Rebecca
, imply that
possession, in all senses of the term, supersedes property ownership.
Candles in the Window
“Candles in the Window” appeared in the December 1958 issue of
Woman’s
Day
(pages 32, 81–3). American spelling has been silently converted to
British. Most space breaks have been omitted because a layout editor added
them to fit the story into available column inches. This Christmas story
recalls James Joyce’s “The Dead” (the snowfall) and
A Portrait of the Artist
(the
aunt who visits at Christmas). The story has indications of retrospection.
Katherine, the narrator, claims, parenthetically, “(It cannot have been easy,
I see now, for Aunt Kay to break out those year-long silences attendant on
her very solitary life.)” She mentions that the house had no electricity “in
those days.” Kay is something of a fairy godmother, akin to the other
godmothers in Bowen’s postwar stories.
1. The description of the town on the estuary is reminiscent of Cork,
although some elements recall Wexford.
Happiness
2. Orris: a derivative of irises used in fragrances and medicines. Its smell
resembles violets.
3. A paragraph break has been added.
“Happiness” appeared first in
1. A paragraph break has been added.
Woman’s Day
in December 1959 (pages 58,
122–4). The reconciliation between lovers countervails Bowen’s many
stories that conclude with the estrangement of lovers. Christmas spirit
compensates for blasted hopes and unhappiness. In many of her Christmas
stories, including “Emergency in the Gothic Wing” and “Christmas Games,”
Bowen takes pleasure in representing the curmudgeonly uncle – in this case,
Uncle Willard. Space breaks introduced into the magazine layout have been
omitted.
The Bazaar
Handwritten in a relatively clear hand, “The Bazaar” comprises twenty pages
with some corrections (HRC 1.5). The manuscript is undated, but it may
have been written between 1925 and 1930. The situation shows evidence of
a careful reading of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories; the resemblance of
“The Bazaar” to “The Garden Party” goes without saying. Virginia Woolf’s
technique of rapidly passing from character to character, not to mention
the singing and the humming women reminiscent of the working women in
the central section of
To The Lighthouse
, marks Bowen’s own technique.
By emphasising the lightness of social comedy, she seems to be thinking
through and absorbing Woolf’s influence on her writing. Capitalisation has
been regularised (so that words such as “bazaar,” “providence,” and “charity”
are in lower case). An ampersand has been converted to “and.” Where
Bowen forgot quotation marks or commas, I have silently added them.
1. Bowen spells this word “aeriels” and may have a flower or plant in
mind.
Miss Jolly Has No Plans for the Future
2. I have added “with a young man” because the “engagement” appears,
at first reading, to refer to Paula’s wanting to shepherd Lady Hottenham
around the bazaar.
3. The handwriting being hard to decipher, this word might be “scurried”
or something else altogether.
4. The comma has been added.
5. The word “head” may be mistranscribed; the manuscript is hard to
decipher.
6. The manuscript reads “gilt.”
7. Possibly “hornam” or “Hornam” or “korman” or “Worman” or some
thing else. The initial letter is difficult to decipher.
8. Bowen inserts a phrase here, but her intentions are hard to construe.
She may have hoped the sentence to read otherwise: “Arranged in the
centre, for Lady Hottenham to buy, was a nightdress case covered with pink
bows.”
9. I have added “case,” although Bowen may have momentarily changed
her mind about whether a nightdress or a nightdress case was for sale. Later
in the story, Lady Hottenham admires the nightdress case.
10. Mr. Bude is not present. Presumably Mrs. Bude remembers that her
husband did not notice her appearance before he left for work.
11.
The Mikado
: Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta premiered at the Savoy
Theatre in London in 1885.
12. In the manuscript, the sentence has no subject: “The was silent.”
Clearly “crowd” or “audience” or “assembly” is intended.
13. Bowen spells cocoanut in two ways – cocoanut and cokernut – with
the implication that Lady Hottenham corrects her colloquial diction. To shy
a cocoanut is to throw it.
14.
Samson and Delilah
: Saint-Saëns’s opera,
Samson and Delilah
, based on the
biblical story, premiered in Weimar in 1877, but was banned from the
English stage until 1909.
