I wonder why it has taken me so long to find a copy of Margaret Irwin’s stunning historical novel, Still She Wished for Company (1924). I have never seen this cross-genre book at an American bookstore or library. I learned about it from a box of Penguin  postcards: one of the cards shows the cover of the old orange Penguin paperback edition.

This uncannily weird historical novel is laced with fantasy and elements of Gothic novels. There is gentle time travel, a decadent man’s eerie practice of mesmerism, and pop-up references to Jane Austen’s pragmatic idea of love in Sense and Sensibility.  Many of the Gothic scenes are reminiscent of J. Sheridan Le Faunu’s ghost stories, Ellen Wood’s sensation novels, and Daphne du Maurier’s weird short stories.

At the center of the novel are two young women of different centuries.  Juliana is a bored young woman of leisure in the 18th century, who lives with her family on the elegant Chidleigh estate.  Jan iives in London in the 20th century, and works at a job she hates in order to support her mother and sister. She is delighted to embark on a long holiday in the country near Chidleigh.

There is a link between the two women, in the same place in different centuries. Juliana’s charming, decadent older brother, Lucien, who studied mesmerism and other magic in Europe and Asia, uses techniques of hypnotism to make Juliana a conduit of communication to Jan. (The conduit doesn’t work very well.)  

 This isn’t a random use of magic.  Lucien has been in love with Jan for years.  It started with a series of dreams about Jan when he was a boy. Jan was his best friend.

Near the beginning of the novel, before we know anything about Lucien, he has a brief, unexplained meeting with Jan.  Jan is waiting out a rainstorm in a doorway in Soho when Lucien appears.  She finds him attractive, but threateningly intense, and is put off by his odd outfit, with a black cloak.  When he leaves to find her a taxi – and she doesn’t want to be picked up by a stranger – she instinctively walks away.  She found him almost brutal, as she tells her sister when she gets home.  But she did admire his confidence:  he didn’t care what anyone thought of him.

What does happen because of Lucien’s magic is that Juliana and Jan find themselves walking into the past and/or future.  One day Juliana walks down the drive and wonders why the trees and flowers seen to have changed: she doesn’t recognize the flowers. And she is confused to see Jan, a woman in a strange frock coat, chatting with a casual couple oddly dressed (in shorts) who act as though they own the place. Jan asks them permission to wander on the estate. 

In another scene in the future, Juliana looks over Jan’s shoulder and sees that Jan is reading Juliana’s own diary, now musty and crumpled.  And Jan has similar experiences, when she finds herself on the drive, and wonders why it looks so different. And then on a few occasions. Julianna and Jan do see each other through the windows at Chidleigh, but they cannot talk to each other.  And as Lucien becomes more and more unhinged and intense with his use of mesmerism (or whatever on earth it is), he is careless of the effect on Juliana. One night, Jan appears at at the window to warn her against Lucien. 

The novel is not grim, despite some of the darker scenes. It is even partly a domestic comedy. There are hilarious dinner parties and card games. And Lucien, when not practicing magic, is the life of the party. 

Juliana’s funny journal is a scream, and it certainly helps us relate to her. Her mother gave her the journal, saying it would be appropriate for a young woman to record her meditations.  Anyone who has no idea what to write in her journal will laugh at Juliana’s attempts. She decides to copy the system related in a favorite novel: she makes a time-table for herself, like Clarissa, “the peerless heroine of Mr. Richardson’s great novel.” She also “debated with herself the next item of ‘One Hour to visit the neighboring poor,’ to give them brief instructions and good books. There were no neighboring poor at Chidleigh.” That’s a problem!

Irwin is known for her historical novels, especially a trilogy about Queen Bess, but I wish she had written more about Jan in London in the 1920s in this one.

Nevertheless, this is such a marvelous read that I have put it on my “reread” shelf.  And this is the highest honor for a book.