PARAGON REVIEW

Issue 6

ANATOMY OF A FRIENDSHIP: EA FREEMAN AND EDITH THOMPSON

Sadly, unlike their novel-writing contemporaries, most 'anonymous' women historians from the 19th and other centuries have not been rescued from oblivion by belated recognition in the way that, for example, the Bronte sisters and George Eliot have. Edith Thompson was one such historian whose importance, ironically, can now be seen partly through her correspondence with her well-known male contemporary EA Freeman, whose image adorns our front cover. Dr Amanda Capern re-discovered the previously little used letters during her research for the BJL's archives guide.

On 22 September 1933 Mrs Isabel Hughes of High Ham Rectory in Taunton wrote to Hull University College to see if they would be interested in some family papers that had come into her possession. They consisted of research notes into the life of Thomas Perronet Thompson and draft chapters of his biography compiled by his grand-daughter, Edith Thompson. They arrived in 1934 and are now catalogued as DTH. In addition, Mrs Hughes sent two boxes containing 186 letters and 3 postcards from the famous historian Edward Augustus Freeman to Edith Thompson and these were catalogued as DX/9. Fragments of some of these letters have previously been printed, in W. R. W. Stephens, The life and letters of Edward A. Freeman, 2 volumes (1895). These letters throw light on the scholarship and personal life of Freeman, but, perhaps more importantly, they have enabled the following reconstruction of the life of Edith Thompson.

Edward Augustus Freeman was born in Staffordshire in 1823. His parents died during his infancy. He was educated by private tutors and at Trinity College, Oxford. He graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in 1845. In 1847 he married Eleanor Gutch and six children were born to them in the first decade of their marriage. In 1860 they moved to Somerleaze, a house near Wells 'with pasture land enough to keep [the family] in milk, butter and mutton'.

It is likely that Freeman met Edith Thompson in Hull during 1867 when he was on a tour associated with his research for the third volume of his major work The Norman Conquest. He was visiting associated sites such as Stamford Bridge and lectured in Edith Thompson's home town to a meeting of the Royal Archeaological Society. His first letter was written in 1868, when she was then just twenty years old.

Edith Thompson was the daughter of Thomas Perronet Edward Thompson, a lawyer, and the grand-daughter of Thomas Perronet Thompson, the anti-slave trade activist and Radical politician. She was already a formidable scholar and Freeman told a male friend that he had found a 'lassie whom I can send to the British Museum to look up things about Harold Hardrada'. Her education had gone well-beyond the usual English, French and music that was expected to set middle-class women up for marriage.

Freeman's own daughter, Margaret, who was Edith Thompson's exact contemporary, was also very well-educated and helped her father with his medieval scholarship. It was possible in the Victorian period for women to become part of an inner circle of historians working at home. Freeman lacked attachment to a historical institution and so did his most important friends. His historical community consisted of John Richard Green (b.1837), who was curate of St Barnabas' church in London and William Stubbs (b.1825), who pursued his historical studies as librarian of Lambeth Palace Library before becoming Regius Professor of Modern History in 1866. Green was Freeman's particular friend and he referred to him in letters as 'little Johnny'.

Edith Thompson was rapidly drawn into this historical community. She went to stay at Somerleaze in 1868, the first of many trips as Freeman constantly asked for her intellectual company. 'You know the interest I take in all your. . . work', he told her in 1869 and in return he asked for her comments on the third volume of The Norman Conquest. He always sent news of his research travels: 'I felt a little like Henry of Navarre breakfasting at Milan and dining at Naples and perhaps reaching Sicily in time for vespers'. He asked her to check manuscripts in the British Museum and playfully called her Eddeva homo mea [maiden vassal of mine]. He shared with her the joke that he called Green Johannunculus homunculus meus [little Johnny my little man] and reflected that if he asked Green to do the same task, he would not be so reliable.

When Freeman and Edith Thompson met he had been contributing articles for some time to the Saturday Review and he asked her to write a review of Madame Guizot de Witt's The Lady of Latham. When her review arrived in September 1869 he said 'I did not expect anything so good, even from you, it makes me feel prouder of you than ever'. He then regularly sent her reviewing work, though it is difficult to reconstruct a publication record because she chose to maintain strict anonymity:

'I am telling Harwood [editor] that the writer wishes to remain unknown in case of failure. . .I wrote my letter. . .without using any persons feminine, but he might guess the truth in the absence of any persons masculine. . .I have kept your secret hitherto and shall work hard to go on doing so.'

In some cases it is possible to identify Thompson as the author of a review retrospectively through reference made in Freeman's letters. For example, it is possible to state with certainty that she reviewed Alexander Mackay's 'crammer', Facts and Dates (1869), because Freeman made reference to it in a letter of 4 September 1870.

However, identification of Thompson's authorship would not have been possible from examination of the letters published by W. R. W. Stephens. When Thompson made her letters available to Freeman's biographer, she instructed that he use none of the sections she had scored through with red pencil. These sections are considerable and the content of them falls into three categories. Firstly, she did not want made public any personal information, such as references to her ill health with constant toothache. Secondly, she wanted omitted sarcastic comment made about colleagues or acquaintainces. So she drew a red pencil through 'is W. H. Pollock capable of thought at all?'. Thirdly, she drew a red line through nearly all reference made to her scholarly endeavours. She gave the following reason:

Anonymity in reviewing was normal practice; it allowed a reviewer to hide responsibility for criticism of other scholars. It perhaps enabled Edith Thompson to say that Facts and Dates was filled with egregious factual errors.

In July 1870 Freeman wrote to say 'I am to write a general sketch of European history . . . and you and such others as I may catch are to fill up parts in greater detail.' The work was to be done for Macmillan in a series to be called Historical Course for Schools and Freeman took the opportunity of commissioning several women scholars, including Edith Thompson and Ellen Macarthur. Such was Freeman's regard for Thompson that he gave her the plum job of producing a small history of England. He suggested that she come and work in his library for 'business and not mere pleasure or whim'.

John Richard Green was scathing and referred to the series as 'the little fleet of paper books' and to the authors as Freeman's 'historic harem' and his 'wee sub-workers'. He proceeded to pull apart the draft manuscript of Thompson's History of England

'. . . a capital piece of work done by a clever woman, and as dull as an old almanack...did you issue instructions to your Harem strictly forbidding the beautiful and the interesting? . . . [T]hese little things must be done by big people.'

Freeman detected a note of jealousy and he showed the letter to Thompson, joking that '[i]t never came into my head to ask such swells'. Green suggested the novelist, Charlotte Yonge (1823-1901), for the volume on France and the two women became symbols of professional rivalry between the two men. Freeman complained to Thompson that he was 'driven wild with Little France . . . each of Aunt Charlotte's sentences needs to be broken into 1000 pieces . . . she gives me more trouble than all the rest of you put together'.

Edith Thompson's History of England was greeted with pleasure by Macmillan and Freeman called it 'wonderfully good'. However, Thompson understandably dreaded being reviewed by Green. She had once said to Freeman that she preferred to remain anonymous so that she did not have to pay 'the penalties of greatness', by which she meant that public success often brought with it public approbation. When the review came out it infuriated Freeman: 'I thought Johnny's review of you unpleasant and disparaging'. He tried to compensate by writing her effusive letters and told her that when someone asked if her book was good he found it a question of 'extreme grotesqueness, being next door to asking me the same question about my own writings'.

Edith Thompson's History of England outsold Freeman himself: 'Your history is a wonderful success; it quite flogs me. That is to say, you are in five figures, I only almost half way in four . . . you are over 10,000 . . . and you are going on at an awful rate.' It went through several editions as well as being adapted for the American and Canadian markets.

Freeman in his study at Oxford

Edward Augustus Freeman spent the 1870s working at a furious rate. He produced further volumes in his history of The Norman Conquest and published two volumes of his essays. Growth of the English Constitution was published in 1872 and in 1874 a series of lectures came out as Comparative Politics. He made frequent research trips abroad and was in Dalmatia when a revolt against the Turks broke out in Herzegovina. This prompted him to publish several articles and a book on the plight of people living under Turkish rule. In addition, his attacks on field sports and his opinions on Irish Home Rule won him few friends, and in 1878 he felt the need to break his connection with the Saturday Review. He left a considerable gap which he later complained was filled by 'ugly dogs' and 'chatterers'. The job of reviewing historical works was left to Edith Thompson and Ellen Macarthur whom he called his 'heiresses'.

In 1872 Edith Thompson moved to Gateacre when her father was made judge of the Liverpool County Court. Her contributions to Saturday Review were numerous in this decade, but the true number of them is difficult to determine from the letters as Freeman lost track of her activity. In 1875 she reviewed favourably Samuel Rawson Gardiner's History of England under the Duke of Buckingham and Charles I. Gardiner was part of a new generation of historians who followed the work of the German historian Ranke in emphasising the need for archival work. Freeman told Thompson that Gardiner 'seems to thrive' on trips to the British Museum and admitted to her that he would personally find it 'dreadful'. In 1876 she reviewed the fifth volume of Freeman's Norman Conquest and described it as 'a great work', though his attititude to sources was beginning to draw criticism from other quarters. In particular his relocation and renaming of the Battle of Hastings as the Battle of Senlac initiated a controversy that eventually became quite vicious.

In 1875 Thompson also reviewed Green's, A short history of the English people. 'I hope the young woman will be civil', Green told Freeman in a letter, though in the event he was moved to thank her for a very generous review in which she picked out his only fault as being an 'excess of brilliancy'. She took no revenge for being called 'dull' and even exhorted students of English history to buy Green's book which was a rival to her own. The book was an instant success but he did not live long to enjoy it, dying in 1883.

From 1880 the paths of Edith Thompson and Edward Freeman diverged further. Freeman con-tinued to publish at a prodigious rate and in 1884 was finally rewarded for his efforts by being appointed to the Regius Chair in Modern History at Oxford. He succeeded his friend, William Stubbs. '[I]t will be a frightful change and break up of my life', he told Thompson and, in the event, he complained that 'Oxford is a dreadfully idle place - I can't get half so much done as I do at home'. The move was made easier because his daughter Margaret had married Arthur Evans, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum. When Freeman first arrived in Oxford he had plans for being 'useful' and approached the job with considerable excitement:

'Here I am then . . . I have . . . taken possession of my quarters . . . received Her Majesty's sign-manual as Professor, been admitted Fellow of Oriel, dined with the Provost, and admired the legs of the Bishop of Chester [Stubbs].'

However, Freeman rapidly fell foul of people he called 'crammers' on the Modern History School Board. His lecture audiences dwindled and attacks on him in journals like the Fortnightly Review increased. 'I know they must write something for their dinners . . . only why do they lie about me so disproportionately?' he begged to know. 'Now I do not see that any other man in a position at all like mine . . . is treated in this way'. Thompson advised him not to take it to heart, but he told her, 'O dear! I am utterly wearied of it. One seems to go for nothing but to be a mockery for the crammers'.

In 1886 Freeman was one of the prime movers behind establishing a new journal edited by Mandel Creighton. ''Twas Johnny who said that the Academy was set up for those who were disgusted with the frivolity of the Fortnightly Review', he told Thompson. In his own case, tired of the Academy he set up the English Historical Review and invited friends outside the Academy to write articles for the early issues. 'I am glad you are going to do something for Hist. Rev.', he told Thompson in August 1885. As her name does not appear amongst the list of authors in the first issue, she must have contributed pseudonymously, or even anony-mously as one article has the simple attribution of a triangle. There were contributions from several other female scholars, most notably Kate Norgate who became involved in the Senlac controversy in later numbers of the same journal. However, Freeman's influence waned even here. Samuel Rawson Gardiner assumed the editorship and Freeman told Thompson that he 'has taken to it vigourously'. One of the most noticeable changes was an alteration in the gender balance of the contributors. By the 1890s professionalisation of historical scholarship was squeezing Freeman and women out of the picture simultaneously.

In the case of Edith Thompson this happened at a time when she was working even more anonymously than in the early part of her career. In 1880 Freeman wrote to ask 'what on earth is it that you are doing for Murray at Mill Hill?'. Murray was James Murray, compiler and editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, and by 1884 Freeman was saying that 'Murray of the Dictionary spake rapturously of you'. Thompson's vast knowledge of Old English and historical terms quickly proved invaluable and she ultimately became one of the top dozen contributors to the dictionary, providing 15,000 entries. She also became the sub-editor for 'C' in 1891 and proof-read almost the entire work.

Thompson's work on the dictionary became the excuse she constantly gave for not finishing the biography of her grandfather which she also started in 1880. As the years rolled by, Freeman urged her to finish before her grandfather was forgotten. His own increasing age, and infirmity with gout and bronchitis, provoked rather Socratic reflections about the role of biography in ensuring a person's immortality. He kept telling her that his great uncle, Thomas Attwood, was so forgotten that no place had been found for him in the projected Dictionary of National Biography.

In 1891 Edward Augustus Freeman began to have presentiments about his death and became very anxious about finishing writing projects, especially his History of Sicily. He asked for Edith Thompson's help and, perhaps also fearing the worst, she made some British Museum trips for him. She also finally agreed to accompany him on one of his trips to Normandy. Only a few months later, on another trip with his wife and daughter to Spain, he contracted smallpox and died. Edith Thompson wrote to Margaret: 'It is a melancholy business reading over letters of the past - and yet, . . . [o]ne thing I feel strongly . . . is what a privilege it is to have had such a friendship'. Certainly, the letters themselves chronicle a remarkable friendship that spanned more than two decades.

Edith Thompson was living in Reigate by the time of Freeman's death and she later moved again, to Lansdown near Bath. Both her parents lived to a very advanced age and her work was slowed in the final years of her own life through the need to care for them. Letters written by her to Macmillan between 1907 and 1928 indicate that her 'little book', as she was apt to call The History of England, underwent constant updating and provided her with an idependent income. New print-runs were filling school shelves for half a century. Freeman had once told her that the boys of the City of London School used to say lovingly 'where's my Edith?'.

Edith Thompson died in 1929 and was buried at Charlcombe, near Bath. An obituary in The Times described her as 'a lady of marked literary ability'. Her accomplishments were listed as the History of England and her work on the Oxford English Dictionary and she then slipped entirely out of the public memory. By contrast, Edward Augustus Freeman, Thomas Perronet Thompson and Thomas Attwood, were all imortalised in the Dictionary of National Biography. Freeman's fears had proved unfounded, though as his notice was penned by an enemy he paid the 'penalties of greatness' and slipped into intellectual ignominy.

The professionalisation of historical scholarship at the end of the Victorian period diminished the reputation of scholars like Edward Augustus Freeman and marginalised independent women scholars like Edith Thompson. Towards the end of Thompson's life she was compensated with honorary membership of the Federation of University Women and in 1928 wrote a small pamphlet, Concerning Sir John Crosby and his Hall, the proceeds of which helped to support a foundation commemorating Margaret Roper. This was appropriate - Roper was the daughter of Thomas More and had, like Edith Thompson, received a full humanist education at home.

Amanda Capern

Maintained by the Archives and Special Collections Team, Brynmor Jones Library
Created: March 1998