Teenage Jewish girl in Second World War Liverpool.] Autograph Diaries of Froma Sonabend, an extraordinarily precocious and articulate girl, detailing her progress from school to war work in London. With a quantity of related material (letters, etc).

Dating from between 1 January 1940 and 29 October 1945 (lacking 1944). From the family home at 5 Sefton Park Rd, Liverpool 8, 1940-1943; and from Hammersmith, London, 1945. A remarkable and vivid portrait of the development of an artistic and intelligent, strong-willed, passionate, and obsessive girl (hereafter FS), progressive in her outlook, and possessed of a remarkable capacity for self-analysis; unhappy both at home and at school; whose yearning to be loved leads her to crushes on several adults; all set against a backdrop of wartime Liverpool. Written while the author is between the ages of 14 and 20, with the family home at 5 Sefton Park Rd, Liverpool 8. FS goes to Aigburth Vale High School for Girls, Liverpool 17, whose loathed headmistress is Miss E. M. Curry. She is a talented pianist and artist, a voracious reader (in 1942 alone her reading includes Bertrand Russell's 'Let the People Think', 'a fine Anthology called "The Knapsack" compiled by Herbert Read', Freud's 'Psychology of Everyday Life'; Spencer's 'First Principles', and 'Selections from Voltaire'), and a self-declared atheist and anarcho-syndicalist internationalist. She attends Young Communist and Zionist meetings (while holding a sceptical attitude towards both movements), listens to Elgar, Beethoven and Mendelson, and plays Bach and Chopin (for whom, in 1942, she is 'cultivating a hungry taste'), and goes to see Ibsen plays in London with 'B.I.B.', a woman for whom she has a particular crush. In London she hears Aneurin Bevin, C. E. M. Joad and H. G. Wells speak, sees Churchill and General Alexander, and takes part in the VE and VJ Day celebrations, while serving on a switchboard in Olympia as a private in the ATS. Her other reading includes the Statesman and Tribune newspapers, Aldous Huxley, T. S. Eliot, Sassoon's 'Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man', and Virginia Woolf (whose 'A Room of One's Own' gives her 'an itch to write a book & so much so that I wrote some notes on the same'). Curiously for such a remarkable character, the later life of the author is a mystery, with nothing known other than that she died in London in 1999. The collection is in good condition, on lightly aged and worn paper. Of the 6 vols of diaries, vols. 3 and 4 are uniform, as are vols. 5 and 6. Totalling 677pp., as follows: Vol. 1: 1940. 'Boots Scribbling Diary'. 139pp., crown 8vo (including 35pp. on pink blotter paper). Vol. 2: 1941. 'Charles Letts's Office Desk Diary'. 193pp., 8vo. Vol. 3: 1942. (31 December 1941 to 19 January 1943.) 'The Viking Navigation Book' by Philip, Son & Nephew, Ltd., Liverpool. 91pp., 4to. Vol. 4: 1943 (12 January to 30 December.) 'The Viking Navigation Book' as Vol. 3. 87pp., 4to. Vol. 5: 17 February to 23 June 1945. Notebooks with grey paper boards and red cloth spine. 74pp., 8vo. Vol. 6: 24 June to 29 October 1945. Notebook, as Vol.5. 93pp., 8vo. The volume for 1944 is lacking (possible explanation given below). The diaries are accompanied by a quantity of papers: incoming correspondence (including many letters from her cousin Benson Russell); school reports; original drawings (mostly portraits, and evincing some talent) and poems; theatre programmes; newspaper cuttings; and a 'Highly Commended' certificate for FS ('Age 15 years') from the War Savings Campaign, National Poster Competition for Schools 1941; a photograph of 'Pte Froma Sonabend | Leave at Liverpool | April 1945'. The six volumes are more journals than diaries, with FS often dissecting recent events in an energetic and entertaining style, and in characteristically obsessive fashion. While the first two volumes, written while she is between the ages of 14 and 17, give a good indication of FS's precocity, it is with the volumes for 1942 and 1943 that we see her character develop. At the front of the volume for 1942 she writes a note beginning: 'This Diary is not intended to be considered neat, witty or a piece of Literature. [...]', and she comments in the first entry: 'I am at this stage of my obscure existance, [sic] sixteen years old and I will be seventeen in [sic] October 13th. [...] My only hope is that it will be full of spice and perhaps the only good point about it that I am sure of, is that it will be fanatically and thoroughly sincere.' A note on the stub of a page torn out of one of the volumes indicates the author's capacity for self-examination: 'I tore this page