To give a slightly different perspective on Holland, I have decided today to put up a piece about his childhood. In later years, Holland made many starts at writing up his life and work, although we are left with a rather patchy picture, as some elements of his life were recounted several times, while other bits are only alluded to or not covered. It will take the family a while to put together a coherent story, but for Easter Sunday, this piece on childhood in the Edwardian era seemed appropriate.
For a child growing up in the early years of the 20th century in a southern industrial island, every day of the week had a distinct flavour, if only by reason of what one could anticipate in the way of meals. Not surprisingly, Sunday stood further apart from the preceding and following six days - the Day of Rest.
However welcome it was to grown ups, I had no great liking for the Sabbath. Breakfast would be late, games would be forbidden either outdoor or on the parlour table, midday dinner would include unwelcome vegetables that had to be eaten and horrors such as fat meat, though fruit pies and puddings adorned with thick custard which followed, were welcome enough. Best clothes would be worn and once dinner was finished we were sent off to Sunday School.
From the age of 5 to 15, I disliked and finally despised this institution as I came to realise it was a device to get children out of the house on Sunday afternoons and allow parents to retire to sofa or bedroom for a blessed hour or two. From the infant stage I remember the coin one was given for the collection, taken up while we sang this very mercenary chant:
Hear the pennies dropping
Listen as they fall
Every one for Jesus
He shall have them all
(Chorus) Dropping, dropping, dropping, dropping,
Hear the pennies fall
Every one for Jesus
He shall have them all.
I also remember a big girl called Vera - a name I have subconsciously since regarded with suspicion - who regularly dropped her penny down the gap between my Eton collar and neck, and I can still recall the sensation of the cold coin sliding down my warm back to tinkle on the floor, unexplained, at some importune moment.
It was just as well it was not my spiritual welfare that mostly concerned my parents, since as we moved house, it was the nearest Sunday School - Wesleyan, Congregational or whatever - that I was sent. A dissenting tradition at first ruled out Church of England, while Roman Catholic or Quaker where held to be too extreme, but within these limits, everything was possible. At a much later date we attended - at my father’s insistence - a town parish church, and I was then at an age to find some pleasure in the service, and more in the socially conscious sermons of an impressive young curate. But this was in contrast with the puerile and ill-informed efforts of Sunday school or Bible class teachers, often prosperous, semi-literate, local tradesmen, whose platitudes one despised with all the superiority of grammar school fifth and sixth formers.
To return to the earlier period, after Sunday School came Sunday tea, and then we assembled either at my maternal grandmother’s little house or at one of my aunts’ homes or even at our own house. A cold supper, roast beef, pork, mutton, pickles of all sorts, with cheese to follow. Cards were not admissible on Sunday, so uncles and aunts, of whom I had my fair share, would gather round the upright piano. The ballads thereafter rendered had to be suitable for Sunday evening: not “Any old iron”, or “My old Dutch”, nothing in the lusty music hall tradition. “Where my caravan has rested”, “Little gray home in the West”, “Down the Vale”, these were admissible. The mawkishly sentimental “Friend o’Mine” touched the emotions:
When you are happy, friend o’mine
And all your skies are blue
Tell me your hopes of fortunes fine
And let me join with you.
The pattern was consistent. Two verses in a cheerful mood followed by one in a minor key:
But when the light grows tremulous
And the last lamp burns low
And one of us - or both of us
The long lone trail must go
Look with your dear old eyes in mine
Give me a handshake true
What ever fate our souls await
Let me be there! Let me be there!
There with you! (fortissimo)
Embarrassing these were (even more so the hearty “Drake is in his hammock” and other bluff Devonian shanties sung with great gusto), they now appear as perfect period pieces, sung by such accomplished artists as Benjamin Luxom and Robert Tear, who have the good sense to render them straightforwardly, without comment or condescension.
A history of a people might be written entirely in terms of its popular songs both vulgar and polite. But to return to my own story, the escapes for me, from what I thought to be false and meretricious, was provided by a favourite aunt, who presented me every birthday and Christmas with a Dickens volume. She possessed a gramophone and records which included as well as Gilbert and Sullivan, Tannhauser, the Ride of the Valkyrie, the Baccarole from the Tales of Hoffman, which I insisted on hearing before Sunday evenings drew to a close.
It was however, the constraint of Sunday that had the longest effect, and until I escaped into more tolerant and carefree environments, where Sunday counted little more than any other day.
[Holland with his little sister, Kathleen, Studio portrait c 1914]