Ladies and gentlemen, The Beatles

In almost no time, John settled comfortably into the Smith household. The family residence on Menlove Avenue—nicknamed Mendips, after a mountain range—was as familiar as any he’d ever known, a cozy seven-room stucco-and-brick cottage with an extra bedroom that Mimi later rented to students as a means of income after George’s death. Thanks to the unobstructed expanse of a golf course across the street, sunlight filled the pleasant interior, warming an endless warren of nooks where John often curled up and paged dreamily through picture books. His bedroom was in a small but peaceful alcove over the porch, and on most mornings he was awakened early by a clatter of hoofbeats as an old dray horse made milk deliveries along the rutted road.

Aunt Mimi and Uncle George made it easy for John to feel loved there. Mimi told a close relative that she’d never wanted children, but “she wanted John.” From the moment he arrived at Mendips, she showered him with attention. She bought him books and read him stories, especially those from a tattered, lavishly illustrated volume of Wind in the Willows that had been passed down from his cousin Stanley to cousin Leila and finally to John. Mimi’s morning room was always filled with the sweet smells of apple tarts and crumbles, which she baked almost as capably and effortlessly as John later wrote songs. And there were always enough toys and sketch pads to entertain him. Besides, Julia visited — often, practically every day, which in some ways made it better for John, in other ways, worse.

If Mimi could at times be prickly and irascible, her moods were balanced out by her husband. Little is known about George Smith other than the sketchiest of details offered by his relatives. He was “a quiet and jolly man,” as one person described him, who had left the milk trade (he operated a dairy farm and retail milk outlet with his brother Frank that spanned four generations of their prominent Woolton family) to run a small-time bookmaking business, taking bets on the gee-gees, as they called racehorses, running at the local track. (He’d let John bet on the Grand National each year, remembers a cousin.) No one was sure how Uncle George squared such activities with upright Mimi, but one thing was clear: he doted on his nephew. “Uncle George absolutely adored John,” insisted another cousin who often visited Mendips. “I had no time to go playing ducks in the bath with him,” Mimi sniffed, whereas “George would see him to bed with a smile most nights.” Any time of the day, George might grab his nephew by the shoulder and sing out, “Give me a squeaker,” which usually earned him a loud, slurpy kiss. Even though George worked nights, “he took us all to the pictures [and] to the park,” recalled Leila. And on those occasions when all three cousins played outside, he allowed them to have meals in the garden shed, where they demanded to “eat just like an animal, with [their] hands.”

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