This is a very long bad cut, nearly an hour now. Ordered more coal and coke today after hearing report of Fuel Minister’s gloomy speech. Economic outlook depressing too, according to today’s News Chronicle leader. But this soaking of the rich – they keep saying that the rich can’t be soaked much more. Yet I see evening sandals advertised at 12 guineas a pair, I see fur coats in the West End worth £1,000 and more; I hear of husband and wife each owning an expensive car; and in grocer’s last week one woman calmly ordering 6 gins (at 32s. 6d. a bottle), whiskey, tonics, a crate of beer. Luxury goods can be had in quantity now, all kinds, at extravagant prices. Someone finds the money from somewhere to pay for them or they wouldn’t be for sale. A lot of it may come, as mine does at present, from capital. We are still living on the energy and enterprise of our own Victorian ancestors.
Light again! And some play on the Light Programme: Maurice Denham in The Ugly Duckling. Someone being very hysterical and smashing mirrors.
Wealth is changing ownership – the old rich classes are impoverished, and the goods they were once able to buy go now to a different group. And it is all so relative. I am well off by some standards. I do not in fact think of myself as poor at all and try to be grateful for what I have. I have a modest fur coat (musquash, and I loathe musquash, I yearn to get something else); I keep a bottle of gin and sherry in stock for the odd occasion; I spend at least 14s. 7d. a week on cigarettes, I have a portable gramophone and records I never use (would sell it willingly if it didn’t mean so much bother to try); an ancient hired radio but still serviceable (I would like a portable as well); an electric clock; sufficient clothes to pass muster (just) for smart dos – these are very rare so I get by; a stock of nylons, always adequate food. I think that I couldn’t possibly manage with less and would like more – another coat, for instance, to wear on shopping expeditions into village when I always cycle; the one I own is now 10 years old and looks terrible.
Where does one draw the line between necessities and luxuries? I think it imperative to have my hair done every 2–3 weeks, to use good lipstick, face creams, powder and talcum, but do without bath salts which I adore. I manage without a car, but other people evidently find they must have one – each. And now it is 6 o’clock. And I had to fly outside to relieve nature.
Phoned Gus. Nice to hear his pleasant, cultured, witty voice – always full of a particular warmth for me. Prepared supper. Curry of mutton remains. It finished up as a revolting dish much too stodgy and fat and I have felt sick ever since. Did the ironing, tacked and pressed pleats of black skirt. Finished some mending, rinsed out the kettles, cleaned the bath.
It rains still lightly.
Sunday, 3 December
Have enjoyed having N. here again very much. There is no doubt at all that her contract with masonry is helping her greatly. Her joy and interest in living is as keen as ever it was. There is beginning to be – really and lastingly I think – a restraint in her. I know she longs for me to become interested in masonry too. Yet still my way can not be her way – not now, in this moment. I must plod on through the fog, alone. She is an inspiration and she shames me. I feel I have too often taken a mean view of her. I noticed her neck had thickened a little but she still had the slim delicate alluring grace of her youth – it was all very much there and I said so. Not until I saw her again this spring was the coarsening really apparent and quite shocking, plump now to obesity, no one could miss it. Hugh L. is in trouble again and wanting to meet N. His 3rd marriage evidently not a success and he is abandoning journalism. She is to meet him on Tuesday.
Say the mystics: when the master is needed the master will come. I need this master now, now, more than I ever did. Help me into the way of finding him, or of finding what this need really is and how I may best fulfil it. I am so full of frets and worries, confusion and conditions. Help me to a greater willingness to learn, to real humility, so that I may see and hear and understand and live more strongly. The battle of living is never done. The less and less effort one makes, the more one tries to avoid it, the greater the difficulty becomes, the harder the way.
Monday, 4 December
A new toy, my first ball pen. Only 3s. 6d., but refills are 2s. 3d.,. I am enchanted with it and chose red ink because I need it for correcting MS and may use it for all proofs. At least perhaps it won’t leak as my other pen does, though I hear they tend to do so as the filling runs out.189
Thursday, 14 December
This evening I tried on an old evening frock with next week’s festive event in view. It is a model gown, bought for £1 off a naval Lt’s wife in Malta. Hopelessly out of date, but still has something. I believe I’ll get away with it. Have still all the etceteras – sequinned shoes and handbag, jewellery, a recently acquired white chiffon scarf tucked cunningly over shoulders conceals worn shoulder straps, a white flower in waistband. It still makes me look Upper Ten, but not only that – it makes me realise that there is nothing in my appearance when well dressed and groomed to cause lack of confidence.190 It is a despicable habit this one, of always prancing before mirrors in one’s mind.
Wednesday, 17 January 1951
The dance was quite a success. (I did not wear the old model gown. When I tried it on for Babs it did not meet with the approval I’d hoped for. I think the low back shocked her a little, and anyway the hall was bitterly cold. The stalwart black velvet was worn instead and really did very well – everyone seems to like it.) I think Babs found her duties as hostess somewhat onerous but on the whole her guests seemed to enjoy themselves and the local caterer who provided refreshments for us came magnificently up to scratch.
The New Year weekend Babs spent at the Exiles Club at Richmond.191 They had a fancy dress ball on the Saturday and B., her heart set on wearing a crinoline, persuaded me that Daddy would not mind cost of hiring a costume. We raced up to London and found what she wanted and she had the time of her life at the dance. Was more flattered and sought after than she has ever been.
One Sunday before Xmas, everywhere thick with snow and day leaden with more to fall and flakes in the air, Dinah went out during lunch and did not come back. She has not stayed out for any length of time all the winter and I was worried stiff, spent most of the afternoon, booted and spurred, out calling her till darkness. I disturbed neighbours, asked passers-by, searched in other gardens and then she appeared suddenly from nowhere, falteringly along the garden path towards me. Had she gone out to find somewhere to die, or collapsed with the cold and was unable to move? Shortly after this Lady S. cornered me in the village and lectured me at length on not having her put away. Called me selfish and cruel, I was thinking of myself and not the cat, she was so thin and so on and on.
I am being stubborn, I am unable to let go of this frail thread which has been part of the fabric of my life for nearly 12 years. And yet I would not hold on to it if I thought she really wanted me to let go. But her breathing gets more laboured and she is but a husk of her former self, so frail now she can scarcely stand against the wind. It seems on the surface that I should have no doubts, no excuse, and am being as selfish as the sentimentalist I abhor and would avoid being.
Saturday, 20 January
Dinah still with me, on my lap now after tea with me. One half of her – the top half – seems the same as ever, alert, eager, devoted, her delicate face and ruff, the tufted ears, clear as amber eyes, silken head, velvet nose. It is the sad, sagging, emaciated lower half that is so distressing. She follows me around, liking to be where I am and on my lap if possible, and always away from the other cats whom she detests, views them and their boisterous healthy activities with bitter loathing. I am the source of all the comfort, shelter, warmth, food and affection she has ever known. Perhaps now she feels that with me is the only possible solution to her difficulties. It is a big responsibility – and I wish I knew what I should do. Spilt a jar of currents just now all over crowded store room. Such treasure I could not bear to lose and set about salvaging them one by one.
Li
z has a boy – in her last letter she said she was expecting a baby in January. I envy people now who have children. Not bitterly or passionately, but rather wistfully. They can be a tie and a burden, restricting one’s development in other directions, but they also stabilise and determine one’s life as other things we desire and go after don’t. A career of any kind nowadays brings one into a hard, competitive sphere. But children lead one into a cooperative part of the community, where experiences are shared, there’s no fight to ‘sell’ them or – unless you are a superlative egotist – make them better than anyone else’s. The mother is chained to a regular dull daily routine but within it there seem to me endless opportunities for making new contacts and taking part in an absorbing sort of community life.
I don’t know that I’d have the courage now, it grows so late for such an adventure (although my old friend Joan Silvester, now married, my own age, had her first baby last summer quite successfully) and no use setting my heart on it if it’s never to be. The point that has been rumbling within for some time now, is that dimly I begin to perceive something beyond one’s own shadow.
