by Mary Hoban
The 1887 festive season was not a happy one in Oxford. Julia’s children and grandchildren had gathered around her, and Tom had joined them, but spending time with his family only made him more conscious of his own loneliness, and he lashed out at Julia. Polly reprimanded him swiftly, telling him that he would regret it very much someday if he went on treating Julia as if she were in a state to bear argument and recrimination, and as if this illness of hers might last an indefinite time. Smarting from Polly’s rebuke, he paid his monthly allowance to Julia — Polly asked him to keep up the full payments — and quickly took himself back to Dublin. There, he sat down and wrote a fierce summation of Julia’s singular failing. She had always been too proud to render that respect, consideration and obedience to her husband, which as a wife she was bound to render. It was what every wife ought to render to every husband who is of sound mind, and requires nothing involving sin.
Julia responded immediately:
Your letter is just what I expected it to be & correspondence excepting upon the matters relating to our children is useless. I shewed your letter to Lucy who I thought as a young wife would appreciate it. I should like you to have heard her comments. I am thankful that I am proud, if I were not under the circumstances of my married life things might have been different to what they are.
These exchanges on marriage continued over the following few weeks. In one such letter, Julia provided Tom with a bitter, if succinct, summation of his singular failing, a tyrannical understanding of marriage. She told him that the way he spoke of obedience on the part of a wife to her husband was something out of the Dark Ages and suited someone who was, as she described it, a pervert to Romanism. She believed that Tom had inherited this need for dominance from his father, after hearing from her friend Mrs Bonamy Price, whose husband had taught at Rugby under Dr Arnold, that he must have [been] an extremely arbitrary & tyrannical man & if your mother had not been of a very gentle & yielding nature things might have been very different in your home to what they were. Julia’s informant had also said that Mrs Arnold daren’t interfere, although she was very fond of her husband she was terribly afraid of him, a situation that Julia felt was far from ideal and one that she was thankful to say that none of her married daughters were likely to experience. Fear. Such a small word, but Julia had been determined that her daughters would not inhabit it. Julia concluded the letter by hoping that when she died, Tom would as soon as possible marry again, and then perhaps have his ideal of married life realised.
In the midst of this never-ending attack and retreat came one of those moments, so rarely referred to, yet fundamental to the lives of women. As a postscript to a letter and marked Private, Polly told Julia that her daughter’s first menstrual cycle had begun. Poor Dot’s troubles began yesterday. Rather early isn’t it? Only twelve and half. She was frightened out of her wits poor child. So succinct yet conveying so much, the news reminded Julia forcefully of her own first period, when she, too, had been frightened, but unlike Dot, had not had a mother or a grandmother to turn to for reassurance.
The disease was progressing so quickly now that even those who saw Julia regularly were horrified by the change in her condition. As more and more people wrote to Tom of her decline, he finally began to take these reports seriously, and when he heard that Jowett himself had been to call on her, he expressed his sorrow at the pain she was in and thanked her for her kindness in writing to him, for sitting up in your bed of pain and dazedness, after such a night and those two doses of morphia, in order to write to me; but it is like your unselfish and expansive nature. Despite these sympathetic words, Tom also wrote to explain that he could not afford to maintain Julia’s allowance and that other members of the family would have to help. That, or Julia and Ethel would need to move to a smaller house or into lodgings.
Polly and Lucy set about raising a fund for their mother, aware that moving house would probably be fatal to her. When various members of the family agreed to assist yet again, Polly told Tom that she was sure he would not find it difficult to manage his share and reminded him that Julia’s comfort was the first consideration as it would in all probability be her last year. Frank, now working as a doctor in Oxford and taking an active role in assisting with his mother’s dressings and her general medical care, also entered the fray. In a strongly worded letter to his father, he told Tom that Julia was a confirmed invalid, becoming more and more helpless, and would not live for several years as Tom appeared to believe:
The change in her condition since the beginning of the year has been very rapid & progressive. When cancer arrives at the condition in which hers is now it does not generally spare a patient many months. Of course her marvellous constitution & nervous energy must be taken into account, but this is likely to be of less effect in the future than it has been in the past in postponing that condition of a rapid growth of the tumour which is now unfortunately well established.
