The Queen’s Book of the Red Cross is, in its own small way, an example of wartime ingenuity. After the outbreak of war in September 1939, this book was put together at rapid speed as a fundraising effort. Contributions were solicited from 50 authors and artists, Queen Elizabeth provided a handwritten introduction and, within two months, it was on booksellers’ shelves in time for Christmas. What could be a more patriotic purchase?
The contributors are a fascinating mix of the familiar and the forgotten. A.A. Milne, T.S. Eliot, E.M. Delafield, Daphne du Maurier, Eric Ambler, Georgette Heyer, and Cecil Day Lewis remain well-known and, for those of us devoted to middlebrow reprints, it’s welcome to see stories from O. Douglas, Dorothy Whipple, Ruby Ferguson and Denis Mackail. But what is even more interesting is to see how these authors are introduced. The introductions are the most obvious sign of how quickly the book was put together, as they range wildly from meaningless praise for the Mediocre to the barest of facts gleaned from Who’s Who for the Great. Witness:
Who has not read “The Four Feathers,” “At the Villa Rose,” and “No Other Tiger”? MR A.E.W. MASON published his first novel no less than forty-four years ago, but he is still one of the most active – as he is certainly one of the greatest – of the master-craftsmen.
versus
MR JOHN MASEFIELD has been Poet Laureate since 1930, and was awarded the Order of Merit in 1935. His best-known poems are perhaps “The Everlasting Mercy,” “The Widow in the Bye-Street,” “Reynard the Fox,” and “Right Royal”; his novels, such as “Sard Harker” and “Odtaa,” reach the widest public; and his “Gallipoli” is one of the classics of the last war.
Some of the judgements are clearly spot-on (“E.M. DELAFIELD is a pen-name that spells wit, brilliance, and versatility.”) but there is one that feels irritatingly dismissive of the author:
Daughter and biographer of that great actor, Gerald du Maurier, MISS DAPHNE DU MAURIER has high claims in her own right as a novelist. Although she has only been writing for some seven or eight years, she has already given us “Jamaica Inn” and “Rebecca.”
O. Douglas similarly cannot escape the relationship with a more famous male relative. Her biography begins “O. Douglas is the pen-name of Miss Anna Buchan, novelist-sister of John Buchan, now Lord Tweedsmuir” but at least continues more generously with the note that “Priorsford is one of the best-loved places in modern fiction.”
Some of the authors’ contributions deal with war, but it doesn’t dominate (unlike the artwork, which is primarily focused on war and fairly forgettable). There’s an enjoyable excerpt from the soon-to-be published The Provincial Lady in Wartime, a German resistance group operating in the Swiss alps, Mrs Miniver plans her Christmas shopping, Daphne du Maurier provides a ghostly escort for a British ship being hunted by a German U-boat, and Priorsford welcomes old residents and new evacuees. There are also stories from other wars, be they reminiscences or pieces of fiction (I especially liked “Only a Sojer!” by D.L. Murray set during the Crimean War). To balance out war, there is a Regency-era elopement from Georgette Heyer, a glimpse of Mrs Memmary conducting buyers around her home from Ruby Ferguson, and, my favourite, Denis Mackail’s story of a young man whose struggles to buy a wedding present for an old childhood friend help him see the charms of a young lady close at hand.
The Queen’s Book of the Red Cross must have sold well given how easy it remains to find copies. And I’m sure if you found it under the tree on Christmas morning in 1939 it would have been a welcome book to dip in and out of (though I do wonder what contemporary readers thought of those troublesome author introductions).
Updated to add a few tantalizing glimpses of the book itself:
