When Evelyn and I (the Twins) were born my parents already had a daughter. Harriet Jane (named for both her grandmothers) was a little over two years of age in June 1909. The apartment in the Hampton Court (on the East side of Mountain Street), into which Daddy and Mother had moved when they were married proved a bit small for a family of five plus a nurse and a cook and so we moved across the court into a larger one #48. I don't think I really do remember life in the Hampton Court but after the fourth daughter, Alma Clavering, was born we moved across the Street into No. 340 which Daddy rented from a member of the Molson family and then, later on, op the Street into No 372 which Mother's family owned. So for a long time the Hampton Court was part of the Street on which we lived. Also, Jane's friend Blossom Harding lived there.
Figure: June 1910. The Veranda #48 The Hampton Court, Montreal.
Subsequently, the Hampton Court was torn down to make way for de Maisonneuve Blvd. No. 340 was torn down too, but much later, and now is, I think, a parking lot. No. 372 became No. 1492 and no longer looks as it did when we lived in it. It was an Office Building for a while and now is a Restaurant.
I can remember many things about 340 Mountain Street: the long dark corridor that ended in stairs going down to the kitchen; Daddy's large study on the second floor in the front of the house with his big mahogany desk (which is now in White Hall, Chinley (until 1983 when White Hall was sold)) standing in the middle, a fireplace and two bay windows with cushioned seats curtained in heavy velvet. The living and dining rooms must have been downstairs, and certainly the stairs had to be where Christopher Robin sat.
I think we had a very proper life in that house. Our nannies dressed us carefully for the walks on Sherbrooke Street. Anyway, it rather looks that way in the photos --- as if we were very much on display!
Jane was a bit upstaged by the twins and pretty soon was complaining that ``Ba'y Jane has too many 'ittle sisters''. Perhaps it was at this point that instead of ``Baby Jane'' she was called ``Lady Jane''.
But that was in town.
After Daddy bought THE FARM in 1913 we became --- most of the time --- less lady-like. We wore overalls and ``helped'' Lloyd Allen (Daddy's first farmer) do the farming. There were very few rules to restrict our freedom, but, because they were safety rules, they were absolute:
The Farm was 160 acres on the East shore of Lake Memphremagog about seven miles South of Magog. Daddy named it ``Agwanis'' which means in one of the Indian dialects ``the Landing Place''. Certainly in winter it had been just that. The ice road used to cross the one mile from Bryant's Landing on the West shore, and there had been a road on our side up to the main North-South road (R. R. no 3). The land hadn't been farmed in years and Daddy decided to get it into shape only when War broke out in the autumn of 1914. There were about 60 acres of arable land and rough pasturage, and the balance assorted woodlot.
It was a marvellous place and we were all devoted to it. We not only spent all our summers there but often the Christmas and Easter holidays.
As we grew older, and outgrew the sandy beach, Daddy built wharfs and boathouses (the big pier was built in 1926) where the motor boats and sail boats were kept and the water was deep enough for diving. The rowboat and canoe stayed in the original boat house on the sandy beach. One summer (1921) the lake water was very low and Daddy had a dry stone retaining wall built all along the shore --- very neat, we thought! and it was. He also built new barns and a farm house (1923--24), and the New House (1929) for us. It was closer to the shore with a magnificent view down the Lake to the mountains called Elephant and PeeVee, and to Lord's Island.
The original little farm house in which we lived for almost 15 years was given to Evelyn as a wedding present, and the old barns were all torn down. We children slept in the old barns after the new hay had been put in. We also slept in the hay stacks in the fields before they were gathered up --- if something happened that they had to be left out over night. My chiefest memory of doing that was being very careful not to move when I wakened (until I actually got up) because the dew would run down my neck and be very wet! As soon as we did get up (probably about 5:30 A.M.) we would collect from the kitchen an egg and sugar, and a saucer in which to beat them (with a stick, of course). Then, supping this super brew, we would climb to the big elm on ``Windy Hill'' high up in the pasture (the elm under which Alma was to be married in 1939 to Patrick Rolleston). There were fairy places in the roots there and we always hoped to sneak up stealthily enough to be able to see the fairies --- but we never did!
I think we had stopped doing this by the time Alma (who was 4 years younger than
the Twins) was old enough to join us. Anyway, I don't remember her in this
context. In fact, the first time I remember any incident connected with Alma was
when Scotty hid Tootch. Scotty was the black Aberdeen Terrier that Daddy brought
home one day because 
Evelyn was frightened of dogs.
Tootch was Alma's teddy. We were all playing on the sandy beach. Alma was about
three, so the twins were seven (I have forgotten the name of that Nanny but
probably she was Edith Christmas), and Scotty, of course, was there running in
and out of the woods, full of excitement. And he ran off with Tootch --- or that
is what we always believed. In spite of all our searching Tootch was never
found. I don't remember that we older children felt any differently about Scotty
or dogs in general as a result but Alma never liked dogs after that.
Though I loved Scotty and paid a little attention to the farm cats (we never had
cats in the house) horses were much more my thing. It all began with Patsy the
Shetland pony that Daddy won in a raffle in one of the Street Fairs. This was in
1916 and she was shipped out the the Farm where all summer long we rode her
bareback --- as much as she allowed us to. She was quite a pet. During the
winter three years later she broke a leg and had to be disposed of. I was pretty
upset by this --- I guess we all were --- so much so, in fact, that Daddy felt
he had to buy us another pony. Billy was really a small horse. He stood
13
hands high. He was bought in the early Spring and was kept in
Town at WHITE's STABLES on Drummond Street below Ste Catherine. All the
neighbouring children --- the Tookes and the Peters --- helped us exercise him
by riding him in the lane behind the house, and Mother drove him on Mount Royal.
When we went to the Farm in the summer he came with us.
For many years Billy was my constant summer companion. We drove him in a
charming small carriage which Mrs Routledge gave us. (She also gave us a
sleigh.)
We drove him to Georgeville three miles down the road, to take and
fetch the laundry. Miss Quinn in Georgeville kept the general Store (and Post
Office) and it was there that we bought those sugar sandwich biscuits ---
scooped out of a barrel --- with which we stuffed ourselves on the way home.
(I haven't been able to enjoy properly a sugar biscuit since!) I rode Billy
everyplace: to round up the cattle as well as on exploration trips --- even in
swimming. He was a very sprightly horse being part Arab (or so we said) and
thought nothing of dumping me off. At times I was quite scared about getting on
him at all --- but obviously never let on that I was. He was still about and
still frisky when we sold the Farm in the Fall of 1939, five years after my
father died and after Alma's wedding in the summer of 1939.
Daddy bought Winnie, a Standard Breed mare, when I was getting rather too big for small Billy. I must have been about 16. She was a fun horse. She was brown (like both Billy and Patsy) and she had charming manners. We never drove Winnie. I took her for far longer rides than I ever did with Billy and showed her at Fairs in Ayers Cliff and Sherbrooke and sometimes won a ribbon. We didn't drive Winnie mostly, I think, because by that time there was a car which was used for shopping and messages.
The first horses on the Farm were a pair of black light-draft horses --- Jim and Joe. Because Jim was mean-tempered --- ``Berkshire (a nasty-type pig) on his mother's side'' as uncle Grover explained --- he was replaced by Prince whom Mother drove in a dog-cart (but no dog ran behind it!) when he could be spared from the Farm. I don't remember just when Sam and Lottie, a very handsome chestnut pair, came to us but it must have been after Raymond West, Daddy's second farmer, had taken Lloyd Allen's place --- this was in 1933.
There were always cows: just one, Lorna Doone, at first who was followed by The Snoop and, later on, by a small herd of Jersey cows. And the flock of sheep began with Minette, a black ewe whom Granny Peverley had bought to keep the grass short around her little cottage at Val Morin but whose sad bleats of loneliness Granny found so traumatic (she said she just could not hold its foot all night) that she shipped her down to the Farm. Minette wasn't lonely with us because Irish Poppy (the nurse at that time whose sister Violet was the cook) took her for walks by Alma's pram and we children played with her. She produced white twins and the flock was on its way!
In the beginning there were Bantam chickens. They were charming but full of problems, the worst one being that they couldn't stand the cold and their feet would freeze. In the winter, at night, they would perch on the backs of the horses where it was warm. I can remember someone whittling a wooden peg leg for one of them --- who never learned to use it! After that we had Barred Plymouth Rock hens. I looked after them one summer --- I suppose it was my turn to do so --- and I can remember not liking it a bit. In my book hens were and are dreadfully silly creatures! Not so with the riding horses. Almost I couldn't spend enough time looking after them!
