Edith Nesbit

Our Ren, the avid reader, learnt that an author who helped shape her childhood and her love (and fear) of steam engines was buried in the Romney Marsh which is coincidentally where Jamie grew up. With that in mind, last weekend before we again travelled to the hospital for our daily visit of family members, we took Yogi for his walk down in the marshes and to pay our respects to E. Nesbit.

It wasn't until after our visit that we looked into the woman who we had travelled to see and learnt of her quite tragic life. It wasn't as awful as some authors we have researched, but with her share of grief and a first husband with a wandering eye and tendency to get women pregnant, it can't have been pleasant.

Edith Nesbit lost her father at four years old. Nine years later she lost her older sister to tuberculosis who had already suffered from ill health and had been the reason that the Nesbit family had moved around so much. Following Mary's death the family settled in Kent for a time before the moved back to London.

At 21 she fell pregnant by Hubert Bland who was three years older than her and had been in contact with her since she was 18. They married as she was almost due to give birth but didn't live together as Bland lived with his mother. Early on in their marriage Edith found that a woman who lived with her husband's mother believed herself to be Bland's fiancée and also had a child fathered by him. However, Edith went on to have another two children by Bland while also adopting the children produced from his affairs. It was more of a blow to Edith after she discovered the child she was adopting from her friend was actually fathered by her own husband and an ultimatum was given to her- adopt the child and allow the mistress to work within the household, or her husband would leave her. Thirteen years later the same woman gave birth to another of Bland's children who Edith had to adopt, another tragic blow landing less than a year later when her youngest biological son died following a tonsil operation. Edith blamed herself for the death as she had fed him shortly beforehand and then left him unattended following the anaesthetic not realising that he would choke on the regurgitated food.   

Near enough 14 years later Edith's husband died. You cannot deny there was some love there despite the arguments and his serial cheating as they joined the Fabian Society together and co wrote for their journals. They also co wrote under their son's name, Fabian Bland, but this fizzled out as Edith soared in her own right with her children's novels. You can also see the love Edith had for her adopted children as several of her novels were dedicated for them. This shows her loving and accepting character, even if in these modern times we would have expected her to shun her husband and these children.

By her own admission, Edith was not one for the feminist/suffragette movement but this was because of her own political standpoint. As a socialist she did not want more bodies voting Tory and harming her movements and beliefs. While it seems she was fully supportive of a woman learning and being able to do things on her own, voting was not one of these.

Three years after the death of Bland, Edith married Thomas 'Skipper' Tucker the Captain of the Woolwich Ferry. Towards the end of her life they relocated to conjoined properties in New Romney,     Edith living in one half and her husband the other. However she died in her husband's half in 1924 from suspected lung cancer as she was a chain smoker. He buried her in the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin in St Mary in the Marsh and carved her grave marker himself. Skipper was devoted to his wife and brought her contentment which we feel she deserves after her rocky first marriage even if she was reported to have lived 'quite the bohemian lifestyle'. Skipper died 11 years later in the same house but we cannot find where he was buried. We'd hoped he was with his wife but it seems not.

Skipper carried out Edith's final wishes which was to be laid to rest under the elm tree at this church. The elm no longer stands but the air of devotion at the site does. We read that Edith had a fondness for nearby Dymchurch which was just a little fishing village instead of the holiday making place it is today, but we can see the appeal. It seems Edith was a fan of the calming sea and that reflected in her second marriage. She came from turbulence and stormy times but the calm settled eventually. This poetic metaphor describes the poets life and we think she may have appreciated this insight.

Her works were heavily inspired by the places she had lived so there are sites in Kent and London which appear in her works, one of the Kentish sites inspiring The Railway Children. It was the film that made the Yorkshire railway popular and Oakworth is also on our bucket list to visit because of this.

Ren was saddened to find that Ms Nesbit was in fact author to a great many novels and she has only read one, so from this moment onward has made it her mission to collect and read as many of Edith Nesbit's works as she can get hold of, so look out for future posts on her progress as she will obsess over this for a while now.

As a post dedicated to the insight of the person and not really her gravesite, we have no need of the usual rating and disclaimer, but we look forward to researching more people we come across on our adventures! Ren is itching to post about Charles Dickens, but we've got a thing about visiting the burial site before posting on the person and that requires a trip to London despite him having lived local to us. The way her mind works is we've then travelled full circle on the subjects life and then her research is fairly complete as we've hit the end, we can then fill the gaps in between. It works for us, so stay tuned!