A Book of Secrets

by Michael Holroyd

  Forged in four seconds of distracted fire

  Unkindly cast into the world to cool

  In the cold wind of loneliness – until …

  … until, after death, loneliness again envelops him:

  And even in the grave, I dare say, lonely

  Till the dark figures of the trees break through –

  Woman, you make us at your pleasure – only

  That our poor bones may be embraced by yew.

  There are several entries in foreign languages – a Hungarian folk song, a German quatrain and Leon Montenaeken’s short poem on the vanity and the shortness even of a long life.

  La vie est vaine:

  Un peu d’amour

  Un peu de haine –

  Et puis – bonjour!

  La vie est brève:

  Un peu d’espoir,

  Un peu de rêve –

  Et puis – bonsoir!

  The bleakness of these poems is offset by continual dewdrops of flattery. One contributor mentioned ‘my overwhelming love’ but neglected to say who he was. ‘So honored to add my name in this Book of Memories,’ added an indecipherable American. People found it increasingly difficult to come up with something generous and appropriate – ‘Satan finds Books for idle hands to write in,’ cautioned Sophia Kennedy. Perhaps the most inappropriate cliché of all for someone virtually homeless and so sharp-tongued was delivered by Ernest Beckett’s niece Beatrice who had married William Eden’s son Anthony Eden. ‘No place like HOME!’ she wrote. ‘Eve makes the final cosy touch.’

  Opinions differed as to whether it was better to fall back on quotations or attempt something personal. A few people escaped this choice by contributing drawings or watercolours, most noticeably Chloë Preston, who filled several pages with excruciatingly cute paintings of Dutch Dolls, grotesquely sentimental children, wide-eyed dogs and a spotted cat with a pink scarf.

  Sybil Hart-Davis (one of Gervase Beckett’s lovers – their son was the well-known publisher Rupert Hart-Davis) quoted Walter Pater to the effect that we are all under sentence of death – adding, however, that ‘we spend the interval in song’. Ethel Thomas used Emerson’s words on love (‘Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just’). Gwladys Chaplin left a message possibly for biographers: ‘Be to my virtue very kind. / Be to my faults a little blind.’ And there were lines from Meredith on swallows and swans, by William Blake on happiness, Queen Christina of Sweden on weakness, and Nietzsche on the shortcomings of men. But no one quoted Andrew Marvell who had spent two years (1650 – 52) teaching General Lord Fairfax’s daughter languages at Nun Appleton where he wrote many of his lyric poems and stored up memories for some of his later work. ‘The quiet country existence of Nunappleton released in him the tastes which he could most happily express,’ wrote Vita Sackville-West in her short biography of Marvell, ‘and the two years he spent there were, poetically, the most fruitful of his life.’ This would have pleased Eve more than other people’s poetry.

  Breaking suddenly into verse Sir Hedworth Williamson sought to denigrate himself in contrast to other contributors:

  Of talent too modest, of genius too cold

  Like Berners to write, or like Rodin to mould;

  But you can win flowers from climate most harsh,

  From a barren old Moore, or a watering Marsh …

  Lord Berners had contributed a few bars of music, an Allegro Spirito written ‘under the influence of drink’: George Moore’s signature next to the date (11 November 1915) was considered a sufficient tribute and Eve went to the trouble of pasting in a congratulatory card from Rodin.

  One of the oddest passages in the book (stranger than the lines from Richard Savage’s dramatic poem ‘The Bastard’ and the quotation from a letter by Mary Queen of Scots on the morning of her execution) was provided by Edward Marsh (one of Harold Nicolson’s discarded lovers), who copied the Last Will and Testament of a lunatic who died in an asylum in Illinois – underneath which, Marsh’s knighthood being absent, Eve has added ‘for me. Sir Edward Marsh’. Perhaps these entries illustrate the panic that filled some of the contributors when Eve slowly approached them with her monstrous and forbidding volume. Sir Hedworth Williamson, while praising Eve, ended with a vigorous curse upon Her Book:

  … and Eve of lost Eden, I will you no evil,

  But heartily wish your old book to the Devil.

