MARRIAGE TO THE METROPOLITAN POLICE

"Even though Edna appears now to have made the break with her family circle, and to have emerged, for real, into the world, she has not become independent. Marriage in the first half of this century was not 'emancipated' in the way of the second half. It was a comfortable institution in which the wife followed and cared for her husband, while he took the place of her parents in making the decisions.

Edna however has moved into a double marriage... since Robert himself was comfortably married to the London Metropolitan Police in the same way. Just as Robert made decisions for his wife, Edna, so the Metropolitan Police made decisions for Robert. These ranged from where he should live, how he should live... and even, with whom he should live. At an earlier time, Robert had defied the Police authorities in marrying his first consumptive wife. After her death, presumably now young and healthy Edna was acceptable. Still the influence of the Police was not yet apparent.

“Soon after the wedding, Robert actually took me to the bank and started a banking account for me. We walked down to the bank and, even though I didn't have a bank account, he doubled my money. You know I broke my heart, because I was again receiving money. I never thought that he was to give me money. You know you don't really think. It's all a new life, isn't it? I signed myself ‘Edna Morgans’. I had to re-sign myself, ‘Edna Graham’, with a signature underneath. It really frightens you at first.”

Despite the romance and the excitement, Edna moved into a dependent state that frightened her, even though neither she nor Robert recognized it for what it was. They were no different from their parents or from the thousands of other married couples around them. Edna’s attempt at independence had come to an end and she needed to find other measures of success.

“Robert was in Kilburn, West End Lane, by now. I found the change from a working girl to the wife of a man on shift duty hard? I did, in so much that I had so much time. I had to go back to doing what I had been doing as a child, cleaning and polishing a brand new flat... Our flat was very small... an upstairs flat in another person's house. Kitchenette, bedroom, and sitting room-cum-dining room. So now I had three rooms that I polished and polished and polished and polished. You've never seen such polishing in all your life. We only had rugs and the linoleum belonged to the tenant downstairs. Really and truly I was polishing their lino, and there was no need for me to polish. But... what I missed more than anything was the freedom. I had a sudden sort of feeling that I was enclosed in those three rooms, with Robert away on the shift work. But I hadn't really been free before, so it was a very happy time, waiting for him. Eventually we were to have 12 years in London. We always said... 12 years before we left to go back to Wales.”

“(The first child) came in about the first 10 months. We were married in October (1925) and Jean was born the following August. During those months I hadn't really gone out much on my own in London, I was waiting in the house. These were the early days of wireless, and Robert used to make these cat's whiskers wirelesses, and all these little electrical things... that's what he used to like... oh, his hobby was wireless, and anything with pencils. He used to go to shops where they sold pens and pencils, and writing materials. He used to stay for hours there. So if I went shopping, he’d either go to a newspaper and stationery shop, or a shop where there was wireless, you see. I looked at more blueprints of these wirelesses than anything (else), even when we were in Wembley before we got married. It was a wireless blueprint that we saw there. Robert was very keen in his pastime. When I would buy myself a sixpenny pocket library book, he would invariably buy a book on making up blueprints. He would love making things that had a lot of these connections... like wirelesses. He was very very tidy, extremely tidy. I didn't even have to cleanup after him. Besides the cat's whiskers sets we had a proper radio, a smaller type it was. Well, small then.”"

“A Measure of Success – a Woman’s Times," Edna and John Graham, Xlibris, 2002, ISBN: 1-4010-4723-8 (Trade Paperback) ISBN: 1-4010-4724-6 (Hardback) pages 259.

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