Diary of an Ordinary Woman

by Margaret Forster

  28 April

  Mabel’s mother has bought her a typewriter. It is not new but is in good working order. Mabel is to teach herself how to type so that she will be able to get a job in an office as soon as term ends. Her mother says that since Mabel is a proficient piano player learning the keys of the typewriter will be easy for her. This makes Mabel angry because there is no comparison. But she is doing her best to learn from the chart which came with the machine. She showed me the exercises she does and I tried them. It is much more difficult than it looks. Each hammer needs to be struck quite hard to make an impression. It took me ages simply to write my name. Father says Mabel’s mother is very wise and that she has the right idea because, with so many men at the war, offices need girls to type and Mabel will get a job easily. He made my blood run cold by asking if I had not thought myself of becoming a typist and earning money straightaway after leaving school instead of more studying. I said no, very firmly.

  2 May

  I stayed at Mabel’s house for the night which was not the pleasant experience I had hoped. Her mother did not seem to want me to be there although she must have agreed or Mabel would not have invited me. I think Mabel is very lonely. There is only her mother and her aunt and her aunt’s son who is five and not much good as a cousin. The house is very quiet and tidy, even the little boy does not run around or shout like our twins but then he must miss his father, I suppose. Both Mrs Crowthorne and her sister wear black from head to toe. Mabel talks about her father sometimes and it is obvious she loved him very much. She has shown me photographs and he looks a kindly man. He was an officer and led his men into battle and was killed in an instant. He was awarded a medal posthumously for gallantry but that is no comfort to Mabel. Her mother gets a pension, but it is not enough to pay for Mabel’s further education, or so her mother tells her. She says she feels the war has wrecked her life and all her plans are useless. I do not know what to say to comfort her. She says she envies me and I do not like the feeling this gives me. It makes me uncomfortable to be envied. I wonder what I would do if I were in Mabel’s shoes but there is not much point in wondering because there would be nothing that I could do. What can a girl in Mabel’s circumstances do? Nothing. She is stuck. She must do what she is told.

  26 May

  There has been a bombing raid. Five people killed and ninety-five injured. Father has begun again saying we must get the children out of London but so far has made no plans. He wishes the Americans would go into action now that they have committed themselves. Mabel and I have heard that there is to be a rally organised by the Women’s Peace League and we intend to try to go if at all possible. We would like to work for the League if we knew how and were not thought too young. Our mothers would not give us permission to go to any such rally so we must keep our intentions secret. We are allowed to go to the National Gallery if we go together and so we will pretend that is what we are doing when we go to the rally if it is held in Trafalgar Square which is where most rallies are held. I do so want to do something in this war to make people see it is useless and wrong. Mabel has stopped getting The Suffragette and now buys The War Paper for Women, which also comes out on a Friday and costs 1d. She says it is the official paper of the United Suffragists and that the Suffragists are more sensible than the Suffragettes because they want to work for the vote within the law. Mabel is so smart.

  6 June

  Mabel told me her aunt is going to a seance to get in touch with her husband. Mabel’s mother is scandalised and has tried to convince Amy (that is her sister’s name) that she will be hoodwinked and that there is no such thing as a spirit world but Amy is determined. Mabel says that her Aunt Amy knows someone who went to this medium and was put in touch with her son who was killed at Ypres. She had not told the medium her son’s age or his regiment or where he was killed or when, so all these details proved it really was her son. The medium spoke to her in his voice and he told her he was happy and in good company and she was not to grieve and now she is greatly comforted. Mabel’s mother is scornful but Mabel herself, to my surprise, is tempted to believe in spiritualism. She asked what I thought and I said I would like to believe in it but would take some convincing. But I would like to go to a seance and so would Mabel. Her Aunt Amy has suggested Mabel might accompany her but Mabel is afraid of her mother’s anger and does not see how she could keep such a thing secret.

  10 June

  Mabel’s Aunt Amy has been to the seance but came back bitterly disappointed though very willing to talk about it. Nothing happened. She told Mabel the medium was a very coarse sort of woman whom right from the start she did not take to though great claims are made for her. She had her hair in a net. The seance was held in the basement of a house in Suffolk Place and though it was a fine evening the room was very cold and dark with shutters closed and heavy velvet curtains drawn over the windows. It was lit by one candle set on a small table and beside the table the medium sat on a straight-backed chair which Aunt Amy said looked very uncomfortable and may have accounted for why the medium squirmed all the time and could not settle. The house belongs to Mrs Hatch, who has lost her husband and all three of her sons to the war but who speaks to them regularly through this medium and they are all well though one has a cold at the moment. Attendance is by invitation only and soft-soled shoes are requested to be worn. There were ten people there, all women, and some were weeping even before the medium was brought in. There was music playing in another room, a harp, or so Aunt Amy thought, but otherwise no sound. Mrs Hatch said everyone must close their eyes and keep very still and think hard of a loved one who had passed over. Aunt Amy did as she was told and after a while the medium began moaning and Aunt Amy peeped between her eyelids and saw she was rocking. Then in an odd, very gruff voice the medium called, Jack! I have Jack and he is looking for! and she was interrupted by a woman calling out, Me! He is looking for me, for Cissie!, and the medium went on, Cissie, yes, he is looking for Cissie and wants her to know he is thinking of her and of how he left her, in the state he did, and this woman cried, Oh! I knew he knew, I knew it, oh thank God he knows about our baby. Aunt Amy said this is how it went on and that even she, hopeful though she was and ready to believe, even she could see the trickery. She will not go again, she feels worse than ever now and is ashamed. Father says these seances are everywhere now and that they should be stopped. He asked if Mabel’s aunt had had to pay anything but I did not know and would not like to ask. If she did, it makes the whole thing worse.

