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CHAPTER TWO

Early years: 1925–36

Frances Whitehead’s father, Captain Claude Maguire Whitehead dso mc, returned from the Great War seriously injured, having had his left shoulder blown away.8 He had been educated at Repton, then at Clare College, Cambridge. He then gained a mining qualification in Sheffield before sailing to South Africa, where close relatives lived; here he became underground manager at the Robinson Deep Gold Mine in Johannesburg. Claude Whitehead happened to be back in England on holiday when war was declared in 1914, and he immediately joined up as a trooper, receiving a commission soon afterwards. The Whitehead family suffered severe loss in his generation; both of Claude’s younger brothers died within a matter of weeks on the Somme.

Frances’s mother, Evelyn Eastley, grew up in Paignton, Devon, where the Whitehead family also lived. Evelyn nursed Claude Whitehead after he came home. Before the war, she had been in love with his younger brother Hugh, so it was natural for her to be drawn into the grieving process of the family as she worked through her own grief. While Claude and Evelyn were very different in age – he 16 years her senior – and in temperament, the circumstances of life drew them together and they became engaged in 1922; a year later they were married.

Claude and Evelyn purchased a small country home with a walled garden, an orchard and several fields, at the foot of Beara Cleave, near the village of Bovey Tracey in South Devon. The village dated back to Saxon times. A house had stood on the site of the Whiteheads’ home since the eleventh century, and its name, Beara, appeared in the Domesday Book.

On their first Christmas, Claude gave Evelyn a bound volume of the Book of Common Prayer with Hymns Ancient and Modern. He wrote in the front: ‘To Darling Bobs with love from Claude, Christmas 1923’ adding the final verse of his favourite hymn, John Keble’s ‘New every morning is the Love’:

Only, O Lord, in thy dear love

Fit us for perfect rest above;

And help us this and every day

To live more nearly as we pray.

Pamela’s tragic illness

Two months later, on 22 February 1924, their first daughter, Pamela, was born; and on 27 March 1925 Frances arrived, named after her paternal great grandmother, the illustrious Frances Maguire. (See Interlude.) Family photographs from the 1920s show two little girls, similarly dressed, playing with family pets and clutching favourite toys. But tragedy befell the family when Pamela reached six or seven years old, as she was diagnosed with leukaemia. By the time little Frances was old enough to play games with her older sister, Pamela was spending much time in bed. As the doctors’ visits increased, and a live-in nurse was needed, Frances was sent to stay with one or other of her grandmothers. It was a lonely existence; partly as there were no other children to play with; and partly as Frances longed to be with her sister, whose illness seemed to be shrouded in mystery, to protect Frances from anxiety. Pamela died in the spring of 1932, shortly after her eighth birthday, when Frances was not quite seven years old.

The fields beyond Beara’s garden gave onto rising woodland, which in the springtime was blanketed in primroses. Frances and her parents picked hundreds upon hundreds of these, and wove them into a cross, to lay on Pamela’s coffin. She was buried in the Bovey cemetery.

Anxiety over Pamela’s illness had taken a deep toll, and Evelyn’s mother urged that the family go on holiday, to rest and be refreshed. So not long after Pamela’s death, Frances sailed with her parents to Madeira. On board ship, Frances’s mother got to know a fellow traveller, Sylvia Dunsford, who became drawn into the family’s company. Sylvia, like Evelyn, had lost her fiancé in the war, and the two women formed a deep bond. This new friendship would soon re-shape family life.

Family life at Beara

Beara was a busy place. The Whiteheads grew much fruit produce – strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, blackcurrants, apples, from which Frances’s mother made many jars of jam and apple jelly in a shed behind the house, fitted with a large paraffin stove. She worked hard, selling produce to local shops and in nearby Newton Abbott. Claude Whitehead kept several hives of bees, from which honeycomb was extracted and sold, and oversaw the vegetable garden with a huge asparagus bed, all grown for the same local shops.

A wedding present to Claude and Evelyn from a Whitehead relative had taken the form of a breeding pair of pedigree Old English sheepdogs, an added hobby for Claude. In due course half a dozen kennels housed these dogs, some sold, others shown, and several won championships at Crufts. Pamela and Frances had learned to walk by clinging onto them. Claude also kept Rhode Island Reds, by then a popular breed of hen, for eggs and for flavoursome meat.

Two further additions were made to the Beara animal community when the family returned from Madeira. Frances’s Uncle William, who owned Welstor Farm up on Dartmoor, gave Frances a Shetland pony with a foal to look after, to help take her mind off her sadness at the loss of her sister. Now new daily routines began as Frances learned how to care for her new friends, and learned to ride. As the foal was broken in, there were tossings-off and bruises, but Frances was not easily beaten and the foal was gradually mastered. She would ride her pony to the blacksmith in Bovey Tracey to be shod, watching the sizzle on each hoof as its shoes were fitted. From this point in her life, Frances developed a keen interest in horses and in the equestrian world.

The family employed two staff, Mortimer the gardener, and his wife who helped in the kitchen. However Evelyn’s mother became concerned that Evelyn was too pressured, given the amount of work needing to be done in the home and garden. So within a short time of returning from Madeira, the Whiteheads engaged two Swiss au pairs to help ease the load.

The death of a child is always an enormous test for a marriage. Evelyn naturally wanted to talk about Pamela, but Claude mourned silently and deeply and did not want her name mentioned. Amid the activity of Beara life, tensions between Evelyn and Claude, two very different people, were soon to surface; however they took care not to argue in front of Frances.

It was around this time that Captain Whitehead and his wife first turned their minds to Frances’s formal education, deciding to hire a governess. This decision served to extend Frances’s rather solitary existence, as she had no children to play with. She recalls her governess cycling to Beara on an old pedal bike; a woman probably in her forties, whom the young girl perceived as ‘very old’.

One of the downstairs sitting rooms was designated as the schoolroom, and here Frances applied herself to her lessons. Claude Whitehead had already taught his daughter to write with the help of a copy book, where, as was the practice for decades, children copied row upon row of a single letter; then rows of another letter. Claude had also taught her to read. So when the governess arrived, he continued, not surprisingly, to retain a keen and active interest in Frances’s tutoring, and to complement it out of class-time. It was a particular frustration to Captain Whitehead that the method of teaching algebra had changed over one generation, and his systems and those of the governess were not in accord.

As well as mastering ‘the three Rs’, Frances learned to play the piano on the family’s baby grand. In addition, her parents wanted her to develop skills in arts and craft. Her father had a gift for painting and for sketching, and Pamela had shown early signs of artistic ability. So two sisters came regularly to teach Frances these skills. But she had no aptitude for art; indeed she never got past the stage of covering a cardboard box in fancy wrapping paper.

Claude Whitehead loved games of every kind. He was a good sportsman, and had competed as a hurdler at Cambridge. Despite his war injury, he continued to play golf with a handicap of par, and he and Evelyn were both active in the local tennis club, as well as playing on their own hard court at Beara.

Frances’s father was devoted to her, and took her with him whenever he was going out. At the age of 8 he gave her an air rifle and taught her to shoot at a bulls-eye set up on the lawn. From here she graduated to taking pot shots at birds. By the age of 9 she was handling a two-bore shotgun with cartridges, and shooting rabbits in the fields, which her Pekinese dog would run to retrieve. She and her father would sometimes go off rabbiting together in the woods accompanied by Mortimer, sending ferrets down the holes to chase out the rabbits. When Frances’s shots were not quite on target, Mortimer would finish the task. Claude loved the natural world and was widely knowledgeable. He would encourage Frances to identify flora and fauna, to listen to the birdsong and distinguish the bird species. He himself belonged to a pheasant shoot, went fishing, and was a good horseman, despite his war injury.

Father and daughter played endless card games at home too, of which Bezique was a favourite. These games would start straight after breakfast, before the Governess arrived, much to Evelyn’s disapproval. Claude Whitehead’s streak of fun and love of games and puzzles delighted his daughter; a trait she herself would retain.

Frances’s father was evidently viewed as a kindly man for in the years following the war, ex-soldiers, former members of his regiment, used to track him down and come to Beara to ask for money and help.

Claude Whitehead took Frances with him each Sunday to the local Anglican Church, where, to a child, the services seemed formal and a little arid. Her father, who evidently had a personal faith which mattered to him, would insist every week that she learn the Collect9 for the day by heart. Before he kissed Frances goodnight, he would sit with her while she said her prayers, always including the Lord’s Prayer; this she would race through. ‘Girlie, stop!’ he would often exclaim. ‘You haven’t thought about a single word you’ve said.’ In the same manner, Frances learned the Questions and Answers of the Catechism in the Book of Common Prayer, again schooled by her father.

After two years of being tutored at home, it was time to send Frances to school. Rather than sending her to the village school, her parents enrolled her in a small private school in Bovey with just six pupils. Her father drove her there each day. On summer afternoons she and her father would watch cricket in the field opposite the school before driving home. Claude Whitehead drove a roomy Fiat with a canvas hood which he would pull back in good weather. But by the time Frances was ten, there was a new daily pattern. Instead, they would travel to and from school in the second family car, an Austin Seven. It was at this young age that Frances now learned to drive. Each afternoon, as soon as Captain Whitehead turned off the main road from the village and into the lane leading up to Beara, he and Frances would get out of the car and change places. Kangaroo starts and crashing gears would, over the weeks, give way to smooth gear changes, and another skill mastered.

Her parents’ separation was now in the offing, but Frances’s mother resolved to remain until Frances left for boarding school when she was 11 years old.

8. Claude Whitehead had a distinguished military career. He served with the 4th Kings Own Royal Lancaster Regiment (Rifles), and was awarded a DSO and the Chevalier Legion of Honour for bravery and leadership at the final battle in the Struma Valley, Salonica, in which he was wounded. He was twice mentioned in despatches and received the Military Cross for skilful leadership in extricating his men after the battle of Doiran. He played an active interest in local affairs, and was Assistant Area Officer (Newton Abbott division) of the Devon Special Constabulary. (Obituary, The Paignton Observer, 23 March 1944.)

9. The prayer for the day, as set out in the Book of Common Prayer (1662) which was widely used in all Anglican churches for another fifty years.