Dear Mr Bigelow
Page 10
And now I must take this to the post office for mailing. Thank you again for Holiday, which I read thoroughly last night (this was started Friday) and for all your very pleasant letters.
Most sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Pam the cow with (left to right) Aunt Elsie, cousins Arthur and
Barbara, and Uncle Herbert
BOURNEMOUTH
Black Monday, May 19th 1952
Oh no! Mr Bigelow,
Not broken, my little group, surely it can't be broken! It was wrapped in paper and put in a cardboard box, wrapped in corrugated cardboard and placed in a second box; then surrounded with straw and placed in a wooden box. It couldn't get broken unless somebody dropped an elephant on it, or unless somebody was criminally careless in unpacking it.
I count this little group as an extension, or continuation, of the Bellport Riders which, as you know, had so tragic a history. I made the Bellport Riders three times only to have it smashed in firing each time. The little dinghy in the Bellport Star group was made three times, and the figures in the boat twice. Oh, it just couldn't be broken. Maybe when they unpacked it in New York, to see why the sender would have taken such care over an article only declared at a few pence, they noticed the oars weren't attached to the rower's hands, and perhaps that is the 'damage' they notified to you. It's not much good saying 'I hope so' for I have now given up hope altogether, and expect that, in reality, the thing is in a hundred little bits.
What makes it all the worse is that I sent Rosalind a teapot and pitcher a week after the Bellport Star group was posted to you. I hadn't any boxes left except two very old cardboard ones, one just slightly larger than the other. So I just stuffed the china in the smaller one, packed in bits of straw in the spaces, pushed the small box into the large one, and then pushed odd bits of corrugated cardboard down between the two sides. I never expected, the day after I had mailed it, that they would arrive in any sort of shape at all, for it was the roughest, most miserable bit of packing I'd ever done. And yet Rosalind's parcel arrived perfectly – and two weeks before yours, which was posted a week earlier – and yours has been damaged. What have they been doing with yours all that time? Dropping it off the Empire State Building to test it for bounce, or something? Sages say it's no good crying over spilt milk, and I'm not crying over this breakage. I just feel like throwing things through the largest glass panes I can find. It's no good saying write to the post office and make a claim – how can I claim? And what? Eighteen pence in money and six months in time?
I do hope your mouth is feeling better now; you have had more than your fair share of bad luck with your teeth this last year. Somebody said the other day that you went regularly to your dentist to have your teeth attended to so that they would be so well-kept and healthy you wouldn't need to go regularly to your dentist to have your teeth attended to. A vicious circle if ever there was, and either way the patient suffers. My mother, who had terrible teeth, had them all out during the 1914–18 war when Daddy was away (and couldn't see her going around with bare gums, poor dear!) because, she tells us, she just got fed up with eternally undergoing painful treatments, paying painful bills, and still having toothache and more painful treatments and bills. I must say there is quite a lot to say in favour of false teeth.
I hope you enjoy your week yacht-racing at the end of this month. While you will be sitting in elegant comfort in the crow's nest or on the Judges' Launch or the terrace of the Yacht Club, I shall be stifling in the swimming-pool hall coping with non-existent staff.
Sorry about the smashed masterpiece.
Very sincerely,
Frances W.
BOURNEMOUTH
June 14th 1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Have you ever studied the intricacies of the sleepless mind? I have of late, to my misery, and it could prove quite a fascinating study were you not, at one and the same time, both the investigator and the unfortunate guinea pig.
Do you remember Jerome K. Jerome's book Three Men in a Boat? They got hold of a medical dictionary and discovered that between them they had every complaint listed except housemaid's knee. Well, I was reading an article last weekend on present-day stresses and strains, and came at once to the conclusion that that was me, stress and strain. Definitely. So I read on, thinking to find the cure. The writer ended his article by saying '. . . . . . the very best stress diet of the lot is caviar and champagne . . . . . .' But he did have a few more useful hints to pass on, amongst them the need for peaceful sleep and serene minds.
Now, due to the inability of most of my staff to count accurately beyond four, I go to bed prepared to rest but my mind thinks to its little self, 'Ah! Now is a good opportunity to think over all the things that have gone wrong today, and to work out ways of preventing them going wrong tomorrow and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and next Christmas . . . . . . Now, where shall we start?' And so I spend half my nights, as well as half my days, coping with other people's problems. Sometimes in the night I'm busy counting pink tickets, mountains of them, all counted wrongly by the cashiers; only to stop myself with a jerk when my brain is calculating the value of the mountain at three shillings a ticket, with the realisation that this year pink tickets are four shillings each. By now my little mind has forgotten how many stubs there were in the mountain, so we go back to the beginning again.
Then I decide firmly that this won't do at all. I will think placid and serene thoughts, and none else. I conjure up a mental picture of a windswept headland, with the sea around it and a skylark overhead, and the faint mew of seagulls in my ears and the scent of wild thyme in my nostrils. I work on the picture quite hard, willing my mind to concentrate, and even manage to imagine how warmly the sun strikes my throat as I look up at the skylark. I decide to add to the serenity by reciting poetry to myself in a small, silent voice – and pick on my favourite: 'Ode to Autumn'.