out towards the end of 1942. Because I had begun to realize how foolish it was to write a list of the people I love and admire. Love is not a material thing. Nor can you just "cross the names out".' FS's constant mood of unhappiness has its origins at home. Early on (in October 1940) she complains that she is being victimised: 'Daddy says I am the worst child and [if] I become a good for nothing then when looking through these pages I shall know he was right, but if not it shall be as I think and that is That Daddy has Lionel and June & Lillian for his favourites and makes a Blacksheep of me that I can be called names and slashed and kicked and banged by June and as I am told I keep quite [sic] and do not hit her back and yet when I ask for justice there is none'. Three months later, following one of several scenes at school, a teacher gives her opinion of FS's character: 'She told me I had many talents besides drawing and a fine strong character but she said I will have to keep the character well trained and not let it get the better of me.' A series of infatuations with adults are described through the course of the diaries. On 7 January 1941 she declares that she is 'Oh so passionately in love with Ben', i.e. her cousin in London Benson Russell (of 35 Ashley Lane, NW4), who is serving overseas as a soldier in the British Army. (Russell, in a letter of 1942, expresses his affection for her, 'notwithstanding red herrings about grammar, quotations from T. S. Eliot, asterisks and sarcy footnotes'.) The diaries also detail, in obsessive detail FS's infatuation with a number of women, including crushes on 'Wad' [her teacher Mrs Waddington] and 'B.I.B.' [Mrs Beatrice I. Barnes]. A Pencil note added to the comment on 20 April 1942 - 'Oh Mrs Barnes I do so love you.' - indicates that FS is not unaware of the nature of these obsessions: 'N.B. Three months later I read a book on homosexuality. I'm writing this quite honestly for the mistaken reader, if any. There was no sex or anything in loving B.I.B. But definitely an overwhelming yearning to be loved and guided by a "mother".' As the first volume opens there are difficulties at home, with periodic family rows (FS's parents quarrelling 'about the business') being 'patched up'. FS does drawing, plays games, writes letters, takes photographs, does her homework, and sends a joke to the 'Daily Mirror'; and at school she participates enthusiastically in art lessons and at sport, although her strong-willed temperament leads her into continual difficulties. On 6 January 1940 she goes 'to a Reception attended by the Lord Mayor for the German Refugees. I was announced and shook hands with the Mayor and the Bishop of Liverpool and the Mayor of Wallassy', and on 22 May she records a 'Gas-mask inspection during games period (anyhow, it was raining) gave my three patch Blankets for Soldiers. "Maggie Marshall" (Miss Marshall, a little dwarfish teacher) is one of those goading sorts of Patriots, she makes us all sick.' On 10 June 1940: 'It is a Jewish Holiday on Wednesday and Thursday but I am determined to go to school.' The following day: 'Every-body is exited [sic] because Italy  is now against Britain.' FS's continuing difficulties at school are exemplified by the entry for 17 June 1940: 'Jean Findlater smacked me for fun in French lesson. All I did was smile but I didnt let a sound out of my lips. Heres what happened. "Are you quite finished FROMA!" "Finished doing what Miss Dorer" "GO OUT OF this room immediately" "But I dont know what I've done Miss" "GO OUT" "I dont want to go out and miss revision without knowing the reason." (Miss Dorer appeals to Form) "What has Froma done" (Blank silence with faint titters.) "The form dont seem to know Miss Dorer." "They are to [sic] well mannered, go out and Jean you go with her." Jean and I went to the Dressing room, thence to the mistresses bicycle shed were [sic] we naughtily let the air out of Miss Nichols tire. When the bell went we had to go to Dorer and promise to be good.' In October 1940 she writes, in large letters: 'I SWEAR IF I MARRY WHEN I GROW UP TO BRING MY CHILDREN UP AS ATHEISTS. WHO WILL UNDERSTAND | That God is there [sic] own goodness and the Devil there own badness and who will know what is noble, brave, selfsacrificing good [and] bad without foolish primitive superstition but by there conscience | THAT IS A VOW THAT I WILL KEEP'. On 15 November 1940 she writes, in unusually immature fashion: 'Over a thousand people were killed in one night in an air-raid in Coventry. We were in the Air-raid shelter & May & the gang of us were discussing wether [sic] we should have Domestic Science & I