Love in the Blitz

by Eileen Alexander

  Yes, please, darling, I want to lose my virginity on our wedding night. There will only be two people in the world on that night, my darling. The rest can clamour to their hearts’ content. They are shadows – nothing more.

  I was simply Horror-struck by your account of the airman who wrote two letters in exactly the same terms to two different women. I can’t remember ever having been so Shocked in my life before. I wish you had followed your Inclination in that instance.

  I had tea with Miss Lloyd Thomas yesterday & read the draft regulations for the Eileen Alexander Prize. They start, my darling, by saying that The Prize was presented by Mr & Mrs Alexander to commemorate the betrothal of their daughter Eileen (English Tripos, 1939) to Gershon Ellenbogen. Oh! my darling, is that Good? I think it’s terrifically good.

  Monday 17 May My darling, this might have been a sad day but instead it’s a wonderfully happy one because your letters 113, 115 and 116 arrived this morning.

  I am not a bit surprised about Aubrey’s interest in Nude Women, my love. He also likes Tired Business Men reviews with a liberal sprinkling of legs. Anyone as Inhibited as Aubrey would be bound to. It’s because he’s so Inhibited emotionally, my darling, that I used to think that he was a wantoner. I thought that perhaps he experimented with wantonness to try and teach himself to relax – although, of course, that’s entirely the wrong way to set about it.

  I understand about you & Aubrey & Bernard Waley-Cohen, darling. I knew already that in the past you had never discussed that kind of thing with him but I was not sure whether living together might not make a difference. I can see now that it hasn’t in spite of the fact that Aubrey is in a very tangled emotional state at the moment, darling, a state rather comparable with yours during your 4th year at Cambridge & he has been writing to me in a way which, inhibited as he is, I should never have thought possible for him.

  I’ve had a long letter from Sir Ernest saying how pleased he was to have been able to help Miss Anderton & giving full details of her condition. What’s more, darling, you must remember that Miss Anderton is a cripple with a marked inferiority complex & the psychological effect of being received like a Duchess by the best skin specialist in the country has been, as I expected, miraculous.

  Friday 21 May There were terrific Purple Passages in the Times & the News Chronicle, darling, about Brigadier Wingate who is described as a relative of and successor to Lawrence of Arabia. Apparently, darling, he conducted a brilliant three-months raid on Burma, ‘one of the most daring operations of the war’. He is described, with Characteristic Fulsomeness, as ‘A dreamer & a soldier’. Of course, my love, there is no doubt that he is one of the most remarkable men I’ve ever met. He has Genius, I think, & he is that rarest of all combinations – a humanist of the first rank and a Man of Action – so that all his Action is directed by quite extraordinary imagination.

  It’s no good thinking that for me you are a man like other men – you are nothing like other men. You appear as far above them as the sun appears above the earth and for the earth, my darling, there is only one sun though I know there are other suns for other earths. You are asking me, at the setting of the sun, to accept a 100 watt bulb in its place.

  Darling, when I got back from lunch Kitty & I Got Talking about Bosoms. I said Impersonally that it was a queer thing that so many men had the impression that there really were more than a tiny proportion of women who had Bosoms like the Girls in the picture-papers. Kitty (who has a very good figure, darling) Laughed Heartily at this & said surely the kind of man who read the Picture Papers Faithfully couldn’t fail to read all the articles on how film stars spent hundreds of pounds on having paddings & mouldings fitted into their brassieres in accordance with Current Fashions in Bosoms. As for photographs of naked girls, darling, she said, as C. S. Lewis has said before her that it was mainly a matter of lighting and posing. I said that I understood that there were women who did Bosom Exercises & did she think they Did Any Good? She said that it was queer that I should ask that because it reminded her of something her family doctor had said to her when she went to see him about some Tummy Trouble shortly after she was married. He remarked that she had grown very thin – particularly in the Bosom (you would have no quarrel with her Bosom now, darling) & he said that it was a curious thing that there was only one thing which invariably filled out and strengthened a woman’s breasts & that was regular and complete erotic satisfaction. Darling, I almost Wept with Joy to hear this because it’s Obvious that my Bosom has a Chance after all – no, far more than a chance – a certainty. Kitty asked him if that was the reason why Wild Oats so often had firmer bosoms than other women & he said he believed it was because there certainly wasn’t any other way of maintaining the Right Kind of Bosom after the age of 18. (Kitty later asked her sister & brother-in-law who are doctors what they thought of this theory & they said it was a Medical Commonplace. Nobody could explain it but everybody knew it.)

