We as her children and grandchildren, are immensely fortunate to have her memoirs as a child, recorded. These memories were typed by my sister Ann, from a combination of my mothers handwritten notes and Ann’s notes, as dictated to her by my mother. Ann spent over 18 years as a young woman unselfishly giving of herself to looking after our mother.

Joyce Peace Curtis (née Distin) – My Early Years

Arthur Samuel Diston, my father, was born in Sussex, England in 1869, and changed his name to Distin. He was about six feet tall and had deep blue eyes. I discovered he dyed his hair and large moustache with a dark brown dye and pointed the ends of his moustache with a sweet-smelling pomade. He was a perfectionist and always expected the best. His clothes were immaculate (suites always pressed daily) and he wore perfectly starched, high, white collars, highly polished brown boots and a fresh flower daily in the button-hole of his jacket. There was a small, silver container at the back of the lapel, which clipped around the hole; this contained water to keep the flower fresh all day. He had a variety of diamond tiepins; my favorite was a little cannon. And in his waistcoat pocket he had a big, gold watch attached to a thick, gold chain. My father was often referred to as “ASD”, but never as “Arthur”. Every morning he looked very spruce, walking to the bus stop wearing his Homburg hat and carrying his rolled up umbrella.

Daddy’s father was English and his mother French. My grandmother was said to be six feet two inches tall and was very chic. A photograph shows my grandfather with a small, pointed beard and looking very aristocratic. Daddy’s only sister, Ada, her husband, Ernest and their daughter, Maude lived in a small house near London. I remember the thick, lace curtains at the windows, which were permanently closed; post of aspidistras, and no bathroom. Ernest sold hats at Christies all his working life.

My father came to South Africa to fight with the British in the Boer War (1899 – 1901). He had such a dislike for the Boers that he forbade any of his children to learn Afrikaans. After the war he worked on an ostrich farm and then became manager of a bioscope in Bloemfontein. Later he started a seed merchant’s business in Johannesburg.

The seed shop was quite large and pretentious in Henwood’s Arcade. The front of the shop had a long, high, strong wooden counter with a weighing scale at each end. On the floor along the front were large open sacks of vegetable seeds. The tops of the sacks were rolled down and in the seeds of each bag was a large scoop used solely for each bag so that the seeds were never mixed. The lettuce and carrot seeds were very small, light grey in colour, delicate and pointed (similar to grass seed). The cabbage, cauliflower and turnip seeds black and round, and beetroot seeds were like small grapenuts. The American tree carnation seeds were very expensive; five seeds were wrapped in cotton wool before being put into a packet, which sold for two shillings and six pence. I liked eating the centers of the sunflower seeds.

There were large windows at both ends of the shop displaying garden tools, insect sprays and flower bulbs from Holland. Needless to say, the whole place was spotless. On the far end wall were racks of packets of flower vegetables seeds, which I had helped to fill. Hanging on the side were long bundles of assorted colours of raffia which were sold for making handbags and which were very fashionable. The natural coloured raffia was sold for tying plants in the garden. In the floor to the side was the opening to the cellar steps, where the surplus stock was kept. There were two pretty ladies selling from behind the counter in the shop and they were taught by my father to make up country parcels with perfect knots in the string. He also taught them to print with thick-nibbed pens dipped in black ink. One day one of the parcels was not to his liking, so he kicked it across the floor and made them do it again.

The Chinese market gardeners bought pounds of vegetable seeds and always paid cash which consisted of a mound of tickeys and sixpences and took a considerable time to count. The Portuguese market gardeners were also good customers. For a number of years my father was given the Government contract, which was contended for by seedsmen every year. When the farmers had a bad season, he allowed them two years’ credit, and as security they gave him their jewellery, which was locked in the safe.

I was always proud of my father, and Distin Seeds became quite famous. His yearly seed catalogue was printed on glossy paper and was always perfect. One day a gentleman came into the shop and asked for my father. He told him that he had omitted from the flower section the name of “flocks”. My father turned a few pages of the catalogue and showed the gentleman a beautiful picture of the flowers with their correct spelling, “phlox”.

There were huge rats in the seed shop, especially in the basement, and at night large cardboard squares covered with very sticky rat lime were placed intermittently over the floor. One night as Daddy was locking the door he accidentally stepped into the rat lime. His boots stuck hard and fast and he caught the bus home wearing only one boot. The office at the back of the shop was partitioned off, and there I sometimes caught my father snoozing in his chair instead of working. In the beginning, a Miss Lever looked after the book work and also looked after the business when Arthur Samuel Distin was overseas.

I always joined my father at the table when he had his early, solitary breakfast, and he would put minute squares of toast covered with bacon and egg on his side plate. He would then turn away while I ate them, and we both agreed that the fairy had taken them. Every year he took us to the Rand Easter Show specifically to see the flower show. The chrysanthemums were enormous and there were such beautiful colours – mainly bronze, yellow and white. Every Guy Fawkes night we had £5 of crackers. Daddy enjoyed pinning the Catherine Wheels to the trees and setting up the rockets and Roman Candles in the flowerbed. The next morning, while clearing up the mess, we bent the squibs in half and re-lit them in the middle when they made a sort of squish sound. Once a year Daddy attended a horticultural conference in London, and the night before his departure, he would always empty a bag of gold sovereigns on the dining room table for us all to see. As there were no travellers’ cheques in those days, these coins were used instead.

On the station platform, just before he left, we were each given one sovereign with which we three immediately went to Dittmars and bought a cream cake each : Rita a doughnut; Edna a meringue and a tipsy cake for me. This was followed by a nut and cherry sundae at the Waldorf Restaurant. Although Daddy gave us everything possible, he was not communicative, and even at mealtimes nobody spoke. After dinner he would go to his chair and read his newspaper.

My father became a Justice of the Peace, received the Fellowship of the Royal Horticultural Society, and he was a Mason. Later he was on the Board of the Johannesburg High School for Girls, and presented a large, silver shield (The Distin Shield) to the Johannesburg School’s Swimming Galas Committee. In 1911 he and my mother were married in Bloemfontein. Her name was Marie Elizabeth Frenzel. My mother was Prussian and was born in 1886 in Konigsberg on the coast of the Baltic Sea. I think she had two brothers who may later have lived in Berlin. Her mother re-married, and she left home in reply to an advertisement, and came to South Africa to be governess at the home of a Government official, even though her English was very limited. Arthur and Elizabeth had three children : Rita born 1912; Edna 1914; and Joyce in 1919. After they were married, my father bought an acre of land in Johannesburg and, with the best Kimberley bricks, built a very nice house for my mother.

The house had three bedrooms. The large diningroom had a black mahogany suit with the seating covered in gray velvet and the highly polished, oval table could have seated twenty people. The wallpaper was black and gold. My father collected antiques, and some of the decorations consisted of large Chinese bowls on pedestals, oil paintings (one was the size of one wall), a Chinese death mask, antlers, silver dishes on the very tall sideboard, a round, revolving stand containing world encyclopedias, a gramophone which had to be wound all the time, records mainly of songs sung by Caruso, and a Pianola at which my father sang and accompanied himself.

The carpets were Axminster. There was a long bathroom, and a pretty, small lounge. The large kitchen had a coal stove and outside there was a cool, very clean, covered yard at the side. We also had gauze-covered cupboards in the large pantry (there were no fridges in those days), and the lavatory consisted of a closet with a black bucket inside which was removed from a back hatchway and taken away in the municipal cart. My mother had an African manservant and they both seemed to be polishing and cleaning day and night. An African woman named Lily came twice a week to do the big washing and ironing. In the garage at the side of the house was a dark green Wolsley car covered with brass fittings and also a honking bulb for the hooter. To me it seemed very high from the ground, and my father adored it. Drives in it were reserved for Sunday afternoons. There was a large, roofed, but open veranda at the back of the house, which ran the length of it and form which you walk down several steps to the large lawn. Further to the side was a two-roomed gardener’s cottage with a bathroom and a small, enclosed veranda. The cottage was never used.

The garden surrounding the house was full of a large variety of roses and dahlias and many other flowers. My father’s love for flowers certainly brushed off on me. I feel sure the he tried to pursue perfection and beauty, and we were never allowed to be ill kept. My mother worked very hard, and one midnight I discovered her pressing our school uniforms. Near the bottom of the garden was a cherry orchard consisting of about ten cherry trees. I sat up in the branches and ate and ate while doing my homework. At the end of the orchard were the large servant’s rooms and the coal shed. Three blocks away was the tram terminus and a Greek-owned café. Also there was a public telephone booth.

I think my mother loved her house, and she seldom went out. Occasionally she took me out in the tram with her when she went shopping, and on one of those occasions I discovered that she was wearing one brown shoe and one black one.

Thoroughly ashamed, I refused to sit with her in the tram. Quite often she and my father played auction bridge with a couple who lived nearby, and these people were Madame France and her very muscular, Swedish lover who was continually building small additions to Madame’s house and consequently there was always lots of rubble about. I wonder if the additions to the house were ever finished? Another very nice couple came to our house also to play auction bridge in the evenings. Mummy only had one lady friend, Mrs Howarth, who owned a farm in Modderfontein, and who spent the day with her occasionally. Mrs Howarth had no children and she didn’t’ like me. We never had a doctor come to the house. Mummy took care of everything; even when Rita had enteric fever when a sheet was nailed over the bedroom door, and no one was allowed in. Later Edna and I had measles at the same time and had to stay in two beds pushed together. The measles episode forced us to play paper-dolls for three weeks.

At mealtimes Mummy gave us enormous helpings of food, and we were never allowed to leave any. And there were no second helpings. Daddy was very fond of dumplings (all kinds) which, unfortunately, we were forced to eat too. Mummy was a very good dressmaker and made all our clothes, including washing-satin petticoats costing one shilling a yard. Later when we had a new Plymouth motorcar Edna tried to teach her to drive, but soon gave up because Mummy seemed to prefer the pavements to the roads. She looked after her appearance and curled her golden hair with hot tongs, and also used pink rouge and rice-powder. She was about five feet six inches tall, and wore an enormous corset, which had thick bones in the seams and laced in the front. She also had large feet, and wore size eight shoes. I myself take size eight-and-a-half shoes. In 1934 when Prince George visited Johannesburg my father and mother were invited to a banquet given in his honor at the town hall. My mother wore an extremely beautiful, pale pink dress, decorated with tiny silver beads.

One year when Daddy was overseas, Mummy had the diningroom furniture cleared away and the carpet taken up. I remember her sprinkling white powder over the floor in preparation for the dancing. Of course there was a feast laid on the diningroom table. Our party dresses were made of pale shades of beautiful satin and decorated with rosebuds around the hems. It was wonderful to see such fun in our house, and the party was a great success. So you can imagine that Mummy found my father’s dullness very oppressive. One night Edna was invited to a party, and my father forbade her to go. So, very secretly, Mummy helped Edna to go out through the bedroom window. Eventually all three of us were attending Yeoville Convent, and I often found my break time sandwiches filled with super bacon omeletts. Mummy made orange cakes, apple turnovers, and excellent shortbread. She also made little marzipan fruits and vegetables and for these she used real ground almonds. We were never encouraged to do any cooking. One day, I saw her reading “Mein Kampf”, written in the Old German print, and it made me think that she missed her own people. In 1937 she took me to Germany intending to see her family, but, at the last moment, she changed her mind.

It was astonishing when, in 1933, Mummy opened a small shoe shop specializing in ladies’ outsize shoes and comfort shoes for older women. We all wondered if it would succeed. She had customers from all over South Africa. No shoes were allowed out of the shop, unless they were the correct fitting. Imagine the joy of someone walking away in elegant, size ten black suede court shoes when they had always had shoe problems. The factory managers went berserk when she insisted in her special lasts and styles. One manager asked her why she did not order the boxes instead of the shoes, and she replied, “If the boxes fitted, I would do so”. One Saturday, at lunchtime closing, all the stock was moved to a larger, brand new shop in Rissik Street. As Mummy was very tired, the three of us offered to the re-arrange the stock and try to have it ready for the opening of the shop on Monday morning. As I had worked with the stock for a year or two, I knew what was required. We even cleaned and dressed the windows. Mummy was so happy on Monday morning to find everything ready for her.

I must say here that, unfortunately, my parents were divorced in about 1933, and the shoe business was imperative for my mother’s income as she refused any assistance from my father. Unbeknown to us, over the years, he would disappear about every two or three years on a drinking bout. On these occasions Rita went with my mother to find him, goodness knows where, and put him in a rehabilitation home for a few weeks. It was very sad that after the divorce he lived alone in the house and we moved to a fully furnished flat in town. Rita was the first to get married and she moved to Sunnyside Hotel, York Road, Parktown. My mother started getting very tired and hard of hearing, and asked me to move to Sunnyside. She then lived in a hotel near the shoe shop, which was much more convenient for her.

Rita was born on 25th January 1912. As she was seven years my senior, I began to think about her only when I was about eight years old. She was very tall and took size nine shoes. In her young days, shoes were made up to size seven only, so her poor feet must have been perpetually squashed. I know she went to a party one night and had to keep sitting while the others danced. She was often with me and gave me more attention and love than my mother gave me. She was very particular about her clothes, especially for a party, when they were prepared the day before. During her school days Rita spent every afternoon and evening doing a great deal of homework; I think convents are famous for this. In form five, she came a close second in the high jump event on sports day. Her math’s was so good that the nuns at Yeoville Convent presented her with a gold medal when she was in matric. My father insisted that she go to university.

After Rita had had one successful year there, my father had one of his drinking bouts, and she agreed to take over the running of the seed shop for Mummy, and worked there until my father died in 1938. She then had the responsibility of selling the business herself.

Outside the shop was the main bus terminus, and of the bus drivers, Sonny Cohen, fell desperately in love with Rita. He was about five feet four inches tall and came into the shop whenever he arrived back from a journey, hoping that he would catch a glimpse of Rita. At university she had met Jumbo Downes, who was studying engineering. He also fell in love with Rita and eventually asked her to marry him; but she did not love him. Buster Fowler accompanied Rita and Edna to the Corner Lounge Tea Room (a very popular students’ gathering place) which had a large balcony upstairs overlooking Eloff Street.

In 1937 we were all living in a very nice flat in town. Daddy was living alone in the house, and it was very sad that he died there, when none of us had visited him. After the shop had been sold, Rita went to Salt Rock, Natal for a holiday. There she met John Frank, and always called him, “Johnny”. At that time he was working for the Shell company. His mother, Lemmie was running the Sunnyside Residential Hotel in Parktown, and John and his brother, Athol lived with her. The day Rita and John were married in St Mary’s Cathedral, Plein Street, Johannesburg, Edna and I, as her bridesmaids, cried our eyes out because our family ties were now broken. This was soon forgotten and we were very happy for her. They lived at Sunnyside Hotel until John was called away to the war.

Edna was born on 13th August 1914. From a very early age, and right through her life, she always demanded the best. When Rita started school at Yeoville Convent, Edna insisted on starting at the same time. Consequently during her first week her panties were seen to be drying on the line at the school. Her school marks in standard eight were excellent, and she insisted on leaving school then because Rita was finishing at the end of standard ten. Edna was then sent to a commercial college for six months where she did very well. Her shorthand and typing marks were excellent, and when she qualified she took an office job. She had beautiful, fair, curly hair and big blue eyes, and she was five years older than I. When she was young we decided to pretend to be fairies and fly off the top of the veranda wall at the back of the house. One day Edna jumped and broke both ankles, and for a few years she had to wear boots. Sometimes Edna had to be my babysitter, and on these occasions she would read to me until midnight. For a change one night, Edna dressed me as a lady, she wore trousers and a shirt and tie (I don’t know where these came from). We then caught the tram and spent the evening at the Yeoville bioscope. I cannot remember if we ever got home in time and if our escapade was ever found out. When we were schoolgirls we went to the seed shop during the holidays. I enjoyed filling the packets of seeds and even now can differentiate between the vegetable seeds. We were also taught how to tie the string on parcels. Edna would sit in a corner, immersed in a book. She was always a prolific reader, and I wonder where she found the books, because I never saw any in the house. When Edna was about fifteen years old, Fatty Botha fell in love with her. He was very plump and lived at the top of the hill about four blocks from our house. For a few years she went out with Buster Fowler while he was at university. He and another student, Jumbo Downes, stole the nameplate from our street and nailed it in the passage at the university residence.

My father had hundreds of advertising stickers about one-and-a-half inches in diameter and which were in the shape of a red seal. The center was white with the printed words “We in the know only sow Distin Seeds because they grow”. Buster and Jumbo stuck these all over buses and trains. When they went out for an evening, my father insisted that Rita and Edna be home by eleven o’clock. One night Buster brought Edna home after eleven, and my father was waiting at the gate, armed with his walking stick. He then chased Buster up the road. After graduation, Buster went to work in Canada, and married a Canadian girl. He and Edna had parted some time previously, and afterwards she met Tommy Kincaid-Smith. He was tall and dark and the most handsome person I have ever seen. He was a traffic officer. He and Edna were engaged for about six months, and I have no details about this except that he saw to it that we never had to pay our traffic fines.

Sometimes Tony Laurilard, a Hollander, took her to the cinema. He was a car salesman, and he would telephone and ask Rita, Edna and I to go out to the cinema. He shared a flat at Crescent Flats in Jan Smuts Avenue with two other young men; Harold Duthie was one of them. Harold was from Scotland and a chartered accountant. Tony invited the three of us there one evening, and not long after this Edna and Harold became engaged. On her wedding day I offered to iron her elaborate wedding dress, and while doing this, two or three times there was a knock at the door. It was Harold, and each time he asked me if I was sure that Edna would be at the Church. When they were newly married they rented a small house in Rouxville.

I was born at midnight on 2nd September 1919 at No 7 Urania Street. As a child, I had no access to any books (the encyclopedias were a forbidden heirloom), and no friends were invited to the house. I can remember having short conversations only with my father. My first school was Yeoville Convent, and when I was about eight years old, I invited all the girls in my class to come to my birthday party. My mother did not advise me, and I knew nothing about sending out invitation cards. So the birthday arrived and I waited and waited next to the laden party table, but of course no one came. In standard six I was sent to Barnato Park High School as a boarder and liked it much better than the convent. My father wrote to me every week, and he and Mummy visited me on Sunday afternoons – Daddy came at three o’clock and Mummy at three-thirty.

All my adolescent years at home were spent in the garden with my Alsatian. I staked sticks in the garden and pretended they were people. I loved the flowers, and often sucked nectar from them, especially from the mauve salvia. I practiced hockey on the lawn for hours after school and the Alsatian made a very good opponent. In later years I played first-league hockey, received my umpire badge, coached for two seasons, and was chosen for a selection committee. Sometimes Mummy took me to town by tram, and every single Saturday afternoon I spent at the Yeoville bioscope. The entrance price was sixpence for children and the manager always argued with me and said I should pay a shilling, which I never did, until I was twelve.

Rita, Edna and I each received pocket money. My amount was one shilling a week and theirs was two shillings and six pence. Rita and Edna started smoking when Edna was fifteen. My father forbade it, so they would disappear into their bedroom and close the door. Or they smoked at night behind the center tree on the lawn. There were clouds of smoke all over the place. Sometimes at night they ran out of cigarettes and it was too dark to walk to the café. So when I had sufficient funds, I would buy a packet of cigarettes (the first packet was Abdulla with Turkish tobacco and cork tips) and sell them to them for a tickey each. My profit was used to buy walnut cream chocolates, which made me very, very sick. I forgot to mention that I had a best friend who lived quite near our house, so we were able to visit each other. One day I suggested that we break off small pieces of the woven veranda chairs and pretend to smoke them. She went home and informed her parents of the magnificent plan and was forbidden to see me again. When I was sixteen my mother found a fully-furnished flat in town and the four of us moved out of the house. Fortunately I was now at boarding school, so was spared the upheaval. Daddy lived alone in the house for about four years. One Sunday, Edna had a premonition, and asked Harold to take her to the house. There was no answer at the front door, so she climbed through my father’s bedroom window. He had died in his bed. I think the reason for our never visiting him was that he never invited us there.

I had no interest in boys until I was fifteen (then going into form three) when I was invited to spend New Year’s Day with a family who had a beautiful house with a swimming pool and tennis court. Here I met a young man, Harry Curtis, and fell head-over-heals in love. He ignored me all day because I was a schoolgirl. I tried to speak to him but he just walked away. He was twenty years of age, and worked underground as a shift boss on City Deep Mine. His father was underground manager of Crown Mines.
I wanted to leave school in form three, but my mother said that if I passed my matric, she would take me overseas with her on a business trip. To me it was incredible that I did pass, and my highest marks were for Latin. The night before the Latin exam, I placed an eiderdown on the bottom of a bath and lay there until I had learned all the Latin vocabulary from A to Z.

