Tension, p.1
Tension, page 1
TENSION
E.M. DELAFIELD
First published in 1920
This edition published in 2021 by
The British Library
96 Euston Road
London NW1 2DB
Preface copyright © 2021 Lucy Evans
Afterword copyright © 2021 Simon Thomas
Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7123 5393 9
e-ISBN 978 0 7123 6703 5
Text design and typesetting by JCS Publishing Services Ltd
Printed in England by CPI Group (UK), Croydon, CR0 4YY
Contents
The 1920s
E.M. Delafield
Preface
TENSION
Afterword
The 1920s
1920: Tension is published.
1920 (January): Prohibition starts in the USA, banning the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic drinks. Campaigns for a similar prohibition in the UK are largely unsuccessful, though Edwin Scrymgeor is elected as Scottish Prohibition Party MP for Dundee in 1922, beating National Liberal candidate Winston Churchill.
‘Homes for inebriates’ are waning in the 1920s. Many opened in response to the Inebriates Act 1898, which allowed ‘habitual drunkards’ to be compulsorily admitted for one to three years, or longer for voluntary ‘patients’. Between 1899 and 1910, 84 per cent of those compulsorily committed were women. The Mental Deficiency Act 1913 superseded the Inebriates Act, reclassifying ‘habitual drunkards’ as mentally ill. Many homes for inebriates were similarly reclassified as mental institutions by the 1920s, and it wouldn’t be until the 1930s that alcoholism began to be recognised as a disease – for example, Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in 1935.
1921: According to the 1921 census, there are 1.75 million more women than men in the UK.
1921: The 1921 census shows 564,000 female clerical workers (up from 179,000 in 1911) – fewer than the 736,000 male clerical workers, though 89 per cent of people employed in typewriting offices were women.
1923: The Matrimonial Causes Act 1923 makes adultery by either husband or wife acceptable as the sole ground for divorce.
Throughout the 1920s, there was an average of 2,718 divorces a year in England and Wales. In 1920, less than a quarter of divorces were initiated by the woman; by 1929, this had gone up to almost 60 per cent.
1928 (November): Radclyffe Hall’s lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness is banned in the UK after an obscenity trial, following a campaign by the Sunday Express. Its most explicit passage is ‘and that night, they were not divided’. The Obscene Publications Act 1857 remained in place until 1959, which introduced the idea that a work could be defended as being for the ‘public good’.
1929: Marriage and Morals by Bertrand Russell is one of the most prominent publications in the debate about free love and marriage, prompting protests and criticisms.
1929 (December): E.M. Delafield’s most famous creation, the Provincial Lady, makes her first appearance in serialised form in Time and Tide. The first volume of diary entries is published the following year.
E.M. Delafield (1890–1943)
E.M. Delafield was born Edmée Elizabeth Monica de la Pasture in 1890: her pseudonym was a play on words, replacing ‘pasture’ with ‘field’. Her mother was a noted writer, as Mrs Henry de la Pasture, and her children’s book The Unlucky Family was particularly popular.
At the age of 21, Delafield entered a French religious order in Belgium as a postulant (someone who has made a request to join an order and lives there for a period of time before admission). She left without joining but returned to nunneries and religious orders in several of her novels, including Consequences, The Pelicans, and her first novel, published in 1917, Zella Sees Herself.
Delafield worked as a nurse during the First World War and married Colonel Arthur Paul Dashwood in 1919. After two years in the Malay States, they moved to a village in Devon, which she loosely fictionalised for her most enduring work, The Diary of a Provincial Lady. It was initially serialised in the feminist magazine Time and Tide, of which Delafield was a director, and published as a book in 1930. It has never been out of print. This heavily autobiographical comic novel was followed by three sequels, which saw the Provincial Lady become a successful writer, travel to America, and carry out war work in the Second World War.
Delafield had two children, Lionel and Rosamund, familiar to readers of the Provincial Lady series as Robin and Vicky. In 1961, Rosamund wrote Provincial Daughter in the style of her mother’s series. Delafield published one or more books almost every year until her death in 1943, aged 53.
Preface
E.M. Delafield is best known as the author of The Diary of a Provincial Lady. Delafield published one or two novels a year from 1917 to her death in 1943, of which one is the delightful Tension, first published in 1920 and reprinted here in the British Library Women Writers series. At turns darkly comic and desperately sad, the primary atmosphere of the novel is, well, tension!
Tension, on the surface, is a novel about gossip and insinuation focussing on shadowy events which occurred off the page. At a deeper level, it explores the roles that women occupied in society in the pre-First World War era. From those in long-established marriages to the newly engaged, from the gainfully employed spinster to the wife hidden away in a home for inebriates, Tension explores the limits and privileges of female life. Tension engages with the differences between a woman’s sphere of influence and the constantly shifting power structures which were to be navigated. The key female characters are Lady Rossiter and Miss Marchrose, who at first appear to be complete opposites. As the novel progresses, we see that they were two people faced with the same central dilemma who chose different paths.
If the tension in this novel doesn’t make you squirm a little, then you will certainly find plenty to amuse. The internal monologues of Lord and Lady Rossiter show the real truth of their marriage. Perhaps their only true accord comes with their dislike of the small children who constantly appear at the wrong moments with sticky hands and a lack of discipline – an excellent addition to literature’s canon of unappealing children.
Tension perhaps gives us an insight into Delafield’s opinion of men. Men who find themselves in sympathy with the plight of women ultimately discover the quiet life is more important. Men who believe they can break away from social norms find themselves retreating to the traditional path. Don’t look to this novel for the neat ending of the romantic comedy. Reputation is what matters, and social institutions and maintaining a status quo.
Lucy Evans
Curator, Printed Heritage Collections
British Library
Tension
I
“Auntie Iris has written a book!”
“A book!” echoed both auditors of the announcement, in keys varying between astonishment and dismay.
“Yes, and it’s going to be published, and put into a blue cover, and sold, and Auntie Iris is going to make heaps and heaps of money!”
“What is it to be called?” said Lady Rossiter rather gloomily, fixing an apprehensive eye on the exuberant niece of the authoress.
“It’s called, ‘Why, Ben!’ and it’s a Story of the Sexes,” glibly quoted that young lady, unaware of the shock inflicted by this brazen announcement, delivered at the top of her squeaky, nine-year-old voice.
“Good God!” said Sir Julian Rossiter.
His wife said, “Hush, Julian!” in a rather automatic aside and turned again to the herald of “Why, Ben!” now hopping exultantly round and round the breakfast-table.
“Did you get a letter from Aunt Iris this morning, Ruthie?”
“Daddy did, and he said it was a secret before, but now the publishers had accepted the book and everybody might know, and I said—I said—”
Ruthie consecrated the briefest possible instant to drawing a sufficiently deep breath to enable her to resume her rapid, high-pitched narrative. “I said, ‘Me and Peekaboo must come and tell you and Sir Julian, because you’d be so pleased and so excited, and so surprised!’”
“Is your little brother here as well?” said Sir Julian, gazing distastefully through his eye-glasses at Ruthie, heated, breathless, hopping persistently on one leg, and with a general air of having escaped from the supervision of whoever might have charge of her morning toilette before that toilette had received even the minimum of attention. Ruthie cast a look of artless surprise about her.
“I thought he was here. He came with me—but you know how he dawdles. He may be still in the drive.”
A slow fumbling at the door-handle discredited the supposition.
“There he is!” shrieked Ruthie joyfully, and violently turning the handle of the door. “Ow! I can’t open the door!”
“Of course you can’t, if he is holding the handle at the other side. Let go.”
“He won’t be able to open it himself, he never can—and besides, his hands are all sticky, I know, because he upset the treacle at breakfast. Let go, Peekaboo!” bawled his sister through the keyhole.
“H’sh—sh. Don’t shriek like that, he can hear quite well.”
“But he won’t let go—”
“Come away from the door, Ruthie, and don’t make that noise.”
Lady Rossiter herself went to the door of which the handle was being ineffectually jerked from without, and said with that peculiar distinctness of utterance characteristic of exasperation kept consciously under control:
“Is that you, Ambrose? Turn the handle towards you—no, not that way, towards you, I said—right round—”
“Turn it towards you, Peekaboo!” shrieked Ruthie, suddenly thrusting her head under Lady Rossiter’s arm.
“Be quiet, Ruthie. There, that’s right.”
The door slowly opened, and a rather emaciated, seven-year-old edition in knickerbockers of the stalwart Ruthie advanced languidly into the room.
“How do you do?” he remarked, extending a treacle-glazed hand for the morning greetings entirely omitted by his excited elder sister.
“Good morning, Ambrose dear. You’re paying us a very early visit.”
“Auntie Iris has written a book!” announced Ambrose, more deliberately than, but quite as loudly and distinctly as, his senior. “And it’s called, ‘Why, Ben! A Story of the Sexes.’”
“Yes, dear, Ruthie told us,” said Lady Rossiter, a rather repressive note in her voice indicating a renewed sense of outrage at the singular title selected by Ambrose’s aunt for her maiden attempt at literature.
Ambrose turned pallid eyes of fury behind a large pair of spectacles upon his sister.
“You said you wouldn’t tell them till I came. … It’s very, very mean of you. … I’ll tell Daddy the minute I get home. … I … I …”
His objurgations became incoherent, though none the less expressive for that, and gaining steadily in volume as he sought, in vain, to overpower the torrent of self-defence instantly emitted from Ruthie’s lungs of brass.
Sir Julian Rossiter laid down his paper, opened the French window, and thrust both his visitors into the drive.
“Bolt the window, Julian,” said his wife hastily. “And I will tell Horber not to let them in at the front door. Much as I love children, I can’t have them rushing in on us at breakfast, it’s really too much.”
“Do you suppose all their morning calls end like this?” remarked Sir Julian, as he watched their departing guests stagger down the drive, Ambrose’s large head still shaking with his wrath, and the voice of his sister still audibly browbeating and calling him “Peekaboo.”
