Dear Mr Bigelow

by Frances Woodsford

  My garden is looking enchanting this week, and so very neat now that we have cut the hedges and lawns and trimmed the edges, weeded the beds and generally cut off or out the untidy bits. True, we are not often allowed to go in the garden because the birds object so noisily to our presence, but when we do, it is a joy to look at . . . The rhododendrons are at their loveliest, and the rain this week has heightened the greenness of all the new leaves, so that if the weather is good next week, Rosalind should see the English countryside at its loveliest.

  Very sincerely,

  Frances W.

  PS Yes I can think of something – your Natural History book arrived yesterday, so I tried reading it at breakfast this morning to take my mind off food. And what were the articles about, pray, Sir? Praying Mantis eating Mate; and Attempts to Cure Screw-worm in Cattle, with full and juicy illustrations. Don't think I'm blaming you: I merely think Natural History might have been more tactful this month!!!! Took six pepper-mints instead of four, it did.

  THE ANGEL INN

  LUDLOW SHROPSHIRE

  Sunday, 12th June 1955

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  Here we are – not at Ludlow, where I got no farther than the address – but in Port Meirion in Wales, where a small (artificial) waterfall clatters down outside our balcony, and beyond is a green lawn (real) and golden sands and clear water and a little green island and, far off, green mountains. It is so cutey crafty it is funny, and I think it was built by a man with his tongue in his cheek. In one small cottage there is a small bricked-up window painted to show a wicked old satyr peering out as a novel change for a wicked old satyr's normal habits at windows.

  Today it was fine and very sunny: cold, too, but at least fine. Due to my planning, about which you have heard much, I daresay, the Castle (Powis) we were going over wasn't open until the afternoon, but we did go around Harlech Castle, an ancient coastal fortress, and shivered in the sunshine under the influence of the antique ghosts.

  Rosalind and I are having such fun: at least I am and I hope she is, too. We found (almost by accident) the most gorgeous gardens yesterday and I removed (almost by accident, too) several interesting seeds with which I intend turning R— Drive into a garden fit, like Hidcote, to be given to the nation eventually.

  We had a most luxurious suite at Ludlow, including Jacobean style beds and red velvet covers, but nowhere to dry our smalls. I do think for the charge made they might have included at least a launderette, don't you?

  Now to use some of the hotel notepaper for a change. Au revoir until Saturday.

  Very sincerely,

  Frances W.

  VICTORIAN MAUSOLEUM

  MINEHEAD

  SOMERSET

  16th June 1955

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  It is raining tonight and it rained this morning. When it isn't raining big, heavy, palsied drops it is being suffocatingly stuffy. When the hotels I picked out so carefully (should have used a pin) are clean and comfortable they are cold; and when they are warm they are terrible! Altogether not the success I would wish for and I'm sure Florence Olsen is more unhappy about it than her chest cold explains. Rosalind is being very, very gay and pretending like mad, bless her. And perhaps in a way it is good for me to make such a failure, for I'd be insufferable, were I always right and 100% efficient.

  Anyway, we have seen two lovely gardens, really beautiful, which exceeded our expectations, and they offset some of the others which were either too sad and run-down or too park-like. We have seen an awful lot of everything and are beginning to suffer the melancholy of mental and visual indigestion. R. and I have climbed spiral staircases till we stagger. But we have met many people who have all been so kind to us – we arrive too late practically everywhere but get allowed in just the same, and are treated with the greatest kindness by everybody. All this, of course, I will tell you when I get home and digest it all. When, too, I shall be able to view the week as a whole and not as a series of failures, semi-failures and successes. Tonight is definitely one of the failures and this is, in consequence I daresay, a depressing letter. Never mind – you don't mind putting up with my vapours just this once, do you? You should be used to them by now, poor man.

  This room has brown walls (pale), brown furniture (dark), brown carpet, brown bed quilt and spread, pale brown curtains a brown and black tiled mantel. Do you wonder I am feeling brown, too?

  Never mind – the 'cork' will be up again next week and no doubt boasting of its prowess as a Travel Agent. Just you wait and see. Until then.

  Very sincerely,

  Frances W.

  ROYAL CLARENCE HOTEL

  EXETER

  Saturday night

  June 18th 1955

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  It is very sad to think that tomorrow is the last day – for me – of this trip. Earlier this evening I was stupefied to hear Florence Olsen say, 'Well, the week's gone now. Now perhaps things will be better.' Stupefied, because I had not thought Florence that tactless, but after a pause she continued, 'The first week you have a cold you just exist, and after that it seems to start getting better.'

  Yesterday was a really delicious day in weather, and we had a pleasant variety. First, Clovelly for quaintness. Next, the romantic ruins of King Arthur's castle perched on a cliff top over dark emerald Atlantic waters. Then the flat, high, windblown north Cornwall. Later there was a visit to Cotehele House on the steep side of the Tamar Valley, which is warm enough for azaleas, camellias and lush greenery to rival the tropics. The house (about 1300) was perfectly beautiful. Lastly, we came over Dartmoor, bleak and rocky and high and lonely, into more lush valleys and eventually Exeter. There we were not exactly lulled by the bell-ringing practice! This may be very fine indeed, but a little distance lends enchantment to the finest church bells in the world, and we here are in the Cathedral Yard . . .

  Now I must dart out into the corridor and see if I can catch the bathroom empty. Up to now it has produced loud sounds of splashing but never a peaceful silence!

  Next week, back to normal. Well – nearly normal, as I shall have to do extra late duties to 'pay' for having this week off. Never mind. There's always 1957.

  Very sincerely,

  Frances W.

  BOURNEMOUTH

  July 2nd 1955

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  Now, where was I? Ah yes – in Shrewsbury, shivering in a miserable commercial-travellers' hotel with brown wallpaper and a hideous structure outside our room window with tower, chiming clock, and 'Floreat Salop' in stone letters around its dome.

  However, we were there only one night and the clock only chimed during one night's rest, but neither of us felt inclined to spend much time exploring Shrewsbury in the morning. We paid our bill – Rosalind used a travellers' cheque to do so and I'm almost certain the cashier gave us £1 too much for it, which should balance the sixpence she was diddled out of later on at Tintern Abbey – and then we were off again.

  So from Shrewsbury we went down the Wye Valley and had a lovely time going over the ferry from Beachley to Aust, getting lost in the Cotswolds again, and eventually arriving at Bath, to find Florence already there. I had been having little bets with myself, whether or not she'd make it on account of the railway strike and having a good time with her friends. The friends were stoic and the country cottage very, very cold, with outdoor sanitation and a pump for water. This, knowing Florence, may have had something to do with her arrival in Bath, complete with bronchial cold. She was terribly upset to discover that the English Kleenex tissues were not only larger than the American ones, but of better quality! Rosalind capped this by saying so was the English toilet-paper, which didn't tear in one's fingers. A quality I had not expected anybody to praise in this article. We sat and thought about Kleenex and toilet-paper and felt very strongly about it all, one way and another.

  Then from Bath we had a ball-and-chain with us, in the shape of Florence. Rosalind dislikes driving over 30 miles an hour; this threw our programme out of
schedule a little, but when you added Florence doing a snail-crawl some way to our rear, the whole thing became ridiculous. I felt a strong rubber elastic chain would have been a good idea. Fastened one end to the car, and the other to Mrs Olsen. Then, when Rosalind and I reached the car, we could give a good strong yank on the rope and up would bounce our laggard. She did her best, poor Florence, but she just isn't geared to other people's rate of progress. She also had – you know about it, no doubt – a most amusing way of making the most ridiculous statements in a deadly serious way, never realising for one moment how wrong she was in her facts. Rosalind and I had a nice catty time exchanging delighted grins behind her unsuspecting back. Don't know who Rosalind has been smiling at since they went off to Sweden . . .

