A Notable Woman Read online

  But to me it is all horrible. This cheapness, this tawdry turmoil and haste and sham values – I can only see it as the manifestation of the ghastly little minds of the people who tolerate these conditions. And ugliness of mind is inevitably inherited by the next generation as a physical deformity that they will not thank us for. It will be more difficult for them to knock down the heritage of deceit and insensitiveness than the walls and facades that seem ‘made of yellow cardboard and sugar icing’.

  Nowhere in the suburbs, nor growing provinces, nor welter of humanity and toil in the thoroughfares of this degenerate London may be found peace or pause. If there is by some mischance a cessation of noise in some backstreet, the silence is empty and vacant.

  But how well she has described it, the Babel and glitter of Oxford Street, and with what courage does she try to discover a value for its existence. ‘The mere thought of age, of solidity, of lasting for ever is abhorrent to Oxford Street.’ It most certainly is: who would want Oxford Street embalmed as a memorial to our present age? God forbid. So let us sweep it away before the harm of its ugliness reaches far into the lives of those who succeed us.

  Saturday, 16 January

  My discontent can be used as the ruling power of my life. After school it drove me from home into the office, from the office to college, and from suburban life to one of independence in town.28 I feel suddenly secure, knowing that so long as I am never content with any one state and achievement I shall go on to discover new people and make new things. I shall never grow smug and suburbanised and narrow-minded so long as I can overcome a natural apathy and lazy desire to dream. So long as the little material things of life don’t crush me down or hem me in so that I lose all vitality.

  I find myself carrying a banner with a strange device: across it in letters of gold and flame is flung the word ‘Excelsior’.29 I discovered it in the train this morning as I was coming home from a night’s dissipation in town and I had stayed with D.V. Cargill. We had been with Peter and his brother to Bow Bells, and supper at the Troc. I wondered why such a delightful evening lacked something I couldn’t define. It was an excellent show, and my companions are charming and amusing. What is this nagging desire that will not be quieted?

  Wednesday, 10 February

  ‘Immortality is hard to achieve,’ says D.H. Lawrence. I believe it, but I want immortality. If I find I cannot create great architecture I shall give it up.

  God, why did I get a ‘C’ for my Farmhouse? I said I would get a ‘1st Mention’ for it. I know I didn’t finish it, but that alone couldn’t have given me so low a mark. I am still stamped with the stamp of suburbia. I cannot somehow get any stability into my work. Or am I right that everything I have done that has been well marked was more of other people’s brains than my own? Admittedly I had little to do with the Town House elevation, but the dovecote was quite a lot of my own …

  But this is sick-making – only when I have strong influences to guide me do I turn out good work. If I am to face this truth, then dare I go back to the office at the end of this course? I shall be dragged under, mutilated.

  ‘I wish I had your profile,’ Joan said to me one day, but I wish I had her colouring. We are never satisfied with what we have. How can I tell her how lovely she is when flushed with excitement when watching Crockett come in at the studio door – her hair is a light, ripe gold, and her eyes are wide and blue and very bright, and she sits tensely upright on her stool, swinging her legs or waving her T-square in the air, and there is a vividness about her I envy. She may be childish now, but she will grow out of it and grow into a far more interesting person than I shall ever be.

  She will outgrow her passion for Crockett. She has tried to persuade me to go with her to Cannon Street where she thinks he lives. ‘But what good will it do you?’ I argued. ‘Oh, but it’s interesting,’ she said. ‘One can imagine him so much better at home if one knows his surroundings, but you don’t understand.’ She added patronisingly, ‘One day you will …’

  Johnny Hodgson despises me and I hate him for it. He described me more aptly than anyone else could have done. When he said, ‘Miss Pratt would never do anything unusual unless someone else was doing it too,’ I hated him for it but I knew he was right.

