Thus it was that Shapurji first came to England in November, 1905, accompanied by Dorabji and Mehrbai, Dorab's wife. He was broken in health, depressed by his uncle's death the previous year and apprehensive about his future prospects, now solely in the command of his antagonistic cousin who was, since Jamsetji's death, in full control of all the family business projects, including the development of the Iron and Steel Company to which Shapurji had contributed so much.
London in a foggy November can have done little to dispel his gloom
Again, Spitam Cama wrote that he saw Shapur on his third day in England and described him as still looking very ill and worn and still walking on crutches.
The three of them stayed only a few days in London and then they all went to Matlock in Derbyshire to Smedley's Hydro. At the time of their arrival, the Matlock Guardian printed the following description of this beautiful part of England:-
"Mr Ruskin wrote of the Matlock district in the highest terms of eulogium. The greatest of England's connoiseurs of art gave Matlock scenery precedence over all the rest of the world. He says:'Learned Traveller, gentle and simple,...think of what this little piece of mid-England has brought into so narrow a compass of all that should be most precious to you. In its very minuteness it is the most educational of all the districts of beautiful landscapes known to me. When Nature had completed Switzerland, there was left one beautiful fragment for which she had no further use in that country; so she set it in Derbyshire, amid a framework of romantic hills, and in time it came to be called THE GEM OF THE PEAK. That gem is Matlock."
The health- giving springs in the area had been commercialised and flourished as early as the year 1698. When the British aristocracy were cut off from the Continent, first by the French Revolution and then by the Napoleonic Wars, they flocked to the watering places in England, and Matlock became a fashionable resort. With the introduction of the railways and a station in Matlock, the popularity of the springs increased yet again. There were some five or six large hydros in Matlock at that time but the most important one was undoubtedly Smedleys, accomodating more than two hundred and fifty guests. A local textile manufacturer, John Smedley, had bought and developed the grand and imposing house on Matlock Bank, standing high on the rim of the valley in which the town lies; there he started his hydro. He advertised it thus:
"Winter residence, with all the advantages of English home comforts and proximity to relatives and friends, at Smedley's Institution, Matlock Bank, near Matlock Bridge Station, Derbyshire; with or without the peculiar Mild Hydropathic treatment. Conducted by W.B.Hunter, M.D., C.M., Glas. Extensive saloons, lofty and well ventilated bedrooms, all kept at summer temperature night and day,without draughts. Charges moderate."
It was to this idyllic spot that our three 'learned travellers gentle and simple' arrived. Dorabji and Mehrbai stayed only for a short while, there being nothing specifically wrong with them; but Shapurji, still suffering from malaria and from the poisoning resulting from the wrong dosage of his madicine, stayed on until the following June. Whether it was the result of the 'peculiar Mild Hydropathic treatment', or the rest after recent toil, or his romance with my mother, no one can tell; but apparently all his physical ailments were cured by his stay in Smedley's Hydro.
Here, once again, I must interrupt Shapurji's narrative and introduce you to the girl who was to become his wife and the loving and devoted mother to us five children. For I have reached the point in my story when the two of them are about to meet. It was such an unlikely encounter that even now, years after the courtship, the marriage, the parenthood and their death, I still hold my breath as I write about it, for fear that this strange duo might after all miss each other and negate my own life and that of my brothers and sister. I often think how minuscule is a human creature and how minute a portion of the surface of the universe each one of us covers; so what a miracle it was that these two tiny and insignificant specks of life should find themselves at exactly the same spot on the earth's crust and at exactly the same moment in time. For he was born in the East, she in the West; he grew up in affluence and she in humble poverty; he had an academic education while she attended a one-roomed village school only until she was thirteen; it is true that he had heard all about Matlock but I doubt if she knew very much about Bombay. (In the village school, geography was taught only to the boys while the girls bent diligently over their needlework). But thankfully they did meet and I and a clan spanning three more generations are here on earth to prove and celebrate the fact.
