background to the characters

28/10 2020

I recently uncovered some letters from my father to my brother John who died 2 years ago. In one of them dated 29/11/1990, John had obviously asked about the family, so below my descriptions of how I recollect them, I've copied out Dad's thumbnail sketches.

Granny - Ada Mary du Feu (nee Trachy) - meek, mild, looked like everyone's idea of a granny. Good household manager, mother of seven children. Would not cross her cantankerous husband I thought, but actually the letters reveal she was made of sterner stuff. When i used to go for my lunch, if the phone rang, (in the hall of course) she would not allow me to answer it. Only Papa could answer it.

Dad said - From a long line of farmers, their farm was at Les Augerez, St Peter. From a large family Mother was a sweet, fairly reserved person and aspired to a level of gentility that Father didn't even understand. He was a down to earth sort of man without any pretensions and Mother used to despair of his salty language on occasion. She was a good and loving Mother and though I think she loved Father dearly, she often wished he would be more gentlemanly.

Papa - Philip John du Feu - Patriarch, retired, goes to town to his club every morning. He was a Centenier in St Helier Honorary Police. Didn't like us children, don't think he liked his own much when they were young. It was said he had a mistress but I've never been able to confirm it.

Dad said - Born at Val de la Mare, St Ouen, he had a number of brothers and sisters. His family farmed there for as long as anyone can remember and on Grandfather's death Father inherited the farm and rented it out for some years. He sold it in 1947. 

Cyril du Feu - eldest son, emigrated to Canada as a young man, as did his uncles. It was quite a tradition in Jersey, to go to the cod fishing. Many houses in Jersey are called 'cod houses', very fine granite houses built on the back of the cod trade.

Dad said in 1990 - went to Canada at the age of 17. No children and when his first wife died, he married again at the age of 84. I only ever saw him once in my life, when I was about 4 or 5

Snowdon du Feu - went with his brother to Canada in his late teens, subsequently married and had 2 sons, Douglas and David. Settled in Montreal.

Dad said in 1990 - Snowden married Aileen and had 2 sons, Douglas and David, who went into telephone engineering.Snowden worked for British Airways and got cheap tickets so we saw him and the family occasionally.

Kathleen Harvey (Kay) (nee du Feu) - oldest daughter, very bossy! worked in De Gruchy in the corset department before marrying ...

Arthur Harvey - born in Bradford and manager of De Gruchy. Pompous ass but resilient and defiant when the Germans were in occupation. Both Kathleen and Arthur deported to a German internment camp in 1942

Kay and Arthur's wedding 1939

Dad said in 1990 - Kay was married to Arthur Harvey who was General Manager of De Gruchys, the large department store in St Helier. She was a lively ebullient personality - much like my father. They had no children although Arthur had 2 sons from his first marriage.

Doreen du Feu, marries Winter Nichols (Nick) during the time of the letters. Vivacious and strong-willed, she's the one who defies her father as they are growing up and in fact is most like him. Lives at home until her marriage working in de Gruchy, Milk Marketing Board and various other places.

Dad said in 1990 - Doreen is different in an undefinable way. That's not to her discredit - you find that in large families sometimes, don't you? They don't quite fit into the family mold. She's a chatty, welcoming sort of woman and kindly with it, but she doesn't seem quite like her sisters or either of her parents, though she sometimes reminds me of Father in appearance. Fairly vivacious

Roselle du Feu - lives at home and never marries. She works in De Gruchy all her working life, becoming a buyer on haberdashery and fancy goods. She's a baker and looks after her parents as they get older. She is a dutiful daughter and never seems to consider her own position.

Dad said in 1990 -  Roselle is a maiden lady and has all the attributes of a kindly old maid. With each passing year she gets visually more like Mother. Being an old maid and having lived all her life in the restricted atmosphere of a small island. She has a very blinkered view of life and relies for her enlightenment on the Jersey Evening Post and the Daily Mirror, her views on world affairs are superficial. Having said all that, I'm very fond of Roselle - maybe because she reminds me of Mother in appearance, and she makes us all very welcome. Dad was a dyed in the wool Tory and Thatcher fan so not surprisingly he did not approve of the Daily Mirror!

