The Tortoise and the Hare | Elizabeth Jenkins

_{The sunlight of late September filled the pale, formal streets between Portland Place and Manchester Square. The sky was a burning blue yet the still air was chill.}

The first point I wish to highlight about Margaret Elizabeth Jenkins are her birth and death dates – the 31st October 1905 and the 5th September 2010. She missed her 105th birthday by a couple of months!

Elizabeth was born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire where her father, James Heald Jenkins, had established the Caldicott School along with Ernest Edward Kellett. However Elizabeth attended the progressive, co-educational school, St Christopher School at Letchworth before reading English and History at Newnham College, Cambridge, the women’s only college in 1921. When she finished her studies (women were not granted degrees from Cambridge until 1948, so there was no graduation for Jenkins) she moved to Doughty Street in Bloomsbury.

In 1929 she took up a teaching position at the co-educational King Alfred School in Hampstead. During the war she worked for the Ministry of Information and the Refugees’ Assistance Board, helping Jewish refugees from Europe. During this time she became friends with Chloe Holland, a daughter of the surgeon, Sir Eardley Lancelot Holland (1879–1967). Jenkins became attracted to this (very married) surgeon.

After the war she became a fulltime writer living quietly in her Regency house in Hampstead.

Jenkins was a founding member of the Jane Austen Society, attending its first meeting in May 1940, with Dorothy Darnell and Jenkins as joint secretaries. Her biography of Jane Austen was the first written by someone other than a member of the extended Austen/Leigh/Knight family.

The Guardian obituary for Elizabeth, from 8th September 2010, revealed that The Tortoise and the Hare was autobiographical in nature. Although Elizabeth never married, there was obviously a serious long term relationship that went wrong. Nicola Beauman suggests that Evelyn was the,

_{well-known gynaecologist Sir Eardley Holland, and the dreadful Blanche was a devastating portrait of the “other woman”, a member of a well-known brewing family, that had to be toned down before publication.}

After Holland’s first wife died in 1951, he was remarried in 1952 to Olivia Constable, the daughter of Lionel Leslie Constable, a director of Henty & Constable (Brewers) Ltd. Jenkins remained single for the rest of her life.

Novels

• 1929 Virginia Water
• 1931 The Winters
• 1934 Harriet 
• 1935 Doubtful Joy
• 1936 The Phoenix’ Nest
• 1944 Robert and Helen
• 1954 The Tortoise and the Hare
• 1963 Brightness
• 1968 Honey
• 1972 Dr Gully’s Story

Biographies

• 1932 Lady Caroline Lamb
• 1936 Jane Austen: A Biography
• 1947 Henry Fielding
• 1958 Elizabeth the Great
• 1960 Joseph Lister
• 1961 Elizabeth and Leicester

Short stories

• 1955 On No Account, My Love

I don’t always write such a long author bio, but one, I was entranced by Jenkins writing and the autobiographical nature of this story was fascinating to research. And two, my desire to write a book review still seems to be on holidays!

Although I was mesmerised by Jenkins soulful writing, I wasn’t sure I would be able to finish The Tortoise and the Hare at one point. I found Imogen’s devotion and self-sacrificing ways to be almost unendurable as she bent over backwards to appease her husband and their obnoxious 11 year old son. Evelyn was controlling and demanding and regularly dismissive. The son was learning to be the same.

But then I started thinking about the title. Who was the hare and who was the tortoise? Did slow and steady win the race? Who underestimated who? Who was humbled? Over-confident? Who was persistent?

To discuss this properly, I will have to issue a ***spoiler alert*** here.

It could be said that Evelyn was the hare – so sure of himself and his own worth, and that the tortoise, Blanche snuck up on him with her advances. Except of course, that Evelyn is not the loser in this situation. A little loss of face thanks to a divorce, but he gets the girl, without any fuss being made by the outgoing one.

Imogen could also be the hare – the first wife, beautiful and young, a trophy wife no less, while Blanche, the tortoise, slowly, methodically, persistently moves in on her target. Except of course, that Imogen is not secure or confident in her position. Evelyn’s strength of character has eroded her sense of self entirely.

Yet Imogen, too, also has some flirtatious dalliances with other men. Perhaps she was too confident about her beauty and her youth? Maybe that is why, Blanche’s looks are allowed to blossom as Evelyn’s love for her becomes stronger?

Could Blanche be the hare? Thinking she has won the race to get the man, only to find out how controlling and difficult he really is. While, the tortoise, Imogen, finally succeeds in escaping the confines of a soul-destroying marriage?

Imogen’s loss of self and identity in her marriage were drawn with such heart-breaking care by Jenkins, that this reader was thrilled to learn that both Jenkins and Imogen escaped the domineering man in the end.

_{The emotional texture of married life is made up of small matters. This one had become invested with a fatal quality.}

For a more thorough review of the story, please see Jacqui @Jacqui Wine’s Journal‘s recent review for the 1954 Club.

Also reviewed previously by:

• Liz @Adventures in Reading
• Ali @HeavenAli

Title: The Tortoise and the Hare
Author: Elizabeth Jenkins
Cover Design: Florence Broadhurst 
ISBN: 9781844087471
Imprint: Virago Modern Classics
Published: 1954
Format: Hardback
Pages: 269

• #CCspin
• #1954Club

This post was written on Yuggera country in The Greater Brisbane region. The original custodians, the Turrubul people, called this area Mianjin/Meanjin.