Dear Mr Bigelow
Page 9
Tell me, does everybody indulge in voting at your Primaries, or only the people working in and for the two parties? I personally am torn between a wish to see General Eisenhower, whom I believe to be a very great man as well as a very good soldier, the United States President; and a wish to see him still in charge of the Armies over here, which need just such a good man to keep the difficult and temperamental bigwigs of the different countries working amicably together. Well, working together, anyway. I definitely don't want Taft, who seems to me to be a man making politics his living, with all that that implies in the States. He seems to be merely the Republican equivalent of Truman, another Party man. Both countries, both yours and mine, need at their head a man who can see higher than the top of his party programme; who can see a wider horizon, which may embrace both parties, so long as it is wide enough to embrace the whole country. And do we get such men? Not often, alas, but probably more often than we deserve.
Now I must get back to work – I have interrupted the affairs of the town to get this letter written, which is a highly antisocial thing to do, but friendly, perhaps. It is, I notice, the anniversary of our letter-exchanging, and may we both enjoy many more of them.*
* Editor's note: In fact, Frances first wrote to Mr Bigelow on January 24th 1949 but her first substantial letter is dated March 23rd 1949 (p. 3). In a letter dated March 17th 1956 (p. 214) she notes that she recorded the event in her 1949 diary on March 22nd.
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
April 1st 1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Trying very hard to keep an objective point of view about pain, I was quite delighted this morning to discover that under great stress (i.e. the drill of the dentist) I say 'Aah!' and not 'Ouch!'
. . . Did I tell you a neighbour of ours is to be our next Mayor? And that people up and down the road are saying 'he'll have to pull his socks up' because he has been in the habit of dashing down the road in his car – for cigarettes or something – dressed in pyjamas, rubber boots and a woollen pullover. A little bird must have whispered in the Mayor-elect's select ear, for now he goes up and down the road fully dressed in hat and gloves, a sight we have not seen for many years, coming from him. His wife, who has been waiting for this Great Occasion for upwards of a quarter-century, is as deaf as could be and not in the least inclined to view it as a handicap, so we are all agog to see what happens. Will the guests at receptions be politely asked, as they enter, to shout? Or will the Mayor's Secretary tactfully give the Mayoress an ear-trumpet for Christmas? Time alone will tell.
We had the most exciting boat race last Saturday for many years. It was rowed in a howling gale with both coxes wearing eye goggles to enable them to see, faintly, through the driving snow! I'm Oxford, and Cambridge have been winning non-stop since I can remember, but on Saturday neither boat got more than half a length ahead of the other, and what with the weather and the Cambridge commentators being so darn fair all round – 'but Cambridge has a better pace . . . . . .' and what with the B.B.C. launch suddenly stopping in the middle of the commentary, we all had great fun. The next morning the newspapers reported that the owner of the launch had asked for a policeinvestigation, since he thought somebody had siphoned petrol out of his boat during the night before the race, while the launch was moored midstream. Sabotage the B.B.C., what sacrilege! As the television viewers were taking sound from the radio-launch (the snow having messed the microphones up on the television launch) I imagine there was a really beautiful panic at headquarters for a few moments.
Last night I went to the cinema to see a new Italian film called Never take No for an Answer. It was a simple little story about a small child whose donkey falls ill. The child, who lives in Assisi, believes if he takes his donkey to the crypt of the cathedral, where St Francis lies buried, his donkey will get better. But of course the Church officials are horrified. The little boy asks his friend, the Father. Then he asks the Father Superior. Then he goes to Rome to ask the Pope. Finally, the Pope writes a letter instructing the Assisi church people to knock down the entrance to the crypt from the cloisters, which has been bricked up for 400 years, so that the donkey can get through and not have to negotiate all the stairs. When they do this, a box containing the Treasure of St Francis, for which they have been digging for years, falls out of the archway, and the film finishes with the Fathers looking lovingly at the tiny box (all it contains is a piece of rope, a wild flower, an ear of wheat and a feather) while the donkey and the little boy pass over the rubble. You don't know whether the child's faith is sufficient, or whether the donkey dies; the film just ends without preaching to you; and it was all most charming and delightful, and the little boy, ugly and passionately alive and natural, is a sheer joy to watch.
