Henley Head's Diary

1958 October - December

2011-03-22T16:03:00.000+01:00

"A race horse pulling a dung cart"

Tuesday, Oct 7th
   Heard from one of the children that Mr Hemming had left. Asked to leave because he believed in too much freedom. Hilary says I shall be asked to leave because I believe in too much discipline. Lessons were much easier today and only in the morning, so felt less tired.

Wednesday, Oct 8th
   Tried the niggers on parts of flowers, but they were inclined to fool about with magnifying glasses and tear specimens to bits. Though I am finding the teaching easier, I don't enjoy it because impossible to like the natives.

Thursday, Oct 9th
   It was a better day, so leaving a note for the fishmonger and collecting a dozen eggs in my sun hat (no sun), we drove to Chastleton, but the time was too short and I got very weary. We were shown round by a very dirty and unkempt gentleman (Mr Clutton-Brock "on the whiskey") with long fingernails, hands stained brown, the heir to Miss Wittmore Jones, and seemed interested when I told him of my time at Claydon and enquired anxiously how many we got and whether there was a book.

Sunday, Oct 12th
   Not a good day. Mrs M asked me to take four of the smallest children for over an hour while the others were singing and read to them as she was off. Dr B went on so long the tea was not laid, but when I went into the kitchen nothing was ready as the cook had gone to sleep till a quarter to six. The usual muddle and lack of organisation that I associate with Mrs Moeran. The senior children were noisy and inclined to be insolent. Because he was so bad, the unspeakable Michael had been kept on duty for another week. I came back utterly fed up with the whole place. On such days I hate the entire set up and hope the Trust will hurry up and find something for me. I suppose I was a fool to come here, but I wanted a roof over our heads, some money, and opportunity to show Mr Pierce I was not "living on friends". I have always enjoyed teaching. I don't here.

Wednesday, Oct 15th
   Day began badly with Michael stalling in first lesson. He fails to open book at the right page, then asked "what are we to do". I tell him. He groans. I say if he does not want to do the exercise he can read his book. He does not like the book. I feel infuriated - a race horse pulling a dung cart!

Sunday, Oct 19th
   In church in morning when asked to take round the bag, Jennifer suddenly announced, "I don't believe in God!". The vicar was a bit taken aback, but the bag was passed to Frances, who performed adequately.

Tuesday, Oct 21st
   Paul threw a pear slice yesterday; he said Graham had started it. When I confronted them this morning Graham remarked, "Mrs Moeran knows we are both liars, but you are a bigger liar than I am!"
   Last night we had this curious creature Dr Barrington in to coffee. He arrived at 9.45 and left at 11.15. Mary wondered what she should talk about, but she need not have bothered. He never stopped - one unending flow about the children and the school. Neither of us could get a word in to prime him with the necessary questions. A dedicated man* who wants to get a diploma in social science, no companion. I fear for Mary and me.
*Later addition: A loony - as disturbed as the children!

Wednesday, Oct 22nd
   Pymone (Mrs M) was in a very bad temper and the children were very jumpy and difficult in the morning. However my lesson on wasps' nests went over well. After tea Mrs M went to bed and left Dr B and me to cope. I read in the parlour when four boys who had been left in the playroom tried to disrupt the reading. Keith, who was in there after his bath showing most of private parts, rushed out and bawled, "You bugger off!". They did! For once I had maladjusted opinion on my side! (Keith, a large elderly boy with bad eye sight and some failure of muscular coordination, always made me think of Caliban!)

Friday, Oct 31st
   Another talk with Mary. Same old stuff. I don't like her parents. I don't realize the problems of old age and so on. Why can't I go to another school if I don't like this one.

Saturday, Nov 1st
   How pleased I am to see Saturday, my day off from all duties and teaching. After shopping in Moreton, we drove by Ford and Stanway to Stanton Buckland. Stanton I thought most rewarding and delightfully situated under the hills. The church had a fine spire and had been much enriched by the Studd family with a very dark rood screen through which glowed one of Comper's gold reredoses.

Tuesday, Nov 4th
   Cherry came to tea today on her way back from Wales to Henley. She stayed til nearly seven. She seems so happy at her new school at Slough and so much more normal in every way, less nervous and a good colour instead of pasty white. Lipscombe, by a characteristic piece of meanness, had prevented her thanking the children for her present, but she had written a letter to each.

Thursday, Nov 6th
   The girls were in purdah. I asked Dr B why they were. He replied "sexual malpractices." I realize no one ever laughs in this school. You cannot make a joke. It is misunderstood. That is one difference between the maladjusted and the normal.

Wednesday, Nov 112th
   Mary had a cold but went into Chipping Norton to shop. Still no heat in school. Children, who have only cotton pullovers, frozen. Quite ridiculous. Don't want to speak to Mrs M in front of children, but can't get hold of her alone. (Later addition: This was a part of the Moeran evasive tactics].

Saturday, Nov 15th
   Met Marjorie Wilkinson in Chipping Norton at 2.40. She was in full spate about Lipscombe all the afternoon and evening. The Prefects had included my name on their list of guests, but had been told he was not going to have a divorced man in his school! According to rumour I am now working in a borstal and Hilary has quarrelled with me!
   The man is a case. It seems he buys expensive equipment and to avoid paying breaks things which are under guarantee. But he's not only a crook. He must be suffering from some feeling of insecurity or inferiority, which makes him so fearfully jealous of me and so concerned to damn everything connected with my headship. He gets into these white rages when he is quite manic. Wilk said she really thought he might attack her when she refused to become senior mistress.

Thursday, Nov 20th
   When I went over in the morning Mrs M greeted me with the news that Dr B had gone off the rails again. Would I be careful not to lend him any money! She took him up to the doctor at Stow, leaving the children to get on as best they could by themselves. He did not appear again.

Tuesday, Dec 2nd
   Dr Barrington has been handing our rosaries. Mrs M said prayers had been said a holy water used in the dormitories and parent's might not like it. It seems Dr B wants to make trouble for Mrs M.

Thursday, Dec 4th
   Dr B and Mrs M had a slanging match before the children last night, so Miss Birch (matron) informed Mary this morning. He has been here on and off for three years and never finished a term. This time she is determined he shall. It is a very queer relationship, made queerer by the fact that Jeremy loathes him and can hardly keep his hands off him when he starts abusing his mother. It is great pity she is not in a position to pack him off, though from my point of view any man is better than no man at all!

Saturday, Dec 6th
   Met Arthur Lane off the 11.28 at Kingham. He was thinner than ever. Took him to Bledington to see the glass, which he enjoyed. In the morning there was a meet near. The hounds ran through the wood near the house and across the walled garden. When we came back from Kingham, the white entrance gate was shut with two boys guarding it. Mrs M, a reader of the New Statesman, does not approve of the chase! and this has not endeared her to the locals.

Tuesday, Dec 9th
   Went to Dr King about two o'clock. A rather cold man, but perhaps unduly professional first time. His consulting room very much a snuggery, small and a bit scruffy compared with Dr Irvine and Dr Hartley.
   A long and rather incoherent letter from Wilk. A three hour staff meeting at which Lipscombe lost his temper, they started shouting at each other and finally it broke up. Wilk thinks he may have given himself away and devoutly hopes he has. Suggested I should write to Dr Irvine as it may help to counter rumours that she thinks Mr L may be spreading about me and Nora. Did so.

Friday, Dec 12th
   We had a carol rehearsal yesterday afternoon in the church for which the rector appeared. Graham accused the back row of singing obscene words to the carols (I could not hear them amid general cacophony), but I could observe his grimaces and gestures intended to set the others laughing. Barrington is no good at training a choir. I have never hear Once in Royal David's City sung more slowly. It might have been funeral march.

Saturday, Dec 13th
   One of the wettest autumns for a long time.Very raw, glass low this morning. Drove to Camden in the morning. Tea, two crumpets each and meringues. When we came out of the café in the dark we saw the hounds of the North Cotswolds come running silently along the pavement under the lamplight with the huntsmen riding beside them. Its complete unexpectedness made it most vivid.

Sunday, Dec 14th
   Well, who would have thought a year ago that I should be reading the lesson at a carol service in Adlestrop church, but I was today. Policed by Mrs L, Dr B and myself it all went off very well - except of course for the actual sound, which was pretty nasty - still it pleased the villagers no end.

Tuesday, Dec 16th
   A party with Christmas Tree, cake, presents, candles in oranges and a log fire and orangeade. Dr M sold some cigarettes to the German cook and went off to the pub with the money to, so he said, get drunk. Anyway he was not there to get them to bed after Mrs M had sweated blood to get the food and so on ready.

Thursday, Dec 18th
   Monty was sent to summon me to supervise the cleaning of the schoolroom tables with Gumption. The niggers went off in two station waggons at half past twelve. They had on the clothes provided by their parents and some looked frightful. Michael Robinson, the chief gangster, was in a loud tie, a tartan shirt and a coat much too big for him.

Sunday, Dec 21st
   Had my first talk of any length with Pymonie since I began. She said she liked having me here and the children liked my lessons. It was related that Dr Barrington was not coming back next term. It would be too much of a strain. Good for one reason, but sorry for another, for he did all the evening work from 6.45 onwards. She talked vaguely about getting a junior teacher, but since she is going to Austria for a fortnight, nothing is likely to be done about it. My guess is we shall start with Pymonie, Jeremy and myself.

Christmas Day
   It was foggy and I took the precaution of taking my "night bag" when we set off for Oxford. Cars had their headlights on. Arrived at Bainton Road about 12. Mr Pierce rather jumpy because Mary's mother had had another attack of sickness. She seemed all right today. I was given a set of silver crowns from Edward VI to Elizabeth II to look at. We had a huge turkey and an excellent Christmas pudding, of which I ate too much. After dinner Mrs Pierce showed me family photographs. M's father presented her with his case of C17th tradesmen's tokens. He both spoils and dominates her. It began to rain after lunch, which cleared the fog. Soon after 8 we set off for Adlestrop. It was an easy drive in spite of the rain for there was little on the roads. The fire had gone out, but we went to bed and were very happy and successful, as on Christmas Eve as well. It was an unusual day for both of us, but a happy one.

Wednesday, Dec 31st
   What a year it has been! Not one like it for screws since 1942, or change in domestic life since 1933! Fortunately one's memory of pain quickly fades and the orthopods do seem to have done my back good. Mary and I adjusting to our new life together - more upheaval for her than for me - for her total change of job and environment. Anyway we end the year married and with a roof over our heads, which considering the first three months of 1958 is, as the Americans say, something!

1958 July-September

2011-03-21T18:04:00.000+01:00

Married at last, and a new job - teaching maladjusted children.

Tuesday, July 1st

Decided to put ads in Times Educational Supplement and New Statesman - latter for a progressive school.

Mary has lumbago - not surprizing in view of weather. She is very sad about her father's hostility. He hardly speaks to her at the weekend, and if he does often makes a nasty remark, such as he can't think why she bothers to come home at all. This period ought to be very happy and it is in fact very gloomy.

Saturday, July 12th

Mary's father thawing a bit and has asked her home for weekend after sending a message through mother, who was away to her brother's, that he did not need her. Went to the Registrar and arranged to be married to Mary at 3.30 next Wednesday afternoon. Cyril asked for it earlier as he would be late for his tea. Mary said it was her wedding and he could jolly well wait for for once for his tea!

Wednesday, July 16th

Dull at first, cloud and some drizzle. Cleared later but muggy and oppressive. Met Mary for coffee at "the High". She looked pale but was cheerful. Her father had come round at last (though it would have saved wear and tear all round if he had done so sooner) and sent her an amiable letter with fifteen pounds.

After lunch, while I was changing into my dark suit, a storm rolled up from the north-west. By 2.30 it was pouring down in sheets and it was lightning and thundering every few minutes. Mary wore a grey coat and skirt with a cream silk blouse and had made a charming jasmine spray. When we reached the Register Office, Cyril and Kay were waiting in the car outside. We were shown into a pleasantly furnished room with plants in pots and some watercolours on the walls. The Superintendent Registrar now appeared smartly dressed in a black suit with a grey silk tie and a rose in is buttonhole. We stood and declared that there was no impediment to our marriage and in turn that we took the other as husband and wife in the presence of witnesses. I the put the ring I had bought long ago on Mary's finger with the engagement ring. Mary was very pale and obviously moved as she made her declaration. We signed the register, as did the witnesses. Mary was handed her marriage lines and the Registrar and the Superintendent shook hands and wished us happiness. It was a short and simple but dignified ceremony.

We drive back to tea at 64. Tea was laid in the study and there we found to our surprize and pleasure that Kay had got us a wedding cake. After tea we went into the sodden garden and took photographs.

At 6.45 met Kay and Cyril at the White Hart, Nettlebed, for dinner. We had sherry followed by Graves, Grape Fruit, Chicken, Raspberries and Ice Cream. The whole cost £3=9=6. About 9 Mary and I saw the Peaches off and set out for the flat. I told Mary I would try to make her a good husband and she said she would try to make me a good wife. Then home to Cyril's.

Saturday, July 19th

When I opened my post in bed I found a letter from a Mrs Moeran, Adlestrop Park, asking if I would like to teach a group of emotionally disturbed boys. She could offer good married accommodation. I immediately got out of bed and rang her up, told her I was coming and caught the first train to Kingham.

I arrived not long after Mrs M had been to fetch an absconder from Didcot Police Station. The children appeared to be very emotionally disturbed by this incident indeed and it was some time before Mrs M was able to cope with me. The house was bare but clean. We had a pot of tea and then saw the natives, one party was splashing in a static water tank and cutting their bare feet on broken glass, another lot were climbing trees and others making a camp. We saw the gardens. The cottage had three small bedrooms, sitting room, kitchen, and downstairs W.C. cum bathroom. It was wired for power.

I liked Mrs M though I was not sure how scatty she was. You had, as she said, to be "emotionally unattached". Came home very favourably impressed with the cottage and position but wondered how we would cope with the maladjusted in close proximity. By the time I had answered all the questions Kay, Cyril an Mary asked, I felt maladjusted myself. Came home early to pack for honeymoon.

Sunday, July 20th

We made an early start and ate Kay's excellent lunch on Salisbury Plain. Before this we went to look at the cranes and gear by which they had just raised the fallen trilithon at Stonehenge. Felt it would pay every time for more extensive re-erection, but even this modest effort has raised opposition in the press.

Turned off for Exmouth along the crest of Woodbury Common. The front, of course, was very crowded on a Sunday afternoon both with cars and people, but the view from our big bay window on the second floor [of Summer's Hotel] was magnificent, the whole sweep of the coast to Berry Head and the ever-changing tides of the estuary. Mary was enchanted. We sat in two armchairs in the window till the lights came on along the Promenade like strings of coloured beads.

This was the first night of our honeymoon, the first, except once in April, for nearly a year. It was so lovely and satisfying and Mary was sweet and womanly. We both felt that happiness which is close to tears in the bodily fulfilment of lying together.

Tuesday, July 22nd

To Shillingford to see Mother's and Father's grave and the Rectory, to Dunchideok for the screen and up to Haldon Belvedere. The view magnificent.

Wednesday, July 23rd

Went on a trip along the coast towards Sidmouth in the M/V Devon Queen - was most enjoyable but saw how impossible Ladram Bay has become as I peered at the dense mass on the beach through my field glasses. In the afternoon we went to tea with Maud. Everyone very pleasant but I would have preferred to have had Maud on her own.

Tuesday, July 29th

It was 19 years since I had been to Western Gap. It had always been an enchanted spot since Molly and I discovered it in the 1920's. It was so lonely then that we sometimes bathed without dresses. I wanted Mary to see it and hoped that it had not been exploited and spoilt like Sandy Bay and Ladram Bay. My heart sank to find a score of caravans by the farm at the top of the coombe and a concrete track half way down. We went down the path by the stream, very slippery after yesterday's rain, but all overgrown with hartstongue. This had not been altered; nor had the beach. There were a few people by the mouth, but the western end was deserted. The waves broke on the shingle beach and above us towered the red, green and grey cliffs circled by the kestrels. It was a firemaker's paradise, as it always used to be.

Bank Holiday Monday, August 4th

Drove Mary over to Oxford for lunch at Bainton Road. Mr Pierce was polite this time, but he's obviously a very spoilt old gentleman who has always got his own way and laid down the law to his family. I do not like him and I do not think he likes me in his house, either. Mary wisely went on with her ploys in the garden with him while I talked to her mother, whom I liked very much and kissed on departing.

Thursday, Aug 7th

To Kingham by 2.30. Mrs Moeran waiting on platform. To Adlestrop in brake with a seat for Mary only and I had to perch on the wheel casing. Not very good for one's spine! We had a look at the cottage and then tea with Mrs M. and vague discussion of work, then Mary left to measure while I talked to Mrs M alone. Mary favourably impressed, bigger than she had imagined. Mrs M offered me the job and I accepted it. Hope I can stick it, that's all! Mary thought Mrs M very affected and wooly.

Sunday, Aug 10th

Over to Henley Grammar School for the first time since I left. Found Tom and Len at home. Lipscombe away. Tom insisted on showing me the study: deep pile carpet, new paint, new fireplace, modern furniture, including chairs and desk, but walls covered with Cambridge groups all featuring the great what's it. Query? Mental age 20+.

Tuesday, Aug 12th

Bad day at Black Rock! A letter arrived from the Times Book Club saying they were closing the Reading Branch. Not unexpected, for there is not much future for the subscription library in the welfare state with an excellent public library service. Thought Mary would be glad to be relieved of it. I certainly shall after 18 years of listening to the difficulties of running it! Then there was the old perennial difficulty of coming quickly to what seems to me the simplest and most straight forward decision, like buying a pot of distemper. This has to be debated and approached with the most fearful caution, so that everything (again it seems to me) is made twice as hard work.

There was hardly a smile all day. After supper tried to discuss cottage with Mary. I wanted a Dimplex radiator. She did not seem anxious to. I woke up in the middle of the early morning with a pain in my stomach and felt mentally awful. Lay awake and felt it was all a failure. Mary got out of bed, so I told her what I felt - that to keep her jollied up I needed enough gaiety for two. It was like rolling a heavy stone up hill and with the strain of a new job (of which I had grave doubts) I felt I could barely cope.

Wednesday, Aug 13th

Mary to Head Office. Branch to be closed end of September. Letter to be sent out end of month. Mary pleaded not to send them while she was there, so she was told she could leave a week early, which suits us very well as she can get flat ready for move.

Sunday, Aug 17th

Drove with carpets, distemper and Mary to Adlestrop, rather over 2 hours, 112 miles. Green carpet [from School House, Henley] fitted sitting room, relieved to know. Went to see Mr Price with cleft palate who doubled in the role of stationmaster and postmaster. He agreed to distemper sitting room and two bedrooms. Measured windows for curtains and floors for lino.

Decided must have separate bedrooms. Mary could not cope with my snores. Depressed about this. Second bedroom gloomy and bad shape so nothing for it but tiny bedroom which will just take bed and chest of drawers. Outlook at back over a thistle patch surrounded by trees. Got very tried standing about and driving 100 miles. Find it very difficult to cope with Mary's painful slowness, did not get supper till 8.30, and her reluctance to make up her mind. Result: another attack of depression, snored (?), Mary did not sleep. Felt married life not what I had hoped! Must take rough with the smooth.

Wednesday, Aug 20th

Visited Ministry of Labour to see if I could get unemployment pay. Wood (late of fifth form, 1957) issued me with a card and instructed me about signing on on Wednesdays and Fridays. "This situation Wood", I said, "is not without its comic side!"

Friday, August 22nd

To Ministry of Labour to sign on. Had to go early as going up to London to get new belt and meet Hilary. Allowed to do so as clerk said I had an honest face. He informed me that did not pay out before 12 as claimants put money on horses!

Hilary arrived with a short beard and a fine fuzzy whisker. Told him on no account to remove it before photographed. Had been to Knossos, Olympia, Delphi, Mycenae. Particularly enjoyed Crete, to which flew, then back by Naples, Pompei, Florence, Pisa, Genoa, Turin.

Friday, Aug 29th

Went round to the flat and found Mary very lit up after sherry party at Heelas, which after all the moaning and groaning and complaining, she had thoroughly enjoyed. Some one had given her an early morning tea set the same as our dinner service. She had various other presents and many appreciative letters.

Saturday, August 30th

Mary returned to sleep at St Edwards- very tired. Her last day at the Library after 33 years (aet. 15 to 48). [First years, however, in Times Library in Oxford].

Wednesday, Sept 3rd

Wilk came over to coffee this morning, bringing a copy of her new biology book. It suddenly occurred to me that this might be the answer to variety in work. Why not elementary biology!

Very busy the last three days shopping and packing up flat. The men arrive to pick up Mary's stuff at flat tomorrow and move off at beginning of day on Saturday.

Friday, Sept 5th

Started at eight. Kay to my surprize overcome with emotion on saying goodbye. Cyril did not appear as he was lying in bed listening to the news! When we got to Adlestrop found the van already there. The foreman immediately told us that the wardrobe would not go up the stairs and he did not think the beds would either. Mrs Moeran was not there and had done nothing. The water did not work properly, the electricity had not been connected, the cottage had not been cleaned, the back door had no key. Mrs Moeran was vague to the point of half-wittedness and disappeared to the top of the house, where she was difficult to find. The men said they thought they might be able to get the bed through the upstairs window if a ladder could be found. With much difficulty this was procured but it would not go up. They proposed to saw off the legs, but I suggested the supports of the head boards instead. With this they finally got them in, much to our relief. The wardrobe proved impossible and was put in the next, empty cottage.

Tuesday, Sept 9th

We worked hard at the weekend, cleaning, putting up curtains, trying to find out what tradesmen delivered, when buses ran and so on. In Stow found a fireman who was ex cabinetmaker and he dismantled and reassembled the wardrobe, much to Mary's relief.

Thursday, Sept 18th

The cottage delightful; the maladjusted horrible. Had to tell Mary I would probably pack up! 30 periods teaching, no free periods, one grown up for two periods at a time, on finishing teaching 4.15, on duty to 8.30 - is just not good enough. Mrs M vague and affected, art man might come in a year! no matron, no other teacher except "Whisker", Mr Hemming, who refuses to do anything indoors. Alas, too, Mrs M no organizer or expositor. Knows the snags of eggs at tea, extra bread, etc, but fails to warn you so you are always left to find out the hard way from your mistakes.

I am maladjusted to the maladjusted, I've concluded. They quarrel, fight and scream (with or without bad language) continually. Each one is convinced he is being unfairly treated and in consequence the whole group is on a hair trigger, one extra spoonful of jam, one mild criticism, and the whole lot go up in flames. There is no "give" and it is all "take". Tea is a shambles, but because knives or milk bottles are not actually thrown, Mrs M seems satisfied.

Any attempt to prevent whistling and singing in my group means turning people out and this provokes endless accusations, denials and recriminations. This has all to be gone into, Mrs M appears to think, and an attempt made to reason with the malads, who are masters of lying, equivocation, and self-exceptionalism, "Please, Sir, it wasn't me, it was him."

After a few days of this my mind got so tired I just could not think, or answer the simplest questions, when I staggered across to the cottage at supper time. I was not used to the atmosphere of lies and double dealing. Sometimes it seemed a hateful place and I dreaded going back to teaching these hooligans. I realized with a shock that it was days since I had found time to look at the sky or do any reading apart from the preparation of lessons, which I have taken more trouble over for these bastards than I ever did for the first forms at HGS!

Saturday, Sept 20th

Not a good day yesterday. Trouble with the sulky Michael and the evil John (son of stevedore who had been gaoled for attempted murder of his wife, and to us from a children's mental hospital), but able to sit down a bit more and felt less exhausted physically.

Mr and Mrs Pierce came to lunch. it was difficult to keep the old man away from the boys, but highly necessary! After seeing them off from Kingham after tea we drove to Icomb and Bourton on the Water. Alas! a great modern school has been built next to the Crab's cottage and the whole placed tripperized by the coach companies.

Sunday, Sept 21st

To church in morning. Lennie tried to crawl under the seat to attack the boys in front.

Monday, Sept 22nd

Back to gangsters. Tea was high class today, no bottles or knives hurled across the table. Graham used his milk straw as a phallus. Like Queen Victoria, I was not amused. Still don't know if help is at hand.

Tuesday, Sept 23rd

Help arrived in the person of Dr Barrington, music, Dublin. A very queer cove who looked as if, and indeed he may have come out of a mental hospital.

Wednesday, Sept 24th

Managed to get 20 minutes with Mrs M in her flat. Am to do nothing after tea about 6.30. Dr B will then take over.

Thursday, Sept 25th

Got on better with lessons. Managed to sit more and when Graham mocked me before tea gave a great shout and sent him to dormitory. This rather frightened the natives.

Sunday, Sept 28th

Church not so good. A fight developed on the way back. Katherine, who was reading the lessons, broke down and the rest started giggling. Anyway, while supervising the letter writing, did get the blackboard raised, which means i shall not have to kneel down to write on it!

Monday, Sept 29th

Not much fun teaching the niggers. Had to turn Michael out for making remarks. I went to take over my class at 4.15. no one turned up for half an hour. Felt frustrated and unhappy, which I have not often felt in teaching.

Tuesday, Sept 30th

My first afternoon off till tea at 6.0. As usual in this place there was a hitch. No baker had called and there was only one slice of bread each. Dates and biscuits were issued. and half an orange. I took care to dole out the dates myself, but there was trouble with the orange skins and the unspeakable Michael smeared his face with milk and then wiped it on his sleeve, John started beating up two small boys when my back was turned, and Graham started screaming, finally the epileptic David refused point blank to do what I asked him. In the end I had four people out. Came back to supper fed with niggers as usual.

1958 April - June

2011-03-21T16:26:00.000+01:00

What a trial parents are! Mary's father cuts up rough.
Thursday, April 3rd
   My darling Mary arrived about 5.30. A lovely dinner, afterwards hair clipped and trimmed, then feet soaked and skin removed, toe nails cut and socks changed.

Good Friday, April 4th
   Walked round garden in sun and east wind. Must have fresh air! After lunch we lay on my bed for first time for three months till tea was brought in. Had my hair washed. Very set up. This was the longest time we had together since January, but at 6.0 she had to go. Hated it and felt very sad and lonely.

Saturday, April 5th
   Got Miss Morris to buy me a pair of plywood tongs from the Baths - 9/6, which I thought plenty. Still with these I could could manage pants, trousers, everything except shoelaces.

Monday, April 14th
   To Woodlands. The bisected corset was opened and snapped off. A fresh jacket was put on after I was well oiled. This too was bisected and taken off to be used as cast for polythene model. I was rather surprized to learn that this will take six weeks.

Sunday, April 20th
   France has no government. It has been thrown out by a coalition of Communists and extreme right over Algeria. They cannot form a government, but they can prevent the centre-right from doing so. France has become the problem child of N.A.T.O. The French cannot win the war against the Algerian rebels, but no minister dare admit this. They have a bear by the tail and can't let go.

Monday, April 21st
   Doctor, to my great surprize and pleasure, said he saw no reason why I should not drive the car for short distances when I got back to Reading.
   Waited anxiously to hear whether for Mary had told her parents of our intended wedding. She had!! When they had had time to think it over, they were pleased. All these years Mary has had to bear the burden of concealment from her parents. Now it has been lifted. I am so relived and delighted for her sake as well as my own.

Tuesday, April 22nd
   A letter from Mr Pim. The decree became absolute yesterday, 4 weeks after nisi. Very curious to feel bachelor again. Wrote to Mary after lunch and sent her Pim's letter.

Saturday, April 26th
    Caught the 1.31 from Droitwich. Very thrilled with sight of real county, lambs, primroses, cowslips, the Cotswolds and Oxford. Mary met me on the platform at Reading to help me down the stairs and put me in a taxi for St Edwards where I arrived for tea.

