An Unconventional Wife
Page 25
14 – A Landscape of Desire
On reactions to Oxford see Mary Arnold to JA, 27 May 1865, BCAM; McCarthy, The Last Pre-Raphaelite, p. 27; Uglow, Elizabeth Gaskell, p. 441; AWR, vol. 1, ch. 6. ‘The meadows were strewn…’ see Fletcher, O Call Back Yesterday, p. 4. On religious turmoil in Oxford see Green, Love in a Cool Climate, p. 17; Bebbington, Review, pp. 158–60; Flood, ‘Plinth commemorates Huxley-Wilberforce evolution debate’; ‘A Grandmother’s Tales’, p. 433. On JA’s relationship with Benjamin Jowett see Arnold, ‘Social life in Oxford’; AWR, vol. 1, ch. 6. On a united family at Oxford see LOMHW, p. 15. Polly used her return to her family’s home in Oxford to inform the opening chapter of her novel Marcella (published in 1894), when her heroine, after years of poverty and parental neglect, returns to her family home eager ‘… to put the past — the greater part of it at any rate — behind her altogether. Its shabby worries were surely done with, poor as she and her parents still were, relatively to their present position. At least she was no longer the self-conscious school-girl, paid for a lower rate than her companions, stinted in dress, pocket-money, and education, and fiercely resentful at every turn of some real or fancied slur … She was something altogether different …’ See MHW, Marcella, book 1, ch. 1; Peterson, Victorian Heretic, p. 18. On building of Laleham see TA to JA, 30 Apr & 24 Dec 1865; TA, Diary, 30 Aug 1867, BCAM. Laleham was no ordinary house. It was built on Banbury Road, just north of where they were living in St Giles’, on land that had recently been released by St John’s College. Several properties had already been built there, one of which belonged to the chemist Mr William Walsh, whose architect was John Gibbs, the designer of the Banbury Cross. Possibly because he liked Walsh’s house, but more probably because of Gibbs’ reputation for economy, Tom chose Gibbs to design his house. See AVW, p. 163. For further information on Laleham and North Oxford see
15 – Coming Adrift
On cost of trousseau see Flanders, A Circle of Sisters, pp. 223–24. On Polly’s wedding: Dean Stanley officiated and as he ‘had recently buried the theologian Frederick Denison Maurice, his speech at the wedding breakfast was quite as much concerned with graves and worms and epitaphs as with things hymeneal’. See TAHF, p. 172. On impending financial ruin see TA to JA, 27 Apr 1872; MA to JA, 22 Jan 1876; William Forster to TA, 17 Jan 1869, BCAM; AVW, pp. 172–74. In her biography of Polly, her daughter Janet Penrose said that in order to live comfortably in that period, a family needed between £800 and £900 a year. This was the amount that together Humphry and Polly were earning. It was an amount that Tom would never earn, despite his perception ‘of having a tolerably large income’. See LOMHW, p. 29; see also Clark, The Huxleys, p. 73; Battiscombe, Reluctant Pioneer, p. 53. On Mrs Arnold’s death and TA’s reaction see TA to Fan Arnold, 30 Nov 1873, BCAM. On education of women and girls in Oxford: Charlotte’s husband, the philosopher Thomas Hill Green, also supported the women, as did other men in Oxford. See Sutherland, Mrs Humphry Ward, p. 56; LOMHW, p. 30: ‘The idea of the founding of Women’s Colleges was already in the air, for Girton and Newnham had led the way at Cambridge, and all through 1878 plans were being discussed to this end. In the next year a special committee was formed for the raising of funds towards the foundation of a “Hall of Residence”.’ See also Brittain, The Women at Oxford. On JA’s role see entry for 15 May 1875 in Green, The Diaries of Lewis Carroll, vol. 2, p. 321, in reference to Maud and Ethel Conybeare (about sixteen and twelve) who lived with the Arnolds; Violet A. Sydney Smith to TA, 5 & 7 Jun 1895, BCAM. TA always resented JA earning income despite its usefulness. In one letter he wrote, ‘That you should attempt to take the part of the “breadwinner” is not reasonable, till my incompetence for it has been proved. Also I doubt much whether you do not over estimate your strength, when you speak of carrying on so large an establishment as you talk about. Then the furnishing of so large a house would have to be considered and twenty other things. Nor do I see that the mistress of the house need ever want plenty of “occupation” even though she should not take boarders …’ See TA to JA, 31 Mar 1877, BCAM. On JA’s intense pride in her children see Violet A. Sydney Smith to TA, 5 & 7 Jun 1895, BCAM; WTA, pp. 10–
