Between Two Worlds - The Diary of Winifred Coombe Tennant 1909-1924

The diary of Winifred Coombe Tennant (1874­1956) is an extraordinary document. Its daily entries (1909­1955) amount to one and a quarter million words. They document the writer's intense inner life alongside her acute observation of the outside world through a period of unprecedented upheaval.

Review :
At the beginning of this volume – which is a much-anticipated companion to Peter Lord’s earlier study, Winifred Coombe Tennant: A Life through Art – we meet Coombe Tennant in a state of grief following the death of her daughter, Daphne. Consequently, the early years of the diary explore different states of consciousness, and form a record of her 'Daylight Impressions' of the afterlife. Her election as President of the Neath Suffrage Society in 1914 ushers in a new phase of social activism and philanthropy. Winifred's awareness of the poverty around her lifts her out of depression and gives focus to her maternal instinct. During the Great War her pacifism melds with her feminism. She expresses the need to end violence by '[i]mparting into public affairs the Mother-Spirit'. This urge informs her actions right through her political career, granting her great self-belief as an orator. The diary is supplemented with extracts from articles written by and about Winifred, detailed accounts of her conversations with Lloyd George, letters from her son Christopher, her 'Journal' and the occasional psychical 'script' (automatic writing). Peter Lord deftly summarises each year of Winifred's diary in order to maintain a sense of narrative continuity. He populates the margins of this hefty tome with a collage of texts and images from Winifred's life and times, from the oil paintings she commissioned of her family to photographs of her in her Eisteddfod robes. Evidently, Lord has struggled to give as full and coherent a picture of the diaries as he feels is possible, while seeking to avoid too much repetition. For example, Lord edits out Winifred's constant quotation of the Song of Solomon during her affair with Gerald Balfour: this is a blessing to the reader, but it betrays Winifred's wish to strengthen her link with Balfour through words, which often formed the only medium of communication she had with him. Lord has created a pruned version of the diary, one that showcases the incarnations of the woman that interest him: suffragist, medium, politician, art patron. However, the diary also captures something far subtler and incremental: the mix of spiritual and mundane rhythms that form the varied texture of an extraordinary life. We see a woman concerned with political wrangling, endless committee meetings and train timetables on one day, and mountains, children and silk dresses the next. In a dark moment Winifred considers the impact her diaries will have: 'I wonder if these diaries of mine won't breathe out waves of agony. They have been steeped in it, so often'. Certainly, there is much here that is profound and saddening. The overarching pattern, though, is one of increasing success, as we follow Winifred from depression, through clandestine love and into the lofty heights of political and cultural life.