When we had all finished, the waiter came round and demanded a king's ransom, and the man opposite me asked 'What time does this train get to Southampton?' in a broad American accent! So I was right, though very unkind to my fellow English for judging a man to be an American merely because his white shirt was so pristine. It is a fact, though – your shirts always seem so clean and new and freshly laundered. Perhaps ours are so expensive our menfolk have to wear them when they get shabby, or keep them on one day longer than they should (our laundries are another thing we don't boast about). I noticed in Canada the brilliant whiteness of shirts, though at that time I thought I was being unfair to Englishmen, who were severely rationed with theirs. Perhaps they still are, financially, when you compare them with Americans visiting this country. After all, you wouldn't wear your oldest clothes if you wanted to impress foreigners, would you?
Did you hear of the three little French cats, called Un, Deux and Trois? They went skating in the winter, but unfortunately the ice cracked, and Un Deux Trois Quatre Cinq!
Awful isn't it? I'll leave before you hurl that book at me,
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
October 20th 1951
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Thank you for your letter of October 10th, which came this week, and which delighted me with your tales of young Master Toddy and his ways. And writing of Toddy brings me to the Subject For Today – 'The Tragedy of The Bellport Riders'.
Now I can take any hint weighing over half a ton, and it was not through obtuseness that I did not react to yours and send you a second illustration of this famous ride. No, my reason was that I had had a brainwave, I thought. Why, said I to myself, do another silly water colour? Why not perpetuate the thing in clay?
So when term finished at the art school I begged a piece of clay and took it home with me. This I rolled and kneaded into a flat slab, on which I painstakingly built up bit by bit, in relief, a horse being ridden by Messrs T. Akin and P. Bigelow. I scratched (literally) in a back-ground of trees and children.
This was so much fun I asked myself once again whether it was good enough, and conscience (and inclination) said No. So I went across the town and bought 7lbs of modelling clay powder. It was horribly difficult turning this powder into usable clay, with no equipment whatsoever, but eventually I managed. And with the clay I modelled the whole thing in a group of figures measuring about 7 inches high by 8 inches long. This was very charming and I was so excited about it as I proceeded that I did it rather quickly, with the result that when the clay dried off, a couple of legs fell off here and there.
But did this daunt me? No! Indeed, No, Sir! I started all over again, this time taking extreme care. Finding, with this third attempt, that there was a space on the horse's back (behind you) measuring about 1½ x 1 inches, I modelled Missie and stood her behind you, barking wildly at something or other. For why should she be left alone and moping at home, while you two were having all the fun?
This third statue was, I flattered myself, delightful. I treated it as though it were an atomic bomb likely to go off if touched. How I got it to the pottery class, goodness only knows, but get it there I did, unharmed; and it sat on the bench and charmed all the other students and the two teachers as well. My head by now was reaching astronomical dimensions.
Everybody coddled that little group. It was given a tin biscuit-box to itself, where it rested in a bed of straw. It was labelled (the box) all over with DO NOT TOUCH notices, and placed high out of reach on a shelf. I used to stand on a chair each time I went to classes, and gently lift the box. Last Wednesday the box felt light and empty, so I hugged myself in anticipation.
And on Monday of this week, as I walked along the corridor, I suddenly saw on a chest further along, a little pile of 'biscuited' pottery . . . . . . the Bellport Riders. In ten separate pieces. In ten pieces, Mr Bigelow (and even so, two other bits were missing when I fitted them together, jigsaw like). I walked into the pottery room too miser-able to say anything, and as soon as I was seated Peter (our new teacher) came up and started asking about the way I made the group, in an endeavour to find out the cause of its explosion in the great heat of the kiln. We decided in the end it was probably my fault – that I had, some-how or other, got an air bubble in the clay of the horse's body, and, in exploding, the body had taken with it all the other parts of the group which had been broken.
I said at length, 'Ah well, it can't be helped, but thank you for all the trouble you have taken. Now I shall just have to be content with the relief-tile.' 'Oh, but that one blew up too,' said Peter. 'There were only two failures in the whole kilnful, and they were both yours.' 'Oh no, there weren't only two,' I said miserably, 'for I've just looked in the cupboard and my biscuit barrel has had its handle broken off.' Only three failures, and all of them mine. Why?
So I took my ten little pieces home, and I stuck them carefully together with glue, and I made a false left leg for you and a false left leg for Dogsbody (the horse) and a new tail for Missie. And then I painted it all with ordinary watercolours – a white horse dappled with grey. A red, red blanket. Toddy in red trousers (short ones) and a white shirt with red band around his neck and arms. You in grey-green trousers and a shirt striped in green and white, with a gay yellow kerchief, around your neck, dotted with black. Your 14-gallon Stetson (a 10-gallon was too small!) was in grey-green to match your trousers, and Missie, whose colouring I did not know, is white with black and brown patches. The horse has two feathers (red) between his ears, and a very naughty look in his eyes. The whole thing was then varnished with colourless nail-varnish, and reposes in state on the sideboard in my living room, with a large antique brass tray at its back.
It is the most charming thing I have ever done, and it was going to be such a pleasant gift for you. And now it is all in pieces. It's all very well for my family to say that misfortune, if well taken, is good for character. But my character, as you know, is too near perfection for it to need any improvement, by misfortune or any other means. Besides, most of the pleasant things that happen to me seem to happen without any deserts on my part; this makes it all the harder to bear hard luck when I feel I do deserve good – as though I need never bother or take trouble, because it will all come to naught, whereas if I just sit back, the only fortunes that come to me will be good ones, undeserved and unexpected. This, I realise, is a very lazy and bad philosophy to get around the place, and I don't really expect to adopt it. But it is disappointing, especially when I have gone to such pains (and believe me, for such as me, pains is the word) to keep it a secret from you.
However, when I got home last night from the cinema, I peeped in the living room to look at the group, and I suddenly said, 'I will not be beaten by a bit of clay. I will do it again. I will get it right!' and suddenly, as I thought all those intense thoughts, there popped into my head a method of getting the body of the horse without any possibility of it containing air bubbles. So next week I shall jut out my chin and confront the pottery teachers with my determination to try, try again. It will, of course, take many weeks, for the clay is so thick in diameter for the horse that it takes many many weeks for the stuff to dry sufficiently for it to be baked . . . I should imagine, with luck, I might do it by next Easter! It shall be my New Year Resolution. This setback is all the more annoying since my delight with my first attempt (prior to baking and blowing-up) led me to plan all sorts of other little figures – a caricature of my brother playing tennis; a sailor and his girl sitting on a bank under a tall tree – the tree trunk to be the column of the table-lamp, the shade to be the tree's greenery – a burlesque, in clay, of my fat cat asleep on his back. And so on. Full of ideas but inadequate to carry them out. You've no idea how exasperating it is, Mr Bigelow, to be fairly bright in the head but not capable of carrying through the ideas that arrive . . .
Very sincerely,
Frances (Brokenhearted) Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH December 22nd 1951
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . I had a letter from my Canadian doctor, Keith Russell, last week to tell me he was in hospital having one lung out. That poor man can't do anything without annoying me! Even when he writes for sympathy he annoys me because that's all he's writing for. Says he somehow feels he's never to hear from my sweet self (that's me in case you wondered) unless he gets down to it and writes to me again. He had seen a play in New York and wrote 'yours truly witnessed the same in New York' . . . . . . Talk about English as it is tortured . . . . . . Oh dear, maybe I'm too particular, too fussy for this imperfect world, but I'd rather stay single and fussy.
The other day my brother was out of the Town Hall on Council business when, presumably, eleven o'clock came around and he'd finished what he had to do. So instead of going straight back to the Town Hall and having a cup of coffee when he got there, he went to one of the big stores in town for his elevenses. In the restaurant he noticed a girl he knew, who was sitting near a pillar, with a body just visible to the main part of the room. Mac walked over and said hallo, and found to his horror, when he got around the pillar, that she was accompanied by seven female friends! They were delighted!! Mac joined them for coffee, and three of them decided to have another cup with him. When the waitress brought the bill she handed it to my brother automatically (she must have thought he kept a harem, or was a stage producer) and he was horrified to find it was for 17 cups of coffee! Apparently the girls had been there some time. The girls said but oh Mac wasn't to pay for them all, it was ridiculous. Mac quite agreed, privately, but made a pooh-pooh fuss just for the record I imagine, and the eventual upshot was that all the gals pushed their contributions into a pile on the tablecloth and refused to take it back. So Mac gathered it up and paid the bill and left a tip and had sixpence left over for himself! He was as pleased with himself as though he'd just made a thousand pounds on the Stock Exchange . . .
Oh – pottery. I have compromised. I will not go back to Ballantine's decoration muddle class, but I have allowed myself to be persuaded to stay in Miss Gilham's throwing class. That means that I shall have to leave my pots at the college to be biscuited, but Miss Gilham has promised to get them glazed for me elsewhere . . . When Mr Ballantine came up to me on Monday he said, 'I am sorry about those two side dishes, Miss Woodsford' (those were the two intended for you, which were ruined by being put in too hot a kiln) and I said it really didn't matter because I had no intention of continuing with pottery in such frustrating circumstances. 'Isn't there anything you can suggest we do to make you feel happier?' I ask you – could I have said, 'Yes, get yourself a new character'? So I just waved my hand around the filthy studio and left it at that . . .
Somebody on the radio said the other day the reason Americans make their tea with little bags and hot water is because they never keep the same wife long enough to get a kettle boiled! And with that calumny I will leave you for now!
Sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
December 29th 1951
Dear Mr Bigelow,
A special treat for you, this letter was to be. All in my own handwriting. But on trying out this new paper (I have thousands of aunts, whose minds run comfortably in the twin grooves of notepaper and hand-kerchiefs) I am not sure whether it is paper or blotting paper, so the letter must be typed to be legible.
Well, I don't know about you, but I'm very glad Christmas is over. I think Christmas should be a time for children, and having none of my own and none handy for borrowing in times of emergency, there was just Mother and I at home, and occasionally my brother to mope and gloom (he's always miserable in between parties and nobody knows what he's like at them because he sees to it that none of his family go to them) so we just moped too. And overate a bit, of course, though the Ministry of Food do what they can to discourage such a thing. Buying all our food as they do, we eat what they buy, and if we don't like it, then we're just too fussy for this world. So our 'roasting' fowl was definitely a boiling fowl; our potatoes were earthy; our Christmas pudding was nearly minus fruit (Ministry of Food forgot to import any!) and our nuts looked and tasted as though they'd been left over from the year before last. However, there is peace on earth and for that I am grateful. And for many other things – the rudest health possible, a clean airy town, a wonderful mother, a job, and a sense of humour. And, of course, you to tilt at from time to time . . .
On Boxing Day Mother and I walked along the promenade on the sea-edge, and oh dear, people just dripped with diamonds and minks and new fur-backed gloves and new silk scarves and yellow pullovers and bright socks. I dripped a new wool scarf and a new handkerchief! . . .
Did you listen to the King's speech? I thought it one of the best Christmas talks he has given, and there was almost no hesitation at all, and none of those awful moments when the whole nation was holding its breath wishing him the next word, and quickly . . .
I went, for the first time for months and months, to the cinema last night. A British film, rather light and flimsy, it was nonetheless good holiday fun. 'Coming next week' was a trailer of an American film apeing (the right word, but probably the wrong spelling) King Kong, and the audience just rocked. With laughter, which I don't think was intend-ed. I roared too, particularly when the trailer came to the bit where the enormous ape wrecked a Hollywood nightclub (breaking the lions' backs across a convenient window frame as one might snap firewood) and pulled down the orchestra on their platform, knocked out the ceiling, the walls, and, it appeared, 90% of the people there at the time. In the midst of all this carnage and earthquake destruction, walks the Heroine (yes, she's the type to deserve a capital H). She trots up to the great beast, and stamps her foot at him in annoyance, plainly saying, 'Oh! Joe Young, you bad thing, you!' I hadn't expected understatement from Hollywood . . . . . .
If this is to catch the mail, I must stop now. I remember now I wanted this letter to be more controversial than the last. And now that I've written the letter, it isn't very, though no doubt you will find plenty of bones to pick over.
So till next time, with more controversy,
Sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
1952
BOURNEMOUTH
January 5th 1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
I knew it! In last week's letter I said the post office would undoubtedly maltreat my cablegram to you, and how right I was; it must be characteristic of all post offices all the world over. Here was the cable, pre-post-office version, as we composed it the day your scrumptious food parcel arrived:
WISHING YOU THE VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR YOU
DESERVE, FROM THE WELL-FILLED, WASSAILING,
WHELMED
WOODSFORDS.
And if you have to look up wassailing in your dictionary I shall claim two points to me!
Today also, as well as your letter, I had one from Rosalind, practically incoherent with delight at the idea of actually, positively, really, going to Jamaica. By now I hope she is warmly lying on the sands of Montego Bay surrounded by interesting high society, from both sides of the Atlantic . . .
Oh dear, Mr B., you do sometimes make me laugh; and sometimes you make me blush with shame. You write . . . . . . 'There are a lot of New Year's Eve parties for this evening – but I won't go to many – about three is my limit.' And all I could manage to do was go to the theatre, and on to bed about 11.30 p.m.! Perhaps, when I arrive at your age, I shall have more energy.
Talking of age – I see you are once more harping on it, for you say Rosalind started her holiday on the 4th January 1952, the date you never thought you would see . . . Our oldest customer at the Baths is Mr Russell (the name haunts me) and it is only these last two months that I've insisted somebody should take him downstairs in the lift, when he comes in for his weekly Turkish Bath. Normally, Mr Russell trots down and upstairs all by himself. Mr Russell is 93, and this week he bought himself a new book of tickets, with enough in it to last him another six months. Fie on y
ou Mr B., you've a long way to go yet, and I shall continue to rely on you for nagging and nattering for many years to come . . .
The theatre I went to on New Year's Eve was presenting a Christmas Pantomime; very spectacular, lots of girls with long legs, little children with lisps, and scenery all over the place. The only thing I thought would really appeal to the children – though, actually, there are so few in Bournemouth no pantomime would dream of appealing only to children, for it wouldn't pay – was a scene in which somebody gave the principal comic a Wooffum-puff. The principal comic was, as is usual in pantomimes, the Dame – that is, he was dressed as an old woman. The Wooffum-puff was a long pale blue furry caterpillar, and on being let out of its cage it promptly escaped down a hole in the stage-floor. The Dame walked to the footlights and appealed to all the children in the audience to look around while he was getting tea, and call out 'Wooffum-puff ' if they saw it. Of course, the children loved this. The Wooffum-puff kept appearing here and there, and the kids screamed their little heads off trying to attract the Dame's attention, but every time she (or he) saw the blue thing, the blue thing would promptly run off on the end of a piece of string or climb up a wall out of reach and disappear around a picture. Unfortunately, they only had this one scene which was of interest to the children. And I must admit that quite a few of the adults were making sounds suspiciously like 'Wooffum-puff ' at the same time.
Dear Mr Bigelow Page 7