V
We came home to England, flushed with triumph, and Max began a busy summer writing up his account of the campaign. We had an exhibition at the British Museum of some of our finds; and Maxa€?s book on Arpachiyah came out either that year or the nexta€“there was to be no time lost in publishing it, Max said: all archaeologists tend to put off publishing for too long, and knowledge ought to be released as soon as possible.
During the Second World War, when I was working in London, I wrote an account of our time in Syria. I called it Come, Tell Me How You Live, and I get pleasure in reading it over from time to time, and remembering our days in Syria. One year on a dig is very like anothera€“the same sort of things happena€“so repetition would not avail much. They were happy years, we enjoyed ourselves immensely, and had a great measure of success in our digging.
Those years, between 1930 and 1938, were particularly satisfying because they were so free of outside shadows. As the pressure of work, and especially success in work, piles up, one tends to have less and less leisure; But these were carefree years still, filled with a good deal of work, yes, but not as yet all-absorbing. I wrote detective stories, Max wrote archaeological books, reports and articles. We were busy but we were not under intense strain.
Since it was difficult for Max to get down to Devonshire as much as he wanted to, we spent Rosalinda€?s holidays there, but lived most of the time in London, moving to one or other of my houses, trying to decide which one we liked the best. Carlo and Mary had searched for a suitable house while we were out in Syria one year, and had a listful for me. They said I must certainly go and look at No. 48 Sheffield Terrace. When I saw it I wanted to live there as badly as I had ever wanted to live in any house. It was perfect, except perhaps for the fact that it had a basement. It had not many rooms, but they were all big and well-proportioned. It was just what we needed. As one went in there was a large dining-room on the right. On the left was the drawing-room. On the half-landing there was a bathroom and lavatory, and on the first floor, to the right, over the dining-room, the same-sized room for Maxa€?s librarya€“plenty of space for large tables to take the papers and bits of pottery. On the left, over the drawing-room, was a large double bedroom for us. On the floor above were two more big rooms and a small room between them. The small room was to be Rosalinda€?s; the big room over Maxa€?s study was to be a double spare-room when we wanted it; and the left-hand room, I declared, I was going to have for my own workroom and sitting-room. Everybody was surprised at this, since I had never thought of having such a thing before, but they all agreed that it was quite time for poor old Missus to have a room of her own.
I wanted somewhere where I would not be disturbed. There would not be a telephone in the room. I was going to have a grand piano; large, firm table; a comfortable sofa or divan; a hard upright chair for typing; and one armchair to recline in, and there was to be nothing else. I bought myself a Steinway grand, and I enjoyed a€?my rooma€enormously. Nobody was allowed to use the Hoover on that floor while I was in the house, and short of the house being on fire, I was not to be approached. For once, I had a place of my own, and I continued to enjoy it for the five or six years until the house was bombed in the war. I dona€?t know why I never had anything of the kind again. I suppose I got used to using the dining-room table or the corner of the washstand once more.
48 Sheffield Terrace was a happy house; I felt it the moment I came into it. I think if one has been brought up with large rooms, such as we had at Ashfield, one misses that feeling of space very much. I had lived in several charming small housesa€“both the Campden Street houses and the little Mews housea€“but they were never quite right. It is not a question of grandeur; you can have a very smart, tiny flat, or you can rent a large, shabby, country vicarage, rapidly falling to pieces, for much less money. It is the feeling of space round youa€“of being able to deploy yourself.
Indeed, if you have any cleaning to do yourself it is much easier to clean a large room than to get round all the corners and bits of furniture in a small room, where onea€?s behind is always getting terribly in the way.
Max indulged himself by personally superintending the building of a new chimney in his library. He had dealt with so many fire-places and chimneys in burnt-brick in the Middle East that he rather fancied himself at the job. The builder looked doubtfully at the plans. You never can tell with chimneys or flues, he said, according to all the rules they ought to go right, but they didna€?t.
a€?And this one of yours here isna€?t going to go right, I can tell you that,a€he said to Max.
a€?You build it exactly as I say,a€said Max, a€?and youa€?ll see.a€?
