A literary conundrum?: ANONYMOUS (but clearly E. M. DELAFIELD), The Bazalgettes (1935)

[Another previously unpublished review written some time last year.]

This anonymous novel of the years 1870-76 is something of a literary conundrum and will, we believe, cause much discussion. When it came to us the style seemed faintly familiar and we suspected who might have written it. It seemed to us well worth publishing, both as a literary curiosity and also because it is interesting to see a theme that might well have been chosen by the most modern of present-day novelists treated in the Victorian manner.

Such was the note from the publisher when The Bazalgettes, or Folly and Farewell appeared anonymously in 1935. Indeed, one feels sure that they must have "suspected who might have written it," since the royalty checks were presumably written to someone, but some critics seemed to have played along with the mystery, suggesting that perhaps it was a lost work by the likes of Charlotte Yonge or Rhoda Broughton. I suspect that very few critics really believed this entertaining melodrama of misguided marriage was of Victorian origin. Surely all but the most gullible would have realized it was by a contemporary author. But the question was who? 

I came across this novel when I was pouring through reviews from 1935 in search of interesting unknown authors or new details about books I already knew. It's something I used to do more regularly, but have got back into recently—just selecting a year from my range and a publication that regularly did book reviews, and pouring through them on the glorious British Newspaper Archive. So I was first introduced to The Bazalgettes almost as a contemporary would have been—as an anonymous work that might be contemporary or might genuinely be Victorian. But as soon as I decided to see if any copies were available, the mystery was quickly resolved.

Of course, I have the advantage of having read several of E. M. Delafield's other works, which some of the predominantly male critics commenting on the novel might not have had. But I have to say there are quite a few clues within the novel that any Delafield fan would have picked up. Just choosing a passage a random, how about this as a clue?:

Her devotion, which begins by touching Margaret, is rapidly approaching the stage when its only effect is to énerver her almost beyond endurance.

Oh, that distinctive, wry slippage into French! 

The novel begins in Austen-esque mode, with Margaret Mardon, the oldest of two sisters hitherto believed unmarriageable by their terrible, tantrum-ridden father, discussing with her aunt her surprising engagement to the much older and well-to-do Mr. Bazalgette. Said aunt wastes no time in sharing her feelings about the decision:

'I cannot tell you at all unless you will give me your full attention. Only—only—pray do not think me very foolish, Aunt, but I had so very much rather that you did not look at me.'

'I am to give you my full attention, I am not to think you very foolish, and you had so very much rather that I did not look at you. Well, I can undertake to gratify your first and your third requirements.'

Suffice it to say the marriage does turn out rather foolish, as Mr. Bazalgette is conservative and elderly in his views and activities, and Margaret finds her only pleasure in trying to coax his brow-beaten children from his previous marriage into some semblance of happy childhood. At least, that is her only pleasure until Mr. Bazalgette's adult son Charlie, whose existence has only just been revealed to Margaret, arrives on the scene for a visit…

Having discovered that the novel was by Delafield (and doesn't seem to be widely known by readers as part of her oeuvre), I of course had high hopes for it. I couldn't say those hopes were entirely fulfilled, though my lack of experience with Victorian melodrama may mean I'm not its ideal target audience. However, I did keep reading, and enjoyed it for the most part, though it sinks quite a long way into gushy sentimentality in the final section (possibly amusing and perhaps satirical for those who know more about the Victorian novels Delafield was channeling, but not quite so entertaining for me as the lighter, more humorous sections earlier on).

But even if this didn't fulfill my secret fantasies of a Provincial Lady in Victorian England, I still enjoyed reading The Bazalgettes, and what's more I suspected that many of you might not know about the book—or who really wrote it!