1. Mother: Regrets, Old Stories & A New Hobby
First Draft: 30th March 2013; Last Revised: 6th May 2013.
Dear Mum,
Please forgive me for not writing sooner. I could give you a long list of reasons for my tardiness but we both know they would be just the usual sorry excuses. In my soul I know one can always make the time when it is a priority. I am truly sorry for being so inconsiderate, yet again. Now that I am retired from the University, my time is suddenly my own in ways that I have never before experienced and am still adjusting to. I promise you, I will turn over a new leaf; I will do better, much better.
Wow, that sounds to me like the commitments I used to make to some shady image of a man, dressed all in black, closeted behind the grill in one of those dusty, dark confessionals at the Roman Catholic Church we dutifully attended in Cambridge when I was still too young to appreciate how really sinful I was! And we both know how well I have done in the sixty-odd years since then in keeping promises to repent even with all the Our Father’s and Hail Mary’s I rattled off. I fear the best I can hope for in my next life is an eternity in purgatory unless I can find a way to acquire more indulgences before it is too late. So, starting today I plan to write much more often. Maybe this can be a small step towards some degree of redemption.
There is reason for a modicum of optimism about my commitment to reform because it is motivated in part by my needing something from you. That too sounds awful. But at least I am being honest with myself and you. And whether you want to give me anything is, of course, entirely up to you. I am hoping that I will indeed do better in corresponding with you this time because in reflecting on my life so far I have been shocked to realize how little I know or remember being told about the lives of you, Dad and the rest of our families before I was born. Given her own tumultuous story, Plu has always been content to let sleeping dogs lie in both our family and her own. Zosia has had some questions about Plu’s and my own early years and the pasts of our parents and immediate relatives but so far has not yet seemed to want to go far in unravelling those murky mysteries and our vague accounts. But now, I suddenly feel myself wanting to know more about you, Dad and my ancestors. Perhaps, my heightened curiosity is sparked by the surging appreciation of mortality that inevitably accompanies retirement. And, certainly the recent arrival of your first great grandchild, Sequoia, has sharpened not only my interest in our past but also my sense of responsibility to not only this exquisit little bundle of promise but also Zosia, Jeff and any others that might follow them, to find out our story – its moments of glory, its tragic events and its mundane routines.
You have always worried about what I am going to do in my retirement years if I am not to become bored, drive Plu crazy and slip into an early grave as a result of slothful inactivity. Well, you will be delighted to hear that I have found me a hobby – genealogy! Doesn’t that sound impressively appropriate for a Professor Emeritus! And your involvement will be critical to its success! Tell me stories, please.
To get us started I thought it would be helpful to play back to you some of what I now know and then pose questions. When I began to get interested in learning more about our families I decided, like any good student, to look into how others have done such research. This eventually led me to a company called Ancestry that has branches in the UK, Canada and the United States. Operating through web sites in each of these countries they guide subscribers on how to search for their relatives using online data bases, such as censuses, electoral registers and birth records, and from what is discovered to build their family tree. I have been pleasantly surprised at how much I have been able to learn in the first couple of months by tracing our family’s roots back to my great grandparents on both your side of the family (the Prides) and Dad’s (the Dorceys), each of whom were born around the 1840s.
I’ll tell you more as we proceed but to whet your appetite for more, you will be delighted to have confirmation that Grandma Johanna Dorcey was born a Ryan in London in 1880 and that it was her parents who came over from Ireland not her, as she so liked to imply. Even more delicious, is the record of Great Grandaddy Daniel Dorcey being sentenced on 10 March 1862 at the Clerkenwell General Sessions in Middlesex to 6 months in prison for “larceny of fixtures and receiving “! When he was brought up on an identical charge in the same court on the 8th September 1984, 22 years later, you will be relieved to learn that he was acquitted. I can promise you more intriguing finds based on what I know already.
While I have made a good start on tracing our roots I have discovered it is not always easy to make progress and that there is enormous scope for error and gaps in data. There are some huge problems with the data bases because of errors in them. Mistakes can creep in and escalate anywhere from the point and time at which the data was collected (e.g. the night on which the head of the household filled in the census form, he had had one too many beers), through to the ultimate point at which the data is put into the reporting document that I am reading online. For example, I was long stymied until I recognized that a misreading of the handwriting in the original document by the Census transcriber entering the information had put “Pridge” instead of “Pride” into the data base. It also can be difficult to be sure you have found the right person because of parents giving their own name to their child. For example, the larcenous Great Grandaddy Daniel Dorcey named his eldest son Daniel Dorcey and it is only when the son’s second name, Joseph, or its initial J is included in the record that the two can be differentiated. Sometimes records include the second name or initial, sometimes they do not. You will understand better these challenges and how I am attempting to meet them when I report to you more specifically on what I have found. I will tell you when I have doubts about their validity. Your help in telling me about what you know and remember being told about relatives would be invaluable in providing an independent source of information and guiding me to strategies that I can use to check conclusions and fill in gaps, if you feel you could do that.
To conclude let me first ask several simple questions about names of our immediate family and who used them:
- Your brother Wally used to call you Dolly but I do not remember anyone else doing so. Where did this originate? What did it mean? Does it come from Londoners’ slang or, more specifically, Cockney use of Dolly to refer to a beautiful, sexy woman?
- Dad and almost everybody else called you Florence. I don’t re-call anyone calling you by your second name, Myra. Dad also called you Tubby upon occasion and it was clearly a term of endearment. Where did it come from?
- Dad was Hugh to almost everyone and never Patrick. You usually called him Hugh but occasionally Boy, which seemed to be his mother’s name of choice. Where did Boy originate? One dictionary suggests it is someone whom people feel good around and go to for laughs. I can see that fitting Dad very well.
- Grandma Johanna Dorcey was often referred to as the Mater and sometimes Grandma by you and Dad and other close family members. Generally when she was not present, she was called Fuzz, although I believe this was largely limited to you and Dad, as my cousins don’t seem to know about this. Where does Fuzz originate? Being the matriarch she was I could easily see it being a term for this authority figure, as in the case of the police. But she probably was called Fuzz before that usage became popular. Fuzz as a foreshortening of fussy fits. And so does fuzz meaning prickly as in feeling a beard. Curiouser and curiouser.
- I have no memory of Grandad Daniel Dorcey beyond his photograph, as he died the day after my first birthday. On the few occasions he was mentioned and I recall you remarking on how very kind he was to you, my recollection is that he was simply the Pater to you, Dad and other members of his immediate family. Did he never have a nickname?
- I remember being told, I think by Dad, that you only agreed to me being christened Anthony as long as I was never called Tony. It was my understanding that you objected to Tony because “it sounded like an Italian ice-cream salesman”. Any truth to this legend? It has always amused me that, except for you, Dad and others following your example, almost everybody has called me Tony from the beginning. I was very happy with either handle but always used Anthony on any formal documents and for stating authorship of everything I wrote. Fortunately after the identity destroying occasion when you called me Pet in front of all the kindergarten kids playing in the Cherryhinton Hall playground that particular term of endearment died a sudden death but only after my playmates mortified me by mimicking “Go to mummy, Pet!”. Horsey Dorcey thankfully only lasted at school for the short while that my long legs seemed to give me an advantage in running events.
Finally Mum, as we embark on what will hopefully be a long and engaging correspondence exploring the known and unknown lives of our family, relatives and ancestors, I want you to know how excited and happy I am to be doing this. It means much more to me than just a fun hobby. I have come to recognize that I can only really understand my own life experiences by examining them in this larger context. More specifically, from my limited reflections so far, I realize already that nothing I have achieved would have been possible without all that you and Dad did for me. I will never forget the time you told me: “You were conceived in love”. You did not need to tell me this explicitly as your love was readily evident, in so many ways, all my life. The sacrifices you and Dad made for me, the example you set me and the opportunities you gave me are all and more than any child could hope for from his parents. My gratitude knows no limit. One of the best ways I can show this is to understand and appreciate as fully as I can how my life came to be what it has been and to do all I can to pass on what I have learned, in partnership with Plu and with our love, to Zosia, Jeff and Sequoia.
Love,
Anthony
PS To make all these fine words truly meaningful, I sure better make sure I now keep the letters coming. More shortly.