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Martha Harris: a biography
by Meg Harris
Williams Martha Harris
was born Martha Gemmell Dunlop on the 13th April 1919 at her
parentsÕ farm at Beith in Ayrshire, first child of Gabriel Dunlop and
Margaret McLure, who then had three more children in rapid succession, two
girls and a boy: Nancy (Agnes), Peggy (Margaret) and Jack (John). Their maternal grandfather was named
Mazzini McLure in honour of the Italian revolutionary, and he himself had
partisan opinions of
a somewhat eccentric nature: thus, after quarrelling with the minister over a
point of theology he never entered the church again, and it was left to his
wife to shepherd the ten young McLures
(all born neatly two years apart) over the hill to the church on
Sundays. The McLures were of
Clan McLeod clan and intermarried with the Howies who were of Huguenot
descent. They were all
good-looking and independent-minded.
Four members of this generation emigrated to Margaret
was aged 30 before she cautiously consented to the bonds of matrimony, in
response to GabrielÕs persistent suit.
She ran her own thriving tailoring company with six apprentices and in
the town she was a more wellknown figure than her husband, who was
disconcerted to discover that he was referred to as ÔMaggie McLureÕs
husbandÕ, especially since from an early age he had been accustomed to being
the person in charge. His own
father died when he was 9 and he was trained in agriculture by his uncle, who
decided that by age 16 Gabriel was old enough to run his own farm and look
after his mother, invalid sister and younger brother. He was a man of quiet authority - far
from loquacious – who expected to be obeyed in his own house, yet
despite strongly held opinions was never tyrannical, as he had the unusual
quality of allowing his point of view to become modified by reality - and by
his sister in law Catherine, who a few years later came to live with the
family, and whose opinions were equally strong but frequently opposed to his
own. It was his custom to keep a
rolled-up copy of the Glasgow Herald by his side during dinner, to deliver a bop on the
head to anyone who misbehaved.
My mother described him as Ôa good manÕ – her highest expression
of praise. Ten
months after their marriage Martha – always known as Mattie – was
born, and proved not an easy baby to manage. She refused to stay asleep at night, so her father
fastened a string to the cradle so that he could rock it from his bed when
she woke up. It wasnÕt long
before a young girl was brought into the household whose sole task was to
carry the baby around while her mother was busy with the full-time work of
the farm and dairy. MattieÕs
particular brand of idealism is illustrated by an incident that all the
family consider characteristic, and which occurred when she was about one and
a half (about the time her sister Nancy was born). Mattie was carried outside to look at the moon,
which she immediately named ÔDaddyÕs tick-tockÕ. When she discovered that she was not able to have it, she
burst into inconsolable wailing.
A friend of her parents, listening from the house, said, Ôwhy donÕt
you just give the bairn what she wants?Õ to which they replied Ôwe canÕt
– she is asking for the moon!Õ
For years after the death of her father, Mattie wore his watchchain in
the form of a necklace. When
she was a little older she pestered her parents to be allowed one evening to
be allowed to stay up after her usual bedtime of 7 oÕclock, utterly convinced
that there must be magic in the air after this time. She was exceedingly disillusioned
when finally this request was granted and she discovered that the mysteries
of the universe were not after all revealed. Mattie did not
appear openly jealous of her sisters, whom she frequently led into mischief;
though she did seem jealous of her brother, whose birth – unlike that
of the girls – was announced in the newspapers because he was a
boy. (A farm, as a business,
depended on having boys in the family.)
