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Friday 1 September 1939 On hearing Hitler’s ‘peace’ proposals over the wireless last night, I begin to feel a warm glow at the idea of punishing the insolent brute, as well! The beautiful impertinence of the suggestion that – (given twelve months for the dissemination of Nazi propaganda & terrorism in the Corridor) he would like another of those now-notorious cooked plebiscites – is really almost inspired! I don’t think even our simple-minded Neville would fall for that one again, somehow. Do you?

I have now heard from Miss Sloane. There is nothing but clerical work at the War Office for the present – but she advises the Censorship. I should apply immediately, she says & I shall probably have to take an exam, soon. Thank God for that. Can’t you see, Gershon, how I come to life again, at the very prospect of something to do?

I had a pathetic card from Ismay this morning. She is staying in Sussex with Charles. He can’t be far away from London, as he expects to be called up any day.

I have written to the Censorship office, telling them how clever & useful I am, and how silly they’d be not to have me. I intended to write the letter myself, but I turned all bashful at the last minute & couldn’t take the responsibility for such a lot of lies, on my own shoulder – so Dad dictated a gem of a document. If you only knew what a mine of precious ore you’d held, bleeding down the front of your suit, ten weeks ago – you’d never have sent the suit to the cleaners.

I presume that owing to the outbreak of hostilities between Germany & Poland this morning – the declaration that we are at war, will be put before the House this evening.

You are likely to have a great deal to do, and worry about during the next few weeks. Please darling, if you are bothered or busy, don’t attempt to write me long letters. I’d be glad of post-cards – to know how you are, and letters if and when you have time – but I’m no longer an invalid who has to be humoured – and all men who are likely to be conscripted will have to think primarily of themselves now, and not of spoilt & idle women to whom they have already been over-indulgent.

Saturday 2 September We shall not be leaving here on the fifth, and I shall stay here until I have definite work to do – which I hope to God will be soon.

Sunday 3 September We have just been listening to Chamberlain’s announcement that we are at war. There is nothing more to be said except God bless you and keep you, and everyone else who is going to help in blotting out slavery & brutality, from too much sorrow and pain. I’m afraid this sounds banal – but I mean it, Gershon.

Let me have news when you can – because I shall be worrying and wondering, at all times, about the whereabouts and safety of all my friends in vulnerable areas – but once again let me reiterate that a post-card will be enough if you haven’t the time or the inclination for letter-writing.

You must be worrying a great deal about your parents. Has your younger brother been sent away to a place of safety?

Under the new Conscription Act1 – I suppose you will soon have to start training for a commission.

This declaration of war has had an astonishingly Cathartic effect upon me. ‘I have not youth nor age – but, as it were, an after dinner sleep, dreaming of both.’ The rain is coming down in a thin drizzle and there are wisps of fog crossing the tops of the hills. It is very dark.

We are as safe here as we could hope to be anywhere. Don’t worry about me, please. I am getting better astonishingly quickly, and soon, I hope – I shall be perfectly fit to do useful work wherever I can be of help.

I hope you are less thin & tired than when I saw you last. Forgive my clucking (nature will out) but do take a tonic if you’re not – an army marches on its stomach, after all – & people with concave tummies have to crawl along on their ribs – which is uncomfortable.

Good luck, Gershon darling, and (as Miss Sloane said) may we soon meet again in Peace.

Don’t be alarmed at the solemn, not to say sententious, tone of the last part of this letter. I can & shall smile still, but I did want to say just once, quite seriously, what I was thinking. It won’t happen again.

Monday 4 September I hope you weren’t disturbed by the Air Raid Sirens last night. I hope you never will be.

I hear the Government urgently wants Graduate University students (men) urgently for all kinds of work. Mum says they broadcast a request for volunteers, while I was having my walk.

I have a premonition that you were born to be the Brains behind this war – be guided by it, Gershon.

Wednesday 6 September I had another letter from Joyce this morning. She is definitely going back to Girton next term. I think she’s wise. I would do the same, were it not that I feel compelled to try & be as useful as possible – and I shan’t do that by digging myself deeper & deeper into the middle-ages. I simply cannot go on living on my parents any longer – though they would, not only willingly, but gladly, go on supporting me in luxury forever. I have, however, written to the Mistress of Girton,2 asking her if there’s any work I can usefully do in Cambridge – and to Miss Bradbrook. I’d be happier there, than in a strange sea-port, prying into other people’s private letters. But if neither the Censorship nor Girton can make use of me, then I think I’ll write to Dr Weizmann & see if he can include me in his scheme for organizing Jewish brain power!! The old boy is about as fond of me as the Chief Rabbi is (I have found it necessary at times to use the same methods of intimidation upon him – when he comes over the heavy leader and martinet) but surely he won’t allow personal prejudice to interfere with the Public Weal – what d’you think?

I shall only apply to Leslie in the very last resort – if no one else will have me at all – but I’m determined to get some work to do, somewhere – soon.

Now about your air-raid adventure. How damnable! But I really don’t see why you, and millions of other people (many of them a lot more uncontrolled than I am), should be submitted to this kind of experience, while I sit snugly in the North feeling safe. It simply isn’t good enough, Gershon. I’m a physical coward of the first magnitude – but so are thousands of others – it is not customary to pander to fear. No doubt I, like everyone else, would soon get used to the sound of Air Raid Sirens, and the dazzle of incendiary bombs. If being a nice girl entails being regarded by one’s friends as on a mental level with an evacuated schoolchild of tender years & snivelling habits – I wish I weren’t a nice girl. I know I’m not ‘self-composed in crises’ – but it’s about time I learnt to be, & this seems to me a good opportunity to begin.

Sir Robert has now definitely cancelled Exmoor. I am relieved. I don’t think it would have been quite my milieu. Where Joyce would shed grace on the county – I would spread disgrace. She has poise & charm & savoir-faire. Pertness, clucking and tactlessness are very poor substitutes for these – and anyway Old Bob never bothered much about me until I got a first. (As a matter of fact, that’s very unkind, not to say unjust. I withdraw it all.)

