1958
Mother and Mrs Fagan;
Christmas decorations at the Baths
Mother and Mrs Fagan;
Christmas decorations at the Baths
Dear Mr Bigelow,
I was particularly glad to see your letter (Feb. 2nd) this morning, for as I told Rosalind in a letter I wrote her yesterday I had a horrible feeling amounting almost to certainty last week that you were ill. And lo, when Rosalind's letter arrived, and it was dated the day I had this foreboding, she put in it 'a year ago today they "dug into" Father'. So you see, I was psychic 365 days late, which I daresay is a most unusual gift although not too useful. If only I could be psychic a year ahead – know which horse would win the Derby in 1959, say – that would really be something. But alas I am only human, and when a lady came to see me one day this week to discuss having a course of Turkish Baths, and asked me what the weather would be like on Friday, as she would not wish to have a bath if it were fine out of doors, I had to admit to not knowing, and she obviously thought I was no good at my job.
Reading your letter, with the description of your full punchbowl, all I can say is that I am not surprised one guest left her hat on the floor and has not yet remembered about it – I am more surprised it wasn't left on the floor with the owner still in it, after that potent punch. What do you call your particular brand? The Joe Louis Punch? If said hat owner still hasn't remembered where she was on the Night of December 28th, by all means toss it eastwards and I will go looking for a cocktail party at which to wear it . . .
We now come to work, in the car, these days by such a circuitous route we must burn up an extra gallon or two of petrol on the way. This is to enable my brother first of all to wave at Audrey, still the Big Love of His Life. We then go down her road for two blocks, and with luck, another girlfriend (oh, way down the list, this one) will be getting break-fast in her kitchen and she too waves at us, and vice versa, as we go by. We then turn at right angles and come back into the road we first thought of, and stop bang on a bus stop (the bus gets furious) to pick up one or two sisters who wait there. If the sisters aren't there, we give a lift to a girl in, of all things, a parma-violet teddy-bear coat whose name we do not yet know, but whose pretty face (and coat) attracted my brother's attention some days ago. We already have one girl, usually in a bright orange coat with lipstick to match, whom we pass near our home. My brother never seems to notice any tall dark and elegant men waiting for buses; eyesight faulty, no doubt . . .
Now I must get to work: have to eat some lunch, go out and collect a repaired brooch, buy a very cheap waistcoat to embroider for my brother in the faint hope he might like to wear it, and then get back before I am snowbound again.
Yours most sincerely,
Frances W.
PS No, the yachting magazine has not yet arrived, but I will let you know immediately it does.
PPS Does not my handwriting get worse and worse?
PPPS No need to answer PPS! I know!
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Last week on my final visit to the dentist, I told him that on considering his argument of the week before, in which he claimed that as some interesting people of his acquaintance wrote very dully indeed, it followed that dull people wrote very interestingly, I had come to the conclusion that his logic was faulty. You may remember, I wrote to you about this last Saturday.
Mr Samson was visibly shattered; first that I should be so brash as to consider him faulty in any way, and then that I should be so rash as to say so! At least I restrained myself until all the drilling was done, knowing that on my last visit only the corners are scraped off and polished with emery powder or something like it. He was, in fact, so taken aback by all this that on Tuesday this week I received the following letter:
. . . . . . Although Aldous Huxley may be no final authority upon our recent discussion, a quotation from his 'reason and rule' at least supports my argument (Had it supported yours I probably would not have sent it to you!). Writing of the artist, Georges de La Tour, who was, he says, a 'visionary', he ends thus:
'it must be added that, as a man, this great painter of God's countenance seems to have been proud, hard, intolerably overbearing and avaricious, which goes to show, yet once more, that there is never a one-to-one correspondence between an artist's work and his character.'
Anyhow, if it doesn't 'go-to-show' you, it is just another arguing point when next you wish to delay the threatening drill.
How's that for an insult? As though I bring up all my best arguments for so low a reason, when all I need do is keep my big mouth shut and I get the same success with less wear and tear on the brain. I replied, taking two lunch hours to compile the letter so that it would simply bristle with shining logic, and from my characteristic kindness, gave him one point for honesty (as vouchsafed by his remark about not quoting Huxley, had it been in my favour) and subtracting one point for the iron mould clearly on his character from his nasty crack about delaying tactics. I must say I, in turn, was shaken, for I know that Mr Samson is a very busy man indeed, and to write even a short note by hand (and what a hand! took me hours to decipher it) must have been a chore.
We have been reading in the newspapers, and hearing over the radio, of your terrible weather. I was trying to visualise a snowdrift 15 feet high, as we came to work the other morning: it seemed to spread right over the store windows up to the next floor; and as for having a snowfall of 58 inches – words fail me. I do hope you had plenty of food in store, and are able to stay snug indoors until the weather is more amiable, and the drive is clear. What a pity Rosalind didn't visit you a week later than she did, then she might have been snowed in with you, and you would have the pleasure of her company that much longer.
I have now read, twice, the article about you in Yachting, and have looked with some amazement and much enjoyment at the rest of the magazine. Amazement, in this tax-ridden country, that people can still afford to run such yachts as are illustrated in its pages – although I did notice most of the larger ones advertised were suggested for 'Executives' or 'Corporations' with the hint there that they might be run on an expense account, which is a great help whichever side of the Atlantic you may be. Some of the articles might have been written in Sanscrit for all the sense they made to such a land-lubber as me, but fortunately the one about The Commodore was in clear English (for the most part) and I thoroughly enjoyed it. How you must have chuckled at that letter in the magazine suggesting you would know better, when you had had more experience of Racing Committees!! Does the young man concerned now race with red sails, to match his face?
. . . Mother has (I heard through a friend) now come to the conclusion that my brother wishes to get married, and all this refurbishing of the home is in readiness for his bride, Mother then being asked to go and live elsewhere to make room for her. How can anybody be so much a stranger to her own offspring? Mac and I were both hurt and offended when we heard; the explanation did cover Mother's careful reading aloud to me from the advertisement columns of the local paper, of all the small cottages, tiny flats, and bed-sitting rooms that appear there. I wondered at it a bit, for although Mother is very inclined to read me bits of news (usually backwards) she doesn't, as a rule, include the small ads as well!
. . . Now to go through this for the more obvious typing errors, and get it mailed to you. I do hope you are feeling well, and not doing anything silly like clearing your own driveway or scootering, while this bitter weather lasts.
Yours most sincerely,
Frances W.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Another blank month; an especially blank week, in which absolutely nothing has happened except that I have inspired 489,562 times, and expired (up to this second) 489,561 times. Even for me, that pair of facts is difficult to work up into a two thousand word letter, so I must look about for something else . . .
