remember my father's departure from Bristol.
Perhaps I felt guilty at secretly being pleased, but now I had my mother to myself … anyway, I don't remember my father's going, but I missed him very much despite all his, and therefore my, faults”
(emphasis mine).
In Southampton, Elias quickly took a young mistress by the name of Mabel Alice Johnson and set up a second household. They soon had a baby, born out of wedlock, while back home, Elsie and Archie were forced to move to even smaller quarters.
Whenever Archie made the occasional visit to Southampton to visit his father, Elias made no secret of his new live-in relationship, and rewarded the boy's arrival with a trip to the local cinema to see the latest Chaplin–Mack Sennett two-reeler. Archie always laughed out loud at Charlie's put-upon character and exasperated glances through the camera—straight at him!— that brought a special brightness and joy to his otherwise lonely life.
IT WAS A JOY THAT would not last. One day in 1914 when he was ten years old, Archie came home from school and could not find his mother. With the war imminent, relatives had begun to live together to share ration books. Despite their smaller house, Elsie had taken in two of her brother's children, both of them older than Archie; now they silently watched as he ran from room to room looking for his mum. When he finally asked where she was, they said she had gone to a seaside resort for a little while. Why, Archie wondered, would she do that without taking him along? Without even telling him? And who was going to take care of him while she was away?
Elsie's sudden disappearance deepened Archie's increasingly tortured feelings of abandonment, guilt, and despair that would, in one form or another, stay with him for the rest of his life. Years later, Grant had this to say about his many failed marriages: “I [made] the mistake of thinking that each of my wives was my mother, that there would never be a replacement once she left. I found myself being attracted to [women] who looked like mymother—she had olive skin, for instance. Of course, at the same time I [often chose] a person with her emotional makeup, too, and I didn't need that.”
What did happen to Elsie? Where had she gone? Not to a seaside resort, and not for a little while, as his relatives first told him. That story was quickly replaced by another; his mother had died of a heart attack.
The news devastated the young boy, who soon began to act out both his rage at being abandoned again, this time by his mother, and his guilt for somehow having caused both his parents to leave him. He soon turned to petty thievery and kept at it, even when, mostly out of pity, the community awarded him a scholarship to the prestigious Fairfield Secondary School. It was there he met his first girlfriend, someone he would still remember decades later as “plump, pretty, and frankly flirtatious” but utterly beyond his reach. The daughter of a local butcher, the girl so turned Archie's head that one day while staring at her, he walked straight into a lamppost and very nearly knocked his own teeth out.
That summer, Archie relocated himself to Southampton. He longed to move in with his father, but Elias said no, claiming that the woman he lived with and their baby, Archie's half-brother, took up all the room in the house. Archie then volunteered for summer work as a messenger and gofer on the military docks, often sleeping in alleys at night if he didn't make enough money to rent a cot in the local flophouse. This was wartime, and one of his daily chores was to hand each soldier a life belt before he set out from the English Channel in a transport ship, many of which were sunk by German submarines only a few miles offshore. Out of his sense of patriotism, Archie refused to accept any tip money from the soldiers for whom he ran these errands. Instead, he would take a military button or a regimental badge. He coveted these as if they were the true
Perhaps I felt guilty at secretly being pleased, but now I had my mother to myself … anyway, I don't remember my father's going, but I missed him very much despite all his, and therefore my, faults”
(emphasis mine).
In Southampton, Elias quickly took a young mistress by the name of Mabel Alice Johnson and set up a second household. They soon had a baby, born out of wedlock, while back home, Elsie and Archie were forced to move to even smaller quarters.
Whenever Archie made the occasional visit to Southampton to visit his father, Elias made no secret of his new live-in relationship, and rewarded the boy's arrival with a trip to the local cinema to see the latest Chaplin–Mack Sennett two-reeler. Archie always laughed out loud at Charlie's put-upon character and exasperated glances through the camera—straight at him!— that brought a special brightness and joy to his otherwise lonely life.
IT WAS A JOY THAT would not last. One day in 1914 when he was ten years old, Archie came home from school and could not find his mother. With the war imminent, relatives had begun to live together to share ration books. Despite their smaller house, Elsie had taken in two of her brother's children, both of them older than Archie; now they silently watched as he ran from room to room looking for his mum. When he finally asked where she was, they said she had gone to a seaside resort for a little while. Why, Archie wondered, would she do that without taking him along? Without even telling him? And who was going to take care of him while she was away?
Elsie's sudden disappearance deepened Archie's increasingly tortured feelings of abandonment, guilt, and despair that would, in one form or another, stay with him for the rest of his life. Years later, Grant had this to say about his many failed marriages: “I [made] the mistake of thinking that each of my wives was my mother, that there would never be a replacement once she left. I found myself being attracted to [women] who looked like mymother—she had olive skin, for instance. Of course, at the same time I [often chose] a person with her emotional makeup, too, and I didn't need that.”
What did happen to Elsie? Where had she gone? Not to a seaside resort, and not for a little while, as his relatives first told him. That story was quickly replaced by another; his mother had died of a heart attack.
The news devastated the young boy, who soon began to act out both his rage at being abandoned again, this time by his mother, and his guilt for somehow having caused both his parents to leave him. He soon turned to petty thievery and kept at it, even when, mostly out of pity, the community awarded him a scholarship to the prestigious Fairfield Secondary School. It was there he met his first girlfriend, someone he would still remember decades later as “plump, pretty, and frankly flirtatious” but utterly beyond his reach. The daughter of a local butcher, the girl so turned Archie's head that one day while staring at her, he walked straight into a lamppost and very nearly knocked his own teeth out.
That summer, Archie relocated himself to Southampton. He longed to move in with his father, but Elias said no, claiming that the woman he lived with and their baby, Archie's half-brother, took up all the room in the house. Archie then volunteered for summer work as a messenger and gofer on the military docks, often sleeping in alleys at night if he didn't make enough money to rent a cot in the local flophouse. This was wartime, and one of his daily chores was to hand each soldier a life belt before he set out from the English Channel in a transport ship, many of which were sunk by German submarines only a few miles offshore. Out of his sense of patriotism, Archie refused to accept any tip money from the soldiers for whom he ran these errands. Instead, he would take a military button or a regimental badge. He coveted these as if they were the true
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