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Content EROS AND ANDROGYNY:
THE WRITINGS OF ROSE IMA CAUL AY
by
Jeanette Nyda Passty
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
May 1982 *
UMI Number: DP23086
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
T H E G R A D U A T E S C H O O L
U N IV E R S IT Y P A R K
LO S A N G E L E S , C A L IF O R N IA 9 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, written by
Jeanette Nyda Passty
under the direction of h.P.T... Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by The Graduate
School, in partial fulfillment of requirements of
the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
.........
Dean
Date...
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Hearty thanks and heartfelt acknowledgements are due
to Professor James H. Durbin, Jr., Department of English,
University of Southern California, for first suggesting to
me that the scant critical attention paid to Rose Macaulay
has been in no way commensurate with her achievement; to
Professor John Halperin, also at the Department of English,
University of Southern California, for many helpful sugges
tions pertaining to my research; to Professor Nancy Topping
Bazin, Women's Studies Department, Old Dominion University,
for taking time out from a very busy day to sit down and
discuss Rose Macaulay with me; to Professor Richard John
Dunn, Department of English, University of Washington at
Seattle, for useful suggestions concerning' The Lee Shore;
to Professor Azizah al-Hibri, Department of Philosophy,
Washington University in St. Louis, for preprints of her
feminist studies of Islamic women; to Professor Alan
Barnsley, Department of English, Washington State Univer
sity, Pullman, Washington, for his personal reminiscences of
_____________________________________________________________ii.
Rose Macaulay; to Professors Dennis R. Estes and Ronald E.
Bruck, Department of Mathematics, University of Southern
California, who took time out from Algebraic Number Theory
and Functional Analysis to read and to support a disserta
tion having far more application to Women's Studies than to
their respective disciplines; to Mrs. Ellen Clark, Language
Arts Department, Los Angeles Trade Technical College for
personally securing for me in England six books by Rose
Macaulay not readily obtainable in the United States; to
Ofelia Guzman, Mollie Nyda, and numerous other staff members
of USC's Doheny Memorial and College Libraries for their
help in obtaining materials pertinent to this study; to
Tammy and David Rosso, Yalerie and Rebecca Watson, Adelle
and Danielle Robinson, Crystal Collins, and Kathy Walton of
Atlanta, Georgia, whose devoted care of my small son pre
served me from the fate of Neville Bendish, forced by the
onset of maternity to abandon her studies to become a
doctor in Rose Macaulay's Dangerous Ages; and last— but not
at all least--to my husband, Professor Gregory B. Passty,
Department of Mathematics, Southwest Texas State University,
who, in the best tradition of academic spouses, shared the
cooking, the dishes, the child care, and the typing of this
dissertation. To him, my gratitude knows no bounds....
iii
DEDICATED
In Living Appreciation of
Gregory Passty and Benjamin Passty
and
In Loving Memory of
Walter Nyda and Fanny Kantor
IV
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................... ii
INTRODUCTION ............................................ 1
CHAPTER I. ANDROGYNOUS LEANINGS ..................... 7
CHAPTER II . "FEMININE" MEN ............... 51
CHAPTER III. "MASCULINE" WOMEN ..................... 103
CHAPTER IV. MORE ABOUT "MASCULINE" WOMEN ............. 150
CHAPTER V. "TWINS" ..............................208
CHAPTER VI. MORE "TWINS" 239
APPENDIX A ................................................276
APPENDIX B................................................ 280
APPENDIX C................................................ 283
APPENDIX D................................ 284
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................... 285
v
In point of fact, those who establish
the virtues of writers are the writers them
selves, however intelligently posterity may
write essays on them.
--Rose Macaulay
INTRODUCTION
Dame Rose Macaulay (1881-1958) was a cousin of Lord
Thomas Babington Macaulay and a distinguished literary fig
ure in her own right. In the course of a prolific writing
career, she generated some twenty-three novels, as well as
a wide assortment of other works. Widely known to British
readers, Rose Macaulay hobnobhed with the likes of Virginia
and Leonard Woolf, was involved in an unhappy love entangle
ment with Rupert Brooke, and became a beloved friend of
E. M. Forster. References to her work appear in such
unlikely places as the murder mysteries of Agatha Christie
and Dorothy L. Sayers. Her novels Potterism (1920) and The
Towers of Tfebizond (1956) were best-sellers both in England
and in America. Honors which accrued to her included the
Femina-Vie Heureuse prize (1922) and the James Tait Black
Memorial prize (1957)* Hailed by her contemporaries as "one
of the most brilliant of living women writers," Rose Macau
lay was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by
Cambridge University (1951), and was created a Dame of the
British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II, whose sister, Princess
Margaret, contracted the habit of reading aloud passages
from Trebizorid to her friends.
The significant contribution made by Dame Rose to
twentieth century English literature was early appreciated
by women scholars in Germany. Margarete Kluge's lengthy
analysis of women characters in the novels, "Die Stellung
Rose Macaulays Zur Frau" (1928) quite appropriately de
scribes Macaulay as "the English woman's author par excel
lence." Kluge's attempt to classify Macaulay's women char-
2
acters into "types," and her mention of the subordinate
status of men in most of the novels make her study a valu
able precursor to this one. Subsequent to the appearance
of Kluge's article, two of her countrywomen published dis
sertations on Rose Macaulay. These are Margot Brussow's
Zeitbedingtes in den Werken Rose Macaulays (193*0 and Irm-
gard Wahl’s Gesellschaftskritik und Skeptizismus bei Rose
Macaulay (1936).
There are two unpublished dissertations by American
scholars. Philip Louis Rizzo's ground-breaking "Rose
Macaulay: A Critical Survey" (1959) is extremely useful as
a source for primary and secondary bibliographical mate
rials. Issues raised by Rizzo's study that have had a great
impact on this one are those of the influence of the novels
of Forster on those of Macaulay and the incident of Laurie
2
Rennel’s castration in The Valley Captives (19H)« Also of
some interest is Robert Earl Kuehn's "The Pleasures of Rose
Macaulays An Introduction to Her Novels" (1962). Kuehn's
dissertation somewhat augments Rizzo's original bibliogra
phy, and, as Alice R. Bensen notes, provides a "perceptive"
3
--if considerably derivative— "discussion of the novels."^
Professor Bensen's own volume in the Twayne English
Authors series, Rose Macaulay (1969)* wonderfully con
cise, comprehensive, and informative. It is the only book-
length study of Rose Macaulay's total output--fiction and
non-fiction--ever printed.
Scholarly articles dealing with Macaulay's fiction
have been few, and these few have ranged from the sublimely
ridiculous to the ridiculously sublime. Two cases in
point: In Some Goddesses of the Pen (1927), Patrick Bray-
brooke, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature,
charged Rose Macaulay "with an obvious pandering to the
disgusting license that certain women novelists take such
4
a pernicious delight in exhibiting." Macaulay, it seemed,
had displayed excessive earthiness in her portrayal of the
pregnant heroine of Crewe Train (1926) with this sentence:
"Denham felt, and often was, sick in the mornings" (C.T.,
p. 169). By contrast, some years later, William J. Lock
wood etherialized the same Rose Macaulay into the limbo of
Minor British Novelists (1967) by noting
1
She is limited in her ability to deal with the
disturbing, personal repercussions of the world she
represents. . . .
. . . . Ultimately, as I think we shall see, Rose
Macaulay's real kinship is with a ^spiritual]] world
beyond human relationships .5
A happy exception to articles of this sort is Alice R. Ben
sen 's "The Ironic Aesthete and the Sponsoring of Causes: A
Rhetorical Quandary in Novelistic Technique" (1966). Ben
sen' s perceptive commentary on the social implications of
the use of irony in Views and Vagabonds (1912) is eloquent
and stimulating. The production, in future, of many more
such articles by discoverers of Rose Macaulay would be a
boon to literary scholarship in general.
No contemporary study of Macaulay can fail to ac
knowledge the enormous contribution made by Constance
Babington Smith's official biography, Rose Macaulay (1972),
and by her edition^ of Macaulay's letters to the Anglican
priest who was her "confessor," the Letters to a Friend:
1950-1952 (1961) and Last Letters to a Friend: 1952-1958
(1962).
Finally, it should be mentioned that Nancy Topping
Bazin's Virginia Woolf and the Androgynous Vision (1973)
began, and Herbert Marder's superb Feminism and Art; A
Study of Virginia Wool'f (1968) sustained, my efforts to
examine the androgyny in Rose Macaulay's fiction.
If I have quoted somewhat extensively from the
novels themselves, it is because all the books of Rose
4
Macaulay are currently out of print— with only one greatly
abridged exception^--and not readily accessible to American
readers. One can only hope that the presses of the United
States and Great Britain will speedily restore to the
English-speaking peoples of the world one of their greatest
literary treasures.
‘NOTES
INTRODUCTION
See Constance Babington Smith, Rose Macaulay (Lon
don: Collins, 1972, reprinted 1973)* PP • 107-106'.
2
Women from seven of Macaulay's novels written in
the years 1918-1926 were categorized as (l) "The Victorian
Woman," (2) "The Modern English Woman," (3) "The English
Woman of the Future," (4) "The Timeless Woman, the Person
Adhering to Nature." See Margarete Kluge, "Die Stellung
Rose Macaulays Zur Frau (Nach ihren Romanen.)," Anglia 52
(June 1928): 136-173-
■^Alice R. Bensen, Rose Macaulay (New York: Twayne
Publishers, Inc., 1969). p- 177-
^Patrick Braybrooke, Some Goddesses of the Pen
(London: C. W. Daniel Company, 1927)* p • 45 ■ Braybrooke is
refuted by Bensen, p. 47* who explains why "Denham's morn-
ing-sickness is important to the plot." It has been the
experience of the writer of this dissertation, after some
thirteen years spent variously as a social worker, teacher,
and mother, that few women report a total absence of such
symptoms during pregnancy, and that those who do are invar
iably well past their actual child-bearing years.
^William J. Lockwood, "Rose Macaulay," in Minor
British Novelists, ed. Charles Alva Hoyt (Carbondale and
Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967)*
pp. 136, 139-
£
Portions of Rose Macaulay’s Pleasure of Ruins
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1953* New York*: Walker,
1966) provide the text for Roloff Beny Interprets in Photo
graphs PLEASURE OF RUINS by Rose Macaulay, ed. Constance
Babington Smith "[New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1964; rev. ed., 1977)-
6
CHAPTER I
ANDROGYNOUS LEANINGS
i
In a letter to her "confessor" --Father Hamilton
Johnson--dated May 16, 1952, Emilie Rose Macaulay writes:
Virginia Woolf--yes, I was devoted to her and am a
great admirer. Orlando is nonsense, of course, but
rather lovely and fascinating nonsense, don't you
think? Orlando him-her-self was taken from Vita
Sackville-West, who is coming to see me in a day or
two; I am v. fond of her, she is v. beautiful and
nice (Mrs. Harold Nicolson).2
This passage, apparently written in reply to a question
from Father Johnson, is an uncharacteristic one. During
the almost eight years of their correspondence, Rose
Macaulay's letters to the "dear Father" who sent her "abso
lution from across the sea" and brought about her reentry
3
into the Anglican communion dealt predominantly with reli
gion and religious literature, with etymology--usually as
it illuminated religion or philosophy, with the ordinary
events of her daily life, with history, with morality.
When, in the letters to Father Johnson, she discusses fic
tion- -and this is infrequently--she is primarily concerned
1
that her spiritual mentor should perceive it as edifying in
a religious and/or moral sense. Her comments to him con
cerning the novel Howards End by her good friend E. M. For
ster are characteristics
I think you'd like it; the characters are so real, the
style so excellent, the humour so delightful, the prob
lems so serious.^
It must he acknowledged that Virginia Woolf's mock
epic Orlando,5 however "lovely" and "fascinating" Macaulay
may have found it, is far from "serious" in nature. There
can he found in the letters no other instance of her com
mending any comparable "nonsense" to Father Johnson, an
erudite and elderly Anglican ascetic of didactic literary
preferences and refined tastes for whom Macaulay felt the
highest esteem and affection.
Why, then, does the reference to Woolf and Orlando
occur at all? Since a great quantity of the letters in
Rose Macaulay's possession at the time of her death--in-
cluding all of those written to her by Father Johnson--
were posthumously destroyed,6 the question is a difficult
one. It is rendered still more difficult in that the let
ters written by Macaulay to Father Johnson which have been
published have appeared with numerous tantalizing ellipses,
including one immediately preceding the passage on Woolf
and Orlando. ? Therefore, like archaeologists recon-
8
structing an entire civilization from a few shards of pot
tery, or like anthropologists resurrecting a whole person
from a few pieces of hone, we must rely here on evidence
that is fragmentary hut highly suggestive, i.e. the internal
evidence of the letter itself. Apparently Father Johnson
has asked a question, to which Rose Macaulay's remark is a
direct reply: "Virginia Woolf--yes. ..." As to whether
Father Johnson asked in general ahout Woolf or specifically
ahout a novel Woolf published twenty-four years previously
we cannot he certain. What is ascertainable, however, is
the tone of Macaulay's reply. There is an attempt at flip-
pancy--"Orlando is nonsense, of course"--followed by an
immediate attempt to justify one's liking of the same--"but
rather lovely and fascinating nonsense, don't you think?"
This is succeeded by a direct statement of the bisexual
theme of the novel--"Orlando him-her-self was taken from
Vita Sackville-West." Then there is the admission of great
affection for this very same individual--"who is coming to
see me in a day or two"--followed by an expression of open
admiration for Sackville-West's physical attractiveness.
This passage is a surprising one, since praise of physical
beauty cannot be said to be a commonplace of Rose Macaulay's
letters, while, in her fiction, beauty of person is usually
8
linked with assorted negative attributes. Finally,
Macaulay appends a parenthetical reminder--almost as if she
fears she has revealed perhaps a little too much and is
2
attempting to reassure Father Johnson on the point--that,
after all, Vita Sackville-West is a respectable married
lady, "Mrs. Harold Nicolson."
There is some- evidence elsewhere in the letters^
10
that the bisexual "Mrs.” Nicolson seemed to hold a par
ticular fascination for "Miss" Rose Macaulay, and this can
best be understood in the light of facts culled from
Macaulay's own biography. For, Emilie Rose Macaulay--like
her friends Virginia Woolf and Victoria Sackville-West— had
been greatly preoccupied with the question of gender for a
great many years. Frank Swinnerton writes that, at the
time of Rose's birth,
Her mother, having already borne one daughter, had
wanted her to be a boy, so that from earliest years
Rose tried to behave as much as possible as a boy
would have done.H
Swinnerton's assessment of Macaulay’s masculine
orientation is confirmed by the juxtaposition of various
passages culled from Constance B. Smith's biography of her
cousin. Here is one such, concerning Macaulay's earlier
years:
Emilie Rose Macaulay was born on the first of August
1881 at Rugby. . . . She was a second daughter, which
to her mother, who had been hoping ardently for a son,
was a sad disappointment. . . . as a girl 'Rosie' was
very much a tomboy, and for years she believed that
she would one day grow up 'to be a man'. £sie] Later
too, in her novels Rose often gave names to her
heroines which could equally well have been the names
of men. 2
ks an adolescent, Macaulay persisted in her "masculine"
10
longings s
Rose, at twelve, was reaching her tomhoyish stage. . . .
And she not only hehaved like a hoy hut hoasted of what
she would do when she was a man. She was determined
that she was going to join the Navy. ^
In our day, when women are only beginning to make
inroads into traditionally'"male" fields of endeavor, Ma
caulay's hankering after service in the navy would make her
12x
a popular subject for the national news media. In the
traditional late Victorian milieu in which she was raised,
it must have made her a considerable oddity. Moreover, "in
physical respects," so her sister Jean Macaulay remembers,
1 S
Rose was "an exceptionally late developer." ^ Her Cam
bridge contemporaries have described her as being in ap
pearance "when she came up . . . like an unfledged bird,
'shy and vulnerable,' and . . . she was rather slovenly in
her ways." At the time she also exhibited a considerable
fondness for hockey, for boating, and for climbing trees
16
and roofs. After she left college, her desire to engage
in "mannish" pursuits persisted:
Rose in her early twenties was still exceedingly young
for her age. It was only when £her younger brother]]
Aulay first appeared in Army uniform . . . that she was
jolted out of the cherished dream that she herself
would one day be able to join the Navy. '
In this and the above passages, Constance Smith
seems to be attempting to imply that Macaulay's aberrant
behavior--in terms of the accepted sex roles of her time--.
can be attributed to the fact that she was, physically and
11
emotionally, what Jean euphemistically termed a "late de-
veloper." If this was the case, evidence provided hy
Smith’s own hook indicates that Hose Macaulay's "develop
ment" must have heen very late, indeed, since no slightest
indication of a sudden onslaught of "femininity," physical
or otherwise, can he elicited from the accounts of those
who knew Macaulay as she approached forty:
The memories of her at this time that have remained
with her friends are of a woman almost hoyish in her
youthfulness. It suited her to have her hair cut
short in the new fashion. . . . Her wiry figure and-
coltish movements also had a certain charm.18
It is questionable whether hohhed hair, a "wiry figure,"
and a clumsy, "coltish" gait will suffice to render a woman
of forty "charming." While such attributes will not neces
sarily confer "masculinity" on such a woman, neither will
they serve to establish her as "feminine" in character.
Whether Rose Macaulay at any stage in her development was
either overwhelmingly "male" or overwhelmingly "female" in
the commonly accepted contemporary senses of these words
remains a matter for speculation. The accounts of those
who knew her serve only to substantiate the ambiguity of
her gender orientation. For instance, her lover of twenty-
four years, Gerald 0'Donovan, professed himself "particu-
19
larly attracted" because Rose "had a brain like a man’s." 7
The man whom Constance Smith describes as Rose's "shrewd
and percipient" critic, Frank Swinnerton, stoutly pro
claimed Miss Macaulay to be, "despite" the "boyish traits"
12
which she exhibited well into her seventies* "a lady. . . .
a remarkable woman, distinguished by great integrity and
20
beautiful modesty." Perhaps the most "accurate" descrip
tion of the physical essence of Rose Macaulay was that pub
lished by her friend Rosamond Lehmann in a tribute written
five months after Macaulay's death. This tribute included
a description of the novelist as she appeared in her old
age:
One of the links between Rose and myself was the
shared passion for swimming. . . . I still see her
figure indomitably poised Con the diving board]:
androgynous tall figure, flat as a shape cut out in
white paper and blacked in to knees and shoulders;
gaunt, comical, adorable--heroically topped with an
antique martial casque. ^
22
Not only is the term "androgynous" applicable to
Macaulay's "late developing" body throughout its seventy-
seven years, but it portrays as well the quality of her
mind throughout those same years. It was the sort of mind
which, at age forty-nine, could fancy itself belonging to
"a shipwrecked sailor . . . 'scanning the horizon for a
sail,'" and it was contained in a figure which, .also at age
forty-nine, looked like that of "a lanky curly-haired
23
boy." Rose Macaulay's novels, as willibe demonstrated,
amply reflect the androgyny of her physical and mental
make-up. For,, in her fiction, like her friend Virginia
Woolf in the latter's Orlando, now Rose Macaulay is man,
now she is woman, now she is either, now she is neither.
13
In 1934, six years after the publication of Woolf's
Orlando, Rose Macaulay produced an anthology entitled The
24
Minor Pleasures of Life. The book, headed by an epigraph
from Leigh Hunt which recommends that "There should be a
joyous set of elegant extracts--a Literatura Hilaris or
Gaudens," contains hundreds of selections. Dating from
classical to contemporary times these passages deal--of"ten
in a whimsical way--with pleasures under headings alphabet
ically arranged, from "Agreeable Encounters" to "Xeno
phobia." The book is, as Macaulay herself confesses, pre
dominantly English in orientation, and "disproportionately
l?th century" in content (M.P.L., p. 7); however, it
includes an ample number of extracts from the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, as well as a lesser number from
other centuries and nationalities. Of these latter the
major portion are from the "great translators'" renderings
of Greek, Roman, and French originals.
The Minor Pleasures, which is, as its editor com
ments in the Preface, "slimmed . . . of much that I hoped
it would contain" (M.P.L., p. 7)> is, nevertheless, 751
pages in length and contains 941 separate entries. Of
these a mere sixteen are from twentieth century writings.
It is instructive to examine further these sixteen entries
for what they reveal, especially in light of the fact that,
by 1932, several significant twentieth century English
writers had produced seemingly "quoteworthy" notable works
— Henry James,^ W. B. Yeats,^ T. S. Eliot,^ and Macau-
p Q
lay’s close friend E. M. Forster among them. Neverthe
less Macaulay, who actively circulated in literary society
and kept eagerly au courant on the latest books until the
29
year she died, did not make selections from the twentieth
century that reflect this. Of the sixteen works spanning
the years 1906-1932 from which Macaulay chose to quote, two
are from non-English sources— one being an extract from St.
Exupery's Yol de Nuit, the other a piece of vicious Ger
man nationalist propaganda beginning, "Frenchmen are not
human beings. ..." (M.P.L., pp. 99» 727-728). One other
selection is from a book on the importance of chemistry in
the Service of Man (M.P.L., pp. 3^8-349)* Of the thirteen
modern "English" passages remaining, one describes in
rather ineffectual prose an aerial view of East Anglia, and
limply alliterates:
A wall of skimmed milk stretched facing me across the
sky. But on my right the milky sea was calm? no cloud
clotted, with curdled white, the almost transparent
whey.
(M.P.L., p. 98)
Another passage deals with the deterioration in the physi
cal environment caused by "motor bicycles" and other
"improvements" (M.P.L., pp. 185-186). Of the eleven selec
tions remaining when these are subtracted, no less than
eight are drawn from two wittily didactic books by Logan
Pearsall Smith, and their titles--Trivia (1918), and More
Trivia (1922)— tell practically all.^° Having thus
__________ : ____________________________________; _____________ 15
accounted for thirteen of the sixteen not quite so "ele-
gant extracts" meant to represent the first thirty-two
years of this century in an otherwise impeccably edited an-
31
thology, we are,left with but three. Nevertheless, the
three remaining selections are of great interest, not for
what they reveal about the era which produced them so much
as for what they indicate about the individual who felt it
necessary to incorporate them into her book.
The very first item in The Minor Pleasures of Life
listed under the general heading of "Female Pleasures" is
a twentieth century poem written in seventeenth century
style and entitled "Huntin'":
Thro' the green Oake-wood on a lucent Mom
Turn'd the sweet mazes of a silver Horn:
A Stag raced past, and hallowing hard behind,
Dian's young Nymphs ran fleeting down the Wind.
A light-foot Host, green-kirtl' d all they came,.
And leapt, and rollickt, as some mountain Streame
Sings cold and ruffling thro' the Forrest Glades;
So ran, so sang, so hoyted the Moone's Maids.
Light as young Lev'retts skip their buskin'd feet,
Spurning th'enamell'd Sward as they did fleet.
The Wind that buss'd their cheekes was all the Kiss
Was suffer'd by the Girles of Artemis,
Whose traffique was in Woods, whom the wing'd Boy
Leaguer'd in vain, whom Man would ne're injoy,
Whose Bed greene Moss beneath the forrest Tree,
Whose jolly Pleasure all in Liberty,
To sport with fellow Maids in maiden cheere,
To swim the Brook, and hollo after Deer.
Thus, the winds wantoning their flying Curies,
So rac’d, so chas'd, those most Delightfull Girles.
ANON
The Chase (c. 1675)
(M.P.L., p. 211)
16
This poem, which is vastly superior to the hulk of
32
the poetry published under its author's own name, is ac
tually a piece of "pseudo-period verse" written, says
33
Constance Smith, by-Macaulay herself. It is significant
for at least three reasons, the latter two having rele-
vance to this study:
1) The imagery of wood, water, moon, morning, and
music reverberates through fifty years of Macau
lay's fiction, both before and after Minor Pleas
ures , and through both volumes of her poetry(q.v.),
as well.
2) The young females, "whose traffic was in woods;
whom the wing’d Boy/ Leaguer'd . . . are arche
typal Macaulay heroines, absorbed in what are char
acteristically "masculine" pursuits (in this case,
running, roistering, leaping, swimming, hunting,
and camping out).
3) These "seventeenth century" maids "whom Man
would ne're injoy," and "whose jolly pleasure"
is to be found "all in Liberty," and in each other,
are depicted attractively and sympathetically by an
authoress who ranked their uninhibited activities
paramount among the "Female Pleasures" and who
chose to remain anonymous until:
17
Ten years later, in 19^» this poem proved an embar
rassment to Rose, for when the eminent bibliophile John
Hayward was preparing a collection of seventeenth-cen
tury verse, he asked her to specify its source. . . •
'The fact is that I wanted a poem about women hunting
Cshe replied] and couldn’t lay my hands on one at the
moment, so I thought I would write one myself, and it
amused me to put it into 17th century garb. . . . it
is, as perhaps you know yourself, a rather entertaining
pastime. One can take some modern poem and rewrite it
in the style of each century. . . . It might be a good
parlor game for those whom it amuses.3^
Shakespeare's "thane of Cawdor" had "studied . . ./
To throw away the dearest thing he ow'd,/ As 'twere a care-
less trifle." This is a "study" in which Macaulay, too,
excels, as evidenced not only by her letter to Father John
son about Virginia Woolf and Orlando, but by other of her
writings in which she may be observed making light of those
things.which, in fact, she holds quite dear. The truth
of this assertion is amply demonstrated by a scrutiny of
the selections included in Macaulay's anthology under the
sardonic heading, "Female Pleasures." Undoubtedly Macaulay
reveals far too much of herself here, so that "wit" must be
used to camouflage the real depths of her feeling. This
section of The Minor Pleasures of Life expresses her views
on female-male relationships through the ages by the simple
device of quoting men themselves.-^ The irony readily ap
parent in these pages is a very deliberately engendered
one. Macaulay's "most Delightfull Girles" degenerate on
the next page, while gripped in the rude clutches of Joseph
Addison, to unwomanly women who require a scathing "put
18
down" s-*8
I have very frequently the opportunity of seeing a
rural Andromache. . . . She talks of Hounds and Horses,
and makes nothing of leaping over a Six-bar Gate. If
a man tells her a waggish story, she gives him a push
with her Hand in jest, and calls him an impudent Dog.
(M.P.L., p. 212)
When, in Addison's view, a woman tries to act "like a man,"
she is absurd. Nor, if we may believe Napoleon, should a
woman attempt to change the course of history, as he did,
since * .
II faut que les femmes tricotent.
(M.P.L., p. 212)
With sexist hyperbole Byron asserts that women should at
all times be ornamentals
A woman should never be seen eating or drinking, unless
it be lobster salad and champagne, the only truly
feminine viands. (M.P.L., p. 213)
A woman should not, as Charles Lamb points out, participate
39
actively in the world's dramas^7
Mary had not been here four and twenty hours before
she saw a thief. She sits at the window working; and
casually throwing out her eyes, she sees a concourse
of people . . . with a constable to conduct the solem
nity. These little incidents agreeably diversify a
female life.
(M-P*L.» p. 213)
Nor is a woman well suited to mingle in even the world's
more mundane affairs, since it is well known, as Boswell
reminds us, that:
A woman who gets the command of money for the first
time upon her marriage, has such gust in spending it,
that she throws it away with great profusion.
(M.P.L., p. 217)
19
Women are intellectually deficient, or rather, as Richard
Burton’s thoughtful planning for their "needs" makes evi
dent, they haven't any intellects at alls
Now for women instead of laborious studies, they have
curious needleworkes, cutworkes, spinning, bone-lace,
and many pretty devices of their own making. . . . This
they have to busie themselves about, household offices,
&c. neate gardens. . . . Their merry meetings and
frequent visitations . . . which are so much in use,
gossipping among the meaner sort, &e.
(M.P.L., p. 22b)
Women are "things" existing but
. . . for shew
And pleasure, created to beare children,
And play at shuttle-cocke.
(M.P.L., p. 222)
Women are sex-starved and crave one thing only:
PRUE: 'Tis true, Miss, two poor young creatures as
we are!
HIPPOLITA: . . . Not suffer'd to go to Church, because
the men are sometimes there! Little did I think I
should ever have longed to go to Church!
(M.P.L., pp. 216-21?)
Women are saints worthy of veneration:
There is . . . piety peculiar to the Sex, which
naturally renders them Subjects more pliable, to the
Divine Grace, than men commonly are. . . .
(M.P.L., pp. 215-216)
Women must not "compromise" themselves:
MRS. FORESIGHT: I own it, I think there's no Happiness
like conversing with an agreeable Man . . . but . . .
to be seen with a man in a Hackney Coach is scandalous.
(M.P.L., p. 221)
Women make their entire existences center around trifles:
20
Ladies . . . were they not used with Ceremony, with
Complements and Addresses, with Legs, and Kissing of
Hands, they were the pittyfullest Creatures in the
World.
(M.P.L., p. 218)
And famed diarist Samuel Pepys, in a generous mood, feels
men should allow women their little toys*.
This evening my wife did with great pleasure shew me
her stock of jewels, encreased by the ring she hath
made lately as my Valentine's gift this year . . .
and with this and what she had, she reckons that
she hath above £l50v-;worth of 'jewels . . . and I am
glad of it, for it is fit the wretch should have
something to content herself with.
(M.P.L., p. 222)
There are, in all, twenty-seven of these "female
pleasures" listed: twenty-four are from the writings of
men; two are labelled "anonymous," i.e. the Macaulay
"Huntin'" poem discussed above, and an excerpt from the
January 1825 Edinburgh Review:
It is generally remarked, that when the odious and
corrupting propensity of gambling takes possession
of the female mind, its ravages are still more
unsparing than upon the characters and feelings of
men.
(M.P.L., p. 21*0
To one lone selection is appended the name of a woman:
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Macaulay has provided the
bitterly ironic superscription, "Accomplishments," to but
two lines from Aurora Leigh. They epitomize just how much
waste there is in the "wasted lives" portrayed in Mrs.
Browning's book-length poem:
I< danced the polka and Cellarius,
Spun glass, stuffed birds, and modelled flowers
in wax.^0
21
This is the precise passage to which Virginia Woolf had al
luded at least two years previously when she wrote, in an
essay entitled "Aurora Leigh"s
At her [Aunt's] hand Aurora suffered the education
that was thought proper for women. She learnt a
little French, a little algebra; the internal laws
of the Burmese empire; what navigable river joins
itself to Lara; what census of the year five was
taken at Klagenfurt; also how to draw nereids neatly
draped, to spin glass, to stuff birds, and model
flowers in wax. For the Aunt liked a woman to be
womanly. . . . Under this torture of women's education,
the passionate Aurora exclaimed, certain women have
died; others pine. . . .^1
Surely, it was with malice and aforethought that
Macaulay headed her section of sentiments on the "nature"
of women with a poem of her own composition in praise of
active females who are forever independent of men and un
trammelled by sexist stereotypes, and who race "Light as
young Lev'retts" through life. It is a premeditated jux
taposition which- makes all too obvious the monumental con
trast between what Macaulay knew she was, and what a male-
dominated society said every "woman" should be. To accept
unexamined her statement to John Hayward that she was
merely playing a "parlor game" when she composed "Huntin'"
and included it in her anthology would be to fall prey to
the "Intentional Fallacy" of which serious literary critics
are justly wary. It would be as illogical as accepting at
face value Macaulay's tentative assertion to Father Johnson
that Orlando was, "of course," mere "nonsense . . . , but
rather fascinating and lovely nonsense, don't you think?"
22
A second item in Minor Pleasures significant for
what it reveals is the only entry under the heading
"Sororal," a poem entitled "After the Party" "by an individ
ual named E. J. Scovell who had, perhaps, more than a little
hostility toward the male sex, as the opening lines of the
first stanza demonstrate:
A girl said to her sister, late, when their friends
had gone: u?
"I wish there were no men on earth, hut we alone."
Unfortunately, men do visit and stay "late.”; The speaker,
who has heen carefully watching her sister during the visit,
jealously reveals her awareness that a male friend (or
friends) arouses an intense erotic response in her sibling.
It is obvious that the bare essentials alone of
Scovell's "After the Party" suffice to establish that the
poem is laden with lesbian suggestion: A girl openly ad
mires her sister's face and body (lines 3» 8); remarks
that her own body is likewise beautiful (1. 8); feels that
there is a special, non-verbal communication between the
two of them (11. 9-1*0 ; insists "Me should be gay together"
(1. 21); resents all men and all normal biological drives
that come between them (11. 2-6, 1?-18, 25-29)» and sits
beside her sister all night with the lights off (11. 24,
28), wishing "there was Qsic] n° love on earth but ours
alone" (1. 29).
; 21
Moreover, the careful reader should not balk at as
cribing to various of the images in the poem--to the men's
signal "flags" (1. 11), the girl's "eyes" (1. 27);^ the
piercing and boasting "flames" induced by a masculine pres
ence (11. 4-5), the "grass" (11. 10, 14) , the "reeds . . .
in river mists" (11. 6-7), the "thicket" (1. 22), the "low,
crouched bramble" (1. 19)» the "drenched upland fields" (1.
1 0 ) , and the "chill pool" (l. 22)--some probable Freudian
equivalents. It is noteworthy that the poem equates
Summer, noon, light, heat, and fire or flame with mature,
heterosexual love (11. 4, 7» 25-27); while Spring, dawn,
dimness, coolness, and wetness represent the less mature
"sisterly love" (11. 7. 15-16, 18, 22, 24, 28). Perhaps,
too, the desire of the girl that both she and her sister
should remain "reed like" (11. 3» 6-7).can>be seen as a
manifestation of her resistance to the curvaceousness of
feminine physical maturation. Since she is as yet not
quite fully sexually matured, she sees— and cannot help but
feel— the necessity of mens simultaneously, she hates them
because of the demands their existence makes on her and
resists being drawn by them toward a more advanced stage of
45
psychosexual development. ^
It will be readily apparent that "After the Party"
by "Miss E. J. Scovell"— we learn the author’s sex only by
consulting the "Acknowledgments" (p. 733) at the conclusion
of the anthology--is a poorly written poem. What can--only
24
with charity!— he termed its "rhyme scheme" follows no
discernible pattern. It is metrically deficient and imag-
istically inferior. It exhibits some extremely infelici
tous choices of dicfion and phrasing, has extremely little
to recommend it in the way of sonorities of language, and
contains at least two rather glaring grammatical errors.^
This most undistinguished poem stands out from the majority
of the 9^1 selections in Macaulay’s largely exquisite col
lection of "elegant extracts" with an inferiority that is
almost flagrant. Why, then, did Macaulay include it in
The Minor Pleasures when, as she herself laments in the
Preface, the volume has perforce been "slimmed . . . of
much that I hoped it would contain" (M.P.L., p. 7)? Set
against the tinnily erotic doggerel of Scqvell's rather
plodding production, even the few other less than excellent
selections in the book assume a new grandeur--merely by
contrast! The "trivia" and "more trivia" of Logan Pearsall
Smith assume an elegance of phrasing and an insight into
human nature that is memorable. The passage on "motor bi
cycles" becomes beneficially didactic in its concern with
the environment? and even the aerial view of the East
Anglian "skimmed milk" sky--which seems in some ways unhap
pily reminiscent of Edmund Spenser's evocation of "brest
hn
like to a bowle of creame uncrudded" in his Epithalamion
--may be appreciated as a historically significant descrip
tion of the view from "up there" when the science of
25
aviation was in its infancy. In short, most of the twen
tieth century selections in The Minor Pleasures which fall
into the dryasdust category have at least some redeeming
social value.
Surely "Sororal" feelings--the purported theme of
the section of The Minor Pleasures including hut the one
item— Scovell's poem— must have been more effectively ex
pressed by someone in the more than 2600 years and several
lands spanned by this compilation. And most certainly Rose
Macaulay— the Oxford-educated daughter of a Cambridge Lec
turer in English who had translated Herodotus and edited
u 8
Gower --could have found something in the many months of
research in the British Museum in preparation of her book
that would have been more to the point. She did! Ele
gantly poised beneath the label "Fraternal" occurring ear
lier in Macaulay's own anthology, are three selections— one
from Boswell, and one apiece from Macaulay’s own cousins,
Thomas Babington and Margaret Macaulay, giving eloquent
testimony to the rewards and pleasures of sisterly and
brotherly love (M.P.L., pp. 225-228)
Although, in compiling The Minor Pleasures, Rose
Macaulay lacked the space to include all that she had so
enthusiastically wished to include, she yet took two entire
and very precious pages to reproduce what is, in essence, a
manifestly inferior poem about lesbian love. "After the
26
Party," unlike her few other twentieth century selections,
does not appear to have any redeeming social value whatso
ever. Almost certainly it was included because Rose Macau
lay let an overwhelming emotional preference for the poem's
content overcome her usually more sensible critical per
spective .
The last noteworthy item'r^of the sixteen from the
first third of the twentieth century included in Rose
Macaulay's 193^ anthology called The Minor Pleasures of
Life--is a very lovely excerpt from the novel Orlando by
Virginia Woolf. This passage, which Macaulay has labelled
"Carnival," is included in a section of her anthology
dealing with the pleasures of "Ice." It reads as followss
London enjoyed a carnival of the utmost brilliancy.
. . . Frozen roses fell in showers when the Queen and
her ladies walked abroad. Coloured balloons hovered
motionless in the air. Here and there burnt vast
bonfires of cedar and oak wood, lavishly salted, so
that the flames were of green, orange, and purple
fire. But however fiercely they burnt, the heat was
not enough to melt the ice which, though of singular
transparency, was yet of the hardness of steel. So
clear indeed was it that there could be seen, congealed
at a depth of several feet, here a porpoise, there a
flounder. Shoals of eels lay motionless in a trance,
but whether their state was one of death or merely of
suspended animation which the warmth would revive
puzzled the philosophers. Near London Bridge, where
the river had frozen to a depth of some twenty
fathoms, a wrecked wherry boat was plainly visible,
lying on the bed of the river where it had sunk last
autumn, overladen with applesr CThe old bumboat woman,
who was carrying her fruit to "market on the Surrey
side, sat there in her plaids and farthingales with
her lap full of apples, for all the world as if she
27
were about to serve a customer, although a certain
blueness about the lips hinted the truth. 'Twas a
sight King James specially liked to look upon, and he
would bring a troop of courtiers to gaze with him.
In short nothing could exceed the brilliancy and
gaiety of the scene by day. But it was at night that
the carnival was at its merriest. For the frost
continued unbroken; the nights were of perfect still
ness; the moon and stars blazed with the hard fixity
of diamonds, and to the fine music of flute and trum
pet the courtiers danced. v Vi-
(m .p . l r, "pp. 32-3-324)
This passage is from the first chapter of Orlando
in which "ice”--its coldness, its hardness, the feasting
and other festivities held on it, its "melting" in the
fires of sexual passion and its transformation into rain
and river flood, emblematic of tears and despair--plays a
<1
very prominent metaphorical role. Not only did Macaulay
quote this passage in The Minor Pleasures (1934), but she
made what may be a direct allusion to Chapter One of
Orlando in her thumbnail history of Life Among the
English (1942). This rather slim volume traces the
history of Britain from. pre-Roman antiquity to World War II
in forty-eight pages. In the section entitled "Feudal" she
writes * .
London life [after the Conquest]] was a round of gaiety
— football, cockfights, tournaments, ice sports (for,
as we know, it froze long and hard every winter in
past centuries), fairs, performing animals, every
kind of pleasure. . . . Social life was largely con
ducted round the well-spread board.
(L.A.E., p. 12; emphasis added)
Whether or not Rose Macaulay had the first chapter
of Woolf’s Orlando consciously in mind when she wrote these
28
words in 19^2 it is impossible to say. What can be demon
strated is that Macaulay knew and liked the novel suffi
ciently to utilize a lengthy quote from it in her anthology
of 193^> and that the passage she then chose to quote—
aside from its intrinsic literary beauties, which are many
--is of interest because of the position it occupies in the
work literary critic Herbert Marder calls Virginia Woolf's
"hymn to androgyny."^ Immediately following the section
excerpted by Macaulay is the "Sasha episode" in which the
youthful Orlando falls ecstatically in love with a person
of indeterminate sex:
He beheld . . . a figure which, whether boy's or
woman's filled him with the highest curiosity. . . .
extraordinary seductiveness . . . issued from the whole
person. Images, metaphors of the most extreme and
extravagant twined and twisted in his mind. He called
her a melon, a pineapple, an olive tree, an emerald,
and a fox in the snow all in the space of three sec4 : ;
onds; he did not know whether he had heard her, tasted
her, seen her, or all three together. . . . When the
boy, for alas, a boy it must be--no woman could skate
with such speed and vigour--swept almost on tiptoe
past him, Orlando was ready to tear his hair with
vexation that the person was of his own sex, and thus
all embraces were out of the question. But the skater
came closer* Legs, hands, carriage, were a boy's, but
no boy ever had a mouth like that; no boy had those
breasts; no boy had those eyes which looked as if they
had been fished from the bottom of the sea. . . . She
was not a handsbreadth off. She was a woman.
(Orlando, pp. 37-38)
Moreover, Orlando is also, from the first sentence
of the book, of questionable sex, despite the narrator's
ironic disclaimer:
29
He— for there could he no doubt of his sex, though
the fashion of the time did something to disguise it--
was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which
swung from the rafters.
(Orlando, p. 13)
But the head is a relic from a bygone war fought by
5k
Orlando's father or grandfather, and Orlando, playing at
being a hero alone in an attic at sixteen, is said to be
"too young" to ride to battle. Further details of Orlan
do’s "youthful beauty" fail to resolve the ambiguity of
"his" gender. We read that he possessed
. . • shapely legs . . . [a] handsome body . . .
well-set shoulders. . . . The red of the cheeks was
covered’ ; ^with peach down. . . . he had eyes like
drenched violets. . . . Sights disturbed him, like
that of his mother, a very beautiful lady in green
walking out to feed the peacocks . . . sights exalted
him. . . . Orlando . . . sat down at the table, . . .
took out a writing book labelled "AEthelbert: A Tragedy
in Five Acts," and . . . Soon he had covered ten pages
and more with poetry.
(Orlando, pp. 14-16)
The somewhat "feminine" character of the young
Orlando cannot have been an uncongenial one to Rose Macau
lay. In 1935* a year after her publication of The Minor
Pleasures, Macaulay produced a biocritical volume on John
Milton. There are some striking similarities between the
effeminate, temperamental, and talented adolescent Orlando
as Woolf conceived him in her first' chapt”er.,; and the. youth
ful Miltbrf as MacaulayC perceived him in her first chap-
■ ■ ■ . . . . ^ ■--,.... • -
ter.When Milton was but a boy, we read:
30
Music . . . could dissolve him into ecstacies. He
wrote poetry at ten. . . . We see him at the age of
ten in Janssen's portrait . . . his mother was not . . .
too Puritan to set off her child's beauty with elegant
dress.
(Milton, p. 3)
A few pages later, Macaulay writes that Milton was heckled
by his contemporaries at Cambridge for his ladylike manner
isms :
Let us picture, then, the undergraduate of sixteen and
a half . . . so delicately beautiful of face and form,
so elegantly nice in demeanour and habit as to be
nicknamed in Cambridge, "the Lady," eager for learning,
and, feeling himself dedicated and set apart for great
things.
(Milton, p. 9)
A few pages further on, Macaulay again feels com
pelled to bring up the subject of her hero's less than
"masculine" image at Cambridge by means of a spirited
discussion of Milton's
. . . protest against the nickname of "Lady," which
£his biographer John]] Aubrey says was given him. for
Abe.ing. "se: fair.: and' clear". C°.£ comple'x-Conl^^but^ .for
which, as Milton suggested, there may have been other
reasons. Was it he petulantly enquired, because he
could not drink heavily, or because his hands were not
hard with plowing, or because he did not prove his
manhood by debauchery? But, he added, ever happy to
compare himself with the classical great (with Ovid in
rustication, with Pindar "when the assault was intended
on the city," with Tiresias in blindness), Demosthenes
himself was called by his enemies not enough of a man.
(Milton, pp. 15-16)57
Both Macaulay's version of the historic Milton, and
Virginia Woolf's portrayal of the fictional Orlando should
be considered with reference to Woolf’s theory of the
"androgynous mind." It was Woolf's expressed belief that a
31
man must be in touch with the ^feminine qualities in himself
and a woman must be in touch with the masculine qualities in
herself if the wonderful possibilities life holds out to
human beings are to be most fully realized. In her feminist
tract A Room of One's Own Woolf voices her theory that,
"If one is a man, still the woman part of the brain must
have effect; and a woman also must have intercourse with
the man in her." She conjectures that "Coleridge perhaps
meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous.
Without the bisexual perspective, both the human individual
in general, and the artist in particular, will be lacking
the essential freedom to create— the one, a rich and
meaningful life; the other, a rich and meaningful work.
Woolf went so far as to say, "It is fatal for anyone who
writes to think of their sex. It is fatal to be a man or
woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or
man-womanly."^ She even admits the possibility that "a
mind which is purely masculine cannot create, any more than
6 0
a mind that is purely feminine."
Literary critic Herbert Marder characterizes A Room
of One1s Own as a kind of lecture by Woolf >on freedom,"
while in Orlando he sees Woolf as actually indulging
herself in that same freedom. "It is especially interest
ing," he comments, "that Orlando's first, and most spectac
ular, change of sex [from "man" to "woman"!] is ushered in
________________________________________________________ 32
by an elaborate ritual of liberation."^1 Even the form of
the novel is a liberated one. Orlando is a mixed-breed work
that does not belong to any of the "established" literary
genres, partaking, as it does, of qualities attributable to
several:
Fantasy, novel, biography, poem, history--all of these
terms may be applied to the book, but no single one
describes it adequately. It seems fitting that this
book about the intermingling of the sexes should be a
hybrid of several literary types.62
Likewise the characters in this protean setting con
tinually oscillate between "maleness" and "femaleness." As
Virginia Woolf observes in Orlando,
Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every
human being a vacillation from one sex ta the other
takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep
the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is
the very opposite of what it is above."°3
Using this passage as his point of departure Herbert
Marder discusses the various characters in Woolf's novel
with reference to their continually shifting sexes:
This intermixing of sexes, and the consequent ambiguity
is observable in several characters. Sasha, the Russian
Princess, at first appears to be a boy and later dresses
as a man. The Archduchess Harriet reveals that she has
only been masquerading as a woman. But she is not
androgynous at all in the ideal sense, because the mas
culine element has always predominated in her, even
before her dropping of the feminine disguise £and reve
lation of her true character as the "masculine," heavy-
handed Archduke]] brought inner and outer sexes into
conformity with each other. . . . Orlando, and her hus
band Shelmardine, on the other hand, are truly androgy
nous, the two sexes within them almost evenly balanced.
It is because of the fineness of this balance that
Orlando must constantly be shifting back and forth, that
is, conforming her outer sex to changes in the inner
weather.
33
A letter written "by Rose Macaulay to Virginia Woolf
in October 19^0, five months before the latter's suicide,
establishes that Woolf, and Woolf's androgynous ideal, were
at the time very much on Macaulay's mind. The letter--
reprinted by Smith with her customary ellipses : #ust where
one would wish they were not--includes the followings
How I wish that I could see you! It's one of the sad
things about this war, seeing people has become so much
more difficult, at the same time more important. I
like it so much when I do see you...I would like to
talk about...Coleridge...some time, as I have long had
in mind a novel about a girl who would be his descend
ant (great .great grandchild, the fruit of mild and
rural sin) and would take after him. I suppose she
would be a very odd girl, wouldn't she--opium,^meta
physics, flow of talk, cadging on friends, even poetry,
but it needn't be as good as his.6-5
Smith goes on to state that "Rose's idea for a
novel about a descendant of Coleridge never came to any
thing though she told Daniel George that she wanted to give
it priority" over another work she planned to write, which
66
was then being researched for her by George. Macaulay,
at this time on active wartime service as an ambulance
driver in London and continually under devastating enemy
bombardment, is obliged to deal, as she writes to Woolf,
with "victims beneath the ruins . . . [who] do make agoniz-
ing conversation often." Although her life at this time
cannot have been devoid of excitement and adventure, still
Rose Macaulay escapes into fantasies about a girl who
reincarnates a famous man, Coleridge; and who is--by
3^
chance!— his lineal descendant, doing everything not char
acteristically feminine that he did, though she cannot do
it quite so well. This girl can even indulge in "poetry,
68
but it needn't be as good as his."
Despite the fact that Macaulay never did succeed in
reincarnating Coleridge in female form, Smith's assertion
that the idea "never came to anything" is not strictly
true. In Going Abroad (193*0 » six years before Macaulay
wrote the letter to Woolf discussing the possibility of a
girl Coleridge, she had already produced a comparable
heroine in the person of "Hero Buckley," an avid swimmer in
dangerous seas, an ardent flirt, a moody romantic philoso
phizer, and— by coincidence!--a girl who bears a strong
physical likeness to Lord Byron, "for this peer was her
great-great-great-grandfather, it were indiscreet to
6q
explain how." ' The fact that Macaulay was still obsessed
with the idea of such an individual six years after making
her a principal character in a novel exceeding three hun
dred pages in length will perhaps serve as an indicator of
the tenacity of the obsession. Small wonder that Macaulay
would have so strong a desire to "talk to" Woolf concerning
her hero/heroine. Surely she would find a kindred spirit
in the author of Orlando. It was likewise small wonder
that, on November 12, 1952, Rose Macaulay delivered a lec
ture in Oxford. In a letter dated "24th October, 1952,"
22
she announced her topic to Father Johnsons
I have to go to Oxford on Nov. 12th to address the
University Literary Society on Men's women and Women's
men, in literature. Not an unfruitful subject.?*-*
36
NOTES
CHAPTER I
Father Hamilton Johnson of the Anglican Church
heard Rose Macaulay's confessions "about half a dozen times,
from the summer of 191^ until the autumn of 1916." In No
vember 1916, Father Johnson's duties took him to the United
States, where he remained until his death in 1961. Some
thirty-six years after he left for the U.S.--all communica
tion between the two having ceased during the interim--
Father Johnson wrote Rose Macaulay an appreciative letter
concerning her historical novel, They Were Defeated (Londons
William Collins, 1932; published in America as The Shadow
Flies, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1932. All references
will be to the New York edition.). This was the beginning
of an extensive correspondence between the two, who eventu
ally discovered they were fourth cousins. Macaulay's half
of the correspondence was prepared for publication by
another distant relative, a third cousin. See the Introduc
tion to Letters to a Friend from Rose Macaulay 1950-1952,
ed. Constance Babington Smith (Londons Collins, 1961;
hereafter referred to as Letters), pp. 11-23* Smith also
edited Last Letters to a Friend from Rose Macaulay 1952-195^
(Londons Collins, 19^25 hereafter referred to as Last
Letters)-.
2
Transcribed verbatim from Letters, p. 315*
Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press published three
of Macaulay’s non-fiction works: Catchwords and Claptrap
(1926), Some Religious Elements in English Literature
(1931)» and The Writings of E. M. Forster (1938).
Victoria--"Vita"--Sackville-West's son, Nigel Nicolson, is
co-owner of the publishing firm of Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
which published the first edition of Rose Macaulay's peren
nially popular Pleasure of Ruins, mentioned on p . 6, n. 6
above.
r ~ *
In 1918 Macaulay met novelist Gerald 0'Donovan at
the wartime Ministry of Information where they were both
employed. 0'Donovan, a former Irish Catholic priest, was a
married man. After 1922 their involvement became such that
Macaulay "broke away from the sacramental life of the
church." See the Introduction to the Letters, p. 19* The
relationship continued until 0’Donovan’s death in 19^2, but
Macaulay remained outside of the Church for some years
thereafter. What she terms the "absolutiones transmarinae"■
37
sent her hy Father Johnson eased her conscience sufficiently
to allow her to seek confession and absolution from a priest
in person, and thereby brought about her re-entry into the
Church after a lapse of approximately thirty years (v. in
the Letters the one dated "l4th January 1951*" p* 5^)■
Smith's biography, Rose Macaulay (London: Collins, 1972),
pp. 89-102, passim, deals frankly with this enduring love
affair, and with its quite significant impact on Rose Macau
lay’s life and, to a lesser extent, on her art.
i j .
Letters, p. 25^•
^Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography (London:
Hogarth Press, 1928). All page references will be to the
1956 edition (New York: Harcourt Brace, ppbk.).
6
Soon after Rose Macaulay's death, , in accordance
with her wishes, her sister Jean personally burnt "vast
quantities of private letters addressed to Dame Rose,"
including all of those written to her over the years by
Father Johnson. See the Introduction to Last Letters, p.
