I was browsing the pages of Y Lofla Publishers, when I came across this title, a story about a Dutch girl who married a Welsh Farmer. Now, being Dutch and writing this blog, that was a book I hád to have!
The publishers mentioned that Johanna (or Hanny) Francis, née Dooyeweerd, was the daughter of one of the Netherland's foremost philosophers. This puzzled me, as I had never heard of him. Looking up information about him I understood why. Herman Dooyeweerd was a professor at the " Vrije Universiteit" in Amsterdam, which was founded in 1880 by a group of Calvinists led by Abraham Kuyper as the first Protestant university in the Netherlands. Being well known in Dutch Reformed circles, he would have been a stranger in mine. Though my mother did go to church, both my parents were firm believers in "openbaar onderwijs" (public education = for everyone and non-religious)). In my street I was the only one to go to a public school. All the other children went to schools of various Protestant denominations. (As a side note: all schools were and are funded by the Dutch government). All this is a long winded way of saying that although both Hanny (born in 1936) and I (born in 1953) were/are Dutch, our worlds would have been completely different.
Anyway, back to the story. The first part of the book consists of Hanny's memoir, the second part was written by her children.
I found the announcement of Hanny's birth in a Dutch newspaper:
Soon after her birth her family moved to a large house near the Vondelpark in Amsterdam. Hanny grew up in a very busy household, she had eight brothers and sisters, and her parents had many visitors. Although they had nannies, home helps and cleaning ladies, the girls (not the boys) were expected to do their bit, and after finishing school they had to do a yearlong stint in housekeeping so as " to be ready for marriage". When Hanny is five the Germans invade The Netherlands. Of course, as a child she often does not understand what is going on, though she knows not to talk about her new "aunty" (a Jewish lady) and the men hiding in the attics of the house. During the last winter of the war (known as "the Hunger Winter") some of the children, including Hanny, are taken to stay on farms were there is food, in contrast to western Holland, were many people starved to death.
After the war life slowly returns to normal. Hanny's sister Marja has her heart set on becoming an air hostess and so she goes to the UK to improve her English. She later marries an English policeman. By 1954, when Hanny is 19, Marja and John, her husband, have settled in Pontnewwydd in Wales. Hanny travels to Wales, to help her sister who is pregnant with twins.
'One day there was a knock on the door. There were two men standing there. One was a friend of John's. The other was a rather scruffy and disheveled tall man with jet black hair and a tanned outdoor face. His name was Robert (Bob) Francis. Oh boy, was he handsome! He had a tray of eggs and told me he was selling them. (...) We clicked immediately, despite my English being so poor. There and then he asked me out for the following day, as he put it, 'to see a bit of Wales'. I was 18 at the time. The good-looking Welshman with the eggs was 33.'
Bob has served in the army for eight years and was now back in Wales trying to earn an living, running a farm, with 15 milking cows, a few chickens, a horse and one pig. Hanny and Bob fall in love, and after a week Bob proposes marriage. Her parents are not amused in the least by the news and tell her to come home at once. However, in the end her parents give in and Hanny and Bob get married on 22 July 1955. I found the ad announcing their engagement:
Hanny and Bob travel to Wales after the wedding and Hanny starts to adjust to life at Glebe Farm: looking after the cattle, the chickens, piglets, growing vegetables, and cooking on the Raeburn. Times are hard and struggling with debts, they are forced to sell off their cows and most of the land. Next they turn to chicken and pig farming and start a company collecting waste from schools and hospitals. Son Allen is born in 1957, daughter Jantien (pronounced Janteen, and called Jant) in 1959. Later they set up a company driving school buses. After his retirement Bob, who is a keen carpenter, spends a lot of time making furniture, including two snooker tables. 'His other love and interest was the garden.(...) Bob created a beautiful garden that looked better and more beautiful every year. ' Sadly, in 1995 Bob becomes ill and after being nursed at home he dies in May 2000. Hanny spends time working as an assistant to the district nurse, before retiring herself. Her son Alan and his family move into the converted barn next door.
This is where Hanny's memoir ends and where her children take up the story, and we learn a little more about Hanny's and Bob's contrasting personalities.
'Mam so loved a party, she would dance all night.(...). She was an amazing woman of two worlds, a tough and hardworking farmer's wife and, when the occasion arose, she would crack open the wine, put on the high heels and glamour and dance the night away. She was a knockout. 'Dad loved home. 'He'd build a moat around us if he could', Mam would say. He didn't care about personal hygiene or new clothes, dressing in 'his checked shirt full of stains and belting up his trousers with binder twine.'
Hanny died in 2020. Alan writes: 'My lasting memory was that Jant and I had the luck to be born into a family home which was full of love. We didn't have a lot, and during the early years, especially, Mam and Dad were outside for most of the time and not with us. But there was always affection in large amounts, and we'll miss it enormously. Mam was at the centre of that.'
