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The Camomile
Of my writing he said, 'I see. It is like the camomile - the more it is trodden on the faster it grows.'
Ellen Carstairs is born to write. Orphaned at an early age, she and her brother are brought up in her aunt's evangelical and 'douce' Glasgow household at the turn of the century. Written in epistolary form, The Camomile, a semi-autobiographical novel, was first published in 1922. It records the mind of the aspiring female artist who struggles to carve out writing space when pressure is laid on her enlightened self to bow to more acceptable ideological patterns. Encouraged by the erudite and esoteric 'Don John', and also by her eccentric friend and English teacher, Ellen begins to break into the world of print. On becoming engaged however to a young doctor whose 'shoulders blot out the rest of the world', Ellen discovers that her fascination with the creative life is incompatible with the conventional trajectory mapped out for her. 'In how much am I to be myself, in how much assume a role laid down by him?' she questions. The answer comes to her as she is on the brink of marriage.
Ellen Carstairs is born to write. Orphaned at an early age, she and her brother are brought up in her aunt's evangelical and 'douce' Glasgow household at the turn of the century. Written in epistolary form, The Camomile, a semi-autobiographical novel, was first published in 1922. It records the mind of the aspiring female artist who struggles to carve out writing space when pressure is laid on her enlightened self to bow to more acceptable ideological patterns. Encouraged by the erudite and esoteric 'Don John', and also by her eccentric friend and English teacher, Ellen begins to break into the world of print. On becoming engaged however to a young doctor whose 'shoulders blot out the rest of the world', Ellen discovers that her fascination with the creative life is incompatible with the conventional trajectory mapped out for her. 'In how much am I to be myself, in how much assume a role laid down by him?' she questions. The answer comes to her as she is on the brink of marriage.
305 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1922
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279 people want to read
About the author
Catherine Carswell
22 books3 followersCatherine Roxburgh Carswell (née Macfarlane) was a Scottish author, biographer and journalist, and a contributor to the Scottish Renaissance. Her work is considered an integral part of Scottish women's writing of the early 20th century.
The daughter of a Glasgow merchant, Carswell was educated at the Park School. From 1901 to 1903 she attended classes in English Literature at Glasgow University. She went on to study music at the Schumann Conservatorium in Frankfurt am Main before taking up employment as reviewer and dramatic critic at the Glasgow Herald from 1907 until 1915. She was subsequently an assistant theatre critic for the Observer.
Carswell's first marriage, to Herbert Jackson in 1903, was annulled in 1908, and in 1915 she married Donald Carswell. Her first novel, Open the Door, was published in 1920, followed in 1922 by The Camomile. She developed a particular interest in the life and work of Robert Burns, publishing her celebrated The Life of Robert Burns in 1930: her unsentimental account of his life upset many Burns traditionalists. She was a close friend of DH Lawrence, and in 1932 she published The Savage Pilgrimage: a Narrative of DH Lawrence.
The daughter of a Glasgow merchant, Carswell was educated at the Park School. From 1901 to 1903 she attended classes in English Literature at Glasgow University. She went on to study music at the Schumann Conservatorium in Frankfurt am Main before taking up employment as reviewer and dramatic critic at the Glasgow Herald from 1907 until 1915. She was subsequently an assistant theatre critic for the Observer.
Carswell's first marriage, to Herbert Jackson in 1903, was annulled in 1908, and in 1915 she married Donald Carswell. Her first novel, Open the Door, was published in 1920, followed in 1922 by The Camomile. She developed a particular interest in the life and work of Robert Burns, publishing her celebrated The Life of Robert Burns in 1930: her unsentimental account of his life upset many Burns traditionalists. She was a close friend of DH Lawrence, and in 1932 she published The Savage Pilgrimage: a Narrative of DH Lawrence.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
January 23, 2025
4.25 stars
“Don’t you agree that there must be something radically wrong with a civilisation, society, theory of life – call it what you like – in which a hard-working serious young woman like myself cannot obtain, without enormous difficulty, expense, or infliction of pain on others, a quiet, clean, pleasant room in which she can work, dream her dreams, write out her thoughts, and keep her few treasures in peace?”
This is a plea by a female writer for a room of her own to write in 1922, six/seven years before Woolf’s similar request. Ellen Carstairs is an orphan who lives with her brother and her Aunt Harry (who is an evangelical Christian). Ellen has studied music in Frankfurt and has now returned to her native Glasgow where the novel is set. It is an epistolary novel, Ellen writes a daily journal which she sends to her friend Ruby. Ellen gives piano lessons to help with the finances and has several female friends in her social circle who appear to be looking for husbands. Ellen is less passionate about music than she is about writing. She finds a small room to rent where she can have some peace to do her writing, away from her household.
Ellen is observant and finds that she also doesn’t fit easily into what society expects her to be:
“Why should Mrs B., when she gives me solemn advice about bedlinen, or shows me the crochet she is doing for Madge’s toilet-covers, either bore me savagely or make me want to shriek with laughter? Are not these the people I have grown up among? Why should their thoughts be so unfamiliar, even grotesque, to me?”
Ellen struggles with some of the things her female circle of friends see as expected. Ellen does find a few friends; an elderly ex-priest and scholar she nicknames Don John, who supports her aspiration to write and gives advice:
“Of my writing he said “I see. It is like the camomile – the more it is trodden on the faster it grows.” And when I asked him who had said that, he smiled again and said, “An observant fat man called Falstaff.””
She does fall in love with the brother of a friend who seems to be ok and not too oppressive. He is in the Indian civil service, and she will be expected to go and live there. Typically, Ellen realises there are problems and Duncan is somewhat inconsistent:
“What, for instance, does Duncan want of me as his wife? He wants me to be womanly, but not to go too far even in that direction … likes me to be what he calls au fait with books and questions of the day, but always to skim the surface lightly … he hopes I shall be a good housewife and mother but without being too much taken up with domestic details as this “makes many married women such bores.” Somehow one feels one is being made into a kind of shop window that the admiring world may be shown what a modern woman can be like, until in time what one really is, is quite lost sight of, even by oneself.”
One of the undertones of the novel is mental health and this has parallels with Carswell’s own life. There is a suicide prior to the start of the novel and one of the peripheral characters is admitted to an asylum. Ellen’s own mental health appears to deteriorate after she becomes engaged:
“Will anyone ever be able to explain why on some days, though one may feel quite cheerful and even happy, one sees a world without any magic in its outlines and colours? With me, when such days have followed one another in a fairly long succession – say for a week on end – I begin to wonder if this may not be the true and normal vision of life?”
Ellen navigates the waters of convention and this is an interesting novel. There is a virago edition and the British Library has recently republished it in their women writers series. I enjoyed this.
“Don’t you agree that there must be something radically wrong with a civilisation, society, theory of life – call it what you like – in which a hard-working serious young woman like myself cannot obtain, without enormous difficulty, expense, or infliction of pain on others, a quiet, clean, pleasant room in which she can work, dream her dreams, write out her thoughts, and keep her few treasures in peace?”
This is a plea by a female writer for a room of her own to write in 1922, six/seven years before Woolf’s similar request. Ellen Carstairs is an orphan who lives with her brother and her Aunt Harry (who is an evangelical Christian). Ellen has studied music in Frankfurt and has now returned to her native Glasgow where the novel is set. It is an epistolary novel, Ellen writes a daily journal which she sends to her friend Ruby. Ellen gives piano lessons to help with the finances and has several female friends in her social circle who appear to be looking for husbands. Ellen is less passionate about music than she is about writing. She finds a small room to rent where she can have some peace to do her writing, away from her household.
Ellen is observant and finds that she also doesn’t fit easily into what society expects her to be:
“Why should Mrs B., when she gives me solemn advice about bedlinen, or shows me the crochet she is doing for Madge’s toilet-covers, either bore me savagely or make me want to shriek with laughter? Are not these the people I have grown up among? Why should their thoughts be so unfamiliar, even grotesque, to me?”