Much to Mr Withersa€sorrow, he did see. Maxa€?s chimney never smoked once. It had a great Assyrian brick with cuneiform writing on it inset over the mantelpiece, and the room was therefore clearly labelled as an archaeologista€?s private den.
Only one thing disturbed me after moving in to Sheffield Terrace, and that was a pervasive smell in our bedroom. Max couldna€?t smell it and Bessie thought I was imagining things, but I said firmly that I wasna€?t: I smelt gas. There was no gas in the house, Max pointed out. There was no gas laid on.
a€?I cana€?t help it,a€I said, a€?I smell gas.a€?
I had the builders in, and the gas-men, and they all lay down on their stomachs and sniffed under the bed and told me I was imagining it.
a€?Of course, what it may turn out to be, if there is anythinga€“though I cana€?t smell it, lady,a€said the gas-man, a€?is a dead mouse, or maybe ita€?s a dead rat. I dona€?t think ita€?s a rat, though, because Ia€?d smell if it werea€“but it might be a mouse. A very small mouse.a€?
a€?It might, I suppose,a€I said. a€?If so, it is a very dead small mouse, at any rate.a€?
a€?Wea€?ll have the boards up.a€?
So they had the boards up, but they couldna€?t find any dead mouse, large or small. Yet, whether gas or dead mouse, something continued to smell.
I went on sending for builders, gas people, plumbers, and everybody I could think of. They looked at me with loathing in the end. Everyone got fed up with mea€“Max, Rosalind, Carloa€“they all said it was a€?Mothera€?s imaginationa€?. But Mother knew gas when she smelt it, and she continued to say so. Finally, after I had driven everyone nearly insane, I was vindicated. There was an obsolete gas pipe under the floor of my bedroom, and gas was continuing to escape from it. Whose meter it was being charged on, nobody knewa€“there was no gas meter in our housea€“but there was a disused gas pipe still connected and gas was quietly seeping away. I was so conceited about having been proved right on this point that I was unbearable to live with for some timea€“and more than ever, I may say, confident in the prowess of my nose.
Before the acquisition of Sheffield Terrace, Max and I had bought a house in the country. We wanted a small house or cottage, because travelling to and from Ashfield for weekends was impracticable. If we could have a country cottage not too far from London, it would make all the difference.
Maxa€?s two favourite parts of England were near Stockbridge, where he had stayed as a boy, or else near Oxford. His time at Oxford had been one of the happiest times of his life. He knew all the country round there, and he loved the Thames. So we also went up and down the Thames in our search. We looked at Goring, Wallingford, Pangbourne. Houses were difficult on the Thames, because they were either hideous late Victorian or else the kind of cottage that was completely submerged during the winter.
In the end I saw an advertisement in The Times. It was about a week before we were going abroad to Syria one autumn.
a€?Look, Max,a€I said. a€?Therea€?s a house advertised in Wallingford. You know how much we liked WallingfordNow, if this should be one of those houses on the river. There was nothing to let when we were there.a€We rang up the agent, and dashed down.
It was a delightful, small, Queen Anne house, rather close to the road, but behind it was a garden with a walled kitchen sectiona€“bigger than we wanteda€“and below that again what Max has always thought of as ideal: meadows sweeping right down to the river. It was a pretty bit of river, about a mile out of Wallingford. The house had five bedrooms, three sitting-rooms, and a remarkably nice kitchen. Looking out of the drawing-room window, through the pouring rain, we saw a particularly fine cedar tree, a cedar of Lebanon. It was actually in the field, but the field came right up to a ha-ha near the house, and I thought to myself that we would have a lawn beyond the ha-ha, and would push the meadows further down, so that the cedar tree would be in the middle of the lawn, and on hot days in summer we could have tea under it.
We hadna€?t much time to dilly-dally. The house was remarkably cheap, for sale freehold, and we made up our minds then and there. We rang up the agent, signed things, spoke to lawyers and surveyors, and, subject to the usual surveyora€?s approval, bought the house.
Unfortunately we were not able to see it again for about nine months. We left for Syria, and spent the whole time there wondering whether we had been terribly foolish. We had meant to buy a tiny cottage, instead we had bought this Queen Anne house with gracious windows and good proportions. But Wallingford was a nice place. It had a poor railway service, and was therefore not at all the sort of place people came to, either from Oxford or from London. a€?I think,a€said Max, a€?we are going to be very happy there.a€?
