Mrs Tim Carries on – D E Stevenson (1941)

With thanks to the publisher for the review copy

I have had this book quite a while – as it’s a review copy, I feel a bit guilty about that – but when it arrived, I hadn’t read the first book in this series. So, I read Mrs Tim of the Regiment, and then promptly forgot about this one. 

I read Mrs Tim Carries On as part of the ongoing LT ‘reading the 1940s’ project – it doesn’t really fit in with this month’s theme (food – I mean people eat, but I can’t claim it as an overarching theme) – but will slot happily into several of the other months.

Mrs Tim of the Regiment was first published in 1932 – and was followed by many other novels and the increasing popularity of their creator – nine years later this sequel to Mrs Tim appeared. Despite that nine year gap – the second book picks up just a few months after Mrs Tim of the Regiment ended. This timeline works perfectly well as from what I can remember there is nothing in Mrs Tim of the Regiment that particularly dates it to the early 1930s. What remains the same is a delicious warmth that envelops the reader immediately. D.E Stevenson brought her characters back in this delightful sequel apparently to lift wartime spirits – I can only think that it would have done that perfectly.

“There is so much War News in News Bulletins, in Newspapers, and so much talk about the war that I do not intend to write about it in my diary. My diary is an escape from the war…though it is almost impossible to escape from the anxieties which it brings.”

Our narrator is again Hester Christie, the wife of Major Tim Christie – mother to Bryan and Betty. Written in a series of diary entries, in the same bright, warm chatty style that so endeared Hester Christie to readers of that earlier book. While Major Christie is away serving in France with the regiment, Hester is keeping the home fires burning in the small Scottish town of Donford where the regiment are now stationed. Her friend Grace is expecting a happy event any day and has somehow managed to make a deadly enemy of Mrs Benson, the colonel’s wife.

Over the course of this novel we see Hester try to suppress the natural exuberance of her delightful Betty when in polite company, cope with her son’s misspelt letters, holiday escapades and the lonely Polish soldier he adopts. When not ministering to the children, Hester spends her time volunteering at the comforts depot, sorting the piles of items which have been donated for the comfort of the men serving abroad. We witness some of the tensions that always seem to exist between people in any organisation of this type – not unlike the ladies who argue over the tea urn in Barbara Pym books.

While Tim is away in France, Tony Morley is again a frequent visitor – he is now a colonel – itching for active service and trying to knock his battalion into shape. It is Tony, who alerts Hester to the worrying situation in France (in the days before Dunkirk) and with no news from Tim for several weeks, Hester knows the fear that was experienced by so many families in these days.

“Sometimes I feel hopeful – I feel it is impossible that anything could happen to Tim without my knowing it in my very bones – and sometimes I am crushed with despair. Oh Tim, where are you? You can’t have gone away and left me here in this horrible, terrifying world alone!”

Hester’s faithful Annie gets married – and while she is away on honeymoon a peculiar replacement generally called ‘not Annie’ by Hester in her diary. Hester entertains a house guest, Pinkie, a blonde Amazonian type of head turner who is delightfully guileless and popular with just about everyone. Pinkie stays far longer than originally intended and is soon very much a part of the family. Dear Mrs Loudon, who we met in the first book turns up to visit her son Guthrie in a near by hospital, Hester makes a flying visit to London to see her brother on embarkation leave and experiences a proper air raid.

I enjoyed this book much more than the first book – which I liked a lot, but thought was a little bit too long, and has two sections which are noticeably different in tone. This book is a charming escape, but never completely shies away from the realities of war, it is also more of a cohesive whole. I have already bought the next two Mrs Tim books (soon after being sent this one, I think I decided I needed to get them in case they ran out or something) so lots more of Hester Christie to enjoy.