10 AUGUST, 2021

Dear Harry,

This might be a good moment for us to talk about money, because Peggy later told me, when I was old enough to understand a bit more about such things, that you took quite a cut in your annual stipend to make the move from Aspley Guise to Braughing. It struck me at the time, when she told me this, that she was none too pleased with the decision, but apparently you felt called by God to make the move.

God would have a hard time explaining to my satisfaction why Braughing needed you so much more than Aspley Guise. It was a smaller village. The Church was St. Mary the Virgin and the main pub was The Brown Bear. The main street was The Street. There were two fords where cars could cross the little stream—at least when it was not in spate. When that happened, once a year, perhaps, the stream became an unruly river for a day or two, often leaving relics from an ancient Roman encampment exposed, from the time when Braughing was a stop on the arrow-straight road that led from Londinium to the wild north. Your annual salary there was a handsome 250 pounds sterling. It might be that you added a few more pounds to that by taking on the parish of Westmill, just across the A10 highway that led up to Buntingford, the nearest small town. Peggy reminded me of this because she thought I should know what a huge financial sacrifice it was to send both Flora and myself to private boarding schools—even though the schools offered discounts to the clergy.

Anyway, leave God out of it, we made the move. Perhaps you had just done the work you needed to do at Aspley Guise. As we say in our vernacular over here, I can relate.

Money did not mean much to you. As Peggy always said—and warned Ellie about myself, your son in this regard—if you had it, you spent it. And you loved to spend. Your pleasure in indulgence was visible, almost palpable. You were, insofar as that small stipend would allow, quite profligate. Still, you were not impressed by people simply because they had it, nor did it worry you that you had relatively little. Your extravagances included, I suppose, those summer caravan trips you loved to take, the needs of your workshop, and your visits to the pub.

I learned to my surprise much later on that you did have other resources. Your father had left you and your siblings shares in Reyrolles, A. Reyrolle & Co., the electrical switchgear company that developed his invention, and those shares must have increased substantially over time. They enabled you to send us to school and eventually to buy the little cottage in Aberporth where you and Peggy spent many years following your retirement. Before your move to Braughing, too, Miss Stone, a lovely old spinster living down the hill from the Aspley Guise Rectory with her caregiver (Mrs. Bridgerton, if I recall? There was a Bridge in there somewhere) left you a respectable sum as an inheritance, I assume in honor of your friendship with her and your pastoral visits. She left you, too, a silver christening mug etched with her family name; I wonder what became of it? We children were invited over to her cottage from time to time. The gentle, silver-halo’ed Miss Stone seemed to take a special delight in having us for tea—wheeled into the drawing room on a trolley by the solicitous Mrs. B and served in elegant china cups and saucers, with scones and cake on tiny matching plates. Those visits required a special effort at politeness and special attention to the table manners.

You yourself, Harry, were scrupulously, meticulously honest when it came to money, and it outraged you when others did not meet your standards. We’ll talk more in due course about Barry Evans, an exuberantly bohemian artist who lived on subsistence earnings with his unruly family up the hill in Braughing; enough, for now, to note that one of the reasons he became your nemesis was your loan of sixty pounds to tide him over a tight spot—a loan he never bothered to return.

I should note that when you died, and Peggy after you, you left behind an estate that I found quite astonishing. As I recall, there was little in the way of money—but there was that nicely located seaside cottage, Glenview, on the attractive Cardiganshire coast in Wales and the proceeds from its sale, shared evenly with Flora, allowed Ellie and me to invest in a cottage on the attractive California coast in Laguna Beach. I was tempted to call it Glenview. But… no glen. We still treasure the view.

With love and gratitude, Peter