You will note I wrote ‘her children’s books’. This is to clear up a misunderstanding, which still persists, regarding the gender of E. Nesbit. Because she published everything under the cloak of that terse initial, Edith Nesbit was often thought to be a man (something she was quite happy to encourage, by all accounts). H.G. Wells was convinced she was male – to the extent of conjuring up suitable ‘E’ male names – until he met her. As late as 1931 (seven years after her death), the noted editor Montague Summers mistakenly called her ‘Evelyn Nesbit’ in his Supernatural Omnibus, a mistake repeated five years later by the anonymous editor of the famous Century of Ghost Stories.
Edith Nesbit was born on 15 August 1858, in Kennington, the youngest of the six children of John Collis Nesbit, a teacher and scientist who ran an agricultural college. She was educated in England and on the Continent and is reported to have lived in at least two haunted houses as a child: excellent grounding for what was to follow. Her childhood also brought her several life-long fears and phobias which were to find expression in her stories, as will be discussed later.
Her father died when Edith was only three years old, and declining fortunes brought the Nesbits back to London in the 1870s. She had already started writing poetry and met with some success while still in her teens. The magazines Good Words and Sunday Magazine bought some of her poetry in 1876, and she became a frequent contributor of poetry to various journals from then on.
In 1877 she met her future husband, Hubert Bland, three years her senior, and, it seems, quite a character: tall, dark, and handsome, with military bearing, and sporting a monocle (which was for more than show – his eyesight was very poor), he was just the type to sweep Edith the literary daydreamer off her feet. And sweep her off her feet he did – straight on to her back. Hubert Bland, as Doris Langley Moore puts it, ‘could not by any effort of nature leave women alone’. Put less elegantly, Bland would tackle anything that moved and wore skirts; this facet of his character was to dominate their marriage.
He got Edith pregnant in short order, and they were married in April 1880, Edith being two months away from her first baby. Bland had started a small brush factory which seemed to be pottering along quietly. Then, in that same year of 1880, he contracted smallpox – twice – and during his long illness his partner in the factory absconded to Spain with the funds. The Blands were penniless and very much up against it.
Edith Nesbit was never the type to sit back and wail, however. She turned to writing flat out, and it was during this time that she started to produce short stories, some of which can be found in this volume, and poetry of a more lasting kind than she had written before. She also discovered an unusual money-maker: designing and painting Christmas cards, inscribed with her own verses. Hubert caught the writing bug as well, for they collaborated on a joint novel, The Prophet’s Mantle, published in 1885 (it was a failure). Edith and Hubert did, however, pursue separate – and successful – writing careers. Hubert became the editor of Today, a respected literary journal, and published new work by authors such as Shaw, Ibsen, Whitman and William Morris.
The early 1880s saw another collaboration with Hubert that became more permanent. Despite his physically domineering manner and his relish for the opposite sex, Hubert was no clod. He was well read and intellectually active, and was a keen socialist. The Victorian era and its obsession with capitalism had produced widespread dissatisfaction among liberal-minded thinkers, and Hubert belonged to several idealistic sets. Increasing divisions amongst them led to the founding, in 1884, of the Fabian Society. Hubert was a leading light in its formation, chairing the first meeting on 4 January 1884, and Edith was also actively involved. The new society’s name even affected the Blands’ first novel, The Prophet’s Mantle. It was published under the pseudonym ‘Fabian Bland’.
Edith had contributed a steady flow of stories to the many journals of the day, including Longman’s Magazine, Temple Bar, Argosy, Illustrated London News, the Sketch and the Victorian. Another magazine which published a good deal of her work was Sylvia’s Home Journal, and it was this magazine which brought about another major change in Edith’s life.
A young Yorkshire girl, Alice Hoatson, worked on Sylvia’s Home Journal as a reader and, in 1882, met Edith when she brought in a story for consideration. The two women, both in their early twenties, struck up a warm friendship, and Alice was eventually invited to move in with the Blands. This proved to be a disastrous move. Alice and Edith had a friendship that was to span more than thirty years but, despite this, Alice was the last person who should have been sharing a roof with the priapic Hubert Bland. She very quickly became his mistress and remained so until he died. More than that, she bore him two children, in 1886 and 1899, both chez Bland, and Edith adopted both of them.
What a household it must have been! Hubert dividing his attentions between the two of them and anyone else he could find; Alice forced in public to treat her two children as Edith’s; and Edith obliged to treat Alice’s children as her own while always aware of the circumstances of their birth. And, it seems, she didn’t let on to either of them what the real story was for a long time.
Hubert, while fond of bestowing his favours where he could, was not too happy when others tried the same game. Julia Briggs recounts an amusing incident when H.G. Wells (as bad as Bland in his own way) tried to run away with Rosamund Bland, Hubert and Edith’s daughter. Hubert cornered them at Paddington and gave Wells a piece of his mind and, ultimately, a thick ear, all on the platform. There is no greater irony in all the Blands’ history than the thought of Hubert giving Wells a few belts round the ear for the cardinal sin of seducing his daughter. A lot of Edith Nesbit’s problems might have been avoided – it is hard to think otherwise – if she had had a father to give Hubert a good thumping at some early stage in their relationship.
The Blands’ marriage never foundered, despite Hubert, and despite Edith herself indulging in some extra-marital fun (who could blame her?). They had a wide circle of famous friends, among them Rider Haggard, G.K. Chesterton, Oscar Wilde, Andrew Lang, Laurence Housman, R.H. Benson and Grant Allen – and George Bernard Shaw.
Shaw was a profound influence on Edith’s life. She developed a strong passion for him, but it would seem to have been one-sided romance. This was not the case with several other men with whom she became involved over the years, including the author Richard le Gallienne and the famous Egyptologist Dr Wallis Budge. Perhaps the balancing of Edith’s fun on the side with Bland’s adventures gave the marriage some needed stability.
Edith’s first solo book, a volume of poetry called Lays and Legends, appeared in 1886. This was moderately successful and she became more established as an author. She published her first children’s book, The Voyage of Columbus, in 1890. Her career reached a peak in 1901 and started a gradual decline thereafter (though not seriously until about 1910 onwards).
The turn of the century also brought real tragedy. The Blands’ eldest son, fifteen-year-old Fabian, died in 1900 after an operation to remove his tonsils. Edith was stricken. Darker days lay ahead. In 1910, Hubert fell ill with heart trouble and failing eyesight. He finally went blind when his one good eye failed, and in April 1914 he died of what seems to have been another, final heart attack.
Edith found herself in straitened circumstances. The war years obliged her to take paying guests at her home, Well Hall in Eltham, and she ran a poultry farm and market garden. This did not help much and, despite being awarded a Civil List pension of £60 a year for her services to literature, these must have been black times.
She never regained her literary feet, but gained some return of happiness when she married an old friend and fellow socialist, Thomas Tucker, in 1917. He persuaded her to move out of Well Hall, and they set up home at Jesson St Mary on Romney Marsh in Kent in 1922. She even published one or two more books. Life must have been hard, but Tucker was not Bland, and the marriage seems to have been a fairly happy one, despite her move to Kent coinciding with the onset of bronchial