Ellen struggles with some of the things her female circle of friends see as expected. Ellen does find a few friends; an elderly ex-priest and scholar she nicknames Don John, who supports her aspiration to write and gives advice:
“Of my writing he said “I see. It is like the camomile – the more it is trodden on the faster it grows.” And when I asked him who had said that, he smiled again and said, “An observant fat man called Falstaff.””
She does fall in love with the brother of a friend who seems to be ok and not too oppressive. He is in the Indian civil service, and she will be expected to go and live there. Typically, Ellen realises there are problems and Duncan is somewhat inconsistent:
“What, for instance, does Duncan want of me as his wife? He wants me to be womanly, but not to go too far even in that direction … likes me to be what he calls au fait with books and questions of the day, but always to skim the surface lightly … he hopes I shall be a good housewife and mother but without being too much taken up with domestic details as this “makes many married women such bores.” Somehow one feels one is being made into a kind of shop window that the admiring world may be shown what a modern woman can be like, until in time what one really is, is quite lost sight of, even by oneself.”
One of the undertones of the novel is mental health and this has parallels with Carswell’s own life. There is a suicide prior to the start of the novel and one of the peripheral characters is admitted to an asylum. Ellen’s own mental health appears to deteriorate after she becomes engaged:
“Will anyone ever be able to explain why on some days, though one may feel quite cheerful and even happy, one sees a world without any magic in its outlines and colours? With me, when such days have followed one another in a fairly long succession – say for a week on end – I begin to wonder if this may not be the true and normal vision of life?”
Ellen navigates the waters of convention and this is an interesting novel. There is a virago edition and the British Library has recently republished it in their women writers series. I enjoyed this.
June 28, 2025
2.5
The Camomile is a reissue of Catherine Carswell's novel originally published in 1922. She is a young woman who has been orphaned and now lives with her Aunt Harry in Glasgow. She has work as a piano teacher but her real passion is writing. She has no plans to marry and I'd quite dismissive of friends who marry young.
The Camomile is a look at what life was like after the first World War when women's roles were beginning to change, if very slowly. Certainly Ellen Carstairs has bigger ambitions when the book begins.
However I felt the book dragged through a lot of the narrative. I didn't particularly engage with any of the characters - and there were a lot of characters who I lost track of.
Overall I was a little bored during the second part of the book. Ellen breaks the mould but not quite enough to make the book more enjoyable.
As a piece of social commentary it's quite interesting but it wasn't really my thing.
Thankyou to Netgalley and Independent Publishers Group for the advance review copy.
The Camomile is a reissue of Catherine Carswell's novel originally published in 1922. She is a young woman who has been orphaned and now lives with her Aunt Harry in Glasgow. She has work as a piano teacher but her real passion is writing. She has no plans to marry and I'd quite dismissive of friends who marry young.
The Camomile is a look at what life was like after the first World War when women's roles were beginning to change, if very slowly. Certainly Ellen Carstairs has bigger ambitions when the book begins.
However I felt the book dragged through a lot of the narrative. I didn't particularly engage with any of the characters - and there were a lot of characters who I lost track of.
Overall I was a little bored during the second part of the book. Ellen breaks the mould but not quite enough to make the book more enjoyable.
As a piece of social commentary it's quite interesting but it wasn't really my thing.
Thankyou to Netgalley and Independent Publishers Group for the advance review copy.
November 24, 2024
Ellen has returned from a few years studying music in Germany, and is now living in Glasgow with her religious aunt and her brother. She is planning to make her living by teaching music, though she is aware that she has little aptitude for this, and increasingly, she wants to write, but isn't sure that she can. Early on she manages to get hold of a room of her own, (albeit a fairly shabby one), to teach and write in.
Told in letters and a diary in Ellen's own words, we are with her as she tries to work out what her place is, and what she wants. Does she want to write? Does she want to become a wife?
There are many aspects of this novel that are interesting, the choices faced by a woman in her position at that time, and her thoughts and ideas, and yet I found her hard to get to know, and the story was not particularly engaging. I did like it, and I can see it's merits; I understand why it is a part of this series, but it's not one of my favourites.
Told in letters and a diary in Ellen's own words, we are with her as she tries to work out what her place is, and what she wants. Does she want to write? Does she want to become a wife?
