"Yes. If their wives were content to rest in their husbands' glory or felt that they themselves might have achieved something if conditions had been favourable. So many of them wrote journals, often work, secret work, of very high quality. Look at Dorothy Wordsworth's marvellous prose-if she had supposed she could be a writer-instead of a sister-what might she not have done? What I want to ask is-why did Ellen write her journal? Was it to please her husband?"
Oh no.
"Did she show it to him?"
"Oh no. I don't think so. She never says so."
"Do you think she wrote it for publication, in any form?"
"That's a harder question. I think she knew it might be read. There are several sharp comments in it about contemporary biographical habits-rummaging in Dickens's desk before he was fairly buried and that sort of thing-the usual Victorian comments. She knew he was a great poet and she must have known they would come-the scavengers-sooner or later if she didn't burn it. And she didn't burn it. She burned a lot of letters, you know. Mortimer Cropper thinks Patience and Faith burned them, but I think it was Ellen. Some are buried with her."
"Why do you think she wrote the journal, Dr Nest? In order to have someone to talk to? As an examination of conscience? Out of a sense of duty? Why?"
"I do have a theory. It's far-fetched, I think."
"What is your theory?"
"I think she wrote it to baffle. Yes. To baffle."
They stared at each other. Maud said, "To baffle whom? His biographers?"
"Just to baffle."
Maud waited. Beatrice described helplessly her true experience: "When I started on it, I thought, what a nice dull woman. And then I got the sense of things flittering and flickering behind all that solid-oh, I think of it aspanelling. And then I got to think-I was being led on-to imagine the flittering flickering things-and that really it was all just as stolid and dull as anything. I thought I was making it all up, that she could have said something interesting- how shall I put it-intriguing-once in a while-but she absolutely wasn't going to. It could be an occupational hazard of editing a dull journal, couldn't it? Imagining that the author was deliberately baffling me?"
Maud looked back at Beatrice, baffled. She saw the outline of stalwart strapping under the so-soft speckled wool of Beatrice's bolster-like front. The wool was basically powder-blue. It was hugely vulnerable. Beatrice dropped her voice. "I expect you think I've very little to show for all these years of work on these papers. Twenty-five years to be precise, and sliding past at increasing speed. I've felt very conscious of that-that slowness-with the increasing interest shown by-your sort of scholar-people with ideas about Ellen Ash and her work. All I had was a sort of sympathy for the-helpmeet aspect of her-and to be truthful, Dr Bailey, a real admiration for him, for Randolph Ash. They said it would be better to-to do this task which presented itself so to speak and seemed appropriate to my-my sex-my capacities as they were thought to be, whatever they were. A good feminist in those days, Dr Bailey, would have insisted on being allowed to work on the Ask and Embla poems."
"Being allowed?"
"Oh. I see. Yes. On working on the Ask and Embla poems." She hesitated. Then: "I don't think you can imagine, Miss Bailey, how it was then. We were dependent and excluded persons. In my early days-indeed until the late 1960s-women were notpermitted to enter the main Senior Common Room at Prince Albert College. We had our own, which was small and slightlypretty. Everything was decided in the pub-everything of import-where we were not invited and did not wish to go. I hate smoke and the smell of beer. But should not therefore be excluded from discussing departmental policy. We were grateful for employment. We thought it was bad being young and-in some cases, not in mine-attractive-but it was worse when we grew older. There is an age at which, I profoundly believe, one becomes a witch, in such situations, Dr Bailey-through simple ageing-as always happened in history-and there are witch-hunts-
"You will think I am mad. I am trying to excuse twenty-five years' delay-with-personalities-You would have produced an edition twenty years ago. The truth is also, I wasn't sure it was right. If she would have liked what I was doing."
Maud felt a heat of fellow-feeling, unexpected and powerful. "Can't you give up? Do your own work?"
"I feel responsible. To myself, all those years. To her. "
"Could I see the journal? I'm particularly interested in 1859. I read his letters to her. The Yorkshire ones. Did she get to Huxley's lecture?"
Was this too blatant? Apparently not. Beatrice raised herself slowly and extracted the volume from a grey steel cabinet. She clasped it for a moment defensively.
"A Professor Stern came. From Tallahassee. She wanted to know-to know-to find out about Ellen Ash's sexual relations- with him-or anyone. I told her there was nothing of that kind in this journal. She said there must be-in the metaphors-in the omissions. We were not taught to do scholarship by studying primarily what was omitted, Dr Bailey. No doubt you find me naive."
"No. I occasionally find Leonora Stern naive. No, that's the wrong word. Single-minded and zealous. And she may have been right. Maybe what you find baffling is a systematic omission-"
Beatrice thought. "That I may grant. Something is omitted. I fail to see why it must be presumed to be-that kind of thing."
This dogged and flushed minor defiance struck another chord of fellow-feeling in Maud, who edged her chair closer and looked into the rumpled weary face. Maud thought of Leonora's ferocity, of Fergus's wicked playfulness, of the whole tenor and endeavour of twentieth-century literary scholarship, of a bed like dirty egg-white.
"I agree, Dr Nest. In fact I do agree. The whole of our scholar ship-the whole of our thought-we question everything except the centrality of sexuality-Unfortunately feminism can hardly avoid privileging such matters. I sometimes wish I had embarked on geology myself."
Beatrice Nest smiled and handed over the journal.
ELLEN ASH'S JOURNAL
JUNE 4TH 1859
The house is echoing and silent without my dear Randolph. I am full of projects for improvements in his comfort to be effected whilst he is away. The study curtains and those in his dressing-room must come down and be beaten out thoroughly on the line. I am in doubts as to the wisdom of attempting to wash the upper ones. The drawing-room pair I attempted have never been the same, either as to lustre or as to the "hang" of their folds. I shall set Bertha to a diligent beating and brushing and see what can be done. Bertha has been somewhat sluggish of late; she comes slowly when called and leaves tasks not rounded-off (the silver candlesticks, for instance, which have streaks of tarnish under the rims or the buttons on R's nightshirt, which are still deficient). I wonder if something is amiss with Bertha. After the uncertainties and dilapidations-and yes, violence and destruction-wrought by her predecessors I had hoped that Bertha would continue to be the half-invisible busy birdlike presence she commenced with so successfully. Is she unhappy or unwell? Both I fear but do not wish to think. Tomorrow I will ask her directly. She would be surprised if she knew what courage, and of what variable kinds (as to the disturbance of both her comfortable goings-on and my own) this requires of me. I lack my mother's force of character. I lack many things in which my dear mother was both proficient and naturally greatly endowed. Above all, when my dear one is away, I miss our hours of quiet reading to each other of an evening. I wondered whether to go on with our study of Petrarch, where he left off, and decided against it; it loses too much without his beautiful voice bringing to life the ancient passion of the Italian. I read a chapter or two of Lyell's Principles of Geology in order to share with him his enthusiasm for his study, and was equally charmed by the intellectual gravity of Lyell's vision and chilled by his idea of the aeons of inhuman time that went to the making of earth's crust-which is still, if he is to be believed, perpetually in process of making. And where may hide what came and loved our clay? as the Poet asked finely. I do not-unlike the Reverend Mr Baulk-feel that this newly-perceived ancient state of things impinges on our settled faith in any decisive way. Perhaps I am unimaginative or too instinctive or intuitive in my trust. If the Tale of Noah's Deluge turns out to be a fine poetic invention, shall I, the wife of a great poet, thereby cease to pay attention to its message about the universal punishment of sin? If the exemplary Life and mysteriously joyful Death of that greatest and only truly good Man were to be thought of as inventions that would be differently threatening.