A Notable Woman. Jean Lucey Pratt
of a copy of a letter to Chris]
At last this term is over. Quite triumphantly too, for I’ve got a 1st Mention for my Classical Ballroom. It’s been such a long time since I managed to get one of these. It’s not the mark I care about, it’s the knowledge of my power to turn out good work.
But you know if you never lift your nose from the drawing board what marvellous things one would miss. I want so to live!
… God bless you and may another letter arrive from you soon! (So far I’ve had one from Toronto which I answered).
Jean.
Monday, 2 January 1933
I have been trying to restrain myself from writing about this thing, but … how immeasurably it helps. It seems to release this terrible unending torment, and I find for a little while a great relief and a little rest.
That Chris should have lied to me I think hurts most. And yet for all my tears and pain I cannot believe it of him even yet. There seem to be two parts of me: one sits serenely and patiently on high, still full of faith and hope, while the other rages at its feet despairingly. There was something in him that was good and beautiful and strong that appealed to all that was good and beautiful and strong in me. Something lovely began to blossom between us, and in our selfishness we would not heed it but trampled it to death at our feet. Oh that I understood – that he would write to explain. I know I must wait a long time yet before that letter comes, as I think it will do, and in the meantime endure this sickness and heaviness of heart. But I shall not be cowed by this event.
All his honeyed deceit – I still believe he would not have hurt me so deliberately had he realised how much I really cared. He would never believe me when I said I loved him. And all he wanted was to make love to me. ‘It would be so marvellous,’ he whispered. ‘But you won’t let me …’ I wish I had given in to him, accepted the affair as he wanted me to, as the passion of a moment, and then let me be. If only we could have understood one another I could have kept the incident as a sacred and lovely memory. What is my virginity to me? I don’t want to keep it. It would have been so sweet to satisfy that desire. And yet of course for a woman it is different – just because he kissed me a little. Those natural desires for a home and children were roused in me until they possessed all my waking moments and he was woven into the centre of my dreams.
Thank God I have written this. It is the first time since that dreadful letter came for Mr and Mrs Pratt announcing Chris’s marriage to some poor lucky fool of a woman that I have been able to get at the core of the matter and see things as they are. I have been waiting to hurl the bitterest of accusations at him. I understood why women are driven to the streets or suicide or murder, yet I knew were he to come back to me with or without any explanation I should love him still.
When he told me marriage could never come into his life he meant perhaps marriage with me, but was afraid to say so because he knew it would bewilder me. So he lied. I want to get all those letters he wrote and trace this idea through them. Oh it is a tangled and twisted misery that must be endured – he can never be mine. I know he is capable of ineffable depths of tenderness and affection for the woman he chose to marry. I am so jealous of him and Josephine, but I hope they’ll be happy.
It is no good, the pain goes in. I love him, love him, love him and he doesn’t want me. Enough of this self-torture. Life must go on.
[Undated letter – possibly never sent]
My dear dear Chris,
What agony I’m going through this weekend! Do you know what happened? I’m at home you see for this last fortnight of the vacc, and though I left my address at Belsize Park for them to forward all letters to me, they didn’t, damn them! So you see we suddenly got the announcement of your marriage addressed to Daddy and E. without a word of explanation to me.
God it was Hell Chris! It was so unlike you, to betray our friendship like that. But oh how typical of you, you dear thing. Was there anything you ever did that wasn’t a frightful rush? Of course you may count on me to help you … to the end of the world Chris. I will not fail you.
Wednesday, 4 January
I am climbing out of the dark well of my despair. Chris did write to me, even as the honourable man I believed him to be. Brief, sincere, concealing. I think I admire him more for the complete lack of an attempt at an explanation than I could have done for any number of bitter excuses. I must accept the truth of all he told me, and if it is so then his difficulty must be even greater than mine.
It must have been true when he told me marriage couldn’t come into his life, and that if he married anyone not a S. African his father had told him he need not go home again. It must have been a very desperate situation that forced him into this marriage. And I know from his letter he needs help, and time will prove whether mine will be of any value to him or not. I will give of what I have to give abundantly, whether it be kindliness, farewell, or a deep and intimate relationship. And of these three the last would be easiest for me, for I know that to be once more crushed in the strong comfort of his arms would bring to me a relief so overwhelming that I daren’t contemplate it.
Thursday, 12 January
Gus said: ‘Before you went away you were beginning to stand on your own feet, beginning to express your ideas, and they were no longer suburban. Then you fell in love and you went back, threw your whole weight on the man. You were dangling. I saw that sooner or later you must drop, and only hoped we should all be there to catch you when you fell.’
I was so impregnated with his point of view at the time he said this that I wasn’t able to contradict him. I see now he is wrong. I never dangled. Not once. But he was a little blinded I think. For a little while I withdrew myself from him and he was jealous. Perhaps it went to my head a little: oh the thrill for a woman when she realises the strange power she can have over a man!
‘You will never be happy,’ said Gus. ‘You want too much and your sympathy is too deep.’ Probably. But what do I want? What does Gus want? What is it we search for and call vaguely an ideal? I owe Gus a tremendous lot, and I think he is right when he says, ‘I feel I have taken you as far as I can, taught you as much as I know. Now it is either someone else’s turn or you are to go on your own.’
He hopes he may train me into that ideal companion for which he knows he is seeking in vain, and I am resisting it with all my strength. It is impossible because of his tragic difference. He is sexless.41 And I, if I am to live, must have sexual satisfaction. ‘Leave sex alone,’ says D.H. Lawrence. ‘Sex is a state of grace and you’ll have to wait.’ I shall surely have to experience this sex fully. I can wait.
It may be I am to write as a woman for women. Perhaps in my writing I shall find the consolation I need. If I must face the truth that no one person will ever be able completely to fill my desires, then let me be brave about it. I have no passion to paint or dance or sing – only to write.
Wednesday, 25 January
From Since Then by P. Gibbs:42
‘Problem of the young woman who wants to fulfil the natural destiny of womanhood but cannot find her mate. It is the outstanding problem of England today … These legions of girls are wistful for male companionship. They want to meet nice boys who will give them the chance of marriage. They crave to be loved … all the books they read intensify their yearnings to experience the biological purpose of their being, without which they have been robbed of the greatest adventure in life with essential meaning. One thing is certain. These women are not going back again behind the window blinds.’
Tuesday, 11 April 1933
An idea for a novel is germinating. Mainly about me (M.), but the chief characters are all to be based on real people. Briefly the theme is to be this. M. is at college, just realising that what she really thinks she wants is to get married and run a home, instead of a career as an architect. One love affair having just ended rather badly, leaving her feeling bleak and lonely. Her