Ada Leverson, part 3: Love's Shadow

Ada Leverson, ca. 1890s. Image source: Thornfield Hall: A Book Blog

A continuation of Ada Leverson, part 2: Friendship with Oscar Wilde

I. The separation

In the late 1890s and early 1900s Ada Leverson's marriage was under greater than usual strain. While Ada had remained a loyal friend to Oscar Wilde during and after his trials and conviction, her husband Ernest had quarreled with Wilde over money. Wilde thought, apparently without foundation, that Ernest was cheating him.

Ernest was also named as a co-respondent in a divorce case that received coverage in the newspapers. In her biography of her mother, Violet Wyndham reports that Ada had an abhorrence of notoriety. Ada wrote to George Moore, "I am not afraid of death but I am of scandal, of which I have a special horror. The idea of being talked about is one of which I have a weak terror." Nonetheless, when Ernest's infidelity was publicly exposed, "The Sphinx forgave her husband and appeared with him in public, as conspicuously as possible, the day after the case was reported." [1]

A final break came in 1902. Ernest, an inveterate gambler and spendthrift, lost virtually all of his money in a risky investment. Wyndham writes that "his father agreed to settle his debts and to give him a fresh start in the timber business in Canada." From evidence in the last two novels in The Little Ottleys, this decision was made rather precipitously. Ernest's daughter from a previous relationship went with him, but "there was no question of Ada and her little daughter accompanying him." [2] Despite Ernest's abandonment, Ada—perhaps because of her aversion to scandal—did not divorce him.

To earn money Ada turned to newspaper work. Beginning with the 28 June 1903 issue she wrote a women's column for The Referee: The Unique Sunday Journal under the pseudonym "Elaine." The Referee's motto was Founded in 1877 by Pendragon! Pendragon, of course, is a reference to King Arthur, and all of the contributors to The Referee adopted Arthurian pseudonyms. Ada's chosen pen name probably alludes to Elaine of Astolat, who nurses Lancelot back to health after he is wounded in a tournament, but is abandoned by him and dies of a broken heart. Elaine is the subject of Tennyson's poem and Waterhouse's painting The Lady of Shalott. [3]

"The Lady of Shalott" by John William Waterhouse, 1888. Image source: Tate Gallery

It may be a measure of Ada's desperation that she agreed to write a women's column, as most domestic subjects bored her. As Edith Ottley is described in Tenterhooks, the second volume of The Little Ottleys: "She had dreadfully little to say to the average woman, except to a few intimate friends, and frankly preferred the society of the average man." [4] Ada devoted her energies to writing weekly columns under headings such as "Conventional Conversation," "Advice to Lovers," "The Art of Listening," and "Baby Parties." As Wyndham writes of Ada,

It is a curious fact that she rarely enjoyed the company of women, disliking the subjects that absorbed them—with the exception of affairs of the heart, in which she was always interested—yet she was able successfully to carry out her undertaking for several years. [5]

Just over two years, in fact. In all she wrote 113 columns totalling over 150,000 words. Her final column appeared on 20 August 1905. [6]

After she stopped writing for The Referee, with the encouragement of publisher and longtime friend Grant Richards she devoted herself to writing a novel. The Twelfth Hour was issued by Richards in 1907, and was well-received. Love's Shadow, the first novel featuring the Ottleys, followed the next year. Four more novels were to follow: The Limit (1911), Tenterhooks (1912), Bird of Paradise (1914), and Love at Second Sight (1916), the third volume of The Little Ottleys and Leverson's final novel.

II. Love's Shadow

Title page of the first edition of Love's Shadow. Image source: Internet Archive

Each of Ada Leverson's three Little Ottleys novels centers on a different love problem. The first novel in the series, Love's Shadow, is concerned with which handsome, well-off suitor the young, beautiful, rich, orphaned Hyacinth Verney will marry. (Somehow the choice of remaining single is never seriously considered.)

While this may not seem to be the most compelling dilemma on which to base a 50,000-word novel, the book's epigraph, from Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, suggests how the perversities of desire will complicate this otherwise straightforward plot:

• Love like a shadow flies
• When substance love pursues;
• Pursuing that that flies,
• And flying what pursues. [7]

For some time Cecil Reeve has been in love with Eugenia Raymond, a 44-year-old widow, although it's clear that she doesn't return his feelings. Eugenia rebuffs Cecil's proposal of marriage by saying, "I'm ten years older than you. Old enough to be your mother!" [8] Instead, Eugenia directs his attention to Hyacinth Verney.

