Madge Carpenter - biography

MADGE CARPENTER

(E. Margaret Wheeler)

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Ethel Margaret Carpenter was born on Saturday April 11th 1908 at No. 56 Argyle Street, Coventry. It was the first house in the street, and there was four feet of snow around the front door the day Margaret was born - her father had difficulty in leaving the house to fetch the midwife. Her parents were Charles Albert (Post Office engineer) and Alice Mabel (unwaged housewife) - née Bale. (Her mother's name appears wrongly on her birth certificate as `Annie'.) She was brought up loosely C. of E., but within a strong Quaker tradition. She was the eldest of twelve -- ten girls and two boys, of whom only three now survive: the twins died at birth [Margaret was already working for Boots at the time]; Barbara died of consumption aged only sixteen; Jim was killed in the war; Audrey died of cancer at the age of 42. Her nearest sister, Betty, died in 1993, aged 82, and her brother Bill died in 1996 at the age of 80. Her sister Joan died late in 1999 after struggling against Alzheimer's disease for the last few years of her life; but Margaret herself saw in the 21st century, and died shortly after celebrating her 94th birthday in April 2002.

Madge, aged 16 months

Margaret left Coventry at the age of four when the family moved to Nottingham, but did not begin her schooling until she was six. This was due to a badly poisoned thumb which kept her at home for six months; and is also perhaps a contributing cause to her ambidexterity, as during this formative period she learned to do everything `left-handed'. She attended Burnham Road Infants before going on to Hadyn Road Junior school, from which she was summarily removed (by her parents) at the age of nine after refusing to be caned. She was seven before she learned to read and write, and (like at least one of her children) can still remember it as an almost instantaneous event.

After continuing her junior education at Stanley Road Preparatory school, she went on to High Pavement, which she left on Jan. 31st 1925 after one term in the 2nd-year of the Sixth Form (and a short spell as a student-teacher, which she disliked intensely). Her originality and natural skills as a writer were already evident during this period, as witnessed by drawings and school essays (only two have survived) and her own diaries - typically, forgotten about, and which only came to light when Margaret was in her mid-seventies.
The reason for ending her education - despite having won a scholarship to Art School (which her father prevented her from taking up) - was the birth of her sister Aline, and the pressing need for someone to look after both her mother and the rest of the family (ten children by then).
Having to look after the whole household during this period, and being prevented from doing what she wanted to do most of all - develop her skills as an artist - gave Margaret a deep distaste for housework, never since lost, nor forgotten.

She began working for Boots the Chemists on June 25th 1925 - first in the machine room (operating Burroughs adding machines) and then after eighteen months in the audit department (auditing credit accounts), where she met and made lifelong friends with Len and Eve Colton.
She was introduced to her future husband Charles, by a mutual acquaintance [Grett - Frank Gretton] on 30th Sept. 1927, and told her mother that evening that she had met the man she was going to marry. (This was more an example of foreknowledge than a declaration of intent.)
Although they shared many common interests - walking, cycling, `church-crawling', theatre, haunting second-hand bookshops, the pleasure of playing with words, and a love of books (although not necessarily of `literature'), and a common interest in art - each had won first prize at school in both Art and English - their backgrounds were very different.

Charles was a spoilt, precocious young man, saved from priggishness only by his tremendous sense of humour and acute wit, brought up in a small, quiet family, where the dominant characters were mainly intelligent, well-educated independently-minded (but nevertheless subservient) women, many of whom were teachers. Forced at high speed through his education by a domineering and ambitious mother because his natural intelligence and ability allowed him to cope with the pace, he quite unthinkingly took it for granted that a woman's purpose in life was to look after the men; and was encouraged by the women in his family to develop an attitude of intellectual superiority. He had also been brought up as a member of the Catholic church. (Which he did not tell Margaret until they had known each other for three months.)

Margaret was a bossy, wilful, self-opinionated intelligent young woman (also saved by her sense of humour), with a high-spirited and rebelliously independent attitude to life. Brought up as the eldest of a very large family (of mainly girls) where she had more than ample opportunity to reflect on the lot of the housewife as exemplified by her own mother, the work of a domestic drudge held no interest for her whatsoever. She had no pre-conceived ideas about her own intellectual worth; was not encouraged to develop any; and had only a suspicion of her own natural talents, which were either ignored or went unnoticed in her own family. The dominant character in the family was her father, who recognized her intelligence, but with whom she had frequent and violent arguments - the character clash was inevitable. Organized religion held little interest for her, and she was not afraid to say so.

