1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
I knew it! In last week's letter I said the post office would undoubtedly maltreat my cablegram to you, and how right I was; it must be characteristic of all post offices all the world over. Here was the cable, pre-post-office version, as we composed it the day your scrumptious food parcel arrived:
WISHING YOU THE VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR YOU
DESERVE, FROM THE WELL-FILLED, WASSAILING,
WHELMED
WOODSFORDS.
And if you have to look up wassailing in your dictionary I shall claim two points to me!
Today also, as well as your letter, I had one from Rosalind, practically incoherent with delight at the idea of actually, positively, really, going to Jamaica. By now I hope she is warmly lying on the sands of Montego Bay surrounded by interesting high society, from both sides of the Atlantic . . .
Oh dear, Mr B., you do sometimes make me laugh; and sometimes you make me blush with shame. You write . . . . . . 'There are a lot of New Year's Eve parties for this evening – but I won't go to many – about three is my limit.' And all I could manage to do was go to the theatre, and on to bed about 11.30 p.m.! Perhaps, when I arrive at your age, I shall have more energy.
Talking of age – I see you are once more harping on it, for you say Rosalind started her holiday on the 4th January 1952, the date you never thought you would see . . . Our oldest customer at the Baths is Mr Russell (the name haunts me) and it is only these last two months that I've insisted somebody should take him downstairs in the lift, when he comes in for his weekly Turkish Bath. Normally, Mr Russell trots down and upstairs all by himself. Mr Russell is 93, and this week he bought himself a new book of tickets, with enough in it to last him another six months. Fie on you Mr B., you've a long way to go yet, and I shall continue to rely on you for nagging and nattering for many years to come . . .
The theatre I went to on New Year's Eve was presenting a Christmas Pantomime; very spectacular, lots of girls with long legs, little children with lisps, and scenery all over the place. The only thing I thought would really appeal to the children – though, actually, there are so few in Bournemouth no pantomime would dream of appealing only to children, for it wouldn't pay – was a scene in which somebody gave the principal comic a Wooffum-puff. The principal comic was, as is usual in pantomimes, the Dame – that is, he was dressed as an old woman. The Wooffum-puff was a long pale blue furry caterpillar, and on being let out of its cage it promptly escaped down a hole in the stage-floor. The Dame walked to the footlights and appealed to all the children in the audience to look around while he was getting tea, and call out 'Wooffum-puff ' if they saw it. Of course, the children loved this. The Wooffum-puff kept appearing here and there, and the kids screamed their little heads off trying to attract the Dame's attention, but every time she (or he) saw the blue thing, the blue thing would promptly run off on the end of a piece of string or climb up a wall out of reach and disappear around a picture. Unfortunately, they only had this one scene which was of interest to the children. And I must admit that quite a few of the adults were making sounds suspiciously like 'Wooffum-puff ' at the same time.
What a couple of heart-lifting events we have had in the newspapers during this last week: first we had the award of the Victoria Cross to a young lad in Korea, and now we have Captain Carlsen and his mad, fool-hardy, glorious vigil in the Atlantic. Needless to say, as a seafaring race our newspapers are full of the Flying Enterprise*, and the first item to be read on the radio at news time is, yesterday and today, of current progress there . . .
* Editor's note: On 25th December, the ship encountered a storm in the western approaches to the English Channel, and eventually sank thirteen days later, just off the coast of Cornwall. Captain Carlsen was declared a hero for refusing to leave his ship until all hope was lost.
Now I must stop: it's gone nine o'clock and there is much work to be done. On top of having a cashier away (she isn't coming back, there's a letter in the post this morning telling us so, oh so sweetly, after she's left us in the lurch for two whole weeks) I now have the Engineer ill (passed out on us yesterday, and frightened us all to bits, poor man) and his assistant on holiday and my boss away ill. I suppose I could now be said to be earning my salary, eh?
And so, au revoir until next week . . .
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Thank you for your letter, with the home-made envelope and the ghastly striped pink paper! It makes one go cross-eyed in reading it, doesn't it? . . . . . . Reading your letter, I thought I detected a note of chagrin when you wrote . . . . . . 'tomorrow there is to be a midnight booze party at the Ewitt's and someone asked me to tea in the after-noon. Wish I could think who it was.' I took it you were mad at being asked to tea instead of to the midnight booze party. On reading it again, though, I changed my mind and decided that you were merely boasting of your cramped calendar of appointments in the social whirl of Bellport! I am sending you the report of my dip in the social whirl, at my brother's cocktail party last week, which I enjoyed much more than I expected to – possibly something to do with my peculiarly nervous digestive system. Couldn't eat lunch through nervousness; couldn't eat anything at tea through ditto. Consequently, two cocktails, an orange juice and a sherry made me feel much better than they would have done on a full stomach. The sherry was awful, and I should have known better than to have it, knowing it was cheap stuff! I gave my brother a copy of this 'epic' and have an idea he is using it for a bit of blackmail . . . . . . to wit . . . . . . 'Let me take your blonde girlfriend to the dance Saturday, or I'll read what my sister says about you, to the Club members . . .' sort of thing.
On the reverse of that newspaper cutting I see a whole flock of real estate advertisements: no wonder you thought cottages and houses expensive, looking at the 'for sale' advertisements in Country Life. Your rents seem to be high, but certainly some of the prices against the houses seem to be most reasonable. I always divide your dollar prices by three, to bring it roughly into pound sterling. Then I halve it on the under-standing that salaries and wages are about twice as high in the States as they are here, and the final answer gives me something to compare with our own prices.
Now that's the article itself: I am returning this with comments (you won't be able to read my shorthand notes, so here they are translated and enlarged). I don't know much about Mr Herbert Hoover, but I'm darned if I'd ever take any notice of anything Mr Joseph P. Kennedy says on this subject, remembering that he sent home urgent and frequent dispatches from London saying that Britain would not, and could not, stand up to Hitler if France capitulated. And then when France did capitulate, he urged the immediate withdrawal of all American aid into the European continent, because obviously the British were finished, caput, wiped out, nodamgood, ready to let Hitler walk all over them. So I'm prejudiced against Mr Kennedy's ideas from the start . . .
As to all that blah-blah about demanding positive assurance, declarations, ironclad commitments by the Western European countries, what good would they be in the event? Scraps of paper? France had an ironclad declaration and commitment she and Britain would stand firm against Germany, but in the event, it didn't affect her behaviour. We had an ironclad declaration and commitment she and Britain would stand against Hitler. Mr Kennedy didn't believe we would keep it, but we did. Now whom are we to believe? The governments who make these declarations, or the people themselves who have to do the fighting? And then again, might not the countries of Western Europe turn round and ask the United States for an ironclad commitment not to wait for the Lusitania or Pearl Harbor? We can all throw bricks. Trouble is, you're making so many more bricks than anybody else, these days!
. . . No, it seems to me that Britain and America are both dependent on each other. It's not all give on one side, and all take on the other. If we are defeated and lose the important points of the Empire, then you're in for a very nasty time indeed. And if you don't help us with your immense possibilities for the production of the weapons of war, then we're defeated. Squirrels in a cage, eh?
. . . And now for home and lunch. If Mother produces sausages or corned beef again, I shall not wait until after lunch to be sick. This week my main daily meal has been, Mon. chilli, Tues. stewed ewe (our week's ration!), Wed. chilli, Thurs. one slice Spam. Fri. one sausage. All with potatoes and greens and the everlasting 'trifle' (stale cake with custard and jelly thrown over it!) because my brother won't eat anything else for dessert. Poor Mother, it must be horrible for her to cope with two offspring who don't like the same things and who eat at different times anyway.
Finally: March 22nd is the date!
Very truly,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
A small extra letter because the sun is warm and shining on me as I sit at my typing desk, and because I feel pleased with the world, and because I wanted to rush off and congratulate you on attaining the fame of a bronze plaque on the Yacht Club premises. Nearly 50 years of yachting there is a proud record.
. . . We are enjoying here at the moment a spell of the most beautiful sunshine. Sunday there was a dusting of snow on the ground, absolutely sparkling with sun. The snow melted overnight, but we have had such heavy frosts overnight that everything has been white in the morning until the sun came up to melt it. The radio says England has been more or less covered by fog, but if so we have escaped it – we usually do – and wallow in wonder at the continuing warmth.
