2.4: Activities: the established way to enjoy myself

We didn't see very much of our parents within a normal day's schedule. We'd go up to Daphne's bedroom to kiss her good morning, and perhaps stay with her while she finished her breakfast in bed, and took her morning bath. Henry was more usually up and away by that time, preferring to eat in the dining-room. And that might well be the last we saw of either of them until we were washed and brushed up, ready for the brief evening session downstairs in the drawing-room. The rest of the day was spent either in the garden, or in the nursery upstairs. We saw a great deal more of Nanny than we did of either of my parents.

The Christmas season always sticks in my mind as being something very different, partly because we all moved into Longleat, and partly because there were so many other children (in the form of cousins) with whom to mingle. It was a fortifying experience to learn that we were all part of an integrated clan, concerned about each other's welfare. And there were ritual games of an evening, first and foremost amongst which for anyone still youthful enough to caper and cavort, was Cocky-Olly, or Kick The Pot Out - as it was sometimes called elsewhere.

This was a matter of Cocky-Olly making sorties from a base territory, invariably sited half way up the front stairs. By pronouncing the name of any individual, on sighting, they were captured, and upon the touch of anyone who remained uncaptured - so long as the touch was delivered within the home base - they were instantly released. And Henry was the adult by far the most preferred, who ever volunteered to fulfil that role. This was because he knew how to combine the right degree of growling fierceness in pursuing us fleeing children, with the lenience of permitting us to get rescued once we had been garnered in his home den. His popularity as an uncle made me feel really proud of him actually being my father.

The excitement in the game also involved that question of hiding ourselves in dark corners and cachettes within Longleat's multiple galleries and corridors. The very idea of straying too far from the touch of our human kind evoked a sense of unease, or even terror, that we might encounter one of the ghosts whom we knew with conviction to populate this building. There were all those tales of the Grey Lady searching for her lost lover; or of the footman who died when falling down that spiral staircase. (The two stories were separate in my mind over that period.) And there were other fancies too, of a gory nature, relating to the monks from the original Longlete Priory. Even some inanimate objects like the two ebony statues of negro figures (to support flower arrangements) struck fear into our hearts whenever it was necessary to pass them, unaccompanied, on our way upstairs to our respective nurseries.

Some of the fun and games engendered seasonally at Longleat were for the wider audience of those who worked upon our estate. It consisted of amateur theatricals, performed by the assembled clan in the village hall at Horningsham. On my first such appearance, at two and a half, I can remember being dressed up in a clownish attire, and required to follow my elder cousin Richard Stanley, to simulate performing animals and come down a slide at a crack of the ringmaster (Henry's) whip. A year later I even had a speaking part. I was dressed in my pink pig-patterned pyjamas, with a top hat and soot on my face. I rushed out on stage, waving a small handbrush, exclaiming: "I'm getting on like a house on fire!" There was much applause, which I was given to understand that I had merited.

There were activities of a sort more typical within our social strand, to which I was introduced at the age of seven. When Henry had been a boy, and prior to being recognised as the heir to Longleat, he'd been impassioned by the outdoor life to which he was introduced by Dick Futcher, the gamekeeper to whose care and tutelage he had been entrusted by Thomas. Not that the introduction went without regrets, as Aunt Kathleen was to inform me. She told me there was something in Henry which always managed to shock Thomas. "It was kill, kill, kill the whole time. Your grandfather was such a gentle person. He could never understand how anybody could be so anxious to kill everything."

My father was to tell me later that he always felt more at home with the Futchers' simple life than he did under the strict formality of the Longleat household. He regarded himself as a country boy at heart, which he held in sharp contrast to Daphne's social inclinations, and general town culture. By introducing me to Tom Renyard, he imagined that he was pointing my footsteps in the same direction as his own, - even if it wasn't to work out like that.

I had a liking and respect for Tom. He was uneducated, but greatly concerned about education: even a poor man's philosopher, in a small way. He was often encouraging me to compete with him in spelling-bees, and the like. But my spelling was atrocious at that age, and I think somewhere the idea was understood that it would be inappropriate for me to compete, and get defeated by Tom. So we never really got together on an intellectual plane. And I think there were occasions when he was offended by reports from Mrs Sims, in the kitchen, how we all made jokes about his Wessex accent. Mrs Sims was always a trouble-maker, and I'll be saying more on that subject in due course.

During these years before I was packed off to boarding-school however, most of my activities involved Tom's participation - whether in rabbiting, ratting, beating for the shooting parties, fishing, bicycling or merely in catching butterflies. The latter sport was something that I introduced him to, rather than the other way around. I had been handed down the essentials for butterfly collecting by my cousin Tom Stanley, who was Caroline's contemporary. It surprised many that Tom Renyard took to the sport with such enthusiasm. But he may have had the feeling that I wasn't really catching on to the blood-lust sports, to which it had been intended that I should be introduced, so he moved a little in my direction by way of compensation. I have visions of him with cloth cap and haversack, bounding over clumps of bracken in pursuit of fritillaries, butterfly net held aloft, and with the cyanide bottle extended in the other hand: similar to the sight of a dog bounding to retain vision of a rabbit in corn stubble.

I developed an interest, although not a passion, for natural history and animal life as a result of my days in the woods with Tom. I learnt something about birds, and the appeal of young nestlings, waiting open-beaked for the anticipated gift of worms. After seeing my first grass-snake, I spent hours in that vicinity, making noises on a toy piano-accordion which I had been given, supposing that this music would charm the reptile a second time from its lair.

But we did also do those other things. I was taught to overcome my squeamishness about lifting a blood- soaked rabbit from the ferret's clamped jaws, and breaking its neck with a deft downward wrench, before disembowelling it, and then stringing its legs crossed together so that the total catch could be slung over a stick. I also remember the impersonal attitude towards animal suffering. "They don't have nerves the same as we do," was the explanation to my query by which it was all excused. But I was dubious, if still excited, at the way Tom would break a rabbit's leg with me watching - no cries: just overt terror - and then let it go, so that my dog would have the better chance of catching it as it limpingly bounded off across the open field. My father had even more gruesome tales to tell me about his own indoctrination into sporting ways, in the company of Dick Futcher. But I'll drop a curtain over all that.

My dog was Charlotte, a Scottie. Daphne took on many dogs, but she often grew bored with them before they were very old. Her policy then was to give them away, and acquire another. I was the most appropriate recipient for the gift of Charlotte, once her own reign down in the drawing-room was ending. (Nanny acquired a Pekinese called Specks, Cal a Corgi called Honey-bee, and Pip a Pug called Juliana - all in the same fashion.) But I loved Charlotte, in an undemonstrative sort of way. She slept on my bed, and she adored to go out rabbiting with me. I took her for granted and she was a much neglected companion, but we appreciated each other's company - for what it was worth.

I was only just beginning to participate within the activities of the local hunts, (which consisted of the Wiley Valley, and the South and West Wilts,) before the outbreak of war disrupted such activities. Cal was thus a far more experienced rider than I ever had the chance to be, but we were both instructed in this art by Charlie Barnes, the head groom at Longleat. I was even blooded at the hunt by John Morrison, who was later to be created Lord Margadale, and his jovial instruction that the blood be left unwashed from my cheeks, no matter how strongly Nanny might protest, was solemnly fulfilled. There are some who wonder if there are still any traces of it there today, since Nanny Marks was always getting accused by my father of under- implementing his instruction that we should all be kept immaculately clean.

I was not particularly sportive in those years: not encouraged to play ball games, or even to feel competitive when running. I suffered from an unnatural fear of heights, when out in the woods with Tom Renyard, and I could never climb up to the branches he suggested - to examine a jackdaw's nest - or whatever. My biggest achievement over these early years was just in learning how to swim, in the municipal pool at Bath, which I attended quite regularly with Cal.

My first ever sense of sportive achievement did come relatively early however - when I succeeded in climbing out of my pram, to join Nanny where she was sitting on the lawn. The look of surprise on her face was a delight to behold, so it's a pity that this did not inspire me towards the attainment of more accomplished endeavours. But the truth of the matter is that I was quite a shy and timid child, and quite definitely highly strung. Not that this featured within my father's own image of what I ought to be, and he did encourage me towards more boyish concerns.

I was only three when Henry decreed that I should be taught how to box: curious perhaps in that he had never himself indulged in that sport. I was accompanied by Nanny to Macpherson's gym in London, and an instructor showed me how to stand and hold my fists, before advancing step by step towards an opponent, to deliver "one to the point, and one to the mark." Having absorbed my lesson, I was matched against another toddler and told to demonstrate what I had learnt. I attempted to do just this. What they had neglected to tell me was that my opponent had been given similar instructions, so that when I moved in close enough to deliver my two punches, I was pre-empted by the receipt of "one to the point, and one to the mark" - ending up much embarrassed on the floor. And my instructor hastily threw in the towel on my behalf, so as to avoid the additional embarrassment of me bursting into tears.

I was never in fact a cry-baby. Nanny Marks was to tell me (something which I do not remember) that Henry was in the habit of smacking me if I started to cry. So perhaps I became inhibited on that issue. I can remember howling with rage when Nanny refused to give me the toy panda I so desperately desired, or from pain when I fell from a table and bit my tongue. But I certainly wasn't frightened by this boxing defeat, and I remember distinctly that I didn't cry: a fact concerning which the instructor praised me at the time.

There was another aspect to these visits to Macpherson's gym which did trouble me, however. The older boys were always participating in a session of gymnastics when we arrived, right at the end of which came a joy-ride on a merry-go-round - with everyone clinging to rope ladders which revolved. To encourage me in the desire for additional participation, I daresay, the instructor would beckon me down from my seat beside Nanny in the public gallery, so that I could join in the fun with them. But I always found that long walk down the aisle from where I'd been enjoying my anonymity to be the cause for excruciating self-consciousness.

I felt myself an intruder into the games of the bigger boys, and that they resented my addition to their throng. But it seemed all too difficult to decline such participation, with Nanny pushing me forward and away from her, urging me not to be shy. All eyes were on me, but I had to start walking. And I developed a dread, in anticipation of that cheery call from the instructor to come down and join them, even though it was impossible to communicate this dread to others.

What I did finally was to summon up my courage, when Henry was driving us all somewhere in his car, to ask if I need go to Macpherson's gym. I am still aware of the deathly silence which greeted this request. Then Nanny hastened to what she imagined was my assistance, by trying to explain to my father how the boys were sometimes a bit rough with me in the boxing. She'd got it all wrong, but I couldn't see how to communicate my true motivation behind the request. I was conscious how there was severe disapproval, and disappointment, in their reaction. But the request was granted, and that put an end to my boxing training - for the time being in any case.

My father did not always play the role of disciplinarian, although I did suffer from the occasional nightmare on the Big Bad Wolf theme: something to fear, lurking in the shadows, intent on devouring me if it could. His attitude towards me might more accurately have been portrayed as one of teasing banter: an idea that I could be chivvied good-humouredly towards the goals he desired. The bark and the bite were reserved for those occasions when I was neglecting to respond.

Sometimes there was even a male camaraderie. I was three when he gave me my first sips of port to drink, and my liking for this was to remain with me. It took me long to discern anything wholesome in wine however, which lacked the former's rich sweetness, and as for beer, I found it insipid and bitter. But I acquired an instant liking for cider, when it was first given me by Tom Renyard, and there was a particular occasion not long after that, when I returned home from a night's outing to catch moths by putting treacle on the bark of trees, to receive a severe scolding from Nanny. It couldn't be decided whether I had drunk too much, or was suffering from a severe touch of flu.

Returning to the activities which were actually directed by my father, I was just three when I accompanied him to his annual Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry camp. The colonel had taken his young son to the camp the previous summer, and my father (although only a captain in those days) was damned if he shouldn't follow suit - proud as he was of having a son and heir. I sat beside him in the mess, and was taught by his fellow officers how to swill my mouth out after a meal: a habit which Henry found hard to break once we were back in female society.

What he hadn't bargained on however, was my delight in sitting on a spectator's chair while the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry band was rehearsing, and accompanying their music with my own shrill tin whistle. They gave me sixpences to go and buy myself ice creams. But after eating them, I would return to resume my accompaniment, to demonstrate yet once again my appreciation of their band. Daphne was promptly summoned from Sturford Mead to repatriate me within the family fold.

I did display a certain talent for music however, being encouraged to join Cal in her piano lessons from Mrs Milner, who arrived by appointment down in the schoolroom. Not that this talent could be described as precocious. And there was no great feeling for music in the family background. Classical records were seldom played, if ever. Daphne's taste was for crooningly fashionable songs like those of Byng Crosby or Fred Astaire, with some jazz and rag thrown in for good measure.

