I was brought up with a horror of Catholicism and this remained with me for a very long time. It was not a case of once a Protestant always a Protestant, but rather that when I ceased to be Protestant I was further off than ever from being Catholic. I discarded Protestantism in horror of its Catholic element. My religious training developed in me a great capacity for fear (I was perpetually tortured by the fear of hell), a superstitious conscience and a sexual embarrassment. I was very long indeed in getting rid of all this. Nancy Nicholson and I (later on in this story) were most careful not to give our four children an early religious training. They were not even baptized.

The last thing that is discarded by Protestants when they reject religion altogether is a vision of Christ as the perfect man. That persisted with me, sentimentally, for years. At the age of nineteen I wrote a poem called ‘In the Wilderness.’ It was about Christ meeting the scapegoat—a silly, quaint poem-and has appeared in at least seventy anthologies. Its perpetual recurrence. Strangers are always writing to me to say what a beautiful poem it is, and how much strength it has given them, and would I, etc.? Here, for instance, is a letter that came yesterday:

Sir,—I heard with great delight your beautiful poem ‘In the Wilderness,’ broadcast from 2LO last night, and am writing to you because your poem has given me strength and hope. I am a gentlelady in need—in great need—not of a gift, but of a loan, on interest of 5 per cent. I also need a kind friend to show me human sympathy and to help me if possible by an introduction to a really upright and conscientious London solicitor who will fight my cause, not primarily for the filthy lucre, but because it is waging the the battle of Right against the most infamous Wrong. First of all I ask you to believe that I am writing you the simple truth. I also am gifted as a writer, but as my physical health has always been a great struggle, and poverty from my childhood has been my lot, and I will not stoop to write down to the popular taste, and perhaps, also, because I have no influential friends to give me a helping hand, I earn very little by my pen. But I know how to wield a pen, and I am going to put myself into this letter just as I am—I am not apt to deceive, I hate lies and every form of deception. This letter is ‘a bow sent at a venture,’—to see if you would like to help a literary sister who is being gravely wronged by her only near relative, an abnormal woman, who has hated her for years without any cause. To be very direct—I need £10 for one year at 5 per cent.—to be repaid £10, 10s. 0d. I need it at once, very urgently—to pay arrears of furnished digs—£3, 13s. 0d.—Milk Bill 16s. 8d., Grocery Bill 10s. 6d. and coal 1s. 8d.—then to leave Bolton (the black town of mills which fogs incessantly) and go for a change to Blackpool: then to go up to Town to put my legal business into a London solicitor’s hands. I will sign a Promissory Note for £10, 10s. 0d., to repay a year hence. I am cultured and and highly educated and well-born. I was trained to teach on the higher schools and I hold high testimonials for teaching. But I overworked and at last became consumptive, and had tuberculosis of both lungs. It was taken early and I am relatively cured. But my teaching career is broken, and I do so love teaching. In consequence of this I have a monthly pension from a Philanthropic Society of £2, 11s. 8d. But it is so tiny, I cannot possibly live on it, squeeze as I may. But an inheritance of over £1000 is mine, which is being wrongly withheld from me by the rogue of a solicitor in whose hands it is. I had one brother and one sister. The brother had saved money, and insured himself in many ways against his old age. The sister was well married to a man in good position; heartless, and hardened with her worldly life, and abnormally unnatural. She was expelled from two schools. She contracted an insane hatred of me, her little sister, and being full of cupidity, has tried to rob me of the little I have. My brother intended me to be his heir and inherit all his money. He wrote her this. But he was not a good brother and I did not visit him. He was a widower without offspring. Then he died suddenly in 1926, Xmas. She got to his house and wired me the death. Afterwards she wrote a few lines but never told me the date of the funeral and has hid everything about his affairs from me—his declared heir! She declared there was no Will to be found, and when I arrived in the Midlands from Yorkshire and got to his Vicarage she, with her woman friend, had locked me out of the house, to prevent my search for the Will! Upon advice I issued a Caveat and they at once violated the Caveat, and began to arrange for the sale of furniture! I heard of it by chance and stopped the sale. Then I was taken ill with my lungs in Derbyshire, whither I had returned after engaging a lawyer to safeguard my interests on the spot. They then corrupted my solicitor, who let me down badly, and I was ill in Derby. They warned the Caveat, and I could not enter an appearance, so it became abortive. Then my sister got herself made sole Administratrix. I had intended to apply to be joint Administratrix. Then began a series of fraudulent acts and maladministration. Her solicitor is a rogue and he is trying to force me to ‘approve’ his unsatisfactory accounts by withholding my share until I sign an undertaking not to proceed against them afterwards. One item in accounts is falsified which I can prove, and other gross acts of fraud can be proved. Foul play has been pursued throughout, and they are now shadowing me everywhere by hired agents who find out the solicitors I employ and buy them off, or otherwise prevent their acting against them for me. It is the grossest case imaginable. I hold all my documents and can prove everything. I have a clear and strong case. But I need a London solicitor—away from the North where my sister lives in Northumberland—and I will not sink my moral principle to accept, not my lawful Half-Share, but what they choose to offer me, namely £919, 13s. 3d. and 18 months’ interest. I want the Court to take over the administration. I have applied to the solicitor for an advance upon my share and he refuses again in order to compel me to sign this infamous agreement. I had £50 in advance in 1926 which is shown in accounts. I just need this £10 now so as to pay up here and get to Blackpool—for I have been ill again with my lungs, and I badly need a change.

