A Notable Woman

by Jean Lucey Pratt

  It will not matter: war and death and the spoliation of one’s loved possessions. Whether we live violently and die damnably, or long and die in peace, we die. We die and our loved possessions must become possessed of another’s love or crumble away unloved. Only the love we can give out in passing matters; it is the only thing that lingers after a person dies.

  I wish brother Pooh was in England. Homefield is a big responsibility for me alone. Ethel went away on July 1st, and I had to undertake the move and warehousing quite by myself. Lonely? No, I haven’t felt lonely yet, there has been too much to do. War? Then let there be war, I can do nothing to stop the mass foolishness of barbarians. My room here fills me with delight. But if I could send a message to Heaven, I would ask an angel to tell my father that I love him, that I love him.

  Tuesday, 18 August

  I have acquired a kitten. Its curiosity is insatiable. Writing is difficult with Cheeta walking over the page.

  Friday, 21 August

  Next Friday I start with cousin Martin and his girlfriend Dorothy on our motor tour in Europe (he has an Alvis). Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, N. Italy, Nice. And then I may take up ballroom dancing with Joan Silvester at the Empress Rooms in October. I am also getting involved with a Communist movement in Hampstead. I even typed some cards for them yesterday. What will the Conservative relatives say …

  Tuesday, 25 August

  The movement is not specifically Communist, but a movement to establish a Popular Front in England involving all parties, sects, religions and classes. A good thing and an urgent one I feel.

  Nockie was full of scorn at first at the ballroom dancing idea, but the more I think of it the more I approve. I need hardening, smartening: if I dance I shall have to care for my hair, nails, clothes, and I think it should give me the confidence among the sophisticated that I lack. Clothes, or rather one’s physical appearance, is the symbol of character. A really smart woman must be intelligent. The tragedy is that not all intelligent women are smart.

  Thursday, 27 August

  I add my name (humbly) to the list that appears at the end of the letter in the Statesman this week on Britain and the Spanish War. ‘It was almost universally held that the noblest contribution of the British to European civilisation has been our theory and practice of political liberty and parliamentary democracy … It has taken over 300 years of our history to establish and consolidate this characteristically British freedom and we have had to defend it against our own kings, aristocracy, army leaders and … Spanish, French, German monarchs, dictators, conquerors … At present in Spain a constitutional government, elected by the people, is being attacked by a junta of generals who have declared their intention of destroying parliamentary democracy in that country … We who sign this letter agree in retaining belief in the British ideals of political freedom and democracy.’

  Everyone at present is afraid that Socialism and Communism means an attack on their property; the idea is fostered by a capitalistically controlled Press. But I don’t see why the confiscation of individual property must be necessary to bring about the reforms needed. Everyone is so smug: so scared for their own safety. But there is evidence of immense wealth in this country, and I am sure it is only a matter of readjustment and intelligent control of the situation. Not by Fascism or military despotism – that is death, not life to the people. The individual’s material needs are limited: after a certain point luxury becomes a vice, and possessions superfluous. The trouble is, I suppose, that the surplus millions are controlled by a small set of powerful persons who have so strangled themselves spiritually that they can only kill and corrupt life.

  I am all for the Vogue way of living: elegance, grace, culture. I consider it necessary to fine living, and know it to be a difficult achievement. But my sense of justice demands that everyone is given a fair chance to achieve that social height. The finest intelligence and most artistic nature should be at the top, but not bolstered there by immoral economic support. Give every man and woman sufficient means to feed and clothe and house themselves, and let the intelligent and artistic rise as they should by the natural development of their capabilities. Let us be snobbish about ugliness and meanness and lies, and let us encourage kindness and cultivate manners and good taste.

  Friday, 28 August

  On the eve of this long-planned motor trip in Europe it has occurred to me that I have made no will. I have been told repeatedly I should make one, but it is such a complicated business I have shirked it. But supposing something happened, who on earth would settle my affairs?

  In The Event of My Sudden Death during coming fortnight, I appoint (or request) my friends Marjorie Nockolds and Joan Bulbulian executrices.

