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I did a thread on Jan Morris, below, and promised to do one on Elizabeth, the mother of their five children. There’s not much in the public domain but some very interesting snippets from Morris’s own book. https://twitter.com/stilltish/status/1339237929256955910
Here’s Elizabeth with Jan. I will include all 21 mentions of her in Jan’s book (Conundrum).
Dedication. Elizabeth is portrayed as very supportive to Jan’s transition and even with recognising this compelling need earlier in their marriage.
Here the book lays out the basis , from Jan’s perspective, of success of their marriage. Love in its “purest” form. From the outset sharing their “feminine” instinct and how he felt “entombed” in a male physique.
This is a very interesting paragraph. The unknowable fantasy of your lover. Here “loving an idea, or loving himself, or your self”.
(Or loving the idea of himself AS yourself? Who knows. It’s now unknowable)
(Or loving the idea of himself AS yourself? Who knows. It’s now unknowable)
Elizabeth appears as the midwife to the birth of her new “sister”. Anticipating her husband’s needs. Jan describes acting until Elizabeth was fulfilled as a mother. (Worth checking back to how Jan described “fatherhood” as compensation for not being able to be a mother).
Jan set great store on children, by their own account, and saw even loving homosexual relationships as “sterile”. They went on to have five children, sadly losing a daughter while young.
Being a father figure is modelling an adventurous life rather than being “paternal”. At least he did not, as so many now do, usurp the title “mother”. Though being “maternal” usually means eschewing life’s adventure for the domestic drudgery.
Here is how Jan looks back on how we met Elizabeth which focuses on the similarity of their looks and their rapport and even how they were like “brother and sister”. Almost as if she was the muse to the future incarnation of “Jan”.
After embarking on transition the couple devised a new relationship and were reinvented as sisters in law. “I had in very truth become my own sister”.
A “girlish” trip with Elizabeth and the flattery from flirtation with men follows.
In a casual aside the decline in their physical relationship is noted.
Germaine Greer is cast as “unkind” in reflecting on the consequences for Elizabeth. However here is one of the few comments, in reply, from Elizabeth, which are in the public domain.
Thank you. @SDewherst Addition to the thread. https://twitter.com/sdewherst/status/1346510310895722496
