Mary Cholmondeley - A Short Story Collection

By Mary Cholmondeley

Mary Cholmondeley was born in Hodnet near Market Drayton in Shropshire on June 8th 1859, the

third of eight children. Her father was appointed rector in 1874 in succession to his father. Much of

the first 30 years of her life was taken up with helping her sickly mother run the household and her

father with parish work, and she herself suffered with asthma.

Mary began writing with in her teens. She wrote in her journal in 1877, "What a pleasure and

interest it would be to me in life to write books. I must strike out a line of some kind, and if I do not

marry (for at best that is hardly likely, as I possess neither beauty nor charms) I should want some

definite occupation, besides the home duties."

Mary began by publishing some stories in The Graphic and her first novel ‘The Danvers Jewels’ a

detective story followed in 1887. It was followed by Sir Charles Danvers (1889), Diana Tempest

(1893).

After her father retired in 1896, she moved with him and her sister Diana to Condover Hall before

selling it to move to Albert Gate Mansions in Knightsbridge, London.

Mary wrote the best seller ‘Red Pottage’ in 1899. It satirised religious hypocrisy and the conceit of

country life. It was denounced as immoral. It also explored female sexuality.

During the war she did clerical work in the Carlton House Terrace Hospital. The sisters moved in

1919 to 4 Argyll Road, Kensington, where Mary died, unmarried, on 15th July 1925.

Index of Contents

The Stars in Their Courses,

Let Loose,

The Understudy,

The Dark Cottage,

Her Murderer

• Language: English
• Publisher: Miniature Masterpieces
• Release date: Jun 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781803549651

Mary Cholmondeley

Mary Cholmondeley (1859-1925) was an English novelist. Born in Shropshire, Cholmondeley was raised in a devoutly religious family. When she wasn’t helping her mother at home or her father in his work as a Reverend, she devoted herself to writing stories. Her first novel, The Danvers Jewels (1887), initially appeared in serial form in Temple Bar, earning Cholmondeley a reputation as a popular British storyteller. Red Pottage (1899), considered her masterpiece, was a bestselling novel in England and the United States and has been recognized as a pioneering work of satire that considers such themes as religious hypocrisy and female sexuality.

Book preview

Mary Cholmondeley - A Short Story Collection

An Introduction

Mary Cholmondeley was born in Hodnet near Market Drayton in Shropshire on June 8th 1859, the

third of eight children. Her father was appointed rector in 1874 in succession to his father. Much of

the first 30 years of her life was taken up with helping her sickly mother run the household and her

father with parish work, and she herself suffered with asthma.

Mary began writing with in her teens. She wrote in her journal in 1877, "What a pleasure and

interest it would be to me in life to write books. I must strike out a line of some kind, and if I do not

marry (for at best that is hardly likely, as I possess neither beauty nor charms) I should want some

definite occupation, besides the home duties."

Mary began by publishing some stories in The Graphic and her first novel ‘The Danvers Jewels’ a

detective story followed in 1887. It was followed by Sir Charles Danvers (1889), Diana Tempest

(1893).

After her father retired in 1896, she moved with him and her sister Diana to Condover Hall before

selling it to move to Albert Gate Mansions in Knightsbridge, London.

Mary wrote the best seller ‘Red Pottage’ in 1899. It satirised religious hypocrisy and the conceit of

country life. It was denounced as immoral. It also explored female sexuality.

During the war she did clerical work in the Carlton House Terrace Hospital. The sisters moved in

1919 to 4 Argyll Road, Kensington, where Mary died, unmarried, on 15th July 1925.

Index of Contents

The Stars in Their Courses

Let Loose

The Understudy

The Dark Cottage

Her Murderer

The Stars in Their Courses

I was always somewhat amazed when I came to think of it, but I hardly ever did think of it, that my cousin, Jimmy Cross, should have married Gertrude Bingham. There seemed no reason for such a desperate step on his part. But if one is going to be taken aback by the alliances of one’s friends and relations one would journey through life in a continual state of astonishment, and the marriage service especially exhorts the married not to be afraid with any amazement, which shows that that is the natural emotion evoked by contemplation of the holy estate, and that it is our duty not to give way to it.

I said there seemed no reason for the lethargic Jimmy to take this step, especially as he had been married before, and had enjoyed a serene widowhood for some years. But what I forgot was that he never did take any step at all in either marriage. He just sat still.

The first time his Mother arranged everything, and the result, if dull, was not actually unpleasant.

The second time Gertrude Bingham took all the necessary steps with precision and determination. Now and then it certainly seemed as if he would take alarm and run away, but he did not. He remained seated.

It is as impossible for a man rooted in inertia to achieve a marriage which implies an effort, as it is for him to evade a marriage, the avoidance of which requires an effort. He remains recumbent both when he ought to pursue and when he ought to fly. He is the prey of energetic kidnappers.

Gertrude was a great astrologer and conversed in astrological terms, which I repeat, but which I don’t pretend to understand. She told me (after the wedding) that when she discovered that Jimmy’s moon in the house of marriage was semi-sextile to her Venus she had known from the first that their union was inevitable. I think Jimmy felt it so too, and that it was no use struggling. To put it mildly, she placed no obstacles in the way of this inevitable union, and it took place amid a general chorus of rather sarcastic approval from both families.

What a mother Gertrude would make to Joan, Jimmy’s rather spoilt girl of twelve, what a wife to Jimmy himself, what an excellent influence in the parish, what an energetic addition to our sleepy neighbourhood. We were told we were going to be stirred up. I never met the second Mrs. Cross till Jimmy brought her down as a bride to call on me in my cottage near his park gates. She at once inspired me with all the terror which very well-dressed people with exactly the right hair and earrings always arouse in me. She was good-looking, upright, had perfect health and teeth and circulation, did breathing exercises, had always just finished the book of the moment, and was ready with an opinion on it, not a considered opinion—but an opinion. During her first call I discovered that she had, for many years, held strong views about the necessity of school life for only children, and was already on the look-out for a seminary for Joan.

It is in her horoscope, she said to me, as we walked in my orchard garden, too much engrossed with Joan’s future to notice my wonderful yellow lupins. Her Mercury and ruling planet are in Aquarius, and that means the companionship of her own age. I shall not delay a day in finding the best school that England can produce.

I need hardly say that such an establishment protruded itself on to Mrs. Cross’s notice, with the greatest celerity, and thither the long-legged nail-biting, pimply, round-shouldered Joan repaired, and became a reformed character, with a clear complexion and a back almost as flat as her step-mother’s.

Wonderful woman, Jimmy used to say somewhat ruefully to me, sitting on the low stone wall which divides my little velvet lawn from my bit of woodland. Gertrude has been the making of Joan.

And of you, too, my dear Jimmy, I remarked.

He sighed.

It was perfectly true. She had been the making of him, just as she had been the making of the Manor garden, of the boot and shoe club, the boys’ carving class, the Confirmation candidates’ reading class, the mothers’ working parties, the coal club, the Church members’ lending library. The only misgiving that remained in one’s mind after she had been the making of all these things was that it seemed a pity that they were all so obviously machine-made, turned out to pattern.

Personally, I should have preferred that they should have been treated less conventionally, or let alone. My own course and Jimmy’s would, of course, have been to have left them alone. We left everything alone. But Gertrude always had a ready-made scheme for everything and everybody. She even had a scheme of salvation into which the Deity was believed to be compressed. I did not mind much the industrious efforts she expended on Jimmy, who was now an inattentive Magistrate and member of the County Council, and wobbly chairman of his own Parish Council, writing an entirely illegible hand, which perhaps did not matter much as he never answered letters. But I felt acutely distressed when she reconstructed the rambling old Manor garden entirely. All its former pleasant characteristics were wrenched out of it. It was drawn and quartered, and then put together anew in compartments. It contained everything; a Japanese garden, a rock garden, a herb garden, a sunk garden, a wilderness, a rose garden, a pergola, three pergolas, just as the village now contained, a boot club, a coal club, a—but I think I have said that before.

In the course of time she presented Jimmy with two most remarkable children, at least she said they were remarkable: and from their horoscopes I gathered the boy would probably become a prime minister, and the girl a musical genius. We don’t actually know