by Adam Thorpe
Tues. 17th March 1953
Clear. Pork Chop. Canned peas tasted off.
Typing & collating all day. Headache. H. has decided to re-do his adolescence (‘too miserable, got to jolly it all up’) so that’s more transcripts. Oh dear, Mr B., if you don’t mind my saying so, I do find the Soundmirror irksome (that’s the word) to operate. Irksome, Violet? Irksome, Mr B. You do realise what you’re saying, Violet, don’t you? You’re saying that £69 10s worth of the latest in magnetic tape recorders ought to be chucked up because you’re too damned fool to learn it. Now where’s my doughnut? At least I’m not working for Mr Evelyn Waugh, I always tell myself, after what Gladys Unsworth passed on that time. Pure poison, she said. 10 p.m., & he’s still recording: comes down through floorboards of study. Like a tummy rumble. Amazing that he can find so much to talk about. I couldn’t.
Wed. 18th March 1953
Clear a.m., overcast p.m. Toad-in-the-hole.
Card-indexing & filing a.m. Cross-referencing p.m. (where does one draw the line? Cd go on forever!) Went with H. to meeting of Ulverton Coronation Committee, 6.30 p.m. Wasted ten minutes struggling with stove. Herbert wants to tie in Burial with Festivities. Newspaper out tomorrow, took copy of letter. Philis Punter-Wall in Chair, so arrived at A.O.B. swiftly. H. spoke after reading out letter. Mr Donald Jefferies said it was barmy, and what the heck does quotidian mean? I did warn H. about quotidian. Much too fancy. Herbert glowered. I took the reins. Said one had to think in bigger terms than our Sovereign’s Coronation: what with atomic and hydrogen bombs, the Reds, 70,000,000 homeless, refugees, world hunger and so forth, we could do our bit. What bit? (Mr Donald Jefferies.) For civilisation. At stake etc. Supposing it all goes up in smoke. Then what? Mr Norman Stroude said I haven’t the foggiest, I won’t be around. Laughter. Mr Donald Jefferies said it was still barmy. Nice Mr Stewart Daye said he liked it. Mr Sidney Bint glowered at Herbert & scratched wart menacingly. It really is unpleasant. Hygiene. Tiny pieces of it in our bread, most like. Perish the thought. What you’d see if you could would stop you eating anything, I’m sure. Ignorance is bliss when it comes to the microscopic, as Vernon Crawshaw would always say. He’s a funny one. Red rose my foot. Wouldn’t hurt a fly, though. Just not my sort. Always smelt of that stuff they bottle dead things in, that was the trouble. Mr Norman Stroude put his arm on my shoulder & squeezed. Breath beery. Said what do you want to know about my daily life, Miss Nightingale? All contributions welcome, I said, looking straight out. Miss Enid Walwyn said it was a super idea and clapped her hands. Herbert smiled. Miss Walwyn has a way with words. Rather high voice. Dr Scott-Parkes said in his capacity as a local man whose family had tended the sick for three generations etc., he felt it tended to the morbid, and had no place in the Age of Hope. Herbert said the Age of Neuroses, rather boomingly. Dr Scott-Parkes took off spectacles and blinked slowly at him, like in surgery. There’s some odd little tale about the Scott-Parkes, but I can’t remember what. Dark cupboards. Will have to ask Mrs Dart. Except she always goes on so and expects a cup of tea and a digestive at the end of it and nothing gets done. Can’t watch her when she’s having her tea-break. Sip like a bath going out. Digestive dunked to soften it. She ought to get teeth, at least. It really is very chill in the Village Hall. Mr Sidney Bint said what’s going into it – ten pounds of aniseed balls? H. said we didn’t quite catch that Sidney old man. Urn making queer noises so break for tea. New lavender-coloured cups, very nice, result of Horticultural Society Square Dance Raffle. Hortic’s property therefore, but all welcome to use. What about breakages? Ah, said Mrs Whiteacre, that’s a question for the committee. Which one, pray? She wasn’t sure. All these fuzzy