The Provincial Lady in America
E.M. Delafield, Brits Abroad and transatlantic tensions between the wars
E.M. Delafield’s Provincial Lady books are huge favourites of mine, and I found myself thinking about her when, unexpectedly, I ended up spending a few days solo in the US. I shouldn’t have been particularly daunted. I speak the language, I even lived in the US for two years. But … it’s been a while. Maybe, like a lot of us since the Covid lockdowns, I’ve found myself becoming more of a homebody. So as I fretted about distant family, the fact that I can’t actually remember any of my credit card numbers, and whether my Uber account would work in Boston (it did), I felt a new respect for the intrepid Lady as she set off on her tour of the States in 1933.
For those who haven’t read them, the Provincial Lady books are the lightly fictionalised diaries of prolific novelist Elizabeth (or Edmée) Dashfield, whose writing name was E.M. Delafield. Delafield mainly wrote rather gloomy novels, at great speed, to supplement the stretched income of her Devon household, in between struggling with domestic demands as a wife and mother of two children. The magazine Time and Tide requested that she write something funny, and so Delafield turned her own life into a kind of 1930s Bridget Jones’ Diary, albeit about middle age. Challenges include put-downs by her husband’s snooty employer, paying the rates, squabbles at the local Women’s Institute, the inadequacies of the Parish Magazine and finding a wearable dress for the village fete. The Diary of a Provincial Lady was a hit, and along with its sequels has never been out of print.
The joy of E.M. Delafield is her very human reactions. The Provincial Lady in America begins with what should be a triumphant moment. She has been asked to go on a speaking tour of the United States: this is, although it is not exactly spelled out, due to the great success of her first diary, The Provincial Lady. (There is a kind of meta thing going on with the diaries, as the subsequent diaries often refer to Delafield’s success with diary one, while also maintaining the pretence that she is a Devon housewife who spends most of her time dealing with laundry emergencies rather than penning novels.) Delafield’s response to this triumph is panic: she likes the idea of America, but it terrifies her, and she is wracked with guilt at abandoning her family. She also knows her husband, the sardonic Robert, will disapprove. So she doesn’t tell him, but bangs off a reply demanding what seems like outrageously generous terms. When these are granted, she is stuck, and goes on avoiding telling him while waiting for the perfect moment to break the news … until, naturally, the tour organisers call and Robert answers.
I’m always rather fond of Robert (in reality Paul Dashwood, an engineer who designed the Docks in Hong Kong before relocating to Devon and becoming a land agent). In this case, he assures the nervous Lady that she will be fine in America providing she remembers which way to look when crossing roads. (This advice I took to heart in Boston.) Then he accompanies her to her transatlantic liner, sees her onto her cabin, and orders champagne.
Delafield’s trip took place at a time of changing UK-US relations between the Wars. Prior to World War I the UK considered itself Top Dog, although economically it had been falling behind for a bit. After World War I however it was undeniably broke, and the US in the driving seat. This caused a certain amount of resentment among the British upper classes. Robert responds badly when his wife’s visiting friend, Rose, praises American living standards:
“[Rose] Says All American houses are Always Warm, which annoys Robert. He says in return that All American houses are Grossly Overheated and Entirely Airless. Impossible not to feel that this would carry more weight if Robert had ever been to America.”
This underlying anti-Americanism was fairly common at the time. John Maynard Keynes – the subject of my two novels – rarely visited the US prior to World War II, a surprising omission in someone whose life goal was to transform the world’s economic system and save western civilisation. His fundamental lack of rapport with the Americans meant many ruffled feathers, undermining his role as UK negotiator at the end of World War II at Bretton Woods. Some of the English upper classes went much further, of course: John Le Carre’s Tinker Tailor novels suggest British chagrin as a motive for treachery – and here he is surely thinking of Kim Philby, Guy Burgess et al, “The Cambridge Five”, whose betrayal of their country began in the interwar years.
But to return to the delightful perambulations of the Provincial Lady ...
Despite frictions and resentments, the British found the lure of American money irresistible. In England, Delafield spent a lot of time selling her clothes to pay the bills (via the 1930s equivalent of Ebay), eating unappetising food (bovril, stale cake and leftovers) either at home or in unglamorous cafes, and even pawning her great aunt’s ring to pay the bills. Even if some of this was exaggerated for comic effect, the overall “make do and mend” rang true. Britain was not part of the roaring twenties. Austerity had followed the Great War, intensified by the UK government’s decision to return to the gold standard in 1925, which made many UK exports uncompetitive. The worst effects of this were felt in the industrial areas – those dependent on mining, steel, shipbuilding etc – far from the Lady’s stamping grounds in leafy Devon. But although unemployment, strikes and hunger marches make scant appearance in Delafield’s diaries, the background of decline is there.
Ironically, by 1933 when Delafield made her trip, the tables had turned somewhat. Britain crashed out of the gold standard in 1931, causing Maynard Keynes much jubilation, as being released from the gold standard did mean a massive cushioning from short term economic woes. Keynes recognised however, that world prosperity relied on “trade recovery in the United States” and the US was locked in the crippling unemployment of the Great Depression. Delafield, though, was still visiting a much bigger, richer and more confident country. It’s true that her American publisher told her gloomily that speaking engagements would be harder to find as many of the women’s clubs that would have hosted her had been hard hit by the Depression. Yet, as she toured the Chicago World Expedition, drank cocktails on Long Island, or had her hair done in the hotel salon in Manhattan, she appeared to be experiencing a land of unquestionable abundance.
It’s also interesting to consider what America thought of her. Even her natural self-deprecation can’t hide that Delafield and her diaries were hugely popular: she was greeted by press photographers at railway stations and a talk in a Chicago department store attracted an audience of over five hundred. Nevertheless, Americans saw her through a particular lens. Writer Mary Borden, who had a foot in both countries, obviously felt a need to explain her when writing the introduction to the American edition of her Diary:
“… this is the story of a very English lady … and it is told by herself in a very dry, shy, English way. She leaves almost everything out that could give her away to a stranger, so the reader must read between the lines and watch for the slight cues to her emotions … She is so unegotistical that it would almost seem that she was contented in her cramped surroundings, and yet I believe that she hated the endless struggle to make two ends meet …. Some of her compatriots tell me that she didn’t hate it, wasn’t courageous … [was] quite content with her narrow, deep, little life. I differ. I think she was too intelligent not to rage at her niggling fate …”
Of course, in part this is a tribute to Delafield’s gift for making fiction from mundane and ordinary frustrations. At the end of the day, though, the Diaries are a picture of a woman with servants, a country house, a steady marriage, plenty of invitations and lots of friends and acquaintances, whose writer was in fact a prolific and successful novelist, playwright and journalist. I doubt any British reader would have shared Borden’s sense of pity for Delafield’s “narrow” life – and I do wonder what Delafield would have made of it. Then again, Delafield had those royalty cheques to console her.
On one thing I do agree with Borden, Delafield was courageous. This is shown not just in the pages of her diary but in her life story. Her next solo visit, after the US, was to a far more intimidating destination: Soviet Russia. World War II saw her moving from the relative safety of the countryside to London. And when personal tragedy hit, not long after, she faced up to that too with grit and dignity.
For more on Delafield:
I'm glad!
Such an enjoyable read! Had been thinking of read ing the “Diary” books, and now I will, thank you!
Also, nice to see a familiar spot in the photo — enjoy the visit, and say hello to the turkeys for me.