A Notable Woman

by Jean Lucey Pratt

  Thursday, 22 May

  By chance today picked up the current Woman magazine and in it found an article by Dr R. Mace of the Marriage Guidance Council answering a letter from a reader asking Why do the Best Wives Get the Worst Husbands? His answer interesting and consoling. ‘The average man has a greater field of choice – he accepts marriage in order to get the girl. The woman accepts the man in order to get married. The lower type of woman will resort to expedients to which the higher type would scorn to lower herself. Women of culture and refinement know that there is more in love than just glamour. They therefore refuse to conform to the pattern … which is “all lips and legs”. Until men in general recover a true sense of values and see through the artifices of the girl who puts all her sex appeal in the shop window, the best type of woman, the “comrade wife”, will have to go unwed or take any man who may be available. We probably all know fine women who would have made magnificent wives and mothers and yet have been passed by.’

  And, he adds, (I note with immense approval) ‘It must be said that often these “fine” women fail their husbands because they are too inhibited to be capable of full passionate response in their love-making.’

  My observation on the type of woman that I make friends with was put by N. in another way last night. She said that of all her woman friends, or most of them, none had in their men their own equal. But I still think the fault may be in us. I at least seem to attract men or be attracted to those who reflect something of the ‘weaker’ side in my nature. I suppose I have been unlucky in my men friends, but none of them go to quite the same lengths or take quite as much trouble building the friendship as I and my women friends do. Largely they may fear emotional entanglement which doesn’t enter into normal friendship between women, but apart from that they really won’t put themselves out to the same extent, they can’t be bothered, are too easily bored.

  Met T. again on Tuesday. There is a case in point. I like him as much as ever and ironically enough can talk to him now with all the ease and freedom I once wanted badly. I’d like to continue this friendship very much, and shall do what I can to help it along. But I feel that he may not make the effort he might, not because of indifference but because of his natural indolence and perhaps some diffidence – a lingering fear or feeling of caution. He says himself that he is a confirmed bachelor, but one takes such statements with a pinch of salt. Yet I should feel some regret and loss and even some jealousy if he did marry.

  Monday, 2 June

  N. wants me to spend all Wednesday with her hunting for rooms in Hampstead. Of course I consent and willingly. When she is in distress my whole nature warms with goodness towards her and I am eager to do all I can. All I can to what? To quieten and restrain and soothe … the good doormat in action. And why not? Doormats are sound, serviceable, necessary objects too often treated with contempt they do not deserve. They work hard, every house needs at least one, they are kicked, beaten, stamped on, shaken; they are dull to look at – no attractive colours or pattern, no softness to the touch, but are tough, humble, patient, enduring … In fact I think I lack some of its most admirable qualities and am not so much a doormat as I suppose, more’s the pity.

  Friday, 13 June

  I am enjoying my thirties much more than my twenties and I hope to make this pleasure in living progressive decade by decade. May my forties be better and my fifties be better still. I should like to be able to say that when I am 70 if I live so long. Reported in paper today was a woman of 88 in trouble because of car she insisted on driving – and I have just heard of man of 73 about to remarry, with more vitality than his son. One shouldn’t mind growing old. It gives one a chance to rectify mistakes, to benefit from one’s experience – use it and practise it.

  Friday, 20 June

  In train to Paddington this morning opposite me were two elderly lovers. Thin, neat, grey-haired man – rather bachelor looking, and enormous middle-aged woman in skimpy coat and skirt, satin blouse, rose in button hole, awful tweed cap-shaped hat – she wore glasses, had broad, florid, kind face and rich North-country (or was it Irish?) voice. Was talking all the time about her family and past history. Might have been a matron or hospital sister – that type – and ecstatically happy. They held hands under newspaper. Am reminded of R.W.’s friend at HDA – a tarty, seductive, intriguing little bit, wiry, dark, exotic, rather French, who came out with things brazenly, impudently. Discussing news of an engagement she once remarked, ‘fancy getting into bed with that’. Which after all is one of the first things one does think of at news of engagement or marriage.