Friday 8 September It’s funny that you should refer in your letter to the myriads of first cousins who have a claim on the Alexander hospitality – because only yesterday we had a wire from Jean’s mother to say that we may expect her, (Aunt Teddy), Jean’s sister & Jean’s niece (aged two – Ye Gods!) on Sunday morning. So the family circle is due for expansion soon.

My future was the subject of much discussion yesterday between my parents and myself. They lean towards the suggestion that I should stay here until term begins & then go back to Cambridge for Research as long as they can afford to keep me there. The cultural work of the Nation, says my father with a wide arm-swing, must go on. How I wish my conscience would allow me to believe that they’re right. Other suggestions were that we should all go back to Egypt together as soon as it’s practicable – but I’d see myself dead before submitting to that.

I was very startled at your talking about conscription as though you thought a few months was the maximum length of time, you could hope to be left at liberty. I think it would be fantastic of the government to make a soldier of you – you’d be invaluable in all sorts of other ways – but unless you bring yourself to their notice – they’ll never find out. O mon dieu, quelle vie.

I had a long letter from Ismay yesterday. She had five days of honeymoon – then Charles wrested from her. He’s back again now, with ten days’ leave – then he’s due to go away again – she doesn’t know where or for how long. Poor Ismay – her sang-froid has completely deserted her. She almost clucked (but not quite, because, like Joyce, she’s too dignified ever to sink as low as that, even though she has just cause. I wish I were a little more like my friends).

Thursday 14 September The war has brought solace to one person of our acquaintance, anyway. Joan Friedman. Raphael Loewe has written to tell her that his country calls, but that he’s probably too short-sighted to be of much use. This, after a silence of several months (I suppose he had to work off his patriotic zeal on someone). Dear Joan – though she doesn’t know it, she’s got a Jocasta complex about Raphael (is there such a thing?) You see, she loves him like a mother – but unfortunately she doesn’t realize it – which, in its way, is a pity.

(By the way, darling, are you too short-sighted to be of much use to the British Army? It’s a beautiful thought anyway.)

Friday 15 September Did you ever meet Mrs Crews? She was famous for a number of things. She’s an authority on Judeo-Spanish and is adored by the Loewes, though she has a pretty poor opinion of them. Sidney Berkowitz says she has the nicest legs in Girton. (I’ve never noticed them myself – but I feel that in matters of this kind, Sidney would probably be competent to judge.) She has the worst sherry in Cambridge (3/6d a bottle, and proud of it) and she’s wireless-crazy, & gives as a reason for her separation from her husband that ‘he was a National & Regional man y’know’. She is in the Censorship now. (She was on the reserve staff last September.) So if I did become a censor, I shouldn’t be completely alone. I’m very fond of Mrs Crews.

Saturday 16 September I have just heard, from the mother of a friend of mine, who is a Cameron Highlander (one of the few regiments still to wear kilts, even in battle), that he has been issued with a pair of gas-proof pants to wear under his kilt. (The official army name is ‘proofed nether garments’.) The legs unroll to make protective gaiters which are buttoned under the instep! Let it not be said that England doesn’t look after her warrior sons.

Monday 18 September My future seems to be taking shape – but (as I may have said once or twice before) no man should be declared happy until he is dead. The censorship doesn’t want me at present – but if I’ll fill in a form all about the colour of my hair & my mother’s nationality and take their exam at my own convenience – they’ll put me on their waiting list. The Mistress of Girton says – come to our arms my beamish girl3 – there are, at present, no specialized war jobs for girls under 25 – so stick to Research. I’ve written back and said that if she’d arrange for me to live in college, I might consider it. My father expands & talks about the cultural work of the nation – a theme he’s expatiated on before. (Spare a prayer, in these Holy Days, Gershon, that the college will have a room for me. Your influence above, is more pronounced than mine, I feel sure. You don’t hare off to Prunier’s to eat curried crab as soon as you set foot in London – nor do you go hatless to synagogue – nor are you saucy to the Chief Rabbi. Any request from you would doubtless be listened to with courteous attention.)

Later I had a long and wholly delightful letter from Aubrey, and one from Miss Bradbrook saying – Come back. Aubrey, like the rest of us, has offered his services to the Government and is finding uncertainty wearing and discouraging. He asks nicely whether I know anything of you.

Offering my services as a sandbag is a very good idea. I felt sure that your fertile invention would produce some really helpful suggestions about my future – and it did! I shall set about it at once.

Aunt Teddy, her daughter and granddaughter are now in our midst. The child is surrounded all the time by hordes of clucking women, asking her if she loves them (poor little devil), but she likes me best, because I take no notice of her & she keeps asking me to go for walks with her!

Oh! Gershon, I want to Research in Cambridge – but there are grave difficulties. The college can’t house me – and my mother sends feathers flying with her clucking at the thought of my living in lodgings with bombs banging about. (The beautiful rooms she’d chosen for me are now out of the question on financial grounds – and I’d have to live where the College sent me – and like it.) My parents and I are going to have a session to consider the problem, this afternoon. I’ll let you know the results.

My parents and I have now sat down to this question of Cambridge or not Cambridge. It is damned difficult. My father says, ‘We cannot commit ourselves,’ (with term 2 weeks away!) My mother says, ‘If they’d have you in College, you could leave tomorrow if you liked,’ – and points out that I’d be as miserable as sin in strange lodgings – not being able to go out at night, and having to sit alone in a probably hideous room – going mad. Then she cries at having to oppose my dearest wish – at this point I cry too – at having to oppose her – and my father relents and says, ‘Well, write to the college and ask them what sort of lodgings are available – and where – and then we’ll see’, – and then the wireless announces the sinking of the air-craft carrier Courageous4 – and Dad says, ‘Look at those poor people,’ – and I do – and feel a cad, & cry a bit more.

Yesterday, I cured all my humours by cleaning my vinaigrettes.5 I haven’t had the heart to look at them since the war started. They are looking lovelier than ever – bless them. May they never be subjected to the ordeal of fire.

Thursday 21 September Today or tomorrow I expect to hear from Girton whether they will allow me to live in the gardener’s cottage in the grounds, until something more satisfactory can be arranged. I don’t expect, for a moment, that this will seem to them a practicable suggestion. A month ago, I was their blue-eyed darling, & the trouble they took over me, one way or another, was phenomenal. Now their sense of proportion has undergone a violent readjustment. They think I ought to go back (for my own sake) but they don’t care a damn if they never see me again – and the twitterings of me & my parents are a matter of superlative indifference to them (and I can’t say I blame them).

I’ve cried so much during the last week that I really begin to feel, as Shelley would say, like a cloud that has outwept its rain!6

Actually, of course, I am fussing disquietingly about very little – what on earth does it really matter whether I go back to Cambridge or not? At this moment I see it as a life or death question – but once a decision is made, I’ll get used to it. Oh! I shall get used to it shan’t I, Gershon? Instead of being secure & pampered, I might have been a Central European or German Jewess, mightn’t I?? – and then I’d have had something to cluck about. This happy thought, instead of restoring my sense of balance, only adds humiliating self-disgust to my other discomforts. I wish you were here – and you could shake me until my toothless gums rattled together – it’s the only fitting treatment for me.

I had a letter from Miss Bradbrook. All the double sets of rooms are being converted into single bed sitting rooms (poor Joyce!) – and Miss Bradbrook says they’re living like pigs. It must be pretty bad, for her to notice anything because, in the ordinary way, she has a Soul above Space – but there you are – the war has changed a lot of people.

I may say that this photograph business has caused a terrific stir in our ménage. ‘Why do you want to have your photograph taken?’ asks Aunt Teddy, rudely & inquisitively. ‘What on earth do you want a photograph of yourself for?’ says nurse – adding more kindly, ‘It’s not like you to want to be photographed.’ ‘Is this quite the moment to be photographed my dear?’ says Pa. ‘Of course you’re looking more like yourself, and we haven’t had one of you for some time – but …’

My mother, who is the only one who knows why I had it taken, smiles kindly, although she thinks it forward, if not improper of me to give a photograph of myself to a MAN (other than Pa, of course). She might be less kindly if she knew the shocking spirit of barter in which the whole transaction has been carried out – but she doesn’t. I tell my mother more than you tell yours, – but not everything.

Saturday 23 September I lay in bed alternately musing and reading the book of Job. (I do not like the Day of Atonement service. I always read the Bible instead.) The only diversion which occurred during the morning was a letter from the Mistress (in reply to my letter to the College Secretary). She has investigated the matter of lodgings herself. I am to live at 130 Huntingdon Road, in a smallish single room (but who cares?) and she personally guarantees my comfort and safety – and Dad, purified by starvation, and intimidated by her august and brisk intervention, says, ‘Yes’.

Oh! Gershon, I am so happy (always bearing in mind that no man should be declared happy until he is dead) that I’m even prepared to admit that (in a non-erotic way, of course) I love you better than my country. (Does it matter which country?)

I am sorry to have to tell you that Aubrey also seems to have noticed that I love you better than my country. (It pains me that my most intimate feelings, however non-erotic, should be so patent to you both – but, no matter, I shall learn resignation in time.) I am led to this conclusion by the fact that in an eleven-page letter, yesterday, he devotes four lines of verse to the war and five pages to you.

He did not owe me a letter, Gershon, – he just caught sight of a reproduction of the Monna Lisa on his wall, (he spells his ‘Mona’) detected a facial resemblance between us – and so wrote me eleven pages of profuse strains of carefully pre-meditated art. (In a post-script he says delightedly: ‘Something really wonderful has happened – Gershon came in while I was out, saw my Mona (sic) Lisa and stuck a label on saying “Eileen” I swear that we have never discussed it before. So you see how I am proved right by the highest authority available. Who better could distinguish a genuine Eileen from a fraudulent reproduction?’)

SUNDAY 24 September Pa is leaving us today with the children. Mum & I still don’t know what day we’ll be leaving for London – but I’m writing to the Mistress to say that (war-work permitting) I’ll be in Cambridge on Oct 7th.

Monday 25 September My mother looked at the enclosed photograph, shuddered, and said, ‘My dear’, in a voice charged with meaning, and then handed it back to me in the manner of one lifting an earwig out of the soup. This was not encouraging, so I showed it to Gerta. She smiled and said, ‘you do look a hap’. Aunt Teddy glanced at it and said, ‘It’s a good likeness – but not flattering’, and if ever a voice implied that a good likeness of me was a painful sight, it was hers.

I think that, insofar as it doesn’t show my scars, my pink chin, or the bump on the bridge of my nose, it’s not too bad, considering the material upon which the unfortunate photographer had to work.

Tuesday 26 September There is now a further hitch in regard to my proposed return to Cambridge. The rooms which the Mistress so kindly offered me, have been let to somebody else – so chaos is come again. I’ve wired to Girton for advice, and I’m waiting to see what happens. Pa is seeing everyone in London, and has suddenly woken up to the fact that Drumnadrochit is a backwater. I think he will send for us soon.

Wednesday 27 September Nurse has come back from London – oh! dear, our peace is shattered again. Of course the first thing she did was to demand to see my photograph and, when I showed it to her, she giggled noisily – slapped me heartily on my sore shoulder and said, ‘I think you’d better have another one taken – he photographed the uglier side of your face by mistake.’ Nurse has taken the place of Lois as Hate No. 1 on my (at present) narrow horizon.

My father phones my mother twice a day – and writes to her twice a day – and, when the telephone rings, or the postman comes, she goes all pink & kittenish! They really ought to know better at their age – and after 24 years of married life, too. Anyway, I’m hoping to cash in on all this love, by getting away from here, very soon – so love on, my girls & boys, love on – and don’t, on any account, mind me.

Thursday 28 September No letter from you by the first post, Gershon! Only nine pages from Aubrey, who is now an Intelligence Officer in embryo. I quote a vital passage from his letter below, to show how interviews with the recruiting board should be managed. Please learn it by heart & say it over to yourself every day before breakfast. Here it is: ‘… then there was the moment when a decrepit doctor with creaking joints asked me to take off my spectacles and read the letters on the board. “What board?” I asked innocently staring straight at it. This disability disqualified me from a Commission in the Observer’s Corps. Some capacity to distinguish an ally from an enemy is apparently regarded as an indispensable asset in war.’ Be as blind as you possibly can, Gershon, when your time comes. Aubrey’s account of his interview with the Recruiting Board has made me realize, (tardily perhaps) that there’s a war on, and that you may be called upon to go forth and get yourself killed in a dirty dug-out in France. I don’t mind telling you, that this is a possibility which I find singularly unpleasant to contemplate. It may be eccentric of me – but there it is.

Pa has just telephoned from London to say that he’s been appointed to a job in the Treasury as an expert in International Law. I gather that he starts work at once – so he probably won’t be coming back to fetch us after all. This means that he may be able to afford the rooms he and my mother originally chose for me in Cambridge – but everything is still very uncertain – he could give us no details over the phone as the appointment is still a secret – and I’ve no business to be telling you about it.

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: ‘I’ll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.’ If example is a satisfactory method of instruction – he would. Never have I seen a man shovel down so large & miscellaneous an assortment of alcoholic liquors. It was all very instructive. Today, I am seeing Mr Back (the surgeon) and the eye specialist. If they give a satisfactory verdict – then it’s Cambridge for me on Thursday afternoon.

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 acquired Tone since they’d got a future University Don to do their odd jobs. He then grumbled at Miss Sloane for telling him he was dining at the Admiralty when he wasn’t, and then wandered back into his own room, calling vociferously for his mid-morning pills, and some hot whisky and milk to wash them down with!

Sunday 24 December It occurred to me on Friday, Gershon, that there was One Person in my life of whom you know nothing – namely Duncan. Now all my friends except you know about me and Duncan – and it is not Right that you should be kept in ignorance any longer. (Hamish knows, Victor knows – and of course Joyce & Jean & Sheila know – even the Outer Circle, like Ismay & Joan Pearce know – true Aubrey does not – but that is difficult, as you will readily understand when I tell you All.)

You see, when I say to any of my friends suddenly in the middle of a conversation, ‘Excuse me, I must see Duncan’, they know that in another idiom this would read ‘Please teacher, may I be excused’, and they smile kindly, for Duncan is beloved of them all – and they also are liable to desert me for him, at any moment of the day – and this is how he came by his name.

As I have often told you, in Drumnadrochit I live next door to the bathroom (and Duncan) and, when we have a house-full of people, there are often battering queues of devotees waiting outside his door (true, we have a Poor Relation established in the garden – but few people care to venture out into the blast on cold mornings to see a mere lateral branch of the family) and one morning, when there were more banging than usual on the bathroom door, I found myself murmuring absently ‘Wake Duncan with thy knocking’,13 – and of course from that time forth Duncan it was and is and ever more shall be.

Merry Christmas (but don’t tell your parents I said so) and Happy New Year, Darling.

Saturday 30 December What you’ve had to put up with from your grandmother is just nothing at all compared with what I have had to suffer from my brothers. They want vociferously to know which I prefer, you or Aubrey. Lionel is sure I prefer you; Dicky thinks it’s Aubrey. They asked me all sorts of personal questions about you both, to which I replied primly & non-committally. ‘Which of them has nicer teeth?’ Dicky asked. I said you both had mouths full of orient pearls. ‘Which has most teeth?’ Lionel wanted to know. I said that, as far as I could tell, you both had the same number. They obviously felt at this point that a deadlock had been reached – then Lionel brightened. ‘Has either of them any gold fillings?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Gershon has two.’ Lionel positively glowed. ‘My dear,’ he said (he has a paternal way about him). ‘Mind you, I’m not urging you to marry money, but times are hard, and two gold fillings should be looked upon in the nature of an investment.’ With that I left the room but I heard the two of them discussing you & Aubrey’s chances from the next room. ‘When I was in Cambridge at half-term,’ Dicky said lyingly, ‘I went into Aubrey’s rooms and found him kissing Eileen’s photograph.’ Lionel gave a hollow laugh. ‘When I was last in Cambridge,’ he said, ‘I went into Eileen’s room and found Gershon kissing Eileen!’ ‘Good God!’ said Dicky in awe, ‘Did you?’ ‘Certainly I did,’ Lionel answered – and then there was a shuffling outside my door – and Dicky burst in to ask for confirmation!!! I was very cryptic, and he went away uncertainly scratching his head. Do your young brothers behave in this unseemly fashion, darling?

***

Tuesday 2 January 1940 Good morning, darling. I’m in Disgrace! It is all very sad – because it’s PA No. 1 I’m in Disgrace with – and it is, as you know, essential that Perfect and Beautiful Concord should prevail among the elaborate hierarchies of Public Adoration. Moreover it’s all because of a Cona,14 and although no-one realizes better than I what a vital spoke a Cona can be in the Wheel of Life, I sorrow at the thought of seeing Miss Sloane forever henceforth through a glass bulb darkly.

