High Collars & Monocles 2- Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland by francis booth

HIGH COLLARS & MONOCLES 1920s Novels by Female Couples edited by

francis booth

At Miss Barney’s one met the ladies with high collars and monocles. Sylvia Beach

Cover image by Peter Wild

Contents Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland ........................................................ 4 Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes (1926) ..............................................33 Sylvia Townsend Warner, Mr Fortune's Maggot (1927) ...................................51 Sylvia Townsend Warner, The True Heart (1929) .............................................63 Envoy ........................................................................................................................72

High Collars & Monocles

Part 2 SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER & VALENTINE ACKLAND

WOMEN OF THE DAY SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER (By Winifred Holtby) THE newspaper gossip set afoot by the publication of “Lolly Willowes” revolved round the strange question. “Is Sylvia Townsend Warner a witch?” It made a good basis for interviews; it provided a pretty line in literary rumours. It was, for instance, possible to suggest that Miss Edith Sitwell, a friend of Miss Warner's, must certainly practise the black arts herself, and that her more bizarre verses resulted from incantations practised backwards. But when a sophisticated, and not undistinguished, audience met to hear Miss Warner lecturing on “Witchcraft” last week, they were hardly prepared for the question, asked solemnly by an innocent-faced young girl, “Please, can Miss Warner tell us what the Devil was like when she first met him?.” Miss Warner, with only hint of laughter in her small, silvery voice, replied with commendable solemnity, “I am so sorry. I have not met him yet, but I am still hoping for that pleasure.” This should have ended the controversy; but some questioners have been, with a rather surprising lack of 4

humour, less easily satisfied. One clergyman went so far as to give an interview to the Press, saying that he thought Miss Warner's flirtations with the black arts were “frightfully wrong and dangerous.” “Frightfully wrong and dangerous” is the verdict passed by many earnest souls upon the adventures of our modern fantasists, and not even Miss Warner's explanation of her witches' devil might console them. For he is, she says, an old, primitive, fertility god, strayed forlornly into a Christian age, picking up converts where he could, mostly among sad, unwanted women. Frightfully wrong and dangerous, he might think her second novel, “Mr. Fortune's Maggot,” shortly to be published, which concerns the adventures of a missionary on the South Sea Island of Fanua, a missionary who makes but one convert, and in a night of storm loses his own god when he forces his boy to destroy a heathen idol. A strange, disquieting, beautiful little tale it is, told with the same lucid serenity of conviction as the equally strange story of Lolly Willowes, that docile but charming aunt who grew weary of well-doing, sold her soul to an obliging devil and became a witch. The publication of “Lolly Willowes" brought fame to Sylvia Townsend

Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland

Warner. Fantasies are fashionable, and the public which had acclaimed “The Memoirs of a Midget” and “Lady into Fox,” took to its heart this deceptively innocent tale of the witch Lolly. It found that Lolly’s creator was a person who could also be taken to its heart. She was a graceful, slender, dark haired creature with something of the charming detachment of [actress] Gwen Ffrangcon Davies. who wore picturesque blue cloaks, or dashing dresses of black and scarlet, and delicious red shoes with her black silk stockings. She had, moreover, wit of a cool, delicate quality, and could drop her clear small sentences into a silence as lightly pebbles into pool but the ripples spread until their circle touched the margin of significance. She was asked to receptions and parties; she gave lectures; her book sold in England, and in the United States was chosen as one the Books of the Month, selected by committee, and neatly packed and handed round to goodness knows how many trustful subscribers in Mass., Conn., Penns., and other United States. What they made of it and of her, Lolly’s debonair devil probably alone knows. But to be thus selected in America means Fame, and solid sales. It took little while for the English public realise that “Lolly Willowes”

was not her first publication. Besides producing a book of poems, Miss Warner had been joint editor of “Tudor Church Music,” one of the most prodigious works of musical scholarship recently published. Before she became known in England and America as the author of an imaginative novel, she had already a European reputation as an authority upon sixteenth century music manuscripts. For six years she had been engaged upon a task requiring infinite patience and devout scholarship, deciphering and scoring intricate MSS. She had studied the evolution, not merely of ecclesiastical music, but of other matters, ecclesiastical and doctrinal. And among them, this heresy of witchcraft. It is an unexpected revelation of learning behind her airy aloofness which makes Sylvia Townsend Warner so puzzling a figure to the average reader or member of a lecture audience. She suggests ethereal flights of a soaring imagination, then suddenly staggers her audience with chapter and verse, the fruit of patient and tedious research. She flashes swift darts of historical perception at them. “The coming of Christianity into pagan Europe," she said, “meant the putting of old heads on to young shoulders.” In the reviews and articles which she is now contributing regularly to the Press, she

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shows more clearly than ever that her fantasies are built upon knowledge of, not ignorance of, human values. Those who read only “Lolly Willowes,” and see only a young red-lipped, and graceful woman, proclaim her a poet and weaver of fairy tales. They seek a warlock; but they find a scholar, who is also charming girl. A girl, moreover, who has, she herself half-reluctantly confesses, “all the domestic virtues.” She can cook, sew elaborately, make delicious preserves, and bottle fruit. Probably her darkest spells have been brewed over the kitchen table, to the delight her friends who can consume the result. It is this humanity which distinguishes her from her contemporary fantasists. The Victorians fled from their commonplace into the world of romance, usually mediaeval romance, associated with large-eyed ladies in trailing robes, with knights who fought in exquisitely uncomfortable armour, and with ruined Gothic castles. Such were the myths of an age sure of itself. Progress, in the form of factories, homes, empires abroad, bicycles, gas, and the telegraph system, might sometimes pall, but it was surely progress. Escape from its monotony need not be sought further than in the emotional simplicities of the more spacious ago from which it had evolved. The Elaines and Lynettes were ancestresses of the Gertrudes and Emilys who played croquet and read their Tennyson with rapture. They might romanticise about life, but it was beyond question real life which they desired to romanticise.

To-day all this has changed. We live in a less complacent age, in which it no longer satisfies to enlarge the world as we know it to heroic size. We are not sure that the world is a very nice place, and enlargement might make it worse instead of better. So we try to escape from human values. Expressionism is out of date. Our younger artists paint tables that are no tables, and men like trees walking; our composers make music without tunes, our poets verses without sense. Because the pattern of things may, after all, be their only beauty; ladies who become foxes may lie preferable to ladies who just grow old, whose beauty crumbles and passion dies and whose story becomes an old wives' tale. So we accepted “Lolly Willowes” and her creator with joy, thinking that she, too, had fled from the human world. We knew aunts; but few of us knew aunts who sold their souls to the devil. And then comes Sylvia Townsend Warner, the student of old, strange human things, who tells with smiling courtesy that the myth was no myth, that old women who met in Kovens and hobnobbed with the devil did indeed live, live to-day in obscure villages, and that her own works are not fairy tales, but deal with the eternal verities of sin and death, and passion for joy and immortality. So we not quite know what to make of her. Perhaps she is not yet quite certain what to make of herself.

Yorkshire Post, April 4, 1927

Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland

I met Valentine for the ﬁrst of only two times in 1954 . . . I remember a strikingly tall woman with broad shoulders wearing a dark blue jacket, a tie shown off by a white blouse, and dark blue matching skirt, effectively a suit. She had an authoritative carriage, gleaming black hair in a mannish cut, pearly white skin accented by lipstick. . . Valentine proclaimed her sexual identity in her male haircut, tie, trousers, and masculine bearing; she ﬂaunted her maleness and was sexually aggressive, but she and Sylvia did not live in a lesbian circle and had almost no friendships with other lesbian couples.

Peter Haring Judd, The Akeing Heart

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On 27 January 1929 Sylvia Townsend Warner was a speaker at a literary luncheon at New York’s Hotel Biltmore. Elizabeth [Wade White, later Valentine’s lover] attended, come to the city as she regularly did from her family home in Waterbury, Connecticut, two hours away by train. Sylvia, then thirty-six, was on her first visit to the US, where critics had praised her recent novels, Lolly Willowes (1926) and Mr Fortune’s Maggot (1927), which had sold well in the US as they had in Britain. She was the daughter of a distinguished master at Harrow School in England who encouraged her brilliant and inventive mind. She became a trained musician and composer and was one of the editors who prepared a scholarly edition of music composed in the reign of the English Tudors, a project in which she was involved for much of the 1920s while living in London. She often entertained her many friends in her flat, and throughout the decade she had a private and heterosexual affair with Percy Buck, a musician and musicologist and the principal editor of the Tudor Church Music project. In the midst of her scholarly effort, she turned to fiction with immediate success. Sylvia enjoyed an active life in London of concerts, opera, and friendships. A photograph of her in the 1920s shows a studious-looking woman, bespectacled as she concentrates on a manuscript, pencil in hand, an independent female scholar and writer. To Elizabeth, twelve years her junior, Sylvia must have seemed an enviable figure: an unmarried woman living on her own and a writer—just as Elizabeth wanted to do and be, though she also longed for marriage. Sylvia was vivacious and entrancing in manner, ‘like an astonished nervous dither bird, with great shell-rimmed spectacles, enthusiastically discoursing’, Elizabeth recorded in her journal. Peter Haring Judd, The Akeing Heart

Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland

I was born, then, in May, 1906, in London. The house in which I was born is rather an ugly one, standing in the street of similar houses which runs somewhere between Bond Street and Hyde Park. My father was fairly rich, although I never realised it no had occasion to; for most of our acquaintances were richer, and both my parents had for different reasons a superstitious fear of money which made them always afraid to believe in their fortune, and even while they were living luxuriously and spending considerable sums of money, they always worried about finances and complained of poverty. So that, while in fact I was being educated at a most expensive public school for young ladies and having such ‘extras’ as riding, violin lessons, swimming lessons as a Junior Member of the Bath Club, and was the sole charge of the highly-trained nurse who received a yearly allowance from which to feed and dress me; all this time I was hearing talk about things we could not afford, and things I must not hope for, and the great anxiety my parents felt about ‘how we should manage,’ to meet this and that expense. Valentine Ackland, For Sylvia

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When “The Oxford History of Music” was planned some thirty years ago the intention was to make a survey of those processes of the art of music which come to fruition in the nineteenth century. Music in the Christian era was held to be a progress from the melodic ideal of one note at a time to the harmonic one of many notes heard simultaneously, whether uttered by voices or by instruments or by both together. A graph of its history resembled a festoon hung onto main pillars, and the names of the pillars were Palestrina and Beethoven. “Over six centuries of work went to provide Palestrina with his medium,” wrote the editor,

and the first hint of that medium was to be found in the primitive “organum” (or singing of two notes simultaneously) of the early mediaeval ecclesiasts. . . . Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner takes one fragment of plainsong (“Tollite portas”) and expresses it in seven stages of the notational system from that of the neums to the “coloured” proportions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The ingenious device puts the matter with a definiteness never previously achieved. Times Literary Supplement, April 11, 1929

London [in 1923] was extremely gay, and it was fashionable to commit extravagances and follies. I remember wearing a bare-backed, sleeveless bright green evening dress and screwing a horn-rimmed monocle into my eye, and walking down the steps into the Savoy Ballroom like that—at the age of 17 for—a bet. Valentine Ackland, For Sylvia

Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner, the young authoress whose new novel of missionary life in the South Seas is to published next week, is also an accomplished musician and speaker. While lecturing on literature at the Tomorrow Club, she met Sir Henry Hadow, who frequently presides there.

