Now of course such a gentleman must be of service to a young lady writer, or even a not-so-young one, and Edith appears to have been grateful for his help—not only because he could tell her things about Grandpapa that she herself had never thought to ask, but because he was a stern critic of her writing, constantly admonishing her to be more interesting, to include anecdotes, to make old Peacock come “alive”: “If you suppress or exclude all matters of human interest what value do you attach to your notes?” Edith confided matters to Mr. L’Estrange that were not known before, and he admonished her to include them: “The Disappointment you speak of might explain the querulous tone of the greater part of his prose. Does it do so? From your notes and from your letter I infer Newark Abbey refused him and that then he proposed for the Philosophy of Melancholy. Is this so? If it be so, it is a cardinal point in a life . . . ,” which Edith ought not to omit. Every Biographer since has been grateful to Mr. L’Estrange, because Edith’s memoir, and the notes Cousin Harriet made for Edith to use, have been the foundation for all Peacock biography since, and little has been added.
Certain things troubled Edith—Grandpapa’s amours, for example. It was not that she minded his having them, but what was proper to print? Mr. L’Estrange was very judicious: “I do not think we need touch on the second lady unless you see unmistakeable traces of her, which I do not.” (Marianne de St. Croix, of whom unmistakable traces would appear in Mrs. Shelley’s diary.) Or, “you are quite right to omit that ‘thousand and one loves.’ Surely of how many millions of young men ought not the same story be told.”
In some things Miss Nicolls betrayed a knowledge she should not have had—of the scandalous Shelley circle, for instance. Mr. L’Estrange is shocked: “I am very much obliged to you for making the Shelley mystery clear. . . . That school of philosophy considered—and acted on the consideration—that the appetite which nearly fills our jails with convicts, crowds our cities with beggars, and spreads woe and desolation [dissolution?] into families is the only appetite which is not to be restrained.” (The question is whether he is objecting to greed, drink, or sex.) Edith, in any case, had seen a little of the wages of all three.
With Mr. L’Estrange she began a debate that still continues, about Mama’s cookery article. Edith remembers that Mama wrote the article at Lower Halliford, in Grandpapa’s study, with Grandpapa’s suggestions and advice. Mr. L’Estrange refuses to believe it: “If anyone except your Grandfather wrote it your Grandfather must have transferred all his wit and peculiar views to that writer, or your Grandfather must have rewritten the article . . . completely” (as the Odyssey poet rewrote the Iliad). Not too long afterward, Meredith biographers will contend (Meredith having been around at the time it was composed), that he must have written most of it. The implication is always that Mama, a woman, could not have done such a clever thing. One wonders if little Edith, at her writing, minded these assertions by Mr. L’Estrange.
So far, what we see of Edith is not what we could have wished for her—she is over thirty, unmarried, portionless, immersed in dead papers and books—but it is more or less what we might have expected. We can imagine her living in New Grub Street and spending time at the British Museum, like someone in a Gissing novel, and occasionally visiting her more prosperous Nicolls relatives in the country. She will wear dark-green bombazine and old bonnets.
But then something turns up in 1875 that must dramatically alter our view of Edith. In that year, we learn, she assumes the principalship of—has perhaps herself established—the National Training School of Cookery. After a moment’s consideration this should not surprise us. Or, it surprises us but we see it follows. This forlorn Orphan, Edith, has not escaped drawing conclusions from the many strange and sobering sights she had seen around Lower Halliford, at Seaford, in odd and dingy lodgings with Mama and George Meredith; at the Nicolls’s at Blackheath. Edith had kept her eyes open. There, on the one hand, was adopted Aunt May, rocking idly and thinking her not-very-complicated thoughts alone in Lower Halliford. So much for a life of devotion. And, on the other hand, there was Mama, with her writing and her passion and restlessness, her strong desire for freedom, and her tears. Mama: such a pariah that you could not convince a respectable man like Mr. Vulliamy that she could possibly have been received into her home again, or that she could possibly have written anything by herself. And men like Mr. L’Estrange, kind but patronizing, who did not take you seriously if you were female, and to whom you had to send things to be translated if they were in Greek or Latin, since no one thought you needed to learn such things.
