| Woody's Predecessor and Funnier to Boot |
March 25, 2009
Yesterday I read The Provincial Lady in London, one of E.M. Delafield's novels from the 1930s written as the diaries of a very charming and witty woman. The Provincial Lady series were largely autobiographical, according to my bit of research this morning. Taking the Provincial Lady diaries as her own, then, I would have loved to hang out with Delafield: she is one of the ones at my dinner of "if you could invite anyone to dinner, who would you invite?". Delafield was funny, observant, self-deprecating but not demeaning, smart, curious, and adventurous. If she talked as well as she wrote and meant the things she wrote, she would be a thoroughly fabulous dinner companion and a fine and good friend.
In this novel, P.L. (provincial lady) has had a book published and is now ready to enter literary society; she is also a mother and wife, and a somewhat hapless organizer of her household. Most importantly for us, P.L. is an acute, and acutely funny, observer of her community, both the provincial one of home and the London society she is discovering now that she has a flat to write in and escape to. Not much writing gets done but our P.L. has plenty of adventures and misadventures and great laughs abound.
Reading this book for just a few pages set me in the groove of thinking like she does, of narrating my life in the same pithy understatements; I just cannot pull off the dry humor and wry observations that she can. She writes about the economic downturn in England (sounds familiar): "Young Frobisher, who is down from Oxford says that he has seen it coming for a long time now. (Should like to know why, in that case, he did not warn the neighborhood)."
Good question, but then all of P.L.'s parenthesized questions are good ones. Like when she wonders "to what extent mothers, if left to themselves, would carry the universal instinct for putting off everything in the world until after the children have gone [back] to school? Feel certain that this would...embrace everything in life, death itself included." Every mother knows this is true, we put off everything until the kids are in school again: the mammogram, the photo albums, the dentist, the attic sorting, and whatever assorted doctor's appointment we need as time marches inexorably on.
More funny extracts from P.L.'s diary: Casabianca is the young man taken on to tutor the children and he offers to tutor P.L. when it becomes clear she has forgotten the basic times tables, adding that "half an hour's arithmetic daily would make accounts simpler." P.L. knows that "only drastic reduction in expenditure, and improbable increase of income, could really simplify accounts" but she accepts his offer anyway. Pamela Pringle, a friend who is on her third or fourth husband, states to P.L. that "nothing in the world matters except Love." P.L. silently disagrees: "banking account, sound teeth, and adequate servants matter a great deal more" after all. P.L. attends a conference and is given a label to wear, bearing her name: "this I pin to my frock, and feel exactly like one of the lesser exhibits at Madame Tussaud's." Great one-liners: E.M. Delafield is the 1930 Englishwoman version of Woody Allen, just a lot funnier.
P.L. loves her husband Robert but that doesn't stop her from considering a romantic adventure with a French gentleman while on a bus. She is on a domestic mission to get her son's shorts repaired and the Frenchman sits just feet away: "Extraordinary and quite unheralded idea springs into my mind to the effect that it is definitely agreeable to find myself traveling anywhere, for any purpose, without dear Robert or either of the children." She then feels horrified by her joy at being without her family and close to an amante, and tries to repress her interest. But: "Does not modern psychology teach that definite danger attaches to deliberate stifling of any impulse, however unhallowed? Answer probably Yes. Cannot, however, ignore the fact that even more definite danger probably attached to encouragement of unhallowed impulse. Can only conclude that peril lies in more or less every direction." Glances are exchanged ("[s]hould be very sorry indeed to recall in any detail peculiar fantasies that pass through my mind") but then her stop is reached: "Final death-blow to non-existent romance is given when Robin's white shorts, now in last stages of dirt and disreputability, slide out of inadequate paper wrappings and are collected from floor by bus-conductor and returned to me." Again I am struck by her resemblance in timing and character, in her quirkiness and self-deprecating observation, to my favorite filmmaker Woody, but again, she is a lot funnier on the page than he ever manages to be .
P.L. is writing about England at a certain time, in a certain place. But her characters are universal (except for the Vicar's wife: nowhere but in England is there such a character as the industrious, self-sacrificing and manipulative Vicar's wife). We all know people like the ones she is describing for us, and her mix of affection and observation is perfect for rendering them naked and fully exposed and yet also unquestionably human and deserving of a bit of empathy. We are all just bumbling through the day, P.L. knows, and we do the best we can. Too bad some do their bumbling with better clothes and real curls, and with a better sense of timing (P.L. arrives at every social gathering well before anyone else until the one time she is late and has to spend the entire afternoon traipsing miles of gardens).
P.L. condemns no one she meets but the reader knows very well where her affections lie. As for me, my affections rest entirely with her, and although I was amused by her imperturbable husband, her unruly children, the all-knowing Casabianca, the various cooks, the slutty friend, the unconventionally-dressed friend, the withering-on-the-vine friend, and of course, the canned French governess, I was absolutely in love with P.L. I suggest Woody Allen read Delafield and make a film adaptation. I'm sure I'd love it.
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