Just finished this (now free on Google books, thank you public domain!), and have a grin on my face.
Evelyn Sharp wants you to know all about her late friend Hertha Ayrton, who was SO COOL -- which can be a hard thing to get across in a book, because you have to take her word on how charming Hertha was in person -- but it generally works, because Hertha Ayrton was very cool! If you liked Marie Brennan's Lady Trent, you'll probably like Hertha Ayrton. (Less hijinks, but there was that one time that Evelyn and Hertha had to move the contents of the WSPU's bank account out of the country before the British government could seize it: "She was full of resource as I expected to find her, and as much unruffled by my news as if she had been engaged all her life in executing commissions of doubtful legality for friends whom the law dubbed conspirators.")
The memoir is, of course, dated in some ways: I was somewhat less interested in the parts towards the beginning where Sharp tells us about how Ayrton met various people who were apparently Big Literary Names -- there's one bit where Sharp mentions Miss De Morgan, sister of the novelist, where I would have said daughter of the logician. But there's plenty of interesting detail in there also, if you don't mind that the narrative arc is often interrupted by, e. g., a poem by 7-year-old Hilaire Belloc! But the pacing picks up towards the end, with the focus on science and suffrage, and Sharp ends the on a high note despite the frustrations of Ayrton's later years.
It holds up well in terms of cultural attitudes: Hertha Ayrton's egalitarianism comes across clearly, even when it encounters disagreement from some of her friends. I also didn't find anything problematic with the book's handling of Jewish characters (Hertha was a Jew who turned agnostic and married a Christian but always kept pride in her Jewish identity). On the other hand, of the two brief mentions of unnamed black people in the book, neither are flattering.
(Also there's a historically interesting bit where Hertha expresses to her mentor her doubts on the issue of "foeticide", which many suffragists of that time objected to on health of the mother grounds, but Hertha doesn't see what harm it does. Edited: see![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
oursin's comment for historical context.)
A bit for the f/f shippers: (context: Sarah, as Hertha was called at the time, is being courted by her cousin Marcus, who takes her to a party where she meets Ottilie Blind)
"It was her spontaneous and romantic admiration for Ottilie that settled in Sarah's mind the question of her feeling for Marcus; for finding to her surprise that she was just as much interested in her new girl friend as she had been in him and considerably more at ease in her company, Sarah faced the matter squarely and deduced the logical conclusion that she was not and never had been in love with Marcus."
I would have liked to hear more about Hertha's lifelong friendship with Ottilie Blind Hancock, who gave her the name "Hertha", and who endowed a fellowship in her name after her death: Ottilie shows up throughout the biography, but mainly in the background. Another background character I would like to know more about is C. E. Greenslade, Hertha's lab assistant (who started out as Hertha's husband's student, then his lab assistant, and then somehow managed to juggle being a lecturer in Cork, Ireland with assisting Hertha in her lab research).
Anyway, I'm very glad to have read this book, and hope it will be better known -- and also that Hertha someday gets the modern biography she deserves. I may also have to look into more Evelyn Sharp -- she seems to have a bunch of children's books in the public domain, as well as an autobiography from 1933 that was recently republished.
Evelyn Sharp wants you to know all about her late friend Hertha Ayrton, who was SO COOL -- which can be a hard thing to get across in a book, because you have to take her word on how charming Hertha was in person -- but it generally works, because Hertha Ayrton was very cool! If you liked Marie Brennan's Lady Trent, you'll probably like Hertha Ayrton. (Less hijinks, but there was that one time that Evelyn and Hertha had to move the contents of the WSPU's bank account out of the country before the British government could seize it: "She was full of resource as I expected to find her, and as much unruffled by my news as if she had been engaged all her life in executing commissions of doubtful legality for friends whom the law dubbed conspirators.")
The memoir is, of course, dated in some ways: I was somewhat less interested in the parts towards the beginning where Sharp tells us about how Ayrton met various people who were apparently Big Literary Names -- there's one bit where Sharp mentions Miss De Morgan, sister of the novelist, where I would have said daughter of the logician. But there's plenty of interesting detail in there also, if you don't mind that the narrative arc is often interrupted by, e. g., a poem by 7-year-old Hilaire Belloc! But the pacing picks up towards the end, with the focus on science and suffrage, and Sharp ends the on a high note despite the frustrations of Ayrton's later years.
It holds up well in terms of cultural attitudes: Hertha Ayrton's egalitarianism comes across clearly, even when it encounters disagreement from some of her friends. I also didn't find anything problematic with the book's handling of Jewish characters (Hertha was a Jew who turned agnostic and married a Christian but always kept pride in her Jewish identity). On the other hand, of the two brief mentions of unnamed black people in the book, neither are flattering.
(Also there's a historically interesting bit where Hertha expresses to her mentor her doubts on the issue of "foeticide", which many suffragists of that time objected to on health of the mother grounds, but Hertha doesn't see what harm it does. Edited: see
oursin's comment for historical context.)A bit for the f/f shippers: (context: Sarah, as Hertha was called at the time, is being courted by her cousin Marcus, who takes her to a party where she meets Ottilie Blind)
"It was her spontaneous and romantic admiration for Ottilie that settled in Sarah's mind the question of her feeling for Marcus; for finding to her surprise that she was just as much interested in her new girl friend as she had been in him and considerably more at ease in her company, Sarah faced the matter squarely and deduced the logical conclusion that she was not and never had been in love with Marcus."
I would have liked to hear more about Hertha's lifelong friendship with Ottilie Blind Hancock, who gave her the name "Hertha", and who endowed a fellowship in her name after her death: Ottilie shows up throughout the biography, but mainly in the background. Another background character I would like to know more about is C. E. Greenslade, Hertha's lab assistant (who started out as Hertha's husband's student, then his lab assistant, and then somehow managed to juggle being a lecturer in Cork, Ireland with assisting Hertha in her lab research).
Anyway, I'm very glad to have read this book, and hope it will be better known -- and also that Hertha someday gets the modern biography she deserves. I may also have to look into more Evelyn Sharp -- she seems to have a bunch of children's books in the public domain, as well as an autobiography from 1933 that was recently republished.
