Wouldn't you think that I'd have read this before? But in fact I hadn't - and this biography of The Real Mrs Miniver by her grand-daughter had been on my list for simply ages.
I knew the outline of the real Jan Struther's life - but it was still kind of disappointing to discover that she wasn't her character. Worse still was the dawning realisation that if we'd met, I'm not sure we'd have been friends. Well, there was an awful lot of strumming guitars and singing folk songs and I'm afraid I've never been a Joiner In. And, oh dear, once you'd fallen out of love with your husband - who was a golf club bore - and fallen head over heels for a much younger Jewish refugee ... oh, Mrs Miniver-Struther you really were rather tiresome company, going on and on and on about being such soulmates. Partly, I got a bit bored because there's so much detail - your wartime sojourn in America was recounted almost lecture by lecture. And although I could see that it was a gruelling tour - and undoubtedly useful propaganda in the war effort - I still couldn't help feeling that Jan Struther had a very cushy war indeed and had legged it to America mostly because she was hotfooting it after her lover. Vera Brittain - whose children sailed on the same boat, but who remained in London herself for the duration - wrote in her diary that she loved Mrs Miniver the movie: 'But I think Jan Struther is a charlatan posing as a patriot in the safety of the USA.' So did I. I think Mrs Miniver might have Behaved Better.
I did enjoy the reactions of contemporary readers to the fictional character. Americans, of course, adored wise and plucky Mrs M. The British were more cynical. Fond as I am of Mrs Miniver, floating serenely as a swan thinking her Beautiful Thoughts ... it's still hard not to be snarky about one who was born not only with a silver spoon in her mouth but Georgian silver sugar-tongs, as well. 'She is always so smug, so right, such a marvellous manager,' bitched someone (male or female? surely female?) in a letter to The Times. 'It would be so much more helpful if Mrs Miniver would tell us how she would behave if her husband had an affair with a pretty ARP worker, if her son refused to join up, and if some of the workers at the hospital supply depot rose up in revolt and told the lady where she got off. No, I think the only thing for Mrs Miniver is a direct hit from a bomb ...'
I'm sure that person would be highly amused to discover - as I was - that this twit is the real Mrs Miniver's grandson.
6 comments:
I think it's quite possible that you and Vera Brittain would have got along! Think I'll give this book a pass, but I did love my yellowed Virago copy of Mrs Miniver.
Perhaps more than you need to know about Mrs M's creator, Darlene. Do you thintk you'd get along with VB? Far too serious for me, I think!
I have the book and have read half of it, I actually got fed up with it but I might, at some stage, return to it.
Fancy complaining about the quality of cannabis to the police, yes a twit of the first order! It seems that someone approaching retirement age could be "Mrs Miniver's" (aka, Jan Struther, aka Joyce Anstruther) grandson ... oh, how the years have rolled on by!
Margaret P
www.margaretpowling.com
I was flagging, Margaret - too much information, some of it quite dull! And the tragic discovery that i didn't much like her. But have you read Terms and Conditions, YMG's new(ish) book about girls'boarding schools? Much more fun.
No, not yet read Terms and Conditions although I had heard about it (and had forgotten about it.) Will seek that out, not that I went to boarding school but I loved reading the Angela Brazil books about boarding schools although they were for generations of girls long before me!
Margaret P
I loved Angela Brazil, too - somebody donated a whole stack of them when I was about 11. They were old-fashioned even back then. I do wish I'd kept them but my mum was a passionate chucker-out.
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