The Darwin Conspiracy (35 page)

Papa was devastated. He called me into his study. He was seated in his
leather chair where I had seen him hundreds of times before. He did not
strike me but instead looked old and feeble as if he himself had been dealt a
deathly blow, which made me feel thrice worse. He did not demand to know
the name of the father, since, as Mamma had informed him the person was
married, that would serve little purpose. He said I should be hard put to 
regain his respect, no matter how much I repented my actions, and that I was
now condemned to life as a spinster. He said that he would never consent to
pay a dowry but that nonetheless he would not force me out of the house,
which was mine to live in for all my years.

I could not, however, keep the child. To ensure this and to protect the good
name of our family, he would contact his friend, Charles Loring Brace, the
American who runs the Children’s Aid Society, who he said knew how to
deal with such situations. One week later, at Mr Brace’s suggestion, before
my condition became visible, I was sent here to Zurich, where I have
remained these eight months.

She was a baby girl. I barely had sufficient time to discover that. They let
me hold her only for the few minutes it took to cut the cord and for the doctor
to examine her. Then she was taken away. I am told she will remain here in
Zurich for a while until she is old enough to travel and then will be placed
with a good family.

I sometimes believe I can still feel her, now ten days after she has gone,
and I recollect the feel of her in my arms. Her face was pink and wrinkled,
her skin covered with a soft birth substance, and she had a full head of black
hair. The doctor said she was a fine and healthy baby girl.

I am leaving here tomorrow and will return home. By then Papa will have
received the letter I wrote last week in which I told him that I was sorry for
what I had done but observed that we all have committed grievous errors in
our lives. I said it ill behooved him to lecture me on morality. I added further
that I knew he was not such an upstanding man because I had discovered
what he had done thirty years ago on his trip to South America.

Here on the sun-porch, where I sit every day for hours on end, with nothing to distract me but my own dark thoughts, they bring me lemonade, as if
my problem were nothing more than a parched throat.

I prithee, my sweet Mary Ann, think of me not too harshly and pray that I
may find peace.

Yours in grateful remembrance,

Bessie

20 April 1872

My dear Mary Ann,

I received your letter only moments before I left Zurich. I thank you for it,
deeply. Without your support and your comforting words, I do not know how
I would survive.

You asked me to tell you about my home-coming. It was not as dreadful as
I had feared. Parslow himself met me at Orpington and filled me in on the
family news. He said that it was a pity that I had not attended Etty’s wedding and his tone was so unaffected that I deemed it unlikely he had any
inkling of why I had been absent. I pleaded ill-health and said that was the
reason I had gone to rest in the Swiss mountains. He said that Papa too had
not been well and had barely been able to give her away at the church. It was
a short ceremony with scarcely any festivities, though Parslow was much surprised at the presence of a group of men who were unknown to him—it turned
out that they were friends of Richard’s from the Working Men’s College.

Papa was upstairs in his bedroom when I arrived and he did not come
downstairs to greet me. He stayed there all the afternoon, only descending for
dinner. When he saw me, he nodded, nothing else. The meal would have
passed largely in silence except that Horace was home from Trinity and he at
least was garrulous. I enquired after Etty (which caused Mamma to shoot me
a dark look) and Horace said that the newly-weds had both fallen sick on
their honeymoon in Europe. ‘Tell Bessie what Etty wrote from Cannes,’ he
said, turning to Mamma. Most reluctantly, she recited a passage from a letter
in which Etty wrote that the two of them felt very married, each lying in a
sickbed as if they’d been together thirty years, just like Mamma and Papa. It
made my ears burn to hear of it.

Two days have passed now since my return and Papa has not referred to
the letter I wrote him from Zurich. I decided to give Papa an opportunity to
raise the subject if he so desired. Consequently, this afternoon when he readied himself to take his constitutional along the Sandwalk, I asked if I could
accompany him.

He appeared surprised but agreed and we set out. After discussing the
weather and other such topics of little consequence, we fell silent. I realised
that Papa had no desire to broach the subject that was on both of our minds—
nor did he want me to do so. As for myself, I was content, as the saying goes,
to let sleeping dogs lie.

The longer I live here with my parents, the more I find myself sinking into
a familiar lassitude. I am at their beck and call. It makes me feel that I am
losing my shape, my footing in the world, and becoming insubstantial, like the
morning fog on the garden. My condition reminds me of a passage in
Middle-march,
in which you described a woman very much like me and wrote that
she was ‘nipped and subdued as single women are apt to be who spend their
lives in uninterrupted subjection to their elders’.

I do miss you so much, Mary Ann, and long to see you. No one else understands the depth of the misery that has befallen me.

Yours in eternal friendship,

Bessie

1 January 1873

My dear Mary Ann,

It is the New Year and I have seized upon the day to write you and bring
you abreast of my doings, such as they are. It is hard to believe that more
than half a year has passed since my misfortune. I have vowed to throw
myself into my life as a dutiful daughter and spinster, much as I detest the
word. We have settled into a quiet existence at Down House. All of the other
children are gone now—William to banking in Southampton, George to law,
Francis to study medicine and his beloved plants, Leonard to the Royal Engineers and Horace back to University. Mamma and Papa and I live as a
threesome, with little to disturb the daily routine.

Papa no longer plays billiards with Parslow but still has a go at
Backgammon with Mamma every night after dinner. He keeps a record of
their respective wins and losses over the years and each time he is forced
to increase her tally, he thunders, ‘Bang your bones!’ or ‘Confound you,
woman!’ Afterwards she reads novels to him while he reclines upon the sofa.

As you know, he has finally finished his book on human and animal
expressions—at last, we no longer live with those horrid photographs of people grimacing and animals snarling! Now he putters around the greenhouse
doing God knows what with orchids and pea-plants and those insect-catching
sundews. He has been talking lately about writing his autobiography,
largely, he says, to provide amusement to his grandchildren and perhaps
instruction to others.

I try not to think of my baby girl and am able, through sheer force of will,
to banish the memory from my mind for days on end. When the barest thought
of her begins to intrude, I consciously push it away by quickly seeking out
someone for conversation or by finding something to read. This strategem,
however, does not always succeed, especially if I am out walking and see a
young child who would be about her age. Then the floodgate opens. On those
occasions I cannot help but ask myself scores of questions: How big is she
now? What colour hair does she have? In looks does she take after her father
or me? Is she quick of mind like me or slow like Horace? After torturing
myself with such questions, I fall into a black melancholy that lasts for weeks.

Yours always,

Bessie

6 July 1873

My dear Mary Ann,

Today I am content and I would like to share that sentiment with you. It
being a summer Sunday, we had a host of visitors. About seventy men and
women came from the Working Men’s College. Their number was augmented
by the Huxleys and their children and all manner of local people. The
weather was glorious, with the sun shining and the roses in full bloom. In the
garden we had set up long tables for tea and strawberries. People danced on
the lawn and relaxed in the shade of the new verandah. The children rolled
in the newly mown hay and played at Red Indians along the Sandwalk,
using javelins of hazel from the gardener’s shed.

I am accustomed to finding Richard’s visits most upsetting. In anticipation, I would feel my heart beating against my ribs and my breath so shallow
that I feared I would faint. The very first time I saw them as a married couple, Richard ignored me, as if I were of as little consequence as a piece of furniture. Etty gave me a big hug and took me by the hand for a walk in the
garden, which calmed me considerably—for I had been afraid that during
their honeymoon he had felt a compulsion to confess our transgression. So little did I know of his nature! And yet from time to time I caught a hint of jealousy on her part. She would appraise me during unguarded moments, as if
she were trying to burrow into my secret. Once, by accident I sat close to
Richard in the drawing-room, and as he quickly stood up to change his seat,

I saw her observe him and a chill passed over her features as distinct as a
cloud.

But today was different. Everyone seemed to enjoy the outing. As the men
gathered under the lime-trees for a sing-along, Richard brought out his concertina. At one point I heard his deep bass rising above the others and I
looked at him closely, able to scrutinise him fully while being myself unobserved. My Mr
X.
He has gained a bit of weight. I thought back to the time
when he and I would take the men on countryside excursions on the train.

They were the happiest days of my life. And yet, as I recalled them, I felt not
simply an ache of regret that they were forever gone but a quiet joy that they
had happened at all. I walked under the shade of a lime-tree and stood to
one side, looking at Richard as he tilted his head back to sing, and I realised
that I no longer felt the same about him, that my passion had ebbed or turned
into something else, something more tranquil and not at all hurtful. Perhaps
it has become a memory of itself.

Today it is, I think, that I begin my journey to recovery.

Yours always,

Bessie

10 January 1874

My dear Mary Ann,

You asked me to describe the séance we attended at Uncle Ras’ house the
other night from my point of view, so that we might compare our experiences.

As you perhaps do not know, Papa attended only at the urging of my cousin
Hensleigh; customarily he disdains such events that turn on mysticism and
spiritualism.

As you remarked at the outset, mesmerism, mediums, spirit-guides, table-rappers and spirit-photographs are all the fad in London these days. In a
thousand darkened parlours people gather around tables to commune with
the dead or find divertissement in the prospect. Papa pours scorn on the whole
idea and in this he is joined by the ever faithful Mr Huxley.

The ‘manifestation’ was arranged by George. It was he who chose Charles
Williams as the medium. In addition to Mamma and Papa, I was surprised
to see that all manner of people joined us for the session, including Etty and
Richard, Hensleigh and Fanny and Francis Galton. I was most happy to see
 
you and Mr Lewes there, since I always find your presence reassuring. I wonder if you spotted the man who slipped in at the last moment. I am convinced
it was Huxley himself, dressed incognito, undoubtedly to heighten the drama
of his attendance.

I thought the setting-up was great fun. I giggled when the doors were shut,
the curtains drawn and George and Hensleigh tied Mr Williams’ hands and
feet and we all sat there in the dark waiting for the show to begin. It soon got
horribly stuffy and since the room was pitch-black even I began to imagine
various shapes and forms. It was all quite spookish, since one heard breathing
and all kinds of sounds—and it was impossible to tell who was making them.

By this time the heat was almost insufferable. Then the show began with the
ringing of a bell and we heard the sound of wind rushing through the room.

Someone exclaimed and stood up—I heard a chair scraping against the floor.

The chair fell over and I heard a gasp, the sound of someone in distress. The
lights were put on. Imagine my surprise when it turned out that Papa, as you
must have noticed, seemed unable to breathe. He insisted on lying down and
was taken upstairs and put to bed. Afterwards, the session resumed with
more sounds and sparks flashing and the table rising up above our heads.