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in repeating the chorus, in all innocence I imitated Mother’s voice cracking and was surprised at the impact it had on the audience. There was laughter and cheers, then more money-throwing; and when Mother came on the stage to carry me off, her presence evoked tremendous applause. That night was my first appearance on the stage and Mother’s last.
    When the fates deal in human destiny, they heed neither pity nor justice. Thus they dealt with Mother. She never regained her voice. As autumn turns to winter, so our circumstances turned from bad to worse. Although Mother was careful and had saved a little money, that very soon vanished, as did her jewellery and other small possessions which she pawned in order to live, hoping all the while that her voice would return.
    Meanwhile from three comfortable rooms we moved into two, then into one, our belongings dwindling and the neighbourhoods into which we moved growing progressively drabber.
    She turned to religion, in the hope, I suppose, that it would restore her voice. She regularly attended Christ Church in the Westminster Bridge Road, and every Sunday I was made to sit through Bach’s organ music and to listen with aching impatience to the Reverend F. B. Meyer’s fervent and dramatic voice echoing down the nave like shuffling feet. His orations must have been appealing, for occasionally I would catch Mother quietly wiping away a tear, which slightly embarrassed me.
    Well do I remember Holy Communion on one hot summer’s day, and the cool silver cup containing delicious grape-juice that passed along the congregation – and Mother’s gentle restraining hand when I drank too much of it. And how relieved I was when the Reverend closed the Bible, for it meant that the sermon would soon end and they would start prayers and the final hymn.
    Since Mother had joined the church she seldom saw her theatrical friends. That world had evaporated, had become onlya memory. It seemed that we had always lived in wretched circumstances. The interim of one year seemed a lifetime of travail. Now we existed in cheerless twilight; jobs were hard to find and Mother, untutored in everything but the stage, was further handicapped. She was small, dainty and sensitive, fighting against terrific odds in a Victorian era in which wealth and poverty were extreme, and poorer-class women had little choice but to do menial work or to be the drudges of sweatshops, Occasionally she obtained work nursing, but such employment was rare and of short duration. Nevertheless, she was resourceful: having made her own theatrical costumes, she was expert with her needle and able to earn a few shillings dressmaking for members of the church. But it was barely enough to support the three of us. Because of Father’s drinking, his theatrical engagements became irregular, as did his payments of ten shillings a week.
    Mother had now sold most of her belongings. The last thing to go was her trunk of theatrical costumes. These things she clung to in the hope that she might recover her voice and return to the stage. Occasionally, she would delve into the trunk to find something, and we would see a spangled costume or a wig and would ask her to put them on. I remember her donning a judge’s cap and gown and singing in her weak voice one of her old song successes that she had written herself. The song had a bouncy two-four tempo and went as follows:
    I’m a lady judge,
    And a good judge too.
    Judging cases fairly –
    They are so very rarely –
    I mean to teach the lawyers
    A thing or two,
    And show them just exactly
    What the girls can do…
    With amazing ease she would then break into a graceful dance and forget her dressmaking and regale us with her other song successes and perform the dances that went with them until she was breathless and exhausted. Then she would reminisce and show us some of her old playbills. One read:
    ENGAGEMENT EXTRAORDINARY
    Of the dainty and talented
    Lily Harley,
    Serio-comedienne, impersonator