And this is the story. The prelude goes back to the Friday on which I had lunch with you – (oh! that there were more such Fridays in the vacation calendar, but that is beside the point). On that day in the afternoon my mother telephoned me in a state of extreme agitation (at about 3.30) not, as you might suppose, to find out whether I had got back from lunch or not, but to cluck about our Cona, which had inconsiderately fallen to pieces in her hand – funnel and bulb – at one fell swoop. Could I please ring up Fortnum & Mason and ask them to send me the requisite spare parts which I could then bring back to Middleton in the evening. I said I could and would. I duly telephoned that ’igh-class emporium, and asked them to send the Cona round to Miss Alexander at the War Office before 5 o’clock. They didn’t – so I arrived home without it. My mother greeted me more in sorrow than in anger and suggested that I might collect the parcel on my way to the theatre with Lionel the next day. I said I would – but owing to the temperamental tendencies of the South Down motor-bus service, we missed the train we intended to catch, lunched on the next one & reached Victoria just in time to seize a taxi and get to HM’s theatre as the curtain was going up. We came out of the theatre into an impenetrable fog, bleated impotently for a taxi, took refuge in the Carlton – and were only able to get a taxi in time to catch the 6.18 train back to Middleton (we had intended to get the 5.30). My mother observed the absence of Cona much more in Anger than in Sorrow this time – but I promised faithfully to bring it back on Thursday (which was to be my first day at the office after Christmas) if I died in the attempt. Figures-toi donc mon chagrin when I got to the office, to find, No Cona awaiting me. I immediately set Wheels in Motion (not to say such wheels as were within wheels and therefore hardly worth mentioning), and telephones buzzing – and it finally transpired that F and M had delivered the parcel to the War Office – but that nobody seemed to know anything about it. It took me the whole day to get as far as this, (case histories got somewhat neglected in the process) and I left the office in the flappiest cluck of the century – and got back to Middleton – without the Cona. When my mother had recovered from her Swoon and decided not to cut me off with a jade cigarette holder, I explained the situation, and she was appeased. On Friday, as you already know, I did not go to the office – and yesterday was New Year’s Day, with the result that the train was in a Holiday Humour and I got to work an hour late. However, I tripped happily up the marble steps at 11.15 and burst into Miss Sloane’s room with ‘Mikado’ on my lips. ‘A Happy New Year’, I said convivially to Miss Sloane taking her hand warmly, and failing to notice the lack of response in her clasp. ‘A Happy New Year’, I added affectionately to Miss Fox – and I was just making my way to the Inner Doors to say the same thing to Leslie when a Frosty Silence hit me between the eyes, and trickled moistly down my nose. ‘Oh! er – yes?’ I said, retreating a step in acknowledgment and then my eye lighted upon a huge wooden crate addressed to ‘Miss Alexander – The War Office’. This, I thought, misguidedly, was better. ‘Aha,’ I said. ‘My Cona.’ ‘Yes,’ said Miss Sloane. ‘Your Cona,’ and her words froze into sharp icicles in the air before her. Something was wrong. There was a significant pause. ‘I was nearly court-marshalled15 during the weekend on account of your Cona,’ she added, and the vitriol dropped steaming and sizzling on to the desk. ‘Oh! were you?’ I muttered ineffectually. ‘I am sorry’ – and then the whole story poured out like wine out of the mouth of a narrow-necked bottle, which, as Rosalind knew, comes out not at all or all at once.16 It transpired that there was only one Miss Alexander on the permanent staff of the War Office and she (fate is unkind at times), works in MI5, which is the most Secret and Sinister branch of the Intelligence, and has a notice on the door of its department saying ‘No Admission except by Special Pass’. (I have often quailed, in passing, before this notice.) She was sure it was a bomb, and sent it off to Wormwood Scrubs to be opened (this is True, darling, though I shouldn’t blame you if you don’t believe it – it sounds too fantastic even to happen to me). When they found (at Wormwood Scrubs) that it was only a Cona, they sent it back – and enquiries were set on foot to locate the owner. The entire War Office by this time knew about it and Miss Sloane happened to overhear it talked of in a corridor and said (poor soul, she knew not what she did!) that there was a Miss Alexander working in the S of S’s department, thereby bringing the August and Collective wrath of MI5 on her innocent head for allowing Strange Parcels (which might easily be bombs) to be delivered at a Government Office. Furthermore, to add to her general sense of ill-being, F and M had spent the whole of Friday ringing me up about the Cona – thereby blocking the Official Line.

And that is the story of the Cona. It was the first that ever burst into that silent sea,17 and I think – & Miss Sloane hopes, that it will be the last.

I looked in the mirror this morning and was appalled at how plain I was. I’m so sorry, dear. I’ve known it for years but never so overwhelmingly as today. How Awful for you to have to look at me as often as you do. It is Very Beautiful of you.

Saturday 6 January Darling, I’ve just this minute-as-ever-is finished writing to Leslie. Of course, I Know Nothing about the reason for Leslie’s resignation,18 and I never suspected for an instant that it was coming. I’m sorry – not because I agreed with his politics but because he knew how to remain human in a clogged and sluggish machine. (I mean Neville and his Naughty Ninepins.) He was a man (and still is, bless him – (Dear Leslie).) Take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.

Sunday 7 January I am now unemployed. I had a cryptic telephone message from Miss Fox saying that, for reasons that I wotted of (or words to that effect) my services would not be required on Monday morning – or subsequently. Oh! darling, Leslie has been most notoriously abused (as Olivia said of Malvolio in a different connection). It is a Great Sorrow to me. I hope a nasty judgement descends on someone for this. I shall just go on Adoring – and Hope.

Joyce and I had a fantastic journey to London on Friday – with Sir Alan Cobham.19 He’s an Awful man. He talked all the way about the ‘Dirty Reds’. (‘Pity,’ he said, slappin’ his thigh, ‘Pity Germany went in with ’em. Why, if she’d attacked ’em, she’d ’ave gone through ’em like a dose o’ salts – what? And we’d have bin in the background, sittin’ pretty. Suited our book, what? Dirty Reds. I flew the next aeroplane from Goering in a race in Germany once – and I beat him. Ha! Ha! Got £1,000 for it too. Not bad goin’ – a thousand pounds for beating a dirty narzi – what?’) He then went on to talk of Famous People I Have Met – but two can play at that game – especially if one of them is Really Trying – and it didn’t take me long to leave him standing. Joyce sat convulsed with mirth in a corner, and my voice was all aquiver with the giggles too. It was like something out of a play. Silly old man.

Saturday 27 January Darling, I’ve got a grey hair – I mean white! I found it this morning in the Library – and I rushed off to the Catalogue Room to tell Joyce – in a dramatic stage whisper. There was a smallish man at the next catalogue who resented the interruption – he turned round (perhaps in order to catch a glimpse of the celebrated hair, which I was holding away from my head with two fingers – perhaps not) and it was Dr Bernard Lewis!20 He thought I was mad before, my dear love, now he’s sure of it! Isn’t it Awful?

I saw John Gielgud in Trinity Street this morning. He looked old & plain & knobbly – and he carries his nose higher than any man I’ve ever seen – with his head thrown right back – he looks like a parrot that’s trying to make its beak look retroussé! Fantastic!

Monday 5 February I didn’t sleep last night, Gershon. Not on account of the Warning – but because you are reproaching yourself on my account. Listen, my dear love. I have known, ever since there was anything to know, exactly what your attitude was – and because of this there has always seemed a touch of irony in the kindly advice of Mrs Turner, Joyce & Joan Friedman who (in that order) advised me to take stock of my intentions before I went Any Further with you.

