The life of Charles Marston
IN the winter of 1925-26, a great day came for Charles – on the morning of December 18th 1925, he received a letter from the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin.
It said that, if he so agreed, his name would be submitted to the King with a recommendation that ‘he may be graciously pleased to confer upon you the honour of Knighthood’.
Charles’s name was accordingly drafted in the New Year’s Honours, and the knighthood was conferred upon him by George V on the morning of February 6 1926 at Buckingham Palace.
With the recent loss of his young wife Louise, Charles threw himself into the growth and consequently success of the family business. His father, and founder of Sunbeam, John Marston died in 1918 at the age of 82 and his wife followed him a few weeks later. They had been a devoted couple all their lives and although Mrs Marston told Charles that she was now free and could travel and do what she wished to do; she only survived her husband by six weeks.
Sadly, also, Charles’s younger brother Roland, who like him had been placed in the works as a young man, died, and inconsequence, the Sunbeamland Works – the cycle and motorcycle side of the family business in Paul Street, Wolverhampton – was sold to Kynoch, later Imperial Chemicals, and became known from 1943 as Marston Excelsior.
Business
The Sunbeam Motor Car Company had long formed a separate unit. Charles put his whole attention to his own rising business, The Villiers Engineering Company, which under the brilliant handling of Frank Farrer was on an upward crest.
In 1922 a year after the death of Louise, Charles married Ruth Miller Bayne, an American woman who had visited the Marstons many years before. Previously married, she brought one young daughter into the household. Home life completely changed after his second marriage. The change to a normal life, after years of makebelieve during the illness of Louise, was so overwhelming that for some time, he could not really adjust himself to it. He wanted simply to be with his new wife in homely circumstances and surroundings with time to consolidate a new phase in his life.
From his daughters’ point of view, the new marriage raised considerable difficulties of a different kind, as they were not really ready for such a rapid event. Charles and Ruth had felt they had been obliged to wait already for a long time. For Marjorie and Melissa, the event had come too soon: they were still under the spell of their own beautiful mother’s tragedy and illness, and could not yet accept the new chapter so easily.
Another complication was the young “sister”, aged eight, brought into the household. Margaret, American on both sides of her parentage, had a typical American upbringing: little discipline, treated as a grown up, and having everything explained to her. She was actually five years younger than Melissa, but appeared much older and more sophisticated.
With her mother behind her, she naturally took centre stage at home. She was naturally used to easy companionship, especially with her own generation, and it must have been equally difficult for her to become a member of this isolated and strained household.
Difficult
Marjorie, the eldest of the three by a considerable amount had been two years at university, and was already well-launched in a life of her own. She was not, therefore fundamentally dependent on her parents’ home.
But Melissa was barely fourteen, and a difficult young person to manage now that Charles had married again. It was thought better for her to go to school in Britain, but, unfortunately, a church school in the north of England was selected for her, which after her American one, was far too strict and old-fashioned. Frightened by some of her teachers, and not much a natural scholar, she was never able to get on as she would like to have done. Girls of that generation, when careers for women were not considered necessary except for financial reasons, were often very dependent on a kind and understanding teacher for the whole future.
Bungalow
The newly-constructed family returned to Wolverhampton – to Afcot in Tettenhall Wood, with groom William and gardener Wall – the latter still carrying on his beautiful flower arrangements in the garden – and an assortment of new servants. Jane, the ever-faithful cook had been pensioned off for life by Charles and given her own little bungalow near her family.
The Marstons bought a small Ford Flivver car, a type Ruth had been driving previously in the USA, and were much criticized for this, as it was considered by some to be a disloyal action to the Sunbeam family business!
Charles never actually drove a car (in those days most gentlemen sent their drivers to have a special course for driving at the Sunbeam works) although he was an excellent backseat driver, and sometimes a difficult one from the chauffeur’s point of view.
The faithful William, of the pony and trap, had long since graduated into a car driver, but always thought of his new steed in terms of a horse, and talked to it coaxingly whenever anything went wrong. That combination, with Charles, surrounded by maps, usually produced an unexpected and adventurous afternoon. Cars in the early years of the century, even Sunbeam, were not particularly reliable, nor as capable of going up hills as they were later. But the Ford Flivver was a definite improvement on all this, particularly on steep roads.
A family institution which Charles reintroduced at this time of his second marriage was family prayers each morning. These took place after breakfast, and all members of the family, including staff and any visitors, were asked to attend.
The party assembled in the breakfast room. Charles read a bible passage from the Church of England Calendar, and some other appropriate piece and prayers were said afterwards, the congregation kneeling in front of their chairs as his ancestors must have done before.
Church
The little service was variable as to the length, sometimes very short, at others seemingly interminable, particularly when the participants were in a hurry or had pressing engagements. On Sunday mornings the whole family attended church as they had always done at Christ Church, Tettenhall Wood, just a few minutes’ walk from Afcot, and sat in the front pews.