Dear Mr Bigelow

by Frances Woodsford

  1960

  August 6th (p. 357). Frank MacPherson Woodsford marries Audrey Fagan. Miss Frances Woodsford, third from left.

  BOURNEMOUTH

  January 2nd 1960

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  . . . At this time of year I always keep one Resolution, as you should know by now. In fact, it is no longer even necessary to make it, because I automatically write you about New Year to thank you for all your kind-nesses of the year just ended, and to tell you how very much indeed I appreciate your letters, and having my little open window onto your life and doings. You remember that awful time when some member of the staff stole one of my letters to you? I told my boss at the time that you were my Father Confessor, my confidant, the friend to whom I could tell anything and everything and invariably did, without the least fear of repercussions for my indiscretions. So I really am telling the truth when I say you are about the most important friend I have, and I just don't know what I should do without that basic purpose in my life – the Saturday Special. Some people might say I could always pour out my feelings in a letter, it would not matter to whom it was addressed; but that would be completely untrue. I sort out my feelings most carefully, and my letters are always tailored as well as I can manage it, to fit the person who will read them. You seem to have fitted yourself into them so well there has been no need for tailoring my end; you are just ready-made for them, and thank God for it.

  So, a very Happy New Year to you dear Mr Bigelow, and look after yourself.

  Your affectionate correspondent,

  Frances W.

  BOURNEMOUTH

  March 5th 1960

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  . . . We over here were all fairly breathless last week, what with the Royal Family just bursting out with births and engagements and despatches. We were very, very sorry that Lady Mountbatten should have died so young, for she was a very wonderful woman and I've never met any-body who ever came in contact with her, who thought differently. Then of course we were very pleased with the new royal baby. And on top of that, Princess Margaret goes and gets herself a fiancé – and a Mr, at that. The awful pun 'It'll be hard work now, keeping up with the Joneses' has gone round and round Britain. He looks as though he has a sense of humour, and strength of character, both of which will no doubt be of incalculable assistance to him in his marriage. The only thing that worries me is – what is he going to do when they are married? I cannot see the Princess ever allowing anybody to treat her as other than Royal. And I cannot altogether see a man of character, not brought up in royal traditions (as Prince Philip was), just giving up an all-absorbing career to be a hanger-on to the Royal Family. They wouldn't even want him to open bazaars! I would say, myself, that the young lady was a handful enough for one man, without having all the Royal Family tacked on as well. Still, we are all glad she is marrying, and delighted it isn't Peter Townsend, that rather boring prig; or Billy Wallace, that chinless wonder . . .

  Friday midday now, so will say au revoir here and now, and get this posted in time to reach you on the usual day. I hope you are well, and blooming like the weather.

  Yours very sincerely,

  Frances W.

  BOURNEMOUTH

  April 9th 1960

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  . . . I have a sad little story about yet another member of the staff. She recently won £22 in a competition, which bucked her up no end for, as she told me, her husband had walked out of his job some time before Christmas, and had not worked since. Apparently, when they got the cheque for this amount, the man said, 'It's a pity it isn't one of the big prizes, but never mind dear, we shall just have to go on working, won't we?' When she tries to suggest he should go out and look for a job, he gets all sulky and nervy and says, 'Well, we're managing, aren't we?' Sometimes, Mr Bigelow, I am very sad not to be married, for I should dearly like to feel that I meant that much to somebody. And sometimes, Mr Bigelow, I am very glad not to be married and this is one of those times. Next time this particular woman gets a bit testy and difficult at work, I will remember that she is probably still keeping her husband and her mother-in-law, and overlook her tantrums, poor woman.

  . . . I will tell you a secret. Mr Watts says I can hardly help passing the French exam in June; but I am not going to pass it. I am going to get Honours, so there! This will mean a lot of work, hard work, so if I sound a bit distrait in my letters between now and mid-June, pray put it down to the fact that I am probably writing you and saying irregular verbs to myself at one and the same time. Don't tell anybody about this, please, in case I miss the target.