Oh yes, I know what did happen this week! Having, as perhaps you don't know, an extremely bad complexion on which I try everything from spirits of salts to handcreams, I read somewhere the other day that the best thing of all was an egg-mask, made from white of egg spread on the face extremely thinly. I always have an egg for my luncheon, so one day I whipped up the yolk in milk, and had that for lunch, and carried the white upstairs to a bathroom. Once undressed, I washed my face in the bath (before getting in, of course) and then, leaning over the water so as not so spill any on the floor, put my hand in the cup and scooped up a bit of egg white to slap on.
Well, I don't know whether you've ever given yourself a face-mask of egg white, Mr Bigelow (although the odds are you haven't) because the egg white doesn't come up, a bit at a time, but adheres to your hand in one horrid slippery mess, or falls off just as you are about to slap it on. In the end I just emptied the cup into my hand, and splashed the whole lot in the general direction of my face. About 87%, at an estimate, slipped off my chin and nose, eyebrows and ends of hair, and – of course – fell in the bath. Have you ever had a bath in a collection of floating meringues, Mr Bigelow? It's like trying to catch mercury. By the time I had soaked and washed and the face stuff was nicely set (talk about Mrs Frankenstein!) the egg white in the bath was almost hard-boiled, and what the attendant thought it was when she cleaned the bath out after me, I hate to think! And if you wonder, was all this kerfuffle successful, I don't know, but if I turn peaches-and-cream, or even raspberries-and-cream (that being this month's complexion colour, I understand) I will pass on the good news.
Looking for a number in the telephone book the other day, I came across this man – Reginald Pobjoy. Glorious name. Can't you see him? Not very tall – about five foot seven, plump, with a little moustache and hair parted in the centre. Spectacles, probably gold-rimmed, and a nervous habit of coughing to indicate his presence. Reginald Pobjoy. How could his parents have been so unkind as to so christen him?
Do you remember my telling you, some time last summer, about the little boy who stopped me in the Baths hall and told me he could swim two-thirds of the way across the pool? And that, when I mentioned this to his mother a little later, she told me that her son had given me this item of news because, months earlier, I had promised him sixpence when he could swim the whole width? Well, yesterday he came up to me as I was just going into my office – and claimed his prize! He was absolutely beside himself with delight when I gave it to him, and saying 'Oh, thank you! Thank you so much' and so on, he gave it to his even smaller brother to hold ('. . . . . . and don't you drop it!') while he went in to swim. That his father was holding a wodge of swimming lesson tickets that had cost him nearly a £1, was unimportant; what was important was that he had won sixpence. I told his father the child deserved it for sheer tenacity of purpose, or for a darn good memory. Later, the instructor told me that yesterday was really John's Day. I had given him his sixpence and praise for, at long last, learning to swim: then I had gone upstairs and given his brother two bars of chocolate, one for him because no doubt he would get hungry applauding his brother's prowess in the water, and one for John because he would obviously be exhausted after his long swim. Not only this, but the instructor took John up to the deep end of the pool and let him swim across there, all by himself. Oh, definitely, it was John's day. How delightful, Mr Bigelow, to be so pleased with such simple things. A nicer pair of children it would be hard to find: plain little things, both of them, but so well mannered and so happy, and their little faces shine with cleanliness, like clean plate-glass windows for their sunny little dispositions to shine through.
This has been an extremely dull week for mail: nobody had had any-thing of interest, and only Mother has had letters – and those from our famous Aunt Ethel, noted for her interminable chatter (is it inherited I hate to wonder?) and her enormous size. Mine has consisted of one catalogue from Holland, of rose bushes, of all things, and an invitation to take part in a whist drive got up by the Civil Defence. Neither item of any interest to me whatsoever, although the roses look nice and I do have two in the garden which could be replaced.
I am currently deep in the making of a spring (or summer, if the summer is chilly) dress, made up of some of that hand-woven towel material I used for Rosalind's apron some months ago. I was going to have only a full skirt, but when the stuff was made, I got ambitious and managed to get a short-sleeved sheath sort of dress out of it, and have lined it with butter muslin. It should be delightful to 'dress up' with coloured accessories, but at the moment it is rather less than delightful as the hand-woven stuff is very loosely woven and every time I put my scissors within yards of it, masses of bits come adrift and float all over the living-room carpet and the moth-eaten bearskin rug in front of the fire that, as Mac supplied it, we cannot discard. So, Mother is hardly on speaking terms with me, the more so as she suggested an old sheet should be spread over everything while I am working, to save her carpets from getting littered, and I looked up and said mildly that I thought we used all our old sheets on our old beds! Poor Mother, she was very cross indeed, and it was some time before I got her to giggle a bit and agree. However, all is nearly finished now, and after all, what use is it to own a Hoover if you can't put a nice bit of litter on the floor before Hoovering? . . .
Yours most sincerely,
Frances W.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . I went to my brother's girlfriend's home last evening, to see their new car – an enormous peacock blue Jaguar, very wonderful to look at and with every possible gadget including one for sweeping away people they run over. Anyway, as I was saying, we went there and I expected OF COURSE to be the star turn because of this sciatica. But oh no, not a bit of it. 'How are you?' said Mrs Fagan politely, and equally politely I said 'Very well, thank you: I always am', and that was that, she went straightway into how worried she was over Wendy's weight (she's the little sister) and from there to her husband's peculiar health, and then Audrey piped up to say, pleasedly, 'I'm going to see Dr Lucas soon', as though somebody was going to buy her a lollipop. Between whiles they kept commiserating with my brother whose teeth were hurting, as usual, and giving running commentaries on Wendy's chickenpox (three visible spots, to date, but my dear, absolutely smothered with them on her chest!). In face of all this opposition, I could not allow even a twinge to cross my countenance, and in fact, I don't think I'd even try to enter such competition. For somebody who respects and likes doctors as a body, I do try to avoid them as practitioners, but this Fagan family seem to keep them in the house like pet dogs, almost. Father Fagan is once more in hospital for a check-up, and judging by the symptoms that were tossed around with the cocktails, he needs it. Either that, or the doctors are finding life a bit hard on the National Health Scheme and anybody who comes along with a fat pocketbook is manna from Heaven for them, and they aren't going to tell manna he's a fit man, not for a long, long time. I am quite probably quite wrong, and poor Mr Fagan may well be a very sick man, but I've never met him and am not likely to do so, so I judge by the rest of his family to the last little hypochondriac. Anyway, it was a beautiful Jaguar, and they gave me a big bunch of daffodils for Mother as I came away . . .
I had a card from Rosalind this week, which had come by surface mail and so taken rather a long time. What a romantic address her hotel had – 'The Surfriders Hotel, On the Beach at Waikiki'. It should definitely be set to music.
And that's the lot for this week.
Yours most sincerely,
Frances W.
PS There has recently opened a new shop in one of the suburbs of Bournemouth, which amuses me. It is a poorish suburb, with nothing in the least imaginative in the shopping line, and this new store is all frills and flounces, and they have called it 'Mes petits'. What's the betting the district immediately nickname it 'My smalls'? It is rather a silly name for a store selling children's clothes in such a district.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Did I tell you my brother went into a shop the other day and asked for one razor blade, and when the shopkeeper (who knows us) looked a bit surprised, Mac explained loftily that he was 'trying to cut down on expenses and one has to start somewhere'. The shopkeeper's obvious disbelief in this explanation apparently penetrated, because this morning Mac asked if I would go over to the shop, which is quite near home, and buy him a blade, and of course I had no such nerve and bought a whole packet! There's extravagance for you, Mr Bigelow – a whole half-dozen at a time. Cost me all of 1s.8d. it did, too. Poor brother: he has to pay a £20 repair bill on the car all at once, because he has claimed income tax relief and has to produce receipted accounts to prove his expenditure! So you see, he is busy saving tuppence here and tuppence there, and no doubt will soon have a few shillings saved up . . .
Having been, Sunday last week, around a lovely garden alongside a river, I thought last Sunday we would make a change, so we all went around one of the Rothschild estates in Hampshire. Rosalind would know the sort of terrain it was in, for the estate runs alongside the river at Beaulieu, and she and I (and Mrs Beall) had dinner there at Buckler's Hard many years ago, and looked across the lovely river at the wooded slopes on the far side – the Rothschild place.
It was a very sad visit to me. Sad and pathetic, but I could not make up my mind whether I was right in feeling this way, or whether I should be tough and democratic and say to myself, 'Well, why should I feel sorry because they can't afford to live here?' Of course, being me, I am jumping to my own conclusions. This was what happened.
The Exbury estate of, I think, Leopold de Rothschild is famous for rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias and orchids. We didn't see any orchids, but that might be because the place was so vast Mother's feet gave out before we'd gone far. The house, Edwardian, was the queerest sort of triangle in shape and not large – probably twenty bedrooms at the outside, plus a few attics for staff – but it was very ugly. The front, or long side of the triangle, faced open meadows giving a long view of the Isle of Wight across the Solent, and there was an enormous salon or ballroom with a colonnaded terrace in front of it. There were a few enormous scented magnolias trained up the side walls. No other furnishing, either inside or out; no curtains, no nothing. The stables were occupied, and a small wing had cheap curtaining at the windows, but the main house was empty, with nasty sightless eyes staring in rows. But the park around was sown with clouds of daffodils, here a mass of rich gold, there a pale cream, beautifully placed around the trees. At the edge of all this parkland was the wooded part, in which the rhododendrons and azaleas etc. were in abundance – and very beautiful, but not a patch on Stourhead, where the setting is ideal for them, with the three lakes reflecting all the massed colours. Here, all the enormous flowers were in woods, and some of them were so enormous, and fleshy, they made one shudder and wish not to meet them on a dark night.
The estate was beautifully kept; the bushes well fertilised, the shrubs trimmed, the paths kept in good order. We found two disused tennis courts (hard) with a little pavilion shrouded in roses, connecting them, and a handful of moth-eaten tennis balls inside. The courts had been out of use for years; one was moss grown, and the other had all the nails coming out of the metal lines. The birds were singing, the river sparkled through the trees (you did get the occasional view) and the flowers were magnificent; it was all planned, it seemed to me, for the family to live in the house, on the estate, for five or six weeks of the year – no longer, just while the flowers were out. Now perhaps I should feel that nobody should have enough money to keep an estate up merely to use it for so short a time, but I did feel it was sad that they could not. And I felt sad, too, that apparently they liked it enough to keep the grounds in good order, even if they could not afford to live in the house at all. And perhaps I am letting my (vivid) imagination run riot, and my feelings were miles wide of reality. Right or wrong, we all felt the place was a bit haunted by Edwardian ghosts of wealthy, unthinking, sophisticated has-beens.
Mac was happily engaged, on the way home, in phrasing little sentences . . . . . . 'called on the Rothschilds on Sunday but unfortunately they were away . . . . . .' . . . . . . 'oh yes, we went over the Rothschild place – y'know, the Exbury estate', which he hoped to drop casually into his conversations. As we reached Beaulieu, where there is a very nice hotel, I said, 'Well, now, we've enough money for one of us to go in and have tea while the others wait outside', which quickly put a stop to Mac's highfalutin airs. As it was the last weekend before payday and I hadn't borrowed even a penny from any of my various funds, I thought we did very well indeed to have enough money amongst us to pay for the petrol and the entrance fees, let alone for one to have tea! That's part of the fun in being poor; you can get such a delightful contrast with imagining what it must be like to be rich. I should think to be rich all the time must be awfully boring, for you would surely never put yourself into the imagined place of the poor in the reverse way. Could you, for instance, ever imagine that silly creature, Barbara Hutton, visualising such a situation as ours – going slumming over a millionaire's estate without enough money in our pockets to pay for tea! It touched my funny bone, and the others enjoyed the point, too. Incidentally, the children we met in our ramble nearly all carried little twigs or sticks, on which they were putting the dropped petals of the camellias – they are cup-shaped, and drop off in a whole piece, so that you can thread them on a string – so that they were toddling around with little wands of coloured flowers, most prettily . . .
Yours most sincerely,
Frances W.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Can you see from the snapshot where some horrid person backed into our radiator grid? The car was left outside the tennis club while my brother was inside watching the English Hard Court Championships there last week, and when he came out, this was what he saw. We asked our garage, and they said they could straighten it, but as we knew it involved removing the radiator inside the bonnet, we knew also it wouldn't cost sixpence. So Jemima had a brainwave – suggested we tied a piece of rope through the grill and fastened it to something solid, perhaps the plum tree in the garage forecourt, and then very delicately backed the car away. Mac loathed the idea, so one evening when he was having his dinner and, as usual, was nearly an hour late so that I had long before finished mine, I went outside the flat and tied a bit of string on, myself, but having nothing to which to fasten it, I just pulled on the string myself. After a few long, strong pulls the string broke and I fell over on my back in the gutter, which is quite an unusual place for me to be in, I can assure you. But I had managed to get some of the 'push' removed.
A neighbour came rushing out, literally wringing his hands! An old Jonah, he said why hadn't he come out in time to stop me, for as sure as eggs is eggs I would split the soft metal of the grill. I said thank you, but I hadn't and I wasn't going to do any more because the string had broken anyway. I told Mac what I had done, and later when he looked he was so impressed he tried it himself, only with stronger string and a stronger pull – and he got the dent completely out again! Oh, we are a clever family, aren't we! Mac was furious that the dent wasn't removed when this snapshot was taken – last Monday, but it is, now, so you must just picture the car looking in its usual perfect state. The shadow sitting by the driver's seat is Mother, and I have already taken up the hem of my coat once but it appears from this, not enough. Excuse me while I get needle and thread, and to work . . .
