Words Through a Windowpane [antikvár]

A Jewish ChildhoodI was born on ii June 1921 in Hamilton Terrace in St John's Wood, London, a few hundred yards from Lord's cricket ground which fifty years earlier my great-great-grandfather had owned. My father said it was the only really ugly house he had ever lived in, a big Victorian building of red and yellow brick; he had leased it for three months while our new home was being got ready in Marylebone. That was in Portland Place, a beautiful eighteenth-century house built by the Adam brothers which got bombed during the war. Although my father, a timber importer, was then no more than well-to-do, we had eight servants: a cook, parlourmaid, housemaid, under-housemaid, nurse, nurserymaid, kitchenmaid and chauffeur. Their combined salaries totalled L350 a year, from two pounds a week for the cook to ten shillings a week for the nurserymaid and kitchenmaid. Although I liked them all, I decided early in life that even if I became a millionaire I would never have servants living in. Our existence was regulated by the need not to inconvenience them. There was no question of raiding the kitchen for snacks or drinks; none of us could sleep late, for the rooms had to be done; nor could we leave clothes or anything on the floor.We saw more of the servants than of our parents. My two elder brothers and I lived on the second floor, looked after by our nurse and nurserymaid; my father and mother occupied the two floors below, the servants the two above. My mother was beautiful, tall, slim and auburn-haired, my father handsome and witty; when they first met at a dance, she told her sisters that he was 'just like Lewis Waller', a famous matinée idol of the time, and Waller's photographs confirm this. But I remember them as gracious people who lived a totally different life downstairs, in which we were sometimes briefly