A Notable Woman

by Jean Lucey Pratt

  Now I could spend hours analysing this analysis. It is absolute nonsense to say I am a sceptic,* and I have no desire or intention to become a teacher unless I can do it through my writing. But it is interesting and encouraging to see that this ability and desire is apparent in my handwriting. What they have missed is my need for a happy, personal relationship. ‘Complete’ happiness is again nonsense – I don’t believe that anyone is ever ‘completely’ happy – which implies continuity, having everything one wants, achieving all one’s desires. If that were possible … one would become static and dead. But I do lack a sense of completeness which is probably what they mean. I do need a man’s affection and attention and companionship very deeply and if I have any grudge or suffer from some disappointment it is that I haven’t yet been able to find and attract this man. This has always been at the core of my inferiority complex.

  * NB Modern meaning of ‘sceptic’ implies cynical which I am sure I am not. But in the older sense of the word of being ‘unconvinced of truth of particular fact or theory’, ‘inclined to suspense of judgement’, perhaps I am slightly, particularly with regard to orthodox religion of the C of E and non-conformism and political faiths.

  Saturday, 3 November

  The variableness of moods.

  I don’t mind being alone all day when busy and with the knowledge of many friends in the background and interesting activities ahead of me – even the deadly routine at the office because that brings me into contact with people whom I have grown to know and like or at least find amusing to watch and be with. But it’s in the evening and at night I feel my loneliness. Day over I want, yes, HIM (but I have no name, no particular person in mind – or only a sentimentalised image of M.) to be there to talk to, and laugh with and tease. And at night (let’s be crude) sometimes but not always in bed with me.

  Wednesday, 7 November

  Always the unexpected bowling me over, setting the fire ablaze. Today Dr Lowe, who has replaced Mr Pike in the Library, and has just lost Miss F. the assistant who grew up under Pike, came and asked me if I would like to train to take her place … (he mentioned salaries of £850–£1,000!). With my training and experience and interests and intelligence I can’t think why I have never considered this sort of work before. Librarians are usually rather dull, academic sort of people – but there’s no reason why they should be. The type of work does appeal to the timid intellectual who can find refuge in his sorting and indexing of knowledge for other people’s benefit. But it could be – for me – a means of making many more contacts and might lead me into very interesting, enriching ways of life.

  Thursday, 8 November

  My first fine frenzy over the suggested Library job has quite died down. Was introduced to work by Mrs C. this afternoon – I can do it all right, given time and help, but whatever made me suppose that this was the work I’ve been looking for! After I had seen what would be required of me I had a moment of fearful revulsion. I’m not temperamentally suitable for a librarian – I can see that now. But I’ll probably take on the job and do it conscientiously – maybe it’s a way out of the present morass and it will be better than doing writing in publicity.

  Tuesday, 13 November (War Diary)

  Last week a doctor was reported in the press to have said that most of us were suffering from food shortage. One of the symptoms was an unusual feeling of fatigue, and particularly after doing extra work. Many people I meet seem to suffer from this fatigue. Lydia is one and has been to her doctor about it (she says ‘One’s heart feels almost too tired to beat’). Poked a toe through a sheet last night. So sick of Making Do.

  Wednesday, 14 November

  It seems that I may start work in the library next week. The idea of trying to work on a novel in any spare time waxes and wanes. If only I could do it! And so forget in these long intervals that continual source of torment over which I am alternately optimistic and in despair. Another popular song describes my state of mind – ‘The Gipsy.’ ‘I want to believe the Gipsy … who said, my lover was always true, Although I knew in my heart, dear, somebody else was kissing you. But I’ll go there again … because I want to believe the Gipsy …’ Quite idiotic. I remember little things and ‘suddenly the heart sings’! It does, indeed it does – The touch of his hand, the tilt of his hat, the life in him, the abundant if crude life in him that calls to the life in me.

  But then again.

  Friday, 16 November

  10 p.m. In bed. The warmest, most delicious place on a sharp cold November moonlit night. The only other thing I would rather be doing is riding in his new car (an Austin 10, he had it two days before my birthday, and I was, he said, its first passenger). Either to or from some comfortable, attractive, firelit pub.

