Before the Fact by Frances Iles

I have a confession to make. I love Alfred Hitchcock films. Love them! It all started when I was introduced to Rebecca, by my mum when I was about 10 years old, or so. After that I was hooked! I watched all of the films I could get my hands on and, along the way, the films inspired my reading. My love of Daphne du Maurier’s writing grew out of watching Hitchcock’s film adaptations of Rebecca and “The Birds”. 

It should come as no surprise then that I was extremely keen to read Francis Iles' Before the Fact, the book that inspired the Hitchcock film Suspicion. It’s one of my favourites. Black and white, and staring Joan Fontaine and Cary Grant. It’s subtle. It’s moody. And never did a glass of milk look more menacing! (Did you know the spooky glow of the milk in that scene was achieved by putting a lightbulb in the glass?)

Expectations were high when I started reading Before the Fact and I am pleased to report that this book did not disappoint! It grabbed me from the first lines.

“Some women give birth to murderers, some go to bed with them, and some marry them. Lina Aysgarth had lived with her husband for nearly eight years before she realized that she was married to a murderer.” (17)

Twenty-eight-year-old, Lina McLaidlaw meets, Johnnie Aysgarth, a man one year her junior. He is flattering, charismatic, and just plain fun. Lina doesn’t know what to make of him. Does he like her or are his attentions nothing more than a flirtation? Regardless, Lina has fallen for him and despite her father’s warnings that Johnnie is a ne’er-do-well, the two soon marry.

What follows is the suspenseful story of an overly trusting woman navigating her marriage to a charismatic and less than trustworthy man. He gambles. He cheats. He lies. He is a layabout. He breaks his promises. He repeatedly waves red flags with both hands, but still Lina stubbornly chooses to see the best in him. It takes eight years before she sees her husband for who he really is, and the journey is tense!

Johnnie leaned back in his chair, crossed one leg over the other, rubbed its silk-covered ankle, and laughed as if this was all the greatest joke in the world. ‘Not a cent!' he repeated. I thought you'd better know,' he added.

‘Well, I should hope so,’ Lina said tartly. And after a pause, as calmly as she could, 'What do you intend to do about it?' Already she saw them begging their bread, from house to house.

'Oh, I don't know. I expect something will turn up. It always does.' (47)

This scene comes just after the couple have returned from a lavish honeymoon. Lina discovers that not only does Johnnie not have a cent to his name, he borrowed a thousand pounds to fund their honeymoon and let a house with eight bedrooms, fully furnished and decorated, without paying for any of it. When she asks him why he took a house far bigger than they need, his nonchalant response is, “I like plenty of rooms” (47). That in a nutshell sums up Johnnie’s approach to life. He doesn’t allow himself to worry too much about where the next pound will come from because there is always a way of getting your hands on some. But he certainly isn’t about to work it. Heaven forbid!

This book has light points, as well. An old school friend of Johnnie’s, Mr. Thwaite, comes to visit and proves to be something straight out of a P.G. Wodehouse novel, as Lina points out to the reader. It’s all “old bean” this and “what?” that and “what ho!” galore. Of course, even Beaky Thwaite becomes a point of contention between the couple. Lina grows to hate him. Likely, because she suspects Johnnie is going to steal from the man, and she can’t hate Johnnie no matter how hard she might try. Not that she is trying.

Suspicion is a tenuous thing, so impalpable that the exact moment of its birth is not easy to determine. But looking back over the series of little pictures which composed the memory of her married life, Lina found later that certain of them - a small incident here, its significance quite unnoticed at the time, an unimportant action there, perhaps just a chance word of her husband's - had become illuminated by her fear so that they stood out like a row of street lamps along a dark, straight road: a road which looks so easy in the daytime, but so sinister by night. (17)

Lina goes on to tell the reader that from the perspective she has now, even her first meeting with Johnnie seemed “a red triangle of danger whose warning she had deliberately ignored” (17). 

This is, in part, why I think Before the Fact would make for a very enjoyable reread. Once you reach the ending you can’t help but wonder if Johnnie has managed to pull the wool over your eyes, along with his wife’s. 

So how did Before the Fact stack up against the film adaptation? From the beginning I was so impressed with how true a representation we get of Johnnie through the film script and in the casting. Cary Grant was Iles’ Johnnie, as much as he was Hitchcock’s. Johnnie blurs the lines between naivety and knowingness, deceiving while being innocent as a child, and all the while he is charming and playful. The character must also be loveable in order to break down Lina’s barriers, so that she always ends up doubting herself before she doubts Johnnie. Cary Grant pulls all of this off with style, as one would expect. 

The same is true for Lina. Joan Fontaine is a great fit. Lina is a very similar character to Mrs. De Winter from Rebecca. It’s no wonder Joan Fontaine was cast in both roles. Lina falls for Johnnie from the start, and as a woman who has been led to believe she is plain, she is perhaps even more susceptible to Johnnie’s charms than most. While she suspects Johnnie of gambling and repeatedly says she will leave him if he doesn’t quit. Johnnie knows just as well as the reader that the threats are empty.

Whether you have watched the Hitchcock film or not, I think you will be pleasantly surprised by this book. It’s quite the ride! By the end, I just about wanted Iles to put me out of my misery and wrap it up already. The tension reaches such a fever pitch! I know I will be returning to this one again, before too long. I would love to read more books by Francis Iles, Anthony Berkeley, or any of Anthony Berkeley Cox’s other pen names.

Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of Before the Fact for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

Lady Living Alone by Norah Lofts

Norah Lofts’s Lady Living Alone is such an unexpected novel! Originally published in 1945, this is the latest book British Library Publishing has released in their Women Writers series. It features a gorgeous autumnal cover designed by Sinem Erkas, who is responsible for all of the cover art in this fabulous series. I do believe these books just keep getting more beautiful with each new cover that comes out.

First of all, I highly recommend going into this one completely blind. That means resisting the urge to read the back cover copy and skipping this review. But while I still have your attention, I do very much recommend this book if you like less cosy literary fiction that keeps you in anticipation. It was so good, I read it in a single day!

(Only keep reading beyond this point if you have decided you are happy with a few spoilers. Not to worry. There will not be many.) 

I should clarify why I suggest going into this one blind. Some of you may already know this about me, but I typically refrain from reading book blurbs because I like to approach new books with minimal expectation. I accidentally read the start of the blurb for this book in a caption on Instagram and I wish I hadn’t read this line, “what begins as a domestic novel quickly evolves into a dramatic thriller”. In the case of this book, I think the reading experience would be improved upon if one approached it without that knowledge. 

However, I can understand why the publisher chose to provide that information in the blurb. Not everyone likes a thriller, and providing the reader with that information ahead of time gives them enough outside knowledge to not feel bamboozled when the cosy domestic novel this book begins as gets turned on its head. By its genre alone, this one stands out among the other books in the Women Writers series that I have read. I’ve only read 15 of the 26 titles released thus far, so there may be other thriller-y books in this series, but if there are I have yet to come across them. I’m inclined to believe that Lady Living Alone would be equally at home in the British Library Crime Classics series. Although, of course that would really give the genre away!

Penelope Shadow lives with her half-sister, Elsie, until Elsie remarries, and Penelope settles in a remote house in the country. It might be a bit big for a single lady living alone in 1932, but with the success of her romance novels there is no need to let that stop her from moving into a lovely Georgian home with formal gardens, a view of water meadows, and backing onto a park.

“It’ll be awfully lonely," said Elsie in as diffident a way as her forthright voice could speak. She was remembering that over a period of twelve years Penelope's little foible of not liking to be alone in a house after dark, had caused her hostess a vast amount of inconvenience.

Miss Shadow's heart had missed a beat or two as she too, and for the first time, remembered her abnormal nervousness. (18)

In my opinion it is here that we get the first major clue that this story is going to be anything but cosy. Penelope’s fear of being alone in a house after dark is both described as being a “little foible” and an “abnormal nervousness”, as though we are being told it’s an unimportant detail no need to worry yourself with it—but it’s also not a normal thing.