However, I didn't spend all my time by any means with the horses because of
swimming and boating --- especially, as I grew older, sailing. The Lake front
was very important to us all. By 3
every afternoon we were all
congregating at the lake, picnic hampers at the ready. Daddy had built rustic
benches from cedar branches, a table from a large flat shale stone and a stone
fireplace in a cleared space in the woods close to the boat house. Here, after
swimming, we had a picnic supper. Often Daddy would take one of us fishing and
we would cook the catch over our open fire. He taught us not only how to bait
our own hooks --- having dug the worms --- but also how to clean and filet the
fish. (Perch are the easiest to clean --- and the sweetest to eat --- because
they skin so easily.) As I remember it there always were guests and we would
play games such as ``Beckon'' and Hide-and-seek to warm us up and make us
hungry. Sometimes we children were allowed to sleep near the picnic place,
rolled up in blankets between some fallen logs that lay around. I remember one
particular night when Mother, knowing that a thunderstorm was on its way, came
in her nightdress down from the house to bring us back. She had a lovely clear
voice and she sang as she came so that we wouldn't be frightened by her ghostly
appearance. I think we were still half asleep as we climbed into our beds ---
just before the storm broke.
In the early days boats were our mode of transportation as much as for fun. Before daddy became a Judge, at which time he had two uninterrupted months during the summer while the Courts were recessed, he used to come out to the Farm on Friday evenings and return to Montreal on Sunday evenings. He would come to Magog by train and then to Bryant's Landing on ``The Anthemis''. Lloyd rowed across the Lake to meet him. Evelyn remembers that Daddy always had a pocket full of ``hundreds and thousands'' (very small coloured candies) which he spread on Mother's air cushion for us children to gobble --- obviously his clever way to get rid of his demanding daughters while he could enjoy a brief quiet moment with Mother! We went to a lot of parties by boat. ``Spring Bank'', ``Maple Hill Camp'', ``Birch Bay'', were all summer camps on the Lake all within three or four miles of us, and we swam and picnicked as much with the Holmes-Smiths, the Eliots[?], the Dales, the Davis', etc. as we did on our own shore. And, then, there were the trips to Lord's Island, and to climb Owl's Head, also done by water. (We also climbed Orford and Jay Peak but those trips were made by car.)
While we owned it there never was electricity on the Farm. We used candles and
coal oil lamps. I remember our first gasoline-burning lamp. It gave an enormous
white light that greatly improved reading at night. The original farm house was
served by water from a spring-fed stream which ran close to the house and so
down to the Lake. (There was a second delightful spring quite close to the Lake.
It enlarged the stream considerably and Daddy built a rustic bridge across it
so that we could get from the Sandy beach to the new boat houses without having
to hop from stone to stone. It made basket-carrying a lot safer.) The water came
by gravity into the house by a single tap in the kitchen. This was at first.
Later on there was a wash-room with john incorporated into the kitchen area.
But always the hot water came from a tank in the big wood-burning stove. The
legend on the inside of the cover to that tank read, ``Keep full of water
Do it now'' --- words that served as an anthem to the tune of the
Doxology which we alternatively intoned and shouted as we washed the dishes
during the spring and winter visits when there was no cook. (The only other john
was, of course, a two-holer ``privy'' in the woodshed --- very cold in the
winter and spring but essential when the house was full of family and guests.
This was most of the time.)
For our Christmas visits to the Farm a Franklin Stove (we
called it ``Wilhelm'' because it had a most remarkable Kaiser helmet for a top)
was set up in the middle of the Living-dining room of the little farm house. The
stove-pipe went through a hole in the ceiling into the twins' room, across it
and into the kitchen (?) chimney. This was supposed to keep us warm and, thanks
to Daddy's all night stoking, in a way it did. At least, I don't remember ever
being cold, but I do remember Daddy coming up to our room in the morning and
shaking the snow off the newspapers with which he had covered our blankets the
night before. (There were draughty French windows onto a balcony in that room.)
And then we got up! This is one of the memories I have of Christmas at the Farm.
Another one is putting the Christmas tree all decorated with strings of pop-corn
and cranberries out on Boxing Day ``for the birds''. Once on a very cold,
absolutely still New Year's Day we put candles on a small evergreen in a bay at
the edge of the woods. It was sunset time. We were all on snowshoes and it was
ghostly quiet. Mother wrote a poem about this which, sadly, has been lost.
