The personal diaries written by ordinary people
are by far the greatest social documents of our age because they tell of
daily experiences, of hopes and fears, of ambitions achieved and loves
won and lost, and so what we read is life as it was, unfettered by
academic considerations.
Among the greatest of these are the Diary
written by Samuel Pepys between 1660 and 1669 which presents a vivid
picture of an age and a uniquely uninhibited and spontaneous revelation
of its author's life and character, James Woodforde's diary of 1759-1802
A Country Parson, Kilvert's Diary, written by another
country clergyman Francis Kilvert between 1870 and 1879 and chronicling
life in the English countryside in mid-Victorian times, and of course
the Lakeland Journals of the poet William Wordsworth's sister
Dorothy written between 1800 and 1803 while keeping house for her
brother at Dove Cottage near Grasmere in the Lake District.
A more modest contribution to the canon has come my
way and it has been a delight to read, hand-written in a small notebook
bound in black oilcloth purchased for a few pence from the local shop
and the pages filled with the minutiae of life in a Lincolnshire
parsonage because the author was Dorothy Houghton, then aged 27,
daughter of a former rector of St Andrew's Church at Pickworth, a small
village in the less frequented countryside of the stone belt nine miles
north west of Bourne.
Her father was the Rev William Christopher Houghton, B
A of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, who had taken over the living in
1905 and was 68 when the diary began. It was written entirely during the
First World War and was started under the heading of Jottings on
Wednesday 24th January 1917 and the entries continued for the next
fifteen months. Through these pages flit the people who were part of her
life, her mother always in the background but maintaining a busy
household, father perpetually ill with colds, brothers Cyril serving as
a subaltern in the Royal Artillery and later posted to France, Reg also
with the army at G H Q in Rouen, Basil with the Royal Navy, Hal seeking
his fortune in Canada, sister Edie who was a nurse working at a hospital
in Margate and her friends Josephine and Adelaide Outram, sisters of the
Rev Edmund Outram who was rector of the neighbouring parish of Ropsley.
This is a portrait of middle class gentility, a family
respected in the village and with a wide circle of friends and
acquaintances, of days walking or cycling in the countryside, to Haceby,
Braceby, Newton, Sapperton, Walcot and Folkingham, doing good deeds or
visiting friends for afternoon tea, while evenings were spent at home
engaged in conversation, reading and reciting and writing letters and
post cards because this was a period in which correspondence was a major
preoccupation and the only form of communication. There are also
accounts of money spent and saved, books read and books required for
reading, and soon we have a picture of an intelligent young woman with a
lively mind who was both thrifty and generous. She was also interested
in everything she was told by her family and friends.
The rectory at Pickworth
Basil was serving aboard H M S Patrol based at
Immingham.
Tuesday 6th February
1917:
Basil wrote the other day and described to me how Sunset is blown on
the bugle aboard ship. It sounds a picturesque ceremony. Edith says
that a mine was lately washed ashore near the hospital. It looked like
a gigantic tea kettle. The weather continues bright, clear and frosty,
and the snow does not go. Such a winter we are having! An old man was
found frozen to death in a ditch the other day.
Tuesday 12th February 1918:
Basil came for nearly a fortnight in January. He went up to London for
2 nights and came back and said he was engaged to be married. To a
girl of 26 named Gwendoline Wear, a doctor's daughter in Newcastle; he
has known her 7 years. Basil and I had a day at Frieston Shore before
he left and Gwen's brother, Dr Wear, surgeon at the aerodrome, gave us
tea in his cabin.
Brother Cyril wrote regularly from wherever he was
stationed with vivid accounts of his experiences:
Wednesday 5th December 1917:
Letter from Cyril. He is now in a siege battery on the Western Front.
The shelling was bad and Cyril was nearly hit. He is living in
semi-ruined cottages and has been sleeping on stone floors. An orderly
with three horses was standing about 15 yards away. A shell came along
killed all the horses and so badly wounded the orderly that he died
the same night. Poor old C. has had no letters since he left England.
