1950
April 29th (p. 26), 'I am going to distemper and paint the bathroom, spring clean the kitchen and repaint it, and do Mother's bedroom as well if I get time.'
April 29th (p. 26), 'I am going to distemper and paint the bathroom, spring clean the kitchen and repaint it, and do Mother's bedroom as well if I get time.'
Dear Mr Bigelow,
It's a glorious day today; a rich apricot-coloured sunshine is wrapped round everything, and I have just come in from a walk in a short- sleeved wool frock and bolero only. Privately, I was a fool to let the sun tempt me, because it wasn't until I got outside that I discovered it was tempered by a nice little breeze from your part of the world.
I was delighted with your letter, Mr B., and even more delighted with all the trouble Mr Dahl obviously took to make the package seem so much more important than it was. I have written him a short note of thanks, which he well deserves. He won't be overwhelmed this time! My earlier letter to him was, I will admit, very, very carefully written with two rough drafts first, as I had no intention of giving him any loophole at all through which he could get out of doing my behest. Incidentally thank you for a new word for my vocabulary – I'd never heard of 'whelmed' as a separate word before, but it's there in the Concise Oxford and scores you a point . . .
I'm afraid 'you've had it', so far as your new kitten is concerned. That was a phrase much in use in the Forces during the war, and indicated that, whatever it was you wanted, it was just as though you'd already had it, so far as any likelihood of future having was concerned. Dogs and cats who 'find' people do it on purpose, and are not to be got rid of by wily advertisements or other means. Your cat has obviously taken over the house, as I can see from his behaviour towards your dogs already. What are you going to call her? Cara? Autocat!! Orphan Annie? I had a Mr Perkins once who turned out to be a Dorothy Perkins instead. Perky made quite a good name for a cat; it was easy for her to hear. Of course, no cat hears itself called unless it wants to, but just the same it's a good thing to find a name they can easily understand. Mine are called Sammie, Fatty Freckleface (Frecks, or Fatty, or Culls when we call him) and the office one is Willie Jackson, as you know.
Rereading your letter: I cannot help thinking Mr Dahl's guests were the ultra-polite type. The suit and shoes in the snapshot are both about seven years old! The ring is an heirloom and I don't wear an engagement ring, never having got that far! I had intended sending my prize-snapshot to you, but as several friends to whom I showed it remarked 'Oh, what a pretty girl! Who is it?' I decided it couldn't be a good likeness, so plumped for this one instead. I am usually smiling except when I am not. Many, many years ago I was born with gastritis, a hernia, and so weak my eyes had to be bathed open every morning for six months. I am told that between turning blue with the pain of my various sicknesses, I blew the happiest bubbles in London. Thus proving at an early age that there's one born every minute, and reflecting no credit on me for my happy disposition. There's so much horror and sorrow in the world about which we can do absolutely nothing at all, it seems stupid to go around with a long face just because it is there. As reasonable to go around laughing for joy because there are buttercups and sunshine and light on water.
The Radio Times was not marked with all the best programmes. I remember being rather annoyed with myself for not having listened to the type of programme I would feel proud to acknowledge having heard! It (the B.B.C.) is not exactly a government enterprise, although it is run by a Board of Governors appointed by Parliament, and it is thought at the moment to err rather in showing left-wing bias, but that might be explained by the fact that so many scientists are that way inclined. They never were in touch with the facts of life, were they?
So now I have a warped mentality, have I? Because I enjoy an occasional crossword puzzle! Let me tell you Mr B., that the one I do – in the Daily Telegraph – is a very good exercise in clear thinking. An exercise I am always in need of. The clues (usually there are two or three hints rather hidden in the one clue) say exactly what the compiler means. Only, they say it in such a way that the solver automatically thinks it means something else. Careless reading – just as we have so much careless listening – we hear what we expect to hear, and not always what is being actually spoken. As for those crosswords which are full of unknown words, there is no fun or interest in them at all, I'll grant you that. One day I will solve one of the Telegraph items, and send it to you to see for yourself . . .
Thank you for your letter from Mr Meserole. Is he like our own
J. B. Priestley? Woolly minded? I love the idea of world-planning so that nobody wants for anything, nobody suffers, nobody is unhappy. How many murders were there in the world last year? How many divorces? How many arguments between the U.S. Navy Department and the U.S. Army big-shots? How many between Foreign Ministers? How many between Dictators? Perhaps if we start with the family rows and work up from there we may yet have a world-plan, but personally I don't expect to see it. If, say, we had a sudden, overwhelming revival of the Christian spirit that wouldn't be big enough to solve world problems, because it wouldn't take in the Jews, the Mohammedans, the Buddhists, the Hindus, the sun-worshippers or the Hottentots. It wouldn't even affect the Mormons or the Seventh-Day Adventists. I think it's too big a problem for Mr Meserole to tackle, even with your help.