  My share of the property at Wembley and all invested and current monies I leave to my brother Leslie Vernon Pratt (c/o Pacific Cable Board, Barbados, BWI), with the exception of the War Loan Stock, which I should like transferred to my friend Marjorie Nockolds, and £100 to my friend Constance Oliver.

  I should like Constance Oliver also to choose whatever furniture she cares to have from the lots stored with John Sanders of Ealing Broadway, with the exception of the grandfather clock, which I leave to my cousin Margaret Royan, and the piano, which I leave to my cousin Joyce Joliffe.

  And furniture for which Constance cannot find a use I should like my stepmother Ethel Mary Pratt to have in the hope that she may buy her cottage soon.

  All MSS, Notebooks, Diaries etc to be burnt please without being read.

  My new fur coat (purchased this week and being stored with John Lewis of Oxford St) I leave to my friend Mrs Valerie Honour. My other clothes to my friend Zoe Randall (109 Charlotte St), and also to her my sewing machine.

  My jewellery I leave to my sister in law, Ivy Pratt. My typewriter to John Rickman. My best deep-blue tea service to Gus (Geoffrey Harris). My plants and kitten to Joan Bulbulian, and my good wishes to everyone I haven’t mentioned.

  Thank you all,

  Jean Lucey Pratt

  ‘Only the brightest memories remain.’ Jean’s parents, George and Sarah.

  13.

  Israel Epstein

  Saturday, 29 August 1936 (aged twenty-six)

  Luxembourg.

  For a fortnight I hope no one can send me bills, solicitors cannot disturb me, and property need not worry me. We drove to Dover last night, lost our way and Martin his temper, arrived half an hour late but allowed on board. Belgium incredibly boring, drab, beaten, until we go beyond Brussels. Picnic lunch in Soignes Forest, lovely. Scenery from Namur to Bastogne and Luxembourg boundary enchanting. Dorothy and I sleeping in car, Martin in cart at side. Soon must wash in babbling brook.

  Wednesday, 2 September

  We have come through Luxembourg into Germany via Trier, the Saar, Hamburg, Karlsruhe, Freiburg, Titisee, the Bodensee, Meersburg, into Austria, Bregenz, and are now camped in the valley somewhere between Bludenz and Partenen. Nothing but mountains, fir trees, river blue sky and a sun setting on the further side of the valley. Martin and Dorothy have gone in search of milk.

  It took me three days to realise I was abroad again: everything seemed so like England – trains, roads, cars, trams, European clothes. The civilised countries are getting alike. Everything in Germany very clean, efficient, stolid. A nation of mechanics, without imagination, kind, but ugly, bullet-headed, fat, corpulent, cigar smokers, beer drinkers. In Bavaria flowers in the windows everywhere. We went to a Biergarten last night in Lindau, but though the people there were well fed, I thought them dull, heavy, drably dressed.

  Atmosphere in Austria a little different. A more dreamy light in the eyes of the people, villages still clean, but not so tidy. As Dorothy remarked, Austria seems the same as Germany but without that solidity.

  M. rather mean-minded. Haggles about halfpennies and begrudges us a postcard. Dorothy is pretty, feminine, a little stupid, but easy to know.

  Sunday, 6 September

  We are now at the Gasthaus in the Falkenstein. Yesterday we spent
partly at the Freiburg baths, and today we walked a little way into the Black Forest. They aren’t walkers, the others. I am not a walker either, but can walk the others tired without much difficulty. Martin doesn’t drink beer or spirits or smoke; his only appetite is for tea, which he drinks at any hour of the day. Lovely country, but a little too lush, too dark. I feel hemmed in, bowed down by mountains, vision barred and escape impossible.

  Monday, 7 September

  No marks left for a meal. We are feeding off nuts and peaches.

  Friday, 11 September

  Hampstead. Arrived back soon after seven. Cheeta was sweet but thinner and larger. Plants dusty and badly watered.

  Wednesday, 16 September

  Do not feel I have had a holiday at all, swept as I am into the turmoil again. Find I have been elected a member of the People’s Front Propaganda Committee.

  From The Sunday Times … am gratified that I heard this story weeks ago:

  ‘There is this story, which is enjoying great popularity in Berlin. A lion escaped from a menagerie and arrived at a crowded restaurant in the dinner hour. Everybody fled in terror except one little man, who refused to move until the lion was near to him, when he took up a sharp knife and cut its throat. A newspaper reporter, who saw the affair from a doorway, rushed up and congratulated him “on the bravest deed I have ever seen,” and promised a full report in his paper the next morning. “May I have your name, please?” “Certainly,” replied the hero. “My name is Israel Epstein.” The journalist lifted his eyebrows and walked away. Next morning the following headline appeared: “Cowardly Jew attacks defenceless lion.”’

  Sunday, 11 October

  Our democratic liberties are in danger, so I am told. Everyone seems convinced of this – some say in the form of Fascism, an unreliable government, individual industrial interests, the Jews, Communists. The People’s Front may even be a mask from Moscow. Who is one to trust?

  We want peace, individual freedom, free speech, equal opportunities. We would not tolerate a dictator. But we have no peace when partisan demonstrations cause disorder in our streets, when free speakers are bespattered with bad eggs, and opportunity is obviously the privilege of the minority.

  ‘The movement for a British Popular Front,’ wrote The Sunday Times political correspondent last week, ‘about which a good deal of noise was made in some quarters during the summer, is fizzling out.’ Is it? Although the People’s Front movement has brought these perplexities to my notice, and roused my sense of justice, I am still hesitant about its essence. If it is really a democratic movement, why has it not drawn in the more intelligent democrats? From what I have seen of them, the original members of the movement are regrettably peevish individuals, midgets with a grievance, hoping they have found something at last that will make them seem important. There is everywhere so much distrust. I would like to shrug my shoulders and leave it all for someone else to work out, which is an invitation to Fascism. We must learn to think and decide action each for ourselves.

  Sunday, 18 October

  For the first time in 27 years I celebrate the anniversary of my birth without either parent responsible for it. I have spent the whole day alone. Pooh has sent me a cable.

  Saturday, 24 October

  The exquisite Charles Scrimshaw is storming my imagination. I shall endow him with the usual extraordinary sensibilities and understanding, convince myself that his glances every Tea Dance in my direction are full of significance, and settle myself with him for the rest of my life – until I (if ever) speak to him. Then I shall discover he is not yet 25, is either married, thinking about it, or ‘pansy’ as Joan Silvester declares he is, because being inordinately conceited he combs his hair frequently before one of several mirrors.76

  Saw Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times this evening. A moving plea for the underdog.

  Wednesday, 4 November

  His glances in my direction seem more significant than ever. Nockie read my teacup a short while ago: ‘You’re going to be swept off your feet. Not a very tall man, and dark I think.’ Well, I wish the sweeping’d begin. I won’t endure another of these feeble infatuations. It is so easy, so fatal to fall in love with an idea.

  The tenant moves with his family into Homefield this week. Cheeta has run away. I am afraid she has gone for good.

  Monday, 9 November

  Events have taken an unexpected turn. Mr Watson (of the People’s Front Propaganda Committee) descended upon me on Saturday with some letters to type, stayed to tea and wants me to have dinner with him one evening. I am flattered. Now Nockie has phoned to say that what she prophesied for me has happened to her. Did she read the wrong cup?

  Saturday, 21 November

  Nockie is in the thick of her affair: the situation is an astonishing one. Both are madly in love with one another, but he is married, and still loves his wife to whom he has been married only six months. He says he never believed a person like Nockie could exist outside fiction, and neither knows what to do next.

  Friday, 27 November

  I still feel in danger of drowning when I see Scrimshaw looking at me the way he does. He is insufferably conceited: he may only think he has found another mirror in me.

  Saturday, 5 December

  I am now collecting opinions on the King-Simpson bombshell.77 My hairdresser was the first to tell me it was in the papers on Thursday morning. ‘One could forgive him making a fool of himself over something young and dainty, but an old hag like that …’

  ‘Thinks nothing of sending her £5 worth of flowers every week,’ said Mrs Rogers. That’s the sort of boyfriend I’d like. Aunt Emmie was so funny about it when I saw her in the summer: had I heard of someone at Belvedere who warmed his slippers for him?78 Of course it was a dead secret and she mustn’t repeat names, but the lady in question was married, her name began with an S, and there was a firm of the same name in the Strand …

  I am intensely sorry for him. I think the whole nation is (but no, I heard of someone’s uncle on Thursday night who said he needed horsewhipping). I do agree with the Statesman’s leader writer: he is being honest, and why won’t the government make a special law that the King’s wife need not be queen?

  ‘One did hope,’ said Aunt Maggie, ‘He would have chosen someone fresh.’

  Thursday, 10 December

  I pray that the King will neither abdicate nor give in to his ministers.

  Tuesday, 22 December

  King Edward abdicated. I was so sure he wouldn’t. Now everyone says War is upon us. I am so sure there won’t be a war.

  The Scrimshaw infatuation continues to ferment.

  Wednesday, 30 December

  I have been reading through my Journals again. That affair with Colin in Bath – what a fool I was during the first weeks we met. I had him in the hollow of my hand, but like a strange toy in the hands of a clumsy child he slipped through my fingers. It was too late when I returned in the summer. Sometimes I think I will burn the Journals, rough notes and all. But when I read them through I know I cannot.

  Saturday, 6 February 1937

  I have not had such a bad attack of inferiority complex for months. For the past week I have had grave suspicions that Joan Spall has transferred her affections (for the third time since October) to Charles Scrimshaw. I have tried to ignore them and the pain it gives me. I have only the slenderest evidence and have been making mountains of it. I woke at 7 this morning in tears about it.

  This is not an isolated instance: it has happened continually through my life, and weighs upon me heavily. Unless I make a supreme effort it will continue, so that I shall miss the affection and tenderness I crave. Without it, life is empty, however full of other things. The heart is hungry for the stimulating flow of love, and without the gift of it from another, the source in oneself dries up.

  Tuesday, 9 February

  The Empress Rooms … Joan Spall didn’t rush off to catch her train at 6.30, but was waiting suspiciously for someone in the lobby. I would so like to bel
ieve that C.S., in a discreet effort to get to know me, is trying to win Joan’s confidence first.

  Wednesday, 14 April

  I have finished The Suburban Chronicle.79 It must now be read and criticised by sundry friends, then typed and turned loose among the publishers. I do not expect that it will be accepted anywhere very easily, but if it only brings me into contact with literary circles I shall be satisfied.

  Sunday, 9 May

  Coronation, coronation, coronation. The crowds nauseate and excite me. They nauseate me because their voices are loud, their clothes ugly, their manners vulgar. They excite me because they are excited and so friendly and good-humoured. I shrink from the vulgarity and messy emotionalism fostered by the commercial magnates – this sort of thing [from the Evening News, 8 May]: ‘If you are amongst those who have still things to buy – clothes, extra delicacies for the table, something new for the home, seats for the shows you want to see – utilise the short time left to your best advantage. Make an extra careful study of the advertisement columns of The Evening News, so that you may know without delay where your requirements are to be met to your certain satisfaction.’

  I would like to feel one of a great, unified people paying homage to their new King, but I cannot. It is all so false. I wonder how much interest and loyalty they would show if it didn’t suit our tradesmen and the Church to excite it through the Press. People are saying it’s the last Coronation England is likely to have.

  Saturday, 15 May

  Saw something of the Coronation crowds and the fireworks on the Heath. Brilliant in spite of the rain. Had a long letter from Nockie, she suggests I go out to share a flat with her in Malta. Had a bad Scrimshaw attack on Thursday. Extraordinary. Thought I’d got over it.

  Saturday, 22 May

  The Suburban Chronicle came back, so magnificently typed and bound that it took me two days to summon my courage to read it. I felt as an artist must feel when he sees his first picture framed and realises it is not as good as it seemed on his easel. But I have sent it now to Jonathan Cape with a letter.