11. On JA & TA becoming grandparents see Fan Arnold to TA, 23 Jul 1874, BCAM. The whole family were delighted with Dorothy’s birth, especially Judy and Ethel who were rapturous when they heard the news; LOMHW, p. 29 & Trevelyan’s Evening Play Centres for Children; the Mary Ward Centre website; Sutherland, Mrs Humphry Ward. On JA’s two wild boys, Theodore and Arthur see TA to JA, 31 Aug 1866 & TA to Mr Price at the Bank of England, 27 Dec 1871, BCAM; MA to TA, 30 Nov 1875, LMADE. Unlike Willy, neither Theodore nor Arthur had ever fitted in or shone or settled into the discipline and routine that came with school. After being moved from the Oratory School at Birmingham, Theodore had been sent first to the grammar school at Loughborough, then to another at Burton upon Trent, and finally to Cheltenham College, each move being triggered by his disruptive behaviour. When he turned seventeen, Tom had tried to find him a position — beginning with the Bank of England — clearly hoping that the Arnold name would open doors for him. In his letter to the bank, Tom stated that his son had ‘plenty of intelligence, and if he gets into the Bank of England, will soon, I am convinced, make himself useful’. On TA’s allegiance to the Anglican Church see LOMHW, pp. 26–27; Huxley, Memories I, p. 13; TA to Fan Arnold, 27 Oct 1874, BCAM. On first-ever performance of Dodgson’s ‘The Mad Tea-Party’ see Green, The Diaries of Lewis Carroll, vol. 2, 7 Dec 1874, p. 335. Carroll thought the performance ‘very creditably done’. On TA’s increasing vulnerability see TA to JA, 25 Feb 1875, BCAM. On financial worries and trying to find TA a job: Tom didn’t have enough money to send to Julia, who was staying in London, and advised her to ‘borrow it from Jane, or else from Fanny’. Jane offered to send some money to TA, see Jane Forster to TA, 18 Mar 1875. William Forster sent ‘out of brotherly sympathy’ a cheque for £50, see William Forster to TA, 9 Apr 1875. TA, in Wales, tells JA to pay, if she can, a part of the bill for Polly’s wedding cake (the wedding had been held over a year previously) but not to pay any interest! in TA to JA, 13 May 1875; MA to JA, 22 Jan 1876, BCAM; MA to TA, 28 Jan & 1 Feb 1875, LMADE; Lewis Carroll to Lord Salisbury, 31 Jan 1875, in Cohen, The Letters of Lewis Carroll, vol. 1, pp. 219–20.
16 – Into the Abyss
On exchanges between JA & TA in London see TA to JA, 12 & 13 Feb 1876; JA to TA, 18 Feb 1876, BCAM. On JA’s ultimatum see Polly to TA, 16 Feb 1876; JA to TA, 18 Feb 1876; TA to JA, 18 Feb 1876, BCAM.
17 – Separate Lives
On TA’s religious migration see Macaulay, Tale Told by an Idiot, pp. xi, 3. On reactions to TA’s reconversion see LJHN, vol. 18, pp. 124–26 & vol. 28, p. 157; AVW, p. 189; LOMHW, p. 27; Jane Forster to JA, 18 Oct 1876; TA to JA, 22 Oct 1876; MA to TA, Oct 1876, BCAM, in which he said to TA ‘… As to the Catholicism, that is a long story. Catholicism is most interesting, & were I born in a Roman Catholic country I should most certainly never leave the Catholic Church for a Protestant; but neither then or now could I imagine that the Catholic Church possessed “the truth”, or anything like it, or that it could possess it’; see also Green, The Diaries of Lewis Carroll, vol. 2, p. 356. Margaret Fletcher, who later converted to Catholicism herself, remembered Oxford being enveloped by Protestantism, a place where only Catholics were ‘excluded as dangerous’. She also went straight to the dilemma that Tom’s nature and his actions posed for Julia, his family, and his friends when she remembered ‘the indignant reaction most of us felt that the soul-journey of the chivalrous and courteous man who was a familiar figure to many of us was being held up to public bewailing’. See Fletcher, O, Call Back Yesterday, pp. 16, 29, 39; GWJS, p. 167; TAHF, pp. 178–79. On TA’s explanation see TA to Humphry Ward, 14 Oct 1876, BCAM & TAHF, pp. 177–79. On TA blaming JA for all that had happened & her response see TA to JA, 22 Oct 1876; 4 Apr 1877; 9 Jun 1877, BCAM. See also MHW to TA, 23 Oct 1876, TCCL; TAHF, pp. 178–79. On TA’s view of his role as breadwinner see TA to JA, 31 Mar 1877, BCAM. On Josephine Benison’s response see AVW, pp. 187, 190.
