1950s and 1960s – Page 10

The Years of Grace: Your Home

In my previous discussion of the opening section of The Years of Grace, I neglected the fabulous illustrations, so I’ll make sure to include some here. Each section of this book has an introduction by Noel Streatfeild, and in this second section, ‘Your Home’, she admits that she was a “menace” as a teenager, “scowling round the house, saying ‘Why should I?’ about everything I was asked to do” and bringing home an unsuitably un-English friend called Consuelo (“Girls from Latin countries grow up faster than girls from cold countries. Consuelo probably held the record for fast growing-up even in a Latin country.”).

The first chapter, by Margaret Kennedy, discusses the difficulties of sharing a house with parents and siblings:

John Verney illustration from 'The Years of Grace'

“The mother must manage to make room for her daughter’s wider life without letting the others feel that the whole house now belongs to an ENORMOUS GIRL who seems to be everywhere at once – locked in the bathroom when her brother wants to shave, telephoning in the hall at the top of her voice, pressing a dress on the kitchen table and dancing to the radio in the sitting-room.”

(By the way, I thought that illustration’s dense cross-hatched style seemed familiar and it turned out to be the work of John Verney, author of Friday’s Tunnel.)

Margaret Kennedy provides some sensible advice about reaching compromises with parents, including the need to be nice to your parents’ dull old friends (“It is highly mortifying for a mother if the refreshments at her bridge party are brought in by a daughter who looks as though she were dispensing alms to a colony of lepers”) and having to explain your own friends to them (“Parents do not always understand their daughters’ friendships or see where the attraction lies”). This is further explored in an article by Richmal Crompton, who gives useful tips for being a good friend (you need tact, generosity, lack of possessiveness, common but not identical interests, and a shared sense of humour).

Next comes Magdalen King-Hall with a chapter about community service and social justice, even if she doesn’t call it that. Although the examples she provides are a little dated (Elizabeth Fry, William Wilberforce, Florence Nightingale), the message is still relevant today:

“We are linked together, not only with the other people in our own country, but with all the other people in the world. It is like a stone dropped into a pond, the ripples spread out in widening circles – you, your family, your school, your community, your country, your world. This feeling of world citizenship is only in its infancy, but it has been born, and two devastating world wars have not destroyed it.”

She even mentions The League of Nations. Veronica FitzOsborne would approve. But Veronica probably wouldn’t think much of Mary Dunn’s article, ‘The Queen Was in the Kitchen’. Mrs Dunn explains that men reserve their greatest admiration for a girl who can cook:

Anna Zinkeisen illustration from 'The Years of Grace'

“Pretty, helpless women are very nice in the fiancée stage, to take to the pictures and to dance with, but after marriage, unless a girl is feminine in the right way, not just to look at but a homemaker, there is going to be trouble. Of course, after he has married her a man still wants a girl to look pretty and to have time to do things with him, but he wants as well to be quite certain that she looks after him better than the wives of all the other chaps in the street, and that he can brag that he is the best-fed man he knows.”

Mrs Dunn despairs because British housewives are letting down the side, compared to their glamorous counterparts in France, Scandinavia and especially the United States. You might think those Hollywood films depicting pretty housewives creating beautiful meals in dazzling kitchens are just Hollywood fantasies. But you would be wrong:

“Most American kitchens are like that and nearly all American girls really are splendid cooks, and really do whisk up superb meals and appear five minutes later in their living rooms looking too glamorous to be true. This business of looking smart when doing housework or cooking is something that we in this country really ought to turn our attention to … I feel sorry for tradesmen; how depressing when they call, to be greeted by a bedraggled object …”

Fortunately, the next article, by Janet Farwell, involved a vet talking to a family about the advantages and disadvantages of various pets (dogs, cats, rabbits, tortoises, fish, hamsters, budgies, silkworms) and included some adorable puppy illustrations, so my blood pressure returned to normal.

Finally, Elizabeth Cadell gave a lot of practical advice on hosting teenage parties, including hints on venues (turn your bedroom into “a very attractive bed-sitting room” by scattering cushions on the floor and covering the dressing table with a tablecloth), refreshments (sausage rolls, trifle, ice-cream, cider cup and “in cold weather, provide Bovril”) and games (cards, Tiddlywinks, charades). Which leads nicely to the next section of The Years of Grace: Leisure.

