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| ISBN-13: | 9780752495019 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 02/08/2003 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 354 |
| File size: | 624 KB |
| Age Range: | 12 Years |
Read an Excerpt
Spike
A Biography
By Pauline Scudamore
The History Press
Copyright © 2013 Pauline ScudamoreAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-9501-9
CHAPTER 1
India: The Child
O are you the boy Who would wait on the quay With the silver penny And the apricot tree?
Charles Causley
On 16 April 1918, the First World War still raged furiously over the battlefields of France. The Times carried news of Lloyd George's impassioned speech in the House of Commons on the necessity for conscription in Ireland. The British roll of honour for that day showed 487 officers wounded and 105 reported dead in the battles of the Somme. The Playboy of the Western World and Chu Chin Chow were running in London. Harrods food bureau gave a lecture on 'Appetizing ways with potatoes' and advertised the sale of ladies' three-button French kid gloves at four shillings and eleven pence per pair. A London charwoman was sent to prison for six months, with hard labour, for having stolen finery from the titled lady who employed her.
In the Province of Bombay, halfway across the world, the Indian Raj seemed not to be greatly interrupted by the long-drawn-out war in Europe, and Mrs Leo Milligan, née Kettleband, in labour with her first child, made the last four miles of her journey to hospital by bullock cart. At 3.30 p.m., just as the shifts of Ahmednagar Military Hospital were changing, she was delivered of a male child. The boy had a mop of dark golden hair and piercing blue eyes. He looked angry, and wailed discordantly. His mother, exhausted and proud, thought him beautiful. He was named Terence Alan, but by the time he reached full manhood these names were almost forgotten and he was known simply as 'Spike'.
Flo Milligan's confinement had not been easy. In later years she was to tell her son how she had resented the offhand attitude of the nurses and doctors who put her in a labour ward and told her to pull on a twisted wet towel 'to concentrate her mind' when the pains were severe. When a medical orderly put his head round the door and called out 'Are you all right, memsahib?' Flo swore at him with some spirit. This at least produced a visit from the doctor, who received the same treatment. 'Don't swear at me, I'm not responsible,' he said sulkily, promptly disappearing down the corridor. Only one person had really helped her, said Flo – a black Indian ayah who sat with her, bathing her face in cool water and comforting her. 'Memsahib be soon good. Soon come little master or missy baba.'
Thus, even during the trauma of birth, the imperial foundation of those early years was clearly defined. 'I always accepted that we were supposed to be superior,' observed Spike. 'It was emphasized by every facet of our lives.' During the evenings of great heat, the white children were carried in their beds and put to sleep on the tennis courts or balconies of their homes. Shrouded in mosquito netting, the cool air still reached them and the nights could be magical:
I remember lying out in my bed and looking at the vast, quiet sky. Right up above my head there were three stars in a row, and I remember thinking, well, I'll have those three stars all my life, and wherever I am they will be. They are my stars, and they belong to me.
Leo Alphonso Milligan, Spike's father, was the sixth child of William Patrick Milligan and Elizabeth Higgins. He was born in Sligo in Ireland, and his impressive names were bestowed upon him not by his parents (who wanted to christen him Percy Marmaduke) but by the priest at Sligo Cathedral, where he was baptized, who, at the last moment, persuaded William and Elizabeth to call him after the pope of that time.
Leo Milligan had a neat, elegant bone structure and a sensitive, masculine beauty. In due course Spike and his son Sean were to be cast in the same mould. It seems to be a pattern that wears uncommonly well, for Leo retained a smart, athletic, light-stepping poise well into middle age; right up to his death in 1969 he looked quite capable of launching into the 'buck and wing dance' which drew enthusiastic acclaim in the Indian Army concerts of the twenties.
The only picture in existence of Spike's great-grandfather, the earliest Milligan to be traced in the direct line, suggests that he too might have been lithe and fine-boned. Michael Milligan was born in Donegal in 1816. At the age of twenty, he left the poverty of his Irish boyhood behind him by joining the Royal Artillery, thereby establishing a family tradition, for in due course his son William, his grandson Leo Alphonso and his great-grandson Terence Alan (Spike) were also to become Royal Artillery gunners. At the time of enlisting in the British Army, Michael was a labourer by trade, and he was illiterate. He was posted to Canada (listed as Newfoundland in the records), and in order to communicate with his family back home taught himself to read and write. 'And no one,' his wrathful great-grandson would say, 'had the slightest feeling for this achievement. No letter survives. Not one. Everything thrown away.' Spike (an archivist at heart) was perplexed that his ancestors did not see fit to preserve any of the letters which must have been written with such painstaking determination by his forebear:
You would think that someone, somewhere along the line, would have realized how great it was that this man, so deprived, had taught himself. What it must have meant to him! Does nobody ever care?
