Witness to a Century
Grace Wardell: 'The oldest living 'old girl' of London's Woodford County High School for Girls, a witness of the horrors of World Wars I and II, and the unfolding of the century'
Grace Wardell
At 101, Grace Wardell has seen the entire history of the last century. She saw World War I up close – her family lost its fortunes, and their hope that there would be no more wars was answered only by the “improved” and more horrifi c World War II. Her London had horses and carriages going clip-clop on cobblestones, and lights lit with long gas burners. This was a time when Darwin’s theory of evolution was being discussed and applied to sociology by those like Herbert Spencer, her father’s hero, and when Albert Einstein was the hot new thing!
The prospect of an interview with Grace Wardell intrigues me. After all, how often does one get to meet a centenarian woman journalist, the oldest living ‘old girl’ of London’s Woodford County High School for Girls, a witness of the horrors of World Wars I and II, and the unfolding of the century?
As I step into Grace Wardell’s room, I see her reclining on the bed propped up by pillows. Radhika, her companion and caregiver, is beside her. Grace is dressed in coordinated slacks and sweater, a string of colorful beads encircling her neck, and thick metallic ear rings clasped to her ear lobes. Her back combed hair is held by tortoise shell clips and shell glasses frame her large expressive eyes. Grace Wardell exudes elegance and style. Not surprising, for she was a fashion editor herself, who made her own garments based on Vogue designs.
Grace, however, admits that she gave up making her own clothes when she came to India, impressed as she was by the “fabulous Indian tailors”.
A well thumbed and underlined copy of Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope is next to her. Finding my eyes straying to the book, Grace Wardell says, “Take the book. I hope I kept it clean. I enjoyed the book, and am sure you will too.”
Until as recently as a year back, Grace Wardell was mobile and walked around with a cane. She read voraciously, played Scrabble and bridge at the Kodaikanal Club, of which she is the oldest member. Soon after her hundredth birthday on 23 March 2008, Grace straddled the pillion of a motorbike and rode with a young friend, Amaresh, negotiating the winding hairpin bends downhill from her house to the centre of the town, and came back, invigorated after the adventure. Her friends threw a birthday bash to celebrate the centenary of ‘Amazing Grace’! Since then, however, a cataract operation led to a sudden decline in her mobility and memory. Yet the journalist in her surfaces when she asks me, “Do you want a quote? I need to think it all in my mind before I answer!” Sivakasi Times is honoured to feature Grace Wardell.
