NELLA LAST IN THE 1950s
‘In this next volume of Nella’s diary we gain further insight into the life of this hard working, determinedly cheerful woman, and the post war society that was changing around her’ Gilda O’Neill, author of Secrets of the Heart
‘Nella Last’s diaries give a fascinating and detailed account of life in the early 1950s. The prose is such a delight to read – lively, entertaining, observational and vividly realised’ Gervase Phinn, author of Road to the Dales
Robert Malcolmson is Professor Emeritus of history at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. Patricia Malcolmson is a historian and a former executive in the Ontario public service. They live in Cobourg, Ontario and Nelson, British Columbia.
The Mass Observation Archive at the University of Sussex holds the papers of the British social research organisation Mass Observation. The papers from the original phase cover the years 1937 until the early 1950s and provide an especially rich historical resource on civilian life during the Second World War. New collections relating to everyday life in the UK in the 20th and 21st century have been added to the original collection since the Archive was established at Sussex in 1970.
ALSO AVAILABLE
NELLA LAST’S WAR:
The Second World War diaries of Housewife, 49
‘I relished it … her personality is so powerful … There are so
many things to admire about her‘ Margaret Forster
NELLA LAST’S PEACE:
The post-war diaries of Housewife, 49
‘Tender, intimate, heartbreaking and witty – it grants us the
privilege of knowing a stranger‘s heart‘ A. L. Kennedy
NELLA LAST IN THE 1950s
Further diaries of Housewife, 49
Edited by
PATRICIA AND ROBERT MALCOLMSON
Published in Great Britain in 2010 by
PROFILE BOOKS LTD
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This eBook edition published in 2010
Mass Observation material © Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive Nella Last in the 1950s, selections and editorial matter © Patricia and Robert Malcolmson, 2010
The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
eISBN 978 184765 286 7
CONTENTS
Map: Nella’s Cumbria
Introduction
Nella Last’s Family, Friends, Neighbours and Associates
CHAPTER ONE Troubles and Trials: January–February 1950
CHAPTER TWO Public and Private: February–April 1950
CHAPTER THREE Snapshots of Society: May–August 1950
CHAPTER FOUR Fragilities and Familiarities: September–December 1950
CHAPTER FIVE Getting By, Getting On: December 1950–May 1951
CHAPTER SIX Summer and Sons Return: May–August 1951
CHAPTER SEVEN Comings, Goings and Public Affairs: September–December 1951
CHAPTER EIGHT Times Change: January–July 1952
AFTERWORD July 1952–December 1953
February 1953: Helping the Victims of Floods
Glossary
Money and Its Value
Chronology
Editing Nella Last’s Diary
Mass Observation
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
INTRODUCTION
‘I can never understand how the scribbles of such an ordinary person, leading a shut-in, dull life, can possibly have value.’
Nella Last wrote the words above in her diary on 2 September 1949. Tens of thousands of people have now read and enjoyed some of her diaries, available in two edited books.* Many have also seen the television film inspired by her wartime diaries, Housewife, 49, starring Victoria Wood, which drew attention to the remarkable efforts of this previously largely unknown writer. Perhaps some day someone will be able to claim to have read all that she wrote for Mass Observation; we estimate it to be in the vicinity of ten million words – possibly more – which must make it one of the longest in the English language. And she didn’t start it until she was forty-nine years old.
‘When I was a girl at school and was asked what I wanted to be,’ Nella Last wrote on 16 October 1952, ‘I used to say “a writer” – but meant of books!’ She was undeniably assiduous in her self-imposed task of writing, virtually daily, and often at great length – 1,000 words, 1,500 words, occasionally 2,000 words in a day – for over a quarter of a century. Without doubt, she was a tireless, dedicated writer, a lover of words. Usually, except on those rare occasions when she was away from home, she wrote at night, in bed (though some entries were written earlier in the evening or even late afternoon) – she and her husband had separate bedrooms* – and her practice was to summarise the events and routines of the day, starting with how she felt when she woke up and concluding with how she was feeling or what she was thinking as she was about to turn out her light. In some entries she added commentary or ruminations or personal reminiscences – in other words, she allowed her mind and pen to wander. She stuck resolutely with her writing even though none of it was published during her lifetime (except for a few passages from her wartime diaries that were printed anonymously in Mass Observation’s own books), and she only gave up writing shortly before her death in 1968.
Nella admired creativity, even as she credited herself with possessing little of it. ‘It must be grand to be gifted,’ she wrote on 29 September 1950, ‘to be able to create a picture or piece of carving or sculpture, above all write a novel or play.’ There was a part of her that wanted to escape the mundane, the necessities of life, the narrowness of routine and convention in rather out-of-the-way Barrow-in-Furness, a shipyard town, population around 67,500, which was then in Lancashire and is now in Cumbria.** And while in these years she never moved from Barrow physically – though, since she did live close to the Lake District, day trips there, usually to Coniston Water or Lake Windermere, were a great tonic for her – her ability to write allowed her to give voice to her experiences in Barrow and turn them and her thoughts about living into often memorable prose. On a couple of occasions she seemed to think of this writing as the equivalent of books. ‘I feel sometimes’, she wrote on 17 April 1951, ‘I must have written all the books I would have liked to write – if I’d been clever enough – in the shape of letters and diaries for M-O.’ Some months later, on 16 October 1952, she said that ‘I often wonder how many long long novels in words I’ve written, the hundreds of letters. Come to think of it, my diaries alone would count up to a few books in the years since 1939.’ (Her letters, none of which is known to survive, were written mainly to her two sons, Arthur and Cliff, born in 1913 and 1918 respectively, after they left home in the 1930s.)
Nella and her husband, Will, who had his own small joinery business, had moved into their semi-detached house on a new estate ‘on the outskirts of town’ in 1936, and by the early 1950s the population of Ilkley Road itself – the Lasts lived at number 9 – was (in Nella’s eyes) ageing. ‘Most of us are
elderly or old people,’ she wrote, ‘none given to standing talking at the front. Our gossiping is always done over the back fence, when sweeping, hanging out mats or clothes.’ The locality was ‘not the friendly all-together type of district where anything communal goes on. We pass the time of day or walk up from the bus with neighbours, and that’s all’ (6 June 1953). There were few children near by, and those who make appearances in the diary are commonly visiting or talked-about grandchildren.
The unifying force in a diary is usually the mind of the diarist him- or herself; the period and occurrences written about may or may not have noticeable unity. Nella Last’s War is framed by the realities of the Second World War. It starts when the war starts and ends when it ends, and thus it benefits from this chronological clarity. While Nella Last’s Peace does not have this sort of obvious thematic coherence, it does convey a lot about the after-the-war atmosphere and common experiences of English life from the middle of 1945: transitions (many of them painful) from war to peace; comparisons between wartime and peacetime states of mind; letdowns and disappointments; the many different ways in which people hoped to move on (or feared moving on); and the drabness and austerity of post-war life in a nearly bankrupt nation. In Nella Last in the 1950s there is a kaleidoscope of subject matter and sentiment – anxiety about the possibility of another war, changes in popular culture, new technologies, ‘modernising’ trends – and this variety has informed the choices we have made in selecting what to print. Our selections represent around 10 per cent of the original diary for January 1950 to July 1952, though the percentage varies significantly from chapter to chapter (her writing from 1950, for example, is presented much more fully than her writing from 1952). While the central reality of Nella Last’s diary is that it records a life unfolding in the ongoing present, without the wisdom of hindsight, it also testifies to changes in society – the intimate world of family and friends as well as the larger world of neighbourhood, city and nation.
Nella Last’s diary is rich in detail and commentary – and decidedly unpredictable. It is full of surprises. As she regularly observed herself and others, new subjects kept cropping up, along with new perspectives, which arose from various circumstances and situations. Often she was at home, usually alone with her husband and cats; at other times she was out and about, noticing public incidents and participating in or overhearing conversations. Sometimes her writing is descriptive, at other times it is judgemental or reflective. Her mood was sometimes edgy or dark and brooding, at other times buoyant or at least intense – and this is the writing that our selections highlight. Her subject matter constantly changes, for her life and the lives of those she knew changed, and she frequently had novel observations to report, new stories to relate, fixed opinions to reconsider or expand on, endings or beginnings that she thought were worth writing about. In some sense her diary was, for her, a journey of everyday discovery and reflection; and her pen – which, when little was happening, might resort to recording the minutiae of meals, the weather, shopping, prices and bodily complaints – was always ready to find words for whatever was out of the ordinary, or perhaps ordinary but waiting to be described in an attractive, even captivating, way.
These are the literary and intellectual strengths that we have tried to highlight in this edition. Their presence (or absence) during any period of time is the main determinant of the fullness (or sparseness) of our selections. Some periods of her writing are richer than others, and some days in her life offered more in the way of incident and stimulus than others. Virtually no one who wrote at such length almost every day, whether the day was eventful or uneventful, lively or dreary, could produce prose of sustained high quality. The job of her editors, we believe, is (in part) to approach her diary as raw material from which an attractive book can be fashioned. The more technical aspects of our editorial practice, which are similar to those followed in Nella Last’s Peace, are summarised in an appendix. The symbol † indicates a word defined or a proper name identified in the glossary (pp. 280–83).