“Why does she call her brother by that senseless and revolting nickname?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s a nursery relic, and dates from the days of their unfortunate mother.”
“The dipsomaniac?”
Lady Rossiter said nothing. She was aware that Mrs. Easter’s enforced retirement into a home for inebriates was an ancient scandal, and that Julian had only introduced a reference to it in the idle hope of trapping her into disregarding her favourite touchstone in conversation—“Is it kind, is it wise, is it true?”
Unlike his wife, but in common with many people less apt at analysing the idiosyncrasy than himself, Sir Julian habitually preferred silence to speech, unless he had anything unpleasant to say. It was one of the many differences which did not make for unity between them.
“I wonder,” Sir Julian presently observed, “what publisher is undertaking the responsibility of ‘Why, Ben!’ How exactly like Auntie Iris to choose such a preposterous name, and to call it ‘A Story of the Sexes’ into the bargain! She can’t be more than twenty.”
“It rather made me shudder when those two poor children spoke the name so glibly. ‘A Story of the Sexes’—imagine their knowing such a word at all, at their age!”
Sir Julian shrugged his shoulder. “Nothing could surprise me, from the egregious Ruthie. I suppose I shall have to congratulate Mark Easter on his half-sister’s achievement this morning.”
“Are you going to the college?”
“I must. There is a meeting of the directors, and I have to take the chair.”
“Not a General Committee meeting?” said Lady Rossiter quickly.
“No, Edna,” replied her husband, with a great finality. “Not a General Committee meeting.”
If he did not add an ejaculatory thanksgiving aloud to the statement, his wife was none the less aware that he regarded with the extreme of disfavour her presence at the general meetings of the committee which presided over that venture known as the “Commercial and Technical College for the South-West of England.” On this reflection, Lady Rossiter infused as much proprietary interest as possible into the tone of her next enquiry.
“Have we got a Lady Superintendent yet? I can’t bear to think of all my girls without a woman to look after them. There are so many little things for which women need a woman.”
“One of the subjects before the meeting to-day is to discuss an application for the post. Fuller thinks he has found someone.”
Edna Rossiter raised her well-marked, dark eyebrows.
“Surely Mr. Fuller is hardly qualified to judge?”
“Probably not. That’s why the question is to be laid before the directors,” said her husband drily.
Lady Rossiter, tall and beautiful, with the maturity of a woman whom the years had left with auburn hair unfaded and opaque white skin almost unlined, moved restlessly about the room.
Sir Julian, aware instantly that she was anxious to pursue the subject, perversely remained silent behind the newspaper.
“Do you know anything about this woman? Is she a lady?”
“I have not the least idea.”
“Is she from the West Country?”
“She writes from London.”
“Ah, our Devonians won’t take to her if she’s a Cockney. I should prefer someone de nous autres, Julian.”
“So she may be, for all we know.”
“You had better tell me her name, Julian.”
“Why?” enquired Sir Julian childishly, and also disconcertingly.
“Why?” echoed his wife, momentarily nonplussed.
She looked at him for a moment with black-fringed, amber-coloured eyes.
“Why not?” she demanded at last.
“It would convey nothing more to you than to the rest of us.”
“Oh, the perversity of man!” cried Lady Rossiter playfully. “Here am I backing up the great venture heart and soul, knowing every member of the staff individually and offering prizes to every class in every subject, and even putting all my savings into the concern—and then I’m not allowed to hear what the high and mighty directors are going to talk about! Really, Julian, you men are very childish sometimes.”
“She is a Miss Marchrose.”
“Marchrose!”
Sir Julian, perceiving recognition in the tone of the exclamation, and recollecting his own prediction that the name would convey nothing to his wife, looked annoyed.
“It is a most uncommon name.”
Julian carefully refrained from questioning.
“I told you I might know something about her! The girl who jilted poor Clarence Isbister in that abominable way was a Miss Marchrose.”
“It doesn’t seem probable that this girl could have any connection with the woman who jilted your cousin Clarence; she is a certificated teacher of shorthand and typewriting.”
“Well, Clarence’s girl was nobody at all, and she was older than he, poor boy—the Isbisters were not at all pleased about it, I remember. But they’d made up their minds to it, and it was all arranged, and then came this thunderbolt.”
“If it was such an unpopular engagement, the Isbisters may owe her a debt of gratitude for throwing him over.”
“Ah, it was more than that. Don’t you remember, Julian? They’d been engaged six weeks, and Clarence was like a lunatic about her, and simply made his father and mother consent to it all, and they kept on saying the girl wasn’t good enough for him, and didn’t seem to care for him much. And then he had that appalling hunting smash.”
“I remember,” said Sir Julian, “when they thought he was going to be paralysed for the rest of his life, poor chap.”
“So he was, from the waist downwards, for nearly a year, and all the doctors said that his recovery was a perfect miracle. But when he was still helpless, and nobody knew if he had to be an invalid or not, he offered to release Miss Marchrose from the engagement—and she gave him up.”
“H’m,” said Julian noncommittally.
