{"id":31769,"date":"2024-03-02T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-02T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bf64e2f2-78c7-4381-a10f-b8f79c70a9a1"},"modified":"2024-03-02T11:34:28","modified_gmt":"2024-03-02T10:34:28","slug":"my-husbands-grandparents-letters-revealed-how-their-romance-flourished-despite-racism","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/rss_feed\/my-husbands-grandparents-letters-revealed-how-their-romance-flourished-despite-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"My husband\u2019s grandparents\u2019 letters revealed how their romance flourished despite racism"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>

By Gail Dixon\n <\/p>

Published: Saturday, 02 March 2024 at 10:00 AM<\/p>

\n\n

Picture the scene: you receive a letter through the post, and as you open it rose petals cascade out. In the age of WhatsApp and text messaging, such romantic gestures seem to belong in bygone days. Through inheriting a collection of letters written in 1926, Sally George has uncovered the story of a passionate affair that prevailed despite family disapproval, jealousy and prejudice.\u00a0<\/p>

Sally, who lives in Beverley in the East Riding of Yorkshire, has been researching her family tree for 48 years. \u201cThe letters were written by my husband Steve\u2019s paternal grandparents, Erroll George and Alice Jenkins.\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cThey were given to me in 2018, because I\u2019m the family historian. Alice and Erroll didn\u2019t like to throw things out, and their papers filled four suitcases and several boxes. They took up a whole room in our house.<\/p>

\u201cI started combing through the letters and putting them in order. Alice died before I married Steve, but I knew Erroll and we got on well. I thought I knew about their life together, but the letters revealed several surprises.\u201d<\/p>

