Authors: Virginia Nicholson
Brydon, Ailsa Camm, Joy Cann, Adjutant Joan Drummond, Peter Forbes, Andrew
George, Paula Gerrard, Jo Glanville, Sam Jones, Anne Locker, Janet Mann, Kate Perry, Dr Anne-Marie Rafferty, Dorothy Sheridan, Dr Roderick Suddaby, Lenore Symons and Miriam Valencia. Particular thanks to Penny Lyndon and Jane Vince, who helped me find my way through the invaluable archive of working-class autobiographies at Brunel University, and to Dr Lesley Hall at the Wellcome Trust Library for her guidance through the Marie Stopes archive. I am also grateful to Antonia Byatt, Teresa Doherty and Anna Kisby for arranging access to the ‘Out of the Dolls House’ archive in the Women’s Library at London Metropolitan University. Others who kindly replied to my questions, letters and advertisements were Daphne Baston, Hugo Brunner, Mrs Lee Bryan, Canon John Edge, Dr Peter Estcourt, Jamie and Maggie Fergusson, Margaret Forster, Richard and Jane Garnett, Lady Gibson and the late Lord Gibson, H. V. Gilpin, Mrs Iris Graham, Miranda Grainger, Chloe¨ Green, Lord Hutchinson, Lady Joanna Hylton, Michael Johnson, Sue Keighley, Lucinda Lambton, Philip Mayne, Susan McGann, Nick Milner— Gulland, Anne Morrison, Jane Mulvagh, the late Nigel Nicolson, Zoe¨ Pagnamenta,
Isabel Raphael, Elizabeth Ray, Ged Robinson, Diane Spero and Simon Watney.
Thanks too to Joanna Head, Emma Wakefield and Mary Cranitch of Lambent
Productions.
I would not have been able to write this book without special help from
Elizabeth Finn Care and their staff, whose excellent retirement homes give friendly and dignified care to the elderly (and who do much more too). Marian Flint most willingly and efficiently set up introductions to the ladies I interviewed: Rani Cartwright, the late Mary Cocker and her friend Olive Jefferies, Gertrude Foxley, Margaret Howes, the late Miss Mapp, Doreen Potts, the late Doris Smith, Evelyn Symonds, Olive Wakeham and Miss Willetts. Elizabeth Ray also effected my
introduction to the staff and residents of Dresden House, Hove. I am grateful too to a number of other people who spared time to be interviewed: Dr June Goodfield, Ian Hamilton, Kate Herbert-Hunting and Angela Sinclair, Elizabeth Jenkins, Harry Patch and Joan Thornton.
Particular thanks to Douglas Matthews for his exemplary index; also to Stephanie Collie, Lesley Hodgson, Kathryn Laing, Annie Lee, Sophie Powell and all the
publication team at Viking. Thanks too to Jeremy Crow of the Society of Authors, and to the staff of the London Library and the British Library.
Friends and family have helped in many ways, small and great. Thanks are due to Susannah Acworth, Russell Ash, Paul Beecham, Cressida and Julian Bell, Adam Curtis, Peter Grimsdale, Adam Low, Jamie Muir, Julia, Maria and Teddy Nicholson, Jane Salvage, Paul Spencer and Olivia Timbs.
