REVIEW: Dimsie Carries On
Mar. 27th, 2009 06:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllDimsie Carries On: Dorita Fairlie Bruce Oxford University Press
This is my post about buying the Dimises I've been reading and reviewing of late. (Tes, it can easily take over six months between the purchase of a book and the reading of it in my world.) Closer scrutiny has shown that I've got reprints, so there must have been other dust jackets originally. Even closer scrutiny (ie the dust jacket breaking up somewhat) has revealed that it's two sided, the other side was a dust jacket for another book entirely (Adventure for Two by Elsie J. Oxenham). I don't think I've come across that before!
Despite the title, this book is really about Anne and Primula Mary, who rather reminded me of the Abbey girls, Rosamund and Maidlin, with Dimsie playing the Joy (and Jen) role. And it's always mildly amusing when you reach that point in a girls' own series where the biological family is separated while the old girls congregate to create their own little community. It's particularly striking here that most of the Anti-Soppists seem to have married each other's brothers or their friends, with three out of five living in the same village. Anyway, these are biological families where the girls are sent to boarding school from a young age, so it's hardly surprising that they choose to stick with the created, chosen 'family'.
This was both written, as the dedication makes clear, for readers who wanted more about Dimsie and co. and as propaganda. The book was first published in 1941, but begins with the onset of World War II. Primula Mary and Anne have been staying with Dimsie and try to sign up for war work. The fitter Prim is accepted to become a januty dispatch rider, but Anne must stay where she is, which she does not love, although Dimsie needs her help as assistant herbalist/dispenser. Indeed, Dimsie and her friends need a governess for their children, who are not quite yet old enough to be sent away to school (Dimsie's dughter is called Daffodil/Daffie, but this is from a woman living in a house called Twinkle Tap).
It was striking that joining the war effort/armed forces was seen as a thrill and fun for young ones (and unlikely to involve killing people etc). Handily, Germans, not Nazis, are said to have a miasma of evil about them. For yes, despite being in scenic Scotland, in the middle of Argyllshire over a mountain and a loch, Anne (and to a lesser extent Dimsie and Prim) end up being involved in SPY CATCHING! It is very thrilling (and, if I remember aright, similar to the plot of Fairlie Bruce's Toby of Tibbs Cross, which I've still frustratingly misplaced). A master spy, a common and garden spy and a traitor putting up an imposture (?) as an old Jane girl, (she's come to teach Dimsie and co's children) are trying to find out about a secret base that Primula and some old and new connections of our heroines are working at. Anne, who has an unerring sense of judgment (so it is totally all right that she goes off into the woods with a man she's just met because her instinct is that fine. AHEM. I seem to recall taking umbrage at similar proceedings in another book by the same author) can't make herself like Miss Ewell, so she accepts the job of keeping an eye on her. Soon, suspicious events pile up. Everyone has a habit of debating what has just happened. They aren't that great at keeping secrets.
I didn't realise how much the Dimsie series is bookended by wars - the aftermath of WW1 weighs comparatively heavily on Dimsie at School, and this bunch of old and future Janeites and their friends from Springdale must now face the next. My feeling is that the job of writing propoganda for a youngish audience weighed on the author. There are mentions of it being a strange war, and a waiting time, but then - and I don't know if this was based on truth - there's talk of a German secret base for subs etc on the Scottish coast, a plane flying up to Scotland unchallenged. I'm presuming that the 'message' is for girls like Anne who were caught up in a fervour of patriotism, but weren't allowed to do direct war work. It's highly unlikely that they'd be able to help in the way that Anne did, but I presume they were ment to sympathise with her and take on board the idea that everyone had a chance to help, for wise, innocent Anne is the heroine by the end. There's a reined in romance with Robin Burnet, who Anne initially thinks is a worthless gentleman of lesiure, but who is in fact, involved in the secret base, and whom Primula Mary rather likes, but poigniantly nd stoutly steps back when she sees how things lie.
Some use is made of the Scottish landscape and there's some examples of broad Scots. And...it has it's moments.
I have linked to this DFB resource website before, but it's worth linking to again :).
This is my post about buying the Dimises I've been reading and reviewing of late. (Tes, it can easily take over six months between the purchase of a book and the reading of it in my world.) Closer scrutiny has shown that I've got reprints, so there must have been other dust jackets originally. Even closer scrutiny (ie the dust jacket breaking up somewhat) has revealed that it's two sided, the other side was a dust jacket for another book entirely (Adventure for Two by Elsie J. Oxenham). I don't think I've come across that before!
Despite the title, this book is really about Anne and Primula Mary, who rather reminded me of the Abbey girls, Rosamund and Maidlin, with Dimsie playing the Joy (and Jen) role. And it's always mildly amusing when you reach that point in a girls' own series where the biological family is separated while the old girls congregate to create their own little community. It's particularly striking here that most of the Anti-Soppists seem to have married each other's brothers or their friends, with three out of five living in the same village. Anyway, these are biological families where the girls are sent to boarding school from a young age, so it's hardly surprising that they choose to stick with the created, chosen 'family'.
This was both written, as the dedication makes clear, for readers who wanted more about Dimsie and co. and as propaganda. The book was first published in 1941, but begins with the onset of World War II. Primula Mary and Anne have been staying with Dimsie and try to sign up for war work. The fitter Prim is accepted to become a januty dispatch rider, but Anne must stay where she is, which she does not love, although Dimsie needs her help as assistant herbalist/dispenser. Indeed, Dimsie and her friends need a governess for their children, who are not quite yet old enough to be sent away to school (Dimsie's dughter is called Daffodil/Daffie, but this is from a woman living in a house called Twinkle Tap).
It was striking that joining the war effort/armed forces was seen as a thrill and fun for young ones (and unlikely to involve killing people etc). Handily, Germans, not Nazis, are said to have a miasma of evil about them. For yes, despite being in scenic Scotland, in the middle of Argyllshire over a mountain and a loch, Anne (and to a lesser extent Dimsie and Prim) end up being involved in SPY CATCHING! It is very thrilling (and, if I remember aright, similar to the plot of Fairlie Bruce's Toby of Tibbs Cross, which I've still frustratingly misplaced). A master spy, a common and garden spy and a traitor putting up an imposture (?) as an old Jane girl, (she's come to teach Dimsie and co's children) are trying to find out about a secret base that Primula and some old and new connections of our heroines are working at. Anne, who has an unerring sense of judgment (so it is totally all right that she goes off into the woods with a man she's just met because her instinct is that fine. AHEM. I seem to recall taking umbrage at similar proceedings in another book by the same author) can't make herself like Miss Ewell, so she accepts the job of keeping an eye on her. Soon, suspicious events pile up. Everyone has a habit of debating what has just happened. They aren't that great at keeping secrets.
I didn't realise how much the Dimsie series is bookended by wars - the aftermath of WW1 weighs comparatively heavily on Dimsie at School, and this bunch of old and future Janeites and their friends from Springdale must now face the next. My feeling is that the job of writing propoganda for a youngish audience weighed on the author. There are mentions of it being a strange war, and a waiting time, but then - and I don't know if this was based on truth - there's talk of a German secret base for subs etc on the Scottish coast, a plane flying up to Scotland unchallenged. I'm presuming that the 'message' is for girls like Anne who were caught up in a fervour of patriotism, but weren't allowed to do direct war work. It's highly unlikely that they'd be able to help in the way that Anne did, but I presume they were ment to sympathise with her and take on board the idea that everyone had a chance to help, for wise, innocent Anne is the heroine by the end. There's a reined in romance with Robin Burnet, who Anne initially thinks is a worthless gentleman of lesiure, but who is in fact, involved in the secret base, and whom Primula Mary rather likes, but poigniantly nd stoutly steps back when she sees how things lie.
Some use is made of the Scottish landscape and there's some examples of broad Scots. And...it has it's moments.
I have linked to this DFB resource website before, but it's worth linking to again :).
