We Went to England: (Part of a Life - 1927-1946)

By Elaine Good

A vivid, often humorous slice of autobiography, We Went To England spans the Atlantic OceanRochester, New York to London, the Great Depression and the second World War. Children of an American mother and an English father, Elaine and her sisters have a privileged, sheltered lifemore akin to the world of Jane Austen than that of Angela's Ashes. Elaine, though, finds there is always a BUT. You have to learn to be a Lady. To obey a set of rigid ruleswhat's "done" and "not done". Too many of the rules she learns only after breaking them.

With the War in 1939 everything changes. Being a Lady is no longer so importantsurviving is. There are gas masks, air raids, bombs and the constant fear of death.

After September 11, 2001, Elaine's story has fresh relevance. As a young girl she learned that in the presence of constant low-level fear, life goes onand so do laughter and purpose.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 29, 2001
• ISBN: 9781469702193

Elaine Good

Elaine Good is now an actress, living in Rochester, New York. Her life since the years covered by this story has been happy, but not greatly different from any other. "Everybody has a story. This is mine."

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All Rights Reserved © 2001 by elaine G. Good

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

Writers Club Press an imprint of iUniverse, Inc.

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ISBN: 0-595-20579-8

ISBN: 978-1-4697-0219-3 (ebook)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

INNOCENCE

CHAPTER I: EARLY DAYS

CHAPTER 2: THE LARGER WORLD

CHAPTER 3: LEARNING

CHAPTER 4: ON THE OTHER HAND

CHAPTER 5: GRANDPA’S

CHAPTER 6: ANNE

CHAPTER 7: CHANGE

CHAPTER 8: PRIMROSES

CHAPTER 9: PASSAGES

EXPERIENCE

CHAPTER 10: MORE LEARNING

CHAPTER 11: BRANCHING OUT

CHAPTER 12: STORM WARNING

CHAPTER 13: WAR

CHAPTER 14: KEEPING ON

CHAPTER 15: DOUBT AND SORROW

CHAPTER 16: FREEDOM

CHAPTER 17: STILL LEARNING

CHAPTER 18: HEAVY DUTY

CHAPTER 19: LONDON LIFE

CHAPTER 20: HITLER’S NEW TOYS

CHAPTER 21: NO MEAN CITY

CHAPTER 22: TURNING POINT

CHAPTER 23. PLANS

CHAPTER 24. PASSING GO

CHAPTER 25: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece:

Grandpa and Grandma Richmond with Betty and Elaine

Mansel Road—with Daddy

Mansel Road—with Mummie

The Swing

Jimmy

Baby Anne—first appearance of John

The family—and Tony

Parkside lodge

Three sisters—1935

Anne and John with Peko on Wimbledon Common

Golden Wedding—Grandma Gentle

Golden Wedding—Grandpa Gentle

Daddy

Mummie

Three sisters—1943

Elaine in America—1946

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To Loral Dean, Jim Scholes, Kitty Semisch, Alison Kouzmanoff, Roger Brainard, Amy Smith—Thank You for all your help and support.

INTRODUCTION

Louise Richmond, (who one day would be Mummie) was born in 1893, the only child in a sheltered middle-class family in Rochester, New York. Her early life was usual; attending Public School 23 and then Columbia School for girls, and every Sunday—Third Presbyterian Church.

But in 1914 came a turning point: A trip to Europe to celebrate Louise’s twenty-first birthday. They sailed with their Skuse cousins, whose daughter Marion was about the same age. There was sightseeing and a tour through Devon and Cornwall. Toward the end of the trip there came the Meeting: A dinner rendezvous at the Rembrandt Hotel in London. The Skuses had English cousins—a couple named Gentle—and their two sons William and Frank. William, the elder was a Cambridge undergraduate, polite but perhaps slightly pompous and much on his dignity. Frank was tall, solid, fair-haired, soft-spoken. Louise had never seen anybody so handsome, so wonderful; she glowed. She was very pretty, plumper than would be fashionable now, with a cloud of dark hair done up in a psyche knot, brown eyes and a wide, vulnerable mouth. After the first five minutes, they were in love.

Frank never went up to Cambridge. It was August 3, 1914—the day the lights went out all over Europe—the beginning of The Great War—the War to end wars.

