My father’s family was comprised of West Yorkshire folk, Ben Cowper being an 18th century innkeeper. My paternal Great-Grandfather was William Henry Cowper, a bearded paterfamilias. In 1888 in his fifties he was a Mechanic and Commercial Manager at the Framfellgate Coal and Coke Company, Limited. His firm worked one of the finest coal estates in the county of Durham. Associated with many other local institutions, he was also a Freemason and all-round sportsman.

His son, my Grandpa Walter Taylor Cowper, solicitor in Stoke Newington, London, married Georgina ‘Georgia’ Parke in 1904. In morning coat he looked every inch the clever lawyer, although he stopped wearing a top hat at the time of the General Strike, knowing that a ‘topper’ would be knocked off, eventually remaining bareheaded.

Grandpa and Grandma had retired to The Mount, a Georgian house in West Burton, Wensleydale, in the North Riding of Yorkshire when we visited them for the first time in the early 1950’s. Seated at the kitchen table, I was terrified by the angry voice of Grandma telling Grandpa off. He had forgotten to introduce himself to me. Walking towards me in his plus fours, he addressed me in his Yorkshire voice as he leaned over the table in his shirt-sleeves: ‘Hello, I’m your Grandpa.’ We shook hands.

Grandma had a wash day. I was forbidden to touch the Edwardian mangle for fear of crushing my fingers in it. Visits to the greenhouse with Grandpa were a huge treat. I relished running under the potting tables as he watered the plants, before taking my hand as we went back to the house.

To my sorrow I knew him only a few years before the post came one morning. My mother read the letter as I stood by her in the hall.

Quietly she told me: ‘Grandpa’s dead.’

Grandma Cowper, with a Yorkshire accent like him, scared me stiff on her occasional visits for which my father drove up to Yorkshire to collect her, stayed overnight, then drove her all the way back as there was no nearby railway station.

I would lie awake until she arrived. ‘Goodnight, Grandma!’ A look from her was enough as she was escorted to the room she would share with Grannie.

Next day, she was amused by my Ellison’s practical joke, which involved lifting her dining plate by means of a plastic diaphragm under the cloth. She even shared the joke, encouraging it to rise as much as it could. Grannie Toby, my maternal grandmother, warned me: ‘Don’t annoy Grandma with that.’ Grandma, clearly enjoying my efforts, silently objected to the interference by ‘Mrs. Toby’ as she called her as a fellow Victorian.

They disliked each other. Grannie was too outspoken for the tastes of Grandma. Perhaps Grannie was starting to regret this when out of earshot of Grandma she suggested to me that I kiss her sister-in-law.

I did the deed; Grandma rolled her eyes in embarrassment.

Perhaps Grandma had heard the words from the Gertie Millar song:

He says, ‘Mary Ellen, I’m soft in‘t head
I’m just about thinking it’s time we were wed’
And he makes such a noise when he gives her a kiss
But they are like that up in Yorkshire.’

My ‘Grannie,’ Mabel Elizabeth Godwin Toby had no problems about being kissed, being ‘the girl with the laughing eyes.’ Initially pursued by a Dick Cank, she had family roots at Broadway in the Cotswolds, with a sister Marion ‘Manna’ Toby who would become Matron at Rugby School where her portrait was painted, and another, Ivy, who became Music Mistress at Abingdon. My Grannie was the prettiest of them even when she grew older. Perhaps that is why her two sisters disliked her. Everyone knew Ivy as ‘Anne’ after an ancestor. She rejected the name ‘Ivy’ due to a well-known music hall song, performed at the Oxford Music Hall in Oxford Street, London by Miss Marie Kendall, where the chorus ends: ‘Just like the ivy I’ll cling to you.’ Fed-up with the song, especially when Kendall sings it in Say It With Flowers (1934), robustly ‘Anne’ declared, ‘I’m not going to cling to anyone. I’m a modern woman.’ She combined maternal instincts with musical interest and inherited talent to go into teaching. Through visits to Oxford, she and her sister ‘Manna’ probably knew Dorothy L. Sayers, copywriter and crime writer of ‘Lord Peter Wimsey’ fame.

My Grannie married the older Ernest Toby who was a chiropodist, minor composer and friend of Elgar whose feet he is said to have attended, his practice being at 12 College Street, Worcester, near the Cathedral. He played tunes on flower pots that were hung on strings, becoming Poet Laureate of Abingdon Bowling Club.