The Pool in the Desert

by Sara Jeannette Duncan

In The Pool in the Desert, first published in 1903, Sara Jeannette Duncan explores the impact of isolation on the small British communities of Victorian India. In the four stories collected here - “The Pool in the Desert,” “A Mother in India,” “An Impossible Ideal,” and “The Hesitation of Miss Anderson” - Duncan's women have certain freedoms living amidst the reaches of Empire, but they also must negotiate their way through a landscape dominated by the constraints of small, military societies. The stories that result combine a delicacy of manners and movement that recalls Henry James, with a wit and sharp eye for small town foibles that bring Stephen Leacock to mind.

Genres: School, Short Stories, Classics

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1903

About the author

Canadian born author and journalist.

After her marriage to Everard Charles Cotes she spent most of her time between England & India.
Duncan had been treated for tuberculosis in 1900, spending the summer out of doors in the fresh air of Simla, as chronicled in On the Other Side of the Latch (1901), published in the United States and Canada as The Crow's Nest. Duncan died of chronic lung disease on 22 July 1922 at Ashtead, Surrey, whence she and her husband had moved in 1921.

In 2016, she was named a National Historic Person on the advice of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.

information extracted from Wikipedia
a.k.a.:
Mrs. Everard Cotes
Sara Everard Cotes
Sara Jeannette Duncan Cotes

This author also writes under the pseudonym Mrs Everard Cotes.

Reviews

[Pascale · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are 4 short novellas in this volume, all of them a pleasant read but only 1 truly arresting. All of them take place in Simla and a common theme is the philistinism and moral tawdriness of the famous hill station. Everybody kills time with silly games, pretty women flirt shamelessly, gossip is rife, and nobody except a few elite souls actually reads books or gives a thought to anything apart from trivial points of etiquette. "The Pool in the Desert" is the story of a woman who falls in love with the son of her best friend. The pair is about to elope when the regiment is sent on a mission where Judy's husband is killed despite her lover's gallant attempt to rescue him. Somers then proposes to Judy, but once back in London Judy doesn't find the young man half as attractive as when he was her "pool in the desert" and she turns him down. Or does she, as the narrator is half inclined to believe, "abandon in pride a happiness that asked so much less humiliation" (than if they had eloped). This is an enjoyable story with a satisfyingly open-ended, ambiguous conclusion.
"An Impossible Ideal" is told from the point of view of a senior civil servant who shares elective affinities with a colleague's daughter, Dora. At the annual art exhibition, they both take a fancy to a newcomer's unusually vigorous work. Dora leans on her friend to seek out the artist, Ingersoll Armour, and help him establish himself in Simla. Initially the narrator is most willing to ease the way for Armour who is socially inept and therefore no threat to him, but his attitude changes as Dora seems to fall in love with the younger man. Armour reciprocates to the extent of compromising his artistic integrity so much that material success comes to him at last within the uneducated Simla community. On the verge of behind offered a sinecure in Calcutta, with the reluctant support of the narrator, Armour has a change of heart and returns to Europe without seeing Dora again. After this brush with bohemianism, Dora and the narrator get married, and give up all pretense of being culturally superior to their Simla peers. Again, this is quite well-done.
"The Hesitation of Miss Anderson" is the weakest in the collection, in part because it relies on a rather blatant coincidence. Madeline Anderson breaks her engagement to Prendergast when she realizes he has fallen in love with Violet. Prendergast turns into a crook, maybe to finance Violet's lifestyle, and ends up in gaol. Violet gives up on him, moves on and is reported dead. Madeline faithfully visits Prendergast in gaol until his death, and then starts travelling the world. In the course of her travels, she ends up in Simla, where she falls in love with Colonel Innes, whose wife's colorful past is a prime subject of gossip within the community. When Madeline meets Mrs Innes, she realizes that this woman is none other than Violet. Although this miraculous coincidence would give Madeline all the ammunition she needs both to exact revenge and to marry the man she loves, she is much too fastidious to take the easy route. Not wanting to take any chances with being exposed as a bigamist, the resourceful Violet seduces another officer and bolts with him. Punctilious to a fault, Madeline rushes after her to let her know she'd still be in time to claim Prendergast's inheritance. Violet thus gets both her money and her man, while Madeline and Horace Innes can marry without having lowered their exacting moral standards. Bof.
The finest piece in the collection is "A Mother in India". The wives of civil servants and military men in India all faced the same choice when they had children: stay by their husband or go back to England when the education and/or the health of their children demanded it. The narrator of this story chooses the former option, and as a result her daughter Cecily grows up into a prim and proper little twit under the tutelage of her father's dull maiden aunts. Initially heart-broken to have so little contact with her daughter, and zero input into her upbringing, the narrator grows to resent her standoffish daughter. When Cecily turns 21, her parents at last take her back to India with them in order to find her a husband. During the passage, one of the narrator's younger admirers, Dacres, takes a shine to Cecily, largely because he is offended in his sense of decorum by the narrator's apparent lack of "maternal instinct". Dacres institutes himself Cecily's protector and fancies himself in love with her. Seeing that Dacres is about to propose for the wrong reasons, and will regret all his life being shackled to mediocre Cecily, the narrator does everything she can to open his eyes, and succeeds so well that Dacres flees with his tail between his legs. Ironically, the narrator's prophecy that Cecily will quickly marry the first stuffed shirt who offers doesn't come to pass, and Cecily turns into an old maid whose sole purpose in life is to be the prop of her parents in their declining years, a very mixed blessing since there is no real affection between mother and daughter. I liked the narrative voice in this story a lot. Yes, she is a cold fish, but like the Royals she believes in doing her duty and not crying over spilt milk. As an officer's wife she has had to give up a lot, and having a daughter without being a mother has warped her. However, she always looks on the bright side and feels loyal to the Anglo-Indian community: "It was a Bombay ship, full of returning Anglo-Indians. I looked up and down the long saloon tables with a sense of relief and solace. I was again among my own people. They belonged to Bengal and to Burma, to Madras and to the Punjab, but they were all my people. I could pick out a score that I knew in fact, and there was none that in imagination I didn't know. The look of wider seasoned skies, the casual experienced glance, the touch of irony and of tolerance, how well I knew it and how well I liked it! Dear old England, sitting in our wake, seemed to hold by comparison a great many soft, unsophisticated people, immensely occupied about very particular trifles. How difficult it had been, all the summer, to be interested! These of my long acquaintance belonged to my country's Executive, acute, alert, with the marks of travail on them. Gladly I went in and out of the women's cabins and listened to the argot of the men; my own ruling, administering, soldiering little lot." For this paragraph alone this book was worth reading.

[egagne]

annoyingly vague.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was pretty interesting. It was like looking back in time, at a very important Canadian authors life. I know its fictional, but it reads nearly like a memoir. Her prose is awesome. It was good.

[Princeps Cosmi · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's probably my least favorite book I've read until this very day, I was not able to finish it as it felt almost like a burden to read it. Duncan's writing style is definitely not a match for me, it gave me the sensation she was rambling throughout the pages, she presents too much uninteresting content in her narratives to a point that the narrative itself seemed non-existent to me, I didn't know where the story was headed towards and I also had no interest in finding it out.

[Tia Gonzales · Rating 5 out of 5]

sharp, bright, observant story telling...resembles reporting