The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (3 page)

All his life Leslie worshipped his womenfolk – mother, wives and substitutes – and painted them in angelic colours but, in return, he expected them to be perfect in every respect: always ready to come running, however inconvenient, to pander to his needs. Woe betide them if they disappointed him: the air was filled with recriminations. During his marriage Leslie's behaviour exhausted Julia and caused immense difficulties between him and his children. Virginia firmly believed that ‘it would have been better for our relationship if she [Julia] had left him to fend for himself'.
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Leslie went up to Trinity Hall when still 17. The new life there, away from home, transformed him. He grew in self-confidence, made friends and, at the end of the first year, won a scholarship. He also ‘toughened up'. He became an enthusiastic oarsman and, eventually, a renowned rowing coach, a formidable walker covering 30 or 40 miles a day, and a climber whose exploits in the Alps are still recalled. Mountaineering was a pleasure he delighted in and, until Julia's death, he spent many of his holidays in the Swiss Alps. As he climbed, always in silence, his anxieties evaporated. But it was the conquest of the mountain rather than a search for tranquillity, a need to prove to himself, as much as to the world, that he was not the weak, mollycoddled youth of pre-Cambridge days that really motivated him. Yet however great his successes on the mountains or in the intellectual world, fear of being thought a failure was never far removed. Whenever he became depressed self-doubts immediately began to plague him.

Leslie was elected a Fellow and Tutor of Trinity Hall in 1854. The fellowship required him to take Holy Orders and he was ordained the following year. He was expected to take priest's orders within a short period but an inexplicable delay of four years ensued. Sir James, a staunch Evangelist, was disturbed and tried again and again to persuade his son to act, but not until his father was dying did Leslie move and enter the priesthood.

Two years later Leslie faced a crisis of identity: was he to continue his enjoyable but narrow life at Cambridge and end up as a don in an ivory tower, or follow his brother's example and seek to establish himself in the wider world of London? His father believed that Leslie's delicate nervous system rendered him unfit for the competitive work market, and particularly the field of journalism where Fitzjames had already made a name. Leslie should not leave the protective environs of Cambridge, Sir James had counselled, but if he did he must return home and live with his mother and sister.

Leslie's solution to the dilemma was to lose his faith and become an atheist. He had never been a heartfelt Christian and religious controversy and doubt were widespread in academia at that period, (Darwin's
The Origin of Species by Natural Selection
had been published in 1859), and Leslie now came to see that many of the biblical stories on which his Christian faith rested were unsustainable. The literal truth of Noah's Ark, when viewed in the light of reason, vanished into thin air. He abandoned the priesthood. In so doing he had to give up the fellowship and so effectively ended a Cambridge career.

Leslie's loss of faith was surely linked to the death of his father and represented a rejection of his authority; for it was not a passive process, a simple loss of belief, but an aggressive rejection of Christianity. Leslie now became a militant agnostic, renowned for his writings and the logic of his arguments. His influence in persuading doubters was considerable and, in fact, Julia Duckworth's interest in him was first aroused after reading one of his articles and finding intellectual justification for her own atheism.

If Leslie had been motivated to free himself from his father by rejecting Christianity, he was only partially successful. A parent is far more difficult than God to kill and the phantom lives on long after death, as Virginia was to discover. Leslie's conversion to atheism, by forcing him to leave Cambridge, certainly freed him to enter a wider, more satisfying world wherein he prospered and became a respected figure. At heart, however, he continued to feel a sham and a failure, never really deserving of good opinion.

*   *   *

In 1867, when he was 35, Leslie married the younger of William Thackeray's daughters, Minny, then aged 27, a whimsical woman ‘with beautiful eyes'. Watt's portrait of her shows a ‘sweet', to use Leslie's description, ‘rather dreamy face'. Leslie was attracted and thought her ‘pure minded and free of any taint of coarseness or conceit or self-consciousness'.
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His sister Caroline Stephen, a fair eccentric herself, saw her as ‘quaintly picturesque'.
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It is difficult to see what the two had in common apart from a mutual admiration for Minny's father and his works. She was also inclined to be vague and spent much time rescuing flies from drowning in the garden after rain, and feeding stray cats. Nonetheless, she proved to be a capable housekeeper and caterer.