Incidentally, I'd love to know where he got his $400,000,000,000 from. Did he go round all the firms in the U.S.A. asking how much they lost in the depression, then add it all up. Personally, I stop counting, or being affected by any figure above the ten thousand mark. I earn £350 a year and I know, to the penny, just how far that stretches. What I don't know, and can't visualise, is how far forty-million-times-£350 would stretch. I can't take in our National Debt; the amount of Marshall Aid now rising up in a mountain round our necks (makes a change from the National Debt, which was only called a millstone) or how many light hours it would take to reach the moon. So now you know my Achilles tendon!
. . . Having been rather busy lately, I haven't proceeded very far with your life history, but here are a couple of chapters for you to be getting on with. I think, in the next chapter, I will bring in one or two of the relatives I found for you under the 'Bigelow' group in the American Who's Who I studied at the library the other week. You'd be surprised to know who you picked up as brothers. I was always told my father's family were related to the Woodsford-Strangeways (the 17th, or some-thing, Earl of Ilminster), but when I came back from the States some-body wrote to me and said she was an Elizabeth Woodsford before her marriage, and were we related – her mother had been maid to Mrs So-and-so and her only brother was a farm labourer. I was livid. Served us right for being snobs, yes? Of course we indignantly denied any such relationship, which is actually, about as likely as the earldom one . . .
I hope the dentist didn't wreak too much of his will on you. Sadists all, and only one step better than wife beaters. If I were Dictator of Mr Meserole's nicely planned world I'd forbid toothache, that I would. With about as much possibility of global co-operation as any other edict, rule or law would have, were it sent around the entire globe to apply to everybody. Still I expect Mr M. is quite happy pottering around in his life-work, and who are we cynics to make him cry?
Very sincerely yours,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Imagine me, if you can, with a cheese sandwich in one hand and a swatch of letters in the other, trying to get the one digested and the other answered, before tearing off to London for a week's holiday. Excuse, beforehand, expected low standard of epistle, that is.
Thank you for your latest letter, with the enclosure regarding different governments and their effects on cows. I must confess I had seen it many years ago, and in retaliation all I can think of is to send you another hoary chestnut – the one about who's doing the work. Here it is, therefore.
Also enclosed is a cutting from a magazine, in case you've never met the dear girls of that super super school, St Trinian's. Mostly, they appear in sketches only (like the one of the small girl kept back in class to write out a hundred times, 'I must not smoke cigars in chapel') but in this instance the artist and Arthur Marshall have co-operated. Arthur Marshall, himself an ex-schoolmaster, is well known for his extremely funny impersonations of a schoolmistress in just such a school as St Trinian's. You may chuckle; you may not.
I have just finished reading my Christmas book of the comedies of William Congreve. I can imagine a whole lot of hearty friends in whose company I would not like to see one of these plays enacted! Apart from the juicy bits, though, they are beautifully written and confirm my old love of Millamant. What a gorgeous role to play!
Also finished, for the third time since Christmas, Pride and Prejudice. Did I tell you, or was it before our time? How I went especially to the National Portrait Gallery in London one day, just to see their newly acquired portrait of Jane Austen by her sister Cassandra? And how amazed I was to find she had, apart from such things as large brown eyes, frizzy hair, a long straight nose, and pink cheeks, a mouth shut tight like a small button cemented over. I was astounded that such a mouth could go with such a wide sense of humour – wide enough to embrace humanity as a whole, and not merely the falling-on-banana-skin type.
Rereading P. & P. I was struck by the exceedingly bad manners of the majority of the characters. Although we always say that today our manners are appalling, I think their roughness hurts less than the sheer brutality of so many of J.A.'s characters. And today we in ourselves are more independent, less influenced by others' opinions and behaviour, so that we do not so readily blush for our friends. If manners are there to make one at ease, and to make others at ease as well, then I think we are an improvement over the Regency grade. True, Elizabeth and Jane Bennet later are exquisitely mannered in the best way, but they do stand out as a pair of little candles in a very uncouth world. Quite a change to hear anybody say, 'Ah, the younger generation isn't what it was. Thank goodness,' isn't it?
And now I must get on with the other letters. I do hope you had a lovely visit from Rosalind, and the weather was good to you both. I wonder why you called her Rosalind? It's such a lovely name as are most in Shakespeare, but so few people make use of them. Did you hear of the white woman who called her fifth son Ling-Hi because she'd heard that every fifth child born is Chinese?
