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Supposedly derived from the journal of Alice Marion Mills in 1912, Lady Hillingdon, now lost. Later apocryphally connected to Lucy Baldwin, wife of Prime Minister Baldwin, and Queen Victoria or described as advice given to Victorian era brides-to-be. First popularized by the translation in 1955 of Pierre Daninos's Les Carnets du Major Thompson (1954), a French satire on upper class British culture.
I am happy now that Charles calls on my bedchamber less frequently than of old. As it is, I now endure but two calls a week and when I hear his steps outside my door I lie down on my bed, close my eyes, open my legs and think of England.
1940 Nov. 2, "Canadian Industrial Independence Seen as War Outcome", Windsor Daily Star, p. 10:
...when the test comes, when the United Kingdom gets into trouble again, and when the King calls upon his loyal subjects all over the world, the Canadian knows at a still deeper level of his being that he will undoubtably do as he has always done before. He will close his eyes and think of England.
1955, Robert Farn tr. Pierre Daninos as The Notebooks of Major Thompson:
Meltenham and her mother had prepared her for marriage in an entirely Victorian spirit. The day before she left home, Lady Plunkwell had delivered her final advice: "I know, my dear, it's disgusting. But do as I did with Edward: just close your eyes and think of England!" Like her mother and her mother's mother before her, Ursula closed her eyes. She thought of the future of England.
1972, Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny:
One finds as many mentions in Edwardian literature to the chastity, the holy purity of upper class women, indeed to their active abhorrence of sex, as one does in the nineteenth century. There was the passage I quoted from Lady Hillingham at the head of this chapter—"...close my eyes, open my legs and think of England". The source for this quotation is a little suspect. The sentiment expressed is without question typical and accurate.
