A Notable Woman

by Jean Lucey Pratt

  I now feel as bolstered and inspired as Boswell himself when Johnson praised him for keeping a journal. I would faint and fail if I ‘knew’ mine were to have such a high destiny, but as I feel pretty sure it hasn’t I prattle on happily, hoping for a sympathetic reader or two in, say, 40–50 years’ time.

  Have been working hard at Dinah book, all last week at the BM and some days in the week before. Saw Luigi last week. Same as always, such a truly delightful companion – how she makes me talk. I don’t think I know anyone I babble to quite so easily on fairly intellectual subjects as I do to her. Luigi has more to give back (without pushing it at you). Luigi and I are intellectually on a level – N. is above me, Joan below – though I don’t mean any disparagement to Joan by it.

  Babs home on Friday for the weekend. She is a prefect now and a very important person. Really she grows nicer and nicer. But I notice that she is always better during and immediately after the term, when still within immediate aura of school influence. It wears off as holidays advance. They are to have five weeks, heaven help me, this Easter, and I don’t know how she will fill her time.

  Thursday, 15 March

  Looking through Tatler’s in hairdresser’s I get seized with a longing for expensive clothes and to be moving in ‘rich’ society. I mean elegant society, but then I know I should quail at the outset and soon feel suffocated. I do not want luxury or fame, but I do like elegance and interesting – not neurotic – people. In fact, without being smug, I like my life well enough as it is. I only ask to be able to improve it where it needs improving and to maintain what standards of moderate goodliness I have already achieved. To go on growing, in short.

  My own two apparently conflicting ambitions, to marry and to write. Since the A.M. episode, which for me concluded in 1946, there has not been the slightest possibility of marriage. I have met no one I have wanted to marry or could have married, and nothing has stood in my way of going ahead with the writing ambition. Until I could do this sincerely, without resentment and inner strife, I could not write, or could not achieve publishable writing.

  The desire to marry, to marry rightly that is, is still there, but is set on one side. To marry because one ought to ensures no success in one’s personal life as a woman.

  Monday, 26 March

  This is the cost of cooking for three people for four days. I will start with full menus.

  Friday lunch: pork pie, boiled pots, tomato, beet, watercress, bread-and-butter, cheese, coffee. Friday supper: haddock in egg sauce with mashed pots, baked beans, sprouts, plum flummery, bread, coffee.

  Saturday breakfast: bacon and fried potato, bread, butter, Vita-Wheat, marmalade, tea.

  Sandwiches: grated cheese and chives, bread and marg, cake, oranges.

  Saturday supper: pork hotpot (pots, onion, garlic, apple, herbs, seasoning and stock). D: peas and lentils mashed, cabbage, junket, coffee.

  Sunday B: boiled eggs, as before.

  Sandwiches: sardines and beet and watercress, as before but apple if not oranges.

  Sunday supper: liver hotpot (in remains of last night’s gravy with the bacon, more pots, tomatoes, last of the beans, peas) stewed bottled pears and apples in jelly, coffee.

  Monday B: sausage and bacon as before.

  Sandwiches: egg and tomato, oranges as before.

  Monday supper: beefsteak stew in stock from last two days (including all veg water) plus onions, garlic, leftover peas and lentils, cauliflower, bread, coffee.

  Tuesday breakfast: bacon and pots.

  Sandwiches (if required): cream cheese and grated sprout.

  Laundry: four sheets, two pillowcases. Two bath towels, two napkins, one tablecloth plus surcharge.

  Total cost £1. 15s. 2d.

  On top of this I have to allow something for kitchen stove fuel. I provided baths on Saturday and cottage has been aired and warmed this very chilly damp weekend, though stove would have been on anyway if I’d been alone. Also allow something for electricity – light at night in sitting room and bedroom and stove in sitting room all evening and for breakfast. Should allow something too for rent and rates but this very low – unless one throws in necessary decorations and repairs. I suppose too one should remember h.w. for washing-up, washing-up powder, and scouring stuff and h.w. for visitors washing.

  I think £2 should cover most of it, including my own living expenses for the things mentioned. The profit would seem a good one. But I do all the work. It is a full-time job, from 8 a.m. to about 9 p.m. with an interval in the middle of the day varying perhaps from two to four hours. But add to this, or note, rather, that I dishonestly keep these ‘earnings’ from income tax declarations – if the venture were ever worked up into a proper business (as I often dream of doing) then I should have to declare them I suppose. Also, overall, I must remember that present advertising expenses, which are considerable unless I get many more bookings this summer, will swallow completely any profit whatsoever and leave me out-of-pocket.

  On Wednesday I meet Babs and E. at the Ideal Home Exhibition.

  Thursday, 12 April

  B. a pet. Really so very nice now, pleasant, companionable, interesting. Is out tonight dancing with school friends. We saw Kiss Me Kate yesterday. On Saturday we go to see Gay’s the Word.

  But what sets me singing most is that yesterday morning I saw the jacket design for Peg. By Philip Gough, and delightful. It has quality. It sets the tone of the book. Distinguished, arresting. We are all pleased with it. To be done by lithograph – an investment for a long run I am told. I can’t believe this is me: Janet Camden Lucey.195 Dear God may I have the stability to stand the strain of success if it comes. October is to be the publishing month, and salesmen to start circulating the book in July. Please please let me not falter now.

  40.

  The Latest Boogie-Woogie

  Thursday, 19 April

  Sometimes in my dreams at night I am back again at school and it is always nightmarish. I live again through that cold rush of hostility, of feeling I don’t fit in, can’t do things, will be jeered at or get reprimanded. All horrible, so that I wake with huge relief to my 40 full years.

  Pepper’s first family arrived in the early hours this morning. I found her purring ecstatically over three when I came down to the kitchen; she chose to have them in box placed under little table and curtained off. She swivelled right round to let me see them, and moved so that I could take away all the messy paper. Every time I peek in and speak to her she rolls over to show them to me. ‘Aren’t they the most beautiful babies?’ she purrs. ‘I am a clever cat, aren’t I?’

  Friday, 11 May

  Guests who telegraphed last weekend that they would arrive last night have not turned up, nor have I had one word of explanation. They answered a Liberal News ad, address Bethnal Green. I hope they don’t come at all now. As I worked about the house yesterday I wished that I did not have to give up my time to domesticities again, and when, with all things ready for them and the whole house clean and tidy, they hadn’t appeared by 11 p.m. it seemed too good to be true. I can’t think they’d turn up now expecting a pleasant welcome. I can only suppose that either something catastrophic has happened to them, or that they did write during the week but the letter went astray. When I have got into the writing swing again I detest the enforced change of rhythm to prepare for and entertain visitors. I worked at the Dinah book from this Friday until the following Sunday with only one day off in town on Tuesday, to the Foyles luncheon to hear Priestley.

  Cats all behaving like savages with woodland wildlife. Garden littered with dead and dying corpses and remains. I rescued a baby thrush from Pepper the other day. Yesterday Squib was torturing a baby rabbit. I managed to get it from him and have had it in a box in my room ever since, but doubt it will live. It won’t eat or drink. I don’t know why I bother with these little creatures. I cannot kill them, and would see them live and free again if it were possible, although it might be only to die more miserably in a trap or live to eat my most tende
r and rare plants.

  The warmth of the fire has revived my bunny. He fell out of the duster and has been making valiant efforts to get onto his feet, but keeps falling onto his side. The struggle costs much effort and he lies exhausted. It lies now wrapped in the duster on my lap, its head resting on the thumb of my left hand, and my fingers holding its forepaws. I have been feeding it with milk and water from a pen-filler. At least its fear seems to have gone – I hope it has. It is very still. I cannot feel it breathing. As I fed it with the filler it opened its mouth gasping – perhaps it could not swallow, the cats may have twisted something in its throat. I’m sure it is dead. I have loosened my hold, it does not stir.

