Saturday, 2 September
Nockie arrived about 9 p.m. with the two Haynes girls – very, very charming Scottish Canadians. Parliament meets this afternoon. Butter is difficult to get. Spong can get me no more cigarettes.93 Parties of evacuated children are playing in the Beeches. The Chronicle reports that Hitler has said he is ‘ready to wage a 10 year war on Britain.’
Tuesday, 5 September
We are at war with Germany.
15.
The Boys in the Village
Wednesday, 13 September 1939 (aged twenty-nine)
No air raids yet. An atmosphere of resigned curiosity has settled over England. Rumours are current of deserters from the German army, of strikes along the Siegfried line. But our heavily censored press prepares us for a three-year conflict. News of aid from the colonies and dominions and India, opinion largely in America on our side makes me hugely optimistic – I fear too optimistic.
Monday, 30 October
My darling journal. That lost golden month of September. A sodden, gone October. And not a line here written. I have written letters, cooked, gardened. I have written an article on Malta for the Canadian Geographical Journal, I have sewed and knitted and read, and one day gone into Slough and one day went to Hampstead to see Joan for a few hours. We read together and talk and ramble through the Beeches, and enjoy our food and sometimes the radio, always the Band Wagon.
Gypsy East is let to a nice quiet couple with baby: Campbell.
Wednesday, 1 November
I have found a few notes made since the outbreak of war.
We were bored with the news, and calling the Ministry of Information ‘The Ministry of Little or No Information’ and ‘The Ministry of Misinformation’. Latterly someone has called it ‘The Ministry of Malformation’. There seems to be a strong undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the government – I wonder how strong, how dangerous.
We are under a polite dictatorship. We do not really know what we are fighting for, and our government fears the spread of Bolshevism in Europe as much as Nazism. We were all gloomy conjecture, waiting for air raids. The first time I came up to London after war began I accompanied Nockie to Swiss Cottage, and the number of uniforms and the general atmosphere increased the feeling of rebirth within me. Memories of the last war returned with startling vividness: my earliest memories are connected with uniforms, thin newspapers, ration cards, potato cakes, margarine instead of butter, a shortage of sugar. I dreamt of a lettuce with a rotten heart.
On September 25th we were reading Sense and Sensibility, the Beeches were yellowing. Jane Austen carried us away completely. A lovely age, of peace and orderliness, good humour, security and comfort.
On October 18, my birthday, I scribbled: I am 30, unmarried and still a virgin. If I am not bombed or bankrupted by this war I suppose my declining years are to be spent here with Nockie. Friends may come and friends may go, but she goes on forever.
Tuesday, 14 November
On Monday Nockie begins work at the Forest of Dean in the Forestry Dept of the Women’s Land Army. I shall be unable to believe that my freedom will last any favourable length of time.
We have had our ration books. I cannot get butter now from the milkman. No difficulty about other food. Blackout regulations still rigid. Windows every evening an agony. Tonight Gracie Fields entertainment to the BEF94 Somewhere in France was broadcast: the troops did not know the words of her Shipyard Sally song ‘Wish Me Luck’. Naughty digs by variety artists on the radio at Hitler and his gang are endless. The German broadcasts in English are entertaining. On one occasion Bournemouth was in flames.
Monday, 20 November
Alone again. Curtains drawn. Little cat out saying hullo to the new moon. Some woman drivelling on the radio.
I have just listened to the six o’clock news. More ships sunk by mines. Air battles over Holland. One plane brought down, two men killed. This idiotic war: hundreds and hundreds of civilians, neutral and belligerent, drowned and drowning and a handful of fighters killed. No air raids, no battles. We, the luckier ones in England, continue to eat and sleep in comfort, our anxiety dulling.
Why I like living alone: I can organise myself to suit myself – i.e. rise and breakfast without fear of disturbing another, potter about my chores without interference, be in garden without a guilty conscience of being unsociable, and work in the evenings instead of having to be agreeable by the fire. No tension from disagreement. No interruption.
My little cat is resting her chin on my right wrist. One cannot be lonely with this little companion, an individual with seductive, provocative and independent ways, one of the dearest animals I have ever known.
Tuesday, 21 November
I am lost in a pleasant dream: to buy the Gypsy Cottage block from the Moneypennys. To do this I shall have to enlist Pooh’s aid, sell Homefield, which I can contemplate calmly now with the idea of possessing Gypsy Cottages in its place, and probably release some of my already threatened capital. Perhaps I would not need to touch the War Loan and the Gilt Edged, and I might still be able to rely on £100 per annum from them. This evening began to coat bedroom floor with Liquid Lino to give it a glossy finish. A very tough rabbit for supper.
Thursday, 23 November
I am trying to cut down my cigarettes from 25 to 10 a day by not smoking until after tea. The New Statesman reports a rumour that Germany is to begin her attack on the West on May 1st, and will have defeated Britain – so her authorities calculate – by mid-July.
Monday, 27 November
Dinah followed me for 10 minutes into the woods this afternoon. She trots behind with her bushy tail erect and amber eyes wide and staring, a picture of studied determination to keep me in sight. Every now and then she stops and looks about her with back arched, as though she suspected enemies in every bush.
4.30 p.m. I can smoke now. But they are bitter little cigarettes, 4s. 6d. a 100 from Rothmans. I must not get any more for 10 days. From breakfast to tea-time I say to myself, ‘Wait, wait – think of the rates. I have been smoking 15 du Maurier a week. In a year that would pay the rates on Gypsy East and Wee Cottage.
Tuesday, 28 November
A man came this morning selling newly shot duck. He said he was from Lord Burnham’s estate. I bought a pair for 4s, and a couple of tiny things he said were teal duck. They are swinging now in the shed outside, such beautiful feathers. I saw the man again in the village later. Something rather harassed about him.
Thursday, 30 November
A group of young evacuees was walking home with a girl as I returned from village. She was reading some letters they had been writing. ‘I have been evacuated from Shepherds Bush. I like it better in the country because I can go and play in the Beeches and collect conkers. Sometimes I pick up wood for the Lady.’ One hears echoes of this happiness of town children everywhere.
9 p.m. Russia has invaded Finland. Russia has said that she bears no malice towards the Finnish people – only their government. That sounds like a leaf out of our book. It is beginning to be a little ridiculous: each belligerent country declares undying respect and affection for the people of the nation it is fighting. Each states that it has the good of the people at heart.
But oh, what is the matter with the people of this world that they have let such governments lead them into this path of destruction? It is surely the fault of the people – me and you – too lazy, too limited, too self-centred to care who rules so long as the responsibility is not ours. I am afraid that we are to pay a heavy price for our indolence.
Friday, 1 December
From Lionel Hale’s ‘Life Goes On’ column in today’s News Chronicle.
‘Looking back these 13 weeks: the curious feeling of a gas mask on your shoulder; the pitch black buses; the feeling your way from pillar box to lamppost; a crop of jokes about Hitler; his Last Will and Testament sold in the Strand for a penny; the lovely shine of the balloon barrage in the September sun; an ARP post in a Knightsbridge cellar furnished with carpe
ts, chintz, radio, magazines, a bowl of goldfish.’
Ethel has sent a telegram to say she cannot come. I was looking forward to entertaining a pukka visitor – roast wild duck and orange salad all to myself now. I feel gloomy.
10.30 p.m. Alas for the duck! When the poulterer brought them plucked and prepared they were bright green. The ducks – all four – are now buried in the compost heap.
Friday, 8 December
I have asked Josephine Norris here for Xmas. I feel tired at the thought. Why did I do it? I think the statement that I am like Russia and pursue a policy of cold self-interest not unjustified.
Friday, 15 December
Josephine is coming for Xmas. I wish I were going to Ethel’s. I have started a separate notebook for my war diary: Nockie, the dear, wrote me a letter of enthusiastic constructive correspondence after reading my first instalment.
Sunday, 17 December
As I sat playing patience half an hour ago, the German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee scuttled herself just outside Montevideo harbour. Hooray, hooray – Germans dead and wounded and defeated, a fine piece of engineering gone, gone just like that. All because of man’s inhumanity to man. I don’t want that sort of victory.
I was waiting up to hear a Mozart pianoforte recital, but I am not listening to it. I can only feel the humiliation and despair of men who have had to scuttle their pride – and the Bulldog’s chortle of triumph. Listen, listen now to the beating of Mozart’s heart …
Thursday, 21 December
I am enjoying myself enormously. Josephine arrived yesterday and she seems so happy here. I like people to feel at home, comfortable, warm, well-fed, pleased with the country and my company. What are the things that please me? Fires, warm rooms, hot water, things I can provide for my guest, food, the sun through winter trees, my cat – and, be honest Jean – the little Scot who works for the Ray Frasers.95 I have an admirer, only a ‘workman’, but so intensely gratifying. He has stopped to speak to me on his way to the village, has thrown dead wood over from their ground into mine. It is going to my head. Ah, if I could only let myself go.
Thursday, 28 December
Today I feel dreadful, literally full of dread and pain and desire. Snow has fallen. My visitor is still with me. The trouble is that they like staying with me so much that they don’t want to go. I want so much to be alone again. I am shocked to the core at this passion for my own unadulterated company.
Saturday, 6 January 1940
Alone again. The relief is heavenly, like the first immersion in a hot bath. I saw her off at Slough this afternoon – if only she hadn’t stayed so long. I want to write the third instalment of my war diary.
At the beginning of December, Jean learnt that Nockie had been keeping a diary of the war that she hoped would prove to be a useful social document in years to come. She decided to follow suit, opening a separate notebook to tackle less personal issues than those covered in her journal. Every few weeks she sent copies of her new diary to Mass Observation, the private organisation established in 1937 to record everyday life in Britain (see Introduction). Although many of her entries are unique to this new diary, after a few months her private journal and her account of the war began to merge, and carried similar or identical passages.96
Saturday, 20 January
I have stayed with Joan in Hampstead, seen the films Goodbye Mr Chips and Juarez, and the thriller Ladies in Retirement. I have bought things in the West End I couldn’t afford, stayed with aunt Maggie and Ethel where I was thoroughly spoiled, saw Diana Churchill in her new show and visited her afterwards, missed the last Bakerloo Watford train and walked home in the blackout without a torch. I played mah-jong with Elsie Devereux, saw Fargeon’s Little Revue, spent the night in Gus’s new Primrose Hill studio flat, called on the Silvesters. And fallen in love again.
He is a boy – or should I say man? – whom Gus met and liked when playing in Young England before Xmas. Tall, charming, dangerously like Colin Wintle. I know it’s hopeless. I know that in a week the excitement will have died from my mind. He might arrive unexpectedly one day in spring at the cottage gate and I would show him the garden and we would talk of the country, which he says he adores, and poetry and ballet and pictures. But I think it will be a long while before we meet again. It was a spark … It will die, although of course I hope and like to imagine it won’t.
Yes, a lovely London visit, but what a welcome home: frozen pipes, burst main, flooded kitchen, plumbers and chills. It has been an agonising 24 hours. I have never known such a hard winter.
Sunday, 21 January (Jean’s Mass Observation War Diary)
Vahan is employed at the moment by a Borough Council to inspect air raid shelters in which he says he has little faith. They might save one from flying shrapnel and falling masonry, but exact safety depends entirely on where a bomb may fall: the open centre of a street might be the safest place.
Less than 50 per cent of the population seems to be carrying gas masks now. Joan and I decided to take ours when we went out, on principle, but it was an effort and an irritation. The blackout has slackened considerably. I noticed streaks of light from doors and windows which would never have been allowed at the beginning of the war.
Sunday, 28 January (War Diary)
Salisbury Plain manoeuvres have brought the army into much evidence in this district. Houses in the forest have been commandeered for the military, and disused saw mills, stables, vicarages, are being used as billets. There are soldiers in our village too. A large new garage was commandeered at the beginning of the war, and khaki coloured lorries and officers’ cars being driven in and out of it are a familiar sight. No doubt spy rumours abound. When I was in London I was told of enemy transmitting stations discovered in an old church tower and the petrol tank of a woman’s car. One might do worse than cash in on spy stories now. I could imagine myself as a suspect.
Sunday, 4 February (War Diary)
A glassy thaw began on Wednesday when I had an appointment with my bank manager in London. He was grave and kind. He advised me to reinvest in the old 3 per cent War Loan, the government stock being not only a patriotic investment, but as safe a one as any, since if the government crashes everything else crashes too. ‘But it will not come to that,’ he said, ‘though we have hard times to face. Government stock may drop still further. Taxes are heavy. We shall all suffer. I am receiving less now than I was two years ago although I am earning more.’ He can grant no more private credit: all available credit is being reserved for the Government. Money for bombs at all costs.
Fanny has heard that Hitler is to be in London on April 21st. She said with a twinkle, ‘Don’t you arrange to go up that day, Ma’am!’ It is reported that he intends to be King of England. An odd ambition.
Sunday, 11 February
Now for a sentimental interlude. I have been listening to the BBC’s 1930s scrapbook. Oh, but I was standing on the edge of things in 1930! All the world was singing the Song of the Dawn: the government was Labour; they subsidised opera for five years but it didn’t interest me then; Sydney Bridge was finished; Amy Johnson flew to Australia; we were humming ‘I’ve got such Happy Feet’. I went to college in October, I was 21. I saw and was enchanted by Private Lives and later Grand Hotel and All Quiet on the Western Front (the book appalled and moved me mightily). And one of my first memories of Gus at a Buildings Construction demonstration. And Valerie was engaged to Jack Honour, and Daddy alive and Ethel cruel. Well, it is over. Ten years ago.
Saturday, 24 February
The weather is mild now, no trace of snow or frost remains anywhere, buds are swelling, birds are bursting with song; I go round the garden each morning with greedy eyes, the moist earth eager with life. One wants to make plans – one’s blood stirs as the sap is stirring – and then an aeroplane casts a black shadow over the future. How can one think of the summer?
Monday, 26 February (War Diary)
I was working in the kitchen this afternoon, knitting and books and newspapers, l
etters and cigarettes, face flannels and a table cloth on a clothes-horse, coke crackling in the range, kettle humming, Dinah on my knee – when I saw a sprightly lady in a costume the colour of Parma violets pass this window. She was scented and made-up discreetly, wore a brown felt hat, a fox fur, brogues and dark thick stockings. She was small and bony and I recognised her at once as the owner of a dachshund I have met in the Beeches. I have heard her talking to the dachshund as I talk to Dinah and ordering him about as I would never dare my little cat.
She asked if I had heard of the National Salvage Campaign, looking at me doubtfully as though a young woman in grubby grey slacks with untidy hair and a dirty face might very well be ignorant of it. I had heard of it. I asked the Lady in Violet into the kitchen with due apologies, while Dinah sat on the hearth rug looking very annoyed. The Campaign was explained, and a list of salvage items (waste paper, metals, textiles, bottles, glass, rubber, even electric batteries and bulbs), and the address in the village where they were being received.
Summer Time began again yesterday. The new stock of Woolworth eau-de-cologne is in bottles of very reduced size for the same price. ‘I think it’s wicked,’ said the girl who served me. ‘You have a big bottle while they’re still some left.’
Dinah’s love affairs are reaching a conclusion. Ginger Tom, by a really awe-inspiring determination, is established as the accepted suitor. I had great difficulty in keeping him out of the cottage if Dinah was in it. The moon grew full. Dinah stayed out night after night while my sleep and probably my neighbours’ was disturbed by Ginger Tom’s piercing love songs and Dinah’s replies in tones of terror and excitement.
But I forget. We are at war. Nockie has resigned from the Forestry Department of the WLA. An architect of my acquaintance who has had no other employment since war began save that of waiting in a London Auxiliary Fire station, is planning to join a contingent for Finland. His wife is in the Censor’s office, translating Hungarian. Gus has testily given up reading or listening to war news, distrusting all information given to the public. Some friends of his discount 95 per cent of all they read and hear. The boys in the village are leaving one by one. ‘Soon,’ said the butcher, ‘there’ll only be us old ones left.’
A Notable Woman Page 18