Hilda Reid Born 30.11.1898

Hilda Reid Born 30.11.1898. Life story by her nephew Alex Reid. Available online at www.livesretold.co.uk.

Contents

1. Introduction 2. Childhood in India 3. Schools 4. Oxford University 5. A Snapshot of 1927 6. Novels 7. Other Writing 8. Second World War 9. Later Life 10. Memories of 46 Tedworth Square

Hilda Reid. 1. Introduction Hilda Stewart Reid was born on 30th November 1898. She had two younger siblings, Philip and Lesley. But before telling Hilda's life story, a word about her parents. Hilda's father Arthur Reid came from a Scottish family which had sent its sons to India for several generations. Arthur's grandfather, John Fleming Martin Reid (1797-1859), served in the Bengal Civil Service. Arthur's great grandfather, John Reid (1754-1810), was a surgeon in the service of the East India Company. Hilda's mother, Imogen Beadon, also came from a family with strong Indian connections. Her father, Sir Cecil Beadon (1816-1880), had been Lieutenant Governor of Bengal. He is buried in the churchyard of St. John the Baptist Church, Latton, Wiltshire. The glazed bureau bookcase, now with our daughter Anna, came from the Beadon house in Latton.

Hilda's parents, Dieppe, 1899.

Imogen Beadon, Philip's mother ______4

2. Childhood in India

In about 1945, Hilda hand wrote and illustrated a little book called Once There Were Three Children about their childhood in India. It is very special, and there is only one copy. Its first few spreads, featuring a crocodile, Nanny Bugg, and a tiger

5 shoot, are above. The Reid children had an English nanny - Annie Bugg - and an Indian nurse called an Ayah. A log fire blazed behind the big brass guard in the day nursery; the hot weather was spent in the hills. Their father, who was Chief Judge of the Punjab province, kept an establishment of about thirty servants. The servants lived with their families in the compound - a village behind the house. Arthur was fond of entertaining, and proud of his horses and stables. The garden was bounded by a cactus hedge. Water came from a well, worked by bullocks that walked round in a circle. The machinery was made of wood; one could hear it continually creaking and clattering. The flower beds and lawns were fed from irrigation ditches. The children liked to ride in the driving seat behind the bullocks and played for hours damming the little streams. Two men did the household washing, standing in a cemented tank with the water up to their thighs, and beating the clothes on a slab. An old bespectacled tailor sat cross-legged on the house verandah, sewing.

Nanny Bugg with Hilda and Philip.

The children said 'Good-night' to their father as he sat over home work in his study. Their mother came to see them in bed, often beautifully dressed for a dinner party or a ball; once she wore fancy dress. The Reid children left India when Hilda was ten. Their father served some more years before retirement. Hilda and Lesley went to live with their Aunt Nini. Their mother returned to India for the winter. Nanny Bugg married Sergeant Applin, who had waited patiently for her.

Philip on his pony Monarch, drawn by Hilda

Sir Arthur Reid, Philip’s father

Philip, Hilda & Lesley with their mother ______

3. Schools During the period 1909 to 1913 Hilda, and her brother and sister Philip and Leslie, were looked after by their Aunt Eirene, known as Aunt Nini, who had married Will Dyson but had no children. Eirene lived in Sheffield, where she worked at the Girls’ High School, then moved to a terrace house in Leonard Terrace, London, at the top of Earl’s Court Road and near Kensington Gardens. Those houses have now been demolished to make way for the Odeon Cinema. While living in London with Aunt Eirene, Hilda attended school in Notting Hill. ______

4. Oxford University

Somerville College, Oxford. Hilda Reid took her undergraduate degree at Somerville College Oxford, where she was a member of a close-knit group of friends, several of whom went on to have distinguished literary careers. The group included Winifred Holtby, Margaret Kennedy, Vera Brittain, and Sylvia Thompson. Hilda Reid remained particularly close, personally and professionally, to both Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain.

