E. Arnot Robertson was the pseudonym of Eileen Arbuthnot Robertson (1903-1961) and ‘Cullum’ was her first novel, published in 1928.
As with many other debut novels, it draws heavily on the writer’s own life.
Like her heroine, Esther Sieveking, Robertson spent her childhood at Holmwood in Surrey, moving to London in 1917. Two years later, she began a career in journalism, writing for ‘Answers’, a weekly magazine.
James McBey, an artist who painted her portrait in 1917, lent her his boat for the winter, moored at Mersea in Essex. She lived aboard until she broke her arm in a riding accident.
In the novel, Robertson donates her red hair to her anti-hero, Cullum Hayes, with whom Esther falls in love. Both are journalists. He has recently published his first novel, ‘The Chink’, which explores the characters’ different vulnerabilities.
He declares his own to be dissatisfaction with what he has gained and ‘aching for anything that is just out of reach’.
Much of the time, Esther and Cullum live together, at his mother’s house and then aboard a borrowed boat at Mersea. They strive to keep their relationship on an intellectual plane, despite their mounting sexual desire. Ultimately, this is too much to bear and they become lovers, engaged to be married.
Only for Esther to discover that Cullum is a cad and a bounder, when she catches him cheating at cards!
But this proves to be the thin end of the wedge: it soon becomes apparent that Cullum is an accomplished liar and serial womaniser. He has already broken an engagement to be with Esther, and has been unfaithful to her with his friend’s fiancée.
Esther is much given to horses and hunting. Torn apart by this betrayal, she engineers a serious hunting accident, turning her anger upon herself. This forces her into extended convalescence, from which she emerges with a pronounced limp.
The novel’s ending is somewhat contrived. Cullum abandons his friend’s fiancée, passing through a series of affairs before marrying an Italian. Then he becomes enamoured of an older French comedienne, but he has run away from bankruptcy and lives under an assumed name. There is a warrant out for his arrest.
Esther and the unhappy friend (who has since taken back his errant fiancée and acts as father to Cullum’s child) volunteer to confirm his identity when the police go to arrest him. But they find that he has killed himself out of unrequited love for the comedienne: a piece of unlikely poetic justice.
This is very much a period piece. The attitudes to love and sex seem particularly dated. Esther is insufferably conceited until her world collapses and she emerges a wiser woman. There are neat purple patches, but parts of the prose are very clunky, some of the conversation stilted.
The story of a decent woman falling for an unsuitable man is as old as the hills but, even so, the novel has a certain gawky charm.
Coincidentally, Robertson herself committed suicide, a few months after her husband’s death in a boating accident.
TD
June 2024
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