Gerry Kutchinsky and marriage

Hebrew marriage certificate of Gerald kutchinsky and Zelda Brown




Left -Gerry, Zelda and me as a baby, 1948
Right - Gerry and Zelda





When I was 19 the familly became anxious that I might marry a non-Jewish man. They went on the offensive, desperately trying to find me a nice Jewish boy. I managed to thwart most of their plans, but I succumbed to their pressure one Sunday afternoon when I had nothing else special to do. My Aunty Ann took me with her to have tea with soe new friends of hers, who she assured me were very rich and had a young brother who was an admiral in the navy or something like that.
Bored with their coversation at the tea table, I volunteered to do the washing up. I as in the kitchen when I heard the front door open and in walked a handsome, bright blue-eyed young sailor - a steward not an admiral!
He started to chat me up and I realised that he thought I was the daily help. Imagine hs embarrassment when I went into the lounge to join the others and they introduced me to him. The year was 1942 and he told me he was stationed at Gosport, but was able to get up to London most weekends. He told me with ride that he had joined up right at the start of the war. His tales of dangerous missions, of Atlantic crossings when his ship had been bombed, of minesweeping around the coast and of havin to swim ashore when his ship sank, kept me wide-eyed with wonder, but remained sceptical.
He had been in the merchant navy before the war, serving on the P & O line doing the South Africa run and sometimes to the Caribbean. But what really boosted his image in my eyes was that he had been gun-running to Bilbao, helping the anti-fascists dring the Spanish civil war.
The merchant navy, he told me, had been his escappe from an unhappy period at home. He had rebelled against family expectation that he would go into their workshop to work on the buttonhole stitching machines. He felt exploited by his mother, who treated him like an idiot.
He went out and got himself an apprenticeship in a local engineering firm, but his mother taunted him when he came home with dirty hands saying "What sort of job is that for a jewish boy?" Nothing he did ever pleased her. He felt very unloved.
When younger, he attended Jewish Free School which had a very good reputation. Some of the East End's finest sons were taught there. It certainly gave him a good grounding, and he was particularly proud o one episode in his years there. After the Kristalnacht in Germany the whole class demonstrated their hatred of the nazis by refusing to learn German any more. One of the teachers he had at the Free School was the father of Roger Woddis of Unity Theatre - strange how our lives intertwined over the years. [Roger was a poet who contributed regularly to New Statesman and was Zelda's lover for many years, both before and after her marriage]
Jerry could reel off pages and pages of Shakespeare's plays and could recite nearly every poem in the Golden Treasury of Verse. He was good at maths and loved music, but it was practical tasks that he excelled in. He was very inventive and given a problem he would always find some way of solving it, even if he had to design and make a tool for the job himself. He was what people would call a rough diamond He had not finesse, no social graces, and was honest to the point of rudeness. But what most people remember about jerry was his humour, his puns and quick repartee. Both our daughters, Sue and Joan, take after him in that. The tradition continues. His forte was telling Jewish stories. He could keep an audience laughing all evening with his reminiscences of characters from his East End childhood.
Jerry was not ambitious but he did want to iimprove himself, or perhaps I should say prove himself. He attended evening classes and gained the higher National Diploma in engineering. hat was no easy task after a hard day plus overtime in the factory. Once he had passed his exam he came off the factory floor and found a job as a draughtsman with Standard Telephones in Southgate. Eventually he cliibed the ladder and became a trainer at their factory in Woolwich. Whatever his position he remained an active trade unionist throughout his working life, being a shop steward at one time and a convenor at another, as well as being branch secretary of his local AEU branch for many years.
However, recognising tht he had never fulfilled his own potential, Sue, Joan and I encouraged him when he said he would like to go to University as a very mature student. He joined a Fresh Horizons course at the City Lit and right from the start you could see the pleasure it gave him. With that tucked under his belt and his Higher national Diploma to back it up he applied for and gained a place at the University of East Anglia at the age of 56.
The next 3 years were probably the happiest of his life. He was a great favourite with the young women students who treated him as a surrogate father to turn to and they rewarded him by making him an honorary member of the Feminist group.
His last years were spent in a Tottenham school teaching woodwork and metalwork to youngsters who had been ill-served by the education system. They had little knowledge, few skills and no prospects for the future. Jerry was saddened and frustrated. he wanted to open up their minds to the beauty in the world rather than the dirt and squalour of their immediate environment. He wanted to show them what pleasure could be had through working with their hands and making objects of use as well as beauty. He wanted to help them develop skills that could give then some hope for the future. But he was banging his head against a wall.
The strain of it all culminated in a heart attack at the age of only 64, from which he did not recover.

