Provincial Lady

Lady B. stays to tea. (Mem.: Bread-and-butter too thick. Speak to Ethel.) We talk some more about bulbs, the Dutch School of Painting, our Vicar's wife, sciatica, and All Quiet on the Western Front. (Query: is it possible to cultivate the art of conversation when living in the country all the year round?)' If the question suggests a qualified answer, there is no doubt that the art of diary writing is alive and well and very, very funny in Devonshire in the 1920s. At least in the hands of E. M. Delafield. Though poles apart in many ways, Bridget Jones's Diary could not have existed without her sometimes arch, often lofty, but deeply English upper middle class forbear. Diary of a Provincial Lady is a classic of its time, revealing the thoughts and concerns of a Lady embedded in family life and the mores of comfortable country life. She has a husband 'raised to the peerage', two children and servants; she is burdened by the superior Lady Boxe, the tiresome vicar's wife and the constant temptation to live beyond her monthly household allowance. But she soldiers on, recording her days with acute observation, wit, self-deprecation and colour. A balance to the Bloomsbury intensity of the day, this is a classic that has never been out of print and now comes to life in this pitch-perfect reading by Georgina Sutton.

“The Provincial Lady Goes Further” is the immediate sequel to “Diary of a Provincial Lady”, and life mirrors art. Our Provincial Lady has found herself, unexpectedly, with a literary success on her hands! She is suddenly 'somebody', both in her Devonshire environs and in London, where she establishes a bolthole-ostensibly so she could concentrate on the much-awaited sequel, but also so that she can enjoy the fruits of being a best-selling author! In real life, this sequel was the first of many to come, as E. M. Delafield worked imaginatively to satisfy the public demand for antidotes to modernism-especially the hauteur of the Bloomsbury Set. In art, “The Provincial Lady Goes Further”, using the same diary format, proves to be just as amusing (if not more so) as its predecessor, and full of pointed observations about her targets-in this case fashionable London of the 1930s (it was published in 1932). Reader Georgina Sutton again delights in the tones of an upper-class lady, who, up from the country and immersed semi-willingly in artistic and fashionable environs, can't quite equate the posing, the outrageous dresses and equally outrageous behaviour with her eminently well-grounded sense of humour.

No one could have been more surprised than our Provincial Lady to receive an invitation from her American agent to travel transatlantic and embark upon a programme of lectures and signings. She was particularly amazed because, having received an overture sometime before and feeling that she would rather stay in the English countryside, she requested that they meet quite a few 'requirements' before she would agree to go. They met every stipulation. 'Am completely thrown on my beam-ends by this. Can I possibly be worth this?' And so off she goes. And, courtesy of her diary, we have an entertaining account of her shipboard life, her arrival and immediate encounters with enthusiasm - which sometimes stretches her credulity, and English patience. It is all go, window-shopping on Fifth Avenue, cocktails, meetings with a wide range of writers, society ladies, and even an old acquaintance. And then there are the book shop signings, the lectures to the good, the great - and the lesser great. It is a whirlwind. How does our Provincial Lady respond to all this after the slower pace (really? What about the domestic dramas?) in her country home? Georgina Sutton once again represents her with vigour, humour and a lively personality. This is book 3 in the Provincial Lady series.

The Provincial Lady in Wartime, though the last of the Provincial Lady series, is one of the finest. No further 'Diaries' had appeared since The Provincial Lady in America (published in 1934) when, in 1939, Harold Macmillan, then chairman of Macmillan publishers and a fan, made a personal request to E. M. Delafield for a new book. The onset of the war with Germany was serious, but, he said, Britain, was in need of the entertaining but pertinent observations from the Provincial Lady! Delafield duly set to work and produced the longest and in a way the most interesting of the 'Diaries' without losing its sense of fun, of seemingly casual frivolity. The Provincial Lady in Wartime covers a short time - from 1 September 1939 (just before the declaration of war on 3 September) to 21 November 1939, when fact again met fiction and E. M. Delafield was really 'called up' to work for the Ministry of Information. As a result, the focus in the book was on the 'Phoney War' when the country found itself in a fever of preparation without the intense action that was to follow a short time after. The Provincial Lady finds herself in London, looking for voluntary work to support the war effort, which proves an unexpectedly difficult thing to achieve. Her interactions with a varied host of companions, also caught up in a strange frenzy, reflect so clearly the mood and tension of the time, yet the account is witty, apposite - and so very English, with the stiff upper lip underpinning it all. This book is both hugely entertaining and a faithful portrait of the months before hostilities began in earnest - as seen, of course, from the quirky eyes and particular milieu of the Provincial Lady, whom we have come to love and admire. Sad, then, that it was to be the last 'Diary'. However, this recording also contains The Provincial Lady in Russia, the three articles Delafield wrote for Harper's Magazine in 1937 covering her three-month visit to the USSR. These deft pieces of more personal journalism are again witty, observant and informative, showing how ably Delafield combines a light touch with more serious conclusions. The three essays are: 'The Provincial Lady in Moscow' (Harper's Magazine, January 1937) 'They Also Serve: The Provincial Lady in Leningrad' (Harper's Magazine, February 1937) 'To Speak My Mind About Russia: The Provincial Lady in Odessa' (Harper's Magazine, March 1937) As always, Georgina Sutton serves E. M. Delafield so well, with a vivacious yet perfectly placed reading.