Moving house was an expensive business, and considering Julia’s very precarious condition, any move taken on the assumption that she would live several years in the new house would be, he said, a dismal farce.
His son’s words made an impact. Tom paid his share, Julia did not move, and Tom became more intent on pleasing her, rather than irritating or upsetting her. Knowing her love of gardens and flowers, he sent a fallen blossom from a camellia and some heliotrope. Julia, in turn, adopted a more gentle tone towards him and once more took to signing her letters as his affectionate wife. Writing was becoming more of an ordeal for her, particularly when her arm grew to the size of a child’s body. On one occasion she described what this felt like and how temporary relief was obtained by inserting tubes into it to drain the excess fluid and blood:
Yesterday was the day of the most appalling agony that I have yet had to bear & I write a few lines now in case I should not be able to write again or to anyone else. I had an unusually good night on Wednesday & up to about 10 o’clock I felt fairly well excepting that I felt weaker than usual. I then began to feel a good deal of pain in the bad arm & down that side of the back. This went on increasing up 1.30 when Ethel got frightened & went to the hospital for Frank — he was amazed & alarmed at the state of things & after some deliberation he determined to put in two punctures. This he did, the first caused very little discharge but after the second the blood gushed out, & immediately coagulated into a jelly. The relief afforded was extraordinary & by 10 o’clock I was all but free from pain & very contrary to my expectations I had a very good night, & although terribly weak & in a good deal of pain which is only kept down by constant hypodermic injections of morphia.
By Easter the pain was excruciating and Julia’s morphia dose was doubled.
Still she remained curious and concerned about others. It was the only way she knew to live. She comforted Polly, who was suffering from severe neuralgia and was anxious that she could not edit her novel. She encouraged Ethel to establish a life of her own — providing it was not, as Ethel had hoped, on the stage — to go to balls and dinners, to continue with her writing. She fretted about Frank, who, having completed medicine, still did not have a secure position and had fallen in love with the delightfully named, but somehow obscurely unacceptable, Miss Valentine. And she worried about Judy, who was pregnant and shortly to give birth a second time — her first baby had died at birth — and Julia, too ill to be with her daughter, could only wait for news. It came towards the end of June. Judy had given birth to a boy, and she and Leonard called him Julian Sorell Huxley. In an era when eldest sons were often named after their father or grandfathers, this was a singular honour to Julia.
Refusing to accept her declining strength, Julia continued to receive a steady stream of visitors through her door. Felicia Skene came to see her almost daily — she was one of the visitors Julia would never turn away — as did Mr Chavasse, the rector of St Peter-le-Bailey in Oxford. Julia had always liked his simple services. Her neighbours the Müllers and Charles Dodgson were also r
egular visitors. Benjamin Jowett called on her, too, and throughout the summer, people from beyond Oxford arrived, including her old friend from Ireland Edward Whately and her cousin Fanny. Even ravaged as she was, Julia’s sense of humour did not desert her. When her neighbour Mrs de Brissay, the wife of the diocesan inspector of schools for the deanery of Oxford, burst into tears when she saw how ill she was, Julia was astonished. I did not think that she cared that much whether I was alive or dead …
Her children came often, each in their own way giving comfort and providing her with a vital interest in living. Polly desperately wanted Julia to see her novel published, and Willy, who had read a draft of it, told Julia that she might look forward to finding herself the mother of a famous woman. Even Theodore, who, since the death of Arthur, had assumed the role of black sheep in the family, was there in spirit. A letter had arrived from him, telling Julia that her loving letters had been a great solace to him in his troubles. His life had become a shadow play of Tom’s — he was in constant financial distress and now his short-lived marriage in New Zealand had broken down — and Julia felt his sense of hopelessness and the physical distance between them keenly. That, and the fact that she could provide no support for him.
Tom was one person who did not make his way to Oxford — instead, he visited his old Irish friend Josephine Benison. If Julia took offence, she did not reveal it. As summer morphed into autumn and then winter, she continued to send almost daily letters and parcels to him, and although these written conversations became increasingly punctuated by missing and scratched out words and blotches — the constant hypodermic injections of morphia she now required caused her to drop off to sleep with the pen in her hand — they were remarkably amiable. She offered sympathy when he became ill — wrap up properly and take a glass of good stiff whisky & water when you go to bed — and she even advised him on how he should negotiate his contracts and the fees he should seek.
Julia was no longer willing to vent any animosity. She wanted peace. She was preparing for her death. In fact, she wished for it, as she became more emaciated and weaker by the day. Her body was covered in eczema, and she needed oil to be applied several times a night to ease the pain. She felt more & more incapable of doing anything either mental or bodily and she was suffused with that awful feeling, that of waking up to another day, of the sun shining through a little, but not for her.
When, at the end of January 1888, Polly finally sent off the last corrections to her novel Robert Elsmere, Julia became extremely agitated. She was anxious about Tom’s likely reaction to the book and the impact this would have on Polly. She had every reason to be concerned. In Robert Elsmere Polly had painted the world of religious division that had begun when Dr Arnold and Dr Newman became opponents in the 1830s, and one which was now, in the wake of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, engulfed in a confrontation between traditional orthodoxy and a new scepticism. In a classic tussle between love and conscience, Robert Elsmere, the young rector of Murewell, begins to doubt his own faith in the face of his work among the rural poor and the intellectual currents of his time. After much agonising he eventually turns his back on his traditional ministry and instead goes down the path of social activism, a path that leads to an estrangement from his wife, Catherine. It was a novelistic view of her own parents’ struggle and the crisis in religion that had convulsed her family.
Tom did take umbrage at the novel, and Julia tried to blunt it by reminding him that Polly believed in God. It seemed to work, and he eventually conceded that it was good that Polly should have her say, and make a clean breast, as she feels so strongly on what she writes about, but he did hope that she might return towards faith.
If Tom did not recognise death was closing in on Julia — he talked of their having another pleasant summer together at Sea View — everyone else did. Her children now began taking turns to stay with her, and in a poignant note to his mother, Theodore told her that although he understood her death would be a release for her it would be a terrible loss to us who are left behind. One of his few champions would soon be gone, and he knew it. By the beginning of February in 1888, Charles Dodgson thought she was very near her end. They had a long talk covering more serious topics than they had ever discussed before. She told him her life had been lived and her faith was sufficient to have earned her God’s mercy, and she summarised her understanding of the purpose of life by using the words from the prophet Micah, to do justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God. It was a text that resonated with her practical and intuitive nature.
On a very cold day towards the end of February 1888, as she lay on her bed watching the hundreds of blackbirds in her garden — poor birds, she thought, they looked like little black demons on the snow — Julia received the news that Lucy had given birth safely to another son, and that Robert Elsmere was finally published. On that same day, Frank wrote to his father in Dublin, telling him he should return as soon as he could. Fan Arnold travelled from Fox How, and although deeply shaken at the pain and suffering that made every movement agonising for Julia, she could only feel the deepest admiration for her spirit and courage and a great tenderness for her. Julia’s favourite among Tom’s sisters, Mary, also came, even though it meant leaving her own dying husband. And Matthew Arnold stayed overnight in Oxford in order to see her, writing to his daughter that Julia was terribly wasted, one arm a yellow skeleton, the other monstrously swollen and discoloured; but her head and brow have still something fine and deer like about them. She liked my visit; I stayed more than an hour… It caused him to write to Tom, saying that although Julia had wonderful vitality, the change in her since he had seen her last was very great, and that
she seemed much distressed about the uncertainty of your coming; I can quite understand the difficulty of getting another man to take your lectures, unless the doctors absolutely summon you home, but I think, if you will allow me to say so, I would be careful not to hold out a prospect of your coming on this or that day, and then, changing your plans, to put off your return; as these changes worry an invalid and the mind goes on disturbing itself with them.