But I was not cut out for marriage - or perhaps I was just too young and immature, being married at just 20 years old. Certainly my independent streak was a problem. I felt trapped. I could not bear anyone having control over my life. I wanted to make my own decisions and the more Jerry tried to look after me, the more I fought him off. I'd had enough of my mother controlling my life to allow him to take over when she stopped.
I couldn't understand why loving each other should mean always lviing in each other's pockets and doing everything together. I felt hemmed in, taken over. His love was suffocating. He was always there, needing me, needing my attention, needing my presence. He offered devotion and wanted it from me. I wanted passion and excitement, not everyday routine. I wanted to be out there doing things in the world, not staying home to do housework. I suffered that "nameless aching dissatisfaction" that Betty Friedan described in her "Feminine Mystique" In one way or another I was always trying to escape but never quite making it.
Our life was beset by many financial problems, too. When Jerry came out of the navy he went to work for his brother Louis. That was a disaster. It ended with Lou giving jerry the sack just as i became pregnant with my second daughter joan. Jerry toured the local area looking for work and eventually found a job in a factory on the Edgware Road. He had to work in a terrible atmosphere of chemical fumes on day and night shifts, fortnight on fortnight off. It wasn't easy trying to keep the two children quiet whilst he slept during the day. I walked the streets with them for most of the day. With factory wages so low, we soon had to give up our bungalow near the Welsh Harp, as we were unable to keep up the mortgage payments. We moved to East Finchley into a very cramped first floor flat in an old house.
Our early married life was circumscribed by what we saw as our duty to our respective families. Eash Saturday we visited Jerry's mum and on Sunday we went to my mum. Those years when the children were small and I was not able to work outside the home, were difficult times for us. We had little money and little time together, as Jerry worked overtime in an effort to get us out of our financial problems. For a small sum I used to look after my fellow communist party comrades' children while they went to work. I also did home work like pressing skirt hems for a manufacturer, doing mail-outs for offices, a bit of typing or anything else I could get. But none of them paid well. Sometimes Mum and Aunty Ann needed help in the shop on Saturday and they paid me 30 shillings for the day to act as a sales lady. I quite enjoyed it and I was fairly good at it too. While I was there Jerry would take the children to the cinema. They were brought up on the Disney greats and the musicals of their times. They loved them all, from Snow White and Bambi through to Brigadoon, Oklahoma and Carousel.