I remember sugaring at Easter time. The first operation was very primitive and lots of fun, and we all helped. I also remember the lambs and how occasionally one would be deserted by its mother and had to be brought into the kitchen and bottle fed. But chiefly I remember coming back to Montreal with baskets full of tins of maple syrup and sugar and latire in birch-bark cones held together with thorns. And they leaked! It was warm in the train and they were up on the luggage rack and Daddy's friend Father Filion of Loyola College sitting underneath. To our paralysed horror we watched drips of latire descend on his priestly shoulders!
During the last three or four years of the 1920s there were three ``occasions'' a year a ``Agwanis''. The first was the Easter egg hunt to which all the
``locals'' were invited. This was held in the barn. The second event was in the
barn too. It was a barn dance with a fiddler who called the steps and it took
place as soon as the new hay was all in. It was held in the evening on the ramp
between the hay mows. Coal oil lamps were used for lighting. I remember the huge
barrels of water against fire standing on the ramp and, outside, the trestle
tables clothed in sheets and covered with endless lemonades and goodies. The
third event came in late August and was the really important one. It was the
Regatta, and the guests mostly came by water. All the usual kind of event was
scheduled --- races in the water and on it --- and there were ribbons! First,
Second and Third. And a huge iron kettle boiling the first of the season's corn.
Perhaps as many as 100 people turned up with their picnics. Building the bonfire
took most of the summer. I don't know what the others did but Billy and I
dragged many a load of fallen branches out of the shore woods. It was all
tremendous fun. One of the side products of collecting the bonfire together was
making ``rooms'' in the cedar grove. They provided us with a magic place in
which to play. But I must note here that every summer ``always'' there was a
bonfire being built on the high pasture. The fact that it was there may have
inspired the organizing of the picnic.
We never had tractors on the Farm, or radios or televisions, or ``frigidaires''. The only telephone was up at the Farm House. It came, as it were, when the Farm House was built in 1923. It was on a party line which meant lots of frustrations and some quite chummy situations when other people up and down the line listened in on our supposedly private conversations and every once in a while joined in --- just couldn't resist it I suppose!
1929 was a typical summer: lots of guests; lots of activities including theatricals, boating, swimming, mountain climbing, picnicking, tennis --- the lot.
Top Right shows Alma as GrandPa and Evelyn as GrandMa in ``Cassandra'' (no doubt a product of Dr. Penfield's imagination) with all the Penfields. In the
Picture Below Right: Alma, Evelyn, ``Doey'' (Joan) and Nancy Archibald sit on the springboard with four young Penfields. (The Penfields rented a cottage from Howard Murray in the bay behind Pine Point.)
Below: ``Doey'' and Nancy Archibald, Jane, Alma and Beatrice Carter in the ``Lady Jane''.
and Below that: Evelyn, Alma, Jane and the Archibalds on Lord's Island.
Just to prove --- if almost illegibly --- that there were men around too! This is Labour-Day week-end. On that week-end the guests staying with us were:
Reg. Harvey-Jellie
Herbert Parker
Stephen Lyman
Margaret Harvey
Mayne McCombe
Beatrice Howell
George Nicholls
(Apart from the House there were the South Home (2); A tent (4) and the Boat
House (?)
Our first car was a Chevrolet which could make the steep hills only by backing
up them. And, too, the rear axle was inclined to break! The next car was a
McLaughlin-Buick ``Becky P.'', named thus because Daddy made some money in the
Stock market in Quebec Power. It was a far more reliable car than the Chev. In
1927 Daddy bought a Model ``T'' grey, open touring Ford, ``Mike'', and it was
in that that I did my first driving. Evelyn taught me. She learned to drive long
before I did because my parents considered me a bad risk. There were no such
things as licences or Driving Schools in those days. It was up to the parents.
Until we owned a car the team came the seven miles to Magog to meet our train. It took about an hour for the trip one way. In the winter the farm box sled was filled with straw into which we children snuggled warmly while any adult who wanted to sat up forward on the seat beside Lloyd. I can remember a time when the snow drifts were so deep that the sleigh actually upset rolling everybody into the snow. It took all our energies to push it upright again.
COPY OF A SCHOOL ESSAY BY ALMA
It took two cabs to get the family to the station. Daddy thought that although motor-taxis were plentiful now, and quite reliable, the high carriages with their big double seats and open tops were much easier to pile with dunnage bags and parcels, and anyway the cabbies were more ready to help with luggage than the thin young men who had learned to drive taxis. Mother went in the first cab with Jane, because she was the eldest and could help look after the baggage at the station, and Alma, because she was the smallest and could be squeezed between the bigger pieces on the front seat. When they were off Daddy would put the twins and Poppy, the cook, into the second cab, pile the last of the small things around them, lock up the house, and climb onto the high seat beside the driver.