I will tell you what the Thames looks like on fire after I have set it. And if.
Till then, au revoir, and a bonne santé,
Sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
If you have a blackboard knocking around the place, chalk up one point to you over this business of coffee. I will go halfway to meet you over it – coffee in England, in public restaurants and cafés (where they ought to know better) is awful. The coffee you get in private homes is usually a good deal better. Whereas in my opinion, and judging by my slight experience, coffee in the States is drinkable anywhere, at worst, and very good, at best.
I was forcibly reminded of this vileness of English coffee on Sunday, when I went to Southampton to meet two American ladies off their ship, and took them to the best hotel in Southampton for lunch. A horrible meal, too, of which I was heartily ashamed. The soup was just warm brown thickness; the Yorkshire pudding (I didn't have any) looked soggy and rubber-like, and the coffee was awful.
It was great fun, playing hostess to somebody who had reversed the roles in America. It was also great fun putting on one of my No. 1 beaming smiles to get me through forbidden territory! Having no official permit, I should not have gone into the docks at all, but the policeman on duty took pity on my blank look of disappointment and let me through upon signing some paper or other. Nobody lower than a Cabinet minister is allowed on board while ships are in the docks, but I looked helpless and appealing at three very tall men, one of whom looked down and remarked, 'Oh dear, no, you can't go on board. Besides, this man is the doctor and he has to go on board first of all, to give the ship a clean bill of health. Then this man goes on – he is the Immigration Officer – and then I go aboard. I'm the Customs Officer. You just follow us.' So I did.
Coming out, we had a taxi and went another way. Then the police stopped our car for the production of passports, and upon saying I hadn't one, but had come in by the other gate, the bobby remarked, 'Oh yes, I know all about you.' See how the Gestapo keep us under their watchful eye! The police apparently passed me from one to the other, for they didn't argue when we came back later and I accompanied my friends on board and stayed to dinner. Nor did the gatekeeper object when I arrived back at his post, completely, utterly and absolutely breathless, too breathless even to speak. Even to object to the fact that the clock in the distance I had been running by, was twenty-five minutes fast and I was in no danger of losing my train, by the clock over the dock gates. But then, I always manage to catch my trains in plenty of time. This day, just as I was walking (yes, walking by then) down the steps leading to the station yard, I saw a train in the platform and heard the loudspeaker voice announcing . . . . . . 'stopping at Boscombe, Bournemouth Central, Bournemouth West, and Weymouth'. So I went back to my normal twelve miles per hour rush and promptly got clutched by the ticket-collector who wanted to know, reasonably enough, where I was going to. 'Don't stop me – I want to catch the Bournemouth train!' I retorted, struggling. 'Well, you'll do it. It's not due in for ten minutes', was the nasty answer. The train I had seen was going the other way, anyway. I know quite well that when I die I shall pop out of my coffin and run all the way to the cemetery so as to be there in plenty of time for the arrival of the cortège.
. . . Disappointed woman all round, I am today. From a friend I borrowed a pair of silver-fox furs last weekend. I wanted the two American ladies to think I was affluent – as though I wasn't a bit worried whether my money'd be enough to pay the lunch bill! – and so I dressed up in my Sunday best. Unfortunately, my family decided I looked common in the furs. I didn't agree, but I did think they made me look old – look my age, anyway! – and as it was actually too cold to go without a coat, I had the furs returned without showing them off. I suppose I must stick to mutation mink (the pale stuff, like captured moonlight) or nothing. Or perhaps chinchilla would suit my particular beauty. I knew I should have persuaded Mrs Watson, a friend of Rosalind's from Fairmount, to return to the docks in time to see the Caronia come in with its 22 millionaire passengers aboard. Might have found one to suit me, I might.
I am going up to London again in a few weeks, to spend a couple of days showing Mrs Watson around. What I lack in information as to our famous sights, I more than make up in imagination. And who cares about dates anyway! I am using the task as practice for next year, by which time surely I should have worn down Rosalind enough to get her to come over, when my ability as a guide will have increased with use.
That's all for now,
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
It is raining; it is cold; I have been, all the morning, interviewing applicants for one or two staff vacancies, and that's a job I loathe because I either feel so sorry for obvious misfits that I want to give them the position whether they could fill it successfully or not; or else I get cross with them for being bumptious and self-opinionated with little reason. In any case I'm bound to choose the wrong people, so the whole morning has been generally depressing, and I am venting my spleen on you.
I am sorry not to have answered your lovely long letter before. My reason is that Easter is a headache for me and has resulted in a bout of sleepless nights, which in turn mean irritability which I do not like transferring to my friends by way of letters. So you've been postponed, but don't think it was because I didn't wish to write off at once and thank you for taking all that trouble, because I did.
Now, Mr Bigelow, you really mustn't take me to task for referring to a 'road connecting New York with Long Island'. When I say a thing happened in 1535 I mean it happened in 1535 or thereabouts – say fifty years either way. I cannot be held down to finicky details, see? I'm one of the large gesture type; the world planners, as opposed to the scientists with their noses to the retort. Not that I'm often at a loss for a retort. Ah me, I'm in fine form today. Did you notice that pun just gone past? And heave a sigh of relief that it had gone past, perhaps? Anyway, to get back to the road. With the help of a bridge it connects the city of New York with the outlying towns on Long Island, and looking at your map (for which many thanks: I love maps) it seems to be called Shore Parkway, and a very fine Parkway it looked from my ship too.
You say in your letter, 'What is it that makes English people so?' You politely don't say what it is they are so, but I will give you an explanation anyway. We are a homogeneous race, as contrasted with the American, which is a mixed race. I am talking, again, in large gestures, of the majority, not the minority, in both instances. I have a Dutch great-grandfather on my mother's side, and a Scottish great-grandfather. Apart from that, on both sides of the family my ancestors came from the west part of England – Dorset and Devon – from back so far they got lost with William the Conqueror. That means that the amount of non-English blood in me must be very small, and it is so with most English people as well. That again means that my characteristics are those which are in English people for twenty or thirty generations back. And as climate and environment play such a large part in our natures, it means that any deviation from the norm has to be caused by an exceptionally strong characteristic, different from the usual ones. Now I am a genius, say (I'm not, but we'll just pretend. It's one of my favourite daydreams) and that genius, being such a hard taskmaster, forces me into being different from everybody else not a genius. But an English non-genius differs only in nice particulars from all the other non-geniuses – not outstandingly. Whereas in America your mother might be French, your father German, your grandparents Red Indian, English, Polish and Greek, and your great-grandparents eight other nationalities. These characteristics are going a'warring in you, and the strongest will come out. But it will be the strongest from each separate nationality, and as a result you, the offspring, may have (for an example) the volatile nature of a Frenchman with the painstaking plodding of a German and the sun-loving habits of the Greek and the poetry of an Englishman. No wonder you have so many neurotics, you poor things, with that private war going on in so many of you!
Anyway, ancestry aside, I believe the climate is what 'makes English people so'. We never know what tomorrow will bring. We say, 'Yes, I see' when we mean – 'I understand'. We are so used to thinking in terms of seeing through the mists that we really do see around them, through them, and as though they do not exist. Our climate is equable, though often deplorable. It is possible to be very uncomfortable – and our houses make it easy! – but it is never too hot or too cold to work and go about our ordinary business. Our twilights and our springs are things of exquisite loveliness, and have resulted in Shakespeare and a whole lot of little Shakespeares. I bet you what you like (anything up to a $) that you could stop ten people in an English street, and at least five of them, if honest, would admit that they had written poetry at some time or another. Even our love of our little gardens is a way of expressing our appreciation of beauty.
The characteristic about English people which hits other people, I believe, is snobbishness. It must be awful, to be so glaring, and I don't know the root of it unless the early nineteenth century was to blame. Why, in my job this morning, did I automatically say to myself, 'Oh, he's much too good a type for the job' about some of the men, if not for snobbish reasons? – they were 'too good' to scrub floors. But why do so many American women belong, by hook or by crook, to the Daughters of the Revolution? It's the same thing, different country. And you know, Mr Bigelow, most prime ministers of England have come from the lower strata of society (Lloyd George was a miner's son, McDonald a post-man's son etc., etc., I could name half a dozen) than U.S. Presidents have. So that snobbishness does not keep everybody in the station in life to which they were born, as the Victorians expressed it, and as most Americans believe it does.
Enough of England . . . . . .
