"Diary of a Provincial Lady"

[fiefoe]

The preface finds it necessary to warn its readers that the story is 'told in a very dry, shy, English way', yet I warmed to the provincial lady right away. One entry that convinced me that we are birds of the same feather reads:
    (Mem.: Pay grocer's book before I go, and tell him last lot of  gingernuts were soft. Find out first if Ethel kept tin properly shut.)

The book has been on my to-read list forever, but a recent (May 9th) feature of E. M. Delafield in The New Yorker nudged it up the queue. When I read that one key characteristics of the series was the surreal-ness of recorded string of thoughts, I had an inkling it would be my kind of book.('We talked some more about bulbs, Dutch School of Painting, Our Vicar's Wife, sciatica, and All Quiet on the Western Front.') As a matter of fact, the good lady herself has an internal commentary about this:
    (Mem.: Interesting, if time permitted, to trace train of thought leading on from one topic to another. Second, and most disquieting idea: perhaps no such train of thought exists.)

When I miss the jokes, it's mostly because she's quoting the French governess directly. (That was a different age, after all.) Knowing that the author herself is of French extraction gives some of her comments more piquancy:

• ...and take small and inferior dyed mat from the night-nursery to put in spare room. Mademoiselle is hurt about this and says to Vicky, who repeats it to me, that in this country she finds herself treated like a worm.
• (This suggests Mem.: That English cooking, never unduly attractive, becomes positively nauseating on any public occasion, such as a banquet.)