A Notable Woman

by Jean Lucey Pratt

  I didn’t know whether to keep my appointment with Dr Howe or not. I told him that the panic in London was unnerving me. And what, he asked, would I want to do if the crisis occurred? I want to stay in London. I might be able to help, do first aid. Living, I said, was so pointless if one didn’t create something.

  Our meetings are over. I tried to say I was grateful.

  Monday, 10 October

  Nockie came yesterday. She is full of gloom for our political future, believes that war is inevitable eventually, or conditions of dictatorship in England that will be worse than war, and urges me to go abroad away from it all as soon as I can. Hitler’s curve, she says, is parabolic. Watch it. We went to see Charles Boyer in Orage at the Everyman, and also the GPO film North Sea. As Nockie said, the struggle to live goes on while Hitler marches into Czechoslovakia. And fishing in the North Sea will go on, for even dictators must eat.

  Tuesday, 20 December

  We are bound by a hard frost and snow, brought, I am told, by winds from Siberia. The pipes in the flat have frozen and we still have no hot water. I have oil stores on the landing and in the bathroom. I am wearing three thick sweaters and two pairs of socks. On Sunday I walked over the Heath to Highgate. The wind cut so that it hurt to breathe.

  Tuesday, 27 December

  My Xmas has been one of pleasant plenty – presents, cards, warmth and enormous meals, disturbed a little by the thought of those in want, and the possibility of days of poverty for myself in the future. I am nearly 30 and have no right to all this comfort, security and kindness. I want to earn my right to them.

  On Sunday I went with the Poohs to a family party at Milton (Ethel’s sister). I went with them yesterday to see Peter Pan. Soon they will be on their way to Suez. Pooh means more to me than he has ever done. His marriage is one of the most successful that I know: Ivy is a very fine little person and an excellent mother. I wish we were not so nervous of one another.

  Saturday, 31 December

  ‘How Some People Approach 1939’ [Cuttings from the News Chronicle, with each comment accompanied by a photo of the speaker.]

  Miss Marjorie Oakham, of Morden, Surrey, secretary: ‘I have made up my mind that in 1939 I will be less impatient and more tolerant.’

  Mr Tom Calvert, of Hackney, chef: ‘As far as business goes, 1938 was quite good, but with better prospects of peace ahead, I am looking forward to a still better 1939.’

  Mrs B. McGrogan, of Belfast: ‘My wish for the New Year is a wave of prosperity and content. My motto is, “Keep Smiling”.’

  Mr Hampden Butler, of Heston, commercial artist: ‘I think that this war scare will be overcome, that the pessimism of 1938 will turn to optimism in 1939.’

  Mr Harry MacDonald of Highams Park, Essex, hotel proprietor: ‘If 1939 is no worse than 1938 I shall be satisfied. I think the prospects seem hopeful.’

  While Jean Lucey Pratt – snapped here in the 12-guinea Jaeger coat given her by brother Pooh – approaches it as she never remembers approaching any other year, all nicely set on her marks, full of plans and hope.

  Tuesday, 10 January 1939

  Last night I was at the Behrends’ ‘At Home’, at which Sophie Wyss accompanied by Benjamin Britten gave a recital of German, French and English songs. The English section was a selection of poems by W.H. Auden set to music by Benjamin Britten. Auden was present, and St John Ervine, Ashley Dukes and probably other celebrities. It was very Bloomsbury. A party of us went on to the Four Hundred.87 It is most discreetly, beautifully decorated. The Duke and Duchess of Kent were there for a while, looking exactly like their photographs (they didn’t seem to be real people to me at all). I danced most of the time with Julie’s boyfriend, the architect John Greenidge, a very good natural dancer whose style would lay Gwen Sylvester prostrate with horror. I came home in the early hours of the morning feeling frightfully pleased with myself.

  Friday, 17 February

  I had my fortune told again last night in teacups and cards. The thrill one gets from this sort of nonsense is incredible. I was promised a successful career and a successful marriage. She saw great possibilities ahead of me, with hard work. She saw engagement rings around two men, but thought I had not yet met the one she would choose for me. He was charming, fair, my type. I might meet him at a party, or in connection with some business. He would probably have a government post, something to do with aeroplanes. I am going abroad again in about six months, partly on business, partly on pleasure. A hot climate. Water is lucky for me. I shall be in an old building, looking through files. An elderly man will give me much help. I must beware of crossroads. A small debt will be paid by a fair woman, unexpectedly.