Standing under the clock in the high steel-arched station, when the luggage had been counted and recounted and the children herded together around it, was the worst part of the whole trip. It was somehow just as inevitable as the rush and excitement of getting up early, gulping breakfast, and stuffing into bags already overflowing those treasures which at the last moment seemed indispensible. Hazel didn't mind much because she liked to watch the people coming from the New York sleeper --- newly shaved dark-suited men, women with furs and veiled hats, their neat suitcases following in the hands of respectful red-caps. She put down her basket with the rubber boots tied to its handle and detached herself from the little group under the clock with the pile of ramshackle bags, thinking that some day she would go to New York and it wouldn't be with a dunnage bag either. But to Evelyn, her twin sister and to Alma, the hands of the clock moved much too slowly. It was bad enough having to sit on the train for three hours, but then at least you were going somewhere: here you just had to stand still.
Alma was gazing at the candy counter with such a meaningful air, and Hazel had so plainly dissociated herself from the rest of the family, that Daddy took a final glance at the clock and said ``I think they will let us get on now. Evelyn, I'll take the grass rake and you can carry your Mother's coat. Hazel, don't forget the lunch.''
``I'd rather carry your suitcase, Daddy --- the lunch looks so funny. Couldn't Evelyn carry it now?''
``Hazel, don't be stupid and get things all mixed up'' said Jane. ``It's much better if you go on carrying what you were carrying before. Anyway, it's your rubber boots that make it look so funny.''
``They don't look as funny as your hat'' said Hazel, and holding the basket stiffly away from her knees she marched primly through the iron gates with a fine disregard for Jane's command to wait for the others.
There was nothing to do on the train except sit --- at least not until Farnham, and then you pushed your nose to the window to watch for the school-house which Daddy said was exactly half-way between Montreal and Magog. Before that you knew that each minute you sat had to be sat all over again after Farnham, so there was no use thinking about it. But when the long rows of tracks and the warehouse sheds of that town were past, the rolling hills of the Eastern Townships began, gentle at first and then more and more abrupt, and the trees appeared, and sometimes you could see cows, and people weeding kale, and after that you could hear the rumble of the train as it crossed bridged gullies and streams, and almost before you had savoured that hush of anticipation there would be a whoop and everyone except Poppy would rush to the right hand side of the train to look down into Orford Lake, its clear waters made deep and mysterious by the wooden piles of the old railway track disappearing below them. Then the tick-a-tick of the rail joints would resound between the rocky walls of a cutting, and there would be another flash of the lake, and then everyone would rush to the left hand windows to peer upward at the brows of Orford. After that it was a matter of desperate competition as to who would be the first to see the big lake, although everyone knew that you could never see even a corner of it until the train pulled around the curve, and then there it lay, its long expanse stretching to the south with the familiar hills around it. Jane would be solemn as she gazed: Evelyn would clutch her bag, bracing it and her round body against the curve of the train: Alma would twist her head to catch sight of the horses drawn up at the station, and Hazel, her propriety gone, would swing her feet clear between the backs of the seats and shout ``We're here! We're here!''
It was funny to think that it took almost as long to do the seven miles from Magog to the Farm as it did to do the ninety odd from Montreal to Magog. Jim alone in a light carriage could make it in less than an hour, but with all the luggage and the heavy wagon even the two horses together took two hours, and sometimes more if the roads were muddy. They could trot only on the flat pieces, so if you put on your rubber boots you could jump out of the wagon and run along behind, and going up hills you had time to look for strawberries on the roadside and even to climb the fences and walk along the edges of the fields if you were quick. But once past the Glass House there wasn't much time because then the lunch basket was opened and you had to be right beside it if you wanted to get enough bread and cheese to make up for those long hours on the train. By the time you had eaten the sandwiches, and the chocolate which Daddy always had in his pocket, the horses began to know they were near home and you had to run to keep up. Then you came to Judd's Hill, and then you could see the boundary elm, and suddenly you were waving to Mr Robinson on his porch, and passing the wild plum tree all in flower, and with a lurch and a bump you drew up in the front yard. The screen door flew open at Hazel's pull and there was Daddy with the first load of dunnage bags, ducking his unaccustomed head under the stove pipe on his way to let Poppy in at the kitchen door with her armful of pots and baking tins.