  Tuesday, 8 July

  In town today, dined with Luigi and then paid flying visit with her to Gus and Phyllis. Coming home in train began an analysis of my friends. I say to myself vaguely that I know a great variety of people, but actually I doubt if they are so different. They all belong to some strata of the middle classes, upper, middle and lower. The upper grade have close and obvious connections with the aristocratic and ruling class. They are from well to do families with property or capital of some kind, familiar with comfortable, cultured living, with artistic or high class professional interests, liberal or conservative in outlook, their tastes refined, discriminating, and possessing a rather superior sort of tolerance for the rest of humanity. In this grade are, of course, Gus and Phyllis, Josephine, Lizzie Cecil, Luigi, Enid Martin. The next grade, in which I include myself, is rather more obviously plebeian. We are in touch with and know both higher and lower grades of the middle class and can adapt ourselves to either when occasion demands but do not feel we belong. I am always acutely conscious of the conflict within me between the happy, impulsive, uncouth, common little peasant Pratt and the educated, restrained, polite, timid little middle-class Lucey. Joan, Nockie, Lydia and Lizzie Mitchell – we all have a provincial, less sophisticated, less delicate background – we are coarser, tougher, not so confident of our social superiority. Hugh and Tom belong here too. But our interests are similar. We have strongly developed artistic or intellectual instincts. In politics we tend more towards the left, though this path becomes increasingly difficult and confusing. We distrust the Tory way but are shocked by present Labour antics and ashamed to own allegiance. Perhaps the people I know differ more in character and temperament than in social distinction or interests.

  Saturday, 2 August

  More paying guests today. Two nice women, about my age, plain, school-mistressy, sad-eyed. One, I think, an RC. A rosary fell from her night things when I took the cover from the bed. The hour before guests arrive is fearful. I wonder and wonder about them, imagining dreadful possibilities. The one I corresponded with most has an almost childishly script hand. Is active, pleasant-spoken – used, I should say, to command.

  Sunday, 3 August

  A day so beautiful, so perfect, that it hurts. Full of memories that go back and back. Full of foreboding. One should be with friends, a really jolly party, in some Cornish cove picnicking, in and out of the sea all day. Or with one or two special friends having a lazy tea in the garden. But I am here with an empty hour and an empty garden full only of sunshine and shadow and green leaves and the scent of phlox.

  I have been given a talent for writing. This is a real fact that I must not try to bury and ignore. But the way seems long, hard and unfruitful. So many people can write, do write, have written. There are far too many printed words in the world today. But that is an old argument, refuge of the pessimist and coward.

  Tuesday, 2 September

  I keep feeling, more and more, that the small things we do, see, think and feel every day and forget are more important than we realise. We cannot capture them all: we should be drowned in words if we could. Yet in this moment I want to capture all mine. Hasn’t Virginia Woolf written a book which covers in time only one day?

  But I do not like to reveal too much to Mass Observation. This isn’t delicacy, or consideration for my friends, but vanity. I am ashamed of my lack of strong male connection: no husband, no fiancé or l
over to acknowledge and be proud of, and very few boyfriends. In revealing as little of this as possible I hope to conceal it and leave them guessing. As though they cared!

  On Saturday we said goodbye to Hugh. He goes to India this week and then on to Australia. Shall we meet again? I don’t ‘feel’ that we shan’t. I have seen him little lately, yet I shall miss him. He has promised to write. I am very fond of Hugh. But I think there is little there for a woman to love. N. says his wife Maritza is no longer ‘in love with him’, that he does not sleep with her now. N. suspects him of having another affair. But he declares he has been faithful, and I believe that is true. Maritza is to join him in Australia, with his young son.

