1949
Pier Approach Baths
(reproduced by permission of Bournemouth Libraries);
Miss Frances Woodsford
Pier Approach Baths
(reproduced by permission of Bournemouth Libraries);
Miss Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
I am pretending that your eyesight, whilst not exactly poor, isn't quite good enough to interpret my handwriting. There's no doubt at all about that – it certainly is poor – so I am seizing upon it as an excuse for typing this letter. Let us just say that it is kinder to both of us. If bad mannered on my part!
In a letter from Roady last week she remarked that you had asked when she was going to send you another of my letters. So here is one especially for you. A sort of prize for having such a nice daughter.
Some weeks ago I referred to a large-scale map of Long Island, to see where your cottage was located. Now maps are a weakness of mine, and when coupled with a vivid imagination, I can picture a place nearly as well as a physical visit. So, to my reading of the map, I have added my view of the Jersey shore (which at the time I thought to be the north side of Long Island) as I sailed up Hudson last winter, and the composite picture gives me some idea of your home. Long Island looked rather drab when I saw it on a cold day in December, but my mind's eye has painted it more vividly and even given you a few flowers in the spring and fall! See how kind I am to you!
Even though it is nearly eighteen months since I saw New York for the first wonderful time, it is painted like a primitive watercolour for me. Especially Staten Island with an inflamed red sun suspended a yard or so above it in a uniformly grey sky. And even more especially the Statue of Liberty etched in grey on hundreds of other shades of the same grey. Something only the Chinese would do justice to in putting on paper; certainly I cannot.
Long before I visited America I knew what it looked like, and had quite made up my mind that the only place to live, if living in New York, was a houseboat on the river so that the famous skyline would be your backyard fence. And on actual sight, I was right again. A tiny, hardly-to-be-mentioned obstacle to this ideal domicile, I thought, was the scent of the rubbish barges as they sailed heavily downstream with their redolent, smouldering burdens. You are very quiet about them and very noisy about your skyline, and you are quite, quite right in both instances!
I loved the gay highway connecting the city with Long Island, with its beautiful riverside houses and apartments, and as I have always been a fervid reader of American thrillers (they intersperse my heavy reading, like bicarbonate between courses of a banquet) I can easily imagine the various towns and villages of Long Island itself. Most of the best types of thrillers are located either in a city (New York, Boston, or sometimes San Francisco) or in Long Island. One would think nobody lived any-where else at all, and that nobody could possibly be other than one of the 400! They make good escapist reading, and are very slick and polished and I enjoy them for that and not for the picture they paint, so please don't worry that I think Hollywood depicts America accurately because I don't.
What else struck me about New York? The squirrels in Central Park – one of whom carried a large brown paper bag right up to the top of a tall tree and stuffed it there into a little wooden box-nest. You can imagine my feelings as I noticed this brown paper bag walking along the path by itself, for it wasn't until it had gone some dozen yards that the squirrel underneath came up for air and a rest. Harlem, that struck me all of a heap. I went there all alone on my first day in New York, when I had money enough only for coffee and cereal for breakfast and a long, long wait until I could embark on the Queen Mary at midnight. So I decided that the cheapest way of keeping out of the cold was the longest bus ride I could find, and it turned out to be Harlem and I was so upset and scared that I got straight back on the bus and returned to Central Park, where I wandered around and around the lovely Museum until the attendants began looking very oddly at me and fingering their weapons, just in case. Another thing I noticed particularly was the strange beauty of some of the negresses. When well dressed in colours toning with their skins I thought them exquisite. In fact, the loveliest woman I saw in the whole of America was an (I'm not sure of the word) octoroon in New Orleans. For me she conjured up at once a picture of the old city with two gay young blades fighting a duel over her.
The ankles and silly little shoes of the New York women; the equally silly, but by no means so attractive, coats flapping in the breeze with hoods hanging down between the shoulder blades – for two days I thought every woman was about to become a mother and had my lips pursed to whistle for an ambulance, until I discovered it was merely fashion, and not nature, at work.
