Mama’s Diary Chapter 1.01 – My Parents Early Lifes

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“Memories-like the corners of my mind misty water coloured memories all the way we were scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind

Smiles we gave to one another For the way we were Can it be that it was all so simple then

Or has time rewritten every line

If we could have the chance

To do it all again

Tell me

Would we?

Could we?

Memories-

May be beautiful and yet

What’s too painful to remember

We simply choose to forget

So it’s the laughter we remember

When ever we remember

The way we were The way we were “

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“Well, what do you think?”, Chris said to me in the kitchen the other day. I look across the bench to my good looking 15 year old grand son, Blonde hair and so like his Dad before him; eager, keen, intelligent and I warmed again to his fresh and open outlook on life.” Chris”, I am sure I’ve found that as you get older other people see you age-get wrinkles and grey hair but you know that your mind remains young. You look into yourself Chris, and you feel the same as you’ve always felt and I think that’s marvellous!

And it started me thinking-remembering and wanting to write down the memories of 70 years of wonderful living.

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I was born on 14 March 1923 in Maidstone Kent, England, the second child of Charles Brooke Wright of Maidstone and Annie Constance Wright (nee Bush of Emsworth Hampshire). My mother’s family had a great naval tradition going back some generations. Her father was Lieutenant Commander Ernest Bush of the Royal Navy at Portsmouth and her mother Annie Charlotte Sly also had naval associations. Granny Bush use to tell me of her fathers ship “The Dauntless” and how she would row across from the shore when the ship was in Harbour in Portsmouth and call out” dauntless ahoy” as she drew alongside. Charlotte Sly married Ernest Bush about 1890 and their first Child was named Ernest after his father and was about 1892 with Constance arriving in about 1894. The family grew up at Portsmouth with ships and dockyards as part of their heritage. As a young teenager, Ernest went away to public school joining the 17th Hussars as an officer about 1914. In 1916, Ernest was transferred from the army into the new military arm called the Royal Flying Corps and it was as Major Bush he flew on many sorties in World War I. He used to tell me of carrying a small bomb on the floor of the open cockpit and at the right time, picking

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it up and dropping it overboard. His armament consisted of his pistol. The wooden propeller of his Sopwith aircraft was still at home. When I came to Australia in 1946. It was a beautiful dark, honey-colour and highly polished momento of his wartime experiences. Constants had a sheltered upbringing as was the usual in those days. Granny Bush had close connections with Edwardian social life and she used to tell me of the large house parties held in many country homes of the well to do. She saw King Edward VII and Queen Alexandria at some of these gatherings and told me once she hid in a wardrobe in one of these large Country houses when she entered the wrong room by mistake she later reckoned it was the King’s bedroom. Someone came in and out of the room whilst she was there and caused her to hide in the wardrobe and went to the toilet, she said! But whether this was correct I do not know. Suffice to say that the Duchess of Portland was my mothers godmother and Granny used to have a lot to do with the Portland’s. It must have been about this time, Ernest Bush left Charlotte. Young Ernst Bush was a Public School and destined for the Hussars and Constance was at home with her mother and a French governess at Auch House, Emsworth. Louise, my mother’s French governess taught my mother music, embroidery, singing and the French. Ernest

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Went he came home from school on holidays used to tease Louise. He said that if someone came to the front door the polite lady with say” how do you do Mr and Mrs Tom cat”. He also taught her in public transport to say” shove up”. ” you wicked, wicked boy”, Louise would say” you teach me very bad English” When my mother, Constance, was about 14, her uncle, Robert Sly, came to visit, and remonstrated with his sister, Charlotte, Telling her that young Constance spoke better French than English and had no maths understanding at all. As a result, My mother was sent away to boarding school in Portsmouth. While she was there she suffered two accidents which were to have a profound effect on her life. She was hit very badly on the ankle during a hockey game and about the same time she cut her inside thigh deeply on a chamber pot which broke apart as she sat on. The medics who attended the deep cut inadvertently cut her femoral artery on the same leg which had been damaged at hockey. The result was a long stay in hospital with a badly infected ankle. So her formal education came to an end and she said a lot of a teenager and early twenties in and out of hospital. She always embroidered and knitted and sewed all her life. And she loved the

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Piano. She told me that during World War I soldiers were always around the Havant, Portsmouth area and on Sundays there were always a goodly number in church where she was the organist. She was young(and I think attractive!) and they were young and they dared her to play” Itchy-choo” as the choir and minister came into church. At the time ”Itchy-choo” was top of the pops and one of the earliest of the tunes of the Charleston era. Not to be daunted she took them on. There was a bumper attendance at the little church-Packed to the doors as the young Connie Bush played ” itchy-choo” À la Connie as the choir came in. The minister never knew-but the soldiers were delighted.