I told Joyce (but not Mrs Turner or Joan) that I sincerely and honestly believed that in this matter I was not being unfair to you, because you knew and I knew that my Intentions would change according to your wishes. She said, yes, but I must consider the question of whether I would be prepared to make a drastic change in my attitude to marriage should the occasion arise. I said that it would be unfair to myself even to consider that question, unless the occasion arose – and I didn’t believe that it ever would arise. She said that she thought I was deliberately evading the issue – but I maintained that since my whole plan of living was based on the assumption that I didn’t want to marry, I dared not reconsider it, since I believed that you had shifted the basis of our relationship only because you thought I was safeguarded from being seriously hurt when it ended, by my views on marriage. And now you aren’t sure, are you dear, whether I am safeguarded by them? And neither am I – but that is my fault and not yours. After all, you told me very seriously, quite a long time ago to hang onto my independence, and you’ve often told me that you’d never met the woman you wanted to marry. So, darling, please believe that you have nothing with which to reproach yourself – and all I want, is that our relationship should go on until you are tired of it – and it won’t be any more difficult for me later than sooner – since it is quite clear in my mind (I hope) that the break must come – and, as far as I’m concerned, the longer it is put off, the better.

As for my changed attitude to Forwardness, I haven’t any regrets about that, either (though I’m glad I still think the same about Wantonness). I feel, rather arrogantly, that the nobleness of life is to do thus, when such a twain & such a mutual pair can do it.

I’m afraid all this sounds rather clumsy & solemn, darling – but I want to be faithful, even at the risk of expressing myself stupidly.

In conclusion, darling, please don’t worry about me. ‘I wonder, by my troth, what thou & I did till we loved’ and now – ‘you are all states and all princes I. Nothing else is, Princes do but play us.’21

Monday 19 February Last night you were wondering about Aubrey, darling. Wonder no more – I had a letter from him this morning – written in a barracks room which he was sharing with twenty vociferous & newly-inoculated privates – all singing ‘Kiss Me Goodnight, Sergeant Major’. He’d just had a meal consisting mainly of spinach. (‘Dear Leslie,’ he says in an embittered parenthesis – and I can’t say I blame him in the circumstances.) You shall see the letter when we meet – but I’ll keep it for the present so as to be able to answer it point by point – as is my way.

Sunday 25 February It really has been a very varied day. I had a terrific discussion with Jennifer about the way Men of Genius treat their wives (the particular instances in question were Shelley, Byron, Milton & Dickens). She said all the wives must have been Fools to Put Up With It. I said, with Infinite Wisdom born of Age & Experience that if they (the wives) were fond of them (the Geniuses) I expected they thought it was worth it. She snorted & said Tush, or something equally intolerant – & added that No Man was Worth Anything unless he knew how to treat his wife. Shelley & Co. were therefore all hypocrites – posing as social reformers indeed, when they’d have been better employed in reforming their own conjugal habits. (Further snort.) Women who married Geniuses, she added, were fools. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove,22 I said mildly – but I’m afraid she thought it was a quotation from ‘The Desert Blooms’23 – so it didn’t carry much weight. Ah! me.

Monday 18 March Oh! I’m so tired, darling. Mr Turner hammered on my door at seven, this morning – and it seemed such a short time since you’d left, that I thought you must have come back to collect something you’d forgotten! I almost said – ‘Come in, darling’, but fortunately I woke up, properly, just in time. Poor Mr Turner – he’d never have been the same again – and it would probably have disorganized the Administration of Justice at the Saffron Walden Courts (where he’s appearing today) very seriously. Think what he was spared – if only he knew!

It’s been a wearing day. Aubrey drove Semiramis24 to London – just as if she were an Army lorry, darling. I shall never be the same again. Occasionally, he thought Semiramis was a motor-bicycle, and that was even worse. Outside the Blue Boar I met Raphael Loewe.25 When I said I was on my way to collect Aubrey – he said intensely ‘Ah! yes – he left me at eleven last night’ just as though he were describing a Tender assignation which he felt to be Very Beautiful. Then he wished me a happy vac in an impassioned voice – & vanished – it was a Beautiful moment, in its way.

The Nester baby circumcision was Awful. As soon as I got to the hotel, I went to see Duncan – leaving Aubrey & Mrs Turner to drink coffee with my mother. I suddenly had a Horrible Thought and, parting hastily from Duncan, I rushed into the drawing room & asked my mother – d’une voix mourante – whether we’d actually have to witness the circumcision. (I’m frightened of shots in films & plays – my dear love – but it’s all as nothing to the Terror I should feel at seeing a smallish, pinkish baby wriggling beneath the surgeon’s knife.) She said rather coldly that it would not be necessary – it was obvious that she thought that certain things should not be discussed in mixed company – and even more obvious that circumcision was among these things. I’m a Great Sorrow to my mother, Gershon – even on my first day in the Family Bosom and that is a Heartly Sorrow to me. Ah! well.

At lunch – I was wedged between Dr & Mrs Weizmann. They both ignored me acidly & ate steadily – but I did elicit two words from Dr W which is at least a beginning. After about half an hour of agonized silence during which I looked at his beard – and thought of you – and sorrowed – I Plunged. ‘I think you know a friend of mine,’ I said – adding helpfully ‘Aubrey Eban’. ‘Nice chap,’ he replied distantly – and silence reigned again. Not a very fruitful morning, darling.

Tuesday 19 March Oh! darling – London is close and clammy & tomorrow is Wednesday and I shan’t be having lunch with you – and I have a headache – & my mother saw a lad we know mollocking on a sofa in the Hotel lounge & said some harsh things about public mollockers – and Life is a Great Sorrow to me – but it has its Solaces too.

Thursday 21 March Yesterday afternoon Basil & Nellie Ionides came to tea. Basil was in a new blue tweed country suit – his face all round & pink & sunlit – looking altogether more like a hand-printed smock than ever. Nellie was in black, and obviously on a Higher Plane, every inch of her. Soon after they’d gone Horace and his wife arrived. Horace was on the way to a Chess Tournament, and too preoccupied with his Next Move to say very much. When he’d gone his wife launched excitedly upon a series of Intimate Revelations about Flaubert’s love-life. She’d just got to the point where he ‘threw his whore out of the house – literally, my dear. But of course he was in love with his mother (wonderful woman!) all his life’ – when my mother came in.