Tuesday, 23 January
I phoned the cat clinic and asked if they could in this particular case possibly send their ambulance. They only use their ambulance for emergencies, but there is a possibility that they might fit in with another journey tomorrow. I am to ring again. If they can do this I’ll never be able to thank them enough. I shall be spared that long drawn-out agony of taking her there myself: it would be the best possible solution all round and the idea of parting with her becomes bearable. How she watches me now – can she possibly know? I must write – or try to – a book about her.
Margaret Leigh’s delightful Spade Among the Rushes answers some of the criticisms always to be flung at a solitary woman and gives her reasons for choosing to live as a crofter.192 In lesser degree I know them to be true for myself too. I no longer feel so doubtful about it, or afraid of persevering in my efforts to combine writing with the practical work of accommodating people for holidays. It is curious how single women, if they are honest and of any integrity, usually express a regret that they have never married. But remember always, O single ones, you have indeed a greater freedom than wives and mothers and can use it to similarly creative ends. And also that many wives and mothers, happy though they may be with their husbands and children, yearn too for the independence and interests of their single days which they have sacrificed. My friend Liz M. said last night on the phone that she had a greater and greater urge to find herself a job as a commercial artist again and employ someone to look after the little boys. The urge to experience life within the home and outside it will never be checked in women now.
Wednesday, 24 January
It is finished. Little light of my life is gone from me. When I can think of her without tears I will write more. Mine is such a pinprick of grief among the world’s sorrows – I must bear it in silence and plod on. Squib sat on the table just before tea purring benignly and lifting his head eagerly for my hand. ‘Do not weep,’ he said, ‘there is me, handsome, handsome me!’
Later: This is what happened. Last night in wave upon wave of torment I sat and wept over her, trying to eat some supper. She was on my lap, happily consuming most of my bacon. She elected to stay in the kitchen all night, seated on window sill, watching I think for a boyfriend. During breakfast she was stretched luxuriously in front of the electric stove and hitting out at Joey to keep him off her. I phoned the clinic as arranged at 10 a.m. and was told briskly that yes, Miss Hallam would call perhaps this afternoon but possibly this morning if I would be there? I would be there.
About 12.30 Miss Hallam arrived driving the ambulance. She has a very gentle, reassuring personality, a real love and understanding of cats – and their silly sensitive owners. Into the kitchen. Dinah was waiting to go out. Mrs Hallam opened her basket. ‘Would you like to go away while I put her in? Some people …’
‘Oh no, no …’ But I turned my back. Dinah clung to me like a child, would not release her claws at Miss H.’s gentle touch. I kissed the top of her little black head quickly and turned to my handbag. I could not see the lid being closed. ‘I’ll be off now …’ And away she went round the corner, down the path with the basket.
Tears. They do not bring the beloved back. They do not alter one jot of the years that are gone. Tears and tea and chores again. Now this, and more tears. Only those who have never known the strange, joyous, mystic communion that is possible with a loved animal will not understand.
Saturday, 28 January
Not a day has passed but some part of it is shadowed with grief. Even this morning when alone I was weeping again as I made the beds. That frightened, reproachful little face.
Tuesday, 6 February
I must try to do this summary. The whole point and purpose of these journals will, for me, otherwise be lost. Confession is good for the soul, a large forgettery also. I have tried to know myself, with self-concentration, not selfishness, but too often the problem patterns have repeated themselves. What are they?
Timidity, cowardice, lack of confidence – fears of every kind
Laziness and impatience
A lust to destroy, particularly myself when apparently worthless
Acute anxiety for the future
Fear has been one of the biggest governing forces of my life. If, like me, you are whipped perpetually by dissatisfaction, doubt and discontent, conscious that you are getting nowhere, stunted, left behind – then, as I understand it, there is only one thing to do. Dive in. Suffer doubt, humiliation, opposition, frustration, failure. Endure them. These are the problems that may not be escaped by being solved, but only by being lived through.