in the WAAF

left -Ada Brown, Norma (Zelda's sister), Gerry and Zelda in 1944

right - zelda, third from left, back row, in the WAAF



It was the end of August 1945 when i left the WAAF, soon after VJ Day, the official end f the war. Thanking me for my service to the country, the officer handed me my demob papers and added "we're so glad you could be with us right to the last". What a laugh that was, considering my service record.
When I joined the WAAF in November 1943, I had been a member of the Communist Party for one year. I was sent to Wilmslow Camp for the usual three weeks of square bashing (training they liked to call it)., but before the first week was over, I was called up before the commanding officer, who sat at his large desk and without even looking up, informed me "We know who you are, we know what you are, watch it"!
I quite enjoyed the drill, though it was terribly cold standing around on that huge square. It was even colder in the nissen huts in which we slept, 20 to a dormitory backed by an ablutions hut with a row of washbasins, showers and toilets. There was one central stove that we had to keep stoked up, cleaned out and blackleaded, but it rarely rewarded us with sufficient warmth.
Each night at lights out we woul start singing softly to keep our spirits up. Scottish songs like Annie Laurie and Bonnie Prince Charlie were favourites, with old music hall numbers of Marie Lloyd a close second. But whatever we sang, and however loudly, one could always hear the sad sound of sobbing from some of the women. They were so homesick and scared.
As we approached the third and last week of training, I was called up before the CO again. "i hear you have some experience of the stage" he announced, again not looking me in the eye. "You'd btter organise the camp concert as a farewell". That was no suggestion, that was an order. I was terribly nervous, worrying that I wouldn't be up to the job. But everyone rallied round and we put on such a good show that I was highly commended by the CO.
It did not save me from the dreadful posting they had planned for us. We were sent to a bleak camp at Henlow, Bedfordshire, where we were employed in soldering hundreds of colour-coded wires to their proper place in the radio circuit. Boring, boring! The cookhouse and dining hall were a ten minute run from the workshop and with only an hour alowed for our lunch break i do mean run. My first introduction to what they laughingly called a meal there was picking up a plate from the pile and seeing huge cockroaches running across the plate beneath. Even worse, when it was my turn to peel the potatoes i found mice nesting in the sacks. And it was not until after we had eate it was discovered that the beef was actually horsemeat.
We stayed there only until january and then, having undergone an intelligence test, eight of us were chosen to go to Edinburgh for a course at the university. At that time with radar in its early days they needed more people able to build and repair the equipment, so we were sent to Herriot Watt college for an electrical engineering course. Normally it would have taken 3 years to attain a BSc, but we had to do a condensed intensive course in just one and a half years. it was so intense and there was so much to learn on top of carrying out other duties required of us, that some of the women dropped out, defeated by the task. Two of them had mental breakdowns and another suffered a phantom pregnancy.
I enjoyed Edinburgh, if not the course. We made friends with some of the civilian students even though it was forbidden for us to fraternise. We were supposed to be inn bed with lights out by 10.30pm but we used to bunk out about 9 to go dancing, laving one or two behind to cover for us in case there was an unexpected visit fro an officer. Around 1 am we would climb back in through the side windows. if discovered, and this happened on two occasions only, we were given extra duties and loss of leave as punishment. The extra duties were usually cleanig out the lavatories.
There was but one other jewish woman in our group and we were easy targets for the anti=semitism rife among officers. not a day went by without Celia or i suffering some abuse and not only from our own women officers. There was a male sargeant who took us for square bashing every Saturday morning in the main square of the city. He was always picking on me and humiliating me in front of the people of Edinburgh who turned out to watch us being drilled. in the April of 1944, when I married Jerry, my name changed overnight from Brown to Kutchinsky. [It was changed to Curtis by deed poll by the whole Kutchinsky family after the war]. What a field day the sergeant had with that name at the next drill session! I comforted myself by going AWOL to hop off to the Lyceum theatre where Bill Owen (previously Bill Rowbotham of Unity Theatre) was in a play with Alastair Sims. We had a few drinks together after the show but I paid for the pleasure when I returned to college the next day. They put me on ablutions duty cleaning out the lavatories.
In June 1944 my father died and the fact that my mother was then alone in London in the midst of bombing raids, gave me good reason to approach the authorities for a compassionate posting to London. In actual fact i was sent to Woolwich to continue my electrical engineering course at the poly and was billeted at Eltham. There i met Arthur and Ken, two RAF lads. They were both in the Communist Party and together we turned the common room at the Poly into a hotbed of political argument. Once the theory exams were over at the Poly they posted us to Cranwell for a six month practical course. I hated it. None of the women I knew were there. However, I got involved with a group of Jewish pilots for whom I felt great sympathy. They faced danger with courage, but they felt the need for religious support. it was decided to turn an unused hut into a synagogue for them and i worked with them to clean it up, paint it and furnish it. Then we invited the Chief Services Rabbi to consecrate it and set the Ark in its place. How strange that I , an atheist and a woman, should have Rabbi Brodie thank me personally and allow me to play a part in the celebration of the opening of the synagogue.
Hating both the course and Cranwell as much as I did I tried to get out of them. I aplied to become an officer, but a woman officer told me that my application would be turned down. "After the Air Force has put all this money into training you to do such a specialist job, do you think they're going to let you become an officer when you would not have to do the work?" So i played the compassionate posting card again and mum backed me up. they posted me to a camp in Bushey Park near Kingston. From there, whenever i could, I used to rsh up to London to work at Unity Theatre. I can remember times when on that journey from Kingston to Waterloo the train would be stopped two or three times because of bombs ahead, and I was on the last train to get through Lewisham before the terrible bombing of its Woolworths when scores of people died - one of the worst raids of the war.

Unity Theatre

Zelda and friends at Unity Theatre, London 1942




left-my father, second from right, in a play at Unity theatre, London

right - a young Bill Rowbotham, later Bill Owen of Last of the Summer wine fame, on stage at Unity Theatre


