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Millicent Bracegirdle has led a sheltered life, the unmarried sister of a rural clergyman. When she is obliged to travel abroad for the first time, to France, a trivial mistake in her hotel has unfortunate consequences, placing her in an extremely compromising situation...
credits
released August 9, 2022
Read by Simon Stanhope.
Stacy Aumonier (1877–1928) was an artist, actor, essayist and author, best known for his highly regarded short stories. He was described by his contemporary John Galsworthy as "one of the best short-story writers of all time". He was born in London into an artistic family of Hugenot descent, his father William Aumonier being a well-known architectural sculptor and his uncle James Aumonier a celebrated landscape painter. After finishing school at Cranleigh in Surrey, Stacy initially followed in their footsteps as a visual artist, exhibiting paintings at the Royal Academy on a number of occasions in the early 1900s.
Stacy married Gertrude Peppercorn, a well-known concert pianist, in 1907, and it was after his marriage that he began to develop a new artistic career as a writer and performer of his own sketches. His stage performances were incredibly popular, and when he was called up for service in World War I (at the relatively late age of 40, in 1917) he gave his occupation as "Actor and writer". He was soon to become extremly acclaimed in the latter field, publishing six novels and volumes of essays and sketches. But it was his short stories – about 90 in all, published in numerous contemporary magazines and periodicals between 1915 and 1929 – that earned him his highest praise, and on which his reputation really rests today. His style is most often compared to the 19th century French author Guy de Maupassant.
Aumonier began to suffer from tuberculosis in the mid-1920s, when he was in his late 40s, and spent the last few years of his life in sanatoria in England and Europe. He died at a sanatorium in Geneva in December 1928, aged just 51. He was survived by his wife, their son Timothy (born 1921), and his stories, which his friend Galsworthy wrote at the time would ensure that "he will outlive nearly all the writers of his day."
'Miss Bracegirdle Does Her Duty' was first published in The Strand Magazine in September 1922, and appeared in book form the following year in a volume of Aumonier's collected stories entitled 'Miss Bracegirdle and Other Stories'. The story was adapted for television as a 30 minute episode of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' in 1958.
