I am going up to London again in a few weeks, to spend a couple of days showing Mrs Watson around. What I lack in information as to our famous sights, I more than make up in imagination. And who cares about dates anyway! I am using the task as practice for next year, by which time surely I should have worn down Rosalind enough to get her to come over, when my ability as a guide will have increased with use.
That's all for now,
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
April 27th 1950
Dear Mr Bigelow,
It is raining; it is cold; I have been, all the morning, interviewing applicants for one or two staff vacancies, and that's a job I loathe because I either feel so sorry for obvious misfits that I want to give them the position whether they could fill it successfully or not; or else I get cross with them for being bumptious and self-opinionated with little reason. In any case I'm bound to choose the wrong people, so the whole morning has been generally depressing, and I am venting my spleen on you.
I am sorry not to have answered your lovely long letter before. My reason is that Easter is a headache for me and has resulted in a bout of sleepless nights, which in turn mean irritability which I do not like transferring to my friends by way of letters. So you've been postponed, but don't think it was because I didn't wish to write off at once and thank you for taking all that trouble, because I did.
Now, Mr Bigelow, you really mustn't take me to task for referring to a 'road connecting New York with Long Island'. When I say a thing happened in 1535 I mean it happened in 1535 or thereabouts – say fifty years either way. I cannot be held down to finicky details, see? I'm one of the large gesture type; the world planners, as opposed to the scientists with their noses to the retort. Not that I'm often at a loss for a retort. Ah me, I'm in fine form today. Did you notice that pun just gone past? And heave a sigh of relief that it had gone past, perhaps? Anyway, to get back to the road. With the help of a bridge it connects the city of New York with the outlying towns on Long Island, and looking at your map (for which many thanks: I love maps) it seems to be called Shore Parkway, and a very fine Parkway it looked from my ship too.
You say in your letter, 'What is it that makes English people so?' You politely don't say what it is they are so, but I will give you an explanation anyway. We are a homogeneous race, as contrasted with the American, which is a mixed race. I am talking, again, in large gestures, of the majority, not the minority, in both instances. I have a Dutch great-grandfather on my mother's side, and a Scottish great-grandfather. Apart from that, on both sides of the family my ancestors came from the west part of England – Dorset and Devon – from back so far they got lost with William the Conqueror. That means that the amount of non-English blood in me must be very small, and it is so with most English people as well. That again means that my characteristics are those which are in English people for twenty or thirty generations back. And as climate and environment play such a large part in our natures, it means that any deviation from the norm has to be caused by an exceptionally strong characteristic, different from the usual ones. Now I am a genius, say (I'm not, but we'll just pretend. It's one of my favourite daydreams) and that genius, being such a hard taskmaster, forces me into being different from everybody else not a genius. But an English non-genius differs only in nice particulars from all the other non-geniuses – not outstandingly. Whereas in America your mother might be French, your father German, your grandparents Red Indian, English, Polish and Greek, and your great-grandparents eight other nationalities. These characteristics are going a'warring in you, and the strongest will come out. But it will be the strongest from each separate nationality, and as a result you, the offspring, may have (for an example) the volatile nature of a Frenchman with the painstaking plodding of a German and the sun-loving habits of the Greek and the poetry of an Englishman. No wonder you have so many neurotics, you poor things, with that private war going on in so many of you!
Anyway, ancestry aside, I believe the climate is what 'makes English people so'. We never know what tomorrow will bring. We say, 'Yes, I see' when we mean – 'I understand'. We are so used to thinking in terms of seeing through the mists that we really do see around them, through them, and as though they do not exist. Our climate is equable, though often deplorable. It is possible to be very uncomfortable – and our houses make it easy! – but it is never too hot or too cold to work and go about our ordinary business. Our twilights and our springs are things of exquisite loveliness, and have resulted in Shakespeare and a whole lot of little Shakespeares. I bet you what you like (anything up to a $) that you could stop ten people in an English street, and at least five of them, if honest, would admit that they had written poetry at some time or another. Even our love of our little gardens is a way of expressing our appreciation of beauty.
The characteristic about English people which hits other people, I believe, is snobbishness. It must be awful, to be so glaring, and I don't know the root of it unless the early nineteenth century was to blame. Why, in my job this morning, did I automatically say to myself, 'Oh, he's much too good a type for the job' about some of the men, if not for snobbish reasons? – they were 'too good' to scrub floors. But why do so many American women belong, by hook or by crook, to the Daughters of the Revolution? It's the same thing, different country. And you know, Mr Bigelow, most prime ministers of England have come from the lower strata of society (Lloyd George was a miner's son, McDonald a post-man's son etc., etc., I could name half a dozen) than U.S. Presidents have. So that snobbishness does not keep everybody in the station in life to which they were born, as the Victorians expressed it, and as most Americans believe it does.
Enough of England . . . . . .
