1. Poke bonnets: bonnets with a projecting brim, fashionable in the
nineteenth century.
Comfort and Joy
2. This sentence does not appear in the manuscript.
3. The situation, and more particularly the quadrille, recall Lewis
Carroll’s
Alice in Wonderland
.
4. The manuscript has a crossed-out phrase: “looked disdainfully at her
green velvet shoes.”
“Comfort and Joy” appeared in a double issue of the literary journal
Modern
Reading
in 1945 (pages 10–16). Edited by Reginald Moore,
Modern Reading
included prose by Storm Jameson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Anaïs Nin, Henry
Miller, May Sarton, and others in its 1944 and 1945 issues. In his headnote
to the double number published in 1945, Moore notes,
For reasons comprehensible only to those with a knowledge of the
exigencies of wartime publishing, we should not have been able to
produce No. 12 as a separate number for three or four months, and we
felt that both our readers and our contributors deserved better than this.
Hence our New Year Number, comprising Nos. 11
and
12. (7)
Printed in London, this pocket-sized journal was produced “in complete
conformity with the authorised economy standards” (4). Bowen does not
discuss the war explicitly, but war exerts its pressure. Children are displaced.
Flats are shut. Soldiers are billeted on families. Cyril’s being jilted on
Christmas Eve anticipates the plot of “Happiness.”
1. “Tiding” in the first line has been amended to “tidings.”
The Good Earl
2. In the context of the story, the husbands’ absence insinuates that they
are at war.
3. The original reads, “Happychristmas.” In the exchange between the
two girls, paragraphing has been slightly altered to follow alternating
speakers.
4. This sentence was originally included in the preceding paragraph.
5. “God rest your merry, gentlemen” has been amended to “God rest you,
merry gentlemen.”
“The Good Earl” appeared in
Diversion
, a book edited by Hester W.
Chapman and Princess Romanovsky-Pavlovsky and published by Collins in
1946 (pages 133–46). Proceeds from the book were meant to benefit the
Yugoslav Relief Society. Rebecca West, who had written extensively about
Yugoslavia in
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
(1941), supplied a passionate
introduction to
Diversion
. Other contributors included Sacheverell Sitwell,
Rose Macaulay, Lord Berners, John Lehmann, Noel Annan, Henry Green,
and Edward Sackville-West. Using a “we” narrative voice, Bowen casts this
story as a communal commentary on the earl’s grand schemes. The narrator
more precisely discloses that he is male when he refers to “we young
fellows.” As internal evidence indicates, this allegory of wastefulness and
class pertains to Ireland. Two earlier versions of this story exist: corrections
to a typed version on sixteen pages of pink paper are incorporated into a
second version on eighteen numbered pages of white carbon paper (HRC
4.6). Bowen made a few further changes to the second version by hand.
Where these emendations illuminate something about the process of
revision or about the story, I have made a note of them. Capitalisation in
the story has been regularised, but Bowen clearly intended an allegorical
dimension to the story by capitalising “Earl” and “Lough” and “Steamer,”
among other nouns.
1. In the typescript, “to” yields to “into.” “To” seems more natural, but
“into” was the preposition used in the published form.
The Lost Hope
2. The first three references to the Little Dog are lower case; thereafter
they are in upper case. They have all been regularised to upper case.
3. Forenist: Bowen uses a variant of “fornent” or “fornenst,” which means
“right opposite,” “over against,” or “facing.”
4. Quotation marks are placed around the quoted speech in the carbon
typescript version. Occasionally Bowen adds quotation marks throughout
the typescript. Omitting the quotation marks, as happens in the published
version, enhances the mythic dimension of the fairy tale.
5. The original reads “to raise and maybe sell.”
6. Bowen crossed out “not” and substituted “now” in the typescript.
7. I removed a comma after the initial “For.”
8. Bowen included a phrase in the typescript that was edited out of the
published version: “and from houses that he possessed in Dublin.”
9. The original reads “is” but “are” is the logical verb form in context.
10. Bowen adds an “s” to create the plural, “stoopings,” in the typescript.
11. The typescript, with handwritten corrections, reads differently: “his
eyes looked at you out of his head like lamps.”