  1 July

  The examinations are finished but I do not feel as happy as I should because I do not think I have done brilliantly in every subject and I may not after all get a distinction which I want so badly. Mabel probably will. She has studied so hard even though there is no point when she is doomed to office work. She says she likes to study and that it is worth doing well for its own sake surely and that one day in the future it may do her some good to have matriculated well. I do admire Mabel. My maths will have let me down. I have no doubts about the other subjects but mathematics have always been a problem, alas. It is not fair that a poor performance in one subject can spoil one’s chances of a distinction overall. Mabel is good at maths. Her grandfather was an accountant and she imagines she has inherited his facility with numbers.

  2 July

  Mabel has got a job! In only one day. She went for an interview this morning, feeling very nervous and not knowing what to wear, not that she has much choice. Even Mabel’s best clothes are rather shabby though I would never comment on them. In the end she wore her grey school skirt and a pale blue blouse she got for Christmas and a black velvet jacket of her mother’s. The jacket, needless to say, does not fit her, with her mother being much bigger. I walked with her to the Town Hall and felt sorry for how she looked but her appearance did not tell against her. They gave her a typing test first which she said was easy and she did it in a trice and the result was perfect. Then she had to read a letter in a very difficult hand and that was harder but she
understood every word except one which she had to guess and luckily her guess was correct. She waited with four other girls and then after a bit was called into an office where a man asked her questions which she said were an insult to her intelligence though she could not remember exactly what they were. She expected to be told they would let her know and that she would then be dismissed but they told her to wait again and afterwards offered her the situation. She starts work in a month’s time.

  3 July

  I thought all night about Mabel getting that job. I do not envy her and know I would hate to have to give up dreams of college and go to work in an office but still she will be earning money when I will not and this will give her an independence I will not have for years. She will be a working girl and it makes me feel somehow inferior. I dare not say any of this to anyone, especially not Mabel who would think me very ungrateful when I have all the opportunities she does not. Of course, almost all of Mabel’s money will go to her mother and aunt, for her upkeep, but she is to have 2s a week to herself and later 2s 6d, which is not nothing. She is going to save it and maybe one day pay her own way through college. I am sure Mabel could win a scholarship. Miss Bailey said she would inquire, but Mabel said even a scholarship would not be enough and she would rather not know about one at the moment.

  10 July

  Father says I am going to cost him a fortune. He did not say this jokingly either, but with a frown and crossly. It is because my book list arrived today from Goldsmiths’ College and it is very long and the books are expensive. Father says he does not see why I cannot use books from the library but he has not been in our public library for years and he does not know that its stock is very limited. He says I must try to decide which are absolutely necessary and then attempt to procure second-hand copies. He said I could spend Saturdays going round the second-hand shops in Charing Cross Road and look at the barrows of books in Gray’s Inn, but Mother immediately spoke up and reminded him there was a war on and the centre of London was a dangerous place. I think Father was a little ashamed. He said to make a copy of my book list and he will look himself. Then he said maybe it was something George could do, it would give him some purpose because he no longer seemed to have any though he was quite well. Mother flushed and said on the contrary he was not quite well and had Father forgotten that at the last medical they had declared him permanently unfit for further active service because his lungs had been damaged by the mustard gas. Father said, Slightly, and Mother said, What? and Father repeated that George’s lungs were only said to be slightly damaged but not enough to incapacitate him in civilian life. There was an atmosphere. Mother knows that Father thinks George should, as he puts it, stop lounging around. It is a year since he was invalided home and he still mopes about the house and, Father says, he cannot do that forever. At this point Mother usually weeps.

