What did we do before the Internet? Now there’s a question….
How did we cope in the days before we could post our daily status for the world to see and understand? Or reach blindly out into the ether and discuss the un-discussable with faceless strangers on digital talk boards? And twitter a running commentary of every hiccup, highlight and hiatus of our day in the hope that someone else might relate to how we feel? In short, in days of old, how on earth did we connect with our fellow human beings?
The answer is, we probably didn’t. Remember that old phrase, to suffer in silence? Well, there was a whole bunch of suffering and a big heap of silence in days gone by. The personal was not for general consumption like it is today. Unless, of course, you were ‘Ubique’, a brave lady who was driven to write this letter to a well known women's magazine in 1935….
‘Can any mother help me? She began, ‘I live a very lonely life as I have no near neighbours. I cannot afford to buy a wireless. I adore reading but with no library am very limited with books. I get so down and depressed after the children are in bed and I am all alone in the house. I sew, read and write stories galore, but in spite of good resolutions, and the engaging company of cat and dog, I do brood and ‘dig the dead’
In short, she fired a starting gun, the echo of which was to ring out for the next fifty-five years. The Cooperative Correspondence Club, or the CCC, as it came to be known was raised from the depths of a deep longing to communicate, to share and to understand how other people, women in particular, felt. Men had networks. They had work, clubs and they played games together. Women, particularly those in rural areas were separated from the herd, isolated, often with young children in tow and no-one else to talk to.
Women from all over Britain responded to the familiarity of this cri de coeur. Ladies from all walks of life overcame the limitations of common communications – and the etiquette of the day - to create something quite unique.
‘I am indeed sorry for ‘Ubique’ in her trouble’, wrote ‘Mother of Three’….’I wonder if Ubique would care to correspond with readers. I should be very pleased to exchange letters with her and this would give her fresh thoughts and would, I should think, cheer her up. Perhaps she would tell me if she cares for this idea.’
Ubique cared for this idea very much but she also didn’t have a lot of money for stamps. As an alternative, she suggested that they form a correspondence magazine. Each woman, writing under a pseudonym, would contribute something they had written, on any subject and mail it to Ubique. She would assemble the articles into a magazine, stitching the pages together by hand and mail the completed magazine to the first person on a pre-arranged list.
For the next fifty-five years, a group of twenty-four women did exactly this. Each month they wrote and created articles for CCC on the same subjects that interest us today. They wrote about their families and children, they chewed over politics, sex, orgasms, childbirth, religion, affairs – of the heart and otherwise – and just about everything else that women talk about now.
For fifty-five years, this magazine was read, digested, stuck in an envelope and posted onto the next person until the month drew to an end and it would all begin again.
Why am I not surprised as I write this? Because people have an innate need to connect to other human beings is why. Ask the question again: what on earth did we do before the Internet was invented? Here is your answer. People reached out to each other in precisely the same way they do now. The format was a little different but the motivation was just the same. The Cooperative Correspondence Club was a genuine precursor to the Internet. Had these ladies been around today, I have no doubt that they would have met on an Internet discussion board instead.
But would they ever have met in person? That I don’t know. This isn’t Guardian Soulmates after all. A unique set of circumstances meant that the CCC did meet in person and the war was the catalyst for this. In their effort to survive and make the best of a difficult situation, the war ended up drawing people closer together. People phoned and wrote to each other and some members of the CCC sent their children to billet with other members who lived in the countryside. Friendships were solidified and when the war was over, the CCC decided to hold a yearly ‘luncheon’ and catch up with each other face to face.
‘The first time I went to this luncheon….I was extremely nervous…I walked up and down, I was nervous to go in…I sort of crept in…and across the room there was this woman and we looked at each other…we never forgot this….there was a kind of glance or recognition between us, a sort of affinity straightaway.’
The very best thing, I am pleased to report, is that in 2003, whilst researching a subject for her master’s thesis, Jenna Bailey came across the beginnings of the CCC’s correspondence stashed away in the Mass Observation archive at Sussex University. As she delved into the archive, she realised that not only did she have a great subject for her thesis on her hands, but that she also had the beginnings of a great book.
‘Can Any Mother Help Me?’ is that book and you can buy it today on Amazon. Do not be fooled by the chick-litesque cover of this tome. This is rock solid stuff from cover to cover. These women were absolutely at their best when spinning the very real tales of their lives.
‘Can Any Mother Help Me?’ grips with a genuine cinematic tension and tightness as women recall episodes from their lives with real skill. ‘Yonire’ was forced to fight off a dear family friend in a church late one dark night. Such was the ferocity of his advance that she was forced to beat him over the head with her shoe….
‘I climbed over him and up the organ loft stairs and found a light. I switched it on and saw him lying in a pool of blood with the top of his head battered in, unconscious, and, for all I knew, dead. I was quite certain he was dead. Well, what would you have done?’
Amelia’s description of her battle to get to work during the Great Fog of 1952 is second to none. And Isis will keep you glued to your seat with the unrequited story of her love for her doctor, a passion that was to last a full three years…..
‘On one of the last afternoons in May, having done my housework and fed Matthew, I had a bath and changed into a summer dress and was just sitting down to write something for CCC when Doctor X appeared. He was wearing a natty summer suit and appeared to be in no hurry at all. When I asked, ‘Shall I fetch Matthew in?’ he said, ‘Not yet. Come and talk to me first.’….
This is a book of the finest order. For so many different reasons. If you don’t read it and spend the next year mailing it to all your friends, I will eat my hat. Don’t make me eat my hat. Or make me think of a smart ending for this post.
Pathetically, I had two, yes, two drinks of an alcoholic nature last night and feel rather the worse for wear. Don’t readers, whatever you do, ever give up alcohol. This will only ever serve to render you useless on the days that you do succumb.
Thank god for the Internet, at least I can tell you how I feel. That makes me feel slightly better. Kate is: tired but happy. And keen for you to enjoy this book as much I did. Here it is.
Wow, this was amazing... It's amazing how much humans crave the social experience. I guess it's all about how unbearable life is in solitude, but hard to leave when others are involved.
Posted by: AzureWolf | August 16, 2008 at 05:44 PM
So true.Many of these women had children and committments and it was simply what was expected of them way back when.
I really couldn't recommend this book enough. Its a real eye opener. I think I laughed, cried and gasped in equal measures.
Posted by: Kate Monro | August 16, 2008 at 06:58 PM