10. Relapse and Exile

©2024 Barbara Fisher, CC BY-NC 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0377.10

In October 1910, while Trix was living in Edinburgh with Jack, Alice was diagnosed with Graves Disease (hyperthyroidism). As soon as Trix heard the diagnosis, she went to be at her mother’s bedside. Through October and early November, Trix went back and forth between Edinburgh and Tisbury to tend to her mother, feeding and dressing her as well as entertaining her with constant jollying talk. In mid-November, when Trix was at St Andrews accompanying Jack on the golf course, she received a telegram from her father calling her home. Lockwood, recognizing that Alice was nearing the end, summoned Rudyard home as well. Trix went immediately to Tisbury and was at her mother’s side when Rudyard arrived at The Gables on 19 November. Both children were present on 22 November 1910, when Alice died.

Trix chose to remain with her mother’s lifeless form, helping the nurse to lay out her body. After she had done all that could be done, she begged the nurse to leave her alone with the body. Staring down at the mother she had never had enough of, she thought how beautiful she looked with all the lines of age and pain removed from her face. Calmly and tenderly, Trix touched her mother’s cool cheek for the last time. Whatever was left of Trix’s ‘mother want’ was to be her final portion.

Believing that Rudyard would want to take a final look at his mother, Trix went down the stairs to fetch him. When she entered the library, she expected to find Rudyard limp with grief. Instead, she found him on his feet, furiously tearing up papers. Having come upon him unawares, Trix tried to make sense of what she saw. She assumed that he had gotten possession of their mother’s keys, had opened the cupboard, emptied its contents, and was in the process of destroying private family papers. Surprised and frightened (and perhaps not seeing or hearing with complete clarity), Trix weakly protested against her brother’s violent actions. Looking more attentively at the papers in Rudyard’s clenched hands, she thought she saw the will that her parents had discussed with her a few months earlier. She tried to stop Rudyard from destroying the document, but he said, ‘’Oh, Death invalidates this’, and threw himself snarling over the torn papers’.1

Trix had felt all right as she had nursed her mother in her final illness and even as she had watched her die, but several days after her mother’s death, she became excited and nervous. She couldn’t stop pacing about the familiar rooms, talking, shaking, and screaming. Over and over again, she saw Rudyard tearing up papers. She became increasingly suspicious and angry at him, hurling furious accusations and terrible words. Rudyard tried to calm her but was unable to control her. Jack, who was also present with the rest of the family, didn’t even try to exert his influence. Rudyard assumed the responsibility of managing his sister. While he took charge of Trix, Carrie took over the details of the funeral.

Lockwood, old, weary, and devastated by the loss of his beloved wife, was initially comforted to have his children stay on at The Gables. But after a week of witnessing Trix’s mounting fury and distress, Lockwood no longer found any solace from having her near. On the contrary, she upset him and unsettled the rest of the household. Feeling helpless and heart-broken, Lockwood encouraged Jack to take his wife away to Salisbury. Jack carried Trix off, then abruptly returned with her a few days later. He had been unable to manage her and was relieved to deposit her back with her family. He went on alone to London, but a week later he was recalled by Rudyard. Trix had become even more difficult. Jack dutifully returned, but he soon recognized that he could do nothing to contain Trix’s outbursts. Unwillingly but not entirely unhappily, he left Trix again with her father and brother at The Gables. Trix, carried hither and thither, seemed not to care where she was.

Once more, the family was forced to acknowledge that Trix was in need of serious medical help. Alice was no longer available to take charge of the situation, as she had done when Trix first broke down. Thus, Lockwood, Rudyard, and Jack when he was available, had to work together to devise a plan for her care. Lockwood and Rudyard were sympathetic to Trix, recognizing how deeply she felt the loss of her mother, but Jack hardly shared in this loss. He simply wanted his wife speedily restored to good health and to him. When Jack, as Trix’s husband and legal representative, asserted his authority, Rudyard and Lockwood were helpless to protest or interfere, although they complained vigorously about him to each other. Rudyard, who had never liked Jack, was unusually nasty about him, referring to him as ‘carking Jack! that sleeplessly cantankerous invalid’. Rudyard was thankful that Jack wasn’t demanding his marital rights as well as his legal ones and suggested, ‘It’s change and firm sympathy the poor child wants and above all change, and—low it be spoke—the assurance that J. will not descend on her and tell her to “pull herself together.”’2 Rudyard tried to persuade Jack to look after his own precious health, always his primary concern, and leave Trix’s care to Lockwood and himself. He wanted Jack to leave, preferably to another continent.

