My paternal grandmother was a very proud woman, and I suppose in a way she had every right to be. She, like my grandfather, had been born into a very large poor family living in a tenement building. The streets where they were born were later demolished in slum clearances. However my grandfather had worked hard and had the “gift of the gab”. His was a true rags to riches story, rising from being the son of a stocking maker to being the managing director of a knitwear mill, when I was born.
By that time my grandparents lived in a very grand house, which was on top of a hill and had a garden, which would do credit to a stately home nowadays.
My grandmother always emphasised that her name was Elizabeth, and was not happy with any members of the family who referred to her as Liz or Lizzie, although many disrespectfully did. She told us that before marriage, she had been Elizabeth Taylor, the same as the famous actress. Actually mostly she was referred to as “the mother”, as in, “Tell the mother that the postman has been”. I knew that that referred to my grandmother. My grandparents had seven intelligent feisty daughters, as well as my rather weak and spoilt father. All of them would refer to their mother behind her back as “Lizzie”, but she would be “the mother” when she was in earshot.
I remember Lizzie clearly when she was about the age I am now. She was almost always decked out in a pale blue twinset (see the blog of February 28 for more info on this) and pearls. She wore a tweed skirt – never trousers of any description – and patterned flesh coloured lisle stockings. She had quite a large bosom, which was not ever encased in a brassiere!
By her sixties Lizzie had pure white hair, something I am lucky enough to be well on the way to inheriting from her. She considered herself to be extremely fit. She would demonstrate this quite frequently by telling us children to watch while she touched her toes – an incredible feat for someone of her advanced years, she gave us to believe.
She considered exercise important. She would march us about two hundred yards along the drive from the house to stand at the top of the steps overlooking the town and tell us to “breathe deeply”. She would watch to make sure we took in some deep breaths, while her unencumbered wobbly bosoms rose up and down too. We would then walk gently back to the house, exercise done for the day.
I often think of her in Pilates classes. As I turn myself upside down on a giant ball or do “the plank”, I imagine how absolutely appalled she would be at any female getting themselves into such a position. Dignity was everything for Lizzie.
She would not have been overly impressed by the idea of Jae and me accompanying Oscar up Kilimanjaro. She would have thought it rather unladylike and unsavoury to be sleeping out on a mountain – a more suitable thing for men to do.
One of the things she used to say to the many females in the family was that “you must keep yourself right”. I remember being told this from a young age and not understanding quite what was meant, but knew from the accompanying facial expression that I should not ask. The few boys in the family did not get this puzzling advice.
I raised this recently with my one remaining aunt, asking her what it had been about. She recollected being told frequently as a girl and young woman to keep herself right. She says that she and her sisters regarded it as the entirety of their sex education, and that what was meant was that females must not have sex before marriage! I had suspected it meant something of the sort, so it was nice to be sure at last.
During her marriage to my grandfather, we were told to address envelopes to my grandmother to “Mrs Robert Wilson”. That was the proper mode of address. However after his death, we were told that all correspondence was to be sent to “Mrs Elizabeth Wilson”. She seemed to be quite pleased to have things in her own name – “Elizabeth” being a name she had always been inordinately proud of.
It was only about a decade ago – many years after her death – that I discovered that Elizabeth had not really been her name at all! My friend, occasional guest blogger Jean, did some research into my family tree and uncovered the details of my grandmother’s birth certificate. She was registered in the name of Lizzie! No doubt she felt this diminutive form of the name was quite unsuitable for her position in life and that was why she was so adamant that her name was Elizabeth. I can’t recall anyone ever calling her that, however.