A Notable Woman. Jean Lucey Pratt
Mullion again and the clear sea air!
On Monday we started at a quarter to nine from our house. Ethel and I were so tightly packed into the car, and so surrounded by ‘impedimenta’ we didn’t quite know where we began or ended. We met Uncle Charlie and Auntie Ruth on Ealing Common at 9 a.m., and after that we couldn’t get the car started, but at last with Harold’s help we were off. On the Bath Road Daddy decided the oil gauge wasn’t behaving properly so he hailed an AA man and they spent half an hour fooling with that. We went to Andover for lunch, and Ethel, Daddy and Uncle all slept afterwards in the lounge upstairs – the three beauties – until the maid floated in loudly and woke them with a start.
Sunday, 5 September
Leslie is coming on Tuesday! Not next month or next week, but Tuesday. I’m getting just a little nervous. Will he have altered too much? Does he want to see me as much as I want to see him? How will he get on with Ethel?
Monday, 6 September
Tomorrow morning at 6.30 Daddy and I go to Helston. Leslie. I mustn’t forget to brush my hair well. What shall I wear tomorrow? Oh Leslie, just one wild beautiful fortnight and then school and hard work. I mustn’t make a sound tomorrow morning …
Thursday, 9 September
It’s 10.45 p.m. and everyone but me is getting into bed. Writing by candlelight. Tonight let us deal with the biggest subject I have in my life at the moment: my brother. A tall brown man who is at once so very familiar and yet such an utter stranger. I think he feels just as shy at having to deal with a growing-up younger sister as I am at having this manly yet very brotherly brother. He is not used to England yet after three years in the wilds of Brazil. He has the most extraordinary eyes – grey-green, a little piercing, honest eyes.
All the same, it doesn’t seem so wonderful – the anticipation was far sweeter than the realisation. It usually is, but it wasn’t his or anybody else’s fault. I had anticipated too much. After all the excitement was over on Tuesday I was worn out and dead tired and disappointed. I somehow felt he found I wasn’t quite what he expected. I cried after I’d blown the candle out. Sometimes you have to. I would never cry in front of anyone if I could help it. But in the dark, just sometimes.
Saturday, 11 September
Yesterday morning a film company came down to the Cove with all their paraphernalia. Most thrilling. They were having a sort of picnic when we left for our lunch, and Geoff and I bolted our food to come down again to the Cove as early as we could. They had collected on the rocks just below the Mullion Hotel, and we clambered up the cliffs and got a topping perch. There were at least a dozen of them.
The heroine, one of those pretty fluffy little creatures with a child’s figure, a springy walk and an American accent – she was wearing an orange cap with a long silk tassel over one shoulder, a blue Eton sweater and a green skirt with white shoes and stockings. And her hair was very, very fair and fluffy – suspiciously fair.
The hero – I should think he was an Italian – anyway, something foreign – very tall and slim, black hair just going grey, quite good-looking with clean-cut features and very even teeth. He was dressed as a sailor in long dark blue trousers and a queerly worked belt in gold and black. We discovered today that he is Carlyle Blackwell and the girl Flora le Breton.6
Well they didn’t do much yesterday afternoon. It was a dull, heavy day and they couldn’t get on without the sun. They made up their faces, and fooled around quite a lot, but nothing happened so just about tea-time they packed up and went. We left a lot of them eating mussels at the Gull Rock Hut.
This morning directly after breakfast Geoff and I flew down to the Cove to see what was happening. They had started – at least the hero and heroine were practising a most touching love scene and a sad farewell. So we got some sob stuff gratis. But just as they were getting the cameras ready the sun went in and presently it began to rain, so they all packed up again!
Directly after lunch the sun came out. They went through the caves onto the beach and started rigging up palm trees. They didn’t do much on the beach – only just rigged up the palm trees and took them down again. The producer and his wife bathed, and presently they started packing up.
Saturday, 8 January 1927
Last night I didn’t get to bed till past midnight. Leslie and I sat up talking, and he mentioned the fact that perhaps after his next leave (I shall be 21 then) it is possible I might go back with him and ‘keep house’, provided of course he didn’t get married in the meantime. He said, ‘I don’t think I shall ever get married – of course you never know your luck.’
The idea thrills me to the core: to get away from here, from Wembley, just for a little while, to see different places and people. I know that I shall be in love a hundred times before I find the right man. I don’t want to get married – not at least to the struggling domesticated life which seems to belong to every man I know. I want someone just overpowering, who can dance divinely with me, who likes much the same things as I do, who isn’t too punctilious or particular, yet dresses well and looks well and is well, who doesn’t mind spending money. I don’t think I want him to be too rich, but just well enough off so that we can live comfortably, enjoy life and help others, those who really need it. He’ll have to be taller than me of course, quite good-looking, not too much so though, he must be extremely witty and popular, a hard worker without showing it, reasonable and sympathetic, dark, and he must be endowed with much the same gifts and ideas as Leslie. He must be English too. In fact he’ll be a man very difficult to find, and when I do find him I’ll think myself unworthy.
I am so lonely, yet who am I to complain? You are tired Jean. But stand up to these pinpricks, grit your teeth, grin and go on, so that when the blows come with God’s help you won’t go under. Poor little lonely soul. If I could give you back your mother I would. But hold up your head and never let the world know. It doesn’t want to know. You are of no consequence to it, so why should it bother?
Monday, 17 January
On Thursday I go back to the work and the weariness and the routine, the fun and the laughter and the dread of failure. Exams! That will prove if my last term’s victory was worthwhile, was sincere. It will seem just impossible to think that someday there will be no returning, that I shall have to say farewell to the place which has played the biggest part in my life so far. And after that? The office with Daddy to see what architecture tastes like, and then perhaps more work and exams and a career … when my soul cries out for dancing and film work. I think that after a while you would grow very tired of dancing, and as to films it means very hard work and a lot of pushing.
Yet again if I did take up architecture for a career – and I should never dare to do so unless I was sure I could make a success of it, for Daddy’s sake – there’ll come a time when I’ll have to toss up between that and a home and babies. It’ll be mighty difficult, but time and these pages will see.
The smell of eucalyptus, the fluttering of the fire, the ticking of the clock, the occasional rustle of the paper as Ethel turns to read it, her spasmodic conversation, sometimes the dog asleep beneath the table – home and nothing to do. Life would be awful like that.
Monday, 7 February
I have come to the conclusion that I am rapidly ‘growing out’ of school. This routine, these petty little rules, this kind captivity. But as H.P. pointed out yesterday it is like climbing a hill. You are dying to get to the top but there’s still a long way to go. The only thing is to climb – so one climbs.
Sunday, 27 March
Sometimes I hate everyone, everything. Last night I loathed the thought of the life I’ve got to live: inconspicuous, complacent. I want to do great things, to be great. I can’t bear to think of that office, to pass my years insignificantly as an unsuccessful architect. Why won’t Daddy see these things? I want to do everything people think