I do hope you have a good time with Rosalind: you have both waited long enough for this visit, goodness knows; it should be all the pleasanter in consequence. Don't forget to be very kind and gentle with Rosalind, whose nerves will take some time to recover from seeing your latest rug!
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
April 6th 1952
Raining again
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Here we go on the merry-go-round again! About ten days ago I bought small gifts for the two women who have taught me pottery as a parting gift now that the classes have been cancelled. When I got home that evening there was a parcel from Rosalind! Tit-for-tat, so to speak.
And then yesterday I sent off a very small 'surprise' to you, together with my usual Saturday letter (though most uncharacteristically morbid letter). After lunch and when we were sitting by the fire having coffee there was a knock at the front door, and on going it was not some-body selling something, nor yet the Government Clerk with the form to be filled up. It was an Easter egg from you. Yet again, great big TIT for my little tat. I never seem to be able to keep up with you two, let alone get ahead of your twin brains, both of which seem always to forest my own ideas, and forestall them in a wholesale manner that leaves me and my family just gasping for breath, and grasping at words adequate to say 'thank you'.
One of Mother's sisters is spending Easter with us, and I will admit we have been thinking of queueing with the holiday crowds in order to eat out several times over the period, as rations just won't run to entertaining in one's home except occasionally and by sticking severely to fish! I like fish, myself, but I suppose it is rather restricting to the hostess. Today Mother is jubilantly arranging what she will do with your parcel, mainly, I think, the bacon for luncheon and the beef for evening meals, and the butter for voluptuous delight all around the clock. The ham and tongue we are going to hide for the present and it looks as though we should do the same to the sugar, which is going like candy at a children's party (our sugar is mainly beet, rather worse and not as sweet as the cane stuff ). Altogether we are hugging ourselves for delight, and you too (metaphorically) for being so kind and generous as to send it. We all hope you have the pleasant Easter you fully deserve.
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
SOMERSET
May 3rd 1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
From being in a seaside town of ex-smugglers, I am now bang in the middle of a very damp bog, slightly drained here and there, in which (before my day) King Alfred spent a short time daydreaming in a farmhouse kitchen and thus burnt the cake and made history. Some time later, Cromwell knocked the stuffing out of the Duke of Monmouth in the same bog, and so made history again. Now I am here and you can follow through to the logical conclusion yourself.
The cottage is built on a high bank dividing the road from a man-made river which was dug to drain the bog. The disadvantages are obvious: the bank is no more than 20 feet across, and on the riverside there is a narrow towpath. So my friend's cottage is long and very narrow – one-room narrow, actually. Hall, lounge, dining room, kitchen, bathroom (miles from the two tiny bedrooms upstairs!)
and, finally, work-shed, all strung along in a row. You can fish out of the kitchen window, or pick hats of passers-by through the lounge window, as the whim takes you.
It is all very peaceful after Lyme Regis, where you nearly lost your correspondent in a litter of boxer pups trying out their teeth and newly discovered aggressiveness on the strange female in their midst. You try disengaging yourself intact from eleven pups at once, and you will appreciate my current condition!
. . . Then here is my old friend Jem, who is ordinary, and her husband who is quite extraordinary. A brilliant engineer but terribly smug about his brain and, at a guess, a bit smug about his appearance. Why, other-wise, adorn your plain face with this sort of moustache?
We argued about education last night until midnight and I got off a lot of long words, most of them in the right place!
Today it is raining heavily. The fields across the road are full of withy, which is a small willow tree grown merely for the long twigs which are cut and used for basket-making. I hope to see the workshop near here before going home on Sunday.
And now that is quite enough of my handwriting for you, so I will promise you an extra Special Saturday Special next week. I am bursting to write a grim short story about the dog breeder's peculiar domestic staff, straight out of Chekhov!
For now, I hope your weather is better than mine, but your countryside couldn't look better than my flower-bedecked one as I saw it yesterday and on Monday.