About two miles to the East of Matlock lies the little village of Tansley. During my mother's childhood it boasted one shop, one church, one chapel, one school (which consisted of one classroom),and two pubs, one in the heart of the village, called the Gate and one on the edge of the village that is called, I think, the Green Dragon. All these amenities and some few houses are built on the slopes of the moorside, leading southward and upward off the road to the height of the moors. There at the top of the village, and a little remote from it, was a cottage called Foxholes, surrounded by moorland, with a few modest grey stone dwellings scattered around fairly close by; the fields are upholstered with cushions of springy grass growing above underground springs. On the opposite side of the main road leading out of Matlock, looms what is known as Riber Castle; it is only a mock castle but it's imitative mediaeval shape dominates the village as it stands on a height which makes it a familiar landmark in Tansley and in Matlock too. It was here to this cottage that a young quarry-man, Harry Marsh, took his bride Annie Jane, in 1884; this was just about the time that the young Shapurji,four and a half thousand miles away, was eagerly looking forward to celebrating his tenth birthday.
Four years later, on the 10th September, 1888, Harry and Annie Jane welcomed to the world their third daughter and fourth child. She was baptised Sarah Elizabeth but was always called Sally. By 1904 the couple had twelve children, ten of them daughters. I remember my Grandma as a very quiet, staid and composed character, very puritanical and correct. But she obviously had her lighter moments for she once confided in a friend that her Harry had only to hang his trousers on the bedpost and she fell for another baby. But strangely enough it was not Annie Jane who lost her health creating this minor baby-boom, but the formerly robust Harry. After only a few years of marriage he contracted rheumatic fever and was a semi -invalid for most of his life thereafter. For a few years he was able to work again in the stone quarries, spasmodically, but for many years he was unable to work at all.
Annie Jane managed to provide for the family, and all the children had to participate in running the household. Sally was baking all their bread by the time she was seven; and when the doctor came to deliver yet another baby he was surprised to smell bread baking when he knew the lady of the house was hors de combat on her bed of labour upstairs. When he saw the scrawny little waif Sally competently acting as the family baker, he took her in his horse and carriage back to his house where his wife gave her a slice of cake and a glass of milk; this spontaneous kindness so impressed Sally that she talked of it to me even when she was in her eighties; and remembering her own delight she was always ready to give sweets or fruit or toys as unexpected gifts to children she met casually, all through her long life. The Marsh sisters were all sent out on the moors in the autumn by four o'clock in the morning to make sure of a good harvest of the bilberries which were so abundant on the hillside; and Annie Jane made jam with the free crop and walked the two miles or so into Matlock and sold it to Smedley's Hydro; in return, apart from the cash, she also received generous basins of dripping which was one of the mainstays of the family diet. She also sold them cakes and butter made from the milk of their one cow, and at one time took fish round to sell in a little pony and trap. They grew their own vegetables, Harry digging trenches, one child behind him scattering manure into the trench, another followed with the potatoes or the seed and a third would fill it in with the freshly dug earth.
For all their poverty and meagre way of life they were a really joyful family, the parents loving towards each other and towards the children, and the children loving their parents and each other. And although the babies arrived in quick succession, there was general rejoicing at each birth. The older children took care of the smaller ones. When Sally was ten, she was put in charge of the latest arrival when the baby was a few months old. Of course there were about four children to a bed and one night the baby, Clara, was crying; still half asleep, Sally lay and patted the infant and sang "Come to the Saviour, come to the Lord..." without opening her eyes. The baby continued to howl. At last, Father Harry stood in the doorway, candle held aloft at the end of a night-shirt-clad arm. "Sally, the baby's cryin'!" Upon investigation, poor little baby Clara was found to be howling UNDER the bed, while sleepy Sally was comforting the pillow!
Their pleasures were simple. All the brood belonged to the Band of Hope and signed the Pledge almost as soon as they could write. (My mother often hummed the song "My drink is water bright, water bright, water bright, My drink is water bright from the crystal stream." And when my eldest brother was a general practitioner he once said to one of his patients, "What you need is plenty of water bright - drink as much of it as you can." The poor bewildered patient returned in a few days and said she had asked all the chemists in town and none of them had ever heard of water bright!) They sang and recited at Band of Hope concerts, and went on Sunday School outings. Their Sabbaths were kept intolerably holy (well, it would have been, intolerable for me but they accepted it all with joyous grace apparently). Sunday mornings were spent in Chapel singing Wesleyan hymns and in the afternoons they all trouped off to Sunday school. In the evenings Harry would gather his brood about him and sing to them in a rich baritone; my Aunty Hannah, child number six, always said she enjoyed listening to Paul Robeson because "he sounds like my Dad". How we daughters flatter our fathers - I dare say I am guilty of it too as I write.
In spite of all the affection, (or perhaps because of it?) the family was strictly brought up. Annie Jane, understandably in view of her fecundity and fiscal responsibilities, could be very sharp tongued. And while it was Harry's pride that he had brought up twelve 'childer' and never raised his hand to one of them, he certainly raised his voice from time to time. When Sally was about 16 she went for an innocent evening stroll with a lad called Tom Twigg. She was met at home by an irate Father. He asked menacingly: "'ast a bin aht wi' Tom Twigg?" and when Sally acknowledged that she had, he roared between clenched teeth: "Well, tha's let on a bonny booger now, so 'elp my boody liver if tha' 'asna!", his voice rising to a high-pitched crescendo. Apparently, he and Mr Twigg,senior, had fallen out over the price of a cow. Sally crept to bed and any romance with Tom Twigg was nipped in the bud. More than seventy years later, when I was negotiating with the Derbyshire County Council for the planting of Mother's memorial trees, one of the letters was signed by a Tom Twigg; I wrote and told him that had our grandfathers not fallen out over the sale of a cow, we might have been brother and sister!
At thirteen Sally left school and went to take care of a publican's baby. But she had to report at six in the morning; she washed the long hall floor and lit the fires and then took over the baby. She did all the cleaning of the private dwelling (not the pub itself) and for this she was able to take home and give to her parents half- a -crown a week. (12� new pence.) But fortunately one of her cousins found her a job as a pantry maid in Smedley's Hydro. There she enjoyed luxurious food and really blossomed in the unfamiliarly lavish surroundings; she was a rarely beautiful girl, hardworking and of a very gentle and graceful nature and she soon graduated to the dining room where she worked as a waitress. The hours were long and the work was hard but she was used to that. She enjoyed new friendships and the companionship of a large staff and thought herself lucky to be there. Whereas at home her diet had been mainly vegetables and bread- and- dripping or bread- and- treacle, in the hydro she was serving a profusion of delicacies and she had her choice of the menus when the guests had finished their meals. She learned a little basic French from the menus; for although she had had little formal education, Sally had a brisk and creative mind, which was to make her a supportive, congenial and adaptable partner for Shapurji later on in my story. Varied entertainments were provided for the guests and, although Sally obviously could not participate, she enjoyed seeing the dances, the balls, the concerts and tableaux- vivants as well as the sessions of cards and other games. How stimulating all this must have been after the quiet and confined life in Tansley!
The dining room was spacious, with pillared archways on either side and it served as a ballroom or concert-hall after dinner had been served and the huge table that ran down the centre of the room had been removed. There were also small tables set in the window alcoves; and it was at one of these that Dorabji, Mehrbai and Shapurji sat down to dine. They arrived in November 1905 and it was not until Daddy's birthday, the twenty-eightth of March, 1906, that he found the opportunity and the courage to speak to Sally at last.
