Maud’s War

Peter Fleming (journalist, soldier, travel writer and brother of Ian) commissioned Jan Struther to write a regular column for The Times about “an ordinary sort of woman who leads an ordinary sort of life”.

The result was Mrs Miniver published as a book in 1939 and made into a film in 1942. I’m sure I would enjoy the book – comfort-reading – but I prefer the real thing. Mrs Miniver, incidentally, is not as ordinary as all that: house in Chelsea, second home in Kent, eldest child at Eton, plenty of staff, grouse shooting in Scotland, etc.

But the real thing is The War Diaries  of Maud Russell 1938 – 1945. Born in 1891, she is the daughter of German immigrants who settled in London in the 1880s. By 1938 she is married with nearly grown-up children, a house in London and is the chatelaine of Mottisfont Abbey in Hampshire. This comfortable life is turned upside down. Her husband falls ill, her children prove troublesome and she has difficulty extracting her wider family from Germany, Hungary and Spain. The house in London is closed and she uses Claridges when she visits London, almost weekly.

She throws herself into the war effort in Hampshire, taking in evacuees and soldiers. Fortunately Mottisfont is capacious.

“Sunday June 15 1941

For the amusement of later years I note the number of people in the house last night: GR, MR, Sibyl, Osbert, Alice, Freddie, Philip and Anne Toynbee, Adele, three housemaids, a cook and three kitchen-maids, a butler, two footmen, an odd-man, a negro refugee from Southampton, five evacuee children and eight officers. In the stables there are eight batmen, two evacuee children and Mr and Mrs Gould – she as helper – as well as the butler’s wife and a young man, another Southampton refugee.”

How on earth did she manage to feed four dozen? Inspired by Diana Cooper she got cows and then beehives; she made cheese; rabbits were plentiful; then there was the shoot.

“Saturday December 20 1941

Fourth pheasant shoot. Wonderful day. Warm and beautiful. Shot about 100 pheasants. None fed or reared, of course, for two years. There have been plenty all the same. They fetch high prices. 13/- a bird is the most we have got and a great deal it is. Conrad came in time for lunch. He is always a pleasure. We talked about cheeses, cows and chickens for hours.”