Singled Out (43 page)

where to spend their annual holiday. Great efforts were made in fundraising

to provide cheap, comfortable, seaside hostels in such pretty spots as

Keswick or Llandudno, where singles were able to spend a happy fortnight

together enjoying rambles, picnics and prayer meetings.

Networking was the key to curing ‘one-room-itis’. Even before Florence

White achieved her goal of pensions for spinsters aged sixty, her National

Spinsters Pensions Association had not only given many single women a

cause to rally behind, it had also provided a social amenity for the lonely.

The Bradford branch of the NSPA started a Spinsters’ Club, laying on all

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kinds of diversions and outings. ‘I find real pleasure, and comfort, in our

Spinsters’ Club,’ declared Miss Ethel Curtis, who at seventy-four was their

oldest member. ‘It is not only the concerts which are so kindly given to us, or in the little rambles; it is deeper than that. It is in meeting ladies of age and circumstances that are like my own, and in extending to each other sympathy and kindness, which will always make any gathering into a real

club.’

Trade unions for working women did more than support their cause as

employees; they were also a social outlet. For example, the female—

dominated teaching profession saw the National Union of Women

Teachers’ conference as the high spot of their annual calendar – an excuse

for a party. Alongside the debates members drank toasts, and entertained

the delegates with orchestral recitals and community singing. At branch

level NUWT members could attend their local HQ for weekly evening

classes in Esperanto, ballroom dancing or to participate in amateur dramatics. And when in  the Vote was granted to all women over twenty-one, members celebrated with a party at the Restaurant Frascati in London, where they ate and drank to the music of the NUWT choir.

Women’s clubs also provided pleasure and comfort to career women

making their way in the precarious and often hostile male professional

world. The Soroptimist Clubs were for them: started in America, they

got a toehold in Britain from , and offered membership on the same

basis as the Rotary Clubs for men – each business or profession was represented by one member. The stockbroker Beatrice Gordon Holmes was approached to join on behalf of women in finance. After years fighting a

lone corner in a male-dominated world, it was a happy surprise to find that

there were other pioneers who, like her, had broken through into trade

and commerce:

I rediscovered women after years of daily living in a world of men. I was delighted with the discovery, because I had not encountered women of that calibre and distinction in numbers before. I like women, I have always liked women, but

circumstances and, above all, my fundamental social shyness had kept me out of touch with other women of my generation.

Organising on behalf of professional women gave Gordon a new lease of

life. In  she went on to become first President of the British Federation of Business and Professional Women; the dynamic social atmosphere of Gordon’s salon of professionals was described by one of its members:

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Gordon Holmes, having changed her white suit for a colourful loose robe, reclined on a sofa propped up by cushions, smoking a cigarette in a fantastically long holder, whilst the others gathered in a circle round a large and cheerful fire. Ideas flew back and forth – some to be rejected instantly by the President, others to be seized on and eagerly developed . . .

*

In such ways, the Surplus Women offered each other support, guidance,

intimacy, love and fun. Gradually and fearfully, the young women were

recovering. Their natural appetites were reviving. Women like Vera

Brittain who thought they had lost everyone they ever cared about confessed that there were things worth going on for: ‘I love my uninterrupted independence . . . At long last I had achieved the way of living that I had

always desired; I rejoiced in my work.’

Life had to go on for the Surplus Women. It took a particular kind of

vitality and fearlessness to survive the blow of loss, and some never did. It was probably harder in some ways for the women who had never loved and lost, women like Winifred Haward who simply hoped in vain for a

husband, for a ‘great love that survives the night and climbs the stars’.

Winifred Holtby confessed to the same desire for a passion that would one

day come along and thrill her to the core: ‘I really shall be disappointed if I go through life without once being properly in love.’ Vera Brittain had no further wishes in this respect; she never reckoned on meeting anyone

to replace Roland Leighton in her heart. Though she moved on, stoical,

valiant, she owned later – despite having married and had children – that

for years she had ‘thought about little else but the war and the men I lost

in it’.

But that conflict had claimed so many victims already. On the whole,

Britain’s single women had no intention of adding their own names to the

casualty lists. There were many unlucky women, many poor and lonely

spinsters, but victim mentality, defeatism, self-pity were not, in those still patriotic days, acceptable mindsets. Faint-heartedness was equated with cowardice in the public mind, and to succumb would be to betray the

bravery of those who had died.

Thus one is more likely to come across stoical silence in the face of

misfortune than a death-wish, and more likely still to find faith, fortitude and a sense of purpose. Life at the age of twenty, or even thirty, still stretched ahead. This was a vision which counted blessings, made the best

of a bad job or, like Winifred Holtby, protested loudly against the notion

that failure in marriage was the equivalent of failure in life. There was

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no excuse, she declared, for one in four women feeling cursed by their

spinsterhood, and society must take the blame for making husbandless

women feel that they were, of necessity, unfulfilled.

In May 
Woman’s Weekly
ran ‘An Understanding Little Article’, entitled ‘Finding Happiness as a ‘‘Bach’’ ’. The writer ‘eavesdropped’ on six single young women – Alicia, Mollie, Mona, Josephine, Janet and Frances – toasting their toes round the snuggery fire and talking about whether a

woman could find true happiness without marriage.

Alicia was a schoolmistress:

‘I mean to be happy in my career,’ she said. ‘I don’t think for a moment that I shall marry.’ We all knew that Alicia had once been engaged, and that she had lost her lover ‘out there.’

Mollie was a doctor:

‘I don’t think an ambitious woman should marry . . . You can’t run a career and a home too . . . As there seems to be a surplus of women I suggest careers as a substitute for a man. Like Alicia, I think a career can bring great happiness.’

Josephine spoke next:

‘Well . . . I haven’t a career, yet I have a jolly time as a ‘‘bach’’ . . . In fact, I get more invitations out than I want. I think a ‘‘bach’’ can be happy if she doesn’t get selfish.’

Mona:

‘Living alone does incline one towards selfishness . . .’

‘That’s what you have to guard against,’ said Josephine.

‘Jo’s right,’ chimed in Janet. ‘She knows another thing, too, and that is never to let herself grow stodgy . . . I think others want you when you keep bright and merry. I mean to keep in touch with all the modern movements, read the latest books, see the plays and listen to the lectures . . . No single woman leads a lonely life when she keeps herself up to concert pitch.’

And Frances:

‘Once . . . I thought I should marry because I so badly wanted a home of my own and kiddies to play with. But I found out that it is possible to have a home without 

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a man, and that there were always other folk’s kiddies to play with . . . I get a good many of the joys of motherhood without any of the responsibilities.’

. . . ‘I think we’re all on the right track,’ said Mollie.

How genuinely representative of the post-war generation were the voices

of Alicia, Mollie and their chums? Real women’s voices echo the fictional

ones. Here is a single teacher, Margaret Miles, remembering her life in the

s:

I worked hard, but I lived in a fairly carefree way. I read a lot . . . I played tennis at the local club, I went to dances, and I went to London to the theatre . . . I was interested in the League of Nations Union, and helped with the Nansen pioneer camps in Devon during the holidays.

My proudest possession was a second-hand Baby Austin . . . which I bought for £ and drove recklessly and often, I regret to say, brakelessly, to all sorts of places.

I could not really afford it and I suppose I should have saved my money, but it gave me a great deal of fun and a sense of adventure.

Caroline Haslett, a single woman who trained as an engineer and was to

become the founder of the Electrical Association for Women, poured her

energies into championing the cause of women in the electrical industry.

Life could be wonderful for singles, she maintained. ‘The world is hers for

the winning . . . What can the time of our aunts offer in comparison?’ At

the age of forty-three, her own appetite for life was intense:

Gardening gives me great pleasure and the delights of driving are such that I have used a car for many years in London . . . I find myself heartened and invigorated by visits to the theatre . . .

I play golf, and swim, and row with great zest and some competence, and I even play tennis at times. Though I thoroughly enjoy skating, I am far from the competition stage! I revel in the public forum . . . Books still have an irresistible appeal for me.

Both these women highlight the pleasure of having cars. They were at this

time relative novelties, and for women to be seen in the driving seat still

had a certain shock value. But cars were all the more a wonderful release

and an enhancer of status for the single woman. For Phyllis Bentley the

£ she paid for a car made her feel ‘agreeably dashing and independent,

indeed let out of prison again into the free world’. After stifling years spent tied to the home she felt rejuvenated.

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But it took reserves of honesty and good cheer for spinsters to come to

terms with the encroaching years, and in the face of visible wrinkles the

euphoria sometimes faltered noticeably. The ‘bach’ couldn’t go on being

girlish past her thirties, and women in the first half of the twentieth century were almost as absorbed in keeping age at bay as we are today. Even Winifred Holtby (who died at the age of thirty-eight) was not impervious

to the deluge of books and advertisements aimed at selling beauty aids to

the not-so-young. An ‘apocalyptic and terrifying’ corset catalogue sent her

scurrying for the tape measure to check her hip measurement (forty-two

inches). Her resolve to improve with age wavered when confronted by the

persuasions of copywriters to nourish her fading skin with almond oil, and

stave off waning desire with patent medicines and slimming systems. Middle

life could be a testing time as diminishing attractiveness reinforced the

greater disappointments of life.

Old age was even harder. The children’s author Noe¨l Streatfeild reconciled herself to its onset by writing herself a list of sensible rules, including: Never willingly mention your health. People may ask how you are but they don’t want to know . . .

Never, never criticize those younger than yourself. If tempted remember yourself at their age and blush.

Go to church regularly even if you don’t feel like it. God understands it’s tough growing old and will help you to be pleasant about it.

Make your motto ‘Keep right on to the end of the road.’

Streatfeild made a point of keeping up appearances. She loved clothes and,

determined not to conform to the frumpy spinster stereotype, she would

cut a dashing figure in public swathed in minks, her hands beautifully

manicured in blood-red nail polish.

Angela du Maurier didn’t pretend that she liked it; sixty seemed to her

a dreadful age to be. It conjured up ‘a stout, high-busted party with woollen stockings and golf-shoes, hair in a bun, clothes too tight, a jolly laugh, ever so hearty . . . And, of course, a spinster.’ The contrast with her youth both appalled and amused her. Privileged, pretty, prim, but always, always in love, the young Angela’s life had been a stream of romances, parties and

dreamt-of kisses. She recalled her tiny wardrobe stuffed with evening

dresses, and how after every ball she used to toss aside her silk stockings to be darned by the housemaid . . . in those days she had taken for granted a 

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fairytale future, married to a viscount with six children. Forty years later Angela was an English maiden lady in tweeds, a bit down on her luck, eating kitchen suppers and doing her own ironing. ‘I laugh to myself as I

realise that such a future as it conjured up to me at twenty-odd would

have brought me almost to the verge of suicide.’ And yet the simple

compensations amounted to true happiness: ‘The joy of early bed and a

good book to read. The bliss of saying on the telephone, ‘‘I don’t go out

at night any more’’.’ It was worth anything not to be such a gauche flapper.

And it could be even better than that. On the isle of Seil, overlooking

Mull and Jura, among the sheep bells and the scent of peat, Angela du

Maurier experienced moments of unequalled spiritual peace: