Florence had lived with the fear that “the child,” when it arrived, would resemble Herbert Methley, and she would hate it. The nurse cleaned it, and Gabriel gave it to its mother.
“A daughter,” he said, waiting to see if she was pleased. The child had a shock of dark hair—like Florence’s own, like Julian’s Italian hair. It had large dark eyes which it appeared to fix on Florence. And a character. There she was, all shocked with rushing into the world, and she pushed with her head, impatient for something. Years later, thinking it all over, Florence admitted to herself that she had recognised in the daughter a kind of excessive primitive energy she had responded to in the father. And responded to in the daughter. She took her, triumphant, into her arms, and kissed her hair. Julian came into the room.
“Meet Julia Perdita Goldwasser,” said Florence, laughing a little wildly. Julian bent courteously and kissed the small new hand as it clutched its shawl.
“I do not know,” said Florence to Gabriel, “what I should have done without you. In every way.”
“It was destiny,” said Gabriel Goldwasser.
He said later, to Julian, over a glass of apple juice, “She was not afraid. Most women are afraid. Or become afraid.”
“She was lucky?”
“Oh yes. She will think of it as virtue, but mostly it is luck.
In June 1909 King Edward VII opened Sir Aston Webb’s new buildings for the Victoria and Albert Museum. He opened them with a golden key, with a stem of steel damascened with gold. The long white buildings, which had emerged slowly from their wrappings of tarpaulin, and thickets of scaffolding, were judged to be rhythmic and lovely, were compared to symphonies and chorales. The opening was attended by a glistening crowd of courtiers and dignitaries. The Webbs were there, and Alma-Tadema, with Balfour, Churchill and the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith. The workers who had made the building were there, in smart suits, with bowler hats or top hats; they read an Address, composed by themselves, at the monarch’s personal request. The choir from the Royal College of Music, perched high in an arch, sang Dowland’s piercing “Awake, sweet love” and the Irish Guards played in the background. Prosper Cain was among the party, elegant in his uniform.
He was, like many of his colleagues and many amongst the public, disappointed by the uniform whiteness and looming austerity of the inside of the new buildings. The Keeper of the Wallace Collection, Claude Phillips, wrote in the
He had had to move house, and was now in a pretty Arts and Crafts town house in Chelsea, with more space —not for his random collection of objects, but for nurses, nurseries, and vociferous babies. Frau Goldwasser had returned, with the energetic Julia in her arms, to find she had an airy bedroom, with a delicious French wallpaper and pretty electric lights. Prosper and Imogen had discussed things, and decided that one nurse and one nursery would do for two babies. The room was most beautifully decorated by the ladies from the Glasgow School of Art. There was a frieze of flying, ephemeral creatures, and white tables and chairs of a severe yet delightful modern design.
Cordelia was six months old and Julia five. It is an age when a baby can sit up, but not an age when it takes much notice of another baby. They had a nanny and a nursemaid. Florence had breast-fed her baby at first. Imogen had not been able to do so.
Florence, with her laughing child, saw what she could always have seen, if she had cared, that Imogen was afraid of her. Cordelia was a quiet, watchful little mite, tentative even when she reached for a rattle. Julia crowed and bounced, and had brief fits of roaring rage. Florence found herself encouraging Cordelia to play, and then talking naturally to Imogen. Prosper Cain smiled wryly under his moustache.
Florence could not, of course, return to Newnham College. She went to see Leslie Skinner, and started attending lectures, and classes in History, at University College. Dorothy was still with the Skinners. Florence discovered that Dorothy was now an MD and qualified to practise as a doctor. She was continuing her studies: she wanted to qualify as a surgeon. She was working in the Women’s Hospital. She invited Florence, with Griselda, who was a postgraduate student at Cambridge, to her graduation ceremony that summer. She said her mother was ill, and would not be able to come. This proved to be so. Dorothy looked serious in her gown and cap. Griselda and Florence wore frivolous dresses and sunny hats.
Olive took to her bed, most of the time, much of the time in the dark. She was not writing. She was depleting Humphry’s stocks of whisky. Her hair straggled on the pillows, turning grey, a rather glossy, metallic grey. Humphry sat with her, and opened the curtains, and told her she had six other children, who needed her. Olive replied curtly that they frightened her. Once, when she had drunk a great deal of whisky, she said “If you know that you can kill a child—”
“You have killed no one. Don’t be absurd.”
Olive shrank back into the pillows. “You don’t
“Tell me—”
Humphry did not really want to hear. She said “You don’t really want to hear.”
• • •
In the autumn of 1909 August Steyning drove over in his new motor car to see Olive. She usually stirred herself when he came, and sat at the tea-table, staring around as though she did not recognise the room. She listened to his account of the continuing success of
Violet, coming in with cream cakes on a plate said “Ah” and fell forward, crashing to the ground with her face in the cream, on top of one of Philip Warren’s early Dungeness plates, decorated with seaweeds and umbellifers. The plate smashed. Steyning tried to help Violet, but she did not move and was not breathing. Her cynical sharp face was red and twisted. She was quite dead. She was turned over, and wiped clean. A servant was sent for a doctor. Olive said
