John Thompson was the subject of another
From my Window
in August – ‘On Being Like Oneself’:
I have in my care a young, serious, and most profound philosopher. His mind grinds slowly, but it grinds exceedingly small, and he reduces everything and everyone to their lowest common factors. Consequently he occasionally utters observations which, while on the surface appearing superficial, betray a perception and a reasoning which are astonishing …
One of his observations that ‘people are so “zackly” like them selves’, was explained by her:
… He wanted to say that our outward bodies reflected our inner souls and reflected them so astonishingly correctly that even he was able to recognise the fact …
The Thompsons remember Enid writing in her diary and she often spoke of having kept one each year from an early age, but there are few remaining today. Those that do remain cover only a decade or so of her life and consist of little more than pencilled jottings. The earliest is for 1924 and, though incomplete, shows something of the general pattern of her life at that time and of how established a writer she had already become during her four years at Southernhay. According to this diary, there was no easing up on her work even through her Christmas holiday at Oakwood Avenue with Mabel.
Her first entry on 1 January records that she wrote ‘all morning’ before going out to shop and have tea with Mabel and her sister. The following day she ‘Copied out Bimbo and Podge booklets [Birn Brothers] until supper …’ Her entry for 3 January was:
To London. Saw Dr. Wilson at Nelson’s. It’s definitely decided I’m to do 36 books for them! [This was a series of readers.] To Birns. Gave me a cheque for £38 17s …
She mentioned having tea with Alec Rowley and his sister and of how the composer played the settings to her lyrics – no doubt for one of the many songs for children the pair wrote together for
Teachers’ World,
and later brought out in book form. On 10 January, she recorded going once more to London to see Birn Brothers:
… They want me to do a jolly decent book to be brought out regardless of expense. To Cassells … No difficulty about copyright [this probably refers to one of her stories that she wanted to use elsewhere] … To
Teachers’ World,
talked over new ideas for poems etc …
There appears to have been no day of her holiday when she did not spend some time at work in connection with her writing and she seems to have retained her boundless energy throughout. She never failed to get all of her weekly contributions into
Teachers’ World
on time and even provided Miss Russell-Cruise – by return post and written to the required length, seemingly without effort – extra poems or stories needed at the last minute for the children’s page.
There was little time left for relaxation in this busy life and even the occasional visits to the theatre or cinema were apparently used as material for her writings. When she took two of her pupils to a London theatre at the beginning of January, she noted their reactions to the play and the visit was later recorded in her weekly column as ‘Only Just Us at the Windmill Man’. An afternoon at the Crystal Palace circus was similarly treated in another
From my Window
article.
Most of her weekends at home with the Attenboroughs were spent in writing but she usually made a point of accompanying Mabel to church on Sunday evenings – although her early allegiance to the Baptists had by this time slackened and when she was away from home other matters invariably took precedence over church attendance. During holiday time, she knew it also pleased Mabel if she helped her with the crèche she ran for mothers from the East End of London attending Monday afternoon meetings at the Walworth Road Baptist Church, but she refused to join in most of the other social activities around the church at Beckenham and showed no interest in any of the young men she met there.
Most of the men who visited the Thompsons and Attenboroughs were married and older than herself, as were the majority of the publishers she met in the course of her writing, but she appears to have had little inclination, or allowed herself the time, to meet others elsewhere. Her happiness with the children at Southernhay, Mabel’s deep affection and, above all, her writing, seemed to provide her with everything she needed – until she met Major Hugh Alexander Pollock.
H
ugh Pollock had joined the publishing firm of George Newnes as editor of the book department in 1923, after a notable army career. Born and brought up in Ayr, where his father had for many years been an antique bookseller and much respected elder of the Church, Hugh had joined the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the outbreak of war and fought in most of the major battles, eventually being awarded the DSO in 1919. A handsome, fair-haired man with striking blue eyes, he was in his middle thirties when he came to Newnes, after a short post-war service with the Indian Army. With his glamorous background, air of quiet authority and sophisticated manner, he charmed the twenty-six-year-old, emotionally very immature Enid from the start, while her childlike naïvety and zest for life drew the war-weary ex-soldier to her from their first meeting.
There is no exact record of this encounter but it is likely that she began submitting stories to Newnes during Hugh’s first year with the company and probably discussed some of these with him personally. Whether she knew from the beginning that he was already married, his wife having left him for someone else during the war, can only be a matter for conjecture. It is not so much what she writes about him in her diary of 1924 that intrigues, but what is left unwritten.
Her first mention of him was on January 10th:
Pollock wrote and asked if I’d collaborate with him. It was a lovely letter.
She evidently agreed to see him to discuss his proposition for on 1 February she called at his office:
Pollock wanted to know if I’d do a child’s book of the Zoo. He asked me to meet him at Victoria tomorrow … I said I would.
Her diary for the following day shows that a startlingly rapid progress had been made in their relationship:
Met Hugh at two. Went to the Zoo and looked round. Taxied to Piccadilly Restaurant and had tea and talked till six! He was very nice. We’re going to try and be real friends and not fall in love! – not yet at any rate. We are going to meet again tomorrow.
They met as arranged, walked in the park, had tea and talked again on a very personal level:
We’re going to have a purely platonic friendship for three months and then see how we stand! Oh dear.
Obviously this was not to Enid’s liking and neither was the letter she received two days later:
He says he is fond of me in a big brotherly sort of way!!!??? I’ll small sister him.
She lost no time in writing a ‘long letter’ to him –
… telling him exactly what I think. Guess he won’t like it much, but he’s got to fall in love if he hasn’t already. I want him for mine.
Such diary entries, all written within the space of a week, would no doubt have surprised the majority of people who only knew Enid at that time as the outwardly naïve young nursery governess, but here was the other Enid who, having determined upon something, was setting about gaining exactly what she wanted.
Her candid letter brought a telephone call from Hugh the next day and they arranged to meet on the following Saturday. After describing how they had lunched at Rules restaurant near Covent Garden, seen a Western film and dined at Victoria, she wrote:
I know he loves me, but I’m not going to say I love him till he has proved himself.
By ‘prove’ does she mean ‘shown his love’ – or is there a deeper meaning relating to his, as yet, undivorced state? There is no way of knowing, but subsequent entries in the diary, after further meetings in London, show that she proceeded to play him as carefully as any fisherman with a potentially valuable catch:
… He told me he loved me and asked if I loved him yet. I said I thought I did, just a little.
On 16 February, following another day in each other’s company with ‘lots of talking, of course’ and a theatre visit she wrote:
… He’s not going to ask properly for my love till Easter. He has got something to tell me first.
Could this be that he would then be free to marry her? Or simply that he was already married? If Enid guessed, she made no mention of it.
The courtship continued with express letters or telephone calls from Hugh on the days between meetings and by the end of February she was writing:
Hugh made me say I loved him and he gave me first of all ‘six incontrovertible reasons’ to prove that whatever I might say, I did love him.
Evidently this declaration of love did not satisfy him for, after a bombardment of letters and telephone calls, she met him a few days later at the Strand Hotel for dinner where –
… he told me that unless I could give him my real love we must say goodbye after Friday … So I told him I did love him, of course. He then gave me his medal miniatures all beribboned and polished up.
The first token, perhaps, of a possible engagement?
That she had not, up to that time, had much of a social life is clear from the excitement with which she writes of their outings together. Her ‘first ever’ dance was with Hugh on Leap Year night at Prince’s Restaurant in Piccadilly. Felix, Phyllis’s husband, had given her a few dancing lessons the previous week and ‘Hugh and I danced well. It was such fun.’ She wore her newly bought ‘silver tissue dress, grey velvet cloak with shoes and stockings to match’ and the evening was a great success: ‘I loved it and loved it.’
Although she did not get back to Beckenham until early the next morning, she was in London again within a few hours to meet Hugh again. They walked by the river and later had their first argument:
… about which of us was master. Hugh wouldn’t give way an inch and I loved him for it. I think I do want him to be master …
Her busy life of teaching and writing continued throughout this time, so it is not surprising that she was soon to record in her diary that she was ‘feeling dreadfully tired’ and would have to ‘put the brake on’. This lassitude, unusual for the energetic Enid, worried Hugh, and on a Saturday in early March, during a ‘heavenly all-day walk to Cudham, with a picnic on “Magic Hill”, he fed her at intervals with spoonfuls of Brand’s Essence from a jar, and left her with a tonic to take. Enid described this outing in her
Window
of 20 March:
I think never before do I remember a day like that Saturday. Coming as it did after a spell of cold, grey weather, it was all the more perfect, for everything was in its most rejoicing mood.
She described how she and her ‘companion’ had set off ‘laughing with the joy of spring, leaving behind us work, worry and everybody else in the world.’ The column finished:
… The hills were soft with blue haze, and the birds were singing of the wonderful, wonderful day. A blackbird took up the tale, and, like a born poet, he wove the sunshine and the spring, the budding trees and the starry celandines into a silvery enchantment of song – a song that came, oh surely not from a bird but from the lightsome, lilting, dancing heart of the sweet Springtime.
The growing sentimentality of
From my Window
had not escaped the notice of the staff at
Teachers’ World.
One member of the editorial department commented at this time that the column was becoming ‘altogether too whimsical’.
The day after the walk, Hugh met her at Beckenham where, according to Enid’s diary – ‘He told me what he was in tending to tell me at Easter but it’s nothing much, bless him’ – and this brief note was the sum total of her reference to a revelation which, to Hugh at any rate, was evidently momentous. No further mention was made of the incident, and meetings continued as before.
During the following weeks they saw each other frequently. They met for dinner or for visits to the newly-opened Wembley Exhibition, the cinema or the theatre – and at times quarrelled vehemently. Hugh was obviously exceedingly jealous and on one occasion the mention of a casual acquaintance of Enid’s was enough to set the pair off on an argument which lasted for days, though he made it up eventually with a small present.
At the beginning of April, Hugh telephoned Enid to tell her that the signet rings they had decided to give each other were ready. Two hours later he rang again to say that Grandpa Attenborough had been making inquiries about him and had found out – ‘what we had been keeping secret for a while and sent Uncle Ralph to see him’. Although they met later in London for dinner and to exchange their rings, she made no further reference in her diary to Hugh’s urgent telephone call until the following day:
Met Hugh at 10 and we went to see Uncle Ralph and things are quite straight.
‘Uncle Ralph’ Thompson was a solicitor and an Attenborough brother-in-law so, without doubt, this episode related to the family’s concern that Hugh was already married or about to be divorced – though Enid made no specific mention of this in her diary. Her entry for 7 April, two days after the visit to ‘Uncle Ralph’, is rather more explicit:
Hugh phoned and told me that he’d heard definitely that the case would be heard at Easter and so he’d be free in June. I am so glad.
At no time did she refer to any actual proposal of marriage by Hugh – though the rings were clearly an indication of their intentions.
It is puzzling that the Enid, who could write at length over other things – and even record such trivia as ‘washed my hair’ or ‘messed about until bed’ – could still leave so much unwritten that was obviously so important to her. Perhaps the memory of her mother’s intrusion into her secret world all those years before had left its mark. Or was it just that there were some episodes of her life she did not want to remember? An example of this was the brief mention made to the ending of her four happy years with the family at Southernhay. At the beginning of April she wrote, after a weekend at home with the Attenboroughs: