What a couple of heart-lifting events we have had in the newspapers during this last week: first we had the award of the Victoria Cross to a young lad in Korea, and now we have Captain Carlsen and his mad, fool-hardy, glorious vigil in the Atlantic. Needless to say, as a seafaring race our newspapers are full of the Flying Enterprise*, and the first item to be read on the radio at news time is, yesterday and today, of current progress there . . .
* Editor's note: On 25th December, the ship encountered a storm in the western approaches to the English Channel, and eventually sank thirteen days later, just off the coast of Cornwall. Captain Carlsen was declared a hero for refusing to leave his ship until all hope was lost.
Now I must stop: it's gone nine o'clock and there is much work to be done. On top of having a cashier away (she isn't coming back, there's a letter in the post this morning telling us so, oh so sweetly, after she's left us in the lurch for two whole weeks) I now have the Engineer ill (passed out on us yesterday, and frightened us all to bits, poor man) and his assistant on holiday and my boss away ill. I suppose I could now be said to be earning my salary, eh?
And so, au revoir until next week . . .
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
January 13th 1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Thank you for your letter, with the home-made envelope and the ghastly striped pink paper! It makes one go cross-eyed in reading it, doesn't it? . . . . . . Reading your letter, I thought I detected a note of chagrin when you wrote . . . . . . 'tomorrow there is to be a midnight booze party at the Ewitt's and someone asked me to tea in the after-noon. Wish I could think who it was.' I took it you were mad at being asked to tea instead of to the midnight booze party. On reading it again, though, I changed my mind and decided that you were merely boasting of your cramped calendar of appointments in the social whirl of Bellport! I am sending you the report of my dip in the social whirl, at my brother's cocktail party last week, which I enjoyed much more than I expected to – possibly something to do with my peculiarly nervous digestive system. Couldn't eat lunch through nervousness; couldn't eat anything at tea through ditto. Consequently, two cocktails, an orange juice and a sherry made me feel much better than they would have done on a full stomach. The sherry was awful, and I should have known better than to have it, knowing it was cheap stuff! I gave my brother a copy of this 'epic' and have an idea he is using it for a bit of blackmail . . . . . . to wit . . . . . . 'Let me take your blonde girlfriend to the dance Saturday, or I'll read what my sister says about you, to the Club members . . .' sort of thing.
On the reverse of that newspaper cutting I see a whole flock of real estate advertisements: no wonder you thought cottages and houses expensive, looking at the 'for sale' advertisements in Country Life. Your rents seem to be high, but certainly some of the prices against the houses seem to be most reasonable. I always divide your dollar prices by three, to bring it roughly into pound sterling. Then I halve it on the under-standing that salaries and wages are about twice as high in the States as they are here, and the final answer gives me something to compare with our own prices.
Now that's the article itself: I am returning this with comments (you won't be able to read my shorthand notes, so here they are translated and enlarged). I don't know much about Mr Herbert Hoover, but I'm darned if I'd ever take any notice of anything Mr Joseph P. Kennedy says on this subject, remembering that he sent home urgent and frequent dispatches from London saying that Britain would not, and could not, stand up to Hitler if France capitulated. And then when France did capitulate, he urged the immediate withdrawal of all American aid into the European continent, because obviously the British were finished, caput, wiped out, nodamgood, ready to let Hitler walk all over them. So I'm prejudiced against Mr Kennedy's ideas from the start . . .
As to all that blah-blah about demanding positive assurance, declarations, ironclad commitments by the Western European countries, what good would they be in the event? Scraps of paper? France had an ironclad declaration and commitment she and Britain would stand firm against Germany, but in the event, it didn't affect her behaviour. We had an ironclad declaration and commitment she and Britain would stand against Hitler. Mr Kennedy didn't believe we would keep it, but we did. Now whom are we to believe? The governments who make these declarations, or the people themselves who have to do the fighting? And then again, might not the countries of Western Europe turn round and ask the United States for an ironclad commitment not to wait for the Lusitania or Pearl Harbor? We can all throw bricks. Trouble is, you're making so many more bricks than anybody else, these days!
. . . No, it seems to me that Britain and America are both dependent on each other. It's not all give on one side, and all take on the other. If we are defeated and lose the important points of the Empire, then you're in for a very nasty time indeed. And if you don't help us with your immense possibilities for the production of the weapons of war, then we're defeated. Squirrels in a cage, eh?
. . . And now for home and lunch. If Mother produces sausages or corned beef again, I shall not wait until after lunch to be sick. This week my main daily meal has been, Mon. chilli, Tues. stewed ewe (our week's ration!), Wed. chilli, Thurs. one slice Spam. Fri. one sausage. All with potatoes and greens and the everlasting 'trifle' (stale cake with custard and jelly thrown over it!) because my brother won't eat anything else for dessert. Poor Mother, it must be horrible for her to cope with two offspring who don't like the same things and who eat at different times anyway.
Finally: March 22nd is the date!
Very truly,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
January 30th 1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
A small extra letter because the sun is warm and shining on me as I sit at my typing desk, and because I feel pleased with the world, and because I wanted to rush off and congratulate you on attaining the fame of a bronze plaque on the Yacht Club premises. Nearly 50 years of yachting there is a proud record.