1918 came and on November 11 that year the Great War ended. My mother was about 25 and Ernest about 27. Ernest had married a diminutive Scots girl from Glasgow whilst there on leave during the war. Her name was Peggy and she demanded Ernest leave the RFC. He was now a Major. He had served with distinction in France and later had been A.D.C. for General Allenby and marched into Jerusalem on to or beside him and the soldiers under Allenby command. He would have been in line for and excellent career in the air force (as the military was his training and life). However Peggy persistent and Ernest spent the years 1919-1929 on the dole. Eventually in 1931 or 1932 he

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got a job as a cinema operate in a Glasgow cinema. But the spirit have gone out of him as it had out of countless others in the same generation. It really wasn’t until 1939 at the start of World War II that opportunities came his way and he moved to Melton Mowbray in the north of England and rose to be in charge of a large factor there. He was a devout Christian and a layman preacher in the Church of England. He had four sons and one daughter Margaret who married an American pilot and went to live in Snowflake Arizona USA. Margaret had six sons all reared in her husbands faith – the Mormons.

In 1919 Constance became friendly with a Mrs. Dowling (we always called her Auntie Bill) she was the housekeeper(?) for a New Zealand Doctor who live in Maidstone Kent. So Constance was invited to stay with the Doctor in his lovely home. At the time Connie have become engaged to a young naval officer-but she went up to Kent for a short holiday.

This Doctor Barclay was my father’s doctor. My father was a 44 year old bachelor. His mother had died in 1914 (see family history) and he and his retired father had sold the 4 story Victorian home in Maidstone for £900 and had come to live in Turkey court. Grandad Wright had been a wealthy businessman in Maidstone owning several last barges which would carry grain and the like from France

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around the Kentish ports of Dover Chatham etc and up the Thames Estuary to London. One day there was a terrible storm and all the barges were sunk and he went bankrupt.

My father Charles Brooke Wright was the youngest of four children(see family history). His oldest brother Guy had gone to Oxford for his degree and then on to the Stock Exchange London when he became a stockbroker. He married Evelyn Cooper daughter of a Queenslander, William Cooper, who invented the sheep/cattle dip which wiped out the cattle tick.(Incidentally-if Grandad Baskerville had had some Coopers Dip for his cattle he might have saved them and become a grazier @ Woodstock, Queensland instead of a dairy man in Townsville!).

Charles had been intended for the church. He had been sent to the Cathedral School Worcester where he received most of his education & sang in the choir. He had a lovely tenor voice and I remember often listening to Daddy sing to my mother’s accompaniment on the piano.

However when Grandad went bankrupt(socially terrible in those days Daddy had to leave Worcester and return to Maidstone and complete his last year at Maidstone Grammar. He used to tell me how dreadful it was for him. He had enjoyed a pleasant social life with his family

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but after Grandad’s business losses no-one even knew him (he took great pleasure in later years when folk who had snubbed him as a young man wanted to socialise with him again, in either ignoring them or saying he did not ever remember them!)

He left school after matriculating in the classics( Latin, Greek, English, etc) and got a job as an office work at Turkey Mill Maidstone. A paper mill making high-quality paper used extensively for bank notes worldwide used also by the King of England and the President of USA. It was owned by a family headed up(at that time) by Ralph Cook and General Thomas Pitt.

Daddy got on very well with both these men and when Ralph Cook felt his London business require more of his time he offered my father the job of Manager of the mill and the residence of Turkey Court.

I must say at this point that Charles Brooke Wright(or Brooke as he was known) had kept the mill going during World War I. He had offered for the army soon after his mother had died but he was 39 then and he was turned away with a diagnosed dicky heart as his heart beat was irregular on occasions.