The dirty sidewalks (I live in a seaside town where there is no industry, and therefore no smoky dirt, though I must say that New York was far dirtier than I remember seeing London) and the garishness of Broadway. The dignity and beauty of the buildings surrounding Central Park, and of course, Grand Central Station. The infuriating slowness of the Customs (it took me six hours to get off the boat and through them!) and the wonderful hospitality of the girl who waited all that time on the dock to welcome me. I stayed the first night at a horrible hotel in West 49th Street and the noise was another thing that struck me there. On my way home, being at the end of the trip and also the end – or beyond it – of my exchequer – I stayed at a YMCA hostel down on the East side, quite near the river, and the noise was much less there.
My other impressions are mostly of the West. The Rockies, the funny little round hills, pimple-like and sometimes quilted with vines, in California. The warmth, oh the heavenly warmth of that state. And the scorn my Scottish friends there had for the heather, growing in that warmth to a mere ten feet instead of the scrubby 15 inches it normally does in Scotland. The arty-crafty air of Carmel; the unpleasantness of Los Angeles's Mexican-cum-Negro quarter, in which I got lost. And of course, the food. Being quite mad I believe in having the best when possible, and going without everything when it is not. So I spent six dollars having gumbo creole and chicken baked in a bag, at Antoine's in New Orleans, even though it meant three days in New York on break-fast only. I had a very bad cold when I reached S.F., and remembering the ironic laughter with which the public here in England had greeted a newspaper article just before I sailed, in which it said that the best cure for a cold was 24 oranges (since oranges arrive about three times a year and then we get a pound a head) . . . remembering this, I went out and bought 24 oranges and set to eat them. If I remember rightly, I stuck on the ninth, but it was wonderful going up to then.
Another joy was to go down into Union Square in San Francisco in the mornings, and watch what I think must have been the most elegant collection of women in the world, going, presumably, to a lecture in one of the theatres.
I loved also going into small stores and interrupting all business by getting into arguments! Once when I had (as usual) been asked if I were Australian I answered, 'No, I'm English.' 'Well, are you going to Australia?' 'No, I'm going home to England.' 'Whatever for?' Up came my fists, I gave my best impersonation of Mr Churchill looking fierce, and bellowed, 'Why ever not! It's a nice place!' And of course all the other customers came over to see what the fight was about, and we had the loveliest time.
The casual way in which people take public graft for granted shook me to the core. Even more, has the recent exposure of Socialist Members of our Parliament for taking bribes, shaken me, so it seems nobody's hands are very clean nowadays. Mine least of all, for I was always ready to try for an extra pint of milk, or a pair of stockings going without any annoying questions of 'coupons' for them. We are in a sorry mess all round, aren't we?
Roady, in her letter, mentioned a friend of yours, a Mr Dahl, saying to his wife, 'Now, why don't you write to somebody in England and get letters like that?' Well, you may tell Mr Dahl that 999 English people out of 1,000 are just as bad correspondents as the same number of Americans. At least, that is my own experience. I correspond with upwards of eighty people (not regularly, or frequently) and at the moment 76 of them owe me a letter. That is partly why I was so delight-ed to meet Roady, if only so far by means of correspondence. She writes the loveliest letters, full of humour and picture-painting. Such a pleasant change from the other 79, who mostly send me a Christmas card on which they have scribbled, 'Thanks for letters – Drop me a line some time.' Bah! to them!
Roady told me some time ago that your two hobbies (apart from the dogs) are clocks and yachts. I know nothing of the one, and my experience of the other has mostly been confined to my sitting up in the bows pretending to be a Viking Figurehead, in spite of my figure, which isn't sufficiently robust for that role. Anyway, next time I write, I will discourse on yachts I have known, and if that doesn't last the course, then I can always go on for a long time about Mr Jackson, a cat who has a passion for me and spends all day long in my office or following me around the building like a dog. He stops sometimes to nip customers neatly in the ankle, but for the most part he cannot tear himself away from me long enough to do so. Why isn't he a man!!!
I feel very grateful to you for having a daughter; she seems so extremely fond of you and so close to you, that I feel a little the same, at third hand twice removed as it were. So please don't think it an impertinence if I wish you well and hope that the spring has come to Long Island as it has to this island and brought you the happiness it always brings me.
Yours sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
PS On no account are you to feel this calls for an answer, because it doesn't, so there!
PPS On rereading. Nothing like being vain, is there? Fancy taking it for granted a letter from me would count as a prize!
