Idylls of Womanhood: 'His kiss of betrothal yet burned on my tremulous lips''

By Catherine Amy Dawson Scott

Catherine Amy Dawson Scott was born in Dulwich, London on an unknown date in August 1865.

Her mother died when she was 11 and the following year her father remarried, and the family found itself in nearby Camberwell. Catherine later graduated from the Anglo German College.

At 18, she began work as a secretary. She had literary ambitions and soon set to work writing ‘Charades For Home Acting’. An epic 210 page poem ‘Sappho’, was published the following year and then ‘Idylls of Womanhood’ in 1892.

At 33 she married a medical doctor, Horatio Francis Ninian Scott, with whom she would have 3 children.

It was only in the early 1900’s that she got back to a literary career. This time it was novels with ‘The Story of Anna Beames’ (1906) and then 8 books in 8 years until the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

In 1910, the Scott family moved back closer to London, enabling her to join London's literary circle.

When World War I broke out, and her husband sent to France, Catherine helped create the Women's Defence Relief Corps. The corps had two divisions: civil, to replace men with women in factories and other places of employment and a ‘semi-military/good citizen’ section, for recruitment of women to the armed forces, to be trained in drilling, marching and the use of arms so they could protect themselves and their families on the home front in case of invasion.

When she and her husband attempted to settle down again after the war they found it impossible to resume their relationship. After 20 years of marriage, they divorced. Dr Scott committed suicide in 1922.

In the spring of 1917, Catherine started the To-Morrow Club to find the ‘writers of tomorrow’ and connect them with established writers to exchange ideas, advice, and comments. She also invited literary agents and editors to attend Club dinners and to encourage the young writers to meet them. At the same time Catherine returned to writing and continued to publish a book each year.

She remains best known for helping to found the International PEN Club in 1921, a successor to the To-Morrow Club, and to foster a community of writers to defend the role of literature in an ever-changing society. John Galsworthy was its first President. PEN was a shortened acronym for Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists.

Catherine also adapted her 1921 novel ‘The Haunting’ into the libretto for the opera ‘Gale’ by Ethel Leginska. It premiered in Chicago on 23td November 1935.

In 1926 Catherine was writing that certain unusual faculties had begun to develop. Spiritualism had been very popular amongst the literary set for several decades and Catherine now claimed she had psychic powers to communicate with the dead. It was a subject she immersed herself in.

In 1929, Catherine founded The Survival League, a spiritualist organization which sought to unite all religions to study psychical research. She went on to serve as the Organising Secretary for the successor to The Survival League, the International Institute for Psychical Research.

Catherine Amy Dawson Scott died on 4th November 1934. She was 69.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Release date: Aug 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781839679919

Book preview

Idylls of Womanhood by Catherine Amy Dawson Scott

Catherine Amy Dawson Scott was born in Dulwich, London on an unknown date in August 1865.

Her mother died when she was 11 and the following year her father remarried, and the family found itself in nearby Camberwell.  Catherine later graduated from the Anglo German College.

At 18, she began work as a secretary.  She had literary ambitions and soon set to work writing ‘Charades For Home Acting’. An epic 210 page poem ‘Sappho’, was published the following year and then ‘Idylls of Womanhood’ in 1892.

At 33 she married a medical doctor, Horatio Francis Ninian Scott, with whom she would have 3 children.

It was only in the early 1900’s that she got back to a literary career.  This time it was novels with ‘The Story of Anna Beames’ (1906) and then 8 books in 8 years until the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

In 1910, the Scott family moved back closer to London, enabling her to join London's literary circle.

When World War I broke out, and her husband sent to France, Catherine helped create the Women's Defence Relief Corps. The corps had two divisions: civil, to replace men with women in factories and other places of employment and a ‘semi-military/good citizen’ section, for recruitment of women to the armed forces, to be trained in drilling, marching and the use of arms so they could protect themselves and their families on the home front in case of invasion.

When she and her husband attempted to settle down again after the war they found it impossible to resume their relationship.  After 20 years of marriage, they divorced.  Dr Scott committed suicide in 1922.

In the spring of 1917, Catherine started the To-Morrow Club to find the ‘writers of tomorrow’ and connect them with established writers to exchange ideas, advice, and comments.  She also invited literary agents and editors to attend Club dinners and to encourage the young writers to meet them.  At the same time Catherine returned to writing and continued to publish a book each year.

She remains best known for helping to found the International PEN Club in 1921, a successor to the To-Morrow Club, and to foster a community of writers to defend the role of literature in an ever-changing society.  John Galsworthy was its first President.  PEN was a shortened acronym for Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists.

Catherine also adapted her 1921 novel ‘The Haunting’ into the libretto for the opera ‘Gale’ by Ethel Leginska. It premiered in Chicago on 23td November 1935.

In 1926 Catherine was writing that certain unusual faculties had begun to develop. Spiritualism had been very popular amongst the literary set for several decades and Catherine now claimed she had psychic powers to communicate with the dead.  It was a subject she immersed herself in.

In 1929, Catherine founded The Survival League, a spiritualist organization which sought to unite all religions to study psychical research.  She went on to serve as the Organising Secretary for the successor to The Survival League, the International Institute for Psychical Research.

Catherine Amy Dawson Scott died on 4th November 1934.  She was 69.

Index of Contents

A WOMAN'S ETHICS 

A WOMAN'S LOVE 

RUKHMABAI 

WOMAN'S WIT

A WOMAN'S VENGEANCE

A WOMAN'S FAITH 

A WOMAN'S SIN 

CATHERINE AMY DAWSON SCOTT – A CONCISE BIBLIOGRAPHY

A WOMAN'S ETHICS

Out of the deeps of the valley, the shadowy deeps grey-green,

Where the glimmer of twilight water, steals up thro' ascending glooms,

And the pines are a whispering darkness, clear-sketched in the after- glow

Of a sun-god slain in his berserk, and slain with his face to the foe,—

Out of the deeps we toiled, and found the leaves on the lawn

Tossed in a windy swirl, a dance of russet and brown,

Tossed and scattered and torn, as thou and I in the past,

The past that is folded in dark, as our dead in the silence of God.

And I felt with the wind on my brow, and the stretch of the golden skies

A-deepening down the hills, till their radiance gathered and passed

And only the eyelid of wisdom, might hold the sun-beauty foreseen

And evolved thro' the numberless ages of mist, and chaos, and dark—

I felt that the pain must have speech, that the life of my innermost life,

The life that was hushed in despair, as a spring in the caves of the sea,

Must rise, heart-ruddied and rise, till it broke thro' the billows of sleep,

Till it ran up the weed wet beaches, and shallowed away and was lost,

A scattering echo of grief, that is stilled by the dirge of the deep.

Friend—friend of my noon—of the dawning and strife of my day

My friend to hearken and heed, tho' the lapsing cloud-heavy years

Have burdened thee sore with a sorrow, an infinite sorrow—God wots—

Not grief like my absolute grief, a pool that is stagnant and still;

Not death like that absolute death, that is held in the dying of love,

But parting—the parting of souls—the parting of souls for an hour,

Or less—for the space of a cry, of a wind-echoed wandering wail.

Not you to forget how we dreamed, when the larch new-tasselled with green

Swayed over our heads in the woodland, and brown on the bloom-white spray

Swelled the throats of the songsters warbling of summer-rich glooms and gold.

We dreamed, and our dream was a hero—a Galahad virgin-pure

With a face like the freshness of morning and thoughts unsoiled as the light,

When it leaps thro' the heavens aflush, gold-spearing the recreant shades.

And we vowed standing deep in the mosses, we vowed by the bonds of our love,

By our sisters lost in the cities, by womanhood's weakness and strength,

That the men we would wed should be pure, should be pure of all sensual sin

As the Christ and our maiden souls, we vowed it and turned again,

Threading the tangle of grasses, and wandering deep in the wood.

We dreamed when the rose was in bud, and before the full flush of the flower

Had lighted the gardens, and given its golden-sweet heart to the sun,

One came from the city—your hero, a scholarly man and grave,

Wise with the wisdom of science, a thinker, a worker and more—

Yet who knew not of love, was content to search out beginnings of truth;

A man half-asleep—but you spoke, and he roused as the warrior afar,

Who hears the faint note of the clarion, the echo of thundering feet,

All the turmoil and hurry of conflict, and stumbles full-armed to his feet;

A man with the faults of his manhood, but filled with an earnest desire

To learn, as a child of its mother, to climb, groping upwards and on,

Till he paused on the levels of love, the levels where God meets the soul

And sanctifies, purifies, burns, till the dross has been parted, and leaves

The pure metal, the gold, the love-gold, the element matchless and rare,

So rare in our pitiful world, that we blend it and tinker and spread,

Just its gleam on the poor wooden frame of the daub that we show as a life.

Thus were dreams over-filled ere the summer had deepened the green of the beech;

You wedded, and from the white roadway the thunder of galloping hoofs

Smote chill on my heart tho—the lilies yet lifted their pride