And what would a sensible girl with her eyes open conclude from all this? That a woman had better get herself secure in something, some work to assure her independence, and she had better not get mixed up with men, either, until she had. And that the world was a very hard place full of hard people, and you had to defend, to defend, and to be clever, and to see your chance, and to get ahead, like a man.
Fortunately, little Edith had learned a lot about cookery from Mama and Grandpapa, who were forever discussing it and observing that they were living in a nation where no one could cook so much as a mutton chop decently, and where people were starving—literally starving—because of their insular food prejudices, and ignorance of proper cookery, and their notion that they would rather die than eat like a Frenchman or a Turk.
But Edith had learned better, and had a book of recipes besides, and a reverence inherited from Grandpapa and Mama for fine cookery,36 scientific cookery, and a knowledge of these, and a missionary zeal for imparting what she knew to others—and she had ambition and a strong need to save little Edith.
So she became an Expert and a Principal, and then, in 1876, when she was secure, she married a Charles Clarke from the India Office—perhaps someone she had known a long time. And they had three daughters. But Edith went on being remarkable and peculiar for a Victorian woman; she continued her career. She was head of her cooking school until she was seventy-five, “the pioneer of Domestic Subjects Training” for girls in school—this being rather like home economics in America. And she wrote cookbooks: Plain Cookery, Fancy Cookery, High-Class Cookery, Work-house Cookery; these went into many editions, so she did all right by them, and a lot of good by them too. And she was given a gold medal from the Royal Society of the Arts—conferring upon cookery a status it had theretofore lacked in England, and was given (for some reason) a tea set by the Committee of the Fisheries. And she was made a Member of the British Empire, so that she could always put initials after her name, Edith Nicolls Clarke, M.B.E. And all her life Edith often thought of Mama, and what could happen to a woman, no matter how brilliant and energetic, if she was just a little unlucky.
•
The Baby Harold—Felix—was too young to remember, only three when Mama died, but when he was bigger he would look at the little clothes she had sewed him and that Papa had laid away in a trunk, and at the tiny envelope addressed to him in her own hand, with a lock of her hair in it. Harold loved his nurse Mrs. Bennet almost as well as he might have loved a mama, and he loved Dottie Bennet and Auntie and Joy Farm near Birkenhead, where they lived, and there were roosters and two pug dogs and ever so many other things. It was a great comfort to Henry that Harold was so well taken care of; Mrs. Bennet was a sensible woman who let Henry know what Baby needed: “I am going to ask you if you would be so kind as to see if you can get for me a good collection of the old fashioned English nursery stories, not put into modern dress. I do not wish to have any German mixture, but simply such tales as Jack the Giant Killer, Tom Thumb . . . Jack and The Beanstalk which is Harold’s favorite—so far as I can tell it to him, but unfortunately I always stick fast in the middle for want of memory. I do not want expensive binding or illustrations.”
How Harold got on was a matter of some anxiety, for he was a delicate little boy, very blond and fragile-looking. Henry was afraid he might take after the delicate Peacocks, though he rather resembled his gran
dfather Thomas Love, who was a robust old man still. To be safe, Henry took Harold out of England each winter—in 1861 and 1862 to Capri, where he had taken Mary Ellen; Henry was still convinced that Capri was good for you. In 1863, they went to Rome instead, and it was cold; Henry writes his own Mama that “some of the fountains with figures of Tritons and Neptunes etc. presented rather a curious appearance, being quite draped in ice with icicles hanging from their arms and legs, which amused Harold immensely. I put him in extra flannels and he seems to have got on very well.” In another letter Harold is “Pretty well”; but not quite equal to the previous winter in milder Capri. They plan to be back for the English spring.
Harold seems, like his half-brother Arthur, to have been interested in philology; when he was but five, Henry reports of him that “he is very fond of acquiring languages. I think I shall let him begin German. He has been trying his hand on Greek lately—the joke against him is that he begins a fresh language every day.”
Harold and Arthur had other boyhood similarities; like most boys, for instance, they were both afflicted with measles. Mary Ellen, being dead, was spared the nursing of her two little boys through that disease, but the two fathers had to cope. Arthur was with George. George writes to a friend for advice:
Dear Tuck,
Little man has got measles coming out.
Now, may I trouble you to send me globule bottles of Puls: and any other medicine necessary; stating what to be given during the dort of fever etc.
And later:
Dearest Tuck,
Your medicines and directions came opportunely, deciding me not to send for Izod. Sons are as a mulberry in the shade. They are spotted like the pard. They are hot as boiled cod in a napkin. They care for nothing but barley-water, which I find myself administering at all hours of the night, and think it tolerable bliss, and just worth living for, to suck an orange. I am sorry to say they have a rather troublesome cough. Otherwise all goes well.
Harold, now always called Felix, was staying with his grandmama Wallis. Henry writes from London:
My dear Mother,
I was sorry to hear Felix is no better. If it is measels I suppose you had better let the doctor see him. I do not think it is necessary to give medicine for measels or only something very simple. Write and let me know how he comes on. Give him my love & kisses & tell him I hope to hear that he is patient I shall come & see him the first opportunity.
George is cleverer but Henry is more truly kind, which may have been the way Mary Ellen saw it too.
SANGER’S GREAT HIPPODROME
AUG. 16
THE PROPRIETERS HAVE, AT AN UNHEARD-OF OUTLAY, PURCHASED ONE OF THE MOST GIGANTIC
TRAINED ELEPHANTS
EVER SEEN IN EUROPE. THE NOBLE ANIMAL IS
THE MOST DOCILE OF ITS SPECIES, AND WILL APPEAR
AT EACH REPRESENTATION IN ITS WONDERFUL
AND (FOR ITS HUGE SIZE)
ELEPHANTINE PERFORMANCE,
WHICH MUST BE SEEN TO BE CREDITED.
Sometimes Henry takes Felix to the circus.
•
Felix was somewhat more fortunate than Arthur in the matter of schools. When it was time for him to begin instruction, Henry put him in the care of a Reverend Mr. Wicksteed and his wife, a concerned and kindly couple who kept a small school for six children. Henry seems at one time to have contemplated a French school for him, and immediately incurred a torrent of pedagogical advice, first from Mrs. Wicksteed:
June 29, 1867
My dear Sir,
We have had a nice note from Felix this morning telling us of his safe arrival in Chester. I enclose it for your edification. He left us well and happy yesterday. Indeed contrasting his delicacy, and your anxiety about him when he first came to us with the present, we have all great reason to be thankful for his increased robustness, and soundness of constitution. The last half-year he has particularly developed in physical power and bearing, and in those moral qualities which are the most sympathetic with these. I used to observe with some pain and more puzzlement a certain shrinking, frightened look about him—as if he were expecting a blow—and a suspicious and guarded out-look of the eyes, of a self-protecting and untrusting character. I never could account for it, as he had never been exposed to anything anywhere that I could make out to cause or explain. But as the older boys have gone, and younger ones succeeded (altogether of our present six, he is still the youngest but one) he has blossomed out into an increased confidence and courage—speaking in a more assured and manly manner—holding his own better and altogether taking a more individual and independent position. This has been accompanied also by more kindness in his behavior to his schoolfellows, and more confidence and affection in his bearing towards our school. I think possibly that having beat about a good deal, and having been mostly with older people, he has naturally fallen into some want of that hearty unreserve and unshrinking sense of equality and security, which now that he is thrown among boys not sensibly much older than himself, he seems to be acquiring, to the great gain of his [?] and happiness. I think the present is rather a turning point with him, and I should be sorry to see this process, which I consider particularly salutary for him, interrupted too suddenly. It may be indeed and I should not much wonder at making the discovery any month, that the work is done, and that he may be becoming a little too cocky for a young set—or for ladies’ management—inclined to rebelliousness. In such case a change would be unquestionably desirable for him. But are you quite sure of the effect of a French School at his very early age? The result of a rather lengthened observation and experience in reference to my own and my friends’ children is to incline me to defer a superinduced foreign education, whether in France or in Germany—to a later age, say 16 or 17. If a great deal earlier before a thoroughly English schooling and training are completed, I have sometimes noticed a kind of mongrel result—confusion of knowledge, and even a confusion of tongues. Each nation has its own character and characteristics, and I think such a question always involves the question of a boy’s nationality. His history, his geography, his very arithmetic, his politics, his manners, his religion, his sympathies, his form and scheme of life, his Latin and Greek—all take a mixed, individual and confused form—which sometimes even reflects itself in his mind and pursuits. When on the basis of a clear, firm, national foundation the larger superstructure and wider sympathies of study and intercourse in other countries is added—the effect is purely accretive—enlarging and enriching, like a handsome house on a grand foundation. But before that foundation has been much laid, I think weakness, vacillating, uncertainty, confusion and want of strong leanings and preferences (of a kind in harmony with original natural inherited and national antecedent instincts and tendencies) are apt to manifest themselves.
