Minnie's Room: The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes

by Mollie Panter-Downes

Contains ten stories describing aspects of British life in the years after the war.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, British Literature, Classics, Literature, Historical Fiction

125 pages, Paperback

First published June 22, 2002

About the author

Mary Patricia "Mollie" Panter-Downes was a novelist and newspaper columnist for The New Yorker. Aged sixteen, she wrote The Shoreless Sea which became a bestseller; eight editions were published in 1923 and 1924, and the book was serialised in The Daily Mirror. Her second novel The Chase was published in 1925.

After her marriage to Aubrey Robinson in 1927, the couple moved to Surrey, and in 1938 Panter-Downes began writing for the New Yorker, first a series of short stories, and from September 1939, a column entitled Letter from London, which she wrote until 1984. The collected columns were later published as Letters from England (1940) and London War Notes (1972).

After visiting Ootacamund, in India, she wrote about the town, known to all as Ooty, in her New Yorker columns. This material was later published as Ooty preserved.

Mollie Panter-Downes died in Compton, Surrey, aged 90.

Selected works:

- The Shoreless Sea (1923)
- The Chase (1925)
- My Husband Simon (1931)
- One Fine Day (1947)
- Minnie's Room (Short stories collected between 1947–1965) Republished by Persephone Books in 2002.
- Good Evening, Mrs Craven (short stories collected between 1938–1944) Republished by Persephone Books in 1999.
- Ooty preserved: a Victorian hill station (1967).

Reviews

[JimZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third piece of fiction I have read by this marvelous author.

Here are stats from Goodreads on Mollie Panter-Downes' three works of fiction, and you can see Minnie’s Room has not been read by a whole bunch of people. ☹:
• Good Evening, Mrs. Cravens: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes – 1086 ratings, 161 reviews
• One Fine Day — 537 ratings, 88 reviews
• Minnie’s Room: The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes – 147 ratings & 23 reviews

That’s really sad. Such a good book and so few people have read it. I hope that changes. After I finished the eponymous story, I was floored at how good it was. I must say it reminded me of the Beatles’ song on Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, ‘She’s Leaving Home’. A cook leaves the employ of the Southerns after years of service. They never thought she would leave them, and they are indignant that she is leaving and at the same time quite despondent that she is doing just that. But what a way of writing that Panter-Downes has. Here’s how she starts out the story, and it’s really a loaded sentence: “Minnie was an ugly little Londoner who had been cook to the Sothern family for twenty-five years.” That’s not a very nice thing to say! 😧

The central theme of the stories is that the old way of life before WWII is dying in the 1940s and 1950’s in England. Those days where the well-to-do had estates with maids and servants and cooks and governesses were dying out, and the people left behind the times have to sink or swim….or leave England and seek their old way of life elsewhere. These stories are about 10 pages in length and all were published originally in The New Yorker.

1. Minnie’s Room – 5 stars (I’d give it 10 stars if I could) 😊
2. The Exiles – 5 stars
3. Besides the Still Waters – 5 stars
Nannie is taking care of an old lady whose family has pretty much abandoned her...and they are not close to each other anymore…Nannie arranges pictures of the old lady’s family carefully so the old lady can see the pictures from her bed. I liked this passage: ‘…as though Nannie insisted on uniting the family in double leather frames, however carefully they avoided each other in the flesh.’
4. I’ll Blow Your House Down – 4.5 stars
5. The Old People – 3 stars
6. What Are the Wild Waves Saying? – 4.5 stars
7. Intimations of Mortality – 3.5 stars
8. Their Walk of Life – 5 stars
9. The Willoughbys – 3.5 stars
10. The Empty Place – 3.5 stars

So over all 4.2 stars, but I am going to inflate my score to 5 stars because I want more people to read this book! 🙃 😉

Reviews:
• https://theliterarysisters.wordpress....
• https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2...
• https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2011/...