After JackÕs birth their mother fell into a prolonged severe
depression. It was at that point
that Catherine, the youngest McLure sister, came to live with the family and
from then on the children in effect had two mothers. Aunt Cathy had been working in an
office in By the time Cathy joined them, the Dunlops had
moved from their original rented farm at Nether Grae to one at Lugtonridge,
which although rather less profitable was owned by Gabriel Dunlop. The Lugton Burn ran alongside and
there was constant worry that the children might fall in. One day when the river was in spate
in the spring, Mattie led the other children across it on top of the wobbly
storm-gates, placed there to catch debris. Another time the adults were struck with panic when Peggy,
aged two, wandered in and announced dreamily that Ô
And the
children rarely came to blows themselves. Their inventiveness was put to work to find other modes of
venting their exasperation: thus they would hiss, ÔIÕll scream in your ear!Õ,
or Mattie would make the pigs squeal, by chasing them with her hands on their
backs – a noise that got on her sistersÕ nerves. The children were
given tasks on the farm as soon as they could manage them. Taking tea out to the harvesters was
one of these; and in warm weather, when she was thirsty, Mattie would stop in
the field on the way and milk a cow for a drink. MattieÕs most obstinate exploits however were
probably verbal ones. She had
always been precocious in her speech and learned very early to argue
relentlessly. After a heated
debate in adolescence about the King and Mrs Simpson, she was told: ÔyouÕd
argue all night that a black crow was white!Õ to which she replied Ôyes, and
before dawn, I would prove it too!Õ
One day when she was small, Mattie was rebuked for demanding of a
visitor who always brought them sweets,
Ôwhat have you got for us?Õ
ÔYou mustnÕt askÕ, she was told. So next
time he came, she twisted the formula into one which she thought would appear
acceptable: ÔIÕm no asking, Tam, IÕm no asking!Õ Despite the requirements of obedience, she was determined
to find a channel for getting her message across. Yet outside the home she
adhered strictly to her fatherÕs precepts. From the age of six, she was entrusted
with escorting My motherÕs memories of starting school have been
recounted, faintly disguised, in her book Thinking about infants and young
children, when she and
her best friend were taken to school for the first time by their mothers and
they heard the disturbing sound of the LordÕs Prayer being chanted in
assembly. Her mother tried to
reassure her by saying they were Ôtalking to the teacherÕ, but the child
thought, ÔIÕd never heard anyone talking like that before and I had a vague
feeling of something extraordinary going onÕ. Then she noticed her mother was Ôshaking slightly, all
upsetÕ, so she started to howl and said she wanted to go home:
Another
story from this period of early childhood may be found in the same book, in
the form of a six-year oldÕs fantasy about her night-time parents. It was Christmas time and Mattie was
thinking with Ôa kind of aweÕ of Santa Claus coming with his sledge from the
frozen north, and also of the Snow Queen who stole Gerda from little Kay
– a story that she had just been told by her mother, who was imminently
expecting her next baby. Mattie
did not manage to explain her disappointment with the doll she had received for
Christmas (for not being a real baby), and this seemed to end her fantasy of
a fairytale romance with her mother.
The following
Christmas morning – with her baby brother now solidly established
solidly on terra firma – Mattie was discovered bumping about downstairs where the
children had hung their stockings:
In a way it was
the end of the child who had cried for the moon, for DaddyÕs tick-tock. In one sense those shadowy figures
from the eternal world, Father Christmas and the Snow Queen, became Ôonly
Father and MotherÕ. In another
sense they were relegated to some mysterious place amongst the blue hills and
lochs of the north from which she was soon to be weaned away, but which
remained firmly established in her imagination as her personal vision of
Ôthat immortal sea/ Which brought us hitherÕ (Wordsworth, ÔImmortalityÕ
ode). From childhood on, she said, she felt
that whoever looked at her intently would see the hills in her eyes. For when she was eight years old, what was probably
the most dramatic event of her life occurred: the family left Scotland, to
stand – like KeatsÕs Ruth in a passage which Aunt Cathy used to
describe the move - Ôin tears amid the alien cornÕ (Ode to a Nightingale).
This seemed to colour my motherÕs perception of things for ever
afterwards: wherever she was, was always in a sense temporary until
eventually she would return to
Mattie said the
book which captured most poignantly the quality of her life in At first the children, like their mother, were very
miserable at TurnerÕs Hill. They found themselves in a more primitive,
semi-feudal society where the village school had no ambition beyond turning
out farm labourers and domestic servants, and where in effect the Dunlops
were foreigners, barely speaking the same language as the natives. Mattie was too depressed to shepherd
the other children around as she had always done in the past. It was left to Nancy, then aged six,
to defend the flock against the yokels of Sussex, which she managed fairly
effectively by taking off her double-breasted overcoat, which had large
saucer-like buttons, and swinging it about her head so that the buttons left
the enemy battered and bruised.