I get happily to the line about 'filling all fruit with ripeness to the core', where I stick. What comes next? I start again, a little worried; and stick in exactly the same place. I am cross with myself. I lecture myself; telling me this won't do and where's my serenity. Out the window along with my memory, my alter ego replies. I get crosser and crosser, and more and more wakeful, until at last, in desperation, I get up and go to the living room and shut the door quietly (so as not to awaken the family) and put on the light and look for the poem.
Back to bed, with the book of poems, in case I get stuck again, and back to my serene thoughts once more. This time the windswept head-land seems a trifle lonely, so I change it for my current serial-story in which (but naturally) I am the glamorous and fascinating heroine. This story usually occupies about ten minutes, and if it proves particularly interesting I go back and use it all over again with extra details. The current tale involves a drug-taking wife, a frantic husband who blames himself; one or two awe-inspired friends and ME. I sort everything out most beautifully, far, far better than Adler would have done. But you can imagine that this is not quite the serene and peaceful sort of story suitable for putting me to sleep. So I allow myself to run over it once lightly, up to where I left off the night before, and then go firmly back to poetry. It has to be poetry, for I have a loathing for silly sheep, and mine only stroll through gates anyway so no help at all in my troubles.
This time I chose Gray's 'Elegy' because I fondly hope I shall remember rather more of it. True, I get – more or less, ad-libbing here and there – as far as the verse about jewels lying undiscovered in deep sea-caves and many a flower being born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air. I am about to weep myself to sleep in the mood of self-pity this brings flooding over me when it occurs to me to wonder whether the word is flower, or rose. And if it's rose, which seems to scan better, what rose ever grew in a desert? And come to think of it, I never heard of jewels being found lying around loose in sea-caves before. The man is crazy. Trust me to get a crazy poet around my neck! Flower? Rose? Rose? Oh well, it doesn't
matter. Not really matter. Not a matter of life or death. No concern of mine. Go to sleep, mind. Stop larking about – I'm tired. Flower? I'm sure it's rose. But best put on the lights and make certain.
The poem is in the other anthology, of course – the one still in the living-room bookcase. I go out and look (It's flower all this time. It would be) and while I'm up, take a couple of aspirins and half a glass of cold water. I debate whether to drink the water cold, which will give me indigestion, or hot from the tap, which will probably give me chronic rust-poisoning. I decide that perhaps the aspirins will start work before the digesting of them gives me indigestion. But of course, they don't – the cause-and-effect follow in that order, and the hot pains start shuddering across from rib to rib. I get up (It's three o'clock now, and the dawn looks like breaking before my insomnia does) and go out and eat a peppermint. My bed looks a mite crumpled when I crawl back into it, and I match it.
I try a new idea – taking deep breaths. Guaranteed, so the article said, to send you to sleep before the first dozen are inhaled and exhaled. Before I arrive at No. 6 my heart is pounding like a road-drill and both ears are buzzing in time with the heartbeat. This is an increase of one ear over my usual left ear bedtime buzz and I decide I dislike it more than twice as much as usual, so I stop deep breathing. This is a help, but my heart goes on puffing for some time, and I make tentative plans for being an interesting invalid with serious heart-trouble for the rest of my life, but this involves having a gracious, spacious room in which to lie, and as mine is a large-size cupboard, it doesn't seem much good being an interesting invalid. I punch my pillow for the 47th time, and throw my head at it, slightly fracturing my skull on a hair-curler. The curtains billow out as my heavy sighs race across the room, but I can't help being miserable as I think of my poor self during the coming day, carrying that awful load of responsibility with no sleep, no rest, no respite at all . . . . . . and in comes Mother to waken me.
. . . Now I will stop before this letter weighs too much. I do hope your jaw is champing away right merrily again, and that the yachting week was successful and exciting and you didn't have to disqualify more than, say, two-thirds of the competitors.
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
June 21st 1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . On Monday I take out a provisional driving licence, and in July I am to take the course of lessons, hoping to pass the Government's Test some time in August, ready for my driving holiday the month after. I bought a book from the British School of Motoring, and enquired of them for fees. As I have no car in which to practise, they suggested I would need extra lessons, and quoted me £16 for 16 lessons (or it might have been £17 for 16, I forget now). This is the equivalent, to you, of about $100 for 16 lessons of an hour each! As I earned the equivalent of about $50 a week, the shock put me back quite a little, as you can imagine. However, I find other smaller schools charge far less so I'm hoping that a deep study of the book, plus a certain amount of common sense, will get me through at less than the cost of the Moon. I must admit that the book seems very perplexing, and I come to work each morning with a piece of paper on which I have scribbled notes about my queries, which I thereupon throw at my boss. You would enjoy, as I do, the sight of him sitting on my typewriting chair waggling his legs about because you can't describe the art of double declutching without working it out physically first! I'm glad it becomes so automatic your mind doesn't bother to record what your feet are up to, for at the moment I feel the pedal work must be as difficult as footwork on an organ . . . Altogether my peace of mind is going for good, but as I never had much perhaps I shan't miss it.
