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feather_ghyll) wrote2025-04-22 08:02 am
feather_ghyll) wrote2025-04-22 08:02 am
REVIEW: Henrietta Sees It Though
Hope you had a happy Easter!
Henrietta Sees It Through: Joyce Dennys, Bloomsbury 2010
This is a sequel to Henrietta’s War, which I read almost five years ago, during lockdown. This time around, I felt some more distance from the wartime characters and their privations. It covers 1942-45, ending, with qualified hope, just after V.E. Day.
Henrietta is the Doctor’s Wife, Mrs Charles Brown, mother to Bill and the Linnet (who gets married and becomes a nurse while her husband is serving abroad during this book.) They live in an unnamed seaside town in the West Country, and Henrietta is writing irregular letters about town life to her ‘childhood friend’ Robert, who knows everyone, but is far away, serving. (Or this was the conceit, the letters were actually published in a magazine during wartime, with Dennys drawing on her own experiences for inspiration and illustrating the features, which are reproduced in this republished collection.)
‘Everyone’ includes the beloved and inspiring Lady B, the rather more sharp-tongued Mrs Savernack, glamorous Faith (not to be mixed up with Lady B’s dog, Fay), who finally makes the lovelorn Conductor the happiest of men, and, in due course, interrupts Charles’s Christmas Day to give birth to a child who is henceforth called ‘Little No-well.’ There are other neighbours who lose their children to the war, an American soldier named George, animals full of character, and Visitors who have come streaming out of London and make the locals feel bad for not having had their experiences, although, as we see throughout the book, they are not unaffected.
There are times, as the war goes on, where Henrietta, who is a worrier, feels quite low. Parties are rare chances to pull out pre-war clothes (never mind ladders and moth holes.) But in the main the tone is humorous, with a letter revolving around an anecdote, perhaps about an important town meeting, or a general mood about the town, or a visit to Our Cathedral City, with the last line before the greeting at the end pointing to the absurdity of human nature.
For a bit, I thought ‘Where have all these spoonerisms come from?’, but this didn’t last. There are some interesting insights into the mental toll of trying to do one’s duty – Lady B’s spirit is strong, but she’s in her seventies now – particularly the women’s perspective. Henrietta feels guilty that the billeting officer exempts them from having evacuees to try to protect Charles. She never succeeds in making him jealous, he’s generally too sensible for that, but their efforts to look after each other and others are touching. It was also an insight into the thoughts of GPs as the genesis of the national health service was starting.
As I said of ‘Henrietta’s War’, it’s not a book to be devoured in one sitting. Although I read it in several days, I’d read a handful of letters, and then put it down to let it rest. Perhaps it would have worked better if I’d read it in between other books, making me experience something more like the passage of time the characters undergo.
Henrietta Sees It Through: Joyce Dennys, Bloomsbury 2010
This is a sequel to Henrietta’s War, which I read almost five years ago, during lockdown. This time around, I felt some more distance from the wartime characters and their privations. It covers 1942-45, ending, with qualified hope, just after V.E. Day.
Henrietta is the Doctor’s Wife, Mrs Charles Brown, mother to Bill and the Linnet (who gets married and becomes a nurse while her husband is serving abroad during this book.) They live in an unnamed seaside town in the West Country, and Henrietta is writing irregular letters about town life to her ‘childhood friend’ Robert, who knows everyone, but is far away, serving. (Or this was the conceit, the letters were actually published in a magazine during wartime, with Dennys drawing on her own experiences for inspiration and illustrating the features, which are reproduced in this republished collection.)
‘Everyone’ includes the beloved and inspiring Lady B, the rather more sharp-tongued Mrs Savernack, glamorous Faith (not to be mixed up with Lady B’s dog, Fay), who finally makes the lovelorn Conductor the happiest of men, and, in due course, interrupts Charles’s Christmas Day to give birth to a child who is henceforth called ‘Little No-well.’ There are other neighbours who lose their children to the war, an American soldier named George, animals full of character, and Visitors who have come streaming out of London and make the locals feel bad for not having had their experiences, although, as we see throughout the book, they are not unaffected.
There are times, as the war goes on, where Henrietta, who is a worrier, feels quite low. Parties are rare chances to pull out pre-war clothes (never mind ladders and moth holes.) But in the main the tone is humorous, with a letter revolving around an anecdote, perhaps about an important town meeting, or a general mood about the town, or a visit to Our Cathedral City, with the last line before the greeting at the end pointing to the absurdity of human nature.
For a bit, I thought ‘Where have all these spoonerisms come from?’, but this didn’t last. There are some interesting insights into the mental toll of trying to do one’s duty – Lady B’s spirit is strong, but she’s in her seventies now – particularly the women’s perspective. Henrietta feels guilty that the billeting officer exempts them from having evacuees to try to protect Charles. She never succeeds in making him jealous, he’s generally too sensible for that, but their efforts to look after each other and others are touching. It was also an insight into the thoughts of GPs as the genesis of the national health service was starting.
As I said of ‘Henrietta’s War’, it’s not a book to be devoured in one sitting. Although I read it in several days, I’d read a handful of letters, and then put it down to let it rest. Perhaps it would have worked better if I’d read it in between other books, making me experience something more like the passage of time the characters undergo.