After just a few weeks, Trix’s mental state was characterized as a ‘breakdown’. Lockwood wrote to Edith Plowden on Christmas day, one month after Alice’s death, ‘I am in deep water just now with my darling Trixie’s break down […] There are difficulties of all sorts, but they’ve got to be overcome. The worst is the husband who would give a brass monkey depression’.3 Lockwood tried to be optimistic about Trix, recognizing that, as in all these cases, there were times of progress and times of regression. The trouble was Jack, who, wretched, pessimistic, and sleepless, was little help in finding treatment and a suitable nurse for Trix. Lockwood wrote to Edith Plowden that Trix ‘has had a nervous breakdown and is in a sad state, but I trust will soon be better. It is not so bad as her first some years since […] Col. Fleming left on Tues. for Scotland. She seems to get on better with me alone’.4 Certainly Lockwood and Rudyard got on better without Jack.

Trix’s moods shifted back and forth, while Rudyard and Lockwood at The Gables considered the best treatment for her. Jack, on his own in London, consulted Dr Lang, Dr Munro, and Dr J. P. Williams-Freeman of Weyhill House to recommend treatment and nurses for Trix. Dr Williams-Freeman offered Jack a secluded place for Trix to stay should she need a quiet situation in which to recuperate, an offer Jack soon accepted.

Trix, when calm, still liked to curl up in a comfortable chair and read. She liked strolling around the garden. One afternoon, Trix returned to the house after a walk in the fresh air and found what looked like a conference in progress. She had left the house bright and cheerful but was puzzled to see Rudyard and Lockwood engaged in talk with a woman she had never seen before. She soon recognized that what was taking place was an interview with a prospective nurse for herself. She disliked the woman immediately and was indignant that, without her approval, the woman was being considered for a position. Trix was repulsed by the woman’s looks and said so plainly. She felt no need to behave or speak decorously. Lockwood sent the woman from the room and dismissed her with dispatch. Trix was now beyond good manners. But she was not beyond self-will, and she maintained her right to choose her own companion.

Trix might have recovered not only her manners but her mind if no other calamities had occurred. But, a little more than two months after Alice’s death, on 3 January, a fresh disaster overtook her. Trix was away from The Gables, under treatment at Weyhill House in Andover, when she was told that Lockwood, while visiting the Wyndhams at Clouds, had been felled by a sudden heart attack and had died. Far from the family and removed from the scene, Trix had to absorb this new and terrible loss alone and from a distance. Following doctors’ orders, she remained at Weyhill House. She never saw her father’s body, did not have any part in the preparations for his funeral, and did not attend his burial service.

She had been improving under the care of Dr Williams-Freeman. But the news of her father’s unexpected death sent her sadly back into herself. Barely able to accept the loss of her mother, Trix was unable to absorb the shock of this second blow. When Jack visited her on 1 February, the day after Lockwood’s funeral, he found her body shrunk and her mind wandering.

It was not a straying husband, a childless marriage, a literary disappointment, or psychic influences that caused Trix to break down, but the death of her parents that finally undid her. If Lockwood had survived to mourn Alice’s death with her, and comfort and reassure her, she might have recovered, but the double loss was simply too much for her to take in.

While Trix was constrained at Weyhill House, Carrie took charge of all the funeral and financial arrangements. The breaking up of The Gables and all its contents was left in her competent hands. Trix was not aware of what was happening, although later, she accused Rudyard and Carrie of cheating and robbing her, taking for themselves valuable furniture, embroideries, carpets, and silver, while she was out of the way and incapable of objecting. Although Rudyard and Carrie denied any wrong-doing and intimated that Trix was simply mad, she remained steadfast in her belief that, while she was in residence at Weyhill House, Carrie took advantage of her absence to remove precious items from The Gables. Carrie was especially assiduous in destroying documents, burning personal papers and family letters, including Trix’s. Anything she deemed possibly embarrassing or damaging she destroyed, claiming that she was ‘simplifying’—her word of explanation for the destruction of material she deemed unsuitable for public scrutiny.

Trix’s most damning allegation was that Carrie had destroyed Lockwood’s will. Trix asserted that the will, which was never found, would have left to her a larger share of her father’s estate. Trix supplied the name of the solicitor at Salisbury to whom Lockwood had gone to draw up the will, in which she claimed, ‘everything he possessed of money and furniture went to me, and only his books, MS, and pictures to his wealthy son!’5 As no will was ever found, it was determined that Lockwood died intestate, an unusual circumstance for a man of his position. Thus, Lockwood’s estate was divided evenly between his two children, a fair arrangement but hardly commensurate with their relative wealth and need. Rudyard was by now a rich man. Without consulting Trix, Rudyard and Carrie carried off all of the books, furniture, and household effects from the Gables. When these items were evaluated, their worth was deducted from Rudyard’s share of the proceeds of the estate. This seems a fair arrangement, but there is little doubt that Trix was ill-used.

Rudyard defended himself and Carrie against Trix’s accusations by asserting that Trix was irresponsible and delusional. And Trix was not in a perfect state of mind at the time. She was kept out of the way and was unable to defend herself. Rather than accept the obvious explanation that Trix’s mental state was due to the almost simultaneous deaths of her parents, Rudyard positively attributed Trix’s mental illness to the spiritualists. Rudyard held them responsible for ‘the wreck of her mind’. His idea was that ‘the soul-destroying business of “Spiritualism” affected her mind much more profoundly and permanently than anyone dared to say when the trouble first began’.6 He was convinced or convinced himself that all the delusions that attacked her after their parents’ deaths were caused by her association with psychic research.

Rudyard’s belief that spiritualism was responsible for Trix’s illness is not only unsubstantiated but inconsistent with her state of mind during the preceding years. Better than anyone, he knew the suffering she had endured as a child, as the daughter of Alice, and, later, as the wife of Jack. Blaming the spiritualists allowed him to exonerate the family by locating the source of Trix’s troubles outside of the home. Trix’s longest and most serious period of involvement with psychic research was, in fact, one of her healthiest. Her engagement in automatic writing served not as an irritant, but rather as a self-prescribed form of therapy and solace. That the deaths of her parents should cause her to break down is completely reasonable. Trix was deeply attached to her mother, never had enough of her, and, with her death, knew that she would never be able to make up the loss.

Trix now felt utterly alone, adrift in the world. Her parents were gone, the house in Tisbury, which had been her refuge, was broken up. She felt that her brother had betrayed her, and her husband had abandoned her. She was returned to the helplessness and loneliness of her childhood, once again feeling like an unwanted parcel deposited here and there. Her mostly empty journal contains this entry for the entire year 1911 ‘Widowhood—Father died Jan 4^th. Orphaned and deserted by both Brother & Husband—I ought to have died—And Colonel F[lemin]g mourned for her—six lovely months at most—’7

Trix almost disappears from her own story at this point. Others took charge of her, decided where she lived, for how long, and with whom.

At first, Trix remained miserably at Weyhill, which she referred to as ‘Weyhill Prison’, near Andover in Hampshire. Recognizing Trix’s extreme reluctance to receive visits from Jack, Dr Williams-Freeman at Weyhill discouraged his visits and recommended constant vigilance and self-restraint. When she had been there only a few months, Fleming made enquiries to the Lunacy Board about having Trix certified as incompetent. He did not proceed with this when Trix’s doctors deemed her capable of managing her own affairs.

