Nella Last in the 1950s: Further diaries of Housewife, 49

NELLA LAST IN THE 1950s

‘In this next volume of Nella’s diary we gain further insight into the life of this hard working, determinedly cheerful woman, and the post war society that was changing around her’ Gilda O’Neill, author of Secrets of the Heart

‘Nella Last’s diaries give a fascinating and detailed account of life in the early 1950s. The prose is such a delight to read – lively, entertaining, observational and vividly realised’ Gervase Phinn, author of Road to the Dales

Robert Malcolmson is Professor Emeritus of history at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. Patricia Malcolmson is a historian and a former executive in the Ontario public service. They live in Cobourg, Ontario and Nelson, British Columbia.

The Mass Observation Archive at the University of Sussex holds the papers of the British social research organisation Mass Observation. The papers from the original phase cover the years 1937 until the early 1950s and provide an especially rich historical resource on civilian life during the Second World War. New collections relating to everyday life in the UK in the 20th and 21st century have been added to the original collection since the Archive was established at Sussex in 1970.

ALSO AVAILABLE

NELLA LAST’S WAR:

The Second World War diaries of Housewife, 49

‘I relished it … her personality is so powerful … There are so

many things to admire about her‘ Margaret Forster

NELLA LAST’S PEACE:

The post-war diaries of Housewife, 49

‘Tender, intimate, heartbreaking and witty – it grants us the

privilege of knowing a stranger‘s heart‘ A. L. Kennedy

NELLA LAST IN THE 1950s

Further diaries of Housewife, 49

Edited by

PATRICIA AND ROBERT MALCOLMSON

Published in Great Britain in 2010 by

PROFILE BOOKS LTD

3a Exmouth House

Pine Street

Exmouth Market

London ECIR OJH

www.profilebooks.com

This eBook edition published in 2010

Mass Observation material © Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive Nella Last in the 1950s, selections and editorial matter © Patricia and Robert Malcolmson, 2010

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

Typeset by MacGuru Ltd

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN 978 184765 286 7

CONTENTS

Map: Nella’s Cumbria

Introduction

Nella Last’s Family, Friends, Neighbours and Associates

CHAPTER ONE Troubles and Trials: January–February 1950

CHAPTER TWO Public and Private: February–April 1950

CHAPTER THREE Snapshots of Society: May–August 1950

CHAPTER FOUR Fragilities and Familiarities: September–December 1950

CHAPTER FIVE Getting By, Getting On: December 1950–May 1951

CHAPTER SIX Summer and Sons Return: May–August 1951

CHAPTER SEVEN Comings, Goings and Public Affairs: September–December 1951

CHAPTER EIGHT Times Change: January–July 1952

AFTERWORD July 1952–December 1953

February 1953: Helping the Victims of Floods

Glossary

Money and Its Value

Chronology

Editing Nella Last’s Diary

Mass Observation

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

INTRODUCTION

‘I can never understand how the scribbles of such an ordinary person, leading a shut-in, dull life, can possibly have value.’

Nella Last wrote the words above in her diary on 2 September 1949. Tens of thousands of people have now read and enjoyed some of her diaries, available in two edited books.* Many have also seen the television film inspired by her wartime diaries, Housewife, 49, starring Victoria Wood, which drew attention to the remarkable efforts of this previously largely unknown writer. Perhaps some day someone will be able to claim to have read all that she wrote for Mass Observation; we estimate it to be in the vicinity of ten million words – possibly more – which must make it one of the longest in the English language. And she didn’t start it until she was forty-nine years old.

