From Morgan Bible & Journal 1939-44

An excerpt from Caradoc Evans's Journal, kept firstly while moving back to Wales from London and at their new house, Brynawelon, just outside Aberystwyth in the county of Ceredigion.

Margaret Roberts has found us four rooms on a farm near their mansion. The farmer received us in his second-best brown suit. He is from Hereford originally. He is seventy, as strong as a gorilla. His shoulders have humped into a kind of platform for carrying hay to his animals. He has a son who is stone deaf through inattention to his ears in childhood. He had to work in the wet and damp when he should have been in the hands of doctors. There is no farmeress. She went Up Above long since. Up Above is Marguerite’s. There is a housekeeper. Miss Daniels is her name. She is a gnomish little woman with gold rings in her ears. Marguerite has taken to her.

It looks as if we are here for the duration. The woman has started to write again. Pre-war contracts have been cancelled. Everything has been cut by half, take it or leave it. She does not seem to worry about that. The only thing that worries her is the slaughter of youth. She says the old men should go and get themselves killed off first and the politicians who are likewise old men. She says women should refuse to sleep with men or to bear children until the war is called off. She says the rock bottom reason for war is the jealousy of old men who deliberately bring about the slaughter of youth. She says all countries should be run by young people and we should have a better, less bloodthirsty world. When she gets going she is priceless and totally without logic.

The farmers think this is a very good war. In 1939 many of them were poor. Now many of them are buying second-hand motor cars at prices from £10 to £30. Even if chapel is only half a mile distant they drive to chapel on Sundays and week-night prayer meetings. They get petrol somehow. One farmer in thanksgiving for extra profits tells me he will make two of his sons Methodist preachers, it having been his intention of making one a preacher.

This house is on the main road and the garage is on the main road. I have put a notice on the garage door. This: “Notice to tramps. If your pipe is empty come to the back door and get it filled.” No tramp has seen it, but four have been directed to the house. This proves that tramps see no more than the middle of the road and that they are unable to think.

The servant here, a German Jewess refugee, went for a walk yesterday and she met a man. The man said to her: “I have five cows, seven pigs, and so on. Will you marry me? Let me know next Sunday. You will know me by my dog.”