Now she and Sir Henry are compiling book of Early Tudor music, much of which has never yet been heard by the public. Some beautiful Yorkshire pastorals are to be included it. Sheffield Daily Telegraph, April 16, 1927

Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland

I was still, you see, free from any fixed vice: I have never thought (do not now, and do not expect to think) homosexuality wrong; that it is still considered to be a social offence makes it dangerous to a certain type of mind – offences against Society often intoxicate the offender, and the righteous who condemned them very often become intoxicated, too. But I am sure that the impulse of desire towards someone of the same sex is not in itself wrong: it is not an offence in any degree – neither against God nor Man. And although for a short time I took pleasure in thinking I was flouting Society, it was exactly the same degree of pleasure that I felt when I wore a daringly low-cut dress, or first wore trousers and walked in Mecklenburgh Square (in 1926 this was a startling thing to do), or did any of the many defiant things people of my age were doing at that time. For the rest, I know now that I was quite normally neither over- nor under-sexed, and that if Richard [Valentine’s husband] had been anything but what he was we should have become reconciled to our state, and, for a time at any rate, we should have been happy. But Richard was without any experience of women, and he was suffering from remorse and fear because of certain homosexual relationships he had enjoyed recently. ‘Enjoyed’ is the important word. He was now horrified to remember that he had been happy. Valentine Ackland, For Sylvia

A WOMAN “GUEST-CRITIC” I hear that Sylvia Townsend Warner has departed these shores for the United States, where she will fill the role of literary “guest-critic” on one of New York's big papers [The New York Herald Tribune; Warner later became a regular contributor of short stories to the New Yorker.] She will not be here to see her third novel, “The True Heart,” with, I understand, Queen Victoria as one of its characters, published.

In the field of women writers Miss Warner’s rise has been as rapid as it is real. Her second book, “Mr. Fortune's Maggot,” had the good fortune to be selected for circulation by one of America's huge book of the month clubs. Deservedly praised by experts for the book's wonderful South Sea descriptions, it subsequently transpired that she had “imagined” them! ‘As I see Life,’ Daily Mirror, February 13, 1929

High Collars & Monocles

Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland

One November evening in 1925, two young women from London arrived at the village of Chaldon, in Dorset. They brought with them two suitcases, a gramophone, and a wooden box full of records; the bare necessities. Both wore trousers (‘unheard-of then except among perverts’), and had Eton-cropped hair, but this was the androgynous fashion of the moment; they were not a couple. The taller of the two, Mrs Turpin [briefly Valentine Ackland’s married name], had come to the country to recover from a recent operation to remove her hymen [Richard Turpin had been unable to consummate the marriage, which was annulled]. Her friend Mrs Braden thought this was tremendously funny. . . Once the villagers had seen Lady Ottoline Morrell (the Bloomsbury patron and eccentric host of Garsington) in one of her outrageous hats, two women in trousers would not scandalise them. Chaldon was now fashionable; an artistic colony migrated there every summer, and in the 1920s the place was cheap, unspoiled, and beautiful. But beyond that, it had a special atmosphere, a sense of secrecy, of being entirely separate from the rest of the country, not on the way to anywhere. Frances Bingham, Valentine Ackland: A Transgressive Life

It was from Violet [Powys, daughter of local novelist TF Powys, who was the brother of novelist John Cowper Powys and of Gertrude Powys, who painted Valentine] that I first heard of Valentine. Valentine rented a cottage in the village. She lived by herself. She had married before she was 20 but the marriage had been annulled. She went for long solitary walks, wearing trousers (at that date, a novelty). She did not eat enough to keep a mouse alive. She and Theodore [Powys] lent each other books. She was believed to write poetry but never spoke of it. Her mother, a widow, lived in London and was well-off. The village approved of her; she was polite to everybody and very open-handed. When Mister Goult let her drive the village bus, she drove it much faster than he did. . . When the solitary came in, halfway through Violet’s tea-party, I was not prepared for someone so romantically young and elegant – tall, slender as a Willowwand, sweet scented as a spray of Cape Jessamine, almost as silent, too. Our meeting was not a success. She had come to meet the right of my poetry, found her talking among talkers, thought her aggressively witty and overbearing. I was disconcerted by feeling myself so gravely and dispassionately observed by someone I was making a poor impression on. She was young, poised and beautiful, and I was none of these things. I recouped my self-esteem by deciding we could have nothing in common and that I need think no more about her; and in my pique I allowed this decision to be slightingly obvious. Sylvia Townsend Warner, I’ll Stand by You 13

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Valentine Ackland by Gertrude Mary Powys

Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland

Walking up the drive Violet spoke of Ms Green’s cottage for sale, and I became so inflamed that we must turn round to get the key from Mrs Goult and go over it. It is very nice inside, sizeable rooms, a good back-kitchen and stairs. No water, but a water-butt. The garden is charming – snow on the mountains, clove carnations, lavender, apple and cherry trees. Valentine and I in independent first thoughts approved the partition which would make it possible for one person to escape upstairs unobserved whilst the other dealt with the door. (This could be perfected by a thick staircarpet and felt slippers always in readiness, as at the door of the mosque.) Sylvia Townsend Warner, diary, April 21, 1930

The year’s end of 1929, then, brought me to Chaldon, with the Powys boy returned to East Africa and Sylvia staying in the village. She saw an empty cottage, while she stayed there, and on an impulse of concern for me (I had shown her some poems of mine; very weakly and bad ones, and she had seen good in them or perhaps seen good in me, and become friendly to me) she suggested that she should buy the place, and asked whether, if she did, I would live in it and ‘keep it warm,’ so that she might come down from time to time, and stay there a little while, and visit Theodore and Violet. Strangely enough, for in my shyness and awkwardness I do not usually say Yes to any proposal, I instantly said that I would. And she as instantly set about buying it. It was a small, plain-faced cottage, opposite the village inn; it had two bedrooms and a sitting-room and a long narrow back-kitchen, with a copper in it. And a very good plot of neglected garden ground. . . In October of that year, 1930, Sylvia moved in, and I went down, on October 4th, with a few oddments of furniture, and found her there, with a duck cooking and one large dubious-looking horse-mushroom which she had picked on the Five Marys that afternoon. We ate that good dinner and drank some Beaujolais and then some brandy that I had brought and we went to bed. In the morning I came downstairs in my fine silk man’s dressing-gown and Morocco slippers, and lighted the first fire. It burned very brightly and kindled without trouble. After about a week, during which I had felt shy and tried to behave as if I were not, while we were talking through the partition between our narrow bedrooms, I said sadly ‘I sometimes think I am utterly unloved.’ And Sylvia thought she heard heart-break melancholy in my voice, and with that passionate immediacy of succour which marches through all her character, and makes her have the most purely beautiful heart I have ever known – perhaps that has ever existed – she sprang up and came through the connecting door and fell on her knees by my bed and took me in her arms. I do not know what happened then, except that in a moment or so she was in my bed and I was holding her and kissing her and we 15

High Collars & Monocles

were already deeply in love – and ever since then have we ceased to love each other, and with each year of our joint lives we have loved more, and more truly. . . Our lives, for the next few weeks, scarcely knew night or day or any change in the hours or weather; we knew nothing except our joy and pleasure and the thousand and one, infinitely fine adjustments that we were each making, to fit always closer and closer to each other. Valentine Ackland, For Sylvia

It was one of our formalities that we did not talk after the door between our bedrooms was closed. I had blown out my candle and was half-asleep when I heard a screech-owl hunting up the valley, and Valentine saying she hoped it would put the woman at the vicarage in remembrance of the shroud – though it was more likely to do that to her captive. Somehow – I was still half-asleep – we got onto the subject of human relationships. I said I found it easier to love people than to like them. There was a pause. A voice of convinced desolation said, ‘Sometimes I think I am utterly unloved.’ I jumped out of the bed, in a flash. I was through the door and on my knees at her bedside, crying out that it was not true, not true, that she must not say such a thing. She gathered me up in an embrace to lie beside her. Love amazes, but it does not surprise. I woke to the light and saw her standing by the bed, looking down at me. ‘Well?’ She asked, rather sternly. I could not conceive where there should be any question, or why her voice should be stern. I was at home in an unsurmised love, and irrefutable happiness. It was early morning, autumnally silent. Realising how mistaken we had been about each other and how in my precipitate ignorance I had thrown out all her experienced calculations, we laughed as people do who have escaped, by a miracle, from some deadly peril and find themselves safe and secure. Sylvia Townsend Warner, I’ll Stand by You

Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland

The two women became closely involved in the village life and were friendly with many of its inhabitants, literary or not. They became part of the Chaldon artistic circle in the 1930s along with the Powyses, and Elizabeth (Betty) Muntz, the sculptor. Theirs was an ‘open marriage’, tolerated by Sylvia, who even kept count of Valentine’s frequent affairs with men and women. Valentine’s aforementioned brief sexual affair with Katie Powys paved the way for the latter’s consoling letters to Elizabeth nearly a decade later. Peter Haring Judd, The Akeing Heart

More domesticity than I meant. Valentine came to tea, and told me how Anna de Benson Barry, an old flame of Theo’s, came to tea, and was handed a plate by Valentine in trousers. ‘Is this your elder son, Mister Powys? Theo, just like that, ‘No’. Sylvia Townsend Warner, diary, March 21, 1930

I have missed out a good deal, I see; thanks to Oliver Lodge [artist and writer, associated with the Bloomsbury group], to whom I had become accustomed and who considered himself in love with me (among many other people he also loved). I had begun to sit for the figure to him and to [typographer, sculptor and incestuous paedophile, Eric] Gill and occasionally to others. Gill exhibited some of the drawings he made of me, and 2 of them were given to me. [One was used as the cover image Valentine Ackland: A Transgressive Life by Frances Bingham.] Valentine Ackland, For Sylvia

An erudite artist called Gill In print has announced: ‘Well, I still Believe in the Fall And in Adam and all, And in Art and in Love and in Gill.’ Valentine Ackland, Limerick Diary (1928)

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The Gill photographs came this morning, and I have been arranging secret assignations with them ever since. But they are not as beautiful as you, my dear. I had Violet and Francis [Powys] to breakfast, everyone in the highest spirits, and Violet at Woolworth’s revelling in artificial red-hot pokers, and cut-glass bowls because they were like hedgehogs. I bought some practical night-lights and a red platter, and a memorandum book. I was in the most tearing gaiety all the morning until I saw a little dog ran over. It was a baby Pekinese, it rushed into the traffic like a dead leaf blown by the wind. I went to the vets with its mother, but it died on the way there. I had to tell her. She held it in her arms, did not look at it, and the slow blood dripped from his nose on the sleeve of her slaughtered fur coat. If I had not vowed truth to you, I would not tell you such things. I began to tremble, and to think that joy was as rash and as easily made away with. But I have been extremely sensible. I have had lunch and reasoned with myself. I was thinking of you at the very moment I saw it happen before my eyes. That was partly what made it so terrible. It was as though it were you. By this time tomorrow we shall be together. My dear, dear love, I love you. Sylvia Townsend Warner, letter to Valentine Ackland, November 5, 1930

Valentine Ackland by Eric Gill

Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland

I wonder, and I am afraid. What will happen when you realise how unlearned I am – and how I know nothing of wit and wisdom. How undeveloped my mind is and how slow. And when you are forced by proof to believe all this – lack of ability, cowardice, and all the rest. When you see, at this moment, how I shy away from a full list of my weakness and vice. While you, your fine, sharp handwriting, the sure rightness of your words, your wit and understanding, wisdom and courage and steadfastness. All this is an endless delight to me, and for the beauty of your body, which I worship, and the achievement and mastery for which I adore you – Dear love. I love you. Let us not speak of unworthiness. I have nothing to give you which is worthy of you, except that my love is great. You must desire the pleasures I am devising for you. I think you will. You would not receive love so beautifully unless you enjoyed and desired it. There can be no end to the delight of making love to you. It hurts me when I read your words. It scared me, too. If you leave me now I may well misunderstand – and compel you to return. Because I would hope you are being Mister Fortune [from Mr Fortune’s Maggot], while you would probably be simply tired of me. Sylvia Townsend Warner, letter to Valentine Ackland, October 15, 1930

Elizabeth Wade White was my mother’s ﬁrst cousin and my godmother, a strong presence from my childhood to her death. . . In 1929, Elizabeth, aged 23, first met Sylvia, then 35, at a literary lunch in New York and admired her independence and witty, astringent talk. They met again in England that summer, and six years later Sylvia invited Elizabeth to the cottage in West Chaldon, Dorset, shared since 1930 with Valentine. . . The relationships altered when Valentine awoke in Elizabeth a hitherto unexplored sexuality in a passionate affair that began in late 1938 and stirred each of them deeply. Valentine expressed a ‘violent & ecstatic happiness’. To Elizabeth, her lover came ‘with a sharp sword and a gentle healing hand’. Peter Haring Judd, The Akeing Heart

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Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland

The Daily Express has been very much on its toes about the withdrawal of Radclyffe Hall’s Well of Loneliness after an attack by James Douglas in the Sunday Express. It was backed up by the Spectator, Lord knows why. Sylvia Townsend Warner, diary, September 6, 1928

I must not forget Naomi [Royde-Smith]’s proposed evidence (called but not chosen) in the Well of Loneliness case. Do you consider this a suitable book for general reading? I do. I consider it most valuable. I was for many years mistress in a girls school, and if this book had then been available I should have given it to read to any girl inclined to sexual perversion. I should have said to her, ‘Let this be a warning to you, first, as to what sort of treatment the world will mete out to you if you go on like this; second (Naomi wriggled and bridled) as to what sort of book you may end by writing.’ Sylvia Townsend Warner, diary, November 20, 1928

Sex in literature, pace Virginia [Woolf]’s new book [A Room of One’s Own]. The moment you say how women are to write well, you’ve given away your case, as a feminist. It should be, how people are to write well. And personally I mistrust this ambivalence of sex idea. The best male authors are undoubtedly the most male, great writing seems to establish itself in periods of marked sexual distinction, periods of sexual fusion produce only good writing. So why aren’t the best female authors to be the most female? Sylvia Townsend Warner, diary, December 27, 1929

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Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland

Women Writers’ Readings The popularity of readings by wellknown writers from their own works continues. Lady Cory is lending her house in Belgrave Square to-morrow afternoon for Miss Victoria SackvilleWest to appear in this role. The occasion has been arranged by the Six

Point Group; one of the most prominent of feminist associations, and two more readings in March will conclude the series. The last one, by Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner, who is a great authority on the subject of witches, ought to be specially interesting. Daily Mirror, February 24, 1930

Vote, February 14, 1930

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Author Village Libel Action TROUBLE OVER HOME FOR GIRLS LAWSUIT BROUGHT BY MOTHER AND DAUGHTER INMATES WHO RAN AWAY

A MENTAL home at a Dorset village vicarage, and the storm aroused, led to a libel action at Dorchester Assizes to-day. The plaintiffs were Mrs Katherine Stevenson, a widow, and Miss Joan Inez Drusilla Stevenson, her daughter, both of The Vicarage, East Chaldon. Llewelyn Powys, the author novels of West-country life, was one of the four defendants. His address was given as Chydyok, East Chaldon. The other defendants were Mr James Cobb, of West Chaldon Farm, and the Misses Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine both of Frankfort Manor, Sloley, Norfolk. It was contended that the alleged libel was contained in a letter written and published by the defendants to a large number of persons. Defendants admitted publication to a certain number of persons, but pleaded privilege. TRAINING FOR GIRLS The case was before Mr Justice Finlay and a special jury. Mr F. J. Tucker, K.C., for plaintiffs, said that they, as tenants of the

vicar, had used the vicarage for several years as a training place for girls of backward mental development, girls who had been in undesirable home surroundings, and girls who had been sent by local authorities for training as domestic servants. Miss Stevenson was also organising secretary of a Dorset Mental Welfare Association. Mr Powys and Mr Cobb lived the neighbourhood. The other two defendants were “literary ladies” who had lived in a cottage there. Mr Tucker told of an unreturned call by the Powys by the Stevensons when they first went to the vicarage. “Perhaps that was a little haughty,” he said. “Things of that kind sometimes rankle a little.” He was also told of trouble between plaintiffs and some of the defendants over Mrs Stevenson's Great Dane dog. RUNAWAY GIRLS From time to time, he said, girls ran away from the home. One girl, a certified mental deficient, absconded twice. After she had been brought back by the police, the Misses Ackland, and Warner came to the vicarage and caused a sensation. Hull Daily Mail, January 18, 1935

Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland

Find the Author A new idea in verse-publication has been evolved by Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, who are publishing their latest work together under one cover. Each has contributed about one-half of the hundred odd poems “Whether a Dove or Seagull” (Chatto and Windus, to-morrow),

but no hint is given as to authorship, partly as a protest against “the frame of mind which judges a poem by looking to see who wrote it,” and partly because the authors think that a joint presentation of this kind adds freshness to a book verse. Yorkshire Post, March 14, 1934

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Valentine Ackland

Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland

Britannia and Eve, May 1, 1931

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TO THE EDITOR Sir, — Your two correspondents, Messrs. Cannon and Cree, both invoke the name of liberty in their defence of Fascism. One objects to “restrictions on British subjects,” the other writes of " free speech” and “inalienable rights.” But how does freedom, as we understand it, fare under Fascism? In Germany and Italy alike there is forced labour, heavy Press censorship, suppression of free speech. Workers, small shopkeepers, and farmers are compelled to exchange their labour or their goods against unremunerative State-controlled wages and Statecontrolled prices. They are heavily taxed, and interfered with at every turn of life. Here, dislike our government, we can at least vote for the Opposition. Under Fascism, there is no Opposition; one must vote for the dictator, or not at all; and he who does not vote is liable to be deprived of his citizenship. Such suppression of liberty is no bulwark against Bolshevism. “The intensified persecution in Germany threatens the pauperisation or exile of hundreds of thousands of Germans, not only Jews, but also the ‘non-Aryan’ Christians treated as Jews, and Protestants and Catholics who, in obedience to their faith and

Sir, — I shall be very much obliged if you will insert the following announcement, if possible following any account you may give of the Peace Rally held yesterday. “Following the 28

conscience dare resist the absolute will of the National Socialist State.” So wrote Mr. J. G. Macdonald, High Commissioner under the League of Nations for Refugees coming from Germany, when, in November, 1935, he resigned his post declaring that “conditions in Germany which create refugees have developed so catastrophically that a reconsideration of the entire situation the League essential.” The recently-published “Yellow Spot” (foreword by the Bishop of Durham) contains convincing evidence on the question, and we would be glad to lend it to either of your correspondents. That is Fascism abroad. We consider our protest against any encouragement of Fascism in England amply justified such facts as these. But since our first letter further justification has come. Sir Oswald Mosley, speaking in the Albert Hall on 22nd, made a violent and direct incitement to Jew-baiting. And his adherents cheered it to the echo. T. F. POWYS, C. P. POWYS VALENTINE ACKLAND SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER East Chaldon, Dorchester, Dorset Western Gazette, April 3, 1936

success of the Peace Rally held in Dorchester on June 20th, it has been decided to form a Dorset Peace Council, which shall represent, as broadly as possible, all organisations prepared to

Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland

stand together for peace. This Council, to function at its best, should be undenominational, non-political, and representative of all classes of society, and it is hoped to make it so. All those interested in the formation of such a Peace Council for Dorset, and especially those who are in any way connected with any societies, associations, clubs, &c., working for social or humanitarian causes, are requested to write, as soon as possible, to Miss Townsend Warner, West Chaldon, Dorchester.

The great success of the Peace Rally itself showed how much support there is in Dorset for the cause of peace. The formation of a Dorset Peace Council will, by organising this support, build from the success of one day a powerful and lasting influence for peace.” Yours faithfully,

Sir, — Your correspondent, “Woman in the Street,” asks why we should collect funds for the relief of loyal Spain since the Spanish Government can afford, according to the “Daily Mail,” to pay large allowances to volunteers and their dependents. The actual allowance to these volunteers is ten pesetas a week (a peseta equals sixpence), and this is paid only when the men are in the fighting line. Those in barracks receive merely their keep and their uniform. I have recently returned from Spain, and have seen for myself how great is the need for medical supplies, warm clothing, and foodstuffs. I have seen the refugees, driven from their homes, the weary children clinging to weary mothers. I have seen, too, the compassionate and sensible methods of alleviation adopted by the Government, but these methods must be supplemented by our aid if they are to be adequate. For Spain, even at the

best of times (and these are the worst of times) is a very poor country. Your correspondent should remember that many newspapers are backing the rebels. Such papers cannot be expected to give a just account of conditions in Spain. I have heard many wealthy English people, who dislike paying taxes, declare that our ex-soldiers and their dependents in the distressed areas are perfectly well provided for, and have nothing to complain of; but I should not believe these statements, even if I had not seen the distressed areas, since I realise that the speakers are prejudiced. I would advise your correspondent to take other prejudiced statements with a similar pinch of salt.

