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| Description | Diary of Isabel Fry. Much of this diary cover the care of, and death of 'Nurse' [ Ethel Weaver] .
Diary starts November 1947 ‘continued from brown notebook’
Nov.15 ‘N’ in hospital; caught a bus to Bareppa; ‘VR’ waiting for Fry, Fry went for supper
Nov 16, Mawnan – Mrs Plumsead brought violets and VR a posy; visited N (Nurse?) in hospital, worried about symptoms; read Beatrix Potter’s life; tea and music at Milburn-Smiths’
Nov 17, Mawnan Smith – hospital with E.W.; Fry worried about leaving next day
Nov 18 Clarendon Road – describes journey back from Cornwall through snow on train with a man who wrote all the way but admitted his papers were ‘really quite unnecessary
Nov 19 Bkld [Buckland] too cold to find diary to write in
Nov 20 Bkld – welcome home from Margarethe and Mrs Fordham; shopped in Aylesbury; day of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding
Nov 21 concerned about Nurse; Margarethe used the iron which had been forbidden; Miss Nelson came to visit Fry, she is old and lonely
Nov 22 Bkld – Nurse must have another operation, Fry fears she will to survive it; went to lecture at Buckland Archaeological Society on birds of St Kilda including fork Tailed Petral, and St Kilda Wren
Nov 23, on train – going to Falmouth to see Nurse (E.W.)
Nov 24, Crossfield, Mawnan Smith; to hospital with V.R., Nurse worried by operation; surgeon told Fry of large stomach cancer that Nurse is unaware of, all must hide it form her, including her sisters who visit her
This situation continues till Dec 3 when Fry mentions a ‘tragic letter from Spirou’ which mentions Rikki; and note from Judith T saying they moved to Oporto
Dec 4, Clarendon Road – traveling home sees a bittern; mentions Margery meeting her at Paddington; Mary Gott concerned about Charles who is backwards and problematic’
Dec 5, Bkld – home to find Wrights and Knights ‘at daggers drawn’; Miss Fordham says she cannot stay
Dec 6 Miss Fordham trying to get Miss Irvine to stay with Nurse; doctor visits to look at Fry’s knee; Will Nelson things bittern was heron
Dec 7 wrote article on ‘extension of school age’ for Aylesbury Club
Dec 8, Home – Mr Knight grumbling; letters form Spirou, discussing belief in afterlife; V.R. and Nurse
Dec 9 – Mr Wright equally antagonistic as Mr Wright; lessons with Tony, sorting out stones and shells to give to the museum; visit form Miss fuller and ‘a dear little boy’; Mr Sansom for stones and Sir William Ramsay’s table; Jens to talk about ‘ambient electricity’ project; letter from Margarethe
Dec 10 - Lulu Frey [Karnitsky] for lunch, Fry accompanied her singing; news from Margarethe, Nurse is worse
Dec 12 – Fry concerned that ‘RC’, ‘R. Cism’ [Roman Catholicism] has potential to “sweep England into her net”, mentions the Reformation
Dec 13 – Cherry for the night; Sansomes’ for tea – ‘Not exactly thrilling, but Liberals!’; letter from Margarethe, Fry feels liked
Dec 14 Roger’s birthday 81 years ago’ letter to Miss Fuller; Cherry to tea at Nelson’s; reading Winnat’s letters from Grosvenor Square, Fry admires him and wonders which he became a Tory leader
Dec 15 Tony to tea, Gillian Barrett for games; Mrs Fordham gone for Christmas so Fry must prepare own food
Dec 16 – visit from Gorandson girls with gifts; they are going back to Sweden; Council of Four Powers have broken down
Dec 18 – took shoes to Mr Gomme to mend but he wants to talk about Liberalism, education, apathy; worries about Knights, Wrights and Nurse
Dec 19 and Dec 20 worries about a kitten
Dec 21 Visiting neighbours; Mrs Hearne tells her about giving blood to combat ‘the change of life’ [menopause]
Dec 22 visit from Mrs Thompson, talks about memorial for her son Frank in the place he was killed in Russia, they agree on being ‘strongly Liberal; Yvonne and her mother arrive
Dec 24 mentions ‘old Gomme’; Tring Co-Op”; Marriot’s giver her clipping on death of Aleister Crowley;
Dec 25 Yvonne Jones and her mother for dinner; Nelson’s for tea – Fry amuses them with ‘Ruth Draper’s last night’s B.C.’
