‘Holland married a woman called Alice Avery,’ I say. ‘She was an actress. We don’t know how they met because Holland hardly ever left Sussex and, after Alice died, he rarely left the house. He writes about Alice in his diary. He was dazzled at first but it soon starts to go wrong. Alice seems to have had some sort of mental instability. Holland called it “hysteria”. A very common diagnosis in Victorian times, as I’m sure you know, and always used of women. They were only married four years when Alice died. He describes her taking a “dying fall” and I’ve always imagined that she fell down the stairs at Holland House, where the old part of the school is. Holland’s marriage and Alice’s death are noted in the family Bible but there’s no mention of a Mariana. However, in another letter, he says, “my sweet child Mariana”. Then there’s a poem, “For M. RIP”, about his grief at Mariana’s death. She can only have been about thirteen. But there are no other mentions of her and she’s not buried in the graveyard at Talgarth.’
‘There’s a graveyard at your school?’
‘Yes. It’s out-of-bounds but as you can imagine, it’s a popular destination.’
‘The perfect place for an illicit cigarette.’
‘And the rest of it. But in this letter, Holland writes about Mariana inheriting “her mother’s taint”. That seems to imply that she was Alice’s daughter.’
‘Maybe he did send her to his sister in Shropshire?’
‘It’s possible. Holland’s sister, Thomasina, was married to a clergyman and she wasn’t one for letters or diaries. But they had a family Bible, too, and it lists all of Thomasina’s children, including the two that died in infancy, but there’s no mention of Mariana.’
‘It’s a little creepy,’ says Hamilton, ‘all that stuff about him needing Mariana with him.’
I’m struck by his use of the word ‘creepy’. Not only is it distinctly unacademic but it’s the word Georgie used to describe the college earlier.
‘It’s very odd,’ I say, ‘but then Holland was odd. And he took a hell of a lot of opium towards the end.’
‘They all did,’ says Hamilton. ‘Wilkie Collins took so much that when his valet celebrated his bequest from Collins’s will with a small dose of laudanum, an eighth of his master’s daily intake, it killed him.’
‘And there’s Miss Gwilt in Armadale: “Who was the man who invented laudanum? I thank him with all my heart”.’
‘I’ve never read Armadale.’
This makes me feel slightly smug although he says it a bit like he’s read every other book in the world. ‘You should,’ I say. ‘It’s got a great villainess in it. I’ve heard the valet story before. I wonder if it’s true. It sounds almost too Wilkie Collins somehow.’
Hamilton laughs. ‘Fair point. What was The Ravening Beast? An unpublished book?’
‘Yes. There are some notes about it in his diaries. It’s about a beast that lives in the wood and sometimes descends on a lonely village and drags off young women to kill and eat them. But there’s some ambiguity as to whether it’s an animal or a crazed madman, maybe even the narrator himself. Holland says it’s a cross between The Hound of the Baskervilles and the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.’
‘Does the manuscript still survive?’
‘It’s not with his papers at Holland House but Holland quotes from it in his diaries. He’s a great quoter. And there are several rejection letters from publishers in his files.’
‘That’s what he was talking about in the second letter?’
‘Yes. The book certainly sounds as if it was “strong meat”. There are several quite explicit passages. The parts I’ve seen read a bit like one long opium-induced nightmare. But, as Holland says, publishers only wanted more short stories like The Stranger.’
‘And he says he regrets writing that.’
‘Yes. He wrote it when he was still a young man. He’d just left Cambridge and was living in digs in London. He hadn’t inherited Holland House then. The Stranger was published in a weekly magazine and later it was part of a collection of ghost stories. Holland grew to resent its success. Maybe he also felt sorry about killing Gudgeon, especially as he seems to have stayed friends with Petherick.’
‘Friendship is a slow ripening fruit,’ says Hamilton. ‘That’s Aristotle, by the way. I looked it up.’
‘It’s a rather unpleasant image. Fruit either withers or goes bad in the end.’
Hamilton looks slightly surprised, as if he didn’t expect literary critique from a humble Bristol graduate. But then the door opens and Edmund ushers Georgie back in. He mutters an inarticulate goodbye and departs. Georgie looks after him thoughtfully.
‘Thank you very much for your time,’ I say, standing up. ‘Could I take copies of the letters?’
‘Of course,’ says Hamilton. ‘I’ve very much enjoyed our chat. Will you let me know if you find the truth about Mariana?’
‘I’ll send you a copy of the finished book,’ I say, slightly tongue-in-cheek.
‘I’d like that very much.’
We have lunch at a nice vegan cafe and wander round the public bits of some of the colleges. Georgie tells me that quads are called courts in Cambridge, which seems to be the only piece of information that she has picked up from Edmund. ‘Is that really a college chapel?’ says Georgie, staring at the soaring gothic windows of King’s. ‘It looks like a cathedral.’
‘It’s a bit bigger than the chapel at Talgarth High,’ I say and, as I do so, I remember that Ella’s parents want to hold her funeral there. Talgarth is non-denominational but the chapel is still in use, mostly as a wedding destination. Despite the horror of the modern buildings, some people actually choose to get married at the school and it’s a much-needed source of revenue. I just can’t imagine a funeral being held there, the coffin being carried up the main steps, the mourners walking along the corridors with the GCSE art on the walls. I can’t think about it. I won’t.
On the way home, Georgie surprises me by asking what was in the letters. She’s never shown any interest in Holland before.
‘They were interesting,’ I say, ‘and there was a mention of the mysterious daughter, Mariana. Something about worrying that she has inherited her mother’s taint.’
‘What was that, do you think?’
‘Madness, I suppose.’
‘Was his wife mad then?’
‘Probably not. Women could be put into mental institutions in those days if they were suffering from post-natal depression or if they disobeyed their husbands. There are even cases of women being locked up for “excessive novel reading”.’