  Eve was to carry this portmanteau of a book from place to place for over fifty years. Though the pages blew from it like leaves from a tree, it increased in bulk and irregularity as she stuffed into it all sorts of photographs, letters, bits and pieces. So it began to resemble a huge and dilapidated saddle of a horse, a chaotic artefact that was a part of Eve’s personality: her pride and her penance. Like an extraordinary tramp, she travelled the country between Castles, Halls, Granges, Manors, Priories, Abbeys weighed down by its heavy load like a figure from The Pilgrim’s Progress. Ernest Beckett’s daughter Violet Trefusis gives a picture of her in her novel Pirates at Play.

  Poor Francie … was one of those popular elderly girls whose happiness was purely vicarious … It had taken her the best part of ten years to realise that popularity could become a substitute for love … Of course she never got married … Much in demand for week-ends (Francie is such a good mixer) the only tribute she exacted was a caricature or ribald verse in her visitor’s book, which was her most valued possession. It was a stout tome bound in green morocco; the addresses of nearly all the stately homes in England figured in it; neatly cut out of the writing paper and placed above a view of the house, there would follow the signatures of her fellow guests, some laboured doggerel on the hunt ball, or a frieze of the local ‘meet’ done in coloured chalks borrowed from the nursery. There were also a few meticulous watercolour sketches of salmon flies, and half a dozen dance programmes with tiny white pencils attached …

  The Keppels were among the many families that signed in. The heads of these families often bore the names of places: Chesterfield, Devonshire, Norfolk, Plymouth, Southampton, Wellington, Westminster, Windsor, Zetland. Other signatures were hyphenated, the most endearing of which was Gregory Page-Turner (Adrian Book-holding Jones disdained the hyphen). Perhaps some jokers were making fun of Eve. Archbishops, generals and foreign royalty filled up the pages and there was a picture of the Prince of Wales fondling a baby kangaroo in Australia (1932). Rosamond Lehmann copied down a page from her novel Invitation to the Waltz describing the seventeen-year-old Olivia Curtis running into the sunlight, Hilaire Belloc added a poem and so did Vita Sackville-West’s one-time lover Geoffrey Scott, while John Betjeman, Harold Nicolson and Somerset Maugham contented themselves with signatures. There were plenty of actors’ autographs from Ellen Terry to Michael Dennison. Then I come across a Concert Programme dated 22 July 1915 given in the Lord Roberts Memorial Workshops at Norfolk House. Tertis and Rubinstein are playing with several other musicians including Désiré Defauw. A piece of blue paper has been inserted which reads: ‘DEFAUW (on music programme)’. This concert took place a year before the birth of John Francis Mordaunt and was possibly Eve’s first meeting with Désiré Defauw.

  And there is one name, probably entered in the mid 1960s, which also catches my eye: Mordaunt Milner – which may indicate that Eve’s son had been absorbed into her mother’s family. So, amid all the chaos and oddity, the poetry and applause, this is a book of secrets.

  At the age of eighty Eve seems to have come to the decision that Her Book had finally grown too cumbersome and unwieldy for her to manage. She wrote to Johannesburg asking whether the art gallery there would like to add it to her Rodin collection. The curator replied that he would be delighted and Eve sent it with a somewhat apologetic note: ‘It is really a very small part of my life – the gay side – and I am afraid it is all rather a muddle as I had some loose leaves put in at one time which seemed to upset things. They are all my friends, great and otherwise … I don’t know if the book is suitable for your museum but I hope and think yo
u and others will find amusement and interest in it.’

  The book had become an encumbrance to her and a torment to others. But once it has gone she misses it as if she has lost some essential part of herself. It represented much more than ‘a very small part’ of her life: it was an anchor that she dragged from one harbour to another; it was also her daemon. In its absence this prodigious object gained the affection of those who had dreaded seeing Eve bent over or beneath its substantial bulk as she approached them. Without it she was no longer quite the legendary figure she had been. She was diminished.

