The Anatomist - Bill Hayes [97]
Spooner then adds his own two cents:
I would venture to suggest to your consideration whether it would not be advisable to treat her kindly and let her live with you again. After a few years all former occurrences will be gradually buried in oblivion.
DAY TWO AT the library dawns. Steve and I are joined by fellow hunters and gatherers at the large center table in the Poynter Reading Room. Although we exchange little more than nods of hello, I feel we could not be in more genial, civilized company. Directly across from us sits a middle-aged woman, both chic and bookish, who was also here all day yesterday. A Mona Lisa smile never left her face as she endlessly inputted from a stack of small medieval-looking tomes. Steve and I have decided—based on no facts whatsoever—that she is a historical romance novelist tracking down period details and atmosphere. The young married couple is back as well. They seem as passionate about each other as they do about tracing their genealogy. As for Steve and me, we still have our own little family history to sort out: Did H. V. Carter follow his lawyer’s advice (and Harriet’s wishes) and take his wife back? Or did he divorce her? And what happened to his daughter? In the second-to-last entry of his diary, he writes with great anguish about the child, “that poor infant, a sweet healthy babe.”
Can I ever expect—hope—to see her again? Years ago, poor old grandfather Barlow, when he used to set me part of the way home from Dry-pool, would peer anxiously those dark Saturday nights under every passing woman’s bonnet—a scrutinizing gaze so peculiar and keen that, unobservant youth as I was, it almost appalled me. He expected—hoped?—to see the face of his own daughter—a creature of the town, notoriously public—
Illegitimate.
Am I ever to endure his…bitterness? But this is far anticipation—God knows alone our future rescue or doom. Every passing child wrings my heart.
Among Carter’s papers, I come upon a small note that must have just about broken it. Dated 1867, it is written in a child’s scrawl: “Dear Papa come soon.”
His daughter would have been six years old at the time.
Did his heart begin to soften, finally? Did he ever find a way to forgive Harriet? The answer would be unknowable, it’s safe to say, were it not for one person—
“My Dear Sister—”
Yes, Lily, confidante to all, quiet keeper of all things. This batch of letters was not from H.V., however, but her sister-in-law, Harriet. Apparently, the two women had become close after Harriet returned on her own to England.
“I wished to tell you that Henry is now the Principal of a hospital in Bombay,” Harriet writes to Lily in December 1879. You can hear the pride in her voice.
Unfortunately, Lily’s side of the conversation is silent. Though 80 percent of the material in the Carter Papers comes from her, not a single letter in her own hand survives. Still, it is clear that Lily and Harriet were on very good terms.
“Henry is so much engrossed in his book that we see little of him,” Harriet confides in a letter from January 1881. “I for my part shall be very thankful when the said book is in the press.”
Only three of these sister-to-sister letters survive, none earlier than 1879, but in this small cluster comes a remarkable number of answers. First and foremost, Harriet and H.V. were never divorced, but they also never lived together again. Instead, the couple maintained an unconventional relationship that endured for more than twenty years. Other than a series of furloughs, H.V. remained in India, while Harriet and the children lived in Europe, including England, Germany, and Italy. Mother, father, and daughter apparently did reunite on occasion, spending a month together in Rome, for instance. And at least once in India, husband and wife spent time alone together, though in a town a good distance from Bombay and its late-Victorian mores. Was this a romantic rendezvous?