A Notable Woman. Jean Lucey Pratt
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.