blurted out "its not fair, the men ought to do the washing up & the cooking & Miss Waddington said "Yes defenately [sic]" or "hear hear" (or something like that) and she was smiling & looking at me all the time as far as I could see. Oh I'm sure my love for her can never die out. Shirly has got a basket as she is going to have some puppies.' On 2 January 1941 she records that 'some bombs had been dropped in Dublin last night as well as on Merseyside. Gurt the german refugee boy came but daddy wouldnt even lend me the money to go to the pictures with him'. As the second volume begins her difficulties at school continue, and she has particular problems with mathematics. On 23 January 1941 she has an altercation with the headmistress Miss Curry over her refusal to do her sums, and is told by a teacher named 'Miss Crane': 'She told me I had many talents besides drawing and a fine strong character but she said I will have to keep the character well trained and not let it get the better of me.' One teacher, Miss Muddle, finds it hard to cope. On 26 February 1941 she gives the form 'a terrible row [...] she called us as many nasty things that could exist. I'm rather sorry for Miss Muddle. She must be realizing what a horrible failure she is as a mistress and its probably embittering her.' On 2 March 1941 she writes: 'I'll be frank I see nothing at all in Zionism. Splitting one race up and taking it to some holy stew pot and isolating it from the rest of the world no the land of the chosen people. I am an out andn out Atheist and so will my children be (if I have any).' On 27 April 1941 two soldiers come for supper, one of them being attracted to FS: 'it is obvious that Warren Simon likes me very much and I like him very much also, he said it was a pity I wasnt a bit older and joked he could wait for me, he said he loved me but he is 30 years older than me, but he is extremely handsome, terribly intelligent, amazedly [sic] strong and isnt religious and loves travelling'. On 9 May 1941 she travels back to Liverpool with her father: 'It was a bother travelling by the train at last I got to Liverpool, Lewises looked a terrific mess and Lewises district was still smoking. St Lukes church was gutted yet one could get a 15 car from there through. Every where in the house was dust, soot, fragments of glass and untidiness and unwashed dishes, still I managed to wade through these all the same'. In large letters at beginning of entry on 22 June 1941: 'Guess what! Russia! is fighting Germany. Russia! is our Ally! This amazing fact is true and fighting began Germans via [sic] Russians today.' The following day she is cycling to school and 'when half way there I noticed I had forgotten my gas mask I went back for it, chain broke, got to school late. Morrissee sent me to Miss Curry this I consider was very mean indeed. Curry said I would have to report to her at quarter to 9 every morning. And also muttered something about me not getting on I think it was Art because I didnt work hard or something.' In July she summarises recent events in 9 points, the second being that 'One of the nicest women I ever imagined (barring Wad of course) came to stay with us in the green room, her name is Mrs Barnes and I could write a book on the originality and the charming charm of her character'; the third being that she is 'now firmly convinced that I am going to be a Doctor. Daddy is quite reconciled I think to me being one.'; and the seventh being that 'I have become a confirmed Atheist.' She also begins writing poems. On 1 January 1942 she goes 'to a picture on the Paramount with Mrs Barnes and Frank (her cousin)'. In the entry for 20 January 1942 she declares that 'Something terrible is going to happen at the end of the term, in other words Wad's leaving. As soon as I get an opportunity I'm going to talk to her about it. I must never lose contact with her. I am terribly ambitious and it is just these latest days that I am feeling it most.' Of Mrs Barnes: 'I will never forget the night when I had run away from Mammy's and the rest's vile remarks, how she sympathised and soothed my shattered nerves'. On 3 March 1942 she receives a phone call from Ben: 'I went quite feminine blushing around all night. Hell knows why. Anyhow I went to meet him at the station in my one & only suit, [...] I knew then that I really had never stopped liking him. What followed was a very enjoyable weekend. We went to the pictures and walked together. He did a bit of chemistry with me. And also we all talked. I think he likes me very much (which is something practical people do not put in diaries). On 3 March 1942: 'Since I last wrote in my diary I