Queer Places:
Ryedale House, 156 Coach Rd, Sleights, Whitby YO22 5EQ, UK
Margaret
Ethel Storm Jameson[1]
(8 January 1891 – 30 September 1986) was an English journalist and author,
known for her novels and reviews.[2]
She was an intimate friend of Vera Brittain.
British Women Writers 1914-1945: Professional Work and Friendship is primarily
concerned with the lives and writings of Stella
Benson, Vera Brittain,
Winifred Holtby,
Storm Jameson,
Naomi Mitchison (who were all at
some point connected to Time and Tide) and of
Lady Rhondda, the journal's founder and editor from 1926.
Storm Jameson was a close friend of
Vera Brittain,
Winifred Holtby,
Rose Macaulay and
Naomi Mitchison.
Jameson was born in Whitby,
Yorkshire, she briefly attended school at the Scarborough Municipal, before
studying at the
University of Leeds.[2]
She moved to London, where she earned a
Masters of Arts degree from
King's College London in 1914, and then went on to teach before becoming a
full-time writer. She married the author
Guy
Chapman,[2]
but continued to be published under her maiden name, Storm Jameson. Though she
predominantly used her own name, she also published three novels
pseudonymously in 1937–38. The first two used the name James Hill and
the third one was published under the name William Lamb.
Jameson was a prominent president of the British branch of the
International PEN association, from 1939,[2]
and active in helping refugee writers. Additionally, she was a founding member
of the
Peace Pledge Union.[3]
Jameson was a socialist in the 1930s;[4]
although the outbreak of the Second World War caused her to recant her
pacifism and later adopt
anti-Communist views. However, she remained a supporter of the
Labour Party.[4]
In addition to her novels, Jameson wrote three autobiographies.
Jameson wrote several science fiction novels. In the Second Year
(1936) is a dystopia set in a fascist Britain.[5][6]
Then We Shall Hear Singing describes a near-future invasion by the
Nazis of an imaginary country.[7]
Her most controversial work was Modern Drama in Europe (1920) a
critical analysis of the progress made in drama in the first part of the
twentieth century. Though most of her commentaries are highly critical and
sometimes malicious, her boldness reaches its peak when she asserts that
William Butler Yeats "represents the last state in symbolic imbecility".[8]
When
Vera Brittain and
Storm Jameson met at Jameson's
flat in November 1932, Brittain's diary records that '[Jameson] said my best
chance to get some notice and prestige for [Testament of Youth] was for a
group of people who think the book worthwhile to notice it instantly upon
publication. She promised to do this herself. In fact, Jameson had already
promised (in reply to Brittain's first letter concerning the New Clarion
article) to review Testament for the New English Weekly. She later offered to
set up reviews at the New Statesman and the Week-End Review, and when the time
came she also wrote reviews herself for both the Yorkshire Post and the Sunday
Times. Jameson had less faith in her own book (writing in the same letter, 'I
do not feel that about mine'), but Brittain also played her part in securing
notice for No Time Like the Present. She reviewed it herself in the Week-End
Review, while a review by Winifred Holtby in Time and Tide was apparently
arranged at Brittain's instigation.
In October 1933, Brittain sent roses to Jameson, who replied by letter:
These most lovely roses were here when I came in from having my injection, so
I didn't care at all about my sore arm and head but I feel splendid and feel,
too, that something good just might come of a look behind which is so much
kindness. Something is changing in me because of all this -1 think Tve been
half dead (partly out of choice) and I'm coming alive. You'll say: 'The
woman's going mad'. I don't think I am really, but I think knowing you has
been damned good for me and that I shall never repay my debts. These roses
were among a number of gifts Brittain made to Jameson during the course of the
friendship which also included delicacies from Fortnum and Mason (a
fashionable food store in West London) on occasions when Jameson was unwell, a
financial loan when Jameson needed medical treatment for her back, and a
bracelet (apparently a Christmas present) which Jameson wears 'with all the
pride, joy and pleasure in the world'. This potential for an erotic dimension
to the friendship is further evident in a series of exchanges in which
Brittain and Jameson discussed possible travel plans which never actually
materialized.
Following the personal losses Brittain suffered in the First World War
through the deaths of her brother and fiancé at the Front, the death in
September 1935 of Winifred Holtby, 'the best friend whom life has given me',
brought a new and devastating grief. From this moment Brittain's need of
Jameson's friendship inevitably increased, and, she sought 'to mould [Jameson]
as a substitute friend and confidante'. However, the intimate depths that came
to be acknowledged and 'understood' in Brittain's and Holtby's friendship
found no comfortable expression in the friendship of Brittain and Jameson
which continued to be troubled by its more intense desires.
It was in April 1940 that a violent quarrel exposed the 'failure of
intimacy' in this friendship. The quarrel arose in relation to the publication
of Jameson's new novel, Europe to Let. Reading the book on her return from her
third lecture tour in America, Brittain perceived in the character of Olga
Stehlík (a woman writerlecturer) an unflattering portrait of herself. Brittain
wrote to Jameson, praising the novel in general terms but requesting an
opportunity to discuss 'one or two things in the Prague chapter'. From ensuing
correspondence it is clear that at a meeting that took place two days later
Brittain levelled her accusations at Jameson who was shocked, indignant and
extremely upset. Thoroughly losing her temper with Brittain, Jameson's parting
comment was that if there had been an idea of Brittain in her head at all when
writing the book it was in the character of Hana Carek that she interpreted
it. The intensive exchange of letters that followed went some way to repairing
the friendship on a temporary basis, but the friendship never fully recovered
from the admissions and revelations this correspondence involved.
Tensions in the friendship escalated once again through the remainder of
1940 and 1941 over matters documented in the correspondence, including:
disagreement over Brittain's family affairs (Jameson strongly believed that
Brittain's first duty was to her children and that she should have gone with
them to America rather than evacuating them alone); Jameson's use of a letter
from Brittain in a pamphlet exposing the weaknesses of the pacifist position;
Brittain's removal of Jameson from her will as literary executor and guardian
of the children without telling her. The correspondence ends in November 1941
with a terrible sadness. In a further denial of the more complex levels of
intimacy being negotiated in this friendship Brittain wrote to Jameson, 'I
don't want to lose your friendship, because my experience tells me that it is
the war, and nothing else, which has come between, and if we are both here
when it is over, we shall wonder how ever such a tiny rift looked like such a
wide chasm'. Both women survived the war but never resumed their friendship.
Jameson's collection of novellas, Women Against Men, was admired by
The
Times reviewer, Harold Strauss, who stated, "So completely is she the
master of her art, so instinctively the craftsman, so superlatively the
selective artist, that a restrained evaluation of her work is difficult for a
student of the novel."[9]
Jameson wrote the introduction to the 1952 British edition of
The Diary of Anne Frank[10]
Jameson's novel Last Score was praised by Ben Ray Redman in the
Saturday Review of Literature. Redman described Last Score as
"one of Storm Jameson's best" and stated "it is the complex web of human
relationships that give this novel its breadth and depth".[11]
A biography by Jennifer Birkett, professor of French Studies at
Birmingham University, was published by the
Oxford University Press in March 2009. A second biography, Elizabeth
Maslen's Life in the Writings of Storm Jameson: A Biography, was
published in 2014 by Northwestern University Press.
The rebuilt Charles Morris Halls of the University of Leeds now have a
building named after her, Storm Jameson Court.
My published books:
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Jameson