The children were frequently ill. Mattie began to grow tall at an alarming rate, which she
converted into another weapon to use against the foreigners, in particular
against the headmaster of the village school, since she became subject to
fainting fits and knew that she had only to close her eyes and she would
faint. The rule at school
assembly was to stand completely still with eyes shut. But eventually, after carrying her
out over his shoulder once too often, the headmaster exempted her from
restraint and allowed her to fidget as much as she pleased. As for Sunday school, she argued
herself out of it, while Jack achieved the same goal by arranging to be
expelled. Later when Peggy
complained that she had to go to church and Mattie didnÕt, she was told that
this was because Mattie knew her Bible from cover to cover. After the initial period of transition to their new
surroundings, when the family became firmly established in the community and
closely linked with some other Scottish immigrant families in the area, the
later childhood and adolescence of the Dunlop children became an exuberantly
happy time, in which the usual rawness and angst was played out in a
containing framework of busy activity and comradeship. Each member of the family had his
appointed tasks in the house and on the farm.
Unlike the
others Mattie tended not to have pets (although she always wanted a pony):
she preferred her animals to be either wild or working. (And perhaps it was the same with
human beings.) The children used to jump into an old pony trap lying around
in the yard and push it down the slope to see how far it would go; Mattie
always gave it the final shove before jumping in herself. She was also a great tree-climber and
cyclist. She loved singing and
dancing, especially the Scottish variety, and would persuade Peggy to play
the melodeon or piano while they sang, or organise carol-singing expeditions
at Christmas. When a mother
herself, she organised us into playing the recorder and singing to while away
long car journeys. She used folksongs as lullabies, and she always treasured
the fantasy of learning Ôa little instrumentÕ herself. And from early on she was a voracious
reader, devouring any scrap of print that crossed her field of vision:
sometimes, she said, as a form of escapism; at other times, penetrating her
mind Ôlike wine through waterÕ - to use a favourite metaphor of hers taken
from Wuthering Heights,
which she read aged eight, propped up near the stove whilst she was stirring
the porridge for family breakfast.
Withy Pitts
Farm became a centre of attraction for young people who came and stayed with
the family. They were allowed to
wander for hours in the woods of neighbouring Balcombe Forest, playing and
debating, and unhindered by contemporary notions of what it was proper for
young ladies and gentlemen to be doing together, since the adults saw that it
was not necessary to curtail any of their activities through unnecessary
moral strictures. Mattie imbibed
not opinions, but values, from her three parents. As she wrote herself:
Despite the
strictness of the domestic rules about manners and appearance, their father
was enlightened regarding their need for freedom to explore friendships with
the opposite sex. He would say
something like, Ôand who is this young man coming to visit?Õ, while puffing
away at his pipe, to which the girls would reply Ôoh, nobody in particular, DaddyÕ – particularity being
lost amidst three girls of nearly the same age. The girls shared dresses and jewellery, and had to
fight for indoor privacy where none of them had a room of her own. Their
mother made or superintended the making of their clothes with her usual fine
dressmaking taste, so they were well and often slightly unusually dressed,
although in individual terms their wardrobes were small. Mattie
was renowned for dreaminess, untidiness, and lateness, frequently holding up
the school bus – or even occasionally taking the wrong one. Perhaps there was also an element of
rebellion against the impeccable standards of her mother, of whom Aunty Cathy
said that Ôwhen Grandma made something, it was as neat inside as outÕ. Once when Mattie was heard to use a
swear-word, she was made to wash out her mouth with soap and water; and
though she never swore again, she still refused to be neat inside and
out. It was characteristic of
her that on the day of her first ball, she broke a front tooth playing
hockey, but nonetheless went to the dance with half a tooth missing and a red
swollen nose. She was not above
subterfuge. When she and
Peggy were forbidden for a while to go to the swimming baths because their
mother said they were spending too much time in the water, they used to throw
their swimming costumes out of the front window each morning, then say their
goodbyes and leave for school from the back door, retrieving the costumes
from the front lawn as they went. At
age eleven, Mattie (and later the others) went to the county grammar school
at Mattie
had few enemies but she knew how to deflate the opposition. In this context
the headmaster sometimes felt his control was not quite as complete as it
might be. In misogynistic
times, he vaguely sensed impropriety somewhere, and tried to ensure that
Mattie didnÕt know her own cleverness, even to the extent of trying to
conceal from her the successful results of a scholarship exam, until Aunt
Cathy ferreted them out of him.
