Eileen Alexander - Love in the Blitz

Saturday 19 August It was nice of you not to be sceptical about the Monna Lisa comparison. (Monna was a 13thC. Florentine abbreviation for Madonna – in fact an exact translation of m’lady – and so although I know all about how the vulgar herd spell this (conjectural) name for Leonardo’s Gioconda , I stick to Monna which is pedantic but Right.)

Tuesday 22 August Hamish came to see me on Sunday – (Charlotte is back in Edinburgh). I told him politely, but with a subtle inflection of enquiry in my voice, that Charlotte had written to me. He gave me a long and involved explanation of this phenomenon – (his story is that she got so tired of the sound of my name (!) that she got quite nasty about me. Hamish explained to her, with dignity, that he and I were on a Higher Plane – and finally brought her to see me – whereupon she was immediately reassured – one look at me was enough to convince her that here was no rival for her charms – and her letter was a subtle (?) tribute to her restored faith in Hamish – and her Absolute Confidence in me). It was a good story, told in Hamish’s inimitable voice & enlivened by Hamish’s inimitable mannerisms but I doubt if we’ve got to the core of the matter, even now.

Wednesday 23 August I wish I were a Cabinet Minister, Gershon – I’d have been so clever – nothing like this could ever have happened.3 When Italy attacked Abyssinia, I’d have put two nasty, bristling battle cruisers across the Suez Canal (strictly illegal, of course – but oh! what a gesture) and then I’d have cocked a snook at Mussolini (I never liked his face anyway) and I’d have written a rude note to Hitler saying that I knew all about why he was holding Mussolini’s hand – so as to keep his mind off Austria.

And now look what a nasty mess we’re in – all because no-one thought of including me in the Cabinet. It gives rise to ‘thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears’.4 Ah! well, let’s eat, drink & be merry for tomorrow we die – tis a maxim tremendous but trite.

As a matter of fact, I’m frightened. I just wanted to tell someone I was. Let’s not mention it again. You’re not thinking of sprouting into a handsome territorial, or anything, are you? don’t – darling – (not that I really think you would – but I’m being Forward and, (I hope) appealing, just in case you had considered it).

My aunt is clucking helplessly. Jean keeps on expecting a wire announcing her instant mobilization. My father prophecies a cataclysmic collapse in Germany, after which everything will be All Right. (He believes the Russo-German pact to be a wild clutch at a swirling-away straw by a drowning Fuhrer.) I go out & stir up rabbits – I prefer rabbits to political arguments. What’s done is done. She wept because she had no more to say.

Dear me, this is a very unsatisfactory letter. The truth is that I want to be comforted.

Friday 25 August In case of war I think my mother and the children will stay here. Dad will go to London to see in what way he can be of use, and I have written to Leslie HB’s5 secretary asking her advice as to what kind of job I’m fitted for. Don’t worry, I don’t intend to offend the aesthetic sensibilities of my friends or the nation by blossoming forth as a WAT Or a WREN Or a WAAF or even a land-worker.

My father doesn’t think there’ll be a war. He bases his belief on that old saw about right triumphing in the end – and also on a conviction that the Führer is played out.

Dicky is getting more and more insufferably insolent. I’d like to beat him hard. I wish you were here to do it for me – as a matter of fact I wish you were here – (but that is a forward admission, & quite by the way). There’s a sort of heat-vapour of suppressed hysteria in the house – which makes me feel I want to scream & scream. It is no-body’s fault – but it’s Hellish. Your letters are the only things that happen, to make me smile.

I blush, Gershon, I really do, to think of the number of letters from me which will await you on your return from Liverpool. (Though I am forward, I am not brazen – yet.)

Saturday 26 August Old Sir Robert, my-host-that-was-to-have-been, thinks that his house party on Exmoor will probably have to be cancelled – so it looks as though I shall not follow the hunt in a car – with the dowagers – after all. I shall, by then, probably be immured in some ‘destination unknown’ with the War Office.

And what of Ismay’s wedding? I fancy that in the event of War, she will be gathered to her Charles’ manly bosom sooner than either of them expected. But I’m not going to talk about war any longer – I’m tired of it – and you must be too, by now.

I’ve just been downstairs listening to the news. I think the suppression of Neville Henderson’s6 message from Hitler is very sinister. I hope we’re not going to have another Munich – but I don’t think so. Chamberlain (silly old cockerel) wouldn’t dare do it again – but you know the old saw: ‘If at first you don’t concede, fly, fly, fly again.’ (This is not original. I shouldn’t like you to think I am cleverer than I am.)

A heartening sight met me in the drawing room. Lionel – plunged deep in knitting. He offers no explanation of this phenomenon. He just sits, all wrapped up in yarn – knitting frenziedly – only coming out of his reverie occasionally to make trenchant comments on the news. Dicky is now not on speaking terms with anyone in the house except Lionel. He refuses to wash or brush his hair or change his clothes – or wear the requisite amount of undergarments. He goes about in a navy polo-jersey & navy shorts and Wellingtons – in & out of the house – his hair standing on end in wiry tangles. Occasionally he tramps about intoning a tuneless trill of sound – or murmuring ‘What the bloody Hell’ to himself in an aggressive manner. Otherwise he holds no communication with man or beast. Yes, Gershon, we are an odd household.

Dad is certain that there will be peace with honour. Well! if he’s right, we shall meet again at Ismay’s wedding in just over a fortnight, sha’n’t we? If he’s wrong – ‘Quoth the raven “Nevermore” –’7 or quite possibly, at any rate – but this is vapouring. Take no notice of it.

Monday 28 August I had an agitated letter from Joyce by the same post as your two. If there is a rent in the clouds – she is coming up here at once – otherwise she will be evacuating school-children for her Country.

I liked the fatherly touch about ‘one oughtn’t really to worry about individual skins’. Of course one oughtn’t, mon cher , but one does – and the more shocked one is by the unethicalness of worrying, the more one worries, because in addition to worrying, one worries about one’s own shortcomings which make one worry – if you see what I mean – and I shouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. Anyway, (and I say this defiantly, though firmly) I’m glad you’re not a Territorial – though I don’t suppose that will prevent the War Office (damn it lustily) from sending you off to prod Germans in the rear from the Maginot Line, while they are busy trying to squeeze into the corridor, if & when war breaks out.

Of course, I was saddened to hear that you had had my blood cleaned off your suit – but I do see the position. It would have been a fine gesture to arrive at Ismay’s wedding all spattered with it – but it might have caused Comment or even Gossip – and then – Reputation, Reputation, we’d have lost our Reputation – which would have been a pity – but it was uncommonly civil of you to say you wouldn’t let anyone else bleed on it. If anyone tries, just push her onto the ground, and let her bleed on that!

I haven’t had an answer to my letter to Miss Sloane (Leslie’s Secretary) yet – but I pressed obligingly but firmly for a job either with the War Office or the Censorship, on the outbreak of War – (if such there be). I could not possibly spend the illimitable duration of a modern war in the family bosom – we would worry one another around in circles all the time, until one, or all of us, dropped down dead, from nervous exhaustion. If I have a paid job in the government, I shall have to go where I’m told, and no-one will be able to do anything about it, which sounds incredibly selfish – but actually will be better for all of us.