It was unsubtle of you, dear, not to see that, if I have never been serious about anything else in all my life, I am serious about not wanting to be married. Mr Kean, who hardly knows me at all, realized that I was frightened of erotic love (of which, everyone tells me, there is a certain amount in every marriage) and you, who know more about me than is good for either of us, don’t seem to realize that that is the most serious obstacle to marriage which could possibly exist – and it’s not that I don’t know anything about it either. Practically speaking, of course, I don’t know anything about it – but otherwise I do. From the ages of 11–20 (inclusive) I brooded over a morbid and depressing infatuation for Gerta’s cousin/young man. I did not like him – nor was I amused by him – but he was very attractive and exciting. It was not until I met him by accident in the theatre, at a performance of the Three Sisters,8 after which he took Jean & me out to coffee, that I realized that he’d bored me excruciatingly for years. (His comments on ‘The Three Sisters’ were as banal as they were insensitive. Silly ass.)
I shall not write to you again before we meet – (unless I owe you a letter before then). I don’t like my mother’s caustic comments – though she doesn’t mean to offend me – besides, there’s a lot in what she says (by implication). You think so too, don’t you.
Monday 16 October [Girton Corner, Cambridge] You’ll be gratified to hear, darling, that Miss Bradbrook has told the Board of Research Studies (by letter) that my Literary Judgement is penetrating & accurate.
I’m feeling quite clever today – so if Mr Bennett gives me half a chance when I see him this afternoon, I’ll ask him what he thinks about supervision. I dare do all that may become a girl, who dares do more is none.
Sunday 22 October I’m very sorry I was so querulous this afternoon, darling. So sorry, in fact, that I’d probably have cried if Aubrey hadn’t been here. (Poor Aubrey!) I was fantastically tired & I had a headache – but that was no excuse. It was an impossible way of returning your kindliness & hospitality – (pause for a semi-tearful brood on the whole thing).
You can come & see me any evening you like, if you like, provided you telephone and/or write and say you’re coming. I now have no sherry, coffee, squashed-fly biscuits, nor any other form of sustenance to offer you, (except Sanatogen, of course, you can have lots of that) – only me, trying hard not to look like Lois – and probably not being able to think of anything to say – so if you’d rather stay at home or prowl about on your Quest for Her – you may. I shall understand.
Monday 6 November I skipped out of bed this morning just as though I’d never had a headache in my life. The red streaks of dawn (is dawn red? I’ve never seen it, so I wouldn’t know – but popular fiction has a tradition to that effect) were just appearing in the sky. Clutching my dressing gown about me and pushing wisps of hair out of my eyes, I tottered downstairs and found your letter (in a carefully disguised hand – which I recognized at once) side by side with a very fat one from Sheila. I opened yours first – and, darling, the photograph is the concrete embodiment of the Platonic idea of a photograph of you. It is not flattering – it is ideally and triumphantly Right. This morning (because nobody is coming to see me today), it is sitting on my dressing table. I don’t think I’m going to be able to do any work – so perhaps there are advantages in les convenances, which dictate that I should keep it out of sight when I have visitors! Thank you for taking so much trouble over it – it was worth waiting for.
Sheila’s letter was Beautiful, too. She lives in a welter of Air Raids and domesticity. She ascribes her engagement to Allan’s whirlwind courtship, when he spent a week in Edinburgh prior to being called up. There was nothing to do but court, she says, social life in Edinburgh being practically at a standstill. Not, mind you, but what they’ve often courted before – but, (in case you’d forgotten) there’s a war on now – so everything is different. She is a little worried about Hamish & Charlotte who are now practically indistinguishable in looks, voice and ideas. They remind her of Paolo & Francesca,9 she says. Their spirits have mingled and they are One. (Don’t misunderstand me, Charlotte is, in every sense of the word, a nice girl and Hamish’s intentions, though undefined, have been strictly honourable from the first.) This is the old Sheila – and I’m very happy at having re-established contact with her.
Tuesday 5 December My dear love, I have News for you. I am going to have a job at the War Office, in the vac, as assistant to Public Adorer No. 1, and so I shall be in direct contact with Leslie for a whole month. I shall come to London by train from Middleton every day. Isn’t that Beautiful? Ma told me, all casual-like, on the telephone this morning. I was strook-aback.
And, darling, now that I’m such a Personage, you will come to tea at four on Thursday, won’t you? After all, an hour one way or another won’t affect your work much, will it? – but oh! the difference to me!
Thursday 14 December I’ve had a most fantastic day, darling, which is a Good Thing, because there’s been no time for my imagination to sit on brood (a lovely expression, I’ve always felt – and from one of my best-known plays too).
Miss Sloane introduced me to her underling – a Miss Fox, whose underling I am to be (and damn me if she isn’t a fully fledged Public Adorer as well! This thing is becoming a cult – but I’m pledged to it now and there is no escape10).
Then Miss Sloane said, ‘I think Mr Hore-Belisha wants to see you,’ and she flung open the double doors – and there I was in his room. That was at three – at three-five he’d already found out why I love Malory – at 3.10 he was asking me what position the Jews held in Mediaeval Society (if any) and at 3.15 – I was giving him a lecture on Chivalric Love Poetry, and religious mania as exemplified in the ‘Book of Margery Kempe’.11 He just sat and nodded all the while – and then he sighed and said, ‘My dear, you must come in and read me some of these things. I feel like the child in Robert Louis Stevenson’s fable – everyone laughed at him for playing with toys – and so he put them away in a cupboard, saying that he’d play with them again when he was grown up and no-one would dare laugh at him, then – and then he forgot all about them. You have opened the cupboard for me, and I have caught a glimpse of the things I had forgotten. Please come and read to me sometimes.’
It was very beautiful, darling – and then the crash came. PA No. 1, who had been standing by chafing all this while, now bustled busily forward. ‘Certainly, certainly,’ she said briskly, more in anger than in sorrow, ‘Eileen will be glad to read to you when we’ve got rid of this war – but you’ve got to see the Prime Minister in five minutes – and you put off Lady Dawson of Penn,’ (Leslie here interjected irritably, ‘Damn the woman’ and PA No. 1 looked as shocked as a PA can permit herself to look) ‘so as we could go through the points of your interview together’ – (glowering at me) ‘and we haven’t.’ Whereat she seized me by the shoulder and pushed me out – shutting the door with a determined click. Not So Beautiful.
However, my work is to consist of filing his letters from constituents (y’know – Mr X has rheumatism – and Mr Hore-Belisha did say at the last election that he’d be pleased to help and advise his constituents – and someone said horse-embrocation was a good thing – what did Mr H. B. think – and so on) and also to help Public Adorer to compile a War-File – of all his successes & failures and speeches, and all the nice comforting things we’ve done for the troops – bein’ an uncle to them and all that – you know.
I ought to be doing this now – but as this is my first afternoon, Miss Fox is being kind to me and letting me have an hour off to write a Very Important letter which must catch the evening mail.
Nor marble nor the gilded monuments of War Chiefs shall outshine this powerful claim, Darling.12
Saturday 16 December Leslie said good-morning with a sardonic chuckle, and said he hoped I was finding my work under Miss Sloane as inspiring as Mediaeval Literature – and turning to Miss Fox, he asked her, whether she had noticed that the office had definitely