An anti-fascist sketch at Unity Theatre


I was unhappy and frustrated when I returned to London leaving all my friends in Taunton. Dad sensed it and came up with a solution to my problems. He pointed out an advert in the New Statesman publicising an audition for actors for Unity Theatre.
Unity was a left-wing theatre, supported by trade unions, the Co-operative movement and many communists. One of its aims was "to strive for socialism" and the hope was through drama to inspire people to work for the betterment of society, and specifically, at that particular time, to move them to demand the opening of a second front to take pressure off the Russian front.
Much has been written about Unity Theatre, and perhaps the definitive work is the one written by Colin Chambers. But nothing I have read has ever quite caught the atmosphere of the theatre or the spirit of the people working in it.
Let me try to describe how it was for me. To be able to combine the activities I enjoyed most, acting and discussing ideas, with political action, made my time at Unity Theatre a most exciting and satisfying experience. I greeted each day as an adventure and I was eager to grasp everything the theatre offered.
It gave me the opportunity to gain a working knowledge of every aspect of theatre: acting, directing, stage management, lighting, scene painting, props and make-up. Sometimes I worked behind the bar, sometimes I sold programmes, and took turns at the Box office.
Unity was my whole life. It gave me a political education and a means of expressing my ideas. It gave me friends and lovers and a whole new way of life. How extraordinarily lucky I was. It broadened my outlook and expanded my mind. But it was also a humbling experience. I soon realised the futility of my dreams of becoming an actress.
My first introduction to the theatre was the audition at the rehearsal rooms in Newport Street. I had no idea what to expect and I was rather fearful. I was greeted by Bernard Sarron and Ruby Bendas. Theatricality oozed from their every pore. Bernard was short, pale-faced and wore thick-lensed glasses. His rather large head seemed t sit awkwardly on his body and he had a strange gait. I found out later that it was due to his having had some toes amputated because of diabetes. He was homosexual, very "camp" and delightfully, sarcastically witty. Bernard, who was an art director at Pathe Pictures, had won much acclaim for his performance as the Dame in "Babes in the Wood", a political pantomime that had been popular with Unity audiences. Ruby was a tall, impreious looking woman, dressed elegantly and expensively. Her most impressive feature was her large hooked nose, which I felt gave her character, and I was really upset in later years to see that she had undergone surgery to straighten and shorten it. She did not look half so handsome. She worked for J. Arthur Rank and her office was in the odeon, Leicester Square, where she entertained me with cups of coffee during our friendship.
They handed me the script of a short sketch and I had to read the part of an old woman of the Edith Evans type. To my amazement I was one of four chosen from the largeish group of hopefuls. I was to be in the Outside show group, an adjunct of Unity theatre, and we would perform in factory canteens for the workers, at camps for the Forces, or in local halls around London for the various communities. We performed anything, anywhere we were wanted: sometimes cabaret, sometimes one act plays or musicals that we devised, or often we just performed individually. Alfie Bass and Bill Rowbotham (later Owen), had mime acts. Alfie mimed a boxing match and Bill did a woman undressing to get in her bath. But the all-time favourite with audiences was Bill doing his song "You too can have a body like mine" as he drew attention to his skinny frame, accentuated by an oversize vest and a baggy pair of pants. Benny Norris used to play the piano and i would sing songs from the American Garmentworkers' show "Pins and Needles".
When we weren't performing or rehearsing, we attended Unity's political discussions or the education classes the Communist Party organised regularly. Before long I had been recruited into the Young Communit League and Ted Willis took me in hand. [Ted Willis wrote The Blue lamp, which later was the basis for Dixon of Dock Green]. Soon after I joined the Party. After the shows we would go over to the pub to discuss the Party's line on art. "Art for art's sake" was abandoned for "art in the service of the people". Revolutionary art and realism was encouraged, and art as propaganda was our practice. I was reminded of those days recently when I saw Woody Allen's film Bullets over Broadway.
We had acting workshops where we discussed the Stanislavsky method and tried to put it ito practice in our performances. We studied our character in relation to real life, beyond the confines of the play. We looked at the social and historical background and had to think ourselves ito the psychology of the character and know how she would react to any circumstances. I learned a lot about people from these workshops but I cannot say that it made me any better an actress. Life was so hectic. Work by day, theatre each evening and parties all night, often at my friend Pam's flat in Coram Street, or at Ted Willis's in Belsize Park. He was a very unhappy man at the time. He would keep me up all night reading poetry to me - his own poems!
It was at a party that Ted took me to that I first met Roger Woddis, then in the army. He had been in Unity Theatre since 1938, both acting and writing sketches and songs for the shows. The party had gone on into the early hours of the morning and just as I was thinking of leaving, the door opened and a soldier in uniform came in. He looked around and came over to me. He asked me who I was and introduced himself and for the rest of the night he talked about his army experiences. Up and away early the next morning, I did not see Roger again until the end of the war as he was sent off to Italy into the thick of the action. When he returned our lives intertwined again and again over the years.
It was whilst I was at Unity that I decided that my war effort should take the form of working in an engineering factory. The Party gave me a little push in that direction too, but it was not a good experience. Up at 6am each morning for the 40 minute journey to clock on at the factory at 7.30 and then endure a day of general sexual harassment. As if that weren't enough, the vicious machines took bites out of my most vulnerable body parts whenever my attention wandered even for a second. I accepted it all because I wanted to be able to do my bit for the country as well as continue to perform at Unity Theatre. I would leave the factory at 4.30 in the afternoon to go straight to Unity for the evening erformance. The last straw was when they put me on night shift and the sexual harassment got really heavy. I then gave up the unequal struggle, left the factory and volunteered for the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF).
When I wrote to my friend john to tell him of my decision, his reply was "Don't indulge in your usual flights of fancy and begin romanticising about life under the flag. I think what you have done is neither good nor bad, but acceptance of one of the wartime jobs open to you. You are an intelligent girls with a natural cunning and a commission is the first rung to military fame...."

