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The Heart to Artemis: A Writer's Memoirs
Bryher (1894-1985)—adventurer, novelist, publisher—flees Victorian Britain for the raucous streets of Cairo and sultry Parisian cafes. Amidst the intellectual circles of the twenties and thirties, she develops relationships with Marianne Moore, Freud, Paul Robeson, her longtime partner H.D., Stein, and others.
This compelling memoir, first published in 1962, reveals Bryher’s exotic childhood, her impact on modernism, and her sense of social justice by helping over 100 people escape from the Nazis.
“A work so rich in interest, so direct, revealing, and, above all, thought-provoking that this reader found it the most consistently exciting book of its kind to appear in many years.”—The New York Times
This compelling memoir, first published in 1962, reveals Bryher’s exotic childhood, her impact on modernism, and her sense of social justice by helping over 100 people escape from the Nazis.
“A work so rich in interest, so direct, revealing, and, above all, thought-provoking that this reader found it the most consistently exciting book of its kind to appear in many years.”—The New York Times
436 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1962
8 people are currently reading
202 people want to read
About the author
Bryher
23 books29 followersBryher was the pen name of the novelist, poet, memoirist, and magazine editor Annie Winifred Ellerman.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 29, 2024
The Heart to Artemis by Bryher is, for this 21 century reader, a bundle of contradictions. Bryher was a lesbian and very rich, both facts she never mentions in this memoir. She was a precocious child who was constantly railing against the fact she was a child and couldn’t do what she liked but she loved travelling and visiting new places. Her wealthy parents took her to France, Italy, Egypt (which she particularly loved) Spain, Germany, Switzerland, North Africa and Greece.
About half of this memoir is about her childhood, her travels and her views on education. I was really struck by the way she fights against the restrictions on young woman around the time of WWI. I was surprised it was her rather than one of her contemporaries. But so far reading about women of her time, it has only been Bryher who has put her feelings down on paper about these restrictions and really denounced them. “I seldom had more than half an hour a day to myself.” And she is refreshingly honest and forthright about the psychiatric treatment she seeks as an adult later in the book. Here she is speaking about the awful boarding school she was sent to:
“We went to Tintagel, I remember and as we stood on the top of the cliffs I knew that there was no adventure that I would not dare and no opinion that I would not question. I looked up at the gulls in a state of exultation but then, the next minute, the approach of a new term flooded me with terror. I should have run away there and then, only, having a practical nature, I knew I should not get very far on the ten shillings in my pocket.”
In between her views on education and history, there are some lovely passages about the places she visits including her beloved Scilly Isles.
“There were no tourists in 1911 and no cars. We drove across to Pellistry beside hedges full of a lemon-scented honeysuckle and carried our parcels in a donkey cart or we rowed about in our own punt.”
Here she is meeting HD, the love of her life for the first time:
“The door opened and I started in surprise. I had seen the face before on a Greek statue or in some indefinable territory of the mind.”
Bryher was married twice, for convenience purposes I’m guessing but she doesn’t elaborate. Her first husband Robert McAlmon forwarded her mail from Paris to Switzerland where she was living off and on in the 1920s, so that her parents weren’t aware she wasn’t in Paris. And with her second husband Kenneth Macpherson, she shared an interest in film. He was also H.D.’s lover.
During World War 2 she helped people escape persecution from the Nazis before she fled to England, fearing for her life. This is an erudite autobiography from a fascinating, intelligent woman, a product of her times as she says herself:
“I should like this book to be read as neither mere autobiography nor period piece but as an attempt to show how external events and unconscious drives help or hinder development. History itself is a philosophy. It dies and is continuous. The skeleton survives; the particular circumstances of time and place perish with each generation.” Three and a half stars.
About half of this memoir is about her childhood, her travels and her views on education. I was really struck by the way she fights against the restrictions on young woman around the time of WWI. I was surprised it was her rather than one of her contemporaries. But so far reading about women of her time, it has only been Bryher who has put her feelings down on paper about these restrictions and really denounced them. “I seldom had more than half an hour a day to myself.” And she is refreshingly honest and forthright about the psychiatric treatment she seeks as an adult later in the book. Here she is speaking about the awful boarding school she was sent to:
“We went to Tintagel, I remember and as we stood on the top of the cliffs I knew that there was no adventure that I would not dare and no opinion that I would not question. I looked up at the gulls in a state of exultation but then, the next minute, the approach of a new term flooded me with terror. I should have run away there and then, only, having a practical nature, I knew I should not get very far on the ten shillings in my pocket.”
In between her views on education and history, there are some lovely passages about the places she visits including her beloved Scilly Isles.
“There were no tourists in 1911 and no cars. We drove across to Pellistry beside hedges full of a lemon-scented honeysuckle and carried our parcels in a donkey cart or we rowed about in our own punt.”
Here she is meeting HD, the love of her life for the first time:
“The door opened and I started in surprise. I had seen the face before on a Greek statue or in some indefinable territory of the mind.”
Bryher was married twice, for convenience purposes I’m guessing but she doesn’t elaborate. Her first husband Robert McAlmon forwarded her mail from Paris to Switzerland where she was living off and on in the 1920s, so that her parents weren’t aware she wasn’t in Paris. And with her second husband Kenneth Macpherson, she shared an interest in film. He was also H.D.’s lover.
During World War 2 she helped people escape persecution from the Nazis before she fled to England, fearing for her life. This is an erudite autobiography from a fascinating, intelligent woman, a product of her times as she says herself:
“I should like this book to be read as neither mere autobiography nor period piece but as an attempt to show how external events and unconscious drives help or hinder development. History itself is a philosophy. It dies and is continuous. The skeleton survives; the particular circumstances of time and place perish with each generation.” Three and a half stars.
July 28, 2015
This was a fascinating read. Bryher grew up in the Victorian era with all its restrictions on women and children and tells it like it is--utterly stifling. However, she had an unusual early upbringing in that her parents traveled quite a bit and she experienced different cultures, but then was sent to boarding school at age 15. After this education she was expected to marry, but she wasn't willing to give up her freedom, and so sought a marriage of convenience to get her parents off her back (she had two such marriages, and became partners with the poet, H.D.). The first book she wrote was about her experience of the soul-crushing repression of her education, and how she envisioned learning could be. With an independent income, Bryher managed to escape a conventional life, study archaeology and write historical novels and memoirs. She lead an adventurous life of travel, cultivated literary friendships, and financially helped many writers to get published. At the outbreak of WWII she was able to help refugees escape via Switzerland, before she herself went through an ordeal of escape to England. The book ends with her arrival in England. The next book of her memoirs is entitled "The Days of Mars," about her WWII experiences, and I am looking forward to reading that one as well. Bryher writes vividly of her experiences so that you can almost smell and taste them.
December 29, 2008
This author is wonderful and this memoir is her rendition of an unusual child-girlhood (so far...) A great new discovery for me
May 27, 2011
A lovely book by the parter of the poet, H.D.
February 20, 2020
Beautifully written and thought provoking, the best piece of non-fiction I have ever read.
October 23, 2024
Annie Winifred Ellerman, born six years before the end of the 19th century, became a celebrated English novelist, poet, memoirist, and magazine editor. She is better known as Bryher, a name she chose for herself and took steps to make legal.
In this first of her two-volume memoir, Chapter 15 begins with this sentence: “I should like this book to be read neither as mere autobiography nor period piece but as an attempt to show how external events and unconscious drives help or hinder development.” (p 241) Most of the memoir deals with that notion, how as a child, adolescent, and young woman, she struggled against social convention and conditioning to become the person she wished to be. England and Europe at the fin de siècle, the Great War, and the coming of the Second form the backdrop for her growth and development as a person and a writer.
As a child she read voraciously and traveled extensively with her parents, developing twin passions for learning and travel. These unleashed her intellect which set her at odds with the social conventions placed on women held over from the Victorian into the Edwardian Age. Despite her parents’ unusual relationship (they were not married until several years after Bryher was born), their social position mandated adherence to those customs under which Bryher chafed for years. Two observations illustrate her discontent: "People do not mind if you read but they hate you if you think." And: "I had committed the unpardonable Victorian sin and made myself ‘conspicuous.’" (p 225)
Her training as a historian, her interest and exploration into psychology and childhood education, and lifelong pursuit of truth created a nucleus on which to draw as a novelist and essayist. She wrote: "The object of my search since I had been a small child was absolute truth…my vice is danger and there is nothing more perilous than to look at truth, that Gorgon’s head." (p 298)
She viewed her cohort as seeing the world in radically different ways from the previous generation as a consequence of the Great War. They fought an internal and external struggle to initiate change. "We were the last group to grow up under the formidable discipline of the nineteenth century whose effect … cannot be entirely eradicated from our systems. All of us had been taught as soon as we could speak that abnegation and hard work would give us security and peace. The battle of the trenches cracked this myth from one end of Europe to the other. The Armistice offered us influenza, inflation and loss." (p 241)
She chose a marriage of convenience rather than disappoint her parents or to return to their home. She observed: "…sex to me then was entirely a matter for science and I grasped immediately that birth control was far more important to women than votes. Nobody had the right to force a woman to have a child…it must be her choice as a matter of moral principle." (p 228)
The narrative includes many names of writers and poets, titles of their work, and conversations that influenced Bryher’s ideas about the world, and her comments on those individuals. The rapid pace of change in art and science produced excitement in the possibilities ahead. But as the 1930’s progressed, she noted: "We were so full of what we could do with the future that we never perceived the darker motives of our enemies, who were gathering strength to destroy us." (p 296)
As a historian, she understood what was coming and tried to spread the warning to England on deaf ears, prompting her to comment: "…apathy is the greatest sin in life." (p 326) Unable to stay on the sidelines as refugees fled the approaching holocaust, she worked to help many to escape.
