The elusive human soul, 1898–9

A life told in the margins

Let’s start somewhere in the middle.

On Tuesday 17th November 1896, a 29-year-old lawyer-turned-journalist called Enoch Arnold Bennett wrote this in his diary:

To-day a business crisis which has been active for a fortnight ended with a definite arrangement that I should accept the editorship of Woman…

Edith Evors, my new secretary, is the first genuine middle-class bachelor woman, living alone in London lodgings, that I have been intimately familiar with. A tall woman, slightly under thirty, with big limbs and a large, honest, red-cheeked face, and a quiet, intense voice. Transparently conscientious; with little self-reliance, but a capacity for admiring self-reliance in others. She lives in Bloomsbury, and at night goes to socialist and anarchist lectures. “It is dreadful”, she said to me today, “to think how little one can do!” She cannot make her own clothes, though her earnings are only 30 shillings a week, and she grudges “every moment spent in their repair”. But personally she is neat enough in an unadorned, aggressively simple way. She is serious, earnest, practical in small affairs, and visionary in great ones. Full of easily aroused pity and indignation. Physically strong and healthy.

That pen portrait of Ms Evors – and you can decide for yourself what you think of its tone – is the only description you will ever find of her… until now, because it’s her story I want to try and tell this week. In fact, she was three years older than the writer – who went on to become better known just as Arnold Bennett, one of the most successful novelists of the early 20th century (albeit not so well remembered today).¹ At the time of writing, as he took the helm at Woman magazine, he was still two years off from publishing his first novel.

Last time here I presented an interview with the British suffragette Christabel Pankhurst, published in the magazine Hearth and Home in 1910. What I didn’t say is who conducted the interview.

The name was given only as ‘E M Evors’. They were obviously sympathetic to Ms Pankhurst’s viewpoint, and wrote in a fresh, engaging way. I found myself wanting to know more. Ultimately this is my somewhat hasty attempt to find out what I can in just two weeks about somebody lost in the margins of literary history (and yes, I’ve had this bug before). A short biography of someone forgotten, unknown, overlooked. And therefore something of a challenge.

A bit of googling revealed that E M Evors was the compiler of three ‘birthday books’ between 1912 and 1913 – day-by-day collections of notable quotations by well-known figures of the day (the cheesy Christmas gift book market is nothing new, folks). Those celebs were the actress Sarah Bernhardt, writer and Walden shed-dweller Henry David Thoreau, and novelist Marie Corelli (allegedly Queen Victoria’s favourite writer).

The Bookseller magazine even wrote a review of The Marie Corelli Calendar, noting “Mr Evors has made his choice with skill and judgement…”. But E M Evors was no mister, as you’ve already gathered.

Edith Mary Evors was born in 1863 into the family of Charles Robert Evors and his wife Elizabeth Lowndes. Charles was then the rector of Kington, a small parish in Worcestershire. Edith was the youngest of three and sadly their mother died in 1869.

In the 1871 census, we find Edith, aged 7, living with her 44-year-old father in Kington. Also in the house was Eliza Griffiths, the rector’s 18-year-old niece (his sister’s daughter). And thereby hangs a perturbing tale: a few years after this, Charles Sr and Eliza eloped abroad and got married: an ‘avunculate’ marriage of this kind was strictly forbidden in the Church of England. They went on to have many children together.

In 1881, young Edith was a pupil at Hatcham Manor school in south-east London – a predecessor of what’s now part of Haberdashers’ Girls’ School.

At this point we only have these census-powered snapshots – in 1891, Edith was setting out on her career, now boarding in Islington, north London, and declaring herself as ‘writer’ to the census enumerator. What she was writing at that point is not clear, but we can certainly prove she stuck with her career, and I feel she was one of various late Victorian pioneers in independent female journalism.

So five years later, as we learned from Bennett, she was working as his secretary at Woman, at least in an environment close to her ambitions. I have managed to track down parts of her correspondence with Bennett over the years that followed, which give a little window into her personality and concerns, some of this never published anywhere before now…

Photojournalist Frances Benjamin Johnston’s self-portrait as a ‘New Woman’, 1896.

