Showing posts with label D.H.Lawrence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label D.H.Lawrence. Show all posts

Monday, 31 December 2012

Mystery Monday - "Are you going out, father?"

A photograph of Ellen Milton Palethorpe on her wedding day
Ellen Milton Palethorpe daughter of
Arthur Milton & cousin of novelist
D.H.Lawrence
As Aaron Sisson left his house on Christmas Eve his daughter Millicent called after him "You won't forget our candles, will you?".  It was the last time that Millicent would see her father.  He was meant to be going out to buy final decorations for the tree they had just decorated and to play his piccolo for Christmas carols at the pub in the Nottinghamshire mining village in which he lived. He didn't return and Millicent, her sister and mother never discovered what happened to him.

According to novelist D.H.Lawrence, Aaron left his wife and children that cold Christmas Eve in a search for freedom that took him first to London and then across Europe to Italy and finally Florence.  Lawrence, had no further interest in  Millicent and her sister but I find the story of the two little girls deserted by their father on Christmas night heart rending.