Great Aunt Nell was often recalled by her nephews and nieces. To her niece, Roma, she was a great ‘romancer’ while to her niece. Kathleen, she was a fervent gossip.

Kathleen remembered visiting her aunt in the 1950’s when she lived at 70 Wolfington Road in South Norwood - a small tiny semi-detached house with a tiny front garden.

At that time Nell was widowed and lived alone with her cats and her memories.

Later, Kathleen wrote a story - a chapter in her aunt’s life. She begins her story: ‘It must be pleasant to remember, on growing old, that there once was a time of Paris and wine and bouquets’ and she quotes from Nell’s ‘Paris Notebooks’.

Her aunt had scribbled all she could remember about her life in a bundle of red notebooks and Kathleen had quoted from some of these. But Nell had also recorded her childhood in South London and remembered a little tin box that she took on her travels: ‘ I had my tin box which was blue inside and brown outside. This was packed mostly with poems and stories that I had written and bits of painting and a box of water colours and music - all torn and gummed together.’ Something of contents of this box remain among her notebooks.

After Nell’s death, another niece, Gwendolyn collected all these note-books together, tied them up with string, and put them in a drawer. Later, Gwendolyn passed the notebooks onto me and I have typed them out to the best of my abilities.

Michael Middleton

December 98