Note:
In the Publisher’s Note at the beginning of the collection, it is said that Mollie Panter-Downes wrote 36 short stories that were published in the New Yorker which means there are 5 more stories I can read by her. But I just looked at their archives and that are actually 8 short stories of hers. Well, all the better for us I say! Here they are…I am sure I will be reading them all before this year is out.
1. Bodyguard – December 13, 1941 Issue
2. “Time's Winged Chariot” – August 26, 1939 Issue
3. Gum Across The Sea – August 19, 1939 Issue
4. Women without men – April 1, 1939 Issue
5. Susan and Father Christmas – December 24, 1938 Issue
6. The Case of Mrs. Nash, November 12, 1938 issue,
7. Wings Over Mugbourne – October 22, 1938 Issue
8. Pastoral at Mr. Piper's – August 6, 1938 Issue

[Kirsty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read, and very much enjoyed, many books published by Persephone over the years - as, indeed, have many of the bloggers and readers I follow.  I was thrilled when I came across a copy of Mollie Panter-Downes' peacetime stories, Minnie's Room, in my local library.  I loved both her War Notes, and Good Evening, Mrs Craven, a collection of short stories set on the Home Front during the Second World War.  I snatched up the copy (carefully, of course), and went home immediately to begin reading it.

Minnie's Room is a companion of sorts to Good Evening, Mrs Craven.  Comprised of ten stories, all of which are set outside of the Second World War, the collection runs to just 125 pages.  Panter-Downes began to write these tales immediately after she finished her much respected novel, One Fine Day, which I have yet to pick up.  They are all dated throughout the collection, and were written largely between 1947 and 1954.  The final story, however, was penned in 1965.

In Minnie's Room, Panter-Downes shows different aspects of British postwar life.  She focuses acutely upon the English middle class, who, as the publisher's note explains, were 'struggling to try and live in the same way that they had enjoyed before the war.'  This note goes on to say: 'Many of the stories are about people who once had glorious lives, either because they were more affluent or because they were powerful in India or simply because they had once been young and were now old.  In every case they are images of a once-great past now brought low.'

The titular story of the collection is about a family who are astounded that their maid, Minnie, wants to leave their employ in order to live out her days in a room of her own.  Minnie's goal in life is highly Woolfian, although rather than yearning for a space in which to work, she longs for a room in which she can rest.  Panter-Downes' omniscient narrator notes: 'If a woman got to a certain age without finding a husband and kids, Minnie's philosophy stated, she ought to have something of her own, even if it were only one room that belonged to nobody else.'

Panter-Downes explores different kinds of relationships in Minnie's Room, but seems particularly interested in the correlation between employer and employee.  She looks at the middle classes, and how they relied in this period upon hired staff - the maid in 'Minnie's Room', the nurse caring for an elderly charge in 'Beside the Still Waters', and the nanny of a woman whose childhood memories are collected in the quite beautiful story 'Intimations of Mortality'.  

Familial relationships, too, and their often tumultuous nature, find a place in these stories.  In 'Beside the Still Waters', to use an example from above, Panter-Downes comments: 'Her brothers and sister... greeted one another amiably but without enthusiasm.  Meeting seldom, they generally parted as speedily as possible, and with a certain amount of relief.  On such occasions, Cynthia found it difficult to think of herself and these three middle-aged adults as having at any time constituted a tight little unit known as a family, with a shared roof, habits, sentimental associations, and terms of reference.'

Panter-Downes' observations are keen, and rather striking.  She describes physical interiors with such attention to detail that they seem to be built before the very eyes.  In the collection's title story, for instance, she writes: 'All the Sotherns were substantially built, and their house in Bayswater was veiled with muffling plush curtains and full of large, softly curved objects filled with down, covered with rosy glazed chintz, or padded with leather.  Even the china figures in the drawing-room cabinets contributed to the overstuffed effect, representing, as they did, bonny, plump shepherdesses and well-fed sheep.'