When Charles and Margaret finally decided to marry, their engagement lasted five years, and survived all attempts by Charles's family (aided by three priests) to convert Margaret to the Catholic faith. It also survived all attempts to persuade Charles that it was an unsuitable match for a good Catholic.

They married on June 3rd 1933 in the Catholic church of St. Paul's on Radford Boulevard. Margaret had to give up her salaried job at Boots - married women were not allowed to hold jobs at that time. Charles was still teaching at High Oakham. There was no nuptial mass, as Margaret was resolutely non-Catholic, and after her recent experiences with the church, more than ever determined not to bring up her children in that faith (or any other - the choice would be left to them to make for themselves). Margaret also insisted on removing the words `to obey' from their marriage vows; but to her chagrin was not allowed to have the words `to serve' similarly removed.

Their first family home was `Winster' - a small rented bungalow in Linby (now part of Mansfield); but after thirteen months they bought and moved to a second home, a three-bedroomed house `Neighbour Oak', on July 7th 1934 - just seventeen days before their first child [Charles Michael] was born. The house was named by Charles from a reference in Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill to: "neighbour Ash, Oak and Elm".

It was from here that Margaret went into St. Anne's nursing home in Nottingham in November 1936 for the birth of their second child [Valerie / Peggy], and the long story of the mixed children began.
In 1938 Charles managed to obtain a teaching post in Cumberland - he had visited the Lake District without Margaret on a climbing holiday the previous year, and had liked the area very much - and so on October 1st 1938, with Margaret suffering from the effects of her third pregnancy [Denise - born the following April], they arrived at 34 Park Lane, Workington. This was a rented house in a small dirty northern industrial steel-working town and coal-port which Margaret disliked on sight; but the intention was to remain there for no more than three years. It was in the same street as the school at which Charles was teaching (and which the children were later to attend as Workington Grammar School), overlooked a public park at the front - and gave a magnificent view of the town slag-bank from the back.

Charles and Margaret's three further children [Denise (April 1939); Martin (January 1941); and Penny (July 1950)] were all born in this house - Margaret adamantly refused to go into hospital or a nursing home for the birth of any of her children after the events in Nottingham in 1936.

With the advent of the war and the inevitability of war service, Charles applied to join the RAF; but was referred back to the Army when it was realized that he had been through OCTU training at University. He was attached to the Royal Fusiliers and left Workington at the end of February 1941, just one month after the birth of their fourth child [Martin]. He was transferred to the Royal Indian Army Service Corps, and in early January 1942 was posted to India, leaving Margaret with four young children to look after, and no immediate source of money to support them all. For the first six months she was left entirely ignorant of where he was, or even whether he was alive or dead. Neither did she receive any of his Army pay, which was held up with no explanation. In doubt and confusion, she was eventually obliged to sell the house in Mansfield [`Neighbour Oak'].

Two years later she began her correspondence with Bernard Shaw; not as an isolated event, but as just one part of a tremendous output of correspondence at that time which peaked at almost one hundred letters per month on one occasion.

Charles returned from his war service with the R.I.A.S.C. in India in August 1945 with the rank of Major, and in early 1946 began a new job as (Southern) Area Education Officer for Cumberland, initially based in Whitehaven. He very soon transferred to a similar post (Western Area Education Officer) but now based in Workington - a post he retained until his retirement in August 1972. In the meantime their children had grown up in his absence - only the eldest [Michael] had any memory of him - and Margaret had "reached out and found someone to talk to". Nevertheless, the family rapidly re-united and set about growing up in what was now considered the family home. The three years eventually stretched to twenty-one.

After three mis-carriages, Margaret gave birth to a third daughter [Penelope Jane] in July 1950. The child's early development was perfectly normal up to the age of fourteen months, when she suffered an undiagnosed illness - officially diagnosed three years later as a de-myelinating encephalitis. (Her pitiful and dreadful screaming and head-banging were attributed by the locum standing in for the family doctor at the time to `teething'.) Charles and Margaret were eventually forced to recognize that this child would never be `normal' in any sense, and would require lifelong care and attention. This obviously took its toll on the whole family - but principally on Margaret, who bore the brunt of the caring and worrying, and found herself tied to the home more than ever. Charles nursed his grief and disappointment in silence, expressing it only privately in his personal poetry (which Margaret has never read) - Margaret almost gave in under the strain. It was a period of great financial hardship and severe tension, exacerbated by the children's turbulent adolescence.

Charles's job took him out into the Lakeland countryside and provided him with a salary; Margaret's unpaid job kept her tied to house and home and a severely disabled child who needed constant attention. She resented more than ever this unequal rôle-division, and the financial thraldom it imposed on her.

In the late 1950s Margaret enrolled for evening classes in art at the local Grammar School and took up `potting' - making hand-built pots from clay. This was eventually to provide her with the creative / artistic outlet she had always sought - strangely, her natural talent as a writer left her quite unmoved. Her originality was by this time regarded as mild eccentricity by her children.

In 1957, Charles and Margaret found themselves unexpectedly faced by their own children demanding an explanation of the Valerie/Peggy story - something they had not expected, but nevertheless had always felt would one day have to come out into the open. Margaret was at last able to talk openly within her immediate family and to her own children about her convictions, and the situation between the two families resolved itself very rapidly. Changes in the rent laws in that same year meant that the landlord of 34 Park Lane was at last able to serve notice on Charles and Margaret to quit their home - news which Margaret received with great joy, as it meant that they would at last have to leave a house she had come to hate. She and Charles designed a new home, to be purpose-built to cater for their own needs, and those of their disabled daughter. A new era had begun.

By the time the bungalow was finished in late 1959 and the family was able to move in, only the two youngest children were still living at home (Michael had been in the RAF for seven years and was now married, Valerie was teaching, and Denise was in her final year at college). The site Charles and Margaret had found gave a magnificent view over the Derwent valley to the Cumbrian fells beyond, and the bungalow itself was named `Looking Stead' after one of them. Within two years, Margaret found herself left alone in the home for most of the day, looking after a disabled child, with only occasional visits from the other children (and now grand-children); and eventually took on the further burden of caring for her own parents as well.

Margaret's mother died in 1962; her daughter Penny died in 1964. The death of her daughter had severely shaken her (Charles too; but he wouldn't show it in public), but Margaret was at last able to persuade Charles to allow her to enrol at art college in Carlisle, and pursued both writing (she had started a correspondence with Mary Stott and the Guardian) and potting with vigour.
In many ways, the next twenty years were to be Margaret's most productive and creative period. During this time she hand-built over 1000 pieces of pottery and sculpture; corresponded with Mary Stott, strangers, and her own family (amongst others). Her father re-married - her own best friend from childhood [Gladys Chalmers-Park - née Spooner, and known to everyone as `Spooney' all her life].

In August 1972 Charles retired, and attendance at the evening art classes was gradually replaced by daytime classes, which Charles attended too, making several fine pieces of furniture in oak.
The long-lost top-copy typescript of Margaret's correspondence with Shaw (last heard of in 1952 when it was entrusted to Dr. C. E. M. Joad to be passed on to Victor Gollancz) turned up in America, and Margaret started to agitate to have it published in her own name. Quite understandably, she took violent exception to the fact that it had been exported to America without her knowledge or permission, and seemed to be passing outside her control.

In 1974 Charles and Margaret were able to afford a holiday in France with their younger son [Martin], where they were able to see the paintings of the Impressionists (Margaret was now 65 and had not been on the Continent since before the war), visit the Père Lachaise cemetery, and the Rodin museum in Paris. (Charles took every opportunity to practise the language, though Margaret preferred to spend most of her time in the garden, reading novels she had brought with her from England.)
Several years later they returned to the Continent to visit Valerie in her home in Andorra, driving down through France with Denise for company.

In 1983 Charles and Margaret celebrated their golden wedding anniversary. The story of Valerie and Peggy was leaked to the press by a stringer working in the hotel booked for the reception, and for the first time the family became aware of the enormous media interest the story always arouses.
The experience was quite shocking - in all senses. For a few sensational days, enquiries poured in from all over the world, as did TV crews, cameramen, radio reporters and journalists. Margaret began to get an inkling of what might be in store; so did Charles, who resented the attention paid to Margaret and frankly admitted his jealousy to one of the children [Martin].

Michael Holroyd contacted Margaret in connection with his own biography of Shaw, and asked permission to quote from some of Margaret's letters, which Margaret gladly agreed to. He was also able to inform Margaret of the current whereabouts in America of the `missing' top-copy typescript of the letters.
Barrie Hesketh learned of the existence of the correspondence with Shaw through Charles's nephew [Peter David Wilson], and obtained permission to turn it into a play for two characters (first publicly produced in summer 1985 at the Mull Little Theatre); and in the same year French television made a film of the mixed children story, broadcast in France by Antenne II in November [Méli-mélo / Mix-up].

Margaret had learned to drive in 1940, but had never kept up her driving licence (she had to sell `Janey' - the family Austin - during the war), and thus was always dependent on Charles for transport; so when Charles lost his driving licence in 1984 their isolation in `Looking Stead' became acute. The telephone became Margaret's lifeline to the outside world.

Continued attempts were made to interest publishers in the Wheeler / Shaw correspondence, but met with little positive action. Michael Holroyd continued to promote knowledge of Margaret's correspondence, and, more importantly, her worth in her own right, to other Shaw scholars and the publishing world. BBC TV picked up on the story of the mixed children and produced a 40-minute documentary [Mixed Blessings : Jonathan Gili & Catrine Clay].

Charles sulked publicly; Margaret smirked a little - but only in private. Mindful of the American experience, she also began to ensure that much of what she had produced in her life would be properly available if it were ever required for publication. In this she recruited the help of her children, and other members of her family, who began the long and extremely laborious work of collating, photo-copying and typing-up in accurate and presentable format a life's work which (apart from the Shaw correspondence) existed only in handwritten form. The majority of it is still completely un-edited.

In late 1990 /early 1991 Margaret was contacted by Becky Swift of Virago with a proposal to edit the Shaw correspondence for definite publication (by Carmen Callil of Chatto). Margaret agreed; and the family set up an archive for both Charles and Margaret on a properly organized basis, to replace the ad-hoc system of the previous nine years, and in order to be able to cope with the increasing number of requests for accurate original material.

Martin Wheeler
Cheltenham, April 1992
(revised April 1995; April 2000)

ADDENDUM

Margaret's book "Letters from Margaret" (edited by Rebecca Swift) was published in November 1992, but contrary to all her expectations and despite very good reviews in the literary press, aroused very little interest in the publishing world. Several radio programmes picked up the story, but the very-much-hoped-for further publication of Margaret's other writings has not yet materialised.
In fact, only 2000 copies of the book were printed (against the 5-7,000 expected as a first run), and after selling 1500 or so, the book was remaindered in 1995 without Margaret even being informed of the fact by her publishers, Chatto & Windus. (Much to Margaret's fury.) Reluctantly the family has once again turned to self-publishing Margaret's enormous output over the years - this time, with the added interest of a WWW site for presentational purposes, and as a means of establishing direct communication with interested readers.

After a long period of gradually deteriorating ill-health, Charles died on the 25th January 1994. Margaret was devastated, but had no direct way of expressing her grief. For a further year and a half she remained in the bungalow they had built and shared together for so long, teaching herself in her mid-eighties to manage the money she had never had access to before; then decided to quit the memories and inclement climate of West Cumbria for good, and move south to be closer to one of her remaining sisters. After two years' make-believe independence and stubborn insistence on living in a bungalow of her own in Somerset, the necessity of being properly looked after and cared for became apparent even to Margaret. Unable to settle satisfactorily and peaceably with any of her children, she lived for a further year and a half with one of her grand-daughters in Yorkshire, until finally going to live with her daughter Denise in Devon, where she continued to write (sporadically) and generally behave as she always had done, within the physical limits imposed on her by chronic arthritis of the hips and knees, and the sheer boredom of just being old. When Denise finally emigrated to New Zealand, Margaret's state of health, and the inability of any of her children to continue to look after her, obliged her to move to a nursing home in Keinton Mandeville (Somerset), where she was visited daily by her children until her death in April 2002.

Margaret was cremated at Taunton crematorium on April 26th 2002.

Nevertheless, as her 100th anniversary approaches and passes, the family doggedly carries on with the task of making her personal and vastly detailed description of a twentieth-century life more widely and fully available - encouraged from time to time by events such as the radio programme made for BBC Radio 4 by Martin Weitz in 1997 (which for once forgot the story of the mixed children and concentrated on Margaret's uncanny ability to chronicle, and thereby render interesting, the doings of her own everyday life) -- and then in 2000, by the four-hour C4 series of social history programmes (A Family Century)featuring not just herself, but her sisters and their families as well.

Glastonbury, April 1998
(revised April 2000; April 2008)

more about Madge:
[ Margaret Wheeler - short biography ] [ Dear Mr Shaw - text of Epilogue ]

selected texts by Madge:
[ Guardian reprint - Grandma (1964) ]
[ Reminiscences to Sheila (1981) ] [ Letter to G.B.S. (July 1946) ] [ Letter to G.B.S. (Aug. 1946) ]

Margaret's complete literary output throughout the whole of her life is currently being edited for publication, both digitally (in TEI-encoded format), and in conventional (i.e. printed book) form.
Serious enquiries from interested publishers should be sent via e-mail in the first instance.
Editors wishing to commission material on Margaret are welcomed, although journalists and free-lance media "researchers" after no more than free material for a story for their own financial gain will be politely turned away.

Information initially prepared and published by Sheila Bourner & Martin Wheeler
February 2000
to accompany the Channel4 TV social history documentary film series A Family Century