This morning we are glad there's something to make us feel cheerful, for the cuts in everything to make the country solvent (or have a shot at doing so) are enough to make us all pour into the Channel like suicidal lemmings. It is now 1952, and we have been controlled, rationed, impoverished, drained and depressed since war started for us in 1939. Deduct 1939 from 1952 and you get a horribly long time in comparison with one's normal expectation of life.
Quite by accident last week I discovered why the Bellport Riders blew up in the kiln! I had used modelling clay – obviously that was, I thought, a thing to use for modelling. But, you have to find a very special brand of modelling clay if you wish to fire it, otherwise it disintegrates (and how!) in the great heat of the kiln. I am once more fired with enthusiasm, and if the new clay has arrived when I go to pottery-throwing class tonight, I shall 'borrow' a little and get to work once more on the Masterpiece.
And now I have finished my lunch of one apple, one toasted cheese sandwich, and four nuts, and feel I should walk it off in a bit of exercise along the seafront; for who knows, when the sun disappears we may not see it again until Easter, this being England.
And so, au revoir 'til Saturday.
Frances W.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Twice during this sad half week I have been severely shocked by my fellow creatures. Shocked, and worried. On Wednesday afternoon, it being his half day, one of our attendants came back to the Baths for some tea in the café, and I heard in a roundabout way that he was really, actually, furious. Apparently it was inconsiderate of the King to die on a Wednesday. And even more inconsiderate of all the cinemas and theatres to close immediately the news was heard.
'Where'm I expected to go until 10 o'clock tonight?' asked Mr Smith indignantly. 'Am I supposed to go home and cry?'
That was one man's reaction. The other shock came today, when another male member of the staff (in fairness to him I must say his feelings have been echoed rather more faintly by several others) complained bitterly about the continuing misery of the radio programmes. I must tell you that we have music (classical and mostly depressing – things like roundelays and fourteenth-century part-songs and music for the harpsichord) then we have talks to farmers, Children's Hour, the Morning Service (and several others) and the News Bulletins. We are to continue in this strain until after the funeral, when programmes will gradually, very gradually, go back to including plays and light music and comedy.
Now what shook me this time was not so much the man's biting remarks – he is a red-hot Socialist, anti-Monarchist, anti-authority, and a thoroughly quarrelsome type – but the picture he unconsciously painted of many thousands of people, who are so utterly conditioned to the present fashion of being entertained artificially every spare moment of their time, that they cannot contemplate life without the comic turns on the radio. Not for two nights (which is all we've had so far). To think that people cannot live with themselves for so long as two evenings of, say, four hours each, is a horrifying thought . . .
I am sad, too, for Queen Mary. She has had more sorrow than any one person should have to bear, and in spite of it all, at the age of 85 and in sorrow at the loss of a favourite son, she did not do what the rest of us would do – keep herself shut away in privacy. She came out and passed the 2,000 or so people staring at Clarence House, so that Princess Elizabeth should have somebody there to welcome her when she returned to her home. Everybody I have listened to has felt most sorry for our grand old Queen. And most people have felt glad that the King's end was so peaceful after his recent painful storms. Now we are feeling sorry for Elizabeth. She has a long, hard job ahead of her with no half days, no complete holidays, no retiring. It is as if, Mr Akin died tomorrow, Rosalind was immediately told to go to the steel works and run them in his place. Immediately, with no space for grief or pause for preparation before she faced the work people. And today Royalty don't even get the panache and the panoply of the Kings and Queens of old. Can you imagine Elizabeth II being allowed to send some modern Drake off on an expedition – or to order somebody's head off because she felt bad-tempered?
. . . I'm off for a long weekend with friends who live on the edge of the New Forest. Then, Tuesday afternoon, I shall come home and repack and go off Wednesday morning to London and Surrey for the rest of the week. When I get my weekly washing and mending done I do not know . . .
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Today we are, after a long-drawn out agony of ten days, burying a very kind King. It has been sunny in spells, but for the most part a day of yellow-pearl texture, and icy cold.
I have just come back from a neighbour's house where my aunt and I watched the televised funeral procession in all its pomp, dignity and silence. Also watching was a young American, the wife of a medical man, who came in a little after us. She was much impressed, especially by the Guards Officers, be-plumed and mounted on glorious horses: I remarked that the silent crowds lining the route, edged by servicemen with bowed heads over reversed arms, looked through the cameras like banks of massed flowers, probably frozen flowers, for many had waited all night. The American girl said yes, it was better to watch it as we were doing, and as they were probably doing back home. 'Where's back home?' I asked. 'Oh, I'm from Illinois,' she said. And, of course – since coincidence and I go together – she had been at school at Duncan Grant or something, just about four miles from Alton!
At the top of my letter I mentioned the long agony of the last week. It seems to me that we are, in our insistence on ritual, imposing intolerable misery and strain on the King's family. In ordinary life when some husband and father dies there is privacy for his family, broken only by friends, and the funeral follows hard on the death. It does not make their sorrow any less, but it is less of a strain on them. But our late King's family have had strain upon strain: none of the church services they have attended have been private, but Monday they had to follow the coffin from Sandringham to the railway station; then the three Queens had to – or chose to – receive the cortège at the London terminus, the poor Queen Mother making at one moment a piteously 'lost' little motion. They then went to Westminster to receive the dead King there: twice they have been since to Westminster Hall to watch silently the silent lying-in-state, and the silent stream of people passing through – 300,000 of them in three days. And today there was the two-hour ceremonious march from Westminster to the station, and this afternoon there is, at long, long last the Windsor funeral. All in pomp, and so public . . .
Now I must go upstairs and take off my coat: it's so rude to go around dressed in everything I have with me, but I am once more sleeping with a Persian prayer-rug as an extra, unofficial blanket, and the only time I am warm is under it or in the bath. And no guests can stay in either place indefinitely!
Au revoir till next week,
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
On Tuesday this week, members of the staff were horrified to see Smithy (an attendant) cook for his lunch some crumpets, covered with toasted cheese, covered in turn with TREACLE! On Wednesday, to their horror, he came up with fried bread, two fried eggs, and more TREACLE. On being twitted about this, he remarked blandly, 'The trouble with English people is that they've no imagination where cooking is concerned.' I have suggested, via the staff grapevine system of telegraphy, that Smithy should try kippers and strawberry jam, but so far all the other members of staff have refused point-blank to make such a suggestion out of kindness to their own olfactory sense.
On Tuesday this week I was not doing anything so plebeian as to dine in my office (I never use the staff room, believing that the staff should be able to get somewhere where they know I shan't appear on a tour of inspection!) because my cousin Arthur Mould called me up and took me out to luncheon at the Royal Bath. The Royal Bath is a hotel which used to cater for Edward VII, and also for the Prince of Wales in his heyday. It remains static; the corridors are still covered with highly polished Prussian blue linoleum, that in turn being laid with bright red Turkey carpeting. The walls are dark brown up to waist-height, when they turn into a cream colour between enormous picture frames showing the Battle of Inkerman and so on. The lights are, for the most part, made of broken bottles fitted into a mosaic – at least, that is my opinion; when they were new they were probably the latest thing in stained-glass household what-nots. The hotel period extends not so far as the plumbing or the beds, but it faintly flavours the cooking, for the chef does tend to run to thick puddings. Arthur and I arrived in due course at the sweets, and I made myself very unpopular by asking the waiter if the mousse was still disguised blancmange. The waiter was properly horrified, so I chose coffee mousse, and it was disguised blancmange and still the same texture as foam-rubber.
It is very pleasant having Arthur as a cousin, even though I believe the superior luncheon to which he stands treat is put down to business expenses and even though it entailed listening to Arthur's small stock of personal anecdotes, which vary only in detail from year to year. There is one about Arthur in the desert during the war, playing tennis, unknowingly, against an ex-Wimbledon champion. And playing, what is more, as a favour to her because he disdained playing against weak and feeble women as a rule . . .
Now, in the garden, I have dark purple iris out, the snowdrops and the crocus buds, dark and pale mauve primroses and the ever-flowering veronica. Even the cats have gone gay, so I'm positive that it is spring and the itch to buy a new hat grows excessive!
. . . Thank you for your letters. I know I don't say 'ta ever so' as often as I should, but I appreciate them just the same, more than I say.
