I Remember Mama

TEMPESTUOUS PETTICOAT (272 pp.]--Claire Leighfon--Rlneharf ($3.50).

Early in the century a fine, fiery Irish-Cornish lady named Marie Connor Leighton wrote throbbing serial stories with titles like Fires of Love and Sealed Lips. A copy boy waited in the hallway of her house in St. John's Wood, London, to dash with the latest installments to Lord Northcliffe's Daily Mail. The income kept her household going: six servants, four dogs, three children, a secretary and a husband.

In Tempestuous Petticoat, one of the children, Clare Leighton, now a U.S. wood engraver, has set out to remember mania in all her Edwardian glory. Mama first fell madly in love at ten (with a window cleaner), published her first novel at 16, and believed until the end of her life (1941) that the secret of a ladylike complexion was cold water, lemons and dry oatmeal, externally applied.

The Best Flannel. One consequence was that the main bedroom in the Leighton house was littered with oatmeal dust and old lemon peels "turned all conceivable shades of blue and green mold." Underneath a study table heaped with notes scrawled on brown paper bags, paste pots, unpaid bills and old quill pens sat an assortment of patient, sighing dogs--preponderantly Skye terriers, since Queen Victoria had been partial to Skyes. And since the dear Queen was whispered to have been partial to flannel underwear, garments of the best bluish-green Welsh flannel were generally draped over the study furniture and fireplace screen, to air.

Marie Leighton was adamant about airing. There was no better way to catch pneumonia, she said, than to wear a flannel garment that had not been properly warmed and aired. "And when it comes to things like chemises and drawers, which go next to the skin, it's always on the safe side to let them go on airing for the better part of a week." She was adamant on many points: furs mothproofed with pepper, the futility of female education, the social inadequacy of Unitarians. Robert Leighton, her husband, was unfortunately not only a Unitarian but a less successful writer than she (he wrote boys' adventure stories). "You know perfectly well, Robert," she said, "that I have no objection to being the member of the family to earn most of the money. But I do wonder what it would feel like to be a kept woman."

Poet-Novelist George Meredith had been an early admirer, but had been dismissed because his beard was too bristly. Other admirers or callers came & went--an old judge who claimed that he had loved 100 women, no more, no less; the great Lord Northcliffe, who usually passed at least part of each visit relaxing prone on the floor. "There's absolutely nothing to be surprised about in someone choosing to lie on his stomach," Marie Leighton explained. "The sooner you children learn to accept any eccentricity as though it were a commonplace, the better equipped you will be for life."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.