Then another crossroads, another main road, and finally, the main London–Exeter road for three miles, just in case the other traffic hadn't quite finished me off. 'Blow your horn at him!' said the man at one stage. 'Just where is the horn, please?' said I. That is an example. Aren't you lucky to be getting this letter this week instead of a blackedged card from my sorrowing mum? He also told me to pass a horse and cart when we were on a slight bend, and when I obediently pulled out it was to discover a fast-moving car (anything going over 30 was fast to me!) approaching around the bend. The man shouted something; I accelerated, thinking he wanted me to pass while there was time; he, of course, jammed the clutch and handbrake and then said it was all the horse-driver's fault for pulling out just as I did too. No, I have not that full confidence in him that I could wish for, and the worst thing is, I've paid for the course! He was once (about the time you were in rompers) a flying instructor, and spoke airily of teaching men to loop the loop without the benefit of parachutes. Possibly he feels that by putting the car-pupil on the road from the absolute word 'go' he gets a slight echo of that earlier thrill. Personally, I would prefer to bore him to tears. When I reached home late at night, I looked at the leaflet he had given me. It described his methods and suggested he was the world's best teacher of driving, and finished up with:
'Please be at the collecting-point punctually. When you see the car, come up and introduce yourself to me. You will not be disappointed.'
I am the exception.
. . . I hope you have a nice long visit from Rosalind, and that the weather is cooler, as it is here today. My garden looks like the Sahara, and simply glows with dust!
Very sincerely,
Frances W.
BOURNEMOUTH
July 19th 1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Do you know that I start writing your Saturday letter on Wednesdays these weeks, in order to make sure it's ready by Saturday? And don't suggest I should send it off as soon as it is finished, because I know full well you would still expect your Saturday Special, and you mustn't be greedy. Of course, I never am (greedy) so I can lecture you from a smug pedestal.
Well, I've finished the full course of driving lessons, leaving a flummoxed instructor with his appointment book poised ready in his hands, while I got out of the car and walked off with a saccharine smile and a cheery wave of the fist. On my last hour's lesson I was taught how to start on a hill, which I did quite well. In fact, I did it excellently the first time, and thinking it easy, not nearly so well the next time, almost suffocating a passing cyclist when I revved the engine without letting the clutch up. No idea so much thick black smoke existed outside the steel towns . . . . . . Now all I need to learn is how to go backwards; but perhaps the instructor realised that my motto is 'Ever onwards!' and taught me accordingly. My own view is that, wearing one or two of Rosalind's delightful dresses, the impression was given that I was a Lady of Means and Good for at Least Two More Payments. So you see, Rosalind has a lot to answer for. I have written her this week to warn her she's going to have seven splendid corpses on her conscience on Saturday, when I wear the latest creation she sent me and the seven divers all miss the pool and hit the surrounds when they get an eyeful of me in brown silk, all a'shimmering in the light. On second thoughts, possibly only four of the seven will hit the deck, for out of consideration for the youth of the other three I put, last night, an extra two inches of material in the neck of the dress. Before that was done I could see if my shoe-laces were tied, without bending over, and the effect on passers-by was problematical but exciting . . .
My poor mother! Yesterday evening, while she was doing something or other in her room, she came rushing out to me crying, 'Oh! Jack Stockwell's had an accident on his motorbike and the ambulance is there!!' Now Jack Stockwell has only had his bike about a week, and everybody has been expecting the worst, in their usual ghoulish way. I went to the front of the flat and said, 'But Mother, Jack's bike is still there in the garden, and I saw him only half an hour ago. And there's Mr Stockwell – and there's Mrs, so it can't be anybody we know.' Mother was forced to stay in her room, ostensibly to powder her nose (she knocked the lid of her powder bowl against the bowl several times in the next ten minutes so that I, in the living room, would know by the sound that she was powdering her nose and not just nosing) until the ambulance men came out. And even then, she didn't recognise the body and had to report merely that 'it's a very short person' and conjecture from there as best she could. I suspect the minute I was out of the flat this morning she dashed across to admire Mr Stockwell's geraniums and find out All About It.
