Ethel’s threats and tantrums wouldn’t have mattered. I let my subjective fear of them stifle my love’s development. Love when it is strong enough defeats such miserable obstacles with ease. If I had loved my father as I should, I should have known how much he must have suffered. I was too impatient and cruel.
Tuesday, 5 May
4 a.m.: Death is a great healer. All animosity between myself and Ethel has shrunk to nothing now that the object of our love and jealousy has gone.
I cannot sleep. I would like to marry some well-armed and powerful fighter of disease that I might help to make living and dying easier. My mother suffered dreadfully for years, and Daddy must have suffered much more than anyone ever realised. I had wanted to believe he would live to see my book published, but perhaps it is well he didn’t; he might have found my ideas difficult and hurtful.
Birds are beginning to sing. We shall be leaving his home and garden. How that would grieve him, but neither I nor Ethel have any wish to remain here without him. I have the power to create the same loveliness elsewhere; I hope I may even be able to improve upon it, although I shall be told I expect that nothing my father did could be bettered. There is a great deal of sentimentalism one has to fight, but the feelings he inspired are genuine. He was very greatly loved.
The doctors spoke of his operation as a simple affair: just another three weeks in hospital. That was the way in which I was seeing it. It was so cruel that it had to be so unexpectedly terrible. He was like a child with the pain: it must have been awful.
When love is real and big enough, the ability to see things in their right proportion cannot lessen it. There have been things about him at which I was irritated and impatient, but what makes me go on my knees to him now, as it always did, was the natural unconscious sun of his spirit. It is that sun in the heart of men that makes them great. We were all warmed by it, so that only the brightest memories remain.
Thursday, 7 May
There will be no more green springs for us in this garden, no more summer hay or night-blue grapes at autumn. The blossom-starred branches nod in the evening wind, but his step is not on the stairs, he locks his doors no longer and sings no more in the morning, for his long trick is over, his quiet sleep and sweet dream found.
Oh God that he should have died before I could show him how much I love him! But I shall take my love away. I shall take it with me all over the world and plant his roses everywhere.
Friday, 8 May, Wembley Observer and Gazette
Death of Mr G.P. Pratt
Vicar Warden at St John’s
One of Wembley’s Oldest Residents
It is with deep regret that we record the death, which occurred at the Wembley Hospital on Saturday, of Mr George Percy Pratt, of Homefield, Crawford Avenue, Wembley, at the age of 70 years. Mr Pratt, who was taken ill in March, went into hospital to undergo an operation for appendicitis. He had been a resident of Wembley for 42 years. His life was an extraordinarily active and varied one and his interests were numerous. By profession he was a chartered architect and surveyor … he was chairman of the Acton Bench of magistrates up till his death … a prominent freemason, a member of many lodges. His principal hobby was gardening, and for many years he was a prominent member of the Royal Horticultural Society. He grew roses mainly.
Mr Pratt leaves two children, a son, Leslie, who is in the cable business, at present stationed in British West Indies, and a daughter, Jean, both by his first wife, who died in 1923. In August 1925 Mr Pratt remarried, his bride being Miss Ethel Watson of Sudbury, daughter of the late Mr Dewar Watson, who owned the old Sudbury Brewery.
Saturday, 6 June
I am battling with house agents, expiring and antiquated insurances, solicitors, removals and warehousing plans, bills, relations. If I were the great artist I want to believe I am I would sweep all these things aside and allow nothing to come between me and my creative urge. But I have been left with half a house to look after and all the furniture: responsibilities increase daily, and each new difficulty proves my immaturity. I have never felt so tired and worried and alone, yet everyone tells me how well I look.
Monday, 8 June
The thing that looms largest on the horizon now is our move from Wembley and my move into a new flat in Hampstead. Vahan and Joan are converting a house in South Hill Park: they are to have the ground floor, and I am having (I hope) the attic.
Monday, 27 July
I’m here, at 83, South Hill Park, Hampstead. I have signed an agreement for 3 years. I have been here a fortnight, and my lodger (Vahan’s younger brother) arrives on Thursday. ‘Homefield’ is empty, its garden rich with rain, flowers and maturing fruit, and everywhere are rumours and threats of war. How can one feel settled?
Cecil Lewis has written in Sagittarius Rising: ‘World state, world currency, world language … would demand new allegiances, new deals. Possibly two or three more world wars would be necessary to break down the innate hostility to such changes … It is a fight between intellect and appetite, international ideals and armaments. The latter will probably win the first two or three rounds; but if civilisation is to survive, the ideal must win in the end. Meanwhile, if a few million people have to die violent deaths, that cannot be helped. Nature is exceedingly wasteful.’75
It will not matter: war and death and the spoliation of one’s loved possessions. Whether we live violently and die damnably, or long and die in peace, we die. We die and our loved possessions must become possessed of another’s love or crumble away unloved. Only the love we can give out in passing matters; it is the only thing that lingers after a person dies.
I wish brother Pooh was in England. Homefield is a big responsibility for me alone. Ethel went away on July 1st, and I had to undertake the move and warehousing quite by myself. Lonely? No, I haven’t felt lonely yet, there has been too much to do. War? Then let there be war, I can do nothing to stop the mass foolishness of barbarians. My room here fills me with delight. But if I could send a message to Heaven, I would ask an angel to tell my father that I love him, that I love him.
Tuesday, 18 August
I have acquired a kitten. Its curiosity is insatiable. Writing is difficult with Cheeta walking over the page.
Friday, 21 August
Next Friday I start with cousin Martin and his girlfriend Dorothy on our motor tour in Europe (he has an Alvis). Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, N. Italy, Nice. And then I may take up ballroom dancing with Joan Silvester at the Empress Rooms in October. I am also getting involved with a Communist movement in Hampstead. I even typed some cards for them yesterday. What will the Conservative relatives say …
Tuesday, 25 August
The movement is not specifically Communist, but a movement to establish a Popular Front in England involving all parties, sects, religions and classes. A good thing and an urgent one I feel.
Nockie was full of scorn at first at the ballroom dancing idea, but the more I think of it the more I approve. I need hardening, smartening: if I dance I shall have to care for my hair, nails, clothes, and I think it should give me the confidence among the sophisticated that I lack. Clothes, or rather one’s physical appearance, is the symbol of character. A really