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . I wonder why it is that families are so unable to speak of their inner thoughts to each other – or is it just my family are so afflicted? For some time now I have wanted to ask Mother to calculate just how much it costs, having my brother living at home. Then, if I knew that, I would know just how much more I would have to contribute to the exchequer if he were to leave; and if that amount were within my power, then I could telephone him at the office one day (I'd never be able to say it to his face) and tell him if Mother's financial dependence were the only stumbling block to his marriage, to hop over it, for Mother and I could manage quite well on our own. But so far I haven't been able to pluck up enough courage to ask Mother, let alone say anything to Mac.
Perhaps I shall have to soon, though, for both Mother and I feel desperately sorry for Mac's girlfriend, Betty, who returned home two days ago after spending six months in California. I sent a bunch of flowers to welcome her home; Mac, nothing – didn't even telephone her. She 'phoned him next day at his office. We expected he'd go out to her home next evening, but instead he took some other girl to the Fireman's Ball; and last night he said coolly that he had promised Desmond to play billiards with him at the Club, and off he went there. Mother and I were aghast at such cavalier treatment, if it shouldn't be described more strongly. And, of course, we neither of us can ask Mac what's happened; our imaginations however are running riot.
Tell me, does everybody indulge in voting at your Primaries, or only the people working in and for the two parties? I personally am torn between a wish to see General Eisenhower, whom I believe to be a very great man as well as a very good soldier, the United States President; and a wish to see him still in charge of the Armies over here, which need just such a good man to keep the difficult and temperamental bigwigs of the different countries working amicably together. Well, working together, anyway. I definitely don't want Taft, who seems to me to be a man making politics his living, with all that that implies in the States. He seems to be merely the Republican equivalent of Truman, another Party man. Both countries, both yours and mine, need at their head a man who can see higher than the top of his party programme; who can see a wider horizon, which may embrace both parties, so long as it is wide enough to embrace the whole country. And do we get such men? Not often, alas, but probably more often than we deserve.
Now I must get back to work – I have interrupted the affairs of the town to get this letter written, which is a highly antisocial thing to do, but friendly, perhaps. It is, I notice, the anniversary of our letter-exchanging, and may we both enjoy many more of them.*
* Editor's note: In fact, Frances first wrote to Mr Bigelow on January 24th 1949 but her first substantial letter is dated March 23rd 1949 (p. 3). In a letter dated March 17th 1956 (p. 214) she notes that she recorded the event in her 1949 diary on March 22nd.
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Trying very hard to keep an objective point of view about pain, I was quite delighted this morning to discover that under great stress (i.e. the drill of the dentist) I say 'Aah!' and not 'Ouch!'
. . . Did I tell you a neighbour of ours is to be our next Mayor? And that people up and down the road are saying 'he'll have to pull his socks up' because he has been in the habit of dashing down the road in his car – for cigarettes or something – dressed in pyjamas, rubber boots and a woollen pullover. A little bird must have whispered in the Mayor-elect's select ear, for now he goes up and down the road fully dressed in hat and gloves, a sight we have not seen for many years, coming from him. His wife, who has been waiting for this Great Occasion for upwards of a quarter-century, is as deaf as could be and not in the least inclined to view it as a handicap, so we are all agog to see what happens. Will the guests at receptions be politely asked, as they enter, to shout? Or will the Mayor's Secretary tactfully give the Mayoress an ear-trumpet for Christmas? Time alone will tell.
We had the most exciting boat race last Saturday for many years. It was rowed in a howling gale with both coxes wearing eye goggles to enable them to see, faintly, through the driving snow! I'm Oxford, and Cambridge have been winning non-stop since I can remember, but on Saturday neither boat got more than half a length ahead of the other, and what with the weather and the Cambridge commentators being so darn fair all round – 'but Cambridge has a better pace . . . . . .' and what with the B.B.C. launch suddenly stopping in the middle of the commentary, we all had great fun. The next morning the newspapers reported that the owner of the launch had asked for a policeinvestigation, since he thought somebody had siphoned petrol out of his boat during the night before the race, while the launch was moored midstream. Sabotage the B.B.C., what sacrilege! As the television viewers were taking sound from the radio-launch (the snow having messed the microphones up on the television launch) I imagine there was a really beautiful panic at headquarters for a few moments.
Last night I went to the cinema to see a new Italian film called Never take No for an Answer. It was a simple little story about a small child whose donkey falls ill. The child, who lives in Assisi, believes if he takes his donkey to the crypt of the cathedral, where St Francis lies buried, his donkey will get better. But of course the Church officials are horrified. The little boy asks his friend, the Father. Then he asks the Father Superior. Then he goes to Rome to ask the Pope. Finally, the Pope writes a letter instructing the Assisi church people to knock down the entrance to the crypt from the cloisters, which has been bricked up for 400 years, so that the donkey can get through and not have to negotiate all the stairs. When they do this, a box containing the Treasure of St Francis, for which they have been digging for years, falls out of the archway, and the film finishes with the Fathers looking lovingly at the tiny box (all it contains is a piece of rope, a wild flower, an ear of wheat and a feather) while the donkey and the little boy pass over the rubble. You don't know whether the child's faith is sufficient, or whether the donkey dies; the film just ends without preaching to you; and it was all most charming and delightful, and the little boy, ugly and passionately alive and natural, is a sheer joy to watch.
I do hope you have a good time with Rosalind: you have both waited long enough for this visit, goodness knows; it should be all the pleasanter in consequence. Don't forget to be very kind and gentle with Rosalind, whose nerves will take some time to recover from seeing your latest rug!
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Here we go on the merry-go-round again! About ten days ago I bought small gifts for the two women who have taught me pottery as a parting gift now that the classes have been cancelled. When I got home that evening there was a parcel from Rosalind! Tit-for-tat, so to speak.
And then yesterday I sent off a very small 'surprise' to you, together with my usual Saturday letter (though most uncharacteristically morbid letter). After lunch and when we were sitting by the fire having coffee there was a knock at the front door, and on going it was not some-body selling something, nor yet the Government Clerk with the form to be filled up. It was an Easter egg from you. Yet again, great big TIT for my little tat. I never seem to be able to keep up with you two, let alone get ahead of your twin brains, both of which seem always to forest my own ideas, and forestall them in a wholesale manner that leaves me and my family just gasping for breath, and grasping at words adequate to say 'thank you'.
One of Mother's sisters is spending Easter with us, and I will admit we have been thinking of queueing with the holiday crowds in order to eat out several times over the period, as rations just won't run to entertaining in one's home except occasionally and by sticking severely to fish! I like fish, myself, but I suppose it is rather restricting to the hostess. Today Mother is jubilantly arranging what she will do with your parcel, mainly, I think, the bacon for luncheon and the beef for evening meals, and the butter for voluptuous delight all around the clock. The ham and tongue we are going to hide for the present and it looks as though we should do the same to the sugar, which is going like candy at a children's party (our sugar is mainly beet, rather worse and not as sweet as the cane stuff ). Altogether we are hugging ourselves for delight, and you too (metaphorically) for being so kind and generous as to send it. We all hope you have the pleasant Easter you fully deserve.
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
From being in a seaside town of ex-smugglers, I am now bang in the middle of a very damp bog, slightly drained here and there, in which (before my day) King Alfred spent a short time daydreaming in a farmhouse kitchen and thus burnt the cake and made history. Some time later, Cromwell knocked the stuffing out of the Duke of Monmouth in the same bog, and so made history again. Now I am here and you can follow through to the logical conclusion yourself.
The cottage is built on a high bank dividing the road from a man-made river which was dug to drain the bog. The disadvantages are obvious: the bank is no more than 20 feet across, and on the riverside there is a narrow towpath. So my friend's cottage is long and very narrow – one-room narrow, actually. Hall, lounge, dining room, kitchen, bathroom (miles from the two tiny bedrooms upstairs!) and, finally, work-shed, all strung along in a row. You can fish out of the kitchen window, or pick hats of passers-by through the lounge window, as the whim takes you.
It is all very peaceful after Lyme Regis, where you nearly lost your correspondent in a litter of boxer pups trying out their teeth and newly discovered aggressiveness on the strange female in their midst. You try disengaging yourself intact from eleven pups at once, and you will appreciate my current condition!