Monday, April 28th
   Got out car from garage and all things considered found it easier and more comfortable to drive than I expected after seven months. We pottered along to Nettlebed and by Huntercombe to the Long Grasses. We walked up to the barn. On the way up the hill we saw a male hare chasing a female. Every time he caught up with her and clasped her round the middle ready to begin, she broke away and the pursuit recommenced. This happened three or four times in the middle of the great field of winter corn. Finally they disappeared, still pursuer and pursued, over the skyline. We had never seen anything like this before in watching hares on the Downs. Mary laughed and asked me how I would like to run and run but never catch up!

Tuesday, April 29th
    Drove through Henley bold as brass about half past eleven. Met no sunken rocks. Through Marlow to Cliveden. I have never seen it more lovely at any time. It was heaven to be with Mary among all this beauty.

Thursday, May Day
   Mary over to Oxford to help complete spring cleaning. She asked me not to write as her father would be curious about letters.

Sunday, May 4th
   Met Mary at flat at 9.30 to hear her news. It was disappointing. When she got home full of her holiday in the earlier part of the week, she found her father in a tizzy. He had spent his time chewing over all the possible snags - "no job, living on capital, giving up her job at the library, carried away". I am glad to say she told him she was no longer a girl, but a mature woman of 48 who might be expected to know her own mind. Her mother sounded much more sensible, but does not count for a great deal. As he said they had been told nothing, I thought my long letter (to them) rather wasted.

Wednesday, May 7th
   To supper with Mary at Cyril's. Much amused by case of woman shut in lavatory at Harlow, who appealed to the High Court. She tried to get out over the top, but had to give up. Climbing from the seat she had trodden on the toilet roll. This had revolved and she had fallen. Judgement was 75% council's fault and 25% her fault for treading on the roll!

Wednesday, May 14th
   To Oxford by 8.30 Cathedrals Express. It suddenly occurred to me to visit Mary's parents, so rang them up. I got rather an unexpected reception. Mrs Pierce was nice and friendly, but Mr Pierce was as awkward as he knew how to be and cross questioned me in a distinctly hostile way. Nothing was right! No home, no job, no money! Was I proposing to "live on his daughter". Was I living "on friends""? Was I even properly divorced or only separated? I told him I was divorced but refused to go into details. Had I left the grammar school because of divorce? Was there a scandal? Everything I said was twisted to my disadvantage, whether he knew what he was talking about or not, even the fact that I had not taken my M.A.!
   I was polite, did not answer back, and kept my temper, but after an hour of trying to break out of this conversational circular track by references to the garden, the cat, my family, I left. I had had more than enough of this very difficult old gentleman, who accused me at one point of "keeping something back" and made me wonder whether he suspected me of having got Mary with child!

Tuesday, May 20th
   Today heard from Mary. As I feared Mr Pierce had attacked her on Saturday and gone over the same old ground again. "I had not told them anything" and so on. "We were not to get married in July. If we did neither of us would be welcome in his house again!" I wrote to her and said that if every weekend between now and July is to be taken up with an argument about our marriage, it might be an idea to go to the Registry Office and settle the matter. I am very sorry. It is hard on Mary's mother and might with a little good will have been so different and happier for all concerned. He will probably now set to work to dig out the case to find out what were the grounds and who's the correspondent. Much good that will do anyone!

Saturday, May 24th
   Saw Mary off at 5.30 for Oxford. Told her to come back to Reading if necessary and phone me. She was fortified with some pink sleeping pills. No use lying awake all night as happened last Saturday.

Whit Monday, May 26th
      The French possibly on verge of civil war. Algeria in revolt, followed by Corsica. Army of doubtful loyalty. De Gaulle ready to assume power, whereon Communists to declare a strike. "Oh, I don't know", as Cyril keeps saying of his staff difficulties!

Tuesday, May 27th
   A very nice letter from Lady Helen who said she now has a "distaste' for Henley Grammar School. Don't wonder! Another from Denys Thompson, who had been ill with blood pressure. Denys said he liked quiet, but his wife (a town councillor) and family did not. Mary amused me by pointing out that most of my married friends, when told I have been divorced, write to tell me how difficult their wives are!
   A lovely day. Sat out in the sun in the garden in the afternoon, but my left arm hurt and I had an attack of depression, thought what a dreadful year since August it has really been. The family row at Oxford raises its ugly head just when we were planning to get married. Mary's mother had an attack of sickness last week. She had hardly arrived when her Father remarked that he did not think her mother would be long with them. Piling on the agony, I say. An armed truce prevailed, but Mrs Pierce spoke of me and realized that I had spent the weekend alone while Mary went home to scrub - and arrived back on Sunday night absolutely knocked. Mrs Pierce's migraine probably brought on by his bad temper and abuse of Mary on Saturday a week ago. What a trial parents are!

Wednesday, June 4th
   To Clivedon with tea. Rhododendrons magnificent. On the way back we called in on the Wilk in Henley. She was very excited by our appearance and never stopped talking. She had refused to accept job as senior mistress when Cherry got a job in Slough, though almost bullied into it by Lipscombe, until Majorie Hunter told her she would be letting the side down. He has now appointed a woman from Gillots. He is a cad!
   De Gaulle voted into power by the Assembly under threat of civil war, goes to Algiers. Will he be able to enforce a settlement?

Friday, June 20th
   Last day of the bus strike so had to meet Nora at Paddington. Fortunately the rain stopped so we were able to eat sandwiches in a garden near the station. I had not seen Nora since the middle of last November and had forgotten how old she looked and how pale her face was. She said she was much happier and settled.

Sunday, June 23rd
    Cherry, looking chalk-white and twitching, came to tea. The A.M.A. secretary had visited Lipscombe and one hopes put the fear of God into him.

Tuesday, June 24th
   Gabbitas, fat partner like Prince Regent but most amiable, produced card from 1929. Ink went a bit faded. Went through the particulars, very apologetic when asking for a reference. [Gabbitas & Thring, a job agency for teachers]
   After lunch set off to Euston Square to find out about pension. Thought I would whizz up in the lift and have a word with Miss Hastings, the A.M.A. secretary who interviewed Lipscombe. It was worth it. She was a splendid person of great integrity. Lipscombe seemed to her immature, like a school prefect, and very ill advised. She told him he could not set his judgement against 20 years of experience (me) or the Ministry's report (Lady H) and that he knew nothing of co-education, so she may have made a slight scratch on the rhinoceros hide of his self conceit.

Friday, June 27th
   Called on Marjorie Hunter yesterday and told her of Miss Hastings. While there Doreen Cook came in and gave a warm invitation to go and see them. Marjorie H said Clem, now made deputy head, had come out of it very badly; "always thought he was queer, now know he is crooked as well."

Sunday, June 29th
   Wettest June for 60 years, floods and swollen rivers.

1958 January-March

2011-03-13T18:54:00.000+01:00

The Diarist undergoes a hellish stretch treatment for sciatica. His successor at Henley "a twerp."

Wednesday, January 1st
   This is the first time I have really been exposed to television. It is a great evil! Our manners, speech and morals have been sapped by American films. Now the films have got inside the home, for 75% of the television material is American - hour after hour of crooners, variety and gangsters. Maud complained, but still she looked. There was a rather pathetic expectancy about her, as though something good or interesting might be round the corner. It never was.

Thursday, Jan 2nd
   Went into Exeter for the second time and called on Wilfrid. He was sitting up and seemed better, but much too fat I thought. He said his brother Bernhard in De le Rue's had made a million last year in Formica. But they sometimes slipped up. During the war a Czech refugee tried to interest them in a pen. The experts said it would never go and there was nothing in it. His name was Biro!

Sunday, Jan 12th
   Came down to Droitwich. This tile in rooms at The Mount. A Victorian house full of draughts.

Sunday, Jan 19th
   A bad week! Aunt died last Wednesday after months of misery. The lawyer forwarded the will. It was pretty stupid. Aunt had divided her one third of the estate, given the South African one half and divided the other half between Molly and me. For some reason the lawyer had told me the house had been left to Molly and me, so I was very disappointed. Molly gets father's one third anyway; I get half of half of one third!
   Then my leg! By Monday evening I could hardly get upstairs. I rang Dr Dawson and told him what had happened, but he told me to go on till Wednesday. Had a bath on Friday and by Saturday was in a state bordering on 1942. For the last 48 hours have been living on aspirin every hour or so. A cheerful outlook indeed.

Thursday, Jan 23rd - Mary on day visit
   At lunch time the taxi I had ordered drove Mary to the door. Oh, I did want to see her so badly. We had lunch together and then I lay on the settee and she sat beside me in the armchair so we could touch one another. We were both tremendously happy and had so much to talk about that it was soon tea time and an hour later it was time to say goodbye. It was so satisfying and worthwhile, her physical presence, her womanhood, her voice, her warmth irradiated the room and made everything different.

Friday, Jan 24th
   Molly arrived from Longhope to discuss Aunt's affairs. She describe the journey to Luton Parish Church*, the arrival of the Rolls Royce with Aunt and three men from Watford, the massive stone vault in the now disused churchyard, the procession across the road and the placing of Aunt as she wished with her parents and her twin brother, who did not survive. The last time the vault was opened was in 1914. Aunt neither went with her mother to see the Harley St doctor when her cancer was diagnosed nor to the funeral. She always avoided anything unpleasant. Mother had to do both poor dear. She told me how ghastly it was driving from Watford to Chatam behind the hearse.

Sunday, Feb 2nd
   A dreadful night! Leg got worse. Doctor came round about 10.30. He was very kind as by this time I was liable to cry at any moment. He told me to take the aspirin every two hours and gave me some new yellow pills to take very four hours.
   Mary C told me Lipscombe did not bother to come to the choir competition, from which he excluded the Fifth Form, because, forsooth, he had to see an accountant about a pass book. He is an outsize twerp, that man. Marjorie W says he never looks at you when is talking to you. He has sacked Mrs Loader, who first knew this when she read it in the Henley Standard! Though not very bright, she was a good sort, so I wrote and said that I would act as a referee if she wanted one. Mary C is applying for three jobs and wants testimonials, and also Wilk. The best testimonials are those you write yourself, so I drafted two and sent them to them for corrections and additions.

Monday, Feb 3rd
   Another frightful night. By time dawn broke I was completely exhausted and defeated. Doctor thought I should go to an orthopaedic surgeon, but in the meantime he was going to stick needles in my buttock this afternoon.

I take up my pen to complete my Diary two months later.

Tuesday, Feb 4th
   Sat for over an hour in the Birmingham bus to New Street. By the time I got there I was completely crippled, but with aid of a stick shuffled slowly the 150 yards to the taxi rank and drove to the surgeon's. Dr Dawson suggested I should go in to the general ward of the Woodlands Orthopaedic Hospital.

Wednesday, Feb 5th
   First the almoner - my religion? None! Next of kin? Mary. Phone number? Cyril. Lady? Fiancée. So Mary was let into the ward with me. "We've said goodbye in queer places, but never before in a hospital ward," I said.
   Put into bed like a board and a small hard pillow put under my back. From then till 11 that night had ample time to contemplate the company. On my right was a low spiv-like type called Tony, whose main occupation seemed baiting a jowly, elderly navvy-like man opposite. The discussion of football and betting went on endlessly. I thought how advanced education and membership of the middle class separates one from the majority of the population!
   A noisy night followed. I was given something, but slept little and woke about 5 a. m. when activity started in earnest. Later when the sister came round, I discovered there was a private ward and asked to be moved there. I had had enough of the noise, farting, belching and straining. Privacy was cheap at £18 a week I thought.
   Most of the beds were wheeled out to the physiotherapy department and last of all I went to a small room where my legs were bound mummy-like from hip to thigh with elastoplast. Then about 12 o'clock, with my arms round a nurse's shoulder, I hobbled down to my bed in room no. 5, a mirror was fastened over my head and I was given dinner. Later weights were attached to my ankles and the foot of the bed raised so I slipped against the drag of the weights. This was my position for three weeks. "Do not upon the rack after this harsh world stretch him out longer."

Friday, Feb 7th
   My first night "on traction" was a horror. I was given two shots of morphia, the last of which knocked me out completely till near lunch time. I had placed Mary's photo on the ledge over the radiator by my bed. I was so miserable with the pain and the morphia that when one of the nurses asked me if it was my wife I burst into tears. She was an angel in disguise and told me about her husband and how for years he thought he was going to die till I felt much better. Little Irish Nurse Brinsley then explained the treatment and what I was supposed to do. Two real understanding women - "the little unrewarded acts of kindness and love," as Wordsworth would have said. Nurse Harris, plain though you were, you had a heart of gold and I shall not easily forget you!

Sunday, Feb 23rd
   Sister Reilly did not appear for the first three or four days and was away for one whole week. She was an Irish Roman Catholic of poor education with much powder and paint and a soft but nagging voice. She made up for what must have been a sense of inferiority by a pompous manner and an evasive eye. Like Molotov, she believed in saying no on principle, even to the simplest requests, and denying responsibility. Not an intolerant person naturally, I grew to detest her.

Feb 28th - April 1st
   I had been in traction for three weeks, so I was taken up in bed to be plastered. You were suspended from your shoulders at one end a steel bracket between your fork at the other. The plasterers worked as a team with extreme speed, and it was worth coming up to see the plastering sister, who in her operation coif concealing her hair looked most beautiful. For two days you dried out in a cage with lights and hot bottles. This was most unpleasant. I passed the morning of March 1st lying flat on my face sweating like a bullock and feeling sick. After a few days the pressure of the bracket and the hardness of the plaster produced a sore on my tail which was painful and difficult to get rid of. Sister Reilly lost face because the night nurse noted it on the report and vented her annoyance on me. The patient was always wrong!
On March 8th I was got out of bed. A large chair was produced and I was left sitting on it for for two and a half hours because Sister Reilly had everyone spring cleaning. When I was finally got up I was in agony and received a definite set back. Wrong again; I was told, though swathed in blankets and on a slippery floor, I should have got up and walked around the room!
   After three weeks of this I could stand in the plaster room for a second closer-fitting one to be put on. I feared more sores from pressure but though uncomfortable none arrived. After I got my legs a bit I could get over to the w.c. and let myself down cautiously by handles in the wall and gradually my inside started to work again regularly, but it was extremely difficult in my plaster to wipe. This was one of the many minor frustrations with which one was beset, among them feeding, washing, writing letters.
   Nurse Willis order an ambulance for Tuesday, April 1st. It was supposed to arrive at 10 but with typical hospital perversity it arrived at 1:15. Reached Droitwich between 2 and 3 o'clock. While in Woodlands I saw Mr Allan, the surgeon, about twice a week. Sometimes he came in before operating in his theatre gown. He had himself been in the next room with the low back pain on traction about a year ago, so he knew what it was like. He stayed and chatted to me several times because he knew I had few visitors. I told him I felt deeply grateful to him for freeing me from the awful pain in January.

1957 August - December. Living in limbo

2011-02-27T17:38:00.000+01:00

The Diarist, now of no fixed address but with a National Trust job in prospect. Year-end finds the Diarist with a serious attack of sciatica. Meanwhile HGS staff badly demoralised by new headmaster's arrival.

Monday, Aug 19th, Hollybush Farm

Washed down the caravan in the morning and walked up to the May Hill post office in the p.m. Got a short space with Molly this morning top ask her what my food cost. Offered her £1-10s but she said she didn't think she could do it for under £2.

Tuesday, Aug 20th

Spent the day in Gloucester mugging up on the Verneys and Claydon in the reference library. Had 3/6 lunch at Boots, ghastly it was! Gloucester has some good shops, but is an ugly sordid place with no trees.

Wednesday, Aug 21st

Spent the morning painting the van roof and blocking holes with Sealastic and after tea did about half the holes. It will be much more exposed to the weather here than at Henley. It is beginning to show signs of age. Since it at present my only home I must look after it! At lunch today Molly talked of selling the farm this autumn. Milk prices are not going up, wages are. Even if she installed a milking machine and had no man it would, she said, be slavery. Tom called Ruth a "playboy". It is apt description. She always chooses the easier job. Molly digs, Ruth cuts the raspberry canes; Molly washes the dirty clothes, Ruth does the flowers. Molly and I wash up, Ruth lays the table.

It has been a funny summer holiday. No timetable to make, but constant business from the moment term ended. As soon as one thing cleaned out of the way something else has happened. I don't think I shall miss teaching and school very much. I always said it would be a good job if there were no children!

Thursday, Aug 22nd

Finished painting the walls this morning. Mr Bowket, the local builder, came to make the rainwater tank tight. A rather Shakespearean type of country man in the stamp of Custard or Len Hayes, combined a good deal of natural stupidity with an immense amount of patience.

Mary wrote: "I am always thinking of you, of your face and hands and all the things we like to do. I like having your possessions here and cherish everything of you as you are everything there is to me."

Saturday, Aug 24th

Met Mary at Hereford. Arrived at Maewllwych Arms who should walk in to dinner but Sir Felix* and Lady Brunner! Did not enjoy mine as I expected that at any minute the voluble Mrs Derrick to rush in and greet me, but as it turned out my fears were not justified. They wanted as little to with us as me with them. In any case, Mary said, I had now left.

* Henley Grammar School governor

Monday, Aug 26th

A poor day, cold and windy. Drove to the Elan reservoir, a marvellous sight with the water pouring over the great barrage.

Saturday, Aug 29th

We drove to the foot of the Brecon beacons but followed the directions in an old ed Guide. This was a mistake We were on the wrong side of a difficult valley. We reached the edge of the cliff below the beacons and had lunch. This initial mistake had made us too tired to go on. After this we referred to them as Beastly Beacons.

Friday, Aug 30th

We went up to the Dedwyns, a lovely piece of moor above Paincastle. We visited Newchurch again.

Saturday, Aug 31st

My last day as H.M. of Henley Grammar School. It was muggy, low cloud and rain.

Monday, Sept 2nd

Alas cloudy and dull so we had to go church hunting

Tuesday, Sep 3rd

Overcast. Hay Bluff covered, but as forecast better made an act of faith and went up to the pass. We had to have lunch in the car, but then the cloud just lifted to clear the mountain top. Last year Mary wore her green spotted frock; this year an anorak!

Saturday, Sept 5th

Had lunch with Molly solo. We had macaroni cheese and were offered water! After this took Mary into Oxford bus at Gloucester. Very low after lovely time together and hated to see her go.

Friday, Sept 6th

Drove to Claydon and arrived about 5.30 after tea and shopping in Bicester. Lucky I did for nothing from the Bouchers and was famished next morning. They were waiting for me and old B immediately started on the electric polisher, the opening and shutting of windows, the cleaning.

Then we went up to the flat and the finance was gone into and the keys handed over.

Saturday, Sep 7th

Mr and Mrs B left at 9.30 after showing me the dustbins and the ladies & gents. I was also introduced to Mrs Middlemiss, a little Scot in curling pins, who was "to do" my lunch and help with the money and the visitors on Saturdays and Sundays. I went down the grand staircase and into the saloon, which was in sunshine and a dream of beauty.

We went into battle. At 2.39 electric polisher, the opening and shutting of windows. Sir Harry Verney and Lady Rachel drove up in their Daimler from the village. He was a large portly man of 76 with a loud laugh, she a frail wisp and much under the dominion of her Lord. He repaired to the Library where he held court with Florence Nightingale's letters. I trotted round the N. Hall and Saloon chatting to the visitors. By 6.01 I was quite tired out and my legs ached. I then crawled up to the flat and counted the money.

Sunday, Sept 8th

Today much the same. When I had counted the money, I went round to the church and hearing a sermon in progress went in. It was an awful sermon and I was glad to have caught only the end of the service. The Verneys were there in strength and one or two, but precious few, retainers. Like Sir Roger, Sir Harry noted my presence.

Tuesday, Sept 10th

More insight into the public, the complaining, the dumb, the snobs. Told Mary I should in future have more understanding of her job and her difficulties!

Thursday, Sept 12th

High tea with Sir Harry. After tea he took me into his library and told me Ralph Verney liked me and he hoped I would take the job. Clearly there is much feeling on the Verneys' part about the use of the Grand Staircase for taking the public up to the Nightingale rooms. They don't like this but would not allow the use of another staircase. The more one learns, the more the wheels within wheels are disclosed between the Verneys, the Trust and Boucher.

Sir Harry loves spending from 2.30 - 4 in the Library talking to visitors. He has now learnt that Boucher has said his presence is bad for tips!

Wrote to Mary to tell her I could have the job if I wanted it.

Sunday, Sept 15th

Had to go to Matins because asked to a drink after church by young Verneys. Their flat is beautifully furnished and drawing room contains two best pictures of Sir Edmund and Lady Mary Verney which they evidently intend to hang on to too. Found Mrs V very big with child, sang in Bach choir under Tom Armstrong. Very pleasant but more and more convinced Ralph is the iron first in the velvet glove.

Wednesday, Sept 18th

Sir Harry took me up to the top of the house to show me his "muniments". He had made a collection of prime minister's signatures, but on writing to Macmillan he had drawn a blank. The secretary replied! We then went into the Library and some of the famous C17th "memoire" letters were produced. The old man said how nice it would be if I would sort his Victorian letters for him!

A telegram from Hilary this afternoon. he had arrived unexpectedly early in a fast boat.

Friday, Sept 20th

The Bouchers came back at 6.0 so I handed over the money and went off to Reading.

Tuesday, Sept 24th

Back at Longhope. Molly very gloomy. Bank overdraft up £300 since last April, but if I were her I would have kept more track of it than she appears to have done and cut down on entertaining and building alterations.

Friday, Sept 27th

Drove to Reading. Back, which seemed slightly better, much worse, query driving position, damp, worry or what.

Saturday, Sept 28th

10.30 Mr Bohn, the surgeon. Right hernia needs repair. News very bad.

Sunday, Sept 29th

Back leg very painful. It looks as if a really bad attack may develop. Oh curse it! Cyril said if I had to have an operation at Dunedin I might get some massage there and Kay said I must come and convalesce with them. I have good friends, such kind friends too, Cyril, Kay, Wilk, Cherry, Nora and then Mary.

Hilary rang up from Wilk's before lunch and we arranged to meet tomorrow at the N.B.L.

Told Kay and Cyril last night about Mary. They were very pleased and said if it had to be, they were glad it was she - such a charming and intelligent person. Suggested I should bring her round to coffee tomorrow evening so she could meet the cats.

Monday, Sept 30th

Went to see the elusive Mr Wallace in Queen Anne's Gate. Told him I would start on Feb 8th and hope by then I shall be safely married to Mary.

Lunch at N.B.L. where Hilary arrived about 4 and we had a leisurely tea. In the course of this he said that Con, with whom he had been staying, was "my evil genius". Mary had always maintained (by intuition?) that she was responsible for Molly's change of attitude. He confirmed it. Con apparently taking line that if I wanted to get a divorce ought to have had it long ago and not now when Nora older. This, as I pointed out to Hilary, all very well, but overlooks the fact that we did not take this course in order to give him a home and bring him up.

Hilary brought some news of Henley. The new H.M. and his wife are "subtopians". "Hillcrest" and three piece suites and all that. Corporal punishment reintroduced! All out for three or four years in Sixth and scholarships etc. In fact a thoroughly conventional "payment by results" H.M. who will not perplex the inhabitants of Henley.

Nora sent Hilary's army "character". It was jolly good.

"He has been in the Intelligence Section where has has used his high educational qualifications to some purpose. He is intelligent with a strong personality; he readily accepts responsibility out of all proportion to his rank and has not yet failed to carry out a task, whether it has required personal initiative or the organisation of other people. He also gets on well with the others and is easy to work with;"

Thursday, Oct 3rd

Very pleased to hear from Mary that she had been to tea with Kay and Cyril yesterday to see the gardens and the school and had enjoyed it.

Sent Hilary £160 to get on with but his college dues will take £118. Wrote to Mr Bohn to say I would go into Dunedin the weekend of Oct 18th

Friday, Oct 4th

A pathetic letter from Marjorie Wilkinson. Tired and ill. The new H.M., who has been taken in by Hirons, has given her the duds to do examination biology while the bright people go to Hirons. He must be a nut if he can't see through Uncle Edgar. She says Cherry is in little better state. It sounds ominous. She says accidents to the girls have to reported to the H.M., not the senior mistress. Horrified to hear that one Wilson, certified by Child Guidance as about Modern School level, put in for 5 Matric subjects, including biology.

This morning announced Brown [Ruth's brother] was coming. Don't want him in [caravan] with me.

Sunday, Oct 6th

The two Browns and Molly went to church at 8.30 so I got breakfast.

Golly! What a bore Brown is. No wonder no woman has been found to take him on! We had earth satellites at supper and shortage of clergy at breakfast! As we don't listen to the news much we had not heard that the Russians have launched an earth satellite. the Captain very taken up with it. On this the Russians ahead of the Americans.

Monday, Oct 7th

Boucher sent the £12 for Claydon. Felt quite rich! The first money earned by something other than teaching.

Tuesday, Oct 8th

A dull day in every sense. Only bright spot two letters from Mary written on Saturday and Monday. "Isn't it strange and lovely", she wrote, "to think that in 4 months time we light be at Claydon together (that is if we are well up in the queue) instead of "sometime perhaps"."

Molly and I had lunch together. Molly said wages and foodstuffs were continuously rising. Brown, the man, when she came £5, now £7=15=0. It is impossible to make any money and the only thing is to sell up next spring or preferably next autumn. Don't know what they will do then.

Friday, Oct 11th

Yesterday Hilary went to Keble, just as I did 40 years ago in October 1917. Had a letter from him. To my great relief the county have given him a substantial grant of £237, of which £109 is maintenance. He says he is very much looking forward to going up and thanks me for making it possible. "I hope I shall make the best of the experience, though I do not think I will be emulating you in your degree."

Saturday, Oct 12th

Read Gwen Raverat"s account of he childhood in Cambridge - Period Piece - full of amusing sidelight on manners, morals and dresses. Young ladies' wear: Woolen combinations; White cotton same; Stays; Black stockings; White woolen drawers; Petticoat bodice, cotton; Flannel petticoat; Alpaca petticoat; Flannel blouse; Starched collars; Tie; Blue skirt; Leather belt; High button boots. No wonder decent women did not take much trouble about their underclothes, which were apt to be rather "Jaeger" and patched!

Thursday, Oct 17th

A letter arrived from Aunt's housekeeper to say Aunt's leg was swelling and doctor said it would be serious in a much younger person. Wondered whether to go in [to Dunedin nursing home] tomorrow. Of course wanted to go in and get it over, but felt I might be very selfish to do so. In the end started packing.

Friday Oct 18th

Well here I am where I was nine years ago, though not in the same room. Hadn't been in very long before Mrs Target came in and claimed me as a long lost friend, the Mr Bohn came in, which was nice of him, finally Mary who stayed till 9.30.

Read letter from Cherry. Poor dear, she sounds very miserable. Lipscombe is a twerp. Rude and tactless I knew from my own experience him to be, but he seems an intriguer. To say he'll have her removed is rot, but he has threatened to report her to the governors and has complained to Tom Luker and the nice Mr Dorrell. She says he is so stupid and hopeless with people. Now he has changed his tune and she is to be consulted. I guess he's been told he's bloody well got to get on with her and that's the reason. This what comes of appointing a man with no experience of a mixed staff to a co-educational school.

Sunday, Oct 20th

Cherry arrived about dinner time and I heard more of that tic Lipscombe. he appears to have said that the school was in a bad state and he had been appointed to clean it up. How lucky we had a general inspection to nail that one to the counter! He is not going to use my room because it is near what he calls "the girl's toilets" and is moving down to the prefects room.

Tuesday, Oct 22nd

Given a blockbuster last night. Nurses don't realize the effect on some one who never normally takes such a pill from one year to the next.

A good batch of letters this morning. Miss Hunter says she has not fallen for my successor's face or voice; however he seems quite pleased with both. Nor can she imagine what qualities made them choose him. In the morning I think it cannot do any harm if I write to Tom Luker about Lipscombe and Cherry, so do. Cherry in after tea. Told her I had written to Tom Luker. governors' meeting tomorrow so well timed. Cherry had asked Tom if the issue was coming up at the tomorrow and he said no intention of bringing them up, so Lipscombe is a liar - as I thought.

Later Wilk arrived. She was full of school scandal,which was a bit tedious. About 8 Cyril and Kay arrived. Kay's chatter too much for me. Like a race horse, I started sweating and thought I should scream.

Friday, Oct 25th

The British Isles fully represented at Dunedin. My nurse very calm, cold, dignified and efficient, English; Mrs Target, alias Auntie Bullseye, explosive, bustling, loud and rather vulgar, Welsh; my other nurse, dark, pretty, soft, feminine, Irish; the night nurse, tall, gaunt, sharp featured with large long hands, Scots.

Cherry came in for an hour. More news of my incredible successor. He wanted the boys marched down to the playing field in the lunch hour because "people in the town" did not think they ought to scramble up and down the bank. The principles on which he the school is to be run are those of subtopia - keeping up with the Joneses, what do the people next door think?

However, worse was to follow. Len has been told he must not sublet, so Raymond and family are to go. Meanwhile, his grandchild may not be wheeled down the front drive or in the school grounds, but must use the back entrance. Oh God! Oh Henley-on-Thames!

Sunday, Oct 27th

Mr Bohn came in this morning to take the stitches out in person, a very great honour. Last time i was done by Mrs T, who tore my hair out in lumps.

Cherry came in, but was in one of her dopey states. I asked her when Alfonso was leaving. She said she hoped he would never leave! But what the significance of that was I did not like to ask!

Tuesday, Oct 29th

Today I got out. I am getting in need of total immersion. The American advertisement experts day some people cling to their B.O. as devotedly as skunks. It is defence mechanism. "So nice not to have any friends." Left for St Edwards School in Cyril and Kay's car. Had supper in their study and then retired to bed in the garden bedroom which was provided with roses and crysanthemums. "Jolly good," as the night nurse would have said.

Tuesday, Nov 5th

Cyril and Kay are simple people and their lives, especially Cyril's, are punctuated by small happenings, an accident to the cook, the disappearance of a kitten, a single decker bus going by instead of a double decker, of which much is made and which are labelled "crazy, fantastic, would you believe it and well I never." A great deal of the day is spent with Cyril stretched out with his long legs on a cushion on a stool reading, like a good many elderly men, I suppose, he follows an exact timetable of glasses of sherry, pills, weather forecasts, news, whisky at five every evening. Kay drives him down to the town. He cannot be kept waiting a minute for his food, his drive or his bedtime.

Cyril told me he likes to go out on Saturday to avoid housework! I observed last night that he wears a clean pair of socks every day. Besides being his wife, Kay is also secretary, chauffeuse, accountant, cook and housemaid. A more than full time job.

Thursday, November 7th

Went down to the flat and bought some fruit, 4 bananas, a box of dates and a pound of grapes cost 6/7. Awful. Bill from Dunedin £73, Mr Bohn £43. I hope for recompense of £50 from B.U.P.A.

Saturday, Nov 9th

Went down to meet Cherry for coffee. Lipscombe has now suggested she leave as they are incompatible! It is a pity Tom Luker is both a limited and a weak chairman. His main object in a situation like this is to avoid trouble. Anyway she has decided to stay and fight it out and good luck to her. It is tough on her that after 15 years service to the school they should have made this ghastly appointment of this dreadful type.

Sunday, Nov 10th

It would be well if men and women could remember, in sexual relations, in marriage and in divorce, to practise the ordinary virtues of tolerance, kindness, truthfulness and justice. Those who, by conventional standards, are sexually virtuous, too often consider themselves thereby absolved from behaving like decent beings. Bertrand Russell

Saturday, Nov 16th

Leg bad and cold wind but went to Paddington, where met Nora, and to Watford. As Nora remarked, you would not keep a dog alive under the conditions of Aunt's existence - so blind she can't distinguish faces, deaf, swollen with an intestinal stoppage and permanently parched mouth. She was too weak to talk much, but when she could talk her mind was clear.

Sunday, Nov 17th

Reading the first of the lectures on Russia by an American expert, G. F. Kennan. Full of good sense. "If the Soviet likes to portray itself as embarked on a desperate economic competition with us, I don't see that we are under any obligation to accept this interpretation." "The Russians are the Babbits of this mid-century, but so far, being good materialists, they have shown no awareness

Tuesday, Nov 26th

Went to see Dr Williams (a Baptist, funny how you can always tell) and he gave his consent, necessary for B.U.P.A., for Droitwich. Phoned Ayrshire Hotel and booked room

Thursday, Nov 28th

Took the 2.30 to Droitwich

Thursday Nov 28th to Dec 21st

Ayrshire Hotel full of old ladies in various stages of senile decay. Old age in a hotel my idea of hell!

Reading Maurois: A happy marriage is a long conversation that always seems too short.

Somerset Maugham: Beauty is a rare word. It is used lightly now, of the weather, of a smile, of a frock.... But beauty is none of these... It is a force. It is an enravishment.... The impact of beauty is to make you feel greater than you are so that for the moment you feel you are walking on air and the exhilaration and release are such that nothing in the world matters any more. You are wrenched out of yourself into a world of pure spirit."

Sunday, Dec 22nd

Spent morning at the flat. Hilary arrived for lunch at Cyril's and then I took him round to the flat for tea. It was a success! Though a letter had arrived from Nora to say the case would come off in Late January or early February, felt very depressed. Leg very stiff;

Dec 23rd

Mary came to see me off at Reading. Reached Exeter about lunch time. Maud's for tea

Christmas Day

Maud and I had a chicken and Christmas pudding and we drank to absent friends. In the afternoon I went down to the estuary after the Queen's television appearance. This I thought a mistake. It was over rehearsed and acted, delivered with a smile - also rehearsed? It was better when you only heard her.

In her letter Mary wrote: I thought Hilary very nice indeed yesterday and, though he is like Nora in looks, he seemed to me a warm person and has expressive friendly eyes. I was glad he came.

Monday, Dec 30th

Into Exeter to see Wilfrid, flat in his back recovering from a coronary thrombosis. "Hubert," he said, " we communicate only through rumour." Curiously a) he had sat next to a man at a Rotarian function at Crediton who came from Henley b) the rector of Henley's daughter had married the cathedral organist c) my old master Woodard had been inducted to Cheriton Fitzpayne.

Hilary, his daughter there, after whom Hilary Barnes is called, with her baby. I carried her on the Downs at Brighton 30 years ago, as witnessed by an old snapshot.

Dec 31st

Nine months ago I gave notice that I was leaving Henley, five months ago I supplied evidence for a divorce, but legally I am still where I was, though without a home or more possessions than can go in a couple of suitcases. A limbo-like existence! I have had no regrets.

1957 July - August

2011-02-18T18:29:00.000+01:00

The prefects, summer 1957. The editor can
only reliably identify John Clifford, top row,
furthest right, and next to him Hazel Reynolds,
and Leslie Roberts, bottom row, right

July. The Diarist's final days as headmaster of Henley Grammar School.

Monday, July 1st

Nora had two Fifth form girls up to help with the crews' dinner, but listening to the thousands of words she used directing them what to do I wondered whether there was in fact much saving of energy.

Wednesday, July 3rd

Picked up Mary at the Caversham bus stop. We decided to go to the Bucks side. We saw Bryanston beat Tiffin's School

Thursday, July 4th

Bryanston fell to Shrewsbury.

Friday, July 5th

Went up to London... to Queen Anne's Gate.... where I was conducted into a room and saw two men. It was some time before I discovered that the second was Major Vernet, the ex-owner of Claydon! The National Trust agent very passive. I asked most of the questions, Major Verney a few. They offered a 3 room flat and £300 a year. They have no idea how many may turn up when it opens on July 29th. There did not seem to be any urgency when i said I could not come until September. The great catch is living by myself until Mary and I can get married.

There has been rather a scandal about Gilbert Murray. The Roman Catholics got in when he was not compos mentis and gave him extreme unction.

Saturday, July 6th

Temperatures of 90° and high humidity. The men had dinner in the middle of the day and high tea before departing at six. Our gross takings in notes were £81=5=6. Nevertheless I was thankful to see them go. The heatwave has made us very tired.

Sunday, July 7th

Spent the morning tidying up the house. Nora, planning as ever, suggested that if I went to Claydon I should send my washing to a launderette in Cheam. Pointed out a) had not been offered Claydon b) if offered had not decided to accept it!

Monday, July 8th

Charmian Cook, her French husband, 2 boys, month old baby girl, to tea. We shall be social to the bitter end as the Makins are coming down here on July 30th

Rang up the rector tonight about the Periam service. The clergy are the bottom. He wanted the Psalm said, a different lesson, and his own hymns. Finally he enquired if Brind could play the organ.

Tuesday, July 9th

The end of term gets more and more distracting with invigilation continually interrupting the other chores. It seems to be having a bad effect on the wind in my guts which appear very inflated.

Cherry told me the staff were giving me £11, the children £20 and the Old Boys and Girls about £70. The children would like to see their present, the rest would prefer cheques. Shall have to consult Mary tomorrow.

Friday, July 12th

Lady Helen in to say goodbye. Charming as ever. Promised to come and see my house, if I got one.

Saturday, July 13th

My successor came down. I liked him much less than the first time, but Lady Helen said one never does like one's successor. He won't answer letters promptly, that's one thing. He said his wife was coming, but did not say that she was coming later from Worthing and staying at the Red Lion, while he came on from London. He apparently does not mind if he meets the staff or not before term. I'd thought he'd want to, but if he feels like that he might have said so and saved me the trouble.

We had another go at the timetable, the school accounts, etc. He had been told religion was important in Henley, so had apparently decided to go to church. I found this a bit hard to stomach. However if he joins the golf club, the Salisbury Club, the squash club and and attends service on Sunday no doubt they'll think he is what they call "a live wire".

He said Soar, my predecessor, under whom he taught, was "more like a business executive". I could not resist saying, "Most headmasters are."

Took him down to see Cherry for a drink. She was desperately nervous. After I dropped him at the Red Lion. I went back to see Cherry. She said that at any rate he was polite, if without charm, which was more than some headmasters were!

Sunday, July 14th

Rang up Cherry to hear how she had got on at morning coffee with Mr and Mrs L [Lipscombe, the coming head] and the senior master. She was very gloomy. He was only interested in organisation and completely disinterested in people. The school would become academic institution and he and Clem would run it as they thought. Poor dear! Secretly I agree with her. The more I see of him the less I like him.

Monday, July 15th

This was a funny day. Mary and I all dressed up in our best - me in my new suit, Mary in an unwonted county hat and French gloves - started off for Claydon, arrived at the house about three o'clock. The door bore a painted plate "Ring for custodian". We rang. Nothing happened so we found the door was unlocked and went in. The hall was full of litter and people writing at tables who displayed no interest in us, or, when asked, in Mr Wallace, the agent, either. We explored and entered a huge half-darkened library where a group seemed to be trying out the lighting. From the group Mr Wallace and Major Verney appeared and we were introduced. We need not have bothered. Mr W and the Major were in tattered sports coats and Mrs V in slacks. There was builders' and electricians' clutter all over the place, mixed up with a jumble of junk from the rooms they were working on. Some of the windows were out, and men were even tearing off the roof off the church! The custodian appeared, a big wheezy popeyed man called Bowsher. He seemed to think we might be a relief from Tring! but when we were introduced we were told we might be coming to help him, but everything was vague to a degree and nothing was explained, except the people in the hall: they were professor and students looking for something.

Saturday, July 20th

Heavy rain made it necessary to cancel the Old Boys' Match, but over 100 came up to the tea and presentation. Phyllis, Miss Hunter and Marjorie Barnes all in the front rows. I was rather nervous, but soon got into my stride and made them laugh. They gave me £70 and a book with the subscribers' names and to Nora one of the Wilk's water colours. I used the quotation from Bacon: I count every man a debtor to his profession.

After this we circulated with cups and saucers; I tried to have a word with most people. It was a very pleasant party and most enjoyable.

Monday, July 22nd

My last staff meeting. Amiable and short - determined that "leave it to my successor" a good policy, especially as Cherry inclined to be emotional when I suggested sorting the quick and the slow.

Tuesday, July 23rd

The last of my "justly dreaded" talks on "How babies are born" to 1y and 1d. They were very nice and sensible.

Wednesday, July 24th

Phyllis and boys up for tea. P curious to know what I intended to do, replied "Put my feet up". Nora said she felt the strain of concealment. I said I've had 17 years of it.

Thursday, July 25th

Yesterday my last lesson, to 1y on the discovery of the ocean routes in the C15th and C16th centuries - rather a good lesson I thought. Intend to tell them it was last tomorrow.

Staff, summer 1957. Bottom row, left Norman Attrill
and Mr Clifford, headmaster and Mrs Clayden.
Top row, far right, Mr Roberts and next to him
Mr Brind and, I think, Mr Hirons and
Wally Rees. The editor cannot with any assurance
put names to the others.

Friday, July 26th

This was indeed a day to remember! I had to prepare the speeches for the seniors, the juniors and the staff. While I was shaving I had a brain wave. Why stand to make my farewell speeches, why not have the desk removed from the dais and sit at ease in my library arm chair, the school literally at my feet. This I did, and it worked well.

I did not have the usual O God our help followed by the school hymn, but chose two of my favourite tunes, He that is down need fear no fall and Gird on thy sword, O man. I thought I might falter with the Collects, but my voice remained quite steady and unemotional after the last lines:

From whom all is, from whom all begun,

In whom all Beauty, Truth and Love are one

After the lists had been read, the swimming certificates announced, the term's competition prizes distributed and the cups given away, Hazel Reynolds came forward and made a speech. It was a nice speech mainly about what I had done with the Sixth - how good it was to have a scholar as headmaster (Cherry's inspiration here I felt). At the end she offered me a token plate from the Doulton "Cascade" dinner service. To loud and long applause I held up the plate for all to see at arms length above my head. The desk was removed and I made by allocution.

I thanked them for the present and said the pattern on it would remind me of the field in June, the grasses on the bank, high and covered with blue, brown and yellow flower. I said a school should have a character, a flavour, a tang, even eccentricity, and secondly a standard of excellence.

There were two sides to our civilization; the new, science, and the old, literature and the arts. Whether one had most to do with one or the other, not to neglect the new or despise the old. Their education could never be complete. We tried to open doors for them. They must go through. I quoted Bunyan and gave them a rule of conduct: Do nothing that increases the difficulty of the individual.

Then they stood and I described Sir Jacob Astley on Oct 23rd, 1642, leading his men into battle. After he had halted them and said his prayer, which I repeated, he added, "Lead on boys" - and I say to you "Lead on boys". At this the organ, piano and strings sounded the first chord of a march and the school filed out, leaving me in my chair.

Only the staff remained. Len and Tom were sitting among them, pleased as anything. In order to short circuit the Cherry-Clem row, Wilk had been asked to to make the presentation. Poor dear, she had spent hours writing an essay which she proceeded to read from manuscript. It went on and on in very stilted language. I thought it would never stop. Anyway it made it easy for me for; this, like Tom Luker's effort on Saturday, good to follow by contrast.

Back to the Sixth form. I gave my reading from Don Juan in America of Mr Pumpenstempel's Orchestra.

After lunch it suddenly occurred to me that Cherry light go over to see Mary. She said she was thinking of going into the library, so I rang Mary and told her to expect her. I thought it would be easier for both.

Shook hand with all the Sixth and dismissed them, then after the bell had gone, sat in my room and waited for the individual members of the staff had been in to say goodbye. By now I was very tired.

Picked up Mary in Castle Street. Cherry had been in and was in such an emotional state she could hardly speak and was very weepy. Mary said she almost wept herself but tried to keep the conversation on a calm level.

After we had had supper and washed up it was nearly nine, but I knew we must complete this "day to remember" in one way; our way. We got into bed and I told Mary as I held her that now it was only us. The school had gone. She was my only love, and so we lay together and I could feel, though I could not see, the tears that filled her eyes.

Saturday, July 27th

A letter, a very nice one, arrived from Cherry. Said she liked Mary. She was beautiful and charming. Cherry so relieved she would not "never see me again".

Had a cup of coffee with Wilk in the morning and told her Nora and I were parting. Said she guessed as much as we wanted two photographs of Ioan! Asked a bit tartly what would my R.C. friends think. Had been questioned by some on staff as to where I spent my Wednesday afternoons. Replied if they wanted to now they had better ask me! Good for her.

Monday, July 29th

A heavy crop of honey. One lot Tom could just about lift and that was all.

Friday, Aug 9th

Ten days later am writing this in Mary's flat. We had the last social occasion at School House, the Makins family to lunch on July 31st. Nora left the same afternoon. On Wednesday the removers [for Nora's things] should have arrived at 8.30, at 10 I rang up and discovered Mr Wilkins had forgotten the date. Moral: never employ Wilkins. That evening while Mary was cooking supper, the enquiry agent, a tough, bronzed colonial type, appeared to take a statement from us. This had its comic moments. When he asked whether I stayed in the flat over the weekends, or was "intimate" in the afternoons or evenings, Mary put her head round the door and said "All three". Signed my statement, about a page and a half and Mary a sentence to say she agreed with the truth of it, the whole thing about took about half an hour.

On Thursday I cleaned up the house, washed up the honey apparatus (170lbs from four hives) and Mary came over to supper. I went to Miss Hunter and told her of the divorce. She cross questioned me like a Q.C. - worse, though not as intime as the agent! Said she was sorry for Nora. The agent said he did not think there was much hope of a marriage before Christmas.

Saturday, Aust 10th

Mr Wallace came in at teatime and asked me if I would take over from the Bouchers for a fortnight in September.

Wednesday, Aug 14th

Mr Boucher rang up at 10 and had everything arranged. Suggested I should go to Claydon on Sept 6th to learn the knowhow and he would leave on the Saturday.

Friday, Aug 16th

Removers arrived punctually at 9 and off by 11. To Miss Hunter's to sleep.

Saturday, Aug 17th

Got my own breakfast and said goodbye to Miss H. Took me to 12.30 to pack car full to roof almost, lumbering along with flattened springs. Had just time to take a last walk round the garden. It was a lovely green. On the Italian terrace the snapdragon and dahlias were in bloom

I looked at the limes with their tasseled bobs, the lily pond , on the edge of which we so often sat in summer, the view of the school Geoffrrey Makins painted, walked up to the walnut tree and touched its grey channeled trunk, a private ritual of Mary and me, then more slowly across the lawn to the place under the cedar where I ate my picnic in 1934 while I was waiting for the governors' decision. I thought of the lines

Look thy last on all things lovely

Every hour. Let no night

Seal they sense in deathly slumber

Till to delight

Thou have paid thy utmost blessing;

Since that all things then would'st praise

Beauty took from those who loved them

In other days.

Smoky the cat was sleeping in his grassy nest by the back door. I woke him by stroking him goodbye, but his reaction was to demand food cat like! Poor Smoky! I hope the Lipscombes will be kind to him in his old age [he did indeed live several more years].

To lunch with Wilk and off about 2.30, tea at New Inn, Lechlade, but very expensive, 2/9, and reached Hollybush about 6.30. The tie with Henley cut now for good and for the time being no home of my own beyond the caravan, but isn't that a blessing! A room of one's own!

Ten days lter am wrting this in Mary's flat.

Monday, July 1st

Nora had two Fifth form girls up to help with the crews' dinner, but listening to the thousands of words she used directing them what to do I wondered whether there was in fact much saving of energy.

Wednesday, July 3rd

Picked up Mary at the Caversham bus stop. We decided to go to the Bucks side. We saw Bryanston beat Tiffin's School

Thursday, July 4th

Bryanston fell to Shrewsbury.

Friday, July 5th

There has been rather a scandal about Gilbert Murray. The Roman Catholics got in when he was not compos mentis and gave him extreme unction.

Saturday, July 6th

Sunday, July 7th

Monday, July 8th

Charmian Cook, her French husband, 2 boys, month old baby girl, to tea. We shall be social to the bitter end as the Makins are coming down here on July 30th

Rang up the rector tonight about the Periam service. The clergy are the bottom. He wanted the Psalm said, a different lesson, and his own hymns. Finally he enquired if Brind could play the organ.

Tuesday, July 9th

The end of term gets more and more distracting with invigilation continually interrupting the other chores. It seems to be having a bad effect on the wind in my guts which appear very inflated.

Friday, July 12th

Lady Helen in to say goodbye. Charming as ever. Promised to come and see my house, if I got one.

Saturday, July 13th

He said Soar, my predecessor, under whom he taught, was "more like a business executive". I could not resist saying, "Most headmasters are."

Sunday, July 14th

Rang up Cherry to hear how she had got on at morning coffee with Mr and Mrs L [Lipscombe, the coming head] and the senior master. She was very gloomy. He was only interested in organisation and completely disinterested in people. The school would become academic institution and he and Clem would run it as they thought. Poor dear! Secretly I agree with her. The more I see of him the less I like him.

Monday, July 15th

Saturday, July 20th

After this we circulated with cups and saucers; I tried to have a word with most people. It was a very pleasant party and most enjoyable.

Monday, July 22nd

My last staff meeting. Amiable and short - determined that "leave it to my successor" a good policy, especially as Cherry inclined to be emotional when I suggested sorting the quick and the slow.

Tuesday, July 23rd

The last of my "justly dreaded" talks on "How babies are born" to 1y and 1d. They were very nice and sensible.

Wednesday, July 24th

Phyllis and boys up for tea. P curious to know what I intended to do, replied "Put my feet up". Nora said she felt the strain of concealment. I said I've had 17 years of it.

Thursday, July 25th

Yesterday my last lesson, to 1y on the discovery of the ocean routes in the C15th and C16th centuries - rather a good lesson I thought. Intend to tell them it was last tomorrow.

Friday, July 26th

From whom all is, from whom all begun,

In whom all Beauty, Truth and Love are one

Back to the Sixth form. I gave my reading from Don Juan in America of Mr Pumpenstempel's Orchestra.

Shook hand with all the Sixth and dismissed them, then after the bell had gone, sat in my room and waited for the individual members of the staff had been in to say goodbye. By now I was very tired.

Saturday, July 27th

A letter, a very nice one, arrived from Cherry. Said she liked Mary. She was beautiful and charming. Cherry so relieved she would not "never see me again".

Monday, July 29th

A heavy crop of honey. One lot Tom could just about lift and that was all.

Friday, Aug 9th

On Thursday I cleaned up the house, washed up the honey apparatus (170lbs from four hives) and Mary came over to supper. I went to Miss Hunter and told her of the divorce. She cross questioned me like a Q.C. - worse, though not to intime as the agent! Said she was sorry for Nora. The agent said he did not think there was much hope of a marriage before Christmas.

Saturday, Aust 10th

Mr Wallace came in at teatime and asked me if I would take over from the Bouchers for a fortnight in September.

Wednesday, Aug 14th

Mr Boucher rang up at 10 and had everything arranged. Suggested I should go to Claydon on Sept 6th to learn the knowhow and he would leave on the Saturday.

Friday, Aug 16th

Removers arrived punctually at 9 and off by 11. To Miss Hunter's to sleep.

Saturday, Aug 17th

Look thy last on all things lovely

Every hour. Let no night

Seal they sense in deathly slumber

Till to delight

Thou have paid thy utmost blessing;

Since that all things then would'st praise

Beauty took from those who loved them

In other days.

Ten days lter am wrting this in Mary's flat.

1957 April - June

2011-02-06T12:39:00.000+01:00

April. Vanishing £. Case of lockjaw. Training to become a housekeeper. The chatelaine of Uppark.
Monday, April 1st

A nice cheerful day! On the main page of The Times this morning a graph from 1946 to 1957 showing the decline in the purchasing power of the £. If 1938 is taken as 100, by 1946 it was 60, by 1948 50, by 1953 45, today about 37! Labour or Conservative makes no difference.

We have come to the end of our assets and our loans. We are living beyond our means, i.e., our productivity. This may have been stationary in 1956, but anyway not more than 2%. Wages rose 5%! 3% decline in £, rise in cost of living, further wage claims, more strikes! More strikes loss of confidence in £. Even without strikes a rise in wages without a corresponding rise in output eats away at the currency. It has been declining steadily for the past 20 years. It can collapse!

Will this government tell the truth and stand out against the unions' claim that wages are a kind of sacred cow that must never be linked with production, in spite of the fact that wages in total depend production in total? Nor can you pay twice, once with an increase for higher production and than again when production does go up.

Because the mass of the people are better off and can have their television, cars, Saturdays off, pools, and so on, they think they have some kind of right to them and that they will always be there.

If nothing is done the prospect is bad. What is to happen to one's savings, one's pension, one's old age (if any)? Was I foolish to give up a well paid job just at this point? I wish I knew. All this makes one low. I realize more and more that I am no longer young - grey-haired, baggy-eyed and tired - and I have given up a comfortable job at £1500 a year! Still no use worrying. At any rate I am not in debt, or only 17/-!

After supper started looking through my diary 1944 - 50. Felt very low as a result - years go by never to return, Hilary grows up, nothing happens. Camping, caravaning, now too old.

However, I did have a nice letter from Leslie Bennett. "We particularly want to keep in touch with you. Over the years ours has been such an admirable friendship." Good old Leslie - 4 years older than I am, but wearing better I think.

Tuesday, April 2nd

Yesterday went off at school with only some chalk missing and the disappearance of the soap in the boys' lavatory! I was told Richard Dimbleby on television gave viewers a film of the Italian peasants getting in the spaghetti harvest! Some people are supposed to have rung up and asked whether they could buy spaghetti trees!

One of the boys had a kick on the jaw. The doctors x-rayed his skull. He complained of pains in his spine. Finally he was taken over to the Churchill Hospital at Oxford and his complaint was diagnosed as lockjaw! It is so rare no one recognized it. Most medics have never seen any.

Wilk had Ioan's portrait of me in the lab and varnished it. Remembering portraits are often so difficult to identify, I wrote my name on the back.

Think heart may not be too good, pains in chest and it bumps a bit, especially in right ear when in bed. Still, always nervous about myself anyway - pulse 78 - might be strain of cutting nettles with a bill hook.

Wish I had some of Nora's amazing energy. She has now started a course to learn how to teach English to foreigners in London for two days a week.

Thursday, April 4th

A letter from Hilary arrived, enclosing a snap taken in Nicosia last autumn. The last of the rains was falling. He cursed the strikers; said they felt very self righteous serving the Queen. People leaving Britain might not be leaving a sinking ship so much as one infested with rats! Last week they went round the brothels, this week they are going through the prophylactic stations.

After the hockey match Cherry came to tea. In the course of this she let out that she was going on with Italian lessons privately unknown to Miss Hunter! That the teacher, a man of 50, was a relapsed catholic. I said she was becoming clandestine, and really wonder what she is up to. However she did give me a lovely new thermos for the course. It was nice of her, but I do wish she wouldn't spend money on me.Then Nora came home and told me she has picked up a business follower on the train to Guildford!

Saturday, April 6th

Bushell came up and photographed me in my room at the table and then standing in front of my fireplace. Hope it won't be too expensive.

