In Notting Hill; Memories of Roy Jenkins

 In Notting Hill; Memories of Roy Jenkins

 

 

 

I don’t really know the Notting Hill area of London. Until recently, I’ve only remembered having visited the Eastern periphery, over towards Queensway and Paddington. The heart of the district, Portobello Road and the terraces set round private gardens off Ladbroke Grove, were pretty much foreign territory.

 

Indeed, I felt a stranger in my own city, spending a few hours and a night in Notting Hill. Although London is said to be a collection of villages, most of the villages superficially resemble the others of the same period. But Notting Hill is almost another country.

 

The windows of the room in the one-night hotel looked over a well kept extensive communal garden, into which the back doors of huge terraced houses, and the terraced hotel, gave direct access for privileged residents. Hotel guests did not count as such. At the top of the steps which led down to the garden stretched a chain, with a sign “Private”. There are residents; and then there are hotel residents.

 

In Britain, privilege is still carefully measured out. Notting Hill is where much of the City’s financial wealth has come to reside, in an exclusive way.

 

Local shops, cafes and restaurants all reflect this. Those wandering, or shopping, or sitting and sipping, are on the whole sleek, fairly young, and oh so comfortable with the prices to be paid in very posh organic eateries and grocers. This is a Village, not necessarily of the Damned, but of the very well off.

 

And then there is Portobello Road, a long snaking street of tourist tat, interesting antiques and whimsical special interest shops (a great hat shop!). Its nearest London equivalent is Camden Market, and it shares with that extravaganza a feeling of strangeness, even alienation, for anyone who actually lives in London. This is accentuated, in the case of Portobello, by the fact that is runs through the streets dominated by the terraces and gardens of the wealthy, who I doubt are much seen browsing there.

 

For me, a stay in Notting Hill brought back sharp memories of an erstwhile family connection with one famous late resident. In the next street south of the hotel is the large terraced building  containing the flat that, bar a few months, was the last home of Roy Jenkins. And on the other side of the inevitable private square behind the building is the smaller house he owned before that. Altogether he lived on one side or the other of Ladbroke Square from 1954 to 2002. This was a period that began when Notting Hill was a bomb-wrecked place, its big houses divided into squalid bedsits rented out by unscrupulous landlords. And ended with colonisation and restoration of grandeur by the financial elite.

 

Seeing these places (though I don’t think I ever visited either of them) sent me back to my memories of Roy and his wife, Jennifer. It was she that, for several years after Roy’s death, lived in a flat on the Eastern edge of Notting Hill, where I visited her often, as earlier mentioned.

 

My memories were eclectic: of Roy’s ferociously timetabled regime at home, segmenting the day into intervals (carefully annotated) dedicated to exercise (mostly brisk walking); writing; and drinking, mostly with family and friends, but alone if necessary. Of Roy’s struggles with Latin when he became Chancellor of Oxford University, when I stepped in to help in the early days, experiencing what it must have been like to have worked for Roy as an adviser (Special Latin Adviser, or SLAD rather than SPAD). Of his ceremonial approach to claret. (I’ve written elsewhere in more detail about the Latin and the claret https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2014/may/the-chancellor .)Of his love of driving, fast and far, in a series of black BMWs.

 

Then, of Jennifer’s domestic dedication when Roy lived, allowing him freedom to pursue his many interests. Of her dignity and gentleness when she was on her own. Of her mercifully very gradual decline in her 90s, fondly shepherded by her extrovert carer. Of escorting both of them, with my friends, to the Jenkins house in East Hendred in Oxfordshire. Of escorting her to her local Greek restaurant in Westbourne Grove.

 

Finally, memories of the dismantling of Jennifer’s flat after her death in 2017. Of picking, with the family’s permission (I being no longer a member) of a few small mementoes.

 

These included an old copy of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. It was Roy’s copy – clearly a favourite. Typically he had recorded on a fly leaf the number of readings, as follows:

 

London, 17 viii 43

Re-read April/May 1992

Re-re-read May 1998

Re-re-re-read Nov18/19 2002

 

About 7 weeks later, he died.

There was another Virginia Woolf book I selected (both were probably together on the shelf (Jenkins bookshelves were very orderly). This A Room of One's Own, also an early 1940s edition. This famous essay in praise of the independent woman writer was, it is apparent from the handwritten dedication at the front, a gift from Roy to Jennifer to celebrate the first year or so of their acquaintance, perhaps courtship, in early wartime.

It is a deeply ironic gift. For it was precisely "A Room of ROY's Own" that Jennifer allowed and supported throughout their marriage.

 

 

 

September 2020