  Yes it is dead. It gasped its last in my hand. My kindness killed it, or saved it perhaps a few more lingering hours. If I had left it to the cats yesterday afternoon its agonies would have been over within the hour but it would have died in a pall of terror.

  N. in trouble still. She has been having trouble with gums, had a poisoned elbow, and passed out under penicillin injections. Expects the end any day now, but retains, she says, her sense of humour. The Powers of Evil have marked her down, she thinks, because she has refused to cooperate with them. Dear N. Forever and forever N.

  Thursday, 17 May

  The PGs never turned up and I have had no word. This evening the first batch of Peg proofs arrived. I read right through them (as far as they go) from 5.30 to 8.30 and then felt really exhausted and ill. The pains I had last year again across the diaphragm. I made myself eat boiled egg but then had to lie on bed for 20 minutes or more before circulation and appetite revived. I wonder if it’s the smoking? I think that ever since I last mentioned it in here I have been smoking at least 20 day and sometimes back to the old 30 to 40.

  Later. N. has been so urgent that I let her help me check the proofs and has sent me pages of advice: her job now involves a great deal of proof correcting so she is right on top of the technique. She makes me feel that what she wants really is to dig herself in somewhere so that it can be said that she was in one particular respect indispensable to Peg’s production – she just must have her finger in the pie somewhere, somehow. I can let forth about it in here and feel I am cheating. Other people have only the more ordinary outlet of ‘pulling her to pieces’ behind her back, which she discovers now and then and is fearfully hurt and shocked by, and makes me feel guiltier than ever of this very sly confessional.

  Tuesday, 24 June

  N. came for the weekend. She wrote later in a postcard, ‘I didn’t want any acknowledgement, my dear. I am rather overwhelmed to find myself in such distinguished company. But in a way it might even act as encouragement to me to do something myself at last, which I know would be your greatest reward for ever mentioning me.’ Oh dear, oh dear!

  Characteristically, she is going through the proofs with three times as much thoroughness as anyone else could. This I acknowledge is all to my advantage, and I’m grateful. But the price! She is, of course, ‘saving’ the book! Correcting grave faults, changing my writing style, revolutionising the punctuation. But I mustn’t be pig-headed and stupid. It is not the superficial question of style that troubles me, but the old, old need for me to resist being overwhelmed by the N. personality – to resist it without spiteful feelings of resentment.

  She says, ‘The older I get, the less women seem to like me. The more I try to lead the good life the more antagonistic they become.’ She seeks for the reason outside herself – concluding they are just jealous and resentful of her vitality, ability, culture and so forth, but there is this that she does not see: her very buoyancy is deflating. The accounts of her own exploits, achievements, activities make everyone else’s seem stale, flat and unprofitable by comparison – she is a ‘capper’ par excellence – every anecdote will call forth one from her own life which puts the original in the shade. Also, her judgements and conclusions are not always right but she gives them with such conviction that only the very strongest could disagree without a tremor. She is almost – but I think this only in my lowest moments – like arsenic, needed in very small quantities for medical aids to health, but fatal in large doses.

  Thursday, 28 June

  Two more satisfied PG’s go tomorrow. It is very gratifying to feel I can make a success of this job. They all say they want to come again (but never do!), praise my cooking, and promise to recommend me to friends. This is my first all-male contingent, and I must say I prefer looking after men than women. Not that I have had any difficult women. But the atmosphere is different, it’s puzzling to know just why. With women, especially when they have a husband in tow, there is a feeling of competition, inquisitiveness and even suspicion, and always a sort of disconcerting, amazed, unspoken curiosity. Men bring much less clobber with them and seem somehow to demand less. Or perhaps it is that, all other instincts are being quiescent, they call forth the maternal.

  Had been trying to persuade Tom to let me have his corrections, and finally he promised to bring them, plus latest girlfriend, on Sunday. Tom in ecstasy over Lovely Peggy cover. Everyone entranced by it.