Frontispiece by G.C. Wilmshurst from the first edition of Love's Shadow. Image source: Internet Archive

Hyacinth is the ward of Sir Charles Cannon, the married man Eugenia has been hopelessly in love with for years. Sir Charles is half in love with his ward, while Hyacinth ultimately settles her affections on Cecil—only to discover (and become jealous of) his feelings for Eugenia. Hyacinth's companion, Anne Yeo, tries to comfort her by explaining the situation, with only partial success: 

'He's attached to her, fond of her. She's utterly indifferent about him, so he's piqued. So he thinks that's being in love.'

'Then why does he try to deceive me and flirt with me at all?'

'He doesn't. You really attract him; you're suited to him physically and socially, perhaps mentally too. The suitability is so obvious that he doesn't like it. It's his feeling for you that he fights against, and especially because he sees you care for him.'

'I was horrid enough to him today! I told him never to call here again.'

'To show your indifference?'

'I made him understand that I wanted no more of his silly flirtation,' said Hyacinth, still tearful.

'If you really made him think that, everything will be all right.'

'Really, Anne, you're clever. I think I shall take your advice.'

Anne gave a queer laugh.

'I didn't know I'd given any, but I will. Whatever he does now, leave him alone!. . .he'll get tired in the end of her indifference and remember you,' added Anne sardonically.

'Then he'll find I've forgotten him. Oh, why am I so unhappy?' [9]

"Love's Shadow" by Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys, 1867. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Love's Shadow is rather bold for its time in suggesting powerful attractions between women:

Hyacinth Verney was the romance of Edith's life. She also provided a good deal of romance in the lives of several other people. . .She had such an extraordinary natural gift for making people of both sexes fond of her, that it would have been difficult to say which, of all the persons who loved her, showed the most intense devotion in the most immoderate way. [10]

Anne is one of those who is immoderately devoted to Hyacinth; she is described as Edith's "unacknowledged rival in Hyacinth's affections":

With a rather wooden face, high cheek-bones, a tall, thin figure, and no expression, Anne might have been any age; but she was not. She made every effort to look quite forty so as to appear more suitable as a chaperone, but was in reality barely thirty. She was thinking, as she often thought, that Hyacinth looked too romantic for everyday life. [11]

Anne also gets many of the best lines. "The little Ottleys" is Anne's term for Edith and Bruce, and is both her attempt to diminish her rival and to remind Hyacinth of their relative social positions. With her face and figure lacking softness, her penchant for masculine attire (her favorite outfit is a mackintosh, heavy boots, driving-gloves, and an "eternal golf-cap"), and her frank admiration for "Hyacinth's graceful figure," Anne's self-presentation and, it's hinted, her erotic inclinations are those of what might have been called in Leverson's time "the third sex." [12]

But Anne puts her own feelings aside when Hyacinth's relationship with Cecil is threatened by her suspicions of his continuing attachment to Eugenia. Anne goes to Eugenia to try to set everything right:

'I—well, you know I'm devoted to Hyacinth. At first I was almost selfishly glad about this. I could have got her back. We could have gone away together. But I can't see her miserable. She has such a mania for Cecil Reeve! Isn't it extraordinary?'

'Most extraordinary,' replied Eugenia emphatically.

'And since she's got him, she may as well be happy with him,' Anne added.

. . .'I'm afraid you're not happy, Miss Yeo?' said Eugenia impulsively.

'I don't know that I am, particularly. But does it matter? We can't all be happy.' [13]

Indeed. Marriage is a particularly uncertain means of obtaining happiness, Love's Shadow suggests. Probably the couple in the book that are most suited to one another are the middle-aged Eugenia and the man she finally marries, Lord Selsey, Cecil's uncle. They clearly have a companionate, rather than passionate, union, as Lord Selsey explains to a questioning Cecil:

'So you fell in love with her at first sight?'

'Oh no, I didn't. I'm not in love with her now. But I think she's beautiful. I mean she has a beautiful soul—she has atmosphere, she has something that I need. I could live in the same house with her in perfect harmony for ever. . .Of course, she's not a bit in love with me either. But she likes me awfully, and I persuaded her. It was all done by argument.' [14]

"Perfect harmony for ever" remains elusive for the other couples in the novel. Sir Charles Cannon made a "suitable match" with a woman with whom he is incompatible in virtually every way:

Lady Cannon had a very exalted opinion of her own charms, virtues, brilliant gifts, and, above all, of her sound sense. Fortunately for her, she had married a man of extraordinary amiability, who had always taken every possible precaution to prevent her discovering that in this opinion she was practically alone in the world.

