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Saturday 13 April 1940 [Eileen’s twenty-third birthday] Darling, when I wrote to you yesterday, I felt as though I should never smile again – but I was wrong. This England1 produced not a languid twitch at the corners of my mouth or anything like that – but a twinkle, and then a wide smile, and then a giggle, and then the loud laugh, which is such a source of surprise to you, dear.

The birthday atmosphere is somewhat marred by it’s being Saturday, and the fact that I have a headache as though the flames of Hell were roaring in my skull.

Well, with all this, my gloom fell from my shoulders like a cloak – and now, I’m ready to laugh at anything – even at the merry absurdity of my ever casting you into the limbo of Men I have Known & Forgotten. As a matter of fact, I never forget anybody, not even the young man of Jewish Lineage and Parisian up-bringing who, for some reason known only to himself, wanted to impress me – and set about it by telling me that he’d had his first Mistress at the age of 12½, and that she was the mother of his best friend at school. He hastened to add that the suggestion came from her – and that Love (by which he meant Lust) was Very Beautiful. All this happened by moonlight on a Messageries Maritimes Liner in the middle of the Mediterranean – and was intensely funny. I listened solemnly to his catalogue of wantonness – and then laughed and laughed and laughed – and said ‘Goodnight’. I don’t suppose he’s ever been the same since.

Thursday 23 May I bore my Mother away to the West End to see Gone With the Wind, which, darling, is unendurably long (3h 58m). The acting is good (but no better than that). Some of the photography is lovely – and you know what I think of the plot – and all its shoddy melodrama stands out far more glaringly on the screen than in the pages of the book. No, my comfort, it is not worth all the publicity which has been lavished on it – it is not worth getting pins and needles in the rear elevation for, either – and, above all, it is not worth Titanic feats of Endurance in connection with Duncan.

Horace is so bracing. He came to see me yesterday evening & solemnly urged my mother and myself to evacuate ourselves to my farm in Wales, so that when the Nazis smash us, we can make a ‘quick getaway’ via some northerly port. Dear Horace.

Oh! darling. I haven’t seen you since Newton started Taking an Interest in Apples – and that was hundreds of years ago.

Monday 10 June Aubrey came into the drawing room, stiff and correct and every-inch-an-officer – and the bridge-players (including my mother & father, darling – what a Sorrow) just looked at him with a glazed eye &, as he said afterwards, made him feel like the Shrinking Man in every Bateman cartoon. My father then bore Aubrey & me off to the Front Parlour & told us All, with vague & gloomy expansiveness. All he said could be condensed into one poignant & succinct phrase. ‘What a sorrow.’ Aubrey called him Sir, and put his case – in the Pauses for Breath – and my father said he’d do what he could for him with Colonel Kisch & Lord Lloyd. He then said A Few Words on the subject of Glorious Evacuations & went back to his bridge. Aubrey seemed to think he might be helpful – but he (Aubrey) was tired & nervy & stilted – and when I told him about the Importance of Shoes in marking the distinction between Forwardness and Wantonness, he was only able to manage a wan smile – and it was obvious that his Mind was elsewhere.

I felt suddenly & frighteningly out of touch with Aubrey tonight. Perhaps because I’d hung on to the thought of his coming as a kind of indirect link with you – and he was completely detached from us and our idiom and our Solaces & Sorrows.

Of course, it’s not surprising. It looks as though MI2 is off – but he hopes with the help of Dr Weizmann, Major Cazalet & perhaps Pa, to get to Egypt & Palestine, and do the kind of work that interests him – once he gets there. Everyone in Whitehall disclaimed all knowledge or responsibility in the matter or expressed Great Sorrow – Oh! I hope All will be Well with him.

Tuesday 11 June When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions, darling – as I may have said before.

This morning Lord Inverforth3 telephoned & my mother picked up the receiver. He asked if he could speak to Dad and then urged him to go into another room – alone. Something in his voice must have frightened my mother because she turned dreadfully pale – and I, rather foolishly, advised her to pick up the receiver & listen in. She did – and oh! darling, she just lay back in bed gasping & choking with dry, coughing sobs. Lord I had had a wire from her sisters asking him to tell her that Uncle Elie had died suddenly (acute appendicitis with complications). She has this rather frightening & very Jewish bond with all her relations – & in this case there was no warning or preparation of any kind. Dad came into the room & sat down – his face was quite grey & blank & he kept muttering ‘She doesn’t deserve it’ over & over again – & nurse danced around squeaking with maddening ineffectualness. Mon dieu, quel cauchemare! (I can’t spell, darling, even in an emergency. I don’t know whether there’s an ‘e’ in cauchemare or nor.) Now, there’ll be another year of black and apathy & withdrawal for my mother.

Yesterday she was worried because all her money is in her brothers’ bank & may be confiscated by the Egyptian Government – and that would mean that our only steady income would be cut off completely – & now there’s this. I’m glad I’m here today, my dear love – not but what I’m completely useless & ineffectual – but she seems to be pleased that I’m back in London.

This isn’t a letter – just thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.4 (Eliot is a great poet, dear.) Oh! I am out of suits with fortune!

Referring to you at lunch today, darling, my father said in mock-bewilderment that he couldn’t understand ‘this business’ at all – but no doubt it had some profound Medieval Significance – to which I replied that you were a verray parfit gentil knight5 – and, in addition, a Great Solace to me. ‘What’s that?’ he said. ‘Solace? Solace?’ and then, dear, the Beauty of the word dawned upon him, in all its glory. ‘Solace’, he murmured into his Camembert. ‘Solace!’ he added later between noisy sips of coffee. ‘Solace’, he said, puffing the word out with his cigarette-smoke. This is the first glimpse of my idiom he’s had as yet. Perhaps I was wrong in keeping it from him for so long.

It’s been a wearing day – my father has suggested that a Good Way to end Italian intervention would be to dress the Pope up in Full Regalia & send him between the French & Italian armies saying ‘Shoot if you dare!’ (A Beautiful Thought in its way.)

Wednesday 12 June Yesterday evening my father & I walked to Primrose Hill for air. He was peering over fences at potato-patches in an ecstasy of dig-for-victory enthusiasm – but I was looking wistfully at the mollockers in the long grass & thinking that the nobleness of life would be to do thus if you & I could do it. Oh! my God, the Dragon School has just notified us of a violent epidemic of measles & Dicky is coming home on Saturday for a fortnight! where’s that kindly & protective providence you told me about?

Friday 14 June I’ve just fled upstairs to escape the 1 o’clock news. Cowardly, dear? – but the tension here is growing & growing, & I’m so terrified of my father’s deciding suddenly that we are to go away – to Canada or God knows where. If that happened, then that dream I’m always having about not being able to get to you would be real, darling. Oh! God. I’m bereft of all words at that thought.

My mother is eating off a low stool with a slit in her petticoat – a gloomy business – & my father sits & speculates upon our chances of survival when the Germans occupy London. Tomorrow Dicky will be here to give us a taste of Nazism in the Home. Tired of all these, for restful death I cry … as I said in one of my best sonnets – adding hastily however – save that to die I leave my love alone.6

Saturday 15 June I’ve been keeping out of my father’s way – & last night he commented on it – acidly – & then took on a martyred air, & today he keeps coming into my room & asking me to go downstairs & talk to him. It’s exactly as I told you, darling. I can’t escape – and every time I’m with him, I simply quiver with fury – because he took me away from Cambridge, darling – and I can’t bear it. Dicky has come home today, doubtless to spread measles & havoc. There is no light … no light.

I had a letter from Aubrey this morning. There’s no question of MI. Dr Weizmann’s son is in exactly the same position, it seems – and Dr W has had a Cackle of Cabinet Ministers pulling wires All in Vain. However, he hopes to get to the Near East & establish himself as an Asset when he gets there. His training ends on Friday & then he gets a fortnight’s leave.

We had a diversion yesterday in the shape of a fat little refugee rabbi who came to instruct my mother in the Art of Mourning. (She ought to Know All by now – she’s had enough practice, poor woman, but she’s so frightened of Leaving Anything Out, that she always likes to have a Spiritual Guide to Hold her Hand.) He was small & round and his features were richly curved – & he thought up a perfectly incredible number of things which my mother ought to be doing – & then when he got home he remembered yet Another – & he telephoned to tell my mother that she must on no account wear leather on her feet (Give me a shoe that is not leather soled! – or a bedroom slipper, for that matter) lest we should all Perish or be Cast into Hell. It was obviously a matter about which he felt strongly.

I’ve done nothing since I left Cambridge but let my melancholy sit on brood – and read crime-stories – the bloodier the better. I’m suffering from an infinite prolongation of the feeling I have in Cambridge when you’re an hour or two late. I haven’t smiled since I left you standing on the station in your white shirt & blue jacket which I could see for such a long time after the train had started moving.

Darling, Colonel Nathan’s peerage makes me feel awkward & embarrassed with Joyce. You see, I think it’s ludicrous – & she thinks it’s Just & Proper. (Of course I didn’t tell her I thought it was Ludicrous – you have learnt by now that I don’t invariably Tell All, haven’t you?) So there’s an Enormous Gap between her Idiom & Mine on the subject – even in jest.

Sunday 16 June Col. Nathan a peer, darling! However the Hon. Joyce will carry her courtesy title with an air – & doubtless (I mean Mrs N (as was) of course) Her Ladyship’s F. H.7 will become more formidable by several inches.

I had tea with Joyce and her mother today. I peered wistfully at the exquisite square inch of tea-butter and, like Marie Antoinette, decided that the common people had better eat cake. I saw the report in the evening paper when I got home. I rang Joyce up to rebuke her for failing to Tell Me All. She said there wasn’t a word of Truth in it – and half-an-hour later rang me up to say that it was now official. Can’t you imagine the Colonel coming home & coyly unburdening himself like a bride announcing that an Heir has been arranged for? How Fantastic!

Friday 21 June Oh! darling, it was fantastically selfish of me to suggest that you should come to London on Saturday – but when it’s a matter of keeping you with me or having you back again soon, I have no morals – I’ve always felt in complete affinity with Cleopatra when she turned her ship round – knowing Antony would follow her – although it meant shame – shame – ever for ever – and she knew it.

Monday 24 June I went to Kilburn with my mother this morning to buy vegetables (vegetables are cheaper in Kilburn, darling!) & now I Know All. You burst open pea-pods & taste the peas & unless they’re a Solace in the Raw, you Reject them – you squeeze cabbages & unless they squeak, you say in a voice of withering scorn, that they Have no Heart – and cast them from you – a lettuce that you can’t stub your finger on is No Good – & when strawberries are two shillings a pound, you lose Heart & decide that you might as well have done your shopping at Swiss Cottage & saved a 2d bus fare.

Tuesday 25 June Oh! darling, things that love night love not such things as these. The sirens started screaming at 1.15. (Sirens are louder here than at Girton Corner.) I got up to see what my parents were doing – and Pa took such exception to my suggestion that we should all stay in bed, that I put on my new dressing-gown, wrapped my eiderdown round me & followed him to our outside shelter. It was a clear, still night and the stars couldn’t have been more sharply focussed if there had been a frost – half a moon & little greyish clouds. We packed into the shelter like chocolate stick-biscuits in a round tin. We sat in deck-chairs – large deck-chairs – & my feet didn’t reach the ground – but Stanley chivalrously stretched out his legs & let me rest my feet on his slippers. We sat quite silently for the most part – the only sound was the rumbling of poor old Wright’s recalcitrant digestion – & occasional bursts of impromptu & heavy jests from Pa. At about 2.30 (the shelter is distempered concrete & as bare as a picked bone, and I was getting colder & colder), I was suddenly doubled up with cramp – (Nurse said nastily that it was due to my being out in the rain on Sunday. I pointed out tartly that there hadn’t been a drop of rain anywhere except on the pavement by the time we got out of the house!). Anyway, I quaffed a sherry glass full of brandy & warm water in one nose-wrinkling gulp & went to bed. The All-Clear sounded at four – but I never heard it – the brandy having done its work – but that was only the beginning of things for my parents & Stanley – because poor old Wright had a heart-attack & they had to summon a doctor & send him off in Mrs Wright’s care, to hospital. So this morning everyone here is a little blear-eyed & vague.

Wednesday 26 June Darling, I’m almost angry with you. Here are the papers all buzzing with vague & terrifying reports of continuous raids on the SW – and no letter of reassurance from you this morning.

I spent a fantastic afternoon with Joan at her crazy school yesterday. The children wear purple shorts and white shirts – the garden is a carefully cultivated wilderness – the school-building, rambling, beautifully furnished, with a touch of arty-craftiness here & there. The staff sits about on tree-stumps Musing upon Life in rather uninhibited clothes. (Joan tells me that the Headmistress, who is nearly 83, and of titanic dimensions, appeared in the air-raid shelter on Monday night in a pair of trousers all tied together with safety-pins – declaring that her zip fasteners had been sabotaged either by one of the children or the staff – and after seeing the school, I can well believe it.)

Joan told me, more in sorrow than in anger, that she had met Joy Blackaby at her interview with the Cambridge County School, & the first thing Joy had said to her was that she’d seen me one day mollocking abandonedly in KP!8 Joan said that in Cambridge of all places there was no excuse for Public Mollocking, because the facilities for kissing & clipping at home were unlimited. I agreed in principle – but I pointed out that in my case, there was a factor which had never entered into her relationship with Ian – Time fear. I said that taking a short-view, she too had often heard time’s winged chariot hurrying near – but that against this – she had a confident feeling of permanence which made it unnecessary for her to hang on to the reassurance of physical contact. Because she has a sense of having all life before her, darling, she never has that terrifying ‘Is he really here?’ doubt – nor the crushing fear that every moment of Solace may be the last. She couldn’t see why I should assume that you’d stop wanting me as a Solace one day. She said that, from what she had seen of us together, our regard for one another was unhurried & restful & built on more permanent foundations than most people’s. I said that mine was – but that you had warned me from the very beginning that yours might not be – but I hoped to God she was right – whereupon she withdrew her censure of my public behaviour, & added that she was sure that, ultimately, All Would be Well.

I got a letter and a Character from Miss Bradbrook this morning. She is serving her country by pounding mangle-wurzels and working for the Hush-hush from nine-till-five every day. Only Miss Bradbrook could have thought of such a Beautiful juxtaposition of labours – turning mangle-wurzels into cattle-fodder – and hearing All – at one fell swoop. She’s a wonderful woman. My Character is on a very high Plane, darling. I’m looking forward to showing it to you. She advises me to get into the Civil Service if I can, because I’ll only be allowed to take up my research where I left off if I’ve been doing war-work in the interval.

Thursday 27 June I have been to Kilburn again for vegetables. Cauliflowers have risen in price, whereas beans have Gone Down. The situation on the Asparagus Market remains unchanged.

I’m seeing the Secretary of the Appointments Board tomorrow to Tell her All. I liked the sound of her voice over the telephone – which is encouraging – voices make a lot of difference. Did you hear the Princess Royal asking us to join the ATS on the Wireless? ‘Over your dead body!’ I replied sullenly. ‘If it’s the last thing I do.’ (Aren’t everybody’s idioms but ours silly, dear?)

Then Aubrey rang up to ask if we could meet for tea instead of lunch, as his cousin Charles had decided to get married. I said oh! wasn’t that rather surprising? – to which he replied Yes and No. Charles, it seems has been Walking Out for eighteen years – but, Aubrey says, after you have been Walking Out for eighteen years, people just assume that you have Got into a Rut, and stop wondering about Intentions – (what a Solace, darling, we’ve only got seventeen years to go!) & when you have an over-night whirlwind courtship with your wench of eighteen years standing, and get married the next day – it is, on one plane, surprising, although, on another, you’ve really been expecting it all along. This is the gist of what Aubrey said, though perhaps he didn’t say it quite in those words.

Later: Aubrey arrived at the Cumberland rather late. He was delayed by the wedding. It’s a Beautiful story, darling. It seems that Charles and his lady would have gone on Walking Out quite happily for another eighteen years, had it not been for his parents & the lady’s. She is a Palestinian &, as such, subject to the Alien curfew. ‘Poor Shulamite,’ said her parents, in sorrow (Shulamite, believe it or not, is her name.) ‘How inconvenient’ – and they called on Charles’ parents, who forthwith sent a wire to Charles saying, ‘Be a man Charles – marry her – or she’ll have to go to bed every night at 10.15.’ So Charles called on her & said ‘What are you doing on Thursday, sweet chuck?’ & she said she had a short-hand exam in the morning but that she was free in the afternoon. ‘All Right,’ said Charles, ‘we’ll get married in the afternoon.’ And they did – in the presence of Aubrey & his mother. The ceremony lasted 15 minutes & then Charles went over to the cash desk & handed over £2. 4. 6½d (Aubrey says you can do it for 7/6d if you really try – but Charles decided to do the Big Thing for once in his life. Aubrey says he is disgustingly rich – and incredibly parsimonious in the normal way). Aubrey arrived for tea looking harassed & a little disillusioned. He says he now knows why so many people prefer to Live in Sin. Registry Office Marriages – culminating in a sordid little transaction at the cash desk are, he assures me, no solace at all. What an anti-climax, dear, after Walking Out on a Higher Plane for 18 years!

Friday 28 June I have had an eventful day, darling. I arrived at Bedford College much too early for my interview – so I went into the Botanical Gardens to smoke and muse. Then I went in to see Mrs Woodcock who was wearing a beautiful emerald ring – & was efficient & soignée and altogether quite a solace. She said the Higher Grades of the Civil Service were obviously The Thing. The Civil Service, she went on, loves Classicists & Economists & distrusted English Specialists but, she added consolingly, they were very partial to firsts. Then I told her about my mother being an Enemy Alien & she was in Great Sorrow & went into muse – out of which she emerged suddenly to ask briskly whether I knew anyone with Influence. I said, without enthusiasm, that I knew Lord Lloyd. ‘Ask him to write a covering letter to your application – saying that your family is well known to him and is All Right.’ She finished up by suggesting a teaching job in a boy’s school, if Lord Lloyd couldn’t help.