  On Monday I went to see Gus and Phyllis. Gus read beginnings of ‘Peg’. He went on reading it and wants to read more and gave me one or two most helpful points: not destructively as of old. That it is holding his attention is great encouragement. I make no prophesies, I have no ‘feelings’ about this book. I am getting it done. G. and P. cling to a colourful past and won’t accept more than they must of the present to make life tolerable. But they are helping to keep alive and to continue traditions that make living gracious. They practise the art of fine living as far as it is now within their power, on the old lines, the ancient model. It is an art and must not be forgotten.

  Supper last night with Ethel and Aunt Maggie. Home by 10.30, tired but happy. My path is set in pleasant places. I love my life. I am deeply envied by many people. (It is sometimes an immensely heavy burden, the envy of others.) Yet remember, remember all ye that pass by: I am lonely, lonely. No one comes home to me at evening. I sleep alone at night. This is becoming less of a whine than it was. But it is the price one has to pay for this lovely, enviable life that is mine.

  At Hampstead I slept in a room facing the back of New End Hospital and on Sunday night was kept awake – it seems long hours – by a child’s crying. Three nights in London are vivid now. One some time ago with Joan when the woman in Flat 3 had had an illegal abortion and was very ill (she eventually had to go into hospital, and recovered). The second when staying in flat with Liz Cecil near Paddington a few weeks ago. And then last night. The weight of misery in a city has borne down on me. It is terrible, suffocating. The sordidness of that woman’s life in Flat 3 – a little dog that wailed, neglected outside a shut door near Paddington – and a child’s bewilderment, pain, frustration. I can’t properly recall the feeling now, but at the time it is what I think must be hell.

  Monday, 8 September

  This panic I get into about the future: sudden, vivid little pictures of a lovely, unloved, impoverished old age. Ill, neglected, without money, friends or any means of support. I want frantically to insure myself against such disaster and misery. It’s a form of neurosis, a symptom of a neurotic attitude to life. Don’t let it happen!

  Sunday, 21 September

  11.30 p.m. In bed and nearly asleep when I remembered something. Hugh has been fabricating the most monstrous tale concerning me. Made N. swear never to mention it but when she hinted at it last week she told me the whole without much persuasion.

  From something I said in one of my letters to him. I wish I could remember exactly – it referred, obliquely, without names, to A.M. and my rage with him at that moment when he seemed to be behaving particularly badly; I felt very blue and let off steam to Hugh. I know Hugh answered promptly, most anxious about me, offering to come down at once and bump the offending male off for me. Very flattering. I laughed and forgot about it.

  Hugh did come for a weekend that autumn – he slept on sitting room sofa. I did not encourage attentions though think he’d have obliged if I’d given the least sign – but I had become A.M.’s mistress that summer and was waiting ardently for the next visit. Well, out of all this Hugh composes this story: I am being followed and molested by an undesirable man in the neighbourhood who insists on visiting cottage late at night and is scaring me to death. I appeal to Hugh. There is ‘fear in her voice’. He makes some excuse to wife M. and comes for the weekend. Of course because of M. he has no ‘immoral relations’ with me. I keep looking at the clock, expecting a footstep saying ‘this is about the time he comes …’ and so on. Then unknown to me Hugh goes to the garden gate about 10.30, sees a man walking up and down outside who says to him:

  ‘What are you doing at that house?’

  ‘I live here,’ says Hugh.

  ‘But Miss P. lives there—’

  ‘I know. I live with Miss Pratt here. What do you want?’ And the man vanishes and Hugh returns and assures me ‘there’ll be no more trouble’.

