Out of the Silence

by Wendy James

  24 August

  At school today there was a nasty confrontation with Mrs Simpkins – Judy’s mother – over Vida’s growing public prominence. Miss Goldstein, of course, was absent and Elsie and Aileen were busy teaching, so I was left to beard the dragon.

  She: I understood that Miss Goldstein was a supporter of the suffrage, but I had no idea she would be so public about it, nor did I think she would see fit to fill my daughter’s ears with these rubbishy notions of hers. This school came with the highest of recommendations! Now my Judith is spouting such nonsense, has her head filled with ideas that I, for one, am completely opposed to.

  I: (wringing hands, smiling effusively) I’m sure we’ve said nothing in class that you could take exception to—

  She: It’s not necessary that it should be in class. My daughter is obviously exposed to these ideas here.

  I: Mrs Simpkins, your daughter is a bright girl (she’s as dull as ditch water, really, but we cannot afford to lose students – the spectre of governessing rears its ugly head again!) and these ideas are all about us. Surely we cannot be expected to protect your daughter from learning about one of the great questions of our day?

  She: (snorts) Well, it is quite simply the wrong question. There are many of us Miss – er – who believe that to give women the suffrage will be to force us to move into a sphere that is harsh and unaccommodating, and unnatural. That we will strip womanhood of all that makes it sacred if women are allowed to move into the world of men. We do not need to be told we are equal to men, we know that, but our roles are different, and separate. You will see women lose their uniqueness; they will become as coarse, as brutish as men. Is that what you want? I’ve heard that there is to be a petition against the suffrage and I will be signing it. There are many women who think as I do and I assure you we will be making our voices heard! Good day to you. (Stamps foot, shakes head, exits.)

  I could do little but wring my hands and heartily wish myself elsewhere. These sorts of arguments are just not my forte. I’m bemused by the attitude of women like Mrs Simpkins (particularly when so many women like Vida successfully run businesses, attend university, work as doctors, nurses, teachers, and so on. Why is she so affronted by the idea of women having equal representation? Why is the granting of this particular ‘right’ seen to be so fraught with hidden dangers?) but I am not clever or brave enough to argue the point.

  Anyway, Mrs Simpkins has withdrawn her daughter from the school. ‘Good riddance,’ says V., ‘the Simpkins girl will do better at a school without any academic pretensions.’ I am not so sanguine – no doubt Mrs Simpkins will not hesitate to advertise her dissatisfaction.

  28 August

  A letter from the Tucker girls today. They are finally to have a governess, who will begin in October. She is a young lady from Dederang who has taught in a Melbourne school and now wishes to be closer to her ailing mother, so from there she will be able to travel home on most weekends. She has no music, but evidently their father, who has had some training on the piano, has promised the girls a lesson a month, which will satisfy them for a small while. I have promised to purchase music of my choosing for them, though Isolde tells me her father is a great one for Bach – my own favourite – so there will be no difficulty there.

  Purchased fabric and patterns for three new shirts. Intended to sew them myself, but may have to send them to Harriet’s dressmaker. An unforseen expense & I have already spent more than I have budgeted, but I seem to have so little time, lately.

  Extract of letter from Elizabeth Hamilton to her brother Robert

  6 September

  … The greatly anticipated Woman’s Suffrage Bill was again rejected by the Victorian Legislative Council. As expected, my fellow house guest was somewhat gloomy & dispirited. There was much talk of betrayal, and of the council’s increasingly unrepresentative power.

  Vida is incensed. It is beyond all understanding, beyond all sense, she says. To have the bill passed so easily in the lower house, with such a majority, only to see it quashed once again by those ‘barbarians’ of the upper house. ‘Men like Councillors Campbell and Reid pretend that they fear the loss of women’s exalted position, or the disintegration of the home, and of the nation, when,’ she said, ‘all they’re really concerned about is that women’s voting doesn’t put too much power in the hands of the working class – or worse still, lead to six o’clock closing and the abolition of wars and gambling!’