And sure enough we have been very happy there, for nearly thirty-five years now, I suppose. Maxa€?s library has been enlarged to twice its length, and he looks right down the length of it to the river. Winterbrook House, Wallingford, is Maxa€?s house, and always has been. Ashfield was my house, and I think Rosalinda€?s.
So our lives went on. Max with his archaeological work and his enthusiasm for it, and I with my writing, which was now becoming more professional and therefore a great deal less enthusiastic.
It had been exciting, to begin with, to be writing booksa€“partly because, as I did not feel I was a real author, it was each time astonishing that I should be able to write books that were actually published. Now I wrote books as a matter of course. It was my business to do so. People would not only publish thema€“they would urge me to get on with writing them. But the eternal longing to do something that is not my proper job, was sure to unsettle me; in fact it would be a dull life if it didna€?t.
What I wanted to do now was to write something other than a detective story. So, with a rather guilty feeling, I enjoyed myself writing a straight novel called Gianta€?s Bread. It was mainly about music, and betrayed here and there that I knew little about the subject from the technical point of view. It was well reviewed and sold reasonably for what was thought to be a a€?first novela€?. I used the name of Mary Westmacott, and nobody knew that it was written by me. I managed to keep that fact a secret for fifteen years.
I wrote another book under the same pseudonym a year or two later, called Unfinished Portrait. Only one person guessed my secret: Nan Wattsa€“now Nan Kon. Nan had a very retentive memory, and some phrase I had used about some children, and a poem in the first book, attracted her attention. Immediately she said to herself, a€?Agatha wrote that, I am certain of it.a€?
One day she nudged me in the ribs and said in a slightly affected voice: a€?I read a book I liked very much the other day; now let me seea€“what was itDwarfa€?s Blooda€“thata€?s ita€“Dwarfa€?s Blood!a€Then she winked at me in the most wicked manner. When I got her home, I said: a€?Nowa€“how did you guess about Gianta€?s Bread?a€?
a€?Of course I knew it was youa€“I know the way you talk,a€said Nan.
I wrote songs from time to time, mostly balladsa€“but I had no idea that I was going to have the stupendous luck to step straight into an entirely different department of writing, and to do it, too, at an age when fresh adventures are not so easily undertaken.
I think what started me off was annoyance over people adapting my books for the stage in a way I disliked. Although I had written the play Black Coffee, I had never thought seriously of play-writinga€“I had enjoyed writing Akhnaton, but had never believed that it would ever be produced. It suddenly occurred to me that if I didna€?t like the way other people had adapted my books, I should have a shot at adapting them myself It seemed to me that the adaptations of my books to the stage failed mainly because they stuck far too closely to the original book. A detective story is particularly unlike a play, and so is far more difficult to adapt than an ordinary book. It has such an intricate plot, and usually so many characters and false clues, that the thing is bound to become confusing and overladen. What was wanted was simplification.
I had written the book Ten Little Niggers because it was so difficult to do that the idea had fascinated me. Ten people had to die without it becoming ridiculous or the murderer being obvious. I wrote the book after a tremendous amount of planning, and I was pleased with what I had made of it. It was clear, straightforward, baffling, and yet had a perfectly reasonable explanation; in fact it had to have an epilogue in order to explain it. It was well received and reviewed, but the person who was really pleased with it was myself, for I knew better than any critic how difficult it had been.
Presently I went one step farther. I thought to myself it would be exciting to see if I could make it into a play. At first sight that seemed impossible, because no one would be left to tell the tale, so I would have to alter it to a certain extent. It seemed to me that I could make a perfectly good play of it by one modification of the original story. I must make two of the characters innocent, to be reunited at the end and come safe out of the ordeal. This would not be contrary to the spirit of the original nursery rhyme, since there is one version of a€?Ten Little Nigger Boysa€which ends: a€?He got married and then there were nonea€?.