  Sunday, 18 November

  In a novel-forming mood all day. There is a character in The Seagull who keeps saying, ‘when I was a young man there were two things I wanted to do – become a writer and get married. I’ve done neither.’ And that is what I may be saying in my old age. When I think about my twin ambitions I get an icy feeling in the region of my heart, as though suddenly conscious of foreordained and inevitable doom, decided before I was born: ‘She shall desire greatly both to marry and to be a writer, but shall do neither.’ I must go on trying, I must never give up hope.

  Tuesday, 20 November

  There is some hitch in my move to the Library. Probably my salary, although Dr R.L. assured me twice there would be no change in that. I had a premonition about it last night, felt infuriated, disgusted and depressed and went to see Tom Walls in Johnny Frenchman.

  I came home terribly hungry, wolfed some food and was then very sick. The second time I’ve been sick in a fortnight. I might be having a baby, I thought. I wish I were.

  (War Diary)

  At lunch today someone mentioned problem of Palestine. ‘I don’t think the Jews should be forced to leave a country – let them go to Palestine if they want to.’ ‘Jews get such a financial hold on a country.’ ‘That’s true – all the same, a country is nearly always better off where Jews are powerful – they may make big money, but they circulate it.’ ‘They produce much talent too.’ ‘Pity they have such unpleasant characteristics.’ ‘Only due to long years of persecution – aggressive trait has developed.’ ‘Well, we all get aggressive don’t we, when we feel looked down on?’152

  Wednesday, 21 November

  Extracts published today from Eva Braun’s diary, 1935. Jean Pratt you should be ashamed. How familiar the tone of these entries: ‘I am so infinitely happy …’ Then, a few weeks later, ‘Why do I have to suffer like this? I wish I had never seen him. I am desperate – I am going to buy more sleeping tablets; at least then I will be half dazed and will not think about him so much. Why doesn’t the devil come and get me? … For 3 hours I stood outside the Carlton and had to watch while he bought flowers for Ondra and invited her for supper.’153

  World is full of Hitlers and Eva Brauns. Eva Braun did marry her Hitler. But what a honeymoon. What a marriage! Bride and bridegroom disintegrated and destroyed within the hour – the inevitable penalty for their way of life, the just, slow stroke of time bringing the action’s reaction. All who try to race time are in the end destroyed by time.

  Friday, 30 November

  Liz Cecil has been here for the evening. Sitting room is warm, has a happy, used feel in the air. Gramophone and record cases open, sewing oddments on the table, crumpled sofa cushions. An easy, friendly room.

  Young people last night discussing on the radio ‘Why should sex be a problem?’ Lot of little prigs. ‘Intercourse before marriage is wrong’ – one or two very emphatic about this. Others not so sure, thought a trial period for engaged couples was excusable. But to talk or try to talk of sex isolated like this seems to me quite wrong. You might as well argue about constipation on its own. They came of course nowhere near an answer. Nor am I or can I give an answer. Concentrate, my dear reader, on your emotions not sex – sex is one means of expressing certain emotions or
can be indulged in for the sensory pleasure it can give, but I can see no dividing line where you can stand and say, ‘This side right, that side wrong.’ Sex is a magical, magical power and should be understood and guided and then followed. It has its own deep significance and laws related to other parts of the personality. (But the importance or proportion of sex varies with different people. I am quite sure it is possible to lead a healthy, life-giving life without it. I have only to remember Aunt Janie.)

  Saturday, 1 December

  Always when on my own at the cottage I look forward and listen to Saturday Night Theatre. Always when it is over a great feeling of emptiness and isolation descends. All the life and the drama that has been filling the room and carrying me with it for an hour and a half suddenly recedes like a quick-turning tide leaving me stranded.