I particularly enjoyed the way in which Panter-Downes fleshes out her characters.  In 'The Old People', a family, complete with grandparents, have gone on holiday.  Panter-Downes describes the working father in the following manner: 'Lance had appeared at breakfast that morning in shorts and an open-necked blue shirt, but the holiday garb sat on him strangely, with the look of a carefully planned fancy dress that would win its wearer a prize at a dance on board ship.  His short legs, unveiled once a year, had a curious air of still being covered by a species of spiritual tweed.'  In this manner, which continues throughout the book, Panter-Downes unfailingly strikes the perfect balance between seriousness and amusement.

However commonplace these stories and characters may seem at first, each tale offers up an element of surprise.  These range from something merely glimpsed, to a revelation to the protagonist in question.  Each has been placed perfectly into the narrative, and each made me consider something within the story.  The tales here are brief, running to around 12 pages each on average, but in every single one, realistic characters and scenarios are presented.

I have admired Panter-Downes' work for years, and am disappointed that it took me so long to pick up a copy of Minnie's Room.  The collection was fascinating to read, and it further cemented for me just how incredibly perceptive its author was.  Time and again, she evokes an England which is utterly recognisable, but which is largely gone.  

The stories in Minnie's Room are largely quiet ones, but they deal with large and important topics - illness, relocation, sadness, poverty, and death, to name but three.  Panter-Downes' sharply rendered insights into her characters have a kind of empathy to them at times.  I found Minnie's Room a real treat to read, and look forward to the day when I can finally get my hands on a copy of One Fine Day.

[Fiona MacDonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh MPD is just a wonderful writer. I adored "Good Evening, Mrs Craven" which was a collection of her short stories written during the war, and now this lovely collection of stories written just afterwards that celebrates all the ways these various people have started putting their lives back together and are learning to live without restraint. Her writing is witty, warm and addictive. I love her.

[Rosemary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mollie Panter-Downes wrote stories and articles from England for the New Yorker through the Second World War and after. While the stories in Good Evening, Mrs Craven were set in England during the war, those in Minnie's Room were written later (1947-65). Many of them show people whose lives have been battered by the war and its aftermath. They're sometimes bleak, sometimes hilarious. The characters are ordinary people made interesting by details that pick up on their charming, absurd or pathetic individuality.

My favourite was 'The Old People' (1950) which had me laughing out loud over and over again with its portrait of a family forced to take the grandparents along on their annual seaside holiday. Here's a quote: "Cecily sometimes noticed [another hotel guest] gazing at her father-in-law with romantic respect, as though he detected on the old man's food-spotted waistcoat a plaque that said 'In this building, now ruined, Edward Munroe Darlington lived for many years'."

[Tania · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having loved Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes, a collection of her short stories written during WW2 and published by The New Yorker, I was really looking forward to this one. These are the post WW2 stories that they published. Unfortunately, I found them rather insubstantial compared to the previous collection. Good, but nowhere near as good as Good Evening.

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

This companion volume to Persephone book no. 8 Good Evening, Mrs Craven contains ten stories describing aspects of British life in the years after the war. 'Minnie's Room' itself is about a family who are unable to believe that their maid wants to leave them to live in a room of her own. An elderly couple emigrates because of 'the dragon out to gobble their modest, honourable incomes.' The sisters in 'Beside the Still Waters' grumble because 'Everything is so terribly difficult nowadays.'

Persephone book number 34. It is always such a treat to pick up an unread Persephone book. I have to say I loved these stories. I read the war time stories some time ago and enjoyed them enormously. What Mollie Panter Downes manages to do in not very many words - is to paint a picture beautifully of an entire world, past present and future, you hear the voices, see and feel the insecurities and petty snobberies up close. There is remarkable detail in these everyday lives, and therefore the characters become very real, a vividly poignant portrait of England during the late 1940's and 1950's emerges from this slight volume.

[Cathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant, superb collection of stories. I have now read all the currently in-print books by this author. These stories reveal so very much in sharp, shining prose. I just love her writing and wish, greedily perhaps, there were just a few more stories in this rather slim volume. It took an afternoon to read and I wish I had another afternoon's worth to look forward to.

I am so pleased to have discovered this author's work - and I hope her writing gets lots more attention.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I finished this all I could think was "It was fine, but I don't get all the fuss about MPD--or at least this volume." Then come to find out, I read it 5 years ago and didn't remember anything about it. At no point in my re-read did any of it seem familiar. I know I am getting old, but I think this says more about how humdrum this slim volume is.

[Austen to Zafón · Rating 5 out of 5]

Persephone reissued Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes a few years ago, which is a group of stories that take place during WWII in Britain. I loved those. Panter-Downes doesn't disappoint in this companion volume of post-WWII stories. England suffered the privations of war long after 1945, with rationing continuing into the fifties and a whole way of life destroyed. In fact, I think I may like this collection even better, although I'd need to re-read the first one to be sure as it's been a while.

While most of the stories are about change and loss, it's lightened by sometimes unexpected humor and sharp observation. Panter-Downes was a master of using few brush strokes to convey a scene, a character, or way of life.

Here are some quotes I particularly enjoyed.

In "The Old People," a young couple with children are saddled with the husband's parents on a trip to the seaside. The older man, a retired professor, is particularly loud and draws many stares, but not all of them are negative. The wife observes in the dining room, "Cecily sometimes noticed Mr. Kent [a guest] gazing at her father-in-law with romantic aspect, as though he detected on the old man's food-spotted waistcoat a plaque that said, 'In this building now ruined, Edward Munroe Darlington lived for many years.'"

In "I'll Blow Your House Down," a young widow has to sell her house. She's meeting the prospective buyers, who are talking tactlessly about what they want to do to the house, 'Look Dolly, that chestnut will have to come down, for a start.'
Rhoda looked at him in horror. 'The Chestnut? My husband and I were always particularly fond of it,' she said.
Mrs. Baynes' widowed state flashed so plainly across Mr. Denton's mind that he appeared to raise an invisible hat for a brief, respectful silence...
In other parts of the house, Mr. Denton waved his arms again, and other walls crashed, cupboards sprang up, new bathrooms blossomed. The air was so thick with spectral flying masonry that Rhoda felt inclined to jump back in alarm."

In "Intimations of Mortality," a woman is looking back on her loving relationship with her childhood nurse, Kate, and how it differed from that with her family. "My father's and mother's affection was something I had to live up to. Even in the talk of the relatives who came to see us from time to time--mostly country people...whose sturdy bodies were dressed in hairy tweeds, which looked and smelled, I used to imagine, as though my relatives lived in an earthy bank under the foxgloves with the round, good, furry creatures of the Beatrix Potter books--even in these relatives' talk, I heard vaguely, passed back and forth over my head, a constant assessment of the items I had inherited from the huge, muddled store-chest of family characteristics. In this depository, each generation had salted away some feature...a habit, or a trick of speech or gesture. My love of scribbling in penny exercise books, for instance, was not (it appeared) something that belonged to me alone but an extension of the famous and vivacious gifts of my Aunt Violet..."

[Ally · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this slim collection of Mollie Panter-Downes' short stories, originally published in THE NEW-YORKER between 1947 and 1965, the author explores the ways in which British society is changing post-WW2. Each of these stories were hopeful and heartbreaking in measure, with characters so vivid and real that you might see yourself or your family/friends in them. At times I had to remind myself that these were fictional, as I would have just as easily believed they were works of non-fiction.

In "Minnie's Room", an upper-class family struggles to understand why their long-time in-house cook, Minnie, is leaving them to start a life of her own. An older couple, who find that their modest income/pension no longer allows them to live comfortably in London, decide to leave and sail to a new life in South Africa in "The Exiles". In "Beside the Still Waters", siblings have to decide how and where to relocate their elderly mother and her nursemaid when the coastal convalescent home can no longer care for her. In "I'll Blow Your House Down", a young widow, still mourning the sudden death of her husband, must sell their house so that she can have money for her and their children to live. As she walks through the rooms and the garden, she experiences memories and reminders of their once-happy life together. A husband and wife bring his elderly parents (one experiences symptoms of dementia) along with them to a family, seaside holiday in "The Old People". In "What Are the Wild Waves Saying", a young child learns a valuable lesson about the true nature of love. In another child-narration story, "Intimations of Mortality", an upper-class family's governess brings her charge along with her when she pays a visit to her dying mother. The child has her first exposure to people whom are from much lower social classes from her, and her first experience with being around serious illness. In "Their Walk of Life", an upper-class family must come to terms with the surprise engagement of their daughter to a man who is from a lower class. In "The Willoughby's", the narrator observes, and then interacts with a small family party who are on holiday at the same Austrian hotel. "The Empty Place", the final story in this collection, meets Dolly, a middle-aged woman whose husband was recently and suddenly killed, and how she responds to the tragedy. Rather, the reader obtains this information from the widow's long-time friend Mr. Scoby, who may have been secretly in love with her. Through his lens, we are witness to the ways that people can gradually fade away from the sphere of someone who has experienced tragedy.

In each of these stories, there is a sense of the end of a way of life. Some event (war, illness, tragedy, etc.) has occurred and caused a dramatic shift (often unwelcomed and unwanted) that forces the character into a strange, uncomfortable, new life. While certainly tragic, there are hopeful ticks to the works that leave the reader feeling that all is not lost. The mixture of sadness and hope feels fully authentic to modern life. I would highly recommend MINNIE'S ROOM: THE PEACETIME STORIES OF MOLLIE PANTER-DOWNES as a window into the concerns of British society after the end of the Second World War and beyond.

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

What happens when wars end? The war isn't there any more but its effects are. That's what MPD manages to show in these short stories. The best stories for me were those set when the war was still recently ended, when people realised with a startling regret that they were still alive but life would never be the same again. 'Minnie's room' is my favoourite story in this collection. MPD is great on people dealing with change, especially change at home: where we live, who we live with, who provides food and less tangible things needed. She's brilliant at mutual bafflement, for example between middle-class families and their servants, noticing all the unconscious assumptions in the relationship which make it work, and all the pain that comes when the relationship ends.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book-end to Good Evening, Mrs.Craven in the sense that the short stories contained within are mostly post-war by both theme and date written.

Mollie Panter-Downes has the knack for drawing the reader into each tiny world and her worlds often leave a detail in your mind to remember.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mollie Panter-Downes wrote the Letter from London for the New Yorker all through World War II and nothing evokes London during those years better than she does in those dispatches. This is a small book of her short stories about England after the war and she manages to capture a larger world by focusing on specific characters. Her touch is delicate, always.

[Russell James · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are her 'peacetime stories'. (There is another collection of her wartime ones.) They are all good, though those written in the 40s and 50s are the most atmospheric aNnd reflective of their time. This is how we (we of the midddle classes) were.

[Hepzibah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant, beautifully crafted stories. Read this.

[Becky Holmes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blog post: http://abookaweek.blogspot.com/2013/0...

[Bryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great writer! I thoroughly enjoyed this. All of these stories made me feel genuine feelings in the span of just a few pages. Minnie's room--tear!

[Chloe]

Beautiful short stories.

[Marie S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as brilliant as the War stories in my opinion. They were enjoyable, but not memorable. The last one though was very touching.

[Jane Fudger · Rating 4 out of 5]

A selection of stories ranging from 1947 to 1965during peacetime England, Essentially the stories examine family relationships whilst the nation's class and well being depict a state of decline.
Mollie Painter-Downes has a great perception oof British society at the time with the stories being both suggestive and funny yet also portraying loneliness, loss and seldf deception
An enjoyable collection easy to read.

[Lisa Townsend · Rating 3 out of 5]

Panter-Downes' short stories depicts daily life in England in the context of austerity measures in the aftermath of World War II. It presents a picture of how the devastating effects of war reach far forward in time to touch even mundane aspects of daily life. It is also a testament to perseverance and recovery.

[N. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Evening, Mrs. Craven is one of my favorite short story collections so I had high hopes for Minnie's Room. While the stories themselves could be a little ho-hum, not much to see here, her writing style absolutely blows me away. She had a phenomenal ability to place the reader in a scene, making the characters and their surroundings so vivid that you can practically see the little miniature Gobi brought in from the seaside, feel the wind, smell the cooking or the wine or the musty dampness.

I think I loved Good Evening, Mrs. Craven a bit more because of the WWII setting and how it illuminated everyday life during the war in England in a way most fiction I've read does not, but there were touches of the 50s in Minnie's Room that I also enjoyed. Nothing will beat a peek into WWII for this reader but anyone who makes me reread sentences for the turn of phrase or the pairing of words in a description deserves a pretty high rating, whether or not the stories were the most compelling. I hope Persephone finds and publishes more of her work, if they haven't already.

[Catherine Morrow · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve long anticipated reading this collection of #shortstories by Mollie and I’m really sorry to say I didn’t enjoy it.

Although I liked the references to days and times gone by and references to such scenes and objects like cigar boxes and monocles, the stories didn’t grip or interest me.

It won’t put me off reading other Persephone titles but this one will be finding a new home.

[Toast · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice collection of short stories with a lot to say about post war Britain. Small but perfectly crafted works of observation of 'revolution' as everything, however small and everybody, however insignificant has changed forever.
Moving and monumental.
Toast

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Likely a 4.5. Short stories not often my preferred read, but these are exquisitely written and superbly crafted. Very English, very simple. But just wonderful. A slim volume.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-observed and nicely described.

[Trisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mollie Panter-Downs was the New Yorker's London correspondent during the Second World War and her book of 21 short stories (Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes) captured the ordinary lives of British people from a wide variety of occupations and social positions as they got on with the harsh realities of living in the midst of the chaos of wartime.

That book with its distinctive gray cover and lovely endpapers reproduced from graphic designs popular during the period, was the first of many I’ve ordered from Persephone Press in London. Since then I’ve ended up with quite a few more – including this one, published in 2002. It contains 10 short stories originally published in the New Yorker and spanning the years 1947 through 1965. They focus on the difficulties faced by the English middle class as families struggled to return to the way life used to be for them before the war.

But even though England won the war, nothing was the same as it had been before. Not only had many families lost their homes as well as sons, husbands and fathers, rationing was still in effect until well into the 1950’s. Gone were the days of being able to depend on domestic help, which meant that women who hadn’t been used to doing their own cooking and cleaning were left with no other alternative but to do it for themselves. “Everything is so terribly difficult,” one of them lamented,” we seem to be slaving. . .trying to keep the place going.”

Many of these families had once lived comfortable, even fairly affluent lives and were now struggling to adjust to social and economic changes that left them feeling disoriented and adrift in a world that no longer made sense. It was a grim time, and if anything links together the stories in this collection it’s a harsh sense of resignation to a way of life that had been changed forever.

[Gail · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love Mollie Panter -Downes style of writing with it's subtle depth of observation. Mollie started writing for The New Yorker in 1938 aged 32 and continued to 1984 publishing 852 pieces for them and no one else, including poems, London Letters, book reviews, Profiles, ats columns, Letters from England etc.

These post-war short stories were written immediately after she finished One Fine Day. Britain may have won the war but peace time was unremittingly grim with war time controls and restrictions still in place and bread was newly rationed in 1946.
A recent New Yorker historian has singled out Mollie as "a writer whose grace and restraint mirrored her personality.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having recently enjoyed Good Evening, Mrs. Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes, I was eager to read her later collection, Minnie’s Room. This collection of ten short stories, written between 1947 to 1965, has mostly to do with the sudden and profound changes in England following the second World War. I was really impressed by how easily she draws you into the stories, her eye for detail, and her ability to evoke strong emotions with brevity. She is a marvelous short story writer, and I highly recommend both collections.

[Jenny (bookishjenx) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Satirical, quaint, funny little stories. Set in post-war Britain, the woes of the middle-class are hilariously portrayed in this.

Never heard of the author and wouldn’t have picked it up without it being a Persephone, but I loved it!