It’s a distant task (she does it at home, without having measured him) but also an intimate one, reflecting her contradictory feelings. The Count asks Daphne to sew him some shirts, on condition she uses the thimble he gave her when she was 17, bearing his family’s heraldic scarab-like ladybird. “ I am a prisoner in other people’s clothes.” Image: Hand sewing a shirt cuff ( Source.) Fire: beautiful, bewitching, warming… dangerous.
Whereas looking at her mother “ filled the heart with ashes”, the dark little Count (those adjectives and variants of them are repeated like a mantra) fills her blood with fire. The stage is slowly set for a Lawrencian triangle of natural passion and unsubtle symbolism (“ the white plucked lily of your body” with its secret, buried root) and a diversion into philosophical debate.ĭaphne’s “ adorable” husband, Basil, is a POW in Turkey, and the Count has an animal magnetism, despite his being physically unappealling. She encourages her beautiful, but sickly 25-year old daughter with “ wild energy” to visit him, thus making herself irrelevant to the rest of the story (she’s briefly mentioned near the end) - not that she was necessary in the first place! She visits German POW officers in a London hospital, and recognises an old family friend, Count Dionys. The first few pages are devoted to Lady Beveridge, “ this little, worn bird of an out-of-date righteousness and aesthetic”. This novella is set as The Great War is ending. She encourages her beautiful, but sickly 25-year old daughter with The floral, fiery, animal, earthy, easy-to-mock Lawrence that I love (akin to The Rainbow see my review HERE, and a rainbow is mentioned, as is a gamekeeper). The floral, fiery, animal, earthy, easy-to-mock Lawrence that I love (akin to The Rainbow see my review HERE, and a rainbow is mentioned, as is a gamekeeper).
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