  Saturday, 5 March

  Peter (Gus) – I cannot bring myself to admit I am in love with him, for I don’t know how much is sheer animal sex and how much true affection.30 That at times I am terribly fond of the little blighter I mustn’t deny. I have messed around with him so much and taken him so much for granted that it is a little alarming to believe that I am growing to care.

  He is weak and selfish and terribly affected, and at times irritates me beyond endurance, but I am thinking far too much about him to ignore facts. He is clever definitely, and interests me: who couldn’t be thrilled with the designer of my Chelsea Arts Frock? It is a dream, a miracle, something that completely transfigures me and which is of course so eminently pleasing to one’s vanity. But then he is so ridiculously young for his age, and I am afraid of what he may become now that he is going on the stage – he is so easily influenced.

  At times I am consumed with a terrible lust for power. Power over men, power to make that light come into their eyes like I have sometimes seen with Peter’s when they look at me. That is the beast in me. I doubt whether anyone suspects it. ‘The Wee Bear’ says Peter. ‘Something soft and fluffy.’ Me. Me! Soft and inoffensive and wholly ineffectual – Christ! Is it any wonder I lust for power?

  Monday, 14 March

  Amazing what a difference my meeting Roy has made to my feelings for Peter. I had a wonderful weekend at the Gornolds’, but it was chiefly on account of Roy.31 He is quite the sweetest thing I have met for a long time, and I am desperately anxious our acquaintance won’t end there. At first I wondered if he was just a spoilt and pampered boy amusing himself with a studio and a few paints. He is intensely selfish and lazy, but evidently frightfully delicate, and has consequently been waited on and surrounded by female adoration since birth.

  I wondered at first whether his interest in art was not just a pose. We had a tremendous argument about Epstein on Saturday evening, and he was horrified when I spoke in favour of Epstein’s work. ‘But it is the produce of a distorted mind!’ he said.

  It was on Sunday morning that he impressed me most. We walked along the front before lunch discussing the future of Britain. ‘Britain is the coming race,’ he said. ‘There never has been such a nation, and I still think the Britisher is superior to all foreigners.’ I had mentioned Russia and my interest in its future. ‘Rot!’ Roy had said. ‘Utter bunk! For one thing the people are physically so degenerate it will take about 900 years for them to produce a clean, perfect strain, even after a few generations of what appears to be more or less normal healthy stock. You will get throwbacks and lunatics being born. It takes years to get rid of all that in a country. Besides, with the equalising of women, Russia will cut its own throat. As soon as the women of a nation become equal with men that nation falls – it happened in Rome, in Persia, in Egypt.’

  I asked how. ‘Why, men lost their respect for women and women became cheap. The Britisher has always idealised women, but if she once cheapens herself Britain will be in danger.32 It’s a woman’s job to look attractive and appear to do nothing. There comes a time when man needs and relies on women’s intuition. He doesn’t really care to live with an intellectual woman: he would rather be persuaded to a point of view with subtle flattery than argued into it, however clever and convincing the argument.’

  It was all decidedly stimulating and exciting. I want to know more of him, to continue our discussions. Possibly he finds me a little boring, for I gave him little in return except a certain amount of spirited opposition. But I cannot forget those ghastly moments when he was seeing me off on the 10.15 to Victoria last night. In his eyes was the expression of the man who is deliberately avoiding the words the woman wants him to say. ‘When dealing with women you are dealing with danger,
’ he had admitted in the morning, so perhaps he would not mention anything about a further meeting lest I construed too much from the situation. But heaven forbid I should ever marry him! He would wear me out in a week.

  Friday, 1 April

  Letter to Joan in a vain endeavour to disencumber her of this Crockett business:

  ‘I am beginning to give up the popular idea of love. It is so grossly exaggerated in our cinema and cheap novels and magazines. I am putting it aside as a myth, a fantasy, a poet’s dream.