After lunch started for Dunford House. I got to the house before the London contingent and unpacked, then emerged at 7 for dinner to see what had turned up, not without trepidation. Dinner was like the first chapter of an Agatha Christie: one speculated on the identity of the victim and the criminal!

After dinner we went into the sitting room and presented ourselves. Men: 1 builder, a pig farmer (cheerful bucolic), 1 antique dealer with Jewish wife, 1 highbrow book expert (rather superior I thought). Women: elderly white haired matrons, one with a facial twitch and one extraordinarily sinister looking woman with a long nose and white strait hair, a nurse, but I would not like her near me with a hypodermic!

Sunday, April 7th

Made my own bed. After breakfast we had a talk on the house from the parson, Mr Bliss, who acted as warden. I spent most of the morning writing letters to Mary, Cherry and Nora, then walked down to the drive to the pillar box. After lunch we had a talk from Mr Bliss, who had changed into sports jacket and grey corduroys, on the running of Dunford and then he showed us round; this was pretty dull. After supper we sat around drinking coffee, always a bore in a hotel or anywhere. Went out after a bit and read Cobden's Diary in manuscript in the library, where the fat, small red-faced Col Wallis [the pig farmer] was doing the same.

Monday, April 8th

A young rather delicate looking woman arrived last night - the cleaner queen - and this morning she started off in cleaning materials and methods. This took the whole morning with a break for coffee. In the afternoon had two toughs from Hoover and a woman with a washing machine. After sitting all afternoon in a centrally heated room with people smoking I had a really splitting headache. After tea to try to clear my head a bit, I walked up through the woods to the Cobden obelisk. Dinner over I went to the library where the colonel and I established ourselves very comfortably and read in almost complete silence till 10 o'clock.

Tuesday, April 9th

A good day. Quite amusing cleaning demonstration and practice in the morning. I cleaned a carved wooden lion holding up a table. We all got more matey and used to one another. In the afternoon we went in a coach to Goodwood through the most lovely downland country. The outside of the house is dull, but it contains fine Louis Quinze furniture and interesting Stuart portraits. After we got back Mrs Spikes left for London. I have formed a high opinion of Mrs Spikes - she is clearly in the Lady Helen class.

Wednesday, April 10th

We had practical housework this morning. I was paired with a nice farmer's wife and we had silver to clean, a room to do and a corridor to clean. While I was busy with white apron and short sleeves, the school I hoped was breaking up without a row between Cherry and Clem. It wasn't! I was sitting in the library about nine reading Bertrand Russel when the phone rang. It was Cherry. Clem had walked out at prayers on Monday, had a row with her that day, demanding if she had acted at my orders; when she said yes, he failed to appear either Tuesday or Wednesday. Trouble ahead I am afraid.

In the afternoon we had a talk from the Earl of Euston. he arrived in a bowler hat, always a bad sign, obviously Eton, Magdalen and the Guards! However he was intelligent and gave a very good talk, though he never smiled or made any effort to be pleasant. Like Lord Curzon he was clearly a very superior person.

Thursday, April 11th

This morning we completely stripped down the drawing room and went at it 9.30 to 12.50 hammer and tongs

Friday, April 12th

A rather unrewarding day. laundry in the morning, not of much interest to me. After tea I took the colonel on a church crawl to Trotton, which has two magnificent brasses and an excellent wall painting, evidently recently discovered.

Two peculiar episodes. At breakfast the young Swedish maid asked "Is the gentleman still in Kate," (the bedrooms are called by names). At lunch the warden was explaining that the vicar of Midhurst was so low that he had put the nonconformists out of business, to which the rugged Mr Beasley replied, "If yo can't break a racket, get inside it."

Saturday, April 13th

We had the morning off so I went to Bognor for the sea air; Bognor was, is, the bottom. After lunch we went in a huge coach to Petworth. This is a marvellous place. Profiting from a lecture of Deinfestation, I discovered a beetle (death watch) on the carpet!

Sunday, April 14th

In the afternoon we started for Uppark with our tea. We were met by Lady Meade-Featherstonhaugh, a little, rather frail looking, but distinguished lady with untidy grey hair. She took the greatest trouble with us, beginning by impressing on us that a historic house had a life and atmosphere of its own, that Uppark had a happy feeling and atmosphere. What impressed me at first was the air of decay compared with, say, Osterly or Goodwood. As we went round the rooms the charm and vitality of the house grew on one. It had only six owners in 250 years.

The chatelaine was a character. She used only "living" water from a spring and in infusion of soapwort for cleaning. She was an expert restorer of fabrics - the great window curtains were hanging in strips when she arrived. Now they were all reconditioned by stitching 20 threads to the inch. There was a most beautiful cherry red state bed and two chairs, one restored (by soapwort) and one not - an amazing contrast. By the time we had finished with the bedrooms it was 4.40, but we were shown an C18th dolls house with all the original furnishings and fitments, and then our indefatigable guide proceeded by a stone passage at a very low temperature to a detached and disused kitchen. The cold went to your marrow. Out on the lawns, looking at about 600ft towards the sea, the old lady explained in almost mystical terms what the house meant to her, how through it you could live beyond time and the worry of contemporary life. Utterly exhausted we staggered to the bus for tea.

We had not done our stint, however, not a bit, alas. Mr Clarabut, the highbrow bore, was due to talk "on the care of books". He performed the remarkable feat of talking for two hours without coming to books at all and what he said on these on these could have been put in five minutes. My God I was annoyed.

April 15th

This was a good day. Coach to Haslemere and stockbrokers' express and on to South Kensington. We were shepherded by Miss Lowenthal, very chic, soignée and good looking, to a distant part of the museum for a talk by one of the curators, followed by the public relations officers, off whom anything would bounce. We started again in the afternoon in the English furniture section with Miss Lowenthal. She was first rate. Got back to Dunford about 7.

Tuesday, April 16th

Cleaning carpets and upholstery in the morning. Then free afternoon. I went to Petworth. After dinner we had another fearful session with the housekeeper, supposed to be on "stores and accounts", but a chit chat and get together with the women, a waste of time and very irritating.

Wednesday, April 17th

Today we cleaned the whole house with a daily, weekly or special clean, working from 9.30 a.m. to after tea. My feet got very tired and I have seldom been more glad to see tea arrive.

Thursday, April 18th

We had a final meeting at which Mrs Spikes read letters from various house owners who had been approached about curator-caretakers. Some were encouraging, some negative, some plain ridiculous. They all however seemed unwilling to pay!

After an early lunch the party left by bus. I made tea at the flat and when Mary got in from the library we started for the Queen's Hotel at Newbury, where we were welcomed by Mrs Groves. As usual we had room 14. After dinner we took a stroll and then sat in the bedroom and I showed Mary my postcards. To be together again after a fortnights absence made us very excited and we were long and successful and very moved to tears.

Good Friday

A tremendous beginning to the day at early light. Ecstasy! Mr and Mrs Groves at breakfast talked about Watford. Mary went tomato colour. "Mrs Barnes hasn't changed at all." We drove straight to Coombe. It was a perfect day! The new made world was filled with light and birds sang in Eden. We were full of joy and happiness from the hours of night and our hearts sang with them.

Saturday, April 20th

Spent the day sorting out, but failed to get tidy.

Easter Sunday

Went on clearing back room. Took our tea out to the Streatley Lane.

Wednesday, April 24th

We had not been to Kew since 1950. This year said we must go - it may be our last chance. Brilliant sunshine and a cool north wind. Met Mary at the Southern Reading station with a sandwich lunch, lemonade and a thermos for tea, at 1.15. We had just begun our lunch when five schoolgirls entered the carriage and sat in a row on the seat opposite and never took their eyes off us while we ate our sandwiches! Not what we had planned.

We walked by the little enclosures where we had lain among the narcissi many years ago now, by the magnolias to the great palm house. The beds in front were ablaze with tulips and in front of the house were ranged the Queen's Beasts from the Coronation Pavilion at Westminster, Lions, Unicorns, Bulls, Griffins, Falcon, Horse, Dragon, fascinating - I was more interested in these than the tulips said Mary.

Next to the rock garden. After tea we went back to the chalk garden and the tulips to the rhododendron of King William's temple. As we wandered along, hand in hand, we often kissed and felt very happy and so much in love.

Friday, April 26th

I left at the 10.15 and had lunch in Exeter and came on to Maud's in time for tea. I told her Nora and I were parting and that I proposed after a divorce to marry Mary. It was a much easier conversation than with Molly. I felt at once that Maud was sympathetic and understanding. I found to my surprize that she had installed television.

Saturday, April 27th

Went to Exeter in the afternoon. I met the 2.13 from Reading which was taking Mary to Looe. We had six minutes together, but it was well worth it.

Sunday, April 28th

It is clear that after all this we have decided to give up the canal as a bad job and accept Nasser's terms, paying the dues like the Americans I suppose "under protest" - a pretty lame and impotent conclusion to it all.

Monday, April 29th

Tennis has raised Hilary in the social scale. He had got as far as playing a doubles tournament with the deputy governor, who could not have been nicer, and ending up with drinks in the officers' club! Took sandwiches, bought fruit and a bottle of lager in Exmouth and took my lunch beyond Orcombe point, for the tide was right out, and found a sun trap among the rocks. It was so sunny I took my shoes and socks off and had a paddle in the shallow rock pool. I am sure Mary would not have approved! I found a bit of drift wood to act as a desk and wrote to Mary, sending her a poem I had written in bed last night and this morning. I felt that our Easter holiday should be commemorated in our book of poems.

Last night I saw television for the first time. I must say I did not think much of it. The screen is small and the grain pretty coarse. We looked at a film on costume.

Tuesday, April 30th

Caught the 3.30 from Exeter. Felt very flat and depressed at my return though don't know why I should.

May. Seen with "another woman". Cherry and the Italian lodger. Petrol rationing to end (again). The next headmaster. Donald Heath on the declining standards of the medical profession. Last sports day. Headship brief history: dark ages, war years, middle ages, modern times.

Wednesday, May 1st

Took Cherry out to tea and went back to supper with her. Cherry let out i) that she knew who Mary was and where she worked and ii) that Miss Hunter had told her I had been seen with another woman, "but of course it meant nothing." Mary had given me an envelope addressed to her with stamps on it and I had left it on the desk in 1y after I had distributed the stamps; that my absences on Wednesday and the fact that I always got my books from the Times Book Club, had given her the clue.

Thursday, May 2nd

Letter card from Mary. She was so pleased with the poem, bless her. This buoyed me up against possible eruptions from Clem. However he merely cut me dead and refused to acknowledge my existence at all.

Yesterday, I learnt more about the clandestine, see April 4th! Cherry does not want to hurry him, but if he proposes, she will accept him. He may not be the proposing sort (in that sense!). Would like to meet him and see what I thought. She'd rather marry me, but if she could not marry me, then she would take Alfonso da Ponte!

Friday, May 3rd

The day started badly. A parent arrived to complain about a stolen watch and threaten with the police. It turned up almost at once. She also produced a live cartridge picked up on the range. After I had lectured Wally on the subject, I suddenly realized it might be Raymond Hayes who had left it - it was of course!

Saturday, May 4th

Called on Wilk in the morning. She was furious at Clem's gross rudeness to Mary Clayden at the end of last term - said he was the most selfish man alive! About right too.

Sunday, May 5th

Went on cleaning the back room, took out lino, washed paint, descaled kettle, lifted bulbs, wrote letters - the usual Sunday chores in fact.

Germans very upset because we intend to reduce conventional forces in their country and rely on tactical atomic weapons.

A pair of bullfinches are nesting in the brambles on the bank below the house, and a blackcap too.

The Observer says petrol rationing will only last another fortnight. The price has come down anyway to what it was before Suez. Perhaps The Observer is right after all. Expeditions like Suez are out of date and we should let them get on with it. Certainly, if we did try to seize the canal we should be honest with ourselves about it.

Monday, May 6th

Went to Hartley to report pains in chest. He said blood pressure same as last June, heart OK, pains either indigestion or rheumatism. Pink patches on chest due to nerves! What are you to do? Wish I wasn't so windy; strong hypochondriac tendencies, always I suppose have had from my maternal parent's worries and anxieties.

Powys on M. Arnold: Those who best love the undying books of the past must necessarily be his staunchest supporters, for it was always from books, from the long, deep channel of the accumulated writing of the centuries that he nourished his imagination and refreshed his spirit. It was by the inspired words of the past that he fed the life if his soul.

Wednesday, May 8th

Mr Moore, the dentist [London Road, Reading], died last Sunday week. An excellent dentist. I had gone to him since 1934 and he had kept me patched up for 23 years, bless him.

Thursday, May 9th

Donald's mother rang up to say he had been awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship in the U.S.A. Sent him a greetings telegram.

Cherry to tea. Alfonso is working as a photographer. "Decent or indecent?" I asked!

Friday, May 10th

Went over to Reading to seal envelopes at bank and then to Mr Pim, the solicitor. He said that all that was wanted was a simple confession of adultery from me and Mary to an enquiry agent - nothing about hotels etc was necessary.

Saturday, May 11th

Coffee with Marjorie Wilkinson, after lunch Marjorie Barnes blew in. I wanted to say that I had kissed a headmistress, so I did, on her arrival and departure! To my surprize she offered me her mouth, not her cheek!

Nora returned for supper having bought an Edwardian house in Sutton with help from Ken, two flats, the lower occupied. Hope it doesn't fall through.

Sunday, May 12th

After lunch told Nora about what Mr Pim said and she promised to see a solicitor, though she seemed to envisage policemen coming up the school drive to serve writs! I wonder. Blockbuster McBurnie came up after lunch. She looked a bit boiled, but had come within 200 votes of the Conservative candidate in the municipal election and hopes to get in next time. What a woman!

Wrote to Mary and told her the day of our marriage was drawing near and we should have to decide about beds. Could I train myself not to snore?

Monday, May 13th

My last House Committee. Mr Cook asked me to retire, so he's evidently cooking up something for the governors' meeting. Hartley syringed my ears and got out masses of wax and dirt. I immediately heard much better.

Thursday, May 14th

Petrol rationing to end at midnight. Waste of money having the new books printed I should have thought!

Wednesday, May 15th

Ex-Indian judge Grille has aksed Mary to have a drink in his flat. Are his intentions honourable? M's assistant thinks not! We must wait and see.

Thursday, May 16th

Cherry to tea. Alfonso not coming up to scratch!

Saturday, May 18th

The new H.M. and his wife arrived at 3.30. I met them at the station and identified them easily as they were the only pair that got off the train. I liked him. He seemed a nice person, though without any charm. He had a very irritating habit of saying yes, yes, to any remark you made. His wife though was an exasperating person, who seemed on the verge of a nervous collapse and would eat nothing. She worried all the time about the schools for their very small daughters and seemed on edge with him. I felt sorry for him with a wife as jumpy as that. We had a couple of hours on the timetable and I gave him all the information about it I could.

That dead beat, old Lord Saye & Seal, asked him if he approved of corporal punishment. He made the very cunning reply that he would follow my practice in the matter and if he found he was giving more than I did he would think something was wrong*. Did I have any? I said no, a) unnecessary b) out of place in mixed school.

*Diarist's subsequent insertion: That should have warned me!

Sunday, May 19th

Donald Heath came up for morning coffee. He borrowed my rucksack as he is going to Spain and I appointed him my agent for the purchase of postcards* both there and in the USA.

We had an interesting discussion of what is wrong with the Health Service. He says the most frightful thing about it is the degeneration of the G.P. The young ones are losing any medical ideas they might have had and becoming disillusioned cynics. He takes surgeries to make pocket money and says after working with integrity and honesty all day in the lab, he puts all that away when he gets in the bus. He has perhaps 45 patients to see in two hours. He can give about three minutes to each, provided they walk in quickly! Of those 45 perhaps five really need a doctor. Unless you can persuade the public not to crowd into the surgeries, general practice of this kind is a farce.

But how? I suggest a charge, Nora an intensive camapign on wireless and television "Don't go to your doctor unless you really need him." It is impossible, says Donald, to discipline your patients and tell them "I don't want to see you again, there is nothing the matter with you?" If you do they simply clutter up someone else's surgery. A good example of dividing a cake and still having a cake left at all.

[The Headmaster had a large collection of postcards of art and architecture. Anyone travelling abroad was always asked to add to the collection. There were a couple of thousand cards by the time Mary died in 1994, most of them black and white, and by that date the availability of postcards of a much better quality, as well posters and reproductions using new techniques, had made the collection obsolete. I gave it to a grateful neighbour in the Cotswolds, a student who was studying the history of architecture]

Read Speaight's Life of Hilaire Belloc. A difficult man, unhappy, disappointed because Oxford failed to give him a fellowship and he was forced to rely on lecturing and journalism. Discovered that the book on economics I used at Leatherhead and have, alas, only just thrown away, was written by him for a 16-year-old girl "Helen", none other than my dear Lady Helen.

Lady, when your lovely head

Droops to sulk among the Dead,

And the quiet places keep

You that so divinely sleep;

Then the dead shall blessèd be

With a new solemnity,

For such beauty, so descending,

Pledges them that Death is ending.

Sleep your fill - but when you wake

Dawn shall over Lethe break.

"When we are dead, some Hunting boy will pass and find a stone half hidden in the grass and grey with age: but having seen that stone (which was your image), ride more slowly on."

Lord Finchley tried to mend the electric light

Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!

It is the duty of the wealthy man

To give employment to the artisan.

Wednesday, May 22nd

There was brilliant weather for my last Sports Day at the Grammar School. A cool wind blew from the north east to temper the brilliant sun and the valley looked its best. I wandered round talking to parents and chatting to the charming Mrs Mathews, who gave away the prizes. Mrs Williams, the new vicaress, turned up and we had quite a big tea party including Miss Hunter, Mr and Mrs Clem and the German teacher, Herr Nussbaumer, a fat, and stocky little man from Cassel.

Friday, May 24th

Empire Day. Hymns, lesson about the sons of Zebendee asking for a position "in the kingdom". My last governors' in the afternoon. Tom Luker made a speech, rather pedestrian and heavy, and asked Mr Denham, as the oldest inhabitant, to add a bit. I replied. in the past under the Mackenzie, Monk, Ashford regime, I was so discouraged that I could not forbear to say I divided my 23 years into the dark ages to '39, the middle ages, the war years, and modern times. In the war years "never in the history of education did so many teach so little to so few". Some of them were amused, but they take themselves very very seriously of course.

Mary had been to drink Madeira with the ex-chief justice of India, Sir Frederick Grille. His flat was full of books of all kinds - "These are mainly erotica" - He talked to Mary as if she were a fellow clubman, but so far he appears respectable and only erotic in his bibliophily, not in his behaviour. But you never can tell.

Saturday, May 26th

Aunt wrote asking me if I could bring her over some coal! She doesn't want to buy any more, and yet in these chilly days needs a fire. Obviously she does not expect to be alive next winter. She was sitting up in her bedroom, which faces north, very frail, thin and tottery, eyes bad, hearing bad, and with a septic throat. I got in the coal from the car in a bucket. Her mind seems all right, which makes the process of physical dissolution worse for her because she realizes what is happening. I got the coal from the car in a bucket.

Nora came back in the evening after two days away, today at Sutton to look at the new house. I must say after yesterday at Mary's and today with Cherry, I found her voice extremely penetrating.

Sunday, May 26th

The grand old man Gilbert Murray died this week, a rationalist and humanist to the end. He once said that Christianity by reducing the Olympians to one, had only left one to be knocked down.

"We can never", he said, "get outside man. Beyond man is the unknown, the realm of mystery which cannot be expressed in language or comprehended in human thought."

Monday, May 27th

Went to tea with Mary. On my way ordered a new brown "thorn proof" suit at Mr Wilcox. We had tea in the new café in the market place, expensive, but very nice. It was not a success as I wanted to get over to Mary too many things requiring decisions in too short a time, notably what to ask for in China for a presentation [by staff and children]

Tuesday, May 28th

Herr Nussbaumer to tea. He had taught till 1942, then joined up and fought in the Crimea, was wounded in the debacle of Germany and got away through Rumania across the Black Sea with a permanently paralysed thumb.

He was a talker, so much so that he could hardly eat his tea. Did not think anything could be done about unifying Germany, was against its neutralization because the Russians would respect no agreement. Critical of the American policy to Russia at end of war; the Germans had warned us. As Churchill said, "We killed the wrong pig." Did he? I had not heard this one.

Wednesday, May 29th

Took over my blue Spanish plate Con gave me after supper and Mary hung it over the kitchen door.

June. A Christian country after all. Hazel's reading list. Sisterly sympathy lacking. "Lowbury belongs to us." Alexander Weiss.

Saturday, June 1st

Went looking at china for presentation in Lawleys and John Lewis, lunch at N.B.L. then to National Gallery to see reproductions.

Sunday, June 2nd

Nora and I took our tea on Downs to Aldworth, but nearly ran out of petrol. We asked a young man by the pub in Aldworth if he knew where we could get any and he produced a gallon in a tin from his "beeje" car. It's a Christian country after all!

Monday, June 3rd

Cherry and I went up to Beethoven concert at Festival Hall - Egmont, Emperor, Fifth. When the victorious divisions marched past the P.M. and Alanbrooke at Tripoli, they wept and neither was ashamed of this emotion. The drumbeats and trumpets of Beethoven are my triumphant legions. At the end of the overture Cherry quite overcome.

Tuesday, June 24th

Nora went to see a London solicitor, who told her that as long as she was performing "wifely duties" she was "condoning" (what wifely duties?), so before she could start proceedings she must leave School House. She thought she would leave after the end of term.

Wednesday, June 5th

When I went down to Exeter in April I noticed from the express window what looked like a very nice strip of Kennet & Avon canal with a lasher and cascade just before Kintbury. We started off along the towpath from Kintibury station towards Newbury. The lasher was further than I thought. We stopped for tea in sight of a lock. After tea we left the things and went on to the lock. This turned out to be the lasher, a charming spot with clear shallow water running over pebbles and water weed. We surprized a red shank. No one came along the towpath. We were alone and far away. It was a delightful afternoon.

[Shorter Oxford: lasher - water that lashes or rushes over an opening in a barrier or weir]

Thursday, June 6th

Hazel Reynolds has been reading novels for me, Aldous Huxley, Maugham, Hemingway, Cather, Compton MacKenzie, Charles Morgan, Linklater. Today she brought me back The Fountain and I gave her The Spanish Farm.

Cherry took the small bookcase and books in her car and we agreed to lunch at The Fleece in Cirencester.

Friday, June 7th

Passed Cherry's car outside The Bull at Fairford. She was inside having a sherry! Lunch, and reached Longhope about 3. Cherry wanted to go for a walk so took her up to the top of May Hill where we lay on the top till tea time. Molly was haymaking but came down and made us tea.

Saturday, June 8th

Did the weekend shopping for Molly in Ross in the morning. Hoed beetroot in the afternoon.

Whit Sunday, June 9th

Tom and Hester Armstrong turned up in his powerful car from Rugby for lunch, chicken, which he carved. After that he retired to bed till tea time.

Monday, June 10th

Took our lunch and went purring through the lanes, where we met no one, first to Kemply and then Kilpeck. Pointed out to Tom rude corbel of woman showing her thing and was amused ten minutes later to see Tom showing it to Hester. Tom and Hester, in spite of age and obesity, a lovely pair - a true marriage.

Tuesday, June 11th

Tom and Hester set off at 7.15 for the Royal Academy. I waited till 12.30 for Cherry to meet me at the Royal Hotel, Ross. Reached home with supper bought in Ross about 7.

It was an unsatisfactory weekend I felt. Molly is so gruff and (query) disapproving. I got no comeback from her, no warmth or friendliness, or any attempt to make me feel welcomed, let alone any sympathy. Mary's name never crossed her lips the whole three days I was there. When I said what I intended to do, she did not appear to take much interest. Old Maud was ten times more human.

Thursday, June 13th

Letter from Miss Sansum to say Aunt had had had a heart attack on getting up yesterday morning.

Cherry to tea as usual on Thursday. She seemed rather tired, but I gathered had sat up till midnight with Alfonso and had asked him, unknown to her parents, to stay in the house while he is turned out of the White Hart at Nettlebed during Regatta.

Saturday, June 15th

Nora want over to see Aunt, who was sitting up in bed and had rallied round again! Cherry and I took our tea up on Wittenham Clumps. It was most enjoyable.

Sunday, June 16th

Another blazing day. It was too hot to go to the Downs or Long Grasses so I repeated the visit to Wittenham with Nora for lunch and came back for tea. Sorry to see how poor the beeches on Wittenden are becoming, broken branches and rotting trunks.

Monday, June 17th

Another blazing day and bedroom at night 78°.

Tuesday, June 18th

Another very hot day, but distant thunder in the evening. Temperature in the 80's.

Reading A Time to Keep Silence, Patrick Leigh Fermor, on the monastic life. He described how he stayed at the monastery of St Wandville in Normandy. No demands were made on my nervous energy; there were no automatic drains, such as conversation at meals, small talk, catching trains, or the hundred anxious trivialities which poison everyday life.... Guilt and anxiety fled away. This new dispensation left 19 hours a day of absolute and Godlike freedom.

Wednesday, June 19th

I got tea and supper together in the morning. This was our midsummer picnic on the Downs. We drove up the lane. There was no one about, no other cars, no tractors, only three pairs of hares running about on on a newly rolled field. After tea we sat about till about six, than set off to walk to the top. When we reached the site of the haystack we kissed and I was for turning back. "Let's go on to Lowbury", sad Mary, so we walked up beyond the beacon pole and sat on my coat. We started home. Near the beacon pole we came to a shallow hollow in the turf about eighteen inches deep. I was surprized and delighted when Mary said "Let's sleep together here!" and lay down in the hollow. There was no one in sight except the tractor driver below the hill and though we were on the skyline our turfy saucer hid us from view. We lay together looking into one another's eyes. A lark rose singing an epithalamiom on the lovers below. "Now," said Mary, "Lowbury belongs to us." My heart was filled with surprize and joy as we walked back hand in hand to our supper. A memorable midsummer picnic.

Thursday, June 20th

Supper with Phyllis in her new home in Hamilton Avenue. After supper Eve and Alexander came in for coffee. Latter on leave and wearing a dark suit and Old Etonian bow tie, had decided to go into the merchant navy or commercial flying, much, I guess, to the professor's disgust. He was pale, spotty and very blasé. Not a very nice type.

Friday, June 21st

Took Mary two pummets of strawberries and some real cream. These I bought in Henley 3/-, the one I bought in Caversham 1/8, such is the robbery practised by the Henley shopkeepers at Regatta time!

June 22nd

A letter from the National Trust inviting me to go for an interview for two jobs going, one at London, one in North Bucks, on July 5th. Took this over to Mary and then went to tea with Cyril. He was trying to sell his car, but he had trouble with crooks who had tried to get it by means of a fraudulent cheque drawn on a non-existent account by a non-existent firm. When a car is damaged in an accent, they buy it from an insurance company, cheap, and steal a new car which they substitute, and sell.

Sunday, June 23rd

Spent a good deal of time delousing caravan and tidying house for crew. The crew are paying 22/6 a day, but this now includes lunch as well. Nora, who made a profit of £50 last year, says it will be only £40 this year, though she is getting more per day.

Reading The Passionate Sceptic, a life of Bertrand Russel. A personality, he thinks, is a collection of "events". When a friend said he found it hard to accept the complete dissolution of the individual, he replied, "A personality is an aggregate, or an organization like a cricket club. I can accept the dissolution of the M.C.C.". Energy which he might have wasted in feeling sorry for himself he directed into feeling angry with other people. It is no good being sorry because the universe has no principle of justice.

Monday, June 24th

A letter from Hilary. He is hoping to go to the Lebanon for 10 days next month on a scheme offering cheap rates for the forces. The most expensive item will be a pair of trousers to go in.

The Anglo-Italian woman, Nora's pick up, has now been invited to spend the night, all fearfully matey. I only hope she's genuine. She told Nora she was more handsome than Celia Johnson, which was laying it on a bit thick.

The great advantage of making a move, sorting out your stuff and beginning a home all over again, is a heightened awareness of your possessions, books, pictures, and pieces of furniture. You enjoy them again as though they were new, which is very pleasant when you have had them for so long.

Tuesday, June 25th

The N.T.! The house is Claydon; flat of 2 bedrooms, sit, kitchen and bathroom, electricity. Rang up Mary to tell her. I want to get it if possible. The question is the salary and terms of appointment. Well, I shall have to wait 10 days.

Clem came in; he had written an "obituary", really very nice indeed. It is a pity he is such a "schitz".

Friday, June 28th

Keble dinner; discovered that Dicker, whom I thought a very clerical cleric, had been at the Slade and painted in Paris! Sat between Dicker and a broken nosed little bachelor from Dunsford in the Teign valley. An excellent dinner; Iced melon, Salmon Steak, Chicken, Strawberry and Ice Cream, Mushrooms on scrambled egg. Claret, Port and coffee. Warden very handsome and soigné, like some aristocratic Victorian cleric, and made a well composed speech though he read most of it. He said speaking in the college hall was like shouting down a railway platform! A very enjoyable evening.

Saturday, June 29th

A fearfully hot day. Mary took a half day and we went up to "the lane". Shortly before four I hastened to make a fire to get the kettle boiling and it was as well I did for a tremendous thunder storm blew up. While we were sitting in the car drinking our tea there was a loud explosion like a whip crack and enormous flash. The storm did not last long and we were able to sit down again on the bank by the side of our hawthorn tree. After supper, Mary, who had walked up to the edge of the barley field, called out that she had found a young partridge that might be hurt. I went up to see and crouched between the rows of barley was a speckled leveret, his ears tucked flat, quite still. Presently, very cautiously, he moved his eyes and head very slightly and then bolted up the furrow and "froze" once more. He did this three times until finally we lost him in the half light. A lovely incident.

Sunday, June 30th

I had vowed I would not have another crew in the house but poverty, or avarice, had made me, and here they are, Mr Dingle and all. The boys are in bed and Mr Dingle playing Bach on the piano. Another day of tropical heat and now a thunderstorm is rolling round and round the hills.

1957 January - March

2011-02-01T10:04:00.003+01:00

January. Premium bonds. Diarist's resignation. Dr Bodkin Adams. Brain drain from GB. Emotion turned to ashes.

Tuesday, Jan 1st

Celebrated the New Year by going to the dentist and having a very shaky front tooth shored up. Reading The Times Portrait of the Year found this crack about premium bonds, "The archbishop branded these token of iniquity as as a 'cold, solitary, mechanical, uncompanionable, inhuman activity' - and investors indulged their inhumanity by buying £40m worth in the first month."

Thursday, Jan 3rd

A lovely mild summer day. About two o'clock the P.O. engineers - 4 men only! - arrived to transfer my telephone to Len's cottage! The lordly Raymond [Hayes] having decided to be on the telephone. Len very sheepish about all this. Soon after a security man arrived to ask about a boy who might have access to secret documents in the R.A.F.

Friday, Jan 4th

Letter from Hilary. He had had his parcels for Christmas, the day itself was "monumentally awful," the dinner was uneatable, and he spent part of it after guard duty cleaning the canteen. Here he did find 10/-. They had their Christmas dinner, which was good, on the Thursday, the officers serving. "Christmas for the army is nothing but a festival of inebriety. The number of people able to keep themselves in a state of semi-paralytic drunkeness for 3 days is surprising."

Saturday, Jan 5th

Remarkably mild with grey skies and high wind. Bedroom 54°. Went to see Hartley. Blood pressure no higher, heart action OK but fast.

Nora went down to tea at Miss H, where were Marjorie Barnes, Wilk and Phyllis. Phyllis, who a fortnight ago thought she was at death's door, has completely recovered and, so Nora said, dominated the party. Glad I politely declined an invitation to go! At Christmas, just as James was about to insert the knife into the turkey on this festive day, Johnnie announced, "Daddy doesn't like you, Mummy." My new nickname for Phyllis is Blockbuster McBurnie.

Sunday, Jan 6th

Reading the Duchess of Windsor: favourably impressed; very free from rancour considering how shabbily they were treated by the court and government. Not even Winston, when P.M., could do anything for them.

Asked Nora what she was going to do about a house next August. She had not really taken any steps at all as far as I could see. Pointed out that once I had given in my notice in March, I couldn't withdraw it, and that hardly left six months for her to find somewhere. I wish she would take advantage of Ken's offer of a flat, but she does not want to.

Tuesday, Jan 8th

Tea with the Wilk. She had suffered from the administrations of a chaplain when in hospital in Reading, as she hadn't enough to put up with in her mental and physical condition. "Well, young woman (she's 51), you don't look as if there's anything wrong with you;" "Why do you think I'm in here, you B. F. " seems to be the right answer. This came out because I found her reading a Penguin on Christianity. Poor dear, she has very little of Ioan's MSS. His sister, I think, has the war book, Jimmie Edwards the novel, and some one else the travel book.

Nora came back last night with news of a 5/- a week cottage near Ipswich, one up, one down, earth closet and outside tap. It would be so nice to put furniture in. It might be, but she does not know, I think, what she is letting herself in for.

Thursday, Jan 10th

Went up to London to see Mrs Spikes of the Institute of Houseworkers in Mount St. Very high class! She was a nice elderly woman who said they were trying to work towards a register of people competent to look after historic houses. That was the idea of running a pilot course. They had a number of people who were interested, but it was not much good unless there were some openings afterwards. One snag, I gather, was the number of retired army types who had pensions. She mentioned one house in Kent where there was a flat and all found at 5/- a week, but they were not prepared to pay while they could get pensioners.

Walked along Piccadilly to the National Book League and waited for Cherry, who was late. She was horrified when I suggested we should go to Lyons, however we went to the 7 Stars and had an excellent lunch, as she was forced to admit.

Found that Douglas Hamilton, Miss Hunter's buddy at Harpsden, had been given three years for defrauding the the Income Tax of £20,OOO. I never did like him since he came to the W.E.A. just after the war, a thick, insensitive type I thought.

Yesterday Eden resigned on grounds of ill health. Much speculation as to whether Butler or Macmillan would succeed. After tea found it was Macmillan. Hope he can pull the country together. We badly need it.

Found a letter from Hilary: "If my father is feeling old, I am feeling young. I suddenly remembered that I was 20. A third almost of my life and nothing achieved yet. Still most people are the same I suppose."

Friday, Jan 11th

Hilary wrote once again describing the officer, 2 regulars, 1 national service N.C.O. and two privates, including himself, in the intelligence section. On New Year's Day they surrounded a village at night and caught a double murderer in their cordon. Everyone was congratulated on their alertness, although by his account it was more luck than cunning.

Saturday, Jan 12th

Thinking of inflation I wondered what my grandfather's salary as rector of Hatford was. Might look it up in Crockford. At Leatherhead I got £200 p.a. and board in 1923; at University College Leicester I rose to £550, on which I married; at Henley in 1934 I started on £600 and by the war had reached £800; in 1950 £1,000; in 1956 £1,500. But hardly as much in real terms as I was drawing at Leicester.

Monday, Jan 14th

The first day of term. Wilk went off to St Thomas' Hospital. Her student, a cockney with a prognathous skull and wooly hair set well back on his head, looks like something out of the ape house, but perhaps he may improve on acquaintance. My first impressions, I must remember, are not always right! The beginning of term staff meeting lasted just 25 minutes; I was pleased to be informed that owing to petrol rationing the governors would not meet this term.

Thursday, Jan 15th

At 10 a.m. a girl bit a needle in half and swallowed one half, the blunt end! Sent her to the hospital to be (as the W.A.A.F. said) ultra-violated.

The trial of Dr Bodkin Adams, the Eastbourne doctor, who helped his women patients over the border after they had willed him their Rolls Royces, began yesterday before the magistrates court. Like other successful men in his line of business he seems to have grown careless and even rang up the coroner before the patient was dead! It looks as if much will turn on the evidence of the nurses. The bodies he was careful to have cremated.

Sunday, Jan 20th

General Spiedel, Rommel's old chief of staff, is now commanding N.AT.O. ground forces in Germany, so the wheel has come full circle since I started writing my diary.

The Israelis, quite rightly, won't hand over the coast at Aquaba and the Gaza strip before they have some guarantees from U.N.O. or the Egyptians about access to their southern port and navigation through the canal. In fact, as some one said, the U.N.O. is a kind of Brigand's Benevolent Society.

Tuesday, Jan 22nd

I wrote a letter to Mary for our haystack anniversary in case I have not time tomorrow. I was very pleased to hear from her this morning, as I had not expected to. I told her I wanted to protect, cherish and hold her.

Thursday, Jan 24th

Went to tea with Cherry. Told her I was thinking of leaving in the summer. Considering she has always said she could not stay in Henley without me, she took it more sensibly than I had expected. She wondered if Clem might possibly be made headmaster, but I told her there was no likelihood of that. She has 7 years to go to qualify [for pension], but a long way to go to 60.

The latest story of Clem is that he noticed a nice little boy watching the Old Boys' rugger match and explained the game to him, but failed for some time to observe he was talking to his younger son!

Friday, Jan 25th

Took half a bottle of Graves and a little chicken over to the flat to celebrate Mary's 47th birthday. After supper we chatted about the past, about Con, Nora and Molly and 1940; about Mary's admirers, Hugh Anderson and Leslie Thorpe, and why Mary hadn't married Hugh, the ambitious and successful young surgeon.

Saturday, Jan 26th

The afternoon was rainy and I sorted out old letters from Con, Nora and Cherry from 1933 onwards and then had a cremation in the kitchen stove. They went up in a fiery mass, all this emotion turned to ashes ["And your quaint honour turn to dust/And into ashes all my lust" - Marvell, To His Coy Mistress]. When one is young one has not the knowledge of oneself or other people, and when one is old the vitality has waned. The death of Nora's first baby, the thirties and early forties - some of it seemed a long time ago, some very near and that connected with Mary very vivid.

Tuesday, Jan 29th

A trying day. The Student's class all right when I was in there, but I concealed myself for one form in the prep room and of course thinking the coast was clear, the horrid little girls were rude and rowdy. I said to Mrs C I am about fed up with children - and my God I was. In the afternoon we had a House Committee to award special allowances. Fortunately that did not take long and they accepted my suggestions and explanation of the scheme. It is a bad thing for the staff to have these special payments which are in effect a gratuity awarded by the headmaster.

February. Income tax and emigration. Nora's pension error. A lunch too much for Hore Belisha.

Saturday, Feb 2nd

Nora arrived back last night from a visit to Dorothy Wade. D.W. had advised her to have the divorce in London (more expense for me) but had given her the name of a lawyer. She seemed to think she has an accommodation address in London.

Phyllis came up to supper. She has at last decided to apply for custody of the children. Very anxious to argue over the rights and wrongs of Suez, but I was not to be drawn very much. Talked also of the frustration of the middle class, which leads people to emigrate. Over 11% of the 6 1/2% of undergraduates canvassed at Cambridge said they had decided to emigrate after taking their degree, mostly to Canada. Over 44% were scientists.

Sunday, Feb 3rd

Wrote to Hilary and told him I was thinking of retiring in August, but that I could pay for his first two terms at Oxford and by then hoped he would get a grant. I thought I'd let him get used to this idea before I mentioned a divorce.

Monday, Feb 4th

Nora went off to Cheam flat hunting. Sweating out unwanted books, giving some to school, parcelling up others to s/h dealers in Reading.

I don't know how I shall feel next autumn when I have not got a job?. I have not been out of a job since the autumn of 1922! I Tell Mary that she must on no account give up her job, unless it gives her up, until I have found something.

More about emigration. Is our present system of taxation unfair to the middle class man of brains? Taxation of £2,000 in Canada is £206, here £499!

Tuesday, Feb 5th

Last night they played a recording of the Eroica in memory of Arturo Toscanini (1867 - 1957) a lovely performance but too much for my 17-year-old set.

Thursday, Feb 7th

A pretty flat day. Went into lessons in the Bi. Lab to see what was happening and had to turn a girl out of one. Letter from Mrs Spikes offering me a place in course at a house neat Midhurst called Dunford from April 6th - 18th. Shall have to ask Cherry to take over for the last three days and say I have gone to "history conference". Find Dunford is Cobden's house.

Friday, Feb 8th

My last governors' meeting bar one. Lasted half an hour, slow as they were. Old Pullein-Thompson, who is evidently hoping to become the next chairman, why I didn't give the numbers taking each subject in the Sixth form at each meeting.

Supper at flat. Bus to Reading now 2s 7d.

Saturday, Feb 9th

Nora has made a mistake about her independent pension. She thought she was separately insured, but now she finds she hasn't been. She never got it in writing from Oxford and her card has not been adequately stamped, and consequently she has been lumped in with me. This has decided her to go into Ken's flat and not buy a house.

Monday, Feb 11th

The charming Lady Helen turned up his morning without warning. I had only just opened her letter. We had her to lunch in my house and tea in my room. I told her I was taking a course on care of houses (but not when it started) and hoped she would put something in the hat!

Tuesday, Feb 12th

A pair of green socks to go with my thorn-proof suit from Molly. We had a small chicken, pressure cooked, and a half bottle of Bordeaux for lunch with Christmas pudding and brandy butter to follow. I felt very sleepy after this but gave a lesson on Hannibal to 1y and on Essex to Rada.

Mary wrote, and when I entered my room at 8.30 I found a calendar and a bunch of coloured freesias from Cherry. After school I wrote to Aunt, Molly and Hilary. As I went down to the post the letters the birds were in full song at 5.40 on my 57th birthday.

Wednesday, Feb 13th

Read Pericles Funeral Speech to the Sixth and Livy on Hannibal to 1y. Cooled my lunch and drove over to Reading, train standing in Platform 5 and Mary by it. We decided to take a taxi to the north end of Kensington Gardens and walk to Kensington Palace. I had not been there since Leatherhead days. The state apartments were still pretty gloomy. The most beautiful of the state robes was a pink dress belonging to Princess Alexandra and the most sinister a black dress of the aged Victoria like a squat dwarf - the counterpart in its way of Henry VIII's suit of armour.

We were turned out at four to find a heavy shower had begun. I had no umbrella and Mary had no oilskin, so we had to stand in a crowd under the rather inadequate shelter of a kiosk, menaced by a jumping, barking black dog, which the other shelterers appeared in English fashion to tolerate. Finally we reached Kensington High St and got a bus to Piccadilly for tea. I began to be discouraged by London, as usual! After tea in Lower Regent Street things looked brighter and we tubed to the Festival Fall for the 5.45 concert of Mozart and Handel. The conductor, Boyd Neal, and the organist, Ralph Downes, made a music hall pair of comedians - the former tall, fat and expansive, the latter wizened, stunted and short-sighted, but both utterly flat footed. They played beautifully and the music had that C18th quality of timelessness.

Thursday Feb 14th

To see Hartley about this pain under my ribs. Suggested as it was 1954 since last x-ray of gall bladder and ought to have another. I thought I would go into Reading as I did not think much of the local hospital last time, and just as well for Hartley said they now have a Hungarian refugee who speaks very little English!

Saturday Feb 16th

Looked in at Phyllis and asked if she could let me have a petrol coupon at the end of March to help me get to the course in Sussex. She said she would, but unfortunately the March coupons cannot be used, so they say, after the end of the rationing period.

Sunday, Feb 17th

Over 50 hyacinths well on, the first crocus, a yellow one, in flower.

The buried bulb doth know

The signals of the year

And hails far summer

With his lifted spear.

Hore Belisha, the inventor of the Belisha beacon for the pedestrian crossing, died of a stroke when addressing a meeting at lunch at Rheims to celebrate Anglo-French friendship. It must have been a very good lunch! I always took an interst in him because when we were both undergraduates I once went to visit him in his rooms at St John's about some union business and he offered me a cigarette! I did not know he was a future secretary of of state war. He was mysteriously sacked in January, 1940, no one knew why, though it was said he had so offended the Guards by his army reforms that the King requested the P.M. to remove him. Perhaps we shall hear the truth at last [Editor: see the Wikipedia Hore Belisha entry].

Monday, Feb 18th

Brought Mary sticky buds and a few wild violets. [Robert] Graves says that wherever you get a love of bright colour and wild animals women count in a civilization. As in Eritruria, where they are allowed premarital intercourse and dined with the men.

Tuesday, Feb 19th

To Oxford by train. A very cold night. Reached Union at 6.30 where I had dinner with Norman (Bosseyed) Smith, now in his last year and President of the International Club (Cosmos). He had been up in London having an interview with some big business concern. He had plenty to say and I listened mostly. Old Beveridge was dining with a party of what might have been grandchildren. I gave a talk on the National Trust to a Scout and Guide group in a queer dilapidated hall, about 35, a young and lively, intelligent audience, quick, to laugh at any jokes, but full of difficult questions! Two young Keble men came up to me afterwards when they heard my college, and I was taken to the station in style in a taxi, arriving rather too early for the 9.50.

While I was waiting I heard the ticket collector enquiring after a passenger's health and the passenger the ticket collector's. I thought this rather odd and discovered on closer inspection it was Tom Armstrong, returning to London after rehearsing the St Mathew Passion. We travelled to Reading together and chatted over the past. He said he often thought of our tutor, Crab Owen, and his old Baedecker, now of course out of date. He had got balder and fatter and much more great man, but he was charming and courteous, courtly as ever.

Friday, Feb 22nd

Mary came to see me off on 9.45 to Gloucester. Visited cathedral, then had lunch at Boots, bought a leg of lamb and bottle of Graves and out to Holly Bush on bus. Molly came down to meet me, looking very wild and agricultural.

Saturday, Feb 23rd

A vile day, cold and raining. With great difficulty purchased razor blades in Newent - query a non-shaving area!

Monday, Feb 25th

A better day, milder and dry. Molly and I walked in the woods and picked some wild daffodils in bud for Mary, who met my train at Reading.

Thursday, Feb 28th

Posted air mail letters to Hilary from both Nora and myself explaining the situation. I hope he is not upset by our separation. Sent Mary a post card of Tintoretto's Ariadne and Bacchus for our anniversary tomorrow and bought a bottle of white Port.

March. Clem erupts. The other half of Plato's apple. The view from the headmaster's room.
Friday, March 1st

Went over to dinner at The Ship to celebrate, but I wondered afterwards if we had done better at the G.W.R., which is now a Trust House. The service was very poor and the greens abominably cooked without any salt - and this is supposed to be Reading's best hotel. However we were very happy. Mary had sent me a lovely letter for the anniversary and I took her over a good big bunch of single snowdrops, which I found at the top of the bank, in a box full of green moss. As we lay in bed we could see the green of the corollas and the yellow pollen and the slightly bitter scent from the glass bowl beside the bed. Dear Mary, my darling heart.

Saurday, March 2nd

I did the deed! Wrote to Chorlton, the Director, saying I wanted to leave in the summer, also a personal note to Dorrell. Shall also have to write to Lady Helen.

It was a perfect spring day. In the evening after watching the School v the Old Boys we went to the dinner at the Red Lion. At any rate this year it was slick, all over by nine when a dance band started up next door. The meal itself was nicely cooked and well served. However there were some snags. The company was small, the staff and governors conspicuous by their absence and there were rather a lot of the Hobbs clan. Also in my speech I offended to susceptibilities of the senior master, and full of injured dignity, and also I suspect of Dubonnet, he came up to complain as soon as soon as we rose from the table. He is an ass! Nothing ever seems to go right with the Old Students' Association anyway.

Monday, March 4th

Not what you would call a really good day! Clem came in after prayers and erupted again. He really is a lunatic. I had insulted him in front of his wife and brother and sister in law. He need not have come back after the war! I did not appreciate the fact that he had! He could never be my friend and so on. He even went back to the fact that when he had brought "his beautiful bride" to the school I had expressed the hope that he would now use braces instead of fastening his trousers with string! I let him go on. Then I asked if I might say something. "Clem," I said, "you won't have to put up with my ineptitudes much longer. I am leaving at the end of next term." That checked the flow a bit and I got him out of the room. The head boy was waiting outside. I wondered how much he had heard.

I told Mrs Loader. She was very nice and said she had been so happy working for me. I also told Tom and Len as they were such old friends, but I found this more of a strain than I expected. Len of course in his usual way wanted to know why I was retiring, had I got another job. "What's the game? I thought we'd retire together."

Tuesday, March 5th

Three nice letters by the morning post from Tom Luker, MacCarthy and Dorrell. MacCarthy suggested the Governors might give me a dinner and wondered if I dined in the S.C.R at Balliol it might help get a university hostel job. I don't relish the prospect much.

Clem was very distant in the morning. I think he may have been nervous of my reactions, but he came in during the afternoon and was very amiable. Perhaps he felt rather a fool. I don't know.

Yesterday Nora went over to see Aunt and came back very alarmed about the housekeeper, who hasn't had a holiday for two years. Thinks she may break down with having the extra work of looking after Aunt in her bedroom. Aunt, of course, running true to her life-long form, can't see why the housekeeper can't conserve her energy by never going out and never writing letters.

Grivas' second in command was killed in a cave in the Troodos Mountains after a 10-hour gun duel. Hilary's battalion was not involved.

Friday, March 8th

Took Mary some yellow polyanthus. The garage gave me two gallons of petrol without coupons and said they could get me have some more if I wanted it. Perhaps Mary and I can go and watch hares. There does not seem to be a real shortage at the pumps.

Saturday, May 9th

Went over to Cyril. He was not in when I arrived and I felt quite nervous waiting till he appeared. He was very kind but we both felt rather awkward and ill at ease. I told him Nora and I had thought of separating before but decided not to do anything till Hilary was grown up.

Sunday, March 12th

More hurdles. Phyllis, Jimmie and Johnnie came to tea. However once Phyllis had realized that if you earned less you got more grant for a university education no further explanation was necessary. As Nora says, she has a tough ego!

Went to see the Wilk in the evening. She has aged a lot since Ioan's death, but her time in hospital has made her fatter. I was going to tell her about Mary, but decided not to. After all the fewer people who know about it the better and the only person in this neighbourhood is Cyril, and he does not know there is some one else.

I wrote to the Inspector of Anatomy to get the necessary forms to pass your body on to a medical school. Feeling a bit like that today, but anyway it seems a good thing as it saves your relatives a funeral, just as cremation saves them standing around in the cold and the rain.

Monday, March 11th

A marvellous letter from Mary about us. She said she had found the other half of Plato's apple. There was no need for me to worry about her. She knew what she was doing. She wanted to be there when I needed her. She was quite sure of that.

Tuesday, March 12th

The Govt Director of Anatomy wrote thanking me for my intention to help medical science (which was handsome for a Civil Service Dept) and enclosing forms for my executrix. In the afternoon showed Wilk the documents and we sat on two stools at the back of the biology lab discussing our intentions! They can keep your bits and pieces, if they see fit, for two years. Wilk's kidneys are so peculiar that anatomists ought not to miss them but she had not got it tidied up, so to speak.

Cut some of the grass again tonight and did a little gardening, but have now a good excuse for letting the garden go - and shall. Spring this year seems to have come with remarkable speed and to have caught us before we were expecting it. I have never known a spring term to pass so quickly.

Thursday, March 14th

At last a letter from Hilary arrived in answer to ours of Feb 28th. He replied briefly that Cheam seemed a good idea, but of course we should miss the country. No other comment of any kind!

A nice tea with Cherry. When I arrived I found her struggling to extract an H & P cake from a hermetically sealed tin for export. She had bought it because she thought it special, but woman like had no tin opener and utterly inadequate tools. By the time I arrived the tin had suffered various dents and rips, but the cake was still well inside! With great difficulty and infinite labour I eventually extracted it with one minor cut on one of my finger tips. The cake was lightly damaged; the tin was a wreck!

Satuday, March 16th

A frustrating day! Set off with Nora for London to go to theatre to mark her birthday. Five o'clock matinee of a play called Juliette and Romanoff recommended by Con. Frightful tripe. Couldn't hear although the actors shouted. Sat through the first act then came out. Too late to go to anything else, too early for a meal, so came home by 7 o'clock from Paddington. Have had no luck with plays recently.

Sunday, March 17th

Wind and rain. Not a very cheerful outlook. A strike in the shipyards and a threatened strike of engineers. Both sides in the shipyard strike bone- headed and obstinate - a miserable situation.

Monday, March 18th

When I came into my room at school on the first floor this morning, there was a gentle blue sky crossed by low and swiftly moving cumuli. I looked cross the valley to a vivid green field dotted with red and white cattle; some standing some lying down. The field was framed by a line of bare trees, among which were a few pines, and contained three circular coppices. Below was a neatly dug red-walled garden with some rows of daffodils on the left and a range of derelict greenhouses, mostly without any glass, on the right. Behind the daffodils rose a fine horse chestnut tree and a silver birch on the edge of the school lawn. I stood and listened to the various noises, the wind in the trees, the scrunching of coke being shovelled in the boilers, the uneasy shifting of chairs, and in the distance the voice of some one teaching. I have become so used to this now that I scarcely notice it on a busy morning, but this time next year some one else will have it to look at, and I hope enjoy.

Mary C told me Miss H was very pleased I had gone down to tell her on Saturday I was leaving and made some very nice remarks about me.

Tuesday, March 19th

Nora's 59th birthday. gave her some claret for lunch and Hilary's present of a Cypriot tea cloth and mats. Wilk came to lunch. I did not go into break and Mrs C announced that I was leaving as she thought the advertisement would soon be in and the staff should know!

Took Nora to see The Man in the Sky, Jack Hawkins who brings his plane in to land on one engine after the passengers have bailed out. He has to fly round the landing field for 25 minutes to exhaust his fuel and the film takes just that time to reach landing point. When he goes home he has a good row with his wife for refusing to abandon the plane. This sounds true to me!

Wednesday, March 20th

My room at school! When you walk in perhaps the first thing you notice are the heavy stone mullions and black iron work of the four-light "Tudor" window facing you. The room is a light and cheerful place with cream walls and apple-green dado, repeated on the picture rail and a beam, from which hang four glass "bottles" in their net picked up on a Cornish beach. To the left of the door is an oak table placed along the wall and beyond it a hideous knee-hole office desk which I have never used. Both of these are covered with books in piles or in trays, with boxes, files and card indexes in various degrees of disorder! In the middle of the floor stands a very solid waxed oak table at which I have sat and written my letters and interviewed all and sundry for 23 years. It has fewer papers, a couple of wire baskets and a red letter rack and white blotter.

I sit with the light on my left facing a brick fireplace and looking at a variety of objects displayed on the mantelpiece - a stone cat, a cast of a Corinthian pillar, a blue Chinese pot, some Roman coins, and two roots carved into fantastic shapes by Hilary when he was at Long Dene.

Over the mantelpiece hangs a Medici print of Luxcrezia Tuanobuoni welcoming the Graces and on the wall left a Swiss cuckoo clock which erratically cuckoos. The room contains two other pictures, an Edward Wadsworth still life of marine objects and Fouquet's Virgin and Child from Melun, which I brought back from the Paris Exhibition of 1937.

Thursday, March 21st

Cherry has had another dust up with Clem. He wished to announce my resignation. She said she was going to as deputy head. She won her point, but he wouldn't come in. The staff were rather knocked, what was I going to do? how old was I? Much to my surprize, old Wally expressed regret as I had left him to himself, whereas I always thought he resented my lack of interest in games and the cadets.

Friday, March 22nd

This afternoon I was invited to take the part of Alfred Doolittle in a Sixth form reading of Pygmalion.

Saturday, March 23rd

Had been intending to visit Aunt, but she has evidently taken offence because we have suggested her companion-housekeeper needed a holiday this summer, and wrote to say she wished the visit postponed. Good!

Sunday, March 24th

Most of my friends are women; I don't want to have to give them up if I marry Mary. Asked her what she thought about this, for we should not have any reservations or concealments and yet keep our own "private" things if we want to.

Monday, March 25th

Much cheered by a nice letter from Miss Owen. Leslie and Irene Bennett arrived for lunch - Christmas pudding with an extra spoonful of brandy for Leslie, fatter, balder and more talkative than ever! After lunch they gave a recital to the Fifths and the Sixths in the music room. Leslie did the talking and singing, though his voice at 62 long past its best, and Irene played the virginals and recorders. They came over to tea till about five, then departed, Leslie still in full spate - but he is a nice man, very fond of him, though exhausting.

Saturday, March 30th

Hilary and Jack Wray to lunch. Hilary had withdrawn her P.O. savings at the time of Suez and written to the P.M. and told him so. Nora regarded this as "integrity" - I suppose so but am not convinced.

Sunday, March 31st

What really happened last October is beginning to come out in France. The French were told Israel was planning an attack in Sinai and on October 15th Eden was warned. The next day he and the foreign secretary went to Paris and the invasion was planned, but the French to get him to agree had to accept "the embarrassing juridical fiction of an intervention designed to separate the combatants". The French were not bound by this. Their navy protected the Israel coast and their transport aircraft dropped supplies to the advancing Israeli army in Sinai from Cyprus! When Eden said the attack was a surprize "he was not lying, only his truth was 15 days out of date".

When on Nov 5th the French P.M. came to London he found a harassed invalid, at the end of his strength. On Nov 6th Eden decided on a ceasefire owing to pressure from Eisenhower and the fact that Mr Butler and eight of his other ministers were threatening to resign. He refused to delay it for 24 hours as the French wanted.

An abysmal mess. The French and ourselves were engaged in a joint enterprize for different reasons and with different objects. They had two allies, neither of which would speak to the other, but at any rate they were clear headed and honest, not hypocritical and muddled. How not to do things!

I came across a nice story of Hilaire Belloc this week which Ioan would have loved. His host bought a bottle of 3/6 Port at the off licence and decanted it, and presented it as the last bottle of his father's Port with details of date and place. Belloc drank it slowly - "A remarkable wine", he said at last, "an admirable wine. There is no reason to waste it on these young people", and he kept the decanter by him, pausing in his talk occasionally to refill his glass.

1956 - October - December

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October. Soviet Union has trouble in Poland, Hungary, Britain with Suez Canal.. Sixth Form in Winchester. Clem's oecumenical christening.

Wednesday, Oct 3rd

Had a talk with Mary about our plans. She stressed so much the difficulty of the situation if her father survived her mother that I began to think she did not want to get married! but it was only the policy of looking at the worst possible contingencies!

Sunday, Oct 7th

Johnnie's birthday. Phyllis arrived with him almost before we had our breakfast. Her had already celebrated the occasion by kicking Jimmy in the teeth and had been given a sedative by Phyllis! Nora went down to tea. Jimmie had a temper tantrum, bit the carpet and then opened his mouth and shouted the place down.

Saturday, Oct 13th

I went over at 9.30 to Mr H. A. Finney, art teacher at Reading University, who lives at Wokingham, and he did a free chalk drawing of me - head and shoulders - for 10 guineas with frame and mount. It took over three hours with a cup of coffee at half time. I gave myself a treat on the strength of my increased salary! Perhaps this was rash, but I would like to leave something to my descendants and more immediately to dear Mary.

Sun day, Oct 14th

A lovely autumn day. Nora and I took our lunch out to Ewelme Down and we sat on a straw bale in the sun. Coming back we got some spindle, some of which I took to Miss Hunter, just back from hospital, and some to Cherry. She had applied for a job that began in January. She told me she had also applied to a marriage bureau, but they don't take women over 40! I said men have the best of everything!

Monday, Oct 15th

Not a good day. I went into one of Mrs Paterson's lessons and found she really has not much idea how to teach. Another passenger to carry, I thought. Felt very discouraged. Asked the new rector up. He sounds like a normal human being - a change after Canon Crosse.

Wednesday, Oct 17th

Showed Mary the chalk drawing. She was a bit doubtful about the mouth, but was very pleased with it and we hung it on the wall. It looked good.

I found Clem showing some Jews around the school. They were part of the collection he took to [his son] John's christening, with a few Roman Catholics and agnostics thrown in, about 1939, and then wondered why the parson, a high Anglican, was displeased. He is a funny chap.

Sunday, Oct 21st

We drove out to Beacon Hill. We climbed slowly to the top without any ill effects as far as I was concerned. We drove in the afternoon to Coombe and got back to the flat about six o'clock. My drawing greeted us. Mary said how comforting it was to have it in the flat and on Friday night she had been carried away by emotion and kissed it.

Thursday, Oct 25th

Did the Sixth form trip to Winchester. A good and successful day. We got to the by-pass about 10.30. It ran under the cross road to St Giles' Hill in a cutting. However we scrambled up the side and fortunately there was no barbed wire at the top, got in the other road and reached the view over the city. The wind was very cold, but I pointed out the walls and landmarks. We then went to the mill and the bridge. Here we lost two boys who made off to the Cathedral on their own, much to my annoyance. Along the clear and swift stream to Wolvesey Palace, the outskirts of the college and the close. Here I gave a talk on the monastic buildings and took them for a quick view of the south transept, then went out along the west front. Went in and stood in the end rows of the nave chairs and said the Lord's Prayer and a collect for form prayers. Don't often have form prayers in a cathedral!

Took them a quick tour and then left them to their own devices with pens and notebooks. Went out and had my lunch by the river with one of the boys. We met at two outside the college. We were shown round by the head porter, whose grammar was awful. He also indulged in malapropisms, "execrated" instead of "consecrated" etc, but the children were very good and did not laugh until we were got out. Then went into the chapel, the hall, cloister and big school. In the cloister we stood by Wavell's grave. We had a pleasant walk to St Cross by the river. Here we met another trying old man, but saw the church and hall. Started back at four, reached Henley at 5.30.

Sunday, Oct 28th

The Soviet empire in Eastern Europe began breaking up this week. Mr Gomolka came back to power in Poland as a Polish Tito. The Russian leaders immediately flew to Warsaw to deal with what they imagined to be a party revolt to find themselves dealing with an insurgent nation. They were shown the door. They then had to decide whether to use force and alienate the neutrals. They baulked. Gomolka survives.

In the same week the Hungarians rose but the Hungarian Communists could not hold the people in check and the Russian tanks fired on the crowds in Budapest. We don't know whether the government in the capital will survive. Very little news is coming out. Nothing for instance is known about the attitude of the Hungarian army.

Tuesday, Oct 30th

Yesterday was a day! Israel started a larges scale invasion of the Sinai peninsular and claimed to be within 18 miles of the canal. This afternoon we and the French have given the two sides 12 hours to stop the fighting and said if they did not we would occupy key points on the canal. The ten o'clock news was interrupted to say Nasser has rejected the ultimatum. Israel has started the war, without waiting to be attacked, while the Russians are busy. This gives the French and ourselves an opportunity we have been waiting for to take over the canal by force. I wonder whether Hilary is embarking for Egypt or still in Nicosia. Nora took the news much more calmly than I expected.

In Hungary the people seem to have won after a bloody struggle. There are to be free elections and Russian troops are to leave Budapest. There, over 6,000 people are supposed to have been killed and tens of thousands wounded.

Wednesday, Oct 31st

Listening to the news all day. Half thought we might hear that landings had been made, but learnt that air attack on Egyptian bases had begun. We aim to destroy their air force before the invasion begins. We have crossed the line between peace and war so quickly that people are taken by surprise. The opposition continues to invoke the United Nations - in which we have twice invoked the veto - and boos the prime minister. The M/G loudly condemns the government for its "wickedness and folly."

November. Hungarian uprising crushed. British troops at Suez. Diarist admits he was wrong on Suez. Petrol rationing. The Diarist's final Prize Day. Ioan Vaughn Jones dies.

Thursday, Nov 1st

The air attack on Egyptian bases continued yesterday. Our naval aircraft sank a blockship that was being towed into the canal and also an Egyptian destroyer off Haifa and another in the Red Sea.

Opinion is obviously deeply divided. I think the government is right. We must consider the facts of the situation and not be led away by catchwords. The U.N. can express an opinion. It has condemned the closing of the canal before and no one has taken any notice. When war comes, who is prepared to do anything to stop it - no one! We are prepared to stop it, actually to do something.
Nora very disturbed by "our aggression". Says she has met no one today - her first day at Guildford - who does not think the government wrong.

Friday, Nov 2nd

Set off for Holly Bush about 11. Nora has gone to stay with Ken and Rita. Arrived at the farm for tea and as usual found it very cold (600ft). Discussed next autumn with Molly after tea.

The Russians have obviously made up their minds to strangle the Hungarians. Tanks and troops moving west and refugees fleeing into Austria.

The P.M. broadcast tonight. I thought he was quite good. The British and French governments have said they would go on with their action against Egypt until a U.N. force actually arrives and is accepted by Israel and Egypt.

Sunday, Nov 4th

The last broadcast made from Budapest as the Russian tanks ringed the city and the Hungarians were threatened with bombing. Soon after midday the Russians announced "the counter revolution" had been crushed. The west and U.N.O. can do nothing but watch the suppression helplessly, a frightful tragedy.

Monday, Nov 5th
As I expected, the parachute drop began at dawn this morning at Port Said. Gloomy breakfast as Molly and Ruth both horrified. After an excellent lunch set off for Henley, which I reached just in time for the six o'clock news. Quick work. The governor of Port Said had had enough and was beginning negotiations for a ceasefire. At home I found copies of the Manchester Guardian and the Observer, all very vehemently against the government, even to the extent of placing the murder of Hungary at their door. Oxford dons loud in their condemnation. Indeed I seem among my acquaintance to be their only supporter, yet I am all the more convinced that they were right to act.

Tuesday, Nov 6th

Heard on the 8 o'clock news that commandos were landing at Port Said with guns and tanks. Crowds coming out to see them arrive! About six o'clock Egyptians and Israelis agreed to a ceasefire and we had agreed with the Sec. Gen. of U.N.O. to do the same at midnight if not attacked.

Yesterday Bulganin addressed an open letter to the P.M (with his usual courtesy broadcast some hours before he got it!) in which he threatened this country with rockets. We replied with some appropriate remarks about the Russian activities in Hungary.

Diarist's note, dated 1962.

In 1956 I was quite wrong.

1) The Canal Co. had no power to guarantee free passage nor function to do so. No new "control" was set up by Nasser's action.

2) The canal was in Egyptian territory and the company registered in Egypt.

3. There was no threat to close the canal for canal income depended on being used and one quarter of users were British.

Nasser "seized" the canal, but it was already Egyptian. He offered specific reassurances, which were ignored.

The Hitler-Rhineland-Mein Kampf analogy bogus "image". 23 million Egyptians, miserably poor, illiterate, riddled with disease, no steel, 100,000 army - how were they to control all the Arab states, then all Africa, finally all Moslems (one sixth of mankind)? A false analogy known by those who used it to be false.

Thursday, Nov 8th

In most European capitals there have been demonstrations against the Russians. In Paris the police looked on while the crowd sacked the communist party headquarters.

At last we have got the American election over. Eisenhower has been returned by a large majority. We must now hope that American policy will be less erratic.

Saturday, Nov 10th

Had been suggesting to Nora that we should give up telephone and save £20. But she pointed out that you couldn't be rung up. This no loss, I felt this morning. Had just got my trousers down when it started ringing and ringing. In the end hitched them up and went down. Phyllis wanted to know the way to Leighton Park!

Phyllis his morning said she could not forgive the government for bringing us so near to war. The papers are still talking of Russian planes in Syria manned by "volunteers" and my guess is that Nasser's airfields were first on the list to prevent more Russian arms being flown in. Today the first contingents from the Scandinavian countries arrived in Italy and the Colombians set out in American planes from Bogota. At any rte it is sporting of the small countries to send these tiny contingents in hundreds in the face of Soviet armed might.

The Red Cross convoys are sill waiting on the Austria-Hungarian border, but entry refused for fighting is still going on. The Russians appear to be starving Buda into submission. In spite of food being offered in the factories it is said that three quarters of the workers are still on strike.

Mary said liftman was asked for "Lin and gery". When he looked blank, the customer asked, "Don't you speak English?" Another asked for "Ats". He replied, "Millinery". "I said ats." Such are Saturday's customers in the era of the five day week.

Sunday, Nov 11th

Listened to the Cenotaph service on the wireless. Then did a clearance of the loft and made a huge bonfire. Spent the rest of the day gardening and writing my report for Prize Day.

Tuesday, Nov 12th

A letter from Hilary after 10 days. He is still at Nicosia, still on security, at which they are still unsuccessful! He said they seem young and delicate and inexperienced besides the paratroopers.

Petrol rationing looms ahead. There are over 30 ships sunk in the canal! Heard from Norman Smith at Oriel. He had been a leading member of the U.N.O. society and so, he said, had no choice but to oppose the government. Oxford a bad place to be as emotions so high.

Wednesday, Nov 14th

It turned very cold and Mary's cold was so bad we stayed in the flat. After supper I finished reading Linklater's Dark of Summer, read aloud. It read aloud well and we both enjoyed it very much. Yesterday there was no heating in Heelas to save oil, by which it is now heated - or would be.

Saturday, Nov 17th

Still wondering why we stopped when we did on Nov 6th. The decision was certainly not taken on military or naval grounds! We still have no airfields in Egypt which can take jet fighters. The canal, three quarters of which we don't hold, is blocked. The number of sunken ships has risen from 27 to 49. There seem to be three possible explanations: i) a political revolt among Conservative MPs - unlikely. ii) a threat of Russian intervention by air iii) great pressure from the U.S.

Tuesday, Nov 20th

Petrol rationing to start on Dec 17th - 200 miles a month basic ration for private motorists. This said to be more than war time ration, but as far as I can see it will only take me to Mary and back twice a week with very little left over.

Eden's health has cracked up. He is suffering from over strain and must rest. Poor devil, I wonder he has kept going as long as he has.

Very few Hungarians are at work in Budapest and coal and food is running out.

Thursday, Nov 22nd

Two staff and secretary away. Suggested one man should do dinner today instead of tomorrow, but said quite impossible, so did it myself. It was quite easy and pleasant. What a fuss!

Had my hair cut at 3.30. The barber said we were in a mess and I agreed with him. The Egyptians are trying to stir up trouble in Port Said. We are no nearer getting the canal cleared. As The Times says, the U.N.O. adopts two standards, one for us and one for the Soviet. Mr Butler, the acting P.M., said about half the blockships are in our part and we have the best kit and tackle for clearing the rest. The opposition said their piece about the U.N.O, but the French foreign minister was nearer the mark when he told the Assembly that the existence of the organization was at stake if it will only act against its supporters - straining at the gnat and swallowing the camel.

First white frost this winter, 12° of frost.

Saturday, Nov 24th

Still bitterly cold. Nora felt shivery so went to be after lunch for the rest of the day. Phyllis rang up and asked for Nora, but as she had just gone to bed I told her she had flu. Phyllis said she had something worse than flu, but wouldn't say what. I knew Nora, given any encouragement, would have gone down there or her up here, but she's so bossy and such a scrounger of other people's services that I did not feel like "a touch" and was selfish.

Sunday, Nov 25th

The Observer still attacking the government with unabated energy, a new government needed which has "regained the confidence of our friends and allies." It denies that there was a plan by Russia to intervene when Israel attacked Egypt, and so denies that our intervention was the lesser of two evils. It does think however that what stopped us at El Cantra on Nov 6th was an urgent warning from Eisenhower that if we went on the Russians were likely to intervene and America would not be responsible for the consequences if they did.

It seems possible that the original plan for the French was to use Israel, with substantial help from them, to knock out Nasser. This they revealed to us at the meeting in Paris on October 16th. The government, without letting the Israelis know what they were doing, decided to come in on their own account. The "collusion" was between France and Israel, we cashed in on it - or hoped to.

Monday, Nov 26th

This has been a very bad weekend. Phyllis is ill and in a state in case she has to go into hospital, and then on top of this on the evening before Wilk was to go into hospital, she rings up to say Ioan had died of a heart attack at Leiston.

I am sorry. He was a delightful man and a great refreshment to meet with his individual outlook on things. We had known his heart was bad for a long time, probably a result of his flying during the war. This is the second time Marjorie has lost a lover, the first about a year after we came here when Fyfe, the maths master, was drowned off the Welsh coast, and now Ioan. It's bad. Ioan came to the school in 1948. I little thought that Wilk would outlive him.

The telephone company is cutting off the telephone on Dec 21st. With its aid it is wonderful how the news gets round. I rang up Cherry to tell the news of Ioan's death and within the hour I had calls from Attrill and Marjorie Hunter.

America voted for the U.N. Assembly resolution on withdrawal, so keeping up the moral ban on France and ourselves, and by dragging her feet on the supply of oil to Europe, she is, in effect, applying the sanctions to us that she refused to apply to Egypt when the canal was seized. For 10 years we have tried to operate with the U.N. under American membership and this is what we get.

A correspondent who has got out of Egypt says that in a week or two they will be out of oil. They cannot get any out of Iraq because their buddies in Syria have blown up the pipeline and they have blocked the canal themselves. He says in spite of the relentless propaganda of the radio, Cairo is a city of fear and anxiety. They cannot conceal the disasters of the defeat in Sinai, the destruction of the air force, the battered remains of which are still on the airfields, and the running out of oil, without which there will be no electricity and transport and which people use to cook

Tuesday, Nov 27th

A letter from Hilary this morning. They are moving to Limassol and he seems very disgruntled. He was asked by his company commander whether he was qualifying for a tramp as his water bottle [cover] had a tear in it. Sent off my Plato and Moorhead's Gallipoli to him.

Some comment on the fact that Eisenhower was too busy playing golf to see either the Australian or the English minister. However he did make some comments about the solidity of NATO to offset what's happened at the U.N.O.

Thursday, Nov 29th

The usual morning Prize Day chores. Had a solitary lunch, changed and drove down to the Town Hall. Mary had given me a new white handkerchief for the occasion. The hall was full. Mary had taken a half day off and sat at the back. Her first prize day; my last! Used an old speech of 1948, slightly refurbished! Miss Major, Principal of St Hilda's, a grim woman of no charm and hardly a smile, made quite a good speech free of moralizing. Lady Hambleden came, so I put her in the front row next the chairman. She sat absolutely upright and completely motionless, except her eyes, which moved and took in everything; She was dressed well with a turban-like hat, and, as you looked at her, you felt that with her beautifully modelled face and aquiline nose she might have belonged to any historical period and would have fitted any historical costume. Of the other women governors the less said the better.

The only other snag in the ceremony was poor Mr Cook, who had been asked to move the vote of thanks to Miss Major. He was overcome with logorrhea and spoke for as long as Miss Major or myself - on television, homework, the importance of sharing a warm room to work in etc etc. Mrs Cook, who had warned him not to be long winded, sat in the front row of the hall obviously growing more and more uncomfortable as he went on and on. In the end it took one hour 15 minutes over all.

I went out to the car to find Mary. We drove back to the flat and discussed the notables, Tom Luker, Lady Hambleden, Mrs Griggs, Mr Cook (whom Mary regarded as a kind of buffoon) and what staff were visible. I was glad Mary had been able to see me in my natural habitat.

It was a sad day for Wilk as Ioan was cremated at Ipswich. He had not made his will so hs books, paintings and writings belong to his sister.and anything the Wilk wants to keep she has to ask for.

[Editor: Ioan owned a bull-nosed Bentley with no self-starter. It was started, as was still quite normal at that date, by turning the engine over with a handle. I was told, either by Wilkon or by my parents, I presume, that Ioan died when cranking the Bentley on that morning, but whether this true or not I do not know]

Extracts from the Headmaster's report, 1956

- From the middle ages we have inherited the institutions of university and college. From these centuries, too, the traditional connection between grammar school, college and university. They all three sprang from the same high social purpose - "that all good learning might flourish and abound." From this grammar school we have at present four old boys teaching at universities - Oxford (law), London (geography), Birmingham (pathology) and Reading (physics). In addition we have this link with two Oxford colleges, Balliol and St Hilda's..... and we are delighted to welcome the Principal of the College.

- July sees us going down to St Mary's for the Periam service and sermon. The school files by the tomb of Lady Elizabeth Periam, who when he school was united to the Grammar School in 1778, became one of our founders and has this year provided us, posthumously so to speak, with some nice new tables for the library.

- Mrs Brackston has played hockey for England and Miss Wilkinson has had published the first volume of her book "Biology for the Young Citizen" published

- We want to take advantage of the much greater flexibility of the new General Certificate of Education as compared to the old school leaving certificate. The new certificate with its greater freedom and higher standard can be related to the individual boy or girl who wants to qualify for university entrance or preliminary examinations of the numerous professional bodies. It should not be treated a school leaving certificate, but as a qualifying certificate to a particular career, and there is no reason why a boy or girl in the fifth form should not by-pass some subjects at the fifth form level altogether. The educational value of a subject does not depend on whether the subject is examined or not examined, but on the content of the subject itself and how it is taught, as we see for example in the case of Religious Instruction or Literature and Music.

December. Dr Heath. French girl in trousers! Henley to Exeter in 12 hours: Christmas at Exton. Hilary in Limassol

Saturday, Dec 1st

A day out with Cyril and Kay in their Ford Consul. Had a very good picnic provided by Kay in Windsor Park. The Consul not all jam. Its heater made it stuffy and couldn't open windows because Cyril did not like draughts. It also had a wireless, which was a mixed blessing.

Some plain speaking from Lord Hailsham. The U.N. must not degenerate into an instrument of racial spite, or a means by which stronger nations can strangle a smaller nation to death, or a small nation exploit a larger nation's reluctance to use force against it. We are ahead of America not behind it. We do not wish to hear moral lectures from those whose moral weakness and incapacity to see the facts was the precipitating factor in the present crisis. Good. Time someone spoke up for England.

Sunday, Dec 2nd

Had Wilk up to lunch. I went down to fetch her at The Pod and took down a parcel that had arrived. It was a book, Lucky Jim, which Ioan's sister had forwarded and contained a note from him written on the day he died. In it he said she might be glad to have a funny book "in a certain eventuality". I think it is clear he realized his heart was very bad. He had written to her before, "The curtains of fatigue are closing round me".

Tuesday, Dec 4th

Petrol to go up to 1/5. They have been only letting you have a gallon at a time and garages have a written notice outside "Regular customers only". I got one gallon today, though I dare say now the price has risen they may be a bit more generous.

Wednesday, Dec 5th

Seating choirs with aid of whistle and long stick!

Thursday, Dec 6th

The choirs went off very well, though Brind had a stomach upset and was very shaky.

Sunday, Dec 9th

Donald Heath came up to coffee. He had been to see the Wilk yesterday afternoon. Said these parathyroid glands difficult to find and there might be three or four of them, and then how to know which had the tumour on it! He was very smartly dressed and had bought himself a Swedish hat at the cardiological conference he attended in Stockholm, where he read a paper. Altogether he seemed much jollier and more human. He even remarked he enjoyed coming to see me. He said the medical school like the medieval field system: the first year wild oats, the second year fallow and the third year ploughed!

Tuesday, Dec 11th

To my great joy was able to pick some little sprigs of Chimonanthus in flower - never known it possible before Christmas or more often the first week of January.

The Germans terribly indignant because we have asked them to pay more for our troops. They, having promised 12 divisions, have at the moment none at all except on paper. We have five in B.A.O.R. [British Army on the Rhine], but say if no contribution will have to withdraw some.
N.A.TO. meeting which Mr Dulles attends and say more consultation necessary. M. Pineau, French P.M., reported to have replied that he didn't known Egypt was in N.A.T.O. area.

Saturday, Dec 15th

Went off with Cyril and Kay to visit Stoke Charity near Winchester, a delightful, unrestored 12th century church standing by itself in a field above a tributary of the Test. We got back to tea and I returned to the Prefects' Party. Nora was ill and did not come. I stayed to the supper and play, 6 - 8, and then looked in occasionally, but thought the heat, dust and noise worse than ever.

Monday, Dec 17th

Staff meeting. Let Clem Clifford talk much about senior boys at the beginning to save time at the end. Lasted about 1 hour 10 minutes.

Hilary now moved to Limassol and likes the camp better than Nicosia. From your bed you can see the sea.

Wednesday, Dec 19th

The Junior Carols yesterday and Senior Carols today - reflected that this my last school carol service but did not feel particularly sorry or particularly moved by this reflection.

Thursday, Dec 20th

I spent a good deal of time taking forms for Mrs Paterson to avoid riots, then to tea with Cherry. She gave me a book of Gardens. I was about to give her a Linklater when she said she did not like him, and gave her soap instead!

Friday, Dec 21st

Broke up. Just managed to the prevent appearance of a dirty looking French girl in trousers at prayers by collaring her hostess on the way in - anything to make the last assembly more undignified! However everything went off quietly.

Saturday, Dec 22nd

Had a taxi 10.45; Reading 11.30, train for Swindon jammed to the windows 12.0. Stood in corridor and arrived Swindon 1.0. Slow train to Bristol, carriage to ourselves [Diarist and Nora], ate lunch, soup, sausages and fruit. Bristol trains an hour or two late. Presently Exeter train came in and we had a compartment with two other people. It waited in the station half an hour and started at 5.0. At 6.0 it reached Taunton, left soon, climbed the bank and was going all out down the Even valley when without any apparent reason it stopped. Foggy, but nothing dense. Here we sat for a solid hour, 6.30 - 7.30. On again, only to stop again after a mile or two. About 8.30 the guard came round and said a coupling had broken on a train and it had had to be shunted off the line. Finally after a long wait outside the station we arrived at Exeter at 9.10. Missed the 9.30 at Queen Street, waited for the 10.15. This started at 10.30. We finally reached Studley, cold and with splitting headaches, 12 hours and 15 minutes after we left Henley. Moral: never travel at Christmas.

Sunday, Dec 23rd

Woke up in Maud's best bed with Nora in a higher bed beside it. Was told by Maud, who brought in a cup of tea for Nora, that she should have been in the low bed. Periwinkles lout and honeysuckle covered in bloom in the garden

Monday, Dec 24th

Into Exeter to get fruit, wine and a Fuller's cake for Maud. Overcast, grey, inclined to rain. Dog-walked in the afternoon. Life was easier here as Maud had a new lavatory cistern which actually did its work efficiently. Her neighbour, called by Maud the Read woman, has a bed at night, but Maud is so rude I wonder she likes to, but she is deaf, so things even out I suppose!

Christmas Day

Breakfast, and after breakfast presents. Maud gave me a pair of socks, N a book token, and Molly sent a slim and flexible carving knife, as I l must have admired hers in the summer. We gave Maud a tin of biscuits with birds on. The weather was fearful. It blew and rained hard all day. Maud had a taxi to the church in the morning for the late celebration, but otherwise it was impossible to go out all day. Even the dog was reluctant to go in the garden to relieve itself!

For the first time for 16 years we were back on the turkey standard. He had been cooking since 9.30 and had two sorts of stuffing, fore and aft, chestnut and sausage meat; bread sauce as well. With this we had mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and a nice bottle of Graves I had bought in Exmouth. This was followed by Christmas pudding, brought from Henley by Nora, and a quarter of Devonshire cream.

This took about an hour. Then we washed up and tuned in for the last half hour of of the Christmas programme. They were going round the Commonwealth and ended up with the Duke of Edinburgh from the Britannia in the South Seas. He was almost unintelligible. Then the Queen. Her timing and pauses had been carefully rehearsed and she came over well. Wondered where we should be keeping Christmas next year!

My stomach not being outsize or even of average capacity, I felt very sleepy and uneasy in the afternoon, but I managed to eat a piece of Fuller's cake for tea. We drank to "absent friends" at dinner and I thought of Hilary in his tent at Limassol; of Mary in Oxford with here parents; of Con in her rest cure home in Sussex; of Lettie in Birmingham; of Molly in the cowsheds at Holly Bush.

Boxing Day

A quiet morning and an early lunch and then by bus for a totter on the front. We sat in a shelter and were quite warmed by the sun.

Maud is so old that she makes you feel old yourself and felt on the front at Exmouth that I was an aged gent ripe for retirement. It sounded on the news tonight as if we had had the best of the weather - the heaviest snowfall of the century in Birmingham.

Thursday, Dec 27th

We started off by 9.45 bus to Exeter. We were 1 1/4 hours late at Reading and reached home by bus about 4.30. The worst of going away at Christmas is returning to a house which has had no heat in it over the holiday. We turned on everything, but impossible to get the heat up much.

Saturday, Dec 29th

A letter from Hilary. The duty officer's eyes looked like poached eggs boiled in blood!

Met Mary on Reading station and up to a new hotel, Queensway, Princes Garden, where we had a nice room on the third floor for 35/- B & B. To the Festival Hall to see José Greco and his Spanish dancers. Too much of the same kind of dancing. Some very erotic numbers. It seems as long as they don't actually touch and the woman has a long dress on, they can suggest as much as they like.

Sunday, Dec 30th

Breakfast in bed, which was a great luxury at no extra charge. Got up about eleven and by bus to see Epstein's Mother and Child in Cavendish Square. Then to the Marble Halls. Here everything on the first floor has been reconstructed and we had a delightful meal in "the 7 Star". We had roast rib of beef, potatoes in jackets with butter and a delicious continental salad, followed by a superb confection called a Nuttie. It was expensive, but satisfactory because you were getting real value and enjoyment. Caught the 4.45 to Reading after a lovely weeked. It was expensive, but as I said to Mary, we must enjoy our money while we have a little for next year we shall probably have none!

Monday, Dec 31st

A letter from Con. "Is this your year of retirement and remarriage? I so often wonder what you are going to do in the way of a job. Whatever it is I wish you good fortune."

We end the year with petrol rationing again, but are told in the news tonight that the canal will be open again by May.

In his tent in Limassol Hilary sits looking at a wall plastered with photographs of wanted men and maps with pins for every incident of the last few months - red for death, yellow for sabotage, black for a bomb.

1956 July - Sept

2011-01-15T09:40:00.000+01:00

Sunday, July 1st

Made ten beds, heaved mattresses, put up camp and safari beds, pitched tent, obtained chairs and crockery. This took all morning without a stop. Resolved this my last eight, in future only newspaper correspondent for bed and breakfast! The boys, from Bryanston, arrived about 5 - three in my room, 4 in big room, 2 in tent, Mr Dingle, master in charge, a Cambridge blue and Lady Margaret Boat Club, in Hilary's room. Mr Dingle brought them all in a brake and had them in excellent order.

Monday, July 2nd

Felt a bit less exhausted. I got two dumb girls from 5w to help Nora with supper. They came in their best dresses, hoping to make contact with the Adonisses, but they went before the boys came back from tea! Nora gave them what she thought was a huge leg of lamb, but only the bone came out! I washed up afterwards and the boys dried. They row against St Edwards on Wednesday and my guess is they will be beaten.

Tuesday, July 3rd

Only four staff away this morning! Two back by lunch, so I decided to spend the afternoon at the flat to avoid Brigadier coming to inspect the Cadets. Somehow I felt past brigadiers! I got back in time to carve the tongue and see that the table was properly laid by the dumb chums who were helping out. Boys asked by Nora to walk in stockinged feet and last night were as quiet as mice.

Wednesday, July 4th

Bryanston beat St Edward's handsomely. Mary and I saw them from the Fawley boathouse. It was windy and most unpleasant, muggy, but cold in semi-gale.

Thursday, July 5th

Went to West Wycombe to give talk to American officers' wives at air base. When I got back I found Bryanston had beaten King's Canterbury, but tomorrow had to row against Eton - poor chaps. They were very cheerful. Anyway they will now stay to after breakfast on Sunday.

Friday, July 6th

Invigilated in morning as GCE 'O' was on during Regatta. Eton won by 1 1/3rd lengths.

Saturday, July 7th

For the first time for 22 years I saw the fireworks. Ioan asked me to go up the Mount with him and Marjorie. The place swarmed with cars parked everywhere and crawling in long queues. Everyone was making for the fair and the Berkshire bank, but when we toiled up the Mount we found only a handful of people.The display began punctually at 10.15 with a loud explosion and ended promptly at 10.45 with another. I love fireworks and it was a long time since I had seen any. I suppose I must have recollections of those at the White City when I was about 11 or 12. Coming home, I pointed a glow worm out to Wilk. She got down on all fours, stuck her behind in the air and with aid of an electric torch put her face about an inch from the ground to announce in a loud voice to some passers by 'They're copulating!"

Sunday, July 8th

The boys and Mr Dingle packed up and got off in their Bedford truck promptly at 11.0. They were taken to the fair last night but came back in good order at midnight with no excessive noise. Mr Dingle a good chap - what he says goes! We took £69 so when the bills are paid will be about £50 to divide. But think, though the money will be useful to pay for the car, it's my last eight!

Monday, July 9th

We began cleaning up the house. Grisly!.

Tuesday July 10th

Took the Sixth form, 16 available out of 26, to Osterly. It was very nice. Sat them down on the great steps (Cherry at the top against an ionic column) and gave them a second talk, following one at the school in the morning, on the magnificent and magnanimous men of the C18th. Then they went inside. Cherry and I walked round the circuit of the park and then had tea. As it was her birthday we each had a slice of iced cake! Left at 12.30, back at 5.30. A lovely trip.

Saturday, July 14th

A cold damp day. Phyllis came up, but she did not seem as tired by the Regatta as Nora. She had taken to the gin bottle while the crew were there, even so had fainted twice and almost given up. She has now started divorce proceedings. The papers had not been served on James, who was down today. He will get a nice surprize.

Monday, July 16th

The Sixth went to conference at St John's with Clem in charge [University Institute of Education, "Men against Society"]. I had intended to go over in the afternoon, but took Cherry out to tea instead as she seemed annoyed and fed up.

Tuesday, July 17th

Met Mary his evening with some raspberries and tinned milk. We talked about our difficult future. I pointed out that if this heart condition of mine got worse, I might be unable to take a new job, but able to keep ticking over at Henley. That raised the question of Nora's application for a job at Guildford. So far I had not told her about the diagnosis and wondered whether to before Guildford. Mary was disappointed naturally enough that we might not be able to do anything before 1959 ( if we survive)! Whichever way you look, it's a clotted problem!

Thursday, July 19th

End of term staff meeting lasted a little over an hour, which I thought good going. My queer sixth former, Rada Barnicott, is a nuisance. "Mum", who always informs me she is an Oxford graduate, wants the girl to do history, but in my opinion the girl herself is not really interested in history as a subject at all. This came out when I asked her to write an account of Osterly Park.

The long-awaited phone call from Hilary arrived tonight. He crossed today and gets 48 hours leave tomorrow evening. His gruff voice unmistakable on the telephone from Brentwood, where he said the barracks are poor, but they will not be there long if they are to sail at the end of August.

Friday, July 20th

Went over to tailor at teatime and noticed a flowered brocade waistcoat on the counter. A customer had ordered six! He was slightly batty. Asked if he was a bachelor, he said he was only 24 and son of an eminent surgeon. Young Walker! The son or Mr Walker, who took out my appendix at Dunedin.

On my return was met by Hilary in his best civilian suit. Was relieved to see he had kept it carefully. He has not stoutened or coarsened and his hair was not unduly cropped. He said he was glad to be home. We had a bottle of Bordeaux to celebrate.

Saturday, July 21st

Shopped with Hilary in the morning and saw the Saturday eccentrics. After lunch to Cherry, sat in her room till 3.30. The poor woman has no luck. A few weeks ago her sister had a baby. She heard this morning that she had to be taken to a mental hospital to have shock treatment.

Phyllis came to dinner. She was at her last gasp and liable to burst into tears if the little boys proved troublesome.

Sunday, July 22nd

Ioan came to lunch. He seemed rather down. He asked Hilary what he liked least in the army, dumb company, lack of privacy and so on. He replied "useless work because they must be kept employed and there was no useful work to be done. Tables scrubbed and then re-scrubbed because there was an indelible ink spot." He said he found the semi-literate rather amusing, which is more than I should.

Monday, July 23rd

Nora went after a part-time job at Guildford, which she got - two sessions on Thursdays and Fridays, not to begin however till a social worker has been appointed in the autumn.

Went to see Hartley. Said I might tick over for 10 or 15 years! Told me to go on with the pills and to come and see him in September.

Tuesday, July 24th

Went over to Mary. It was a very hot day and we could lie on the bed baked, which was very delightful. Told Mary she looked like a Renoir, as indeed she did!

Wednesday, July 25th

The Governors met to debate the report. As usual they were pretty fatuous. I had to explain to Pullein-Thompson your couldn't "set" maths with one teacher, but old Denham was very friendly and said some nice things. Tom Luker is a poor chairman on these occasions, he had not enough grip, and I thought he was pretty lukewarm considering what an excellent report it was, but you'll never get any come back from this lot, so why expect it!

After tea Mr MacCarthy, whom I had invited over to tea, let his hair down. He was married again to a wife of 30 and his two daughters did not like it, so he kept his new wife at Woodstock and maintains his house at Oxford so he can come hoe at weekends. Was it a mistake to have kept them at home after his wife died, would it have been better to send them to boarding schools. I was very touched that he should have confided in me at all.

Cherry came over later. Said her sister has some lucid intervals.

Friday, July 27th

The school broke up - but quietly, in fact it was the sedatest end of the summer term that I can remember!

Saturday, July 28th

While I was shopping I met Ioan. He remarked that he had never known anyone as little changed by the army as Hilary, he must be a very bad soldier!

Sunday, July 29th

Colonel Nasser, the Egyptian dictator, has declared the canal nationalized, apparently out of pique because, after repeated abuse, the U.S. and ourselves have refused to finance a high dam at Aswan. The Arabs are waiting with some curiosity to see what the west will do. The oil is the trouble.

Have just finished The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. First published in 1940, but I missed it then and never caught up with it since. Like Dombey & Son, it gets you down - all heat, sweat, mosquitoes, flies, beetles, bad teeth, offensive breath and SIN. How that man loves sin and the Devil - he is more of a devil worshipper than a Christian. Lent me by Cherry, who of course thinks it wonderful - the Christian novelist etc.

Thursday, Aug 2nd

"You will return immediately to barracks on receipt of this." Hilary is recalled. His 3rd Div, based on East Anglia, is to move to Cyprus at the weekend, but I suppose his battalion will hang about at Brentwood for a bit. Anyway Hong Kong will be off till this Suez business is over.

The Times more bellicose than the M/G. The latter says so far Nasser has not broken the law, but as he has closed the canal for some time to Israeli ships I should think this is doubtful. Anyway having got rid of the canal base he may think like Hitler that he can proceed "step by step" and get away with it. The U.S. is supposed to be advising caution. The French are rabid against Nasser, but have they the troops available if necessary?

Saturday, Aug 4th

Donald Heath looked in at 10 and stayed to 11.30 a.m. He reports a very high failure rate among finals students in medicine. Not impressed by Birmingham after Sheffield. Says no one knows anyone else. It is far too big and depersonalized, a gigantic sausage machine. He is disappointed that the students, who are after all a highly selected group, are such clock-watchers and have little interest in the subject itself. A man flew over from Turkey to give a lecture and only 14 people turned up, not a student among them. Think what a marvellous thing a college is compared with this redbrick mass university, how lucky undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge are.

No hard news today but much speculation. A conference is called in London for August 16th. An Anglo-French plan for the canal will be put forward. If Nasser does not attend or won't accept the plan, the French and ourselves will use force to occupy the canal. There does not seem to be any sign of division in the country or parliament. We have had enough of the Egyptians and are not going to wait until the U.S. moves. If we take military action, it is thought the Russians will support Egypt short of war, which is what the Americans will do on our side. It isn't thought likely they will do more, as no vital interest of theirs is involved..... It is said the American oil interests would not be sorry to see us pushed out of Arabia altogether.

The phone rang about 7.20. It was Hilary to say he sails for Cyprus next Friday. It is only a fortnight since he came back from Germany, now he's off to Middle East instead of China!

Sunday, August 5th

Hilary arrived on the 12.34, which I met as it was stormy and inclined to rain. We had a bottle of Beaujolais for lunch. In the afternoon I persuaded him to clean his bicycle, which was then hung up on a beam in the garage against his return from the Middle or Far east. After that he had a pre-embarkation bath.

Monday, August Bank Holiday

A day of heavy showers and thunderstorms. very dull, worked on tile table and letters in the morning, weeded in the afternoon. Nora plunged in gloom, hardly said anything all day till she was going to bed when she asked if I was worried about Hilary. Did I think there would be a war?

Rang up Cherry this morning, who has an R.A.F. pilot of some kind occupying the top flat. In the air force, she says, you look at things on a different scale. This chap has his washing done each week in Cyprus because it's cheaper than in Henley!

Tuesday, August 7th

We met Hilary at the N.B.L. for dinner. He turned up in civilian clothes hoping he would be able to pack them in his knapsack. His suitcase and big kit bag had gone. We went to see The Waltz of the Toreadors by Jean Anouilh. We had to make the eleven o'clock train from Paddington and I did not want an undignified farewell while running to catch the train. Fortunately we made it in time and he came with us on the tube. We said goodbye in front of the entrance to No. 5 platform. We shook hands. I said, "Well, keep the canal open!" and he replied, "Keep the school running" and walked across the lawn to the metro to Liverpool Street, down which he disappeared. He did not turn and wave. I was reminded of our parting at the stream half way between Long Dene and Penshurst station three years ago. The soldier parting for the crusades - 20th century version!

Wednesday, Aug 8th

Mary and I set off to see Guildford Cathedral. The nave had risen about 10ft since last year, the great blue carpet was down in front of the high altar, and the white and lovely interior surprized by joy after the stark planes of the exterior brickwork. We essayed the central tower, 150 steps to its present level, but easy going. I was able to do the climb it without any ill effect. Mary went ahead up the staircase and I was overcome with affection and insisted on kissing her frequently.

I did not get home to about 11.30 to find to my great surprize that Nora had returned from London. Hilary had been kept, which was hardly unexpected, and had arrived so late that she had given him up and missed him by 15 minutes. This had upset her very much. Partings and farewells are difficult anyway. Why make them worse by uncertainty and frustration.

Thursday, Aug 9th

An atmosphere of gloom prevailed. Nora says we are sabre rattling and must not do anything to lose the support of world opinion. A fat lot of good that has been to prevent Nasser stopping Israel's shipping. Hilary leaves barracks tonight at 3.30 a. m. and sails tomorrow on the troopship Dilwara.

Sunday, Aug 12th

This afternoon Nasser refused to attend the conference, said the canal was Egypt's affair, nothing was further from their minds than interfering with shipping, 200 ships had passed through the canal in the last fortnight, the conference was "collective colonialism.".... I think the idea of forcing a settlement in Egypt is becoming less attractive. We could not control the canal without controlling Egypt and it is doubtful if we could get the oil out of Arabia in face of Arab sabotage. The Observer says today that we should make it clear we are determined to create a real international authority, pay the dues into the international bank meantime, and say definitely our troops are only there to act if our own shipping is interfered with.

Monday, Aug 13th

Nora very gloomy, not a smile of any kind and speaks no more than is absolutely necessary, though as soon as the telephone rings she is all charm and chat!

Went down to see the Wilk this evening and was rather horrified she seemed so ill, temperature goes up at night and she has a beastly cough. Dr says it is a virus. Can't imagine how she is going to get through the next term, poor dear. Miss Hunter has got so bad she fell out of bed the other night and could not get back. The doctor has carted her off to Battle (what a name!) Hospital in Reading for a fortnight. Nora was trying to persuade her to buy a small house on Gravel Hill with a bathroom on ground floor, but it is not easy. Even when in good health she was a woman who could never make up her mind short of weeks of cogitation and afterthoughts.

Wednesday, Aug 15th

Mary and I started for Coombe with our tea. Driving home I told her that I had opened a letter to Hilary stating that on the a journey from Dieppe to Newhaven on July 30th he said he had lost his ticket. I had first imagined that some one else had given his name. Would he refund the money? It suddenly dawned on me that he might have skipped over to Dieppe to meet Micheline from Paris. Mary agreed. She pointed out that with passports it would be difficult to use anyone else's name, that it was like Hilary to loose his ticket, that he was short of money, that it would be possible to make the journey in 48 hours from Brentwood and lastly, with much laughter, that if had "a clandestine" his father was in no position to criticize him!

Saturday, Aug 18th

Picked up Mary in the Bath road at 2.30 and we started off for our holiday. We reached Farringdon for tea and went to The Fleece at Cirencester for the night.

Sunday, Aug 19th

We had a nicely served breakfast and then left for the Manor House Hotel, Longhope. At about 3 we went back up the road to Holly Bush. We sat chatting in the sitting room and then went out to see the farm - the pigs, the garden, the poultry, the Muscovy drake's trick of catching little bits of cake, demonstrated, of course, buy Ruth, who called him Mr Gregory. We had a very nice tea and left about 4.30. It all seemed to go off very well.

To The Swan at Hay. We were shown into a dark, gloomy badly lit and scruffy bedroom with a double bed which faced the road. We went out for a stroll after a rather nasty cold supper. No one was about, the place seemed completely deserted, so we went to bed. Then the trouble started. About 11 the charas returned and unloaded the inhabitants outside (they had been to England, where the pubs were open on Sundays!), more and more motorbikes arrived, revved up and tore up and down the road. As the night wore on, the traffic seemed to get heavier and heavier. Downstairs there was a clock which chimed every quarter. Finally in the early hours the cats started up opposite. The bed was unsatisfactory, it sloped inwards and the pillows were impossibly hard. One of our dreaded hotel nights

Monday, Aug 20th

As soon as Mary awoke, "I am not staying here" I said. We had booked for 10 days, but I did not care. Mary, bless her, got busy with the AA handbook and suggested Clyro or Glastonbury on Wye. At Clyro they advised us to see the Maesllych Arms, Glastonbury. Here we were shown a room with twin beds, light and pleasant, guaranteed quiet with only farm noises, at 9 1/2 guineas. We accepted joyfully. Later Mary discovered that her pink nightdress was missing and we went back to The Swan, but Madame denied all knowledge of it and we were convinced the chamber maid had pinched it. After supper I rang up Molly three times to give her our new address because we had left envelopes with The Swan for forwarding on Mary's mother's letters. It was a slow business through a very rural exchange. Altogether it was a rather difficult day. Mary was upset and wept much when we lay together.

Tuesday, Aug 21st

We drove to Snodhill Castle, the scene of the Midsummer Picinic in Kilvert's Diary for 1870. Mary had begun to read him with great interest and amusement. The to Abbey Dore. Here we had lunch by the stream. It was a dull day, but it did not rain. We looked in the Abbey, then drove to Capel-y-ffin, looked in the church and then went up to the monastery where we had a very good tea, more than we needed, in the refectory. We came back by Abergevenny and Talgarth and reached the hotel about 7.10

Wednesday, Aug 22nd

We both had a good night's sleep and felt much better. Followed the road to Capel-y-ffin from Hay climbing up the side of the Cusop dingle and branching right at the New Forest Farm. The original rough track had been recently mettled right through to the Honddhu valley. The surface was good but it was only wide enough for one car most of the way and rose very steeply. The car struggled on valiantly and fortunately we met nothing. At 1500ft we reached a wide and grassy shelf with many sheep below the Hay Bluff. The car was boiling merrily, so we stopped. I tried one of Hartley's brown pills and then we started to climb up to the top of the ridge by the by a sloping, grassy track. When we reached the top it turned out to be a wide plateau. We had an easy walk along the edge until we reached a point overlooking the Gospel Pass. Here we had lunch. We walked back along the ridge to the top of Hay Bluff, 2219ft. I was jolly pleased to have made it, though I did not notice the brown pills had much effect. We came down in second or first gear most of the way for I doubted, if we met anything coming up, the brakes would stop us. We did meet a car coming up but mercifully the brakes did just hold and the other car managed to drive up on a slight verge and we edged past.

Thursday, Aug 23rd

Not a very good day so went on an architectural expedition, Bredwardine, Madley, Kilpeck; Grosmint, Skenfirth, castle and church.

Friday Aug 24th

Up to Clyro Hill, a lovely view, the Black Mountains; Brecon Beacons, the Malverns, May Hill, the Cotswolds. To Glascwm, a charming situation in a deep saucer surrounded by green and purple hills. Lunch by the side of the road, no traffic of any sort while we sat there! To Newchurch, the blue spire and the lonely tree as Kilvert described them - and Emmeline's grave, but who was Emmeline?

Before we went to bed bed bathed a deux with much laughter, a thing we hadn't done since 1952.

Satuday, Aug 25th

Mary very frustrated because she wanted to go to the Severn Wild Fowl Trust at Slimbridge. It was 175 miles, too far from here. Her frustration turned to anger and she said I did not want to go because I had seen it; if we did go and it rained I would say it was her fault! However by evening she had seen that it was a very long drive and agreed it was too far. To Crickhowell by Pont Newydd by the valley road to the reservoir. Up the track to the farm below the church. As we approached we heard a piano playing - it was a delightful surprize. Another mountain encircled coombe. The rain came down in sheets so we had to give up and drive home.

Sunday, Aug 26th

Stayed in the hotel all morning, read Sunday newspaper. After lunch to Mornington on Wye. A derelict church to which we walked across the garden of Mornington Court, a C16th farm house. While we were having supper, The mother of Mrs Derick's two maids came in to say she was worried because they were out with boys. Mrs D told us the last one she had, had two miscarriqages than had to marry. All to Mary as woman to woman. We liked Mrs D. She was highly coloured and always wore corduroy trousers, but she was extremely competent and a good cook.

Monday, Aug 27th

A wet, sunless, cold day. We started on Hereford Cathedral, but had to abandon till after lunch when Mary sighted some subscribers.

Tuesday, Aug 28th

To Clyro and Glascym - our best day so far in this dull, wet and cold August. We left the car above Glascwm and walked up through the heather on the hill. We had lunch in a sheltered grass patch in the heather and watched the sheep butting. Nine hours in the open air, wind and sun. At night we had our first sunset and the river ran gold beneath the early stars.

Wednesday, Aug 29th

To the Clyro potters and bought a cup and jug. After lunch we climbed up to Mynydd Lysian, 2173ft, but it began to rain and we had to turn back. Mary was seized with a desire to have communion with the with the mountains and rolled in the heather. This climb was one of the high spots of our 1956 holiday and at night we had a tremendous climax

Thursday, Aug 30th

We reached Molly at 12 for lunch. We had brought a bottle of claret and she had come back from Exton with lobsters! Jolly good. Took Mary to Gloucester with two dozen eggs and a bag of plums, then back to Holly Bush. She wept when we parted. We had had such a successful and lovely holiday in England for the first time since Kent in 1948 - and that was only four days!

Friday, Aug 31st

Reached Berkely Castle for lunch. It had only recently been opened and everything had been done to make a good job of it. A keep and domestic building round inner Bailey. Not spacious but good good pictures, furniture and a magnificent C14th hall with lovely wooden screen. All through, excellent medieval woodwork, never seen better.

Saturday, Sept 1st

Bitterly cold N.E. wind. August the coolest since 1924.

Monday, Sept 3rd

Home, 86 miles. Called in at Hatford and found some small white cyclamen flowering in the grass by Grandfather's grave. I guess they must have been brought by Uncle from the churchyard at Shillingford.

Sunday, Sept 9th

Two letters from Hilary. He is in a wire perimeter near Nicosia living under very uncomfortable conditions, eating sitting on the ground. They are being employed in "security", but he says the Cypriot police know beforehand which houses they are going to search and the inhabitants usually already have the door open! There is no NAAFI, but they have a char wallah who has made tea for British troops for years and has fetched up here in Cyprus from Pakistan.

We were listening to the news when Phyllis rang up and Nora had to go down and see her. She has had a great row with James and has failed to get legal aid for a divorce.

Nasser has rejected entirely the 12-nation plan. Parliament is summoned for Wednesday, so we shall hear shortly what the government intends to do.

Tuesday, Sept 11th

Second day of term. Got on rather well for new school year, fewer urgent problems than usual. Cherry seemed pretty ghastly, chalk-like, smoking hard, with a nervous gesture of the hand across the mouth. Oh dear! Oh my!

Suez building up to crisis. Heard today the company has told pilots they can go at the end of the week.

Wednesday, Sept 12th

Nora went over to Cambridge. Mary came over to tea and stayed the night. Today the great debate on Suez, an occasion! Eden surprised the opposition by telling the house that France, America and ourselves have formed a canal users' association and are going to send ships through the canal without pilots. This seems to be the equivalent of daring Nasser to stop us. The opposition very against the government because they won't rule out the use of force and promise only to act through the U.N.

Saturday, Sept 15th

Nora very critical of government along M/G lines. When I said her livelihood was at stake, she said her son's life was at stake. Obviouly sees Hilary killed in Egyptian war.

Took Cherry out to lunch. She had taken so much dope that she couldn't keep awake or understand what I said half the time. A bright prospect with term one week under weigh. She said she couldn't bear seeing me everyday and ought to get another job. Assured me she would not have another break down as last autumn, but shouldn't be surprized if she goes on at this rate. Her sister, poor wretch, is no better and is still having shock treatment and being put into insulin comas.

Sunday, Sept 16th

The Americans have said they will provide oil to supplement a) what we get through the Syrian pipeline and b) what we can have round the Cape. the plan seems to be to let him stew in his own juice while we go ahead with the lengthy (and probably otiose) job of appealing to the Security Council....

Mary C rang up tonight to say she wouldn't be coming to school tomorrow. Don't wonder, poor dear,in the state she is in.

Monday, Sept 17th

Cherry rang about 6.30 to ask me to go down as "the professionals", i.e. doctors, were unobtainable. She was sitting in a kind of daze in front of the gas fire and seemed hardly able to speak. She said she had sat there all day and done absolutely nothing, she was so depressed. Said she would commit suicide if it wasn't so much trouble to arrange!

Tuesday, Sept 18th

Cherry came back to school and seemed better

Friday, Sept 21st

A letter from Hilary. He is rather more comfortable. They have a marquee and tables to eat off. The camp is in a sandy plain which he believes will flood in the rains. They drive over the mountains to the north [to Kyrenia] to bathe. Harding has inspected them. He refused to go on church parade and nearly got into trouble. The paratroopers are next to them and the French some distance the other side.

Sunday, Sept 23rd

I lent the field to a meet of archers. Masses of cars turned up and by 2 o'clock the air was full of the impact of arrows on butts. As we looked from the top of the hill, the flights momentarily caught the sun and left glistening streaks. Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt.

Phyllis brought the boys up. She likes to be in everything. Nora said last night she uses her as if she were a basin to be sick in; pours out all her troubles and then leaves her till the next vomit!

Monday, Sept 24th

Nora had a letter from Hilary. He had been on guard at the prison where three Cypriot terrorists were hanged. He said it was ghastly, the tension terrific. Four of his lot, but not himself, had had to dig the graves.

Saturday, Sept 29th

I set off for Winchester for a reconnaissance, but it was not one of my better days. I got to Reading in good time for the 9.10, but wondered why it was late. Then I realized I was waiting for it on the main platform and it had already gone from the bay - a confusion of platform 1 and platform 4.This cost me a wait of an hour and a half. However I got the trip with the Sixth screwed down, which is something.

Nora tested Johnnie while I was away and found he was hardly grammar school level - rather a blow to Phyllis.

Sunday, Sept 30th

Went over to school this morning and found Hilary's Latin result had arrived. He has passed - hurrah - so pleased, thought this would make it easier to decide what to do next.

1956 April - June

2011-01-15T09:30:00.000+01:00

Easter Monday, April 2nd
                     A letter from Mary. « I did enjoy seeing the countryside yesterday, the tidy ploughland and the Downs. It was lovely to have a day away from Reading. I keep you in my heart and think of what we had between us . »
                     I spent the morning digging and did a clear up at the school in the afternoon, where I found Cherry had put forsythia in my room and a copy, in Latin and English, of the Easter Eve ceremonies, Paschal Candle, Holy Fire etc. Please would I read it. I did. It seemed inordinately long !
                     In the afternoon the two boys, Phyllis and the help came up to tea. After tea Johnnie asked to see a picture of the crucifixion. Phyllis told him I had some. After some hesitation I chose Raphael. He looked at it for a long time, then said he wanted to see a picture of the people who crucified him. I could not supply this. « It was very cruel, wasn’t it ? » he said.
                     The boys are different in temperament. Johnnie must be with people all the time. He cannot bear to be alone. Johnnie is much more solitary and perhaps more imaginative ; he is quite happy working out his own fantasies.

Tuesday, April 3rd
   Nora and I took our lunch out to the Ewelme Down. The wind, which had gone round to the west, was blowing hard and bringing cloud, but no rain so far. The whole hillside round "The Lonely Barn" and the Long Grasses had been sown and rolled. It looked magnificent, Constable at his best, every shade of brown from milk with a dash through café au lait to sepia, as the chalk lay on the surface or the top soil was richer and deeper, and behind the slow curves of the horizon the sky of April. Lovely Oxfordshire!
   Mr Malenkov and 13 cars drove from Brighton to Canterbury on Easter Sunday to have lunch and tea with the Dean. Unfortunately while he was showing them round the cathedral they ran into the Archbishop, who was leaving the choir walking behind a bedesman carrying a cross. As they passed, the Dean bowed, disappointing those to whom it appeared he was about to introduce to his friends. "But", says the M/G, "such processions are never interrupted." Bad show, chaps!

Wednesday, April 4th
   Bad news on the home front. Aunt writes to say Cousin Cyril is about to sail for England and encloses a letter from him. He should be here by May. Nora says he may have a stroke in the Red Sea. Point out he will not be coming that way. He says in the letter he has a new deaf aid. Aunt and he will bawl at each other across the goat rug. He does not realize what he's coming to - Aunt, Rusby, the masturbating dachshund, and the dimwit lodger! Suggest he goes for a coach trip to Scotland and/or Switzerland, if he has the money.

Thursday, April 5th
   Had a letter from the God-directed woman following one I received on Good Friday from her husband asking to have her form next term. Replied to both in same terms and told her I did not wish to continue correspondence. Discovered this evening she had rung up her successor to try to get her to refuse job. Successor said No and hung up. Good for her!
   Went out to lunch at The Lamb at Wallingford with Cherry. She was in a tizzy because I had said I would ring her up on Saturday and had forgotten. On my part I replied that I wanted an affectionate friendship and this did not seem to be her idea; I thought she was still trying to go back on it, and (selfishly I suppose) I had troubles enough on my hands, that Nora was putting the pressure on me to leave and so on, and that I could not do anything that would be a betrayal of Mary.
   I went to Reading and discovered Mary having tea in Jose's. the Manager of the T. B. C. had been down. The branch made a £12 profit last year. However he said they don't generally close them till they have made a loss for three! and this small profit was before the new subscription schemes which involves buying less books for the branches.
   When I got home I found Cherry had sent back all my letters since August and asked me to burn them, or rather she had said she couldn't burn them, but did not want to have to read them, so did not want to have them by her. I burnt them, after Nora had gone to bed, in the kitchen boiler. I did read them through again. They were mostly accounts of what I was doing; they did not make me feel ashamed; they were sincere at the time they were written, but, poor woman, in the bleakness and loneliness of her life she had read more into them than perhaps there was.

Saturday, April 7th
   Telephone rang at 9.30. Mary's mother ill in bed and Father left with no food in the house! She was planning to spend the night there, and we were going to Kew tomorrow, so that's all knocked on the head. Nora went off to London on the one o'clock bus and will be away til Monday at 5.45, so I shall see how I get on by myself with Smoky the Cat.
   Con sent N a post card from the south of France but not to me. I am afraid Con is very definitely not batting on my side now. As Nora has gone to spend the weekend with Rita, I wonder if the she will tell her and Ken about the project for building up a job in Cambridge and leaving me here. That'll be a surprize!
   Had a letter from Hilary. He gave an amusing account of a conversation he had had with an English major, who assumed he was a subaltern, in the early hours of the morning at a German café when he ought to have been in barracks. (Editor: in a bar which was out of bound to "other ranks").

Monday, April 9th
   Went over to lunch with Mary. Now that she has only one assistant she has only 45 minutes for lunch. Her mother seems to have collapsed on Wednesday after burning herself out looking after her father. The doctor however does not think there is anything radically wrong with her except exhaustion.
   Nora came back at 4.45 and phoned me from the Market Place, and pretty cross because I was not there.

Wednesday, April 11th
   Bryanston School rowing master is enquiring about house for eights week, but he wants an evening meal as well as breakfast. Lily, the Irish help, will oblige, so now Nora thinks she will do an evening meal. Only hope she does not burn herself out.
   Mary not going home, so decided to go to Clivedon, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Thursday, April 12th
   Molly came out to greet me, looking very old, thin and grey, the skin on her neck sagging badly and her eyes tired. I gave her my presents, a hayfork (which Ruth immediately appropriated), a leg of lamb, two jars of honey, and a big clump of snowdrops. The last was hardly a bone fide gift for I wanted, if I left Henley, to keep some snowdrop plants to give to Mary in January and March, the flowers which are the symbol of our love. I was able to plant them in the corner of the wall on the left as you enter the front garden. I hope they will do in the colder and harsher world of Gloucestershire.
   The water situation was acute. Gravitation was providing none; it had to be hauled from the parish well on the main road or pumped in the yard well. The latter was 60ft deep and had 25ft of water in it, but was unconnected with the house; we could neither bath, wash nor flush!

Friday, April 13th
   Molly and Ruth went in to Gloucester to see the specialist. I was not invited! I stayed behind and wrote to Mary and Cherry. They arrived back very late for lunch. Apparently "farmer's lung" is a new disease. The doctor had taken the plates to a conference, but those present were by no means agreed on the diagnosis. The view was that time would show whether on exposure to hay it recurred; if it did, he suggested it might be best to give up farming - poor Molly, how disappointing. At present it is on the mend. One lung has cleared up, but there is still trouble in the other one.
   After lunch Ruth went in to Cheltenham to her mother and sister in the nursing home. Molly and I sat on either side of the fire - Molly very solemn, not to say gloomy. I told her about my plans for leaving Henley in 1957, Nora's idea of going to Cambridge and the problem of Hilary's university career. It was a difficult conversation but I thought it went off fairly well. Molly is now so grim and middle aged that it is difficult to know whether she is simply sad in herself, or disapproving on moral and religious grounds.

Saturday, April 14th
   It was now raining steadily, cold and grey. However as it seemed the only opportunity of getting to Hay-on-Wye, which I wished to prospect as a possible holiday centre for the Black Mountains, I started off. At Clyro I inspected the hideous Victorian church. It contained a badly lettered granite slab to say that R. F. Kilvert, "the diarist", had been curate there. Hay was a grim little stone town, made less inviting by the cold and rain. Bredwardine Church, where Kilvert was rector and where he was buried, is good after Clyro. It is built of the local red sandstone and had a stone seat under an ancient yew in the church yard looking down an avenue gay with daffodils and bearing the inscription "In memory of Francis Kilvert". I took two white violets from near his grave. What pleasure his Diary has given me!

Wednesday, April 18th
   Found a letter from the N.U.T. about the batty Mrs Eastland. They wanted to come and see me that Wednesday. She had apparently been up at the school on Tuesday morning to see me. Just as well I was away.
   Gave a talk on National Trust to Cockpole Green Women's Institute. The talk was, I hope, all right, but the local colonel had brought up his magic lantern to show the slides, which were barely perceptible. The colonel was a know-all who contradicted me in front of the ladies, which was ill mannered. He was also wrong. Not a very profitable afternoon.
   Redeemed however by a tea at home where I met the new psychiatirst, Dr Thompson, a delightful white haired leonine man of about 60, who told tales of Hitler's and Himmler's astrologers. Himmler's was considered better as he had a degree - and decided whether the auspices were favourable by measuring the growth of onions. In 1940 the onions were definitely against invasion! As he was leaving he remarked that he had been at the Nuremberg Trial.

Thursday, April 19th
   The G. D. woman made a scene with Miss Owen in front of the children as Miss O had been given her children. Just before school started, she sent up a note by the secretary to say I had no doubt had second thoughts and decided to give her back her form. I hadn't, and sent for her and told her so very plainly indeed. I thought she was going for me, but she didn't in the end!
   In the midst of all this fracas, the curate turned up to say he had skidded in the holidays, landed upside down in the ditch and smashed up his car. Cars more trouble for Cherry, had had a crash as well and broken her passenger's ribs and put paid to her Austin 12.

Friday, April 20th
   The G. D. woman now says she proposed to ask for a transfer. Told her she could if she liked, though when rang up the office found this was impossible in Oxfordshire. Kept Tom Luker, the chairman of governors, informed.

Saturday, April 21st
   Got a shock today! Went over to Aunt with Nora and found her in bed with all the curtains drawn and Cousin Cyril, yesterday landed from Southampton, sitting on the bed. He was rather wizened and very deaf in spite of an aid. He appeared to have two main interests, food (4 kinds of marmalade and numerous cheeses on Union Castle Line) and money - he asked the price of everything, and of course I did not know!
   Aunt was like something out of Voltaire or Dickens, a pre-tomb or mausoleum like state of existence. We suggested that if the two sets of curtains were drawn and the sun allowed to penetrate, it might conceivably bring warmth, but Aunt replied that if she had the sun it might get too hot!

Sunday, April 22nd
   A man rang up and said his little girl in 1d had been interfered with by a boy in the Fifth who had invited her up to his bedroom in Peppard to see his stamps. Said it was primarily a matter between parents, but was informed that on Friday the boy had been describing his exploits to the 5th form girls, who had teased the 1st former. More trouble for Monday.

Monday, April 23rd, St George's Day, Shakespeare's birthday
   Had "the Queen, O God, to thee her heart upraiseth" and the National Anthem. Then Mrs C interviewed the girl. The boy had put his arm around her waist and tried to kiss her. Saw the boy, he hastened to inform me that his intentions were not immoral, and I don't think they were. A
silly ass. Told him next time to choose some one as old as himself and be careful he did not get his face smacked!
   The G.D.W. did not put in an appearance. The staff room was all carefree and jolly today and no sense of strain at the beginning of term.
   The Wilk informed that she missed Bulganin and Krusch. as they drove through Henley on Saturday en route for Oxford past her very door. When they got to Oxford a crowd of undergraduates chanted "Poor old Joe" and let off a monster firework.

Wednesday, April 25th
   Miss Loader told me the Modern School governors called for interview a Miss Smith from Kingston. They were a little bit taken aback when in walked a Negress from Jamaica!
   Mary had felt too ill to collect her groceries from the pleasant Mrs T on Castle Hill so I called for them. Mrs T enquired how she was; "She's such a sweet girl and I am so fond of her"; I could have said "So am I", but thought silence more discreet.
   B & K were invited to a dinner by the parliamentary Labour Party. They were asked what had happened to the imprisoned social democrats in Russia and the satellites. Kruscheff got very angry. So did some of his audience when he began to state that Russia fought Hitler unaided!

Saturday, April 28th
   Cyril arrives with importable suitcase, barely portable grip, panama hat and various parcels, including two books for me - "You like books?" - and grapes for Nora. He calls her Mona, for this has not registered. We have tea and sit, have supper and sit. He makes various statements of which i disapprove strongly, but he can't hear what I say anyway. He also has the semi-educated approach to facts. Why argue about facts and waste time when you can look them up in 30 secs in a reference book.

Sunday, April 29th
   Feel low and very fed up with Cyril and all colonials who come home and plant themselves on you when you have nothing in common with them and have not seen them for 40 years and don't mind you haven't. He smokes almost continuously and likes the drawing room heated with oil. However Nora come to the rescue and takes his case history most of morning - Gussie and Aunt Beattie, early poverty, strict upbringing, etc, including treatment of younger brother in mental hospital. Take him for a drive after lunch. Shillingford Bridge Hotel for tea. Lawns and river very pleasant, have to pretend it is not my first visit. He has an alarming habit of going round the corner of buildings to pee, as he does in hotel, and also a rather peculiar custom of apologizing for audible farts and belches - an ancient colonial custom perhaps.

Monday, April 30th
   Cyril goes off by early train for Gloucester. Should have washed up up, but diverted by group of boys on bank below house obviously looking at something contraband. When staff come by they break up but continue down on cricket field. Send for one boy and ask "Nudes or jokes?" Says they are pin-up girls he found in bus. Ask to see them. They are, some in (?) belts, some showing breasts. Say I don't want them in school or shown to juniors or girls. Find these boys really rather disarming.

Tuesday, May 1st
   A warm May day. Cold responding to treatment. In p.m., interview four candidates, 2 men and 2 women, for English job. One man, a jumpy, spotty individual, ex-Kings Cambridge via Middlesborough, quite impossible, second man a powerful smooth type, too high-voltage for Mary C, committee liked him, I didn't much - then the women, a difficult choice; played for safety and chose a plain Jane, abominably dressed, from Lancashire, slight accent, but pleasant voice, instead of small woman from L.M.H., clever, more cultured, but a poor report from H.M.

Wednesday, May 2nd
   Nora went off to Cambridge. Drove her to the station at 7.30. Then on going to school locked myself out of the house. I was just climbing in through the scullery window when the postman arrived! In the afternoon I went down to the sports heats. I was standing watching the long jump when I saw Mary come out on the terrace. I waved to her - all in the public view! After tea we went to bed where we stayed to about seven. Drove her to the flat for supper. Mary extremely amused by Cousin Cyril's lack of training.

Tuesday, May 3rd
   Got at last four men short-listed from the numerous art applications. Some funny things among the letters - "I have specialized in thumb pots, slips and small thrown objects." Ink bombs?! "I have taught pottery to adults" - and had been most useful at the old people's club. Nora said she heard this as "adultery to pots." The Vicar wrote a testimonial for one man in the middle of which he said that his wife was a trained chiropodist
   Rang up Dorrell (at Oxford Education Office). He had seen G.D.W. on Tuesday and advised her to apologize and come back to work, but of course she won't. Meanwhile I can't make another appointment. It is now a fortnight she has been on strike.

Sunday, May 6th
   A busy day and almost over by the time I sit down to write my diary. In garden in morning cutting grass and doing bees. In afternoon washing up, reading and studying newspaper. After tea allotment. Nora says I have not invited any of my friends, but when have I had time without giving up my weekends, which are fully taken up with things I'd much rather do. Visits involve so much sitting and talking and doing nothing while the grass grows.
   Reading life of Victor Hugo. He had a lot of trouble with women in his life. He had a wife, a permanent mistress and a vast host of semi-permaments and purely temporary. He wrote these marvellous poems and letters to his mistress, but got her on the cheap as secretarial help, made her account for every penny she spent and took her for a holiday once a year. How French, say I. He also kept a diary!

Prayer written by Hugo for Juliette Drouet:
   O God, let us live together for ever. May she be fulfilled in me and I in her. So order it that she shall never be absent from any day of my life, or from one single moment of my eternity. Grant that I may be always beloved and useful: useful to my beloved and loved by her. Save us, transfigure us, and make us one.
When old she wrote:
   The scene has changed, and I have put on the disguise of old age but my heart and soul have both stayed young and now adore you, as they did the day when, for the first time, I gave myself to you.
   He wrote:
   She said: "Shall I keep my shift?"
   I said: "Never can woman make a lovelier gift than utter nakedness."
   O short-lived days of spring!
   That start in laughter and end with pondering.
   Joy! Ashtaroth unmasked: ecstasy, Isis bare.
   Have you at times looked at a rising star?
   O lovely spectacle! "Well, here am I" said she.
   And thus did Venus stand for Adonis to see.

Wednesday, May 9th
   Sports Day, one of the worst for a number of years. It started to rain at 3, the spectators either sat in their cars or retreated under the trees. The staff in the centre of the track were soaked and chilled. It dragged on beyond time, competitors grew slack, the old boys present did not turn up for their race, and we were not going to wait for them, so it was cancelled; fortunately Councillor Hamilton was not present. At the last minute Mrs Lambert could not come, so I had to ask Mrs Griggs to distribute medals and cups. I improved the shining hour by asking Annette [Griggs] to thank her. We had the usual tea at School House, though I did something unusual by giving Wally and Clem a whisky! Wally typically put his foot in it by suddenly calling out all the girl prizewinners as surnames only. You really can't keep up with him.
   This morning at last got a letter from G.D.W. to say she was not coming back. She had a job in Reading. I also have found a very old Oxford graduate, 50, mother of a family, who seems willing to come for this term.

Thursday, May 10th
   Started by holding a parade of boys in playground and getting chairs back from the gym. Then had an Ascension Day service, as little preparation as possible! Then I engaged "the old lady", who said she was like a medlar, but past the change of life! This took till lunch time, after which I endeavoured to compose a report on Mrs E's departure from the fairly large dossier which I now have.
   In the evening did the garden and then wrote a poem for Mary, the first for two years, suggested by that lovely picture of Tintoretto's from the Doge's Palace, Bacchus and Ariadne.

Saturday, May 12th
   Started off at 5 o'clock and met Mary outside Heelas when she came out at 5.30. About 6 we were off and had dinner at The Bear at Wantage. We got to Lechlade before dark and went to see Inglesham. Then to the New Inn. We had what appeared to be a very nice big bedroom in the front with twin beds and a gas fire. I gave Mary a small posy of pheasanteyes. I told her I wanted to show her something, Tintoretto's Bacchus and Ariadne, but she said she wanted to get into bed first, then of course we forgot about the Tintoretto. However afterwards I lay on the outside of the bed and showed her the photograph and read he the poem. We were both very moved.
   We seemed all set for a quiet night, but no, not a bit of it. As usual the awful snaggery of hotels raised its ugly head. A man (with a dog? and possibly a wife?) went in next door. He flings his boots off, I presumed drunk, and got into bed. It was then about midnight. For the next couple of hours he coughed, retched, groaned and called aloud. The more I listened to his heavings, the more wide awake I became and the more I became convinced I was sick myself! Then at times I became angry and thought why should Mary and I be condemned to this horror when we ought to have a house of our own! I took two aspirins, very cautiously not to wake Mary, if indeed she was asleep. Nothing happened, then I realized she was not a sleep, so I got into her bed and we lay together. Finally about 3 we got some peace and managed to go to sleep; O God! Oh English hotels!
   It was a brilliant May morning, warm sun but a wind to keep it from getting too hot. We drove in leisurely fashion from Lechlade to Hatherop and Coln St Aldwyn, stopping on the way to pick buttonholes of cowslips and list to the nightingales still singing as they once did in the wood below Beacon Hill. It was "Bridal and Earth Sky", the fields were yellow with buttercups and the beeches in green and tender leaf. At Bibury we went into the garden of The Swan and saw the lovely green, cool and bubbling spring, looked over the bridge at the speckled trout and wandered arm in arm up to the mill. Then we sat on the wall by the river till it was time to start for Cirencester.
   Molly's car was drawn up in the market place and we found her in the church porch. I introduced her to Mary and we looked into the church for a minute, nearly getting locked in and having to be let out by an obscure side door - a curious English custom on Sundays. We went round the back of the church and found a seat, then I produced a half bottle of sherry and opened it with a satisfying plop with which we drank healths. We then repaired to the Fleet Trust House where we had a very nice lunch. Afterwards we sat on the seat in front of the porch until it was time at 3.0 for Molly to start back for milking. Molly was reserved but friendly and Mary liked her and felt that they could get on well if they knew one another better, for she was direct and unpretentious. Good! I was very pleased and that Mary and I have had one of our rare, very rare social occasions.

Wednesday, May 16th
   To Aldworth via Bradfield. We spotted some young plovers on a rolled field. They rose, so we walked up to them and picked them up in our hands and they made no effort to move and when we put them down they froze as before.

Thursday, May 17th
   News item in Daily Mail. Suicide by taking Seconal sleeping tablets of "Barbara" in James McBurnie's flat. Coroner thought she was drunk and it was an accident - lucky for James. "She was", he said, "the guest of her accountant." Had been for three weeks! "His sons," James told reporters, "were at his country residence." That man's a marvel!
   Nora weighed in by saying Jimmie and Johnnie should stay with us instead of going to his flat. This caused a row and when I got back from taking Cherry to Clivedon, cables were flying backwards and forwards from Zagreb between Phyllis and Nora. James meanwhile phoned Danish nannies to say Nora on no account to be allowed to see boys!

Wednesday, May 23rd
   I Picked up Mary on the Marlow road at 3.30 and we took our tea to Cliveden. The tulips were at their best in the Long Garden and our little house was leafed, so we could go in and embrace. Nora had gone to Cambridge, so we came back to a cold supper.

Thursday, May 24th
   We had to get up at 7 o'clock for Mary had to leave the house at 7.45. Went over to tea with Cyril and Kay, but had not cleared up the breakfast things. Nora was early and passed me in the market place, just in time to put away two of everything!

Friday, May 25th
   Governors! Before hand we had to go to old Turton-Green's funeral and as a relative Tom Luker had to go on to the crematorium, so he could not take the chair and we were left with old Hamilton. The case of the G.D.W. went off all right, also religious instruction, and they took a lenient view of Wally's use of electricity in the cadet hut for changing, but all these were quite tricky topics.

Saturday, May 26th
   Showed Sir Felix Brunner, funny little lizard-like man, round the school in the morning. he wanted to see the building problems, which at least showed willing.

Sunday, May 27th
   Yesterday a letter arrived from Molly in which she said she like Mary very much and hoped things would sort out all right for us both, which was very nice of her.
   Hilary wrote last week. He was living a life of ease in a garrison at Hohne learning Latin and even getting some cricket. It was near the Belsen concentration camp, which was eerie enough.

Tuesday, May 29th
   A letter from Mary, "Our life together is such a joy and comfort, and something I can retreat into when pushed about in the library."
   Ioan came over after tea and made a charcoal sketch of me as a study for an oil painting. He tells me he has applied for an English job at a modern school in Sussex.

Thursday, May 31st
   Gave my justly dreaded talk on relations between men and women to the Fifth boys. They were a bit stunned I think and asked no questions.
   Read Harry Truman's Vol II about the Berlin blockade and the Korean war. The book is heavy reading, but my opinion of him goes up steadily. He always tried to do the decent and honest thing.

Wednesday, June 6th
   Lady Helen came in to hear the strange story of Mrs Eastland. She was much smarter than usual and nicely made up with a silk scarf from Rome. I said because she had been to see the Girl's Technical; Nora said to see me!

Thursday, June 7th
   Took Cherry to Cliveden. Came back to her house for supper as her parents away and had some Yugoslav Riesling with our chicken, which made C rather abandoned, but retired intact.

Friday, June 8th
   A lovely long and affectionate letter from Mary. Went over to see a Dr Anderson, a heart specialist in the Bath Road, Reading, a rather coarse faced Scotsman. He asked the usual questions about how long I had this choking when I climbed a hill. He said it was due to cramp in the heart muscle.... the [best] thing to do was to find out what activity brought it on, call that x and then live at x - I. Anyway, no more walking in the Alps.
   Mary said she was changing at Reading for Oxford at 6.23. The car was in dock, but I knew Mary would hope to be met, so went in by bus. She looked very well as she came off the train, brown and burnt by the wind. It was lovely to see her and she was so pleased that I came; just caught the 6.50 home to supper.
   A long and interesting letter from Hilary about the scientists he had met at the new camp. He has found they are far less widely read than he is and says by the time they have finished at university the gap will be still wider. "It is not a matter of intelligence, unfortunately.... but perhaps the education I received was liberal in more than one sense."

Sunday, June 10th
   Today The Observer used more than half its paper printing verbatim Kruschev's speech attacking Stalin. Waded through it, though hard going. It shows what a primitive, barbaric country Russia is.

Monday, June 11th

After this I netted the peas and planted 30 antirhinums. Of course, after last Friday, everything I do I think I can feel my heart giving out.

Wednesday, June 13th
   Told Mary about my interview with Dr Anderson on Friday and said that after all we should have to live in a bungalow. Her views agreed with mine. She had met him in the library and found him a bad-mannered tough, but said he has a great reputation as a doctor. Speriamo!

Saturday, June 16th
   Ioan came up at 10 and finished portrait. I thought it better before he put in the reflection of the lenses of the spectacles.
   Took Cherry out to tea at Theale. Miss Owen, with whom she is rather friendly, said, "You don't often get a headmaster like Mr Barnes!" Very pleased by this.

Sunday, June 17th
   Margaret Burton came to lunch. many years since we had asked her. The policy of not asking people because you think you ought to makes it very difficult when you finally want to! I thought she had mellowed though.
   She told the story of a man and his wife taking auntie for a trip in Spain when auntie died suddenly in the back of the car near frontier. Husband decided to lay her down in the back seat covered in rugs and drive across the frontier to France before reporting her death to the French authorities. They drove to the nearest French town and went into café for a drink, when they came out the car had vanished. Weeks later the car was found abandoned, but so sign of either luggage or auntie. Very awkward, very awkward!

Thursday, June 21st
       This afternoon went to see Dr Hartley. he said I had this cramp of the heart muscle and it was angina, as I thought. He was not committing himself to any forecast or whether it could be checked, but he pointed out that many people lived long without taking any exercise whatsoever. He proposed to try two drugs, one for long term, one for short term if I anticipated strain. I must not get fat.

Friday, June 22nd
   Keble Dinner. Put on my Moss Bros dinner jacket and drove to the college. Not many of my contemporaries there. I liked the new warden, Dr Abbot, from Cambridge via Kings College, London. He was not pompous or forbidding. I told him who I was and explained that Hilary would be coming up in 1957.

Monday, June 26th
   Took the Sixth to the Festival Hall to hear a Beethoven concert, Egmont, Emperor, Eroica. Few had heard a symphony and only one I think had been to the South Bank. We had seats facing the conductor, which I discovered on arrival had no backs, but they were excellent from the children's point of view for they could easily follow the various sections of the orchestra and see the conductor bringing them in. I came our rapt to journey home with the adolescents chattering and drinking pop as usual.

Saturday, June 30th
   Felt very cross that Nora had persuaded me to have an eight, which I didn't want, just because Phyllis had one. The summer term is bad enough and exhausting enough without all this upheaval. Then in addition the maid who was coming fails, and on Thursday Nora slips in Reading and cracks a bone in her elbow and has to have her arm in a sling. Nothing goes right at all.