edited by Victoria GlendinningMcLelland and Stewart
~ Review in Halifax Herald, September 2009
In wartime London, Charles Ritchie, a Canadian diplomat and Elizabeth Bowen, a successful author, meet at a christening. Their attraction is immediate and they begin an intense and passionate love affair. Elizabeth is married, and while fond of her husband, she is unable to resist Ritchie. For 30 years, they meet when they can, never spending more than a week in each other’s company and always reaching forward to the next liaison.
Charles’s position in the diplomatic corps takes him to live in Paris, New York, Ottawa and Bonn. Elizabeth’s letters follow him, letters of hope and love. She was a writer of her times and her letters are rich with descriptions of her days and of friends such as Iris Murdoch, Eudora Welty, Nancy Mitford and Virginia Woolf. But always her words speak of love and of her yearning for their next liaison.
Charles marries his cousin in hopes of companionship, and in one of life’s twists of fate, Elizabeth’s husband dies. Guilt now complicates Ritchie’s life. “All we have to do now is to live our lives without too great discredit,” he writes. Elizabeth asks “where am I to send telegrams to now?”
Love’s Civil War is a document of letters and diaries. Unfortunately, while Ritchie kept all Elizabeth’s letters, he destroyed his letters to her after her death in 1973. His diaries are the only surviving record of his complicated life and they are less satisfying than Elizabeth’s letters, which are vibrant with a joy of life and everyday pleasures. Ritchie’s diaries are short, and the sometimes terse entries are missing the flavour of reciprocity of feelings that must have been part of his emotional life. His final entry, however, speaks from the heart. “If she ever thought that she loved me more than I did her, she is revenged.”
Victoria Glendinning is an award winning biographer, broadcaster and novelist. She lives in the UK.