Dicky’s Disgrace culminated at lunch time in his throwing one of the dining-room chairs at Pa & then telling him to go to bloody Hell. I did not participate in this exchange of badinage – as I haven’t spoken to Dicky for nearly a week – but I was, in a sense, the onlie begetter of the Scene9 – as it arose out of the fact that it was about time Dicky apologized to me for being such a sorrow. This morning my mother spoke to me about Dicky, saying that I wasn’t really very fair to him – then, darling, I could see a struggle Going On Within – and finally she said – as though she were quoting the scriptures – ‘Gershon told you that he didn’t think you were just to Dicky.’ It was very beautiful to hear my mother citing you as the Ultimate Authority, dear. I hope she does it again – often. Something has gone wrong with the style of this letter – perhaps it’s because I’m tired – and oppressed with the frightening knowledge that I can’t do without you, my dear love – and what’s going to happen to me?

Saturday 29 June Aubrey rang up this morning to tell me that Dr Lewis is getting married on Monday. He wanted to know if you were in London so that he could ask you to be his best man. Oh! darling – I wish he could get hold of you before Monday. Not knowing when I’m going to see you again is driving me mad – & that’s not just a manner of speaking, either.

I had a letter from Mrs Woodcock this morning suggesting that I might like to teach in a school in the Midlands. English up to University Scholarship standard & Scripture & Games throughout the school!!

I had a Civil Service form to fill in this morning. They want to know if I’m a specialist in anything. ‘Medieval Romance’ looks so helpful, dear! They also want to know All about my health. Well, they asked for it – I’ll show ’em.

Oh! Dicky has just been in to ask for an Armistice. I gave way without much enthusiasm – but because I thought you’d like me to, &, as I said once before – being your slave what should I do but tend upon the hours & times of your desires?

Sunday 30 June Darling, following my newly learnt lesson of telling you All, I want you to listen to me tolerantly & patiently now. I’m so frightened that my hand is shaking – but because, you are, after all, my friend as well as my Young Fellow, I don’t believe you’ll be angry with me. (Please don’t be angry with me, my dear love.)

Do you remember, when we were walking from Grantchester one afternoon, you said ‘If your father were to ask me my Intentions, I know what I’d say to him’? Well, I wanted to ask you then, what you would say, not because I didn’t think I knew the answer, but because I hoped I might be wrong – but I didn’t ask because I felt then that indecision was better than crushing certainty. Now, however, I want to tell you what I believe to be the reasons for your Absence of Intentions, and to ask you if I’m right, & if, as far as you can judge at present, these obstacles will always be insurmountable. And here they are.

a.) My inadequacy as a Solace – the fact that you’re afraid that if you were with me always, you’d be made restless & irritated by my clucking & possessiveness & would become obsessed with the idea of breaking free.

b.) You are in no position financially to have any Intentions. (Note – the present war-situation might over-ride that consideration, if your Intended-as-might-have-been were economical, practical and useful-about-the-house. It’s a Heartly Sorrow to you, (though perhaps not for this reason) that I am none of these things.)

c.) You have a very strong feeling that I wouldn’t be a success with your family. I am not Orthodox enough – or useful enough – or adaptable enough.

d.) As circumstances make it possible only for us to meet sporadically, you may at any time meet another & more adequate Solace.

That is how I interpret your attitude to the situation, darling. Am I right? Whatever you say will make no difference. I am yours now and hereafter and for ever, on any plane you will – but I feel it’s cowardly of me not to ask you what you really think – & I know that whatever you say will be generous & kind, as everything you have said to me has always been.

Do you remember, as well, that when I told you about my recurring dream about our being separated by a room-full of people, you said that it was because I realized, as you did, that there was something standing in our way? Did you mean any of the things I’ve mentioned, dear – or something else – and, if so, what? I believe, you know, that I could make a success of being a permanent Solace to you – because I’d put every ounce of energy I had into trying to be what you wanted me to be – but if you don’t, darling, it’s no matter. I haven’t any will but yours.

I’m so exhausted by this avowal, Gershon, that I feel as if I’d had a baby – limp & wan & panting! I am, I mean – not the Baby!

In the evening Norman Bentwich came to sherry. He has a job in the Ministry of Information. In the event of London’s becoming a besieged city, his job is to Keep the Population calm with Soothing News-bulletins. Horace, if he knew of this, would Snort and call him an Eye-wash-monger – I feel. Horace & Norman were at St Paul’s together – they are no Solace to one another on any plane whatever. Norman Wilts visibly at the mention of Horace’s name – Horace Seethes at the mention of Norman’s – it is all very Intense & Concentrated.

This morning Mrs Seidler suddenly arrived here – she is coming to live in London. My parents are thinking of offering her a home with us, (She wants to live with a family as her husband is likely to be interned any day, and she has no friends in London) but Pa wants to think over the position before actually suggesting it to her.

Please write to me more often, darling. On the days when I don’t get a letter from you, I feel like a Gothic Ruin in an 18th century landscape – an empty shell, overgrown with the tangled ivy of Desolation – which sounds very picturesque – but as a matter of fact it isn’t.

Monday 1 July Darling, I’m in Solace – so please don’t answer my questions in yesterday’s letter – because I don’t want to be in sorrow all over again. Thank you.

Wednesday 3 July Oh! please let’s get this Intentions question settled in your next letter, darling. It’s no good being stern about ‘troubled sleep’. Last night I didn’t sleep at all, because I thought I was going to hear the Awful All this morning.

I had rather a Harrowing afternoon, yesterday. Joan & Ian came to lunch. It was their last day together before Ian left for Nyasaland10 – and during & after lunch, we all Glittered with Synthetic Gaiety – then after coffee, Ian said he’d have to leave at 4.30 for Croydon where his people are staying – and Joan went upstairs to put on her hat & she sat down & cried & cried & cried. Then she went into the bathroom to wash her face – & remarked that she’d better see Duncan while she was there – when we suddenly became Aware of a Strange Man on the Windowsill. (We found out afterwards that it was the Gardener trimming the hedge.) It was so fantastic that it broke the Tension & we laughed hysterically for at least ten minutes.

Then they went off to the Portuguese Embassy to get a visa for Ian for Mozambique – & at 4.30 I met Joan at the Cumberland. (She asked me to have tea with her somewhere detached & noisy – & it seemed the ideal place.) She behaved, darling, with marvellous dignity & courage. I have the most tremendous respect for her – perhaps more than for any of my other college friends. I wish I were more like her – & I know that, at the end of three years, she & Ian will resume their relationship as though he’d never been away. Their love is Serious, Complete & of a Certain Magnitude – and after Sorrow there will be Regeneration.

Nurse is a fool. I was trying to make Joan & Ian laugh at lunch (and succeeding, darling) by telling them how Sheila explained to me the other day that Allan failed in his Tripos because he would insist on sticking too close to the point. (I’d stick to it too, if I only had one point – I’d cling to it as a drowning man clings to a straw – wouldn’t you?) & Nurse, to whom none of my remarks were addressed, snorted & said: ‘I think you spend your whole life saying nasty things about the people you call your friends.’ Joan & Ian just stared at her coldly & my mother said ‘Well, I’d rather see her laugh than cry.’ Nurse gave us all a Comprehensive Dirty Look – and subsided. My idiom is so much Bessarabian to Nurse (Is there a Bessarabian language, darling? It doesn’t really matter – but I thought I’d like to know).

Friday 5 July I came home, wilting, to find Joyce waiting for dinner. She was looking very soigneé in pill red – & we had a pleasant evening talking of you and Mr Mosley (who is, after all, a close relative of Sir Oswald!11 – but his branch has Cut Oswald Off – so that, says Joyce rather uncertainly, is All Right). She described the absurd procedure of Lord Nathan’s investiture with insight & wit. (Joyce has the Right Stuff in her, hasn’t she, dear?)

Negotiations are almost complete for the transfer of Mrs Seidler from the Turner ménage to ours. I think she’ll be rather a Solace. Mr Turner rang me up last night. He’s joining the family in Devon today – They’re leaving for Canada from Liverpool in about ten day’s time. (They haven’t been told the exact date, of course.)

Did I tell you Jean’s Wonderful Private Information about Cambridge & the Fifth Column? ‘Cambridge is Full of the Fifth Column,’ she said portentously in a Sinister Whisper. ‘I am Privately Informed that whenever an Air Raid Warning is sounded – All the lights go on’ – then, when I seemed unimpressed she added, by way of explanation. ‘To help the Enemy planes to find their Way About.’ (Capital letters Absolutely Everywhere, darling!)

Saturday 6 July Joan doesn’t know what to do this vac. She wants some kind of job, I think. We are considering trying to find something to do together, as soon as I hear from Lord Lloyd & find out what my position is with regard to the Civil Service.

Yesterday, I was able to collect quite a considerable parcel of jewellery to send to the Red Cross. I found I had a lot of gold bangles and lockets & trinkets which could be melted down for their metal value & I sent, as well, a diamond & sapphire bar brooch – a brilliant brooch and a seed pearl & lapis lazuli necklace.

In the afternoon my parents took me to Christie’s to see the things that people had sent. The jewellery was rather staggering – colossal diamond necklaces – and superb single-stone rings – as well as smaller things running the whole aesthetic gamut from Horrified Sorrow to Extreme Solace.

Monday 8 July Good morning, my dear love. Thank you for your letter. You’re right, you know – my mother in her twenties was very much the sort of girl you describe. Leslie H. B. realized this when he said ‘If I could meet a girl who was what you must have been at twenty, Vic, I’d marry like a shot’ (His idiom – not mine). And the look he gave me as he said this – spoke volumes for my inadequacy.

I’m more grateful than I can say, darling, for your just and generous summing-up of the situation. It seems to me that if I make up my mind to be a little less inadequate as a Solace – it will be something to keep me busy – & I think that, in future, if I’m busy, I shall be well, and that will be a Solace to you, won’t it? You see, now there’s nothing organically wrong with me. It’s just that my mind is being pounded down ceaselessly with the fear of not seeing you – & the endless hammering tires me so much – that by the end of the day, I do feel ill. The Victorians called it a decline, dear, but stronger women than the milk & water heroines of Victorian fiction have suffered from the same thing. After all, Lady Macbeth’s madness dated from the time when ‘my lord went into the field’.

I’m going to learn to be useful. (You’re right, darling, I can be useful – but it bores me.) Furthermore, if, at any time you want me to dance with you, I shall. (But you wouldn’t really like to dance with me, would you, darling? No? Thank you.)

Nevertheless, my dear love, although, now, I know exactly what you want from a Real Solace, I shall try to be more like the girl you want. (Not as an affectation, dear. (Heaven forbid!) What I want to do is simply to make use of certain characteristics ‘that I have of my own’, which aren’t developed at all because I wasn’t interested in them – but they are there.)

Strangely enough, Gershon, one of the things that I value most highly in you is the fact that your affection for me does not blind you to my shortcomings … (Incidentally, dear, ‘In love’ is not my idiom – because its opposite is ‘out of love’ – whereas the opposite of ‘to love’ is ‘not to love’ which is less frighteningly consecutive!) That is why you are incontestably my friend as well as my Young Fellow – because, though my feelings are a sorrow to you on one plane, you are able to meet them with wonderful sympathy and understanding on another – whereas, if your regard for me were uncritical – you’d be so shattered when you found me out, that you’d cast me off at one fell swoop.

I often feel that you think that my affection for you is blind & undiscriminating – but, as a matter of fact, darling, it isn’t. The things for which I love you are real – your tolerance & understanding – your infinite patience with me – your unswerving sense of honour – which has led you scrupulously to keep me abreast of what you were feeling from the very beginning of our friendship – the subtlety and delicacy of your mind – the broad sweep of your humour – and your charm, of which other women must have been aware before me. Besides these things, what do the qualities in you which frighten me, or which I don’t understand, matter?

For instance, we’ll never agree in our estimates of the significance of physical love. I am not able to understand, but I have learnt to accept, that you would not regard kissing another girl as an irrevocable act of infidelity on every plane. If I were to kiss anyone but you, it would be an irreparable betrayal – because, to me, a kiss is a symbol of complete surrender. It is something so personal & intimate, that to kiss anyone I didn’t love would be nothing less than obscene. (It makes me feel ill to think of it!) But, darling, I do realize that you feel differently about this – just as lots of people feel differently about the actual presence of the body & blood of Christ in the bread & wine of Christian communion – & I’m not less fond of you for that.

I had a letter from Aubrey this morning. He’s being moved, Mess & all – and he was all-of-a-flutter because his CO had asked him to go to the pictures with him. It is all Very Beautiful.

Lord Lloyd wrote this morning to say that he’d be glad to give me the letter of recommendation I need – so I’ll be able to send my Comic Form to the Central Register12 within a few days – and then I really shall feel that I’ve taken the first step towards economic independence. (What a Solace!)

Wednesday 10 July Ismay’s dear little Charles has at last been transferred from an OCTU13 darling, stripes and all. She’s asked me to have lunch with her one day to celebrate his Rise.

Darling – there is one point arising out of your last letter which I want to make clear. You say that you would like your perfect Solace to be the kind of woman who would not allow her own personality to be submerged if it ran counter to yours at any point – & I don’t think it’s just a fancy of mine to suppose that you believe that my personality would be so submerged. Well, dear, I should always want, with you, to put your wishes before my personal inclination (as in the instance when you were so angry with me because I went to the theatre, in accordance with your spoken wish, instead of going for a walk as I wanted to – it’s a trivial instance but ’twill serve) though often (as on the occasion when I wouldn’t let you leave me – to write vitally important letters) my own selfish wants might overrule this – but, darling, if an ethical principle were involved in our conflicting wishes, then I should not want to give way to you – but, because I have absolute confidence in your moral dependability – I don’t believe such a conflict could ever arise between us – if I thought it could, I couldn’t love you.

Looking back on everything I’ve said to you in the last few months it occurs to me that I haven’t a shred of dignity left in the world. (You know, I think I did once have a kind of dignity, in spite of being dumpy & silly-looking.) I wish I still had a little.

Friday 12 July Darling, you should see Nurse’s Air Force Hanger-On standing sentinel at the gate while she’s pinning the last curl in place – (Tides – Seasons – Armies must wait while Nurse pins her curls into place. She has no Uncertain Opinion about her looks. She bought a new cotton dress the other day & came into my room to show it to me. I was wearing my blue & white checked dress at the time, & I remarked that hers was very much more attractive than mine. ‘It all depends on who wears a dress,’ she said, tossing her head. ‘Now you might look very silly in this dress, while I think I’d look rather nice in yours’ & she left me gasping. Darling, I know I’m plain, but there are kinder ways of saying it, don’t you think?)

Mrs Seidler has just arrived dear. She asked after you, and said such nice things about you that I think I’ll find her a Solace for the rest of my life.

Saturday 13 July Some of the characteristics that I have of my own, darling, are the following:-

a.) The ability to talk vaguely to strangers about anything, as though I were interested in them and it. (As it is, I only talk to people who interest me on subjects that amuse – but I do know how to be universally ‘sociable’.) In future I shall try & put this into practice.

b.) A real joy in household usefulness, efficiency & neatness – countered by a dislike of doing these things myself – but rather than see a room or a house messy & ill-managed, I would do it – and now I shall do it – in spite of the fact that if I left my room in a mess someone would come in & clean it up.

Bombshell of the Year – Sheila has just rung up to say that Hamish has announced his engagement to Charlotte – & Joan & I were congratulating one another on Tuesday on his Impending Happy Release – and now this has Happened. Oh! woe – how are the mighty fallen. Mr & Mrs Falconer are Numb – Sheila is Shattered – so is Allan – so am I – so, doubtless, is Joan. Charlotte arrived in London with him & her mother – All Dewy & Clinging – then she went to Devonshire & sent Sheila a pot of cream. This, says S, tragically is The End – & she rang off in Sorrow & Anger.

Tuesday 16 July I had a letter from Aubrey this morning – His address is 14th Battalion S. Staffordshire Regt, Racecourse, Hereford. He seems happier in Hereford than he has been anywhere since he was encased in the habiliments of war (this is his idiom as well as mine). He has a batman called Nightingale who is a Great Solace to him. He says he asked him the other morning whether he ever sang in Berkeley Square, to which Pte Nightingale replied Rather Beautifully ‘No Sir’ and would he be wanting anything else? Aubrey says that the Paddock at Hereford has the finest array of Duncans in captivity, and that is a further solace to him. He loves letters, darling – write to him if you can spare the time – after you have written to me.

Wednesday 17 July What a Beautiful Picture, darling, – you in the Air Raid Shelter trying to make your mother & Raymond & Alice aware of the Consummation of the Marriage of Literature & Life.

No – I’m not surprised about Hamish & Charlotte – only in sorrow. She’s such a dam’ silly, prim, kittenish little thing. I don’t know why Allan is shattered – probably because Sheila is. I’ve never known him to have any reasons of his own for anything yet – but Charlotte is enough to make anyone come out in a rash of sheer irritation – & Allan, like the rest of us, is very fond of Hamish.

Darling, I do blame my school-fellows for being unkind about my appearance. You don’t know what it’s like to be fat & ungainly & acutely conscious of your supreme unattractiveness – & while I didn’t want anyone to try & soothe me with mendacious flattery – I was grateful to the people who made no comment at all. I’m still very self-conscious about being plain – (Joyce says that what I lack is showmanship – the power to make the best of my appearance & to make an impression on people by physical self-confidence. Look at Ursula, she says, 50% of her charm is good showmanship. No-one stops to remember that she has nobbly features & is too thin – because she’s vivacious & assured & she dresses & carries herself strikingly – perhaps she’s right) and Nurse’s constant jibes are a real Sorrow.

Thursday 18 July Sheila & Allan are coming to dinner tonight. I haven’t heard from Sheila since she went into a Swoon over Hamish’s engagement on the telephone the other night. I’m in Great Solace at the thought of seeing her again.

On Tuesday, Ismay is coming to London & I’m having lunch with her at her flat & then we’re going to a theatre. She said in her last letter that Charles looks worse, if possible, than most people in Battledress, because they haven’t been able to find one to fit him. (What did I tell you? I knew that they ought to have sent up to the Small Ladies Dept.)

Peggy writes that Mr Loewe has had a relapse – but that he’s on the way to recovery again. She called there the other day to find Raphael wallowing in gloom. You know, darling, Raphael has missed his vocation. He would have been a Prince of Undertakers. He is the Platonic idea of an undertaker – and I don’t suppose he’ll Ever know. I’m afraid (if I may borrow your idiom for a moment, dear) that even his best friends won’t tell him.

Friday 19 July Joan Aubertin was in London today. She came to lunch and told me (in the strictest confidence, of course – I wasn’t to tell anyone – not even you) that Sheila had told her (in the strictest confidence – she wasn’t to tell anyone – and particularly not me) that Hamish had bought a Wedding-ring & was hoping that Charlotte would join him in S. Africa on the cargo-boat of an Uncle of a lady-friend of one of his colleagues in the Air Force.

You know, your mother is not the only harbourer of half-witted maids. Lady Nathan’s parlour-maid leaves Alice standing. The other night, Lord N, in his Hospitable way, fell-a-snoring before the coffee had been poured out – so Buxom Nellie told the maid to leave the Cona in the Library. ‘Shall I leave the cups too?’ the girl wanted to know. Lady Nathan thought it would be helpful if she did leave the cups. Then, at dinner, we had some difficulty in mopping up our cream with our raspberries – so Joyce called for spoons. The maid took away our fruit knives & forks and laid pudding-spoons & forks beside our plates. She obviously took the view that, if we looked upon the raspberries as Dessert, then all we needed were dessert knives & forks – but, as we were going to be eccentric & regard them as Sweet – there was to be No Compromise. Pudding-implements were what we needed, and Pudding-implements were what we were going to get, willy-nilly. A Young Woman of Character – the Nathan’s parlour-maid. Joyce has a theory that whenever she introduces Mr Mosley into the Library, she feels as though she were in a conspiracy, and gives Joyce a Lecherous & Understanding Leer – It’s a Great Sorrow to Joyce.

Monday 22 July Joan and I have a Beautiful Scheme, darling. You know that it was announced on the wireless recently that if the town in which you happen to be living is declared a prohibited area, you are allowed to leave it with your debts unpaid for the duration. Well, we thought we’d tap every available Well-Informed Quarter, and find out what the next prohibited area was likely to be – then we’d take a beautiful house there, fill it with lovely furniture, pictures & ornaments, and live there in the Grand Manner, entertaining our friends in Voluptuous tea-gowns, & becoming Centres of Intellectual & Social Life. When our home was declared a prohibited area, we would Move On – to the next potential PA – and so on. Joan has sixteen pounds and I have five – and our only expenses would be train-fares & Removal Vans – so we ought to be able to do very nicely.

Wednesday 24 July Darling, my remark about your last letter being ‘distant’ wasn’t a rebuke. There’s no need to apologize. All your letters are a Solace, whether you have any news or not. The tone of patient exasperation in this letter (I mean your letter, which I’ve just received) is more than justified. I try not to cluck, darling – but it’s no good. I know that I’m adding to your irritation at a time when you’re already restless & irritated. I know that you’d come & see me if you could – That’s the real reason why I’m such a hopelessly inadequate Solace. What you want is sympathy & amusement – and all you get is cluck. Damn you, Eileen, you’d be much better dead. (I’m not suggesting that you think this, though you well might – but I do. I’m sickeningly angry with Eileen Alexander. She hasn’t any balance or any control. She professes to love you & all she can do is worry you. She’s egocentric and a fool – and oh! so ludicrously inept. Tell her once & for all time, to let you alone, darling, and find a Solace worthy of you – a solace who will make you laugh & feel light-hearted & young when you see her, who has life & colour & charm, not one who can only cry & clamour and look pale, not one who would see you ill rather than away from her.)

Monday 29 July I had a letter from Aubrey on Saturday. He goes around the countryside in a car (with or without Attendant Sergeant – It All Depends) ostensibly engaged upon Detailed Reconnaissance – but really drinking Gallons of tea beside the Wye. He’s in Great Solace. Pte Nightingale is sure he (Aubrey) is winning the War – Aubrey is not so sure – but he finds Pte Nightingale’s devotion & loyalty (In Spite of All) Very Beautiful. (All this is, of course, my idiom – not Aubrey’s.)

I hope you’ll find the work interesting in the Air Force, my dear love. It isn’t dangerous, is it? Oh! please God don’t let it be dangerous. Darling, it would be so humiliating to be in Grade II (feet) that I’m almost glad you’re ineligible for Special Duties. Grade II (eyes) is an Intellectual Grade – All the Best People are in it – It’s an honour to be in Grade II (eyes). But Grade II (feet). Oh! no, dear.

Wednesday 31 July My mother & I had a very dull day with Ismay & her mother at King’s Langley yesterday. We looked at the new house that they’ve bought. It has a lovely garden – but nearly all vegetables. Talk about dig for victory – what with the Girl Guides & the Canadian Soldiers Club – and the fruit-bottling – and the sock-knitting – they’re winning the war with a purposefulness unparalleled. It’s all very Disconcerting.

Tuesday 6 August I had a long letter from Joan Aubertin this morning. She says her sister, Alice, solemnly assures her that Chamberlain may not recover from his operation – which was an attempt to put guts into him! (Alice’s idiom – not mine.) She hasn’t heard from Ian again – and she’s had her eyebrows plucked. She says the effect is a Terrific Solace – but I can only say, what a sorrow. She was knitting me a square for my blanket – but the dog got hold of it – it’s Alice’s dog, she says defensively, as though this was enough to exempt her from All Responsibility – but, on the other hand, it was her knitting – ah! Well.

I’m lunching with Pa & Mr Gisborne at the ‘Cheshire Cheese’ today. I gather the food is good but Beefy – but it was a favourite haunt of Dr Johnson – and I’m going there in search of Resolution – the Resolution to Write – a quality which the Great Cham of Literature had, above all others. (A wonderful man, Dr Johnson – the greatest prose stylist of all time.)

Pa & Mr Gisborne talked war across the table & I just sat steeping myself in the Atmosphere. Of course, the place has been exploited – The menus are distinctly Ye Olde … in Gothic lettering with deckle-edging – and there’s an iron grid sentimentally protecting the step worn down by Dr Johnson, Charles Dickens & others. The café was rebuilt in 1667 & hasn’t been touched since. It’s down a tiny alley off Chancery Lane in the city & it has a wrought iron sign over the door. The fact that the shop opposite assures all comers in heavy white enamelling that it sells All Birth Control Appliances, illustrates the profundity that Time Marches On – but otherwise you’d never suspect it. The rooms are low and square with flagged floors covered in saw-dust – and heavy oak panelling & benches – leaded glass, old pewter, and framed playbills, 18th century newspapers, and great mugs of clay pipes everywhere.

Wednesday 7 August I’m very tired, dear, – I’ve done nothing all day but go with my mother to the butchers to help her buy several miles of miscellaneous sausages – and take my shoes to be repaired. I woke up this morning with a great Longing upon me for tripe & lemon sauce – I mentioned this to my mother who said hesitantly that she wasn’t sure that it was Kosher. We rang up Mrs Greenberg to find out what she had to say about it – but she wasn’t very helpful – she said it wasn’t on her Forbidden List – but that she’d never seen it in a Kosher butcher’s shop. We approached Mr Rubenstein in some trepidation, and timidly put the question to him – He emerged from an Outsize in Bowler Hats, and stood for a moment bemused and blinking in the sunlight. He murmured something about having to get a Certificate for it – and any way they weren’t issuing it since the war – but the major problem still remains unsolved – and to whom should I turn in my bewilderment but my solace? Tell me, darling, is tripe Kosher or is it not? Everybody Hedges so, when confronted with this seeming-simple question that I begin to believe that it must have some Awful Mystic Significance – like the Question in the Fertility Rites of Antiquity. If it has any such Significance, you will know it. (After all we know Everything between us, don’t we, dear?) So Tell Me All.

Thursday 8 August Miss Sloane rang up this morning to ask me if I’d like to become PA No. 2 again for a time – if I had nothing better to do – I said I had nothing better to do (and I said it more in Sorrow than in Anger, darling) and promised to call at Leslie’s Office on Monday & do what I could.

Oh! and one other news item before I go to sleep. Lord Lloyd’s secretary phoned Pa to ask whether I’d got a Civil Service job yet. Lord Lloyd, he said, was particularly anxious to be kept informed. This may mean nothing or it may mean a great deal. I’m not banking on it as a Great Hope, but it’s encouraging, isn’t it, dear? I’ll never say another word about Lord L. He’s really been extraordinarily kind in the matter.

Saturday 10 August Pa & I had Words this morning – because neither of us were smoking. He said I did nothing but sit in my room & write letters – He hoped I was proud of my War Effort, he added acidly. I said that I only stayed in my room to Keep Out of the way of his Incivilities. My mother intervened soothingly and there the matter ended.

Darling, please don’t start your letters ‘Dear Eileen’ – I always feel as though you’re about to Congratulate me on the birth of my third son, or ask me to dinner to meet your deceased wife’s sister – such an interesting woman, you’d have so much in common – or offer me a ticket in the House to hear your Budget speech – or ask me to return that book I borrowed from you in ’86 – and I always miss the Solace of the first page, because I’m busy adjusting my mind to the queer convention which moves you to start a letter to me in the same terms as you would start a letter to your grocer – ordering a pound of tooth-picks. Plunge straight into your letter, darling, please, and then I won’t have the disconcerting feeling that you’re writing ‘Dear Eileen’ to gain time – & thinking ‘What on earth shall I say to her today?’

I came back home from the cinema to find a long & Beautiful letter from Aubrey waiting for me. He says he despatched one to you by the same post. Don’t I get your friends to write to you, darling. Aubrey is Running His Regiment. He is being Exploited & Overworked by the High Command. Aubrey has Told Me All. He has unburdened himself to me in what some people might call a Big Way (only that’s not my idiom). ‘Now you’ve got me pouring myself out,’ he says & goes on to describe the Company Commander as ‘an elderly commercial traveller with a nauseous accent, no knowledge of war but an expert grasp of cross-bow tactics picked up as a subaltern at Agincourt, periodically goes to bed with gout leaving me to command the Company.’ Poor Aubrey – Nor was there any sorrow like unto his sorrow, as you might say. Let’s write to him, darling – he needs Solace.

Monday 12 August Think of me in the next few days, recording applications for the abolition of Rats & other Vermin (unspecified) in tenements, in a ‘neat, round, complacent hand’ – which reminds me of an authentic remark made by one of my father’s Egyptian Students in the days when Pa was Professor of English Law at the University of Cairo. The young man had been absent from his class for several days, & my father went up to him after the lecture and asked whether he’d been ill or anything. The young man looked woeful & said no, that he hadn’t been ill – but that his wife had died – but it was the idiom in which he announced this unhappy event which was so remarkable – because, darling, believe-it-or-not, he said – ‘The hand that rocked the cradle has kicked the bucket.’ My father has never really been the same since.

Listen, my love, (talk about trembling fingers) has it occurred to you that if you should become hurt or anything, on active service – I could only find out about it by reading the casualty lists in The Times or by casual report? I’m not being morbid – just provident – D’you think you could ask Basil to write to me, if your family were to hear that anything had happened to you?

What’s the good of saying to me that the question of your going abroad ‘probably won’t arise for months’. What are months? – Darling, I have resources of love to last me till eternity – and then there shall be new reserves in store – and you talk to me about months. If you spent every second of your time with me for the next seventy years, I should still be clucking at the end of it because you were going to leave me for an hour – and you talk to me about months. Oh! darling, don’t go overseas – at the thought my heart is turned to stone – I strike it & it hurts my hand.

Saturday 17 August Yesterday was quite Adventurous. I was just coming back from Haverstock Hill with Lionel – I’d been there to have a piece fitted onto the end of my gas-mask at the Town Hall – when the sirens went. We walked into a shelter in a leisurely way, sat down on one of the benches – and I did my knitting until the All Clear sounded an hour later. There was one girl in the shelter besides Lionel & me. Most people took no notice of the warning at all. I arrived very late for lunch with Jean – but she was quite happy, contemplating a heavy gold signet ring which one of her Air Commodores has just given her.

I was on my way home to change for dinner with Joyce, when the second warning went. I took shelter at Hyde Park Corner – and knitted again. When I got to the point when I had to measure what I’d done – I enlisted the help of four old charladies (all girls together, y’know) and they rewarded themselves for their assistance by Telling me All – inveighing darkly against ‘Them’ the while. ‘They’ are the bloated plutocrats who own offices, carpeted in rich Persian carpets which have to be swept and cleaned without so much as a ’oover – O’ course it’s the ’ousekeeper – She takes the money. Very Sinister, darling.

Then there was a ’bus driver off duty. He was musing on the Queerness of the Passenger breed. ‘Last winter,’ he said, ‘I was drivin’ along an’ I sore an old gel lying frozen in the snow. My pal & I, we got aht and started rubbin’ ’er feet & ’ands – and we gave her a drop o’ spirits & she came rahnd “It’s Orl Right Muvver” I sez – “Muvver?” she says. “How dare you call me Muvver, young man. The name is Miss Sylvester.” Blimey, I sez to myself – That’s torn it. But my pal, ’e looks at ’er thoughtful like … “Miss Sylvester” he says, y’ought to be ashamed o’ yourself, old gel.”’ He had his wife & children with him & he was telling us what a Good Thing Education was. He drew himself up to HFH14 and said he had won a Scholarship to a Secondary School – but he hadn’t taken it.

Dinner at the Nathans was uneventful – except that the Col. asked Pa & me to one of his Wednesday lunches at the Dorchester, which ought to be interesting. Joyce sends greetings.

I went in to call on my parents this morning – and Pa greeted me with the words ‘And what does Lord Nathan think about the war?’ & suddenly, darling, my patience snapped. I’ve heard nothing but war from Pa for months – a handful of clichés – an alternation between that gloomy optimism which Victor used to find so trying, and the ‘if we have to take refuge in Canada …’ strain.

I said nastily: ‘I never discuss the war with anyone.’ Then he gave me a dirty look & said ‘No, I suppose you prefer to discuss your love affairs with the Nathans.’ I was so angry that I felt as if someone were sewing up the corners of my mouth with a needle and thread. I didn’t answer though, and he said that he was ‘fed up’ with my behaviour and he never wanted to speak to me again. I said – thank God for that & would he kindly stop bellowing at me now – whereat he leapt out of bed & left the room – & I haven’t seen him since. The whole thing is so damned sordid that I’m sickened by it, darling. – N’en parlons plus.

Bless you for your letter. Thank God you’re not fit for the Air – I hope your inoculation didn’t hurt too much. I have a phobia about injections. They make me feel iller than any other sensation in the world. It’s the jab of the needle wot does it.

Sunday 18 August Lionel & my mother were hovering around me all morning – palpably sent on a mission of Reconnaissance – and, if necessary, of Appeasement by Pa. The Actual Peace Negotiations started while I was in my bath. My mother sat on the marble edge Appealing to my Better Nature. Lionel stood at the door – declaring that he had been authorized to say that Pa had Meant no Offence – and had Spoken in Anger – and was Very Sorry. I decided that you’d want me to Come Off It, darling – so I did – and it was really just as well – because it’s difficult to register Unflinching Aloofness in the confined space of an Air-Raid Shelter – and Pa was Genuinely in Great Sorrow for what he had said.

Pa is giving a lecture on ‘Egypt & the War’ at the Royal Empire Society on September 17th. It ought to be good. He spends his days at Chatham House & the Egyptian Embassy researching frantically. Darling, with all these warnings, my mother thinks I ought to have a siren suit – I saw a Rill Red one at Jaeger’s when I was buying your wool. It’s a terrific Solace – but I’ll have to wait for it until my mother gets some more money from Egypt.

Tuesday 20 August Good morning, my dear love. Nurse is going to be married – her intended is an RAF Sergeant – She’s welcome to him – I only know his voice & the back of his head – and neither are a solace to me on any plane whatever. She expects to be married in three weeks’ time – to go away for a week’s holiday & then come back to us. She’s in Great Solace and all Dewy. It was all Decided in an Air Raid Shelter and is Obviously Very Beautiful.

I went reluctantly to Leslie’s office yesterday & when I got there Miss Fox told me that He was coming in to work that afternoon. When he came in, he asked Miss Fox whether Miss Sloane had arrived yet. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And Miss Alexander is here too.’ ‘Oh!’ he said, with what seemed to my sensitive ear a marked absence of enthusiasm – but a few minutes later he came in and looked over my shoulder at photographs of himself – and fulsome press accounts of ‘Our Popular War Minister’ and, simulating confusion very prettily said: ‘I’ve never seen any of these – but this kind of work isn’t quite in your line is it, my dear?’ Then he left me – but in an instant he was back. The office is really a small residential flat & the room where I work must have been the bedroom, because there’s a washbasin in one corner and a bathroom within. Now as the bath is crammed to the brim with press-cuttings, darling, the only reason anyone ever has for going into it is to commune with Duncan, as the vociferous plug stridently testifies. It is impossible to be Bashful about Duncan in that office – so Leslie decided to Brazen It Out. ‘The lavatory,’ he said with Elaborate Unconcern, ‘is in There. Do you mind if I use it?’ ‘Not at all,’ I said Graciously. I wonder what would have happened if I’d said it would be a Great Sorrow to me? I shall Never Know, now.

Later in the day, I heard him rating Miss Fox soundly for only providing dry biscuits for my tea. She came in all chastened to ask if I’d like a doughnut. ‘No, thank you,’ I said mendaciously – and – when she went back to report – he positively exploded – ‘Of course, she’d say “no thank you” – what else could the poor girl say in the circumstances. She’s good enough to come all this way to help and all you can give her is a handful of water-biscuits. I never heard such nonsense – Don’t let it happen again.’ And when I left, he expressed Great Sorrow at my not yet having a job: ‘Tell ’em all to go to Hell – and go back to your books where you’re appreciated,’ he said. So you see, darling – I’m not In Disgrace with him any more.

Wednesday 21 August Lionel & Dicky, on hearing of Nurse’s engagement, asked wistfully when I intended to Follow Suit. Lionel thought Antony Ellenbogen would be a nice name for my first-born. Dicky favoured Winston S. Eban! Lionel said oh! no, the country would be Overrun with Winstons in the Coming Generation – besides, I was, after all a literary specialist though, of course, Dicky couldn’t be expected to know All the implications of ‘Antony’ – Dicky (who had thought Lionel had chosen Antony as a compliment to him – Dicky’s name is Anthony) shrunk from his F. H. to normal & withdrew from the Discussion. Lionel added that Eban was a trivial little name. He, for his part, preferred the Rich Resonance of Ellenbogen. (What then would he say of Kazen Ellenbogen if he Knew All, dear? One day, I must Tell him.)

Darling, while I was in my bath the other day a Great Sorrow Swept Over me – sorrow that you & I had never mollocked on your sofa at King’s. What a waste, as my Grandmother said when she was sick as a result of over-eating at Dicky’s circumcision party. (He was circumcised on the Day of Atonement.) ‘What a waste’ was a favourite expression of my grandmother’s.

Joy Blackaby has just written to me saying, ‘Whether it’s love or the motor accident you’re certainly a pleasanter person than you were’! Look what you’ve done for me, dear.

Thursday 22 August Thank you for your letter in Morse, darling – but don’t do it again. It has a stultifying effect on your style. Lord Nathan did Pa & me much honour at the Dorchester Lunch.15 We were at the same table as his mother & brother & Mr Oppenheimer. I was sandwiched between Pa & Mr Oppenheimer – who was all Gracious Civility. He said he couldn’t see a trace of the accident – and told me coyly & In Confidence that he was dining with Fanny that evening. I will encounter Darkness like a bride, his look seemed to say – and hug it in my arms.16 Sir John Anderson was dull to yawning point, but he told one nice story about an Anderson shelter. He was investigating the damage at Croydon last Friday & he came to an enormous bomb crater in a working-man’s back garden. The man pointed to a few scraps of shattered metal at the bottom of the crater and said rather shyly ‘That was my Anderson Shelter’. ‘Oh!’ said Sir John – rather fatuously, as he admitted, himself – ‘You weren’t in it then?’ ‘No,’ said the man, ‘The warning sounded too late for me to be able to get there.’ He also told of a mother who turned angrily to her fifteen-year-old daughter who was quietly reading in the shelter and said: ‘Shut that book, Mary & pay attention to the air-raid.’

Allan unexpectedly got his calling-up papers for September 12th and he & Sheila are getting married by special licence tomorrow week.

Lord N. has asked us to the lunch on the anniversary of the outbreak of war (Sept 3rd, in case you’ve forgotten, darling) to hear Eden.17 It should be interesting – only if you’re in London then, I shan’t dare to tell my parents I’m not going. Oh! Damn – I’m clucking already at the very thought.

Saturday 24 August Darling, If I sound querulous (and I am going to sound querulous) you may deduct 20% for Saturday – but the rest is real. Your twopenny snap is damned awful – and I wish you’d never sent it to me – (especially as you’re wearing a jersey under your tunic which wasn’t knitted by me. Yes, I do notice everything) because now I know you’re in the Fighting Forces – and I’ve been crying ever since I had your letter – it makes me feel ill – and the thought that you are only going to write to me twice a week – because you’re too busy being convivial with your fellow Air-Craftsmen isn’t much of a Solace. Oh! darling, please don’t be angry with me for saying this – but do you remember how often at the end of last year & the beginning of this, I used to be in Great Sorrow at some of the things you used to say in jest – and you used to explain that you were just absent-minded and that most of the girls you knew didn’t mind flippant remarks in that strain. You won’t be likely, will you, my dear love, to get into the way of making that kind of remark, through casual contact with girls who don’t mind them? I’m frightened, darling, frightened that the new idioms & new values of military life will make you impatient and bored with mine. Please don’t be bored with me, dear. (Pause – for more crying.)

I’m afraid this is a very Great Sorrow, darling. I’ve had three cigarettes in rapid succession & they’ve had no effect whatsoever. What has actually happened is that the solace of our time together while you were in London has lasted until today – and it’s only worn off now because I’ve suddenly realized that you’re in a new environment – among new people – and wearing new clothes. (Perhaps I’ll feel a little better when you’re dressed in my pullover, dear.) These strange men with whom you live and play cards & go to dances frighten me, darling. You’re starting a new life in which I have no part. What do you talk about? Oh! darling, is all this going to ‘iron wedges drive and always crowd itself betwixt’?18 Please, dear, let me have a long letter on Tuesday and another on Saturday, and a little reassuring one on Thursday. You’re so far away and I can’t do without you – Indeed I don’t want to. Does anyone want to go on living without a heart or lungs?

Pa has read & approved my letter to Lord Lloyd’s secretary. Something ought to happen soon. Bernard Waley Cohen told me yesterday evening that he’d got a high administrative Civil Service job – and he hasn’t even got a degree.

Miss Fox is away on holiday and I’m going to Answer the Telephone & Be Efficient for Miss Sloane all next week.

I met Nurse’s YF19 last night. A wisp of straw, darling, but quite inoffensive – though he’s neither here nor there.

I wish you were here to mollock with me in Air Raids. I don’t mind Air Raids if I can mollock while they’re in progress. As it is I just Brood Savagely – & knit.

This is an unsatisfactory letter, dear. But if I were to have to do without you – why then let Rome in Tiber melt & the wide arch of the ranged Empire fall20 – oh! God, I hope they give you leave soon.

Sunday 25 August There’s no place in the world where one is so suffocated by Family as in an Air Raid Shelter. I pretended to go to sleep in an endeavour to Escape – but there they were – Everywhere. Nurse, who hadn’t bothered to see that the children had rugs – lay back on pillows – enveloped in an eiderdown – and Relaxed. (She’d obviously been reading the Women’s Papers which tell you to Lie Back, Drop your Lids, and Relax completely whenever you can, or you’ll get Wrinkles – I have wrinkles.) I’m getting a very severe attack of Emotional Claustrophobia, darling. It’s not pleasant.

Tuesday 27 August God! darling, what a night. Hell has no terrors for me anymore. As the sirens shrieked, I called on Duncan & went, quite good-humouredly into the shelter, thinking that having a warning at 9.15 might mean an undisturbed night. I knitted quite happily for about an hour and a half – and at quarter to eleven, Mrs Seidler turned out the shelter light & I tried to sleep, dear. We could hear the dull thud of AA21 fire and the spattering of machine-gun bullets – and close overhead the thick chugging of aeroplane engines. It was an oppressively hot night and the only sound apart from war-noises, was Pa’s ear-splitting snore. By midnight, darling, I felt that I’d rather die slowly of wounds than live in a room with Pa and Dicky. It wasn’t a reasoned loathing, darling, it was just intense & hysterical & suffocating – the spiritual equivalent of the stale and thick air of the shelter. Then Pa said something nasty about Nurse, who had been caught in the raid – & his tone implied that no-one should stir from the house in these times – and I got up & said quite quietly that I was going to bed. Then, darling, the trouble started. Pa said that if I moved he’d go out into the night – (I knew it was only histrionics but I dared not take the risk of its being genuine for my mother’s sake). I said he was a damned bully – and stood in the doorway, watching columns of sparks scattering outwards in the sky – and after that, I sat on a cane chair by the door until the All Clear sounded at four. I didn’t get to sleep till about five – and now I feel infinitely old & tired – & so bitterly resentful of my father that I feel it would make me physically sick to be in the same room with him. Oh! darling, I wish you were with me – though even if you were here I can’t see that we would have anything but Sorrow under this new martial law notion of Pa’s. Darling, I’m sick & sullen – & I’ve only had two hours sleep – I’ll write more later. Oh! I’d trade a kingdom for a laundry basket, if only I could get away from my father for ever.

Oh! darling, I could have done with a letter from you today – but I expect the mails have been delayed by the air-raids. It isn’t that you’re angry with me for the letter I sent you on Sunday is it, my dear love? Oh! please don’t be angry with me. Your affection is the only thing of worth that I have in this turmoil – Don’t take it away from me.

Later: Darling, I’ve just come home to find a letter from Lord Lloyd’s secretary, saying that Lord L. is going to write to the Central Register asking them ‘what exactly has happened to your application’. This is heartening news and a step towards achievement.

Wednesday 28 August Darling, I had a very queer experience last night. We had a small dinner party which I hadn’t even bothered to mention to you because I’d no reason to suppose that it would be anything but dull – and anyway I expected to be too tired to take any interest in anything. Our guests were Col. & Mrs Fred Samuel, Joyce, Herman and a Captain & Mrs Wingate,22 whom I’d never met before. My parents met them a few nights ago when they were dining with Mrs Gestetner & had liked them so much that they’d asked them to dinner. He has rather a nobbly face, with a strikingly intellectual forehead and a sullen mouth – she is twenty-two (she married when she was seventeen) and her eyes and face are alive with light and intelligence.

During the early part of the dinner, everything went as I’d expected. I was sitting between Herman & Capt. Wingate and I exchanged a few desultory & apathetic remarks with them – but mostly, I just sat back in a coma.

Then, darling, the Sirens went – and the thought that I need not go out into the shelter sent me almost crazy with relief. I laughed hysterically and said ‘This is an Air Raid de Luxe’ and I suppose my face must have come alive because Captain Wingate suddenly realized that I was there, and turned to me & started asking questions about Cambridge & what I’d been doing there. I knew I was talking well, dear, though I sez it as obviously shouldn’t, and I told him that my major interest in Cambridge had been the study of love in Arthurian Romance. He asked me a lot of very searching questions – paused over the problem of reconciling the attitude of the church and the nobility to sexual love in the Middle Ages, and then asked me if my research had led me to consider the nature of sexual love – through its manifestations in different ages! I said not very seriously – and he said that he thought the essential pleasure of physical love and emotional love lay in pressure. (Yes, I thought, the pressure of Gershon’s arms and mouth and head and hands – but I didn’t say anything about that, darling!) He said that in the final act of love there was the joy of violation – of breaking down a barrier – but in all the less primitive manifestations of love, (he didn’t use primitive in any censorious way, of course) pressure existed in two ways – actual physical pressure – and the pressure of repressing the normal biological urge – or rather pressing it into new shapes. If the pressure is too hard it becomes painful – but gentle repression can give very great pleasure. (That’s why you and I are on the Highest Plane of All, darling.) He also put forward the theory that all civilized trends were, in their early stages, an attempt to enhance the sexual market-value of the individual. The accumulation of wealth, for instance, in the days of barter, made the owner of fine wares more alluring – and so on. We argued and danced around one another and side-stepped – and then the women went into the drawing-room – and I discovered that Mrs Wingate was a student of Malory – and a girl of very great charm and acute judgement. What a Solace, darling. I talked too fast and too loudly, but I was alive again after a day of hellish weariness – and when they left – intoxicated with the exuberance of my own verbosity, I told my parents I was going to bed and I stuck to it.

Later; Oh! darling, I’m crying – Please don’t be angry with me – I’ve been regretting that letter ever since I wrote it – I’m sorry about the photograph – Please may I keep it? – it’s got a message on the back. In it, my dear love, you are most notoriously abused – you look like one of the Comic Characters from Follow The Fleet – but it’s faintly like you and I’d like to have it. I was ungracious – but I’m so sorry, that it’s inexpressible. The remark about the pullover was meant to be in jest – tearful jest, because I was (and am) in Sorrow – but I’m not surprised it didn’t come across in the right spirit.

Of course you got full marks for Morse – I don’t need to draw myself up to MFH23 for that – I knew you would.

Thank you for not letting your new life drive a wedge between us, darling – I’m only frightened because I love you so much – It’s not really surprising, is it? (I mean that I’m frightened! It would hardly be modest of you not to think the other surprising.)

Thank you for telling me that you were ‘rather irritated by (my) clucking’ at the beginning of your letter – but I had noticed – but please, darling, don’t be irritated with me again. – I can’t help clucking – and my clucks never mean anything. Please say in your next letter that you’re not irritated any more – I knew you were going to be angry – and when I came in from Miss Sloane’s office, I sat with your letter on my knee for well over ten minutes not daring to open it.

Thursday 29 August Hell was let loose in the sky last night darling – and I slept through most of it. The Sirens went at nine and, because I thought it would be uncivil to go to bed so early I sat in the shelter until ten, knitting – and then went up to bed. When I said goodnight to them, my parents were sullenly silent – but I undressed, and in a few minutes I was asleep. Mrs Seidler woke me at two and said ‘Listen’ – and I did and I could hear the bombs crashing quite close at hand – she told me that my mother had spent the whole evening crying piteously – so I went down to the shelter as a Gesture. There were red patches in the sky from fires – and the searchlights criss-crossed like basket weave. I sat in the shelter for half-an-hour & we could still hear bombs and AA Fire – after that things quietened down – and I couldn’t stand the shelter any more – I could feel that suffocating hysteria welling up inside me as it did the other night – and I went back to bed and I slept till morning, neither hearing the All Clear or anything.

Since I’ve been kept awake o’ nights my headaches have started again – it’s as though the bones of my skull had been battered in. My mother says that unless I agree to spending my nights in the shelter, she’ll send me out of London – Lionel suggested Blackpool with a wicked smile – (I’d told them at dinner that the sirens had never sounded in Blackpool since the war began) and after that she said no more.

You know, darling, I don’t think women discuss the ‘unmentionable’ topics, which all men talk of when they’re among themselves. Some of the dirty-minded little perverts at school used to stand in corners and smack their lips over pornographic talks – but they always stopped when I came into the room. Doris collected & retailed stories of hair-raising obscenity – but they didn’t offend – because she was so objective about them. Jean is different – Her conversation isn’t frankly & healthy bawdy in the Chaucerian manner, as I imagine that kind of conversation is among the nicest men, it is unpleasant & suggestive – and I should think hers is the idiom, verbal & atmospheric, of women who do discuss these things – jest – but I think it’s the exception rather than the rule.

I must go now and help my mother choose Sheila’s & Allan’s wedding present. They want an old book. They’re getting married tomorrow at 3 in Audley St (St Mark’s Church) & their reception is to be at Claridge’s.

Please forgive me for clucking & snapping, darling – but suppose you suddenly found yourself in possession of the Kohinoor diamond, wouldn’t your nerves be a bit frayed at the thought that the whole world was striving to take it from you by fair means or foul? I think you would – but I’ll try not to cluck again – I only want to please you.

1 A 1940 propaganda historical drama about a village defying tyranny.

2 Military Intelligence.

3 Andrew Weir, 1st Baron Inverforth (1865–1955) created and headed the firm of shipowners in Glasgow.

4 From ‘Gerontion’ by T. S. Eliot (1888–1965).

5 From the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343–1400).

6 From Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 66’.

7 Full Height.

8 King’s Parade, a street in the centre of Cambridge.

9 From ‘The Dedication’ in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.

10 Ian Nance joined the Colonial Service in Africa, before serving in the Abyssinia campaign with the King’s Own African Rifles.

11 Sir Oswald Mosley (1896–1980) was a British politician and later leader of the British Union of Fascists.

12 At the beginning of the war the government had set up the Central Register to process the thousands of temporary civil servants that Whitehall was going to need.

13 Officer Cadet Training Unit.

14 His Full Height.

15 The Dorchester lunches, organised by Lord Nathan in support of Army Welfare. Sir John Anderson, the guest speaker at this lunch, was effectively the home front supremo in the wartime government, but best known now for the ‘Anderson Shelter’ named after him, a curved, galvanised corrugated steel air-raid shelter, 6 ft high by 4.5 ft wide and 6.5 ft long, that could be sunk into the ground or covered in soil and sandbags. Issued free to all householders with an income under £5 per week, over 2.5 million were erected before and during the war.

16 Measure for Measure, Act III, scene i.

17 Anthony Eden, Conservative MP and enemy of appeasement, was Foreign Secretary from 1935–38 and after being Secretary of State for War returned to the Foreign Office at the end of 1940.

18 ‘The Definition of Love’, by Andrew Marvell (1621–78).

19 Young Fellow.

20 Antony and Cleopatra, Act I, scene i.

21 Ack-ack or Anti-Aircraft fire.

22 Orde Wingate met his future wife, Lorna, on a sea voyage from Egypt when he was thirty and she sixteen, and they married two years later. They were both committed Zionists.

23 My Full Height.