Box 15: Scrapbook: Evenly Mary 'Molly' Clark

Dossier

Box 15: Scrapbook: Evenly Mary 'Molly' Clark

• 1912-1915 (Production)

"Large album covering the life of a young woman, just turned 21, until her marriage five years later. Britain and Continental Europe...The album was compiled by Evelyn Mary 'Molly' Clark in the final years of the Belle Époque through to the beginning of the momentous First World War, opening with parties, dances, weddings, shoots, and holidays, before concluding with patriotism, preparations for invasion, and army training.

Molly was the daughter of Henry Clark who headed the leading British marine engineering business George Clark Ltd. based in Tyne and Wear. As a family, they were very independently wealthy but had no links to the aristocracy or the landed gentry of Britain. She was born in 1891 and when the album commences would have been 21. She appears to have been attending one of the colleges at Cambridge, although as no college is mentioned, she may instead have been up to Cambridge to help host for her elder brother. There we at least half a dozen such lunches given in rooms at 37 Market Square, Cambridge, with the other guests all signing her copy of the menu. Photographs were taken at some of the lunches showing equal numbers of young men and women, usually with an older couple as chaperone. Probably these lunches had the dual purpose of examining suitable marriage partners.

Molly also visited and stayed at several country houses, not those actually lived in by the landed gentry but rented by people of the same class of mercantile families as the Clarks. These included St. Leonards Priory, Norfolk; Mount Oswald, Durham; Culeaze, Wareham in Dorset; Old Buckenham Hall, Norfolk (formerly home to Duleep Singh), and Hildon House, Hampshire. She also went further afield to watch the Ireland Polo Club and stayed at the hunting lodge of Fox Knowe in Pertshshire, where dances, shooting parties, swimming, tennis, golf, and general mucking about were all on offer. The camera was ready to take a snapshot of the people and places, and Molly, who clearly travelled with her precious album, also encouraged everyone to autograph the pages. Of course, she also went up to London to mix with society and enjoy the current musical theatre on offer, so find her enjoying the 'Chocolate Soldier' and 'Miss Hook of Holland' and staying at the Savoy and the Royal Palace Hotel, Kensington. In 1912, Molly wintered at Mürren in the Swiss Alps and was clearly having lots of fun with her friends of the same age, skiing , sledging, and skating. The first British tourists had begun to use the resort only in 1911, so this must have been the very height of fashionable travel. In the following year, we find her in Monaco for another holiday with friends.

The album continues in much the same way until the 27th July 1914 when Molly stayed at Hildon House in Hampshire, and here she was dancing, playing tennis, and other entertainment just as the storm clouds of war were gathering. The next page is dated September, and a sober theme concludes the album with a great number of the men dressed in military uniform, all still very happy to smile at the camera and learning to march, etc., but a certain seriousness is now very apparent. A page lists some sixty names framed as a roll of honour with the flags of the allies and a banner reading 'For King and Country.' Included among the names are some fifteen captains and two majors, but also due to her connection to shipbuilding, a dozen of her friends had joined the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. The remainder of the album has various friends in military uniform, expectantly waiting to do their bit for the war effort. Also, many scenes of digging trenches on the dunes before the estuaries of the Rivers Tyne and Wear in case of a German invasion and doubtless good training for the trenches of the Western Front.

Molly married Lt. Col. Fendall Frederic Ivor Kinsman in January 1916, and here the album closes on her life before. Her husband was from an army family, and she, therefore, spent the next few decades in India and West Africa and when her husband retired, settled down in Bagshot in Surrey. She later moved to a nursing home in Devon where she died in 1981." --description form Pickering & Chatto booksellers