Alison Emily Grant Morris nee de Candole

A Memoir dated 25th February 1993

Ninety years today I was born in the sprawling thatched house in rural Suffolk where my father was Rector. After I was born my father went to tell Carr the gardener the news in the vegetable garden where he was digging. On being told, without a word of congratulations, he threw down his spade and said “they want bread down the village” and dashed off.

Although we left Holton St. Mary when I was four [in 1907], I have memories of my life there. I am sure my parents were happy here but as the family was increased they had to have more money so my father became Chaplain and Schoolmaster at Ipswich Grammar School and we moved to a house in Denham.

At Holton a woman came in to wash the clothes and I remember her handing me a bowl containing water and a pair of my father's socks and showing me how to wash them. At the entrance of the curved drive there was a large barn in which village plays were acted and one day my nurse, Lily White, took me there during a rehearsal and I suppose to keep me quiet put a large scarlet cotton rose in my hand and for the first time I felt the glow of happiness that beauty brings. I remember the yellow roses, like cups of custard, that hung on the walls and the forsythia outside my father's study.

Later we moved to Ipswich and I had my first real disappointment. We moved to a house called The Links, rather grand with an enormous greenhouse and a row of limes in front. I was taken to see it before we moved in and found in a summer house a splendid dolls house.  Of course when we moved in it had gone. Later, after my grandmother moved out, we moved into a new semi-detached house and this was near a very good public girls school trust and I went to kindergarten, i was a tiresome child and was in constant trouble. Miss Flear, the head of the kindergarten, one day after trouble sent me home and carefully explained that this was because she thought I was not well (and not because I was naughty).

Later on I was joined by my two brothers and was in the first form. A mistress from the kindergarten came to see me and said that my youngest brother, aged five, I suppose, told them that his name was Charles Patrick, and that was what he was called.

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