John Sutherland looks back on how being in the right place at the right time gave him the good education that his grandmother missed out on.
"She was the second generation in her family to benefit from the 1870 universal education act."
I’m old enough to be a grandparent but sadly never shall be. My only son, God bless him, is gay. I nonetheless think a lot about grandparentage and, more specifically, what an awful grandchild I was.
My gran (I called her Nan) was born in 1896, as I can best work out. 'Decent working class', she was the second generation in her family to benefit from the 1870 Universal Education Act. A 14-year-old school-leaver, she could write (licking the point of the pencil when thinking, painfully, about the next word), read (running her index finger along the sentence, licking it to turn the page), and 'number' (often using her fingers).
She was an excellent seamstress with the treadle sewing machine. She could dash away with the smoothing iron - several of them in line heated on the coal-fired hob. She served roast on Sunday, cold meat on Monday, and mince on Wednesday. Meat, without refrigeration, wouldn't last beyond mid-week. In the outside lav, the toilet paper was neatly quartered Daily Mirror and News of the World. The second made for the better read. But what did 'intimacy occurred' mean?
Sometimes, I have to tell you, I'm glad I don't have grandchildren to sneer at me. Or perhaps they'd be kinder than I was to ungrammatical nan.
Nan was, in short, a Victorian. She could actually remember the great funeral and proudly drank tea from the saucer, because 'the Queen did it' (I was never sure about that). Tea was important in other ways. She was a 'tassologist' and read the leaves. Part of her was medieval: she might have been burned at the stake in earlier times.
My father was killed in the war, before I knew him. My mother - happily liberated from childcare - left me to the care of Nan. A clever boy, I passed the 11+ and was one of the first to benefit from the Butler Education Act.
I went to a grammar school and, among much else, I learned grammar. By the age of 12, I was sneering inwardly, and sometimes cruelly aloud, about Nan's imperfect command of 'proper' English.
I recall, to my eternal shame, seeing her read a novel. She was an avid reader (in late life with a magnifying glass larger than Sherlock's) of tuppenny library romance. The novel was called Dr Chaos. She pronounced it 'Chuss'. I laughed, scornfully. She looked bewildered. I grandly instructed her on the difference between 'lay' and 'lie'. 'Lay down', she'd say. I'd shudder, melodramatically. The memory scorches.
I went on to enjoy a better life than any of my predecessors. I wasn't cleverer, I just happened to be in the right place, historically and geographically, at the right time. Lucky me.
As you grow older, involuntary memory floods back. I hate the cocky little swine I was, in that early 1950s artisan's cottage. Sometimes, I have to tell you, I'm glad I don’t have grandchildren to sneer at me. Or perhaps they’d be kinder than I was to ungrammatical nan. I'll never know.
John Sutherland's How Good is Your Grammar? is published by Short Books at £12.99 and is available from Amazon.