Dec 26 Gerry; Mrs Jones
Dec 27 Lunch and tea with Bovings’, Mrs Hobson and Penelope and grandsons, Alan and Nicholas
Dec 28 call on J.B.Grundy; reading Barnes’ ‘Rise of Christianity’
Dec 29 Margery stayed; Ronal Ward came to visit in his sailor’s uniform
Dec 30 Margery left; Mrs Flowers’ for lunch where she met Miss Bate who works in the museum, and knows anthropologist Dorothy Garrod, discussion on many anthropologists being ‘R.C.’ [Roman Catholic]; Melina Rosselli arrived late
Dec 31-Jan 2 Melina’s visit involving playing music
Jan 3 Mrs Baker in the afternoon who has ‘married a blinded soldier’; Avice arrives for weekend
Jan 4 W. Nelson looked in, good talk followed but Avice ‘strangely dry’
Jan 5 dentist visit; five children for ‘Bird Protectors’ group; Margarethe returns; Woodhouses’ for coffee
Jan 6 concerned about Nurse; concerned about Communism; Mrs Botman’s work on Mrs Edmunds’ old house
Jan 7 – 8 concerns re. Nurse; Margery mentioned
Jan 9 visit from Betty (Hilda) Moorhead and children, John Godfey and Audrey, she talks about South Africa and Malaya, mentioning her sympathies with the ‘native peoples’, also discusses rice shortage in Malaya due to jungle advancing on rice fields during war time
Jan 10 Miss Bate; Margarethe; Will Nelson and Lalla; Hanna Schiff; letter from Judith Tollinton ‘drenched in the tragedies of Bulgaria’s Communists’
Jan 11 more about Judith
Jan 12 looking for a replacement for herself, received response form advert placed in The Times; ‘Sir Hugh and Lady Dowag.’ for tea
Jan 13 Mr Sainsbury; Rotarians [Rotary Club]; Romania
Jan 14 description of War time agriculture film on milking cows
Jan 15 busy day in London; Mrs Skifferington White; Helen Barlow; Mrs Daley who is to come to Fry, and Erica too; met Joan at Friends’ House; M Billett the Head Keeper of Birds at Whipsnade to give a talk on turkeys
Jan 17 Mrs Hand; Miss Gouldstone
Jan 18 Mr Wood returned Fry’s watch, mended. He is working on ‘Supersonics’ in a Government lab; atom bomb and ‘bacterial warfare’; tea with Nelsons
Jan 19 Ghandi’s fast has been effective – Fry questions, using these words ‘are primitive people more answerable to a sense of shame, or responsibility? Or more imaginatively sympathetic? Or simply are we [Europeans] more hard hearted?’; Mrs Daley lets Fry down
Jan 20 visits a housebound old lady; talks to a builder with creative ways of getting round permits; Mrs Baldwin on giving away her coupons ‘Well I tell the young people, if you don’t do that you forget what freedom is’.
Jan 22 Mrs Hayward; Mrs Lough on convent education; Frau von Trabenberg; Bevin on Russia
Jan 23 lunch with Dons, looking a photographs of their life in India; Henry Winslow transcribed letter from Lulu
Jan 24 Margaret Haynes came for a book; tea with Buff Benson who is ‘off to Africa’; Mis Fordham left, alone with Mrs Badeley
Jan 25 Nurse is very ill; Else Smith to lunch; Philip Green to tea
Jan 26 Walcot Square – arranging for nurse to be moved to a nursing home in Woburn; Margery helps with arrangements; Joan Agnes; W.Nelson
Jan 27 Bkld – Waldo Fox is in prison in Nigeria; Avice seems to know little about it
Jan 29 Hilda Harrison stayed
Jan 30 Ghandi’s assassination; Avice reports that Waldo has been set up to disgrace him due to his pro-African sympathies
Jan 31 sees Nurse; lots of people are kind to Fry; Cherry stayed for the night
Feb 1-3 Nurse is very ill; Mr Gomme’s daughter; Maria Robles; Mrs Gomez; Mr Broster
Feb 4 is worried at doctor’s diagnosis of Maria Roble’s T.B.
