John Burke's a-Musings: Great-Gt-Aunty Lucy's Autograph Book Sketches

Monday 10 June 2024

Great-Gt-Aunty Lucy's Autograph Book Sketches

Sorry readers - a few months flew past there. My last entry was back in March. Since then I've been enjoying the delights of high-doseage radiotherapy on the cancer, courtesy of the wonderful people at The Christie Hospital, Manchester. I can't praise them enough. Treatment started late in March and ended mid-April after eight treatments. Had it been a normal dose it would have been 30 treatments. The side effects are starting to wear off now and hopefully I should hear whether it has been successful or not somewhere near the end of July.

Anyway, enough about the woes and the excuses for not writing regularly! As generations die away and descendents either accumulate far more "stuff" or just get rid without looking through it, I took the former option and have finally got round to sorting and looking at "stuff" some dating back three or four generations. Autograph books and photo albums can be full of nostalgic photographs and memories, whilst older ones tend to be filled with biblical quotes and the odd sketch or watercolour.

For this article, all of the sketches came from an 23 x 18cm size autograph album that belonged to my Great-Gt Aunty Lucy Metcalfe. It was a Christmas present from her brother, my Great Gandfather, Frank Metcalfe in 1904.

I do not recognise the names of many of the contributors to the pages of my gt-gt-aunt's book - even where some have the family surname (My mother's side were the Metcalfe side). Nellie Metcalfe, for instance, added a few inspirational and biblical lines of poetry in 1907 but always signing herself "Nellie Metcalfe" without any expressions of family love or relationship. No "Cousin Nellie" for instance.

This pencil and wax crayon drawing was the work of Emily Lord who added it to the album on the 5th January 1906.

On the facing page is a pencil drawing of fishing boats, coming into - or leaving - an unknown harbour. It is signed A Pollard and was added to the album on 28 December 1905. Such albums were not filled in order, but by contributors opening a page at random. The latter quarter of the album is mostly empty save for an entry on the very last page, written c1950 in a large and dramatic child's hand. My Uncle David, who wrote: "By hook or by crook, I'll be last in this book!"

Here is gt-gt-aunty Lucy. Born on 27 October 1884, she lived an incredible 104 years, passing away in 1989. She never married and lived the vast majority of her life in Haddenham, a small village in Cambridgeshire, at the ancestral family home, Porch House, which was an old coaching house, built in 1657. Her father Charlie Metcalfe had had the distinction of being the oldest person in Haddenham when he died aged 93 in 1949. He had been a member of the Foresters Society for 74 years.

Here members of the family stand outside Porch House c1910. In the porch is my 3x great-grandad, Isiah Metcalfe. In front of him is my great grandad, Frank, whose wife, Mary(?) holds my grandad, also Frank. Charlie is to the right of the postbox and Aunty Lucy is dressed all in black under the window. The picket fence survived into the 1950s, somewhat warped and shrivelled and I have a bit of cine film of an aged Frank snr, jumping as he gets a splinter in his hand from it!

Back to the album! A watercolour of an eyed hawk moth, (Smerinthus Ocellatus) rendered by Edward Pearce on 26 June 1918.

A beautifully delicate pen and ink drawing of blackberries, added by L.E. Farthing of Haddenham in December 1913. The quote is a slightly misquoted version of a verse by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

"Earth crammed with Heaven
And every common bush aflame with God
But only those who see take off their shoes
The rest sit round it and eat blackberries."