The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit

by Eleanor Fitzsimons

  Producing The Neolith was an ambitious undertaking. An article in Putnam’s Monthly confirmed that its “projectors” saw it as “less of a commercial enterprise than an effort to place before the public sound pictorial and literary work.”3 They sent circulars to prospective subscribers; an annual subscription cost one pound (approximately £120, or USD$160, today) while a single number could be bought for 7s 6d (approximately £35, or USD$46, today). When Edith was soliciting contributions, she asked that they be written “in the most beautiful English.” She was adamant that she wanted no “Yellow Book suggestiveness.” It would appear that she was disillusioned with the publishing industry, since she told socialist writer Evelyn Sharp: “Almost everything that’s printed now is lies, in one form or another,” adding, “I want the plain naked unashamed truth.”4

  Editorial meetings were often fraught. Jackson and Hewitt found Edith headstrong, high strung, and difficult to deal with, particularly when she burst into tears if she felt her decisions were being undermined. Hewitt described her as “very flustered” with “those beads and bangles and incessant cigarettes.”5 To add to their frustration, commissions generally arrived late. But they managed to produce issue one, in folio size, for November 1907. Edith was given top billing on the masthead and “The Criminal,” the poignant story that had been inspired by her son Fabian, was included inside. She had persuaded Shaw to contribute “Aerial Football: the new game,” a witty short story concerning a bishop and a drunken charwoman who enter heaven together. The clergyman, poet, and stained glass designer Selwyn Image gave her a short essay on the engraver and natural historian Thomas Bewick. She had also persuaded G. K. Chesterton to give her one of his best-known poems, “The Secret People.”

  Edith promoted emerging writers too. One was twenty-one-year-old Gerald Gould, a graduate of Magdalen College Oxford and author of a poetry collection titled Lyrics. Gould was a huge fan of her Bastable stories, which he had read while convalescing from a serious illness in 1902. He was thrilled when his friend Clifford Sharp offered to introduce him to her at Well Hall.

  Like Edith, Gould was a fun-loving free spirit with a passion for socialism, who composed comical ballads. He got on brilliantly with her family and was invited to join them in Dymchurch and on impromptu boating parties on the Royal Military Canal. He described Edith reclining in a chair on the lawn:

  A majestic, ample figure, clad in a flowing robe of green, and festooned with a long and tangled scarf; her arms heavy with bangles: on her knee the inevitable box of tobacco, out of which she spun an endless chain of cigarettes: in her mouth the longest cigarette-holder in the world; at her feet, in an attitude of easy indolence, a delightfully but austerely handsome young man.6

  She offered to mentor him and published poems he had written in three of the four issues of The Neolith. It seems likely that she named Gerald in The Enchanted Castle (1907) after him. Although he was grateful for her patronage, he believed she was too indulgent of her young protégés, some of whom had precious little talent.

  Producing The Neolith required dedication and hard work, but there was fun to be had too. The flat at Royalty Chambers often reverberated with the sound of games and charades, or the sea-shanties and folk songs Edith would play on a battered old piano. When they were working they had food sent up from local Soho restaurants, but they ate out when they could. They celebrated their first issue with dinner for twenty guests in Villa-Villa at 37 Gerrard Street, the former home of Edmund Burke. This lively spot was included in Europe after 8:15 (1914):

  Their [Villa-Villa and Maxim’s at 30 Wardour Street] reputations are far from spotless and English society gives them a wide berth. Because of this they have become the meeting place of clandestine lovers. Here is the genuine laughter and the wayward noise of youth. Nine out of every ten of their patrons are young, and four out of five of the girls are pretty. Music is continuous and lively, and they possess an intimacy found only in Parisian Cafés.7

  Afterward they returned to the flat for games and songs. Edith accompanied them on a guitar she had borrowed from the proprietor of Villa-Villa in exchange for an invitation to their party.