There are many aspects of this novel that are interesting, the choices faced by a woman in her position at that time, and her thoughts and ideas, and yet I found her hard to get to know, and the story was not particularly engaging. I did like it, and I can see it's merits; I understand why it is a part of this series, but it's not one of my favourites.
May 15, 2019
'I see. It is like the camomile - the more it is trodden on the faster it grows'
This started off well, and I was loving the way the story unwinds in epistolary form, as Ellen Carstairs writes constantly to her close friend Ruby about her life, love and career ambition in Glasgow. But after getting to just over half way I was finding that it dragged quite a bit. I was also a bit overwhelmed by the strong evangelical theme that ran through the story, it seemed a bit preachy to me. It could be that I had a long gap in the middle when I read other things which blurred over the cleverness of the book, but I fear not...
I powered through, adament that this was one of those books that I 'should' be reading, because it highlighted all the problems in the turn of the ceuntry with women wishing to work, marriage and independent thought. And I suppose it ended well, but I was more relieved than anything.
This started off well, and I was loving the way the story unwinds in epistolary form, as Ellen Carstairs writes constantly to her close friend Ruby about her life, love and career ambition in Glasgow. But after getting to just over half way I was finding that it dragged quite a bit. I was also a bit overwhelmed by the strong evangelical theme that ran through the story, it seemed a bit preachy to me. It could be that I had a long gap in the middle when I read other things which blurred over the cleverness of the book, but I fear not...
I powered through, adament that this was one of those books that I 'should' be reading, because it highlighted all the problems in the turn of the ceuntry with women wishing to work, marriage and independent thought. And I suppose it ended well, but I was more relieved than anything.
February 3, 2010
Ellen Carstairs has returned to her home in Glasgow, with her maiden aunt and her brother, after spending several years studying music in Germany. Although she intends a career as a music teacher, she is drawn to the literary life instead, much against the conventional views of her friends and family. It's written in the form of letters and an extended diary kept for Ellen's best friend, and though it did take me a while to get used to Ellen's vivacious, dramatic voice, I ended up liking her a lot and rooting for her to defy society and do what she wanted. The Camomile is a vivid picture of a woman who needs a room of her own: in Ellen's words, "a quiet, clean, pleasant room in which she can work, dream her dreams, write out her thoughts, and keep her few treasures in peace."
November 30, 2016
More like 3.5 stars, but I am rounding up because I do love these stories I've come to think of as "Room of One's Own" stories. This was absolutely enjoyable, but not really what I've been in the mood for as of late. Do recommend to my fellow Virago- and Persephone-loving ladies.
June 22, 2007
Semi-autobiographical, The Camomile is the account of a young music student, Ellen, who tries to break free of the conventions of her time. She finds her own musings about religion and sexual independence very antithetical to the people around her. She writes her thoughts down in a journal for her friend Ruby. Along the same lines as Kate Chopin's The Awakening.
October 9, 2025
Absolutely loved this introspective, funny, beautifully written novel from 1922, reissued in the British Library Women Writers series.
Ellen Carstairs is a young woman recently returned to Glasgow from Frankfort, where she has spent three years getting a music education. An orphan, she lives with her annoying evangelical aunt Harry and her beloved younger brother Ronald, who although being disabled is brilliant and has a great career ahead of him in New York when he is apprenticed. To support herself she teaches music, with the rest of her time mostly spent reading in the library and writing in a small backroom she rents, as she tries to figure out what to do with her life.
This is a feminist novel about “a room of one’s own”, written seven years before Virginia Woolf’s, but that is not the main point of the novel. It is rather a bildungsroman, with Ellen pondering life, its sensations and choices, and debating with herself and her friend Ruby, to whom she writes, what is truth and not, what to do with her life, and what is the right way to live.
It is an unsentimental novel, surprisingly so considering it was written in 1922. Ellen talks laconically about amorous professors, lesbian crushes, extramarital affairs and mental illness, and dispassionately considers her childhood friends’ engagements and marriages. Rather like Virginia Woolf, she examines everything about her and within her in detail and tries to pin down and describe everything as truthfully as possibly.