  ‘To me, friendship seems the most important thing in life: to know well as many interesting people as possible. And if it remains purely intellectual it doesn’t matter whether one’s friend is a man or woman. I cannot see that “love” is anything apart from a combination of these two elements – sex and friendship. It’s this damn silly sex business that makes friendships difficult and induces one to expect too much of marriage. One is either first physically attracted and then attain[s] mental agreement or vice-versa, and “love” is built out of these two together. Its perfection lies in the balance obtained between them. Tragedies occur when there are wrong proportions on either side, such as one’s attraction being purely physical and the other purely intellectual. Love must be built on a very deep and wise understanding of the other person’s heart and mind – only then may one indulge and enjoy sensual pleasure. Love is a thing to be learned, a very long and arduous process of continual building.’

  Friday, 8 April

  Strange to hear the history of one’s family. Of my mother, dominated and oppressed by the fear her own puritanical and severely minded mother inspired all through the years of her childhood until she was 20. Her own father could not pick her up and caress her in the presence of his wife. And the wild, troubled spirit of Uncle Fred, mother’s youngest and favourite brother, the one adventurer in that terribly sober and phlegmatic family. And the kindly old man who was my grandfather, and the good position his father held as Lighterman of the City of London on the Thames.33 And the change in the family’s fortunes with the invention of steel and steam.

  After that comes an emptiness and sense of futility. Grandfather sleeping with his housekeeper. Uncle Fred leaving his selfish wife in England, sailing to New York, making love to a woman, building up a splendid business, instigating the jealousy of his colleagues, going for a voyage on a private yacht and being buried at sea.34 And I am left wandering – is it all a pageant to please immortal eyes?

  Sunday, 10 April

  I am being cowardly again: postponing the hour of study will not help me in June. But I could scream at the flaccidness of this household. Why can they not take an intelligent interest in any of the arts? What does Daddy know about modern architecture? Precious little of any real value. Blount does all the designing in the office – that is probably why it is so rotten.

  What I need at home is either intelligent opposition in my pursuance of the arts, or definite encouragement. I meet with neither, and flounder hopelessly when I come into contact with it outside. I wish with all my heart Mother were still alive. She played Chopin exquisitely and was the artist here, not Daddy. Ethel is just a very conventional materialist. I am grateful for all she does, and if she had been at all intellectual she might not have been content to stay here and look after the house. Damn money. I want pots of it – enough anyway to provide me with an adequate number of servants, trained people who will look to the care of my wardrobe and meals and all these petty irksome little details that take up so much of one’s time. And here am I, wasting what little I have to spare when I should be starting a thesis on the architecture of the French Renaissance.

  I had left Peter on Thursday evening in rather magnificent form. ‘You will become hard and efficient and live in the suburbs,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t bear it! Why don’t you take up dress design? You respond so quickly to clothes in the right colours …’ And then the other night I took off my glasses and combed back my hair, and surprised him more than he had ever been in his life. ‘But you are almost beautiful!’ he said. ‘We could make something really astounding of you – will you let me try please?’

  I know he is not flattering me in the least – he is no more in love with me at the moment than he is with anyone else. For his art is the art of creating beautiful women, and I know he has extreme genius in this direction. Together we might be able to establish an amazingly good business. If he provided the ideas and I could see to their execution, I would make a damn good manageress. We would dress all the elite of the world! I see myself superbly accoutred in black velvet, moving suavely up and down softly carpeted luxuriously lit rooms, advising gracious and lovely women to wear what had been specially designed to enhance their personality. We would have a special beauty parlour and medical adviser, hairdresser, manicurist and chiropodist. Even perhaps a psychologist also, for what is the point of clothing the body if the mind is not also well appointed?

  I don’t want to become one of those whom Ruskin describes as having ‘fat hearts, heavy eyes and closed ears’. The only way to do this is to live beautifully, fully, by striving to attain an ideal that is perhaps beyond my reach, to reach for the stars.