15. Bowen omits “in,” because she originally wrote “in another,” then
crossed it out in favour of “the other.” Through inadvertence, she forgot to
reinstate the “in.”
16. The manuscript reads “walking.”
17. The story ends here abruptly.
Handwritten with a fountain pen on ruled paper, “Miss Jolley Has No Plans
for the Future” comprises seven pages (HRC 8.4). The style of writing and
the use of black ink in the manuscript are characteristic of Bowen’s writing
habits in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Nevertheless, the monologic
technique resembles narratives written in the 1940s – “Oh Madam” (1940),
“The Dolt’s Tale” (circa 1946), and Stella Rodney’s answers to a coroner’s
inquest in
The Heat of the Day
(1949) – to convey criminal intent or
implication in crime by association. Part way through the manuscript,
Bowen ceases to use quotation marks around the woman’s monologue. She
spells “court” sometimes with an upper case, sometimes not; it has been
standardised in lower case.
1. Bowen usually puts a comma after an initial “yes” or “no” in a sentence.
On several occasions, she does not. I have added several such commas,
where appropriate.
2. Rout: to root around or dig up.
The Man and the Boy
3. “I” is missing in the original.
4. In the original, the second page ends here, but Bowen pencils the
number 5 at the top of the next page (the third). From this numbering, one
could infer that some pages are missing from the manuscript.
5. The word “in” has been added for sense.
6. “She” apparently refers to Miss Kisby’s mother.
7. Bowen accidentally writes “I” for “a” here.
“The Man and the Boy” (HRC 8.4) is handwritten on ten sheets of ruled
paper, of the same sort as “Miss Jolley Has No Plans for the Future.” With
its interwar affability, the story may date from the late 1920s. The European
setting recalls “Salon des Dames” and
The Hotel
(1927). The reader learns
that Benjie, despite his physical similarity to Tom, is Antonia’s son from a
previous marriage. Spelling and punctuation errors have been silently
corrected. The title “The Man and the Boy” is loosely scrawled at the top of
the first page in pencil.
1. The chief newspaper in the south of France is
Story Scene
Nice Matin
. Having been
ten days earlier in Tours, the travelling party has moved south to Provence.
2. Tours: a small city in the Loire Valley in France. A comma has been
added after “Tours.”
3. The manuscript reads “sit,” but the preceding comment about Benjie’s
and Tom’s deliberate avoidance of Theodore promotes the possibility that
“seen” is meant.
4. There is a ditto on “to think” in the manuscript.
5. Benjie, taunting Theodore, means, “do mad dogs unnerve you, too?”
6. Bowen altered “stood” to “standing”; the former is grammatically
correct after the semi-colon, while the latter suggests the immobility of the
jalousies left ajar.
7. Bowen erased “might,” but the sentence makes more sense with that
auxiliary verb.
8. Bowen changed the original sentence, “then you couldn’t spare the
car.” Altering it, Bowen left “then you said couldn’t spare it,” which requires
an extra “you.”
9. Originally this formed one sentence. Throughout this story, Bowen,
drafting hastily, omits quotation marks, full stops, and commas in quoted
dialogue.
10. Faubourg: a suburb or district within a city.
11. Albi: a French town near Toulouse.
12. Eupeptic: having good digestion. But I have had to guess. The
handwriting being illegible, the word looks like “emphatic” and might be
anything at all.
13. The story ends here abruptly.
There are two drafts of this fragment about Leonard Osten and his
adulterous wife Rene. The first page bears the pencilled title, “Story Scene,”
in Bowen’s hand (HRC 1.1). Revising, she reworked one draft into another
directly on the typewriter. I have transcribed what appears to be the more
evolved draft; while resembling the first, the later draft is more elaborate
and integrated in terms of plot. Nevertheless, the drafts run together and
bear many crossings-out and alterations. In the version that I did not
transcribe, Bowen describes Len, age 32, as having “the face but not the
temperament of a Pierrot.” By contrast, Rene has “a Madonna face – though
faintly stubborn and cryptic.” In this version, she resembles an Undine
rather than a Madonna.
1. The word “on” is omitted after “went” to avoid the double preposition.
Flowers Will Do
2. Coalite: a fuel made by extracting the elements that smoke from
coal.
3. The typescript reads, “idea of Flora coming.”
4. Bowen substituted “that” for “the,” although “the” is more likely in
context.
5. Bowen crossed out a sentence that indicates Rene’s implication in
Alec’s life: “Rene (who seemed to know) said, now the garage was growing
they were taking a lot of evening work.”
6. This opening descriptive clause could fit somewhere else in the
sentence (after “Rene,” for instance). Bowen added the phrase above the
typed text, but does not indicate with a caret exactly where it belongs.
7. A superfluous “in” falls at the end of the sentence; Bowen forgot to
cross it out.
8. Bowen crossed out a parenthetical phrase that allies Flora with men:
“(for Flora, his cousin, had been one man more).”
9. Originally, Bowen wrote “sank into Len’s silence”; revising, she wrote,
“sank in, Len’s silence.” I have removed the comma.
10. The typescript reads, “uncrewed.”
11. A paragraph break has been added.
12. A space break is likely: at the bottom of the typescript page, there is
an unaccounted for space, as if a line were missing. In the last short section,
Bowen accidentally mixes up Len and Alec. It is more probable that Len as
the host, not Alec as an old friend, meets Flora at the train station. It would
also be odd for Flora to ask Alec about Rene. The error becomes clear when
Flora, walking beside “Alec,” asks after “Alec.” I have adjusted the names
accordingly. In the last section, paragraphing has also been added to reflect
dialogue; Bowen, usually when writing early drafts, runs dialogue together
without paragraph breaks.
This twenty-two-page story exists as a typescript (HRC 4.4). The typist
habitually substitutes an “8” for an apostrophe – a typing error clearly –
which I have corrected. Letters accidentally disappear from “handome,”
“cuboard,” “cuhion,” and so forth; these, too, have been corrected. Commas
are missing in some instances of quoted dialogue. Occasionally the dialogue
is not paragraphed for alternating speakers, so I take the liberty, following
Bowen’s usual practice, of starting a new paragraph for each new speaker. In
a few instances, lines are cut off at the bottom of the page. Mrs. Benger is
first called “Mrs. Belt”; her name changes when Doris begins to pop into her
flat for visits. Only latterly is her given name, Polly, revealed by Leo. The
story is so nearly complete that it may have been published somewhere
with minor corrections. Sellery and Harris do not, however, mention its
publication anywhere. With a plot about callous lovers and loose women,
the story would appear to have been written in the 1930s. Bowen wrote
longhand until the mid-1930s; therefore, this story, written on the type
writer, likely dates from the late 1930s.
1. The sentence begins with a “Then,” which chimes awkwardly with the
“then” after the comma.
2. Marquisite: possibly “marquisette,” a machine-made net fabric, or
“marcasite,” a crystallised form of iron pyrites used for ornaments and
jewellery.
3. A misspelling, “while hair,” occurs in the typescript.
The Last Bus
4. “I have had enough” would be more fluid, but Bowen omits the “had.”
5. This phrase is written “half I man” in the typescript. Bowen might have
intended “half a man.”
6. Although this word is spelled “tin” in the typescript, it seems unlikely
that the house, however jerry-built, would have an interior wall made of tin.
7. Bowen originally wrote “the woman below.” She replaced this with
“Mrs. Belt,” who returns as “Mrs. Benger.” “Benger’s” was the proprietary
name of medicinal powder that, mixed with milk, soothed digestion and
restored strength.
8. This word is spelt “delikatessen” in the typescript.
9. A.B.C.: Aerated Bread Company, a chain of self-service tea-rooms and
bakeries across the British Isles, started as a bread production company in
1862.
10. One or two words are cut off at the bottom edge of the page. It is
possible that several lines of dialogue have been lost at this point.
11. Originally there was a comma after “root”: “that was the root, of it.”
12. Some lines may be cut off at the bottom of the page; the very tops
of cut-off letters are visible, but illegible.
13. The sentence, “There’s not much he can do, really,” is not attributed
to either Doris or Mrs. Benger. Yet only these two characters are in the
room. Either woman could speak the line, but it makes more sense that Mrs.
Benger, who wants Leo to leave, would claim that he cannot do much. Doris
Simonez would be less likely to presume so far.