You might also be interested in reading:

1. The Years of Grace : You
2. The Years of Grace : Your Home
3. The Years of Grace : Leisure
4. The Years of Grace : Sport
5. The Years of Grace : Careers

Adventures in Research: Schoolgirls in the 1950s and 1960s, Part Two

My copy of Truth, Dare or Promise: Girls Growing up in the Fifties was finally delivered and proved to be interesting, although not terribly useful for my research purposes and possibly not worth the three-month wait. I am far more excited by the arrival of this book:

'The Years of Grace', edited by Noel Streatfeild

The Years of Grace: A Book for Girls, edited by Noel Streatfeild, was recommended to me by Penni and is a marvellous guide to 1950s Girl Life. As the jacket proclaims,

“The Years of Grace is a book for growing-up girls who are too old for children’s books and are just beginning to read adult literature. It is a difficult age – difficult for parents and friends, but more difficult for the girls themselves. What are they going to do when they leave school? How should they dress? What is a good hobby? How can they make the right sort of friends? The problems are endless, and here in The Years of Grace is to be found the wisdom of many of our greatest writers and most distinguished people of our time.”

There are sections on ‘You’, ‘Your Home’, ‘Leisure’, ‘Sport’ and ‘Careers’, all beautifully illustrated. I’ve only read the first section, but can already tell I’m going to find this book highly entertaining. The first chapter of ‘You’, for instance, is written by “a Woman Doctor” who has chosen the interesting pseudonym of ‘Cannula’. She begins by stating,

“When I become Prime Minister, I shall introduce a law: the study of glamour will become a compulsory subject for all girls at school. Science and algebra are all very well, but they will not be much use to you in life unless you also know all about glamour … I declare firmly that you will do much better if you have glamour without learning than if you have learning without glamour.”

The rest of her chapter consists of stern advice on posture (“no girl who holds herself badly can look really smart”) and grooming (make sure you change your knickers “two or three times a week at least” and use deodorant once a week).

This is followed by an amusing chapter by Marguerite Steen, mostly about the history of undergarments, although she does have some advice on modern-day underwear:

“Nothing on earth looks more sluttish than mended nylons (unless they are invisibly mended) with darns down the ladders. The ‘next worst’ is moth-eaten suspenders, a single glimpse of which is quite enough to ruin the effect of your handsomest hand-knitted sports stockings.”

Also, make sure you’re wearing nice underwear, in case you get run over by a bus:

“I remember being told by a friend of mine, who was in an accident, that the fact of having on her best pin-spot chiffon step-ins went quite a long way to offsetting the pain of her fractured thigh when they were taking her away in the ambulance!”

Then comes James Laver on the history of women’s hairstyles and Elizabeth Arden on ‘The Care of the Skin and Hair’ (strangely enough, this requires a lot of cleansing creams, skin tonics, foundation creams, face powders and outfit-coordinated lipsticks, all no doubt available at the nearest Elizabeth Arden counter). Digby Morton’s contribution is ‘Pretty Girls All in a Row’, full of words of wisdom on fashion (for instance, “school is a place where your reputation is built, a place to look trim and well-groomed always” and “the wisest thing a girl can do is to take a dress-making and millinery course”). He also wishes to be Prime Minister, so he could “make it compulsory for every girl to have a grey flannel suit”. (These writers seem to have a peculiar view of the role of the British Prime Minister.) But as much as I want to make fun of Digby Morton, I have to admit he provides some very good advice on colours, fabrics and styles, and a fifties girl who followed his advice on building a wardrobe would look quite fabulous. And Alison Settle’s ‘Making the Best of Yourself’ is a terrific, timeless article on teenage anxieties regarding emotions, making and keeping friends, falling in love, dealing with annoying siblings and managing parents. I am very much looking forward to the remaining sections of this book – if anyone’s interested, I’ll post my thoughts about them here.

