Hester Lilly and Other Stories – Elizabeth Taylor (1954)

In the title story of this collection which is more in length like that of a novella, a middle aged wife of a boarding school headmaster dreads the arrival of Hester, her husband’s cousin. Hester and Robert having been writing to one another for some time and Muriel feels excluded. Initially she is relieved when Hester arrives, not seeing in her the threat she had dreaded.

“Hester, in clothes which astonished by their improvisation – the wedding of out-grown school uniform with the adult, gloomy wardrobe of her dead mother – looked jaunty, defiant and absurb. Every garment was grown out of or not grown into.”

However, having underestimated Hester’s appeal Muriel soon reverts to her original jealousy. Robert and Hester get along well together, while Muriel and her husband have a strained relationship, which she only serves to worsen when she makes a fool of herself at a dance. Muriel makes Hester nervous, slowly driving her almost to collapse, Muriel wants rid of Hester and Hester feels it keenly and it makes her miserable.
Muriel is wonderfully terrible creation, as is the peculiar character from the village that Hester meets on her wanderings, the lonely Miss Despenser who lives in a filthy house with her memories of her dead sister.
This story is a wonderful start to a lovely collection. Anyone regularly reading my blog knows how much I love Elizabeth Taylor’s writing, and this collection demonstrates beautifully why I do. In ‘First Death of her Life’ a daughter sits by her dead mother awaiting the arrival of her father. I’m sure that this story is deeply autobiographical, as the death of Elizabeth Taylor’s own mother had a huge effect on her. There are too many stories in this collection to talk about each one individually but among my favourites were: Shadows of the world, Swan Moving and A Red letter Day. In Swan Moving, a swan comes to the pond of a small rather down at heel village. Its presence seems to instigate something of a change in attitude of the villagers to their environment- although they do go rather too far. However when the pool begins to dry up, the villagers decide to move their swan to another deeper pool a mile away.

“The swan sat on the front seat beside the Vicar and the manservant sat behind. When they drove away, the crowd waved and cheered as if seeing off bride and bridegroom. The swan surveyed them with indifference. His feet were splayed out in an ungainly way on a piece of sacking and, as the car moved forward, he crooked his neck and began to cleanse from his plumage the trace of human hands.”

In ‘Red Letter Day’ a mother and son go out for the afternoon, the mother collecting her son from boarding school, a day so looked forward to, is of course a small disappointment. Elizabeth Taylor is a master at showing us the small everyday events that loom large in people’s lives, the way people act, speak and think, ring so beautifully, and often poignantly true. Shadows of the World is just so well written, a subtle domestic story, a woman shares a drink with a male friend, awaits her husband’s arrival home, her daughter is put to bed, her son watches over his cat as she gives birth to four kittens. He imagines the kittens later running and playing around the house.
There is though, plenty of Elizabeth Taylor’s wit in evidence. She was such a wonderfully sharp observer of people, the way they speak particularly; she must have had just as sharp an ear for speech, as she had for the way people act. In ‘Nods & Becks and Wreathѐd Smiles’ a group of women discuss childbirth while having tea in a café.

“Well it was certainly the worst experience I ever had,” Mrs Howard said emphatically. ‘I hope never to go through –‘
‘I thought neuralgia was worse,’ Mrs Graham forgot herself enough to say.
At first, they were too surprised to speak. After all, men could have neuralgia. Then Mrs Miller gave her own special little laugh. It was light as thistledown. It meant that Mrs Graham only said that to be different, probably because she was vegetarian.”

I do so adore Elizabeth Taylor’s writing, I think her short stories are masterly, and I am very fussy about short stories, I used to think I didn’t much care for them. These were a joy, and I am sure they are stories that I will happily return to again and again.