Impossible Life of Mary Benson, The

by Bolt, Rodney

  LINES WRITTEN BY EWB FOR HIS FRIEND MR FRANCIS MARTIN, ON SEEING HERONS AT GRASMERE

  One floating o’er the gorge, and one

  Down dropping o’er the scar,

  And one, wide-oaring o’er the wood

  The Herons come from far,

  From lonely glens where they had plied

  All day their feasts and war.

  Ah, goodly lords of a goodly land,

  How calm they fold the wing:

  How lordly beak on bosom couch’d

  To their pine-hung eyrie swing,

  And stand to see the sun go down

  Each like a lonely king.

  Mr Martin joined the party at Grasmere. Having twisted an ankle jumping off a coach, Edward sat quietly on a bank beside the lake, watching herons in the sunset and writing a poem about them for his patron and friend. That night he read Mr Martin his poem and received warm praise. The old man read aloud from Terence, Milton and Shakespeare. Edward noted in his diary ‘how most pleasant’ it was to see Mr Martin, ‘with his short cut grizzled hair, and bright face with its constant smile, patting the book and stroking it, and sometimes smiling more and sometimes less, and now and then looking upwards with a scarcely heard Beautiful Beautiful – what can be more beautiful. . . leaving off to stroke your hand or lay his hand on your shoulders and play with your hair.’

  It was this sentimental, headstrong, self-regarding, absolute, and conscientiously Christian young man for whom Francis Martin had packed his carpet-bag and hastened across the country with news of a first-class degree and the Senior Medal, and whom little Minnie Sidgwick had so aroused with her cleverness and her reading of The Princess.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mrs Sidgwick was startled by Edward’s disclosure, and unsettled by his intentions. Little Minnie was a year below the age of consent and, even so, that was quite young enough. Mrs Sidgwick did not think it proper that a girl should marry before she was twenty-one. She could not entertain the idea of an engagement until, say, eighteen. Seven years away! Who was to say that the boy would not change his mind? Eleanor observed that Edward ‘made idols’. Was this not just one? And there were yet so many duties and accomplishments for Minnie to acquire! Besides, there was the child’s health to consider. She would soon be passing from girlhood into womanhood, a time that demanded the most anxious maternal supervision if a girl was to emerge unscathed. This was just the moment that any inherent weakness, mental or bodily, might show itself. Minnie was not very strong just now. She was fragile, an unformed child. Certainly, nothing must be said to her for the present. Edward had barely left the house when Mrs Sidgwick picked up her pen to write to him.

  Edward was so distracted by events in Bristol that he left his portmanteau behind. Yet he entertained no doubt that he had been correct in speaking to Mrs Sidgwick. Edward explained his conduct to himself quite rationally. It was not surprising that he thought it possible sweet little Minnie should become his wife. They had long been very fond of each other. Besides, there had been tugs at his affections of late that disturbed him, and it would do well to put a stop to such feelings before he had committed any error that would evermore give him cause to repent (he slipped into cipher to record this fear in his diary). Pure little Minnie would help him. Tracing the seamless logic of decisions and circumstances propelled Edward into a sentence of quite extraordinary length:

  As I have always been very fond of [Minnie] and she of me with the love of a little sister, and as I have heard of her fondness for me commented on by many persons, and have been told that I was the only person at whose departure she ever cried, as a child, and how diligent she has always been in reading books that I have mentioned to her, and in learning pieces of poetry which I have admired, it is not strange that I, who from the circumstances of my family am not likely to marry for many years to come, and who find in myself a growing distaste for forming friendships (fit to be so called) among new acquaintances and who am fond indeed (if not too fond) of little endearments, and who also know my weakness for falling suddenly in love, in the common sense of the word, and have already gone too far more than once in these things and have therefore reason to fear that I might on some sudden occasion be led [the following in cipher: into a step I might all my life repent] – it is not strange that I should have thought first of the possibility that some day dear little Minnie might become my wife.

  ‘Dear little Minnie’, as she said goodbye to Cousin Edward at Bristol Station on the April morning he headed back to Cambridge, did not cry. When her mother asked her why, Minnie quickly replied: ‘I could have cried, only I should not think of doing it on a platform!’ In the days that followed she chattered frequently about Edward. After an outing to ‘Gloster’ with her mother, she wrote to tell him all about it, ending with: ‘All my pets are quite well, With love to you, I remain, Yours very much’, and including a fluffy yellow feather from her canary for dear old Mr Martin, in a carefully folded piece of paper inscribed: ‘A love token from Dicky’. Minnie liked to please people, and for them to feel loved. She was in awe of her big cousin, and very fond of him in her joyous, childish, all-encompassing way. ‘I feel quite sure that no one can have put into her head any foolish idea about your notice of her,’ wrote Mrs Sidgwick cautiously to Edward, ‘and that no such idea has ever entered it, and I think you may quite fearlessly gratify her childish love for several years to come.’

  RETROSPECTIVE GLANCES FROM THE ADULT DIARIES OF MRS MARY BENSON (NÉE SIDGWICK)

  I realise that he chose me deliberately, as a child who was very fond of him and whom he might educate – he even wanted to preserve himself from errant fallings-in-love. . . God, thou gavest me a nature which desired to please – and on its natural gaiety and pleasure-lovingness had been planted by my Mother a strong sense of duty.

  Desire of pleasing E. because of fear of vexing. . .

  Mrs Sidgwick’s spinster sister Henrietta, Minnie’s Aunt Etty who lived with them in Bristol, sniffed the air and sensed intrigue. Aunt Etty had ink-black hair, a hooked nose, a strong jaw and a voice like a man’s. She was fearsome, prone to all-embracing moods that all too often plummeted into a deep enveloping gloom, and she frequently seethed with a consuming jealousy of those about her. Aunt Etty’s darker moods could suck the entire household down with her, but when she swooped up again she startled people with her whooping laugh, and a sense of humour the family considered ‘incongruous’. One morning after Edward had left, when alone with Mrs Sidgwick, Henrietta, quite unprompted, remarked how fond Minnie and Edward were of each other. She said that she could not help thinking that Minnie might ‘some time be his wife’. Mrs Sidgwick did not comment, but side-stepping neatly asked Henrietta whether she would object to such a match. ‘Oh, far from it,’ boomed the reply. Nevertheless, wrote Mrs Sidgwick to Edward, ‘I think it better to say nothing on the subject to anyone at present. . . ’ Aunt Etty was one more person for Minnie to please.

  A prevailing wind of melancholy blew through Mrs Sidgwick’s soul. Her grief at her husband’s death had been deep and suffocating. It would have smothered her entirely had she not maintained such a strong sense of duty, and been of such sound practical character. She was a dignified and handsome woman, yet there was an air of bewilderment about her and a continued note of mournfulness in her speech. Perhaps this is what led Minnie to want so much to please her mother, and make her happy. Two of her six children lay buried, but she had managed successfully to bring up Minnie and three boys, and to give a roof to Henrietta. When Harriet Benson died, even though the families had not been particularly close, she had willingly taken in Edward’s sisters, Eleanor and timid little Ada, who hesitated a full year before calling her ‘Aunt Mary’, and then only did so in a whisper. She loved Minnie and was fiercely protective of her. Edward’s interest in the child caused her deep concern.

  Widowhood had fallen upon Mary Sidgwick when she was just into her thirties. Eleven years later, she was still young enough to harbour her own passion fo
r her brilliant, beautiful young relative. She was a handsome woman, with a delicate mouth, a pert, precise nose, large eyes and an abundant head of hair; her late husband had left her in possession of a comfortable fortune. Alone in Bristol one wet Friday evening, having returned from seeing Edward in Cambridge, she wrote ‘to repeat how very, very much I have enjoyed my visit with you’, and then continued, longingly: ‘I wish I could just come and take tea with you and stir your fire and stroke your face and have a nice chat with you this windy rainy evening.’ And it seems that young Edward’s fire was indeed stirred by the woman ‘who in all things was more than a mother’. They enjoyed long conversations together, hours after the others had gone to bed, discussing on at least one of Edward’s visits whether he would ‘ever be a fit companion for one true-hearted woman’. ‘I have had a day of you – would that it could have been more in thinking of you only,’ he wrote to her from Cambridge. ‘How much I thought of you, and how much I wished for you, you may well fancy.’