One of the letters<\/figcaption><\/figure>
Erroll was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India<\/a>, and was of mixed race. His father James Robert George was descended from a captain in the Bengal Army and his \u2018wife\u2019 Begum Madhui, who was a member of Indian nobility. Erroll\u2019s mother Evelina was the daughter of Michael Weathrall and a servant named Soondee.\u00a0<\/p>
\u201cErroll had a brother Cedric, who was 22 years his senior. They were raised in a world of servants and sedan chairs. Evelina died when Erroll was only six years old, which must have been devastating. He was sent to boarding school in Nainital, in the state of Uttarakhand, but ran away with his assistant and hid in one of the family\u2019s homes for two months. As a punishment, he was sent away to Sevenoaks Grammar School in Kent.\u201d<\/p>
Erroll returned to Calcutta in 1920, and worked as a finance assistant in the Indian government\u2019s Coal Department. His father James died in 1923, and Erroll returned to Britain where Cedric was already living. He found lodgings in London, and lived off an allowance that was left by his father.<\/p>
$\"Colour$
A photograph of Erroll<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\u201cErroll was quite the \u2018man about town\u2019, and spent his days going to the cinema, library and swimming pool. He found it difficult to find a job in Britain, which he blamed on prejudice,\u201d Sally says.<\/p>
Alice Jenkins was born in 1894 in Christchurch, Hampshire, where her father owned a hardware shop. She trained as a nurse<\/a> and, after qualifying in 1925, began a long nursing career at Bexley Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Dartford Heath, Kent.\u00a0<\/p>
\u201cThe letters revealed that Erroll and Alice were introduced to each other on 12 July 1926, by a mutual friend called Hilda Benny. I was amazed to discover that they married only four months later. No one in the family knew they\u2019d had such a whirlwind romance.<\/p>
\u201cThe first question that came to mind was, \u2018Why did they marry so quickly?\u2019 Could it have been because there was a shortage of men after the First World War? Alice must have known that the chances of her marrying were slim, so perhaps that is why she took a chance.\u201d<\/p>
$\"Colourised$
Photograph of Alice<\/figcaption><\/figure>
One of Erroll\u2019s letters revealed another reason for their alacrity. He was finding it hard to manage on his allowance, and his father\u2019s will<\/a> stipulated that he wouldn\u2019t receive his inheritance until he married. James had left him \u00a32,500, which would equate to over \u00a3106,000 now.\u00a0<\/p>
However, Sally doesn\u2019t think that Alice married Erroll for his money, or that Erroll married Alice for his inheritance. \u201cHe had been engaged to a woman in India called Doris Hoare, but it didn\u2019t work out. Also, the letters revealed that there had been a romance between Erroll and Hilda Benny, so he had a choiceof potential partners.\u00a0<\/p>
Naturally, Hilda was resentful when Erroll transferred his affections to Alice. A mutual friend Mr Krishna met Hilda on a London bus one day and wrote to Erroll saying, \u201cI say, Hilda is jealous. She said to me, \u2018I don\u2019t think Jenki [her nickname for Alice] is knowing what she is doing, being a little too hasty.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>
Erroll resolved to be kind to Hilda, telling Alice, \u201cI shall see Hilda for the last time today, at any rate for a while, but I must be on friendly terms with her, for it was she who brought about our meeting and it would seem funny if I turned nasty.\u201d<\/p>
The prejudice suffered by people of mixed race cropped up again. Erroll wrote that when he met Hilda, they couldn\u2019t walk down his street because \u201cthe people in the road hate to see a coloured man out with a white girl, which they believe would only ruin her\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>
\u201cThe people in the road hate to see a coloured man out with a white girl”<\/p><\/blockquote>
Clearly such prejudice was anathema to Alice. Their romance blossomed amid the leafy parks of South London, where they enjoyed picnics, strolls and kisses on her days off.\u00a0<\/p>
\u201cI love the detail that the letters give about life in the 1920s. They had several postal collections and deliveries each day, which is hard to imagine now.\u201d Alice writes of her nursing friend Queenie who returns from a three-week holiday and has had her hair \u2018shingled\u2019, which was the fashionable tapered bob of the time.\u00a0<\/p>
\u201cMy favourite letter has to be the one Erroll sent on 15 August 1926: \u2018I send you in this letter a crushed red, red rose in all its purity and fragrance, as a token of my love.\u2019 Soon after, Erroll and Alice became engaged, just five weeks after they were introduced.\u201d Neither had met each other\u2019s family yet.<\/p>
“I send you in this letter a crushed red, red rose”<\/p><\/blockquote>
By this point Cedric was a retired government official living in Surrey \u201cas a gentleman\u201d. After the engagement, the couple went to visit him for the weekend, and it appeared to be a success.\u00a0<\/p>
Alice was keen for Erroll to see her family in Christchurch, but she couldn\u2019t get two consecutive days off to travel. Instead, Erroll wrote a long letter of introduction to them, highlighting his lineage, prospects and devotion to Alice.<\/p>
The couple exchanged a flurry of letters as they began to plan the wedding. Erroll bought Alice a diamond engagement ring and a \u201cpretty velour coat with fur collar and cuffs to match, which can be your going away dress\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>
As the costs began to mount, so did Erroll\u2019s stress. A month before the wedding, he asked Cedric for an advance on his inheritance. Cedric refused, citing the fact that Erroll still hadn\u2019t found a job.\u00a0<\/p>
\u201cThe two brothers clearly fell out because Cedric wrote to Alice\u2019s father John saying, \u2018Don\u2019t let your daughter marry Erroll. He has no morals, no job and no money.\u2019 John replied saying, \u2018That doesn\u2019t concern me.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>
Cedric wrote to Alice\u2019s father John saying, “Don\u2019t let your daughter marry Erroll”<\/p><\/blockquote>
\u201cPerhaps he was pleased that his daughter had found a potential husband at a time when so many women had to remain single. John still had two daughters living at home, Edith and Elsie, who never married.<\/p>
\u201cErroll became increasingly stressed about money, and where they would live after the wedding. He couldn\u2019t afford a suit, and was forced to go to the India Office in London with the banns and ask for an advance on his inheritance.\u00a0<\/p>
\u201cIt was such a relief to see that the wedding went ahead as planned on 27 October. They married<\/a> at the Congregational Church in Christchurch, and the witnesses were John and Edith Jenkins. It seems unlikely that Cedric attended.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>
Erroll used some of his inheritance to buy \u2018Syringa\u2019, a bungalow in the village of Abbotts Ann, near Andover. The couple had three children, Clive, Noel and Alan, who was Sally\u2019s father-in-law.\u00a0<\/p>
\u201cErroll and Alice enjoyed a long and happy marriage, but it wasn\u2019t without its difficulties. In 1929, Erroll lost his fortune in the Wall Street Crash, so Alice returned to nursing and Erroll worked as a clerk for the Air Ministry\u2019s Directorate of Works at Amport House near Andover. It must have been a frightening time for them.\u201d<\/p>
Their married life revolved around family, work and the Church. \u201cAlice passed away in 1970, which was devastating for Erroll. He found it deeply unfair that he had been left alone, and could be quite grumpy at times.\u201d<\/p>
Erroll died himself 16 years later. \u201cHe was passionate about genealogy during his lifetime, and that was an interest that we shared. The letters might have been lost to time otherwise.\u201d<\/p>
\u201cIt\u2019s so important to keep such family documents,\u201d Sally emphasises. \u201cThey\u2019re historic ephemera, and a wonderful glimpse of past lives.\u201d\u00a0<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n
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