| The ‘Queen of Crime novels’, Agatha Christie was born on September 15, 1890 at her
family home Ashfield in Torquay, Devon, England. The youngest child of Frederick Alvah
Miller and Clarissa ‘Clara’ Boechmer, Agatha was christened Mary Clarissa Agatha
Miller. She was the youngest of three children with an older sister Margaret (Madge) and
brother Louis (Monty) who was ten years her senior. When Agatha was born, her father
donated a sum of money to All Saint's Church to mark her birth (She later on became a
founder member and the church is always associated with her).
Agatha’s
childhood was a happy but lonely one. She hardly had any playmates,
but never felt lonely for she had created her own fantasy
and enchantment. To her, the garden in their house was an
enchanting place, with interesting entities. Each tree had
a special meaning attached to it.
The wooded part of the garden loomed ‘as large as The
New Forest,’ in the eyes of young Agatha. She connected
it with ‘mystery, terror, secret delight, inaccessibility
and distance...’; and then were her companions, albeit
imaginary – The kittens : Clover, Blackie and three others
with their mother Mrs Benson. Later on there was Mrs Green
and her hundred children, three of whom – Poodle, Squirrel
and Tree, accompanied Agatha on all her exploits in the garden
! The gift of a canary, ‘Goldie’ sparked off a new
secret saga – Dickie and Dicksmistress, later on joined
by Lord Tony, (her Yorkshire terrier puppy, named George Washington
by Agatha’s father). Sometimes Dicksmistress would become
Queen Marguerite and Dickie her son Prince Goldie. Along with
the garden and her ‘friends’, stories too formed
a major part of her childhood.
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While her Nanny’s (whom she called Nursie) stories never varied, her mother never told the same story twice. Her stories and her games were full of imagination and were very delightful.
Although Agatha’s mother had been in favor of educating girls and had sent her elder daughter to a boarding school, she now held the view that no child should be allowed to read till he is eight. But Agatha had different ideas. Whenever she liked a story, she would study the pages, which gradually began to make sense. She also started asking about and picking up words written over shops and on hoardings. And much to her mother’s distress, by the age of five the world of storybooks was opened up for Agatha. Arithmetic, which she loved and writing, which she found difficult, as she had learnt to read by the look of a word and not by its letters, were introduced. Agatha’s education began. |
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