Obnoxious as a child, Byrher became a fine writer which is apparent in this well-crafted memoir.
In this first of her two-volume memoir, Chapter 15 begins with this sentence: “I should like this book to be read neither as mere autobiography nor period piece but as an attempt to show how external events and unconscious drives help or hinder development.” (p 241) Most of the memoir deals with that notion, how as a child, adolescent, and young woman, she struggled against social convention and conditioning to become the person she wished to be. England and Europe at the fin de siècle, the Great War, and the coming of the Second form the backdrop for her growth and development as a person and a writer.
As a child she read voraciously and traveled extensively with her parents, developing twin passions for learning and travel. These unleashed her intellect which set her at odds with the social conventions placed on women held over from the Victorian into the Edwardian Age. Despite her parents’ unusual relationship (they were not married until several years after Bryher was born), their social position mandated adherence to those customs under which Bryher chafed for years. Two observations illustrate her discontent: "People do not mind if you read but they hate you if you think." And: "I had committed the unpardonable Victorian sin and made myself ‘conspicuous.’" (p 225)
Her training as a historian, her interest and exploration into psychology and childhood education, and lifelong pursuit of truth created a nucleus on which to draw as a novelist and essayist. She wrote: "The object of my search since I had been a small child was absolute truth…my vice is danger and there is nothing more perilous than to look at truth, that Gorgon’s head." (p 298)
She viewed her cohort as seeing the world in radically different ways from the previous generation as a consequence of the Great War. They fought an internal and external struggle to initiate change. "We were the last group to grow up under the formidable discipline of the nineteenth century whose effect … cannot be entirely eradicated from our systems. All of us had been taught as soon as we could speak that abnegation and hard work would give us security and peace. The battle of the trenches cracked this myth from one end of Europe to the other. The Armistice offered us influenza, inflation and loss." (p 241)
She chose a marriage of convenience rather than disappoint her parents or to return to their home. She observed: "…sex to me then was entirely a matter for science and I grasped immediately that birth control was far more important to women than votes. Nobody had the right to force a woman to have a child…it must be her choice as a matter of moral principle." (p 228)
The narrative includes many names of writers and poets, titles of their work, and conversations that influenced Bryher’s ideas about the world, and her comments on those individuals. The rapid pace of change in art and science produced excitement in the possibilities ahead. But as the 1930’s progressed, she noted: "We were so full of what we could do with the future that we never perceived the darker motives of our enemies, who were gathering strength to destroy us." (p 296)
As a historian, she understood what was coming and tried to spread the warning to England on deaf ears, prompting her to comment: "…apathy is the greatest sin in life." (p 326) Unable to stay on the sidelines as refugees fled the approaching holocaust, she worked to help many to escape.
Obnoxious as a child, Byrher became a fine writer which is apparent in this well-crafted memoir.
April 19, 2025
so cool verklemmt die frau.
November 19, 2014
http://www.parispress.org/shop/the-he...
Bryher — adventurer, novelist, publisher — flees Victorian England for the raucous streets of Cairo and the sultry Parisian cafes. Amidst the intellectual circles of the twenties and thirties, she develops relationships with her longtime partner H. D., and with Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier, Walter Benjamin, Hemingway, Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein, Man Ray, Freud, and others. This compelling memoir reveals Bryher's exotic childhood, her impact on Modernism, and her life of social justice — helping over 100 people escape from the Nazis through her home in Switzerland.
Bryher — adventurer, novelist, publisher — flees Victorian England for the raucous streets of Cairo and the sultry Parisian cafes. Amidst the intellectual circles of the twenties and thirties, she develops relationships with her longtime partner H. D., and with Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier, Walter Benjamin, Hemingway, Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein, Man Ray, Freud, and others. This compelling memoir reveals Bryher's exotic childhood, her impact on Modernism, and her life of social justice — helping over 100 people escape from the Nazis through her home in Switzerland.
January 31, 2008
This was chosen as part of book club. We all hated it and decided not to finish it.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews