Ihad twin brothers, Arnold and Walter. Walter made a golden pathway with sand from the end of our garden. It curved in and out and at one end he cemented a shallow pond for fish and water. My cat, Don, used to sit and watch the goldfish and - to our horror - one day he caught one.

The two boys were not alike - only in their height. Walter was a garden lover and used to distill scent from flowers and bottle it as a present for my mother and Aunt Mally, my father’s favourite sister, I can picture her now - in lilac and satin with a blouse of purple and a silken shawl. She lived half the year with us at ‘Einhallow’ and the other half she spent with her sister, Clara, in Ireland.

Sweet Aunt Mally we all loved: she was the peacemaker in the family. Her face was serene and beautiful, her very presence dominated the house and the bountiful love she gave flowed like the sun. I remember she always wore a cap - cream lace on silk - with a pansy of velvet adorning it.

She had lost her family before I ever knew her. A long chain always hung round her neck with a gold locket as large as half a crown. On each side was a portrait of her two sons who had died long since of consumption at the early age of twenty and twenty one.

She hired her own little maid so as not to interfere with the household. We had a man and his wife who lived in. The wife did the housework with the help of a daily woman called Mrs Varnel who loved her glass of beer at eleven. We had a parrot whom she taught to say, “Draw the cork - Draw the cork” and at eleven he would screech and dance up and down in his cage saying, ‘Draw the cork - draw the cork.”

I sat whenever I could beside my father whilst he wrote his books or poetry. I would draw with a tiny mapping pen little birds with feathers all picked out so you could see the veins. Now and then I would show my pictures to my father and he would praise them. Sometimes he would take me into the garden at night and show me the stars. I loved the ‘Great Bear’ and the ‘Evening Star’ which was so much greater than the rest of them.  

 There was a border of evening primroses which looked dead all day because they were asleep but at evening time they burst open and shone like the stars of the night.

On my birthday at ‘Einhallow’ he had all the trees lit up with fairy lights - coloured glass jars with night lights in. The boys had been busy all day going up ladders with them - quite a lot of lights, over a hundred.

Ethel and Dora, my playmates, used to come and hide under the raspberry bushes eating as much as they could and having a wonderful time.

I could write and write forever about those days but I’d better get on otherwise I shall forget things which are more important for the family. No one seems to know or remember - most are dead so how can they know if I do not tell it to the younger generation. After my father’s death at Brasted Chart, and ‘Einhallow’ had been sold and gone forever, only memories remained.

I remember when two of my sisters were at home and I had not yet left school. I wish I could have gone to art school but my father could not afford it. He had educated two of his sons at Dulwich College and then they all bottled off to the other end of the word. I think he had lost heart in planning for his children.

I think the boys must have inherited a roving spirit from my mother. She was forever moving about and doing things - full of life and energy. She was very kind to the poor - making up parcels of left-off clothing or taking eggs from our chickens to a neighbour who was ill - or going to a sale. It was the one thing she adored, going to large houses, catalogue in hand and buying things that nobody really wanted. But she generally made good use of them or sold them for more than she had given.

She furnished a small cottage right away in the countryside and let it to a doctor - the rent being four shillings a week and she let it for twenty five shillings. She called it her weekend cottage. When it was not let we certainly did go there and enjoy the uniqueness of it all.