14. The typescript reads “his,” which makes no sense.
15. Mrs. Belt converts into Mrs. Benger at this point.
16. The typescript reads, “the bed’s tumbled surface of the bed.”
17. The typescript reads, “freezias, flooping.”
18. The word “for” has been added.
19. Bowen writes “Mrs. Simonez,” an accidental confusion, for she means
“Mrs. Benger.”
20. Bowen adds the words “the which of” by hand, but the phrase adds
nothing to the sentence. I have therefore omitted it.
21. The typescript reads “Why not you two . . . ”
22. The word “a” has been added at the start of this phrase. Beneath
Bowen’s erasures, one can discern a different sentence: “Leo lay sideways
across the divan – young man who had just had his head pushed gently off
someone’s lap.”
23. The typescript reads “in.” The preposition is wrong. A hand might lie
in her lap, but it cannot easily lie “in her knee.”
24. Bowen erased another version: “It was as though she saw Sydney for
the first time.” Revising, she wrote, “Now, though she saw Sydney for the
first time.” I have added the second comma.
25. Bowen wrote this paragraph twice over. The first version ends
suddenly: “All at once, Doris pulled her hand free. ‘Well, we don’t have to
keep laughing.’ She looked across at Sydney, flushed and twisting his head
round, tilting his drink at Polly. She did not love Sydney. She thought:
Polly’s seen, too – oh, what a shocking thing. With her.” The dynamic is
more complex in this version. Doris, glimpsing her relation with Sydney
through Polly Benger’s eyes, realises that she does not love Sydney at all.
The carbon copy of “The Last Bus” is dated “29.11.44.” at the end of the
eight-page typescript (HRC 6.10). The story is an allegory about Europe
and its future directions. It owes something to E. M. Forster’s
The Celestial
Omnibus
(1911), the title story of that collection being one that Bowen
considered teaching at Vassar in 1960 in her class on the short story.
Following editorial practice in other stories, I have separated dialogue into
paragraphs according to speaker, whereas Bowen, beginning with the con
ductor’s dismissive, “I dessay you’re right,” lumps together dialogue among
several speakers in single paragraphs. The point of doing so may be to
indicate the coalition of voices – young, old, male, female, military, civilian,
bureaucratic, English, and foreign – that contribute to making the new
Europe. Although the story ends inconclusively, Bowen thought it finished,
for she drew a line across the page at the end and added the date.
1. A paragraph break has been added.
Fairies at the Christening
2. There is a semi-colon, not a comma, in the typescript.
3. A. T. S.: Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s corps of the British
Army. Originally staffed by volunteers during the Second World War, the
A. T. S. changed its structure of rank to correspond to full military status as
of 9 May 1941.
4. In the typescript, an ellipsis follows the civil servant’s remark.
“Fairies at the Christening” exists as a twenty-one-page typescript with
extensive corrections in Bowen’s hand (HRC 4.4). Sellery and Harris do not
list it as published in any book or magazine, and I cannot trace it to any
published source. I have amended obvious spelling mistakes and errors in
verb tense. Bowen interchanges periods, em-dashes, colons, and semicolons. Some rough punctuation has been left unchanged, although Bowen
would probably have refined the story in subsequent revisions.
1. The word “nonna,” meaning “grandmother” in Italian, connects the
child to the three wise women who show up at her christening.
Christmas Games
2. Originally Bowen wrote, “He felt he had suddenly plunged into deep
waters.” Not fully erasing this sentence, the typescript erroneously reads,
“He felt he himself plunged into deep waters.”
3. The typescript reads, “What are really the headache are these
appalling godmothers.”
4. The “of” has been added.
5. The typescript reads, “car’s door opening.”
6. Bowen uses em-dashes after “laughter” and “flat” in the last two
sentences in the paragraph. I have altered these to avoid having four
consecutive sentences that hinge a clause to the sentence with a dash.
7. Bowen, perhaps accidentally, added the question mark to the type
script by hand.
8. There is a ditto on “crowded” in the typescript.
9. The typescript reads, “not, might say.”
10. The original reads, “corner lamp in the corner,” with the first “corner”
a handwritten change.
11. Bowen uses a colon not a full stop after “cord,” which I have changed
to reduce the number of colons in the sentence.
12. The typescript reads, “
wished you, Happiness in Love, and Truthfulness.
”
13. Bowen crossed out “holy, most wholly human, day” and replaced it
with “greater Day.”
I cannot trace “Christmas Games” to any published text. It exists as an
eighteen-page typescript with extensive emendations in Bowen’s hand
(HRC 2.6). The atmospherics of this story, which is a pastiche of sorts, owe
something to Sheridan Le Fanu’s
Uncle Silas
. The name of the gloomy
country house, “Ravenswood,” alludes to Sir Walter Scott’s
The Bride of
Lammermoor
, whose protagonist is Edgar Ravenswood. At the same time, the
destroyed house recalls Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
Other influences are evident. The engraving of a scene from
Macbeth
that
hangs on Mrs. Throcksby’s chimneypiece could represent the witches’
coven in that play. Fairy-tale qualities taken from Rumpelstiltskin (the
footprints) and Hansel and Gretel (the two young people lured to the
witch’s den) also enter the plot. Mrs. Throcksby’s lip-licking and avid
glances remind Phyllida of the “Wolf Grandmother” in “Little Red RidingHood.” Because “Christmas Games” resembles “Emergency in the Gothic
Wing” and because it shares a Christmas Eve setting with other mid-1950s
stories, it may have been written around 1954. Spelling mistakes, such as
“boottees,” “suddeness,” “jublilantly,” “siezed,” have been corrected. Bowen
gives a slightly Gallic quality to the word “invalid” by adding a final “e,”
which I have omitted.
1. In the typescript, Bowen writes “Birdington,” but elsewhere she calls
the village Little Birdover. The name has been altered here for consistency.
Home for Christmas
2. The typescript reads, “Aunt Beattie’s.”
3. In the typescript, Bowen writes “pull-bell.”
4. Correcting the typescript by hand, Bowen left a jumbled phrase:
“referred to in Mrs. Throcksby in letter.”
5. Before revision, the sentence read, “Bespectacled, saturnine, frowsty,
stopping, he looked like an unpleasing kind of professor but more than mere
learning seemed to be on his mind.”
6. Bowen added the rhetorical question mark at the end of this sentence
by hand.
7. Before revision, this phrase read, “then added; ‘And after . . .’ ”
8. The typescript reads, “love first sight.”
9. In the typescript, “cup-and-saucer” is hyphenated.
10. “Clotted” is circled in pencil, for no discernible reason, but is not
crossed out.
11. The typescript reads, “bad your aunt.”
12. Fulvous: reddish-yellow or tawny.
13. Bowen crossed out “on” and tried the phrase “found in the ashes.”
Restoring “remained,” she forgot to restore “on” as well.
Bowen wrote an essay called “Home for Christmas” for the December
1955 issue of
Mademoiselle
. Despite bearing the same title, “Home for
Christmas,” the story, has nothing else in common with the essay. It exists
as a twelve-page typescript (HRC 5.7). Bowen’s compulsion to write
Christmas stories in the mid-1950s fixes the date of composition of this
particular story at that time. While sharing the spookiness of such stories as
“Just Imagine . . .” and “The Claimant,” this story has a more sinister quality,
for Tom urges Millie to get inside the trunk; he wants her to repeat the
action that cost the previous woman her wits. Dialogue has been broken
where necessary into separate lines for alternating speakers. Typographical
and spelling errors have been corrected. “Gasfire” alternates with “gas fire,”
so the latter has been adopted. Similarly “hide-and-seek” sometimes does
and sometimes does not have hyphens; I have regularised the term with
hyphens.
1. A ditto on “he” occurs in the typescript.
Ghost Story
2. The typescript, amended by hand, reads, “He went off to write a
letters in our room.”
3. A ditto on “into” occurs in the typescript.
4. A ditto on “live” occurs in the typescript.
5. Originally the phrase was “screaming away.” Crossing out “screaming,”
Bowen may accidentally have let “away” stand.
6. The story ends here abruptly.
I have added quotation marks that were omitted from the eleven-page,
unfinished typescript of “Ghost Story” (HRC 4.6). Bowen made some
corrections to the typescript by hand. “Ghost Story” appears at the top
of the first page. Because of the Christmas setting and the comic mode,
the story was probably written in the mid-1950s, around the time of
“Emergency in the Gothic Wing.”
1. Mistakenly spelled “Ottowa” in the typescript, although Bowen also
tried “Ottoawa.”
Women in Love
2. The typescript reads, “Across in chasm of silence.”
3. Bowen crossed out “him” after “round.”
4. A ditto on “light” occurs in the typescript.
5. The passage is heavily revised. The word “reassuring” may or may not
be intended.
6. The amended passage reads, “behind about the mouths and eyes”; only
one preposition is required. Because the word “behind” is typed intralineally,
as a later addition, it takes precedence over “about.”
7. The more intelligible phrase, “could be told,” is crossed out.
8. Bowen erased a phrase from the end of the sentence: “contracting their
shoulder blades as though blasts came on to them from the walls.”
9. There is an unlikely plural, “rabbits-skin,” in the typescript.
10. The typescript reads, “we’ still strangers strangers to her,” with the
missing “re” on “we’re” and a ditto on “strangers.”
11. The word “in” is missing in the typescript: “walk her sleep.”
12. The typescript reads, “their pony trap bolted”; the comma and
“which” have been added.
13. The typescript displaces a preposition: “he lived with Cousin Meta
on for some years.” This error is probably due to an addition, “with Cousin
Meta,” inserted between lines in the wrong spot.
14. “Threw” is a guess, for the original reads “rhew.”
15. “I” has been added. Bowen crossed out the phrase, “I’m so dis
appointed,” but she forgot to include the pronoun in her revision.
16. Word order is conjectural because Bowen added some material
intralineally. She might have intended, although it is unlikely, “her living
presence, this morning, unexpectedly most grateful.”
“Women in Love” exists as a twenty-six-page typescript and its carbon copy
(HRC 10.1). While typing up the story, the typist inserted carbons back
wards; they have left an inky imprint on the verso of pages 4, 7, 9, 11, 13
and 21. Consequently, these pages are missing from the carbon copy. There
are, on the other hand, two versions of page 24 in the carbon copy. Bowen
made emendations in blue ink to the typescript and added the title, “
T.V.?
Women in Love
by Elizabeth Bowen.” The title announces Bowen’s ongoing
engagement with D. H. Lawrence, manifest in
The House in Paris
and short
stories such as “Attractive Modern Homes.” She lectured on Lawrence’s
stories “Tickets, Please” and “The Rocking-Horse Winner” in the under
graduate course that she gave on the short story at Vassar College in 1960.
In those classes, she emphasised the explosive force in Lawrence’s stories
and their regional specificity (HRC 7.3). In a review of an anthology of his
works, Bowen recuperates the intensity of Lawrence’s writing: “what he saw
(if not always what he said) sinks itself into the memory, deep down; his
vision not only fuses with but permanently affects the vision of his reader”
(
Collected Impressions
157). In the same review, Bowen notes that the characters
in Lawrence’s novel
Women in Love
“split apart under too great pressure”
(
Collected Impressions
159). Bowen’s short story, “Women in Love,” takes a
melodramatic, perhaps Lawrentian, turn when Andie and Joanna, building
on sympathetic feeling towards each other, nearly quarrel; Joanna speaks
“sharply” and “impatiently,” and Andie responds “angrily.” Having known
each other for a brief afternoon, they have little reason to speak with so
much heat. Tonia’s narcissism is somewhat overdrawn; she asserts her
presence with the repeated, italicised, first-person pronoun “
I
.” The story
has an inconsistency: the reason for selling the cottage that Joanna gives to
her friend Margaret on the telephone has to be construed retrospectively as
a falsehood. The narrator does nothing to contradict the initial assertion
that Joanna is selling her country house in order to help her financially
strapped mother. Later she intimates that she wishes to sell the cottage to
help the blind artist. Andie infers that the man is her brother, building on
the evidence that his “sister” will have the money. Joanna neither confirms
nor denies this allegation, which raises the possibility that the man is not
Joanna’s brother but her lover, hence “Women in Love.”
In light of the notation, “TV,” the story was probably meant for
dramatisation. Adverbial indicators for vocal intonation – “glumly,” “angrily”