A reference in a magazine to The Diary of a Provincial Lady some thirty years ago sent me off on a quest to track down this author. The Diary is probably her most well known book but there were so many other titles which nobody seemed to have heard of and which seemed to be languishing in obscurity. I made it a mission to track down as many as possible and spent several years haunting second hand bookshops in this quest. I have some twenty of her titles on my shelves and amongst them is a very battered copy of Tension which I bought for the princely sum of £10 some years ago. It is wonderful that the British Library are now republishing this so that it is easily available.
If you read E M Delafield regularly the reader will note after a while that there is a recurring character in many of her books. It is that of a meddlesome, unpleasant trouble maker with these characteristics hidden under a veneer of benevolence and charity and, quite frankly, these women, are poisonous.
In the Provincial Lady Goes to War there is a warden in charge of a war time canteen who is unsparing of her time and expects others to do the same, but she does it because she wishes to appear as an efficient, saintly soul who would give up her time and happiness for others. It is a sham. In The War Workers, Delafield’s first novel, we find this person once more.
In Faster Faster we meet Claudia who runs an employment agency (a rarity showing a working woman at this time) who exhibits the same persona, wishing to be admired for her efficiency and her organisation.
At so it is in Tension. Here the iron hand in the velvet glove is Lady Rossiter whose mantra is 
“Is it kind, is it wise, is it true” which she manages to successfully ignore while purporting to live up to its ideals.
Lady Rossiter is married to Lord Julian and though she will never admit to it their marriage is empty and sterile. His proposal to her was one of chivalry rather than love.
“Edna disliked the memory of the scene that had led to his proposal although time and her own industry had draped the situation with much that it had lacked at the moment. She had met him on board ship where she was travelling with her mother, a vulgar woman…………”
After a quarrel with her mother who had taunted her with her unmarried state “Edna’s rare tears had shaken her and it was Sir Julian who had found her crying in a solitary corner of the deck….anger and misery together had made her give him in reply to his enquiry something that very nearly approached the raw crude truth……She had accepted him and she would not have believed it, had she not thrust the memory away henceforward that she had witnessed the truest most intimate relationship in which she and her husband were destined ever to stand towards one another…”
She had many years to forget the mortification of her pre-marriage days. Edna reflected sometimes that they had never had a quarrel “and remained unaware that the fact admirably measured the extent of their estrangement”.
Lord and Lady Rossiter are involved in the running of a local secretarial collage and while she labours under the delusion that everyone at the college adores her and loves seeing her on the committee she is very much disliked with her constant interference and her total imperviousness to the effect she had upon the pupils and staff.
Miss Marchrose is a newly appointed administrator and Lady Rossiter recognises the name as that of somebody who broke off an engagement in what appears on the surface to be a cruel and heartless matter. She is determined to find out the truth or what she deems to be the truth and with a subtle sweetness starts to drip feed the staff and colleagues with poison.
The Tension of the title gradually increases with each barb and malicious rumour gently dropped into the ears of the listeners. We learn that there was a very good reason for the engagement being ended but it makes no difference to Miss Marchrose’s position and the gradual eroding of her reputation.
After the Provincial Lady EM Delafield is viewed as being witty and amusing but if you read more of her output you realise she is anything but. She can be quite merciless in her pin point accuracy regarding the nasty side of a character but it is done so subtly that sometimes it is difficult to see. Even in her humorous asides in Provincial Lady there is a hidden barb.
Lady Rossiter is a deeply unpleasant, unsatisfied and, quite frankly, nasty piece of work while hiding behind a persona of sweetness and light. What she, and others similar in other Delafield titles, needs is somebody to tell her precisely what they think of her and in a way that there is no possible misunderstanding.
Unfortunately, Lord Rossiter takes refuge in irony and sarcasm fully knowing that his wife will never understand or fathom what he is trying to say. He takes refuge in his own intellect, despising Edna but never having the bravery to stand up to her. He is a coward.
I mentioned earlier the title Faster Faster which features a dominant wife in similar mould to Lady Rossiter who also has a weak husband who takes refuge in the mantra anything for a quiet life. In Provincial Lady the husband, Robert, seems to spend most of his time reading the Times and saying nothing. One can only assume that E M Delafield was rather disappointed in the men she knew as they are mostly of this ilk.
The foreword of this edition of Tension says “if the tension in this novel doesn’t make you squirm a little, then you will certainly find plenty to amuse”
Yes the tension did make me squirm but, quite frankly, I found very little amusing in this novel. It was all rather sad and mostly with one exception, full of sad little people.
I think it is masterly.
Recent Comments