edges, it’s a wonder things go on. People break things and don’t report them, said Mr Bint. In a queer voice. Discussion resumes. H. reads out letter again. Lots of nods. Motion carried by majority of I. Mr Donald Jefferies suggests it happens after bonfire. Bonfire? Biggest ever, to be made out of waggons. Waggons? Splendidly combustible. A new Elizabethan era. Ties in with Mr Bradman’s do. Burying the past and all that. Passing of horse and cart in favour of tractor & trailer. H. says I’m not burying the past. Mr Bint says aniseed balls again. H. says what? Mr Jefferies says it all ties in. He and Scouts to scour the parish for all sorts. Waggons, carts, ploughs, old farming tools etc. Biggest bonfire ever. Beacon. Beacons to be lit from Land’s End to John O’Groats. Ulverton’s to be the biggest and brightest, etc. Mrs Whiteacre says do you realise she’ll be same age as first one? Our Sovereign. Motion carried, none against, I abstention (Miss W., who is fond of waggons needless to say) and Meeting breaks up amicably. Herbert spent evening, after combing session, hopping about floor of living room and spilling his whisky on rug. I was very satisfied with my contribution. H. pecked me on forehead when I gave him his nightcap. Bristly, like Kenneth. Nearly mentioned Tampax matter, but balked at last moment. Chill tonight. Orchard House rather draughty with easterly. Whistles. Plum flicking again. Brand’s Essence definitely buoying appetite. Bit worn out, actually. What with
Thurs. 19th March 1953
Clear, windy. V. cold. Hard frost. Luncheon meat.
Typing & collating a.m., ’phoning p.m. Mrs Iris Webb popped round tea-time. Gave us all her support. Had read the newspaper letter. Could her little daughter Susan show us her needlepoint? H. said needlepoint wasn’t on the list. But you asked in your letter for local contributions. Representative is the word, said Herbert. (Why does greatness have to be so gruff sometimes?) Mrs Webb leaves in bit of a huff. H. turns to me: what is bloody needlepoint? Bell rings. Mrs Maud Oadam. She has brought along her grandfather Ralph’s animal traps. Horrid. H. says that’s for the bonfire. Mrs Oadam leaves in a bigger huff than Mrs Webb. I meant THE bonfire, H. shouts. Bell rings. Mr Horace Rose holding a footman’s jacket. His father’s. Rather fine. Nice gold buttons. Used to serve up at the big house. Serve up what? Serve, says Mr Rose, with a sniff. H. says, politely, I am concerned with the present, not the past. Modern times! 1953! Mirro Modern Cleanser. Deaf Aids. Auto-changer gramophones. Projection television. Oxo cubes. Coloured magazines. Plastic switches. Phensic tablets. Tampax internal sanitary protection (aha). Magnetic tape recorders. Silvifix Hair Cream. And so on. Do you see? A single example of anything modern that will fit. Not a footman’s jacket, Mr Rose. Go and see Mr Jefferies. That is his department. Mr Rose told H. that he was an ungrateful bugger and why doesn’t he bury himself too while he’s about it? Left in a bigger huff than Mrs Oadam. Not a good start. Left notice on gate: ‘All Contributions For Posterity, Please Bring Sat. May 2nd or Sun. May 3rd.’ H. retired early, so took opportunity to search Deposit Room for missing personal item. Not in ‘Health & Hygiene’ boxes. Nearly gave up. Clock ticking made me nervous. Chill. Switched on new electric fire though rather loud click might wake H. in room above, I feared. Did not consider ‘Domestic Comforts’ as already indexed it, but only to F with ‘Medical Advances’. Searched without success in unpleasant material (rupture girdles, stethoscope, hypodermic syringes etc.). Then noticed them (Tampax) clear as day tucked into ‘Vogues & Luxuries’ box along with sunglasses, powder compact, lipstick, electric mop etc. Vogues & Luxuries! Greatness does have its oversights. Am quite irritated. Have to have a word. Fuzzy edges. Where does one Section end and the next begin, I ask myself. Scald still tender.