10. The loss of Father Johnson's letters--by means of
which he drew Rose Macaulay back into the Anglican Communior
from which she had been estranged for many years--is incal
culable. Writing to Father Johnson on "18th November,
1955*" Macaulay acknowledged her debt to "the most wonderful
ministry of letters that ever was," Letters, p. 211.
7
It is more than possible that this was out of
respect for the wishes of Father Johnson, who told C. B.
Smith that, "if these letters could be published (after
careful editing) they would be of help to many," Letters,
"Preface," p. 7* Smith also writes that, "In editing the
letters I have omitted passages which might cause embarrass
ment to living persons," Letters, "Preface," pp. 8-9*
These two restrictions on -what Smith allows to appear in
print are reiterated in Last Letters, "Preface," pp. 9 and
11 respectively. Thus the printed version of the corre
spondence may omit much that the student of this particular
period would be curious to know (see n. 3* above), and the
letter in which Macaulay apparently made her "confession"
has vanished in a most mysterious fashion. (See Macaulay's
own references to the same in two letters dated "9th Decem
ber, 1950*" and "15th December, 1950," Letters, pp. 38-39*)
8
Strikingly beautiful women do not fare well in
Macaulay's fiction. Their sufficiencies in body are almost
invariably offset by deficiencies in heart, mind, or
scruples. Among numerous examples of such women are
Rosamund Ilbert of Abbots Verney, Evie Tucker of -.-.
38
Non-Combatants and Others, Eileen Le Moine of The Making of
a Bigot, Rosalind Hilary of Dangerous Ages, Pilar Alvarez
of And No Man's Wit, and Helen Michel of The World My
Wilderness. Only Julian Conyheare of The Shadow Flies
combines unusual*Jinoral and intellectual endowments with
striking physical beauty. She is, however, killed as the
novel concludes.
9
yk further reference to Vita Sackville-West cum
those tantalizing ellipses supplied by Constance Smith reads
as follows:
I haven't read The Edwardians [a 1930 novel by Vita
Sackville-West mentioned by Father Johnson in a letter
to which Macaulay is replying] for years, and your
letter makes me decide to read it again. I will then
tell you what I think about it. I remember it inters
ested me v. much at the time. I wish you could meet
the author; she is a most loveable being....I wish we
met oftener; but she seldom comes to London, and I sel
dom go to Sissinghurst Castle (a fascinating old castle,
which they bought some years ago when it was a ruin, in
which farm buildings and cattle had their home; the
Nicolsons dug up the buried walls and repaired the
standing ones and planted the garden, unearthing an
ancient nuttery in the process, and made it a lovely
place
By the way, the only thing I found rather amiss in
your very good and moving words on K. Adam's book was
that you seemed rather to be content to accept a place
of inferiority for the Ang^lican] Ch[urch], whereas you
might have indicated that it is the better church of
the two, more truthful, nearer the Gospels, more
Christian, more reasonable, more open to the progressive
leading of the Holy Spirit which is, in the end, to
guide us all into all truth.
See the letter dated "8th June, 1952," in Letters, p. 321.
10
Nigel Nicolson, son of Harold Nicolson and
Victoria Sackville-West, supplies ample evidence of the
bisexual tendencies of both his parents, of whom he wrote
that, "each was constantly and by mutual consent unfaithful
to the other. Both loved people of their own sex, but not
exclusively." See the Preface to Nicolson's biographical
Portrait of a Marriage (New York: Atheneum, 1973). p* ix.
Also pertinent are pp. 23, 29-30, 33, 37-39. 103-132,
L35-138, passim.
39
11 .
Emphasis added. Frank Swmnerton, "Rose Macau
lay," Kenyon Review 29 (1967)» 591-608. See in this regard
pp. 593-594.
1 2
Smith, Rose Macaulay, p . 17* Smith's Introduc
tion to Macaulay's Letters lends additional support to this
assertion.
1 3
"Emith, Rose Macaulay, p. 36.
14
An instance of this is provided in Marcia Stamell,
"The Basic Training of Joan Smith," Ms., August 1977» pp.
48-51, 98-99:
West Point established two media days in the summer
of 1976 for the express purpose of satisfying media
requests to see the women £cadetsH at basic training.
Reporters, and especially camera crews, gawked over
each woman-to-woman pugil-stick battle . . . , over
each feminine hand hurling a grenade, and over every
high-pitched female voice declaring, "I want to kill,
sir" (p. 50)*
1 5
^Smith, Rose Macaulay, p. 42.
l6Ibid., pp. 42-43.
7
1 8
Ibid., pp. 94-95; see also p. 115*
19
7Ibid., p. 96. Of relevance also is the passage
on p'.~l4l describing Rose Macaulay in 1937: in spite of the
horror that physical suffering kindled in her she was not
altogether anti-military; there was still in her something
of the young hero-worshipper who had relished tales of
daring, and had herself longed to be a man.
on
Swinnerton, pp. 593-594.
21
Rosamond Lehmann m "The Pleasures of Knowing
Rose Macaulay," Encounter, March 1959, quoted in Smith,
Rose Macaulay, pp. 224-225; emphasis added. Also of
17Ibid., p. 48.
interest is p . 226.
22
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English
Language, 1969 ed., s.v. "androgynous" defines the term as
"having male and female characteristics in one; hermaphro
ditic ."
40
2"*Smith, Rose Macaulay, p. 115*
oh.
Rose Macaulay, ed., The Minor Pleasures of Life
(London: Victor Gollancz, 193^5 New York, Harper and
Brothers, n.d.). All references here are to the New York
edition which will henceforth he referred to as M.P.L.
2 3
"^Macaulay's novels, as well as her non-fiction
writings, are replete with epigraphs and other literary
allusions that testify to the wide range of her reading. An
epigraph from an obscure writing of Henry James adorns her
Pleasure of Ruins (1953 edition) and four other references
to this James'work occur within the text (P*R., pp. 202,
3^8, 358-59* ^51)• Much more significant is a statement of
Macaulay's quoted hy Philip L. Rizzo in his "Rose Macaulay:
A Critical Survey"'(Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Penn
sylvania, 1959)* in a personal letter to Mr. Rizzo dated
May 5» 1958, Rose Macaulay writes, "It rather interests me
someone should have suggested a Jamesian influence in The
Furnace [19073* as I remember that I was reading him with
fascination at the time I wrote it" (Rizzo, p. 9)•
2^Five lines from Yeats's "The Secret Rose" (See his
Collected Poems [New York: Macmillan, 197^+3* P* 67) form the
epigraph to "Part V" of Rose Macaulay’s highly experimental
novel, The Secret River (1909) • Yeatsian "romantic icono
graphy" is also a major influence on the theme and imagery
of the book itself. See in this regard Rizzo, p. 12. Also
useful on this point is Robert Earl Kuehn, "The Pleasures of
Rose Macaulay: An Introduction to Her Novels" (Ph.D. Disser
tation, University of Wisconsin, 1962) . In Macaulay's
post World War II novel The World My Wilderness (1950),
eight lines from Yeats's "The Folly of Being Comforted"
(1903) occur within Chapter 33* presumably in the mind of
Sir Gulliver Deniston. These lines usher in the climactic
confrontation between Sir Gulliver and his ex-wife Helen
(w.w., p. 230).
^Macaulay's Letters and Last Letters (q.v.) contain
some interesting references to Eliot, who became a personal
friend of hers, as well as to some of his works. In a
letter to Father Johnson dated "29th March, 1957," she
writes, "I am trying to recall what I felt about his
[Eliot's]] poetry when I first read it, or some of it, in the
early 1920's. The impact was enormously exciting, and I
have been trying to put it into words" (Last Letters, p.
2*1 - 8). [See also Macaulay's essay on "The First Impression
of the Waste Land" in T. S. Eliot: A Symposium for his
Seventieth Birthday edited by Neville Braybrooke (1958).3
41
Especially delightful are Macaulay's artful "put-down" of
Eliot's The Confid en t i a 1 Cleric ("8th October, 1953>" Last
Letters, p . 115); and her clever consideration of his merits
as a literary critic in her letter to the Spectator ■ 149
(October 22, 1932): 53^-35, from which the epigraph to this
dissertation is taken.
Lines 380-390 from T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land
serve as part of the epigraph to The World My Wilderness
(1950)• Another reference to lines 115-116 of the poem
o.ccurs within the text in the last words spoken aloud in
The World: ' <
"I think," Richie murmured, "we are in rats' . ' a ' l l ' e y ,
where the dead men lost their bones."
(p. 244)
See T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems: 1909-1962 (New York: Har-
oourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1970), p. 57 •
28
Macaulay's biographer notes that "Macaulay first
met E. M. Forster at a,hout.,the time when he was working on
Aspects of the Novel pi9273'' and was soon his ardent disci
ple5 1 (Smith, p . 103) . Evidence in Smith's biography (p.
200), and the several references to Forster in the Letters
and Last Letters, indicate that he and Macaulay were good
friends. See, for example, Letters, "1st Feb. [19523," p.
26l. Confirmation of this is also in P. N. Furbank, E. M.
Forster: A Life (New York: HarcourtrBrace Jovanovich, 1978),
q.v. In 1938 Macaulay wrote a 300-page study of The Writ
ings of E. M. Forster (London: Hogarth Press, 1938).
^Alan Pryce-Jones in his "Introduction" to the 1961
edition of Macaulay's novel 0rphan Island (London: Collins)
reminisces:
One of the most striking things about Rose Macaulay
was her agelessness. . . . She . . . shared many of the
preoccupations of her juniors. . . . Even the newest
writers on the scene found that she knew all about them.
(p. 11)
10
Representative of the sort of pellucid prose
employed by L . P. Smith in his transparent re-echoing of the
obvious is the following limpid aphorism used by Macaulay as
an epigraph to her novel Dangerous Ages (1921):
'Reflecting how, at the best, human life on this
minute and perishing planet is a mere episode, and as
brief as a dream....'
42
Logan Pearsall Smith was very likely a personal
friend of Macaulay's, as Letters, "23rd February, 1951>"
p. 85 seems to indicate. The omission of his name from the
Index to that volume is, no doubt, due to a simple over
sight .
31
In part, this may have been because of the diffi
culties inherent in using rather recent copyrighted mate
rial, or because of a desire not to offend the vanities of
living writers [[i.e. by omission], or because the twentieth
century "classics" were not yet quite so classic in the
opinions of literary critics and scholars, or perhaps
because Rose Macaulay simply preferred other centuries to
the twentieth. Nevertheless, taking all these factors into
consideration, she seems to give the twentieth century ex
cessively short shrift.
32
J Cf. Macaulay’s The Two Blind Countries (London:
Sidgwick & Johnson, 191^)» and Three Days (London: Consta>t[
ble, 1919)* Selections from each were reprinted in The
Augustan Books of English Poetry (Second Series, Number
Six): ROSE MACAULAY, ed. Humbert Wolfe (London: Ernest Benn,
Ltd., 1927)* Professor Alice Bensen’s Rose Macaulay (New
York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1969) includes a useful
assessment of both volumes on pp. 53-63 which bears out the
contention that poetry was not Rose Macaulay's true metier.
-^Smith, Rose Macaulay, pp. 125-126. In the Preface
to M.P.L., Macaulay lends credence to her forgery with the
following:
There is here one little 17th century poem (on p.
22) which has not, I believe, been printed before; if
any one knows of it, I should be glad to hear.
(M.P.L., p . 9 » q *v.)
Ojl
J Letter to John Hayward quoted in Smith, Rose
Macaulay, p. 126. Helen Michel in The World My Wilderness
fabricates similar period poems. See-b.elpwi pp. 193-19^*
-^See Macbeth, act 1, scene 4, lines 8-1^.
3^
J Other examples of this tendency are readily
available. There is, for instance, Macaulay's bitterness at
the rejection of her love by Rupert Brooke. Many years
later the resultant emotions had been transmuted into what
her biographer terms the "affection but with entire detach
ment" with which Macaulay later wrote of him. See Smith,
Rose Macaulay, pp. 18-19, 61-71 for additional details.
There is also the evidence of the obituary Macaulay
composed for her lover, "written . . . mostly in a formal
^3
style" and reprinted in Smith, Rose Macaulay, pp. 159-160.
In addition, there is the evidence of Macaulay's
novel The Towers of Trebizond (London: Collins, 1956), in
which she has a great deal of fun at the expense of the
Anglican Church to which she was, at the time, passionately
devoted. In a letter to Father Johnson dated "18th August,
1956" (Last Letters, p. 227, q.v.) Macaulay urges, "Don’t
think my jokes, comments, speculations on religion, etc.,
flippant, will you".[sic]] >
'I * f*
37
In an article written thirteen years earlier for
The Outlook (August 6, 1921) and reprinted the next month
in Living Age ("Woman, The Eternal Topic," Living Age 310:
734-736, Septemher 17. 1921), Macaulay was far more vehe
ment. The article is a must for any student of the feminist
movement, and it is for that reason reproduced in full in
Appendix A to this dissertation. Here is a representative
passage:
Women are regarded in some quarters rather as a
curious and interesting beetle, whose habits repay
investigation. Someone writes a novel about a woman,
even a bad novel, and there will not be lacking critics
who will say, ’Here at last is the truth about woman!’
. . . Any number of books about men may be written
. . . , and no one says . . . , 'Here at last is the
truth about man.' . . .
We have talked a great deal about whether women
should have votes, degrees, seats in Parliament, holy
orders, tobacco, and other privileges. . . . Why not
write [similar]] books land articles about . . . [men]]?
■ • »
All sorts of thoughts about . . . [man]] come into
one's head. . . . Has he a sense of humor, of fair
play? Should he wear knickerbockers in the country and
display the leg to the knee, thus attracting women?
Should he smoke, vote, preach in church? How can he
arrange his life so as to be happy though unmarried?
Are his manners less graceful thafi they were? Is he
becoming unmasculine, unsexed? Should he play violent
games? Is he an individual, or mainly intended for a
helpmeet to woman? . . .
*3®I am indebted to Dr. Gloria S. Gross of the
Department of English, Whittier College, for calling to my
attention Addison's "smiling condescension towards what he
habitually termed (the fair sex.!"
44
39
"^Perhaps, in his case, with some reason. His
sister Mary, in a fit of insanity, stabbed her mother to
death, and wounded her father in attempting his life as
well. She was placed in her brother'■& custody, but was
periodically forced to return to the asylum when her illness
recurred. See E. Y. Lucas for the standard Life of Charles
Lamb, 2 volumes;, (London: Methuen, rev. ed., 192lT.
^Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh (London:
Chapman & Hall, 1857) is divided into nine books ranging
from more than nine hundred to more than thirteen hundred
lines in length. The two lines quoted Toy Macaulay are from
the 'First Book,' 11. 424-25-
See Virginia Woolf’s essay, "Aurora Leigh," in
The Second Common Reader (New York.: Harcourt, Brace & World,
Inc., reprinted i960),- ppV. 1 82-t 9 2 5;^"Th e^pa s sage quoted is
from p . 184.
L l 9
E. J. Scovell, "After the Party," appears m The
Minor Pleasures of Life, pp. 632-633* In the Acknowledge
ments, the poem is attributed to "Miss E. J. Scovell," with
no prior printing indicated. The poem is reproduced in
full in Appendix B below.
43 — -
^See Sigmund Freud, "The Interpretation of,>
Dreams," in Complete Psychological Works, >24 Ypls'vT ed.
James Strachey, Anna Freud, Alix Strachey, and Alan Tyson
(London: Hogarth Press, reprinted 1975)» 5*359*
The genitals can also be represented in dreams by oth
er parts of the body: the male organ by a hand or a
foot and the female genital orifice by the mouth or an
ear or even an eye.
N.B. Freud did not regard such symbols as valid only in ■
dreams. See n. 4 , 4 - below.
^Ibid., pp. 358-59>-also"provides the following in
sights regarding such symbols:
In addition to symbols which can stand with equal fre
quency for the male and for the female genitals, there
are some which designate one of the sexes predominantly
or almost exclusively, and yet others which are known
only with a male or female meaning. For it is a fact
that the imagination does not admit of long, stiff ob
jects and weapons being used as symbols of the female
genitals, or of hollow objects, such as chests, cases,
45
t>oxes, etc., "being used as symbols for the male ones.
See also Ibid., pp. 354-56, 366 and vol. 4, p. 86. Useful
also is Freud's explanation in his lecture on "Symbolism in
Dreams" in which he explains*
how we in fact come to know the meaning of these dream
symbols. .. .
My reply is that we learn from fairy tales and
myths, from buffoonery and jokes, from folklore (that
is, from knowledge about popular manners and customs,
sayings and songs) and from poetic and colloquial lin
guistic usage. In all these directions we come upon
the same symbolism, and in some of them we can under
stand it without.-further instruction. If we go into
these sources in detail, we sha'll find so many paral-
, lels to dream-symbolism that we cannot fail to be
convinced of our interpretations.
See Complete Psychological Works, vol. 15> PP* l54-l60ff.
The passage quoted above is from pp. 158-59*
l i , <
Freud's essay "Transformations of Puberty," from
Ibid., vol. 7, pp. 227-228, asserts:
The closer one comes to the deeper disturbances of
psychosexual development, the more unmistakably the
importance of incestuous object-choice emerges. . . .
Girls with an exaggerated need for affection and an
equally exaggerated horror of the real demands made by
sexual life have an irresistible temptation on the one
hand to realize the ideal of asexual love in their
lives and on the other hand to conceal their libido
behind an affection which they can express without self-
reproaches, by holding fast throughout their lives to
their infantile fondness, revived at puberty, for their
parents or brothers and sisters. Psychoanalysis has no
difficulty in showing persons of this kind that they
are in love, in the everyday sense of the word, with
these blood-relations of theirs. . . .
L6
See my notes to the poem m Appendix B of this
dissertation.
^Edmund Spenser, Epithalamion, line 175*
48
Rose's father George Macaulay was educated at
Trinity College, Cambridge, and was successively an assis
tant master at Rugby; a translator of Herodotus; the editor
of the complete works of Chaucer's friend, William Gower,
for the Clarendon Press; Professor of English Language and
46
Literature at the University College of Wales at
Aberystwythi and Lecturer in English at Cambridge. See
Smith, Rose Macaulay, pp. 17, 38, 45, 4-9; and Smith's Intro
duction to the Letters, pp. 12-13-
49
And, if all else had failed, how could she help
but remember Sophocles' Antigone as the archetypal example
of sisterly devotion, if such had been her honest intent:
I will bury the brother I love. . . .
I am not afraid of the danger, if it means death,
It will not be the worst of deaths--death without honor.
(From Antigone, "Prologue," 11. 69, 87-88, trans. D. Fitts
and R. Fitzgerald, New York; Harcourt Brace, 1939> 1967»
reprinted in R. F. Dietrich et al., The Art of Drama, New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 19^9^7
-^Virginia Woolf, Orlando, pp. 34-36, quoted in
M.P.L., pp. 323-324. A superfluous comma from the sentence
beginning "The old bumboat woman. . . ." has been omitted
because it appears in Macaulay's transcpi-ption, but not in
the original.
^See Orlando, chapter 1, pp. 26, 33-40, 42, 44-47,
49-57, 59, 6l-63 • See also Macaulay's prior use of this
image in the Epilogue to Abbots Vemey (1906), p. 390.
■^Rose Macaulay, Life Among the English (London:
Collins, 1942, 1946), henceforth to be abbreviated as
L.A.E. Also of great interest in considering the frozen
river and related imagery in Orlando are the two tributes
to Woolf published by Macaulay shortly after Woolf's
suicide [curiously enough, by walking into the River Ouze
near her home at Rodmell; see Aileen.Pippett, The Moth and
the Star (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1953, 1955), pp •
160, 3671• In one of these tributes Macaulay wrote of her
late friend in a manner which would evoke an eager "I told
you sol" from the lips of any ardent Freudian:
With her, conversation was a flashing, many-faceted
stream, now running swiftly, now slowing into still ^
pools that shimmered with a hundred changing lights,
shades and reflections, wherein sudden coloured fishes
continually darted and stirred, now flowing between
deep banks, now chuckling over sharp pebbles.
(pp. 316-317)
Two paragraphs and several circumlocutions later, Macaulay
once again incorporates the "river" theme:
47
To tell her anything was like launching a ship on
the shifting waters of a river, which flashed back a
hundred reflections, enlarging, beautifying, animating,
rippling about the keel, filling the sails, bobbing the
craft up and down on dancing waves. . . .
(p- 318)
See Rose Macaulay's article in the collection by various
authors, including Vita Sackville-West, entitled "Virginia
Woolf," Horizon 3 (May 1941): 316-318.
In the other of these tributes, Macaulay mentions:
the rich, fantastic masque of Orlando, cut loose from
all conformity with novelistic form. . .
and later adds that:
it amused her [Woolf3 to embellish, fantasticate and
ironise . . . all she wrote of— a room, a lighthouse,
a frozen river, a paper flower, life flowing by. . . .
See Rose Macaulay, "Virginia Woolf," Spectator 166 (April
11, 1941): 394.
53
^Herbert Marder's Feminism & Art: A Study of
Virginia Woolf (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1968) provides an excellent treatment of Woolf's bisexual
aesthetic as manifested in her novels (chapter 4, pp.
105-142, passim). His thesis that "The novels . . . cele
brate the androgynous mind" (p. 175) is borrowed by Nancy
Topping Bazin, who attempts to expand this and other of
Marder's ideas in her longer study Virginia Woolf and the
Androgynous Vision (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
Press, 1973)• Of interest, although not of relevance to
this study, is Bazin's consideration of manic depression
and its aesthetic impact on Woolf.
54cf. "the head of a Moor brought down in Morocco
by the rifle of Ramon's father in 19H>" in And No Man’s
Wit (1940) , p. 33.
■55R0se Macaulay, Milton (New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1935)* Macaulay's youthful Milton, like the
youthful Orlando '(see n. 5 above), alternately experiences
heat and cold. Milton:
[In3 his first love poem, written in May, 1628, . . .
relates how, among the . . . young women walking abroad
. . . he had perceived one in particular, much like
Venus in appearance, and Cupid had forthwith wounded
48
him in a thousand-.iplaces; he burned, he was all aflame!
• • •
[There are then] ten lines of lofty contempt for
such.past vanities, which he later attached as an epi
logue to this poem. . . . Socratic learning, he
declares, has cured him of love's folly? his breast is
now ice....
(p. 14)
Subsequently, images of water and fire alternate in Macau
lay's discussion of the Nativity Ode and the Elegia Sexta
(pp. 16-17). This is followed by a mention of "his very
poor poem on The Passion [which, Macaulay insists, Milton]
should . . . have . . . deposited . . . in the fire." She
then adds that the poem's "badness may have cured [Milton's_
. . . religious-poetical ambitions, for we get no more in
this kind for the present" (Milton, p. 18).
-^N.B. The oil painting of Milton at the age of
ten (1698), by an unknown artist, was formerly attributed
in error to Cornelius Johnson or Janssen. It is, at pres
ent, in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. Douglas
Bush, Editor, The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton
(Bostons Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965)> p. xiii. Bush
reproduces this painting on the plate between pp. xvi and
xvii of his Introduction.
57
An anonymous artist's portrait of Milton at
c. 20-21 which seems to lend credence to his nickname is
reproduced in Bush, Ibid. JLohn Aubrey's biography of
Milton from his Brief Lives (1680) may be sampled in John
Miltons Prose Selections, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (New Yorks
The Odyssey Press, 1947), pp. cxlix-clv. Of Milton Aubrey
writes s
His complexion exceeding fair [he was so fair that they
called him the Lady of Christ College]. Oval face,
his eye a dark gray.
(p- cl)
For an excerpt from Milton’s original retort to this nick
name, see Chapter II, n. 60 below.
D See Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (New Yorks
Harcourt, Brace, 1929)» pp. 170-1711 quoted in Marder,
p . 108.
59
A Room of One’s Own, p. 181, quoted in Marder, ,p.
107 .
49
^See A Room of One's Own, pp. 170-171, quoted in
Marder, p. 108.
6lMarder, p. 111.
^2Marder, p.' 114.
^ Orlando, p. 189*
Marder, p. 115- See also p. 116 for further dis
cussion of Orlando’s androgynous nature.
^Letter from Rose Macaulay to Virginia Woolf dated
"October 19^0," quoted in Smith, Rose Macaulay, pp. 15^-55*
^Smith, Rose Macaulay, p. 155* Further details
about Macaulay's collaboration with George are given on
pp. 1^2-1^3, 14-5-1^6.
^Letter from Macaulay to Woolf dated "Oct. 19*10,"
quoted in Smith, Rose Macaulay, p. 155
^emphasis added.
^Rose Macaulay, Going Abroad (New Yorks Harper &
Brothers, 193*0, P* 15*
7 0
bast Letters, p. Ml, q.v. This lecture is also
mentioned in a fetter dated "10th November, 1952," and in
one dated "20th; November 1952," in Last Letters, pp. 50 and
53 respectively.
50
CHAPTER II
"FEMININE" MEN
In Mystery at Geneva (1922) Rose Macaulay observes
that intellection may or may not be gender-biased, depend
ing on the individual:
It may be observed that there are in this world mental
females, mental males, and mental neutrals. You may
know them by their conversation. The mental females,
or womanly women, are apt to talk about clothes, chil
dren, domestics, the prices of household commodities,
love affairs, or personal gossip. . . . Mental males,
or manly men, talk about sport, finance, business,
animals, crops, or how things are made. . . . In
between these is the No-Man's Land, filled with mental
neutrals of both sexes. They talk about all the other
things, such as books, jokes, politics, love (as dis
tinct from love affairs), people, places, religion,
. . . plays, music, current fads and scandals, public
persons and events, newspapers, life, and anything else
which turns up.
(M.G., pp. li|4-l45)
J
With tongue in cheek, Macaulay is here arrogating to the
exclusive province of the "Mental-Neutrals" far more than
is theirs alone. Still, the underlying message is plain:
One's mental set might or might not be a function of one's
biological sex. A careful reading of Macaulay's novels
will demonstrate that she felt this was likewise true of an
51
individual's appearance, mannerisms, psychological and
social functioning, chosen vocation and chosen avocations.
All of these might he either "masculine" or "feminine" as
well, without regard to the nominal sex of the individual
possessing or pursuing them. Many "masculine"-seeming
women and an assortment of "feminine"-seeming men appear in
Hose Macaulay's fiction. Paradigmatic of the former is
"John" (Joanna) Yallon of The Valley Captives (1911)» who
is sturdy, square-jawed, laconic, calm, unimaginative,
aggressive and hrave when confronted with danger * Her
chief interest in life is "practical farming." Paradigma
tic of the latter is John's brother "Teddy" (Tudor) Vallon
in the same novel. He is slight, frail, weak, verbal,
creative, high-strung, nervous, artistically inclined, fear
ful, and cowardly in the face of real or imagined peril.
His most passionate desire is to be an artist.
"Masculine" women occur frequently in the novels
from The Valley Captives (1911) to The Towers of Trebizond
(1956) . "Feminine" men can be found as early as The Secret
River (1909)• They disappear as even a minor element
subsequent to the appearance of I Would Be Private (1937)*
Various of these "feminine" men will be discussed first.
Michael Travis, the protagonist of The Secret River,
observes his twentieth birthday in that novel's first
52
"part."^ Physically Michael is "frail-bodied" (S.R., p. 12),
and exceedingly sensitive, with a
face . . . like pale and shifting waters, . . . £which3
took motion and hue from every passing image without,
every stirring wind within.
(S.R., p. 13)
Michael is a poet whose rapturous delight in the sensual and
supersensual apprehensions he experiences lends a rare
beauty to his poetry. He is frustrated by his awareness of
the impossibility of attempting to translate his visions of
the ineffable "in plain English . . . in black and white"
(S.R., p. *f) . He knows, even as he writes, the utter
3
futility of such an attempt.
Michael Travis loves two people with all the inten
sity of his poetic nature. Mentioned in part 1 is Michael's
sun-tanned, tall, strong, and handsome friend Jim.
Michael's delight in Jim's lithe body and beautiful face
k
has in it a strong suggestion of the homoerotic. Mentioned
in part 2 is Michael's fiancee Cecilia, a physically attrac
tive but prosaic young woman, with whom he has absolutely
nothing in common. Although Cecilia is beautiful to look
at and to listen to, and Michael is profoundly affected by
the sound of her voice and the touch of her hands (S.R.,
pp. 27-28), the impression is conveyed that she is for
Michael less an object deserving worship in and of herself
than a sort of incitement to Platonic rapture.^
Michael Travis is the most unreservedly sensual of
53
all Rose Macaulay's characters, and parts 1 and 2 of The
Secret River, in which he encounters first his male friend
and then his female lover, are the most unreservedly
sensuous— and the most unrestrainedly erotic--writings
Macaulay ever published. Like Stephen Wonham in The Longest
Journey (1907), Michael Travis is addicted to sleeping out-
doors. As part 1 opens, Michael--whose given name sounds
very much like "Macaulay"--is "awakening" under a "pink
rose" by a mystical river. As the morning progresses, all
his exquisitely perceptive bodily senses--hearing, sight,
smell, touch, and even taste--will awaken in turn and synes-
8 9
thetize, inspiring him to bodily and even to extra-bodily7
ecstasies. Having awakened to all the sights, sounds, and
scents of a spring morning!
Michael laughed and threw the blankets off him,
and stood in a moment naked to the morning that flicked
him through pointed leaves. Then he slipped down into
the cool morning spaces Qof the river], and they closed
about his limbs and his warm body, and circled over his
head. . . . [[Michael] spread out his arms and let the
slow stream take him and carry him, bearing him gently
through shadow and light, between banks purely and
mystically white with the may [Vic]. . . .
(S.R., pp. 6-7)
In the course of a prolonged, onanistic nude swim
among various phallic, vulvate'7, and other fertility symbols
(§L‘E’ » PP ■ 6-10), Michael
paused to give good morning to the bobbing lily-balls,
. . . slipping his fingers up juicy stalks and bending
his face over the cups that were brimmed with delight
and laughter and water and the sun.
(S.R., p• 9)
5^
Subsequently, in a passage heavy with homosexual
suggestion, thoughts of "the delight of the morning," and
"the touch of slippery stalks and wet gold cups against his
body," give way in Michael's mind to thoughts of Jim, "the
friend he loved" (S.R., p. ll). Michael’s sun-browned
friend
was tall and supple, and walked with a lounging gentle
ness that veiled strength. To the frail-bodied Michael
this strength was as the beauty of his face, a thing
to smile at for sheer pleasure.
(S.R., pp. 13-14)
Michael's thoughts of Jim give way to a suggestive meeting
10
with Jim himself, and some suggestive talk between them
(S.R., pp. 14-16) . Among a plethora of oral and phallic
images comes the expressed intention of Michael to purchase
a mattress as a gift for Jim, but to sleep on it himself
(S.R., p. 16). In the course of the story, such a "sharing"
will indeed occur. First, amidst a quantity of philosoph
ical speculation, mystical vision, and rather limp hetero
sexual foreplay, Michael experiences a sexual "climax" with
his fiancee Cecilia in a canoe on the river:^
Then the rose filled the earth and sky . . . and
the slumberous afternoon was on the slow, green river
like the burden of a dream, and the weeds swayed to
a mysterious rhythm, and presently a canoe slid gently
down between sedgy banks, drifting from light to green
shadow with a faint gurgling sound of water eddying.
(S.R., p. 29)
)Jext, Jim elopes with Cecilia on the day before she is to be
narried to Michael, and she spends a number of years living
_________________________________: ____________________________ 51
luxuriously on the Continent as Jim's mistress. Finally,
when Jim casts Cecilia off, she returns to England where
Michael marries her. On their low budget honeymoon they go
to Europe. There they see the same sights and socialize
with the same people Cecilia and Jim had encountered
previously (part 9).
Michael ascribes his quick and quiet acquiescence
in a loveless and stifling marriage with Cecilia to "pity"
and "weakness" on his part (S.R., pp. 107-110). However,
in view of his previously strong love for her former lover,
there are strong homoerotic implications in this sexual
"sharing" of the same woman by two erstwhile mutually
affectionate mens one frail, fair-complected, and effemi
nate; the other strong, sunburnt, and virile.
Two Macaulay novels in which the author's own
sexual rage and frustration are sublimated into print at
the expense of the vital energies of male characters are
Non-Combatantb and Others (1916) and What Not (published
1 9 1 9 ) In Non-Combatants, "Basil Doye" (Rupert Brooke)
rejects "Alix Sandomir" (Rose Macaulay), with whom he had,
13
before the War, carried on a flirtation. Wounded at the
Front, Doye is hospitalized in London. There he is threat
ened with the amputation of his fingers, and does, in fact,
have "the middle finger of his right hand cut off." ■ This
56
mutilation is disastrous since he, like Alix, is an artist.
Obviously the amputated finger is an emblem, both of his
1 4
phallus and of his artistic power. With equal symbolism
Basil later breaks a pipestem in front of a fireplace while
he is rejecting Alix (N.C., p. 214). And, as the novel
concludes, Basil is back at war in a desolate and storm
wracked spot when his "tent" collapses while he is tormen
ted with longing for Eve, Alix's rival (N.C., p. 3°1) •
Similar castration imagery occurs in What Not, ;?(1918) , a
post World War I satire on the foibles of paternalistic
government. Intermingled with the satire is a love story
in which Macaulay's real-life married lover, Gerald
O'Donovan, is represented as government minister "Nicholas
Chester," while Macaulay herself appears as a ministry
underling, "Kitty Grammont." Macaulay had strongly ambiv-
1 5
alent feelings about the real-life relationship, and
these explain the continuing series of mutilations and
other torments to which the hapless-^^i'd^c-Ghes.Jiel*" ois
subjected. These sadistic episodes do little or nothing to
enhance the content or advance the true action of the
. 17
story. For these reasons we must see as wholly cathartic
the scenes in which "Nicky" is observed!
*
1) ' pricking his finger with a poison thorn sent to
him by a would-be assassin (W.N., p. 80).
2) slicing out a section of that same finger with
57
his own pen knife and going about his duties with
his left hand in a sling (W.N., pp. 80-81) .
3) biting his own tongue in an aeroplane accident
so severely that his handkerchief is "scarlet-
stained," and his speech is impaired while he is
attempting to declare his love to Kitty (W.N.,
pp. 126-127).
4) dangling over a balcony while members of a mob
are accusing him of being married and are swinging
him "to and fro" by a leg and an arm (W.N., pp.
220-223).
5) stumbling down steps in the grasp of an assail
ant who calls him a "bloody married imbecile," and
falling headlong into a melee from which he will
emerge--but just barely!--with "a broken head and
three smashed ribs" to lie "inert through quiet
snow-bound days and nights, and no one knew whether
or not he was going to recover" (W.N., pp. 223-227)
Exploring a similarly "cathartic” tendency in the
murder mysteries of Rose Macaulay's contemporary, Dorothy
18
L. Sayers, Janet Hitchman observes
V. S. Naipaul has said, "An autobiography can distort;
facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies:, it
reveals the writer totally." The only way Dorothy
could get herself through a crisis was to write it out
as fiction, to see it laid down as though it had
happened to someone else. It was as if the typewriter
58
were her psychoanalyst or father confessor. Then, when
it was all written out, why waste it? Why not publish
it? Murder in print the person who had deceived or hurt
you. It assuaged the bitterness of her soul and enabled
her to forgive and carry on. But she was wrong if she
thought it did not show.19
In Non-Combatants and Others and What Not Rose Macaulay does
not "murder" Rupert Brooke and Gerald O’Donovan, but she
certainly debilitates them with a vengeance; As is
obvious from their imperiled fingers and other bodily and
mental afflictions, the fictional surrogates for each of
these men are confronted with the symbolic threat of castra
tion. In another novel, The Valley Captives (1911), having
been angered beyond endurance by her father, Rose Macaulay
"actually" carries out that threat.
The Valley Captives was dedicated by Rose Macaulay
"to my FATHER." In this tale the hero and his father are
both cripples: physically, emotionally, and professionally.
In the course of the story the hero's best friend— also a
failure in his life and in his work--is horribly tortured
and castrated by religious fanatics.
Emilie Rose Macaulay was a college professor's
daughter with a sound religious upbringing. What incited
her to perpetrate such horrors in print? A probable answer
emerges from data provided by Macaulay's biographer,
Constance Smith. Smith records Rose Macaulay's longtime
friendship- with the poet Rupert Brooke, with whom "she was,
for a time, a little in love." Smith also discusses
59
Brooke's possible influence on The Secret River, and his
very definite influence on Views and Vagabonds (1912) and
Non-Combatants and Others. In addition, Smith records that
"somewhere about" the time of "the summer of 1910," Brooke
invited Rose to accompany him on a caravan expedition,
'a sort of camping holiday'.[sic] But the -invitation
had to be declined, to Rose's intense disappointment.
Her father frowned sternly on the idea of a caravan
holiday a deux, and although by now she was nearly
thirty she accepted the paternal veto. In Views and
Vagabonds, however, there is a [remark in a] chapter
entitled 'The Conscientious Bohemian' . . . [which]
suggests that her father's ban continued to rankle
for some time.20
Smith indicates that, because of this incident, Macaulay
was"quietly defiant" towards her father in certain passages
of Views and Vagabonds. However, Smith makes no mention of
the way in which Macaulay takes a far less "quiet" revenge
in The Valley Captives. In this very somber novel she
unmans the author of "the paternal veto" by means of three
surrogates named "Oliver Vallon," "Tudor Vallon," and
"Laurie Rennel."
Most of the action of The Valley Captives takes
place in a rural setting on the western edge of Wales.
Macaulay describes this locale as
a secluded, remote, and extraordinarily lovely country
between the hills and the sea [which perhaps] . . . had
a paralysing effect on the energies of those who lived
there.21
It was in such a locale that Macaulay herself was obliged
to spend a most stultifying and unhappy period of time as
60
one of three grown daughters living at home with her
22
parents. Perhaps this explains why her characters are,
indeed, "captives"--each in her or his own way--and why
there is in the novel the repeated imagery of entrapment--
of "nets" and "walls"; "cellars" and "pits"; "prisons" and
"chains"--to characterize their various situations. More
over, in Tudor Vallon's desperate and continually thwarted
desire to go to London and learn painting there is certainly
a depiction of Rose Macaulay's own early artistic dilemma:
. . . Tudor was trying at this time, hopelessly,
despairingly, savagely, to teach himself to paint.
Somehow he had to learn; if not from others, then by
himself. So in his secret hours he laboured vainly.
But it was absurd. Tudor was artist enough to know
that he knew nothing. What he did he hated. And--
this was a strange thing--it was not merely that he
had not learnt to draw or paint; there seemed to be
in his attempts an oddly repulsive element. . . . If
the technique had been good instead of bad, this evil
note would still, where it appeared, have made ugly
and repulsive pictures. . . . Why he, who hated ugli
ness, should produce it despite himself, was a problem.
(V.C. , pp . AO-i}-l)
The narrator goes on to imply that it is the "hate" and
"ugliness" in Tudor's home life that have poisoned his per
ceptions and tainted his art.^
The Valley Captives appears similarly tainted. For
Instance, there seems to be a certain autobiographical poign
ancy in the "young Vallons1" recollection of spoiled oppor
tunities for enjoyment, of bygone holidays when "the elders
of the household took their amusement Con the croquet lawn^,
inaccessibly near" (V.C., p. 9)*^ It is likely that this
61
sort of failure of communication "between Macaulay and other
members of her family may have helped to engender the
reclusive, impotent, failed men and pushy, shrill, somewhat
successful women who populate many of The Valley Captive's
pages.
The father of the family with which the story is
primarily concerned is "pale, tired-faced," physically
handicapped Oliver Vallon. He is described in the first
sentence of the first chapter as "the ineffectual, cynical
cripple" (V.C., p. l).
It was difficult to.forget when one talked to Oliver
Vallon that one talked to a failure. The creed of
inert scepticism that he applied to the world in
general sprang straight out of his own experience of
life as it was lived. What was the use of fighting
when one never won?
(V.C., pp. 3-^)
Having limited finances and scant ability to augment them,
Vallon, a widower, has been pressured into a loveless and
mercenary second marriage by the widow Bodger. It is she
who holds the purse strings, and she dominates him in other
ways as well. The widow Bodger has a viciously sardonic
daughter and a coarse and brutal son by her first marriage.
This sadistic pair takes delight in tormenting Vallon's
daughter and son by his first marriage. Vallon is unwill-y
ing and unable to prevent this. He is unable to nurture
or even to communicate with his own children; he is
incapable of feeling anything other than "repulsion" for
62
the stepchildren with whom his own are interminably at
strife. Vallon defends himself against "the discordant
clash of actualities that made life in the house on the
hill" with mockery or by escape into his library. There in
fiction, like Rose Macaulay's father in fact, he writes
books that bring him neither reputation nor remunerationC
(V.C., p. 8).2^
The reader's awareness of Oliver Vallon's weakness
and impotence is heightened by the contrast of his ineffec
tual personality with the strong personalities of his sister
and his wife. An effective contrast to the limp passivity
of Oliver is the energy and decisiveness of his "clever cos
mopolitan" sister, "Miss Kate Vallon," who is characterized
as
a fine-lipped, keen-eyed lady of erectly-carried head
and alert brows, grafting on to her brother's fineness
and ironic discernment a militant vigor not
h n . s . . . . o A ,
(V.C., p. 111)^°
In keeping with Miss Kate's "militant vigor," she
is invested with a masculine emblem of power— a swords
Oliver Vallon looked at his sister rather ner
vously . She always came upon him with something . . .
of the suggestion of an impatient knight-errant, sword
in hand, eager to cleave prison bars. He shrank from
such eagerness;' cleaving swords do not bring peace,
and his peace, hardly won, was the thing he most
prized. . . . To go out into the arena . . . and fight 3
for victory was a very bitterness of imagination to
the defeated man. . . . Yet his militant sister goaded
him continually to the field.
(V.C., pp. 117-118)
63.
The "arena" in question is a marital one; not a
martial one, although it is described in martial terms. In
the ensuing "combat"--an argument over whether or not to
send Oliver's unhappy children on a much needed Italian
holiday with Aunt Kate--Vallon is symbolically castrated by
his second wife:
There is no need to describe in words the hurling
of a feather-bed against a very brittle lance; it suf
fices that it was hurled, gathered together, and hurled
again, and finally became moist with £Mrs. Vallon's]
salt water [tearsj, and the extra weight it gained thus
did the business. The fragile lance shivered; the haft
dropped weakly from a nerveless hand. "I've no doubt,
my dear, that you are entirely in the right," the
defeated combatant hastened to admit. . . .
(V.C., p . 120) '
Vallon's unmanning is foreshadowed earlier in a scene with
his daughter, "John." Deaf to her pleas that he act towards
her brother with compassion and understanding, "Oliver
Vallon played with an ivory paperknife, balancing it on
long, delicate fingers" (V.C., p. 92).^®
Oliver Vallon's fragile, timid son Tudor ("Teddy")
resembles him greatly. During one dramatic encounter
between them a lamp illumines "the delicate, similar fea
tures of both" (V.C., p. 80). Also like his father, Tudor
is a cripple. The cause of the elder Vallon's disability
is never mentioned, but it is stated that Tudor was
disabled when, as a child, he was locked in the cellar by
his stepsister and stepbrother. In the course of his futile
6k
attempt at escape, he had a had fall. Consequently,
His spine was hurt, and his right arm broken, and he
never completely mended of either. To the end of his
life he was left-handed and walked with a slight
limp....
(V.C., p. 19)
Like Michael Travis in The Secret River, Tudor
Vallon writes poetry. He also draws (V.C., p. 20) and
desperately yearns to study painting in London. Also like
Michael, Tudor has a finely honed aesthetic sensitivity; his
delicate, frail body is exquisitely receptive to external
stimuli:
The luminous eyes were of no color; their essence was
merely light, whose hue followed the changing colors
of its environment, reflecting and absorbing all tints
in turn. . . . They lit a face delicately mobile, a
boyish face, refined rather than strong, with a broad,
clever forehead and a fine and nervous mouth. . . . The
boy was of a light and nervous build, he might be swept
by quick laughter and sudden angers, as finely stretched
strings by wind; he seemed to have an excess .of nervous
sensibility that might have made for vital vigour and
force of living, but that seemed in him to make rather
for weakness.
(V.C., pp. 67-68)
Tudor’s "excess of nervous sensibility" causes him
to start at sudden noises and to flee in terror from dangers
real or' imagined, as when he knocks his maiden aunt off a
bridge in his terrified haste to escape from a friendly
sow (V.C., pp. 110-111). Another manifestation of his ner
vous disorder is his exaggerated abhorrence of convention
ally acknowledged heterosexual interchanges. For example,
merely having been introduced to a young woman classmate of
61
his during the day causes him to experience a nightmare
from which he wakes "in a cold sweat" (V.C., p. 39)* Simi
larly, observing his stepbrother flirting with a young
woman causes him to "shudder . . . for both of them" (V.C.,
p. 47). The actual sight of an embrace between his step
brother and another young woman affects him with assorted
negative feelings, most notably "an almost physical nausea"
(V.C. , pp. 132-13*0 •
We are told "Tudor did not personally like any
girls much" (V.C., p. 133) > but we are not told why. Two
explanations suggest themselves, and they are not mutually
exclusive. One is that he suffers from extreme castration
anxiety, mingled with, or perhaps provoked by, religious
terror. This first hypothesis is substantiated by specific
29
passages in the text. 7 The second explanation is that
Tudor is a latent homosexual. With his effeminate appear
ance and preferences, his fear and hatred of most young
women, his appreciation of a few young women only insofar
as they are objects he would like to paint or mannequins
for whom he yearns to design "very queer" clothes (V.£.,
on
p* 13*^) i he strongly suggests this possibility.
But whatever his sexual orientation, when Laurie
Rennel is castrated, Tudor Vallon is identified with him in
several ways. For example, Tudor and Laurie lie down
together near the place where Laurie's mutilation will occur
66
a few weeks later (V.C., pp. 68ff., 130). On the night of
Laurie's ordeal the foppishly clad Tudor is said to be
wearing a "sv?,ord" as part of his costume for a New Year's
Eve ball. In some unknown fashion the Sword disappears
31
after Tudor flees "shaking like a girl" from the scene of
Laurie's distress'. Tudor is then compared to "an unarmed
man" whose cowardice will cause him to be tortured by
opprobrium :
like Laurie Rennel in the hands of the Hughes brothers.
(V.C., p. 203)
So they divided it, he and Lauries to Laurie the horrid
fate, to him the indelible shame.
(V.C., p. 205)
The setting in which Laurie meets his "horrid fate"
is a very Gothic one. It is after midnight, in a raging
storm, on a desolate bog, in a "dreadful upstairs room"
(V.C., p. 187) equipped long since with various dreadful
implements of torture. A helpless young woman screams in
terror as an accompaniment to the action (V.C., p. 170),
which is carried out by two madmen in the grips of a reli
gious frenzy. But, although the machinery is part of the
Gothic novelist's stock in trade and may in no wise be con
sidered original, the emotions that compelled Rose Macaulay
to utilize that machinery were very personal indeed.
Philip Rizzo comments:
The incident of Rennel's castration has elements of the
sensational, elements perhaps too far out of what she
£Macaulay] was to indicate as her range.32
67
The peculiar nature of Rennel's fate may seem excessively
cruel; however, Rose Macaulay's tendency to sublimate her
rages into print may well have been an extremely healthy
one. That Rennel's mutilation does indeed constitute a
revenge fantasy appears almost certain. Her father had kept
her immured at home, when she hungered to go to London and
learn the art of writing. Her father had kept her--at age
twenty-nine!--from the company--and possibly from the arms--
of handsome, charismatic Rupert Brooke, with whom she had
much in common, and with whom--Constance Smith's demi-
33
disclaimers notwithstanding --she was at the time very much
in love. Rose Macaulay must have felt driven to sublimate
in the novel dedicated "to MY FATHER" a very great deal of
rage indeed.For example, the discovery by Laurie
Rennel’s friends of his ordeal is brought about by a young
woman whose first name, "Blodwen," translates from Old
3 6
English as "blood expectation," and whose surname,
"Hughes," is a homonym for "hews." Moreover, the perti
nent pages are so unnecessarily overladen with phallic and
castration symbols as to suggest that the author was
deriving some sort of gratification in depicting them. Per
haps the most startling of these symbols is the dressing
gown in which Rose Macaulay three times laps her "languid"
37
eunuch. The gown is "fat and soft, with pink rosebuds.
Having, in effect, thrice left her signature on the surro-
68
gate object of her revenge, Macaulay subjects him to a
final, painful interview with Dorothy Wynne, the young
woman he had been courting. Dorothy, who at one time had
decided "to give to Laurie Rennel . . . all of herself that
he cared to take" (V.C. , p. 172), has!, now decided instead
to bestow herself on "her earnest young trampling lover,"
an itinerant preacher. With this preacher, Dorothy asserts
to Laurie, she intends to "tramp the roads.
A combination of wish-fulfillment and a revenge fan
tasy is strongly indicated by this final encounter between
"Laurie Rennel" and "Dorothy Wynne." At the time George
Macaulay prevented his daughter Rose from joining Rupert
Brooke in his horse-drawn caravan, Brooke was himself an
39
itinerant preacher of sorts. Writing of her fictional
character's escape "into the roads and fields" with her
lover Rose Macaulay exults, "Through love at last she had
found her way into life" (V.C., pp. 316, 319-320). It is
certain beyond a reasonable doubt that in Dorothy Wynne's
"breaking free" (V.C., p. 31°) there was a vicarious escape
for the author herself from the "FATHER" whom she could, if
only in print, punish, and from whom she could escape with
40
her lover in fantasy if not in fact.
Contributing to.this interpretation is the oft-
iterated contrast in the novel of Laurie's pale and trem-
4l
blxng weakness with the preacher's virile strength. Thus,
______________________________________________________________ 69
although the two rivals for Dorothy's love are contempo
raries, Rennel seems like the much older man. Additionally,
there is the insistence hy Dorothy on receiving not just
Laurie's forgiveness, hut his permission to "find happiness"
(V.C., pp. 317-318), as though he were more a guardian than
a cast-off suitor. Finally, there is the evidence of the
"knives"s Very early in the story Tudor Vallon fantasizes
that he and his sister will escape from the oppressive life
they lead at home with their father and move to London,
where Tudor will learn to paint. Afterwards,
They would go and live in a hut in the country; they
would tramp the roads with a donkey cart, and grind
knives.
(V.C., p. 36)
The "cart" is of course a reminiscence of Rupert Brooke's
A-2
invitation. The symbolism of the knives is by now ob
vious. Thereafter occurs a scene in which their father
very insensitively and obtusely refuses John's plea that her
hr>
brother be allowed to pursue his chosen vocation. J In the
course of this scene, as has already been noted, "Oliver
Vallon played with an ivory paperknife, balancing it on
long, delicate fingers" (V.(D. , p. 92).^ And, finally,
there is the last goodbye of Dorothy Wynne to the recently
unmanned Laurie. In the course of their interview he is
seen "playing with a paper-cutter" (V.C., p. 319)- .Immedi
ately thereafter comes the sentence proclaiming Dorothy’s
"sudden" and "private" marriage to the tramping preacher,
__________________________________________________________________________ 70
Lloyd Evans.
When Tudor Vallon and Laurie Rennel are lying down
together in mutual commiseration and despair, the narrative
voice of The Valley Captives interpolatess
[Full] Realization [of what has happened and why] is
difficult when one has wrecked one's ship and is flung
hy the storm on to a lee shore,? broken and stranded.
It takes a little time.
(V.C., p. 72)
Phis idea of a "lee shorej" a final refuge for those who
nave experienced a "shipwreck" of their lives, was probably
suggested by chapter 23 of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick
i year later it formed the theme of an entire, prize-winning
k-6
novel. By far the most sympathetic and the most success
fully "feminine" of the males who are major characters in
the novels is Peter Margerison of The Lee Shore (1912)* His
iilemma might well have been suggested by that of Rose Ma
caulay 's own father. As her biographer explains, Macaulay
adored her father, but in the family it was recognized
that he was professionally a failure--he himself admit
ted it without hesitation. Thus it may be that Rose
was striving in her novels, quite unconsciously, to con
vince herself that her father's failure by worldly
standards was of no importance. For there were other
values, personal relationships and personal integrity
which counted for so much more. In book after book she
showed her sympathy for the feeble, the rejected, the
despised, the outcasts, and it is notable that one
reviewer of THE LEE SHORE praised her for her 'sympa
thetic treatment of unsuccess' and her 'tender handling
of ineffectual lives' .[sic]^7
71
Peter Margerison's very surname sounds feminine, as
though he were "Margery's son.’ . ' As a hoy he is "delicate
to frailness" (L.S., p. 7)- He has a whole-souled crush on
an older boy, and there is more than a hint of the homo-
Kg
erotic in the imagery describing their encounters. Peter
is not a great success on the playing field, and his
attempts to participate in sports cause him frequent inju
ries :
he was easy to break and hard to mend--made in Germany,
as he was frequently told. So cheaply made was he
that he could perform nothing.