I am afraid you will think I am losing any ideas I may have in a multitude of words. But I feel very anxious my dear Mr. Wallis, as you have confided your dear and beautiful little boy to my care, to be as frank with you and as helpful to you in forming a judgement of what is best for him as I can be. . . .
Felix had left school for the holiday and was visiting a Mrs. Smith, to whom the confused parent sent Mrs. Wicksteed’s letter. Mrs. Smith feels that although she
cannot judge on some of the points she speaks of I cannot but feel inclined to fear that Felix is not strong enough, or independent enough yet, to enable him to bear roughing it, at a foreign school—the School Mrs. Bennet mentioned to you, I know more particulars of than she did when she spoke to you; two of Dottie’s young Uncles went there—the eldest who from a little fellow was very forward, manly and independent got through all well, suffering but little—he was there 2 or 3 years. But when he came back tho’ a good French scholar and trained somewhat like a soldier—he was obliged to go to school to rub up his English and fit himself for his uncle’s office. The younger, Lyell, was of a very different disposition and suffered very much bo
dily and mentally—he was so ill that he would scarcely have recovered had there not been a lady at the place to whom he was known and she had him at her house and he gradually recovered—he was there only one year—There are 300 boys at this school—and the arrangements and discipline are good—but not such as such boys of at all delicate constitutions—or such as cannot make their own way in the world—no home comforts.
Poor little Arthur Meredith was already placed at such a school. Henry continued to investigate the problem of schools, and sends a copy of Matthew Arnold’s report on schools to the Wicksteeds. Now Henry rather inclines, through his reading, that Felix should go to a German school. A Matilda Lufton, one of the teachers, enters the fray:
I feel very glad that you should have decided on Germany in preference to France, but do you really think that English boys or indeed any boys are benefited by a foreign education commenced so early. I mean before 16 or 17? My impression was the contrary. I know I have heard that the greatest scapegraces in the German schools are the English boys, and I, perhaps somewhat luckily [?] took it for an axiom that boys were better for the control that the public opinion of their own country exercises on them. I have fancied that I perceived in children brought up abroad a sort of homeless feeling. They do not regard the feelings or opinions of those among whom they live, and they are too far from their own country to feel it home, and when they return, often seem more aliens than many foreigners.
This is rather Edith’s comment on Arthur, when he returned to her in 1874, after eight years in a foreign school.
Eventually, Felix went to London University School in England, and was not exposed to the rigors of a foreign education at all, but he accompanied Henry on his many travels, and so it must be supposed that he had the advantages of foreign “culture” nonetheless. He received the third certificate in his class in French, and the eighth in his class in English. But only the fourteenth, we are sorry to see, in mathematics, which suggests that he may have inherited more from the artists in his lineage than from the businessmen, though a businessman he would be.
The True History of the First Mrs. Meredith and Other Lesser Lives Page 18
