I just don’t know where to begin... to tell the truth. I am still too excited to be able to collect my thoughts, and although my eyes are half-closed with sleepiness, I can’t resist the temptation to start right in on my diary. It is my first diary and today is my birthday.
I should explain that first. When I went to kiss dear Mamma this morning, little expecting she would give me a present, she handed me this lovely book bound in dark red leather with a dear little gold clasp that locks with a tiny gold key. I thought at first it was a new hymn book and thanked Mamma, for I truly do need a new one. “No,” Mamma laughed, “I am giving you a treasure-trove. It’s for your own secrets. Look, do you see how it locks?” Then she unlocked the clasp for me: and I saw all the pages were blank!
“Now, I want you to write in it every day, Victoria,” Mamma said, “and that way you will have your precious memories to keep forever. You’re fourteen now and you might just as well begin with the summer holidays. Your cousins are coming home from India and I am sure you will have a great many charming anecdotes to write down. How grateful you will be in later years if you keep careful account of all that happens to you now. And it’s high time you began to think on paper, one doesn’t think at all if one doesn’t think clearly, you know, and the best way is to discipline yourself to say the right thing in the right way. I have always kept a diary, and in between the pages of my diaries I’ve kept a collection of pressed flowers I’ve picked up on special occasions. I suggest you do the same.”
I felt overcome with pride and happiness and gratitude. I thanked dear Mamma with tears in my eyes and went out of the room, leaving her to rest on her chaise-longue. She rests most of the day.
Poor Mamma is not strong and Papa insists on her having a trained nurse to look after her. Mamma always has pretty nurses because Papa says they are more restful, and Miss Browning is quite lovely, really even prettier than the one we had before, Miss March, who became fat and, I did think, quite ugly before she had to leave.
‘Tis a great pity dear Mamma’s health is so fragile. I overheard Violette, Mamma’s third maid this year, speaking about her condition to Martin who is really a silly man to have for a valet, for he called Mamma an old girl. One should never listen to servants, and maybe I shouldn’t write such things down in my diary; but, after all, Mamma is only thirty-two.
Yes, I must do well. I am wandering straight away from the point, as Miss Perkins says when she corrects my English essays. She’s so kind to me. Just the other day she gave me a lovely japanned box which, she said, had been in her family’s possession for many years. I thanked her and promised in exchange to try hard to do my lessons more thoroughly and from now on to concentrate and achieve real progress.
And then my birthday party. Think! The only thing that spoiled our gayness was dear Papa’s being away. The Indian mail has been delayed and Papa is still waiting to meet Aunt Margaret, Uncle John and my cousins. He hopes they will land tomorrow.
Well, there were sugar ornaments and all kinds of sweets on the table and in the middle a huge cake with white icing and fourteen pink candles. Mamma had invited some of our neighbours, the vicar, Mr Gareth, and of course Ursula, who had on a hideous spinach-green taffeta dress and looked, if I do say so, plainer than usual, even if she is my best friend. Oh, I would hate to have a vicar for a father!
I have never dared ask Ursula if she minded. He looks as if he knew all your sins even before you had got started committing them. And the way he gazes at one with that glassy stare of his makes one feel quite as naked as Eve must have felt after she had taken a bite of the Fatal Apple. Papa says Mr Gareth is àdark horse’, whatever in the world that could mean; and when I asked Mamma, I declare she turned purple. And I felt so ashamed. Poor Mamma’s health can’t bear shocks. I asked Ursula too, she said that she didn’t know, and perhaps it is because he is always dressed in black.
Well, I’m so weary that I say all sorts of silly things.
Before I stop, I must write down my birthday resolution: No matter what, I, Victoria, shall finish my lace doily this summer, come what may and despite all.