  After half a dozen years without Her Book she wrote to the Johannesburg art gallery asking whether she could have it back. Maybe she had hoped to be paid for it; maybe the gallery had expected something that was attached more closely to Rodin. In any event, both sides were happy to see it returned – the art gallery photocopying a few Rodin items before letting it go. In her mid-to-late eighties Eve could no longer drag this hefty property around with her. Instead she would solicit items that she could take back and give to it, like a mother bird feeding its young.

  She seldom stayed anywhere long. Between the wars people had lent her their London flats and country cottages from where she set out on her peregrinations. Sometimes she stayed at a large unheated house in the village of Acomb on the outskirts of York. It had been bequeathed to the spinster daughter of a one-time precentor of York Minster on condition that she look after a pack of collie dogs – duties that Eve occasionally took over in what she called ‘that doggie place’.

  In her seventies, she still sometimes rode side-saddle through the streets, a striking figure in her top hat and veil, a long dark skirt, jabot and black coat. And she would make appearances at the Snow and Summer Balls in the Old Assembly Rooms in York. One of her favourite staging posts was the Yorkshire Club, a big, rather dismal and somewhat Gothic, red-brick, late-Victorian building with white stone dressings, overlooking the river on the approach road to Lendal Bridge. There she sat, a frail but powerful figure, as if enthroned, her luggage cast around her, her face plastered with white make-up invaded by irregular dots of rouge and a bright cherry-red mouth, and wearing enormous earrings. The staff treated her with a mixture of reverence and exasperation. This was principally a men’s club, a watering place for gentlemen visiting their Yorkshire estates. But Eve managed to find a hideout in one of the attics until this became known and she was invited to leave.

  Afterwards she found a room above a stuffed-birds shop at Petersgate, and then again at the top of a house over a woollen shop at Stonegate: both districts of York. She suffered painfully from arthritis during her nineties and had great difficulty going up and down the stairs – throwing down her sticks first with a terrible clatter and then sitting on each stair as she descended. She went upstairs backwards.

  Like an itinerant refugee, she still made her way round the country. Her stamina was extraordinary. And she grew adept at calculating how long she could stay before her hosts became too irritated – and how soon she could return. Arriving for a long weekend, she stayed six months with her cousin Lady Serena James at St Nicholas, Richmond. ‘Those whom the gods love die young,’ she announced, ‘and I am eighty-seven.’ She was eighty-eight by the time she left. She enjoyed telling people that ‘I shall be immortal in art galleries all over the world after my friends are dead.’6 In all moods and weathers she was protected by the aristocracy: she was one of them and they looked after her, arranging for cars to take her from one place to another, telephoning the next batch of hosts on her itinerary to make sure she was met when travelling by train. She was not always polite and saw no reason to be grateful. Why should she be? After all, was she not a direct descendant of the famous parliamentary general, Lord Fairfax, who had defeated Charles I’s troops at the Battle of Naseby? The answer, strictly speaking, was no: Lord Fairfax had no direct descendants. But she was of the true blood and belonged to one of the two branches of his family. She spoke of His Lordship as if his ghost were following a few paces behind, shadowing her, giving her special status and authority. She was imperious, abrasive, amusing, lively, entertaining, cross and sometimes raucously snobbish.

  Men liked her more than women did – she flirted with them but treated women dismissively. She was sometimes rude with servants too, but children liked her. They liked her rudeness, which sounded funny when she insulted adults in her old-fashioned Yorkshire voice – dropping the gs in huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’, and pronouncing her rs as ws when she referred to the presents people had given her as ‘Wubbish!’. When she gave presents she would frequently take them back. But there were genuine presents for children in the huge overflowing bag she carried round with her: it was a bag of treasures, a medley of biscuits, embroidery, sixpences, underclothes, everything … But sometimes she would frighten them, particularly at night when they heard the awful tapping of her sticks and the crack of her bones as she found her way up to one of the bedrooms, her legs so bent she was forced to move sideways like a crab, clutching for support with hands that had grown into arthritic claws. She was the very image of a witch – except for her face. All her life she remained ‘fair of face’ as a genuine Fairfax should be and in some ways that face grew more remarkable: full of vitality and mischief-making.

