A Notable Woman. Jean Lucey Pratt
he said, ‘but I found I wasn’t good enough.’ Shall I be saying that in 50 years’ time? ‘I once wanted to write …’
Monday, 27 January
I have an odd conviction that these journals will have a value, perhaps scientifically. Every time I go through them, they pull at me. I cannot throw them away. They seem to be demanding recognition, acknowledgement in their own right, as they stand, so I will let them have their way.
I am in more danger of being submerged by Gus than I have admitted. It is a difficult fight: every day something happens to draw me deeper into service for him. Day by day my affection grows. I stay up late at night, I linger over meals, I help him entertain his friends.
Marriage with him looms in my mind significantly. But I cannot imagine him in love with me. And I do not honestly want to marry him – socially I doubt if I could rise to the demands of such a position. But vanity urges me to bring about desire in him if it is possible.
Monday, 3 February
Gus blinds with gold-dust. He feeds the vanity of others in order that they may feed his. And I am blinded with the rest. ‘Your view of the young man,’ said Nockie, ‘seems at the bottom to be proprietary. He gives you excitement which you do not get at home.’ I want to believe I can give him what no other woman can.
I am thinking of Gus’s room. It is essentially theatrical – too theatrical. One piece of furniture out of place, or a cushion crumpled, spoils the effect. There is no place in it for anyone but Gus, a room of mirrors.
Tuesday, 11 February
Gus and Zoe may be going to join a repertory company at Amersham next week. They have tried for so many other jobs at various places that I can’t believe this one will materialise.
Friday, 21 February
I am 26, still feel myself neglected, still wanting to be in demand, surrounded by admiration and attention, I want the homage of men and the respect of women – but peace, peace – I don’t really want these things. They are but abstract symbols. It is time I stopped chasing these shadows. What I want is quality – quality in everything I do and possess. I want to be elegant, graceful and elegant without being snobbish; I want to be sophisticated and accomplished without being metallic; I want to be smart without being cheap or theatrical, dignified without being cold or stiff, honest without being dull. Kind without being stupid, be generous without being complacent, steady and reliable without being obstinate and narrow. I want wit without rottenness or meanness, excitement without lust. I am sick of mediocrity, the kindness of cows, the beaming kindness of uncultured women.
Gus and Zoe are playing at Amersham. I went to see their first night performance – a cruel journey, a dreadful little theatre, and an odd, under-rehearsed, barely organised company. The man who is running it seems quite inexperienced and has no money. Consequently Gus and Zoe are given huge parts they cannot manage. It is strange that whenever I see Gus on the stage I can get no grip of the character he is playing at all. I still believe he has great ability, but he is years of hard work away from its full development.
Sunday, 23 February
I have been troubled by the effort involved in living. Why, if I like being lazy, staying in bed, reading easy literature, going to a film or play, drifting around from friend to friend and adventure to adventure – why should I not live like that? I have the economic means, I do not have to support anyone but myself. Why should I bother to write a book? Why must I always be making the effort to improve, to progress?
It would be easy to quieten my conscience by finding a job – in the provinces as a journalist, as a freelance architectural correspondent, or teaching English to a French family. I could even go back to Daddy’s office. It is the continual nagging inside me somewhere that will not let me rest, will not let me laze or relax. One must grow and develop. One must exercise one’s faculties, or without exercise everything atrophies, physical or mental. So I must get my book written. My reading I shall reduce to the New Statesman, the Sunday Times, a few good fiction books, some poetry, and a book or two on style, construction and criticism. But I will do it. I will do it.
Monday, 24 February
Mrs Harris (mother of Gus) came in just now. She sat down on the arm of Zoe’s chair and asked me what I was doing now. ‘Writing a book? A novel? But how interesting.’ And she has promised to give me some introductions for placing it when it is down. And then Pansy Leigh Smith phoned: ‘I know a man in Cassell’s and a publisher in New York.’ And Vahan knows a reader at Macmillan. Seems as though there’ll be a fight among the placers.
Thursday, 12 March
Extraordinary. I don’t know quite how to record all that has happened over the past few days. Daddy’s appendix was removed in Wembley Hospital on Tuesday night at 11 o’clock. I lived through the worst half-hour of my life when Ethel phoned me on Tuesday evening. She simply said, ‘can you come home,’ and was crying so much she couldn’t go on.
I now feel, as I always do at home, that I have been here for ever and will be here for ever. The phone goes perpetually. Somebody calls every half-hour. We are calling Leslie (rather touching to feel one can be in communication like this with people the other side of the world). Ethel, outside the genuine anxiety she naturally feels, is getting a tremendous kick out of the situation. ‘What it is to be the wife of a public man!’
Saturday, 14 March
‘I should have known,’ said Nockie on Thursday, ‘that you’d been at home with your stepmother even if you hadn’t told me.’ That’s the effect it has – it muffles me and it shows. I loathe it, I loathe it. This murderous atmosphere. Am not even allowed the full hour with my father at the hospital.
Sunday, 15 March
What agony it was to sit by Daddy this afternoon while his life flickered like a guttering candle. ‘I’m being worn out,’ he said. ‘I’ve no strength left, no strength. I don’t want any food.’ One could barely hear his whisper. Ethel found me crying by his side. He turned to me and said, ‘I’m afraid I’m not much entertainment for you.’ How could I help crying?
But this evening he was better. He was being fed on Benger’s Food, which pleased him.73 He made the nurses quite hysterical by conducting the evening service over the wireless with a spoon. ‘I should like a cigarette,’ he said afterwards, ‘but I must wait until this irritation on my chest has moved.’ The coughing disturbs him dreadfully, ‘like a knife,’ he said, ‘ripping me open’.
Monday, 16 March
Uncle Len is with us (he is Ethel’s brother), and I am flirting with him outrageously.
Wednesday, 18 March
Ethel has been charming this last week with Daddy ill. But tonight, for a moment, the claw showed. She suggests the house should be made into flats, so that she should not have as much to look after. The house, she said, was too big for them – what did she and Daddy want with seven rooms? My God, I feel sick again when I think of it. And what does she imagine Daddy’s feelings are? But she doesn’t. If she thinks Leslie and I will spend our capital on altering the house into mean little flats at the expense of our father’s pride, she is mistaken. Daddy wouldn’t tolerate the idea for a second. This house is not big, and IT IS NOT HERS.
Friday, 20 March
Pop’s stitches were removed today. His progress is very satisfactory, so that on Monday I hope I shall feel free to go back to the flat. It worries me perpetually why I cannot live at home. It seems so strange to me that all my relations are so tediously unambitious – all, that is, except Mummy’s youngest brother Fred Lucey, to whom I owe my economic independence.74 I wish I could discover he didn’t die in America before the War (it was only a rumour), and that