NELLA LAST’S FAMILY,
FRIENDS, NEIGHBOURS AND
ASSOCIATES
Arthur
Nella’s elder son
Arthur (Procter)
A teacher; husband of Margaret
Atkinson, Mr and Mrs
Next-door neighbours
Christopher
Nella’s younger grandson
Cliff
Nella’s younger son; lives in Australia
Dearie
Nella herself (as she was known by family)
Diss, Mrs
Head of the local Women’s Voluntary Services (WVS)
Edith (Last)
Arthur’s wife
Flo
Sister of Nella’s husband
George (Holme)
Neighbour; husband of Jessie
Gilbert
Apprentice in joinery shop
Gran
Deceased maternal grandmother; a Rawlinson
Harry
Brother of Nella’s husband
Helm, Mr and Mrs
Neighbours in the house attached
Higham, Mrs
Friend
Howson, Mrs
Friend and neighbour
Jessie
Neighbour; wife of George
Joe
Cousin of Aunt Sarah; lives with her
Jones, Mrs
Neighbour; mentally ill
Kath
Daughter of George and Jessie
Ken
A nephew
Leo
Nephew of Mrs Howson; lives with her, his Aunt Mary and Mrs Stable, his grandmother
Margaret
The Atkinsons’ younger daughter; now married
Mary (Stable)
Sister of Mrs Howson; lives with her
Miller, Dr
Family physician
Mother
Mother-in-law
Murphy
Cat
Newall, Mrs
Paid part-time secretary of the WVS
Norah (Redhead)
The Atkinsons’ elder daughter
Peter
Nella’s elder grandson
Salisbury, Mrs
Cleaning helper
Sarah, Aunt
Sister of Nella’s late mother
Shan We
Siamese cat
Sheila (Diss)
Daughter-in-law of Mrs Diss
Stable, Mrs
Mother of Mrs Howson and Mary Stable; lives with them
Steve
Husband of Mrs Howson
Wadsworth, Dr
Psychiatrist
Will
Nella’s husband
Willan, Miss
Associate in the WVS
CHAPTER ONE
TROUBLES AND TRIALS
January–February 1950
‘Such a heavy dull day,’ Nella wrote on 31 December 1949, ‘with the feeling in the air that the old year was actually dying. … Ever since I can remember I had a sadness on me on New Year’s Eve. Cliff always teased me about my “Hogmanay Blues”.’ The next day, the first of the New Year, she and Will visited Aunt Sarah and Sarah’s cousin Joe in Spark Bridge and then returned home to spend the evening alone.
Sunday, 1 January. The fire soon blazed when poked. I had banked† it with slack† and coal dust dampened, and I made tea, meat sandwiches (tinned), crushed pineapple and whipped cream, Xmas cakes and mince pies. I wished there had been someone in to share, as we sat by the fire and I stitched at my crazy patchwork. I felt the ‘blues’ I’d missed last night enfold me like a mist, helped no doubt by an article in an American magazine the Atkinsons sent in, speaking of war as inevitable after 1951, and hinting at atomic bombs being puerile when compared to the germ bombs Russia was concentrating on. All my fears and conjectures of before this last one rushed over me. I felt if I turned suddenly I’d see some of Arthur’s friends’ faces as they argued against such a thing as �
��too inhuman’ etc. I thought of the unrest of today, the state of affairs in Egypt, hoping if King Farouk did lose his throne for ‘romance’, it had as little effect as it had when it happened in England.* I felt, as I thought of one upset or worry, it brought its fellows along. I heard my husband ask me something and looked up to see him waiting for an answer. He was ‘thinking how neglected we have let your parents’ grave get – we will have to go up and clean the marble stone as soon as the weather gets better’. I felt it was the limit, and tuned in to Palm Court, which he had earlier refused as his head ached, and then we listened to the first instalment of The Virginians – sounds promising.
Tuesday, 3 January. Though it still rained heavily I persuaded my husband to go to the pictures to see The Hasty Heart. Such a well acted picture. It’s a long time since we have enjoyed a picture so much. It had stopped raining, we walked home, and I soon had the fire blazing warmly, and did cheese and toast. Before we settled down, Mrs Howson and Steve came in, with the air of staying the evening. I did feel so glad. Then there was a ring, and an old school friend of Cliff’s came in, one I’d never met when Cliff was at home. He is a ‘fridge’ engineer on a line of steamers that take frozen meat from Australia and America and bring it to England, and while in Adelaide had seen Cliff’s exhibition posters the week after it had closed, and read the notices of the ‘clever English sculptor’, and tried to track Cliff down in Melbourne without success, so called for his address so as to find him next trip. We had a real merry party, laughing and joking. Steve and he soon got yarning. I opened a tin of Australian chopped ham, and there was rum butter, chocolate biscuits and Xmas cake, and the table looked like a real party, and the cats were as delighted as I was – they are nice animals – to see them happily being ‘one of us’. Their heads turning as if listening and enjoying everything was comical. Alan was so taken with Shan We, and I begged him to tell Cliff as much as he could of my little cats’ funny ways. Shan We blinked understandingly and shared tit bits of chopped ham offered. Alan had to rush off to catch the last bus to take him to Walney but is coming again if he can before he rejoins his ship. Steve said, ‘Well, we didn’t think we were coming to a party when we came across. It has been a jolly evening.’ I looked at my husband, sitting so quiet, who had refused even to sit at the supper table or eat anything in case it made him have a wakeful night, and sighed. But I was so grateful for my happy evening. I feel sometimes as if my face is ceasing to fit me properly, as if it creaks if I laugh. It’s not good to get into a deep rut of passive acceptance of sickness of any kind, yet it is so difficult at times.
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