It’s because of this fear that in the first week of January 1935 we find 35-year-old Penelope “driving through the premature dusk of a snow-storm, to all intents and purposes, homeless” (19). It is this running away from an uncertain fear, that puts her on the path to a much more certain one.

Afterwards, through vastly varying moods, her fancy would play with the idea that Fate had been with her on that afternoon, guiding her actions, moulding her very thoughts. And, oddly enough, though everything within sight was by this time thickly coated with snow which was falling so fast that Miss Shadow had twice had to clear the accumulation of it from her windscreen where the wiper was clogging, the momentous notice-board, with its back to the wind, was clear and perfectly legible. From a great way off Miss Shadow read its exhortation. "Turn Left," it said, "for the Plantation Guest House. Historic Surroundings with Modern Comforts. Golf. Riding. Fishing, H. and C. in all rooms. Terms Moderate."

Made for me, said Miss Shadow aloud. She had contracted the habit of talking to herself when alone. (28-29)

It’s here, in this country house turned dismal guest house, that Penelope meets Terence Munce, a young man who works as a waiter/housekeeper/cook at the establishment. He is the one dependable staff member in the dire place, and Penelope immediately takes a liking to him. The next day she heads for home, but before she goes she overhears Terry in the act of quitting and after offering him a lift, she impulsively offers him a job as her housekeeper.

There is a great scene that occurs after Terry has established himself as someone who is both kind and a valuable asset to Penelope. Terry has gone out for the evening and Penelope has just risen from her desk after finishing the novel she has been working on. It’s nine o’clock and the shadows are lengthening, but the trees are still bathed in golden light as she goes out into the garden. She settles herself down and caught in thought she loses track of time. 

The shadows deepened. The last bird calls began to die away. A little breeze sprang up, ruffling and cooling the earth without chilling or disarranging it. Penelope looked at her watch. It was just on ten o’clock. Nearly dark. She must go into the house. She half rose from the seat and then sat back again. She had left it too late. The house had changed from a possession, a happy place where one lived and ate and slept and had become a menacing, dark hulk, the abode of darkness and mystery, an alien territory not to be approached without the help of a friendly human presence, or a bright and friendly light. (81)

As I was reading, this book reminded me of a particular Hitchcock film. I’d love to share which one with you, but I worry that to do so would spoil some of the tension for those who haven’t yet read the book. 

There are so many things I loved about Lady Living Alone. The build up of tension throughout is incredibly well done. I read this book in a single day because I could not help but! It’s completely unpredictable. You think there is going to be a certain outcome and Norah Lofts continues to subvert the reader’s expectations. And Penelope Shadow! Beyond giving her a brilliant name, Lofts has created a complex character that manages to be both likeable and frustrating often at the same time. Penelope is a success in her profession, and but for her one weakness—this fear of being alone in a house at night—she has an inner strength that is eventually allows her to come out of the shadows. (Couldn’t help myself.)

There are a lot of things I could say about this novel, but the most important one is that I think you should read it. Oh, and then go ahead and read Simon Thomas’s afterword. He writes such good ones!

Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of Lady Living Alone for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

56 Weeks with Nancy Drew - The Haunted Bridge

Book 15

Welcome to the 56 Weeks with Nancy Drew series! If you are new here, welcome. You can find my introductory post to this series here. Please note I will be including plot spoilers in this review series. I explain my reasoning at the start of this post.

Editions pictured: OT (25 chapters, 220 pages); RT (20 chapters, 180 pages)

OT publication date: 1937

My OT edition printed: approx. 1942

OT cover illustrated by: Russell Tandy

RT publication date: 1972

My RT edition printed: approx. 1972

RT cover illustrated by: Rudy Nappi

Ghostwriter: Mildred A. Wirt Benson

Editors: Edna Stratemeyer Squier & Harriet Stratemeyer Adams

Revised by: Priscilla Baker-Carr

OT & RT setting: Deer Mountain Hotel (a summer resort with a championship golf course), Andover (town near the hotel)

Introduction

I’ve been enjoying the experience of reading both the original text (OT) and the revised text (RT) Nancy Drews so much that when I saw an early edition of The Haunted Bridge with a dust wrapper, and for a reasonable price, I had to order it. I would love to be able to blame my waiting for that book to arrive as the reason this post is going up so much later than planned. But the book was annoyingly prompt in arriving at my door! The problem was getting myself to read the thing. I found the OT to be shockingly similar to the RT. It was so similar that reading these within the same month felt like trying to read the same book twice in a row. If you are filling in the gaps in your Nancy Drew collection I would say you could hold off on acquiring the alternate version of this one. There are other titles in this series that differ greatly between the two versions, but The Haunted Bridge is not one of them.