Now it's time to finish; a lovely motor launch has just sailed across the sea outside my office window. Although I think I would prefer sail to motor any day, a motor launch would be a very pleasant means of locomotion on a day such as this, still and heavy and flat and overcast. We want rain; we need rain; we are longing for rain. But do we get it? You know the answer to that one.
I hope your Timber Point meeting went off well, or goes off well if I am too previous. Don't get angry and start gnashing your teeth again – you know what happened last time. Be like me, placid and only given to hysterics now and then.
Very sincerely,
Frances W.
BOURNEMOUTH
August 23rd 1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Do you remember, some time ago, one of our submarines sank in the Channel, and all England followed with caught breath the frenzied race against time that was the search for it? Do you also remember that we were criticised in your newspapers for keeping our minds and hearts on a few square miles of grey sea instead of what was then happening in Korea? Well, another similar occasion has just occurred; and as I was thinking about it, the explanation of our previous narrow interest came to my mind: we are one family, the whole little Island, in a way that your own enormous continent can never be one family; and a family is always anxious when one member of it is in trouble, even if the whole of the next street is being flattened by some awful plague; the family's first thought is for its own sick.
This week we are all sorrowing, as one family, for the tiny village of Lynmouth, in North Devonshire. I believe when I spent three days at Lynton, 400 foot up the precipitous hill above Lynmouth, three years ago, I described the place to you and possibly also sent you postcards of it. Lynmouth is one of the English beauty spots we are so fond of – it is one of those 'cosy and charming' spots of which you wrote in your last letter. Architecturally it is not particularly beautiful . . . But nothing can spoil Lynmouth basically, because nothing – or so we thought – could destroy the beauty of its situation. It is built, huddled together, at the mouth of a tiny valley. Tiny but deep, with the hills rising sheer out of it to 500 and 600 feet, and two tiny streams rushing burbling along down from the heights of Exmoor in the hinterland, over miniature waterfalls formed of great brown round boulders; over flat grey slabs green with weed, and past luxurious growth of bush and flower scented and almost gross in its richness, in this tiny sheltered valley. At the mouth, Lynmouth. Perhaps a hundred houses, all jumbled together; a row of shops and hotels pressed close against Lyn Hill (the fourth floor of the hotels is one floor lower than the ground floor of the rare house built on the hillside, so steep is the incline) then a road, twelve foot in width; next to this is another row of small cottages and cafés, then comes the Lyn river (the two streams join in the village at one of the bridges, and then run together the hundred yards or so that remain before the harbour is reached). On the far side of the river is a pedestrian's walk, flower-edged. And beyond that a wide strip of grassland with the beautiful Manor House set in its centre. This meadow is, more or less, built out to sea, for that is the only place there's room for a meadow. Otherwise, you are no sooner slipped down Lyn Hill than you have to go vertically up Countisbury, on the other side. The place is crowded during August and September with honeymooners, and the native pirates make enough money then to live on in peace and quiet thro
ugh-out the rest of the year. Except this year.
This year we had a day of heavy rain. Three months' rainfall fell last Friday on nine square miles of Exmoor. The bogs filled up and tipped over, the streams became rivers, the rivers torrents, the torrents lethal weapons bludgeoning ten-ton boulders, and the little town of Lynmouth is nearly wiped out and fifty people are either dead, or missing and believed dead. The little burn scorning its normal path, now rages down the main street, and through a corner group of buildings to the sea. It was no flood such as one gets, I imagine, in the great central plains of America; there, there is room for the water, although I realise that the damage old Mississippi does is not to be compared with Lynmouth. Here there was no room. Four cottages, built 20 feet above the river, were just swept away with most of the people in them; a boy, alone with two small brothers in one cottage, was sweeping the water coming in the front door, out of the back door, when the back door and the kitchen around it disappeared. He was lucky, he got his two brothers out of the house.
