My Spring , livre ebook

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236 pages

English

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An unusual memoir contrasting the lives of Royals, with an ordinary working class Sheffield family. An aristocratic lady and a girl from Sheffield are born into large families at the height of the British Empire, where grand houses had elephant foot stools, cutlery with ivory handles, tiger skin rugs and Imperial Leather soap. In the north, horse and carts with 'rag and bone' men shout, "Any old irons."The northern girl wears 'hand me down' clothes and lives in a 'two up, two down', back to back house. The lady wears fine clothes and lives in grand homes. Both women experience turmoil and sadness in the First World War, and they both marry in 1923. This book is about the parallel life stories of an extraordinary Royal lady and an ordinary woman as they go through life changing upheavals and the fear of a second World War. They both have daughters in the same year - one was destined to be Queen and the other was to become the author's mother. Jean A Stockdale began by writing poetry before moving onto write the stories that lay behind each poem. My Spring is her look at the past through the unusual lens of her own northern family background and contrasting it with the Royal Family.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Memoir

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	09 février 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781780886480
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

My
SPRING
Royal Times and Ordinary Lives
JEAN A. STOCKDALE
Copyright 2013 Jean Stockdale
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador 9 Priory Business Park, Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp, Leicestershire. LE8 0RX Tel: ( 44) 116 279 2299 Fax: ( 44) 116 279 2277 Email: books@troubador.co.uk Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
ISBN 9781780886480

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
Dedicated to my loving family of the past and of the present. Special love to Michelle, Jerry, Thomas; my brother and family; Valerie,Terry and family. I m so proud of Thomas for writing the poem Attack featured in the last chapter. More from Thomas in the next book, My Summer , more Royal times and ordinary lives.
About The Author
There s something great, even amazing, that happens every day of your life, but the truth is it doesn t always happen. Today, all day long, nothing really happened. Yet I want people to know that I m here. I want to say that I m a great person or that I m special, but I don t think I can at all.
I m just an ordinary girl with an ordinary life, not interesting enough for people to know about me. But I want people to know about me.
And today, even though nothing really great happened, I feel as though something great did happen.
When I started putting pen to paper and writing poems and prose, my life years stretched before me in an endless line far longer than my mind could imagine. By the time I finished putting words to computer screen , my life years stretched behind me, unimaginable to someone still young.
I m not a professional writer or poet and I ve no university degree. But inside of me, well, there lies a story. I was born and brought up in Sheffield. As a royalist I checked memorable dates between my ordinary family and the royal extraordinary family and found that many life events of both families happened in the same year or around the same time.
And in the parallel storylines; there s fascination, there s joy, there s sorrow and guilt and a little bit of humour
(I can hear my school teacher saying never start a sentence with and or but )
(Some events and names have been changed.)
The author writes her early poems in magazines she compiled as a child. One poem is about spring and summer. SPRING light and lighter, shoots shooting, branches branching, into SUMMER light blue skies, flowers blooming, snowing summer , fresh and fresher, shining dew, taller grass, soft and softer, sunny showers, leafy trees, sunny and shade, sheep lambing, daffodils opening, hot sun and sand, sheep shearing, sunflowers growing.
(This poem is actually read across, so you might like to read it again )
Contents
About The Author
Prologue
Very Early Spring
Early Spring
War Times
War Diary and Memories
War Stories
In-between Diary
Just Before Spring
My Spring
Spring Memories
School Times
Royal School Times
First Diary
First Poems
Just After Spring
Epilogue
Prologue
George III, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, had produced nine sons, an heir and many spares, so to speak. Yet, by 1819, there were still no grandsons to take the Monarchy forward. He spoke sternly to his four eldest sons to go and find wives for the good of the Kingdom . The fourth son married a widow of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, who had two children already born. Together they had a daughter, a princess born fifth in line to the throne of the House of Hanover.
The princess moved closer to the line of succession after her father died and then her uncles died without heirs. George IV and William IV, two of George lll s sons, both died while on the throne leaving no legitimate heir. In 1837, a month after the princess eighteenth birthday, the daughter of the fourth son became Queen. Albert, a young prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, is brought to England with his brother to meet the young Queen. Although he had been told at an early age he would marry his English first cousin, he had no idea that by the time they met, she would be the Monarch.
Three years after their first meeting Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert. Almost to the day, nine months after the wedding, she has the first of their nine children.
Years later, the widowed Queen loses her heir presumptive grandson to pneumonia only a few short weeks away from marrying Princess Mary of Teck, the great grandaughter of George III. (She was known as May , her birth month).
In 1893, there were two notable marriages.
The first notable marriage, albeit arranged, was the Queen s late grandson s betrothed, Princess May, marrying his younger brother, Albert George, who had now been thrust into the limelight of the British Monarchy.
They married, having ten bridesmaids, amid much pomp and ceremony in the Chapel Royal at St James Palace. A procession of open landaus took everyone to the wedding breakfast at Buckingham Palace. After a honeymoon on the Sandringham Estate they started married life in York Cottage on that same estate in Norfolk.
The second notable marriage, a love match between first cousins, took place in the north of England. Notable in terms of the author s family, that is.
They married, having no bridesmaids, in a quiet ceremony at the local church. The bride, groom and both sets of parents walked back to the bride s parents home for tea and buns. There was no honeymoon and they started married life living with the bride s parents.
Very Early Spring
A very weary and frail old lady slept in her very grand four poster bed in a house where she and her late husband had been so happy. Her children and grandchildren heard her murmur and saw her lips twitch. They leaned forward for a sound, a movement, but it never came.
The old lady was dreaming of another century, another age, when life as an only daughter had seemed a slower and simpler way of living. How that had all changed when she was a young girl of eighteen and thrust too early into the world of adulthood and duty. An arranged match had blossomed into love and she went on to share a devotion, a serene happiness, with her beautiful husband, bearing him nine wonderful children.
Then, all too quickly, her happy life was gone when he died young and suddenly, leaving her alone and empty inside. For many years, far too many, she had blamed Bertie, her son and heir, as her beloved husband had visited him to give guidance on his royal duties and to err his philanderings . After that visit he had caught a chill which had led to his untimely death, causing a devastation she would never recover from.
In her dream, though, she felt very close to his beloved memory and to his warmth and to his love.
Her last conscious word had been Bertie as he had embraced her with much sobbing. A wholehearted reconciliation at the eleventh hour. Then her distraught, favourite grandson, the Kaiser, took her in his arms as she fell asleep.
She never awoke from that last slumber and died peacefully. She left a country, a powerful and wealthy country and vast empire, to mourn her passing. She had reigned for the longest time and become known as grandmother of the European Royals as she had arranged her children s marriages into almost all the major royal families across the continent.
Bertie had an overpowering, happy memory of his parents, once again together, holding and swinging their entwined hands as if they were the only two people in the world. He remembered when he had once had, though rarely, carefree and happy times with his siblings in vast gardens, but that was long, long ago and now he felt very alone and very old.
During his mother s long reign, he had become known as Uncle to the nation and British Empire, but he would very soon hold the mantle of burden and responsibility he had longed for, and dreamed of, for most of his life.
But his eldest son, now heir to the throne, had not been born or groomed to become King. He had grown up in the shadow of his older brother, born to be King, and as they were close in age, they had been educated together. They had both toured the Empire as naval cadets. After that they had been separated as the younger son could continue in the navy while the heir apparent had to go to university.
At the young age of 28, the oldest brother had contracted influenza in a pandemic, turning to pneumonia; tragically dying from it only weeks before he was due to marry Princess May. It was decided that the time and effort it had taken to find such a sensible and obedient princess, from good Anglo-German stock, should not be wasted . Prince George, the new heir, was encouraged to marry his late brother s betrothed. Although they had dutifully wed, they grew to have a deep affection and love for each other.
George was invested as Prince of Wales at the Coronation in 1902 as his father was crowned King of the United Kingdom and Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions and Emperor of India. King Edward ( Bertie ), though British, had some German blood as Monarch of the Houses of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Hanover. Although a first cousin, the Kaiser would listen to no-one and started to build up his German Army.
Bertie had to prove himself as King at the age of 61 years, but times were changing from rural to urban living, from horse power to motor cars and the reforming of the British Home Fleet and the British Army. He would take a personal interest in the building up of the Naval Fleet, just in case it was needed