Saturday 23 March D’you remember that in a letter from London at the beginning of this academic year, I outlined at some length and in detail, the development of my attitude towards ‘darling’? Well, I’ve progressed a good deal since then – not only do I toss it off with the utmost ease, verbally and graphically, (there was a time, Gershon, when I always had to ponder for half an hour before saying it – and so when it eventually did emerge – it had always ceased to be relevant) but if it’s absent from your letters, it’s such a Sorrow to me (in a minor way) that I almost cluck!!!

Monday 25 March D’you remember my telling you about the harsh things my mother said about my childhood friend who was, (I gathered from Dark Hints) mollocking in the lounge of the Mayfair with a girl for whose reputation my mother wouldn’t have traded a fig? Well, Aubrey was there at the time and the incident gave rise to some interesting Revelations which I will quote in full – because they are so Beautiful.

‘When I left you on Tuesday I looked avidly round the hotel lobby seeking your compatriot whose violations of the Moral Code stirred such virtuous indignation in Room 426. Sure enough, there he was, but not in flagrante delicto. A somewhat dishevelled young lady was re-decorating herself … and it seemed that neither participant was a believer in the Worse-Than-Death-Concept.

I would regard a hotel lobby & battle-dress as uncongenial conditions for mollocking. But neither would I sit around in the King’s Uniform in a hotel lobby eating an orange. But – let it go no further –’ (he wasn’t talking about you though, darling – he knew I’d tell you) ‘in private life and all unbeknownst I do Eat Oranges … (the dots are to give time for completing the analogy.)

In this connection my Greatest Sorrow is the shattering effect I have on middle-aged married women who succumb long before any offensive is contemplated, whereas those with fewer attachments & less experience regard me with the same platonic affection as one has for the Encyclopaedia Britannica – and ostensibly for the same reasons. But all this belongs to a future volume on Sofas I have Mollocked On …’

Dear Aubrey. I didn’t tell him what mollocking meant – it came to him all-in-a-flash while he was listening to us talking at tea the Sunday before last. (Oh! my dear love – is that only a week-and-a-day ago?)

Thursday 28 March Did I tell you, darling, about my urge for a Red Dress – a very bright red dress, preferably with white buttons. When Aubrey and I walked from the Mayfair to the New Gallery to see ‘Pinocchio’ – I kept darting away from him to flatten my nose avidly against window-panes in which red dresses were displayed, with cries of Rapture and Longing. (The cries of rapture and longing came from me, not the red dresses.) Aubrey was not only Alarmed – he was Appalled.

What shall I do about it, dear? If I don’t have a red dress – I shall probably suffer from Repressions for the rest of my life – and if I do – you’ll probably never speak to me again – and that would be such a Sorrow to me that I can’t contemplate it, even in jest.

Saturday 30 March Yesterday, I had lunch with the Nathans – the most agonizingly well-regulated household in the world – each member of the family has a little saucer with the week’s butter ration on it, and a little flag bearing his or her own initials – and they have competitions to see whose ration lasts longest!! Mrs Nathan billowed in, rather late for lunch – she was in black-and-white checks, from head to foot again. Why does she do it? After an excellent lunch which culminated in a Camembert as resilient as a spring mattress and as smooth as cream – Joyce and I went to see Raffles26 – undistinguished but pleasant.

In the evening Herman & I went to The Beggar’s Opera. After the theatre we went to supper at the Landsdown Restaurant in Berkeley Square. There were some fantastic people dancing. There was one man in uniform with the tiniest hand I ever saw and little feet, and the most colossal massif centrale outside France. He was very tall and there was a little woman with him who was simply prancing about like an india-rubber ball, holding her two fore-fingers in the air and skipping from one foot to the other – occasionally pausing to prod him in the stomach. (Each time she did this Herman & I were certain that he was going to explode with a loud pop.) We hoped for her sake that she was tipsy – we feared she wasn’t – particularly. But the most absurd thing of all was that the man, who looked like a General suffering from protracted adolescence – was in fact – a 2nd Lieutenant! Why this was so extraordinarily funny, I don’t know – but it was. Perhaps because it was so incongruous.

Monday 1 April I’m glad you liked my farm,27 dear. The scenery is rather staggering, isn’t it? In a guide book entitled So You’re Going to Wales, the view from the farm is described as the most beautiful in the world.

I wasn’t surprised at Aubrey’s mollocking either, darling. Of course he’d be ‘sound’ at it – everything he does is sound. Why should mollocking be an exception?

Bless you for not minding about the red dress. My father is sending me a cheque for my birthday. I may get one with that. I saw one in Bognor today with white spots. It looked like spring – as it would catch a Tired Intellectual in its strong toils of grace – I hope it does.

Wednesday 3 April I forgot to tell you in my last letter that there is someone who always calls me ‘luv’, too. He’s an aged Jew from Baghdad – but he made several of his millions in Manchester. (He’s a British Subject now – and his three sons are English Gentlemen from head to heel.) Someone told him once that to be an English Gentleman it was also necessary to be a sportsman. That’s easy, sez he – and he employs an expensive coach and his eldest son became a Ju-Jitsu expert – and his second ran for England in the Olympic Games. The youngest is the most promising of all – but he’s still at school. Mr Smouha28 is Pleased with his Brood – and so he calls me ‘luv’ – because he can afford to be generous.

Saturday 6 April I had a Beautiful letter from Aubrey this morning. He says, of my letter: ‘I read it between parades this morning & a Sergeant Major gazing at the blatantly feminine note-paper winked at me with misplaced lechery & enquired “What does she say?” (He said something else as well which my pen, schooled in moderation, cannot set down.)’ His superior officers have set him problems in slogan-writing for the troops. His suggestion, he says, was received without enthusiasm. It was: ‘Private soldiers are the Braces of the High Command: not noticeable but quite indispensable.’ I’ll tell him what you say about writing to him. It may produce some effect – but I doubt it because he thinks you have far more to tell him than he has to tell you.

I had a letter from Ismay this morning by the same post as yours and Aubrey’s. It was almost human, and it had a rosy glow of retrospective pleasure on its face when it described Charles’s six days leave at Easter, which they spent at their London flat. (I gather they spent most of the time entertaining their relations to meals – but no doubt they had the evenings to themselves – in which to knit happily on either side of the hearth!) Even her clichés had a glimmer of life – like Lyons’s pastry – if you warm it up in the oven.

Monday 8 April Have you any wires you can pull, dear? If so try for your life – and mine – and don’t forget that the Air Force and Navy have intelligence services too – and if you get into them you’re not expected either to fly or run the Gauntlet of the U-boat pest. (I’m not suggesting that you would mind if you were – but I would.)

Oh! why didn’t I cultivate the acquaintance of Sir Edward Grigg – permanent under-secretary for War – when I was at the War Office? My father wrote to me at the time, saying, ‘Look up old Grigg, we were at John’s together.’ I told Leslie about this and asked who Grigg was. He said, ‘Oh! Grigg,’ as one would say ‘Oh! spinach,’ if one were Aubrey – and so I pursued the matter no further. What a damned fool I was, and am, & ever shall be.

Thursday 11 April Darling, ‘thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears’29 sounds nonsense until you suddenly & sickeningly apprehend its meaning in a kind of leaden stupor, as I did when I was confronted with an actual date – July. Then the vague and frightening notion of you in battle-dress and in a place where I am not, formulated itself into a dark reality. (Oh! apparently that thought didn’t lie too deep for tears after all! It was really a delayed action of my tear ducts.) You are ten thousand times a properer man than I a woman, my dear love, and it’s shallow and selfish of me to twitter at you. But once this particular cloud has out-wept its rain,30 I promise you’ll hear no more on’t – but please don’t be cruel only to be kind, and remind me of what is past and passing and to come. You treated me like a child in not telling me, until it was over, that you were going to see the Military authorities (bless you for it). Please go on treating me like a child – and only tell me things of that kind if and when you have to, for I am pigeon-livered and lack gall31 – and when I think of you as a cog in the military machine I am sick and sullen32 (though, as I once pointed out to Aubrey, I’m like Cleopatra in that alone).

Friday 12 April I don’t like the Miss Sloane: Leslie: Eileen: Gershon equation. Leslie can’t do without Miss Sloane, but he is nevertheless wholly & permanently unaware of her as a living person. She’s just the Hand that Wields the Pen. You would be quite justified in looking upon me in just that light, of course – but nevertheless I hope you don’t.

On the other hand, I do like the Thought of being built for comfort, not speed – though it does make me feel rather like a hearse – (a feeling, I might add, wholly in harmony with my present mood, which makes Mariana in the moated Grange seem like a Bright Young Thing).33

1 In May 1939 the government had introduced a very limited programme of conscription, and on the outbreak of war this was superseded by the National Service (Armed Forces) Act, under which all men between the ages of eighteen and forty-one, with numerous deferments and exemptions, became liable for conscription.

2 Helen Marion Wodehouse (1880–1964).

3 A reference to ‘Jabberwocky’, by Lewis Carroll (1832–98).

4 The sinking of HMS Courageous off the coast of Ireland by a U-boat with the loss of 519 lives. Hailed as a triumph in Germany, it came as an early blow to British pride in the Royal Navy.

5 ‘An unconsidered trifle of the goldsmith’s art’, the vinaigrette was a small ornamented container with a pierced grille containing a perfumed sponge. A lifelong passion of Eileen’s, she would have the best collection in England and after the war write a book on the subject.

6 From Adonais: An elegy on the death of John Keats, by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822).

7 A drama (1936) starring Isobel Lillian Steele and based on her own experiences.

8 A play by the Russian playwright, Anton Chekhov (1860–1904).

9 Characters based on the life of Francesca de Rimini (c.1255–85) from The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (c.1265–1321).

10 Eileen would be a little unfair to Hore-Belisha: on his death in 1957 he left two-thirds of his estate to Miss Sloane and the other third to Miss Fox.

11 Margery Kempe (c.1373–1438) was an English Christian mystic, known for dictating The Book of Margery Kempe, a work considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language.

12 An allusion to ‘Sonnet 55’ by William Shakespeare.

13 Macbeth, Act II, scene ii.

14 A glass coffee machine.

15 Gershon was always complaining about Eileen’s spelling, and she happily confessed that she could not spell in any language, including in Hebrew.

16 As You Like It, Act III, scene ii.

17 ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834).

18 Hore-Belisha had been at odds with his generals since he first took office, and disagreements over the disposition and readiness of the BEF in France finally led to his dismissal. Public opinion was on his side but it was the effective end of his political career.

19 An RFC pilot in the First World War, Sir Alan Cobham was a famous pioneer of long-distance aviation.

20 A controversial Jewish orientalist and historian, Dr Bernard Lewis worked in intelligence during the war.

21 From the poem ‘The Sun Rising’ by John Donne (1572–1631).

22 ‘Sonnet 116’ by William Shakespeare.

23 Most likely a reference to ‘Desert Bloom’, a poem by Gertrude Thomas Arnold (1876–1962).

24 Eileen’s car, ‘the most delicate shade of ivory imaginable’, named after the legendary queen of King Ninus of Assyria.

25 Jewish writer, translator, poet and decorated wartime soldier, Raphael Loewe came from a long tradition of Jewish scholarship. His father, Herbert, the Reader in Rabbinics at Cambridge, had written a letter of support for Eileen’s application to Girton.

26 A British film made in 1939 starring David Niven and Olivia de Haviland, based on ‘Raffles’, the amateur cracksman short stories, by E. W. Hornung (1866–1921).

27 On his walking holiday in north Wales, Gershon had stayed at the farm Eileen owned near Beddgelert in Snowdonia.

28 Even by Egyptian standards, the cotton manufacturing Smouhas were spectacularly rich. In the wake of the Suez conflict they would lose a huge fortune when Nasser confiscated Jewish Egyptian property. Joseph’s son, Edward, won a bronze medal for Britain in the 1928 Olympics.

29 ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’, by William Wordsworth (1770–1850).

30 Adonais, by P. B. Shelley.

31 Hamlet, Act II, scene ii.

32 Antony and Cleopatra, Act I, scene iii.

33 A reference to ‘Mariana’, a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809–92).