Well, that was Lynmouth. On Saturday morning we heard on the radio that only people with business in Lynmouth would be allowed there; by Saturday night the place was being evacuated as unliveable. By Sunday morning appeals were being launched all over the country for help. By Monday they were able to announce that they had enough clothes to go on with. The family had rallied round, you see. For the moment we can't be bothered with what is happening in the Volga valley or the Philippines; we only want to know how people are in Devon. It is, perhaps, parochialism, or narrow nationalism, but it is understandable, and I wish it were more realised.
It has always puzzled me that so many (I exclude you and other intelligent Americans, if there are any such!!) Americans love their own country and think it wonderful, as they have right and are right in thinking, and yet they cannot conceive of other people loving their country in the same way. We shouldn't love England, they seem to feel; we should only feel sorry we aren't Americans. But love of one's country is nearly always born in one, and cannot be changed except at great trouble. And in great trouble, it comes swamping up smothering differences and making Britons of us all, English, Scots, Welsh and Irish. Just now we are all people who have seen the beauty of Lynmouth, or people who have heard of that beauty and wish they had seen it . . .
So au revoir until next week; and don't be too depressed about Lynmouth – it has brought out more strongly than before our eternal brotherhood, and it has even made Civil Servants human and Government Departments kindly, for postage has been waived on all parcels going to North Devon, a thing I can never remember happening before.
Till next week, then,
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
PS My boss and I have been making collections for the Flood Fund and in two days we have got £80!!
BOURNEMOUTH
November 15th 1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . I went to the cinema this week and saw the pictures of the Queen at the opening of Parliament. She looked very lovely, with a long and slender neck rising out of a cloud of white fur, and topped by a small head and a diamond crown. The camera showed you the family on Buck. Palace balcony afterwards, with Princess Anne standing on a chair (to make her tall enough to look over the balcony) next to her brother. The Queen turned and went in, and the Duke lifted down the little girl and shooed her, with Prince Charles, back into the room. The two children were then put out of sight, being too small to be seen over the balcony, but the camera showed the Duke immediately turning around and coming back with his arms outstretched. I thought, 'Surely he hasn't come back to take the chair in!' and as I thought that, over the edge of the chair suddenly popped a little princess's head, as she started waving delightedly again. Prince Charles was there, too, but this time their father took both of them firmly by the hand and shoved them ahead of him into the room at the back. It was so human and so very sweet, the two little things dashing back for another wave, and so plainly enjoying themselves immensely. It must be very exciting to tiny children; all those lovely big soldiers, and their glittering uniforms, and horses, and people waving, and staying up late and so on. I heard the other day that the Queen will not allow them to be addressed by anyone except as Charles, and Anne. That will make a more normal childhood for both of them. We all love the little boy, but whenever I have seen the whole family on the screen, the Duke of Edinburgh is invariably looking after his daughter, and leaving Charles severely alone. I can imagine he doesn't allow his son to get spoiled, but perhaps he thinks a father should spoil his daughter a bit. At least, he appears to do so . . .
I'm off to London on Thursday for five days; pray for warm weather, please – today it is foggy, cold and raining, all at the same time, and I'm just sick and tired of having cold, horrid, rainy weather for my holidays. Do you know it is four years since I had a thoroughly fine week's holiday!
. . . Au revoir until next week,
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
BOURNEMOUTH
November 17th 1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Will you please do me a favour, Mr Bigelow? I don't often ask favours of you (only the favour of an occasional letter, as you know) but this time I am, and I am serious. Will you please omit any form of gift this Christmas and just send me a card? I mean that in all seriousness; I am not jumping to the conclusion that you're bankrupt because your house needs painting, but I know from hard experience how Christmas is apt to become a snowball unless you're very strict and hard with yourself, and I have myself cut out all gifts to the staff this year for the same reason. I can't promise not to send you anything because it is already bought and no earthly use to anybody else (nor to you!) but it is of no value whatsoever and doesn't count as a gift, merely as something to tickle your sense of humour, I hope. So please, leave me out except for good wishes and I will regard it as proof of my complete mastery in our friendship, in that I can get you to do what I want, when I want it badly enough. Please, now.
