Barbara Vine - The Blood Doctor

‘But she can’t have known then, Vi,’ said Stanley. ‘She can’t have had any idea he was going to let her down.’

‘She had a premonition that all wasn’t well. And she was right. She never heard another word from him. “Indisposed,” she kept saying. “ Indisposed . He was indisposed to seeing me .” ’

I had given up asking Lady Farrow how she could possibly know such things, how a mother would tell a daughter such things. What I wanted most at that moment was to be home with the diary open in front of me to check if there was a pentagram on the entry for 14 June 1883.

‘Her father wanted to bring an action for breach of promise, you know. They did that then. They put notices in the papers warning other parents to be wary of men who might behave badly to their daughters.’

‘But Sir John Batho didn’t?’ I said.

‘Olivia stopped him. Her pride wouldn’t let her agree to that. “She sat,” ’ said Lady Farrow surprisingly, “ ‘like patience on a monument, smiling at grief.” That was how Violet put it. Pretty, isn’t it? She was very gifted, she wrote lovely poetry. If you’d like any of the photographs for your book, I’m sure you’re very welcome.’

‘Be our guest,’ said Stanley.

‘On the understanding we get them all back intact, of course. And Stanley has photostatted all the letters for you.’

At least I wasn’t offered samples of the poetry. I was out in the hall when the two of them dived back into the living room and began a whispered colloquy. Lady Farrow came out, fetched my coat and insisted on helping me into it.

‘Oh, by the way, I hope you didn’t take that seriously, what Stanley said about Olivia contracting a – well, a contagious disease. Of course that wasn’t what he meant, was it, dear?’

Stanley, hovering behind her, said, ‘Certainly not, dear. Certainly not.’ He astonished me by screwing up his eye in a histrionic wink.

‘He was thinking of someone else.’

It was only when I was walking down the street towards the tube station that I remembered ‘contagious’ was the Victorians’ euphemism for what we’d now call a sexually transmitted disease, and what less mealy-mouthed people, and indeed Stanley himself, called syphilis.

How much of that could I believe? Not all, certainly. Jude was out at a launch party for one of her authors when I got home. I went into the study, put the two photographs I’d borrowed with the rest, and found the diary for 1883, a green leather one, octavo size. Henry wrote in a typical Victorian hand, sloping, spidery, conventional, the upper loops tall, the lower loops deep. For Thursday 14 June he had written only: ‘Audience with HM 11 a.m. Feeling unwell, I cancelled my evening engagement.’ No mention of what or where the evening engagement was, not a word about the Bathos. And no pentagram either. The next one of those occurs on Monday 18 June. At that time, February, I didn’t know about Mary Dawson, I hadn’t met Laura Kimball, but I do now. Sitting where I sat two months ago, in the light of my new knowledge, I’m looking at May, the month Jimmy conceived her daughter Mary Dawson, and there are three pentagrams that month, one on the 13th (the day after Henry returned from the Lakes), one on the 17th and one on the 29th. Since Mary was born on 21 February 1884, it seems likely conception took place on 13 or 17 May. Of course, there isn’t and can never be any way of absolutely fixing this. I think fleetingly of Jude who would so love to make such calculations for herself.

Two very different women, I’m sure, Mary Dawson and Violet Raven. What happened to Violet is clear enough, marriage to a man below her father’s station, a happy enough life probably in a villa in then suburban Hammersmith. One child, Stanley, to whom she was a devoted and possessive mother. What would Olivia have thought of her grandson following in the footsteps of ‘the great love of her life’ and entering the House of Lords? I’ve checked him out in Dod and discovered he was for many years Leader of Hammersmith Council. As for Mary Dawson, all I know is that she was Laura Kimball’s mother. And, of course, my half great-aunt. I’m curious, so when I write to Laura asking for the postcard of Jimmy Ashworth I’ll also ask for information about Mary, though I fear it will only evoke more whitewashing.

And now I’m back again to the question of why. What is the answer? That is the question, as Henry said in his maiden speech. Why did Henry, apparently so keen on Olivia, Henry who had begun looking for a house in which to begin married life, Henry who dined regularly with the Bathos, went riding with Lady Batho and her daughters, stayed at Grassingham Hall (according to the diary) on three separate occasions, why did he coldly and callously drop her? Not jilt her perhaps, for ‘jilt’ implies an engagement, but led her to believe he wanted to marry her and, without warning, threw her over. Suddenly it occurs to me that Jimmy Ashworth’s pregnancy could be the reason. The objection to that is that if Mary wasn’t conceived until the middle of May, in those days long before testing, Jimmy couldn’t have known she was pregnant by 14 June. And conception was impossible before that because Henry was in the Lake District from the last week of April until 12 May. Could Jimmy have known it if Mary was conceived on 13 May? Just about, if she had a regular cycle. But why would the discovery of Jimmy’s pregnancy make Henry drop Olivia? It’s very unlikely Jimmy was proposing to blackmail him. The consequences of such an attempt would be ultimately worse for her than for him. It’s out of the question Henry was considering marrying her – or is it? I’m asking myself if he’d come to want a child, an heir, as early as 1883. Men of his standing and position had been known to marry their mistresses. Sometimes. Very occasionally.

She seems to have been the type he preferred, dark-haired, white-skinned, dark-eyed, voluptuous, soft-featured with a short nose and full lips. But Olivia also belonged to that type. And Olivia had a fortune of thirty thousand pounds. There’s a powerful argument against the pregnancy being responsible for Henry’s dropping Olivia. He didn’t marry Jimmy. And there’s no question but that she would have accepted if he’d asked her. A gentleman for a husband, a father for her coming child. She’d have jumped at the chance, she’d have been in seventh heaven.

So, why?

8

Back to the House of Lords Bill today. There is much talk, and more gossip, about the so-called Weatherill Amendment, an amendment to the Bill put down by Lord Weatherill, Convenor of the Cross-bench Peers. It was he who led the cross-bench negotiating team, the other members being the Earl of Carnarvon and Lord Marsh, which produced the idea of 10 per cent of the 750 hereditary peers remaining. And he put down the crucial cross-bench amendment which bears his name along with Marsh, Carnarvon and Viscount Tenby. This provides for ninety-two hereditary peers being retained in the House during the interim period between the general banishment of hereditaries and the second stage.

How will the ninety-two be chosen? By the ‘hereds’ in the different parties or by all members of a party? Lord Shepherd asked that back in March but I don’t remember that he got an answer. It was also he who suggested for the first time in this House, I believe, that the smooth passage of the Bill would depend on the way Lords behaved themselves.

I am in the Chamber from the start today because I intend to speak and it’s not considered good manners here to come in, just say a few words and rush off again. Lord Dinevor, a hereditary peer, took the oath before business began, reminding me of my own entry to this House eight years ago. Though the process has been curtailed, life peers are still introduced with pomp and ceremony, each having a supporter to precede him and another to follow him, the three wearing scarlet robes. All that happens when a hereditary’s father dies is that he comes quietly in wearing a lounge suit. Holding the New Testament, he mutters a few words before shaking hands with the Lord Chancellor.