I wrote the play. It did not get much encouragement. a€?Impossible to producea€was the verdict. Charles Cochran, however, took an enormous fancy to it. He did his utmost to get it produced, but unfortunately could not persuade his backers to agree with him. They said all the usual thingsa€“that it was unproduceable and unplayable, people would only laugh at it, there would be no tension. Cochran said firmly that he disagreed with thema€“but there it was.
a€?I hope you have better luck some time with it,a€he said, a€?because I would like to see that play on.a€?
In due course I got my chance. The person who was keen on it was Bertie Mayer, who had originally put on Alibi with Charles Laughton. Irene Henschell produced the play, and did so remarkably well, I thought. I was interested to see her methods of production, because they were so different from Gerald Du Mauriera€?s. To begin with, she appeared to my inexperienced eye to be fumbling, as though unsure of herself, but as I saw her technique develop I realised how sound it was. At first she, as it were, felt her way about the stage, seeing the thing, not hearing it; seeing the movements and the lighting, how the whole thing would look. Then, almost as an afterthought, she concentrated on the actual script. It was effective, and very impressive. The tension built up well, and her lighting, with three baby spots, of one scene when they are all sitting with candles burning as the lights have failed, worked wonderfully well.
With the play also well acted, you could feel the tension growing up, the fear and distrust that rises between one person and another; and the deaths were so contrived that never, when I have seen it, has there been any suggestion of laughter or of the whole thing being too ridiculously thrillerish. I dona€?t say it is the play or book of mine I like best, or even that I think it is my best, but I do think in some ways that it is a better piece of craftsmanship than anything else I have written. I suppose it was Ten Little Niggers that set me on the path of being a playwright as well as a writer of books. It was then I decided that in future no one was going to adapt my books except myself: I would choose what books should be adapted, and only those books that were suitable for adapting.
The next one that I tried my hand on, though several years later, was The Hollow. It came to me suddenly one day that The Hollow would make a good play. I said so to Rosalind, who has had the valuable role in life of eternally trying to discourage me without success.
a€?Making a play of The Hollow, Mother!a€said Rosalind in horror. a€?Ita€?s a good book, and I like it, but you cana€?t possibly make it into a play.a€a€?Yes, I can,a€I said, stimulated by opposition.
a€?Oh, I wish you wouldna€?t,a€said Rosalind, sighing.
Anyway, I enjoyed myself scribbling down ideas for The Hollow. It was, of course, in some ways rather more of a novel than a detective story. The Hollow was a book I always thought I had ruined by the introduction of Poirot. I had got used to having Poirot in my books, and so naturally he had come into this one, but he was all wrong there. He did his stuff all right, but how much better, I kept thinking, would the book have been without him. So when I came to sketch out the play, out went Poirot.
The Hollow got written, in spite of opposition from others beside Rosalind. Peter Saunders, who has produced so many of my plays since then, was the man who liked it.
When The Hollow proved a success, I had the bit between my teeth. Of course I knew that writing books was my steady, solid profession. I could go on inventing my plots and writing my books until I went gaga. I never felt any desperation as to whether I could think of one more book to write.
There is always, of course, that terrible three weeks, or a month, which you have to get through when you are trying to get started on a book. There is no agony like it. You sit in a room, biting pencils, looking at a typewriter, walking about, or casting yourself down on a sofa, feeling you want to cry your head off. Then you go out, you interrupt someone who is busya€“Max usually, because he is so good-natureda€“and you say: a€?Ita€?s awful, Max, do you know I have quite forgotten how to writea€“I simply cana€?t do it any more! I shall never write another book.a€?
a€?Oh yes, you will,a€Max would say consolingly. He used to say it with some anxiety at first; now his eyes stray back again to his work while he talks soothingly.
a€?But I know I wona€?t. I cana€?t think of an idea. I had an idea, but now it seems no good.a€?
a€?Youa€?ll just have to get through this phase. Youa€?ve had all this before. You said it last year. You said it the year before.a€?
a€?Ita€?s different this time,a€I say, with positive assurance.
