What Will She Do? Storm Jameson’s “A Day Off”

Posted on February 4, 2026 by Kat

A relative telephoned. “It’s hard to find a job in a new city.”

“I have to go now,” I said, trying not to cry.

The movers had arrived, the maids were cheerfully cleaning, I was still putting books in boxes, and I went up to the attic to weep because I didn’t want to leave our old house. It was our modest version of Howards End. There was even an oak tree. (Not a wych-oak, though.)

Years later, I still miss that house. If only we could have brought it with us! In my favorite novel by E. M. Forster, Howards End, there is much angst about moving. The Schlegels’ house is about to be demolished, and though Margaret Schlegel looks at many houses, she can’t find affordable housing in London.

In Storm James’ novella, A Day off, published in a single volume or in a Virago collection of novellas, Women against Men, we encounter a different couple called the Schlegels. The unnamed heroine meets Mr. and Mrs. Schlegel while she is a maid at a hotel. Mr. Schlegel was reserved, but Mrs. Schlegel gently chatted with her. The next morning another employee discovers that the Schlegels have committed suicide in their room. The heroine is so overcome with grief that she leaves her job.

The Schlegels’ death is significant, not only because it shocks the heroine, but because suicide may be one of her options in her late forties. (Very unlikely, though: she has the gift of bouncing back.) But like Forster’s Schlegels, she worries about losing her home, a shabby rented room where she has lived for a number of years. George, the man who supports her (she is his mistress), hasn’t written or sent her a check in five weeks. Well, she puts a good face on it – an aging face – and she wills herself to believe the letter will arrive today.

“A Day Off” is included in this collection of novellas.

Jameson’s prose is hard and unsentimental. This is not Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day or The Provincial Lady in London. The heroine is a lower-class version of Jean Rhys’s heroines, sad women who don’t know how they’ll survive without men. Rhys and Jameson were both writing in the 1930s, but their styles are very different: Rhys’s prose is spare and sad, and her lost women have no one to turn to. Jameson’s style is vigorous and alert: she sees alternatives for her characters. The heroine of A Day Off may be going down – but not yet.

She decides to forget about George for a few hours and take a day off at Hampstead Heath. She enjoys the scenery, the deer and the wild flowers, and takes a long, much needed nap. But hers is not the sleep of youth; she drools and has lines of her face. A group of young people laugh at her, and when she wakes up, she scolds them, mostly because she realizes she isn’t young anymore.

She decides to spend the rest of her money on a meal. Her feet hurt, and she has blisters, but she walks slowly, painfully downhill to a tearoom she remembers. She sits at a table with a lonely older woman who shares her pastry and confides that she is splurging because she had a windfall of eight pounds. And then, alas, we see the ugly side of our heroine: she steals the purse while the woman is in the restroom.

Desperation has driven her, but she also is jumpy and afraid of her action. We despair for her. And then she commits another desperate act. But the heroine is resilient. Perhaps she’ll get back on her feet. Perhaps she’ll go into retail: she met George while she worked in a shop that sold gloves. We hope for the best. We know that whatever job she takes, her feet will be killing her! But it’s sad that George, or his successor, will never marry her.

Storm Jameson’s Novella, “Delicate Monster”

Posted on February 3, 2026 by Kat

“You’ve had so many men. You might have left me mine,” I said ridiculously. — “Delicate Monster,” by Storm Jameson

Storm Jameson is a brilliant, often political, writer, best-known for her trilogy, The Mirror in Darkness. If Virago had not reissued the trilogy along with Women Without Men, my generation would not have have read her. Unfortunately, the Viragos are out-of-print.

Women against Men, a collection of three novellas, is a good place to start. The title is striking, though it does not apply to the first novella, Delicate Monster, in which two women writers, Fanny and Victoria, are pitted against each other. One writes literary fiction, the other best-selling blockbusters.

There is jealousy from the start. The narrator, Fanny, and her rival, Victoria, grow up in the same small town. Their teacher considers Victoria the better writer, but Fanny ignores her and continues to write. It is not until the girls move to London that they become close friends. They go to parties together and deride the behavior of the eccentric guests, until Victoria’s success with the literati divides the two girls.

Storm Jameson is a brilliant, often political writer, best-known for her trilogy, The Mirror in Darkness. If Virago, the women’s publisher founded in the UK in 1978, had not reissued the trilogy and a collection of novellas, my generation would not have discovered Jameson. Unfortunately, the Viragos are out-of-print now.Jameson’s Women Against Men is a good place to start. The title, however, does not apply to the first novella, “Delicate Monster.” In this fictional treatise on jealousy, two women writers are pitted against each other.

Fanny is a serious literary writer, while beautiful, promiscuous Victoria gains success by writing trashy best-sellers (part bodice-ripper, with a tad of family saga, and scenes borrowed from her friends’ lives). Soon charming Victoria is feted by critics, writers, celebrities and the upper-classes.

Fanny struggles. She writes very slowly. She continues to be an underrated and underread writer of literary fiction. Her books don’t sell: she can’t make a living writing. Eventually she finds a a job at a publishing company. Part of the job is dealing with egotistical writers. She observes, “Novelists are rarely tolerable. I say nothing of their vanity (‘A little vanity does no harm in life’), but novelists are almost alone in expecting to be paid highly for doing what they like.”

And she goes on: “… we have eight million authors, of which five thousand are writers on serious subjects, ten thousand dramatics, fifty are practicing poets, and the remnant (7,984,950) novelists.” (Very funny! Are the numbers still the same proportionately?)

It is easy to see quiet Fanny coping at her job and soothing the writers’ feathers. But her married life is rocky: she is shattered when she finds a love letter from Victoria in her husband’s raincoat pocket. And when Fanny approaches her, Victoria is impatient. “Oh, that!” And then Fanny learns that the two are still having an affair.

Fanny gets over it – the marriage is soon over – but can one be surprised that she is pleased when Victoria’s daughter Camilla visits to ask advice?

Victoria reminds me of the indelicate monster in Max Beerbohm’s satirical novel, Zuleika Dobson. The beautiful Zuleika drives hundreds of men to suicide, including an entire class at Oxford. (Well, perhaps it’s the whole university. I can’t remember!)

Delicate Monster is a haunting, realistic look at friendship, with its moments of joy and terrible sadness.

About the quote at the top: yes, it’s melodramatic, but if your friend steals your boyfriend, you might as well say this as anything else, because nothing will do any good!

Writers Dining with Other Writers: Storm Jameson’s “The Road from the Monument”

Posted on February 28, 2021 by Kat

Years ago, I wrote a local newsletter called A Few Green Leaves. The concept was simple: I selected an out-of-print writer, wrote a brief biography of him or her, and reviewed one or two of her books.

The subject for my first issue was the English writer Storm Jameson (1891- 1986). No one seems to read her anymore, but she is very good. She was born in in North Yorkshire, educated at University of Leeds and King’s College London, active in leftist politics, and wrote 45 novels and numerous reviews to make a living. Her style is seemingly effortless rather than elegant, her plots elaborate, her characters complex, her point-of-view unflinching, and her novels consistently workmanlike and fascinating.

I recently read Jameson’s forgotten 1962 novel, The Road from the Monument, a brilliant page-turner which is (or was) available as an e-book from Bloomsbury Reader. If you are curious about the gossip of bitchy writers, you will adore Jameson’s characters, some of whom struggle, others of whom do well, and still others are jealous of anyone who succeeds.

At the center is a successful writer, Gregory Mott, who is charming, handsome, talented, and very smug, as his bitter invalid wife has learned over the years. The son of an impoverished sea captain, he grew up in poverty. Now, in addition to being a critically-acclaimed writer, he is the director of the Rutley Institute of Arts, and has enormous prestige in the literary world.

Much of the book is told from the point-of-view of other writers, who have decidedly mixed feelings about Gregory, but we also hear from his friends and his wife.

The first chapter is told from the perspective of seventy-year-old Paul Gate, Gregory’s former teacher. Paul was the lowest-paid teacher at the school because he never passed the education exams. He thought so highly of Gregory that he paid the fees for Gregory’s university education. Paul went hungry and lived in a hovel so he could support the brilliant boy. And as the years go by, he is delighted to receive occasional letters from Gregory and read his books, and does not expect to see him.

Finally Paul receives a dinner invitation and will be reunited with his favorite pupil in London. But Paul is shocked by Gregory’s selfishness and what he deems as immorality: he jokes about religion. And he is devastated when Gregory carelessly asserts that he regrets not having gone to Oxford. He realizes Gregory was not who he’d thought he was. And later, Gregory carelessly tells a school friend that he was sure Paul had money or he wouldn’t have paid the tuition.

Most of the characters are writers, and Gregory’s most loyal friend, Lambert Corry, a failed novelist, is the deputy director at the Institute. Lambert is bitter because Gregory gets the credit for the work that Lambert does. He does not understand that Gregory is the idea man. Lambert’s wife lambastes Gregory at her dinner parties while at the same time promoting her latest, not always talented, young proteges. Lambert is pleased by her vituperation of the golden boy, though he always defends Gregory.

Harriet, Gregory’s former mistress, still loves him but knows his faults. One of them is vanity: she knows despairingly that he is better-looking than she, and that was one of the reasons he did not marry her. His wife, Beatrice, also had money. Harriet is a writer, but the critics don’t like her, and she has been grinding out mediocre books for decades to pay the bills. Now she is tired. And I can only imagine that many novelists feel like this when they must go on and on because they have no savings.

She reflected lucidly that she was paying now, in her fiftieth year, for not having made herself any allies. After all these years of hard and on the whole honest work, she was back exactly where she started as a very young woman, without security, without money, and with fast-diminishing energy —she was strong but she had used herself mercilessly hard. An unworldly fool. A freak who does not even amuse. She did not know how to talk to people, she could not make herself respected: no one, not the weakest or youngest, had any reason to fear her —and so no reason to help her.

Gregory finally makes an error that threatens everything he has. But I won’t give away the plot.

I realized while I was writing this that religion plays a big part in this book.

Id you want to read Jameson and can’t find The Road from the Monument, there are many used copies of her Mirror in Darkness trilogy, which consists of Company Parade (1934), Love in Winter (1935), and None Turn Back (1936).