have had an interesting visit to Mrs Barnes friend Jean Thomson who is a phychologist [sic] at a mental clinic in Liverpool [i.e. Jean Thompson, Department of Psychology, 7 Abercromby Square]. The maid took me for a patient and trotted me into the waiting room with two neurotic people. One was a little girl, obviously very intelligent. She said after a while (the room was very miserable, and the furniture sticky and arranged badly) "We're all sitting down like Buddhas." She looked so young that I couldnt help asking her about Buddha. She gave a little laugh and said "Oh we[']re like stones like him aren't we". Next came two women and a little boy who kept darting his head madly with furtive "Youre looking at me" glances in his eyes. I took in the situation well and glanced at him once as if to say "Your [sic] just like any other boy" and never looked at him again. He then took confidence came up to me took a magazine from the table and smiled at me. I smiled back. It gave me a splendid kick. Jean Thomson was very nice to me (the idea had been that I wanted to see round the clinic) I promised to bring some magazines the next time I came. She is obviously a very clever woman but slightly <?> in speech, though not obviously [...] the little neurotic girl gave a very logical remark when she said to me that she didnt like chairs as they were so far from the ground and didnt see any reason why we couldnt sit on the floor. Mad people are often wiser than sane ones.' On 6 April 1942 she reports that she likes Mrs Barnes 'more and more [...] this last three weeks I have felt this feeling continually growing inside myself. So much that it hurt me to think of her, and yet the hurt was so nice at the same time that I am afraid I continually thought of her. I began to see that it was wrong because at the same time I yearned for her to like me as well. This was so selfish and unreasonable because she had and has far too many important things to bother about.' She describes a highly-charged evening, ending with Mrs Barnes coming into FS's room: 'She did not let me go but held me closer and told me that she liked people liking her. (this only to reassure me) "Besides," she said "I am so unhappy myself."' On 16 April 1942 she goes 'to a very <enthusiastic?> meeting at the Central Hall [...] Joad [C. E. M. Joad], Aneurin Bevin, E. Wilkinson, Michael Foote [sic, for Labour politician Michael Foot], H. G. Wells & Rose Macaulay spoke. I rather liked Joad before but I think that he is only a man with a gift for quotations. He speaks and acts as if he was doing a music hall turn. The meeting was about the suppression of the press. i.e. banning "Daily Worker" and crushing "Daily Mirror" for the cartoon. Aneurin Bevin was the most level headed of the speakers. And he alone brought forward the point that only weak governments try to crush the press. Strong governments are not afraid of criticism. He also brought forward the fair poitn that Morrison was not the only one to blame.' On 11 October 1942, spends 'a "historic" evening' with 'a Palestinian soldier, a bigot Caplan and the Secretary of the Zionist movement with his wife [...] I had previously told this secretary in my last Zionist meeting that I loathed Zionism but was interested in the psychology of the people that yelled hebrew songs like animals or rather savages. I was struck then by the way he took that. Tonight he talked about Zionism and then for the first time I saw that my idea of internationalism could come through it. [...]' At the beginning of 1943 she is made form captain, 'which is of course a joke when applied to me, and my past record at school'. She buys a gramophone record of Elgar's Enigma Variations, and spends time 'thinking in bed', hoping that 'it will not be too much of a lonely yearning year'. On 20 January 1943 she gives a long account of a typical 'day in school': 'take coat of  [sic] in dressing room - say "hello!" to various people automatically though they are no more interested in me than I am in them. Next I slink into the hall and collect the form register outside the staff room, and if I see Miss W. I get a sweet but painful remembrance of somebody else. Should this happen I walk upstairs even more unhappily. I usually find Valerie Greenhalge upstairs in the morning as she goes there early to swot. She is quite a nice girl we exchange automatic "hellos" Next I write the lunch list. I then wander downstairs again, and make remarks to other arrivals, the remarks are meant bitterly but are accepted by them with laughs etc. I peep half-heartedly into the mirror and then wander upstairs again. The whistle goes and "Totty-flip" the pitiful Miss E. and our form-mistress appears. The form are pigs to her and torture her without pity. Why dont people who appear sounder than me in other things realize that it is wrong to torture a pitiful creature like her, and leave her alone. [...] I take my books and the register, lunch-list and dinner-book down and give the two latter articles to the temporary secretary Mrs Todd in the office. I then take another fleeting glance into the mirror and plant the register down. I see Miss W again and I get a cutting feeling. I walk up to the physics labs depressed and thinking of the two B's. I exchange a choppy conversation with the rest of the equally self-absorbed but really quite nice girls, just for the sake of not sitting in a room in sielnce. The only objection I have to any girl in our set is one S. C. a fat catty and to me it seems an unpleasant girl. [...] Next break, a gather of books from the physics lab and I walk downstairs feeling a bit happier. Milk in the hall with a crowd of jostling girls. The kids from the lower school think I'm rather a joke and often come up and say hello and talk to me - I get on with small people marvelously [sic] its only the irritable gawking age that I dont like very much [...]'. On 3 February 1943 she writes: 'In her letter B.I.B accused me of putting her on a pedestal, and being disillusioned about her. [...] I wrote that she was as beautiful as Beethoven's music. [...] But for god's sake fro, when you read this when you're doddering don't scorn me [...] When I was two years younger I did deceive myself: [...] I had an advanced "crush" on somebody with a strong character, and that affection for Wad [teacher H. M. Waddington] did me a lot of good [...] I'm awfully glad that I was as innocent as an infant then because otherwise I would have brooded about homosexuality and all that; without any possibility of getting it off my chest. I still like Wad, and I am endebted [sic] to her to the end of my days for giving me a disease which I am now cured of, and which also has provided me with sufficient antibodies to counteract it and make me completely immune from it. [...] My bible - if such it must be called, is very short. My morals are a conscience which I blemish now and then, [...] and my prophets are the people that I love, the minor prophets are those that I only respect.' On 20 February she is still 'pining' for B.I.B., but feels that she 'must also keep other things up'. On 2 February she goes to a Young Communist meeting, 'in order to see what it was like. The meeting was much warmer and far more enjoyable than the young Zionist meeting I went to with Jessie. I can see the reason for this - The jewish girls of the Zionist meeting knew themselves to be in a very precarious position - they must either snatch up a Jewish boy whilst they had the chance or finish their lives as their own bedfellows. (And since jewish boys a[re] very scarce and since there are few to go round, their position needs almost all their brains and attention to their person, [...]) [...] I liked the Communist meeting much better. The girls and boys were warm and unrepressed. And above all there was no pitiful "mating" motive behind it. I debated with the rest but I must confess that in end it was I who was debating with all the rest. They were all "communists". They knew nothing about any other system of government accept [sic] what they had read about in Communist propoganda [sic] leaflets. They spoke in platitudes, and knew nothing of the actual position in Russia today. During the debate they gasped when they heard that there were slums in Russia. Instead of accepting such a thing as a natural factor in a developing system. [...] when I spoke I knew enough to speak for every existing system in turn - even including veiled anarcho-syndicalism'. On 4 March 1943 she states that she 'must wipe away or <?> behind all bloody - yes BLOODY! (and I wish I could swear more strongly) Freudian nightmares and crazy agonies in school'. On 14 March 1943: 'The position is as follows. A. hardly any revision | B. another awful row with the family with blows encore | C. And then something terrible [...] Exams tomorrow I dont care a damn if I fail.' On 22 March 1943 she plays in an 'inter-school hockey tournament', before going to see the Ballets Jooss with her mother and two sisters. At the tournament she develops the archetypal crush on the hockey mistress: 'I also met another "WASP" today. [...] I saw her at the match, at the tramstop, and in the car. From the back the effect was amazing, a perfectly waspy figure hair style and colour hair. Waspy hat and waspy coat & everything else. And when she turned round even her face - and her blasted eyes. This is wasp number two. [...] I had a bit of a brood on whether I was seeing too many wasps for my health. She's the games mistress of Birkenhead high school. Well thats that. I felt the usual bewildered angry feeling on the way home, and the longing to see the original, but there's nothing to be done about it, I fear - except be sensible. And wasp number I - Miss Wilkinson at school is still hurting me unwittingly with the same intensity [...] I ask the girls that she teaches very casually about her (as if I'm just asking to pass the time). From the various girls I gather that she is a very orthodox christian, and believes in miracles and every syllable of the bible - that was a shock - I had expected just the opposite.' Mrs Barnes sends copies of the Statesman and Tribune, but on 4 April 1943  FS suspects that 'something unpleasant has happened to her or that something is wrong. I've heard nothing from her for two months [...] a label from one of her papers [...] isn't addressed properly and the writing when compared with an ordinary envelope of hers, looks terribly suspicious. Almost as if somebody has been trying to write in her handwriting. Now why should they do this? Its a very morbid answer. If I don't get any news from her tomorrow, I'm going to send her, (or whoever is sending the papers) a letter asking what the hell's wrong.' (It later transpires that the Tribune is being sent as a result of a subscription taken out by her cousin Ben.) She worries that it may appear that she is 'more interested in the effect of my writing than in what was causing me to write it. Don't quote M. Aurelius because it doesn't apply here! - I have so much time alone with myself that I analyze things like this from habit.' On April 5 1943: 'I was on the way down town to get a blazer when Miss Walker popped on the car. I was very surprized when she sat next to me and asked very sweetly if she could sit with me. When I write that and read it it looks even more fantastic - that anybody like her should want to - but of course she said it in her B.I.B way - No! I dont mean that she reminds me of B.I.B. as well, I mean her way of teaching things belongs to the same "school".' Of a production of 'Hedda Gabla [sic]' in London she writes: 'the woman kept gabbling about somebody she loved coming back with "vine leaves in his hair." She was a witch of a woman but she did love in her snaky way and couldnt help being weak I suppose'. On 14 June 1943: reads Milton's 'Paradise Lost' ('a real change to read something that sounded so strong & beautiful') and has 'ordered the anarchist "War Commentary" that they are always advertising at the bottom of their books'. On 9 August 1943 has piano lesson with 'Mr Miller', 'And judging from what he says - and I feel - I am improving. I've done 3 of Schumann's "Kindersahen" (I think that's how you spell it) & 1 lovely Bach largo from a concerto'. On 22 and 31 August 1943 she gives a long account of school camp, from which she has just returned, with a diagram of a tent and contents. And on 8 September 1943 she records: 'Today Italy has unconditionally surrendered to the "United Nations". And today also I realized again how much the latter word "United Nations" lies and is as untrue as hell would be'. On 18 September 1943 she describes time spent in London with B.I.B., including going to a performance of Ibsen's 'Ghosts'. 'As well as this we saw a couple of moderate films and I went to the restaurant and had a couple of meals there. Something awful happened the last day I being the sickest I've ever been (6 times in 3 hours) arrived at the Restaurant were [sic] I had arranged to meet B.I.B an hour late, and I found that something really disgusting had happened. Some indescribable scoundrel had thieved all her two trunks full of clothes. B.I.B's clothes were the only things he really had left and they were lovely. Even I could see this and now I remember her in them. Of course she trusted everybody and never locked her door. Well she is now left with the following ludicrous trousseau: - 3 hats, a tennis outfit, an evening dress & opera cloak. Also a fur coat (which was given to her, and which she never wears because she is a vegetarian). The dirty hounds even thieved her shoes. When I saw her she was still as charming and clam & dignified as she always is. I realized again for the thousandth time how great a woman she was. [...] She has neither the money nor the coupons to buy new clothes, [...]'. On 18 September 1943 she contemplates 'the most direct & vivid interpretation of Gods evil [which] was when I learnt of B.I.B's terrible unhappiness. Because she has suffered so much I cannot bring myself to try and explain this belief in something to B.I.B. She is an atheist but in this she is judging God with a conscious mind only. - like Bertrand Russell does. Its funny that I should be on the other side.' On 11 October 1943 she is in self-pitying mood: 'I could not resist writing tonight, Fro old girl, to tell you that I will always be with you - Here's my hand on it, and I know you will never weaken. Bless you! | Nautilus your shadow. | Nautilus it is good to write to you - you are the only friend that I need not assume that I am not being sentimental. I am lonely tonight and yearning for something - it is good to write this and feel sad at the same time - But know that I will one day look back on this unhappiness.' On 23 November 1943: 'This week for the first time except a momentary one with Mr Schevach, I heard somebody tell about Zionism and felt it was worth more consideration. And that Raphael (a thorough Communist) thought it was worth a lot of thought shows that what I heard must have been convincing. [...] The man really did know what anarchism & anarcho-syndicalism was but he believed that for the sake of the persecuted Jews it was only right to bring them to a place were [sic] the children could grow up healthy in mind & body again. [...] I wish I was not Jewish so that there might be no danger of my being influenced by my position.' Further difficulties at school are described on 3 December 1943: 'I'm a slave again and write neatly I'm back at school. This week has been an experience. A rather harsh one I will need no other of this kind. I was a fool to think that people in responsible positions were worthy of them. I see now the relation in almost everything (beginning in school) to the tyrant & the slave, the dog and the master, the masochist & the sadist. What a fool I was to trust these people or to try to be part of their world. I will neither lead or serve such despicable beasts. What a fool I was to think of hypocrites & liars, & weaklings, mostly as people you rarely meet [...] I've found hundreds of them now and God I have to live with them a great deal longer, until I have a decent degree of independence.' Accompanying the account that follows is a TLS to FS's parents from headmistress E. M. Curry: 'I am sorry to tell you that Froma behaved in a very rude and unpleasant way in my room yesterday and spoke to me in a way which I cannot permit in this school. I note that she has absented herself from school to-day and I shall be glad to see you as I could not permit her to be in school while she is taking the attitude that she can say whatever she chooses.' (Following a previous argument with Curry FS notes that she had 'walked out in a Freudian nightmare'.) The same day's entry contains two original poems: '1st Lunatic's song' and 'Nautilus', the latter reading 'Yes I have flouted truth on falsehood's throne, | But I was blind for I had pampered eyes; | Perish a lost faith with those lies! | At last I see the serpent in the dust; | The hidden wrinkles in the painted face, | I shall leave this place, | And build up a free creed alone.' (Another original poem, loosely inserted in the 1942 diary, is titled 'Froma at Seventeen (or "The Egoist at large")', 'written between Nov 15th - 23rd.') On 11 December 1943 there is yet more trouble at school: 'We broke up on Friday. It was one of those days when everything seems to go wrong. [...] I had to go with other sixformers to be told what odd jobs we could do and then Curry [the headmistress E. M. Curry] asked me to stay behind - Next five minutes were unpleasant. She told me such ridiculous things - [...] and then offered to be my friend to guide me around in the darkness. Last time she told me she wanted to be my friend I believed her. [...] I refused the badge as nicely as possible and kept on refusing and being nice - which was very difficult. In the process of trying to persuade me with a seraphic smile on her face she told me tactlessly that even if I had failed or something most failure blossomed out into exceptions. I told her coldly that I never admitted failures. [...]' At the end of the fourth volume, on 30 December 1943, she writes: 'Had nice mixed parcel from B.I.B today, with soap, Statesman magazine the enclosed booklet and last of all a message from her. One day I'll be capable of repaying her a little.' There is a gap between the fourth and fifth volumes, with the whole of the year 1944 lacking, possibly as a result of the death of 'B.I.B.' The fifth volume opens with FS in London, serving as a private in the