  A MINIATURE OF THE YOUNG MRS MARY SIDGWICK

  Duty and pragmatism demanded of Mrs Sidgwick a more motherly role – indeed, that is how Mr Martin encouraged Edward to see her, and Edward had ‘affectionately confided’ to her all his ‘joys and sorrows’. Yet she also had Minnie’s health and heart to protect, not to mention her purity. The young man whom she had assured ‘that under all circumstances, my affectionate interest in you will never cease’ had shown an inadmissible regard for her youngest daughter, attention which could ‘give rise to thoughts which I hope for some years at least to come will have no existence in her’. Mrs Sidgwick would not permit that. Besides, however sincerely felt, Edward’s passion for the child might only be a young man’s passing fancy. With heartfelt candour Mrs Sidgwick wrote to him: ‘You must allow me to say and from my heart I do say it, that any woman must think herself most happy in the possession of your full affections and that I shall think my own dear child singularly blessed to be the one when your maturer judgement and older affection would choose above every other and be satisfied with the choice.’ These were themes to which, in her letters to Edward, Mrs Sidgwick would frequently return.

  Mrs Sidgwick enjoyed a good letter. She would pick up her pen in the morning, again to catch an afternoon post, and sometimes yet again at midnight. Having just dispatched one missive, she began another with: ‘I had not intended to write again so soon, but Eleanor’s open Envelope lying before me is a temptation I cannot resist’, succumbing to the temptation for a full seven pages before running out of paper, having to finish off on a salvaged scrap, and producing a bulletin so heavy it had to be sent under separate cover, after all. Edward became the object of a voluminous correspondence.

  Time and again, Mrs Sidgwick implored restraint. Minnie was but a child, and ‘I do not wish you to suppose that her love is anything but the childish affection of a little sister’. Nothing should happen that would cause Minnie to ‘lose that childlike simplicity which is her great charm’. Minnie was artless, and Edward should not read ‘deeper meanings’ into her expressions of fondness. If they were there, ‘I would feel it necessary for you at once at least to appear to lessen your interest in her’. Tactfully, Mrs Sidgwick wrote that Edward was still ‘a very young man’ and that her faith was ‘not sufficiently strong in the constancy of any man’s affection who has not yet attained the age of 23’, especially when feelings were as ‘warm and earnest’ as his were. Edward might well change his mind about Minnie, and would be quite entitled to, but by then the harm would be done. She mentioned the dangers of marriage between cousins (consider the Royal Family!), and pointed out that Minnie was of an age when ‘some of the greatest trials of health in childhood and youth are still to come’, arguing dramatically that she would not want Edward to have to share her grief if Minnie should die.

  Sunny Minnie chirruped along unawares, with bed each night at seven thirty, lessons at home, walks in the garden and games with Nurse Beth, Cousin Ada and her brothers. (Mrs Sidgwick did not approve of outside friends for the children, and the family ‘rather gloried in being self-sufficient’.) Minnie always hastened to assure her mother of her love for Edward. ‘Mama, I often wish I could be an invisible fairy with wings,’ she told her. Then she would fly to Cambridge to see what Edward was doing there. Not that she would upset her awe-inspiring cousin: ‘I would fly to Edward’s room and hover over him, but I would not disturb him.’

  In letter after letter Mrs Sidgwick put up valiant resistance to the untimeliness of Edward’s suit, on occasion acknowledging that perhaps she had ‘said this all before and may weary you by repetition of it’, but continuing nonetheless. She managed to persuade Edward not to say anything to anyone about what they began tangentially to refer to as ‘the subject’, most of all not to Minnie, who became ‘the sweet child’, M., or simply __ .

  Yet people were beginning to take notice. Edward was talking too much in company about Minnie’s ‘sayings and doings’, even reading her letters aloud. Mrs Sidgwick had specifically to ask Edward to make his letters to Minnie suitable to show to others in the family, as people asked to read them and it was difficult to refuse. A friend of his in Cambridge had joked – loudly and while on an omnibus – that Edward treated his little cousin more like a lover than a relation. Edward’s sister Eleanor, though concerned that it was ‘impertinent in a younger sister’ to raise such a topic, had mentioned her misgivings about Edward’s behaviour to Mrs Sidgwick.

  Mrs Sidgwick was herself concerned that Minnie was now too old for the petting and kissing an adult might lavish on a small child. ‘It would seem almost ridiculous to prescribe the degree of interest which it would be safe to show a child of 11 years old,’ she wrote, but she hoped that Edward ‘would gradually give up such childish fondlings as were only suited to a childish age’, or at least ‘give them up for a time’. But Edward was a most forceful young man, and Mrs Sidgwick’s resilience was strongly tested.

  Edward demanded regular news of his ‘little pet’, information he referred to as ‘nursery tales’. He pushed to be allowed to speak to her on ‘the subject’, bombarding Mrs Sidgwick with almost as many letters as she sent to him. Mr Martin, always very much on his protégé’s side, joined the cause, pressing with all the authority of an older man and a Cambridge don for Edward to ‘speak’ (propose) to Minnie. Still Mrs Sidgwick stood her ground. ‘I cannot for a moment agree with Mr Martin in thinking that any such communication be made to dear Minnie so early,’ she wrote. ‘I really think it would be taking an unfair advantage of a mere child, and not allowing her to be a free agent. . . I have been wrong very wrong to let your mind dwell so much upon the whole scheme.’

  Yet Mrs Sidgwick seemed powerless to resist Edward’s fervour. She and Minnie went to Cambridge to visit him, and he came frequently to Bristol. ‘There really is no end of him,’ proclaimed Aunt Etty, ‘one never knows when he is gone.’ Always anxious to please, and to assure both Edward and her mother of her love, little Minnie said and did what she perceived would make them happy, even if she had now become a little frightened of her cousin. When Mama wrote Edward a letter, Minnie would ask her to send him her ‘very, very, very best love’, and she said how she wished he could come to her room and kiss her goodnight every night. After Edward had been dropped at the station at the end of one visit, Minnie sat in his vacated seat in the fly, allowed her eyes to fill with tears and intoned: ‘Oh, but for one touch of that vanished hand’, on this occasion slightly misquoting her Tennyson. Only once did Mrs Sidgwick find her looking at a portrait of Edward and muttering to herself ‘Minnie hates, Minnie hates,’ but Minnie assured her mama that she was not in earnest.

  RECOLLECTIONS OF THIS TIME FROM MRS BENSON’S RETROSPECTIVE DIARY, WRITTEN IN MARCH 1876

  Ed. coming – fear of him – love? always a strain – never the love that ‘casteth out all fear’.

  Mother and Ed. both wanting my love – neither at all satisfied. . . misery. . . utter misery.

  I had to satisfy Ed
. by expressions of love and after was not true to Mama. . . I was influenced too strongly by him, without really loving.

  Go to Beth to comfort me.

  On occasions Minnie seemed not to want to visit Edward, or was sulky and uncommunicative once they arrived in Cambridge. That was put down to her ‘endeavour to hide the sorrow she felt at parting’. Now she had constantly to be reminded to write to him, and sometimes the simple mention of his name would bring on tears – but again Minnie assured her mother that was because she loved Edward so much and never wanted to do anything to grieve him. When Mrs Sidgwick told her that her drawing needed attention, Minnie promised to improve, because it would gratify her mama, her cousin Eleanor and brother William, ‘and she added with tears in her eyes “Edward too – and immediately turned away”’.