  And now I will get this in the post before I go out for a bit of shop-ping, and eat my egg, apple and orange lunch. I hope you are well and happy, and that the spring has sprung in Bellport, as it has here. The cat is moulting, and his fur is already disappearing from the bushes on which I place it, to line more bird nests.

  Yours most sincerely,

  Frances W.

  BOURNEMOUTH

  April 23rd 1960

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  . . . It seems to me that I ought to start a Society for the Protection of Audrey Fagan, who looks like having a poor time of it once she marries my brother. Not that I shall believe she'll pull it off until about teatime on August 6th, for I am quite sure my brother is getting more and more reluctant, and more and more miserable as he sees no way out. His temper at home is very bad, which is always a sign he is worried or unhappy, but there is just nothing I can do about it. Of course, when he snarls at me I snarl back, but I don't count that as 'doing' anything about it! That's purely destructive doing, that is, and an automatic reflex of mine, alas, which I often deplore, and which has become automatic since the early days of my youth when, recognising myself to be a coward, I resolved not to behave like one, and when somebody shouted at me to frighten me, to shout back so that they wouldn't know I was a coward. Anyway, as usual we have come back to me, and I was talking about Audrey. On Easter Sunday afternoon Mac took Mother and me for a ride to Bullbarrow, where he and I picked little wild violets and white wood anemones and pale yellow primroses, and I gathered some lichen-covered hawthorn that had tiny pale green buds showing through the silver moss, and some peculiar stones that looked as if they had been nibbled by the moth. On reaching home I spent over half an hour arranging my share of these flowers in a shallow turquoise bowl standing on a straw tray (you sent it to me years ago with preserved fruits in it) with the odd stones tucked under the dish. They looked very fetching. Well, Mac saw them on Monday and grinned sourly and said, 'You should see what Audrey did with her flowers – they got stuck in one of those awful glass vases and half of them died immediately.'

  He also comes home and moans because the cooking at 'Fitzharris' (what a name for a house!) is poor, uninspired, and sometimes downright ghastly. Well, if he thinks that by marrying a very pretty, spoiled, invalid daughter of a rich man he is going to find a wife who cooks like his mother, and arranges flowers like his sister, he is going to get disillusioned pretty quickly, and I don't really think it's fair on Audrey that she should be expected to come to these levels. True, I might feel sorrier for her if she didn't have such a high opinion of her abilities, but that probably goes with the prettiness and the money. Oh, those two . . .

  It's when I come up against moneyed women that I appreciate Rosalind all the more, for I know it is an unhappy fact that money corrupts (especially women) and the more money, the more they are corrupted. I don't mean they are morally bad just that they expect their money to buy service and civility and deafness to their increasing rude-ness, in direct proportion to their wealth and their age. But not Rosalind, thank God, not Rosalind, who always seems to me to be the most under-standing person I know. I think she must practise for ten minutes every day, putting herself in the place of some underprivileged person, so that when she does happen to meet them, she will know how they feel and treat them as human beings, with feelings and dignity of their own.

  Lecture over; that's al
l for this week except that I do hope you will, from now on, with the sunshine and all, start feeling younger and younger every day through the long summer to come.

  Yours most sincerely,

  Frances W.

  BOURNEMOUTH

  May – no, June 4th 1960

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  By the time you are reading this, you will have seen Rosalind and heard of her holiday directly from her. I telephoned her at Kew last night, to wish them Godspeed and safe landing and to say au revoir, and Rosalind said the weather here had been absolutely wonderful – sun, sun, and more sun but quite cool. Just, in fact, what I ordered, but so rarely get.

  In London last week, anyway, it was both sunny and hot, and I was quite sorry to have my fur tippet to drag around. It looked luxurious, though, even if a bit hot. Rosalind and your daughter-in-law had a pleasant room in a rather unpleasant hotel (all the corridors were wet, as somebody apparently was washing all the carpets, and they smelled a bit of soap and disinfectant) and I had an enormous room with a double bed and four huge, fat square pillows and 14 cupboards and eight drawers. I decided 14 cupboards was quite adequate for an overnight stay, and spread my other frock over as many of them as possible. There was also, oh delight, an enormous bunch of flowers and a jug to put them in, so when I had finished, with my silver-fox draped negligently (took me five minutes to get real negligent) over a chair, I looked the height of a luxurious lady visiting the haut monde . . .

  We had tea together, and chatted for a little, then changed as I said, and with a nice long drink under our belts, off to the theatre. (I was so thirsty, for some reason, I ordered gin and bitter lemon, emptied all the bitter lemon into the gin, and just gulped it down as if it were lemonade. With, I may say, about as much effect!) The play, if that is the right word for it, was Ross, and was all about T. E. Lawrence of Arabia, during the short time he was in the Air Force after the war, under the name of Ross. It was a series of scenes from the desert warfare, and although it failed, for me, to explain why Lawrence wanted to go into the Forces, it was a most moving dramatic piece, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

  And, of course, the acting of Sir Alec Guinness was amazing. And dear Lady Churchill was sitting in the row immediately in front of us, which added to my pleasure. Afterwards, we went to Veeraswamy's Indian Restaurant and had very second-rate curry and third-rate wine (first-rate charge, of course) and so back to the hotel and to bed and, in the morning, sadly to see the others off to Kent. Your d-in-law had a formidable programme of gardens and houses to see, and I only hope they didn't wear themselves out looking for them, and at them.

  Last night I telephoned Rosalind, as I said. The telephone number was engaged at first, and the operator said he would call me back. Just as the 'phone rang, and I ran to answer, there was a loud 'bang' from the kitchen and a sharp exclamation from Mother. I could either see what she was up to, or answer the telephone, and I'm afraid I did the latter: she sounded exasperated rather than in real trouble.

  When I had had our short three minutes, I dashed to the kitchen, to find Mother had been lighting the boiler and blown the door off with the gas poker. And a baby blue-tit had flown in through an open window into our living room and that was too much for Freckles, who was all agog. For a little while there was pandemonium, but in the end all was well, and the indignant little bird flew off with his mum, and an indignant cat went stalking out, all ruffled, and Mother and I sat down to a cup of much-needed coffee . . .

  No doubt by now Rosalind has come and gone like a passing glint of sun through the clouds. Wasn't it kind of Lady Harold Nicolson to give them flowers when they left her garden at Sissinghurst? The Nicolson son, Nigel, has been our member of parliament in Bournemouth (East) for some years, but is in process of being thrown out by the local diehard Tories because he voted against the party over the Suez question . . .

  Pandemonium is reigning right now; our water show starts tomorrow so by now tempers are worn thin and everybody on our staff is rushing to telephone the nearest lunatic asylum to book a suite for themselves. Ah well, in another eight weeks we shall be halfway to the end of the season. In another nine Mac will be getting married; my heart fails me more and more, and I just cannot even make a semblance of happiness about it, but I must, if only to keep Mother unaware of my growing misgivings. I had a ghastly thought the other day, when Mac said not to give our list of wedding guests to the Fagans as he 'wanted to alter it' and I thought he was going to cross off a very old friend of ours – Dorothy Smith. So one day I asked him point-blank, and after a tiny pause he said no, of course he wasn't doing any such thing. But the pause made me wonder. And this morning he said, out of the blue, that he had spoken to Dorothy and she didn't wish to be invited. Now I don't know whether he is telling the truth or not; whether Dorothy really has said she prefers not to be invited, and if so, whether she feels too upset to come. And if so, whether she just doesn't think this particular marriage is a good thing (as I know she does) or whether she is too emotionally involved. We have known Dorothy since we were in our teens, and she was even then white-haired. I have no idea of her age, but it must be in the mid-fifties at least, and whereas Mac has always treated her as a sort of convenient sister, I am not so sure that Dorothy has looked upon Mac as a brother. So I can't ask her about this invitation business for fear I probe too deeply in something she would rather I didn't investigate. And I can't do nothing, because I should hate a good and well-tried friend to be hurt just because Mac is marrying some addle-headed little fool who is stupid enough to be jealous of somebody who befriended us twenty years before she even met Mac. Oh, Mr Bigelow, don't people complicate matters!

  Now to post this; I was so pleased to see from your last letter that you sounded more cheerful, and hope in the next that the same happy progress will be visible.

  Au revoir until next Saturday yourself, then, and look after yourself.

  Yours most sincerely,

  Frances W.

  BOURNEMOUTH

  June 18th 1960

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  Oh what a tangled web we mortals spin, when once we start to deceive – or whatever it was, whoever it was, said. And what a mess I get into with tenses when I start my weekly letter to you on a Monday or a Tuesday, but date it Saturday and pretend I am writing it then – which I never do, as you know full well, since it is always posted by Friday afternoon at the latest. If in some future age some eager beaver of a historian digs around in the cliffs of Bellport, he may well find a painted box containing a mass of mildewed letters from Bournemouth; and what a trouble some clever creature will have in sorting out dates, apart from reality from fantasy. Makes quite a pleasant thought, giving all that work to some unknown nosy parker, doesn't it?

  I had a letter from Rosalind this week, happy to be home but appalled by the weeds in the gardens, poor dear. She said you had seemed quite bright and cheerful when she reached Bellport and were sitting watching television when she arrived. Shame on you, Mr Bigelow! I thought you only used the television to switch it off with a huff and a puff of indignation from time to time!

  My French exams took place on Monday and Tuesday. I was very elated immediately after doing the written exam, but next morning very depressed as I began to remember more and more mistakes I had made, and how many more I don't know I made: my essay – I chose to write about the book I most prefer, not wishing to describe a gentleman, nor the joys of campings – (if any). Of course, having got through the first sentence I suddenly realised my favourite book is Pride and Prejudice and I don't know the French for either word. So I had to be untruthful and pretend I liked Pickwick Papers best. And on top of this my subconscious took a hand, and when I was writing 'Les Papiers Pickwick' what do you think appeared on the paper – 'Une Conte de Deux Cities' [sic]. So there I was, saddled with a book I can scarcely remember reading!! And by an author I don't like, anyway. I was so mad, even at the time, and madder than ever in retrospect, so, to get my own back, I finished my little chi
ldish essay by saying that, in any case, my favourite book was usually the one I was currently reading and only the bell for the end of time stopped me waxing eloquent (and inaccurate) about the joys of unexpected delights that awaited one over every fresh page . . .

  Looking at the whole thing as dispassionately as I can, I should hesitate to say I had higher marks than 70%, which is well over the 50% pass-mark but not, as you know, nearly good enough to meet my some-what vainglorious ambitions. Ah well, serves me right for flying too high. I will let you know what I do get, some time in August.

  Now I must finish this; I will take it with us tomorrow, and post it from some outlandish corner of England (or possibly Scotland) and next week you may have to be content with a very short letter. Incidentally – thank you for Reader's Digest which came yesterday and leaves for Scotland tomorrow.

  Yours most sincerely,

  Frances W.

  BOURNEMOUTH

  July 23rd 1960

  Dear Mr Bigelow, oh hitter-of-Telegraph-Poles,

  One thing I must say, and you are in no position to stop me, I admire you for picking on something your own size. Height and width are, I should say, about equal but of course you have a moustache, which perhaps gives you just that little bit of an edge.

  I am hoping that by the time this letter is posted I shall have heard again from Rosalind, to the effect that you are home and pottering around again with the mutts and going out to lunch with Rosalind and visiting Mr Dall in hospital or at his home, if he too has returned; generally your own self once more, with two beautiful black eyes fading into memory. We went back to the flat this morning because as we came out of the garage drive we noticed the postman down the road, so we motored back a little and waylaid him, but he disappointed us. We cheerfully told him to take a week's notice on the spot, and this so shook him he offered us somebody else's mail as a peace-offering, but we spurned it and went back on our route to work without a letter from America. (This is Thursday, at the moment.) I was a bit optimistic, expecting a letter as I know Rosalind said she would be visiting you on Monday, and she would have needed to write me as she opened the front door, more or less, for the letter to reach Bournemouth so soon. Oh Mr Bigelow, why do you do these things – you are deuced hard on the nerves!