The Woman Who Didn't
Victoria Cross [Annie Sophie Cory]
London: Lane, 1909
159 pages
The narrator is a British soldier who is returning home on leave having served six years in India. He reclines in the aft of a large boat one dark Aden evening, smoking and listening with bemusement to his fellow countrymen squabble with local boatmen as to when payment should be made for services.
"I should pay now; if you mean to at all," says someone from the stern. The voice is that of a woman. After further squabbling, she adds: "Well, I am
going to pay mine, and I strongly advise you to,
or we may lose our ship. What can it matter
to you whether you pay now or afterwards."
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| Untitled engraving of Aden in 1885 credited to T. Taylor. |
Slowly, the other passengers open their wallets. The boatmen bring them to the awaiting vessel and its long ladder. Our narrator stays back because he's curious about the woman who stood so resolute.
Eventually, she appears out of the darkness. Petite, fetching, and young, her name is Eurydice:
"It’s an awfully pretty name!"
"Not with the surname,’ she answered, laughing. "Eurydice Williamson! Isn't it a frightful combination!"
"I don’t think so," I maintained unblushingly,
though the seven syllables in conjunction
positively set my teeth on edge.
Together, they enjoy a stroll around the deck, made all the more pleasant through conversation. All in all, the beginning of what? A friendship? A romance? Both seem possible until our soldier narrator leans in for a kiss outside her cabin door. Eurydice avoids his lips, hitting the back of her head in the process. She strikes his chest, then shuts him outside.
Evelyn – the soldier's name is Evelyn – makes his very best apology the following day and is taken aback by Eurydice's forgiveness. The remaining days of the voyage toward England's green and pleasant shores are spent in conversation. The soldier is smitten. On the final day, just as he begins to lay bare his soul, Evelyn is met with an unwelcome discovery: Eurydice is a married woman!"
In grand Victorian tradition, the reader is met with a misunderstanding. Eurydice had lost her wedding ring during an unfortunate handwashing incident. Did Evelyn not read the ship's passenger list! Eurydice shares that she's wed to a man who is unfaithful. Her husband's dalliances began the month after their marriage, and yet she maintains her vows.
The news strikes hard. Despite his many faults, Evelyn has drawn a line at pursuing married women. He and faithful Eurydice – again, did he not read the passenger list? – choose to never see one another again.
Being somewhat familiar with Victorian literature, I was fairly certain where this would land. Evelyn would keep his distance until Eurydice's degenerate husband's lifestyle did him in. It wouldn't be long.
I was wrong.
The Woman Who Didn't is a simple, commonplace story with an unconventional ending that I promise not to spoil.
From the beginning, The Woman Who Didn't (1895) has been paired with our own Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did (also 1895). It is most certainly not an offspring; title aside, I would argue that it is of no relation at all.
Much has been made about the two these past few decades. In The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999), Lorna Sage describes The Woman Who Didn't as "a deliberate response to The Woman Who Did." Kathryn G. Lamontagne goes further in Reconsidering Catholic Lay Womanhood (New York: Routledge, 2024): "Victoria Cross's The Woman Who Didn't (1895) was written in angered response [emphasis mine] to Allen's work which scandalized contemporary society."
Was it?
Contemporary accounts suggest otherwise. In the mid-July 1895, two months before The Woman Who Didn't was published, Arthur Waugh submitted this to The Critic:
I suggest that the title The Woman Who Didn't has everything to do with publisher John Lane seizing an opportunity to cash in even further on The Woman Who Did, his firm's new succès de scandale.
The Woman Who Did is the story of Herminia Barton, a young, educated clergyman's daughter who falls in love with successful lawyer Allan Merrick. Despite the depth of this love, Herminia rejects his proposal because she does not believe in marriage. She convinces her lover that they should simply live together, outside the "unholy sacrifices" matrimony has sustained. But then Allan dies, leaving behind a pregnant Herminia.
What Herminia "did" – what she dared do – was raise the child, a daughter, at a time when she would have been expected to give it up for adoption. You see, the title is not nearly as titillating as it would seem.
The Woman Who Didn't concerns a woman who very much believes in marriage, so much so that she is willing to endure an unfaithful husband. And so, Eurydice and Evelyn face separate futures, each made more unhappy for having ever met.
In what way is that an "angered response" to The Woman Who Did? How is it a response at all?
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Annie Sophie Cory [Victoria Cross]
1868 - 1952
RIP |
The claim is made all the more absurd when one considers the author's other works. In January of the same year, 'Theodora: A Fragment,' her first published work of fiction, was published in The Yellow Book.
As the title suggests, it was written as part of a longer work. Though complete, it wouldn't be published until 1903 under the title Six Chapters of a Man's Life. It revolves around an unmarried couple, Cecil and Theodora. Well matched, they share interests in art, literature, spiritualism and sex. It is more than hinted that Cecil has had homosexual encounters in the past. His attraction to Theodora has much to do with her "hermaphroditism of looks."
Annie Sophie Cory's twenty-six novels and short story collections are replete with positive depictions of extramarital sex, so what exactly would have provoked a response, angry or otherwise, to Allen's novel?
If anything Cory, who never married, is more likely to have agreed with Herminia Barton:
"I know what marriage is, from what vile slavery it has sprung; on what unseen horrors for my sister women it is reared and buttressed; by what unholy sacrifices it is sustained, and made possible. I know it has a history. I know its past, I know its present, and I can't embrace it; I can't be untrue to my most sacred beliefs."
The Woman Who Didn't ends just that way with Eurydice caring for her absent, philandering husband's mother, sacrificing the possibility of a better life with a man she loves, but found too late.
That said, I'm not convinced Evelyn is such a catch.
Trivia: Aboard ship, Evelyn hears a young woman singing "She told me her age was five-and-twenty!" It comes from 'At Trinity Church I Met My Doom':
Fun fact: The author's third novel, A Girl of the Klondike (1899), is set in and around Dawson at the time of the Gold Rush.
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| New York: Macauley, 1925 |
Object and Access: First published in the autumn of 1895 by John Lane. My 1909 edition, one the earliest paperbacks in my collection, was purchased in 2024 from a German bookseller. Price: €10.35. When published it cost one shilling.
The front cover illustration depicts a scene that does not feature in the novel. It is almost certainly inspired by Evelyn's unwelcome attempt at a kiss the night he met Eurydice. This of course, should have taken place outside her cabin, not in it.
The back cover features adverts for three other John Lane books:
As I write, I see nothing but print on demand dreck being offered online.
I don't see that any Canadian library has a copy.