. . . Then here is my old friend Jem, who is ordinary, and her husband who is quite extraordinary. A brilliant engineer but terribly smug about his brain and, at a guess, a bit smug about his appearance. Why, other-wise, adorn your plain face with this sort of moustache?
We argued about education last night until midnight and I got off a lot of long words, most of them in the right place!
Today it is raining heavily. The fields across the road are full of withy, which is a small willow tree grown merely for the long twigs which are cut and used for basket-making. I hope to see the workshop near here before going home on Sunday.
And now that is quite enough of my handwriting for you, so I will promise you an extra Special Saturday Special next week. I am bursting to write a grim short story about the dog breeder's peculiar domestic staff, straight out of Chekhov!
For now, I hope your weather is better than mine, but your countryside couldn't look better than my flower-bedecked one as I saw it yesterday and on Monday.
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
The postman was early on Thursday, and so I met him as my brother and I were turning out of our road on our way to the Polling Station where we were entombed from 7.45 a.m. until 10.35 p.m. He handed over Holiday and a bill, both of which I took with me, and the former of which was greatly enjoyed by sundry Poll Clerks and Supervising Officers up and down the Station.
Also to be answered is a letter from you written at the end of April, and disclosing the fact that, once again, you have been 'discovered' by a cat in need of a home. Do you have arrows all over Bellport pointing to Casa Bigelow and reading, 'This way for strays. Good chow and catnip supplied'?
. . . You wrote 'since starting this I have had breakfast and broken off a front tooth – that shows'. I can't tell whether it shows you eat rock-salmon with the salmon missing for your meal, or whether your house-keeper forgot to use the tin-opener and served it up complete. I hope the grimace is nicely repaired by now, and without too much dentist trouble.
I have been expecting daily to hear from Mr Dall that you cannot write because you are quite prostrate with ecstasy over the Bellport Star, but perhaps it has been delayed in transit, or perhaps it didn't have quite that effect . . . . . .
When I was in Lyme Regis I sent you a postcard of the dear little place . . . Lyme was first mentioned in the Domesday Book as being a place where a monastery was built, and the monks of which were allowed to distil salt and sell it for the benefit of the Monastery.* It was turned 'Regis' by, I believe, a very early Edward, in about 1400 or so. It is such a quaint and delightful little place that one of the Cadbury family (the chocolate manufacturers and extremely wealthy) who lives there, when he found he could not easily manoeuvre his yacht in and out of the Cobb, sold the yacht rather than move to a town with a larger harbour.
* Editor's note: In fact, these were monks from Sherborne Abbey with land in Lyme.
. . . G. K. Chesterton always used to stay at the Three Cups Hotel . . . He used to park his wife (who bullied him) on a chair on the steps, then stroll down the hill, oh ever so nonchalantly, and if she was looking the other way at the crucial moment, he'd dive into the bar of the Royal Lion Hotel opposite, where the company was greatly to his liking, and the beer likewise. On either side of the little place cliffs rush up and down in great headlands, golden on one side and grey-white on the other, and at the back the countryside is hilly and lush, not quite so much so as deep into Devon (here you are right on the border of Devon and Dorset, sometimes in one county and sometimes in the other as you walk about) but quite lush and hilly enough for anybody with consideration for their legs or their cars.
My uncle and aunt and one unmarried cousin live in the fishing end of the village, opposite the Cobb (so called, I understand, because it was built of Cobb stones stuck between great wooden posts pushed into the sand) and another cousin and his wife live at the back of the town in an old manor house with thousands of boxer dogs, half a dozen dachshunds, and a cow called Pam. Pam was produced and introduced to me when I went there to tea one day, and it was comical to see the expression of disgust on her face when she discovered she hadn't been called up to the barn either for her meal or her milking! I have never seen a cow look disgusted before, but she did it perfectly. It was probably a joyous sight to see me endeavouring escape from the attentions of eleven boxer pups which had just discovered they were aggressive! My cousin's wife called out 'Just walk through them!' but, with two biting my shoe-buckles, two more cutting off my feet at my ankles, one swinging on the hem of my skirt at the back, two at each hand and a couple jumping up in an endeavour to catch my nose as I stooped down to brush them aside, 'just walking through' was not as easy as it sounded. They came out all in one piece, but only just. They were nice little things, all chubby and firm but not puppy-fat. Rather, they are like dachshunds, miniature copies of adults while they are still babies.
Jessamy, my cousin's wife, is six foot two and built to scale. She is the most unfeminine person I know as to character, although she has a very pretty face and curly fair hair. She dresses always in tweed slacks and woollen blouses and cardigans and swears better than (at a guess) General Patton! Apparently she deigned to marry Arthur on her own terms, amongst which were that she should not be asked to do house-work, entertain guests, do gardening or, in fact, anything but keep dogs. Nonetheless she is most kind-hearted, and (though she tries to hide it) sincerely touched by kindness in others. She suffers from a series of unsuitable 'home helps' who, because of her refusal or inability to be a housewife, she has to employ to stop the roof falling in. When I was there she had a woman who had run a café of her own for years, but she wanted the lighter job because her husband was 'just getting over a nervous breakdown' and they thought country life would suit him.
They didn't tell Jessamy that 'just' meant eleven years ago; she found that out gradually! The husband never speaks except, occasionally, in a whisper to his wife. He is reputed to be stone deaf and wears a hearing aid, but about his complete deafness there is a certain amount of doubt. We were called in to tea, which was served in the enormous farmhouse kitchen. There was a gigantic sofa in one corner on which four equally gigantic boxers lolled. This sofa had been bought for about a dollar, especially for the dogs. Next to the sofa and near the large black kitchen range was a round dog-basket with an army blanket in it. Under the blanket was the most ancient dachshund, retired. He lived permanently under the blanket in the basket, coming out for a second for a biscuit, after which he snuggled out of sight again. On the other side of the kitchen range was an armchair upholstered in sacking; this belonged to another dog. Down the middle of the room was a giant-size kitchen table, the top covered in yellow-checked American cloth. A white-painted sideboard contained odds and ends and a few dog trophies and cups. An electric kettle boiled its heart out on top of a radio which, I was told, didn't work. The table was laid with thick brown pottery, lined with yellow and most in keeping with the size of everything, for the cups held a pint of tea!
Jessamy waved me to a chair halfway down one side. Uncle took a chair opposite me. Jessamy and Arthur sat across from each other higher up the table. Right down at the window end were the home helps, husband and wife, huddled together around the teapot and a large dog. Mrs Home Help wore a slightly worried, ingratiating expression and a gash of lipstick right across her face. Mr H.H. looked ten minutes off death from starvation, a darkly tense man. They both stared at me, but said nothing, and nobody introduced us.
Mrs H.H. it turned out eventually (I spoke to her next day when she came out and played with the puppies) speaks only in clichés, which come from her in a non-stop stream. At tea she merely said, 'Now, you'd like a nice cup of tea wouldn't you, Mrs Mould?' with a fond smile which was nearer a grimace than was comfortable. Then, later, she remarked, 'Another little drop won't do you any harm, Mrs Mould.' Maybe it wouldn't, but Jessamy took the second cup, tasted it, poured it straight-way into a gigantic basin standing near her and said loudly, 'God! Too hot and not sweet enough.' Arthur murmured something about getting cooler if she left it a moment, whereupon Jessamy looked at him in surprise and said coldly, 'I don't happen to want to leave it a moment; I want to drink it now and the dam' stuff 's too hot and not sweet enough.' She held out the cup indignantly, and Mrs H.H. rushed up with the teapot and other bits and pieces, and clucked and tushed and dear-deared for some minutes. Jessamy turned back to her dog magazine, and the rest of the tea party returned to what was apparently 'normal' for this household. I was thoroughly enjoying myself, you can imagine!
They told me at my uncle's afterwards, that the home helps were the most helpless creatures who were so terrified of losing their jobs that Jessamy literally had to drive them out of the house for an afternoon's walk now and then. Jessamy did try once to give a dinner party. They were playing canasta when Mrs H.H. puts her head around the door, leered, and said coyly, 'Five minutes!' They said good, and finished the game. Mrs H.H. put her head in the room again, and said 'Oh dear, I am silly! I forgot the bread sauce. Won't be long now, folks!' They politely said that would be all right and went on with the canasta. Twenty minutes later Arthur went out to the kitchen to see what was happening, and came back and said, 'I think you'd better come, Jessamy, Mrs H.H. is in tears on the kitchen floor.' She had forgotten to switch on the electricity on the oven! So Jessamy now invites people to tea, which she says can't really go so terribly wrong because her guests have enough sense to bring their own cakes, and she merely puts a loaf, a knife and some butter on the table so that they help themselves. They sound like something out of a book or a Russian play, don't they?
