Forward to Cicely Lucas - A Memoir

Cicely Ann Neal (1879-1970) was born in Westwood Health, what was then a rural part of Warwickshire, but is now a suburb of Coventry, close to the Warwick University campus.  Her husband, Ernest Lucas (1878-1951), was born under a shadow, as his parents, Eliza Orton and James Lucas (born 1854) were not married at the time.  They later married and went on to have eight children together.  Cicely herself was one of four children.  Her parents took charge of the new school house freshly built by Lord Leigh, for the village of Westwood Health.

St John the Baptist Church, Built 1842-44.  Architect- George Scott

The Westwood Heath School House.

Westwood Heath, in the days it was a heath

    

Picture from the 60's taken of Westwood Health School Children

I have a striking memory of a four year old boy, standing by a small table and chair, with light streaming through a grandly curtained Georgian window.  We were in the first floor hotel room my Great-Grandmother took on Blackheath High Street.  I was presented with an apple and apparently took lessons in reading and writing.  These memories contain not a jot of trauma, though my mother assures me this is true. 

When she died I also recall the ‘after the storm’ discussions between family members; humour, exasperation, pain, and admiration.  I understand her as an interesting, determined, wilful, self-centred and courageous person and this appears to be her own self-confessed position. 

My family moved to Hong Kong, and the next thing I knew was a story about how she had panicked while trying to cross Black Health High Street, traumatising an innocent driver by falling beneath his wheels.  

I pondered creating a title such as ‘Mon Combat’, but for someone who lived through two world wars, this seems somewhat distasteful.  I am left with ‘Memoir’.  This is enough.  

I note that her memoir is written for Elisabeth. This may because it was written in a response to my aunt’s request for ‘a story’.  My mother may warn that despite being a one time member of the communist party, she had her favourites.  As a local journalist in Warwickshire for many years, she had also perfected the technique of ‘journalises’.  I muse that she would probably not be happy with her great-grandson, after all these years, taking the liberty of becoming her editor, but as she taught me to read and write, she started it.  I leave you the reader to imagine how she may have responded.

Cicely Annie Lucas died aged 91.


Illustrations: This picture, painted by James Tissot, is likely not to be the picture Cicely saw in the Westwood Health School Room.  James Tissot painted religious paintings towards the end of his life.  These pictures were made into Lithographs in 1904.  He was an Anglophile, and lived in St John's Wood, London, for some time.  The story itself is fascinating as it links to a number of other ancient stories involving snakes.  It is also noted that the Hebrew enjoys the alliteration nehash nehoshet, or snake bronze.

Moses raising the Bronze
Serpent in the wilderness.
Numbers 21:4-9

My Great Grandmother Suffragette sash, courtesy of
Sara Wear, Warwickshire County Council