GENTLEFOLK 1985

It’s 1985, I am 37. Kensington was well stocked with eccentrics, one never knew their names, but as a resident one came to know them by sight. One such was ‘Miss Haversham’. This was the heyday of Biba, Take Six and Kensington Market (with the Caryatids and pink kicking inflated legs in unison). The King’s Road was the fashion capital of Britain, with W8 being a more amateur off shoot of small independent entrepreneurs. I remember a stall in the basement called ‘Symphony of Shadows’ for Goths.

One would be walking along Kensington High Street or Church Street and see in front of you the back of an apparently gorgeous girl going in the same direction. She was dressed in white Victorian lace from head to foot; white lace dress down to her knees; white lace calf length socks, white lacy handbag; white shoes trimmed with lace; white lace broad brimmed hat; white lace elbow length gloves; and to top off the effect, a white lace parasol. Hurrying to catch her up, she would turn and smile as you drew level, for you only to realise she was about 75! She obviously enjoyed the effect she had! I think she paraded slowly up and down deliberately. Having been caught myself I saw a constant stream of men recoil in horror.

There was an Italian restaurant at the bottom of Church Street where I took my evening meal - its name was indeterminate, it had several competing names outside, one of which was ‘Cherry Pie’. It was good value and good home cooking (‘Liver Venettiana’ was my favourite) and as such was patronised by a regular local clientele of nearby residents of moderate means. Luigi ran the front of house, I think his brother in the basement was the chef, and there was a young Italian waitress. This was before McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken catered for this demographic. One saw the same faces every evening. If I was out and about in central London I would look for a ‘Chelsea Kitchen’ or ‘Pot’ restaurant, but if I was at home then Luigi’s.

Rather like the ‘Prommers’ in the ‘Builder’s Arms’ there was a subset of customers with an indefinable sameness which enabled you to identify them without really being able to say why. I never saw Miss Haversham there, but others,  middle aged or elderly, slightly shabbily dressed in good but old clothes, keeping each to themself, with ‘a certain air’; and not tipping the waitress, so she punished them by  giving them very bad service. One also saw them out and about on the street, along with the other eccentrics – the Sturdy Beggar; the Foul Mouthed Dwarf on crutches; the Tourettes Boy;  the Squirrel Feeder in Kensington Gardens;  the Woman with the Pet Duck in a cat basket at the Round Pond; Leo Villa’s daughter who blindfolded herself with a towel in public . . . I do wish I had photographed them all.

One day a scene erupted – Luigi shouted at a scared looking one of ‘them’, a middle aged lady, “Get out – you come in here every day, have the cheapest meal, drink water,  don’t tip my waitress, and now you say you have forgotten your purse and can you pay me tomorrow – get out and never come back”. She stumbled out white faced. The others closely studied their meals. It was rather upsetting, and really she was only doing more extremely what we were all doing; I had the fourth cheapest meal, one small cup of coffee, and tipped a strict 10%. I felt very bad for her, clearly his resentment had been brewing for a long time to trigger such a violent reaction, which on the face of it it was a reasonable request. She obviously thought that as a regular she could ask favours - how wrong could you be. I never felt quite the same going there.

30 years later there was a planning row in Kensington, with an application to empty and demolish an old people’s home in Vicarage Gate off Kensington Church Street. I had noticed this block, but never given it much thought, but I went and looked at it; a utilitarian red brick box but it did have some minor features of interest – much more ornate railings than usual, and the odd  semi-circular window. From the local protests I learned that the owners were the charity ‘Elizabeth Finn Care’ who claimed it was no longer economic, they wished to move away from residential care to care in the community and for this they needed the money from the sale. I began to wonder if this explained my Luigi regulars and Miss Haversham.

A little research revealed that ‘Elizabeth Finn Care’ was a renamed ‘Distressed Gentlefolk’s Aid Association’. The Distressed Gentlefolk’s Aid  Association was very familiar to anyone brought up in the 1950’s – they advertised heavily for donations and bequests in the ‘Daily Mail’, and the magazines ‘Weekend’, and ‘Tit Bits’ for the whole of the decade (usually adjacent to the ‘Panacea Society’ wanting Joanna Southcott’s Box opened by twelve bishops). In these advertisements they never really explained who ‘Distressed Gentlefolk’ were, the assumption apparently was if you were one then you knew it. The Kensington inter-war authoress Rachel Ferguson makes it clearer in her book ‘Alas Poor Lady’ (reissued by Persephone) which charts the downfall of a spinster daughter of an Edwardian upper class family who loose all their money – she goes from a Belgravia mansion and ‘Coming Out’ to lodging in old age by cruel chance in the servant’s attic of her old house converted into multiple occupancy bed sitting rooms. ‘Gentlefolk’ are the family of ‘Gentlemen’, and no Victorian or Edwardian needed to be told who a Gentleman was. So Miss Haversham and the Luigi regulars were Distressed Gentlefolk, coming a short walk from their hostel for a cheap meal. It explained why there were so many of them and why the had an indefinable similarity.

I guess, with the coming of the ‘Swinging Sixties’, the Labour government and the Welfare State the concept of a ‘Distressed Gentleperson’ became increasingly embarrassing, not that they went away of course. I would love to see the minutes of the Committee meeting of the DGAA where they decided to change the name to ‘Elizabeth Finn Care’ – I mean, how far can you distance yourself from your previous image?

Alas – Biba; Take Six; Kensington Market; Barkers; Pontins; Derry and Toms; Luigi’s all are swept away and W8 is now like any other anonymous shopping area. The hostel was sold, the residents dispersed, and the site redeveloped with a posh block of flats. I wonder what happened to them all?

Back