V. ACKLAND (p.p. Sylvia Townsend Warner) Western Gazette, June 26, 1936

SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER 24, West Chaldon, Dorchester Western Gazette, January 15, 1937

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Sylvia and Valentine in Spain with a comrade

Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland

PASSPORTS REFUSED Barnstaple M.P.’s Question To Minister Mr. R. Acland (Barnstaple) asked the Foreign Secretary in the House of Commons yesterday for what reasons a passport had been refused to, among others, [professor of literature] Lascelles Abercrombie and Sylvia Townsend Warner, who desired to attend an International Conference of Writers at Valencia, in view of the fact that many British nationals lived in safety in Madrid without the protection of any

LEFT BOOK CLUB RALLY AT STREET There will be an interesting array of speakers at the Left Book Club Rally in the Crispin Hall, Street [in Somerset], next Tuesday, the 18th October, and these include both the Liberal and the Labour Prospective Candidates for the Wells Division. The principal speaker will be Mr. Cecil Day Lewis, the distinguished poet and author. Born in 1904, he was educated at Sherborne School and

British officials: and could he give an assurance that it was not intended to sever cultural relations between this country and the Spanish Republic. Mr. Eden: As regards the first part of the question I would refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave last Wednesday, which I have nothing to add. The answer to the second part is yes, sir. Western Morning News, July 15, 1937

Oxford, and in 1927 edited “Oxford Poetry.” . . . Mr. Lewis’s subject at the meeting will be " Fascism and Literature," on which he is well qualified to speak. Mr. George Thomas, a Welsh miner, will also speak; and the chair will be taken by Sylvia Townsend Warner, another famous novelist. Central Somerset Gazette, October 14, 1938

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Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes

SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER, LOLLY WILLOWES (1926) To celebrate our Book of the Year Award, we asked our followers on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to name the statuette from our official 2016 seal. After sifting through hundreds of entries, a clear victor emerged: “The Lolly!” "The Lolly" is a tribute to Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner, the very first book ever selected by Book of the Month back in 1926. At the time, BOTM judges voted to decide on monthly selections. Warner's book won by a large margin, even though the author was virtually unknown. When told that Lolly Willowes had been selected, Warner said: “Any organization daring enough to pick an unknown author would be a valuable asset to contemporary literature.” bookofthemonth.com

The award of the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize has been made to Miss Radclyffe Hall for her popular novel of Soho, “Adam's Breed,” whose chief character is a waiter. The Femina prize is the only international reciprocal literary prize, and is awarded annually in France and England for the best work of fiction of the year. The final award to the English novel is made by the French Committee, and vice-versa,

and both committees are composed of distinguished writers. The three novels which were selected to go up to the French Committee were “Adam's Breed;” “Lolly Willowes,” Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner’s book which raised so much discussion on witchcraft; and Liam O'Flaherty's “The Informer.”

Westminster Gazette, April 7, 1027

Roused at 8.30 by [feminist author, founder of the Women Writers' Suffrage League and legendary literary salon host] Violet Hunt ringing me up to say that the Tait Black prize had gone to Adam’s Breed. I could not feel as annoyed as I might have done because I was so amused by her officious desire to break the bad news; and yet I believe the woman likes me – I’m sure she thinks she does. Sylvia Townsend Warner, diary, January 7, 1928

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LOLLY WILLOWES, or The Loving Huntsman. By Sylvia Townsend Warner, 7s. net. London: Chatto & Windus. There is a piquant charm in this quiet chronicle of the life of an old spinster who makes a compact with the Devil, throws her relations to the winds, and asserts her right to stay out all night in the hills. If it be objected that the patient Aunt Lolly whose submissive girlhood, submissive sisterhood, and submissive aunthood are so delicately and with fine persistence pictured by the writer could never develop into such a “monstrosity” as a witch, then the objector is referred to the exquisite old lady herself, who, it is certain, will charm doubt into conviction. For does she not explain everything when she tells the “loving huntsman” of Great Mop village that “one doesn’t become

Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner gives us in LOLLY WILLOWES (Chatto and Windus, 7s. net) not only a first novel of remarkable accomplishment but an object-lesson in the proper way of bringing Satan into modern fiction. She wastes no time in cold philosophical argument, in pumping up horror before and after the event, in giving away the surprise and then making it seem preposterous; instead she prepares the ground with extraordinary subtlety. Laura Willowes is the unmarried daughter of one, sister of another, and aunt of a succeeding generation of

a witch to run round being harmful, or to run round being helpful either, a district visitor on a broomstick? It’s to escape all that – to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to you by others, charitable refuse of their thoughts, so many ounces of stale bread of life a day, the workhouse dietary so scientifically calculated to support life.” Thus is it. Aunt Lolly at last satisfies her inmost cravings to be herself: and may all overweening nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters-inlaw, take warning from this tale of an old spinster who turns. The writer, who has already made herself known by an appealing book of verse, must be congratulated for the delicious fancy and charming irony of the present prose study. It is a book to be read again with increased pleasure. The Scotsman, February 18, 1926

a respectable, solid, acquisitive, comfortable middle-class family. Her youth was spent at Lady Place, a house near Yeovil where her father kept the accumulated family furniture and owned the brewery; and when her father died she was unquestioningly taken in by her brother Henry and his wife Caroline to live with them, as the children’s Aunt Lolly, at the house in Apsley Terrace and in the lodgings of the summer holidays. Up to the end of part one nobody could anticipate the development. Laura’s life, all the life of all Aunt Lollys, is set down for us in

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes

sentences of deft observation and concealed irony. Miss Warner’s economy of phrase is admirable. By the time the Willowes family met at breakfast all this activity had disappeared like the tide from the smooth, garnished beach. For the rest of the day it functioned unnoticed. Bells were answered, meals were served, all that appeared was completion. Yet unseen and underground the preparation and demolition of every day went on, like the inward persistent working of a heart and entrails. Sometimes a crash, a banging door, a voice raised, would rend the veil of impersonality. And sometimes a sound of running water at unusual hours and a faint steaming hiss in the upper parts of the house betokened that one of the servants was having a bath. Nobody would suspect the emergence of a cloven hoof from this quiet realism. Into seventy-three pages Miss Warner compasses twenty years of Laura’s life with Henry and Caroline, she and they and their offspring and their life etched with fine precision. If one is afraid of what is coming, the fear is that nothing is to come but one more study – though an unusually artistic one – of a frustrated woman’s life and death. There have been hints, it is true, but too deep for the unintuitive. At the age of forty-seven, however, the war being over, Laura is more than usually oppressed by the day-dreams that customarily invaded

her during autumn in London. Something is waiting for her, she must find a clue, but the clue eludes her. An impulse seizes her in a greengrocer’s shop, it leads to the Chilterns, she buys a map and guide, and calmly startles a family dinner-party by announcing that she is going to Great Mop to live in a cottage. There is a trap for the unwary here, too. The prophetic will exclaim: “Ah, yes, the country, nice old landladies, village worthies, landscape and echoes of Henry Ryecroft;” and they will be most deservedly confounded, for Miss Warner gives them all these things, and the real surprise on top of them. The crisis comes when nephew Titus comes to Great Mop two, to write a book on Fuseli. In depicting Laura’s dumb anguish at this invasion of her privacy and desecration of her mysterious love for her chosen country, a new note of passion suddenly breaks out. The whole family seems to be advancing upon her once again, and, alone in a solitary field, she invokes the woods for help. The answer is prompt, but we cannot bring ourselves to spoil the delightful surprise prepared for the reader and for Laura on the latter’s return to tea. It must suffice to say that Aunt Lolly realises at length to what all the omens of her life have pointed. She is – we are compelled to divulge it – a witch, a modern witch, one of thousands. Miss Warner works out her idea, witches’ Sabbath, Satan and all, so delicately and tactfully that it never becomes incongruous. Titus is bewitched into the arms of a fiancée, and Laura, having passionately breathed to her mas-

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ter the hidden truth about witches, remains at Great Mop among her companions. It is a charming story, beautifully told, spare in outline but

emotionally rich, on which we congratulate the author.

It is on rare and infrequent occasions that such perfected and deftly fascinating fiction as “Lolly Willowes” swims within the reviewer’s ken. David Garnett, who is remembered as something of a master of wit and shrewd observation, has remarked that this is one of the year’s witty books. However, this novel needs no such introduction. It is the cameo-like realization of the life of a quaint and subtly attractive maiden lady. It recalls the two exquisite novels of Elinor Wylie but “Lolly Willowes,” is closer to the present. Behind the story of Lolly, but at least once removed, is the inevitable theme of the old order changing. The effect upon her life is less pronounced than usual because of her passive temperament. The Willowes are an old family of landed gentry. Lolly is heir to much accumulated tradition. Her father is a brewer, her mother is a semiinvalid. She is the youngest of the three children. Hence, she grows up in a family where the males of the house were always expected to look after her. In turn, she compared all other men in terms of her father and brothers. With complacency she looked out upon the world from their country seat, Lady Place, in Somerset. It was satisfying to her. . .

The sly and almost subdued comedy of this novel is a strong suggestion of the quality of Jane Austen. The handling of sentiment, family life and much feminine observation has the adroit fitness of the divine Jane. In the handling of the narrative, however, a different method is employed; the straightforward method of the comedy of manners could not capture the inner life of Lolly, and fill so minutely the picture of this involved family life, for all its surface commonplaceness. Beginning in the later Victorian age of gentility, the story is woven into the present restless age, without neglecting or overemphasising the war; the technical skill and compression is of a high order. At forty-seven Lolly realises that she has had almost no life of her own. Rebellion stirs in her. To the horror of her brothers, to the surprise of their children – now grown-up – she insists upon escaping from them. This whim of hers to leave them and live in the village of Great Mop – population 227 and twelve miles from anywhere – is embarrassing because Henry has invested her money in an enterprise that just at the moment is in decline. Lolly accepts a loss and departs.

Times Literary Supplement, February 4, 1926

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes

Once at Great Mop she begins to recapture the serenity that had made her inner life bright at Lady Place. . . . The family hope for her return. They visit her. She has horror at the thought of returning to Apsley Terrace, London. The idea preys upon her mind and finds outlet in fantasy. Thus, James’s son, now graduated from Oxford, comes to stay with her at Great Mop. Though she thought herself very fond of him, he greatly distresses her. She starts a sprightly flirtation with the Prince of Darkness, in an effort to find that fellowship that her life has lacked. Finally, she is free of her relatives. She could at last do what she liked. . .

In the limitations of its genre, “Lolly Willowes” is an exquisite fantasy of wit. Also, in its mixture of comedy of manners and dark romanticism, there is a viable essence that is enchanting. Lolly, indeed, going her kind, lonely way, is a character that ingratiatingly sets herself in memory. Doubtless, the Willowes, with their traditions and sane conservativeness, will not be forgotten. But, in the last analysis, it is Lolly – who might be another Emily Dickinson, had she only had the medium of expression – who captivates our fancy. Her secret life is ours in the artless words of her historian.

Perhaps it is most difficult for the general reader to find his way among the new novels, because they are a sort of forest labyrinth; only, that is one interest of travelling among them — the surprises, alarms, and rejoicings. Mr. A. C. Benson's posthumous story “The Canon,” published by Heinemann, is a sure choice if you love good writing, agreeably fresh thinking, and the fragrance of English gardens. “Lolly Willowes,” by Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner, a Chatto novel, should also find the reader who falls in love with a beautiful prose style, running along like a sunlit river, and telling a story in

which there is a mystic, yet always human, touch. Should you prefer a romance which has a quite popular air, then get Mrs. Hull's new desert yarn “The Sons of the Sheik,” or Miss Rubv Ayres's tale “Spoilt Music,” with the lines from Swinburne on the wrapper:

Edwin Clark, New York Times, February 7, 1926

It may be all my love went wrong, a scribe's work writ awry and blurred, Scrawled after the blind evensong, spoilt music and no perfect word. The Graphic, February 20, 1926

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Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes

WITCHES’ SABBATH The witch, burned and persecuted throughout the centuries, was in the Bronze Age the Wise Woman. The Greeks made of her a priestess, and put on her shoulders the mantle of the goddess. She guarded fire for the Romans, and it was not till the legal fiat went forth, “thou shalt not permit a witch to live,” that mankind hunted her out, and no protest was lifted to shatter the leg-irons or douse the blazing faggots. Today witchcraft is considered a primitive form of superstition, and has indeed become so legendary that the witch has even taken unto herself a romantic form. So at least Miss Townsend Warner would have it in this clever, exquisitelywritten book, with its thin vein of underlying cynicism. One can by no means picture Lolly Willowes as a witch, even if in old age her nose would have perilously inclined towards her sharp chin. She was merely a bored spinster of middle age who had such a dull, comfortable, dependent existence and so many moments of leisure in which to think of herself that she got rather queer ideas into her head. And her mind being obsessed by such thoughts, it was not surprising that when she found a kitten, strayed into her room, she should accept it as a familiar spirit of the Devil. Incidentally, she imagines she meets the gentleman on two occasions, first at a witches’ Sabbath, at which the villagers

dance hilariously, and again near a churchyard where his Satanic majesty appears as a jobbing gardener. Forthwith Lolly unburdens herself of the thought that has now become an obsession with her: – I think you are a kind of black knight, wandering about and succouring decayed gentlewomen. . . When I think of witches, I seem to see all over England, all over Europe, women living and growing old, as common as blackberries, and as unregarded. I see them, wives and sisters of respectable men, Chapel members, and blacksmiths, and small farmers, and Puritans . . . And they think how they were young once, and they see new young women, just like what they were, and yet as surprising as if it had never happened before, like trees in spring. But they are like trees towards the end of summer, heavy and dusty, and nobody finds their leaves surprising, or notices them till they fall off. The whole idea of the story is quaintly absurd, but Ms Warner has an inimitable sense of atmosphere and such a direct rapier-like irony that her book is a tonic for the reader by virtue of its strangeness, piquancy and originality. Aberdeen Press and Journal, February 8, 1926

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BACK TO WITCHCRAFT Vicar Denounces Tendency Strong disapproval of any tendency on the part of modern women to indulge in witchcraft was expressed to an interviewer yesterday by the Rev. G. B. Bourchier, of St. Jude’s Church, Hampstead. The interview was in answer to one with Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner, author of “Lolly Willowes,” who expressed her belief in an approaching renaissance of witchcraft. She declared that in her opinion modern women with any “talent for witchcraft” should encourage it, and become witches.

MODERN WITCHCRAFT Authoress whose Belief Runs to Practice (By an Interviewer) Time was when many man slept ill o’nights, his skin bubbly with gooseflesh, because he feared the evil eye of the local witch. Strange, bearded old women were these witches, wise in the lore of root and herb, accompanied ever with a familiar, in the shape a black cat, and given nocturnal expeditions floating on broomstick. They were often ducked in the village pond, these old women, and one had imagined the whole race had died out; but Miss Sylvia Townsend Warn40

“I think witchcraft is one of the most evil things in life,” the Rev. Mr. Bourchier said to the “Daily News.” If there is any tendency on the part of modern women to practise witchcraft, it ought to be severely dealt with. Such ideas are frightfully wrong and dangerous. “If a widespread renaissance of witchcraft is on the way, as Miss Warner says it is, more asylums will have to be built to hold the women who practise it. Women had much better occupy their time with good and helpful practices.” Portsmouth Evening News, June 18, 1926

er, the authoress “Lolly Willowes,” asserts that they still exist. She goes further than that, and declares that she is something of a witch herself. Naturally, her pronouncement has caused great deal of discussion, especially among the clergy, who have declared with one voice against any attempt the part of modern women to dabble the craft. “Dozens of people have written me the subject,” Miss Warner told me. They all want to know if I really intended my heroine to be witch. Of course I did. You know, I’m quite proud of being a witch myself. “There is no reason why witchcraft should not be practised by every woman who has a talent for it, for it gives the power for which every woman

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes

craves—the power to get her own way. Personally, I am convinced that we shall soon see a great revival of the old art, brought up to date, of course. “Certainly, I not anticipate modern witches being burned at the stake. It is much more likely that they will become very honoured figures of the State, for witchcraft is not evil. “A short stay in almost any country village will soon prove my point that witchcraft is not as dead as it’s made out to be. In some places I know the people date happenings as taking place when Mother So-an-So was the witch. There is always an heir to the throne, too. for when one dies another is found at once to take her place. “Mind you, witchcraft is not confined to the country. It is just as rampant in London. Many a large, gloomy house in Belgravia which is closed for months in the year has a caretaker who is also a practising witch. The difference between town and country is in the nature of the charms used.

Rural witches cling to the traditional herbs and dried bats, while their town cousins use red flannel and glass beads as the instruments of their art.” I asked Miss Warner how one would set about becoming a witch. She laughed. “You are interested already,” she said. “Well, as a preliminary, take a trip into the country, where it is quiet and still. Make friends with animals and talk to the trees. No. It doesn’t matter about the black cat; any animal will do. After that perhaps things will come." Although, I have said, the clergy oppose the idea tooth and nail, quite a number of very prominent women are intensely interested. Miss Tennyson Jesse [early female war correspondent, criminologist and author], who has met strange beliefs in the course of her travels about the world, told me recently that she would love to know enough witchcraft to able to do unpleasant things to people she really disliked. “When was in the West Indies.” she added, “I heard bloodfreezing stories of Voodooism, ‘there are more things in heaven and earth.' you know. And Shakespeare wrote those words in connection with an eerie situation, didn't he? Shakespeare knew things.” Portsmouth Evening News, July 27, 1926

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WOMEN AND WITCHES The early part of the book is the story of a daughter of an old Conservative country family, from 1874 to 1920. For twenty-eight years Laura Willowes lived very comfortably at home; had nurses and governesses, and welltrained servants to look after her, kept house for her father when her mother died, and knew neither strong feelings, deep conviction, hard work, nor any physical discomfort. On her father's death she went to live with her married brother and his family in London. There her life was much the same, except that she was not quite so important to anyone as she had been to her father. She was “Aunt Lolly” to a number of young people, who rather liked her. All her relations were kind, they were also well off. They led regular, ordered, comfortable lives, and dear Lolly was quite a help! Once there was a chance that she might marry, but she disconcerted her pretendent by an odd remark about werewolves. This remark introduces the latter part of the book. So far it has differed from other stories of frustrated women’s lives, only by the surety of its description and the purity of its style. The last part of the book, in which Laura breaks away from her relations, and goes to live in lodgings in a Buckinghamshire village, is different. It is possible to take it in two ways; the way in which it appeared to Laura, and the way in which the reader suspects that it may have appeared to her friends. It is told entirely from her

point of view, and it is only by subtle indications that the reader is led to guess that another view is possible. Seeing through Laura's eyes it appears that the village in the beech woods was a haunt of witches, and that Laura nearly became a witch. It is possible that this is what the author intends us to believe. But I cannot help suspecting that what we have before us is really a very acute and sympathetic description of oncoming of insanity; the kind of insanity that attacks people who have had nothing in their lives. Be this as it may, the story of Laura's mind is delicately and tenderly told, and not only she herself but all those who surrounded her are presented with a vividness which has no element of caricature. From the young and modern Titus, who came to Great Mop to write his life of Fuseli, but perhaps also to look after " Aunt Lolly," to the kitten, whom she took as an emissary of Satan, but received with characteristic kindness, they are all both real and attractive. The description of the village itself, and the way in which the atmosphere of that particular bit of countryside is conveyed are so good that for those alone it would be worth reading the book. But it has several aspects, and whether it is taken as a psychological study of an individual, as a contribution to the study of witches, as an essay on the woman question, or as a finely written story, it certainly should not be missed. I. B. O’Malley, Common Cause, February 26, 1926

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes

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AMIABLE WITCH AND AGREEABLE DEVIL Without wishing to be rude to Messrs. Chatto and Windus I cannot help regretting that in their very laudable desire to advertise Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner’s book “Lolly Willowes” they should have chosen the particular form of “puff” advertisement that they did choose. To try to make out that this first novel sensational story of a witch who “walked with Satan’’ (all printed in large old English type to make it the more exciting) by announcing — “Everyone is asking for the witch story,” is really not the way to make this particularly charming book a success. For people expect a series of thrills or at least sensation, when they are led on in this way, and may be disappointed if they do not get them. Miss Warner’s book is not at all of the sensational or thrilling type. It is as quiet as a mouse, as quiet as “Aunt Lolly” herself; as retiring as the delicious village of Great Mop to which she withdrew to pursue her unusual calling. There is no climax in this tale. It opens quietly creating in its first chapters the whole atmosphere of Victorianism, leisurely and rather spinsterish. The arrival of the arch-fiend himself is no occasion for hysterics. He arrives, inevitably has charming manners, and the dignity of a sympathetic archangel. We always suspected Lucifer to be like this, and not the cloven hoofed devil that other authors have imagined him. Miss Warner must clearly be a witch herself to describe him so well.

“Life becomes simple if one does nothing about it,” says Miss Warner . . . and that is practically the whole philosophy of Laura Willowes. She makes very few efforts, one to get away from her relations in London, and one (in which she helped by the emissary of Satan) to remove her nephew (“such a nice young gentleman”) from Great Mop when he invades her privacy to write a book on Fuseli. Needless to say, both these efforts are successful, and perhaps the moral of this book is that success attends the efforts those who make few, rather than those whose lives are one continued, efforts. The Witch’s Christmas We must quote Laura Willowes’ simple reactions to Christmas, for she does not allow even that unescapable festivity to upset the even tenor of her way. It is a lesson to us all. “Laura spent a happy afternoon choosing presents at the village shop. For Henry she bought a bottle of ginger wine, a pair of leather gaiters, and some highly recommended tincture of sassafras for his winter cough. For Caroline she bought an extensive parcel — all the shop had, in fact — of variously coloured rug-wools, and a pound’s worth of assorted stamps. For Sybil she bought some tinned fruits, some sugar biscuits, and a pink knitted bed-jacket. For Fancy and Marion, respectively, she bought a Swanee flute and a box with Ely Cathedral on the lid, containing string, which Mrs. Trumpet was very glad to see the last of, as it had been forced upon her by a traveller,

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes

and had not hit the taste of the village. To her great nephew and great nieces she sent postal orders for one guinea, and pink gauze stockings filled with tin toys. These she knew would please, for she had always wanted one herself.” There is another very quotable remark. When her sister-in-law Caroline asked her if she had met any nice people in the neighbourhood — “No. There aren’t any nice people, said

Laura . . . As far as she knew this was her only slip throughout the day. It was a pity.” And it was so true, had Caroline only known it. For when all the inhabitants of a village are witches and warlocks how can there any “nice” people? Fortunate village!

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tured middle-aged woman who seeks refuge from her possessive family and a chance to enjoy herself in a leisurely fashion in a Buckinghamshire village, and ultimately becomes a witch, secure in the protection of the Devil. Miss Townsend Warner did not convince all her readers that the lady could not have saved herself by a little pluck without resorting to such drastic means, or that there was much fun in being a witch. Since then she has hinted that she is herself a witch. She declares that there are many other witches in the country, and that she expects to see a renascence of witchcraft – amusing nonsense that some critics have taken seriously.

Witches Up to Date No one would suspect that earnest and excellent society, the Six Point Group [a feminist group founded in 1921 to lobby for changes in the law in six areas of women’s rights], of any desire to dabble in magic, or fear that they will try to secure their worthy aims by such means as the witches used. But in their list of literary lectures to be given during the next few weeks, they have included one on witchcraft, by Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner, who will undoubtedly try to bring them to her belief that “Witchcraft would make an excellent pursuit for the modern woman.” The heroine of her very original first novel, “Lolly Willowes.” Is a cul-

Sheffield Daily Telegraph, April 9, 1926

Illustrated London News, January 29, 1927

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WITCHES INITIATION A Six Years’ Contract with the Devil Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner, who, as the author of “Lolly Willowes.” is regarded something of an expert on the subject, yesterday delivered a lecture on “Witchcraft” to the Six Point Group. She described the initiation of witch as follows: The Devil, always adopting different guise, called on the witch-to-be and endeavoured to persuade her to

join his cult. He could not force her to his will; it was a purely voluntary proceeding. The woman was then compelled to renounce the Christian religion, and was branded to the service of the Devil. A contract of about six years’ duration was then entered into during which the initiate was given supernatural powers. At the end of the contract time it was obscure what happened, some believing that the contract could be renewed, while others held the opinion that the Devil “did her in.” The confessions of witches at their trials were often said be merely the products of their own imaginations, yet it was an established fact that these confessions agreed when witches were tried as far apart as Sweden and the Pyrenees. The “guilty” women were to be found in all social grades. Witchcraft still existed in certain parts, and in some villages there was always a witch. The witch cult was like a pyramid with the Devil at the top. In each district there were covens composed of thirteen of the principal witches with an officer at its head who represented the Devil. This officer could either man or woman. There were more women witches than men. Portsmouth Evening News, March 25, 1927

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes

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A REAL LIVE WITCH! A friend of mine went to hear Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner, the authoress of “Lolly Willowes,” lecture on witchcraft to the Six Point Group this afternoon. She tells me that, after hav-

ing listened to her for an hour and a half, there is absolutely no doubt in her mind that Ms Warner is a witch herself! ‘The Round of the Day,’ Westminster Gazette, March 25, 1927

WITCHCRAFT IN THE BALKANS Tudor Music Witchcraft has quite taken the place of spiritualism as a popular topic of conversation. The other day I told you of the amazing lecture on the habits of witches ancient and modern that Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner gave to the Six Point Group, and now she has just taken the chair at a meeting of the Near and Middle East Association, when Mrs. Hasluck told a thrilled audience all about witchcraft in the Balkans. Miss Townsend Warner is the author of “Lolly Willowes,” the story of a middle-aged woman who became a witch, and she tells me that there is still a village in Dorset where a company of witches are said to hold their Koven (meeting) once a week. As it is the 20th century, nobody says them nay.

Her new book, about an imaginary missionary who converts one small boy on an imaginary South Pacific island, and then discovers that the small boy only pretended to be converted out of loving-kindness (this is her description, not mine), will be out at the end of this month. In the meantime she is busy collecting, arranging, and editing a collection of Tudor music with Sir Henry Hadow. Witches do not take all her time, it seems, and she is really by profession a musician. Apparently there are hoards upon hoards of Tudor music, typically English, that no one has bothered to revive before. ‘The Round of the Day,’ Westminster Gazette, April 11, 1927

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes

For nearly fifty years she was a woman as other women are: an affectionate daughter, a not unaffectionate sister, a meek sister-in-law, a popular maiden aunt. And then, suddenly, she determined not to be any of these things, but a woman who would live alone, unquestioned, and sleep, if she found

such a proceeding convenient, without fear, in a ditch. this is one of those rare books that are not only works of genius, but also works of art.

Mirror Cookery Book

cover and allow to stand for ten days, giving it a stir each morning. Next strain and measure the vinegar, allowing a pound of sugar to each pint. When the sugar is dissolved put the whole into a jar; place in a saucepan of boiling water and keep simmering for one-and-a-quarter hours, skimming occasionally. After it is cold it can be bottled for use—old wine bottles are excellent for this. About a couple of tablespoonfuls of the vinegar to a tumbler of water, soda water or halfand-half makes a delicious summer drink.

OLD FASHIONED VINEGAR

Stillrooms are obsolete in modern homes, but ever since I read Sylvia Townsend Warner's amazing book “Lolly Willowes” I've been bitten by the desire to try my hand at cordials. The result has been loganberry vinegar—made on the principle of the raspberry vinegar beloved by the Victorians. You want two quarts of loganberries and two quarts of white wine vinegar and a pound of loaf sugar to each pint of the liquid. Put the fruit in a wide-necked bottle—or an unglazed jar will do—pour over the vinegar,

Sylvia Lynd, Time and Tide, March 19, 1926

Daily Mirror, July 15, 1926

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Sylvia Townsend Warner, Mr Fortune’s Maggot

SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER, MR FORTUNE'S MAGGOT (1927)

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My hands are not beautiful, my dear. They were once, but now they are spoiled, like most of the rest of me. I say most; for by some strange mercy my sensitiveness has remained unbattered. I can give you that without self-reproach or sighing. But I am not good enough for you, Valentine, and there are moments when I wonder if it would not be better that I should go away, like Mister Fortune, leaving you with love. But I can’t. Even though the wonder were certainty I don’t think I could. I have so little strength left, except to love you. Instead, I have been walking about in Kensington Gardens, visiting the trees that have been kind to my old distress and bewilderment. Sylvia Townsend Warner, letter to Valentine Ackland, October 14, 1930

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Mr Fortune’s Maggot

Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner has followed “Lolly Willowes with MR. FORTUNE’S MAGGOT (Chatto and Windus, 7s net). The surprise which was so cleverly concealed in her first story is here wanting; yet, though the narration of this moral tale is straightforward the details of Mr Fortune’s life upon the imaginary Raratongan island of Fanua, where dwelt no other white men and where the natives, so the Archdeacon said, were like children, light and immoral. Mister Fortune’s maggot, presumably, was that he had the power of converting such people; and the result of his three years’ sojourn was that, while he lost his beliefs, he learned one or two of the profound truths about a man’s relationship to all that lies outside him. For a great deal of the book, however, our pleasure is provided simply by Miss Warner’s brilliant, simple, comic and slightly satirical narration of all that happened to modest and painstaking Mister Fortune from the moment when, with stores, harmonium and a silver teapot, he does embarked on the impossibly idyllic island where the air was “sleeping with salt and honey, and the sharp wild cries of the wild birds seem to float like fragments of coloured paper upon the monotonous background of breaking waves and falling cataract.” As he knelt at his first prayer before the chosen altar-stone in front of his hut, one convert seemingly was sent to him. The beautiful and incalculable boy Lueli, who lived with Mr Fortune in a beautiful mutual attachment, listened to his rambling instruction – which

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would divert from Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem upon a donkey to a description of the sands at Westonsuper-Mare – was rapt by the strains of the harmonium, taught his teacher to swim and even consented to wear the home-made trousers unwisely confected by Mr Fortune at the Archdeacon’s suggestion, garments still more unwisely snatched off and entered into by Lueli’s capacious mother. Lueli furnished him with all the mental exercise that he needed. For Lueli was discovered to have a wooden God, for whom he picked flowers, like all his kindred. This was Mr Fortune’s crisis. He ordered Lueli to burn his God, and as he wrestled with him in the spirit an earthquake shook the island, set Mr Fortune’s thatch on fire, and pinned him beneath his harmonium. Lueli saved him and took him up the mountain, from where they saw the extinct volcano break into fiery life again; but Lueli’s God was burnt, and Lueli thenceforward went as one condemned to death. Faced with a real and pressing problem in soul-saving,

Mr Fortune taxed his ingenuity to the utmost. Every diversion he could think of failed; and when in a culmination of comedy he hit on the idea of teaching Lueli mathematics – the mensuration of the tree and the mathematical description of an umbrella are triumphs of Miss Warner’s – Lueli deliberately dived to death in a deep pool. He is saved, but, while his fate is apparently settled, Mr Fortune’s reflections point the moral. “How dreadful it is that because of our wills we can never love anything without messing it about!” And, so, with Lueli restored, Mr Fortune sees that he must leave his heaven upon earth lest, in his love, he infects it with death. The element of unreality is here throughout, but it does not matter, because the story is a fable; and few fables contain characters as beautifully drawn as that of Mr Fortune. Most of all, we praise Miss Warner’s touch, its lightness and its virtuosity. Times Literary Supplement, May 5, 1927

Sylvia Townsend Warner Brings “Robinson Crusoe” Up to Date Last year with “Lolly Willowes,” Sylvia Townsend Warner attracted much favorable comment with a curious study of a maiden aunt. There was a simplicity about her writing that was misleading. In the short, compact history of Lolly, with its casual air, there was a wealth of life. On the surface 54

there was all the appearance of tranquillity, but seemingly without varying her chaste manner of writing, Miss Warner ended her history by showing the dormant eruptive fires in Lolly breaking into flame. The result was a grotesque and oddly beautiful short novel. At that time it wasn’t yet clear

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Mr Fortune’s Maggot

that this was Miss Warner’s attitude toward the world at large. The reappearance of this same manner – or approach to character – and point of view in “Mr Fortune’s Maggot” makes it now apparent. In her new short novel Miss Warner has turned to a man whose life in his early and middle years is as uneventful as was that of Lolly. She quickly sketches in the background with a few light strokes and introduces us to a picturesque chapter in his development. This is also a tale of awakening “fires under the Andes.” This episode of Mr Fortune’s savors of the beckoning romance that lures us to find escape from the everydayness of things. Here again is that far-of island that figures so much in daydreams and literature. Here is the world of a tropical island basking under fair blue skies, where there is uninterrupted leisure and contentment. And here we have man aping his own dream, for the maggot of Mr Fortune is nothing more than the realisation of his “nonsensical or perverse fancy.” Briefly, “Mr Fortune’s Maggot” is “Robinson Crusoe” brought up to date. For years Timothy Fortune has been a clerk in the Hornsey branch of Lloyds Bank. He had worked and spent the usual holidays after the English fashion. It didn’t satisfy him. He longed for the peace of quietism. After years, when he finally inherited some money, he left the bank and became a missionary. At the isle of St Fabien, which was a mission headquarters in the South Sea, he was found to be the only man proficient at keeping the books.

