Snapshot: A sailor’s life, death and legacy
This is my grandfather Claude. It shows him just after he had joined the navy: he signed up for 12 years in 1912, on his 18th birthday. I have known about him all my life, but we never met. Neither had I seen any photos of him until now.
In the 1930s, he and my grandmother Lily divorced. Claude remarried and had two daughters and Lily raised her two boys, my father, Elliott, and his brother, Lionel.
As a child, I was fascinated by the grandfather I had never met. My father was 12 when his parents separated and he did not see his father again, although Claude sent each of his sons 100 francs to help them when they were called up to fight in France. I knew that my grandfather had died in 1959 and I have a memory of a distant relation bringing the news of Claude’s death.
My interest in family history was triggered in the 80s, when I heard from a firm of genealogists that my grandfather’s last surviving sister had died, leaving no will. The estate was divided among the descendants. My father and his brother were no longer alive, so my brother, sister and I all received a legacy, as did Claude’s children.
At last I knew the names of Claude’s daughters from his second marriage, which had taken place some years after his divorce. There was much more too, including the identities of three great-aunts of whom I had never heard. I discovered my grandfather’s naval records at the National Archives: he had served on a number of battleships in the first world war and was honourably discharged at the end of the war, diagnosed with shellshock.
It did not occur to me to make contact with Claude’s new family and time passed. My family tree grew and research showed that the original Lorants had fled the French revolution in 1795 and arrived in Hampstead, taking over the Old White Bear pub.
This year I found a message on a family-tree website from Claude’s granddaughter by his second marriage. Although we are both his granddaughters, there is a generation difference in our age. Her mother is my father’s half-sister. She had always known she had two half-brothers, and had given her son the name of Elliott as a middle name. I was touched by this and excited that at last I got to see photos of my grandfather: it appeared that, like my father, he was a keen photographer. We shared my father’s life and pictures; they did the same.
Jane Lamb
Playlist: When our dancing upset the neighbours
The Floral Dance, written by Katie Moss
“I thought I could hear the curious tone / Of the cornet, clarinet and big trombone / Fiddle, cello, big bass drum / Bassoon, flute and euphonium / Far away, as in a trance / I heard the sound of the Floral Dance”
It’s a Sunday afternoon in 1977, we had just married and bought our first house, we were decorating the lounge with the radio on playing the chart show when The Floral Dance comes on. That started us doing daft dancing and we turned up the radio while we leapt about wildly singing. There was a knock at the door and our neighbour was berating us. We couldn’t believe someone would complain after a few minutes of noise on a Sunday afternoon. “We like to read on Sundays,” he said, “so we like quiet.”
“Well, we don’t,” replied my new hubby and closed the door. We kept the noise down after that, but it must have been too much for them as they moved out six months later and the new neighbours never complained for the 30 years they lived next door. It’s our ruby wedding anniversary this year, but The Floral Dance still makes us laugh and do a daft dance every time we hear it.
Gwynneth Noxon
We love to eat: Nonna’s minestra
Ingredients
Celery
Cabbage (savoy/spring greens)
Spring onion
Borlotti beans (tinned or dried – you might have to soak and boil the dried ones)
Parsley
Garlic
Potato
Rice
Water or stock
Don’t worry about the quantities. Aim for roughly the same amount of each of the vegetables. Don’t stint on the parsley. Chop everything small and the parsley finely. Put everything except the cabbage and rice in a pan. There should be a couple of inches of water above the veg. Bring it to the boil and then turn the heat down so it is still bubbling a bit. If you think it needs more stock or water at any stage, just add it to the pan, preferably hot.
Heat for half an hour. Then add the cabbage and, five minutes later, the rice. It should be ready in 10-15 minutes. The rice and the beans give it body. If you want to add to the thickness of it, keep some cooked beans back, mash them and put them into the soup at the end.
My nonna, worn out with 10 children, two of whom died at six months and an alcoholic husband who was away with the carabinieri in the war, made the most delicious minestra, a rich soup with a variety of vegetables, particularly cabbage and beans. Her children loved it. My mam says they used to have bread and milk for breakfast, polenta for lunch and almost always minestra for tea. They had meat on Sundays – maybe a bit of boiled beef and only then would there be a bit of stock to add to the soup, otherwise Nonna would add a bit of pig fat from the pig they fattened and killed every year.
The minestra was less watery when she fed it to her grandchildren. We were all more prosperous then, and, as children, we hated that soup, it was sludgy and lumpy, you were never quite sure what was in it and the cabbage went grey.
As I got older, I realised how wonderful it was. Later on in her life, she got a bee in her bonnet about Italian food being the best in the world and her children would tease her that she only knew how to make polenta, minestra, pastina and risotto. That was almost true but what she cooked was always fresh and healthy and, except for the polenta, delicious!
Maggi Green
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