See if you can spot Dad, Tony Hall.
The Hall family grew up quite close to one another geographically and pretty well emotionally. For most of my childhood Granny and Grandpa Hall lived in Pine Street in Pretoria and Aunty Connie, Uncle Jack, Rosemary, Barbara and Ian lived across the road. Your Dad's dad, of course, owned the Lido Hotel south of Johannesburg.
David and Tony were boarders at Pretoria Boys High School – older than my brother Peter who was also a boarder, while I was mostly a “day dog”.
As you may have been told, Grandpa (that is my Grandpa and your Great Grandpa) was a geologist who, as the assistant director of the Geological Survey, surveyed some of South Africa’s richest mineral prospects – platinum, phosphate and gold in particular. With nothing more than a rock hammer, a chisel and a wonderful instinct he made extraordinary discoveries and his reports are still used by geologists today. Ask any geologist who works in South Africa about Dr A L Hall !
I only remember him as a retired man who sat peacefully in an old but comfortable armchair in a room in which literally dozens of sepia prints of all the great classical composers competed for space. There was an old gramophone in that room and hundreds of books about music and geology but I never heard music. He kept that treat for the regular chamber music recitals he and his staunchly loyal musicians shared under his baton.
He was a man of habit with a capital H. There was a large wooden jar with a lid on the chest of drawers at the top of the passage in which string was collected and stored. A piece of string never lay around or got thrown away – it went into the jar with all the others. His pipes and his tobacco, in the tobacco jar kept moist with a new banana skin every day, were on the card table between his chair and Granny’s and his walking stick was between his legs sticking out too far.
He went shopping twice a week – the same shops below the Union Buildings. He would collect the shopping bag from its place, his stick, his hat, his overcoat (regardless of the weather), money and exactly the right amount of coins for the bus trip both ways. Then he would walk up the steep hill to catch the “Union Buildings bus", as we called it. And he took the same bus home when his shopping was done.
Amongst his purchases were sweets – our favourites – because when he knew we were coming, any of us, he would carefully tie your favourite sweet from a piece of string hanging down from the antlers in the hallway. On big family occasions the strings were festooned with different sweets – one favourite for each of us - and I don’t ever remember a fight or a disappointment. It was his way of telling us we were welcome.
As we grew up we were allowed to go into his study – a room as exciting for children as Aladdin’s Cave! Clockwork toys, pieces of coloured rock, ornaments (I remember a matchbox dressed in harlequin gear for example), old musical instruments, hammers and chisels and the paraphernalia of half a century of trekking around the Transvaal searching for minerals.
And there were stages in one’s growing up. When you reached three you could wind up the three clockwork pigs – one played a violin, one played a tin drum and one danced. When you reached four you could get down the matchbox and light Grandpa’s pipe. There was that sort of absolutely wonderful ritual.
But the final rite of passage was when you became a teenager and he allowed you to sort out the music sheets for the next chamber music evening! He would decide the programme and then the lucky new teenager would climb up the ladder, choose out the right brown paper envelope for the chosen piece of music and then carefully count out the music sheets – 2 for violins, 1 for cello, 1 for clarinet and so on. What an honour!
One of my funniest memories of Grandpa happened in the hallway which was dominated by a very large hallstand which accommodated a dozen walking sticks and umbrellas, many coats, hats, scarves and gloves, a large mirror and an even larger gong with the heavy hammer to hit it which, of course, no one ever did. It would have wakened the dead!
Grandpa needed his coat, hat and scarf and tried to pull them off all at once and pulled the whole hallstand over on top of himself. The noise of his fall, the crash of the hallstand a split second after him and the huge gong which clanged in kindred for the first time in its life brought us all running to his assistance, sure he had suffered grievously, and the little maid got there first. He reached up to her to take her hand gently and asked “Are you OK?”
Granny was an activist in every way all her life and Eve became her favourite because she had shown such political courage and such commitment to good principles. Granny kept the Hall family together with her absolutely clear understanding of what was right and what wasn’t. Having been a suffragette with Emily Pankhurst in England, she came to South Africa and secured the right for women to vote before England did! And she never gave up on women’s rights – a commitment she taught Aunty Connie, who followed in her footsteps.
She was determined all her life. Apparently she was not allowed to enrol at Bristol University because she was a woman and, worse still, she wanted to study science – not the arts. So she sat amongst the rhododendrons under the window of the lecture hall and then submitted her answers to the quarterly test …. and came first! So they allowed her to enrol and she graduated with honours.
It was that same spirit that guided her in choosing a career for Aunty Connie when she matriculated from St Mary’s DSG.
“Constance” she is reputed to have said, “there are only two professions from which you are disbarred – the Church and Law. I think you should become a lawyer”.
Ultimately the law had to be changed to allow women to practice Law and Granny took her family to Cape Town for the duration of a parliamentary session to muster support for a Private Members Bill. Aunty Connie was then admitted as the first woman attorney in South Africa.
Such was her spirit.
Aunty Connie took after her mother. If she was feisty, Uncle Jack was the gently spoken Scottish auditor who did an honest job honestly. With Rosemary, Barbara and Ian around about our ages we cousins had good times with the Pollocks at 159 Pine Street. She, like Granny, was a generous hostess and meals there were good events and sometimes there were so many of us we filled the large side veranda.
My mind turns to food. Grandpa loved Brunswick sausage, a German sausage that tasted good with chutney, both of which he bought on his shopping trips. Granny made the most delicious bread and butter pudding. I still crave for her drop scones (or, as some would say, flapjacks). Her fruit cake was more fruit than cake and her soups, which always seemed to be boiling lightly on the stove in the corner of the kitchen, were to die for.
Now to the Lido Hotel. I went there a year ago and almost couldn’t find it because the roads have changed to much. But it is still there and very little has changed. The oily old standby generator room is still there but Shorty, who was perennially drunk, isn’t. Even while he was falling around drunk Shorty could get the big generator to start. The bottle store, which surely financed the whole business, still seems to serve a loyal customer base. The paddock, which we thought was huge, really isn’t. And the three tired horses aren’t there anymore. George, that fat waiter who served us all in the children’s dining room, carrying 8 plates or more at a time, is no longer there but the line of “mixed puddings” at the end of every meal still got my mouth watering. The swimming pool, which used to be very big, isn’t now but standing at the edge of it I could remember endless games every summer weekend.
The glass doors to the ballroom are still etched with the words “LIDO HOTEL BALLROOM”. Perhaps they still dance there, but Friday and Saturday nights were Ballroom Dancing events that used to draw dancers and party-goers from miles away.
We cousins used to sit up until the cabaret came on – a different one most nights. Jugglers, contortionists, singers, dancers and magicians. They were real treats.
My father Phillip and my mother Mary got on very well with Nola and John so we went for many weekends. We cousins got on well too so they were good times.
My father was what was called a fuel technologist. His forte was coal and carbon fuels and he was a pioneer in the processes of making oil and other carbon derivatives from coal. He foresaw a fossil fuel crisis, always said that we were mining high grade fuels and carelessly leaving lower grades behind which would be economically impossible to go back and retrieve. And I can remember him telling me that one day we would have to harness the energy of the sun …. or else!
Me and my mother loved tennis and there were two tennis courts at the Lido and always weekend tennis with local enthusiasts.
David, even as a little boy, loved tennis too and excelled at school and at Wits University. He was a little older than I was and he was a cousin to look up to. So, too, was Tony – though much gentler, much easier and kind to me. He read a lot, sang beautifully taking lead roles first as a soprano whose voice had not yet broken, and then with his rich baritone. He was the star of school productions especially the annual Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. They seemed to suit his lovely sense of humour and fun.
My father got ill then died when I was 13. Granny and Grandpa died soon after. 160 Pine Street was sold, we cousins one by one matriculated all pretty well and went our separate ways. David married Felicity and went to live in California, Tony met Eve who proudly paid the price of telling our State President how wrong Apartheid was, pleasing Granny greatly, but leaving herself little option but to leave South Africa for England. Peter went to the United States to get a mathematics doctorate. Rosemary married Tom and settled in Durban. Barbara married Ken but stayed in Pretoria, so did Ian married to Jenny. I married Diana and moved to Johannesburg. So we became scattered.
I think I only saw Tony and Eve once when they were in Zimbabwe for a while and then once they had settled on the farm. But it was really easy to pick up where we had left off. Eve was already suffering but she hid it well – from us anyway – and we got on so well. They had very strong views about things they thought were wrong but their strong views made for great lively worthwhile conversation.
They were always Tony AND Eve – never Tony or Eve. In my mind always Tony AND Eve. I told Tony that when Eve died. He liked it because it was true.
I really do wish that we had had more time!
By Colin Hall
Learning To Lead, Cape Town
Phone 021 6857373
Fax 021 6857390
Cell phone 082 568 7887
Email colinH@LTL.co.za
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