And now I must take this to the post office for mailing. Thank you again for Holiday, which I read thoroughly last night (this was started Friday) and for all your very pleasant letters.
Most sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Pam the cow with (left to right) Aunt Elsie, cousins Arthur and
Barbara, and Uncle Herbert
Oh no! Mr Bigelow,
Not broken, my little group, surely it can't be broken! It was wrapped in paper and put in a cardboard box, wrapped in corrugated cardboard and placed in a second box; then surrounded with straw and placed in a wooden box. It couldn't get broken unless somebody dropped an elephant on it, or unless somebody was criminally careless in unpacking it.
I count this little group as an extension, or continuation, of the Bellport Riders which, as you know, had so tragic a history. I made the Bellport Riders three times only to have it smashed in firing each time. The little dinghy in the Bellport Star group was made three times, and the figures in the boat twice. Oh, it just couldn't be broken. Maybe when they unpacked it in New York, to see why the sender would have taken such care over an article only declared at a few pence, they noticed the oars weren't attached to the rower's hands, and perhaps that is the 'damage' they notified to you. It's not much good saying 'I hope so' for I have now given up hope altogether, and expect that, in reality, the thing is in a hundred little bits.
What makes it all the worse is that I sent Rosalind a teapot and pitcher a week after the Bellport Star group was posted to you. I hadn't any boxes left except two very old cardboard ones, one just slightly larger than the other. So I just stuffed the china in the smaller one, packed in bits of straw in the spaces, pushed the small box into the large one, and then pushed odd bits of corrugated cardboard down between the two sides. I never expected, the day after I had mailed it, that they would arrive in any sort of shape at all, for it was the roughest, most miserable bit of packing I'd ever done. And yet Rosalind's parcel arrived perfectly – and two weeks before yours, which was posted a week earlier – and yours has been damaged. What have they been doing with yours all that time? Dropping it off the Empire State Building to test it for bounce, or something? Sages say it's no good crying over spilt milk, and I'm not crying over this breakage. I just feel like throwing things through the largest glass panes I can find. It's no good saying write to the post office and make a claim – how can I claim? And what? Eighteen pence in money and six months in time?
I do hope your mouth is feeling better now; you have had more than your fair share of bad luck with your teeth this last year. Somebody said the other day that you went regularly to your dentist to have your teeth attended to so that they would be so well-kept and healthy you wouldn't need to go regularly to your dentist to have your teeth attended to. A vicious circle if ever there was, and either way the patient suffers. My mother, who had terrible teeth, had them all out during the 1914–18 war when Daddy was away (and couldn't see her going around with bare gums, poor dear!) because, she tells us, she just got fed up with eternally undergoing painful treatments, paying painful bills, and still having toothache and more painful treatments and bills. I must say there is quite a lot to say in favour of false teeth.
I hope you enjoy your week yacht-racing at the end of this month. While you will be sitting in elegant comfort in the crow's nest or on the Judges' Launch or the terrace of the Yacht Club, I shall be stifling in the swimming-pool hall coping with non-existent staff.
Sorry about the smashed masterpiece.
Very sincerely,
Frances W.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Have you ever studied the intricacies of the sleepless mind? I have of late, to my misery, and it could prove quite a fascinating study were you not, at one and the same time, both the investigator and the unfortunate guinea pig.
Do you remember Jerome K. Jerome's book Three Men in a Boat? They got hold of a medical dictionary and discovered that between them they had every complaint listed except housemaid's knee. Well, I was reading an article last weekend on present-day stresses and strains, and came at once to the conclusion that that was me, stress and strain. Definitely. So I read on, thinking to find the cure. The writer ended his article by saying '. . . . . . the very best stress diet of the lot is caviar and champagne . . . . . .' But he did have a few more useful hints to pass on, amongst them the need for peaceful sleep and serene minds.
Now, due to the inability of most of my staff to count accurately beyond four, I go to bed prepared to rest but my mind thinks to its little self, 'Ah! Now is a good opportunity to think over all the things that have gone wrong today, and to work out ways of preventing them going wrong tomorrow and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and next Christmas . . . . . . Now, where shall we start?' And so I spend half my nights, as well as half my days, coping with other people's problems. Sometimes in the night I'm busy counting pink tickets, mountains of them, all counted wrongly by the cashiers; only to stop myself with a jerk when my brain is calculating the value of the mountain at three shillings a ticket, with the realisation that this year pink tickets are four shillings each. By now my little mind has forgotten how many stubs there were in the mountain, so we go back to the beginning again.
Then I decide firmly that this won't do at all. I will think placid and serene thoughts, and none else. I conjure up a mental picture of a windswept headland, with the sea around it and a skylark overhead, and the faint mew of seagulls in my ears and the scent of wild thyme in my nostrils. I work on the picture quite hard, willing my mind to concentrate, and even manage to imagine how warmly the sun strikes my throat as I look up at the skylark. I decide to add to the serenity by reciting poetry to myself in a small, silent voice – and pick on my favourite: 'Ode to Autumn'.
I get happily to the line about 'filling all fruit with ripeness to the core', where I stick. What comes next? I start again, a little worried; and stick in exactly the same place. I am cross with myself. I lecture myself; telling me this won't do and where's my serenity. Out the window along with my memory, my alter ego replies. I get crosser and crosser, and more and more wakeful, until at last, in desperation, I get up and go to the living room and shut the door quietly (so as not to awaken the family) and put on the light and look for the poem.
Back to bed, with the book of poems, in case I get stuck again, and back to my serene thoughts once more. This time the windswept head-land seems a trifle lonely, so I change it for my current serial-story in which (but naturally) I am the glamorous and fascinating heroine. This story usually occupies about ten minutes, and if it proves particularly interesting I go back and use it all over again with extra details. The current tale involves a drug-taking wife, a frantic husband who blames himself; one or two awe-inspired friends and ME. I sort everything out most beautifully, far, far better than Adler would have done. But you can imagine that this is not quite the serene and peaceful sort of story suitable for putting me to sleep. So I allow myself to run over it once lightly, up to where I left off the night before, and then go firmly back to poetry. It has to be poetry, for I have a loathing for silly sheep, and mine only stroll through gates anyway so no help at all in my troubles.
This time I chose Gray's 'Elegy' because I fondly hope I shall remember rather more of it. True, I get – more or less, ad-libbing here and there – as far as the verse about jewels lying undiscovered in deep sea-caves and many a flower being born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air. I am about to weep myself to sleep in the mood of self-pity this brings flooding over me when it occurs to me to wonder whether the word is flower, or rose. And if it's rose, which seems to scan better, what rose ever grew in a desert? And come to think of it, I never heard of jewels being found lying around loose in sea-caves before. The man is crazy. Trust me to get a crazy poet around my neck! Flower? Rose? Rose? Oh well, it doesn't matter. Not really matter. Not a matter of life or death. No concern of mine. Go to sleep, mind. Stop larking about – I'm tired. Flower? I'm sure it's rose. But best put on the lights and make certain.
The poem is in the other anthology, of course – the one still in the living-room bookcase. I go out and look (It's flower all this time. It would be) and while I'm up, take a couple of aspirins and half a glass of cold water. I debate whether to drink the water cold, which will give me indigestion, or hot from the tap, which will probably give me chronic rust-poisoning. I decide that perhaps the aspirins will start work before the digesting of them gives me indigestion. But of course, they don't – the cause-and-effect follow in that order, and the hot pains start shuddering across from rib to rib. I get up (It's three o'clock now, and the dawn looks like breaking before my insomnia does) and go out and eat a peppermint. My bed looks a mite crumpled when I crawl back into it, and I match it.
I try a new idea – taking deep breaths. Guaranteed, so the article said, to send you to sleep before the first dozen are inhaled and exhaled. Before I arrive at No. 6 my heart is pounding like a road-drill and both ears are buzzing in time with the heartbeat. This is an increase of one ear over my usual left ear bedtime buzz and I decide I dislike it more than twice as much as usual, so I stop deep breathing. This is a help, but my heart goes on puffing for some time, and I make tentative plans for being an interesting invalid with serious heart-trouble for the rest of my life, but this involves having a gracious, spacious room in which to lie, and as mine is a large-size cupboard, it doesn't seem much good being an interesting invalid. I punch my pillow for the 47th time, and throw my head at it, slightly fracturing my skull on a hair-curler. The curtains billow out as my heavy sighs race across the room, but I can't help being miserable as I think of my poor self during the coming day, carrying that awful load of responsibility with no sleep, no rest, no respite at all . . . . . . and in comes Mother to waken me.
. . . Now I will stop before this letter weighs too much. I do hope your jaw is champing away right merrily again, and that the yachting week was successful and exciting and you didn't have to disqualify more than, say, two-thirds of the competitors.
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . On Monday I take out a provisional driving licence, and in July I am to take the course of lessons, hoping to pass the Government's Test some time in August, ready for my driving holiday the month after. I bought a book from the British School of Motoring, and enquired of them for fees. As I have no car in which to practise, they suggested I would need extra lessons, and quoted me £16 for 16 lessons (or it might have been £17 for 16, I forget now). This is the equivalent, to you, of about $100 for 16 lessons of an hour each! As I earned the equivalent of about $50 a week, the shock put me back quite a little, as you can imagine. However, I find other smaller schools charge far less so I'm hoping that a deep study of the book, plus a certain amount of common sense, will get me through at less than the cost of the Moon. I must admit that the book seems very perplexing, and I come to work each morning with a piece of paper on which I have scribbled notes about my queries, which I thereupon throw at my boss. You would enjoy, as I do, the sight of him sitting on my typewriting chair waggling his legs about because you can't describe the art of double declutching without working it out physically first! I'm glad it becomes so automatic your mind doesn't bother to record what your feet are up to, for at the moment I feel the pedal work must be as difficult as footwork on an organ . . . Altogether my peace of mind is going for good, but as I never had much perhaps I shan't miss it.
I do hope by the time this reaches you the hospital-and-bed-session will be far behind you in the past . . .
Very sincerely,
Frances W.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Yes, Mr Bigelow, I quite agree with you that the English make far too much use of the silly expression, 'I'm afraid'. I'm afraid we use it all the time.
Your 'recommendation' that I should adopt three children as a method of keeping myself busy and thus ensuring good sleep at night is an excellent one. I was, however, disappointed to see that you couldn't think of a child to match the eight-month-old red-haired Scot, or the two-year-old Sicilian girl. What about a four-year-old Fillum Star? She (or he) should be quite a match for the others, and would nicely round off the awful triangle, to mix my metaphors . . . And, just think of it, if I adopted three, a grateful Government would pay me 12s.6d. a week to keep them on. All of $75 . . .
One day this week I took Mac's ex-girlfriend out to lunch. Got myself up like yesterday's ham-bone to keep up the Good Name of the family (somebody on the Bath's steps said to an attendant as I passed, 'Place is full of glamour-girls this year, isn't it?' but I think he must have been short-sighted) and reserved a table at the best place in town. I am very fond of good food, well cooked, beautifully served, and don't mind paying for it on the rare occasions when I do go out to lunch. But we were confronted with the alternatives of
Kidney soup,
or
Consommé de tapioca!!!!!!!!!! (my exclamation marks)
on a boiling hot day. We decided to skip the soup, and ordered chicken and ham pie, salad and new potatoes. The pie was more like a galantine, very jelly-ish and spotted with little bits of chicken and ham skin. The salad was two half-leaves of lettuce, one slice of beetroot and a quarter of a tomato. The new potatoes were adequate. The sweets offered were (Heavens!) bread and butter pudding, treacle tart, ice-cream or mixed entremets. We chose the last-named, and it turned out to be custard with decoration on top (called 'trifle') or coffee mousse encased in sponge and topped with jelly . . . It was, taken all round, a grave disappointment and I was LIVID! My cider was iced and perfect, and I believe Betty's beer was also cold and good, but that, surely, isn't enough to make a feast.
It turns out that it was Betty who finished with my brother, and not any awful faux pas he made which caused a split. I suppose he felt it was a blow to his pride to have the girl break off their association, so he wouldn't tell us, but I must say I wish he had, for he might have saved us much heart-burning and the embarrassment. After all, we none of us can be loved by everybody, and it's no disparagement of our own personality if one particular person decides that, after all, it isn't love they (he, or she) feels for us. Silly boy, my brother . . .
My first driving lesson is at two o'clock next Tuesday. I have read How to Drive a Car twice right through, and some parts four or five times; the Highway Code I know more or less by heart, and I have gone deeply into the table which gives the braking distances at different speeds, so deeply that I have discovered the basic 'rhythm' of the table and can work out thinking- and braking-distances at any speed up to 10,874½ miles per hour. I love mathematics, they are so shapely, if you know what I mean . . .
I was glad to gather from the tone of your last letter that you are once more your normally spry and dander self. A letter from Rosalind earlier this week told me of her trip east to look after you: you sound a terrible hospital-patient: what sort of a home-patient do you make? The doctors seem to have done everything to their Bellport guinea pig except pick it up by its tail and shake it, but then I understand that is the thing they do only as a last resort, especially as the tail is so hard to find. Next time you feel a hiccup coming along, you try a mouthful of peppermints. Anyway, I am glad it is all over and done with, but don't do it again . . .
Very sincerely,
Frances W.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Temperature 92°F; . . . and a rush to keep the two o'clock appointment of my first driving lesson. I rushed to such an effect that my arrival was greeted with 'Oh, you're early; well, I suppose it doesn't matter, we might as well start.'
Truly an auspicious opening, and I don't think it was surprising that I took an instant dislike to the man. Do you think that means I'm not likely to learn quickly, since I have consciously to force myself to do what he says, out of sheer dislike? I must admit, though, that I don't think he's such a good driver as he imagines – or good teacher, perhaps I should say. He showed me how to start the car, giving the sketches of the engine, motivation of car, gears, clutch etc. (which I knew about beforehand but that didn't stop him!) but he never told me how to stop.
Then, after demonstrating gear changes and saying blithely that most cars have the gears marked on the top of the lever but his were worn off we changed places. I was then lectured for eight minutes on the importance of making sure the doors are closed, and we set off. Now Mr Bigelow is it good teaching to let somebody start driving immediately in a fairly busy road? My first turn came after about 200 yards, and was at a junction and across the traffic. We then turned again, sharply left (I still didn't know how to slow down to a stop without stopping the car altogether, and I still don't know whether I'm supposed to declutch, brake, and start moving the gear into first ready to start when the road is clear) into a road with buses, trolley-buses, cars, bikes, an estate of Council Houses with attendant children running in the road, and a gypsy encampment with horse-drawn carts up and down and across and back. Good for the nerves?
Then another crossroads, another main road, and finally, the main London–Exeter road for three miles, just in case the other traffic hadn't quite finished me off. 'Blow your horn at him!' said the man at one stage. 'Just where is the horn, please?' said I. That is an example. Aren't you lucky to be getting this letter this week instead of a blackedged card from my sorrowing mum? He also told me to pass a horse and cart when we were on a slight bend, and when I obediently pulled out it was to discover a fast-moving car (anything going over 30 was fast to me!) approaching around the bend. The man shouted something; I accelerated, thinking he wanted me to pass while there was time; he, of course, jammed the clutch and handbrake and then said it was all the horse-driver's fault for pulling out just as I did too. No, I have not that full confidence in him that I could wish for, and the worst thing is, I've paid for the course! He was once (about the time you were in rompers) a flying instructor, and spoke airily of teaching men to loop the loop without the benefit of parachutes. Possibly he feels that by putting the car-pupil on the road from the absolute word 'go' he gets a slight echo of that earlier thrill. Personally, I would prefer to bore him to tears. When I reached home late at night, I looked at the leaflet he had given me. It described his methods and suggested he was the world's best teacher of driving, and finished up with:
'Please be at the collecting-point punctually. When you see the car, come up and introduce yourself to me. You will not be disappointed.'
I am the exception.
. . . I hope you have a nice long visit from Rosalind, and that the weather is cooler, as it is here today. My garden looks like the Sahara, and simply glows with dust!