I do hope by the time this reaches you the hospital-and-bed-session will be far behind you in the past . . .
Very sincerely,
Frances W.
BOURNEMOUTH
June 26th 1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Yes, Mr Bigelow, I quite agree with you that the English make far too much use of the silly expression, 'I'm afraid'. I'm afraid we use it all the time.
Your 'recommendation' that I should adopt three children as a method of keeping myself busy and thus ensuring good sleep at night is an excellent one. I was, however, disappointed to see that you couldn't think of a child to match the eight-month-old red-haired Scot, or the two-year-old Sicilian girl. What about a four-year-old Fillum Star? She (or he) should be quite a match for the others, and would nicely round off the awful triangle, to mix my metaphors . . . And, just think of it, if I adopted three, a grateful Government would pay me 12s.6d. a week to keep them on. All of $75 . . .
One day this week I took Mac's ex-girlfriend out to lunch. Got myself up like yesterday's ham-bone to keep up the Good Name of the family (somebody on the Bath's steps said to an attendant as I passed, 'Place is full of glamour-girls this year, isn't it?' but I think he must have been short-sighted) and reserved a table at the best place in town. I am very fond of good food, well cooked, beautifully served, and don't mind paying for it on the rare occasions when I do go out to lunch. But we were confronted with the alternatives of
Kidney soup,
or
Consommé de tapioca!!!!!!!!!! (my exclamation marks)
on a boiling hot day. We decided to skip the soup, and ordered chicken and ham pie, salad and new potatoes. The pie was more like a galantine, very jelly-ish and spotted with little bits of chicken and ham skin. The salad was two half-leaves of lettuce, one slice of beetroot and a quarter of a tomato. The new potatoes were adequate. The sweets offered were (Heavens!) bread and butter pudding, treacle tart, ice-cream or mixed entremets. We chose the last-named, and it turned out to be custard with decoration on top (called 'trifle') or coffee mousse encased in sponge and topped with jelly . . . It was, taken all round, a grave disappointment and I was LIVID! My cider was iced and perfect, and I believe Betty's beer was also cold and good, but that, surely, isn't enough to make a feast.
It turns out that it was Betty who finished with my brother, and not any awful faux pas he made which caused a split. I suppose he felt it was a blow to his pride to have the girl break off their association, so he wouldn't tell us, but I must say I wish he had, for he might have saved us much heart-burning and the embarrassment. After all, we none of us can be loved by everybody, and it's no disparagement of our own personality if one particular person decides that, after all, it isn't love they (he, or she) feels for us. Silly boy, my brother . . .
My first driving lesson is at two o'clock next Tuesday. I have read How to Drive a Car twice right through, and some parts four or five times; the Highway Code I know more or less by heart, and I have gone deeply into the table which gives the braking distances at different speeds, so deeply that I have discovered the basic 'rhythm' of the table and can work out thinking- and braking-distances at any speed up to 10,874½ miles per hour. I love mathematics, they are so shapely, if you know what I mean . . .
I was glad to gather from the tone of your last letter that you are once more your normally spry and dander self. A letter from Rosalind earlier this week told me of her trip east to look after you: you sound a terrible hospital-patient: what sort of a home-patient do you make? The doctors seem to have done everything to their Bellport guinea pig except pick it up by its tail and shake it, but then I understand that is the thing they do only as a last resort, especially as the tail is so hard to find. Next time you feel a hiccup coming along, you try a mouthful of peppermints. Anyway, I am glad it is all over and done with, but don't do it again . . .
Very sincerely,
Frances W.
BOURNEMOUTH
July 3rd 1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Temperature 92°F; . . . and a rush to keep the two o'clock appointment of my first driving lesson. I rushed to such an effect that my arrival was greeted with 'Oh, you're early; well, I suppose it doesn't matter, we might as well start.'
Truly an auspicious opening, and I don't
think it was surprising that I took an instant dislike to the man. Do you think that means I'm not likely to learn quickly, since I have consciously to force myself to do what he says, out of sheer dislike? I must admit, though, that I don't think he's such a good driver as he imagines – or good teacher, perhaps I should say. He showed me how to start the car, giving the sketches of the engine, motivation of car, gears, clutch etc. (which I knew about beforehand but that didn't stop him!) but he never told me how to stop.
Then, after demonstrating gear changes and saying blithely that most cars have the gears marked on the top of the lever but his were worn off we changed places. I was then lectured for eight minutes on the importance of making sure the doors are closed, and we set off. Now Mr Bigelow is it good teaching to let somebody start driving immediately in a fairly busy road? My first turn came after about 200 yards, and was at a junction and across the traffic. We then turned again, sharply left (I still didn't know how to slow down to a stop without stopping the car altogether, and I still don't know whether I'm supposed to declutch, brake, and start moving the gear into first ready to start when the road is clear) into a road with buses, trolley-buses, cars, bikes, an estate of Council Houses with attendant children running in the road, and a gypsy encampment with horse-drawn carts up and down and across and back. Good for the nerves?