Last October I tried to read this book, and if you were reading my blog then you might have spotted it in a post called 'What I Haven't Read This Week'. Yes, I tried it and gave it up, thinking that it was too depressing. But when Persephone kindly offered me a copy, I thought I really should give it another try -- the title, after all, seemed to demand it, and also the fact that part of it is set in Penge, in South East London, where my daughter and family live. I've just finished it, and I am so glad I did, as it is a remarkable novel.
The thing about this book is that there are, in one sense, no surprises. Jenkins based the story on a true crime that took place in the 1870s, and most people who pick up the novel will be aware before they start of the bare bones of the plot. Harriet, in her early 30s, is a woman with learning difficulties, or as Jenkins puts it
what the villagers in Mrs Ogilvy's old home would have called a natural. Her intellect was not so clouded that intercourse with ordinary people was out of the question; the deficiency showed itself rather in a horrid uncouthness, the more noticeable in that she had a vigorous and powerful zest for such aspects of life as were intelligible to her.
She has been well brought up by a loving mother, takes care of herself and pride in her appearance, likes nice clothes and pleasant things around her. She is also an heiress, having three thousand pounds to her name and another two thousand on the way - according to my edition that's about a million in today's money. This is her downfall. She encounters a young man, Lewis Oman, who quite ruthlessly decides to marry her for her fortune, and he succeeds in doing so despite her mother's best efforts to prevent him. At first he looks after her fairly well, and even makes her pregnant. But after the child is born his treatment of her deteroriates, and eventually he moves her into his brother's house in the country and takes his young mistress to live with him nearby. Some months later, Harriet is dead, having been terribly mistreated and seemingly starved to death. This dreadful affair, and the trial that followed, came to be known as the Penge Murder, as this was the area of London where Harriet finally died.
You can see why I thought this novel was going to be depressing, and the subject matter is, indeed, very disturbing. But Jenkins handles the material so tactfully that the real fascination is not with Harriet's sufferings -- these are not glossed over, but they are implied rather than dwelt on -- but with the extraordinary psychology of the people who have her in their care. Harriet is sent to live with Lewis's painter brother Patrick and his devoted wife Elizabeth, whose younger sister Alice is Lewis's mistress. There is never point at which these four people make a decision to starve or otherwise mistreat Harriet, and in fact the matter is never discussed. Instead, it comes to pass slowly, over time, and everyone somehow manages to convince themselves that they are in the right. There's a telling moment quite early on when Elizabeth visits Alice at her home and finds her in the kitchen, ironing. Sitting down at the table, she sees that her sister is ironing some beautiful pieces of silk and realises they have been unpicked from a dress of Harriet's of a beautiful jay's wing blue, which Alice had earlier seen and admired, thinking to herself at the time how much better it would suit her than Harriet. Elizabeth says nothing -- she just looks away silently. A weak woman, she is so besotted with her husband Patrick that she will never question anything he does or says, while Patrick in turn is completely devoted to handsome, flashy, common Lewis. The unusually close relationship between the two brothers is never more evident than after their arrest when they are put together into a cell:
the brothers did not lie down. Seated side by side, their arms round each other, they whispered into each other's ears all night long. It was the conslusion of all the midnight conversations they had held as children, when, side by side in the double bed, they had whispered under the clothes so as not to be heard next door. The darkness was the same; it was the same surrounding silence. Patrick had pulled the blankets round their shoulders, and their breath was warm and damp on each other's cheeks just as it had ever been; and the confidence was the same -- the unreserve they had never achieved with women, or with anyone except each other.
The other fascinating character is Alice. Very young, very beautiful, entirely selfish, she plays a less active part in the final mistreatment of Harriet, though she is perfectly well aware of what is going on. She acquires Harriet's clothes and jewellery and is happy to use Lewis's, or rather Harriet's, money to live a life of luxury and ease which she would never have expected from her rather humble beginnings. There's a wonderful moment when she has had the most glorious dress made, entirely of crepe, the dim mauve of lilac or heliotrope flowers; the bodice and sleeves were tight to Alice's beautiful slenderness -- and she is almost overwhelmed:
when she put it on, she was amazed, vain as she was, at the mysterious beauty of her own appearance. It seemed as if all the resource and intelligence and taste and determination which had been developing all her life had reached their zenith in creating this; her charm had reached its full perfection; and she was awed by the spectacle of herself. As she stood with the light of the chandelier revealing her, gazing at Lewis, her smile had in it something rapt and solemn, as if she were the vestal guardian of her own loveliness.
As I'm sure you can see, Jenkins writes beautifully, and her perecption and understanding of the inner lives of these people is wonderfully done. True crime is a genre I usually avoid like the plague, but this is something else -- moving, thought-provoking, it will stay with me for a long time. And next time I go to Penge I will try to find Harriet's grave, which still exists in St George's Church in Beckenham.
