Rhapsody and Other Stories

‘I can’t think of a more wonderful collection of stories... It’s a card-carrying masterpiece. Funny, creepy, and strangely beautiful.’ Dan Rhodes -- Publisher: Parthian Books
The main group of ten stories featured here were published in 1927; of the others, 'La Penseuse’ was written by 1927 and the last two stories were published after the author’s death in 1934. Because her death was suicide and she left a note expressive of serious depression, this seems to have coloured a great deal of the response to her work both at the time and later (despite most being written some years earlier). This edition endeavours to redress the trend, highlighting her irony, originality and fine craftsmanship. These stories inhabit a recognisable milieu whose precise locations are rather indefinite. Set mostly in country houses of a leisured middle class, they usually contain a character on holiday – out of place – observing a new, perhaps half-understood situation. The source of narration, apart from the four first-person narrators, is curiously subtle and shifting. ‘Summer-time’ is mainly seen from the point of view of Joseph Laurel and has his frivolous and playful tone. In ‘Cultivated People’, although apparently told by a member of the Music Club, with a dry, knowing eye, sometimes we share the thoughts of Miss Wolf. ‘Sweet Grapes’ is apparently narrated by a friend of Hugo’s who comments critically on his aimless and selfish behaviour. The narrator in ‘Rhapsody’ finds himself ‘collected’ by the eccentric George Everett and observes Everett’s obsession with music, which shuts him off from engaging with anyone who does not directly feed this addiction – to the neglect of his wife and son. Here the reader identifies with the observer’s view, but in ‘A Country House’ the narrator is the protagonist – we are button-holed by a mean, jealous man (very reminiscent of the Duke in Browning’s poem ‘My Last Duchess’). He becomes jealous of an engineer brought in to work on his land, but all his hostility is directed towards his wife whom he censures for playing Chopin ‘to a stranger that you met for the first time’. One of the most haunting stories is ‘A Garland of Earth’, in which old Mr Leonard remembers a visit to the home of a successful scientist he had helped when younger. Leonard meets the children: a lively boy and brilliant older daughter, Rahel. She worked with her father but has an unspecified illness. Leonard is concerned lest she overworks, but her sadness may be that she knows she is running out of time. She is identified with the wildflowers she collects. They share a perfect moment but in the approaching storm Leonard dreads a Fury’s vengeance. The balance of his insights and blindness is finely done. While the most obviously repeated theme in the collection is the characters’ involvement with music, there is another which is the threat of TB. Many of the female characters are described as ‘very pale’ and in ‘A Garland of Earth’ and ‘A Throne in Heaven’ the threat is most explicit. While pale beauty was still fashionable, modern readers may underestimate how common TB victims (especially teenage girls) would have been in Dorothy Edwards’s world. The author was an unusually well-educated woman from a politically-aware family. This is not very overt in her stories but the limitations on women are present in the assumptions made. In ‘La Penseuse’ it is clear that Mary is as intelligent as Sidney but it is never suggested that she could have taken the same path. Only in ‘Days’ is there a balanced relationship between the two professionals who respect each other’s art. Dorothy Edwards’s stories well deserve re-issue and reappraisal as fine, subtle works full of wit, insight and skill. -- Caroline Clark @ www.gwales.com