Vera Brittain, Hilda's contemporary at Somerville College, Oxford. In her autobiography Testament of Youth Vera Brittain describes how Winifred Holtby introduced her to "her friend Hilda Reid, the pale, whimsical second-year student who has since become, as H.S.Reid, the author of exquisite historical novels, delicately etched with the fine pen of a literary drypoint artist". In her review of Hilda Reid's first novel in Time and Tide, Vera Brittain wrote: "To the generation that went down from Oxford just seven years ago, Miss H.S.Reid was known as an ardent and fastidious historical scholar, blissfully indifferent to the anxieties and rivalries of an examination system which offers little scope to an imagination so fine and so constructive." Brittain described Phillida in her review

9 as "a rare and lovely book" In her review of Emily in the Schoolmistress, Winifred Holtby wrote: "Her two earlier books, Phillida and Two Soldiers and a Lady, were subtle and scholarly stories of the period after the Civil Wars. But in Emily she looks at the modern world, which is giving so much trouble to statesmen at Geneva. She looks and she laughs".

Winifred Holtby An article in Time and Tide, describing leading women writers who had emerged from Oxford after the first world war, described Hilda Reid as a Somervillian who "was thought much of as a poet by her college, a gentle, dreamy, delicate creature, with fair fluffy hair that would not keep tidy, and a reputation for brilliant and fastidious scholarship that won prizes but could not win alphas in examinations. She forgot lectures, roamed mildly between the Bodleian and Somerville, scattering books; and went down with a fourth in History. But this year when she published Phillida, an exquisite study of the seventeenth century – gay with polished wit and musical phrases, concrete and authentic and vividly imagined, those few who had read the uncommon promise of her frugal essays said 'I told you so. We knew that Hilda Reid could write'". In the summer vacation during the First World War Hilda Reid, like other students, undertook agricultural war work. She picked strawberries which she described as "an agony of bending" and "pulled up flax with your bare hands. The Government did supply strong leather gloves, but they were in ribbons after the first 3 days. The flax was needed for making the fabric required for the cockpits and wings of aircraft". After Oxford, Hilda worked as a nurse and a schoolmistress, before taking up writing as a full time occupation. ______

5. A Snapshot of 1927

Drawing of Hilda Reid. A letter Hilda wrote to her brother Philip on 15th December 1927 gives a flavour of her life at the age of 29. It was the year before her first novel, Phillida, was published. Writing from the Reid home at Pamphill, Wimborne, Dorset, she says: Thank you for your letter of Nov.11th. I still type because I left my fountain pen in the train the other day and I get so inky with the other kind that it is a penance to write. Typing I like to practice. I expect to get my pen again as I have all particulars. I went to a meet and luncheon and Bridge and dinner on Saturday. Went to the Pinneys on Sunday. Rode the grandson of a Derby winner and helped to found an Institute at Lyme Regis on Monday. Caught the 7.45 at Crewkerne on Tuesday. Met Mabel at Waterloo (Mable Digby of course) went to the Royal Water Colour Exhibition, and League of Nations lunch and Ruth Draper. Caught the six P.M. at Salisbury. Slept at High Wood. Came home in time to go to Dorchester. I am going to another Institute this afternoon. Well my dear. Ruth Draper is more marvellous than people say. Quite worth going up to see. Not only funny but really moving - and not moving in the sense that Hamlet was, who moved me and Phoebe to the Coliseum. When Ruth Draper pats an imaginary dog you see the dog, and when she talks to imaginary people (she has a dozen people on the stage at once) they are all quite different. Urns and cups and telephones grow under her hand. She does an entire railway accident single handed, and so well that I cried. We saw the German Governess, and the Italian Lesson and Showing the Garden and the Church in Florence and several more. She is a lovely creature, too. O Miracle!

Ruth Draper (1884-1956) was an American actress, dramatist and noted diseuse who specialized in character-driven monologues and monodrama. The League of Nations was rather mouldy from a luncheon point of view. It was held at Pinoli's restaurant, which devotes a room to it once a week and saves up (fancy) its most depressing food for the occasion knowing that Leaguers don't mind what they eat. They are teetotallers too, which does not add to the gaiety o f their nations. Hubert Watson had me and Mable there and two League females. Afterwards Wilson Harris (editor of Headway) gave us whatever inside information he thought it good for us to know. He was not very long, but long enough for me, who was aching all over after my wrestle with the Derby's grandson. I am not pleased with Hubert. Why drag a woman to Soho and offer her ginger beer?

Pinoli's Restaurant, Wardour Street, Soho.

Many happy returns of the day. I am afraid this will miss your birthday. So sorry. The fact is, I haven't really started thinking about Christmas. Worm that I am. Adieu, mon cher. Your loving Hilda.