Mattie was always surprised by her academic success although nobody
else was. She got the news about
passing her Higher School Certificate while she happened to be out on an errand
to the village shop, and her excitement was evidenced by the bag of squashed
bananas she brought home. When she wanted peace at school, she used to
clamber up on the roof to read a book. The only
subject at school for which she could not summon up any enthusiasm was
domestic science, and she was expelled from the class after rolling her
pastry along the floor. She
never cooked or sewed until the end of her first year at university, when
during the vacation she decided to make a shirt and culottes for each member
of the family and completed this project from start to finish without any
supervision. (In later years,
she was pleased when a professional chef complimented her on her Cordon-bleu
standard cookery – which had developed owing to her desire to provide
abundantly for her students.)
She also loved to act in plays, and amongst others, produced a version
of P. G. WodehouseÕs If I Were You which toured beyond
Although
it was clear to everyone that Mattie ought to go to university, the
headmaster had decided that this was not necessary for girls, so had excluded
the girls at his school from Latin lessons – essential in those days to
pass university entrance.
Encouraged by Aunt Cathy, Mattie succeeded in doing the Latin course
on her own in six months, and passed the admission exam to This
happened in 1938. Mattie was
slim and attractive with a lovely figure although her mother despaired of her
slouching deportment. Her
friends were in love with her, both then and later, including my father, whom
she met at university but did not marry for another eleven years. He was of a retiring and studious
disposition and his energies were bound up in intercollegiate chess
tournaments. My mother stayed in
During
the war she worked as a teacher, while her sisters studied nursing in My
father had also started as a sincere conscientious objector. During the first
part of the war he worked on a farm under Ôthe wisest man he ever knewÕ (in
his own description). This was
the internal-father farmer of his poem ÔThe LarkÕ:
He then served
in the Friends Ambulance Unit, with whom he entered
In 1949, to the
consternation of all at Withy Pitts, my mother announced that she intended to
get divorced. This was considered an act of dubious morality with dire social
consequences. It was Aunt Cathy who objected most stoutly, on principle,
because she had supported her niece the first time round and felt it was too
much to be required to do a volte face - though later, she and Roland became
the best of friends. Divorce
proceedings at that time were both difficult and expensive. Although my mother was scarcely
bothered about the social stigma she anguished over the pain caused to the
three protagonists. My parentsÕ marriage was witnessed only by Nancy and her
husband Bruce Holt, a civil engineer, whom she met during the war in
India. My father was the only
child of a talented but somewhat unstable and ultimately penniless pianist -
Ôruined by successÕ my mother said – and a once-beautiful but rather
helpless and clinging mother, who had little help from her husband with the
upbringing of their son, whom she worshipped possessively. Soon after my parentsÕ marriage my
grandfather died of cancer of the face, and a few years after that, moved by
my fatherÕs compassion and sadness (and the distance into When
my parents married they had a debt of a hundred pounds (a considerable sum in
those days) and some furniture made of orange-boxes. Accommodation was hard to find at
that time and after temporary lodgings in several places they took up
residence in a flat in Kensington that was vacated by Nancy and Bruce, and
remained there for 2 years. Like
her own mother, my mother was 30 when she fell pregnant for the first
time. Hospital consultants were
not informative, and during the monitoring of her first pregnancy she picked
up a stray word from the gynaecologist who was addressing some students, and
on returning home found it (or
something like it) in a medical dictionary borrowed from the library, only to
discover that it referred to a condition that was Ôgenerally fatal to the
mother or baby or bothÕ. I was born at
It is the
moment of catastrophic change – Ôon the ridgeÕ – heralded by
Prince Andre in War and Peace, or Hamlet in ÔTo be or not to beÕ, or Keats in his journey to Burns
country, Ôbeyond the bourn of careÕ.