  Issue one of The Neolith was well received. The Morning Post declared: “The first number reaches a standard which places it above any magazine of the kind ever produced.”8 The Burlington Magazine was broadly supportive but lamented the lack of fresh writing talent. It failed to mention Edith’s involvement and declared:

  The NEOLITH is a novelty among artistic publications . . . lithography is used both for the text and plates, the stories and poems contained in it being admirable examples of modern penmanship. Of the pictures, those by Mr Sims and Mr Raven Hill best combine vitality with coherence. It was perhaps a pity that the editors should have relied so much on veteran talent. Mr Selwyn Image, Mr. Bernard Shaw, Mr G.K. Chesterton and Mr Frank Brangwyn are useful names with the public but less practised work from younger pens would have been a more realistic raison d’être.9

  Edith persuaded several old friends to contribute to issue two. Laurence Housman and Hugh Benson gave her a story each, and Arthur Watts illustrated Andrew Lang’s story “Neolithic Decadence.” She also included a story titled “The Highwayman,” the work of Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, eighteenth Baron of Dunsany, an aristocratic young man who wrote as Lord Dunsany and was known as Eddie to his family and friends. Dunsany was born and raised in London to the second oldest title in the Irish Peerage, dating back to 1439. He kept a home in London but spent much of his time at the family seat, Dunsany Castle near Tara, in County Meath, Ireland, where he did much of his writing in a room in one of the towers, using quill pens he had cut from feathers discarded by ducks on the estate.

  Dunsany was exceptionally tall at six foot four, an attribute he inherited from his statuesque mother, Ernle Elizabeth Louisa Maria Grosvenor Burton, a cousin of the explorer Richard Burton. He was also an athletic and accomplished man. At one time he was both chess and pistol-shooting champion of Ireland, and he traveled and hunted extensively. A prolific writer of short stories, novels, plays, poetry, essays, and autobiography, he published in excess of eighty books during his lifetime. He was recognized as an important patron of the arts in Ireland, a donor to the Abbey Theatre, and a literary collaborator with William Butler Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory.*

  Pryse had brought Dunsany to Edith’s attention when he recommended The Gods of Pegna (1905), a collection of his fantasy stories. Dunsany insisted they were his first and second readers. She enjoyed the book and wrote to him on October 9, 1907: “can you let me have a short story or article (between 800 and 1,000 words) before Christmas? (Or even shorter if you would wish it so.)” She employed her considerable charm:

  So far I have, with one or two exceptions, only asked for contributions from personal friends—but I love your book so much that I cannot bear to let go any chance, however slight, of receiving a contribution from you. If you will give me one I shall be for ever your grateful debtor.10

  In response Dunsany sent her “The Sword of Welleran.” She liked it but advised him that it was far too long, so he sent two shorter stories, “The Highwayman,” which appeared in issue two, and “Three Tales,” which appeared in issue four. She invited him to lunch at Royalty Chambers. There, while he was explaining his deep interest in the Greek god Chronos, governor of time, the hands of a clock began spinning erratically, the mechanism emitting an odd whirring noise. This clock may have resembled the one described in Dormant: “A tall clock ticks near the door. It has a silver face, and a painted moon and sun mark the hours of day and night.”11 Since Dunsany regarded Chronos as the most significant of the gods, he took this as a good omen. He presented Edith with a copy of Time and the Gods (1906), his second book, which he inscribed to “Mrs Bland from Dunsany.”

  When Edith visited Dunsany’s home at Cadogan Place, she was introduced to his wife, Lady Beatrice Child Villiers. She met W. B. Yeats there at a later date and likened him to a very handsome raven.
She took to Lord and Lady Dunsany. They were invited to Well Hall, and also to Dymchurch where they remembered playing hide-and-seek and charades with fellow guests. As a committed and campaigning socialist, Edith appeared amused by this connection with aristocracy. “Do I address you correctly on this envelope?” she asked him in one letter, “I am inexperienced in correspondence with Lords.”12

  Dunsany was not the only young man whose talent she spotted early in their career. Issue four of The Neolith contains a poem and short story from Richard Barham Middleton. Perhaps he reminded her of Hubert, since he was twenty-five at the time and had resigned from his post as a clerk in the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation Bank to pursue a literary career. A popular, gregarious man, he makes a thinly disguised appearance in Arthur Ransome’s Bohemia in London:

