The Story of My Life. By Arnold GoodliffeThe lost memoirWhen I was a girl, living in Nottingham, my father was given a typewritten book whose author was Arnold Goodliffe. My father was also Arnold Goodliffe, as it happened, but he was born in 1912, and the book’s author was born in 1806. The book has a black leather cover which is embossed with the title “A Family History”. I read it time and again. In it, Arnold describes his many brothers and sisters and their lives, his parents, grandparents, the farm and village in Rutland where he grew up, and his move to Nottingham where he set up a thriving business. I was eventually given custody of the book, and sometime in the early nineteen eighties I realised that I had in my house a very valuable document which needed to be copied and made available to researchers. So at that time I lodged a copy with the Leicester and Rutland Record office. The story now backtracks to 1969, when, as a newly married couple, Michael and I went to my parents’ house near Nottingham one Sunday. Also there were my Granny Goodliffe, Connie, and my father’s sister Mary Goodliffe. They had with them an old handwritten notebook. This book was almost square in shape, and was written in black ink on lined pages with a pink margin. The cover was black leather. I only glanced at it because I was enjoying chatting to my family, but Michael looked at it more thoroughly and was later able to confirm that there were passages in this copy that had been left out of the typewritten version. Well, that was the last we saw of the old notebook! My father and his mother and sister all died in the seventies and eighties and my mother and Michael and I became interested in family history. We now realised that the handwritten notebook we had seen that Sunday was the original document. But where had it disappeared to? Between us we knew of various distant cousins who could have lent the book to Granny or my father. As my mother aged she became quite forceful and decidedly blunt. She wrote to a number of distant relatives implying that they must have the book hidden away somewhere! An equal number of replies denied all knowledge of it! Mother died in March 2004 aged 92, and there was still no sign of it. We all hoped that, wherever it was, someone was aware of its significance within the family. By now I was realising how enormous the Goodliffe family had become. Through internet friendships I was corresponding with dozens of descendents of “ Lion Goodliffe” who lived in Gretton, Northamptonshire in the sixteenth century. Many of these people were keen to have from me a c.d. on which was the text of the typewritten copy of Arnold’s book. On the first page he writes “ My son Thomas knowing I had a bit of a weakness about old family matters etc. bought and brought me a book to scribble a few particulars in about my ancestors…” By now I had Goodliffe contacts on every continent, people whose ancestors came from Rutland and Northamptonshire all those years ago. Some were asking where the original notebook was! I should explain that my mother and her sister Joan married my father and his brother Charles. Joan was the last survivor of this quartet, and late in 2005 she rang me mentioning that she had found an old book that a Goodliffe had written by hand around the time they were starting up in business in Nottingham. She thought I might like to borrow it! Michael and I were beside ourselves with expectation, and lost no time in popping over to Willoughby-on-the-Wolds where my ninety year old aunt had the book next to her chair. We knew from the shape and from the leather cover that it was the very same book that we had seen that Sunday at Calverton. We could scarcely believe that the long lost treasure had been tucked away so close to home for so many years! My Auntie said that she thought that Charles had been given it by an elderly Goodliffe wife who lived in Woodthorpe, Nottingham. I would like to find out more about that part of the story. Joan asked us to take the book home and read it, and whilst it was at our house we scanned it. A few days later it was duly returned. Needless to say, we were delighted to have found the book, but equally we were concerned as to how it could be kept safe and available to other interested people. This was slightly complicated by the fact that we did not want Auntie Joan to know that there had been a big search for it! A few months later, sitting under an umbrella on a Mediterranean beach, I drafted a letter to my aunt. In it I explained how important a document it was and would she talk to her sons Bill and Roger about putting it into a county record office. Sadly Joan died suddenly a few days later, and the letter was never sent to her. But I did ask Roger to look out for the book and I gave him a copy of the first page so that he would know exactly what he was looking for. Well, the weeks went by, and over the phone he said it had not turned up. We all met up on holiday in Cornwall, and still there was no sign of it. At my daughter’s wedding I had a word with Bill’s daughter Fay, thinking that her Granny might possibly have lent it to her to read. She thought Joan might have mentioned it, but no, she had not seen it. In early September 2006 we had a family gathering at Bill’s home in Yorkshire, and Roger handed me the book! He had found it at Joan’s bungalow a few days before. Well! Until the Autumn of 2005 I never thought that Arnold’s original memoir would surface again. After that, my mission was, as tactfully as possible, to move the book to a place of safekeeping. The copy of the typewritten book I had given to the Leicestershire and Rutland Record Office, but they have told me that the notebook can be placed there on indefinite loan, which would mean that I could remove it from time to time if I wished to. My last thought goes back to Arnold himself. He claimed to have had a poor and rather spasmodic education, indeed the typed copy of his book would support that. However, the actual memoir displays impeccable handwriting throughout by someone with a good grasp of grammar and punctuation. I often wonder if a family member was the typist. Whoever it was, it was a person with some tact. Arnold very much disliked his eldest surviving brother, John, who was my great great grandfather. In the text John was dismissed in a few harsh words as having a “ suspicious selfish temper”! The typist later added some kinder thoughts of his or her own, using a separate slip of paper overlaying the page in question, something that only a relative would have been able to do. As he took up his pen on his first day of writing, Arnold would have been astounded if he had known how treasured his book was to become, and how future Goodliffe descendents would be anxious for its safety and well-being. Elizabeth Higgins (nee Goodliffe)
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