Synopsis

Nancy Drew and her friends, Bess Marvin and George Fayne, are visiting Deer Mountain Hotel with Nancy’s father, Carson Drew, who is there on legal business. The summer resort boasts many sporting activities, in addition to a champion golf course, which is where the girls spend most of their days. It’s the lead up to a championship tournament for amateur golfers and the club’s golf pro has urged Nancy to enter. Nancy is playing a qualifying round when she drives her ball into a patch of woods bordering the sixteenth hole. Nancy is keen to retrieve her lost ball as it is one signed by Jimmy Harlow. But Nancy’s caddy refuses to go near the footbridge which stands at the other side of the woods. Apparently, the bridge is haunted and all of the caddies are scared of the woods! But we know by now that Nancy doesn’t believe in spooks. Nevertheless, she is eager to find out what it is that has the caddies so afraid of the spot. 

Nancy soon discovers that the ghost is a rigged up scarecrow and the moaning sound is nothing more than the wind in the trees. But someone has gone to some length to deter people from exploring the woods and Nancy wants to know why. In her investigation, Nancy finds a chest on the muddy riverbank, which turns out to be chock full of jewelry. Meanwhile, Carson Drew has been investigating a notorious smuggling gang and guess what they’ve been smuggling? Jewels! Nancy suspects the chest of jewelry has something to do with these international jewel thieves. Carson Drew gets Nancy’s help by going around to the hotels in the area on the lookout for a suspect who is supposed to have a jewelled compact mirror in her possession. Inside the compact there is said to be a photo of a little boy. In a hotel powder room, Nancy strikes up a conversation with a woman who has a jewelled compact, but there is no photo inside. Logically, the photo could simply have been removed, but Nancy doesn’t believe the kind woman she talked to could be a jewel thief. Besides, when she complimented the woman about the eye-catching compact, the woman had been perfectly willing to talk about it and show it to Nancy. (As we all know, in Nancy Drew Land, baddies act suspiciously, and have cruel faces!)

But there is also a loyal gardener living in a cabin in the woods that has outdoor enclosures filled with injured or orphaned wild animals. The man still potters around the garden of the Judson mansion even though the family haven’t been back to the property since the big fire that demolished the place. When the gardener gets injured and needs round-the-clock care, Ned and his friends arrive on the scene just in time to offer their services. 

As all of this is going on, Nancy is competing in a golf tournament, which she fits her sleuthing around. Things are looking good for Nancy, that is until she falls off a balcony into some bushes when she tries to avoid coming into close contact with unwanted male attention. Mortimer Bartescue, or Martin, as he is called in the RT, is the kind of many any woman in their right mind would gladly throw themselves off a balcony to avoid. Unfortunately, Nancy painfully injures her hand, which makes it difficult to play golf. But, lucky for Nancy, even an injured hand and an accusation of cheating doesn’t prevent her from winning the tournament, finding the missing Judson girl, reuniting a couple, uncovering a band of international jewel thieves, and solving the mystery of the haunted bridge. Not that the “haunted bridge” really has anything to do with the rest of the story, but it is an undeniably intriguing title!

Reading the same book twice

I should say that unlike what I have done in the past, I did not take extensive notes on these books as I was reading. I am sure with a closer reading one would discover more differences than the few I picked out. The biggest differences I found were the fact that in the RT Mortimer Bartescue was changed to Martin Bartescue. Perhaps Mortimer was not as fashionable a name in 1972 as it was in 1937. I cannot say I have ever met a Mortimer, so maybe the name change wasn’t such a bad idea.

