more on Sir Henry Newbolt's private life
Having taken an interest in the unexpected discovery of the poly family of a stuffy Victorian war poet, I went to see if I could find more information than was in the stilted little Wikipedia paragraph that I copyedited.
Sadly, the biography referenced is quite expensive, even used, so I probably won't be picking that up in the very near future, but the different attitudes of the three reviews I found were quite amusing. One almost wonders if they were reading the same book.
I am figuring that this Globe and Mail column is probably the most accurate summary of the book, because it gives the most concrete detail with the least judgment. An excerpt: "As a 25-year-old lawyer, Henry fell in love with Margaret Duckworth, a woman of great charm who had many qualities associated with young men . . . but when he started to court her an impediment emerged. Margaret was already in love with someone else, her cousin, a beautiful young woman named Ella Coltman. They were both members of the Grecians, a club of women who studied Greek poetry, disdained the company of men, and privately gave each other male names drawn from the classics. Margaret announced she would marry Henry only if Ella became part of their intimate life together, and Henry agreed." They each had some other relationships along the way, but the triad lasted until their deaths.
However, as the summaries of the relationship in the other two reviews of the biography I found show, this is just too much for most people to accept.
Either it has to be the man's doing, with the women's relationship ignored:
"Unknown to the world, he also entered into a triangular lifelong relationship with his wife and her best friend, Ella, carefully dividing his favours between the pair of them. The scandal never broke and the gentlemanly and chivalrous Newbolt soon became a sleek establishment figure, fussing over the de luxe binding of his latest book and insisting on wearing velvet knee-breeches and ruffles of the Nelson era when he received his knighthood."
from The Spectator, Aug 23, 1997 by Andrew Barrow
Or the man has to be the victim of callous and unhousewifely lesbians:
"But not one in a hundred readers would guess the author of that explicitly erotic Viking Love Song, was also the upholder of Victorian values who maintained a bizarre menage a trois with two forcible blue stockings who lived well into their eighties. They shared his London and country life, but not chores. Henry meekly mended his own socks and had little of Bloomsbury comforts."
from Contemporary Review, Jan 1998, Molly Mortimer
Chuckle. Who knew that the distribution of sock-darning was a major complication of multiple-adult households?