Fear in itself is not bad – it is not fear we must destroy, only our fear of fear.193 Our object is to define fear and find the cause of it, as honestly as we can. Then having found the cause, to face it, and accept it with open mind, open heart and open hand … and to hold it there without attempting to destroy it.
Laziness and fatigue have become in me so intertwined I don’t know one from the other. But of fatigue – it is often a symptom of depression – and depression a symptom of unwillingness to be depressed.
Now, lastly, my anxiety about the future. For this there is absolutely no remedy, from the fearful possibilities no escape. It involves us all. All I can do personally now is to go on with my plans, living as I have done for some time almost from day to day, learning to love what I have in hand, learning to live in truth which is suspense, which is adventure: movement, growth, uncertainty, risk and danger.
Tuesday, 13 February
Took Ethel, for her birthday, to see Diana Churchill with Emlyn Williams in Accolade on Saturday, and stayed weekend at Wembley, visiting Joan for tea and supper on Sunday. Accolade a most intriguing play, cast and production excellent. But poor Ethel now so deaf she could not hear.194
Ploughing now through the Mass Observation diaries for cat material. Not as much there as I’d hoped. Oh, those war years! I am ashamed of these diaries – at least that is the feeling I have as I hurry through them. My attempts to be facetious, cynical, woman of the worldish make me wriggle. But there’s a lot of useful data there. They were always written in a hurry, to record some passing detail, but my huge, burdensome vanity would push me into the picture wherever it was possible and I could find time for it – even when I thought I was concealing my own ego it seemed to pop out and take possession. It’s been allowed to take possession here too, and there’s a sort of passion behind the entries which keeps them moving and alight. MO wanted personal reactions to detail and that was what I was trying to give too. And my feeble attempts to explain and excuse why I clung to HDA and the cottage! However I can see how some of it might well be incorporated, by careful editing, with this – but fudge! You silly, conceited woman – stop being pompous and destructive.
From an interview with Sheila Hutchins (March 23 1950, News Chronicle): ‘You have to allow time for wr
iting and also for not writing. Lying awake in the dark is the time to be timid and humble … when you sit down to your typewriter you have to carry yourself across that fatal gap … on a great rush of courage.’ This of course essential but it has to be, as she herself puts it, with a ‘positive not a negative attitude’ in oneself towards life in general. Writing is an attack.
Wednesday, 14 February
Available now in considerable quantity are varieties of Swiss roll. The chocolate kind are filled with thick mock cream – margarine I guess. Have just eaten two slices of this muck, some coconuts and cherry cakes and almond biscuits for my tea and feel heavy with indigestion.
The Mass Observation diary improves from 1946 on. It begins to peter out in 1948, falters badly all through 1949 and stops completely in May 1950. I might go on with it if they gave one more encouragement. One writes and writes, spilling oneself lavishly, recklessly and then what one has written disappears into a void. One knows it is received and read – or is alleged to be – but there is no response. It must be how an actor feels without an audience. One personal letter a year would be enough, something informal and direct, with criticism and guidance if necessary. This would be sufficient spur for me, but without it – no, I cannot be bothered. I don’t imagine my diary is all that important, though I realise the value of apparent trivialities to future social historians. All detail, if accurate, is grist to their mill.
Wednesday, 14 March
I have now read Boswell’s London journal 1762–63. Oh, I love it, I love it, whatever the critics say! Dear Boswell, how I sympathise, and how I wish that my journal might attain even half so much eminence. But I do not doubt that this is the wish, ambition and determination of at least a thousand others and we can’t all prove so lastingly readable, or hope for so much luck granted to our MSS after death as Boswell’s received after his. It is a miracle that the MS was not destroyed by his family long, long ago. I do not mean that it appeals to me just because of his detailed amours. It is the picture of the young man who ‘sometimes approves of himself as composed, genteel, manly, firm, valiant, dignified, and feels sure he has the promise of unusual distinction but too often finds himself awkward, uneasy, timid, mean, bashful …’ Aren’t we all like this?
A Notable Woman Page 48