The Dawsons ( VILLAGE TALES EP. 16 )

An introduction. A family steeped in academia but without an iota of common sense and who’s motto should be, ‘An accident waiting to happen’. Throughout history the Dawsons and their ancestors have been associated with some of the greatest catastrophes and mis-haps but somehow have always survived and even prospered. They live on the edge of the village and their tradition continues.

Besides Blythe Hall which owns much of the surrounding land, village interest is most easily sparked by the antics of the Dawsons. Their home is Brimstone a Victorian gothic pile complete with clock tower and porticoed entrance. An elaborate bell push to the right of the substantial oak door is typically ‘Dawsonesque’, in that is has all the appearance of intellect without any certainty of it working and with the probability of malfunction and possible injury.

The Dawsons were a family of renown booksellers selling specialist books for academics, education and the arts. They were bought out by one of the high street chains for a very tidy sum and a continuing financial arrangement. 

Dawson history is steeped in academia, Miriam Fox-Tristram who became Miriam Dawson was one of the original ‘blue stockings’. Many of her affairs were with colleagues whose books and plays her family would later make a tidy living from selling. She married Cecil Dawson whilst being nine months pregnant and the wedding ceremony had to be rushed so that she could be taken to hospital. Their son Tristram Dawson being delivered whilst the ink on the marriage certificate was still wet. The delivery was not straight forward. Firstly her new, very new, husband, Cecil, took her to the wrong hospital. When they arrived at the right one the child was delivered so quickly that the midwife only just caught the child before he hit the floor. If the midwife hadn’t been the women’s cricket team principal slip fielder, poor little Tristam may never have seen the light of day. The near catastrophe was overshadowed by the new-born’s father mistaking another baby as his own and pouring affection on the sleeping mother in an adjoining recovery room. In those days fathers were not allowed to be present at the birth and had to bide their time in a waiting room until informed of the birth, the sex of the child, and the state of the mother. Cecil Dawson always claimed it was the nurse who mistook him for another expectant father and led him to the wrong room. The court case that resulted prompted the tabloids of the day to wonder if Cecil Dawson was in fact the father of both children and they revelled in the idea that there was some holy retribution in both mothers being in adjacent rooms giving birth simultaneously to his illegitimate offspring. The fact that Cecil had just married one of them was dismissed as a paltry attempt to minimise the effect of his licentious behaviour. I tell you this to illustrate the fact that Dawson history is littered with such events, either of their own making or as the victims of circumstance.

More recently, the village’s intellectual elite, Jack Dawson and his wife Gillaine abbreviated within the family to Gill (as in fish) have four children all in different ways child prodigies. The bookkeeping ancestry still grips, even the children were born in alphabetical order. First was Amethyst, second Brendan, third Callum, and last Davinia. Amethyst prefers to be known as Amy, Brendan as Dan, Callum is happy with Callum, but Davinia who considers herself a tomboy will not answer to anything other than Dave. Coming out of the shoot and having to prove herself to be as brilliant as the three siblings before her, she was always going to be tricky. Amy was destined to be a pianist even before her folks bought her a concert grand. Dan was a compulsive liar from the moment he could talk but the invention of his ‘stories’ were interpreted as a talent for fiction. Fiction writers are, after all, just telling lies for a hobby, out of which some make a living. Callum found a way of expressing his genius more difficult. He was impatient to follow his older brother and sister in finding something which would garner praise and adulation but their paths, music and literature, left only art as the principal contender. When Gill, sorry Gill, was delivered of her fourth, baby Davinia, Callum had to make a decision quickly for fear he might be left with nothing in which to excel. He gambled on his only option even though he knew his drawing skills were non existent. Visiting the recently opened Tate Modern, however, convinced him that anything they could do, he could do at least as well. Coupled with what he had been shown of Rothko and Jackson Pollack an ability to draw was a positive hinderance. As long he demonstrated an angry impatience with everything and everyone and could find an agent who was as good a liar as his brother, he felt he could compete on equal terms with his siblings, and if not, at least those exhibiting in the Tate. 

Dave, who you may recall was born Davinia, hated everything to do with the family, in fact she hated everything. She actually hated the fact that she hated everything, but that was the only enjoyment she had, which she hated. In reality she was not a bad child or an undisciplined student. Like her brothers and sister she was very intelligent almost to a level of genius, she achieved through her private education all of the exam results, accolades and awards that were possible, all of which she absolutely hated.

Although an extremely well read, well educated dynasty of academics, what makes the Dawsons remarkable is that they have not one iota of common sense. The phrase, ‘an accident waiting to happen,’ could be their family motto. Hardly any of the past members of the Dawson family have died peacefully in bed, in a chair or anywhere that one might consider appropriate to undergo the transition that must come to us all. Their predecessor, Tristram Dawson, he that was saved by the cricketing midwife, died, it is thought, somewhere in the Atlantic. The hot air balloon he had built himself drifted out to sea after he had mis-read the wind direction. Starting in Cornwall he hoped to make a dramatic descent into Hyde Park on the centenary of the founding of their book selling business. Unfortunately the last they saw of him was disappearing westwards over the horizon towards Venezuela . His father Cecil, whilst supervising his pet project The Dawson Arboretum was struck by lightening whilst sheltering under a Sessile Oak. Though spelt very differently the press revelled in the coincidence and some Christian pamphleteers used it as proof of there being ‘intelligent design’ and a retribution for a decadent life, still preferring to believe that it was his philandering that resulted in the simultaneous progeny some decades before.

The current Mrs. Dawson has a habit of leaving her handbag on the top of the car when driving out of Brimstone. As she turns onto the lane leading away from the village it usually falls off and a neighbour, familiar with the event, is able to rescue it for safe keeping until Mrs. Dawson returns unable to buy anything. I don’t know if it was her or her husband that was responsible for the fire service being called to put out a kitchen fire. Apparently an electric kettle, the sort that rests on a plastic base that’s plugged in, had been filled then put on a gas ring so as to boil some water. The plastic bottom of the kettle un-accustomed to actual flame, soon ignited setting fire to a nearby cupboard and filled the kitchen with noxious fumes. An attempt to douce the flames with water merely shorted the electrics in the nearby unoccupied kettle base and plunged the house into darkness. A friend of theirs that was staying, something not to be recommended, unfamiliar with the house found herself locked in a cupboard thinking it was the back stairs. She was released after the brigade had put out the fire, after which she gathered her things and left. There had been several events during her short stay, one apparently life threatening, and all she said to the rescuing fireman was if they didn’t want her to stay, why didn’t they just tell her?’

I have a copy of the ‘Dawson Miscellanea of Mis-haps’ published in the fifties but the tradition is alive and well and I will endeavour to inform you of further events.

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Written and read by Barkley Johnson.