2. ‘ELL’ – a measuring word – & naughty Mr.Shakespeare
Elworth Hall - timber building. Illustration by Sarah Keen
All the best families have secrets and the very best have houses big enough to hide them in.
To escape from the blitz, my mother was sent to the family home of Elworth Hall, where enigmas scampered alongside the rats in the wainscoting. People took to their beds in that house – or disappeared.
London and its bombs would have been kinder.
Ell – an obsolete unit of length, approximately 45 inches. O/E : eln – forearm (the measure being from forearm to finger tips)
Shakespeare liked ELL and he used it as a slang term for penis in Romeo and Juliet. It was Shakespeare who first used the word ELBOW. What was he thinking?
The farmers at Elworth Hall grew secrets by surveying up and parcelling out land , making sure only the right ell was used to plant crops. They grew women who were not domestic, who challenged the ell’s length,who found it could be much bigger than originally thought. The women of Elworth Hall grafted on new genetic stock. A measure for measure if you like.
My Grandmother, not called Eleanor but Nell haha, got caught. As a young girl she found a good measure of a man – William. He lacked no thing – but land. Willy Lackland indeed. Reader, she married him. Reader, her father disinherited her.
In his Shakespearian will, he left her nothing but the second best Grandfather Clock that had stood in the kitchen for years out of memory. A ruthless timepiece that logged the hours in unalterable, measured degrees.
Nell and her new husband moved to Ruislip taking my mother and the secrets with her. Even in the tiny 1930s suburban house that her family scorned, there was room for those. My mother, when she grew up, tried to leave them behind. She wound them 45-inches deep in her mind and tried to conform. She tried to be domestic. She tried so hard, but the trying made her ill. The trying killed her.
Although my house is clean, I am not domestic. I have secrets – I am not trying. If I had daughters, they would be wild as seeds.
When my great-grandfather died, Elworth Hall burnt down.