WOMEN OF BRITAIN ACKNOWLEDGMENT I want to thank all those who have so kindly sent us their friends letters for inclusion in this book, and have helped us in the deletion of certain personal details in order to preserve the writers anonymity. It has not been possible in all cases to ask the writers themselves for per mission to print the letters, but, judging by the way in which their friends over here have described them to us, and also by the tone of the letters themselves, I should guess that they are people who would do anything they possibly could to help to give the inhabitants of other countries a true picture of wartime life in Great Britain and I can imagine no better means of doing this than by allowing the circulation of these personal letters. I hope, therefore, that I shall be forgiven for taking their permissions for granted and that they will allow me to offer them my warmest thanks on behalf of the air-raid victims to whose relief the royalties of this book are to be devoted. JAN STRUTHER CONTENTS INTRODUCTION BY JAN STRUTHER 1 THE LETTERS I. DAY TO DAY LIFE 29 Londoners in Exile 37 The Soldiers Wife 38 The Officials Wife 83 The Business Mans Wife 101 The Unmarried Woman 125 The Commuting Line 130 Country Dwellers 160 II. THE BACKBONE 209 III. THE OLDER GENERATION 235 IV. DECISIONS AND CHANGES 255 V. LONDON AND THE BLITZKRIEG 273 INTRODUCTION by JAN STRUTHER INTRODUCTION Here in New York it has been a lovely day the kind of spring-in-wmter day which in London always made me look out of the window to see if the lime-tree in the back garden was showing any sign of life. From force of habit I did the same thing here, only of course it was a sumach I was looking at instead ofa lime-tree. I dont know the habits of sumachs, or when the first leaf-buds are likely to appear. That is the kind of thing which makes a coun try seem strange, however much one feels at ease with the human inhabitants of it. I am getting to know and to love this country but one cannot completely love either countries or people until one has shared with them all moods, weathers, and seasons. In sickness and in health, in summer and in autumn, in winter and in spring . . . When I first sat down to work this morning the sun was behind the El and all the southbound trains were packed with people going downtown to work. The Sec ond Avenue families had got their washing hung out, and there was one particularly charming line-full with three little blue striped frocks and three little scarlet plaid frocks, going down in steps like the three bears. I guessed that they must belong to the Italian newsagents INTRODUCTION children round the corner. Anyway, they looked very gay and fluttery, and the spike on the top of the Chrysler Building was shining like a sword, and the man who lives on the top floor of the house opposite this one, be yond the sumach, was up on the roof as usual exercising his pigeons, waving a long flexible bamboo cane and mak ing them fly round and round in circles, like a ring master. But now the sun has just gone down beyond the Empire State, and it is the uptown trains that are full I can see the rows of people in them, sitting or strap-hang ing. They are going back to their own homes in Queens, in Long Island Cityand when they get there they will sleep all night in their own beds until it is time to get up and go to work again. The Chrysler Building, stand ing up blackagainst a watermelon-pink sky, has ceased to be a petrified spring onion and become an elegant and elongated minaret. The pigeons have gone to roost in their wood-and-wire-netting pent-house, and their owner has just switched on the light in the room oppo site to this one and is sitting peacefully eating his supper, with the evening paper propped up against a milk-bottle. It is a pleasant, ordinary, domestic scene...