Highlights In The Shadows: 8 - Mother's Family
“My mother, her sister and brother, like my father and his sisters, spent all their childhood years at boarding schools.’’ Owen Clement is of the opinion that such an education meant there would have been no bonding with their parents.
My mother’s mother, Irish born Emma Mary Butler, could be accused of having a keen sense of humour as she first married a Mr White. After Mr White’s death she was left a widow with three children, Hannah, Dasa and Jack Butler-White.
She then married, William Edward Gray, who was employed by an English telegraph company. He was born of Scots parentage in Rangoon, Burma. They also produced three children, Ethel Dorothy (my mother, born 4th June 1904), Nora Eileen and George Donovan. Their surname was Butler-Gray.
In 1909, shortly after my grandfather, William had been transferred by his company to Madras in India, my grandmother sadly died of a very long protracted childbirth leaving behind three very small children. I truly believe that the trauma suffered by the three Butler-Gray children at losing their mother at such an early age, were never fully resolved, especially my Aunt Eileen. As a child I found some of her behaviour quite bizarre.
My mother, her sister and brother, like my father and his sisters, spent all their childhood years at boarding schools.
After my mother’s mother died, my grandfather married his housekeeper purely as a foster-mother to his children. I remember seeing a studio photograph taken of her which showed a severe-faced Edwardian overdressed woman wearing pens nez glasses, the archetypal Victorian spinster. This was not a true reflection of her, as my mother told us that she was a sad but kind person. My sister, Gloria, remembers our family visiting her in Bangalore in the 1940's.
My mother told me that their marriage had never been consummated, as during that period my grandfather was carrying on a long-running affair with his niece. My mother also told us that her father lavished gifts on his mistress at the expense of his new wife and his children. When my mother’s father died in 1923, he left his three teenage children penniless orphans. Her father, my mother told me, was "a sadistic brute of a man".
However, in his defence she later wrote to me saying: “You see my father was put into a boarding school at the age of six and put out to a job at 18, his mother left her husband who was a drunkard and ill treated her so my dad had no interest in his father or his relations. My mother was married to my father for a few years only so he didn’t get to know much about her relations.''
I can only imagine that he, like many of the British children whose families lived abroad at that time, spent most of his childhood at boarding school in Britain. Even when he returned to Burma for his Christmas holidays, the servants would have attended to his needs. The bonding to his parents would have been non-existent.
