by Barbara Vine
At some point after my great-grandmother Edith died (she was never called Louisa, and was always known by her second name), the three chests had found their way up into the attics. No one had ever drawn my attention to them, for in most people’s eyes they had lost their importance. No biographer had suggested writing Henry’s life, but I knew the chests were there and if I ever thought about them it was only to wonder how anyone ever succeeded in carrying them up fifty-six stairs. I even thought they might have been drawn up to the attic window on a pulley from outside. Perhaps they were. Five years ago I lifted the lid of one of them and saw the sombre dark-green and navy-blue bindings of several of Henry’s works, Diseases of the Blood, Haemorrhagic Disposition in Families, Epistaxis and Haemorrhagic Diathesis. We had copies of these works downstairs along with several others and at that time I had read none of them. Quite naturally, it had never occurred to me to read them, believing they’d be beyond my comprehension as, when the time came, they almost were.
I’m running down the stone staircase at St John’s Wood tube station carrying a briefcase weighed down with my great-grandmother’s photograph album: the one I believe is particularly relevant. It’s for passing the time while I’m in the House but not in the Chamber. The down escalator at this station has been out of use for months and no doubt will be for months to come. It’s something to do with the extension of the Jubilee Line which I asked my question about on Monday. Waiting on the platform, I think how good it will be when the line goes all the way through to Westminster. I’ll be able to go to the House without changing. And then I tell myself what a fool I am. I shan’t be there when the line goes through, they’ll have got rid of me.
Today the House rises for Easter and I’m only going in because I want a couple of books from the library but I may as well go into the Chamber and collect the expenses to which I’m entitled once I pass the bar. The debate isn’t very interesting and I’ve nothing to contribute, so I sit there in front of Lord Weatherill, Convenor of the Cross-bench Peers and former Speaker of the House of Commons, and behind Lord Annan and listen for half an hour. The television cameras move from right to left and left to right with their slow steady rhythm, come to the left again and linger on the minister while she’s speaking. Cameras are always on us while we’re in here but you’re only conscious of them for about five minutes on your first day. After that you take them for granted.
When I’ve done my duty I leave the Chamber and go to the library, encountering outside the Bishops’ Bar a very old Conservative hereditary, well-known for voting against women being admitted to the House in 1957. He tells me, sure he’s being very risqué, laughing so much at his own wit that he can hardly get the words out, that since the rise of feminism women no longer menstruate, they ‘femstruate’. I can’t bring myself to join in his laughter or even produce a smile. Jude has come into my mind and I’m suddenly filled with love and pity for her. The old anti-feminist tells me I’ve no sense of humour. I shake my head, collect my books and sit at one of the tables. The smell of the place reminds me of my grandfather Alexander. Peers come in here to smoke and read the papers as much as to work or study something. Visitors aren’t allowed but when they find out about all the smoking that goes on in these rooms they’re amazed it’s permitted in a library. Doesn’t it damage the books? they ask. I don’t know whether it does or not and I don’t mind the smell, though I broke that vow I made in Venice to follow in Alexander’s footsteps and I suppose I’ve had no more than a couple of cigarettes in my whole life.
Great-grandmother Edith, whose elder son he was, recorded a good deal of her life in photographs. Sepia ones up to about 1920 and black and white after that. The first photograph made in a camera was as early as 1826 but amateur photography really became possible in the 1880s with the introduction of roll-film cameras. Henry and Edith were married in 1884 and it appears that she first began taking photographs five years later, using the newly introduced Eastman Kodak box camera with its handy roll of negative paper. One of her first photographs was of her third child Helena at the age of three months in her christening robe. Did she buy the camera here? It seems unlikely. Her cousin Isobel Vincent had married an American in 1886 and gone to live in Chicago, so perhaps the Kodak was a present from her.
That picture is in another album. The one I’ve brought with me contains interior shots of Ainsworth House. A favoured hobby of Edwardians was taking photographs of the insides of their houses, over-furnished rooms kept in immaculate condition by housemaids, and these are mostly of that kind. But several of them are roomscapes with figures and the one I’m looking at is of all Edith’s children clustered together on a sofa in the drawing room. It’s a big squashy sort of sofa, covered in velvet or plush, and the children have been arranged in a human pyramid in the middle of it.
The two eldest girls, Elizabeth and Mary, aged in their late teens, lean over the back, smiling down at their younger sisters Helena and Clara who, though sitting quite far apart, are leaning the upper part of their bodies close together with their arms round each other’s necks. Between them, so that their shoulders and arms and faces make an arch above his head, sits Alexander, grinning artificially. He seems to be about ten and is obviously not enjoying this at all. All the girls have long curls and hair ribbons and wear versions suitable to their ages of pinafores over dark or striped dresses. Alexander is in a Norfolk jacket and bow tie. In front of him, on a low stool, sits George, the youngest child, the sick child. He is in a sailor suit which does nothing to make him look healthier or more robust. He leans against his brother’s knees, one arm along the sofa, the other bent into his lap, his legs tucked under him, and he is smiling a gentle, rather sad smile. There they all are, the six children, preserved for ever (or for as long as the album lasts) by their mother’s Kodak.