Last night, Thursday, I went to the theatre to see a new all-negro show, Simply Heavenly. Rather a mixed-up sort of thing, with some attractive dancing if you like negro style, and some very lively singing and some very loud playing in the orchestra pit. Afterwards, I motored to the Town Hall to await the arrival of my brother, with the ballot boxes from his polling station. It was rather fun sitting there in the warm darkness, watching the cars and taxis come sweeping around the drive and up the incline to the Town Hall entrance, where police and a few interested spectators clustered around to see what had happened as each arrival put their result up on the board. Made one feel quite part of the city. I got out after a time and wandered around, just looking and listening, simply dripping with my silver foxes – or dropping, which is nearer the right description for what they do! – and feeling quite pleasantly detached from all the hullabaloo. As you know, when there's any hullabaloo I'm usually in the middle of it . . .
Yours most sincerely,
Frances W.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . We had a Visit Royal at home on Sunday. Mac and I had worked very hard indeed in the garden over the weekend, and it looked quite lovely, for the weather has not been warm enough, as yet, to turn the moss brown, so we still have good green lawns between the flower beds, and all the bluebells are out and some bright yellow flowers, and even the hedges are sporting blossoms. So I said why didn't Mac bring Audrey along that evening to see the garden. Mac, who was by then all dressed up to go calling on her, hummed and ha'ed and went off. A little later, I was indoors when the telephone went. It was Mac, calling from Audrey's home. Had I told Mother Audrey might be coming? No, I hadn't, did he wish me to tell her or to warn her? Well, it was a little difficult – they were just about to have dinner at the Fagans', and then Audrey would have to change, as she was wearing slacks. I said I was wearing my gardening dress and would have to apologise when Audrey arrived, as all our tiaras were in the pawnshop at the moment so she must excuse us for not being properly dressed. Mac, who was getting more and more pompous every minute, decided it was safer to ring off, and did so. Mother and I hastily had our after-dinner coffee, and were still drinking it when Audrey arrived – still in her slacks!!
Mind you, Mr Bigelow, Audrey IN slacks is the equivalent of me in Ascot high-style . . . The slacks are green tartan and the cardigan to match is the best cashmere wool, and the shoes are handmade, and there is a special rustic sort of wristwatch being sported, to be in the right key. I, of course, was still in my gardening dress. That is, I was wearing a plain green woollen dress that has been knelt in, sat in, fallen in over a period of years. It was clean – well, fairly – but hardly straight out of the band-box. My face was fairly clean, too, but only lightly dusted with powder and a swipe of lipstick. The false eyelashes I always intend to buy and try were where they always are when I want them – still in the shop. And my hands looked, I daresay, as if I had been gardening. Understandably!
When she was leaving after her Royal Tour of Inspection, Audrey said she and her family sit and think of all the things I do, and feel so terribly lazy. Not really, all that eyelash stuff to put on and off all day . . . I daresay you can't expect to have bits of pottery, and embroidery, and cushion covers, and upholstery, and paintings, and gardens, and garden gates and look like something straight out of a beauty-shop-cum-dressmaker's . . .
Now I must dash out and post this . . . I will leave you with my usual best wishes for your health and happiness, extended on this occasion to include the cats and/or kitten/s, from your most regular correspondent, the
One and Only (Original)
Cat Nori
(and a stray, at that!)
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Oh dear, Mr Bigelow – after all my scoffing at Audrey's father and his love of popping in to hospitals to have a check-over or a cardiograph – he went and died on Monday! Apparently his action (or lack of it in this case) astonished everybody including the panel of specialists who have been attending him at great expense. Having decided that the only thing wrong with him was mental, they kept him under heavy drugs for three or four days to 'give his mind a rest' and at the end of it, his heart just stopped. Nobody was expecting it; he was all alone in his London nursing home and his family here in Bournemouth. I cannot pretend to any sorrow, first as I had never met him, and second, as I did not like anything I heard of him. But no doubt it will complicate things for my brother. Whether he is pleased at this possible solution of his problem or not, I do not know, for he is a clam on the subject. It did occur to me to wonder whether one of the attractions of Audrey was her inaccessibility? For you may remember, Father was heavy-handed and refused to allow men in the house. So Mac used to sneak in when Father was away, and when he wasn't, Audrey would telephone in a hushed whisper. All very intriguing and the sort of thing I loathe.
Now it's six o'clock and the mail goes at that hour, so whether or not you have your full quota of miseries and moans this week, I must finish and get this away.
I had a letter from Rosalind in Lisbon; have my 'plane ticket and £20-worth of French francs ready for July 15th, so roll on the date.
Yours irritably,
Frances W.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . I have unwittingly, apparently, created a precedent in Bournemouth. You know I applied last December 1st (the appropriate date) for a rise? Well, the wheels of Local Government grind exceedingly slowly, and very finely, but at long last therecommendation of my Committee was considered by the Establishment Committee this week, the latter being the one that controls all staff and salaries from high up. And they came to the conclusion that my Committee hadn't recommended a high enough grade for me! Also came to the conclusion that it wouldn't really be very nice to override my Committee and give me what they thought I deserved, so they just passed the Baths Committee's recommendation. Not, perhaps, very nice for me, since it is going to cost me the difference between £40 a year extra, which I shall now get, and £115 a year extra, which I might have got! But I was told that never before in living memory had such a thing happened, so on the whole I am both pleased with the Establishment Committee, and with all my friends at court, and, to a degree, with me. My new grading won't affect me until the 1st September: nine months from the time I asked for a rise. Excuse me while I go out and water my patience, which needs all the sustenance it can get these days . . .
I must post this now. Do you notice I have had the mechanic down to put my space-bar right on the typewriter? It used to jump two spaces instead of one, between words. Now it doesn't go one at all . . . . . . If only the window were not barred, I swear I would tip the wretched thing out into the area, honestly I would. One day when I dust the desk, I will accidentally sweep it off onto the floor and hope it will be so damaged as to be irreparable.
Next week, I shall probably be so jittery about Paris I shan't be able to type more than a postcard to you, so I am warning you not to expect too much: even now, I am having a fit of the trembles and can scarcely hold a pen, and on the typewriter my fingers get a sort of St Vitus's dance and come down all over the shop.
I do hope you are well and happy, busy with racing and cats, and collecting letters from Bournemouth and cards from all over Southern Europe.
Till next week, then, look after yourself.