But it wasna€?t different, of course, it was just the same. You forget every time what you felt before when it comes again. Such misery and despair, such inability to do anything that will be in the least creative. And yet it seems that this particular phase of misery has got to be lived through. It is rather like putting the ferrets in to bring out what you want at the end of the rabbit burrow. Until there has been a lot of subterranean disturbance, until you have spent long hours of utter boredoma€“you can never feel normal. You cana€?t think of what you want to write, and if you pick up a book you find you are not reading it properly. If you try to do a crossword your mind isna€?t on the clues; you are possessed by a feeling of paralyzed hopelessness.
Then, for some unknown reason, an inner a€?startera€gets you off at the post. You begin to function, you know then that a€?ita€is coming, the mist is clearing up. You know suddenly, with absolute certitude, just what A wants to say to B. You can walk out of the house, down the road, talking to yourself violently, repeating the conversation that Maud, say, is going to have with Aylwin, and exactly where they will be, just where the other man will be watching them from the trees, and how the little dead pheasant on the ground makes Maud think of something that she had forgotten, and so on and so on. And you come home bursting with pleasure; you havena€?t done anything at all yet, but you area€“triumphantlya€“there.
At that moment writing plays seemed to me entrancing, simply because it wasna€?t my job, because I hadna€?t got the feeling that I had to think of a playa€“I only had to write the play that I was already thinking of. Plays are much easier to write than books, because you can see them in your minda€?s eye, you are not hampered with all that description which clogs you so terribly in a book and stops you getting on with whata€?s happening. The circumscribed limits of the stage simplifies things for you. You dona€?t have to follow the heroine up and down the stairs, or out to the tennis lawn and back, thinking thoughts that have to be described. You have only what can be seen and heard and done to deal with. Looking and listening and feeling is what you have to deal with.
I should always write my one book a yeara€“I was sure of that. Dramatic writing would be my adventurea€“that would always be, and always must be hit and miss. You can have play after play a success, and then, for no reason, a series of flops. WhyNobody really knows. Ia€?ve seen it happen with many playwrights. I have seen a play which to my mind was just as good or better than one of their successes faila€“because it did not catch the fancy of the public; or because it was written at the wrong time; or because the cast made such a difference to it. Yes, play-writing was not a thing I could be sure of. It was a glorious gamble every time, and I liked it that way.
I knew after I had written The Hollow that before long I should want to write another play, and if possible, I thought to myself, I was going to write a play that was not adapted from a book. I was going to write a play as a play.
Caledonia had been a great success for Rosalind. It was, I think, one of the most remarkable schools that I have known. All its teachers seemed the best of their kind. They certainly brought out the best in Rosalind. She was the head of the school at the end, though, as she pointed out to me, this was unfair, because there was a Chinese girl there who was much cleverer than she was. a€?And I know what they thinka€“they think it ought to be an English girl who is head of the school.a€I expect she was right too.
From Caledonia Rosalind went to Benenden. She was bored by it from the start. I dona€?t know whya€“it was by all accounts a very good school. She was not interested in learning for its own sakea€“there was nothing of the scholar about her. She cared least of all for the subjects I would have been interested in, such as history, but she was good at mathematics. When I was in Syria I used to get letters from her urging me to let her leave Benenden. a€?I really cana€?t stick another year of this place,a€she wrote. However, I felt that having embarked on a school career she must at least terminate it in the proper way, so I wrote back to her and said that, once she had passed her School Certificatea€“she could leave Benenden and proceed to some other form of education.
Miss Sheldon, Rosalinda€?s headmistress, had written to me and said that, though Rosalind was anxious to take her School Certificate next term, she did not think she would have any chance of passing it, but that there was no reason why she should not try. Miss Sheldon was proved wrong, however, because Rosalind passed her School Certificate with ease. I had to think up a next step for a daughter of barely fifteen.
Going abroad was what we both agreed on. Max and I went on what I found an intensely worrying mission to inspect various scholastic establishments: a family in Paris, a few carefully nurtured girls in Evian, at least three highly recommended educators in Lausanne, and an establishment in Gstaad, where the girls would get skiing and other winter sports. I was bad at interviewing people. The moment I sat down I became tongue-tied. What I felt was: a€?Shall I send my daughter to you or not?
