Edith’s interest in losing herself in nature was perhaps similar, but perhaps also grounded in a particular physical urgency. She had a very specific reason to wish to escape her own body.
I reconsider everything I know about Edith. John told me that Dorothy returned from the Hermannsburg mission because her mother needed her. I assumed she needed Dorothy to help in her work, to look after the house, to cook and clean, to drive her on collecting trips, to illustrate her papers. It’s a plausible expectation for an unmarried daughter, but it always seemed rather selfish on Edith’s part. Dorothy had her own successful business, career and life to run. Everything I have heard about Dorothy suggests that she was a carer: gentle, kind and unfailingly generous, whereas both Edith and Gladys seem to have been more reserved, keeping themselves to themselves. The image of Edith, the famous naturalist, putting her own needs ahead of her daughter’s always seemed unattractive. Now the image flips and rotates. Edith, ill and long-suffering, tended by a devoted daughter who shared her love of nature and garden. Perhaps the truth is always more complicated than our assumptions.
It makes sense to me now that Edith’s research and writing began in her domestic sphere and circled out, in incremental detail, into the bush beyond. This was not simply because she was a woman, bound to the hearth, as convention would have us believe, but because of an illness she barely even acknowledged.
I can understand why she didn’t drive, why she never travelled back to England with James or her daughter. Perhaps this is why James never got the boat of his dreams – not because Edith did not share his interest, but because it was an activity she could never have engaged in. And I think I am beginning to understand why Edith loved the writing of Jefferies and Emerson and Barrie, even though her own writing is so different. They were not role models for her writing, they were sustenance simply for survival: inspiration for living a courageous, philosophical life devoted to the observation of the natural world.
It is in a letter to Rica that I read the only account by Edith of her illness.
‘At present I’m still in bed,’ she writes, ‘but apart from the nervous condition of the ear, I am quite well; but rest and quiet completely cured an attack of this 10 years ago, so the doctor is being obeyed. I have been thoroughly overhauled recently by one of Melbourne’s leading specialists. He pronounced me a first-class life and sent me along to the ear-specialist. Now my own doctor gives the same verdict – heart and ‘blood pressure’ (the latest fashion in illness) perfectly normal, ‘good as the youngest’ and all organs sound as a bell. But I have a nasty noise in one ear which at times makes me almost deaf in that ear. It isn’t even suspected outside the family, so far!! The specialist could find nothing wrong with the ear but suggested that some gold crowns might be the trouble (They blame everything on to teeth nowadays), so I obliged him. The teeth, my dentist assured me were quite sound and innocent, but time will show. At any rate the doctor wanted me to shut off steam – no work – and very little reading for a week or two. Fortunately (I think unfortunately, for I hate my burdens to be shouldered by others) Dorothy’s holidays have commenced and she has taken charge of things. We shall go to the sea for a while, then to our cottage in Healesville. I’m one of those people, of whom doctors say ‘Responds readily to treatment’ – so I am sure to be on the warpath soon. Two pages all about myself. Shame on me!’
The symptoms of Ménière’s are variable and changing. But the ‘nasty noise’ in one ear is unmistakable. She is 57 on this occasion, 47 when the previous serious attack occurred. Just at the time when she began writing. But neither she nor the doctors know what her condition is yet. They are still clutching at straws – or more literally pulling at teeth. Were the earlier illnesses in her twenties the same thing, or unrelated?
A month later and Edith has still not entirely recovered.
‘Please forgive pencil. I’m abed but to be up shortly and a nice comfortable doctor assures me that it isn’t much. Everything sound except a blocked eustachian tube, my memory doesn’t run to its correct spelling.’
There is no treatment except for rest. Edith chooses camping by the sea for her recovery.
‘We are here, by the sea, under canvas, so you will guess that the Xray said we might go full steam ahead. There is nothing, as the doctors say, but what slackening off work will remedy. We have two tents (my other daughter is with us) and a shelter from the car for dining room. Our light comes from the car too, so given fine weather we shall put in perhaps two weeks.’
I can’t be sure if this ‘we’ includes James or not. There is only so much to be read into pronouns.
‘We are camped under big banksias and the bush is full of birds – the air like wine and our food tasting as food does eaten in the open – food for gods.’
It is Dorothy who has taken up the task of nursing her mother. It is fortunate the attack happened in the school holidays, when she has time off work. I wonder if Edith’s ill health was a factor in Dorothy’s decision to retire from teaching.
It