This, however, was not what he had come to the East for. He was released after a time, upon his request, to go among the Polynesians of Fanua Island. The natives welcomed his arrival and helped him repair and make ready his hut. He had come provisioned for a year with a sewing machine, teapot, lamp and harmonium. The Archdeacon of St Fabien had pointed out to him the characteristics of the islands – given to dancing and singing and wearing flowers – and of course immoral – for the Rarotongan language had no words for either chastity or gratitude. With the arrival of Mr Fortune began the mocking joke and gentle irony that follow his attempts to practice and convert the islanders to Christianity. Before Mr Fortune had made little more than one attempt to speak to the islanders in a body, he acquired a convert, because for some reason he attracted the fancy of Lueli. Lueli became Mr Fortune’s man Friday. Lueli was one of the most popular youths of the islanders, gracious, handsome, indolent and carefree. Between Mr Fortune and Lueli they developed a bond of friendship that held them united in affection, until several years later Mr Fortune was bitterly to understand that the pleasure of their association was keeping Lueli from fulfilling his place in the life of the island for a time, though, his life had the serenity of an idyll. He taught religion to Lueli and found the beauty of the island enchanting. . .

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Mr Fortune came more and more under the influence of the seductive spell of his lovely island. He didn’t go native, for he had “housewifely mind.” But the importance of civilised ways disappeared beyond his horizon. He observed that in the main, though the islanders weren’t Christians and would have no traffic with his idea of God beyond listening politely and slipping away at the first opportunity, they knew how to live happily under their own conditions. . . The writings of Miss Warner are paradoxical in quality and in substance. Using an artificial medium – an adaptation of the comedy of manners – she makes it unusually flexible. Mind takes an eighteenth-century slant at life and yet there is a finally restrained and delicate feeling for its lyrical elements. Her style is both witty and delicate – almost brittle – and yet when she looses in her pages the vital force that motivates action, it is projected with a potent suggestiveness. This is the more surprising as the sensibilities have been recorded with such fine receptivity. Mr Fortune is a delightful joke, to her, yet he is never without her sympathy. Certainly, it was a Puckish nature that chose to let Mr Fortune probe his heart in such alien surroundings. The

contrast implicit in this stolid product of the English public schools attempting to direct a gracious Polynesian boy in the way of the faith, only to lose his own way, to suffer emotional and intellectual doubts, was a conception aided by a searching humor. The fine selection of details and incidents are evidence of exquisite craftsmanship. Miss Warner has chosen a sensitive theme – viewing it with humor – made it more susceptible – and two hours she had at least carried off without offending, or even invading, cherished beliefs. “Mr Fortune’s Maggot” is an engaging fantasy, which says many wise things about the human adventure. So many of the good things of life exist in the odd companionship of Lueli and Mr Fortune that one enjoys a precarious satisfaction in reading of them stop “Mr Fortune’s Maggot” is an omitted chapter from the realistic studies of the commonplace that so many English novelists have written and that here is given flight and has gone winging off beyond the sunrise. It gives Mr Fortune his wish and then leaves him, almost as before, with wonderment. Edwin Clark, New York Times, April 10, 1927

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Mr Fortune’s Maggot

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A PLEASANT PAIR Miss (or is it Mrs?) Sylvia Townsend Warner has followed up that very successful book “Lolly Willowes” with “Mr Fortune’s Maggot.” It is a difficult book to criticise, for it never seems to settle into any definite key. Much of it is in the nature of light and deft satire on missionary enthusiasm; all very much to the point, all gracefully amusing, but castigation, surely, of a dead or dying horse? One would like to take it all as satire and whimsy, but one cannot resist the conviction that the author becomes, by spurts, rather died actively serious in pointing a moral; which moral seems to be that it is foolish to interfere with anybody else’s God or gods, and downright wicked to destroy them. Granted! I suppose

APPEALING STORY OF THE SOUTH SEAS Sylvia Townsend Warner, the authoress of “Lolly Willowes," has written another book more appealing than the first. Its title, “Mr. Fortune's Maggot,” is not attractive till we read the definition from the New English Dictionary on the first page. “Maggot, whimsical or perverse fancy, crochet.” The story is simple. “Rev. Timothy Fortune was a bank clerk, but he had not liked it, and when his godmother, whose passbook he kept, died and left him £1,000, he went to a training college, was ordained, and quitted England for 58

there are still people who are not aware of that salutary truth, and perhaps it is as well that they should be admonished. The fluctuations of method and tone leave one in considerable doubt as to what Miss Warner is really at; yet one reads with pleasure, for the sake of the novelty and whimsy cavity which this book contains in no less degree than “Lolly Willowes.” There are also many passages of excellent serious writing, reflective and descriptive. So far as there is a story, it concerns only two characters – Mr Fortune, missionary, sometime bankclerk, and Lueli , his only convert – who, tragically, turns out not to be a convert, but secretly to bow down toward and stone. Hence those tears. The Sketch, May 18, 1927

St. Fabien, a port on an island of the Raratongan Archipelago, the Pacific.” He worked there without any recorded incidents for ten years, and left it in the new mission launch for the small remote island of Panua, to settle there — perhaps for life. He stayed there for three years and failed make single convert, though thought he had made one in a boy with the beautiful name of Lueli. The charm of the book, which is very great, lies in the description of the island, and of the life of its people, their lighthearted innocence and simplicity, their imperturbable ways, and Mr. Fortune’s ways in it; they listen his

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Mr Fortune’s Maggot

preaching, but make no response, everyone has his own idol and clings it. Mr. Fortune thinks Lueli, to whom he becomes very attached, has become a Christian, and has given up his idol, but finds out by accident that this is not so. The boy has been playing a double game — if so hard a word can applied to such a simple nature — “feigning to be a Christian, and in secret in the reality of secretness worshipping an idol.” Mr. Fortune tries in vain to make him destroy it, an earthquake intervenes, awakes into life a long slumbering volcano, which leads to the burning of Mr. Fortune’s hut and all its contents, including the wooden idol. Lueli is inconsolable and here in her description of Mr. Fortune’s endeavours to divert his pupil Miss Warner is at her best; she is perfectly delightful in every mood; among other distractions, the teaching of elementary ge-

ometry is tried, and the mixture of truth and nonsense found in the now more or less defunct definitions of Euclid is most amusing. The end of the book is very moving, nothing consoles Lueli or makes up to him for his loss. Mr. Fortune is distraught, carves for him another wooden god, and leaves the island with the loss of his own faith. Miss Warner has a most happy insight into the music and power of language; by her works she has thrown great charm round her imaginary island and its people. Whether she is expressing a great depth of feeling or just touching upon a lighter side of life her phrases, though often unusual, are never inadequate, nor unhelpful to what she is wishing to portray.

It may be that the author of this book thought to arouse curiosity by the title. I venture to think that most folk, however, will be unfortunately put off by it, so perhaps I had better inform readers of this column that a maggot is “a whimsical or perverse fancy” and not a creeping thing. Those who like a really whimsical story and who enjoy humorous satire will enjoy this book, though I confess not to be among the number. The Rev. Timothy Fortune is a missionary in the South Pacific Islands, attached to the Mission of St.

Fabian, a former public school boy and a member of Oxford University. While at St Fabian he feels a call to visit the remote island of Fanua, to which he goes alone, and his adventures there form the subject of this story. There is no woman in the plot except the native women, nor is there love interest. The interest lies in the fantastic character of the story, and in the satirical humour with which Mr. Fortune and his one solitary convent are described. Even Lueli, the boy convert, turns out to be no convert at all, but adheres to Mr. Fortune through

Western Morning News, June 6, 1927

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interest in his European ways. In a great earthquake on the island, however, he saved his life. Mr. Fortune is a fatuous and quite impossible character, but then he is meant to so, and

therein is the maggot or whimsical fantasy.

ANOTHER QUEER TALE

missionary who undertook a solitary mission to a sun-enchanted island of the Pacific for the conversion of its care-free islanders, but who was himself converted. From what, by what, and to what he was converted the reader may be left to ascertain as best he may from the scanty outlines of Miss Townsend Warner's tale. But if enlightenment on these points never comes to him he may nevertheless count his effort of reading not ill spent. The island of Fanua is a very pleasant haven for a two hours’ sojourn, and the missionary overseas (like the curate of our own countryside) has become by hallowed tradition the focus of all that is whimsical and absurd. Someday, perhaps Miss Townsend Warner will write us an equally good story about a mother-in-law.

Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner's latest production, Mr. Fortune's Maggot, is an elegant little tale, to whose elegance the publisher and the printer no less than the author have contributed. One surmises that if Stella Benson and David Garnett had never written, or if its predecessor, Lolly Willowes, had been less loudly acclaimed, this newest venture would have been other than it is. This is, of course, no necessary dispraise. Has it not been authoritatively said that Shakespeare owes something of his form to Marlowe ? Nevertheless, there are moments in Mr. Fortune's Maggot when the reader is conscious that Miss Warner is, as it were, feeling for her style, and grasping it not always with that unerring skill which eliminates all sense of effort. But when criticism is exhausted we are still left with a pleasant story—the story of a

Mansfield Reporter, July 29, 1927

M. D. S., Common Cause, August 19, 1927

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Mr Fortune’s Maggot

MURAL TRIPE There is a nice phrase in Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner's book, Mr. Fortune's Maggot, which exactly fits the fantastic embellishments which the creators of London domestic architecture during the last fifty years have

been fond of — “mural tripe.” So good that; and there it is, chunks of it, dripping through South and West Kensington, festooned around cornices and exuding over front doors. Lenox Fane, ‘A Woman’s Letter,’ The Graphic, August 6, 1927

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Sylvia Townsend Warner, The True Heart

SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER, THE TRUE HEART (1929)

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When I met Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner at lunch recently she told me she was one the few British writers who had come to the U.S.A. with the firm resolve never to make speech, give a lecture, or be photographed or

interviewed. As her book, “True Heart,” is just due here, however, she may be induced to change her mind.