Yours most sincerely,
Frances W.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
One day this week, when I was coming rather sadly to work, I met the postman and he handed me a letter. It was from Florence Olsen, and do you know, she said she was so envious of Rosalind, Matt Beall, and me in Paris she wanted to get in on the party and had thought of an idea – and enclosed a cheque for $25, to pay for a dinner for the three of us, with wine, in the hope that she would be able to imagine us having a good time. Wasn't that sweet of her – and won't I, too, have a good time playing at hostess on her behalf ? . . .
We wangled Mother, all unsuspecting, into meeting Audrey's mother the other evening, and after we had seen their garden, we went to the country in their car – an enormous Jaguar which has done 700 miles so far. My brother drove, with excessive care which had me, used to him slewing around on two wheels in our tiny Austin, holding my sides to stop laughing and giving the game away . . . Mother was much taken with Mrs Fagan, and was soon showing her all our guilty secrets in the way of old snapshots, so that hurdle is now safely over. The pair of them – Mother and Mac – insisted on asking Audrey and Mrs Fagan in for a drink on our return, and of course I knew all the flowers were dead, as I had done them afresh on Sunday evening, Monday they were still all alive, Tuesday I worked late – and this was Wednesday, when they were dead. However, I don't suppose they noticed much. With the warm weather, the flowers need doing every second day, and that means 18 bowls of flowers a week, and that is quite a strain on me as well as on the garden.
Now I must write another letter, and start the evening rolling. I hope you are well and happy, and enjoying fine weather, bon appetit, and good nights of unbroken repose.
Most sincerely,
Frances W.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Sunday evening last, I went down the garden and finished cutting the hedge – that bane of my life. I am five foot four inches tall, and so is the hedge, only the hedge is much thicker than I am, being at least three feet from one side to the other, and nobody ever managed to wrap their fingers around three foot as they might (if their fingers were long enough) around me in places. Now, I can only get at one side of the hedge, as there are garden sheds built up alongside the other side. So, in order to cut the far side of the top of the edge, I borrow the bathroom stool and plant it in the flower bed, as close to the hedge as possible, and mount it. Usually it then collapses and me with it, but now and then it only sinks a foot or so into the earth and, perched on top, I can hurl myself across the hedge and, by holding my arms outstretched, I can just reach the far side of the hedge with the tip of the shears. As you may imagine, this palls after a few seconds, and to do it every other week through the summer isn't my idea of a gay life.
About four years ago it was even taller than it is now, and one day I cut about two feet off the top of the hedge and the family wouldn't speak to me for weeks. So last Sunday when I eventually went indoors, I said innocently to Mother, 'Do you remember that terrific row we had some years ago when I cut off the top of the hedge? Well, get started, my dear, because I've done it again.' Only, this time I have cut off about three feet and the part I have sawn down is now only waist high. It is also raw and unkempt and looks ghastly. I was coming back up the garden after carrying an armful of chunks to the bonfire, when who should I see but Harry the Blackbird, having a wonderful time exploring the raw mess of hedge . . . . . . never knew such insects existed as he was finding in the morass! I knew magpies were inquisitive (acquisitive?) but now I know, blackbirds are too.
. . . By now I hope most sincerely that you will have heard about the Paris fiasco. When I went back to Les Invalides to meet Rosalind and Mrs Beall, only Mrs Beall turned up. I looked aghast, and she said there had been a message on the 'plane as it landed, that Mrs Akin's husband wanted her to stay on the 'plane and go straight on to New York'. So poor Rosalind went off for a night flight wondering what on earth catastrophe had caused this order, and wondering whether you were seriously ill, or one of her grandchildren . . . I will write you at length next week and tell you what I did and saw and where I went in my two days: the first was mostly taken up with accompanying Mrs Beall on shopping forays (you Americans!) and the next day she wanted to 'visit with' a girl she had known in Alton, one Dolly somebody or other, and I didn't feel like tagging along, so I spent the entire day on my own and quite enjoyed it, especially as the sun shone. Forgot to eat lunch! However, all that next week.
Mother would have 'phoned me, had there been any letter from America by the second delivery this morning, so I must just go on hoping that you are well and happy and enjoying fine weather and the yachting which is undoubtedly going on, and that Rosalind's miserably worried flight to New York was QUITE UNNECESSARY! When I left, Mrs Beall was working herself up into quite a nice panic (she's the type) so I daresay the plans I have made to see her twice while she is in England will, like all my others this summer, come to grief. A veritable jinx, that's me. I had thought of cabling you, but it's a bit silly to wire 'Are you well?' because if you weren't, you couldn't answer and that might worry you. So I did not bother you in the hope of a letter, or some explanation from Rosalind which will, in any case, probably turn up early next week.
Yours most sincerely
and " worried,
Frances W.
PS Shop sign: 'MEUBLES,
PAYSAN et BOURGEOIS'.
My translation: Common & Middle-class Marbles.
NO?
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Tuesday morning a letter came from Rosalind saying everybody at home was well, and it was Mr Akin's worry about the Near East situation that made him cable her to go straight home from Rome and not stop off in Paris to spend two days with me. This letter was a great relief to me, as you may imagine, for I had been waiting from midnight the previous Tuesday to hear you were alright. As I don't know him and cannot therefore have any knowledge of his good points to offset his others, it will be a long time before I forgive Mr Akin. Don't tell Rosalind this, please: it was bad enough for her to be so worried on the flight home.
I am so glad you weren't the cause of Rosalind's unhappy rush back to America.
Most sincerely,
Frances W.
PS Thank you for another Reader's Digest, and for the Yacht book – nice, cheerful photo of you.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Well, I spent Saturday evening, and most of Sunday, with Mrs Beall in London, and we went to the theatre (very bad, acting poor enough to have been outdone, easily, by the Upper Tooting Bec Amateur Dramatic Club in an off-season) and ate at Rules, an Edwardian restaurant off the Strand. We saw the tail-end of the changing of the guard, and went out to Hatfield, where all three of Henry VIII's children were 'kept' when young, and both Mary and, in her turn, Elizabeth were more or less exiled later in their young lives. It was a glorious house, full of many lovely things – a most delicious, carefully written letter from Henry VIII's young son to his royal father: just like any other little boy writing, in his very best hand, to show Poppa how he is progressing under his teacher. There were several pairs of enormous Chinese vases, but the only one I liked, the guide didn't mention. They were celadon green, pale and unearthly, with raised white swags of flowers on them. Now used as lamp bases. And in the great Library, I suddenly turned and looked out of one of the windows, and there below me was the most gorgeous garden you could imagine, spread out one storey below. Very lovely, and all the nicer for being so unexpected.