‘When I was a girl at school and was asked what I wanted to be,’ Nella Last wrote on 16 October 1952, ‘I used to say a writer – but meant of books!’ She was undeniably assiduous in her self-imposed task of writing, virtually daily, and often at great length – 1,000 words, 1,500 words, occasionally 2,000 words in a day – for over a quarter of a century. Without doubt, she was a tireless, dedicated writer, a lover of words. Usually, except on those rare occasions when she was away from home, she wrote at night, in bed (though some entries were written earlier in the evening or even late afternoon) – she and her husband had separate bedrooms* – and her practice was to summarise the events and routines of the day, starting with how she felt when she woke up and concluding with how she was feeling or what she was thinking as she was about to turn out her light. In some entries she added commentary or ruminations or personal reminiscences – in other words, she allowed her mind and pen to wander. She stuck resolutely with her writing even though none of it was published during her lifetime (except for a few passages from her wartime diaries that were printed anonymously in Mass Observation’s own books), and she only gave up writing shortly before her death in 1968.

Nella admired creativity, even as she credited herself with possessing little of it. ‘It must be grand to be gifted,’ she wrote on 29 September 1950, ‘to be able to create a picture or piece of carving or sculpture, above all write a novel or play.’ There was a part of her that wanted to escape the mundane, the necessities of life, the narrowness of routine and convention in rather out-of-the-way Barrow-in-Furness, a shipyard town, population around 67,500, which was then in Lancashire and is now in Cumbria.** And while in these years she never moved from Barrow physically – though, since she did live close to the Lake District, day trips there, usually to Coniston Water or Lake Windermere, were a great tonic for her – her ability to write allowed her to give voice to her experiences in Barrow and turn them and her thoughts about living into often memorable prose. On a couple of occasions she seemed to think of this writing as the equivalent of books. ‘I feel sometimes’, she wrote on 17 April 1951, ‘I must have written all the books I would have liked to write – if I’d been clever enough – in the shape of letters and diaries for M-O.’ Some months later, on 16 October 1952, she said that ‘I often wonder how many long long novels in words I’ve written, the hundreds of letters. Come to think of it, my diaries alone would count up to a few books in the years since 1939.’ (Her letters, none of which is known to survive, were written mainly to her two sons, Arthur and Cliff, born in 1913 and 1918 respectively, after they left home in the 1930s.)

Nella and her husband, Will, who had his own small joinery business, had moved into their semi-detached house on a new estate ‘on the outskirts of town’ in 1936, and by the early 1950s the population of Ilkley Road itself – the Lasts lived at number 9 – was (in Nella’s eyes) ageing. ‘Most of us are elderly or old people,’ she wrote, ‘none given to standing talking at the front. Our gossiping is always done over the back fence, when sweeping, hanging out mats or clothes.’ The locality was ‘not the friendly all-together type of district where anything communal goes on. We pass the time of day or walk up from the bus with neighbours, and that’s all’ (6 June 1953). There were few children near by, and those who make appearances in the diary are commonly visiting or talked-about grandchildren.

The unifying force in a diary is usually the mind of the diarist him- or herself; the period and occurrences written about may or may not have noticeable unity. Nella Last’s War is framed by the realities of the Second World War. It starts when the war starts and ends when it ends, and thus it benefits from this chronological clarity. While Nella Last’s Peace does not have this sort of obvious thematic coherence, it does convey a lot about the after-the-war atmosphere and common experiences of English life from the middle of 1945: transitions (many of them painful) from war to peace; comparisons between wartime and peacetime states of mind; letdowns and disappointments; the many different ways in which people hoped to move on (or feared moving on); and the drabness and austerity of post-war life in a nearly bankrupt nation. In Nella Last in the 1950s there is a kaleidoscope of subject matter and sentiment – anxiety about the possibility of another war, changes in popular culture, new technologies, ‘modernising’ trends – and this variety has informed the choices we have made in selecting what to print. Our selections represent around 10 per cent of the original diary for January 1950 to July 1952, though the percentage varies significantly from chapter to chapter (her writing from 1950, for example, is presented much more fully than her writing from 1952). While the central reality of Nella Last’s diary is that it records a life unfolding in the ongoing present, without the wisdom of hindsight, it also testifies to changes in society – the intimate world of family and friends as well as the larger world of neighbourhood, city and nation.