I think it is one of those novels that you like if you can recognize your own thoughts in Ellen’s. If not, you will probably find it dull. I was mesmerized by Ellen but also by her life in 1920s Scotland. I found the insufferable but lovable aunt to be hilarious, and could definitely identify with Ellen’s feelings of guilt and exasperation.
In the end, Ellen has to make a defining choice. This to me was the weakest part of the novel.
Highly recommended reading, and I’m so glad I had a chance to read this forgotten novel.
Ellen Carstairs is a young woman recently returned to Glasgow from Frankfort, where she has spent three years getting a music education. An orphan, she lives with her annoying evangelical aunt Harry and her beloved younger brother Ronald, who although being disabled is brilliant and has a great career ahead of him in New York when he is apprenticed. To support herself she teaches music, with the rest of her time mostly spent reading in the library and writing in a small backroom she rents, as she tries to figure out what to do with her life.
This is a feminist novel about “a room of one’s own”, written seven years before Virginia Woolf’s, but that is not the main point of the novel. It is rather a bildungsroman, with Ellen pondering life, its sensations and choices, and debating with herself and her friend Ruby, to whom she writes, what is truth and not, what to do with her life, and what is the right way to live.
It is an unsentimental novel, surprisingly so considering it was written in 1922. Ellen talks laconically about amorous professors, lesbian crushes, extramarital affairs and mental illness, and dispassionately considers her childhood friends’ engagements and marriages. Rather like Virginia Woolf, she examines everything about her and within her in detail and tries to pin down and describe everything as truthfully as possibly.
I think it is one of those novels that you like if you can recognize your own thoughts in Ellen’s. If not, you will probably find it dull. I was mesmerized by Ellen but also by her life in 1920s Scotland. I found the insufferable but lovable aunt to be hilarious, and could definitely identify with Ellen’s feelings of guilt and exasperation.
In the end, Ellen has to make a defining choice. This to me was the weakest part of the novel.
Highly recommended reading, and I’m so glad I had a chance to read this forgotten novel.
December 31, 2024
This book was not terribly good, but I really enjoyed reading it, because it is a wonderful microcosm of life in Glasgow in the early 20th century. The details of neighbourhoods (Langside is very dull and respectable) and attitudes and activities of Ellen Carstairs provide an undeniably authentic look into the past, because, for all the sophomoric claims about what makes true writerly imagination, this is an undeniably heavily autobiographical book. I suspect that the internal musings of young Ellen have little to do with Carswell's desire to create a character, and are instead serving as a mouthpiece for Carswell herself. This is autofiction from a half century before the term was invented (1976, according to the OED). And if these musings are genuinely the thoughts of Carswell herself, then I don't think she was a terribly nice person. Ellen is constantly making quite snide, unkind remarks about the people in her life, which seem to me entirely uncalled for -- and, given the narrative gimmick that this diary is simply notes for letters to her friend, seem quite gossipy. It's one thing to make private remarks in a private diary of this sort, but if you're instead writing a draft of letters to a friend, it becomes awfully catty and mean.
There was, however, a very good extended metaphor about marriage for a woman being like walking to a destination on foot, rather than taking a car in traffic. What is so laborious for the foot traveller is complicated further by the rapid, easy passage of everyone in cars blocking road crossings; how it is easier to trust one's progress to a driver, and look out in ease and comfort at the world from inside a car; and yet, if the driver goes in the opposite direction from where you want to go, you'll never get somewhere that on foot you would eventually reach.
I think there's a real authenticity about young Ellen's internal agonies about her engagement that wouldn't work in a modern book written today, but set in the same era. The way she genuinely wants to have her own career and independence, yet at the same time fully buys into all sorts of gender essentialist claptrap, reads very differently from the pen of an author who genuinely lived that life, compared to an author who imagines one living that life, while having in fact grown up in a world whose public Discourse has evolved from a century's converation of those ideas. A modern writer would probably try to take Ellen on a journey in which she realizes that she can have a fulfilled life that does not depend on carrying out her expected role as a wife and mother; but from Carswell's pen, it seems like Ellen is genuinely giving up something that she wants and believes in. The sacrifice is realer, and cannot be turned into a #GirlBoss parable.
