This is by Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), and it was published in 1929.

My only previous experience of Bowen was The Death of the Heart, some three and a half decades ago. In the departed books list (the one I compiled before a big move, in order to say a fitting goodbye to the books we were separating from), it's marked WROBPNTOA (Would Read Others But Probably Not This One Again). That's not derogatory. I rarely re-read books. The other categories are PWRA (Probably Wouldn’t Read Again) and DRL (Didn’t Really Like), constituting a kind of descending order of reading enjoyment, as remembered lots of years later.

So, Bowen was a Would Read Others, and here -- finally -- is one of those Others.

I got to it via Henry Eliot, who has a site on Substack called Read the Classics. He's FULL of good suggestions, including this one to mark the approach of autumn.


Elizabeth Bowen

This is her second novel, and the one she describes as "nearest my heart". It revolves around Danielstown, the "Big House" of an Anglo-Irish family in County Cork (headed by Sir Richard and Lady Naylor). It's based on Bowen's Court, the real family property that Bowen eventually inherited: Eighteenth-century; comes complete with walled garden and extensive park; austere, and slightly shabby in appearance. Bowen's spirit-of-place rendition is masterly.


This is Pickford's House, in Derby. No park, and not in the least shabby, but it's also elegantly 18th-century...

The book is set in 1920, and spools out two major threads. One is a would-be romance that plays out against a social background of tennis parties, tea parties, and dance parties (and we are shown how the local scene is enlivened by the English officers garrisoned nearby). The other is the expanding "Troubles", in the course of which Irish Republicans are raiding police stations, and generally making their presence felt (in just two more years the Anglo-Irish Treaty would set up the Irish Free State).

Almost until the end, the two threads are kept separate. From the family's point of view, this determination to carry on regardless is possible only through a policy of "not noticing". Arms caches, and shootings, and encounters with mysterious personages point clearly in one direction; and English soldiers bring not only tennis rackets to Danielstown but also news. But the Naylors look discreetly and determinedly the other way, trusting to the season to cool things down: "'Autumn,' pronounced Sir Richard, 'There should be less of this ambushing and skirmishing and heyfidaddling now that the days are drawing in.'"

Victoria Glendinning, in her introduction to one of the editions, notes the odd situation of the Anglo-Irish, who straddle two cultures. They know their local communities (and their varying sympathies) intimately; and they mock the Englishness of their friends and relations on the other side of the pond (not to mention some of the military wives). But they're loyal to the Crown, and welcome young English officers into their homes. As Glendinning explains, "People like the Naylors -- feudal, paternalistic, rooted in their Irish houses and lands -- could only cope with the imperatives of Irish nationalism by 'not noticing' for as long as possible... [But this policy] can be maintained only so long as the cracks in the surface of life do not open and let loose the horror and betrayal that lurks beneath."

Hermione Lee captures this ambivalence brilliantly: "Like Chekhov's plays about the dying years of Russian feudalism, The Last September captures the silliness, the snobbery, the perfect manners, the determination not to show their feelings, the denial, and the ending of the way of life of Bowen's circle. 'Will there ever be anything we can all do except not notice?' one of them asks. Having prided themselves on continuity, rootedness, and a life symbolically centred on the Big House, they have come to feel like unreal transients."

But there was little else the Naylors could do. As Edwina Keown points out, "Caught between the IRA and the British Army, the Anglo-Irish cannot afford to take sides. Both the IRA and the Black and Tans burnt the homes of anyone seen to help the enemy."


In 2000, The Last September was made into a movie, directed by Deborah Warner. It was not particularly acclaimed, even though Maggie Smith, who died just a couple of days ago, played the redoubtable Lady Naylor

It's a novel of many characters, but the young woman at the centre is Lois Farquar, the only child of Sir Richard's late sister, Laura. She's 19, lacks experience in almost everything, and radiates uncertainty and tentativeness and a desire to explore (all rendered very sympathetically by Bowen). Lois is being courted by Gerald Lesworth, a subaltern in the British army.

It's around Gerald that the book's tragedy swirls. Lois is confused and reticent, and makes a rather half-hearted commitment. Lady Naylor is in any case implacably opposed to any such match, and ends up warning him off. So you feel sorry for poor Gerald on a personal level. After all, he can't help coming from Surrey (one of Lady Naylor's main reproaches). Shortly afterwards, he is shot in a raid, and Lois is sent away to continue her education.

