Few novelist-poets are as little known for their poetry as Edith Nesbit. An outstanding children's writer, whom most of us probably first met as E Nesbit, author of the much-dramatised The Railway Children, she produced 21 collections of poetry and numerous adult novels and story collections too. She was a political radical, a founder member of the Fabian Society, and collaborated on various works with her first husband, Hubert Bland, under the nom de plume Fabian Bland. Her poems continue to turn up in anthologies, and they are well worth searching out.
This week's choice, Among his Books, was first published in Leaves of Life in 1888. If it reminds you of Thomas Hardy, note that Hardy published no poetry before 1897. That timeline gives us some idea of Nesbit's originality in, for example, her blending of formal verse structure with informal speech.
Her technique is novelistic in several ways. The poem has a vividly imagined setting, and a narrative voice that suggests complex characterisation. The setting is immediately established. First, there's the dim room with its "dusty blight" redolent of desolation and even dereliction. Then we see the books, lots of them. In the first three verses, the point of view seems to be that of an anonymous observer.
Stanza four brings the first intimation that the speaker could be the owner of the books. The consciously distancing pronoun, "one" in "one's weary nerves" and the wry little bit of revealing wordplay of "It serves – deserves" – suggest the connection. Two stanzas later, the first-person narrator appears and confirms that, yes, it's our bibliophile speaking.
The depiction of the cluttered room has a touch of wry comedy. The repetition of "books" builds up a slightly overwhelming impression of sheer quantity, with exclamation-marks indicating surprise or mock-alarm. It's as if the speaker has suddenly seen his room, his obsession, through another's eyes (the reader's) and is responding to our criticism. The collecting has got out of hand. He admits it – but there's a justification.
Stanza seven is the revelatory one, identifying the speaker's gender: "For children and for wife / They serve me too." The conceit – that books behave in a humanly ideal way, and that, unlike some beautiful people, the beautiful volumes, the Elzevirs and Aldines, never turn out to be trashy "railway novels" – signals the theme of personal betrayal. I wonder if Nesbit, as she contemplated the notion of books turning into other books, and perhaps into people, had a fleeting sense of the magic she might have wrought in a different fictional context.
The narrator sustains our interest, although the humour of the opening stanzas rather evaporates. The details now have a strategic poignancy: two names on the flyleaf of the Book of Common Prayer and a forget-me-not pressed in the pages of the Marriage Service. The syntax remains informal: "Forget me not – / The Marriage Service …" The narrative style is almost stream-of-consciousness. Punctuation favours the dash, the casual grammar of someone muttering to himself, or thinking aloud.
So the outlines of the backstory emerge. The couple, it seems, did not get as far as marriage. Theirs was a broken engagement, at a time when "being jilted" was a seriously painful business, usually suffered by the woman in question. The re-gendering of the old story is interesting. It's even more interesting that the speaker has confessed that his favourite volume is the Book of Common Prayer – for sentimental reasons. We might now wonder how committed a bibliophile he really is.
The sardonic comments lift the poem from nostalgic overdrive. "Well, my dear, you know / Who first forgot" is the first address to the woman, and it's a sharp one. The ending is sharper still. The forget-me-not embodies nothing but an illusion, "the dear memory of what, you know, / You never were". It's as if the narrator had opened the book of his own fantasy. Finally, he acknowledges that the story was made up. The aside, "you know", isn't a meaningless embellishment: it implies that the woman collaborated in the pretence. She knew she wasn't the person he imagined.
In stanza 12, the speaker asserts that a great swathe of trust and innocence has been jettisoned. He has lost belief "in God, in love, in you – / In everything." Perhaps, once again, he's slightly over-relishing his plight? The tone in these later stanzas seems to fluctuate. At times it's tender and regretful. But the exaggeration suggests a fissure underlies the emotional display. He is still half fantasising. An unreliable narrator? Perhaps, just a little.
Nesbit's five-beat/two-beat stanza-pattern is ideal for the voice: the dimeter, particularly when it's the last line, give point to those curt or wry moments of emphasis and reversal. Only in the first stanza is the pattern different. Here, the third line has four beats ("A room with not enough of light …"). Perhaps the author hadn't fully worked out her metrical pattern at this stage? Maybe, on looking back, she felt the deviation justified by the fact that this stanza serves as a kind of introductory paragraph.
While the poem registers the weight of memory (and of those books) it retains a certain rhythmic and tonal jauntiness. The little story of a lover's broken romance and not-quite-tragic disillusionment is probably only a chapter near the beginning of his adult life. The rose by the church porch is still producing its yellow flower. Meanwhile, I suspect, he quite enjoys living in that dusty, book-laden tip of a bachelor pad, with no wife to insist on having her mantelpiece back.
Among His Books
A silent room – grey with a dusty blight
Of loneliness;
A room with not enough of light
Its form to dress.
Books enough though! The groaning sofa bears
A goodly store –
Books on the window-seat, and on the chairs,
And on the floor.
Books of all sorts of soul, all sorts of age,
All sorts of face –
Black-letter, vellum, and the flimsy page
Of commonplace.
All bindings, from the cloth whose hue distracts
One's weary nerves,
To yellow parchment, binding rare old tracts
It serves – deserves.
Books on the shelves, and in the cupboard books,
Worthless and rare –
Books on the mantelpiece – wheree'er one looks
Books everywhere!
Books! Books! The only things in life I find
Not wholly vain.
Books in my hands – books in my heart enshrined –
Books in my brain.
My friends are they: for children and for wife
They serve me too;
For these alone, of all dear things in life,
Have I found true.
They do not flatter, change, deny, deceive –
Ah no – not they!
The same editions which one night you leave
You find next day.
You don't find railway novels where you left
Your Elsevirs!
Your Aldines don't betray you – leave bereft
Your lonely years!
And yet this common Book of Common Prayer
My heart prefers,
Because the names upon the fly-leaf there
Are mine and hers.
It's a dead flower that makes it open so –
Forget-me-not –
The Marriage Service…well, my dear, you know
Who first forgot.
Those were the days when in the choir we two
Sat – used to sing –
When I believed in God, in love, in you –
In everything.
Through quiet lanes to church we used to come,
Happy and good,
Clasp hands through sermon, and go slowly home
Down through the wood.
Kisses? A certain yellow rose no doubt
That porch still shows;
Whenever I hear kisses talked about,
I smell that rose!
No – I don't blame you – since you only proved
My choice unwise,
And taught me books should trusted be and loved,
Not lips and eyes!
And so I keep your book – your flower – to show
How much I care
For the dear memory of what, you know,
You never were.
EDITH NESBIT