(L.S., p. 11)
In appearance and in manner Peter resembles his late mother
--so much so that a former admirer of hers becomes smitten
with h i m .In temperament Peter is "gentle" (L.S., p. 21)
and non-aggressive. His approach tollife manifests his
"gentle philosophy of acquiescence" (L.S., p. 35)*“^ At
least one woman perceives him in his early twenties as "so
sympathetic, you might be a young lady" (L.S., p. 11^).
Like the gentle St. Francis, whom he professes to
abhor, but ends by emulating, Peter Margerison is frequently
associated with animals. He is consistently kind and gentle
to even the most unattractive and troublesome small chil
dren; and, after the birth of his own baby, he bathes,
feeds, dresses, reads aloud to and knits for the child with
a maternal solicitude not evidenced by the child’s biolog
ical mother (L.S., pp. 20^-205ff.).
72
Other feminine attributes of Peter Margerison
include his nicknames he is called "Margery" by his male
associates throughout school, university, and into his
adult working life. There is also Peter's "immense love,
innate rather than grafted, of the pleasures of the eye"
(L.S., p. 23). In grammar school he enjoys looking at
attractive males (L.S., p. 13)* At Cambridge he expresses
his love of beautiful objects in the aesthetically pleasing
way he furnishes his rooms (L.S., p. 23)- Peter delights
in fine old china, in lovely antique tapestries, and in
other art objects. His chosen profession is "art dealing"
(L.S., p. 32), and he has a passion for needlework:
Peter was quite good at embroidery. He carried pieces
of it (mostly elaborately designed book-covers) about
in his pockets, and took them out at tea-parties and
(surreptitiously) at lectures. . . . The embroidery
stood for a symbol [sic], a type of the pleasures of
the senses. . . .
(L.S., p. 23)
Peter's'close personal relationships reflect his
"feminine" nature. For example, he courts his cousin Lucy
so passively that she never even takes a hint (L.S., p. 51)
and marries a more aggressive man. Later, Peter is pushed
into a relationship with Rhoda Johnson by Rhoda's mother.
It is Rhoda who takes the initiative in suggesting marriage,
although Peter pretends to have proposed (L.S., p. 183).
Later it is Rhoda who suggests they leave their boarding
house because she
_____________________________________________________________ 73
wanted a little place to themselves. Peter, who didn’t
really care, but who would have rather liked to stay
and be with Chis sister-in-law and brother^ Peggy and
Hilary, pretended that he too wanted a little place to
themselves.
(L.S., p. 191)
This passage makes plain Peter's obvious unsuitability to
enter into an exclusive heterosexual relationship. The verb
"pretended" is crucial to an understanding of Peter's
psychosexual make-up. Throughout the story he is attempting
to live up to a standard of' "masculinity" that in no way
represents his real self. For example, as a youth he
pretends to prefer the rigors of the cricket field to the
contemplation of Bow china, in order to live up to his best
friend Denis Urguhart's expectations of him (L.S., p. 21).
As a young man, he pretends to other young men that he
vigorously defended Rhoda Johnson's honor when her would-be
seducer spoke of her improperly, but in point of fact he
simply fled from the man in embarrassment (L.S., pp. 107,
L09)• Still later on, a widowed Peter pretends to himself
that he is capable of stealing Denis Urquhart’s wife. But,
within hours of arranging an elopement Peter renounces the
woman for love of the man. He is last seen vagabonding
through Iraly in the company of a sensuously handsome
Italian youth.
The great passion of Peter's life--the "dominant
motive" of his existence (L.S., pp. 30-31)--is his whole-
souled adoration of his friend Denis Urquhart. Peter is
7^
small, weak, and sickly; Denis is tall, strong, and hand
some . Denis's sensual appeal for Peter is reminiscent of
Jim's sensual appeal for Michael in The Secret Rivers
On the shores of the Lido, . . . Peter laughed for the
sheer pleasure of seeing Urquhart’s lazy length
stretched on the warm sand.
(L-S- > P ■ 10*0
Likewise, Urquhart's voice is special to Peter (L.S., p.
296), and Urquhart's reactions to things are the ones that
matter (L.S., pp. 69 > 126-129> 133)• Since they first met
at hoarding school, Urquhart has been Peter’s hero (L.S.»
p. 11). In chapter 1 Peter's love for Denis and the adoring
"deep blue eyes" with which he regards Denis are charac
terized as a "hereditary bequest" to him from his mother,
<2
who had loved and married Denis's father and had looked at
the senior Urquhart "with just such eyes" (L.S., pp. 9-10).
kt the age of fifteen, Peter is observed to pass from rapt
contemplation of an exquisite eighteenth century bowl to
mute adoration of Denis:
"Keep that till you fall in love," [Denis’s uncle
Lord Evelyn]] . . . had inwardly admonished Peter's
back as the two [Peter and Denis] walked away together.
"I daresay she won't deserve it any better--but that's
a law of nature, and this is sheer squandering."
(L.S., p. 22)
Peter's "squandering" of his love on Denis is
readily apparent to every other important character in The
Lee Shore. Peter's employer Leslie resents it; Peter's
cousin Felicity defends it (L.S., p. 47). Peter's brother
75
and sister-in-law, Hilary and Peggy, attempt to exploit it
(L.S., pp. 17, 166). Peter's wife Rhoda is jealous of it
(L.S., p. 197)- Peter’s cousin Lucy, who is unhappy in her
marriage to Denis, cancels her planned elopement to Italy
with Peter when she fully realizes the extent of it:
"Peter we can't do it. . . . the reason is in. you, not
in me. It is that you love Denis too much. So you
couldn't he happy."53
In his life style, Denis Urquhart, the object of
Peter Margerison’s seemihgLy"; obsessive admiration, seems a
"masculine" enough man. For example, his personal "things
were nice enough to look at without being particularly
artistic" (L.S., p. 156). He excels in sports (L.S., pp. 1,
21), slays quantities of grouse during the hunt (L.S., p.
209), courts a wife with vigor and decisiveness (L.S. , pp.
152-153* 155* 157). and includes among his college exploits
a prank involving "actresses" (L.S., p. 167)* Denis enjoys
basking in his friend Peter's open admiration (L.S., p. 7).
but he is not himself demonstrative, and there is no evi
dence that he reciprocates Peter's adulation with compa
rable sentiments. That Denis enjoys basking in Peter’s
admiration (L.S., p. 7)» that Denis almost invariably acts
towards Peter with courtesy, kindness, and interest, but
that his friendship cools when Peter's fortunes wane are
the only facts that .can be established.
Still, various of the images in The Lee Shore
__________________________________________________________________ li
suggest powerful homoerotic feelings--if not experienced hy
Denis for Peter, then certainly experienced hy Peter for
Denis. For example, Denis's scientist cousin Rodney
explains Denis’s appeal for Peter in socio-economic terms,
but then summarizes the situation with a statement that
sounds more like a description of a relationship between a
woman and a man than of a friendship between two men.^
Imagery suggesting a love triangle occurs when Peter and
Denis "share" Peter’s cousin Lucy Hope in a manner similar
to the sharing of Cecilia by Michael and Jim in The Secret
River. However, it is not entirely clear just who--Lucy
or Denis— is at the apex of the triangle, especially in view
of the use made of phallic and other sexual symbols and sug
gestions in conjunction with meetings between the two
males
The Victorian castaways--and their numerous progeny
--stranded for sixty-eight years in Polynesia on Orphan
Island (192*0 constitute a society which, despite its
uniqueness in certain particulars, functions "roughly, along
the same lines as the societies of the larger world" (O.I_* »
p. 190) from which it has been so long isolated. Over the
decades social change in this fascinating community has
paralleled "in microcosm" (0.1., p. 190) social changes in
the outside world. For example, arriving in the 1920's and
77
examining the journal of island happenings kept over the
years "by the island's Yictoria-like matriarch, Miss Smith,
Cambridge sociologist Mr. Thinkwell "detected parallels
even to the European aesthetic movement" of the 1890’s.
The young men in this turn-of-the-century movement oiled
their skins "all over," wore flowers behind their ears,
drew pictures and wrote poetry. In her journal Miss Smith
charged these "mincing" young men with "a loss of true
Manliness" (0.1., p. 186) . Chief among these unmanly
youths she named her own grandson, Hindiey Smith-Rimski.
Subsequent to reading Miss Smith’s chronicle of the
island, Mr. Thinkwell encounters Hindley himself, now
middle-aged:
There appeared at the barber's entrance a very neat
elegant, slim, young-old gentleman, who seemed in the
earlier forties. There was something in his aspect,
and in the air with which he wore his close-fitting
costume of smooth gray bark fabric, and neat lizard-
skin shoes, which indicated the dandy. Behind one ear
he had stuck a small scarlet hibiscus bud, and he
swung a light cane. He was exquisitely shaved and
perfumed, and had a cared-for looking white skin. . . .
He seemed an exquisite man, the flower of island
civilization. One could imagine that he might hold
the office of Arbiter Elegantiae among his peers.
(0.1. , pp. 242-243)
In keeping with the "bland" and "well-bred" (0.1.,
p. 253) Hindley's dandyish demeanor are his "languid voice"
(0.1. , p. 28l), his often flippant style of speech, and his
elegant life style, made possible by inherited wealth and
position. In his temperate, leisurely fashion he enjoys
78
such amenities as the island affords him in the way of food,
57
drink, drugs, recreations, and discourse. His household
servant is "beautifully trained" (O.I., p. 254), and his
tastefully appointed home reflects his personality:
The house of Mr. Smith-Rimski was a small, elegant
building,, its wooden walls tastefully plastered with
oyster shells. Inside it was carpeted with plaited
palm, and on the walls hung paintings. A table stood
at one side, holding bowls of brilliant flowers and a
chess-board with roughly-cut wooden pieces.
"I must," said Hindley, "have beauty about me."
(O.I., p. 252)
Hindley is the island's "librarian" to whom the writers of
its "modem literature" entrust their productions. In his
youth he generated a great deal of indifferent verse, but
the prose productions of his more mature years show to
advantage his
gay, amusing pen; his descriptions were entertaining
and his comments apt. A tendency to a rather Petronian
wit was held in check by a natural well-bred discretion.
. . . . Decidedly Hindley Smith-Rimski had talent, for
all his foppish airs.
(0.1., p. 253)
As a sociologist, Mr. Thinkwell sees in the "suave,
talkative" Hindley, "something rather tiresome . . . , in
spite of his intelligence and his bland charm" (0.1. , p.
246) .
He was an eternal type; one had met him in ancient
Greece and Rome, and one met him in Cambridge, in
Oxford, in London; even, it has been said, in Manches
ter, if not in Glasgow, and [likewise] on this island
that they all persisted in calling Smith.
(0 .1. , p• 246)
79
Rose Macaulay presents this urbane "eternal type" as a
sexless being. With a characteristically clever turn of
phrase Hindley confides, "I have a passion for celibacy; it
is more elegant--don't you agree . . . ?" (0*1., p. 2k-5) .
Hindley is equally susceptible to male and female beauty,
admiring asexually and from afar. "I am half in love with
him and half with his Flora," he remarks of one attractive
young couple, "It would seem a pity if they should ever
marry and become staid unromantic parents" (0.1. , p. 245).
In every way, save in his sexual abstinence, Hindley is a
precursor of the three aesthetes in I_ Would Be Private
(1937)» discussed below in this chapter. It is likely that
he was suggested by a real person or persons in the London
literary world in which Macaulay now freely circulated. The
witty and sophisticated manner in which Macaulay portrays
this both admirable and "tiresome" cosmopolite is an indica
tion of the formidable expansion of her own personal and
professional horizons. Hindley Smith-Rimski of Orphan
Island (1924) is as far removed in space and time from Tudor
Vallon of The Valley Captives (1911) as was Rose Macaulay's
florescence in London, England, from her rustication in
<58
Aberystwyth, Wales.
In her biography of the poet John Milton (1935)»
Rose Macaulay conjures up a picture of a somewhat effeminate
80
Milton in his Cambridge days s
Let us picture, then, the undergraduate of sixteen
and a half, the pride and darling of his home, the
prodigious pupil of his school, so delicately beautiful
of face and form, so elegantly nice in demeanor and
habit as- to be nick-named in Cambridge, "the Lady,"
• . ■
Macaulay paraphrases Milton's own characteristically allu
sive retort to this nickname, which retort, she unsympathe
tically writes, was delivered "petulantly" (M., p. 15)*^
But Macaulay was even less sympathetic to the poet three
years earlier when she utilized "the lady" in a cameo role
to lend verisimilitude to The Shadow Flies (1932), a histor
ical novel set in seventeenth century England on the eve of
the Interregnum. Julian Conybeare, the story's ficfive
heroine, is overawed when, in the course of a visit to Cam
bridge she encounters her idol in persons
As they left the White Horse Inn, they met a
gentleman that entered it; a small slight man of
somewhere round thirty years, fair-skinned, delicately
and austerely featured, with long, smooth, chestnut
hair on his shoulders. . . .
Mr. Milton, a grave, distant and rather shy young
man, bowed [in response to Robert Herrick's greeting]
while Julian gazed'at him. . . .
So this beautiful, elegant, noble-faced gentleman,
who seemed to be a little bored, a little in haste to
be on his way, even a little impatient, was Mr. John
Milton, the one time lady of Christ1s [College] whom
extraordinary fortune had brought to visit Cambridge
at the very same time as themselves. ....
(T«S •]?.., pp. 188-89; emphasis added)
A dedicated and gifted poet and scholar herself, anc
the prized pupil of Robert Herrick, Julian is at first
81
ecstatic to "be staying at the same inn with Mr. Milton.
Back home in rural Devonshire she has studied his verse and
has herself acted the part of the Lady in Comus, hut in
Cambridge she learns that the poet who so idealizes Woman
in the abstract, will not even condescend to speak to a
female who is staying under the same roofs
He never will say a word to us. He don't hold with
females. I don't want to speak with him neither; I
should never dare, knowing how he scorns us. Why do
men scorn women? 'Tis great pity.
(T.S.F., p. 258)
Not only doesn't Milton as he is depicted in The Shadow
Flies see women as human beings; he doesn't even see them as
sex objects. In fact, he fails to see them at all (T.S.F.,
pp. 231» 233-234). In one scene the Pan-like Robert
Herrick commends "women, wine, and tobacco" to his pale,
proud, and cold colleague in poetry. These enjoyments are,
Herrick tells the too serious ^and too dainty young man,
"good cordials to revive thin blood and drooping spirits"
(T.S.F., p. 23*0* After Milton's "rather aloof good-night,"
Herrick reflects!
He's a very fine poet, John Milton, but his blood runs
too thin i' his veins. The lady of Christ's— aye, he
colours up like a very . lady: . at. ' a ' ’ . co~ar.se. Wofd r . r ' He could
well play his own Lady in Comus. He’s something of a
cold, distant, unfriendly man, with his mind all set
fast on reforming education, and no time to stay and
take's pleasure by the way. He was never one o' Ben's
[Jonson's]] merry circle, nor could'a been. We never
went to bed when we might 'a stayed up to talk and to
drink. . . .
(T.S.F., pp. 234-35; emphasis added)
82
In another scene, at a gathering of almost every
poet in Cambridge except the unsociable Mr. Milton, John
Cleveland tries and fails to put across a malicious story
of his own invention concerning the absentee:
The tale of John Milton bore an unveracious air,
and Mr. [Henry]] More dismissed it with a smile.
"John Milton could invent likelier tales of thee
than that, Jack Cleveland. And I dare say that he do,
for he hath a very satirical malicious wit."
"I grant, I grant. Rat the fellow, he's all the
gifts, set aside the right politics and a trifle of
pleasant friendly levity."
(T.S.F., p. 279)
The mingled animosity, envy, and admiration of
Cleveland's emotions here are perhaps the key to Rose Ma
caulay's own, and may explain why she "beladys" Milton per
haps to excess. She was herself a published--though indif-
6 2
ferent--poet. She was deeply read in and enamoured of
the seventeenth century. Like Julian Conybeare, Robert
Herrick, and John Cleveland in the fictional situations
created by her, she could not fail to be impressed by
Milton’s genius--nor, like these same characters, to be
offended by his ostentatious virtue and egocentric aloof
ness, for such they seemed to her.
In 193° the celebrated novelist Edward Morgan
Forster met Robert Buckingham, who was to become the great
/ I o
love of his life for the next forty years. In 1932
_____________________________________________________________ 83
Buckingham married May Hockey, and she and Forster remained
rivals for Buckingham's affections and attentions for the
next several years. In 1933 May Buckingham gave birth to a
son, Robert Morgan, who became Forster’s godchild. And in
1937 Rose Macaulay became the first person to allude to
these events in a published work with her (disguised) „refer^
64
ences to them in. her novel, I Would Be Private.
Forster's fiction had become a powerful influence
on Rose Macaulay's novels at least as early as 1909*^
During the 1920's, according to Constance Smith, Macaulay
and Forster met personally, and Macaulay's biographer char
acterizes her as being at that time "Forster's ardent dis-
66
ciple." This ardent discipleship found expression in an
adulatory volume of literary criticism, The Writings of
E. M. Forster (1938), while Macaulay’s personal knowledge
of Forster and sympathy for his plight as the homosexual
admirer of a heterosexual man was attested to the year
before with I Would Be Private.
In this most curious work of fiction, Ronald
McBrown, a tall, handsome London policeman, becomes simul
taneously disillusioned by witnessing a miscarriage of
British justice and dismayed at the invasion of his privacy
after his wife gives birth to quintuplets. He resigns from
the police force and flees with his wife and family to the
Virgin Islands. There he hopes to find some peace and
84
-g_
privacy. On the island of Papagayo ' the McBrown party
encounters various other people who have taken refuge there
with the like ideal. Among these are three homosexuals--
John Stowe, Francis Axe, and Charles Mendle, whom McBrown
had protected from rowdies on one occasion hack in London.
It is in the love of Charles Mendle for Ronald McBrown that
Rose Macaulay pays homage to E. M. Forster's enduring love
for Robert Buckingham.
The homosexuality of Stowe, Axe, and Mendle is
established by the internal evidence of the book: All three
are "arty" young Cambridge men— John is a surrealist
painters Francis and Charles are writers— who prefer aes
thetics to athletics. The young men make their first
appearance in the novel "sitting indoors . . . and talking
about books" (W.B.P., p. 57)» while outside "the Oxford
hearties" are on a drunken spree on Oxford vs. Cambridge
boat-race night. When these "lusty . . . Oxonians" attempt
to intrude on them uninvited, the arty young men prefer
summoning a nearby policeman to defending themselves (W.B.P.-,
pp. 52-5^.) . The young men are described as behaving with
"pride and affectation" (W.B.P., pp. 5^-55). and the voices
of John and Francis when first heard are "languid" (W.B.P.,
p. 52); while the voice of Charles is/ "high" (W.B.P.,
P . 51) •
______________________________________________________________________________85
These close-knit young men .prefer the company of
one another to the company of anyone else:
[having^] "been at Cambridge together, C'theyl liked at
intervals to find some sequestered and exotic part of
the earth where they could stay for some months and
work. Sometimes it would be Spain or Africa, sometimes
New Mexico, or Central or South America, once it had
been Tristan da Cunha.
(W.B.P., p. 157)
While they reside on Papagayo the kindly Negro
matron who delivers food to them is aware of their sexual
orientation, although most of the islanders are not (W.B.P.,
p. 200). The young men are compulsively misogynist (W.B.P.,
pp. l60-l6l, 217). They are ignorant of women (W.B.P., pp.
183-18^-), are bored by them (W.B.P., pp. 185-186),-are
entirely heedless of the nature and permanence of the
marital bond (W.B.P., pp. 301-2). This is quite obvious
when gentle and sympathetic Francis Axe expresses his ad
miration for those who--like his own parents— endure the
rigors of begetting and raising children. Francis has,
however, no desire to do any begetting of his own (W.B.P.,
p. 213) • In a similar--but far more waspish— vein tempera
mental John Stowe fulminates at "Family life! No good ever
came of it!" (W.B.P., p. 3°6). With like--but silent--
disfavor moody and speculative Charles Mendle concurs with
Francis and John that Ronald McBrown's wife and children are
"of course, a pity" (W.B.P., pp. l8l, 185). To the three
arty young men marriage and children are incomprehensible
86
abstractions, and they are obliged to resort to literary
allusions in an attempt to elucidate these abstractions to
themselves (W.B.P., pp. 214, 24l, 301-3)*
"None such true friends, none so sweet life,"
Charles quoted, with skepticism, "As what between the
man and wife. . . . But I can’t really grasp that.
Marriage is a mystery to me; I don't try to grasp it.
I can't imagine myself marrying. . . . It must be an
extraordinary queer tie to feel."
(W.B.P., p. 302)
Hostility towards and/or ignorance of women govern
both the aesthetic perceptions and the artistic productions
of Francis, John, and Charles. For example, when consuming
art, "these young men. . . . on principle read only gentle
men writers" (W.B.P., p. 168). While, in their innermost
feelings, and hence in the creations which are inspired by
those feelings, John and Charles perceive images of muti
lated women coupled with images of "death," "putrefaction"
(W.B.P., part two, chapter l), and "abortion" (W.B.P., pp.
192-194). Only the misogyny of Francis Axe is said to be
"more theoretical than actual, owing to getting on with his
sisters." He is capable of feeling a liking for women and
takes "more interest in human beings" than his companions
(W.B.P., p. 217)* But for John Stowe and Charles Mendle
females are "Idiotic" and "cow like" (W.B.P., p. 163).
They are "stupid," "irrational," "mad" (W.B.P., pp. 183-84).
They bite like "sandflies," buzz like "mosquitoes," and
87
twitter like "shrill . . . birds" (W.B.P., pp. l6l, 167)•
They play havoc with a man's creativity and destroy his
peace (W.B.P., p. 165)■
By contrast--for all three of the arty young men— a
physically attractive and "charming" young man like Ronald
McBrown can be "adored" f.or the way he speaks (W.B.P., p.
184), esteemed for his strength of character (W.B.P., pp.
221-222), admired for his "strong, graceful back" (W.B.P.,
p* 295)» and "loved" with a motherly solicitude (W.B.P., p.
295). or with hope and happiness (W.B.P., p. l8l), or unre-
quitedly and with despair (W.B.P., pp. 292-296), even across
the miles (W.B.P., p. 319)*
The three arty and aloof young men might seem
unsympathetic characters at first glance, but there are
68
lengthy passages in the book which belie this. As a
homosexual, Rose Macaulay's friend E. M« Forster might well
have taken pleasure in the portrayal of Charles Mendle and
Ronald McBrown on walks together: "two tall and handsome
young men, descending gracefully through the woods like
gods" (W.B.P., p. 178). But, even more, he must have
taken pleasure in the recognition of himself with .three
decades or so lopped off his age, as well as in the repre
sentation of his beloved Bob Buckingham. This friendship,
in I. Would Be Private, of the Cambridge intellectual and
88
the street-wise London police constable has many marked
similarities to the Forster/Buckingham relationship. Like
"Ronald McBrown," Robert Buckingham was a tall, handsome
London policeman, knowledgeable qbout the life of the
streets. The first meeting of "McBrown" and "Mendle" is
occasioned by the annual Oxford vs. Cambridge boat race;
the first meeting of Forster and Buckingham was actually
occasioned by the same.^ "McBrown" has a wife and chil
dren to whom he is devoted, and of whom "Mendle" is jealous;
70
Buckingham was similarly devoted to his wife and child.
"McBrown" defends the police; ("Mendle"--like Forster—
71
assails them. In "Charles Mendle’s" temperament E^, M.
Forster might have recognized his own:
Writing did not make Charles a happy man, for nothing
did that, owing to his temperament, but it relieved
often the tension of his mood. 79
(W.B.P., p. 157)
In "Charles Mendle's" political tendencies E. M. Forster
could have recognized his own:
I should want to help the democratic side against
Fascism, in any country, I think. . . .
. . . Well, anyhow, you see how hard I find it to write
anything, with all this afoot in Europe. To write any
thing not connected with these vital things, with all
these strugglings and clashes, I mean something that
may be constructive, it seems not pulling one's weight
like fiddling while Europe bums.
(W.B.P., pp. 297-98)
In "Charles Mendle*s" aesthetic theory E. M. Forster would
have recognized his own:
89
If one could reach that fusion of art and life; the
right fusion; art not using life, just as fuel for its
flames, hut letting life use art, and yet letting go
nothing of craftsmanship . . . that would be to find
one's place in the scheme; it would he what, I suppose,
finding God is to the religious; or finding the ideal
and lasting love is to the lover.
(W.B.P., p. 298)
"Charles Mendle's" "fusion" is simply a paraphrase of E. M.
73
Forster's "Only connect." ■
Several phallic and oral images are used when
Ronald; McBrown and Charles Mendle are alone. These suggest,
if not the nature of McBrown's feelings for Mendle---since
the former' s mind is usually on his wife or children or
some other domestic or practical matter--then surely the
74
nature of Mendle's feelings for McBrown.
With a fine feminist irony, Rose Macaulay has seen
to it that the most virile man in I Would Be Private is alsc
the most "feminine." Ronald McBrown, a stalwart ex-police-
man, a father of five at one throw, an expert horticultural-
ist, a manly carpenter, also cooks adeptly (W.B.P., p. 4),
washes dishes more adroitly than his wife (W.B.P., p. 68),
7 6
and shares fully in the duties of infant care.
McBrown's tending of his own infants with "maternal"
expertise is viewed with an equal lack of enthusiasm hy men
who are boastfully heterosexual, and hy men who are unobtru
sively homosexual (W.B.P., pp. 195> 213)* McBrown readily
acknowledges to himself and to others the tedium involved
9C
in tending numerous infants. Yet he is equally aware that
his willingness to endure this tedium makes it possible for
his wife to experience life more fullyr s "
". . . my wife likes seeing things as well as I
do. . . .It would not he fair did we not take turns.
(I-l-P-. PP* 99-100)
.McBrown sees his wife as a human being of equal worth and
sentience with himself. Thus, "justice" impels him to
share a lifetime of arduous duties with her; love compels
him to remain "attached" to her; and both love and justice
inspire him to feel the want of her presence when pleasure
and adventure are at hand (W.B.P.,p. 193)*
The living arrangement designed by Rose Macaulay for
use by several of the sojourners on' Papagayo Island provides
a clue not only to the interaction of varying values in I.
Would Be Private, but to the extent of Rose Macaulay's
77
affection for and indebtedness to E. M. Forster. A failed
"loony asylum" has been converted into a prestigious
lodging house. "The madhouse" is described as
a long white building facing south, and partitioned
into twelve numbered cabins, with a covered’ " verandah
running all along in front of it.
(W.B.P., p . 212)
Cabins one through three are occupied by the heterosexuals;
cabins ten through twelve are occupied by the homosexuals;
"the intervening cabins were empty" (W.B.P., p. 212).
There are, as has been indicated above, differences in the
91
various perspectives and personalities of the homosexuals.
There are likewise, as could readily he established, differ
ences in the various perspectives and personalities of the
heterosexuals. For example, Gert Grig, in number one, is a
happy-go-lucky, sexually liberated, self-centered hedonist.
Her brother Leslie in number two is an underprivileged but
aspiring and aggressive young man, a Leonard Bast figured®
but one obviously destined to make good. In the next cabin
are their partly "masculine" sister, Win, and her partly
"feminine" husband Ron; these are happily— albeit often
wearily--obeying the imperatives of domesticity. The
intervening rooms may yet be filled with other individuals
of other personalities and perspectives.
Each of the numbered cabins in this "madhouse" is
linked by a common verandah. This, of course, is the
common thread of humanity that joins all these disparate
characters, homosexual and heterosexual alike. For Rose
Macaulay's "madhouse" is, of course, a microcosm of the
world, each of whose sojourners has, like the characters in
a well-known E. M. Forster novel, her or his own "room with
79
a v i e w { y
93
NOTES
CHAPTER II
4
In a 1961 journal article sexologist Harry
Benjamin, M.D.,
describes seven different kinds of sex to be considered
in the human makeup: chromosomal, anatomical, legal,
endocrinological, germinal, psychological and social.
• • •
Dr. Benjamin himself admits that these concepts
are arbitrary, but in his words: "The purpose of
scientific investigation usually is to bring more
light into fields that are obscure. Modern researches,
however, delving into the 'riddles of sex,' have
actually brought more obscurity, more complexity.
What sex really is, has become an increasingly diffi
cult question to answer."
Quoted in Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiog
raphy (New York: Bantam Books, 1968J, pp. 188-189.
2
The ten "parts" of the novel serve the same func
tion as chapters. Each is headed by a thematically appro
priate epigraph or epigraphs.
•f!f. a passage written nineteen years later by
Virginia Woolf:
"Haunted!" she cried, suddenly pressing the accel
erator. "Haunted! ever since I was a child. There
flies the wild goose. It flies past the window out to
sea. . . . Always it flies fast out to sea and always
I fling after it words like nets . . . which shrivel
as I've seen nets shrivel drawn on deck with only sea
weed in them."
Orlando (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1928, 1956),
p. 313.
^S.R., pp. 12-13, 15-16.
5
A portion of the lengthy epigraph to "part 2"
reads:
Now he who is not newly initiated or who has become
corrupted, does not easily rise out of this world to
21
the sight of true beauty in the other; he looks only
at her earthly namesake.
Plato, quoted in S.R., p. 17; see also pp. 2?, 111.
6
E. M. Forster, The Longest Journey (New York: Vin
tage Books, C1907H 1962, ppbk.), p . 310. The indebtedness
of Macaulay’s early novels to the novels of E . M. Forster
is considerable, and warrants further study. See, e.g.,
Philip Rizzo's "Rose Macaulays A Critical Survey," pp.
14-18, 21-22, 2^-25, 27.
7
'Philip Rizzo sees this as "the inviolate rose of
Yeats" (Rizzo, p. 12), but : a . } more immediate progenitor is
probably Forster's "mystic rose" episode in The Longest
Journey, pp. 293, 298, 3°2 .
Perhaps a future study will gather up and examine
the great quantity of "roses" to be found in the early
novels, in various of which Macaulay did some extensive--
and sometimes self-revelatory--punning on her own name.
See, e.g., V.C., pp. 20-21.
O
S.R., pp. 3, 5, 9- Cf. the "Sasha" passage from
Woolf's Orlando, p. 37*
He called her a melon, a pineapple, an olive tree, an
emerald, and a fox in the snow all in the space' of
three seconds; he did not know whether he had heard
her, tasted her, seen her, or all three together.
g
7Michael is able to pierce the "veil" between this
world and the unseen world. The best written speculations
on "spirit" versus "form" in all the early writings are to
be found in The Lee Shore (1912), pp. 55-59, in a chapter
ironically titled "The Complete Shopper." •Numerous other
worldly "veils" that flutter through Macaulay's^ volumes.of
poetry, Two Blind Countries (191^) and Three Days (l919: -)»
reveal her persistent Platonic preoccupations.
^In Mystery At Geneva (1922), pp. 39-^0, and else
where in her writings, Macaulay rails against the impreci
sion of this adjective, but no other seems to suit here.
1XCf. T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, III, lines
293-299.
■^See below, Chapter V, n. 8.
94
13
■'Tor an account of Macaulay's friendship with
Brooke see Constance B. Smith, Rose Macaulay (Londons
Collins, 1972, 1973)* chapter 5»
l4See N.C., pp. 98, 104, 112, 213-
1 5
-These conflicting feelings helped bring about the
"nervous breakdown"she experienced in 1919* See Smith,
Rose Macaulay, pp. 91-93*
1 A
Perhaps by no great coincidence, "to nick" in
British slang means "to steal." Years later, in The Towers
of Trebizond (1956), Macaulay's partly autobiographical
heroine, Laurie, confesses to having been "a thief" insofar
as she had robbed her lover's wife of "his love, mental and
physical" (T.T., p. 273)*
17
I am indebted to Ms. Dorothy Esther Cady, formerly
of the Department of English, University of Southern Cali
fornia, for supplying this term and suggesting this line of
reasoning.
18
The mystery novels of Dorothy Leigh Sayers Fleming
(1893-1957), M.A., (Oxon.),-Hon. D.Litt. (Durham), Remain
perennial favorites. In addition to her great success in
the field of detective fiction, Ms. Sayers had impressive
credentials as a religious playwright, and was an accom
plished mediaeval scholar whose published translations
included Tristan in Brittany, The Song of Roland, and (the
posthumously completed) Dante's Divine Comedy. From 1939
until 19^5 she was President of the Modern Language Associa
tion. See Janet Hitchman, Such a Strange Lady. A Biography
of Dorothy L. Sayers (New York: Avon Books, 1975T, pp. 68,
passim.
■^See Hitchman, pp. 63-67.
20
See Smith, Rose Macaulay, pp. 6l, 63-64.
21
V.C•, p. 7; see also V.C., p. 6, and n. 22 below.
The locale of the novel is probably that of
Aberystwyth, Wales, where Macaulay's father was Professor of
English Language and Literature at the University College of
Wales during 1901-5* See Smith, Rose Macaulay, pp. 44-47,
49.
95
^ C t o Smith, Rose Macaulay, p. 47 .
A paragraph on V.C . , p. 332, written after all the novel's
passion has been spent, serves as a tentative retraction of
the preceding story. This paragraph briefly raises the
supposition that the major premise of the main plot--the
"tainting" of the victimized Vallons by the victimizing
Bodgers--may have been merely the Vallons' own folie a deux.
2^Cf. Smith, Rose Macaulay, p . 47 ■
• 2^See Smith, Rose Macaulay, pp. 24, 28, 45* 59*
passim.
2^See also V.C., pp. 116-117*
2^See also V.C., p. 90. The "feather-bed" is an
allusion to The Antiplatonick of John Cleveland (1613-1658)
which serves as an epigraph to T.S.F., part three.
p D
For more on Oliver Vallon’s blind intransigence
as a parent see V.C., p. 27-
29V.C., pp. 187-189, passim.
30
^ Tudor's habitual voyeurism vis-a-vis his large
and handsome step-brother’s sex life is unconvincingly
described by the narrator as merely an attempt by Tudor to
annoy Philip. This explanation has a false ring to it,
since in every other conflict of their lives, Philip is
invariably the provocateur. On one- occasion, Tudor's
presence at their tryst is said to cause a girlfriend of
Philip's to become "excited." Tudor perceives this as
threatening. (V.C., pp. 13°* 132, 134).
31
J This is his stepsister's description (V.C., p.
210) .
32
^ Rizzo, "Rose Macaulay: A Critical Survey," p. 11;
see also p. 10.
33
-^See Smith, Rose Macaulay, chapter 5-
34
J Ten years later Macaulay, who was then living with
her widowed mother in Beaconsfield, published Dangerous Ages
(1921), which Macaulay’s biographer explains
may be regarded as an indirect but heartfelt protest
against 'living at home'.[sic] In it an ageing widow,
VMrsv Hilary', a 'muddled bigot' in the eyes of her
children, is held up to scorn and ridicule. When
96
[Rose's mother! Grace Macaulay read the book in manu
script. she recognized the portrait of herself and was
deeply hurt. To [her daughter! Margaret she confided
her distress, and she begged her to persuade Rose to'
tone 'Mrs. Hilary’ down. But the portrait remains a
cruel one. Possibly however Rose [sic! was trying to i j
make some sort of amends when she dedicated the book
'To my mother, Driving gaily through the adventurous
middle years.' . . . Something of Rose herself can be
seen in one of the daughters in Dangerous Ages ('Nan')
who, finding her mother unbearably trying, oscillates
between sparring with her and making extravagant ges
tures of reconciliation.
See Smith, Rose Macaulay, p. 98.
^"uE. blod=blood + OE. wen=expectation. Many of
the characters in V.C.. have names that were deliberately
chosen for their singularly appropriate meanings. For
example, the young lady who renounces her worldly goods and
social status to marry a wandering preacher is named
"Dorothy Wynne" from Gr. Dorothea, "gift of God" and OE.
wynn, "joy," "delight," "pleasure."
3^N.B. It is Blodwen's father, a Calvinistic
Methodist minister named Morris Hughes (after the morris
dance, which is performed around a Maypole), and Blodwen's
uncle, Hughey Hughes, who torture and castrate Laurie
Rennel.
?7y.C., pp. 230-231, 233-
38V.C., pp. 315-316, 227, 336.
3 0
■ "In the summer of 1910," notes Constance Smith,
"he [Brooke! had toured the New Forest by horse-drawn cara
van, campaigning for Fabianism with his friend Dudley Ward"
(Smith, Rose Macaulay, p. 63).
^ C f . the following:
His [Rupert Brooke’s! was the initial influence which
caused the axis of her [Macaulay's! life, previously
centered on family and home, to start gradually to
shift towards independence.
Smith, Rose Macaulay, p. 6l
It was so splendid that he [Lloyd Evans! should go [as
a tramping preacher! and so disturbing. Never before
97
had he so intensely forced on her ^Dorothy] the vision
that was his characteristic gift to her of roads making
for the open.
V.C., pp. 176-177
1x1
V.C., pp. 316-318, passim.
42
The "donkey cart" appears not only m V.C., hut in
subsequent novels as well. E.g-. , in Views and Vagabonds
(1912),
Tom and Betty Crevequer. . . . Though of gentle
birth, . . . lead an extremely happy-go-lucky life of
picaresque poverty. . . . and enter and leave this
novel in a gypsy cart.
Alice Bensen, "The Ironic Aesthete . . .
ELIT 9 (1966): 41.
En the interim of its use by the Crevequers, the cart is
Iriven about by the novel's hero, Benjamin Bunter, and his
girl cousin, Cecil. In The Lee Shore (1912), Peter Margeri-
son is last seen as a homeless vagabond roaming Italy in a
ionkey cart. Still later, the story of Alix Sandomir in
Von-Combatants (1916) opens with a woodland scene in which
Alix dismisses the model she has been painting and drives
off through the trees in a s&all donkey cart (N.£., pp.
3-5).
^-%ee also V.C. , pp. 20-21.
I l J L l y
Also quoted above, p. 64.
^See also V.CV , p. 114.
I am indebted to Professor Richard John Dunn,
Department of English, University of Washington at Seattle,
for pointing out this probable derivation.
^See below, Chapter IV, n. 6.
47
'Smith, Rose Macaulay, pp. 59-60. If the character
Df Peter Margerison was, as Smith believes, inspired by that
uf Macaulay's father, her compassionate treatment of him
lere is in striking contrast to her harsh treatment of him
In V.C. However, there is no less striking a contrast in
Van's love-hate relationship with her mother (See above,
1. 34, and Dangerous Ages, pp. 222-223, 227-228.), or in
Daisy Simpson's alternating shame at and love for her lower
middle class mother (Daisy and Daphne, pp. 112-116, passim).
98
^See especially L.S. , chapter 1 .
^^L.S., pp. 21, 91> 305i passim.
^ A similar phrase is used concerning Laurie
Rennel, V.C. , p. 55* See also V.C., pp. 101, 166-167*
51
Cf. Tudor Vallon: "anything that pleased his
eyes pleased the most essential part of him," V.C., p. 47-
See also V.C., p. 133*
52
L.S., pp. 8-9, explains:
Peter's mother had made two marriages, the first heing
with Urquhart's father, Urquhart heing already in exis
tence at the time; the second with Mr. Margerison, a
clergyman, who was also already father of one son, and
became Peter's father later.
^L.S., p. 283; see also pp. 28l, 300-301.
■"^On L .S. , p. 277, Rodney tells Peter,
"So your emptiness found pleasure in his fullness, your
poverty in his riches, your weakness in his strength,
and you loved him."
^For example, the love triangle in S.R. is fore
shadowed by Michael's stated intention to consume five cups
of tea containing three lumps of sugar each (S.R., p. 15)*
The love triangle in L.S. is revealed in the scene in which
Lucy serves Peter "tea, with three lumps in it," while
making references to "we three" (L.S., pp. 152-153)•
-^This is particularly true of the passages describ
ing their grammar school days, when, e.g., Peter dislocates
his shoulder and Urquhart insists on being the one to "put
it in," an expression that is used no less than eleven
times within a very few pages. Other such images may be
found in chapter 1 and ff. One very striking phallic image
occurs toward the story's end, when Peter, now an itinerant
embroidery vendor in Italy, meets Livio, "a vivacious and
beautiful youth" to whom he presents "two black and snake
like cigars," L.S., p. 287. Similar suggestions can be
found in S.R., part 1.
570.1., pp. 244, 252.
C-O
See above, n. 22.
99
■^Milton, p. 9» see also pp. 15-16.
6 0
The "retort" to which Macaulay is. referring (but
does not footnote) reads in part as follows:
Some of la'te called me "the Lady." But why do I seem
to them too little of a man? . . . It is, I suppose,
because I have never brought myself to toss off great
bumpers like a prize-fighter, or because my hand has
never grown homy with driving the plough,, or because
I was never a farm hand at seven or laid myself down
full length in the midday sun; or last perhaps because
I never showed my virility in the way these brothellers
do. But I wish they could leave playing the ass as
readily as I the woman. . . .
from Prolusion VI (1628) in Complete Prose Works of
John Milton, ed. Douglas Bush et al., Vol. 1 ("New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 1953» 1970)
The novel both begins and ends on a "pagan" note.
In chapter 1 Robert Herrick, Vicar of Dean Prior, is cele
brating Mass in a church filled with
harvest decorations . . . the vicar had himself
conceived the notion of bringing the rejoicings of
harvest home and the hock-cart into the church itself,
and carrying on the good old pagan custom of decking
the altars of Ceres with the fruits of the earth. . . .
. . . the vicar climbed into the pulpit, and stood, a
burly, Roman-headed figure, among the com and barley-
sheaves, and apples. . . .
(T.S.F., pp. 3. 5)
While, in the book's final sentence, after the Civil
War has caused the death or exile of all of the story's
principal characters--including Herrick--he remains a symbol
of the continuity of Nature:
Slowly he walked . . . across the meadows . . . ; and he
seemed to have already put on immortality, for he might
have been some sturdy sylvan god in that serene pastoral
landskip, passing on his way to eat and drink with his
friends.
(T.S.F., p. 6)
The better selections from Two Blind Countries
(191^) and Three Days (1919) were reprinted in The Augustan
Books of English Poetry (Second Series, Number Six): ROSE
MACAULAY (1927) •
100
^See P. N. Furbank, E. M. Forster (New York: Har-
court Brace Jovanovich, 1978), vol. 2, passim.
^Forster' s homosexuality did not "become a matter
of record until the publication of Furbank’s biography.
^The novels influenced by Forster include S.R.,
L.S., V. & V. , and there may well be others, e.g. Potterism.
See above, n. 6.
66
Smith, Rose Macaulay, p. 103*
67
'Papagayo— (Sp.) "parrot; talker, chatterer"--is
an ironic name for the island in view of the aforementioned
goal.
68
Despite their carping at McBrown's wife and
numerous babies, Charles and Francis take an active part in
providing Mrs. McBrown and the quints with a refuge when
they need one, W.B.P., pp. 236-241, passim. Likewise, cer
tain of the young men's political and aesthetic ideals are
quite admirably motivated, W.B.P., part two, chapter 14.
^Furbank, E. M. Forster, vol. 2, p. 165*
^Furbank, vol. 2, pp. 182-183, 205.
"^Furbank, vol. 2, pp. 172-173*
72
See, e.g., Furbank, vol. 1, pp. 191-192, and vol.
2, p. 169.
^•^This is the motto of Forster's Howards End (1910)
which is elucidated in chapter 22 of that novel, q.v.,;
See also Furbank, vol. 1, pp. 188-190, passim.
74
On one of their walks together there are several
phallic and at least two oral images of note. Most strik
ing of the former is the "stone pedestal on which a naked
boy bestrid a dolphin." See W.B.P., pp. l89ff. See also
the last meeting in which Charles experiences very tender
feelings for Ronald and asks if he has considered leaving
his wife. Through much of this scene Ronald "had nails in
his mouth," which he then exchanges for his pipe, W.B.P.,
pp. 291ff.
75W.B.P., pp. 99ff., 195f 213, passim.
101
7^0n W.B.P., pp. 301-302, when Ronald explains to
Charles that it has never entered his mind to leave his
wife, Charles muses about marriage, "It must be an extraor
dinary queer tie to feel." The narrator then interpolates!
To Ronald it seemed natural enough.
77
'Although Forster did not like her Writing’ s of
E. M. Forster (1938), this affection was mutual. See
Furbank, vol. 2, pp. 282, 283n., 289.
7 8
See Howards End, chapters 6 and 4l.
79
I have here extrapolated an .idea to be found m
Rizzo, ."Rose Macaulay: A Critical Survey," p. 21:
It is Forster's A Room With A View which provides
the thesis and the -types of conflict presented in Views
and Vagabonds. Each of the characters has a "view,"
which is made to appear absurd because sinful or sinful
because absurd, and each is an object of satire to the
degree he deviates from the line of virtue established
by Forster. . . .
102
CHAPTER III
"MASCULINE" WOMEN
In Agatha Christie's Murder in Mesopotamia (1935)»
arch detective Hercule Poirot finds his chief clue to the
solution of the murder of Mrs. Leidner in the personality
of the victim herself. That personality is "best revealed,
asserts Poirot, by an analysis of the volumes on Mrs.
Leidner's bedroom bookshelf. Among the volumes on that
shelf is Rose Macaulay's
Crewe Train, Ewhich^ seemed to show that Mrs. Leidner
had a sympathy and an interest in the independent
woman--unencumbered or entrapped by man. . . . Crewe
Train is a study of a passionate individualist.!
The "passionate individualist" referred to here is Denham
Dobie, the motorcycle-riding, cave-exploring, penknife-
wielding heroine of Crewe Train (1926) . But similar "pas
sionate individualists" abound in the novels of Rose Macau
lay. They are always female. They are often semi-autobio
graphical . They are usually young. They are true to them
selves only when they dress, act, play, work, think, or
dream in a way that others in their social milieu regard as
103
more appropriate to males. They are invariably allied with,
and/or in conflict with, a father, a brother, a lover, a
nusband--or some combination of two or more of these. They
make their debut with Joanna Vallon in The Valley Captives
(1911)i disappear for a time, come back in the 1920s, and
then persist as a type until The Towers of Trebizond (1956).
Unlike their cognate, the "feminine" men discussed in Chap-;
ter II, these "masculine" women are the products not of par
ticular circumstances in Rose Macaulay's life, but of a per
sistent state of Rose Macaulay's mind. It is a state of
mind epitomized by Imogen Carrington’s passionate feminist
declaration to her horrified mother in Told by an Idiot
(1923)«
Marry the navy? Oh, no. I couldn't do that. I should
be too jealous of him. You see, I want to be in the
navy myself, and I know I should hate his being in it
when I couldn't. It would only rub it in. I want to
do nice things myself, not to marry people who do
them. . . . it's my life I want to enjoy, not anyone
else's.
(T.b.I., p. 267)
The feminist scholar would argue that, although various of
Rose Macaulay's "passionate individualists" are collected
in this and' a subsequent chapter under the heading "More
About 'Masculine'/Women," a great part of their "masculin
ity" consists in their author's wanting them, like Imogen,
to enjoy "my life . . .not anyone else's."
A brief passage in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House
(1879) will assist in understanding these women. There, a
104
brief vignette elucidates the dilemma of women throughout
recorded human history. It is found in the passage in
which Torvald Helmer advises the widow Mrs . Linde to aban
don her knitting because1 "'that can never be anything but
ungraceful." Instead, Helmer asserts, Mrs. Linde should
2
take up embroidery because "it's far more becoming." The
message is plains A "feminine" woman, even one who is no
longer the property of a father, a brother, or a;';husband,
and even one who is usefully--if trivially--occupied, is
"feminine" only insofar as she pleases the sensibilities of
a man, of any man who might walk into a room and catch her
knitting when she would please his eye more by embroidering.
It is no accident that Stanley Croft, one of the "mascu
line" women in Told by an Idiot, , is shown reading A Doll's
House just prior to filing for divorce (T.b.I_* » P* 111)-
Although yet another in the lengthy series of her husband's
indiscriminate amours precipitates her action, his "idiotic
opinions about one half of the human race" are no less a
factior in the disintegration of the marriage (T.b.I_*> p.
IbZ) .
Imogen Carrington of Told by an Idiot is said to be
congenitally opposed to the stereotyping of sex roles while
she is but "an infant of one summer" (T.b.I., pp. 7^-75).
While Rose Macaulay’s personal views on the subject were
just as congenital as Imogen's, they were*not effectively
105
incorporated into her fiction until her fourth novel, The
Valley Captives (1911)* No less than three young females
in this novel--"Cissie" Bodger, "Dolly" Wynne, and "John"
Vallon--are useful in elucidating the motivation for and
the nature of Rose Macaulay's protest against the tradi
tional roles of women. The first two of these young women
are vehicles hy which to explain the plight of the would-be
"womanly" woman; the third provides an opportunity for
exploring the struggle of an individualist who desires
merely to be "herself" (V.C., p. 331)*
The femininity of Cecily--also called "Cis" or
"Cissie" or "Miss Bodger"--is unadulterated shams she
plays at being a woman, and she and her family suffer
greatly as a consequence. As Cissie passes from girlhood
to young womanhood, she submits to the ever-increasing re
strictions which are placed on her capacity for action.
These restrictions are attributable not to bodily infirmity,
but to the conventions regulating the behavior of the sexes.
Insofar as she is beginning to subscribe to these conven
tions, she is in the process of developing into a "womanly"
woman. Thus, for instance, Cissie becomes so concerned
with the need to keep her clothes in order that she is vir
tually stymied in the physical expression of anger (V.C.,
p. 23)* As a consequence she becomes skillful at using her
tongue to gossip maliciously and to instigate others, espe
106
cially her brothers, to physical combat (V.C., pp. 83-84).
Afterwards, she can affect to be horrified at the outcome
(V.C., p. 85).
Cissie's choice of costume for the New Year's Eve
Ball is as significantly symbolic as the choices of her
step-siblings, Tudor and John. At the dance she is clad in
imitation of "a snowdrop" (V.C., p. 171)*^ The snowdrop is
a long, white, and particularly limp kind of flower. In
keeping with this metaphor, Cissie's dress trails on the
floor to such an extent that it is repeatedly stamped upon
and torn under the feet of her partner, a "manly" man she
will later marry (V.C_. , pp. 179» 334).
As a "womanly" woman, Cissie is never observed in
transit or in action without a companion or an escort. She
has learned to fear driving the family pony and carriage
because driving makes her "nervous" (V.C., p. 303)* When
there is danger to others, she is useless. When there is
danger to herself, she is resourceless. Whenever peril is
imminent, she can only shriek or sob or laugh hysteri-
5
cally. Although she is brutish by nature, as the story's
narrator cynically observes, Cissie is a hypocrite "certain
always to act and speak in Cwhat she deems to be a ladylike"!
character." This is a result not of her true nature, but
of her perpetual worry "lest the men should hear" (V.C.,
p. l4l). For this "feminine" but far from admirable woman,
107
matrimony is the only possible career and life imposes only
one overwhelming criterion: "What will a man think?" (V.C.,
p . 210) .
Also needing a man for a. "prop" (V.C., p. 220) is
Joanna Vallon's friend, Dorothy Wynne, a far more appeal
ingly "womanly" woman than Cissie Bodger. Dorothy is beau
tiful in face and form; she is graceful in motion. From
her "Botticelli lips" (Y.C., pp. 58-59) proceed the trite
phrases and parochial prejudices of her upbringing among
the country gentry. She is repeatedly referred to by her
friends as "Dolly." Of a certainty this nickname stems
from Rose Macaulay's desire to place this character in a
class with Nora Helmer of A Doll's House. Like Ibsen's
Nora, Macaulay's "Dolly" is destined to experience a moral
and spiritual awakening, and to renounce some of what her
society regards as her "femininity" in the process. Also
like Ibsen’s protagonist, Rose Macaulay's "Dolly" has been
"smothered and stunted" in her moral growth by the comfort
able "atmosphere" of her surroundings (V.C., p. 57)• Her
conceptions of right and wrong stem from received opinion
rather than from moral insight or personal preference and
feeling. The opinions she is accustomed to receive are
snobbishly squirearchical.
Like the "snowdrop" Cissie Bodger, Dorothy Wynne is
associated with "flowers." We are told that her hapless
108
suitor, Laurie Rennel, had long admired her "flower-like
charm" (Y.C., p. 311); that she participated in the hunt
"with her small head set flower-like on a slim white-
stocked neck" (Y.C., p. l4l); that "her dark, flower-
wreathed hair tossed about her shoulders" at the New Year’s
Eve Ball (Y.C., p. 172) .
