Autobiography Read online

  B.E.F.

  May 7

  I dined here last night and shall tonight. The food is better than 1918 Ritz but the champagne, of which they have only one brand, is very inferior. Censoring the men’s letters is sometimes amusing but usually monotonous, and their love-letters are so shamefully like one’s own in thought though not so prettily expressed. One man wrote today: “A lot of ships were needed to bring the British Army to France. Only two will be wanted to take it back, one for the men and the other for the identity discs.” I thought it so “good.” There is a rumour that we may be going to where Katharine is. I don’t think for a moment it’s true.

  B.E.F.

  May 12

  Yesterday afternoon I went for a walk with young d’Erlanger. He described to me his parents’ palace in Tunis, which sounded all that we have ever dreamed—terraces going down to the sea and orangeries on the beach. Thinking of you I muttered that it sounded a suitable spot for a honeymoon. He (aged nineteen) said he intended never to marry, that he was like Alfred de Musset and that all he cared for in love was “la conquête et la rupture.” I said—modestly—that I had never made a conquête and was not, I thanked God, ruptured.

  I then abstracted my thoughts and built Somerset Houses in the air for you and me. I thought how happy we should be and how, because we have never been too sentimental, marriage could brush no bloom from our romance. If we survive the war, which is a serious obstacle, it seems absurd that any smaller ones should stand in our way. Tell me what you think of this if ever you think of it at all.

  B.E.F.

  May 15

  While I was writing the above one of my brother officers walked by with another officer. I hailed them. I am sitting outside under an awning. They confessed that they had a rendezvous but sat down to have a drink until their friends arrived. Presently up turned a little poll with a wonderful command of the English language and with the promise of her sister and if necessary another friend waiting at home for entertainment. I excused myself saying that I must write my letter and as she led off the two victims she said to me quite prettily “If you are writing to your sweetheart, say that a French girl wanted you very much but that you were faithful.” Why is it that the word “sweetheart” offends me there? I can only bear it in the vocative.

  B.E.F.

  May 16

  After I left you yesterday I went almost with you to the churches we wanted to see. At the first, St Patrice, there was such a crowd witnessing First Communions that I could hardly get in. So I went to St Ouen, where also a service was going on, but there there was plenty of room and the church is most beautiful inside. I felt I could become a bore about churches. One of the little girls, I suppose the best—la rosière—made a long oration. She said it beautifully, enunciating every word distinctly and laying no stress on any, as though the whole had no meaning. There is a charm in the sexless voices of the young, not because one likes sexlessness but because one does like birds, in spite of oneself and although they get up too early. Then I strolled back to the Cathedral because I wanted to see some tombs there which I hadn’t been able to see in the morning. There was a large one of two Cardinals which I had hoped would be more like the Bishop’s, and there was a very lovely one of the husband of Diane de Poitiers—good late Renaissance—alabaster divided as it were into two stories (I mean étages, not histoires). Above the gentleman appears on horseback and in armour, very fine with smiling female figures at his head and feet representing Victory, Glory etc. Beneath him is seen a small, almost naked man, one cloth twisted round the lower part of his body, his head thrown back as though in death agony and his face mesquin and ugly. At his head kneels Diane quietly praying, at his feet a Virgin with a happy laughing child. I remember that he was a very ugly man and small as he here appears. Diane ordered the tomb. How well those people lived and with what pomp and fantasy they died. All this and more I thought of saying to you while I was looking at the tomb, and then I rejoined my friends, and then we dined.

  B.E.F.

  May 29

  I must try to carry on your education even at this distance. In the first place you mustn’t put at the top of your letter “12 p.m.” because it signifies nothing. 12 can’t be p. or a. because it’s m. itself. You must say “noon” or “midnight.” In the second place you mustn’t ever say “ignorami” when you mean more than one ignoramus. It would bore you if I explained why but take my word for it.

  As we marched out of the station very gloomily we passed a party of W.A.A.C.s, at the sight of whom our men with one accord bleated “Quack, quack, quack” until they had passed. Apparently it is the usual thing. I think it is so funny.

  B.E.F.

  May 30

  I am much warmer and much happier now, for many reasons. Soon after I had finished writing the enclosed little wail, the sun came out and the larks started singing. The larks are wonderful here. Everywhere else in France they are shot by the français sportifs, but here since neither the English or the Germans can ever hit anything they are perfectly safe, with the result that the front line has become a regular bird-refuge, and as one has anyhow always to be awake at dawn, which as you know is their favourite hour for kicking up a row, one doesn’t mind the little——

