Letters to a Sister (35 page)

‘Do not adultery commit; advantage rarely comes of it.'
³²

Sukey on going to bed with men:
‘Ma says it's common, and Pa says he'd wallop me. Ma says she expects they take a pretty poor view of it in Skibbereen, and she says Pa has Skibbereen in his blood, though he hates it. She says it's all under his skin, fretting him—and scaring him, and that's why he won't let Tim and me go to Ireland. Perhaps it's under my skin too, because I'm not much sold on this bedding
business. Are you? Ma says she thinks you'd be too proud for it. Besides, you go to church. Well, I don't know. It's funny about men, they don't seem to be so proud in that way. Tim isn't; is Henry?'

‘No, Henry's not proud,' [said] Emily [and] thought, ‘Going to bed is cosy and comforting, you can forget everything else, it wraps you round in forgetting like music and drink, and religion can too. Religion, music, love, drink—they could wrap you round in dreams, you can hide in them, till everything seems a dream.'

‘I'm going into San Marco for Vespers,' … [said Sukey].

‘Then you're too proud to sleep with people.'

‘Is it proud? It's just that I don't believe I should enjoy it. I like going to bed by myself.'

‘Some do and some don't. Men seem to, more. They're not so proud, I don't think!'

‘Well, I've never actually done it myself. But people do seem to like it. Particularly men do. It's funny…. Peg says, try anything once, so I suppose I shall…. Men don't seem to be proud in that way. They'll sometimes even
pay
to go to bed with someone. Pay money. I wouldn't do that, would you? I mean, I'd rather have the money. If I had enough money, I wouldn't want to waste time going to bed at all.'

Sir Barty Bun-Flanagan.
Sir Barty was beautiful. He had a fine, pale, tanned
[sic]
face, a strong chin, a firm, full-lipped mouth, shrewd blue eyes looking narrowly from under hooded lids, smooth, thick brown hair going grey. He looked a masterful man, intelligent, kind, but wilful.

Lady Anne Bun-Flanagan:
‘Bursting buxom! High heels make your ankles thick, push out your behind and your chest, give you that silly
swan
shape like a comic Edwardian landlady. Common.'

Sukey:
‘But I'd sooner be swan-shaped and common, with
a landlady's bust and thick ankles and have the Women's Pages in the press call me smart and well shod, than have flat shoes and thin ankles and a straight behind and have them call me a frump.'

‘I suppose you think
I
look a frump.'

‘Oh no, Ma.
You
look so distinguished, even in tight frocks. I shall never look distinguished. All I can do is to try and not look odd. Even if my heels do stick in gratings. Byron wouldn't have liked me to look a frump, or odd. He'd rather I looked swan-shaped and bulgy and got stuck in gratings. So would Luigi and Dino, I'm sure.'

‘Don't be silly, dear. Byron's more than enough without bringing in the gondoliers.'

Sukey sighed. ‘Well, what with you looking so distinguished and Pa as handsome as Caligula or Hermes, and Emily so pretty and white and round, you surely don't mind my getting me a few nice men.'

Genealogy of Rose Macaulay

¹
To stay with R.M.'s elder sister Margaret, who had recently retired from working as a Deaconess in the East End of London. After their mother died in 1925 she had established a family home at Petersfield.

²
Rev. Francis Underhill, cousin of Evelyn Underhill.

³
Muriel Jaeger,
The Question Mark
(1926).

⁴
R.M.'s flat at this time.

⁵
This was an idea of Jean Macaulay's to facilitate charitable giving, inspired by Fr Waggett's preaching on ‘the Haves and the Have-Nots'. It later developed into her League of Stewards, see below p. 73n.

⁶
A Majorcan ‘croissant' pastry shaped like a Bath bun.

⁷
An Australian Test Team was then in England.

⁸
Abp Randall Davidson.

⁹
R.M.'s sister Eleanor (a missionary in India) was home on leave, and was attending an Annual Meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.

¹⁰
The General Strike was due to begin at midnight on 4 May.

¹¹
Sir William Beveridge.

¹²
The General Strike.

¹³
H. B. Usher, who during the General Strike worked in a temporary information and intelligence section at the T.U.C. headquarters.

¹⁴
R.M. had moved to another flat.

¹⁵
A broadcast debate on ‘The Menace of Leisured Women'.

¹⁶
There was to be a broadcast programme entitled ‘An Experiment in Telepathy', in which selected ‘agents' at the office of the Society for Psychical Research were to concentrate on a series of objects shown to them. Listeners were invited to record on paper their impressions, ‘if any', of each of the objects shown.

¹⁷
Rev. J. K. Mozley, D.D. (1883-1946).

¹⁸
The Battles of Coronel and the Falkland Islands.

¹⁹
Rt Rev. E. W. Barnes, Bp of Birmingham, had defined his position as a Modernist, and his hostility to the doctrine of Transubstantiation, in an open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, published on 20 October 1927. Abp Davidson rebuked him in a reply published four days later.

²⁰
The State of Tennessee had passed an ‘anti-evolution' law in 1925, by which any teaching inconsistent with the Genesis account of man's creation (taken literally) was forbidden. The American Civil Liberties Union offered to defend any teacher who would ‘personally test the constitutionality of the statute'. John T. Scopes, a science teacher, ‘formally violated the law', and was then tried and convicted. The case received world-wide publicity.