My wonderful Tale of the Unexpected

Rainy Birthdays, special numbers, spirit signs, and Victorian kinship

This is my birthday week.

It begins at 5.45pm, 28th April, when I was born, and finishes on 5th May. During this week I go hunting for signs to see what steps are next, and remind myself of all the reasons why I am so lucky, and eternally grateful. 

An analysis of one’s solar return is always interesting to have, and a way to prepare for the year ahead. I really like reading Dana Gerhardt, she writes so well. I feel refreshed and better informed afterwards.

Cloudy Skies after rain 08 @publicdomainpictures.net

It rains today, after two weeks of solid, hot sun. I want to cry, as yesterday was so mild and sweet. Yuan, my Chinese friend, sends me love, reminding me that rain is really good luck. Her grandmother would “always pray for rain on special days, as it washes things new.” 

Bamboo under Spring Rain Xia, Chang, Chinese, 1388 - 1470

There is always a point during my birthday I give thanks to my birth mother, S.

I was adopted very soon after my birth. I imagine my mother, a young woman about to give birth, to give me up, and another young women, Patricia, who has not met me yet, trying hard to find a baby, somehow in the swinging sixties of London. Going from orphanages, to Catholic mission homes, and finally to a private adoption agency with her husband, hoping a match could be made.

It was made, 6 weeks later, and Patricia and Marius Pope legally adopted me. I went from being Yasmine Veronique Beevor to Jeannette Veronique Leonie Pope - Jeannette, after my Jewish Lithuanian father’s mother.

Patricia, Marius, me, (mum pregnant with Ivan in France.)

I began to be intrigued and terrified by numbers when I was quite young. I am number dyslexic. I loathed maths, and simply stopped doing them. Dad would beg me, paid for private tuition, I just couldn’t understand, and spent more time outside the head’s office then in the maths class. Yet numbers have something very magical, some numbers have colours; red for 3 and 5, green for 7, silver for 11, yellow for 2, black for special 8, while repeated frequencies, 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, and double numbers, 11, 22, 28 became important, as researching documents for traces of my family, years before the ease of the internet had me writing down dates and times very carefully in a notebook, at the now closed, St Catherines house, London. These numbers tell stories.

I was born on a 28th, given up on a 22nd, legally adopted on a 28th, and met my  birth mother S. for the first time on an 8th. My three adoptive brothers have birthdays on the 8th, 2nd and 22nd. Later, my daughter, due on a 14th, was late, born the 28th. My Chinese phone number is 18953286484. In Qingdao we live in Block 2, 16th floor, (8+8=16) flat 2. My house in France is 11, 1+1=2. Recently coming back from Strasbourg before lockdown, with a friend, my Eurostar seat was in carriage 8, seat 28; his was seat 27. This is an often occurrence.

Since living in China my fascination with numbers has become more significant as they are intrinsically bound with the Chinese way of life, like the I Ching, and so many idioms commonly used: “一心一意 (yì xīn yí yì), with one heart you have one idea, so do it with heart and soul, not, 三心二意 (sān xīn’ èr yì), being with two minds gets you nowhere.” 8 is the Chinese special number, one so precious it can cost thousands to have your phone number or business address aligned with an many 8’s as possible.

by Cat Whipple

So when friends have asked me why I take our little Violette, my grandchild, to the Victorian cemetery. finding it morbid, ‘couldn’t you take her to a park?’ I reply. “NO! I can’t because it’s more to me than a cemetery. That’s where my friend Philadelphia is.” I also want to say, It’s all about spirit signs and numbers, but I don’t because I can imagine eyebrows rising, so the story I shall now tell is a story some friends and family know, but not many.

It is my wonderful and true tale of the unexpected and Victorian kinship.

The fairy Queen and butterflies -Public domain - Richard Doyle, 1870

The Woodbury Park cemetery has been a play-pen since I remember. Many from the St John’s area in Tunbridge Wells know and love this cemetery. Lou reminded me how, one night, coming back from the old classic cinema, as teenagers, we went through the cemetery cutaway, home. In those days a white horse was left lose to roam near the marshy part. Lou tried to ride it and slipped over in the mud. I screamed, thinking it was a ghost. I have a vague memory of the shadowy form move around the stones. He also told me he’d had sex there for the first time. Everyone who knows it like we do has a cemetery story. 

I only ever worked in Tunbridge Wells for a few months, and only twice in my life. This was in a café, in the same building on Camden Road, which changed names over 14 years. In 1978 it was called Beefeater, in 1992 Delicious 2. 

Naturally, I would walk through the cemetery cutaway from Queen’s Road, and later, Woodbury Park Road, to 12-14 Camden Road. (Reduces to 8, remember that).

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With Beefeater T.shirt and wild & naughty washing up brush!

On the way I looked at the gravestones, some upright, many sinking, others eaten by wind, rain and time. Woodpigeons, magpies and crows hover and hoot, and red clover, pignut, wild strawberry and lady's smock climb the stones. Tall yews and pine trees make natural arches and hiding places for foxes, hedgehogs and seven species of bumble bee. It is such a pleasant place, and with time on my hands I ambled, looking at the dates of young boys and girls, ladies, gentlemen and maids and maleservents - even Rev. H.T. Austen, Jane’s brother, is buried here. 

On my walk to work, summer 1992, I was I was thinking of a suitable name for a character in a tale I was writing. The heroine, a young Argentinian who had sass, energy and colour. Suddenly, for a reason I did not understand, I was drawn to a gravestone I had not noticed before.

Philadelphia Carmen who died 22 April, 1851, aged 48 years old.

By the time I got to the café I knew she was the one. I was smitten as her name sounded so romantic, exotic, and the young women became Philadelphia, the story, “Trichmaonte’s Trouts”, which Benedicte, a friend, later adapted for a film script in Montreal, Canada.

I eventually left Delicous 2 and Molly and Alan Tarrant the owners, for France. Yet I continue to visit Philadelphia each time I return home to Tunbridge Wells. It feels good to sit and natter to her about this and that, what I have been up to, and over time she became my friend. My family knew that I cared for this woman, and Dad laughed at my “invented kinship.”

Emigrating to Montreal, Canada in 2000, it would be 18 months before I came home. Christmas, 2001, back in Tunbridge Wells, I sat in a crowded coffee shop next to a stranger. His name was Andrew. We exchanged pleasantries and I told him about the cemetery. No, he had never been there, and yes he’d love to come and meet my friend Philadelphia. I was taken by this gesture - he didn’t seem to think it was odd. I bought some snowdrops as snow lay lightly on the ground; it seemed a gentle action. I laid them by her grave.

Three snowdrops - Petr Kratochvil@.publicdomainpictures.net

Andrew asked only one question: Who was she? 

I have no idea

What do you mean you have no idea? Her name is here.

Andrew worked in a library and knew a bit about archives. When I returned to Montreal I asked him to do some research. He obtained copies of Philadelphia’s death certificate, her record in the 1851 Census, and photocopies of an old map of Tunbridge Wells. He posted this information to me in Montreal.

Philadelphia married Thomas Carman late in life, at 41. They lived at 53, Agnes Cottages in Camden Road. They had no children. She worked as a jobbing cook on a casual basis. Her husband Thomas worked for a wealthy lady called Frances Wood in a house which stood on the site where the police station now stands. 

Census for March 30th, 1851. Thomas Carmen and Phillis Carmen (Philadelphia), 53, Agnes Cottages.

Philadelphia died of pulmonary tuberculosis on the 22nd April 1851; she was 48 years old. Charlotte Humphrey, a neighbour, made an X on Philadelphia’s death certificate, as she was illiterate. Thomas Carman was absent for some reason, although he only worked a short distance away.

Philadelphia’s death was recorded on the 28th April 1851 - the same day as my birthday.

I was beginning to have an odd feeling that I knew what was coming next. I asked Andrew to go to Camden Road with the old map to see exactly where the location was.

I had already guessed the answer.

Philadelphia lived and died at 53 Agnes Cottages on Camden Road. (Reduces to 8)

127 and 141 years later, I worked as a part-time cook, also known as a jobbing cook, at Beefeater and Delicious 2 in the exact same location where my friend Philadelphia, lived and died. 

(Agnes Cottages from 1851 town map, Black and Red X the location 53, and 12-14 Camden road)

I “adopted” Philadelphia’s grave with Andrew, and we send an annual subscription to the Friends of Woodbury Park Cemetery to help maintain the tangled and beautiful Victorian cemetery, which is no longer used for burials.

My mother gave me violets from her garden, which I planted at Philadelphia’s grave many years before I knew that my grandchild would be named after this early spring flower. 

And that is my wonderful and true tale of the unexpected . . .

So now you understand, when people ask me why I take our Violette to the cemetery, and not a park, I simply say, “to meet my friend Philadelphia.”

Thank you all. Have a super next few weeks.

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