  James’s response was characteristically moderate; he felt these were reasonable fears, that really Campbell wasn’t such a hypocrite; that he’d always been quite straightforward in his condemnation – ‘scrupulously honest, in fact’.

  Vida laughed, at this: ‘Oh yes, he’s certainly scrupulous in his viciousness towards those “women who wear gem hats and do their washing on a Sunday”. Meaning women like me, I suppose – though I’m sure I can’t recall ever washing on a Sunday.’ And nor can I, for that matter. Though, as V. said, I suppose such talk is marginally preferable to the pretence of chivalry.

  As you can see, Robbie, our ‘at table’ conversations are always full of interesting tidbits since Vida’s arrival – though I fear poor James finds them something of a hindrance to healthy digestion.

  Elizabeth Hamilton’s diary

  14 September

  Surely nothing can be as humiliating as hearing oneself spoken about. I was slipping in through the kitchen door – had forgotten a book I wanted for my junior French class – when I heard Aileen talking to someone, one of the mothers, perhaps, in the hallway. Realised immediately that it was me they were talking about, and stayed put.

  ‘She is a reasonably good teacher. Not inspirational, of course – she’s too retiring – but surprisingly competent, and confident with the girls, who all seem to respect her, and she has a fair range of subjects, too. Really, Vida’s so busy, it’s lucky she’s found her. I believe we’ve been able to save on tutors for some subjects – she’s had a jolly thorough education.’

  ‘And she’s fortunate to have had that, I suppose. So many of these women emigrate without any training at all, no doubt imagining they’ll be snatched up by a rich husband.’

  ‘Oh no, I don’t think that’s likely. She’s far too old, and anyway I believe there was some tragedy or other. She was engaged to be married to a young doctor – her father’s ward, he had grown up in her family from quite a young age – but he was killed in some sort of coaching accident, I believe.’

  ‘Oh, how sad. Now your sister, Miss Vida, one can imagine that she would be a brilliant teacher, her classes exhilarating …’

  I backed carefully through the door and crept back to my classroom; went back to conjugating French verbs. Why is it that one never overhears anything flattering said about oneself? Oh, my eyes ache and my hand shakes and my cheeks flame just writing about it. Too horrible to be regarded in such a way, and so shameful to actually hear it. I feel as pathetic a creature – dependent, subject to the kindness of others, pitied – as poor Enid Gregory. I, who have never, never regarded myself as such an unfortunate creature – a spinster, an old maid. But of course I am. One thinks one knows oneself, but can never see just how we are regarded by others. And when you do – oh … How wrong, how unjust a summing-up of my life, and my ‘self’.

  Later: humiliation and hurt have soured a little; curdled into resentment. Miss Aileen is pleased that I am saving them money. Vida – a fine and exhilarating teacher? She is so rarely here it’s hard to say … Why on earth do I care so much? But then, why not? How else can I measure my worth? But such a grudging valuation.

  If I were to die tomorrow, whose life would be the less? Who would care? Sometimes this solitary existence seems too, too hard.

  23 September

  Several of the senior girls have asked my advice: they would like to set up a literary society and a student magazine. They propose a meeting every fortnight with speeches to be made on set topics, the first of which they’d like me to determine. These spe
eches they will then type up and present as articles in their little magazine. They are very dear, smart girls – too smart. I sometimes worry that we are, as Mrs S. suggested, filling their heads with nonsense, or at least filling their heads with expectations that cannot possibly be met.

  Some are certainly bright enough to matriculate, to attend university, too. But then … What? Do they undertake careers as doctors and lawyers and thus deny themselves for ever the other – and I would argue, greater – pleasures: hearth, husband and children? I cannot see how the two can ever be truly compatible.

