Possession (37 page)

“Oh no.”

“Did she show it to him?”

“Oh no. I don’t think so. She never says so.”

“Do you think she wrote it for publication, in any form?”

“That’s a harder question. I think she knew it might be read. There are several sharp comments in it about contemporary biographical habits—rummaging in Dickens’s desk before he was fairly buried and that sort of thing—the usual Victorian comments. She knew he was a great poet and she must have known they would come—the scavengers—sooner or later if she didn’t burn it. And she didn’t burn it. She burned a lot of letters, you know. Mortimer Cropper thinks Patience and Faith burned them, but I think it was Ellen. Some are buried with her.”

“Why do you think she wrote the journal, Dr Nest? In order to have someone to talk to? As an examination of conscience? Out of a sense of duty? Why?”

“I do have a theory. It’s far-fetched, I think.”

“What is your theory?”

“I think she wrote it to baffle. Yes. To baffle.”

They stared at each other. Maud said, “To baffle whom? His biographers?”

“Just to baffle.”

Maud waited. Beatrice described helplessly her true experience:
“When I started on it, I thought, what a nice dull woman. And then I got the sense of things flittering and flickering behind all that solid—oh, I think of it as
panelling
. And then I got to think—I was being led on—to imagine the flittering flickering things—and that really it was all just as stolid and dull as anything. I thought I was making it all up, that she could have said something interesting—how shall I put it—intriguing—once in a while—but she
absolutely wasn’t going to
. It could be an occupational hazard of editing a dull journal, couldn’t it? Imagining that the author was deliberately baffling me?”

Maud looked back at Beatrice, baffled. She saw the outline of stalwart strapping under the so-soft speckled wool of Beatrice’s bolster-like front. The wool was basically powder-blue. It was hugely vulnerable. Beatrice dropped her voice. “I expect you think I’ve very little to show for all these years of work on these papers. Twenty-five years to be precise, and sliding past at increasing speed. I’ve felt very conscious of that—that slowness—with the increasing interest shown by—your sort of scholar—people with ideas about Ellen Ash and her work. All I had was a sort of sympathy for the—helpmeet aspect of her—and to be truthful, Dr Bailey, a real admiration for him, for Randolph Ash.
They
said it would be better to—to do this task which presented itself so to speak and seemed appropriate to my—my sex—my capacities as they were thought to be, whatever they were. A good feminist in
those
days, Dr Bailey, would have insisted on being allowed to work on the Ask and Embla poems.”

“Being allowed?”

“Oh. I see. Yes. On
working
on the Ask and Embla poems.” She hesitated. Then: “I don’t think you can imagine, Miss Bailey, how it was then. We were dependent and excluded persons. In my early days—indeed until the late 1960s—women were
not permitted
to enter the main Senior Common Room at Prince Albert College. We had our own, which was small and slightly
pretty
. Everything was decided in the pub—everything of import—where we were not invited and did not wish to go. I hate smoke and the smell of beer. But should not therefore be excluded from discussing departmental
policy. We were grateful for employment. We thought it was bad being young and—in some cases, not in mine—attractive—but it was worse when we grew older. There is an age at which, I profoundly believe, one becomes a
witch
, in such situations, Dr Bailey—through simple ageing—as always happened in history—and there are
witch-hunts—

“You will think I am mad. I am trying to excuse twenty-five years’ delay—with—personalities—You would have produced an edition twenty years ago. The truth is also, I wasn’t sure it was right. If she would have liked what I was doing.”

Maud felt a heat of fellow-feeling, unexpected and powerful. “Can’t you give up? Do your own work?”

“I feel responsible. To myself, all those years. To
her.”

“Could I see the journal? I’m particularly interested in 1859. I read his letters to her. The Yorkshire ones. Did she get to Huxley’s lecture?”

Was this too blatant? Apparently not. Beatrice raised herself slowly and extracted the volume from a grey steel cabinet. She clasped it for a moment defensively.

“A Professor Stern came. From Tallahassee. She wanted to know—to know—to find out about Ellen Ash’s sexual relations—with him—or anyone. I told her there was nothing of that kind in this journal. She said there must be—in the metaphors—in the omissions. We were not taught to do scholarship by studying primarily what was omitted, Dr Bailey. No doubt you find me naive.”

“No. I occasionally find Leonora Stern naive. No, that’s the wrong word. Single-minded and zealous. And she may have been right. Maybe what you find baffling is a systematic omission—”

Beatrice thought.
“That
I may grant. Something is omitted. I fail to see why it must be presumed to be—that kind of thing.”

This dogged and flushed minor defiance struck another chord of fellow-feeling in Maud, who edged her chair closer and looked into the rumpled weary face. Maud thought of Leonora’s ferocity, of Fergus’s wicked playfulness, of the whole tenor and endeavour of twentieth-century literary scholarship, of a bed like dirty egg-white.

“I agree, Dr Nest. In fact I do agree. The whole of our scholarship—the
whole of our thought—we question everything except the centrality of sexuality—Unfortunately feminism can hardly avoid privileging such matters. I sometimes wish I had embarked on geology myself.”

Beatrice Nest smiled and handed over the journal.

E
LLEN
A
SH’S
J
OURNAL

JUNE
4
TH
1859

The house is echoing and silent without my dear Randolph. I am full of projects for improvements in his comfort to be effected whilst he is away. The study curtains and those in his dressing-room must come down and be beaten out thoroughly on the line. I am in doubts as to the wisdom of attempting to
wash
the upper ones. The drawing-room pair I attempted have never been the same, either as to lustre or as to the “hang” of their folds. I shall set Bertha to a diligent beating and brushing and see what can be done. Bertha has been somewhat sluggish of late; she comes slowly when called and leaves tasks not rounded-off (the silver candlesticks, for instance, which have streaks of tarnish under the rims or the buttons on R’s nightshirt, which are still deficient). I wonder if something is amiss with Bertha. After the uncertainties and dilapidations—and yes, violence and destruction—wrought by her predecessors I had hoped that Bertha would continue to be the half-invisible busy birdlike presence she commenced with so successfully. Is she unhappy or unwell? Both I fear but do not wish to think. Tomorrow I will ask her directly. She would be surprised if she knew what courage, and of what variable kinds (as to the disturbance of both her comfortable goings-on and my own) this requires of me. I lack my mother’s force of character. I lack many things in which my dear mother was both proficient and naturally greatly endowed.

Above all, when my dear one is away, I miss our hours of quiet reading to each other of an evening. I wondered whether to go on with our study of Petrarch, where he left off, and decided against it; it loses too much without his beautiful voice bringing to life the ancient passion of the Italian. I read a chapter or two of Lyell’s
Principles of Geology
in order to share with him his enthusiasm for his study, and was equally charmed by the intellectual gravity of Lyell’s vision and chilled by his idea of the aeons of inhuman time that went to the
making of earth’s crust—which is still, if he is to be believed, perpetually in process of making. And where may hide what came and loved our clay? as the Poet asked finely. I do not—unlike the Reverend Mr Baulk—feel that this newly-perceived ancient state of things impinges on our settled faith in any decisive way. Perhaps I am unimaginative or too instinctive or intuitive in my trust. If the Tale of Noah’s Deluge turns out to be a fine poetic invention, shall I, the wife of a great poet, thereby cease to pay attention to its message about the universal punishment of sin? If the exemplary Life and mysteriously joyful Death of that greatest and only truly good Man were to be thought of as inventions that would be differently threatening.

And yet, to live in a time which has created a
climate
of such questioning … surely, after all, Herbert Baulk has cause for anxiety. He tells me I should not trouble my intellect with questions which my intuition (which he qualifies as womanly, virtuous, pure and so on and so on) can distinguish to be vain. He tells me I
know
that my Redeemer liveth, and looks eagerly for my assent to his proposition as though my assent provides him with strength also. Well, I assent. I do assent. I do know that my Redeemer liveth. But I should be grateful on earth if Herbert Baulk could respectably resolve his intellectual doubts so that our prayers could be full of honest praise and robust faith in a watchful Providence, rather than darkly
riddling
, as at present.

It is late for me to be writing this. I should not work so late if I was not alone—apart from the servants—in the house. I shall shut this book and betake myself to my pillow to fortify myself for the curtain-battle and the questioning of Bertha.

JUNE
6
TH

This day brings a letter from Patience, who begs to stay here overnight with her brood, on the way to her seaside summer in Etretat. I must make her welcome—and indeed I shall be more than glad to exchange views and news of many dear ones unfortunately distant. But it is not a good time to receive any visit, with half the furnishings dismantled and a thorough inventory and washing of the china embarked on and not carried through, and some of the chairs under covers, and others being stitched by the useful Mr Beale. He discovered between the arm and the deep cushion of Randolph’s study chair (the green leather tub chair) two guineas, the lost bill for candles which caused such a dispute,
and the penwiper presented by the Ladies of St Swithin’s church (and how they could have thought that anyone could have brought himself to sully all that fine work with ink blotches is beyond my comprehension). The chandelier is down and all its crystals are being carefully cleaned and polished. And into this more or less regulated disorder are to
rush
Enid, George, Arthur and Dora, who are as dangerous to crystal teardrops in their exaggerated carefulness as in any wanton playfulness. And yet they must come, of course. I have written to say so. Shall I retrieve or send away the chandelier? I dine in my study on broth and a slice of bread.

JUNE
7
TH

A letter from Randolph. He is well and pursuing his studies profitably. We shall have much to discuss on his return. I have had a sore throat and violent attacks of sneezing—maybe from all the dust aroused by the cleaning efforts—and retired to my couch for the afternoon, behind closed curtains, where I dozed only fitfully, not well. Tomorrow I must rouse myself to receive Patience. Bertha has made up beds for the children in the old Nursery. I have still not asked her if anything ails her—but she is if anything more sullen and more lethargic than she was a week ago.

JUNE
9
TH

How fortunate that the Master of this house is absent, for it has in the last twenty-four hours been converted into a veritable Pandemonium. George and Arthur are sturdy little creatures, for which we must always be grateful, and the dear girls—in repose—have an air of great sweetness with their soft pale skins and large unclouded eyes. Patience refers to them as my angels—and so they are, they are, but the city of Pandemonium was peopled by
fallen angels
, and all four of my exquisite nephews and nieces have a great propensity to
fall
just where it is most inopportune, dragging down cloths, scattering posies, and in Georgie’s case cannoning, just as I feared, into the china bowl containing the crystal drops from the chandelier which rattled like pebbles underwater. Patience’s nursemaid is not a great disciplinarian though she is excellent and perpetual at kissing and cuddling. Patience smiles benignly and says she declares Grace loves the dear infants truly, which I am sure is the case.

I told Patience she looked blooming, which is not exactly so, but I hope God will forgive me a small white lie. I was a little shocked at the changes in her—a fading of lustre from the hair, a lining of her dear tired face, a loss of that trimness of figure in which she used so to delight. She declares frequently that she is well and happy, but complains also of shortness of breath, lumbar pains, incessant toothaches and headaches, and other insidious ailments which have persisted—strengthened their attack, she says—since her last lying-in. She says Barnabas is the most
considerate
husband a woman could have, in this situation. He is much occupied with his theological writings—he is not of Herbert Baulk’s persuasion at all—and has hopes, Patience tells me, of a Deanery before too long.

JUNE
10
TH

Patience and I have had time for much private conversation, both over dinner and because the bevy of cherubs flew out to Regent’s Park for some air. We had a sharp-sweet reminiscing talk about the old days in the Close, and how we ran in the orchard and dreamed of being women. We talked quite girlishly of old fans and stockings and the pain of oppressive bonnets during long sermons and of the trials dear Mamma must have borne, giving birth to fifteen infants, of whom we four girl children only survived.

Patience with her customary acuteness observed immediately that something ailed Bertha, and made a shrewd guess as to what it might be. I said I should speak to Bertha, and had indeed been waiting for an opportune moment to do so. Patience said it could only harm Bertha and the household if it waited too long. Patience has a strong sense that it is contaminating to continue in the presence of sin. I said I felt we were enjoined to love the sinner, and Patience retorted that this did not entail cohabiting with the visible proof of the sin, unchastised. We remembered Mamma’s fortitude in such situations, and how she felt it to be her duty to inflict chastisement herself on erring young women. I remember one in particular, poor Thyrza Collitt, running screaming from room to room and Mamma whirling after her with upraised arm. I shall never forget that screaming. I shall never beat any servant of mine, and nor, whatever she says, will Patience, though she claims Barnabas believes it to be, in certain judiciously selected circumstances, a salutary proceeding. I do not believe my dearest Randolph
would ever consider applying his hand—or anything else—to any young person in our employment. I must ask Bertha to go, before he returns; it is my duty.