England Was an Island Once by Elswyth Thane – for the #1940Club

Title: England Was an Island Once
Author: Elswyth Thane
Publication: Harcourt, Brace and Company, hardcover, 1940
Genre: Memoir/History
Setting: England just before WWII

This week, Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon of Stuck in a Book are hosting the 1940 Club in which we all read and write about books published in the same year.

Description: When Thane visited England for the first time in 1928, she felt that she had come home. She visited every summer after that, often for extended periods of time for research at the British Library or for business, as she became a successful writer and had two of her plays performed in London’s West End. She liked to rent a furnished flat (with a refrigerator; I guess the affluent had them in 1938 even if Elizabeth Fair did not in 1954!) so she could write uninterrupted and have a kitchen and entertain; it is clear she refused to be perceived as an American tourist. As war approached, she did not want to leave but she kept detailed notes and decided to share her impressions of Britain’s preparations for war in the context of the island’s history in this book. She wanted to sell the British cause to Americans while the country was officially neutral and make them understand the gallantry of the British as they dug trenches, prepared to evacuate their families, and even urged her to return to safety in her own country (which hurt her feelings). It was all happening as she watched. The detailed sections on politics or the history of England are not nearly as interesting as the vignettes where Elswyth and her friends are worriedly listening to the BBC broadcasts or having long chatty meals or simply observing the city being prepared for the aerial onslaught, we all know is coming. The book is an ode to England as it was and is, written in the fear that it might be conquered if America did not join in the war.

My Impression: Elswyth Thane is one of my favorite authors yet I picked this up at my own childhood library for 25 cents many years ago and had never sat down to read it. Thane is best known for the Williamsburg novels, a series of seven books that begins just before the Revolutionary War in Virginia and follows the Day and Sprague families through World War II in America and England. In this book, however, I was conscious not merely of her intense love of England but also of how she reinvented herself after moving from Iowa to New York City in 1918. She dropped the name Helen Ricker and called herself Elswyth Thane. She became a writer of serious nonfiction and lighthearted fiction and, in 1927, she married a famous naturalist nearly twice her age, William Beebe. Her first book was Riders of the Wind, reviewed for the 1929 Club, which the New York Times called an “unashamed romance.” In fact, she incorporated a lot of herself into that book – a star-stuck young woman impressed by a quiet but confident explorer, old enough to be her father – and dedicated it to Beebe. However, by the time she started to write England Was an Island Once, Thane was an accomplished playwright with many of her best novels still to come.  She was able to move in the best circles, was invited to country weekends, and even if her celebrity husband was not with her, she was no longer an unknown, self-educated girl from Iowa.

Thane and Beebe

The book meanders but Thane’s inimitable style keeps it entertaining. Although she says she does not go in for pilgrimages, the book begins with a trip to Winchester Cathedral to visit Jane Austen, just as I did in June. She is definitely a name-dropper and mentions meeting Kipling, a huge influence on her work, in London and also in Bermuda where she and Beebe had a home. When not focused on research or writing in London, she is jaunting to the countryside with friends – she especially loves the Cotswolds – and old historic houses like the ones she wrote about in Queen’s Folly and Tryst. Sometimes her style is so leisurely, you forget that war is imminent until she reminds the reader:

You in America to whom the drone of an engine overhead merely means the night mail-plane – how do you think it feels to walk in familiar streets, buy the usual food for dinner, send off the laundry, ride in crowded buses, take the family to the cinema, brush your teeth, go to bed (and to sleep) and wake to a new day – to live in a city not yet under fire, to be sure, but accessible to bombing from the air, and suddenly liable to it within a week’s time? . . . How does it feel?

I  am curious about how the book was received in America when it was published – whether she achieved her goal of reminding people of the close relationship to England at a time when many simply did not see the gathering clouds in Europe as relevant to the United States.

Source: Personal copy