I think if the quality of the writing had been better, I would have been very moved by this book. But as it is, it's not a terribly good book, and interesting more as an artifact of the literary history of my city, than as a piece of literature.
There was, however, a very good extended metaphor about marriage for a woman being like walking to a destination on foot, rather than taking a car in traffic. What is so laborious for the foot traveller is complicated further by the rapid, easy passage of everyone in cars blocking road crossings; how it is easier to trust one's progress to a driver, and look out in ease and comfort at the world from inside a car; and yet, if the driver goes in the opposite direction from where you want to go, you'll never get somewhere that on foot you would eventually reach.
I think there's a real authenticity about young Ellen's internal agonies about her engagement that wouldn't work in a modern book written today, but set in the same era. The way she genuinely wants to have her own career and independence, yet at the same time fully buys into all sorts of gender essentialist claptrap, reads very differently from the pen of an author who genuinely lived that life, compared to an author who imagines one living that life, while having in fact grown up in a world whose public Discourse has evolved from a century's converation of those ideas. A modern writer would probably try to take Ellen on a journey in which she realizes that she can have a fulfilled life that does not depend on carrying out her expected role as a wife and mother; but from Carswell's pen, it seems like Ellen is genuinely giving up something that she wants and believes in. The sacrifice is realer, and cannot be turned into a #GirlBoss parable.
I think if the quality of the writing had been better, I would have been very moved by this book. But as it is, it's not a terribly good book, and interesting more as an artifact of the literary history of my city, than as a piece of literature.
April 6, 2019
The feminist critique contained within these pages is a little wayward until the conclusion, in correlation with the intellectual ‘awakening’ of Ellen Carstairs. Although it’s ostensibly a ‘room of one’s own’ narrative, Ellen is so distinctly unlikeable that it’s hard to root for her. Her torment is at times vainglorious and turgid. Towards the end though, the writing tightened and it offered some catharsis. Unfortunately, Ellen seems shallow and her writing pretentious, the desire to write one of self-induced glory-seeking rather a natural urge. It often reads like teenage angst rather than thought-provoking feminist consciousness.
May 18, 2025
I was thrilled to read The Camomile's ARC. I love the British Library Women Writers books. The fact that it's set in the 1920s, in epistolary format, and centers on an independent young woman made me even more excited to get started. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy this book and found it a slog to get through. I think it was a combination of having a very unlikeable main character. Ellen always made snide comments in her journal/letter to Ruby. Sadly, the important feminist ideas that Carswell outlines seem lost in the snarkiness.
August 30, 2025
📖 ARC READ 📖
4.25⭐️
I really enjoyed this book. I liked Ellen as a main character and watching her navigate and figure out life and love. There were moments that reminded me of myself. I thought the way the novel was set up was interesting, the mix of letter writing to Ruby but also as a sort of journal was nice. I did find it interesting that we never meet or hear from Ruby and that the month spent together was only shared through reminiscing in letters.
4.25⭐️
I really enjoyed this book. I liked Ellen as a main character and watching her navigate and figure out life and love. There were moments that reminded me of myself. I thought the way the novel was set up was interesting, the mix of letter writing to Ruby but also as a sort of journal was nice. I did find it interesting that we never meet or hear from Ruby and that the month spent together was only shared through reminiscing in letters.
September 25, 2024
This epistolary novel chronicles the struggles of a young Scottish woman (mostly) in Germany. It was interesting, a bit too long and boring for me, but I really enjoyed the ending. What a banger!
3 stars
3 stars
Want to read
September 18, 2024I learned of this book via this post: https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2....
January 22, 2025
Reprinted by the British Library. A reminder to me why i was the despair of English teachers. This kind of writing is why I turned to science fiction.
May 15, 2025
I was so excited to read this, as I had heard it recommended by Miranda Mills on Youtube! I was so fortunate to be able to read a preview copy early from NetGalley, of the British Women's Library edition. I love epistolary form stories and books, and this one was lovely. I enjoyed it very much, and would definitely recommend to any other vintage book readers, especially Persephone or Virago Modern Classics folks!
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews