Hanging On: Diaries 1960-1963

Diaries of Frances Partridge #3

by Frances Partridge

Francis Partridge's diaries are the record of a woman who not only participated in the lives of the legendary Bloomsbury group, but was the circle’s oldest surviving member until her death in 2004. Hanging On contains, among her reflections on her own life, her private thoughts on the complex relations between herself, Dora Carrington, Lytton Strachey, and her beloved husband Ralph. It is with the death of Ralph in 1960 that this book opens. But even in the depths of morbidity, Frances Partridge never loses her knowledge of the fecundity of life, her sense of fun, her eye for absurdity, or her capacity and hunger for beauty, that much-derided Bloomsbury characteristic.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Frances Partridge CBE was the last surviving member of the Bloomsbury Group. She is most known for her diaries.

Her father was William Cecil Marshall, architect and runner-up in the very first Wimbledon tournament. She was the sister of Ray Garnett and Thomas Marshall.

Reviews

[Nicola Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Partridge's diaries. This one, I found in a second-hand bookshop in York, during a weekend break. I bought it immediately without bothering to check what part of her life was recorded within its pages. Thanks to my plane being delayed at Leeds airport, I opened it to discover that this was the diary she started two weeks after her beloved Ralph died. I had been widowed not eight months earlier. It's really lovely how certain books come to us at a certain time.

[Janet Bird · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Will read again at some point. They were a weird lot though, weren't they?

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The previous volume of the diary ended with the death of Frances's husband from a heart attack. This volume begins about three weeks after that, so she is in the throes of her recent bereavement. Despite her emotional torment she takes off for an extended trip abroad for the rest of the winter. I found myself wondering how these privileged people manage to do so much visiting and travelling, and how on earth that works in the aftermath of a death! There is very little here about anything practical (which is an aspect which looms over most new widows) - she eventually returns to her house (which had been her home for over thirty years) and seems to sail through the whole business of selling it, clearing it and moving away, spending hardly any time there again. (What happened to the cat? I think I missed that!) This is a picture of an upper class social world which was still underpinned by servants and money seems never to have been a problem. How very indulged some of them were (Frances is aware of it, not all her friends seem to be) - the episode in which she and her friend are asked to come down for breakfast at 9 when staying at a country house, instead of the breakfast in bed waited on by "all these servants", is funny. The editing is rather easier and less intrusive in this volume.
The diary ends on an ecstatic note: her only son, Burgo, having recently married (his young wife was another of the offspring of the Bloomsbury Group), becomes a father, and the birth of her granddaughter gives her something to live for, a purpose again after her loss. This is terribly poignant, as although there is no clue in the diary or its notes of what is about to happen, Burgo died very suddenly shortly after the baby's birth.

[Paulo Santos · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was not expecting much of this volume of Frances Partridge's diaries, convinced they would get less interesting as they became farther from the golden age of Bloomsbury - since Frances Partridge's claim to fame is mostly as a witness and friend of the Bloomsbury set. I was pleasantly surprised - this volume deals with the loss and mourning of her husband and her happy marital life, and for the first time Frances Partridge becomes the main character, now it's her personality, herself that matters, interesting in her own right. The book depicts the way she coped with her loss and how she endured the mourning period and was able to build herself a new life, not as happy as the one she had lived before, but satisfactory and fulfilling enough, which I think it was quite an achievement. From her diaries, Frances Partridge doesn't strikes us as a particularly intelligent person, nor especially witty or creative; her main quality is warmth, a keen aptitude to enjoy life and friendships, a kindness that must have made her dear to the people who knew her, which it seems to me a wonderful gift in itself.

And so the narration of this woman's life journey, sprinkled here and there with some Bloomsbury anecdotes, and also stories about the post-Bloomsbury British literary and cultural set, makes for a very interesting and uplifting reading.

[Adrian]

This volume starts just after Ralph's death and Frances is a mess. She tries to find solace in company but her diaries lack the usual sparkle. She moves to London and gradually her combative, curious spirit returns and the book ends on a high with the birth of her first grandchild.

[Karen-Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent reading. After the death of her beloved Ralph, Frances goes into a tailspin and this is her diary of how she survived. Frances is a very expressive writer, lots of adjectives and adverbs. Descriptive and alive.