Beatrice Sophie Herdman

Memories of my Mother

It is impossible to know what another person is really like; I can only give an outline of the main features of her life. Her father was the son of a reasonably successful Edinburgh artist; my grandfather started to study medicine and won a prize for anatomy then switched to zoology. He worked on specimens from the Challenger expedition and in 1881 was appointed to a foundation chair in Natural History at the recently founded University of Liverpool. This enabled him to marry Sara Douglas the daughter of a leading publisher and bookseller in Edinburgh. I have been told that he had proposed previously but her father did not consider him an adequate match. I have an idea that the Douglas family who lived in a large house in Drummond Place in the new town were financially and socially a bit superior to the Herdmans. My mother was born in 1887; two years later disaster struck, her mother died of puerperal sepsis giving birth to another girl. As was the custom her mother's sister (Auntie Sophie) came to look after the two babies. She was a delightful person, a gifted artist and had a wide knowledge of Scotch history and literature. She provide an excellent surrogate mother and my mother had a great affection for her all her life.

Eight or nine years later my grandfather married again - Jane Holt, the only child of a rich ship owner. She had studied at the University and had been Lady President of the students' guild. I do not know whether the Holts, who were leaders in Liverpool society, approved of the marriage. The Holts like other Unitarian families - Rathbones, Taits - had been instrumental in founding the university and had given large sums to found various chairs. The Herdman family now moved into a different financial level; a large house, servants, chauffeur, gardener etc. Auntie Sophie was sent back to Edinburgh to look after her aging parents, who, I am told, prevented her marrying.

Understandably, and unreasonably, my mother started off by hating her stepmother and was sent off to boarding school, where she seems to have been happy; almost to the end of her life she attended local old girls' reunions and subscribed to the school's appeals. She later sent her daughters to the same school. During this time she also seems to have realised the excellent qualities of her stepmother who treated her stepchildren very generously. When my mother left school she was put in charge of the big house and her step siblings, while her parents were away in Ceylon for seven months. Fortunately she got on very well with her stepbrother and sister. She told me that though nominally in charge the servants really had control.

For some years my mother attended art classes at the University where Augustus John was one of the teachers. She became close friends of the two daughters of a prominent Liverpool dentist: Winnie Dale was the most gifted and won a scholarship to study at the Slade and won a gold medal for her picture of them forming an amateur band. This picture was in the reserve collection of the Royal Academy.

I do not know how her father regarded her marriage to an impecunious doctor with a very junior university appointment. The Holts cannot have completely disapproved as one of them lent his carriage and pair to take my mother to the Ancient Chapel for her wedding. My father's mother disapproved strongly and wrote to my grandfather telling him to cancel the engagement as she intended her son to marry a nice Canadian girl not an unknown English one. For a number of years they must have been relatively poor - a big change from life at Croxteth Lodge. In 1912 my father was appointed to a lectureship at St. Mary's hospital in London. We lived in a semi-detached rented house in Golders Green. The house had a coal cellar; coal was delivered through a manhole in the pavement out side the house. Access to it from the house was by a door situated half way down the stairs to the yard. I was convinced that witches lived in the coal cellar and whenever I had to pass the door I ran as quickly as possible. Above the yard was a balcony and when we were recovering after a severe illness our beds were put there. There was a small garden at the back which lead to an avenue of grass known as the waterway.

After marriage my mother's life was quite hard living in a small semi-detached house which lacked any modern amenities such as washing machine or telephone. When her father died she inherited a considerable amount of money, and for a few years, we were affluent - maids, car, chauffeur, holidays in France, etc. Then in 1931 came the financial crisis, the shipping company abruptly stopped paying any dividends and our lives became relatively Spartan. At one time an American niece of my father's came to stay for eighteen months. It turned out to be a success but my mother must have been brave to accept the unknown. In Liverpool she entertained a lot, including parties for the whole year of the medical school. There were disasters ahead, though - WWII, my youngest sister's death, my father's stroke and lingering death, and a difficult period when she lived with my elder brother and sister after their spouses had died. She was very stoical. I never heard her raise her voice, yell, cry or stamp her feet. The only complaint I ever heard was that she regretted that her father had refused to let her train for any employment; in Victorian times it was considered a slur if a father could not afford to support his daughters. Until she left home and married, her father opened all her letters before she was allowed to read them. I never heard her speak ill of anyone; she was very generous with her money, giving half of it away. Although undemonstrative she loved her family. During air raids in the First World War, she took her children into bed with her on the grounds that it would be better if the whole family was killed together than she might be killed leaving three orphans. During her last ten years she was badly handicapped by hip trouble; three operations left her with a short weak leg. In the end I think she was glad to die.

-- Prof. Robert Roaf