Ivy Compton-Burnett
1892 -
IVY COMPTON-BURNETT,
English novelist, born (d: 1969); Published as “I. Compton-Burnett,”
all her many novels, which have been called “morality plays for the
tough-minded,” are satires of the least attractive aspects of human
nature as found among the nobility and landed gentry of the
late-Victorian world. They are very strange and very intelligent novels
by a very strange and intelligent woman. Compton-Burnett lived most of
her life in a “romantic friendship” with Margaret Jourdain, a woman
several years her senior and a well-established scholar and expert in
18th century furniture.
There was no question in the Jourdain/Compton-Burnett household as
to who was numero uno. Jourdain talked and Compton-Burnett listened.
Even when the novelist’s fame far exceeded the scholar’s, no one entered
their sanctum sanctorum without paying court to Jourdain alone. They
had no sexual contact with each other, nor with anyone else, Jourdain
believing that only men experienced sexual desire and Compton-Burnett
explaining that they were “essentially a pair of neuters.” When Jourdain
died, the novelist was almost sixty, but her subservience and
dependence never ended. She continued to talk with her friend” I say,
what do you think? Do you like it? Would you advise me? What shall I
do?” Strange. Fascinating. Eerie. Like her novels.
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