connected with sport–The Sixth Ball of the Over, A Rub of the Green, Cassie Plays Croquet, and others. They were amusing and witty. I re-read them about twenty years ago, and I thought then how well she wrote. I wonder if she would have gone on writing if she had not married. I don’t think she ever saw herself seriously as a writer, she would probably have preferred to be a painter. She was one of those people who can do almost anything they put their mind to. She did not, as far as I remember, write any more short stories after she married, but about ten or fifteen years later she began to write for the stage. The Claimant was produced by Basil Dean of the Royal Theatre with Leon Quartermayne and Fay Compton in it. She wrote one or two other plays, but they did not have London productions. She was also quite a good amateur actress herself, and acted with the Manchester Amateur Dramatic. There is no doubt that Madge was the talented member of our family.
I personally had no ambition. I knew that I was not very good at anything. Tennis and croquet I used to enjoy playing, but I never played them well. How much more interesting it would be if I could say that I always longed to be a writer, and was determined that someday I would succeed, but, honestly, such an idea never came into my head.
As it happened, I did appear in print at the age of eleven. It came about in this way. The trams came to Ealing–and local opinion immediately erupted into fury. A terrible thing to happen to Ealing; such a fine residential neighbourhood, such wide streets, such beautiful houses–to have trams clanging up and down! The word Progress was uttered but howled down. Everyone wrote to the Press, to their M.P., to anyone they could think of to write to. Trams were common–they were noisy–everyone’s health would suffer. There was an excellent service of brilliant red buses, with Ealing on them in large letters, which ran from Ealing Broadway to Shepherds Bush, and another extremely useful bus, though more humble in appearance, which ran from Hanwell to Acton. And there was the good old-fashioned Great Western Railway; to say nothing of the District Railway.
Trams were simply not needed. But they came. Inexorably, they came, and there was weeping and gnashing of teeth–and Agatha had her first literary effort published, which was a poem I wrote on the first day of the running of the trams. There were four verses of it, and one of Grannie’s old gentlemen, that gallant bodyguard of Generals, Lt.-Colonels, and Admirals, was persuaded by Grannie to visit the local newspaper office and suggest that it should be inserted. It was–and I can still remember the first verse:
When first the electric trams did run
In all their scarlet glory,
’Twas well, but ere the day was done,
It was another story.
After which I went on to deride a ‘shoe that pinched’. (There had been some electrical fault in a ‘shoe’, or whatever it was, which conveyed the electricity to the trams, so that after running for a few hours they broke down.) I was elated at seeing myself in print, but I cannot say that it led me to contemplate a literary career.
In fact I only contemplated one thing–a happy marriage. About that I had complete self-assurance–as all my friends did. We were conscious of all the happiness that awaited us; we looked forward to love, to being looked after, cherished and admired, and we intended to get our own way in the things which mattered to us while at the same time putting our husbands’ life, career and success before all, as was our proud duty. We didn’t need pep pills or sedatives; we had belief and joy in life. We had our own personal disappointments–moments of unhappiness–but on the whole life was fun. Perhaps it is fun for girls nowadays–but they certainly don’t look as if it is. However–a timely thought–they may enjoy melancholy; some people do. They may enjoy the emotional crises that seem always to be overwhelming them. They may even enjoy anxiety. That is certainly what we have nowadays–anxiety. My contemporaries were frequently badly off and couldn’t have a quarter of the things they wanted. Why then did we have so much enjoyment? Was it some kind of sap rising in us that has ceased to rise now? Have we strangled or cut it off with education, and, worse, anxiety over education; anxiety as to what life holds for you.?
We were like obstreperous flowers–often weeds maybe, but nevertheless all of us growing exuberantly–pressing violently up through cracks in pavements and flagstones, and in the most inauspicious places, determined to have our fill of life and enjoy ourselves, bursting out into the sunlight, until someone came and trod on us. Even bruised for a time, we would soon lift a head again. Nowadays, alas, life seems to apply weed killer (selective!)–we have no chance to raise a head again. There are said to be those who are ‘unfit for living’. No one would ever have told us we were unfit for living. If they had, we shouldn’t have believed it. Only a murderer was unfit for living. Nowadays a murderer is the one person you mustn’t say is unfit for living.
The real excitement of being a girl–of being, that is, a woman in embryo–was that life was such a wonderful gamble. You didn’t know what was going to happen to you. That was what made being a woman so exciting. No worry about what you should be or do–Biology would decide. You were waiting for The Man, and when the man came, he would change your entire life. You can say what you like, that is an exciting point of view to hold at the threshold of life. What will happen? ‘Perhaps I shall marry someone in the Diplomatic Service…I think I should like that; to go abroad and see all sorts of places…’ Or: ‘I don’t think I would like to marry a sailor; you would have to spend such a lot of time living in seaside lodgings.’ Or: ‘Perhaps I’ll marry someone who builds bridges, or an explorer.’ The whole world was open to you–not open to your choice, but open to what Fate brought you. You might marry anyone; you might, of course, marry a drunkard or be very unhappy, but that only heightened the general feeling of excitement. And one wasn’t marrying the profession, either; it was the man. In the words of old nurses, nannies, cooks and housemaids: ‘One day Mr Right will come along.’
I remember when I was very small seeing one of mother’s prettier friends being helped to dress for a dance by old Hannah, Grannie’s cook. She was being laced into a tight corset. ‘Now then, Miss Phyllis,’ said Hannah, ‘brace your foot against the bed and lean back–I’m going to pull. Hold your breath.’
‘Oh Hannah, I can’t bear it, I can’t really. I can’t breathe.’
‘Now don’t you fret, my pet, you can breathe all right. You won’t be able to eat much supper, and that’s a good thing, because young ladies shouldn’t be seen eating a lot; it’s not delicate. You’ve got to behave like a proper young lady. You’re all right. I’ll just get the tape measure. There you are–nineteen and a half. I could have got you to nineteen…’
‘Nineteen and a half will do quite well,’ gasped the sufferer.
‘You’ll be glad when you get there. Suppose this is the night that Mr Right’s coming along? You wouldn’t like to be there with a thick waist, would you, and let him see you like that?’
Mr Right. He was more elegantly referred to sometimes as ‘Your Fate’. ‘I don’t know that I really want to go to this dance.’
‘Oh yes, you do, dear. Think! You might meet Your Fate.’
And of course that is what actually happens in life. Girls go to something they wanted to go to, or they didn’t want to go to, it doesn’t matter which–and there is their Fate.
Of course, there were always girls who declared they were not going to marry, usually for some noble reason. Possibly they wished to become nuns or to nurse lepers, to do something grand and important, above all self-sacrificial. I think it was almost a necessary phase. An ardent wish to become a nun seems to be far more constant in Protestant than in Catholic girls. In Catholic girls it is, no doubt, more vocational–it is recognised as one of the ways of life–whereas for a Protestant it has some aroma of religious mystery that makes it very desirable.