William and Frank enlisted the next day as junior officers, Bill in the Guards, Frank in the Sussex Yeomanry. They were told to stand by for word of when to report. For the Americans there was no question now of Paris, only of how to get back to the United States as quickly—and safely—as possible. Louise and Frank saw little of each other—perhaps only two or three more meetings. Among Mummie’s treasures, laid away in her trunk, was a program from the Palace Theatre, dated August 8, 1914. It was a Variety Show: dancing, skits, songs and so on, and on the front cover she penciled the names—William Gentle, Marion Skuse, Frank Gentle, Louise Richmond.

The Americans sailed from Liverpool on August 15th; there was some talk about Frank coming up to see them off. It didn’t happen; he was under orders.

I think I kissed your mother once was all he ever would say about it. But there were letters, beginning right away, and they were eloquent enough. Pictures were exchanged, and words of love. It was enough; it had to be. Some of the letters still survive, preserved in Mummie’s Trunk (always spoken of in capitals). For the next five years they came and went: from Egypt, Palestine, back in England, to and from Rochester. All of them were stamped PASSED BY CENSOR. One of Mummie’s was marked DAMAGED BY IMMERSION IN SEAWATER DUE TO ENEMY ACTION.

Mummie’s Trunk was full of wonders, a sort of Aladdin’s cave. As a special treat on a rainy afternoon, she would sometimes invite us upstairs to the Box Room on the top floor, to go through my Trunk, an invitation never refused. There in the top tray was the bundle of letters, the theatre program, and Passenger Lists from transatlantic voyages. Wrapped in tissue paper was a piece of yellowing silk tulle and some pearl orange blossoms from her wedding veil. Then the tray would be lifted and other treasures came to light: a five-dollar gold piece, a baby-sized pair of white kid gloves that once had been worn by Grandma Richmond, a layer of Mummie’s fruit wedding cake to be eaten when the first daughter got married. (At which point it would taste simply of mothballs.) A great treasure was a wine-red velvet dress with a bustle which had belonged to Grandma Richmond in the 1880s—and a photograph of her, young and slender, wearing it. It had an eighteen inch waist—Mummie’s would never be eighteen inches again.

When we grew up, we were allowed to read the letters, and found them beautiful. Through all the danger and pain, through a leg wound at the Battle of Gaza, an emergency appendectomy in Egypt, through sunstroke so severe as to send him back to England, Frank’s love and optimism never faltered. The whole thrust of the letters is forward, to the end of the War, to the day when he would step off the ship in New York, and they would be together.

It all came true. There were telegrams in the Trunk, too. One, in August 1919: SAILING TODAY AQUITANIA. TRY MEET, and signed FRANK. Of course she would meet and escorted by Mrs. Skuse and Marion (Grandma laid up with a bad back) found herself on the pier in New York, watching the Aquitania docking and the gangplanks set in place. Marion shouted:

There he is! There’s Frank! I recognize his walk! A pang went through Louise. Will I ever know him well enough to recognize his walk? But in her diary she wrote:

Then after five years of waiting we became engaged on the 20th and announced it on the 27th. But the wait continued. Frank had to go back to England and prepare for his bar exams, find a job and then a place to live. In the trunk, the next telegram announced with laconic triumph:

PASSED EXAMINATION, and he was articled (a sort of apprenticeship) to a solicitor in Brighton.

The wedding was in Rochester in 1920, and they sailed immediately for England, to settle down in the sparkly seaside town. They lived pretty much as satellites of the older Gentles. Frank’s father had been knighted by King George V during the War, for his services as Chief Constable of Brighton. He had been active in capturing several German spies—and also in the breaking of a ring of diamond smugglers. Sir William (Grandpa Gentle as he would be to us) was considered—and certainly considered himself—a person of consequence. He’d always been master in his own house. Now he assumed mastery over the lives of the young people.

They took a flat, and went to housekeeping as Mummie always called it. Only she was alone all day, missing her home and her friends. Mother Gentle would sometimes come with the carriage to take her out to tea with friends, or to do some shopping or for a drive along the Downs. But Louise missed her own Mother and Father; worse, she had a feeling, no matter how cheerful their letters were, that they missed her even more. Things in England were just so different.

Everything was different she would tell us.

Tell about the baker, Mummie! We loved this story.

He’d come around every day in a little wagon with a horse, like the milkman does now, you know? Well, then he’d use the same dirty hands that he’d just used to put on the horse’s nosebag with his feed, to take out the bare loaves for me to buy! So I said to him ‘Haven’t you got any wrapped bread?’ He looked at me as if I was daft, and sort of scratched his head. Then he got a bright idea and said ‘No, M’m. But I’ve got plenty of old newspapers in the back! I could wrap up some for you!’

After we grew up we heard more of the dark side of Louise’s first year as a wife. She found the days very long. The wedding had been in September; now the winter was closing in. Brighton wasn’t so bright any more; it seemed to rain a lot. Very soon she found that she was pregnant; she felt sick, and when alone she did a lot of crying. Mother Gentle was no help. When Louise sought her advice about the morning sickness, all that dear soul could think of to do was ask Sir William. And all he could think of was

He sent me the police surgeon! Mummie’s voice still trembled with indignation as she came to this part of the story. The police surgeon poohpoohed her complaints and told her to go for walks. So she walked, but went on getting more and more depressed. She would stop at the end of the Palace Pier and fantasize about walking down to the far end, walking on, and just dropping off into the water, down, down.

But there was Frank. And the new life, too. So she talked to him, and told him how homesick she was, how strange things seemed, and how she missed Mother and Father. And he listened. And made a bargain. For her part, she would settle down and be as well and happy as she could, waiting with patience for the baby to arrive. For his part he promised that as soon as she and the baby were fit to travel, they would leave England and go back to Rochester to live.

This part of the story always gave us a glow. We knew that Daddy was a great man. But wasn’t it always the woman who was supposed to uproot herself and go wherever her husband took her? But for a man to do the same thing? How wonderful.

Louise was filled with love and gratitude. Gradually the morning sickness went away and she settled into a more tranquil state. She and Mother Gentle began sewing and knitting for the baby. A layette, in 1921, was mostly hand-sewn. No rubber panties, just knitted woolen pilches worn over the nappies to help absorb moisture. The knitted undervests, the hemstitched dresses and flannel petticoats began to pile up.

There were other diversions as well. Sir William, when he wasn’t being bossy and overbearing, was kind—though his idea of treats was characteristic too. Louise was presented to the Prince of Wales, young, handsome, bored, on his official visit to Brighton in the spring of 1921. Another time she was taken to hear the summing-up for the defense in the famous Crumbles Murder trial at Eastbourne, by the celebrated Sir Edward Marshall Hall (always referred to in the press as the silver-tongued advocate). He made his impassioned, tear-drenched plea and was about to leave the courtroom when he spotted Sir William and stopped to speak to him. Asked what were the chances of the two defendants’ acquittal, he said loftily

My dear chap, they haven’t an earthly. And passed on his way with a swish of his silk gown.

At the end of June her mother—Grandma Richmond—came to be with Louise for the birth. They had booked a room at the Wellington nursing home; somehow it was considered more modern and elite to be confined in a nursing home than in one’s own bed. The summer weather was beautiful; one Sunday after tea in the garden at the Gentles’, they all sat on, talking and enjoying the view across the lawn past the hedge to the ocean. About half-past five, they heard the church bell begin to toll for a death. Grandma Richmond was not familiar with this custom, and her host took great pleasure in explaining it. In each parish, when a death occurred, the bell would be tolled: three for a child, six for a woman, nine for a man. Then a pause, and then a stroke for each year of the person’s age. As he explained the others listened and counted. Six—a woman. Then—twenty-three. A silence fell on the little group in the garden.

A few days later, Frank said

Oh—by the way. There’s been a muddle about your room at the Wellington, so we’ve had to change the plan. I’ve got you a room at the nursing home in Sussex Square; you don’t mind, do you? It’ll be much nicer, really. My office is just round the corner, and I can nip in and see you at lunch time as well as in the evenings. Louise didn’t mind. A lying-in was a momentous project. Women were confined—lying flat for a week and then very gradually allowed to sit up and at last begin to move around.

The baby arrived more or less on time: Elizabeth Richmond Gentle, July 29, 1921; the first baby, first grandchild, greatly prized.

Not until several weeks had passed did Louise learn the story behind the change in nursing homes. The young woman who died that lovely Sunday afternoon had given birth in the very room that had been booked for Louise; her death was from puerperal fever.

Do we ever realize now how dangerous the whole process of giving birth was? Puerperal fever (postpartum infection) was just one of the risks you ran. All through history, women didn’t have to go off to war; they stayed at home and died.

Louise and Frank, though, were survivors.

All went well and two months to the day after Betty was born they embarked on the ship Corsican bound for Montreal. In the Trunk was the passenger list, where Betty used to take great pleasure in seeing her name listed: Miss E. R. Gentle. Not bad for a baby two months old she would say.

Back in Rochester, with Frank and her new baby, Louise was completely happy. Frank had given up his beginning law practice and gone to work for Grandpa Richmond in the wax paper business. If he felt it was a comedown to be running around the bakeries sweet-talking the managers, peddling wax paper, he never said so. He had the gift for happiness (he gave it to me). To him the glass was always half full. He had more than a dash of theatre in his personality, loved to take stage, be the center of attention. He maintained a repertoire of funny stories and told them well. Some were for general use, some for men only, and came in useful at meetings of the local Post of the American Legion, where he was made an honorary member.

They spent two happy uneventful years. Louise made the transition from only child to wife and mother, center of her own household. Now she found herself looking forward to another baby, surely a boy this time?

Only—no. May of 1924 was when Elaine arrived. I was welcomed anyway, and life continued tranquilly until late in 1926, when the pattern changed again.

Frank got an important offer: Grandpa Gentle and others had formed a company back in England, a sports promotion with emphasis on the new and wildly popular greyhound racing. If horse racing is the sport of kings, greyhound racing became the sport of commons. Frank would be in charge of setting up the company, at a salary which must have seemed astronomical after the wax paper company’s.

They talked about it, and discussed it with the Richmonds. In her new maturity Louise didn’t hesitate. She began to look forward with excitement to the new life. They would not live in Brighton but near London, in a house of their own. She in her turn faced away from her own country, willingly gave up the familiar things, and moved on to learn the ways of her adopted country.

She succeeded—to a marvel. Though Mummie never lost her American accent she became ever more British in her point of view, even to disapproval of many American innovations, manners and customs. In fact as she grew older she more and more resembled that doughty dowager, Queen Mary.

PART ONE:

INNOCENCE

CHAPTER I: EARLY DAYS

Every morning on the ship Betty came to let down the side of my crib so I could get out and play. Her face was a welcome sight: round and red, framed in dark hair cut in a Dutch-boy fringe, bright blue eyes staring forthrightly at you. It meant liberty, action; the day could begin. Betty was my big sister; she was five, I still three months short of my third birthday. Mummie was not in evidence (I learned later that she was overcome with seasickness) but Betty and I—and Daddy—enjoyed ourselves. One day there were Games on deck. A row of apples hung from strings—far above my head. If you could take a bite of an apple it would then be yours and you would have won. Only how could I reach? I lifted up my voice and wept—loudly. It worked beautifully. A nice man in some kind of uniform lifted me up; I took the bite and felt like a winner.

Why were we on the ship? I didn’t wonder at the time; Mummie and Daddy were there, so was Betty, so was I. Where they were was home to me.

On the last morning, very early, Daddy took me up alone, with a sense of occasion, to the boat deck. All around us was the chill grey mist of a February morning. Far below we could look down at the expanse of shiny grey-green ocean. Daddy knelt beside me and put an arm around my shoulders and with his other hand he pointed to a far-away, irregular paler grey line across the horizon.

Look he said quietly. Remember this. I want you to remember. That’s—England.

* * *

Home soon took physical shape: the house at 17 Mansel Road in Wimbledon, where we lived for the next lifetime, seven years or so. The world for Betty and me was mostly the nursery—and the garden, (which we at once learned to call it, not the backyard).

To us it was vast—a whole world on four terraced levels. Its boundary on the left was a wooden fence which ran all the way to the far end, and across the end as well. On the right there was the brick wall between us and next door—another world. We never met, let alone spoke to the neighbors.

Image276.JPG

Mansel Road: with Daddy

You entered the garden through a small door at the back of the house and stepped out onto the red-tiled terrace, a fine place for hopscotch and (later ) roller skating. A few times a year, drama: The door in the wooden fence would open and the Coal Man, big, grimy, bent almost double under his huge, greasy coal sack, appeared. He staggered across the terrace and heaved the coal into the coal bin, hastily opened by Miss Lear, the cook. He wore a sort of black hood with a black curtain hanging down behind to protect his neck. He went to and fro, bent over coming and upright on the way back, between the coal dray and the bin. Clearly he was doing something important and difficult; in any case he was so wonderfully dirty that it was worth watching. He was allowed—even expected—to be dirty. We were not.

On the Fifth of November, we had fireworks out there. In the darkness after tea, everybody, even Miss Lear and Doreen the maid, would bundle up and come out onto the terrace. Daddy would fasten Catherine wheels to the fence and then ignite them! as a climax to our modest display of Roman candles and rockets. Everybody had fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day. We knew him only as a bad man who long ago had tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament (whatever they might be). But he and the other bad men had been discovered putting the gunpowder in the cellars, and dragged off. He had shouted

My name will live forever! So far it had. The poor children, whose parents could not afford to buy fireworks, had even more fun. They would create a Guy, a stuffed dummy dressed in old clothes, looking as villainous as possible, and wheel it around in a go-cart, soliciting donations Penny for the Guy, Mister? which they would use to buy their own fireworks. Nobody worried about safety. Laissez faire perhaps; the thought being that if you weren’t smart enough to handle fireworks with discretion, you wouldn’t be any great loss.

Image286.JPG

Mansel Road: with Mummie

But fireworks were only once a year, the coal man only now and then. Hopscotch was daily. And the terrace was only the entry level to the joys of the garden. From there steep steps led up to the next level. Here there were flower beds, grass and most important of all, the giant oak; Betty was sure it was the largest oak tree in the world. Its trunk was vast; even the lower branches had the girth of an elephant’s legs, and from one, on long, long ropes hung the swing. It was our place. Here we spent hours in busy contentment, not just swinging though. Nothing grew there. It was just bare earth, perfect for mud pies, mud coffee and all kinds of engineering and architectural projects, all involving earth and water. I used to wonder sometimes about this? Inside the house dirt was anathema. You had to change your shoes when you went out and came back in, you had to wash your hands before meals. You must never, never put anything in your mouth that had been on the floor. Yet out there under the oak tree we were allowed to play with the dirt, stir concoctions of it in our toy saucepans, pour the concoctions into our doll dishes, bring them to our lips and pretend to eat and drink—or feed them to the dolls and teddy bears.

Image295.JPG

The Swing

Up the steep bank beyond the oak tree was the lawn: space and liberty. Up there you could run, even shout a bit, though never really scream (a Lady never raises her voice). In summer, sometimes you were allowed to go barefoot—pure joy. We played He (catch), practised handstands, somersaults, and jumping rope, and when there were tea parties with friends we had three-legged races and wheelbarrow races, Oranges and Lemons and Grandmother’s Steps (going to Jerusalem) up there.

The top level, up yet another bank, was called the vegetable garden—a fiction, for the only things that grew there were rhubarb and horseradish, survivors from previous owners. Harris the gardener, fat, wheezy, pungent, came only by the occasional half-day and found quite enough to do mowing the grass and half-heartedly weeding Mummie’s flower beds. He never came near the vegetable garden, so it too was our territory.

Best of all: along the next door wall beside the lawn, grew the loganberry vines. They were like raspberries, and equally delicious only big-ger—the size of thimbles. I loved those berries with inordinate affection. I used to watch their progress toward ripeness, and one early July morning the summer I was four, Betty at school, I took my small basket from on top of the nursery bookcase, and went forth to pick loganberries. Asking permission?—no. They’d probably say No. I would just fill the basket and then hide and have a private orgy.

It was a beautiful morning. The sun shone, the birds sang, and the basket—a strange shape with two round lobes that Betty and I agreed privately looked like somebody’s behind—filled up. The big dark red berries were beautiful to look at, touch, inhale. I decided to go indoors and seek seclusion in the nursery; Harris had arrived and begun to mow. And at the door disaster struck, in the shape of Mummie, emerging from the kitchen.

Oh! What a good little girl! she cried, taking the basket out of my hand. Miss Lear is making jam! What a help you are! and she dumped the berries out onto the zinc-topped kitchen table, and handed me the basket. Thank you, Lanie!

I said nothing, took the empty basket and slowly made my way upstairs. Did she really think I was a good little girl? If so—well—that was nice. Ladies aimed to please, I knew. But why, oh why did she have to come out of the kitchen just then? I had got my mouth all ready for those loganberries. Jam just wasn’t the same thing at all. And I’d got most of the ripe ones, so it was no good going out now for any more. Grownups, you had to face it, were—tricky.

The nursery was the center of our world. In selective memory the sunshine is pouring in. The windows faced south and just outside them was the May Tree—my tree. In May, my birthday month, the tree was covered with clusters of tiny mayflowers, intensely pink. In winter you could see through the branches to Mansel Road, where sometimes the rag-and-bone man would pass in his cart piled high with junk and pulled by an ancient donkey. Ay-yum-oh he shouted—or that’s how it sounded. Sometimes there would be the greater drama of a steamroller, sometimes even the organ grinder, cranking out a tinny air, and his monkey in a yellow dress. Most exciting of all were Jimmy’s fights, which we shall come to shortly.

Against one wall was the nursery bookcase; behind its glass doors lived our small library of Beatrix Potter, Christopher Robin, and various colors of Fairy Books. Among the rest was a big, grey-bound book that had been Mummie’s, when she was a little girl, called Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us. The pictures—engravings from the work of famous artists—were wonderful; I spent hours poring over them. After I could read the text was disappointing: mawkish, preachy, condescending. My favorite picture was of The Passover. A beautiful angel with curling draperies and huge feathered wings, a drawn sword in his hand, hovers about two feet off the ground outside an arched doorway. He will pass over the house because they have smeared blood on the doorposts. Much food for thought.

There were toys of course: among them the Farm, a modest collection of lead animals, trees, fences, even a pond, which Betty had created from a discarded pocket mirror of Mummie’s. She glued crumpled blue tissue paper on the mirror. It looked a bit turbulent but the lead ducks didn’t mind. There was a dollhouse which we spent many hours arranging and rearranging, never to our mutual satisfaction. Both of us had a rather battered doll, but they had to share the one doll bed, which stood under a window. Once Betty perched on it to get a better view of one of Jimmy’s fights, and broke it. O horror! My grief was loud, prolonged and in no way underplayed. Daddy (never the world’s handyman) somehow got it glued together again and departed with admonitions that it was made for dolls, not people.

The brown wool carpet smelt friendly, like the fur of a well-disposed animal (a teddy bear, perhaps). The nursery was like an extended womb, safe and inviolate. Well—almost. There was that time Betty lost her temper, for instance. And once a week Doreen, fresh-faced, Welsh, good-humored, appeared with dustcloth, polish and the Hoover to do the nursery. When this happened I would invariably make myself scarce. I did not care for the Hoover; Betty had explained to me that it sucked up dirt and made the carpet all clean. But it made a horrible noise: low, ill-tempered, ogreish, and there was also the possibility that I too might get sucked up and be no more seen. So when Doreen came upstairs I went down. Even the hall, inviting with its big, overstuffed settee facing out to the garden, was not far enough; you could still hear the snarling and growling of the monster.

I would go into the drawing room, beautiful in my eyes with Mummie’s baby grand in the bay window. The sun streamed in, and the brown velour Davenport beckoned invitingly. Brought from Rochester, it had to be arranged in a certain way, with the left-hand end away from the door, because of Jimmy’s permanent mark.

There was a dark mahogany table against one wall and on it an oriental rug, and on the rug a green Tiffany lamp of supreme ugliness which Doreen, in her weekly doing of the drawing room, accidentally knocked over and broke. Hard to say who cried most, Doreen or Mummie. But somehow, darned if there wasn’t a reproduction made in oiled parchment, and the lamp stood again, proud in its revolting, pea-green perfection.

Also on the table beside the Tiffany lamp sat a large, black leather Bible. Nobody ever