The three o’clock post has just come – with a letter from the Mistress saying that she’s cycled all round Cambridge trying to find me a home! She hasn’t succeeded yet – everyone is housing Bedford women & evacuees from the London School of Economics. She is writing to me again tomorrow. She is, with sympathy, mine sincerely … and I had the temerity to say that Girton wasn’t bothering about me any more. Bless her lily-white head. I hope all her cycling expeditions aren’t in vain!
Friday 29 September This morning I had a letter from Girton. They’ve taken rooms for me at Girton Corner. The main disadvantages are six children and high tea instead of dinner – but oh! if I could get back to Cambridge, I wouldn’t care if it were six boa-constrictors and no food at all! (You’re not the only one who’s willing to go without your meals in a Higher Cause!) Owing to sundry obstacles like clinging parents, and dentists who must be seen, I shall not return to my Alma Mater (if I ever get there at all – and I’m afraid to believe I shall) until Thursday, October 12th.
We leave here, inshallah, on Sunday 8th, and if you are moved to write to me in the intervening four days, my address (unless you hear to the contrary) will be ‘The Mayfair Hotel’, Berkeley Square, London W1.
Dad has started work at the Treasury. (It is therefore no longer a secret – when an Alexander is anywhere, it is difficult to look as though he’s not, and although all Government departments adore secrecy, and would have liked Pa to disguise himself as a puff of wind, they were reasonable, and saw his difficulty.) He is not coming back here, so Mum & I have arranged everything between us, (bless her!)
Sunday 1 October Your lyric outburst over my photograph was prettily written – but did you really like it? More and more people here seem to like it less & less – but, if it meets with your approval, I don’t give a damn. (I’m getting very independent in my declining years.)
Now let me sketch the evolution of my attitude to ‘darling’ for you. I think it will cause you to smile – but if perchance introspective anecdotes of this kind (and I am much given to them, I know) bore you – you have only to say so, and I shan’t tell you any more.
Go back a little in time to almost the eve of my Tripos, when I came out of retirement to go with Joyce and you & Aubrey to the Irish Plays. On the way home, as you may or may not remember, we had an altercation about the relative merits of the words ‘ostentatiously’ and ‘ostensibly’ in a given context. The altercation extended itself onto paper – and the last document in the case was a treatise by you on the subject, written on scribbling paper and handed to Joyce in Synagogue for delivering to me. Joyce gave me this erudite work, when I went to call upon her, the next morning – and, as she was interested in the controversy, I read her what you had to say. All went well, until I got to about the third page – and then I faltered and stopped – and then went on reading – omitting the word which had given me a shock. Joyce was quick to notice the pause, and wanted to know the cause. ‘How dare he,’ I answered obscurely, d’une voix mourante. It took her between 30 & 45 minutes to extract the reason of my distress from me – and when she did, her explanation of the phenomenon was not encouraging. ‘I expect it was just a slip of the pen,’ she said!! I must hasten to explain that at this time, I was living in a state of perpetual terror that my immoderate regard for you must be apparent to everybody – particularly you – and my interpretation of your use of ‘darling’, was that you had said to yourself, ‘Oh! well if it amuses her to be treated like a poppet, I don’t really mind one way or another,’ and had forthwith written it down. I couldn’t explain all this to Joyce – with whom I had spent hours, in the still watches of the night, protesting that I hadn’t any out-of-the-common preference for you at all – so I just sat at the bottom of her bed, crying piteously – and, of course, she was now more firmly convinced than ever, that I was quite mad.
Ye Gods! Was there ever such a transformation. Now, I don’t mind telling you, I not only tolerate ‘darling’ – I like it! Of course, the first time I used it myself, I was shocked to the core. My pen hovered over the page for an eternity, and when I did write it down, I blamed it all onto the war-suspense, and assured myself that, of course, it wouldn’t happen again!
At this point you will doubtless look very wise, and say that what has happened to me is that I am becoming almost normal. I don’t know. Anyway, that’s the story, for what it’s worth!
Y’know, Gershon, sometimes I get into a wild panic at the thought about how much you know about me. Your photographic picture of my defences, must be almost as complete as the Allies’ picture of the troop concentrations on The Siegfried Line. T’aint ’ardly decent – and think of all the damage you could do, if you felt so inclined.
Tuesday 3 October Horace has a lot of very pungent things to say about the political situation. I know they are pungent because I am able to detect a thickening and quickening of the pen-strokes whenever the words ‘Russia’ – ‘Germany’ – or ‘Chamberlain’ occur. Unfortunately, his writing, like Lois’, is quite illegible – so I can’t tell you what they are. This is a Great Sorrow to me because Horace is un genie manqué (I mean this absolutely seriously) and anything he says is worth pondering over. It was he, you know, who got me my first. He told me a story about himself and Henry James which I reproduced in my essay on Henry James in the Tripos. Unless you know Horace, it is impossible to believe the story – so the examiners said (with some truth) ‘This girl has imagination’, and gave me a First at once. (But don’t tell anybody, please, Gershon. I like the outside world to think I’m clever. There’s no point, though, in trying to deceive you – everything there is to be known about me – you know already.)
Wednesday 4 October This is my last night in my solitary Clunemore double-bed. (I use the word ‘solitary’ graphically – not regretfully.) We’ve been here two months – and a more unpleasant two months I’ve never spent in all my life. Thank God for the accident:
a.) because it gave me an excuse for retiring to bed when I was tired of family life, which was often.
b.) because it kept the children quieter.
c.) (and by far the most important of all.) It amused you to write to me often. I have often wondered whether, if there hadn’t been an accident, you’d ever have written to me at all. I have never made up my mind on this point.
I really am too tired to write any more, Gershon. My next letter will be from London. The first thing I shall do when I get there will be to write to you (G. No?) The next will be to go to the pictures – and the rest to have my tooth mended. What a busy girl I’m going to be!
Friday 6 October We had a loathly journey. I’ve never travelled at night on English trains before – and to think that once I used to grumble at Wagon Lits! I just didn’t know when I was lucky.
In a moment I am going to see my dentist. I’m frightened out of my wits.
Evening: The dentist was foul. He gave me a cocaine injection, and drilled for two hours – long after the numbness had worn off – and now all I have the energy to do is to lie in bed and cry weakly.
Joyce and I pranced round the shops in a girlish way after lunch. I haven’t been inside a shop since the accident, and I bought myself a beautiful gas-mask case as a gesture.
Monday 9 October It is very strange to be back in London again. I have shopped – braved the black-out with my father to see I Was a Captive of Nazi Germany7 – which I thought lacked co-ordination, and was far too documentary – besides, Miss Steele is very plain, I think, which, aesthetically, makes a difference – besides which, I don’t like her voice – and I have met Prince Axel of Denmark at a lunch party. No! he was not Prince Hamlet, nor anything like his illustrious forbear – the only thing he has in common with Hamlet is the potentiality to say with truth: