Dear Miss Marjorie Bowen...
'Dear Miss Marjorie Bowen...': An Important Conan Doyle Letter is an article written by Christopher Roden published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 8, 1998).
This research article presents and interprets an important 1916 Conan Doyle letter to Marjorie Bowen, using it to show what he was reading and what he thought about women's fiction. It also explores the context of Bowen's Shadows of Yesterday, Conan Doyle's interest in dreams and mysticism, and the wider significance of the letter for Doylean scholarship.
Dear Miss Marjorie Bowen...
An Important Conan Doyle Letter
One cannot help observing that, of all the wonderful books discussed by Conan Doyle in Through the Magic Door (Smith, Elder & Co., 1907), few were written by women, particularly those who were contemporaries of Conan Doyle. True, ACD draws attention to two historical works: the Memoirs of Madame de Remusat which would have been of interest to him for their Napoleonic content; and eight volumes of Letters of Madame de Sévigné which he describes as 'perhaps the most wonderful series of letters that any woman has ever penned'.
He briefly draws attention to Miss Burney's Evelina (p. 136), but is later dismissive of her: 'I skip Miss Burney's novels, as being feminine reflections of the great masters who had just preceded her' (p. 151). Of the great names, only the Brontës are singled out-and even then only fleetingly: 'Whence came the intense glowing imagination of the Brontës — so unlike the Miss-Austen — like calm of their predecessors' (p. 92), from which we may speculate that Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and their like, found no great favour with ACD, despite their now being regarded as some of the finest novels of the English language.
It is perhaps easy to understand that the peaceful, day-to-day, Hampshire surroundings of Jane Austen would appeal little to the man of action and adventure who was Conan Doyle certainly in much of his own writing in any event. But without any specific word on the subject from Conan Doyle himself, it has been difficult to be firm in this interpretation of his preferences.
Now, however, a short letter, dated 3 July 1916, provides a little more insight into the matter.
Marjorie Bowen [Gabrielle Margaret Vere Campbell Long, 1886-1952] took up writing, essentially to fulfil her own ambitions to provide herself with advantages that no one else would provide for her: it seems that no one had taken the slightest interest in her education and she was, effectively, self-taught. Her determination has to be admired, for her first book, The Viper of Milan, was written when she was sixteen, accepted for publication a little later, and was a startling success. The details of her life need not concern us here: her own version of events is recounted in her one autobiographical volume, The Debate Continues (1939). What should be noted is that she was a highly prolific and successful author, specialising in a wide range of genres, most notably historical, mystery, and weird/ supernatural fiction. Bowen also wrote under the pseudonyms Robert Paye, George Preedy, Joseph Shearing, and John Winch.
It was while preparing a new volume of Marjorie Bowen's supernatural stories for publication (Twilight and Other Supernatural Romances, Ash-Tree Press, 1998), that I came across reference to Conan Doyle's having praised Bowen's work. Bowen's son, Hilary Long, was kind enough to supply a copy of the letter written by Conan Doyle, and we are grateful to him for allowing it to be reproduced here.
The letter is important for several reasons: (1) it gives us information about what Conan Doyle was reading at the time it was written; (2) it provides an indication of his feelings on women's fiction; and (3) Conan Doyle discusses other interests.
The letter reads as follows:
- Dear Miss Marjorie Bowen
- May I say how really splendid I think your new book of stories. It is easily the best book of historical stories and well on to the top in any book of stories. I dont like womens work as a rule, on account of a certain lack of substance, but here the detail, the atmosphere and the dramatic effect are all equally good. The museum idea was a real inspiration. There is not one weak story in the book, which is very wonderful. On the whole the Italian lady's wedding night & the French girl with the hair pleased me most. It is a great achievement.
- I am always studying the mystic & dreams interest me much. I enclose one which will interest you, as it has some analogies to the one in your story-in that 2 people were in it & it was prophetic.
- What days we live in! They make all fancy seem anoemic [sic].
- Yours very sincerely
- A Conan Doyle
- I hope your mother is well.
The book in question was Shadows of Yesterday (Smith, Elder & Co., 1916). Many, if not all, of the stories in it had been gathered from earlier magazine appearances and Bowen had used an interesting device with which to link them for their book appearance — the museum idea to which ACD referred. In her foreword to the book, Bowen told of an old, neglected, rarely-visited museum in the back. streets of a dusty Italian town. The first visitor in many a long day viewed the exhibits, which were mounted in cases on the museum's wall, each described as artifacts tend to be in such surroundings as these: a cornelian ring...; portrait of a lady... ; a painted porcelain cup. ... The description was then carried through to the heading of a story, so that, in some way, the story was related to a particular artifact in the museum. The device was used only in the book: in their magazine appearances, the stories had appeared as stand-alone pieces.
Of the stories mentioned, 'the Italian Lady's wedding night' is 'Giuditta's Wedding Night'; and 'the French girl with the hair' is 'The Fair Hair of Ambrosine'. 'Giuditta's Wedding Night' tells of a bride who, with the wedding feast almost over, elopes with her secret lover Astorre. They sail the canals of Venice to an area with which she is unfamiliar, and once settled at their final destination Astorre introduces her to the nightmare into which she has strayed: he has abducted her to avenge his brother Rosario, a former lover of Giuditta's whose heart was broken when she rejected him for another. As the story draws to its dramatic conclusion, Giuditta is left, seemingly alone, with no hope of escape. She moves to the bed, and draws back the curtains, to reveal: ... Rosario, stiff and awful on the neat pillows; his livid, mottled face showing the manner of his death. The plague.'
'The Fair Hair of Ambrosine' concerns a clerk in the Chamber of Deputies at the time of the Revolution, Claude Boucher, who dreads the approach of 12 December, the day on which he has to carry important papers to Saint-Cloud. It was near the town that his lover, Ambrosine, had been brutally murdered; and it was in her little house there that he had found her, stabbed through and through. His dreams tell him of impending horror and the virtual details of how it will occur. To comfort him, he recruits his friend Réné to accompany him. on the journey. As they approach the location of Ambrosine's cottage, Réné makes a detour from their route, specifically, it seems, to pass by the house. Réné, of course, was the murderer. He, too, had been in love with Ambrosine, and could not face seeing her with Boucher. As Boucher realises, all too late, that his dreams have become a reality, Réné falls on him with the same knife that killed Ambrosine.
Conan Doyle's letter gives us specific guidance as to why he does not concern himself to any extent with the fiction of women: 'on account of a certain lack of substance'. One cannot help feeling that, by dismissing such work with so sweeping a generalisation, Conan Doyle may have denied himself the pleasure of reading some very fine work.
The penultimate paragraph would seem to indicate why he found 'The Fair Hair of Ambrosine' so appealing a story: it coincided with his interest in dreams. Somewhat frustrating, however, is the fact that the details of the dream, which ACD enclosed with his letter to Bowen, have not survived.
Hilary Long recalls being given ACD's stories to read as a boy. He also vaguely recalls Marjorie Bowen referring to ACD as 'a very kindly man'. He believes that it would have been Marjorie Bowen's mother, herself an Edwardian novelist, who would have sent a copy of Shadows of Yesterday to ACD hence, presumably, the post-script to the letter.
Marjorie Bowen's name would have stayed before ACD for many years: she appeared in four symposia in The Strand Magazine between 1910 and 1927. ACD certainly stayed in Bowen's mind: when she edited Great Tales of Horror for John Lane in 1933 (re-edited and expanded from The Great Weird Stories (Neale, 1929)), she included 'The Great Keinplatz Experiment' among her selections.
A Note on ACD's Handwriting:
Although the final word of the letter proper appears as 'anoemic', it seems fairly clear that ACD intended, and almost certainly wrote 'anaemic'. Perhaps this provides further confirmation that ACD's written 'o's and 'a's can, in fact, be confused and opens up, once more, the debate as to whether ACD wrote about 'the Long Island Cave mystery' or 'the Long Island Cove mystery' in 'The Red Circle'.
Acknowledgments:
I should particularly like to thank Hilary Long and Jack Adrian for help with information which has enabled me to compile this article.
C.R.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
