something about it … makes you come back for another look. Lovely bit of white marble to begin with. Of course the anatomy’s all wrong. I went with a doctor, that’s how I know. Of course Epstein’s a bit mental. Never washes.’
Thursday, 12 March
Lecture on Modern Architecture by Austen Hall. Architecture must express an adventure of the mind. Design must have strength and wit and character. In trying to break away from traditions we are taking the wrong path – must find a way of refreshing the old without eliminating all necessary detail, for some of it rightly applied is very beautiful. There seems no point in doing without a cornice (or as one modern architect does, wear a collarless coat).
Thursday, 19 March
Tomorrow is the long talked- and thought-about Foundation Dance at UCL. We are eight: Jo Coates, Dorothy Cargill, Alison Hey, self, Goulden, Tarrant, Gresham and Stoneham. Beginning the evening with the 2nd evening performance of Cochrane’s revue, we go on to dance at college until 5 a.m. God grant the evening will be a success! Tom Goulden is the only boy that knows us all. Tarrant we know to exchange an occasional greeting with. Gresham and Stoneham not at all. Stoneham is causing us all a certain amount of curiosity. I wonder if he will prove very disappointing.
5.
A Man Shorter than Myself
Sunday, 22 March 1931
Over now! And how marvellous it was, just what I had prayed for. Nothing embarrassing happened. Gresham brought me home in his Morris Minor and I arrived feeling so wide awake and gay that I slipped off my frock for a skirt and blouse and took Prince up the Harrowdene Road, a marvellous hour, dawn. It seemed that we shared a secret, the birds, the dog and me.
The loveliness of Alison in her slim pink frock and exquisitely dressed fair hair. Cargill in blue, Jo in green, me in yellow, the new chiffon yellow frock that has cost me £8 8s. and down which I spilt lemonade that Tarrant gallantly mopped up with his handkerchief and made little remarks about for the rest of the evening. For instance, when I had finished an ice, ‘Now, have you eaten that cleanly?’
My beads that Tarrant was hanging round his shirt front …
From the Revue: ‘I’m a little stiff from tennis …’ ‘I don’t care where you come from …’
And Valerie is getting engaged to Jack Honour.
Wednesday, 25 March
The truth weighed suddenly in on my happiness.
The best work I can offer is only 3rd rate. I have spent many extra hours on that sheet, and I have put what I thought was my uttermost into its execution. I had dreamed for a moment that it was better than either of my other orders (Doric and Ionic). There was the possibility of my getting an ‘M’, and all I have received is a ‘C’. No good saying that this is better than having to do it again, or that Goulden also has a ‘C’ or that Decorators must be marked more leniently than Architects. Jo has an ‘M’ and I a ‘C’.
I have terrible visions of the future, of never being able to rise above mediocrity. Of drifting my life away in a dry, dusty office, a dull and stupid spinster who cannot rise out of herself and has not the strength of character to seek adventure.
The trouble is bare before me. What can I do? Fail and fail and fail again.
Sunday, 12 April
Valerie and Jack are having such a tough time. Who could have thought it possible that her mother should be so hidebound, so stupid by convention, that she objects to Jack’s position. He isn’t good enough – not good enough! ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Valerie, ‘his blood relations are much better than mine if we choose to go into it. But of course she won’t, just because his family lost all their money and they have to live in Lonsdale Avenue.’
I cannot understand Mrs Buck’s point of view. I suppose she had dreams for her daughter, saw her carried away from Wembley by the conventionally magnificent hero amid a shower of envy while she stands proudly by. The pitiful narrow selfishness of it.
I have just finished reading Bengal Lancer by Francis Yeats-Brown. There is so much food for thought in this book, and it brings up the question of Gandhi’s fight for India’s supremacy. Why shouldn’t India be allowed to rule herself? A vast continent of many different races, surely it could be more ably done by natives who understand the condition and circumstances of the people. What right have we to force Christianity on them? Will they necessarily remain hostile to us if we were to evacuate? Surely an exchange of ideas and trade would still be welcomed? We need spiritual training more than anything.22
Tuesday, 28 April
There is Pooh, 30 years old, unmarried. A roamer on the surface of the world and likely to remain one until the long hours of night duty and the restlessness kills him. They are pensioned off at 50, rarely last longer than 55.23 Is that to be all for you, my Pooh? Another 20 years controlling the messages of the world? The pain and pleasures of the peoples of all nations by the lift of your little finger.
Friday, 8 May
I wish Ethel would leave me to spend my money in my own way. Trying to make me pay for supper at the church bazaar to which she dragged Margaret and me! It makes me wild – I didn’t want to go. She pretends she dislikes these functions yet really adores them, as happy as anyone there, dashing around in her new blue hat saying how do you do to everyone and feeling immensely important as the wife of the Vicar’s warden. God preserve me from marrying a man who will lead me into such a life. Thank goodness I have a career. It makes me keener than ever to work and work and get away from the terrible ‘Christian’ atmosphere. Anything less Christ-like is hard to imagine.
It always annoys me the attitude E. takes to my clothes. Am always being told to get something ‘decent’ and ‘good’, but when I take a little time and trouble thinking out a respectable sort of summer ensemble that will be suitable she accuses me of collecting a trousseau and asks when I am ‘introducing him’.
I do not dress to attract men or any man, I dress entirely to please myself. Funny though: I was looking at some rather delightful nighties the other day, but passed them by thinking that if I did get any there was no one to appreciate them.
To travel! But one needs a companion, and the best sort of companion is a man. Even to my socialistic mind I think it would be better to be married – more convenient, double rooms being usually cheaper than singles.
Sunday, 10 May
Thinking of ‘Things I Shall Buy My Wife’ (article by Bev Nichols) has given me to consider what I should buy my husband. But beyond a particularly interesting kind of dressing gown which we would choose together and cigarette case I should choose myself, my mind will not rise above tobacco and ties. From there it was all too easy to draw an imaginary picture of the ‘man I shall marry’ so that I feel rather like a schoolgirl again when I decided he must be tall and dark with wavy hair and blue eyes, and I vowed I would die a spinster rather than walk from the altar with a man shorter than myself.
But I hope he will like music and poetry and the same kind of books as I do, besides being able to drive a car, and that we shall have a sufficiently adequate income to go abroad or roam round England just