I turn the page and there it is, Edith’s photograph I knew was in the album but which I haven’t looked at for years. It’s of Henry in his study, seated at his desk but looking at the camera, and, in front of him, on the desk, is his celebrated work, Epistaxis and Haemorrhagic Diathesis. Possibly it has just been published and this copy has been sent or given to him. Possibly it is to record the arrival in the house of this book that Edith has taken the photograph. If this is so the date of this photograph will be sometime in 1896, and there will have been other events for Lord and Lady Nanther to celebrate, for it was in that year that Henry received his peerage and his younger son was born. He looks pleased with himself, a still handsome man of sixty who has just published another book. It’s hard to tell from the front but it seems he has all his hair, though it has become quite white. He seems proud, self-satisfied, but pleasant enough; and in the curve of his mouth and his interested eyes are hints of the famous charm. There is absolutely nothing in this picture to give a clue as to why his youngest daughter referred to him baldly as ‘Henry Nanther’.
After we moved into Alma Villa with our parents, Sarah and I found the trunks in one of the attics. No one else ever went up there. We only opened one of them. Inside we found things which weren’t of much interest to young people: diaries, bundles of papers and letters, brown, faded photographs and photographs in thick albums with cracked, padded leather covers and brass clasps, certificates and diplomas in manila envelopes and books of which we had copies downstairs. Disappointed, we got no further than the top few layers. Almost three decades went by before Sarah sent me Clara’s letter and I investigated the trunks again.
3
A Labour life peer, whose name I can’t remember, has come up behind me and is looking over my shoulder. He asks who the ‘old boy’ is and I tell him it’s my great-grandfather. So of course he quotes the famous phrase Henry is known for, maybe the only clever thing he ever said in the House.
‘Control circumstances and do not allow them to control you.’
Apparently Thomas à Kempis said it first and Henry was only quoting him in his maiden speech. But everyone has forgotten that if they ever knew it. More malicious
members aren’t above reminding me of another notorious statement of Henry’s: What is the answer, Hansard quotes him as asking, that is the question. The life peer asks me if I’ve heard about the ancient hereditary peer the opposition ‘bussed’ in to vote on a motion in last week’s debate.
‘He was in the loo,’ he says, ‘the one by the Bishops’ Bar, and he heard this ringing and clattering. So he comes tearing out, asking everyone what that frightful noise is. Of course it was the division bell. He’d never heard it before, he hadn’t been in for forty years.’
I laugh because it’s funny, though it’s also a mite embarrassing, and the life peer ambles off. Because I am plainly not an aristocrat, people forget that I inherited my title and don’t seem to think twice about using expressions like ‘getting rid of the hereditaries’ in my presence. The accurate description of what they’re aiming at is removing hereditary peers’ right to sit in the House and vote but even that hasn’t a gracious sound. I must try not to be so sensitive, though in the past I’ve never found that possible. ‘Control circumstances and do not allow them to control you.’ The truth is that you can only do so up to a point. Did Henry ever discover that? I wonder. There’s nothing I can do to control the circumstances that are going to turf me out of here, and we’re all victims of circumstance in the end.
I turn the page in the album and here is another photograph. It’s not dated but this is the last picture ever taken of Henry. He is in that same room where in 1896 he was sitting and looking smug, but this time his two sons are with him, the healthy and the sick. The younger boy seems eight or nine, so that is the length of time which has passed. The room itself has changed. It is less crowded with furniture and bric-a-brac. Lighter coloured curtains hang at the window. But the change in the room is nothing to the change in Henry. He is an old and broken man. A metamorphosis has taken place in regard to his skin and his hands and his now thin hair, so that it looks as if a carapace of some creased-up, roughened and worn material has been spread across his face and neck and hands, entirely hiding what nine years before remained of his youth. Alexander sits beside him looking cheerful and unconcerned. George, who must by this time have been no more than two years from death, leans against his father’s shoulder and Henry has his arm round him. I can’t read the look on Henry’s face. Sad? Bitter? Desperately tired? Perhaps all those things. I shall perhaps know when I have found out everything I can about him.
Big white letters come up on the red background of the television monitor: House Up. I put the album back into the briefcase and go down the corridor towards the Prince’s Chamber, the stairs, the cloakroom and the outdoors. A newish life peer, a woman of maybe fifty, a QC and chairman of some august body, with a fine head of blonde hair and legs nearly as good as Jude’s, comes out of the door that leads to the Barry Room and walks towards the blue carpet. Behind her a couple of active old hereditaries are talking and one says to the other, ‘Who’s the new girl?’
I’m reminded of something and I go back into the library to look it up. You can look up anything in here or someone else will do it for you. And here it is, part of the speech Earl Ferrers made in opposition to the bill that would, and eventually did, allow women to become members of this House.
