Phil’s History:

Curriculum Vitae

Names: 

Gwendoline (not Gwendolen) Mary Penfold.Archer, pianist and freethinker, daughter of Frank and Rosa Penfold, born 1909, wife of Frederick George Blake Archer, 1905 - 1991, mother of Michael James Archer, Philip Bruce Archer, and Robert Edward Archer.

To her own particular displeasure, Gwen’s mother, Rosa Penfold called her ‘Molly’ for many years. It’s not clear to me whether she did this from Gwen’s very youngest days, or perhaps only from a certain age. It is not clear where the name came from. Perhaps Rosa thought it was a familiar form of ‘Mary’. Certainly, PBA recalls Gwen taking  serious issue with (I think) one or both of her brothers Vincent  and Raymond on the question and saying and meaning that if they continued to call her Molly she would refuse to acknowledge them of have anything to do with them.

Dates:     

Born 7^th July 1909, during Edward VII’s reign, not long before he died, and was succeeded by his son George V. So she is a true ‘Edwardian’, born, so one might say, towards the very end of the last period of Britains’ greatness, before the First World War started the great decline from its heady days of Empire, which leaves it now a forgotten power which once had an  empire.

As of 8^th September 2003, Gwen is aged 94, living with her third son Edward (REA), at 17 Ambleside Drive, Headington, Oxford, OX3 OAQ, and is in excellent health. Ditto 13^th December 2006, on updating this.

Died 31.10.2009 at about 10.15 to 10.45 pm, exactly 73 years from her wedding day, aged 100 years and 3 months and 3 weeks. She died very peacefully, without trauma or drugs or indeed without people present, exactly as she would have wished (pba/31.10.09).

Birth Certificate:     

1. 1909, Horsham, Sussex;
2. On 7^th July, 1909, at 96 Station Road, Horsham;
3. Gwendoline Mary, girl;
4. Father: Frank Penfold;
5. Mother: Rosa Penfold, formerly Wells;
6. Occupation of father: Auctioneer;
7. Informant: Frank Penfold, father, 96 Station Road, Horsham, 17^th August, 1909, A.H. Miller, Registrar.

Parents:

Second child of: Frank Penfold and Rosa Wells.Penfold.

Siblings:

Vincent Penfold, born 1906, died 1989, estate agent, chrysanthemum grower (check the relevant paper-cutting in the Wells/Penfold photo albums), and film actor (if not ‘star’), who  married Mary Ahearne in 1934, and had children Diana (born 1936) and Thelma (born1944). Diana married Colin Temblett-Wood in 1960. Vincent later lived with Judith (surname unknown) who had a son, Nicholas by a former husband, for years before marrying her. They had no children. PBA believes he met Nicholas at 17 Sandfield Road, Oxford, and perhaps therefore also met Judith, but is not sure (e-mail enquiry to Edward now drafted);

Gwendoline, herself, born 1909, still hale and hearty on 13.12.2006 at the age of 97, having outlived Frank Penfold, senior, her grandfather, by two years; and 

Raymond Penfold, born 1922, died (pba to look it up) about 1996), estate agent, married Margaret English in 1954, and had children Jacqueline (born 1961), and Ian. More details of Raymond’s family to be found in his book ‘Memories of a forgetful Man’.. 

Education:      

Details to be entered in due course from the tape-recorded reminiscences of Gwen;

Gwen has always said that her education was negatively affected by her family’s frequent moves from one home to another (pba);

Health:      

From a telephone discussion on 6.6.2007, Gwen said she had what the doctor called ‘a delicate constitution’.

Thus, she had a series of serious illnesses at the age of 4 or 5, near the outbreak of WWI, leading to her not entering the education system and going to school and starting piano lessons until she was 7, and they were living at Cricklewood.. This all commenced with whooping cough which led to pneumonia, for the treatment of which she had injections of a serum derived from an ass. This same serum was used against pneumonia in the trenches in WWI. It saved Gwen’s life. Her mother put the problem down to using coke for heating the house instead of coal. 