  4 October

  I sometimes think that a piece of me went missing after Davey’s death, and an even greater portion has been lost now that I am so far from everything & everyone familiar, though of course there is no one left, save Rob, and he is too far away to provide any real solace. The world I once inhabited has disappeared entirely, and so very little remains of the girl I was. It would have been all but impossible (unimaginable!) to conceive of my life as it is now, then; it seems I have gradually, almost imperceptibly, become merely an observer of others’ lives – & never a participant. Truly, from the perspective of my old self, it has been an unimaginable, terrible transformation.

  Life is such an even plane now. I have been neither truly angry nor, I have to confess, particularly happy for a such a long time that I have almost forgotten the sensations. When I am not overcome by sadness I am merely numb, I suppose – or resigned. Perhaps we have only a finite capacity for such ‘emotion’, and I have exhausted mine, or perhaps I am in some state that will eventually pass and one day I will be filled again with wild longings and lovings and anticipations and enthusiasms …

  And if I can barely recognise myself, I doubt there is anyone at home who would recognise me at all now. I can hear Father plain as day: ‘What! This quiet, mousy lass our wild, naughty Bess? I won’t believe it.’ And poor Mother – I was always such a worry to her. Perhaps she would approve of my new spirit of patience and tolerance and understanding. How many times has she scolded me? ‘You act too quick, Bess – take a deep breath.’ Well, I have taken breaths, Mama. I have learnt all your lessons now – truly and well. But what I wouldn’t give to hear you again. To hear that anxious sigh and see that shake of the head; to be exasperated by your concern.

  Now I am a sad old maid; the girls I teach barely see me. And in truth I think I probably am half invisible. Only half alive, at any rate.

  16 October

  We began a course in what Vida calls ‘physical education’ today for the older girls, the little ones have an hour of callisthenics daily. I wonder if Vida has been quite candid with the parents about what these lessons entail. Not just physical activity – exercises recommended to her by an acquaintance who has had some experience of Oriental practices – but a series of lessons in human anatomy, culminating in an explanation of the reproductive functions of women and men. These are all things I certainly agree that we should not feel squeamish about, but I have a feeling that there will be an uproar when the girls go home to their parents with their new-found intelligence. Perhaps not a matter for school, and I’d predict a minor exodus … I understand that for Vida this is a vocation, a mission – the education of these young women. But for me the school and its pupils are a matter of survival, both more and less than Vida’s idealistic agenda.

  Extract of letter from Elizabeth Hamilton to her brother Robert

  29 October

  … We had a rather grand luncheon today, what James laughingly refers to as his mother’s ‘Salons’. The conversations around the table are possibly even grander than the fare. We may live at the end of the earth, but we certainly seem to be at the centre of civilisation when it comes to ideas and theories and movements. I do not have much of a part in these conversations myself, and though this may only be a consequence of Alice’s cooking being particularly fine, and so a great deal of my attention (or that of my jaw, at any rate) being thus diverted, I must say that my opinions on the important questions of the day – when they are ever sought – seem to have become sadly uncertain. I had not realised that I had become such a ‘rustic’.

  Anyway, I have put my invisibility to good use and taken the trouble to set down the ‘Salon’ conversation as I recall it, which is to say tidied here and there, and with the trivia and minutiae – the slurping of wine, the yawns and sighs, the frowns and glares – excised.

  Our ‘guest of honour’ this Sunday was a visiting American temperance worker – Mrs Lydia Norton. She was middle-aged, very brash and opinionated, and unable to speak, it seemed, on any other topic than the evils of drink. She was confident, as such people so often are, that we would be honoured by her every thought, and she was very skilful in her ability to bring the conversation back to her particular interest.

  Also present was a young man whom I first met during the suffrage demonstration at Town Hall last month – Edward Stratford. He writes for the socialist journal Tocsin, and has somehow made himself known to Vida. He’s a recent immigrant, of a similar age to James, a Londoner and a great champion of the working classes. Mr Stratford is quite conspicuously taken with Vida, so there was an immediate and obvious antagonism between the two men. They are such opposites: James measured and reasonable, cautious and conventional, and this fellow so quick and nervous, passionate, intense. Mr Stratford is an odd-looking fellow – small and dark and slightly stooped, he is not unappealing, but there is no doubt that James’s undeniably handsome countenance and distinguished air puts Mr Stratford at a disadvantage, of which, I am certain, the poor man is painfully aware.

  But none of this makes any difference: Vida, I fear, is interested in no man. She has neither the time nor the inclination.

  Dr and Mrs Strong were also guests. Dr Strong – the minister at Harriet’s church and the man, Vida says, who has been her most powerful influence – is a compelling speaker when behind his pulpit or in front of a crowd, but he quite loses his rhetorical power in a domestic situation – he’s rather vague and dithering. All ideas and theories. His wife, Jessie, is far more impressive. An intelligent, practical woman – and extremely blunt; a necessary complement to her spouse, perhaps. Harriet told me later that the Strongs have recently lost a child – their married daughter Jenny died suddenly at the beginning of the year. Such a sadness to bear – and yet borne so bravely …

  Salon

  Dr Strong

  Now, here’s a sad story. One of my most faithful parishioners – a good man, a carpenter, who some years ago had occasion to fall foul of the law and spent some years in prison, but who is now one of the Lord’s most willing workers – this man’s son, who is barely sixteen, with whom he had little contact during the time he was imprisoned, his wife having taken up with another fellow, this boy, has, like his father before him, fallen in with a bad crowd – drinkers and gamblers and carousers – and my good friend, Mr Y, we’ll call him—

  Jessie Strong

  (Impatiently) Oh for heaven’s sake, Charles, Harriet knows it’s George Benton you’re talking about – don’t you, Harriet? Such an odd little fellow, I’ve always thought. That dreadful squint – quite a sinister man if you ask me. I don’t know why you insist on your Mr Xs and Ys, Charles, when anybody who can guess will, and those who don’t know don’t care.

  Dr Strong

  (Unperturbed) Thank you Jessie. As I was saying, this young fellow is getting further and further in trouble, and my man – Mr Y – doesn’t have any influence. He can’t use himself as an example, for his son only says, ‘Well, what’s good for the goose … I dare say I can conveniently repent when I’m near death, and it’s not like goodness ever got a man anywhere.’ All quite valid arguments in their own way. Needless to say my man is at a loss – sees his son following in his footsteps, in fact taking him as an example, and his inability to do anything and indeed his own complicity are quite tearing him apart. I can only counsel him to have faith that the young man will learn, though the lessons themselves may be painfu
l, in the same way that he himself did, though hopefully before his troubles become too serious …

  Harriet

  You’ve said nothing of this poor man’s wife, Dr Strong. I’d like to know what happened to her while he was in prison. How on earth would she manage to keep her children on the straight and narrow? And imagine how she’s feeling now. There should be some proper provision made for such people, in every practical sense a woman becomes a widow in such circumstances.

  Vida

  She should have been trained! None of this would ever have happened if his wife had some occupation. Why could she not have learnt to be a carpenter just as well as her husband? She could have taken some of the burden from the man – and who knows, perhaps that’s what caused his original downfall. She could at least have kept the family together without having to be dependent on some other fellow. I’ve often thought it would be a fine thing to be a carpenter—

  James

  It’s heavy, dirty work Vida. You’re hardly capable of lifting a hammer, and you wouldn’t be so blithe about hard work if you’d seen some of the poor wretches I see at the hospital: women scarcely your age who look old enough to be your grandmother, they’re so bent and worn and wrecked from unceasing hard work, and their lifespans are so decreased. You wouldn’t—

  Vida

  Oh James, it’s childbearing, not hard work, that ages a woman. And I should think you’d know that better than anyone. And as far as childbearing goes, well, we all know that there’s a simple solution to—