Crawford, Alice (1990) The desire and pursuit of the whole: pattern and quest in the novels of Rose Macaulay. PhD thesis. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/41157/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] .. ý .ý ' DESIRE AND PURSUIT OF iEIXB' : PATTERN AND (JFSP IN THE NOVELS OF ROSE NACADLAY.- A Thesis presented for the degree of DOCTOROF PHILOSOPHY by ALICE CRAWFORD Department of English Literature, University of Glasgow May 1990 cý Alice Crawford"" ý' t BEST COPY AVAILABLE Variable print quality (ii) Page No. Introduction. 1 ........ ...... ...... .... .... ". """.. "" """".. Chapter 1 The Quest Begins: First Writing and Apprenticeship in Verse. 1. Childhood Reading.... 26 .................................. 2. Mysticism Early Poetry 33 and ............................. 3. Literary Influences: - Walter de la Mare, Rupert Brooke, W. B. Yeats 45 .............................. 4. Conclusion......:.: }. ý... '... 60 '.....: S..................... Chapter 2 The Ordered Frame: Novels 1906-1912. 1. Abbots Verney 63 .......................................... 2. The Furnace ............................................ 73 3. The Secret 79 River ....................................... 4. The Valley Captives 86 .................................... 5. The Lee Shore .......................................... 99 6. '::......... " 111 =Views and'Vagabonds... ....:................. 7. Conclusion. ............................................ 123 Chapter 3 Pursuit and Pragmatism: Novels 1914-1920. 1. Poetry 131 ................................................. 2. Satire 136 ................................................. 3. Pragmatism 144 ............................................. 4. '", Symbolism 162 .............................................. 5. Conclusion 170 ' .......................... .................... 'Nove1s Chapter 4 Pursuit and Pä doxr. 1921-1932. 1. '.............................. 173 Poetry .............. i.... (iii) 2. Background 174 Biographical and Literary ................... 3. Idiot 184 Dangerous Ages and Told By an .................... 4. Women 207 .................................................. 5. Androgyny 210 .............................................. 6. Mystery Geneva Orphan Island 217 at and .................... 7. Crewe Train, Keeping Up Appearances and Staying With 227 Relations ................................. 8. They Were Defeated 249 ..................................... 9. Conclusion 258 ............................................. Chapter 5 Into the Abyss: Novels 1934-1940. 1. Poetry ................................................. 262 2. Biographical Background 263 ................................ 3. Going Abroad ........................................... 266 4. I Would Be Private ..................................... 275 5. And No Man's Wit ....................................... 283 6. Conclusion ............................................. 289 Chapter 6 Out of the Wilderness 1950-1958 1. Biographical Background... ............................. 291 2. Poetry ................................................. 295 3. Wilderness...,............ The World My ................ 307 4. The Towers of Trebizond ................................ 318 5. 339 Venice Besieged ....................... ................. Conclusion 342 ................................................. Appendix A "On Being " 347 Fastidious. ......................... Appendix B "A Letter to the New Professor of Latin in the University of Cambridge. "......... 351 (iv) Appendix C "Thoughts from Great Minds on Crying for Moon. " 353 the ................................. Appendix D Rose Macaulay, Letter to Virginia Woolf, 10 Oct. 1940 355 ................................... Abbreviations in Thesis 357 used the Notes to this ............. Notes 359 ...................................................... Selective Bibliography 466 ..................................... (v) Acknowledgements I am most grateful to Mrs Susan Anthony of the Department of English Literature for her patience and encouragement in her supervision of this thesis. record I should like to my thanks to the following people: Constance Babington Smith, for permission to obtain scripts of BBC broadcasts by Rose Macaulay; Dr Timothy D. Hobbs and Miss Diana Chardin of Trinity College Library, Cambridge, for facilitating my access to the Macaulay papers; Mr Timothy Rogers and Dr Judith Priestmanýof the Bodleian Library, Oxford, for help