 

Lennard du Feu - my dad. He leaves the Island to work in Oxford before the war and then joins the RAF, falls ill, meets my mum...

Margaret du Feu (nee Booth) she is from Stockport, arrives in Jersey, thinks she's died and gone to heaven, never wants to leave Jersey but sadly is dragged back to the UK in 1956.

Margaret du Feu - the 'baby' of the family, Margaret was never quite the same as others. she had funny ways, but was fiercely protected by Roselle. In 1959 she married one of her father's friends, 30 years her senior. As Doreen once said 'it wasn't a marriage in the sense that we know it'. I never pursued that remark. She married ...

Charlie Marrett - a bookbinder, widower, friend of Philip's, happy to marry again

Dad said in 1990 - Margaret died about 12 years ago. Now what do I say about Margaret? Well in a family which was basically happy and contented but in which no one had burdened themselves with intellectual development, it can be said, and said with great affection, that Margaret was the ultimate in simplicity. She was a kind person- I never heard her speak badly or uncharitable of anyone and would indulge in the most complex mental gyrations to justify or find good in the most devious of people.

Yes, a gently simple soul, she was well-spoken of by those who knew her, even if her level of simplicity was often a matter of wonderment and curiosity to her family and friends. 

Her business was that of shorthand typist in a firm of lawyers and at the age of about 40yrs, she married an old Jerseyman of 70. Charlie was a real piece of old Jersey. He was a bookbinder of the old school, he used all the old binding machinery and even used the white of an egg as adhesive, so old-fashioned was he, but he turned out some beautiful bindings and was always employed valuable for records by the States and Royal Court of Jersey. When  Charlie retired all his old machinery and equipment was placed in the Jersey Museum where they equipped a special room for the purpose and in fact Charlie was employed two or three days a week to give a practical demonstration of the old trade.

That's the family, apart from Granny's sister and bother Blanche and John Trachy and I don't know much about them except they had a very dark living room in which we seemed to be incarcerated for hours when we went to visit. There were pictures of volcanos on the walls which looking back is weird in a farmhouse in St Peter. However, the upside was the outside toilet at the end of the garden, just a little shed with a seat with a hole in it. We were fascinated! I remember Uncle John coming to Grannys house and greeting all the men with a cheery 'How are your cabbages my boy?'

Dad said - Uncle John was a dear soul - a bachelor in his seventies when he died. He was a farmer in St Peter where he lived with his sister, Blanche. Auntie Blanche was over 80 when she died and had never set foot out of the Island and Uncle John had only been away for one day - that was when he went a day's journey to St Malo and back to buy a horse - a cart-horse. He was a bit mean, was Uncle John - he had enough to live on comfortably, but he always imagined a pauper's grave was round the next corner. I remember meeting him in St Helier once, and he was obviously in high dudgeon, traveling at speed and it appears he was on his way to the telephone office to protest that they had sent him a quarterly account for 9 old pence (4 and a half p), and there was no way he had made telephone calls to such an exhorbitant extent.

Uncle John went very strange for some years before he died -it all seemed to be centred on the fact that he had no money - it was such a shame because, as I say, he was quite comfortably off. Mother used to go and see them every week and used to save all her scraps of food and take them for the pigs. But Uncle could never bear to see such waste, and he'd grab the bag from her, go outside and eat the lot himself. One day Auntie went into town and brought back a 1lb of sausages, and put them on the kitchen table. When Uncle came in and saw them  he said 'What's in that  bag?' She said 'A pound of sausages.' Uncle said 'Good God woman, put them in the cupboard this minute - if someone comes in here and sees us with a pound of sausages, they'll think we're millionaires!' I've always thought that was funny in a sad sort of way.