Domestic strife

Monday, December 30th., Bath Spa Hotel, Bath.

If truth be told I am here to get away from my wife. I regard myself as a quiet, peaceable sort of chap, but if I stayed in Essex much longer I might do her serious damage. It is all getting to be too much for me to bear.

The bone of contention at the moment is Lockyer, the gardener. I don't know why but she dislikes him and wants to get rid of him. In fact she has been scheming to get rid of him for some time. I think myself that he is too assertive a character for her, too inclined to say what he thinks and to do what he considers best, even when it goes against her wishes. I like him for more or less the same reasons.

He has been fighting in France and has just recently returned. When he was called up Marguerite wanted me to take advantage of the situation to dismiss him. Think of that! I positively refused to do so. No man of honour and decency could have contemplated such a thing. Now she wants me to terminate his job at Comarques which would mean of course his leaving Thorpe and breaking up his home. Some reward for going through all the discomforts and dangers of a soldier's life at the Front. She is trying to blackmail me by saying that she will refuse to do her domestic duties unless I comply with her wishes. Well, I shall give no ground and we shall see who has the greater will. If my wife, aged 40, chooses to behave like a girl of 14 I shall have to respond accordingly.

I intend to stay here for at least another week. The spa facilities are excellent and the water appears to agree with my digestion.

I wrote to George Moore last week to, amongst other things, tell him that it was the first chapters of "A Mummer's Wife" which opened my eyes to the romantic nature of the district that I had bindly inhabited for over 20 years. He is indeed the father of all my Five Towns books and stories.

A matter of loyalty

Thursday, July 18th., Royal Thames Yacht Club, London.

Minute from the War Cabinet yesterday censuring me for my most successful pro-France article in the Observer on Sunday. It had been used on Monday by Daily Mail as an axe to hit the government with about 'baleful secrecy'. Lord B. was furious, and asked me to write a pungent letter in reply, which he signed. By evening Ll. G. had apologised and promised to have a new minute of the Cabinet prepared.

While all this is going on I have more trouble to contend with from my wife. She resents my 'other' life in London and fails to understand that I have an immense amount of work to do and considerable responsibility. Hence she contrives problems to gain my attention. For example, she has conceived a thorough dislike for our gardener Lockyer and is manoeuvring to have him replaced: what a time to become preoccupied with such trivia! I have written to her as follows:

Two of our gardeners have already died in the war defending us. Lockyer is now going into the army. It would not have been difficult for me to keep him out of the army. But I didn't want to keep him out and he didn't want to be kept out. He is quite as patriotic as either you or me. He is under 45 and a Grade 1 man, and he will almost certainly go out to the front where he will risk his life defending us. If he is not killed he will come back. I have already told him, of course, that the situation will be kept for him, and by God I will keep my word whatever the consequences are. Make no mistake. There would never have been any question of his leaving the situation if he had not to go into the army. Well, he goes into the army, he leaves his home and his family, he risks his life, and according to you his reward is to be that I shall say to him: "Of course you can't come back. The recompense of doing your duty is that you will lose your situation, and you will have to leave your house, and the village where you have lived so many years." (For there is no other situation that would do for him in Thorpe.) Am I going to say this to him? I am not! I have said to Lockyer as I have said to every man who has left us to go into the army: "The place will be open to you whenever you want to return." It is a little enough thing.

I am not going to commit an infamy. And if you understood me as you say you do,if you realised the depth of my feeling on such matters, you would never suggest such a monstrous thing. I never interfere with you in the house, and I beg you not to interfere with me in the garden. I have found a woman-gardener solely to please you; but the situation is going to be kept open for Lockyer, if he lives. You have no right whatever to say to me: "I am - not - going to have - Lockyer - back." I warn you in the most solemn way that there will be the most serious trouble if you reopen this question.