The Diary of a Provincial Lady

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Delafield's son Lionel died in late 1940, some suggest by his own hand, something from which she never recovered. Delafield wrote for publication in "Time and Tide", the periodical she often references, and evoked the experiences she shared with her readers. Delafield’s stand-in never quite shakes her quiet desperation and, like many of us, regularly soothes this affliction with retail therapy: “Feel that life is wholly unendurable, and decide madly to get a new hat. Unfortunately Vicky comes into the drawing-room later and says: "O Mummie, are those the bulbs we got at Woolworths? How was it that anyone living a comparatively sheltered, upper-class life 40 years ago could think and behave so exactly like me?

I go back to Rose's flat, and display waves (new hairstyle), and am told that I look fifteen years younger--which leaves me wondering what on earth I could have looked like before, and how long I have been looking it.

ILLUSTRATIONS "Robert reads the Times" Cook Mademoiselle The Rector "Very, very distinguished novelist" The Vicar's Wife Lady B.

curiously savage, self obsessed, alarming" [3] or "quite delightful, full of brilliant touches, serious, sad and funny at the same time". The Provincial Lady In America" has her view of American life, which is more benevolent than you'd expect. Behind this rather prim title lies the hilarious fictional diary of a disaster-prone lady of the 1930s, and her attempts to keep her somewhat ramshackle household from falling into chaos: there’s her husband Robert, who, when he’s not snoozing behind The Times, does everything with grumbling recluctance; her gleefully troublesome children; and a succession of tricky sevants who invariably seem to gain the upper hand.however we can surmise from The Provincial Lady in War-Time that in fact she spent quite a bit of time vainly looking for 'proper' war work and working in an ARP canteen.

Hairdresser’s assistant says, It’s a pity my hair is losing all its colour, and have I ever thought of having it touched up? At one level, the story of 'fast' Mrs Harter's developing romance with Captain Patch, which reaches a crisis with the arrival of her husband. After reading an article about George Bernard Shaw’s women she remarks that “intelligent women can perhaps best perform their duty towards their own sex by the devastating process of telling them the truth about themselves. To which the Provincial Lady inwardly responds, “Feel that, if she wishes to discourage further experiments on my part, this observation could scarcely be improved upon. It subsequently turns out that Our Vicar’s Wife has not read the book herself, but that Our Vicar has skimmed it, and declared it to be very painful and unnecessary.I lose my head and reply No, that it is my custom to keep my servants chained up in the cellar when their work is done. Throughout the diaries, therefore, great comic capital is made out of the heroine's constant juggling with her housekeeping accounts, pawning jewellery, selling clothes and writing endless placating letters to bank managers and creditors. In an accompanying letter, the women's lib lady announced that she had abandoned Normie and the children and run off with another woman.