The Corsican Ordeal of Miss X [1951]

This fantastical tale of a conspiracy to assassinate twenty-one heads of state was first published anonymously in Go, London, n.s. no. 5 (Dec. 1951–Jan. 1952): 69–74, 76–7 (B&R C51.42). It was written several months previously, for Russell reported to Edith Finch on 31 July that he had “finished my silly story à la Mrs. [Ann] Radcliffe”. 48 has been included in the present volume because it was specially written for this “travel and leisure magazine published in association with the Sunday Times” (the description is from its letterhead)—rather than for Satan in the Suburbs (1953), the collection of stories in which it was reprinted just over a year later (London: The Bodley Head), pp. 61–84 (New York: Simon and Schuster), pp. 60–86 (B&R A94). As stated in the preface to that book, Russell intended his Corsican yarn “to combine the moods of Zuleika Dobson and The Mysteries of Udolpho”—respectively, Max Beerbohm’s satire of Edwardian Oxford and Radcliffe’s gothic romance, about which Russell spoke dismissively on a BBC Brains Trust in January 1947 (see ra rec. acq. 1,110). He also warned that any curious readers led to search for “Ghibelline ancestors” (see 333: 24) would be disappointed (1953, 7). Such details were imaginatively constructed. Indeed, it is not clear whether Russell ever visited the Mediterranean island. The setting had supposedly suggested itself to him from the holiday plans of his secretary at the time, Sheila Zinkin, to whom he would subsequently inscribe a copy of Satan in the Suburbs to “the onlie begetter of the ensuing Corsican Ordeal from her well-wisher BR”. He had then written the story, he humorously recalled, “as a warning of what might befall her” (1969, 35).