My mother was born on St George’s Day

April the 23rd 1924

She was born into a middle class family

Which was facing reduced circumstances

Due to economic crisis of the times

 

She was a talented artist and instead of university

Found herself studying at a prodigious art school

It was here that she met my father at the end of the war

His father had commissioned a portrait of his son in uniform

And chose my mother after seeing her outstanding work

 

In 1946 she found herself in India with my father

It was an experience that changed her view of life

His was a colonial posting which was not much discussed

My mother was there during independence

And thought this to be India’s biggest tragedy

 

My father was later posted to a number of African countries

Which my mother hated as she thought them to be Dante’s Hell

She witnessed atrocities that no gentlewoman should have ever seen

And vowed that her children would be raised in a gentle English county

Light years away from the terrors of our crumbling empire

 

When I was of age she told me of her life in great detail

And although unfashionable her love of the old order

Which was by now in her view diseased and fast fading

Through no fault of its own as it had been betrayed by weak and stupid men

My mother passed away October 2019 having painted her cat on the day before she died

 

I have her final cat painting in my study

Along with my fathers many photographs of India

None of his African photographs have survived

As he destroyed them all when we returned to England

He never told me the reason why as I had known the answer for many years

 

 

 

From Child of Empire by Clive Stevens-Smith