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Come, come – have you no shame? Throwing Latin tags around like that! You might hit somebody. In any case, your initial paragraph reads to me like a mixture of Greek, Dutch-Dutch and the Harvard College Yell. I was delighted with your last bit of dog-Latin – I quote you exactly – 'compost mentis and all that sort of thing'. I always thought it was compos, but possibly I misunderstand you, and you were merely being extraordinarily frank in suggesting you have a mind like a manure heap. Do I get an A+ for that?
. . . To my utter astonishment, my boss has decided I am in need of a break and told me I may have a week's holiday before the end of the summer. Normally I get three or four weeks (three weeks plus any national holidays I have worked) any time between November and March! So I am going, all alone, since I have so little prior notice and all my friends fixed their holidays long ago, to Exmoor and the Lorna Doone country. I am to stay at a hotel open only during summer so that the owner can make enough money to do nothing but hunt all winter. It's very huntin' shootin' fishin', and as I do none of those, I shall probably spend a week twiddling my fingers. Maybe, though, they'll trust me with an air rifle to shoot rooks. I am a very good shot (I think) but as that opinion is based on three shots at a fair, and three at a Home Guard target during the war, when I upset everybody by getting bullseyes all the time and making them look much worse than they were, possibly the hotelier will not feel me trustworthy. So it's a piece of string, a worm and a bent pin for me. Will you cross your fingers for luck over weather, Mr B.? In the middle of nowhere I shall need fine weather. Not, please, quite as hot as you are having just now – I'd hate that. Wish for something around the 65–70 degree mark, if you will.
I hope you are well, and that Rosalind managed to visit you on her hectic-sounding holiday. And that no more neighbours have fallen in the Atlantic.
Yours sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Thank you for your long letter, and also for the 'epic' on your experience of hospital hospitality. I'm downright surprised at you, Mr B., making a play on words that way. Thought only decadent English punned these days.
Oh and by the way – I would hate to tell you you're wrong . . . . . . Well, would hate to now and then, that is . . . . . . but over here we spell willy-nilly that way, and not 'Will I nill I'. Since you seem, from other evidence, to be a well-informed gentleman you will probably know that the expression comes from the word 'nill', 3rd sing.pres. condit. (Oxford Dictionary) 'Will he, nill he – whether he likes it or not (now usually willy-nilly) – from the obsolete ne (not) plus will'. End of lecture, which I couldn't resist as a return gesture after your own little admonition over my spelling of 'inured'. Do you remember? You told me the fulsome use of 'n's was unnecessary in the States. Now we are quits.
But, nonetheless, grammar and syntax notwithstanding, I enjoyed your account and chuckled lustily as I read it. You seem to have a good eye for nurses.
And talking of your eye for anatomy, I wasn't suggesting you went to the ballet to study that. You've a nasty mind, that you have; and in any case, by now you should know what anatomy is all about. After all, you will have had Esquire for years and years. My suggestion you visit the Sadler's Wells ballet company was more of an invitation to partake of a lovely experience. Anatomy is one part of it, admittedly, but not the main part. Most ballet-dancers have ugly legs, anyway (not Margot Fonteyn, nor Moira Shearer but most of the others have) and hide them in long net skirts. A memento of the days of Dhiagelif (spelled wrongly, I know) who disliked women in general and their legs in particular and always insisted on the dancers in his company wearing long skirts. No, ballet is not the answer to a tired business- man's prayer. It is a mixture of sound, sight and movement, welded together. However, it is too late now, as the company has moved on, but I hope Rosalind has been able to see it and I know she would love it.
. . . On Friday I went in my lunch hour, to our little art gallery and museum.* This was gathered together by one of the families originally settling in Bournemouth, and then, when the cat left in disgust because he couldn't turn round any longer, they departed this life and left the house and contents to the town, only stipulating certain items must always be on show. This makes it rather awkward for the Museum Committee who, when planning exhibitions of, say, modern art, have to sandwich Picasso between two permanent pictures of Victorian Misses. Complete with birds, dear little cheeldren and the odd pussy cat or two.
* Editor's note: The Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, on East Cliff Promenade.
I love visiting this museum, which is perched on the edge of the cliffs with a really magnificent view over the bay, embracing a sight of the Isle of Wight to the east, and the Dorset hills sweeping out to sea on the western side. My first reaction is always to slip down the first half-dozen steps, just inside the main entrance, as I gaze entranced at the marble statue one sees on entering. This statue is of a mother with baby on her shoulder, just stepping off a rock into the sea. It is entitled The Bathers, in case you didn't guess . . .
