Ada Leverson, part 4: Tenterhooks

Ada Leverson, ca. 1890s. Image source: Beside Every Man

I. The question of infidelity

Ada Leverson's daughter Violet Wyndham writes that in the late 1880s, Ada became disillusioned in her marriage:

She had made the discovery that she was never to know the happiness of living with someone with whom she was in love; that the rest of her life would have to be a compromise. The episode which had brought home this sad fact to Ada had occurred in Monte Carlo where Ernest had displayed the shallowness of his interest in her by spending all afternoons and most nights at the Casino. To be left quite alone in a place whose very name is a symbol of pleasure would have been a depressing experience for any lively young woman. . .As it dawned upon Ada that her marriage had been a mistake, she became overwhelmed with loneliness.

It was in this vulnerable mood that William, 4th Earl of Desart, a handsome man and a poet, was introduced to her. He had stepped off a beautiful yacht, [and was] also unhappy and in need of consolation. They fell in love. That he was a good deal older than Ada [who was in her late twenties] did not detract from his charm for her. Ernest saw no harm in his wife sailing away on a week's cruise with another man. He preferred to remain near the Casino. [1]

Like many another complaisant husband, Ernest Leverson seems to have been happy for another man to take on his affective (and possibly conjugal) responsibilities. The handsome, rich, artistic Lord Desart was far from the final admirer to present Ada with a dilemma: to remain physically faithful to her husband and avoid scandal, or yield to her attraction and risk becoming notorious.

It's not known which alternative Ada chose. However, two decades later she presented the fictional Edith Ottley with a similar dilemma.

I. Tenterhooks (1912)

Frontispiece after J.D. Fergusson from the first edition of Tenterhooks (Grant Richards, 1912). Image source: Hathi Trust

The second novel in The Little Ottleys series turns on the question of whether Edith will indulge in a passionate affair with a handsome older man, Aylmer Ross. Leverson is very frank about Edith and Aylmer's "unacknowledged but very strong mutual physical attraction." [2]

Aylmer is everything Edith's husband Bruce isn't: he's thoughtful, places Edith's needs and desires above his own (most of the time), and has tastes that correspond to Edith's. He's also (as we would say today) emotionally present, while Bruce, if he ever was in love (at least, in his fashion) with Edith, has, after eight years of marriage, become inattentive—except when he is being petty.

Early on in Tenterhooks Edith is described in flattering terms as "a beauty of a particularly troubling type" with "a reposeful grace and a decided attraction for both men and women." [3] But as the novel unfolds she is portrayed as less of a paragon than in Love's Shadow. Without losing sympathy for her, we see more of her foibles, and in particular, her tendency to view others as instruments for the realization of her own needs.

She takes advantage of her devoted former school-friend, Grace Bennett, whom she sends scurrying about the town on errands because she imagines that Grace "had nothing to do, and adored commissions." [4] The children have a governess, "sweet, gentle Miss Townsend," who models her clothes and manner after Edith: ". . .vaguely Edith wondered if [Miss Townsend] would ever have a love affair, ever marry. She hoped so, but (selfishly) not till Archie went to Eton." [5] Selfishly, indeed: Archie is six or seven years old; boys enter Eton at age 13, when Miss Townsend will likely be approaching her 30s.

We also learn that "Edith had a high opinion of her own strength of will. When she appeared weak it was on some subject about which she was indifferent. She took a great pride in her own self-poise; her self-control. . ." [6] But when Aylmer confesses his love to her and then goes abroad for three months to try to free himself from his attraction, Edith summons him back after only six weeks. She writes him,

You told me to ask you when I wanted you—ask you anything I wanted. Well, I want to see you. I miss you too much. You arrived in Paris last night. Let me knew when you can come. I want you. [7]

So much for self-control. Edith doesn't intend this letter to be read as a declaration of love for him, but her self-knowledge is also flawed:

She thought she had a soft, tender admiration for him, that he had a charm for her; that she admired him. But she had not the slightest idea that on her side there was anything that could disturb her in any way. And so that his sentiment, which she had found to be rather infectious, should never carry her away, she meant only to see him now and then; to meet again and be friends. [8]

In other words, she wants to be able to treat Aylmer like a "tame cat"—enjoying his devotion but keeping him always at a respectable distance. "It is human to play with what one loves," the narrator tells us, but it is also cruel. [9]

To be fair to Edith, she does have male friends whose admiration for her she is successful in managing, mainly because they are occupied with easier conquests. Chief among these admirers is Vincy, a character based on Oscar Wilde and possibly two other members of his circle, Reggie Temple and Reggie Turner. [10]

Vincy was her confidant, her friend. She could tell him everything, and she did, and he confided in her and told her all except one side of his life, of which she was aware, but to which she never referred. This was his secret romance with a certain girl artist of whom he never spoke, although Edith knew that some day he would tell her about that also. [11]

The side of Vincy's life that is "lived in shadow" is his affair with the improbably-named art student Mavis Argles, who has a mass of Pre-Raphaelite red hair.

"Yes or No?" by John Everett Millais, 1871. Image source: Yale University Art Gallery

Before we learn Mavis's name, Leverson is careful to refer to her, twice, as a "girl artist," to ensure that the reader doesn't misconstrue Vincy's resemblance to Wilde as implying that they share similar erotic tastes. In case we are in any doubt, Vincy and Mavis are the actors in the novel's rather shocking (for its mere existence) sex scene:

'What a frightfully bright light there is in the room,' Vincy said. He got up and drew the blind down. He came back to her.

'Your hair's coming down,' he remarked.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'But at the back it generally is.'

'Don't move—let me do it.'

Pretending to arrange it, he took all the hairpins out, and the cloud of dark red hair fell down on her shoulders.

'I like your hair, Mavis.'

*            *            *            *            *

'It seems too awful I should have been with you such a long time this afternoon,' she exclaimed. [12]

Vincy, it turns out, is not the only one having an affair. One sunny afternoon Edith goes walking in Kensington Gardens and finds herself musing about "how fortunate she was in Miss Townsend; what a nice girl she was, what a good friend to her and the children":

What made her think of Miss Townsend? Some way off was a girl, with her back to Edith, walking with a man. Her figure was like Miss Townsend's, and she wore a dress like the one copied from Edith's. Edith walked more quickly, it was the retired part of the gardens on the way towards the Bayswater Road. The two figures turned down a flowery path. . .It was Miss Townsend! She had turned her face. Edith was surprised, was interested, and walked on a few steps. She had not seen the man clearly. Then they both sat down on a seat. He took her hand. She left it in his. There was something familiar in his figure and clothes, and Edith saw his face.

Yes, it was Bruce.

Edith turned round and went home. [13]

It seems that Miss Townsend has been modelling herself on Edith all too closely.

Postcard of George Frampton's Peter Pan statue (1912) and the Long Water in Kensington Gardens, looking north toward "the retired part of the gardens on the way towards the Bayswater Road." Image source: The Library Time Machine

In Bruce's infidelity—and, we and Edith will discover, not only with Miss Townsend—Edith has the perfect justification and motive for her own. Leverson leaves us in suspense about what action Edith will take until the final pages, and her ultimate decision is one that will not satisfy all readers.

Tenterhooks is the best of the three novels that make up The Little Ottleys. It is more tightly constructed than Love in the Shadows, places Edith and her dilemmas firmly at the center of the action, and allows us greater access to the inner worlds of its characters. It is also the darkest of the three, featuring themes of unrequited love, adultery, and abandonment. Love's Shadow can read like a drawing-room comedy; Tenterhooks shows us characters who are buffeted, and sometimes upended, by the unexpected strength of their feelings.

Perhaps Ada Leverson had second thoughts about the fates of the characters in Tenterhooks, because she brought the central triangle of Edith, Bruce and Aylmer back in the final novel of The Little Ottleys—which will be the subject of the next post.

Next time: Ada Leverson, part 5: Love at Second Sight
Last time: Ada Leverson, part 3: Love's Shadow

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1. Violet Wyndham, The Sphinx and her Circle: A Biographical Sketch of Ada Leverson, 1862-1933 (André Deutsch, 1963), p. 20-21.
2. Ada Leverson, Tenterhooks (Grant Richards, 1912), Ch. X. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10021
3. Ada Leverson, Tenterhooks, Ch. III.
4. Tenterhooks, Ch. X.
5. Tenterhooks, Ch. XIX.
6. Tenterhooks, Ch. XVIII.
7. Tenterhooks, Ch. XVII.
8. Tenterhooks, Ch. XVIII.
9. Tenterhooks, Ch. XVIII.
10. Violet Wyndham, The Sphinx and her Circle, p. 37. 
11. Tenterhooks, Ch. X.
12. Tenterhooks, Ch. XV.
13. Tenterhooks, Ch. XIX.