Rudyard seriously objected to having his sister certified. Writing to Fleming in March of 1911, he expressed his reluctance to have Trix certified for sentimental reasons and because ‘It jars on one’.8 He urged Fleming not to be precipitous, reminding him that Trix’s attack had, by then, only lasted three months. Trix was unaware that such a move was even being considered at the time.

Over the years, Jack’s plans for Trix alternated between having her put entirely out of the way and having her completely restored to him. When Jack was not hatching plans to have Trix certified and sent to an asylum, he was pestering her doctors about being able to approach her more closely. He tried several times to convince the mental specialists that she was certifiable, but, on the contrary, each time they said that, while she was run down and sensitive, she was unusually brilliant and well balanced. When Jack insisted on his rights as a husband, Trix’s doctors gently but firmly turned him away. Discouraged but not deterred, Fleming continued to visit his wife about once a month, receiving, more often than not, violent and furious outbursts from her. Jack’s persistence inspired even Rudyard to feel kindly toward him. Rudyard, with greater compassion than usual, reassured Jack that in the majority of mental cases the patients turn for a while against those who are nearest to them.

Patients like Trix posed a dilemma for mental doctors. They were reluctant to have patients certified and sent to asylums, they were eager to protect fragile and vulnerable patients, and they needed to be responsive to the often inappropriate requests and suggestions made by family members. Dr George Savage, President of the Medico-Psychological Association and of the Neurological Society, and Dr Williams-Freeman at Weyhill House tactfully balanced these competing interests, keeping Trix out of an asylum, protecting her from being molested by her husband, and responding gently to the wishes and whims of her family. Although Trix felt that Jack had abandoned her, he never did. He visited her with regularity and made repeated attempts to see her and speak with her. On several occasions, he made special trips to visit the Divers, attempting to learn from Trix’s most intimate friend, Maud, what Trix was thinking and feeling. Maud, who knew more than anyone else, did not share what little she knew with Jack. Trix’s complaint that he mourned for her ‘six months at most’ reflects her suspicion that he sought out the company of other women after only this short period of time. She may well have been correct.

Tussles among Trix’s doctors, her husband, her brother, and the Macdonald sisters continued for years. In the early years, when Trix seemed to be improving, Jack considered moving her closer to his family in Scotland, while the Kiplings and the Macdonald sisters tried to settle her in London, closer to them. With a hired companion, Trix travelled from place to place, sometimes with her husband, sometimes with friends, to hotels, lodgings, or private houses, while her mental health fluctuated. All places were the same to her—featureless and cheerless places of exile. Hired companions and nurses came and went. Meant to help her, they mostly oppressed her with their constant presence. She hated sharing a bedroom and loved ‘open windows & drawn back curtains & one only attains the real blessedness of sleep in one’s own atmosphere—Own books near one & the best thoughts one is mistress of as canopy & shield’.9

She was often dull and muddled, unresponsive to the treatments of her doctors, but she rallied from time to time, giving her family hope that she might recover.

Animosity between Rudyard and Jack waxed and waned, but mostly waxed, as Trix’s illness dragged on. Rudyard complained to Jack that he didn’t know what was happening with Trix and often didn’t know where she was or why. His offers to visit her or have her visit him repeatedly came to nothing. When Rudyard did visit Trix in Scarborough in July 1913, two years into her illness, he found her much improved—steadier, more communicative, and less self-absorbed. He took her for a drive and a walk, during which she talked and behaved in an appropriate manner, remarking on things with discrimination and penetration.10 Following this visit, Rudyard proposed another visit, which did not take place—possibly because John, Rudyard’s son, came down with mumps. Later planned visits were also cancelled, suggesting reluctance from either or both parties. Added to the stress caused by Trix’s condition was the continuing discord between Jack and Rudyard about the distribution of Lockwood’s estate.