18 – A Revolutionary Wife
On Willy’s marriage: after his graduation, Willy had remained in Oxford in lodgings and had set himself up as a coach and as a lecturer for the women’s courses Polly and her friends were developing. It was enough to enable him to support a wife. See WTA, pp. 14–15, 30. On JA’s misery see JA to TA, 29 Aug 1877; 21 Sep 1877, BCAM. On JA’s illness & surgery see TA to JA, 22 Oct 1876; 16 Jan 1877; JA to TA, 21 Sep, 1 Oct & 2 Oct 1877; Jane Forster to JA, 30 Oct 1877, BCAM; Roberts’s Sophia Jex-Blake, p. 28. In 1870 Elizabeth Garrett Anderson had become the first woman to earn a medical degree from the Sorbonne; in 1872 she had opened the New Hospital for Women in London, staffed entirely by women; and in 1877, not long before Julia was sent to her, Anderson and another woman, Dr Sophie Jex-Blake, had established the London School of Medicine for Women. Bovell had also been among the first group of women to gain admission to the Medical School at Edinburgh University in 1871. When protesting male students and faculty members forced the women out of the course without being granted degrees, Bovell went to Paris in 1873 to complete her course. Bovell was appointed physician to the New Hospital for Women in Marylebone Road in 1877 and in 1880 she was nominated by the French Government as an Officier d’Academie, a distinction conferred for scientific and literary merit. On JA’s deliberations see JA to TA, 1 & 2 Oct, 1877; TA to JA, 20 Feb 1877, BCAM; On Burney’s operation see Burney, Journals and Letters, pp. 431–43; On JA’s relationship with Tom & her poor recovery see JA to TA, 6 & 12 Nov & 3 Dec 1877, BCAM; LOMHW, pp. 26–27; MA to Victor Marshall, 18 Oct 1877, in LMADE. On increasing financial stress see TA to JA, 27 Feb 1878, BCAM; TA’s letter of 23 Jan 1878 written to Mrs Clough in LTAY, p. 195, in which Tom writes to accept her offer of staying the repayment of the loan that her husband Arthur had extended to him years before, saying, ‘I do not know how to thank you enough for the great kindness of your letter. It would not be right for me to accept it, were I not in truth a very poor man, that is, relatively to the demands which those whom I have to support make upon me …’ On JA sending TA jam see TA to JA, 26 Mar 1877, BCAM. On Arthur’s wayward character and TA’s attempts to get him a position see Ada Belstead to JA, 2 Sep 1876, in which she says of Arthur while he was staying with her in Tasmania,
I think dearest Julia that if Tom is in a position to do so he had far better have him home so that for the next few years he may be under his control. The appointment he has got here is not enough to (occupy) him and the longer he stays the deeper he will be (in debt) … I should strongly advise you to get him away from their influence if you possibly can. I do all I can in the way of advice but he is rather inclined to ‘hough his own (row)’ I’m afraid and I think his whole … life depends upon the influences he is under for the next two or three years. I think he has the making of a good man with judicious treatment and a kind but firm hand to control him such as his Father’s.
See also TA to JA, 27 & 28 Mar 1877 & 8 Jan 1878, BCAM; MA to Frances Arnold 9 Jul 1876, LMADE. On disagreement about Arthur’s military exploits see TA to JA, 16 Jun, 1878, BCAM. On Arthur’s death and reactions to it see Col. Charles Warren to TA, 1 Oct 1878; Fan to TA, 17 Aug 1878; JA to TA, 23 Oct 1878, BCAM; Sutherland, Mrs Humphry Ward, pp. 160–61; ‘South Africa’, South Australian Register, 16 September 1878, p. 5; MA to TA, 19 Nov 1878, LMADE. Not even an invitation from Max Müller to a private viewing of Graham Bell’s new invention, the telephone, could lift JA’s spirits. It was the first time it was ever heard in England:
A large company gathered together, and intense interest and surprise were felt by everyone, even the scientific men present … Mr. Bell also brought down a microphone, only just invented, and a phonograph. The wire of the telephone was stretched from one end of the garden to the other, and even a whisper was distinctly heard. The wire of the microphone was brought from a room on the second story, and the sound made by a fly crawling along a board in the room upstairs sounded in the garden like the tramp of an elephant.
From Mrs Müller, The Life and Letters of The Right Honourable Friedrich Max Müller. On Theodore’s dep
arture see Jane Forster to TA [undated]; JA to TA, 21 Sep 1879; JA to TA, 23 Sep 1879, BCAM. In this letter JA spoke of the suits that Willy and Humphry Ward had given Theodore before he left. On Willy’s departure from Oxford see WTA, p. 82. On JA’s increasing despair & TA’s increasing hostility see JA to TA, 29 Jun 1879; JA to TA, 29 June 1879; TA to JA, 5 March 1880, BCAM. On family financial assistance: even TA’s younger, single sister Fan was providing assistance when she could. In April 1879 she had enclosed a cheque for £5 to TA, saying she had been given a gift and that it would give her pleasure to make even a week or fortnight of his life a little easier. See Fan to TA, 27 Apr 1879; JA to TA, 6 Nov 1879, BCAM. On TA’s isolation: partly to counter his isolation and to earn some money TA joined forces with William Addis to write a Catholic dictionary. Like TA, Addis was also a religious vacillator, although he would make TA’s vacillation look minor — an Anglican, he became a Catholic priest, returned to Anglicanism, then became a Unitarian minister, before rejoining the Church of England to become a vicar. On TA’s mooted return to Oxford & reactions see TA to JA, 10 & 12 Mar, 22 Apr 1880; JA to TA, 27 Feb 1880, BCAM; Polly thought that whatever mental worry JA experienced when TA was away, she had double that when he was at home. His mere presence made her think about topics that, if he were not there, she ‘might forget, or at any rate not take to heart in such a wearing and painful way’. See Polly to JA, 23 Jan 1880, BCAM; TAHF, p. 180 & LTAY, pp. 201, 239 for Jowett’s reaction; TA refers to the rector of Lincoln, Mark Pattison, setting JA against him again and thinks he is a little like Mephistopheles. See letter from TA to JA, 10 Feb, 1878; TA to Frances Arnold, 10 Oct 1897, BCAM; Stokes’s ‘Misguided Tom’. On JA’s surgery see JA to TA, 25 Feb 1880; TA to JA, 20 Mar 1880; Fan to TA, 25 Mar 1880, BCAM. On JA’s financial position and TA’s behaviour towards her see JA to TA, 30 Mar 1880; TA to JA, 23 Apr 1880, 30 May 1880, 1 Jun 1880, BCAM; MHW to TA 21 May & 7 Jun 1880, TCCL; TAHF, p. 181; LTAY, p. 201. On Polly’s relationship with TA: in this instance, knowing how much it would please him, she told TA that she and Humphry were going to meet Newman at Trinity College, where a reception was being held for him. When Polly’s turn came to meet him, she recalled her father to him and their days in Edgbaston. Newman’s face, she recorded, ‘lit up — almost mischievously. “Are you the little girl I remember seeing sometimes — in the distance?”’ Neither Polly nor Newman spoke of the woman who had placed that distance between them. See MHW to TA, 21 May 1880, TCCL & TAHF, p. 182. On selling furniture see TA to JA, 1 Jun & 2 Jun 1880, BCAM. On which wife see TA to JA, 26 Apr, 14 & 16 Jun, 11 Sep, 9 Nov 1880, BCAM. TA was always fluent in his love letters to JA. Even when telling her she, too, had faults like everyone else, he told her that to mitigate against her faults he had, at least, had her to look at, had her as the presiding spirit in the house, had her bright decisiveness and charm, all of which ‘was always “an overpayment of delight”, as Wordsworth says, which far exceeded any grievance there might be. Do not hate me altogether, my dear one, and do not drive me from you. Though it be rather a pain than a pleasure to you to see me, yet support me.’ Examples like this can be found in TA to JA, 27 Oct & 23 Dec 1879, 5 Mar & 16 Jun 1880, 3 Sep 1882, 16 Mar 1884, 21 Oct 1886, BCAM.