The Bazaar and Other Stories Read Free Page B

Earl” has no
link at all to Yugoslavia. By contrast, “The Unromantic Princess”
does offer sly advice about governance to Princess Elizabeth;
although only nine years old when the book bearing her name was
published, she was in a direct line to ascend the British throne.
    Bowen’s exuberance for collaboration grew out of her fondness
for games of all sorts. After-dinner games regularly occurred at
Bowen’s Court, the country house in Ireland that Bowen inherited
from her father in 1930. An avid player of “paper games, card games,
parlour games,” she also invented new games to amuse house-guests
(Glendinning 87). Party games extended to book culture. “She Gave
Him” forms one chapter in
Consequences , a book that takes its
inspiration from a parlour game of the same name. In turn, nine
participants add a chapter to the manuscript before passing it on to
the next person. Rushing to submit her chapter, Bowen felt that she
botched “She Gave Him,” as she told A. E. Coppard, editor of the
book, in a letter dated 16 August 1932:
    I found what I had written was too long and talky, & cut it –
now ,
I find much too vigorously, so that I find it is now underweight.
I’m so sorry: this wasn’t meant to be. Please dock my percentage
accordingly.
    To tell you the truth, I liked the scene (your’s [sic]) but disliked
the characters, so made heavy weather of it: there’s something
about exposing the poseur I find very unrewarding: I could wish
the He & She had been more straightforward and picaresque.
I very much wish that my part were better. (HRC Coppard
Archive)
    Other writers’ contributions not only create intractable problems
in the plot, but also impose challenges to maintaining consistency
of style and quality. The collaborative book ultimately exposes
the incommensurability of talent and imagination among several
authors.
    Notwithstanding her unhappiness about “She Gave Him,” Bowen
entertained the possibility of writing for other omnibus editions.
In the postscript to a letter dated 15 October 1932, she proposed a
novelty book to Robert Gibbings, who published
Consequences at the
Cockerel Press:
    I’ve for some time been thinking over a project of getting 7 (fairly
able) writers to write one story a piece to the heading of each one
of “The Seven Deadly Sins.” Some people in France did this –
I don’t know if you came across the book? – de Lacretelle,
Cocteau, Morand (in his good days) and four others. The result
was interesting. I discussed this with Mr. Coppard some time ago
& he said he’d do one, and I expect Mr. Strong would too. Would
the idea be of any interest to you? It’s only just an idea, as I say,
and may not be worth pursuing. I think the selection of writers
would be very important, as the stories should be neither
mawkish or sensational, nor over-heavy. (HRC 10.4)
    Gibbings volleyed back two further ideas for jointly written books.
In a letter to Bowen on 19 October 1932, he suggested “Excuses,” in
which “four or five women writers create compromising situations
for the husbands of their heroines,” or “Volume,” in which “half a
dozen authors” narrate the fulfilment of a “fortune told by some
professional” (HRC 11.5). Even though none of these collaborative
projects came to fruition, they attest to the high spirits and
camaraderie of the 1930s. Bowen views joint efforts as occasions for
drollery. By the same token, the short stories that she writes for
collaborative books impose constraints of length, content, and tone.
The stories written for such joint ventures reveal how Bowen rises to
the challenge, or not.
    Some of Bowen’s best stories – “Summer Night,” “Ivy Gripped
the Steps,” “Mysterious Kôr” – were written in direct or indirect
response to the Second World War. During the 1950s she wrote few
stories and none at all in the 1960s, yet during this period her
critical analysis of the genre sharpened. Between February and May
1960, she