Mollie Panter-Downes (1906–1997)
Author of Good Evening, Mrs. Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes
About the Author
Works by Mollie Panter-Downes
Good Evening, Mrs. Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes (1999) 545 copies, 25 reviews
Un hermoso día 1 copy
Associated Works
The New Yorker Book of War Pieces: London, 1939 to Hiroshima, 1945 (1947) — Contributor — 114 copies, 2 reviews
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Panter-Downes, Mary Patricia
- Birthdate
- 1906-08-25
- Date of death
- 1997-01-22
- Gender
- female
- Occupations
- writer
novelist
columnist
journalist
short story writer
biographer (show all 7)
book reviewer - Organizations
- The New Yorker
- Short biography
- Mary Patricia "Mollie" Panter-Downes was born in London, England and grew up in Essex. Her parents were Marie Kathleen and Major Edward Martin Panter-Downes, an officer in the Royal Irish Regiment killed at the Battle of Mons in World War I when his daughter was eight. Mollie published her first novel, The Shoreless Sea, at age 16. It became a bestseller. Her second novel The Chase was published in 1925 and was followed by several more, including One Fine Day (1947, reissued 1986), one of the most enduring novels of the century. She married Clare Robinson in 1929 and the couple traveled around the world and had two daughters. They lived in a 16th-century house on a farm near Chiddingfold in Surrey, 40 miles south of London. In 1938, she began a 50-year career of writing for the New Yorker. At first she contributed some poems and short stories, then she became the regular British correspondent through her "Letter from London" column, which ran from September 1939 until 1984. Her column was so popular that that the first year's correspondence was issued as a collection called Letter From England in 1940. She also wrote travel articles, book reviews, children's literature, nonfiction books such as Ooty Preserved (1967), and a biography of the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne.
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- London, England, UK
- Places of residence
- London, England, UK
New York, New York, USA
Brighton, Sussex, England, UK
Roppelegh's, Surrey, UK - Place of death
- Compton, Surrey, England, UK
- Associated Place (for map)
- England, UK
Members
Reviews
But in the early morning light, seen from the top of Barrow Down, the huddle of grey and pink and cream houses looked merely charming. Up here, man had long ago been obliterated by the green armies of fern, the invading foxgloves, the cony and the magpie. Bumps under the honeycombed turf marked the site of old shelters for man and beast where cattle had lowed and the smoke of little fires had written "Morning" and "Hunger" in the sky. Wealding children sometimes found old flints buried under show more the rabbit droppings; picnic parties munched their hard-boiled eggs among ghosts. In spring, dog-violets spilled small blue lakes in the bleached grass, followed later by the pink and white restharrow, clean as sprigged chintz, and the great golden candlesticks of mulleins. Up here, on the empty hilltop, something said I am England. I will remain. (p. 9)
Morning dawns in the village of Wealding, and so begins One Fine Day. It's 1946, the war is finally over, and residents of Wealding and the town of Bridbury are gradually returning to some kind of "normal" life. And yet things changed dramatically during the war. There was, of course, the tragic loss of life, the young men who never returned. But there were also fundamental changes in England's social fabric, which this short novel portrays in exquisite and sometimes painful detail. Laura & Stephen Marshall are an upper middle class couple, and before the war they benefited from daily household help in the form of a cook, a maid, and a nurse to care for their daughter Victoria. Dinner magically appeared on the table every night, the house was always clean and ready for guests, and Victoria was presented to her parents before bedtime, freshly scrubbed and wearing clean pajamas. The Marshalls were shocked into a completely different lifestyle during the war, when their household help found better work at better wages ... and never returned to a life of service.
One Fine Day follows Laura Marshall through a typical day of errands and household tasks, after Stephen leaves for work and Victoria gets off to school. Laura ventures into the town to buy food. She queues at the bakery and the fishmonger, dealing with competitive customers, grumpy shopkeepers, and a shortage of their better merchandise. But this book is not about what Laura does, it's about what she thinks, and what that tells us about her changing world. Occasionally she reminisces about her youth, and the man she almost married, and we gain insight into the society in which she was raised. Through a conversation between Laura and her mother we learn that Laura's parents, who live further away from London, were able to keep their servants. Their home still reflects the golden age of British Empire. "It was like going back to another world, seen through the nostalgic lens of world catastrophe." But then Laura's errands take her to the home of some local gentry, who are no longer able to keep up their estate. They have sold it to the "National Trussed," and are in progress of moving into a flat located near the manor house. She surveys the packing and dismantlement with dismay, noting the marked contrast with poorer families who have bettered their circumstances and "bred and bred like rabbits in their dreadful cottage."
A sense of loss pervades this book. The loss of material goods and comforts serves as a symbol for the loss of Empire that was just beginning to unfold. You can see those "English ladies and gentlemen who would forever inherit the earth," who took pride in turning the world map pink, begin to falter. And yet there is also an air of hope, of accepting one's new circumstances and seeing the possibility of happiness ahead. Much of this is conveyed through Laura's sensory perceptions, as she picks fruit in her garden or rides down a lane on her bicycle. As the day draws to a close, Mollie Panter-Downes shifts the point of view to Victoria, and then Stephen, and somehow manages leaves the reader with the feeling that while their lives are irrevocably changed, everything will work out for them in the long run. show less
Morning dawns in the village of Wealding, and so begins One Fine Day. It's 1946, the war is finally over, and residents of Wealding and the town of Bridbury are gradually returning to some kind of "normal" life. And yet things changed dramatically during the war. There was, of course, the tragic loss of life, the young men who never returned. But there were also fundamental changes in England's social fabric, which this short novel portrays in exquisite and sometimes painful detail. Laura & Stephen Marshall are an upper middle class couple, and before the war they benefited from daily household help in the form of a cook, a maid, and a nurse to care for their daughter Victoria. Dinner magically appeared on the table every night, the house was always clean and ready for guests, and Victoria was presented to her parents before bedtime, freshly scrubbed and wearing clean pajamas. The Marshalls were shocked into a completely different lifestyle during the war, when their household help found better work at better wages ... and never returned to a life of service.
One Fine Day follows Laura Marshall through a typical day of errands and household tasks, after Stephen leaves for work and Victoria gets off to school. Laura ventures into the town to buy food. She queues at the bakery and the fishmonger, dealing with competitive customers, grumpy shopkeepers, and a shortage of their better merchandise. But this book is not about what Laura does, it's about what she thinks, and what that tells us about her changing world. Occasionally she reminisces about her youth, and the man she almost married, and we gain insight into the society in which she was raised. Through a conversation between Laura and her mother we learn that Laura's parents, who live further away from London, were able to keep their servants. Their home still reflects the golden age of British Empire. "It was like going back to another world, seen through the nostalgic lens of world catastrophe." But then Laura's errands take her to the home of some local gentry, who are no longer able to keep up their estate. They have sold it to the "National Trussed," and are in progress of moving into a flat located near the manor house. She surveys the packing and dismantlement with dismay, noting the marked contrast with poorer families who have bettered their circumstances and "bred and bred like rabbits in their dreadful cottage."
A sense of loss pervades this book. The loss of material goods and comforts serves as a symbol for the loss of Empire that was just beginning to unfold. You can see those "English ladies and gentlemen who would forever inherit the earth," who took pride in turning the world map pink, begin to falter. And yet there is also an air of hope, of accepting one's new circumstances and seeing the possibility of happiness ahead. Much of this is conveyed through Laura's sensory perceptions, as she picks fruit in her garden or rides down a lane on her bicycle. As the day draws to a close, Mollie Panter-Downes shifts the point of view to Victoria, and then Stephen, and somehow manages leaves the reader with the feeling that while their lives are irrevocably changed, everything will work out for them in the long run. show less
By Mollie Panter-Downes - One Fine Day (Virago Modern Classics) (1986-02) [Paperback] by Mollie Panter-Downes
“We are at peace, we will stand, we will stand when you are dust, sang the humming land in the summer evening.”
Although essentially plotless, this short novel, which unfolds on an English summer day a year after the end of World War II, is rich and satisfying, with sympathetic, well-drawn characters and fine prose, full of sharp observations. It revolves around the Marshall family—thirty-eight-year-old Laura, her husband Stephen, and their ten-year-old daughter, Victoria—who live in show more Wealding, a pleasant village in the commuter belt around London. The book opens at breakfast with the irascible Stephen assigning tasks to his dreamy wife before he leaves for work. Perhaps the biggest problem the once-comfortable Marshalls face is the maintenance of their large house and garden. All the young people have left domestic service for manufacturing jobs and other opportunities in the city. Weeds threaten to overtake the flower beds outside the house, and Laura, an indifferent cook and housekeeper, cannot keep order within. Even with the help of the hefty village busybody, Mrs. Prout, Laura is exhausted much of the time. The dust and spiderwebs collect, the walls look increasingly dingy, and the upholstered furniture is more threadbare and shabby than ever.
Among the tasks Stephen assigns Laura is visiting the Porters, a family that lives in a cramped hovel and breeds like rabbits. Perhaps young George Porter might be interested in employment in the Marshalls’ garden a few evenings a week. There’s also the shopping to do, some cleaning with Mrs. Prout, and the retrieval of the family dog, Stuffy, who’s likely run off to Barrow Down. A gypsy with many dogs of his own lives there in an old railway car, and it’s almost guaranteed that Stuffy will be brought home pregnant yet again.
Although there are chapters dedicated to Victoria, Stephen, and Mrs. Prout, the novel mostly follows Laura as she goes about her day. She reflects on her easeful upbringing as the child of the Herriots, staunch upholders of the British Empire in India; her choosing to marry Stephen, a businessman, rather than the more privileged well-to-do suitor her mother had selected for her; her wartime experiences alone in the house with Victoria, enlivened by the long stays of Laura’s women friends and their children who fled bombarded London for the safety of the English countryside. Mostly, though, Laura thinks about how so much has irrevocably changed since the war. She is aware of her luck in having a husband come home, when so many men did not. Other acquaintances, including a former cook, were lost in the Blitz. Canadian soldiers stationed near Wealding in wartime have left lasting reminders of their sojourn: numbers of fatherless youngsters toddling about. The landed gentry are selling up and relocating. The Cranmers, for example, who’ve lived on a beautiful estate for centuries, have accepted an offer from the National Trust. The manor house is to be used partly as a holiday hostel and partly as an agricultural training centre for boys, while old Mrs. Cranmer and her addled sister-in-law, Aunt Sophia, will be relegated to a small apartment in a made-over wing of the stables. “It’s the only possible thing for all these places,” says Edward, the only surviving Cranmer son. “I couldn’t afford to live here even if I wanted to. [ . . . ] Perhaps we’ve been here long enough. [ . . .] It’s time for a change. And look at it as it is, rotting away! That is what really broke one’s heart.”
In some ways, Panter-Downes’s novel reminds me of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Both books feature a post-war setting, impressionistic prose, and a sensitive female protagonist through whose consciousness a much-altered world is filtered. Woolf’s writing is, of course, more sophisticated—more experimental and more purely stream-of-consciousness in mode—and the inclusion of the shell-shocked soldier, Septimus Warren Smith, makes hers the more melancholy novel. One Fine Day has a lighter touch and a more buoyant tone. It focuses on a fairly conventional marriage and cast of characters, in a rural rather than urban setting, but it contains lovely lyrical writing about the natural world and some sensitive observations about change, marriage, ageing, and the endurance of the land. I really enjoyed the book. show less
Although essentially plotless, this short novel, which unfolds on an English summer day a year after the end of World War II, is rich and satisfying, with sympathetic, well-drawn characters and fine prose, full of sharp observations. It revolves around the Marshall family—thirty-eight-year-old Laura, her husband Stephen, and their ten-year-old daughter, Victoria—who live in show more Wealding, a pleasant village in the commuter belt around London. The book opens at breakfast with the irascible Stephen assigning tasks to his dreamy wife before he leaves for work. Perhaps the biggest problem the once-comfortable Marshalls face is the maintenance of their large house and garden. All the young people have left domestic service for manufacturing jobs and other opportunities in the city. Weeds threaten to overtake the flower beds outside the house, and Laura, an indifferent cook and housekeeper, cannot keep order within. Even with the help of the hefty village busybody, Mrs. Prout, Laura is exhausted much of the time. The dust and spiderwebs collect, the walls look increasingly dingy, and the upholstered furniture is more threadbare and shabby than ever.
Among the tasks Stephen assigns Laura is visiting the Porters, a family that lives in a cramped hovel and breeds like rabbits. Perhaps young George Porter might be interested in employment in the Marshalls’ garden a few evenings a week. There’s also the shopping to do, some cleaning with Mrs. Prout, and the retrieval of the family dog, Stuffy, who’s likely run off to Barrow Down. A gypsy with many dogs of his own lives there in an old railway car, and it’s almost guaranteed that Stuffy will be brought home pregnant yet again.
Although there are chapters dedicated to Victoria, Stephen, and Mrs. Prout, the novel mostly follows Laura as she goes about her day. She reflects on her easeful upbringing as the child of the Herriots, staunch upholders of the British Empire in India; her choosing to marry Stephen, a businessman, rather than the more privileged well-to-do suitor her mother had selected for her; her wartime experiences alone in the house with Victoria, enlivened by the long stays of Laura’s women friends and their children who fled bombarded London for the safety of the English countryside. Mostly, though, Laura thinks about how so much has irrevocably changed since the war. She is aware of her luck in having a husband come home, when so many men did not. Other acquaintances, including a former cook, were lost in the Blitz. Canadian soldiers stationed near Wealding in wartime have left lasting reminders of their sojourn: numbers of fatherless youngsters toddling about. The landed gentry are selling up and relocating. The Cranmers, for example, who’ve lived on a beautiful estate for centuries, have accepted an offer from the National Trust. The manor house is to be used partly as a holiday hostel and partly as an agricultural training centre for boys, while old Mrs. Cranmer and her addled sister-in-law, Aunt Sophia, will be relegated to a small apartment in a made-over wing of the stables. “It’s the only possible thing for all these places,” says Edward, the only surviving Cranmer son. “I couldn’t afford to live here even if I wanted to. [ . . . ] Perhaps we’ve been here long enough. [ . . .] It’s time for a change. And look at it as it is, rotting away! That is what really broke one’s heart.”
In some ways, Panter-Downes’s novel reminds me of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Both books feature a post-war setting, impressionistic prose, and a sensitive female protagonist through whose consciousness a much-altered world is filtered. Woolf’s writing is, of course, more sophisticated—more experimental and more purely stream-of-consciousness in mode—and the inclusion of the shell-shocked soldier, Septimus Warren Smith, makes hers the more melancholy novel. One Fine Day has a lighter touch and a more buoyant tone. It focuses on a fairly conventional marriage and cast of characters, in a rural rather than urban setting, but it contains lovely lyrical writing about the natural world and some sensitive observations about change, marriage, ageing, and the endurance of the land. I really enjoyed the book. show less
If you really hate short stories... you should read this anyway.
I myself am not a terrific fan of short stories - I read Flannery O'Connor's [b:The Complete Stories|284996|The Complete Stories|Flannery O'Connor|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1557999886l/284996._SY75_.jpg|886814] last year and figured that would do me until 2025 or so. Then I got this surprise in the mail (a gift from my husband, chosen by the lovely people at Persephone Books based on show more my previous purchases), and now I want to immediately read [b:Minnie's Room: The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes|1683769|Minnie's Room The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes|Mollie Panter-Downes|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348318119l/1683769._SX50_.jpg|1680371].
These stories were just so good. In each of them is a picture of the effects of WWII on the English who were at least a few, and in some cases, quite a few steps removed from the actual fighting. For example, the "Mrs. Craven" of the title, who is not a Mrs. at all but a mistress, and who worries that she'd never hear of it, should Mr. Craven be injured or worse, killed. As with nearly every Persephone I've read so far, I'm amazed that this book and its author are not more widely known.
This is the 8th book that Persephone published, and, coincidentally, the 8th that I've read. show less
I myself am not a terrific fan of short stories - I read Flannery O'Connor's [b:The Complete Stories|284996|The Complete Stories|Flannery O'Connor|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1557999886l/284996._SY75_.jpg|886814] last year and figured that would do me until 2025 or so. Then I got this surprise in the mail (a gift from my husband, chosen by the lovely people at Persephone Books based on show more my previous purchases), and now I want to immediately read [b:Minnie's Room: The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes|1683769|Minnie's Room The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes|Mollie Panter-Downes|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348318119l/1683769._SX50_.jpg|1680371].
These stories were just so good. In each of them is a picture of the effects of WWII on the English who were at least a few, and in some cases, quite a few steps removed from the actual fighting. For example, the "Mrs. Craven" of the title, who is not a Mrs. at all but a mistress, and who worries that she'd never hear of it, should Mr. Craven be injured or worse, killed. As with nearly every Persephone I've read so far, I'm amazed that this book and its author are not more widely known.
This is the 8th book that Persephone published, and, coincidentally, the 8th that I've read. show less
Imagine Mrs. Dalloway taking place during the first summer of peace after the Second World War, and you have something very similar to Panter-Downes's One Fine Day. The prose here is eerily similar to Woolf's, in fact, as well as Bowen's and even Elizabeth Taylor's, but the overarching debt here is very obviously to Woolf's novel.
Much more so than there, though, does Panter-Downes get under the skin of the class system, its destabilization after WWII, and the sense of delusion under which show more most privileged Brits lived during the war. While Laura holds the center, and causes Panter-Downes to focus a lot on women's changing roles in and out of the domestic sphere, comments about class and aging, class and bias, class and hypocrisy—all combined with an attention to gender—there are some very astute portraits in here, too, of a crisis in masculinity that the war prompted more so than WWI did, a sense of displacement, and, even still, a nationalistic pride and all but unfounded optimism that is never droll, trite, or sentimental.
It's a damn shame this book is out of print; even more so, that Panter-Downes has written several other novels, about which I can find hardly any information at all, anywhere. If anyone finds information out, please do comment below. This is a fantastic writer whose insight into humanity just in the aftermath of chaos is so worthwhile and prescient to read given the current political climate. show less
Much more so than there, though, does Panter-Downes get under the skin of the class system, its destabilization after WWII, and the sense of delusion under which show more most privileged Brits lived during the war. While Laura holds the center, and causes Panter-Downes to focus a lot on women's changing roles in and out of the domestic sphere, comments about class and aging, class and bias, class and hypocrisy—all combined with an attention to gender—there are some very astute portraits in here, too, of a crisis in masculinity that the war prompted more so than WWI did, a sense of displacement, and, even still, a nationalistic pride and all but unfounded optimism that is never droll, trite, or sentimental.
It's a damn shame this book is out of print; even more so, that Panter-Downes has written several other novels, about which I can find hardly any information at all, anywhere. If anyone finds information out, please do comment below. This is a fantastic writer whose insight into humanity just in the aftermath of chaos is so worthwhile and prescient to read given the current political climate. show less
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