Although I was encouraged by Miss Vigers to read such books as the novels of G.A.Henty, I never engrossed myself in such activity. But I was still very young when I appreciated that I ought not to reply "The Marquess of Bath", in answer to the question of what I intended to become in life. Thenceforward I told people that I would become a writer who illustrated his own books. My talent in drawing had received some praise from Miss Russell, a previous governess; and Daphne maintained some romantic notions about me emerging as a poet, in the vein of Shelley or Byron perhaps. So the idea of becoming more or less what I am today was never really that far from my mind.

The first verses that I ever wrote (at the age of seven) were for Daphne, and in the initial two lines of the first one, I stated:-

Oh the little foal has play,

while his mother works all day....

If we accept that I was in some way endeavouring to describe the nature of our own relationship, it stands as admirable evidence for filial devotion perhaps, but it strikes me today that there may have been a touch of unrealism about my understanding of her activities in life.

Children's parties were very much a part of our lives when we were on the London scene - sometimes at no lesser place than Buckingham Palace. I was instructed by my cousin, Ben Wilson, on how to bow to royalty, and did so with exaggerated grace, (not with the head only, as I later learnt to be the more aristocratic way of doing such things.) But it was Queen Mary herself who took me by the hand, and assisted me to choose my present from the pile of gifts on display. I was ignorant of her special interest in my family at the time, but I certainly regarded her as a dear and dignified old lady.

I was a special favourite too, of Laura Corrigan, who had been made my godmother. The huge parties she threw were sometimes in my honour, and she was apt to fix the competitions (like the one to see whose gas- filled balloon travelled the furthest,) so that I finally heard that I'd won the prize. I remember one little boy complaining that it was unfair in that my card was attached to a bunch of four such balloons, whereas his card had merely three. Mrs Corrigan's explanation about me being her godson was ill-received.

I had a special fascination for the conjurors at parties such as these. And my sister (who was a fairy of course) was on more than one occasion, singled out to receive the tame rabbit that got pulled out of a top hat. The day I witnessed a repetition of this trick, but with only a toy rabbit being shaken as it emerged in the conjuror's hand, ranks as the point when I was struck by the idea that the quality of life might be deteriorating.

I was fed with a taste for travel, or at least the expectation of it, while I was still only three. I then accompanied my parents on their trip to Jamaica, on a banana boat called `The Araguany'. It furnished me with many vivid memories - like the sight of exotic black people, for the first time in my life, along with that of porpoises and flying fish. More important however, there was a real intimacy with my parents - since both Cal and Pip had been left behind.

I was encouraged to think that, in these travels, I had achieved the real break from infancy. While safely distant from Nanny's arms, Henry had taken me to the barber on board ship and a toddler's curls had been shorn drastically from my head. I can still recollect how Nanny stood there pretending not to recognise me on my return. She was putting her hands over her eyes, exclaiming: "No it can't be you! It isn't! Your hair is all in notches." Perhaps she managed to inspire some inner hankering for a return to long hair, which took some while to find adequate expression.

The activities during the latter part of my childhood were overshadowed by the national preparation for war. After that race back home from Piraillon, at the time of the Munich crisis, the momentum towards war became a vivid part of our lives. We had an Austrian cook at Sturford over this period, who had kept a photograph of Hitler ostentatiously on display in the kitchen, and she now went scuttling back home to her native country. Attitudes amongst the rest of the staff were less determinate. Even Nanny had been heard to say that Hitler was probably doing some good things, in bringing the German people back to work. Her comments of ridicule were reserved for Mussolini, and the inflated bullfrog mimicry was one that we all attempted to grasp within our private repertoires. But Munich had made everyone rather more uncertain: a feeling that perhaps we'd been backing the wrong horses, and that it was time to place covering bets elsewhere.

We children were sitting on the paddock gate when Nanny came and told us that war had been declared. I was eating a banana at the time: the last I was to see for quite some number of years. But it didn't feel any too serious at the start. We all knew that we'd never been defeated in a war since the Norman conquest; and even so, I had been led to believe that the Thynne family was descended from those Normans. It wasn't a question of who was going to win, but merely of how long it might last. Surely not as long as the previous one, which had endured for as much as four years?

Henry was now absent from the home scene for lengthy periods, training with the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry. Sometimes we would go to visit him in camp: even to take up temporary billets with him, in the company of other officers' families. But that was only during the holidays. At other times we had our lessons from Miss Vigers to contend with.

It was only after Daddy had been shipped off to Palestine (to form part of the Eighth Army, which ultimately came into action at El Alemein,) that a new sense of urgency took hold. Questions were asked as to what we were all doing to assist in the war effort. Mummy was just as enthusiastic as ourselves, drawing up schemes apportioning jobs to each of us. Cal and I were to get up early each morning to feed the chickens, while Daphne was going to do the local milk round, using our pony-cart. But she had second thoughts about the latter chore, and the spare milk from our cows was then diverted towards the manufacture of home-made cheeses, each of which she christened after particular friends or acquaintances. The problem here was that such individuals became emotionally involved with the cheese that bore his or her name, and thus potentially offended at the fate of some of them. They had a knack of getting eaten by the dog, or simply - for whatever reason - being dubbed inedible.

Spy stories were rife in the neighbourhood, especially after some garrulous lady accompanied by a meek young man, drove up to the front door at Sturford to enquire about the local Home Guard's defence posts. She claimed to have a nervous disposition, and would only consider renting one of our cottages if we could assure her that it was well protected from parachutists. A day or so later, her visit was followed by that of a policeman upon his bicycle. The authorities wanted to question her on the reason for her extensive enquiries, which had yet to result in her renting any place. I retained a vivid memory of what she looked like, but when it was asked if I had taken note of the number-plate on her car, I had to admit that my standard of observation - or of suspiciousness - fell short of what was required in any true patriot. The garrulous lady with her meek young man had either hopped it over the sea to Eire or, more simply, just vanished into the mists of war hysteria.

Bombs far more than parachutists were what most needed to be feared, deep in the heart of the English countryside. And it's a fact that I had long experienced a dread of low-flying aircraft. I have one memory from my days in a pram, waking up to the roar of a biplane as it swooped low over Sturford Mead. Nanny Marks was later to confirm that the occasion which I remembered had in fact occurred. She had always placed the pram under a tree after that, to inspire me with the confidence that they could never swoop that low again. But it may be some residual panic that I still feel when an aeroplane comes too directly towards me.

I was seven at the outbreak of war, and my fear of low flying aircraft increased for a while, in anticipation of such frequent occurrence. I can remember clinging to the grass on Clay Hill, as a bomber made mock strafing runs at a height lower than the point to which I had climbed. It took quite some persuasion after that, for Cal to persuade me to accompany her again on her walks up Clay Hill. She eventually hit upon the solution, (suggested to her in an advertisement, which she cut out for my benefit,) that those sugar-coated chocolate beans called Smarties are good for a person's nerves. She told me they were bravery pills. So we recommenced our walks up Clay Hill, taking along with us a tube of bravery pills - which were fed to me by the fistfull as soon as the sound of a low flying aircraft might be heard.

I managed to sleep through the experience of the only high explosive bomb to be dropped in our immediate vicinity - although Cal heard it all, and was full of exciting detail next morning, as to how the bomb had whistled while falling, driving her to hide beneath her bedclothes. I didn't even have the daunting recollection of its explosion, despite the fact that it fell just a mile away, slap on top of an isolated garage, opposite The Royal Oak in Corsley, where a man was reputed to have been mending a puncture in his bicycle tyre, by the light of an unshielded lamp. He paid for it with his life, and it furnished a cautionary tale for good blackout discipline for many a long night to come.

By 1940 however, we were indeed acquiring some personal experience of the war, in that large hangers for the storage of spare parts for aircraft, were being constructed within the Longleat woodlands. And on the suspicion that these might have been ammunition dumps, the area was bombarded with incendiary bombs on two successive nights. Pip and myself acquired one of these toys, on discovering it dangling unexploded from the branches of a tree, to display within our collection of war momentoes - until Mr Gill, the estate agent, persuaded us that it might still be a lethal weapon. It was returned to us however, after it had been suitably disarmed. I suppose that occasion must rank as the nearest the war ever came to making casualties of us both.

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