The Romance of a Shop: With a Biography by Richard Garnett

By Amy Levy and Richard Garnett

First published in 1888, “The Romance of a Shop” is a novel by Amy Levy that tells the story of the Lorimer sisters who, following the death of their father, decide to open a photography business to avoid a life of poverty. An interesting exploration of the vagaries and vicissitudes of life for the “New Women” in the late 1900s that will appeal to those with an interest in history and feminism. Contents include: “In the Beginning”, “Friends in Need”, “Ways and Means”, “Number Twenty B”, “This Working-Day World”, “To the Rescue”, “A New Customer”, “A Distinguished Person”, “Show Sunday”, “Summing Up”, “A Confidence”, etc. Amy Judith Levy (1861–1889) was a British poet, novelist, and essayist. She was notably the first Jewish woman to study at Cambridge university, and she became well-known for her feminist positions as well as her romantic relationships with both male and female political and literature figures. Other works by this author include: “Xantippe and Other Verse” (1881), “Reuben Sachs” (1888), and “Miss Meredith” (1889). Read & Co. Classics is proudly republishing this classic novel now in a new edition complete with an introductory biography of the author by Richard Garnett.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read & Co. Classics
• Release date: Nov 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781528791700

Amy Levy

Amy Levy (1861-1889) was a British poet and novelist. Born in Clapham, London to a Jewish family, she was the second oldest of seven children. Levy developed a passion for literature in her youth, writing a critique of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh and publishing her first poem by the age of fourteen. After excelling at Brighton and Hove High School, Levy became the first Jewish student at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied for several years without completing her degree. Around this time, she befriended such feminist intellectuals as Clementina Black, Ellen Wordsworth Darwin, Eleanor Marx, and Olive Schreiner. As a so-called “New Woman” and lesbian, much of Levy’s literary work explores the concerns of nineteenth century feminism. Levy was a romantic partner of Violet Paget, a British storyteller and scholar of Aestheticism who wrote using the pseudonym Vernon Lee. Her first novel, The Romance of a Shop (1888), is powerful story of sisterhood and perseverance in the face of poverty and marginalization. Levy is also known for such poetry collections as A Minor Poet and Other Verse (1884) and A London Plane-Tree and Other Verse (1889). At the age of 27, after a lifetime of depression exacerbated by relationship trouble and her increasing deafness, Levy committed suicide at her parents’ home in Endsleigh Gardens.

Book preview

1.png

THE

ROMANCE

OF A SHOP

By

AMY LEVY

WITH A BIOGRAPHY

BY RICHARD GARNETT

First published in 1888

Copyright © 2020 Read & Co. Classics

This edition is published by Read & Co. Classics,

an imprint of Read & Co.

This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any

way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library.

Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd.

For more information visit

www.readandcobooks.co.uk

Contents

AMY LEVY

By Richard Garnett

CHAPTER I

IN THE BEGINNING

CHAPTER II

FRIENDS IN NEED

CHAPTER III

WAYS AND MEANS

CHAPTER IV

NUMBER TWENTY B

CHAPTER V

THIS WORKING-DAY WORLD

CHAPTER VI

TO THE RESCUE

CHAPTER VII

A NEW CUSTOMER

CHAPTER VIII

A DISTINGUISHED PERSON

CHAPTER IX

SHOW SUNDAY

CHAPTER X

SUMMING UP

CHAPTER XI

A CONFIDENCE

CHAPTER XII

GERTRUDE IS ANXIOUS

CHAPTER XIII

A ROMANCE

CHAPTER XIV

LUCY

CHAPTER XV

CRESSIDA

CHAPTER XVI

A WEDDING

CHAPTER XVII

A SPECIAL EDITION

CHAPTER XVIII

PHYLLIS

CHAPTER XIX

THE SYCAMORES

CHAPTER XX

IN THE SICK-ROOM

CHAPTER XXI

THE LAST ACT

CHAPTER XXII

HOPE AND A FRIEND

CHAPTER XXIII

A DISMISSAL

CHAPTER XXIV

AT LAST

EPILOGUE

AMY LEVY

By Richard Garnett

AMY LEVY (1861–1889), poetess and novelist, second daughter of Mr. Lewis Levy, by his wife Isabelle [Levin], was born at Clapham on 10 Nov. 1861. Her parents were of the Jewish faith.

She was educated at Brighton, and afterwards at Newnham College, Cambridge. She early showed decided talent, especially for poetry, pieces afterwards thought worthy of preservation having been written in her thirteenth year.

In 1881 a small pamphlet of verse from her pen, ‘Xantippe and other poems,’ was printed at Cambridge. Most of the contents were subsequently incorporated with her second publication, A Minor Poet and Other Verse, (1884). ‘Xantippe’ is in many respects her most powerful production, exhibiting a passionate rhetoric and a keen, piercing dialectic, exceedingly remarkable in so young a writer. It is a defence of Socrates's maligned wife, from the woman's point of view, full of tragic pathos, and only short of complete success from its frequent reproduction of the manner of both the Brownings. The same may be said of ‘A Minor Poet,’ a poem now more interesting than when it was written, from its evident prefigurement of the melancholy fate of the authoress herself. The most important pieces in the volume are in blank verse, too colloquial to be finely modulated, but always terse and nervous. A London Plane Tree and other Poems, (1889), is, on the other hand, chiefly lyrical. Most of the pieces are individually beautiful; as a collection they weary with their monotony of sadness. The authoress responded more readily to painful than to pleasurable emotions, and this incapacity for pleasure was a more serious trouble than her sensitiveness to pain: it deprived her of the encouragement she might have received from the success which, after a fortunate essay with a minor work of fiction, The Romance of a Shop, attended her remarkable novel, Reuben Sachs, (1889). This is a most powerful work, alike in the condensed tragedy of the main action, the striking portraiture of the principal characters, and the keen satire of the less refined aspects of Jewish society. It brought upon the authoress much unpleasant criticism, which, however, was far from affecting her spirits to the extent alleged.

In the summer of 1889 she published a pretty, and for once cheerful story, Miss Meredith, but within a week after correcting her latest volume of poems for the press, she died by her own hand in her parents' house, 7 Endsleigh Gardens, London, 10 Sept. 1889. No cause can or need be assigned for this lamentable event except constitutional melancholy, intensified by painful losses in her own family, increasing deafness, and probably the apprehension of insanity, combined with a total inability to derive pleasure or consolation from the extraneous circumstances which would have brightened the lives of most others. She was indeed frequently gay and animated, but her cheerfulness was but a passing mood that merely gilded her habitual melancholy, without diminishing it by a particle, while sadness grew upon her steadily, in spite of flattering success and the sympathy of affectionate friends.

Her writings offer few traces of the usual immaturity of precocious talent; they are carefully constructed and highly finished, and the sudden advance made in Reuben Sachs indicates a great reserve of undeveloped power. She was the anonymous translator of Pérés's clever brochure, Comme quoi Napoléon n'a jamais existé.

A Biography from

Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 33

THE ROMANCE OF A SHOP

CHAPTER I

IN THE BEGINNING

Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel and lower the proud;

Turn thy wild wheel through sunshine, storm, and cloud;

Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate.

—

Tennyson

There stood on Campden Hill a large, dun-coloured house, enclosed by a walled-in garden of several acres in extent. It belonged to no particular order of architecture, and was more suggestive of comfort than of splendour, with its great windows, and rambling, nondescript proportions. On one side, built out from the house itself, was a big glass structure, originally designed for a conservatory. On the April morning of which I write, the whole place wore a dejected and dismantled appearance; while in the windows and on the outer wall of the garden were fixed black and white posters, announcing a sale of effects to take place on that day week.

The air of desolation which hung about the house had communicated itself in some vague manner to the garden, where the trees were bright with blossom, or misty with the tender green of the young leaves. Perhaps the effect of sadness was produced, or at least heightened, by the pathetic figure that paced slowly up and down the gravel path immediately before the house; the figure of a young woman, slight, not tall, bare-headed, and clothed in deep mourning.

She paused at last in her walk, and stood a moment in a listening attitude, her face uplifted to the sky.

Gertrude Lorimer was not a beautiful woman, and such good looks as she possessed varied from day to day, almost from hour to hour; but a certain air of character and distinction clung to her through all her varying moods, and redeemed her from a possible charge of plainness.

She had an arching, unfashionable forehead, like those of Lionardo da Vinci's women, short-sighted eyes, and an expressive month and chin. As she stood in the full light of the spring sunshine, her face pale and worn with recent sorrow, she looked, perhaps, older than her twenty-three years.

Pushing back from her forehead the hair, which, though not cut into a fringe, had a tendency to stray about her face, and passing her hand across her eyes, with a movement expressive of mingled anxiety and resolve, she walked quickly to the door of the conservatory, opened it, and went inside.

The interior of the great glass structure would have presented a surprise to the stranger expectant of palms and orchids. It was fitted up as a photographer's studio.

Several cameras, each of a different size, stood about the room. In one corner was a great screen of white-painted canvas; there were blinds to the roof adapted for admitting or excluding the light; and paste-pots, bottles, printing-frames, photographs in various stages of finish—a nondescript heap of professional litter—were scattered about the place from end to end.

Standing among these properties was a young girl of about twenty years of age; fair, slight, upright as a dart, with a glance at once alert and serene.

The two young creatures in their black dresses advanced to each other, then stood a moment, clinging to one another in silence.

It was the first time that either had been in the studio since the day when their unforeseen calamity had overtaken them; a calamity which seemed to them so mysterious, so unnatural, so past all belief, and yet which was common-place enough—a sudden loss of fortune, immediately followed by the sudden death of the father, crushed by the cruel blow which had fallen on him.

Lucy, said the elder girl at last, is it only a fortnight ago?

I don't know, answered Lucy, looking round the room, whose familiar details stared at her with a hideous unfamiliarity; I don't know if it is a hundred years or yesterday since I put that portrait of Phyllis in the printing-frame! Have you told Phyllis?

No, but I wish to do so at once; and Fanny. But here they come.