When, after my father's death, my brother Beram intended writing his biography, my mother wrote the following notes which will tell the story of the courtship better than I can:
He saw me first on his birthday, March 28th 1906. He asked Maria Marsh who I was. She told him I was her cousin so he asked her to call me over to his table and introduce me to him; which she did. With his beard, I took him for an old man. He gave me flowers almost every day and asked me to go for walks. I was too frightened to do so but I kept saying I would just to satisfy him for the time being. Whenever I went out he would walk behind me. One afternoon I went to Matlock Bath by bus; when I offered my fare, the conductor said a gentleman behind had paid. I gave a blind man a penny in the afternoon without knowing Daddy was following; afterwards he told me that he had given the blind man two shillings and told him what a lucky man he was as he had been given a penny by the sweetest girl in the world.
One day I got a note from a shoe shop...would I go in and try on some shoes. There was a note inside a special pair of shoes which I was to try on from him saying that he hoped to be able to buy all my shoes from now on. I happened to say I would like a cycle so he bought one and pretended to give away raffle tickets to several people and I was given the ' winning ticket'.
The day he left the Hydro, he asked me to see him off on the 2.19 train. I said yes but had no intention of going. My friend and I went out in the afternoon. When we returned we got a phone message from Daddy to say he was on Matlock Bath station and he intended to remain there however long it was until I went to see him. I went at nine o'clock at night and said good-bye to him. He wrote to me twice a day after he went away. He came one Sunday for the day. I saw him for a few minutes; he tried to hold my arm when we were walking; I told him not to do that or people might think we were engaged. This was always a joke in later years. Then he came to Tansley for my eighteenth birthday. He saw Dad and Mother and he got them on his side. We all went in a chara- banc to the Peveril of the Peak Hotel. After lunch Daddy said, "Come for a walk in the garden." I said "No." He said, "It's all right, Dad is coming too," We had reached the rose garden when Dad said, "Sally, I have a birthday present for you." And then Daddy said he was the present - imagine my disappointment. From then on he considered we were engaged, but I only accepted the engagement ring on November 6th. (the date was in the ring which I lost) This was when I came to London to see his Mother and his brother Sorab. She stayed in England until the following summer and most of the time she was at Smedley's. She then went to America where she died on November 23rd 1907...."
Quite early in the courtship, Shapurji changed Sally's name to Sehri, a word of his own invention, conjured from Sarah and Sally; this was because 'Sally' was very similar to a swear-word in his language, Gujerati. Her parents and sisters always continued to call her Sally, but in our home, socially and officially, she went by the new name of 'Sehri' (pronounced like 'Mary' but with an ess.)
So it seems that Shapurji pursued the shyly elusive Sally with the same dogged obstinacy and imagination with which he had recently sought out the iron ore in the Indian jungles. Once again, his obstinacy paid off. They were married on August 14th, 1907, in the Parish Church of St Thomas, Moorside, Oldham. The Marsh family had all moved from Tansley in the hope of finding more lucrative employment in Oldham for all the sisters, now growing up and many of them now of an age to earn their own living.
Shapurji's Mother was staying still in Smedleys where she got to know Sally well and a bond of affection was forged between these two ladies both so loved by Shapurji.
Sadly, although my mother treasured all my father's letters, when he died she placed them all in his coffin with him, together with her wedding shoes which he had sentimentally kept for all those years. In a way it is better that they have been lost to us for they must have been intimate and personal and no biography should provide an excuse for usurping the privacy of individuals, even after their death. But I have to confess that, were they available, I would have read them with affectionate interest.
But not all his time in Matlock had been spent in wilful dalliance. It seems that from almost the first day of his arrival in Matlock he involved himself in political and trades union affairs. This is recorded by one Mrs Richards, writing to my brother in 1937. She had kept a glass and china shop opposite the Hydro and apparently Father used to go in there and talk to her. No doubt he must have found the regimen at the Hydro pretty boring and for the first few weeks at least, being still on crutches, he probably could not move very far afield. She writes: "...He came in one day to make some small purchases. During his conversation then and on subsequent occasions I soon discovered he was very interested in politics, at that time, socialistic. Your Father found I was interested and he would quite often come into the shop... and talk long and earnestly of the injustices meted out to the working classes.....His whole thought and actions were how to get people interested in helping to bring about a better life and improved conditions for the workers. If one's thoughts were totally opposite to those of your Father, his sincerity and deep feeling for the cause he held so dear could not leave one unaffected. About this time...he was recovering from a severe illness and bodily he was very frail, but so great mentally. I remember on his birthday, 28th March, 1906, he came into the shop and said he was going to have a birthday party! And would I prepare it. I readily consented and on my asking how many were coming he said - much to his own amusement - you and I!'.. (This was the day on which he first spoke to Sally Marsh and he must have been in a happy and jocular mood!) ' I well recollect on that day he was feeling very strongly the indifference shown towards the working people and was troubled that those who held his convictions and were in power appeared to move so slowly or not at all. (At this stage, he was still a Liberal). I was always a very ready and interested listener and after some long talk upon these subjects he would say he felt better for having got them off his chest!
He expressed a wish to pay a visit to the potteries and I accompanied him as was his wish. Having to change trains at Derby we went to see the Crown Derby Works. He enjoyed seeing the wonderful and beautiful pottery made. On continuing our journey to Stoke-on-Trent, the train passed through a very heavy snowstorm, which, I believe, was the first snow your Father had seen. ......he went to London. From there I received from him long letters...still on the theme of politics and urging me to do what I could in an endeavour to bring others along and get them interested in helping to better the lives and conditions of my own class.
The next I heard of your Father, he was in Oldham; he wrote telling me that he and your Mother were to be married and would my husband be his best man. Unfortunately my husband was away in Scotland. Your Mother and Father came to stay with us with a wee babe and if you are their eldest son, you were that babe. The last time I saw your Father was about two years ago, (1935) when he came to Nottingham to speak. I would like to say my life has been made the richer for having known so great a man and I am quite sure there are many others who can say the same. In conclusion may I quote these words which your Father wrote in a book of mine on January 20th, 1906:-
Be strong! Be good! Be pure!
The right only shall endure.
Wishing you every success, Signed, Yours Truly, S.Richards."
This letter definitely makes it plain that almost as soon as he had arrived in England, he was already committed to a belief in Liberal politics; the politics of his family and of his social milieu had always been Liberal. In London he gave The National Liberal Club as his address but it would seem that he had already advanced far along the road of compassionate socialism as early as 1905. There is also among my brother Beram's letters, one from the Rt Hon. J.R.Clynes, M.P., President of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers dated 2nd March,1937, in which he says:- "I attended a number of meetings under the auspices of the above Union held in Matlock and one or two adjacent places during 1907. We, of course, spoke not only on Trade Union and Industrial matters, but dealt with political questions from the Socialist standpoint. Your Father attended these meetings, and in due course he asked me to arrange a talk with him. We had very pleasant conversations, and, as I learned later, he gave me some credit for turning his views in the Socialist direction. .....
Signed. Yours sincerely, J.R.Clynes
However, I think that the claim that he had turned my Father's views in the Socialist direction is really contradicted by Mrs Richard's letter which makes it quite clear that Shapurji held virtually Socialist views as early as 1905; in any case, he must have been moving very close to Socialism to have been attending the meetings at which he met Clynes. Spitam Cama also said that Shapurji knew Keir Hardie well, "...was quite a pal of his", but there is no indication of the date of their meeting.The Matlock newspapers of the day report frequent Liberal Party meetings which were enthusiastically attended, often to over-flowing. I feel safe in assuming that Shapurji must have attended some of these .
After the marriage, Shapurji and Sally came to London where they had rooms at 730, Holloway Road, in North London. It was now that Shapurji's political involvement really began.