Whoops – left electric fire on. Have to go up. Drat.
Fri. 20th March 1953
Mild, damp. Kippers.
Typing all day. H. in London. Sneaked into living room and watched dance programme – Jack Parnell etc. Put the Ivor Novello and one of Herbert’s (Tommy Kinsman & his Dance Orchestra – rather good) on Autochanger & got it to work. Danced around room till giddy. Knocked over vase & chipped off lip. One of the Chinese pair H. says looted from Peking palace in Mr Mao’s revolution. Priceless. Tried to stick it back on, but wdn’t hold. Blame Mrs Dart? Don’t want H. to think I go in living room as matter of course. He’s funny about that.
Sat. 21st March 1953
Mild, d
amp. Pork pie.
Indexing a.m. & p.m. ‘Medical Advances’ rather unpleasant. Makes me feel morbid. Keep seeing Joan Lowe’s husband sunk in chair. Sick-room. Disinfectant worse than what it was getting out. Broke her, really. Lucky Father went when he did, perhaps. In prime. Bang. Walked to clear head. Up to White Horse. They ought to scour it, or whatever. Daffs in beech clump near barrow. Friendly robin. Shoes held up well in mulch. Thought how difficult to tree-spot without leafage. Herbert’s drawings always v. accurate: said once he kept file of tree sketches so all his pictures have same trees in background. Shd I start on about Tampax? Got them back, at least. He might not notice. H. getting more & more short as day draws nearer. Ticked me off tonight for not stirring powder in cocoa. Floating about on top. Makes me giddy, he said. Well I never. And how’s YOUR contribution going, my dear? Very well, thank you, Mr B. (MUST start it TOMORROW.) Just found half-sucked acid drop stuck on dressing-room table. Feel like Miss Marple, sometimes.
LIFE UNDER HERBERT E. BRADMAN.
by Violet Nightingale
(File …?)
Introduction
I first started with
I came to the country the countryside to the village of Ulv
On the eve of war, when
I walked up the gravel drive of Orchard House that summer’s day with
I scrunched
Being Mr Bradman’s personal secretary (he prefers the term ‘assistant’, but the post was advertised using the former title), I was always seen by him as being an integral part of the ‘Project’, if only to collate the relevant data, type
With his half-moon spectacles and ill-cut jacket, Mr Bradman struck me at first sight as one of those employers who would forever need ‘tidying up’ – even to the extent of supplying my wages now and
Knowing Herbert E. Bradman to have been one of the leading artists on ‘Punch’ for many years (see ‘Collected Works’ and magazine samples) I expected that diffidence to worldly matters that goes hand-in-hand with the artistic life. I was thoroughly prepared to find umbrellas in the refrigerator (see ‘Domestic Comforts’) and the chicken hanging in the hall, as you might say! So I was surprised, on that July day of 1939, scrunching up the drive, to find a man to open the door on the door opening wholly in command of himself, punctilious in the extreme, and courteous. He was dressed in a Harris Tweed jacket, which although rather well-used, was cert and slightly burnt on the sleeve, was certainly of top quality. He received me in the main sitting room of his house: this being a generous pile construction of a somewhat mediaeval look, though built (according to the inlaid stone) as recently as 1929, on the former site of the Manor orchard – several ancient pear-trees, three apple-trees, and one dwindling plum scraping my bathroom window to attest attesting to that fact, and the old brick wall, of course. He shook my hand warmly, and showed me his ‘studio’, a perfectly charming converted garage with a huge skylight facing North. Our problems with our battles to keep this clear of a Virginia creeper which he refuses to uproot have given rise to many of his famous ‘Gardener In A Sweat’ cartoo humorous drawings, and furnished our professional relationship with the kind of laughter discovered one finds on only at on the tops of precarious ladders. Although
Although I had, like many others, confused Mr Herbert E. Bradman with Mr H. E. Bateman (they happen they unfortunately share the same initials – see ‘Minor Rivals’ section of ‘Commentary on the Collected Works’), Herbert (or Mr B., as I like to call him) jocularly) has no singular trade-mark like Mr Bateman’s characters, whose horrified popping eyes leave me disg more repelled than amused. Neither, indeed, is he equipped with a regular sinecure like Mr Arth Alb like Mr Bestall’s ‘Rupert the Bear’ strip in the ‘Daily Express’, or Mr A. B. Payne’s famous trio in the ‘Daily Mirror’ (I myself attended the 1928 rally of ‘Gugnuncs’ at the Royal Albert Hall!) Instead, Herbert strives to capture the modern way of life and its peculiar idiosyncrasies in a careful, almost painstaking line. Enthusiasts of his work (and there are still a fair number) have taken pleasure in identifying the makes of car in his ‘Modern Motoring Mania’ series, or the species of flower in his ‘Irene Rambler’ strip for the ‘Schoolgirl’s Own Annual’, in which her highly amusing muddy adventures ran from 1924 to 1927. The manner in which he can sum up whole personalities with a few deft strokes of his pen has earned him many admirers: as he has famously said – ‘get the nose right, and the rest follows!’ I have come to love to cherish his grand scenes of modern bustle and confusion, from which there always seems to be a policeman’s frantic arm emerging; or those well-known farmyard scenes of pretty milkmaids and ruddy yokels scattering cocks an cockerels hens a their poultry and or and those society galas with their slim ladies and monocled young men, all about to meet with disa catastrophe.
Sun. 22nd March 1953
Mild, damp. Chicken, prunes & custard.
Matins. Sermon rather dull on Contrition or something. Always reminds me of a car part, Contrition. Young Rev. Appleton has nice voice, a waste. Church cd do with electric heaters, stinks of paraffin. H. chatty over lunch. Hasn’t noticed chipped lip? Will plead ignorance if does, for sake of Project. Walked up to Plum Farm to check on wood dog violet behind. Mr Desmond Dimmick in yard, cutting down that nice big tree. Hailed me to come over unfortunately & had to enter. Dung everywhere. Stink still on shoes. Wanted to show me his implements: went into big old barn. Funny-looking plough, harrow, manure knife (!), something beginning with D (dribble?) and sheep-bells etc. all in heap under cobwebs. Had read our letter and so forth. I said my bit about present, not past. Said he’d give us fertiliser bag. What we needed was lots of fertiliser spread about & grass dug up like in war. That or starvation. Then the usual if my old grandad Harry etc. Always blamed you Northerners and all yr smoke, Miss Nightingale. And that Squire! Barn full of dust, got right into my tubes. Sudden shaft of sun showed it all up, like searchlight. I don’t think agricultural matters will ever be my cup of gladness, as Father wd say. You Northerners my foot. Showed me swallows’ nest, though. Come back every year and as old as the barn (1713 on the lintel!) but they always say that. Started ‘contribution’ after tea–bad start but picked up after a bit. Queer putting down yr own life. Though it’s more Herbert’s really of course. Wood dog violet out, anyway.
Mon. 23rd March 1953
Cold, sunny. Spam.
Typing all day. H.’s new transcripts completely different version of his teenage years. Same person? Woman’s Hour had nice thing on widows. Made me cry, thinking of Kenneth. Daft. H. took my hand after combing session and said I was his staff. Hip back again. Asked Mrs Dart about the Scott-Parkes story. Well, I never. Long time ago, though.
Tues. 24th March 1953
Cold, overcast. Lamb chop.
Typing & ’phoning. Nice postcard of Florence from Shirley Leatherbarrow. She does get about. Miss Walwyn round after school. Loads of giggling up there. Stamping shook plaster off. Don’t remember room being this chill and damp. Basements are the devil to get warm. Bit off-colour. At least office is warm, being above living room. What a queer, higgledy-piggledy house this is! All these bits of stairs. My bathroom that bit warmer cos that bit higher. Pity window is tinted in bathroom cos nice view of garden otherwise. Mind you, who knows who or what might peer in if it wasn’t. Never feel quite private on lavatory as it is. That plum branch gives me the frits sometimes. Have to have big lop & burn session. Hillman Minx brought round by Mr Moon’s son Ted of the gummy forelock, Lanchester part-exchanged. Quite sad to see it go. Been a part of life here all along. Had nice comfortable smell, like the vestry at St Catherine’s. I do worry about Herbert’s driving. It’s not the same, I tell him, you do have to keep on the right side of the road these days, even in the country. Road through village busier and busier since they let the petrol go. Always tell the articulated lorries by my tooth-glass.
Wed. 25th March 1953
Cold, grey. Kidneys.
Cross-referencing and labelling. Off-colour. Coronation Commi
ttee Meeting at 6.30 p.m.: they spent twenty minutes trying to get that stove to light. Lucky I’d got the long johns on, given my circulation problems. Wanted to have map of Burial Site. Herbert said it’s part of tennis-court at end of garden. Mr Bint said you haven’t got a tennis-court. H. said it was turned to vegetables at opening of war, but I still call it the tennis-court Sidney. Cd have sworn H. said ‘wart’ instead of ‘war’. It’s so easy. Like ‘Mr Short’ for little Mr Long at Salford Motor Engineers. Those were times. Mrs Whiteacre said that’s what our late Sovereign did with the flower beds. H. said his bit about donating Burial Site to parish: legally common land in perpetuity etc. with cypress hedge about & access from Pightle Lane cos it’s after wall ends. That means we’ll have to maintain it said Mr Donald Jefferies. H. said you only have to keep Location Stone clean of weeds that’s not much to ask when you consider what’s at stake. What on earth is at stake? (Mrs Whiteacre). Civilisation. Oh I didn’t know civilisation was at stake (Mrs Whiteacre). We had all this last time (Mr Norman Stroude). That’s a turn-up for the books having common land give back instead of having it took away (nice Mr Stewart Daye). Let’s not go all political now (Mrs Philis Punter-Wall). Who’s going to pay for it then? (Mr Donald Jefferies). Quite a big bill after three thousand years eh? (Mr Norman Stroude). General laughter. Volunteers I’m sure (Mrs Philis Punter-Wall) but this is a Parish Council matter next item please. H. said it’s all been cleared with the P.C. Committee and did his flared nostrils thing. Dr Scott-Parkes said could I get a word in now please there’s a serious bunting problem cos of paper supplies. I can’t look at Dr Scott-Parkes in quite the same way after what Mrs Dart told me. Will try and order book from library. Although I’d better not carry it about in case he sees me with it. Never know what he might do. Sins of the fathers and so forth. Might have been handed down to him, in the blood, etc. He has got funny eyes. Jealousy! Best keep out of it. I felt like strangling Rita Smelt that time. She and poor Kenneth. Well she did go on so. Triumphant. In the back row, Violet! Those were times. Can’t see a picture of Shirley Temple without feeling nasty. Mr Stroude said use toilet paper, winked at Miss Walwyn. Rev. Appleton present this time said he’s got so much junk in vestry must be some bunting somewhere. Junk? He does like to appear broad-minded. Philis Punter-Wall twitched, but she doesn’t give a lot away. Mrs Whiteacre said W.I. had lots from ’35 Silver Jubilee, but had ‘25’ on every flag goodness me wasn’t that a lot of stitching. Mr Jefferies said at least we’ll have biggest bonfire ever. Mr Daye said seems like yesterday. I said there’s rolls and rolls of canvas left by Ministry of Works up at the big house. Can see it from the woods behind. Volunteered to investigate. Thank you, Miss Nightingale. N.B.: how does Mr Bint know we haven’t got tennis-court? That’s what I mean about sitting on the lavatory.