ATS, a job she is desperate to leave. On 7 March she has an unsuccessful interview for a place at the London College of Medicine for Women. (In September 1945 she will apply to study at King's College, and fail once again.) Seven days later (14 March 1945) she writes: 'Today I heard a flying bomb (not a rocket) for the first time it whistled over the depot & then we heard it stop chugging. It landed on Greenford Ordnance Depot quite near & we've just heard that it killed amongst others thirteen A.T.S. I hope the two Scotch girls Russell & Macpherson who were posted there from Park Street at the same time as me are not hurt. They were very nice girls.' And on 16 March 1945 she is enrolled on a course for a 'temporary job in Olympia on switchboard. The C.S.M. of A Coy', and in June she attends the ten-day course at Allington House. As the last volume opens FS is billeted in Hammersmith, and working on the switchboard at the Ordnance Sub-depot at Olympia. The War Office refuse her 'application for release' from the ATS, so that she can 'begin medicine', and she appeals to the feminist and Labour politician Edith Summerskill (1901-1980). On 29 June 1945 she goes 'with Fagin & Anne' to a homosexual pub: 'I was determined to go to this Pub & find it after Leon had said the evening before "These people are a bit queer but they are nothing compared with those in "The Wheatsheaf". He said this in the pub next door to "The Wheatsheaf" as the latter was closed that night. [...] Fagin & Anne were enthralled with the people they saw. So also were 3 sailors who sat opposite us and looked around absolutely amazed at the assembly. During the evening one of them indicating a man with long blonde hair, said to me "We've decided its a woman what do you think?" They really are despicable'. She returns to the pub a few days later, and finds it filled 'with the local intelligensia'. On 4 July 1945 she sees General Alexander [Earl Alexander of Tunis] at the Royal Academy, 'coming down the steps not ten yards away [...] Quite inexcusably - for my being overwhelmed at seeing him is no excuse, I did not salute. The thing had seemed so improbable a happening to me that I just looked at him as I would have done in the paper or on a newsreel. Fortunately the Palestinian gave an excellent salute. But by his eyes (i.e. the general's) I don't think it quite made up for my minus I performance. I could have kicked myself. But no doubt General Alexander will MANAGE to forget Pte F.S's insubordination.' FS's accounts of the VE and VJ Day celebrations are characteristically vivid. On 9 May 1945, under the heading 'The War in Europe is over', she writes: 'I spent V. Day in London with Leon yesterday. We were two of the few people fortunate enough to see the Prime Minister. He looked a very great man - far greater than I would have thought him to look - let this suffice. He sat in his car looking amazing cool & serene. And yet there really seemed to be light shining from his face. It simply was the effect of what he felt in his hour of triumph. - a certain radiance which made him look really remarkable. Everybody in the crowd had the appearance of having made the mistake of wearing European clothes in the tropics. Everyone looked ruffled. And plenty were histerical [sic] with joy. And yet there he sat - | We went all over the West End & winded [sic] up the whole thing in one of the few Pubs that had anything left to sell (in Holborn). I was just halfway through a port when the wireless announced the king's speech. It was astonishing how quiet the place became when the king spoke [...] I'll never forget the crowds of people - those also clinging on high lamp-posts or advertisement ladders on buildings the stoical look on the faces of the police & First Aid men. The grins on peoples faces. The glazed look on the faces of those that had drunk too much - & so on - including the beautiful early rose from the garden that I wore. It was far better than any rosette'. And on 19 August 1945, under the heading 'The War is over': 'I spend the first V. J. day with Lionel. We went to the West End. And a good lunch in a Jewish Restaurant (called F<?>s I think). We then walked to Piccadilly - as Lionel had not seen it on the European War V. Day. It was quite a different type of crowd to the one I had seen with Leon. The mood it had was hooligan, & almost nothing else. The people hardly seemed to be laughing, but just literally banged into each other like cattle. Believe me it takes a lot to make me feel without an urge to laugh at something or other but the crowd of panic-crazy struggling people in Piccadilly made me feel like Frankenstein.'