  Well, really. Infamous story! I don’t remember him going into the garden after dark. If he did I hope he didn’t have that conversation with one of the neighbours, airing their dog last thing. I am sure he believes it thoroughly now – he is like that; and I wonder how many more he’s made up like that; and of what other outrageous, sinister things N. suspects me of keeping from her. I am sure she thinks I went to G. Howe for the same trouble Monica H. did – her obsession with masturbation, which I have recently learned. I don’t think the word was even once mentioned. I don’t deny guilt where this is concerned but it has always seemed to me, long before I went to Dr Howe, the symbol of something much more important; that that in itself should not be worried over – and since reading Groddeck and other psychologists am all the more convinced and reassured.160

  Wednesday, 1 October

  All in a moment the bright day is darkened and my adored cat becomes a malevolent demon, a black stab of evil as I hold the frail, lonely husk of a small robin in my hands. Its body is still warm, but I think its back is broken. The inexorable law of life. Only humans feel pity and remorse and are aware of cruelty. If humans found some synthetic substitutes for food, animals would continue their slaughter of each other, parasites would suck the life from another organism, decay would attack and rot the living. And we who can feel pity can feel it falsely until we lose all sense of proportion in our feelings. Perhaps this is a means of escape from feeling real pity when we are powerless to restore what is destroyed, or mend what is broken. The still form of my mother’s lifeless body, the closed eyes of my father’s … That flesh will never again be quickened by them. Gone. These are the moments terrible to bear.

  Sunday, 19 October

  Last Tuesday I sat for my auragraph with Harold Sharp (am told he is a Communist) at the Marylebone Spiritualist Association. This is Lydia’s birthday and Xmas gift to me. I sat in a deep armchair facing the light and Sharp, who began at once drawing and colouring a circle on cartridge paper. He is conscious when doing this, though his hand is being ‘controlled’. He says that he cannot draw a line himself. He chats away amiably while I look through a book of auragraphs he has handed me. Amazing creations, all different, all colours, shapes pictures, patterns. He explained several. When mine was completed I sat in a chair by him at a desk and he went into a trance, when his Chinaman ‘guide’ came through and began to explain the diagram. It was a delicate concoction of pale mauve, primrose, green, red rocks, blue waves, and many delightful curly shapes, delicately drawn in the Chinese manner. Surprisingly like Lydia’s. I took notes as he spoke and as far as I can remember he said something like this:

  Upright rock-like structure in steps at base of circle in bright red: represents the slow magnetism, the heavy wavelength in my make-up by which I get things done step by step, determinedly. A tendency to plan my time, to make timetables and to get things done with steady patience. In youth some ‘obstinacy’ since overcome. A little blue sea lapped round my rock which showed adaptability, and the turning of this ‘obstinate’ force into a willing one which helped my progress considerably. The mauve all round outer edge of circle represents a ‘rectification’ ability – not ‘creative’. Would make a good teacher, nurse, healer, psychologist or probation officer – the ability to put things and people right, to convert, to build up from given material: I could not design a hat or gown on my own from nothing, but could
give an old one just the right touch and finish to make it into something new and attractive.

  In the centre a green patch which showed a progressive outlook, that I had travelled a long way from the outlook and idea of my parents and early life. The yellow twisting its way throughout the pattern meant ‘spirituality’. My religion was in my life and it did not matter if I never entered a church – not a ‘shrine worshipper’ was one term he used.

  He saw a ‘baby’ influence in my life. I had thrown a protective wing over some child which had greatly helped my own growth. Did I understand that? (No!) It had helped me to ‘expand’ myself. Also, he could see no inferiority complex (I have to underline this!), usually represented by a brown patch near the base, this space now occupied by a pleasant little blue wave.

  He thought he saw me at the start of a new period, opening new doors. I had to ask if he saw nothing about my writing and the biography I have been working on. He thought that would be my type of work exactly, my thirst for information seeking causes and ability to construct from given facts, the ability to resurrect a personality so that it lives again for others to see and recognise.

  Wednesday, 22 October

  I feel myself committed to the following confession. I have not thought of A.M. seriously now for months. The daydreams have altogether stopped: even daydreams of an imaginary lover do not possess me as they used to. But last night in bed before I slept I thought someone was saying to me, ‘You’re afraid of falling in love’. And I said, ‘No – no – I am afraid of making the same ghastly mistakes all over again. I am so easily tricked. I couldn’t bear any more of it.’ And was once more vividly aware of that look in A.M.’s eyes which I have always yearned to see in a man’s for me.