  . . . However, chacun à son goût or whatever it is. And Florence was a very kind person; very simple, and it was really bad taste on my part to laugh at her, however kindly. She was a sitting bird for a joke made with a straight face. At our last lunch, in Salisbury, where Mother and Mac were joining us, there was a little struggle between Florence and Mac over the bill, and I leaned over the table and said 'Oh, please Florence, let him pay it. If you insist, poor Mac will lose face and have to resign his job and leave town and everything.' Florence blushed scarlet at her appalling breach of English social custom (!) and gave up the bill forthwith, poor soul. Poor me, too – I had to reimburse our Willie when we got outside . . . . . . Don't tell Rosalind, please!

  This week I have had nothing but bad news from all directions (not from Sweden), so that I hope most sincerely the next letter from you will tell me the Pauline* has won all the races in Long Island Sound, under the skippership of your son, and that you have discovered oil in your back-yard. Or made a score of 756 at Scrabble. Or acquired a new dog or cat. Or something delightful, and pleasant, for a change.

  * Editor's note: Mr Bigelow's boat was named after his late wife.

  All for now: more next Saturday, and aren't you glad to be back at the old typewriter-game again, after my handwriting!

  Very sincerely,

  Frances Woodsford

  BOURNEMOUTH

  August 13th 1955

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  If ever – which is extremely unlikely – I had enough money to retire on before reaching the age of 65, I would like to take a full page of the local newspaper and on it put, in large letters, my opinion of the Great British Public as I have experienced it during my nine and a half years as a Corporation employee. Trouble is, if all these 'ifs' came to pass, I don't suppose for one moment any newspaper in the world would accept my advertisement because of libel laws.

  My outburst is caused through an experience this week, when a 'lady' came into my office and, within thirty seconds, told me I was lazy, inefficient, and grossly overpaid. The reason? The elevator was not working. After her first thirty seconds, she added that I was rude, and by that time there was some basis for her accusation. When the electricians got here this morning (the earliest they could arrive) I told the man in charge that I was lazy, inefficient and grossly overpaid because the lift wasn't working and I hoped he would quickly see to it that I became energetic, efficient and underpaid. He looked at me in astonishment. Said, 'Who said all that?' 'Oh, a lady yesterday, who was annoyed because she had to walk up one floor.' 'Well,' he said sturdily, 'I hope you held her head under water.'

  This has been the most ghastly fortnight, from the point of view of difficult customers . . . I for one don't blame the staff one little bit. Anybody who didn't get irritated with the Great British Public in August would either be in an institution or in need of canonisation . . .

  I had a letter from Rosalind this week, full of the joy of ownership of a new Springer puppy named (poor dog) Arthur Tintagel. Judging by our own experience of Tintagel, the puppy is going to be very, very full of wind. She, Rosalind, said you had had Paul and Nancy to stay with you and all the children had been ill. What a to-do! Did you rush off pronto and judge yacht-races? I would have done, in your position. And incidentally, talking of yachting, we are following in the newspapers the course of your hurricane 'Connie' which, at the moment of writing, is slowing down a bit off the coast of Carolina. Now I know a Connie, and she's a very devil, so I hope for all your sakes this namesake keeps well out to sea. We had a small thunderstorm last night; nothing much, but enough rain to beat down a few flowers and make the hard-baked turf soggy underfoot. The cat was terrified – it is so long since he heard the rain beating on the windowpane he put on quite a panic, silly creature, and spent the rest of the evening crouching under the sideboard among empty wine bottles and bits of fluff.

  In my few spare moments during the last fortnight I have been making myself a new winter frock in tweed. It is now at the stage where only the finishing-off, hem turning up and buttonholing and so on, remains to be done. I look like a putty and brown banana in it, as it is in the new sheath-like style. Kindly remind me from time to time, Sir, next winter, not to eat another helping of that nice batter pudding, will you? Which conjures up a problem. What does a banana do when it gets too fat for its skin?