Having become engaged to her through a slight misunderstanding in a country house, Sir Charles had not had the courage to explain away the mistake. He decided to make the best of it, and did so the more easily as it was one of those so-called suitable matches that the friends and acquaintances of both parties approve of and desire far more than the parties concerned. A sensible woman was surely required at Redlands and in the London house, especially as Sir Charles had been left guardian and trustee to a pretty little heiress.

It had taken him a very short time to find out that the reputation for sound sense was, like most traditions, founded on a myth, and that if his wife's vanity was only equalled by her egotism, her most remarkable characteristic was her excessive silliness. But she loved him, and he kept his discovery to himself. [15]

Just in case we needed more evidence of her faults, Lady Cannon has a scene in the novel where an implicit parallel is drawn between her and the officious Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice:

Hyacinth's eyes flashed.

'Are you engaged?' asked Lady Cannon.

'I must decline to answer. I recognise no right that you or anyone else has to ask me such a question.'

Lady Cannon rose indignantly, leaving her coffee untouched. [16]

Edith and Bruce Ottley, the continuing characters whose marriage will be observed over the course of the series' three novels, reverse the gender dynamic of the Cannons: she is the sensible one, while he is oblivious both of his own failings and others' perception of them. As Hyacinth says to Anne, "How bored she must get with her little Foreign Office clerk! The way he takes his authority as a husband seriously is pathetic. He hasn't the faintest idea the girl is cleverer than he is." [17]

Finally—mild spoiler alert, although the greatest pleasures of Love's Shadow don't lie in the unfolding of its plot—Cecil Reeve begins his marriage to Hyacinth by taking her for granted. In some ways Cecil is an incipient Bruce Ottley; but he is partly redeemed by having the glimmering of self-awareness that will forever elude Bruce:

At half-past seven that evening Cecil turned the key in the door and went into the house. It was the first time he had ever come home with a feeling of uneasiness and dread; a sensation at once of fear and of boredom. Until now he had always known that he would receive a delighted welcome, all sweetness and affection. He had always had the delicious incense of worshipping admiration swung before him in the perfumed atmosphere of love and peace. Had he held all this too cheaply? Had he accepted the devotion a little pontifically and condescendingly? Had he been behaving like a pompous ass? [18]

Ummm. . .yes?

Next time: Ada Leverson, part 4: Tenterhooks
Last time: Ada Leverson, part 2: Friendship with Oscar Wilde

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1. Violet Wyndham, The Sphinx and her Circle: A Biographical Sketch of Ada Leverson, 1862-1933 (André Deutsch, 1963), p. 23 and p. 60.
   
2. Violet Wyndham, The Sphinx and her Circle, p. 63.
   
3. There is another Elaine in the Arthurian legends: Elaine of Corbenic, who tricks Lancelot into bed by appearing in the guise of Guinevere, and as a result of their union gives birth to Galahad. It seems less likely that Ada was thinking of Elaine of Corbenic when choosing her pseudonym.
4. Ada Leverson, Tenterhooks (Grant Richards, 1912), Ch. III. https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/10021
   
5. Violet Wyndham, The Sphinx and her Circle, p. 64.
6. Charles Burkhart, Ada Leverson (Twayne Publishers, 1973), p. 79.
7. William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II, Scene ii.
8. Ada Leverson, Love's Shadow (Grant Richards, 1908), Ch. V. https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/9786
9. Ada Leverson, Love's Shadow, Ch. X.
10. Ada Leverson, Love's Shadow, Ch. I.
11. Ada Leverson, Love's Shadow, Ch. I.
12. The term was coined in the later 19th century. As John Ryle writes, "Until the mid-nineteenth century, in the moral and legal discourse of Europe and North America, homosexual behaviour had been represented either as a recurrent [criminal] vice or an episode in a process of hereditary degeneration." In the second half of the century medical investigators began to formulate the conception of homosexuality as a stable (though still problematized) identity. See John Ryle, "A Uranian Among Edwardians" [review of Edward Carpenter's Selected Writings, Volume 1, expanded and annotated], The Times Literary Supplement, 25 January 1985, or on his website at https://johnryle.com/?article=a-uranian-among-edwardians#anchor5 
13. Ada Leverson, Love's Shadow, Ch. XXXIV.
14. Ada Leverson, Love's Shadow, Ch. XIX.
15. Ada Leverson, Love's Shadow, Ch. IV.
16. Ada Leverson, Love's Shadow, Ch. XIV. The parallel is to the confrontation between Elizabeth Bennet and Lady Catherine, Darcy's aunt, in Vol. III Chapter XIV/Chapter 56.
    
17. Ada Leverson, Love's Shadow, Ch. I.
18. Ada Leverson, Love's Shadow, Ch. XXXIX.