William Milligan retired from the army and brought his large family to London in 1885. He had been a cabinet-maker before joining the Royal Artillery and a wheelwright with the regiment. Now he found a job as scenery manager at the Queen's Palace of Variety at Poplar, East London. He was an enterprising man and speedily managed to get a second job for himself as a caretaker of Grosvenor Buildings, the block of flats in which the family lived in Deptford. More importantly, perhaps, he was also able to get occasional work as 'supers' at the Palace (a kind of stage extra) for four of his five sons. The boys did a considerable amount of theatrical work while still at school, appearing with a troupe of youngsters dancing, tumbling and acting with Fred Karno, acrobatand juggler, called Fred Karno's Knock-about Kids. Also performing at the theatre were a then little-known artist Charles Chaplin and his brother Sidney. Leo became infatuated with the theatre but was not encouraged to think of it as a profession. Nevertheless, he earned enough as a sixteen-year-old to pay for lessons at Steadman's Dancing Academy. Here he became a close friend of another ambitious South London child, Hilda Munnings. Born in Wanstead in 1896, Hilda was the daughter of a publican who became Lord Mayor. Her career developed and she became a prima ballerina. She danced with Nijinsky in Diaghilev's company and changed her name to Lydia Sokolova. She corresponded with Leo Milligan for many years, long after he had reluctantly (but only partially) laid aside his own theatrical ambitions and joined the army, thereby pleasing his father and following a family tradition.
One Sunday in the summer of 1913, while Leo, now a corporal, was attending service at the Roman Catholic church in Kirkee just north of Poona, Florence Kettleband was playing the organ and singing. Leo heard a clear contralto voice rising above the anthems and choir solos. He listened with great enjoyment, and in later years was to tell his sons how he fell in love with their mother before he ever saw her. On the following Sunday he again heard the beautiful contralto tones filling the nave of the church, and determined to meet the singer. Flo was enchanted with her handsome and talented admirer. Leo was not only a fine dancer, he was also a gifted musician, singer and actor. When he discussed the possibility of her appearing in one of the concerts he was arranging, she was flattered and delighted.
The Kettlebands had been established in India for as long as the Milligans, and the liaison between Florence and Leo was looked upon with pleasure by both families. The Kettlebands, like the Milligans, were colourful people. Flo and her younger sister Eileen were gifted and attractive young women who danced and sang and commanded a good deal of attention. Flo was an accomplished pianist and her younger brother Hughie, an ace army motor-cyclist, played the ukelele and the banjo. They took part in numerous concerts for the army in India, and the soldiers, isolated as they were from the entertainments of their homeland, received them rapturously. Eileen had won a beauty competition and was acclaimed the loveliest girl in India, and Grandmother Kettleband, an exquisite seamstress as befitted a former lady's maid, made beautiful gowns for the girls to wear. This was just as well, for the concerts in which the girls appeared were basically amateur, and funds were not forthcoming. 'Nobody thought our stage clobber cost us anything,' Leo wrote in a letter to Spike many years later. 'We always had to finance our own shows.' The other notable member of the Kettleband family was Grandfather Kettleband, a former trumpeter sergeant in the army who, as an old man, lay stiffly in bed with a moustache cup on a cabinet beside him. 'He wore striped pyjamas,' recalled Spike, 'and even in bed he almost laid to attention.'
Flo and Leo were married in September 1914. The war in Europe seemed distant, but the possibility of European service was always present and this perhaps lent an air of urgency to the match. Their first marriage was a civil one, in Poona; a year later they had a religious ceremony, leaving the church under crossed swords.
Not long after, Florence joined Leo in one of his relatively few professional appearances. They performed together in the Bombay Palace Theatre of Varieties under the names Gwen Gorden and Leo Gann. The show ran for a week, and played twice nightly. Leo had contrived a comedy duo with vocals and dance called 'Fun Round the Sentry Box'. This was extremely successful and remained in the repertoire for some time. It seems that Leo was given some fairly generous army leave from time to time to enable him to seek such short-term professional contracts. No doubt the assumption was that the experience he gained would reflect well in the already highly successful army shows which he mounted from time to time.
Years later, Leo explained to Spike why he had called himself 'Leo Gann'. It was a device to ensure good billing. 'You can't print a long name in large letters on a narrow billing,' said Leo. 'A short name just has to get big billing.'
When the show was over, Leo and Florence returned to the Regimental Headquarters at Poona, where Leo continued to give all his spare time to the entertainments committee and arranged most of the concerts. Terence Alan did not make his appearance for four years.
* * *
The news of Terence Alan's birth was brought by urgent war telegraph to Leo. Immediately he called for his horse and a bouquet of flowers, and was on the point of leaving for the cantonment hospital when one of the Catholic fathers came racing up to him. His intention was to accompany Leo on his journey and lay a first blessing on the new baby. There was, however, one difficulty – Father Rudden had no mount. Leo was in no mood to delay his departure, so they set off – Leo astride his horse and a mildly aggrieved Father Rudden following on a bicycle.
Writing to his son in 1967, Leo remembered the occasion:
The 16th April will be your birthday, you will be 49 years old, and in your 50th year the next day. How time flies, it doesn't seem all that long that I watched Father Rudden give you his blessing and pin a wee gold cross on you the day you were born. I made my way on horseback to the hospital and Father Rudden followed on a bicycle, wishing all the time he had a horse.
