Written in Cambridge and London. The first entry relates the remainder of the trip to Italy and the return from Bologna.
From 25 November, there are several references to Alethea’s involvement in the establishment of The Mummers, Cambridge’s first mixed sex theatre group, and other founder members, including Dick Phillips of Queens’ College, Alistair Cooke of Jesus College and Timothy White.
Other Cambridge activities include: Girton College Debating Society; the Liberal Study Circle; the Festival Theatre; the Marshall Society; skating on the frozen river Cam; dances; CU Madrigal Society; the Marlowe Society; and general lectures. The latter include: October - Virginia Woolf’s lecture at Girton on women writers of fiction, ‘addressed to the Society of the ‘Twenty Most Intelligent Women in Girton’ of which I seem to have become a member’ [the ODTAA Society (probably a reference to John Masefield’s novel of 1926, ODTAA - One Damned Thing After Another), possibly run by Queenie Leavis; see also GCRF 8/4/5 for collected file relating to Virginia Woolf’s lecture]; and January - Beatrice Power on ‘Women in the Civil Service & incidentally on the position of women among men. Oh dear, when will women stop agitating for equal rights?’.
London trips include a visit to Toynbee Hall in December.
There is relatively little mention of Aelfrida and Agatha in this volume: on 4 October Alethea says ‘Mother & Agatha are one - - - their communion is spiritual - - ‘.
Alethea’s friendship with John Wedgwood continues, although by November she says ‘I don’t think I feel quite as I did’; in February ‘This purely physical attraction annoys & distracts me. And I won’t let myself go’; and in March ‘I don’t think I should ever want to marry him’.
Other acquaintances and visitors include: Con Benson, Mollie Harrison [Homerton], Mac Gradon, Guy Boys, Jack Grant, Helen Megaw, Willie Searle, Bill Davey, David Graham, Joan Wood, Freda and Ludovick Stewart, Freda Gwilliam, James Whyte, Philip Verey, Alix Berwick, Agnes McDiarmid, Tom Henn, Arthur Roberts, Bice Crichton-Miller, Martin Lowther Clarke, Michael McCormick, Tom Quibell, Douglas Davidson, Anthony Wrightson, Isabel Drummond, Ronald Heathcote, Patrick Young, Humphrey and Ruth Warren, Joyce Lodge and Rhoda Harbinson.
Loose items: programme for Girton College Musical Society concert 2 March 1929; a poem entitled ‘Pocol’; and programme for ‘Entertainment in Aid of the College Mission’ at St John’s College 7 March 1929.