Nancie joins the Doublet and Warden Family at Le Havre and Cannes in December 1930

After a few weeks at home Nancie answered an advertisement for a companion-help to a family in Le Havre, in France. She went to Edinburgh to be interviewed by a relative of the French family and got the job. On December 2nd 1930 she set off for Le Havre where she was to stay for two years.

Charlotte Doublet was the daughter of a Scottish Doctor who had practised medicine in Paris until his retirement to Cannes in 1930. Charlotte and her French husband, Jean Doublet had two children when Nancie started to work for them. Pierre was six and Claude, 4. As had happened in Baghdad, another baby, Alixe, was born during her stay.

Charlotte's Father was the noted tennis player, Archibald Adam Warden  (Dr A. A. Warden) who won a bronze medal at the 1900 Olympics.

He won it in the mixed doubles, playing with Hedwiga Rosenbaumova of Bohemia. He continued to play tennis at his home, Villa Serpolette, in Cannes for the rest of his life.

Unfortunately, Charlotte's marriage to Jean Doublet was not a happy one. She suffered very badly with asthmatic arracks. Nancie was left to cope with the children, the shopping and dealing with the servants.

This might be the right moment to mention the fact that Nancie was treated as a member of the family, and not a servant, in all the positions she held. She was a Governess, not a nursemaid and a companion to her various employers, more often than not becoming a close friend and confidant

 and forging a relationship which would last long after the 'job' ended. She corresponded with all these friends until she died.

She also said that her experiences put her off marriage for a long time. She was 28 when she married Jack and as I mentioned previously only agreed to that because of the impending war!

Charlotte and her family took Nancie down to Cannes to the Villa Serpolette for the summer.

She had a wonderful time, swimming and playing tennis and socialising with Charlotte's siblings.

There was Rosemary (always known as 'Bud'), Ken and Kay. I think I am right in thinking that Kay was a chap. Mrs Warden was very good to her and insisted that she went off with all the young people to their picnics on the Ile Sainte Marguerite, Agay and various other places, while she looked after the children. Nancie said there were usually about fifteen of them round the huge table for meals and she really enjoyed the company of her own age group at last. The kitchen was very large and in a semi-basement. Dr Warden would wipe the plates with sheets of paper from a pad before the next course. Nancie describes it as 'one of those blockpads that doctors have' so it may even have been previously used for writing prescriptions!

There were also two German girls staying at the villa, as paying guests. There was no mention of war in those days.

The young folk spent all day on the beach in and out of the water, their bathing suits drying in minutes in the sun. They had a small beach at the Palm Beach end of Cannes which never had more than a dozen people on it. Nancie claimed it was one of the most happy and carefree summers of her life. 

It was while she was in Cannes that Nancie met Vladimir Goluboff, a young Russian whose Mother was a friend of Mrs Wardens. Vladimir used to take Nancie to Juan les Pins where they danced in a nightclub called 'Le Boeuf sous les Toits'. Every evening the young ones would go to the Tennis Club and dance. Amongst the members was the handsome young Maharajah of Jaiphur.

On one of the train journeys from Le Havre to Cannes Charlotte had had a bad asthma attack and when they reached Cannes Dr Warden had had to carry her bodily off the train. He had trained in medicine in Scotland but was forced to retrain at the School of Medicine in Paris before he was allowed to practise there. He had retired to Villa Serpolette in Cannes, where, in his eighties, he still played tennis. One of his tennis partners was the King of Sweden, also an octogenarian.

Nancie made another lifelong friend in Le Havre - a scots girl called Esther Dewar who was teaching at The Berlitz School and lived in a 'pension'. She had an MA in French from Glasgow University.

   Nancie attended the English Church in Le Havre where she met the Bideleux Family and Mr A.B. Clark who later lived in The Sailors' Rest in Greenock. His French wife was sadly killed in an air raid in Scotland during the Second World War. Maisie Bideleux later married Ken Warden. Also in Le Havre Nancie met Gerald Higby, a cousin of Gordon Craig's. (a relative of one of Nancie's friends in later years - one of those amazing coincidences).

Another life-long friend from those days was Newton Robbins, a tall, handsome, young American who was a student from Boston, Massachusetts and had come across the Atlantic to Cannes, on a sailing ship. He, like Kay Warden, played the trombone!

Charlotte Doublet had been madly in love with Jean and had married him against her parents' wishes. A few years later she hated him so much that she ran off to live in Paris, with another man, Edouard Caron. Having recovered from her latest asthma attack, she left, taking Claude with her and leaving the other two children with Nancie, When Jean returned home he was absolutely furious and raced off to Paris, in the middle of the night, returning with Claudie, as she was known to the family. Nancie felt that Jean had neglected his young wife and didn't condemn her for leaving him but she was worried about the effect of the split on the children. She stayed on to look after the three children. Jean was rarely at home but when his 'tetchy old Mother' came to help look after the children Nancie found that she interfered too much so she decided to head back to Scotland.

Nancie hated leaving the children, as she had got very attached to them, just as she had to the previous family she'd been with. She realised at this point that two years was probably the maximum time she should spend with a family as the longer she stayed the harder it would be to leave her charges.

By this time she was twenty and felt a much travelled and experienced person. Her French had improved enough for her to get around, do the shopping, housekeeping and even cope with servants.

Charlotte kept in touch for many years. She divorced Jean Doublet married her lover, Edouard Caron and they had a son, Gilles Caron. They too, divorced eventually, in 1946. Gilles became a photojournalist, covering many high profile conflicts in the 1960s. He disappeared on April 5th 1970, on the road from Cambodia to Vietnam, probably a victim of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. He was 30 and left a wife and two little girls. Nothing more has ever been heard of him.