Throughout the Second World War, Molly Rich, a vicar s wife in
London, wrote hundreds of letters to a young Austrian refugee named
Otto. The boy had fled the Nazis and became a much-loved member of
her family, only to be deported for internment in Australia. The
warmth and humour of Molly's letters sustained Otto through grim
times, even as she and her family endured their own trials in
wartime London: record cold, rationing, and the Blitz. Molly wrote
from the heart of her community, the vicarage of St Nicholas,
Chiswick. The old house overflowed with children, refugees,
evacuees, lodgers, neighbours, and a menagerie of cats, dogs,
rabbits and chickens. She kept her extended family clothed and fed
while also volunteering, digging her allotment, and fire-watching,
always with time to cheer everyone she knew. Hers is a story of
bravery, selflessness, and love. introduction The letters of Molly
Rich, my mother, were written to Otto, a 20-year-old refugee from
Vienna who came to live with us at Chiswick Vicarage early in 1939
and quickly became part of the family. Fourteen months later, as
Hitler invaded Europe, Otto was arrested as an Enemy Alien and sent
to internment camps in England and then Australia. Released
fourteen months after his arrest, Otto joined the Pioneer Corps (a
military auxiliary) and then the Army, serving in England, France
and Germany as the Allies fought to victory. Much loved by us four
children, Otto was considered a fifth child by our mother, who
wrote to him throughout the war. After Molly s death in 1974, I was
lunching with Otto and his wife when he told me he still had all
her letters. I was greatly excited, as Molly was a natural
communicator, writing with charm and energy to her children away at
school, her mother in Hertfordshire, her sisters in Kenya and
extended family in Trinidad and America. I did not realise the full
power of her gift, however, until Otto handed me six boxes of
correspondence and said in his gentle, deep voice, These letters
kept me alive . Molly had typed or handwritten over six hundred
letters, filling every inch of wartime paper. She described the
life of an ordinary family living in a part of London that suffered
badly during the Blitz. The topics are largely domestic because of
wartime censorship and because Molly had little time for anything
but work in a household of 14 people, three dogs, two cats and a
canary, not to mention chickens and rabbits. Molly s husband, my
father, was Edward Rich ( Teddy or Uncle E ), vicar of St Nicholas,
then a parish of 11,000 people, many of them very poor. Molly and
Edward had four children: Helen, Lawrence, Patience and me, the
youngest, aged from twelve to six in 1940. Edward s curate, Fred
Wright, had a bed-sit arrangement on the top floor with his
white-and-tan spaniel, Tasher. The remaining ten bedrooms spilled
over with refugees from Estonia, Austria, Germany and Belgium,
evacuees from bombed-out houses in the neighbourhood and London s
East End, and visiting family and friends. Alice, the untalented
cook who was Molly s only servant, left in 1940. There was one
indoor lavatory. Molly was not a natural housekeeper. Brought up in
a country house, she was sent at 16 to a domestic college and
taught to use a flat iron and to cook and sew. Life at the Vicarage
was wildly chaotic. While trying to keep the household clean and
clothed and doing a great deal of parish work, our mother dug the
lawn to grow vegetables, created an air-raid shelter in the cellar
and helped the Women s Voluntary Service and the Mothers Union,
often after a long night of fire-watching. She managed all the
cooking with wartime rations ( I can now conjure meals from air )
and did the shopping on an old racing bike.
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