Married: 

Frederick George Blake Archer on 31^st October 1936, when he was aged 31, and she was 27. Their marriage was during the very short (uncrowned?) reign of Edward VIII, so, in this respect too, Gwen is ‘an Edwardian’.

Children: 

Michael James: born August 1938; 

Philip Bruce: born October 1941; 

Robert Edward, born July 1949;

Occupation:  

Secretarial work at the BBC shortly before she married in 1936;

Details to be entered from her tape-recorded reminiscences in due course;

Gwen’s main life work was her piano teaching, at which she had great success, in terms of numbers of pupils passing the exams of the Associated Board, though her son Philip did not do so – a matter of choice on his part.  

Lived:      

Prior to marriage in 1936, GMA lived in a significant number of different locations (including Brighton, Merstham, Cricklewood, Kingston, etc), details to be entered in due course after typing-up her reminiscences. Now (7.8.08) have found the list in Edward’s writing marked “Where Gwen lived – where Rosa and Frank Penfold lived:
(i) 1909 Horsham – no address given, but presumably it was 96 Station Road, Horsham, where Gwen was born; (presumably they may well have lived in one or more other locations prior to this, such as when Vincent was born;
(ii) (no date given, but must have been between 1909 and 1912): Malden Road, Brighton;
(iii) 1912 – 1916: Harefield, Montefiore Road, Hove;

(iv) 1916 – 1918: 10 James Avenue, Cricklewood, NW2;

(v) 1918 – 1920: London Road, Merstham;
(vi) 1920 – 1927: 199 Melrose Avenue, Cricklewood, NW2;

(vii) 1927 – 1929: 19 Highcroft Villas,  Brighton;

(viii) 1929 – 1935: 6 Lorne Villas, Preston Park,  Brighton;

(ix) 1935 – 1936: 44 Old Deer  Park Gardens, Richmond;

(x) After October 1936 (Gwen’s marriage) Rosa and Frank moved to 90 Surbiton Road, Kingston-on-Thames, where they lived until he died in 1959;

(xi) Rosa eventually bought a little flat in Rottingdean, Sussex, where she lived for 2 or 3 years until:

(xii) coming to live with Gwen and her husband Fred for two-and-a-half years before she died in 1968 aged 89;

Oxford all her life since 1936;

Believe that she lived with FGBA, first in a house owned by an Archer family member, perhaps rented to them, which may have been the house at 64 Kingston Road. However I also have a handwritten note that FGBA and GMA’s first  year of married life was at 276 Banbury Road, Acacia Lodge, now pulled down. But (1^st September 2003), this doesn’t seem likely, as I do not remember ever it being said that the house at that time had that name;

They then moved to 386 London Road, Headington, Oxford, and onward to 17 Sandfield, Headington in about 1946;

Believe his father gave (no, 7.8.08, it was rented) FGBA a house in Walton Street/Kingston Road area when he married. But (my interpretation) this was soon disposed of  at GMA’s instigation, and they moved away as far as  they could (in Oxford) to 386 London Road, Headington, in 1937/8  (I should think). In 1946 they moved to 17 Sandfield Road, Headington, where they lived until he died on 1^st May 1991;

Since FGBA died in 1991, GMA  soon moved with REA to Ambleside Drive, Headington, Oxford, where they are still residing as of 8^th September 2003;

Re the Penfold family address at station road Dorking (7.8.08 do I mean Horsham, where Gwen was born?) quoted in one of the birth certificates recently ordered (approx July ’07), Gwen said on 4.8.07 that that house was next door to Laurence Olivier’s birthplace -  a little house.

Other biographical details:

1. See typed-up text from GMA’s reminiscences;
2. Discussed with Gwen on 6.6.07 the parallel nature of the piano career of Phyllis Sellick, who died in late May ’07 at the age of about 95. She had a fairly famous career with her husband Cyril Smith, at two pianos, though they had to do 3-handed duets after his stroke. Gwen was at first inclined to say that there was no doubt that Phyllis Sellick was the more talented, as she got a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, but when I commented that she (PS) had had full encouragement and tuition from the earliest age (3) when she started (as Gwen apparently did) to pick out tunes on the piano, she agreed that it might not have been so. Especially as Gwen started her career under the additional handicap of being 4 years behind, at the age of 7. She also mentioned (had I heard of them? No) Ethel Bartlett and Ray Robertson, a similarly talented duo who were just as well-known in their day, and who specialised in Bach.(pba.7.6.07);
3. Discussed with Gwen on 7.8.08 her love of cricket – she had mentioned that she had been brought-up on cricket. Her father took her to Lords when they were living at Cricklewood in the 1920s, and she was in her ‘late teens’, she said. Apparently they walked from Cricklewood to Lords, and she got (whether on that particular day or not, I don’t know) the autograph of (Jack?) Hobbs the famous cricketer, but she has lost it since. She said that her brother Vincent was keen on cricket too

Re Benefactor Jim Rice:

1. From Horsham’s economic history (online): ‘In the 20th century there were two firms of motor engineers in the town. Jackson Bros., started c. 1890 as a cycle hire and repair business, later turned to motor cycle and cars, closing after 1955. (fn. 7) Rice Bros., which began in 1895 as a firm of saddlers, later became coachbuilders and dealers in agricultural machinery as well as motor engineers. In 1965 the firm had a staff in Horsham and elsewhere of nearly 300. (fn. 8) A major new firm in the town from 1937 was CIBA, which manufactured medical and chemical products. The firm's modernistic brick factory building of 1939 near the railway station was enlarged after 1945, (fn. 9) the number of employees rising from 110 in that year (fn. 10) to over 300 by 1962, (fn. 11) over 500 by 1965, in which year a research unit was opened, (fn. 12) and over 750 in 1982. (fn. 13) After the Second World War there was a great expansion of light engineering in the town; the urban district council, which had been encouraging firms to come to Horsham in the 1930s, (fn. 14) provided industrial estates east and west of King's Road after c. 1946. (fn. 15) Many small firms also existed behind Brighton Road in 1962. (fn. 16) In 1979 many different products were made at Horsham, including plastics and fertilizers. (fn. 17) 

From: 'Horsham: Economic history', A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 6 Part 2: Bramber Rape (North-Western Part) including Horsham (1986), pp. 166-80. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=18352. Date accessed: 05 August 2007.

Life Story:

1. Born at the end of Edward VII’s reign, at the very end of the glory days of the British Empire;
2. Lived through the Great War of 1914 – 1918 in which her father was an air-raid warden and the family saw some significant war damage and losses around them in London;
3. Poor health in her youth led to a late start to her formal education, at about 7 (from recollection); and 
4. Her education, in a formal sense ended at about 14, which was probably the statutory minimum school-leaving age in the 1920s;
5. Her father did not/would not pay for any further education for Gwen;
6. The family was involved in numerous house-moves at her mother’s instigation, whereby Gwen was uprooted from her friends and social network many times, just when she had got it established. This probably did not help her confidence as a young person;
7. Music was the mainspring of her life, throughout her life, notably piano-playing. She gave her children a love of classical music by providing them with a background of live classical music throughout their youths.
8. She was an able piano teacher and throughout her life had a pupils who achieved great success in the Associated Board exams;
9. She herself gave some public performances at the piano keyboard and she achieved the LRAM;
10. She married Frederick George Blake Archer on 31.10.1936, ‘a very wet day’ her diary note says. She was introduced to him by her cousin Elizabeth, of whom he was her friend/boy friend at the time;
11. She had three boys and lived in Oxford all her life after marrying. 
12. The marriage was not particularly happy, although the evidence for this fact was very successfully hidden from the children and indeed from the world generally until the children were at least in their teens or beyond. 
13. Fred Archer died in 1991 at the age of 85;
14. Gwen Archer lived on a further 18 and a half years to the age of 100 and 3 months and 24 days, with the companionship of her third son, Edward, most of those years being spent at their joint home, 17 Ambleside Drive, Headington, Oxford, OX3 0AQ.

Dates of entry of data: 

8^th September 2003; 13.12.2006; 15.1.07;

Gwen’s Music:

This is a list of the piano music that I (pba) remember my mother used to play at home at 17 Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford, in my young days. The pieces listed below are ones that I hear on the  radio and think ‘Yes, I know every note of that piece from the days when I used to hear my mother play it. And she used to play it very nearly as well as this recording by a professional’. And she did. I have a recording of the Chopin Etudes played by Vladimir Ashkenazi, and it sounds exactly as Gwen used to sound:

1. Chopin Ballades eg the one in G-minor;
2. Chopin’s waltz in C-sharp minor;
3. Chopin etudes opus 25, Nos. 1- 4; and in fact most of the remaining eight;
4. Jacques Ibert’s ‘Little White Donkey’;
5. Grieg: Lyric pieces: The Butterfly, To the Spring;
6. Debussy: Golliwog’s cake walk;

From Gwen’s funeral service:

Gwen’s funeral service, Oxford Crematorium, Friday 6^th November 2009, 1.45-2.15pm

Walking in music:

Spring Sonata No 5 in F – Beethoven

(First movement) Allegro (Faded out as theme repeats at approx 2’30”)

Michael

We are gathered here – exactly according to mother’s/Gwen’s wishes – just 6 members of the family and two incredibly valued friends - to remember the life of a very special, very individual lady.  We all have our own particular memories of her and of the bonds that linked each one of us with her. Bonds, of course, that have now been cut – but memories that we will all carry with us and which, in words and music, we celebrate very simply now.

I have to tell you that Gwen chose one piece of music herself – in a note written, poignantly, when she was almost exactly my age! So, we will say our final goodbyes to her to the accompaniment of Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending. 

The other two pieces are down to me. We came in to the accompaniment of Beethoven’s wonderfully uplifting Spring Sonata - a purely personal indulgence.  For so many years, Gwen was a wonderful accompanist to her aspiring violinist son and The Spring was amongst the masterpieces we tackled together several times in public. I chose it to remind me – and hopefully my brothers too – of the many happy hours we spent serenading the Archer household.

The other musical treat comes later and is a celebration of Gwen’s amazing piano-playing partnership most Sundays with Doris, who we are delighted to have with us to share this sad but very special Archer occasion today. Equally, it is a great pleasure to welcome Gwen’s friend, Marjorie (and her carer Anne from NZ). Marjorie is still going strong in her own house too at the ripe old age of 102. She, like Doris, shared a friendship with Gwen for many years.

Enough from me - for the moment anyway. It is now time for Philip, the historian of the Archer family, to share his memories of our mother with us.

Philip

Thank you Michael.

We are here today to celebrate the life of Gwendoline Mary Archer, who died peacefully in her own home, on Saturday 31^st October, 2009, aged 100 years and 3 months and 24 days.

Gwen was the widow of Frederick George Blake Archer, the managing director of a family firm of removals contractors in Oxford, the mother of Michael Archer, Edward Archer and Philip Archer, and was born in Horsham, Sussex, the only daughter of Frank and Rosa Penfold.

The Penfolds were a Surrey family, Frank being an auctioneer and his wife Rosa Wells being the daughter of a then-well-known horticulturalist, William Wells.

           Gwen’s childhood and adolescence involved periods of serious illness whereby her education was delayed until she was 7, and though her two brothers had costly public school educations, by the time she was 15 in 1924, she had been allowed to leave school and was earning 2/6d an hour playing the piano for dancing classes, and with this she clothed herself and had a little pocket money. 

Gwen’s musical life included concert-going in the glory days of Rachmaninov’s European concert tours, and she progressed through piano exams and piano pupils of her own, passed the LRAM exam at the age of 22, in 1931, and obtained an interview for teaching music at Lawnside School in Malvern. But, as she said in her reminiscences, lacking the courage, she cancelled the interview. 

Gwen realized that a career as a piano soloist was probably beyond her, and although the role of accompanist suited her temperamentally, the egotism of the soloists was hard to cope with. So, needing to earn her keep, she settled for work as a shorthand typist and trained accordingly. In February 1936 she obtained a position with the BBC at the television branch at Alexandra Palace, and worked for a while for two musicians, but the work was all rather difficult and a bit of a strain.

Then, in April of 1936, only two months after starting work at the BBC, she was introduced by her cousin, Elizabeth Milne-Redhead, who was working as a stable-girl at Wolvercote, Oxford, to Fred Archer, her cousin’s horse-riding boy-friend, and by August of that year she had given up her job at the BBC and was married to him on October 31^st 1936.

The Archers were an Oxford family with connections by marriage with GJ Churchward the famous engineer of the Great Western Railway, and with Albert Reed, founder of the Reed paper empire, though these things did not really interest Gwen. 

Gwen’s marriage was not the happiest, but her three boys went some way towards filling that gap, and my recollections of the nineteen-forties and fifties, and of growing up with Gwen in Oxford, are of happiness, freedom, security, stability, sunshine, and music. We went fishing at Wolvercote and Godstow, we swam in the Thames and the Cherwell. We picnicked on Shotover, we played with friends, we brought friends home to tea, we cycled to school in central Oxford. It was a ‘golden era’ in my life. And always there was music in the home. Live music. Piano music. Violin music. Singing Gilbert and Sullivan and Fraser-Simpson and parlour songs round the piano. Gwen’s wonderful repertoire of Chopin waltzes, mazurkas, studies, polonaises, ballades and more, not to mention little ‘encore’ pieces like Ibert’s ‘Little White Donkey’ and Debussy’s ‘Gollywogs Cake Walk’ and many others. To hear any of ‘her’ pieces now, is to be transported back to the grand piano at Sandfield Road, and to know every note by heart, and to love them with a delight that diminishes not as the years go by. This is life. This is joy. This is as near to the real meaning of life as you can get, is it not? And all from a mother who loved music with every fibre of her being.

           I left Oxford in 1961, and married in 1966, and there were difficult times for Gwen and Fred in the early 1960s, and in 1974, and especially in 1990 and the following year. To some extent, these were the ‘flip-side’ of the stability and peace and security that had contributed so much to my ‘golden childhood’ years in the ‘40s and ‘50s. But now I was less directly affected, and far less vulnerable, though the pain of it will never be forgotten. Gwen’s wide circle of musical and other friends at this time no doubt helped her and included Christopher Headington, with whom she played the piano on equal terms. The serenity of the latter two decades of Gwen’s life no doubt contributed much to her final longevity. 

I must stop. But I must say a final farewell to my mother. Dear Gwen, I thank you for the wonderful gift of life itself, for meeting and loving and marrying my dad, all in those few months of 1936, and for a golden childhood in which the sun seems always to have been shining, and for music and its joys, which take us, in reality, as near to heaven as I believe it is possible to be. Thank you for all that you have taught us: about healthy eating and green-living and reading, for your radical thought and free-thinking, and finally for being our one and only inimitable Gwen Archer.

Philip 

Introduces Ruth (reads message from Helen)

I am sad that I can’t be with you today to say my farewells to Gwen.  However, I send my love and best wishes from my family here in New Zealand.

I have lovely memories of regular trips down to Sandfield Road to visit my grandparents.  I was lucky to be taught the piano by Gwen and I have fond memories of us playing duets in the music room together and feeling so pleased that I sounded so accomplished when Gwen was playing too!

           Gwen, you were such a kind and thoughtful grandmother and I feel blessed to have shared your creativity and to have known you for such a long time in my life.

Thank you for sharing your time and love with me over the years.  You have enriched my life and I am grateful for all the memories.

And now Michael will introduce the second piece of music.

Michael

Even though I had never met Gwen’s delightful piano duet partner, Doris, until today, I knew that Schubert’s wonderful Fantasia D940 was undoubtedly the piece that represented the pinnacle of their amazing Sunday afternoon partnership, which for so long was a real highlight of Gwen’s week.  When Susan and I heard the Chinese pianist Lang Lang play this 20-minute+ masterpiece alongside his tiny prodigy partner at the Proms in the Summer, we understood why Gwen put the onset of an attack of tinnitus down to her and Doris playing the work all the way through. “It is quite a physical effort”, she explained to me. “So, why didn’t you have a break in the middle?” I enquired.  “Oh, we couldn’t possibly do that!” came the reply - which tells you plenty about the spirit of the woman we remember today…and, of course, of Doris’ too.

So, now a couple of minutes in which we can picture them playing together as we sit back in personal contemplation and enjoy the quiet, sublime opening of Schubert’s Fantasia.

Sitting music:

Fantasia D940 – Schubert

First movement - Allegro Molto Moderato (There is a natural ‘fade’ point at approx. 2’15” in)

Michael

My brothers and I inherited an interesting mix of genes.  Our Father, who art (almost certainly) in heaven - having departed 18 years ago now - was God-fearing, animal-loving and a softie. 

Our mother, on the other hand, blamed most of the ills of this world on religion, so no form of God was on her radar.  Hence no prayers or hymns today.

Where Dad was a softie she was tough.  “To thine own self be true” was her gospel. “Don’t bother with, eat or drink anything you don’t fancy” – and she didn’t!  If we three boys have a steely backbone, it definitely came from her. She would fight like a tigress for our rights. And for the last period of her life - which she shared so successfully with Edward - she was also a devout vegetarian….and always attributed her long life to that. Apart from the last year or so, when the batteries began to run down, she scarcely bothered a doctor in 20 years, took regular walks and still managed to climb the stairs on her own until very recently.

But there were several things she didn’t ‘do’…. as well as not eating meat…

She didn’t do drink - as in alcohol.

She didn’t do flights abroad – Devon was pretty much her limit….and that was in our childhood.

She gave up driving – and understandably so – after her fatal accident with her friend Laura Barnet, way back in 1982 

In fact, she didn’t really do travelling. So, since I can remember, even the closer - never mind farther flung - members of the family had to come to her.

She didn’t do shopping either.  Edward was (for all those years) her weekly ‘hunter/gatherer’.  She made her own clothes.  And on her 100^th birthday, it was Edward who cut her hair.

No - money certainly wasn’t a priority to Gwen.  Yet, I often think she tended to overlook the fact that she couldn’t have enjoyed the life she did without the security of the Archer family business that came with being married to Fred. 

It was a marriage that clearly began with plenty of romance and shared interests – in those early, carefree days before the War that included horse riding and holidays. Sadly, when you move the clock forward, past their golden wedding anniversary – and with the business and us children gone – the shared interests were negligible and their lives drifted apart. 

She had her music and reading; he had his garden, the Freemen and Wesley Memorial Chapel.  It still pains me to remember that Father died on his own in a nursing home down the road from the family home.  And his wife chose not to attend his funeral. “To thine own self be true”. And she was.

But then, the autumn of Gwen’s life centred around a shared existence with Edward, who celebrated his 60^th birthday the day after she reached 100. It was an amazing partnership – without which Gwen would not have found anything like the contentment she enjoyed in her own home, with her piano, some pupils until not far off her century, plenty of reading, and cricket on television -  and we would all have been a whole lot poorer! 

I have plenty to thank my mother for - probably my sporting bent (she played in the school hockey team), certainly my love of music and that stubborn streak I’ve already mentioned.  

I was also blessed with a goodbye which I will treasure to my dying day. It was three days before she died.  Edward had alerted me to the fact that she was fading fast.  She was frail but the brain was still working. She enquired after all the family – even, amazingly (from somewhere), our late departed and much-loved cat!  Then I said, “You and I have all those wonderful musical memories that we shared together”.  Her eyes responded. “Yes”, she said, “and we don’t need to hear them to remember them!”  As I left the room, one hand rose above the bedclothes and the fingers waved me a final goodbye. 

“Goodbye, dear mother. Thank you for everything you gave me and, wherever your resting place at the end of your amazingly long and healthy life, may your soul find more peace, harmony and contentment than this world was ever able to offer.”

And now, appropriately, the final words come from the person who has lived all but a year of his life under the same roof as Gwen and devoted certainly the last 18 years of his life to his mother’s health and welfare -  Gwen’s guardian, mentor and non-stop carer, Edward.

