In previous clubs, I’ve quoted from Virginia Woolf’s diaries – and I was wondering who I could use as a perspective on 1944 (given that Woolf died in 1941). And then it hit me – of course! – Mollie Panter-Downes’ wonderful London War Notes. It is the collection of fortnightly letters she wrote for Americans about how WW2 looked in London. And here is part of her entry from 2 January 1944.
The immense din of outgoing bombers which the capital recently heard on more than one fine morning provided a very inspiring sort of overture to 1944, too. All the same, Londoners who saw the year in by storming one of the packed places around town or by bringing out the precious bottle of Scotch or Algerian wine at home couldn’t wish each other a happy new year with a completely light heart. Now that the invasion seems so imminent, the conventional salutation sounded faintly ironic. There have been many other occasions when everyone you met confidently told you that the invasion of Europe would start next Wednesday at the latest, but the announcement of the new team of commanders appears to have really convinced the public that things will begin to move before their new calendars shed many more leaves.
Londoners seem to feel that things will get hot again at home just as soon as they warm up elsewhere, but their attitude remains nonchalant enough to annoy Doctor Goebbels. When a taxi had a particularly noisy blowout the other day, one of the apocryphal London hawkers, now peddling rare bobby pins and rarer elastic to Oxford Street matrons, is supposed to have said to a customer, “Hit must be the secret weapon, lidy.”
Another slight clue to just how happy this new year may turn out to be was provided by the government’s announcement that repairs to gas masks will be made free of charge for the next two months.Though this precaution possibly belongs in the knock-on-wood category. Britons thoughtfully hunting up their almost forgotten masks felt that it might also be an official hint that the Nazis have a few more tricks to try before they are forced to give in.
Here’s another review for the 1944 Club:
No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre:
https://whatmeread.wordpress.com/2018/10/16/day-1274-the-1944-club-no-exit/
Having loved this author’s One Fine Day and Wartime Stories (Good Evening, Mrs Craven), I so want to read the London War Notes. Thank you for this lovely extract which shows very clearly her journalistic eye for detail.
Thank you for this. Her writing is so fresh and immediate. It makes me nostalgic for a time I never knew. In my childhood it was that mysterious “duringthewar”. Must read more from 1944.
Caroline
Love this way of celebrating the 1944 club!
Meanwhile, in another part of the world (Yugoslavia), Evelyn Waugh was trying to shut Randolph Churchill up and failing spectacularly (as related to Nancy Mitford in one of his letters):
In the hope of keeping him quiet for a few hours Freddy & I have bet Randolph £20 that he cannot read the whole Bible in a fortnight. It would have been worth it at the price. Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped. He has never read any of it before and is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud ‘I say I bet you didn’t know this came in the Bible “bring down my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave”’ or merely slapping his side & chortling ‘God, isn’t God a shit!’ (12 November 1944)
Like Jacqui, I really enjoyed Mollie Panter Downes’ wartime stories which Persephone publish. The London War Notes is definitely on my list!
I really loved London War Notes when I read it fairly recently. I read Portable Dorothy Parker for the 1944 Club https://piningforthewest.co.uk/2018/10/21/portable-dorothy-parker-the-1944-club/