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
May 10th 1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
The postman was early on Thursday, and so I met him as my brother and I were turning out of our road on our way to the Polling Station where we were entombed from 7.45 a.m. until 10.35 p.m. He handed over Holiday and a bill, both of which I took with me, and the former of which was greatly enjoyed by sundry Poll Clerks and Supervising Officers up and down the Station.
Also to be answered is a letter from you written at the end of April, and disclosing the fact that, once again, you have been 'discovered' by a cat in need of a home. Do you have arrows all over Bellport pointing to Casa Bigelow and reading, 'This way for strays. Good chow and catnip supplied'?
. . . You wrote 'since starting this I have had breakfast and broken off a front tooth – that shows'. I can't tell whether it shows you eat rock-salmon with the salmon missing for your meal, or whether your house-keeper forgot to use the tin-opener and served it up complete. I hope the grimace is nicely repaired by now, and without too much dentist trouble.
I have been expecting daily to hear from Mr Dall that you cannot write because you are quite prostrate with ecstasy over the Bellport Star, but perhaps it has been delayed in transit, or perhaps it didn't have quite that effect . . . . . .
When I was in Lyme Regis I sent you a postcard of the dear little place . . . Lyme was first mentioned in the Domesday Book as being a place where a monastery was built, and the monks of which were allowed to distil salt and sell it for the benefit of the Monastery.* It was turned 'Regis' by, I believe, a very early Edward, in about 1400 or so. It is such a quaint and delightful little place that one of the Cadbury family (the chocolate manufacturers and extremely wealthy) who lives there, when he found he could not easily manoeuvre his yacht in and out of the Cobb, sold the yacht rather than move to a town with a larger harbour.
* Editor's note: In fact, these were monks from Sherborne Abbey with land in Lyme.
. . . G. K. Chesterton always used to stay at the Three Cups Hotel . . . He used to park his wife (who bullied him) on a chair on the steps, then stroll down the hill, oh ever so nonchalantly, and if she was looking the other way at the crucial moment, he'd dive into the bar of the Royal Lion Hotel opposite, where the company was greatly to his liking, and the beer likewise. On either side of the little place cliffs rush up and down in great headlands, golden on one side and grey-white on the other, and at the back the countryside is hilly and lush, not quite so much so as deep into Devon (here you are right on the border of Devon and Dorset, sometimes in one county and sometimes in the other as you walk about) but quite lush and hilly enough for anybody with consideration for their legs or their cars.
My uncle and aunt and one unmarried cousin live in the fishing end of the village, opposite the Cobb (so called, I understand, because it was built of Cobb stones stuck between great wooden posts pushed into the sand) and another cousin and his wife live at the back of the town in an old manor house with thousands of boxer dogs, half a dozen dachshunds, and a cow called Pam. Pam was produced and introduced to me when I went there to tea one day, and it was comical to see the expression of disgust on her face when she discovered she hadn't been called up to the barn either for her meal or her milking! I have never seen a cow look disgusted before, but she did it perfectly. It was probably a joyous sight to see me endeavouring escape from the attentions of eleven boxer pups which had just discovered they were aggressive! My cousin's wife called out 'Just walk through them!' but, with two biting my shoe-buckles, two more cutting off my feet at my ankles, one swinging on the hem of my skirt at the back, two at each hand and a couple jumping up in an endeavour to catch my nose as I stooped down to brush them aside, 'just walking through' was not as easy as it sounded. They came out all in one piece, but only just. They were nice little things, all chubby and firm but not puppy-fat. Rather, they are like dachshunds, miniature copies of adults while they are still babies.
Jessamy, my cousin's wife, is six foot two and built to scale. She is the most unfeminine person I know as to character, although she has a very pretty face and curly fair hair. She dresses always in tweed slacks and woollen blouses and cardigans and swears better than (at a guess) General Patton! Apparently she deigned to marry Arthur on her own terms, amongst which were that she should not be asked to do house-work, entertain guests, do gardening or, in fact, anything but keep dogs. Nonetheless she is most kind-hearted, and (though she tries to hide it) sincerely touched by kindness in others. She suffers from a series of unsuitable 'home helps' who, because of her refusal or inability to be a housewife, she has to employ to stop the roof falling in. When I was there she had a woman who had run a café of her own for years, but she wanted the lighter job because her husband was 'just getting over a nervous breakdown' and they thought country life would suit him.