Nella Last’s diary is rich in detail and commentary – and decidedly unpredictable. It is full of surprises. As she regularly observed herself and others, new subjects kept cropping up, along with new perspectives, which arose from various circumstances and situations. Often she was at home, usually alone with her husband and cats; at other times she was out and about, noticing public incidents and participating in or overhearing conversations. Sometimes her writing is descriptive, at other times it is judgemental or reflective. Her mood was sometimes edgy or dark and brooding, at other times buoyant or at least intense – and this is the writing that our selections highlight. Her subject matter constantly changes, for her life and the lives of those she knew changed, and she frequently had novel observations to report, new stories to relate, fixed opinions to reconsider or expand on, endings or beginnings that she thought were worth writing about. In some sense her diary was, for her, a journey of everyday discovery and reflection; and her pen – which, when little was happening, might resort to recording the minutiae of meals, the weather, shopping, prices and bodily complaints – was always ready to find words for whatever was out of the ordinary, or perhaps ordinary but waiting to be described in an attractive, even captivating, way.

These are the literary and intellectual strengths that we have tried to highlight in this edition. Their presence (or absence) during any period of time is the main determinant of the fullness (or sparseness) of our selections. Some periods of her writing are richer than others, and some days in her life offered more in the way of incident and stimulus than others. Virtually no one who wrote at such length almost every day, whether the day was eventful or uneventful, lively or dreary, could produce prose of sustained high quality. The job of her editors, we believe, is (in part) to approach her diary as raw material from which an attractive book can be fashioned. The more technical aspects of our editorial practice, which are similar to those followed in Nella Last’s Peace, are summarised in an appendix. The symbol † indicates a word defined or a proper name identified in the glossary (pp. 280–83).

NELLA LAST’S FAMILY,

FRIENDS, NEIGHBOURS AND

ASSOCIATES

CHAPTER ONE

TROUBLES AND TRIALS

January–February 1950

‘Such a heavy dull day,’ Nella wrote on 31 December 1949, ‘with the feeling in the air that the old year was actually dying. … Ever since I can remember I had a sadness on me on New Year’s Eve. Cliff always teased me about my Hogmanay Blues.’ The next day, the first of the New Year, she and Will visited Aunt Sarah and Sarah’s cousin Joe in Spark Bridge and then returned home to spend the evening alone.

Sunday, 1 January. The fire soon blazed when poked. I had banked† it with slack† and coal dust dampened, and I made tea, meat sandwiches (tinned), crushed pineapple and whipped cream, Xmas cakes and mince pies. I wished there had been someone in to share, as we sat by the fire and I stitched at my crazy patchwork. I felt the ‘blues’ I’d missed last night enfold me like a mist, helped no doubt by an article in an American magazine the Atkinsons sent in, speaking of war as inevitable after 1951, and hinting at atomic bombs being puerile when compared to the germ bombs Russia was concentrating on. All my fears and conjectures of before this last one rushed over me. I felt if I turned suddenly I’d see some of Arthur’s friends’ faces as they argued against such a thing as ‘too inhuman’ etc. I thought of the unrest of today, the state of affairs in Egypt, hoping if King Farouk did lose his throne for ‘romance’, it had as little effect as it had when it happened in England.* I felt, as I thought of one upset or worry, it brought its fellows along. I heard my husband ask me something and looked up to see him waiting for an answer. He was ‘thinking how neglected we have let your parents’ grave get – we will have to go up and clean the marble stone as soon as the weather gets better’. I felt it was the limit, and tuned in to Palm Court, which he had earlier refused as his head ached, and then we listened to the first instalment of The Virginians – sounds promising.

Tuesday, 3 January. Though it still rained heavily I persuaded my husband to go to the pictures to see The Hasty Heart. Such a well acted picture. It’s a long time since we have enjoyed a picture so much. It had stopped raining, we walked home, and I soon had the fire blazing warmly, and did cheese and toast. Before we settled down, Mrs Howson and Steve came in, with the air of staying the evening. I did feel so glad. Then there was a ring, and an old school friend of Cliff’s came in, one I’d never met when Cliff was at home. He is a ‘fridge’ engineer on a line of steamers that take frozen meat from Australia and America and bring it to England, and while in Adelaide had seen Cliff’s exhibition posters the week after it had closed, and read the notices of the ‘clever English sculptor’, and tried to track Cliff down in Melbourne without success, so called for his address so as to find him next trip. We had a real merry party, laughing and joking. Steve and he soon got yarning. I opened a tin of Australian chopped ham, and there was rum butter, chocolate biscuits and Xmas cake, and the table looked like a real party, and the cats were as delighted as I was – they are nice animals – to see them happily being ‘one of us’. Their heads turning as if listening and enjoying everything was comical. Alan was so taken with Shan We, and I begged him to tell Cliff as much as he could of my little cats’ funny ways. Shan We blinked understandingly and shared tit bits of chopped ham offered. Alan had to rush off to catch the last bus to take him to Walney but is coming again if he can before he rejoins his ship. Steve said, ‘Well, we didn’t think we were coming to a party when we came across. It has been a jolly evening.’ I looked at my husband, sitting so quiet, who had refused even to sit at the supper table or eat anything in case it made him have a wakeful night, and sighed. But I was so grateful for my happy evening. I feel sometimes as if my face is ceasing to fit me properly, as if it creaks if I laugh. It’s not good to get into a deep rut of passive acceptance of sickness of any kind, yet it is so difficult at times.

Wednesday, 4 January. Mrs Salisbury came earlier and didn’t stay for lunch. Her eldest boy has started at the Co-op dairies, helping deliver milk – at 34s 6d a week! It’s only a put-on till he can find somewhere to serve his time as a joiner or woodworker of some kind, but it means he is in mid-day and needs a hot meal. We worked busily, only stopping for a cup of tea and biscuits at 10.30, and I was glad really she wasn’t staying for lunch, when the butcher didn’t come before lunch, for we managed with a slice of chopped ham fried with an egg. I heated tinned tomato soup and added milk, cooked cabbage and potatoes and heated some raspberry blancmange left from yesterday for my husband. I had a cup of tea.

It was such a nice afternoon and we went out early and got as far as Bowness. Shafts of sunlight fell on fell and hill like magic fingers, making golden patches on the greyness when lighting up faded bracken. Little white-capped waves slapped on the shore, and there was a keenness in the air which hinted at snow on high ground. I got some locally made butter toffee, and met an old friend who lives at Greenodd, and she said she did all shopping in Bowness, registered there, and when the weather was bad got her groceries put on the bus. When I went in the front door I found my Co-op quarterly dividend cheque had come. Coal and milk, cat biscuits and compost maker are about all I get generally, making a total of about £6 I spend each quarter. Lately I’ve often had to count and recount my housekeeping, feeling sometimes I must have lost 10 shillings. There’s been Allenburys Diet,† Sanatogen† *Sloan’s Liniment, Disprins†, Frugoclone* bought every week, or when needed, and I’ve got into the habit of calling in the Co-op chemist’s as it’s on my way home from the Library. I felt ‘No wonder I’ve felt so hard up at times’ when I saw I’d spent over £13 this quarter, though that included extra milk – I always get two pints a day left lately.

