Nine Decades of Writing

Eileen Elias, a founder member of the Verulam Writers' Circle, talks about her life and writing to Colleen Richardson

Eileen started writing when she was six years old - she even made her own books in which to write down the stories she made up at night. This went on decade after decade but now she says at ninety-four she wants to sit back a bit. Her failing sight makes it difficult for her to use her computer.

"But," she said with a soft giggle, "I still got married again at ninety, so life is not quite passing me by. Laurie Ambrose and I have quite a modern marriage. Laurie was a lecturer in Electrical Engineering and makes up for my non-technicality. We both like our space so we live half the week in my little cottage and half the week in his home. It works very well."

Eileen told me that she still writes short articles for a magazine called Grace. It is published four times a year. They have asked her to write about six hundred words on the history of Norwich Cathedral. In January of this year her book Victorian Quartet was published. It is a collection of short biographies about The Rev. Francis Kilvert, John Constable - the Artist and the Man, Dr. Arnold of Rugby and the three lives of Beatrix Potter. Each biography is charmingly introduced with a short description about the person she is to write about.

Eileen has had several books published that include: Enjoy Your Baby: Bringing up Children: Happy Families: Your Child At School: On Sundays We Wore White: this was about memories of Eileen's schooldays and its sequel was: Straw Hats and Serge Bloomers.

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Journalism was also a great aspect of Eileen's writing career. On mourning the death of her beloved Alistair Cooke last November, she said: " I wrote a piece about him entitled A Word In Your Ear. This was because I listened to him a lot, as I had an awful stammer, and I liked his measured form of speaking. I thought this was excellent for people who were partially deaf and tried to encourage speakers to emulate his way of speaking. When I was in New York, I went with my eldest son, to his apartment, hoping to call on him, but he wouldn't receive any visitors.

"I left Wheathamstead and my lovely garden, where I used to entertain the VWC on their Annual General Committee evenings, for Cambridge because my dear husband, Albert, was so very ill with Parkinsons' Disease. My daughter lived in Cambridge and I needed her support whilst Albert was being taken care of in a nursing home. I was able to visit him every day. I've lived here now for twelve years and feel very contented. My cottage is only a minute's walk from the River Cam and one can walk into Cambridge along the towpath. At the end of our road is the ruin of a Benedictine Abbey. All that remains of the 13th century Priory is the place where they used to store all their wine bottles."

Eileen had soon joined the local Writers' Circle in Cambridge and had discovered a nursery school that was to be opened at Queen's College. She wrote an article about it for Nursery World calling it The Light Blue Nursery.

Some years ago, Eileen visited China and wrote a lovely piece entitled Tea With Mrs Wong, mentioning the Wongs smiling hospitality and pleasing them by noticing their treasured possessions: a sewing machine, a radio and a bicycle. They lived in the older part of Beijing.

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I asked Eileen if she ever made any money from her writing.

"Not much," she replied, "but enough to satisfy me - but not enough to live on. I don't bother about the 'high spots' of writing but just get on with the work I am dong.

" The last book I wrote was about my mother. She was a pupil in the London Asylum in Watford. In those days it was an orphanage as her father died when she was quite young. Still living with her mother at home, was her sister Jane and her brother, Aubrey. Sadly he died of consumption when he was nineteen. In 1883 my mother Marian - generally called Lily because of her very fair hair - wrote a letter to her mother from the London Asylum saying that she hoped she and Jane were well and asked that her workbox should be sent to her with her three dolls in it. She went on......'I read your letter ever so many times, it was such a nice long one. Next time send me a stamp on the envelope. ......I was sick four times one day and had to go to the infirmary. One of the little new girls had a hamper sent for her birthday and she divided it between four of us. I was one of them. The girl like Jane was also one. Please write as soon as you can. I remain your loving daughter M L Carey."

Eileen was born in 1910 and married Albert Davies in 1940. They had three children, a daughter, Alison and two sons, Richards and Hugh. I believe Hugh became a journalist.

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Eileen's grandmother came from Norwich where her parents, a Mr and Mrs Annison lived in about 1850. Mr Annison was a Hatter. Their daughter left Norwich and went to London and then to Watford. She married a Mr Carey who died before the children were grown up. After her daughter Marian (Lily), left the Asylum Orphanage she became a governess and later met and married a Welsh doctor, Olwyn Aubrey Elias. He was a short, dark and limpid-eyed with handsome whiskers and curly forelocks. He had a passionate Celtic temper that flared up and was gone in an instant. His father died in the middle of his training and he was forced to go as a partly qualified assistant to a local doctor. Later he became a medical advisor and research chemist to a variety of firms.

When still in general practice, he went as an assistant to a doctor in Islington, where my mother was governess to the doctor's two young children. They adored each other and when they got married, they set up house in New Cross, South London. It had thirty-three stairs and a copper in the basement. Eileen's brother was born in1902 and developed a scientific bent like their father. Eileen said: "I felt very safe and happy in this middle class house, wrapped tightly in a warm ball of comfort."

One of Eileen's gems from those days was when she was listening to her Aunt Jane chatting to her teacher colleagues. "They were always talking about bogey-like creatures called the Eltee Ay or the Guinea Girls who appeared to absorb their lives. Years later I discovered that the Eltee Ay was the London Teachers' Association and that the wild Guinea Girls were untrained girls who became teachers in Elementary schools. This was due to the teacher shortage after the First World War and they were paid a guinea a week for their efforts."

I asked Eileen whom she remembered from her days at the Verulam Writers' Circle.

"Well I was always very friendly with Joan Rice and Mary Rensten and I still hear from them. I miss Sylvia Battock very much as I knew her very well. She died a long time ago. Then there is my great friend Lillian Brown. She is in a home now, poor dear, and cannot remember anybody. She is considerably older than me and I do miss her terribly.

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"Then there was dear Frank Ferneyhough. I always remember that when he retired, he was really fed up and missed his friends to such an extent, that he used to still walk to the station with them every morning. He and his old pals would then have a cup of coffee together and he would walk back home again. He kept that up for years.

"And of course there was Bernard Dumpleton and Muriel Miller. I remember them very well. I sometimes hear from Gillian Thornton these days Frank Ferneyhough wrote of Eileen: an Oxford graduate, world travelled, has published numerous articles and features and eight books. Eileen is currently fascinated by Constable; he gives her little time to sleep. Eileen is a past vice-president of the Verulam Writers' Circle.

I thanked Eileen for giving me so much of her time and as she rose from her study chair and climbed on to her stair lift, she said that she had really liked talking about the Circle days. She whizzed down the steep narrow stairs ahead of me and beat me to the front door to wave goodbye.

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