Our Allies
By CHRISTINE LOWELL
OUR allies are having a profound influence on our lives today and will exert more than a little influence on our lives in the future, but I did not wait until the 1940’s to feel — and show — the influence they exorcised over my own waistline.
Always a voracious reader, I succumbed in the twenties to the charm of the light English novel. Of course, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Vanity Fair, Oliver Twist I had known practically from childhood. But E. F. Benson with his Queen Lucia and his Miss Mapp, devastating creatures, whetted my desire for almost any book presented in an English setting.
What was wrong about that? Nothing so far as you are concerned; you are a person of character. But the years have shown me that I am nothing more nor less than a plastic victim of suggestive influence. My friends watched the results but they did not guess that English authors were the cause.
Their remarks ran something like this: —
“How well you are looking. Do you know, I believe you have gained at least ten pounds since I saw you last year.”
As I never could be compared to a rail, far less, with my five feet, to a beanstalk, — all this meant that I was fast turning into the feminine counterpart of that man lately celebrated at the Stage Door Canteens as Mr. Five by Five.
England had played me false. For I defy you to pick up one of those delightful English novels of the late twenties and not meet a neat little maid bearing a tray of crumpets and jam, raisin cake and tea, before you turn to the seventh chapter. This is the time you would sit calmly on, turning the pages one after the other. Not I. Automatically, I would lay down the book — just for a moment— and quite unconsciously head for refreshment. I would match Lady Isobel and her guests, mouthful for mouthful, drink for drink, although at eleven o’clock at night my crumpets would probably turn into hearty sandwiches, and the cups of tea into glasses of rich, creamy milk. Keep that up and see how your frocks will fit you!
But with the coming of the thirties I turned my allegiance from England to Russia. No more for me the Hunt Breakfast, A Stroll Down the Garden Path, or a pleasant cozy chat with the Vicar. My Accent of Living in the Flesh became Accent of Living in the Spirit.
Russia — there was an ally for you.
But if, as the Bible reminds us, I could not add a cubit to my stature, at least my new-found friends succeeded in stripping many pounds off my wellrounded figure. I read with ever increasing interest of the fight the Russians were making, with all the attendant sacrifices, for their Five-Year Plan, then their Ten-War Plan. I followed Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Walter Duranty, Eugene Lyons, William Henry Chamberlin, Fannina Halle. I even followed the White Russians on their sad journeys away from their beloved Fatherland. Remember Mrs. Platov in The Children — “But Mother was not hungry because, if one would believe her word, she had eaten while preparing food.”
No seeking of late-hour trays after realizing the fare of these peoples. Still, regardless of any possible danger of a return to that figure of Five by Five, let us look forward to that day, and may it be soon, that England once again with abundance in her midst may spell temptation with the words: “ Do join me for tea.” And may it be that best, of all meals, an English High Tea, with the table groaning, and the crumpets dripping — just dripping — with butter.