I also decided that Mrs Beall is a dear, but better taken in small doses for me! She fusses so it eventually gets me irritated and I'm hard put to it not to snap at her when, for the seventh time, she asks if I am quite sure a No. 9 bus will take her to Harrods. As she is inclined, unless restrained, to take the first bus that comes along, for fear she will miss the right one if she waits another second, perhaps she feels that information given her is only given to deceive, and not to help. She also talks – non-stop – in a staccato manner which eventually becomes rather tiresome to my ears – I don't mind the Middle-West accent, and after all, I have an English accent of my own so why should I object to somebody else's, but to have every word made quite separate, and fired out like peas from a peashooter, is something less than musical . . .
It is Friday now, and another sopping wet day. When this goes on for long, and the turmoil and noise all day and all evening in the building never ceases, my poor boss gets almost into a breakdown. Today is his day off, thank goodness, so we can rush around without the certain knowledge that any minute the Heavens may descend on us (or on a hapless customer, it depends who happens to be in the way when the explosion occurs!). I have been issuing tickets for agencies, paying wages, doing returns of takings and cash, washing up, making beds, serving teas, showing Councillors around the building, discussing parties coming to the water show with Aldermen . . . . . . just as I reached that word, a knock on my door heralded in a policeman with a request to see one of the show people. He knew the man was here because his car was outside. So I had to fetch the man concerned, and of course the policeman wanted to interview him in my office, so I shot off to lunch a bit before I had intended to – although it was already my lunchtime, anyway. Then I came back, rushed in to finish your letter, and got called away to attend to somebody who had cut her foot, and then to attend to somebody else who was making an outcry because she couldn't take her itsy-bitsy little dog into the bathroom with her. And finally, at long last, back to say au revoir to you until next week, when please pray for finer weather for us before we all die of duck-feet, nervous breakdowns and plain drowning in depressed holidaymakers!
Hope you, anyway, are redressing the balance by enjoying yourself and fine weather, too.
Yours sincerely,
Frances W.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Oh dear! Please don't go getting the wrong idea – I didn't send you that marmalade jar minus lid; it was a gift Rosalind bought for you in Italy, I believe, and left behind in the turmoil of the French Farce. So I brought it home with me intending to give it to Mrs Beall to carry back, and then Rosalind wrote and said could I post it to you, so I did. I understand Rosalind has the lid . . .
The other day I wandered around the Sales in my lunch hour, and bought a length of pale brown wool cloth for my mother, with the intention of making her a dress for her birthday. On reaching home and showing it to her, M. tossed her head and would have none of it, saying it was so thick she'd never be able to stop wearing it, for fear of catching colds, and she didn't need a new dress and for Heaven's sake why did I keep spending my money on her . . . . . . about here, I went out, a bit depressed, and Mac followed to say I didn't have much luck with the things I bought for Mother did I! Quite brotherly, he was, all of a sudden. Well, next morning M. had evidently had a change of mind, because she was all smiles and said she still didn't want a dress, but did I think I could make a coat for her – a summer coat?
So obligingly I went out and bought a pattern for a coat. Saturday evening I cut it out, and all day Sunday, morning, afternoon, and early evening, I made it. Finished up by making a beret in the same material, and Mother went off to dinner in the evening wearing her new coat and beret-hat and looking delightful! She is like a cat with two tails – or was it a dog? I forget . . .
Thank you, in turn, for your nice letters of August 6th and 11th. I see from the latter that you say at the recent Race Meetings you felt, compared with the other committee members, 'dead and buried'. Now Mr Bigelow, a lecture is coming up, so duck if you wish or take your punishment like a man, if you prefer. So old, indeed, as to feel that way? Really, Mr B. you know full well you may be old, but you are not elderly, and years are but man-made means of telling time. You may be buried in Bellport and its surrounding towns, but your mind ranges over the whole globe, via books and letters and interests: you continue to be old, if you will (and please do!) but so long as you don't act elderly, there will be no complaints from this direction. When Mrs Beall complains because her private bathroom is ten feet from her bedroom, and pays insurance so that every winter when she gets a bad chest cold she may go into hospital and be coddled; when she won't eat any toast except that actually made at the table so that it's piping hot and soggy with butter; when she doses herself with pills to keep her weight down, and overeats excessively because she has reached the age where she feels she ought to indulge herself (!) . . . . . . then you might say she was elderly . . . End of lecture from somebody currently feeling 110.
. . . And now, from one young soul to another (whatever our respective years) in slightly shop-worn cases,
Au revoir until next Saturday,
Most sincerely,
Frances W.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Now, if I break out into French from time to time, you will know it's all baloney and swollen-headedness, because I got on so very well indeed at the first lesson. I fear it's after, say, the third lesson my speed will reduce to normal, at which (in learning a foreign tongue, anyway) a snail in throes of rigor mortis could beat me with ease. However, we shall see. The teacher has, to my surprise, a particularly elegant French accent. To my surprise, because his English is covered with a patina of Cockney, or some local accent very similar. As a Cockney myself (though I hope to Heaven not with a Cockney accent!) I always thought it was especially difficult for us to get our tongues around French. Perhaps, as time goes on, we shall discover this teacher spent his early years in French seminaries . . .
Something I forgot to tell you about my holiday: it made me chuckle, and perhaps will have a small effect on you. As you will remember, I took the car. You probably won't remember because I've never told you, but we garage our car in a small lock-up garage behind a house on the other side of the road. While I was away, Mac needed a car for business, so Audrey insisted he took the Jaguar, and you know what they are – once around the gasometer – twice around the Jag. Well, Mac fussed and fiddled, turned and reversed, turned again – and eventually got the Jaguar pointing in a dead straight line with the open doors of our lock-up. From there, it was easy, and he got into the garage with an inch to spare on one side, and an inch-and-a-half on the other. He sat and rested on his laurels for a few minutes, then with a sign of relief started to get out. Ah – you've guessed it, you horrid thing – he was more than an inch-and-a-half thick, so couldn't get through the open door. A bit of brain-searching, and he decided to get out through the sunshine roof. He told me he had even gone so far as to remove his shoes, so that he wouldn't scratch the paintwork, when it occurred to him to wonder how he would get back in the morning. In the end, he left the huge thing outside all night, and when Mother remonstrated with him, said calmly, 'I hid it behind a large lorry.'
Quick News Flash! I went downstairs on Thursday to pick up the mail, lying on the doormat, and came up saying it wasn't much – a reminder to Mac that his driving licence was due to be renewed, and a bill, and a typewritten envelope for Mother. This I gave to her in the kitchen, and came out to harry my brother a bit, it being a trifle late. Suddenly the kitchen exploded!! Out burst Mother, waving her letter in her hand, and crying, 'I've won! I've won!' When we calmed her down a trifle it appeared she had won first prize in a local competition for a recipe for tomato soup. I remember typing it out for her about five weeks ago, and a covering letter explaining that it was a recipe she had used, as a new bride, over half a century ago, to cheer her mother-in-law up when she was feeling ill or out of sorts. Then the newspaper printed items saying they had had so many entries, the result was being postponed a week. Then we forgot all about it, it was so long ago. And now our dear clever little mum has won it! She is to get a complete set of aluminium saucepans with coloured lids, to be presented at home next Monday. As we left, she was flying to the telephone a) to tell her sister, and b) to make a hair appointment. Mac said to me, 'We'd better get cracking over the weekend, wiping a bit of dirt off the kitchen'. I remarked, sadly, 'and to think Mother has had that recipe in her memory all these years, and we've never even tasted the soup at all.' True, soups are Mother's strong cooking point, but here we are, after all these years, discovering hidden depths in our Mrs Malaprop . . .
Currently I am engaged in reading Stendhal's Rouge et Noir and loathing it. Perhaps it is a work of genius; perhaps it is the best French psychological novel ever written, I wouldn't know. I know only that the characters exasperate me, they are so stupid. Do you notice, I even punch the keys of the typewriter extra hard, I get so mad when I think of them. I keep it beside my bed, and read a little each night to make sure I do my daily stint. Honestly, I'd almost rather learn French irregular verbs . . .
Now to rush home, change into something dirty, and rush back for painting class. Nice; nobody will ask me to use my brain or my memory.
Yours most sincerely,
Frances W.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
When we were very small children, on Boxing Day we all used to go to the pantomime at Wimbledon Theatre, taking practically the whole of the front row of the dress circle for the family, visiting kin, and our special chums. One year, Mac was ill and had to stay at home with the maid, and as a special compensatory 'treat', when he was better, Mother and Father took him up to town to see the pantomime at Drury Lane – the theatre in the whole of the British Isles for a Christmas pantomime at that time. Now, of course, My Fair Lady is there so pantomime will be ousted. However, this was back in the twenties, and the pantomime, from all accounts, was something specially out of this world and Peggy and I never heard the end of it. Very fed up with the Drury Lane pantomime we got over the succeeding years, I can tell you.
And now, all those years later, the same thing is being repeated on a smaller scale, and Mother is the culprit, if that is the right word. Mrs Fagan (mother of Audrey, Mac's girlfriend) is buying a new television set, and was furious when she discovered the firm would allow her only £5 or £10 on her old one, depending on the price she paid for the new one. Mac, thinking the deal had been closed, said, 'Well, if they will give you £10 for the set against this new one, I'll give you £11.' And Mrs F., discovering that Mac wanted a set for Mother, was delighted and immediately said she'd give it to Mother for Christmas!!! So now we have a television set in the living room on top of everything else, and if we buy so much as another ashtray there will be only one thing for it – we'll have to move to a bigger place.
To continue with my tale. The television set isn't yet connected (this afternoon the firm is due to come and do the work) but on Tuesday morning, leaving for the office, I heard Mac tell Mother when it was going to be fixed up, and remarked that it was a pity, because had it been put in on Tuesday Mother could have seen the historic occasion of the Queen opening Parliament. So Mother promptly goes to the grocer for her daily shopping, and moans a bit, and discovers that the grocer has had a television set himself for the past week – so he invited Mother in to see the programme. She does, and believe me, we shall go a long time before Mother lets us forget she saw the Queen, and we didn't. She has now adopted a most delightful air of proprietorship over the television programmes, purely on the strength of having seen that one, and goes around making gracious comments on the planning, arrangements, photography, comments, and everything else about it. Mac and I are hugging ourselves for glee! What she will be like when she can sit and watch the darn thing all afternoon every afternoon, before I get home, I fear to imagine. I think she will have a lovely time, though, and am so happy for it. For my own part, I have always been sorry not to be able to see such historic events – or sporting events, perhaps – on the television screen, but it has always gone against my Scottish grain to spend £60 (which I haven't got, anyway) just to see something for perhaps an hour a week, with the possibility of wasting many more hours a week looking at third-rate stuff just because the wretched thing is there, and one feels one must watch it to get a better return for the outlay . . .
Now for the post: I have watched the postman for days but there has been no letter from you; perhaps there will be one this evening when I get home, or perhaps I shall, after all, have to change postmen. The last one gave much better service.
Yours most sincerely,
Frances W.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
What to write about this week? The probable fiasco of my talk to the 40 Thieves' Wives. In other words, the Bank Managers' Wives Club. When I said yes, I would give them this talk, the date was so far ahead it was like the millennium, interesting but unlikely in our time. But now it has arrived like a dental appointment . . .
The Talk went off, I thought, quite well. True, I got hardly any laughs, but that might have been either because, in my nervousness, I went full speed ahead and all ears had to be bent in my direction to keep pace with me at all, so that nobody had any time to spare for a giggle; or, it might have been that my little jokes weren't as funny as I thought they were. The only real guffaw I got was when I told the assembled 46 females (ough, what a collection!) that in 1862 Turkish Baths were recommended for, amongst other ailments, 'enfeeblement of the mind', and told them that if any of them felt they came in that category, to come along for a Turkish Bath and we could find them plenty of company. Still, they were very attentive, most complimentary after-wards, and by the Grace of God I knew one woman there – worked with her for three years during the war, but never knew her husband had gone so far ahead as to be a Bank Manager, even of a very little branch of a small bank! However, I think half the staff must have dropped down dead, and he got the job, so his wife rushed from a Literary Lunch to a Turkish Bath Tea merely in order to hear me, bless her little heart. Oh yes – they nearly stung me 2s.6d. to come in! All the women were paying a shilling, so I queued up, not seeing anybody who looked like the couple who shanghai'd me into doing the talk, and when my turn came, said to the woman at the desk, 'I'm this afternoon's victim.' 'Well, that'll be 2s.6d.,' she said. I looked a little blank, so she kindly repeated it for me, saying, 'Visitors always pay 2s.6d.' I was getting my money out, but thought I'd better put her right, and of course on my announcing, as perhaps I should have done at first, that I was the Invited Lecturer, followed Collapse of Secretary. They gave me a pound box of chocolates in the end, which was very nice and will come in handy to give to somebody else for Christmas!!!
. . . The rain is simply tippling down, and a good part of it is tippling through my office window, where an old ragged towel is fighting a losing battle to stop it running over the tiled sill, down the wall, and onto the parquet floor where it leaves a little white rivulet of stain in the morning. And, of course, I must needs make an appointment to have my hair done tonight, so that it will be all out of wave by the time I get, damply, home afterwards. Had to get it done now, in readiness for the party at the Fagans next Friday . . . I think I've been asked a) to help wash glasses, and b) to keep Mrs Fagan company while Mac looks after Audrey, and her young sister Wendy looks after the 30 other guests. I refuse point-blank to buy an evening dress for the occasion, so shall probably feel horribly out of everything, and having taken my stand on that, am being equally firm (and broke) and not buying evening or even afternoon shoes, but wearing a pair of beige summer sandals. The heck with them – I shall do the washing up in the kitchen where nobody will see me, and for the rest, will curl up on the settee with my feet under me, or as much of them as will go under me, my feet being somewhat on the large size. English understatement, classic example of.