Tuesday 26th February 1918:
Letter from Cyril. "We can hear our guns thumping the Hun about
10 miles away. I wish you could hear some guns fire . . . it nearly
knocks you off your seat though they are quite ¾ mile away. A walking
stick jumped halfway across the room yesterday."
Brother Reg wrote home less often but enjoyed his
sister's company whenever he came home on leave.
Wednesday 5th December 1917:
Reg and I rode to Grantham. Had a beautiful lunch at the Picture Café
and met Mrs W there. Had to go to the station. A train was signalled
and wondered if Adelaide was anywhere about.
Meanwhile, brother Hal was making a success of his new
life as a farmer in Canada while Dorothy sent him books which were
unobtainable in that country at that time.
Friday 9th February 1917:
Letter from Hal. The Dickens books have arrived he says. He has fifty
head of stock on feed now.
Monday 11th March 1918: Letter
from Hal. He was all right. He had shot 3 coyotes. They are worth 7
dollars each and he said they would help to pay the man he had. He has
70 head of stock of his own to look after besides some for another
man. He got our books all right.
St Andrew's Church at Pickworth
Edie, who was 32, was working as a nurse at a
children's hospital in Margate and her graphic and intense descriptions
of the bombing attacks she experienced are among of the most moving
entries in the diary.
Tuesday 27th February 1917:
Letter from Edie. The hospital has been bombarded on Saturday night.
She was woken towards midnight by "the very dickens of a
row". Dressing hastily, she raced across the hospital. They
dragged the beds in from the verandahs and fed the patients. Either it
was an air raid or a bombardment. The next day they knew. The hospital
and Margate in general had been fired on by a dastardly German
submarine. One shell had struck or glanced off the roof of Edie's
verandah, making a big hole and a bed beneath was full of glass. A
good sized piece of the shell lay on the floor.
Happily no one was
hurt . . . five minutes away, some people outside Margate had been
killed. How fortunate it was no worse. Mr Tiarks rushed into Edie's
ward to see if his little girl was safe.
Thursday 6th March 1917: Letter
from Edie which makes us anxious. She is having giddy fits and
sickness. She wrote from her bed. Much fear that she has drawn far too
heavily on her stock of strength lately. We wrote today urging her to
try and arrange to come home for a good rest. Her birthday tomorrow
(she was 32). Sent her a box of snowdrops and aconites in moss. She
does so love the first spring flowers.
Monday 18th June 1917: Letter
from Edie. Besides the terrible air raid on London when about 41 were
killed and 400 injured in the East End, Edie says four German
aeroplanes visited Margate. "No one killed or injured as far as I
have heard; some houses smashed about, the water mains damaged in one
place, one bomb dropped uncomfortably close to the building where
there is ammunition stored. Lucky for us they didn't quite hit it. I
was doing a round with the doctor when the first explosion came but
didn't take much notice of it at first then another came and we made
for the verandah to get the beds in. Guns were banging away and bombs
dropping every minute and I expected one to land in the middle of us
before we could get the children in. One shell from our own guns went
over the hospital and landed on the cliff opposite. Then we heard
firing in the distance for some time. Poor London has caught it pretty
hot."
Thursday 27th September 1917:
Edie writes an exciting account of the latest raid. "We had a gay
time last night - you should just have heard it - such a racket! You
would have smiled if you could have seen us. Beds crowded into the
ward any how and as far from the windows as we could get them, blinds
down and only one dim light at the end of the ward, 2 or 3 children in
each bed and most of them singing. It really took some doing to think
of songs for them and one simply had to keep on to prevent them
getting frightened. Every now and then there would be a crash of guns
or bombs, we could hardly tell which, and the kiddies' voices got a
bit shaky but they kept it up. One doesn't notice it at the time but
it's a bit of a strain when it keeps up for 2 or 3 hours. At last we
couldn't think of any more songs - we had had the national anthem
(especially the 2nd verse) and as the firing still kept on, I started
them with that awful game: Have my love with an A because he's amiable
and we went right through to Z! By about nine o'clock, the firing had
got very far off so we made
some cocoa and they all settled down to
sleep - tired out, poor little brats! We had managed to get some
supper during a lull in the excitement at 8 o'clock. I was just coming
out on to the verandah when whizz went a shell over us and exploded
with a blaze of light and a tremendous bang followed by another and
another. Star shells were shooting up, looking awfully pretty, and
searchlights dodging all over the sky. It was awfully exciting."