  My brother is still on holiday, with exclusive use of the car and I shall be downright glad when he's not, because every time I am on late duty I miss the bus home and that means I leave in the morning at 8.15 a.m. and get back in the evening at 10.15 p.m., and it's too long a day for any-body, let alone a fragile little flower-like creature like ME! He politely said I could have the car yesterday morning, so I did, and discovered we were out of gas, so instead of saving a shilling bus fare to work and back, I paid out five shillings on petrol. Mac is short for Machiavelli, did you know? . . .

  Yours sincerely

  Indignantly

  Forlornly

  Frances W.

  BOURNEMOUTH

  October 8th 1955

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  . . . Now if you want a bird's-eye view of the Conservative Conference this year, come to me, for I am on the doorstep and can give you such a view. A very small bird, mind you. The Conference is being held in the large Pavilion, directly across the road from the Baths. The Conference is the largest ever held in Bournemouth, and overflows in all directions – right now my boss's car is parked outside my office window, smothering the sparrows who are once again pecking on my windowsill for their winter food – and it's parked there because there just isn't room in our driveway, which is full of the cars of the smaller delegates and officials. There are seven B.B.C. television vans, and one Independent Television Network van . . .

  Sir Anthony and Lady Eden, and about 400 of the other delegates, are occupying the entire Carlton Hotel up on the East Cliff, and Sir A. and Lady are having a suite on the first floor. I wonder if it is the same one Rosalind and Matt Beall had when they stayed there? They are making such a to-do about the whole thing the hotel owners have been to the trouble to have the Eden arms embroidered on new pink bed-quilts! I wonder whether they'd sell them off cheaply afterwards, or do you think they'll charge extra for the honour of being warmed by a bed-quilt which has warmed the Prime Minister . . .

  Willie Jackson, the Pavilion Puss, has been over twice this week – I was astounded, for I had no idea his politics were anti-Conservative. This morning he arrived early with a complaint that he had been turned out because his face was dirty. Well, it was, so I cleaned it up for him and then he decided that he might as well give me the benefit of his company for a while, so he is curled up precariously (precariously because he is far too wide) on the windowsill on a pile of old swimming costumes, watching the birds and purring like a hobbed kettle.

  Tomorrow Mother and I are motoring up to London with Mac to deposit him and his belongings at an aunt's house. As he has done practically nothing whatsoever to prepare for this 10 or 12 week visit, I imagine tonight will be a panic plus, as I keep repeating at hourly intervals 'You realise we are starting promptly at nine o'clock on Sunday, dear?' and Mac only groans, not realising there is such an hour as nine o'clock on Sunday mornings.
Well, he'll know tomorrow.

  On Thursday he went to the Reception for the Conservatives, and on leaving the house about 8.30 p.m. asked me to ring up Highcliffe 313 and tell Ann Allport he had been delayed. Now I have met Ann Allport once or twice when Mac hasn't been able to avoid it, so when I got her on the telephone I said, 'Now, how long have you known my brother?' 'Oh, years.' 'Well, then, you'll realise I am ringing up at his request to tell you he has been delayed, but he has left now and by the time he gets to Highcliffe I have no doubt but that he'll have a specious excuse all ready.' 'I bet he will!' said Ann, and I haven't found out yet what it was. He finished up his last week in Bournemouth (for some time) with his boss away on holiday. On Monday he had a case of two children being kid-napped. On Tuesday a mother tried to kill her children and succeeded in half-killing herself instead. On Wednesday two teenage girls played hookey from school, and the police found them hitch-hiking to the nearest Army camp. On Thursday he had a mother having hysterics all over the office (she is a very bad creature, and the Court have denied her access to her children for a while) and on Friday he had a quiet day. Comparatively. Poor soul, he does have a nerve-racking time, as even this 'comparatively' involved one member of the staff going home with a bad haemorrhage from a tooth. The next ten weeks should be quite a holiday for him, for as he says he'll be a pupil, and have no responsibility whatsoever. As your successive Presidents know, responsibility can be a man-killer if you get it in too great a quantity.