posted on 06 Sep 2018

The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E M Delafield

My recent reading has provided no greater surprise than the sheer pleasure and enjoyment offered by E M Delafield’s The Diary of a Provincial Lady. During the late-70s or early-80s I remember this being in vogue for some while and as a consequence I must have handled and sold hundreds of copies (perhaps it was the early-80s when I believe the book was ‘rediscovered’ and published by Virago?). But I thought it was just another Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady – or worse, quite literally what it described itself as on the cover.

None of this could be further from the truth.

E M Delafield was born Edmée Elizabeth Monica de la Pasture in 1890 and she died as the better known and prolific writer E M Delafield in 1943. The Diary of a Provincial Lady was the book that made her famous.

It is a slyly funny, deliciously satirical, warmly humane and beautifully observed period piece and consists of the daily goings-on of a Devonshire woman and her household – her laconic (not to say undemonstrative and dull) husband, Robert, the two children (and assorted house-guest school friends), assorted domestic staff and governess – and the local country gentry, the vicar’s wife, and Women’s Institute committee meetings that together preoccupy so much of her time.

But this provincial upper class lady has literary pretensions and a marvellously mischievous eye for social observation. That it is a version of E M Delafield herself is apparently beyond dispute. She went on to write several more volumes of Provincial Lady but many think this one the best. It covers 1929 and 1930 and in its own odd way offers a sometimes moving glimpse into a vanished inter-war world of provincial country society.

For no better reason than that it looked very pretty, and I remembered it being widely acclaimed some years ago, I scavenged my older daughter’s copy and began it one morning recently. As far as other commitments and interruptions permitted, I read it in a sitting.

The key thing with books of this kind – funny books, I suppose one must call them: the Grossmiths’ The Diary of a Nobody and Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat would be directly analogous examples – is that they mustn’t be merely facetious (although a touch of facetiousness is sometimes an essential aspect of their success); they must be well written; they must offer abundant character observation and accomplished character development; they must be written in a voice that eventually becomes almost as familiar as a family member’s, but is more lovable; and they must make one hanker (and the more ridiculously the better) for a historical period and society which in any other circumstances one would probably despise.

The Diary of a Provincial Lady does all of these things – precisely. Capturing its period charm isn’t easy. Although there are a dozen editions currently on the market, a good number of them are a little misleading – their covers slightly too modern (flapperish) or too antiquated; one expects Jeeves or Just William to step from the pages. Although I don’t have it, I understand that the Persephone edition reproduces the Arthur Watts illustrations from the first edition, and to my mind these are perfectly judged, as can be seen from the little inset of the original cover.

What I found most delicious about Provincial Lady was its satirised sense of social anxiety, and the provincial lady’s desire – despite herself and certainly despite her better judgement – to try and relive some of the more rackety bohemianisms of her earlier life with best friend Rose in Hampstead. But these always fail – just. And then there is her reluctant desire to convince guests that she is au fait with new novels or new exhibitions or emerging ideas – all too often resulting in an untruth or even a series of untruths as she tries to extricate herself from the first (an admission that she has read A High Wind in Jamaica, for instance, or has visited a new London exhibition of Italian art about which everyone is talking). There are wonderfully deft signifiers of wealth – a lady across from her in a railway carriage is reading a brand new hardback biography – as dull as ditchwater but that isn’t the point – and she notices that it has no circulating library sticker, suggesting it has been purchased outright and is the reader’s own. And then there is local rural society; the sheer volume of business conducted by post and on credit; the unassailable authority and rectitude of one’s bank manager; the fixtures in the village calendar… For keen social historians, Provincial Lady is pure gold.

And there are the provincial lady’s own bemused, grave asides to herself. I'll give you a taste of the style. Husband Robert has – unwisely – asked his sister and brother-in-law to stay. The provincial lady reminds him that this is the case and that the visit is imminent. His harrumphing disapproval (he spends his life or what seems a good part of it asleep over The Times) is predictable. The provincial lady muses to herself:

"Dec 11th. Does not a misplaced optimism exist, common to all mankind, leading onto false conviction that social engagements, if dated sufficiently far ahead, will never really materialise?"

Is it going too far to say this is E M Forster or even Virginia Woolf – but with a mischievous glint in the eye? I don’t think it is. If like me you have ignored this book for decades under the mistaken assumption that it is something entirely other than what it actually is, then do yourself a favour and pick up any one of the current editions available. Some time soon, on a chilly autumn day, when the lights are needed by four o’clock in the afternoon, and you’re listening out for the welcome rattle of tea things coming from the kitchen, you’ll remember that you have a copy of The Diary of a Provincial Lady and realise that it is exactly what you want to read.

 

Alun Severn

September 2018