She is a legend!
Many of us, from many a different vintage, will be somewhat familiar with the novel, the movie or the BBC TV series of ‘The Railway Children’. A good old English classic, telling the story of three young rural children and their adventures growing up in a different age when we were all as innocent as the day was long! But I wager not too many of us are as familiar with the writer of the novel, and the quite tumultuous life she led?
Edith Nesbit (1958-1924) was chiefly a writer and collaborator of children’s literature, accredited with over 60 novels, as well as a poet, a mother and a wife in an extremely bizarre marriage.
Try imagine this; Edith is 7 months pregnant and marries the child’s father, Hubert. Then discovers Hubert has another, who is his fiancée, and also has his child. This lady is abandoned. Alice, a friend of Edith is taken in as a housekeeper, after she discovers she is pregnant, Alice that is. Edith and Hubert adopt the child. Then, it transpires that Hubert is in fact the father. Alice, not alone remains as housekeeper, but has a second child with Hubert some 13 years later. Before, during and after these complications, Edith and Hubert manage to have five children of their own. A busy, complex little house, to say the least .
So, was Edith Nesbit a very patient lady, a very understanding and forgiving woman, a very subdued wife, or perhaps a fool? I do not know, how could I, and I certainly would not dare judge. But let me say this in her favour, and in order to do so I must use that term that is all too frequently bandied about these days, and attributed to some who would not measure up to her Victorian ankle. She is a Legend!
The love poem below is fantastically clever. It is brilliantly written and has a sting in the tail like a kick from a mule. Many experts with the pen will tell you, or teach you, when constructing a poem to avoid going for ‘the hook’ or ‘the shock’ in the final line or two, that it’s a cheap way to impress a reader. There’s merit, certainly in their wisdom but every so often, it has to be allowed and dare I say it, we have justification here, because it works so well.
Villeggiature is initially rich with romantic, gentle imagery. Blooms, blossoms, white curtains. Dewy lawns, pear tree boughs and a visiting Romeo-type ghost, flush with pretty words and kisses.
Perhaps another uninvited male visit, intent on forceful seduction. And we can be forgiven for thinking, as we read, that her heart has again been melted and subdued.
Is it just another sad chapter in the story of a broken heart? No. Not at all. She nails him in the finish, and I guarantee each and every one of you reading it will draw the same conclusion as you smile and agree at the finish, ‘Go Girl! Good for You!’
And oddly enough, if you read it a second time, you’ll see that Ms. Nesbit has thrown in a few clues towards her true feelings along the way. A very clever lady.
My window, framed in pear-tree bloom, White-curtained shone, and softly lighted:
So, by the pear-tree, to my room
Your ghost last night climbed uninvited. Your solid self, long leagues away,
Deep in dull books, had hardly missed me; And yet you found this Romeo’s way,
And through the blossom climbed and kissed me.
I watched the still and dewy lawn,
The pear-tree boughs hung white above you;
I listened to you till the dawn,
And half forgot I did not love you.
Oh, dear! what pretty things you said, What pearls of song you threaded for me! I did not--till your ghost had fled-Remember how you always bore me!
Edith Nesbit died from lung cancer in 1924 and is buried in St.Mary of the Marsh, Kent, England.
John J Kelly is a multiple award-winning poet from Enniscorthy. He is the co-founder of the Anthony Cronin Poetry Award with the Wexford Literary Festival and co-ordinator of poetry workshops for schools locally. Each week, John’s column will deal mainly with novels, plays and poems from both the Leaving Certificate syllabus and Junior Certificate syllabus.