A fair bit of Edith’s journalism persists in periodical archives – more on that in a bit – but as far as I can tell, only four of her letters survive – all to Arnold Bennett.² So for a brief window between 1898 and 1899, we get a glimpse of Edith (who always signs herself ‘E M Evors’) directly.

23rd August 1898

Dear Mr Bennett

I know you don’t like long letters. And you don’t like gush: I will try and avoid these deeps. There remains the ego to be reckoned with.

I write chiefly to thank you for your kind words this afternoon, and for making everything as easy as you could for me.

It is due to your advice, help and example that I am now infinitely better equipped to face a new future than ever I was before. And although this is not saying much – yet it is something.

It is good also to feel that you are my friend which you have ever proved to be. I too am your friend, though in a passive and wholly impractical way.

I am genuinely sorry to sever the connection with “Woman” and to be unable to work with you any longer.

If I am to bear out the intention expressed in my first sentence, I must say no more.

So with best regards
Sincerely
E.M. Evors

An intriguing letter that invites many questions, which sadly I can’t answer. Why was she fleeing Woman after less than two years? Was she frustrated at not getting writing opportunities? Had Bennett overstepped the mark somehow? Were her female colleagues unkind in some way? All speculation. (Bennett later wrote extensively about his time at Woman, and in this same year, 1898, rather presumptuously published a masterpiece of mansplaining entitled Journalism for Women: A Practical Guide; he was also known to be awkward with women. But he does seem to have been supportive.)

Just over a year later, Edith was living at 13 North Crescent in Bloomsbury, and pitching feature ideas to Arnold…

26th November 1899

What do you think of the following as subjects for interview articles (with portraits)?

1. Lady Wimborne, with reference to her Anti-Ritualistic Campaign. [She was a cousin of Winston Churchill and the campaign appears to have been against Catholicism in England.]

2. Mrs Kate Lee, originator and moving spirit of the Folk Song Society.

3. The Dowager Duchess of Newcastle, as Founder and Head Worker of Roman Catholic Women’s Settlement in the East End.

4. Miss Gertrude Tuckwell, Hon. Sec. of Women’s Trade Union League and formerly Secy. to Lady Dilke.

5. The Secretary of the All England Women’s Hockey Union on “The Development of Hockey as a Recreation for Women”.

Please say if I may do any of these for Woman.

Will you come and have tea with me one day here at about 4 o’clock? If so, say when, on a postcard, as I am so often out or engaged.

A week later, Edith wrote to say the Duchess of Newcastle was “unapproachable”. She again discussed Bennett visiting, and revealed: “I have a three days’ ‘job’, beginning tomorrow, and feel quite gay on the strength of it.”

And five days after that, the last letter we have from her, on 8th December 1899:

I am very sorry that you are ill, as well as disappointed not to see you here today. I was ill myself too yesterday. I think the Controller of the Weather has a good deal to answer for. Bar today, life is more supportable.

Don’t “make another endeavour next Friday” (unless I write you) as I don’t think I shall be at home. I am probably going to take charge of a Typewriting Office for a week or so – beginning next Thursday – and Friday being mail day is an especially busy afternoon. But you will come and see me one day?

And that’s it in terms of Edith’s direct communications. But many of Bennett’s letters survive in archives across the world and in published form, and we get glimpses of their ongoing correspondence in the years that follow.³

In June 1900, Edith was pitching more features for Woman. Bennett was about to leave there himself to pursue being a novelist, but wrote back:

You can do me quantities of interviews, but not musical or histrionic ones. I have had an undue percentage of these lately. Get some novelists, or any other sort of weirdness, outside the Fabian Society. Pearsons is a good firm to be in – no Saturday work, & decent treatment. I am their publisher’s reader… Next time I call I will discourse on your charms & abilities to Stanley Service head of that department.

Bennett also decided to move out of London. On 30th October 1900, he wrote to her describing his new circumstances at Trinity Hall Farm in Bedfordshire: “I have a sort of feeling that I have ignored two letters of yours, so I indite this to apologise, & to express the hope that you are comfortable & prospering…” Edith had contributed to his leaving present, too: a silver inkstand. In his next letter, we get a fresh glimpse of Edith and her career anxieties…

21st February 1901

I heard of you the other day as being still with Lady Pearson of Henrietta Street. I hope this will continue, but it doesn’t seem to me to be capable of leading to much. Are you still writing? I trust so. When you die (whenever & however) I trust you will consciously remember, realise, & derive satisfaction from the fact, that your individual influence upon the world has been good, stimulating, & progressive… Note—I have not had any premonition of your decease; but that idea just happened to occur to me, apropos of your regrettable tendency to self-depreciation.

Annie Pearson, Viscountess Cowdray, was a suffragist, philanthropist and key supporter of nursing organisations. The 1901 census reveals Edith still at North Crescent, working as a ‘private secretary and journalist’. According to James Hepburn, editor of Bennett’s letters, at some point in 1901 Edith started working for The Lady magazine.

There’s one last published letter from Arnold to Edith (he now calls her “Dear friend”), sent while he was on holiday on Scotland, which again reveals her concerns:

18th August 1904

I have just got your letter. You ask for advice which cannot possibly be given. You already know all that I can tell you about journalism & how to get into it. Except by seeing editors & demanding situations at the pistol’s point I know of no method of getting the said situations. As a matter of fact I thought you had left H & H. [Hearth and Home, a journal they had both written for] long ago. I certainly understood from some one, quite a year ago, that you meant to leave. I wish I could help you by pointing out to some ‘royal road’ for your feet, but I cannot… I trust you are well & calm.

And there the correspondence fades.

From my searches through archives of periodicals,⁴ in the first 25 years of the 20th century, Edith contributed articles on all manner of subjects – for example:

• ‘Actresses’ Children’

• ‘The Glamour of Gems’

• ‘The World’s Work: Cocoa Growing’

• ‘The War from a New Angle’ – a report from a gathering of blinded soldiers in 1915

In the 1911 census, she stated her employment again as ‘journalist’. Clearly Edith took prompt advantage of being given the vote in 1918: from then on she is listed in electoral registers, which show how she moved from one London lodging to another with some frequency. In 1921, she was in Warwick Street, listed as a journalist working ‘on her own account’ (i.e. self-employed) from home. In the 1910s and 1920s, she wrote many pieces for The Graphic, including full-page features on bonsai trees, London’s parks and reports from art exhibitions in particular, and through the 1920s she wrote weekly book reviews for the publication, covering everything from psychic experiences (headline: ‘The Elusive Human Soul’) to war atrocities in Serbia. The last piece I can find is ‘The Fascination of Modern French Art’ from 1924, when Edith was turning 60.

Her house moves continued, from St Pancras to Islington to Pimlico, Lambeth and Streatham. She died at the age of 91 on 10th March 1954 at the Sunniholme Nursing Home in Croydon. She left a reasonable amount of money in her estate: £1,718, which is something like £60,000 ($78,000) today. Who did it go to? She didn’t leave a will, so there are no clues to her private life.

In his novels Hilda Lessways and Helen with the High Hand, Arnold Bennett wrote of independent ‘New Women’, one of them working in journalism, both living alone and independently (though both ultimately end up in the domestic marital norm of the era). Could “middle-class bachelor woman” Edith have inspired these characters? We’ll never know – but while much of her life remains opaque, for all her anxieties about journalistic life she stuck with it, independent, self-determined to the last. I think she sounds great.

North Crescent in Bloomsbury, where Edith lived 1899–1901 (my photo taken October 2024).

1. He’s possibly better known for his omelette, a bit like Sydney Smith with his salad.

2. I’m very grateful to Sydney Leibfritz at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas for supplying scans of them to me.

3. My chief sources are The Letters of Arnold Bennett, Vol. II 1889–1915 (ed. James Hepburn, OUP, 1968) and The Journals of Arnold Bennett, 1896–1910 (Cassell, 1932).

4. Chiefly the British Newspaper Archive, although I have been unable to consult the archives of Woman magazine. Other key sources for censuses, electoral rolls etc are TheGenealogist.co.uk and Ancestry.co.uk.