Abstract
This chapter explores Bowen’s métier of flux as she travels from Dublin to Kent after her father’s breakdown when she was seven years old. Though seemingly grounded in prominent ascendancy families and traditions—the “mad” Bowens and the “sane” Colleys, described here—she has early feelings of dislocation. Moving from homes in Chichester to Folkstone to Sandgate to Hythe—she has an itinerant education, develops a stammer, and suffers her mother’s death at the age of 13. The Death of the Heart and her little girl stories give voice to the experience of “mad” little girls like herself with feelings of not being located anywhere.
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Notes
- 1.
SW, 10–11, 18.
- 2.
BC, 417.
- 3.
BC, 417.
- 4.
DH, 140–141.
- 5.
PC, 51.
- 6.
“Out of a Book,” 51.
- 7.
Bowen, “Frankly Speaking.”
- 8.
Bowen, “Mainie Jellett,” 115.
- 9.
Bowen, “We Write Novels,” 26.
- 10.
Bowen, “Little Girl’s Room,” 125.
- 11.
BC, 389, 391.
- 12.
Oxford English Dictionary, “vague” in discussion with Victorian specialist, Kathy Chamberlain.
- 13.
SW, 9.
- 14.
Laetitia Lefroy, interview by PL, Dublin, June 2011. Bowen’s first cousin, once removed.
- 15.
PC, 12, 10, 12.
- 16.
PC, 12.
- 17.
HD, 97.
- 18.
HP, 48, 46.
- 19.
BC, 415.
- 20.
PC, 15–16.
- 21.
According to Carol Gilligan, a girl’s stammering or loss of voice may relate to the authority of the father. Bowen, under stress of her father’s illness could be seen as not knowing when to speak, leading to the stammer. Gaining voice then becomes a lifelong quest.
- 22.
BC, 420.
- 23.
John Bayley to EB, n.d. (ca. 1968), HRC 10.6.
- 24.
Lehmann, EB Obituary.
- 25.
Welty to Maxwell, What There is to Say …, October 30, 1968, 248–249.
- 26.
Leo Marx, e-mail to PL, March 26, 2008.
- 27.
April 19, 1934. D 4, 208.
- 28.
British Council Report, 1954, HRC 10.4.24.
- 29.
See DeWitt-Miller, “Cure for Stammering.”
- 30.
Movie version of his struggle, The King’s Speech.
- 31.
Glendinning, Elizabeth Bowen, 240.
- 32.
Ann Berthoff, interview by PL, Concord, MA, February 10, 2008.
- 33.
EB to SS, May 20, 1936, BOD, MS. Spender 39.
- 34.
Agnes de Mille to Anna George de Mille, November 17, 1936, SC.
- 35.
Mary Dwane, interview by PL, Farahy, Ireland, May 2011.
- 36.
Welty, What There is to Say …, June 1951.
- 37.
John Bayley to EB, n.d. (ca. 1968), HRC 10.6.
- 38.
Bowen, “Artist in Society.”
- 39.
Butler, Independent Spirit, 155.
- 40.
Robins, Madman and the Fool, 63.
- 41.
Information from Veronica, Bowen’s cousin, 2011: queried by Lefroy.
- 42.
Medical record, Andrew Whiteside, archivist, St. Patrick’s University Hospital, October 15, 2013.
- 43.
See Robins, Madman and the Fool, 77, 112.
- 44.
BC, 373.
- 45.
“Stephen Gwynn, Obituary.”
- 46.
BC, 367.
- 47.
Bowen, Statutory Land Purchase.
- 48.
HH to EB, June 1933, HHC.
- 49.
The Pembroke estates, one of the most valuable in Ireland.
- 50.
Glendinning, Elizabeth Bowen, 26.
- 51.
Bowen, “Most Unforgettable Character,” MT, 26.
- 52.
“Stephen Gwynn—Obituary.”
- 53.
BC, 345.
- 54.
DH, 407.
- 55.
ET, 91, 95.
- 56.
PC, 10–11.
- 57.
BC, 384.
- 58.
BC, 384–385.
- 59.
SW, 8.
- 60.
Ruth Potterton, librarian, Trinity College, Dublin.
- 61.
Kelly, “Last Days of the Colleys,” 96.
- 62.
BC, 384.
- 63.
Glendinning, Elizabeth Bowen, 23.
- 64.
HP, 16.
- 65.
PC, 3–4.
- 66.
Bowen, “On Not Rising to the Occasion” in Hepburn, LI, 109.
- 67.
BC, 387.
- 68.
Bowen, review, The Moores of Moore Hall, SIW, 42ff.
- 69.
See Ellmann 276–277, 288, 290, 321, 335.
- 70.
Butler, The Children of Drancy, Independent Spirit; Chenevix-Trench, “What Is the Use of Reviving Irish?”; Bunbury, historian, Vanishing Ireland: Recollections of our Changing Times.
- 71.
Lefroy interview.
- 72.
Christopher Hone to PL, April 6, 2011.
- 73.
Alexandra College 1860s curriculum, Aileen Ivory, college librarian, Dublin, October 2013.
- 74.
MT, 290.
- 75.
DH, 191.
- 76.
Melchers, Hythe Civic Society Newsletter 99, December 1999–January 2000. Edward Pomeroy Colley died, age 37, aboard the Titanic, traveling first class. The letter to his Aunt Edie aboard ship was auctioned for £6000–£8000 in 1999.
- 77.
See Maud Ellmann, 218ff.
- 78.
Curtis Brown, PC, xx.
- 79.
PC, 48–49, 50, 52.
- 80.
Bowen, “Unromantic Princess.”
- 81.
HP, 46.
- 82.
Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow, 7, 130.
- 83.
DH, 191.
- 84.
PC, 28–29, 57.
- 85.
Lefroy interview.
- 86.
Information offered by Anne Charlier to Janet Adamson, archivist. In the 1911 census, the rector had two daughters, Mary, 10 years, and Lucy, 13 years (not Veronica and Maisie, as Bowen named them in BC).
- 87.
FR, 61.
- 88.
Glendinning, Elizabeth Bowen, 119.
- 89.
Dictionary of National Biography, 384.
- 90.
See Woolf, Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas.
- 91.
Information from Diana Williams (née Temple), Downe House alumna, 1960–1965, e-mail to PL, April 2015.
- 92.
HD, 24.
- 93.
Essay, Downe House Scrapbook, 1957.
- 94.
MT, 15.
- 95.
MT, 21.
- 96.
EB to CR, June 29, 1958, LCW, 297.
- 97.
Bowen, “Coming to London,” 77.
- 98.
HP, 68.
- 99.
Sally Kean Phipps, Molly Keane.
- 100.
DH, 7.
- 101.
Downe House Scrapbook, 1957.
- 102.
MT, 17.
- 103.
Downe House Scrapbook, 1957.
- 104.
RM to EB, undated, possibly late 30s, HRC.
- 105.
P&C, 9–12.
- 106.
Bowen, “Artist in Society.”
- 107.
“Summer Night,” CS 596.
- 108.
Glendinning, Elizabeth Bowen, 25.
- 109.
“She,” broadcast February 28, 1947. In MT, 246–250.
- 110.
Kenney, 25.
- 111.
“We Write Novels,” 26.
- 112.
Proust, Swann’s Way, 7.
- 113.
Curtis Brown, Introduction, PC, xlii.
- 114.
Discussed in Ellmann, 8.
- 115.
Woolf, “Mark on the Wall,” Complete Shorter Fiction, 77–83.
- 116.
SW, 10–11.
- 117.
PC, 28.
- 118.
Bowen, “Little Girl’s Room,” 131.
- 119.
HP, 219–220.
- 120.
DH, 10, 111, 113, 248, 328, 201, 302.
- 121.
ES, viii.
- 122.
See Gilbert and Gubar.
- 123.
Gilbert and Gubar, Madwoman in the Attic, xii.
- 124.
Proust, Within a Budding Grove, 423.
- 125.
Bowen, “Out of a Book,” 53.
- 126.
Trevor, “Story of Lucy Gault,” 17, 22.
- 127.
Corcoran, Ellmann, Bennett-Royle focus upon the importance of letters and writing.
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Laurence, P. (2019). Change. In: Elizabeth Bowen. Literary Lives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26415-4_2
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