Like the nesting lark, Ôin perilÕ but Ôhappier than in a vague
a-sexual loveÕ, it is a metaphor for the brushing of spirit against
flesh. In fact, my mother died
one day after the anniversary of this birthday, exactly 32 years later; just
as my fatherÕs mother died on his own birthday. By
this time we had moved to a larger flat in Westbourne Terrace where we lived
for seven years, together with my grandmother and a succession of au pair
girls (thirteen in total); and like all guilty working mothers, ours always
maintained we were fond of at least some of them. During this period my father was teaching in secondary
schools, inevitably poorly paid, and my mother was doing the expensive
psychoanalytic training and also the Tavistock training with John Bowlby and
Nusia Bick. Until the end of her
analysis and training some ten years later our parents seemed constantly
preoccupied with money and the lack of it. In the early days they used to take one child each on the
back of large black bikes to Portobello market on Saturday mornings. Then they got a Ford van, windowless
at the back (since there was a tax concession on absence of windows –
rather like the 18th century window tax which nobody realised was
a health hazard). In this the
whole family went on rigorous camping holidays in Scotland or on the
continent; only on one night did we ever seek shelter in a hotel, when rain
flooded the trenches dug round our tent by the side of Loch Doone, where we
were camping alongside friends with a family of boys who determinedly
survived the deluge. Back in town,
a Heinkel bubble car was purchased exclusively for my motherÕs use; she used
to park it outside the Tavistock Clinic (at its original site in central
London) at right angles to the kerb, whence its tail would regularly be
knocked off by passing traffic, and the door pockets of the vehicle were
stuffed with ten-shilling parking fines. My father never went in it; he couldnÕt bear to watch my
mother drive. It was one of the
few ways in which she could ruffle his equanimical temperament and evoke
despair and rage. Indeed
she always maintained an obstinate and deliberate incomprehension of things
mechanical, whilst using them with a cavalier disinterest; for she liked to
have all the household machines on at once – television, record-player,
cooker, typewriter, sewing machine.
She herself pointed out the contrast with her own motherÕs dexterity,
admiring the way she could take her sewing machine to pieces and put it back
together again. Her own style, however, was not imitable. She never gave matter-of-fact
instructions about modes of procedure; her recipe for gardening, for instance
(Ôplant so many flowers that the weeds canÕt growÕ) is impossible to follow
if taken literally. You could
see that she was Ôdoing itÕ but you could never make out exactly what ÔitÕ
was; all you could really gather was that if you approached it in the right
spirit ÔitÕ was possible.
Neither she nor Roland required peace and quiet in a study - with the
children out of the way - before intellectual work could begin. Such work got done semi-invisibly
amidst the hubbub of existence.
Only the annual preparation of the school timetable (for which my
father built a special table the length of the bedroom) was honoured by
seclusion and undivided attention.
Meanwhile, in quiet collaboration, Mattie and Roland were
experimenting with innovative methods of education - initiating a counselling
service in my fatherÕs school (unheard of before) and discussing how to
establish a Child Psychotherapy profession that would enable Esther BickÕs
psychoanalytic training to survive in the world.
When
we were aged 10 and 7 respectively, my mother got what she had long pined
for: a house with a garden.
Material circumstances improved when she finished her training
analysis and our father became the deputy head of a large comprehensive
school. The house at My
mother was not a keen sailor for her own part, though certain features of
boating appealed to her – such as visiting other countries from a
waterfront viewpoint. She was
always interested in other lifestyles, particularly the homely ones of of For
the last year of the boat (before our fatherÕs sudden death at age 50) we
also had a quaint little cottage in
Buttermilk Hall near
The various
atelier groups and more formal educational organizations inspired by Don and
Mattie, following on from the pioneering work initiated by Mattie and Roland,
came under the umbrella of the Ôcouple aegisÕ – though they had a hard
struggle to try to maintain their integrity thereafter, especially in the
adverse conditions of the tyrannical Thatcher social regime that followed,
and which could be considered a phenomenon of the developed world not merely
of the isles of Britain. Perhaps
my mother always remained in one sense the baby who cried for the moon. Yet her brand of idealism never consisted
of idealising, either persons or institutions. She could diagnose anyoneÕs moral deficiencies with
laser-like accuracy, and we in her family often received the diagnosis
untempered by mercy; although to the greater world which she was likewise
dedicated to reforming, she generally gave gentler and more circuitous
treatment. She had a strong
sense of being privileged – not worldly privilege but spiritual –
derived from her internal image of Ôwide-embracing loveÕ, whose richness
towards those who she sensed were more needy, vulnerable and uncertain than
herself (which was almost everybody).
