A Wreath of Roses by Elizabeth Taylor - 1949 - with an introduction by Helen Dunmore- 2010

 A Wreath of Roses  by Elizabeth Taylor - 1949 - with an introduction by Helen Dunmore - 2010

July 3, 1912 Reading,  England

November 19, 1975 Penn, England 

Question.  In Mrs Pelfrey at the Claremont there is a character named Mrs Taylor, in A Wreath of Roses, a central character is Liz.  How do you see this use of parts of her name.?

This is the fourth novel by Elizabeth Taylor I have so far had the great pleasure of reading..   Previously I have read A View of the Harbour, At Mrs. Lippincote’s and my so far favorite Mrs Pelfrey at the Claremont.

I hope to read in the next few months these additional novels:

The Sleeping Beauty 1953

The Soul of Kindness 1964

Blaming 1976. Published posthumously

Longer term it is my wish to do a full read through, including her short stories.

“A Wreath of Roses has been called Elizabeth Taylor’s darkest novel, dealing as it does with murder, loneliness, terror and suicide. The aftertaste of the Second World War is still on everyone’s tongue. Young men who have been formed by the extremes of violence must find a way of adjusting to civilian life, and out of the chaos discover a coherent story to tell themselves about their futures.” Helen Dunmore 

A Wreath of Roses is set in an English Village in the heat of summer.  The war has been over a couple of years. The story opens at a railway station.  Camille Hill, an unmarried woman into her middle years has come to visit two old friends, Liz and Francis.  Liz is struggling with the obligations and expectations of being married to a clergyman and having an infant. Francis, her other friend, is a well regarded painter.  Of late her outlook on life has darkened reflected in her work.  Camille feels her life is dull.

Camille sees a to her handsome man at the station.  Then as they wait making a bit of small talk, a man falls to his death in front of the train.  In a writer as bookish as Taylor, I see this as an invocation of the opening of Anna Karenina.  We are privy to the thoughts of the man as well.  We learn he spent years in a German prisoner of war camp.  He is going to the same town as Camille.  Their developing relationship is the driving force in the plot.

Camille’s friends see evil in him.  We slowly learn of his past.  We see how his terrible war years have impacted him.

I found the close of this book very powerful.  Listening to the truly evil revelations of the man rendered in the exquisite prose of Taylor had a quite visceral impact on me. 

Taylor is a master of character development.

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At Mrs Lippincote’s by Elizabeth Taylor -1945

 At Mrs Lippincote’s by Elizabeth Taylor -1945

Short listed for the Booker Prize 

July 3, 1912 Reading,  England

November 19, 1975 Penn, England 

At Mrs. Lippincote’s was Elizabeth Taylor’s debut novel.  Prior to this I first read her A View of the Harbour and then Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, my favorite so far.  I have also read and posted on four of her short stories.  

I hope to read in the next few months these additional novels:

A Wealth of Roses 1949

The Sleeping Beauty 1953

The Soul of Kindness 1964

Blaming 1976. Published posthumously

Set during World War Two in a rooming house owned by Mrs Lippincote, Julie, her husband Rodney, and their son Oliver are kind of riding out the war there, not sure who will win.  Rodney is an officer in the Royal Air Force.  The social atmosphere of the British Air Force is very rank conscious.  With her lovely understated comic sense Taylor has produced a very interesting book.  You can see everyone is trying to keep an “English Stiff Upper Lip” while hiding their fear of the future.  

Taylor’s sentences are sometimes just such a joy to read, pure happiness on a page.

I loved these lines about the son Oliver:

“OLIVER DAVENANT did not merely read books. He snuffed them up, took breaths of them into his lungs, filled his eyes with the sight of the print and his head with the sound of words. Some emanation from the book itself poured into his bones, as if he were absorbing steady sunshine. ..... If this passion is to be called reading, then the matrons with their circulating libraries and the clergymen with their detective tales are merely flirting and passing time. To discover how Oliver’s life was lived, it was necessary, as in reading The Waste Land, to have an extensive knowledge of literature”.

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor - 1971

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor - 1971

I offer my thanks to Buried in Print for suggesting this marvelous novel

The New Yorkerwhere she published many of her short stories, has a good overview of her life and work

“Elizabeth Taylor's exquisitely drawn character study of eccentricity in old age is a sharp and witty portrait of genteel postwar English life facing the changes taking shape in the 60s . . . Much of the reader's joy lies in the exquisite subtlety in Taylor's depiction of all the relationships, the sharp brevity of her wit, and the apparently effortless way the plot unfolds . . . Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont is, for me, her masterpiece―Robert McCrum, 'the 100 best novels', “The Guardian

July 3, 1912 - Reading, England

1971 - Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont is short listed for The Booker Prize

November 19, 1975 -Penn, England
 Some novels are so beautifully sad they almost hurt to read.  Mrs Palfrey at Claremont is a haunting work.  It tells a bleak story about what it was like to be an elderly woman with little family that cared about you in England after the Wars.

On a cold wet English morning the elderly Mrs. Palftey checks into The  Claremont Hotel, where she will spend the rest of her days.  The hotel is a place  you go when you cannot quite live alone anymore and no one wants to bother with you.  Of course you have to have an independent income to pay the hotel.  It puts England in a very harsh light as a place where the old are thrown away.  As I read it, I am 73, I knew I am lucky to have a very close family and live in a society that respects the elderly.

Mrs Palfrey soon gets into the social life, most of the permanent residents are women, of the Claremont.  Mrs Palfrey, now a widow, spent time in Burma when her husband was an administrator there.  She does have the English “Stiff Upper Lip”.

The women in The Claremont group often talk about their relatives, each one trying to top the other.  Almost no one gets a visitor.  Mrs Palfrey one day makes up a grandson who she says works in the archives of The British Museum, so she will have some one to talk about.  One day she takes a fall while out for a constitutional.  A young man helps her get up.  She invites him to the Claremont for a meal, telling him to pretend he is her grandson. It may not sound like it, but this is all hilarious while very sad.

The deceptions pile on and Mrs Palfrey and her pretend nephew become very close.  We learn about the family history of his mother and sit in as he gets a girlfriend.

The prose is just so exquisite, every sentenced is like a polished emerald.  Some pages left me stunned.

This novel is for sale as a Kindle edition for $0.99.  It can be read in one evening.  My guess is many will add her to their read through list.

She published 11 novels and a number of short stories.  Her stories and nine of the novels are available in Kindle format.  I hope to read them all.

Two Short Stories Dealing with what France meant to the English after World War Two - by Elizabeth Taylor

Two Short Stories Dealing with what France meant to the English after World War Two - by Elizabeth Taylor

“Oh, don’t bring me books about France,’ she said one morning to Mrs Dring. ‘I can’t bear anything about France. It’s worse than China. Why can’t people write books about their own country? Showing off.’ “ - from Simone by Elizabeth Taylor

Paris in July 2020 - Hosted by Thyme for Tea

My readings so far for Paris in July 2020

1. Forain” - a set in Paris Short Story by Mavis Gallant
2. “Winter Rain” - a Short story by Alice Adams about an American woman living in Paris after World War Two
3. Marc Chagall by Jonathan Wilson
4. Missing Person by Patrick Modiano
5. “Sisters” by Elizabeth Taylor.
6. Madame de Mauves - a set in Paris Novella by Henry James - 1874
7. The Queen of Paris- A Coco Chanel Novel by Pamela Binnings Ewen - 2020
8. Government Endommagé - A Short Story about an English couple on vacation in France -  by Elixabeth Taylor - 1950
9. Hotel de Commerce -  English newly weds on honey moon in France - A Short Story by Elizabeth Taylor -


Hôtel du Commerce - first published in The Cornhill Magazine, Winter 1965/66

Government Endommagé was first published in The New Yorker October 17, 1950

Both works are included in The Complete Short Stories of Elizabeth Taylor

July 3, 1912 - Reading, England

November 19, 1975 -Penn, England

As far as I can see, Elizabeth Taylor (she was a bit embarrassed by her namesake and many in first hearing of her fiction say to themselves “I did not know she was a writer also”) never left England.

Hótel de Commerce takes place in Chartes, France, about fifty miles southwest of Paris.  It is home to the famous Chartes, Cathedral. An English couple are there on their honeymoon.  As name suggests, the hotel is a dreary kind of place.  The man was in France during the war and speaks French a bit.  In talking about an Elizabeth Taylor story, it is hard to resist quoting:

“So much about honeymoons was absurd – even little reminders like this one. And there had been awkwardnesses they could never have foreseen – especially that of having to make their way in a foreign language. (Lune de miel seemed utterly improbable to her.) She did not know how to ask a maid to wash a blouse, although she had pages of irregular verbs somewhere in her head, and odd words, from lists she had learnt as a child – the Parts of the Body, the Trees of the Forest, the Days of the Week – would often spring gratifyingly to her rescue.”

His wife seems a bit disappointed in The Cathedral, the husband sees town as full of Tourist traps.

Back in hotel, the walls are thin.  They overhear the couple next door having a terrible fight.  Any one married for a while both cringe at the story and smile maybe sardinically at next days result.  Hótel Commerce is really a good deeply insightful gem.

Gravement Endommagé gives us another English married couple, Richard and Louise.  Unlike the couple in the prior story, they are long past the honeymoon stage.  They are on Holiday in France, a trip they both hope will revitalize their marriage.

“The holiday was really to set things to rights between them. Lately, trivial bickering had hardened into direct animosity. Relatives put this down to, on his part, overwork, and, on hers, fatigue from the war, during which she had lived, after their London house was bombed, in a remote village with the children. She had nothing to say of those years but that they were not funny. She clung to the children and they to her.”

When we meet them, they took the boat over, they are driving into Paris.

Here is a painfully real matrimonial conversation:

“‘But if we are pushed for time … Why kill ourselves? … After all, this is a holiday … I do remember … There is a place I stayed at that time … When I first knew you …’ Only parts of what he said reached her. The rest was blown away. ‘You are deliberately going slow,’ she said. ‘I think more of my car than to drive it fast along these roads.’ ‘You think more of your car than of your wife.’ He had no answer. He could not say that at least his car never betrayed him, let him down, embarrassed him, because it constantly did and might again at any moment.”

In these stories we get a glimpse of how The post World War Two English Middle Class viewed France.

I have now read one novel and four Short stories by Elizabeth Taylor.  She published 12 novels.  I now have six of her novels as well as the Short Story collection.  I hope to read through this in 2020, none of the novels are very long.

Sisters - A Short Story by Elizabeth Taylor - first published in The New Yorker June 21, 1969

Sisters - A Short Story by Elizabeth Taylor - first published in The New Yorker June 21, 1969

Paris in The Thirties as seen from a small town in England about 1960

My readings so far for July in Paris 2020

1. Forain” - a set in Paris Short Story by Mavis Gallant

2. “Winter Rain” - a Short story by Alice Adams about an American woman living in Paris after World War Two

3. Marc Chagall by Jonathan Wilson

4. Missing Person by Patrick Modiano

5. “Sisters” by Elizabeth Taylor.

“Sisters” is Included in The Complete Short Stories of Elizabeth Taylor 

Paris in July 2000- Thyme for Tea

My Prior Posts on Elizabeth Taylor 

Elizabeth Taylor

July 3, 1912 - Reading, England

November 19, 1975 -Penn, England

"Taylor’s sentences are like Renaissance jewelry, intricate, composed, flawless." Roxana Robinson

“Sisters is my third venture into the work of Elizabeth Taylor.  On November 21, 2013 I posted on “The Blush”, one of her short stories.  Then on June 16, 2015 I posted on one of her eleven novels, A  View from the Harbour”.

Now I am five years later posting on another of her short stories, “Sisters”.

I feel a need to share the start of my post on A View from the Harbour”:

"‘A man,’ she thought suddenly, ‘would consider this a business outing. But, then, a man would not have to cook the meals for the day overnight, nor consign his child to a friend, nor leave half-done the ironing, nor forget the grocery order as I now discover I have forgotten it. The artfulness of men,’ she thought. ‘They implant in us, foster in us, instincts which it is to their advantage for us to have, and which, in the end, we feel shame at not possessing.’ She opened her eyes and glared with scorn at a middle-aged man reading a newspaper. ‘A man like that,’ she thought, ‘a worthless creature, yet so long has his kind lorded it that I (who, if only I could have been ruthless and single-minded about my work as men are, could have been a good writer) feel slightly guilty at not being back at the kitchen-sink.’ ". From A View of the Harbour

I completely agree with Roxana Robinson's assessment of the sentences of Elizabeth Taylor, "Taylor’s sentences are like Renaissance jewelry, intricate, composed, flawless."  My first experience with Elixabeth Taylor (1912 to 1975, England) was last year when I read her delightful story about infidelity, "Blush".  I was very grateful when The New York Review of Books offered me a review copy of her 1947 novel, A View from the Harbour.  The novel is set in a run town coastal town in England.  It is a very gossipy novel that focuses on the lives of the residents.  

Taylor is a very acute observer of small details.  I think her remark, from a female novelist who is one of the book's characters, that I quote above will ring painfully true to legions of writers.  

The characters in the story are all connected in one way or another.  Several are working through the consequences of recently failed relationships.

It is the exquiste sentences and the many wonderful observations that made A View of the Harbour such a delight to read.  

I not too long ago acquired The Complete Short Stories of Elizabeth Taylor. (Very much a value at $3.95 for The Kindle Edition.). I was so happy to find at least two Short Stories that tie in with Paris in July.

“Sisters” is wonderful short story.  Set in a smallish English town around 1965, the most important on stage character is Mrs Mason, a widow of a dentist. The plot begins when a young man pays her a visit, he is writing a biography on her sister, a famous writer,  who died about thirty years ago in Paris.

“On a Thursday morning, soon after Mrs Mason returned from shopping – in fact she had not yet taken off her hat – a neat young man wearing a dark suit and spectacles, half-gold, half-mock tortoiseshell, and carrying a rolled umbrella, called at the house, and brought her to the edge of ruin. He gave a name, which meant nothing to her, and she invited him in, thinking he was about insurance, or someone from her solicitor. He stood in the sitting-room, looking keenly about him, until she asked him to sit down and tell her his business. ‘Your sister,’ he began. ‘Your sister Marion,’ and Mrs Mason’s hand flew up to her cheek. She gazed at him in alarmed astonishment, then closed her eyes. In this town, where she had lived all her married life, Mrs Mason was respected, even mildly loved. No one had a word to say against her, so it followed there were no strong feelings either way. She seemed to have been made for widowhood, and had her own little set, for bridge and coffee mornings, and her committee-meetings..”

Her sister Marion lived in Paris in the twenties and thirties.  She wrote stories about her childhood, exposing things deeply repressed by Mrs Mason.  To make it worse she was involved with numerous other writers and artists of time, leading scandalous lives, swapping bed bed mates and seeking sexual experiences way beyond what was acceptable to Mrs Mason.  Her husband refused to have Marion in the house he was so offended by his sister in law’s Life Style.

The story follows conversation of the biographer and Mrs Mason.  He tries hard to draw her out but at first she resists him.

“‘Were you and Marion close to one another?’ ‘We were sisters,’ she said primly. ‘And you kept in touch? I should think that you enjoyed basking in the reflected glory.’ He knew that she had not kept in touch, and was sure by now that she had done no basking. ‘She went to live in Paris, as no doubt you know.’”

Finally she begins to open up:

‘Did you ever meet Godwin? Or any of that set?’ ‘Of course not. My husband wouldn’t have had them in the house.’ The young man nodded. Oh, that dreadful clique. She was ashamed to have it mentioned to her by someone of the opposite sex, a complete stranger. She had been embarrassed to speak of it to her own husband, who had been so extraordinarily kind and forgiving about everything connected with Marion. But that raffish life in Paris in the thirties! Her sister living with the man Godwin, or turn and turn about with others of her set. They all had switched from one partner to the other; sometimes – she clasped her hands together so tightly that her rings hurt her fingers – to others of the same sex. She knew about it; the world knew; no doubt her friends knew, although it was not the sort of thing they would have discussed. Books had been written about that Paris lot, as Mrs Mason thought of them, and their correspondence published. Godwin, and Miranda Braun, the painter, and Grant Opie, the American, who wrote obscene books; and many of the others”.

Finally at the end just before she tells him to leave Mrs. Mason shocks The biographer.

I hope this Month to read her story about a Middle Class English couple on vacation in France.   

Today for $0.99 i acquired one of her novels, Mrs Pelfrey at The Claremont.  I hope to read it soon.



A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor (1947)

"Taylor’s sentences are like Renaissance jewelry, intricate, composed, flawless." From the introduction by Roxana Robinson

"‘A man,’ she thought suddenly, ‘would consider this a business outing. But, then, a man would not have to cook the meals for the day overnight, nor consign his child to a friend, nor leave half-done the ironing, nor forget the grocery order as I now discover I have forgotten it. The artfulness of men,’ she thought. ‘They implant in us, foster in us, instincts which it is to their advantage for us to have, and which, in the end, we feel shame at not possessing.’ She opened her eyes and glared with scorn at a middle-aged man reading a newspaper. ‘A man like that,’ she thought, ‘a worthless creature, yet so long has his kind lorded it that I (who, if only I could have been ruthless and single-minded about my work as men are, could have been a good writer) feel slightly guilty at not being back at the kitchen-sink.’ ". From A View of the Harbour

I completely agree with Roxana Robinson's assessment of the sentences of Elizabeth Taylor, "Taylor’s sentences are like Renaissance jewelry, intricate, composed, flawless."  My first experience with Elixabeth Taylor (1912 to 1975, England) was last year when I read her delightful story about infidelity, "Blush".  I was very grateful when The New York Review of Books offered me a review copy of her 1947 novel, A View from the Harbour.  The novel is set in a run town coastal town in England.  It is a very gossipy novel that focuses on the lives of the residents.  

Taylor is a very acute observer of small details.  I think her remark, from a female novelist who is one of the book's characters, that I quote above will ring painfully true to legions of writers.  

The characters in the story are all connected in one way or another.  Several are working through the consequences of recently failed relationships.

It is the exquiste sentences and the many wonderful observations that made A View of the Harbour such a delight to read.  

Mel u

"The Blush" by Elizabeth Taylor 1958

I believe "The Blush" originally published as were many of her stories in The New Yorker, is one of her highest regarded short stories.  Reading it was my introduction to her work and I now do hope to one day read The Complete Short Stories of Elizabeth Taylor one of these days.  

There is a twist ending in the story but it came at me so unexpectedly and in such a subtle fashion that I had to go back and read a portion of the story three times.  I do not wish to give away to much of the plot.  There are two main onstage characters, an upper-middle class English lady and her maid.  The lady regrets she never had children and when the maid describes the antics of her children she thinks "mine would never act that way".  The lady looks down on her maid, not in a mean way just socially.  The maid often complains of her life and she has lost her figure, not slender like the lady.  Then, this never happened before, the maid's husband shows up at the house of the lady.  Now the story takes a super interesting turn and in an instant you see the undermining of the world view of the lady. 

I read this in an excellent anthology of stories by  women writers that I have been slowly working my way through The Story:  Love, Loss, and the Lives of Women -One Hundred Short Stories edited by Victoria Hislop.

About this author

Elizabeth Taylor (née Coles) was a popular English novelist and short story writer. Elizabeth Coles was born in Reading, Berkshire in 1912. She was educated at The Abbey School, Reading, and worked as a governess, as a tutor and as a librarian.

In 1936, she married John Micael, a businessman. She lived in Penn, Buckinghamshire, for almost all her married life.

Her first novel, At Mrs. Lippincote's, was published in 1945 and was followed by eleven more. Her short stories were published in various magazines and collected in four volumes. She also wrote a children's book.

Taylor's work is mainly concerned with the nuances of "everyday" life and situations, which she writes about with dexterity. Her shrewd but affectionate portrayals of middle class and upper middle class English life won her an audience of discriminating readers, as well as loyal friends in the world of letters.

She was a friend of the novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett and of the novelist and critic Robert Liddell.

Elizabeth Taylor died at age 63 of cancer.  - from Goodreads