| Department of Mathematics and Statistics |
A Necessary Balance: Alec and Harry Aitken 1920-1935
P.C. Fenton
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16. Home life
Margaret began kindergarten in late 1930. She could write and had read since the age of two. George too, lonely without her, was allowed to attend. The instruction was too rapid however, and Margaret became so highly strung that Alec and Winifred decided to keep her at home. There was also a religious element in the teaching, of which they disapproved. This sensitivity to the children in later years grew into open interference, often trivial but difficult to deflect.
[Winifred] was sometimes unsuitably possessive. I think such difficulties as there were may have arisen out of a mixture of anxiety, which did have some causes, and loneliness. She would never, ever admit to being lonely, or anything like that; she was remarkably stoical. But for 15 years when George and I were children Father and she never went out together in the evening.126
‘Things I remember,’ Margaret wrote:
St Margaret’s park nearby, Mother sitting on a seat and myself picking daisies. At home, Mother showing me how to make a daisy chain. Saughton Park, a large park: kite flying there. I had a green and yellow box kite, Boxy, George a red and green flat kite with two tent-shapes on it, Altie. Father, not a handyman really, but out of affection for George and me and real interest in the kite flying, made us a huge box kite, Big Boxy, and a flat kite, Big Altie, in the kitchen, from calico, thin canes and glue. Big Boxy did get into the air and fly, Big Altie, alas, never managed to get off the ground.
For his research, ACA had a strong wooden board with 20 grooves made, and he bought – a special order I think – a large bag of marbles, these being mostly clear ones, with a much smaller number of transparent dark ones, deep green and deep red, one had to hold these up to the light to discern the colour; and a smaller number again of frosted white ones. These we would roll, tip and variously disperse on the board, and when all the grooves were filled ACA would note the number of different-from-clear marbles there were in each row.127
George’s memories of his childhood were coloured by deep resentment, towards his mother especially, which dated from a later period but in retrospect affected everything. He described Winifred as domineering and an intellectual snob, citing her reference to his 2nd class degree as a ‘poor degree’. As children George and Margaret barely saw their father, he said, perhaps no more than a minute a day. Give and take on politics, social or moral questions, fashion or scandal seem not to have figured in family life.
| 126 | MM to me, 28 Aug. 1995. |
| 127 | MM to me, 18 Nov. 1995. |
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