As with the other characters, the costume Dorothy
wears to the Ball expresses her personality. She is
dressed "as a wood-nymph" (V.C,. , p. 171). In a previous
scene depicting the hunt she is said to resemble "some
dryad of the woods" (V.C., p. 142) . But she is a "dryad"
who is not quite comfortable in her role: her hunting cos
tume "drags a little bit at the arms" (V.C,. , p. l4l).
Graceful though she looks, she is not quite at ease in her
wealthy, well-clad, and bland complacency. Ultimately, her
moral sense is stirred by the "religious revival" that
comes "raging" through the valley "like a fire before
wind." She begins to question "her lifelong habit of con
formity" (V.C.., pp. 152, 157)- Very prominent in the
religious revival is Lloyd Evans, an idealistic young
Church of England minister of humble origins who renounces
£
his living to "tramp the roads" preaching the Gospel.
Dorothy's decision to join him as his wife enables her to
abjure her worldly goods and her fashionable ways and to
"depart . . . with him into the roads and fields" (V.C.,
p. 320).
10£.
Dorothy Wynne's resolve to give up "heing worldly
and comfortahle" (V.C., p. 317) is only possible because she
has found a man of great physical and moral strength who
"had given her to herself" (V.C., p. 316). His "strong
hands" lend both support and impetus to her moral regenera
tion:
t
It was not for such as her to be caught and possessed
by the greatness of an idea, like her earnest young
tramping lover. For such as her personal love must be
the revealer. . . . „
(V.C., p. 3i6r
While she is still in a transition phase Dorothy is compared
to "a lovely Undine with a newly found soul which she
resents" (V.C., p. 225)- Undine, a legendary Greek water
spirit who could earn a soul by marrying a mortal and
bearing his child, could be humanized only by commerce with
a potent male. Similarly, when Dorothy acquires the crudely
masculine Lloyd Evans for a "prop," she is humanized by pos
session of his phallus. Armed with his maleness, she can
renounce several of her "feminine" activities for others
which are more "masculine." She can, for instance, exchange
a homebound existence of meaningless frivolities— of
"clothes, games, parties" (V.C., p. 316), for a peripatetic
life of purposeful endeavors. Under the protection of a
husband she can abandon a lifestyle that is "feminine" and
static for one that is "masculine" and kinetic.
In sum, Cissie Bodger*s "feminine" suppression of
8
herself leaves her immobile and vitriolic. The trampling
110
of her dress under the feet of her macho husband-to-be is
indicative of their future relations. By contrast, Dorothy
Wynne is able to realize "herself," but only as an adjunct
to a powerful male. Of the three principal female charac
ters in The Valley Captives only Joanna Vallon is not
married by the story's end} but she, too, as will be
explained, will become more fully "herself" only by totally
annihilating a man she loves— her brother— and then incor
porating his most salient characteristics into her own per
sonality .
When Tudor and "John" Vallon^ attend the New Year's
Eve Ball, the costumes in which they appear provide an ac
curate indicator of the "femininity" of the brother and the
"masculinity" of the sister. Tudor, the young man, is fop
pishly clad in pale blue silk, with a "black patch," a
"tie-wig and ruffles" (V.C., pp. 171. 178, 200). John, the
sister, is costumed "as a silver-mailed Joan" of Arc (V.C.,
p. 171). On the way home from the ball the pair are among
a group called to the aid of Laurie Rennel. Concurrent
with the New Year's Eve festivities Rennel has been kid
napped, tortured, and castrated by religious fanatics in
"a dreadful upstairs room" (V.C., p. 187). While the more
"feminine" of the women in the party shrink in fear; while
her frail and pale brother flees in abject terror, and her
111
oafish drunken stepbrother "fumbled and stumbled below"
(V.C., p. 193)» John is the first rescuer to burst in and
confront the malefactors. For her bravery, she is later
praised by her stepbrother as "a sportsman" (Y.C., p.
1 0
207). In her emulation of "Joan of Arc" Joanna Vallon is
the only true hero in the book.
As the actor of a heroic role, Joanna exhibits many
"masculine" traits. For example, she Is invariably called
"John," notv-only by her family and friends, but also by the
narrator of the story. In childhood she speaks in "her
deep little voice" (V.C., p. 15)* In young adulthood she
is— in a composite description gleaned from the text—
stolid, sturdy, square-jawed, laconic, calm, practical,
unimaginative, aggressive, brave, and true. Eschewing
"feminine" modesty, she looks directly at men with her
1 * 1
"steady gray eyes" (Y.C., p. 13) • In fact, she bears a
striking physical and temperamental resemblance to the
romantic heroes of old.
Tudor Vallon recalls that, when he and his sister
were children, he would invite her to act out with him the
stories in adventure books. Often, for example, he would
ask her to imagine herself as "Ralph," and to join him "on
the Coral Island." But, invariably, she ridiculed the
idea. Tudor attributes this to his sister's innate defi
ciency of imagination (V.C., pp. 281-282). However, years
later, as a young adult, she has no trouble dressing the
112
part and emulating the exploits of St. Joan of Arc, a
derring-doer with whom she could, as a female, identify.
Similarly, Rose Macaulay portrays in The Valley Captives a
heroine with whom she can identify. Joanna Vallon tran
scends the sexual stereotypes of her author's day, doing
well those tasks on the family farm requiring practical
knowledge, manual dexterity, and vigorous bodily activ-
. . 12
ity.
She loved the valley and the garden and all things out
of doors, and when in doubt built a hen-house. She had
also a knack of getting on with people; . . . her most
intimate friends were the farmer people of the hills
and valleys. Most of the girls she knew— and she was
quite fond of some of them--talked about clothes, not
occasionally, which is pleasant, but continually,
which . . . is tedious. John preferred to talk [with
her farmer friends^] about incubators and vegetables,
and . . . the deep mysteries of the fertile earth. . . .
(I-C., pp. 49-50)
As a child, "John" prefers tools to dolls and dreams of be
coming a carpenter. Later on, as a young woman of marriage
able age, she is heedless of any impression she should be
making on the young men she encounters. She makes it abun
dantly clear to them that she prefers farming textbooks to
frothy romances. She pays little heed to her clothes.
When she plays mixed doubles tennis, she plays to win (V.C.,
p. 59)* When she drives with others--male or female— she is
the first to reach for the reins (V.C., pp. 180, 303)* She
anticipates a career not as a wife, as her father Oliver
Vallon has insisted, but as a farmer. She longs eagerly
for the formal agricultural training that her father denies
________________11 j
her solely by accident of her sex. Simultaneously, he is
attempting to force that identical training on her brother,
who is totally unfitted for it and disgusted by it.
Oliver Vallon's sister--John's Aunt Kate--vigor-
ously opposes this stereotyping of sex roles. Kate insists
that her nephew should be allowed to study art.. as' 'he .de
sires, and that her niece should be allowed to study agri
culture . Forcing them to deny their true selves solely
because of their gender is, she insists, "immoral. All
silliness is, of course, and that most--not letting people
live" (V.C., p. 119) •
In life, John and Tudor Vallon are a particularly
close-knit sister-brother pair. But, when Tudor dies
saving John from a fatal carriage accident, some curious
imagery comes into play. First of all, Tudor's fatal
injury occurs when he is struck on the side of his head by
"the point of the shaft" of his sister's runaway cart.
Elsewhere in the book the shaft of a cart is deliberately
13
used as a phallic symbol. ^ Second, John's cheek is de
scribed as having been "cut open on a flint" (V.C., p.
307). Not only does the flint itself have sexual signifi-
1 L ,
cance m a poem earlier alluded to m the novel, but the
blood from the sister's wounded cheek drips onto the dead
brother's forehead. Thus, the imagery surrounding Tudor’s
death actually suggests an incestuous— albeit mystical--
union of the "masculine" sister and the "feminine" brother
114
into one being partaking of the qualities of both and
having "two lives to live at once." J Sister and brother
are merged into a single intensely aware and appreciative
self which regenerates "like a cramped growth restored to
light and air" (V.C., p. 331)* The vegetable simile is an
apt ones the interpenetration of sister and brother sug
gests the fruitfulness— both physical and metaphysical— of
16
the union of Rhea and Saturn:
CJohn]] made friends with life, with people and animals
and vegetables and herself, and dug in the garden. She
realized and fulfilled her kinship with the earth; more
and more its forces made, in her recognition of them,
for beauty and good. . . . practical farming. . . .
gave her its slow, progressive revelation of the
liberty which . . . rises sublimely superior to law.
. . . The walls of materialism had shattered. . . .
(V.C., p. 331)
If, in the fiction of Rose Macaulay, "Cissie"
Bodger is a paradigm for the brutal subjugation of women,
and "Dolly" Wynne is an archetype for the graceful submis
sion of women, then "John" Vallon is the prototype for a
new type of woman: one who is destined, in the process of
self-realization, to make the heretofore exclusively "mas
culine" pursuits, prerogatives, and transcendent experien
ces of men her own.
Dangerous Ages (1921) is a sensitive study of the
predicament of being a female--of any age— in a society in
which "Men must work and women must weep" (D.A., p. 184).
Of the seven women related by blood or by marriage who fig
115
ure in the story, no less than four— Neville, Pamela, Nan,
and Gerda--exhihit Macaulayesque "masculine" tendencies.
Foremost of these is Neville Bendish, the lovely, intellec
tually gifted wife of a British M. P., who has sacrificed
her personal ambition to he a doctor for the sake of her
children's well-being and her husband's career. Neville is
fiercely competitive with other attractive women for her
husband's attentions. For Rodney's sake she spends her
winters in London drawing rooms and dining rooms "being the
political wife" with well-bred ease (D.A., pp. 19, 185).
But in the summer, in the priyacy of the family
17
estate, Neville— whose given name is "masculine' --
displays some behavior that is likewise remarkably "mascu
line." This is particularly true of the first chapter in
which androgynous Neville Bendish, like androgynous Michael
Travis before her, celebrates a birthday with a nude swim
at dawn (D.A., pp. 11-14). If, in this opening passage of
Dangerous Ages, masculine pronouns are substituted for
feminine, Neville could very easily be mistaken for the
boy-hero of an adventure tales She rises at break of day,
feels the morning chill on "her bare throat and chest," and
departs for the woods in her pyjamas, overcoat, and sand
18
shoes. She is munching chunks of "bread and marmalade."
Momentarily, she hesitates under the window of the compan
ion she habitually whistles awake for such expeditions--her
116
daughter, Gerda. But she decides instead to go on alone
with only her dog for company. Once in the woods, she
strips off her clothes to reveal her forty-three-year-old
female body; hut it is a body that could just as easily be
that of a young boys
a slight and naked body, long in the leg, finely and
supplely knit, with light, flexible muscles--a body
built for swiftness, grace and a certain wiry strength.
(D.A., p . 13)
After Neville's swim, she dries herself off on her coat,
resumes her pyjamas, finishes her bread and marmalade, and
19
swarms 7 up a tree trunk to sit astride "a broad branch.
. . . whistling shrilly," in imitation of various birds
(D.A., p. 13)* Clearly, Neville’s doings in the first few
pages of the first chapter of Dangerous Ages read far more
like those of an adolescent or pre-adolescent boy than of
a middle-aged English society matron.
Neville's relationship to her spouse and offspring
is a curious ones she loves them (D.A., p. 15); she con
scientiously and appropriately fulfills every wifely and
maternal function; yet her family are also the playmates
whom she excels at any sports "she could beat any of the
rest of them at swimming, walking, tennis or squash" (D.A.,
p. 15)• Just as her athletic prowess suggests a youth,
rather than a woman of mature years, so do the birthday
presents bestowed on her by her immediate family. Among
these are "a splendid great pocket knife" from her son, an
9
117
"oak "box" carved by her daughter, and "a new bicycle" from
her husband (D.A., p. 18).
If Neville's avocations are not traditionally femi
nine, neither is the vocation to which she ha§? aspired for
20
decades in spite of her own mother's vehement oppositions
I must be a doctor. . . . It's my job. The only one I
could ever really have been much good at. The sight of
human bones or a rabbit's brain thrills me, . . .
(D.A., p. 55)
Neville’s innate interests and abilities have always been
in the biological sciences; yet, ironically, it is her own
socio-biological role that has hindered her in this studys
How to be useful though marrieds in Cher husband]
Rodney's case the problem was so simple, in hers so
complicated. She had envied Rodney a little twenty
years ago; then she had stopped, because the bringing
up of Kay and Gerda had been a work in itself; now she
had begun again. Rodney and she were more like each
other than they were like their children; . . . Only
Rodney's [temperament and outlook on life] had been
solidified and developed by the contacts and exigencies
of his career, and Neville's disembodied, devitalized
and driven inwards by her more dilettante life. . . .
(D.A., p. 19)
The resumption of her pre-medical studies after a
lapse of twenty-three years is an uphill struggle for
Nevilles her powers of concentration are dormant and dimin
ished; her family actively opposes her; her daughter is
smashed up in a bicycle accident and requires continuous
nursing. With' the cards thus stacked against her, she is
predestined to failure even before she starts. In conse
quence, she suffers a physical and mental--a "nervous" —
breakdown, and is ultimately reduced to sitting on chari-
i
118
table committees and trying to subdue the ego that had
caused her to aspire to an ambition that was unattainable
21
as a direct result of her marriage.
By contrast, Neville's thirty-nine-year-old lesbian
sister Pamela is happy and fulfilled in her career as a so
cial worker. Her professional achievements have brought
her, as Neville,..observes with admiration, "recognition,
even fame, in the world you work in. You count for some
thing" (h*A., p. 190). And, while Pamela comforts Neville
with the assurance "Most people" would prefer Neville's
situation to Pamela's, there is not the slightest indica-
tion Pamela herself feels this way (D.A., p. 190)*
In"many ways, Pamela Hilary conforms to the-stereo
type of a "masculine" woman. Her voice is "crisp, quick,
and decided." Her body is "tall, and straight." Her
"pince-nez" enhance her "distinguished-looking" appearance;
while her pleasant, and sometimes humorous manner, her per
petual tact and good breeding, make her impervious to inti
macy, save with her lover, Frances Carr. Pamela is very
"capable" at her work, "the very type of the professional
woman at her best," but her relatives are well aware that
she is obsessed with Frances Carr, and the home that they
have made with one another for the past eighteen years. It
is this home that provides the very "roots" for Pamela's
23
existence.
_____________________________________________________________________________119
Like Pamela, who calls her "Frank," Frances Carr is
a dedicated social worker. Physically and temperamentally
the pair complement each other: while Pamela is tall, fair,
and stately, Frances is small, brown, and merry. These
women--both in their late thirties--are reciprocally nur-
turant*. they fortify one another against illness and
fatigue with bread and milk, with cushions and admonitions
to rest. Pamela's sister Nan characterizes them as
"Women . . . of the mothering type," who expend their ma
ternal feelings on one another in lieu of children (D.A.,
p. 77). But Nan, who is sexually sophisticated in her own
right, is perfectly aware of the strong sexual component
in the relationship of these women. Chapter 4 of Dangerous
Ages provides Nan--and the reader--an opportunity to see
this lesbian household for what it is, to ponder it, and
then to accept it. These devoted "friends and their
friendship and their anchored peace" (D.A., p. 80) are in a
state preferable to that of - the spinster, the widow, or the
heterosexual woman who changes partners indiscriminately.
Only a happily married state is preferable to this one.
Symbolism and suggestion skillfully imply in chap
ter 4 what Rose Macaulay is too reticent to state plainly.
24
The chapter opens as.Pamela fits her "latch-key" into the
door of the lodgings she shares with Frances Carr. Pamela
lets herself into "the hot dark passage hall" that leads her
120
to the room where Frances awaits her with a "steaming bowl"
2 ‘ j
of "pap," an invitation to "lie back" in a "deep chair"
piled with cushions, and a pair of "moccasin slippers"
which Frances slips onto Pamela's feet after removing her
street shoes. All of these images indicate some sort of
interpenetration by these women. Quite suggestively, the
narrator interrupts a recital of these events in media res
with a double-entendre to the effect that, although there
were those among Pamela Hilary’s acquaintance who "com
plained that they couldn't get to know Pamela," yet "Fran
ces Carr knew her."^
No study previous to this one has suggested the ob
vious s The relationship of Pamela and Frances is indubi
tably based on the lifelong companionship of Rose Macau
lay's sister Jean and her colleague in nursing, Annie--
27
"Nancy"--Willetts. Therefore, when she felt motivated to
write about this sort of living arrangement, Rose Macaulay
had ample reason to do so with discretion and kindness.
Like their real-life counterparts, Pamela and Frances are
"all right"; they are idealistic dispensers of charity and
sympathy, a refuge for the troubled and a support to the
needy. Their sexual orientation— a textbook case of arres-
2 8
ted psychosexual development --does not preclude their
being "decent people," calmly and cheerfully "doing one's
job" (D.A., pp. 77» 79). They do not make a spectacle of
themselves; are "not sloppy, not gushing." The reader is
121
asked to see them: as nothing terribly extraordinary or
shocking; as, in fact, "rather boring," since "Most sorts
of love were rather dull, to the spectator" (D.A., p. 77).
The first chapter of Dangerous Ages begins with a
reminder "that there are a million more women than men in
this country" (D.A., p. 2 1 ) . The institution of "some
system of polygamy" is advocated by Pamela's twenty-year-
10
old niece Gerda-' as a way of dealing with this "surplus"
(D.A., pp. 20-21). Pamela and Frances have found in one
another their own alternative, their own "something solid,"
their own "anchor," their own "Roots" (D.A., pp. 79» 8l).
Perceiving this, Nan Hilary is inspired, for the first time
in her frenetic and promiscuous life, to yearn to settle
down. She decides to marry Barry Briscoe, a wealthy and
attractive man of good character, who has been courting her
unsuccessfully for months. Ironically, this good resolve
comes too late: Barry has already fallen out of love with
Nan and is in the process of falling in love with her niece,
Gerda. A duel, very nearly to the death, fought by these
two women during a bicycling holiday on the Gomish coast
settles the matter for good.
At the beginning of her holiday with her brother
Kay, her aunt Nan, and her aunt's suitor, Barry, the nor
mally dreamy and passive Gerda is playfully mocked by her
122
brother as a "Coward" and tauntingly enjoined to "act like
a man" (D.A., p. 145)* While Nan is swimming fearlessly
through the high seas "with the arrowy straightness of a
fish or a submarine," and while Barry and Kay are being
"dashed about by the waves" in a futile attempt to keep up,
the far more timid and far less agile Gerda is placidly
rolling and paddling "in the surf by herself" (D.A., p.
145)• This placidity is expressive of her essential nature
but, before the conclusion of this episode she will "act
like a man" indeed.
Nan is thirty-three years old. Her "supple body
excellently trained" (D.A., p. 146) surpasses Gerda's
childishly "flat body" and "thin white arms" (D.A., p.
149)* Likewise, Nan’s superb intellect outshines Gerda's
vague and dreamy consciousness, just as her brilliant
novels and literary criticism excel Gerda's mediocre po
etry. Yet it is Gerda who wins Barry Briscoe away from her
aunt and marries him.
The contest for Barry's heart and hand may be ab
stracted into a clash of Youth with Age, of Idealism with
Cynicism, or even of Virtue with Sin; since Gerda, although
advocating "Free Love" in principle, has been as pure as
the driven snow in practice, while Nan has been a free
wheeling "rake" (D.A., p. 24) with a seeming preference for
married men. In keeping with romantic convention, Gerda's
childlike undeveloped body, her blond hair and fair com-
123
plexion are emblematic of her moral purity, while Nan's
"lissome" form, her darker hair and skin indicate the in
stincts of a "lower animal" (D.A., pp. 23, 28). All this
is strictly in keeping with the romance convention.
However, in a startling variant on that convention, it is
the two women who will ultimately engage in a duel of
"honour" for the purpose of impressing the mans
They would prove to one another which was the better
woman, as knights in single combat of old proved it, or
fighters in the ring to-day. As to Barry, he should
look on at it, whether he liked it or not.
(D.A., p. 151)
Thus a man is cast into the passive role of a spectator and
32
a prizes and at one point it is a man who faints-^ while
two women engage in deeds of derring-do. Rose Macaulay's
reversal of the customary sex roles in an otherwise arche
typal situation is astonishing. Traditionally, two men
loving the same woman would engage in physical combat, but
one or both of two women loving the same man would resort
to guile, rather than force.
In what constitute the most exciting action scenes
33
she ever wrote, Macaulay depicts two women diving from
dangerous heights, swimming in treacherous seas, confront
ing ferocious bulls, and hurtling their bicycles down tor
tuous mountain paths until one of them--Gerda--goes off the
side of a cliff "straight into space, like a young Phoebus
riding a horse of the morning through the blue air" (D.A.,
p. 163).34
12b
Gerda’s injuries are serious, but not life-
threatening. Her courage in enduring pain earns her the
accolade of "sportsman," which had before belonged to Nan
(D.A., p. 159) and secures to her exclusively the affec
tions of Barry, whom she had previously hoped to "share"
with her aunt (D.A., pp. 132-133* 167).
Probably the most "masculine” of Rose Macaulay's
women characters is Miss Montana, known until the conclud
ing pages of Mystery at Geneva (1923) as "Henry Beechtree,"
and referred to until then with masculine pronouns.
"Henry," the transvested antihero of the story, is a shabby
impoverished, yet gentlemanly, young reporter for the not-
too-influential British Bolshevist. He has been assigned
to cover a session of the League of Nations at Geneva.
When several of the most admired and influential delegates
are spirited away in- a bizarre and sinister plot to dis
credit and destroy the League, Henry sets out to "expose"
a British member of the Secretariat, Charles Wilbraham, as
the Mastermind of the plot. Instead, Henry succeeds only
in exposing himself as Wilbraham's "former lady secretary
. . . in the Ministry of Information. . . . Dismissed . . .
for incompetence" (M.G., p. 208).
Although Mystery at Geneva seems to have many of
the elements of farce--Macaulay subtitles it "An Improbable
125
Tale of Singular Happenings"— it also constitutes a kind of
half serious, half ironic catalog of the evils inflicted by-
nation on nation, by men on men, and, more especially, by
men on women: White slavery, prostitution, pornography,
involuntary servitude, battered women, job discrimination,
the exploitation of women by the news media--all are at
least touched on in the course of this "Improbable Tale."
Miss Montana's assumption of masculine dress is
justified first as a "disguise" to prevent her former em
ployer, Charles Wilbraham, from knowing her if they meet,
and thereby to facilitate her desired revenge on him (M.G.,
p. 243)* Second, it is the means whereby she is able to
replace her injured lover, Denis O’Neill, as a newspaper
correspondent, and this gives her a mobility, an oppor
tunity for experience and adventure, that was customarily
denied to women at the time the novel was written. In
"his" "coat" and "trousers," with "his" "monocle", "hat,"
and "cane," (D.A., pp. 2, 54), "he" can roam freely alone
about Geneva at all hours of the night, while the only •
other women who do so are prostitutes, and even lady dele
gates to the League of Nations walking in pairs through the
streets in the early evening may feel--and do prove to be--
more vulnerable because they are women (M.G., pp. 147-149).
Professor Alice Bensen calls the disguise of Miss
Montana "A game element.If it is that, it is also con
126
siderably more than that. If a woman decries the abuse of
women, as Mile. Binesco, a minor character in Mystery at
Geneva does, she can he dismissed as hysterical. Mile.
Binesco, a "womanly woman" (M.G., p. 144) , does in fact
become hysterical when she observes, for example, "the
iniquities of the traffic in women and children all over
the world" (M.G., p. 110). But if a man--or someone be
lieved to be a man— is critical of the exploitation of
women, for instance, by pornographers, then his opinion
will carry greater weight:
[Henry sought to pass the time reading! L1Humeur which
he found on the [cafe! table before him. But L 'Humeur
is not really very funny. It has only one joke, only
one type of comic picture: a woman incompletely
dressed. Was that, Henry speculated, really funny?
It happens, after all, to nearly all women at least
every morning and every evening. Was it really funny
even when to the lady thus unattired there entered a
gentleman, whether M. l'Amant or M. le Mari?
Was only one thing funny? . . . Henry, . . . tried
hard to think so, but failed. . . . He could not see
that it was funnier that a female should not yet have
completed her toilet than that a male should not.
Neither was funny.
(M.G., p. 11)
Likewise, if a man, or someone believes to be a
man, takes exception to clerical excesses of prudery, his
opinion seems to have more validity than that of a member
of the class towards which that prudery is directed:
"I see," said the clergyman, "that you have one of
the French comic papers with you. A pity their humour
is so much spoilt by suggestiveness."
Suggestiveness. Henry could never understand that
word as applied in condemnation. Should not everything
be suggestive? Or should all literature, art, and
humour be a cul-de-sac, suggesting no idea whatsoever?
127
Henry did not want to be uncharitable, but he could not
tiut think that those who used this word in this sense
laid themselves open to the suspicion . . . that their
minds were only receptive of one kind of suggestion,
and that a coarse one.
(M.G., pp. 39-^0)
As a "man" and a journalist, Henry also gains a greater
credibility in his condemnation of the inherent sexism of
o /
the .daily newspapers?^
Women are, inherently and with no activities on their
part, News, in a way that men are not. Henry had often
thought this very singular. He had read in accounts of
public gatherings (such as criminal trials, tennis
tournaments, and boxing matches) such statements as
"There were many well-dressed women present." These
women had done nothing to deserve their fame; they were
merely present, just as men were. . . . A . . . ques
tion arose? were women News to their own sex, or only
to men? . . . All sorts of articles and letters appear
in the papers about women. Profound questions are
raised concerning them. Should they smoke? Should
they work? Vote? Take orders? Marry? Exist? Are
not their skirts too short, or their sleeves? Have
they a sense of humour, of honour, of direction? Are
spinsters superfluous? But how seldom similar inquir
ies are propounded about men. How few persons discuss
superfluous bachelors, or whether the male arm or leg
is an immodest sight, or whether men should vote. For
men since the press is controlled by and for men] are
no t news.
(M.G., pp. 160-161; emphasis added)
Speaking with the authority of a "man," Henry can even take
exception to the sexist attitudes inbred into women?
"Are you a Catholic, Miss Longfellow?" ^Henry inquired]
"I was brought up Catholic. Women believe what
they are taught, as a rule, don't they?"
"I hadn't observed it," Henry said, "particularly.
Are women so unlike men then?"
"That's quite a question, isn't it? What do you
think?"
"I can't think in large sections and masses of peo
ple," Henry replied. "Women are so different one from
another. So are men. That's all I can see, when peo
ple talk of the sexes."
(M.G., p . 68)
1 28
As a woman, "Henry" had been Miss Montana, a secre
tary typist trapped in a low status, low paying, and monot
onous job. She had been regarded--and treated--with con
tempt by her employer, Charles Wilbraham. For having,
among other stenographic sins, "spelt Parliament with a
small p," she had been dismissed by Wilbraham in favor of
"some one . . . more thoroughly efficient." Since that
time Wilbraham, "with first one bullied secretary, now
another, had moved on his triumphant way" to hobnob with
world leaders (M.G., pp. 240-242). Rose Macaulay concludes
her narrative with the assertion that Wilbraham is regarded
by Miss Montana with "such rancour as Serb-Croat-Slovenes
scarce feel against Albanians, or Bolsheviks against Bour
geoisie" (M.G., p. 248). The political analogy is a delib
erately apt one: the economic and social subjugation of
women is now and always has been a political issue. In
point of fact, when Miss Montana assumes male dress and
becomes "Henry Beechtree," "he" cannot help, to a limited
extent, also putting on male politics and male cruelty to
wards women. So, for example, although "Henry" empathizes
with Wilbraham's current secretary, the pretty but witless
Miss Doris Wembley, "he" plays on Miss Wembley's sexual at
traction to "him" and exploits her without any real inter
est in her as a human being, solely in order to obtain com
promising information anout her boss: "He did not think
129
that Miss Wembley was going to be amusing, but still, he
intended to cultivate her acquaintance" (M.G., pp. 55-56).
Since "his" masculinity is purely an illusion of
dress and of manner, Henry is severely limited, in the ways
in which he can manifest it. "He" can, for instance,
arouse Miss Wembley emotionally, but "he" cannot consummate
the relationship physically. Sexually, "Henry" is a "man"
in appearance, but not in performance. As it is with sex,
so it is with violence: As a pseudo-man, "Henry" can be
involved in abstract cruelty, but not in actual cruelty.
It is relevant to recall here that when Shakespeare's Lady
Macbeth begins to instigate the murder of King Duncan, she
first invokes
- ‘ , v . , ...'-you spirits ' 5" . >
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty!
(Macbeth 1, 5. emphasis added)
"Direst cruelty" is seen by so astute a student of human
nature as Shakespeare as an unnatural behavior for a woman.
She must be "unsexed" before she can practice it. Simi
larly, the perpetration of deliberate physical violence
generally is as impossible for the transvestites and tom
boys in Rose Macaulay's fiction as it is for the more femi-
o O
nine of her women. "Henry Beechtree" can enjoy violence
in the abstract: headlines such as "Femme coupee en mor-
ceaux"--"Woman hacked to bits"--add zest to "his" morning
130
coffee and rolls (M.G. , pi 101) ; but the actual sight of a
goldfish heing devoured by a cat makes "him" dizzy and
nauseous (M.G., pp. 92-9*0» and reveals "him" as a woman,
despite "his" disguise (M.G., p. 235)• By contrast, a
"manly man" like Charles Wilbraham is undisturbed by any
amount of genuine violence and cruelty: he can not only
shake hands with M. Kratzky, the bloodstained Russian
"Butcher of Odessa," but he can calmly and without a qualm
sit down to a substantial lunch with this torturer and mur
derer of young and old. The mere thought of such a meal
turns "Henry" physically "sick" (M.G., pp. *1-9-50)•
Thus, although Henry warns Miss Longfellow against
the practice of making sweeping generalizations about the
sexes, paradoxically Henry becomes the subject of such a
generalization in "his" own right. Even if a woman assumes
a man's mannerisms, dons a man’s clothes, and follows a
man's occupation, the sight or thought or practice of phys
ical cruelty will invariably arouse in her a negative vis
ceral reaction. Rose Macaulay calls this at one point
"womanly sympathy" (M.G. , p. I*f9).» and at another "squeam
ishness" (M.G., p. 50). This "squeamishness" is the touch
stone by means of which even the most "manly" of women will
be revealed for what they are. For, as the plot's real
39
villain, ex-Catholic Cardinal Silvio Franehi, explains to
lenry his early perception of Henry's true biological sex,
131
"Masculine nerves are, as a rule, more robust" (M.G., p.
235) •
Two "masculine" women figure prominently in Told by
an Idiot (1923)• They are Stanley Croft (nee Garden), who
will be discussed in this chapter, and her niece, Imogen
Carrington, who will be of major concern in Chapter IV*
Stanley, also called "Stan," is her father's spiritual heir*,
like him, she is "an ardent hunter of the idea" (T.b.I., p.
16); but whereas he is a theologian and spends a lifetime in
pursuit of the true faith, she is a social activist and de
votes the greater part of her efforts to "something one
ought to do, or join, or help, which might avert" the "ship
wreck" of our so greatly troubled world (T.b.I_., pp. 20-21).
Like other women in Rose Macaulay's other novels,
Stanley is a prey to generalizations about the differences
in female and male "nerves." While women, she decides,
behave like "nervous children," and go "frothing about with
words and ideas," men go calmly and serenely after what
Stanley recognizes as:
the elemental,'enduring things: sex, fatherhood, work.
They knew what mattered; they went for the essentials.
. . . Men were somehow admirable, in their strong sta
bility. Their nervous systems were so magnificent.
They could kill animals without feeling sick, break the
necks of fishes, put worms on hooks, shoot rabbits and
birds, jab bayonets into bodies. Women would never
amount to much in this world because they nearly all
have a nervous disease; they are strung on wires. . . .
It seems fundamental, this difference -between the nerves
132
of most women and most men. You see it among little
girls and "boys; most little boys, but how few little
girls, can squash insects and kill rabbits without a
qualm. It is this difference which gives even a stupid
man often a greater mastery over life than a clever
woman. He is not frightened by life. Women, for the
most part, are. ^
(T.b.I.--* PP* 143-44) ' :
Stanley does not wish to kill a rabbit or to jab a
bayonet into a body, but she does work an entire lifetime
to expand the parameters of behavior possible for females
in England in order to give them, too, "a greater mastery
over life." At eighteen Stanley Garden becomes one of the
first twelve women to attend the newly-established Somer
ville College, Oxford. Her first yean there--l880--is a
time of high hope for women:
There was proceeding at this time a now long-
forgotten campaign called the Women's Movement. . . .
Women, long suppressed, were emerging; women were to
be doctors, lawyers, human beings, everything; women
were to have their share of the earth, their share of
adventure. . . .
(T.b.I., p. 41)
In praise of the young women of Stanley’s generation, Rose
Macaulay remembers for us:
The [eighteen]] eighties were . . . a great time for
women. What was called emancipation then occurred to
them. Young ladies were getting education and it went
to their heads. No creature was ever more solemn, more
eager, more full of good intentions for the world, than
the university-educated young female of the eighties.
We shall not look upon her like again; . . .
(T.b.l., pp. 55-56)
The account of Stanley's life begins when she is a
"sturdy," "sexless" Oxford undergraduate of eighteen,
filled with idealism and enthusiasm; the account ends
133
forty-four years later when Stanley, grown stout and
matronly hut still idealistic, still enthusiastic, is
happily hoarding a train to Geneva, where, as an employee
of the League of Nations, she is confident she will help to
"save the world yet" (T.b.I., p. 336). Between the ages of
eighteen and sixty-two Stanley has heen, among other
things, a settlement worker, a suffragist, an aesthete, a
Christian, a Fahian socialist, an adherent of Celtic mys
tical poetry, a jingoist, a pacifist, a propagandist for
working women, a political candidate, and a feminist. Her
varied and passionately felt life experiences have included
homosexual crushes, heterosexual love, marriage, mother
hood, divorce, and single parenthood.
Three of Stanley's male relatives regard her as
unwomanly in many of her actions and aspirations. These
men are her grandfather, a high-ranking clergyman; her
younger brother, a "Philistine"; and her husband, a "reac
tionary." An older brother is sympathetic insofar as his
congenital cynicism will allow. Stanley's "masculinity"
can best be understood in the light of certain of the atti
tudes and reactions of these men.
In 1894 Stanley is a young wife with a key to her
own front door. She is also a new mother who bicycles--
"now her son has safely arrived" (T.b.I., p. 108)— for
pleasure and for the restoration and maintenance of muscle
_____________________________________________________________________ 134
tone after childbirth. Apropos of such as she, a boldface
headline in the Sunday Observer demands, "What is the
modem girl coming to, for she opens her front door with a
key?" (T.h.I_., p. 129-) • But Stanley's "grandpapa" has al
ready asked the same question of the Manchester Guardian,
and also of Stanley's husband, since Stanley has her own
"latchkey" (T.b.I., p. 112):
Poor grandpapa [[said Stanley's sister Vicky]. He's
writing to the Guardian, as usual, about the Modern
Woman. She's dreadfully on his mind. Latchkeys. He
doesn't think women ought to have them. Why not? He
doesn’t explain. Men may open their front doors with
keys, but women must, he thinks, always ring up the
unfortunate maids. He can think of no reasons why;
he is past reasons, but not past convictions. . . .
[And] he thinks women on bicycles really indecent,
poor old dear.
(T.b.I., p. 108)
It is perfectly in keeping with grandpapa's militant
anti-feminist character that he is brought to his death bed
by influenza, but blames his imminent demise on a lady bi
cyclist, instead (T.b.I_., P* 127). He proves to be sin
cerely religious, undeniably courageous, and "dignified to
the last" as he departs to meet his "Maker." But he is
also an unreconstructed old reactionary who takes the entire
Bible— and even the marginal annotations— literally (T:.b.I.,
p. 23); who cleaves to the Established Church, to the cal
culations of Bishop Ussher that the world "had been created
in six days in the year 400ij- B.C.," and to an arbitrary
standard of "morality" for young females which--he has found
135
it convenient to forget--was not in force when he himself
was young:
What were unmarried young women coming to? . . . The
untrammelled . . . freedom of intercourse enjoyed by
modern young men and women (especially young women)
continually shocked him. Grandpapa had enjoyed much
free and untrammelled intercourse in his own distant
youth, during the Regency, but fifty years of Victori-
anism had since intervened, and he believed that inter
course should not now be free.
(T.b.I., pp. 88-89)
While his granddaughter Stanley is "continually" chafing,at
the unwarranted restrictions placed on women by "the con
ventional prudery of the age," (T.b.I.., p. 89), grandpapa
is simultaneously attempting to shore up those same prud
eries by an ongoing series of anti-feminist diatribe in
speech and in print.
Stanley's grandpapa actively opposes "the New
Woman" on principle, but Stanley's younger brother Irving
merely disapproves of her out of inertia and selfishness.
Irving is self-centered, self-seeking, and self-satisfied;
invariably he enjoys the status quo and utilizes it to his
own best advantage. Nevertheless, in 1880, when both he
and Stanley are teenagers, although he "recked not of the
Woman's Movement," he
amiably held [.their older brother] Maurice's high bi
cycle while Stanley, divested of her [absurd, caught-
in-at-the-knees] tight skirt and clad in a pair of his
knickerbockers, mounted it and pedalled round and round
the quiet square. It was Irving who knew that a lower
kind of bicycle was on its way. . . .
"But girls'll never ride it," he opined. "That's
jolly certain."
136
"Girls will probably be wearing knickerbockers in a
year or twoStanley, always hopeful, asserted. "For
exercise and games and things. Or else a new kind of
skirt will come in, short and wide. Our clothes are
absurd."
"Women's clothes always are," said Irving, content
that this should be so.
^T*b.I_., pp. 45-46; emphasis added)
In the 1890s Irving, now in his late twenties, en
joys life, ignores public controversies, and avoids extreme
opinions and persons. He takes no interest in the Woman's
Movement, which he considers "unattractive" (T.b.I.*» p.
Il6). His attitudes towards his sisters' lives reflect his
attitudes towards women in general: to wit, that their ul
timate worth is a function of the social status and prac
tices of the men they marry and of their own conformity to
Irving's arbitrary standards of "what a woman should be."
Because his sister Rome is over thirty and unmarried, he
worries that people will soon begin to think of her as "an
old maid." The term is for him a pejorative. His beauti
ful sister Una is "all right," save insofar as she fell in
love with a yeoman farmer and so "married down." He dis
parages his sister Stanley for her feminist friends, and
Stanley's husband Denman for his aesthetic friends, "an af
fected and conceited crew, both the men and the women being
unsexed, and for ever writing things one didn't want to
read" (T.b.I., p. 116). Of Irving's four sisters, only
Vicky seemed to him what a woman should be. She looked
pretty, dressed and danced well, was amusing, lived in
137
the right part of London, and gave very decent, lively
little dinners, at which people weren't always trying
to he clever.
(T.b.I., p. 116)
Ironically, Vicky too has certain limited feminist
aspirations, as she confides to Rome. She delights in her
bicycle, despite male disapproval, and she enjoys the way
cycling has transformed women's clothes so as to give them
greater freedom of movement--"Short jackets and cloth caps
are coming in. Bustles are no more" (T.b.I^. , p. 108). She
even aspires to cycle in bloomers and to smoke cigarettes,
but is restrained by her husband's conception of bloomers
and cigarettes as "unfeminine."
"Charles doesn't approve. Conspicuous, he thinks.
And, of course, so it is. Well, men will be men.
They'll never be civilized where women are concerned,
most of them."
(T.b.I., p. 108)
Among the "men who will be men" Vicky includes
Stanley's "reactionary" husband. Stanley, "an individual,
a human creature sensitively reacting to all the contacts
of the engrossing world" (T.b.I_*> p. 1^2), has had the
grave misfortune to have been betrayed by sexual passion
into marriage with a man whose very name— Denman. Croft--
epitomizes the decidedly recidivist nature of his Weltan-
ko
schauung. Denman and his set of "light-hearted and cyni
cal aesthetes" succeed in influencing Stanley against one
of the more recent of Henrik Ibsen's "tracts" on the "eman
cipation" of women:
138
What a play! What moralising!. What purpose! What
deplorable solemnity! There seemed . . . nothing to
do about "A Doll's House" but to laugh at it.
(T«b.1., p . Ill)
Denman Croft has good reason to trivialize Ibsen's
play. In his "idiotic opinions about one half of the human
race" (T.b.I.* » P* 1*^2), Denman himself resembles no one so
much as Torvald Helmer. Rose Macaulay sets the scene for
one effectively Ibsenesque episode by having Stanley read
A’ Doll's House on the train as she returns from a day of
bicycling in the countryside. Flushed with health and hap
piness, she meets Denman in the entrance hall to their
home, and his criticisms reduce her from euphoria to a tem
porary unease. Denman blames Stanley for being late, al
though he has only just returned home himself. He casti
gates her for her appearances she is clad in knicker
bockers and stout shoes; she is flushed and windblown and
in need of a bath. Upstairs, while she looks in on their
baby and prepars to bathe, he changes his clothes and con
tinues his criticisms, sounding all the while like a hearty
echo of Torvald Helmer:
"Women ought'to'jwear "graceful, trailing things always
[even if this imperils their cleanliness and safety].
« • •
"It's better to be elegant, dirty and dangerous
than frumpish, clean and safe. . . . The fact is, women
ought never to indulge in activities, either of body or
mind; it's not their role. They can't do it grace
fully ....
"An elegant inertia is what is required of women.
. . . Any activity necessary to the human race can be
performed by . . . men. ..."
(T.b.I., pp. 113-1*0
139
Ironically, Denman is prescribing "An elegant inertia" for
women at the same time as he is dressing for dinner and de
manding to know what his servant "girl" has done with his
black socks. Even more ironically, while Stanley sings her
irritation at him away in the tub, Denman, too, "would have
liked a bath" (T.b.I., p. 11^), since he has just left the
bed of his current mistress, an "exquisitely lovely" woman
(T.b.I., p. 135) of the inactive sort he likes. "Den-man,"
whom Stanley realizes she must divorce after two children
and five years of marriage, is indeed a throwback to the
time of the caveman. He believes that women exist for only
three purposes! to wait on him hand and foot, to service
him sexually, or to please his eye. Any other activities
they might perform, any other aspirations they might have
are "ungraceful," a pejorative which in his lexicon is the
equivalent of grandpapa’s condemnation of things "indecent"
(T.b.I., p. 108).
Rose Macaulay's sympathies during this scene are
entirely with Stanley. The same cycling costume that
Denman labels as "frumpish" is seen by the story's omnis
cient narrator as "that graceful and sensible fashion of
our ancestresses" (T.b.I., p. 110). And Vicky, the epitome
of ladylike deportment and taste, tells Rome, "Stanley . . .
looks delightful [cycling in bloomers], whatever Denman
says" (T.b.I_., p. 108).
1^0
It is an article of faith with Stanley that
"Things need doing. The world is so shocking...All
this time women have teen suppressed and kept under and
not allowed to help in putting things right, and now
they're just getting free "
(T .b .I_. , p . 50)
In the course of an altruistic and active lifetime, Stanley
does much that is "useful" and a few things that are note
worthy. Her great and cheerful idealism survives the re
fusal of the younger generation--her daughter and son, her
nieces and nephews--to carry on her work. Her great trag
edy is in marrying--and in being obliged to divorce--a man
who believes that others exist only to amuse him, that the
children he begets are merely "amusing toys" (T.b.I,*» P*
137) » and that the burgeoning role of "one half the human
race" in the cause of social reform can be trivialized to
"All this feminine pedalling about and playing ridicu
lous games and speaking on platforms and writing books
and serving on committees.', ..."
(T.b.I., p. 11*0
Stanley's relationship with her older brother
Maurice is also significant, for it is with him that she
conducts a lifelong debate about public affairs. Maurice,
who shares many of Stanley's ideals, becomes a crusading
journalist, but his mordant and contentious critical fac
ulty generally make him seem far less sympathetic than he
is. However, when he and his wife produce a son and a
daughter, Maurice temporarily abandons his customary cyni
cism and is sincere in his expressed desire to educate both
1*4 - 1
his children equally. Unhappily, he hasn't reckoned on the
"unjust" nature of his own wife, who
was . . . the type of mother whose strong sex instinct
leads her to prefer hoys to girls, and she took no
pains to hide this. Maurice said, "The girl shall have
as good a chance as the hoy, and as good an education.
We'll make no difference," hut Amy said, "Chance! Fid
dlesticks! What chances does a girl want, except to
marry well? What does a girl want with education?
. . . Girls can't have real hrains, anyhow. They can't
do anything. . . ."
(T.b.I., pp. 61-62)
Years of personal and political disappointments exacerbate
Maurice’s congenital skepticism. So that when the Liberals
finally sweep the Tories out of office in 1905 and Stanley
is jubilant at the prospects for women's suffrage,
Maurice grinned cynically at her.
"If you . . . think you're going to get a vote, my
dear, you're off it. . . . You may send all the deputa
tions you like, hut you won't move them. Women's
suffrage is merely the House joke." ,
(T.b.I., p. 243) 1
While Maurice spends his life bitterly commenting upon the
wrongs he sees, Stanley spends hers in actively striving to
change them.
One source of solace for Stanley during her pro - . .
tracted and painful divorce are the writings of the Scottish
mystic poetess Fiona Macleod (T.b.I_., p. 150). This is
entirely appropriate to the conception■of a "masculine"
woman; for, by the time Rose Macaulay wrote Told by an Idiot
the.true identity of the reclusive "Miss Macleod" had been
known for several years. "She" was really William Sharp, a
142
happily married, conventionally heterosexual man whose
L l2
"transvestism not of the flesh hut of the imagination"
enabled him to write about and for afflicted women with a
truly womanly compassion. While William Sharp’s "Fiona
Macleod" reminds us of a man's "feminine" capacity for
feeling, Rose Macaulay's "Stanley Croft" serves to proclaim
a woman's "masculine" desire for active involvement in the
world. Both of these androgynous efforts help to expand
the possibilities for human beings.
143
NOTES
CHAPTER III
4
Agatha Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia (New Yorks
Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1935, reprinted December 1979)»
pp. 193-9^* See also p. 113- Androgynous characters in
Christie's own fiction include "womanish",Mr. Satterthwaite
and "man-of-the-world" Miss Wills in Murder in Three Acts
(New Yorks Popular Library, 193^, 1961), pp. 12-13, passim.
2From Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House (1879), act 3*
reprinted in Eleven Plays of Henrik Ibsen, introd. H. L.
Mencken (n.p.s Modern Library/Random House, n.d.), p. 73*
3
-\Ebid., act 1, p. 13- See in this regard Jane
Flanders, "The Fallen Woman in Fiction" (Department of Eng
lish, University of Pittsburgh), delivered at "'A Fabric of
Our Own Making's Southern Scholars on Women" Conference,
Georgia State University, March 6, I98I, p. 8s
Just as a man "owned" a wife, from ancient times the
virgin daughter was regarded as a father’s property to
be disposed of at his will.
b
Macaulay's penchant for symbolic garb was exhibited
in fact, as well as in fiction. After an "academic fiasco"
at Somerville College in 1903, she attended a "going-down
party" dressed as a "worm." See Constance B. Smith, Rose
Macaulay, pp. b^-bb.
%ee V.C., pp. 180-181, 18A-186, 305-306.
6
Lloyd Evans is Macaulay's surrogate for Rupert
Brooke. See above, Chapter II, pp. 60, 68-69.
n
Their relationship seems much like that of Adam and
Eve in Paradise Lost, bs 295-299, 8: ^8-53, 537-5^6, q.v.
8
Yet more immobile--and at least equally vitriolic--
is attractive but obese Pilar Alvarez in And No Man’s Wit
(19^0) who compulsively gorges herself on chocolates and
sews doll clothes for the statues of saints for want of
Dther outlets.
9 ■ .
Her given name, "Joanna," is used only once, on
l.C., p. 13* She is thereafter invariably called "John"
Cor the remainder of the novel. Very likely admiration for
Ibb
St. Joan of Arc inspired the names or nicknames of various
women characters, especially in the early novels. Thus,
Alix Sandomir of Non-Combatants is addressed as "Joanna"
(N.C., p. 59)» Imogen Carrington of Told by an Idiot is
called "Jean” and "Jennie" by various relatives (T.b.I.,
pp. 166-167)1 and, in Going Abroad, Hero Buckley is called
"Joe" by her father and is said to resemble "St. John the
Baptist"; additionally, she encounters a lady named "Jeanne
Joseph" (G.A., pp. 30, 294-295).
1 0
Nan and Gerda vie for the title of "sportsman" in
Dangerous Ages, pp. 151. 159» 165-
11
Cf. the description of a photograph of a Neapoli
tan family by Maria Montessori, Pedagogical Anthropology
(New York: n.p., 1913)» PP • 266-267, quoted in Rita Kramer,
Maria Montessori: A Biography (New York: G. P. Putnam's
Sons, 1977), P - 101:
The man, or rather the beardless youth who is just
beginning to feel himself a man, and therefore hopes
for independence, holds his head proudly level; but the
very pretty woman seated beside him holds her head
gracefully inclined forward. For that matter, this is
woman's characteristically graceful attitude. She never
naturally assumes, nor does the artist ever attribute to
her the proud and lofty attitude of the level head. But
this graceful pose is in reality nothing else than the
pose of slavery. The woman who is beginning to strug
gle, the woman who begins to perceive the mysterious and
potent voice of human conflict, and enters upon the
infinite world of modern progress, raises up her head--,
and beauty is enhanced, rather than taken away, by this
attitude which today has begun to be assumed by all hu
manity: by the laborer, since the socialistic propa
ganda, and by woman in her feministic aspirations for
liberty.
12
During World War I, Macaulay left an uncongenial
career in hospital nursing for a far more "unladylike" stint
as a farm laborer. See Constance Smith, Rose Macaulay, pp.
78-80.
■^On Y.C. , p. 132, Tudor
saw Philip Bodger and Blodwen Hughes, the minister's
daughter. They were sheltering from the rain in a
cart-shed. Philip, astride on a shaft, had the girl on
his knee.
145
The "flint" and the "feather hed" (V.C., pp.
119-120, 307) are allusions to John Cleveland's "The Anti-
platonick," several lines from which serve as an epigraph
to and set the theme for part 3 of Macaulay's seventeenth-
century historical novel The Shadow Flies (1932). A com
plete text of the poem appears in Hugh Kenner, ed.,
Seventeenth Century Poetry: The Schools of Donne and
Jonson (New Yorks Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1964),
pp. 415-416.
l5See V.C. , p. 332. See also pp. 307, 330-331-
16
Rhea and Saturn (Gk. Ops and Cronos) were sister
and brother Titans whose union produced--among numerous
other brings--Jupiter (Gk. Zeus), "called the father of
gods and men." See Bulfinch's Mythologys The Greek and
Roman Fables Illustrated, compiled by Bryan Holme ("New
Yorks The Viking Press, 1979, reprinted 1980), pp. 16, 34,
166. See also Will Durant, The Story of Civilizations
Part IIs The Life of Greece (New Yorks Simon and Schuster,
1939, 196ST7 pp. 99, 102, 121.
17
Constance Smith uses the phrase "sexually ambigu
ous." See her Rose Macaulay, pp. 17, 205, 231*
18
Michael's oral gratifications in Sl.R., pp. 15-16
--blowing a whistle and consuming cigarettes and various
sweets— are paralleled by Neville's climbing up a beech
tree and whistling with the birds and her delight in "bread
and marmalade" in D.A., pp. 12-13*
19
^Macaulay's love of nautical adventure doubtless
influenced this choice of verb. See 0ED, s.v. "Swarm" and
cf. Imogen's use of the word in portraying the adventures
of "Wilfrid"— a male surrogate for herself in T.b.I., p.
193-
20d.a., pp. 85, 109.
2^See D.A . , chapter 11 .
22See also D.A., pp. 35, 79.
23See D.A., pp. 34-35, 46, 75-81.
24
The "latch-key" in Pamela's hand symbolizes her
present sexual relationship with Frances, just as the
"latch-key" in Gerda's hand symbolizes her future sexual
relationship with Barry Briscoe, D.A., p. 132. (See Freud
on "The symbolism of locks and keys" in The Interpretation
146
of Dreams , Complete Psychological Works~| vol. 5 > p • 354 •)
Subsequently, the "key" is transmuted from a physical to a
metaphysical symbol, D.A., p. 242.
2 ^
-'"Pap" is infant food. This is appropriate, since
Pamela and Frances are perpetually mothering one another.
However, the word also means "teat or nipple," which is
singularly appropriate in light of their lesbian relation
ship .
r p / I
D.A., p. 75> emphasis added. Cf. the use of the
word in Genesis 4:1.