  Guy’s

  May 15

  By this time maybe you are with your battalion, and though you calm me it’s all I can bear, but I must wear blinkers and see it as nearer your return. This morning they said to me “Would you like to have a half-day, nurse, it’s less than your due?” It was illustrative of your being far from me that I answered “No, thank you, Sister, I think there is a lot I must get through this evening in the ward.” She snubbed me in replying “At Guy’s, nurse, no one is indispensable. Matron says it of herself,” So it was forced upon me and I could see nothing but disappointment at the waste of free hours without you to breathe the quiet warm air with me. Dropped in at 24 for an hour and a half to dinner with Beaverbrook, Venetia, Diana Wyndham and Nellie; the last two did not once speak. V. was dressed like an elephant in “howdahs” and sham Eastern spoils. Beaverbrook talked of the Daily Express and of how much of his interest he gave to it. Every night, he said, he rang up and told them to insert and omit so and so, and put the fact that Lady D. Manners has a new giant mastiff with a diamond collar on the front page, not the inside one. Edwin recalled an anecdote of Lloyd George at the outbreak of war, sitting in Edwin’s Duchy office, feet on table, while the question of mobilisation, or ultimatum, or what? was in the air, and delivering himself of the following “I am not against the war actually, but I am certain that I could not possibly take an active part in the conducting of it. I shall, I think, resign, though continuing to support the Government. Anyway before I make my decision I must go and consult my old uncle in Wales. We shall play an ignoble part, for in six weeks we shall have starved the women and children in Germany, and not have lost a single man.”

  In the middle of all this I got my Guy’s panic and ran wildly from the house, leapt into a taxi in Victoria Street and crossed Westminster Bridge. It looked so wonderful in the pale dead crepuscule light, and that half-finished building that we love brought my desire for you back till I stretched my arms out to it. It looked tonight so like our generation—great straight aspiring pillars cut off at the same time before they bore the weight they were built for—too lovely an edifice to be half-built, but so beautiful in its abrupt cessation. There are two high finished columns. They looked like you and me. This is written against time.

  I do not remember how Max Beaverbrook became so woven into this period. It was during Duff’s time in France that the Montagus and I saw almost daily this strange attractive gnome with an odour of genius about him. He was an impact and a great excitement to me, with his humour, his accent, his James the First language, his fantastic stories of his Canadian past, his poetry and his power to excoriate or heal. We went a lot to his house at Leatherhead, to his rooms and offices in London, and my letters to Duff are full of admiring refe
rences. Although Duff and he were never to be happy in their relationship, I am to this late day devoted to him, and though there is much to lament I have valuable memories of good deeds done for Duff, if only for my sake.

  Guy’s

  May 16

  Today was a dog day, unparalleled in beauty but of terrific devitalising heat, heat that melted etiquette and discipline. We all shirked work, and sat down in front of each other and were crusty with the patients. No. 2 regained a little lucidity when I was attending to her tonight and kept on repeating “It’s not right, dear, I know it’s not right. You shouldn’t do it. It’s not right for you to do it.” For a long time she couldn’t explain what was wrong, then at last “You’re too clean to touch me, nurse. I know it’s not right you should have to, and don’t do it. I know I’m not fit for you to touch, too foul, too foul.” It was horrible and all said very blankly and quietly, but it seemed to me very, very sensible. Mrs 22, opposite, says she doesn’t like to see her so quiet “cos it’s the quiet ones what always springs.” It was torturingly hot. I thought I must give up in the theatre. The smell of blood seemed too strong, and I had to mop Fripp’s brow for an hour, but half an hour in a freezing bath in the tea interval restored me, and at eight I was prepared to face dinner with the Montagus, but I find I dress slowly and without the happy happy hecticness of three years ago.

  Guy’s

  May 20

  Scarcely had I finished my letter to you at eleven and scarcely fallen asleep, when loud went the maroon, so I darted into my uniform, thinking there was certain to be some drill or law to follow. “Nurses of A. Section to take cover in T. Basement” as it might be, but only a Sister appeared to tell me I could do just what I liked—remain in bed in the papier-mâché house, or go over to the more concrete Nurses’ Home, or stroll in subways, or find shelter with red-dressed fallen women in the laundry. This made it all very difficult, as I only wanted to do the usual, and I couldn’t make out what that was, as everybody was either truthfully unconcerned or in the passage swanking about the lure of their beds and direct hits and yet dressing hectically and edging away out of any finding. Darling, you know I am a little frightened. If you can remember, you only just kept me right when I had measles in the big raid, but without you near me my heart did leap and flee.

  Guy’s

  May 20

  It is a thing that the stoutest campaigners of the school that walk on parapet-tops with eye-glasses flashing, and pick up shells wearing pumps the while, cannot endure—to wait three mortal hours in total darkness among strangers all alarmed, while the London Bridge gun shook our marrows and a procession of victims dead and mangled passed in the darkness. How much less can a feeble campaigner like myself endure, who when in health am used to greet a raid with a glass and laugh the bombs to inaudibility.

  I wish I might stay here until your return, writing every night and a life ordered, but Mother badgers me at all hours and ticks the days off on an almanac.