Very sincerely,
Frances W.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Do you know that I start writing your Saturday letter on Wednesdays these weeks, in order to make sure it's ready by Saturday? And don't suggest I should send it off as soon as it is finished, because I know full well you would still expect your Saturday Special, and you mustn't be greedy. Of course, I never am (greedy) so I can lecture you from a smug pedestal.
Well, I've finished the full course of driving lessons, leaving a flummoxed instructor with his appointment book poised ready in his hands, while I got out of the car and walked off with a saccharine smile and a cheery wave of the fist. On my last hour's lesson I was taught how to start on a hill, which I did quite well. In fact, I did it excellently the first time, and thinking it easy, not nearly so well the next time, almost suffocating a passing cyclist when I revved the engine without letting the clutch up. No idea so much thick black smoke existed outside the steel towns . . . . . . Now all I need to learn is how to go backwards; but perhaps the instructor realised that my motto is 'Ever onwards!' and taught me accordingly. My own view is that, wearing one or two of Rosalind's delightful dresses, the impression was given that I was a Lady of Means and Good for at Least Two More Payments. So you see, Rosalind has a lot to answer for. I have written her this week to warn her she's going to have seven splendid corpses on her conscience on Saturday, when I wear the latest creation she sent me and the seven divers all miss the pool and hit the surrounds when they get an eyeful of me in brown silk, all a'shimmering in the light. On second thoughts, possibly only four of the seven will hit the deck, for out of consideration for the youth of the other three I put, last night, an extra two inches of material in the neck of the dress. Before that was done I could see if my shoe-laces were tied, without bending over, and the effect on passers-by was problematical but exciting . . .
My poor mother! Yesterday evening, while she was doing something or other in her room, she came rushing out to me crying, 'Oh! Jack Stockwell's had an accident on his motorbike and the ambulance is there!!' Now Jack Stockwell has only had his bike about a week, and everybody has been expecting the worst, in their usual ghoulish way. I went to the front of the flat and said, 'But Mother, Jack's bike is still there in the garden, and I saw him only half an hour ago. And there's Mr Stockwell – and there's Mrs, so it can't be anybody we know.' Mother was forced to stay in her room, ostensibly to powder her nose (she knocked the lid of her powder bowl against the bowl several times in the next ten minutes so that I, in the living room, would know by the sound that she was powdering her nose and not just nosing) until the ambulance men came out. And even then, she didn't recognise the body and had to report merely that 'it's a very short person' and conjecture from there as best she could. I suspect the minute I was out of the flat this morning she dashed across to admire Mr Stockwell's geraniums and find out All About It.
Now it's time to finish; a lovely motor launch has just sailed across the sea outside my office window. Although I think I would prefer sail to motor any day, a motor launch would be a very pleasant means of locomotion on a day such as this, still and heavy and flat and overcast. We want rain; we need rain; we are longing for rain. But do we get it? You know the answer to that one.
I hope your Timber Point meeting went off well, or goes off well if I am too previous. Don't get angry and start gnashing your teeth again – you know what happened last time. Be like me, placid and only given to hysterics now and then.
Very sincerely,
Frances W.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Do you remember, some time ago, one of our submarines sank in the Channel, and all England followed with caught breath the frenzied race against time that was the search for it? Do you also remember that we were criticised in your newspapers for keeping our minds and hearts on a few square miles of grey sea instead of what was then happening in Korea? Well, another similar occasion has just occurred; and as I was thinking about it, the explanation of our previous narrow interest came to my mind: we are one family, the whole little Island, in a way that your own enormous continent can never be one family; and a family is always anxious when one member of it is in trouble, even if the whole of the next street is being flattened by some awful plague; the family's first thought is for its own sick.
This week we are all sorrowing, as one family, for the tiny village of Lynmouth, in North Devonshire. I believe when I spent three days at Lynton, 400 foot up the precipitous hill above Lynmouth, three years ago, I described the place to you and possibly also sent you postcards of it. Lynmouth is one of the English beauty spots we are so fond of – it is one of those 'cosy and charming' spots of which you wrote in your last letter. Architecturally it is not particularly beautiful . . . But nothing can spoil Lynmouth basically, because nothing – or so we thought – could destroy the beauty of its situation. It is built, huddled together, at the mouth of a tiny valley. Tiny but deep, with the hills rising sheer out of it to 500 and 600 feet, and two tiny streams rushing burbling along down from the heights of Exmoor in the hinterland, over miniature waterfalls formed of great brown round boulders; over flat grey slabs green with weed, and past luxurious growth of bush and flower scented and almost gross in its richness, in this tiny sheltered valley. At the mouth, Lynmouth. Perhaps a hundred houses, all jumbled together; a row of shops and hotels pressed close against Lyn Hill (the fourth floor of the hotels is one floor lower than the ground floor of the rare house built on the hillside, so steep is the incline) then a road, twelve foot in width; next to this is another row of small cottages and cafés, then comes the Lyn river (the two streams join in the village at one of the bridges, and then run together the hundred yards or so that remain before the harbour is reached). On the far side of the river is a pedestrian's walk, flower-edged. And beyond that a wide strip of grassland with the beautiful Manor House set in its centre. This meadow is, more or less, built out to sea, for that is the only place there's room for a meadow. Otherwise, you are no sooner slipped down Lyn Hill than you have to go vertically up Countisbury, on the other side. The place is crowded during August and September with honeymooners, and the native pirates make enough money then to live on in peace and quiet through-out the rest of the year. Except this year.
This year we had a day of heavy rain. Three months' rainfall fell last Friday on nine square miles of Exmoor. The bogs filled up and tipped over, the streams became rivers, the rivers torrents, the torrents lethal weapons bludgeoning ten-ton boulders, and the little town of Lynmouth is nearly wiped out and fifty people are either dead, or missing and believed dead. The little burn scorning its normal path, now rages down the main street, and through a corner group of buildings to the sea. It was no flood such as one gets, I imagine, in the great central plains of America; there, there is room for the water, although I realise that the damage old Mississippi does is not to be compared with Lynmouth. Here there was no room. Four cottages, built 20 feet above the river, were just swept away with most of the people in them; a boy, alone with two small brothers in one cottage, was sweeping the water coming in the front door, out of the back door, when the back door and the kitchen around it disappeared. He was lucky, he got his two brothers out of the house.
Well, that was Lynmouth. On Saturday morning we heard on the radio that only people with business in Lynmouth would be allowed there; by Saturday night the place was being evacuated as unliveable. By Sunday morning appeals were being launched all over the country for help. By Monday they were able to announce that they had enough clothes to go on with. The family had rallied round, you see. For the moment we can't be bothered with what is happening in the Volga valley or the Philippines; we only want to know how people are in Devon. It is, perhaps, parochialism, or narrow nationalism, but it is understandable, and I wish it were more realised.
It has always puzzled me that so many (I exclude you and other intelligent Americans, if there are any such!!) Americans love their own country and think it wonderful, as they have right and are right in thinking, and yet they cannot conceive of other people loving their country in the same way. We shouldn't love England, they seem to feel; we should only feel sorry we aren't Americans. But love of one's country is nearly always born in one, and cannot be changed except at great trouble. And in great trouble, it comes swamping up smothering differences and making Britons of us all, English, Scots, Welsh and Irish. Just now we are all people who have seen the beauty of Lynmouth, or people who have heard of that beauty and wish they had seen it . . .
So au revoir until next week; and don't be too depressed about Lynmouth – it has brought out more strongly than before our eternal brotherhood, and it has even made Civil Servants human and Government Departments kindly, for postage has been waived on all parcels going to North Devon, a thing I can never remember happening before.
Till next week, then,
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
PS My boss and I have been making collections for the Flood Fund and in two days we have got £80!!
