By Sue Roe
Eva was born on 24 December 1925 and lived first in the Pitsmoor area of Sheffield, moving about ten miles to Bramley in 1962. Her father was an engineer before and during the First World War when he lost a leg. On his return he worked in the offices of Edgar Allen steelworks at Tinsley. Her mother worked in the warehouse of a cutlery firm until she was married and gave it up. Eva passed the 11+ to go to Greystones Intermediate School but her parents were not interested in education for girls:
. . . they didn’t bother with the girls then, you know. Boys could have anything, but …You get married, you don’t need to. That’s the attitude then. So it didn’t get you anywhere.
She started her reading journey at school: she learned to read there. At the age of seven she started to read Dickens, unabridged: ‘I read David Copperfield; that was my favourite.’
Dickens made a great impression on her:
I liked the characters. I mean, they were really interesting characters, weren’t they? True to life, in a way, but funny as well. I loved David Copperfield. I think he went through a lot. I know Oliver Twist is a similar sort of thing, isn’t it, what happened to them when they were younger, but I liked the characters. I liked Peggotty.
Her parents did have books at home, and both were readers:
I used to get them from the library, mostly. We had got, luckily, at home, we had got here, you know, volumes of them. . . . he [her father] used to be like army books and war books.. and she [her mum] used to read love stories, you know . . .
When, much later, her mum lived with Eva in Bramley, she read in bed:
She used to go to bed in the afternoon. … Because she was elderly … she was 38 when she had me … I used to give her all sorts of books, she used to read them upstairs and then she used to have a little nap and then come down for tea.
As a child, Eva did not get many books as presents; she went to Burngreave Branch Library which was just down the road though she never got any help with choosing books:
I used to go regularly, yes, and pick my books, choose my books. … I used to read downstairs. If I started reading, it went over my head when everybody was talking, if I got really interested in a book.
Eva went to Burngreave Secondary School which she enjoyed.
I loved school. And our head teacher was Scottish, and she came from Carbrook School. She was always a miss – she never got married.
She was Scottish and tall. She used to have her hair trimmed short, and she used to always wear tweeds and suits. … But she was very interested in music, so we got that drummed into us. I’ll always remember her for that … and speech training, we had speech training. Elocution.
… when I was at secondary school, we had elocution lessons. They didn’t in most places, but we did. It was just like having proper elocution lessons, so we did a lot of Shakespeare, you know, so you learnt that off by heart, that sort of thing … Hamlet … to be or not to be, that is … I learnt that off by heart, that speech, but I can’t remember it all now.
Libraries continued to be important for Eva even after she married and had a family. Initially she used Handsworth Library but that was pulled down:
[we] had to either go down to Darnall, or go up to Manor Top. We often used to go there when the girls were young; we used to catch the bus. Or we used to walk it, and then we’d got the books … well, we got the bus coming back, because it was a nicer library, you know.
As she got older she read more widely: ‘I liked mysteries. I like murder mysteries.’
[Agatha Christie] : I used to read her books, yes. But once you’ve read one of her books … I used to like them, but they seemed to be all … when you look at them closely, they all seem to be the same, don’t they?
Eva enjoyed Dorothy L Sayers and P D James as well as adventure stories like Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines and John Buchan’s Thirty Nine Steps. She also liked comedies: ‘Not silly, but funny.’
Cold Comfort Farm: I read that, yes. I’ve got it actually.
I’ve read Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Compton Mackenzie … I like his books [like] Whisky Galore
Like several of our interviewees, Eva read books which were seen as shocking at the time:
Lady Chatterley’s Lover … I’ve read that, that’s neither here nor there. … I’ve read Edna O’ Brien – I like Edna O’Brien.
When asked if she was shocked by them, she replied, ‘Not really.’
Eva still reads, though the venue has changed over the years:
Now, of course, I only read in bed. If I wake up early I read, I have a little read at night. But I don’t read like I used to do, I don’t read downstairs. And I got into that habit when the girls were young and you couldn’t concentrate, and they were all there, so that’s when I used to read when I went to bed.
I often used to go to bed early when I was married because I was short-sighted, so it was handy for me. Because I had to have my glasses on, I could lie down in bed… he often used to find me in bed [asleep] with my glasses on, and he used to just take my glasses off!
Her husband didn’t object because he was a reader as well.
Eva enjoys reading well-loved books again.
I often read books that I am very fond of again, it doesn’t bother me. Revise myself on them. … Gone with the Wind, I’ve got that, naturally. Oh, I’ve read it two or three times. I keep coming back to it.