| Chapter 1: | Revisiting Fred Ball: Reminisces on One of The Damned |
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A Truer Picture of Fred Ball
This poem, part of Byron’s “Written Beneath a Picture”, was placed in the coffin of Fred Ball and expresses our feelings for my father. The poem shows the difficulty of the audience in knowing whether it is the man or the picture that is described with sorrow, or if the image can ever give a true picture of the man. In this chapter, I aim to give a truer and more insightful picture of Fred Ball and his work, as well as to acknowledge my mother’s contribution to every aspect of his life and work. Since the publication of One of the Damned, many people have written about my father, but he is usually portrayed as the stereotypical working-class man when, in reality, he came from a much more creative background than most have recognised.
On Christmas Eve in the Ball family household, Fred’s mum, Grace Harriet Adey Ball, would recite works from Charles Dickens and the poem “If ” by Rudyard Kipling—her favourite author and favourite poem. My father and his two brothers and two sisters were to experience very literary occasions, such readings being a regular occurrence in their upbringing, and unusual for a working-class country family. Works from various writers, mainly classics, were often read aloud. Folk songs and popular maudlin songs of the day were regularly played on the harmonium while Granny sang and wept over the absence of her husband, also called Frederick Ball, who was away in India during the First World War. She even named her second son Robin after “Robin Adair”, the character in a traditional English folk song. These childhood experiences were very influential, leaving an imprint which influenced my father later in life.
Granddad (Fred’s father) did not return from the war until 1921. Having been forced to leave his wife during her pregnancy, he returned to meet his second son, George (by now a toddler), whom he had never seen.