First published in 1984, this famous novel has been
reissued. Helena sits reading 'The Times' on THE CAMOMILE
LAWN at her beach house in Cornwall, while the news is all
of impending war. Helena would rather not think about such
matters - her first husband died in the Great War and her
second husband lost a leg in the trenches. Her nephew
Oliver has just returned from the Civil War in Spain and
she hopes the summer influx of young cousins will do them
all good.
As the news becomes gloomier and official edits are issued,
the young people plan on enlisting, except Calypso who is
determined to marry someone wealthy. Some of them had been
to Germany. Young Sophy is the innocent one, adored by all
the group except Helena, her reluctant stepmother. The
young people play a half-serious game suggested by
depressed Oliver, in which someone must kill a person in
the next five years. The war forces them all to adapt;
Helena has to do with fewer staff, taking in an Austrian
Jewish musical couple; the young men enlist and Calypso
marries well. Sophy is still at boarding school. They keep
in touch as best they can, often in the three-minute phone
calls allowed.
These are the kind of well-off people who owned homes in
Knightsbridge and drove cars, who had money to buy houses
in London during the bombing when others sold cheaply.
Those who went to war expected to be officers sooner rather
than later, and the intensity of the times made them all
live crowded private lives. Mature Helena has a pent-up
sexuality expressed in a relationship, while others, on
leave, take brief comfort in warm arms. Sophy has already
lived through a terrifying experience. Long after the war,
on the road to a funeral, Helena and Polly reminisce about
those years and the changes they brought.
The continued focus on people being awfully brave, dining
at the Ritz and attending classical music concerts, can
become tedious for readers looking for a more holistic view
of the war years. Mary Wesley however was writing of times
she recalled and had a certain 'set' of readers in mind.
The main contrast is with the Jewish couple, whose son is
in a camp where the Red Cross have no access. As the
unconventional is accepted in the press of war, nobody's
life could have been foreseen from THE CAMOMILE LAWN.
Mary Wesley’s sprawling novel of wartime England—and the
loss of innocence
It is August 1939. At an elegant manor house high above the
sea, five cousins gather for their annual holiday. As
Calypso, Walter, Polly, Oliver, and ten-year-old Sophy
explore the limits of blood, friendship, and their
blossoming sexualities, war looms on the horizon. This will
be the last summer that they spend together; it is a season
marked by the heady joys of self-discovery, the agonizing
pain of betrayal, and a world on the edge of conflict.
A novel of dazzling breadth and scope, The Camomile Lawn
journeys from the end of childhood to the slings and arrows
of old age with the humor and insight readers have come to
expect from the beloved Mary Wesley.
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