"The Sweetmans were all eccentric" remarked my Mother,tottering off to feed a mouse with buttered toast. My Grandfather, Frank Sweetman, specialised in vivid hypochondria. His wife would prepare herself for her daily outing to the shops, donning hat and gloves in the hall.As she adjusted her titfer in the long cheval mirror; Frank would appear at the top of the stairs to present a detailed report on his health, culminating in a breakdown of the doings of his bowels. As Eleanor buttoned her gloves with some haste,he would finish off by wailing pathetically "I'll say goodbye now then, Nell. I shall probably be dead when you get back".
He lived,of course, well into his late eighties and remained disgustingly fit. He demonstrated this at family gatherings by leaping lightly onto the back of a dining chair and walking along it sideways, like an owl.My Grandmother put this down to his service in the Navy; and the fact that he was barking, but I saw my brother do it once at a party.He had added leather driving gloves to his knees, to intensify the owl effect. It may be an inherited trait.I only did genetics to Mendel's Sweet Peas level, and we didn't go into anything that interesting. My cousin John has been climbing the family tree now for some years.Only last year, we discovered a whole new lot living blamelessly in Australia, and named "Button", They seem delightful, but you never know what might drop out of a shaken branch ,do you?
It seems that the Irish lot, who predominate, were firmly sent off to Ireland by Elizabeth The First. She had had enough of them being ginger and argumentative. Only room for ONE of those. A conversation took place, I like to imagine, in which the Monarch expressed the view that as they were tiresomely Celtic pests and consequently naturally suited to the damp bogs of Eire, they might as well go there and mingle with the locals, whilst trying not to damage the Tudor brand. And keep out of her hair.
So they were given some bits of Galway, Kilkenny, and Cavan to live in,and told to behave themselves. This worked for a while, but it appears that they had more in common with the wilder locals than was convenient, and threw themselves into palships with various Irish Lords, dabbled in unsuccessful farming, and several joined the Roman Catholic Church. Later, some of them became ardent Republicans.And some didn't, which must have made family gatherings stimulating and eventful.
Great-Great Grandfather Sweetman had the lands and money to live the life of the Anglo-Irish gentleman, so delightfully recounted by various writers; Somerville and Ross, and Molly Keane amongst them. He went off to Trinity College, and then "fell into bad ways". Infuriatingly, little detail remains as to exactly what these were, but booze and gambling on horses seemed to be more than hinted at in some sanctimonious letters written by his pious brother. After carousing for most of his adult life, he embraced the Church at the end, being nursed devotedly by the sisters from a local convent.
After he had beenabsorbed into the Bosom Of Abraham ( Queen Victoria declined this invitation when it was offered to her upon her deathbed with a decided "I will NOT meet Abraham"), the will was read.
How I should have liked to have been the proverbial wall-mounted fly when it was revealed that he had left most of a considerable estate to the Church. Furious and with considerably reduced prospects, the Sweetmans packed up and decamped en masse to Liverpool, where they stayed with a relative, Mary Lee, of Lee Hall in Gateacre.One by one , they peeled off , some to modest dwellings in Mossley Hill, or Wallasey, and others going to seek their fortunes in That London. A few went to Wales, to Hope Village, near ,but excessively near,Wrexham. This section married some Lloyd-Joneses, and when I was little, I was often taken to their enormous grey house in Hope. The Lloyd-Jones sisters were my mother's older cousins.They were, respectively the Village Postmistress, School Headmistress,and Midwife. There was another one called Peggy who just seemed to bake cakes. The house was called "Something Welsh I Shall Have To Ask My Mother About Mount," and was built on top of a large slope,surrounded by fields, flanked by orchards; with a stream that ran through the garden. I was quite the little Linnaeus in those days, and was fascinated by the frogs, dragonflies, and lurid caterpillars that hung around the stream. I was also given to climbing, and poking things with a stick.Luckily the Cottage Hospital was nearby. Lil-The-Midwife had a motorbike, and wore a leather helmet like Roy "Chubby" Brown, to whom , I now realise,she bore a striking resemblance. None of the sisters had ever married, their putative fiancees having been killed in the Great War. Therefore men were only barely tolerated, and made rare guest appearances, during which they were treated with deference mixed with mild satire, and stuffed with food. It was all a far cry from Fazackerley.