Minny's mother had schizophrenia (the illness had begun at Minny's birth), and needed constant care although she lived on to the age of 76, and Minny's aunt was ‘so queer as to be almost on the borders of sanity'.
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Possibly Minny herself, had she not died in pregnancy, would have broken down and become mentally ill.

The pressure of being Leslie's wife was not inconsiderable but Minny was protected from Leslie's more extravagant demands and bullying by her older sister Anny, who lived with the couple and was able to control Leslie through a mixture of humour and ridicule. The sisters had always been close and became more so after their father's death in 1863. ‘I shall never be separated from Anny except during my wedding tour,' Minny had told Leslie before their marriage.
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Anny was warm-hearted and enthusiastic with a lively sense of fun. She was very sociable, rather scatterbrained, extravagant and a compulsive talker. She was also fond of Leslie. Her chief complaint against him was the ‘cold bath effect' he had on their enthusiasms.
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She could reduce Leslie to silent rage by her chattering and caused furious scenes when she ran up debts and was unable to pay her share of the household expenses. But Leslie's outbursts mostly went over the Thackeray girls' heads and Anny was more amused than chastened. Leslie was almost always brought to heel and a scene would end with Leslie lending Anny money to pay her debts which, to her credit, she invariably repaid in the new quarter.

It was all in marked contrast to the scenes that would occur in Leslie's second marriage. Julia Stephen, lacking Anny's sense of the absurd, was unable to deflect Leslie's wrath and laugh at him. She pandered to his whims and by doing so, as Virginia complained, perpetuated his bullying egocentric habits.

Minny's first pregnancy miscarried but, in December 1870, Laura was born. The child was autistic but the parents failed to remark on her strangeness and she was treated as normal while Minny lived. Five years later Minny again became pregnant; she felt unwell from the beginning and, in the last month, developed eclampsia and died after a series of fits. The child was stillborn.

Leslie's grief was deep but not unmixed with self-pity and resentment. For a while he withdrew from friends and continued to work, editing
Cornhill Magazine
and writing his ambitious project
The History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century.
He came to rely on Anny, who stayed on and looked after him and Laura for eighteen months until her unexpected and, to Leslie, unwelcome marriage. Anny, nearing her forties, had fallen in love with her cousin Richmond Ritchie, 16 years younger and an undergraduate at Trinity. His frequent visits to the house had already begun to concern Leslie when, on coming into the drawing-room one afternoon, he found Anny and Richmond kissing. Incensed, he told her she must ‘make up her mind one way or other' to marry or to give up Richmond.
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He assumed his ultimatum would at once bring Anny to her senses. Richmond had no money and the age gap was, Leslie thought, indecent. To his astonishment she chose marriage and Leslie became distraught; that Anny could desert him was almost more than he could conceive. The prospect of being abandoned and left on his own aroused intense anxiety and he was reduced for a time to helpless indecision.

He was rescued from his plight by a neighbour, Julia Duckworth. She had been a friend of the Thackeray sisters for many years and frequently visited Anny. She had looked on Leslie with awe and trepidation and kept her distance for fear of irritating or boring him, but she now saw him daily. She listened patiently to his repetitive denunciations of Anny's marriage and then, suddenly, throwing caution to the winds, told him he was jealous and angry only because he was losing Anny. She stood up for Anny and in so doing lost her fear of Leslie. Leslie in turn was impressed by her firmness and from then on came increasingly to depend on Julia. When Richmond asked Leslie for an interview in order to arrange the terms of marriage, Leslie insisted that Julia be present for moral support.

At Anny's wedding he and Julia made a peculiar-looking pair. Leslie ‘looked very deplorable', silent and gloomy, while Julia ‘wore the thickest black velvet dress and heavy black veil [it was a hot day in August, 1877] and gave the gloomiest, most tragic aspect.'
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It was a foretaste of what lay ahead for this unusual couple who complemented so well each other's needs.

