Dashwood, Elizabeth Monica (1890–1943)

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Dashwood, Elizabeth Monica (1890–1943)

British author and radio personality famous for her "Provincial Lady" series. Name variations: (pseudonym) E.M. Delafield. Born Edmée Elizabeth Monica de la Pasture on June 9, 1890, in Steyning, Sussex, England; died on December 2, 1943, in Cullompton, Devon, England; daughter of Elizabeth Lydia Rosabelle (Bonham) de la Pasture (a writer of numerous novels under Mrs. Henry De La Pasture, who was later known as Lady Clifton) and Count Henry Philip Ducarel de la Pasture; married Paul Dashwood, on July 17, 1919; children: Lionel Dashwood (1920–1940); Rosamund Dashwood (b. 1924).

Selected writings:

Zella Sees Herself (Heinemann, London, 1917); The War-Workers (Heinemann, 1918); The Pelicans (Heinemann, 1919); Consequences (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1919); Tension (Hutchinson, London, 1919); The Heel of Achilles (Hutchinson, 1921); Humbug: A Study in Education (Hutchinson, 1921); The Optimist (Hutchinson, 1922); A Reversion to Type (Hutchinson, 1923); Messalina of the Suburbs (Hutchinson, 1924); Mrs. Harter (Hutchinson, 1924); The Chip and the Block (Hutchinson, 1925); Jill (Hutchinson, 1926); The Entertainment and Other Stories (Hutchinson, 1927); The Way Things Are (Hutchinson, 1927); The Suburban Young Man (Hutchinson, 1928); What Is Love? (Macmillan, London, 1928, republished as First Love, Harper, 1929); Turn Back the Leaves (Macmillan, 1930); Diary of a Provincial Lady (Macmillan, 1930); Women Are Like That (Harper, London, 1930); Challenge to Clarissa (Macmillan, 1931, republished as House Party, Harper, 1931); To See Ourselves: A Domestic Comedy in Three Acts (Gollancz, London, 1931); Thank Heaven Fasting (Macmillan, 1932, republished as A Good Man's Love, Harper, 1932); The Provincial Lady Goes Further (Macmillan, 1932, republished as The Provincial Lady in London, Harper, 1933); The Time and Tide Album (Hamilton, London, 1932); Gay Life (Macmillan, 1933); General Impressions (Macmillan, 1933); The Glass Wall: A Play in Three Acts (Gollancz, 1933); The Provincial Lady in America (Macmillan, 1934); Faster! Faster! (Macmillan, 1936); Straw without Bricks: I Visit Soviet Russia (Macmillan, 1937, republished as I Visit the Soviets, Harper, 1937); Nothing Is Safe (Macmillan, 1937); Ladies and Gentleman in Victorian Fiction (Hogarth Press, London, 1937); As Others Hear Us: A Miscellany (Macmillan, 1937); When Women Love (Harper, 1938, republished as Three Marriages, Macmillan, 1939); Love Has No Resurrection and Other Stories (Macmillan, 1939); The Provincial Lady in Wartime (Macmillan, 1940); No One Now Will Know (Macmillan, 1941); Late and Soon (Macmillan, 1943).

Well known under her pseudonym E.M. Delafield, Elizabeth Monica Dashwood was a highly prolific fiction writer who achieved her greatest success with her Provincial Lady, a character whose popularity earned her a large following in both England and America.

Known as Emmie, she was born Edmée Elizabeth Monica de la Pasture on June 9, 1890, in Steyning, Sussex, England, the daughter of Elizabeth Bonham de la Pasture , a novelist who published from 1900 to 1918. Never outgoing or attractive enough to lure suitors, Emmie was criticized by her mother and would later recall: "I was the victim of an emotionally loving, terribly possessive parent who had … not the slightest idea of … her unconscious determination that I should grow up to be nothing but an extension of her own personality." Emmie was raised bilingual in both French and English, and attended boarding schools in Belgium and Britain. Her closest relationship was with her younger sister Yolande , with whom she moved from school to school according to their mother's whim. Emmie's father, Henry de la Pasture, a more gentle parent, died of a heart attack in October of 1908, before Dashwood was 20. Two years after his death, while Emmie and Yolande were away on holiday, their mother married Sir Hugh Clifton, the colonial secretary of Ceylon. The sisters were advised of the wedding on their return home and sent to live with their maternal aunt Connie in Cornwall. Dashwood remained there until she joined a French order of nuns in Belgium, at age 21.

The order was run on strict rules: no talking 23 hours a day, no friendships, and no written endearments or confidences kept, even with family. Those who broke the rules were physically punished. A letter written by Emmie to Yolande, which advised her against becoming a nun, was intercepted by the nuns and destroyed, an act that cemented Dashwood's unhappiness with the order. She left the convent just short of her second year, less socially equipped than when she had entered.

On her return to England, she joined the Volunteer Aid Detachment (VAD) and began using the name Elizabeth. For the first time in her life, Dashwood's popularity increased, and her creativity flourished. She published Zella Sees Herself in 1917 under the pseudonym E.M. Delafield (an Anglicization of de la Pasture intended to prevent confusion between Emmie and her mother).

The author received a fan letter from Major Paul Dashwood, who asked to meet her. The two were wed in 1919 and moved first to Hong Kong and then to Singapore, where Paul was an engineer in several British harbor-building projects. Elizabeth Dashwood continued to write from Asia, but she did not find the isolation of military life agreeable. By 1922, she convinced her husband that they and their two young children, Lionel and Rosamund, had to move home. Their return to England effectively ended Paul's engineering career, and Elizabeth became the family's primary breadwinner.

Dashwood, who had never learned to cook or clean because her mother had deemed these chores beneath her, was ill-equipped as a homemaker, but she was always available to her children and wrote constantly. Paul, meanwhile, took work as the land agent for the estate on which their home, Croyle, was situated. Dashwood joined the writing staff of Time and Tide magazine, where she quickly advanced to an editorial position and introduced her most famous character. Popularity for the Provincial Lady, a member of the nobility and keen observer of vanity and hypocrisy, was so high that the author wrote Diary of a Provincial Lady, which debuted in 1930 and has since become a classic.

Elizabeth took a flat in London while Paul remained in Kentisbeare, and she returned home when her children were on holiday from boarding school. Their son Lionel attended his father's alma mater, Rugby, and their daughter Rosamund followed in her mother's footsteps, moving from school to school as her mother searched for the right influences. The Dashwood marriage was strained but cordial, though they presented a familial front to frequent literary visitors.

Lionel was his mother's most frequent male companion, and his death from a self-inflicted, possibly accidental, gunshot wound in 1940 devastated her. Dashwood's declining health forced her permanent return to Croyle in 1941, and the reunion with her husband renewed the relationship. After a colostomy in November of 1941, Dashwood's health worsened. She collapsed during a lecture and died at home two days later, on December 2, 1943. She was buried next to her son.