Abstract
This chapter presents contrasting paths—the seaside of Hythe, England, and the green expanse of Bowen’s Court, Ireland—as places that became aspects of Bowen’s personality and terrains of her imagination. Bowen’s Court, the family estate with its rituals and conventions, is focused upon as a centerpiece of her emotional life, and the house, her experiences there, its sale, and its demise are described. Her travel away from Ireland to the more carefree lifestyle of Hythe unleashes the farouche or untamed aspects of her personality. As an adult, she leads a modern unsettled cosmopolitan life, often traveling to Italy and France and to teach in the United States.
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- 1.
Bowen, “Notes on Writing a Novel,” 177.
- 2.
Welty, “Place in Fiction,” 117, 122.
- 3.
National University of Ireland, Galway, Landed Estates Database, http://landedestates.nuigalway.ie/LandedEstates/jsp/family-show.jsp?id=2664. Accessed December 15, 2015.
- 4.
BC, 453, 248.
- 5.
SW, 4.
- 6.
EB to CR, May 7, 1962, LCW, 231.
- 7.
DH, 140.
- 8.
Bowen, “Most Unforgettable Character,” MT, 258–259.
- 9.
Bennett, “House,” 173.
- 10.
HH to EB, June (ca.1933), HHC.
- 11.
BC, 27.
- 12.
BC, 457.
- 13.
EB to CR, May 14, 1950. LCW 173.
- 14.
Plomer, At Home, 138.
- 15.
Bowen, “The Big House,” P&C, 27.
- 16.
Kreilkamp, 17.
- 17.
PC, 25.
- 18.
Bowen, “The Big House,” PC, 29.
- 19.
BC, 453.
- 20.
EW to EB, August 5, 1951, HRC 12.3.
- 21.
EB to CR, June 16, 1958, LCW, 30.
- 22.
CR journal, July 2, 1958, LCW, 311–312.
- 23.
Woolf, April 30, 1934, Diary 4, 210. The “old man,” Patsy Hennessy, St. Geoffrey’s Well.
- 24.
Keane, “Elizabeth of Bowen’s Court.”
- 25.
Bennett, “House,” 177.
- 26.
Bowen, “The Big House,” PC, 28.
- 27.
Bennett, “House,” 172.
- 28.
Donnelly, “Big House Burnings,” 147–148. Donnelly cites methods for estimating values in today’s money; one recommends multiplying the British sterling values of 1920–1921 by 30. He also recommends consulting http://www.measuring worth.com/ukcompare/. Accessed May 6, 2011.
- 29.
EB to CR, August 24, 1945, LCW, 57.
- 30.
R.B. MacCarthy to DH, April 1, 1973, PRONI D/4400/C/2/28.
- 31.
Woolf, To the Lighthouse, 267.
- 32.
DH, 90, 291.
- 33.
Dwane interview.
- 34.
Molly O’Brien: see Murphy, “Regionalism and Nationalism,” 146ff.
- 35.
TST, 11–17.
- 36.
Brenda Hennessy’s reported remarks on Michael Collins and Molly O’Brien, in Murphy, “Regionalism and Nationalism,” 32ff.
- 37.
In the Act of Settlement of Farahy Townlands, eighteenth-century records reveal that Lord Kingston was allotted 1227 acres, compared with John Bowen’s 655 acres, and thus Maume’s assessment. Farahy Parish history:
http://www.corkpastandpresent.ie/places/northcorkcounty/grovewhitenotes/fairyhilltokanturkcastle/gw3_103_119.pdf. Accessed November 2015.
- 38.
Interview with Mike Gould, January 24, 1993, Murphy, “Regionalism and Nationalism.”
- 39.
Brenda Hennessy, interview by PL, Farahy, Ireland, May 2011.
- 40.
Keane, “Elizabeth of Bowen’s Court.”
- 41.
“Elizabeth Bowen and Jocelyn Brooke.”
- 42.
LS, 60.
- 43.
Banville, BBC Sunday Feature: Radio 3, 1999, NSA.
- 44.
LS, 302–303.
- 45.
Lassner, Elizabeth Bowen, 46.
- 46.
LS, 41–42.
- 47.
Padraig O Maiden, “The End of Bowen’s Court,” September 28 (ca. 1959), in Hennessy’s Miscellaneous Files.
- 48.
Preface, second edition of LS, 204.
- 49.
BC, 278.
- 50.
Mary Dwane interview.
- 51.
As reported in Donnelly, “Big House Burnings,” 149.
- 52.
BC, 376, 365, 371.
- 53.
Kiberd interview.
- 54.
LS, 26.
- 55.
WL, 11.
- 56.
LS, 25–26.
- 57.
Heaney, Sweeney Astray.
- 58.
Joyce, Ulysses, 268.
- 59.
An affinity between Bowen’s view of trees and recent environmental studies: Wohlleben, Hidden Life of Trees.
- 60.
Bennett, “House,” 2.
- 61.
L.P. Hartley to EB, March 12, 1934, HRC 11.5.
- 62.
EB to CR, September 7, 1948, LCW, 134.
- 63.
Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 367.
- 64.
Bowen, “Culture of Nostalgia,” 451.
- 65.
Poulet, Interior Distance, 244.
- 66.
Alexander, September 10–18, 1935, from “Notes on a Visit to Ireland,” 197–198.
- 67.
WP to EB, August 17, n.d., HRC 11.8.
- 68.
EB to WP, August 17, n.d., DUR 19.
- 69.
“The Disinherited,” CS, 387.
- 70.
BC, 172.
- 71.
Janet Adamson, archivist, Folkestone, England, 1909 Irish census.
- 72.
BC, 420.
- 73.
Trench, “Dermot Chenevix Trench,” 39ff.
- 74.
Reference by Peter Reichenberg, member of Ulysses reading group.
- 75.
BC, 420.
- 76.
Documentary, The Death of the Heart.
- 77.
FR, 41.
- 78.
SW, 55.
- 79.
EB to CR, January 29, 1957, LCW, 260.
- 80.
SW, 20.
- 81.
PC, 3, 28.
- 82.
EB to VW, August 26, 1935, SU.
- 83.
P C, 26.
- 84.
Bowen, “Coming to London,” 80.
- 85.
BC, 440.
- 86.
Janet Adamson, archivist for the Folkestone Historical Society England, information from local street directories listing Mrs. E. Cameron residing in “Wayside” on Church Hill, Carbury (“Carbery”) in 1966, 1968, 1970, and 1971–1973.
- 87.
Hubert Butler, 85.
- 88.
Bowen, “Autobiographical Note.”
- 89.
Correspondence, Miss Beckett, Harper’s Bazaar, Grosvenor Square, July 1, 1945, HL, 52742–52813.
- 90.
DH, 303–304, 34.
- 91.
John Summerson, visitor to Bowen’s Court and Regent’s Park, wrote about Nash’s architecture in Georgian London.
- 92.
Bowen, “Regent’s Park and St. John’s Wood,” 156, 152.
- 93.
Ibid., 152.
- 94.
“Attractive Modern Homes,” CS, 525.
- 95.
Bowen, “Regent’s Park and St. Johns Wood,” 154.
- 96.
Bowen, “The Cat Jumps,” CS, 367.
- 97.
CR to McIntosh, Feb. 27, 1947, Robertson personal collection.
- 98.
HP, 9.
- 99.
PC, 26–35.
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Laurence, P. (2019). Terrains of the Imagination. In: Elizabeth Bowen. Literary Lives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26415-4_3
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