wits my enquiries about Rose Macaulay's letters there; Mr W.H. Kelliher and Mr Jude de Vima of the British Library, Ms Jav Rose of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts and Letters for their help in tracing various documents relating to Rose Macaulay; Mr Mark Bonham Carter of Collins Publishers, for the address of RoseMacaulay's literary agent; Miss 'Archives Debbie Butler of{ the BBC Written Centre for copies of scripts of Rose Macaulay's broadcasts; Dr Michael Moss of Glasgow University Archives, for information about the Rectorial- Election of 1937; Mrs Margaret Jeffrey, for lending me material on Elizabeth Bowen; Mrs Frances Wetherell of Books by Post (Cambridge), for acquiring for me many obscure and out-of-print publications; Dr Seyed M. Moosavi of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, for information about the Macaulay documents held there. (vi) My friends and colleagues at Glasgow University Library, where I worked while writing the thesis, helped in many ways. I am most grateful to the Librarian, Mr Henry J. Heaney, for making money from the Blackie Fund available to help with my travel expenses to Cambridge, and for supporting my application for two weeks' study leave. I much appreciate the work of Mrs Irene Kennedy and her staff, in the Inter-Library Loans Department in dealing with my many loan- requests. My colleagues in the Physical and Earth Sciences Division, Miss Pat Martin, Miss Anne Good, Miss Margaret Hoolighan and Mrs Ellen Gallagher provided daily support and encouragement, for which I am extremely grateful. I should also like to thank Miss Kathleen Shortt of Dundee University for her excellent word-processing. My particular thanks must go, of course, to my parents and family, Alan, Ann, David and Joyce, for all their help and understanding over the years. Without their patience and support the project would never have been completed. Finally, my love and thanks to my husband Robert, who has made it all worthwhile. Dedication For Robert ý., ýý ., ý. ýy (viii) SUMMARY Desire and-pursuit of the whole is the theme which animates all Rose Macaulay's fiction. ' Her literature-rich childhood nourished both an interest in mysticism and an ambition to write poems. It is in her verse that we first see emerging her careful symbolism of quest, her obsession with pilgrims who seek the elusive goal of insight perfectly achieved. The fascination is evident in her six earliest, image-studded novels 'in each of which she , traces -a protagonist's development from innocence to maturity. `` The multiple symbolisms of mysticism, Platonism, Hermeticism and Christianity, are juggled to produce a complex iconographical subtext to the stories', of growth towards perception. While Rose Macaulay's novels of the First World War period change sharply in tone, veering towards a new mood of pragmatism, the theme of the pursuit of the whole remains clear. Now, however, characters are shown realising that the "whole" is, an--unrealisable dream which they must, in the interests of good-sense; decline to chase. They must limit their quests to, the practically achievable. 1 .,, .t. -Satire lightens her most well-known fiction of, the - inter-war years , 'allowing her to complicate her work with the 'new elements of ambiguity and irony. ' Still convinced` that the individual's impulse to search for wholeness is essential, she now combines her conviction with a satirical perception that the quest is pointless. Her field (ix) widens in these intricate, paradoxical novels and it becomes evident that her interest in the personal "pursuits of the whole" of her characters is parallelý. ed by her anxious interest in the quest of the post-war world itself, for civilisation. In her best novels, the clashes of comedy and tragedy, civilisation, and savagery, which her new ambiguous outlook has released, produces, liveliness and wit. In her fictions of 1934-40, however, Rose Macaulay's personal weariness and disenchantment intrude, and the formula fails to ignite. The "whole". is. again vigorously pursued in her last, two novels, published after a ten-year silence during the 1940's.,.. From her distraught picture in The World My Wilderness of a once coherent world in ruins, she moves in The Towers of Trebizond to a new sense of fulfilment. Her reconciliation with the Anglican Church allows her, to proclaim triumphantly,. in this, the richest and most, . paradoxical of her books, that the "pattern and the hard core" of.