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . I went to the cinema this week and saw the pictures of the Queen at the opening of Parliament. She looked very lovely, with a long and slender neck rising out of a cloud of white fur, and topped by a small head and a diamond crown. The camera showed you the family on Buck. Palace balcony afterwards, with Princess Anne standing on a chair (to make her tall enough to look over the balcony) next to her brother. The Queen turned and went in, and the Duke lifted down the little girl and shooed her, with Prince Charles, back into the room. The two children were then put out of sight, being too small to be seen over the balcony, but the camera showed the Duke immediately turning around and coming back with his arms outstretched. I thought, 'Surely he hasn't come back to take the chair in!' and as I thought that, over the edge of the chair suddenly popped a little princess's head, as she started waving delightedly again. Prince Charles was there, too, but this time their father took both of them firmly by the hand and shoved them ahead of him into the room at the back. It was so human and so very sweet, the two little things dashing back for another wave, and so plainly enjoying themselves immensely. It must be very exciting to tiny children; all those lovely big soldiers, and their glittering uniforms, and horses, and people waving, and staying up late and so on. I heard the other day that the Queen will not allow them to be addressed by anyone except as Charles, and Anne. That will make a more normal childhood for both of them. We all love the little boy, but whenever I have seen the whole family on the screen, the Duke of Edinburgh is invariably looking after his daughter, and leaving Charles severely alone. I can imagine he doesn't allow his son to get spoiled, but perhaps he thinks a father should spoil his daughter a bit. At least, he appears to do so . . .
I'm off to London on Thursday for five days; pray for warm weather, please – today it is foggy, cold and raining, all at the same time, and I'm just sick and tired of having cold, horrid, rainy weather for my holidays. Do you know it is four years since I had a thoroughly fine week's holiday!
. . . Au revoir until next week,
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Will you please do me a favour, Mr Bigelow? I don't often ask favours of you (only the favour of an occasional letter, as you know) but this time I am, and I am serious. Will you please omit any form of gift this Christmas and just send me a card? I mean that in all seriousness; I am not jumping to the conclusion that you're bankrupt because your house needs painting, but I know from hard experience how Christmas is apt to become a snowball unless you're very strict and hard with yourself, and I have myself cut out all gifts to the staff this year for the same reason. I can't promise not to send you anything because it is already bought and no earthly use to anybody else (nor to you!) but it is of no value whatsoever and doesn't count as a gift, merely as something to tickle your sense of humour, I hope. So please, leave me out except for good wishes and I will regard it as proof of my complete mastery in our friendship, in that I can get you to do what I want, when I want it badly enough. Please, now.
I hope Rosalind and Mr Akin are having a good time in Alabama, or wherever it is you say St Louis people have their hide-out. I suppose, poor souls, if they live in a cold place like St Louis they must have some-where to get warm. It's freezing over here today; why don't you keep your cold winters, I don't like them. And in particular, I don't like them when I'm about to go on holiday to a very cold house on top of a very chilly hill.
Remember – a Christmas card only, to show proof of sincerity and friendship, Mr Bigelow.
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
PS How dare you, Sir, be so rude about my driving! I would have you know, that like Lady Catherine de Bourgh's daughter (who would have been a wonderful pianist if only she had learned) I would be a wonderful driver if only I had continued my lessons. As it is, I am waiting a) for the car Frank and I plan to buy in the New Year, b) to be taught to drive an Ambulance in the Civil Defence Corps which I have joined with that end in view.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Do you think it is because I have had, of late years, so much experience in writing them that my 'thank you' letters are beginning to sound slick and professional? Frankly, it appals me. I like a letter of gratitude to be gracious, faintly surprised, sincere and appreciative; . . . You and Rosalind, between the two of you, have had ELEVEN thank you letters since the beginning of March. No wonder I find it so hard to think of something different to say to you both. But, of course, do not think from that last remark that I – and my family – am not extremely grateful for the latest pair of parcels, the chocolates and the well-chosen tinned goods. We are; we are also at a loss for exactly the right words to use in saying so.
Well, now to return to London, about which I was telling you when all these 'thank you' letters intervened. It was icy cold, as it always seems to be when I visit Uncle Ronald, but this time I was luckier than usual, for under the spread on the second bed in my room I found a folded collection of blankets and sheets. My aunt explained them later by saying that Peter, the son, was now at a new school where they did not expect parents to provide bedlinen (the stuff that the school provided went on the bill!). So she had more blankets and sheets than usual and would I like another blanket on my bed? I said oh no, thank you, I was as warm as toast. And only omitted to mention that I already had five blankets (including my own travel rug) and made quite certain I had remade my bed before anybody else got upstairs to find me out!! Even so, a glass of water left in my room froze both Saturday and Sunday night, so you can understand if I was warm in bed, it was sheer willpower and no help from nature.
Uncle took us to the theatre one evening, and Phyl and I went early up to town because she wanted some gloves. Uncle is the only man I have met who complains that his wife isn't extravagant enough! I will admit he has cause: he spent pounds bringing a length of fine silk home from Brunei for Phyllis to have made up for a dress to wear at a wedding they were going to, and then Phyl gets the little dressmaker in the village to make it! After Uncle had brought it safely through no less than seven Customs!! He gave her a lovely black fur coat, which she wore the day we went out. Underneath she had a nice thick silk cocktail suit, topped with a red and grey striped wool cardigan which had probably cost her about seven dollars. She had pleasant shoes on, but never pays more than (roughly) 50 cents for her stockings and as she has piano legs with elephantiasis cheap stockings are not, repeat not, for her. So, there was the beautiful fur coat and the stockings and the nice shoes, and a grey felt hat she'd bought somewhere in a sale and grey artificial wool-fur gloves. Just things to make black more exciting and chic! Admittedly black on a dull, cold day can and does look the same way, and I, too, was in black. But I had added a white fur felt hat with black and white pearls strung around a little knob on top, and both black and white pearl earrings, and fastened my pearl necklace after dark with a glittering diamond brooch. It isn't exactly real, but it sparkles just as nicely as any-thing Barbara Hutton possesses, and pleases me more than her gems do her, I'm sure.
Well, we had to eat very early (the theatre we were going to started at the ghastly hour of 7.15 p.m.) so we couldn't go to one of the smarter places. While we were waiting, keeping a table for the tardy man, Phyl and I had a martini, and when Uncle arrived he looked aghast we hadn't one waiting for him, so ordered a large one and two more small ones, to level things out. Now two dry martinis on an empty tummy is really one more than I need, so I started dinner in a nice state, and the fact that we shared a bottle of white wine with lamb cutlets helped no end. But by the time we arrived, in a flurry, at the theatre – Theatre Royal, Haymarket, and an exquisite little gem of a place it is, too, with lovely Corinthian pillars edging the pavement outside – we were all quite ready to enjoy the show. And as the play was good – a sort of modern Month in the Country – and the actresses in it included Dame Edith Evans, Dame Sybil Thorndike, Wendy Hiller and Kathleen Harrison, it could not possibly be anything but beautifully acted . . . We dashed to the station, caught a train for Chipstead and, when we arrived there and tore up the station steps in greatly deteriorated weather – it was now pelting with icy hail and rain – right at the end of a queue of theatre-going residents all aiming for the one and only taxi, we were absolutely delighted when the taxi-driver, perched high in his office window, saw Uncle over the heads of the other people and promptly pretended we'd ordered the taxi and bundled us in while the other people had to stand around and wait until he got back. Arrived at 'Oakhurst' Uncle told the driver to turn the car around and rushed into the hall, which he did, arriving coincident with a large whisky Uncle had promptly poured for him. Possibly this explains why it is that Uncle never has any trouble getting a taxi at the station, but it also makes it very pleasant to go out with the dear man, for you are wafted along all the time on a flood of good wishes from whatever staff you come in contact with.
. . . All the time, whenever we met anybody, Uncle kept moaning 'I've got to go to Paris' very much the same way my brother says on Sunday, 'Oh, Mother, I've got to go to the Club.' The operative word, of course, nobody believes in the slightest. Uncle was rather annoyed, though. He has been trying, for some time, to get a trip to New York fixed up, but at the weekend his firm (an oil firm, you know what they're like) told him they had arranged instead for three men to come from New York to England to see Uncle. In a way it was very flattering, but Uncle was livid, because he wanted that trip, and as he is retiring (five years later than anybody normally is allowed to stay) next July, it was his last chance of a free trip to the States. So, perhaps as a sop, they sent him to Paris just to oversee the experts who were going with him . . . I think he'll find life awfully dull after July, when he'll have nothing to do but concentrate on his wife's faults!
. . . Now I must get this mailed; I shall buy stamps so that you can see the new ones with the Queen's head on them. I think the green 1½d stamp is a little frilly – all those emblems around her head look a trifle unconnected, but the red 2½d stamp I think is quite charming. If you want one or two for your stamp collection (unfranked, I mean) just let me know and I'll pop them in another letter . . .
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford