Reading through your two letters: no, the Dr Russell to whom I refer sometimes is not Bertrand R. He is a Canadian from Toronto who has a rather pathological love of England. Mind you, I don't suggest that any-body who loves England and the English must of necessity be pathological about it, but this particular man is inclined to weep because his health won't permit of his living in England, and I detest men who weep because they can't have their own way. I dislike, disapprove, or detest a great deal about Dr R., and it is one of the Seven Wonders of the World why I am still, in a remote sort of way, fond of him. Possibly because he is sophisticated, terribly experienced with women, and the very fact that he was attracted to me seemed the highest form of flattery. And good-ness knows I needed a bit of flattery, to offset his other insults – for it is really an insult to want to marry somebody merely because they won't be your mistress, and to make it quite obvious, whilst in the very midst of proposing for the umpteenth time, that you loathe and dread the idea of being 'tied' in marriage.
Anyway, you notice I am not married; nor do I ever intend to be so merely to be able to put a handle to my name. My Dr R. is, at the moment, way down in my bad books, with all his letters torn up in a huff and thrown away. Most dull letters too, so he deserves to live in the rubbish basket.
This is a shorter letter than usual, and probably when I reread it I shall be ashamed of its scrappy style and lack of interest.
Sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
November 4th 1950
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . What a to-do this attempt on Mr Truman's life is! I cannot help feeling sorry for the two assassins (would-be) for they so obviously are mentally deficient, and therefore pitiable. They must be, for no sane person would imagine he could walk into a very large, many-roomed house, and search through all the rooms until he found one man (the victim) without meeting some other person who would want to know what was afoot.
I imagine, probably wrongly, that the attempt must have been a terrific shock to Americans (perhaps not to you personally, but to the rank and file) who fondly imagine they are beloved wherever they are. We in England are well used to being regarded as bloated beasts, and so our unpopularity, which grieves us with our so-clean consciences (!) does not come as a rude shock. One of the things which so exasperated my friends in Canada was the impossibility of convincing visiting neighbours from the States, that Canada was not dying – nay, did not have the slightest wish – to become another State. The Canucks used to wail that the Yankees wouldn't even start to believe them.
. . . Enough of politics. I have been reading, with delight, The Silverado Mine, and Travels with a Donkey, by R.L.S.
I have been today to a new antique shop – new, that is, to me. I'm always looking for new antique shops, but the result is all the same. I'm done, diddled and bedevilled. One of the things I bought today is intend-ed for a Christmas gift for somebody (probably poor Rosalind will get it slung at her!) and I bought it mostly because I loved its rich dark blue colour. It wasn't until I was busily washing it that I realised a) it had no containers for the ink it was supposed to hold, and b) even if it did, most people use fountain pens these days and not eighteenth-century (I hope) ink stands. So I sat down and thought and thought and thought, and now I shall claim that immediately (note that – immediately) my eyes lit on it I said to myself, I said, 'Now, that could make a delightful holder for pencils – in the pen-holes – and cigarettes, in the centre hole, for somebody to hand around a bridge table. Or they could put flowers in it, a clump in the middle and a small flower in the individual holes.' See how I trim my inspiration to my sucker-nature!
. . . I am sorry to learn you feel this is your last season as Chairman of the Regatta Committee. I hope by the time this reaches you, you and Rosalind will have had a lovely drive up through New England in the fall, to visit your sister. Isn't she the Mrs Crocker you said hardly went any-where even though she was only eighty?
Now my lunch hour is finished and I must tackle the week's most unpleasant task – wage sheets. I hope you are enjoying something more felicitous, like yachting, or dozing, or a good book, or just sitting playing with the kittens. Wage sheets, indeed – we should have a big copper bowl full of money, and everybody dip in once or twice a week. Bags I first dip!
Sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
November 11th 1950
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Tonight we are all out to dinner and the theatre (it's my birthday today) and tomorrow I start on the kitchen painting and distempering. By January 17th, or thereabouts, I should be finished. And I probably will be finished, washed up, wore out, and knocking at the knees by that time. It's hard work, interior decorating, you know.
My brother, discovering that in my cleaning out I had thrown away about an inch of after-shave lotion which has been on the bathroom shelf for over two years, raised Cain about it yesterday morning, and not even the offer of my eau-de-cologne would soothe him. So I said alright, he could darn well do the kitchen, and last night I solemnly presented him with a supply of typed labels to put on the bottles I knew he would find about that room. Each label is marked 'Unknown Muck' and I suggested he should put them on before replacing the bottles where he finds 'em. Mother will not throw things away, and there's always a battle royal when I do. Me, I have fits, during which I throw out everything in sight except those pieces of furniture I can't lift. It's drastic, but I claim it is essential if we are to get through the front door into our tiny flat.
To my enormous surprise and gratification, I find that the Council are in the process of regrading me WITHOUT ASKING! When I came to work for them, four years ago, the job was advertised as being in the General Division. That's the lowest officer division. I was in that for two years, then asked to be regraded, and got transferred halfway up to the next grade. Like jumping a couple of grades at school. I haven't reached the top salary in that second grade yet, and here they are putting me halfway up the next grade still. I am most satisfied about it . . . It's not finally agreed to, yet, but I have an idea it will go through satisfactorily, and it gives me the notion that my boss thinks my work better than he will admit personally. The other day he was grumbling to somebody, when I chipped him about something or other, that I never gave him 'any encouragement'. When I retorted acidly that what you never give you never get given, he looked a bit nonplussed for an answer and then sheepishly grinned! I am the only person around here who gives praise to the staff for individual bits of work, and I firmly believe in it. It sweetens life, and pays good dividends as well. It's really very silly of him from a psychological point of view, for after four years he should know that I thrive on encouragement (not to say blossom on praise) and that I go right down in the dumps if the job becomes especially unpleasant – as it sometimes does, as do all jobs I imagine – and there is no sunshine to offset the gloom . . .
And now I will leave you to contemplate just what you would do, and if it gives you indigestion, I recommend soda bicarbonate.
Sincerely yours,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
December 16th 1950
Dear Mr Bigelow,
We have had snow! And it's no use your turning up your no-doubt aristocratic nose at that statement. I know full well you've had snow yourself, and that you always get snow. But not here in Bournemouth – that is why I say 'We have had snow' and put an indignant exclamation mark after it.
. . . I woke yesterday morning to hear Mother laughing in the kitchen and saying, 'No! You can't go in, you poor little pussy, you' and then the rattle of newspaper. I knew from that sound, that Freckleface was being wiped dry, and went out to see how he had become wet enough to make Mother laugh. And getting in the kitchen, Mother said sharply, 'Don't let Frecks through to your bedroom – his paws are all snowed over.' But his paws weren't – he was walking around with about forty snowballs pendant from his unde
rfur. Talk about de-icing a cat! If I tried combing them out, the fur came with the ice and hurt him. When I picked them off by hand, it apparently tickled him; and when I held him up in front of the fire, his tender tummy got scorched long before the snow had melted. Later in the day, after we had turned him out for a duty-walk, he came back with his tail frozen solid. It's no use your writing back by return and suggesting a dish of cinders or sand, a) because by then the snow will have gone, and b) Freckleface always refuses to use a dish of cinders, preferring the floor just outside the dish. Hence the forcible ejection from time to time, to his utter fury.
Well, anyway, having defrosted cat, and tucked him warmly on my bed as a treat, I dashed out and swept snow in all directions. Off our back steps – being an upstairs flat, we have a flight of concrete steps which come up outside the building, then turn inside and finish up under cover, outside our kitchen door. These were sifted and drifted into a plane. Then the path from the bottom, to the main path we share with the downstairs tenants – the man downstairs had swept his bit of path from his kitchen door to his coal bin, and no farther. I swept from his kitchen door to the roadway, for the sake of tradespeople calling, then went round and swept the other path which comes to our front door, downstairs front door, and the two back doors of the block of flats next to ours. The tenants next door had swept nothing; one is too lazy, and the others are only given to sweeping past with haughty looks – they wouldn't know what a broom was. Well, having done all this, and got up some coal for Mother (to the accompaniment of 'Oh – I'll get that', from my brother, still in bed) I simply glowed with warmth and smugness. Said to Mother, 'It's too deep for you to go out today, dear, so will you please stay home and I'll use the Wellington boots.' Marched smugly the pathway into virgin snow on the roadway, and went right over the top of my boots and way up under my skirt! There's probably a moral in there somewhere, but, wet and frozen, I failed to see it at the time.
. . . I don't suppose this letter will reach you much before the New Year, so will wish you well in that Year, and hope your Christmas was a happy one. We always drink a toast at lunchtime on December 25th, to our friends who are not with us, and so if your ears burned and wakened you about eight o'clock on Christmas morning, you'll know who it was thinking about you.
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
1951
Uncles Mould, Marine Parade, Lyme Regis;
Frank 'Mac' Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
February 3rd 1951
Dear Mr Bigelow,
How strange, sometimes, comparisons work. The February copy of Holiday arrived this morning, many thanks, just as I was leaving for the office, so I took it with me to look at on the bus. While I was working, I gave it to the cashier to look at (she's hardly anything to do this week, as the premises are closed except for hot baths, and the poor cashier on duty just sits and thinks and wishes for something to occupy her) and, as they passed her desk, most of the staff stopped and had a good horse-laugh at the Holiday Diet page.
I was intending to send you back one of the meals illustrated – either the breakfast of two pork chops and orange, apple and banana slices, or the dinner of two roast potatoes and roast beef, with a sarcastic question, 'Is this one meal or two weeks meat ration?' (which, over here, either meal would be!). But, suddenly, in came a customer as I passed across the hall and he looked at it, the cashier obligingly holding the book round for him to see it better, and he turned to me and said, 'Well, it looks very nice, but you don't do too badly here in England – you do get meat now and then.' I said, 'Yes, we do, but what I object to is that we got more meat "then" than we do "now".' He shook his head at such stubborn greed and said, 'Well, when I was a prisoner in Russia, I didn't have any bread for seven months. Bread, mind you.' 'You mean you didn't even have cake instead of bread, like Marie Antoinette? Well, I can understand that, but surely you're not going to say it was healthy for you?'
So, you see, a diet that seems inadequate to English housewives (and their husbands) seems wonderful to an ex-Russian prisoner of war from (I imagine) Czechoslovakia. And both would seem inadequate to an American. It's mostly a matter of point of view. You moan (just a little bit, not much!) because you only have toast and coffee and an egg and Quaker Oats for your breakfast. I have never had an egg and coffee and Quaker Oats for mine. Partly because I loathe and detest that boiled woollen underwear which is called Porridge, and partly because I have always had orange juice, toast, and cornflakes with milk since I was about ten years old . . .
I was amused to see in the newspapers that this week the London butchers are going into mourning for meat! Their shops are being draped with black, and they are having black-edged cards printed for distribution to their customers with their ration of meat, the cards reading, 'We regret to announce the all-but passing away of Meat from this Country', or words to that effect. According to the papers, people are getting really angry about this dilly-dallying with the Argentine. After all, we are charging them two or three times pre-war prices for the coal and machinery they buy from us, so why all this hypocritical screaming because they are charging us the same increase on their meat? And people are saying they'd rather pay the extra few pence a pound for meat, than pay eight or nine times the price for rabbits or ham or tinned Spam-stuff. It's all this dam' Gov. planning. To keep down the official cost of living, they refuse import licences for firms to bring dried fruit into the country. Then they grant licences to Eire and Holland to import what is called 'Dried mincemeat', which is ordinary dried fruit stuck in bottles and covered with a slight sprinkling of sugar. Ordinary dried fruit costs (when we are allowed to buy it) about 2s. a pound. This so called 'mincemeat' costs about five times that – and what makes us so mad is that it is the fruit sent over for us, and bought by the Government in bulk, and then sold by the Government in bulk (to Eire and Holland etc.) and then sold back to us at enormously inflated prices. You see, dried fruit could be classed as an ordinary item of diet, to count in any cost of living index. But nobody can say 'mincemeat' is an essential, so we don't count that. It's like saying, 'we'll take all the shoes off the market, and then nobody'll have to pay money for shoes and then they'll all save that much money and it will cut down the cost of living.' Then they'd put, say, Chinese wooden clogs on the market at umpteen dollars a pair, and we'd have to buy them when our ordinary shoes gave out, and we'd then get told off for such extravagance – fancy buying Chinese wooden clogs! What an idea, indeed! Bah! and likewise Pah!
. . . And now for home, and four days at home next week, with a type-writer and a big fire – the coal-man having called when we were down to burning twigs and yesterday's ashes!
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
PS Remember March 22nd's the date.
BOURNEMOUTH
Saturday, March 31st 1951
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Looking over my old wartime hospital visiting reports the other day, I came across a report in which I had said, '. . . . . . I met this patient out in the street last week, when I was hungry and tired and rushed, what with going without my midday meal to do shopping for the patients, and running, or jog-trotting, nearly two miles in order to deliver their requirements to the hospital. Mark Garven was surprised, therefore, instead of getting a beaming hospital-visitor sort of smile, to get the full blast of my tiredness and exasperation with Canadians who wanted impossible things and weren't even grateful when I got 'em. He listened to me in silence, and when I stopped for breath said meekly, 'Well, you know you only do it because you like doing it – you wouldn't do it at all, otherwise.' And he was right. Whatever the trouble, I do my visiting because the joy it gives me is worth more than all the worry and disappointment and work.
Well, then, I write to you because I like writing to you, and because I like hearing from you and taking part, third hand, in your life in Bellport. If I didn't like doing it – or if I were doing it only out of gratitude for Rosalind's ki
ndnesses, my letters would long ago have dried up or become stilted, dull 'bread-and-butter' affairs. So there is one chore less you can give yourself – that final paragraph in your letters thanking me for mine! Don't, for Heaven's sake, feel grateful for these Saturday Specials; our indebtedness is well balanced in that respect, so our thanks can cancel each other's out, see?
. . . It is raining again, and I'm all dolled up in my best suit and my silliest hat, as my brother and I are invited out to lunch today. Serves me right for not wearing a heavy coat – I came out in my suit and my fur titfer and I refuse to carry an umbrella since they don't match my suit. Expect next week's epistle to be even less coherent than yesterday's, as I shall by then probably be delirious with triple pneumonia.
In the meantime of course, I remain strong and healthy and
Very sincerely yours,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
June 15th 1951
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Yes, I know it's only Friday, but the way I feel today, tomorrow the family will be ordering wreaths, and I should hate to break the sequence of letters by not sending you one every Saturday until the last possible Saturday.
In other words, I am suffering; and oh, Mr B., I don't often suffer, but when I do, I make the most of it! Either I have
Dear Mr Bigelow Page 5