The Lonely Ones

By ELIZABETH GUNDREY LONELINESS seems to be re- placing poverty as society's disease. Its grip is not con- fined to any one class or age-group. `Everyone experi- ences it,' Eva Bartok said recently of herself. But some find it difficult to climb out of the pit of loneliness. To feel

solitary when in a crowd. or acutely lonely in marriage, can be more desolate than_ to seek solitude from choice.

Loneliness is first difficult to diagnose, then not easy to cure. Its causes are' varied. The only problem common to all the lonely is that ,they, do not seem to have a problem: no thalido- mide tragedy to bring them into the headlines, no unemployment statistics in which they figure. Only when loneliness swells to mental illness do they become anyone's concern.

But increasingly efforts are being made to find the lonely ones and bring them back into the community the widows, the bedsitter girls, the housebound mothers, students from abroad, the old.

Behind a number of attempts to reach them is one woman, Mrs. Norah Phillips. That she is secretary of a women's organisation is only part of the reason why she is doing so much. Her office is a springboard from which she gets things done, but what she achieves is often managed by unconventional means and always coloured by her own individualistic way of tackling matters: red tape brushed aside, spades called spades (even in the Minutes) and 'activity set swirling around her.

Mrs. Phillips has been concerned about the londiness of a variety of people on their own: young people in bedsitters, professional women such ,as school matrons doing a residential job isolated from congenial contacts, the divorcee, the spinster left alone after a lifetime of caring for parents, the overseas worker returning to retirement. All are lonely as a result of severance of their previous ties of family of friendship. Norah Phillips wrote a letter to the Sunday Times which provoked 300 letters from Londoners longing to make contact. She met most of them at a series of coffee meetings, where she heard from one after another, 'There's nowhere to go, nothing to do, at weekends.' No mixed groups exist for the twenty-to-forty-year-olds.' 'If only there was a link between people wanting rooms and others willing to offer them to congenial companions.'

Out of these meetings sprang six Contact Clubs in London, Wolverhampton, Manchester and Leeds, with more to follow. Generally, these loosely-knit and very informal groups meet in one another's rooms once every fortnight. From them, sonic friendships spring: even if nothing more than a companion with whom to go to a theatre or cinema, this can be a. very .big step forward for many. The ages are very varied, but the occupations are all professional and execu- tive. Men, too, have been writing to say they need something like this:

Mrs. Phillips also giVes her lonely ones infor- mation about other groups likely to interest these people, carefully chosen as having something to offer the intelligent man or woman whose needs will not be filled merely by joining an organisa- tion or attending meetings. Included in her list are bodies like the Efficiency Club in West- minster (for businesswomen), the East-West Friendship Club in Bloomsbury (for non-Euro- peans), the London Appreciation Society and the London Observers (both providing visits to unusual places). Play-Playwright (a group for theatre-lovers); and. of course, the YWCA and YMCA Clubs, the Coffee Pot Clubs for young graduates and the Business and Professional Women's Clubs- - in and 'outside London.

The special loneliness of au pair girls and other foreigners here is the concern of the Friends of the Island ('no man is an island'). There are plenty of clubs now for non-Europeans: the Friends is one of the very few to offer a meeting place for mixed European young people and a place at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields where they can relax with the English, who often then invite them to their homes. They also have stacks of information about other clubs: their various lists could interest many English girls, too, who are alone in a city.

Mrs. Phillips has this year also been looking into the particular problem of widows—mainly with regard to pension rights, the education of their children and other practical issues. But from meetings to discuss these topics, she came face to face with the social needs of widows, too, and their special loneliness. Her Women's Clubs have drawn in many of these women, while others have found a solution in a somewhat older, and professional, organisation—the Cruse Clubs. These clubs, the fundamental purpose of which is to provide a counselling service and advise widows in financial or other straits, have a news-sheet and information about suitable training schemes, profitable hobbies and so on. So far eight towns (in the south, except for Hull) have a Cruse Club, their members helping one another—and other widows —to take the sharp edge off bereavement and loneliness. It is shocking that the clubs' chair- man, Mrs. Margaret Torrie, can say, 'The widow is no longer asked to married friends' houses, to parties, weekends or even the odd coffee party or to share a drink at a pub.' The clubs fill this need. And where one woman might find it too mach of an effort to take classes, do voluntary work and go out, two together may manage it.

But it is not just the single women who feel alone today. The housewife isolated in a suburb, her husband's hours of absence increased by long commuting, and her sole diversion the immature conversation of her children, is in a situation from which it is even more difficult to escape. A few hours' opportunity to visit friends or a library, to go to choir practice or do volun- tary work, is now available to some who have got together to form a play group for children. Mrs. Tutaev was the leading spirit in this move- ment, which exists to fill the gap created by the shortage of nursery schools. Each group rents, say, a church hall for a few hours and pays one of their number 10s. or £1 to look after a number of children (age two and a half to five): there's no shortage of takers, as it's a job to which their own child can be taken. Often, the mothers take it on in turns and thus make friends while working together.

For those who can rarely get out of the house at all there is organised letter-writing, first with similarly placed strangers, then leading to more personal friendships. There are now correspon- dence magazines all over the country, each one uniting about a dozen scattered women who send the editor a letter a month. These are put into a folder and circulated—and, as one contribUtor says, 'One can often write more freely tb strangers about one's anxieties.' The twelve are likely to have very dissimilar backgrounds—yet often similar problems. Sometimes, the editor sets a topic for discussion: pros and cons of board- ing schools, or of unlimited hospital visiting, for instance. Holiday addresses and children's clothes are exchanged through the magazine. Occasionally a specialist interest (slimming, or unusually large families) links the writers. How to start or join a correspondence magazine? Mrs. use Salomon (see below*) can advise. More professional is the one run by Farmer's Weekly, which has some 300 Farm Women's Clubs up and down the country, a lively bunch of which Barbara Hargreaves is the prime mover.

Then there is Mrs. Prys-Jones's Register of

* Addresses of organisations mentioned: Mrs. Norah Phillips, National Association of Women's Clubs, 26 Bedford Square, London, WC1. (Contact Clubs, etc.)

Friends of the Island: Mrs. Bremner, Thatches, Brasted Chart, Westerham, Kent.

Mrs. M. Torrie, Cruse Club Counselling Service for Widows and Their Children, The Charter House, Richmond, Surrey.

Pre-School Playgroups Association: Mrs. Tutaev, 4a Cavendish Mews South, WI.

Friends By Post: Mrs. Ilse Salomon, 54 St. Michael's Avenue, Bramhall, Cheshire.

Farm Wives' Clubs: Mrs. Hargreaves, Longacre Press, Fleet Street, EC4.

Register of Housebound Wives: Mrs. Prys-Jones, 2 Sefton Road, Croydon, Surrey.

New Forum : Mrs. Little, 120 Marlborough Hill, Harrow, Middlesex.

Housebound Wives. This started (like a lot of these enterprises) with a reader's letter—in the Guardian. It has about a hundred voluntary or- ganisers up and down the country, and 3,000 members: sole qualification, 'a lively and in- quiring mind.' Informality is the keynote, with meetings in each other's houses, occasionally with an expert to discuss some topic—from Picasso to CND.

And, again a self-help venture, a magazine specifically for women tied to the house, New Forum. In this, housebound wives write articles or letters, occasional poems, or reviews of books relevant to their situation and exchange experi- ences on things like part-time work or holiday exchanges.

For many people a purely social link is scarcely strong enough: a group with some positive pur- suit in common, often something developing a particular aptitude, provides a firmer basis. Whether it is an Investment Club or the Em- broiderers' Guild, evening classes or voluntary service, a Consumer Group or a Civic Society, the common interest brings together like-minded people without artificiality.

The hopeful thing about all these tentative

efforts is that they are largely self-help. Loneli- ness is one thing that do-gooders cannot, tackle from outside. The wish to extricate oneself, but only if powered by iron determination to succeed, has to be there first. Fear of repulse, lack of self-confidence, sheer inertia, a habit of reserve—these contribute to the persistence of loneliness amongst those who could make contact with others yet somehow never do.

Deliberately to seek out another even lonelier with the intention of solving not one's own prob- lem but theirs, is one way out. Somehow, in any gathering, two people attract others' company in a way that often one does not. Many of the self-help enterprises described above offer op- portunity. They cannot do more.

And looking at the list of them, one wonders whether some of the organisations might not help one another, to their mutual advantage. Housebound wives or farm women inviting to their homes European students from the Friends of the Island or widoWs from the Cruse Club. The Contact Club members doing some baby- sitting for the playgroup mothers. A little cross- fertilisation might open up quite new horizons for many of their members.