  Saturday 22 May My darling, Brigadier Wingate is still Front-page News. In fact, my love, more than that, he’s the subject of the Times’s second leader this morning. The Evening Standard devoted two full pages to him and gave Mrs Wingate’s address. I shall write to her, my darling. I have an idea that her husband’s absence leaves as terrible a gap for her as yours does for me, my dearest love, except that in her case there is the added burden of his constant physical danger.

  My darling, Victor is here. He’s joining a Destroyer flotilla for Coastal Convoy work tomorrow. I’m so tense with excitement, my darling, that I have hardly been able to listen to a word he’s been saying. My mind did grasp one anecdote though, my dear love, that deserves to be put on record. He was recently offered the Favours of a hideous & pathetically haggard middle-aged Prostitute. These he declined, but when she told him she was Destitute – all her Old Gentlemen having been Evacuated & the young men wanting something better, he asked her to dine with him & then gave her a present of some money. He tells me, darling, that they had a long talk about Prostitution & she very fervently & cogently put forward the view which, as I remarked to Victor is held by Kenneth Walker, that prostitutes are an essential factor in the protection of the Sacred Institution of Marriage. She bitterly deplored the growing tendency towards promiscuity in middle-class girls & Victor swears that her attitude was obviously very genuine & born not of self-protective Trade Unionism, as I half-seriously suggested, but of sincere Compassion.

  Apropos of Victor’s encounter with the prostitute, darling, he left behind his Encyclopaedia of Sexual Knowledge in order that I might read all about the result of a recent Gallup Poll on ‘Do Prostitutes enter the Profession for Pleasure?’ I haven’t read the chapter yet, darling, but I was glancing through the book last night trying to find out the location of the sensitive spot at the seat of Wantonness. It appears, darling, that it is not covered over by the maidenhead but that it is, in fact, one of its boundary points. On the other hand, my love, the book says that the reason this place is often so sensitive in virgins is that they spend a lot of time in their youth exciting themselves by touching it (how horrible, darling) which makes it more & more sensitive. From the Geographical Description of the Seat of Wantonness in the Book, which is more explicit and lucid than any I’ve ever met before, it seems, my love, that you hadn’t actually discovered the spot. The Book also says, darling, that Men have Erotogenic Places all over them just like women. Have they, darling? The Book says it is the Duty of a Good Wife to ask her Husband where they are. How I loathe reading books on Wantonness, darling. It’s all so unreal and mechanical. However, my darling, reading them does show me what I knew already – that all other men are fools and that my Solace is the cleverest lover in the world.

  Wednesday 26 May My darling, yesterday evening at 7 o’clock, I gave up smoking – You remember, I said I would, my dear love? I feel intensely nervy and irritable and dizzy at the moment but that will wear off and by the time we’re together again, my darling, I shan’t even want a cigare
tte if you offer it to me – and you will not have to kiss My Lady Nicotine ever again.

  I’m finding it the most terrible effort to write, my darling. The craving for tobacco is one of the most beastliest of all physical sensations. It makes you sigh and feel absurdly short-tempered and intolerant and it makes intellectual concentration almost impossible. I can’t believe, my darling, that I shall feel like this for very long. Of course this time of intense excitement is not really the best moment to try and do without cigarettes.

  I had a long & charming letter from Mrs Wingate this evening thanking me for mine. She asks kindly after you & says she’ll get in touch with me next time she’s in London.