  For her hundredth birthday a lunch was hosted by Lord Savill at the Yorkshire Club. Friends travelled there from all over the country, seeing one another, many of them, after intervals of many years and with gasps of amazement at their being still alive. Eve appeared very much alive. She gave a short, fluent and amusing speech but complained that she had not been offered enough wine.

  Following a stroke, the last seven years of her life were passed in the Retreat, a Quaker hospital in York, founded in 1796, which specialised in treating infirmity and providing mental health care. The heads of three families paid for her: Lord Grimthorpe, the Duke of Wellington and Lord Linlithgow. Visiting her there towards the end of 1971, her friend Serena James came away very distressed. ‘She was sitting in a small room surrounded by obviously mentally sick ladies,’ she wrote. ‘She herself seemed more alert – she implored me to take her away, suggested a taxi … She is undoubtedly very unhappy.’ She asked whether Eve could be moved from this small annexe to the main building where she might be able to play cards and ‘would see some men’. The following February she was transferred to ‘more congenial surroundings’ in one of the central wards.

  She seemed for a time more settled. Some days there were echoes of her former self. During a pause in a Christmas Nativity play, her voice boomed out: ‘I can’t hear the bloody fairy!’

  When the young historian Hugo Vickers visited the Retreat in March 1977, he was escorted to the Charlotte Ward and advised to ‘look helpless’ until a nurse brought Miss Fairfax to him. Eventually she arrived in a large, high-backed wheelchair wearing a mauve dress. ‘She moved and reacted very well. We shook hands and I introduced myself,’ he wrote. ‘She asked a lot of questions about me, where did I come from, what did I do, was it my first visit to York … did I have brothers and sisters … Eve asked my age. “I’m somewhat older,” she said … Lunch arrived and she fed herself without problems. It really is remarkable.’

  Hugo Vickers was writing a biography of Gladys Deacon, Duchess of Marlborough, and wanted to see whether her name appeared in Eve’s monumental book. A nurse heaved it to him. ‘It was quite amazing,’ he wrote. He turned the pages and there it was, Gladys Deacon’s signature, accompanying a quotation from Baudelaire. At the end of his visit Eve said to him: ‘It hasn’t been a silly life, it’s been a useful one. Anyone who saw the book could see that.’

  When Hugo returned the next day he was told Eve was asleep. They wheeled her through in her geriatric chair but she did not wake up. ‘She looked absolutely like a wax-work,’ he wrote. ‘ … They said she sometimes spends as long as three days like that. So I had been very lucky the day before.’

  She was suffering from senile dementia as well as arthritis and
needed constant observation. Sometimes she claimed to be Queen Elizabeth I (the part she played at one of the York Pageants). She could not stand unsupported but often forgot this and had several falls. The nurses aggravated her – they did not come when she called them. She was often disorientated, not realising she was in a psychiatric hospital, and was frequently upset, confused and outspoken. At night two nurses had to raise her several times from her bed to prevent incontinence.

  She died of bronchopneumonia at half past three in the morning of 27 May 1978, five months short of her one hundred and seventh birthday. There was a memorial service at St James’s Church at Bilbrough. She had made a Will with various dukes and barons as her trustees, but since she had no money it was not proved and she died intestate.

  The Times obituary of Eve Fairfax, on 12 June 1978, described ‘this grand old lady’ as representing ‘a fascinating chapter of history starting in the reign of Queen Victoria and ending after man had successfully walked on the Moon’. But she belonged to neither world. Without money, a husband or recognised children, she lost her position in late-Victorian and Edwardian times; and without employment her nomadic existence led nowhere in the twentieth century. She was like someone waking from a dream and not knowing what is real or imaginary. In Her Book, she copied out a speech made in 1944 by Dr Temple, the Archbishop of York, arguing that ‘the burden of work’ was often ‘a curse’ and that, in spiritual terms, unemployment had its blessings. Perhaps this was the basis of the claim she made to Hugo Vickers that her life was ‘useful’. It was, in the words of the Rodin scholar Marion J. Hare, ‘a genteel tragedy’.