“Dear Mum
I’ve been doing so much here that I don’t know where to start.
Betty came and called for me on Monday morning (this place isn’t in the phone book, private number, and it’s been a frightful nuisance for people trying to get in touch with me) and took me down to the changing of the guard, then around the main streets near Trafalgar Square and Piccadily. We had lunch together, explored the shops, then she left me in St Pauls while she went down to Cowens and I came back from there”.
Excerpt from Jean’s letter to her mother
“Betty called for me Monday morning and took me to see the changing of the guard (what a thrill that was). I then trailed around like a puppy lapping everything up while Betty did business in a few places. We had lunch in a Lyons Corner House near Piccadilly Circus, explored the shopping centres and lastly she left me in St Paul’s…I stayed for evensong and spent so long exploring the crypt that I had to come home for dinner without climbing to the galleries, so must go back some time. You just can’t imagine how huge the place is. I don’t like the architectural style of St Pauls, but it’s so grand and huge that it’s breath-taking. Even looking up into the dome you can’t realise how vast it is until you look down again to the people round you. It was a peculiar feeling to see in the crypt the graves of Wren, Reynolds, Turner, Millais, Holman Hunt and other painters side by side. There were lots of memorial statues by Flaxman, Arthur Sullivan’s grave, right beneath the dome – Nelson, and nearby Wellington. They even have Wellington’s funeral carriage down there.”
Excerpt from Jean’s letter to her sister Mary, 23 May 1951