How can I find out what you are really likeHow on earth can I find out if she would like being with youAnd anyway, whata€?s it all about?a€Instead, I used to stammer and say a€?era€“era€?a€“and ask what I could hear were thoroughly idiotic questions.
After much family consultation, we decided on Mademoiselle Tschumia€?s Pension at Gstaad. It proved a fiasco. I seemed to get letters from Rosalind twice a week; a€?This place is awful, Mother, absolutely awful. The girls herea€“youa€?ve no idea what they are like! They wear snoodsa€“that will show you?a€?
It didna€?t show me. I didna€?t see why girls shouldna€?t wear snoods, and I didna€?t know what snoods were anyway.
a€?We walk about two by twoa€“two by twoa€“fancy! At our age! And wea€?re never even allowed in the village for a second to buy anything at a shop. Ita€?s awful! Absolute imprisonment! They dona€?t teach us anything either. And as for those bathrooms you talk about, ita€?s an absolute swizzle! Theya€?re never used. None of us has ever had a bath once! There isna€?t even any hot water laid on yet! And for skiing, of course, ita€?s far too far down. There may be a bit in February, but I dona€?t believe they will ever take us there even then.a€?
We rescued Rosalind from her durance and sent her first to a pension at Chateau da€?Oex and then to a pleasantly old-fashioned family in Paris. On our way back from Syria we picked her up in Paris, and said we hoped she now spoke French. a€?More or less,a€said Rosalind, careful not to allow us to hear her speak a word. Then it occurred to her that the taxi-driver taking us from the Gare de Lyon to Madame Laurenta€?s house was following an unnecessarily devious route. Rosalind flung down the window, stuck out her head, and addressed him in vivid and idiomatic French, asking him why on earth he thought he was taking those particular streets and telling him what streets he ought to take. He was vanquished at once, and I was delighted to find out what otherwise I might have had some difficulty in establishing: that Rosalind could speak French.
Madame Laurent and I had amicable conversations. She assured me that Rosalind had comported herself extremely well, had behaved always tres comme it fauta€“but, she said, a€?Madame, elle est da€?une froideura€“mais da€?une froideur excessive! Ca€?est peut-??tre le phlegme brittanique.a€?
I said hurriedly that I was quite sure that it was le phlegme britannique. Again Madame Laurent assured me that she had tried to be like a mother to Rosalind. a€?Mais cette froideura€“cette froideur anglaise!a€?
Madame Laurent sighed with the memory of the rejection of her demonstrative heart.
Rosalind still had six months, or possibly a year, of education to put in. She passed it with a family near Munich learning German. Next came a London season.
At this she was a decided success, was called one of the best looking debutantes of her year, and had plenty of fun. I think, myself, that it did her a great deal of good, and gave her self-confidence and nice manners. It also cured her of any mad wish to continue the social racket indefinitely. She said she had enjoyed the experience, but had no intention of doing any more of that silly kind of thing.
I raised the subject of a job with Rosalind and her great friend, Susan North.
a€?Youa€?ve got to choose something to do,a€I said to Rosalind dictatorially. a€?I dona€?t care what it is. Why dona€?t you train as a masseuseThat would be useful later in life. Or I suppose you could go and arrange flowers.a€?
a€?Oh, everybody is doing that,a€said Susan.
Finally, the girls came to me and said they thought they would like to take up photography. I was overjoyed; I had been wishing to study photography myself. I had been doing most of the photography on the dig, and I thought it would be useful for me to have some lessons in studio photography, about which I knew little. So many of our objects had to be photographed in the open, and not in studio conditions, and since some of them would remain in Syria it was important that we should have the best photographs of them possible. I enlarged enthusiastically on the subject and the girls went into fits of laughter.
a€?We dona€?t mean what you mean,a€they said. a€?We dona€?t mean photography classes, at all.a€?
a€?What do you mean?a€I asked, bewildered.
a€?Oh, being photographed in bathing-dresses and things, for advertisements.a€?
I was horribly shocked, and showed it.
a€?You are not going to be photographed for advertisements for bathing-dresses,a€I said. a€?I wona€?t hear of anything like that.a€?
a€?Mother is so terribly old-fashioned,a€said Rosalind, with a sigh. a€?Lots of girls are photographed for advertisements. They are terribly jealous of each other.a€?
a€?And we do know some photographers,a€Susan said. a€?I think we could persuade one of them to do one of us for soap.a€?
I continued to veto the project. In the end Rosalind said she would think about photography classes. After all, she said, she could do model photography classesa€“it needna€?t be for bathing-dresses. a€?It could be real clothes, buttoned up to the neck, if you like!a€?
So I went off one day to the Reinhardt School of Commercial Photography, and I became so interested that when I came home I had to confess that I had booked myself for a course of photography and not them. They roared with laughter. a€?Mothera€?s got caught by it, instead of us!a€said Rosalind.
a€?Oh, you poor dear, you will be so tired,a€said Susan. And tired I was! After the first day running up and down stone flights of stairs, developing and retaking my particular subject, I was worn out.
The Reinhardt School of Photography had many different departments, including one on commercial photography, and one of my courses was in this. There was a passion at that time for making everything look as unlike itself as possible. You would place six tablespoons on a table, then climb on a stepladder, hang over the top of it, and achieve some fore-shortened view or out of focus effect. There was also a tendency to photograph an object not in the middle of the plate but somewhere in the left-hand corner, or running off it, or a face that was only a portion of a face. It was all very much the latest thing. I took a beechwood sculptured head to the School, and did various experiments in photographing that, using all kinds of filtersa€“red, green, yellowa€“and seeing the extraordinarily different effects you could get using various cameras with the various filters.
The person who did not share my enthusiasm was the wretched Max. He wanted his photography to be the opposite of what I was now doing. Things had to look exactly what they were, with as much detail as possible, exact perspective, and so on.
a€?Dona€?t you think this necklace looks rather dull like that?a€I would say. a€?No, I dona€?t,a€said Max. a€?The way youa€?ve got it, ita€?s all blurred and twisted.a€?
a€?But it looks so exciting that way!a€?
a€?I dona€?t want it to look exciting,a€said Max. a€?I want it to look like what it is. And you havena€?t put a scale rod in.a€?
a€?It ruins the artistic aspect of a photograph if you have to have a scale rod, It looks awful.a€?
a€?Youa€?ve got to show what size it is,a€said Max. a€?It is most important.a€a€?You can put it underneath, cana€?t you, in the caption?a€?
a€?Ita€?s not the same thing. You want to see exactly the scale.a€?
I sighed. I could see I had been betrayed by my artistic fancies into straying from what I had promised to do, so I got my instructor to give me extra lessons on photographing things in exact perspective. He was rather bored at having to do this, and disapproving of the results. However, it was going to be useful to me.
I had learnt one thing at least: there was no such thing as taking a photograph of something, and later taking another one because that one didna€?t come out well. Nobody at the Reinhardt School ever took less than ten negatives of any subject; a great many of them took twenty. It was singularly exhausting, and I used to come home so weary that I wished I had never started. However, that had gone by the next morning.
Rosalind came out to Syria one year, and I think enjoyed being on our dig. Max got her to do some of the drawings. Actually she draws exceptionally well, and she made a good job of it, but the trouble with Rosalind is that, unlike her slap-happy mother, she is a perfectionist. Unless she could get a thing perfectly as she wanted it, she would immediately tear it up. She did a series of these drawings, and then said to Max: a€?They are no good reallya€“I shall tear them up.a€?
a€?You are not to tear them up,a€said Max.
a€?I shall tear them up,a€said Rosalind.
They then had an enormous fight, Rosalind trembling with rage, Max also really angry. The drawings of the painted pots were salvaged, and appeared in Maxa€?s book of Tell Braka€“but Rosalind never professed herself satisfied with them.
Horses were procured from the Sheikh, and Rosalind went riding, accompanied by Guilford Bell, the young architect nephew of my Australian friend, Aileen Bell. He was a very dear boy and he did some extraordinarily lovely pencil drawings of our amulets at Brak. They were beautiful little thingsa€“frogs, lions, rams, bullsa€“and the delicate shading of his pencil drawings made a perfect medium for them.
That summer Guilford came to stay with us at Torquay, and one day we saw that a house was up for sale that I had known when I was younga€“Greenway House, on the Dart, a house that my mother had always said, and I had thought also, was the most perfect of the various properties on the Dart.
a€?Leta€?s go and look at it,a€I said. a€?It would be lovely to see it again. I havena€?t seen it since I went there calling with Mother when I was a child.a€?
So we went over to Greenway, and very beautiful the house and grounds were. A white Georgian house of about 1780 or 90, with woods sweeping down to the Dart below, and a lot of fine shrubs and treesa€“the ideal house, a dream house. Since we had an order to view, I asked its price, though without much interest. I didna€?t think I had heard the answer correctly.
a€?Sixteen thousand, did you say?a€?
a€?Six thousand.a€?
a€?Six thousand?a€I could hardly believe it. We drove home talking about it. a€?Ita€?s incredibly cheap,a€I said. a€?Ita€?s got thirty-three acres. It doesna€?t look in bad condition either; wants decorating, thata€?s all.a€?
a€?Why dona€?t you buy it?a€asked Max.
I was so startled, this coming from Max, that it took my breath away. a€?Youa€?ve been getting worried about Ashfield, you know,a€?
I knew what he meant. Ashfield, my home, had changed. Where our neighboursa€houses had once been ringed round usa€“other villas of the same kinda€“there was now, blocking the view in the narrowest part of the garden, a large secondary school, which stood between us and the sea. All day there were noisy shouting children. On the other side of us there was now a mental nursing home. Sometimes queer sounds would come from there, and patients would appear suddenly in the garden. They were not certified, so I presume they were free to do as they liked, but we had had some unpleasant incidents. A brawny colonel in pyjamas appeared, waving a golf-club, determined he was going to kill all the moles in the garden; another day he came to attack a dog who had barked. The nurses apologised, fetched him back, and said he was quite all right, just a little a€?disturbeda€?, but it was alarming, and once or twice children staying with us had been badly frightened.
Once it had been all countryside out of Torquay: three villas up the hill and then the road petered out into country. The lush green fields where I used to go to look at the lambs in spring had given way to a mass of small houses. No one we knew lived in our road any longer. It was as though Ashfield had become a parody of itself.
Still, that was hardly a reason for buying Greenway House. Yet, how it appealed to me. I had known always that Max did not really like Ashfield. He had never told me soa€“but I knew it. I think in some way he was jealous of it because it was a part of my life that I hadna€?t shared with hima€“it was all my own. And he had said, unprompted, of Greenway, a€?Why dona€?t you buy it?a€?
And so we made inquiries. Guilford helped us. He looked over the house professionally, and said: a€?Well, Ia€?ll give you my advice. Pull half of it down.a€?
a€?Pull half of it down!a€?
a€?Yes. You see, the whole of that back wing is Victorian. You could leave the 1790 house and take away all that additiona€“the billiard room, the study, the estate room, those bedrooms and new bathrooms upstairs. It would be a far better house, far lighter. The original is a very beautiful house, as a matter of fact.a€?
a€?We shana€?t have any bathrooms left if we pull the Victorian ones down,a€I pointed out.
a€?Well, you can easily make bathrooms on the top floor. Another thing, too; it would bring your rates down by quite a lot.a€?
And so we bought Greenway. We put Guilford in charge, and he redesigned the house on its original lines. We added bathrooms upstairs, and downstairs we affixed a small cloakroom, but the rest of it we left untouched. I only wish now that I had had the gift of foresighta€“if so I would have taken off another large chunk of the house: the vast larder, the great caverns in which you soaked pigs, the kindling store, the suite of sculleries. Instead I would have put on a nice, small kitchen from which I could go to the dining-room in a few steps, and which would be easy to run with no help. But it would never have occurred to me that a day would come when there was no domestic help. So we left the kitchen wing as it was. When the alterations were all done, and the house decorated plainly in white, we moved in.
Just after we had done so, and were exulting in it, the second war came. It was not quite so much out-of-the-blue as in 1914. We had had warnings: there had been Munich; but we had listened to Chamberlaina€?s reassurances, and we had thought then that when he said, a€?Peace in our timea€?, it might be the truth.
But Peace in our time was not to be.