. . . We are enjoying here at the moment a spell of the most beautiful sunshine. Sunday there was a dusting of snow on the ground, absolutely sparkling with sun. The snow melted overnight, but we have had such heavy frosts overnight that everything has been white in the morning until the sun came up to melt it. The radio says England has been more or less covered by fog, but if so we have escaped it – we usually do – and wallow in wonder at the continuing warmth.
This morning we are glad there's something to make us feel cheerful, for the cuts in everything to make the country solvent (or have a shot at doing so) are enough to make us all pour into the Channel like suicidal lemmings. It is now 1952, and we have been controlled, rationed, impoverished, drained and depressed since war started for us in 1939. Deduct 1939 from 1952 and you get a horribly long time in comparison with one's normal expectation of life.
Quite by accident last week I discovered why the Bellport Riders blew up in the kiln! I had used modelling clay – obviously that was, I thought, a thing to use for modelling. But, you have to find a very special brand of modelling clay if you wish to fire it, otherwise it disintegrates (and how!) in the great heat of the kiln. I am once more fired with enthusiasm, and if the new clay has arrived when I go to pottery-throwing class tonight, I shall 'borrow' a little and get to work once more on the Masterpiece.
And now I have finished my lunch of one apple, one toasted cheese sandwich, and four nuts, and feel I should walk it off in a bit of exercise along the seafront; for who knows, when the sun disappears we may not see it again until Easter, this being England.
And so, au revoir 'til Saturday.
Frances W.
BOURNEMOUTH
February 9th 1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Twice during this sad half week I have been severely shocked by my fellow creatures. Shocked, and worried. On Wednesday afternoon, it being his half day, one of our attendants came back to the Baths for some tea in the caf
é, and I heard in a roundabout way that he was really, actually, furious. Apparently it was inconsiderate of the King to die on a Wednesday. And even more inconsiderate of all the cinemas and theatres to close immediately the news was heard.
'Where'm I expected to go until 10 o'clock tonight?' asked Mr Smith indignantly. 'Am I supposed to go home and cry?'
That was one man's reaction. The other shock came today, when another male member of the staff (in fairness to him I must say his feelings have been echoed rather more faintly by several others) complained bitterly about the continuing misery of the radio programmes. I must tell you that we have music (classical and mostly depressing – things like roundelays and fourteenth-century part-songs and music for the harpsichord) then we have talks to farmers, Children's Hour, the Morning Service (and several others) and the News Bulletins. We are to continue in this strain until after the funeral, when programmes will gradually, very gradually, go back to including plays and light music and comedy.
Now what shook me this time was not so much the man's biting remarks – he is a red-hot Socialist, anti-Monarchist, anti-authority, and a thoroughly quarrelsome type – but the picture he unconsciously painted of many thousands of people, who are so utterly conditioned to the present fashion of being entertained artificially every spare moment of their time, that they cannot contemplate life without the comic turns on the radio. Not for two nights (which is all we've had so far). To think that people cannot live with themselves for so long as two evenings of, say, four hours each, is a horrifying thought . . .
I am sad, too, for Queen Mary. She has had more sorrow than any one person should have to bear, and in spite of it all, at the age of 85 and in sorrow at the loss of a favourite son, she did not do what the rest of us would do – keep herself shut away in privacy. She came out and passed the 2,000 or so people staring at Clarence House, so that Princess Elizabeth should have somebody there to welcome her when she returned to her home. Everybody I have listened to has felt most sorry for our grand old Queen. And most people have felt glad that the King's end was so peaceful after his recent painful storms. Now we are feeling sorry for Elizabeth. She has a long, hard job ahead of her with no half days, no complete holidays, no retiring. It is as if, Mr Akin died tomorrow, Rosalind was immediately told to go to the steel works and run them in his place. Immediately, with no space for grief or pause for preparation before she faced the work people. And today Royalty don't even get the panache and the panoply of the Kings and Queens of old. Can you imagine Elizabeth II being allowed to send some modern Drake off on an expedition – or to order somebody's head off because she felt bad-tempered?
. . . I'm off for a long weekend with friends who live on the edge of the New Forest. Then, Tuesday afternoon, I shall come home and repack and go off Wednesday morning to London and Surrey for the rest of the week. When I get my weekly washing and mending done I do not know . . .
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
ON HOLIDAY: LONDON
Friday, February 15th 1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Today we are, after a long-drawn out agony of ten days, burying a very kind King. It has been sunny in spells, but for the most part a day of yellow-pearl texture, and icy cold.
I have just come back from a neighbour's house where my aunt and I watched the televised funeral procession in all its pomp, dignity and silence. Also watching was a young American, the wife of a medical man, who came in a little after us. She was much impressed, especially by the Guards Officers, be-plumed and mounted on glorious horses: I remarked that the silent crowds lining the route, edged by servicemen with bowed heads over reversed arms, looked through the cameras like banks of massed flowers, probably frozen flowers, for many had waited all night. The American girl said yes, it was better to watch it as we were doing, and as they were probably doing back home. 'Where's back home?' I asked. 'Oh, I'm from Illinois,' she said. And, of course – since coincidence and I go together – she had been at school at Duncan Grant or something, just about four miles from Alton!
At the top of my letter I mentioned the long agony of the last week. It seems to me that we are, in our insistence on ritual, imposing intolerable misery and strain on the King's family. In ordinary life when some husband and father dies there is privacy for his family, broken only by friends, and the funeral follows hard on the death. It does not make their sorrow any less, but it is less of a strain on them. But our late King's family have had strain upon strain: none of the church services they have attended have been private, but Monday they had to follow the coffin from Sandringham to the railway station; then the three Queens had to – or chose to – receive the cortège at the London terminus, the poor Queen Mother making at one moment a piteously 'lost' little motion. They then went to Westminster to receive the dead King there: twice they have been since to Westminster Hall to watch silently the silent lying-in-state, and the silent stream of people passing through – 300,000 of them in three days. And today there was the two-hour ceremonious march from Westminster to the station, and this afternoon there is, at long, long last the Windsor funeral. All in pomp, and so public . . .
Now I must go upstairs and take off my coat: it's so rude to go around dressed in everything I have with me, but I am once more sleeping with a Persian prayer-rug as an extra, unofficial blanket, and the only time I am warm is under it or in the bath. And no guests can stay in either place indefinitely!
Au revoir till next week,
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
March 8th 1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
On Tuesday this week, members of the staff were horrified to see Smithy (an attendant) cook for his lunch some crumpets, covered with toasted cheese, covered in turn with TREACLE! On Wednesday, to their horror, he came up with fried bread, two fried eggs, and more TREACLE. On being twitted about this, he remarked blandly, 'The trouble with English people is that they've no imagination where cooking is concerned.' I have suggested, via the staff grapevine system of telegraphy, that Smithy should try kippers and strawberry jam, but so far all the other members of staff have refused point-blank to make such a suggestion out of kindness to their own olfactory sense.
On Tuesday this week I was not doing anything so plebeian as to dine in my office (I never use the staff room, believing that the staff should be able to get somewhere where they know I shan't appear on a tour of inspection!) because my cousin Arthur Mould called me up and took me out to luncheon at the Royal Bath. The Royal Bath is a hotel which used to cater for Edward VII, and also for the Prince of Wales in his heyday. It remains static; the corridors are still covered with highly polished Prussian blue linoleum, that in turn being laid with bright red Turkey carpeting. The walls are dark brown up to waist-height, when they turn into a cream colour between enormous picture frames showing the Battle of Inkerman and so on. The lights are, for the most part, made of broken bottles fitted into a mosaic – at least, that is my opinion; when they were new they were probably the latest thing in stained-glass household what-nots. The hotel period extends not so far as the plumbing or the beds, but it faintly flavours the cooking, for the chef does tend to run to thick puddings. Arthur and I arrived in due course at the sweets, and I made myself very unpopular by asking the waiter if the mousse was still disguised blancmange. The waiter was properly horrified, so I chose coffee mousse, and it was disguised blancmange and still the same texture as foam-rubber.
It is very pleasant having Arthur as a cousin, even though I believe the superior luncheon to which he stands treat is put down to business expenses and even though it entailed listening to Arthur's small stock of personal anecdotes, which vary only in detail from year to year. There is one about Arthur in the desert during the war, playing tennis, unknowingly, against an ex-Wimbledon champion. And playing, what is more, as a favour to her because he disdained playing against weak and feeble women as a rule . . .
Now, in the gard
en, I have dark purple iris out, the snowdrops and the crocus buds, dark and pale mauve primroses and the ever-flowering veronica. Even the cats have gone gay, so I'm positive that it is spring and the itch to buy a new hat grows excessive!
. . . Thank you for your letters. I know I don't say 'ta ever so' as often as I should, but I appreciate them just the same, more than I say.
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
March 22nd 1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . I wonder why it is that families are so unable to speak of their inner thoughts to each other – or is it just my family are so afflicted? For some time now I have wanted to ask Mother to calculate just how much it costs, having my brother living at home. Then, if I knew that, I would know just how much more I would have to contribute to the exchequer if he were to leave; and if that amount were within my power, then I could telephone him at the office one day (I'd never be able to say it to his face) and tell him if Mother's financial dependence were the only stumbling block to his marriage, to hop over it, for Mother and I could manage quite well on our own. But so far I haven't been able to pluck up enough courage to ask Mother, let alone say anything to Mac.
Perhaps I shall have to soon, though, for both Mother and I feel desperately sorry for Mac's girlfriend, Betty, who returned home two days ago after spending six months in California. I sent a bunch of flowers to welcome her home; Mac, nothing – didn't even telephone her. She 'phoned him next day at his office. We expected he'd go out to her home next evening, but instead he took some other girl to the Fireman's Ball; and last night he said coolly that he had promised Desmond to play billiards with him at the Club, and off he went there. Mother and I were aghast at such cavalier treatment, if it shouldn't be described more strongly. And, of course, we neither of us can ask Mac what's happened; our imaginations however are running riot.
Dear Mr Bigelow Page 8