Something new every month

19th Nov / 33
61 Deodar Road,
Putney
SW15

Dearest People,

[5 lines of family news]

You will want to hear the whole funny business of how I came to be so much in the Press, though I can't really tell you why, except that journalists seem to have got hold of the idea of my windows being "news" because of the Public House in one of them. It happened to come in because the place where the boys (on St Leonard) were playing cricket is a portrait of a real place - in that place there is a Public House & its name is the Suffolk Arms. It seems a little low to have become news because of my love of Public Houses! I am interested to know if Fr Wilson has any shocked letters from Temperance Societies.

Well, the first I knew of it was that Fr Wilson telephoned last Monday & said: "Do you take the "Daily Express" and when I said "No" [underlined twice] he told me to buy a copy as I might be amused. This I did & we were all highly amused, though we thought the style of of William Hickly [sic] who wrote it abominable. Dorry & Phyl tried to find adjectives to fit me, to match with such things as "mild mannered Morgan Jones" as tall, active, bespectacled, level headed etc -. How this got to be written I don't know, unless the journalists went to have a look at Fr Wilson who is begging for £5000 to build homes for 12 aged men & women.

Well, what seems to have caught on about this mention of the windows was that they are "the most extraordinary series of stained glass windows in Christendom". That each window does depict what they call an ideal remote saint as well as everyday incidents in East London, they entirely overlooked.

About 11 o'clock on Monday morning the telephone rang and I heard this - "The Central News speaking, can we send one of our photographers to take a photograph of Miss Rope in her studio in connection with the extraordinary series of stained glass windows in St Augustine's Haggerston?" I feeling rather bored and conscious that Phyl was in bed behind the curtain said "Well it isn't very convenient." However they pressed me & I said all right & they said they would send a man after lunch. They also said: "Don't let the other photographers who may want to come, come before we have been." The man came about 3 o'clock, a tall mild mannered man. He proceeded to take about six photographs of me in various attitudes of work. I happened to have a step ladder about & posed for him on it at my window & at my Hereford cartoons. He then asked if I ever did anything small at a table, so I faked up the picture which came out in the Daily Mirror of me tracing. I am leaning on a hand rest, a cartoon spread on the table & a piece of glass laid on the cartoon & I am tracing the drawing through onto the piece of glass. There is a small brush in my right hand which hardly shows & a palette in the foreground which doesn't show much.

We had a slight argument as to whether it wasn't a slightly tall order to say that this series was "the most extraordinary series of stained glass windows in Christendom". He however solemnly said: "I expect they are the most remarkable." He asked me if I was doing any more soon & I told him I was doing another after next Easter at which he said: "I shall make a note of that. And will there be any everyday scenes in it?" I told him there would probably be scouts at the bottom. Then he said with feeling: "Make it as remarkable as you can & I will come & take a photograph of it while you are doing it." I wondered if I should look very different. He asked me if he might say that I was the only woman stained glass artist, whereupon I warned him that there would be considerable trouble if he did. He said perhaps it would be rash as they got so many letters when by chance they got anything wrong. I did not like to say what I thought: How often by chance do you ever get anything right?

After he had gone I was soon rung up again. Is that Putney 3941? Can I speak to Miss Rope etc... It is the Press Association speaking. I have just been down to St Augustine's Haggerston in connection with that remarkable series etc. etc. Now can you tell me if it is usual to put a public house or a bus etc. in a stained glass window: isn't it rather unusual? I told him I knew another window, not mine, in which there was a bus. (Marga put one in once). Now have you any other remarkable windows in London in which there is a bus etc etc or anything topical? I told him I had other windows in London but I was afraid that they could not be called remarkable because they had not in them the necessary articles to deserve that term such as a bus etc etc etc. I told him that I was hackneyed enough to quite often put in a saint. We then chatted on the medieval glass painters & how they not infrequently put in their windows scenes or objects from their everyday life. He asked me if I thought there had been a revival of stained glass lately and I told him I thought there had. Altogether it was very amusing.

Then on Tuesday morning appeared all the papers with the pictures of self & windows & Fr Wilson looking as if he had done one himself. I had lent the photographer from the Central News photographs I had of S.Leonard & S.Anne, but some photographer went straight to the church..

I do think it too amusing for words how all the papers have the same things & to think they were so short of news they had to put in about those innocent windows. I was also much amused because the Sport & General Press agency photographer went down to Haggerston. I suppose the cricket attracted them. Besides that, three press cutting agencies want me to subscribe to them to send me all the press cuttings in reference to me & another person wanted to photograph me.

Didn't you like what the press put under the picture of me drawing the Madonna of Hereford - Miss Rope has drawn her inspiration from everyday things in the life of the East End. I sent a postcard of myself to Fr Wilson rushing down to the East End to receive inspiration from an aspidistra and a lamp post.

Well I never what a lot about myself.

Much love Tor.

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