As Enid's nephew I have published her memoir
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Foreword to
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I was on a visit to my cousin Selina (granddaughter of Margaret in this book) looking for letters from Ida (hereinafter Mummie) when I came across this delightful Memoir written by my aunt Enid. Really more an autobiography, it really did seem worth making it available to a wider readership and so I set about dictating the text into a digital format as a first step towards publishing.
From her significant role as a Commissioning Editor at Penguin Random House Selina has been a most useful guide and support. There is much to enjoy in the pages that follow. It brings to life the social whirl of the British Raj in the period leading up to the First World War and the beauty of India and its wild life from the Plains to the Himalayas. Comments about dress and etiquette remind us of how much has changed, but how human nature remains the same. Enid was a romantic adventurer. As a romantic she had a difficult time coping with her many suitors and once married made sure that Neil was kept up to the mark with adventure. She was also a perceptive matchmaker and had a significant part in introducing my father (Bobbie in this story) to my mother. Later she was to introduce me to more than one girl in the hope that it would be a good match. During the First World War she took on pioneering work together with her mother and later Violet at Gwynnes' Aeroplane Factory in Chiswick. Thanks to Enid and others who then worked so hard on the home front, this was the age when women gained respect among men before being given the vote. Driving all the way to Poland in the late 1930s with a friend she had made in Australia further illustrates how adventurous she was. She had the audacity of introducing herself to those who could give her access to what she wanted. I can recall the embarrassment of my parents when she wanted to look round the private garden of some grand house and would have rung the bell but for my father restraining her. I first knew her when I was a child and she was living at Elm Lodge, the six bedroom house that features towards the end of this story. As young children we were advised to be on very good behaviour and to keep quiet lest we disturb the irascible Neil, who must have been nearing the end of his life. More enjoyable was the experience of joining Enid attending to her beehives and coming away with a jar or a comb of honey. It was after Neil died (1950) and also very sadly her sister Margaret (1954) that Enid read Margaret's journals. We can sense that out of such loss she found a stimulus to write this memoir. She may well have attempted to get it published herself. The attitudes she expresses are enlightened for the time, though sixty years on ours have changed. From Elm Lodge she moved to Quennington in Gloucestershire renaming her Cotswold stone dwelling Moyles Cottage (after Moyles Court near Ringwood the home of our de Lisle ancestors). There her gardening talent was evident and there was a delightful orchard with an undergrowth of 'ladies lace' in spring. In 1956 she married Wigram, a cousin to whom you will read in this narrative she had been engaged for a short time before meeting Neil. The shock of finding him dead in bed only two and a half years later brought on diabetes. She died in 1972 and I was privileged to preach at her funeral. A few years earlier when I was training for ministry in the Church, Enid thought it most important that I should visit Palestine, offering to pay for my flight. Taking up this offer I spent a couple of months, in what had become Israel, working at Kibbutz Kfar Mazaryk near Acre. This happened to be close to where she had lived in a tent soon after marriage to Neil. On my return she showed me her watercolours of the area and gave me two of these which continue to remind me of my time there. Having now inherited many more watercolours and also a photograph album I have been able to match these with this narrative account, and have included a selection in this book. I do hope you will be as delighted as I have been, entering into the adventure and romance of Enid's life which was lived to the full. Lisle Ryder, February 2017. |