I am glad you did manage to agree with me about women's shoes. And the sketch you enclosed was, horrors, exactly like my house slippers, though my heels are lower than that you drew. Still, you wouldn't like women to be plain sensible creatures, now would you? It'd take all the fun out of life. I remember one evening during the war, when I did hospital visiting in my spare time, wearing a plain sensible hat with a plain sensible suit, and a plain sensible American from San Francisco (bronchitis, hospitalised three weeks) leaned towards me, perching on the end of the bed, and said, 'Excuse me, ma'am, but I do like your bloody hat.' I wasn't at all sure whether that was a bit of flattery or sarcasm, so to obviate any repetition I went home and straight away cut the hat into bits, added a bow here and a ribbon there, popped it back over one eye, and thereafter wore it like that. And nobody thought it was bl—dy, or likeable any more. They laughed at it, which was just what I wanted them to do, as they had little else to laugh at in the hospital. Besides, we females get fun out of being silly, so why should we forgo that just to oblige a lot of spoil-sports like you men?????? My biggest hat-success of my career as a Florence Nightingale was a hat I made out of the cellophane wrappers of cigarette packets. For weeks and weeks everybody in hospital saved these wrappers, and I wound them round and round like pipe spills, until I had made a little cellophane boater. To this was added white and pink flowers, and a white ribbon to keep the concoction on. I never dared wear it in the street, but it used to be popped on outside the ward doors (and out of view of the orderly on duty in the hall, whenever possible) and then paraded up and down between the beds, to the loud (and possibly sarcastic) admiration of the sick men and women. It was so darn heavy I got a headache after two minutes, but it was certainly pretty and a change from nurses' starched handkerchiefs.
I have just finished reading a book about the Brontës. Too finicky and detailed, it was yet interesting and enlightening. What queer people they were, weren't they? I prefer Emily, both as a writer and as a person, but alas have more in common (except genius) with Charlotte. And here I have the nerve to try and explain to you 'what makes the English so', when nobody knows what makes that particular English family so, however hard they delve and analyse and interpret. With tight-lacing and women being 'interes
ting invalids' every time they had an annual baby, I cannot imagine how any family of women managed to be so outstandingly stoic, Emily and Anne both dying out of bed after illnesses of months' duration. The last time I was in bed was back in 1943, when I had flu and stayed in bed one day; running red nose, shining skin, lank straight hair and an 'ackin' corf. That was the day my number one beau came up to say goodbye before going overseas, and the shock of seeing me as I was, nipped in the bud what might have been the love affair of the century! So I haven't stayed in bed since, but that is only because I've not been ill, for I am no Brontë stoic, not by a million miles, and the least pain would put me down on the pillow wailing for my mummy. You should have heard the moaning I've been doing this last couple of months because I have developed neuritis in one arm. You probably did hear it, and thought it was the ghosts of the drowned dead marching up the Hudson and wailing as they went!
. . . thank you again for writing me and don't ever feel you have to, because you haven't . . .
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
April 29th 1950
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Mother has gone gallivanting off to London for a couple of weeks today, leaving me to cope with the flat, the cats, the shopping, the job, and the BROTHER. He is the biggest cope of all, announcing calmly to Mother this morning that he is confident he will not be called upon to do more than his usual share of domestic work during the next two weeks. Yes, that really is the way he speaks. If I want to annoy him, I call him Pompous Pete. I overheard this, and merely called out that his confidence was misplaced! I am going to distemper and paint the bathroom, spring clean the kitchen and repaint it, and do Mother's bed-room as well if I get time. If we eat at all, the brother will do the cooking. I will merely do the burping! I know his cooking of old – he makes lovely cakes (he says) but only if he is given crumpled biscuits instead of flour, for that is the only flour they were able to get when he learnt cooking as a prisoner of war. Except for the time when they swapped tea (used tea, dried off and repackaged with the addition of a little soda bicarbonate to make it draw when reused) with the German guards, and the Huns got wind of what they had done with the tea, and mixed cement with the flour they bartered in exchange.
And so I must rush off and start ruining my lilywhite hands (see ads) peeling spuds, and shredding fish for two starving cats whose plumpness is due to dropsy, but never, never, to overfeeding.
So, till the next letter, I hope you enjoy the books and a laugh or two to go with them,
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
May 20th 1950
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Today all 'points' are cancelled for food-stuffs. That means we can get treacle, and syrup, dried fruits and biscuits, tinned milk or condensed milk, tinned meats and fishes, without having to balance our need for the one against our need for the others, and adjust the answer against the number of points allowed us. Always an inadequate number, I may say. We are still rationed (and terribly meanly) on sugar, fresh meat, tea, and confectionery. But the relaxation, long overdue, of this points business will mean such a weight off the housewife, and she has been carrying more than Atlas these past nine years and deserves it if anybody does. There will, of course, remain a certain amount of rationing, because the shopkeepers only get a certain amount of goods in short supply, but it will mean that if Mrs Jones doesn't want any syrup, but could do with an extra pound of dried apricots, and Mrs Brown doesn't want the apricots but would like some syrup, they won't both be penalised because they can only have their ration and if they don't want it, they can't take something else in its place. Now if we can't get one commodity, the chances are we'll be able to get something in its place.
