Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland (1867-1955), was among the first involved in establishing a Red Cross Ambulance Unit in Belgium in 1914. In 1915, after the German invasion of Belgium, Sutherland escaped to England and then France where her unit then became a British Red Cross Hospital Unit. Sutherland was awarded the British Royal Red Cross, the French Croix de Guerre and the British Red Cross in honour of her service during the War. She was also an advocate for social reform and better working conditions. She wrote a total of seven novels, plays, memoirs and short story volumes, including That Fool of a Woman and four other sombre tales (1925). It is a collection of five semi-autobiographical items, ‘a novelette which titles it and four somber short stories’ (‘New Books’, p. 939).

The title story follows a widow named Chloe. It begins with the death of her husband (Sutherland’s first husband died in 1913) and follows her journey throughout the War. Chloe, mostly like Sutherland, becomes a nurse for the French Red Cross but is quickly captured by German soldiers in Belgium; after escaping she returns to the UK, where she continues to nurse.

While the story follows Chloe’s experiences as a nurse, it is more focused on her relationships, especially with the men in her life and, moreover, the way that war impacts on these. The focus on romance rather than the War was not uncommon in 1925. Prior to the 1928-9 successes of the starkly disillusioned texts of the War Books Boom, the lens was less violent and less dehumanized than it would subsequently be.

Following the death of her husband and her first experience of the War, Chloe becomes overwhelmed by the horrors of war and impulsively marries Freddie. However, their relationship does not last and they divorce shortly after Armistice (Sutherland remarried in October 1914 and divorced in 1919). We also follow her relationship with her son Rex, who is a soldier in the War.

Chloe’s final and most pivotal relationship is with Major Wentworth Longden, who she meets during the War; this makes apparent her incompatibility with Freddie. They correspond during and after the War, their letters providing her with an escape from the conflict. eventually marrying. While her relationship with Longden does begin by being healthier and happier than her previous marriage, they grow unhappy and divorce (Sutherland remarried in October 1919 and divorced in 1925). The relationship seems unable to function in peacetime. Chloe moves back to England before returning to Paris to write pantomimes, plays and essays, returning to her pre-War passions.

The volume was harshly reviewed in The Bookman (US) the summer after its publication, in a brutally brief ‘tabloid review’: ‘Seldom does a title characterize a book so fitly — even the reader feels included’ (p. 474). Other war and post-war books reviewed particularly favourably in this list are Philip Gibbs’s Unchanging Quest and C.E. Montague’s Rough Justice; also commented upon with less distinction are Warwick Deeping’s Sorrell and Son, William Faulkner’s Soldiers’ Pay, R.H. Mottram’s The Crime at Vanderlynden’s, and Sylvia Thompson’s The Hounds of Spring (Andrew writes about both Montague’s and Mottram’s books in Writing Disenchantment). The reviewer for the Saturday Review of Literature comments on the ‘emotional but extremely intelligent style’ of the text, but criticizes the weakness of the other four stories compared to the long title story.

This book of 1925 is included in the dataset, as we searched a slightly longer period (1925-34, against 1926-33) in looking for books of the Scottish War Books Boom, to see if it took a different shape (this work was done by Louise Bell, to whom thanks are due).  The author was born in Dysart, near Kirkcaldy, Fife.  It is clear from this item that the War was still on the minds of both writers and readers alike, and that readers were interested in a range of experiences during it.

Ray Thomson

(edited by Andrew Frayn)

Bibliography

‘The Bookman’s Guide to Fiction’, Bookman (US), 63.4 (June 1926), 471-4 <https://www.unz.com/print/Bookman-1926jun-00471/> [accessed 31 Oct 2023]

‘The New Books’, Saturday Review of Literature, 2.51 (17 July 1926), 939-40 <https://www.unz.com/print/SaturdayRev-1926jul17-00939a02/> [accessed 31 Oct 2023]

Sutherland, Millicent (1925). That Fool of a Woman (London and New York: Putnams)