dear comrade

Although there are many more letters I am just adding one more, so that I can carry on with more of the memoir. This is another letter from Zelda to her father.
Comrade!
I have started in this way to show you that I am already marching fearlessly down that rough and crooked road of communism. Well, let me not say Communism, for I would describe myself as merely pink, not red. At any rate, I hope I am not of the common herd, for Heaven help me if I am. But, why it is inevitable that I tread this road, I cannot see.
On Thursday at the WEA Mr Humphries spoke on the Panama Canal and South America. Did you know that when travelling through the Panama Canal you are actually travelling in an easterly direction and not westerly as one would imagine. Mrs. Coles, wife of the history master at Cooper's school, asked Mr. Humphries how Argentina was governed, and in answering Mr. Humphries said that the President was anti-fascist yet governed in a fascist way. At that, Mr. Coles said "Would you say then, he was a Communist?" Mr. Coles himself is a true communist, and looks it too, for he wears his hair long, wears London tan coloured plus-fours with brown linen shirt and canary yellow tie, and smokes one of those old-fashioned pipes. For all that, he is very nice, and is Mr. Barnard's best friend, though Mr. Barnard is only just pink not red too.
Mr. Barnard took me home from the meeting, and we began to talk about teaching. I told him that I wanted to be a teacher, and he told me that I had picked uon the wrong vocation for myself. He said that I am of a rebellious spirit, and that if I keep up that spirit, which he says I should strive to do, I should not become a teacher. He said he'd been reading Neill's Problem Teachers, and that there it says that an enquiry was made in a school to see what the children wanted to be when they grew up, and only one child said "a teacher", and later it was found that this one child was mentally deficient. But, I still want to be a teacher. So he said that he hopes I get some "rebellious spirits" to teach, and then I'll know what it is to teach.
I must remember though that I have to answe your numbers of questions. First, it is your tit-bits of intellectual peculiarities that really do interest me. It wouldn't seem like a letter from you, if there were no such tit=bits in it. Perhaps because of my inflated mental impression, as you call it, but I certainly don't think that they are above me, those tit=bits.
You also asked me if the vicar had allowed "Judgement Day". Well, if you knew the Cooper's School, you wouldn't ask that question, for you would know that Cooper's School takes no notice of such people as vicars etc. They have a marvellous set of masters at Cooper's school for even the Headmaster is socialist, and the sixth formers are real revolutionaries, even worse than communists.
Unfortunately, not only are they revolutionary, but they think themselves 2nd Don Juans and they flirt like the dickens with some of our girls. So, now Miss Bartlett has given us a lecture, telling us that we are not to make ourselves "cheap" with the Cooper's boys. She, an English mistress, actually used the word "cheap"!
Well, I'll say adieu now mon pere
Ton fille affectioneuse
Zelda