27
'Constance Smith, Rose Macaulay, mentions Nancy
Willetts in connection with Jean Macaulay on pp. 72n.,
77-78, 151» 189, and l89n., but never suggests the obvious,^
That Pamela and Frances are involved in an "affair" in D.A'.
is noted briefly and disapprovingly by Philip Rizzo in Rose
Macaulay, pp. 511 53-
O Q
These women have, in some ways, never outgrown
their undergraduate days at Oxford, D.A., pp. 75-78, and
are said to be incapable of "leaving the past behind." C’ f .
Sigmund Freud's essay on "Transformations of Puberty" in
his Complete Psychological Works, vol. 7, p» 208, where he
suggests:
Every pathological disorder of sexual life is rightly
to be regarded as an inhibition in development.
See also Ibid., p. 229:
Dessoir C18943 has justly remarked upon the regularity
with which adolescent boys and girls form sentimental
friendships with others, of their own sex. . . . Where
inversion is not regarded as a crime it will be found
that it answers fully to the sexual inclinations of no
small number of people.
2?Cf. what George Gissing observed in 1893 in The
Odd Women (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, reprinted
1971) , p • 37, where he causes Rhoda Nunn to remark "that
there are half a million more women than men in this
unhappy country of ours. . . .So many odd women--no making
a pair with them.
30
^ Whether Gerda is twenty or twenty-one is somewhat
ambiguous. Cf. D.A., p. 16 with pp. 72-73» 124.
31See also D.A., pp. 147, 149, 153-
147
^ Gerda's brother Kay faints on D.A., p. 159*
33
-^Isie Rickaby's wanderings, lost, alone, and hys
terical, through the Guatemalan jungle come close to
equaling these. See Staying with Relations, pp. 117-134.
. As Gerda is compared to Phoebus Apollo because
there are no female equivalents in Greek mythology, so Isie
in S .Rel. , p. 312, balances herself on her surfboard ":like
Phaeton holding the reins of his rushing chariot.
3 5
-^Alice Bensen, Rose Macaulay, p. 81.
^ The exploitation of women by the press also looms
large in Daisy and Daphne, passim. It is satirized briefly
in 0rphan Island (pi 81), and it helped to provoke Macau
lay's essay "Woman: The Eternal Topic" which is printed in
full as Appendix A to this dissertation.
-^The paper by Flanders (n. 3 above) makes this
point quite convincingly.
Alix, who yearns to go off to war in Non-Combat
ants , but is sickened by the deaths and injuries that war
produces, epitomizes such women. In The Shadow Flies,
tomboyish Meg dons her dead brother's armor and is quickly
killed. There is no indication that she succeeds in
killing--or even in injuring--anyone else. The "maquisarde*
Barbary in The World My Wilderness lures the Nazi soldier
who raped her to his death and acquiesces in the deliberate •
drowning of her Collaborationist stepfather, but the only
violent act she herself commits is the shooting of a
Scottish farmer with her slingshot. Of the more "feminine"
of Rose Macaulay's heroines, Flora Smith inflicts gratui
tous injury on random jungle plants and a hummingbird in
Orphan Island and is compared to Rosamond's cruelly "mascu
line" scientist brother William. Only one heroine, the
very "feminine" Clare Potter of Potterism, commits willful
murder, and there is considerable and unresolved ambiguity
about just how "willful" that murder is.
-^The name of Franchi's castle is, for one familiar
with Byron's "The Prisoner of Chillon," a useful clue to
solving the Mystery at Geneva. The Swiss patriot Bonnivard
was immured in a place where "Lake Leman lies by Chillon's
walls" (1. 107) and the kidnapped delegates are immured in
Franchi's "Chateau Leman" on Lake Geneva.
^°He is a den-man, i.e., one who belongs in a cave,
like an animal or a primitive man. The name "Croft"--1')- "A
small enclosed field or pasture near a house"; 2) "A small
148
farm" is equally indicative of his provincialism. American
Heritage Dictionary, 1969 edition, s.v. "croft,"
L l i
Stanley's--and Macaulay's--ardent feminist con
victions are very much in evidence on Tt.I., p. 235 q*v.,
which reads in parts
To her the denial of representation in the governing
hody of her country on grounds of sex was not so much
an injustice as a piece of inexplicable lunacy, as if
all persons measuring, say, below five foot eight, had
been denied votes.
h,o
Plavia Alaya, William Sharp--"Fiona Macleod":
1855-1905 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press, 1970), p. 11. See also p. 12.
1^9
CHAPTER IY
MORE ABOUT "MASCULINE" WOMEN
Unfeminine and unattractive, but intelligent and
sincere, Ann Dorland is cleared of suspicion of murder and
supplied with a fortune and a future husband in Dorothy L.
Sayers's The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928) .
While probing the secrets of Ann Dorland's love life,
Sayers's ace detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, makes a fleeting
but significant reference to "what Rose Macaulay referred to
1
as ’nameless orgies.’” The allusion is to the passage in
Dangerous Ages in which Neville, indignant at the news that
a friend of her daughter has just borne a child to the man
she lives with without benefit of clergy, argues the matter,
and then falls into a reverie:
Neville, led by Pree Love to a private vision,
brooded cynically over savages dancing round a wood-pile
in primeval forests, engaged in what missionaries, jour
nalists and writers of fiction about our coloured
brothers call "nameless orgies" . . . and she saw the
steep roads of the round world running back and back
and back--on or back, it made no difference, since the
world was round--to this. Saw, too, a thousand stuffy
homes wherein sat couples linked by a legal formula so
_________________150
rigid, so lasting, so indelible, that not all their
tears could wash out a word of it, unless they took to
themselves other mates, in which case their second
state might he worse than their first. Free love--love
in chains. How absurd it all was, and how tragic too.
One might react hack to the remaining choice--no love
at all--and that was ahsurder and more tragic still,
since man was made . . . to love.
(D.A., p . 22)
"Free love--love in chains . . .no love at all."
2
This formulation was an intriguing one for Dorothy Sayers,
as it was for Rose Macaulay who has Rome Garden propound
the following syllogism to her shocked Victorian mama in
Told hy an Idiot:
Novels have always heen ahout sex, or rather sexes.
. . . People must have a sex in this life; it's inevi
table. Novels must he ahout people; that's inevitable
too. So novels must he partly ahout sex, and they're
nearly always ahout two sexes, and usually largely
ahout the relations of the two sexes to one another.
They always have been....
(T.h.I., p. 81)
Instances of sexual experience and of sexual abstinence
abound in Told hy an Idiot. The life stories of its numer
ous characters provide explorations into human sexuality--
whether inside or outside of marriage. Also explored is
the question of celibacy, as imposed hy custom, hy divorce,
hy death, or hy the death of love. It is hoped that a sub
sequent study will deal with these issues as they affect
all the many and varied personae of the novel--and, indeed,
of the novels-r-and not merely the "masculine" women who
fall within the parameters of this study.. But, for now,
the complexities involved can only he hinted at hy taking as
151
exemplars Rome Garden and her sister, Stanley Croft, and
their niece, Imogen Carrington. Rome is an "urbane," do-
nothing, "blue-stocking" who frightens off most mens her
conduct is as "cool" as her utterances are unrestrained.
Only after the murder of the one man she is destined to
love does she freely acknowledge her sexual feelings for
him (T.b.I_*» P* 124). Conversely, Rome's sister Stanley,
having with "ecstasy" acknowledged her own sexuality "body
and soul" in her marriage with Denman Croft, compels herself
"to shut off that side of life" during and after her di
vorce (T.b.I^., pp. 72, 142) . Thus,, one of these women re
cognizes her libido too late; the other suppresses hers too
soon.
Neither Rome nor Stanley is regarded-by her .contem
poraries as conventionally "feminine," although both are
unquestionably heterosexual. Rome is portrayed as
a woman of the world, a known diner-out, a good talker,
something of a wit, so that her presence was sought by
hostesses as that of an amusing bachelor is sought.
. . . She knew her way about. . . .
(T.b.IE. , p. 78; emphasis added)
Rome Garden possesses the wit, intellect, and learning more
commonly found in the men of her time than in the women.
Wealth inherited from’ , her grandfather has made her finan
cially independent. She enjoys her bachelor existence with
a self-indulgent masculine freedom; dressing well, travel
ling frequently and unchaperoned— sometimes with her lawyer
____________________________________________________________________L52
friend, Guy Donkin— and gambling astutely at "Bridge, whist,
baccarat, poker, roulette" (T.b.I., p. 178)* However, in
Rome's case, propinquity does not promote prurience. The
hapless Francis Jayne was the one passion of her life and
one can believe her when she asserts, "Guy and I do nothing
not comme-il-faut" (T*b.I_., p. 178).
As selfless as her sister Rome is self-indulgent is
Stanley, who is obsessed with social reform. This obsession
has been a source of worry to their sister Vicky who re
joices when marriage brings a temporary halt to Stanley's
careers
"I'm glad she’s off that stupid trade union and sweated
labor fuss. . . . I was afraid Stan was going to turn
into a female fanatic, like some of those short-haired
friends of hers. That's not what we women ought to be,
is it, my Imogen?"
(T.b.I., p. 73)
But "Imogen, an infant of one summer," whom Vicky catches up
in her arms and kisses while she speaks to her thus is as
"masculine" a woman as her Aunt Stanley. Because Imogen is
the most autobiographical of all Rose Macaulay's eharac-
i ) ,
ters, her innate reaction to Vicky's words is Rose Macau
lay 's own:
But Imogen, neither then nor at any later time, had any
clear idea about what women ought or ought not to be.
Anything they liked, she probably thought. If, indeed,
there were, specifically, any such creatures as
women....For Imogen was born to have a doubting mind on
this as on other subjects.
(T.b.I., p. 7*0
153
The young Imogen who outperforms her male playmates "in
climbing, running, gymnastics, and all active games," who
gets dirty damming brooks and wading in them, who wants to
capture bear cubs at the North Pole, who glides through the
forest shooting real arrows at imaginary Indians, who slinks
through the streets of London with a toy pistol in her
pocket, who pretends that she is Sherlock Holmes, who is
suspected of being mentally ill by an uncle who sees her
playing at knights in armor in the woods, who knows by
heart "the displacement and horse-power and knots of all
the battleships and first-class cruisers" in the British
navy, who daydreams that she is lieutenant-commander Denis
Carton, sailor and popular metaphysical poet--this Imogen
is autobiographical.-^
When Imogen's uncle Ted says of these activities
that "no sensible young fellow would like it," (T.b.I., p.
252)— i.e. that Imogen's marriageability would be compro
mised by these pastimes— what he is really saying is what
Henrik Ibsen is protesting in A Doll's House: that men may
lead their lives to please themselves, but that women must
6
lead their lives with reference to men. Being forced to
put aside her favorite occupations as fantasies when she
"grows up," while the males she knows grow up to join the
armed forces, to travel, to fight in wars, and to otherwise .
experience in person the things about which Imogen can only
154
daydream, she has every reason "to he resentful:
Rotten it was, being grown up. Simply rotten. . . .
when you put your hair up, you had to hide all sorts of
things away, like a guilty secret. . . . Your mother
told people you were a tomboy. A tomboy. Imbecile
word. As if girls didn't like doing nice things as
much as boys. Who started the idea they didn't, or
shouldn't? Oh, it was rotten bring grown up.
(T.b.I., p. 253)
When Rose Macaulay addressed the Oxford University
Literary Society "on the creation of men by women, women by
men, in fiction, drama and poetry," she proffered the sug
gestion that an author's portrayals of the opposite sex
tend to be idealized, "whereas their own sex they often
7
draw more from within, and achieve more realism."' If we
apply this axiom to Imogen Carrington, and to her aunts
Rome Garden and Stanley Croft, we can draw some useful con
clusions about the kind of "masculine" woman Rose Macaulay
was and about the kind of "masculine" women Rose Macaulay
customarily portrayed. First, whatever the traditionally
male-dominated activities in which they may engage, they
will be heterosexual as adults, even if they manifest homo
sexual tendencies in their youth. In girlhood, Imogen
adores a succession of female teachers (T.b.I., pp. 175-
176), just as, years before, her Aunt Stanley had been "in
love" with a succession of female schoolmates (T.b.I_., pp.
42-43). But Stanley's first physical relationship is with
her husband and Imogen's first caresses come from a fiance
in the navy (T.b.I_. , pp. 317-318).^ Another characteristic
______________________________________________________________155
of Macaulay's "masculine" women is their inborn emotional
ity. Rome is tortured by poweful emotions despite the
"bland, cool, and composed" facade she presents to the
10
world. Far less "self-contained" than Rome is Stanley,
who openly experiences life's pleasures and pains with
11
great emotional intensity. And very like Stanley is her
niece Imogen who, at the age of eight, earns the opprobrium
of her older brother Hugh because she is moved to tears by
the sights and sounds accompanying the accompanying the
appearance of Dr. Nansen at Albert Hall:
Boys did not understand the.female weakness which wept
at fire engines, poetry and clapping, and was sick at
squashed insects. Imogen wanted (even still half
hoped) to be a boy, so she tried to hide her weak
nesses .
(T.b.I., p. 162)
The tearful habit is something Imogen does not outgrow.
When, at age thirty-four, she leaves her married lover be
hind for a year to voyage to the Pacific Islands in ful
fillment of a lifelong dream, characteristically she "wept"
(T.b.I., p. 336).
A final verity about Rome, Stanley, and Imogen is
their utter inability to commit acts of physical violence.
Rome witnesses the brutal stabbing to death of her lover
and withdraws quietly to the country without so much as a
fantasy of personally punishing his assailant. Stanley is
callously wronged by the husband who pressured her into
marriage, yet it is she who apologizes to him and who blames
__________________________________________________ 156
herself for the failure of their marriage (T.b.I., pp. 139.
143-1^4). More liberated than they in her fantasies is Imo
gen, who slays wild beasts and ferocious warriors without
number in her daydreams. She imagines that someday the
trophies on her walls will include:
reindeer, sand-bok, polar bear, grizzly, lion, tiger,
cheetah, wombat and wolf. [[But]] no birds. Shooting
birds was no fun. Imogen knew, for she had shot her
first and only sparrow last week, with her new cata
pult. The boys had been delighted, but she had nearly
cried. It had been beastly. 19
(T.b.I., p. 192)^
In all her youthful fantasies, Imogen glorifies war. But
in the concluding portion of Told by an Idiot, Imogen and
all her friends and relations experience the horrors of the
First World War. Imogen is very angry at being excluded
from combat owing to "a mere fluke of sex." She "had never
before so completely realized that she was not, in point of
fact, a -young man" (T.b.I., p. 316). Yet the sights and
sounds and smells of hospitalized soldiers make her--as they
made Rose Macaulay--nauseous and faint (T.b.I_., p. 317)
In only one of Rose Macaulay’s twenty-three novels
does a woman lay hands on another human being and murder
him, but there is considerable ambiguity even' about that one
1
instance. , Likewise, in only one of the novels does a
woman--Flora Smith of Orphan Island--willfully and wantonly
injure an animal--and that woman is consistently portrayed
as "cruel." Imogen Carrington's "masculine" imaginings
__________________________________________________________________157
seem largely the product of the same powerful hunger for
experience and the same intensely active imagination that
caused her--and Rose Macaulay--to become a writer* Like
her Aunt Stanley, Imogen chafes at the irrational restric
tions that have been arbitrarily imposed on her sex. Since
she cannot change that sex--in a world that values men more
than women and allows them a considerably wider range of
experiences--she imagines it as having been changed, just
as she imagines other adventures for herself:
She wanted to go to the Pacific Islands and bathe from
coral reefs; wanted money and fame; . . . wanted to
save a life, watched by cheering crowds; wanted a motor
bicycle; . . . wanted to be a young man. But not now a
naval man; she had seen through the monotony and rou
tine of that life. She wanted in these days to be a
journalist, a newspaper correspondent, sent abroad on
exciting jobs, to report wars, and eruptions of Vesu
vius, and earthquakes, and Cretan excavations, and
revolutions in South America, and international con
ferences.
(T.b.I., p. 298)
In the first of these fantasies can be recognized the set
ting for Rose Macaulay's next novel, Orphan Island.
Nineteen-year-old Rosamond Thinkwell is a dreamy
ingenue, a stockier version of Gerda Bendish in Dangerous
Ages. Ninety-eight-year-old Miss Charlotte Smith is the
autocratic, alcoholic matriarch of a small Pacific island
who has succumbed to the delusion that she is Queen Vic
toria. Although both these women should be categorized as
"masculine," the mores by which each lives are brought into
158
sharp contrast in Orphan Island (192^-) .
Rosamond is the daughter of a 'learned and industri
ous Cambridge sociologist. One of her older brothers is a
promising young scientist; the other is a published--and
attractive--author. But Rosamond herself has gifts neither
of mind nor of body,"nor does she possess any special
skills or knowledge save an ability to read maps and a
16
thorough knowledge of the lore of tropical islands. She
is a simple, happy, inarticulate person with bobbed blond
hair, a sturdy boyish body, and a credulous nature. Her
belief in God is "deep, childish, and romantic" (0.I_., pp.
108-109)• She has an instinctive and heartfelt aversion to
the torture, entrapment, or .killing of living creatures,
whether they be worms on hooks, or men on chain gangs. At
the sight of the latter she "blinked away tears" (0.1^. , p.
1 * 7
196). ‘ Primitive pleasures--eating, swimming, climbing
trees, experiencing tropical flora and fauna--pervade her
daydreams. On any subject other than food and Pacific is-
1 ft
lands she has "a vague and wandering mind" (0.1.* » P* 33).
Rosamond's brother Charles says of her, "She
doesn't know the difference between any two things, unless
they're to eat. She can't distinguish between men and
women" (0.1. , p. 3^)• Most certainly is this true of the
numerous times Rosamond has been "in love." Her passions
19
have been bisexual, intense, and platonic. With "pleas
ure" Rosamond has worshipped from afar heroines and heroes
_____________________________________________________159
--ancient and modern, on stage or in books— as well as as-
sorted sailors and athletes, classmates and teachers (0.I.« »
p. 156).^° Initially she is "pleased and stirred" hy Cap
tain Paul, commander of the schooner that carries her and
21
her family to Orphan Island (0.1. , p. 133) > hut he falls
considerably in her estimation after he kisses her:
It was a step down on his part, unworthy, as it were,
of a man of action and travel, whose heart should be
all set on adventure. She preferred him to tell her
the stories of the sea.
(0.1., p. 51)
Later, Captain Paul is superseded in Rosamond's affections
by Flora Smith, the sensuously beautiful daughter of the
Island's Prime Minister and his Spanish wife:
Was it . . . that, once you had seen Flora Smith, no
one else counted very much? Such grace was hers, such
mocking beauty and such pride...a mountain panther
could not touch her for the kind of wild, disdainful
elegance she had.
(0.1., p. 85)
At a glance and a smile from the exquisite Flora Rosamond
is "as wax in . . . flame" (0..I • , p. 229)* In the grips of
a passion that lasts almost the length of the novel, Rosa
mond blushes at the mention of Flora's good looks (0 .1. , p.
107), yearns for Flora's friendship and regard (0.1,. , p.
79)» is pained whenever she incurs Flora's displeasure
(0.1. , pp. 130, 148), mentions Flora in her prayers (0.1_. ,
p. 150), cheers herself with thoughts of Flora (0.1^ , p.
208), feels love for Flora "hurt and tear" her (0.1. , p.
157)* By contrast, when Flora's handsome brother Heathcliff
______________________________________________________________16c
indicates some interest in Rosamond, she rebuffs him (0 .1. ,
pp. 127, 131)•
Rosamond's brother Charles is also susceptible to
Flora's charms, and Rosamond begins "breathlessly" to hope
that Flora will "one day love and marry" her brother. "To
have Flora for sister . . . what felicity!" is Rosamond's
conscious thought, but that she is in this manner sublimat
ing her own sexual feelings for "her dear Flora" (0.1_. , p.
288) is obvious. Flora's cheeks, throat, eyes, hair, skin,
and limbs figure constantly in Rosamond's thoughts.
An episode that anticipates E. J. Scovell's lesbian
22
poem, "After the Party," by eight years depicts Rosamond
and Flora climbing "a winding path up a thicketed slope”
through the "green gloom" of a tropical forest (0.1_ . , p.
15*0 "to a secluded place where Flora speaks of her desire
to marry her boyfriend Peter, and Rosamond gazes rapturously
at Flora in the painful ecstasy of unrequited love. Various
sexual symbols are in evidence during this scene as the two
young women talk about love, marriage, and children.
Finally the two hide behind a mangrove clump and "swop"
their dressess
Each took off her frock. Flora looked with interest
at Rosamond's cami-knickers, Rosamond at Flora's under
petticoat of scarlet-dyed cocoanut cloth. Flora slipped
into the short-sleeved, low-necked white cotton frock,
Rosamond into the tunic made of the scarlet feathers of
many birds. Neither altogether fitted, for the wearers
were of different builds; [sic]] Rosamond was small,
firmly built, stocky, like a sturdy little boy, without
l 6 l
feminine elegances, or any of Flora's wild animal
sinuousness.
(0.1., p. 160)
As in "After the Party," the lesbian implications of this
encounter are latent hut obvious.
When Rose Macaulay wishes to bring discredit upon a
given viewpoint, a favorite device of hers is to have that
viewpoint voiced by a character that is herself or himself
somewhat less than reputable. Thus, as we have seen in Told
by an Idiot, views critical of women's involvement in aports
or politics or social reform -are put into the mouth of the
waster, Denman Croft. Likewise, in 0rphan Island, a lapsed
Anglican missionary, Mr. Merton, whose soiled white trousers
and alcoholic breath indicate his lack of credibility (0.1. ,
p. 4*4-), distinguishes between "female virtue" and "male vir
tue" when whites and "niggers"--his word for Polynesians--
intermingle in-the Islands:
"You'd-find the women would sink, in one generation, to
nigger notions of morality" [said Mr. Merton].
"The women, you think, more rapidly than the men?"
[inquired Mr. Thinkwell.]
"Oh, the men....I was speaking of morality--female
virtue."
"And what about male virtue?"
"Honesty, you mean, and industry, and so forth....
Well, those qualities aren’t so quickly affected."
"I perceive," said Mr. Thinkwell, "that you are one
of those who think of virtue in the two sexes in dif
ferent terms. An interesting state of mind, and one
often to be met with, especially among persons rather
of action than of thought. You can trace it back many
thousands of years...."
(0.1. , p. 47)
162
Tracing the evolution of the concepts of "female
virtue" and "male virtue" so crudely voiced hy Rose Macau
lay's Mr. Merton, feminist scholar Jane Flanders draws on
the findings of L . C. Knight and R. H. Tawneys
By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, con
trols on female sexuality, which originated in misogyny(
paradoxically led to an opposite concepts that women,
armed hy their greater purity, were obliged to uphold
a standard of morality, spirituality and sanctity for
society as a whole. This belief had an implicit eco
nomic rationale? clearly, the man in the marketplace or
at the exchange could not he hampered hy moral scru
ples. 23 The doctrine of economic individualism preclu
ded the recognition of communal obligations and moral
imperatives binding all members of society. It became
the woman's duty to maintain moral order through her
devotion to chastity, home and family. "Morality" and
"honor" could be'removed from the male economic sphere
and instead identified with woman's sexual restraint
and conformity to conjugal and maternal roles. When
she "fell" from this obligation, she assumed the guilt
for the community as a whole.
. . . . While the usual pattern for males was to
leave home and to establish themselves in the public
arena, females were being all the more closely confined
and assigned the task of supporting affective relations
within the family. Men were forced into aggressive
competition within a context of pragmatic moral choice,
while women were asked to be loving, nurturing, yield
ing, devoted to children (whose innocence required the
protection of equally inviolate beings), while also
making a display of liberal expenditure and conspicuous
leisure*. 2^
It is in just such a society that the Thinkwell
family and their companions find themselves when they arrive
on Orphan Island. It is a society in which the Victorian
2 3
world view J and Victorian proprieties of language and be
havior still obtain; in which boys are trained up to play
aggressive team games while girls are left to amuse them
162
selves in a more "ladylike" fashion; and in which young
women have "no business to know" about topics relating to
sexuality and must be sheltered from such "undesirable
characters" as illegitimate children, lest they contract
some sort of moral taint and become "er--undesirably entan
gled" (0. .I • , pp. 89-90). In this society women of the
upper--or "Smith"--class give dances and dinner parties,
but as for any share in the government, "Fortunately they
don't count. Or where should we be?" (0.1_. , pp. 58, 225).
And thus it is that, on the Island, Rosamond encounters the
Misses Macbean, who know that they are illegitimate and
hence "we aren't accepted in good society," but who also
know that young ladies have "no business to know about
things of that kind." Between the Misses Macbean and Rosa
mond, who played organized games like cricket at school,
who leads a troop of Girl Guides back in Cambridge, who
chooses her own friends and "speakQs]] of anything we
like...anything we do," and whose homeland has recently ex-
27
tended the suffrage to women, there is a gap of some
"seventy years" (0 .1. , p. 89).
Orphan Island's concept of the "womanly woman" is
exemplified by fat and placid Mrs. Albert Edward Smith, the
"am.iable" wife of its Prime Minister, who needs "protection"
from overexertion, who supervises her servants conscien
tiously, who selects foods for her family's table person-
16k
ally, whose mind is almost invariably on her sewing--even
when she is confronted with the first English visitors to
her island in seventy years--and whose favorite remark is
28
"Very pleased, I'm sure." When her husband holds out to
her the possibility of travel away from her desert island
home, Mrs. Smith's reply is characteristic:
"What say you, my love?" he inquired of his lady.
"Oh, I," she said placidly. "I am a home-lover,
you know, my dear. Travel is all very well for gentle
men; makes a nice change, don't it; but what do we
women want with it? That’s what your mamma has always
said, Bertie. Women's business is in the home."
Mr. Smith indulgently displayed his wife’s womanly
reply to the audience.
(0.1., p . 65)
Mr. Thinkwell reminds that same audience that Bertie's mama
herself "travelled rather far afield"--i. e. was ship
wrecked on a Polynesian Island in transit from England to
California, but then
Miss Smith's son's indulgent smile changed to"a more
reverent expression. "My mother, Mr. Thinkwell, is no
ordinary woman. Almost a man's grasp, a man's intelli
gence and knowledge of affairs. And yet, sir, a
womanly woman if ever there was one."
[Mr. Thinkwell's son]] Charles reflected that Miss
Smith sounded much like the late Queen Victoria as
viewed by herself and her subjects about the time of
the Diamond Jubilee.
(0-i* > PP• 65-66)
The Miss Smith who.has "Almost a man's grasp" is a
clergyman's daughter who was shipwrecked on the Island al
most seventy years before with a Scottish nurse, an alco
holic doctor, and some forty-three orphan children. Not
29
only did Miss Smith "marry" the doctor and produce ten
165
children with him before he was eaten hy a shark; she also
became the founder of "Quite a little nation. Houses,
roads, and all that sort of thing" (0.1. , p. 58)> with its
own currency, social structure, Church, Parliament, laws,
professions, trades, and prison system modelled after those
of Victorian England. Like Queen Victoria, with whom she
identifies herself increasingly as the years pass.-^ Miss
Smith is the titular head of both church and state. But,
in fact, the power and influence of "Miss Smith of Smith
31
Island" over her one thousand twenty-four subjects (0.1_. ,
p. 76) far exceeds that of the English Queen.For exam
ple, not only has Miss Smith ordained every successive
"Anglican" clergyman on the Island, but what she remembers—
or finds it expedient to remember--of the Bible and the
Anglican Prayer Service constitutes almost all that the
33
islanders know of religion. Miss Smith's memory provides
the text for the clergyman's Sunday sermon (0.I_. » PP • 68,
163)- Likewise, the very little'Miss Smith has retained of
English letters has become the basis for the island's liter
ature. Her influence over the islanders' every conception
of the world extends not only to institutions, but to fac
tual knowledge as well. She has been their lexicon, and
words she has not taught them do not exist (0.1., pp. 57,
69, 125). She has been their encyclopedia and has imparted
to them her scanty knowledge of natural history; however,
166
because she cannot draw, animals like the "cow," "sheep,"
"dog," and "horse" are merely words to them (0.I_. , pp.
200-201).
Miss Charlotte Smith is a "masculine" woman with
certain affinities to Aunt Kate Yallon of The Valley Cap
tives . Both women are practical, decisive, dogmatic, and
energetic. The "masculine" nature of each is represented
34
by a figurative "sword" --which, m the case of Miss Smith
is said to have "snapped short abruptly at the hilt" after
she has been deposed from power (0.I_. , p. 312). Another
male emblem of power and authority--a stick--is tellingly
employed, first as a symbol of Miss Smith's puissance (0.1_. ,
PP• 93» 95» 103), and then as a sign of her downfall and
destruction. The climactic duel to the death between the
island's two matriarchs recalls the classic confrontation
not of witches with their cauldrons but of Biblical prophets
or of wizards with their staffs. In-this scene, the Scot
tish nurse, Jean, kept to "her duty and her place" (0_.I_. ,
p. 154) beside Miss Smith for sixty-eight years and then
cruelly denied by the latter the opportunity to return home
to Aberdeen to die, "stepped forward, leaning on her stick,
lifting one arm prophetically above her head for silence"
(0.1,. , p. 275)- Jean then pronounces doom upon Miss Smith
in the form of a revelation that all Miss Smith's children
are bastards, since their father was already married when he
167
contracted his alliance with Miss Smith. The latter immedi
ately suffers a stroke that proves fatal; the "stick" falls
from her hand, and with it departs also her power to speak,
to move, and even to live {0..I. , pp. 311-312):
Her lips worked, hut no sound emerged; she grasped and
shook her stick at Jean, at her people, at heaven, till
it fell suddenly from her hand, and she seemed to col
lapse, with a loud and stertorous groan.
(0.1. , p. 276)
Other "masculine" traits of Miss Smith include the
fact that, "naturally, her name goes down" to her descen
dants rather than that of her deceased consort. However,
the thought of any other name going down in the female line
strikes her son, Albert Edward, as "an odd notion indeed"
(0.1. , p. 60). Property and status also belong by right of
birth to members of the "Smith Caste"--i.e. Miss Smith's
O ^
ten children and their "legitimate issue"; however, polit
ical power is reserved solely to the males. Four of Miss
Smith's children are sons, and these are trained up in the
arts of government in order to assume their hereditary role
as natural leaders of the island's people and Parliament.
As a sociologist, Mr. Thinkwell perceives Miss
Smith's island as "The world in microcosm" (0.1 • , p. 190) •
It is a world in which--Godlike— Miss Smith creates the law
and the Scriptures (0.!! . , p. 312); but--Godlike also--she is
herself above the law. Thus, although she inveighs against
drunkenness (0.1. , p. 96), she is herself an alcoholic.
168
Although she rails against sexual transgressions (0 .1. , p.
188), she has herself been---arbeit inadvertently--"a wan
ton" (0 .1. , p.. 28) . . Although she makes laws against bas
tardy, the ten of her children--as she has found it conven
ient to forget--are "bastards all" (0 .1. , p. 275)* Fi
nally, although she imposes Victorian standards of mascu
linity and femininity on her subjects--gentlemen smoke and
ladies don't (0.I_. , p. 122) j gentlemen govern and ladies
don't--her own career has been a "masculine" one. "I have
created a House of Parliament," Miss Smith noted in her
journal of life on the island,
which shall consist of twenty-one of the most steady X ' j
and virtuous Orphans, as well, of course, as my own
four Sons, who will be their natural Leaders. Caroline
says, why should not she, the eldest of the Family, be
there, and I had to discourse to her at some length on
the different functions of Man and Woman in the scheme
of Creation, and how it would not be fitting that the
gentler and frailer Sex should take an active part in
the male arts of Government. She replied, 'But you do,
Mamma!' and I had to explain to her the peculiar Posi
tion to which God had called me. I fear she gets no
more docile as time goes by, . . .
(0-F • , pp« 183-84)-''
A month later the spirited Caroline is neutralized as a
threat to Miss Smith's hegemony by the provision to her of
"a Consort," in the person of a young man she has been
pining to marry. Nothing else is heard thereafter of this
rebellious daughter, save that the "eldest boy" of her
union with Conrad Rimski was the "far from manly" Hindley
Smith-Rimski, and that Caroline herself died twenty years
169
before the arrival of the Thinkwell party on Orphan Island
(0.1. , p. 99) •
All four of the principal female characters in Hose
Macaulay's Crewe Train (1926) embody certain "masculine"
traits. Thus, the treacly and gossipy novelist, Evelyn
Gresham, has "closely cut" hair and a "boyish" body, de
spite her role as "the middle-aged mother of four adults"
(6*T., p. 286). Evelyn's catty, "clever," and attractive
daughter Audrey is an editor and an author, who sometimes
resents being a woman (C.T., p. 211). Admired by her
friend Arnold Chapel because she is "like and intelligent
39
youth, with a girl's grace added," Audrey is bisexual in
her own "admirations" (C^.T. , p. 84). Audrey's younger sis
ter, Noel, is an Oxford undergraduate and a feminist (C..T. ,
p. 211), who honorably avoids loose talk about the affairs
of others, and who, in the last chapter in which she ap
pears, goes off alone by train from London to Cornwall with
a rucksack on her back in search of her cousin Denham.
Having found Denham, Noel shares a symbolic meal with her,
becomes "friends" with her, crawls down a "slimy tunnel"
and explores a "secret" cave with her, and then accompanies
her back to London as a passenger in the side-car of her
motor-bicycle. In the "virginal"^0 communion of "the two
young girls," after bread and jam and tea, is a commingling
of -"-the-.produotlbf" ' s . . fastidip.uscivilization" and "the
_________________________________________ 170
young 'barbarian" (C_.T. , pi 297) • Denham Do tie, the female
protagonist of Crewe Train, is that "young barbarian."
Reviewing the novel at the time of its appearance,
critic Robert Morss Lovett observed that Denham
plays the part allotted in eighteenth century novels,
such as Nature and Art or The Fool of Quality, to a
boy, . . . who illustrates the education of nature as
opposed to that of artificial society.
The clergyman father of Denham Dobie was a misan
thrope and a recluse, who, after the death of Denham's
mother, resigned his living and fled with his small daugh
ter first to Mallorca, and then, when that island became
overpopulated, to Andorra, in the vain hope of avoiding
social contact and of evading responsibility. Unhappily
betrayed by "life" into a second marriage with a handsome
Z i 2
young Andorran woman, Mr. Dobie soon found himself the
father of four additional children, and the head of a
household that was continually filled with his wife's very
sociable friends and relations. Like other of the "mascu
line" heroines of Rose Macaulay, Denham has marked affini-
43
ties with her male parent. Likewise, in Mr. Dobie's
unhappy fate--he died as a direct result of the stress of
having to deal with too many English visitors at one time
(C.T., p. 23)— is a foreshadowing of Denham's own unhappy
future.
At the commencement of Crewe Train Denham is a
"grave, square-faced, brown-legged little girl," who is by
171
nature "a very self-sufficing and independent child" (C..T. ,
pp. 13» 11). She grows into an unkempt and silent young
woman who finds housework and child care distasteful and
unnecessary (C. .T. , pp. 15-16). In accordance with her
heredity, she lets others alone and wishes to he left alone
herself. A description of Denham at age twenty-one "stroll- *
ing up the rocky path behind Andorra town, full of bread
and cheese and . . . animal content" conveys no slightest
suggestion of the feminines
She was a long-legged, lounging, loosely-built young ■
woman, brown-skinned, blunt-featured, with small dark
eyes sunk deep under silky black.brows and a big mouth
screwed up into a whistle. She looked and was a
loafer. . . . She was untidy; she was probably stupid.
. . . She was obviously no lover of her kind; when she
saw anyone whom whe knew approaching, she . . . lurked
hidden until they were passed by. If you had asked
her why, she would have replied, "Dunno. It's a bother
speaking to people when you're out." . . . Denham Dobie
had no intention of giving herself unnecessary trouble.
(C.T., p. 18)
The sudden death of Denham's father puts her into
the hands of her maternal relatives, the Greshams, an ur
bane Chelsea family who hale her off to London and set
about exposing her "animal" nature to "the higher life."
They groom her, dress her, and subject her to books, par
ties, and people of culture. Exposed to civilization by
the Greshams as a savage is exposed to religion by mission
aries, Denham is compared to "a savage captured by life"
who continually and ineffectually asks "Why?" in an earnest
attempt "to grasp its principles," but who gets no satis-
172
factory answers (C .T. , p. 139)-
In all . . . things people had set up a standard, and
if you did not conform to it you were not right, you
were left. You wore thick stockings and high-heeled
shoes in the town. You wore a hat if you gave a lunch
party, a sleeveless dress in the evening. You had,
somehow or other, to conform to a ritual, to he like
the people you knew. You had to have, when you ate,
one food brought in after another, each with fresh
plates and different kinds of instruments to eat them
with, as if on purpose to take time and trouble the
servants. . . .
Denham sometimes dreamed of a life in which one
took practically no trouble at all. One would be alone;
one would have no standards 5 there would be a warm cli
mate and few clothes, and all food off the same plate,
if a plate at all. And no conversation....,
(C.T., p . 58)
Denham is a truthful, literal-minded person who
wants adventures instead of parties. She prefers maps to
novels, radio weather reports to classical music or talk
shows, puttering around in the gardener’s shed alone to
joining her family and their friends in the parlor for word
games or charades. Thus, her aunt perceives her as "a case
of arrested developmentand_makes 'plans.'td*;’ 'ha_ye-her.; seen
to'l (C.-T.. , p. 115)- Arnold Chapel, a friend and business
associate of the Gresham family, accuses her of being like
a child of thirteen (C.T., pp. 96-97)» but he succumbs to
a sexual attraction for "her strong firm body" (C.T., p.
88), and to a fascination for her exotic background, ap
pearance, and behavior, and insists they marry.
The physical and behavioral attributes of Arnold
and Denham express his "feminine" and her "masculine" qual-
121
ities. Arnold is slim, fair-complected, and refined, as
"befits a representative of "grace," "culture," and "civili
zation" (C.T., p. 88) . Preoccupied with physical passion,
he can still discourse learnedly--if distractedly--at din
ner on the Russian ballet (C.T. , p. llij-) . By contrast, his
inamorata is large and muscular, brown-complected, a rude
savage in behavior. She--not he--is "Physically . . . mag
nificent" (C.T. , p. 115)» a "primitive" (C..T. , p. 215).
Strong and silent, she strides through the forest in love
with her beau but thinking -much of the time instead of
"wasps' nests, moles, squirrels, ants, or how many miles
one walked an hour" (C..T. , p. 112). Arnold's parents, who
are anthropologists, classify her "as Cro-Magnon, . . . or
Neanderthal" (C.T. , p. 117).
Other traditional "female" and "male" qualities are
reversed in the personalities of this wife and husband:
Her health is robust; his is frail. She is laconic, stoic,
and practical; he is verbose, emotional, and imaginative.
She accepts religion pragmatically; he embraces it devoutly
(C.T., pp. 13^-135). She is slovenly; he is tidy. She
prefers solitude; he requires society. Her appetite ex
ceeds his. Her athletic abilities and energies surpass
his . Her practical and mechanical skills are far more in
evidence than his. She is active and perambulatory; he is
passive and stationary. She observes and describes real
174
events or natural phenomena accurately and dispassionately;
he romanticizes without regard for actuality. When he
writes a novel, Arnold positions "the literary moon" hap
hazardly and inaccurately, hut Denham is quick to remind
him of the astronomical verities (C.T. , p. 15*0 • While
Denham, clad in "khaki breeches" (C.T., p. 180), is in a
rowboat on the Cornish coast making maps, scaling cliffs,
and exploring caves, Arnold is wading along the shore and
gathering prawns (C .T. , pp. 17^--183) • While Denham,
dressed in "grimy overalls" (£.T., p. 228), is overhauling
her motorbike at her seacoast cottage and planning a soli
tary trek through Cornwall with her dog, Arnold is enter
taining and being entertained at parties, plays, and din--
ners in London.
Filled with a desire to please her during their
courtship— and perhaps also with a wish to taste once again
the delights of his own childhood--Arnold eagerly joins
Denham in the pursuits she enjoys, although he regards them
as better suited to a child of "thirteen" (C.T., p. 96).
During one weekend spent at her uncle's country house, he
finds her alone in the gardener's shed and joins her in
carving and sailing toy boats down a woodland stream.
Here, as on subsequent occasions, behavior which Arnold
perceives as enjoyable but regressive serves as a prelude
to serious heterosexual love-making between this pair. And,
just as the toy boats launched by Denham and Arnold may have
___________________________________175
been suggested by the wad of flaming paper sailed by Rickie
and Stephen in E . M. Forster’s The Longest Journey,^ so
the revelation to an inflamed Orlando of the boy-like
Sasha's femininity as she skates along a frozen river may
will owe something to Rose Macaulay's own streamside reve
lation, which preceded it by two years:
#
He came up to her, his retrieved boat in his hand.
He felt pleased, as if he had satisfied a small boy.
The rain stopped, and the west was suddenly a
sheet of yellow. The young man saw the young woman
standing against it, the short ends of her damp black
hair caught with light, her bare wet arms golden-brown.
His heart turned in him, for she was no small boy, but
a woman. Their eyes met, and the look in his filled
hers . . . with consciousness of him.
"I want to kiss you," he said. . . . c
(C.T., p. 99)
Their love affair leads to marriage, their marriage
leads to Denham's first pregnancy, and that pregnancy
causes her to be violently sick for the first time in her
46
life. While Denham loathes the pregnancy as an unwanted
and unwarranted affront to her body and an intolerable en
cumbrance upon her freedom of action, Arnold has "a whim
for a child or children" (C .T. , p. 172), and moreover sees
hn
in it an opportunity for his wife to become "feminised"': '
Mammas do not go on being like small boys [of twelve]] .
That quality in Denham which he loved would make place
for a new quality, of the kind commonly called deeper,
which he would love even more. She would become femi
nised. Arnold regretted this in a way, for, in propor
tion as their child should gain a mother, he must lose
a playmate; but still, life is like that, it marches
on, and what you lose on the swings you gain (let us
hope) on the roundabouts.
(C.T., p. 168)
176
When Denham disobeys her doctor and continues her normal
round of strenuous activities, she has a miscarriage. This
helps to create an ever-widening "rift" between herself and
her husband. When Denham is indeed "feminised" by the on
set of a second pregnancy, she resolves to sacrifice her
own essential nature out of regard for her unborn child and
out of a genuine but inarticulate and undemonstrative love
for Arnold. Ironically, when she makes this resolve, she is
unaware that Arnold is no longer in love with hers
Because she loved Arnold, she would go and live again
as he lived, surrounded by people, civilization, and
fuss, she would bear his child, tend it and rear it,
become a wife and a mother instead of a free person,
be tangled in a thousand industries and cares. . . .
(C.T., p. 312)
Early in their acquaintanceship Arnold had observed
of Denham that her nature was that of "an individualist"
(C.T., p. 96 ). A metaphor for the essence of that individ
uality is a seaside cottage with a passage in its basement
leading to a cave with an outlet to the sea. This cave she
discovers with "A deep, heady satisfaction," such as that
experienced by "a person in love, or a religious who has
found his vocation" (£.T_. » p* 182). The cottage and the
cave are, as Robert Kuehn so perceptively comments, sym-
JNQ
bolic of Denham's innermost "self, her soul." * From the
moment she is seized upon by "life," as her father was
before her, she strives ineffectually to defend that self
from encroachment by others. In seeking to ward off in-
_________________________________________________________________________177
truders from her cottage and her cave, "She is really,"
observes Kuehn, "fighting for her right to freedom and
privacy in the face of the world's compulsions and intru-
sions." '
That "freedom" and that "privacy" are best enjoyed
by Denham in pursuance of a life style that her acquaintan
ces regard as irresponsible, immature, and "masculine."
Had she been bom a biological male, following her own
innate inclinations and abilities might have made of her a
cartographer, a wood carver or carpenter or shipwright, a
meteorologist, a mechanic, a fisherman, a sailor, a soldier
of fortune, an athlete, an explorer, or a vagabond. But
she has been bom, instead, a biological female, and--like
all but one of such "masculine" Macaulay heroines--a heter
osexual as well.-5° And thus, tempted into "life" by
"love," as a mouse is tempted into "the trap" by "the piece
of toasted cheese that baited it" (C..T. , p. 313)» Denham is
perverted into a passive, "stupid" creature, lying pregnant
and helpless on a sofa, smothered in a blanket, and lis
tening to a disquisition on how to manage a household by a
woman who commends "The Cambridge and Oxford colleges" as
"excellent training schools for housewives" (C..T. , p. 318).
Young Cary Folyot of Daisy and Daphne (1928) has a
"secret life": She alternates reading the works of Freud--
178
!which frighten and disgust her--with making clandestine
•visits to an Anglican church. There she makes her confes
sion, receives absolution, and attempts without much suc
cess to argue her religious doubts with the priest. Daisy
Simpson, fiancee of Cary's older brother, accidentally dis
covers the private dilemma of this precocious pre-teenager
and is moved by it to speculates
Is . . . Csex], then, really so disgusting, or is it
we who are too readily disgusted? . . . How fortunate
are the animals, arriving into this world without the
sense of fastidiousness that so deranges and dualises
the mind of man..
(5* §L 5* > P* 198; emphasis added)
Caught like her creator amidst a complex of conflicting
feelings concerning the dichotomies of flesh and spirit,
Cary yearns alternately for matrimony and for celibacy;
51
for thirteen children who would emerge from her body, and
for a life spent writing books as a solitary nun in a con
vent and denying that same body.
The moral dilemma exemplified by Cary's internal
conflict is one that was central to Rose Macaulay's own
life:. For decades Macaulay was involved with a married
lover whom she could neither marry nor bring herself to
52
relinquish. Oscillating like Cary between sexual desires,
sexual disgusts, spiritual longings, and spiritual doubts,
Macaulay wrote in novel after novel of heroines who were
themselves writers and who were invariably involved In adul
tery , actual or potential.
1221
But Cary Folyot is of interest, too, because, being
some twelve or thirteen years of age, she is among the
youngest of Rose Macaulay's "masculine" women. Cary's
"spindle" legs and coltish appearance, her nautical predi
al
lection, ^ her adventure fantasies set in exotic and far-
off places, her yearning to be an explorer, her compulsive
"literary efforts" (D. & D., p. 175)» and her preoccupation
with religious faith and doubt--especially vis-a-vis the
Anglican Church--all of these make of her, like her prede
cessor Imogen Carrington, a recasting of the facts of Rose
Macaulay's own youth into fiction.
Climbing trees and waging imaginary battles between
settlers and Indians with her younger brother Charles while
in a forest, Cary suddenly finds herself obliged to do bat
tle in earnest, to save Charles from a wild boar. For this
purpose she takes up a male symbol of power, a "stick"
(D. & D., p. 5^)• This she uses to fend off the boar until
she, her brother, and their governess are rescued by the
timely arrival of her older brother Raymond who, of course,
wields a more substantial "stick" (D. & D., p. 5^)
When, some months later, Raymond is assaulted by burglars
in the middle of the night at their London home, it is Cary
who, unable to rouse Charles, "entered on her dark and
frightful adventure alone" in an attempt to rescue him. To
this end she is armed with a "cricket bat" belonging to the
180
-------------------------------------- ETC-------: ------------------------------
temporarily impotent Charles. ^ Along with her female
readers, Rose Macaulay must have thrilled vicariously to
Raymond's commendation of Cary--"You deserve a medal"
(D. & D., p. 252)--and to Cary's own retrospective enjoy
ment of the adventure, which was, the youthful heroine
exults, "Just like a night in a hook" (D. & D., p. 253)-
Cary's art is the mirror of her life? for, in her
own "literary efforts," it is young women who have all the
"adventures" (D. & D., p. 132). If a male character is
permitted to appear in a novel, he.occupies a subordinate
position as a husband and father, and can be quickly and
easily'eliminated when the heroine wants to go exploring
for treasure in Patagonia with her children and her faith
ful Indian guide (D. & D., pp. 175-176). In her survey of
the seven novels written by Rose Macaulay in the years
1918-1926, Margarete Kluge remarks:
One could call R. Macaulay the English woman's writer
par excellence. The chief and subordinate characters
of her numerous novels are almost exclusively women.
The man plays an entirely insignificant role in them,
being mostly only mentioned because certain of her
heroines are married and must therefore converse with
the husbands in question.-56
"When men come in []to a novel]] there's love," observes Cary.
And love between the sexes is something that causes Cary
considerable distress as she oscillates between her Church's
injunction "to think nicely" (D. & D., p. 195) and Dr.
Freud's observation
181
that no other group of Instincts has been submitted, to
such far-reaching suppression by the demands of cul
tural education, while at the same time the sexual in
stincts are the ones.which, in most people, find it
easiest to escape from the control of the highest men
tal agencies.57
While three of her more "masculine" sisters are
dealt with below in this chapter, Claudia Cradock of
Staying with Relations (193°) is of interest here because
she sheds additional light on the nature of Cary Folyot,
and thence on the nature of Rose Macaulay herself. Claudia
is deliberately misrepresented to the reader as "A spin
ster," "a virgin,"""The celibate type" (S.Rel., -pp. Ik,
158). Only midway through the plot is it revealed that
Claudia has been involved intermittently for years in a
love affair with a married man, Adrian Rickaby. Ultimately
Claudia puts several thousand miles between herself and
Rickaby and becomes engaged to a wealthy widower with five
children on whom she plans "to gratify her maternal in-
stincts" (S.Rel;,, p. 31^)* "And so much for your mother
types," her now bereft- lover bitterly complains to a novel
ist of his acquaintance.
"You didn't guess Claudia was one, did you?"
"No," said Catherine. . . .
"Well," he said, sombrely and with spite, "she is.
She wants to vent her instincts on a widower's five
children, and doubtless five more of her own as soon as
she can come by them."
(S.Rel., p. 31k)
The "Claudia" who so wants to exercise "her mater
nal instincts" and the "Catherine" who witnesses the dis
182
comfiture of Claudia's cast-off lover both bear a notice-,
able resemblance to Rose Macaulay. As Cary Folyot was able,
with a few strokes of her pen, to leave her heroine in pos
session of six or seven children who would serve as her
companions, but to divest her of a troublesome mate, so Rose
Macaulay was able to provide a ready-made family for Claudia
and to remove her from a relationship which caused her a
great deal of grief, guilt, and pain. It is no accident
that the names "Adrian Rickaby" and "Gerald 0’Donovan" have
an identical number of syllables.
Rose Macaulay's propensity for generating fantasy
children for herself is also quite evident in I_ Would Be
Private (1937)> an escapist novel which begins with the
birth to one of its heroines of quintuplets. There are
three "masculine" women in this novel. First mentioned of
these is twenty-two-year-old Winifred McBrown, the "sturdy,
plump-faced, brown-eyed girl" (W.B.P., p. 139) whose "un
womanly feat in technogenesis" (W.B.P., p. 15)— the prOdUe-
EjQ
tion of five live young at one birth-77— begins the story.
"Win" McBrown is the daughter of a sailor and "would have
been very well pleased," as her husband appreciates, "if she
could have been a sailor, too. . . . She likes to see
strange countries" (W.B.P., pp. k?, 185). Thus, lying
wearily convalescent after the birth of her quints, Win fan
tasizes at length of "Mountains and jungles, deserts and
• 183
islands," and paddles her solitary canoe about the "lagoons"
of her imagination (W.B.P., pp. 45-47). Win has read the
narratives of the perils endured by women explorers and
romanticized their sufferings, concluding "They have a granc
6 0
time, women that can travel have." She dreams that her
daughters will grow up to be aviators and explorers and that
she might someday accompany them on their explorations
(W.B.P., pp. 284-285). With money earned by the quints for
commercial endorsements and movie contracts she is able to
travel with her family to the Caribbean. But, so long as
her children are young and her husband has needs, any pro
longed and solitary rambles of her own become "selfish"
(W.B.P., p. 109). "To be a lover, a wife and mother, an
explorer, all four; here was a job" (W.B.P., p. 111).
Like Win, her sister Gert is an "adventuress at
heart" by virtue of their father's influence (W.B.P., p.
4?). Although she is attractively feminine in appearance,
Gert speaks of "street tarts" without a trace of "feminine"
embarrassment. When her sister mentions "dancing girls" as
one of the attractions of Japan, Gert counters :
As to dancing girls, I never struck any shortage of
them, that I remember. Now, if you know of a country
that features dancing men, I'd always be glad to con
sider it.
(W.B.P., pp. 43-44)
In Gert's fantasies about travel to exotic places tradi
tional sex roles are reversed: men are slavish and ornamen
184
tal; she is regal and sybaritic. In Gert's fantasy she is
splendidly clad in a costume that could almost have be
longed to Haroun al-Rashid--to wit, "white silk trousers
f i 1
and- a scarlet blouse." She reclines at her ease on the
deck of a luxury cruiser and takes her refreshment ilike the
master of a hareem with "a young fellow each side of me"
(W.B.P., p. 43)* Arriving at some exciting foreign port,
she goes "swanking ashore among the blackamoors, me palm
parasol held over me head by the Cship’s^ second officer,
while I buy pearls the size of peas" (W.B.P., p. 43)* Her
unsuccessful attempt to find and to purchase a small black
slave when she actually does arrive in the Caribbean
(W.B.P., p. 108) demonstrates that she would indeed convert
her fantasies into fact if circumstances permitted.
Sexually liberated--although, in her own sense of
£ p
the word, "discriminating" (W.B.P., p. 269) --Gert takes
for a husband. Senor Tomas Monte, a brown-skinned Venezuelan
of dubious antecedents, questionable character, charming
manner, and virtually non-existent vocation. A "kind of
gipsy fellow," his principal appeal for her is that "he em
bodied . . . some of the gay, titillating mystery and ro
mance of abroad” (ft-B.P., p. 308). Although she goes
through the form of marriage with him, just as she plans to
go through the form of divorce with him if they should go
their separate ways (W.B.P., p. 270), Gert is well aware
that "Monty" has left behind a wife--or wives--and that he
185
is "father many times" in many places (W.B.P., p. 102).
Amoral, high-spirited, sufficient unto herself (W.B.P., pp.
278, 302-303)f "Gert Grig loves for the moment and marries
for the moment. She departs from the scene of her wedding
on Papagayo Island with her new husband headed for Cuba and
Florida amidst the following authorial meditations!
Eternal adventuress, she would take Love in her stride,
take lovers as they came and went; she would see them,
yes, for a space, and, without heaviness, see them go,
and go herself. It was Life she would grasp at and
hold.
(W.B.P., p. 307)
Gert Grig’s marriage to Senor Monte is one of three
bigamous alliances in ! E Would Be Private. Perhaps fanta
sies centering around her own married lover influenced Rose
Macaulay to bless these irregular unions with the Anglican
marriage ceremony and to have each of these "marriages"
promise well for the happiness of the individuals con
cerned.^ Gert's disavowal of "silly police ideas" regar
ding arrangements entered into by partners who wish to be
together, however permanently or impermanently (W.B.P., p.
270), accords with her sailor father's pragmatic approach
to marriages "Bigamy has its bright side, as I always say"
(W-B.P., p. 279) •
In one of the scenes of I Would Be Private, Doro
thea Dunster, the third of the story’s "masculine" women,
rubs down "her hard, sturdy, naked body" with a rough towel,
gets into her pyjamas and ties the cord.^ The costume in
186
which Dorothea sleeps is "masculine." The clothing in
which she works--"khaki dungarees," "sea-going overalls,"
"shorts" (W.B.P., pp. 127, 257 > l66)--is "masculine." The
handkerchief she carries is "grimy" (W.B.P., p. 179) » most
probably with the grease from the engine of her motor-boat,
of from her solitary digging for treasure on the various
cays of Papagayo Island.
The "stalwart tomboy" daughter of the island's An
glican priest (W.B.P., p. 166), Dorothea recapitulates
several of the salient characteristics of her "masculine"
predecessors. She is sturdily-built and practical minded
like "John" Vallon; she has well-developed musculature,
seeks privacy, and has a secret refuge like Denham Dobie.
She has the simple and unquestioning religious faith of
Rosamond Thinkwell, and like Rosamond loves to eat tropical
fruit, loves animals, is compassionate concerning the trials
of others, and is readily moved to sympathetic tears. Like
Cary Folyot, Dorothea provides herself with imaginary
babies (W.B.P., pp. 239-240)5 but, unlike Cary, Dorothea
seems curiously asexual. Calm and laconic like many of her
predecessors, Dorothea is also the realization of every
nautical fantasy of every heroine who has preceded her, for
she is the captain of her own boat--although it is only a
small dinghy--and the master of her own soul.
The quiet, ascetic Vicar of Papagayo Island per-
________________________________________________________________________187
ceives her as "the only sane one among his children"
(W.B.P., p. 313)* for she is quiet, contented, and useful,
and remains untroubled hy the carnal passions that make her
sister a laughingstock and her brother a wastrel. There is
about Dorothea none of the feeling of being afraid, incom
petent, and "lost" which assails even the sturdiest of her
predecessors simply by reason of their femaleness. In
Staying with Relations, for example, Isie Rickaby can ride
a surfboard like a demigod and seek her prey in the jungles
of Guatemala like Diana the Huntress (S.Rel., pp. 17* 312),
but she is revealed to be hopelessly dependent and neu
rotic. Likewise, Isie’s young stepsister Meg Cradock, de
spite her sturdy body, her archery, fishing, swimming, and
other down-to-earth boyish preoccupations, is shown to have
the physical and mental weakness appertaining to a previous
bout with "Meningitis" (S.Rel., p. 93)* These and other
stalwart women in Staying with Relations are weighed in a
balance with their male relatives and found wanting:
Benet, so like . . . [[his sister Claudia]], had, among
other differences, the differences of sex. . . .He,
being masculine, could assert himself more firmly on
the world, approaching it with more of familiarity and
of confidence, seating himself in its saddle and seiz
ing its reins with the triumphant control of the male
rider whose steed it has always (if one comes to think
of it) been. Feminine creatures too often appear and
feel unseated, alien, and a little lost, as if they
knew no way of coming to terms with a world too strong,
swift, and overpowering for them. Catherine had seen
that lost look in the eyes of many little girls, while
their brothers seemed to be immediately at home in the
odd world into which they had strayed, recognizing it
as something which their papas and grandpapas had
188
“ bequeathed to them. . . . Baffled and afraid; that,
thought Catherine, was what women were when they
stopped to think. Men, on the other hand, seemed com
petent , assured, at home, full of energy and physical
and mental robustness .
(S.Rel., pp. 38-39» emphasis added) ^
Catherine, as has already “ been noted, is a novelist
with a marked resemblance to Rose Macaulay. Catherine's
explorations of "woman's incompetence and bewilderment in
the face of the world's strangeness" (S.Rel., p. 39) can be
subsumed into those of Macaulay herself as she portrays the
vast majority of her "masculine" women. Thus, for example,
John Yallon is frequently "sick" with anger or worry, Stan
ley Croft, Rome Garden, and Catherine Grey lie sleepless
and tormented at night; Imogen Carrington is suspected by
fifi
her uncle of being mentally ill; Denham Dobie becomes
pregnant, passive, and hopelessly "lost"; Cary Folyot is a
prey to nightmares and overwhelming bedtime fears; Isie and
Meg are confined to their beds by stress and exhaustion;
Alix Sandomir and Barbary Deniston are "nervy" from earliest
childhood
Dorothea Dunster Is distinguished from these and
other of her "masculine" sisters by four qualities. One of
these is, as has already been established, her absolute
emotional stability and equanimity. Even the jolliest and
/TO
most equable of Rose Macaulay's other outdoorswomen
"sunny," "tomboyish" Molly Bellairs in The Making of a Bigot
( 1 9 1 ^ ) "timeless" Una Garden in Told by an Idiot,^
______________________________________________189
happy-go-lucky Rosamond Thmkwell in Orphan Island, "Ama
zonian" Pamela Deniston in The World My Wilderness (1950)--
must pass through a Sturm und Drang period resulting from
frustrated love before they can attain to the possibility
of the sort of contentment to which their essential natures
seem best suited. Perhaps Dorothea’s utter asexuality is
the most influential component of her tranquil and untrou
bled nature. The only two men of importance to her are her
father, a gentle, kindly, and genuinely spiritual cleric;
and her friend Mr. Huggins, a cheerful retired sailor who
serves as a second father to her. Dorothea is, moreover,
as insusceptible to the homoerotic as she is to the hetero
erotic. Unlike many of her predecessors, she finds no
women who "excite" her, even from afar.
A second characteristic of Dorothea Dunster that
makes her unusual is the high regard in which she is held
by all the men who meet her. She is esteemed by her father,
is highly praised by Mr. Huggins, and earns the accolades
71
even of the island's most misogynist residents. The only
dispraise accruing to her is also as a direct result of
certain of her "masculine" attributes. To wit, Gert Grig
resents her as being "more of a boy. No sex, if you get
me," because, unlike the other women of Papagayo Island,
Dorothea is impervious to the charms of Senor Monte and
perceives him for the "lazy louse" he is (W.B.P., p. 268)
1^0
And Dorothea's "nymphomaniac" sister Linda hates Dorothea
for habitually exercising towards her the kind of "protec
tion" commonly provided in the novels of an earlier era hy
a brother or other male relative.
A third of Dorothea's attributes--her "unfailing
competence and.calm" (W.B.P., p. 273)— explains her popu
larity with men. With her "strong . . . hands" and skilled
fingers, she can skillfully mend a fishing line, clean,
oil, and otherwise care for her boat and its engine, navi
gate adroitly whether by day or by night even through
waters avoided by others because they are difficult of pas
sage and/or because they are feared to be haunted.^ On
all occasions she lands her boat "neatly" (W.B.P., p. 232).
A fourth quality, that of upward mobility, makes
Dorothea Dunster unique among all of Rose Macaulay’s
heroines. Denied the educational advantages accorded to
her lazy older brother solely by reason of his sex, she is
practical, enterprising, and "not unintelligent" (W.B.P.,
pp. 171 > 237)* She is the only "masculine" heroine in all
of Rose Macaulay's novels to practice a trade rather than a
nu
profession' and to rise like the heroes of Horatio Alger—
by dint of her own industry, ability, and enterprise, with,
of course, the help of "fortune"--to a position of economic
prosperity (W.B.P., p. 315)-
1$1
No character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is
more feminine than his most "masculine" woman: Irene Adler,
the lovely actress and transvestite "adventuress" who beats
7 * 5
Sherlock Holmes at his own game in "A Scandal in Bohemia."
Similarly, no character created by Rose Macaulay is more
voluptuously feminine than her most "masculine" creation:
Helen Michel of The World My Wilderness (1950)• Irene
Adler’s principal appeal for the king who has jilted her to
make a marriage of state is her "soul of steel. She has
the face of the most beautiful of women, and the mind of
7 ^
the most resolute of men." Likewise Macaulay's Helen
Michel combines "a woman’s beauty and the mind, grasp and
wit of a man" (W.W., p. 33)*^
Helen Michel's androgynous name reflects the equally
powerful "female" and "male" qualities she possesses. As
Helen of Troy is reputed to have kindled both Greeks and
Trojans to a state of war, so this modern-day Helen is said
to possess "that outrageous power of inflaming" (W.W., p.
233)• With the dark hair and "classical" facial features
of a Greco-Iberian deity, the full-breasted statuesque body
"of the Milo Yenus," she compels the adoration both of men
and of women. Her "siren"-like charm inspires in her ex-
husband, Sir Gulliver Deniston, a kind of "madness that has
captured about all of me" (W.W., pp. 226, 235)* She has
_______________________________________________________________132
"the power to dominate people" merely "by her presence"
(W.W.* p. 233)* Lucien, married cousin of her late second
husband Maurice, finds her irrestible. Barbary, her adoles
cent daughter, is held enspelled and suffering in the "net"
of her "charm" (W.W., p. 146).^ Meeting Helen for the
first time, an; } Irish nurse finds herself "trapped. . . . a
slave to sudden passion" (W.W., p. 203). Even Sir
Gulliver's appropriately jealous and hostile second wife,
Lady Pamela, allows Helen to "seduce" her into a temporary
friendliness (W.W., p. 211).
Helen'.s surname, "Michel," translates as "Michael,"
79
a name favored by Macaulay 7 and appropriate to the "mascu
line" qualities Helen displays. In Going Abroad (1934),
beauty expert Jeanne Josef deplores "that masculine absorp
tion in study, . . . that made some English women so very
strange" and so neglectful of clothes and cosmetics.(G.A.,
80
p. 295)* But Helen is "an intellectual courtesan" (W.W.,
p. 225). She not only recapitulates classical antiquity in
ler heroically feminine persons she also ranges freely and
familiarly over it with her gifted scholar’s mind. In years
gone by Helen soothed her daughter to sleep with the Greek
nyths or with Herodotus (W.W., p. 38). She was her son’s
first instructor in Greek and Latin (W.W., p. 20). Thor
oughly at home in "twelfth-century Provencal poetry," she
Invents fifty poems in the troubadour style. Some of these
: _________________ : _______________________________________ m .
are printed in the Nouvelle Revue, and they completely de-
8l
ceive Provencal scholars (W.W., pp. 84-85). With an ease
that would have done credit to an Elizabethan courtier,
Helen maintains that perpetrating this sort of sophisticated
literary fraud is merely a recreation for her "like embroi
dery, or patience" (W.W., p. 86). Lounging in her garden
in the south of France, she delivers to her eldest son a
seemingly casual commentary on scholars who have committed
"Fraud, forgery, plagiarism, falsification, theft, conceal
ment and even destruction of documents, to win glory or to
prove a theory" (W.W., p. 86). Her lecture is in itself a
masterpiece of erudition.
Helen admits to her son that, in matters of scholar
ship, as in other matters, "I've no conscience of any
kind. . . . It seems to have been left out of me" (W.W.,
p. 86). Baptized into the Anglican Church "too young to
say no" (W.W., p. 26), she wonders
if people want gods, why not the Greek ones; they were
so useful in emergencies, and such enterprising and
entertaining companions. Capricious, of course, but
helpful, unless one offended them. I don't know why
paganism has so quite gone out in England; I suppose
we’re not naturally a god-fearing people.
(W.W., pp. 26-27)
Helen uses "god-fearing" in the sense of "god-propitiatingV
Half ironically, half in earnest she proposes a reversion to
deities of the sort that can be pleased by an offering of
fish on a stone altar, a practice which her friend, the
__________________
Catholic Abbe Dinant, calls "apostasy" (W.W., p. 27).®^
Unincumbered and unintimidated by the Judeo-Christian ethic,
Helen speaks and lives in conscious defiance of commonly
accepted but sexually repressive religious and cultural
myths, particularly as they apply to women. Outspoken,
free-thinking, Helen derides the basic concepts that under
pin the patriarchy: to wit, that "female virtue" is any
more "frail" than "male virtue" (W.W., p. 2^1); that women
need to be "stupid," uninteresting, and lacking in initia
tive (W.W., pp. 189-190); that work is desirable, that
patriotism is laudable, that the family is a religious
ideal:
"And as to the family, Csaid Helen,3 I have never
understood . . . why it should be an ideal at all. A
group of closely related persons living under one roof;
it is a convenience, often a necessity, sometimes a
pleasure, sometimes the reverse; but who first exalted
it as admirable, an almost religious ideal?"
"My dear Madame, not almost. It is a religious
ideal." The abbe spoke drily, and did not add anything
about the Holy Family at Nazareth, for he never talked
in such a manner to his worldly, unbelieving friends.
(W.W,, pp. 13^-135)
It is this sort of iconoclasm that motivates Helen to paint
a portrait of her late father-in-law, a prominent French
mayor, in the nude.^
Equally iconoclastic is Helen's refusal to perform
the traditionally "feminine” role of "supporting affective
Oh
relations within the family," or anywhere else. That one
can feel liking and affection for people within and without
195
one's household, but that they should never be trusted, is
the advice Helen gives to her daughter (W.W., pp. 223-224),
and it illustrates her "masculine" predisposition to subor
dinate her emotions to her reason or her pleasure*.
She was one of the rare women who are almost as highly
sexed as a man; yet she took sex casually in her stride;
it was not an aim of existence, but a pleasure by the
way, to be taken simply, directly, frankly, then laid
aside for some other pleasure. . . . CHer lover] Lucien
admired her enormously, finding in her a woman's beauty
and the mind, grasp and wit of a man. He guessed in
her, too, a masculine freedom and sensuousness; most
women, he held, loved not with their senses but with
their sentiments.
(W.W., p. 33)
Sometimes as casual in her maternity as many men are in
their paternity, when it suits her convenience Helen reveals
to her ex-husband that she has let him think for some seven
teen or eighteen years that her daughter Barbary was really
their daughter. She casually explains the affair with the
Spanish painter Vicente Rodriguez that produced the child
by quoting Byron’s comment concerning Don Juan's liaison
with Donna Julia:
What men call gallantry, and the gods adultery,
Is much more common where the climate's sultry.
In certain of her attributes Helen Michel resembles
86
her Irish father, a gambling, disreputable, still virile
"dispossessed peer in Galway" (W.W., p. 226). However,
Rose Macaulay's conception of Helen owes far more to the
life of Lord Byron's contemporary, Charles James Fox (1749-
1806). Helen, like Fox, was brought up by her father "with-
196
out the least regard for morality."^ University educated
like Fox (W.W., p. J1), as thoroughly conversant with the
classics as he, in her student days she--as did he--
88
succumbed to "extravagant and dissolute habits," and
their respective careers are both marked and marred by the
same. Helen's son Richie remembers
. . . the long nights of cards, when his mother had
sat playing on and on, with a party of friends, mostly
men, enveloped in cigar smoke, knocking back whiskey,
brandy, vodka, with enviable . . . expertise. . . , ac
quiring and parting with piles of chips that stood for
incalculable wealth. . . . Helen had always played to
the end; she might be finished financially, but never
in spirit; she was like Charles Fox, her ancestor, who
having played and lost a fortune, would stake his gold
watch, his horses, his houses, perhaps his mistresses.
(W.W., pp. 41-42; emphasis added)89
As sincerely as her putative ancestor, albeit on a
far smaller scale, Helen Michel is a "champion of lib-
90 . .
erty. Of her politics she says, "I am an old-fashioned
Whig. Like my volatile ancestor, Charles James Fox" (W.W.,
p. 148). Other parallels between the two are far too
striking to be ignored. Arthur Aspinall writes of Fox,
"His charm could overcome the hostility of even the most
91
inveterate of his foes."^ The same has already been es-
92
tablished regarding Helen Michel. As Fox, in his later
years, entered into an irregular and enduring union with
Mrs. Elizabeth Armitstead, to whom he remained devoted and
whom he ultimately married,, so Helen Michel, married to
Gulliver Deniston when she first began to live with Maurice
Michel, became successively Maurice's mistress, wife, and
_________________________________________________________________________ L22_
widow (W.W., p. 19)* After his death, whatever her pecca
dilloes, she remains devoted to his memory (W.W., pp. 32,
89, 223)* In the home Fox made with Mrs. Armitstead at St.
Anne's Hill, he is said to have "indulged his tastes for
93
classical literature and a rural existence.'' ^ Their life
at St. Anne's Hill became the prototype for Helen and
Maurice Michel's secluded life at their "Villa Fraises."
Thus, as Helen Deniston Michel lounges comfortably
and colorfully clad in a hammock in her garden "idly trans
lating Greek comedies into French," it is not merely the
"Michel male tradition . . .of libertinage" that she is
recapitulating, but that of her "volatile" Whig "ances
tor," Charles James Fox, as well. In no other "masculine"
woman character of Rose Macaulay is so much beauty combined
with so much intellect. Next to Cleopatra-like Helen (W.W.,
p. 107), Sir Gulliver's attractive second wife, Pamela, an
athlete and a huntress, who "looked at once Amazonian and
full of good sense" knows herself to be "crude," "unin
formed," and "dull" (W.W., pp. 36, 225)* Likewise, Helen's
own daughter Barbary--depicted with all the customary
boyish paraphernalia: the pocketknife, the wooden boats
and whistles, the male garb, the fishermen friends, the
solitary travelling and exploring, the adventures as a
fringe "maquisarde"--seems merely callow by comparison.
__________________________________________________198
NOTES
CHAPTER IY
• t
Dorothy L. Sayers, The Unpleasantness at the
Bellona Club (New Yorks Avon Books, 1928, 1963), p. 172.
2
Sayers's love involvements--and her "masculine"
mannerisms--are chronicled in Janet Hitchman, Such a
Strange Lady: A Biography of Dorothy L. Sayers (New Yorks
Avon Books, 1975, 1976).
3
Like Macaulay's real-life lover, Gerald 0'Donovan,
this man, "Francis Jayne," is an adulterer with two chil
dren hy his wife. Rome Garden witnesses his stabbing and
death (T.b.I., pp. 121-122). Mr. Jayne's "feminine" name
and brutal fate put him in a class with other emasculated
men--Laurie Rennel, Basil Doye, Nicky Chester--discussed
above in Chapter II.
4
Alice Bensen, Rose Macaulay, p. 82, notes that
Imogen is "a recollection of the author's childhood." S! ee
also pp. 83-84.
^See, in this order, T.b.I., pp. 211, 253, 163-164,
248, 268, 219-220, 251-252, 224.
^Women who do not do so are subject to at least the
implied threat of rape in 0.1., p. 288, C.T. , p. 205, and
T.T., p . 20 .
"^Letter dated "10th Nov. 1952" in Last Letters, p.
50. See also Chapter I above, pp. 35-36.
8
In young adulthood her admirations are bisexual.
See T.b.I. •» pp. 301-303*
9See also T.b.I., pp. 328, 333-334.
10T.b.I., pp. 83, 105-106, 122-124.
■^See, e.g., T.b.I., pp. 140-141 .
12See also T.b.I., p. 212.
13
Constance Smith, Rose Macaulay, pp. 78-79*
A22.
After Clare Potter confesses to giving Oliver
Hobart a fatal push downstairs, the Anglican deacon who has
counseled her writes in his journals
That she had truly repeated what had passed between her
and Hobart I believed. But whether she had pushed him,
or whether he lost his own balance, seemed to me still
an open question.
(Potterism, p. 187)
■^O.I., pp. 79, 267, 291, 311, passim.
16
Writing of Denham Dobie's cartographical procliv
ity,, Alice Bensen in Rose Macaulay, p. 98, states that Ma
caulay herself "was a great collector'^ of‘ .;maps. Of Imogen
Bensen writes, p. 91, "She is one aspect of the girlhood of
her . . . creator.,"''-.,
17See also O.I., pp. 142, 154-155, 195-196, 208.
■^See also 0 , pp. 34-35*
19
'Cf. Catherine Grey, who is "excited" by and "in
love with" Claudia Cradock in Staying with Relations, pp.
49, 88. Catherine experiences; this love while she is
strolling about with a "stick"’ in her hand, p. 87.
on
See also 0 .1. , pp. 43-44.
^It is only after Miss Smith is deposed that "THE
NAME OF THIS ISLAND IS HEREBY CHANGED FROM SMITH ISLAND TO
ORPHAN ISLAND," by the rebellious populace, 0 .I_. , p. 282.
22
See above, Chapter I, pp. 23-27*
23
Flanders has a footnote here which reads as
follows:
This is a central argument in L . C. Knightsy.>Brama
and Society in the Age of Johnson (New York: 1968• first
published 1937); see also R. H. Tawney, Religion and the
Rise of Capitalism (New York: New American Library,
1947; first published 1922).
24
Jane Flanders, "The Fallen Woman in Fictxon," pp.
10-11. See above, Chapter III, n. 3, regarding this paper.
2 S
0. » P* 65, reveals the Anglocentric nature of
the islanders’ conceptions:
200
Of course, we know, for we have always heen taught so
here, that Great Britain, the country from which we
originally emigrated, . . .is the world’s huh, pecul
iarly chosen hy the Deity as the centre of His benefi
cent purposes towards His universe.
This attitude is explored in Richard D. Altick, Victorian
People and Ideas (New Yorks W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
1973), pp. 188-189, q.v.
2^0.1. , p. 219; see also p. 220.
27
David Thomson, England in the Nineteenth Century
(1815-191*0 (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1950» reprinted
1963), p. 188, recalls:
In 1918 the Representation of the People Act gave the
vote to women over thirty who were householders or
wives of householders. They numbered some 8,500,000.
See also T .b.I_. , pp. 331-332.
2 8
See 0 .1_. , pp. 60-61 , 63-66, passim.
29
'"So Miss Smith consented to become (as she
thought) Mrs. O'Malley, and they were married according to
the Scottish rite, before two witnesses . . ." (0..I,. , p.
27) •
3°0.I., pp. 68, 91-92, 9^-95, 170.
3^See above, n. 21.
320.1., p. 98.
330.1., pp. 62-63.
ln Crewe Train, pp. 81-82, Evelyn Gresham’s niece
Catherine is said to carry her politics "ardently like- a
sword." Catherine's Liberal M. P. husband Tim is a "chorus"
echoing,her opinions instead of an independent thinker for
mulating his own.
35Cf. Exodus 7:8-13, and 17:5-13; Numbers 17:5-10
and 20:8-11. A more recent instance is in J . R. R.
Tolkien's The Two Towers: Being the Second Part of The Lord
of the Rings (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965)» p*
189:
201
He raised his hand, and spoke slowly in a clear
cold voice. 'Saruman, your staff is broken.' There
was a crack, and the staff split asunder in Saruman's
hand, and the head of it fell down at Gandalf's feet.
'Go!' said Gandalf. With a cry Saruman fell hack and
crawled away. . . . The spell of Saruman was broken . . .
^^0.1_. , pp. 182-184, passim.
37
This is written very much in the style of Queen
Victoria. See, e.g., Elizabeth Longford, Queen Victoria* .
Born to Succeed (New Yorks Harper & Row, 1964» ppbk.), pp .
328-329, passim.
■^O.I.* , PP* 186, 243* See also above, Chapter II,
pp. 78-80.
^ Crewe Train, p. 277- Cf. Constance Smith, Rose
Macaulay, pT 9^s
Gerald [0'Donovan]] once remarked . . . that Rose had a
brain like a man's, and that this was one of the things
about her which particularly attracted him.
^°Noel is a virgin, spiritually and physically, as
symbolized by the "empty mug" she sets down as a precursor
to this communion. Similarly, although she is pregnant by
Arnold at the time, Denham's spiritual "virginity" is sym
bolized by her secret "passage to the sea" which she in
vites Noel to explore.
41
Lovett, Robert M., The History of the Novel in
England (New Yorks Houghton Mifflin Company, 1932), p . 2531
quoted in Robert Kuehn, "The Pleasures of Rose Macaulay," p~.
l8l f . . . . V - . . - - - • - - -
42
Crewe Tram, pp. l4-15i 33*
43
Crewe Train, pp. 22-23* Verney Ruth of Abbots
Verney and Peter Margerison of The Lee Shore each bear a
remarkable resemblance to their respective mothers. John
Vallon of The Valley Captives, Barbary Deniston of The
World My Wilderness, Julian Conybeare of The Shadow Flies,
Stanley Croft of Told by an Idiot, and the Grig sisters of
I Would Be Private all have much in common with their re
spective fathers.
44
It is very likely that Macaulay herself regularly
indulged in the sailing of toy boats, at least in her youth.
Secret River, pp. 39-41, and The Furnace, pp. 228ff., con
tain similar episodes which may owe their origins, as may
202
this one, to the scene which concludes chapter 33 of E. M.
Forster's The Longest Journey (New Yorks Vintage/Random
House, 1962 edition), p. 293*
45
X f . Virginia Woolf, Orlando, chapter 1, pp.
37-38.
46 1
See n. 4 to the Introduction to this dissertation.
47
N.B. This is Macaulay’s spelling, for which
there is a precedent in the OED.
48
Kuehn, The Pleasures of Rose Macaulay, p. 188. A
Freudian interpretation would equate the "sea" which Denham
leaves on her first exploration of the cave with "amniotic
fluid"; would compare the "slimy . . . tunnel" 'through
which she crawls with the "birth canal"; and would also
accord to the "rock steps," two chambers of the cave,-the:
cottage, and other such images in C.T. , chapter 9» their
standard Freudian equivalents. See Freud's The Interpreta
tion of Dreams in The Complete Psychological Works, vol. 5»
pp. 354-355, 400-401, 365V passim.
^Kuehn, Ibid.
^The exception is Pamela Hilary of Dangerous Ages,
whose lesbian life style is discussed above in Chapter III,
pp. 119-122.
51
Constance Smith reports that, in .childhood, Ma
caulay frequently played at having "twelve or thirteen
children." Rose Macaulay, p. 35-
52Smith, Ibid., pp. 159. 185, 200-201, passim.
53
•^As demonstrated by her "reefer coat," Daisy and
Daphne, p. 196.
54
By contrast, "Daisy had no stick with her,"
D. & D., p. 54. Especially in the early novels, characters
leaning on sticks for support or wielding them in self-
defense are so numerous--Daphne Oliver in The Making of a
Bigot, p. 87, Alix Sandomir in Non-Combatants, p. 5, and
Imogen Carrington of Told by an Idiot, p. 251, are not
elsewhere mentioned in this regard, and so are brought to
the reader's attention here--as to prod this writer to
recommend that an article "examining in detail Macaulay's
use of these symbols is greatly to be desired. Macaulay
herself leans on a stick in Constance Smith’s Rose Macaulay,
photograph facing p. 176.
203
----------------------------------------------------------------
n D. & D. , pp. 250-251, Charles is depicted as
"dead asleep after his orgy"— i.e. he has devoured an en
tire pot of jam--with "his head hanging outside" his bed,
his face smeared with strawberry jam, and "a small empty
pot" at his side. Coming upon this scene in Charles's bed
room, Cary picks up Charles's "cricket bat" and goes off to
defend the household.
Similar Freudian symbols occur in The Valley Cap
tives , where Laurie's castration is symbolized by, among
other things, a broken tree branch. See V.C., pp. 199ff*
See also Laurie's "wobbling" "candle" on V.C., p. 229.
Another notable castration symbol occurs when Peter
Conolly pulls Charles Thinkwell's tooth--and subsequently
marries the girl they have -both been eourting--in Orphan
Island, pp. 259-260.
One of the rare phallic images in the novels which
is not immediately also an image of sexual impotence is
that of Nicky Chester who "stabbed into the soft, damp
earth with his stick," in What Not, p. 148, during a tryst
with the woman he later marries. However, Chester is sym
bolically castrated elsewhere in the novel, as explained
above, Chapter II, pp. 57-58.
Cf. Sigmund Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, Com
plete Psychological Works, vol. W, p~^ 186, vol. 5» p.
38?n., pp. 366-367, and passim.
^Kluge, "Die Stellung Rose Macaulays Zur Frau," p.
137.
< 7
Freud, On Dreams, Complete Psychological Works,
vol. 5» p. 682. Cary confesses to Daisy that she has been
reading "a book about dreams" by "A man called Frood,"
D. & D., p. 195*
CjO
D N.B. Belle, Claudia's stepmother, has made a
similar marriage, S.Rel., pp. 11-12, and the result is a
family with five children.
69
Win's father and his second wife have four chil
dren, W.B.P., p. 141 . Constance Smith records that, in her
childhood Macaulay, with four of her brothers and sisters,
made up a group to which they and their mother continually
referred as "the five." A sixth child, Eleanor, remained
ostracized and unwanted, while a seventh, Gertrude, died at
the age of three. Rose Macaulay, pp. 24-35*
6 0
W.B.P. , pp. 61-64, presents in jest the sort of
adventures that S.Rel. portrays in earnest.
204
-
Her "flop hat, umbrella size," W.B.P., p. 43, is
also suggestive of an Aral male's kaffiyeh.
^Gert applies this term ironically to SeRor Monte,
but it is equally applicable--in its ironic sense--to her.
/ I o
Senor Monte has failed to divorce a ’ wife he left
in Venezuela. He marries Gert Grig in an Anglican ceremony
on Papagayo Island. Elderly Mr. Grig has left a wife in
England and, under an assumed name, has married a second
wife on Papagayo Island. They are pillars of the local
Anglican Church. Meanwhile, back in London, Mr. Grig’s
first wife, believing he is dead, marries a widower named
Mr. Purdie, but it is not explained if the ceremony is a
religious or a civil one.
64 . . .
Her sexually troubled sister Linda watches while
she does sO, W.B.P., pp. 259-261. See alsovwhat is possibly
Linda's symbolic castration of Dorothea on pp. 178-179*
^ C f . Orphan Island, p. 24, and The World My Wil
derness , pp. 91-92.
T.b.I., pp. 251-252.
6*7
'See Non-Combatants, pp. 29, 32-33, passim, and
The World My Wilderness, pp. 16, 218, passim.
68
Margarete Kluge's terms for such a woman in "Die
Stellung Rose Macaulays Zur Frau," p. 137* are "Die zeit-
lose Frau, der naturhafte Mensch."
69See M.B., p. 95*
70
"Una is eternal and sublime; . . ." T.b.,I*» p*
126. See also Kluge, Ibid.
71
I.e., the three homosexuals discussed above in
Chapter II, pp. 85-92.
72
Cf. Rosamond's susceptibility to the charms of a
"fallen" naval man in 0 .I_* » pp• 43-44.
73W.B.P., pp. 176, 235, 150-151, 244, 129, 238.
74
"Louie" Robinson of Views and Vagabonds works in
a mill, but she has left her job by chapter 3 of the novel
to marry Benjamin Bunter. There is, moreover, nothing
noticeably "masculine" about her, other than her nickname.
205
' 7 ^Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Scandal in Bohemia,"in
The Complete Original Illustrated SHERLOCK HOLMES (Secaucus,
New Jerseys Castle Books, 1976), pp • 15-16, 23-25* Cf. alsc
the nameless lady "avenger" in "The Adventure of Charles
Augustus Milverton," pp. 5^7-5^8» 550, and the "tall, grace
ful, and queenly" lady bicyclist in "The Adventure of the
Solitary Cyclist," pp. ^95ff•
^Doyle, "Bohemia," p. 16.
77
fSee above, n. 39*
^8See also W.W. , p. 30.
7Q
7See above, Chapter II, p. 5^*
8^See also G.A., p. 29^.
81
Macaulay herself perpetrated such a fraud, as ex-
palined above in Chapter I, pp. 16-18.
82
Fish and fishing are important Christian symbols
in The Towers of Trebizond, q.v.
83W.W., pp. 3, 5-7, 12-13*
8A
Flanders, "The Fallen'Woman," p. 11.
O c '
Don Juan, canto 1, stanza 63, 11* 7-8, quoted in
W.W., p. 237 *
86
A catering to English parochialism--not evident
in the novels in other than amatory matters--seems to be
operating here. Likewise, the sexual transgressions of
Betty Crevequer of The Furnace are possible because she is
half Italian; while those of Eileen Le Moine of The Making
of a Bigot, Alix Sandomir of Non-Combatants, and Helen
Michel's daughter Barbary are understandable because they
are half "Irish, and a little Hungarian" (M.B., p. 91),
half Polish, and half Spanish, respectively. Other instan
ces can also be cited.
Qty
Statements regarding Fox quoted in this chapter
have been derived from the article by Arthur Aspinall in
The New Encyclopedia Britannica, Macropaedia, vol. 7, 15th
edition, 1980, pp. 578-579, s.v. "Fox, Charles James."
88Cf. Aspinall, Ibid., with W.W., p. 192.
8^See also W.W., pp. 187-188.
206
^^Aspinall, Ibid.
^Aspinall, Ibid.
^See above, in this chapter, pp. 192-193*
^Aspinall, Ibid.
"^Emphasis added. See W.W., pp. 5» 12, passim.
207
CHAPTER V
"TWINS"
A great many of Rose Macaulay's novels have in them
a young woman and a young man--frequently sister and
brother; sometimes cousins--who often seem to be the femi
nine and masculine counterparts of but one personality. An
instance of this occurs in Macaulay's first novel, Abbots
Yerney (1906). Here, a youthful sister and brother, Maggie
and Johnny Denham, two would-be English artists in Rome,
share not only "their workshop" and their "artistic lean
ings," but their rather immature physical appearance, as
well. Both these minor characters, "suggested a couple of
bright-eyed and intelligent puppies" (A.V., p. 79)*
But it is in the succeeding novel, The Furnace
(1907)» that such a sister-brother pair assumes the status
of heroine and hero. In appearance, Betty and Tommy
Crevequer, Italian-English "street-children of gregarious
habits and wide tastes" (T.F., p. 216), seem to be indis
tinguishable: "There did not seem to be any particular dif-
208
ference "between them, externally'* (T.F. , pp. 3~^+) • Both are
in their early twenties. Both are untidy in dress. Both
stammer. Both— like their predecessors the Denhams--pursue
pseudo-artistic careers: Betty as a part-time performer on
the music hall stage? Tommy as a reporter-illustrator for a
low-class illustrated newspaper. Repeatedly Rose Macaulay
portrays this pair in such a way as to heighten the reader's
sense of their physical and temperamental similarities.
They are ''as two twin bahes" ; they are "Tweedledum and
Iweedledee" (T.F., pp. 20, 100, 105-106).
Still, such a physical "oneness" serves merely as
an indicator of the spiritual "oneness" of this female/male
pair. Far more indicative of the strength of the bond
joining them is a silent, shared epiphany, an "illuminated
moment of insight" experienced by them as they walk together
to church to worship (T.F., p. 83). Since both are disap
pointed in love by members of the opposite sex, the novel's
conclusion serves only to reaffirm "this companionship of
two . . . stronger than death, surer than the thing called
love" (T.F., p. 167).
Five years after the publication of The Furnace,
Betty and Tommy Crevequer reappear as minor characters in
Views and Vagabonds (1912). Here, as before, these look-
alike, act-alike bohemians are "two minds with but a single
thought" (V. & V., p. 257).1
209
The Valley Captives (1911) features another sister/
brother pair as co-protagonists. Shared persecutions at
the hands of a boorish stepsister and stepbrother in child
hood; shared provocations from the same stepsiblings when
all are in their twenties; shared neglect from their own
lame, reclusive father--these are the factors that help to
forge a link from earliest childhood between the doughty,
stolid Joanna Vallon, and her weak-kneed, frail-bodied
brother, Tudor.
Physically and temperamentally the two are polar
opposites. To "John," the sister, are allotted the traits
customarily considered "masculine"; while "Teddy," her
brother, is accorded those attributes usually regarded as
2
"feminine." Nevertheless, this very "masculine" young
woman and this very "feminine" young man are united spirit-
3
ually by a shared consciousness. Moreover, after Teddy
dies in the act of saving his sister's life, this shared
consciousness transcends even his mortality. In the early
stages of mourning John
had given the most vital part of herself to Teddy and
he had taken it with him and kept it; but now, keeping
it still, he seemed to give it back to her, a gift to
be passed on, together with his own vividness of life.
. . . To have two lives to live at once--that made of
it an exciting business.
(V.C., pp. 331-332)
Joanna/John first causes the death of her male counterpart,
whom she "had always loved . . . more than . . . herself"
210
(V.C., p. 322). He dies saving her, and she then incor
porates him into her own personality. This integration of
two opposing "but complementary.principles, female and male,
yin and yang, brings into being one internally harmonious
androgynous individual Such an individual is able to
partake of a reciprocally nurturant communion with the
earth and with all animate creation:
John became at last herself, alive and free. . . . She
made friends with life, with people and animals and
vegetables and herself, and dug in the garden. She
realized and fulfilled her kinship with the earth. . .
(V.C.., pp. 330-331)
Interestingly, Rose Macaulay's melding in The Valley Cap
tives of a "masculine" woman with a "feminine" man antici
pates Virginia Woolf's published manifesto on the subject
by some eighteen years.^
A year after the publication of The Valley Captives
Rose Macaulay produced her prize-winning The Lee Shore
n
(1912). First cousins Lucy Hope and Peter Margerison pro
vide the central love interest of the novel, albeit each
very unwisely marries someone else: Lucy, unaware that her
strong feelings of affection for Peter are anything other
than "sisterly," is dazzled into matrimony by the wealthy
and handsome Denis Urquhart; Peter, distraught over losing
Lucy, marries the sickly and penniless Rhoda Johnson in or
der to protect her from her would-be seducer, the contempt
ible Guy Vyvian.
211
Peter perceives Lucy as
rooted in the very fiber of his being; it wasn’t so
much that he consciously loved her as that she was his
other self.
(L.S., p. 154; emphasis added)
Indeed, the affinities, physical and spiritual, displayed
by Lucy and Peter are as obvious to others as to themselves.
Denis tells Lucy:
"You £and Peter^l are rather like, you know."
"I know," said Lucy. "It's not only looking and
laughing and words; we think alike too."
(L.S., p. 161)
Rhoda perceives the same uncanny external likeness,
but then realizes that it is merely the reflection of an
inner reality:
CLucy was3 absurdly like Peter . . . to look at and to
listen to... .
Then Peter came in. . . . After all, Rhoda didn't
see now that they were so like.... But . . . , there
was something... something inner, essential, indefinable,
of the spirit, that was not of like substance but the
same. So it is sometimes with twins.
(L.S. , pp. 198-I99; emphasis added)
Peter has long been aware that he and Lucy "have
always been different from most cousins . . . rhore like
brother and sister" (L.S., p. 197)- From earliest child
hood Lucy too has thought the relationship to be one of
"brother and sister," but a prolonged separation from Peter
brings her to an awareness that, "I was only half a person
without you" (L.S. , p. 262).
Peter's wife has deserted him and died; Lucy's hus
band has disillusioned her. Meeting in a wood, the cousins
212
now desire a physical union as total as the union of their
minds and hearts x
Peter and Lucy had come to the place where they
couldn't share and didn't want to, and no love hut one
matured. They had left civilization, left friendship,
which is part of civilization, behind, and knew only
the primitive, selfish, human love that demands all of
body and soul. They needed no words to explain to one
another their change of view. For always they had
leaped to one another’s thoughts and emotions and
desires. V o ■
(L.S., p. 263)
This promised union of the cousins seems to portend
a more complete conjunction than the partners-through-life
companionship attained by Betty and Tommy Crevequer at the
conclusion of The Furnace, or by the partners-in-death fu
sion achieved by Joanna and Tudor Vallon. But Lucy and
Peter's planned elopement is thwarted by Denis’s cousin and
uncle (L.S., pp. 268-283, 300-301), and the lovers remain
permanently sundered.
Perhaps the most bizarre pairing of female/male
counterparts occurs in Rose Macaulay's What Not: A Pro-
phetic Comedy (1919)This novel satirizes governmental
attempts to legislate improvements in the lives of citizens.
Extrapolating from what she learned at first hand during
wartime work as a British civil servant, Macaulay hypothe
sizes a post-war "Ministry of Brains" which attempts to up
grade the collective British I. Q. through a combination of
"Mind Training Courses" and stringent financial incentives
______________________________________________________________21j
^ :
to selective "breeding.
The originator of this scheme and the driving force
behind it is Nicholas Chester, the intellectually gifted
"Minister of Brains," whose hatred of stupidity is obses
sive. In his public orations the Minister "made intelli
gence a flaming idea, like patriotism" (W.N., p. 175)*
The motivation for Chester's fanatical abhorrence
of feeblemindedness stems from his own family circumstances.
His Anglican clergyman father and his mother had married,
as Chester recalls bitterly, although they
had no right, of course, to have had any children at
all} they were first cousins, and deficiency was in the
family.
(W.N., p . 186)
Four children resulted from this union: Maggie, seemingly
of normal or above normal intelligence; Nicholas himself,
of overwhelmingly superior intellect; and the imbecilic
Joan and Gerald. Curiously, all that Joan and Gerald have
in common is that they have been born into the same family
and share the same affliction. Extraordinarily, Joan is
Nicholas Chester's "twin sister" (W.N., p. 185).
»
Owing to this unfortunate situation, Nicholas Ches
ter has for years scrupulously heeded the dictates of his
reasons he has conscientiously avoided marriage because of
the strong likelihood that children born to him will be men
tally deficient. Finally, when he does yield to emotion and
marry, the public disclosure of his marriage causes the fall
21k
------
of his ministry and the temporary ruin of his career.
Some time thereafter Chester takes his new wife Kitty on a
first visit to the home of his parents. There,
they saw Chester's twin sister. She was harmless; she
was even doing crochet work; and her face was the face
of Chester uninformed by thought.
(W.N., p. 234; emphasis added)
Obviously, as do their fictional antecedents, this
sister/brother pair exhibits a remarkable physical likeness.
However, in contradistinction to their predecessors, this
pair does not seem to share any mental or spiritual affini
ties. Needless to say, Joan Chester's opportunities for
meaningful interaction and/or competition with her bril
liant and successful male twin are nil. In keeping with " " ’b
this discrepancy, his role in the story is a major one;
while hers is the merest cameo. Still, in her capacity of
"idiot drivelling on a green" (W.N., p. 89), Joan serves a
two-fold function. First, her very existence is a strong
motivation for certain of her brother's otherwise inexpli
cably cruel actions, such as his attempt to regulate matri-
12
mony by statute. Second, she serves as an extreme exam
ple of that rampant stupidity so soundly satirized by What
Not. And, linking her brother to her in light of this
second function is the fact that Nicholas Chester himself
has fallen prey to. the irrationality and stupidity in his
13
own psyche. This most supremely rational and intelligent
of men has thereby brought to ruin everything he himself
_________________________ 215
has so painstakingly built. Quite definitely he has far
more in common with his imbecile sister than is at first
apparent. Of this, the apparition that appears to his new
wife as she and he journey home from their visit to his
parents is blatantly symbolic^ In the train compartment
with her and her husband Kitty suddenly "sees":
a Being with a vacant face. . . . And the Being's face
was as the face of Chester's twin sister.
(W.N., p. 235)
Both Nicholas Chester and his unfortunate sister
are middle-aged, and the disparity in their relative abili
ties is well nigh astronomical. A far different sister/
brother pair makes its appearance in Rose Macaulay’s next
novel. Potterism (1920) is a clever assault on the "cant"
promulgated by the popular press, incorporating both a love
1 J L l
story and a murder mystery. Here Jane and Johnny Potter,
twin children of a hugely successful press lord and a
highly sentimental lady novelist, are in their early twen
ties, fresh from Oxford, bursting with literary--and other
— ambitions, and fiercely competitive, especially toward
one another. The use of a pair of twins, alike in almost
every way— save.in their sex--makes it possible for Rose
Macaulay to effectively explore the disadvantages of trying
to compete as a female in a male-centered society. Simi
larly, a comparison of the twins' sex lives provides the
opportunity for broader speculations on the differences—
216
real or apparent--in female and male sexual behavior.
As the story "begins, Jane Potter is well aware of
the disadvantage of her genders
Jane knew that, though she might "be one Up on Johnny as
regards Oxford, owing to slightly superior "brain power,
he was one pp on her as regards Life, owing to that
awful "business sex. Women were handicapped; they had
to fight much harder to achieve equal results.
(P., P. 13)
Angrily, Jane plans to "wrest" for herself those career op
portunities that "People" will freely offer to her less
able brother solely by virtue of his malenesss
Young men possessed the earth; young_women had to wrest
what they wanted out of it piecemeal• Johnny might end
a cabinet minister, a notorious journalist, a Labour
leader, anything....Women's jobs were, as a rule, so
dowdy and unimportant. Jane was bored to death with
this sex business; it wasn't fair. . . . She wouldn't
■be dowdy and unimportant, like her mother and the other
fools; she would have the best going.
(P., p. 13)
Although Jane is deeply bitter about the male-cen-
terednes's of the society in which she lives, her brother is
totally oblivious to its
Johnny said to Jane, "War is beastly, but one's got
to be in it. . . . Every one ought to go."
"Every one can't," said Jane morosely.
But to Johnny every one meant all young men, and he
took no heed.
(P., pp. 33-3*0
The impetus that Johnny's maleness gives to his
career in wartime translates into a significant advantage
after the war, when, as an up-and-coming young writer, he
is able to capitalize on his blood-and-guts experience in
217
print (P. , p . 65)• Meanwhile, Jane's far more limited op-
portunities as a wartime Civil Servant and a post-war
shorthand typist cause her to plan "a novel about a girl at
school and college and thereafter. Perhaps it would he the
first of a trilogy" (P., p. 21^). It is evident that, in a
relatively short time, Jane's lack of experiential oppor
tunity has dulled her creativity. Just a very few years
earlier Jane herself would have thought such subject matter
dreadfully insipid (P., pp. 40-if-l).1^ •
Jane's sex is the first obstacle to her professional
success. The second, as she learns after Being left a
young and pregnant widow, is a corollary of that sex, to
wit--motherhood. Jane's ambitions for achievement and en
joyment are powerful, but her maternal instincts are power
ful as well. After the birth of her son her day-to-day
life becomes a species of juggling act in which she at
tempts simultaneously to manage the baby, her professional
life, her love life, and her social life.^
In fact, it is as a dropout from the literary field
that Johnny, her twin brother and chief literary rival, now
17
chooses to see her. Jane's first baby and Johnny's first
novel are "just out" at one and the same time, and each
feels enormously jealous of the other. When Jane speaks
aggressively to Johnny of her "future masterpieces," he
condescendingly assumes she means future babies, while she
218
intends him to understand that she is referring to her
future books. With like condescension, Jane taunts her
sibling with the fact that she has produced a child, while
he has not (P., pp. 222-223). Motherhood provides Jane
with a profoundly "sensuous," intensely pleasurable emo
tional experience. At the same time, as she is resent
fully aware, far more is exacted from her by the parenting
process than would be exacted from her brother should he
father a child. It is very much to Jane's credit that,
despite the difficulties involved, she is able to nurture
both, her baby and her book-in-progress at one and the same
time (P., pp. 225, 2^5, 252).
Potterism covers the twins' experiences from 191^-
to 1920. Shortly before the novel's conclusion Johnny is
said to have already established a reputation as "quite a
competent journalist." In addition, still "swimming on the
tide of his first novel," he has been given a job as assis-
18
tant editor of an important weekly. Meanwhile, some few
weeks or months later, his "shade cleverer" sister (P., p.
65) is still apparently a freelance writer with "her novel
coming out next week" (P., p. 252).^
Setting aside the social advantages inherent in
Johnny's gender, and the biological disadvantages involved
in Jane's reproductive function, Macaulay's story makes it
obvious that other factors have also retarded Jane's career.
219
These can he most fully elucidated by taking as a point of
departure the viewpoint of Katherine Yarick, the ostensibly
"sexless" chemist friend of the Potter twins whom Professor
20
Alice Bensen regards as "the author's raisonneur."
Katherine--and thus her creator--would wish us to examine
Jane as a complex personality, speaking and acting incon
sistently, from motives of which she herself may be par
tially or even totally unaware. For example, at the com
mencement of her career Jane appears to be highly idealis
tic. Like her "anti-Potter" friends she professes to de
spise the "mediocrity, second-rateness, humbug, muddle,
cant, cheap stunts" of the newspapers owned by her father
21
(P., p. 76). Jane projects a career for herself as, for
instance,
a journalist; a reporter, perhaps: (only the stories
women were sent out on were usually dull), a special
correspondent, a free-lance contributor, a leader
writer, eventually an editor....Then she could initiate
a policy, say what she thought, stand up against the
Potter press.
Or one might be a public speaker, and get into
Parliament later on, when women were admitted. One
despised Parliament, but it might be fun.
(P., p. A2)
Initially, then, Jane's ambitions center around the actuali
zation of her own potential. Over a period of time, by
means of her own painstaking industry and in spite of the
obstacles she knows she will encounter because of her sex,
Jane intends to work her way up from fledgling "reporter"
to seasoned "editor." She will do this by means of her own
. 220
unaided efforts because she feels she has things of impor-
22
tance to say. However, after the war Jane falls briefly
in love with Oliver Hobart, the editor of one of her
father's own papers. She compromises her anti-Potterite
principles and makes use of Hobart's position to advance
23
her writing career. Their marriage is a short and un
happy one which ends with Hobart's accidental death. Six
weeks later Jane, who is expecting Hobart's child, becomes
engaged to her longtime friend Arthur Gideon, with whom she
appears to be far more compatible than she was with her
late husband.
At the time of this second engagement Jane feels as
competitive as she always has toward
Johnny, with the rubbishy books he was writing and
making his firm bring out for him and feeling so
pleased with. Jane knew she could write better stuff
than Johnny could, any day. And her ebooks would be in
addition to Gideon, and babies, and other amusing
things.
(P., p. 211)
By contrast, a few months later, after the birth of her
child, Jane, although still very much concerned with "writ-
pii
ing" as a way of "making a kind of a name," seems to have
transferred onto her fiance several of her unfulfilled pro
fessional aspirations and personal jealousies. When, for
instance, rather than compromise his anti-Potter principles,
Arthur resigns his assistant editorship of the Weekly Fact
and his job is offered to Johnny, Jane is
221
sulky, jealous, and contemptuous.
"Johnny. Why Johnny? He's not so good as lots of
other people who would have liked the job. . . . Oh,
Arthur, it is rot, your chucking it. I've a good mind
not to marry you. I thought I was marrying the assis
tant editor of an important paper, not just a lazy old
Jew without a job."
(P., p. 235)
Although she does not say so to Arthur, beyond a doubt Jane
is pre-eminent among the "lots of other people who would
have liked the job."
Perhaps because many of Jane's once-cherished per
sonal ambitions have thus far failed to materialize, she
now attempts to fulfil these identical aspirations vicari
ously through her husband-to-bes
Jane was not seriously alarmed. She believed that
this [desire] of Arthur's [to withdraw into a studious
"quest for truth"] was a short attack; when they were
married she would see that he got cured of it. She
wasn't going to let him drop out of things and disap
pear, her brilliant Arthur, who had his world in his
hand to play with. Journalism, politics, public life
of some sort--it was these that he was so eminently
fitted for and must go in for.
"You mustn’t waste yourself, Arthur," she said.
(P., p. 2 W
.; - Almost certainly, as Rose Macaulay constructs the
situation, Jane's failure to advance as rapidly as her twin
brother, owing to the "handicap" of her sex, has convinced
her that, if one can't be born with the privileges of a
male, one should attempt to enhance one's own opportunities
by marrying a male and manipulating him for one's own ends:
He loved her, and she was persuaded that he would yield
to her in the end, and not spoil her jolly, delightful
life, which was to advance, hand in hand with his, to
222
notoriety or glory or both.
(P., p. Zk5)
In this intention Jane is thwarted a second time when Arthur
Gideon--like Oliver Hobart before him--meets a premature
death.^ Still, Jane Potter-Hobart-(almost) Gideon is por
trayed as preternaturally "greedy" for worldly success, and
therefore destined to achieve it.^ Potterism draws to a
close with the cynical reassurance that,
Jane would, no doubt, fulfil herself in the course of
time, make an adequate figure in the world she loved,
and suck therefrom no small advantage.
(P., p. 255)
Very auspiciously, her first novel finally does appear among
the book publishers' spring offerings. But, with the notice
of this comes a parenthetical suggestion that Jane's brother
27
will be perennially slightly more successful than she. 1
Nevertheless, Potterism* s final paragraph is a strident re
minder that Jane has produced a son. This male child, who
is the image of her father both physically and temperamen
tally, is the heir presumptive to her father's publishing
empire (P., pp. 221, 256). Thus, albeit at one ironic re
move , the ultimate triumph in this tale of the archetypal
"Jane's" sibling rivalry with the archetypal "Johnny" is
destined to be "Jane's." Having "failed" in Hthat she was
not bom a male, she has "succeeded" in that she has given
birth to one.
Jane Potter's romantic involvements are with men of
223
her own class with whom she makes, or tries to make, advan-
tageous alliances. Apparently no such motive enters into
the indiscriminate amours of her promiscuous male twin. We
have already observed that, in Potterism, Rose Macaulay's
twins provide her with a kind of "laboratory" in which she
can conduct for the observant reader a species of "con
trolled experiments" demonstrating the social and biologi
cal disadvantages acting upon "modern" English women of the
second decade of the twentieth century. Similarly, in
order to lead her reader to "investigate," in the manner of
her "raisonneur" Katherine Varick, the differences— real or
apparent--in various manifestations of female and male sex
uality, Macaulay is likewise able to utilize her "twins" in
an analytic capacity.
The reader is first presented with the attitude
towards "sexual relations" young Jane Potter thinks she
holds shortly after graduation from Oxford. These views
appear quite liberal:
It was, surely, like eating and drinking, a natural
element in life, which few avoid. . . . Jane was quite
willing to accept with approval, as part of the game
of living, such episodes in this field as came her way;
but she could not regard them as important. As to
marriage, it was merely dowdy. Domesticity; babies;
servants; the companionship of one man. The sort of
thing [her not very intelligent sister] Clare would
go in for, no doubt. Not for Jane, before whom the
world lay, an oyster asking to be opened. OB
(P., pp. 4l-42)^S
A sexually "liberated" life style is what the ambi-
22^
tious, capable, collegiate Jane anticipates for herself.
However, after spending the war years in a drab civil ser
vice position and experiencing the Armistice in Paris as a
shorthand typist, Jane succumbs to the surface "glamour" of
Paris and to the allure of the beautiful but vapid face of
Oliver Hobart, editor of her father's paper, the Daily
Haste. She marries Hobart.in haste, and conceives a child
by him in almost equal .haste. While still a relative new
lywed, she falls out of love with Hobart and becomes aware
of her strong feelings for her long-time friend Arthur
Gideon, the assistant editor of the Weekly Fact. After Ho
bart's death, Jane mistakenly suspects that Gideon "might
have killed Oliver." Still, "it made no difference to her
caring for him." (P., p. 206). Not particularly fond of
the discomforts of pregnancy, she anticipates having
Gideon's children the instant she and he b.ecome engaged
(P., pp. 210-211).
Thus, whether her feelings for a man are transient,
as they are for Oliver Hobart; or transcendent, as they ap
pear for Arthur Gideon (P., pp. 219-220), Jane invariably
feels a need to marry the object of her sexual desires and
to bear him children. It would seem that Jane is incapable
of a selfless, enduring passion. Yet, all her "liberated"
theories notwithstanding, she always experiences a need to
marry the object of her affections. Save in their common
225
profession of journalism, Oliver Hobart and Arthur Gideon
29
are polar opposites. ' The incongruity of replacing the
former with the latter merely heightens the reader's sense
of the indiscriminate nature of Jane's marital urges.
By contrast, Jane's indiscriminately promiscuous
brother exhibits no such matrimonial tendencies. Rose Ma
caulay euphemistically characterizes Johnny Potter with the
adjective "polygamous" (P., P* 215)* His simultaneous in
volvements with a lady violinist and a "painted" music-hall
girl of the "kind you don't meet" evoke speculations from
his twin on possible differences in female and male'sexual
ity s
Men were perhaps less critical? or perhaps they wanted
different qualities in those with whom they flirted;
or perhaps it was that their amatory instinct, when
pronounced at all, was much stronger than women's, and
flowed out on to any object at hand when they were in
the mood.
(P., p. 216)
Jane's fiance Gideon accounts for differences in women's
and men's sexual behavior with a simplistic assumption:
"Men usually have, as a rule, more sex feeling than
women, that's all. Naturally. They need more, to
carry them through all the business of making marriage
proposals and keeping up homes, and so on. Women often
have very little. That's why they're often better at
friendship than most men are. . . . Most men . . . want
sex in their lives at some time or other. Some women ;
are quite happy without it. They can be nearly sex
less. Very few men are that."
(P., p. 216)
However, Potterism is rife with women of lesser or
greater importance to the plot who provide counter examples
226
to this assumption. First and foremost, there is Jane her
self, who becomes engaged to marry her second husband long
before she has given birth to the child fathered by her
first husband (P., p. 210). There is Jane’s older sister
Clare, "whom one can't think of apart from sex. No friend-
30
ship would ever satisfy her." There is Peggy Potter,
wife of Jane's elder brother, Frank. Marriage to an Angli
can priest inhibits neither her roving eye nor the mali
ciousness of her tongue when she is frustrated in a flirta
tion (P., pp. 4?, 53-5^)* There is the violinist, Nancy
Sharpe, who takes her music with great seriousness, bjut who
can take a love affair "with nonchalance" (P., pp. 215,
226-227). There is the lovely music hall girl, who can be
intimate with a man "merely to pass the time" (P., p. 215)*
There are the "fast" women of the "dissolute" Juke house
hold and their "theatrical friends" (P., pp. 171-176).
There is the nameless prostitute who solicits Arthur Gideon
on a rainy night (P., p. 231). Finally, most sublimely
ironic of all, there is the "frosty blue"-eyed chemist
Katherine Varick, whom Arthur Gideon cites to Jane as the
quintessential "sexless" woman. Jane readily concurs with
Gideon that the frigid seeming Katherine "isn't typical.
. . . isn't a channel for the life force, like most of us"
(P., p. 217).31 Yet the reader has long since been privy
to Katherine's reluctant confession in her "Journal"!
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________22Z
For the last five years I have cared for Arthur Gideon
more than for any one else in the world. I see no rea
son why I shouldn't, if I like. It has never damaged
any one but myself. It has damaged me in two ways--it
has made it sometimes difficult to give my mind to my
work, and it has made me, often, rather degradingly
jealous of Jane. However, you would hardly (I hope)
notice it, and anyhow it can't be helped.
(P., p. 168)
Sufficient textual evidence exists to demonstrate that both
of the Potter twins are susceptible to intense erotic
feelings. Johnny's powerful libido means that he "usually
had more than one girl on hand" (P., p. 215)* Jane, mar
ried to Oliver Hobart and expecting his child, becomes pro
gressively more enamoured of Arthur Gideon, even when she
mistakenly believes him to be her husband's killer (P., pp.
102, 185, 206). For Johnny, women are objects providing him
with companionship, entertainment, and sexual gratification
(P., pp. 215-216). For Jane, men are likewise objects— to
be exploited as she attempts to exploit everything else.
She is "ignorant of love except in its crudest form of de
sire for the people and things which ministered to her per
sonal happiness" (P., p. 108) . Even when her passion for
Arthur is turning her "hot and cold," Jane is able to wonder
"how long it would last at this pitch" (P., pp. 219-220).
Ironically, while Arthur is prepared to surrender his high
est professional ideals because of his ardent desire to
marry her, Jane calculates that she can best fulfill her
career plans by marriage with him (P., p. 2^6). Arthur's
228
sudden death is a shock to Jane, but it does not leave her
inconsolable:
Jane would, no doubt, fulfil herself in the course of
time, make an adequate figure in the world she loved,
and suck therefrom no small advantage. She had loved
Arthur Gideon; but what [her mother the sentimental
authoress] Lady Pinkerton and [her equally sentimental
sister] Clare would call her "heart" was not of the kind
which would, as these two would doubtless put it in
their strange phraseology, "break." Somehow, after all,
Jane would have her good time; if not in one way, then
in another.
(P., p. 255)
All this suggests that, in writing about her arche
typal "Jane" and "Johnny," Rose Macaulay may have postulated
no major differences in the basic sexuality of males and
females. However, there are strong social pressures which,
in the case of the female of the pair, inhibit the expres
sion of that essential sexuality. For instance, Johnny can
enter omnivorously into flirtations and/or intimacies with
women of all classes without fear of compromise to his so
cial or professional status. By contrast, a woman of the
same class, like his older sister Clare, has so repressed
her sexual feelings that she feels compelled to wait pas
sively for a suitable man to initiate a courtship before
she can even acknowledge to herself that she has any desire
for him. "I'm not that sort of girl, I never was," she
proclaims, decrying female assertiveness in affairs of the
heart (P., p. 18*0 . Since Clare Potter makes this "proud"
proclamation while in the act of confessing to a clergyman
222.
■that she has murdered the man who courted and then jilted
her, the pathological consequences of such sexual repres
sion are all too tragically obvious. Moreover, this double
standard of conduct for men and women may explain why
Johnny Potter feels free to consort with dance hall girls
of the "kind you don't meet," and waitresses and any other
woman who appeals to his eye and his instincts, while Jane
says she would consider the conversation of "the equivalent
man" boring (P., pp. 215-216).-^ This statement is a mere
tricious one, for at least two reasons. For one thing, as
Jane must be well aware, there is no "equivalent man" to a
dance hall girl readily accessible to her. For another,
conversation is not the issue here; sex is the issue. But
it is an issue that Jane cannot afford to acknowledge even
to herself. The sex urge in a woman of Jane's class is al
most always inextricably bound up with societal pressure on
her to marry. Since a woman's matrimonial bonding to a
man is usually the chief determinant of her position and
income in the homocentric social order in which Jane finds
herself, what rational woman could allow herself "to flirt
with the waiters in restaurants" (P., p. 216)? Thus it is
that Jane experiences a physical attraction for Daily Haste
Editor Oliver Hobart--"And all that Hobart will let her in
to" (P., p. 72). Later Jane "wrote in . . . [Arthur
Gideon's]] paper, and she was always seeing him."-^ After
_____________________________2J3C
their engagement, Jane suggests to a world-weary Arthur
that he "must do something worth while" -(P., p. 244). Rose
Macaulay makes it perfectly apparent that what the idealis
tic Arthur views as a passionate union of two people who
love each other, the calculating Jane perceives as the
yoking together of two careers (P., p. 246). She is deter
mined that Arthur "must go in for" the pursuit of "Journal
ism, politics, public life of some sort" (P., p. 244).
Not at all coincidentally, Jane's mother, for whose
life and for whose writings Jane affects such blatant con-
tempt, has pursued a like course before her. For Mrs.
Potter--now "Lady Pinkerton"--married a man who recognized
her "flair" for popular fiction and published her stories
in his papers. Subsequently, she became a successful nov
elist, while he acquired a publishing empire, a peerage,
and "a lordly mansion" (P., pp. 13-15» 38, 110-111).
Funny old pater had, every one knew, begun his
career as a reporter on a provincial paper. If funny
old pater had been just a shade less clever or enter
prising, his family would have been educated at grammar
schools and gone into business in their teens. Of
course, Mrs. Potter had pulled the social level up a
bit; but what, if you come to that, had Mrs. Potter
been? Only the daughter of a country doctor; only the
underpaid secretary of % lady novelist, for all she was
so conceited now.
(P., p. 18)
The archetypal Johnny's various spheres of activity
need not be interlinked. For Johnny manhood is an advan
tage bestowed on him at birth; sex is a recreation; and, as
it was for his father before him, his career is a function
231
of his own enterprise and initiative. He can afford to in
dulge in a relatively unrestrained expression of his libido.
However, for the archetypal Jane--his twin in all but gen
der- -womanhood is the "handicap" with which she was born;
"nice" girls don't get involved with men they don't intend
to marry; marriage and status are indissolubly.linked. It
is small wonder that Jane Potter-Hobart-(almost) Gideon
doesn't find "the waiters in restaurants" in the least bit
appetizing.
232
NOTES
CHAPTER V
1In "The Ironic Aesthete . . . ELIT 9 (1966)1
42, Alice R. Bensen sees the Crevequer siblings as so se
curely joined to one another as to preclude the possibility
of a genuine romantic involvement for Betty in V* & X- !
The renunciation scene [[between Betty Crevequer and
Benjamin Bunter] is only sketched; Betty would not have
been actually available in any relation other than that
of a comrade--she is. too closely linked to her
brother. . . .
(emphasis added)
2
John is sturdy, square-jawed, laconic, calm, uni
maginative, aggressive and brave when confronted with dan
ger. Her chief interest in life is "practical farming."
Teddy is slight, frail, weak, verbal, creative, high-
strung, nervous, artistically inclined, and--generally--
timid and retiring in the face of real or imagined peril.
He is a frustrated artist.
Their step-siblings, Cissy and Phil Bodger, are
mutually complementary only insofar as they exhibit the
stereotyped "feminine" and "masculine" mannerisms appropri
ate to their respective sexes. However, in other ways,
these latter appear undifferentiated from one another.
3
-'This is evident in passages like the following:
[Although a considerable distance now separated them,3
John was very near to him somehow today--nearer than
she had been for many weeks, perhaps for years. She
was as near as when they had been children together,
and had stood close in mutual alliance for self-defence
and mutual comradeship for adventure.
See V.C., pp. 281-282, 295-297-
4
John deliberately attempts to kill her stepsister
and herself in a carriage "accident." In an uncharacteris
tic act of heroism, Teddy jumps in front of the horse,
grabs the reins, and saves his sisters' lives at the cost
of his own. Symbolically, John's living blood then drips
onto Teddy's battered and dead flesh. She twice accuses
herself, "I've killed Teddy." See V.C., pp. 305-307.
333-334.
233
•^See Appendix C .
^In A Room of One's Own, pp. 170-171, Woolf specu
lates s
whether there are two sexes in the mind corresponding
to the two sexes.in the body....If one is a man, still
the woman part of the brain must have effect? and a
woman also must have intercourse with the man in her.
Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great
mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes
place that the-mind is fully fertilized and uses all
its faculties. Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine
cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely
feminine.
-Quoted in Herbert Marder's excellent Feminism and Art, p.
108, q.v.
7
The novel was awarded fxrst prize--one thousand
pounds--in a competition held by the publishing firm of
Hodder and Stoughton. See Alice R. Bensen, Rose Macaulay,
pp. 39-^0, and p. 171» n* 11. See also Constance B. Smith,
Rose Macaulay (1973 ed.), pp. 58-59*
8
The Crevequer siblings exhibit a similar kind of
"e.s.p." See The Furnace, p. 133*
9
Most appropriately, in light of its theme, What
Not was ready for publication in November 1918, but the
need to revise it in compliance with "one of the laws of
the realm" delayed its appearance until March 1919* W.N. ,
p . xi, n .
10
The idea may not seem so implausible to govern
ments as it doubtless does to What Not's readers. In
February 1981 the Venezuelan government announced the crea
tion of a cabinet level "Ministerio de Estado para el
Desarrollo de la Inteligencia" ("Ministry of State for the
Development of Intelligence") for the purpose of upgrading
the intellects of the country's citizens, so that one of
them might someday win a Nobel Prize. (No Venezuelan has
yet done so.) See Appendix D.
11
That the extremely able Chester will make a come
back is strongly implied at W.N.’s conclusion, pp. 230,
232, 235*
23^1
12
His private as well as his public actions demon
strate his phobia. For example, in boyhood Chester had
experienced a strong desire to take his mentally feeble
siblings "out into a wood and lose them"- (W.N., p. 186).
Even on his honeymoon in Italy, Chester is capable of need
less cruelty to a feeble-minded beggar (W.N., p. 185) .
^-%ee, for example, W.N., pp. 162-163*
What was it, . . . this quite disproportionate desire
for companionship with . . . one person out of all the
world of people and things, which . . . so perverted
and wrenched from its bearings the mind of a man like
Nicholas Chester . . . ?
1 J h ,
The action of Potterism is narrated from several
different perspectives. Characters describe in turn their
involvement in a murder mystery which is intertwined with a
love story. In its conception Potterism is highly reminis
cent of Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book.
^In A Room of One's Own, pp. 120-121, Virginia
Woolf mourns the waste of Charlotte Bronte’s genius "in
solitary visions over distant fields." Woolf also deplores
"the isolated life of the semi-outcast" imposed on George
Eliot, while, "At the same time," as Woolf points out,
on the other side of Europe, there was a young man
living freely with this gipsy or with that great lady;
going to the wars; picking up unhindered and uncensored
all that varied experience of human life which served
him so splendidly later when he came to write his
books. Had Tolstoi lived at the Priory in seclusion
with a married lady "cut off from what is called the
world," however edifying the moral lesson, he could
scarcely, I thought, have written War and Peace.
A Room of One * s Own, pp. 122-123, quoted in Marder, op.
cit., p . ?0.
16
A subsequent Macaulay heroine, Daisy Simpson of
Daisy and Daphne (1928), supports herself in part by wri
ting
periodic articles on one or another of those absorbing
problems that beset editorial minds concerning the
female sex and young persons, as, should women simul
taneously rear young and work for their living, ' . . ?
See D. & D., pp. 18-19, 86-88.
221
Happily for Jane, she is assisted in the arduous
task of combining homemaking and a career by a most unob
trusive pair of female servants (P., p. 123)- For a con
temporary discussion of this perennial dilemma see "The
Superwoman Squeeze," Newswe ek (May 19, 1980).
17 .
However, m fairness to the young man, the reader
should note his genuine concern for Jane's career plans im
mediately after the announcement of her engagement to Oli
ver Hobart (P., p. 69)* As with Jim Hilary in Macaulay's
next novel, Dangerous Ages, Johnny's initial concern for
his sister's career dissipates after she becomes a wife and
a. mother.
18
Johnny is a member of the adoring coterie of
sycophantic young literary men who perpetually surround the
chief editor of the Weekly Fact. Appropriately, this edi
tor's name is "Peacock" ("?• . pp. 65, 226, 235)*
19
By the time Jane's novel appears, Johnny's is in
its "second impression" (P., p. 248).
20
See Alice R. Bensen, Rose Macaulay, pp. 69, 71»
74-75* Whether she is studying chemical reactions or human
interactions, Katherine doesn't seek to alter the phenomena
she observes, but only to describe them as objectively and
accurately as she can. For Katherine, human nature is "in
teresting, like other curious branches of study," but far
more complex than a science like chemistry. This is be
cause so many variables govern human behavior, and often
these variables are unknown to the very people they most
directly influence. See P., pp. 147, passim.
21
The description is Arthur Gideon's. Gideon is,
like Jane and Johnny, a member of the "Anti-Potter League"
while at Oxford.
22
P., p. 40, describes how
In intervals of ^wartime] office work and social
life, Jane was writing odds and ends, and planning the
books she meant to write after the war. She hadn't
settled her line yet. Articles on social and indus
trial questions for the papers, she hoped, for one
thing; she had plenty to say on this head. Short
stories. Poems. Then, perhaps, a novel.
See also P., p. 90> re Jane's impressive mental and elocu
tionary capabilities.
236
^3as Arthur Gideon cynically observes,
I began to see . . . where Hobart came In. Jane wrote
cleverly, clearly, and concisely--better than Johnny
did. But, in these days of overcrowded competent jour
nalism— well it is hot unwise to marry an editor of
standing. It gives you a better place in the queue.
(P., p. 835 emphasis added)
See also pp. 69, 72-7A, 76-77, 88. Having made this and
other similarly cynical observations about Jane, Arthur
will succumb to love for her in his turn.
2^P. , pp. 225, 2^-2-2^3 •
2 * 5 ' '
^Arthur is in Russia, pursuing "truth" when he
dies in a futile attempt to rescue a Russian Jewish family
from a mob. His death--brought about jointly by two war
ring Russian factions (P., pp. 25^-255)--has parallels in
the "accidental" deaths of Julian Conybeare in The Shadow
Flies, and of Vere in The Towers of Trebizond■ See below,
pf. 265 and p. 272, n. 29*
2 8
The twins are depicted as comparable to animals
or small children in their excessive greed for recognition,
achievement, and enjoyment. P., pp. 13, 16, 28, A4, ?k.
2^See n. 19 above.
28
When Jane has shifted onto Arthur many of her own
ambitions, there is an ironic echo of this last sentence in
Jane's thoughts about "her brilliant Arthur, who had his
world in his hand to play with" (P., p. 2^).
29
Hobart is exceedingly handsome, cool, poised,
graceful, and well-groomed, with a "second-rate" mind and a
"flair" for the inaccuracies of popular journalism. By
contrast, Gideon is dark, unattractive, graceless, and ill-
mannered, excessively nervous and brilliant, with an abso
lute passion for observing, recording, and transmitting
objective "truth."
-^P., pp. 216-217. After Clare has been courted
and jilted by Oliver Hobart, who marries Jane instead,
Clare gives Hobart a shove that sends him down a steep
flight of stairs to his death. Clare mourns hysterically
for six weeks, confesses abjectly; and, a few months there
after, "was beginning to fall in love with a young naval
officer" (P., p. 221).
237
-----------31
George Bernard Shaw expatiated on "the life
force" in several of his plays, most notably Man and Super
man (1904).
-^Likewise, Eddy Oliver, in The Making of a Bigot
(1914), can spend time alone with the "fallen" violinist
Eileen Le Moine. However, Eddy's fiancee, Molly Bellairs,
"cannot meet" Eileen, even when well-chaperoned, for fear
of damage to her own reputation. "Your young man's got to
he careful of you," Molly's aunt warns her. See M.B., pp.
218-227.
-^See, for example, P., p. 215t on the kind of girl
who is expected to get engaged to Johnny, and the girl of
the other kind whom "No one thought Johnny would marry."
34
P., p. 1855 emphasis added. For additional evi
dence of the all-too-obvious linkage of Jane's romantic
life with her professional life see n. 23 above.
3 5
Arthur Gideon has a sudden perception of both
Mother and daughter. It was very queer to me. That
wordy, willowy fool, and the sturdy, hard-headed girl
in the (^speaker's] chair, with her crisp, gripping
mind. Yet there was something...They both loved suc
cess .
(P., p. 90)
238
CHAPTER VI
MORE "TWINS"
Young Jane Potter of Potterism is just beginning
the struggle to sustain the pursuit of her chosen career in
despite of the social conventions and the hiological drives
that impel her to marry and procreate. Middle-aged
Neville Bendish of Rose Macaulay’s next novel, Dangerous
Ages (1921), is ahout to realize--alas, too late!--that for
her the struggle is all hut over. After twenty-two years
of marriage to a successful— hut egotistical and imperfect
--man, Neville feels unfulfilled.
How to he useful though married: in Cher M. P. husband]
Rodney's case the problem was so simple, in hers so
complicated. She had envied Rodney a little twenty
years ago; then she had stopped, because the bringing
up of Cher son] Kay and Cher daughter] Gerda had been
a work in itself; now she had begun again.
(p.A. , p. 19)
Like youthful Jane, middle-aged Neville is com
pared and contrasted with a brother with whom she has much
in common and whom she initially excelled in ability. Like
other sister/brother pairs in the preceding novels the two
______________________________________: ________________________________________229
shared a special closeness in youth. On more than one oc
casion, for instance, their mother experienced a
little sharp pang £of jealousy at the memory o f]. . . .
those two dear ones talking together, studying to
gether, going off together, hound hy a hundred common
interests, telling each other things they never told
her.
(D.A. , p. 109)
During their early medical studies
Jim and Neville had worked together. Jim had heen
proud of Neville's success; she had heen quicker than
he.
(D.A., p . 109)
Now, however, Jim is a highly successful Harley Street sur
geon, happily married, and the father of a family (D.A., p.
103)• By contrast Neville has sacrificed medical school
for marriage and children and now, more than two decades
later, "with the jagged ends of her long since broken ca
reer stahhing her" (D.A., p. 15)> is engaged in a frustrat
ing and ultimately fruitless attempt to pick up her voca
tion again after a lapse of over twenty years.
Jim Hilary is quite emphatic in his opposition to
Neville’s attempt. In his opinion, intellection is a non
renewable resource and Neville's
brain has lost its grip. She's not kept it sharpened;
she's spent her life on people. You can't have it both
ways--a woman can't, I mean. Her work's been differ
ent. She doesn't seem to realise [[sicH that what she's
trying to learn up again now, in the spare moments of
an already full life, demands a whole lifetime of hard
work. She can't get back those twenty years; no one
could. And she can't get back the clear, gripping
brain she had before she had children. She's given
240
some of it to them. That's nature's way, unfortunately.
Hard luck, no doubt, but there it is; you can't get
round it. „
(D.A., pp. 109-110)^
In response to his mother's harsh criticism of
women doctors as a class, Jim expresses the opinion that
his female colleagues are fully competent to practice (D.A.,
pp. 113-114). At one time his sister Neville had the poten
tial to be a physician, but her brain was "spoilt" by dis
use. However, Jim perceives the vast majority of women as
3
solely biological entities:
"It's all right as far as most women are concerned,"
he said. "Most women have no brains to be spoilt.
Neville had. Most women could do nothing at all with
life if they didn't produce children; it’s their only
possible job. They've no call to feel ill-used."
(D.A., p. 110)
Neville's decision to resume the study of medicine
stems, in part, from her desire to be genuinely active and
useful now that her children have grown:
Oh, Lord, it's a queer thing, being a woman. A well-
off woman of forty-three with everything made comfort
able for her and her brain gone to pot and her work in
the world done. I want something to bite my teeth into
--some solid, permanent job--and I get nothing but
sweetmeats, and people point at Kay and Gerda and say
'That's your work, and it’s over. Now you can rest,
seeing that it's good, like God on the seventh day.’"
(D.A., p. 189)
Another force impelling Neville to resume her ca
reer is her very powerful ego. ' She hungers for public ac
claim on her own behalf and not merely because she is the
socially prominent wife of Rodney Bendish, a prominent
241
Labour M. P. "I want to count, to make a name," she con
fides to her sister Pamela, "I'm damnably ambitious" (D.A.,
p. 189).
Neville experiences an intense need to compete with
her own husband, son, and brother, all of whom she envies
4
passionately. She feels superior to these men who are
closest to her, and sometimes exhibits a tendency to mini
mize their achievements, even while these achievements ex
cel or promise to excel her own.^ But it is Neville's own
natural talents and proclivities that are perhaps her
strongest motivation to recommence the study of medicine:
Rodney . . . wanted her constant companionship and
interest in his own work.
"You've had twenty-two years of it, darling,"
Neville said. "Now I must Live my own Life, as the
Victorians used to put it. I must be a doctor; quite
seriously I must. I want it. It's my job. The only
one I could ever really have been much good at. The
sight of human bones or a rabbit's brain thrills me, as
the sight of a platform and a listening audience
thrills you. . . ."
(D.A., p. 55)
Neville's chief motivation is, then, "that need for self-
expression which marriage didn’t satisfy" (D.A., p. 234).
Neville’s effort to prepare for medical school "in
the spare moments of an already full life" proves "diffi
cult beyond her imaginings" (D.A., pp. 54, 109) . Ulti
mately, while nursing her ill daughter by day and studying
by night, she suffers a "nervous breakdown" which puts a
permanent end to her medical aspirations (D.A., p. 184) .
242
Rose Macaulay herself had had a direct and personal inter
est in the way the accident of one's "biological sex func
tions as a prime determinant of one's available career op-
tions. Both Potterism and Dangerous Ages explore and ex
plain the often,; inexorable process by which someone bora-
into the female gender gradually yields up her individual
ity in the performance of a social and biological role.
Ultimately, of course, that individuality is irretriev
able y
As Macaulay presents the situation in both novels,
three forces are operant in this process of gradual surren
der. One is social. One is biological. One is psycholog
ical. The first of these involves the artificial encum
brances imposed upon women from their earliest years by the
society into which they are bora. For instance, social
custom dictates that little girls must wear garments, such
as dresses, that limit their opportunities for physical
experience and development. In childhood Jane Potter had
"gotten round" this social convention, which thwarted her
innate athletic ability, by assuming masculine dress—
"knickerbockers" (P., p. 215). However, in adulthood, de
spite her resolve never to "be put off with" the "second-
rate jobs" customarily foisted upon women (P., p. 13)» she
is, as we have previously seen, obliged to become first a
wartime Civil Servant and then a secretary typist. By con-
___________________________________________ 243
trast, the outbreak of war brings Johnny Potter a lieuten
ant's commission, and Johnny makes good use of the opportu
nities that thereby come his way to become a be-ribboned
British army major by the war's end. With the peace, both
sister and brother are able to resume their literary ca
reers, but Johnny can and does capitalize in his writings
on a range of combat experiences which his twin was not per
mitted to share. Because, as Jane had long since discerned,
"People" readily "give" responsible jobs to young men in a
way they don't give them to young women, Johnny is quickly
transmuted from hustling free-lance writer and literary
sycophant to respected assistant editor. Jane cannot, like
Johnny, be part of an editor's coterie of "writing young
men," but she does find that she can get her articles pub
lished by marrying an editor. By marrying the editor of
the Daily Haste; and, subsequent to his death, by engaging
herself to the assistant editor of the Weekly Fact, Jane is
attempting to ally herself to a position that she as a
woman is prevented by social custom from obtaining in her
own right.
In analogous fashion human reproductive biology—
"the life force" (P., p. 217)--handicaps a womariFlike Jane,
but not a man like Johnny:
If Johnny married and had a baby it wouldn’t get in his
way, only in its mamma's. It was a handicap, like your
frock (however short it was) when you were climbing.
________________________________
You had got round that by taking it off and climbing in
knickerbockers, but you couldn't get round a baby.
(P., p. 215)
Finally, there is the psychological factor of the
effect on an individual's development of her or his "role
model"--i.e., the feminine or masculine ideal represented
for a child by the parent of the same sex. Jane has for
her model her mother, "Leila York," a treacly lady novelist
of limited insights and questionable grammar whom she per
ceives as "dowdy and unimportant," a "fool" (P., p. 13)*
Meanwhile, Johnny has as an example to emulate his father,
"Lord Pinkerton," an enterprising and trendy Press Lord and
Peer.®
Like Jane Potter, her "successor" Neville Bendish
(nee Hilary) resolves the problem of certain social cus
toms that are physically restrictive of the female sex by
simply ignoring them and doing what males do. For instance,
Neville is a superbly conditioned athlete who has never let
garments inhibit her in the development of her motor
skills. Neville greets the dawn of her forty-third birth
day by stripping naked and going for a solitary swim (D.A.,
p. 13)* Afterwards, she dries herself, dons her pyjamas,
and shinnies up a tree. However, all this is done in pri
vate, on the family estate. In public, social pressures do
very much control the eminently proper behavior of "Mrs.
Rodney Bendish," wife of the well-known British M. P. Be
_____________________________________________________________2 k5
cause of the stigma attached hy her class to women who
"work," there is very little in the way of meaningful ac
tivity to which a woman of Mrs. Bendish's class can put her
hand. Sometimes she helps her husband with his constitu
ency; sometimes she emulates her social worker sister Pam
by sitting on committees and otherwise aiding the unfortu-
p
nate. However, in none of these pis-aller pursuits does
Neville Bendish find personal or professional fulfillment
(D.A., p. 188).
Also like Jane Potter before her, Neville Bendish
must deal with the consequences to a woman inherent in sub
ordinating or abandoning other life goals to the biological
function of child bearing and its corollary of child rear
ing. A twentyish Jane looks forward to a lifetime of
having to demonstrate that she is not "the mere'.mother" (P. ,
p. 222), but a fortyish Neville fears the time is fast ap
proaching when
I shall have done being a mother, in any sense that
matters. Is being a wife enough to live for? . . .
And Rodney will die some time--I know he'll die first--
and then I shan't even be a wife. . . . What will be
left?
(D.A. , p. 185)
Finally, as with Jane and Johnny, the psychological
effect of role models must be considered in analyzing
Neville's failure to pursue her chosen profession vis-a-vis
her slightly less able brother's success in that same field.
The late Mr. Hilary, the father of Neville and Jim, was a
______________________________________________________________2 M
highly proficient scholar; Mrs. Hilary, their mother, is a
hysterical and fatuous woman who, with the demise of her
husband and the maturation of her children, is acutely con-
11
scious of having outlived her usefulness. Such parental
influences of Jim to succeed and on Neville not to succeed
are revealed in such passages as the one in which Mrs.
Hilary reflects on
sex, which set Jim on a platform to he worshipped, hut
kept Neville on a level to he loved.
(D.A., p . 66)
In earlier years Mrs. Hilary had feared and resented Ne
ville's non-domestic aspirations and efforts and the hond
Neville thereby had with Jim. Now Mrs. Hilary fears and
resents the resumption of
"this ridiculous work of hers. It's so absurds a mar
ried woman of her age making her head ache working for
examinations."
. . . Mrs. Hilary, who had welcomed Neville’s mar
riage as ending all that, foresaw a renewal of the
hurtful business.
But Jim looked grave and disapproving over it.
"It is absurd," he agreed, and her heart rose.
(D.A., p . 109)
Quite perversely, Mrs. Hilary admires in Jim the
very thing she finds so threatening to her in Neville. She
takes pride in the achievements of her son, even when they
interfere with his attentions to her, as, for example, when
he must be absent from her on her birthday to perform
"One of those tremendously difficult new operations,
that hardly anyone can do. His work must come first,
of course. He wouldn't be Jim if it didn’t."
(D.A., p. 37)
24?
Significantly, after Neville experiences her nervous break-
down, it is she who draws the analogy between herself and
her role raodel--her mother--whose fatuousness and emotion
alism have heretofore been a constant source of irritation
to hers
"This must be what mother feels," she thought.
"Poor mother....1’m like her; I've had my life, and I'm
too stupid to work, and I can only cry....Men must work
and women must weep....I never knew before that that
was true....I mustn't see mother just now, it would be
the last straw...like the skeletons people used to look
at to warn themselves what they would come to . . . .Poor
mother...and pdor me ...."
(D.A., p. 184)
The natural gifts with which Neville Bendish was
endowed at birth were initially greater than those of her
brother; but, tragically, a great toll has been exacted on
those gifts by the social, biological, and psychological
factors which have "handicapped" her as a woman, but which
have not in the slightest impinged upon Jim as a man. By
the time both are middle-aged, Neville has been rendered
impotent to perform any work that would be meaningful to
her, while Jim is at the top of the profession that had
been the cherished goal of both. It is by means of
Neville's rivalry with her male alter ego that Rose Macau
lay is best able to demonstrate the vast disparity between
female potential and aspiration and male prerogatives and
domination of the professions. v In one of the most unfor
gettable scenes of the novel Jim deliberately makes his
______________________________________ 248
forty-three-year-old sister "come a cropper" in a "prac
tice" exam with the premeditated object of showing the
woman whose natural abilities had once conspicuously sur
passed his own that medicine is "not your job any more.
It’s absurd to try. Really it is" (D.A., pp. 111-113).
Like Jane Potter before her Neville Bendish has fallen prey
to "the life force."
In both Potterism and Dangerous Ages sister/brother
pairs are used to put on display the ways in which the
disabilities of the mothers are visited on the daughters,
while the prerogatives of the fathers are the prerogatives
of the sons. Thus it is that Neville's daughter Gerda--who
excels "at economic and social subjects"--writes poems,
draws pictures, daydreams, denounces marriage, and then
1*,
marries without even attempting college. Meanwhile, Ger-
da's brother Kay is intent on "reading economics for his
Tripos" at Cambridge (D.A., pp. 56-57)*
Tomboyish, dreamy Imogen Carrington in Told by an
Idiot (1923) is "a recollection of the author's child-
1 5
hood." She is also part of a grouping of fictional blood
relations into "triplets," which constitutes a variant on
Macaulay's "twins" device. Imogen is paired with two
brothers, as is Alix Sandomir before her in Non-Combatants
and Others (1916) ; and as is Barbary Deniston after her in
_____________________________________________________________________________249
The World My Wilderness (1930)» With the younger brother,
Tony, Imogen shares like tastes and activities. In a scene
labelled "Gamin"--which is set in England, hut which is
highly reminiscent of similar1 scenes depicting Tommy and
Betty Crevequer in Italy in The Furnace--Imogen and Tony,
"a happy and untidy pair" of children, "enjoyed the streets
with the zest of street Arabs" (T-b.I., p. 216). In one of
Imogen’s childhood fantasies she rescues Tony from a fero
cious polar bear (T.b.X*» PP• 163-164).
Like her creator, Imogen in her girlhood is of a
martial frame of mind. The daydreams which she acts out
and/or chronicles for herself center around her heroic ex
ploits as a young man, "Usually he was in the navy" (T.b.!I.,
p. 194). Watching British troops depart to fight the Boer
War, Imogen is consumed by envy and experiences a tremen
dous feeling of rivalry vis-a-vis her brothers, Tony and
Hugh:
Thank heaven, it was rather age than sex that kept one
from . . . Agoing and fighting the Boers^> the boys
couldn't go any more than Imogen could. If the boys
had been old enough and gone, Imogen would somehow, she
felt sure, have gone too. To be left out was too awful.
(T.b.I., p. 184)
But with the commencement some years later of World
War I, "the boys" do go while Imogen finds herself excluded
from combat "owing to a mere fluke of sex" (T.b.I_., p. 316).
Imogen's lament for the death of her younger brother Tony
in the war recalls the prior and parallel bereavement of
________________________________________________________________ 25C
Alix Sandomir in Non-Combatants, and of Joanna Vallon In
The Valley Captives. Similarly, as Betty Crevequer in The
Furnace prefers the "substance" that is her injured brother
to the "shadow" that is her remorseful lover,^ so Imogen
prefers her deceased younger brother to her deceased fiances
Neville took his place in her memory not as a personal
loss but as a gay, heartbreaking figure, a tragic sym
bol of murdered, outraged youth.
But when Tony was killed, the world's foundations
shook. He was her darling brother, her beloved compan
ion in adventure, scrapes and enterprises from their
childhood up. She could by no means recover from the
cruel death of Tony. . . .
(T.b.I., p. 319)
Imogen is consoled for the unhappiness of a subse
quent, more complicated love entanglement by the company of
her older brother Hugh, with whom she is last seen departing
from her lover and from England for a year of beachcombing
in the Pacific Islands (T.b.I., pp. 333-336). Imogen's
relationships with her two lovers, and with her two broth
ers are virtually identical with those of her predecessor
Alix Sandomir. Like Imogen, Alix becomes involved with one
man whose appeal for her is primarily physical, and also
17
with one for whom her feelings are more complex. Alix
likewise has a younger brother, Paul, with whom she has ;
1 R
marked physical and mental affinities. Paul Sandomir
dies, like Tony Carrington, in the First World War. An
older brother, Nicholas, provides consolation for Alix's
disappointment in love, and she is last seen alone in his
____________________________________________ : _________________2il
company on New Year's Eve.
In Non-Combatants and Told by an Idiot, these group
ings into "triplets" are atypical, but not incomprehensible.
One woman is joined to two complementary men, who are her
brothers. One, the younger, is her psychic "twin," with
whom she has strong emotional ties. The other is her "big
brother" who takes over after the younger brother's death
as a kind of father substitute. This latter is her protec
tor and consoler in her misery over an unhappy love affair.
In each case, both of the brothers together combine psychic
and protective functions identical to those exercised toward
Betty Crevequer by her brother Tommy. Hence, the "triplets"
in Non-Combatants and Told by an Idiot are merely a variant
of the "twins" motif
A totally unique pairing of siblings occurs in Rose
20
Macaulay’s Daisy and Daphne (1928). This novel's co
protagonists are different not in their sex, but in their
breeding:
Bom of one father, but of two quite different
mothers, Daphne and Daisy looked alike, though Daphne
was the better looking, the more elegant, and five years
the younger. But in disposition, outlook, manners, and
ways of thought, they were very different, Daphne being
the better equipped for facing the world, Daisy for
reflecting on it, though even this she did not do well.
(D. & D., pp. 12-13)
Daphne, having been greatly influenced by the genteel aunt
with whom she lived from the age of eleven, is well-edu-
: 252
cated, refined, attractive, and twenty-fiv.e, with all the
virtues and graces appertaining to a member of the upper
class. By contrast, her' half-sister Daisy, the illegiti
mate daughter of an alcoholic lower middle class matron, is
dishonest, snobbish, unattractive, and thirty. She writes
potboiler novels and "lowbrow" articles on "Women" for
trashy papers under the pseudonym, "Marjorie Wynne." In
t
media res--on page 143 of a 334-page novel, to be exact--
"Daisy and Daphne, these apparently two young women" are
discovered to be
actually one and the same young woman, Daphne being
Daisy's presentment, or fantasy (as the psychologists
call it) of herself as she hoped that she appeared to
others. Daphne Daisy her mother had named her. . . .
And Daisy she had always been called at home, but
Daphne by her father's sister. . . . Daphne was the
educated, intelligent.tyoung person of cultured anteced
ents, Daisy the daughter of Mrs. Arthur of East Sheen,
about whom Daphne's friends knew; nothing.
(£4 & D., pp. 144-45)
The "catastrophic" revelation of this dual identity
causes the break-up of Daisy/Daphne's engagement to a dis-
21
tinguished young scientist, and her mutation to yet a
third "self," "Marjorie Wynne," the best-selling novelist.
Daisy/Daphne/Marjorie is last observed sailing away from
England to commence a lecture tour in America. Meanwhile,
ler true self, "a frail little spirit, overshadowed by the
three who formed its cage, fled shivering for cover"
[D. & D., p. 334). In the story's "moral," the paragraph
________________________________________________ 251
which concludes the novel, this particular dilemma of one
human being who manifests a divided self is generalized to
99
include us "all" (D. & D., p. 33^)-
The Shadow Flies (1932),a superbly wrought his
torical novel set in seventeenth-century England, features
two youthful, adolescent sister/brother pairs: Julian
("July") and Christopher ("Kit") Conybeare; and their
friends since childhood, Meg and Giles Yarde.
Meg and Giles play supporting roles in this novel.
The former is a foil and companion to Julian; the latter
becomes a foil and adversary to the poet John Cleveland.
Like other, similar pairs in Rose Macaulay's fiction, Meg
and Giles display a strong resemblance in their physical
appearance (T.S.F., p. 221), and likewise in their mutual
tastes and temperaments. Both sister and brother are red-
haired, freeled, long-limbed and robust. Both are anti
intellectuals, preferring boisterous outdoor sports and
games to more "adult" pursuits. Back home in the small
Devonshire village of Dean Prior, the "tomrigg" (T.S.F., p.
180) Meg resists all efforts by her grandparents to teach
her housewifery and "lady like" deportment. Simultaneously,
up at Cambridge, Giles excels in athletics, but has not the
slightest aptitude for scholarship.
When Giles devotes himself too exclusively to Julian
_____________________________________________________Z5k
at a Cambridge festivity, Meg's jealousy seems less .like
that of a sister, and more like that of a rivals
For the first time in her hoydenish life Meg felt that
she needed a cavalier. But it was Giles, her beloved,
scapegrace companion in sports and adventures, whom she
desired for this post. Why must Giles squander his af
fections on July, who thought nothing of him at
all . • . ?
(T.S.F., p. 220)
Noting Meg Yarde's straight, bold, and free de-
neanor as she moves unescorted through a Cambridge hall
filled with men, an onlooker remarks, "She's like a lad in
petticoats" (T.S.F., p. 221). Further heightening the simi
larities of the sister to the brother is the circumstance
that, with the advent of the English Civil War both brother
and sister die in battle. After Giles was killed in the
'Sing's cause at Exeter:
Meg had donned her brother's clothes and arms, and
ridden out secretly to join the troops that fought
Fairfax round Ashburton, and had been killed in the
first skirmish.
(T.S.F. , • p. 4?0)
These minor characters in The Shadow Flies are large
jf limb and small of intellect. Their obverse is to be
found in two of the story's more central characters: its
heroine Julian Conybeare and her brother Christopher. As do
the previously considered sibling pairs, these two exhibit
both physical and temperamental likenesses. Both are dark-
2 * 5
haired, dreamy-eyed, fair-skinned, "pretty," v petite,
serious, and studious. The brother's "pale . . . grave’
__________________________________________________________________________251
face" is "almost the spit of his sister's" (T.S.F., p. 213)*
They are fond of each other and often, although not always,
confide in each other.^ Both are good scholars, although
Julian excels her brother, both in industry and ability.^
However, unlike her "hoydenish" friend Meg, who envies men
the freedom conferred on them by their maleness (T.S.F.,
pp. 219, 259), Julian envies them their opportunity for ad
vanced study, an opportunity denied her solely by reason of
her sex. "I would I had your chances," she tells an indo
lent, dull-witted Cambridge undergraduate, "Particularly as
you don't use 'em" (T.S.F., p. 31)*
Much of the action of The Shadow Flies is set in
Cambridge, where both Julian and her brother pursue their
studies. He is a student at St. John's College; she
studies independently, and attends Henry More's Tuesday
P R
afternoon "philosophy class for females." While Julian
and Kit are at Cambridge, each is carrying on a dangerous
intrigue--she with a lover; he with a church. Both are
29
ruined as a result. ' Ironically, Kit's Cambridge tutor,
the poet John Cleveland, is actively attempting to fore
stall the seduction of the young man's mind by the Catholic
Church, even while he is himself simultaneously in the pro
cess of seducing the young woman's body. Cleveland's quib
bles on the words "tutor" and "pupil" after he coaxes his
student's sister into a first embrace are lost on Julian,
256
who naively thinks this display of physical affection means
her brother's revered teacher is willing to help her with
her studies, as well (T.S.F., p. 3^7). However, although
Cleveland truly cares about the development of the young
man's mind, he acknowledges the young woman only as an ob
ject of carnal desire (T.S.F., pp. 307 > 3^3). This "shar
ing" of an older, more experienced and exploitive male by
a brother and sister is highly reminiscent of the situation
in The Furnace in which Warren Venables is simultaneously
Tommy Crevequer's "friend" and Betty Crevequer's paramour.
Such female/male pairs as have been thus far dis
cussed appear not only in cdntral roles in many of Rose Ma
caulay’s novels; they also make some minor, seemingly gra
tuitous appearances, as well. For example, Hero Buckley,
important in an ingenue role in Going Abroad (193^)» has a
brother, Giles, who serves as her male complement, but who
30
does very little else in the novel:
A young couple came walking along the sea road
towards them, damp-headed, clad in white shorts, and
carrying towels. They were brother and sister. The
young lady's looks, which were of good quality, ex
ceeded her intelligence, which was only so-so; with
the young gentleman, it was the other way about. . . .
(G.A ., p. 15)31
But the most singular minor example of this "pairing" ten
dency occurs in Mystery at Geneva (1923)t in which the
heroine, "Henry Beechtree" (Miss Montana), has a seemingly
_____________________________ : _______________________________2£L
gratuitous brother who surfaces just seven pages prior to
the novel's conclusion, where he is mentioned in but a sin-
32
gle sentence.
It is possible to see in all the aforementioned
sets of "twins" dual aspects of but one androgynous person
ality. Such female/male compounds appear in central roles
in Rose Macaulay's fiction, as in the case of Julian and
Christopher Conybeare. They also occur as minor characters,
as in the case of Meg and Giles Yarde. Finally, they are
evident in the consanguinity of an important character with
one of lesser significance, as in the case of Miss Montana
and her otherwise inexplicable brother.
The least consanguinous of Rose Macaulay's sister/
brother pairs are the teenagers Barbary Denis ton ".and Raoul
Michel of the post-World War II novel The World My Wilder
ness (1950). Barbary and Raoul are an unruly pair of step-
siblings who live with Barbary's mother, Helen Michel, in a
villa just outside a small French Mediterranean coastal
town. After the war these intractible adolescents are sent
to their respective relatives in London, where they reunite
and run wild in the bombed-out areas of the city. Biologi
cally, these two are linked only by their mutual half-
33
brother, the baby Roland Michel. Still, as it is with
their fictional predecessors, so it is with them: Barbary
__________________________________________________________________________ 216
and Raoul are physically, temperamentally, and spiritually
alike. Despite frequent quarrels, these teenagers are
"inseparable" (W.W., p. 23). Both are "slight and small,
live and pale" (W.W., p. 10). Both are "untidy" in appear
ance, uninterested in school, and lawless in behavior.
During the German Occupation of France both Barbary
and Raoul were juvenile maquisards (W.W., p. k)j with the
coming of peace they find it impossible to revert to pre-
World War II mores:
"Barbary . . . is an anarchist, like Raoul and all their
maquis friends."
"An anarchist?"
"Well, they don't call it that. . . . But, actually,
they seem anarchists; they are against all authority,
and used to hiding bombs about the place and derailing
trains. It seems to have become an instinct."
(W.W., pp. 21-22)
The virtually illiterate Barbary and the slightly more ac
complished Raoul are both young savages. "Farouche beyond
reason" is the way Raoul's grandmother characterizes their
behavior (W.W., p. 17). For them--owing to the barbarism
of their wartime experiences--antisocial acts have become a
way of life. Both youngsters, in truth, find their spirit
ual home--"chez nous"--in the "wrecked waste" of bombed out
35
London.
Very often Rose Macaulay heightens, the similarities
of Barbary and Raoul by having them act in tandem, or react
in tandem, as when
______________: ______________________________________________ 2i2_
Two pairs of melancholy and apprehensive eyes en
visaged that remote wilderness of cold stone.
(W.W., p. 28)
Of great significance as a bond between them is a strain of
apparently hereditary lawlessness that runs rampant through
the ancestry of each. On the matrilineal side, Barbary is
a direct descendant of the "volatile," hard-living Charles
James Fox. She is also the granddaughter of a disreputable
Galway peer (W.W., pp. 226-22?), and the daughter of an
unprincipled lady artist totally devoid of the moral
sense. While, on the patrilineal side, the young lady's
ancestry is even more dubious. Although her putative father
is.the eminently ethical lawyer and K. C., Sir Gulliver
Deniston, her natural father is the Spanish painter, Vicente
Rodriguez (W.W., pp. 237-240).
These "irregularities" in Barbary's background are
reflected in her physiognomy. She is an "irregular-featured
elf" (W.W., p. 14), and her very name suggests the alien and
uncivilized.^
Like Barbary, her stepbrother Raoul has a family in
/vhich the tendency toward moral turpitude seems almost a
leritable trait, at least in the male line (W.W., pp. 12-13).
however, there is also a strong tendency towards morality in
Raoul's bloodlines. His paternal grandmother is almost ob
noxiously "upright" (W.W., p. 5)» while his late, convent-
bred mother was well-nigh insipidly virtuous. It is the
260
physical "build of this "girl mother" that Raoul's own phy
sique recapitulates. Thus, his "features were neater and
prettier than Barbary's" (W.W., pp. 10-11).-^ Even his
39
name combines savagery with sagacity. 7
In the first chapter of The World My Wilderness the
reader is told regarding this pair that the virtually il
literate Barbary evinces
something defensive, puzzled, wary about her, like a
watchful little animal or savage. [[While Raoul,3
. . . two years younger, had a touch of the same ex
pression} but he looked French, and quick, perhaps
clever, nearer to civilization, as if it might one day
catch hold of him and keep him, whereas the girl would
surely be out of the trap and away, running uncatchable
for the dark forest.
(W.W., p. 10)
Sexually, Barbary is also the "wilder" of the two.
There is no evidence that Raoul knows anything more than
the first faint flutterings of desire (W.W., p. 170).
Barbary, by contrast, was made violently aware of sex
during wartime (W.W., p. ?2); she has since become thor
oughly "experienced" at provoking and then fending off the
40
unwanted attentions of unsavory men.
Like Peter Margerison and Lucy Hope in The Lee
Shore, Barbary and Raoul are sundered at the end of their
story. The differing fates of this pair of "twins" as set
forth in the denouement of The World My Wilderness vindi
cate the expectations ; l o, f them set up by the author at the
novel's beginning. Raoul is last seen abjuring forever the
261
lawless companions and petty crimes to which he had been
habituated and making a grudging but genuine capitulation to
the "civilized" world of adult authority. "I shall collab
orate," he announces to Barbary at their last meeting,
That is to say; [/sic] I shall observe the laws, go daily
to school, obey my uncle and aunt, attend mass on Sun
days, keep out of the way of the police. Then they will
perhaps let me visit you in France next year as my step
mother has invited me.
(W.W., p. 228)
But, although Raoul has been "civilized" by the
story's end, the same cannot be said of his stepsister, who
has very likely only been tamed. In a scene Barbary does
not witness, the truth about her "Spanish" ancestry is re
vealed, and she is wholly disclaimed by her mother's ex-
husband. Her mother then resumes custody of her, vowing
that Barbary will "work at painting in Paris" (W.W., p.
234). However, judging from the mother's own past perform
ance and present predilections, the daughter is most proba
bly destined to exchange a life lived in open defiance of
the law for one lived merely in wanton disregard of conven-
4l
tional morality. This shift from an overtly criminal to
a flagrantly bohemian life style can scarcely be considered
a triumph for "civilization."
Rose Macaulay's last and most innovative novel,
The Towers of Trebizond (1956), contains what is also her
262
most innovative coupling of two complementary characters of
kindred blood and opposite genders. The narrator/protago
nist, Laurie, is paired with a second cousin and lover,
Vere. Contrary to her practice of the preceding half-cen
tury, in. Trebizond Macaulay causes these "twins" to be
fully intimate with one another sexually, as well as psy
chically. Also contrary to her practice of the preceding
half-century, in this novel Macaulay fails to ascribe like
physical features to her female/male dyad. In fact, she
sedulously avoids any physical description of them whatso
ever, and purposefully assigns androgynous names to them.
This;,-is because their respective genders are not meant to
be revealed until the book's concluding chapter, and, long
before this the reader is doubtless Intended to form her or
43
his own erroneous conclusions. Still, like the other
"twins" in Macaulay’s previous works, Laurie and Yere are
linked by a strong emotional bond, and are greatly compat-
44
lble, whether they are together or apart.
Since both Laurie and Yere travel extensively for
4<
different purposes, since they move in different "sets,"
and since at least one of them--presumably Vere— is married
to someone else, the opportunities they have to be together
are limited.
In what is also a significant departure from Rose
Macaulay's practice of half a century, The Towers of Trebi-
261
zond is narrated in the first person by Laurie Because
the lovers are often apart, the reader perceives Vere only
infrequently, and always through Laurie's eyes. Still,
Vere is ever-present in Laurie's consciousness. The reader
is constantly made aware of that presence as Laurie corre-
47
sponds with Vere; muses on Vere and on their relation
ships^ travels long distances anticipating a reunion with
Vereenjoys stolen moments with Vere.^0
Although Laurie has what Vere unsympathetically
calls a "church obsession," Vere is seemingly totally lack
ing in any religious tendencies. Laurie is a lapsed High
Church Anglican with a long family history of deep devotion
<1
to that faith. It is the relationship with Vere that is
the cause of this lapses for, says Laurie,
the Church met its Waterloo . . . when I took up with
adultery.
(T.T., p. 66)
The irresolvable conflict between conscience and
concupiscence; between profound spiritual yearnings and
passionate fleshly desires produces a deep psychic "discord"
in Laurie (T.T., p. 216), who speculates incessantly regard
ing what T. S. Eliot termed, "The perpetual struggle of
good and evil."-^ When Laurie gratuitously poses as a
"celibate missionary" (T.T., p. 188), the reader may read
ily perceive in this a kind of wishful thinking, a fanta
sized triumph of faith over flesh. Similarly, when Laurie
264
is attempting to ride a camel, and has to prevent it from
having "love" with other camels who roar like "the waves
. . . on Dover Beach" (T.T. , p. 1 3 1 ) or when Laurie is
struggling to instill religion— a "moral sense" (T.T., p.
240), a "conscience and sense of sin" (T.T., p. 243) in a
pet ape, the reader perceives that what is symbolized is
the spirit straining ineffectually to govern the body.
In the concluding chapter of Trebizond, Laurie's
"reckless anger" while driving in heavy traffic causes
Vere's death in a collision with a bus. It is only when
Laurie has "murdered" Vere that the reader learns the re
spective sexes and marital statuses .Of the cousins: Laurie
is a single woman; Vere was a married man with children.
For ten years Laurie has been joined in an emotional and
sexual union with her male cousin and counterpart (T.T.,
pp. 2?2-273)* As does Joanna Vallon in The Valley Cap
tives , she terminates the relationship with her male "twin"
by causing his death. However, whereas Joanna is mysti
cally completed by the union of her dead brother with her
self, Laurie and Vere had been complete while Vere was
alive. Now, Laurie is no longer part of an androgynous
"whole," since she has slain her male, self:
When a companionship like ours suddenly ends, it is to
lose a limb, or the faculty of sight; one is, quite
simply, cut off from life and scattered adrift, lacking
the coherence and the integration of love.
(T.T., pp. 273-274; emphasis added)
261
Laurie remains in a state of incompletion, cut off by death
from her "other self," and by sin from God.
Two of Laurie's travelling companions can be men
tioned here to good effect. These are Laurie’s Aunt Dot,
an Anglican lay missionary, and Dr. Halide Tanpinar, an
M.D. who has converted to Anglicanism from Islam. As these
women journey through Moslem lands by boat, camel, and
jeep, they have ample opportunity to research--but are
frustrated in their plans to ameliorate--"the position of
women, that sad and well-nigh universal blot on civiliza
tions" (T.T., p. 12).
Dr. Tanpinar begins her journey as a kind of ad
junct to the others, "like Dr. Watson" (T.T., p. 45), but
the personal failings of her travelling companions--among
whom is also a highly bigoted Anglican priest-~and the
harsh realities of rural Turkish life cause her to redis
cover her own culture and to find her own voice. Ulti
mately, she announces to the others that she has rejoined
the Islamic religion:
I have come to see . . . that we emancipated Turk
ish women, if we are to lead our poor countrywomen into
freedom, must do this from within. What is the use
that I speak to them in the villages and tell them that
I belong to the Church of England? What is that to
them, when they belong to the Church of Turkey? . . .
DOe must speak to them as Moslems, we must tell them
that our religion,and theirs allows these things that
they think they may not do, and this way we shall awake
them to ambition and to progress, and make their men
266
ashamed to keep them down. There is now a band of
educated truly Moslem women, who will go into the back
ward villages and teach them along these lines.
(T.T. , p. 261)54-
Agreeing with Dr. Tanpinar as to ends if not as to
means is aunt Do.t, the widow of an Anglican missionary who
is herself a missionary, and whose particular gift is for
discerning "the pattern and the hard core" of Christian-
515
ity-^ beneath.the sexist— and other— excrescences that have
so plagued the women adhering to that faith over the cen
turies :
. . . ^Father Chantry-Pigg] added, "As for women,
they've got to be careful, as St. Paul told them.
Wrapping their heads up is a religious tradition that
goes very deep."
"An oriental tradition," said aunt Dot.
"Christianity," Father Chantry-Pigg reminded her,
"is an oriental religion."
"Anyhow," said aunt Dot, "Christianity doesn't
derive from St. Paul. There is nothing in the Gospels
about women behaving differently from men, either in
church or out of it. Rather the contrary. So what a
comfort for these poor women to learn that they
needn't."
(T.T., pp. 19-20)
It was to the metaphorical "City of Trebizond,
to "the pattern and the hard core" of Christianity, that
Rose Macaulay returned after decades of alienation from the
S7
Anglican Church of her forebears. And it was in this
faith that, not too long after the publication of Trebi
zond, she died: "There is nothing in the Gospels about
women behaving differently from men, either in church or
out of it. Rather the contrary." For the feminist scholar
267
seeking to understand Rose Macaulay's entire output of
androgynous women and androgynous men this credo is, indeed,
"the pattern and the hard core."
268
NOTES
CHAPTER VI
-*-See above, Chapter V, pp. 223f f •
2
Neville herself thinks that her involvements in
marriage and children have caused her hrain to "atrophy"
(D.A., p. 55)-
3
"His comment apropos of his own niece is sympto
matic of this attitudes
"Gerda," he remarked, "is a prettier thing every
time I see her."
(D.A., p. 116; emphasis added)
L
Seven times in four pages, some form of the word
"envy" is used in discussing Neville's feelings, "particu
larly" vis-a-vis Rodney (D.A., pp. 14-15* 18-19).
There are, for example, her thoughts about her hus
band's political works
And his work Neville felt that she too could have done.
. . . Neville at times thought that she too would stand
for parliament one day. A foolish, childish game it
was, and probably really therefore more in her line than
solid work.
(D.A., p. 58; emphasis added; see also p. 19)
Likewise, thinking of her son's success in his studies Ne
ville recalls that in her own days as a student
she had worked . . . with pleasure and interest, and
taken examinations with easy triumph. As Kay did now at
Cambridge, only more so, because she had been cleverer
than Kay.
(D.A., p. 55; emphasis added)
And, with the memory of how "She had easily and with bril
liance passed her medical examinations long ago" ever
present in her mind, there is her "bitterness" at her
brother "Jim's telling me how I shall never be a doctor,"
and her determination, "in the face of growing doubt, to
prove Jim wrong yet" (D.A., pp. 15. 113)*
269
^In The Valley Captives (1911).dedicated "To My
Father," Oliver Yallon, the protagonists' father, attempts
to force totally inappropriate careers on his children,
largely on the basis of sexual stereotypes (V.£., pp. 20-21,
26-27, passim).
See also Constance Smith, Rose Macaulay, p. 36,
quoted above, Chapter I, p. 11.
^In Crewe Train (1926), love and pregnancy trap the
strongly individualistic Denham Dobie into the role of sub
urban housewife and mothers
Because she loved Arnold, she would go and live again as
he lived . . . she would bear his child, tend and rear
it, become a wife and a mother instead of a free person,
be tangled in a thousand industries and cares. . . .
(C .T., p . 312) '
8
In Jane's view of their respective professional
merits,
"Mother's merely commonplace; she's not even a byword--
quite. I admire Dad more. Dad anyhow gets there. His
stuff sells."
(P., p . 14)
n
7The term pis-aller is not used by Macaulay in D.A.,
but it is certainly applicable to Neville's unresolved life
crisis. For discussions of Macaulay's purpose in using the
term in her earliest fiction see Philip Rizzo, "Rose Macau
lay 1" PP• 6-7, 11, 18, 3i» and Robert Kuehn, "The Pleasures
of Rose Macaulay," pp. 17-18.
10
For an updated look at what psychologists call the
"empty nest syndrome," see Laurie Lucas, "Hatching a New
Life in the Empty Nest," Prevention, Sept. I98O, pp. 166-70.
^D.A. , pp. 31-32, 115» passim. Both Mr. and Mrs.
Hilary were suggested to Macaulay by her own parents. The
novel is dedicated to Macaulay's mother, who recognized
herself in Mrs. Hilary and bitterly resented it. See
Constance B. Smith, Rose Macaulay (1973 ed.), p. 98. It is
also useful, when considering the influence of role models
on Neville, to remember her intellectually gifted "Grand-
mama," with whom Neville enjoys a special closeness. As a
wife, "Grandmama" immersed herself in her clergyman hus
band's pastoral concerns. As a widow, she has made an
unpaid career of parish work for the past twenty years.
27 C
1 7
On D.A., p. Ill, Mrs. Hilary wonders,
To have produced Jim--wasn’t that enough to have lived
for? Mrs. Hilary was one of those mothers aho apply
the Magnificat to their own cases. She always felt a
bond of human sympathy between herself and that lady
called the Virgin Mary, whom she thought over-estimated.
(D.A., p. Ill)
13
-fAfter her nervous breakdown, Neville asks herself,
"Why do I want to work and to do something? Other
wives and mothers don't....Or do they, only they don't
know it, because they don’t analyse Cthemselves]? I
believe they do, lots of them."
(D.A., p. 185)
1 i f ,
Gerda wins philanthropist Barry Briscoe's heart
in part by working as a volunteer (and most inept) secre
tary typist in his office. Barry had been courting Gerda's
Aunt Nan, a free-spirited lady novelist with a successful
career of her own.
1 6
-\Alice R. Bensen, Rose Macaulay, p. 82.
16
When Mt. Vesuvius erupts--symbolic of the "cruci
ble" or "furnace" by means of which life crises test one's
ultimate values--only Betty's tie to her brother proves to
be "gold” (T.F., p. 175)* All other individuals, her lover
included, are perceived as "shadows" (T.F., pp. 177-179,
181, 183).
17
These are, respectively, Tommy Ashe and Basil
Doye. The latter is modelled on Macaulay's long-time
friend, the poet Rupert Brooke. See Constance B. Smith,
Rose Macaulay, pp. 70-71*
l8See N.C., pp. 15. 157-158, 164-165*
19
There are also "triplets" of this sort in The
Shadow Flies and The World My Wilderness. See ns. 29 and
34 below.
20
Daisy and Daphne is the title of the American
edition;of the novel. All page references are to this
edition. The book was published in England as Keeping Up
Appearances (1928).
271
£pp ' ' ' '
Ironically, all the other principal characters in
D. & D.--including, unbeknownst to Daisy, her own fiance--
are likewise leading double lives. However, Daisy is the
only one to suffer public exposure and humiliation.
22
Appropriately enough, Macaulay chose as epigraphs
to this novel Oliver Wendell Holmes' "Three Johns" from The
Aristocrat of the Breakfast-Table, and the following from
W.. D. Howells:
■ We all have twenty different characters--more charac
ters than gowns--and put them on or take them off just
as often.
23
vThe Shadow Flies is the title of the American
edition of the novel. The book was published in England as
They Were Defeated (1932).
ph
See also T.S.F., pp. 221-226.
25T.S.F., pp. 178, 180, 343. See also p. 439-
26T.S.F., pp. 167-168, 310-311, 317, 342, 388.
27T.S.F., pp. 30, 48, 254, 316.
28T.S.F., pp. -283-284.
29
^The love affair with John Cleveland destroys
Julian's reputation, and she herself is accidentally killed
by her angry older brother Francis, a Puritan and a lawyer,
as he attempts to assault the man who wronged her. Kit's
conversion to Catholicism terminates his Cambridge career,
and he becomes an exile in Paris "hanging on to the
beggared English court" (T.S.F., pp. 471-472, passim).
QQ
Giles departs for a tour of Spain on G.A. , p. 106,
and does not rejoin the action until it is virtually over,
199 pages later (G.A., p. 305)-
31
The pair also acts in tandem on G.A., p. 17:
The young brother and sister caught up their towels
and sped from the terrace down into the road, and into
the Irun omnibus, . . .
32
The following is the only reference to "Henry's"
brother in the entire novel:
272
In her loafing, idle and poor, about London, with
her idle and poor brother and her Irish journalist
lover, bitterness had grown more bitter.
(M.G., p. 242)
By comparison, the scant attention paid to the Irish jour
nalist lover seems voluminous indeed (M.G., pp. 242-244,
246-247).
33
-^Maurice Michel, Raoul's widowed French father,
married Helen Deniston, Barbary's divorced mother. The baby
Roland is the product of that marriage. During the Occupa
tion, "Rapa" Maurice sheltered refugees from the Nazi
terror, "but he also transacted business with the Germans.
Eventually, he was drowned by the maquis for "collaborat
ing" with the enemies of France.
34 / \
Barbary also has a "civilized" (half-) brother,
Richie Deniston, who acts toward her in the role of protec
tor and counselor (W/W.r, pp. 28-29. 38-40).
-^W.W. , pp. 48-57, 70, 173> passim.
-^English statesman Charles James Fox (1749-1806)
was a noted profligate until midway through the fifth
decade of his life. Macaulay makes him a putative ancestor
of Barbary's mother Helen Michel. For a discussion of Helen
herself, see above, Chapter IV, pp. 192-198.
37
The dissolution of civilization by savagery is a
theme that permeates the book. Rose Macaulay, who describes
Barbary as "an untaught savage" (W.W., p. 82), is acutely
alive to the allusiveness of her heroine's name. See W.W.,
pp. 141, 242-244, passim.
-^See also W.W., pp. 6, 220.
39 . /
'Raoul is a French form of Rudolph (0. G., "famous
wolf"), or Ralph (0. E., "wolf-counsellor ).
^°W.W., pp. 56-58, 70-74, 119, 177.
41
Such a fate is predicted for Barbary by Raoul-; s
grandmother as she--symbolically!--sits and nets, in the
novel's first chapter (W.W., p. 14). See also W.W., p. 201,
and chapter 33•
42
At the time of her death, Rose Macaulay had begun
work on another novel Her notes are included as an appendix
to Constance Smith's edition of Macaulay's letters to Jean
Macaulay, Letters to a Sister (1964) and are discussed by
2Z2l
passim
Smith in Rose Macaulay, pp. 210-211.
^Since Laurie travels freely and alone on camelback
through some of the more primitive regions of the world, and
since Vere prefers .to he lapped in luxury, it is easy to
assume (wrongly) that Laurie is the male of the pair.
^T-T., pp. 91, 184-185, 268-270.
h<
■Laurie paints "water-coulour sketches to illus
trate travel hooks" (T.T., p. 10), while Vere tends " to
lead a sportive life of pleasures and palaces, yachts and
private planes, villas in France and castles in Italy"
(T.T., p. 269)•
employs
^All
third
of her other fiction,
person narrative.
without exception,
^7
48
49
50
T.T
T.T
T.T
T.T
51
52r
T.T
pp. 91, 132, 137, 153, 157.
pp. 66, 102, 116, 216.
pp. 159. 170, 211.
pp. 116, 181, 183-185, 227-228, 239, 266,
PP• 4-5ff•
Rock'
'This and
(Chorus I_)»
53,
four other
is quoted hy
lines from T.
Macaulay on
S. Eliot's 1 The
T.T., p. 151•
Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," which depicts the
"Sea of Faith. . . . / Retreating. . . ."is quite appropri
ately mentioned in this passage ahout the camel, since a
recurrent theme of the novel is the conflict of the spirit
with the flesh. Also appropriately, the camel is a female
(T.T.» p. 131)--a clue to Laurie's own sex. Another pos
sible clue occurs a few chapters later when Laurie "spent
the night . . . in a[n archaeological] digging with a
large-size female statue" (T.T., p. 207).
54
Very much in the spirit of Dr. Tanpinar's resolve
to tell her women co-religionists in the villages "that out
religion and theirs allows these things that they think they
my not do" is a paper by Professor Azizah al-Hibri, Depart
ment of Philosophy, Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.,
entitled "A Study of Islamic Herstory," scheduled to appear
in Women's Studies In'ternationa1 Quarterly in a special
issue on "Islam and Women" in February 1982.
274
-^See T.T., pp. 274-277-
. St. Augustine, "The glorious city of God is my
theme in this work . . . ," in De Civitate Dei, trans.
Marcus Dods, reprinted in .part as St. Augustine, On the Two
Cities: S elections' from; THE: CITY' OF. GO-D, ed. F. W. S troth-
man (New Yorks Frederick Ungar 'Publishing Co., 1965) » p* 1.
Cf. also Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, hook 1, canto
10, stanzas 55-5,8"' for a description of "The Citty of the
Greate King. . ."./ The New Hierusalem, that God has built.
And cf. as well "the city. . . . the heavenly Jerusalem"
described with assorted scriptural allusions in John Bunyan,
The Pilgrim1s Progress, ed. Catherine Stimpson, with an
Afterword by F. R. Leavis (New York: Signet/New American
Library, 1964), pp. 141-148.
-^See Constance Smith, Rose Macaulay, pp. 192-203-
275
APPENDIX A
From The Outlook, August 6, 1921,. as reprinted in Living Age
310 (September 17, 1921): 73^-736:
WOMAN: THE ETERNAL TOPIC
by Rose Macaulay
[Miss Macaulay is an English novelist whose latest
book, Dangerous Ages, dealing mainly with the lives of
a group of women, has roused much discussion. ] ]
From The Outlook, August 6
(London Conservative Literary Weekly)
There is a number of puzzling facts connected with
the strange life lived by humanity and others on this per
plexing and surely unusual planet. There is a vast number
of questions that the inquisitive will be forever asking
themselves and their neighbors, and of these only the
smaller part receive any satisfying answers. Not among
these last are the inquiries rising out of a remark care
lessly made to me the other day by one who never inquires,
but takes all for granted. 'Women,' she said, 'are a topic.
Men aren't.'
It is entirely true. Man is not a topics he is
merely a sex— hardly, in fact, even a sex, for he is human
ity and women are the Sex (in spite of their present prepon
derance in numbers). As a topic, woman is a hardy annual.
Annual? No, a hardy monthly, seminal, daily. Women’s
clothes: are they too few, too short, too transparent, too
tight, too cool? (Who ever discusses thus seriously the
garments of men, whether they are too many, too thick, too
hot, too much designed to be a lure to the other sex?)
Mateless maidens, surplus women, women as a social danger,-
the modern girl--is she different from her grandmother? Are
women becoming more (if possible) dishonest? More ill-
mannered? Should they smoke in baby's face? What kind of
women do men prefer? And so on, and so on, and so on.
276
The psychology, physiology, rights and status of
woman— how far more often they are discussed than those of
man. Man too, presumably, has a status, has his rights,
even his psychology--and Rousseau and Tom Paine and their
contemporaries used to discuss them at length at one time.
But in these days women hold the field. It is possible,
even probable, that there are also too many men--but news
papers do not point it out in the rather rude manner they
adopt where women are concerned. And why? Merely because
woman is a topic; she is interesting; it is even interest
ing, therefore, though deplorable, that there should be too
many examples of her. She is a problem to be discussed and
dealt with. ’The mentality of women,' people say, just as
if women were Germans, who notoriously possess mentalities.
People no more write of the mentality of men than they
wrote during the war (we are beginning to do it a little
now, owing to Silesia) of the mentality of Frenchmen.
Women are regarded in some quarters rather as a
curious and interesting kind of beetle, whose habits repay
investigation. Someone writes a novel about a woman, even
a bad novel, and there will not be lacking critics who will
say, ’Here at last is the truth about woman!' (One should
perhaps apologize for quoting this particular phrase, for I
have been informed by the rightly indignant user of it that
he only used it in a private letter of thanks for the book,
and on these difficult occasions one must, as we all know,
say something foolish. But still, it may stand as an exam
ple.) Any number of books about men may be written by the
biographers of adolescent manhood, and no one says (or do
they perhaps say it in letters of thanks to the authors?)
'Here at last is the truth about man.'
Why do they say it of one sex and not of the other?
It is no use asking them; they do not know. They vaguely
feel that woman is a topic under investigation, and man is
not. We do not get up correspondences in the press during
the silly seasons (all seasons are pretty silly), comparing
the man of today with the man of fifty years ago; we take it
for granted that the manners and habits of men slowly alter,
and have always slowly altered; but that those of women
should also do so seems to many people profoundly interest
ing. So much are women regarded as a topic, rather than
merely as people, that in some circles (army messes, for
instance) theyxare a forbidden topic. Among no feminine
military organizations,— Waacs, Fannies, Wrens, V.A.D.’s, or
Land Armies,--was man (one believes) ever a forbidden .topic.
One might think that this studying of the topic of
woman came from the fact that literature and thought have,
anyhow till lately, been in the main in the hands of men,
and men have found themselves unable to accept women as. an .
277
ordinary, and not at all out of the way, section of human
ity, hut have really believed them to he a kind of'extra
human species. But this cannot he the only explanation,
for of late years women themselves have enthusiastically
weighed in with discussions of their own status and
qualities.
It seems hardly fair to men, who are, after all,
quite as interesting in their way, and more unusual. Why
should we not now put up man as a topic? We have talked a
great deal ahout whether women should have votes, degrees,
seats in Parliament, holy orders, tohacco, and other privi
leges. Why not discuss now whether men should have cool
muslin.clothes, seats in huses, parasols, and face-powder?
Why not write hooks and articles ahout them? Two well-known
writers have, during the past year, written hooks on women—
Our Women and The Good Englishwoman, they were called. It
is time someone wrote corresponding works on man.
It lately came to my knowledge that a daily paper
intended starting this autumn a correspondence on the New
Woman, and was asking various literary people to assist in
chasing this ancient hare. Will not some other paper open
its columns to thoughts on the New Man? For Man is quite as
new, which, however, is not saying much. Man will repay the
trouble expended on his study; he is an interesting crea
ture. All sorts of thoughts ahout him come into one’s head
directly one begins to think him over. Has he a sense of
humor, of fair play? Should he wear knickerbockers in the
country and display the leg to the knee, thus attracting
women? Should he smoke, vote, preach in church? How can he
arrange his life so as to he happy though unmarried? Are
his manners less graceful than they were? Is he becoming
unmasculine, unsexed? Should he play violent games? Is he
incomplete without fatherhood? Is he an individual, or
mainly intended for a helpmeet to woman? Is the modern
youth different from his grandfather? What constitutes a
surplus man? What, in brief, is man really like?
Meanwhile, I should like to offer any daily and
nearly any weekly paper a wager that it will not he able to
keep woman, as a topic, in one aspect or another, out of its
columns for a clear month from now.
When did this thing begin? Has it always been so
throughout the ages (except among the Early Fathers and
mediaeval saints,"by whom woman was written of, not as a
topic, but as a temptation)? Did Adam speculate an talk
about Eve, her dress (or undress), her habits, mentality,
status, and uses, while Eve took Adam for granted as a being
much like herself? Probably; and Eve, no doubt, was a
little flattered by such interest, a little amused, and a
good deal bored. Perhaps she would really have preferred to
278
have been taken for granted, which is so restful.
Anyhow, there it is. Woman is a topic, never out
of date,; and even if man, too, can be made into one, she
need have no fear of being superseded. There must be some
thing about her more interesting and more perplexing than
appears to the casual eye.
2.7.9
APPENDIX B
SORORAL
After the Party
A girl said to her sister, late, when their friends had
gone:
"I wish there were no men on earth, but we alone.
"The beauty of your body, the beauty of your face--
That now are greedy flames, and clasp more than themselves
in light,
Pierce awake the drowsing air and boast before the night--
Then should be of less account than a dark reed's grace,
All Summer growing in river mists, unknown—
The beauty of your body, the beauty of my own.
"When we two talk together, the words between us pass
Across long fields, across drenched upland fields of grass,
Like words of men who signal with flags in clear weather.
When we two are together, I know before you speak
Your answers, by your head's turn and shadows on your
cheek--
Running of wind on grass, to bring out thoughts together.
"We should live as though all day were the day's first hour,
All light were the first daylight, that whistles from so
far,
That still the blood with distance. We should live as
though
All seasons were the earliest Spring, when only birds are
mating,
When the low, crouched bramble remembers still the snow,
And woods are but half unchained from the Winter's waiting.
We should be gay together, with pleasures primrose-cool,
Scattered, and quick as Spring's are, by thicket and chill
pool.
"Oh, to-night," the girl said, "I wish that I could sit
All my life here with you, all my life unlit.
To-morrow I shall love again the Summer's valour,
Heavy heat of noon, and the night's mysteries,
And love, like the sun's touch, that closes up my eyes--
To-morrow: but to-night," she said, as night ran on,
"I wish there was no love on earth but ours alone."
E. J. Scovell
A Girl to her Sister (1932)
280
NOTES
APPENDIX B
It will be readily apparent that "After the Party"
is a poorly constructed poem in several respects. First,
its rhyme scheme follows no discernible pattern. The poem
has twenty-nine lines divided into five stanzas of two, six,
six, seven, and eight lines respectively. The lines in
these stanzas are arranged with no apparent pattern in mind,
save that the near-rhyme of the opening couplet (gone/alone)
is echoed almost thirty lines later by the near-rhyme of
the concluding couplet (on/alone). The rhyme scheme of the
stanzas is as follows:
Stanzas 1 and 2 A A B C C B D D
Stanza 3 E E E G G F
Stanza 4 H H I J K K
Stanza 5 L L M N N A A
This is assuming, of course, that "far" and "hour" are also
meant to be a near-rhyme (11. 15-16), along with the felic
itous combination of "mysteries" and "eyes" (11. 26-27).
Scovell quite boldly includes "valour" (1. 25) in the
fourth stanza, but does not give it a rhyme, unless it mighl
be said to rhyme with "hour" and "far" which introduce the
previous stanza.
Second on the list of Scovell’s poetic peccadilloes
are the metrical deficiencies of her poem, of which her
very first line is quite representative. Line 1 appears to
commence with iambs, it next stumbles into trochees, and
then tacks on a masculine ending, for who knows what pur
pose. Viewed as a whole, the poem's first stanza is often
sing-songy and consists of a hodge-podge of trochees, iambs,
and anapests. The subsequent stanzas fare no better.
Third among Scovell's poetastrian faux pas are the
rather bizarre images that crop up hither and yon in her
"work." For instance, her sister's "body" and "face" (1. 3)
become "greedy flames" that "clasp" in one curiously mixed
metaphor (1. 4); meanwhile, the "air" is "drowsing," but
gets "pierced awake" by those very same pernicious flames,
which are also, apparently, quite capable of emitting a
"boast" (1. 5)* Other fantastic images in the poem include
the words which "pass . . . across drenched upland fields"
(11. 9-10); the men who seem to simultaneously emit words
and wave signal flags (1. 11); the "first daylight" which
281
"whistles" (1. 16); the "bramble" which crouches and
"remembers" (1. 20). Moreover, it is impossible to deter
mine whether the woods have been chained up because they
were waiting during Winter, or because the Winter itself
was waiting (1. 20). In yet another scenario straight out
of Salvador Dali, noon-time displays its avoirdupois (1.
26), and then "night" runs on (1. 28).
Fourth among E. J. Scovell's frivolities may be
listed some extremely infelicitous choices of diction, as
well as the fact that the work has pathetically little to
recommend it in the way of sonorities of language. There
is an obviously artificial jingle quality to several of the
lines in the poem, such as those ending in "whether" and
"together" (11. 11-12)5 "waiting" and "mating" (11. 18, 20);
"sit" and "unlit" (11. 23-24). While the only discoverable
lyrical beauties in the poem occur in the--admittedly lovely
--one and one-half lines calling fors
. . . pleasures primrose-cool,
Scattered, and quick as Spring’s are, by thicket and
chill pool.
(11. 21-22)
Finally, there appear to be two errors in grammar and one
unsightly misprint in the poem. These first two errors
consist of Scovell's failure to use "were" with the sub
junctive mood (1. 29; no doubt she used it in 1. 1 only
because "men" is plural); and in the sperfluity of "to
morrow" * s in 11. 25 and 27 which are probably intended to
provide emphasis by repetition. It doesn't. As regards
1. 14, Scovell may be given the benefit of the doubt.
Surely she intended the line to read "to bring our thoughts
together," which makes a good deal more sense than what is
printed.
282
APPENDIX C
From June Singer, Ph.D., Androgyny: Toward a New Theory of
Sexuality (1977), pp. 89-91»
The Adam from whose rih Eve is taken is the hermaphroditic
Adam. He fulfills the definition of the hermaphrodite as
one who is imperfectly formed as to sexuality, with the
characteristics of the opposite sex anatomically present bu1
in a distorted, incomplete and inferior form. . . . Like
Dionysius, the Edenic Adam is man-woman, and as hermaphro
dite he is basically asexual. This is because the feminine
is present within him but he is unconscious of her being
there; hence he cannot relate to her, nor, by the same
token, can she relate to him. This asymmetrical relation
ship, which is also unconscious, is necessarily impotent
and passive. Nothing dynamic can come of it until the male
is first separated from the female. . . .
Consciousness . . . implies man's awareness of his
own mortality, over and against a cosmos that appears to
him timeless and of another order. Gradually in the process
of acquiring consciousness he becomes aware of all the
other pairs of oppo'sites, the male-female pair being among
the most important, for this pair can be seen as a metaphor
for nearly all the others. All the events comprising a
consciousness-seeking way of life present themselves in the
form of pairs of opposites. The hermaphroditic, mode is the
mode of imbalance, ambiguity, confusion. The hermaphroditic
union of the opposites is not a true union but a merging of
undifferentiated aspects. It is cloudy* chaotic, and yet
it is a fertile space. Much can grow there as consciousness
enters in, nurturing and ordering. . . . In the differentia
tion of the hermaphroditic anomaly, the way is opened for
the recognition and ultimately for the marriage of the pairs
of opposites. In this lies the promise of the return to the
ideal of the true androgyny, in which the masculine elements
and the feminine elements in the human psyche are fused, and
not confused.
283
APPENDIX D
Transcription of letter received by "the author of this
studys
Embassy of Venezuela
Information and Cultural Service
2437 California Street, N.W.
Washington, D. C. 20008
February 19» 1981
Jeanette Passty
2250- B- Lindmont Circle N.E.
Atlanta, Georgia. 30324
In reference to your letter of February, 1981
Please contact:
Dr. Luis Alberto Machado
Ministro de Estado
Ministerio de Estado para el
Desarrollo de la Inteligencia
Edificio Torre Central,
Caracas, Venezuela, S. A.
Telephones 283-12-33
Sincerely yours,
(signed)
G on z alo^ Palacio s', RhD.
Counselor for Cultural -Affairs
and Information
284
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. Books "by Rose Macaulay
[In all cases the first edition is-the one used in
this study, save where * indicates that a subsequent edition
was used.J
Novels (In Chronological Order)
Abbots Vemey. Londons John Murray, 1906.
The Furnace. Londons John Murray, 1907-
The Secret River. London: John Murray, 1909.
The Valley Captives. London: John Murray, 1 9 H • (*New York:
Henry Holt and Company.)
Views and Vagabonds. London: John Murray, 1912. (New York:
Henry Holt and Company.)
The Lee Shore. Londons Hodder and Stoughton, 1912.
The Making of a Bigot. Londons Hodder and Stoughton, 191^-
Non-Combatants and Others. London: Hodder and Stoughton,
1916.
What Not: a Prophetic Comedy. London: Constable, 1918.
Potterisms a Tragi-Farcical Tract. London: William Collins,
1920, *1950- (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1921.)
28^
Dangerous Ages. London: William Collins, 1921. (*New York:
Boni and Liveright.)
Mystery at Geneva. London: William Collins, 1922. (*New
York: Boni and Liveright, 1923*)
Told “ by an Idiot. London: William Collins, 1923* (*New
York: Boni and Liveright, 1924.)
Orphan Island. London: William Collins, 1924, 1961. (*New
York: Boni and Liveright, 1925*)
Crewe Train. London: William Collins, 1926. (*New York:
Boni and Liveright.)
Keeping Up Appearances. London: William Collinsj 1928.
(American title, *Daisy and Daphne. New York: Boni
and Liveright.)
Staying with Relations. London: William Collins Sons and
Company, Ltd., 1930* (New York: Horace Liveright.)
They Were Defeated. London: William Collins, 1932, i960.
(American title, *The Shadow Flies. New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1932 .)
Going Abroad. London: William Collins, 1934. (*New York:
Harper and Brothers.)
I. Would Be Private. London: William Collins, 1937* (*New
York: Harper and Brothers.)
And No Man's Wit. London: William Collins, 1940. (Boston:
Little, Brown and Company?.)
The World My Wilderness. London: Collins, 1950. (*Boston:
Little, Brown and Company.)
The Towers of Trebizond. London: William Collins, 1956.
C*New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957*)
Poetry (In Chronological Order)
The Two Blind Countries. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1914.
Three Days. London: Constable, 1919*
286
ROSE MACAULAY] in The Augustan Books of English Poetry
(Second Series, Number Six) [^selections reprinted
from the above two works, edited and with an Intro
duction by Humbert Wolfe]. London: Ernest Benn,
Ltd,, 1927.
Essays, Literary Criticism
(In Chronological Order)
A Casual Commentary. London: Methuen, 1925* (*N'ew York:
Boni and Liveright, 1926.)
Catchwords and Claptrap. London: Hogarth Press, 1926.
Some Religious Elements in English Literature. London:
Hogarth Press, 1931 • (New York: Harcourt, Brace.)
Milton. London: Duckworth, 193^* (*New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1935■)
Personal Pleasures. London: Victor Gollancz, 1935* (New
York: Macmillan Company, 1936.)
The Writings of E. M. Forster. London: Hogarth Press, 1938.
(New York: Harcourt, Brace.)
History, Travel (In Chronological Order)
Life Among the English. London: William Collins, 19^-2.
They Went to Portugal. London: Jonathan Cape, 19^6.
Fabled Shore: from the Pyrenees to Portugal. London: Hamish
Hamilton, 19^9 • (*New York: Farrar, Straus.)
Pleasure of Ruins. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1953*
(New York: Walker, 1966.) Portions of this book
provide the text for Roloff Beny Interprets in
Photographs PLEASURE OF RUINS by Rose Macaulay,
ed. Constance Babington Smith XNew York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, rev. ed., 1977*)
287
Anthology
The Minor Pleasures of Life. Londons Victor Gollancz, 1934.
(New Yorks Harper and Brothers, 1935*)
Letters
Letters to a Friends 1950-1952. Edited hy Constance Babing-
ton Smith. Londons William Collins, 1961 . (New Yorks
Atheneum, 1962.)
Last Letters to a Friends 1952-1958. Edited by Constance
Babington Smith. Londons William Collins, 1962.
(New Yorks Atheneum, 1963*)
Letters to a Sister from Rose Macaulay. Edited by Constance
: Babington Smith. Londons Collins, 1964. (*New Yorks
Atheneum.)
II. Selected Miscellaneous Writings
by Rose Macaulay
(In Chronological Order)
"Woman, The Eternal Topic." Living Age 310 (September 17,
1921)5 734-36. Reprinted from The Outlook, 6 August
1921 .
"Orphan Island." London Mercury 10 (August 1924)s 350-359•
"Human Beauty." Saturday Review 145 (June 2, 1928)s 692-693-
"Christmas Problem." New Statesman and Nation 36 (December
6, 1930)$ sup. ix-x.
"What I Believe." Nation 133 (December 16, 1931)* 666.
"Hatreds and Manners." New Statesman and Nation 2 (December
5, 1931)* sup. viii.
"Word on Family Life." Spectator 148 (February 20, 1932):
245-46.
2 M
"Miss West, Mr. Eliot, and Mr. Parsons." Spectator 1*4-9
(October 22, 1932): 53*4-35-
"Returning to Horridness in Literature." Spectator 150
(March 10, 1933)* 329-
"Stella Benson." Spectator 151(December 15> 1933): 892.
"Past and Present: Have We Improved?" Spectator 153 (Novem
ber 23, 193*0* 792-93-
"On Linguistic Changes." Essays and Studies by Members of
the English Association, vol. 20, pp. 108-122.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935-
"Freedom: Not Much So Far." Spectator 155 (November 22,
1935): 862.
"Lyly and Sidney." English Novelists: A Survey of the Novel
by Twenty Contemporary Novelists, pp. 33-50. Edited
by Derek Yerschoyle. New York: Harcourt, Brace and
Company, 1936.
"Full Fathom Five." [[Macaulay's "Auto-Obituary"] Listener 16
(September 2, 1936): *4-3 * 4 - -
"Christianity and Communism." Spectator 157 (December * 4 - ,
1936): 992.
"Eccentric Englishwomen." Spectator 158 (May 7, 1937):
855-56.
"Cambridge Men." Spectator 165 (November 22, 19*4-0): 520-21.
"Virginia Woolf." Spectator 166 (April 11, 19*4-1): 39*4-•
"Virginia Woolf." Horizon 3 (May 19*4-1): 316-18.
"Losing One's Books." Spectator 167 (November 7, 19*4-1): * 4 - * 4 - * 4 - .
"Miss Anstruther's Letters." London Calling. Edited by Storm
Jameson. New York: Harper and Brothers, 19*4-2.
Reprinted in Constance Babington Smith, Rose Macau
lay , pp. 161-170. London: Collins, 1972, 1973-
"Book-Building After a Blitz." Saturday Review of Litera
ture 25 (June 6, 1942): 15-16.
"Trying to Understand Russia." Spectator 173 (October 6,
19 * 4 - * 4 - ) : 313.
28Q
"Luther and Hitler." Spectator 174 (June 1, 1945): 500.
'Future of Fiction." New Writing and Daylights By Various
Writers, pp. 71-75* Edited by John Lehman. Londons
Longmans, Green, 1946.
"Parson and Princess Caroline." Cornhill Magazine 163
(Summer, 1948): 207-220.
"Free Run of the Shelves." New Statesman and Nation 36
(December 4, 1948)s 487.
"In the Ruins." Spectator 183 (November 18, 1949): 660-61.
"Ruin-Pleasure." Spectator 184 (June 30, 1950): 883.
"Virginia Woolf." The Golden Horizon. Edited by Cyril
Connolly. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd.,
1953*
"Coming to London." Coming to London, pp. 155-166. Edited by
John Lehmann. London: Phoenix House Ltd., 1957*
"In Spain and Portugal." Spectator 198 (February 22, 1957)*
239*
"What Christmas Means to Me." Twentieth Century 162 (Decem
ber, 1957): 515-518.
Ill. Relevant Books and Articles
Biography
Smith, Constance Babington. Rose Macaulay. Londons Collins,
1972, reprinted 1973*
Bibliography
ioveman, Amy. "Clearing House: Books and Magazine Articles
About Rose Macaulay." Saturday Review of Literature
12 (September 7. 1935)* 17*
2,90
Rizzo, Philip Louis. "Rose Macaulay: A Critical Survey."
Unpublished dissertation. University of Pennsyl
vania, 1959- Pp• xviii-xxix.
Published Ph.D. Dissertations
Brussow, Margot. Zeitbedingtes in den Werken Rose Macaulays.
Griefswald, 1934.
Wahl, Irmgard. Gesellschaftskritik und Skeptizismus bei
Rose Macaulay. Tubingen, 1936.
Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertations
Rizzo, Philip Louis. "Rose Macaulay: A Critical Survey."
University of Pennsylvania, 1959*
Kuehn, Robert Earl. "The Pleasures of Rose Macaulay: An
Introduction to Her Novels." University of Wiscon
sin, 1962.
Criticism, History, or Biography
Relevant to this Study
Alaya, Flavia. William Sharp--"Fiona MacLeod," 1855-1905.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 19?0.
Alexander, Sidney. "Aunt Dot's White Camel." Reporter 16
(June 13, 195?): 46-48.
Allen, Walter. The New York Times Book Review, p. 2,
January 21, 1962.
Bazin, Nancy Topping. Virginia Woolf and the Androgynous
Vision. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
Press, 1973-
Beach, Joseph W. The Twentieth Century Novel: Studies in
Technique. New York: Appleton-Century, 19^7*
291
Bensen, Alice R. "The Ironic Aesthete and the Sponsoring of
Causess A Rhetorical Quandary in Novelistic Tech
nique." English Literature in Transition 9 (1966):
39-43• ■
Bensen, Alice R. Rose Macaulay. Twayne English Authors
Series, no3 55* New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc.,
1969.
Bowen, Elizabeth. Collected Impressions. London: Longmans
Green and Company, 1950.
Braybrooke, Patrick. Some Goddesses of the Pen. London:
C. W. Daniel Company, 1927*
Brown, Sharon, ed. Essays of Our Times. New York: Scott-
Foresman, 1928.
Burra, Peter. Review of X Would Be Private. Spectator, : - - /
19'February 1937, p. 328.
Church, Richard. Growth of the English Novel. London:
Methuen and Company, Ltd., 1957•
Connolly, Cyril. Review of Keeping Up Appearances. New
Statesman 30 (March 31» 192£3): 796.
■— ~— The Condemned Playground: Essays, 1927-1944 * New
York: The Macmillan Company, 1946.
-------- . Ideas and Places. New York: Harper and Brothers,
1953.
Dalgliesh, Doris N. "Some Contemporary Women Novelists."
Contemporary Review 127 (January 1925)* 82.
Dangerfield, George. Review of And No Man1s Wit. Saturday
Review of Literature 23 (December 14, 1940): 6.
Davenport, John. "Talk with Rose Macajulay." New York Times
Book Review, 21 April 1957» P~* 14.
Dobree, Bonamy, general ed. Introductions to English Litera
ture. London: The Cresset Press, 1958. Vol. 5‘ - The
Present Age from 1920, by David Daiches.
Drew, Elizabeth. The Modern Novel: Some Aspects of Contempo
rary Fiction. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and
Company, 1926.
292
Ellis, Geoffrey Uther. Twilight on Parnassus; A Survey of
Post-War Fiction. Londons M. Joseph, 1939*
Evans, B. Ifor. English Literature Between the Wars. Londons
Methuen, 1948.
Furbank, P. N. E. M. Forsters A Life. New Yorks Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1978.
Gould, Gerald. "Some of Our Humorists." Bookman 67 (October
1924): 3.
Hobson, Harold. Review of The Towers of Trebizond. Christian
Science Monitor, 11 October 19561 pi 51
Inglishman, John. "Rose Macaulay." Bookman 72 (May 1927)s
107-110.
Irwin, W. R. "Permanence and Change in The Edwardian and
Told by an Idiot." Modern Fiction Studies 2 (May,
1955)s 63-67.
Johnson, Reginald Brimley. Some Contemporary Novelists
(Women). Londons Leonard Parsons Press, 1920.
Kluge, Margaret. "Die Stellung Rose Macaulays Zur Frau.
(Nach ihren Romanen.)" Anglia 52 (June 1928)s
136-173.
Krutch, Joseph Wood. Review of Told by an Idiot. Nation 118
(March 12, 1924)s 288.
Lawrence, Margaret. The School of Femininity. New Yorks
F. Stokes Company, 1936.
Lehman, John, ed. Coming to London. Londons Phoenix House,
1957-
Littell, Robert. Review of Keeping Up Appearances. New
Republic, 9 May 1928, ■ p . 358.
Littell, Robert. Review of And No Man's Wit. Yale Review 30
(Winter 1941)s viii.
Lockwood, William J. "Rose Macaulay." Minor British Novel
ists . Edited by Charles Alva Hoyt. Carbondale and
Edwardsvilles Southern Illinois University Press,
1967.
2£3i
Lovett, Robert Morss. Review of Told by an Idiot. The New
Republic, 16 April 1924, pp• 211-213*
-------- . Review of Crewe Train. The New Republic, 20 Octo
ber 1926, p. 253*
Mansfield, Katherine. Review of Potterism. The Atheneum,
4 June 1920. Reprinted in her Novels and Novelists,
pp. 208-9. Edited by J. M. Murry. New Yorks Knopf
and Company, 1930.
Marble, Annie R. A Study of The Modern Novel. New Yorks
Appleton-Century, 1927.
Marder, Herbert. Feminism & Arts A Study of Virginia Woolf.
Chicagos The University of Chicago Press, 1968.
Millett, Fred. "Feminine Fiction." Cornhill Magazine 155
(January 1937)* 225-35-
"Miss Macaulay’s Novels." Times Literary Supplement, 12 May
1950, p. 292.
Morley, Christopher. "Herrick's Buttered Ale." Saturday Re
view of Literature 9 (October 29, 1932); 205.
Nicolson, Harold; Lehmann, Rosamund; Pryce-Jones, Alan;
MacDonald, Dwight; Kinross, Patrick; Wedgwood,
C. V.; Carter, Mark Bonham; Powell, Anthony; Plomer,
William; Cooper, Diana. "The Pleasures of Knowing
Rose Macaulay." Encounter 12 (March 1959)* 23-31*
Reprinted in Constance Babington Smith, Rose Macau
lay, pp. 223-236. Londons Collins, 1972, 1973-
Nicolson, Harold. "Spanish Journey." Observer, 6 May 1949,
p. 291.
O'Brien, Kate. Review of And No Man's Wit. Spectator,
21 June 1940, p. 844.
Patterson, Isobel. Review of Going Abroad. New York Herald
Tribune, 20 August 193^* P* 9*
Peterson, Virgilia. Review 'of The World My Wilderness. New
York Herald Tribune Book Review, 29 October 1950,
p. 7.
Plomer, William. Review of Going Abroad. Spectator 153 (July
6, 1934)s 26.
294
Prescott, Orville. Review of The Tower's of Trebizond. New
York Times, 10 April 1957» p* 9-
Priestly, J. B. Review of Told “ by an Idiot. London Mercury,
December 1923, p* 205*
Pryce-Jones, Alan. Introduction to Orphan Island. Londons
Collins, i960.
Quigley, Isabel. Review of The Towers of Trebizond. Specta
tor, 7 September 1956, pp. 331-32.
Raymond, John. Review of The Towers of Trebizond. New
Statesman and Nation 52 (September 29, 1956): 383.
Review of And No Man's Wit. London Times Literary Supple
ment , 22 June 19^0, p. 301.
Review of Daisy and Daphne. Dial 85 (July 1928); 72.
Review of Daisy and Daphne. Nation 127 (July 4, 1928); 22.
Review (in verse) of The Furnace. Punch, 11 December 1907,
p. 432.
Review of Keeping Up Appearances. The London Times Literary
Supplement, 29 March 1928, p. 241.
Review of Personal Pleasures. Literary Digest 121 (February
8, 1936)s 27.
Review of The Towers of Trebizond. London Times Literary
Supplement, 7 September 1956, p. 521.
Review of The Towers of Trebizond. Time 69 (April 15, 1957)*
133.
Review of The Towers of Trebizond. New Yorker 33 (June 1,
19577s 116.
Review of They Were Defeated. New Statesman and Nation 4
(October 22, 1932): 492.
Review of The World My Wilderness. London Times Literary
Supplement, 12 May 1950, p. 292.
Rolo, Charles. Review of The Towers of Trebizond. Atlantic
Monthly 199 (June 1957)s 91•
29 5
Rosenback, E. "Rose Macaulay." N. Sprachen 33 (1925): 200-6.
Sandrock, Mary. Review of The World My Wilderness. Catholic
World 172 (December 1950): 233*
Sherman, Stuart. Critical Woodcuts. New York: Charles Scrib
ner's and Sons, 1926.
Stallings, Sylvia. Review of The Towers of Trebizond. New
York Herald Tribune Book Review, 14 April 1957,
p. 3-
Stevens, George. Review of Going Abroad. Saturday Review of
Literature 11 (August 25, 1934): 69.
Stewart, Douglas G. The Ark of God: Studies in Five Modern
Novelists, James Joyce, Aldous Huxley, Graham
Greene, Rose Macaulay, Joyce Cary. London: Carey
Kingsgate Press, 1961•
Strong, L. A. G. "A Tour of Time and Place." Spectator 149
(October 22, 1932): 558.
Sturgeon, Mary C. Studies of Contemporary Poets. Enlarged
and revised edition. Londons G. G. Harrap and Com
pany, 1920.
Swinnerton, Frank. The Georgian Scene: A Literary Panorama.
New York: Farrar, Rinehart Company, 1934. London:
Willdram Heineman,, 1935* (Revised edition, London:
Hutchinson 8c Co ., 1969.)
-------- . "Rose Macaulay." Spectator 184 (May 12, 1950):
653.
-------- . "Rose Macaulay." Kenyon Review 29 (November 1967):
591-608.
Taylor, Roehel. Review of Keeping Up Appearances. Spectator
140 (March 24, 1928"): 477- -------- -------
Tindall, William Y. Forces in Modem British Literature:
1885-1946. New York: Knopf Company, 1947•
Wedgwood, Cicely Veronica. Introduction to They Were De
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West, Anthony. Review of And No Man's Wit. New Statesman anc
Nation, 13 July 1940, pp. 46-47-
2M
Witherspoon, Alexander. "Milton is Still Timely." Saturday
Review of Literature 11 (April 27* 1935)* 6b6 .
Woods, Katherine. Review of And No Man’s Wit. New York
Times, 2? October 19^0, p. 6 .
Woolf, Virginia; A Writer's Diary. London: Hogarth Press,
1930.
223

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