But the biggest difference I noted is the addition of Burt and Dave to the RT. These friends of Ned Nickerson’s from college are introduced in the RT as “Burt Eddleton, George’s friend, and Dave Evans, who dated Bess” (RT 94). In the OT Ned arrives at Deer Mountain Hotel with Bud Mason and Bill Cowan, who are first referred to as “two strange youths” (OT 120). I don’t believe we get any description that distinguishes them from each other, despite this being the first time Nancy or the other girls are introduced to them. As far as I can tell they are only there so that Ned has help looking after Joe Haley, the gardener, and so that when the group go to one of the hotel dances, there is an even number of males to females.

One scene, two books

I thought I’d pick a favourite scene to display just how similar these books are. The bolded text is where the two versions differ. The two instances where wording has simply been altered have been italicized. 

First we have the scene in the OT.

[T]he girls made their way toward the haunted bridge. Dark clouds were moving swiftly overhead, and by the time the chums reached the woods a strong wind was blowing.

"Do you think it will rain soon?" Bess asked anxiously, scanning the sky overhead.

"Oh, not for an hour at least," Nancy replied carelessly. "Even if it should, we'll be partially protected by trees. Let's not turn back now."

The girls struck off through the timber, and soon were within view of the old bridge. With the sun under a cloud it was dark and gloomy beneath the canopy of trees. Bess shivered and kept close to her companions. Suddenly they were startled to hear the same groaning sound which had frightened them on their previous visit.

"Oh!" Bess squealed in terror, clutching George's arm. "There it is again!"

Nancy warned her to be quiet, and for several minutes the girls stood perfectly still, waiting for the sound to be repeated. No one could be seen anywhere near the bridge.

"I believe the noise came from far down the ravine," Nancy whispered after she was convinced that the groan would not be repeated. "Come on, let's investigate."

After briefly searching the locality near the bridge, the girls turned their attention to the trail which had interested them upon their first visit to the spot. Footprints were plainly visible. Nancy wondered if someone had not used the path within the past twenty-four hours.

"Let's not go that way today," Bess pleaded, reading her chum's thoughts. "It's growing darker every instant, and we don't want to be caught in a storm."

Scarcely had the words been spoken when a shrill scream broke the stillness of the forest.

This time Nancy was certain that the cry had come from far down the ravine.

"Come on!" she urged excitedly. "We'll solve this old mystery yet!" (OT 109-10)

Now, for the same scene in the RT.

The girls made their way toward the haunted bridge. Dark clouds were moving swiftly overhead, and by the time they reached the woods a strong wind was blowing.

Soon they were within view of the old bridge.

Bess shivered and kept close to her companions.

Suddenly they were startled to hear the same moaning and groaning sounds which had perplexed them on their first visit.

"Oh!" Bess squealed, clutching George's arm.

Nancy warned her to be quiet, and for several minutes the girls stood perfectly still, waiting for the sound to be repeated. There was only a rustle of leaves in the breeze.

"I believe the noise came from somewhere right around here," said Nancy. "Let's investigate. Maybe we'll find someone's in hiding, playing a joke."

The girls searched through the brush and trees near both ends of the bridge, but found no one. Then they explored the trail they had seen on their previous visit which led along the ravine. Footprints were clearly visible. Had someone used the path within the past twenty-four hours?

A moment later a shrill scream broke the stillness. This time Nancy was certain that the cry had come from some distance up the ravine.

"Let's go!" she urged excitedly. "We'll solve the mystery of these strange sounds yet!" (RT 88-89)

As you can see the two texts are remarkably similar. The passage from the OT is 310 words while the RT is 214, which means 31% has been cut from the OT. But as the OT is 220 pages in its entirety and the RT is 180 pages, I would say that on average 19% of the OT has been cut. This is just an estimate, of course, because we are comparing page numbers, not word count. For the most part all that has been removed from the RT is description. Although, in the RT Nancy suggests that the sounds might be from someone “playing a joke”, which diffuses some of the tension. In the OT there is no such explanation offered, and the tension is left to continue to build as the scene plays out. I think most of us would agree that the OT is more atmospheric, but when you are aiming to cut down a text it does make the most sense to start with anything that could be construed as unessential. I must admit that it wasn’t until I was reading these two passages side by side that I was aware there was any difference, besides the change from the friends being referred to as “the chums” to simply “they”. 

Final thoughts

In my opinion, the person who revised the OT, Priscilla Baker-Carr, did a wonderful job. As I said at the outset, I felt like I was reading the same book twice. Nothing important had been altered and I think that readers who are most familiar with the OT could read the RT of this one and recognize the same Nancy. But I wonder if this is because The Haunted Bridge is a fairly tame book. This isn’t a book full of dramatic scenes like some of the other Nancy Drews I have read in the OT. For example, the OT of The Whispering Statue has Nancy save two people from a burning plane that has crash landed in the ocean. In that same book a house set on eroding cliffs is taken by the sea with Nancy inside! Both versions of The Haunted Bridge have a lot of golf, some dances, a bit of exploring in the woods, a suspected forger is locked in a caddy club house until the authorities arrive, Nancy, Bess, and George surreptitiously follow a car, and Nancy confronts a thief with a lot of backup near by, and that’s about it! Minus a brief scene when Nancy falls through a bridge and gets swept away by a storm swollen stream, The Haunted Bridge doesn’t go in for big drama and there was very little bonkersness. I cannot believe I am saying this, because I’ve never thought of myself as a fan of the less believable aspects of these books, but I think more drama and bonkersness would have made this a better book.

Coming up next…

Next time, I will be discussing the Nancy Drew with Persian kittens, tap dancing, Morse code, and a secret room. It’s The Clue of the Tapping Heels. I can assure you that we are in for bonkersness in spades with this one!

While you’re waiting for me to come up the goods, why not check out my new favourite podcast, Regular Nancy Drew? As always, I am late to the party on this one. Regular Nancy Drew has been recording since early 2021 and they already have 92 episodes in the bank. Listening to the hosts, Becky and Kori, is like chatting with your best friends about Nancy Drew. You can find Regular Nancy Drew just about anywhere you can listen to podcasts. But I must warn you that just like your favourite Nancy Drew, it’s very addictive. My friend and fellow Nancy Drew fan, the talented author, Barbara Matteson, introduced me to this podcast three weeks ago and I’ve been listening to about one episode a day ever since. It is so good!

The Camomile by Catherine Carswell

Catherine Carswell’s book, The Camomile is about a woman who rents a room close to home, so she can focus on her creative pursuits. Recently returned home to Glasgow after studying music at a conservatory in Frankfort, Ellen Carstairs initially wants a place to practice the piano without being interrupted by her intrusive aunt, but it is writing that soon becomes Ellen’s primary focus.

The book is divided into three parts, starting with a letter dated 2 September, which Ellen writes to Ruby Marcus, a friend from the conservatory, who like Ellen has moved back home after finishing her training. In fact, the entire book is like one long letter to Ruby, because the second part is a journal addressed to Ruby, which Ellen mails off in parts. The third section is another letter to Ruby. This one dated 8 December, a year and three months on from the start of the book.

But—though it took us so long to realise it fully—you and I were both there under false pretences. You were there because you loved all the arts and had to escape from West Hampstead, I because I loved all the arts and had to get away from Glasgow. And though we had both been buttered up by our silly music-teachers into the belief that because we had general artistic taste music was our gift, I think we always ‘knew in our souls,’ as Boris used to say, that nothing comes of choosing an art; the art must choose you. I daresay it was party this that made us such friends right from the beginning.

Meanwhile here we are, both back in the places we worked so had and lied so stoutly to escape from, both faced with the necessity of justifying our brief escape by giving music lessons for money. It all seems very strange to me. (11-12)

Ellen talks about the everyday struggles with living in a close knit community and wanting to have a claim in her personal freedom. She quickly discovers that having a room to work in does not mean that you will always be able to get work done there. At one point she lists the advantages verses the disadvantages of her room, with the disadvantages far outweighing the advantages. Some of disadvantages are very funny indeed. My favourites being, number two, “Cats (many outside, one—not a nice one—inside)” and number 14 “Boy in the lane with an instrument giving lifelike imitation of cats” (29).

But I think the journal entry from 20 December perfectly captures what it is to have the physical space for your creative pursuits, but still finding there are other road blocks in the way of being creative.

For once I am going to write in this in the morning. Generally I don't let myself touch it till night. But of late writing at night has turned my head into a rookery, with ideas for the rooks, caw-cawing by the hour, but never getting any farther, and serving no end but to keep me hopelessly awake when I want to sleep.

After playing at Miss Sutherland's school this morning and giving lessons to the very unmusical Lockhart children, I went to my Room meaning to practise. But the whole house smelt so fusty and steamy, with a washing going on just under my window, that I fled.

Now I am sitting in the Botanic Gardens. Though the puddles are frozen in the shade, you could sit out for ever so long in the sun without feeling cold. (40)

I can picture Ellen huddled on a bench in the cold to scribble in her notebook and trying to convince herself it really is very warm in the sunshine,—if where was any—whilst slowly losing feeling in her fingers.

At one point Ellen is reading an autobiography by an aristocratic woman that a friend insists on lending to her, because she claims Ellen is getting too solemn and serious. It’s not the type of thing Ellen would normally read, and Ellen is confused as to why her friend thought it would help cheer her up, because the more she thinks about it, the more she realizes that the life of an aristocrat wouldn’t suit her at all. 

I need so much leisure and being by myself doing nothing in particular, and she seems always to have done everything in company. I do love meeting people, but a whole day with them nearly kills me. Having to be socially polite for a couple of hours at a stretch makes my face ache all over. (91)

It’s just five pages later that Ellen’s love interest is first mentioned. There are too many red flags to the relationship to share them all, but this one stuck with me. When she asks him how he would feel if “instead of playing tennis and things I wanted to sit dully at home writing ‘highbrow’ stories” after they are married, he assures her that she won’t want to do that.

[H]e would never like to stand in my way, but he thought I was ‘so much a woman’ that what I suggested was unlikely to happen. ‘Life,’ he said, ‘is a bigger affair than books, and life is pre-eminently your business. Wait till your hands are full of life, and I doubt if you will have the time or the wish to add to the mass of feminine writings already in the world.’ This, I must say, deeply impressed me. (163-64)

This felt distinctly similar to a passage in Sylvia Plath’s 1963 novel, The Bell Jar. 

I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn’t want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterwards you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state. (The Bell Jar 81)

Surprisingly, it is the book that was published earlier which offers hope for a character who feels the attraction to two things, being a wife and being a writer, which she has been lead to believe are mutually exclusive. As we find out at the beginning of The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood has a baby, but there is no mention of her being a writer. While Ellen Carstairs’ story ends with a section called ‘Also, Vorwärts!’. In reminding her friend Ruby of this encouraging cry which was a favourite of their music teacher, Ellen is urging Ruby as much as herself to move forwards, march onwards. It is distinctly optimistic.

According to the back cover of The Camomile, Catherine Carswell’s book is “widely considered a fictional counterpart to Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’s Own’”. Originally published in 1922, The Camomile, predates both ‘A Room of One’s Own’, published in 1929 and the 1928 Cambridge lectures the essay grew out of. This begs the question, did Woolf read The Camomile and could she have found inspiration in Carswell’s writing? Did Sylvia Plath, for that matter? Perhaps. However, it seems more likely that all of these writers were concerned with the pressing issues for women of their day, issues that continue to be of concern now. 

If there is to be a takeaway from this novel I think it is, at least in part, that the issues facing Ellen Carstairs are not solved by simply having a room and an income. A room is a start. And in this novel Ellen makes a start at carving out a space for herself and for her art. There is more work to be done, but if the last section heading, ‘Also, Vorwärts!’ is any indication, she is facing it from a position of vindication and optimism for the future. 

I found this book to be thought provoking and compelling. It was also a really enjoyable read. I think I will always list F. Tennyson Jesse’s A Pin to the See the Peepshow as my favourite book from the British Library Women Writers series, but this one is definitely up there. 

Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of The Camomile for review. All opinions on the book are my own.