Read Online The Real Mrs Miniver by Ysenda Maxtone Graham - Free Book Online Page B

hopefulness, Lord of all joy’ – which to this days brings in handsome royalties to the beneficiaries of her will. It is included in almost every one of the fifty or so new American hymn books published each year.
    Then she wrote ‘When a knight won his spurs in the stories of old’ and ‘Daisies are our silver, buttercups our gold’, both of which are apt to bring tears to the eyes of those who remember singing them to the school piano. Not many people know ‘When Stephen, full of power and grace, went forth throughout the land’, though there are a few who hold it close to their hearts. She also wrote eight other hymns: ‘High o’er the lonely hills’, ‘Round the earth a message runs’, ‘Sing, all ye Christian people!’, ‘When Mary brought her treasure’, ‘Unto Mary, demon-haunted’, ‘God, whose eternal mind’, ‘We thank you, Lord of Heaven’, and ‘O saint of summer what can we sing for you?’ These are rarely sung nowadays, but because ‘We thank you, Lord of Heaven’ contains the line ‘For dogs with friendly faces’, vicars sometimes choose it for their annual pets’ service.
    Lovers of these hymns who discover that their author was not herself a churchgoer feel a sense of betrayal. The favourite hymn sung at their own wedding or at their grandfather’s funeral turns out to be, so to speak, a fake.
    Like most of their generation, Tony and Joyce had been force-fed religion as children, Sunday after Sunday. Tony had suffered the stifling atmosphere of the Scottish Sabbath. As a small child his sister Ysenda was caught by their grandfather playing on a Sunday with a sixpenny tin jar with a handle which, when vigorously worked, caused the jar to emit a few cracked and reedy sounds. ‘Nurse, I do not approve of music on Sunday,’ said the terrifying grandpapa. ‘We must all remember that this child has a soul to be saved.’
    Joyce, in itchy gloves, had sat through long services each Sunday, ‘and the new puppy was waiting at home to be played with, getting larger and less pick-upable minute by precious minute, and the liturgy dragged and dawdled, always far behind one’s eagerness to be gone’.
    Avoidance of church was another bond between Tony and Joyce. They even avoided looking at churches. On a rainy day during the shooting visit in Lincolnshire, Joyce wrote in her diary: ‘We sat about and sat about. Finally we were reduced to deciding to drive into Lincoln and look at the cathedral ( us! ) but the car wouldn’t start.’ On a rainy day in Scotland, the younger generation of the family sat in the drawing-room writing clerihews about local ministers of the Church of Scotland. This was Tony’s:
    The Minister of Madderty
    Never had a sadder tea
    Than when entertaining at the Manse
    He inadvertently wet his pants.
    They were getting their revenge for years of sermons. He and Joyce were always on the look-out for a ‘J. in V. B. T.’ (joke in very bad taste) or, better still, a ‘J. in W. P. T.’ (worst possible taste), and many of these were God-related. ‘I’m so hungry,’ said Tony one Sunday lunchtime, ‘I could eat the hind leg off the lamb of God.’
    At this stage of her life Joyce had a gift for turning out whatever bits of writing she was asked for. She never lost the schoolgirl’s delight in showing work to the teacher and getting high marks. In adulthood, this ability to produce just what the editor required was a kind of flirtation. Editors tended to be attractive and brilliant men: to give them what they wanted in words gave her an intense, even erotic pleasure. If asked, she could turn out cigarette advertisements, such as this ‘Capstan Shanty’:
    When I was Mate of the brig Carlisle
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â (Hulla-balloo-balay!)
    We was wrecked one day on a