‘Right everybody. Big smile! Say “cheese”!’
The group stiffened up, checked their positions, put on their unnatural smiles and I took the photograph. Some twenty people were lined up, arranged in two rows, the bride and groom centred, in front of the entrance to the old parish church in Peebles, in the Tweed Valley. I took two more photographs for luck and let the wedding party disperse to the reception at the Tontine Hotel about a hundred yards away.
I packed away my camera and tripod and lugged them back to where I’d parked the Imp. I felt the usual depression settle on my shoulders and ignored it. No, Amory, stop it. I wasn’t photographing pets but it was close. Still, I had a job, I was earning money. I had no right to complain or feel aggrieved.
I was working for a monthly illustrated magazine called Scotia!. It was a rival to similar magazines such as Scottish Field, Caledonia, Scotland Today, Bonny Scotland and the like, whose staple journalistic menu dealt with the seasonal traditions of our small country — shooting, fishing (‘Rod, Reel and Line’), stalking, game fairs, agricultural shows (‘Country Notes’), robust outdoor fashion, motor cars and — this is where I came in — the social round. Weddings, balls (‘How to Wear a Sash’), christenings, Highland gatherings, tournaments, military tattoos, funerals and so on, were covered by Scotia! with all the nuance and artistic flair reserved for team photographs of rugby, football, golf and cricket clubs. The subjects formed a line and they were photographed. Couples stood side by side, ditto. These subjects and couples then usually asked for copies of said photographs and thereby provided a significant revenue stream for the magazine. It was not to be taken lightly, so the editor regularly told me.
Scotia! was edited by a client of Joe Dunraven. Joe had secured me the job as a favour once he knew my history as a professional photographer. His client, Hughie Anstruther, was more than happy to take me on, given my experience (and my title), but he very quickly advised me: don’t get any fancy ideas, Lady Farr, this is not American Mode. I didn’t.
Hughie Anstruther was a neat, waspish, vain man who combed his side hair over his bald pate in an elaborate coil, like a table mat or hemp rope, and was oblivious to the tonsorial effect of this on his otherwise respectable appearance. But I came to like him and the job he gave me allowed me to supplement my allowance from the Farr settlement. I wasn’t poor but I had to budget carefully. I had a house to live in but it was certainly no palace. It struck me that, entirely inadvertently, I had come full circle. I had started off an impoverished young woman, taking society photographs with Greville in the 1920s to make ends meet, and here I was, decades on, an impecunious middle-aged woman, doing exactly the same.
The world of Scotia! © Scotia Media Enterprises Ltd, 1964.
I was beginning to feel, also, after the turmoil of my recent years with Sholto, that I’d entered a form of quietus. The cottage was entirely comfortable, though a little basic; the girls were on the point of leaving school; I was relatively solvent, relatively comfortably housed, secure enough, employed, after a fashion. I couldn’t complain. But was I happy?
I had integrated myself, as far as any newcomer could, into the small but diverse island community of Barrandale. I had found a few new friends and, another bonus, because they were new I could tell them as much or as little about my past as I wanted. I never advertised myself as the widow of Sholto, Lord Farr. I was just Mrs Farr, or Amory, to the people I dealt with or counted as my new acquaintances.
I hadn’t sought the Scotia! job. Joe Dunraven who, as a matter of course, knew far too much about me, had suggested me to Hughie, and Hughie, thinking my background would open more doors, had eagerly hired me. The job was undemanding: once I’d returned home from whatever wedding or grand ceilidh or memorial service I would develop the film, print contact sheets, annotate them with the names to fill the captions and post them off with the rolls of film to the office in Glasgow. And the next month there would be the evidence of my work on the ‘social pages’. I was consoled only by the thought that I had insisted on remaining uncredited and that I was — in a manner of speaking — still a professional photographer.
I remember when she was fourteen Blythe said that she wanted a guitar for her birthday and so I bought her one. She was quite musical, it turned out — Dido was delighted — and also took piano lessons at school. One night in the cottage when she and Annie were home on holiday I asked her to play something. She sang a song she had written, a plangent minor-key version of the folk song ‘Bobbie Shafto’. She sang it in a husky but true voice as Annie and I sat opposite her, Annie sitting on the floor by my feet, Blythe perched on a stool in front of the fire, her big guitar balanced across her knee.
Bonny Sholto’s gone away,
He’ll not be back another day.
Wherever he’s gone, he’s there to stay,
Bonny Daddy, Sholto.
The song continued — ‘Bonny Sholto went to war’ — but the three of us were sobbing halfway through the second verse and had to stop and hug each other. It was a moment of real catharsis for us all and I had a full sense of the girls’ loss, also. It wasn’t just my grief; the difficult, complicated life of Sholto Farr wasn’t just my problem; the damage wasn’t just limited to me.
I remember that we all went on holiday to Italy to see Greville in his new life. Having sent him out there on assignment in 1944 for GPW, I’m not sure we ever received one photograph in return. But somehow, in his leisurely travels as he — at careful distance — followed the 110th Infantry Division as it advanced north up through Italy, he had contrived to engage a young artist as his translator, called Gianluca Furlan. Gianluca had inherited a small but rather lovely house up in the hills behind Viareggio, in northern Tuscany. After the war Greville moved in. He took photographs; Gianluca painted the Tuscan landscape. They seemed entirely happy and Greville swore he owed it all to me.
We spent two weeks with them in 1965. The girls had just done their A levels. We were there in July and every two days or so we’d drive down to the wide beach at Viareggio and spend a day by the sea. Greville took this photograph of the three of us. The three Farr women, he called us.
Me and the twins, Viareggio, 1965.
I remember buying a book, a popular military history about the last months of the Second World War called Desperate Endgame: British Armies in the Final Year, 1944–1945. There was a page or two dedicated to the battle for Wesel during Operation Plunder. All it had to say relevant to Sholto was this:
15 Commando, under the command of Lt Col Lord Farr, encountered stiff resistance at a crossroads to the east of the town centre. It took some hours to clear out the strongpoint. At daybreak 15 Commando gathered in a small park where it was discovered that their casualties were six dead, fourteen wounded. The assault on Wesel was a copybook Commando action: in the ferocious street fighting they had proved their mettle.
No comment.
I remember once we were having a picnic, me and the girls, out at the foot of Beinn Morr on a windy, sunny day, the grass bleached and bending in the tugging breeze, and Blythe, who was sitting beside me, asked if we could play Greville’s Game. At that time of her life she was always asking me if we could play the game with her. Annie couldn’t be bothered joining in — she thought it was ‘stupid’.