Edith Somerville and Violet Ross
Aug. 31st, 2025 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeMori: Me and sinistmer are having a book club, reading Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present, by Lillian Faderman. One of the things I wanted to keep an eye out for was whether any spirit marriage came up, and wouldn'tcha know it, sinistmer texted me letting me know INDEED THERE IS!
"Somerville's own romantic friendship was poignant though somewhat bizarre: It ended only with Edith Somerville's death in 1949, long after the death of her friend, Violet Martin, in 1915. The two women were writers. During Violet's life they collaborated on numerous books. After her death they continued to collaborate, according to Edith, who claimed that she was able to communicate with Violet nightly. All Somerville's books written after Violet's death were published under the names of E. O. Somerville and Martin Ross (Violet's pen name). After Violet died, when Edith alluded to her it was never in the past tense alone. For example, in a 1917 book Edith stated, 'Martin and I, like our mothers before us, were, are, and always will be Suffragists, wholehearted, unshakable, and the longer we have lived the more unalterable have been our convictions.' In the last essay which Edith wrote, three years before her death in 1949 at the age of ninety-one, 'Two of a Trade,' she says of their first meeting in 1886, 'I suppose our respective stars then collided and struck sympathetic sparks. We very soon discovered in one another a comfortable agreement of outlook in matters artistic and literary, and those collided stars lit for us a fire that has not faded yet.' As late as 1947 she was still celebrating Violet's birthday." (206)
"They wrote thirteen volumes together, beginning with the novel An Irish Cousin (1889). Edith wrote sixteen more books after Violet's death, all of them published under both their names.
"In Irish Memories and 'Two of a Trade,' Edith discusses their method of collaboration [...] After Violet's death, Edith says in 'Two of a Trade,' the technique of writing 'has had to be changed, and, to a certain extent, modified,' but they have always relied on each other, 'whether on this plane or another.' Here she is lyrical and mystical about their joint efforts:
"Because of the fundamental sympathy between them, she concludes, 'there was never a break in the harmony of our work nor a flaw in our mutual understanding.'" (207)
sinistmer are having a book club, reading Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present, by Lillian Faderman. One of the things I wanted to keep an eye out for was whether any spirit marriage came up, and wouldn'tcha know it, sinistmer texted me letting me know INDEED THERE IS!"Somerville's own romantic friendship was poignant though somewhat bizarre: It ended only with Edith Somerville's death in 1949, long after the death of her friend, Violet Martin, in 1915. The two women were writers. During Violet's life they collaborated on numerous books. After her death they continued to collaborate, according to Edith, who claimed that she was able to communicate with Violet nightly. All Somerville's books written after Violet's death were published under the names of E. O. Somerville and Martin Ross (Violet's pen name). After Violet died, when Edith alluded to her it was never in the past tense alone. For example, in a 1917 book Edith stated, 'Martin and I, like our mothers before us, were, are, and always will be Suffragists, wholehearted, unshakable, and the longer we have lived the more unalterable have been our convictions.' In the last essay which Edith wrote, three years before her death in 1949 at the age of ninety-one, 'Two of a Trade,' she says of their first meeting in 1886, 'I suppose our respective stars then collided and struck sympathetic sparks. We very soon discovered in one another a comfortable agreement of outlook in matters artistic and literary, and those collided stars lit for us a fire that has not faded yet.' As late as 1947 she was still celebrating Violet's birthday." (206)
"They wrote thirteen volumes together, beginning with the novel An Irish Cousin (1889). Edith wrote sixteen more books after Violet's death, all of them published under both their names.
"In Irish Memories and 'Two of a Trade,' Edith discusses their method of collaboration [...] After Violet's death, Edith says in 'Two of a Trade,' the technique of writing 'has had to be changed, and, to a certain extent, modified,' but they have always relied on each other, 'whether on this plane or another.' Here she is lyrical and mystical about their joint efforts:
Sometimes the compelling creative urge would come on both, and we would try to reconcile the two impulses, searching for a form into which best to cast them--one releasing it perhaps as a cloudy suggestion, to be caught up by the other and given form and colour, then to float away in a flash of certainty, a completed sentence--as two dancers will yield to the same impulse, given by the same strain of music, and know the joy of shared success.
"Because of the fundamental sympathy between them, she concludes, 'there was never a break in the harmony of our work nor a flaw in our mutual understanding.'" (207)
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Date: 2025-09-01 12:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-01 07:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-01 03:48 pm (UTC)It’s complicated.
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Date: 2025-09-02 07:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-02 02:31 pm (UTC)