The Houghton family may have been a long way from the
war but still felt its effects.
Monday 26th February 1917: The
food question is getting serious. Tea, coffee and cocoa are among the
restricted imports and a strict weekly ration for each person is being
urged by the Food Controller.
Thursday 27th September 1917: A
policeman has been in Pickworth warning everybody that 23 or 24
Germans have escaped from a Northamptonshire camp and advising us to
keep our places well locked up. He thinks they will hide in the woods
overnight and try to work their way to the coast.
Tuesday 2nd October 1917:
Father and mother heard the Zeppelins last night about 11 p m. Bombs
dropping and the windows rattled. Somebody has got it I suppose!
Friday 5th October 1917: Rode
over to Horbling to see the V A D hospital. Mary Cragg showed me
round. There are 33 patients in all, all convalescents. Some of the
wards are very small. Mary . . . looks very nice in Red Cross uniform.
Mrs Cragg was working through a pile of soldiers' mending in the
kitchen. Had tea at the Winchleys after. They had just said goodbye to
Fred before he went off to the front. Poor Mrs W was rather sad. They
have already lost one son in battle.
Wednesday 21st November 1917:
Went for a walk today up past the searchlight station at Sapperton.
There is a huge clearing in the woods, trees felled in all directions.
Brown and gold leaves still cling, the wind sighed lonesomely in the
tree tops and there was the dull, almost continuous roar of the guns
at the big camp at Belton Park, nine miles distant.
Dorothy had great affection for the Outram sisters and
looked forward to their visits and to cycling the three miles to the
rectory at Ropsley see them.
The rectory at Ropsley
Their father, the Rev George Outram, had become rector
in 1890 but died seven years later and his son the Rev Edmund Healy
Outram, a graduate of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, succeeded to the
living in 1897 and took on the responsibility for his two spinster
sisters and his widowed mother who celebrated her 82nd birthday while
this diary was being written. The Outram family were slightly less well
off than the Houghtons because the Ropsley living was then worth £370
annually (£11,478 in today's value) but nevertheless, this was a very generous stipend when
compared with the wages of the day.
Monday May 14th 1917: Rode over
to see Adelaide after tea. Found her gardening, clipping lawn borders
and her brother mowing. We went in and all three had a jolly chat in
the drawing room. I got reciting poetry. So enjoyed the evening. Had a
lovely ride home. Saw rosy pink sunset cloud in close contrast to
vivid green of chestnut
tree.
Thursday 31st May 1917: Just as
we were finishing tea, Jo and Adelaide arrived on bicycles. So nice to
see them. Jo looked wonderfully well after her holiday at Marple (in
Cheshire) and Adelaide looked so pretty in light grey tweeds. They
stayed chatting till about 7.30 and we took them round the garden
before they left.
Friday 22nd March 1918: Father
still very poorly but up and sitting by his bedroom fire. I took him
some tea, had an early tea myself, then rode to Ropsley to ask Mr
Outram if he would take Sunday service here. Found Adelaide gardening
near the verandah in the evening sun. It was such a pretty picture. I
sat on the barrow and chatted to her a minute or two then she took me
to her brother who was rolling the tennis lawn. While we were
discussing matters,
Josephine came out. She had been to Grantham.
Adelaide sat on the grass and we all talked things over. Finally Mr
Outram kindly agreed to take the 3.30 (new time) service here and then
Adelaide, Jo and I dragged an old seat into the sun and talked a
refreshing lot of nonsense. It was so jolly us three together again.