Now, au revoir until next week, and in case next Saturday's letter doesn't arrive in time, here is another wish that Christmas will be, if not gay and merry, happy and contented for you, which is a much, much better wish than any hilarity might be.
Yours most sincerely,
Frances W.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Monday evening this week . . . rather in fear and trembling, Mac suddenly announced to me privately that he was getting engaged on Friday. In fact, that he was engaged, but the announcement was being made at that party to which I had been invited 'to help with washing the glasses'. So there you are; I have been happily taking it for granted the status quo would continue indefinitely, and all the while other people have been equally happily, no doubt, engaged in planning otherwise. Audrey is to undergo an operation early next year, or never, for she will not much longer have the strength to survive it, and even now it is a matter of 50/50 odds, poor soul. Mac says they have become engaged because Audrey needs all the support she can get in this time, and he feels he must give it her . . . 'if it should come to marriage,' he went on grimly, while I held my breath to stop myself from laughing. Engagements usually come to marriage, don't they? I thought that was the whole idea. But from the way Mac said it, it sounded very much as though he were saying . . . 'if it comes to the worst, we can always have the bad tooth out.' He also told me what he could manage (he hopes) in the way of a financial help for Mother, and what he had planned about the car, and said, casually, '. . . and I would live there.' What, not live with us, and commute to and fro his wife's home? I am astounded! After all, he could spend 3 days with us and 4 with her, and alternate each week . . . I can only imagine he was so terrified of my reaction he didn't really know what he was saying. Poor man, I had no idea my opinion mattered so much to him, and I am afraid I was so shocked – not shocked, but it was such a shock – that I wasn't as sisterly and affectionate as I should have been. Never mind, I'll ask him to stop at the Fagans' on the way home this evening, and pop my head around the door and say 'Hallo, Sis' to Audrey, and all will be well.
Later: it wasn't really quite as easy as the last paragraph suggested! We stopped at the Fagans', I rang the bell, Audrey came rushing to answer, and I said, 'Hallo, Sis, nice to have you coming into the family,' and gave her a hug. I then thought I'd go even further, and apologised for not having telephoned my felicitations the night before, when Mac told me, but said I was so surprised I couldn't even move! Audrey looked a bit chilly, and remarked that she didn't see why anybody should be surprised, as she and Mac had known each other for eighteen months. I didn't make any further comment, thinking I had done enough harm even by being surprised!
To be honest, I can imagine people being surprised for two reasons. First my brother has been a very gay butterfly and his girls have changed with the seasons because, perhaps as a result of being a prisoner all those war years, at the slightest suggestion that anyone is trying to pin him down, attain a position from which to have any control over him, he shies off like an unbroken colt. The other reason is Audrey's health: for a girl with a hole in her heart, tragically destined to a life of invalidism, to get married, might be thought surprising by some people. By me, for instance. However, I don't know the whole story and it may well be, as my brother says, that they are getting engaged now so that he can give her support in her coming operation, rather than wait to see how she gets on and then announce their engagement. Certainly Audrey seems to be able to order my brother about with a good deal of success already. He told Mother yesterday morning, and I believe she was very pleased about it all, although today she is a little nearer earth as she has apparently been thinking things over. I gave her some money last night for a new dress for the engagement party, and this morning she returned it (all that means is that I shall go out and buy a dress for her today, instead of leaving the choice to her) and she also said, à propos of (apparently) nothing whatsoever, that she didn't think it was at all necessary to buy her a refrigerator, because they were so expensive and she didn't really need one . . . . . . bless her, we aren't going to be as poor as all that.
So, a very Happy New Year to you dear Mr Bigelow, and don't you go and get engaged: I couldn't stand it.
Yours most sincerely,
Frances W.
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Well, we can put it off no longer: the engagement party. You may remember in last week's letter I told you Audrey has asked me to go and keep her mother company and help wash glasses? Well, although I have seen forty summers and a few, I must still be as naive as when I was sixteen, because I thought she was joking . . . . . . By one o'clock I was very, very tired of collecting dirty glasses and washing them and bringing them back clean and collecting dirty glasses and washing and bringing them back . . . . . . was quite giddy with such a dizzy round, so I said I was tired and made my brother take me home. He was furious, as well as not being in a fit state to drive, really. However, we met nothing on the way, and he promptly turned around and went back and got home in the end about 3.30 and woke me up with his noise. The cat woke me up about 4.30 wanting to go out, and Mother dropped some-thing heavy like the flatirons about 6.30 a.m., so whoever may have thought the party a success, it was not me. At least, not after, say 11 p.m. when the glamour of all those crystal glasses began to pall.
Audrey was very prettily overdressed, as usual, in a pale blue satin Empire line evening dress, heavily embroidered with pearls and diamanté and silver-thread. She sported a pair of earrings five rows of diamonds thick and about three inches long. Fortunately her dress was topless, so there were no shoulder-straps to get caught up in the ear-rings, and no monkeys to swing from them, either. As if all this glitter wasn't enough, she had a pink and gold embroidered chiffon stole in clouds around her. She also wore the engagement ring, quite a pretty thing and not, I should imagine expensive, poor Mac. I wouldn't expect or wish it to be otherwise, but cattily I did wish she hadn't worn three enormous rings set with at least fourteen stones, on the third finger of her other hand! Just for that one evening, anyway. As you may imagine, I am not terribly enthusiastic about Audrey, being rather averse to being so prettily ordered about.
Mac's friends were there in force, and the general opinion seemed to be it was about time he got engaged. He has two groups of friends: the West Hants Club group – they were the ones at the party – and the other group, who were acquired through his work and his family. This latter group is, I think, a bit dismayed by the engagement, whereas the former think it an ideal arrangement. To my horror, I cannot get much enthusiasm worked up, nor show great happiness. With my mind I wish them happiness; with the rest of me I am selfishly watching my own dismal future and feeling very, very glum about it and, possibly as a result, blaming that on Audrey, which I quite realise is terribly unfair of me . . .
Now I will finish this and get it posted. I do hope you will have had a happy, merry Christmas, with plenty of good cheer and visits from all your friends, and a letter from Rosalind bang on the right day; and of course I do hope you have a very Happy New Year, with good health and a sufficiency of sleep to keep you well and happy and full of ideas with which to prod me into a rude reply.
Bless you, and thank you for everything,
Affectionately,
Frances W.