OK - oone more!
Dearest Daddy
I hope this awful weather is not affecting your health. Isn't it dreadful, it hasn't stopped raining for a whole week. This was commented on by our geography teacher who told us that the reason for Frome's extraordinarily bad weather is that the Bristol Channel area is an area from which cyclones come over England, and being near the channel Frome gets the whole brunt of the cyclone, and gets bad weather in spells for weeks on end.
In history we have just finished doing the repeal of the corn laws, the main cause being the famine in Ireland in 1845 owing to diseased potato crop. To impress the dreadfulness of the famine in our minds, our history master read us an excerpt from a book called "Famine" by liam O'Flaherty. it is a very vivid book and certainly showed us the horrors of the Irish famine. Our history master is fond of readiing excerpts from books to impress facts in our minds. We'v been doing the Factory Acts, and to show us the struggle between the Industrialists and the workers, he read us excerpts from various books, incuding Charlotte Bronte's "Shirley". He also impressed us by reading various old authentic documents, showing us how awful life in the factories was, for children and for woen. When learning about the Poor Law amendments Act he read us Dickens' Oliver Twist, showing us how terrible the workhouses were. This master has been all over America, studying her government and her people, and he has lately been giving some remarkable speeches at the WEA meetings about America's government. Everyone in Frome thinks he's a remarkable man.
In English lessons we've been reading some poems by young moderns as our mistress calls them, and we have been criticising their styles. Their poems are full of realism, such as describing the countryside, not as the poets usually do, but planting gasometers in the fields, and things like that. They are all very realistic and also they don't care about the uniformity of rhythm, they chop and change it about. This led her to talk about jazz and modern unrealistic art and we have had extremely interesting debates upon modern art.
One modern poem interested me very much. The poet tried to combine sight and sound, in trying to describe scenes to us. I can remember pieces of the poem, which I will tell you. In one part the poet says "The morning light creaks down again" The poem is about a kitchen maid, of bucolic stupidity, getting up in the morning, and that's a modern enough subject for you. The poet, to show you how low her mind has sunk, says that when she looks on the garden as she gets up, she immediately thinks of the carrots and turnips for dinner, and from that her weak mind turns to milk out on the step etc. That's modern poetry!
Since I wrote last I have read several books, Lady Windermere's Fan by oscar Wilde, Wisdom of Father Brown, by Chesterton, Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey. These books I got fro the public library, where there is an awfully nice old librarian. He always talks to you about the books you take out, and delights in good books. He told me the other day that I was the best-read girl he had met for my age and always helps me choose my books.
In this school they don't learn trigonometry but the maths teacher thought it was a shame for me to drop it after starting it, and so he goes on teaching me it. You see I'm better than the others at maths and so I finish my work ages before them, and it is in those moments that he teaches me trigonometry.
Wouldn't you think that in the country the boys and girls would be less grown-up than town children, who are supposed to have seen life? Well, they are not! Definitely! The girls and boys here are very grown-up in their outlook and their ways, and we're all very sensible in class, having lots of debates and arguments in various subjects. None of them are frightfully brainy, like Shizuko or Alice were, but they've all got a good deal of common sense and a little knowledge of everything rather than a wide knowledge in special things. We all have fun together and we're carefree, but there's only one thing that I hate about Frome, and that is the gossip. You see, everybody knows everybody else in Frome and its such a small place that if anybody has done anything in the least ill-mannered or naughty, it is all over Frome in no time. Do you know, if I go to the pictures with mr. and Mrs. Lapham they sometimes say to me "Look, see that person in the 2nd row from the back, well he's not a Frome boy". that shows you that peope know everybody in Frome, and when I first came to Frome, within a week, everybody knew there was a stranger in Frome and by the time I went to school they all knew me as that London girl who's staying with the Laphams.
Well, there's no more news, so I'll bid you adieu, mon cher pere
Your adoring daughter,
Zelda

another wonderful letter

March 8th 1940
Darling Daddy
I've quite a lot of news for you, this evening, though I'm afraid I haven't acquired the information you asked me for. I'm so sorry.
Yesterday evening we had a very good WEA meeting. Mr. Humphries spoke on America as per usual, but last night he was in fine form, speaking on the rise of Roosevelt. It was made very interesting by him telling us of the run on the banks, and of the prohibition and racketeering. He told us some juicy stories too! Talking of the banks started a discussion which was very interesting because in the discussion there was an actual bank manager, a communist, an extreme conservative, a farm labourer, a teacher and myself. Perhaps you can imagine the sparks flying about.
Amongst other things we discussed how far Roosevelt's action of reopening the banks after the slump was to help the people or the capitalists.
Mr. Humphries himself has been to America and when telling us of the start of mass production and Ford's cars, he told us of his actual visit to Ford's works in Detroit. He gave us a glowing description of the making of the motor car. I was able to score there, for I had read "Flivver King" by Upton Sinclair. He also told us that round the works there are 7 acres in which the cars of the employees are garaged. Of course, all Ford cars! I wonder if they would be sacked if they didn't buy Ford cars.
He also told us of the start of the Hire Purchase System and how they even sold graves on the hire Purchase rate, and then, the racketeers, confident that the dead can tell no tales, resold several times the same grave, and just dumped the bodies.
I could go on forever, telling you of Mr. Humphries talk but I've other things to tell you, so I'll leave that subject.
In history lessons we've been learning about the Irish problems all through the ages. Its a most interesting and exciting subject, isn't it? We've just finished it, with a discussion on the IRA and their methods and we're reading Liam O'Flaherty's "The Informer" as a recommended book We're on modern history now, well, by modern, I mean the politics of 1914-1924, not the foreign policy or war. It seems funny to learn about Lloyd George!
Mr. Barnard has each month the New Statesman and the nation. He gave it to me to read yesterday, the February edition, and it's very interesting. There's a preview of a novel called Prelude to Love, which seems very good. It's supposed to get right into the mind of a young girl of 17 years. There's also an article by Joad, which I seem to have read before, starting with "What is the State?".
He's also given me a "Penguin Parade". That's a Penguin book of previously unpublished modern short stories. It's rather good! Not only short stories but it also has some modern drawings. They're most peculiar, especially one called Adam and Eve. It's represented by a gigantic hand holding an apple, the core of which is presumably Eve, for its a woman sitting down.
By the way, we've been reading some good poems lately. But Miss Bartlett doesn't think they are good for us because they are written in such a disillusioned way on life. We like them, well, rather I like them, because I don't think the others can understand them. I'm going to try and bring that book of poems to London with me, I'm sure you'd like them.
Well, I've tons of homework to do, so I'll end now, goodbye
Your adoring daughter
Zelda

letters home 2

Next in a selection of letters written by Zelda to her parents from Somerset, where she was evacuated at the beginning of the second world war.

Dearest, darling mummy,
How's the weather in london? Down here it's as bad as in finland! We are absolutely frozen up in the house. No cold water, no hot water, no water in the lavatory. The other day we had a slight thaw, and all the water came through the ceiling. Now it's frozen again, and we are expecting a burst. For water to wash ourselves in we have to collect snow and melt it. But still we keep smiling. Though Mrs.Lapham threatened to leave Mr. Lapham this morning and go home to her mother.
Still, I don't mind. I'm having some fun. Up at school, in game lessons, we go out and have snow fights and last Wednesday the whole senior school went down to Orchardleigh pond which is completely frozen. The mistress in charge had skates but we hadn't so we just had to slide. It was glorious fun, so we went out there again today.
On Wednesday Mrs. Lapham wanted to go to the pictures with someone but Mr. Lapham didn't want to go, so she took me. We saw Dark Victory. Isn't Bette Davies a marvellous actress? Do you know, in the evening now, it gets dark at about 6 o' clock and then at about 9 o'clock it becomes light as day. Mrs. Lapham was astonished, but she said that was why we were having the frost, or some such rot.
Thursday was a very exciting day for me. When I got to school, Mr. Barnard asked me to go and speak to him at dinner time. I went and what do you think he said? You see I often talk about Psychology and health etc. So Mr. Barnard thinks I am terribly brainy and told Mr. Humphrey tthat I was. Mr. Humphrey said he agreed with Mr. Barnard and they decided to ask me to join the "Workers' Education Association", to which they belong. They have a different speaker each week, who speaks on education, politics, religion etc. and they have debates on them. I wanted to join ever so much, but I told them I wasn't allowed to go out during the week, and nor could I afford the 6d a week. Mr. Barnard said he would let me off the 6d and said that he would meet me at the bottom of Nunney Road to take me, and would take me homw too, if I would come. So I said I'd go that day but didn't know whether I'd go again.
went that night and he met me at 6.45pm at the bottom of Nunney Road. We had a lecture on Intelligence, and what makes some people imbeciles and others geniuses. Everyone there made a fuss of me, and every tiime I argued a point they all listened respectfully, as though I was a prime minister or suchlike. They were ever so nice, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. They asked me to go next week, for it's a lecture on psychology and they seem to think I'm an expert on that subject. Why, I don't know. Mr. Barnard took me home at 9.30pm and told me I was let off my homework for that night if I wished. But I did it all the same. I asked Mrs. Lapham if I could go again next week, and she said she didn't mind in the least. What do you say?
That was not all that happened on Thursday. When I got home from school, I found a letter waiting for me. I'd like you to see it. It's very mysterious!
[Zelda received an anonymous postcard signed "an admirer"]
It's so funny! All the girls and boys up at school are teasing me like anything. They say that I've charmed the whole of Frome, and they tease me terribly about Mr. Barnard. They keep teasing him too, saying that I've captured his heart, and such daft things as that. But he doesn't mind because he is used to their teasing ways.
Mrs. Lapham laughed like anything when she read that postcard I have enclosed. She says she is going to hire a detective to see who it is that sent it. I asked nearly everyone I know, and still can't find out who sent it. I thought at first that it was a joke, but some of the boys say that they know who sent it, but they won't tell me. Anyway, it's been rather useful, because every time I asked anybody if they know who sent it, they'd say "Ooh, ask so and so, he likes you". So, I've found out everybody that likes me. Isn't it just too silly for words.
Darling mummy, I'm so sorry for you in that dreadful shop. But perhaps if you close this shop, it will all turn out for the best. You may be luckier somewhere else, or perhaps not in millinery at all. Still, don't worry.
I miss you too mummy. However happy I may be, I still wish you were with me, which would make me perfectly happy.
I am going to write to Daddy on Sunday, so don't let him think I'm neglecting him, will you?
Give my love to all the family and with love from everyone here, I end
Your adoring daughter for ever
Zelda

letters from somerset 1939/40

Zelda and her friends in Frome, Somerset, where she was evacuated at the beginning of the second world war

Zelda wrote scores of letters home to her parents during 1939/40 and I am posting some of the most interesting here, which certainly give a pointer towards Zelda's later political development.

Beloved Papa,

I'm so ecstatically happy at school, and I'm working so very hard, but it's all great fun. We don't have much games, nor such recreational lessons as singing or art in our form, because we have to work hard. In this school we don't have physics, but we have chemistry instead, which I like much better than physics, or perhaps it's the master that makes me like it better. We have the headmaster for chemistry and we all call him "Chips" for he is so much like James Hilton's Mr. Chips. He makes us roar with his silly little jokes, which are silly but they are chemical jokes. The other day we were working with acid, and he was trying to impress upon us that we must use the very minimum of acid, so to stress the point he told us to be like the Maypole Dairy, which is noted for giving underweight of butter.

For maths we have a master who is a conscientious objector, and gives us five minutes at the end of one geometry lesson a week, to read his newspaper "Peace News". He likes his lessons to be lighthearted, and funnily enough, we don't take advantage of that and play him up. Instead we have a very interesting lesson. Whenever he mentions that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points there is one boy who argues this, for he says that a straight line is a curve, because we are on a globe. He loves us to argue with him and we do.

We have a mistress who loves to argue too. She is the English mistress and we have marvellous debates in her lessons, as to whether we should learn grammar or not, because the modern writers seem to dispense with grammar and punctuation completely. She is very fond of Shaw and till this year they have always acted a Shaw play if possible. Last year they acted "Devil's Disciple" and they wanted to do "Geneva" this year, but the local vicar, who is a governor of the school objected to it, because he felt that Shaw made fun of religion in "Geneva". We have had to fall back on Shakespeare and are doing "As you like it", and even though I am a new girl, she is giving me a part. Aren't I lucky?

Our prose book for English lesson is "A Modern Prose" consisting of extracts from books by modern authors, like H.G Wells, Sackville-West, Hardy, Shaw, Lytton Strachey and several others.

Our history master is frightfully keen on Lytton Strachey, and keeps on recommending us to read several books of his. I'm afraid he is not like Miss Sharmann for history, because he doesn't make it half so interesting. He teaches us all about the Parliamentary Affairs in a completely manly way.

Our geography master, for five minutes at the end of every lesson, reads us from a certain magazine, the autobiography of "Weston Martyr", which shows us life in the raw. I should say so too! Ugh! You should see how Weston Martyr describes the pains of that awful disease miners get, and all his adventures on a boat.

Anyway, it's a lovely school, and I've tons of friends, but I have so much homework that it is dark before I have finished, and I can't go out to see them then. Mummy is still nervous of the dark! Though I suppose even if she let me go out in the dark, I wouldn't, because it gets so cold at night here. Just the same we have fun with Mr and Mrs. Lapham in the evening, in front of the roaring log fire, with the wireless.

Owing to the war, the school is short of paper and books and I am not fully equipped with suchlike, so I was wondering if you would be so very kind as to post on to me all those portfolios with paper, atlas and various books I have in the top drawer of the bureau and in the desk. They would be so useful. Especially all those notes in portfolios, because they are such a help for the exam. I hope you will send them soon. I'd be awfully grateful.

Well, there is not much news for all I do is go to school in the morning, come home in the evening, do my homework and go to bed, so I'll say goodbye now.

Votre fille aimante

Zelda