farmers are in despair. They fear the stock will starve through the winter.
Your loving daughter
Veronica