*
In addition, the author gratefully acknowledges the kind permission of copyright holders to quote from the works of a number of authors and sources, as follows: Peters Fraser & Dunlop, on behalf of the Estate of Phyllis Bentley, for permission to quote from
O Dreams, O Destinations
; excerpts from
Thank Heaven Fasting
by E. M. Delafield (Copyright © Estate of E. M. Delafield ) also reproduced by permission of PFD (
www.pfd.co.uk
)
on behalf of the Estate of E. M. Delafield; Gillon Aitken Associates Ltd on behalf of the Estate of Sir John Betjeman, for use of an excerpt from ‘Business Girls’ in
A Few Late Chrysanthemums
, also on behalf of the author for the use of a quotation from
Bridget Jones’s Diary
by Helen Fielding; Constable & Robinson Ltd, for reproduction of excerpts from
A Woman Alone
by Etta Close, also from
Universal Aunts
by Kate Herbert-Hunting; A. P. Watt Ltd on behalf of the executors of the Estate of Jocelyn Herbert, M. T. Perkins and Molly M. V. R. Perkins for the excerpt from
Other People’s Babies – A Song of Kensington
Gardens
; A. M. Heath and Co. Ltd, for permission to quote an excerpt from
Beyond
the Vicarage
by Noe¨l Streatfeild (Copyright © Noe¨l Streatfeild, ), and also for permission to quote excerpts from
The Well of Loneliness
and
The Unlit Lamp
by
Acknowledgements
Radclyffe Hall (both Copyright © Radclyffe Hall ); Macmillan & Co. for use of an excerpt from
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
() by Muriel Spark; Virago, for excerpts from
I’m Not Complaining
by Ruth Adam, new edition (); Mark Bostridge and Rebecca Williams, Literary Executors for the Vera Brittain Estate, , for the inclusion of quotations from Vera Brittain; Hodder & Stoughton for the use of excerpts from
The Joy of the Snow
by Elizabeth Goudge (); Jonathan Clowes Ltd, London, on behalf of the author, for the reprinting of an excerpt from
Under My Skin – Volume of My Autobiography
by Doris Lessing, Copyright ©
Doris Lessing; the Sheldon Press for extracts from
Woman in a Man’s World
by Rosamund Essex (); the Estate of Sylvia Townsend Warner for permission to quote from
Lolly Willowes
and
Letters
, ed. William Maxwell; the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, for quotations from the writings of Enid Starkie; Faber and Faber Ltd for permission to quote from
The Waste Land
by T. S. Eliot; an excerpt from
Traveller’s Prelude – Autobiography –
by Dame Freya Stark reproduced by permission of John Murray (Publishers) Ltd. Grateful acknowledgements are also due to the BBC for use of extracts from the British Library Millennium
Memory Bank Oral History Collection, and to Rosina Wood neé Chitticks for
use of unpublished excerpts from the writings of Miss Emily Chitticks now held in the Department of Documents of the Imperial War Museum. Quotations from
the work of Elizabeth Bowen reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of the Estate of Elizabeth Bowen, Copyright © Elizabeth Bowen ; quotations from U. Monk,
New Horizons – A Hundred Years of
Women’s Emigration
reproduced under the terms of the Click-Use Licence issued by the Office of Public Sector Information. Quotations from the Mass Observation Archive at Sussex University Library reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of the Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive
Copyright © Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive.
The author would also particularly like to thank the following: James Slater for permission to reprint excerpts from
Grey Ghosts and Voices
by May Wedderburn Cannan; Jean Faulks for permission to reprint excerpts from
All Experience
by Ethel Mannin (); Angela Holdsworth for use of material from
Out of the Dolls House
, BBC Books (); excerpts from
Josie Vine
and
African Apprenticeship
by kind permission of the Trustees of the will of the late Dame Margery Perham; Dr Alison Oram for use of material from her book
Women Teachers and Feminist Politics –
, Manchester University Press (); Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy for permission to quote from
The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny
; Annabel Cole for permission to quote from
The Single Woman
by Margery Fry; the Estate of Irene Rathbone for permission to quote from her work. It should be mentioned that a large number of these copyright holders could not have been traced without the indispensable aid of the WATCH (Writers, Artists and Their Copyright Holders) database
(
www.watchfile.com
),
jointly run by the Universities of Reading and Texas, and supported by the Strachey Trust. While not quoting substantially from it, this book has also drawn from an unpublished biography of Florence White by Diana J.
Prickett, written in ; the manuscript is accessible on-line via the website
www.historytoherstory.org.uk
Yorkshire Women’s Lives On-Line.
Acknowledgements are also due to the following whose works have been quoted
from: Ruth Adam,
A Woman’s Place
; Gertrude Caton-Thompson,
Mixed Memoirs;
G. Phizackerley (ed.),
The Diaries of Maria Gyte
; Shirley Millard,
I Saw Them Die –
Diary and Recollections
, ed. Adele Comandini; John MacArthur,
Shall Flappers Rule;
Anthony M. Ludovici,
Lysistrata, or Woman’s Future and Future Woman;
Charlotte Cowdroy,
Wasted Womanhood
; Margery Spring Rice,
Working-Class Wives: Their
Health and Conditions
; Christina Stead,
For Love Alone
; Rosamond Lehmann,
Invitation to the Waltz;
Beatrice Curtis Brown,
Southwards from Swiss Cottage
; Mary de Bunsen,
Mount Up with Wings
; Marjorie Hillis,
Live Alone and Like it
; Jeremy Tunstall,
Old and Alone – A Sociological Study of Old People
; Mary Grieve,
Millions
Made My Story
; Rosamund Tweedy,
Consider Her Palaces
; D. F. P. Hiley,
Pedagogue
Pie
; Gladys M. Hardy,
Yes, Matron
; Irving Berlin,
Sisters, Sisters
; Sybil Neville-Rolfe,
Why Marry?
; Esther Harding,
The Way of All Women
; F. Zweig,
Women’s Life and
Labour
; Erich Fromm,
The Art of Loving
; Sylvia Stevenson,
Surplus
; Dame Caroline Haslett,
Myself When Young – by Famous Women of Today
, ed. Countess Asquith; Rosalind Messenger,
The Doors of Opportunity – A Biography
; Maude Royden,
Sex
and Commonsense, Sermon Preached in the Cathedral at Geneva on the Occasion of the
Meeting of the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance
and
The Moral Standards of the
Rising Generation; The Lyrics of Noe¨l Coward
.
While every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of a number of other works quoted in this book, it has proved impossible in certain cases to obtain formal permission for their use. The publishers would be glad to hear from any copyright holders they have not been able to contact and to print due acknowledgement in future editions. Works whose copyright holders have so far proved untraceable are as follows:
Two Lives
by Winifred Haward Hodgkiss, published by Yorkshire Art Circus ();
Rose: My Life in Service
by Rosina Harrison, Cassell & Co. (); the poem ‘Old Maid’s Child’, reprinted in
The Single Woman
by Margery Fry;
In Love with Life
by Beatrice Gordon Holmes, Hollis & Carter ();
A Victorian Son – An Autobiography
by Stuart Cloete, Collins ();
Prelude and
Fugue
by Dame Joan Evans, Museum Press ();
Life Errant
by Cicely Hamilton, J. M. Dent ();
Call Me Matron
by Cassy Harker with Jack Glattbach, Heinemann, London ();
It’s Only the Sister
and
Old Maids Remember
, Peter Davies ( and ), by Angela du Maurier.
The archive of working-class autobiographies at Brunel University has been an invaluable resource; the authors of these most poignant of unpublished works –
May Jones, Amy Gomm, Elizabeth Rignall, Norah Elliott and Amy Langley – and their hereditary copyright holders are lost in the mists of time, but should any of them emerge the publishers will be equally happy to give proper credit to them in any future editions.
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Index
abortions,
–; happiness and
Ackland, Valentine, ,
fulfilment, –; and ageing,
Adam, Ruth:
I’m Not Complaining
, –;
see also
spinsters and –;
A Woman’s Place
,
xii
spinsterhood
advertisements: for matrimony, –
Baldwin, Monica,
Africa, –
Balfour, Lady Eve, ;
The Living
Aldington, Richard, –;
Soil
,
Death of a Hero
,
balls
see
dances and dancing Allen, Grant,
Bankhead, Tallulah,
Allen, Marian,
Banks, Misses (bookshopowners),
Allen, Mary,
Angell, Irene, , , , ,
Bark, Evelyn,
animals: love for, –
Barlow, Miss (print-worker),
Appleby Castle, Westmorland,
Barney, Natalie,
Aristophanes:
Lysistrata
, n Barron, Phyllis,
Armstrong-Jones, Sir Robert,
Bath, Alexander George Thynne,
arts: women in, –
th Marquis of,
Ashford, Daisy:
The Young Visiters
, Beauchamp, Joan,
Beavan, Margaret,
Asquith, Herbert Henry, st Earl,
Beck, Dr Diana,
Beckett, Phyllis,
Astor, Nancy, Viscountess, , ,
Bedford College, London,
,
Beesley, Edith,
aunthood, –, ;
see also
Belloc, Hilaire, –
Universal Aunts
Benson, E.F.,
Austen, Jane, ;
Sense and
Bentley, Eleanor (Nellie), –
Sensibility
, n Bentley, Nicolas,
Australia: emigration to, –
Bentley, Phyllis: background,
Aves, Geraldine, , , ,
–; marriage hopes unfulfilled,
Aylward, Gladys,
–, , , ; writings,
–, ; cares for mother,
bachelor girl: as term, –; in
–; owns car, ;
literature, ; manuals and
Inheritance
, ;
O Dreams, O
guides for, –; activities,
Destinations
,
Index
Bergman, Ingrid, n
independence, ;
The Dark
Berlin, Irving,