Locked in the Garage with Uncle Sam

[steepholm]

A few days before she died, my mother asked me to go into the garage and see if I could find the portrait that her great uncle, Samuel Parkes Cadman (early radio preacher and even now the only member of my family to have a New York street named after them), had had made by John Singer Sargent. It wasn't the original, of course, but "Uncle Sam" had made copies for all his nieces and nephews, including my grandmother. I remember the portrait hanging in the house during my early childhood, before my mother - whose main memory of the sitter was being told to "Shush" when he visited Wrexham, because "Uncle Sam was praying" - mustered the courage to consign it to the garage.

Anyway, I had a bit of a rummage, but couldn't at that time find the portrait. Instead, I came up with some old bottles of fruit wine that I had made in 1981, just before going to Uni. They didn't look too appetising, but they brought back nostalgic memories of my winemaking days. (Who could forget the terrible accident with the marrow rum?)




Today, I went back into the garage and found the portrait quite easily. I now feel a bit guilty that I was so easily distracted by the wine, and failed to fulfil what was, if I had known it, virtually a dying wish. That said, she didn't know it either, and I'm still not convinced I'd want this on my wall.



Next to the portait was a suitcase full of her old Magnets from the 1930s (with a few from the preceding and succeeding decades). She always half-joked that this collection about Greyfriars and Billy Bunter would be our real inheritance, but I have my doubts. Still, they certainly offer an insight into the comics of what we must now, I suppose, admit to be yore.

Comments

[cmcmck]

He came from Ketley which is the next town along the road from us!

[steepholm]

My grandmother's family are all from round there.

[cmcmck]

He is commemorated as a child in the Wellington windows:



The lady is our local novelist, Hesbah Stretton, who knew your relative as a child

[steepholm]

That, I didn't know! Of course I've heard of Stretton - Jessica's First Prayer, and all that. (In fact, I adapted that for a a post title once...)

[calimac]

Interesting that his byline was S. Parkes Cadman, but his family still knew him as Sam. I've come across that sort of inconsistency, if that's what it is, before.

[steepholm]

You will notice that even on the portrait he has written “To Evelyn from her loving Uncle Sam”. (Evelyn being my grandmother.)

[calimac]

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that relatives were calling him that in the teeth of his own preference. Just that most people form their formal name to front the forename they actually use, and it's curious when they do the opposite, especially when it's the first rather than a middle name. But, as I note, I've seen cases of that before.

[thistleingrey]

And TIL that the name "Bunter" would've had a contemporary echo for some of Sayers' contemporary readers. Thank you. (I'm not a particular fan, but in college I had the vague sense that the characters had been named carefully, without in most cases having any idea how to pin anything down.)

[steepholm]

Certainly when I first heard the name of Wimsey's Bunter, I immediately thought of the Fat Owl of the Remove, and I imagine the same is even more likely to have been the case for Sayers' contemporaries. I don't recall ever encountering a Bunter in real life.