  Guy’s

  May 21

  Last night a new patient came in unexpectedly. The nurse rushed to me shouting “What do you think we’ve got in?” I guessed a Hun, a hermaphrodite or a dog-faced woman. “No,” they whispered breathlessly, “an actress,” and a poor furtive little widow actress she was, with a blue ribbon in her modest nightdress instead of an unbleached calico wardgown. She threw off a blanket in the middle of the night (the one next her, as the heat is abnormal and the ward has eight calorifiers) and the night people declared she had done this as the House Surgeon came in so as to “catch him.”

  Guy’s

  May 24

  I have one advantage over your sister Steffie in that I do not have to retire for an hour daily to think on you, but manage to do it day and night with no effort and in all companies. So if this simple method is to keep you safe you are strongly accoutred.

  There is a woman here, who because her husband failed in the carpentering business has lost her memory to the extent of not being able to remember whether she has had her dinner, or been washed or anything. It worries her terribly, especially the terror of doing something twice. Such a condition would not suit me now, but it might have had its advantages if we had forgotten we had been to Victoria Road, or had dinner, and fun for Keats if he’d forgotten his impressions of Chapman and was able to come over queer every morning.

  Guy’s

  June 2

  Today I took a florid buxom young girl’s nightdress off, preparatory to washing her, and there on her firm white arm I saw tattooed a large scroll encircled with red and white rose-wreaths. On the scroll was inscribed in copybook calligraphy the simple name “Bill Baldwin.” Was it not charming? the confidence of unalterableness, the pain endured, the chaff of her future husband—a Maupassant might be written, I thought, on the succeeding lovers’ irritation at the eternal advertisement. Do you remember the tattoo shop as we left the Old Vic and my desire for a voluntary wound “here on the thigh”? If fickle Fortune sends you back to me I think I must have a little laurel wreath or “a dove alighting” or something adaptable to other explanations and even other conditions, of course, but some commemoration of great joy I would like.

  B.E.F.

  May 25. Sunday

  We argued about Asquith and Lloyd George. One of my brother-officers maintained that Asquith was “all in with the Huns” and he believed that Mrs Asquith was a “female b——” that being as near as his limited vocabulary allowed him to get to Sapphist. He sounds dreadful but is really sweet—of the Denny type, with red hair and a large nose and a slow smile. He is Acting Captain. My other brother-officer said that Lloyd George was not what he called a clever man.

  I have been out riding all today—from seven a.m. to three and it was rather lovely. Such perfect weather. Quite close to the line, just dangerous enough to make one feel brave and think of gentlemen in England now in church.

  B.E.F.

  May 31

  It is, as you say, very odd that our friends should be blind to our love, or blind to yours at any rate. Surely they don’t doubt mine. That we should have so long and successfully deceived them thrills with pride and pleasure all the gentleman in me and slightly irritates all the cad. For the cad would be flattered—the imperious desire speaks out—he would have men mark you eyeing me, and would have them groan to be the god of such a grand sunflower. But it is very well that he should not be humoured.

  Guy’s

  June 3

  Today, my last day, I am rather glad to find myself so popular with nurses and patients. They bring me bunches of very tired flowers when they have their half-holiday and rush home to Peckham, and the young girl-patients wink at me to wash them and lie to get me. It is nice. 2 has gone to the infirmary, but 12, who has lain lost in her own dirt since I have been here, literally crawling and weighing fifteen stone and spitting unintermittently, has suddenly developed a disease, incurable, called foetid bronchitis, which makes it quite impossible for anyone to tend her unless we burn an incense cone by her bed or wear a mask. Every few hours she puts on a gasmask-snout filled with the strongest possible disinfectant and breathes it for an hour. This she thinks is a treatment but it’s only for the staff’s sake. All the fluid in her lungs, all she spits, has gone bad inside her. Could anything be worse?

  Belvoir

  June 7

  I spent the afternoon preparing food for a picnic which John begged. It was such a lovely tea in Frog Hollow. The garden is exactly like a transformation scene at Drury Lane, azaleas and syringa and asphyxiating smells. There were petits pains filled with chicken and lettuce and mayonnaise, and feathery jam tarts, and cucumber. I thought I would make a meal just like it for ourselves, and somehow we should be in that garden together, for no breeze can reach it and the flowers meet across the paths, and you would kiss me as we walked, and I should not be afraid and always looking back.

  B.E.F.

  June 7

  I am writing this in my tent after tea. My tent is the colour of spilt
claret, a beauty which I owe to theories of camouflage, although it is the colour of nothing in nature except a copper beech half-finished or a ploughed field of very red soil. In my tent there is a little grave wherein stands my bed, so that I lie no higher than the ground. So I am supposed to be immune from bombs, and so should anyone say to me after dinner “Will you walk out of the air?” I could reply, “Into my grave.”† Do you always follow my quotations, or misquotations? At night one candle makes a tent quite light and I feel very romantic in mine. I think of Saul in his and David playing to him, and of Achilles when he wouldn’t come out, and of Richard’s night before Bosworth, and Brutus and Cassius both in one tent and I’m not surprised they quarrelled.