They didn't tell Jessamy that 'just' meant eleven years ago; she found that out gradually! The husband never speaks except, occasionally, in a whisper to his wife. He is reputed to be stone deaf and wears a hearing aid, but about his complete deafness there is a certain amount of doubt. We were called in to tea, which was served in the enormous farmhouse kitchen. There was a gigantic sofa in one corner on which four equally gigantic boxers lolled. This sofa had been bought for about a dollar, especially for the dogs. Next to the sofa and near the large black kitchen range was a round dog-basket with an army blanket in it. Under the blanket was the most ancient dachshund, retired. He lived permanently under the blanket in the basket, coming out for a second for a biscuit, after which he snuggled out of sight again. On the other side of the kitchen range was an armchair upholstered in sacking; this belonged to another dog. Down the middle of the room was a giant-size kitchen table, the top covered in yellow-checked American cloth. A white-painted sideboard contained odds and ends and a few dog trophies and cups. An electric kettle boiled its heart out on top of a radio which, I was told, didn't work. The table was laid with thick brown pottery, lined with yellow and most in keeping with the size of everything, for the cups held a pint of tea!
Jessamy waved me to a chair halfway down one side. Uncle took a chair opposite me. Jessamy and Arthur sat across from each other higher up the table. Right down at the window end were the home helps, husband and wife, huddled together around the teapot and a large dog. Mrs Home Help wore a slightly worried, ingratiating expression and a gash of lipstick right across her face. Mr H.H. looked ten minutes off death from starvation, a darkly tense man. Th
ey both stared at me, but said nothing, and nobody introduced us.
Mrs H.H. it turned out eventually (I spoke to her next day when she came out and played with the puppies) speaks only in clichés, which come from her in a non-stop stream. At tea she merely said, 'Now, you'd like a nice cup of tea wouldn't you, Mrs Mould?' with a fond smile which was nearer a grimace than was comfortable. Then, later, she remarked, 'Another little drop won't do you any harm, Mrs Mould.' Maybe it wouldn't, but Jessamy took the second cup, tasted it, poured it straight-way into a gigantic basin standing near her and said loudly, 'God! Too hot and not sweet enough.' Arthur murmured something about getting cooler if she left it a moment, whereupon Jessamy looked at him in surprise and said coldly, 'I don't happen to want to leave it a moment; I want to drink it now and the dam' stuff 's too hot and not sweet enough.' She held out the cup indignantly, and Mrs H.H. rushed up with the teapot and other bits and pieces, and clucked and tushed and dear-deared for some minutes. Jessamy turned back to her dog magazine, and the rest of the tea party returned to what was apparently 'normal' for this household. I was thoroughly enjoying myself, you can imagine!
They told me at my uncle's afterwards, that the home helps were the most helpless creatures who were so terrified of losing their jobs that Jessamy literally had to drive them out of the house for an afternoon's walk now and then. Jessamy did try once to give a dinner party. They were playing canasta when Mrs H.H. puts her head around the door, leered, and said coyly, 'Five minutes!' They said good, and finished the game. Mrs H.H. put her head in the room again, and said 'Oh dear, I am silly! I forgot the bread sauce. Won't be long now, folks!' They politely said that would be all right and went on with the canasta. Twenty minutes later Arthur went out to the kitchen to see what was happening, and came back and said, 'I think you'd better come, Jessamy, Mrs H.H. is in tears on the kitchen floor.' She had forgotten to switch on the electricity on the oven! So Jessamy now invites people to tea, which she says can't really go so terribly wrong because her guests have enough sense to bring their own cakes, and she merely puts a loaf, a knife and some butter on the table so that they help themselves. They sound like something out of a book or a Russian play, don't they?