Edward 

 She was born in July 1909, the very month that the aviator Bleriot first flew across the English Channel.  Another world, a century ago!

   She had pneumonia quite badly in her childhood in the days before antibiotic drugs. She had hot linseed oil poultices applied to her chest, from which she developed her lifelong dislike of the smell of linseed oil!

   She recovered, but was declared to have 'a delicate constitution'.  For someone with such a constitution she didn't do badly to reach one hundred.

   She got through two World Wars and the Cold War, bringing good music into people's lives as she went.  As one of her hundredth birthday card senders wrote: 'Congratulations on surviving the Twentieth Century!'  I think the stoicism of her generation is a lesson to us all.

   She had a long, rich, and fulfilling life, for which she counted her blessings.  She was proud to be an Englishwoman. I recall one of our discussions long ago about the possibility of reincarnation. She admitted she thoroughly disliked the idea because she did not want to be born  anything other than English! 

   She loved Oxford for all its culture and music, and was glad to have lived ...and died here.  In a little note which she wrote back in 1980 about her funeral she said: “Although I now hold no orthodox religious beliefs, I have come to believe that ‘there's a divinity that shapes our ends', and I believe too that the same Divinity will not cease to operate should my soul survive physical death. Otherwise, I wish for nothing better than a sleep from which there is no waking; and I can look upon death (as Mozart did) as ‘the best and truest friend of mankind.’”

   Also back in 1980 she wrote a document -a living will- asking not to be resuscitated if she were obviously on the way out.  I joked with her quite recently: 'If I had told you back in 1980 that you would live another 29 years, you wouldn't have believed me would you!' She agreed.

   I recall Gwen telling me years ago that when her mother Rosa died, back in 1968, Gwen had, in the minutes after the death, the clear impression that Rosa's spirit had departed, leaving just an inert body behind.  I believe that was an accurate subtle perception.

   I had the same perception when she died just days ago. Her bright, musical spirit had been liberated at last from a very old, tired, worn-out body. It was a going home after a long, long day in the School of Life.  Now her spirit is free to enjoy the higher levels of existence beyond the perception of the five senses of living humans.

   She had a good life; she had the kind of death she wanted.  She chose to depart at a memorable moment: on All Hallows Eve -a day when tradition has it that the veil between this world and the next is much thinner than usual.

   So, as we now consign her physical body to the blessed purifying influence of fire, let us, to help her on her next journey, imagine her in the prime of life, surrounded by light...   rising to the higher levels, like the lark ascending on a bright, mid-summer morning.

Cue Committal music:

The Lark Ascending – Vaughan Williams Williams (From start of disk to be faded at the conclusion of the service / exit of the 9-person ‘congregation’) 

From Jonnet Garner by e-mail: 

On 13 Dec 2009, at 18:33, jonnet Garner wrote:

Dear Phil,

Many thanks for senting all the thoughts and music played for Gwen's memorial Celebration of Life.

 It was good to quietly connect with everyone and take time to reflect.

Gwen would have appreciated the honesty expressed.

It was good to reflect on Fred too and the part my mother had in their lives. She was very like Fred in her kindness towards others and love of animals & nature. 

My Mum was always a free spirit and had a taste for the naughty!! She loved to swim in the brook at Holden Clough after a ride. I suspect it was the naughty fun in my Dad that she was drawn to. She and Dad also had some rough times together.

Take care.

Seasons Greetings from us all

love Jonnet xx

PC Record data: 

C:\My Documents\Family History General\C.V.s\Frederick George Blake Archer and brothers and sisters and spouses\cv(Gwendoline Mary Archer).doc

to help her on her next journey, imagine her in the prime of life, surrounded by light...   rising to the higher levels, like the lark ascending on a bright, mid-summer morning.

Cue Committal music:

The Lark Ascending – Vaughan Williams Williams (From start of disk to be faded at the conclusion of the service / exit of the 9-person ‘congregation’) 

(Ends.pba.16.12.09).