12. The scene recalls Christ’s resurrection.
Although Bowen wrote this story in 1945, it did not appear until 29
September 1946 in the
Sunday Times
(pages 3–4). Mr. Russell, literary editor
at that newspaper, commissioned and held “The Lost Hope” for a year while
accumulating enough material for a series. Meanwhile, Bowen signed a
contract with the
New Yorker
in October 1945 granting that magazine the
right of first refusal on articles and stories. She explained to her agent at
Curtis Brown that, in the circumstances, the publication of “The Lost Hope”
in the
Times
did not contravene her contract with the
New Yorker
, which, in
any event, turned down all the pieces that she submitted. In a letter dated
15 October 1946, Bowen clarified the situation for the agent who handled
magazine sales at Curtis Brown:
Mr. Russell explained that they might not be using the story im
mediately, but that they wanted to collect some for a proposed series. I
had not, however, anticipated that they would be holding it for so long.
All this happened prior to my receiving and signing the
New Yorker
contract – which, though it dates from October 18
th
[,] did not reach me
for signature until considerably later. I think this clears the matter. (HRC
10.5)
She let the
New Yorker
contract drop because it proved too confining. The
setting of “The Lost Hope” recalls Bowen’s essays about seacoasts, including
“Folkestone” and “The Idea of France.” Moreover, returns – people coming
back to residences that they have left because of the war – characterise the
short story “Ivy Gripped the Steps” and the essay “Opening up the House,”
which both date from the same period. James’s story, “The Middle Years,”
has a discernible influence on “The Lost Hope”: the seaside, the ageing
writer, the younger man.
1. The microfilm of this story being hard to decipher, some of the
punctuation is unclear. At this point, the punctuation may be a semi-colon
or a comma. I opt for the latter for syntactical reasons.
2. A paragraph break has been added.
I Died of Love
3. “His room” might be intended.
4. “Assisting at” derives from the French,
assister à
, which means “to
witness,” without any sense of “to help.”
“I Died of Love” appeared in 1946 in
Choice: Some New Stories and Prose
, edited
by William Sansom, illustrated by Leonard Rosoman, and published by
Progress Publishing in London (pages 129–37). In his foreword, Sansom
wrote that the editorial principle behind the selection of “modern narrative
prose, of creative and not critical work” (vii), emphasised good writing. He
added, “There is, however, a tendency away from the toughies, a tendency
on the whole to write less as one speaks but rather as one might, given the
time and the thought and the sensibility, hope to speak” (vii). The gist of
the volume is away from conventional short stories and towards experi
mental hybridisation. In this vein, William Plomer calls Bowen’s “I Died of
Love” a “ballad” and a “strange and delicate fragment” in his prefatory
comments in
Choice
(viii). Indeed, the story uses the collective “we” as a
narrative position, much like “The Good Earl.” Also, the story runs in a
circle, with Miss Mettishaw presented as storyteller at the beginning and
end, as in a ballad. The soldier with the handsome face who leaves debts all
over town draws his pattern from Wickham in
Pride and Prejudice
, a novel that
Bowen discusses in
The Heritage of British Literature
. She also excerpted sections
from
Pride and Prejudice
for a radio dramatisation of Austen’s writing life, “New
Judgement: Elizabeth Bowen on Jane Austen,” broadcast in 1942. Literary
influences aside, one should not forget that Bowen herself was briefly
engaged to a British soldier, Lieutenant John Anderson, in 1921 (Glendin
ning 48). A ten-page typescript with handwritten corrections of “I Died of
Love” is extant (HRC 6.3). I have noted some of Bowen’s changes in the
editorial notes.
1. In the typescript, Bowen concluded this sentence with the phrase,
“after the rest it had had from remaining shut.”
So Much Depends
2. Bowen crossed out a clause that originally concluded the sentence
after a colon: “she could not however forget what it might have been.”
3. The typescript reads “faultlessly” rather than “blamelessly.”
4. The typescript reads “discard” rather than “refuse.”
5. In the typescript, Bowen crossed out a sentence following this: “No
lady called without an appointment.”
6. The word “would” has been added.
7. In the typescript, another clause added to this sentence clarifies the
motives for the marriage: “he was esteemed locally and could have had his
pick, but the bride would be called on to bring in money.”
8. The typescript more damningly states that “the flounces of her skirt
and petticoats were stained green with grass.”
9. In the typescript, the sentence ends, “as though protecting some
thing,” which is crossed out.
10. In the typescript, the sentence reads, “In another minute there would
be big drops, and the trees in the gardens were all rustling.”
“So Much Depends” appeared in the September 1951 issue of
1. St. Swithin’s: 15 July. Legend in Britain has it that if it rains on St.
Swithin’s Day, it will rain for the next forty days.
Woman’s Day
(pages 72, 149–50, 152–60). While recalling the middle portion of
The Death
of the Heart
, set in a house on the English coast, “So Much Depends” also
looks forward to Bowen’s essay, “The Case for Summer Romance,” published
in
Glamour
in 1960. Summing up a summertime flirtation in that essay,
Bowen wonders whether holiday romances need be serious. In “So Much
Depends,” disappointed love and broken engagements, mainstays of Bowen’s
plots, are reconfigured in Ellen’s moody self-obsession. Ellen’s flightiness
contrasts with Erica Kerry’s much more anguished, less public love. Space
breaks in the published version have not been followed; no manuscript
exists to indicate Bowen’s intentions for space breaks. Although the layout
editor at
Woman’s Day
inserted spaces whimsically, I have retained only
breaks that indicate shifts in time, space, or perspective.
Emergency in the Gothic Wing
“Emergency in the Gothic Wing” appeared in the
Tatler
on 18 November
1954 (pages 18–19, 52). Bowen wrote a weekly book column for the
Tatler
for eight years, from 1945 to 1949, and, after a hiatus, from 1954 to 1958.
The goofiness of this Christmas story may partly be explained by its
appearance in a magazine devoted lightheartedly to the comings and goings
of aristocratic society: balls, hunts, openings, sightings of royalty.
1. Mélisande: a character in Maurice Maeterlinck’s play
Pelléas et Mélisande
(1892), which was the basis for several musical compositions, most notably
Claude Debussy’s opera of the same name.
2. In “Bowen’s Court,” an essay about her house in County Cork, Bowen
explains that a “Long Room,” intended for balls, took up the entire length
of the third floor. Although generations of children played in this room, it
was never used for dancing: “Any ball is held, by tradition, down in the
drawing room. Why?
The Long Room floor will not stand up to vibration
. So I was
told by my father, he by his, his by his father, whom his father had told. No
one of us, in consequence, ever tried” (193). The actual layout of Bowen’s
Court inspires the fictional layout of Sprangsby Hall.
3. Spirit photographs: manipulated photographs that provided, through
double exposure, spurious evidence of the spirit world. Spirit photographs
purported to show emanations of dead people. An amateur of the genre,
Arthur Conan Doyle published
The Claimant
The Case for Spirit Photography
in 1922.
“The Claimant” appeared in
Vogue
on 15 November 1955 (pages 122–3,
167–8). It was also published in
The Third Ghost Book
, edited by Cynthia
Asquith, in 1955, and in the magazine
Argosy
in January 1956. In his
introduction to
The Third Ghost Book
, L. P. Hartley comments that traditional
ghosts gibber and clank chains. He adds that
a stylized ghost is much easier to handle, so to speak, than one whose
limitations are uncertain. If he can only squeak or clank a chain, we
know where we are with him . . . But if the ghost can be so like an
ordinary human being that we can scarcely tell the difference, what is
the difference to be? Where is the line to be drawn? (ix)
The ghost in “The Claimant,” more psychological than chain-clanking,
resembles the spectre in Henry James’s
1. The original reads, “all the place was queer that smile of his.” The
“with” has been added.
The Turn of the Screw
. Bowen was fond
of plots about moving in. Her last, unfinished book was tentatively called
“The Move-In.” In the short story “The Cat Jumps,” a couple move into a
house where a murder took place. The story “Women in Love” also dwells
on inspecting a house with a view to buying it and moving in. These plots,
with their recollection of Daphne du Maurier’s