The Second World War Diaries of Housewife 49
When I look at the cover of this book I am always in danger of reading it as Nella’s Last War, which would of course be a different thing entirely, although I think it actually must have been just that; her last war.
So this is a diversion from the large amount of fiction that I get through. I do enjoy reading diaries, journals, biography and autobiography and particularly about the lives of ‘ordinary’ people. We all have a back story, we all have thoughts and feelings shaped by our past and our experiences, so really no one is ordinary when used in that slightly derogatory sense.
Nella, I suspect, would have said she was just an ordinary housewife but her writing shows otherwise. The diary entries are insightful, confident and tell a powerful story of the Second World War. Her literary interests show through, when in October 1939 she writes:
‘Next to being a mother I’d have loved to write books – that is, if I’d brains and time. I love to ‘create’, but turned to my home and cooking.’
Nella did not just suddenly decide to commit her thoughts to paper in the form of a diary. This was part of the Mass-Observation project which was set up by Charles Madge and Tom Harrisson in 1937. A journalist and anthropologist, they recruited volunteer observers from throughout the country and invited them to submit a day to day account of their lives. This gave Nella the reason and motivation to write and keep on writing. Reading her diary, one gets the feeling that she felt she was doing something quite important and enjoyed being a part of a large project.
Initially I had thought this was some sort of government enterprise but it was not. Instead, Madge and Harrisson were part of a British social research organisation. The archive now resides at Sussex University. It provides invaluable resource material about the war years from 1937 onwards and new collections have been added relating to British life in the 20th and 21st centuries.
One of the most interesting things I found in reading Nella’s thoughts was her strength and determination to help others and to keep up morale. She lived in Barrow-in- Furness in what we would now call Cumbria. Barrow was a working port and it was surrounded by ship building yards which made the whole community vulnerable. Nella writes several times about being a worrier, about taking ‘a couple of aspirin’ and ‘taking to her bed’ for a little while. She had two sons of fighting age, so who wouldn’t worry. Despite all this, like many women of her ilk, she seems to regard it as her duty to get involved with voluntary war work whilst at the same time continuing to run a home in what we would now consider to be a very labour intensive fashion. Small things give her pleasure, which makes total sense to me:
‘My table had boiled eggs, whole meal bread, damson jam and a little cake cut in small pieces and spread out to look more- all home-made and simple, but my gaily embroidered cloth and bowl garden made it festive. My ‘garden’ is a bowl of moss and ferns off a sheltered wall. Today I stuck four yellow and two white crocuses in the damp moss. The warmth of the room opened them and they looked like gold and white stars against the deep green moss.’
That paints such a lovely picture but is even more poignant when you know it was written in March 1941 as her town was regularly being bombed along with other ports along the west coast. I remember my parents telling me that at the time people in Britain never thought that the war would be lost and gradually I realised how the morale of the country was controlled and manipulated by the government and their authority over the media. I still though think that Nella’s attitude is commendable…and I love her bowl garden. How cheering.
The part of the diary that covers 1945 and the end of the war is almost sad and shows clearly how it was not only rationing that continued after the fighting had finished. Nella writes of problems she sees in her neighbours’ homes when husbands and fathers return and family dynamics have to be renegotiated and redefined.
As ships’ hooters and fireworks sound celebratory noise, Nella finds she has no desire to join in:
‘I feel disappointed in my feelings. I feel no wild whoopee, just a quiet thankfulness and a feeling of ‘flatness’. Dear God knows what I’d imagined it would be like. I think I’ll take two aspirins and try and read myself to sleep.’
This is such a rich and worthwhile read. It makes me feel very thankful that I have not had to live through such times … and thankful also that Nella wrote her diary.