  15 July 1917

  MY BIRTHDAY. SIXTEEN today. I used to long to be 16 but now it does not seem so wonderful. I thought at 16 that I would be free of childish restraints and able to enjoy my own life and do what I wanted, but it has not turned out like that. I am not as chained to this house as I was once, because Aunt J. does such a lot, and has even found a girl to help, but still I cannot count on much time to myself and worst of all I have lost George’s room since he moved back into it and am once more sharing with Aunt J. which is almost unendurable. I asked Father to let me have his study but he said it had only been made into a bedroom as an emergency measure for George and it had been very inconvenient, was certainly not to be given up to me. I am worse off than when I was 13. And I do not have the fun I had expected at 16. I do not mean having a beau or any such thing. I have no interest in boys. And I do not wish to go to dances even if there were any to go to, but all the same I should like some fun and there is no fun because of this war. Everything is dreary. No one talks of anything but how there is no food to be got and all supplies are short, and who has been killed or wounded. I am tired of it. I know this is a very selfish attitude but I cannot help it. It has been a miserable birthday though Mother did her best and managed to get hold of the ingredients to make a cake which was very nice. Baby loved the candles.

  18 July

  I wish, this year, that we were going on holiday. Mabel, before she starts her job, has gone with her mother to a cousin’s farm in Devon and I miss her. I do not fancy a farm holiday, but I would like to be out of London at the moment. I would like to go somewhere exciting like Paris or Rome, except all of Europe is spoiled by this war. It is so hard always having to tell myself that I am lucky to be alive and to have all my family alive when I simply do not feel lucky. Mother is always reminiscing about how perfectly lovely it was to be sixteen and what a good time she and her sisters had. My generation know none of that. It is beastly to have been born in 1901. I am very sorry for myself, which I know is wrong but I cannot help it.

  *

  Millicent’s gloom continues throughout the summer of 1917 but lifts in the autumn when she starts at Goldsmiths’ College, then the largest teacher training college in the country. She is a day student, one of those without a free place, and her father pays £14 for her tuition and £7 for her dinners (which have to be taken). There are 314 women enrolled in October 1917, and only 17 men, all studying for a two-year certificate of education which will entitle them to teach in an elementary school. To Mr King’s relief, men and women are kept strictly apart, with separate entrances and common rooms. Lectures continue all day from 9.30 to 5 p.m. Millicent is very young to be allowed to enrol but perhaps because the previous year has seen the lowest enrolment ever since the college’s foundation in 1891 (though it was not until 1904 that it became an official teacher-training college affiliated to London University) her youth is overlooked. She has, at any rate, the necessary qualifications, having matriculated not with the distinction she craved (and Mabel gained) but with merit. She finds the work hard, much harder than at school, but at the same time is excited to be at College.

  *

  15 October

  I have so much to do that I have little time to write in this diary which is ironic because I actually have something of interest to record. Goldsmiths’ is such a splendid place, the very buildings I mean. I have never seen the colleges at Oxford or Cambridge but surely they cannot be more grand. I said this to Father and he roared with laughter and said there was no comparison and that I could have no understanding or appreciation of architecture if I fancied Goldsmiths’ so magnificent. I thought it was very unkind of him to say so. Why can new buildings not be as beautiful as the very old? Father said it was not worth arguing about and that one day, when I have been to Oxford and Cambridge, I will understand. Well, I feel very proud to be educating myself in such surroundings though I am overawed too and keep getting lost because the corridors are so long and look the same and I am always having to ask my way which can be embarrassing. I wish I was not so very small. I look positively childlike compared to the other students and some of them treat me like a little girl which is infuriating. I know I do not look as if I could ever be a teacher but I mean to be a good one.

  18 October

  There is a girl called Phyllis who has made friendly overtures. I am not good at making friends so I am always glad when I don’t have to. Phyllis is very attractive and lively and a bit noisy. She was reprimanded yesterday for talking in a lecture and was not a bit put out whereas I would have been mortified. She is a day student too and pays her own fees so we are in the same situation. We both wish we were boarders living in one of the hostels, especially Surrey Hostel because the girls there seem to have such fun and form quite a clique. It would be heaven not to have to go home to Grace crying and Michael shouting and the twins running around like wild beasts, but I must not complain. I could be Mabel, stuck in an office. I hardly dare meet Mabel now. She asks me about Goldsmiths’ and is so envious. I think it would be cruel to tell her how I love it so I just say it is terrifically hard work. I do not mention the fun we sometimes have, as
we did yesterday, when somehow a dog got into the lecture room and grabbed Miss Spalding’s notes and we all gave chase and ran ourselves ragged trying to catch it. It was the loveliest dog, a spaniel, and it thought it was a game and we were laughing so much we kept falling over. Eventually, it was cornered, and I was the one able to get the notes out of its mouth. They were all soggy and ruined but Miss Spalding was sporting about it.

  19 October

  Phyllis has invited me to go home with her tomorrow. Not for tea, though. She said her mother does not understand about tea. I don’t know what that means but didn’t like to ask. She has a brother at home at the moment. He is called Tom and has been wounded twice in the war, once at Verdun, and again at the third battle of Ypres where he lost an arm from the elbow down. I imagine he will be in an even worse state than George and I am prepared.