  This was Jean’s last entry in an exercise book until October 1933. She continued to write for the next 18 months, but in a more random way; she wrote on scraps of loose-leaf paper, and her handwriting appeared more rushed. The file in which she kept these notes also contained several letters, although many of these were drafts and incomplete.

  7.

  All His Honeyed Deceit

  Thursday, 23 June 1932

  Nearly two months have slipped by and the exams are over. The passion that rules my life at the moment is to get to know David A., that tall, nervous intense young man with the slender hands and white sensitive face. Last year he wore spats until Joan teased him out of it. Spats! I want to understand that mixture of wistfulness and superficial conceit and I want to win his confidence. It is going to be difficult, for if I force myself on him in the least he will leap back into that shell out of which he is beginning to creep. I think I am suffering a little from the hell others have suffered – being interested in someone who cannot give you back all your passion and desires. I want him to care – terribly. No one has ever fallen in love with me to any intense and palpitating degree. Mon ami, what a lot I could give you if you would only let me.35

  Friday, 24 June

  Perhaps I shall be able to indulge in some passionate affair while touring Russia during the summer vacc.

  Tuesday, 5 July

  What a fool I was to give David A. The Conquest of Happiness (Bertrand Russell). I underestimated his intelligence. It was written for the average man who cannot think very acutely for himself, and he is anything but average. I’m definitely losing ground there. He thinks I’m a half-wit.

  Monday, 11 July

  Ten days before the end of term and up heaves my tutor. ‘Now, Miss P., I am in a position to discuss your case. We have got all the results through. You have failed in Construction, Hygiene and Engineering, and I am afraid it will mean you will have to do the 2nd Year again.’

  It was so ridiculous. Everyone was very kind and sympathetic, particularly David A., at which I felt gratified. ‘I mean, isn’t it silly,’ said David, ‘just for the sake of 6 hours to be put back a whole year …’ Perhaps after all it would be better to chuck Architecture completely and go in wholeheartedly for Interior Decoration. Gus of course was delighted when I told him this.

  So I went and explained it all to Pop, who was kind as he always is but I know terribly disappointed to discover his precious little daughter was not the brilliant young undergrad he had given everyone to imagine. But it is a miracle to me how I got through my History exams, having produced a beautiful plan-section of Rheims Cathedral and firmly called it Notre Dame.

  However Pop was not satisfied and came up to see my tutor. The next morning my tutor strongly advised me to continue with the course and could he give me his special course of coa
ching in Engineering? ‘I suppose at the time something was distracting your attention,’ he went on. ‘I don’t know what it was of course, but I might make one or two guesses. I’m no psychologist – the men students are bad enough, but the women completely baffle me. It might have been books or an interest in higher art, or theatre or men. You know it’s a very terrible thing when the students fall in love with one another. We can’t do anything about it, but it’s most distracting, most distracting …’

  I could have smacked his face. I have chosen to do Decoration.

  Mid-July

  [Draft of letter]

  Pooh darling,

  Ethel has been frightening me into fits by the wildest suggestions for the reason of your rather strange silence. She firmly believes something has gone wrong and conjures up pictures of you sitting haggard-eyed before the good old gin bottle contemplating suicide because the girl has let you down. I don’t believe it.

  No Pooh, if things have gone wrong for you I know that however difficult a time you are having now you will pull through. Naturally I think Pop is a bit anxious, but nevertheless he has faith in you also: your life has not been saved for you to tear to pieces within two years of its salvation.

  Although we have not written we are thinking about you. We keep hoping for a letter from you first. In all your troubles Piglet prays for you.

  Thursday, 28 July

  I lay awake the other night in a sudden state of panic wondering why I had even contemplated joining the Student Tour to Russia on my own. I was visualising those five days at sea travelling tourist class on a Soviet ship with people I have never met nor know in the least. Accommodation may be cramped and uncomfortable, the North Sea may be very rough and I shall be ill. Conditions I am told in Russia are appalling.