  But now I remember a resolution I made earlier in the evening. I took the kitten – Junior, that quick, wicked splinter of life teasing his elders, pouncing on their lazily moving tails, winding my wool round table and chair legs, staring up at my cigarette smoke with button eyes just losing their baby blue – I took him to a new home in Slough and thought how wonderful and fearful was the night, the soft air and the lighted windows and the skeleton trees against the night sky. The fearfulness of the adventure ahead for the young thing in my arms, how small, how pitiful and helpless and yet how vastly surrounded and shielded from the terrors it could not face and understand alone.

  I came home thinking that I did not enough appreciate the wonderfulness of this earth. Obvious beauty will move me quickly, easily to some slight passing expression of appreciation, but it is shallow – quickly come and gone. I am too much wrapped in peevish discontent for things I think I want and do not get – peevish, petulant, silly, selfish woman. It is a sin, a great sin not to look about you and think of life and history of the things around you. The things we use everyday, the cups we handle. Clay – through how many hands, fashioned by the thought of how many minds, contributing something to how many lives and taking in something from those lives it has touched.

  It is a wonderful world, full, full of things to give delight. It must be part of hell to remember the beauty and the miracles one passed by daily with blind eyes – or rather, to remember that these were miracles to be seen daily which one was too ego-bound to notice.

  Wednesday, 6 December

  I receive now such a lot of nice attention, so many compliments from people and not only from dear, well-meaning friends like N. who say how pretty I am looking and what an owl M. is not to make more of this chance of a worthwhile friendship. But also people at the office – Dr R.H. for instance, ‘Not thinking of getting married? Really, you surprise me’ – oh, and meaning it, I know they mean it. And I know that I am a desirable, loveable, thoroughly marriageable person. That is a triumph, to have that confidence, and no longer the old fear of men and of other people – not in the same way. Shyness is still there, will always be there, but many people have dissolved that shyness, and that experience helps me to be less shy with new people.

  I am to leave HDA in my own time, says Mr B., as the cancellation of my appointment to the Library (where everyone agrees I should have been well suited to the job) was the firm’s fault. Well, I am going to plan a campaign and work at it. And then when I have one or two jobs in hand (as we hope) I shall be able to withdraw gradually from the ties of HDA.

  (War Diary)

  Have just been listening to BBC’s From the London Theatre series – an excerpt from Private Lives. Saw Gertrude Lawrence and Noël Coward in the first production of this evergreen, then the film version. An incredibly fascinating play about really very stupid, tiresome people. Such delicious, delectable love scenes – that’s what makes the play so appealing. All the women in the audience see themselves as Amandas, and see their men as Elyots. What, one wonders, are Elyot and Amanda like when they are not being brilliantly witty?

  Thursday, 13 December

  I’ve had a poem from Hugh – an Xmas poem which has been accepted by the Sat Evening Post and which is dedicated to me – in memory of last Xmas. A poem dedicated to me! Dear, delightful Hugh, what lovely things you think of; and how much his time with me must really have meant to him. ‘My nice, unforgettable Moog’ he writes. Oh, thank you God very much for Hugh and for N. sending him down to me. (Witch that she is and as much as I resented it.)

  Friday, 14 December

  Lydia dined out with him last night. He had come to tell her that the jewellery business was finished as far as he was concerned. He paid her for her designs, and that was that. Lydia was trying gallantly (my dear, my excellent friend – I hope I can do as much for you one day) to bring the conversation round to me but he would not be drawn. But her chance came eventually and (not being me) she had it out with him. He thinks I am taking him much too seriously – he had no idea I was such an – she couldn’t remember whether it was actually ‘hysterical’, but it was around something like it, ‘sentimental’ perhaps or ‘emotional’ type.

  He had finished, ‘was washing his hands’ of both of us, he said. He went on to emphasise that he had no intention of altering his domestic arrangements and he had given me no cause to think he was. She lectured him at length, said he had no sense of his responsibilities, that after all surely he realised I was very fond of him. She let him have it properly, I gather, told him he was vain and selfish and a lot more. But it was water off a duck’s back. (Or maybe not. Maybe some of it he’ll remember.) She says that he spoke well of me, that he is probably as fond of me as he is capable of being fond of anyone. She said it was a pleasant evening, he was good company, gave her a good dinner and plenty to drink.

  I have got the solid evidence I wanted to help me out of the maze. If he wanted to he could still make me do almost anything for him. But I weep for him and his coming damnation. And I weep for myself that my own feelings are so unreliable, can be so easily tricked. I do not like believing the worst of people. But what a lot of proof I have been given of this man’s falsity.

  Sunday, 16 December

  This is being much more painful than I thought it would be.

  I must do nothing – I must just make myself realise that this is over, finished. I shall never see him again. None of my dreams can ever come true. It’s the only way. Soon I shall be right away from HDA and all its associations with this unhappy business. For 18 months this stone has been in my path, I have been stubbing my toes against it. I must kick it in the ditch where it belongs.

  I have many good friends to see me through the affair, the difficult days. Best help of all is when I see the funny side of it. Wonder what he’d do if I started sending postcards: ‘Please send me more money for the baby.’

  Shall I ever learn? Shall I ever, ever find someone who’ll love me as I could love them, fully, freely, deeply?

  Boxing Day

  8.45 p.m. All knotted up inside, But have had a delightful Xmas. N. brought young Canadian scientist friend, Roger, a terrifying modern intellectual, like Aldous Huxley, but tall, courteous and interesting (I don’t mean that A.H. is none of these). Brought with him all that forgotten Ivory Tower detachedness of the modern intellectual of the upper classes. A likeable, awe-inspiring person, but not loveable. He admitted to N. that he is terrified of emotional involvements – of being enveloped and ‘possessed’ by women. These men! They are all the same. But women must take some of the blame. They do, generally speaking, want to catch, envelop and possess their man. Too much so. A natural desire which few women have yet tried to understand and discipline. It can become selfish and clogging – no wonder men are scared. Women forget the importance of their own integrity and independence. They shift the responsibility of their own lives onto the man – he has to make and direct their lives, often at the sacrifice of his own. The relationship becomes one-sided, and is not what it should be – a sharing of experience together, a mutual, integrated development of two separate entities – but a flopping on the woman’s part, a selfish, greedy abs
orption of another person’s life to feed her own. She becomes a vampire.

  Friday, 28 December (War Diary)

  I was not able to look for good and interesting presents this year and my friends and relatives had to be satisfied with Readers Union books, soap (from my store) and cards. For Ethel and Aunt Maggie I packed up a box of oddments such as Rinso, lard, tea, hand cream etc – it was just like a hamper for poor relations in pre-war days, but met with tremendous welcome. Myself, I received book and gift tokens, books, one pair of fully fashioned stockings, flower seeds for the garden and a homemade mince pie, shoulder covers for hanging clothes (made from blackout material and bound with bright tape), a much needed sponge bag, a lovely small glass bowl filled with homemade toffees, calendars, many cards.

  Saturday, 29 December

  Such a very pleasant surprise. Half-an-hour or so ago, as I was beginning the last of the washing up, Tommie Hughes phoned. Really I am delighted. He wants to hear all about HDA and what I’m doing and has given me his phone number and address. It was a genuinely friendly gesture on his part, I’m sure of it and I will NOT start looking for ulterior motives though no doubt they may be there. So yah! to Mac! Conceited little shrimp – thinks I’m wanting to marry him does he? So short of boy friends? And Roger now inviting me to see Henry IV (I) (Ralph Richardson as Falstaff) with him. I do feel good tonight. I also received an Xmas card from Peter Buckland quite out of the blue – he’s with the RAF in Germany. Well, it’s all exceedingly gratifying and I hope the twerp hears of it one day soon.

  Monday, 31 December

  Have just listened to BBC Home Life stories of C.B. Cochran, Alec James and John Gielgud. If the Cochran love story is true it is enough to twist the hungry soul of every woman like myself with envy. He fell in love with attractive blonde, pursued her against parental opposition and kidnapped her under the nose of uncle chaperoning her to a convent in Ireland. One doesn’t seem to hear of men doing that sort of thing nowadays.