My second choice in statues is one of a young girl sending off a dove with a message. This dates it as being pre-telephonic. This lass is throwing the poor bird into the air with one chubby hand, while the other is coyly pressed across the Victorian bosom. She quite obviously hasn't the first idea of throwing, and would be hopeless at cricket or baseball. The lass is wearing a smirk and a shift (or chemise) that has slipped.
Possibly the Victorian shape of the girl explains why the chemise didn't slip all the way down, but I still don't know how it got off arms and shoulders in the first place, unless she was the original film star and was sewn into it each day? I can't begin to think why she would have been out for a walk in her chemise, or with a dove for sending messages on the spur of inspiration. So I leave this mystery to you to solve during the long winter evenings.
Now come to think of it, fashions don't seem to change as often as we think. For outside the museum is a small bronze statue of Pan, in the act of throwing something (if it was a football, the ball is missing) out to sea. Pan is dressed in a smart-alec sort of smile, for the most part, but during the war he was frequently dressed in undergarments looking very like those issued to the little English Air Force girls. He lives next door to the main Canadian Air Force Officers' mess on one side, and opposite two large hotels used as leave-centres for the U.S. other ranks, and I think it was once more a case of the American Forces, both sides of the 49th Parallel, sending clothing parcels to Britain. What I often wanted to know was, were his warm wearings given voluntarily or not?
. . . Enough of all this: I do hope you are better now, and continuing to disappoint your doctor by refusing to have pneumonia. I understand the medicine for pneumonia is horrible. It's much better to stick to colds, which carry with them much less drastic doses of physic. Anyway, by now you will be better, I'm sure, and are probably overseeing the tying of your rose bushes against the winter. Two of mine are still blooming, yah, yah! I think they are crazy, but that may be the company they keep.
I've not heard from Rosalind since she wrote on her visit to Vancouver Island, and do hope this doesn't mean she's been ill. Probably just busy; and in any case, there's no real reason why she should write.
Last Saturday I went to Salisbury, a cathedral town with a market place about 30 miles from Bournemouth, in the hope of finding some antique bargains for Christmas gifts. As it rained very heavily in the morning I decided not to go. And then just as I was about to leave the office, it stopped raining, so I dashed off to the bus station and caught the bus, only stopping to think when halfway there that I'd had no lunch and made no arrangements about taking sandwiches. So I thought I'd have something when we reached Salisbury at 2.30. At 2.30 we did reach Salisbury, and I was frozen to the marrow, sitting in a cold bus with wet feet. So I tore round to the market square looking for a cup of some-thing hot. Only to turn my nose up at the cheap, nasty, snack-bars which surround the market place along with the public houses. All the good restaurants were filled with lunches, and not started with teas. So I went at the double round the stalls looking for bargains. Only bargain I saw was on the part of the stall holder I discovered selling Bristol Blue glass at fabulous prices to two American ladies shopping there! So I came away, unable to bear the sight, and merely stopped to purchase a small silver brooch for a young girl who'll probably hate it anyway, and dashed back to the bus station to find a bus waiting. Popped on, and decided I'd wait to eat until we got back to Bournemouth when I could have a tea-snack before going to friends where I was due for dinner. Of course, on arriving back in Bournemouth I was once more frozen to the marrow, and finding a bus to the friends' district ready and waiting (and not another for an hour) I popped in and arrived at their house cold and hungry, about 5.30 p.m., having eaten breakfast at 7 a.m. and nothing since. AND WE HAD DINNER AT EIGHT O'CLOCK! Before dinner I was given two sherries, and oh Mr Bigelow I've never felt so giddy in my life! It wasn't much fun (I've never yet got drunk or near-drunk and can't imagine it being a happy condition, judging by my misery after a couple of cocktails) and it was very, very hard work being polite and applauding the firework display in the garden, when all I wanted was a good beefsteak. Not that I was likely to get a good beefsteak, or even a steak, but these friends are well in with the blackmarket and their tables always groan (their guests too, but afterwards, with overeating) and to have to wait all that time nearly killed me.
And that is why I say it's the company my rose bushes keep that turns them crazy.
I do hope you are well again.
Yours sincerely,
Frances Woodsford