I am glad you did manage to agree with me about women's shoes. And the sketch you enclosed was, horrors, exactly like my house slippers, though my heels are lower than that you drew. Still, you wouldn't like women to be plain sensible creatures, now would you? It'd take all the fun out of life. I remember one evening during the war, when I did hospital visiting in my spare time, wearing a plain sensible hat with a plain sensible suit, and a plain sensible American from San Francisco (bronchitis, hospitalised three weeks) leaned towards me, perching on the end of the bed, and said, 'Excuse me, ma'am, but I do like your bloody hat.' I wasn't at all sure whether that was a bit of flattery or sarcasm, so to obviate any repetition I went home and straight away cut the hat into bits, added a bow here and a ribbon there, popped it back over one eye, and thereafter wore it like that. And nobody thought it was bl—dy, or likeable any more. They laughed at it, which was just what I wanted them to do, as they had little else to laugh at in the hospital. Besides, we females get fun out of being silly, so why should we forgo that just to oblige a lot of spoil-sports like you men?????? My biggest hat-success of my career as a Florence Nightingale was a hat I made out of the cellophane wrappers of cigarette packets. For weeks and weeks everybody in hospital saved these wrappers, and I wound them round and round like pipe spills, until I had made a little cellophane boater. To this was added white and pink flowers, and a white ribbon to keep the concoction on. I never dared wear it in the street, but it used to be popped on outside the ward doors (and out of view of the orderly on duty in the hall, whenever possible) and then paraded up and down between the beds, to the loud (and possibly sarcastic) admiration of the sick men and women. It was so darn heavy I got a headache after two minutes, but it was certainly pretty and a change from nurses' starched handkerchiefs.
I have just finished reading a book about the Brontës. Too finicky and detailed, it was yet interesting and enlightening. What queer people they were, weren't they? I prefer Emily, both as a writer and as a person, but alas have more in common (except genius) with Charlotte. And here I have the nerve to try and explain to you 'what makes the English so', when nobody knows what makes that particular English family so, however hard they delve and analyse and interpret. With tight-lacing and women being 'interesting invalids' every time they had an annual baby, I cannot imagine how any family of women managed to be so outstandingly stoic, Emily and Anne both dying out of bed after illnesses of months' duration. The last time I was in bed was back in 1943, when I had flu and stayed in bed one day; running red nose, shining skin, lank straight hair and an 'ackin' corf. That was the day my number one beau came up to say goodbye before going overseas, and the shock of seeing me as I was, nipped in the bud what might have been the love affair of the century! So I haven't stayed in bed since, but that is only because I've not been ill, for I am no Brontë stoic, not by a million miles, and the least pain would put me down on the pillow wailing for my mummy. You should have heard the moaning I've been doing this last couple of months because I have developed neuritis in one arm. You probably did hear it, and thought it was the ghosts of the drowned dead marching up the Hudson and wailing as they went!
. . . thank you again for writing me and don't ever feel you have to, because you haven't . . .
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Mother has gone gallivanting off to London for a couple of weeks today, leaving me to cope with the flat, the cats, the shopping, the job, and the BROTHER. He is the biggest cope of all, announcing calmly to Mother this morning that he is confident he will not be called upon to do more than his usual share of domestic work during the next two weeks. Yes, that really is the way he speaks. If I want to annoy him, I call him Pompous Pete. I overheard this, and merely called out that his confidence was misplaced! I am going to distemper and paint the bathroom, spring clean the kitchen and repaint it, and do Mother's bed-room as well if I get time. If we eat at all, the brother will do the cooking. I will merely do the burping! I know his cooking of old – he makes lovely cakes (he says) but only if he is given crumpled biscuits instead of flour, for that is the only flour they were able to get when he learnt cooking as a prisoner of war. Except for the time when they swapped tea (used tea, dried off and repackaged with the addition of a little soda bicarbonate to make it draw when reused) with the German guards, and the Huns got wind of what they had done with the tea, and mixed cement with the flour they bartered in exchange.
And so I must rush off and start ruining my lilywhite hands (see ads) peeling spuds, and shredding fish for two starving cats whose plumpness is due to dropsy, but never, never, to overfeeding.
So, till the next letter, I hope you enjoy the books and a laugh or two to go with them,
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Today all 'points' are cancelled for food-stuffs. That means we can get treacle, and syrup, dried fruits and biscuits, tinned milk or condensed milk, tinned meats and fishes, without having to balance our need for the one against our need for the others, and adjust the answer against the number of points allowed us. Always an inadequate number, I may say. We are still rationed (and terribly meanly) on sugar, fresh meat, tea, and confectionery. But the relaxation, long overdue, of this points business will mean such a weight off the housewife, and she has been carrying more than Atlas these past nine years and deserves it if anybody does. There will, of course, remain a certain amount of rationing, because the shopkeepers only get a certain amount of goods in short supply, but it will mean that if Mrs Jones doesn't want any syrup, but could do with an extra pound of dried apricots, and Mrs Brown doesn't want the apricots but would like some syrup, they won't both be penalised because they can only have their ration and if they don't want it, they can't take something else in its place. Now if we can't get one commodity, the chances are we'll be able to get something in its place.
I see from the papers that two bodies of experts had been to America (at the expense of the taxpayers, of course) to study production methods in the steel industry and in the building industry. And do you know, they have come back and published papers showing that the reason you have higher productivity in these industries is because your workers have more incentive in the way of wages, and more incentive to work in the way of the sack if they don't! For which wonderful discovery we have probably paid through the nose in our scant dollars. I am at once setting up as an expert in the rotundity of the globe, in the hope that in a week or two I can persuade the British Government to send me on a world cruise so that, on my return to England, I can publish a paper setting out my discovery that the World Is Round. Not only are we having Jobs For the Boys now that everything is nationalised, on a scale never before imagined, let alone known, in England. We are, apparently, having Holidays For the Boys in Dollar Areas, so that they can come back and tell us what the Conservatives have known for two hundred years.
On which note of indignation I think I will stop. There has been no letter from you, Sir, for about three weeks now, and It's Not Good Enough. I shall, in desperation, probably write to Russ next Saturday instead of to you, and that will be fatal for the only way I ever get an answer out of that difficult gentleman is by being so nasty he writes back to tell me I'm unkind, unsympathetic, un-understanding and generally doing him wrong. Incidentally, you asked once if he was English. How Dare You! No Englishman I know (I know two, as a matter of fact, Bournemouth being exclusively female) was ever as difficult, moody, soul-searing, wolfish and altogether over-dramatic as W.K.R. And he does it on his head, so I think he must have practised a long, long time, and knowing me hasn't been the cause, hard though he tries to pretend it is.
Sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . My brother is very fond of telling the story of Dr Johnson, who was said to have spat out a mouthful of too-hot soup with the remark, 'Some dam' fool would have swallowed that.' Not that my brother does more than copy the remark, I would have you know. My brother does seem sometimes to be ashamed to be seen in public with me. One fine day, when I am out with the scion of the Woodsford family, I will do every-thing I know, and a few things I imagine, to give him really something to be shamed for – I shall scratch, hitch my skirts, smooth my girdle, pick my ear, run my nails through my hair for dandruff; stare at people; laugh like a noisy hyena, and belch whenever we come within hearing distance of any and everybody. That'll larn 'im.
The peculiar thing is that I really know my one and only brother isn't ashamed of me. At least, I am always clean and tidy in public, and fairly quiet. I wore gloves (as I always do) and a hat, and my fur cape, a decent, quiet dress and stockings. He wore a tennis shirt (he did have a tie, I will grant you) but no hat (never does) and no gloves. So why he should act as though I were a leprous barmaid, heaven knows! In the street, we alternately crawled along to avoid catching up with somebody he knew, or raced along side streets to ensure meeting as few people as possible. It brings out the nasty, catty side of my nature, and I dream of becoming the Hampshire Lady Tennis Champion (much chance!) and then joining his club after they begged me to do so on bended knee, just for the pleasure of refusing to associate with Mac. See what a horrid nature I have at bottom, but you won't tell anybody, I know.
I can, to an extent, sympathise with his agonies if he really is embarrassed by my presence. When Dr Russell was in England last summer, and stayed with us for a week or two, I loathed going out with him, as I had to do each evening. But in that case there was some reason – his behaviour in public is far too affectionate for my liking, and at the least suggestion that I disliked it, it became more so than ever, just to tease. Not very pleasant, when there are about sixty town Councillors here there and everywhere in Town, all keeping a watchful eye on the council officers, to see that they do not Let The Place Down. Where my brother is concerned, of course, there is no such worry for him, and the only explanation I can think of is that he has spread the tale at his club so hard, that he is a lonely bachelor living in rooms, that the presence of a real live sister might bring his house of cards to the ground any moment, and show him up for the romancer he seems to be. Mind you, that is surmise on my part: I've only heard of this 'living in digs, family lives miles away' story once and it may not be generally accepted.
Enough of difficult men. A small boy came to my office yesterday to know if we had found his false tooth (on a tiny plate) which he had lost in the Baths. 'I shouldn't have lost it,' he explained, 'because I put it for safe-keeping in my shoe!'
. . . And now it's time to get back to work again. I am on late duty three nights this week and four next week, and shall be dead by Saturday. No flowers, please. Ah, my vanished youth, when four 14-hour days and two nine-hour ones wouldn't have caused the bat of an eyelash!! However every time I think of my pay cheque at the end of the month, with all this extra time, I hug myself for glee. So I must off, to earn all that pay.
Sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . The other day, just as the water show was beginning, a nice clean grey little mouse ran down the steps and swam right across the pool, to be picked out, poor fellow, the other side and removed in ignominy by his tail. The audience was delighted, thinking it was part of the show. The next night, when the compère announced 'Bournemouth's twelve Beautiful Aquabelles', out walked thirteen, the thirteenth having four legs! A stray dog got through to the dressing rooms and, being an exhibitionist, had taken the best possible way of drawing applause. Oh we do see life, we do . . .
Reading through your two letters: no, the Dr Russell to whom I refer sometimes is not Bertrand R. He is a Canadian from Toronto who has a rather pathological love of England. Mind you, I don't suggest that any-body who loves England and the English must of necessity be pathological about it, but this particular man is inclined to weep because his health won't permit of his living in England, and I detest men who weep because they can't have their own way. I dislike, disapprove, or detest a great deal about Dr R., and it is one of the Seven Wonders of the World why I am still, in a remote sort of way, fond of him. Possibly because he is sophisticated, terribly experienced with women, and the very fact that he was attracted to me seemed the highest form of flattery. And good-ness knows I needed a bit of flattery, to offset his other insults – for it is really an insult to want to marry somebody merely because they won't be your mistress, and to make it quite obvious, whilst in the very midst of proposing for the umpteenth time, that you loathe and dread the idea of being 'tied' in marriage.
Anyway, you notice I am not married; nor do I ever intend to be so merely to be able to put a handle to my name. My Dr R. is, at the moment, way down in my bad books, with all his letters torn up in a huff and thrown away. Most dull letters too, so he deserves to live in the rubbish basket.
This is a shorter letter than usual, and probably when I reread it I shall be ashamed of its scrappy style and lack of interest.
Sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . What a to-do this attempt on Mr Truman's life is! I cannot help feeling sorry for the two assassins (would-be) for they so obviously are mentally deficient, and therefore pitiable. They must be, for no sane person would imagine he could walk into a very large, many-roomed house, and search through all the rooms until he found one man (the victim) without meeting some other person who would want to know what was afoot.
I imagine, probably wrongly, that the attempt must have been a terrific shock to Americans (perhaps not to you personally, but to the rank and file) who fondly imagine they are beloved wherever they are. We in England are well used to being regarded as bloated beasts, and so our unpopularity, which grieves us with our so-clean consciences (!) does not come as a rude shock. One of the things which so exasperated my friends in Canada was the impossibility of convincing visiting neighbours from the States, that Canada was not dying – nay, did not have the slightest wish – to become another State. The Canucks used to wail that the Yankees wouldn't even start to believe them.
. . . Enough of politics. I have been reading, with delight, The Silverado Mine, and Travels with a Donkey, by R.L.S.
I have been today to a new antique shop – new, that is, to me. I'm always looking for new antique shops, but the result is all the same. I'm done, diddled and bedevilled. One of the things I bought today is intend-ed for a Christmas gift for somebody (probably poor Rosalind will get it slung at her!) and I bought it mostly because I loved its rich dark blue colour. It wasn't until I was busily washing it that I realised a) it had no containers for the ink it was supposed to hold, and b) even if it did, most people use fountain pens these days and not eighteenth-century (I hope) ink stands. So I sat down and thought and thought and thought, and now I shall claim that immediately (note that – immediately) my eyes lit on it I said to myself, I said, 'Now, that could make a delightful holder for pencils – in the pen-holes – and cigarettes, in the centre hole, for somebody to hand around a bridge table. Or they could put flowers in it, a clump in the middle and a small flower in the individual holes.' See how I trim my inspiration to my sucker-nature!
. . . I am sorry to learn you feel this is your last season as Chairman of the Regatta Committee. I hope by the time this reaches you, you and Rosalind will have had a lovely drive up through New England in the fall, to visit your sister. Isn't she the Mrs Crocker you said hardly went any-where even though she was only eighty?
Now my lunch hour is finished and I must tackle the week's most unpleasant task – wage sheets. I hope you are enjoying something more felicitous, like yachting, or dozing, or a good book, or just sitting playing with the kittens. Wage sheets, indeed – we should have a big copper bowl full of money, and everybody dip in once or twice a week. Bags I first dip!
Sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Tonight we are all out to dinner and the theatre (it's my birthday today) and tomorrow I start on the kitchen painting and distempering. By January 17th, or thereabouts, I should be finished. And I probably will be finished, washed up, wore out, and knocking at the knees by that time. It's hard work, interior decorating, you know.
My brother, discovering that in my cleaning out I had thrown away about an inch of after-shave lotion which has been on the bathroom shelf for over two years, raised Cain about it yesterday morning, and not even the offer of my eau-de-cologne would soothe him. So I said alright, he could darn well do the kitchen, and last night I solemnly presented him with a supply of typed labels to put on the bottles I knew he would find about that room. Each label is marked 'Unknown Muck' and I suggested he should put them on before replacing the bottles where he finds 'em. Mother will not throw things away, and there's always a battle royal when I do. Me, I have fits, during which I throw out everything in sight except those pieces of furniture I can't lift. It's drastic, but I claim it is essential if we are to get through the front door into our tiny flat.
To my enormous surprise and gratification, I find that the Council are in the process of regrading me WITHOUT ASKING! When I came to work for them, four years ago, the job was advertised as being in the General Division. That's the lowest officer division. I was in that for two years, then asked to be regraded, and got transferred halfway up to the next grade. Like jumping a couple of grades at school. I haven't reached the top salary in that second grade yet, and here they are putting me halfway up the next grade still. I am most satisfied about it . . . It's not finally agreed to, yet, but I have an idea it will go through satisfactorily, and it gives me the notion that my boss thinks my work better than he will admit personally. The other day he was grumbling to somebody, when I chipped him about something or other, that I never gave him 'any encouragement'. When I retorted acidly that what you never give you never get given, he looked a bit nonplussed for an answer and then sheepishly grinned! I am the only person around here who gives praise to the staff for individual bits of work, and I firmly believe in it. It sweetens life, and pays good dividends as well. It's really very silly of him from a psychological point of view, for after four years he should know that I thrive on encouragement (not to say blossom on praise) and that I go right down in the dumps if the job becomes especially unpleasant – as it sometimes does, as do all jobs I imagine – and there is no sunshine to offset the gloom . . .
And now I will leave you to contemplate just what you would do, and if it gives you indigestion, I recommend soda bicarbonate.
Sincerely yours,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
We have had snow! And it's no use your turning up your no-doubt aristocratic nose at that statement. I know full well you've had snow yourself, and that you always get snow. But not here in Bournemouth – that is why I say 'We have had snow' and put an indignant exclamation mark after it.
. . . I woke yesterday morning to hear Mother laughing in the kitchen and saying, 'No! You can't go in, you poor little pussy, you' and then the rattle of newspaper. I knew from that sound, that Freckleface was being wiped dry, and went out to see how he had become wet enough to make Mother laugh. And getting in the kitchen, Mother said sharply, 'Don't let Frecks through to your bedroom – his paws are all snowed over.' But his paws weren't – he was walking around with about forty snowballs pendant from his underfur. Talk about de-icing a cat! If I tried combing them out, the fur came with the ice and hurt him. When I picked them off by hand, it apparently tickled him; and when I held him up in front of the fire, his tender tummy got scorched long before the snow had melted. Later in the day, after we had turned him out for a duty-walk, he came back with his tail frozen solid. It's no use your writing back by return and suggesting a dish of cinders or sand, a) because by then the snow will have gone, and b) Freckleface always refuses to use a dish of cinders, preferring the floor just outside the dish. Hence the forcible ejection from time to time, to his utter fury.
Well, anyway, having defrosted cat, and tucked him warmly on my bed as a treat, I dashed out and swept snow in all directions. Off our back steps – being an upstairs flat, we have a flight of concrete steps which come up outside the building, then turn inside and finish up under cover, outside our kitchen door. These were sifted and drifted into a plane. Then the path from the bottom, to the main path we share with the downstairs tenants – the man downstairs had swept his bit of path from his kitchen door to his coal bin, and no farther. I swept from his kitchen door to the roadway, for the sake of tradespeople calling, then went round and swept the other path which comes to our front door, downstairs front door, and the two back doors of the block of flats next to ours. The tenants next door had swept nothing; one is too lazy, and the others are only given to sweeping past with haughty looks – they wouldn't know what a broom was. Well, having done all this, and got up some coal for Mother (to the accompaniment of 'Oh – I'll get that', from my brother, still in bed) I simply glowed with warmth and smugness. Said to Mother, 'It's too deep for you to go out today, dear, so will you please stay home and I'll use the Wellington boots.' Marched smugly the pathway into virgin snow on the roadway, and went right over the top of my boots and way up under my skirt! There's probably a moral in there somewhere, but, wet and frozen, I failed to see it at the time.
. . . I don't suppose this letter will reach you much before the New Year, so will wish you well in that Year, and hope your Christmas was a happy one. We always drink a toast at lunchtime on December 25th, to our friends who are not with us, and so if your ears burned and wakened you about eight o'clock on Christmas morning, you'll know who it was thinking about you.
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford