90+ | June 13th 2008

Jillian Edelstein

In our third instalment of "Bright Old Things", our feature on 90-somethings with storied and contented lives, Maureen Cleave talks to Betty Stevens, who takes her 73 descendants in stride. "God decides how long we're going to live," she remarks ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, Summer 2008

What is interesting about Betty Stevens is of slight interest to herself: the fact, for example, that she has nine children, 32 grandchildren and 32 great grandchildren, with two more on the way. That's 73 descendants. "Children? They just rear--it's not as though they all come at once. I'm just a bit of a damp squib, an old widow of 40 years." She was settled comfortably on the sofa in her pretty drawing room. She has soft white hair, a clear voice and perfect teeth. "Gnashers in good order," she said. She is 90 and lives in St Andrew's. She has two daughters with her much of the time, and kind Mrs Peace who comes three times a week to clean and, she says, make her laugh.

Her father worked for the Great Western Railway in Berkshire; she and her younger sister played in the garden, shared a governess with the vicar's children and did as they were told--until Betty was almost 18. Then they sought out a certain Canon Kernan and, under his instruction, converted to Catholicism, to the consternation of their Anglican mother.

Two years later Betty married Charles Phillips Stevens, a Catholic doctor, and regular officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps. War was in the offing. He was posted to the Middle East and they spent four years darting between Palestine and Egypt. He was planning for the invasion, converting an 80-bed army hospital to 1,200 beds. Their first baby was born in the Anglo-Swiss hospital in Alexandria. "It was absolutely hilarious. The matron wasn't a midwife at all but a Hungarian countess, which really appealed to the rich cotton wives having babies there. The nurses would shout, 'Poussez, Madame, poussez'." Betty's first baby was a boy. The
next two were born in the Anglo-American hospital in Cairo.

"War made little impact on ordinary life in Egypt. There was plenty to eat, no difficulty getting servants. In an odd way it was the best time of our lives. We would clamber up the Great Pyramid of Giza, sit on top and survey the world. It was an interesting time for me--I like looking at things from the sidelines. I knew the plan was to hold the Germans at Alamein, which was a secret." She paused. "It's funny being history--it's as though I'm telling you about Noah's ark."

In 1943, the crisis over in the Middle East, they came home on the rms Aquitania--Betty, her husband, two little boys, a baby girl and another on the way. The journey took six weeks. "It was a troop ship full of these poor soldiers with nothing to do but sit around on deck." The two boys had a fine time dashing all over the place. "One day this immaculate young officer came and saluted smartly: 'The captain's compliments to Mrs Stevens. Would she kindly keep the children out of the gun turrets? We may have to use them.'

"When we got home, my husband's parents, the soul of goodness, took us in. The house was on the river in Maidenhead. It had ten bedrooms and we needed every one"--certainly by the time five more children had arrived. They all went to boarding schools; Catholic schools reduced their fees for large families.

By now two daughters, Clare and Mary, are in the room, talking about what fun it was, lots of friends to stay, always an extra place laid at the table in case. "The younger ones had life jackets," Clare said, "but falling in the river was the thing to do." She remembers the great flood of 1947, her grandmother cooking in the kitchen in her galoshes, ducks coming through the French window. When their father died in 1966, the nine children were between 13 and 26, their mother only 48. "And that's the end of the story," Betty Stevens says. "After that I just was."

Except, of course, there was still a lot to be done.

"We're given a pattern in life and God decides how long we're going to live. I was reared by God-fearing parents and I married a saintly man. I believe God made us for Himself. It's like being a child in the arms of its parent, feeling completely safe."

We shouldn't expect to be happy in old age, she says: contentment is enough. "I have an absurd sense of the ridiculous--I see life in a series of cartoons. If I do a quick reccy, I'm jolly lucky. I can't see to read any more but I can walk more or less, I have enough money to keep going, I listen to the wireless, Clare takes me to Mass every Saturday. I wake up at ten in the morning in a nice warm bed, aches and pains gone in the night, and I say the Rosary. I have peace of mind. God is my keeping-going."

(Maureen Cleave was one of the first feature writers on the London Evening Standard. Her last feature was "Beggars can be orators" for the Spring issue of Intelligent Life. Jillian Edelstein, who took the portraits for this series, is an award-winning photographer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker and Vogue.)