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Leslie soon asked Julia to marry him, but at first she was hesitant. She liked Leslie but she had ‘no courage for life'. Her ambivalence was patently clear. What she offered Leslie with one hand she took back with the other: ‘I do love you with all my heart', she wrote to him, ‘only it seems such a poor, dead heart'.
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She felt no passion within her love for Leslie. She was attracted to his mind and, above all, to his overwhelming need for her, his pathetic helplessness.

She discussed the question of marriage with her mother who, not surprisingly, advised against it. Mia Jackson feared for Julia's happiness and, what was no doubt unsaid, her own position if Julia should adopt a new life. But Uncle Thoby, although terminally ill at Freshwater in the Isle of Wight, gave the marriage his approval. Julia returned from seeing him and told Leslie she meant ‘to be as good a wife as she could'. On 26 March 1878 the ‘tall, grave and thin couple' were married.
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Chapter Three

The Stephen Marriage

Leslie and Laura moved into Julia's house at 22 Hyde Park Gate. The three Duckworth children accepted their stepfather with remarkable equanimity. George, the eldest, was ten. He possessed his father's good looks and easygoing temperament and was the apple of his mother's eye. He, in turn, adored Julia who was always ‘his own darling Mother'.
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Stella, a year younger, was just as devoted to her mother and already beginning to shape up to Julia's notion of a ‘perfect' daughter. Gerald was born after his father's death and, as the centre point of Julia's grief and attention, became the ‘delicate child' of the family, pampered and difficult.

Julia was a strict disciplinarian and all her children were well brought up, good mannered and polite. The contrast between the courteous, conventional Duckworth children and the eight-year-old Laura was extreme. Leslie described her at this time as a ‘normal, though obviously backward, child',
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but, in fact. she was seriously autistic, possibly from Asperger's Syndrome. This condition is characterised by inappropriate social interaction, repetitive behaviour, bizarre intonation and body language, and poor motor co-ordination. Intelligence is usually in the low–normal range. The child's inability to communicate and the chilling way he or she ignores and looks through anyone else present can be very disturbing.

Autistic behaviour develops during the first three years of life and is always strongly influenced by how the child is treated. While Laura's mother was alive and when warm-hearted Anny cared for her, Laura's eccentric behaviour could be and was readily overlooked, but with Anny's departure she deteriorated and regressed. When she went to live with the Duckworth children, where she was expected to behave as a normal child, the effect was catastrophic. Leslie repeatedly lost his temper over her strange behaviour, her inarticulate ways of thinking and speaking. His unsuccessful attempts to teach Laura to speak, read and write terrified the girl and served only to increase her regression. Eventually he was forced to accept defeat and hand over Laura's management to Julia.

Julia was convinced that Laura's behaviour was entirely due to her having been brought up badly and she was sure the remedy lay in firm discipline and strict training. When she discovered she was wrong she became more and more punitive and eventually, after four years and when pregnant with Virginia, banished Laura to the top of the house in the care of a ‘governess', after which she was only seen at family meals. Five years later she was sent away to a ‘home', and later still to an asylum. Julia washed her from her mind as a hopeless lunatic, but Leslie continued to feel responsible and to visit his daughter until his death. Laura lived to be 76.

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Julia Stephen quickly became pregnant. Vanessa was born in May 1879 and Thoby followed 15 months later. Julia wanted another boy but it was Virginia who arrived on 25 January 1882. Her last child, Adrian, was conceived at the beginning of the next year.

Julia's reactions to her pregnancies throw a light on her personal difficulties and the tensions and problems Virginia encountered in early life.

Some women are profoundly affected by the sex of their child. Julia was cheered when her infant proved to be male, and depressed when it turned out to be female. Julia perhaps visualised each of her children
in utero
as male – certainly when pregnant with Virginia she imagined a boy and referred to him as Chad – and was disappointed when a girl was born. Julia took the line that males are superior to females, but that throughout their lives they need to be protected and mothered. She believed a women's primary role in life was to care for her men: husband first, then sons. For Julia the birth of a son, full of promise, was the start of a natural loving process. A daughter was no better than a formless lump of clay at birth which had to be pummelled and moulded into a ‘perfect' woman.