A Notable Woman. Jean Lucey Pratt
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 coaching 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