Her missionary spirit strove to create circumstances which would make
it easier for people to be good and Ôtrue to themselvesÕ, despite the
original sin in their natures which was a fundamental part of her view of the
mind (with its parallel in Mrs KleinÕs formulations of the same thing), and
which she interpreted as a form of falseness, akin to BlakeÕs or
Money-KyrleÕs or BionÕs Platonic view of Ôthe lieÕ as simply an unreal
obscuring of the hidden truth, not a real entity in itself. She worked with a light touch,
never hauling out a cannon to squash a fly. Rather, she removed peopleÕs fear of the consequences of
becoming good, as she did weeds from the garden, infusing strength and
replanting with joy and hope.
Like the second, reformed Cathy of the end of Wuthering Heights, she was Ôafraid of nothingÕ. Nobody could bully her. Confronted by Mattie Harris, the
sonorous foghorns of would-be despotism and pomposity were revealed in their
true light as little squeaking voices.
In the midst of cooking she would sometimes be mentally preoccupied
with her tactics for disposing of the enemy: Ôyip yip yipÕ she would mutter in
a sing-song way, bopping their imaginary heads with a wooden spoon just as
her father had done with the Yet she knew the eternal spirit which
she embodied operated in a world of flux and change. Hence she would create gardens
wherever she went, not with the sense of building a monument, but of
manifesting a spirit. She knew
her work and her life were part of a wider process of growth and decay, and
always said that when she died, she would like to be buried not cremated
because she liked the thought of being eaten by the worms. In the same spirit she enjoyed ByronÕs
epithet about the Egyptian pharaoh Cheops who misguidedly built a pyramid,
Ôthinking it was just the thing/ To keep his memory whole, and mummy hidÕ:
Her favourite
novels were those in which both plot and characters seem to grow out of the landscape,
moved by its poetic spirit – the hills in their eyes. At the end of novels by Thomas Hardy,
Grassic Gibbon or Wuthering Heights, the buildings and institutions crumble back into
the landscape like Ôdust to dustÕ, assimilated into its natural beauty, but
the spirit transfers via the love of individuals.
Published
in Italian in ÔUn omaggio a Martha HarrisÕ, Quaderni di psioterapia infantile
no.18 (1989), translated by Aroldo Stevens. Postscript The above was
substantially written in 1987 as a family project with the help in particular
of my aunt Nancy Holt. A few
additions have been made to coincide with the Trust launch and publications
of Martha HarrisÕ books in 2007.
Time – pace Cheops – has confirmed the pioneering and heroic quality of her
life and work, despite what appears to be a temporary regression in societyÕs
educational mores deriving from the inequality and rigidity associated with
continuing Thatcherism (as a social phenomenon rather than a particular
personage) and from the social turbulence arising from our clumsy endeavours
to come to terms with the electronic revolution. When Mrs Thatcher was in
government, there were frequent complaints that she was a look-alike woman
not a real one – an Ôiron dollÕ whose tradition was upheld by a
look-alike man dubbed ÔBushÕs poodleÕ – together forming a not a very
inspiring couple-aegis for society.
Looking back over 20 years it is interesting to consider what a neat contrast
the Thatcher-doll makes with Martha Harris and her promotion of love and
parental values. Aspects
of these values maybe found on every page of her published work; they are
founded on her own internal combined-object parents. A one-time tomboy herself, her
advancement of womanhood in both public and private spheres was founded not
on the need to appropriate an iron phallus, nor on turning a man into a
poodle, but on the passionate commitment and generosity of spirit that can be
born only of an expansive capacity for love, itself generated by good and
loving internal parents. To conclude with an anecdote. On one occasion, before Wilfred Bion
moved back to
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