I fixed some fillets of plaice and we had just finished tea when the phone rang, and it was long distance. It was Robert Haines, to say he would come this weekend if convenient – arrive off the mid-day train from Euston, which gets into Barrow about 6.40 – and leave for Leeds on Monday afternoon. I felt so happy he could come. I’ve only to change the beds – he can have mine and I’ll make the small one up in the little front room. All is aired. I’ll only need to bake on Friday and we plan to take him out to The Heanes for lunch Saturday if it is fine, and somewhere else on Sunday so he can get a glimpse of the Lakes. I put down the receiver and turned away, and then realised we wouldn’t recognise each other unless he sees some resemblance to Cliff – or in odd snaps! I’ve never even seen a photo with clear enough features; any I have had have been taken at a distance. As I sat down I thought suddenly and with amusement of the time I went to meet a girl Arthur knew – Agnes Schofield from Blackpool. Off my mind galloped on memory lane. I wonder where she is, if still a doctor’s secretary at the dental clinic, still so dependent on advice from outsiders, always searching for someone ‘to love me’. If we could only have as fair and sweet a day – or days – at the weekend as we have had today. Robert could have a nice look round, though I’d have really liked to give him an extra good time. If he doesn’t have to return to Australia till March, he may possibly be able to come again. Train fares ‘off his schedule’, though, might be expensive. I wonder if his grant is a good one from the British Council of Arts.

Friday, 6 January. The train was only five minutes late, and I stood by the exit wondering which of the men walking alone from the train towards me would be Robert. From the end, as the crowd thinned, a slight, rather diffident looking man approached me and with a slight stammer said, ‘I hope you have not been waiting long in the cold, Mrs Last’, as if we had met before! Robert is 35 – odd how Cliff generally has friends about five years older. I wonder if it’s the case of the difference in his and Arthur’s age. Could be, I suppose. He is extremely likeable and walked round touching or looking at different things, saying, ‘Cliff so often thinks of home and you. It’s his deepest concern at times when he feels a bit down that he cannot pop in and see you, and talk things over. You know I think the chief attraction of Cliff is his love of discussing every and anything. He is so interested in life from every angle.’ I sighed as I thought, ‘No one knows better than I do that attraction possessed by my two sons.’ I’m thankful little Peter shows signs of that same interest. All this ‘strong silent men’ talk leaves me cold. Any I’ve met have been too dumb – or too short of interest in things – to be anything else.

During the weekend, Nella and Will showed Robert around the Lake District – Kendal, Windermere, Bowness, Ambleside, Hawkshead and Coniston Water. Late on Sunday afternoon they were back at 9 Ilkley Road.

Sunday, 8 January. Robert fits in so well he might be one of the family. He so loves to talk, as we discussed conscientious objectors, Russians, Americans – whom he seems to detest, saying most Australians do! – flying saucers, the Australian way of life, the possibility of him living in London, even washing socks to keep them from shrinking – and things like central heating crept in. The day seemed to fly. My husband said it was just like when Arthur used to come home weekends! We settled by the fire, looking over old photos of Cliff and Arthur and a pile of odd snaps and cuttings of the war I’d kept, though tonight I did have a clear-out, feeling many more are for scrapping. I gazed in wonder and a little sadness at some of the earlier war snaps of myself, feeling that these last ten years have drained vitality and humour. Each I handled seemed to bring a train of memories of different little incidents and events and people I’d worked so happily with. Robert had a few chuckles over snaps. He has a few leg pulls for Cliff on his return!

My husband went to bed and Robert and I drew up our chairs. Even for an Australian, he is naïve and boyish for 35, and I had a little sadness as he spoke of future plans as if he was only 18, with golden youth ahead instead of past. He spoke of his fear of the future, whether he should marry, have children in today’s chaos when to thinking people so many problems and difficulties beset youth. As I pointed out, they always did to a varying degree. I pointed out the quiet leisured peace of The Forsyte Saga, which we had discussed as a little cameo of life earlier in the evening. I drew a word picture of the countryside as I’d known it, before motors and planes, and earlier still before trains when Gran was a young bride – earlier still in Rogue Herries’† pack horse and bridle path days. I said ‘It was said trains, later motors, would poison the air’. Every generation has its bogey, and fears of the future, but we who have lived through found compensations somewhere, and did live through.

Friday, 13 January. Wherever I’ve been today there’s been little remarks about the loss of the Truculent.* Barrow people always feel they own a bit of the ships and subs they make. George came in and he had been talking to someone who had grown old in submarine building and had said, ‘If those lads were in reach of their equipment, they would be up and floating like ducks.’ I shivered as I said to George, ‘In the dark cold water, no ship near to pick them up, it would only prolong the agony.’ Such a dreadful senseless accident, no combat, no ‘they died gloriously’, as much an accident as if crossing the street and been knocked down by a bus.

Tuesday, 17 January. I got the pantry and kitchenette cupboards cleaned out this morning, and it took me most of the morning. I had cold meat and macaroni pudding to do, and opened a tin of soup and added grated onion and a little Bovril, and cooked frozen peas and potatoes. My husband went down to the doctor’s and saw Dr Miller, who is better after his operation. He told my husband the same thing – that his cure is in his own hands. It’s what he thinks and does for himself, rather than drugs and potions, but added too he realised how difficult it was to conquer ‘nerve’ health when one got low.

Wednesday, 18 January. We set off at 1.30 to go to Windermere for the two prints Robert wanted for Cliff. It was lovely motoring along the glassy lake, where shadows met on the steel dark water, not even a boat or a bird to mar the smooth stillness. Farmers worked busily everywhere. Hedges that were not done earlier are being cut and trimmed, fields drained, and the queer machine that cuts a deep neat furrow for the draining pipes fascinates me – so much time saved. Lime, dung and phosphates were being spread, with a speed that hinted the workers smelled snow in the keen air, and snow ploughs were on corners of waste land all along the roads. If we don’t get a severe frost soon, grain will be poor next harvest. It’s far too ‘proud’,† as the old ones say. It needs to be ‘backened’† or else there will be too much stalk. I love the little Lakeland towns in off season. The shops are so attractive, with expensive fruit, flowers and vegetables as in a city, things we don’t see in such profusion in Barrow, and the cakes, fish, game and poultry are always a delight to a shopper with a long purse!

Thursday, 19 January. I shocked and offended Jessie a little. They had been talking about Priestley’s broadcast, and though Jessie is a real Conservative, I could tell Priestley’s kindly humble puppy philosophy had affected her.* She said, ‘Don’t you like him?’ I said ‘Ah yes, as a playwright and real kindly man, he has no peer, but he does see life through rosy spectacles, which, though cosy, is not realistic nowadays. We could do with lots more like him. They are a good leaven.’ Jessie said, ‘Sometimes you are very cynical. I either like people or I don’t’ and Mrs Atkinson agreed. Mrs Atkinson said a bit crankily, ‘Now if Mr Last had only been interested in cards we could have played whist and I wouldn’t have missed going to the whist drive so much tonight.’ I said, ‘And if he only had wings, he would be able to fly’, and joined in the laugh, but thought of what a lot of things he didn’t do or want to do!

Saturday, 21 January. It was bitterly cold, but the sun shone, and we went round Coniston Lake. The day had that newly washed crystalline light that Hugh Walpole so loved and described so lovingly of Derwent, Skiddaw and round Keswick. The hills seemed to drowse in veils of soft amethyst to deep sepia shadows. Swale† fires nursing under the whin† and dead bracken made long plumes of smoke that rose up into the still air like fantastic fir trees, higher than the hills in the background. Age-old grey walls were jewelled with emerald-topiary from little tufts of green moss, and orange-yellow lichen where the sun rays picked out the colour. Evergreens glistened as if every leaf had been washed and polished separately. Horses’ coats shone like burnished metal, and the hill sheep’s wool dried in the keen wind and made a little shimmering nimbus round them as they cropped the grass, or lay quietly resting. In sheltered fields fresh hurdles made folds for the expected lambs, in the rude shepherds’ huts. The glint of straw could be seen stacked and piles of turnips under rough shelters were ready. I stood by the smooth quiet lake, thinking how Robert would have loved to be with us today. Nothing stirred or broke the perfect