460
DORIS LESSING
children and the great-grand-children of relatives. It would
be a mistake, however, on entering a house in which nothing has
been moved for fifty years, to diagnose a condition of fossilized
late-Victorian integrity. They read every book reviewed in the
Observer
or the
Times,
so that I recently got a letter from
Aunt Rose inquiring whether I did not think that the author
of
On the Road
was not perhaps---exaggerating his difficul–
ties? They know a good deal about music, and write letters of
encouragement to young composers they feel are being neglected
-"You must understand that anything new and original
takes time to be understood." Well-informed and critical Tories,
they are as likely to dispatch telegrams of protest to the Home
Secretary as letters of support. These ladies, my aunts Emily
and Rose, are surely what is meant by the phrase
English
spinster.
And yet, once the connection has been pointed out,
there is no doubt that Judith and they are spiritual cousins,
if not sisters. Therefore it follows that one's pitying admiration
for women who have supported manless and uncomforted
lives needs a certain modification?
One will, of course, never know; and I feel now that it
is entirely my fault that I shall never know. I had been Judith's
friend for upwards of five years before the incident occurred
which I involuntarily thought of- stupidly enough-as "the
first time Judith's mask slipped."
A mutual friend, Betty, had been given a cast-off Dior
dress. She was too short for it. Also she said: "It's not a dress
for a married woman with three children and a talent for
cooking. I don't know why not, but
it
isn't." Judith was the
right build. Therefore one evening the three of us met by
appointment in Judith's bedroom, with the dress. Neither Betty
nor I were surprised at the renewed discovery that Judith was
beautiful. We had both too often caught each other, and our–
selves, in moments of envy when Judith's calm and severe face,
her undemonstratively perfect body, succeeded in making
everyone else in a room or a street look cheap.