I hope Rosalind and Mr Akin are having a good time in Alabama, or wherever it is you say St Louis people have their hide-out. I suppose, poor souls, if they live in a cold place like St Louis they must have some-where to get warm. It's freezing over here today; why don't you keep your cold winters, I don't like them. And in particular, I don't like them when I'm about to go on holiday to a very cold house on top of a very chilly hill.
Remember – a Christmas card only, to show proof of sincerity and friendship, Mr Bigelow.
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
PS How dare you, Sir, be so rude about my driving! I would have you know, that like Lady Catherine de Bourgh's daughter (who would have been a wonderful pianist if only she had learned) I would be a wonderful driver if only I had continued my lessons. As it is, I am waiting a) for the car Frank and I plan to buy in the New Year, b) to be taught to drive an Ambulance in the Civil Defence Corps which I have joined with that end in view.
BOURNEMOUTH
December 6th 1952
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Do you think it is because I have had, of late years, so much experience in writing them that my 'thank you' letters are beginning to sound slick and professional? Frankly, it appals me. I like a letter of gratitude to be gracious, faintly surprised, sincere and appreciative; . . . You and Rosalind, between the two of you, have had ELEVEN thank you letters since the beginning of March. No wonder I find it so hard to think of something different to say to you both. But, of course, do not think from that last remark that I – and my family – am not extremely grateful for the latest pair of parcels, the chocolates and the well-chosen tinned goods. We are; we are also at a loss for exactly the right words to use in saying so.
Well, now to return to London, about which I was telling you when all these 'thank you' letters intervened. It was icy cold, as it always seems to be when I visit Uncle Ronald, but this time I was luckier than usual, for under the spread on the sec
ond bed in my room I found a folded collection of blankets and sheets. My aunt explained them later by saying that Peter, the son, was now at a new school where they did not expect parents to provide bedlinen (the stuff that the school provided went on the bill!). So she had more blankets and sheets than usual and would I like another blanket on my bed? I said oh no, thank you, I was as warm as toast. And only omitted to mention that I already had five blankets (including my own travel rug) and made quite certain I had remade my bed before anybody else got upstairs to find me out!! Even so, a glass of water left in my room froze both Saturday and Sunday night, so you can understand if I was warm in bed, it was sheer willpower and no help from nature.
Uncle took us to the theatre one evening, and Phyl and I went early up to town because she wanted some gloves. Uncle is the only man I have met who complains that his wife isn't extravagant enough! I will admit he has cause: he spent pounds bringing a length of fine silk home from Brunei for Phyllis to have made up for a dress to wear at a wedding they were going to, and then Phyl gets the little dressmaker in the village to make it! After Uncle had brought it safely through no less than seven Customs!! He gave her a lovely black fur coat, which she wore the day we went out. Underneath she had a nice thick silk cocktail suit, topped with a red and grey striped wool cardigan which had probably cost her about seven dollars. She had pleasant shoes on, but never pays more than (roughly) 50 cents for her stockings and as she has piano legs with elephantiasis cheap stockings are not, repeat not, for her. So, there was the beautiful fur coat and the stockings and the nice shoes, and a grey felt hat she'd bought somewhere in a sale and grey artificial wool-fur gloves. Just things to make black more exciting and chic! Admittedly black on a dull, cold day can and does look the same way, and I, too, was in black. But I had added a white fur felt hat with black and white pearls strung around a little knob on top, and both black and white pearl earrings, and fastened my pearl necklace after dark with a glittering diamond brooch. It isn't exactly real, but it sparkles just as nicely as any-thing Barbara Hutton possesses, and pleases me more than her gems do her, I'm sure.
Dear Mr Bigelow Page 11