For much of Terence's early life his father was absent, away on tours of duty. His mother was left in charge in Poona, and although she was ably supported by servants and had the company of her own mother and sister Eileen it seems probable that she found the responsibility debilitating and lonely.
After her marriage their life had centred on the regular shows which highlighted the regiment's off-duty hours, and when she became pregnant in 1917 it hardly curtailed her theatrical performances. Florence says proudly that after the birth of her eldest son she used to have his bassinet in the wings, run off between acts to feed him and then return to the stage to finish the show.
Concern was caused in high places by Flo's refusal to depart for the hills with the other wives and children when the hot weather came. Many years later Leo wrote to Spike: 'Your mother always refused to be parted from me during the hot weather and insisted on staying behind to take her place in the Friday night concerts – which were, of course, a great success.'
The shows were very well received indeed, and the army hierarchy was torn between the need to bolster morale during the tedious and exhausting days of the hot weather and the embarrassment of having a vociferous young woman break away from hitherto unquestioned military procedures. The conflict was eventually settled when a crisis was reached. Flo Milligan grew thinner and thinner, while the infant Terence wilted and screamed almost without pause. 'I think,' says Spike rather vaguely, 'that there was something wrong with the feeding.'
Whatever was wrong, it is on record that senior army matrons and nurses went in force to the colonel to voice their anxieties about Flo and baby Terence; this resulted in their being sent, rather against Flo's wishes, to Coonor in the Nilgari hills in the south-west. There was no improvement, so the decision was taken to send the family on hospital leave to England, an idea that was greeted with enthusiasm.
They embarked on the British India steamer Erinpura in June 1919. Terence was just fourteen months old. Their passage was smooth until the ship went off course in the narrow mouth of the Red Sea. Why this happened has always been a matter of conjecture. The rocky coasts are about twenty miles apart, and Milligan family mythology supports the theory that the captain was drunk: whether this was in fact true is now difficult to say, but the 5,000-ton vessel did run aground on a reef off Perim, a small island two miles long on the Aden side. Two of the holds were flooded, and the pumps proved inadequate. Assistance had to be called for, the ship was abandoned and the passengers were rescued by HMS Topaz, a destroyer from Aden. The Erinpura was irreparably damaged. The Milligan family, along with the other passengers, were taken to Alexandria and rested for a while in a military hospital. They were then transferred to the Château Aygulard near Marseilles. A picture exists of a rather dismal little group which includes a pale-looking young Terence staring wistfully at the camera. Finally they were taken by cattle truck ('unless my father exaggerated,' said Spike) to the coast and thence to London.
Once in London, Terence was cared for partly by his father's sister Kathleen and partly by his grandmother's sister in Sittingbourne. Flo was still ill, and at one stage went blind and was put into hospital. After a few months Leo was recalled to India, to Rawalpindi, and eventually Flo recovered sufficiently (after being treated by a faith-healer) for her and Terence to join him. At this stage Leo received promotion to Quarter Master Sergeant and the little family moved to Kirkee. 'I think that life sort of stabilized then,' said Spike. 'My first gleamings of remembrance begin':
I suppose I was four or five. I remember being given a chota hazri – that's Indian for small breakfast – on a tennis court where our beds had been taken out at night because of the great heat. And I remember the toys my father gave me, he had them carved out of wood for me by his Indian carpenter – but I had one toy I really loved, he was called Mickey, a huge donkey – a caricature of a donkey – who used to sit up at the front whenever we all went for a ride in a gharry, or a Victoria, or a tonga. I don't know what happened to him. My parents always threw everything out, gave everything away. I'm surprised they never threw me away. That's why I've always kept my children's things. My parents had no feelings for belongings.
Harry Secombe, always a compassionate and generous friend to Milligan, remembered their dredging up these childhood memories during their early days together, and turning them to mirthful ridicule:
We used to talk a lot about India, but there was a lot of conflict there. He wasn't allowed to play with officers' children – all that sort of stuff. It bedevilled him, in a way. And all that being taught to clap your hands for a servant to come – well, if you did that sort of thing at Catford [where Spike lived on the family's return to England] you'd get a clap round the ear-hole!
Nevertheless for Spike life at 5 Climo Road, Poona, was to become his first tangible memory, and it was a secure, not unhappy time. Later he was to say that it always seemed to have a sort of glamour about it.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Spike by Pauline Scudamore. Copyright © 2013 Pauline Scudamore. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface,Author's Note,
Acknowledgements,
1 India: The Child,
2 India: The Boy,
3 Rangoon,
4 Catford, SE6,
5 Army Days in Bexhill,
6 D Battery to Africa,
7 Italy,
8 Central Pool of Artists,
9 Post War: Pre-Goon,
10 Goons Arising,
11 Goons Ascendant,
12 Associated London Scripts,
13 Australia,
14 Single Parent,
15 Puckoon and Oblomov,
16 Poets Clowning,
17 Milligan. Writer,
18 The Other Spike,
19 The Black Hat,
20 Conservationist,
Publisher's Note,
Postscript,
Appendices:,
I Books,
II Films,
III Records,
IV TV and Radio,
Notes,