Tom finally arrived in Oxford, where he found Julia contemplating death with a steady calmness and acceptance. She had forgiven him. She wanted love and she wanted comfort. At night, when she had difficulty settling — she dreaded its length and darkness — she asked Tom to read psalms to her. It was a singular service he could and did perform for her. Polly found it extraordinary how Julia’s feeling for Tom, which in spite of everything, had always been the most absorbingly fundamental thing in her, came out during this period.
At the beginning of April, she asked for her children. In the quiet of this house where death was hovering, she began her final farewells. After Dr Symonds visited her, she had five minutes alone with Tom. She gave him her wedding ring and, as he recalled afterwards, she spoke in a lovely humble way of not having been as good a wife to me as she should have been. She then farewelled her children and asked that Theodore, poor darling, be told that one of her last thoughts was for him. She said goodbye to Nurse Gooch, who had been with her for more than a year, and kissed her, and then asked to see the servants, Eliza and Lavinia, who, weeping, came up to her bed and kissed her. When Gussie arrived with her daughter Katie, Julia could no longer swallow and spoke rarely.
The following morning, the seventh of April, when Polly went in to sit with Julia, the nurse told her to call the others. They came at once:
We asked her if she knew us, but she was past speech or recognition, and at 6.55 after a few gently labored breaths, with a meekness & piteousness of expression quite indescribable, she breathed her last. No one could see I think a more childlike rendering up of the soul.
Julia was sixty-one years old. Despite all the storms and friction, Polly said, Julia’s nature had been sustained by love, and more particularly, her love for Tom. Her sister Judy agreed. Julia was, she said, all love, the basis of her character an intense affection
ateness. She simply loved to love and be loved.
Julia’s memorial service was held in Oxford a few days after her death, after which her family accompanied her body to Fox How where she was buried. Lucy’s husband, the Reverend Carus Selwyn, gave the funeral address.
20
Aftermath
Despite her long, slow decline, Tom was completely unprepared for Julia’s death. He was unprepared for the desolation her children and her friends felt, and he was unprepared for his own grief. He began to recast their relationship immediately, telling his sister Fan that the radiance had gone out of life and that living in Dublin without the hope of returning to Julia was far more dreadful than he had ever imagined. It was only now that she was gone that he knew just how much his spirit and being were linked and interwoven in hers. He told his old Tasmanian friend General Thomas Collinson, who had tried to dissuade him from marrying Julia, that he thanked God with all his heart for having given Julia to him, and he to Julia, and although Collinson had been right — he and Julia were unsuited to one another — Julia had so subjugated him by her beauty, he belonged much more to her than to himself, and it had been impossible for him to take Collinson’s advice not to marry her.
In the verse he wrote about Julia for their children, Tom continued to recast his relationship with her. He had an intense desire, he said, that all the world should know how beautiful, how original, how valiant Julia was, and although she had been so little prepared by education to meet what she had to suffer, she had met it nobly and victoriously. Tom went so far as to claim that his life’s single achievement was that his and Julia’s true love burn’d clear to the last, this being despite the sorrow caused when loving hearts cannot accord! When that which by one is deem’d holy, By the other is scorn’d and abhorred. He wrote of Julia’s fidelity, which he believed was stronger than reason, of her feeling, which was more potent than thought, and of the simplicity, courage, and kindness with which she bore her illness. She was, he said, a true mother, true wife, and true friend, ennobled by pain, exhaustion, and grief. Tom had always romanticised their life together, and when it was at its worst, he was at his most romantic. His children’s reactions to his poetry are not recorded.