Twilight by Marjorie Bowen

Classic Ghost Stories

Tony Walker

Fiction, Drama, Science Fiction

4.9 • 686 Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Twilight opens in a garden where beauty wears a mask to protect it from the years, and twilight brings regrets and confessions. A young courtier stumbles upon a Duchess at dusk—painted, jewelled, and demanding. She wants him to be her father confessor, but what does Lucrezia Borgia want to confess and why does he run away? My first video podcast on Spotify... Publication: First published in God’s Playthings (E. P. Dutton, New York, 1913), under Marjorie Bowen’s principal pseudonym. Setting and subject: Ferrara; Lucrezia Borgia in her final twilight. Author: Marjorie Bowen (Margaret Gabrielle Vere Long, 1885–1952), prolific British writer of historical and supernatural fiction. Noted for: Lush atmosphere, moral chiaroscuro, and “twilight tales” that fuse history with the uncanny ⭐ Join my Patreon ⭐ https://patreon.com/barcud Go here for a library of ad-free stories, a monthly members only story and early access to the regular stories I put out. You can choose to have ghost stories only, or detective stories or classic literature, or all of them for either $5 or $10 a month. Many hundreds of hours of stories. Who needs Audible? Or, if you'd just like to make a one-off gesture of thanks for my work https://buymeacoffee.com/10mn8sk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:39.3	Everybody dies, don't they? Everybody don't they everybody come back isn't that so you tried to get into the long
0:45.8	draw today didn't you
0:47.1	how do that they'd come back with it what's the secret
0:50.9	hello I'm Tony Walker I'm the narrator of the classic ghost stories podcast.
0:56.8	And today I am going to read you a story called Twilight by Marjorie Bowen from this book,
1:02.9	which is a collection by an anthology created by Hugh Lamb way back in the 1980s.
1:10.3	Let's get started. Twilight by Marjorie Bowen. Three women
1:16.3	stood before a marble margined pool in the grounds of the Ducal Palace at Ferrara. Behind them
1:22.9	three cypresses waved against the purple sky from which the sun was beginning to fade. At the base
1:29.3	of these trees grew laurel, ilics and rose bushes. Round the pool was a sweep of smooth green,
1:36.3	across which the light wind lifted and chased the red, white and pink rose leaves. Beyond the
1:42.3	pool the gardens descended, terrace on terrace of opulent trees and
1:46.8	flowers. Behind the pool, the square strength of the palace rose, with winding steps leading to
1:54.2	balustrated balconies. Further still, beyond palace and garden hung vineyard and cornfield in the last warm maze of heat.
2:04.1	All was spacious, noble, silent, ambrosial scents rose from the heated earth,
2:10.3	the scent of pine, lily, rose and grape.
2:14.1	The centre woman of the three who stood by the pool was the Spanish Duchess Lucrezia, daughter of the Borgia Pope.
2:21.3	The other two held her up under the arms, for her limbs were weak beneath her.
2:26.3	The pool was spread with the thick veined leaves of water lilies and upright plants, with succulent stalks broke the surface of the water.
	...

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