The Early Years

Agatha: the early years.

 

Agatha Christie, born Agatha Miller, was born in Ashfield, the house where she was born- a large Italian-style stucco villo on the outskirts of Torquay, an English seaside town in Devon.  Agatha loved this house almost as much as she loved her mother, Clara Miller.  Clara would prove to be the most influential person in both Agatha’s personal and professional life.  At the base of Agatha’s feelings for her mother was a deep sense of poignant sympathy for her childhood.  Clara wasn’t raised by her biological parents, but was adopted and given materially most everything a girl could want. Maureen Summerhayes, a character in Christie’s 1952 detective novel Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, expresses the author’s doubts about the benevolent adoption:

 

“My mother parted with me and I had every advantage, as they call it.  And it’s always hurt –always- always-to know that you weren’t wanted, that your mother could let you go.”

 

Clara married Fredrick, Agatha’s father, and according to Agatha their relationship was a real-life version of a romantic women’s novel.  It had great significance for Agatha’s own adult attitudes to men and marriage.  Agatha describes her father, Frederick Miller, as an easy going, affectionate man who lived the life of a gentleman.  Even with his good nature, he wasn’t totally able to read Agatha.  Agatha as a child and even into adulthood was incredibly shy and inward.  Only Clara, who knew what it was to lack self-confidence and the ability to express the inner self, understood her daughter, and acted almost as her translator to the world. 

 

One incident in Agatha’s youth is a perfect illustration of how she could be so easily be misunderstood by the world, but how Clara understood at once.  Agatha was about six and living in the South of France.  Agatha’s father and sister planned a daylong muleback excursion into the Pyrenees.  Agatha was pleased with the mule, which proved to be the most dangerous mule of the bunch, walking on the edge of perilous spots.  After the ride, the family’s kind French guide thinking to amuse a young girl, pinned a live butterfly to Agatha’s hat.  Tormented by the flutterings of the dying insect yet not wiling to seem ungrateful to the guide, Agatha could only collapse into a heap of tears.  Her father, irritated by the lack of explanation of this sudden disturbance of emotion, called them stupid tears.  Clara Miller heard the story, and looked at her long and hard.  After a few moments, diagnosed the situation correctly and removed the butterfly from her hat.  Agatha remembered the “glorious… wonderful relief” she felt at that moment, as she as released from “that long bondage of silence.”

 

*Agatha also had many private imaginary friends called Kittens, and when they were discovered Agatha swore…”The Kittens were my Kittens and only mine.  No one must know.”