Ithink sometimes what a very full life I have had when married to Frank Mellersh and the hectic times I had at the great exhibition at the White City in 1922. I painted the stall for the West Indian Jamaican exhibit. Mr Henriques engaged me to be his artist and go up a great ladder forty feet high and paint vast flowers of a tropical description all along the front and to paint the sides with immense flowers stalks.

I was doing it with Frank holding up the ladder when I heard a voice say, “Isn’t she wonderful.”

I had to laugh as to me it was just nothing.

When I had finished, Mr Henriques gave me fifteen pounds which was a lot of money in those days. Tea was only four pence a pound; and sugar, one penny for half a pound; matches were six pence for a dozen boxes, whiskey was two and sixpence and a bottle of beer was one penny a pint. You could get a jolly good feed for a shilling or go around London in a Hansom cab.

The clock ticks on for years and years. The mirror behind the clock reflects it and the furniture in the room. The sideboard is of fumed oak and matches the mirror. On the sideboard is a glass tray with little red glass tumblers and wine glasses as they have always stood. At each end of the sideboard are bowls of flowers - chrysanthiums and white roses and, in the summer, garden flowers. In spring the bowls were always gay with mimosa and the scent carries through the years - the pungent smell of the yellow bush flowers holds memories of years gone by. The chairs and tables and cushions and rugs are all part of a scheme and take up the individual of the whole. Movements from house to house. They always look the same because the room is the same.

The white candlesticks with the green and yellow candles stand like sentinels and say, “We are the candles to light if the electric fails - without us all would be darkness.” The piano too has candlesticks made of brass and they jut out displaying two green candles. It is a proud piano for it has been played on by a wonderful musician. The morning light shines on the piano and bounces rays across the room.

I stand in the open door and see the room reflected and other rooms come into my view. It is always the same because of the furniture; the photograph; the china, the settee and the oval scuttle with its brass shovel. The candlesticks are crooked because someone has been careless and pushed them back. My body hurts but I thrust forward to repair the error and the careless way things have been handled.  

 My husband’s photograph stands in its place with flowers in a china vase behind it.

Once there had been a party in this room; the last party when Frank celebrated his eightieth year. It was a man’s party and all the candles had been lighted and shone on the faces of his friends in a fitful glow. Mr Foster came with his flute and Major Ranault with his trombone and a man called Lee with his cello. I could still accompany them on the piano at the age of seventy three. We were all old. Walter Bird was the youngest and he was sixty. He sang songs of his own composition but others just sat back and told stories of their own experiences while they sipped sherry and port right into the early hours of the morning.

They talked and played and above all, Frank, the host. An Englishman born and equipped with all the courteous charm it is possible to imagine. He understood ‘life’ and made allowances for everything - always excusing others for any deficiencies they had. His humour and good sense - giving always the best of his intelligence to anyone on the slightest demand from a Cabinet minister to a coal heaver in a public bar. He could listen to people, pick out their meaning, however clumsily put.

Those humorous and keen eyes of his would lay the problem out in a pattern - move it up and down like pieces on chess board until he had put all the pawns into place. He put the king and Queen, knights and bishops in place and then he would advise the next move. All difficulties receded into the background and the person who had come with a troubled countenance went from his presence, beaming, with footsteps light as air.

This was the remarkable attraction of Frank; this was the secret of his charm. All his life it lived with him and he gave out scintillating sparks of happiness. He eclipsed the sun and the stars and now he is gone - terribly gone. I sit down on his chair in front of his desk. A birthday card stands up against the ink well. On the card is a picture of a gay looking Scotchman and, written, is ‘To a gay old octaganarian from your loving niece, Roma.’

Frank liked the card and stood it by the ink well. I polish his desk with kindness when I see his writing on an envelope. Sympathy and companionship have gone. Something has gone out of my life, never to return. The years roll back. The lights of Paris glitter like diamonds and little tables stand along the Boulevards and the Champs Elysses.