I see from the papers that two bodies of experts had been to America (at the expense of the taxpayers, of course) to study production methods in the steel industry and in the building industry. And do you know, they have come back and published papers showing that the reason you have higher productivity in these industries is because your workers have more incentive in the way of wages, and more incentive to work in the way of the sack if they don't! For which wonderful discovery we have probably paid through the nose in our scant dollars. I am at once setting up as an expert in the rotundity of the globe, in the hope that in a week or two I can persuade the British Government to send me on a world cruise so that, on my return to England, I can publish a paper setting out my discovery that the World Is Round. Not only are we having Jobs For the Boys now that everything is nationalised, on a scale never before imagined, let alone known, in England. We are, apparently, having Holidays For the Boys in Dollar Areas, so that they can come back and tell us what the Conservatives have known for two hundred years.
On which note of indignation I think I will stop. There has been no letter from you, Sir, for about three weeks now, and It's Not Good Enough. I shall, in desperation, probably write to Russ next Saturday instead of to you, and that will be fatal for the only way I ever get an answer out of that difficult gentleman is by being so nasty he writes back to tell me I'm unkind, unsympathetic, un-understanding and generally doing him wrong. Incidentally, you asked once if he was English. How Dare You! No Englishman I know (I know two, as a matter of fact, Bournemouth being exclusively female) was ever as difficult, moody, soul-searing, wolfish and altogether over-dramatic as W.K.R. And he does it on his head, so I think he must have practised a long, long time, and knowing me hasn't been the cause, hard though he tries to pretend it is.
Sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
July 22nd 1950
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . My brother is very fond of telling the story of Dr Johnson, who was said to have spat out a mouthful of too-hot soup with the remark, 'Some dam' fool would have swallowed that.' Not that my brother does more than copy the remark, I would have you know. My brother does seem sometimes to be ashamed to be seen in public with me. One fine day, when I am out with the scion of the Woodsford family, I will do every-thing I know, and a few things I imagine, to give him really something to be shamed for – I shall scratch, hitch my skirts, smooth my girdle, pick my ear, run my nails through my hair for dandruff; stare at people; laugh like a noisy hyena, and belch whenever we come within hearing distance of any and everybody. That'll larn 'im.
The peculiar thing is that I really know my one and only brother isn't ashamed of me. At least, I am always clean and tidy in public, and fairly quiet. I wore gloves (as I always do) and a hat, and my fur cape, a decent, quiet dress and stockings. He wore a tennis shirt (he did have a tie, I will grant you) but no hat (never does) and no gloves. So why he should act as though I were a leprous barmaid, heaven knows! In the street, we alternately crawled along to avoid catching up with somebody he knew, or raced along side streets to ensure meeting as few people as possible. It brings out the nasty, catty side of my nature, and I dream of becoming the Hampshire Lady Tennis Champion (much chance!) and then joining his club after they begged me to do so on bended knee, just for the pleasure of refusing to associate with Mac. See what a horrid nature I have at bottom, but you won't tell anybody, I know.
I can, to an extent, sympathise with his agonies if he really is embarrassed by my presence. When Dr Russell was in England last summer, and stayed with us for a week or two, I loathed going out with him, as I had to do each evening. But in that case there was some reason – his behaviour in public is far too affectionate for my liking, and at the least suggestion that I disliked it, it became more so than ever, just to tease. Not very pleasant, when there are about sixty town Councillors here there and everywhere in Town, all keeping a watchful eye on the council officers, to see that they do not Let The Place Down. Where my brother is concerned, of course, there is no such worry for him, and the only explanation I can think of is that he has spread the tale at his club so hard, that he is a lonely bachelor living i
n rooms, that the presence of a real live sister might bring his house of cards to the ground any moment, and show him up for the romancer he seems to be. Mind you, that is surmise on my part: I've only heard of this 'living in digs, family lives miles away' story once and it may not be generally accepted.
Enough of difficult men. A small boy came to my office yesterday to know if we had found his false tooth (on a tiny plate) which he had lost in the Baths. 'I shouldn't have lost it,' he explained, 'because I put it for safe-keeping in my shoe!'
. . . And now it's time to get back to work again. I am on late duty three nights this week and four next week, and shall be dead by Saturday. No flowers, please. Ah, my vanished youth, when four 14-hour days and two nine-hour ones wouldn't have caused the bat of an eyelash!! However every time I think of my pay cheque at the end of the month, with all this extra time, I hug myself for glee. So I must off, to earn all that pay.
Sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
September 7th 1950
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . The other day, just as the water show was beginning, a nice clean grey little mouse ran down the steps and swam right across the pool, to be picked out, poor fellow, the other side and removed in ignominy by his tail. The audience was delighted, thinking it was part of the show. The next night, when the compère announced 'Bournemouth's twelve Beautiful Aquabelles', out walked thirteen, the thirteenth having four legs! A stray dog got through to the dressing rooms and, being an exhibitionist, had taken the best possible way of drawing applause. Oh we do see life, we do . . .
Dear Mr Bigelow Page 4