You might also be interested in reading:

1. The Years of Grace : You
2. The Years of Grace : Your Home
3. The Years of Grace : Leisure
4. The Years of Grace : Sport
5. The Years of Grace : Careers

What I’ve Been Reading

I’ve mostly been reading British fiction written during or about the 1960s, but as I tend to blog only about books I like, I won’t be writing about them.¹ However, I did enjoy the third volume of Noel Streatfeild‘s autobiography, Beyond the Vicarage, first published in 1971. She wrote the books from the perspective of a character called ‘Victoria Strangeway’, explaining, “I made, and make, no pretence that I am not the Victoria in the three books, but the thin shield of anonymity has helped me to feel unselfconscious when writing the story of my life.” 'Beyond the Vicarage' by Noel Streatfeild Fair enough, but it does lead to phrases like “Victoria seemed to think that …” and “Victoria must have forgotten that …”, which is a bit odd when she’s writing about herself. Anyway, this book is about how Victoria/Noel decides to stop being a successful actress touring the world and become a writer. She sails back from Australia via Siam (as it was then called), where her brother works, and eventually arrives in England to look after her recently-widowed mother. Although Victoria’s father had been a bishop from a well-off family, the family is now in ‘reduced circumstances’ and Victoria’s mother is the sort of helpless genteel lady who has never had to look after herself, so living in lodgings does not go well. After employing a series of disastrous companions, her mother is finally settled in her own new home with appropriate help and Victoria, breathing a huge sigh of relief, moves back to London to write her first novel. Despite the distractions of her busy social life (she eventually resorts to writing in bed in her pyjamas so she won’t be tempted to go out), she quickly writes the manuscript, immediately finds a publisher and is instantly making a comfortable living as a novelist. Her publisher even pays her a weekly wage when she complains the system of advances and royalties is too complex for her to deal with. The only complaint her publisher has is that “you make everyone too loveable. I doubt you could write about a bitch if you tried.” (Victoria then vows to write “the bitchiest bitch you ever read about” and writes It Pays To Be Good.) Then another publisher, aware of Victoria’s theatrical background, asks her to write a children’s book about child actors, so Victoria, “cross at herself for agreeing to something she was convinced she could not write”, produces Ballet Shoes, which is an instant bestseller, and the rest is history. Although she ended up writing a few more novels for adults, she gave up on them in the early 1960s, telling herself,

“If, for some reason, the public are either off novels or like such peculiar ones you couldn’t and wouldn’t write them, why go on trying? Let’s face it, you never had more than what Noel Coward’s song called ‘a talent to amuse’. You never belonged to the great. So give up writing [adult] novels here and now.”

She took great care with the research for her books – for example, she travelled with a circus when writing about child circus performers, visited Hollywood when writing about a child star, and spent “a lot of time in [Buckingham] Palace hanging about for news from the Lady-in-Waiting” when writing about Princess Margaret for Growing Up Gracefully. But the most interesting part of the book involves her experiences during the Second World War, when she joined the Women’s Voluntary Service. She ran mobile canteens in Blitz-battered London, arranged housing for bombed-out Londoners, put out fires set off by incendiary bombs and then, after the war, organised entertainment for newly-returned residents of the Channel Islands, gave lectures in Holland and spent her own money turning a London bombsite into a flower garden. (What a contrast with Dodie Smith, who spent the entire war living in luxury in America.) The war stories are a mixture of humour and heartbreak – a monkey rescued from the rubble of a bombed pub gratefully accepts a cup of hot milk, then turns around and bites his rescuer; a woman dying of cancer survives two bombing raids that kill the rest of her family. There is also personal anguish for Victoria, with her brother and his young family interned as prisoners of the Japanese, her own flat and most of her belongings destroyed in the Blitz, and her publisher’s warehouse, containing all unsold copies of her books, all the plates to reprint them and the entire first printing of her new book, getting “bombed to pieces”. While she skims over a lot of potentially interesting events and the book is essentially a series of unrelated anecdotes, Victoria/Noel comes across as a lovely person – energetic, funny, honest, devoted to helping others and endlessly curious about life.

'Quiet' by Susan Cain Taking a break from post-war England, I then read Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by US writer, Susan Cain. It came out a couple of years ago but there was a long queue for it at my library (I know, library patrons being deeply interested in a book about introverts, WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT). This was an easy-to-read, well-researched account of the difficulties introverts face in the extroverted culture of modern-day America. There was a clear overview of the strengths of both introverts and extroverts, as well as a good discussion of the overlap between ‘high sensitivity’ or reactivity (or neuroticism) and introversion. The author also explains that many introverts are very successful at faking extroversion when highly motivated to do so (for example, because their job requires it or they’re promoting a cause they’re passionate about), although they need ‘restorative niches’ of solitude to recharge their energy. Most of this information was familiar to me, although I was interested to read about research into introversion/extroversion in various animal species. For example, some species have about 20% ‘shy’ individuals and 80% ‘bold’ individuals, with the bold ones doing better in hard times because they’re willing to take the risk of being eaten in order to find food (the shy ones starve to death in harsh conditions, but thrive in good conditions as they’re better at evading predators). My only criticism of this book would be the very narrow focus – while the author (a Harvard-educated lawyer) claims the book is about American society in general, it’s really about rich white Americans and rich Asian-Americans (and all ‘Asians’, from Indians to the Japanese, are treated as having similar cultures and lifestyles, which is just not true). Still, it’s a good read and its bestseller status indicates there are a lot of Americans who agree that introverts are under-appreciated in their society. Also, I was interested to read the author’s note that “You wouldn’t be reading this book if I hadn’t convinced my publisher that I was enough of a pseudo-extrovert to promote it.” Sad, but true. Ah, for the good old days when authors were able to sit at home writing their books in introverted bliss, without having to worry about promoting themselves …

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Although if you’re interested in finding out just how sexist, racist and homophobic 1960s England was, hey, have I got some book recommendations for you! ↩

Adventures in Research: Schoolgirls in the 1950s and 1960s

Generally my Adventures in Research are not all that adventurous, given that they tend to involve nothing more arduous than a fifteen-minute stroll to my local library or second-hand book store and then some concentrated reading. This time, though, there is an actual story to go with the research. Well, not really a story, because it doesn’t have a conclusion. More of a series of events.

So – Sydney City Council has about a dozen branch libraries scattered around the centre of the city, each with a special collection relevant to the particular neighbourhood it services. For example, the Haymarket Library, in the middle of Chinatown, has lots of Mandarin books and DVDs; Customs House, near the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge and other places frequented by tourists, has a large collection of international newspapers and magazines; my own branch has lots of LGBT fiction and non-fiction, handily marked with little rainbow stickers on the spines. Generally, these items can be transported between branches, arriving at your local branch within a day or two of your request – it’s really convenient and easy for library members. Anyway, a while back, I was browsing the library computer catalogue and came upon some potentially useful books about women’s lives in post-war Britain. There were histories, biographies and memoirs, including an intriguing book called Truth, Dare or Promise: Girls Growing up in the Fifties. All of the books were marked as “Non-Circulating Reference Books”, located at Ultimo Library, which did seem slightly odd – why would Ultimo, of all places, have a collection of non-fiction about women, and why would such books, mostly paperbacks, be regarded as so precious that they couldn’t leave the library? Never mind, I would visit Ultimo myself!

So one fine autumn morning, I gathered up my notebook, pen, Gregory’s Street Directory, bus timetable, multicoloured Post-It notes, packed lunch, ~~compass~~, water bottle, ~~pith helmet~~ and spare pen, and set off on my quest. Due to my excellent map-reading skills, I got off at the wrong bus stop and had to ascend Ultimo’s steepest hill (who even knew they had hills in Ultimo?) before arriving, puffing slightly, at Ultimo Library – the reference section of which turned out to contain a small shelf of books about local council history, but not much else. I searched the general collection, then asked the librarian at the front desk, who frowned.

“Are you sure these books are here?” she asked.

“Yes, they’re in the Sydney City Libraries catalogue,” I said. “Listed as being held in Ultimo Library in the Non-Circulating Reference section.”

She summoned her colleague and I showed them the list of call numbers.

“Ah!” said the colleague. “Those books! No, they aren’t here. They’re in the National Women’s Library. I wish they’d take those books out of our catalogue, because we often have people coming in here looking for them.”

“Then…why are they listed in Sydney City Libraries catalogue?” I asked, quite reasonably. ‘And why does it say they’re here?”

Who knows? Although it turned out the National Women’s Library wasn’t far away – in the very same block, actually. The helpful librarians gave me a set of directions that sounded almost exactly like Arthur Dent in The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy looking for the plans to demolish his house, which are on display at the council planning department:

“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a torch.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.”

Except my situation didn’t involve a leopard. (Pity, it would have made this story far more exciting.) So I went down the stairs, turned right, went past the table-tennis tables and the courtyard and the kitchen and down more stairs and found the locked doors of the National Women’s Library. This was during its listed ‘opening hours’, but there didn’t seem to be anyone around. I spied another door at the back, so I went back outside and around the building and tried that door and it was locked too¹. So I gave up.

As it was such a beautiful day, I decided to walk all the way home, which would give me a chance to do some sightseeing. Ultimo used to be mostly old warehouses and factories, but now there’s the Powerhouse Museum, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation headquarters and the rapidly expanding University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). It was the latest UTS building that I was most interested in, because it was designed by Frank Gehry and the photos made it look so spectacular – a bit too spectacular, really, a bit show-offy and grandstanding, all wrong for a battered, industrial area like Ultimo, I’d thought. But that building was lovely. It nestled into its space, not overwhelming any of the surrounding buildings, and the famous ‘bulges’ in the brickwork made it look as though it was breathing. The bricks were golden-brown and glowed in the sunlight, and there were a lot of square, nicely-proportioned windows that reflected the blue sky, so the whole thing looked like a squat, friendly creature with a lot of big blue eyes. I didn’t go inside, so I don’t know how functional it is, but apparently it uses a lot of natural light and has loads of environmentally-friendly features. Officially, it’s named the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, because he gave the university twenty million dollars to build it, although I’m pretty sure all the students just call it the ‘crumpled paper-bag building’. Anyway, it’s a vast improvement on the main UTS building on Broadway, which looks like a Weetbix box covered in brown pebble-dash. Then I wandered up towards Broadway, noticing that a lot of the old warehouses along the way had been turned into trendy coffee shops and advertising agencies and such, and I had a look at One Central Park, which was recently named Best Tall Building in the World by someone or other. All of the outside walls are covered in vertical gardens, which I didn’t think would work out very well, given the vehicle fumes and the often harsh weather, but the huge variety of plants seemed to be thriving. It probably helps that it’s done nothing but rain in Sydney for the past six months.

When I arrived home an hour later, I went online and discovered that there were multiple copies of Truth, Dare or Promise: Girls Growing up in the Fifties on sale for less than ten dollars from various British second-hand bookshops. This seemed a lot easier than trying to gain access to the National Women’s Library, so I placed an order. And waited. And waited some more. Then I gave the bookseller an extra couple of days, due to Easter. Then I emailed them, more than a month after I’d ordered the book. The bookseller was very polite and apologetic. The book must have been lost by the postal service. They would send me another copy. So I waited. And waited. Then I emailed them again. They were very, very sorry. The replacement book must have been lost in the post, too. They didn’t have any more copies of the book, so they would give me a refund.

I can understand that one book might get lost in the post, but TWO? I had a vision of their new office boy, keen but not very bright, being sent off with an armful of parcels and diligently posting each one in a rubbish bin instead of a post box. I waited another week for the refund to arrive, then used the money to order a copy of the book from a different bookseller. I’m still waiting. You know what’s going to happen, don’t you? This one will get lost, too. Or all three copies will arrive simultaneously in my mail box.

'My Secret Diary' by Jacqueline Wilson Anyway, in the meantime, I bought a copy of Jacqueline Wilson‘s My Secret Diary: Dating, Dancing, Dreams and Dilemmas. This is an account, aimed at teenage readers, of the author’s life in 1960, when she was a boy-crazy fourteen-year-old schoolgirl in suburban Surrey. It included lots of great black-and-white snapshots, as well as some excerpts from her real diary, which are as hilariously earnest and angst-ridden as you’d expect. I took notes on the clothes and records and films she liked, and the food, and the ridiculous school regulations and horrible uniforms, although I’m not sure how similar her life would have been to an upper-class London schoolgirl. In fact, I couldn’t quite figure out just where her family fitted into England’s rigid class system. Jacqueline’s family lived in a small council flat, but in a ‘genteel’ new block, rather than the rough council estate up the hill. They had a car, a TV, a telephone and a brand-new record player, but no washing machine or fridge. Jacqueline walked several miles to and from school (she was in the grammar stream at the local girls’ comprehensive) to save on bus fares, but there always seemed to be enough money for new clothes, cinema tickets, hairdressing appointments, pocket money and Christmas presents, and the family went on holidays (although not abroad) once a year. I couldn’t figure out what her father did for a living – he worked “at the Treasury” in Westminster, but doing what? Her mother worked locally, as a book-keeper. So, maybe lower-middle class – but could you live in a council flat in the 1960s and be regarded as middle-class? Maybe aspiring, ambitious working class, about to move into the middle class?

I was also interested to read about her favourite books – The Diary of Anne Frank, Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle and Rumer Godden’s The River and The Greengage Summer. She secretly borrowed Peyton Place from a friend and thought it was “sheer trash”, but was impressed with Lolita (“I wasn’t particularly shocked, just enormously interested”), although the author adds that “nowadays I find the whole story so troubling, so distressingly offensive, that I can’t bear to read it. I strongly recommend that you don’t read it either.” She was also determined to be a writer, so she bought a book called How To Be A Writer by Kathleen Betterton. This advised that “the writer for children must not attempt subtlety of character in which good and bad are blended”, so Jacqueline vowed, “If I ever write, I won’t write for children.” Fortunately for her many fans, she changed her mind, ignored that advice and went on to sell twenty-five million copies of her children’s books. (Teenage Jacqueline was also unimpressed with the writing advice doled out by Enid Blyton in her autobiography – “surely her books are not all that great”). I found this to be an entertaining, informative read – and if my other book about schoolgirls ever arrives, I’ll be able to figure out how typical Jacqueline’s experiences were.

You might also be interested in reading:

Adventures in Research: Schoolgirls in the 1950s and 1960s, Part Two

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Later I discovered the National Women’s Library is run by volunteers, so it’s understandable that the opening hours would be limited and unpredictable. And I guess the books aren’t allowed out because they’re all donated and many are out of print and not easily replaced. ↩

Lady Chatterley’s Lover: The Obscenity Trial

I’ve just been reading about D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which was banned in Britain for more than thirty years. In 1960, Penguin attempted to publish a mass-paperback, uncensored edition of the novel, but the British government charged them with publishing obscene material. The Crown prosecutor, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, opened the trial with words that quickly became famous:

“Would you approve of your young sons, young daughters – because girls can read as well as boys – reading this book? Is it a book that you would have lying around your own house? Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?”

'Lady Chatterley's Lover' by D. H. Lawrence Girls can read as well as boys! I should add that he was addressing a jury that included three women (all of whom were required to read the book). He was also horrified that the novel seemed to treat sensuality “almost as a virtue”. In reply, Penguin argued that the book had genuine literary merit and was neither obscene nor depraved. Penguin asked more than three hundred literary figures to appear as expert witnesses, and among those who agreed to defend the book’s literary merits were Rebecca West, E. M. Forster, Cecil Day Lewis and T. S. Eliot, with Sylvia Plath watching excitedly from the press gallery. A few, though, declined to help, including Evelyn Waugh, Robert Graves, Doris Lessing and Iris Murdoch, as well as one particular bestselling female author. Guess who said the following:

“I’d love to help Penguins but I don’t see how I can. My husband says ‘No’ at once. The thought of me standing up in court advocating a book like that … I’m awfully sorry but I don’t see that I can go against my husband’s most definitive wishes in this.¹“

It was ENID BLYTON! Oh, Enid.

Penguin, of course, won the case. Their initial print run of 200,000 sold out immediately and more than two million copies were snapped up in the first year. I feel I ought to have a go at reading this book, given its historical significance, but Kangaroo was so dreadful that I don’t think I can face any more D. H. Lawrence.