Ursula Bethell’s ‘November 1937’ and Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

Abstract

In his first edition of Ursula Bethell’s Collected Poems, Vincent O’Sullivan observes in an end-note to ‘November 1937’ that ‘[w]ritten across the side of the manuscript is the quotation “Aujourd’hui, avec moi, en paradis - quelle promptitude! quelle compagnie! quel séjour”- Bossuet.’ (1985, 106) In his second edition of the Collected Poems, O’Sullivan identifies the author of these words as Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, a ‘seventeenth-century French cleric and theologian’ (1997, 108), but the exact source of this quotation remains unknown.