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| Description | Diary of Isabel Fry. The abbreviation ‘S.M.F.’ used throughout this volume refers to Margery Fry [Sara Margery Fry], Isabel’s sister. Fry sometimes mentions what she is reading. Warning: this catalogue entry contains offensive terms which are included to reflect the content of the diary.
Mar 22 Mrs Baddeley is unmoved by recent political events – Trieste, Eritrea and Somaliland; cat has had kittens
Mar 23 letter to Marie Mauron
Mar 25 visitors Sylvia Pankhurst and son Richard, two Ethiopian princes, Merid and Samsone Beyene; Miss Perham; Tony to say happy birthday
Mar 26 Good Friday – the Ethiopian boys are demanding but do play games; Fry finds Sylvia and Richard Pankhurst difficult
Mar 27 tea with Nelsons; ‘boys to Whipsnade with Margarethe; reading Arabesque by Sherifa Musbak;
Mar 28 Easter Sunday – Ethiopians refuse to go to church
Mar 29 Methodist choir having a picnic on the lawn
Apr 1+2 Fry planning trip to France with S.M.F.
Ap 3 buying fish; singing lesson; Margarethe and Margasha to Batesons’; Merid and Samsone to theatre; Dick Frey to ask Fry to guarantee loan; received ‘plea to help Anglo-Soviet Friendship ‘a well camouflaged bit of Communist effort’.
Ap 4 Margarethe suffers ‘fits of melancholy and depression; to Miss Haywards to give advice to Miss Randall’s daughter on farming
Ap 5 to bank re Dick Frey’s loan ‘a woman has special trouble about such matters’; Ethiopian boys to look at early bikes in museum
Ap 6 Fry has sent her Ethiopian visitors to Gerry’s; Cripps budget and how taxes on beer and tobacco hit the ‘poor man…Puritans at work’
Ap 7 Fry had ‘to listen quietly to a solicitor reading out to me, or rather translating for my incapacity, into fairly simple Eng – the legal rigmarole of a guarantor’s liabilities which I being a female have to have a solicitor explain’; Anne Hodgekin; talks to Sainsbury re. budget and taxation
Ap 9 Anne Hodgekin, lesson in quill pen cutting; heart-to-heart with Margarethe; knee is very bad
Ap 10 Anna Margarethe left; singing lesson; Woodhouse family bring 18 eggs
Ap 11 Tony; Yvonne Jones, talks of friendship with Eugenie Dubois; Andrews’ family and Jo Beardor- Grundy; Andrews’ family cannot find anywhere to live; S.M.F. on radio talking about treatment of mentally ill [mental health]
Ap 13 Mrs Baddeley left; Todd girls come to choose kitten, talk of ‘dogmatic lingo of the Board of Education’, they are training to be teachers; Lady Dow. To tea, her husband is in Jerusalem; complaining about government
Ap 14 Lala Nelson; talks to garden birds; concerns about Russian tanks near Berlin
Ap 15 Jo B-G brings a potato for Fry to grow for a rescue home; mentions Miss England; ‘Capital punishment abolished for 5 years’
Ap 15 Ida Rohtert didn’t visit; Lala Nelson; Miss Clarke; Latvia, Austra Krassin tlaks of torture of people in Latvia; Howes; Miss English’s furniture arrives
Ap 17 singing lesson; Andrews’; birds
Ap 18 article on Margery in Observer 'dragging in Elizabeth Fry', mentions Agnes Fry but not Joan; Mr and Mrs Hirst to tea; Gerry and Violette Stein
Ap 19 Nicole Limbosch; read Morris’ Phoenix Cup
Ap 20 storm last night with strange effect on phones; two Beyenne returned; Gerry took Fry to take Ramsay experiment table to Aylesbury museum
Ap 21 sent Beyenne boys back to Miss Pankhurst; Mangasha stayed; Fry makes some derogatory remarks about Polish Jews; Mrs Haynes asks to have a chapel garden fete in Fry’s garden
Ap 23 Fry took Mangasha to Wendover, comments on 'black boys'; S.M.F had broadcast on cinema and morals, this caused long discussion between Fry, Miss English and Nicole Limbosch; S.M.F. did not commit
Ap 25 Bird Protectors meeting; Gerry; Sir Hugh and Lady Dow, talk regarding UNO government in Jerusalem, description of conflict between Jews and Arabs; Nicole Limbosch is incensed by Sir and Lady Dow’s comments on Jews as ‘Semites alike after money and 0 else’. Nicole later recounts her own escape from imprisonment by ‘Gs’ [Nazis]
Ap 26 Miss parsons brought children from her school to look at flints; Ida Rohtert to arrive
Ap 27 Nicole left, Fry sums her up; spends time gossiping with Ida
Ap 29 talked to Nicole Limbosch who was called to Law Courts to be questioned on Belgian Law, she answered ‘It is ____’ and was fined two guineas
Ap 30 Ida Rohtert left; listening to debate on Liberalism
May 2 Clarendon Rd to see Anne who is expecting her baby this week; Tory and H Wilson
May 3 Mr Grieves for knee; Margery and Noy; Katherine Hodgekin re. Howard
May 4 bought a hat; tea with Fletchers, talk re. B[eatrix] Potters’ father; Mrs Creech Jones; Avice phoned
May 5 booked train to France; J. Mason’s show of pictures; S.M.F. is ‘indignant with the Jews <…> while Pamela has become hotly pro-Jewish! So the family may be divided.’.
May 6 Bkld Andrews’ have moved in with nowhere else to go; Cherry; Sheridan Russell; Miss Stuart; Oliver Strackey; Richard de la Mare; Wm Nelson
May 7 village election vicar 75, Communist 49
May 8 Fry thinks about trip to France – difficulties with knee versus being older and no more able next year; describes spring day sitting outside; Archie Andrews
May 9 describes flower scents; Nelsons; Tony for talk ‘Dare to be a Daniel & Theras”; Jo B.G.
May 10 Miss Krassen brought altered dress; Mrs Flower
May 11 mending clothes
May 12 Govt have ordered killing of 80% of rooks.
May 13 Fry addresses mother of vigilante bird killers.
May 14 took children to Whipsnade; Maria arrives for Whit.
May 16 talks about establishment of Jewish state in reference to news from the U.S.
May 18 thinks about 20 years ago, reads diary entry/travel notes from 1901; worries about Communism; H Harrison and Anne turn up with dog and cat.
May 20 Looks at house in W. Oxon.
May 21 Norma Barlow; Mary Bennett.
May 22 William Nelson; Raymond Powell came to get kitten, is damaged by war
May 23 Natalie Greg visited
May 25 train to Dunkirk, thinks about people who died/escaped/were carried off to be tortured from there; Violette Stein and George Fournier
M 27 Rue du Bac exploring Paris saw M [Margery] in her flat; visited Yvonne Marx, Jewess whose family were tortured and killed by Hitler; Ancel’s were there with other penologists
May 28 exploring Paris; Lulu Karnitzka; Margery spoke at Sorbonne; evening with Violette
May 29 dinner with Pierre and Lucy de Gaiffier; travel difficulties; discussions on Cuba
May 30 train to Cannes; lunch with Pierre and Lucy and Sylvie; talk about Belgium – aristocracy and bourgeois
June 1 Auberge Camassade, Tourettes-sur-Loup - describes train journey through France; geological features; hostess Dianne Van Domellen; describes previous evening of drinking, dining and company of ‘crowd of bohemians’
June 1 Madeleine Flandres; Diane; Mrs Lewis, civil servant
June 2 car to Fourettes for shopping; talk with Diane re. her work with the Resistance; Elsie Lewis
June 3-5 holiday activities
June 6 walk with Diane, talks about O’Sullivan Maloney; Fry talks to Belgian neighbour about eugenics and theoscopy
June 7 chez Jacqueline Merles, La Mouette, Sanery S/Mere – journey to Toulon, met by Margery and J Merle
June 8 journey to Mas d’Angirany talk with Jaqueline Merle re. U.S. Congregational Church
June 9 farewell party for de Boucken; Maurice; Mme Goutier; Merle; description of party
June 10 St Remy SMF Chas and Fry talk on individual state
June 11 Fry talks about the relationships between the friends they stay with – Alice, Chas, Marie, de Boucken, Laure Rou[manille]; describes Van Gogh cloisters
June 11- June 21 Fry describes various places they visit in southern France. Also alludes to relationship difficulties within their party
June 22 Margery visits a reformatory run by Roman Catholic nuns
June 24 Bkld – writing after arduous journey home from France, Sylvie Stein travelling with Fry
June 25 describes garden; Audrey Hancock and Jenny Chapman arrive; concerns re. situation in Berlin
June 26 Sylvie is poorly; dock strike; Archie Andrews reports ‘Yellows disease’ in Fry’s garden
June 27 Gerry; Marie Claire; annoyance at Jenny Chapman (unfair); William Nelson and Lalla anxious about Russia; Jessie Gomez came and talked about studies
June 28 Suzon Gontier; Violet Stein
June 29 Miss English not well, Fry worries about losing her to another job; three baby goslings delivered; dock strike
June 30 looking after goslings; Crawford Bensons visited to tell of their African tour
July 7 Mayortorne staff changes, Dorothea Dow
July 8 Josephine Mason
July 9 Joan and Ida
July 10 Avice; French civil service may strike
July 11 Avice talks about her work in the ‘Cripple’s home’; Baa and Jenkins; Bobby Piercy; Roman Catholicism
July 12 Mrs Plank; Mr V Gainsberg to discuss money market
July 14 Margery returns form France; concerns about Russia and Berlin; Mrs Richie talks about her experiences growing up Roman Catholic in Ireland; letter form British Consul in Munich
July 15 Fry berates herself for being unkind, disorganised etc.
July 16 Edward Ashcroft and family
July 17 Dr Oras with his wife, they are Russians in exile
July 18 Fry talks about drowning kittens, there is also a cuckoo in a robin’s nest that will be killed
July 24 Chapel people have a fete in Fry’s garden
July 25 Mrs P Green; Newmans’
July 26 Amy and Rose Bosan; Jens and Hilma Boving; worries about war
July 27 Joan’s birthday; Jonathan Hodgkins; talked with Dodson about disapproval of present government; with Agnes to choose posters.
July 28 Agnes; M Gott; Tory
July 31 gleaning with Maria Walker
Aug 1 Maria wishes to return to Spain, but Fry is concerned she will not be allowed out once there as she has renounced her religion of Roman Catholicism
Aug 6 went to Oxford; visited the Boving’s new house; took Hilma to Ruth’s who had ‘2 Indians, 2 Negroes & a very dark U.S. girl’.
Aug 7 Grace Wms [possibly Williams] and Huxley and Carol visit.
Aug 11 Fry talks about her book of Swedish stories. |