Two other black-gowned figures entered by the door which led from the house, and helped to form a sad little group in the middle of the room.

Frances Lorimer, the eldest of them all, and half-sister to the other three, was a stout, fair woman of thirty, presenting somewhat the appearance of a large and superannuated baby. She had a big face, with small, meaningless features, and faint, surprised-looking eyebrows. Her complexion had once been charmingly pink and white, but the tints had hardened, and a coarse red colour clung to the wide cheeks. At the present moment, her little, light eyes red with weeping, her eyebrows arched higher than ever, she looked the picture of impotent distress. She had come in, hand in hand with Phyllis, the youngest, tallest, and prettiest of the sisters; a slender, delicate-looking creature of seventeen, who had outgrown her strength; the spoiled child of the family by virtue of her youth, her weakness, and her personal charms.

Gertrude was the first to speak.

Now that we are all together, she said, it is a good opportunity for talking over our plans. There are a great many things to be considered, as you know. Phyllis, you had better not stand.

Phyllis cast her long, supple frame into the lounge which was regarded as her special property, and Fanny sat down on a chair, wiping her eyes with her black-bordered pocket-handkerchief. Gertrude put her hands behind her and leaned her head against the wall.

Phyllis's wide, grey eyes, with their half-wistful, half-humorous expression, glanced slowly from one to the other.

Now that we are all grouped, she said, there is nothing left but for Lucy to focus us.

It was a very small joke indeed, but they all laughed, even Fanny. No one had laughed for a fortnight, and at this reassertion of youth and health their spirits rose with unexpected rapidity.

Now, Gertrude, unfold your plans, said Lucy, in her clear tones and with her air of calm resolve.

Gertrude played nervously with a copy of the British Journal of Photography which she held, and began to speak with hesitation, almost with apology, as one who deprecates any undue assumption of authority.

You know that Mr. Grimshaw, our father's lawyer, was here last night, she said; and that he and I had a long talk together about business. (He was sorry you were too ill to come down, Fanny.) He told me all about our affairs. We are quite, quite poor. When everything is settled, when the furniture is sold, he thinks there will be about £500 among us, perhaps more, perhaps less.

Fanny's thin, feminine tones broke in on her sister's words—

There is my £50 a-year that my mama left me; I am sure you are all welcome to that.

Yes, dear, yes, said Lucy, patting her shoulder; while Gertrude bit her lip and went on—

We cannot live for long on £500, as you must know. We must work. People have been very kind. Uncle Sebastian has telegraphed for two of us to go out to India; Mrs. Devonshire offers another two of us a home for as long as we like. But I think we would all rather not accept these kind offers?

Of course not! cried Lucy and Phyllis in chorus, while Fanny maintained a meek, consenting silence.

The question remains, continued the speaker; what can we do? There is teaching, of course. We might find places as governesses; but we should be at a great disadvantage without certificates or training of any sort. And we should be separated.

Oh, Gertrude, cried Fanny, you might write! You write so beautifully! I am sure you could make your fortune at it.

Gertrude's face flushed, but she controlled all other signs of the irritation which poor hapless Fan was so wont to excite in her.

I have thought about that, Fanny, she said; but I cannot afford to wait and hammer away at the publishers' doors with a crowd of people more experienced and better trained than myself. No, I have another plan to propose to you all. There is one thing, at least, that we can all do.

We can all make photographs, except Fan, said Phyllis, in a doubtful voice.

Exactly! cried Gertrude, growing excited, and walking across to the middle of the room; we can make photographs! We have had this studio, with every proper arrangement for light and other things, so that we are not mere amateurs. Why not turn to account the only thing we can do, and start as professional photographers? We should all keep together. It would be a risk, but if we failed we should be very little worse off than before. I know what Lucy thinks of it, already. What have you others to say to it?

Oh, Gertrude, need it come to that—to open a shop? cried Fanny, aghast.

Fanny, you are behind the age, said Lucy, hastily. Don't you know that it is quite distinguished to keep a shop? That poets sell wall-papers, and first-class honour men sell lamps? That Girton students make bonnets, and are thought none the worse of for doing so?

"I think it a perfectly splendid idea, cried Phyllis, sitting up; we shall be like that good young man in Le Nabab."

Indeed, I hope we shall not be like André, said Gertrude, sitting down by Phyllis on the couch and putting her arm round her, especially as none of us are likely to write successful tragedies by way of compensation.

You two people are getting frivolous, remarked Lucy, severely, and there are so many things to consider.

First of all, answered Gertrude, I want to convince Fanny. Think of all the dull little ways by which women, ladies, are generally reduced to earning their living! But a business—that is so different. It is progressive; a creature capable of growth; the very qualities in which women's work is dreadfully lacking.

We have thought out a good many of the details, went on Lucy, who was possessed of less imagination than her sister, but had a clearer perception of what arguments would best appeal to Fanny's understanding. "It would not absorb all our capital, we have so many properties already. We thought of buying some nice little business, such as are advertised every week in The British Journal. But of course we should do nothing rashly, nor without consulting Mr. Grimshaw."