A Notable Woman. Jean Lucey Pratt
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.
We shall travel everywhere ‘hard’ class and sleep two or three to a room at the hotels of the cities we visit. Why was I then so rash to pay down my £25 I can so ill afford for three weeks that may be torture?
‘You are brave!’ people have said in awed tones. And, ‘Russia? Are you sure it’s quite safe?’ ‘Of course you will only be shown what they choose to show you.’ ‘I think you’re making a great mistake. Some women I know who were on a party that went to Moscow broke down at the sight of the squalor in which they were expected to exist while there.’
But Soviet Russia is a force that may not be ignored.
Mid-August
[Fragments of a copy of a letter to ‘Chris’36]
We accomplished the journey from Kiev without mishap and were only one-and-a-half hours late. Something contrived to bite me 13 times on the left arm and I am very glad to be at sea again. The ship is at least comparatively clean, and so far the Baltic is behaving itself admirably. I sought in vain among the letters at Leningrad and was more depressed (than ever) with that decayed city when I failed to find one from you. But perhaps it will be waiting for me at home.
I’ve missed you terribly. Were you beginning to be a bit disappointed with me, to think I was a flirt and merely after all the admiration and attention I could get? I’m sorry if I seemed cheap, but please, please believe me when I tell you I am not in the habit of allowing my male acquaintances to make love to me as you did. And you do do that divinely!37 Whether from experience or instinct I wouldn’t like to say, but I don’t think it matters much. The fact remains. Dear Passing Ship, please linger a little longer within my sight that I may grow to know and understand you better. You were marvellously kind to me, and that I shall never forget.
And now I will try to pull my scattered thoughts together and endeavour to tell you something about Russia. We were not there long enough to receive more than the briefest of impressions. Everyone told me before I went, we ‘were shown only what they wanted to show us,’ which nearly drives me epileptic with rage, as if they covered up their decaying buildings with dust sheets, screened off the food queues and chained off all undesirable parts of the city and prepared special places for tourists. Heavens, as if every city in the world has not backstreets and ugly buildings and bad factories they don’t wish foreigners to see.
But certainly to anyone used to the average luxuries of modern Western Europe, living in Russia is not exactly exciting at the moment. Many of the people are physically splendid to look upon, the younger generation particularly, but they are all clothed in garments that are shoddy and badly made. That no amount of propaganda even attempts to deny it is a sign of the poverty of the race. Imagine if you can, London completely overrun with the working classes, the shops and clubs and restaurants of Piccadilly and St James’s and Knightsbridge closed or converted into factories or worker’s guilds, no subtlety or graciousness or dignity left anywhere, a bland, naive young people, enormously enthusiastic, mind you. And they know where they’re going and what they’re trying to do, whereas we muddle along.38 Their government is centralised, and so long as every member of the ruling party remains uncorrupt and lives up to their ideals I think they have every chance of success.
I think I see wisdom in their suppression of individualism. It tends to do away with all selfishness, individual gain, ambition and greed. I envy them their singleness of purpose, each one of them as part of their new state has a reason for living. Russia is undoubtedly one country with a future in a world where all other systems of civilisation and administration are rocky and cracking and decaying. I am not convinced that for us there are no means of discovering new ideals and new methods without going through the same ghastliness of war and revolution and suffering that Russia suffered. Revolution perhaps, but God let us hope it will be bloodless. The test of their experiment is not now, but in 10 or 20 years’ time.
I will phone you on September 1st.
Monday, 12 September
There is a strange streak of hardness in me somewhere – cruelty, and a desire to mar the perfection of things, such as trampling in new-fallen snow.
Now supposing Chris were suddenly to go away without saying goodbye or seeing me again: what should I feel? My vanity would be hurt. I am terrifically proud of possessing so popular a male as a friend. He is a divine lover. But I am yet to know him as a companion. We have extraordinarily little in common. I never know what to talk to him about when we are alone, so he fills in the silences by making love to me.39
I feel I am making myself cheap, I feel as though we have both somehow reached a dead end. I should be terribly hurt if he were thinking the same thing. I should like to make more of it than this, invest it with some permanence. Kisses alone are not enough to cement a friendship.
Friday, 14 October
When Mausie goes down to the Strand for tea
She’s no thought for David and none for me
She’s lost in joyous, abstracted bliss
With her charming and lovable diplomat Chris40
Strange how life goes on. I decided I must do the Decoration Course and refused to consider the idea of 2nd Year Architecture again. But here I am, doing it and rather enjoying myself. I think I am happier than I have ever been. My days are filled with many people and interesting work, I am independent of home influences, my room is delightful.
Friday, 25 November
As I walked down Tottenham Court Road tonight I again realised what a marvellous time I had had at college, how dear and familiar London had grown, and what memories each part brought back. Teas at the Criterion, Swan & Edgar, the Arts Club where I lunched with Gus and his mother for the first time, the delicious sensation of being well-groomed just after a visit to that hairdressers in Dover Street, Harrods where I once lunched alone off Welsh rarebit, all the theatres in Shaftesbury Ave, the nights we have queued for pit or gallery, the strange snack bar somewhere off it where Gus and I once had the most marvellous waffles, the Coventry Street Corner House at 3 o’clock in the morning, teas at Boots, Regent St by bus and on foot and in a Daimler, the gramophone shops where Gus and I have listened to many records, Charing X Rd, its books and News Theatre and Doctor’s Pills.