He shook Sidgwick’s hand warmly and congratulated Nora on the strides she had made in the area of female education. It was a cause that he publicly championed but privately questioned. He knew that his sister would have benefited from such opportunities, but then, she was the exception. His wife, like most women he knew, preferred her quiet, domestic role to a larger, more active one, which was just as well; how could he do his work if she had research of her own? It was a selfish thought, but he would not feel guilty for it.
As he sat down with the Sidgwicks, he noted that the other members of the club continued to glare in their direction. He could only imagine that they were registering their distaste for Sidgwick’s spiritualist interests, though the thought struck him as odd. Since when would such an interest provoke animosity? Ridicule, yes; scorn, possibly, but venom?
“Have a cognac,” said Sidgwick cheerfully. “Or better, a whiskey. That’s what I’m drinking. You need it to fortify yourself against the rancor that surrounds us.”
“But why such rancor?” asked William. “You and Nora are respected figures in your fields. I’d think they’d be eager to talk with you.”
“Normally they would be,” said Sidgwick blithely, “but not now. It’s Nora’s presence in this room that enrages them. The Oxford and Cambridge Club has been designated an all-male bastion, and she refuses to honor the gentleman’s code.” He pointed to a youth in livery cowering in the corner. “When the waiter over there politely informed her that ladies were not welcome, she told him that he would have to call a constable if he wished to remove her.”
William nodded. It was clear now. He knew, from experiences in America, that the female issue was a lightning rod among even the most enlightened men, for whom superiority to the other sex was the one thing to which they felt entitled; their very definition of masculinity seemed to turn on it. He sometimes wondered if it was a requirement of a democratic nation to maintain this one site of hierarchy as a kind of structural support, much as a house must have one weight-bearing beam. From a rational point of view, of course, it was nonsense, as oppressive and unfair as any other sort of enforced hierarchy, but as a practical fact, he had sympathy for it, if only because his gender disposed him that way. “Is it in the club bylaws to exclude women?” he asked. He was used to the reflexive tendency to invoke university regulations as though they were universal laws.
“It is,” responded Sidgwick, “and this is precisely what Nora hopes to change. The club was formed to serve the graduates of Oxford and Cambridge. Newnham is Cambridge’s first female college, just as Girton is Oxford’s, but the bylaws have not been amended to reflect this, and Nora, as head of one of these female institutions, protests the fact strenuously.”
Nora, who sat by while her husband explained her position, did not appear to be protesting strenuously, but she did look very charming as she nodded in agreement. “I stumbled on the idea while reading your Henry Thoreau,” she said languidly. “He refused to pay his taxes. I’m acting on the same principle.”
“Not an exact analogy,” acknowledged Sidgwick, “but close enough.”
“Henry Thoreau went to jail,” noted William.
“Nora’s intention precisely,” said Sidgwick. “She feels it would be good publicity for the movement. Unfortunately, she can’t get anyone to arrest her.”
“Englishmen are cowards,” explained Nora. She glanced around the room, and the men who had been staring at her immediately averted their gazes.
“We British tend to hope the cold shoulder and the venomous stare will do the work of prescribed legislation, which is why reform grinds exceedingly slow in this country,” said Sidgwick.
“Since I don’t think they have the courage to arrest me, I might as well leave,” said Nora, sighing. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Professor James. I look forward one day to meeting your wife. Perhaps you will visit us in Cambridge. The Newnham girls are very good with children, so she could rid herself of the albatross of childcare and enjoy herself.”
William assured her he would relay the message, wondering whether his Alice had ever considered childcare to be an albatross.
“And send my regards to your sister,” she added. “I hear she is not well. She might find some relief in spiritualism. We would welcome her as a member of the SPR.”
William explained that his sister was too much of a skeptic to entertain ideas beyond the realm of the empirical.
“Well then,” said Nora, “perhaps we can find common ground elsewhere. I have also heard that she has a strong feeling for social justice. Perhaps she can come sit with me and weather the stares of the ossified members. It would be a nice touch to have an invalid who could barely walk thrown out of the club.”
“That is the sort of thing that would appeal to her,” agreed William, “if she could get up the strength to get out of bed.”
“The prospect of being thrown into the street might be an incentive for her to do so,” said Nora shrewdly. She had risen from the table and begun putting on her cloak.
The eyes of every man in the room registered relief as they watched her leave, and as soon as she was out the door, the young waiter came over to take the men’s drink order.
William turned to Sidgwick, pleased finally to be able to speak in person with someone he had long admired. “A great honor to meet the author of the Methods of Ethics.”
“The admiration is mutual,” Sidgwick responded. “Most illuminating, your treatise on habit. It is, as you rightly say, the foundation for moral character—on the one hand, ensuring discipline and virtue; on the other, blinding us to wonders that may exist beyond our daily routine. Which is why we must not let the skeptics close our eyes to the possibility of other worlds and the otherworldly.”
“‘There are more things in heaven and earth…’” agreed William. It was the premise on which both men rationalized their interest in psychical phenomena. “You are not deterred after that fiasco with Madame Blavatsky?” he asked gingerly. He was referring to the alleged medium Sidgwick’s group had discovered, but who was found to have fabricated a large swath of her personal history.
“That was a disappointment.” Sidgwick sighed. “But I still hold that the woman possesses extraordinary capabilities; a little charlatanism ought not to be a complete disqualification.”
William nodded. It was precisely his view. One fraud, even fifty or a thousand, did not mean that the subject was closed. All you need is one white crow to destroy the assumption that all crows are black.
“And now, what brings you to London, my dear fellow?” asked Sidgwick with a pointed look that seemed to know the answer, supporting the general assumption that he had psychic powers of his own.
“I’m here to investigate the Whitechapel murders.” William had not intended to give a reason for his visit, but the question had been so direct and so knowing that he felt he could not evade it.
Sidgwick’s eyes brightened. “I suspected as much,” he exclaimed, slapping William heartily on the shoulder. “How surprisingly intelligent of those duffers at Scotland Yard! You’re just the person we need to shed light on the case. And I must say that our meeting today is a happy accident—if there is such a thing as accident. It happens that I have access to”—he cleared his throat—“evidence…that you may find uniquely useful.”