‘Frankly,’ he said, ‘I find women in politics highly distasteful. In general, they are organizing, they are pushing and they are commanding. Some of them do not even know where loyalty to their country lies. I disagree with those who say that women in your Lordships’ House would cheer up our benches. If one looks at a cross-section of women already in Parliament I do not feel that one could say that they are an exciting example of the attractiveness of the opposite sex. I believe that there are certain duties and certain responsibilities which nature and custom have decreed men are more fitted to take on; and some responsibilities which nature and custom have decreed women should take on. It is generally accepted that the man should bear the major responsibility in life. It is generally accepted, for better or worse, that a man’s judgement is generally more logical and less tempestuous than that of a woman. Why then should we encourage women to eat their way, like acid into metal, into positions of trust and responsibility which previously men have held?
‘If we allow women into this House where will this emancipation end? Shall we in a few years’ time be referring to “the noble and learned Lady, the Lady Chancellor”? I find that a horrifying thought. But why should we not? Shall we follow the rather vulgar example set by Americans of having female ambassadors? Will our judges, for whom we have so rich and well-deserved respect, be drawn from the serried ranks of the ladies? If that is so, I would offer to the most reverend Primate the humble and respectful advice that he had better take care lest he find himself out of a job…’
That speech was made not in Henry’s time but in 1957 and Ferrers was only twenty-eight when he made it. I put the photocopy from Hansard into my pocket for Jude to see and retrace my steps along Pugin’s gold and crimson corridors and across the bright blue carpet.
It’s a strange mad old place and I don’t want to leave it.
The school Henry went to was Huddersfield College. He left at the age of fifteen for his father’s woollen mill in Godby, where he spent two years learning various processes. Why? According to a letter from his mother to his aunt Mary, his father was appalled by Henry’s ambition to become a doctor of medicine. His only surviving son must go into the business. There follow two pages in which Amelia gives vent to her grief at the death of Billy, a sorrow that seems as intense as it was immediately after his death. If only he had lived, she writes, he might have learned the factory processes and one day taken over, leaving Henry to do as he chose. Perhaps it was too painful to confront, but she ignores the fact that Billy, suffering as he did from some kind of mental incapacity, could never have developed business acumen.
Nor, apparently, could Henry. At any rate, in 1853, when he was seventeen, he was apprenticed to a surgeon in Manchester and entered the Owens College in Quay Street. This seems to have been one of the first medical schools in the country. His father had relented and made him a fairly generous allowance. Possibly, he saw there was a future in medicine. It was no longer the rather disreputable trade, a ‘leech’, a ‘barber surgeon’, which it had been in the first decades of the century when he was young. At the Owens College and at the Manchester Royal School of Medicine Henry gained medals in chemistry, materia medica, operative surgery, physiology and anatomy, and in 1856 he carried off gold medals in anatomy, physiology and chemistry at the first MB London examination.
Marcus Grady, the Professor of Materia Medica at Manchester Royal School, wrote a glowing letter to his father. It was carefully preserved, firstly I’m sure by Amelia, then by Henry, between sheets of tissue paper in one of the trunks.
When it fell to my lot to announce the prize list last Thursday, I did something I have certainly never done before in such an assembly. In the midst of the applause I congratulated your son. Unorthodox though my conduct was, I could not help myself, I was so struck by the substance of his exercises, their scholarly style, and evidence of a truly awesome command of their subject.
Easy to see why Henry kept it. In the following year he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons and licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in London. Very evidently, he had known what he wanted and had answered a genuine calling. While at Manchester Royal School he began to keep a diary and apparently made the first real friend of his life. This was a young Scotsman, Richard Fox Hamilton, one year older than himself, the youngest son of a cousin of Lachlan Algernon Hamilton, Lord Hamilton of Luloch. Henry notes all this in his diary, including Hamilton’s full name and details of his cousin’s peerage. Entries in those early days were much fuller, and even though they could hardly be described as emotional, at least they were less unemotional than they later became.
Henry writes in the diary of his parents and their pleasure at his success, of an increase his father has made in his allowa
nce and, in the summer of 1859, of taking Hamilton home with him to Yorkshire to meet his father and mother and enjoy a walking holiday on the moors. It seems that Amelia took such a fancy to Richard Hamilton that Henry describes him as regarded by her as a substitute for her lost son Billy. Henry had himself apparently never been considered as a replacement.
The first post he had was as house physician at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, and while there he contributed two articles to the British Medical Journal, ‘Haemorrhagic Disease’ and ‘Cases of Epistaxis’. These were his first publications. I found yellowed copies of the journal in one of the trunks under a bundle of letters from Richard Hamilton. Before taking up a post at the Great Northern Hospital, he went abroad for the first time in his life. This was to spend a year studying at the University of Vienna, recognized as a world leader among medical schools. No doubt this was financed by his father who would have been much mollified by Henry’s obvious brilliance at his medical studies. At Vienna he showed an aptitude for languages, learning to speak fluent German within three months.
His mother kept every letter he sent to her and his father. Henry made copies too.
I find in myself [he wrote] an unexpected aptitude for learning foreign languages. I had not attempted it before, with the exception of Latin which is hardly to be thought of as a spoken language. Here I have made the acquaintance of a Swiss gentleman who vows to teach me his own peculiar tongue within the remainder of my stay. The language in question is Romansch or Rhaeto-Romanic, derived from the Vulgar Latin – therefore not entirely unfamiliar to me – and spoken in southern parts of Switzerland.