At last, Adelaide went in as she had a cold, and Jo and I followed
soon after to choose some books for me - then I pulled the drawing
room door handle off!
Thursday 19th July 1917: All
went to the fete at Ropsley rectory. Lots of people. Adelaide looked
so pretty. We had a chat with dear old Mrs Outram. She had her tea
upstairs and did not come in the garden at all. But she came down in
the drawing room after tea.
Monday 23rd July 1917: Rode to
Grantham and had a tooth stopped. Grand day. Photo taken 2s 6d, lunch
4d, paper ½d, sweets 5d, towards father's baccy 1d. Had tea at
Ropsley on the way home and found Jo lying in the hammock under the
old cherry tree.
Before returning to live at home, Adelaide had worked
for a spell as a nurse at a V A D war hospital at Tunbridge Wells.
Wednesday 14th February 1917:
Adelaide wrote a most delightful letter descriptive of her life. It
was scribbled in pencil before a cosy gas fire in the electrical room
while she is on night duty. The very first night of her new duties, a
convoy of 41 men arrived from France. "They were in such a state
and fearfully dirty and so tired, poor things. Getting them bathed,
fed and put to bed took us till 2 a m."
Adelaide returned home later that year.
Thursday 20th April 1917: Went
to Ropsley by invitation. Adelaide looks a little thinner for her
hospital experiences but seems well. Very nice to see her again.
Dorothy was a devoted daughter, helping both her
mother in the house and garden and her father with his church duties and
there are constant references to her cleaning the communion vessels,
polishing the brasses and filling the altar vases, and she was always
deeply concerned whenever her father was ill.
Thursday
1st March 1917: Here is the seed month; now we must get busy in the
garden. Mother and I weeded and raked there for an hour before dinner
and again most of the afternoon. Barrow loads of rubbish. A bright
wild spring-like day. We worked without hats.
Friday 16th March 1917: Mother's
birthday. Gave her some woollen gloves.
Saturday 16th March 1918:
Mother's birthday. I put the usual bunch of violets on her breakfast
plate, I wish I could have given her a £5 note!
Tuesday 19th March 1918: Father
has caught a terrific cold on top of his other one. Rode to Folkingham
to . . . get him some peps (a medication). They hadn't any, so after tea
mounted again and rode over to Ropsley. Same result.
Wednesday 20th March 1918: Sent
for the doctor before breakfast. He has to keep warm in bed at present,
so lit his fire in the bedroom then drove to Billingborough to get peps
for him. I read the news to father and had tea with him in his room
after walking to the post. It has been rather an upset sort of day.
Saturday 30th March 1918: Mother
and I are having a busy time. Father is still laid up though we hope the
worst is over now. It is
something like Red Cross work in hospital I
should think, nursing, cooking, preparing trays of food at all hours,
cleaning grates, sweeping and dusting. It would be so jolly if Adelaide
or Josephine could get into her uniform again and come over and help. We
have our meals in the kitchen mainly. Mother insists on keeping all the
night work to herself so I take it out by getting her nice hot suppers
and an easy chair.
In March of 1918, with Dorothy's father nearing
retirement, the family started planning to move to Devon.
Friday 8th March 1918:
Prolonged family council in the afternoon about buying a certain house
in Paignton - Hurst Dene, Fortescue Road, and finally decided to
purchase on condition that the drainage is all right.
This transaction fell through and other properties
were considered but the family eventually settled for a house in King's
Road which they purchased for £450.
Monday 18th March 1918: Rather
disappointing as it only has three bedrooms and is one of a row. Hurst
Dene in Fortescue Road was a semi-detached villa and had four
bedrooms. However, we are lucky to get a house at all these days.
There is a mad scramble for houses in the west of England just now.
Everyone wants to get out of the air raids.
But was there any romance in her life? There is
little evidence of this and I get the impression that Dorothy had a
latent preference for her own sex. She certainly found Adelaide
attractive and there are many references to this and then there is one
very mysterious entry.
