Dawn Chorus

by Joan Wyndham

Sharing her family history of unique characters Joan Wyndham explores her ancestors' experiences of bygone eras, at home and at war. Starting with her aristocrat grandfather who built a vast Victorian country house in Wiltshire, entirely of green granite, and boasting forty bedrooms and a kitchen so far from the dining room that a miniature railway track had to be built to carry food from one place to the other! Drawing such varied house guests as prime minister Arthur Balfour, Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, and Oscar Wilde and Bosie, this was a society where weekends were set aside for bed hopping. This was accepted provided you stuck to your own class, though made the Wyndham family tree somewhat complicated. And then there was Joan Wyndham's aunt, "a perfectly normal upper-class girl devoted to show jumping who ran away with a black lesbian actress and lived the rest of her life in Harlem".

233 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Joan Olivia Wyndham was a British writer and memoirist who rose to literary prominence late in life through the diaries she had kept more than 40 years earlier, which were an account of her romantic adventures during the Second World War, when she was an attractive teenager who had strayed into London's Bohemian set. Her literary reputation rests on Love Lessons (1985) and Love Is Blue (1986), two selections from her diaries which led one critic to call her “a latterday Pepys in camiknickers”.

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dawn Chorus by Joan Wyndham starts with the incredibly tantalising paragraph :

"The first three years of my childhood were spent in a vast Victorian country house in Wiltshire called Clouds. Built entirely of green sandstone, it boasted forty bedrooms, and a kitchen so far from the dining room that a miniature railway track had to be built to carry food from one place to the other. Luckily, tepid meals were the norm in those days."

How could I possibly resist such an opening?

In Dawn Chorus Joan Wyndham tells the story of her family, beginning with her great-grandfather, Percy, who built Clouds to be his family home and continuing on through the generations down to her own memories of her childhood and teenage years. Her life begins in 1921 at the second incarnation of Clouds, the first having burned down before she was born, then is transported to London after her parents separate, where her mother’s friends, a group known as ‘the Souls’ simultaneously entertain and embarrass her with their eccentric antics. Joan attends a convent school and has a somewhat tempestuous relationship both with religion and the nuns responsible for her education, until she goes to the theatre and sees John Gielgud as Hamlet, whereupon she decides to audition for RADA.

This is a wonderful memoir, not only because the subject matter than it chronicles is so interesting, but also because the evidence on which Joan Wyndham draws is so miraculously complete. Her relatives seem to have been meticulous record keepers, and so her accounts of their history is littered with diary entries and excerpts from letters which lend a great immediacy to the writing. Her own letters and diaries are written with remarkable candour and shared with an openness and lack of embarrassment which makes Dawn Chorus a delight to read. Even though I do not doubt that the selections used have been carefully chosen, Wyndham seems quite happy to display her younger self both at her best and at her worst. I cannot think of many writers who would share their awkward teenage diaries, rife with overblown emotions and incidents rather forgotten, so willingly with the reading public.

Whatever subject she is talking about, Joan’s diary entries are warm and filled with emotion so that she really leaps off the page and comes to life. They are often highly amusing, although sometimes not intentionally so, imbued as they are with the seriousness of youth. At one point, she goes to stay with a family in Paris:

"Friday: For three days now there has been no paper in the Tante Fannee. I’ve had to use all the tissue paper from my trunk. Luckily, I have been asked to dinner by my Romanian relatives in Paris. They are very grand and rich so I will probably be able to pinch a few rolls of paper to take home with me."

There is a similar brutal and entertaining honesty in the extracts from her family’s writing that she includes. Take, for example, her mother’s record of Joan’s early development in her Baby’s Progress Book:

"Joan is never still for one moment and exhausts all who look after her. When finally tired out, she sits and twiddles her hair without ceasing.
Hearing: Hears more than is good for her.
Smell: Good, but has a habit of snorting.
Sight: Slight squint.
Taste: Greedy"

Later on there is no doubt at all of the genuine affection between Joan and her mother, as evidenced by their numerous letters to one another, but her mother’s evident frustration with her young baby and the ruthless way in which she records it is highly entertaining.

This book can become a bit confusing at times, as Joan tends to refer to people by their first names rather than their relationship to her, so it can become easy to lose track of who is who and in which generation. Nevertheless, this is a fine memoir of life in England for the upper classes between the Wars, and definitely one that should be more widely known.

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this entertaining memoir, particularly the first half when Joan talks about her childhood and family. I got rather bored reading about her RADA escapades and the different plays she'd seen and performed in. I've read all three of her other autobiographical books/diaries and think they're so much better than this one. Some lovely photos, however and good for research into the pre-war period, which is what I bought the book for.

[Lyndsy Spence · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Joan Wyndham. This is a nice departure from her scandalous diaries. The narrative is very funny and is written in a typical Joan style. Loved the vivid portraits of her mother and companion, Sid.