Pamphill Manor, the Reid's rented family home, from which Hilda wrote this letter. ______

6. Novels

Hilda published four novels:

1928 Phillida (published by Chatto & Windus, London) 1932 Two Soldiers and a Lady (published by Constable & Co Ltd, London) 1933 Emily (published by Constable & Co, London) 1939 Ashley Hamel (published by Constable & Co Ltd, London)

Phillida The reviewer in The Guardian wrote "Rarely have we been so taken with a story of adventure as we were with this chronicle of Richard Carey's thrilling Odyssey in Africa in the seventeenth century and of his belated love-affair with his Phillida." The reviewer of Phillida in The Times wrote: "Miss Reid contrives to write as a contemporary of the seventeenth century and of the twentieth century at once, and it is to this perhaps that the reader's pleasure is largely due. She is at home in the seventeenth century, and takes it so much for granted that we are soon persuaded to do the same." The review concludes: "If this is, as its publishers tell us, the early

14 work of a young writer, it is remarkable as much for its performance as for its promise".

Opening page of Phillida. The dedication is to her father.

The reviewer in Country Life wrote: "Though this seems to be Miss Reid's first novel, its strange elements are maturely compounded and her use of the seventeenth century idiom is natural and graceful". The reviewer in the Sunday Times wrote: "Phillida is a first novel of exceptional merit, and it should not be missed". T The reviewer in the New York Herald Tribune wrote: "In this story, written in a style whose beauty is a certain crystal clarity and appositeness of phrase, a subtle transparence of word in which the underlying thought continually vitalises the changing external picture, the author has achieved an historical novel of peculiar charm and merit." The reviewer in the Liverpool Post and Mercury referred to Hilda Reid's confidence in the historical accuracy of Phillida: "She says she dare offer quite a handsome prize to anyone who can find in Phillida an error in historical fact, so assiduous has she been in her researches at the British Museum".

Two Soldiers and a Lady The reviewer in the Observer wrote: "Scene and costume are subordinated to character, for the interest one feels in Miss Reid's two soldiers and the lady whom they served is due to them individually and not their (Cromwellian) period". The review concludes: "The closely-knit, delicate texture of Miss Reid's story is as satisfying as her sense of character". The reviewer in Country Life wrote: "This is a rare book, rare in the historical knowledge and historical sense that informs it, and rare in the perception the reader gains from it." The reviewer in the Manchester Guardian wrote: "A graceful style and an intimate knowledge of seventeenth-century England are the outstanding features of Miss Reid's novel". The reviewer in the New York Times wrote: "The strength of the book lies in its abnegation. By deliberate concentration on what

15 might, at first sight, appear to be historically of least importance the author has succeeded in reproducing the spirit of the period – which determined the events."[14]

Two Soldiers and a Lady, signed by Hilda. Emily The reviewer in the Daily Telegraph wrote: "Miss Reid must have been studying life in Bloomsbury, or Chelsea, or one of the more precious of our garden suburbs. The experience has diverted her thoughts for the moment from matters historical, and she has Produced 'Emily' for amusement – hers and ours. The cranks, the nut- eaters, the uplifters, the earnest remakers of post-war Europe are paraded in company with the most comic little group of Balkan intriguers London has ever sheltered". The reviewer in Time and Tide wrote: "It is a relief to come across a book so utterly joyous, irresponsible and deliciously mad as Emily." The Times Literary Supplement reviewer wrote: "Miss Reid has taken a holiday from the seventeenth century, and her new book is a modern extravaganza, very wittily performed". The reviewer in John O'London's Weekly wrote: "Miss H.S.Reid, whose amusing novel Emily has just appeared, went to Somerville College, Oxford, after first studying art. She worked as a nurse and as a schoolmistress before starting to write. She is an authority on witchcraft and village drama." Ashley Hamel The review of Ashley Hamel in the Sunday Times described the novel as "a piece of very good work" which is "both lively and shrewd". It describes the novel as marking the changes, social, political, and ecclesiastical, in a Dorsetshire village from the 18th century to the present day. Ashley Hamel was also reviewed in The Times. The review includes: "Miss Reid is not a sentimentalist. She records changes without defending or decrying them, and after their moments of grief or joy her characters must insensibly resume the ordinary round".

Opening page of Ashley Hamel, list of principal characters on left. The reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement wrote: "It is a shrewd piece of work, gracefully carried out, and one takes great pleasure in the reasonable mind behind it". The reviewer in the Manchester Guardian wrote: "Miss Reid has a keen sense of the general ideas dominating English life at particular periods, and she is particularly successful with her eccentrics, such as Mr.Finch, the curate in charge in the days of pluralism, who, having conceived a boyish devotion to Marie Antoinette, holds himself partly responsible for her death because of his revolutionary opinions". ______

7. Other Writing 1937 Famous Landscape Architects: Capability Brown (published in Landscape & Garden, the journal of the Institute of Landscape Architects, Spring 1937) 1938 One Hundred Years in a Chelsea Parish (published by Christ Church, Chelsea). Hilda took keen interest in the history of Chelsea. A reviewer of One Hundred Years in a Chelsea Parish wrote that it is "an admirably written book, a model of a little history. Miss Hilda Reid has had not only books and the parish records and magazines for her material but personal memories of parishioners going far back into the nineteenth century. One of them has recalled for her a lady whose pony, after being un-harnessed from his basket carriage at the front door, walked up the steps and through the house to his stable in the garden."

1948 The Story of the County of London Branch (published by the British Red Cross Society). Hilda's sister Leslie worked for many years after the Second World War at the Battersea branch of the Red Cross, to which she would commute in her Morris Minor convertible car.

Morris Minor convertible, as owned by Lesley. The reviewer in the South London Observer of The Story of the County of London Branch wrote: "That story is told tersely, economically and factually by Hilda Reid, which recalls the nights of fire and explosion, particularly in south London".[23] The reviewer in the Evening News wrote of the "heroic work" of the Red Cross nurses during the war years, and describes Hilda Reid as seeing "much of the organisation's work during the war years while working with the Civil Defence."[24] The book carried a foreword by Mrs Winston Churchill. After the war Hilda Reid wrote several unpublished novels and plays, and was for many years secretary of the Chelsea Society. Her unpublished novels include Tolpuddle House, Leaving Briarly, Thel, Egypt End, and Egremont. Her unpublished plays include The Jest of Fame, and The Burning Deck. She also wrote several unpublished children's stories. One, which might alarm small children but has a happy ending, is reproduced below: FISH, FASH AND FUSH There were once three brothers called David, William and Henry Brown. They were fairly good boys, but not very good. They were often disobedient. One day their Mother went out shopping. Before she went she said to them, 'Play where ever you like while I'm away; but don't go bathing in the river. If you go bathing in the river, Fish, Fash and Fush will certainly eat you up'. David, William and Henry promised their mother faithfully that they would not go near the river. They meant to keep their promise; and yet, as soon as her back was turned, they forgot all about it. First they went to the river's brim and saw how clean and cool it was. Then they took off their clothes and laid them in three heaps on the bank. Then they jumped in and began to swim about. While they were bathing, Fish, Fash and Fush, the three great Salmon, swam lazily up the stream. Fish came first. He opened one eye and he saw David. Then he opened his mouth and gobbled David up. Fash came next. He opened one eye and saw William. He gobbled William up. Last came Fush. He had to open both eyes in order to see Henry, because Henry was so small; but that did not prevent him from gobbling Henry up. Then the three Salmon swam quietly on, waving their tails. When Mrs Brown came home from the shops she called her children in to tea. They were nowhere to be 19 found. They were not in the house, nor in the garden, nor in the road. On the river bank were three piles of clothes; and not a child to be seen. When she found the clothes she was in despair. She ran to the nearest policeman and said 'have you seen my sons?' 'No Madam' said he. 'But Fish, Fash and Fush came up the river this afternoon. Perhaps they have swallowed the boys'. 'What shall I do?' cried poor Mrs. Brown. 'I know what I should do', said the policeman. 'I should go to the shops and buy three legs of mutton and a pound of pepper. Then I should pepper the mutton and hang it in the river'. Mrs. Brown thanked the policeman for his good advice. She ran to the shops and bought three legs of mutton and a pound of pepper and a ball of string. She peppered the legs of mutton well, tethered them with the string to three posts, and threw them into the water. In the evening, the three great Salmon swam slowly down the stream. Fish came first. He saw the first leg of mutton and he gobbled it up. The pepper was so strong that he began at once sneeze and to sneeze till, with a great 'Plop!', David Brown shot out of his mouth, alive and well, and swam safely ashore. Then came Fash. He found the second leg of mutton. When he had tasted it he sneezed and sneezed till William appeared again and got ashore as easily as David had done. Fush ate the third leg of mutton. There was even more pepper on that. He sneezed, and sneezed, and SNEEZED; till little Henry shot out of his mouth, head over heels, right onto the bank. Mrs. Brown dressed her children and hurried them home, and put them straight to bed. They had to drink buckets and buckets of hot milk and cinnamon in case they should catch cold. ______

8. Second World War

London Blitz. Throughout the Second World War Hilda worked as a volunteer Air Raid Warden in Chelsea, patrolling streets, shepherding people into underground air raid shelters, and helping the victims of bombing. The basement of the Reid house at 46 Tedworth Square, Chelsea, was turned into a base for the local force of Air Raid Wardens.

A page of notes Hilda made during training as an air raid warden. 21

The page of notes above, which Hilda made while training as an air raid warden, contains instructions on how to deal with contaminated wards, contaminated vehicles, and contaminated clothes. This presumably refers to the risk of gas attacks. Lost children were to be taken to the Violet Melchett Welfare Centre in Flood Walk. Over 30,000 people were killed in London by air raids during the Second World War. More than 70,000 buildings were completely demolished, and over a million were damaged. Hilda's sister Lesley worked throughout the Second World War at the secret cryptographic centre at Bletchley Park, managing the accommodation for the thousands who worked there. They had come from all over the country, and were accommodated as lodgers in local homes.

Bletchley Park ______

9. Later Life

Ardfern Hilda's mother Imogen died in London in 1964 at the age of 94. Hilda (now 66) and Lesley gave up the house at 46 Tedworth Square and moved to a small pre- fabricated timber bungalow, built to their specification, in Ardfern, Argyll & Bute, Scotland. Ardfern is a waterfront village lying on the south coast of the Craignish peninsula, facing Loch Craignish. It was an area that they knew and loved, and the bungalow made a quiet and pleasant retirement home.

King's Road Chelsea, as it was. A factor in their move may have been that by the 1960s Chelsea had changed from the quiet, village-like atmosphere that they knew, with old fashioned butchers, bakers and ironmongers, into the noisy heart of swinging London. Hilda's mind remained active while living in retirement in Ardfern. In 1978, at the age of 80, she entered a hand-written poem into the Literature section of the annual Craignish Rural Institute show. It recalls her voyage home by sea from India to England in 1908, at the age of ten.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS A first impression of the sea Was stamped on me When beyond sight of land I found The world was round And much resembled on the whole A goldfish bowl Well stocked with fishes, of which just a few Came into view. Enormous whales (less persecuted then by evil men) Made the horizon messy with their spouting And set us shouting At sight of silver fountains 'Look at those!' Or 'There she blows!' Until perhaps the feared fin of a shark Wrought thoughts more dark. Then flying fishes broke the skin of water, Each courting slaughter By accident, breaking its silly neck Upon our deck. Too sad! The rose or saffron jelly fishes Best met my wishes. The brilliance of the Indian Ocean Always in motion. Rising or sinking in the changing hue, Purple, green, blue. Of that translucent water on whose face For a brief space We left the slender diamante snake That was our wake While we climbed up that ever swelling hill Whose top escaped us still. In the late 1970s Hilda and Lesley moved back south, perhaps to be near their brother Philip. Hilda died in a Somerset nursing home on 24th April 1982, at the age of 84. The Chelsea News published the following piece about her on 30th April 1982: Hilda Reid, a well-known a much respected resident of Chelsea, was due to be cremated in Somerset this week following her death at the weekend. As a former honorary secretary of the Chelsea Society, Miss Reid will be greatly missed for her devotion to Chelsea where she had lived for many years as a novelist and historian. She was one of a brilliant year at Somerville College Oxford, and numbered Vera Brittain among her friends, and went on to write three novels 'Three Soldiers and a Lady', 'Emily', and 'Ashley Hamil'.

Apart from her brave and distinguished record during World War II air raid duties in Chelsea, she is likely to be remembered in particular for her History of Christ Church Parish, Chelsea, and her invaluable work for the Chelsea Society. Miss Reid, whose Chelsea home was in Tedworth Square, died in Somerset. ______

10. Memories of 46 Tedworth Square

Hilda, right, in about 1949, when I was eight and she was just over 50. With my parents and Griselda. Hilda lived from the 1930s through to the 1960s at 46 Tedworth Square, London SW3, with her sister Lesley and their mother Imogen. I lived with my family in Bath from the age of 6 to the age of 12. During that period I often went up to London to stay with my aunts and grandmother at Tedworth Square, which acted as our London family base. The house, which my grandmother had bought leasehold from the Cadogan Estate, has now been demolished together with the whole north side of Tedworth Square. New terrace houses and flats have been built in its place. The construction was probably flimsy, and there may have been some war damage.

My memories of 46 Tedworth Square are vivid. It was a typical Victorian 5-storey house, with a basement, a pillared portico, and steps up to the raised ground floor. There was a front and a back room on each floor. I remember my grandmother Imogen had become almost permanently bedridden. She lay comfortably in an upper bedroom, listening to the radio, and wearing a kind

26 of white lace cap. She seemed very calm, spoke quietly, and was very friendly. Hilda and Lesley took her meals up to her. I would be given a spare bedroom at the top of the house. A notable feature of the spare bedroom was that it had a tin of digestive biscuits on the bedside table in case of night hunger. This was a luxury to which I was not accustomed.

Tedworth Square looked like this.

I don't think any improvements had been made to the house since my grandmother had bought it in the 1930s. Indeed being leasehold there may have been little incentive to make improvements.

A hot water geyser similar to that at 46 Tedworth Square.

There was one bathroom, with an ancient and lethal gas water heater over the bath. This dribbled out cold water, steam, and boiling water in an unpredictable sequence. It took a very long time to fill a bath. The back room in the basement, known from the time of the Second World War as the Warden's Room, was an Aladdin’s Cave of bric a brac. This was because it was used as the collection point for donations to Aunt Lesley's annual Red Cross jumble sale. As the date approached the Warden's Room became full to the ceiling. It was wonderful to explore. Money was short and thrift was the order of the day. In those days parcels arrived in brown paper, secured with string rather than sellotape - which had not yet been invented. The brown paper would be carefully removed and folded up into the brown paper drawer in the front hall. Similarly the string would be carefully untied and stored in the string drawer. To enable a second use, envelopes would be turned inside out. And my aunts had an ingenious little device for making new bars of soap out of small scraps of old soap. It consisted of two metal cups with a hole in each and a bolt connecting the cups. You filled the cups with soap scraps, threaded them onto the bolt facing each other and tightened up the bolt to form a kind of press. You then left it overnight. The resulting bar of soap had an interesting marbled appearance and hole through the middle of it. Hilda and Lesley were very indulgent and looked after me well. At my urging they would take me all over London on the top of double-decker buses. On my first such trip I insisted on returning by taxi. Hilda and Lesley were much too thrifty to ever take taxis, but they reluctantly fell in with my request. Afterwards they persuaded me to explain why I had insisted on the taxi. It was because I had wanted to save them money, and had assumed that a dull black taxi must be much cheaper than a huge bright red double-decker bus.

1950s London bus. Always a conductor.

When I was about six I would periodically explain to Hilda and Lesley that I needed to do ladder work. This required them to lug a wooden step ladder from the basement and set it up in a corner of the living room. I would then go up the step ladder and peer and grope about at ceiling level. I would then climb down and require the step ladder to be moved several times to other parts of the room so that I could repeat the process. I cannot image why they put up with this.

We also played Happy Families; I liked Mr Chip the Carpenter, but found Mrs Bone the Butcher's Wife rather alarming.

On one of my visits Hilda and Lesley mentioned their difficulty in removing the tight foil caps from milk bottles. This was during my lathe phase, and on the next visit I brought them as a present a device I had turned out of wood. It was a biscuit- sized wooden disk which was flat on one side, and had on the other side an upstanding centre designed to fit the inside radius of the top of a milk bottle. You pressed this onto the top of the bottle, and the foil cap then lifted off easily.

A more elaborate hand-made gift was a night notebook for my aunt Hilda. I thought that, as an author, she would have thoughts in the middle of the night and would need to write them down. I therefore made a clipboard that carried a notebook, a bulb holder, a battery and a sleeve into which you could slide a pencil. A copper spring closed the circuit when you withdrew the pencil, causing the light to turn on. It was not clear how you would see to grasp the pencil. ______

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