There is a poignant autumn connection in the final stroke of tragedy. Mrs Trent, a friend from Lady Naylor's circles, comments that Danielstown looks at its best in this season:

"'To tell you the truth, I really believe it does. There is something in autumn,' said Lady Naylor. She remained on the steps looking after the trap, her hands restlessly, lightly folded. Some leaves spun down from the gate with a home-coming air.

"The two did not, however, again see Danielstown at such a moment, such a particular happy point of decline in the short curve of the day, the long curve of the season. Here, there were no more autumns, except for the trees. By next year light had possessed itself of the vacancy, still with surprise. Next year, the chestnuts and acorns pattered unheard on the avenues, that, filmed over with green already, should have been dull to the footsteps but there were no footsteps. Leaves, fluttering down the slope with the wind’s hesitation, banked formless, frightened, against the too clear form of the ruin.

"For in February, before those leaves had visibly budded, the death -- the execution, rather -- of the three houses, Danielstown, Castle Trent, Mount Isabel, occurred in the same night."

This is doubly shocking because Danielstown, rendered in all its weather moods, has very much become a character in the story.



Occurring at the end, these are dramatic events indeed. Most of the book, however, is told slowly and languidly. People arrive and leave. They have funny little "withholding" conversations. They are reticent, these people. It's not a society that enjoys spilling beans, even non-political ones. Various little love triangles form. Right at the beginning the family welcomes Francie and Hugo Montmorency as guests. He once had a thing with Lois's mother, and Lois herself seems drawn to him. But later we have the arrival of Anglo-Irish Marda Norton, 10 years older than Lois, self-possessed, and beguiling. Hugo becomes infatuated by her (but, engaged to a rich Englishman, she wisely rejects his attentions). Lois, too, is fascinated by Marda's sophistication, and longs to impress her.

The Montmorency pair are a bit drippy (Francie is sick with something, and has an excuse, but Hugo is just plain ineffectual). But their drifting qualities make me warm to them a little. This conversation, for example, once they've departed (again it's Lady Naylor and Mrs Trent):

"'The house feels empty. They’ve gone, you know.'
"'Yes, dear me, I was sorry not to have seen the last of Hugo and poor little Francie. What about their bungalow?'
"'Oh, that was just an idea, they are quite off it. Bungalows inland seem so pointless, cliffs are so windy and one cannot live on a flat coast. No, they think now of going to Madeira.'
"'Then they won’t unstore the furniture?'
"'I don’t think so, they never cared for it much.'"



I find Bowen's style evocative but slightly disjointed (not helped by the fact that half the punctuation marks had disappeared on my old copy).

But her characters are vivid. She has a knack of making you FEEL them, just by sketching in a few lines. As noted here, some of the minor characters are reminiscent of Jane Austen: "The voluminous Mrs Fogarty, the unmarriageable Miss Hartigans..." There's also a clear suspense element, as our characters walk out into territory that we strongly suspect to be hostile. And the nostalgia is palpable. That comparatively short period between the setting of the novel and Bowen's writing of it brought about enormous change.

Completely unobserved by Prudence is a gothic undercurrent much noted by others. Edwina Keown, for example, suggests: "In The Last September [Bowen] experiments with gothic and modernist techniques: using gothic to create the narrative disruptions; the alienation; the clash between different versions of history; and the focus on gender and alternative sexuality that are all associated with modernism. With its isolated and decaying ancestral home; its ruined mill and ghosts; its lower-class Catholic 'natives' versus landed, hybrid Anglo-Irish 'settlers/colonialists'; its entrapped female and male characters; its ambiguous 'visitors' -- dispossessed Anglo-Irish and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) gunmen; and its exploration of terrifying modernity in the guise of the motorcar and the 'New Woman', The Last September ensures that in the 'twentieth century, in diverse and ambiguous ways, Gothic figures have continued to shadow the progress of modernity with counter-narratives displaying the underside of enlightenment and humanist values [quote from Fred Botting].'" Interesting insights. In fact, that whole article is well worth reading.

So, Bowen is back on the agenda. And so is Gothic.