Well, anyway, he asked me what I was interested in, and I said I’d always had an idea I should like to write. He said that was an awfully good idea, and I ought to encourage it by trying my hand at a little sketch or article every day, or by just putting down my observations of people and things as I saw them. I’m sure I get subjects enough in this house, as far as matrimony goes, anyhow. Indeed, my dear, from what I see of men, I’m very glad there are other ways out of my troubles than what Dr Trevor calls the direct way!! Do you mind, please, not throwing my letters away — just stick them in one of the drawers in my old desk when you’ve finished with them, because I think I might use some of the funny little incidents that happen here to work up into a novel some time. One puts these things down when they are fresh in one’s mind, and then one forgets about them.
Well, we are jogging along here in our usual placid way — with the usual little outbreaks, of course, when a meal goes wrong, as they will sometimes, with all my care. Mr Harrison is such an expert, you know, that it is very hard for a person with only one pair of hands to keep everything up to his high standard. And, fond though I am, and always shall be, of dear Mrs Harrison, I do sometimes wish that she was just a little more practical. If anything at all is left to her to do, she is so apt to lose herself in a book or a daydream and forget all about it. She always says she ought to have been born to ten thousand a year — but who of us could not say that? I always feel myself that I was really meant to ‘sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam’ — you remember the games we used to play about being princesses in the Arabian Nights, with a train of a hundred black slaves, carrying alabaster bowls filled with rubies — but alas! life is life and we have to make the best of it. And I do sometimes feel it a little unfair that so much should come upon my shoulders. Women do want romance in their lives, and there is so little of it about. Of course, as you know, I do feel for Mrs Harrison — her husband is such a dry sort of man and so lacking in sympathy. I do what I can, but that is not the same thing and it is very worrying. I must learn to detach myself. Dr Trevor says it is very important to cultivate detachment.
When I was shopping this morning I met Mr Bell, who told me the top maisonette was let at last — to two young men! I said I hoped they wouldn’t be noisy (though anything would be a relief after that awful woman with her children), and he said they seemed quiet, gentlemanly young fellows. One of them he thinks must be some kind of artist, because they were so interested in the top back room which has a big window with a north light — you know, the one Mr Harrison always covets so much. Though, of course, it is not nearly so convenient a house as ours in other ways.
I have started on Tom’s stockings. They are going to be very smart. I have worked out an original design for the turnover — a sort of swirly pattern in fawn, brown and black, taken from the coat of the kitchen cat — tabby, you know. Mr Perry saw it the other day when he called. He thinks I have quite a talent for that kind of thing.
Give my love to Ronnie and Joan. I hope you are taking care of yourself.Your loving sister, Aggie
2. The Same to the Same
15, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater 13th September, 1928
Dear Olive,
I really think it is very unkind of you to suggest that I like Dr Trevor simply because he is a man. I am the last person to imagine that a woman doctor is necessarily inferior. Quite the contrary. Other things being equal I much prefer a woman, but if the man happens to be right and the woman wrong, it would be absurd not to admit it. I do feel that Dr Trevor’s treatment is doing me good, and I am not the least little bit prejudiced by the sex question one way or another. I daresay Tom has been airing his opinions, but that does not impress me at all. Men never ever get out of their heads that the whole world centres round their high-mightinesses. I’m not blaming Tom, but all men are self-centred. They can’t help it. Dr Trevor says that it is a necessary part of their psychological make-up; they have to be self-regarding, just as women have to be other-regarding — on account of the children and so on. But I do beg you will not take Tom’s pronouncements for Gospel where I am concerned.
I read such a clever article the other day by Storm Jameson, in which she said that all women, in the depths of their hearts, resented men. Now I do think that is so true. It is so maddening, the calm assumption of superiority that a man puts on when he is talking to a woman. We had quite a little dispute the other evening — about Einstein, of all people! Mrs Harrison started to talk about an interesting account of him in the Sunday paper, but Mr Harrison only grunted and went on reading something tedious about the Government. However, she went on asking him questions till he simply had to answer, and then he said, quite snubbingly, that he considered the man was a charlatan who was pulling people’s legs with his theories. I said I didn’t think all these professors would believe in him and have him down to lecture and so on if it was just that. So he said, ‘Just you ask my old friend, Professor Alcock, if you won’t believe me.’ Mrs Harrison said she couldn’t ask Professor Alcock, because she had never seen him, and why didn’t Mr Harrison sometimes bring somebody interesting to the house? That seemed to annoy him, though I thought it was very much to the point, but, being only a paid subordinate, I said meekly that we were all entitled to our own opinions. So he smiled sarcastically and said that perhaps some of us were better qualified to judge than others, and that the Sunday Press was not always the best guide to knowledge. ‘But you read the papers,’ said Mrs Harrison. ‘When I’m given the chance,’ said he.
If I had been in Mrs Harrison’s place I should have taken warning from the way he rattled The Times, but one cannot expect old heads on young shoulders — or perhaps mature heads would be fairer to myself. But she is perhaps a little tactless now and again, poor girl, and said if she didn’t read the papers how was she to improve her mind? Of course, I knew exactly what the answer would be — the virtues of the old-fashioned domestic woman and the perpetual chatter of the modern woman about things which were outside her province. It is the fatal subject, and somehow or other it always seems to crop up. Mrs Harrison was very much hurt, and said of course she knew she couldn’t possibly come up to the perfections of Mrs Harrison No. 1. Then, of course, the fat was in the fire. It was just like a woman to take it personally. Mrs Harrison began to cry, and he said, ‘Please don’t make a scene,’ and went out and slammed the door.