Feb 5 Jens Boving
Feb 6 Nurse to take Communion
Feb 7 Czech Mr Stross from Alloys Company came to ask Fry to VNA meeting on state of Government; five girls for singing lesson; Jo B-Grundy
Feb 9 Mrs Kempster, new char woman; VNA meeting, Fry speaks about the future of Germany
Feb 12 reading The Pavilion of Women by Pearl Buck
Feb 13 Avice and two Latvian women visit
Feb 14 Nurse has died, Avice helped Fry all day
Feb 15 Gerry; Miss Nelson; Mr and Mrs Stross
Feb 17 Nurse’s funeral
Feb 19 visited Nurse’s grave; W.I. [Women’s Institute] re. increased food production; Liber[al] Brains Trust meeting
Feb 21 ‘Lib mtg’; Robinsons; Clement Davies
Feb 22 Margery, who has “a little Siamese girl on her hands’, talk of Waldo – how to get him out of prison, B.Russell’s broadcast on God; communism in Poland and Czech [Republic]; outrage and outbreak in Palestine
Feb 26 Swedish story translations; Mrs Green
Feb 27 tea with Miltons; spreads word of liberalism to electrician
Feb 28 Archie Andrews; communism constant threat/worry
Feb 29 Tony; Eddie Webb; tea at Clarkes’
Mar 1 Mrs Rogers; Ratcliffes; Woodhouses
Mar 2 Joan and Ida; talks about Nurse’s death with Hanna
Mar 3 met Avice; Mrs Marsden; went to see cleaned Old Masters with Avice; Mrs Vaisey ‘Friends of the Poor [address]’ shows Fry homes for old women in Wimbledon run by Miss Ashfield; Solvi Bateson
Mar 6 Miss Krassin; girls for singing lesson; Herbert Hammon who stayed with Fry when he first came over from Germany, he has orthodox views ; Bird Protectors meeting; Wassermans’ visit – Anni tells story about a young woman in need of contraceptives but unable to procure or receive what Anni gets her[possibly Dutch cap] due to Petain Laws in France [strict laws regarding use of contraceptives that were initiated/the legacy of Philippe Pétain who collaborated with the Nazi government in the construction and running of the French State in 1940]
Mar 7 a women wishes to work for Fry to escape her divorced husband but Miss English has the post
Mar 8 deposits Will in the bank; to museum for Mr Sansome to show Ethiopian boys things; Mrs Hay; Miss Grundy; Mr Bromley to tune piano, he says business is bad, and this is generally a sign of bad times
Mar 9 Mrs Haywood to tea; Mrs Woodhouse
Mar 10 May Brown to dinner and to put daffodils on Nurse’s grave; Archie Andrews with ‘tale of woe’; Jens; Hilma concerned about next war; reports of chaos in Russia
Mar 11 Violet Roskile to dinner, looked over George Fournier’s pottery; Violet refused to take French child for holidays; Jo Beard[o] Grundy; letter from Halide; Jan Masaryk is dead, suicide or assassination?
Mar 12 Mrs Stross discussing ‘dim feelings of the English people’ due to concerns re. Russia and communism; Audrey Hemcock to visit, she is working in Sir Cockroft’s office, I part due to her good hand writing
Mar 13 Jo’s cat has dies; Yui Ming to visit with wife, discussing China, Russia, Communism, dislikes methods describes cases of convictions, is for Chiang
Mar 14 Rosita Yui took a bike, determined to learn to ride it; Sun Yat Sin, Yu’s grandmother helps refugees in Shanghai; Kowloon squatter; Hong Kong
Mar 15 Gerry; Avice talking about Waldo
Mar 16 Chybyham to Cornwall to sort out Nurse’s house and things
Mar 16 dinner with Mr and Mrs Chinn; tea with Violet – Alan Hodgekin is getting F.R.S., she thinks for Radar work
Mar 17 sorting out Nurse’s thing (Ethel Weaver’s) things with help of her ‘cousin’ Molly Baker; Dr Milbourne
Mar 19 Brent Knoll – ‘Af’s’ embroidery show
Mar 21 Proctor-Haywood family; talk of Russia and Sweden; Hudson’s also talk about Russia
List of expenses included on back page/cover of diary.
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