  A huge felt hat banged freely down over a wealth of thick black hair, bright blue eyes, an enormous black beard, a magnificent manner . . . a way of throwing his head back when he drank, of thrusting it forward when he spoke, an air of complete abandonment to the moment and the moment’s thought; he took me tremendously. He seemed to be delighting his friends with extempore poetry.13

  Like Edith, Middleton was passionate about poetry. He was grateful for her support, and counseled: “I hope the Neolith will continue. It would be a pity if it were to join the dodo and the great auk after a brief but glorious career.” He advised her to advertise with The Studio and the New Age. She must have been in Dymchurch at the time as he included the line: “Meanwhile, I hope the rushes grow green in the neighbourhood of Dymchurch.”14 Like Edith, Middleton made hardly any money from his poetry. He fell into a deep depression as a result and left London for Brussels in 1911. When happiness eluded him there too, he poisoned himself with chloroform that had been prescribed as a remedy for his mental anguish. He was just twenty-eight years old.

  At least one writer turned Edith down. A. E. Housman told his brother Laurence:

  I don’t at all want to contribute to Mrs Bland’s publication. . . . I suppose she already knows that I am morose and unamiable, and will not experience any sudden or agonising shock.15

  Edgar Jepson, who was a useful documenter of the period, confirmed that The Neolith had a significant influence on literature at the time:

  Literature was quiet in the middle of the Edwardian age; then Mrs Bland founded the Neolith. . . . The Neolith was the forerunner of the revival of literature at the end of the Edwardian Age.

  He was close enough to those involved to observe the tensions that were emerging, and he held Edith largely responsible:

  I do not know what there is in lithography to make one’s angry passions rise, but the editorial offices, in Soho, were the field of furious battles between Mrs Bland and her art editor. I could not understand what the battles were about; but she was used to having her own way, and naturally she had to have it. She got it.16

  Inevitably perhaps, the task of producing such an intricate magazine overwhelmed them. Hewitt found it deeply frustrating to have to write stories and poems by hand onto transfer paper. Jackson was juggling his commitments with commissions for portraits, which paid his bills. Edith too had many calls on her time. Her time-shifting children’s book, The House of Arden, appeared toward the end of 1908, and she began writing Harding’s Luck, its sequel, almost immediately. That year the Fabian Society published her Ballads and Lyrics of Socialism, and she was also working on having Absalom, or In the Queen’s Garden, a verse drama she had written for issue four of The Neolith, produced for the stage. Even though Shaw advised her on licensing and copyright, the Censor banned it on the grounds that it featured biblical characters, the same ruling that had halted Oscar Wilde’s Salomé. As if this wasn’t enough, Oxford University Press had invited her to edit their illustrated Children’s Bookcase series. Her own contribution was The Old Nursery Stories, a clever reworking of traditional fairy tales including Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Puss in Boots, and Jack and the Beanstalk.

  Although she employed a secretary from time to time, it was generally some literary-minded young person she was helping. and she almost always submitted handwritten manuscripts to her publishers. Her letters were handwritten too, and she often closed them with a tiny drawing of a clover shape, which formed her initials. By then she was receiving dozens of fan letters, many of them addressed to Oswald Bastable esq. She was desperately short of time but answered every single one. Occasionally Paul would help her and they would clear thirty in an evening.

  Edith was unfailingly kind to her younger fans and took a genuine interest in their lives. One was Kathleen Waters, whose benevolent uncle had been advised to speak with the Blands about helping poor people in London. When he called at Well Hall he left her waiting in his car, but Edith invited her inside, exclaiming: “Fancy leaving anything so charming to sit alone in the dark!” Kathleen described Well Hall as “a great place full of people, mostly young and all laughing and talking in the bright light.” While she was there, Edith inscribed a copy of Fabian Essays for her. “She was so generous,” Kathleen remembered, “so vital, that I imagine she swept most of her young friends up, as she did me, into the warmth of her heart, and gave them a vision to carry them through life.”17

  The Neolith never lost money, but it occupied a considerable amount of time and energy. When they decided to discontinue it after four issues, Edith remained on friendly terms with everyone except Jackson. She kept the flat in Royalty Chambers and continued to champion talented young men. In 1909 she read A Room with a View, the third novel from Edward Morgan (E. M.) Forster. She loved it so much that she invited him to lunch at her flat. Forster, who was two decades her junior and shy and awkward, knocked over a towering pile of plates while he was closing a window at her request. She responded kindly, assuring him that she had purchased them for practically nothing from a bric-a-brac stall at the Caledonian Market in Islington. Forster admired her stories. A favorite of his was “The Town in the Library in the Library in the Town” from Nine Unlikely Tales. In it she explores the building of a model city, a theme she returned to again and again, most notably in The Magic City, which was serialized in The Strand Magazine from January 1910. That same month she traveled with John to Dunsany Castle, where they stayed for ten days. Each evening they acted out charades, held writing contests, and played boisterous games of hide-and-seek. Lord and Lady Dunsany helped Edith construct an elaborate model city in their parlor. Their stay was delightful, but the ferry crossing home was horrendous and was followed by a night in Holyhead in “perhaps the worst hotel in Europe.”18

  One day when Margaret Bondfield, future Labour Minister and a member of the Fabian Woman’s Group, called on Edith, she found her playing with her children:

  They were building a wonderful house with such immense attention to detail—no scamp work was allowed—and she identified herself so completely with the children that I also was drawn into feeling that to build that house securely on the best possible plan was a matter of supreme importance.19

  Edith shared this interest with her old friend H. G. Wells. Both may have been inspired by Evelyn Sharp’s “The Palace on the Floor,” a fairy story from her collection The Other Side of the Sun (1900). Wells would spend hours constructing railways and cities with his two young sons, and they conducted miniature wars with toy soldiers on their nursery floor. He included these games in The New Machiavelli. In Floor Games, published in December 1911, he explained that “a large part of the fun of this game lies in the witty incorporation of all sorts of extraneous objects.”20 Edith felt exactly the same.

  Forster visited Well Hall in 1911. Edith played the pianola for him, and they strolled through the orchard discussing books. At sunset he joined the party in the garden to watch her burn a cardboard model that depicted rows of factories and terraced housing. Edith detested the creeping urbanization. In “Fortunatus Rex and Co.” she wrote: “The ugly little streets crawled further and further out of the town eating up the green country like greedy yellow
caterpillars.” She attributed this blight to greed and lamented: “It is curious that nearly all fortunes are made by turning beautiful things into ugly ones. Making beauty out of ugliness is very ill-paid work.” In Wings and the Child she warmed to her theme, protesting “everything is getting uglier and uglier. And no one seems to care”:

  The hideous disfigurement of lovely hills and dales with factories and mines and pot banks—coal, cinder, and slag; the defilement of bright rivers with the refuse of oil and dye works; the eating up of the green country by greedy, long, creeping yellow caterpillars of streets; the smoke and fog that veil the sun in heaven; the sordid enamelled iron advertisements that scar the fields of earth—all the torn paper and straw and dirt and disorder spring from one root. And from the same root spring pride, anger, cruelty and sycophancy, the mean subservience of the poor and the mean arrogance of the rich.21

  For years Well Hall had remained an idyllic oasis in the midst of this creeping sprawl, but the tramline had reached them by then, and it ran right past her front gate. A young amateur artist named Albert Coumber provided a snapshot of the isolation she had once enjoyed. On a Saturday afternoon sometime around 1906, he had traveled from London with a friend to “the comparatively rural district of Well Hall, Eltham.” They wandered through adjacent fields on that beautiful sunny evening and decided to sketch a cluster of redbrick outbuildings. As they approached the main house, it became clear that a soirée of some sort was underway, since guests in evening dress had wandered out onto the lawn. Spotting two girls on a balcony, Coumber blew them a kiss, which they returned.

  The young men returned the following Saturday to finish their sketches. Absorbed in their work, they were startled when a “deep female voice” asked them if they realized they were trespassing. This belonged to “a stately lady in some sweeping garment who repeated the question in some sepulchral tones.” They offered to leave, but Edith merely sighed and responded “we like to be asked.” She invited them to stay and examined their sketches. After they agreed to show them to her daughter, she returned with a girl who seemed “somewhat shy and embarrassed.” Coumber suspected she was one of the girls from the balcony. This may have been Iris since she was artistic. They chatted for a while, and Edith sent out tea to them.22