  Lovely, lovely life. Garden at a midsummer pause. Foxgloves are out, the dahlia is growing well but my rampageous cats will knock it about. Pepper’s three kittens now at their most enchanting age, and I learn that the Cats Protection League can’t place any more just yet, so what I’ll do with them I don’t know. Their names seem to have developed as Walrus (Walley), Tom-Tit and Starlet, two short-haired blacks and Starlet with a star of white beneath her chin.

  Sunday, 1 July

  Two of the proletariat this time: lads from a nursery at Walton-on-Thames, out-of-doors, uncomplicated young people with splendid bicycles of the new bright coloured light alloy. I saw a collection of these machines in the woods a little while ago, heaped against the trees by some club while the owners wandered, bright and dazzling, delightful as a rainbow. I can understand such a possession to be the desire of every adolescent.

  Monday, 2 July

  Truth is, I am slashed with nerves. A letter from Hugh about the cost of any proof corrections and a newspaper report of medical research finding people who died of cancer of the lung were all heavy smokers.

  Tuesday, 3 July

  My principal PG, the one who made the booking through the Liberal News, is a most interesting and likeable boy. Very, very tall, almost hits Wee’s low ceilings. Tanned, pleasant, open face and intelligent brown eyes. He came back yesterday with newly purchased gramophone records and asked shyly and politely if he might try them out on my portable. I restrained my irritation, thinking ‘Oh hell, now the latest boogie-woogie. But they are on holiday – don’t be mean.’ And what should follow but Tchaikovsky’s entire Fifth Symphony – on four records! Abashed and moved, I listened with delight and suggested he looked through my records if he cared to. I have been guilty of sloppy thinking again. A boy who could choose this sort of holiday wouldn’t like particularly the cheaper music – at least one supposes that if he did, if he had that type of mind, he’d want a resort populated with lush lassies and filled with noise. He sat listening to that music with passionate delight. And today persuaded his friend to buy a record of Yehudi Menuhin’s. He is interested in embroidery too. His little friend hasn’t anything like his character – talks as though he has no roof to his mouth and is just a little bit ‘simple’. I suspect a very good-natured, and a willing, easy yes-man for the other, who with these interests must find companions of his own kind difficult to find.

  Lunched with nice Enid R. today. She managed to stop smoking in Canada by chewing gum for three weeks, and says she can get enough sent over for me.

  Monday, 9 July

  Lunched at D.H. Evans cafeteria, did sundry small shoppings, then saw a coat for £3 in Jays and bought it. What exultation! What heaven! A Voguish, Brenner sports utility model in a fine navy check on cerise, wool, fully lined. Incredible. Then BL exhibition (modern books), and tea with Phyllis and Gus.

  They in delightful turmoil. Gus seems to ha
ve found himself a really profitable business. With help of his Irishman protégée in basement, he is repairing antiques, upholstering, making curtains, decorating, renewing damaged structures, building. They want an assistant they have so much work. Really it is a joy to see them. In fact, I saw scarcely anything of Gus, he was busy finishing a sofa which was carted away at 6 p.m. Phyllis in background doing all the office work, phoning, scouring London for materials – hugely happy.

  Tuesday, 17 July

  N. said on Sunday morning as she pottered about the room and I lay still in bed knitting, ‘My affection for you grows and grows with the years. Your book has made me love you more than ever.’ This is generosity indeed. It came sincerely, spontaneously, from the heart. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve it. My journal will surely arise one day and pierce me to death. And that I shall deserve.

  Her biggest quarrel with me is what she calls my ‘reserve’. This is always being thrown at my head in moments of exasperation – I am always one of the most reserved people she has ever known. She picks up on the long forgotten Mac affair as an example, but that is all over, as dead as poor Mac. She senses acutely all the ocean of thoughts spilled into these pages and kept seductively from her.

  There are no more PG bookings. B. comes home next week and is off to Scotland a week later. She goes to Eastbourne Domestic Science School in October. Peg illustrations have to be arranged. I want to get on with and finish the Dinah book. Sadleir has contact with the Golden Cockrell Press and I daren’t let such a chance slip. Hurst and Blackett have option on my next book, so if I can I want to make that the cat book.