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The lolly of youth
‘Money doesn’t grown on trees’ was the motto Jonathan Self and his forebears grew up with. But the relative affluence of today’s teenagers brings with it a whole new problem: a lack of money-managing skills. So much so he has written a book to help.
‘I was always hungry, frequently cold and nothing I wore fitted me,’ is how my late grandfather, Sir Albert Henry Self, summed up his childhood. Do not be misled by his title. He was born in 1890, the son of a tram conductor, and one of 12 children. At nine he was taken out of school and sent to work washing up dishes in a restaurant because the family were desperate for the extra money. However, his former teacher was so impressed by his academic potential that he managed to get him a scholarship, first at a decent prep school, and later at a famous public school.
History does not record what my grandfather’s parents had to say about this but all 12 children ended up doing well. Several became teachers, one was a bank manager, and another owned a bookshop. My grandfather, who rose to some prominence in the Civil Service, was considered to be the most successful. Outwardly, the least successful was his youngest brother, who worked in a post office. However, after he died it turned out that he had been playing the stock market and was worth more than £1 million. His widow, on discovering she was wealthy, bought a new draining board for the kitchen and gave the rest to charity.
What intrigues me about my grandfather and his siblings is that they were the last generation within my immediate family to experience genuine poverty. It shaped their entire lives and those of their children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. Families that escape from poverty react in different ways. Some seem to want to forget that they once struggled to survive while others, like my own, make an effort to keep the memory of harder times alive. I am sure that one of the reasons I do so is that part of my childhood was spent living with my grandparents. As a result I feel a direct connection to events that happened well over 100 years ago. To my own children, aged from 11 to 26, the 1890s are ancient history, but not to me.
In 1918 my grandfather, who spent the First World War running Woolwich Arsenal, married his Army driver (who happened to be a wealthy heiress) and my father was born the following year. His childhood could not have been more different from his father’s. Although the family led a somewhat isolated existence – my grandmother’s relations did not approve of her marrying beneath her and my grandfather’s relations felt awkward around so much wealth – they were not lacking in comfort. At nine, my father, far from having to take a job to put food on the table, lived in a substantial, amply staffed house. He was sent to Lancing and Oxford, after which he was under no pressure to find paid employment but free to pursue his personal interests. Not that he wasn’t industrious – he devoted his life to teaching and worthy causes – but he always knew that he never had to worry about money.
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