Thursday 30th August 1917:
F.K.H. Tall, well-developed, reddish hair, very happy smile showing
large white teeth. Just a big, sunny-hearted woman.
However, there is also one instance of anticipation
that male company might be acceptable.
Wednesday 20th June 1917:
Letter from Basil. He seems pleased with the books on Lincs which I
sent him for his birthday. He hopes to come home the first week in
July and will perhaps bring Mr Pratt of Newcastle with him.
Dorothy seems to have been a perfectly fit and healthy
young lady who is able to ride long distances on her cycle and apart
from several visits to the dentist in Grantham to have teeth filled,
appears to have had little wrong with her but we are given a hint that
all is not well during a visit to London in October 1917 because she
went to see a specialist at the Florence Nightingale Hospital for
Gentlewoman in Lisson Grove which received widows and daughters of the
clergy and where a close relative or good friend called Fan worked in a
senior capacity.
Monday 15th October 1917: Went
round the hospital with Fan . . . then went with theatre sister for my
appointment with Mr Heath. Was asked to go again 10.30 a m next day .
. . and after a good many tests, he said he couldn't do much for me;
it wouldn't get better and
it wasn't likely it would get worse. He
would call and explain things to Fan on Friday morning.
But we are not told of the nature of the illness or
why this diary should end abruptly on Easter Monday 1st April 1918 with
several pages of the notebook still to be filled.
This delightful diary was discovered by David
Hutchinson of Newcastle upon Tyne who bought it in a job lot of books at auction twenty years ago and
discovered the inscription
"Miss D Houghton, Pickworth Rectory, Folkingham" inside the
front cover. He searched the Internet for a mention of
Pickworth and after finding the village on the Bourne web site, he
emailed me
for help. He then sent me the diary to read and after some research, I
have been able to find out a great deal about her family and friends
which I have included here. Surprised with my findings, David gave me
the diary as a gift and it is now one of my prized possessions.
Mr Houghton was rector of Pickworth for fourteen years
from 1905 when the living was then worth £404 per annum plus 30 acres
of glebe land and so the family was comfortably off and from reading the
diary we know that when he retired from the living in 1919 at the age of
71, he took the family to live in Paignton and was succeeded as Rector
of Pickworth by the Rev Cecil St John Wright. But nothing is known of
them after that.
We can only speculate why this diary was not
continued. Perhaps what we have is merely a fragment of a larger work
that still lies in some dark cellar or dusty attic waiting to be chanced
upon in similar circumstances. Perhaps the other volumes have all been
destroyed or perhaps there were no others and these pages recording a
few months from Dorothy's life are all there is. Did she stop writing
because she had succumbed to her mysterious ailment for which there was
no cure? Or did tragedy strike the family in some other way and so she
lost that enthusiasm which drove her earlier entries? But a more likely
theory is that she may have married Dr Wear or fell for the entreaties
of the mysterious Mr Pratt and either way would have probably ended her
days in Newcastle upon Tyne for that is the only explanation as to why
her diary should appear at an auction sale in that city sixty years
after it was written.
The rectory at Pickworth where Dorothy wrote her diary
was sold by the Church of England in 1945 and is now divided into flats
and is in a dilapidated condition. But the Houghton family is still
remembered in the village because the names of her three brothers who
served in the war are among the 22 names included in "Our Roll of
Honour" in the church, Francis Cyril Houghton, Reginald C Houghton
and Basil Gordon Houghton.
The rectory at Ropsley, now a private house, has a
reminder of those who once lived there because Josephine Outram
scratched her name on the inside glass of one of the lights in the
dining room sash window and it can be seen to this day. Did she do it
for a spot of fun one day while Dorothy was visiting?
Whatever the answers to these questions, I do wonder
what happened to this young lady whose jottings, as she called them,
have given so much pleasure to those who have since discovered and read
them and which provide us with a revealing glimpse of life as it was
eighty years ago.
Diary, commentary and
photography
© Rex Needle 2001