Will you help a stranger with this not very big loan, and on interest? I would bring all the accounts and papers to show you when I come to town. And if I have found a friend in you, I shall indeed thank God. You can trust me. I am worthy, though I can give no references, because the people are dead. But I think you do not like being ‘bullied’ with such things. I am middle-aged, but a child in heart—original—and just myself, and look rather ridiculously young, without any artifice or makeup.

But apart from the loan, I need a friend. The family used to sneer at me that I ‘never made friends for what I could get out of them.’ Truly I never did. I like rather to help others myself. I should like to help you if I could in any way. I just love to serve. My life has been lonely, and both parents are dead, and I don’t make friends lightly. So that is all. But I won’t finish without telling you that I love the Master, the Lord Jesus Christ, as you love Him, and trust Him in all this darkness. I always like to bring His Name in—and so good night—I would be thankful if you will write to me in a registered letter. Some of my letters have gone astray, I fear I do not trust the woman in these lodgings, and my letters are going to a shop to be called for.

I am, dear Sir,

Yours very truly

* * * * * (Miss).

P.S.—Do you think you could get a letter to me by Saturday? I do so love your poems.

I put this in here because it is not a letter to answer, nor yet somehow a letter to throw away. The style reminds me of one of my Irish female cousins. And that again reminds me of the ancient Irish triad—‘Three ugly sisters: Chatter, Poverty, and Chastity.’

III

I went to six preparatory schools. The first was a dame’s school at Wimbledon. I went there at the age of six. My father, as an educational expert, did not let me stay here long. He found me crying one day at the difficulty of the twenty-three-times table, and there was a Question and Answer History Book that we used which began:

Question: Why were the Britons so called? Answer: Because they painted themselves blue.

My father said it was out of date. Also I was made to do mental arithmetic to a metronome. I once wet myself for nervousness at this torture. So I went to the lowest class of King’s College School, Wimbledon. I was just seven years old, the youngest boy there, and they went up to nineteen. I was taken away after a couple of terms because I was found to be using naughty words. I was glad to leave that school because I did not understand a word of the lessons. I had started Latin and I did not know what Latin was or meant; its declensions and conjugations were pure incantations to me. For that matter so were the strings of naughty words. And I was oppressed by the huge hall, the enormous boys, the frightening rowdiness of the corridors, and compulsory Rugby football of which nobody told me the rules. I went from there to another preparatory school of the ordinary type, also at Wimbledon, where I stayed for about three years. Here I began playing games seriously, was quarrelsome, boastful, and talkative, won prizes, and collected things. The only difference between me and the other boys was that I collected coins instead of stamps. The value of coins seemed less fictitious to me than stamp values. My first training as a gentleman was here. I was only once caned, for forgetting to bring my gymnastic shoes to school, and then I was only given two strokes on the hand with the cane. Yet even now the memory makes me hot with fury. The principal outrage was that it was on the hand. My hands have a great importance for me and are unusually sensitive. I live a lot in them; my visual imagery is defective and so I memorize largely by sense of touch.