– adorn the text, often in the middle of dialogue. Indeed, the story was
likely written as a television treatment. In a letter dated 28 May 1959,
Spencer Curtis Brown wrote to Bowen in New York:
One of the TV Companies here are [sic] making a series of half-hour
television films under the general title of WOMEN IN LOVE. They are
for joint English and American release, and they are having different
English, American or Continental stars in each film. WOMEN IN LOVE
is a broad title, since it can cover not merely women of any age in love
with men of any age but women in love with houses, places, relations, or
indeed anything else.
If you cared to rough out a short outline of a story for them, they
would be prepared to commission this for £200. For this fee they would
buy, of course, only television rights, and you would be perfectly free to
write the story up later in a form suitable for publication and sell it to
any magazines anywhere you wanted or include it in any collection.
Consequently the £200 would be sheer extra money.
It would not be necessary to give them a polished story, but merely
an outline of a character, and of a dramatic situation into which they get
and out of which they get. It must, of course, be a story which is capable
of visual presentation, equally a story requiring only four or five sets, and
preferably with no more than five or six characters. If you would like to
send such a story, then we could collect the £200 immediately since the
commission is firm.
The star for whom they would particularly like you to write would be
either Wendy Hiller or Margaret Leighton, both of whom you probably
know. As an example, they are using MARRIAGE A LA MODE by
Katherine Mansfield and THE LEGACY by Virginia Woolf. (HRC 11.3)
Bowen typically wrote stories and novels first, and oversaw their adaptation
to the radio or screen subsequently. Hence she may well have written this
treatment in the form of a short story as a way of working out the con
tingencies and exigencies imposed by the film company. I have corrected
obvious typographical errors and added missing quotation marks. Certain
unhyphenated words, such as “goodlooking” and “mantleshelf,” are Bowen’s
compounds.
1. Joanna later reveals to Andie that “somebody” was blinded and that
she hopes to raise money to support him. The sudden death of the father,
mentioned only at the beginning of the story, would also be a plausible
reason to sell the cottage. That Joanna’s side of the telephone conversation
is reported, rather than quoted, lends credence to the statement.
2. Paragraph breaks have been added to separate passages of quoted
speech attributed to different speakers.
3. Bowen erroneously writes “Joanna’s,” but Tonia has gone upstairs.
4. The word “irritation” is typed between lines above “with a nod.” Or it
may have leaked through from another page because of carbon paper badly
placed.
5. “To” has been inserted. The sentence originally read, “Tonia suddenly
asked Joanna.” Bowen forgot to add “to” in her revisions.
6. The word “be” has been inserted.
7. There is a ditto on “so” in the typescript.
8. There is a ditto on “for” in the typescript.
9. The sentence originally read, “she glanced at the bowl on the table,”
but Bowen crossed out “glanced” and wrote “shrugged her shoulders” above.
If “she shrugged her shoulders at the bowl” seems like an odd gesture, it may
be due to the fact that Bowen never finished revising the phrase.
10. The typescript reads “feel hurt,” but “feet hurt” is more likely.
11. The verb “were” refers, ungrammatically, to “vision and longing.” But
“was” is more logically the verb that completes “blend” or “face.”
12. The word “the” is missing in the typescript.
13. The original sentence is uncharacteristic of Bowen’s style: “Her
expression showed (a) that she did not care for any jam, (b) that since there
must, apparently,
be
jam, she recognised this as the best kind.” I have altered
the sentence slightly.
14. The typescript reads “Joanna,” which is clearly an error.
15. Although Bowen hyphenates “chimney-piece” earlier in the story, the
unhyphenated spelling, “chimneypiece,” has been adopted to conform with
occurrences of the word in other stories.
16. The story ends here abruptly.
Works Cited
The Elizabeth Bowen Archives are held at the Harry Ransom Humanities
Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Throughout this
volume, all archival material, including letters, manuscripts, typescripts,
broadcasts, and notebooks, is designated with the acronym “HRC,” followed
by a box and file number. All HRC designations refer to the Bowen archives
unless otherwise indicated.
Bowen, Elizabeth.
Afterthought: Pieces about Writing
. London: Longmans, 1962.
—. “Bowen’s Court.”
Holiday
24 (December 1958): 86–7, 190–3.
—.
Collected Impressions
. London: Longmans, 1950.
—. “Comeback of Goldilocks et al.”
New York Times Magazine
(26 August
1962): 18–19, 74–5.
WORKS CITED
—. “Enchanted Centenary of the Brothers Grimm.”
New York Times Magazine
(8 September 1963): 28–9, 112–13.
—. “Guy de Maupassant.”
Literary Digest
1.1 (April 1946): 26.
—. “The Idea of France.” 1944. HRC 6.3.
—. Introduction.
The King of the Golden River
. By John Ruskin. New York and
London: Macmillan, 1962. iii–v.
—. Introduction.
The Observer Prize Stories: ‘The Seraph and The Zambesi’ and
. London: Heinemann, 1951. vii–xi.
Twenty Others
—.
The Mulberry Tree
. Ed. and intro. Hermione Lee. New York: Harcourt,
1986.
—. “A Novelist and His Characters.”
Essays by Divers Hands: Being the Trans
. New Series, vol. 26. Ed. Mary Stocks.
actions of the Royal Society of Literature
London: Oxford University Press, 1970. 19–23.
—. Preface.
Early Stories
. New York: Knopf, 1951. v–xvii.
—. “Rx For a Story Worth the Telling.”
New York Times Book Review
(31 August
1958): 1, 13.
—. “The Short Story in England.”
British Digest
1.12 (August 1945): 39–43.
—.
A Time in Rome
. New York: Knopf, 1960.
Coppard, A. E., ed.
Consequences
. Waltham: Golden Cockerel, 1932.
Fothergill, John, ed.
The Fothergill Omnibus
. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode,
1931.
Glendinning, Victoria.
Elizabeth Bowen
. 1977. New York: Anchor, 2006.
Green, Henry.
Loving
. Intro. by Jeremy Treglown. 1945. London: Harvill,
1996.
Joyce, James.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
. Ed. Chester G. Anderson.
1916. New York: Penguin, 1977.
Lassner, Phyllis.
Elizabeth Bowen: A Study of the Short Fiction
. New York: Twayne,
1991.
Lee, Hermione.
Elizabeth Bowen
. Rev. ed. London: Vintage, 1999.
MacKay, Marina.
Modernism and World War II
. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni
ver sity Press, 2007.
Sellery, J’nan M. and William O. Harris.
Elizabeth Bowen: A Bibliography
.
Austin, TX: Humanities Research Center, 1981.
Wilson, Angus. Introduction.
The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen
. 1981. New
York: Ecco, 1989.
Yeats, William Butler.
The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats
. New York:
Macmillan, 1965.