It is not easy to describe the quality of Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner’s novel THE TRUE HEART (Chatto and Windus, 7s. 6d., net). Though it tells of a simple servant-girls love for an epileptic boy and of the steadfast devotion with which she follows him until she can take him under her wing and marry him, and although the date is from 1873 onwards, the descriptions of Essex landscape are brilliantly real, the episodes of Sukey’s pilgrimage are not at all impossible, and the great climax is an interview with Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace – all these circumstantial details are not much more than the material colours in which Miss Warner has painted an ethereal theme. To express its quality one would have to compare this story to an illumination, to some old Italian series picture of the life of Griselda, or to the figures on a Flemish tapestry. Though the author does not shrink from the ugly and the violent, she takes Sukey into the parlour of Mrs Oxey, the procuress, she lets Mr Mullein be gored by a bull – this very charming tale does not belong to the actual world at all, but to the everimagined youth of the world when a true and innocent heart could go unscathed through every danger, un-

spoiled by any contact, to find it’s love at the last. Sukey Bond, the soul of obedience, a girl of perfect innocence, is taken from an orphanage to be girl upon a lonely farm in the Essex Marches; and here, among the rough Norman family, she finds her love, Eric Seaborn, son of the rector of Southend, whose existence has always been concealed from the world by his proud, ambitious mother. The ethereal union of these two is very beautifully depicted – and a deal of two innocence in a deserted orchard. They kiss and that is all. Sukey “might as well try to lean on a rainbow” as put any trust in Eric. Yet, ignorant as she is, so simple that she believes herself to be with child while yet intact, so trusting that she pursues Eric to the rectory and hopefully reveals herself to the outraged rector’s wife as the expectant mother of her grandchild, her love brings her to womanhood. The succession of scenes is like a story from Boccaccio depicted on an arras; Sukey befriended by the tramp. Sukey’s innocence protecting her from contamination that Mrs Oxey’s. Sukey tending the Mullein children at Halfacres farm and daily revering the picture of Queen Victoria presenting the Bible to a

‘A New York Letter,’ Yorkshire Post, February 25, 1929

Sylvia Townsend Warner, The True Heart

kneeling negro, Sukey hearing of the slight put upon Mrs Seaborn by a Princess in public and determining to win Eric by turning away the Royal Family’s wrath against his mother, Sukey driving in the vegetable-wagon to Covent Garden, Sukey given tea by Lord Constantine Melhuish, Sukey in the presence of the great Queen, Sukey and Eric hiding from Mrs Seaborn under a hedge, and, finally, Sukey

married and a mother country go up all the past memories of her maiden life. Though Sukey is too good to be true, there is nothing grotesque about her; for Miss Warner is a poet at heart who draws no hard line between the imagined and the real, and can therefore blend both with perfect grace.

Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner adopts, by way of contrast [to the previous review, of a book by Hugh Walpole and JB Priestley], the post war convention. It is, of course, really a war convention, for are not the bravest men in our war novels shot for desertion, and is there in all their pages, except in a few books, a professional soldier who fights? And so in this novel the only thing noticed about the only gentleman who appears in the book is “his large white gentleman's hands,” and the “true heart” belongs to a servant girl who falls in love with an idiot. Some stage parsons, an elegant “lady” with a past and no heart and a keeper of a disorderly house with a

heart of gold, flit across the bemused vision of Miss Sukie [Sukey] Bond, who after some painfully realistic adventures meets a real lord at Covent Garden, sees the Queen (Victoria) and goes back to marry the idiot. What would Dean Inge say about it? Sukie Bond is an attractive study in muddle-headed innocence but the unfailing perversity of the rest of the character drawing is not justifiable in a fairy story. You must not throw stones from dreamland and expect them to hit the mark.

Times Literary Supplement, February 28, 1929

Douglas Jerrold, Britannia and Eve, March 8, 1929

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Sylvia Townsend Warner, The True Heart

BOOK OF THE DAY There are few novelists of the day whose use of words can compare with the delicate and yet pungent prose of Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner, For certain people a new book by her is the literary event of the year. Many readers whose admiration does not extend quite as far as that, settle down to her latest work with a rare anticipation of aesthetic enjoyment. Others again, and the present reviewer is among them, find her as exasperating as she is seductive; and embark on each new book with a suspicion that seems likely to become a certainty, as time goes on, that they will be at first delighted, and then (it seems to them) unjustifiably let down. It is as if the author, like one of her own half-witches, took malicious pleasure in luring the reader on, by the rightness and beauty of her setting, and by her penetration and illumination of character, to expect passionate human climax; and then, all of a sudden, freakishly twitched up the curtain for the last act on a show of marionettes. “The True Heart” is the story of Sukey Bond, who left the Warburton Memorial Female Orphanage to take a place as servant on an isolated farm on the marshes beyond Southend. She had given every satisfaction as an orphan. “Prize for good conduct,” Mr. Warburton read out, “awarded to Sukey Bond. A copy of Bunyan’s ‘Holy Man.’ With illustrations. I see. Sukey Bond, I have great pleasure

in presenting you with the prize for good conduct. Er—conduct is everything.” So the situation on the Marshes was found for her by the beautiful Mrs. Seaborn, distinguished patroness of the Orphanage, and a relative of Mr. Warburton. In due course her new employer called for her, and in due course, after a long drive, he brings her to her new home. Pointing with his whip the farmer said; “There are the Marshes.” They had reached the brow of little rise, and before them the fields sloped downward and away to rich-coloured flats, streaked and dotted with glittering water. Here and there were farmsteads, and a few groups of dwarfish trees showed up black and assertive, at odds with the solitude. Not a shadow fell on the marsh from the cloudless sky, nothing moved there; even the cattle were still, clustered round the trees for shade. It lay in unstirring animation, stretched out like the bright pelt of some wild animal. To the eastward a dark rim bounded it, and beyond this was further expanse that shone, baffling the eye. On the farm, where there is no woman to keep a friendly eye on Sukey, a boy, who has some inexplicable, elusive quality which separates him from the farmers’ sons, is being brought up with them. Very young, and completely innocent, Sukey Bond loves him at

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once, instinctively. He is drawn to her too, by instinct; but even Sukey cannot remain blind to this strange, elusive quality, this “difference,” in her young lover: “a lover who for an hour was near and close, and the hour after was more strange than any stranger; a lover who seemed able to forget her words and kisses as utterly as though they were a dream lost in awakening.” Actually, he is the secret son of Mrs. Seaborn, the Orphanage’s distinguished patroness; an epileptic, boarded out with the farmer, a decent man, who has undertaken to look after him and keep him out of his mother's way. The boy is physically normal, and possessed, as many epileptics are, of a pure and almost unearthly beauty of feature and form; the disquieting, unmistakable beauty of one “lightly tethered to reality.” The girl feels his strangeness, conveyed with an exquisite apprehension of its significance to Miss Warner; and is baffled by his inexplicable periods of unconcern and complete forgetfulness; but is entranced by his essential kindness.

The author of Lolly Willowes walks apart, seeing the world for herself, using the common words of the dictionary as though she herself had just invented them . . . She is very quiet, very reserved, but none the less excited and exciting. The True Heart is like no other book I have ever read. This doesn't mean that it is henceforth my favourite novel, but it does mean that I shall never forget it. It is, outwardly, 68

She had forgotten everything except this new pleasure being cherished. With a sigh she drew him to sit down beside her and offered her mouth to be kissed. Above his face, shadowy and strange with proximity, and the near bright glitter of his eyes, she saw the pattern of oval leaves; like a sweet net it seemed to descend on her and close her in. All the ingredients of tragedy are in this love story of two elemental beings. But at this point Miss Townsend Warner breaks off and careers away into fantasy, as usual. The farm life comes to an abrupt end; an epileptic attack of the boy’s has revealed the secret of his elusive quality to Sukey; he is sent home; and she sets forth to try and obtain an audience with Queen Victoria, whose intervention with Miss Seaborn will enable her, she believes, to marry and take care of him. Even the fantasy is well done. But another real theme has been wasted. Yorkshire Post, March 2, 1929

the story of an orphan servant girl. Twenty-five years ago people used to class novels as “pretty” or otherwise. (Perhaps they still do, those people.) Miss Warner's story is “pretty,” and yet how different! This is a mixture of realism and phantasy. The humble heroine of The True Heart might be cited to illustrate the maxims of the Sermon on the Mount. She is meek, and she becomes the

Sylvia Townsend Warner, The True Heart

friend and confidant of the patron of the Orphanage and marries the son of a clergyman. She is pure in heart, and she sees and speaks with Queen Victoria. Does this sound sentimental and ridiculous? There is a bloom on the

little story which makes it no more and no less sentimental and ridiculous than a rose.

Some people make a living by distilling those fine fresh country smells which are to be met in an April wood or a June meadow, and sealing them up in fantastic cut-glass bottles, and giving them French names, and advertising them as “liquid sun shine,” or “the perfume of remembered laughter,” and selling them at high prices to rich women. All the time I was reading Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner's The True Heart, one corner of my mind was seeing such a small flask, set, solus and priceless, in a Rue de la Paix window its very solitude proclaiming “I am exquisite and expensive I am an essence of beauty, prisoned in crystal, and only to be released by much fine gold.” And when I tried to sweep the little bottle out of my mind and could not, I realised that its name was The True Heart and its manufacturer Miss

Sylvia Townsend Warner. To be more explicit, Miss Warner's writings are largely composed of descriptions of natural things; yet they are essentially artificial. They describe emotions, thoughts, loves, which should be common to mankind but they have been distilled and refined, and poured into little bottles marked “exclusive.” You are to feel, please, that in appreciating the sweet, simple joy of Sukey in love, you have proved yourself a judge of the exquisite, and are somehow raised thereby above the common run of novel readers. So, if you like your beauty in a bottle at so much an ounce, here's the very thing for you. It is exquisite; do not mistake me; as soon as you open the book you “shake hands with delectable odours.”

The Sphere, March 9, 1929

The Graphic, March 23, 1929

High Collars & Monocles

It might almost be imagined that Miss Warner had set herself a problem in the virtuosity of her art in taking as her heroine a girl from an orphanage, in the early ‘seventies of last century. Sukey Bond, indeed, has bettered the instruction of the orphanage by being a model of characterless docility and industry. So thoroughly has she conformed to the rule and teaching of the institution in which she has been reared that she is a show pupil, almost conspicuous, to venture upon a paradox, in her absence of individuality. But behind the meek exterior of the well-drilled girl whose destiny is domestic service, there is a mind which works vaguely, but none the less inquiringly, although its possessor is half-alarmed at the idea of its daring to work at all. She is placed in service at a farm in the Essex Marshes, and

there encounters Eric Seaborn, the mild and almost childish son of an ambitious mother, to whose pride his departure from the normal is a scourge. Sukey and Eric, indeed, are a pair of children, and in telling their story Miss Warner deserts fact for fantasy. It is, however, fantasy of a true poetic cast, and Sukey, wandering unscathed through a series of remarkable adventures, ranging from protection by a kindly tramp when she is destitute to an interview with Queen Victoria, is a curious mixture of the soberly real and the elfin. The same thing might be said of the book as a whole. It never remains for long quite steadily on one piano. Everything is at once real and unreal. The effect, however, is fascinating. The Scotsman, May 13, 1929

Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland

From The Nature of the Moment by Valentine Ackland

High Collars & Monocles

ENVOY

Dear Elizabeth I’m perhaps in trouble again—having had my shoulder treated, they think they found signs of a recurrence of cancer “elsewhere”, by X-Ray. I’m to go [back] on July 29. Think of me that day if this reaches you in time. I can’t write more, nor more legibly, because my left hand does not anchor the paper properly! Letter from Valentine Ackland to Elizabeth Wade White, July 1969

10:xi:1969 Dear Elizabeth Valentine died yesterday morning – here, as she wished. She had been under morphia for two days and not conscious at all. She wished her ashes to be buried in the churchyard at East Chaldon, and I think that will be agreed to. I send my real sympathy. Sylvia Letter from Sylvia Townsend Warner to Elizabeth Wade White, 1969

Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland

High Collars & Monocles 2- Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland

Articles inside

Sylvia Townsend Warner, The True Heart (1929

Sylvia Townsend Warner Mr Fortune's Maggot (1927

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes (1926