NAOMI MITCHISON

NOVELIST

Novelist Naomi Mitchison was part of the Second World War’s Mass Observation project, when diaries of life on the home front were scrupulously kept. There was one event she would rather not have had to record, when her baby died shortly after birth. “The silly thing is, I realise perfectly that much worse things are happening at this moment to thousands of people, but one cannot generalise as simply as that. “I at least cannot change pain into love. And all the little things hurt, hurt, hurt, and there is nothing to be done. Nor is to fair to speak about them to others; nor indeed, would the others understand one’s minding so much. But she was part of me, and wanted, all these months, and warm, and one said what a nuisance, but lovingly, and now the whole thing is needed: the love has no object. “I had dreamt so often of the sweet warmth and weight of a baby at my breasts and now my bound breasts ache. If I get at all drowsy I begin to expect someone to bring the baby in, and that’s hell. One has to keep awake.”