My Father found all this very discomforting, and would sit rigidly in his suit trying not to look common, whilst various Sweetmans passed him seedcake,and twittered on about people in the Village whom he had never met and never would. Sometimes they would speak Welsh, which didn't help anyone. When my Grandmother came with us on these visits, she insisted that Guinness be brought out and consumed, unless it was a Sunday. Guinness was generally supposed to have nourishing qualities, and, mysteriously said to be "Full Of Iron". Therefore ladies could sip it delicately if they were run down. My Great-Aunt Bella knocked it back immoderately and was run over by a tram.
And tomorrow, I shall tell you how the rest of me came to be Scottish.
He lived,of course, well into his late eighties and remained disgustingly fit. He demonstrated this at family gatherings by leaping lightly onto the back of a dining chair and walking along it sideways, like an owl.My Grandmother put this down to his service in the Navy; and the fact that he was barking, but I saw my brother do it once at a party.He had added leather driving gloves to his knees, to intensify the owl effect. It may be an inherited trait.I only did genetics to Mendel's Sweet Peas level, and we didn't go into anything that interesting. My cousin John has been climbing the family tree now for some years.Only last year, we discovered a whole new lot living blamelessly in Australia, and named "Button", They seem delightful, but you never know what might drop out of a shaken branch ,do you?
It seems that the Irish lot, who predominate, were firmly sent off to Ireland by Elizabeth The First. She had had enough of them being ginger and argumentative. Only room for ONE of those. A conversation took place, I like to imagine, in which the Monarch expressed the view that as they were tiresomely Celtic pests and consequently naturally suited to the damp bogs of Eire, they might as well go there and mingle with the locals, whilst trying not to damage the Tudor brand. And keep out of her hair.
So they were given some bits of Galway, Kilkenny, and Cavan to live in,and told to behave themselves. This worked for a while, but it appears that they had more in common with the wilder locals than was convenient, and threw themselves into palships with various Irish Lords, dabbled in unsuccessful farming, and several joined the Roman Catholic Church. Later, some of them became ardent Republicans.And some didn't, which must have made family gatherings stimulating and eventful.
Great-Great Grandfather Sweetman had the lands and money to live the life of the Anglo-Irish gentleman, so delightfully recounted by various writers; Somerville and Ross, and Molly Keane amongst them. He went off to Trinity College, and then "fell into bad ways". Infuriatingly, little detail remains as to exactly what these were, but booze and gambling on horses seemed to be more than hinted at in some sanctimonious letters written by his pious brother. After carousing for most of his adult life, he embraced the Church at the end, being nursed devotedly by the sisters from a local convent.
After he had been
How I should have liked to have been the proverbial wall-mounted fly when it was revealed that he had left most of a considerable estate to the Church. Furious and with considerably reduced prospects, the Sweetmans packed up and decamped en masse to Liverpool, where they stayed with a relative, Mary Lee, of Lee Hall in Gateacre.One by one , they peeled off , some to modest dwellings in Mossley Hill, or Wallasey, and others going to seek their fortunes in That London. A few went to Wales, to Hope Village, near ,but excessively near,Wrexham. This section married some Lloyd-Joneses, and when I was little, I was often taken to their enormous grey house in Hope. The Lloyd-Jones sisters were my mother's older cousins.They were, respectively the Village Postmistress, School Headmistress,and Midwife. There was another one called Peggy who just seemed to bake cakes. The house was called "Something Welsh I Shall Have To Ask My Mother About Mount," and was built on top of a large slope,surrounded by fields, flanked by orchards; with a stream that ran through the garden. I was quite the little Linnaeus in those days, and was fascinated by the frogs, dragonflies, and lurid caterpillars that hung around the stream. I was also given to climbing, and poking things with a stick.Luckily the Cottage Hospital was nearby. Lil-The-Midwife had a motorbike, and wore a leather helmet like Roy "Chubby" Brown, to whom , I now realise,she bore a striking resemblance. None of the sisters had ever married, their putative fiancees having been killed in the Great War. Therefore men were only barely tolerated, and made rare guest appearances, during which they were treated with deference mixed with mild satire, and stuffed with food. It was all a far cry from Fazackerley.
My Father found all this very discomforting, and would sit rigidly in his suit trying not to look common, whilst various Sweetmans passed him seedcake,and twittered on about people in the Village whom he had never met and never would. Sometimes they would speak Welsh, which didn't help anyone. When my Grandmother came with us on these visits, she insisted that Guinness be brought out and consumed, unless it was a Sunday. Guinness was generally supposed to have nourishing qualities, and, mysteriously said to be "Full Of Iron". Therefore ladies could sip it delicately if they were run down. My Great-Aunt Bella knocked it back immoderately and was run over by a tram.
And tomorrow, I shall tell you how the rest of me came to be Scottish.
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