  It is the first time a clairvoyant has seen ‘the possibilities of great things’ ahead for me in connection with my work. I want so much to believe it is true, yet dare not. A successful career and marriage – too good, too good.

  Monday, 6 March

  The disturbing atmosphere of Baker Street. The syncopated rhythm of modern life: the smartly dressed women, the flowers, the furs, the colour. Oh, the money in the N. West of London! The well-fed faces, the good warm clothes, expensive hats, fast cars, scintillating modern life, vulgar, gaudy, fascinating. How can I sit here now and work (at my desk) with that movement still throbbing through my veins? I have no real part in it. Oh, to feel one was working with and for society, part of it, part of the means to the known end – justified, good, progressive, thrilling and alive, not rebuffed by it.

  Thursday, 9 March

  In December 1920 (I was 10!), Katherine Mansfield wrote: ‘There is no limit to human suffering … suffering is boundless, it is eternity … I do not want to die without leaving a record of my belief that suffering can be overcome. One must submit. Do not resist. Take it. Make it part of life … I must turn to work. I must put my agony into something, change it. Sorrow shall be changed into joy.’

  I know that I have not known suffering like it; I don’t think I have suffered yet at all. Shall I ever have the courage to destroy my ‘huge complaining diaries’?88 But I still think they are interesting, scientifically, and will not destroy them yet.

  Tuesday, 21 March

  The unabridged translation of Balzac’s Droll Stories that Ivor has lent me89 is hugely diverting, but fills me with humiliation that I am still a virgin. It is preposterous. I am not flat-chested as Joyce Joliffe is; I have, I know, an exceptionally attractive body, and that I have to be so fastidious about is exceedingly hard. Oh, the French are artists! The Englishman’s approach to vulgarity is so clumsy that it makes it seem dirtier than it really is, but the Frenchman lifts it with a light, dexterous touch onto a plane of inimitable humour. To go to bed with Balzac is to know what one has missed all one’s life.

  Sunday, 26 March

  I often wonder if I shall look back on these easy-comfort days with longing, when I do not have to save on cigarettes or think too hard about catering, taking extra cream when I feel like it, meals out, buying good fruit and vegetables, not worried overmuch by bills, or having to deny myself the price of a gallery seat or an afternoon picture show.

  Friday, 31 March

  Ivor’s favourite expression: ‘The country will be split from top to bottom!’

  A man in the clothing trade has told him that the cheap tailoring firms have had a government order for 5 million khaki suits, 1914 pattern.

  Elsie and I are taking First Aid classes in April. It is all very comic – now.

  Such a heavenly day. I dallied back from the library in Keats Grove (why have I not been using this library instead of trailing down to Antrim Grove?) across the Heath. England did seem in that hour a land of hope and glory. There was a swan on the pond that would chase one of the drakes. The trees along the shore of the farther pond were a shower of delicate, pale green and a glowing burnt ochre kind of red. On the bridge strode a child, the mother in a red-brown coat, the child in dull orange – nothing against that brown and red and green could have been more perfect, the dark shade of
the water and the blue shadows, faint it seemed with the hope of summer.

  Mrs Boddy (the new char, name alone worth 1 shilling an hour) was telling me today of a well-to-do Jew in Germany who has been sent into a concentration camp. He is a friend of a husband of someone she works for – ‘was a gentleman, good and kind, never done anyone any harm. One can’t help what nationality one’s born into, now can one? But his friend may never see him again. He’s broken-hearted about it, everything been taken away from him, and never done anyone any harm, one of the nicest.’

  How long will this absurd sort of cruelty persist? Why do the German people allow such things to happen? Could it ever happen – this persecution of the Jews – to the same extent, now, in England?

  Wednesday, 5 April

  I am contemplating a complete move to the country when my lease here is up in July.

  Wednesday, 17 May

  I’m too excited to work or read or practise or study first aid. I have found it, the place I must have – not must have, but want. A small cottage and a larger one in a gypsy clearing in Burnham Beeches, being excellently decorated by one of Alan’s friends, owned by one of his friends, with all modern convenience: electric light, hot water, fires, a charming garden, near the London Green Line bus route and buses into Slough. Gypsy Cottage East and Wee Cottage. I can’t, daren’t believe it. Something may happen to snatch it all away from me. The cottages belong to a Kathleen Moneypenny but are looked after by her brother. £115 per annum plus rates and insurance.

  Tuesday, 6 June

  I move to Burnham Beeches on the 24th.90 Gus and Phyllis drove with me there on Sunday and fell in love with the place. Gus now wants to give up Charlotte Street and live in Gypsy Cottage East whenever he is out of work.

  A very wide-awake kitten is trying to bite my elbow. Nockie brought her for me from her sister’s chicken farm on Whit Monday. A black atom of fierce fluff. I am calling her Dinah.

  Thursday, 8 June

  An ARP official called on Joan the other day insisting that she accepted one of the government’s Air Raid Shelters. She is going to cover it with earth, scatter it with Woolworth’s seeds and let Geoffrey play in it. They expect no trouble, they told Joan, but We’ve Got To Be Prepared.

  We hear that there will be no war because vested interests do not wish for one. We hear that there will be a war because vested interests require one. Chamberlain is tied hand and foot by vested interests.

  The Duke of Kent is a kleptomaniac and has a man following him continually to replace the objects he takes. On one voyage he was locked into his cabin because of his moral indiscretions – ‘too fast’ was he for his fellow passengers.

  Thursday, 22 June

  I should have worked for these cottages, not inherited capital which places them at my disposal. It is grossly unfair that the valuable comforts of life can so easily be bought. The feeling I have now is that I shall make a success of architectural journalism and I shan’t with short stories.

  Tomorrow … and then on Midsummer morning into the woods!

  Sunday, 2 July 1939

  Wee Cottage, Egypt, Burnham Beeches.

  I am in heaven. I am in love. All the week I have been wanting to write this down. I am happier than I have ever been.

  I wrote to Nockie: ‘I must be very selfish, but I adore being on my own.’ To which she replied, ‘I don’t think you’re selfish. Sensible. One can’t grow properly if one’s roots are muddled up with someone else’s.’

  All the week I have been hard at work in house and garden. The Devereuxs drove me and Mrs Boddy after the removals van last Saturday. Mrs Boddy stayed the weekend helping me. I saw her onto the London bus and walked back through the woods in the still evening wanting to cry, wanting to write here how she had said so quietly, without rancour: ‘It makes me a little envious, seeing all this. My grandchildren, they’d go mad here they would.’

  This afternoon Gus and Phyllis and Julie came to tea. Charming, yet when they had gone I felt cold and the old unrest. It may have been because they didn’t state their approval of my arrangings.

  Thursday, 6 July

  I want to indulge in a little wail. It is raining and the willow tree outside my study window waves sad glistening leaves at me. Desolation will creep in – a threat of it rather. I fear I may be drowned by it: a deep, dreary soughing sea of melancholy.

  Elsie came yesterday with her bicycle which she sold to me for £2.

  Monday, 17 July

  The willow tree branch has been cut from my window. Yesterday I waited in hope for answers to my Gypsy Cottage advert in the New Statesman.91 Two nasty young men from South Audley Street arrived in a sleek greige car and went over the place uttering scarcely a word. Only the balcony seemed to amuse them slightly. It was the discovery that I should be such a near neighbour that finally startled them into saying No. I can only think that they wanted to practise Black Magic. No answers from the Lady advert.

  Sunday, 23 July

  I have been having tea with my neighbour Lady Spicer. An exquisitely British move on her part to invite me informally this morning. She was oh so charming. I see her pass with her Alsatian daily. We can now be formally informal. I suppose I could ask for her aid in time of need, and I suppose she will ask for mine if ever such an occasion arose. Everyone was so class conscious, she said; you never find that atmosphere on the Continent. Abroad the workers are not ashamed of being workers. That seemed to her very satisfactory, that they should know their place. But that surely is an attitude belonging to the old order of things.

  Sunday, 20 August

  Our foreign policy seems at last firmly defined. We shall fight if Germany tries to interfere with Poland. But perhaps Germany won’t interfere with Poland: perhaps she will do something completely unexpected and we shall be as indeterminate as ever.

  I am planning a tinned food store. Wondering if I must have thick curtains.

  Saturday, 26 August

  My near neighbours Jack Payne and Peggy Cochrane are now On the Air.92 Crazy world. I find it rather uncanny to be waiting to know whether my future is to be chaotic and painful, or will continue its meandering fog-bound course undisturbed, on the word of one man. Yet it is all so like last year’s crisis it is comic. The same sickening fear, bewilderment, resentment and wonder. Lady Spicer returned from her holiday this afternoon: ‘We shall find ourselves allied to Germany next, fighting France and Italy – or at war with America.’ Everything is so fantastic I’d be surprised at nothing.

  Peggy Cochrane about to sing. They say that she and Jack swear at each other something awful.

  Monday, 28 August

  I had been telling myself after reading the Statesman’s leader that although a war would smash my life and the lives of thousands like me, it might release those of millions. The last one hastened the emancipation of women, broke down much class prejudice, and swept away much stupid social etiquette. Life is more democratic than it was, although class friction continues. So perhaps a war might benefit mankind more than the terror and idea of it will let us see.

  9.15 p.m. And still we wait. Two panic-stricken women [came] to see the cottage this afternoon. They made me furious, sick and ashamed. They wanted to park themselves and families into Gypsy East for one month. They scarcely looked at the place they were so scared. ‘Let us be safe. Let us be safe!’ Now I know what the local agent means when he speaks of ‘the rats’. War at the moment seems absolutely inevitable. I am as scared at bottom as anyone, but may I never show such mean cowardice as these women are doing.

  I stand to lose everything – my money, my house, my treasured belongings. Many of my friends may be killed or badly injured. I may be killed, and that would be the easiest solution. What I dread most is physical pain. Spiritual torture I believe I could now endure or learn to endure.

  I believe they are drilling on Farnham Common. I can hear a voice above the trees shouting like an army sergeant.

  Tuesday, 29 August

  A wave of op
timism. Hitler did not hand his reply to Sir Neville Henderson until after 7 p.m. We don’t know yet what it is, but the hope is that as he hasn’t marched into Poland yet he daren’t because the odds are too heavy for him.

  Lady S.’s houseman, a marine reservist, has been called up. He told me that there are now 4 million regulars ready for the Front Line. Many are already on the Continent, others waiting at Newhaven. There is a heartening feeling of confidence in the air. It looks as though Hitler is in a nasty corner. Is this the beginning of the end of the Nazi regime?

  Wednesday, 30 August

  Another long day of uneasy waiting. We still don’t know what Hitler’s demands are, or what our reply is. Report has it that he insists on the return of Danzig and the Corridor. Russia is fortifying her Polish frontier. Holland and Belgium have offered Poland their services. France is requisitioning all her railways tomorrow and has already handed over her broadcasting stations to military authorities. Switzerland has appointed a commander-in-chief. All over Europe I see doors closed on secret government conferences.

  Thursday, 31 August

  Tomorrow schoolchildren and other ‘priority’ classes are being evacuated from dangerous centres. The Prime Minister wishes it to be made clear that this doesn’t mean that war is inevitable. I sat and wept through the 9 o’clock news. This part of the nation’s confidence and calm is oozing away. I can think of only one prayer that now seems adequate: ‘Thy will be done.’

  Friday, 1 September

  Hostilities have broken out in Poland. Lady S. is expecting four evacuees, she doesn’t know when. I have bought black paper for the windows. There is difficulty in getting butter and sugar. Lady S.’s houseman, so his wife tells me, has had a month’s salary in advance and Plymouth is in a complete state of war. He may be in France now.

  6.30 p.m. I cannot believe that this is happening to us. Germany has been bombing Polish towns since 5.30 this morning – obliged, so Hitler says, ‘to meet force with force.’ But no one knows (I mean I don’t) who started the bombing. The British government is … ‘inflexibly determined to stand by her obligations.’ Chamberlain – speaking in Parliament now – says that the responsibility for plunging the world into this frightful position rests on the shoulders of one man. I shall stay here as long as I possibly can.