Commemorative Modernisms: Women Writers, Death and the First World War

311 Pages·2020·2.16 MB·English

by  Alice Kelly

COMMEMORATIVE MODERNISMS
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For my family, especially my Grandma, who passed
onto me her love of Katherine Mansfi eld,
and for my dear friend, Garon Coriz
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COMMEMORATIVE MODERNISMS
Women Writers, Death and
the First World War
Alice Kelly
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Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in
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© Alice Kelly, 2020
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
The Tun – Holyrood Road, 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh EH8 8PJ
Typeset in 10/12.5 Adobe Sabon by
IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and
printed and bound in Great Britain
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4744 5990 7 (hardback)
ISBN 978 1 4744 5992 1 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 5993 8 (epub)
The right of Alice Kelly to be identifi ed as the author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003
(SI No. 2498).
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CONTENTS
List of Figures vi
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction: A Culture Surcharged with Death 1
Part One Death in Proximity: Wartime Commemorations
1 The Shock of the Dead: Deathbeds, Burial Rites and
Cemetery Scenes in Nurses’ Narratives 39
2 Uncomfortable Propaganda: Edith Wharton’s Wartime Writings 81
Part Two Grief at a Distance: Civilian Modernisms
3 Mansfi eld Mobilised: Katherine Mansfi eld, the Great War
and Military Discourse 121
4 The Civilian War Novel: H.D.’s Avant-Garde War Dead 154
Part Three Modernist Death: Postwar Remembrance
5 Modernist Memorials: Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfi eld
in the Postwar World 193
Conclusion: Modernism’s Ghosts 230
Bibliography 244
Index 285
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FIGURES
I.1 David McLellan, Members of the Women’s Army Auxiliary
Corps carrying wreaths to place on the graves of British soldiers
buried at Abbeville, 9 February 1918. © IWM (Q 8471) 4
I.2 Olive Edis, Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps gardeners tending
the graves of the war dead at Étaples, 1919. © IWM (Q 8027) 11
I.3 Offi cial letter (Army Form B.104) from the Infantry Record
Offi ce informing Mrs Ethel A. Ottley of the death of her husband,
8 December 1917. NAM. 2004-11-115-6. Reproduced courtesy of
the Council of the National Army Museum, London 12
I.4 Next of Kin Memorial Plaque for Sergeant Herbert Walter
Stacey, 13 Squadron, Royal Air Force. © IWM (EPH 2223) 17
I.5 Next of Kin Memorial Scroll for Sergeant Herbert Walter Stacey,
13 Squadron, Royal Air Force. © IWM (EPH 2223) 18
I.6 Imperial War Museum appeal for mementos of the war dead.
© IWM (Q 24093) 20
I.7 Sir John Lavery, The Cemetery, Étaples, 1919. Imperial War
Museum Women’s Work Section commission. © IWM
(Art.IWM ART 2884) 28
1.1 Arthur G. McCoy, If I Fail He Dies, Work for the Red Cross
(Duluth, MN: J. J. LeTourneau Printing Company, 1918)
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FIGURES
(copyright Rev. S. A. Iciek, 1918). Courtesy of the Pritzker
Military Museum & Library 42
1.2 and 1.3 Two pages from Patricia Young, Album of photographs,
autographs, and notes compiled by a nurse of the Volunteer
Aid Detachment, Dumfries, Scotland, 1914–17. Yale Center
for British Art, Friends of British Art Fund 70–1
2.1 Edith Wharton and Walter Berry among the ruins. Edith Wharton
Collection. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare
Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University 90
2.2 and 2.3 Edouard Brissy, Museum of the Battle of Mén il-sur-Belvitte,
created by the priest present during the combat, 31 August 1915.
© Ministère de la Culture – Médiathèque de l’architecture et du
patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Opérateur D 95–6
3.1 Alfred Hughes (1870–1933), Portrait of Katherine Mansfi eld
wearing a military style jacket in 1915, probably taken in
Hughes’s London studio. Ref: PAColl-10046-07. Alexander
Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand 130
3.2 Photograph from Katherine Mansfi eld’s passport and her
signature (as Kathleen Mansfi eld Murry), issued in 1919.
Ref: MS-Papers-11326-070-02. Alexander Turnbull Library,
Wellington, New Zealand 139
4.1 Septimus E. Scott, These Women are Doing Their Bit (London:
Johnson, Riddle & Co., 1916). Sponsored by the Ministry of
Munitions. © IWM (Art.IWM PST 3283) 166
4.2 Samuel Begg, ‘A Hospital-Ceiling as a Screen for Moving Pictures:
A Cinema for Bedridden Wounded Soldiers at a Base in France’,
Cover of Illustrated London News, 10 August 1918. © Illustrated
London News Ltd/Mary Evans 174
5.1 Crane Arthur, Unveiling of the Cenotaph and the funeral of the
Unknown Warrior, Armistice Day, 1920. © IWM (Q 14966) 194
5.2 ‘The Last Journey’, The Times, 10 November 1920, p. 12.
© The Times/News Licensing 195
C.1 Sir William Orpen, To the Unknown British Soldier in France
(1921, exhibited 1923). © IWM (Art.IWM ART 4438) 231
C.2 Sir William Orpen, To the Unknown British Soldier in France
(1927–8). © IWM (Art.IWM ART 4438) 232
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research for this book has been made possible by institutional and fi nancial
support. Both my Masters and my PhD research was funded by the Arts and
Humanities Research Council. In the fi nal year of my PhD, I was awarded a
Fox International Fellowship at Yale University, endowed by Joseph C. Fox
and Alison Barbour Fox. Since then my research has been supported at the Uni-
versity of Oxford, fi rst by the Women in the Humanities Postdoctoral Writing
Fellowship at The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), and
the Rt Hon. Vere Sidney Tudor Harmsworth Postdoctoral Research Fellow-
ship on the History of the United States and World War One, supported by the
Harmsworth family, at the Rothermere American Institute and Corpus Christi
College. The necessary research in archives and presentations at conferences has
been funded by a Wood-Whistler Scholarship at Newnham College, Cambridge,
and travel grants from Linacre College, Oxford; the Faculty of English, Oxford;
the AHRC; Newnham College, Cambridge; the Faculty of English, Cambridge;
Darwin College, Cambridge; and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. My research
has been further supported and extended by a Corpus Christi Fellowship at
the Huntington Library and Gardens in Pasadena, California, and a Remarque
Visiting Fellowship at New York University. A British Academy Rising Stars
Engagement Award enabled me to run my Cultures and Commemorations of
War Seminar Series. I am indebted to all of these sources.
More importantly, this book has come into being through conversation with,
and the encouragement of, other scholars. First of all, I would like to thank my
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
brilliant PhD supervisor, David Trotter, whose intellectual rigour, unfailing good
humour, and kind words sustained me throughout the writing of my disserta-
tion. Elleke Boehmer’s encouragement of this project from my Masters onwards
has been much appreciated. Michael Whitworth has been continually support-
ive and encouraging, always willing to offer feedback on ideas. I am similarly
indebted to the generous support of Jay Winter, who supported my application
for a Fox Fellowship and enabled me to stay at Yale beyond it. I feel very for-
tunate to have returned to Oxford at a time when there was a very active Glo-
balising and Localising the Great War group of scholars, established by Adrian
Gregory and John Horne. A number of other scholars have offered support and
advice, and have read my work or shared their own with me, including Carol
Acton, Tim Barringer, Claire Buck, Ardis Butterfi eld, Bruno Cabanes, Santanu
Das, Jay Dickson, Anne Fernihough, Andrew Frayn, Alan and Irene Goldman-
Price, Christine Hallett, Alison Hennegan, Margaret Higonnet, Sydney Janet
Kaplan, Tim Kendall, Gerri Kimber, Marina MacKay, Lucy McDiarmid, Jan
Mieszkowski, Gill Plain, Jane Potter, Pierre Purseigle, Laura Rattray, Vincent
Sherry, Helen Small, Angela Smith, Randall Stevenson, Trudi Tate, Jonathan
Vance, Rishona Zimring and Bart Ziino. Our conversations and exchanges have
been invaluable in writing this book. I would like to thank Jackie Jones and the
editorial team at Edinburgh University Press, as well as my copy-editor Sarah
M. Hall, for all of their help in turning my manuscript into a book.
My work has benefi ted from participation in scholarly societies and confer-
ences. The Board and members of the Katherine Mansfi eld Society, the British
Association of Modernist Studies, the Edith Wharton Society, the War and
Representation Network, and the First World War Studies Society, have all
provided productive and welcoming environments to develop my ideas. The
new body of academic and public scholarship in First World War Studies, as
well as new archival material prompted by the centenary, has stimulated my
thinking within my own fi eld. The participants in my Cultures and Commemo-
rations of War series have enabled me to think beyond the First World War
to broader questions about war and memory. I am grateful to the innumer-
able scholars I have met at conferences and events who have given me useful
references and much encouragement. The excellent questions, comments and
enthusiasm shown by my students in classrooms at Cambridge, Yale, Wesleyan,
and Oxford, have provided another valuable space to test out my ideas. Much
of the writing of this book happened in my TORCH Academic Writing Group,
where our friendly and supportive group provided a huge sense of camaraderie,
teamwork, and good cheer.
A number of librarians and libraries have provided wonderful resources and
spaces in which to work. Over the past decade, I have been lucky enough to
spend many hours in the Reading Rooms of the Bodleian Library, Oxford; in
libraries by the river in Cambridge; in my family home in the Malvern Hills; in
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
the cool calmness of the subterranean Bass Library, and the translucent marble of
the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, at Yale; and, for shorter stints,
among the cacti of the Huntington Library and Gardens in Pasadena, California,
and in an offi ce on Fifth Avenue high above the honking horns of New York City.
I am grateful to the very helpful librarians and staff at all of these libraries, as
well as those at the University Library and English Faculty Library in Cambridge;
the English Faculty Library in Oxford; the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale;
the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Princeton University
Library; and The Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of The Johns Hopkins
Medical Institutions, for creating friendly and welcoming spaces for research
and writing. Linacre College in Oxford; Newnham, Darwin and Sidney Sussex
Colleges in Cambridge; and Davenport College at Yale have all provided wel-
coming social and intellectual communities. In particular, Darwin College
provided the warm and supportive atmosphere needed for extended scholarly
work. The colleagues and friends I have made around the lunch table at Corpus
Christi College in recent years have provided intellectual support and encourage-
ment. I am grateful to all the Fellows and especially the staff who make these
communities thriving and friendly places to work.
My friends and family have been invaluable in both helping me to rethink
my project and giving me a space away from it. There are too many people to
thank individually, but in particular Charlotte Gould, Catherine Licata, Rory
O’Connor, Naomi Portman, Susie Rumsby, Hanna Smyth, Philip Sidney and
Laura McLindon have been brilliant cheerers and supporters. In the last stage
of this project, the sudden loss of a very close friend, Garon Coriz, means that a
personal grief is present in its pages. My fi nal and greatest thanks go to my fam-
ily, who have been there for me throughout the process of writing this book,
from beginning to end. My partner Joel Dodson has supported me in too many
ways to mention. My sister Clare Kelly and her family, Tim, Ruben and Lucy,
and my brother Tom Kelly and his family, Angela, Massimo and Emeric, have
all been encouraging in different ways, as well as making me laugh. Thank you
to Pippa for all the walks, and for snoozing under the desk while I work. My
parents Jim and Sarah Kelly have been endlessly supportive and encouraging
in ways too numerous and far-ranging to list. Thank you in particular to my
Dad for patiently reading draft after draft, often late into the night. This book
is dedicated to my parents and to my grandparents.
And to all the friends and strangers who have taken an interest in my project
and offered a personal anecdote or some encouragement, thank you very much.
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