  Thursday 27 May My darling, Sylvia was quiet & serene and restful and I feel a great deal better. She brought with her, my dear love, the books (discreetly wrapped in brown paper) on marriage which she read before her marriage. Last time we met, darling, I was telling her how much I hated most of the books on marriage that I’d read & she said that she had read two very slender books by women doctors which were impersonal, intelligible and helpful. As Sylvia has very much the same kind of mind as I have, darling, they will probably make the same impression on me. I don’t want to read Technical Tomes, my dearest love. All the technical knowledge that I need, my darling, I know I shall get from you and, arrogantly perhaps, I believe I know a good deal more about emotional love than most of the doctors who write about it – but I feel I must read one Good Book on Wantonness and one on Contraception before we’re married, my dear love, as a basis for your instruction.

  Friday 28 May I’m Immeasurably Relieved to hear that Aubrey Can’t Take Mrs Halper. I was stricken to the core to hear (from her, of course) that he Adored her. My Faith is Fully Restored. Please tell him I felt sure all along that there must be Some Mistake & that she must be thinking of two other people of the same name. Is Aubrey sure her friendship with Lady Swaythling is Unilateral, darling? I should have thought that they would have met constantly & by common consent on the Social Mountain up which they both Sweat so Constantly & Conscientiously and Single-Mindedly. I stayed with Lady S. at Buxted for a week once, darling, & at the end of it she offered me a choice of photographs of herself (i) with Shirley Temple (ii) in her Coronation Robes. I took the Coronation Robes, my love, because I couldn’t see any way of Wriggling Out of it – but I lost it Pronto. There is no doubt in my mind, my love, that the late lamented Mr Halper died of a surfeit of Mrs Halper as sure as the late lamented Lord Swaythling died of Lady Swaythling. One of the most Depressing things about the present Lord Swaythling, darling, (Nellie’s ex-son-in-law) to those who know him is that he has not yet died of anything.

  Darling, I didn’t tell you how Joyce stood in relation to Aubrey and or vice versa for a number of reasons, – (i) because I thought you knew already (ii) because I thought, in spite of what you’ve told me of your relations with him on Personal Topics (iii) because I thought that it was more than likely that he’d show you the letter in which I Told Him All. But it seems that I was wrong, my love, so I’ll give you a brief résumé of the situation. Joyce isn’t seriously interested in Aubrey at all – any more than she is in Us. She has travelled along a different road but she has a kind of ashamed loyalty to us all because we were once her friends. That is really all, my darling.

  I suppose Aubrey’s ‘lengthening list of sundered threads’ simply means Joyce & Joyce’s Predecessor in his affections, but since everything is relative, two names at the age of 28 is quite a considerable list & I think his remark was not unjustified. Poor Aubrey. I wish he weren’t so hopelessly incapable of handling his own emotional affairs.

  Saturday 29 May Basil arrived unexpectedly for dinner, my darling. He’s restless & depressed and terribly lonely emotionally. He finds suddenly that he is bored when he goes home. He is losing his old bearings and hasn’t yet found new ones. He is, in fact, in very much the same state as you were in when I first knew you, my dear love. He left at 10 to go to Edinburgh for a course in Tropical Diseases and thence to Liverpool on Embarkation Leave. He is Seething with Speculation about his ultimate destination but knows nothing definite.

  He says too, darling, that ever since he was posted to the Field Ambulance Unit with which he is now he has had a foreboding that he had not long to live. I explained to him that that was nothing more than a fear of the unknown which came to every man I had ever known – every sensitive man at least – who was faced with the prospect of going into battle for the first time. Basil is self-observant, my darling, without being self-understanding, in which he differs very strikingly from you, my dearest love.

  Tuesday 1 June Darling, you know it’s odd how even when parents & children have a strong similarity of intellectual outlook, as my parents & I have, the most extraordinary barriers are always cropping up.

  Last night at dinner Peggy Davies was talking about Twins and I told her what Mr Long had said about the Growing Up of twins being especially interesting to watch. She asked me what sex they were and I said boys. ‘Oh!’ said Peggy, ‘I shouldn’t like twin boys – I should like one of each.’ I explained to her, darling, that those weren’t real twins because real twins developed from a single split cell and had to be the same sex whereas twins of different sexes were two separate cells developing at the same time. This morning, darling, Mum expressed Shocked Amazement that I should have discussed ‘Such Things’ in mixed company!!! In all her years of married life, she said she had never referred to matters of that kind to anyone but Pa. Pa intervened here to say hastily that while he realized that Times had Changed and People Thought Differently now about what was or was not Suitable Drawing Room Conversation, I ought to Respect the Older Generation whose views were different from mine. Well! darling. I just gasped. It was obviously no good arguing with Mum – anyway I was struck so Dumb that I couldn’t think of anything to say but I find it dreadfully stultifying to discover suddenly in that way that Mum or Pa are speaking to me in a Foreign language. Do you see what I mean, my love?

  You know, darling, the more I see and read the more certain I am that the Jewish Racial-Persecution bug is one which extends far beyond the Jews and should be treated as part of the whole heart breaking & morally revolting tendency to persecute racial minorities. I was reading an article the other day in Kitty’s New Statesman on the American Negro question, my dear love. The persecution there, darling, is only less horrible in degree than the persecution of the Jews and the reason why, in spite of occasional lynching there is, on the whole, not much actual thuggery in America towards the negroes, is I am sure, because they have not the same dangerous habit as the Jews of rising to the top in the Callings that Matter. (That may very well be because they’ve never had a chance, darling.)

  I remember feeling physically sick, my love, when Mum told me, a year or two ago, after having met and talked to him at a Party, that Paul Robeson had remarked that he’d tried to get his son into every university of repute in America, and, having found all the doors closed against him, had finally sent him to Moscow University. Besides all this, darling, I have a vast body of terribly distressing stories about the treatment of the Negro troops in this country both by the Americans & by ourselves – & I’m haunted by a report I saw some months ago on Teaching the RAF a ‘Right Attitude’ (God!) to the colour-bar question in S. Africa.

  You see, darling, all this leads me back to the conviction that the only way to cure the Racial Minority Disease is to teach people about right and wrong – not to segregate them into separate states. Oh! no, no – and if I didn’t believe in the ultimate perfectibility of human nature I should have in the end to believe that racial prejudice was incurable and I can’t believe that, my darling.

  Jean gave me Bone Soup (and let me chew the Bone, my love) and stuffed veal & salad & tinned peaches and then, being very late we Cast About for a taxi to take us to the Cinema. We found one, darling, just at the moment when it was being hailed by a Man in a Monocle & German Spats (believe
it or not) and a chocolate brown suit. As we were going his way he offered us a lift which we gratefully accepted, darling. He turned to the driver & instructed him to drop us at our cinema & then to take him to Portman Square and then to Claridge’s: ‘I’m dining at Claridge’s,’ he explained quite redundantly and added, taking out an Opulent Cigarette Case: ‘Do have one of my hand-rolled Turkish Cigarettes – I am at the Bank of England.’ This seemed to me something of a Non-Sequitur, my love, and anyway I prefer my cigarettes rolled by machine – it’s more hygienic, so I declined politely & Took Out a Craven A. Beau Brummel, darling, is a Beautiful Thought but when you meet him in the flesh he’s an Awful Ass.

  Jean is feeling rather Woebegone at the moment because Square is in America. She really loves Square, you know, my darling. I was rather surprised. Shall I tell you how I know? She said suddenly, apropos of nothing: ‘You know I should never have believed that any man could be as kind and gentle as Square.’ That’s the surest sign of love in a woman, darling, a sort of wondering gratitude for her lover’s understanding. A man expresses another aspect of the same thing, rather differently. If he loves a woman he says: ‘I never believed a woman could love me so much’ or ‘There isn’t another woman in the world who could love me so much.’ Do you see what I mean, my darling?

  Friday 4 June My Bosom isn’t getting any Bigger or Better. Darling, I wonder if you know how much sorrow the inadequacy of my Bosom causes me. You see, my dear love, the greatest joy that I know in the world is to lie in your arms with your hands on my breasts – it’s perfect, dazzling, bewildering joy, my darling – when I remember it, I catch my breath with happiness and then I remember that my breasts are soft and small and disappointing and that’s all I can give you in return for all the unspeakable delight that I have from you. Darling, you have often said you can love me, Bosom and all. Please say it again.