As Trix was moved about from place to place, she was, from time to time, taken to London where she was evaluated by new doctors. In mid-1914, she was seen by Dr Craig and Dr Bartlett, neither of whom was reassuring about her progress. Dr Maurice Craig, who took charge of her care at this time, was a well-respected medical psychologist, author of a textbook on Psychological Medicine (1905). He, like Dr George Savage and the many other doctors who had seen Trix, offered the standard treatment of bed rest, quiet inactivity, and regular intensive feeding.11

In 1914, while Trix was oblivious to world events, Jack began to investigate the possibility of joining up to serve in the First World War. He was sufficiently serious about this plan to consider where he might place Trix if he should be posted abroad during a tour of duty. Rudyard considered the idea of middle-aged, retired Fleming serving on active duty as completely deluded and daft. Rudyard recognized that the plan to have Trix certified and safely in an asylum was primarily to ensure Fleming’s peace of mind and not to secure Trix’s best treatment. To prevent this, Rudyard repeatedly offered to take over Trix’s care himself, proposing to find a place for her within easy motoring distance from his home. Jack repeatedly turned these offers down. Rudyard feared that having Trix certified would definitely close all hope of her recovery and would be deeply resented by her. Jack ignored Rudyard’s suggestions and objections and continued investigating asylums for Trix and pursuing plans for military duty.

Toward the end of 1914, another prospective caretaker entered the fray—Miss Winifred Holt, daughter of the American publisher Henry Holt and a tireless do-gooder. While Trix was in London being examined by Drs Craig and Bartlett, she was introduced to Miss Holt and met with her several times. On one occasion, Miss Holt invited Alice Johnson, Trix’s friend from the SPR, to join them at the Sesame Club on Grosvenor Street. Trix arrived profoundly depressed, inert, and mute. Nonetheless, ‘Miss Holt, believing that the one chance for her was to be rescued from her husband, made great efforts to persuade her to accompany her back to America and was on the point of engaging a passage for her’.12 Miss Holt, together with Miss Johnson, even consulted a lawyer about the legal situation of removing Trix. But in the end, the scheme failed, as Trix was unable to cut herself loose. She was paralyzed by fear that she would be considered wicked and ungrateful for abandoning her marriage.

The long horror of the First World War passed Trix by, as she lived secluded from the world and indifferent to its upheavals. News of the death of Rudyard’s son, John, in September 1915 at the battle of Loos in France either did not reach her or did not touch her. Rudyard’s grief over the fate of his young son and his continuing hope for his return kept him occupied for the next two years. He was thus much less engaged in the long-standing debates about Trix’s treatment.

When Jack was refused active service, as Rudyard knew he would be, the issue of transferring Trix’s care was dropped for a while along with the prospect of certifying her. But, when Jack visited Trix and found her peevish and distant towards him, he again considered sending her to an asylum. During a period when Trix seemed to soften towards him, Jack moved her to 8 Napier Road, the family home he had inherited at his mother’s recent death. He soon regretted this decision. Trix was not an agreeable wife. On the contrary, she was often agitated and angry. After only a month in the house, she became obstreperous and, in a fit of temper, cut off her hair. Disgusted with Trix’s behaviour, Jack sent her away again, moving her from Worplesdon to Carlisle, Keswick, Blackpool, and St Andrews. Trix endured these frequent moves without complaint. The one happy event of this period was the arrival of Mary Sinclair. Mary was hired to look after Trix as her personal maid. Along with Minna, another personal maid, Mary became half of what Trix humorously and lovingly referred to as the ‘prickly pear [pair]’. These two women remained Trix’s trusted and faithful servants for many years.

In 1917, at his wits’ end, Jack arranged a family conference with Rudyard and Carrie to discuss what to do with Trix. At this meeting, Rudyard suggested that Trix come to stay for a while with him and Carrie at Dudwell Farm, up the road from the Kipling home, Bateman’s, in Burwash. This plan was approved, and an extended visit was arranged.

On 19 September, Trix, with her latest companion Mrs Postle, set off for Dudwell Farm. Rudyard looked forward to the visit, but Carrie decidedly did not. Grudgingly, Carrie carried out her duties as hostess to her sister-in-law. But she had little good feeling towards Trix, whom she found simply selfish and self-centred. She was convinced that Trix should be able to control her behaviour by sheer will power. By the end of September, her small sympathy for Trix had dwindled away to nothing. Compounding her displeasure was Rudyard’s obvious delight in his old intimacy with his sister. The two took long daily walks, even in the frigid weather. Trix was happy in the familiar company of her brother but was oppressed by the cold both inside the house, where the fires seemed to give out no heat, and outside, where the Sussex chill actually frightened her.

After more than two months of having Trix as his guest, Rudyard, at Carrie’s repeated urgings, wrote to Fleming asking that he remove Trix from Dudwell after Christmas. Eventually, after much back and forth, Rudyard allowed that she could stay on through February. Although Carrie grew more and more jealous of the attention Trix received from Rudyard, she continued to take care of her sister-in-law. It wasn’t until 12 March that Trix and Mrs Postle left Bateman’s for Blackpool, arriving back at Napier Road in early April.

Fig. 27 Trix’s passport, renewed in 1919.

During the spring, summer, and fall of 1918, Trix was in deep distress. Often, she couldn’t even get herself out of bed. When she was urged to get up, she went limp with resistance, groaned, and screamed. Late in the fall, she became violent—furiously smashing glass, hurling hatpins, and outraging everyone in the household. In early 1919, when Jack was unable to curb her fury, he sent her away to Pitlochrie, north of Edinburgh, where she continued her riotous behaviour. When she returned to Edinburgh at the end of June, she was as difficult and disruptive as before. She threw her diamond rings to the floor, kicked and stomped on them, trying to destroy them. These were the rings she had proudly displayed during the early months of her engagement. Now, they reminded her not of Jack’s love and faith, but of Jack’s heartlessness and betrayal. From June through the middle of August, Trix kept herself coldly apart from Jack, while he made plans to send her farther away—to Jersey.

During the years from 1917 to 1919, Jack tried numerous times to return Trix to the house in Edinburgh and reintroduce her to family and marital life. Trix either immediately defeated these attempts or engaged in prolonged wranglings and refusals, punctuated by dramatic violent acts—hurling sharp objects, breaking glass, and destroying ornaments. Trix found Jack utterly insensitive to her feelings of physical revulsion against him, based on her belief that he had again been unfaithful to her. Repeatedly and callously, Fleming tried to reclaim Trix, then gave up and sent her away, first to visit her brother at Dudwell Farm, then to Pitlochrie, and finally to Jersey. When thoroughly defeated and resigned to a bachelor life, Jack made plans to sell the family home.

In 1920, Jack sent Trix into her most prolonged and lonely period of banishment—mostly in Jersey, with infrequent trips to the Brittany coast (1920-1924). There, she resumed her correspondence with her old and dear friend, Maud Diver. In her few letters to Maud in the 1920s, she shared little of her thoughts and feelings. She reported on books she had read and responded with her usual precise critical judgments to the drafts of the novels the prolific Maud continued to send to her. Her critical faculties were as sharp as ever. She was full of praise for her friend’s continued productivity but never referred to her own vanished writing career.

As before, the medical establishment did what it could for Trix, ordering the standard benign treatment of rest, quiet, isolation, feeding, and a minimum of sedation. They protected her from her husband’s demands, discouraged his visits, and refused many of his attempts to remove her from their care. But they also protected her conventional and easily embarrassed family by keeping her out of their way.

It is likely that Trix needed to be sent away after the deaths of her parents. She not only needed constant attention, but she also embarrassed her family by her unruly behaviour and unrestrained speech. A more sympathetic family might have found ways to keep her at home, to tend to her with patience and compassion. When Trix had broken down in 1889, she had had her mother to care for her. This time, with her parents gone, she had no one willing to make the sacrifices necessary to tend to a difficult and demanding patient. Rudyard was occupied with his fame, his writing, and his family—especially the loss of his son. Carrie, always unsympathetic to Trix, was unwilling to take on the onerous burden of her permanent care. Jack, back in Edinburgh after his long tour in India, was eager to resume a normal life. Under the influence of his family, who never approved of Trix, and with the active participation of his sister Moona, he was encouraged to consider his own interests and pursue his own pleasures, which he did.

At different times, Trix blamed different people for abandoning and abusing her. She was initially incredulous that Rudyard, who had shared her early losses, did not understand and sympathize more fully with her feelings of orphanhood at the time of their parents’ deaths. She blamed Carrie for Rudyard’s lack of empathy. Similarly, she blamed Jack’s favourite sister, Moona Richardson, for Jack’s callousness. At one time, she shifted the blame entirely onto Rudyard and Carrie, asserting that they had boycotted her and had exercised their poisonous influence on Fleming. Much later, in a desire to exonerate Jack, she shifted the blame entirely onto his controlling and influential sister, Moona. ‘Moona was to blame for the fight I fought between 1911 and 1924 for sanity and liberty, and she always ruled her brother, barely 16 months older! RK of course treated me as an outcast then’.13

Trix claimed that she and Fleming had been ‘on normal affectionate terms’ until her breakdown at age forty-two. ‘There was no other woman then—though of course there was later—but that was not my fault—I had not one to turn to or appeal to—& perhaps he took my resignation for indifference—I know his sister influenced him unduly—but after 21 years of married life I had some claim’.¹⁴ Trix accused Jack of being indifferent to her, although he made many awkward attempts to get close to her. During most of her illness, she treated him as if he had wounded her, betrayed her, and coldly rejected her. While she confessed that he was the only man she ever had any real feeling for, she did not characterize that feeling as love or desire. During the period of her exile (1911-1924), Jack lived his own life.

Until 1916, when his mother died, he lived with her in his childhood home. After his mother’s death, his elder sister practically annexed him and did her best to write me off the slate […] His sister and her friends gave him all the social life he needed, and ‘pick-ups’ at the Empire the emotional outlet he preferred, and there was nothing left for me. And we had been happy and normal man and wife for 21 years. I suppose my illness (I was very thin and wan) revolted him and he broke the habit of being married and never wanted to resume it.¹⁵

Trix continued that Jack was ‘tired of Holy Matrimony’ and would have put her away if he could have.

Anxious to exonerate her brother and husband from blame for her years of exile, Trix consistently blamed Carrie and Moona. Women—her mother and Mrs Holloway—had been the villains in Trix’s early life. Later, she added Carrie Kipling and Moona Richardson to her list of powerful and conniving women. Trix characterized women as strong in their sly manoeuvring and men as weak in their resistance to the controlling female grip. Lockwood bent to Alice’s will in sending the children off to strangers when they were little, and later conceded to Alice’s approval of Jack Fleming as a husband for Trix, although he had little faith that the marriage would produce lasting happiness. According to Trix, Jack Fleming was influenced by his jealous and possessive sister, who wished to push Trix aside and establish herself as the primary woman in her brother’s life. Similarly, Carrie Kipling, envious of Trix’s special place in Rudyard’s affections, was responsible for Rudyard’s ill treatment of his sister—discouraging contact, destroying documents, and appropriating property. (Captain Holloway was the exception. He was kinder than his wife, and he was able to keep her evil tendencies in check while he was alive.)

Trix tended to believe that the men in her life had relinquished authority on matters that were emotionally complex or morally suspect, allowing their women to commit actions that were ungenerous and unkind. Trix never blamed Lockwood for anything. She blamed both Rudyard and Jack at various times but was always ready to make excuses for them and shift the blame away from them and onto Carrie and Moona.

‘T’is but the shadow of a wife you see, The name—but not the thing—’.16 Always able to remember her Shakespeare, Trix located the appropriate quotation. This line is delivered by the clever, loving, and loyal Helena, the spurned wife of the unknowing, unworthy, and unfaithful Bertram at the end of All’s Well that Ends Well. Helena is eventually vindicated, reclaimed, and beloved—Trix’s wish for herself.