James Courage and ‘Jezebel’: An unpublished story

Abstract

James Francis Courage 1 (1903-63) is a largely neglected New Zealand-born expatriate writer who achieved some commercial and critical success in New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. with novels and short stories published in the last third of his life. While Courage lived and published mostly in England, he corresponded with a number of New Zealand writers of the time, including Frank Sargeson and Charles Brasch, and set most of his fiction in earlytwentieth-century Canterbury. Five out of his eight published novels, for instance, were set there. Living in England, Courage worked in and managed Wilson’s Bookshop in Hampstead for some ten years till 1950-51 when, prompted in part by psychiatric problems, he devoted himself full-time to writing. During 1952, especially, he worked on a number of short stories and in September submitted a sequence to Michael Sadlier at Constables, who were then publishing his novels, for publication in a single volume. Although his proposal was rejected, a number of his stories were published individually in magazines such as Gentry, London Magazine and Landfall. It was not until 1973, 10 years after Courage’s death, that Charles Brasch collected 15 of his stories into a single volume, Such Separate Creatures (Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1973). One of the stories written in 1952 was ‘Jezebel’. Two versions are extant in the Hocken Library: a manuscript dated 9/4/52, which has the title ‘No Time for Jezebel’ and a revised, undated typescript, which is now published for the first time.2 It is of interest to those with a knowledge of Courage’s work for a number of reasons, especially for its connection to his most successful novel, The Young Have Secrets. (Ironically, Constables also rejected this novel when Courage submitted it. It was taken up by Jonathan Cape, was a Book Society Choice for December 1954, and ran to several printings.) The novel is set in Sumner, Christchurch, where Courage boarded as a boy when attending Mr. Clement Wiggins’ Dunelm Preparatory School in Christchurch. His manuscripts record that he began working on the second version of the novel on 21/3/52 and completed it on 27/5/53.3 Clearly ‘Jezebel’, written when he was working on this novel, has connections with it in its evocation of the Sumner setting: the tram journey, the estuary, Cave Rock and the romance of the seafront.