In 1937 Mummy and I went by ship to Southampton. It was January and the weather was appalling. On the first morning at the Regent Palace Hotel in London we awoke at eleven o’clock to find it almost pitch-dark outside and we would not have woken then if it had not been for a young lad from the ship who telephoned to ask me out to dinner. Throughout the journey Mummy was hiding her handbag and forgetting were she had put it. So those were hunting days.

We then moved on to Paris and saw the show at the Moulin Rouge, which was gorgeous. We also saw an American film, with French captions, starring Fred Astaire. We bought our tickets for four shillings and six pence each and, to our horror, discovered that our seats were in the Royal Box. Apparently the majority of the seats were priced at one shilling and six pence. As this film was in English, we laughed before the other cinema-goers.

In one of the French shoe salons, my mother asked the manager if he could supply her with shoes, which would fit my feet and larger feet. His eyes grew bigger and he replied, “Never have I seen such feet”. We then visited Germany where I loved the wonderful hospitality and the cobbled streets. As we entered a train compartment, I said to my mother that I needed some opening medicine. A German gentleman who spoke German and French, and a Frenchman who only spoke French joined us. So when I said something to my mother translated into German for the German gentleman who then translated it into French for his friend. When they left the train the Frenchman turned to me and said. “I hope you find your opening medicine”.

We then traveled to Austria, which I think is the most beautiful place in the world. The mountains were covered with snow, and the leaves of the trees were a magnificent brown and yellow. When we were in the mountains one of our meals consisted of thick, almost black bread and cheese, and steaming coffee, which I thought, was pure nectar because we were so hungry. One weekend we inadvertently caught a ski train, which was packed with young skiers with their skis. There were no seats available, and we had to stand packed like sardines with our noses almost pressed on upright skis. No one could get in our out, as the corridors were also packed, and young people were standing on the steps holding on to the railings. It was incredible to see them all get off the train at their destination. We then visited Vienna, Prague (everywhere so fresh and clean) and on to the Hague in Holland. In Holland we were given cabbage and potatoes every single day. We had hunted everywhere for a certain type of wood and steel shoe stretcher, and one day, quite by change, we saw one in a shop window. Mummy ordered large quantities of these, which sold very well later on in her shoe shop. Also good sellers were English hand-made shoes, and French Bally shoes. We made our way back to London and Southampton where we embarked on the old Windsor Castle. Because we had second-class tickets, we were accommodated in the first class section. During the voyage a very nice Frenchman asked Mummy if he could marry me. I am sure Mummy was glad to get home.

A few months after our return I had a telephone call from Harry Curtis, and the first time we went out together he proposed to me. This was in 1937. We became engaged until June 1938, when I broke off our engagement as I felt he was far too young. At this time I was doing office work and serving in my mother’s shop. In September 1939, war was declared, and I joined the WAAF and the Civic Guard. In 1940 the troops were inviting the girls to parties every night, and my poor mother had many sleepless nights waiting up for me. In 1941 I heard that the mines had released Harry, and he first joined the RAF in Rhodesia and later transferred to the SAAF. He instructed there for two years and was then sent to North Africa, Europe and Greece. When he had leave he came to see me from time to time, looking very dashing in his airforce wings and lieutenant pips.

In September 1943, I married Buster Howes, who was a captain in the Tank Corps. He was from Cape Town, and his father owned a shipping company, Dart and Howes. I had a very beautiful wedding, and Lemmie Frank kindly arranged the reception at Sunnyside Hotel. Suddenly, in November 1943, Buster and his Company were sent to Greece, and he was killed there in January 1945. After this tremendous shock, I became very ill with arthritis. After I had had many months of treatment, Harry came to see me. He was demobilised in December 1945 and a little while later he asked me to marry him. “….. even if you had no legs”, he said. We were married in December 1945.
In the final summing up, I think that my mother always did her best for us. And although my father was aloof, his love for us was always there.

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